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Doni-Jo Minor-Munro, Yuchi tribal member is a Traditional Spiritual Healer who currently serves as Director of Urban Indian Education in Santa Barbara Tri-County area California. In addition, Ms. Minor-Munro is the CEO/CFO of Our Children Are Sacred, Inc./American Indian Education Programs. She attended the Oregon College of Education and is an advocate of urban Indian rights and native children advocate. Ms. Minor-Munro believes in traditional Indian services. Among some of the services is a traditional Native American Pre-K through 12th school, healing ceremonies, ICWA family support, healing with horses and Native Veterans sweat lodge programs. She is affiliated with UNIC, USET and the National Indian Education Association (NIEA). One of her favorite quotes is "The Creator hears us when we pray in our native tongue. Pray always and serve with humbleness."
NEW YORK, June 9, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- This report provides detailed analysis of worldwide markets for Light Stabilizer from 2011-2016, and provides extensive market forecasts (2016-2021) by region/country and subsectors. It covers the key technological and market trends in the Light Stabilizer market and further lays out an analysis of the factors influencing the supply/demand for Light Stabilizer, and the opportunities/challenges faced by industry participants. It also acts as an essential tool to companies active across the value chain and to the new entrants by enabling them to capitalize the opportunities and develop business strategies.



Stabilizers for polymers are used directly or by combinations to prevent the various effects such as oxidation, chain scission and uncontrolled recombinations and cross-linking reactions that are caused by photo-oxidation of polymers. Polymers are considered to get weathered due to the direct or indirect impact of heat and ultraviolet light. The effectiveness of the stabilizers against weathering depends on solubility, ability to stabilize in different polymer matrix, the distribution in matrix, evaporation loss during processing and use. The effect on the viscosity is also an important concern for processing.



GCC's report, Global Light Stabilizer Market Outlook 2011-2021, has been prepared based on the synthesis, analysis, and interpretation of information about the global Light Stabilizer market collected from specialized sources. The report covers key technological developments in the recent times and profiles leading players in the market and analyzes their key strategies. The competitive landscape section of the report provides a clear insight into the market share analysis of key industry players. The major players in the global Light Stabilizer market areBASF (Germany), Cytec (USA), Albemarle (USA), Songwon (Korea), ADK (Japan), Chemipro (Japan), Shipro (Japan), Johoku Chemical (Japan), Addivant (USA), Sunko Ink (Taiwan), Everlight Chemical (Taiwan), Everspring Chemical (Taiwan), Yingkou Fengguang (China), Beijing Jiyi Chemical (China), Suqian Unitechem (China), Beijing Tiangang (China), Tianjin Rianlon (China).



The report provides separate comprehensive analytics for the North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, Middle East and Africa and Rest of World. In this sector, global competitive landscape and supply/demand pattern of Light Stabilizer industry has been provided.

Read the full report: http://www.reportlinker.com/p03866981-summary/view-report.html



About Reportlinker

ReportLinker is an award-winning market research solution. Reportlinker finds and organizes the latest industry data so you get all the market research you need - instantly, in one place.



http://www.reportlinker.com



__________________________

Contact Clare: [email protected]

US: (339)-368-6001

Intl: +1 339-368-6001

SOURCE Reportlinker

Related Links

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WASHINGTON, June 10, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

Will Simplify Access to Important Social Programs Like Food and Cash Assistance for 200,000 DC Residents

Infosys Public Services Inc., a US-based subsidiary of global consulting, technology and next-generation services company Infosys (NYSE: INFY), and the District of Columbia Department of Human Services, today announced the achievement of a milestone in their joint project, the District of Columbia Access System (DCAS). This project aims to modernize the District's complex eligibility and enrollment system for food assistance, cash assistance, and other social services benefit programs. The District received permission from Food and Nutrition Services (FNS), an agency within the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), to move this new system into the pilot production phase. The pilot phase is the federally-mandated final test phase before the system is allowed to launch. Entering this phase requires the system to meet pre-set quality criteria and to be approved by the FNS oversight team in order to move forward.

(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20130122/589162 )



Application development was accomplished in six months and the testing phase, made up of over 9000 test cases, was completed in 8 weeks. This process took significantly less time than other states implementing similar systems, along with a substantial cost savings over the average cost in other states.

DCAS replaces the District's decades-old legacy system with a more scalable, agile, and citizen-centric solution. Built on the IBM Curam social program management solution, the new system will improve the management of important social services programs for over 200,000 residents by collecting more detailed information about each person, automating case administration, determining integrated eligibility, issuing benefits and, in the future, it will provide an online self-service option for citizens. The system will eventually be extended to support other DC health and social programs, providing the District's citizens and caseworkers with a way to check eligibility for various health and social programs through a single application.

Infosys Public Services has been the prime contractor for the District, initially implementing the District's Health Benefit Exchange, DC Health Link, and subsequently modernizing the District's legacy eligibility system for additional federal and local health and social programs.

Quotes:

Marina Havan, CIO of the Department of Human Services, District of Columbia

"The federal approval to move DC Link, our consolidated eligibility and enrollment system for Food and Cash programs, is a significant milestone in the DC Access System project goal to modernize our IT infrastructure to better serve the District's residents. This was made possible by the hard work and collaboration amongst the Department of Human Services caseworkers, our policy partners, the agency's IT staff, and the Infosys Public Services team. Infosys Public Services' systems integration capabilities and understanding of our systems have played a key role in helping us build a modern health and human services system."

Eric Paternoster, President and CEO of Infosys Public Services

"Many health and human services organizations see the value of modernizing and integrating their social programs so they can reduce costs and improve the service they provide to citizens. The District of Columbia has been a leader in successfully implementing such complex initiatives. This project required us to draw on our healthcare expertise, legacy modernization solutions and strong program management and execution methodology to build the District's new system in just six months. This has enabled the District to go live and move to the pilot stage in record time."

About Infosys Public Services, Inc.

Infosys Public Services (http://www.infosyspublicservices.com), a North-American subsidiary of Infosys (NYSE: INFY), is a leader in business consulting, technology solutions, and next-generation services. We partner with public sector organizations in the US and Canada to help them stay ahead of the innovation curve. Our solutions, combined with execution excellence and proven best practices allow clients to renew themselves while also creating new avenues to generate value.

About Infosys:

Infosys is a global leader in consulting, technology, outsourcing and next-generation services. We enable clients, in more than 50 countries, to stay a step ahead of emerging business trends and outperform the competition. We help them transform and thrive in a changing world by co-creating breakthrough solutions that combine strategic insights and execution excellence.

Visit http://www.infosys.com to see how Infosys (NYSE: INFY), with US$ 9.2 billion in LTM revenues and 193,000+ employees, is helping enterprises renew themselves while also creating new avenues to generate value.

Safe Harbor

Certain statements in this press release concerning our future growth prospects are forward-looking statements regarding our future business expectations intended to qualify for the 'safe harbor' under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, which involve a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in such forward-looking statements. The risks and uncertainties relating to these statements include, but are not limited to, risks and uncertainties regarding fluctuations in earnings, fluctuations in foreign exchange rates, our ability to manage growth, intense competition in IT services including those factors which may affect our cost advantage, wage increases in India, our ability to attract and retain highly skilled professionals, time and cost overruns on fixed-price, fixed-time frame contracts, client concentration, restrictions on immigration, industry segment concentration, our ability to manage our international operations, reduced demand for technology in our key focus areas, disruptions in telecommunication networks or system failures, our ability to successfully complete and integrate potential acquisitions, liability for damages on our service contracts, the success of the companies in which Infosys has made strategic investments, withdrawal or expiration of governmental fiscal incentives, political instability and regional conflicts, legal restrictions on raising capital or acquiring companies outside India, and unauthorized use of our intellectual property and general economic conditions affecting our industry. Additional risks that could affect our future operating results are more fully described in our United States Securities and Exchange Commission filings including our Annual Report on Form 20-F for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2016. These filings are available at http://www.sec.gov. Infosys may, from time to time, make additional written and oral forward-looking statements, including statements contained in the company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission and our reports to shareholders. In addition, please note that the date of this press release is June 10, 2016, and any forward-looking statements contained herein are based on assumptions that we believe to be reasonable as of this date. The company does not undertake to update any forward-looking statements that may be made from time to time by or on behalf of the company unless it is required by law.

SOURCE Infosys
"I'm incredibly proud of our network's achievement, winning 'Network of the Year' for the third consecutive year. This further proves that Leo Burnett is at the forefront of bold, transformational creativity that helps our clients stand out and drive real business change," said Mark Tutssel, Leo Burnett Worldwide's global chief creative officer and creative chairman of Publicis Communications. Tutssel also served as ADC's Advertising Jury Chair this year. "ADC has a standard it upholds, and does not lower it for anyone. An ADC award is rare for a reason."

The Spanish Lottery, Leo Burnett Madrid's client since 2014, was honored as "Client of the Year." Its Christmas campaign, "Justino," took home two Gold and two Silver ADC cubes." This is the second straight year a Leo Burnett client has been crowned with this highly coveted title following Proctor & Gamble's win in 2015.

The network collectively took home five Gold, 13 Silver and eight Bronze awards. Thirteen Leo Burnett Worldwide offices contributed to the creative performance, including Bangkok, Beirut, Buenos Aires, Chicago, Frankfurt, Madrid, Melbourne, Mexico City, Oslo, Paris, Sao Paulo, Sydney, and Toronto.

The following campaigns won the Gold ADC cube:

Leo Burnett Buenos Aires' "Safety Truck" for Samsung (Advertising: Innovation)

Leo Burnett Madrid's "Justino" for Spanish Lottery (Advertising: TV/Film-TV Commercial and Motion: Animation)

"Justino" for Spanish Lottery (Advertising: TV/Film-TV Commercial and Motion: Animation) Leo Burnett Melbourne's "Dream Run" for Honda HR-V (Motion: Direction)

"Dream Run" for Honda HR-V (Motion: Direction) Leo Burnett Melbourne's "Wild Horse Chase" for Honda CR-V (Motion: Direction)

ADC has been a champion of the very best in commercial creativity. The ADC Annual Awards is the oldest continuously running industry award show in the world. Now in its 95th year, it celebrates the artistry and craftsmanship synonymous with beautiful advertising and design.

To see the full list of winners, visit ADC's site at www.adcglobal.org/awards.

About Leo Burnett Worldwide

Leo Burnett Worldwide believes in using creativity to drive dynamic business change for its clients. Through a HumanKind approach to marketing, the agency puts a brand's purpose at the center of communications to transform human behavior. Part of Publicis Communications, Leo Burnett Worldwide is one of the world's largest agency networks with 85 offices and more than 8,000 employees. The global agency works with some of the world's most valued brands including Coca-Cola, Fiat, Kellogg's, Kraft, McDonald's, Nintendo, P&G, Samsung and Tata among others. Leo Burnett is the most awarded network in the world based on Advertising Age's 2015 Awards Report. To learn more about Leo Burnett Worldwide and its rich, 80-year history of creating iconic brands, visit our site, Facebook page and follow us via @leoburnett.

Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160609/377825

SOURCE Leo Burnett Worldwide

Related Links

http://www.leoburnett.com


Based in West Palm Beach, Martinez began her legal career as an assistant state attorney for the 15 th Judicial Circuit, followed by 15 years with two civil trial practice boutique firms in South Florida. Martinez has a diversified practice and extensive trial experience, including representing clients in aviation, construction defects, traumatic bodily injury, premises liability, insurance coverage disputes, product liability, business disputes, and multidistrict litigation. She has also spoken across the country on various topics of litigation, including discovery, spoliation of evidence, and construction defects.

Martinez earned her J.D. from the Shepard Broad Law Center of Nova Southeastern University in 1996, after receiving a B.S. from Florida State University in 1994. She is a board member of the Palm Beach County Hispanic Bar Association, and a member of the Claims & Litigation Management Alliance, Florida Association of Women Lawyers, the Palm Beach County Bar Association, and an Emeritus member of the Craig S. Barnard Inns of Court, having previously served on the executive board. Martinez also previously served on the board of the Palm Beach County Bar Association and as the chair of the Palm Beach County Bar Association Law Week Committee.

Maureen Martinez can be reached at [email protected] or 561.847.2351.

About the Litigation Department at McDonald Hopkins

The Litigation Department at McDonald Hopkins focuses on the successful and efficient handling of client-critical issues when the need for litigation assistance occurs. The firm has a deep bench of trial attorneys with an exceptional collection of trial, arbitration and mediation experience involving high stakes litigation with a track record of achieving effective results. With extensive bench strength and by employing the latest technology and strategies in the courtroom, we are able to consistently deliver cost-effective results in a wide array of business disciplines.

About McDonald Hopkins

Founded in 1930, McDonald Hopkins is a business advisory and advocacy law firm with locations in Chicago, Cleveland, Columbus, Detroit, Miami, and West Palm Beach. Our subsidiary, McDonald Hopkins Government Strategies LLC, is based in Washington, D.C. and led by former Congressman Steven LaTourette. McDonald Hopkins Government Strategies is not a law firm and does not provide legal services. For more information about McDonald Hopkins, visit mcdonaldhopkins.com.

CONTACT:

Deborah W. Kelm

McDonald Hopkins LLC

Phone: 216.348.5733

Email: [email protected]

Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160610/377913

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20120131/CL44903LOGO

SOURCE McDonald Hopkins

Related Links

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SAN JOSE, Calif., June 9, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- The rate of unsheltered veterans living in Santa Clara County is significantly higher than the national average, according to recent census data.

Lockheed Martin

(NYSE: LMT ) is joining the

All the Way Home

campaign to help those men and women find a home.

All the Way Home is co-led by San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo, Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors President Dave Cortese, and Destination: Home with the goal of housing all veterans in Santa Clara County by Veterans Day 2018. With a long-standing commitment to veteran outreach, Lockheed Martin is the first Fortune 100 company in Silicon Valley to sign on and support the effort through a three-year commitment.

"About one in four Lockheed Martin employees is a veteran, and we know first-hand the meaningful contributions and talents that veterans bring to our workplaces and our communities," said Doug Graham, Lockheed Martin vice president and board officer of the Silicon Valley Leadership Group, which is encouraging other local businesses to support the effort. "We have the highest respect for veterans and their families, and we're honored to join All the Way Home to support these men and women who selflessly served our country."

Today, there are more than 700 homeless veterans in Santa Clara County, with close to half of those individuals considered chronically homeless. To accomplish its mission, All the Way Home works with landlords and apartment owners to increase access to rental units for homeless veterans and their families.

"I'd like to thank Lockheed Martin for stepping up in a big way to help our homeless veterans," said Mayor Sam Liccardo. "These men and women have served our country, and it's our moral obligation to see that they have a roof over their heads. We're proud Lockheed Martin has joined myriad businesses and churches who have worked tirelessly to ensure all veterans come all the way home."

Lockheed Martin's commitment spans three years, in which the company will provide funding to support All the Way Home programming and volunteer efforts, including move-in-kits with the campaign's non-profit partner Destination: Home. The company's initial $10,000 contribution will supply 70 kits that include basic move-in essentials like personal care items, clothing, cookware and linens, as well as an additional 10 kits that include furniture.

"I hope that many businesses will follow Lockheed Martin's example and join our effort to house homeless veterans," said Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors President Dave Cortese. "I thank the company for leading the way. No one who served his or her country should be without a home. They fought for us and we need to stand up for them."

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.

About All the Way Home

The "All the Way Home" campaign is targeted at ending veteran homelessness. The City of San Jose, the County of Santa Clara, the Housing Authority of the County of Santa Clara and Destination: Home are collaborating to address this community crisis. We are partnering with our community's consortium of service providers including Veteran's Voices of Santa Clara County, Abode Services, HomeFirst Services of Santa Clara County, Goodwill Silicon Valley, Sunnyvale Community Services, Veteran's Resource Centers of America and others to ensure more housing resources are available for homeless veterans.

Media Contacts:

Lockheed Martin: Lauren Fair, 408-742-5605; [email protected]

City of San Jose: David Low, 408-535-4840; [email protected]

Santa Clara County: Janice Rombeck, 408-299-5030, [email protected]

Destination: Home: Maya Esparza, 408-513-8724; [email protected]

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20151019/278077LOGO

SOURCE Lockheed Martin

Related Links

http://www.lockheedmartin.com


"Mark's wealth of experience and industry knowledge will make him a key addition to the CarProof team," said Dick Raines, president of Carfax. "We see him as an important addition to unlock the full potential of an exceptional team with a long track record of success. I'd like to thank Drew Forret, and all the members of the CarProof team, for their good counsel and leadership of the company during our search. I'm confident that with Mark's guidance the company will continue their tradition of innovating to help Canadians make better decisions about the used cars they buy and sell."

CarProof is the leading vehicle history company in Canada whose products help consumers, car dealers, vehicle manufacturers, major auctions, governments, insurance providers and police agencies across Canada. Based in London, Ontario and founded in 2000, CarProof has been named one of Canada's 50 Best Managed Companies, and was also honored with Deloitte's 2013 Technology Fast 50 and Fast 500 awards. CarProof will continue to operate as a standalone company and Rousseau will report to Dick Raines, president of Carfax.

"The CarProof commitment to providing trusted information that helps Canadians buy and sell used cars with more confidence is what attracted me," said Rousseau. "I've always been curious and had a deep desire to build. I'm excited to join a company that's firmly committed to innovating new products and building outstanding teams. CarProof helps millions of consumers and thousands of dealers in Canada and I'm proud to now be part of that effort."

For questions, please contact Larry Gamache at 703-934-2664.

About Carfax and CarProof

Carfax and CarProof, both units of IHS Inc. (NYSE: IHS), are vehicle history experts for used car buyers, sellers and the automotive industry across North America. Carfax created the Vehicle History Report in 1986 and continues to develop innovative services  like Carfax Used Car Listings and myCarfax  that make it easier to buy, sell and own a used car. CarProof, based in London, Ontario and founded in 2000, similarly offers vehicle history information products to help Canadian buyers and sellers of used cars. Based in Englewood, Colorado, USA, IHS is the leading global source of information, insight and analytics in the automotive industry and other critical areas that shape today's business landscape.

Available Topic Expert(s): For information on the listed expert(s), click appropriate link.

Larry Gamache

http://www.profnetconnect.com/larry_gamache

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20080507/CARFAXLOGO

SOURCE Carfax
SPRINGFIELD, Mass., June 10, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- The MassMutual Foundation, Inc.  a dedicated corporate foundation established by Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Company (MassMutual)  today announced it is providing the University of Massachusetts Amherst $15 million over 10 years to further strengthen its world-class data science and cybersecurity research and education programs in Western Massachusetts.

The grant, a signature contribution of the MassMutual Foundation  and one of the largest donations in UMass Amherst history  was outlined by Nick Fyntrilakis, MassMutual's Vice President of Community Responsibility and President of the MassMutual Foundation, at a briefing at the UMass Center at Springfield, located in Tower Square, which will house the new cybersecurity initiative.

"The implementation of new technologies across all industries is occurring at an extremely rapid pace, driving demand for scientists skilled in analyzing data and protecting digital information," said Fyntrilakis. "The MassMutual Foundation is making this gift to take these leading data science and cybersecurity research centers to the next level, and to ensure that both the Pioneer Valley and the Commonwealth will be at the forefront of these emerging areas and a top destination for these important disciplines."

A growing and exciting new facet of MassMutual's corporate responsibility approach, the MassMutual Foundation is a dedicated corporate foundation created by MassMutual to manage eligible charitable contributions.

The MassMutual Foundation's long term goal is to provide a total of $100 million through targeted charitable investments over the next five years. Fyntrilakis added that over the past 10 years, MassMutual has given back nearly $80 million to the communities where the company's employees and agents live and work.

"Throughout our 165-year history, MassMutual has always made people a priority, and today that commitment to our policyowners, customers and the communities we serve continues with the creation of our Foundation," said Fyntrilakis. "By giving back to our communities and providing economic opportunity, we are indeed strengthening the vitality of the region."

In announcing the new UMass initiative, Amherst Chancellor Kumble Subbaswamy said: "We are deeply grateful for this extraordinary investment by the MassMutual Foundation. Today's announcement represents a private-public collaboration that will uniquely benefit the Commonwealth. With this support, our researchers will expand our knowledge of data science and its uses and develop new cybersecurity systems to protect information networks. Our internationally recognized faculty also will help prepare the next generation of leading computer scientists, creating new knowledge and educating a growing workforce to create a range of new economic opportunities."

The grant to UMass Amherst, the Commonwealth's flagship campus, will provide substantial new resources to two of the university's outstanding areas of academic and research excellence  both affiliated with the College of Information and Computer Sciences.

$12 million to support the Center for Data Science, which will enhance UMass Amherst's standing as a leading destination for data science and related research. Funds will be invested to hire additional faculty, and support the Center's goals to double the number of data science courses and triple the size of the master's program in computer science. Students will engage with  and learn from  leading educators in data analytics. The center also focuses on creating new technology to manage and gain insight from big data while also educating tomorrow's data scientists.

to support the Center for Data Science, which will enhance standing as a leading destination for data science and related research. Funds will be invested to hire additional faculty, and support the Center's goals to double the number of data science courses and triple the size of the master's program in computer science. Students will engage with  and learn from  leading educators in data analytics. The center also focuses on creating new technology to manage and gain insight from big data while also educating tomorrow's data scientists. $3 million to support new research and education activities at the university's Cybersecurity Institute. The gift will establish the Institute's new Trust Assurance Cybersecurity certificate offered at the MassMutual Foundation/UMass Springfield Center for Training in Cybersecurity. The program will provide a significant economic development benefit to downtown Springfield , drawing professionals from the Springfield - Hartford, Conn. , area as well as undergraduate students. The gift also supports new faculty hires by UMass Amherst to develop and teach the classes.

In addition to the collaboration with UMass Amherst, the MassMutual Foundation is focused on expanding its FutureSmartSM program, which challenges young leaders to take steps toward both a successful career and financial wellness for themselves, their families and their communities. To date, the program has reached more than 250,000 middle and high school students across the country. Its goal is to reach two million students by 2020.

The MassMutual Foundation will also fund such programs as Mutual ImpactSM, MassMutual's employee giving program, and grants focused on economic development, academic achievement & workforce development and financial education. To learn more about the MassMutual Foundation please visit www.massmutual.com/responsibility.

EDITOR'S NOTE: The field of data science draws on statistical methods to address business issues and improve the customer experience in an array of fields. With respect to MassMutual, among the work currently being conducted by its team of data scientists, includes helping the company instantaneously assess risks, enable new products and streamline the underwriting process.

In 2015, MassMutual made a $2 million, four-year investment to enable Smith College and Mount Holyoke College to develop a comprehensive data science curriculum. The company also opened an industry-leading data science center in Amherst.

About the MassMutual Foundation

The MassMutual Foundation strives to broaden economic opportunity for America's youth and their families by investing in economic development, academic achievement & workforce development locally, and financial education across the United States. The Foundation is a reflection of MassMutual's longstanding dedication to corporate citizenship and its unwavering commitment to the communities in which we do business. To learn more about the MassMutual Foundation please visit www.massmutual.com/responsibility.

About MassMutual

Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Company (MassMutual) is a leading mutual life insurance company that that is run for the benefit of its members and participating policyowners. MassMutual offers a wide range of financial products and services, including life insurance, disability income insurance, long term care insurance, annuities, retirement plans and other employee benefits. For more information, visit www.massmutual.com.

About UMass Amherst

The University of Massachusetts Amherst is a nationally ranked public research university offering a full range of undergraduate, graduate and professional degrees. As Commonwealth's flagship campus in America's education state, UMass Amherst makes a profound, transformative contribution to the common goodin Massachusetts and beyond.

Contacts: Laura DeMars

413-744-7181

[email protected]

Michael McNamara

413-744-3917

[email protected]

Ed Blaguszewski

413-545-0444

[email protected]

CRN201806-202844

SOURCE MassMutual Financial Group

Related Links

http://www.massmutual.com


WASHINGTON, June 10, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Bonnie A. Barsamian has been nominated by President Barack Obama to serve on the Board of the Securities Investor Protection Corporation (SIPC), which maintains a special reserve fund authorized by Congress to help investors at failed brokerage firms.

Ms. Barsamian, a partner in the New York Office of the law firm Baker Botts L.L.P., has been recognized as one of the top capital markets lawyers in the United States. Her nomination must be confirmed by the U.S. Senate.

SIPC President Stephen Harbeck said: "We are pleased to be joined in our work by such an exceptional new Board member. Ms. Barsamian's deep financial experience will be a great asset to the SIPC Board and to the investing public. We look forward to a speedy confirmation by the Senate."

Ms. Barsamian is a seasoned advisor and law firm partner with over 25 years of corporate transactional, advisory and regulatory experience. She advises public and private companies, financial institutions, sponsors, executive leadership, and boards of directors in the full range of equity and debt capital markets/securities offerings and other financing transactions, as well as acquisition/divestiture, recapitalization, and change-of-control transactions. She is a veteran advisor on Federal securities laws, and also advises boards of directors and board committees on a range of routine and extraordinary corporate governance matters. She has served as past chair of a law firm's global corporate finance practice group and serves on non-profit boards of directors. She received a B.A. degree in Economics and English from Amherst College, and a J.D. degree from The University of Chicago Law School where she was a member of The University of Chicago Law Review.

Contact: Kristen McCaughan, 202-276-4961, [email protected]

SOURCE Securities Investor Protection Corporation (SIPC)
MIAMI, June 10, 2016 /PRNewswire/ - Next Group Holdings, Inc. (OTCQB: NXGH) (the "Company") today announces a change of the Record Date for the special stock dividend for shareholders originally announced on May 27, 2016. The original Record Date for the special dividend was June 10, 2016. The record date will now be June 28, 2016.

The Company has completed and filed requisite paperwork to issue a special dividend of one share of the new Class D redeemable preferred stock for each share of NXGH common stock held. To receive the special dividend, each NXGH shareholder needs only to take the appropriate steps with their brokerage house to verify their position in the Company.

The change on the record date is due to FINRA's request for additional information regarding this dividend. We are in the process of gathering this material and responding to FINRA's request.

"Rescheduling the effective Record Date for this dividend is necessary to comply with FINRA's request for information," said Arik Maimon, NXGH's Chairman and CEO. "This special dividend has great potential to bring extra value to NXGH and each shareholder." added Maimon.

Next Group Holdings has provided the stockholder letter necessary to request the Class D preferred stock certificate from the Company free of charge at www.nextgroupholdings.com under the "Investors Relations" in the main menu and "Dividend" tab.

The complete 8-K regarding the dividend and new class of share filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission is available at: http://www.otcmarkets.com/edgar/GetFilingHtml?FilingID=11397857.

About Us: NXGH is a corporation headquartered in Miami, Florida, which, through its operating subsidiaries, engages in the business of using proprietary technology and certain licensed technology to provide innovative mobile banking, mobility, and telecommunications solutions to underserved, unbanked, and emerging markets. NXGH's principal executive offices are located at 1111 Brickell Avenue, Suite 2200, Miami, Florida 33131, and its telephone number at that location is (800) 611-3622. NXGH's web address is www.nextgroupholdings.com.

THIS NEWS RELEASE CONTAINS "FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS", AS THAT TERM IS DEFINED IN SECTION 27A OF THE UNITED STATES SECURITIES ACT OF 1933, AS AMENDED, AND SECTION 21E OF THE UNITED STATES SECURITIES EXCHANGE ACT OF 1934, AS AMENDED. STATEMENTS IN THIS NEWS RELEASE, WHICH ARE NOT PURELY HISTORICAL, ARE FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS AND INCLUDE ANY STATEMENTS REGARDING BELIEFS, PLANS, EXPECTATIONS OR INTENTIONS REGARDING THE FUTURE. EXCEPT FOR THE HISTORICAL INFORMATION PRESENTED HEREIN, MATTERS DISCUSSED IN THIS NEWS RELEASE CONTAIN FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS THAT ARE SUBJECT TO CERTAIN RISKS AND UNCERTAINTIES THAT COULD CAUSE ACTUAL RESULTS TO DIFFER MATERIALLY FROM ANY FUTURE RESULTS, PERFORMANCE OR ACHIEVEMENTS EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED BY SUCH STATEMENTS. STATEMENTS THAT ARE NOT HISTORICAL FACTS, INCLUDING STATEMENTS THAT ARE PRECEDED BY, FOLLOWED BY, OR THAT INCLUDE SUCH WORDS AS"ESTIMATE", "ANTICIPATE", "BELIEVE", "PLAN" OR "EXPECT" OR SIMILAR STATEMENTS ARE FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS CONTAINED IN THIS NEWS RELEASE INCLUDE STATEMENTS RELATING TO OTHER PUBLICLY AVAILABLE INFORMATION REGARDING THE COMPANY.

SOURCE Next Group Holdings, Inc.
CHICAGO, June 10, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- At a pivotal moment in a year which has seen enormous populist upsurge in the 2016 Presidential campaign, an all-star lineup of progressive and community leaders and activists will gather in Chicago June 17-19 for a People's Summit.

Thousands are expected to join the three-day Summit, which is intended to step up the momentum and movement building associated with the populist moment and the broad grassroots organizing on progressive issues that has been underway with less media fanfare around the nation for years.

The Summit will also bring together many of the leaders and organizations who have participated in the Bernie Sanders campaign, as well as other community leaders and activists who have worked for social, political, and economic change for years.

What: People's Summit

When: June 17-19, McCormick Place, Chicago

How to Get Involved: Via http://www.thepeoplessummit.org or [email protected]https://www.facebook.com/events/772454342884561/

Twitter: @pplsummit

Program begins 7 p.m. Friday night, June 17. Continues through 12 noon, Sunday, June 19. (Press Registration  Lakeside Ballroom, McCormick Place. Best Parking  Parking Lot C)

Sen. Sanders is one of the invited, but not confirmed, speakers.

Confirmed speakers and participants include:

Naomi Klein , environmental/social activist, author, "This Changes Everything"

, environmental/social activist, author, "This Changes Everything" Rep. Tulsi Gabbard , veteran, Meritorious Service Medal awardee

, veteran, Meritorious Service Medal awardee Rep. Raul Grijalva , co-chair Congressional Progressive Caucus

, co-chair Congressional Progressive Caucus RoseAnn DeMoro , executive director, National Nurses United

executive director, National Nurses United Van Jones , CNN commentator/correspondent, president/co-Founder of Dream Corps, former White House green jobs advisor

CNN commentator/correspondent, president/co-Founder of Dream Corps, former White House green jobs advisor Rev. William Barber , architect of the Moral Mondays Movement; president, Repairers of the Breach

, architect of the Moral Mondays Movement; president, Repairers of the Breach Former Ohio State Sen. Nina Turner

Rosario Dawson , actress/activist

actress/activist Gaby Hoffman , actress/activist

actress/activist Josh Fox , documentary filmmaker, showing his new film "How to Love Everything Climate Can't Change"

, documentary filmmaker, showing his new film "How to Love Everything Climate Can't Change" Frances Fox Piven , author, activist

author, activist Heather McGee , president, Demos

president, Demos Cook County Commissioner Jesus "Chuy" Garcia

Juan Gonzalez , co-host Democracy Now, author, writer, "Harvest of Empire"

co-host Democracy Now, author, writer, "Harvest of Empire" Jim Hightower , American populist and political commentator

American populist and political commentator Shaun King , New York Daily News columnist, Occupy activist

columnist, Occupy activist Rev. Lennox Yearwood , President, Hip-Hop Caucus

President, Hip-Hop Caucus George Goehl , co-director, People's Action

co-director, People's Action Tobita Chow , chair , People's Lobby

chair People's Lobby Becky Bond , former Executive Director CREDO, director digital organizing Sanders campaign

A Vision of Change

The Summit opens Friday night, June 17 with presentations by Naomi Klein, Van Jones, RoseAnn DeMoro, and Juan Gonzalez outlining visions of social justice and continuing the progressive movement building going forward to the November election and beyond.

On Saturday morning, Rev. William Barber will join with leaders of social justice and environmental organizations to discuss how collective actions have already led to a number of significant victories for social change. Presenters include Dante Barry from A Million Hoodies: Movement for Justice, Linda Sarsour founder of MPOWER, and Mark Schlosberg, Food and Water Action Fund.

That will be followed by additional presentations and discussions of how to continue the momentum to strengthen the unity of the broad diversity of movements around the country.

Later Saturday, Congress members Tulsi Gabbard, Raul Grijalva, former Ohio State Sen. Nina Turner, and Cook County Commissioner Jesse "Chuy" Garcia will lead discussion of formation of a "people's agenda" that can help unify many movement activists.

Saturday's program will also feature workshops on a broad range of topics including energy democracy and climate justice; racial and economic justice; ending voter suppression, mass incarceration, and deportations; the push for guaranteed healthcare through Medicare for all; student actions to raise wages, not tuition; and building a movement while interacting with an increasingly concentrated corporate media.

An additional highlight Saturday evening will feature a "People's Speak" of dramatic theatrical readings by celebrated actors Rosario Dawson, Gaby Hoffman, Wallace Shawn, and Max Carver.

Sunday morning, the Summit concludes with a celebration of Juneteenth, an anniversary of the abolition of slavery, and discussions of how to bring actions back to local communities.

Summit endorsers/participants include National Nurses United, Peoples Action, Presente, People for Bernie, United Students Against Sweatshops (USAS), 350.0rg, Food and Water Action Fund, MillionHoodies: Movement for Justice, Physicians for a National Health Program, Iowa Citizens for Community Involvement Fund, Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), Progressive Maryland, the United Students Student Association, Progressive Democrats of America (PDA), African Americans for Bernie, Working Families Party, HealthCare Now, and Friends of the Earth.

What Summit endorsers are saying

"Community organizing  on healthcare, the climate crisis and environmental pollution, poverty, income inequality, racial justice, immigration rights, affordable housing, student debt  has been underway for many years, far from the media spotlight," says DeMoro. "While electoral politics are an important part of the movement, they are not the movement itself. A signal accomplishment of the Bernie Sanders campaign has been to highlight so many of these issues, through the vehicle of a national Presidential campaign, and demonstrate the broad public support for real, transformative change."

"As Bernie himself has said, our politics must shift from the horse race aspect to focus on policy options and building grassroots power for the working people of our country," says People for Bernie's Winnie Wong. "The Summit is an opportunity to come together as a community and process this moment together, in unity. We've got a lot to figure out: how to win platform fights at the DNC, how to support the grassroots across the country, and how to build a path to power in government and in our communities that includes all of us."

"Sen. Sanders himself has said the political movement we need must be built from the bottom-up," says George Goehl, Co-Director of People's Action. "We believe it will come in the form of millions of people joining and building local people's organizations, aligning around big idea policy campaigns, and recruiting thousands of everyday people with truly progressive values to run for political office."

SOURCE National Nurses United
VANCOUVER, June 10, 2016 /PRNewswire/ - Northern Dynasty Minerals Ltd. (TSX: NDM; NYSE MKT: NAK) ("Northern Dynasty" or the "Company") reports that it has closed its previously announced prospectus offerings of 38,000,000 units of the Company at a price of C$0.45 per unit (the "Offering") which includes 4,666,667 units issued pursuant to the full exercise of an over-allotment option granted to the agents, for gross proceeds to the Company of $17,100,000.

Each Unit consists of one common share (a "Share") and one common share purchase warrant (a "Warrant"). Each Warrant will be exercisable into one common share (a "Warrant Share") at an exercise price of $0.65 per Warrant Share for a period of five (5) years from the closing of the Offering.

The offering of 35,777,778 Units was conducted by a syndicate of agents, led by Global Securities Corporation and including Industrial Alliance Securities Inc. The balance of 2,222,222 Units were sold directly to United States "accredited investors" by the Company.

The Warrants will be listed for trading today on the TSX under the symbol NDM.WT.B-T.

The net proceeds of the Offering will be used to fund the Company's multi-dimensional strategy to address the United States Environment Protection Agency's proposed pre-emptive regulatory action under the United States Clean Water Act and to prepare the Pebble Project to initiate federal and state permitting under the United States National Environmental Policy Act, costs to keep the Pebble project in good standing, costs to advance a potential partner(s) transaction and for working capital and general corporate purposes.

In Canada, the Offering was qualified by the Company's short form base shelf prospectus dated March 7, 2016 and the Company's prospectus supplement dated May 26, 2016, as filed by the Company with the Canadian securities regulatory authorities in the Provinces of British Columbia, Alberta and Ontario

The Units were offered in the United States pursuant to a base shelf prospectus contained in the Company's registration statement on Form F-3 (the "Registration Statement") filed by the Company with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (the "Commission") under the United States Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the "U.S. Securities Act"). The Registration Statement was declared effective by the Commission on March 30, 2016. On March 31, 2016, the Company filed with the Commission pursuant to Rule 424(b) under the U.S. Securities Act the base prospectus related to the Registration Statement (the "U.S. Base Prospectus"). On May 26, 2016, the Company filed with the Commission pursuant to Rule 424(b) under the U.S. Securities Act a prospectus supplement relating to the Shares and Warrants (together with the U.S. Base Prospectus, the "U.S. Prospectus").

Sales of Units to persons outside of the United States were neither effected pursuant to the U.S. Prospectus nor qualified by the Registration Statement. Accordingly, as provided for in the Warrant Indenture governing the Warrants, any Warrants (the "Regulation S Warrants") forming part of the Units originally sold to persons outside the United States may not be exercised by or for the account or benefit of a U.S. person (as defined in Rule 902(k) of Regulation S under the U.S. Securities Act) or a person in the United States absent an exemption from applicable U.S. federal and state registration requirements. Therefore, should any such Regulation S Warrants be subsequently purchased by a U.S. person or a person in the United States and subsequently exercised pursuant to a registration exemption, the resulting Warrant Shares will be "restricted securities" (as defined in Rule 144(a)(3) under the U.S. Securities Act) and will be subject to resale restrictions under applicable U.S. securities laws. The resale safe harbor provided by Rule 904 of Regulation S under the U.S. Securities Act, if available, will facilitate the resale over the TSX of any Warrant Shares issued as restricted securities.

This press release does not and shall not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy any of the securities, nor shall there be any sale of the 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 state or jurisdiction. The securities being offered have not been approved or disapproved by any regulatory authority, nor has any such authority passed upon the accuracy or adequacy of the U.S. Prospectus or the Registration Statement.

About Northern Dynasty Minerals Ltd.

Northern Dynasty is a mineral exploration and development company based in Vancouver, Canada. Northern Dynasty's principal asset is the Pebble Project in southwest Alaska, USA, an initiative to develop one of the world's most important mineral resources.

Ronald W. Thiessen

President & CEO

Forward Looking Information and other Cautionary Factors



This release includes certain statements that may be deemed "forward-looking statements". All statements in this release, other than statements of historical facts, such as those that address the in-progress financings and plan to complete certain regulatory filings permitting it to offer securities to the public are forward-looking statements. These statements include expectations about the likelihood of completing the financings, the amount of funds to be raised, the use of proceeds of the financings and the ability of the Company to secure required Canadian and US regulatory acceptances. Though the Company believes the expectations expressed in its forward-looking statements are based on reasonable assumptions, such statements are subject to future events and third party discretion such as regulatory personnel. For more information on the Company, and the risks and uncertainties connected with its business, Investors should review the Company's home jurisdiction filings at www.sedar.com and its filings with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission at www.sec.gov.

SOURCE Northern Dynasty Minerals Ltd.

Related Links

www.northerndynastyminerals.com


WASHINGTON, June 10, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- AJC presented its Moral Courage Award to two heroes, Michel Bacos and Tzvi Har-Nevo, who played vital roles in the rescue of more than 100 passengers and crew on a hijacked Air France jet 40 years ago.

"Tzvi and Michel stared down enemies and stood up for innocent people," said AJC Board of Governors member Steven Wisch, who presented the awards at the AJC Global Forum. "They risked their lives to save others. They displayed tremendous moral and physical courage in the face of daunting odds."

Bacos was the captain of Air France Flight 139 from Tel Aviv to Paris, seized on June 27, 1976, after a stop in Athens, by Palestinian and German terrorists who redirected the flight to Entebbe, Uganda. Bacos, along with the other 11 crew members, elected to stay with the Jewish hostages after the 148 non-Jewish passengers were released by the terrorists. The crew and the 94 Jewish passengers, most of them Israeli, were held hostage and threatened with death.

"Michel Bacos is a beacon of heroism and courage, and an inspiration to us all," states the Moral Courage Award inscription.

"My father strongly believed that he was only doing his duty as an Air France captain. When you take responsibility, you don't leave passengers behind," said Jean-Claude Bacos, the 92-year-old retired pilot's son, who traveled to Washington to accept the award on behalf of his father. He saluted the "incredible courage" of the Israeli commandos who risked their own lives to rescue the crew and passengers.

On July 4, those commandos flew more than 2,500 miles to Entebbe. The success of the mission hinged on the ability of the four Israeli planes to fly the 5,000 miles round-trip without being detected, and Har-Nevo, the lead navigator, was key to carrying out what was arguably the most daring rescue operation in Israeli military history

"We were staying low, flying through the night over the dark terrain of Africa" during the seven-hour flight from Israel, Har-Nevo recalled. "Our maps had not been updated in many years. There was no GPS. The only navigation tools I had were a compass and radar," he said. "I needed to harness every ounce of focus and skill to ensure that we didn't deviate from the planned route and from our scheduled timing."

The Israeli commandos spent about 40 minutes on the ground in Entebbe before safely returning to Israel with more than 102 freed hostages, making a refueling stop in Kenya. Three hostages were killed by hostile gunfire in the rescue operation. Another hostage, who was in a local hospital after falling ill during the hijacking ordeal, was later murdered by Ugandan forces.

Yonatan Netanyahu--brother of current Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who led the attack, was fatally wounded during the Israeli rescue mission. "It was a sad moment, a shocking moment," said Har-Nevo. "I still think of Yoni today, and remember his bravery, his heroism, and his moral courage."

The inscription on the Moral Courage Award to Har-Nevo states: "In grateful recognition of your courageous and heroic role in Operation Entebbe."

The two-day annual AJC Global Forum marked the 110th year of AJC. The event was the largest in the organization's history, attracting over 2,700 people from across the U.S. and over 70 countries, including key political figures, high-ranking diplomats, and hundreds of young people from around the world.

SOURCE American Jewish Committee

Related Links

http://www.ajc.org


LOS ANGELES, June 10, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- In true Hollywood fashion, the Orphaned Starfish Foundation (OSF) was launched Wednesday night at the Sunset Strip's trendy 1OAK LA at a red carpet filled "club night" fundraiser. In the span of a few hours over $200,000 was raised to benefit the foundation's 50 international programs helping over 10,000 orphans in 25 countries around the world.

Trendy Butler Founders, Mix Master Mike, Orphaned Starfish Founder. For photo credit / press... files ending in: BSK: Bennett Sell-Kline (@bskphoto), JSL: Jake West (@jakewestphoto), IME: Ivan Meneses (@ai.visuals) OSFLA Launch @ 1OAK LA

Celebrities arrived to support including Dolvett Quince of The Biggest Loser, actor Anthony Michael Hall, legendary Beastie Boys' DJ Mix Master Mike, American Ninja Warrior Host Matt Iseman and more. (GALLERY).

The concept to expand the chapter of the New York City based foundation in LA was the brainchild of OSF founder Andrew Stein and Trendy Butler CEO Jeremy Barnett after Barnett and fellow Trendy Butler co founder Ali Najafian embarked on a trip to one of OSF's orphanages in Bogota, Colombia. Trendy Butler, a technology and value driven men's subscription clothing startup sought the participation of their fellow entrepreneurs with SURKUS, a rapidly growing crowdcasting application service and influencer marketing leader Speakr to ensure the event would be a massive success.

"We really wanted to expand awareness of OSF here in LA," said Jeremy Barnett CEO of Trendy Butler and new Chairman of OSF Los Angeles. "We also wanted to bring in our fellow startup entrepreneurs who are young, scrappy and hungry just like we are to make a point that even though we're all hustling 80 plus hours a week to be successful, we can still take some time to help children around the world who really need it."

"The outpouring of support we received from the Los Angeles community was very humbling," said Andrew Stein. "Special thanks to 1Oak and Kim Stein for donating the venue. Supreme thanks to Trendy Butler, Surkus, & Speakr for helping us get this done. And a very special thank you to our largest donors Tori and Vinny Smith for bringing their friends from Los Angeles and Orange County to support OSF. Their matching donation of $100,000 last night was beyond inspirational."

About Orphaned Starfish:

Since 2001, ORPHANED STARFISH programs have addressed the challenges facing orphans, victims of abuse and at-risk youth by providing them with technology training, job training and job placement. OSF funds the construction and operation of vocational computer-based training facilities, including computers, furnishings, teacher salaries, job placement services, internships and scholarships for higher education. OSF also provides english language software & classes, and helps with job placement whenever possible. Orphaned Starfish now serves over 10,000 children in 50 computer centers in 25 countries around the world. www.orphanedstarfish.org

CONTACT: Ben Cooke 310-720-1214, Email

Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160610/378088

Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160610/378056

SOURCE Orphaned Starfish Foundation

Related Links

http://www.orphanedstarfish.org


Schenck's presentation provided an overview of PenFed and the credit union system, while challenging the banking industry.

"All of you are savvy consumers, so you understand the banking business modelbank CEOs need to maximize profits for their shareholders which means they are incentivized to pay their customers less on deposits and charge more on loans," he said.

Explaining that the banking model is set up to benefit a bank's investors, Schenck told his audience that credit unions flip that model on its head. "As a credit union CEO, my mission is to pay the most I can on deposits and charge the least on our loans to our member owners. Credit unions exist to maximize value to their members, not a group of profit-seeking investors," he said.

PenFed's Executive Vice President of Global Fixed Assets Rocky Mitchell talked with the interns about the importance of culture within any organization. In describing key elements of PenFed's culture observed during his 15 years as an executive, Mitchell used the terms member-focused, people helping people, military ethos, growth-minded and conservatively positioned regarding safety and soundness. The interns will have the opportunity to work with and learn from all of PenFed's leaders over the coming weeks.

Schenck envisioned a robust intern program after reflecting on his recent visit to the Junior Achievement Finance Park in Landover, Maryland. "When I visited PenFed's educational branch at JA Finance Park, I saw a quote that inspired me to reach more interns: 'Someday they will run our businesses, lead our nation, make discoveries and change our world. But first, they will practice within these walls.'"

Intern Crystal Eley, a second-year student at Hampton University assigned to Human Resources said, "My biggest takeaway from today is that PenFed really believes in helping people. The culture is also diverse, upbeat and welcomingit feels like a family here."

A total of 18 college students, hailing from universities around the country are part of PenFed's 2016 Summer Intern program. The credit union's Army intern was accepted through a special pilot program for wounded service members. "I am really impressed by the men and women who joined our ranks this year," said Schenck. "They truly are a reflection of the best and brightest in the nation."

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.

Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160609/377786

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20150123/170917LOGO

SOURCE PenFed

Related Links

http://www.PenFed.org


AMSTERDAM, June 10, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Royal Philips (NSYE: PHG, AEX: PHIA) today announced that it will be showcasing solutions at the Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging (SNMMI) 2016 Annual Meeting in San Diego, Calif., highlighting Philips' legacy of innovation. Recognizing molecular imaging's unique ability to transform healthcare, Philips has developed high-quality imaging solutions that aim to increase diagnostic confidence, enhance the patient experience and care, and lower costs  expanding the advancements seen over the past 125 years as a company.

"Our dedication to developing solutions for enhanced diagnosis and treatment can be seen across Philips, demonstrated by our continued commitment to deliver health technology to drive better outcomes across the health continuum," said Kirill Shalyaev, Ph.D., Vice President and General Manager, Advanced Molecular Imaging, Philips. "Philips' proven solutions and advanced innovations in molecular imaging are enabling fast and confident decision making."

Nuclear medicine technology has significantly evolved over the years  growing from scanner-only equipment to solutions that integrate quality, quantification and analytics. Ten years ago, also in San Diego, Philips introduced the first commercial Time-of-Flight PET/CT. Over the last decade, this technology has continued to improve and today, time-of-flight is faster, better, and digital. This year, over 20 oral and poster sessions featuring Philips' digital photon counting PET system will be presented at the SNMMI meeting, highlighting the technology's full range of capabilities and Philips' work with academic partners.

"The Wright Center of Innovation team at The Ohio State University and Philips have been very successful partners in the clinical evaluation of the next generation digital PET/CT," said Michael V. Knopp, MD, PhD, Professor of Radiology at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center. "In this year's SNMMI Annual Meeting, we will present over 20 scientific presentations and posters on these efforts demonstrating performance and benefits of PET digital photon counting in the areas of lesion detectability, radiation dose management and quantitative imaging."

As our population continues to age and exponentially grows in the coming years, coinciding with the prevalence of multiple chronic and complex diseases such as cancer, dementia and cardiac diseases, health imaging will require a more integrated and inter-disciplinary approach toward treatment. Given the unique clinical insights it provides, molecular imaging will play even more of a critical role in addressing complex diseases  as a result, the advanced data and analytics found in these technologies will be essential to improving patient care.

Philips' SNMMI exhibit (Booth 1330, Hall E) will feature the latest solutions and technologies driving nuclear medicine, and will highlight the following milestones:

A decade of Time of Flight  Launched ten years ago, Time-of-Flight technology continues to hold the promise of better PET imaging. Since it was first brought to market in 2006, it has grown to be an integral piece in Philips' portfolio of PET/CT solutions. Today, time-of-flight is faster, better and digital in products such as Vereos, the world's first fully digital PET/CT. Time-of-Flight technology is now bridging innovation with digital architecture available in Philips solutions  meaning high quality images and enhanced lesion detectability.

 Launched ten years ago, Time-of-Flight technology continues to hold the promise of better PET imaging. Since it was first brought to market in 2006, it has grown to be an integral piece in Philips' portfolio of PET/CT solutions. Today, time-of-flight is faster, better and digital in products such as Vereos, the world's first fully digital PET/CT. Time-of-Flight technology is now bridging innovation with digital architecture available in Philips solutions  meaning high quality images and enhanced lesion detectability. Advanced data sharing  Data sharing gives physicians the power to visualize, diagnose and communicate across clinical domains and imaging modalities with one automated workflow. Philips' latest edition of its advanced data sharing, analytics and visualization platform, Intellispace 8.0, helps physicians detect, diagnose and follow up on treatment of diseases, offering a comprehensive advanced visualization suite for multi-modality tumor tracking, characterization and assessment.

 Data sharing gives physicians the power to visualize, diagnose and communicate across clinical domains and imaging modalities with one automated workflow. Philips' latest edition of its advanced data sharing, analytics and visualization platform, Intellispace 8.0, helps physicians detect, diagnose and follow up on treatment of diseases, offering a comprehensive advanced visualization suite for multi-modality tumor tracking, characterization and assessment. Flexibility of PET/CT  Philips PET/CT systems allow physicians to go beyond current limitations in standard PET/CT imaging, with capabilities such as digital imaging, and can now meet a wide range of clinical and economic needs in CT lung cancer screening.

For more information on Philips' molecular imaging solutions, and to learn more about the company's presence at SNMMI 2016, visit Booth 1330, Hall E; www.philips.com/snmmi and follow the conversation on @PhilipsLiveFrom.

For further information, please contact:

Adrienne Smith

Philips Diagnostic Imaging

Tel: +1 781-277-1170

Email: [email protected]

Kathy O'Reilly

Philips Group Communications

Tel: +1 978-221-8919

Email: [email protected]

@kathyoreilly

About Royal Philips

Royal Philips (NYSE: PHG, AEX: PHIA) is a leading health technology company focused on improving people's health and enabling better outcomes across the health continuum from healthy living and prevention, to diagnosis, treatment and home care. Philips leverages advanced technology and deep clinical and consumer insights to deliver integrated solutions. The company is a leader in diagnostic imaging, image-guided therapy, patient monitoring and health informatics, as well as in consumer health and home care. Headquartered in the Netherlands, Philips' health technology portfolio generated 2015 sales of EUR 16.8 billion and employs approximately 69,000 employees with sales and services in more than 100 countries. News about Philips can be found at www.philips.com/newscenter.

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20140122/NE50581LOGO

SOURCE Royal Philips

Related Links

http://www.philips.com


LONDON, June 9, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --



In May 2016, China's phosphorus chemical industry remains depressed. Market prices and operating rates of most phosphorus chemicals maintain low and manufacturers mainly maintain trading due to orders they have received before.



Market dynamics of phosphorus chemicals in May 2016:



Phosphorus ore: The domestic market is quite stable. Having no faith in the future market, some manufacturers in Sichuan Province disclosed that they may suspend production for overhaul of facilities in the short term.



Yellow phosphorus: The domestic market is stable overall. In some regions, market supply is tight due to the persisting low operating rate. Market price of yellow phosphorus shows no signs of increase. Some manufacturers such as Sichuan Mianzhu Norwest Phosphate Chemical Company Limited and Sichuan Linchen Group Co., Ltd. resumed production at the end of April.



Phosphoric acid: The domestic market remains stable. Boosted by the export market, a few manufacturers in Southwest China raised their product prices slightly; while in Central and East China, market price of phosphoric acid is quite stable.



STPP: Price and operating rate remain low in the domestic market. Many manufacturers have no choice but to reduce prices to run down inventory and relief inventory pressure.



MAP: The MAP market remains depressed. Demand from the downstream market shrink so trading is slack. Under such circumstances, some manufacturers choose to resume production for equipment overhaul or reduce operating rates.



DAP: China's DAP industry enters a period of depression. In the domestic market, trading was slack and in the overseas markets, the price of DAP began to fall.



In Q2 2016, Chinese listed fertilizer enterprises released their 2015 financial reports. Many of them have taken successful steps to correct their deteriorating financial performance. However, CCM found that it was non-recurring profit and loss in particular that has helped some of these enterprises make turnarounds. In this issue, CCM will analysis this phenomenon in detail.In Q2 2016, Chinese listed fertilizer enterprises released their 2015 financial reports. Many of them have taken successful steps to correct their deteriorating financial performance. However, CCM found that it was non-recurring profit and loss in particular that has helped some of these enterprises make turnarounds.



As of May 2016, China's peak season for fertilizer consumption is over and market prices of major fertilizers have begun to show downward trends. However, CCM found that against falling market conditions, the market prices of minor fertilizers such as TSP, calcium superphosphate and calcium magnesium phosphate fertilizers have succeeded in remaining relatively stable. CCM believes this is due to the control of operating rates and stability of domestic and overseas market demand.

In May 2016, China's DAP industry entered a period of depression. In the domestic market, trading was slack and in the overseas markets, the price of DAP began to fall. Under such circumstances, the operating rate of the industry in China began to slide. CCM expects that 2016 may be the most difficult year yet for Chinese DAP enterprises.



In May 2016, Xinyangfeng Fertilizer claimed that it will take part in two national fertilizer projects. CCM believes that this will help the company to maintain the right direction in developing its fertilizer business and further improve the company's brand awareness and reputation.

In early May 2016, CMOC announced that it will acquire Anglo American's niobium and phosphate businesses for USD1.50 billion. CCM believes that this transaction will help CMOC to complete its fully-integrated business layout and improve the company's financial performance in the near future.



In May 2016, the Chinese DAP market is depressed. To better deal with market fluctuation, Wengfu Trading claimed that it is vigorously carrying out market-oriented reform to develop its agricultural means of production business.

In May 2016, China solicited public opinions over the Measures for the Administration of Commercial Reserves of Chemical Fertilizers during Off-seasons (2016 Revision). Compared to the 2015 version, restrictions are eased in general. CCM expects this to stimulate companies' initiative in commercial reserves of chemical fertilizers during off-seasons.



In May 2016, China's MOF and SAOT jointly released a notice on comprehensively propelling resource tax reform, encouraging domestic phosphorus ore enterprises to adopt the filling mining technology in rude ores mining. CCM believes that this will help to minimize environmental pollution and reduce waste of resources.

In April 2016, China's yellow phosphorus market kept depressed. Considering that some manufacturers resumed production and downstream markets (the glyphosate and phosphoric acid markets) were stagnant at the end of April, CCM believes that market price of yellow phosphorus may decline later in China.

In April 2016, China's STPP market remained dull. Low operating rate failed to relieve manufacturers' pressure from inventory. Considering that severe oversupply will exist for a long time, CCM predicts that the domestic STPP market will not be essentially improved in the short run.

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NEW YORK, June 9, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- The global process oil market is projected to reach USD 4.98 billion by 2020, at a CAGR of 2.5% between 2015 and 2020. The main reason for the growth of the global process oil market is increasing demand for finished lubricants from various industries, along with increase in the number of various end user industries.



"Tire & rubber segment is the leading application segment of the global process oil market"

Among applications, the tire & rubber segment led the global process oil market in 2014. It is also expected to grow at the highest CAGR during the forecast period, 2015 to 2020. The tire & rubber application segment is one of the potential application segments of the global process oil market.



Growth of this application segment can be attributed to increased usage of process oils as carrier oils, plasticizers, dust control agents, and processing aids in the automotive industry.



"Asia-Pacific is leading the global process oil market, in terms of consumption"

In terms of consumption, the Asia-Pacific region is the leader in the global process oil market and this dominance is expected to continue during the forecast period as well. The process oil market in Russia is projected to grow at the highest CAGR from 2015 to 2020, owing to increasing investments made in the automobile sector and rapid industrial growth in the country. Key countries in the Asia-Pacific process oil market include China, Japan, South Korea, and India. In 2014, these countries collaboratively accounted for a market share of 75.0% in the Asia-Pacific process oil market, in terms of volume.



Profile break-up of primary participants in this report:

- By Company Type - Tier 1  50%, Tier 2  13%, and Tier 3  37%

- By Designation  C-level  50%, Director-level  31%, and Others  19%

- By Region  Asia-Pacific - 45%, North America  30%, Europe  20%, RoW  5%



This study estimates the size of the global process oil market during the forecast period, 2015 to 2020. As a part of quantitative analysis, the study segments the global process oil market at the regional level, with the current market estimation and forecast till 2020. Major regions covered in this report include Asia-Pacific, North America, Europe, and RoW. By application, the global process oil market is classified into tire & rubber, polymer, personal care, and textile.



Further, as a part of qualitative analysis, the research provides a comprehensive review of the major market drivers, restraints, opportunities, and challenges. It also discusses competitive strategies adopted by the key market players, such as Royal Dutch Shell plc, Chevron Corporation, and Petronas Lubricants Belgium NV in the global process oil market.



With the given market data, MarketsandMarkets also offers customizations as per specific needs of the companies.



Reasons to buy this report:

This report covers following key aspects:

- What will be the market size by 2020 and what will be the growth rate

- Which are the key market trends

- What is driving the global process oil market

- What are the challenges impacting the growth of the global process oil market

- Who are the key players in the global process oil market

- The report covers the global process oil market for key regions, such as Asia-Pacific, North America, Europe, and RoW.



Read the full report: http://www.reportlinker.com/p03655078-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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EXPERT ALERTS

Retail Medicine a Vital Component of Healthcare Access

Looks Do Matter: Start With the Outside to Create an Amazing Life

Seven Signs You May Be Addicted to Work

This Father's Day , Talk Finances With Dad

MEDIA JOBS

Reporter  News Tribune (WA)

Managing Editor  Birmingham Business Journal (AL)

Multimedia Journalist  Telemundo (NV)

OTHER NEWS & RESOURCES

Covering the News: A Risky Business for Freelancers

How to Develop Fresh Angles for Your Stories

How Freelancers Can Protect Themselves From Lawsuits

-------------------------------------------------------------------

EXPERT ALERTS:

Retail Medicine a Vital Component of Healthcare Access

Scott Mason, DPA, FACHE

Principal

ECG Management Consultants

The critique and concerns about retail medicine in its initial stages were memorable. It was the subject of considerable skepticism, as disruptive innovations often are. To this day, many traditional health systems have tended to shrug off retail medicine as an interesting innovation in healthcare delivery but not much more. Mason says this is a mistake: "Retail medicine and convenient care clinics are now a vital component of healthcare access. They will continue to proliferate and health systems cannot afford to deflect their presence as a niche or nuisance. Retail medicine has already become one of the major forces changing healthcare in the direction that the new healthcare consumer is demanding."

Mason is available to discuss new healthcare delivery modalities. He has been one of the most trusted healthcare strategy advisors in the business for 30 years, is a frequent speaker, and holds a doctorate in health policy and management from George Washington University. He is based in Washington, D.C.

ProfNet Profile: http://www.profnetconnect.com/scottmason_ecg

Website: www.ecgmc.com

Contact: Kimberly Miller, [email protected]



Looks Do Matter: Start With the Outside to Create an Amazing Life

Linda Formichelli

Author

Renegade Writer Press

Women are taught that worrying about how they look, and how their homes look, is the epitome of shallowness, and that "it's what's inside that counts." But loving how you (and your home) look boosts your energy and motivation for more important goals, says Formichelli, author of "How to Do It All: The Revolutionary Plan to Create a Full, Meaningful Life  While Only Occasionally Wanting to Poke Your Eyes out With a Sharpie": "Ever try to do important work when you're having a really bad hair day, or your home office is coated in cat fur? Yeah, me too -- and it's not productive."

Formichelli is available to talk about the importance of taking care of appearances, why this is far from a shallow goal, and how to do it without going crazy -- or broke. She has been a full-time freelance health and wellness journalist since 1997, is the busy mom of a 7-year-old, has hosted 14 exchange students, and travels the world with her family. She is based in Raleigh, N.C.

ProfNet Profile: http://www.profnetconnect.com/linda_formichelli

Website: http://www.howtodoitallbook.com

Contact: Kim Place-Gateau, [email protected]



Seven Signs You May Be Addicted to Work

Dr. Judith Zackson

clinical psychologist

According to researchers, work addiction is mainly characterized by working excessively and compulsively. In other words, if you are a workaholic, you feel compelled to work for more hours than is normal. Zackson can discuss these seven signs of work addiction: "1) You spend time thinking about how you can work more hours each day. This means that you actively look for time that can be spent working. 2) You work more than you mean to. 3) You devote yourself to work to escape from unpleasant emotions. You feel anxious, depressed or guilty, and to tamp down those feelings you keep yourself busy at work. 4) Friends or family ask you to cut back at work, but you don't listen. 5) Not being able to work stresses you out. You really have to come home in time to attend an event. 6) Other activities fall by the wayside because of your devotion to work. You used to jog in the morning before work, but now you get up early to get to the office instead. 7) Your work habits are harming your health. Maybe you aren't taking time to eat well or exercise anymore and you have gained weight as a result."

Dr. Zackson is a clinical psychologist with more than 12 years of experience. Her private practice focuses on depression, anxiety, panic attacks, relationship issues, and parenting issues. She also specializes in various forms of eating issues and addictions. Dr. Zackson works with a range of clients, from adults, adolescents, parents, couples, to business leaders and corporations. Her treatment approach is solution-focused, helping clients identify and manage emotions that might be getting in the way of achieving their goals so they can live a better quality of life.

Website: www.drjudithzackson.com

Contact: Ryan McCormick, [email protected]

This Father's Day, Talk Finances With Dad

John Sweeney

EVP, Retirement and Investing Strategies

Fidelity Investments

"The road to financial education is a two-way street. Not only can children learn from their fathers, dads can learn a few things from the younger generation, too."

Sweeney can speak to Fidelity's "Like Father, Like Daughter" infographic, which offers a snapshot of Boomer men and Millennial women's financial habits and the lessons families can learn from one another this Father's Day.

Website: https://www.fidelity.com/bin-public/060_www_fidelity_com/documents/about-fidelity/fathers-Day-Infographic.pdf

Contact: Alexis Ganz, [email protected]

****************

MEDIA JOBS:

Following are links to job listings for staff and freelance writers, editors and producers. You can view these and more job listings on our Job Board: https://prnmedia.prnewswire.com/community/jobs/

Reporter  News Tribune (WA)

Managing Editor  Birmingham Business Journal (AL)

Multimedia Journalist  Telemundo (NV)

*****************

OTHER NEWS & RESOURCES:

Following are links to other news and resources we think you might find useful. If you have an item you think other reporters would be interested in and would like us to include in a future alert, please drop us a line.

COVERING THE NEWS: A RISKY BUSINESS FOR FREELANCERS. When the lead story drags a business's name through the mud, that company might turn around and drag the reporter who broke the news into court. In those cases, freelance journalists are particularly vulnerable -- left to fend for themselves -- without the protection of an in-house legal team or deep pockets of a major news organization. We're hosting a Twitter Q&A about that Tuesday, June 7 . If this is something you've thought about, join us. Details here: http://prn.to/1XTkSXZ

. If this is something you've thought about, join us. Details here: http://prn.to/1XTkSXZ HOW TO DEVELOP FRESH ANGLES FOR YOUR STORY. In this digital age of storytelling, writers have multiple vehicles in which to tell their story. Whether you're writing traditional articles, producing content for private clients, or simply marketing your own work, you need to stay on top of the various tools and platforms available to you. Here are some tips from four influential women in the publishing industry: http://prn.to/28fZq4n

HOW FREELANCERS CAN PROTECT THEMSELVES FROM LAWSUITS. Freelance reporters, particularly investigative journalists or writers who cover matters of public concern, work in a risky business. A headline-grabbing story may grace the front page, but the reporter who broke the news may also come under fire. Here is some advice from an attorney who focuses on professional exposures for clients in the media: http://prn.to/MediaInsurance

****************

PROFNET is an exclusive service of PR Newswire.

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20150604/220954

SOURCE ProfNet

Related Links

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BANGKOK, June 10, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- ProPak Asia 2016, returns for its 24th successful edition, 15th to 18th June 2016 at Bangkok International Trade and Exhibition Centre (BITEC), Bangkok, Thailand.

ProPak Asia is Asia's largest and most important international food, drink and pharmaceutical processing and packaging technology event. Taking place every year in June and connecting the world's leading suppliers to buyers from across Asia.

ProPak Asia has established itself as the No. 1 industry event in Asia by consistently delivering the best and largest range of exhibitors, technology and solutions to the heart of Asia every year. Suppliers from across the world join ProPak Asia to meet buyers from Asia as Asia continues to be the Shining Star outperforming the rest of the world in terms of real and expanding business opportunities in the food, drink and pharmaceutical manufacturing and related industries.

ProPak Asia 2016 will once again deliver its Biggest-Ever show on record. Presenting over 1,900 exhibitors from 47 countries, over 4,500 machines from across the world and expecting over 40,000 professional visitors across its 4 days' event.

"ProPak Asia is the industry's annual meeting place with buyers and sellers attending from across the world to source the latest technology and solutions to expand and advance their business. Thailand is one of the world's most important agri-business markets with the highest standards of manufacturing. Thailand and ProPak Asia are the perfect combination for manufacturing success in Thailand, and springboard into Asia's regional markets," said Mr. Justin Pau, General Manager, Bangkok Exhibition Services Ltd.

ProPak Asia 2016 has received tremendous support and participation from leading international processing and packaging trade associations with 16 international pavilions from Australia, mainland China, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Korea, Singapore, Spain, Taiwan, UK and the USA.

ProPak Asia 2016, once again features a long list of supporting industry events including the Food Innovation Asia Conference 2016, Food Innovation Contest 2016, Asia Drink Conference 2016, PharmaTech Seminar 2016, Thai Packaging Centre and TISTR Conference 2016, The Department of Industrial Promotion Seminar 2016, The FoSTAT-Nestle Quiz Bowl, Asia Food Beverage Thailand Seminar, Food Focus Thailand Seminar and The Thai Star and Asia Star Packaging Award 2015.

ProPak Asia 2016 will be held from 15th to 18th June 2016 at Halls 101-107, BITEC, Bangkok, Thailand. Opening hours are 10am-6pm every day.

For more information, please visit www.propakasia.com

Email: [email protected]

Tel: +662-615-1255

SOURCE Bangkok Exhibition Services Ltd.

Related Links

http://www.propakasia.com/


NEW YORK, June 9, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- The global prosthetic heart valve market is USD 2.87 billion in 2014 and is expected to reach USD 4.80 billion in 2020 at a CAGR of 9.1% from 2015 to 2020.



The purpose of this report is to cover the definition, description, and forecast up to 2020 of the global prosthetic heart valve market. It involves deep dive analysis of market segmentation which comprises products and geography. The report also gives the deep insights of strategic analysis of key players for the market. In this report, the global prosthetic heart valve market has been segmented based in products, into mechanical heart valve, tissue heart valve, and transcatheter heart valve.



The prosthetic heart valve market has been segmented by geography, which includes major regions, such as the Americas, Europe, Asia-Pacific, and the Middle East and Africa. The Americas has been further segmented into the U.S., Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Columbia, Uruguay, and Paraguay. The Europe region has been further segmented into Germany, France, the U.K., Spain, Italy, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Belgium, Denmark, Turkey, and Russia. In Asia-Pacific, the major countries included are China, India, Japan, Australia, Republic of Korea, Singapore, Malaysia, New Zealand, Vietnam, Indonesia, Taiwan, and Thailand.



North America contributed the largest share to the global prosthetic heart valve market in 2014. The large share can be attributed to the rising aging population; increasing number of patients suffering from rheumatic heart diseases; and growing prevalence heart and vascular system conditions, such as coronary, carotid, and peripheral artery diseases and heart rhythm disturbances in the recent years.



Besides this, insurance coverage & reimbursement scenario will also influence the growth of the prosthetic heart valve market. Presently, in the U.S. Medicare (CMS) covers aortic valve replacements for the patients whose aortic heart valves are damaged. In this reimbursement, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) made a joint decision that will permit the CMS to cover transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR). Moreover, the reimbursements for medical devices including valve, stent, and pacemaker, among others are evaluated on a case-to-case basis.



The report also provides a detailed competitive landscaping of companies operating in this market. Segment and Country specific company shares, news & deals, mergers & acquisitions, segment specific pipeline products, product approvals, and product recalls of the major companies would be detailed. The main companies operating in this market are Zimmer Inc. (U.S.), DePuy Synthes (U.S.), Stryker (U.K.), and Smith & Nephew (U.K.), B. Braun Melsungen AG (Germany), Corin (U.K.), and Waldemar LINK GmbH & Co. KG (Germany).





Reasons to Buy the Report:



From an insight perspective, this research report has focused on various levels of analysis, namely, industry analysis (industry trends and PEST analysis), market share analysis of top players, supply chain analysis, and company profiles. All of these together comprise and discuss the basic views on the competitive landscape, usage patterns, emerging- and high-growth segments, high-growth regions and countries and their respective regulatory policies, government initiatives, drivers, restraints, and opportunities in the global prosthetic heart valve market.



The report will enrich both established firms as well as new entrants/smaller firms to gauge the pulse of the market, which in turn will help the firms in garnering a greater market share. Firms purchasing the report could use any one or a combination of the below mentioned five strategies to strengthen their market share.



The report provides insights on the following pointers:



- Product Analysis and Development: Detailed insights on upcoming technologies, research and development activities, and new product launches in the global prosthetic heart valve market are provided.

- Market Development: Comprehensive information about lucrative emerging markets is provided. The report also analyzes the markets for prosthetic heart valve across various regions, exploit new distribution channels, new clientele base, and different pricing policies.

- Market Diversification: Exhaustive information about new products, untapped geographies, recent developments, and investments decisions in the Global prosthetic heart valve market is provided. Detailed description regarding the related and unrelated diversification pertaining to this market is also provided.

- Competitive Assessment: An in-depth assessment of market shares and company share analysis of the key players forecasted till 2020 is provided. Develop business strategies and manufacturing capabilities of leading players enhance the bottom line of the companies in the global prosthetic heart valve market.



Read the full report: http://www.reportlinker.com/p03655082-summary/view-report.html



About Reportlinker

ReportLinker is an award-winning market research solution. Reportlinker finds and organizes the latest industry data so you get all the market research you need - instantly, in one place.



http://www.reportlinker.com

__________________________

Contact Clare: [email protected]

US: (339)-368-6001

Intl: +1 339-368-6001

SOURCE Reportlinker

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COLWICH, Kan., June 9, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Quality Solutions, a leading provider of facilities maintenance and constructions services, has changed its name to QSI Facilities, launched a new website and introduced a new approach for overcoming value leakage in outsourced facilities services.

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160609/377704LOGO

"We changed our name to QSI Facilities and created a new website as part of a larger strategic initiative to help clients gain control over facilities management outcomes and costs," said Joe Kirmser, CEO of QSI Facilities. "Facilities management executives across all industry sectors are challenged to reduce costs. However, many proposals that appear to offer savings during the procurement stage actually end up increasing total cost of operations (TCO) over the term of the engagement." Kirmser reported.

Value leakage is the difference between what is promised at the procurement stage and what is actually delivered over the length of an outsourced services agreement. Losses from value leakage, caused by billing inaccuracies, slow response times and service quality problems, represent 20 percent or more of the total amount companies spend on outsourced services, according to a report by The Shelby Group, a procurement and sourcing consulting firm.

QSI Facilities has developed a four-pronged approach for helping clients overcome value leakage that includes establishing industry standards, employing performance analytics, optimizing field processes and developing hiring and training tools for field services partners. The company provides facilities maintenance and construction services to premier brands in the fields of retail, food service, commercial/industrial real estate and many other market segments.

For more information, visit qsifacilities.com

About QSI Facilities

Located in the nation's heartland just outside Wichita, Kansas, QSI Facilities has grown over the past two decades to become the nation's top-performing provider of facilities maintenance and construction services. QSI clients include premier brands in retail, food service, commercial/industrial real estate and many other market segments. Last year, QSI completed more than 250,000 work orders covering 75 skilled trades at 100,000+ client locations in the U.S., Canada and Puerto Rico. QSI's Six Sigma trained project teams take a data-driven approach to working with clients and their network of high-performance field service partners to measure, manage and improve facilities performance and cost control. Visit qsifacilities.com.

Contact Information

Mark Felton

[email protected]

This content was issued through the press release distribution service at Newswire.com. For more info visit: http://www.newswire.com

SOURCE QSI Facilities

Related Links

http://www.qsifacilities.com


SAN ANTONIO, June 10, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- SA Energy Acquisition Public Facility Corporation (the "Corporation") announced today that it is soliciting consents from holders of its Gas Supply Revenue Bonds, Series 2007 (the "Bonds") to amendments to supporting documents on terms and subject to the conditions set forth in its Consent Solicitation Statement dated June 10, 2016 and accompanying Consent Form (collectively, the "Consent Solicitation Documents").

As more fully described in the Consent Solicitation Documents, the proposed amendments, if effected, will:

Replace a collateralized repurchase agreement with DEPFA Bank plc that is held in the Bond Fund for the Bonds with an initially unsecured investment agreement to be provided by J. Aron & Company and guaranteed by The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. ("GSG").

Amend the prepaid natural gas sales agreement between the Corporation and J. Aron to eliminate a seller default if GSG fails to maintain an investment grade credit rating from S&P or Moody's and then fails to provide specified credit support upon request from the Corporation.

The amendments are proposed to improve the credit ratings currently assigned to the Bonds by Moody's (while maintaining the ratings currently assigned to the Bonds by S&P and Fitch) and to reduce reliance on the performance of DEPFA. The proposed amendments will become effective, if at all, only upon satisfaction of certain conditions, including, but not limited to, (a) payment of a consent fee described in the Consent Solicitation Statement to consenting bondholders and (b) confirmation that the Bonds will be rated by Moody's, S&P, and Fitch at least as well as GSG.

Execution of the proposed amendments requires the consent of the registered owners of a majority in principal amount of the Bonds outstanding or their proxies. As of June 1, 2016, $354,605,000 principal amount of Bonds were outstanding.

The consent solicitation will expire at 10:30 a.m., New York City time, on June 30, 2016, unless amended or terminated (such date and time, the "Expiration Date"). Only holders of record of the Bonds as of 5:00 p.m. New York City time, on June 9, 2016, are eligible to deliver consents to the proposed amendments in the consent solicitation.

The Corporation has retained Jefferies LLC to act as Solicitation Agent in connection with the consent solicitation. Questions regarding the consent solicitation may be directed to the Solicitation Agent at (800) 567-8567 (toll-free) or (404) 264-5057 (collect). Copies of the Consent Solicitation Documents as well as assistance with voting and delivery of consents may be directed to D.F. King & Co., Inc., the Information Agent and Tabulation Agent for the consent solicitation, at (866) 521-4219 (toll-free) or (212) 269-5550 (collect) or by email at [email protected].

This announcement is for informational purposes only and is not a solicitation of consents with respect to any securities. This announcement shall not constitute an offer to buy or a solicitation of an offer to sell any Bonds. The consent solicitation is being made solely by, and on the terms and subject to the conditions set forth in, the Consent Documents and is not being made in any jurisdiction in which it is unlawful to solicit of grant consents.

The Corporation is a public non-profit corporation created to acquire energy supplies for the City Public Service Board (d/b/a CPS Energy) of San Antonio, Texas, the Corporation's sponsor.

SOURCE SA Energy Acquisition Public Facility Corporation
SEATTLE, June 10, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Seattle-based family law firm Goldberg Jones is excited to announce the addition of Colette McEldowney to the team. A skilled attorney, McEldowney brings a wealth of experience that will be a valuable asset to husbands and fathers facing divorce, custody battles, and other cases in the Puget Sound area.

Well-versed in criminal proceedings, McEldowney prosecuted felonies and misdemeanors as part of the District Attorney's office in Portland, Oregon. Before making the switch to family law, she handled dependency cases, those involving neglected children and victim's rights, and worked with the Mental Health Specialty Court.

Speaking of McEldowney, managing attorney Ken Alan says, "Colette is sharp and thorough, with a deep compassion for her clients. Her experience as a deputy district attorney and dedication to justice make her an important addition to the Goldberg Jones family."

A competitive, dedicated litigator, McEldowney has an eye for detail and always follows through for her clients. She is a strong, passionate advocate, and a great asset to the firm. Moving forward, she will continue to use her skills to support the husbands and fathers of King, Pierce, and Snohomish counties, and the surrounding region.

A native of Oregon, McEldowney received her B.A. in Political Science from Oregon State University. She then earned her Juris Doctor from Lewis & Clark Law School in Portland.

About Goldberg Jones

Goldberg Jones is a local office of family law attorneys serving Seattle and the communities of Western Washington. We have grown from a three-person startup to a multi-state firm with more than 28 lawyers devoted solely to the practice of family law, specifically, protecting the rights of husbands and fathers.

Our representation is focused on providing dedicated advocacy for men in divorce, child custody, child support, and most other family law matters. Our divorce attorneys in Washington, Oregon, and California are knowledgeable and aggressive in protecting the rights of husbands and fathers under Washington divorce laws. For more information please visit https://www.goldbergjones-wa.com/

SOURCE Goldberg Jones

Related Links

http://www.goldbergjones-wa.com


WASHINGTON, June 9, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Senator Judd Gregg (R-NH), a Senior Advisor for the COFINA Senior Bondholders Group, made the following statement today after the House approved the "Puerto Rico Oversight, Management, and Economic Stability Act," or PROMESA, bipartisan legislation to address Puerto Rico's fiscal crisis and stabilize the Commonwealth's economy.

"Today's bipartisan House vote in support of PROMESA signals Congress recognizes the urgent need to send this bill to the President's desk for his signature. Americans should commend Speaker Ryan, Chairman Bishop, Leader Pelosi and the Obama Administration for coming together during a very politicized time to advance this critical legislation. Most importantly, PROMESA is enabling congressional leadership to achieve its goals of equipping Puerto Rico with battletested restructuring tools and shielding taxpayers from funding a bailout. Achieving these legislative goals will help stabilize the island's fiscal house, stem outmigration and lay the groundwork for growth-oriented environment in the years ahead  all while adding nothing to the federal debt load.

While the bill is not perfect, it's definitely a much needed and constructive step in the right direction. Now it is up to the Senate to take this bipartisan effort and quickly act before Puerto Rico slips into economic cardiac arrest on the heels of potentially missing its $2 Billion debt payment on July 1. The Senate must not derail this momentum. Changing the bill at this late date, with the July 1st deadline looming, will be a serious mistake and truly counterproductive to a constructive and fiscally conservative resolution to this situation."

About Senator Judd Gregg

Gregg served as a United States Senator from 1993 to 2011. He was Chairman and Ranking Member of the Senate Budget Committee and also Chairman and ranking member of the Health, Education, Labor and Pension Committee. He was a senior member of the Senate Banking Committee and chaired the Appropriation's subcommittees on Foreign Operations; Homeland Security; and Commerce, State and Justice. He also served on President Obama's National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform (Simpson-Bowles) and worked to produce a comprehensive plan to reduce the national debt. Prior to his tenure in the Senate, Gregg served as Governor of New Hampshire and as a U.S. Representative. As Governor, Gregg steered New Hampshire through one of its most difficult economic times leaving it with a balanced budget and a strong infrastructure, which included reorganizing the State's major utilities and banking system.

About the COFINA Senior Bondholders Ad Hoc Group

The Group is a coalition of creditors made up of retirees and individual investors in Puerto Rico and throughout the United States, as well as asset managers GoldenTree Asset Management LP, Merced Capital LP, Tilden Park Capital Management, Whitebox Advisors LLC, and others.

The COFINA Senior Bondholders Ad Hoc Group has come out in support of many of the components of the "Puerto Rico Oversight, Management, and Economic Stability Act," legislation released by the House Natural Resources Committee. The framework ensures that creditors are treated fairly and equitably based on their legal standing and provides a strong foundation for federal legislation to address the Commonwealth's economic crisis.

Media Contacts

Sean Neary

Edelman

202-350-6675

[email protected]

Sarah Braunstein

Edelman

212-277-3725

[email protected]

SOURCE COFINA Senior Bondholders Ad Hoc Group
AUSTIN, Texas, June 10, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Low-income mothers in Central Texas can now get disposable diapers free under a new test program announced in Austin by President Obama. The program is offered to families insured by Sendero Health Plans, a nonprofit Austin-based health insurance company.

The president, speaking at South by Southwest Interactive Festival in March, called the problem the "diaper divide," explaining that while most Americans today can save on diapers by buying them online, many low-income mothers cannot. The result is that they struggle to afford enough disposable diapers, which can cost nearly a thousand dollars a year per child, up to 14 percent of their entire incomes.

Of particular concern to Sendero Health Plans are the potential health issues related to not having enough clean diapers. Dr. Ted Held, MD, Director of Reproductive Health at People's Community Clinic said, "An infant uses about 240 diapers a month, and if parents cannot afford enough, they may tend to change them less often. That can lead to urinary tract and staph infections, sometimes requiring hospitalization. People's is proud to partner with Sendero to offer this program to the community."

According to the White House, some researchers also believe the lack of enough diapers is a leading cause of mental health problems among new mothers. "By providing the free diapers, our health plan hopes to help keep its members healthy," said Wes Durkalski, President and CEO of Sendero Health Plans. Durkalski added that "the diaper disparity program is just one of the many exciting health initiatives that Sendero Health Plans has created for the benefit of the community."

In order to qualify for the free diaper program, Sendero members must maintain participation in Sendero Health Plan's "A Tu Lado/By Your Side" healthy living initiative which features Community Health Workers who make home visits and coordinate appropriate utilization of healthcare services. The program is designed to support members' wellness by offering free services from pregnancy testing to prenatal and postpartum support and well-baby care. Qualifying Sendero members will have the free diapers shipped directly to their homes.

Sendero Health Plans will benefit from a partnership created by the White House with Cuties diapers and Jet.com. Only nonprofit organizations are allowed to apply for the program which offers diapers at discounted prices that can be distributed free or without making a profit. The pilot diaper program involves five nonprofit organizations in Central Texas, and Sendero is the only health plan to offer the free diapers.

More About Sendero Health Plans

Formed in 2011 to improve access to care for those covered by publicly-funded health insurance programs, the nonprofit health plan covers an eight-county area in Burnet, Bastrop, Travis, Fayette, Hays, Williamson, Lee and Caldwell counties. Sendero Health Plans is sponsored by the Travis County Healthcare District (d.b.a. Central Health). Visit www.senderohealth.com to learn more about Sendero Health Plans.

Contact:

Linda Burton,

Director of Marketing

Sendero Health Plans

(210) 482-0789 cell

[email protected]

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160610/377979LOGO

SOURCE Sendero Health Plans

Related Links

http://www.senderohealth.com


CHEYENNE, Wyo., June 10, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- The National Association of State Fire Marshals (NASFM), an association whose principal membership comprises the senior fire officials in the United States and their top deputies, is asking the country's largest online retailer to stop the sale of smoke alarms that are not tested to nationally-recognized standards and which may not comply with applicable building codes in many states and municipalities. NASFM is also asking the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) to take action to ensure consumers are protected and purchasing safe products.

In question are smoke alarms that do not carry the testing labels from a Nationally Recognized Third Party Testing Laboratory such as Underwriter Laboratories (UL) or Intertek/ETL  the two largest independent safety testing companies for electrical products. Products with these marks are evidence that the smoke alarm has been independently tested and complies with UL 217, Standard for Smoke Alarms, the industry-accepted standard for smoke alarms.

"Perhaps no other items sold to consumers today play a more critical role in protecting their families against fire than smoke alarms," said NASFM President Butch Browning, who also serves as the Louisiana State Fire Marshal. "Consumers can buy products bearing trusted third party laboratory marks with confidence, knowing that they have been subjected to the prescribed review process and can expect their smoke alarms to perform as promised when needed. Often, that performance can mean the difference between life and death.

"We are asking the CPSC to investigate this matter and urge Amazon and other online retailers to stop selling smoke alarms and other fire safety products that do not carry the UL or ETL marks, or marks from another third party that has tested the alarms to the UL 217 standard," he added. "We are also asking that retailers review their smoke alarm products and remove any non-listed products from their websites immediately."

NASFM identified several smoke alarm brands lacking third party testing laboratory marks on Amazon including: X-Sense, Arikon and Bovon.

Browning explained that smoke alarms sold in the United States are sent to UL or Intertek/ETL for testing and review. The two testing companies test smoke alarms in accordance to the UL 217 standard, the industry-accepted standard. Products not tested to this standard may not accurately detect fire, alarm the consumer in a timely fashion, and operate for the desired time period or other critical functions. Browning noted that the third-party listing also protects the consumer from potential legal penalties.

"Additionally, many states, including Louisiana, require alarms that are to be installed in residential or commercial occupancies to be listed by approved third-party testing agencies and bear the mark of that agency showing the product is tested and listed to the UL 217 standard. And as such any products that are installed by a consumer not meeting the listing and testing requirements is in violation of the law and subject to the prescribed penalties," Browning said.

About NASFM, "50 States  One Strong Voice for Fire Prevention"

The principal membership of NASFM comprises the senior fire officials in the United States and their top deputies. The primary mission of the National Association of State Fire Marshals (NASFM) is to protect human life, property and the environment from fire and related hazards. A secondary mission of NASFM is to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of State Fire Marshals' operations. In addition to its principal membership, NASFM has several categories of membership to allow companies, associations, academic and research institutions, and individuals who support NASFM's mission to contribute in meaningful ways. Learn more about NASFM and its issues at www.firemarshals.org.

SOURCE National Association of State Fire Marshals

Related Links

http://www.firemarshals.org


NEW YORK, June 9, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- A regional study of the Sub-Saharan Africa electricity metering market covering the period 2016-2026 (152-pages + PowerPoint + dataset).

The study covers the four metering segments of legacy, prepaid, AMI and C&I metering with 10-year forecasts for each country.



Sub-Saharan Africa is poised for a decade of strong, continuous economic growth. In order to sustain this growth, African countries are investing heavily in the power sector and rapidly expanding electrification programs. As they do, electricity metering will increase in importance, creating significant market potential. Metering is critical to Africa's growth efforts as utilities seek to ensure financial sustainability through improved revenue collection. In the near term, this includes implementing metering for currently unmetered customers and large-scale deployments of prepaid meters. By the end of 2016, prepaid meters will make up 42% of the residential metering market and this share will grow to 61% by 2020. AMI metering  often including prepaid features  will also grow significantly in larger countries like Nigeria and South Africa. By 2026, over 90% of electricity meters in Africa will be either AMI or non-communicating prepaid meters.



At the same time, the African metering market faces significant challenges. Most notably, per-capita electricity consumption is the lowest in the world. In percapita consumption terms, the cost of advanced meters may be prohibitively high in some areas. Additionally, large rural populations make electrification impractical in some countries. Finally, political risk remains high across the continent. But these barriers are being lifted, and in some senses, Africa's currently undeveloped market is a positive, as it creates large opportunities for growth. As these trends continue, Africa will have the fastest growing metering market in the world over the next decade.





Key questions answered in this study:

- How large will the electricity metering market in Africa be over the next ten years?

- Which countries have large-scale prepaid metering plans and electrification goals?

- Which countries are undergoing industry restructurings that will highlight the importance of utility financial sustainability through improved metering?

- How is Nigeria's power sector privatization driving AMI deployments?

- Where are the largest opportunities for commercial and industrial meters?

- Who are the leading vendors and which ones are well placed to compete for this growing market?

Read the full report: http://www.reportlinker.com/p03866770-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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"This summer is unlike most others and we want Americans to celebrate it appropriately. In addition to Independence Day, Americans are in the midst of the 2016 Presidential election campaign and gearing up to root for Team U.S.A. in the summer Olympics. It's the perfect time to tap into what's happening in American culture and remind Snapple lovers to take a break and enjoy this summer," said Brent Chism, director of content and marketing, Snapple. "With our latest campaign and new tea flavors, we're doubling down on patriotism and celebrating Snapple's position as a national icon of fun, optimism and, of course, break time."

Oh Say Can You TEA

Recently, Snapple launched Oh Say Can You TEA, a black tea with strawberry flavor and a hint of mint, offering the perfectly refreshing experience for this time of year. Available through July 4, the new tea flavor has been supported with social, digital and traditional media and marks the first time that a limited-time Snapple product has received national TV support. Oh Say Can You TEA TV creative pays homage to the Snapple Real Fact that, "In Massachusetts, it's illegal to dance to the National Anthem."

Snapple TEAcision 2016

Later this summer, Snapple is launching two new seasonal flavors  a Red Fruit tea flavor incorporating pomegranate, cherry and raspberry, and a Blue Fruit tea flavor with blueberry and blackberry. Similar to its Oh Say Can You TEA predecessor, Snapple's new Red and Blue teas are also backed by an integrated marketing campaign that taps into the excitement around the 2016 Presidential election.

Snapple lovers can enjoy the new teas when they hit the market in September. But prior to that, Snapple will be popping up in cities that are hosting major political events, including Philadelphia and St. Louis, to hack the political arena and give fans a sneak peak of the new flavors.

To do this, Snapple has enlisted the help of actor and Snapple fan Michael Rapaport, who will serve as a break time correspondent. At his various stops, Rapaport will arrive like any other self-respecting campaigner in a wrapped Snapple "Break State Bus," which he'll use as a base of operations for giveaways, blind taste tests of Snapple Red Fruit Tea and Blue Fruit Tea and consumer debates with topics about anything except politics.

"With all the controversy and debate happening these days, you see a lot of brands shy away from anything political. That's why Snapple is jumping into the conversation to give fans a break from it all," said Rapaport. "Snapple is a hilarious brand founded in New York and I've got New York roots myself. So of course I'd want to help Snapple lovers celebrate break time with Red Fruit Tea and Blue Fruit Tea leading up to the election."

Digital creative supporting Snapple's Red Fruit and Blue Fruit teas enables fans to take a break with an interactive "create-a-campaign" break tool, which generates a customized, patriotic and ridiculously awesome campaign ad. In addition Snapple lovers can also take an online "Can-Tea-Date" quiz to discover their true flavor profile and see if they lean Red Fruit Tea or Blue Fruit Tea. In addition, Snapple will develop entertaining digital videos featuring Rapaport hosting blind taste tests of Snapple Red and Blue teas at the Snapple "Break State Bus."

TV spots for Snapple Red Fruit Tea and Blue Fruit Tea will reference the little-known Snapple Real Fact that, "Astronauts can vote from space."

To learn more about Snapple, visit www.snapple.com.

About Snapple

Snapple, a brand of Dr Pepper Snapple Group (NYSE: DPS), is a leader in great-tasting premium beverages. Founded in 1972 by three childhood friends, Snapple got its start in Greenwich Village, New York, and is now available throughout the United States. Snapple prides itself on developing, producing and marketing a wide variety of premium beverages, including ready-to-drink iced teas, juice drinks, 100% juices and water. DPS is a leading producer of flavored beverages, marketing Snapple and 50-plus other brands across North America and the Caribbean. For more information, visit Snapple.com or DrPepperSnapple.com. For the brand's latest news and updates, follow Snapple at Facebook.com/Snapple or Twitter.com/Snapple.

Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160609/377811

SOURCE Dr Pepper Snapple Group

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Tilray is supplying pharmacies around Croatia with orally administered medical cannabis products through a partnership with the Croatian Institute of Immunology, which will oversee distribution of Tilray products cultivated and processed at the company's federally licensed, state-of-the-art production facility in Canada. After receipt of all necessary approvals and permits from the Croatian and Canadian regulatory authorities, Tilray announced the partnership at Croatia's annual Media and Health Symposium in Groznjan this morning. Initially, two varieties of Tilray Liquid Capsules will be available in Croatia. One formulation contains 5.0 mg of THC and 5.0 mg of cannabidiol (CBD) per capsule. The other formulation contains 2.5 mg of THC and 2.0 mg of CBD per capsule. The inclusion of both primary cannabinoids ensures maximum therapeutic effect, reduces risk of adverse reactions and enables precise dosage and easy titration.

Professor Ognjen Brborovic PhD MD, Chairman of Croatia's Committee for Medical Cannabis, welcomed the arrival of Tilray Liquid Capsules in Croatia. "It took eight months for the Committee for Medical Cannabis to deliver necessary documents needed to change Croatian legislation to get cannabis to Croatian patients. It took another eight months of diligent work with Tilray to secure all certificates and licenses needed to import and distribute cannabinoid preparations into the European Union from Canada and for actual production of the first batch of cannabis extract oil. I am glad that Croatia is the first EU country that will be able to assure patients first-class cannabis extract oil is available in pharmacies. I hope that patients in other EU countries will soon have the same opportunity," Dr. Brborovic said.

It is expected that thousands of Croatians could soon benefit from medical cannabis as therapy for conditions including multiple sclerosis, HIV/AIDS, chronic pain, Dravet syndrome, and nausea. Compared to other prescription medicines available in Croatia, medical cannabis offers patients an affordable way to manage symptoms for many different diseases with relatively benign side effects and a good safety profile.

Croatia and the EU join Australia as Tilray's newest markets outside of Canada as the company continues to shape the future of the medical cannabis industry around the globe. This effort to facilitate legitimate medical access further establishes Canada as a leading source of cannabis for medical and scientific applications globally. In May, Tilray received approval from Australia's Therapeutic Goods Administration and the Queensland Department of Health to begin supplying a patient in Australia with medical cannabis via a federally administered Special Access Scheme. Earlier in the year, Tilray announced a clinical research trial in Australia in partnership with the Government of New South Wales, Chris O'Brien Lifehouse and the University of Sydney to study the safety and efficacy of medicinal cannabis for patients suffering from chemotherapy-induced nausea and vomiting.

In the coming months, Tilray will announce several additional clinical research partnerships in Australia, Canada and Europe as well as further medical market partnerships in Europe. With today's announcement, Tilray becomes the first Canadian company to export medical cannabis products from the country's federally regulated medical cannabis program.

"We estimate that medical cannabis has the potential to be a $100 billion industry globally. We are excited about the rapid development of the medical cannabis sector in Europe, and we are pleased to be the first company to legally import medical cannabis products into the European Union after meeting all regulatory requirements in Canada and Croatia," said Mr. Brendan Kennedy, Tilray President. "With demand at an all-time high, we look forward to working with the Institute of Immunology to help eligible patients in need access medical cannabis products in Croatia."

About Tilray

Tilray is a global leader in medical cannabis research and production dedicated to advancing the science and safety of cannabinoid medicine for patients with a diverse range of conditions including epilepsy, cancer, chronic pain and multiple sclerosis. The company operates one of the largest and most sophisticated medicinal cannabis research and production facilities in the world and offers pharmaceutical grade medical cannabis products to patients, pharmacies and researchers in Australia, Canada, the European Union and the Americas. Learn more at www.tilray.com

http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160609/377706



http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160609/377733LOGO

SOURCE Tilray

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LONDON, June 9, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --



In May 2016, China's TiO2 price continues to move up. Successive leading domestic TiO2 manufacturers have raised their product prices by about USD77.44/t (RMB500/t). CCM believes that the recovery of the domestic real estate market has been the key supporting factor behind the price rises and the recovering global market is also conducive to the recovery of the market.



Market dynamics of Titanium products in May 2016



- Ilmenite



The market price of ilmenite remains high, mainly because ilmenite manufacturers hold optimistic attitudes towards the future market. However, there have been few new orders this month. In Sichuan Province, influenced by the increasing prices of TiO2 and 38%-40% titanium concentrate, market conditions of ilmenite have improved.



- Titanium slag



The price rise of TiO2 has boosted the price of acid dissolved titanium slag. However, Market conditions of high titanium slag are essentially stable and both market price and operating rate remain low because operating rate of the titanium tetrachloride industry remains stable with no increase in the industry's demand for high titanium slag.



Imports and exports of TiO2



In March 2016, China's import & export volumes of TiO2 grew significantly, showing signs of recovery, mainly because the majority of domestic TiO2 manufacturers and dealers resumed operations after China's Lunar New Year.



Company dynamics



In May 2016, Guangdong Huiyun and Zhejiang Shenji applied for entry into the New Third Board.



On 20 May, 2016, Chemours announced that its 200,000 t/a TiO2 project in Altamira, Mexico had begun production. This highly effective and low-cost new production line is expected to help Chemours further improve its TiO2 production efficiency.In March 2016, China's import & export volumes of TiO2 grew significantly, showing signs of recovery. This was mainly because the majority of domestic TiO2 manufacturers and dealers resumed operations after China's Lunar New Year. The gap between import volume and export volume widened from 22,189 tonnes in Feb. to 35,422 tonnes, while the gap between import price and export price narrowed from USD860/t to USD621/t.



In March 2016, China recorded a MoM growth in its import volume of ilmenite, with import volumes from India and Mozambique growing the most markedly. The domestic ilmenite market began to show signs of recovery and operating rates in Sichuan and Yunnan provinces rose slightly.

In May 2016, the TiO2 price has continued to climb in China. Successive leading domestic TiO2 manufacturers have raised their product prices by about USD77.44/t (RMB500/t). Boosted by the TiO2 market, the market prices of acid dissolved titanium slag and ilmenite are also continuing their upward trends. Market conditions for high titanium slag are essentially stable.



On 20 May, 2016, Chemours announced that its 200,000 t/a TiO2 project in Altamira, Mexico had begun production. This highly effective and low-cost new production line is expected to help Chemours further improve its TiO2 production efficiency. Since its spinoff from DuPont in 2015, Chemours has recorded a slide in performance due to depressed market conditions. To the company's credit, it has boldly made the decision to vigorously adjust its industrial structure.

In Q1 2016, Henan Billions successfully achieved growth in both revenue and net profit, mainly due to a significant increase in sales volume of TiO2 over the reported period. Given that the TiO2 market is presenting an upward trend, and Henan Billions is further enriching its business profile and expanding its market shares, CCM believes that the performance of Henan Billions will improve later this year.



In 2015, Jilin GPRO's net profit rocketed by 214.60% YoY, surpassing "RMB100 million". CCM believes that efficient cost control and increasing market shares in overseas markets were the key driving factors behind the significant growth in profit the company made in the face of depressed market conditions.

On 9 May, 2016, Guangdong Huiyun officially applied to enter the New Third Board. CCM believes that entering the New Third Board will help Guangdong Huiyun to gain capital resources through various channels.

At the end of April 2016, the annual titanium meeting namely Military Industrial Materials Supply Chain Management and Titanium for Petroleum Seminar was held in Beijing. From the meeting, CCM learnt that China's titanium sponge industry has been recovering since Jan. 2016, seeing slight increases in both output and market price.



On 29 April, 2016, AkzoNobel announced that it has started production at its largest decorative paint plant in China. This will enable AkzoNobel to respond to the increasing demand for decorative paints in Western China. CCM has found that in recent years, under the influence of policies such as The Great Western Development and the Belt and Road Initiative, the western Chinese market has become increasingly attractive to international paint magnates.

On 10 May, 2016, the CNCIA and the SUES announced their plans to establish a coating industry university together. The university will design its majors around the characteristics of subindustries of the coating industry so as to cultivate talent for the industry.

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NEW YORK, June 10, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

Growing Disposable Income Coupled With Increasing Product Innovations and Effective Marketing Strategies to Drive the Sales Of Diapers in the United States.

New Age TechSci Research Logo (PRNewsFoto/New Age TechSci Research)

According to TechSci Research report, "United States Diapers Market By Product Type, By Adults Vs Kids, By Region, Competition Forecast and Opportunities, 2011-2021", diapers market in the United States is projected to cross $ 9.8 million by 2021. With anticipated revival in US GDP growth as well as consumer spending, the diaper market is expected to grow over the course of next five years. The market is expected to witness growth on account of rising expenditure on baby care, growing demand for adult diapers, coupled with quality product offerings from leading diaper players at competitive prices.

(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20140117/663730 )



Browse 20 market data Tables and 21 Figures spread through 109 Pages and an in-depth TOC on

"United States Diaper Market"

http://www.techsciresearch.com/report/united-states-diapers-market-by-product-type-disposable-diapers-training-diapers-cloth-diapers-swim-pants-and-biodegradable-diapers-by-adults-vs-kids-by-region-competition-forecast-and-opportunities-2011-2021/684.html

Disposable diapers accounted for a majority revenue share in the US diapers market in 2015, and the segment is anticipated to continue its dominance during the forecast period. However, a slight decline in the value share could be witnessed, on account of higher growth anticipated in adult diapers and bio-degradable diapers. Kids diaper held the majority value share in the US diapers market in 2015, and this trend is expected to continue over the next five years. Procter & Gamble and Kimberley Clark are the leading players in the country's diapers market, and both of them cumulatively accounted for more than three-fourths of the revenue share in the US diapers market in 2015.

Download Sample Report @ http://www.techsciresearch.com/sample-report.aspx?cid=684

Customers can also request for 10% free customization on this report.

"Being a developed country with a large population base, United States is a huge market for diaper companies. A vast population of working women makes the country even more attractive marketplace for huge brands as well as private labels. Growing use of adult diapers as well as cloth diapers is also positively influencing the country's diaper market. Moreover, with diaper companies increasing their focus on introducing innovative product offerings and adopting aggressive marketing strategies, the US diapers market is expected to continue growing in the coming years.", said Mr. Karan Chechi, Research Director with TechSci Research, a research based global management consulting firm.

"United States Diapers Market By Product Type, By Adults Vs Kids, By Region, Competition Forecast and Opportunities, 2011-2021" has thoroughly evaluated the future growth potential of US diaper market and provides statistics and information on market structure, size, share and future growth of the country's diaper market. 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 present in the United States diapers market.

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United States Chocolate Market By Type, By Age Group, By Point of Sale, Competition Forecast and Opportunities, 2011-2021

http://www.techsciresearch.com/report/united-states-chocolate-market-by-type-by-age-group-by-point-of-sale-competition-forecast-and-opportunities-2011-2021/661.html

India Women's Cosmetics Market Forecast and Opportunities, 2020

http://www.techsciresearch.com/report/india-women-s-cosmetics-market-forecast-and-opportunities-2020/419.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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ATLANTA, June 10, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- USMotivation, a full-service performance improvement agency, today announced promotions and recent additions to the company's executive team. Caren Bigelow has been promoted to Vice President of Travel Operations. Bill Karwoski was hired as Vice President of Sales and Marketing and Jennifer Fowler as Vice President of Human Resources.

Caren Bigelow has over 25 years of experience in air and land travel management and operations. In her new role as Vice President of Travel Operations, Caren will oversee all aspects of USMotivation's travel programs. She will be responsible for planning, operations, air and individual travel, as well as final approval of all supplier contracts. "I have had the pleasure of working with Caren for many years and I am delighted to see her step into this new role. Caren is a solid leader at USM and within the industry and brings a great deal of value and insight to our organization," said Tina Weede, USMotivation President.

Bill Karwoski will focus on the company's sales development and marketing strategy. He joins USMotivation with 30 years of experience in business development and executive sales management. Bill is the founder of Sherpa Insight, a leader in emotion-based research for marketing and human resources. His previous background as BI Worldwide Vice President of Sales for the Ohio Valley and Chicago Regions has helped Bill make an easy transition into his current position with USMotivation.

No stranger to the USMotivation family, Jennifer Fowler rejoins USMotivation after previously being part of the human resources team from 2004-2008. Jennifer has over 20 years of experience in employee relations, performance management, compensation analysis and benefits management. Her prior employment history includes positions such as Director of Human Resources and Business Operations for a national recruiting firm, where she was responsible for establishing a human resources department within the company.

"We're thrilled to welcome Bill and Jennifer aboard," said Tina Weede, USM President. "Their respective experience in sales and human resources will help support USM's infrastructure as we rapidly grow and expand. What excites me most is the core value alignment that Caren, Jennifer and Bill demonstrate daily and how they each will enhance our culture moving forward as being members of our senior leadership team."

About USMotivation

USMotivation is an agency that gives incentives, recognition and meetings meaning with the development, creation and execution of award programs, incentive travel, meetings and events. For over 50 years, USM has grown brands and built businesses with a focus on enabling, empowering and elevating people, performance and culture. Visit http://www.usmotivation.com for more information.

Contact: Lisa Williams

[email protected]

770.290.4700

SOURCE USMotivation

Related Links

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BETHESDA, Md., June 10, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Walker & Dunlop, Inc. (NYSE: WD) (the "Company") announced today that it has hired a South Florida team to join its Capital Markets group. Senior Vice Presidents & Managing Directors, Kevin O'Grady, Daniel R. Sheehan, and Eric McGlynn, along with their support-staff, will be based out of Miami, Florida in the Company's newest office. As part of Walker & Dunlop's Capital Markets group, the team advises owners and operators of real estate as well as developers in arranging financing nationwide with institutional capital providers such as banks, life insurance companies, and CMBS conduits. Together, they have closed in excess of $13 billion in structured financing transactions including identifying sources of equity, mezzanine lending, construction financing and portfolio recapitalizations.

Walker & Dunlop has established a goal of growing its sales force of finance and investment sales professionals by 25 percent by the end of 2016, and hiring established teams with industry expertise is a significant part of this growth strategy. With combined commercial real estate finance experience of almost 60 years, the Miami team has structured financing for a wide range of asset types including office, retail, industrial, and multifamily properties as well as condo conversion and development, and large mixed-use projects.

Walker & Dunlop President, Howard W. Smith, commented, "We are thrilled not only to welcome three new talented originators to Walker & Dunlop but also to expand our presence in the Miami region with the addition of this team. Kevin, Dan, and Eric bring diverse experience and a proven track record of leadership in the commercial real estate finance space and will be an incredible asset to Walker & Dunlop and our clients. The team is a great cultural fit, a key consideration for us in the hiring process, and we're confident that they will hit the ground running as part of the W&D platform."

Messrs. O'Grady, Sheehan, and McGlynn joined Walker & Dunlop from Cohen Financial where they were responsible for structuring and placing equity and debt for real estate investment and development projects nationwide.

About Walker & Dunlop

Walker & Dunlop (NYSE: WD), headquartered in Bethesda, Maryland, is one of the largest commercial real estate finance companies in the United States providing financing and investment sales to owners of multifamily and commercial properties. Walker & Dunlop, which is included in the S&P SmallCap 600 Index, has over 500 professionals in 26 offices across the nation with an unyielding commitment to client satisfaction.

SOURCE Walker & Dunlop, Inc.

Related Links

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BAAR, Switzerland, June 10, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Weatherford International plc (NYSE: WFT) (the "Company" or "Weatherford") announced additional amendments with respect to the previously announced offers (as amended, the "Amended Tender Offers") by Weatherford International Ltd., a Bermuda exempted company and indirect, wholly owned subsidiary of the Company ("Weatherford Bermuda"), and Weatherford International, LLC, a Delaware limited liability company and indirect, wholly owned subsidiary of the Company and indirect subsidiary of Weatherford Bermuda ("Weatherford Delaware" and, together with Weatherford Bermuda, the "Offerors") to purchase for cash Weatherford Delaware's 6.35% senior notes due 2017 (the "2017 Notes") and Weatherford Bermuda's 6.00% senior notes due 2018 (the "2018 Notes"), 9.625% senior notes due 2019 (the "2019 Notes") and 5.125% senior notes due 2020 (the "2020 Notes" and, together with the 2017 Notes, 2018 Notes and 2019 Notes, the "Notes").

The additional amendments provide for:

(i) an increase in the aggregate maximum purchase price (excluding accrued interest) of Notes the Offerors are offering to purchase from $2.1 billion to $2.6 billion (the "Amended Aggregate Maximum Purchase Price");

(ii) an increase in the consideration offered per $1,000 principal amount of the 2019 Notes and 2020 Notes as shown in the table below;

(iii) an elimination of the $275.0 million cap on the aggregate principal amount of 2020 Notes Weatherford Bermuda is offering to purchase; and

(iv) Weatherford Bermuda having closed by the Early Settlement Date (as defined below) an offering of senior notes, in one or more tranches and with terms and conditions satisfactory to Weatherford Bermuda (the "Senior Notes Offering"), that provides gross proceeds of at least $1.5 billion (an increase from the previously announced amount of $1.1 billion) (the "Amended Financing Condition").

This announcement amends Weatherford Delaware's and Weatherford Bermuda' Offer to Purchase, dated June 1, 2016, as amended by the press release filed on June 8, 2016 and as hereby further amended, the "Offer to Purchase"). Other than the amendments described above, all terms and conditions in the Offer to Purchase remain unchanged.











Dollars per $1,000 Principal Amount of Notes Title of Security CUSIP Number Aggregate Principal Amount Outstanding Tender Cap / Initial Tender Cap Acceptance Priority Level Tender Offer Consideration/ Previously Announced Tender Offer Consideration Early Tender Premium Total Consideration/ Previously Announced Tender Offer Consideration Weatherford Delaware's

2017 Notes 947074AJ9 /

947074AF7 /

U94320AC9 $600,000,000 N/A 1 $1,020.00 $30 $1,050.00 Weatherford Bermuda's

2018 Notes 947075AD9 $500,000,000 N/A 2 $1,025.00 $30 $1,055.00 Weatherford Bermuda's

2019 Notes 947075AF4 $1,000,000,000 N/A / $250,000,000 3 $1,070.00 / $1,065.00 $30 $1,100,00 / $1,095.00 Weatherford Bermuda's

2020 Notes 94707VAA8 $773,088,000 N/A / $100,000,000 4 $915.00 / $910.00 $30 $945.00 / $940.00

Holders of Notes that are validly tendered (and not validly withdrawn) prior to 5:00 p.m., New York City time, on June 16, 2016 (the "Early Tender Date"), and accepted for purchase pursuant to the Amended Tender Offers will receive the applicable Total Consideration (as set forth in the table above) for such series, which includes the early tender premium for such series of Notes set forth in the table above (with respect to each series of Notes, the "Early Tender Premium"). Holders of Notes tendering their Notes after the Early Tender Date will only be eligible to receive the Tender Offer Consideration (as set forth in the table above), which is the Total Consideration less the Early Tender Premium.

All Notes validly tendered and accepted for purchase pursuant to the Amended Tender Offers will receive the applicable consideration set forth in the table above, plus accrued and unpaid interest on such Notes from the last interest payment date with respect to those Notes to, but not including, the applicable Settlement Date (as defined below). Tendered Notes may be withdrawn from the Amended Tender Offers prior to 5:00 p.m., New York City time, on June 16, 2016 (the "Withdrawal Deadline"), unless extended by Weatherford Bermuda or Weatherford Delaware. Holders of Notes who tender their Notes after the Withdrawal Deadline, but prior to 12:00 midnight, New York City time, at the end of the day on June 30, 2016 (the "Expiration Date"), may not withdraw their tendered Notes.

The Offerors reserve the right, but are under no obligation, subject to the satisfaction or waiver of the conditions (including the Amended Financing Condition) to the Amended Tender Offers, to accept for purchase any Notes validly tendered and not validly withdrawn prior to the Early Tender Date, at any point following the Early Tender Date and before the Expiration Date (the "Early Settlement Date"), subject to the Acceptance Priority Levels (as set forth in the table above), the Amended Aggregate Maximum Purchase Price and proration. The Early Settlement Date will be determined at each Offeror's option and is currently expected to occur on June 17, 2016, subject to all conditions to the Amended Tender Offers (including the Amended Financing Condition) having been either satisfied or waived by the applicable Offeror. If the Amended Financing Condition is not satisfied or waived by the Early Settlement Date, the Offerors reserve the right, but are under no obligation to accept for purchase any Notes validly tendered and not validly withdrawn prior to the Early Tender Date, at the Early Settlement Date, subject to an aggregate maximum purchase price of $1.1 billion (the "Initial Aggregate Maximum Purchase Price"), the Acceptance Priority Levels, the Initial Tender Caps (as set forth in the table above), and proration. Irrespective of whether an Offeror chooses to exercise its option to have an Early Settlement Date, such Offeror will purchase any remaining Notes that have been validly tendered and not validly withdrawn prior to the Expiration Date and that such Offeror chooses to accept for purchase promptly following the Expiration Date, subject to the Initial Aggregate Maximum Purchase Price or the Amended Aggregate Maximum Purchase Price, as applicable, the Initial Tender Caps, as applicable, and proration (the "Final Settlement Date," the Final Settlement Date and the Early Settlement Date each being a "Settlement Date"). The Final Settlement Date is expected to occur on the first business day following the Expiration Date. Regardless of whether the Amended Financing Condition is satisfied or waived by the Early Settlement Date, Holders tendering Notes pursuant to the Amended Tender Offers will receive the applicable Total Consideration or the Tender Offer Consideration (as set forth in the table above).

Subject to the Initial Aggregate Maximum Purchase Price or the Amended Aggregate Maximum Purchase Price, as applicable, the Initial Tender Caps, as applicable, and proration, the Notes accepted on any Settlement Date will be accepted in accordance with their Acceptance Priority Levels set forth in the table above, with one being the highest Acceptance Priority Level and four being the lowest Acceptance Priority Level. All Notes tendered before the Early Tender Date will be accepted for purchase in priority to other Notes tendered after the Early Tender Date, even if such Notes tendered after the Early Tender Date have a higher Acceptance Priority Level than Notes tendered prior to the Early Tender Date.

Acceptance for tenders of any Notes may be subject to proration if the aggregate principal amount for any series of Notes validly tendered and not validly withdrawn would cause the Initial Aggregate Maximum Purchase Price or the Amended Aggregate Maximum Purchase Price, as applicable, to be exceeded. Acceptance for tenders of 2019 Notes and 2020 Notes may be subject to proration if the aggregate principal amount of the 2019 Notes or 2020 Notes validly tendered and not validly withdrawn is greater than the applicable Tender Cap, if any.

The consummation of the Amended Tender Offers is not conditioned upon any minimum amount of Notes being tendered. However, the Amended Tender Offers are subject to the satisfaction or waiver of certain conditions in the Offer to Purchase, including the Amended Financing Condition.

Deutsche Bank Securities Inc., Citigroup Global Markets Inc., RBC Capital Markets, LLC and Wells Fargo Securities, LLC are the dealer managers in the Amended Tender Offers. Global Bondholder Services Corporation has been retained to serve as both the depositary and the information agent for the Amended Tender Offers. Persons with questions regarding the Amended Tender Offers should contact Deutsche Bank Securities at (toll-free): (855) 287-1922 or (collect): (212) 250-7527, Citigroup Global Markets Inc. at (toll-free): (800) 558-3745 or (New York): (212) 723-6106, RBC Capital Markets, LLC at (toll-free): (877) 381-2099 or (collect): (212) 618-7822 or Wells Fargo Securities, LLC at (toll-free): (866) 309-6316 or (collect): (704) 410-4760. Requests for copies of the Offer to Purchase and other related materials should be directed to Global Bondholder Services Corporation at (toll-free): (866) 807-2200 or (collect): (212) 430-3774.

None of the Company, its board of directors, the dealer managers, the depositary or the information agent or any of the Company, the Offerors or their respective affiliates, makes any recommendation as to whether holders of the Notes should tender any Notes in response to the Amended Tender Offers. The Amended Tender Offers are made only by the Offer to Purchase. The Amended Tender Offers are not being made to holders of Notes in any jurisdiction in which the making or acceptance thereof would not be in compliance with the securities, blue sky or other laws of such jurisdiction. In any jurisdiction in which the Amended Tender Offers are required to be made by a licensed broker or dealer, the Amended Tender Offers will be deemed to be made on behalf of the Offerors by the dealer managers, or one or more registered brokers or dealers that are licensed under the laws of such jurisdiction.

ABOUT WEATHERFORD INTERNATIONAL PLC

Weatherford is one of the largest multinational oilfield service companies providing innovative solutions, technology and services to the oil and gas industry. The Company operates in over 100 countries and has a network of approximately 1,100 locations, including manufacturing, service, research and development, and training facilities and employs approximately 33,100 people.

FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS

This press release includes forward-looking statements as defined under federal law, including those related to the Company's potential securities offering and tender offers. These forward-looking statements are generally identified by the words "believe," "expect," "anticipate," "estimate," "intend," "plan," "may," "should," "could," "will," "would," and "will be," and similar expressions, although not all forward-looking statements contain these identifying words. Such statements are subject to significant risks, assumptions and uncertainties. Known material factors that could cause the Company's actual results to differ materially from the results contemplated by such forward-looking statements are described in the prospectus as supplemented, which is a part of the registration statement, and the risk factors described in the Company's Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2015 and those risk factors set forth from time-to-time in other filings with the SEC. Weatherford undertakes no obligation to correct or update any forward-looking statement, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise, except to the extent required under federal securities laws.

Investor Contact:





Krishna Shivram +1.713.836.4610 Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer



Karen David-Green +1.713.836.7430 Vice President  Investor Relations, Corporate Marketing & Communications

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/19990308/WEATHERFORDLOGO

SOURCE Weatherford International plc

Related Links

http://www.weatherford.com


INDIANAPOLIS, June 10, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- WGU Indiana marks its sixth anniversary today, having notably expanded access to higher education for thousands over the last six years. The university is celebrating by offering its largest single scholarships since university was founded in 2010. Valued at $6,000the cost of tuition for a full yearthe scholarships are available to statewide applicants through September 30. More than 3,500 Hoosiers have graduated from WGU Indiana over the past six years and greater than 4,400 students are currently enrolled in the university's bachelor's and master's degree programs.

WGU Indiana was established in 2010 when former Governor Mitch Daniels signed a partnership with Western Governors University. Indiana Lieutenant Governor Eric Holcomb helped arrange the agreement as a member of the Daniels administration.

"Six years ago, the State recognized that WGU could offer a solution for the thousands of Hoosiers who wanted to finish a college degree while maintaining their participation in the workforce," said Holcomb. "After several years of growth and success, it seems we were right. I commend all WGU Indiana students and graduates who have contributed to the State of Indiana and applaud the work of the university in broadening access to higher education in our state. I know that even greater accomplishments are on the horizon."

In celebration of its sixth anniversary, WGU Indiana is making available six $6,000 Sixth Anniversary Scholarship to applicants through the month of September. The cost of tuition at WGU Indiana has remained flat at $6,000 per year since 2010.

"Making college affordable and convenient for working Hoosiers is our mission," said WGU Indiana Chancellor Allison Barber. "For those hundreds of thousands of Indiana residents who have completed some college but who have not finished their degree, WGU Indiana presents a unique opportunity. It is never too late to go back."

Over the last six years, WGU Indiana kept its focus on competency-based education, allowing students to accelerate through areas of prior work or academic experience. Degree programs are designed to allow for maximum flexibility as most WGU students are employed full-time while enrolled.

For full details about WGU Indiana's Sixth Anniversary Scholarship and other tuition assistance, visit indiana.wgu.edu/scholarships.

Contact for media inquiries:

WGU: Kyle Utter

317.965.8312

[email protected]

SOURCE WGU Indiana

Related Links

http://indiana.wgu.edu


SHENZHEN, China, June 10, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Two years ago a small and humble company took to the internet to bring trendy fashion to the masses. Fast forward two years and Zaful has successfully ascended to being a comprehensive catalog of clothing with a huge consumer base. These last two years have been an exceptional experience for the company and we are excited to welcome consumers and the media to the next phase in the companies' growth.

Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160610/377856

Every good anniversary needs a celebration and Zaful is ready to deliver. The company is planning on rolling out its largest sale ever. This ultimate promotion will see major mark downs that would otherwise be unheard of. With the company turning two the promotion will go on for two days between June 28th and June 30th 2016.

Zaful is looking to do more than just a one off sale to commemorate two years, there will also be permanent changes. To increase customer satisfaction Zaful will begin hiring more staff. New in house designers, photographers, customer care representatives, manufacturers, and more will be brought in. The increase in staff will be used to optimize every facet of the Zaful experience from increasing delivery speed, ship out time, and being available to answer questions and concerns immediately.

Between June 15th and June 30th, newly registered customers will receive one 15% off coupon, this is a 5% increase from the usual 10% discount given. To keep the website fun and interactive Zaful will give users the chance to win prizes by just coming to the website. Customers will be given a chance to spin a virtual wheel with a chance to win a prize. Each customer will get one spin, however sharing the wheel on social media will allow for an extra spin. Customers who are not lucky enough to win a prize from the wheel are not out of luck, anyone spending over $80 will get a free thank you gift. It gets better, every day Zaful will randomly select 5 customers from the previous business day to receive a full refund on their entire purchase!

Mark your calendars now and make sure to head over to Zaful for the Anniversary events! For more special offers, you can also visit the other two websites from Globalegrow: Rosegal and Sammydress.

Contact

Robert Woo

(503) 928-7482

Email

http://www.zaful.com/

SOURCE Zaful

Related Links

http://www.zaful.com


If you were looking for the Charlestown Democratic Town Committee website and ended up here, try this





Got news tips, gossip, suggestions, complaints?E-mail us: progressivecharlestown@gmail.com We strive to avoid errors in our articles. Our correction policy can be found here
New York, June 5 : Scientists at Microsoft Research and their colleagues are developing an artificial intelligence (AI) system that can tell stories based on photos.

The aim is not just to explain what items are in the picture, but also what appears to be happening and how it might potentially make a person feel, US-based website livescience.com quoted the researchers as saying.

For example, if a person is shown a picture of a man in a tuxedo and a woman in a long, white dress, instead of saying, "This is a bride and groom," he or she might say, "My friends got married. They look really happy; it was a beautiful wedding."

"The goal is to help give AIs more human-like intelligence, to help it understand things on a more abstract level and what it means to be fun or creepy or weird or interesting," Margaret Mitchell, study senior author said in a

"With our focus on storytelling, we hope to help AIs understand human concepts in a way that is very safe and beneficial for mankind, rather than teaching it how to beat mankind," Mitchell, who is also a computer scientist at Microsoft Research, added.

To build a visual storytelling system, the researchers used deep neural networks, computer systems that learn by example.

The researchers said although everything worked fine, the computerised storyteller needs a lot more tinkering.

"The automated evaluation is saying that it's doing as good or better than humans, but if you actually look at what's generated, it's much worse than humans," Mitchell noted.

"There's a lot the automated evaluation metrics are not capturing and there needs to be a lot more work on them. This work is a solid start, but it is just the beginning."

The scientists will detail their findings in San Diego at the annual meeting of the North American Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics later this month.
Islamabad, June 5 : At least 18 Indian fishermen were freed on Sunday by Pakistan as a goodwill gesture, an official source here said.

The fishermen would arrive in Lahore on Monday from Landhi jail in the port city of Karachi, the source said.

"The fishermen will be taken to Wagah border by a special bus from Lahore railway station," it said.

Another official said India must reciprocate the gesture and release the Pakistani fishermen lodged in Indian jails.

Fishermen are frequently arrested by both India and Pakistan's maritime security for entering each other's territorial waters.

Pakistan has so far released 199 Indian fishermen this year.
Kathmandu, June 5 : Nepal's ruling CPN-UML denied on Sunday that Prime Minister K.P. Oli had accused India of trying to topple his government.

In a statement, party Secretary Pradip Gyawali rejected media reports to this effect and said Oli had not made any such statement at any meeting.

Media reports here cited Oli, who is also the Communist Party of Nepal-Unified Marxist-Leninist (CPN-UML) chairman, as saying at the ongoing party Standing Committee meeting, that the US was also on the same page with India and both countries were hatching a conspiracy against his government and party.

Oli reportedly told party leaders that this had transpired as they had "started taking our decisions on our own", and the present conflict in Nepal was over who will take decisions, and will "they be made by us or somewhere else outside the country".

He said India was not cooperating with his government and seeking an alternative, according to the reports.

However, Gyawali stressed in the statement that the Oli government had received "well hearted support" from neighbouring countries and misunderstandings with India had been cleared.

"Our neighbours have exhibited generous support in the peace process, constitution drafting process and during search and rescue during last year's earthquake... the generosity shown by the neighbours to carry out the reconstruction work is commendable," he said, adding that the government expected better cooperation from neighbouring counties in the days to come.

Nepal-India ties saw a rough patch since Nepal promulgated its new constitution last September with India continuously urging its leaderships to resolve the political standoff in the Madhes area of the Terai region.

(Anil Giri can be contacted at girianil@gmail.com)
Dhaka, June 6 : Bangladesh authorities on Monday issued a ban on motorcyclists carrying more pillion riders than one. The step is aimed at preventing militant attacks.

The ban comes as a response to the killing of a top Bangladeshi police officer's wife on Sunday. She was shot dead by suspected militants in Chittagong port city, Xinhua news agency reported.

Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan said the decision has been taken for public safety in view of motorcycles being used to carry out terror attacks.

"Three riders on a motorcycle will be not allowed anymore," he said.

Muslim-majority Bangladesh has been facing a surge in violent attacks in recent years.

A number of secularist writers, bloggers and publishers in Bangladesh have been killed or seriously injured in attacks perpetrated by extremists since 2013.

In most of the cases, it was noticed that the attacks were carried out by motorcycle-riding assailants.
Kolkata, June 8 : The alleged mastermind behind the kidney trafficking racket at Delhi's Indraprastha Apollo Hospital, T. Rajkumar, was on Wednesday given on a three-day transit remand to Delhi Police by a court here.

Rajkumar, arrested from Rajarhat in Kolkata's northeast fringes on Tuesday, was presented at the Barasat court during the day.

His counsel moved a plea for bail, which was turned down by the judge of the Barasat court.

Rajkumar has been charged under various sections of the Indian Penal Code dealing with cheating, forgery and criminal conspiracy for trading in human kidney.

"We moved a bail plea, which was rejected. The judge has given the police a three-day transit remand to present him in Delhi court by June 11," said defence counsel Dilip Kumar Sikdar.

The prosecution argued that Rajkumar was the kingpin of the racket for trading in kidney.

Police busted the racket on June 2 with the arrest of two Indraprastha Apollo Hospital employees and three touts on the charge of persuading economically-weaker people to sell their kidneys.

A case was then registered at Sarita Vihar police station in Delhi.

Police said Shailesh Saxena, 31, and Aditya Singh, 24, who work as personal secretaries to two Apollo Hospital doctors, were held for organising the kidney trade.

The three arrested touts were identified as Aseem Sikdar, 37, Satya Prakash, 30, and Devashish Moulik, 30.

Investigators have claimed the members of the gang persuaded poor people from various parts of the country to donate their kidney in exchange for money and also prepared forged papers, including the identity proofs to establish the relationship between the donors and the recipients.

The recipients were charged large sums while the donors were fobbed off with paltry amounts.

People falling prey to the gang come from various parts of the country like West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh, Delhi and Tamil Nadu.

Police sources said the hospital staff used to inform Sikdar about the need for a kidney, and he would then arrange the donors with the help of his associates Prakash and Moulik.

Police have so far questioned several doctors and staff members of Apollo Hospital in the case.
Ahmedabad, June 9 : Hearing on the quantum of punishment to the 24 convicts in the 2002 Gulberg Society massacre here which left killed 69 persons, including former Congress MP Ehsan Jafri, remained inconclusive on Thursday, and the court adjourned it again for Friday.

This is the second time after June 6 that the pronouncing of the sentence to the convicts has been put off with prosecution calling for strictest punishment to the guilty and defence counsel arguing for lighter sentence and an opportunity for them to reform.

The special SIT Court of Judge P.B. Desai directed that the convicts need not be physically present in the court on Friday and, if need be they could be presented through video conferencing from the Sabarmati Jail where they are lodged.

During the arguments, the prosecution stuck to its stand that the convicts be awarded maximum sentence for the mass murder while defence counsel argued that the convicts, the 11 held guilty of murder, should not be given capital punishment.

Citing a Supreme Court judgement, defence lawyer Abhay Bhardwaj said that since the convicts never tried to tamper with the evidence nor did they commit any crime during their bail period, they should be given an opportunity to reform.

The defence lawyer forcefully argued that the court should take into consideration that the attack on the Gulberg Society was provoked by private firing by Ehsan Jafri, in which one person was killed and several others injured. According to him, Jafri was the key culprit for the unfortunate massacre.

On June 2, the court held 24 of the total 66 accused guilty while acquitted the remaining 36. Six accused died during the trial. Of the 24 convicts, 11 were adjudged guilty of various charges, including murder. One person was found guilty of attempt to murder, and remaining 12, including Vishwa Hindu Parishad leader Atul Vaidya, were held guilty of lesser charges like rioting and unlawful assembly.

Special Investigation Team (SIT) counsel R.C. Kodekar, during the argument on the previous date of hearing on June 6, demanded appropriate strict sentence for the convicts while advocate for the survivors and victims S.M. Vora sought strictest punishment and compensation for the victims.

Significantly, the court had dropped the charges of criminal conspiracy under Section 120 B of the Indian Penal Code in the case against the accused persons.
New Delhi, June 9 : After an Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) legislator in Delhi on Thursday accused Lt. Governor Najeeb Jung of "misusing" his position to restore a ration shop owner's licence, the Delhi assembly passed a resolution to form a committee to probe the charges.

Burari MLA Sanjay Jha alleged that Jung restored the cancelled licence of a ration shop in Sant Nagar area, which falls under his constituency, without any authority.

He accused Jung of corruption and claimed the L-G was the kingpin of the ration mafia in the national capital.

"The shop owner concerned used to sell poor quality ration. As the locals complained, the shop's licence was cancelled after my intervention. But the shop owner approached the L-G, after which his licence was restored. It is a clear case of corruption on the part of the L-G," Jha said on the opening day of the two-day special session of the assembly called to discuss corruption in civic bodies.

The AAP leader claimed the shopkeeper paid Rs 12 lakh to get the licence restored.

"The shop owner now openly claims he spent Rs 12 lakh to get back his licence. Surprisingly, in his letter, the L-G recommended action against me," Jha said.

"The nine-member special inquiry committee formed will probe the grave allegations of bribery. It will also receive complaints on similar matters and investigate the same," an official statement said.

It added: "The committee shall exercise all powers and immunities available to the existing committees of the assembly."

The committee will submit its report to the speaker before the next assembly session.

Earlier Malviya Nagar legislator Somnath Bharti had supported Jha's charges and said: "The L-G has misused his post. He had no authority in the matter. A committee should be formed to investigate the matter."
Islamabad, June 10 : Pakistan has expressed concern over growing strategic ties between India and the US, a day after the two countries signed a number of agreements for security cooperation during Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to the US.

Addressing a conference at the Foreign Office on Thursday, Adviser to the Prime Minister on Foreign Affairs Sartaj Aziz said the US approaches Pakistan whenever it needs it and abandons when it does not need the country.

"Pakistan will convey its concerns to the US over the latest issues in the bilateral ties," Aziz.

A high-level meeting is scheduled to take place between Pakistan and the US officials on Friday in Islamabad.

"We firmly conveyed it to the US that maintaining effective nuclear deterrence is critical for Pakistan's security and only Pakistan itself can determine how it should respond to growing strategic imbalance in South Asia," he said.

Aziz said Pakistan has decided to take up the issue of Kulbhushan Jadhav, alleged Indian spy arrested in Balochistan, with the UN and other international forums.

He said the statement made by Director General of National Investigation Agency (NIA) that no evidence linked Pakistan to the January 2 Pathankot attack in Punjab has vindicated Pakistan's position in attack probe.

Aziz's statement comes as Modi wrapped up a visit to Washington as one of President Barack Obama's closest international partners.

The developing Indo-US relationship is seen as a foreign policy success for the Obama administration.

Washington views India as an important part of its re-balance to Asia and as a counterweight to China, Dawn online reported.

The two countries have finalised various agreements that would make it possible for their militaries to cooperate more closely in the future. Under one such agreement, an American company will build six nuclear reactors in India.

The perpetually oscillating Pakistan-US relationship is once again at low as reflected by the congressional restriction on financing of F-16 fighters' sale from Foreign Military Financing programme, because of which Pakistan lost the opportunity to buy the jets.

The relationship was further strained when the US carried out a drone strike in Balochistan, killing Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Akhtar Mansour. Pakistan termed it as a violation of the country's sovereignty.
Colombo, June 10 : The Sri Lankan government has decided to expedite development projects funded by China, the Ministry of National Policy and Economic Affairs has said.

The ministry said the decision was taken following talks held between a Chinese government delegation and State Minister of National Policy and Economic Affairs Niroshan Perera, reports Xinhua news agency.

Zhou Liujun, head of the Department of Outward Investment and Economic Cooperation of China's Ministry of Commerce, met the state minister and discussed Chinese investments in Sri Lanka.

The State Ministry of National Policy and Economic Affairs said at the talks it was proposed to finalize a trade and economic pact between China and Sri Lanka.

Sri Lanka is home to a large Chinese community. Chinese tourist arrivals to Sri Lanka has also seen a rise this year.
Bangalore, June 10 : Virtual hotel chain Nida Rooms has announced a partnership with Via.com to enable customers of the travel and hospitality industry aggregator customise holidays with a wider selection of over 3,500 hotel rooms in Asia.

"This strategic partnership enables NIDA Rooms to reach out to more travellers, as Via.com has served over 70 million guests in Asia," Kaneswaran Avili, chief wxecutive of Nida Rooms and former Chief Commercial Officer of Spicejet, said in a statement on Friday.

"Nida Rooms and Via.com hold similar offerings -- value-for-money products for customers."

Avili added that Via.com, one of the top largest online travel agency in Asia, especially in the B2B segment in India, has been introducing new offerings to customers to make the logistics for holidaying simple.

"This partnership will be a big step forward in our journey to offer the absolute best value to our customers," said V. Swaminathan, Chief Executive of Via.com that has its footpring in India, the Philippines, Indonesia, Singapore and the UAE.

Each of these countries having more than 90,000 resellers offering comprehensive travel products.

Nida Rooms partners with selected hoteliers and secures certain number of rooms. Those rooms are branded as Nida Rooms and are offered through various online channels, mainly their Web site and mobile applications in Google Play Store and Apple App Store.

"In a short span of eight months, we have secured over 3,500 hotel partners located strategically throughout Thailand, the Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysia. We will be continuously expanding our reach in Asia with immediate plans to penetrate markets like Vietnam," said Avili.
Kabul/New Delhi, June 10 : Suspected militants have abducted an Indian female aid worker from the volatile Afghanistan capital of Kabul, Indian and Afghan officials said on Friday.

The woman was identified as Judith D'Souza, 40, a senior technical advisor on gender with the Aga Khan Developmental Network in Kabul, sources in Delhi said.

Believed to be from Kolkata, D'Souza was kidnapped late on Thursday, the sources said. No group immediately claimed responsibility for her abduction.

The Indian embassy in Kabul is in touch with senior Afghan authorities and the government, the sources said, adding that officials in Delhi were also in contact with her family in Kolkata.

They said all efforts were being made by the Afghan authorities to secure her release.

The aid agency also confirmed to IANS that a "staff member of the Aga Khan Foundation" was abducted without naming her.

"An investigation by the authorities has been launched, in conjunction with security officials and various partners. Every effort is being made to secure the safe release of the staff member," Aga Khan spokesperson Sam Pickens said in an email response.

This is not the first time that an Indian aid worker has been kidnapped in Afghanistan. Taliban militants have mostly been blamed for the kidnappings.

Many Indian establishments have also been targeted in the past in Afghanistan where New Delhi has pledged and made huge investments to rebuild the war-torn country.

The latest in a series of terror strikes on Indian interests in Afghanistan was on an Indian consulate on March 2.

The abduction comes as the Indian embassy issued a security alert earlier last month for Indians residing in Afghanistan and travelling to the country.

"All Indians residing and travelling to Afghanistan are advised that the security situation in the country remains highly volatile. Terrorist attacks have taken place in the country against foreigners and are expected to continue. There is also the risk of kidnapping and hostage taking throughout the Afghanistan," the embassy statement warned.
Islamabad, June 10 : Philanthropist and Edhi Foundation Chairman Abdul Sattar Edhi on Friday declined Pakistan's former President Asif Ali Zardari's offer of treatment abroad.

Zardari on Thursday proposed to Edhi for treatment abroad, but the philanthropist, declining the offer, said he preferred to receive treatment in Pakistan, Dawn online reported.

"Should I take you with me to London or Dubai?," asked a Pakistan Peoples Party senator while paying a visit to Edhi on Thursday.

The senator said if Edhi's condition does not improve, he would visit again and take him abroad for treatment.

Interpreting for his father, Faisal Edhi said: "He insists on treatment in Pakistan, particularly in a government hospital."

"I have told him, if he gives the word, I will take him to any hospital in the world," said the senator.

Edhi was diagnosed with kidney failure in 2013 but has been unable to get a transplant due to frail health.

The eminent humanitarian declined in October Prime Minister Narendra Modi's offer to donate Rs 10 million to charity after the return of hearing and speech impaired girl Geeta to India.

Geeta, who was stranded in Pakistan, had been under the Edhi Foundation's care during her time in the country.
Experts say it would be impossible for Vietnamese start-up companies to go public on a bespoke stock exchange recently suggested by Deputy Prime Minister Vuong Dinh Hue.

The deputy PM proposed the idea at a meeting on June 7, and said it could become a reality in the next two or three years.

While appreciating the government's focus on start-up companies, many investors and CEOs have expressed different views about the feasibility of the trading floor.

Do Hoai Nam, founder of Up Co-working Space, said: Every company needs to meet a lot of requirements to be listed on the stock exchange, and most start-up companies would be unable to do so. If they could, they would list on existing trading floors rather than an exclusive one.

Many start-up companies have said it would take them several years to meet all the requirements, and the trading floor itself would take time to balance out, putting them at risk.

In addition, investors appear to be reluctant to buy shares in start-ups.

Chu Dung Hoang, founder and CEO of Zinmed, a startup company that provides health care services, said: Its difficult to assess the value of any startup, not to mention Vietnamese firms. When you cant evaluate the value of a company, you cant list it on a stock exchange.

Nguyen Quang Thuan, general director of StoxPlus, which provides financial information and industry research services, also agreed, adding that: Many profitable shares havent been sold on official trading floors, let alone shares in start-ups.

Founders and CEOs of start-ups have reached a consensus that the government, instead of opening another exclusive stock exchange, should complete a legal framework to support start-ups and their investors, as well as provide guarantees for loans.

Related news:

> Deputy PM suggests setting up a stock exchange for start-ups

> Vietnam offers special policy to support start-ups and SMEs

> Vietnamese win first prize at education start-up contest
Tokyo, June 10 : The irst phase of the "Malabar" joint military exercise between India, Japan and the US took off on Friday at Japan's Sasebo city.

The first harbour phase will conclude on June 13. The second sea phase will run June 14-17 off Okinawa Island.

"Malabar 2016 will be another significant step in strengthening mutual confidence and inter-operability as well as sharing of best practices between the Indian, Japanese and US Navies," an Indian Navy statement said.

"The exercise will support maritime security in the Indo-Pacific region, and benefit the global maritime community," the statement reads.

The Special Forces of the three navies will also interact during the exercise.
Hyderabad, June 10 : India's first three women fighter pilots will be formally commissioned into the Indian Air Force (IAF) on June 18.

Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar will formally commission the women fighter pilots along with flight cadets of various branches of the IAF at a combined graduation parade at the Air Force Academy in Dundigal on Hyderabad's outskirts.

"The graduation parade will be a landmark in IAF history as the first three women pilots will be commissioned in the fighter stream of the flying branch," said an official release.

The minister will review the passing-out parade and confer the 'President's Commission', on behalf of the President of India, to 129 graduating trainees of various branches, including 22 women trainees.

Parrikar will also present the 'Wings and Brevets' to the newly commissioned officers of the flying branch and to officers from the Indian Navy and Coast Guard who have successfully undergone the flying training.

He will also present the President's Plaque and the Sword of Honour to the flight cadet standing first in the order of merit in the flying branch, who will get to command the parade.

Parrikar will also award the President's Plaque to the toppers in the navigation and ground duty branches of the graduating course.

On the eve of the graduation, he will attend a ceremonial guest night and interact with graduating trainees and their proud parents.

During this event, the defence minister will award trophies to the flight cadets who have excelled in their respective streams.

The pre-commissioning training at Air Force Academy for various branches such as flying, navigation, administration, logistics, accounts, education and meteorology commences in January and July every year and culminates with the combined graduation parade in December and June respectively.
New Delhi : I don't exactly gasp but am puzzled by the indifference with which the media has treated two fascinating Indo-Iranian stories. Now that Indo-Iranian relations are set to improve after crucial agreements signed in Tehran by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Hassan Rouhani, the anecdotes should be shared.

During his journey to Iran in 1932, Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) made a request: He was keen to visit the tomb of the great Persian Sufi poet, Hafez (1326-1390) at Shiraz.

A reading room attached to the shrine has a cornice on which is settled a remarkable photograph, the size of a pocket book. It shows Tagore at the tomb, with a book of Hafe's verses open in front of him.

I have been to the shrine with Prime Ministers Rajiv Gandhi and Atal Bihari Vajpayee. They were both fascinated by the great poets, representing two cultures, separated by six centuries, captured in one photograph. There was a great deal of loud thinking: life size copies of the photographs can adorn Indo-Iranian cultural centres, and perhaps the two embassies. So far, nothing has happened. Perhaps Mamata Banerjee in Kolkata would take interest.

The second story concerns Ayatullah Khomein''s roots in the Shia enclave of Kuntoor, near Bara Banki, in the heart of what was once Awadh. After the Shah's fall, there was a search on for new contacts in Tehran. Atal Bihari Vajpayee, then Minister for External Afffairs, asked me if I knew Khomeini's clan in Kuntoor. I did. Maulana Agha Rhui Abaqati soon materialized in South Block. He was enlisted as a guide to a delegation consisting of Socialist leader and Vice Chairman Planning Commission Ashoke Mehta and senior diplomat Badruddin Tayyabji. When the trio reached Ayatullah Khomeini in Gumran, outside Tehran, there was something of any anti climax. The reception to the delegation was cold. Abaqati in fact got an earful from Khomeini himself.

It turned out that the young Islamic Revolution was eager not to publicize the Supreme leader's "foreigm" roots. Opposition to Khomeini among the clergy would exploit it.

Against this background, Iranian ambassador Gholam Reza Ansari's intervention at a seminar in New Delhi's Leela hotel in 2014 was quite remarkable. The ambassador cited Imam Khomein''s roots in Awadh as proof of ancient ties between the two countries. This was a major shift. Between the debacle faced by the Indian delegation in 1979 and 2014, the Iranian revolution had travelled a long distance. It felt secure enough to admit that Imam Khomeini ancestry could now be traced to India.

The point I am making here is a simple one: schools of Iranian studies have mushroomed in the West, placing every aspect of Shia scholarship under a microscope. Here, in and around Lucknow, is incontrovertible evidence of linkages between Indian centres of Shia scholarship and rest of the world. Libraries with rare books lie in utter neglect. Who knows, this astounding lack of interest may end in this new phase of accelerated relations between the two countries. Cultural collaboration is an important part of the agreements.

Iranians have been spreading out a range of maps before diplomats in Tehran. "It's a win, win for all," they say.

Soon after Prime Minister Narendra Modi's very purposive visit, Japanese Prime Minister Shinto Abe's officials are locked in discussion with their Iranian counterparts to prepare a script for Abe's visit to Tehran in September. The development of Chabahar port will be an item on his agenda.

Pundits preoccupied with China and Pakistan will say: this is part of the US "pivot to Asia" in which, they hope, Iran too will be roped in. But the "win, win for all" chant coming out of Tehran suggest a more nuanced look at China's anxieties, particularly in the South China Sea.

"In periods of hostility, their passage through the straits of Malacca can be choked," said an Iranian diplomat. The Gawadar port at the mouth of the Persian Gulf is a key element in the Chinese ambitious One Belt - One Road concept. It frees them of their total dependence on Malacca. Iranian diplomats insist that Japanese interest in Chabahar need not be seen in adversarial terms. The distance between Gawadar and Chabahar, it is point out, is only 150 km. "Win, win for all" goes the chant after the recent agreements.

These agreements have been signed with an Iran everybody is wooing. The difference this time is that Prime Minister Modi has actually signed agreements after considerable preparation. But there still remains a fly in the ointment. The parallel road and rail links via Afghanistan, which are central to the Chabahar agreement, will remain unimplementable unless there is peace in Afghanistan. This should be a worry.

Americans have been threatening to pack their bags in Afghanistan since 2009. But their desire to leave was, in retrospect, seen to have been half hearted. Several factors were not allowing Afghanistan to be at peace with itself.

Outsiders have been reluctant to notice an undercurrent in Pushtoon society: the Durrani, Ghilzai tensions. This needs explanation. When Noor Mohammad Taraki, an Afghan Communist, took over as Prime Minister in 1978, an epoch making change took place.

By seizing power, after killing President Mohammad Daud Khan, the Communist parties, Khalq and Parcham, had upturned the Afghan feudal structure in many ways. For the first time in 200 years, Durranis had yielded power to Ghilzais. Like the late Mullah Omar, most of the Taliban leadership are Ghilzais. The power structure put together in Kabul with US help, whether Hamid Karzai or Ashraf Ghani, happen to be part of the old ruling class: Durranis. If this 38 years old tension is ever to soften, Ghilzais will have to be decisively in power in Kabul. Is there a non Taliban route to this end?

For the American presence, however depleted, the port city of Karachi remains indispensable for logistics. The convoy route is seldom far from Taliban strongholds - Quetta or Kandahar.

Even after a considerable drawdown of troops, the US is unlikely to give up its half a dozen or so major bases. I wonder if pundits have spotted American determination to keep some presence in Afghanistan. They will never be too far from the world's only Islamic state "too nuclear" to be left to its devices. Even for limited bases, Americans will always require continuous logistical help from Karachi.

Should Chabahar construction actually accelerate, the port, roads and rail linked to it can be used by everybody, Americans included. Americans finding alternative routes to and from Afghanistan is no trifling matter. It will spell loss of power in Islamabad. That is one of the reasons Chabahar will be a game changer.

Tehran is aware of all the contradictions with Islamabad. That is why both Supreme leader Ayatullah Ali Khameini and President Hassan Rouhani never gave up the chant: It is "win, win for all"; agreements are "against" nobody.

To underpin this "win, win", Iranian officials point to an already existing rail link between Zahedan and Quetta which can be easily spruced up and extended should Pakistan so desire.

(Saeed Naqvi is a commentator on political and diplomatic affairs. The views expressed are personal. He can be reached on saeednaqvi@hotmail.com)
Islamabad, June 10 : Pakistan on Friday told visiting US officials that the recent US drone strike in its southwestern Balochistan province has "vitiated bilateral ties".

Ambassador Richard Olson, US Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, and Peter Lavoy, Senior Advisor and Director for South Asian Affairs at the US National Security Council, arrived in Islamabad on Friday weeks after a US drone attack killed the Afghan Taliban chief at a time when efforts were underway to bring the Taliban to the negotiations table.

The US delegation held talks with Prime Minister's Advisor on Foreign Affairs Sartaj Aziz and Foreign Secretary Aizaz Ahmed Chaudhry at the foreign ministry and held candid discussions on bilateral relations, regional security situation and the Afghan peace process in the wake of May 21 drone strike near Quetta in Balochistan, a foreign ministry statement said.

"The Advisor conveyed a strong message to the US that the 21 May drone strike was not only a violation of Pakistan's sovereignty and breach of the principles of the United Nation's Charter, but has also vitiated bilateral ties," the statement reads.

"It was emphasized that any future drone strike in Pakistan will be detrimental to our common desire to strengthen relations," the statement added.

Aziz, according to the statement, expressed his concern that the drone strike had seriously undermined the ongoing efforts for Afghan peace and reconciliation process at a time when Pakistan, along with other Quadrilateral Coordination Group (QCG) countries, was engaged in serious efforts to revive peace talks between the Afghan government and the Taliban.

"The foreign secretary recalled that in QCG's fifth meeting on May 18 in Islamabad, it was decided that peace negotiations remained the only option for a political settlement. He emphasized that this would require collective efforts on the part of all QCG members to promote lasting peace in Afghanistan," the foreign ministry statement noted.

In response to US queries on safe havens for Taliban, it was emphasized that Pakistan is already pursuing its objective of eliminating all militants and terrorists from its soil in accordance with an anti-terror policy known as the National Action Plan.

The Pakistani side asked the US officials to push the Afghan government to take action against the Pakistani militants on the Afghan side of the border.

Peter Lavoy said that US President Obama was committed to improving relations with Pakistan as emphasized during Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's visit to Washington in October 2015, the statement said.

He also conveyed President Obama's good wishes for speedy recovery of Nawaz Sharif, who is in London after his recent open heart surgery.
Mumbai, June 10 : Actress Sandeepa Dhar says she has a lot of respect for veteran actor Anupam Kher because he has been talking about the issue of Kashmiri Pandits.

"Being a Kashmiri myself, I have a lot of respect for Anupam sir because he's talking about the issue of Kashmiri Pandits," Sandeepa told IANS.

"We've been having this issue for 25 to 30 years now. Who has come to the rescue of Kashmiri Pandits? The government has not helped us. Whatever Kashmiri Pandits have achieved today and the way they have rebuilt their lives is because of their own hard work and education."

"We are one of the most educated people in the country. We lived in tents and our parents struggled to ensure that their kids got a good education," she added.

Sandeepa also shared the struggles her family had to face over the years.

"To be honest, as a Kashmiri myself, my family and I moved out because of the militancy problem in the 1990s. We are Kashmiri migrants. I know how difficult it has been for my family to pack their suitcases overnight and leave a state where they have spent their entire lives."

"I have seen my parents starting from a scratch. All our property and everything was left behind there."

The actress will be seen in "7 Hours To Go", directed by Saurabh Verma. Also starring Varun Badola and Natasa Stankovic, the film will release on June 24.
Seoul, June 10 : Mango, the national fruit of India, will soon be heading to South Korea as the regulatory approvals for its import into the country are through.

"After completing the Korean regulatory procedure, import requirements for fresh mango fruits from India have been published and have taken effect from June 7," the Indian embassy here said in a statement on Friday.

India exported about 43,000 tonnes of mangoes to various countries, including the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, Nepal, the US and European Union during 2014-15.

Exporters, wishing to export mangoes to South Korea, will need to get the mango orchards and packing houses registered with the Agricultural and Processed Food Products Export Development Authority (APEDA), the embassy statement said.

The export consignments to South Korea will be inspected by the Korean Animal and Plant Quarantine Agency prior to being given clearance, it said.
New Delhi, June 10 : A day after the BJP leaders described Prime Minister Narendra Modi's five-nation tour, including to the United States, as "historic", the opposition Congress on Friday said not a single new idea came out of his US visit.

Congress leader Manish Tewari said the foundation for the India-US relations was laid by the previous Congress-led United Progressive Alliance government when it signed the India-US nuclear deal.

"As far as the India-US relations are concerned, there is no single new idea that came out of this trip," the Congress leader said.

Tewari said the fact that Modi spent only a few hours in Mexico shows a lack of commitment towards Latin American nations.
New Delhi, June 10 : Targeting Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Friday alleged that there was a plan by the Centre to file an FIR against his deputy Manish Sisodia.

"Now that Modi is back in India, I have come to know there is a plan to register an FIR against Sisodia and to summon our Transport Minister Gopal Rai," Kejriwal told the Delhi assembly.

And raising his voice, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader said he and his colleagues were not going to be cowed down by the Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) and threats of arrest.

"We are made of steel... We are not afraid of jail," he thundered, triggering prolonged thumping of desks by AAP legislators.

Kejriwal spoke at the end of a two-day special session of the assembly convened to discuss issues related to the three municipal corporations in Delhi that are controlled by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

Taking a swipe at Modi, the chief minister wondered with what face he visited Western cities that are spotlessly clean when Delhi had become "a huge garbage dump".

Blaming the mess on the BJP-controlled municipal corporations, he said there was foul smell in many parts of Delhi.

"The MCDs are not under our control. Had they been, Delhi would have been a different place," he said.

Kejriwal alleged mounting corruption in the civic bodies, saying this was why even Finance Minister Arun Jaitley was hesitant to give a bailout of Rs 1,000 crore to pay the salaries of municipal employees.

"The municipal corporation has become a black hole... Whatever money that is given is gobbled up."

The AAP leader also accused the BJP of being "anti-Dalit and anti-minorities" and said this was the reason why BJP corporators on Thursday beat up an AAP Dalit corporator at Delhi's Ramlila Maidan.

"It had nothing to do with an AAP cap he was wearing. He was beaten up because these BJP corporators cannot tolerate a Dalit corporator in their midst."

In an earlier intervention, Kejriwal targeted Modi for taking control of the ACB.

"We were doing a good job of battling corruption" after taking power in February 2015, he said. That is when Modi sent paramilitary forces to take control of the ACB, he added.

"The ACB is not in our hands," he pointed out, giving reasons why a probe had not been ordered into the so-called water tanker scam.

"Everyone knows that the Congress and BJP are hand in gloves (over corruption issues)," he said. "They are like 'pati and patni' (husband and wife)."

Kejriwal spoke after BJP legislator Vijender Gupta dramatically stood on his bench to demand action by the Kejriwal government on the water tanker scam that had taken place during the earlier Congress regime.
New Delhi, June 10 : Emphasising on deepening and strengthening cultural ties between India and UK, The British Council India launched 'UK-India Year of Culture 2017' programme here on Friday.

The 'UK-India Year of Culture' was announced during the visit of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to London in November 2015. The campaign aims to highlight the vibrant cultural history of the two countries and celebrate the best 'cultural exports' together.

The year 2017 marks the culmination of four years of Re-Imagine - a programme designed to build new creative connections in new ways between the people and institutions of Briatin and India.

"With the British Council, we believe that culture has a powerful role to play in helping people understand one another. India's cultural relationship with Britain is incredibly important.

"We want to develop stronger cultural relations between Britain and India. We want to celebrate, reconnect, revive and inspire the next generation of people culturally. We want to inspire people in both places with their cultural story and," British Council India Director Alan Gemmell told IANS.

As part of the celebrations, a British Council Art Collection featuring works of some of the greatest British artists was launched. The works cover various influences in British art, which starts with the iconic designs of the 1920s London Underground posters, then moving to Eduardo Paolozzi, who brought audiences to the beginning of Pop art of 1960s.

The works of Tom Philips introduce the audience to the process-based art of the 1970s and Adrian Wiszniewski's 'New Glasgow Boys' of the 1980s, then shifting to the works of David Hepher and Howard Hodgkin of the 1990s, who very differently explored ideas of space, combining figurative and abstract elements, a theme later visited by Hurvin Anderson.

There is also a photography exhibition that displays some rare colour works by Fay Godwin.

Talking about promoting cultural exchange between India and Britain, Gemmell commented that the most exciting way is to create new things together. "We want to have ideas from India and Britain and bring those ideas together to make brilliant new things," he added.

There was also the launch of 'Mix the Play' - a special edition of the popular 'Mix the City' platform that promotes Shakespeare. The digital platform will offer audiences the chance to direct one of Shakespeare's most loved play - A Midsummer Night's Dream. The objective of Mix the Play is to engage audiences with Shakespeare and educate them about theatre direction in a fun way.

Speaking of improving ties between the both countries, Gemmell said that British Council has planned to do many new things culturally.

"We will tell a new story from what Britain and India want to do together to the world and will help to a new story what Britain and India are together. We are expecting more from the tech and digital platform contribute more to improve and connect the cultural ties," he stated Gemmell.
Jammu, June 10 : Two persons were killed on Friday when some cylinders exploded in an industrial area in Jammu and Kashmir, authorities said.

Amar Singh and Sant Ram, both employees of the Border Roads Organisation, died when two acetylene cylinders in a truck exploded, a police officer told IANS here.

The truck had gone to fetch oxygen cylinders from a factory in Bari Brahman industrial area when the acetylene cylinders burst, sparking more explosions.
Vietnam looks to divest from all agricultural SOEs by 2017

As Vietnam integrates more into the global market, Vietnamese farmers will need to expand their businesses to compete with foreign rivals, and that, of course, requires land.

Vietnams scattered farm land hits the overall efficiency of the countrys agricultural production, which in turn reduces the competitiveness of local agricultural firms.

Thai Binh Seed JSC., one of the countrys biggest seed companies, finally managed to expand its business last year by opening a new seed processing factory on an area of 1.2 hectares in the northern province of Thai Binh.

It took the seed supplier three years to talk 27 farm households into selling their land to the company, said CEO Tran Manh Bao.

He added that some land owners had left their land unused for many years.

I even had to fly across the country to the southern province of Vung Tau to strike a deal with the owner, even though the plot was tiny, said Bao.

Only one percent of foreign direct investment is flowing into Vietnam's agricultural sector, according to the Institute of Policy and Strategy for Agriculture and Rural Development (IPSARD). Photo by VnExpress Photo Contest/Pham Phuoc

One of the main reasons for agricultural inefficiency lies in the unfavorable farmland structure.

The fact that farmland is divided into multiple plots and a considerable proportion of state-owned plots are left unused has dampened investors appetite for the agricultural sector.

Only about one percent of foreign direct investment is currently flowing into the agricultural sector, said the Institute of Policy and Strategy for Agriculture and Rural Development.

However, the government is trying to change the situation by making state-owned agricultural land available to the public through privatization.

There will be about one million hectares of farmland available after the government divests from state-owned farms, said Deputy Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development Ha Cong Tuan.

He added that the Agriculture Ministry is trying to sell its stakes in many enterprises.

The state has already fully divested from corporations such as Vietnam Tea Corp, the country's top tea exporter.

We are trying to divest from all companies the ministry holds stakes in by 2017, deputy minister Tuan continued.

Vietnam is feeling the need to give the agricultural sector a push especially after the worst drought in nearly a century has cost the country more than $670 million in lost rice and fruit output, according to the Ministry of Planning and Investment.

Official statistics show some 250,000 hectares of rice have been lost to the drought.

Rice wasn't the only crop affected by the dry spell. 30,000 hectares of fruit were also lost and aquaculture losses covered 6,800 hectares.

Related news:

> Vietnam to retain state control of enterprises in national security and defense

> Go organic: how to increase the value of Vietnam's rice exports

> Failure to establish global brand holds back Vietnam's rice exports

> Vietnam's 2016 drought-hit rice output to fall 1.5 percent: government official

> How historic drought hurts Mekong Delta's rice crops
Mumbai, June 10 : The Bombay High Court on Friday pulled up the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) for insisting on 'censoring' films instead of 'certifying' them and demanded to know why it was not banning 'Udta Punjab' film if it was trying to glorify drugs.

Simultaneously, it asked the makers of the film to tone down the expletives and certain vulgar scenes to which the CBFC has objected as these alone cannot guarantee the film's success.

A division bench comprising Justice S.C. Dharmadhikari and Justice Shalini Phansalkar-Joshi, which concluded the two-day hearing following a petition filed by the "Udta Punjab" producers, will pronounce its final verdict on Monday.

Coming down heavily on the CBFC, the court asked it not to be overly critical. This could kill creativity in the film industry.

Questioning the CBFC's Revising Committee orders of June 6 to delete references to Punjab and other cities in "Udta Punjab", the judges felt that by dropping references to Punjab from every dialogue or scene, "the crux fo the film would be lost.

"If the filmmaker wanted to be critical of a place or person, then these would have to be shown," the judges point out.

"If the film is glorifying the use of drugs, then ban it entirely," the judges told the CBFC, adding that people must be given the choice to view what they want to.

On the overdose of expletives or cuss words, the judges said these do not contribute to the success of a film as today's generation is very direct, open and a lot mature.

"Films do not run on such content in this age, there must be a strong storyline and content. The modern generation won't be impressed by all this. Many movies are failing in multiplexes because the audiences are bored with this overdose," the court observed.

On the contrary, the court said that by passing such an order, the CBFC was giving the film undue weightage and publicity.

CBFC lawyer Advait Sethna has justified the decision to order cuts, remove all expletives and cuss words, axe references to Punjab and other cities, and delete scenes showing the hero urinating in public, terming them "vulgar and deplorable".

The court suggested that while a scratching scene be deleted fully, the film-makers could display 'disclaimers' for the expletives or tone it down though that could not be expected if a rustic character is speaking out his mind.

Phantom Films counsel Ravi Kadam readily agreed to both the suggestions made by Justice Dharmadhikari and Justice Phansalkar-Joshi, adding that by the use of the expletives, the film-makers were merely trying to depict the real situation.

Co-produced by Phanton Films and Anurag Kashyap and directed by Abhishek Chaubey, "Udta Punjab" stars Shahid Kapoor, Alia Bhatt, Kareena Kapoor Khan and Diljit Dosanjh.

Kashyap accused CBFC chairman Pahlaj Nihalani of bullying and deliberately not certifying the film slated for release on June 17.

While the CBFC at one point demanded 89 cuts in the film, its Revising Committee brought down the number to 13.
New Delhi, June 10 : Following a dip in ties with Nepal, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj during a meeting with visiting Nepalese Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Kamal Thapa here on Friday, reaffirmed India's support for development and stability in the Himalayan nation.

"External Affairs Minister Sushma welcomed Nepalese Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Kamal Thapa on his fifth visit to India," External Affairs Ministry Spokesperson Vikas Swarup said.

"Bilateral mechanisms were reviwed, including political exchanges, connectivity and trade," he said.

"The external affairs minister reaffirmed India's interest in development and stability in Nepal."

Thapa, who arrived here on Friday, will preside over the convocation ceremony of the South Asian University on Saturday.

Early last month, the pro-establishment faction in Nepal accused India of causing an upheaval in the Himalayan country by allegedly propping up the Nepali Congress and United Communist Party of Nepal-Maoist (UCPN-M) to bring down Prime Minister K.P. Sharma Oli's government.

In response to this alleged move, the Nepal government cancelled the visit of President Bidhya Devi Bhandari to India scheduled for the middle of May and recalled its ambassador from New Delhi.
Patna, June 10 : Even as the Special Investigation Team (SIT) conducted raids, Amit Kumar, the alleged mastermind of the Class 12 Board merit list scam in Bihar, remained untraced on Friday.

Kumar is the director-cum-principal of the VR College which is being investigated in the case.

Meanwhile, it has come to light that Kumar alias Bachcha Roy was present when the SIT raided the VR College in Vaishali. However, there are two versions of how he managed to evade arrest.

According to certain sources, Kumar used his connections to evade arrest. But according to another version, Kumar got to know about the SIT raid and managed to leave the college precincts.

IG (Tirhut) Sunil Kumar admitted that Kumar along with his father Rajdeo Roy was present at the time of the SIT raid and he provided some required documents.

"Bachcha Roy was present when the SIT went to his college. But the SIT failed to arrest him even though his name figures in the FIR that has been registered in the case," a top police official told IANS on condition of anonymity.

According to another police official, the accused was alerted by some powerful people in the state government that he could be arrested by the SIT. Since then he has been absconding.

The opposition Bharatiya Janata Party has raised the issue and blamed the SIT for letting the accused evade arrest.

Meanwhile, the SIT is yet to track Lalkeshwar Prasad Singh, the former Chairman of the Bihar School Examination Board. He has been absconding ever since he resigned from the post.

SIT teams have been conducting raids in Vaishali, Muzaffarpur and other places to arrest the accused.
New Delhi, June 10 : The telecom service providers on Friday presented a 100-day action plan to the government on call drops and said collectively they will set up 70,000 base transceiver stations (BTS) within that time-frame.

"The telecom operators have presented a four-point action plan to the Department of Telecom Secretary J.S. Deepak and other government officials. First and foremost they said they will set up 70,000 BTS across the country in 100 days to address call drop problems," Rajan S. Mathews, Director General, Cellular Operators' Association of India (COAI) said after the meeting.

"Secondly, the operators said optimisation of network will be done in all 22 telecom circles in the country and thirdly they sought government's help in addressing interference issues by people like setting up of illegal mobile repeaters to boost signals," Mathews added.

Gopal Vittal, Bharti Airtel's CEO for India and South Asia; Sunil Sood, Vodafone India's CEO; Himanshu Kapania, Idea Cellular's Managing Director; Sanjay Mashruwala, Reliance Jio's Managing Director among others attended the meeting as COAI members.

"They have proposed a 100-day action plan," DoT Secretary J.S. Deepak said, adding, "I don't think, in my personal view, someone should go to jail every time a call drops."

Communications Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad recently said he has an open mind on empowering the telecom watchdog to impose penalties on operators for call drops and poor service quality, but will wait for a formal request.

"If the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) approaches us in a structured manner about the legal architecture we will consider it with an open mind," Prasad told IANS in a recent interview.

Earlier, the Supreme Court had struck down the penalty on call drops proposed by the telecom watchdog, calling the move, as taken, to be ultra vires, arbitrary, unreasonable and non-transparent. It also found the action void of data or reason.

In a recent test by the TRAI, it said most telecom service providers failed to meet the call drop rate threshold of less than two per cent in the national capital region (NCR).

The action plan by the operators comes after the Delhi High Court and Allahabad High Court decided that health cannot be cited as a reason anymore for denial of permission to set up telecom towers.

Mathews said the government will be monitoring the progress.
New Delhi, June 10 : An 11-member delegation of BJP councillors from three civic bodies on Friday met Minister of State (MoS) for Home Affairs Kiren Rijiju and submitted a letter asking him to direct the Delhi government to release the funds due to them.

Leader of house in North Delhi Municipal Corporation Vijay Prakash Pandey said the Delhi government owed Rs 9,000 crore to all three corporations.

"We have submitted a resolution to Kiren Rijiju and asked him to direct Delhi government to release the funds of civic bodies which amounts to Rs 9,000 crore. All the three municipal corporations are ailing due to lack of funds," Pandey told IANS.

The delegation included all three mayors, standing committee chairmen and leaders of house of civic bodies.

Councillors Rekha Gupta and Ashish Sood, who are also general secretaries in Delhi Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), were also part of the delegation.

The councillors requested Rijiju to ask the Arvind Kejriwal-led Delhi government to let them (civic bodies) function according to the provisions in the constitutions.

"We have requested him to also direct Delhi government to abide by the constitutional provisions which have been made to run local bodies. We are hopeful that Rijiju ji will convey our concerns to Delhi government," he said outside Parliament Street police station.

Earlier, scores of BJP councillors started a march from the inner circle of Connaught Place to the minister's home, to protest against the "constitutional crisis" in civic bodies of Delhi.

They were stopped by police authorities at Parliament Street station following which the 11-member delegation visited Rijiju's home.

The BJP-led civic bodies and Delhi government led by Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) have been at loggerheads ever since the latter has come to power.

While AAP government has alleged that there was widespread corruption in municipal corporations and they have failed to perform the basic duties; the civic bodies claim that Delhi government has not released their funds.
Kabul/Kolkata/New Delhi, June 10 : An Indian woman, working with an international aid agency in Afghanistan, has been abducted from the volatile Kabul, her family and officials said on Friday.

Armed suspected Islamists seized Judith D'Souza, 40, who works for the Aga Khan Foundation as a senior technical advisor on gender issues in the Afghan capital, around Thursday midnight. It was not known who is responsible for the kidnapping or whether a ransom was sought for her release.

Her family told reporters in her home city of Kolkata that they learnt about the abduction from the Indian embassy in Kabul early on Friday morning.

The family urged the Afghan and Indian governments to act fast so as to rescue Judith D'Souza, who was set to return home next week.

"It happened in a different country. The government of that country should take steps. She liked the place as she said there was a lot of work to be done," her sister Agnes said.

"The government of India must do something and get my sister back. I want her back," she added.

External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj responded and said: "We will spare no efforts to rescue her."

"She is your sister and India's daughter. We are doing everything to rescue her," the minister tweeted.

Officials in New Delhi said that the Indian embassy in Kabul was in touch with the Afghan authorities who were making all efforts to secure her release.

The Aga Khan Foundation, which is a part of the Aga Khan Development Network, told IANS that an unnamed "staff member" was abducted.

But the aid agency, which works in health, education and rural development sectors and has pumped nearly $750 million into Afghanistan's reconstruction, didn't provide more details.

"An investigation by the authorities has been launched, in conjunction with security officials and various partners. Every effort is being made to secure the safe release of the staff member," Aga Khan Foundation spokesperson Sam Pickens said in an email response to IANS.

At Judith's home in central Kolkata, her parents were distraught.

Asked about Taliban involvement in the crime, her sister Agnes said: "I don't know."

She said Judith never spoke about any danger to her. "She has been abroad before, but this is the first time this has happened."

Her father Denzile described Judith as "very brave".

"We were concerned about her safety in Afghanistan but she said she was quite safe. She told us there was plenty of security," he said.

Judith was home two-and-a-half-months ago.

The abduction brought back chilling memories of many Indians abducted, a few of them murdered later, in Afghanistan where kidnappings is a huge problem for international aid agencies.

At least two abducted Indians have been killed in the Taliban captivity while four others were released in the last 13 years in Afghanistan. These include two construction workers who were kidnapped and released in December 2003.

Father Alexis Prem Kumar, an Indian Roman Catholic priest, was kidnapped in Heart in June 2014. He was later released in February last year.

An Indian best-selling author, Sushmita Banerjee who married an Afghan businessman, was shot dead by suspected Taliban gunmen in Sharan city in Afghanistan in 2013. In 1998, she wrote the bestselling memoir "Kabuliwalar Bangali Bou" (A Kabuliwala`s Bengali Wife), offering a vivid description of the suffering of women under the Taliban.
New Delhi, June 10 : A Delhi court on Friday acquitted Maoist ideologue Kobad Ghandy of terror charges, but convicted him of cheating and forgery, and sentenced him to jail for the period which he has already spent in prison, from September 2009.

However, Ghandy will remain in jail as 14 other cases are pending against him in various courts of the country.

Additional Sessions Judge Reetesh Singh acquitted Ghandy, 68, of charges under Section 20 and 38 (member of banned outfit and furthering its activities) of Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA), but convicted him of cheating, forgery and impersonation under provisions of the Indian Penal Code (IPC).

According to police, Ghandy was involved in setting up a new network of the banned Communist Party of India-Maoist (CPI-Maoist) in Delhi. He was arrested here in September 20, 2009, while undergoing treatment for cancer.

Ghandy was living in Delhi to propagate the activities of the CPI-Maoist and he was helped by co-accused Rajinder Kumar, police said.

It also alleged that Ghandy and Kumar carried out forgery on the basis of which fake voter ID card was issued to Ghandy.

The court observed that the prosecution had relied on the recoveries made from the house where Ghandy and Rajinder Kumar were living, printouts of emails accessed at his instance, information and articles about him downloaded from the internet, newspaper reports as well as contents of the First Information Reports to prove that he was associated with the banned terror outfit.

But the court did not find the material reliable to prosecute Ghandy, and said: "None of the evidences relied upon by the prosecution has been found to be admissible in evidence by the court. The testimonies of the prosecution witnesses suffer from infirmities."

"In the facts and circumstances of this case, there are reasonable doubts on the version of the prosecution on charges under Section 20 and 38 of the UAPA," the court said.

"It is true that prosecution has been able to prove that Kobad Ghandy was residing in Delhi in an assumed name and that he had in his possession forged documents."

Observing that these circumstances do give rise to grave suspicions that Ghandy wanted to avoid himself from being discovered, the court said that "suspicion, however grave it might be, cannot be equated with proof of the said fact".

"The material relied upon by the prosecution to prove the membership and association of Kobad Ghandy with the said banned organisations is not reliable and admissible in evidence," the court said.

It said the "gap between using fake identities and membership of the said banned organisations cannot be filled on the basis of suspicion".

Ghandy's defence counsel Bhavook Chauhan told court that his client has faced trial in this case for almost seven years and sought leniency.

The court observed that Ghandy has remained in jail for almost six years and six months and imposed on him a term of imprisonment already undergone by him and fine of Rs 10,000.

The court also convicted his associate, co-accused Rajinder Kumar, of charges dealing with cheating but acquitted him of possessing forged document.

Kumar, arrested on March 19, 2010, was also sentenced with the jail term already undergone by him and fine of Rs 10,000.

Kumar will also remain in jail as he is facing trial in a separate case in a Kanpur court.

Ghandy and Kumar are convicted under Sections 120 B (criminal conspiracy) 468 (Forgery for purpose of cheating) as well as for cheating. Ghandy was convicted under sections for possessing forged document.

The court found that Kumar had forged the signature of one Raman Sharma on electricity bills which were used for inclusion of the fake names of Dilip Patel and Sameer Atmaj Joshi in the electoral roll and issuance of Electoral Photo Identity Card (EPIC) cards in the name of Patel and Joshi with the photographs of Ghandy and Kumar respectively. The association of Ghandy and Kumar was also proved by eye-witnesses, the court said.

Ghandy was also proved to be residing in Delhi and receiving treatment under the assumed name of Dilip Patel.

The court observed that Kumar carried out forgery on the basis of which fake EPIC was issued to Ghandy.

An EPIC is a document which recognises the right of a citizen to vote in an election, the court noted and said that the "document is also recognized for several ancillary purposes".

The prosecution has proved that Ghandy cheated government authorities into issuing EPIC and PAN card in the fake name of Dilip Patel, the court said.
Kolkata, June 10 : Efforts by some people violently forcing Indian aid workers to leave Afghanistan won't succeed because people in the war-torn country have always wanted amicable ties with India, said a member of the Afghan community in Kolkata.

"A few people want to destroy the (India-Afghan) ties. If you look at the newspapers, they talk about India-Afghanistan friendship," Amir Khan, president, Kolkata chapter of Khudai-Khidmatgar (Servants of God), told IANS.

Khan was speaking in the backdrop of the abduction of Indian aid worker Judith D'Souza by suspected Islamists in Kabul. D'Souza is from Kolkata and has been working with global aid agency, Aga Khan Foundation, in the war-ravaged Afghanistan.

Khan said: "These attacks on Indians won't work as people in both countries want good relations."

"I hope the woman returns home safe. Kabul is relatively safe but when foreigners move out of the capital then there is a reason to worry over security as the government doesn't have much control," the Afghani said.

Khan is one of the roughly 5,000 Afghans living in city pockets like Kashipur.

Once known for selling asafoetida, dry fruits and soorma, they are now into transport, money lending and tailoring ventures.

Elaborating on the conditions in Afghanistan, Khan a second generation Afghani living in Kolkata, said 40 years of war decimated livelihoods and opportunities in his native country.

"A lot of work needs to be done, especially for women. People still find it difficult to eke out a living. If Indians are going there to work and improve conditions, then it is a necessary step," Khan said.
New Delhi, June 10 : Bilateral relations between India and Nepal are now back on track after recent hiccups and the Himalayan nation now looks to its southern neighbour to play a major role in consolidation of the political change that it has adopted, Nepal Deputy Prime Minister Kamal Thapa said here on Friday.

"India has been a valued partner in Nepal's democratic transition," said Thapa while delivering a talk on "Current developments in Nepal and India-Nepal relations" at the Observer Research Foundation here.

Thapa said India-Nepal relations are "unique and special" and one should not compare Nepal's foreign policy vis-a-vis India and China -- its respective southern and northern neighbours.

"It cannot be same. Each nation has its own character and so the foreign policy will change accordingly," he said.

Thapa, who is also the foreign minister of Nepal, said Nepal was keen to derive maximum benefit from the two large global economies surrounding it -- that of China and India. India has already emerged as one of the fastest developing economies in the world, he pointed out.

"The misunderstandings of the recent past have been resolved and we are back on track... as many as 13 bilateral meetings lined up during June-July are proof that relations are good," Thapa earlier told media persons here at an interaction co-organised by the South Asian Women in Media and the South Asian Free Media Association.

In the run-up to the promulgation of Nepal's federal constitution in September last year -- and for a considerable period thereafter -- relations between Kathmandu and New Delhi soured after a wide section of population in Nepal's southern plains, the Terai or the Madhes, launched an agitation claiming that the new charter was discriminatory.

Thapa, here on a three-day visit -- his fifth in the last eight months -- sought to make clear that the new constitution was dynamic and amenable to change if it was so desired.

"We effected the first amendment in the new constitution within four months of its promulgation... if need be, it can be amended further," said Thapa, who heads a government panel set up to hold dialogue with the aggrieved Madhesi political parties which held nearly six-month-long protests in support of their demands.

"In a democracy -- despite it being the best form of governance, you can't have everyone happy," Thapa observed.

Thapa dismissed reports in the media that Nepal Prime Minister K.P. Sharma Oli told a meeting of his Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist-Leninist) that the anti-constitution agitation in the Terai region was India-inspired.

"Prime Minister Oli was misreported in the media... he did not say anything like that," Thapa asserted.
Palermo (Italy), June 10 : A boat belonging to medical charity Doctors without Borders docked in the Sicilian port city on Friday with 592 people on board including 119 women and nine children.

Four of the female migrants who reached Palermo were pregnant and some of the children had travelled without an adult. Seven of the migrants were taken to hospitals in the city with minor ailments, doctors said.

The passengers were among 2,000 migrants rescued on Thursday in the Mediterranean from 15 boats. Many thousands more have been rescued in recent weeks and hundreds are believed to have perished in a spate of shipwrecks.

Italy's Prime Minister Matteo Renzi denied on Thursday that Italy was being "invaded" by the ongoing influx of migrants seeking to cross the Mediterranean from North Africa.

"The numbers speak for themselves. There is no invasion of our country. Last year 51,000 people had landed in Italy by June 8 compared with 48,000 this year," Renzi wrote on his Facebook page.

But Renzi admitted that "demographic pressures" in Africa were a problem that could only be resolved in the medium-to-long term.

European Union ministers were on Friday due to look at ways of stemming the flow of migrants who attempt dangerous journeys to Europe from lawless Libya and elsewhere in north Africa.
Body of British climber to be handed over to family in Sapa

The location (cirled red) where the body of missing British tourist Aiden Webb was found yesterday, June 9. Photo by VnExpress/SG.

Police officers have reached the body of British backpacker Aiden Webb on Mount Fansipan, a day after he was found dead by rangers.

Speaking to VnExpress, Deputy Chief of Sa Pa District Police Le Anh Dzung said the autopsy will be completed this morning at the site.

They will then use specialized equipment to retrieve the body from a ravine and transport him to the public service cable car, which operates separately from the commercial one. The journey will take an estimated three hours.

According to Dzung, the body of Aiden Webb will be handed over to his family and representatives of the British Embassy in Sapa, the nearest town to the mountain.

Aiden Webb, 22, was reported missing on June 4 when he was attempting to climb Fansipan, Indochinas highest mountain, in the northwestern province of Lao Cai.

His aunt, Lisa Shaw Webb, raised the alarm via a widely-shared Facebook post, saying he was last seen on Friday on Mount Fansipan in Hoang Lien National Park. His father and uncle had flown into the country to join the search for the 22-year-old.

Local police were able to access the site this morning. Photo by VnExpress/SG

Webb, who was described as an experienced climber, was travelling in Vietnam with his girlfriend Bluebell Baughan at the time.

On June 6, Baughan revealed in an interview with the press that her boyfriend had been able to alert her via text message that he had slipped and fallen by a waterfall, hurting his knee and arm. Webb also sent her a map of his whereabouts before his phone ran out of battery.

It sparked a wide-scale search operation in Hoang Lien National Park, with the participation of over 100 rangers, police, locals and trained dogs.

A group of Vietnamese also helped by using camera drones to scour the area from a height of 2,800m.

However, authorities said the search became more difficult due to the dense forests and steep terrain.

The operation ended when park rangers discovered Webb's body at the bottom of a deep ravine six days after he was last contacted.

Fansipan, known as "the roof of Indochina", is a popular destination for Vietnamese and overseas trekkers.

This is not the first time an incident involving tourists climbing Fansipan has happened.

In 2001, a 17-year-old British girl fell 150m to her death on the mountain during a school trip to Vietnam.

The previous tragedy occurred in 2013 when a Vietnamese university student named Pham Ngoc Anh, 20, disappeared on his way down from the peak. His body has never been found.

Related news:

> Drones, rescue dogs scour Mount Fansipan in search for missing Brit Aiden Webb

> Body of missing Brit Aiden Webb found on Mount Fansipan

> Scottish judo medalist injured in Vietnam shows more signs of recovery
Islamabad, June 10 : Intensifying efforts to seek backing for its membership to the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), Pakistan's top foreign advisor on Friday spoke to the Mexican and Italian foreign ministers -- a day after both countries indicated support for India's bid.

Sartaj Aziz, advisor to the Prime Minister on foreign affairs, had a word with Mexican Foreign Minister Claudia Ruiz Massieu and Italian Foreign Minister Paolo Gentiloni.

Aziz, according to a statement here, highlighted Pakistan's credentials for the NSG membership during his talks with both the ministers. Massieu expressed support for a "non-discriminatory approach on NSG expansion to non-NPT states", the statement said.

Aziz and Gentiloni had a very "cordial exchange", the ministry said in a tweet.

Pakistan has intensified its efforts to seek backing for its bid to the 48-nation bloc, which is holding an extraordinary plenary in Geneva from June 9-10 to take up applications for membership, including from India.

On Thursday, Mexico announced support for India's membership to the NSG during talks between Mexican President Pena Nieto and visiting Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Mexico City.

Pakistan has been lobbying hard to scuttle India's NSG bid, saying that country-specific exemptions would be harmful to South Asia.
New Delhi, June 10 : Describing the recent attacks on Africans in the national capital as "racial", African students here on Friday urged Indians to come forward and join hands with them to put an end to the discriminatory practices.

"We came to India as we found it more closer to our culture," Ibrahim Djid, a 25-year old Libyan national said at the Africa-India Solidarity Forum here.

"But now everyday I am asked by my parents and friends that 'Is India a racist country? Are you people facing racism'? And I say yes," Ibrahim Djid added.

"People here classify us by our skin colour, and the recent incidents of attacks have had a very deep impact on us. And now we don't count days, but we count hours of our stay here," he said, adding: "This sort of behaviour towards us is very unfair. And thus we need to combine all of us here and join hands to put an end to such practice."

Ibrahim has been staying in India since 2011 and studies Business Administration at the Noida International University in the national capital region.

The intercultural meeting was organised at the Gandhi Peace Foundation in the wake of the killing of a Congolese national and a string of other attacks on Africans staying in New Delhi, and a case of assault in Hyderabad -- all of which have caused widespread anger among the community.

Renowned journalist Seema Mustafa, addressing the event, said: "We create a climate of impunity because we don't act swiftly. And thus they again feel free to attack."

"We are genetically a racist society and this discrimination is inside us," she added.

Even former ambassador to Italy K.P. Fabian felt that though India speaks about globalisation but the mindset of the country isn't globalised yet.

He said that this mindset needs to be changed; and that people need to speak to the Africans to understand their problems. "A practice that Mahatma Gandhi would have done by speaking to them," he said.

"And to maintain the cultural relationship of India and Africa, we need to strengthen the communication bridge," the former ambassador added.

Muniza Khan, a social activist from Varanasi, said that the attacks on Dalits, minorities and Africans should not be taken lightly, and that a strong civil society is required to fight the discrimination.

"Racism is inherited in India by birth in the family which is very shameful," Muniza Khan said.

"Children here are taught about skin colors since childhood and there is a mentality that fair skin is always better while dark is bad," she added.

Shahid Siddiqui, president of Association of African Students in India and Intercultural Resources, told IANS, "The dialogue between members of African countries living in Delhi and Indian citizens has been organised to bridge the gap between the two communities."

"This is a platform by the Indian people for the African nationals on how to solve this kind of problem,," he said, adding, "Soon statewise meeting would be held on regular interval to decide the future course to minimise the cultural gap."

"This forum will work to change the mindset, which can mobilise more like minded people all over the country," he added.

Appreciating the effort of the civil society, Ola Jason, a Nigerian national, told IANS, "This meeting resembles that we are calling for a change. And it is always appreciated when it is for from bad to good."
Hyderabad, June 10 : Aiming to make Telangana a BJP stronghold, party president Amit Shah on Friday launched an attack on the TRS government in the state, saying parties run by families can't do any good to the state or the country.

Without naming Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS), Shah said: "Be it any state, parties which have no internal democracy can't do good to the country and to Telangana."

Amit Shah was addressing a public meeting at Suryapet town in Nalgonda district.

The 'Vikas Parv' meeting was organised as part of the BJP's outreach programme on the occasion of NDA government completing two years.

Claiming that the central government has given Rs 90.000 crore to Telangana for its development, he said the funds were not reaching the grass roots.

He said Modi government gave lot of funds and schemes for Telangana during last two years.

Shah asked people if the villages in Telangana get 24-hour electricity, have road connectivity, hospitals and other infrastructure and claimed that all these were achieved in states ruled by the BJP.

Claiming that the comprehensive development of Telangana is possible only under Narendra Modi and BJP, Shah appealed to people to strengthen the party and make Telangana a stronghold of BJP.

Shah said Telangana Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao can't counter Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (MIM) chief Asaduddin Owaisi's communal politics and claimed that BJP alone is capable of doing it.

Shah listed out the achievements of Modi government and said even Congress president Sonia Gandhi can't make an allegation of corruption against it.

He alleged that during 10 year rule of Congress-led UPA government, scams involving Rs 12 lakh crore had occurred.

The BJP leader claimed that the Modi government secured the Indian borders.

On Congress leader Rahul Gandhi's statement that incidents of firing were continuing on the border even now, Shah said unlike in the past the Indian troops were giving befitting reply to Pakistan.

"Rahul baba can't see all this because he has Italian goggles," remarked the BJP chief.

On Congress leader Kamalnath's criticism over Prime Minister Narendra Modi's frequent foreign visits, Shah said they were few compared to the foreign tours undertaken by Manmohan Singh when he was prime minister.

Terming Manmohan Singh a 'Moni baba', Shah said nobody would know of his trips abroad. "Now wherever Modi goes, thousands of people turnout to welcome him," he said.
Mumbai, June 10 : Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on Friday increased private sector Yes Bank's foreign holding limit to 74 per cent of the paid-up capital, under the portfolio investment scheme.

RBI, in a release here said foreign institutional investors (FIIs) and registered foreign portfolios investors (RFPIs) can now invest up to 74 per cent, from the existing 60 per cent, of the paid-up capital of Yes Bank under the Portfolio Investment Scheme (PIS).

"Yes Bank has passed resolutions at its Board of Directors' level and a special resolution by the shareholders, agreeing for enhancing the limit for the purchase of its equity shares by FIIs/RFPIs," the release said.

Investors can make the purchases through the primary market and stock exchanges, it added.

A union cabinet panel had last month approved Yes Bank's proposal to increase foreign investment limit in the bank to 74 per cent, entailing FDI inflows of up to $1 billion.

It got the approval to raise the limit without any sub- limits for investment by way of issue of non-equity shares and/or other permissible instruments to eligible non-resident investors.

Yes Bank already has an enabling approval from its board to raise an additional $1 billion of equity capital.
The VND5billion Lexus registered with a blue plate numbered 95A-0699 that believed to belong to the Vice Chairman of provincial Peoples Committee Trinh Xuan Thanh. Photo by VnExpress/A.X.

Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong has ordered an investigation into a newly-elected delegate of the National Assembly after he was spotted driving a Lexus 570 to work.

On June 1, the media reported public outrage in Hau Giang Province at a VND5 billion Lexus registered with a blue plate numbered 95A-0699 allegedly belonging to the vice chairman of Hau Giang Province's Peoples Committee, Trinh Xuan Thanh.

In Vietnam, blue plates are only granted to cars used by government officials, and the Lexus 570 far exceeds the limit of VND920 million set for vehicles allocated to provincial officials.

According to results announced yesterday afternoon by the National Election Council, Trinh Xuan Thanh has also been elected to the National Assembly.

Prior to being assigned to his position in Hau Giang, Trinh Xuan Thanh was the chairman of PetroVietnam Corporation from 2007 to 2013. In 2012, the company reported surprise losses of VND293 billion ($14 million).

Thanh later made clear that he did not own the car but had borrowed it from a friend in Hanoi when he was transferred to Hau Giang.

At the time I arrived, Hau Giang still had so many financial difficulties; the local government was not able to arrange a vehicle for me to commute to work. That's why I decided to borrow a car from a friend, Thanh explained. He also said the car originally bore a white plate with a Hanoi registration plate 29A-79093.

The blue plate was licensed by the local police after having been approved by provincial leaders of Hau Giang to help me do the job, he said. I am willing to return the plate if it upsets the public.

Thanh added he would not ask for another public car as a replacement because Hau Giang is still a poor province.

Trinh Xuan Thanh held senior positions in the Ministry of Industry and Trade and PetroVietnam Corporation prior to his position in Hau Giang

A spokesperson for the provincial Peoples Committee, Tran Thanh Lam, said because Thanhs job requires him to go on frequent business trips to neighboring areas, the local government had asked the police to grant him a temporary blue plate for the car, which will be returned when Thanh leaves office.

However, according to several lawyers, the Ministry of Public Security does not allow private cars to bear government plates.

On June 9, in response to the controversy, Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong ordered an investigation into the matter, and assigned the Party Central Committees Inspection Commission to work with the Home Affairs, Inspection and Emulation and Commendation Commissions and other related parties.

This is not the first time this month the public service vehicles have been in the spotlight in the Mekong Delta. On June 6, local police in Soc Trang also made the headlines for using money from traffic fines to buy four luxury Lexus 570s.

Related news:

> Public outrage after police spend traffic fines on luxury cars
With talk of another referendum in Scotland if the UK votes later this month to leave the European Union new research has found that Scottish independence is not a priority for UK property investment.

Investors believe that they will still invest in commercial real estate in Scotland as long as yield outperforms other regions as the issue of Scottish independence ranks lower in importance than rental yield, capital growth and a stable tax environment.

Just 21% of property investors said independence was an important factor, less than half the 46% who mentioned rental yield, according to the Morton Fraser survey.

Overall one in four property investors is open to investing in Scotland with 11% actively monitoring or currently pursuing opportunities. Proportionately, this is above the nations 8.9% share of the UK commercial real estate market.

It also shows that 85% believe that leaving the EU would have no impact at all on their likelihood to invest in Scotland and 79% of property investors claimed Scotland separating from the UK would not affect their decision to invest.

It is easy to overestimate the potential impact of Scottish independence on the property market. Investors are ready to enter the market if the right opportunity arises, regardless of the political status of the country, said David Stewart, commercial real estate partner at Morton Fraser.

That gives us optimism for the future of the Scottish real estate industry. If the price is right and the market conditions are at least on a par with other regional areas across the UK, investors will follow the returns. The prospect of a neverendum in Scotland may drag investment, but its not the deciding factor for many, he added.

With rental yield the number one criteria for potential British property investors looking to enter the Scottish market, Morton Fraser has uncovered the tipping point at which a yield premium would encourage investment.

Of the property investors likely to invest in Scotland if there was a higher yield premium, 70% said a benchmark of more than 3% or higher would encourage them to invest, with 31% saying more that 5%. That figure should be viewed in the broader context of many respondents being initially cold on investing in Scotland, so the true figure for active investors is likely to be sharper.

Many investors are prepared to overlook ideological or political issues to run the rule over Scottish property investments. The yield gap between Scotland and other regional cities in the rest of the UK can always be met with a quality opportunity whether you are looking to invest in Edinburgh or Manchester, Glasgow or Bristol, a high quality asset will always stand on its own merits, Stewart added.
The UK Chancellor George Osborne should pause housing tax at the top end of the market or risk distorting the wider market, it is claimed in anew analysis report.

Up to a 100% rise in stamp duty on high luxury homes has seen buyer interest drop at a time when there has been a 40% rise in prime properties planned in London, according to the report from design and consultancy firm Arcadis.

It points out that the unintended consequences of successive stamp duty rises means projects in development for a number of years have been disproportionately affected and the delivery of affordable homes could be threatened as a result.

Despite initially encouraging investment in prime residential property as a means of stimulating wider economic growth, the government has since changed policies mid-cycle, the report suggests.

It says that this is regardless of the fact that many developers have already committed to major schemes. Since the end of 2014, the stamp duty alone on a 6 million home has almost doubled, rising from 420,000 to 810,000 when bought as a second property. The timing of these reforms has come just when certain parts of the market had already begun to slow.

In order to ensure sales, some developers who had committed to schemes before 2014s reforms have been forced to discount prices or resort to stamp duty paid deals. These sales discounts have hit margins by as much as 4% on prime homes and up to 7% on super prime properties.

Meanwhile, others have opted merely to delay construction, meaning that a significant number of affordable homes, planned as part of the original development, are not being built as quickly.

Furthermore, with fewer would-be purchasers willing to pay such high rates of tax, many investors are eyeing homes under the 1.5 million price threshold. This additional wave of interest risks distorting the mid-market and inadvertently pricing out those people who would typically be looking to purchase these as family homes, the research adds.

According to Mark Cleverly, Arcadis head of commercial development, to accelerate the delivery of affordable housing currently in the pipeline and ensure the construction sector remains sustainable, the Chancellor must impose a temporary reduction in stamp duty on new build properties. In tandem with this, he must better focus the debate onto ensuring acceptable levels of affordable housing are delivered as part of new developments.

Cleverly suggests that this approach would get the market moving again, meaning both a steady flow of affordable homes coming onto the capitals market and making schemes viable again for developers, safeguarding jobs and ensuring development can proceed as planned.

The Chancellor has to act on prime property tax. Despite initially encouraging investment in prime housing, the government since changed its mind and attempted to stem demand through ongoing tax increases and new fiscal regulations. This has prompted a drop in buyer interest at the very top of the market, creating a big problem for developers who had already committed to schemes and meaning affordable housing allocations are not delivered, he explained.

Whatever the Chancellors intentions when it comes to taxing the top, the unintended net result is likely to be less stamp duty receipts to the Treasury and potentially exacerbating the housing crisis. In short, stamp duty is becoming a tax on development, not on wealthy buyers, he added.

A more sensible approach would be to impose temporary stamp duty relief on new build homes planned before 2014s property tax overhaul. This would both ensure the construction sector remains viable and accelerate the flow of housing of all tenures that London so badly needs, he concluded.
Police in the northern city of Mong Cai close to the Chinese border arrested a man carrying 32 bear paws by motorbike on June 8.

At around 6 p.m. on June 8, police detected a man carying a suspect package by motorbike from Mong Cai towards the northern coastal city of Ha Long. After pulling him over, police found about 58 kilograms of what appeared to be decomposed bear paws.

Paws taken by police. Photo by VnExpress/TH

Police count the paws. Photo by VnExpress/TH.

Nguyen Huu Tung, 33, testified that a Chinese man had paid him to transport the paws from Mong Cai for VND500,000 ($22).

Realizing the case may involve an endangered species, the police confiscated the whole batch for further investigation.

Bear paws are belived to be an alternative treatment for rheumatism. They are also used in some Chinese dishes.

Related news:

> Rescued bear makes a splash on return to freedom in Vietnam

> Vietnam's wild tigers on the edge of extinction

> Police seize 4 frozen tiger cubs, arrest one
An Act of Love Documentary RMN had hoped to motivate United Methodists to call on their delegates to vote for full inclusion for the LGBTQ community in The UMC.

Paradise Valley United Methodist Church, 4455 E Lincoln Drive, Paradise Valley, AZ 85253, will host a screening and discussion of the documentary An Act of Love on Sunday, June 12 at 6:30 pm in the sanctuary. PVUMC has partnered with a reconciling church, Dayspring United Methodist Church, to show the film, which has been promoted by the Reconciling Ministries Network (RMN). The Fountains United Methodist Church and Scottsdale United Methodist Church have been invited to join us. The documentary, which premiered at the prestigious Mill Valley Film Festival and won an Audience Award, tells the story of Rev. Frank Schaefers religious trials for officiating his sons same-sex marriage and the ensuing controversy that made national headlines. This event is free and open to the public. See the event on Facebook.

"An Act of Love" aims to continue to elevate the conversation around LGBTQ rights, in light of the recent events at the 2016 General Conference. Held every four years, the General Conference is The UMCs policy-making body composed of approximately 500 clergy and 500 lay delegates elected by their regional annual conferences around the world. RMN and ally organizations filed several pieces of legislation that would ban discrimination towards LGBTQ clergy and lay members employed in The UMC, allow clergy to perform same-sex marriages, and reduce harm toward LGTBQ children and youthhighlighting specific challenges faced by LGBTQ young people including family rejection, risk of homelessness, bullying and suicide. RMN had hoped to motivate United Methodists to call on their delegates to vote for full inclusion for the LGBTQ community in The UMC. Late in the afternoon on May 18, delegates voted to accept the recommendation of the Council of Bishops to delay a debate on homosexuality at this gathering of the denominations top legislative assembly and let a proposed commission study church regulations.

We accept our role as spiritual leaders to lead The United Methodist Church in a pause for prayer  to step back from attempts at legislative solutions and to intentionally seek God's will for the future, said Council of Bishops president Bishop Bruce Ough in announcing the recommendation.

RMN has created the campaign website rmnetwork.org/itstime to enable supporters and allies to share their stories and tell those in leadership that Its Time to reverse The UMCs discriminatory treatment of its LGBTQ ministers and congregants. In an article published online in May 2013 by Christina Dillabough, communications director for the Desert Southwest Conference, she reported, The Desert Southwest Conference is a Reconciling community as is the Western Jurisdiction, the Jurisdiction that the Conference is a part of. To find out more about the Reconciling Ministry Network or to access resources to start the process of becoming a Reconciling Community, visit http://rmnetwork.org.
It's Your Great American Summer begins Thursday, June 16 and ends Wednesday, August 10, 2016. The favorite American convenience store destinations, Kwik Shop, Loaf N Jug, Tom Thumb and Turkey Hill, are teaming up for Its Your Great American Summer-their largest loyalty promotion since joining forces in 2015.

The Kroger family of convenience store brands is giving customers even more to look forward to, no matter where this summers adventures may take them. The favorite American convenience store destinations, Kwik Shop, Loaf N Jug, Tom Thumb and Turkey Hill, are teaming up for Its Your Great American Summer- their largest loyalty promotion to date.

Beginning Thursday, June 16th, customers can use their rewards cards to be automatically entered into the Its Your Great American Summer contest by purchasing any item throughout the stores*. Popular brands and products such as Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Nestle, General Mills, Red Bull and other favorites are able to make customers winners this summer! Prizes include free gas for an entire year, vacation packages, GoPros and $100,000 in other exciting prizes.

Our convenience stores have long been a favorite stop for customers looking to refresh and refuel with all of their favorite road trip essentials. Kroger Convenience Store Promotions Coordinator Shannon Powers said. The best part is that customers can enter the It's Your Great American Summer giveaway just by shopping their favorite brands. There will be multiple winners each and every day. It doesnt get any easier than this!

This is the first time that all four convenience store banners have jointly participated in such a large scale promotion to date. Its Your Great American Summer begins Thursday, June 16th and ends Wednesday, August 10, 2016. Participating brands may vary by store and are subject to change. *Exclusions apply on tobacco, alcohol (valid if FL only), prepaid cell phone cards, milk and lottery tickets. No purchase necessary. Official rules and additional details can be accessed on each of the convenience store websites:

http://www.kwikshop/greatamericansummer

http://www.tomt.com/greatamericansummer

http://www.turkeyhillstores.com/greatamericansummer

http://www.loafnjug.com/greatamericansummer

About the Kroger family of Convenience Store Brands

The Kroger family of convenience stores are regional favorite brands associated with the Kroger Large Format Grocery Stores and Kroger Fuel Centers. These banners include: Kwik Shop, Loaf N Jug, Tom Thumb and Turkey Hill and are concentrated in a number of select markets throughout the country. From Colorado to PA, Ohio to Florida, all sharing the same fuel rewards program and loyalty card offerings overseen at Kroger headquarters in Cincinnati.

In 2016, Kroger developed a unified rewards program encompassing its convenience store banners to offer rewards card incentive promotions, for greater customer benefit. Through this collaboration, customers may use their existing rewards cards to earn fuel points at reciprocal brands while traveling.
"We are excited to have Maria as part of our team to serve women owned businesses in Frederick County" Helen Propheter, Director, Frederick County Office of Economic Development

The Maryland Womens Business Center (MWBC) and Rockville Economic Development, Inc. (REDI) welcomes new Business Counselor/Trainer, Maria Ryan McElhenney to serve women entrepreneurs out of the Frederick Office of Economic Development, located at 118 N. Market Street, in historic downtown Frederick. Workshops are already in full swing, and some will be offered in both Spanish and English.

This month, McElhenney will teach the following workshops: June 7ABCs of Starting a Business, June 14Free Group Counseling for Pre-Startups and New Companies, June 21-- Free Group Counseling for Established Companies, June 22Writing a Successful Business Plan, and host a Networking Lunch on June 29 at Frederick Skaure Burger for entrepreneurs to make new connections.

McElhenney defines herself as a women of purpose and passion and is the 2003 recipient of the Maryland Latina Woman Leader of the Year. She is bilingual (English/Spanish), and also owns and manages Makeup Artist Pro Group, which comprises a team of 12 certified Makeup Artists and serves the DMV area for weddings, special events and classes.

Maria brings strong entrepreneurial experiences and vibrant energy, which will help us reach more women entrepreneurs in Frederick County who are looking to start, grow, and sustain their businesses, said Kiesha Haughton, Managing Director of the Maryland Womens Business Center.

McElhenney has a background in business banking and entrepreneurship, and one of her first business ventures was in the area of corporate identity, development and web design, strategy and marketing. She also was the Founder/President of Blooming Women, Inc. a nonprofit dedicated to supporting women business owners and professionals.

Im excited to join the team, and hope to help entrepreneurs succeed by sharing all that I have learned in my journey as a woman, mother and business owner, added Maria Ryan McElhenney, Business Counselor/Trainer in Frederick County for Maryland Womens Business Center.

Special thanks to our partners Frederick Office of Economic Development, Frederick Chamber of Commerce, and Skaure Burger for hosting these events. Learn more and register for workshops at: http://www.marylandwbc.org.

About The Maryland Womens Business Center

MWBC was established in 2010 as a program of the non-profit Rockville Economic Development, Inc. (REDI) to help people throughout the region start and build successful women-owned enterprises that are positioned for long-term growth. MWBC conducts specialized training, offers individual business counseling, and provides unique resources. Our special initiatives include a Childcare Business Development Program and StartRight! Womens Business Plan Competition. Stay connected on Facebook, Instagram , LinkedIn, and Twitter.
Kim Reid, Principal Analyst, Eduventures "Weve expanded our rating method to include not only first-year retention, but also six-year graduation rates in a combined index of student success.

Eduventures, Inc., the leading provider of primary research, analysis and advisory services that help higher education institutions support decision making throughout the student lifecycle, today announced that they have released the 2016 Student Success Ratings. As legions of college students graduate, Eduventures pays tribute to the institutions that have been the most successful in improving both retention and graduation rates for their student populations.

Understanding the Landscape for Student Success

Eduventures has created a comprehensive rating system that accounts for both retention and completion rates. Historically the hallmark of our retention ratings is how an institution scores on first-year retention given their institutional circumstance. This year, Eduventures has added trend data to the analysis to credit institutions that have made sustained improvement in measures of student success.

According to the author of this report, Eduventures Principal Analyst, Kim Reid, Our new student rankings seek to find the strong performers that have beat the market on student success in a number of ways. Weve expanded our rating method to include not only first-year retention, but also six-year graduation rates in a combined index of student success.

When Retention is Mandated from the Top

The 2016 Student Success Ratings show that the largest improvements in six-year graduation rates have come from public institutions. This category shows evidence of a state system putting its weight behind student success initiatives. Four Florida State University System campuses are in the top 12 while private Baccalaureate-level institutions struggle the most, with larger declines than improvements in first-year retention.

As evidenced from the Florida State University System, improvements are hard to come by without a strong executive mandate, a keen understanding of institutional context, and the tools to quickly identify at-risk students, roll out interventions, and measure their effectiveness. In its 2005  2025 strategic plan, the Florida State University Board of Governors gave its institutions the goal of improving degree proficiency and program efficiency. The state also moved to a performance-based funding model in 2016, proof that the power of a well-supported mandate can stimulate improvements. To view a list that includes top-ranked schools in two of our six institutional categories can be found at http://www.eduventures.com/eduventures-2016-retention-ratings/.

For additional information about this report or to arrange a one-on-one briefing with the author, please contact Ellen Slaby at eslaby(at)eduventures.com.

About Eduventures

Eduventures is the leading primary research, analysis and advisory services firm that is focused exclusively on analyzing the forces that are transforming higher education. Building on twenty years of success in working with education leaders, Eduventures provides forward-looking and actionable research based on proprietary market data, and advisory services that support both strategic and operational decision-making. Our recommendations and personalized support enable clients to understand the top traits of leaders in critical disciplines and to evaluate the opportunities presented by new technologies. For more information about Eduventures research, role-based coverage areas and team, visit us at http://www.eduventures.com.
Ana LHomme and Dario Ergas, producers of the new award-winning documentary, Silo, A Spiritual Path, will arrive to Los Angeles from Chile on June 11 to accept the Hollywood International Independent Documentary Award of Excellence for their film. The following day, Sunday June 12, there will be a press screening of the film and opportunities to interview LHomme and Ergas about this innovative film and the man known as the Sage of the Andes.

Silo, A Spiritual Path, tells the inspirational story of Mario Rodriguez Cobos, a revolutionary from Argentina who overcame censorship and persecution to propose a radical system of self actualization leading to nonviolent social change. Although not well known in the United States, Silos teachings speak powerfully to todays generation working for social justice and human rights.

Along with a wealth of archival footage, the films young protagonist, Catalina, interviews many who knew Silo as a friend, a guide, and a master. They share their personal stories with moving candor and the result is a multifaceted portrait that is both historical and intimate. The viewer will experience how the teachings of Silo challenge us to change ourselves in order to change the world. Silo passed away in 2010.

Emerging in 1969 as a response to global violence and the repressive regimes in Argentina and Chile, the teachings of Silo have been embraced worldwide as a social, spiritual and consciousness-raising movement, making Silo one of the most important social guides to emerge from Latin America. The movie was filmed in Argentina, Chile, Russia, Spain and the United States.

To date, the film has won the Accolade Global Film Award and a Hollywood International Independent Documentary Award of Excellence (HIIDA), and been selected into festivals in Israel, and Miami and Romania. http://www.siloaspiritualpath.com/category/awards/

Journalists are invited to attend the private screening on June 12 at 2pm at the Wilshire Screening Room located at 8670 Wilshire Blvd, Beverly Hills, CA 90211, United States, and to interview producers Ana LHomme and Dario Ergas about the film and about Silo and his life and teachings. Please contact OrangeRio to be added to the press list. Ana and Dario will also be available for interviews from June 11 to June 19, 2016.

Film Trailer

https://vimeo.com/131598628

Media and private screening registration contacts

 Marcia Barahona, OrangeRio (415) 312-8243, mybarahona [at] OrangeRio.com

 Ken Dickinson, (415) 497-8463. kdickinson [at] aol.com

# # #
From left to right: Tarek Obeissy, Audra Montgomery, Brenda Whetsell, Mike Lyon. We really enjoy volunteering at the Ronald McDonald House. Its a great cause and we want to support them anyway we can.

On June 7th employees from Midland IRA, a local self-directed IRA administrator, volunteered their time to make the families staying at the Ronald McDonald House a homemade meal. The Midland IRA staff prepared a three course dinner.

The Ronald McDonald House is a local non-profit that serves as a home-away-from-home to many families who have children who are seriously ill and are undergoing medical treatment. The house is a place where families can stay while still enjoying the comforts of home. The Ronald McDonald House includes a full size kitchen and individual bedrooms and bathrooms for the guests to stay comfortably. Most nights volunteers will create a nice dinner for the families to enjoy each evening.

Midland IRA volunteered to make dinner for the families of the Ronald McDonald House. We really enjoy volunteering at the Ronald McDonald House, says Dave Owens, president of Midland IRA, its a great cause and we want to support them anyway we can. The staff at Midland IRA made a three course Mexican themed dinner consisting of corn salsa with chips, cheese quesadillas, chicken enchiladas with Mexican rice, and a guava cream cheese pastry. The Ronald McDonald House had a full house of 12 families that the Midland IRA employees made dinner for.

Midland IRA believes in actively volunteering in the community as often as possible and will be volunteering for the Ronald McDonald House fishing tournament which takes place later this week.

About Midland IRA

Midland IRA is a self-directed IRA administrator that provides tax-deferred and tax-free investment opportunities, superior customer service, and educational tools to assist investors in realizing the maximum benefits possible within IRAs. Midland IRA makes it easy to use self-directed retirement plans to invest in assets that the individual investor knows, understands, and can control. Midland IRA is also a 1031 exchange qualified intermediary. To learn more visit www(dot)MidlandIRA(dot)com.

About Dave Owens

Dave Owens is president of Midland IRA in Fort Myers, Chicago, Miami, Gainesville, New England, and the Florida Panhandle. Owens opened the Fort Myers headquarters in 2003. His background as a certified public accountant, combined with a long history of personal retirement self-direction, provides his audiences and clients with solid advice and practical solutions to their IRA investment questions. Dave holds a BS in accounting from Purdue University. He also earned the prestigious Certified Exchange Specialist designation through the Federation of Exchange Accommodators.
The MagBuddy Collection Easy to use, inexpensive and ultra-reusable, MagBuddy is the smart new way to make the most of tablets and smartphones, David Nazar, CEO of Naztech.

Leading consumer electronics manufacturer and distributor Naztech has announced the launch of the MagBuddy Collection, an innovative magnetic mounting system for convenient hands-free mobile device use.

The MagBuddy Collection will include a line of products for car, home and office featuring MagBuddys slim, cradle-free design and a high-powered magnet to mount devices where they can be most useful and easy to see. The MagBuddy Collection is available at http://www.naztech.com, http://www.amazon.com and authorized retailers.

Placing any mobile device near the magnetic surface locks it securely onto a fully rotational mount that allows for landscape or portrait use and easy access to controls and ports, making hands-free calling, GPS navigation, audio and video streaming and internet use easier than ever before. Designed for optimum hands-free connectivity and mobility and useful for thousands of applications, MagBuddy affixes easily to nearly any surface from car air vents, windshields and cup holders to home and office surfaces such as appliances, desktops and countertops.

Featuring magnetic device mounting systems for any car, environment and application, the MagBuddy Collection includes the Anywhere, Dash, Vent, CupHolder, Windshield and Desktop products. Each MagBuddy product comes with two MagBuddy magnetic plates with 3M non-residue coating that attach to mobile devices or cases for use with MagBuddy mounts.

Easy to use, inexpensive and ultra-reusable, MagBuddy is the smart new way to make the most of tablets and smartphones, said David Nazar, CEO of Naztech. The innovative MagBuddy system is designed to meet increasing consumer demand for grab-and-go convenience and universal accessories that work in harmony with other products.

Naztech will promote the MagBuddy launch with a multi-platform marketing campaign including a reviewer sample program, publicity and on-line promotions; the company is also planning to announce a partnership with a non-profit organization to promote safe driving.

About Naztech

Naztech is a leading consumer electronics products brand. Headquartered in Valencia, CA, Naztech is known for skillfully incorporating patented technologies, precision hand craftsmanship and ergonomic designs with the most advanced and highest-quality materials in its products. Naztech is a member of Apples MFi licensing program and is certified in maintaining quality and design standards that match Apples. For more information, visit http://www.naztech.com or email pbylsma(at)hypercel(dot)com.

# # # #
Naturally, the pleasant smell of food is the indicator for its tastiness. Hanoi begs to differ with its famous fried tofu, rice noodle and better-eaten-than-smelled shrimp paste. VnExpress follows the trail of scent and takes you to the best bun dau mam tom in Hanoi.

FYI: Bun is the rice noodle, served dry; dau is the fried tofu; and mam tom is the shrimp paste. The dish also acquires a shorter name, bun dau, because there is no other better way to eat bun and dau. To cater for the diverse tastes of Hanoians, all bun dau shops boast a few more side dishes such as cha com (fried minced pork with green young rice), doi (Vietnamese version of black pudding), boiled pork, gia cay (fake dog meat), and not to mention the compulsory herb kinh gioi.

Phat Loc Alley

The first name that pops up when it comes to bun dau. Phat Loc has been the high street bun dau among others. Sitting in the Old Quarter, Phat Loc Alley is the most reachable for anyone craving for a bun dau.

Ma May Street

Another rival from the Old Quarter. Ma May boasts two bun dau shops facing each other, both offering lovely crunchy fried tofu and bubbly shrimp paste. You can even choose soft or crispy tofu.

Hang Khay Street

They say that the best shrimp paste, when stirred with oil, makes an airy soft mixture. Thats exactly what the bun dau place at Hang Khay offers.

Thuy Khue

The bun dau here is said to serve the most original bun dau, with each portion coming wrapped in a banana leaf. The service here is also the best thanks to the chewing gums that the owner gives out once the bill is paid.
















MIAMI  The MIAMI Association of REALTORS (MIAMI) is working along with other local groups to increase Chinese trade, investment and consumers in South Florida. MIAMI CEO Teresa King Kinney will be participating and presenting at the 2016 Asian Real Estate Association of Americas China North America Global Summit on June 15-25, 2016 at Chengdu, Xian, Changzhou and Shanghai.

South Floridas clean air, quality schools, international banking center and construction industries are of great interest to the Chinese, Kinney said. A direct flight from China to Miami would encourage more investment in South Florida. It would boost South Floridas banking, tourism, real estate, retail, education and construction industries.

China, the worlds most populous country, has invested more than $100 billion in the United States since 2000. Locally, China finished as Miamis third-largest foreign trade partner with $6.4 billion in transactions in 2015, according to Miami-Dade County statistics. More than 400,000 passengers flew from Miami to Asia in 2015, according to Sabre Global Demand data and Miami International Airport.

Kinney will be traveling with the Asian Real Estate Association of America (AREAA) on a trade mission to China this month. Ninoska Nina Fabbri of ISG International will also be attending the 2016 Asian Real Estate Association of Americas China North America Global Summit on June 15-25, 2016 at Chengdu, Xian, Changzhou and Shanghai. Fabbri is a member of the Greater Miami AREAA Board and the AREAA International Committee.

MIAMI has facilitated several partnerships and events to help its 42,000-plus members better advertise their properties in China. MIAMI recently reached an agreement with Juwai, Chinas No. 1 international property portal, to promote MIAMI residential and commercial listings in Asia.

MIAMI has been facilitating Chinese partnerships since 2013. MIAMI made a 2013 market-presentation in San Francisco to a group of 100 top Chinese brokers with SouFun, which operates one of the leading real estate Internet portals in China.

MIAMI hosted a dinner in Miami for the Chairman of the Chinese Real Estate Association and their delegates. MIAMI exhibited at luxury property shows in Beijing and Shanghai in 2015. MIAMI members also have special pricing for their properties on SouFun, now Fang.com.

The First Direct Miami to Asia Flight

A group of Miami-Dade County government officials and local businessmen recently traveled to China and Taiwan to discuss the creation of nonstop passenger flights to Asia. The Miami-Dade Aviation Department has also created the MIA-Asia Task Force of 39 community and business groups, including the Japanese Business Association and the Greater Miami & The Beaches Hotel Association.

Recently, Cathay Pacific Airways Ltd. CEO Ivan Chu told Bloomberg News his airline is considering a plane capable of direct flights from Miami to Hong Kong. Cathay is Asias largest airline by passengers.

Many major cities in the U.S. have a direct or nonstop flight to Asia, but Miami is the furthest U.S. point from the continent. New flight technology has made the potential 18-hour flight possible.

Launching the first direct Miami to China flight would make it easier for Chinas growing middle class to visit, create businesses and purchase real estate in South Florida. By 2022, Chinas middle class will grow to 630 million  which will be 45 percent of the countrys total population  and consume $3.4 trillion in goods and services  about 24 percent of gross domestic product.

Creating Miamis First Chinatown, Consulate

The North Miami City Council recently approved plans to study and designate a Chinatown cultural arts and innovation district. The district would be on Northwest Seventh Avenue (U.S. 441) from 119th to 135th streets. There are no plans to displace established businesses and the idea is to involve Chinese motifs in the overall facade of the area.

North Miami City Council staff noted the large number of Chinese students at Florida International University, which has a campus in North Miami. Miamis Florida International University, the first U.S. university to establish campuses in China more than a decade ago, has about 5,000 Chinese students. FIU has a partnership with the Tianjin University of Commerce in Tianjin, China.

Other governmental entities, such as the Miami-Dade Board of County Commissioners, are working to establish a branch of the Chinese Consulate in Miami. Currently, the Chinese Consulate-General in Houston covers Florida as part of its consular jurisdiction.

A Miami Chinese Consulate would not only help local residents in obtaining visas to visit China, but it would also promote more Chinese investments in South Florida.

About the MIAMI Association of REALTORS

The MIAMI Association of REALTORS was chartered by the National Association of Realtors in 1920 and is celebrating 96 years of service to Realtors, the buying and selling public, and the communities in South Florida. Comprised of six organizations, the Residential Association, the Realtors Commercial Alliance, the Broward Council, the Jupiter Tequesta Hobe Sound (JTHS) Council, the Young Professionals Network (YPN) Council and the award-winning International Council, it represents more than 42,000 real estate professionals in all aspects of real estate sales, marketing, and brokerage. It is the largest local Realtor association in the U.S., and has official partnerships with 136 international organizations worldwide. MIAMIs official website is http://www.miamire.com

###
Hackathons have always been events where some of the most creative and technically innovative content has emerged.

Hackers from throughout Japan will have the opportunity to participate in the biggest event of its kind in that country as Perception Neuron and Japanese virtual reality news site, Mogura VR have joined forces to present the 2016 Perception Neuron All Japan VR Hackathon taking place June 17-19.

In an early, celebratory nod to the upcoming Japan 2020 Olympic Games, hackers taking part are being asked to use the medium of virtual reality to capture the culture, innovation and lifestyle trends that are unique to Japan. The participating hackers will be using the Perception Neuron motion capture system to create various experiences about Japan.

Winners of the content created at the All Japan VR Hackathon will be featured both nationally and internationally at several upcoming events including the Digital Content Expo, taking place in October in Tokyo; SVVR Asia, also being held in October in Beijing; and at Mogura VR events worldwide.

Hackathons have always been events where some of the most creative and technically innovative content has emerged, says Roch Nakajima, Marketing Director for Noitom. We expect to see some ingenious ideas for our Perception Neuron motion capture come alive during the hackathon and we are ecstatic to be a part of making an event of this kind that brings people together to push the individual boundaries of their ingenuity.

A selection of awards will be given out to the best projects produced during the hackathon. Sponsors of the event will be giving winners a collection of donation prizes. The awards include the Japan VR Award, Perception Neuron VR Award, Perception Neuron Special Integration VR Award, Vive VR Award and the Aiuto Award.

The hackathon is taking place from June 17-19 with the main headquarters at Mono Telecom Center in Tokyo. Satellite events of the hackathon will take place in Osaka, Ishikawa, Okayama, Hiroshima, Fukuoka and Okinawa.

Events leading up to the hackathon will include an Unreal Engine Workshop on June 11th and a series of VR Workshops and Q & A sessions on June 17th.

Registration has begun on the hackathon website and will continue through 9 a.m. on June 18th. The hackathon will kick-off following registration and will continue through the evening of June 19. Awards will be given out immediately afterwards. Sponsors for the All Japan Hackathon include Unity, Unreal, Aiuto, Mono, Mouse Computers, COLOPL, G-Tune, Tech Lab Paak, Hackosco, DCAJ, AMD and iClone.

To register, and for more information about the Perception Neuron All Japan VR Hackathon, please visit vrhackathon.co.

To learn more about Perception Neuron, please visit neuronmocap.com. To learn more about Noitom, visit noitom.com.

Founded in 2011, Noitom Ltd. works with a team of dedicated engineers who develop world-class motion capture technology for consumer and industrial markets through the integration of MEMS sensors, pattern recognition, human kinetics and wireless transmission. Noitom is an international leader in innovative technology for use in animation, film, medical applications, robotics and gaming. Noitom is headquartered in Beijing with affiliate offices in Shanghai and Shenzhen. The company also has two US offices located in Miami and Scottsdale. For further information about Noitom and its services, please visit, http://www.noitom.com. For general inquiries, please email, info(at)noitom.com.
A new episode of Behind The Scenes with host James Earl Jones features the essentials of aeronautical education, and how training in this field equips students for more than just piloting at a standard level.

Aerospace classes prepare students for aviation and aerospace at an undergraduate or graduate level. The classes may teach them to be air traffic control officers, maintenance technicians, professional pilots and include aircraft construction and mechanics.

Regular classes inform students about the history of atmosphere and space flight with hands-on training privileges. Advanced students are taught aviation law and mechanical interpretation and how to diagnose mechanical problems as well as analyzing their severity.

The basic aeronautical class would usually include rocket propulsion, spaceflight dynamics and the way these elements work in conjunction with spacecraft performance and the complications that arise from them. These courses oftentimes come in several tiers and display how air moves around objects and include, airfoils, lattice methods and transonic flow. Class discussion and research are often included in the process.

This new program looks to feature these facts and many more about aeronautical education. Behind The Scenes is created solely for Public Television and distributed to television stations throughout the United States. Each episode of the program is filmed in high definition and must meet the highest of quality assurance standards before being approved for air. Besides having TV and movie veteran James Earl Jones serving as host, the program also employs an award-winning team of writers, producers, and videographers. It isn't released or produced by PBS or APT, who are providers of long-form content and aren't related to Behind The Scenes.

(source: http://study.com/aeronautical_courses.html )
In one of my trips to China I noticed a Wine In University WeChat post go incredibly viral - says Stevie Kim - I was intrigued and I wanted to know personally the creator of this project. This was a university student in love with the wine.

Vinitaly International tightens the ties with China with a new initiative addressing Chinese millennials. The Italian Wine Month was held in April 2016, in partnership with Wine In University (WIU), the largest league of Chinese college students interested in wine, including many future oenologist of the PRC.

The world of wine is increasingly looking at East. Vinitaly International is orchestrating a wave of initiatives in line with its mission in China, where it acts as a bridge between the key players in the market and Italian wine makers, always focusing on how to communicate.

This new partnership, conceived and promoted in order to educate the Chinese to Italian wine, lays its foundation back in time. Stevie Kim, Managing Director of Vinitaly International, has always been a great supporter of the use of Chinese social media platforms, Wechat in particular. "I dont speak Chinese," Ms Kim admits, "but I use Wechat every day to communicate with my staff or just for leisure."

WeChat can be described as a combination of a messaging app and a social media: with a strong "sharing" inclination, it gives special emphasis to the images and it can count on nearly 700 million active users. (SOURCE: http://www.statista.com/statistics/255778/number-of-active-wechat-messenger-accounts)

"The best thing about Wechat is that just looking at the photos and the reactions of the people you can get an idea of the trending topics, without clashing with the Chinese characters," explains Stevie Kim, revealing that "it was just through WeChat that the link between Vinitaly International and Wine In University was created."

Built on WeChat, Wine In University is a platform that provides students of nearly 30 Chinese universities with the opportunity to keep up with the news about the world of wine and participate in wine tasting events.

"In one of my trips to China I noticed a Wine In University WeChat post go incredibly viral," says Stevie Kim, "Yang Lu, Italian Wine Ambassador of our Vinitaly International Wine Academy and Director for Shangri-La Hotel, responded personally to questions of hundreds of students. I was intrigued and I wanted to know personally the creator of this project. This was a university student in love with the wine to the point of wanting to share his passion with all its peers."

Ms Kim immediately ensured that Ted Zhang, the founder of WIU, had the opportunity to go to Italy to learn and be seduced by Italian wine, totally immersing himself with an internship in the Valpolicella vineyards in December 2015.

The foundations of the partnership between Vinitaly International and WIU were therefore built during the last edition of wine2wine, where Ted held a workshop in which he presented his project, along with Lingzi He, the first Chinese Italian Wine Expert of the Vinitaly International Academy.

"The trip to Italy was my first outside of China, and it was great," says Ted. "I wanted to bring home what I learned, but I and Vinitaly International did not stop here." The second step saw WIU as a technical partner for Vinitaly China - Chengdu 2016, where they provided translators for producers, announced the event on the platform and held a joint press conference during which the Italian Wine Month was launched.

Italy was chosen as the first partner country for this kind of initiative. The pilot project has since materialized in various online and offline activities.

As for the first part, WIU has organized a series of four lectures on Italian wine topics, which were held by the Italian Wine Expert Lingzi He. The interest was very high, as evidenced by Ted: "We are very happy, the lectures were attended by more than 500 students and then read or downloaded by up to 8,000 students!"

At the same time, a series of 16 tastings were organised in over 10 different Chinese regions, involving some of the major importers of Italian wine and producers who participated in Vinitaly China - Chengdu, coordinated by Vinitaly International for the supply of wine during the events.

Therefore, on the one hand Vinitaly International is continuing to focus on the major promotional channels with established events like Vinitaly Hong Kong and Vinitaly China - Chengdu. On the other, it expands the boundaries of penetration in the Chinese market by not focusing exclusively on professionals but also with an eye on the general public, through B2C initiatives such as Vinitaly China - Shanghai (for the second edition of the Shanghai Wine & Dine Festival, scheduled for September 23-25, 2016). Other cross-cutting activities for the training and promotion of Italian wine among Chinese millennials, like this important partnership with Wine in University, are also in development.

LIST OF UNIVERSITIES

Beijing:

Peking University

Shanghai:

Shanghai Jiaotong University

Chongqing:

Chongqing University

Sichuan International Studies University

Sichuan:

Tianfu College of SWUFE

Hubei:

Hubei University of Economics

Shaanxi:

Northwest A&F University

Shandong:

Shandong Agricultural University

Qingdao Agricultural University

Shandong Polytechnic University

Binzhou Medical University

Jiangsu:

Huaiyin Normal University

Ningxia:

Ningxia Technical College of Wine and Desertification Prevention

Gansu:

Gansu Agricultural University

Liaoning:

Shenyang Pharmaceutical University

Hainan:

Hainan University

About:

Veronafiere is the leading organizer of trade shows in Italy including Vinitaly (http://www.vinitaly.com), the largest wine and spirits fair in the world. During its 50th edition Vinitaly counted more than 4,100 exhibitors on a 100,000+ square meter area and 130,000 visitors from 140 different countries. The next edition of the fair will take place on 9 - 12 April 2017. The premier event to Vinitaly, OperaWine (http://www.vinitalyinternational.com) Finest Italian Wines: 100 Great Producers, will unite international wine professionals on April 8th in the heart of Verona, offering them the unique opportunity to discover and taste the wines of the 100 Best Italian Producers, as selected by Wine Spectator. Since 1998 Vinitaly International travels to several countries such as Russia, China, USA and Hong Kong thanks to its strategic arm abroad, Vinitaly International. In February 2014 Vinitaly International launched an educational project, the Vinitaly International Academy (VIA) with the aim of divulging and broadcasting the excellence and diversity of Italian wine around the globe. VIA this year launched the second edition of its Certification Course and today counts 54 Italian Wine Ambassadors and 3 Italian Wine Experts.

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e-MDs Our vision is to be the leading provider of healthy solutions for healthy patients and healthy practices. Receiving this award is a demonstration of our efforts to realize that vision.

e-MDs, a leading provider of ambulatory electronic medical record (EMR), practice management (PM) software, revenue cycle management (RCM) solutions, and credentialing services, announced today that it has been ranked number one ambulatory EHR for Thoracic & Vascular Surgery specialties by Black Book Research. e-MDs also received top 10 rankings in Infectious Disease, Pediatric Surgery, and Physical Medicine and Rehab. The company was also honored as one of the top ten ambulatory EHRs for the 6-10 Physician Practices & Groups across all specialties. The survey measures customer satisfaction and loyalty across 18 key performance indicators.

e-MDs is pleased to be named a market leader by Black Book Research, commented Derek Pickell, e-MDs CEO. e-MDs is dedicated to identifying and delivering new enhancements, solutions, and products based on what our users want and need. Our vision is to be the leading provider of healthy solutions for healthy patients and healthy practices. Receiving this award is a demonstration of our efforts to realize that vision.

e-MDs Solution Series is a leading EHR and practice management solution used by thousands of physicians nationwide. Solution Series enhances a practices revenue generation, office productivity and clinical workflows, while also raising overall quality awareness through an emphasis on proactive, ongoing training.

More information on the rankings can be found on the Black Book website at http://www.blackbookrankings.com/.

About e-MDs

e-MDs is a leading provider of integrated electronic health records, practice management software, revenue cycle management solutions, and credentialing services for physician practices and enterprises. Founded by physicians, the company is an industry leader for usable, connected software that enables physician productivity and a superior clinical experience. e-MDs software has received top rankings in physician and industry surveys including those conducted by the American Academy of Family Physicians Family Practice Management, AmericanEHR Partners, MedScape, and Black Book. e-MDs has a proven track record of positioning clients for success as demonstrated by Meaningful Use attainment in 2011, 2012, 2013 and 2014. According to data provided by CMS, e-MDs clients are attesting in the top proportion of all major vendors. For more information, please visit http://www.e-mds.com, http://facebook.e-mds.com and https://twitter.com/emds.
MyWebGrocer, the leading provider of eCommerce and digital marketing solutions to the grocery and consumer packaged goods (CPG) industries, announces that MyWebGrocer VP of Data & Insights, Michelle Cote, will present at next weeks Beverage-Digest Market Smarts Conference on Monday, June 13 in New York.

The adoption of online grocery shopping is accelerating at a rapid pace, and brands and retailers no longer have time to doubt the effect it will have on their businesses. According to MyWebGrocers client sales data from 2015, online beverage purchases grew 10.9 percent and accounted for 11 percent of all online grocery sales. In total, beverages were included in 79 percent of online grocery orders.

At the conference, Cote will elaborate on specific trends and opportunities for beverage brands in light of online shopper behavior, and share CPG best practices. Cote will also participate in a panel discussion alongside Chris Butler, Director of eCommerce and Digital Activation at Nestle Waters North America, to provide insights and clarity from across the more than 130 retailers whose web platforms MyWebGrocer supports.

The data and insights we track indicate that the beverage industry has a tremendous opportunity to capitalize on the growth of grocery eCommerce, said Cote. I look forward to sharing actionable insights from first party data - not just forecasts - so that industry executives can inform their strategy for eCommerce.

Those interested in attending Cotes session at this years Beverage Digest Market Smarts Conference can register here, and see additional details:

 Who: Michelle Cote, VP, Data & Insights, MyWebGrocer

 What: E-Commerce Panel

 When: Monday, June 13th, 2016, 9:45 a.m.10:45 a.m. ET

 Where: Eventi Hotel, New York, New York

 Register: http://www.zenithinternational.com/events/201

About MyWebGrocer

MyWebGrocer offers the only complete Digital Experience Platform for grocers and Consumer Packaged Goods brands. The platform powers every interaction to attract, engage, transact with and retain grocery shoppers through digital offerings ranging from planning and shopping platforms to mobile and social tools. The company also offers opportunities for consumer packaged goods brands looking to reach consumers with relevant advertising, promotions and offers throughout their grocery path to purchase.

Founded in 1999, MyWebGrocer manages digital solutions for more than 130 retailers across the globe, representing more than 10,000 stores, and 500+ major consumer packaged goods brands. For more information, please visit http://www.MyWebGrocer.com, and connect with us on LinkedIn and Twitter.

Media Contact

Nausheen Farishta

Walker Sands Communications

nausheen.farishta(at)walkersands(dot)com

312-648-6015
The MassMutual Foundation's grant to UMass Amherst will provide substantial new resources to the university's Center for Data Science and their Cybersecurity Institute.

The MassMutual Foundation, Inc.a dedicated corporate foundation established by Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Company (MassMutual)today announced it is providing the University of Massachusetts Amherst $15 million over 10 years to further strengthen its world-class data science and cybersecurity research and education programs in Western Massachusetts.

The grant, a signature contribution of the MassMutual Foundationand one of the largest donations in UMass Amherst historywas outlined by Nick Fyntrilakis, MassMutuals Vice President of Community Responsibility and President of the MassMutual Foundation, at a briefing at the UMass Center at Springfield, located in Tower Square, which will house the new cybersecurity initiative.

The implementation of new technologies across all industries is occurring at an extremely rapid pace, driving demand for scientists skilled in analyzing data and protecting digital information, said Fyntrilakis. The MassMutual Foundation is making this gift to take these leading data science and cybersecurity research centers to the next level, and to ensure that both the Pioneer Valley and the commonwealth will be at the forefront of these emerging areas and a top destination for these important disciplines.

A growing and exciting new facet of MassMutuals corporate responsibility approach, the MassMutual Foundation is a dedicated corporate foundation created by MassMutual to manage eligible charitable contributions.

The MassMutual Foundations long term goal is to provide a total of $100 million through targeted charitable investments over the next five years. Fyntrilakis added that over the past 10 years, MassMutual has given back nearly $80 million to the communities where the companys employees and agents live and work.

Throughout our 165-year history, MassMutual has always made people a priority, and today that commitment to our policyowners, customers and the communities we serve continues with the creation of our Foundation, said Fyntrilakis. By giving back to our communities and providing economic opportunity, we are indeed strengthening the vitality of the region.

In announcing the new UMass initiative, Amherst Chancellor Kumble Subbaswamy said, We are deeply grateful for this extraordinary investment by the MassMutual Foundation. Todays announcement represents a private-public collaboration that will uniquely benefit the commonwealth. With this support, our researchers will expand our knowledge of data science and its uses and develop new cybersecurity systems to protect information networks. Our internationally recognized faculty also will help prepare the next generation of leading computer scientists, creating new knowledge and educating a growing workforce to create a range of new economic opportunities.

The grant to UMass Amherst, the commonwealths flagship campus, will provide substantial new resources to two of the universitys outstanding areas of academic and research excellenceboth affiliated with the College of Information and Computer Sciences.



$12 million to support the Center for Data Science, which will enhance UMass Amhersts standing as a leading destination for data science and related research. Funds will be invested to hire additional faculty, and support the Centers goals to double the number of data science courses and triple the size of the masters program in computer science. Students will engage withand learn fromleading educators in data analytics. The center also focuses on creating new technology to manage and gain insight from big data while also educating tomorrows data scientists.

$3 million to support new research and education activities at the universitys Cybersecurity Institute. The gift will establish the Institutes new Trust Assurance Cybersecurity certificate offered at the MassMutual Foundation/UMass Springfield Center for Training in Cybersecurity. The program will provide a significant economic development benefit to downtown Springfield, drawing professionals from the Springfield-Hartford, Conn., area as well as undergraduate students. The gift also supports new faculty hires by UMass Amherst to develop and teach the classes.

In attendance at the event were State Senate President Stanley Rosenberg, House Speaker Robert DeLeo and UMass President Marty Meehan.

Massachusetts is poised to build on our burgeoning cyber security sector to become the indisputable leader in the country. The support of the MassMutual Foundation toward this effort at UMass-Amherst and the satellite center here in Springfield will increase our technological edge and produce the graduates ready to enter the workforce and build on our success, said Rosenberg. This is an outstanding example of a public private partnership that benefits both the industry and our public higher education institutions.

DeLeo said, Over the past few years the House has focused on data analytics because we believe that the industry will define the commonwealths future economic success. We also recognize that public-private partnerships foster fresh perspectives that are beneficial to both companies and to an emerging field. Thats why Im so pleased that the MassMutual Foundation and UMass Amherst are joining efforts to prepare the innovators of tomorrow and position local businesses to be competitive in a dynamic economy.

Meehan thanked the MassMutual Foundation for its generosity and commitment and added, Both data science and cybersecurity are vital and expanding fields with a tremendous demand for talent. This investment will continue to advance UMass Amhersts cutting edge research in these fields and strengthen the regions role as an education hub that will help train the future workforce that the commonwealths knowledge-based economy relies upon.

In addition to the collaboration with UMass Amherst, the MassMutual Foundation is focused on expanding its FutureSmartSM program, which challenges young leaders to take steps toward both a successful career and financial wellness for themselves, their families and their communities. To date, the program has reached more than 250,000 middle and high school students across the country. Its goal is to reach two million students by 2020.

The MassMutual Foundation will also fund such programs as Mutual ImpactSM, MassMutuals employee giving program, and grants focused on economic development, academic achievement and workforce development and financial education. To learn more about the MassMutual Foundation please visit http://www.massmutual.com/responsibility

EDITORS NOTE: The field of data science draws on statistical methods to address business issues and improve the customer experience in an array of fields. With respect to MassMutual, among the work currently being conducted by its team of data scientists, includes helping the company instantaneously assess risks, enable new products and streamline the underwriting process.

In 2015, MassMutual made a $2 million, four-year investment to enable Smith College and Mount Holyoke College to develop a comprehensive data science curriculum. The company also opened an industry-leading data science center in Amherst.

###

About the MassMutual Foundation

The MassMutual Foundation strives to broaden economic opportunity for Americas youth and their families by investing in economic development, academic achievement and workforce development locally, and financial education across the United States. The Foundation is a reflection of MassMutuals longstanding dedication to corporate citizenship and its unwavering commitment to the communities in which we do business. To learn more about the MassMutual Foundation please visit http://www.massmutual.com/responsibility

About MassMutual

Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Company (MassMutual) is a leading mutual life insurance company that that is run for the benefit of its members and participating policyowners. MassMutual offers a wide range of financial products and services, including life insurance, disability income insurance, long term care insurance, annuities, retirement plans and other employee benefits. For more information, visit http://www.massmutual.com

About UMass Amherst

The University of Massachusetts Amherst is a nationally ranked public research university offering a full range of undergraduate, graduate and professional degrees. As the commonwealths flagship campus in Americas education state, UMass Amherst makes a profound, transformative contribution to the common goodin Massachusetts and beyond. http://www.umass.edu
Effective July 1, 2016, Sunstates Security will expand its company-wide 401(k) retirement savings program to include employer matching. In an industry known for razor-thin margins and minimal benefits, the move demonstrates the leadership philosophy that has driven sustained annual organic growth averaging 24% over the past five years.

We deliver a service to our clients, which means that our success as a company depends on the men and women who wear our uniforms, says President Glenn Burrell, who founded Sunstates Security after serving 20 years in Scotland Yard. Their dedicated efforts, day after day, have allowed us to experience exceptional growth, and its only right that we look for new opportunities to reward them.

While industry turnover rates are estimated between 100% and 400% per year, many Sunstates employees have more than five years of service. Burrell attributes low employee turnover to the companys core values of honesty, integrity and trust, which apply equally to interactions with both internal and external customers. This approach has paid off with a client retention rate that exceeds 95% and sustained growth that has doubled Sunstates size in less than four years.

With the enhanced 401(k) benefit, Sunstates will match 25% of each employees contribution. The employer contribution will vest at a rate of 25% per year, based on years of employment. All participating employees with at least five years of service will be fully vested.

Introduced in January 2014, the 401(k) retirement savings plan is available to all employees that work 20 hours or more per week, or a minimum of 1,000 hours per year, upon completing one year of employment. Other employee benefits include tuition reimbursement and medical coverage that predated the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

About Sunstates Security

Based in Raleigh, N.C., Sunstates Security provides uniformed security personnel and security consulting services to clients throughout the United States. The company is certified as a Womens Business Enterprise by the Greater Business Womens Council, a regional certifying partner of the Womens Business Enterprise National Council (WBENC).

###
A Cathay Pacific 747-8 freighter will be among the Boeing aircraft on display during EAA AirVenture Oshkosh 2016. From vintage biplanes to huge jumbo jets, at AirVenture youll see how Boeing shaped the world of flight.

The 100th anniversary of The Boeing Company, the worlds largest commercial and military aircraft company, will bring a unique collection of airplanes and presentations to EAA AirVenture Oshkosh 2016 on July 25-31. The 64th annual Experimental Aircraft Association fly-in convention, the Worlds Greatest Aviation Celebration, will take place at Wittman Regional Airport in Oshkosh, Wisconsin.

Many of the airplanes will be displayed on EAA AirVentures main showcase ramp, which has been dubbed Boeing Centennial Plaza for this years event. Those aircraft include current commercial and military aircraft as well as historic Boeing airplanes from the companys first 100 years.

Boeing aircraft have touched nearly every part of civilian and military aviation history over the past 100 years, so well rightly celebrate that century of innovation at Oshkosh this year, said Rick Larsen, EAAs vice president of communities and member programs who coordinates features and attractions at AirVenture. From vintage biplanes to huge jumbo jets, at AirVenture youll see how Boeing shaped the world of flight.

Among some of the highlights during AirVenture week will be the arrival and display of a Cathay Pacific 747-8 Freighter on Saturday, July 30  which has been named Boeing Day at Oshkosh. There will be other historic Boeing aircraft, such as the B-17 Flying Fortress and the B-29 Superfortress on Boeing Centennial Plaza that day. Prior to the night air show on July 30, Boeing historians and officials will also present highlights from a century of Boeing aircraft production during a Theater in the Woods program.

For 100 years Boeing has been the leader in the aviation industry, said Sherry Carbary, vice president of Boeing Flight Services. As we start our second century, we look forward to celebrating our centennial at EAA AirVenture with our customers and aviation enthusiasts.

Along with the July 30 festivities, an Alaska Airlines 737-800 will be in Oshkosh on Wednesday, July 27 to participate in WomenVenture Day at Oshkosh, of which Boeing is the presenting sponsor. The airliner will be flown by an all-female crew and bring more than 100 female Alaska Airlines employees to be a part of WomenVenture activities, which highlight the possibilities to increase the number of women in the aviation industry. Also that day, FedEx will showcase a Boeing 767 Freighter on Boeing Centennial Plaza.

A major gathering of Stearman biplanes built in the 1930s and 1940s is also scheduled during EAA AirVenture 2016. These airplanes are a major part of the Boeing legacy and will be displayed in both the vintage and warbirds aircraft areas. The Stearmans were among the most popular primary training aircraft for military pilots during the World War II era.

About EAA AirVenture Oshkosh

EAA AirVenture Oshkosh is the Worlds Greatest Aviation Celebration and EAAs yearly membership convention. Additional EAA AirVenture information, including advance ticket and camping purchase, is available online at http://www.eaa.org/airventure. EAA members receive lowest prices on admission rates. For more information on EAA and its programs, call 1-800-JOIN-EAA (1-800-564-6322) or visit http://www.eaa.org. Immediate news is available at http://www.twitter.com/EAA.
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In direct violation of numerous UN Security Council Resolutions, the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea, or North Korea, continues to conduct nuclear tests and launch ballistic missiles. To facilitate this program, the North Korean government is using the countrys financial system to launder money and illicitly procure needed materials and equipment.

For this reason, the United States Treasury Department has tightened sanctions on the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea, to target ongoing violations of its international obligations and a broad range of its provocative, destabilizing and repressive actions and policies.

On February 18th, the United States enacted the North Korea Sanctions and Policy Enhancement Act of 2016, which requires the Treasury Department to determine within 180 days whether reasonable grounds exist for concluding that North Korea is a jurisdiction of primary money laundering concern.

On March 2, the United Nations Security Council unanimously adopted Resolution 2270, which requires UN Member States to sever correspondent banking relationships with North Korean financial institutions within 90 days of the adoption of the resolution, among other restrictions.

Having found evidence that the DPRK is indeed a jurisdiction of primary money laundering concern, the Treasury Department took steps to further isolate North Korea from the international financial system by proposing a special measure that would, if finalized, require U.S. financial institutions to implement additional due diligence measures to prevent North Korean banking institutions from gaining improper and indirect access to U.S. correspondent accounts.

This measure would also reinforce current U.S. law that prohibits U.S. financial institutions from engaging in both direct and indirect transactions with North Korean financial institutions by prohibiting U.S. financial institutions from opening or maintaining correspondent accounts with North Korean financial institutions, and prohibiting the use of U.S. correspondent accounts to process transactions for North Korean financial institutions.

The United States, the UN Security Council, and our partners worldwide remain clear-eyed about the significant threat that North Korea poses to the global financial system, said Adam Szubin, Acting Under Secretary of the Treasury for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence.

The regime is notoriously deceitful in its financial transactions in order to continue its illicit weapons programs and other destabilizing activities.

Todays action is a further step toward severing banking relationships with North Korea and we expect all governments and financial authorities to do likewise pursuant to the new UN Security Council Resolution. It is essential that we all take action to prevent the regime from abusing financial institutions around the world  through their own accounts or other means.
In Bangladesh, attacks by violent extremists targeting intellectuals, secular writers, members of religious minority groups and activists continue at an alarming growth rate.

Most recently, on June 6, a Hindu priest was killed in western Bangladesh as he rode his bicycle to a prayer service. On June 5, a local Christian was knifed to death after Sunday prayers in northwest Bangladesh in an attack claimed by the Islamic State. Police said unidentified attackers murdered the 65-year-old in the village of Bonpara, home to one of the oldest Christian communities in Muslim-majority Bangladesh. Sunil Gomes was hacked to death at his grocery store just near a church at Bonpara village, said Shafiqul Islam, deputy police chief of Natore district.

The killing came hours after the wife of a senior anti-terrorism police officer was murdered in the southeastern city of Chittagong. Police suspect members of a banned local militant group are responsible. Three unidentified men stabbed and then shot Mahmuda Khanam Mitu in the head as she walked her son to a school bus stop near her home, according to Chittagong authorities. Ms. Mitu was the wife of Babul Akter, who led several operations against the banned Jamaatul Mujahideen Bangladesh militant group in Chittagong in recent months.

Such attacks have left more than 40 people dead in three years. Among those attacked are university professors, secular bloggers, human rights activists, foreigners, and members of religious minorities including Shia, Sufi and Ahmadi Muslims, Christians, Buddhists, and Hindus.

Bangladesh has a history as a moderate, tolerant, inclusive society that values the diversity of its people, culture, and religions, and such attacks fundamentally seeks to undermine all that Bangladesh stands for and all that the Bangladeshi people have strived to bring about in recent years.

The United States condemns the brutal murders of innocent people in Bangladesh. No one should have to pay with their life because of something they say or believe. The United States will continue to support all those who work on behalf of tolerance and human rights in Bangladesh and around the world.
Award-winning childrens author Rhoda Blumberg, who translated her passion for history into more than 25 nonfiction books, died at home on June 6. She was 98.

Blumberg was born and raised in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. She received her B.A. degree from Adelphi University in New York, and following graduation became what was then known as a career girl. She worked as a freelance writer, researcher, and producer for both CBS Radio and NBC Radio, a talent scout for Simon & Schuster, and wrote features for several national publications.

In 1945 she married attorney Gerald Blumberg, six months after their first meeting. The couple moved to a farm in Westchester County in 1951 and Rhoda then spent more than 20 years raising their four children. She was said to take great joy in introducing the children to the wonders of nature, the arts, and travel, among other pursuits.

By the 1970s, the Blumbergs had an empty nest when their youngest child entered college. At that time, Rhoda rekindled her interest in writing and reconnected with her fondness for history and research. In 1973, she worked as executive editor of Simon & Schusters travel guides, , and soon after tried her hand at writing childrens nonfiction. Her first title for young readers, Firefighters, was published by Franklin Watts in 1975. She wrote prolifically for the next 30 years, producing more than 25 books. Though she explored many nonfiction topics, it was her historical books that received the highest accolades and warmest praise in various journal reviews for being meticulously documented, beautifully written and entertaining. Her 1985 title Commodore Perry in the Land of the Shogun (Lothrop, Lee & Shepard) was awarded a 1986 Newbery Honor and the Boston-Globe-Horn Book Award, among other commendations. Her most recent books include Shipwrecked! The True Adventures of a Japanese Boy (HarperCollins, 2001), and Yorks Adventures with Lewis and Clark: An African-Americans Part in the Great Expedition (2004).

Her longtime editor, Barbara Lalicki, who retired as senior v-p and editorial director for HarperCollins Childrens Books in 2013 and now teaches at Pratt Institute in Manhattan, offered this remembrance: Sparkling, brilliant, alert to the telling detail, and fun to be with  words that describe Rhoda, and her vibrant, meticulously researched nonfiction as well.

Blumberg is survived by her four children and their spouses, as well as nine grandchildren, 10 great-grandchildren, and her sister. Jerry Blumberg passed away in 2009 shortly after their 64th wedding anniversary.

A funeral will be held on Friday, June 10 at 11 a.m. at Temple Israel of Northern Westchester.
The sad news of Muhammad Ali's death, which became public late on the Friday evening of June 3, has resulted in publishers rushing to get their new Ali titles into stores, and a run on available backlist titles about the iconic boxer and activist.

The most noticeable uptick in sales among Ali-related titles in the week ended June 16, at Nielsen BookScan, was for David Remnicks King of the World (Vintage, 1998); it saw a 576% increase in sales over the prior week, but still moved only 113 copies. Sales of Ali books have, however, also been climbing at various bookstores.

Daisy Kline, v-p of books at Barnes & Noble, said the retailer has seen a definite uptick in demand" for books about Ali. Kline noted that customers are showing an interest in Ali titles aimed at readers "of all ages."

The strongest demand at B&N has been for frontlist titles about Ali, such as Tim Shanahan's May-published Running with the Champ: My Forty Year Friendship with Muhammad Ali (Simon & Schuster), and Randy Roberts and Johnny Smith's February-published Blood Brothers: The Fatal Friendship Between Muhammad Ali and Malcolm X (Basic Books).

Backlist Ali books are also moving at the chain, though. In addition to Remnick's King of the World, Kline highlighted author Dennis O'Neil and illustrator Neal Adams' graphic novel Superman vs. Muhammad Ali (DC Comics, 2010). For children, the interest has been focused on biographies about Ali with Who is Muhammad Ali? by James Buckley and illustrated by Stephen Machesi and Nancy Harrison (Grossett & Dunlap, 2014) doing especially well.

The flagship outlet of Carmichaels Bookstore in Alis hometown of Louisville recently unveiled a seven-book display, near the store's entrance, featuring titles about the boxer. Among the books included are: Blood Brothers; The Greatest: My Own Story by Muhammed Ali, Richard Durham, and Toni Morrison (which was originally published in 1975); Running with the Champ; and Relentless: The Stories Behind the Photographs by Neil Leifer (University of Texas Press, May).

Carmichael's bookseller Jason Brown said that, of the titles in the display, Blood Brothers is selling the best. And, while Brown acknowledged that sales of Ali books are up across the board at the store, he said customers are showing more interest in commemorative magazines, particularly those with extensive photo collections of Ali.

Other independent booksellers reported a more modest increase in sales of Ali books. Kip Johnson, co-owner of Black Stone Bookstore & Cultural Center in Ypsilanti, Mich., said he was surprised books on the boxer werent doing better. Johnson predicted, though, that the sales will come, and he is planning to hold an Ali tribute event at the store in the near future.

Politics & Prose in Washington, D.C., Left Bank Books in St. Louis, and Book Beat in Oak Park, Mich., all reported that Blood Brothers has been their bestselling Ali title. But many at these stores, like Book Beat's Tiffany Dickerson, thought there would be more of a rush on Ali titles. A lot of young people dont quite know who he is, Dickerson said.

But Left Banks book buyer Randy Schiller, like many booksellers who spoke to PW, said he thinks his store is simply experiencing the calm before the storm, and that sales of Ali titles will really kick in when the new releases start arriving.
B&N readies a new concept location in D.C.; Canadas oldest LGBTQ bookstore relocating; a former Cleveland bookstore could get a new lease in a one-time funeral home; and more.

Visible Voice Books to Pop Up in Cleveland: After a February announcement that Visible Voice Books, which closed in 2014, could be coming back, owner/founder Dave Ferrante confirmed plans to reopen the store in a former funeral home. In the meantime he plans to host a pop-up tent-party on July 10.

Torontos Oldest Bookstore Moving: Glad Day Books, the oldest bookstore in Toronto and the oldest LGBTQ bookstore in the world, is moving to a larger, accessible space with greater visibility where it will be able to add a coffee bar, alcohol, and/or board games. For some people theres a lot of nostalgia attached to the location, but the store was also always supposed to be pushing boundaries; being part of the queer liberation and sexual liberation movement in 2016 means being wheelchair accessible, said Michael Erickson, lead owner of Glad Day. In conjunction with the move, the store has launched an Indiegogo campaign to raise $50,000.



B&N Proceeds with New DC-Metro Store: A previously announced 18,000 sq. ft. standalone Barnes & Noble store is moving forward at One Loudoun in Ashburn, Va. Slated to open in 2017, the bookstore is likely one of the mega-booksellers new concept stores.

Obituary: Capital Hill Bookseller Joe Shuman (1928-2016): Joseph S. Shuman, who died on June 6 from complication from Alzheimers, was best known for running Trover Shop in Southeast Washington. In 1958, he and Harvey Weinstein purchased the bookstore, which specialized in political memoirs and manifestos. The bookstore closed in 2009. A card and gift store that Shuman, and later his sons, also ran closed a few months later in 2010. Shuman was 88.
The Senate Rules Committee on Thursday voted to recommend that the full Senate approve President Obama's nomination of Carla Hayden to serve as the nations 14th Librarian of Congress. A highly respected and accomplished librarian, Hayden, who served as president of ALA from 2003 to 2004, would be the first woman and the first African American Librarian of Congress. She will also be the first professional librarian to hold the post in over 60 years. The question now is: when will the full Senate schedule a vote?

Hayden, currently CEO of the Enoch Pratt Free Library in Baltimore, would replace associate director David Mao, who is serving as the the librarys interim director following the January, 2016 retirement of James Billington, a Reagan appointee who took the post in 1987. To be confirmed, Hayden needs only a simple majority of Senators to vote for her appointment. A vote in the full Senate has yet to be scheduled, but ALA officials said they are hopeful it will happen soon, and prior to the Senates summer recess in mid-July.

In a statement, ALA president Sari Feldman said the Senate vote to move on Hayden's nomination was historic. "Once confirmed, [Hayden] will be the perfect librarian to pilot the Library of Congress fully into the 21st century," Feldman said, "transforming it again into the social and cultural engine of progress and democracy for all Americans that it was meant to be."

Hayden's nomination has garnered wide support. In a PW column last month, Brian Kenney, director of the White Plains Public Library, argued that Hayden was the perfect choice for the job, and that her confirmation would be a big win for librarians.

"Haydens nomination makes clear what should be obvious but is too often questioned: that librarians can lead the organizations theyve created, and served in," Kenney wrote. "If the president of the United States can find a librarian to run the largest and most complex library in the world, then your local library board can do the same when it comes time to hire its leaders."


Annie Proulx. Scribner, $32 (736p) ISBN 978-0-7432-8878-1

Structured in 10 novella-length sections, this monumental achievement begins with two Frenchmen, Rene Sel and Charles Duquet, who arrive in New France (now Canada) in 1693 to work for a local seigneur in exchange for land. The first section is about Sel, a born woodsman who fathers three children with Mari, a Mikmaq woman. The second follows Duquet, the wilier of the two, who runs away and, snatching up tracts of woodlands in the northeast, founds a timber company in Boston called Duke & Sons. The subsequent sections alternate between each mans bloodline, tracing displacement, resettlement, and death, finishing in 2013. The descendants of Sel battle the erosion of Mikmaq culture (at the books end, their number dips below 1,500), often struggling to adapt as Europeans flood North America, while the Mikmaq drift and take labor jobs as they are uprooted. Meanwhile, Duquets descendants take up the family business. James Duke, Duquets great grandson whose future flickered before him as a likely series of disappointments, pushes west to find new sources of timber. And Jamess daughter, the hungry and enterprising Lavinia, perhaps the books most memorable character, brings unprecedented growth during her time at the helm. Despite the length, nothing seems extraneous, and not once does the reader sense the story slipping from Proulxs grasp, resulting in the kind of immersive reading experience that only comes along every few years.
MOLINE -- Elimination of four majors at Western Illinois University would primarily affect the Macomb campus, Provost Dr. Kathleen Neumann said at a news conference Thursday evening.

The news conference comes ahead of a vote by the board of trustees this morning to determine the fate of the majors. The meeting will be held at Western Illinois University Quad Cities Campus, 3300 River Drive.

Programs slated for elimination are African-American studies, philosophy, religious studies and women's studies. All four programs are based at the campus in Macomb, Dr. Neumann said.

Bringing the programs back again in the future is a possibility, but not making the cuts now could result in additional layoffs, furloughs and modifications to other offerings, according to Dr. Neumann.

"We will have to continue to use all of the tools in our toolbox in terms of being fiscally responsible," Dr. Neumann said.

Faculty positions for those programs would not be cut until the 2017-18 school year. How many jobs would be cut would be determined after a review of how many faculty still would be needed to teach courses in those areas.

"We are not eliminating our minors, we are not eliminating our general education courses in these areas," Dr. Neumann said. "We are only looking at reducing the number of majors."

There has been lots of feedback from alumni, students and the community over the program cuts, Dr. Neumann said.

"Obviously, everyone is very concerned about the health of public higher education in the state of Illinois in general," Dr. Neumann said. "It is a very stressful time for everyone in terms of the health of public higher education.

Dr. Neumann also said she wanted to be "very clear" that elimination of the four majors was not a direct result of the lack of a state budget. Had a state budget been in place, the programs still would have been reviewed, she said.

Regarding a state budget, the provost said she "remains very hopeful" and is optimistic about receiving funds for fiscal year 2016, but said it is too soon to tell if it will happen.

Enrollment numbers in the four programs have been consistent over the years, but the number of students majoring in those programs fell below the metric used to trigger a review.

For a program to be reviewed, fewer than 25 students could be declared for the major, with six students graduating with degrees in those programs each year, Dr. Neumann said.

Currently, African American studies has 13 students as declared majors, philosophy has 17, women's studies has seven and religious studies has five.

All students in those programs will be allowed to finish out their majors through special study, Dr. Neumann said.
ELKO  Family and friends loudly cheered and applauded in Great Basin Colleges theater Wednesday evening as students of the Elko Adult High School held their annual graduation ceremony alongside others who earned their Certificate of High School Equivalency.

The ceremony included speeches from Judy Wintermote and Brittney Stefanic, instructors of Elko Adult High School, along with a commencement address from Associate Vice President of Great Basin College Distance Education Lisa Frazier.

My advice to you is follow your passion, stay true to yourself, and find your pathway, Frazier said. She encouraged students to do more, do something, anything toward your next goal.

The Adult High School graduated 11 students while 33 others earned their Certificate by passing the HiSet exam.

Luis Rodriguez, who received his certificate, is wanting to begin working toward his degree at GBC.

I want to do something more than this certificate, he said.

Adult High School graduate Sadie Roloson plans to further her education and become a teen psychologist.

Im going to wait a year and go to GBC, get my bachelors degree and then move to Arizona State University for my doctorate, she said.

John Childs received his diploma Wednesday night and also wants to keep going.

Hopefully, I can go to college at some point once I work and save up, he said. Looking to begin studying for his Associates in Diesel Technology, Childs added, I dont want to stop there. I hope to get a bachelors and masters degree. If I have the time after Im 60, get a doctorate.

The Adult High School programs instructors, Wintermote and Stefanic, did note a smaller class this year.

We are looking for growth next year and to achieve more diplomas, said Wintermote.

Stefanic added that the Adult High School has classrooms in Elko and Spring Creek, allowing students to continue their studies with flexibility. Courses are also offered online.

Someone can work at either the Elko or Spring Creek sites, depending on weather, work or family situations, she said.

Echo Skinner, instructional assistant for the Adult High School, said their program also uses credits earned from the High School Equivalence test, also known as the HiSet, for their diploma.

The HiSet, with a high score, can waive up to 11 credits towards their adult diploma, which makes it a faster way to achieve the diploma if they are lacking credits, explained Skinner, adding that it goes toward their English, math, science and elective credits.

We run the same academic school year as the Elko County School District, said Skinner, adding that the Adult High School starts August 29 this year.

The HiSet can be taken at Great Basin Colleges testing center, located in the Academic Success Center.

Ping Wang, director of the ASC, schedules HiSet exams year-round and noted that the center administered about 650 tests to about 135 test takers in the school year 2015-2016.

About 70 passed HiSET/HSE and received the certificate of high school equivalency from Nevada Department of Education, and many are either taking or planning to take college courses at GBC.

For more information on the Adult High School program, call 753-2233. To learn more about the HiSet and sign up for a test, call 753-2144 or visit the ASC located in DCIT building on the Great Basin campus. The ASCs summer hours are 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday.
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The resolution, prepared by German MEP Ms Martina Werner, puts forward concrete proposals to boost competitiveness that could be undertaken by the European Union (EU). MEPs want the European Commission to coordinate an ambitious industrial policy for the railway supply industry covering research and innovation, skills and training, the EU internal market, public procurement of equipment and services, trade and access to foreign markets.

A key objective is to create a level playing field for railway equipment globally by ending what the EP regards as unfair competition. "Parliament calls on the EU Commission to craft a coherent EU trade strategy which ensures compliance with the principle of reciprocity, particularly in relation to Japan, China and the USA," says the EP in a statement.

The parliament is concerned about low-cost imports of railway equipment from non-EU countries often with strong political and financial support from their country of origin which it says is "skewing" competitive conditions for EU suppliers. "These practices may constitute unfair competition which threatens jobs," the EP says.

"As this well-timed resolution aptly points out, European rail supply manufacturers are under significant competitive pressure from emerging Asian industrial giants on global and now even on European markets," says Mr Philippe Citroen, director general of the European Rail Supply Industry Association (Unife). "Meanwhile, these new competitors' home markets continue to become less and less accessible to European companies, putting this job-creating, innovative and export-oriented European industry at a significant competitive disadvantage. We hope that Industry Commissioner Bienkowska will take note of the strong messages voiced by the MEPs in support of our industry and we expect the Commission to put in place a structured industrial dialogue in the coming weeks."

Nevertheless, the European rail supply industry, which employs 400,000 people in the EU, currently leads the global market for railway equipment with a 46% market share.
The Association of American Railroads (AAR) joins the international rail transportation community in educating the public about the dangers of railroad grade crossings during the 8th Annual International Level Crossing Awareness Day (ILCAD) today, June 10, 2016.

Some of the nations largest freight railroads, more than 40 countries and numerous international railroad organizations and companies are marking ILCAD with events throughout the country and around the world. This years theme, Life is Worth Living, focuses on raising public awareness among senior citizens and persons with sensory and mobility restrictions.

The freight rail industry believes there is no greater priority than safety and federal statistics show rail safety has been dramatically improving over the last three decades with a decrease in grade crossing collisions in 2015, said AAR President and CEO Edward R. Hamberger. Unfortunately, there are still too many fatalities that occur at grade crossings and virtually all of them are preventable. Grade crossing safety is an ongoing focus, but freight railroads support initiatives, like International Level Crossing Awareness Day, that are designed to focus peoples attention on the inherent dangers around grade crossings.

Statistics from the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) show that U.S. grade crossing collisions fell by 7.6% to 2,280 in 2015 from 2,096 in 2014; grade crossing-related fatalities also dropped 7.6% to 244 from 264 in 2014; and trespass injuries fell 4.3% to 398 from 416 in 2014.

Americas railroads are partnering with local law enforcement agencies, community leaders and Operation Lifesaver, Inc. (OLI) to bring attention to grade crossing safety and awareness in more than 15 states. Some of this years events include: distribution of literature about railroad safety, a Chalk One Up for Safety drawing contest, Officer on a Train rides where law enforcement officers observe motorist, pedestrian and cyclist behavior at crossings and presentations from OLI that feature the See Tracks? Think Train! campaign, developed in conjunction with the AAR. Educating the public about grade crossing safety, remaining active on the FRAs grade crossing task force and working closely with state transportation departments are all preventative steps that railroads are taking to bring the industry closer to the goal of zero grade crossing fatalities.

To celebrate ILCAD 2016 internationally, Latvian Railways, Operation Lifesaver Estonia and the International Union of Railways will host an international conference in Riga, Latvia titled How to improve safety at and around level crossings. The organizations will also join experts from different sectors and countries on a technical visit to Tallinn, Estonia. During the conference, participants will discuss awareness, engineering, inspection, risk management and cooperation between railroads and infrastructure managers, local authorities and the media.

The ILCAD Campaign was established in 2009 by the international railroad community in conjunction with various highway organizations, the European Commission and the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE), to raise awareness among road users and pedestrians of the risks at grade crossings.
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Former employees of Russian Drug Control Service to go on trial in fraud attempt case

MOSCOW, June 10 (RAPSI)  Four residents of Murmansk, including former employees of Federal Drug Control Service are going on trial for alleged attempt to cash a forged bill of 1 billion rubles ($15.5 million) in one of the regions largest banks, RIA Novosti reported on Friday.

Prosecutors have brought final charges against former employees of the Drug Control Service for the Murmansk Region, Alexei Belyayev and Sergei Olkhovskiy, as well as Vladimir Anoprienko and Alexander Podorov. They are charged with attempted large scale fraud committed by a group of people on preliminary arrangement.

According to investigators, one of the alleged criminals has obtained fake bills worth 1 billion rubles ($15.5 million) with one of the largest banks allegedly being the guarantor. Earlier it was reported that fraud was attempted in the Murmansk branch of Sberbank. The fraud was prevented by Russian authorities.
Former Yukos security chief denied pardon

MOSCOW, June 10 (RAPSI)  Former Yukos security chief Alexei Pichugin convicted of masterminding several murders has lost an application for pardon, RIA Novosti reported citing his lawyer Ksenia Kostromina.

Alexei Pichugin has lodged a petition for pardon as this was the only legal chance for his release. He has already been refused, Kostromina said.

Earlier, Vedomosti newspaper reported that Pichugin had turned to President Vladimir Putin petitioning for pardon.

According to investigators, a criminal group killed several people between 1998 and 2002, including Petukhov, on orders from former Yukos shareholder Leonid Nevzlin. In 2009, Nevzlin, who moved to Israel in 2003, was sentenced in absentia to life in prison.

Pichugin was found guilty of murdering Petukhov and received a life sentence in 2008.

The murder of Petukhov provoked a public outcry 17 years ago, when several media outlets speculated that he was directly involved in the re-division of Russias oil assets. Investigation into Petukhovs murder was suspended.

In December 2015, former Yukos owner Mikhail Khodorkovsky was charged with organizing the murder of Petukhov. The Basmanny District Court of Moscow issued an arrest warrant for Khodorkovsky and put him on the international wanted list.
Domodedovo airport pays compensation to 34 victims of 2011 terror attack

MOSCOW, June 10 (RAPSI)  Domodedovo airport paid compensation to 34 victims in the criminal case launched after 2011 terror attack that left 37 dead, the airports press office reported on Friday.

Domodedovo reported first payments to the victims through a specially established charity fund.

Lawyer Igor Trunov said in turn that the victims are going to take back their civil lawsuits in Russia which were filed during preliminary investigation of the case when they receive compensation.

About 30 people more are expected to be compensated by June 15.

The Domodedovo airport owner Dmitriy Kamenshchik and several other ex-managers have been charged in the case over 2011 terrorist attack. According to investigators, they have not provided sufficient security level that let the suicide bomber freely enter the arrival lounge and set off an explosive.

A suicide bomber detonated a bomb in the Domodedovo Airports international arrivals hall, killing 37 people and injuring 172, on January 24, 2011.

Doku Umarov, Russias most wanted terrorist at the time, claimed responsibility for the attack. Altogether, 28 men connected with the terrorist organization called the Caucasus Emirate were linked to the attack, according to the investigators. Seventeen of them were killed in special operations in 2011, and four were detained.

In November 2013, a Moscow Region court sentenced three men to life in prison and a fourth man to 10 years for their role in the suicide bombing.
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.
WILDHORSE  After being closed for several years, the Wildhorse Resort is back in business under new ownership. Whether you are staying in the area or passing through, the refurbished resort is a welcome stop with a full bar, restaurant, convenience store, RV park and rooms for rent.

New owner Patrick Riles moved to Wildhorse from Reno 12 years ago, after he retired. During that time, the resort closed and remained empty for several years. Riles would drive by and look at the empty building and think that somebody should do something with it. So he did.

Its a little time consuming, but what are you gonna do? Thats why I bought it, he said. I was bored at the time. I dont like being bored. Id much rather be tearing something up or building something.

Riles purchased the place nearly two years ago and went to work refurbishing the entire property. The main building that houses the restaurant, bar and convenience store has been completely redone.

We stripped the building completely, inside and out, said Riles.

The restaurant now has a full-time cook and serves breakfast, lunch and dinner. Although the bar still has its dart board, Riles plans on putting back the pool table and is working on bringing gaming back in.

The resort also has an RV park with 34 spaces that have full hook-ups. Riles is currently working on refurbishing rooms to rent.

Right now I have two rooms completely refurbished. They have two queen beds in each room, and theres bathrooms, showers, heaters  everything it takes to survive, said Riles.

There are still 16 more rooms to renovate and Riles plans to eventually include a large shower house with a laundry on site as well.

The past two years the resort has sponsored the Wildhorse Trout Derby every February, which has been well attended despite lower water levels in the reservoir. There are plans in the works for more sponsored events.

Were working on several bike and car events that come through here to Elko and were trying to sponsor a cookout or something for them the day before the events, said Riles.

The Wildhorse Recreation Area is a base for many outdoor activities including camping, fishing, hiking, hunting, ATVs and water sports. And things are looking up for the reservoirs water level.

According to Joe Doucette, conservation educator with the Nevada Department of Wildlife, the lake went into winter at 12 percent capacity and is now up past 50 percent. Doucette expects the lake level to be around 60 percent this year and fish are currently being stocked.

The reservoir should receive its full complement of 60,000 stocked fish this year, said Doucette.

Folks that live in the Wildhorse area are happy to see the place open again.

Its a great community center for us, said resident Vicki Ayres. Everybodys just really happy to have it there, to kind of have a gathering place.

According to Ayres, its great to have a message center and a place to hold meetings, as well as a gathering place for locals during the holidays.

The resort is open 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. every day except Tuesday. For more information or reservations Riles can be reached at 775-690-9830.
realclearworld Newsletters: Mideast Memo

Ramadan, most Muslims believe, marks the time the Quran was first revealed to Muhammad. This week, millions around the world welcomed the beginning of the holy month, which is typically commemorated through intense prayer and daily fasting from dusk until dawn.

Ramadan by its very design can be a trying month for Muslims, especially those experiencing longer days farther away from the equator. Turkish Muslims, for instance, may experience more arduous fasting periods than their coreligionists in Indonesia, especially when Ramadan occurs during the summertime.

Geography and the sweltering summer heat can take quite a toll on the Middle Easts economic output during this time. Some Mideast countries shorten work days during Ramadan and enact laws prohibiting strenuous outdoor labor.

Such prolonged fasting can can be detrimental to a Muslim countrys economy, according to a paper published last year by Harvard University professors Filipe Campante and David Yanagizawa-Drott. We show that longer prescribed Ramadan fasting has a robust negative effect on output growth in Muslim countries, whether measured by GDP per worker, GDP per capita, or total GDP, write the studys authors.

Muslims arent in exact agreement on when this all begins and ends, as the Muslim calendar is a lunar one pegged to the different phases of the moon. They are, however, in agreement on one thing: Once Ramadan ends, its time to eat, pray, and be joyous.

And eat they do: During the fast-breaking holiday of Eid al-Fitr, Muslims are encouraged to indulge and enjoy the kinds of foods their better judgement might otherwise instruct them to avoid. "On Eid, you are encouraged to eat all the things that are too rich, too sweet, too creamy for a normal day," food writer Sumayya Usmani told the New York Times.

Food, and the absence or abundance of it, plays an important role in most major religions. Fasting is designed to bring us closer to our creator, our hunger pangs reminding us of the suffering and sacrifices of those who came before us.

In the war-torn Middle East, however, food has also been used as a weapon, and this Ramadan season has been no exception. As the five-year-long civil war in Syria rages on with no apparent end in sight, the embattled Assad government has increasingly turned to the tactic of siege and starvation in its bid to regain territory from the variety of rebel groups occupying parts of the country.

In the Damascus suburb of Daraya -- one of the four locations identified by U.N. officials as presently being cordoned off by the Assad regime and its allies -- malnourishment is on the rise, affecting children and the elderly most acutely. U.N. officials fear that if the government continues to drag its feet on allowing aid workers into these communities, many will likely starve to death.

"The blockage of aid is a political issue," said U.N. spokesman Ahmad Fawzi in a recent briefing. "Daraya is 12 km (7.5 miles) from Damascus, so it can be done but we need the political go-ahead from the government."

Siege and starvation certainly isnt a new tactic for Damascus, but such measures are no doubt felt more sharply in a time of fasting and religious obligation. As one of the five pillars of the Muslim faith, the decision of whether to fast is one of great significance to any Muslim -- especially those living under occupation and war.

The same is true even for those living in the territory controlled by President Assad himself. In Damascus, the war has pushed the price of groceries and other basic necessities through the roof, forcing Muslims to scale back or cancel entirely customs that were once routine in more peaceful Ramadan seasons past.

A family used to be able to live with about $70 a month, now you need at least $1,000, complained one Damascan woman recently to Al Arabiya.

The price of prolonged violence across the Middle East weighs not only on the region and its predominantly Muslim inhabitants, but on the entire world. Indeed, a recent report by the Institute for Economics and Peace found that violence cost the global economy $13.6 trillion in 2015, much of it stemming from the Middle East and North Africa.

If you take the Middle East out of the equation, the world has become more peaceful, noted the Institutes founder, Steve Killelea, in an interview with Bloomberg.

Its a troubling and tragic reality, and one that appears unlikely to be remedied before the conclusion of this Ramadan season. It is also a grim reminder for Muslims and non-Muslims alike that human suffering rarely takes a holiday, and that history is often unkind to those who turn a blind eye to it.

More on this:

The Right Way to Observe Ramadan -- New York Times

Is It Eid or Not? Trying to Resolve an Old Calendar Dispute -- Al-Monitor

Global Peace Index: 2015 -- Institute for Economics and Peace

Ramadan Traditions Die in Damascus -- Al Arabiya



***

Questions, comments, or complaints? Feel free to send us an email, or reach out on Twitter @kevinbsullivan.

Anxious for more Mideast news and analysis? Check out our new site, Real Clear Middle East.
Turkey is in the midst of a major shift in its policy on Syria. Ankara has long opposed the Syrian Kurds because it sees them as affiliates of the Turkish Kurdish separatist movement, the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). But now it has reached a compromise with Washington, in which it is willing to accept a role for the Democratic Party of Syria (PYD) and its armed wing, the Peoples Protection Units (YPG), in the fight against the Islamic State. The Turks will continue to view the Syrian Kurds as enemies. For now though, their relationship with the Americans and the threat from the Islamic State is a higher priority for them.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut CavuA?oA?lu on June 7 claimed that Washington had guaranteed that Syrian Kurdish forces would not retain a presence west of the Euphrates River after U.S.-led operations against IS were over. Speaking to state-owned broadcaster TRT Haber, the top Turkish diplomat remarked: If the YPG wants to give logistical support on the east of the Euphrates then that is different. But we do not want even a single YPG militant to the west [of Euphrates] especially after the operations. The U.S. has given a guarantee about this.

On June 2, Turkish President Recep Tayyip ErdoA?an said that his country was assured that Arabs would lead the fight against IS in the northern Syrian area of Manbij, while the Kurds would largely play a logistical role.

It was only on May 30 that Turkey said it was ready for a joint operation with the United States against IS, but on the condition that the Syrian Kurds were not a part of it. We detected the beginning of this shift in Turkish policy when U.S. CENTCOM Commander Army Gen. Joseph Votel made a surprise visit to Turkey to ask Turkey to play a key role in the offensive against the Islamic State. Votel went to Turkey from Syria, where he had met with the PYD/YPG leadership.

Three days prior, ErdoA?an hinted at a change in his countrys position when he said that Turkey had neither the chance nor the right to turn our back on our region and the world. He also added: Who can say, claim or imagine that the things happening in Syria, Iraq and the Middle East have nothing to do with us? These remarks were the first sign that Turkey was finally ready to fight IS.

The Turks had resisted U.S. pressure to play a lead role in the efforts against IS in Syria. Our view has been that Ankara would be dragged into Syria eventually, but we arent expecting Turkish troops to march into Syria in 2016.

The Turks cannot afford to have problems all along their periphery and a bad relationship with the Americans. Syria has been a growing challenge since it became clear that the Assad regime was not about to be toppled. But last November, Syria became far more complicated when the Turks shot down a Russian aircraft on the Syrian border.

This incident meant that Turkey had crises to its north and south. There was no way the Turks could be at loggerheads with Washington and Moscow simultaneously. Meanwhile, Turkeys relations with Europe had also soured because of the migrant issue and because of its unwillingness to crack down on IS. A key reason the Turks have been hesitant to act against IS is the fear that doing so would empower the Syrian Kurds and by extension exacerbate the domestic Kurdish separatist movement. However, that concern became secondary to Turkeys need to get out from under the pressures it was facing on all sides.

At the same time, IS was becoming a threat to Turkish security. The only way out was to mend relations with the Americans. The price for that was to get involved against IS. Besides, it was becoming clear that the Syrian Kurds were going to be the ground force against IS, which the Turks could not tolerate. Subjective preferences aside, the Turks also know that the Syrian Kurds are the only force right now that could strike at the heart of the IS caliphate.

The Islamist rebels that Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar are backing are focusing on fighting the Assad regime. Certainly the Turks do not want to insert their own troops, which would explain why they have agreed to the use of special forces. Therefore, they have gone from demanding that Arab fighters play the lead role while the Kurds act as an auxiliary force to saying they are willing to accept a Kurdish role in the fight against IS so long as the Kurds do not control any areas west of the Euphrates.

The fight against IS will not end anytime soon, so it is difficult to predict what will happen. At some point in the future, the Turks may deploy a large number of troops in this operation. They may not do this to fight IS, but they would likely do so to prevent the Syrian Kurds from enhancing the scope of Kurdistan, which is anchored in northeastern Syria.

Regardless of the fate of IS and the Kurds and the overall situation in Syria, the United States will likely get what it wants  for the Turks to play the lead role in managing war-torn Syria.
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ELKO  A North Dakota man was arrested Wednesday and charged with trafficking a controlled substance after authorities located approximately 2 pounds of methamphetamine in his vehicle.

Around 1:30 p.m., Elko Central Dispatch received information concerning a careless driver being followed by a Eureka County Sheriffs deputy, who continued to follow the vehicle as it exited the 298 off-ramp and traveled toward Elko.

The vehicle stopped at the Airport Shell, where officers met with the Eureka County Deputy and then the driver of the vehicle, James Marsh, said a statement from the Elko Police Department.

Officers requested a narcotics detecting K-9, because of information provided by Marsh, 58, of Columbus, and his driving pattern.

The K9 gave a positive alert to the odor of illegal narcotics present in the vehicle, said police.

The search produced approximately 2 pounds of methamphetamine hidden in a Tupperware container.

Marsh was arrested for trafficking in a controlled substance of 28 or more grams. His bail was listed at $250,000.
The Bureau of Land Management has a tough job managing wild horses. If they propose a gather, or dont gather enough, they get sued. If, through drought or agency inaction, forage and water on the range are exhausted and horses die, the public explodes with rage.

Meanwhile, wild horses keep reproducing and filling holding facilities at breathtaking costs to the taxpayer. Even in the best facilities, the lives of the newly captive horses do not remotely resemble their lives on the range.

Reducing wild horse population growth using contraception is an obvious solution. This is hardly news to the BLM, which has been funding such research, including ours, for 40 years. Were grateful for it.

But at some point, studying must yield to doing. And here, BLM lags.

The National Park Service has been managing the wild horses of Assateague Island National Seashore in Maryland with the PZP (porcine zona pellucida) contraceptive vaccine since 1994. Now, nearly all the Atlantic Coast barrier island wild horses are being managed with PZP, with barely a ripple of concern from the public.

But thats different, says the BLM. Those horses are much more approachable, and can be darted and redarted with the vaccine as needed. We cant do that out West.

Thats mostly true.

But, in our view, its NOT why NPS is succeeding where BLM is failing.

The crucial difference is that the NPS has developed careful, detailed management plans, whereas BLM has not even tried. For each site, NPS prescribes management goals, how many horses should be treated and which ones. They adapt their management plans as conditions change and goals are met, or not.

By contrast, half a dozen scattered BLM herd management areas manage herds with PZP. Other HMAs have used PZP haphazardly, without strategic goals or evaluation of success. BLM-sponsored research pursues the quick fix that will solve its billion-dollar horse problem. But no technical solutions will work without a systemwide implementation plan.

In the latest twist, BLM has backed off a volunteer-driven PZP project at Pine Nut Mountain HMA because of legal threats from a Connecticut animal rights group. This group must shroud its advocacy in legal action and pseudoscience because its solution to capping wild horse populations is natural regulation, which is code for mass starvation. To everyone else, thats intolerable.

PZP works. Its major side effect is that, spared the energy drain of pregnancy and nursing, PZP-treated mares display better physical condition than mares with foals.

To reduce herd population growth and keep wild horses in their bands at home and out of holding facilities, PZP must be applied systematically and thoughtfully. We understand that most HMAs dont have NPSs capacity to track and treat individual mares. But theres a lot of middle ground between that approach and treat all mares released back to the HMA. BLM must explore that ground, and plan, or continue to fail.

Were scientists. Were all for research. But for goodness sake, when it works, use it.
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Make-A-Wish, Palomar reach goal

The Make-A-Wish Foundation of Northeastern California-Nevada and Palomar Builders of Redding have reached their goal of raising $200,000, the nonprofit announced Thursday.

Make-A-Wish and Palomar came together last fall to raise money by starting House of Hope in the Shastina Ranch subdivision off Airport Road in south Redding. The goal of the campaign was to provide funds to grant the wishes of 20 North State children who have been diagnosed with life-threatening medical conditions.

The House of Hope at 3494 Lemurian Road has been completed and is ready for final inspection, which will be led by Make-A-Wish child Geddy from 11 a.m. to noon Tuesday.

Hauberg promoted at K-Coe Isom

K-Coe Isom, a consulting and CPA firm, has promoted five senior associates to manager and 16 associates to senior associate, including one in Redding.

Bianca Hauberg, a Chico State University graduate, was named a senior associate in the firm's Redding office.

Hauberg joined K-Coe Isom in January 2014.

Reporter David Benda can be reached at 225-8219 or at david.benda@redding.com.
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By KATE BRUMBACK, Associated Press

ATLANTA (AP)  To its owner, a pet dog may be priceless  and even though Georgia's highest court didn't go quite that far Monday, it did say that under some circumstances, an owner whose pet is hurt or dies at the hands of another may seek to recoup more than its fair market value.

The state Supreme Court ruled Monday that when a pet is injured or killed by someone else's negligence, the owners may also try to collect costs incurred trying to save the animal.

The unanimous Georgia Supreme Court opinion written by Chief Justice Hugh Thompson acknowledges the case deals with a subject "near and dear to the heart of many a Georgian in that it involves the untimely death of a beloved family pet," and how to measure damages when the pet is hurt or killed because of negligence.

Under Georgia law, Thompson wrote, the owners can't seek damages based on the sentimental value of the animal to its owner. He said "the unique human-animal bond, while cherished, is beyond legal measure."

But he also cited a 19th century Georgia Supreme Court opinion involving the injury or death of animal. It says that if an animal is injured through negligence and dies as a result of those injuries, the owner can seek the animal's market value, plus interest and "expenses incurred by the owner in an effort to cure the animal."

Robert and Elizabeth Monyak sued the Barking Hound Village kennel in Atlanta and its manager, claiming negligence, fraud, and deceit in the death of their dog Lola.

The Monyaks boarded their two dogs  Lola, an 8 -year-old dachshund mix, and Callie, a 13-year-old mixed Labrador retriever  at Barking Hound Village for 10 days in May 2012. The Monyaks say kennel staff gave Lola medication intended for Callie, which they say caused kidney failure that led to her death nine months later.

The kennel looks forward to proving to the lower court that it didn't cause any harm or damage and remains "passionate and strongly committed to the quality care of all dogs," spokeswoman Liz Lapidus said in an email.

The Monyaks are seeking to recover damages, including more than $67,000 to treat Lola.

Robert Monyak said he's very pleased with the high court's decision, adding that he believes the court reached a just and fair conclusion.

The court's opinion elaborates on what may be used to determine market value, saying "we see no reason why opinion evidence, both qualitative and quantitative, of an animal's particular attributes  e.g. breed, age, training, temperament, and use  should be any less admissible than similar evidence offered in describing the value of other types of personal property."
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By Jeremy Tuggle, Special to the Record Searchlight

Before William Albert Pryor became an apothecary, there were only a few men who made their mark in Shasta's colorful history as a pharmacist. Pryor, sometimes referred to as "Will," was one of Shasta's most enterprising entrepreneurs, successful in his trade and very popular among the locals during his generation.

Pryor was born on June 16, 1853, in Calaveras County, California. According to the 1860 U.S. Census, Pryor was the second child of pioneers Joseph Pryor and Prescilla Thomas Pryor, who had four children  three boys and one girl. Joseph Pryor was a native of England who came to Shasta County in 1854 and purchased a piece of property at Huling Creek in western Shasta County, near the settlement of Eagle Creek, which became the town of Ono in 1883.

His father's occupation was listed as a miner. Their children's adventures kept them busy while they were growing up, as Shasta County offered lots of recreational activities, as well as the general education they needed to succeed in life.

Joseph Pryor sold their property sometime between 1859 and 1862 before moving to the town of Shasta. At age 21, he registered to vote on June 20, 1874, in Shasta and listed his occupation as a telegraph operator. William Pryor relocated to Sacramento, where he lived and worked as a store clerk for a very short time.

When he returned to Shasta County, William Pryor was hired as a bookkeeper for J.E. Church in Red Bluff. As he approached the age of 30, he won the heart and the affection of Josephine Litsch, a daughter of pioneers Charles Litsch and Julia Behrle Litsch. They were married on April 22, 1885 at the home of the bride's parents in Shasta.

William and Josephine Pryor had two daughters, Alice and Ethel. William Pryor purchased the Spatz & Litsch Bakery Saloon from his father-in-law, Charles Litsch, and he remodeled the interior of the building and turned it into a thriving pharmacy named the City Drug Store. Among other products, Pryor sold standard patented medicines at his store.

Professional druggists had their own drug prescription forms printed. Pryor had his printed on standard paper with his company logo. He sent them to various doctors in the area, and the doctors would fill out each form and sign their signature or mark on the bottom line. When a form was sent in to him by a doctor or the doctor's patient, Pryor would review the form and fill it accordingly to the directions given by the doctor.

The prescription forms would chronicle the patient's name, the name of the medicine and how to proceed with taking the medicine. Like today, consultation would be rendered by Pryor to each patient.

Between 1885 and 1889, Pryor served as a post master for the town of Shasta. At age 43, the 1896 Shasta County Great Register describes him as 5-foot-7, with light complexion, blue eyes and brown hair. His occupation was listed as a druggist.

Surprisingly, Pryor acquired a secondary job in 1903 working as a telephone agent in Shasta as he operated his pharmacy. Around 1905 or 1906, he closed the City Drug Store and moved his family to Sausalito, where he was hired by the Northwestern Railroad Co., leaving the apothecary trade for good.

In 1912, his family moved to the Claremount District of Oakland, where he took a leave of absence from the railroad company as William and Josephine were building their new home at that location. Only bits and pieces of information can be found on Pryor's life after 1912, but we do know that his wife died in 1918.

In 1920, Pryor was living in San Francisco as a widower. He died June 2, 1927, at the age of 74. During his lifetime, Pryor was a charter and active member of the Shasta Parlor No. 35, Native Sons of the Golden West and was a member of the Castle Lodge No. 62 Knights of Pythias in Red Bluff.

Jeremy M. Tuggle works for Shasta Historical Society as their Visitor And Historical Services Associate. He can be reached at shs@shastahistorical.org.
Quentin Bealer

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By Jim Schultz of the Redding Record Searchlight

The fate of a Red Bluff man accused of strangling a 14-year-old girl in 2013 now rests in the hands of a Sacramento County Superior Court jury.

With closing arguments ending, jurors got the case around 3 p.m. Thursday in the trial of 42-year-old Quentin Bealer, a court spokeswoman said.

Bealer is charged with murder in the death of Marysa Nichols, whose body was found Feb. 28, 2013, lying facedown in a creek bed near her high school.

The jury is to resume its deliberations Friday morning.

The trial, which began in late April, was moved to Sacramento due to extensive pretrial publicity in the North State to ensure an impartial jury could be selected.

It's alleged Bealer strangled the pretty teenager after following her on a trail between Red Bluff High School where she was a freshman and Bidwell Elementary School.

Her yellow tank top was tied tightly around her neck when she was found, authorities have said, noting that Bealer's DNA was found on the shirt.

Bealer has steadfastly maintained his innocence and his defense attorney has attempted to show that Bealer's DNA found on the girl came from a cigarette he had given her.

Bealer, who has admitted to being a drug addict, was arrested March 2, 2013, after he turned himself in to police following the release of a surveillance video that showed a man matching Bealer's description outside the high school.

Bealer told police he was the man in the video surveillance, but that he had nothing to do with the teen's violent death.
Record Searchlight file photo Felix Ayala, back row, and Jose Luna sit in a Shasta County courtroom during a recent appearance in connection with the robbery of a Redding hydroponics store robbery.

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By Jim Schultz of the Redding Record Searchlight

The plot thickens.

Two Shingletown men ordered to stand trial in the Oct. 26 robbery of a Redding hydroponics business  as well as a third man who apparently remains at large  are accused of attempted murder in a closely linked shooting that occurred earlier that month in Shasta Lake.

But a Redding police investigator also says in a report filed in Shasta County Superior Court that there is "a strong nexus" between the three men and the murder of 61-year-old Bradley Stephen Yoder, whose body was found Oct. 3 inside his Shasta View Drive home in Redding.

"I found there is a strong nexus between the suspects involved in all three cases and many similarities in their behavior when these crimes occurred," Redding police investigator Brian Torum wrote in the report. He could not be reached Thursday for possible elaboration.

No one, however, has been criminally charged in Yoder's murder and police have not revealed how he died.

But the Shasta County District Attorney's Office has filed attempted murder charges in connection with the Shasta Lake shooting against Felix Ruben Ayala, 36, and Jose Orlando Luna, 51, who are scheduled to have their preliminary hearing Friday in Shasta County Superior Court.

Also charged with attempted murder in that Oct. 2 shooting at the Williamette Street home of one of hydroponic store's employees, Brennan Tinsley, is a third man from the Bronx area of New York City.

That man, identified as Sergio Martinez, is also believed to have been actively involved in the store's robbery.

"Martinez played an obvious role in each of these (two) crimes," Torum wrote in his report, adding that Tinsley identified him from a photo as the same man who attacked him at his home and at his place of employment.

According to Torum's report and the criminal complaint, Martinez, whose DNA was found on a hat apparently left behind at Tinsley's residence after the shooting there, is related to Ayala, possibly as brothers.

But Martinez, who has criminal history in New York that includes a 2008 conviction for attempted murder, is not in jail custody.

Both Ayala and Luna were ordered last month to stand trial on robbery and a series of other felonies during what was their second preliminary hearing in connection with the robbery of the Bare Roots Hydroponics & Organic Supply store on East Cypress Avenue.

They are scheduled to begin standing trial July 7. Luna remains in Shasta County Jail in lieu of $750,000 bail, while Ayala is in jail without bail.

Ayala and Luna are suspected of being two of possibly six men, some of whom allegedly dressed up as federal agents, who participated in the hydroponics store robbery.

Deputy District Attorney Emily Mees has said Ayala and Luna did not actually enter the business during the robbery, but believes they, especially Luna, played an integral role in its planning and execution.

It's estimated they stole $5,000 from the cash register, an additional $600 from the safe, and also took a large automatic marijuana trimming machine valued at $4,500, according to the police report.

Ayala and Luna were arrested Oct. 30 when Shasta County sheriff's deputies and California Highway Patrol officers raided a home on Scharsch Meadow Lane in Shingletown.

According to a police report, it's alleged two men walked into the hydroponics business before closing time and ordered three employees  Tinsley, Taylor Everette Thurston and Jason Pinson  and customer Marc Sieglock to the ground, handcuffed two of them, collected their wallets, and emptied the cash register and store safe.

The two men wore black clothing with a "DEA Agent" logo printed on the front of their shirts and ball caps, as well as badges hanging from chains around their necks, the report stated, adding that at least one of them was armed with a semi-automatic handgun, the report states.

Both were also carrying two-way radios or cellphones and communicating with others who may have been nearby, it says.

Tinsley, the store's assistant manager, who was injured in the alleged robbery and admitted to authorities that he had sold marijuana to Ayala in the past, has told police that at least one of the two men had confronted him at his home in Shasta Lake earlier that month and had shot at him.

He was not injured in that incident, which has been described by authorities as a possible attempted robbery of marijuana.
A group of 13 prominent Nevada officials this week announced their endorsement of Question 2, the initiative to regulate marijuana like alcohol.

Question 2, which will appear on the Nov. 8 general election ballot, will make the possession and use of marijuana legal for individuals 21 years of age and older and will establish a system of regulations for the production and distribution of marijuana.

The group of endorsers includes 10 current members of the NevadaLegislature, along with one former member of the Legislature, a member of the Clark County Commission, and a member of the North Las Vegas City Council. The following is the full list of endorsers:

State Senate Minority Leader Aaron Ford

State Sen. Kelvin Atkinson

State Sen. David Parks

State Sen. Tick Segerblom

State Sen. Patricia Spearman

State Assemblyman Nelson Araujo

State Assemblywoman Maggie Carlton

State Assemblyman Edgar Flores

State Assemblywoman Heidi Swank

State Assemblyman Tyrone Thompson

Clark County Commissioner Chris Giunchigliani

North Las Vegas City Councilman Isaac Barron

Former State Assemblyman Jason Frierson

Joe Brezny, spokesman for the Campaign to Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol, celebrated the announcement.

This is an exciting day for our campaign, Brezny said. With so many current and former elected officials coming out in support of Question 2, we are confident the people of Nevada will take the opportunity to regulate marijuana like alcohol this November. The truth is that marijuana should never have been illegal in the first place. As a substance, marijuana is far less harmful than alcohol. It simply makes no sense to punish adults who choose to use the safer substance.

Some of the endorsing officials provided their own statements to accompany their endorsements.:

State Senate Minority Leader Aaron Ford

Question 2 gives Nevada an opportunity to break free of years of failed public policy when it comes to marijuana prohibition. I believe that a legal, regulated recreational marijuana market will help eliminate a significant portion of the criminal drug trade while providing significant new tax revenue to our state. It will also allow us to reform our approach to drug use within the criminal justice system and finally begin to focus on treating drug addiction like the disease that it is. I will be voting yes on Question 2 and I urge other Nevadans to do so as well.

State Assemblyman Nelson Araujo

I believe that our tax dollars ought to be spent on improving our schools  not building new jail cells. Legalizing marijuana will not only help improve Nevadas justice system, but add a new tax revenue source to our state that will increase teacher pay, reduce class sizes, and build new schools. By ending the prohibition on marijuana, we can also help end the cycle of non-violent young offenders going to jail instead of college. By creating smart regulations, we can strengthen the relationship between our communities and law enforcement. I plan to vote Yes on Question 2 because I believe it is a critical step in reforming our criminal justice system to focus on violent offenders and career criminals instead of on non-violent users who need rehabilitation and treatment.

State Sen. Tick Segerblom

I am proud to be among this group of state leaders who have come together to call for an end to marijuana prohibition in Nevada. This strong display of support is further evidence that change in our marijuana laws is inevitable. But there is no need to wait. We should change our laws now so law enforcement can focus on serious crimes. We should change our laws now so consumers can have access to products that are tested and labeled. And we should change our laws now so we can all benefit from the elimination of the underground marijuana market.

State Sen. Patricia Spearman

No matter how you look at the issue of marijuana, it is clear that we will be better off regulating it like alcohol, rather than having it sold in the underground market. There will be tax revenue from sales, tax revenue from businesses, and tax revenue from employees. None of that is generated when marijuana is sold illegally. Best of all, we can use this revenue to address critical public funding needs in the state.
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By Amber Sandhu of the Redding Record Searchlight

California's joins five other states  Washington, Oregon, New Mexico, Vermont and Montana  to allow patients the option to end their life through assisted suicide.

The End of Life Option Act, which went into effect Thursday, has a plethora of requirements for patients before it allows physicians to prescribe medication that would end the patient's life.

"It's going to be very interesting to see how this implements," said Sue Negreen, president and chief executive officer of the California Hospice and Palliative Care Association, said. "It's a very emotionally charged issue."

Negreen said she's been working with members to ensure that they're up to date with their policies and ready by the time the law is in effect.

"It's a complicated law," Negreen said.

To be granted the right to die in California, the patient must be an adult suffering from a terminal illness with less than six months to live, be acting voluntarily when the request is made, and must be mentally and physically competent to self-administer the drug. The patient must also see an attending physician, a consulting physicians and a mental health specialist to determine whether the patient qualifies.

Negreen said there are a lot of questions being raised about the law. During her policy training session, she said she wanted to get a "pulse" on where some of the hospices stood on assisted suicide. In an internal survey, she found that nearly 70 percent of the hospices that had CHAPCA membership supported the patient's decision to end their own life, but they would not participate in providing life-ending medications to the patient.

In the North State, Mercy Hospice, owned by Dignity Health abides by Catholic directives. It released a statement that it would not take part in the End of Life Act. In a prepared statement, Dignity Health stated, "Though we do not participate in activities intended to hasten the end of life, we respect the personal nature of end of life decisions and make no obligation for patients to begin or continue life-sustaining treatment if it is not their wish to do so. In the event patients decide to forgo medical treatment to allow the natural process of dying, we remain fully committed to ensuring their comfort and peace during their final moments."

While some hospices and physicians can opt out on prescribing life-ending medications to patients with terminal illness, Dr. William H.H. Reeder, local rheumatology physician and delegate of the North Valley Medical Association, said that a discreet number of doctors would participate in the act, such as oncologists who may consistently deal with terminally ill patients.

"It's going to be a certain subset of physicians who get involved," he said. "Every physician has their own opinion, just like anyone else in society."

And a lot of doctors may feel conflicted about it. "A doctor's job is all about health and life sustaining  not termination of life," he said.

But Reeder emphasized that options for end of life care need to be discussed ahead of time, whether it involves the right to die, signing advance directives or just a general conversation with a loved one, before it's too late.

When asked whether the resources are in place in Shasta County for patients to end their life through the End of Life Option Act, he said, "I have no idea."

"People, patients and families do not talk about end of life. They don't talk about what they want or don't want," he said. "Really, families and individuals need to be encouraged to have these discussions."
Quentin Bealer

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The fate of a Red Bluff man accused of strangling a 14-year-old girl in 2013 now rests in the hands of a Sacramento County Superior Court jury.

With closing arguments ending, jurors got the case around 3 p.m. today in the trial of 42-year-old Quentin Bealer, a court spokeswoman said.

Bealer is charged with murder in the death of Marysa Nichols, whose body was found Feb. 28, 2013, lying facedown in a creek bed near her high school.

The jury will resume its deliberations Friday if unable to reach a verdict before the end of business hours today.

The trial, which began in late April, was moved to Sacramento due to extensive pretrial publicity in the North State to ensure an impartial jury could be selected.

Its alleged Bealer strangled the pretty teenager after following her on a trail between Red Bluff High School where she was a freshman and Bidwell Elementary School.

Her yellow tank top was tied tightly around her neck when she was found, authorities have said, noting that Bealers DNA was found on the shirt.

Bealer has steadfastly maintained his innocence and his defense attorney has attempted to show that Bealers DNA found on the girl came from a cigarette he had given her.

Bealer , who has admitted to being a drug addict, was arrested March 2, 2013, after he turned himself into police following the release of a surveillance video that showed a man matching Bealer s description outside the high school.

Bealer told police he was the man in the video surveillance, but that he had nothing to do with the teens violent death.

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Voters in Lassen County shot down a referendum on the State of Jefferson in the primary election, according to unofficial results.

A little more than 57 percent of voters cast their ballots against Measure G, which asked if they would support leaving California to form a new state of Jefferson.

Should Lassen County separate from the State of California and become part of a new State of Jefferson? the measure read.

About 5,400 total ballots were cast.

On March 17, 2015, Lassen County supervisors voted in favor of Jefferson but on the condition that the voters weigh in as well.

Measure G's results are non-binding.

"All across the board the politics of fear were rejected by the politics of hope and the Jeffersonians were soundly trounced. The best their candidates in Lassen could do was about 30 percent and the Measure G results blow a big hole in their aspirations, said Jim Chapman, chair of Lassen County Board of Supervisors, in a news release from the anti-split Keep It California group. "They have no coastline on the west and have lost half of their border with Nevada."

Citing a lack of fair representation, the State of Jefferson movement has worked toward splitting off from California to form a new state. The idea dates back to the 1940s, when Northern California and Southern Oregon residents started the movement to protest the roads' poor conditions.

It quickly evaporated when Japan declared war on the United States in 1941, but has resurfaced several times since then.
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The Redding Police Departments Neighborhood Police Unit arrested a Redding man Wednesday who they said was selling heroin and methamphetamine to people downtown.

An increase in criminal activity brought officers to Library Park, the RABA bus terminal and surrounding areas, police said. Officers spotted Michael Robert Mcpherson, 44, who has been booked into Shasta County Jail 49 times, police said.

Mcpherson, who is on AB 109 county probation for theft, was found to have heroin and meth, and was arrested on suspicion of drug sales and probation violation, police said.

Police had contacted another Redding man, Herman Leroy Powell, 47, and found him with drug paraphernalia and meth that he had just gotten from Mcpherson, police said. Powell was cited and released per Proposition 47.
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Two state agencies are looking into allegations that Siskiyou County Sheriff Jon Lopey intimidated residents of Hmong descent before Tuesday's election.

The Attorney General and the Secretary of State's offices sent representatives to monitor elections after they received complaints from the ACLU that the sheriff targeted the Hmong community with heavy-handed voter intimidation tactics.

People who work with the Hmong community reported that the sheriff set up checkpoints near communities where people of Hmong descent lived, asking them whether they were registered to vote. They also say the sheriff and other officials visited their homes visibly armed and said if they tried to vote on Tuesday they would be arrested.

Lopey says he and members of a state agency  one he declined to name  indeed visited areas where members of the Hmong community lived. The weapons were necessary because the areas are full of marijuana grows and he feared for officials' safety. As to the checkpoint, he said that was "basically untrue."

"The implication that we were involved in any discriminatory-focused enforcement is blatantly false," he said.

His concern is that the residents registered to vote based on property they owned but may not actually live on. They registered using parcel numbers or descriptions of where the land is. Siskiyou County officials apparently wouldn't accept that, but Brian Ford, an attorney who represents the Hmong community, said election laws allow people to use parcel numbers or location descriptions to prove legal residency.

Why would the sheriff care about the voting registration status of residents? According to Andy Fusso, founder of Siskiyou Forward, the sheriff's actions may be related to two measures on Tuesday's ballot, one that would ban outdoor medical marijuana grows and the other that would raise the sales tax by a half-cent to help build a new jail. The sales tax measure failed, but the marijuana growing ban passed.

Lopey argues that allegation, saying both measures passed by wide measures and the voter fraud investigation involved so few people that it wouldn't have affected the outcome of the election.

No matter the reason or the details, it's extremely troubling that a sheriff  accompanied by an undisclosed state agency  just days before an election traipsed into a neighborhood to check out the voting registration status of residents.

Handling voter fraud allegations by sending law enforcement officials to knock on doors and threatening arrest should not be the American way. Instead, such concerns are handled by the Secretary of State  after an election. Ford said that if election officials find there's a residency problem, the ballot is disqualified. Furthermore, residents are never jailed for paperwork errors.

Siskiyou County Elections Clerk Colleen Setzer said she did find problems with some voter registrations, and she forwarded those to the Secretary of State's Office because she has no authority to investigate.

But it appears that Lopey assumed he did.

Lopey's actions sound like outright intimidation. It's not known whether he uncovered any fraud, but his actions kept people from voting. Janelle Vang, a spokeswoman for the Hmong community in Siskiyou County, said on Tuesday that many residents didn't go to the polls fearing they'd be arrested and prosecuted. Others who did go to the polls found their names were not on the voter rolls, according to Fusso.

For a sheriff who paints himself as a Constitutional Sheriff, Lopey should go back and read that document. There are several amendments that grant the right to vote, including the 15th Amendment that says the right to vote is not to be "denied or abridged on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude."

Furthermore, voter fraud is extremely rare. Helen Hutchinson, president of the League of Women Voters of California, said: "We are on record as saying that voter fraud is so rare as to be nonexistent."

Maybe there are issues with how some residents tried to register to vote. Maybe the county has questions on the validity of whether people can use parcel numbers as proof of registry. And those concerns should be forwarded to the California Secretary of State's office, as the county clerk did.

But citizens shouldn't be hounded by a sheriff days before the election to prove they have the right to vote.
The Finance Commission has substantially increased the allocation of funds to panchayats, but a large part of it is apportioned by state governments.

By increasing the share of states in the divisible tax pool to 42 per cent from 32 per cent earlier, the 14th Finance Commission ushered in a monumental change in the fiscal architecture of the country.



Yet, while this marks a significant step towards greater fiscal decentralisation, the devolution process has not been taken to the lowest level of governance.

The central tenet of the 73rd Amendment to the Constitution was to empower panchayats as units of self government by handing over functions carried out by state governments.

To this end, it was envisioned to provide "functional autonomy and adequate resources" to panchayats to enable them to discharge their responsibilities.

But, look closer and there is little sign that the Amendment has been implemented in spirit.

A study on Panchayati Raj Institutions (PRIs) in Karnataka by Accountability Initiative finds that the state government has systematically appropriated funds meant for PRIs.

Even central government funds that are devoluted to gram panchayats have been "re-appropriated by the state".

This has weakened the financial position of PRIs, rendering them financially incapable of carrying out their functions.

Further, the study also notes that as state administrative entities do not gather data on expenditure at the panchayat level, these entities are not even aware of the funds that are being spent in their constituencies.

This means they are not able to keep track of how the money is spent. The damage to service delivery is thus more than collateral.

The figures are quite revealing. According to the study, in 2014-15, 33 per cent of the total state budget of Karnataka (Rs 49,625 crore) ought to have been allocated for PRIs "based on the functions devolved to PRIs, as mandated by the Karnataka Panchayati Raj Act, 1993, and the activity mapping matrix approved by the state government."

But in reality, only 17.5 per cent or Rs 26,343 crore reached the panchayats.

Of the total allocation, 11 per cent or Rs 16,541 crore was appropriated by the state government, while the balance 4 per cent ( Rs 6,015 crore) was allocated to line departments.

What this means is that rather than receiving Rs 49,625 crore, PRIs ended up receiving only a fraction of the amount- Rs 26,343 crores.

Not the only one

The mismatch between allocation and actual amount received is not confined to Karnataka alone.

"This trend is visible across states. There is a huge gap between what is recommended and what actually takes place," says Pinaki Chakraborty, professor at the National Institute of Public Finance and Policy.

In fact, other states are doing even worse. In their comparison, the report says, Karnataka is "considered a trailblazer for democratic decentralisation in India" and that "the state has introduced various reforms to strengthen local governments."

Thus, while political decentralisation has taken hold in states like West Bengal and Bihar, fiscal decentralisation is still far from becoming a reality.

"State governments try not to devolve functions and functionaries to local bodies. They try to keep it with themselves as they want to remain a source of patronage and power" says Santosh Mehrotra, professor, Jawaharlal Nehru University.

"Of the 29 subjects that were supposed to be devoluted, not much has actually materialised for reasons linked to the political economy," he adds.

Of the Rs 26,343 crore received by PRIs in Karnataka in 2014-15, 60 per cent was meant for non-plan expenditure, while the balance 40 per cent was for plan expenditure.

But a whopping 78 per cent of the non-plan expenditure and about 23 per cent of the plan expenditure goes in salaries.

This means, of the Rs 26,343 crore, only Rs 8,113 crore ultimately was used by PRIs for developmental expenditure.

But here too PRIs don't seem to have the flexibility as funds are allocated under various heads by state governments tied to the "implementation of central and state schemes".

This undermines their ability to carry out meaningful development expenditure.

"Line departments of state governments carry out services which are meant to be carried out by PRIs. This is not decentralisation in real sense," says Chakraborty.

Further, state governments have even imposed restrictions on transfers from the central government.

According to the study, in 2015, the Rural Development and Panchayati Raj department issued an order mandating that 25 per cent of the Central Finance Commission grants be deposited into an ESCROW account. This is used for payment of electricity bills.

This order is in direct contradiction to the 14th Finance Commission which states that "no further conditions or directions other than those indicated by us should be imposed either by the Union or the state government for the release of funds."

So, even though the 14th Finance Commission has increased the transfers to panchayats and has recommended a rather generous transfer of Rs 2,00,292 crore over five years, up almost three times from the 13th Finance Commission, this increase in transfers is not enough to provide PRIs with the fiscal space to boost development expenditure.

"While the 14th Finance Commission has vastly increased the transfers to gram panchayats, this is not going to change fiscal decentralisation dramatically," says Chakrobarty.

While limited financial resources may have impaired the ability of PRIs to carry out their functions effectively, questions have also been raised about the capacity of these local bodies to be able to actually implement programmes efficiently.

Concerns have been raised about the leakage of funds at local level, especially in the absence of audited accounts.

Hoping to rectify this, the 14th Finance Commission recommended that proper audited accounts be prepared by PRIs. But this only addresses part of the problem.

"If you want real effective governance, one needs to significantly enhance institutional capacity at the local level," says Mehrotra.
The European Commission said this month that EU member states should only ban "sharing economy" services as a last resort.

A French court fined Uber Technologies 800,000 euros ($907,000) on Thursday for running an illegal taxi service with non-professional drivers and slapped smaller fines on two of its executives in the first such criminal case in Europe.

The Uber POP service connected clients via a smartphone app with non-professional drivers using their own cars.



Uber France suspended the low-cost service last year after the government banned it under pressure from licensed taxi drivers.

A spokesman for Uber said the company and its two managers would appeal against the court ruling.

It was the first time executives from the world's most valuable venture capital-backed startup had gone on trial, although the company has become embroiled in many legal battles as it has expanded to 60 countries since its founding in 2009.

In Frankfurt, a court upheld Germany's ban on Uber POP on Thursday, rejecting the company's appeal against a ruling by a lower court which set stiff fines for any violations of local transport laws.

The Paris criminal court ordered California-based Uber to pay 400,000 euros, with the other half of the fine suspended. It also found Pierre-Dimitri Gore-Coty, director for Europe, Middle East and Africa, and Thibaud Simphal, the company's manager in France, guilty of deceptive commercial practices and being accomplices in operating an illegal transportation service and violating privacy laws.

Gore-Coty was fined 30,000 euros and Simphal 20,000 euros. In each case half of the fine was suspended.

DURABLE DISRUPTION

The court said in its ruling that UberPOP had caused a "durable disruption" of the transport sector, provoking violent protests by taxi drivers that had disturbed public order.

The court did not follow the prosecutor's recommendation that the managers be banned from running a company in France. They had faced a possible maximum sentence of five years in jail and a 1.5 million euro fine.

"We stopped Uber POP last summer and we are still disappointed by this judgment," an Uberspokesperson said.



"It has no impact on Uber's activity in France today. The app connects 12,000 professional drivers with 1.5 million clients."

Another French court fined Uber 150,000 euros for deception last year for advertising Uber POP as a car-sharing service.



French social security authorities have taken legal action against the company for failing to pay employer contributions in 2012 and 2013. Uber denies the charge.

The Uber spokesman noted that the European Commission had just published guidelines that support such innovative services.

The Commission, Europe's top business regulator, said this month that EU member states should only ban "sharing economy" services like Uber and home-rental site Airbnb as a last resort.

Uber POP has also been declared illegal by courts in Italy and Spain, while appeals are pending in Belgium and the Netherlands.

The company's problems in Europe have led it to shift its focus to its service staffed by professional drivers in black sedans, which has grown rapidly in France, Uber's second biggest market in Europe just behind Britain.



The company had a turnover of about 6 million euros in France in 2014 and made a 500,000 euro profit, its legal officer told the court.

The European Union's executive is also preparing to challenge a 2014 French law on taxi services and chauffeured cars following a complaint by Uber.



The so-called Thevenoud law requires chauffeured cars to return to a base between fares, restricts their use of software to find customers in the street and bans unlicensed services, among other measures.

The Commission has not yet formally launched infringement proceedings against France over the law, but sources familiar with the case told Reuters last month that a challenge was in the works.

A lawyer for two taxi drivers' unions, Jean-Paul Levy, hailed the ruling as "a landmark decision since the court stigmatised Uber's methods as running counter to economic and public order".

Photograph: Reuters
Zee.Aero, into which Page has poured more than $100 million since it started in 2010, conducts test flights of its prototype at an airport hangar in Hollister, California.

Image: Larry Page bets big on flying cars. Photograph, courtesy: PAL-V Europe NV (Image used for representation only).

Google co-founder Larry Page is backing two start-ups that are working on flying cars, including funding one of them with more than $100 million so far, Bloomberg said on Thursday, citing sources.

Zee.Aero, into which Page has poured more than $100 million since it started in 2010, conducts test flights of its prototype at an airport hangar in Hollister, California, Bloomberg said.

The start-up has a manufacturing facility on NASA's research center at the edge of Mountain View, the news agency said.

Since last year, Page has also been funding another start-up, Kitty Hawk, that is working on a similar competing model, Bloomberg said.

Kitty Hawk, which employs about a dozen engineers and has its headquarters about half a mile away from Zee.Aero, is working on "something that resembles a giant version of a quadcopter drone", according to Bloomberg.

Page, who is referred to as the guy upstairs ('GUS') by Zee.Aero employees, demanded his involvement in the start-up should stay hidden, Bloomberg said.

Page, Zee.Aero and Kitty Hawk could not be reached immediately for a comment.






The Chinese phone maker has ensured its two brands - Lenovo and Motorola - do not cannibalise into each other's share.

When handset maker Lenovo acquired Motorola two years ago, the $2.9 billion transaction was a leg-up for the Chinese player, desperate to make in-roads in the US.



Motorola, with an 85-year history in the US, was just the right fit for the company, which had no presence in that market.



It was also coming to Lenovo at a fraction of the $12.5-billion that Google paid to acquire Motorola in 2011.

But the question foremost in most minds was whether Lenovo could manage two competing brands in its portfolio.



That appears to have been resolved by the Chinese maker, which has neatly segmented its portfolio on the basis of price.

While Motorola is popular in the Rs 5,000-15,000 smartphone segment, Lenovo gains ground in the Rs 25,000-35,000 segment, conversations with multiple retailers and trade sources reveal.



In the Rs 35,000 and above price point, it is Motorola that steps in again, with models such as the Moto X Force and the Motorola Nexus 6.

Jaipal Singh, market analyst, client devices, IDC India, says, "A dual brand strategy is not uncommon among mobile phone vendors. It provides room to target different sets of consumers under the same umbrella brand and a tested strategy to manage its product lines across channels."

Executives from Lenovo were not available to comment on this story.

Dual-branding strategy rings success for Lenovo But industry sources say the company's eventual plan is to merge the Motorola and Lenovo brand names, something it kicked off soon after the 2014 acquisition of the former.

Motorola was rebranded as Moto, but the future name could go as Moto by Lenovo, persons in the know said.

In fact, the Moto X Force was launched this March without the Motorola brand name.

As the firm mulls going down this road, at a broader level, its success in India, where it is the fourth-largest smartphone maker, has been led in part by its emphasis on affordable models.

Apart from the Moto G range of phones, popular in the affordable category, Lenovo has its own budget sub-brand called Vibe and has models such as the K3 Note and A6000 Plus under the flagship that operate at the lower end of the market.

Neil Shah, research director, devices & ecosystems, Counterpoint Research, says, "Lenovo has grown swiftly over the past year because of its aggressive pricing strategy for the specifications offered. Apart from this, there is good support from its online partner Flipkart which has contributed to the bulk of its sales in recent years."

Shah adds that Lenovo's K3 Note and A6000 Plus, in particular, were the company's best-selling phones in India last year, driving the bulk of its volumes.

In the past six to seven quarters, Lenovo, including Motorola, has not only gained market share - from less than 5 per cent in June 2014 to some 11 per cent in December 2015 - but has also turned profitable in India for the first time.

This gains importance since India is the second-largest smartphone market after China.

For the financial year ended March 2015, Lenovo posted an annual profit of Rs 26.7 crore versus a loss of Rs 44.6 crore the previous year.

Figures for 2015-16 have not been disclosed yet by the company.

Already, Lenovo's smartphone portfolio is estimated to be giving it higher revenues in India than personal computers.

For 2014-15, Lenovo's overall revenues grew 41 per cent to Rs 5,667 crore from Rs 4,028 crore in 2013-14. While a break-up of revenue was not available, analysts estimate that over half its turnover now comes from mobile phones in India.

Bullish bets

Lenovo remains bullish on India at a time when it is struggling in its home turf China, also the world's largest smartphone market.

Executives in previous conversations with Business Standard have said that India could become its largest market by 2017, ahead of Brazil.

Lenovo's global CEO Yuanqing Yang had recently said that he expected $6 billion (about Rs 40,000 crore) in revenue from India by 2018.

Lenovo's increasing focus onlocalisation, market-oriented products and expansion of offline distribution may provide its local unit an edge over its peers, experts said.



The smartphone maker was working on a number of new handsets based on consumer insights, they added.

The dual branding strategy then may just help the firm hold things together ensuring consumers don't slip out of its net.

As Singh of IDC says, "The positive side of this strategy is that the customer benefits from the options he has from both these brands and has the advantage to choose between them, while the company retains consumers."

Lenovo seems to be taking note of this.
Since coming to power at the Centre two years ago the Bharatiya Janata Party has been calling for a Congress-mukt Bharat, confident that its electoral fortunes were on the upswing. As state after state saw the Congress's foot print shrinking, it seemed as if the BJP's grand plan was coming true.

"Congress-mukt Bharat," BJP president Amit Shah has often reiterated, is a "misunderstood phrase". According to him, "It is an expression against the avyavastha (disorder) under the Congress rule of decades where, for selfish interests of the party, Congressmen ignored national interests. We want India to get rid (mukt) of the system nurtured under Congress rule.

Echoing the sentiment, Prime Minister Narendra Modi describes it as an effort to get rid of dynastic politics, nepotism, corruption, communalism and divisions in society, or poverty -- all of which, according to him, are synonymous with a Congress dispensation.

So how close is India to becoming Congress-mukt? Does the decline of the Congress automatically mean the BJP is strengthened?

The map below shows exactly where the various parties stand.

As you can see, besides Karnataka, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Mizoram, Meghalaya and Puducherry, the remaining states are now governed by the BJP or its allies, or strong regional parties (like the TMC in West Bengal, SP in Uttar Pradesh). The Congress's footprint, it is clear, is shrinking.
A Hyderabad University Dalit professor has resigned protesting against the appointment of Professor Vipin Srivastava as the varsity's Pro-Vice-Chancellor-1 and has alleged that there was a "hostile" environment for his community in the campus.

In his resignation letter to the university Registrar, Prof Sreepati Ramudu, Head of the Centre for the Study of Social Exclusion and Inclusive Policy, on Thursday referred to the death of Dalit research scholar Rohith Vemula on January 17 that stirred nation-wide protests, and said he had been following the developments on the campus before and after the incident.

"The current environment on the campus is extremely vitiated and is perceived by the Dalit community as intimidating and hostile," he said.

"They (Dalits) feel very vulnerable and lack confidence in the impartiality of the administration. So, I had hoped that knowing very well the sentiments of the Dalit faculty expressed in many letters from the SC/ST Teachers Forum, the administration will take up confidence building measures. Instead, to my shock, I see a circular naming Prof Vipin Srivastava as the Pro-Vice-Chancellor-1," Ramudu said.

Reacting to the development, Srivastava on Friday alleged Ramudu was not cooperating in administrative matters and that he was not attending to any work.

"I don't know if he is protesting...but he has not been happy since January. He was not signing any papers...he was not cooperating in administrative matters. He was not attending to any work," he said.

Srivastava said a student wanted to attend a conference but Ramudu was not signing his paper nor was he responding to administrative work. "The Dean and I cleared that paper (of the student)," Srivastava told PTI.

"As far as Ramudu is concerned he has not tendered formal resignation as Head of the Centre...whether he has done so or not I don't know because I am on leave today and it is only through news reports that I came to know about it. I need to check from the university authorities if he has resigned," he said.

Ramudu alleged Srivastava had faced a serious allegation in the past.

Srivastava was the chairman of the committee that had recommended punishment for five Dalit research scholars, including Vemula, who committed suicide.

The university had appointed Srivastava as the Pro-Vice-Chancellor-1 on June 7. He would be assisting the Vice-Chancellor Prof Appa Rao Podile.

Ramudu wrote, "I am pained at the constant humiliation and oppression that is meted out to the Dalit community in the university...

"I am pained and my conscience as the Head of the Centre at a time when the Dalit community on campus lacks the confidence in the administration that should ideally be impartial."

Ramudu said he was the supervisor of one of the suspended students and that he was never informed by the administration about the issue until the suspension order was issued.

"When the students started living in the shopping complex in the 'velivada', in response to the punishment, Prof Appa Rao told us to influence the students in the capacity as supervisors and ask the students to leave the campus.

"I have been convinced that there have been many omissions and commissions against the Dalit students (violation of procedures) in the investigation of events culminating in the punishment of students which I took to his (Appa Rao) notice."

He said he made many "constructive suggestions" on how to solve this problem which were ignored. As a result of the "intransigent attitude" of the administration, which he "believed" resulted in the tragic death of Vemula, he had also expressed these same thoughts openly in the academic council meeting held on April 6, 2016, he said.

He said in his capacity as the Head of the Centre, he thought there will be measures taken by the university administration to build confidence among Dalits on campus but to his dismay, the things were turning the other way round.

"In view of this evidence of a hostile atmosphere on campus against the most vulnerable community, i,e the Dalits, my conscience does not permit me to continue as Head of a Centre.

"Therefore, in continuation to the earlier collective decision of SC/ST Teachers' Forum to resign from all administrative posts, I reiterate my decision to resign as Head, CSSEIP in protest," Ramudu said.
External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj said the government was doing everything to rescue her.

An Indian woman working for an international NGO has been kidnapped by suspected militants right outside her office in the heart of Kabul and efforts were being made to secure her release.

The woman, identified as Judith DSouza, a resident of Kolkata, was abducted from Taimani area along with two other persons on Thursday evening.

Judith is working for Aga Khan Foundation as senior technical adviser and was scheduled to return to India next week.

External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj said the government was doing everything to rescue her.

Our embassy is in touch with senior Afghan authorities and the government is also in touch with her family in Kolkata. All efforts are being made by the Afghan authorities to secure her early release, an official source said.

The womans father D DSouza said in Kolkata that the family received information that three persons -- Judith, a security guard and the driver of the vehicle, were abducted.

I want my daughter back, said a sobbing DSouza.

External Affairs minister Sushma Swaraj rang up and spoke to me and assured that the government is making all-out efforts to bring her back, Judiths sister Agnes DSouza said.

Responding to a tweet by one of the family members of Judith, Swaraj said She is your sister and Indias daughter. We are doing everything to rescue her. Please take care of your sick father.

A source said the woman was abducted by suspected militants.

Chief Executive of Aga Khan Trust for Culture, India, Ratish Nanda said every effort is being made to secure her safe release.

On Thursday, June 9, a staff member of the Aga Khan Foundation was abducted. An investigation by the authorities has been launched, in conjunction with security officials and various partners. Every effort is being made to secure the safe release of the staff member, he said in a statement in New Delhi.

The family, Agnes said, received information about the abduction in the early hours of the day. We received the news from the Indian embassy in Kabul at 1.30 am.

The embassy said we are doing our best. We shall inform you as soon as we get any information.

We are now waiting. We hope that the government does something and gets my sister back, she said, adding the Afghanistan government should also take steps to trace her.

She said Judith was scheduled to return home Wednesday next and had rung up two days ago. She did not express any apprehension, she said.

Talking about her daughter, Judiths mother Dazel DSouza said, She is courageous, bold and is in love with her job. I hope she is fine. I hope she is alive. I just want her back at any cost, the middle-aged lady said, her eyes welling up.

Agnes said, We had asked her (Judith) not to go there but she did not listen.

He said his daughter was working for uplifting the condition of women and children there.

The Aga Khan Foundation is an agency of the Aga Khan Development Network and has been working on restoration projects in the war-ravaged country.

It will continue to work with local communities, the government of Afghanistan and those in need to enhance the development of the country, said Nanda.
Islamic State's dreaded chief Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has been wounded in an air strike by coalition forces on one of the outfit's command headquarters close to the Syrian border in Iraq, media reports said on Friday.

Iraqi news channel Al Sumariya TV claimed local sources in Iraq's Nineveh province had confirmed that Baghdadi and other leaders in the Islamist group were wounded yesterday in the coalition bombing raid.

"The planes of the international coalition on Thursday bombed a location where there is a base of IS members along the border area between Iraq and Syria, 65 kilometres west of Nineveh," Express UK quoted an Iraqi source as saying.

ccording to reports, Baghdadi was injured along with some members of the organisation who were gathered at that meeting.

"The attack was carried out on the basis of precise intelligence information that led to strike its own that site," the paper quoted the source as saying. The area is one of the group's strongholds, the source said, adding that "Baghdadi and the other IS leaders arrived in Iraq from Syria with a convoy of cars".

A spokesman for the US-led coalition said that he had seen the reports but had "nothing to confirm this at this time", the report said.

In recent years there have been a number of reports of Baghdadi's injury, and even death, but none have been confirmed. Baghdadi was seriously wounded by an airstrike on March 18, 2015, that killed the three other men he was travelling with. He was said to be receiving treatment for spinal injuries after being wounded in that strike.

The injury left the terror chief incapacitated, with some claiming at the time that his injuries meant he would never again resume command.

In 2011 the US State Department named Baghdadi as a terrorist and offered up to $10 million for information leading to his capture or death. Baghdadi became the leader of the militant group in 2010 but it was only in 2014 that ISIS declared the establishment of a "caliphate" -- a successor of past Islamic empires -- in its territory in Syria and Iraq.
Jawaharlal Nehru University students union president Kanhaiya Kumar, along with 42 others, were on Friday detained by police at Bihar Bhawan in Chanakyapuri in New Delhi for protesting against the alleged attack on students in hunger strike at the College of Arts and Crafts in Patna.

The demonstration started around 3.30 PM, following which Kumar and 42 others were put inside a bus and detained at Parliament Street Police Station in New Delhi. "The protesters were detained considering law and order issues," DCP (New Delhi) Jatin Narwal said.

The protesters also demanded extension of the date of Bihar Public Service Commission main exams so that the dates do not clash with that of UPSC prelims.

"The condition of education in Bihar is continuously deteriorating. The government is not taking the demands of students regarding quality education seriously. And those who are fighting for this significant and relevant cause are facing violence and imprisonment," Kumar said.

He further said, "from the last few days, whenever there is a protest, Delhi Police detains us in five minutes. Throughout India, students are being attacked and whenever they protest, which is an elemental right, they are not allowed to do so. It is an attack on democracy".

Earlier this week, seven students of College of Arts and Crafts under PatnaUniversity sustained injuries in an attack allegedly carried out by some miscreants while they were protesting against the conduct of the administration.

"The protesters were demanding that the corrupt principal of the college be sacked when they were shot at by the guards of the vice chancellor of the University. The goons and police trashed them, and when others went for protest against these actions, they were detained. We demand their immediate release," Kumar said.

"We will keep the struggle alive and if needed we shall go to Patna," he added.
Bharatiya Janata party leader Eknath Khadse, who last week resigned from Maharashtra cabinet over multiple allegations of wrongdoing, is likely to be exonerated by the state police in connection with the charge that he received calls from underworld don Dawood Ibrahim, a senior official said.

The Home Department official said on the condition of anonymity that investigation into the alleged calls made to Khadses cell phone from a Karachi-based landline (allegedly registered in the name of Dawood's wife) was almost over, and the final report may come out within a week.

The Anti-Terrorism Squad (which probed the allegation) has received all the call data records... so far nothing significant has come out of the investigations into these call data records, the official said.

Earlier, the crime branch of Mumbai police too had said the allegation, made by the Aam Aadmi Party first, had no substance.

The ATS had summoned Gujarat-based Manish Bhangale, who calls himself ethical hacker and who had claimed to have obtained the records of a Pakistani telecom firm, for questioning last week. But he did not turn up.

Bhangale has moved the Bombay high court seeking a Central Bureau of Investigation probe; his petition would be heard on June 14.

The AAP had cited the records obtained by Bhangale.

The source of the information might have been fake and the agency is exploring this possibility, the official said.

Khadse has denied the allegation saying that the mobile number concerned was not even in operation for the past one year.

Meanwhile on Friday, Khadse made a futile bid to meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi, National Security Advisor Ajit Doval as well as senior party leaders in New Delhi.

Barring Union Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari, other senior party leaders declined the audience with the heavyweight politician from North Maharashtra who went to Delhi with the documents to present his case before the party leadership.

A Maharashtra BJP leader said that Khadse tried to meet Modi who has returned from his five-nation tour, but without success.

The party has already begun to groom Khadses archrival in Jalgaon district and state Water Resources Minister Girish Mahajan to head the party in the district, he said.

The BJP is more concerned now to ensure the partys victory in upcoming elections to zilla parishad, municipal councils and panchayat samitis in Jalgaon district.

The party has a sizable support among the dominant Leva Patil community in Chopda, Yaval, Faizpur, Savda and Raver municipal councils, in Jalgaon zilla parishad and across panchayat samitis in the region.

According to the BJP leader, the major worry for the saffron party is the clout enjoyed by Khadse in the region which was reflected in the recent move by 14 corporators from Jalgaon Municipal Corporation who threatened to resign in protest against Khadses unceremonious exit as minister.

In order to replace Khadse, an OBC (Other Backward Castes) leader from the region, we have directed Mahajan to be proactive in the party matters in Jalgaon district, he said.

The first indication that Mahajan is being directed to fill the vacuum in Khadses absence came early this week when he was dispatched to state BJP headquarters near Mantralaya to deal with a motley group of Khadse's supporters who had come to protest against their leaders ouster.

Khadse resigned last week, days after Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis submitted a detailed report to BJP president Amit Shah on the controversies surrounding the minister and also met Modi in the national capital.

Earlier, he had deputed his daughter-in-law and BJP MP from Raver, Raksha Khadse who had met Modi to argue the case on his behalf.
Alleged Maoist ideologue Kobad Ghandy was on Friday absolved of serious charges under stringent unlawful activities law for being a member of the banned Communist Party of India-Maoist by a Delhi court which held him guilty of residing here using fake identities.

The court held him guilty under various provisions of the IPC, including sections 120-B (criminal conspiracy) read with, 420 (cheating) and 468 (forgery) and awarded him jail term which he has already undergone during adjudication of the case.

It noted that 68-year-old Ghandy was in custody for almost six years and six months during the pendency of case.

"Ghandy is in custody since December 20, 2009 which is almost six years and six months. I, therefore, impose upon him a term of imprisonment already undergone by him," the court, while imposing a fine of Rs 40,000 on him, said.

Ghandy, an alumnus of the prestigious DoonSchool and St Xavier's College Mumbai, is facing prosecution in around 20 criminal and terror cases in different parts of the country.

Acquitting Ghandy of charges under UAPA, Additional Sessions Judge Reetesh Singh noted that "none of the evidence relied upon by prosecution have been found to be admissible in evidence by this court. The testimonies of prosecution witnesses suffer from infirmities."

"The recoveries made at the instance of the accused have not been proved beyond reasonable doubt. The disclosure statements of Kobad Ghandy cannot be read in evidence...as the same had been made to a police officer.

"...in the facts and circumstances of this case, there are reasonable doubts on the version of the prosecution on charge under sections 20 and 38 of UAPA," the judge said.

While holding him guilty of using assumed names and fake identities, he said "it is true that prosecution has been able to prove that Ghandy was residing in Delhi in an assumed name and that he had in his possession forged documents."

"These circumstances do give rise to a grave suspicion that he wanted to avoid himself from from being discovered. Suspicion, however grave it might be, cannot be equated with proof of the said fact. Material relied upon by prosecution to prove membership and association of Ghandy with said banned organisation is not reliable and admissible in evidence...

"Ghandy was residing in Delhi in assumed names with fake identities. However, gap between using fake identities and membership of the said banned organisation cannot be filled on the basis of suspicion," the court said.

Besides Ghandy, the court also convicted Rajinder Kumar alias Arvind Joshi for the offence under several sections of IPC, including 120-B (criminal conspiracy) and 420 (cheating).

Kumar was also awarded jail term already undergone by him during the adjudication of the case and the court imposed a fine of Rs 20,000 on him.

According to police, Ghandy was residing in Delhi with fake name and identity provided by Kumar, who himself was not using his real name or identity.

The prosecution had earlier claimed that Ghandy, who was arrested in September 2009 in this case in south Delhi for the alleged charges of being a Politburo member of banned outfit CPI-Maoist, was trying to set up a base for naxal activities here and was the "main piller and the think-tank of outfit".

One election ID card in the name of Dalip Patel was recovered from his possession along with other belongings, it had said, adding that he was residing in a house with Kumar in Badarpur area here.

The police had claimed to recover literature and CDs of the outfit. It also claimed that Ghandy was in touch with other associates via e-mail and used to motivate people for joining the outfit.

It had also alleged that Ghandy had visited Nepal in relation to Left extremist activities.

Ghandy was earlier absolved by the court of terror charges due to want of proper sanction and later, a fresh charge sheet was filed by the Special Cell of Delhi Police with another sanction for his prosecution under the provisions of UAPA.

Ghandy's counsel, however, had denied all the allegations levelled against him and had claimed that the evidence were planted.
Pakistan has reached out to Mexico and Italy seeking support for its Nuclear Suppliers Group membership bid, stepping up diplomatic efforts for its inclusion in the elite 48-nation bloc whose membership India is also eyeing.

Adviser to the Prime Minister on Foreign Affairs Sartaj Aziz spoke over telephone with Mexican Foreign Minister Claudia Ruiz Massieu as part of Pakistans continuing diplomatic efforts towards mobilising support for Pakistans application for the membership of NSG, a foreign office statement said here.

He highlighted Pakistans credentials for the NSG membership with a view to seek Mexicos support.

Significantly, Mexico had expressed its backing to India this week during the visit of Prime Minister Narendra Modi there. The Mexican support followed that of the United States and Switzerland. Japan too has expressed its support for Indias inclusion.

Adviser Sartaj Aziz spoke with Italian Foreign Minister Paolo Gentilioni to seek support for Pakistan application for NSG membership. They had a very cordial exchange, Pakistans ministry of foreign affairs spokesperson Nafees Zakaria tweeted on Wednesday.

As part of Pakistans diplomatic push towards mobilising support for Pakistans application for NSG membership, Aziz had earlier this week also spoke over telephone with the Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.

On Wednesday, Aziz also contacted Foreign Minister of New Zealand Murray McCully and Foreign Minister of Republic of Korea Yun Byung-se to highlight Pakistans credentials for the NSG membership with a view to seek their support.

Pakistans push to secure NSG membership comes at a time when India is also looking to secure membership of the elite grouping.

With the US pushing its case, Indias bid for NSG membership has received positive indications from most of the member countries but China is still playing the spoiler by

persisting with its opposition.
A lot is riding on the Rajya sabha polls that are scheduled for Saturday. Major parties are whisking away candidates of other parties, while protecting their own, MLAs are being sent to camps in the final countdown to the polls for 57 seats. Here is a state-by-state look:

Uttar Pradesh

With stage set for Saturdays polling for 11 Rajya Sabha seats in Uttar Pradesh, for which an extra candidate is in the fray, leaders of all major parties took stock of their numbers as the possibility of cross voting loomed large.

Thirty-four first preference votes are needed for the victory of a candidate.

In the 403-member assembly, the Samajwadi Party has 229 members of Legislative Assembly, 80, Bharatiya Janata Party 41 and Congress 29. The rest belong to small parties or are Independents who hold the key.

The Rashtriya Lok Dal, which has eight MLAs, has promised to transfer its votes to the Samajwadi Party and the Congress.

Bahujan Samaj Party has 80 MLAs and with 34 first preference votes needed for the victory of a candidate, the party can easily ensure success of its two nominees with 12 votes to spare.

Mayawati has, however, kept the suspense over which way her 12 surplus MLAs will vote in Rajya Sabha biennial polls, saying the results will show the voting pattern.

The BSP has fielded Satish Chandra Mishra and Ashok Sidharth. The BJP has fielded Shiv Pratap Shukla whose victory is certain.

The nomination of social worker Preeti Mahapatra, who forced a contest by jumping in the fray as an Independent, was proposed by 16 BJP MLAs, rebel SP MLAs and some members of smaller parties and Independents.

The BJP will be left with 7 surplus votes which might go to Mahapatra, who will have to manage a chunk of votes for win. Ruling Samajwadi Party has fielded seven candidates but its seventh candidate is short of nine first-preference votes.

On the other hand, Congress, which has 29 MLAs, needs five more votes for victory of its candidate and former Union minister Kapil Sibal, who now feels comfortable with RLD's backing.

Rajya Sabha candidates in the fray are -- Amar Singh, Beni Prasad Verma, Kuwar Rewati Raman Singh, Vishambhar Prasad Nishad, Sukhram Singh Yadav, Sanjay Seth and Surendra Nagar (all SP), Satish Chandra Mishra and Ashok Sidharth (both BSP), Kapil Sibal (Cong), Shiv Pratap Shukla (BJP) and Preeti Mahapatra (Ind).

Madhya Pradesh

With an aim to ensure victory of Congress nominee Vivek Tankha from Madhya Pradesh in the biennial polls to the Rajya Sabha, lunch and dinner diplomacy besides one-to-one contact with the party legislators is in full swing in Bhopal.

The polling for the biennial polls will be held on Saturday at the Vidhan Sabha. Senior Congress leaders and former Union Ministers Kamal Nath and Sushil Kumar Shinde are camping in the state capital to ensure the victory of Tankha, who is short of just one vote to sail through in the polls.

"A lunch was on at the posh hotel in the city where Congress MLAs were present. Besides four BSP legislators were taking part in it," a senior Congress leader said.

Soon after the arrival of Nath, he interacted with all the MLAs one-to-one at the state Congress office and also took part in the dinner at the party headquarters.

Nath will be hosting a dinner in the evening for Congress and other legislators at his official residence at Shyamla Hills area, the sources said.

"Everything is going on perfectly and as planned. Mock polling will also be conducted so that legislators will not commit any error in exercising their franchise in the crucial elections," state Congress president, Arun Yadav told PTI.

The Congress camp which is short of just one vote is confident of the victory of Tankha as Bahujan Samaj Party has already issued a whip to its four MLAs to vote in favour of him.

The assembly has a total strength of 230 MLAs. The BJP had 166 members followed by Congress 57, BSP 4 and Independents 3. However, with the death of BJP's Nepanagar MLA Rajendra Dadu and the Supreme Court's decision barring another saffron party MLA Rajendra Meshram from voting, the party has 164 votes in its kitty now.

Rajasthan

Election to four Rajya Sabha seats from Rajasthan will be held on Saturday BJP making all efforts for a clean sweep whereas the opposition Congress has extended support to independent candidate Kamal Morarka.

A candidate requires 41 votes to win. In the house of 200, the ruling BJP has 160 members and Congress 24. National Peoples Party has four, BSP has three, National Unionist Zamindara Party has two and seven are independents.

Union minister Venkaiah Naidu, BJP's national Vice President Om Prakash Mathur, former RBI official Ramkumar Sharma and member of erstwhile Dungarpur royal family Harsh Vardhan Singh have been fielded by BJP whereas Morarka filed nomination papers as independent candidate.

Due to presence of Morarka, polling has become necessary. The results will also be declared tomorrow. The BJP has claimed the support of two legislators of National Unionist Zamindara Party and three independent MLAs who attended its training programme on Friday at a hotel.

Congress's state unit announced its support to former union minister Morarka on the directions of AICC and issued a whip to the party MLAs to vote for him. It is expecting support of independent MLAs and other non-BJP parties.

"A dummy voting was conducted in the hotel in which besides the party MLAs, National Unionist Zamindara Party MLAs and three independent MLAs Randhir Singh Bhinder, Nand Kishore Maharia and Narendra Kumar also participated," according to a statement.

Leader of Opposition Rameshwar Dudi said that the party will support Morarka and a whip was issued to Congress MLAs in a meeting on Friday night.

"We were already in mood to support Morarka but the formal decision was taken in a meeting," Dudi said.
'Bachcha' Rai is alleged to be the mastermind behind Bihar's topper scam.

M I Khan profiles the controversial educationist.

IMAGE: Some students in Bihar pay up to Rs 50,000 to secure a 1st division. Photograph published only for representational purposes. Photograph: Kind courtesy Bihar School Examination Board

He failed the Class 12 exams twice, but cleared it with a 1st division in the third attempt from the college named after his grandfather, Vishun Roy College, in Bihar's Vaishali district.

In the years that followed, he allegedly turned the V R College into a 'shop' of 'guaranteed successful results' and produced toppers, with a little help from Bihar School Examination Board officials.

Amit Kumar 'Bachcha' Rai, the director-principal of the V R college, is alleged to be at the heart of Bihar's toppers controversy which came to light when four students from the college -- Ruby Rai, Sourabh Shrestha, Rahul Kumar and Shalini -- who topped the state's Class 12 exams were 'exposed' on local television channels for their unfamiliarity with their chosen subjects of study.

Amrendra Singh, a former teacher at V R College, had alleged that Rai became principal of the V R College on the basis of 'dubious' degrees in 1999, when he was just 19.

Singh alleged that Rai passed the Class 12 exam in 1998, then secured a post-graduate degree in just 13 months and subsequently became principal.

"How did he get an MA degree in 13 months after he passed his Class 12?" asks Singh, adding, "Later he secured a Phd in music."



According to reports, Rai passed the Class 10 exam in 1994 and enrolled himself at the V R College, but failed to pass the Class 12 exam in 1996 and 1997. In the third attempt he passed the exam with a first division in the science stream.

Rai, left, is said to have powerful political connections. During last year's Bihar assembly election, he shared the dais with Rashtriya Janata Dal chief Lalu Prasad and his elder son Tej Pratap Yadav, now Bihar's health minister.

After the toppers controversy erupted, Lalu Yadav quickly clarified that he had nothing to with Rai.

Bharatiya Janata Party leader Sushil Kumar Modi has alleged that Rai worked hard to ensure Laloo Yadav's younger son Tejaswi Yadav's victory in the 2015 assembly election.



Rai's father Rajdeo Rai, who is said to be close to some Bihar politicians, unsuccessfully contested elections to the Bihar Legislative Council.

Besides the V R College, Rajdeo Rai runs three other educational institutions -- two degree colleges and a high school.

The V R college was set up in 1997-98 by Rajdeo Rai in his father's name.



In the early 2000s, the college started producing 1st division results, and students with high scores. Its students' miracle performances in the mid-2000s brought it both the limelight and controversy.



In 2005, then BSEB chairman Nageshwar Sharma ordered the scrutiny of V R College results. 380 students with 1st division results were relegated to the second division; only four first division results were deemed genuine.

The V R College results were reviewed again in 2007.

The college produced toppers in 2014, 2015 and 2016, which came as a surprise for many government colleges and plus-two schools in Bihar with NAAC (National Assessment and Accreditation Council) grading.

IMAGE: 'Bachcha' Rai, wife Sangita Kumari and daughter Shalini after the results.

Rai was present on the college premises when the Special Investigation Team from Patna visited the V R College on June 8, but was not arrested.



"Rai was present when the SIT visited his college," a senior police officer told this correspondent, adding, "Why and in what circumstances did they not arrest him despite knowing that his name features in the FIR?"



A day after Rai gave investigators the slip, Zonal Inspector General of Police (Tirhut) Sunil Kumar admitted that it was discovered during a review of all five district police teams engaged in assisting the SIT that Rai and his father were present and provided the search party with required documents.



Police officers suspect Rai, alerted by powerful people in the state government that he may be arrested, then disappeared.



SIT teams have been conducting raids in Vaishali, Muzaffarpur and other places in the state to arrest Rai and Lalkeshwar Prasad Singh, who resigned as Bihar School Examination Board chairman on June 8.

The SIT investigation revealed that Rai's daughter Shalini, a V R College student, topped the science stream in the Class 12 exam last year, but her name was later removed from the merit list.

Bihar Education Minister Ashok Choudhary declared last week that the 'education mafia' were behind the toppers scam.



The first information report lodged at Patna's Kotwali police station alleged fraud and machination by the V R College to influence the results of the Class 12 exam.



"The answer books of the toppers appear to have been changed, which makes it a case of fraud," a police officer said.



According to the FIR, the exam centre for V R College students was located at the G A High School in Hajipur, the Vaishali district headquarters.

All the answer books from Vaishali district went for evaluation to Bhojpur and Kaimur districts, except for the V R College -- those answer books were evaluated at the Rajendra Nagar High School in Patna.



Many V R College employees are Rai's relatives. His father Rajdeo Rai is the college secretary, his mother Lalmuni Devi is the college president, his uncle Ramchander is on the college board.

Rai's wife Sangita Kumari, brother Jitender Kumar, a sister-in-law, another uncle, a brother-in-law, and two cousins all work for the college.

SIT officials allege that students had to pay Rs 50,000 to secure a 1st division result. If they were ambitious and wanted to top the exam, the rates were much higher.
IMAGE: Prime Minister Narendra Modi addresses the joint session of the United States Congress, June 8, 2016.

Describing the just concluded United States visit of Prime Minister Narendra Modi as "historic", the Obama administration has christened his vision of Indo-US ties that has overcome the "hesitations of history" and working for the betterment of the global good as "Modi Doctrine".

"The most important outcome in my mind of the visit this week and of the years of effort that preceded it is the clear and compelling vision that was laid out by Prime Minister Modi before joint session of the US Congress," Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asia Nisha Desai Biswal said.

"This vision which I have come to call The Modi Doctrine laid out a foreign policy that overcomes the hesitations of history and embraces the convergence between our two countries and our shared interests," Biswal told a Washington audience.

Biswal, the Obama administration's point person for South and Central Asia, said this at a discussion on 'Security and Strategic Outcomes from the Modi Visit' organised on Thursday jointly by the Heritage Foundation -- an American think-tank -- and India Foundation, a New Delhi based think-tank.

Modi, she said, in his speech furthered his bold vision of India-US partnership that can anchor peace, prosperity and stability from Asia to Africa, from the Indian Ocean to the

Pacific and help ensure the security of the sea lanes of commerce and freedom of navigation on the seas.

"This Modi Doctrine notes that the absence of an agreed security architecture creates uncertainty in Asia and reiterates India's adherence to and calls for others support for international laws and norms," Biswal said.

India, she said, is now key element of Obama administrations rebalance to Asia, a strategy which recognizes that Americas security and prosperity increasingly depend on the security and prosperity of the Indo-Pacific.

"The joint strategic vision which was issued last year laid out our mutual goals and interests in the Indo-Pacific and across the global commons. We are now implementing a road map that sets out a path of co-operation to achieve those goals and protect those interests," Biswal said.

In his remarks, US Ambassador to India Richard Verma said the US welcomes and shares the prime ministers vision. "We have made a clear and strategic choice to support

India's transition to become, as Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar has articulated, a leading power. Our actions, as security partners in every sense of the word, speak to this endeavor," he said.

"We envision India as a leading power that can uphold international norms and support what Defence Secretary Carter called last week a 'principled security network' in Asia.

Aleading power that can grow its economy while at the same time demonstrating global leadership on clean energy and climate," he said.

"And a leading power that joins likeminded partners to safeguard the global commons. Realising this vision will require diligent work on part of the bureaucracies in both

Washington and Delhi and resilience to overcome obstacles that may arise," Verma said.

Indian Ambassador to the US Arun K Singh described the prime minister's visit as "historic".

"There is a need step-by-step to build confidence and to build the habit of working together. That calls for regular meetings including at the highest levels," Singh said.

On the political side, he said: "We are finding that even though we may not agree on every aspect there is an increasing convergence in our interest and assessment of issues."

In the prime minister's speech to the Congress there was a reflection of the fact that this growing convergence is in the interest of India and the US. The areas of convergence are in the field of terrorism, situation in the Indian Ocean, Asia Pacific region, cyber issues.

Singh said the two countries have recognised that clean energy would be an important area of partnership.

These remarks were followed by a panel discussion by G Parthasarthy, former Indian diplomat, Baijayant Panda, Member of Parliament; Vice Admiral (rtd) Shekhar Sinha; Sadanand Dhume, resident fellow, American Enterprise Institute and Ashley J Tellis, from Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Panda said some senior people from the US State department have described prime ministers speech and his vision of India-US relationship as 'Modi doctrine'.

"This is not a coinage from the Indian side. This is a coinage from the American side, which I think is a very important way to describe it. So clearly it is historic shifting of gears," he said.
An officer with a heroin package seized during a drug haul in Catalonia in 2014. J. S. (EFE)

For decades it was known as caballo, or horse, and it inspired a plethora of metaphors. In the 1980s, it plagued a generation of Spaniards, and tore families apart in an epidemic that gradually lost momentum. Recently, however, the threat of widespread heroin consumption is once again hanging over Spain. And while user numbers have remained stable, laboratories have been dismantled for the first time ever in Valladolid and Cuenca, with police seizing 56 kilograms in April in Tui, Galicia; 27 kilograms between A Coruna and Portugal in December 2015; and another 16 kilograms in July 2015 from the Arosa River. This year alone 256 kilograms of heroin has been confiscated by police, 12 kilograms more than last year. So where is it all coming from?

This year alone 256 kilograms of heroin has been confiscated by police, 12 kilograms more than last year

During the presentation of its annual report at the end of May in Lisbon, the EU Drugs Agency (EMCDDA) warned of the dangers of a domino effect triggered by the flood of heroin from Afghanistan and spoke of a rise in deaths from overdoses. It is not clear whether these phenomena are related but its worth investigating, the report said.

Just when heroin was beginning to seem like a drug of the past, associated with the ravages of AIDS, all the signs point to a potential resurgence. Although there are no data suggesting a rise in consumption, heroin is starting to be used as a relaxant, to counteract the effects of more stimulating drugs such as cocaine, says drug squad chief Jose Ramon Norena. Its a view backed by anti-drug associations in Galicia.

Profile of a Modern Junkie The modern junkie may inhabit an underground world but he has little to do with 1980s addict, according to experts. He or she is a young person oblivious to what happened in the 1980s. They don't inject the drug, they smoke it, so they don't associate it with the risk of AIDS. Often they take it to alleviate the effects of other drugs like cocaine or ecstasy. It is seen as a quick way to chill out.

Basically, the glut of heroin is to do with the laws of supply and demand. Since the Americans and the blue berets left Afghanistan, the number of poppy plantations has rocketed, as has production, says the Chief of the Central Narcotics Squad. It is coming into Europe through Turkey. The Turks are great businessmen and they have an incredible network of contacts at their disposal.

According to the police, it is these groups of Turkish businessmen who smuggle the drug in and out of Rotterdam. There are a lot of Turkish immigrants living around the port. They are the ones who store and market the drugs. Right now there is unsold stock so it is extremely cheap, says one officer, who calculates that a kilo of heroin worth 20,000 can bring in 10,000 profit just for transporting it.

Its all organized from Holland and if there are investigations, that is where they hit a wall, says Judge Jose Antonio Vazquez Tain, who is well known for his role in the war on drugs. Their methods are not effective in dealing with organized crime. Now they also have a problem with Islamic terrorism but they dont realize it.

The only controls smugglers run up against are in France because of the Jihadi terrorism threat

Experts agree that the Dutch dont see drugs as a priority. In Spain we are much more proactive, says Norena. Its as though they were blind to them.

Heroin reaches Spain in the false bottoms of trucks or simply tucked away in smaller vehicles. Its easier to smuggle because the quantities are small, says another drug squad officer. Were not talking about big containers like they need for cocaine. The only controls they run up against are in France because of the Jihadi terrorism threat, otherwise they come and go from Holland as they please.

Galicia is one of the biggest destinations for heroin, along with Barcelona, Madrid and Zaragoza. The networks have long been established and its border with Portugal makes it challenging territory to police. They have recently discovered groups from Albania and Kosovo who are distributing it on both sides of the frontier, from Tui and Porrino to Portugal, says a drug squad boss in Galicia.

Many of the drug families are coming out of jail now and getting back to work, making use of the new contacts they have made in prison. Theyre always on the job

According to a police chief in Pontevedra, They even use the neighboring Portuguese towns to store the stuff because they know that although there is a good understanding between the Spanish and Portuguese police, the border makes investigations more difficult.

In Galicia, the drug trade is run by the same crowd as always. They go about their business under the indifferent gaze of the locals who frequent their stores and bars. The big drug families are still in business, says one of the directors of the Special Response Group Against Organized Crime (GRECO) in Galicia. Many of them are coming out of jail now and getting back to work, making use of the new contacts they have made in prison. Theyre always on the job, he jokes.

English version by Heather Galloway.
A high-level US delegation arrived in Pakistan on Friday amid tensions in bilateral ties after a recent American drone strike in Balochistan killed Afghan Taliban chief Mullah Mansour and strong concerns over growing Indo-US strategic cooperation.

Senior Director for Afghanistan and Pakistan at the US National Security Council Peter Lavoy and Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan Richard Olson are part of the delegation which will hold talks with civilian and military leaders, according to Pakistani officials.

"The agenda of the talks is open and several issues will be discussed including drone strikes, strategic and defence matters and reconciliation process in Afghanistan," an official from the Foreign Office said.

Pak-US ties are sliding down the hill due to difference over handling of peace issue in Afghanistan and US' growing defence tie with India, especially a blanket support for India's candidacy in the Nuclear Suppliers Group.

According to Prime Minister's Advisor on Foreign Affairs, Sartaj Aziz, growing US-India ties were creating strategic instability as Washington's support for Indian membership for the 48-nation NSG was discriminatory.

Pakistan has strongly protested the May 21 drone attack which killed Mansour.

"The recent drone attack in Balochistan in which the Taliban leader Mullah Akhtar Mansour was killed, has breached our sovereignty, caused a serious setback to the peace efforts and intensified hostilities in Afghanistan. The drone strike must, therefore, be condemned by all stakeholders," Sartaj Aziz said on Thursday.

Pakistan is also unhappy over the scuttling of F-16 fighter jet deal by US Congress which blocked funding to it citing Pakistan's non-impressive actions against Haqqani network. But Islamabad believes that the Congress was prompted to act due to Indian lobbying and pressure.

There are differences over nuclear programme of Pakistan which the latter considers is key to the 'credible minimum deterrence'.
In a sarcastic take on Prime Minister Narendra Modis bonhomie with Barack Obama, key Bharatiya Janata Party ally Shiv Sena on Friday wondered if the US President will shift to India when his term gets over.

The Sena also slammed the US for pursuing a dual policy towards India and Pakistan.

US President has become a good friend of PM Modi. Their relationship is so deep that we wonder if the Obama family will shift to Surat, Rajkot, Porbandar, Manali, Mahabaleshwar or Delhi post his retirement. No other Indian PM would have got so much love from an American President in the past, the Sena said in an editorial in party mouthpiece Saamana.

Obamas presidency is set to end on January 20, 2017.

The Sena said that Modi thanking America for standing by India in its times of need is only an example of his courteous nature.

But, it is the same America, which has not stopped its policy of helping Pakistan financially or providing them with arms and ammunition. On one hand, America helps India fight terrorism and on the other, sells F-16 fighter jets to the terrorist nation. This policy of America is dangerous, it said.

Noting that it was true that America has warned Pakistan to take action against the perpetrators of terror at Pathankot IAF base, Sena sought to know who will take action against the terrorists.

America enters a country where its enemy (apparently referring to Osama Bin Laden) is hiding and guns him down, but for India, it only gives warnings. This duplicity needs to be understood, the Sena said.

Treating Pathankot attack on par with 26/11, Obama in a clear message asked Pakistan to punish the perpetrators and vowed to stand with India against terror threats emanating

from Pakistan-based groups like Jaish-e-Mohammed, Lashkar-e-Tayiba and D-company.
'We use the word "historic" perhaps too much, but the prime minister's visit certainly was historic in so many ways.'

IMAGE: Prime Minister Narendra Modi and US President Barack Obama at their June 7, 2016 meeting in the Oval Office, The White House.

United States Ambassador to India Richard Rahul Verma addressed a conference on security and strategic outcomes, June 9.

The conference was organised by The Heritage Foundation, Washington, DC, and the India Foundation, New Delhi, which is headed by Shaurya Doval, whose father Ajit Doval is India's national security advisor.

This is what Verma, who began his speech thanking Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs Nisha Biswal and Indian Ambassador to the US Arun Singh, said:

It's good to be back in Washington for Prime Minister (Narendra) Modi's historic visit and to have this opportunity to reconnect with so many close friends. Selfishly for me, it's a welcome reprieve from the Delhi heat -- the temperature there today is 107 degrees (Fahrenheit)!

Let me also thank the Heritage Foundation, including Walter Lohman and Lisa Curtis, for organising today's event. For many years Heritage has been at the forefront of advancing US-India ties, maintaining the highest standards of intellectual rigour and scholarship. We very much appreciate all that you do.

This was a week I will not soon forget. We use the word 'historic' perhaps too much, but the prime minister's visit certainly was historic in so many ways. It was especially moving to see the address to Congress yesterday -- I started working in the House of Representatives when I was 18, and then spent several years working in the Senate.

I have great respect for the institution and it was fitting that the prime minister called our legislative branch a 'temple of democracy.' I also thought it was especially poignant that the prime minister quoted President Lincoln to remind us, during what can at times be a divisive political season, that our nation was 'conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.'

As my fellow speakers have noted, we are witnessing a transformative moment in the US-India security partnership. Our growing partnership across the domains is underpinned by a shared strategic vision between our two nations in the Indo-Pacific region. Under the stewardship of Defence Secretary (Ashton) Carter and (Indian Defence) Minister (Manohar) Parrikar -- two exceptional champions of this partnership -- defence sales, exchanges, exercises, and technology sharing have reached unprecedented levels.

Beyond defence, our cooperation is enhancing security in every sense of the word -- from environment and energy to cyber and counterterrorism. Today, I'd like to discuss how we got here and what this growing security partnership means for our two nations.

But perhaps it's best to start with the prime minister's own words yesterday. He, of course, referred to the United States and India as 'natural allies' and, like President (Barack) Obama, called our ties 'the defining partnership of the 21st century.' He rightfully noted that we have overcome the 'hesitations of history' becoming 'indispensable partners'.

But the key line for me, and one that reflects how far we've come was when he said 'a stronger and prosperous India is in America's strategic interest.' It is this belief that now forms the basis for so much of our cooperation.

It frees us from thinking about transactions, and it moves us to thinking bigger, with an India that leads on the world's stage, that remains a net provider of security, and, perhaps most importantly, a powerful force for democratic values and the rule of law.

IMAGE: Ships from the Indian navy, Japan Maritime Self Defence Force and US Navy get into formation for a gunnery live-fire exercise as part of Malabar 2015.

Defence Cooperation

With that framework in mind, let me start with defence cooperation, and recount a small gathering that took place about an hour from here in July 1992. With the Cold War at an end, a group of Indian and American officials met at the Airlie conference centre in Virginia to discuss how to improve US-India defence cooperation.

One of the proposals that emerged from the meeting was for a modest bilateral naval exercise, titled MALABAR. Few of the participants could have predicted the dramatic transformation of MALABAR -- and the larger US-India defence partnership -- over the coming two decades.

Today, MALABAR is a trilateral exercise, with regular participation from the Japan Maritime Self Defence Force. When our three naval forces gather next week for MALABAR 2016, it will be among our largest and most complex exercises to date. This year's MALABAR will feature a US aircraft carrier strike group and submarine, maritime patrol aircraft, Indian Navy divers and marine commandos, and a large variety of surface ships. For good measure, we'll also hold a tri-nation naval band performance!

I'm also proud to report that India is now a major defence partner of the United States, and the sharing of defence technologies with India is on par with our closest allies and partners. Yesterday (June 8), we finalised a logistics support agreement. As most of you know, this was in the works for some time -- credit must be shared with my four predecessors in Delhi!

We also signed a technical arrangement to share white shipping data, which will improve cooperation on maritime domain awareness, and an Information Exchange Annex under our Aircraft Carrier Working Group. This annex will further expand US support for India's carrier programme, one of the most exciting defence initiatives we currently have underway.

If the US aircraft carrier was a symbol that divided us in the early 1970s, it is now a powerful aspect of our cooperation that will unite us in the years ahead.

Counter Terrorism and Cyber

As democracies, India and the United States have a unique responsibility in the struggle against violent extremists who seek to harm our citizens.

Last week, I had the great privilege to sign an agreement with Indian Home Secretary (Rajiv) Mehrishi that will significantly expand exchanges of terrorist screening information. The Homeland Security Dialogue next month, one of our cabinet level engagements, will offer further opportunities to deepen counterterrorism cooperation.

In the cyber sphere, our two governments will finalise shortly a joint framework that further reinforces our commitment to an open and secure internet and combatting cyber threats. These shared principles will help protect the rights of our citizens and the security of our two nations.

As of this month, India and the United States are respectively the world's second and third largest internet users. When two democracies, representing more than 600 million internet users, come together to articulate a common vision for cyber norms, it sends a powerful signal to those who seek to use cyberspace for malicious purposes.

IMAGE: Indian Air Force Su-30MKI fighter aircraft prepare to land at the Eielson Air Force Base, Alaska. India and the US conduct more military exercises together than aniother other two nations. Photograph: Staff Sergeantt Joshua Turner/US Air Force

Beyond Defence: India as a Total Security Partner

These initiatives are expanding our security cooperation in the traditional sense, but let's examine the larger picture. The 21st century is increasingly defined by a new security paradigm, one that includes cyber threats, environmental degradation, climate change, disease, resource scarcity, and other non-conventional challenges.



Against this complicated security landscape, we must deepen cooperation with India across all security domains -- air, space, cyber, and maritime, but also across economic and political domains as well. And we are doing exactly that.



To put it simply, India is a total security partner.

Both of our nations recognise that without a strong economic partnership, our bilateral cooperation in other areas cannot reach its full potential. Our respective roles as security providers depend on our economic prowess.



That is why we continue to expand bilateral trade -- which reached a record $107 billion last year -- and deepen our economic ties.

But we can do more and we must continue to break down barriers to create opportunities for both of our peoples. For example, we are launching a new US-India Innovation Forum, a platform for American and Indian entrepreneurs to share best practices and foster innovation.



We are also working with the Indian government on continuing the reforms -- and some of these are politically difficult -- that will improve India's ranking in the Ease of Doing Business Index.

By continuing to remove barriers to trade and building an open and rules based trade architecture, the US and India can ensure economic security for our citizens and the world.



As Prime Minister Modi said this week, a democratic India can be a driver of the global economy. We couldn't agree more.

In the field of climate and clean energy, I continue to believe that this will be one of the single biggest opportunities for cooperation, and opportunities for growth, in the years ahead.





IMAGE: Prime Minister Modi and President Obama on the sidelines of the COP21 -- Climate Change -- Summit in Paris, November 30, 2015. Photograph: Press Information Bureau

Prime Minister Modi and President Obama clearly recognise the grave threat posed by climate change to our two nations and the world, and the importance of our two countries working together to combat this challenge.



At the same time, India has set some of the most ambitious renewable energy targets in the world. Hundreds of billions of dollars will be invested in the years ahead, and US companies are well positioned to lead the charge.

The United States and India once again demonstrated leadership this week by pledging early entry into force of the Paris climate agreement. We're also working together to phase down the use of hydro-fluorocarbonsunder the Montreal Protocol, in a transition that not only benefits the climate but also US companies with leading-edge technologies.

With the new commitments announced this week, and through the US-India Partnership to Advance Clean energy, we have mobilised over $2.5 billion for clean energy deployment.



Furthermore, the agreements reached between the Indian government and Westinghouse for the construction of six nuclear reactors mark a turning point in our civil nuclear cooperation. The deal, which would be enabled by the EXIM bank, aims to provide India with a dependable source of clean power, while supporting tens of thousands of jobs here in the United States.

Together, these efforts to protect the environment and advance clean energy will advance economic growth while strengtheningthe human security of millions around the globe.

IMAGE: Prime Minister Modi and President Obama make their points as Foreign Secretary Subrahmanyam Jaishankar takes notes, June 7, 2016. Photograph: Press Information Bureau

Supporting Indian Leadership

Prime Minister Modi stated recently that 'India is no longer standing in a corner' on the world stage. The United States welcomes and shares the prime minister's vision.



We have made a clear and strategic choice to support India's transition to become, as Foreign Secretary (Subrahmanyam) Jaishankar has articulated, a leading power. Our actions, as security partners in every sense of the word, speak to this endeavour.

We envision India as a leading power that can uphold international norms and support what Defence Secretary Carter called last week a 'principled security network' in Asia.



A leading power that can grow its economy while at the same time demonstrating global leadership on clean energy and climate. And a leading power that joins like-minded partners to safeguard the global commons.

Realising this vision will require diligent work on part of the bureaucracies in both Washington and Delhi and resilience to overcome obstacles that may arise.



Let us keep at it and work toward realising the full promise and potential of this partnership.



As the prime minister said yesterday, 'the need of the hour is for us to deepen our security cooperation' because ultimately it is our work together that can 'build a bridge to a more united, humane and prosperous world.' That's a goal to strive for. Thank you very much.
Ireland: UN experts urge amending abortion ban subjecting women to suffering and discrimination

Publisher UN News Service Publication Date 9 June 2016 Cite as UN News Service, Ireland: UN experts urge amending abortion ban subjecting women to suffering and discrimination, 9 June 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/575a77361b4.html [accessed 26 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.

9 June 2016 - A woman in Ireland who was forced to choose between carrying her foetus to term, knowing it would not survive, or seeking an abortion abroad was subjected to discrimination and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment as a result of Ireland's legal prohibition of abortion, United Nations experts have found.

The independent experts, from the Geneva-based Human Rights Committee, issued their findings after considering a complaint by the woman, AM, who was told in November 2011 when she was in the 21st week of pregnancy that her foetus had congenital defects, which meant it would die in the womb or shortly after birth.

This meant she had to choose "between continuing her non-viable pregnancy or travelling to another country while carrying a dying foetus, at personal expense and separated from the support of her family, and to return while not fully recovered," the Committee said in a press release.

AM decided to travel to the United Kingdom for a termination and returned 12 hours after the procedure as she could not afford to stay longer. The UK hospital did not provide any options regarding the foetus's remains and she had to leave them behind. The ashes were unexpectedly delivered to her three weeks later by courier.

In Ireland, she was denied the bereavement counselling and medical care available to women who miscarry. Such differential treatment, the Committee noted, failed to take into account her medical needs and socio-economic circumstances and constituted discrimination.

"Many of the negative experiences she went through could have been avoided if [she] had not been prohibited from terminating her pregnancy in the familiar environment of her own country and under the care of health professionals whom she knew and trusted," the Committee wrote in its findings.

The Committee also said that, in addition to the shame and stigma associated with the criminalization of abortion of a fatally ill foetus, AM's suffering was aggravated by the obstacles she faced in getting information about the appropriate medical options.

Ireland's Abortion Information Act allows healthcare providers to give patients information about abortion, including the circumstances under which abortion services can be available in Ireland or overseas. But under the law they are prohibited from, and could be sanctioned for, behaviour that could be interpreted as advocating or promoting the termination of pregnancy. This, according to the Committee, has a chilling effect on health-care providers, who struggle to distinguish "supporting" a woman who has decided to terminate a pregnancy from "advocating" or "promoting" abortion.

Ireland, which is a State party to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), is obliged to provide AM with an effective remedy, including adequate compensation and psychological treatment she may need, the Committee said. Ireland is also obliged to prevent similar violations from occurring.

"To this end, the State party should amend its law on voluntary termination of pregnancy, including if necessary its Constitution, to ensure compliance with the Covenant, including effective, timely and accessible procedures for pregnancy termination in Ireland, and take measures to ensure that health-care providers are in a position to supply full information on safe abortion services without fearing being subjected to criminal sanctions," the Committee's findings said.

In its observations to the Committee on AM's claims, Ireland said that the country's constitutional and legislative framework reflected "the nuanced and proportionate approach to the considered views of the Irish Electorate on the profound moral question of the extent to which the right to life of the foetus should be protected and balanced against the rights of the woman."

The Human Rights Committee considered this case under the First Optional Protocol to the ICCPR Covenant which gives the Committee competence to examine individual complaints.
Justice for crimes committed in Darfur must not be sacrificed  ICC Prosecutor

Publisher UN News Service Publication Date 9 June 2016 Cite as UN News Service, Justice for crimes committed in Darfur must not be sacrificed  ICC Prosecutor, 9 June 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/575a774940d.html [accessed 26 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.

9 June 2016 - More than a decade has passed since the situation in Darfur, Sudan, was referred to her Office, yet the victims' quest for justice is still far from being realized and they continue to be subjected to grave crimes and suffering, the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) told the United Nations Security Council today.

Sadly, my Office's countless appeals to you for action to address the persistent failure of Sudan to comply with its international obligations have not been heeded, said ICC Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda, adding that the Council has been equally consistent in its conspicuous silence over Sudan's non-compliance with its resolutions.

Presenting her twenty-third report to the Council on the situation in Darfur, the Prosecutor stressed that such inaction by the Council has emboldened the President of Sudan, Omar al-Bashir, to continue traveling across international borders despite the fact that two arrest warrants have been issued against him by the Court.

Moreover, she said that the Council's failure to act in response to 11 findings of non-compliance issued by ICC judges has equally emboldened States, both parties as well as certain non-parties to the Rome Statute, not only to facilitate Mr. al-Bashir's travels to their territories, but to invite and host him.

A reasonable observer cannot be faulted for asking: how many more such findings must be rendered by the Court to spur this Council into action? the Prosecutor said.

She emphasized that such an evolving trend risked setting an ominous precedent, which, unless redirected, will not bode well for similar genuine efforts aimed at bringing those responsible for mass atrocities to justice.

Above all, such nonfeasance has emboldened some States to publicly express pride in disregarding the Council's authority, she said, which should be a matter of great concern to all.

Ms. Bensouda also said it is imperative for the Council to fully appreciate and embrace its inter-institutional relationship with the Court within the framework of the Rome Statute, adding that once a ruling of non-compliance has been referred to the Court, pursuant to article 87.7 of the Rome Statute, it was duty-bound to act.

The Council cannot and must not remain silent and non-responsive on such judicial findings which are, after all, inherently linked to the resolution referring the situation of Darfur to my Office, she stressed.

The Prosecutor also urged the Council to give due consideration to the proposal tabled by New Zealand calling for a structured approach in dealing with the Court's findings of State non-compliance. She noted that informal interactive dialogue between the Council and her Office would also enable the two to generate proposals on strengthening their existing relationship.

This is the least we can do to re-assure the victims of Darfur that they have not been forgotten; that both this Council and my Office are fully engaged and committed to finding solutions that ultimately ensure accountability and by extension bring peace and stability to Darfur, she said.

Ms. Bensouda also emphasized that Sudan's failure to cooperate with the Court amounts to non-compliance, and included of Security Council resolution 1593 (2005). In that vein, she said the failure of non-States parties to cooperate in the arrest and surrender of suspects was a complete disregard for the resolution.

Despite such challenges, her Office is continuing its investigations, with a view to deliver justice to the victims of grave crimes under the Rome Statute in Darfur.

That work, however, was complicated by obstacles including a lack of access to Sudan's territory, resource constraints and non-execution of the long-outstanding arrest warrants, which have all contributed to the slow progress in investigations, Mr. Bensouda said.

The Prosecutor went on to say that she shares the Council's deep concern at the increased violence and insecurity in Darfur, as well as the significant increase in the number of internally displaced persons since 2014, and the restriction of humanitarian access to conflict areas where vulnerable civilian populations reside.

A significant increase in aerial bombardments and ground attacks had resulted in more than 400 civilian deaths and destroyed up to 200 villages, Ms. Bensouda noted. In addition, she said that 107 incidents of sexual crimes against women had been reported, resulting in 225 victims.

The Prosecutor also underlined that the continuation of military attacks in Darfur by the Government of Sudan must be halted, adding that in her Office's assessment, the arrest and surrender of Mr. al-Bashir and others accused in the situation in Darfur may assist in stopping such crimes.

In conclusion, this Council must no longer tolerate the continuing deteriorating humanitarian situation in Darfur; the continued non-cooperation of the Government of Sudan, and in particular, the refusal of Sudan to arrest and surrender suspects within its territory into the custody of the Court, Ms. Bensouda said.

It is within the powers of the Council to reverse these trends through concrete action and resolve, she added.
Election posters for the December campaign. KIKE PARA

A new campaign race is underway in Spain, and everyone is claiming that there will be no need for a third election  although nobody has explained why that is.

Although it is being dubbed the unblocking campaign, all four main parties refuse to budge on positions that prevented a governing deal the first time round, and continue to reject coalitions with specific groups.

PP sitting tight

The odds-on favorite Popular Party (PP), which has been in charge of a caretaker government since the inconclusive election of December 20, is still convinced that the only way out of Spains political impasse is a grand coalition headed by acting Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy.

The conservatives have adopted a polarizing strategy aimed at pushing the Socialist Party (PSOE) into a corner and forcing the latter to accept this grand coalition. The PP also seeks to relegate the liberal Ciudadanos, an upstart party that came in fourth at the December election, to a position of irrelevance.

It is likely that we will have to take on very important responsibilities

Podemos leader Pablo Iglesias

As for the new Unidos Podemos alliance, made up of the anti-austerity Podemos and the United Left, Rajoy is dealing with that threat by reiterating that Spain needs a period of moderation against the risk of extremism.

Fighting to remain relevant

He is not the only one casting the leftist group as dangerous to the countrys stability. The Socialists, who stand to lose the most votes to Unidos Podemos  recent polls predict a reversal of roles, with the alliance bumping the PSOE down to third place at the upcoming election  are stressing the communist element in United Left and warning that its proposals would be harmful to Spain.

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The Socialists continue to claim that they will never enable another PP government. But their great fear of being overtaken by Unidos Podemos, which now claims to be the new social democracy, was evident at the PSOE rally held in downtown Madrid on Thursday evening.

Speaking to a crowd at the newly renamed Pedro Zerolo square  honoring a gay rights activist who died recently  Socialist leader Pedro Sanchez tried to appeal to voters loyalty. Despite the bad forecasts, he told them that the future is not written in advance and that socialism is not about resignation, it is about fighting.

Yet party officials know that whats really at stake is the continued relevance of a 137-year-old party that was instrumental in Spains transition to democracy, then shared power in turns with the PP, but began to lose voter support since its massive defeat in the 2011 election.

The different names of Podemos

By comparison, Podemos leader Pablo Iglesias began the new campaign for the June 26 election with a much more confident message.

Socialism is not about resignation, it is about fighting

PSOE leader Pedro Sanchez

It is very likely that we will have to take on very important responsibilities, he told a crowd of supporters. Flanked by his right-hand man Inigo Errejon, IU leader Alberto Garzon and other alliance officials, Iglesias reiterated his earlier offer to build a large center-left governing coalition with the Socialists: We are going to reach out to them to head a government of change, he said.

Originally termed as anti-austerity, the new Unidos Podemos group is variously described as communist, social democratic and populist. The alliance has demonstrated an ability to be all of these things and none of them at the same time, controlling their message in order to attract as many leftist votes as possible.

Ciudadanos goes on the offensive

Ciudadanos leader Albert Rivera has started the new campaign with a defense of his deal-making policy, and a renewed desire to make a difference in Spanish politics despite its smaller share of the vote.

If Ciudadanos is not decisive, the PP and the PSOE will not change a single one of their mistakes of the past years. Where we have been decisive, change has occurred, he said, alluding to his regional agreements with the PP in Madrid, La Rioja, Castilla-Leon and Murcia and with the PSOE in Andalusia.

The future of this country largely depends on Ciudadanos results at the polls, added the 36-year-old leader of a group that started life a decade ago as a non-nationalist Catalan party and made the jump to national politics in 2014 on a platform of democratic regeneration.

Despite his ambitious statements, Rivera will also be fighting to remain relevant ahead of a ballot where, polls say, he will win more votes yet lose one or two seats because of the way the Spanish voting system weighs votes.

English version by Susana Urra.
'This is not yet the moment' for tangible peace talks  UN envoy for Syria

Publisher UN News Service Publication Date 9 June 2016 Cite as UN News Service, 'This is not yet the moment' for tangible peace talks  UN envoy for Syria, 9 June 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/575a776140c.html [accessed 26 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.

9 June 2016 - The United Nations envoy mediating a resolution to the crisis in Syria said today that the time is not yet right for a resumption of the intra-Syrian talks, but that the intention is to begin an official third round as soon as possible, as efforts continue towards the decisive outcome of a political transition.

We want to do it as soon as possible. No doubt about that, said Staffan de Mistura, the UN Special Envoy for Syria, during a press briefing in Geneva at the conclusion of a meeting of the humanitarian task force set up by the International Syria Support Group (ISSG)  which consists of the UN, the Arab League, the European Union and 18 countries that have been working on a way forward since late last year.

Emphasizing that a third round of talks needs to be concrete, he highlighted that he had been told by his predecessors that any action should avoid the situation of Geneva III, an earlier series of UN-backed talks which had no concluding points.

Noting that we want to give maximum chances for a concrete outcome, Mr. de Mistura said this would signify the beginning of a political transition.

But in my opinion, based on my assessment, this is not yet the moment, he added.

He said that preparations were continuing towards that goal, in what he called technical meetings. Such meetings would not take place in Geneva, and he would not be directly involved, although members of his team would be moving to various locations in order to have technical discussions with anyone who has been mentioned in Security Council resolution 2254, or anyone who was usefully contributing to preparing the talks, the Special Envoy said.

Humanitarian aid being unloaded in East Ghouta, Syria (May 2016). Photo: OCHA

Meanwhile, Mr. de Mistura said that the deadline of 1 August set by the ISSG is attainable.

[We] should be aiming at that one because at the end of the day, that's a date which has been put as a target date, but not just for anything but for beginning of a serious concrete message in terms of political transition, he stressed.

Access to besieged areas

The Special Envoy also said that he had been informed by his team in Damascus that the Government of Syria has approved access to 15 of the 17 besieged areas in the country by the end of the month.

Of the 19 besieged locations, 17 were requested as part of the June plan; written permission has been given for 15 of those 17. Two other besieged locations were not requested as part of that plan, as they are being covered by the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) and the World Food Programme (WFP) air drops, respectively.

The besieged locations where written approval has not been received are Al Wa'er in Homs and Zabadani in rural Damascus.

Of course, you know very well that approval, and we know very well, does not mean delivery, the Special Envoy said, noting that many actions needed to take place between an approval in delivery.

In the next few hours, we hope to see some of that approval actually become concrete. That is the test, of course, as always, he added.

Attacks on medical facilities; issue of air drops

The Special Envoy also noted that reports were received that Darayya had been heavily shelled, and said that more information was being sought.

A family from Darayya receives food at a distribution point near Swaida, Syria (February 2016). Photo: WFP/Hussam Alsaleh

Moreover, he said that reports from the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) on attacks against three medical facilities  including a paediatric facility  in Aleppo yesterday were extremely concerning.

Mr. de Mistura also highlighted that thus far, 270,250 people in besieged areas had been reached.

In addition, UNICEF, the World Health Organization (WHO) and all partners in Syria, including the Ministry of Health, had helped to push the numbers of children receiving vaccinations to nearly 70 per cent, with more than 900,000 children younger than 5 years old being reached. The special envoy underscored, however, that an equal number of children had not yet been reached.

On the issue of detainees, the Special Envoy said that some information had been received today from a main source that a substantial number of fighters appeared to have been released, although details were still forthcoming.

He said he was also informed by Russia that it is ending the demining of about 26 square kilometres of Palmyra, which means that people can start coming back.

We have information that up to 1,500 people have actually returned and we are obviously looking forward to be able to assist anyone who does return to a place which has been devastated by Da'esh, Mr. de Mistura said.

On the issue of air drops, he said that an official request had been made to the Government of Syria on 5 June for air bridges, air drops and air lifts, which were each meant to respond in one form or another when land access was not possible.
Content of report on conflict-affected children 'will not change,' asserts Ban

Publisher UN News Service Publication Date 9 June 2016 Cite as UN News Service, Content of report on conflict-affected children 'will not change,' asserts Ban, 9 June 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/575a777940b.html [accessed 26 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.

9 June 2016 - Standing by his decision to remove the Saudi-led Coalition in Yemen from his latest report on conflict-affected children, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today said it was one of the most 'painful and difficult decisions' he has ever had to make, and that it is 'unacceptable' for Member States to exert undue pressure as scrutiny is necessary part of the work of the UN.

"The report describes horrors no child should have to face," said Mr. Ban speaking to the press outside of the UN Security Council chamber, where he acknowledged that the "fierce reaction to my decision to temporarily remove the Saudi-led Coalition countries from the report's annex."

"At the same time, I also had to consider the very real prospect that millions of other children would suffer grievously if, as was suggested to me, countries would de-fund many UN programmes. Children already at risk in Palestine, South Sudan, Syria, Yemen and so many other places would fall further into despair," he stressed.

Insisting that he stands by the report, the UN chief added that the Organization "will assess the complaints that have been made, but the content will not change."

"I fully understand the criticism, but I would also like to make a larger point that speaks to many political challenges we face. When UN peacekeepers come under physical attack, they deserve strong backing by the Security Council," he stated. "When UN personnel are declared persona non grata simply for carrying out their jobs, they should be able to count on firm support from the Member States," he said.

Mr. Ban also underlined that when a UN report comes "under fire" for raising difficult issues or documenting violations of law or human rights, Member States should defend the mechanisms and mandates that they themselves have established.

"As the Secretariat carries forward the work that is entrusted to us, I count on Member States to work constructively and maintain their commitment to the cause of this Organization," he told reporters.

Turning to the issue of migration, the Secretary-General announced that he will be traveling to the Greek island of Lesbos next week to assess the situation and to show his solidarity.

On 26 January 2016, refugees and migrants wait to enter the Miratovac Refugee Aid Point in southern Serbia, on the border with the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, after crossing the Mediterranean. Photo: UNICEF/Emil Vas

"Hundreds of Syrians and other refugees and migrants continue to die in the Mediterranean while making perilous journeys out of war and persecution," he said. "I have listened to the stories, hopes and fears of many refugees in recent months, to understand this challenge based on their first-hand experience," he added.

As the global community formulates a global response to adopt at the upcoming High-Level Meeting on large-scale movements of refugees and migrants in September, Mr. Ban said he looks forward to continuing to work with Member States "to meet this test of our common humanity."

The Secretary-General also took the opportunity at the press encounter to highlight some other challenges affecting the "wide sweep" of the UN's work, such as keeping up momentum on the 2030 Agenda and the Paris Agreement; building on the progress of last month's World Humanitarian Summit; and doing more to resolve major threats to international peace and security.

Responding to questions, Mr. Ban told one correspondent that in the course of making reports available to the Member States or in the course of preparing these reports, the Organization has found that some countries were more concerned that their names are listed together with some non-State actors, like terrorist and extremist groups.

"Therefore, I think the main reaction of the Coalition is also that their names are included and listed together with some terrorist and extremist groups. Therefore, we are now in the process of considering what would be the better modalities of listing those countries," he explained, but reiterated that no decision has been made as the matter is still being discussed.
Ban urges 'sharp focus,' shared responsibility for continued momentum on UN peace agenda

Publisher UN News Service Publication Date 9 June 2016 Cite as UN News Service, Ban urges 'sharp focus,' shared responsibility for continued momentum on UN peace agenda, 9 June 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/575a77dc40b.html [accessed 26 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.

9 June 2016 - With the continuing rise in interlinked political crises and challenges around the world, United Nations Member States must draw on shared expertise supported by a multilateral peace and security architecture to attain a more peaceful future for all, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon declared today.

Success demands a strong sense of shared responsibility among Member States and between Member States and the Secretariat, the Secretary-General said in a briefing to the General Assembly at an informal meeting at Headquarters in New York this morning on the implementation of the recommendations outlined in the most recent reviews on UN peace operations, the peacebuilding architecture, and the implementation of UN Security Council resolution 1325 (2000) on 'women, peace and security.'

We must keep this in sharp focus going forward, he added.

Mr. Ban underlined that the UN reviews make common calls for more effective conflict prevention, stronger partnerships, more predictable financing, and greater participation of women and youth.

Peace operations

On the issue of peace operations, the Secretary-General noted that the recommendations he had made in response to the report of the High-level Independent Panel on Peace Operations were now being carried out.

In that vein, he stressed the importance of improving system-wide planning and analysis, and of having UN partners work together to improve early response strategies and transitions.

Peace operations must be flexible. They must be tailored to prevailing conditions. And they must benefit from a comprehensive understanding of the operating environment, Mr. Ban said.

The Secretary-General said that in order to be more agile, key administrative and logistical processes were being reviewed to see how they can better support operations. Following that, Secretariat policies and procedures will be examined more broadly in order to be more responsive.

At the same time, Mr. Ban highlighted, priority was being given to realizing the potential of the UN's uniformed personnel. In that regard, he recalled that a productive review of the Police Division had just been completed ahead of the Chiefs of Police Summit this past week.

Moreover, the Secretary-General noted that Member States will have a chance to advance progress this September at the defense ministerial conference in London.

There, we can examine our new, strategic approach to force generation  and efforts to enhance performance, Mr. Ban said.

Expressing hope that Member States will pledge new units and deploy them, the Secretary-General also called on Member States to furnish high-quality personnel for the UN's operations, appealing for more female and Francophone peacekeepers in particular.

We must also be bold in confronting the disturbing and deplorable problem of sexual exploitation and abuse. I am acting decisively to stop this crime  and I urgently need Member States to match this resolve, he said, adding that the UN is striving to better assist victims, end impunity and ensure accountability.

Peacebuilding review

Mr. Ban also underscored that the General Assembly and the Security Council have adopted historic resolutions that recognize the inclusive nature of sustaining peace.

They also underscore that sustaining peace is a core United Nations responsibility, he said, adding that Member States are enthusiastically maintaining the momentum.

For its part, the implementation framework will bring together senior officials of all concerned entities, the UN chief said, highlighting that the collaboration with partners such as the African Union (AU) and World Bank was already being strengthened.

In addition, Mr. Ban noted that the Peacebuilding Commission has broadened its scope, and will soon adopt a gender policy. In that regard, he encouraged Member States to strengthen the Commission's advisory role to the Security Council to reflect the growing consensus on preventing conflict and sustaining peace.

Moreover, the Secretary-General said that his successor will prepare a report to the General Assembly on major issues related to peacebuilding, with Deputy Secretary-General Jan Eliasson already developing options for the report on the critical issue of funding.

Women, peace and security

Turning to the Security Council resolution on women, peace and security, the Secretary-General said that the Global Study and High-Level Review presented the strongest evidence yet that women's empowerment transforms societies.

He recalled that the Security Council had reflected the Global Study's recommendations in its resolution 2242 (2015), as well as followed up by establishing an Informal Experts Group on women, peace and security, which had already met to discuss Iraq and Mali.

The Secretary-General also noted that the Global Acceleration Instrument had been established to channel resources to civil society actors working on women, peace and security issues.

In addition, Mr. Ban noted progress on his Seven-Point Action Plan on gender-responsive peacebuilding, and that the UN Peacebuilding Fund is the first entity that reached the target of 15 per cent allocation for projects focusing principally on gender equality and women's empowerment.

The reviews set out ambitious agendas that demand your commitment. We need Member States to take responsibility, engage fully and make political and financial investments for success, the Secretary-General said.

Ending fragmentation, focusing on prevention and providing financing

The Secretary-General also called on Member States to help end fragmentation, noting that the resolutions on sustaining peace, the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, the Human Rights Up Front initiative and the Commitment to Action of the World Humanitarian Summit all aim for comprehensive approaches.

Member States should also focus on prevention, as all three reviews call for putting conflict prevention at the heart of the UN's work.

These reviews  and the World Humanitarian Summit  showed that we are stretched to the breaking point. We have to finally invest more in preventing violent conflicts, ending existing ones and avoiding any relapse, the Secretary-General said.

Mr. Ban also said that while all three reviews praised the Peacebuilding Fund, the Fund faces a desperate funding shortfall.

Thanking those Member States that will hold a pledging conference for the Fund in September, the Secretary-General urged all States to make a contribution.

The migration and refugee crisis has caused some Member States to channel resources to domestic responses  but this should not be at the expense of the UN's ability to prevent and tackle the underlying causes that force people to flee, Mr. Ban said.

Let me be clear: the reviews call for ambitious responses to dire threats. The reaction cannot be business-as-usual. I count on you to help the United Nations give real meaning to these reviews by making good on their recommendations, he concluded.
Women in displacement sites in Nigeria's Borno state face high risk of abuse  UN

Publisher UN News Service Publication Date 9 June 2016 Cite as UN News Service, Women in displacement sites in Nigeria's Borno state face high risk of abuse  UN, 9 June 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/575a77f040b.html [accessed 26 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.

9 June 2016 - New assessments of the protection risks faced by the affected people living in Nigeria's restive north-eastern Borno state have concluded that women face a high risk of abuse in displacement sites, the United Nations humanitarian wing has reported.

According to a humanitarian bulletin on Nigeria issued recently by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), displacement and conflict have destroyed traditional hierarchies and resulted in a large number of female-headed households across the north-east of Borno state, increasing the burden of responsibility shouldered by women.

In terms of the region's traditional household and community structures of the region, this leaves these households without the traditional support networks. In some households, the strict Islamic tenet of kulle - which prevents women from leaving the home in search of a livelihood - is still practiced, OCHA said.

Related to this, links were found between gender and livelihoods, especially negative livelihood strategies, with internally displaced persons and host community members having to resort to increasingly risky activities to meet their basic needs, OCHA said.

Assistance delivery outside of Maiduguri and its surrounding areas is sporadic at best, and female-headed households are more likely to be food insecure, according to OCHA.

In addition, an increasing number of women and girls in newly accessible areas of Borno State have resorted to high-risk coping strategies like transactional sex in exchange for money or food in order to feed their families. Women and girls in the camps of Maiduguri are also increasingly resorting to survival sex, most notably in relation to food distribution within the camps or in order to secure permission to leave the camps that restrict the movement of internally displaced people, OCHA noted.

Traditionally, women have the role of collecting firewood for the household, and many are continuing this as a livelihood strategy, selling a bundle of between 15 and 20 sticks for 100 naira - the equivalent of 50 United States cents.

OCHA also said that reports of women being attacked and raped while carrying out this task are increasing, and in the newly accessible areas where Boko Haram still have a marked presence, there have been reports of women being killed and/or abducted.

The bulletin also said that sexual- and gender-based violence was reported in 50 per cent of sites assessed in Borno State by protectors actors, and stressed that cash-based livelihood assistance is needed in Yobe to support women who are finding ways out of extreme food insecurity and displacement.
Iraq: Funding is running out to help people fleeing Fallujah, UN relief official warns

Publisher UN News Service Publication Date 9 June 2016 Cite as UN News Service, Iraq: Funding is running out to help people fleeing Fallujah, UN relief official warns, 9 June 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/575a780c40c.html [accessed 26 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.

9 June 2016 - The United Nations humanitarian coordinator for Iraq said today she is deeply concerned by the unfolding humanitarian crisis in the besieged city of Fallujah, warning that funding is insufficient to continue to carry out the massive relief operation that is currently under way.

"Humanitarians are working around the clock to provide assistance. We want to do more, and need to do more to ensure families have shade, shelter, health care, food, and water," said Lise Grande, the UN Humanitarian Coordinator for Iraq.

"People are telling us that there are tens of thousands of civilians still trapped inside Fallujah. We are terribly worried about their safety and call on all the parties to the conflict to do everything possible to protect civilians," she added.

Noting that more than 20,000 people have fled Fallujah and surrounding areas since 22 May alone, Ms. Grande said the UN and partners have requested $861 million for 2016 to provide emergency relief to 7.3 million vulnerable Iraqis, but only 31 per cent, or $265 million, has been received so far.

"We are using all available resources but we are running out of funds. The international community has invested so much militarily to defeat ISIL [Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant]. We need to do so much more to help the victims. We cannot let these people down," she added.

Ms. Grande said she travelled to Ameriyat al Falluja in eastern Anbar and met with people who have managed to reach safety.

"We talked with families who have risked their lives to escape Fallujah. Their stories are heart-breaking. Many have walked for days to reach safety; they have been shot at, people trying to cross the river have drowned and thousands more are still trapped in the centre of the city," she said.

"Major efforts are being made to help people as soon as they reach the camps established by the Government. Humanitarian agencies are doing their part as well," she added.

The humanitarian coordinator highlighted that the Rapid Response Mechanism, managed by the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) and the World Food Programme (WFP) in collaboration the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) and a consortium of non-governmental organizations, has distributed thousands of family kits - consisting of ready-to-eat food rations, bottled water and hygiene supplies - in Fallujah and Abu Ghraib districts.

For its part, the World Health Organization (WHO) is operating mobile health clinics and has established primary health-care centres in camps, while the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (OHCHR) has provided thousands of tents and is rapidly building two new camps to relieve overcrowding.

In addition, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) is providing household kits and items and is ready to stand up additional tents for the families expected to arrive from Fallujah in coming days, Ms. Grande said.

Among the specialized services being provided include vaccinations for children who haven't been immunized for years. Social workers and mobile teams are providing psychosocial support to women and girls, including to victims of gender- and sexual-based violence, the humanitarian coordinator said.
Security Council warned of increased risk for international terrorist attack

Publisher UN News Service Publication Date 8 June 2016 Cite as UN News Service, Security Council warned of increased risk for international terrorist attack, 8 June 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/575a785440b.html [accessed 26 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.

8 June 2016 - The threat posed by ISIL (Da'esh) and its associates remains high and continues to diversify, the top United Nations political official today told the Security Council warning of an increased risk of a major international attack.

Under-Secretary-General for Political Affairs, Jeffrey Feltman told the Council that while military setbacks in Iraq and Syria account for an increased in the rate of returnee foreign terrorist fighters, ISIL is yet to be strategically or irreversibly weakened.

He also warned of an inflow of arms and ammunition directly or indirectly into ISIL-held territory.

Given its recent military setbacks, ISIL may be moving into a new phase, elevating the role of its affiliates; trying to move funds outside the current zones of conflict; and increasing the risk of complex, multi-wave and international attacks, Mr. Feltman cautioned.

These observations are part of the second Report of the Secretary-General on the threat posed by ISIL (Da'esh) to international peace and security and the range of United Nations efforts in support of Member States in countering the threat released on 31 May 2016.

Below are some of the main observations of the report, compiled by the UN Department of Political Affairs' Politically Speaking.

The Gravity of the Threat

The report observes that ISIL's territorial expansion in Iraq and Syria has been halted, and in part reversed, over recent months. For the first time since the declaration of its so-called Caliphate in June 2014, the ISIL core is under financial pressure.

But many Member States have noted that ISIL is not yet strategically and irreversibly weakened. Several Member States report a marked increase in the rate of returnees from Iraq and the Syria. Information received from Member States points to recent discussions inside the core ISIL leadership concerning the group's future strategy, a development that should be further monitored.

Recent international attacks perpetrated by members of ISIL demonstrate that the terrorist group is now moving into a new phase, with the increased risk that well-prepared and centrally directed attacks on international civilian targets may become a more frequent occurrence. The attacks in Paris in November 2015 and in Brussels in March 2016 demonstrate the ability of ISIL to mount complex, multi-wave attacks. National law enforcement agencies continue to investigate those attacks, but it is already clear that they were coordinated by foreign terrorist fighters who had returned to Europe from ISIL-held territory in Syria.

Financing Terror

Continuing pressure on ISIL in Iraq and Syria increases the likelihood that the terrorist group may try to move funds to affiliates outside the immediate current conflict zone. Initial reports received from Member States indicate that this may already be occurring.

The United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI) reports that, because ISIL has not conquered new territory in Iraq for some time, its ability to loot and sell fresh resources, assets or antiquities has been diminished.

Increased pressure on ISIL finances in Syria and Iraq also means an increased risk that ISIL will attempt to exploit additional revenue-generating activities. The international community must therefore remain alert to attempts by ISIL to further diversify its revenue streams or expand relatively minor streams.

Foreign Terrorist Fighters Continue to Join ISIL

Significant numbers of foreign terrorist fighters continue to travel from States around the world to join ISIL in Iraq and the Syrian Arab Republic. One Member State reported that around 38,000 individuals may have attempted to travel to the region in the past few years.

ISIL in Libya 

After 18 months of presence in Libya, the local branch of ISIL continues to be part of a deliberate strategy on the part of the ISIL core to expand outside Iraq and Syria. Although the total number of foreign terrorist fighters in Libya is significantly lower than that in Iraq and Syria, Member States estimate the ISIL fighting force (which is mainly composed of foreign terrorist fighters) to comprise between 3,000 and 5,000 fighters.

and in Afghanistan

In Afghanistan, in the face of opposition, ISIL has tactically retreated from the main settled areas to the mountainous periphery alongside the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. In autumn 2015, ISIL was estimated to have between 1,400 and 2,000 fighters in Nangarhar Province. By the first quarter of 2016, however, this force was estimated to consist of fewer than 1,000 fighters. Still, ISIL in Afghanistan has proved its ability to hold limited terrain and to conduct terrorist attacks in major cities beyond its core territory.

ISIL's Use of Information Communications Technology Platforms

ICT is a key enabler for ISIL and plays an essential role in enabling ISIL and its affiliates to function, recruit and attack. ISIL may currently lack technical capabilities for cyberattacks against critical infrastructures. However, the risk that ISIL will purchase attack tools from the darknet is real and developing. Many leading ICT companies have measures in place to prevent the abuse of their platforms. Google and Facebook recently announced the launch of anti-radicalization campaigns to be conducted together with civil society organizations.

Conflict-Related Sexual Violence

Sexual violence continues to be used as a tactic of terrorism to increase the power, revenue and recruitment base of ISIL, as well as to shred the social fabric of targeted communities. The trafficking of women and girls remains a critical component of the financial flows to ISIL and its affiliates, which continue to exploit ICT to extort funds through the trafficking and sale of women.

States should continue to deepen their understanding of sexual violence as a tactic of terrorism and formally recognize victims of sexual violence as victims of terrorism in order to build counter-narratives and counter-strategies and pave the way for reparations and redress. States should also engage with traditional and religious leaders who can help to shift the shame and stigma of sexual violence from the victims to the perpetrators.

Currently, only around one third of the 77 Member States (S/2015/975) identified as most affected by the threat posed by foreign terrorist fighters have updated their legislation in response to resolution 2178 (2014). In many Member States, existing legislation falls short in several areas, including the need to prevent the travel of such fighters by comprehensively criminalizing preparatory or accessory acts.
Nigeria: Killing of unarmed pro-Biafra supporters by military must be urgently investigated

Publisher Amnesty International Publication Date 10 June 2016 Cite as Amnesty International, Nigeria: Killing of unarmed pro-Biafra supporters by military must be urgently investigated, 10 June 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/575a789a4.html [accessed 26 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.

An on-the-ground investigation by Amnesty International has confirmed that the Nigerian army gunned down unarmed people ahead of last month's planned pro-Biafran commemoration events in Onitsha, Anambra state.

Evidence gathered from eyewitnesses, morgues and hospitals confirms that between 29-30 May 2016, the Nigerian military opened fire on members of the Indigenous people of Biafra (IPOB), supporters and bystanders at three locations in the town.

" In one incident one person was shot dead after the authorities burst in on them while they slept. In one incident one person was shot dead after the authorities burst in on them while they slept," said M.K. Ibrahim, Country Director of Amnesty International Nigeria.

"These shootings, some of which may amount to extra judicial executions, must be urgently and independently investigated and anyone suspected of criminal responsibility must be brought to justice."

The exact number of deaths is unknown, partly due to the fact that the Nigerian army took away corpses and the injured.

Amnesty International has received reports from various sources on the ground alleging that at least 40 people were killed and more than 50 injured.

After visits to hospitals and morgues, the organization has confirmed - based on this initial investigation - that at least 17 people were killed and nearly 50 injured. The real number is likely to be higher.

Some of the dead and injured IPOB supporters seen by an Amnesty International researcher were shot in the back, an indication that they were fleeing the scene when they were shot.

The leadership of IPOB claim more than 50 of their members were killed. The Nigerian army has said in a statement that they acted in self-defence, and five IPOB members were killed. However, Amnesty International has seen no evidence that the killings were necessary to protect life. Although the police also claim that IPOB supporters killed two policemen the next day in neighbouring Asaba, Delta state, Amnesty International cannot confirm this claim. However, such killings would not substantiate the army's argument they acted in self-defence.

A joint security operation was carried out by the Nigerian army, police and navy between the night of 29 May and throughout 30May, apparently intended to prevent a march by IPOB members from the Nkpor motor park to a nearby field for a rally. Before the march began the military raided homes and a church where IPOB members were sleeping.

IPOB supporters told Amnesty International that hundreds of people who had come from neighbouring states, were asleep in the St Edmunds Catholic church when soldiers stormed the compound on 29 May.

A 32-year-old hair dresser who was in the church told Amnesty International: "At about midnight we heard someone banging the door. We refused to open the door but they forced the door open and started throwing teargas. They also started shooting inside the compound. People were running to escape. I saw one guy shot in the stomach. He fell down but the teargas could not allow people to help him. I did not know what happened to the guy as I escaped and ran away."

Another witness told Amnesty International that on the morning of 30 Mayhe saw soldiers open fire on a group of around 20 men and boys aged between 15 and 45 at the Nkpor Motor Park on the morning of 30 May. He says that five of them were killed."I stood about two poles [approximately 100 metres] away from where the men were being shot and killed. I couldn't quite hear what they were asking the boys, but I saw one boy trying to answer a question. He immediately raised his hands, but the soldiers opened fireHe lay down, lifeless. I saw this myself."

The witness described how military officers loaded men with gunshot wounds into one van, and what appeared to be corpses into another.

Later that morning, another witness described how police shot a child bystander as a group of young men protested the shootings, blocking a road and burning tyres along the Eke-Nkpor junction.

He told Amnesty International: "I heard a police siren and everybody started running helter-skelter. I ran away with other people, but before we left, the police fired tear gas at us and shot a boy in my presence. He was just hawking in the street. He wasn't even there to protest," he said.

An Amnesty International researcher visited three hospitals in Onitsha and surrounding towns and saw 41 men being treated for gunshot wounds in the stomach, shoulder, leg, back and ankle. The researcher also visited mortuaries in Onitsha and saw five corpses with bullet wounds, all brought in by IPOB members on 30 May.

Amnesty International has been informed that many of those killed or injured are still held by the military and police. Several witnesses said that the military loaded corpses in their vehicles and took them to Onitsha military barracks. Amnesty International was not able to confirm this.

One witness told Amnesty International that around 30 people were held in the military barracks, while another witness said 23 people who were held in State Criminal Investigation Department were brought to court.

Following the shootings, the military told media sources that the soldiers only opened fire after being shot at first, but Amnesty International's research has found no evidence to support this. All the people the organization interviewed said that the protesters were not armed; one young man said that he threw stones at the police and military after they shot teargas at the IPOB members. He said the military then fired live ammunition in return.

Information gathered by Amnesty International indicates that the deaths of supporters and members of IPOB was the consequence of excessive, and unnecessary use of force.

International law requires the government to promptly investigate unlawful killings with a view to bringing the perpetrators to justice. Amnesty International is also calling for those IPOB supporters still held in detention without charge to be either immediately charged or released.

"This is not the first time that IPOB supporters have died at the hands of the military. It is becoming a worrying pattern and this incident and others must be immediately investigated," said M. K. Ibrahim.

"In addition there must be an end to the pattern of increased militarization of crowd control operations as soldiers are frequently deployed to undertake routine policing functions."

Background

Amnesty International interviewed 32 witnesses between 1-3 June in Onitsha and an additional five4 people on the phone.

The IPOB members had informed the Anambra State Police Commissioner of their plans for Biafra Remembrance day and requested for security to be provided for the procession.

Amnesty International has been conducting research into violence and killings of IPOB members and supporters in south east Nigeria since January 2016. A comprehensive report will be published in the near future.

The organization's research shows that since August 2015, there have been at least five similar incidents in Onitsha alone where the police and military shot unarmed IPOB members and supporters. Amnesty International has documented cases of alleged unlawful killings by the Nigerian army between August 2015 and May 2016.

In August 2015, military officers opened fire on peaceful supporters of IPOB calling for an independent Biafran state. The killings and mass arrests of members and supporters of IPOB by a joint military and police operations continued in October, November and December 2015.

On 17 December 2015 for example, the military killed five people when they opened fire on members of the IPOB who were demonstrating in Onitsha in a celebration of a court order for the release of their purported leader, Nnamdi Kanu.

In February 2016, the Nigerian military used excessive force to disperse a peaceful gathering in a school compound in Aba. At least nine people were killed and many more injured.

The Nigerian government has not conducted any independent investigation into any of these incidents.

The right to peaceful assembly and association, as well as the right of freedom of expression, is protected by the Nigerian constitution. International human rights standards also require that law enforcement officials must, as far as possible, apply nonviolent means. The intentional lethal use of firearms is only permissible when strictly unavoidable in order to protect life.

Copyright notice:  Copyright Amnesty International
Israel/OPT: Tel Aviv attack displays total disdain for human life

Publisher Amnesty International Publication Date 9 June 2016 Cite as Amnesty International, Israel/OPT: Tel Aviv attack displays total disdain for human life, 9 June 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/575a79424.html [accessed 26 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 deadly attack on civilians at a Tel Aviv shopping and restaurant complex last night displayed a stark contempt for human life, Amnesty International said.

Two Palestinian gunmen opened fire at the Sarona market in Tel Aviv on Wednesday evening, killing four civilians and injuring others. Several of those wounded were still hospitalized on Thursday morning. Israeli forces apprehended the attackers, wounding one of them.

"This heinous attack flouted fundamental principles of humanity," said Philip Luther, Director of the Middle East and North Africa Programme at Amnesty International.

"There can be never be any justification for deliberately attacking civilians."

No group has claimed responsibility for the killings, but the Hamas movement welcomed the attack and warned of more "surprises" for Israel.

"Celebration and coded threats are a reprehensible response to the deaths of civilians," said Philip Luther.

"Such language runs contrary to the responsibility - shared by all sides - to halt the cycle of violations and abuses in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories."

After the shooting, Israeli forces blockaded Yatta, the town in the Hebron district of the occupied West Bank that is believed to have been home to the attackers. The Israeli military is not allowing anyone in or out of the town, apart from "humanitarian" and "medical" cases. The Israeli authorities say permits for some 200 relatives of the attackers to work in Israel have also been suspended.

"While Israel has the right to enact necessary and proportionate measures to protect those under its control, Israeli forces must not respond to these attacks with further measures of collective punishment or other disproportionate actions, which would themselves violate international law," said Philip Luther.

"Sadly, Israeli forces have a history of using excessive measures in retaliation for attacks, including blanket restrictions on Palestinians' movement and the demolition of attackers' family homes."

The Israeli authorities say they have also frozen entry permits to Israel and occupied East Jerusalem for more than 80,000 Palestinians from the occupied West Bank that were granted for the Islamic holy month of Ramadan.

Since October 2015, Palestinians have carried out dozens of attacks on Israeli civilians and on soldiers and police, killing more than 30 Israelis. Israeli forces have frequently responded to Palestinian attacks and protests with excessive and lethal force, killing more than 200 Palestinians, some in apparent extrajudicial executions.

Copyright notice:  Copyright Amnesty International
Turkmenistan: Dissident's Family Allowed to Leave

Publisher Human Rights Watch Publication Date 9 June 2016 Cite as Human Rights Watch, Turkmenistan: Dissident's Family Allowed to Leave, 9 June 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/575a79cd4.html [accessed 26 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.

Turkmen authorities dropped a 13-year travel ban against three family members of an exiled dissident, Pirkuli Tanrykuliev, allowing them to leave the country on June 4, 2016, a coalition of human rights groups said today. Tanrykuliev's daughter, Ayjemal Rejepova, and her two daughters, ages 3 and 11, were able to fly to Turkey, where Tanrykuliev's wife awaited them.

The Turkmen government has arbitrarily banned several thousand people, including relatives of imprisoned or exiled critics of the government, from travel abroad to intimidate them and punish their family members. At times the authorities have turned the family members away at the airport or physically removed them from flights.

"Finally, after more than 13 years, Pirkuli Tanrykuliev's family can be together," said Rachel Denber, deputy Europe and Central Asia director at Human Rights Watch. "We hope that the Turkmen government will end its practice of arbitrary travel bans, so that other families can experience this same joy."

Tanrykuliev is a retired doctor and medical school professor, and a former member of Turkmenistan's Parliament. He was imprisoned in 1999 to silence his outspoken criticism of the government and prevent him from running for parliament again. He was freed in 2000, and eventually given asylum in Norway. President Gurganguly Berdymukhamedov of Turkmenistan, who is a dentist, was one of Tanrykuliev's college students.

Soon after Tanrykuliev's arrest, Rejepova and her husband were fired from their jobs. Law enforcement and security services subjected them to surveillance, periodically interrogated them, and tried to intimidate them. They were also banned from leaving the country.

In July 2015, Rejepova and her two daughters were barred from boarding a flight for Turkey. A migration services official told them they were banned "for life" from leaving the country, and their passports were stamped and signed "exit banned." In summer 2014, Tanrykuliev's brother, Doly, age 71 at the time, was removed before take-off from a flight to Turkey. He suffered a stroke soon thereafter, which his family felt was a direct result of the stress from the episode.

After the July incident, Rejepova filed an inquiry with the migration services about her travel ban. She received a written reply only after the November visit to Ashgabat by United States Secretary of State John Kerry, who had been informed of the ban. The reply, dated November 20, 2015 (on file with Memorial Human Rights Center and Human Rights Watch), merely stated that, "in accordance with findings by relevant government agencies, restrictions on your travel remain in force."

Human Rights Watch, Memorial, and the Prove They Are Alive campaign, an international coalition to end enforced disappearances in Turkmenistan, along with other independent human rights groups, have raised Rejepova's case repeatedly with European Union officials, in the context of the EU-Turkmenistan Human Rights Dialogue, and of discussions around the EU-Turkmenistan Partnership and Cooperation Agreement. During its May 17, 2016 human rights dialogue with the Turkmen government, the EU "encouraged Turkmenistan to permit citizens to travel freely in and out of the country."

Human rights groups had also urged US officials to raise her case in their bilateral discussions with the Turkmen government.

On April 6, 2016, Rejepova once again wrote to the State Migration Services asking for an explanation of the legal grounds and duration of the travel ban, and which agency had imposed it. In mid-May, she received a reply stating that neither she nor her children were subject to any travel restrictions. A source close to the family said that Rejepova was so surprised by the written reply that she went in person to the State Migration Service to receive oral confirmation.

In September 2015, Turkmen authorities also allowed Geldy Kyarizov, a prominent horse breeding expert who fell out of favor with the government, to leave the country, after banning him numerous times from foreign travel. The authorities allowed his teenage daughter to leave a week later.

Freedom of movement is guaranteed by the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which Turkmenistan ratified in 1997.

"Allowing Rejepova and her children to board the plane is the only right thing for the authorities to have done," said Vitalii Ponomarev, Central Asia program director at Memorial Human Rights Center. "Turkmenistan's international partners should continue to consistently remind the Turkmen government that freedom of movement is a fundamental right, and urge the Turkmen government to end all its travel bans and allow those on the 'black lists' to travel abroad."

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Papua New Guinea: Police Shoot Student Protesters

Publisher Human Rights Watch Publication Date 9 June 2016 Cite as Human Rights Watch, Papua New Guinea: Police Shoot Student Protesters, 9 June 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/575a7a254.html [accessed 26 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.

Papua New Guinea authorities should carry out an effective and transparent investigation into the shooting of student protesters by police in Port Moresby, Human Rights Watch said today. The government should identify and hold accountable any security officials found responsible for using unnecessary or excessive force.

On the morning of June 8, 2016, police opened fire on students on the Waigani campus of the University of Papua New Guinea as they attempted to march to the national parliament to call for a vote of no confidence in the government of Prime Minister Peter O'Neill. Police confirmed that at least 23 students were injured, but disputed claims by opposition party activists that several protesters were killed.

"There needs to be an independent and transparent investigation into the firing of live ammunition by the police into crowds of student protesters, and any security officials responsible for wrongful orders or actions should be prosecuted," said Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch.

Police Commissioner Gari Baki issued a statement refuting reports that there had been fatalities but confirming that "23 people believed to be University students were reportedly injured in a confrontation with police outside the precincts of the University of Papua New Guinea Waigani Campus." Commissioner Baki confirmed, "Five are reported to be in a critical condition  at the Port Moresby General Hospital." Port Moresby General Hospital issued a statement saying that it treated 8 persons for gunshot wounds, but added that no one from the protest had died at the hospital or arrived dead on arrival.

Students have been protesting for five weeks demanding O'Neill step down over corruption allegations. O'Neill responded to the violence with a statement claiming "a small group of students were violent, threw rocks at police and provoked a response that came in the form of tear gas and warning shots." He added that an inquiry would be held "to determine the underlying reasons for continued student unrest promoted by individuals outside the student body  [and] to uncover the source of external funding that has underwritten student protest in recent weeks."

As a party to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, Papua New Guinea has an international legal obligation to respect the rights to life, bodily integrity, and security as well as the right to protest and investigate all potential violations.

The United Nations Basic Principles on the Use of Force and Firearms by Law Enforcement Officials, which sets out accepted international standards on the use of force in law enforcement situations, provide that police and other security forces shall, as far as possible, apply nonviolent means before resorting to the use of force. Whenever the lawful use of force is unavoidable the authorities should use restraint and act in proportion to the seriousness of the offense. Lethal force may only be used when strictly unavoidable to protect life.

An independent and impartial investigation should examine what went wrong that led to the use of force against student protesters, and identify those responsible for any wrongdoing. Only with such an investigation will the authorities be able to restore trust in the police.

"The Prime Minister's announcement focused unduly on the student protests and failed to recognize the need for an investigation into the use of force and firearms by police," Robertson said. "A one-sided government investigation to hunt for alleged 'instigators' among the students is simply unacceptable."

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Pablo Ibar at an appeals hearing in 2009. EFE

More information Spaniard on death row in Florida for 15 years granted new trial

Pablo Ibar, a dual Spanish-American citizen whose death sentence was overturned last February by the Florida Supreme Court, has been transferred from death row to a regular penitentiary in northern Miami, his lawyer said on Thursday.

The Florida Supreme Court vacated Ibars sentence and ordered a new trial, citing several flaws in the states arguments against him.

Forty-five-year-old Ibar, who is of Basque descent, will appear before Judge Jeffrey Levenson in a Fort Lauderdale court, in Broward County, on Friday. Levenson presided over his case in 2009, nearly 10 years after the Spaniard was sentenced to death for the triple murder of a nightclub owner and two models.

Ibar, who has served 22 years in prison, 15 of them on death row, has always maintained his innocence

Ibar is already listed as being transferred to a jail in Broward County, said Andres Krakenberger, a spokesman for the Pablo Ibar Association Against the Death Penalty.

The Florida Supreme Court underscored one of the most important arguments used by the defense: the fact that Ibars DNA was not found on a blue T-shirt recovered from the crime scene and which was allegedly [used] by the perpetrator to partially cover his face.

Benjamin Waxman, Ibars lawyer, filed seven motions in Broward County questioning the basis of the prosecutions case. He argued against the strength of a key piece of evidence, a soundless, blurry, grainy home surveillance videotape that a facial identification expert said could not prove with certainty that the killer was in fact the defendant.

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Ibar will appear before Judge Levenson on Friday for a short hearing to decide future steps to be taken in the procedure leading to the retrial.

Ibar, who has served 22 years in prison, 15 of them on death row, has always maintained his innocence. The defense will ask the court to release him on bail and under the supervision of his family while awaiting the new trial.

During the first trial, which began in 1998, a Broward County jury failed to reach a unanimous verdict and the judge threw out the case because there were no fingerprints or DNA linking Ibar to the murders. But he was convicted on August 28, 2000 after a second trial. Ibar is the only Spanish citizen to have been sentenced to death in the United States.

English version by Dyane Jean Francois.
China: Buddhist Monastery Faces Demolition

Publisher Human Rights Watch Publication Date 9 June 2016 Cite as Human Rights Watch, China: Buddhist Monastery Faces Demolition, 9 June 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/575a7bb54.html [accessed 26 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.

China's authorities should suspend plans to demolish residences at a historic Buddhist monastery in Sichuan province and negotiate with the community's leadership, Human Rights Watch said today. The government plans to eliminate quarters for all but 5,000 monks, nuns, and laypeople at the Academy of Larung Gar, one of the world's largest monastic institutions, by September 2017, cutting numbers there by at least half.

Central government and provincial authorities should negotiate any needed structural or other improvements with local religious leaders and drop demands that Larung Gar be run by government officials.

"China's authorities should not be determining the size of monasteries or any other religious institution, but should accept that religious freedom means letting people decide for themselves their religious practices," said Sophie Richardson, China director. "If authorities somehow believe that the Larung Gar facilities are overcrowded, the answer is simple: allow Tibetans and other Buddhists to build more monasteries."

A recent order from the Serta county government in Sichuan provides no reason for the demolitions and dramatic reduction in Larung Gar's population  which consists of at least 10,000 monks, nuns, and laypeople  but simply says that the community is in need of "ideological guidance." There is no suggestion that the authorities consulted the Larung Gar leadership about the measures.

The order also requires the monastery to accept joint management with government or Chinese Communist Party officials, who would hold a three to two majority. Similar requirements have been imposed in monasteries across the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR), and represent a significant imposition of state power on religious institutions.

Larung Gar, which has hundreds of ethnic Chinese devotees as well as Tibetan, is known for its democratic and egalitarian practices, with a robust means of collective decision-making by its members, an express commitment to gender and ethnic equality, and a rejection of traditional forms of hierarchy. Even the highest lamas must perform menial chores such as cleaning toilets, unusual among monastic communities that are typically highly stratified.

Online reports within China have suggested that the new restrictions stem from concerns about the size of the community and fire risks. While governments have a responsibility to regulate water and sanitation, promote hygiene, and minimize fire risks, this cannot be a pretext to adopt discriminatory measures against specific religious groups or other minorities.

In 2001, local authorities attempted to control conditions at Larung Gar, deploying teams of police and workers who bulldozed most of the monks' and nuns' residences. That incident was captured on video and prompted an international outcry. No effort was made to consult with the affected community or establish a process for the removals.

Since that time, Sichuan authorities have quietly allowed the community to grow again without interference.

In 1994, after holding the Third National Forum on Tibet Work, China declared that no increase in the then-existing number of monks or monasteries was to be allowed in the TAR. That policy rested on the central government's frequent claim that the already permitted facilities "fulfill the needs of religious believers in Tibet." That claim appeared designed to prevent all but a select number of Tibetans from choosing to pursue full-time, lifelong study and practice of their religion.

Article 36 of China's constitution guarantees freedom of religious belief, but in practice this right is frequently violated. Government policies over the years to "manage religion by law," "adapt religion to socialism," and, more recently, "adapt religious doctrines to socialism," have undermined its claims of supporting religious freedom both among believers in China and abroad. The government's White Paper on freedom of religion in the predominantly Muslim Xinjiang province, issued on June 2, 2016, asserts that "the Constitutional principle of freedom of religious belief has been comprehensively implemented," a view contrary to ongoing and pervasive restrictions on religious practice, including authorization of clergy, approval of religious rituals, and access to religious education. In recent years authorities have also moved aggressively against state-sanctioned Christian churches in southeastern China, detaining congregation members and their lawyers, as well as using blowtorches to remove crucifixes from churches.

"The order to demolish much of Larung Gar monastery is a step backward in the government's policy on religion," Richardson said. "By imposing such stringent demands on such a prominent monastery, the government is raising alarms for religious institutions across China."

Copyright notice:  Copyright, Human Rights Watch
Malaysia: Law Code Changes Threaten Rights

Publisher Human Rights Watch Publication Date 9 June 2016 Cite as Human Rights Watch, Malaysia: Law Code Changes Threaten Rights, 9 June 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/575a7c8e4.html [accessed 26 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.

Malaysia's Senate should reject the government's proposed legal changes that would undermine the rights of criminal suspects, Human Rights Watch said today. Amendments to the country's Code of Criminal Procedure passed the lower house of parliament on May 19, 2016, and will be debated by the Senate in the session starting on June 13.

The proposed amendments are being made at a time when the government of Prime Minister Najib Razak has intensified its crackdown on criticism by civil society activists, Human Rights Watch said. The code changes would limit the discretion of judges to impose more lenient sentences, allow for previously inadmissible testimony by unidentified witnesses and written testimony, and allow the denial of bail for a broader range of political and other offenses.

"The proposed amendments are part of a troubling trend of the Malaysian government undermining the right to a fair trial during periods of political turmoil," said Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch. "The Senate should reject amendments that undermine the rights of the accused or judges' authority to protect rights."

The proposed amendments raise serious questions about the government's commitment to the right to a fair trial, Human Rights Watch said. The bill before the Senate contains provisions allowing for testimony by unidentified witnesses and written testimony in place of live testimony without the consent of the defendant. Both provisions deprive defendants of their right to cross-examine the witnesses against them, in violation of internationally recognized fair trial standards.

The bill would also amend the Code of Criminal Procedure to make an array of additional offenses "non-bailable"  meaning that bail is no longer available as a matter of right. International law encourages the release with guarantees of criminal suspects awaiting trial. Penal Code sections 124B-124J, which criminalize "activity detrimental to parliamentary democracy," are among the non-bailable offenses under the draft law. The proposal to deny bail as a right for such offenses appears aimed at quashing critical comment and peaceful activism, Human Rights Watch said, since the authorities have repeatedly used these provisions to arrest critics of the government and those calling for Najib's resignation.

Under the proposed bill, judges would also be stripped of their discretion to impose conditional or unconditional discharges, or to release first offenders on probation rather than impose a criminal sentence, whenever the offender has been convicted of a "serious" crime  a term that is not defined in the statute. This would prevent the courts from taking into account the age, health, and mental condition of the defendant or any extenuating circumstances of the offense. Among those who will be affected by the withdrawal of judicial discretion to release first offenders are many of those facing charges or being investigated for political activism.

"The Najib government's proposed legal revisions are sharpening new tools to punish peaceful activists at the expense of fair trials in Malaysia," Robertson said. "Malaysia's friends should raise concerns that the government is doing long-term damage to the rule of law in the country."

Copyright notice:  Copyright, Human Rights Watch
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.
Sudanese refugees in Chad must adapt or starve

Publisher IRIN Author Mahamat Adamou Publication Date 9 June 2016 Cite as IRIN, Sudanese refugees in Chad must adapt or starve, 9 June 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/575a7dc34.html [accessed 26 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 Darfur conflict fell out of the headlines years ago, but more than 300,000 Sudanese are still living as refugees in neighbouring Chad, a country with its own problems of poverty, climate change, and insecurity. As humanitarian aid has dried up, how are they surviving in this harsh, arid setting?

At first sight, nothing distinguishes Djabal refugee camp from surrounding towns and villages, except perhaps the billboards along the main road promoting various international aid organisations. This sprawling settlement of huts near the town of Goz Beida in eastern Chad's Sila Region is home to some 20,000 Sudanese who fled war-ravaged West Darfur in the early 2000s.

The camp's marketplace is as busy and colourful as any local market. Vegetable stalls offer tomatoes, carrots and onions, and butchers slice and hack at pieces of fresh meat displayed on wooden table tops. Across the street, barbers attend to their customers in a makeshift shop, and a teenager behind a laptop offers to download pirated songs. He also sells petrol in plastic bottles, cigarettes, mobile phone credits, and can recharge a mobile phone battery for a modest fee.

However, beneath this veneer of normalcy is a protracted displacement crisis that the humanitarian aid system seems to have forgotten about as it deals with more pressing emergencies.

The refugees of Djabal represent just a fraction of the 304,650 Darfur refugees living in eastern Chad (in the south, the country hosts another 74,000 refugees from Central African Republic and Nigeria). Sila Region alone hosts 62,000 refugees, in three camps - Djabal, Goz Amir, and Kirfi - that have been running for more than a decade.

Jenada Boldadet, a local prefect dressed in a traditional white robe, said the camps are putting a huge strain on this poor, sparsely populated region. He gave IRIN an avalanche of figures and statistics to explain the impact the refugees have had. For example, he said Goz Beida's water supply system, designed to cater for 7,000 people in the regional capital, has struggled to cope with the additional demand.

Hard choices

The aid agencies providing for most of the refugees' basic needs over the past 12 years have challenges of their own. With dwindling funding available from donors preoccupied by newer emergencies, they have had to take tough decisions.

By the end of April, UN refugee agency (UNHCR) operations in Chad were only 16 percent-funded for the year. Lack of funds has forced the World Food Programme to cut monthly food rations by as much as 60 percent since 2014. Food is now distributed based on four categories of need, ranging from the very needy to the relatively well-off. The very poor receive 70 percent of the previous full ration of 2,100 calories a day, while the less needy receive only 40 percent of a full ration. More cuts to these already meagre rations may be on the way.

Mary-Ellen McGroarty, WFP's country director for Chad, told IRIN that the agency was in urgent need of $17 million for its refugee assistance programmes in the country. "WFP needs to pre-position large quantities of food stocks for the refugees in advance of the rainy season as many of the refugee camps become inaccessible for trucks from June onwards," she said. "WFP faces significant funding shortfalls to complete this exercise."

With little prospect of refugees being able to return to Sudan anytime soon and funding drying up, UNHCR and its partners have little choice but to push the refugees towards being largely self-reliant.

"The way UNHCR and partners have been delivering assistance has entrenched a dependency mentality that we need to work on now if we're going to give them the capacity to fend for themselves and be self-sustaining," the UN agency's representative in Chad, Antonio Canhandula, told IRIN.

He added that the task was not made easier by the region's arid environment and the struggles that even local people face in finding livelihoods.

Adapting to survive

Last July, Refugees International released a report that was highly critical of the aid system's lack of support for Sudanese refugees in Chad to move towards self-sufficiency and local integration.

"It is unrealistic to expect refugees to become self-sufficient in a place where livelihood opportunities are hard to find, government services are limited, cost of living is high, host community tensions are increasing, and most crucially, little development funding exists," wrote the authors.

A year later, there is evidence that some of the refugees, eager to improve their living conditions, are making their own way. Those with personal contacts in nearby villages have persuaded traditional chiefs to grant them land to cultivate. The village of Koutoufou for example, offered some refugees from Djabal parcels of arable land for farming.

Starting in 2014, refugees and villagers organised themselves into a farming association, or "groupement", which receives funding from UNHCR in partnership with the Lutheran World Federation. LWF provides agriculture kits - seeds, farming tools, water pumping generators and fences - as well as technical assistance. The project is boosting the income of the villagers and helping refugees integrate into the local community.

Koutoufou, which had just 60 inhabitants before, has seen its population more than double with the arrival of the refugees. "We are much better today," said Mahamat Zene Youssouf, a villager whose annual income has soared since joining the association, from around 15,000 CFA francs ($26) to about 75,000 ($130).

Thinking long-term

Sidikh Djimet Idriss, 25, who arrived at Djabal camp when he was just 13, joined the association two years ago. Since then, he has married and had a child. He told IRIN he worries less about his own future than about how he'll ensure his child gets the education he didn't. His hope is to attend a vocational training school like the one set up by LWF in Djabal.

In operation since 2006, the centre has trained around 2,000 refugees and local Chadians in trades ranging from construction, carpentry, soldering, mechanics and electricity, to agriculture. The course initially lasted nine months but has had to be reduced to six due to funding shortages, explained Khamis Barka, head of the training centre.

But such initiatives are only benefitting a minority of the refugees. Others compete for occasional casual work in Goz Beida and surrounding villages. Job opportunities are few and far between in this drought-prone region, where many of the local Chadians are themselves in need of food assistance.

Abdallah Djouma, 58, lives at Djabal camp with his wife and four children. He earns a few dollars a day reselling goods he buys from traders at local markets. He also farms a small plot of land. "Last year was bad," he told IRIN. "We didn't have sufficient rain."

"I am not an idle man," he added. "I always manage to get extra revenue to take care of our basic needs."

Without that extra income, the family would not survive. "The reduced rations are far from sufficient to cover our everyday needs," he said.

The reality is that aid agencies like UNHCR cannot provide for the refugees' needs in the long term. "People see us as a development body, but we are just an emergency aid agency," commented Peggy Pentshi-a-Maneng, head of UNHCR operations in Goz Beida.

After 12 years, the Darfur refugees can no longer be considered as an emergency case, said Canhandula, the UNHCR country head, adding that they should be seen as part of the broader development challenges facing their host country. "I think more attention needs to be paid to what 400,000 refugees represent to the government of Chad, because it's a country that's quite poor, where the standards of living, health, water, and education are very low.

"There should be solidarity with the government of Chad."
Developing Apps for Social Good in Iran

Publisher Article 19 Publication Date 9 June 2016 Cite as Article 19, Developing Apps for Social Good in Iran, 9 June 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/575a7f574.html [accessed 26 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.

Technological advances have the potential to transform the global human rights movement. One only has to look at the promising beginnings of the Arab Spring revolutions or the Ferguson protests and Black Lives Matter to see the significant role of technology in social movements. Around the world, technology is increasingly being used to bring about justice and equality for marginalized groups of all stripes--women, racial and religious minorities and refugees.

In Iran, however, where nearly 40 million smartphones are in use, with another million added each month, there are almost no apps for effecting positive social change. Civic tech groups are prevented from developing or using apps that might be considered subversive, with the government stifling the country's app market and development of the civic tech sector.

This is the reality for millions of people living in the Islamic Republic of Iran. Until now.

United for Iran, a San Francisco Bay area based independent nonprofit, just launched IranCubator, a global contest to create social-good Android apps for use inside Iran. IranCubator, in partnership with civil society leaders and technologists, aims to create Iran's civic tech sector. The project's ultimate objective is to encourage civic engagement among everyday Iranians and provide them with technologies that enables them to organize, assemble, and express themselves more easily and securely.

Through the contest, IranCubator will pair-off civil society activists with techies who want to use their skills to make a difference and reach an untapped market with millions of potential users. The areas of focus for the apps have been determined through an extensive community needs assessment. United for Iran surveyed over 200 activists and community organizers to determine community needs and potential tech solutions. Possible apps that will be built by IranCubator include an app connecting victims of domestic abuse to resources and each other, or a Yelp-like app that enables users to rate government services and officials.

Ultimately, IranCubator's Advisory Board, a diverse and inspiring group of human rights activists and organizers, venture capitalists, mobile technology experts, and security researchers, will rely on the target areas determined through the community needs assessment to select up to 20 apps to be made.

The winning teams, in additional to a financial reward, will receive extensive institutional support and full security audits and vulnerability testing to ensure the safety of the apps and the users inside Iran.

United for Iran (U4I) has a long history of collaborative work inside Iran, from their founding in 2009 to today. U4I was founded in the aftermath of the protests following Iran's June 2009 elections, when executive director and founder Firuzeh Mahmoudi organized a global protest in support of Iranian citizens and their demand for democracy. Today, half of United for Iran's staff are activists and former political prisoners who were forced to leave Iran after the 2009 crackdown. U4I has stayed focused on working with, not for, people of Iran in advocating for civil liberties and human rights.

We are at a critical point in defining the role that technology will play in our lives and societies.

Many human rights activists and technologists envision the use of technology in ensuring deep societal impact. IranCubator aims to deliver on that vision. Iranians' basic rights to freedoms of expression, assembly, religion, and association will be protected by IranCubator.

We hope that IranCubator apps will have a ripple effect regionally and globally.

***IranCubator is currently accepting applications from techies, activists and community leaders, and teams. Have an idea for an app? IranCubator is accepting ideas too! The first round of ideas are being accepted until June 14, 2016.

Copyright notice: Copyright ARTICLE 19
Newsletter: Freedom of Expression in Eastern Africa

Publisher Article 19 Publication Date 9 June 2016 Cite as Article 19, Newsletter: Freedom of Expression in Eastern Africa, 9 June 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/575a7ff34.html [accessed 26 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.

MAY 2016

This monthly bulletin provides a snapshot of the status of Freedom of Expression in Eastern Africa. It is compiled by ARTICLE 19 Eastern Africa with the assistance of its partners in the respective countries

ETHIOPIA

MAY 4: Yonathan Tesfaye, a former spokesman for the opposition Blue Party was charged by Ethiopia's Federal High Court for inciting violence and other terror-related offenses, citing Facebook posts as evidence. Tesfaye was put in custody by Ethiopian security forces in December at the height of violent protests in the Oromo community against an alleged plan by the government to grab their land. If convicted, Tesfaye could face a death sentence.

KENYA

MAY 8: Investigative reporters for Sunday Nation were arrested while recording a conversation and had their equipment confiscated. Mr. Martin Nyuguto, a police superintendent in charge of the Homicide Unit at the Directorate of Criminal Investigation (DCI) was speaking to family and friends of the businessman man Jacob Juma, who was shot dead on May 5. The journalists were recording the conversation between the officer and Juma's family as they questioned why it took detectives so long to secure the Mercedes Benz the businessman was driving when he was gunned down. At some point Mr. Nyuguto realised the Sunday Nation reporters wererecording, and confronted them. It took the intervention of the friends and family members present to mitigate the situation. However, the officer still threatened to take undisclosed action against the journalists.

MAY 11: Charles Njama, a presenter at Gukena 92.8FM radio was sent a threat via text message on his mobile phone while he was on air talking about an exposed filthy trench by the media in Nyeri town. The short threatening message came from unknown sender.

MAY 23: Several journalists narrowly escaped death after police officers intentionally lobbed three teargas canisters inside their car at the Kisumu Boys Roundabout during the weekly protests against electoral reforms by the Coalition for Reforms and Democracy (CORD). "I saw hell within few minutes; this is unwarranted and uncalled for. It was clear from the start of the demonstration that the police were targeting us," a journalist told ARTICLE 19.

UGANDA

MAY 4: Alex Atuhaire, an associate editor at the Daily Monitor was summoned and interrogated by the Criminal Investigations Directorate (CIID) for about three hours over a news story which was to be published in the daily paper on April 5. The story was about the mass killings in the Rwenzori sub-region of Western Uganda, where at least 45 people died, according to media reports. This was after the Defence Minister; Dr. Crispus Kiyonga reported a case of criminal defamation at the CIID against the journalists.

Atuhaire was the second journalist from the Daily Monitor to be questioned by CIID over the same story in less than a week. Yasiin Mugerwa, a senior political reporter, who was also questioned about the story, was released on bond and ordered to return to police after a fortnight.

MAY 5: Jim Muhwezi, former Major General in the army and current Information Minister, issued a gag order preventing media live coverage of the opposition party leader Dr. Kizza Besigye. The government order followed the Deputy Chief Justice's April 29th ruling that all protests by the opposition were illegal. The Information Minister threatened a permanent ban and withdrawal of broadcasting licenses for any media house that did not obey the directive. He said the ban may "extend to social media if it is used as an alternative tool for propagating a defiance campaign."

The ban went into force a few days ahead of the swearing in ceremony ofPresident Yoweri Museweni, who is now entering his 30th year of rule after he was re-elected in February. The European Union Observer Mission said that the election lacked transparency and "fell short of meeting some key democratic benchmarks."

MAY 11: Denis Kato, a journalist with Channel 44 was shot in his left leg and rushed to a nearby health centre for first aid treatment, while Arnold Mukose of Salt FM and Ndugga Nicholas of Delta TV were arrested. The three journalistswere arrested while covering a protest at Nakasero Market. A fourth journalist, Damalie Muhaye of KFM was caned by army officers while she was covering the unusually heavy traffic jam caused by traffic diversions by police ahead of the swearing in ceremony.

MAY 12: Ugandan Government switched off social media platforms ahead of the swearing in of President Yoweri Museveni on May 13, after his disputed re-election on February 18, 2016. This was the second time social media platforms were switched off, citing 'security concerns'.

Mobile phone service providers sent messages to their subscribers, quoting a directive from the Communications Regulator, the Uganda Communications Commission (UCC), to switch off all social media platforms till after the swearing in ceremony.

Copyright notice: Copyright ARTICLE 19
Freedom in the World 2016 - Zambia

Publisher Freedom House Publication Date 7 June 2016 Cite as Freedom House, Freedom in the World 2016 - Zambia, 7 June 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/575aa7c924.html [accessed 26 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: 60

Freedom Rating: 3.5

Political Rights: 3

Civil Liberties: 4

Quick Facts

Population: 15,473,900

Capital: Lusaka

GDP/Capita: $1,721.60

Press Freedom Status: Not Free

Net Freedom Status: Partly Free

OVERVIEW

In January, Zambian voters elected Edgar Lungu, the Patriotic Front (PF) secretary general and the defense and justice minister, as the country's sixth president, following the late 2014 death of President Michael Sata, also of the PF. Lungu narrowly defeated Hakainde Hichilema of the United Party for National Development (UPND), 48.8 percent to 47.2 percent, in a vote that left the nation divided along regional lines and, to a lesser degree, along tribal lines. During Lungu's first year in office, the PF continued many of Sata's restrictive laws and policies, including using the colonial-era Public Order Act to interfere with the activities of the opposition. Political violence, primarily between supporters of the PF and UPMD, erupted sporadically during the year. Meanwhile, Lungu found himself confronted with dissent among a faction of PF members who had been aligned with Sata. Lungu's government also grappled with the effects of a sharp economic contraction caused in part by plummeting copper prices.

Zambians have been working on drafting a new constitution since the early 2000s, and under Sata, civil society and church groups were involved in a drawn-out constitution-making process. However, in late 2015, parliament instead approved a package of amendments to the existing 1991 charter. Following several months of public comment, the Constitution of Zambia (Amendment) Bill was introduced to parliament in December, and pushed through days later by a coalition of lawmakers from the PF and the Movement for Multiparty Democracy (MMD). Among other provisions, it requires presidential candidates to select a running mate who would take over the presidency in the event of the head of state's death  an event that triggered early elections in Zambia on two occasions in recent years. It also requires that the winner of a presidential election gain more than 50 percent of the vote. Constitutional experts and civil society organizations criticized the parliamentary debate of the bill as rushed, and argued that the government watered down some protections written into a draft constitution released in 2014, a document that many Zambians had expected to vote on in a national referendum. Lungu was expected to sign the legislation in early 2016. A national referendum on a bill of rights, which was not included in the amendment bill, is planned for August 2016, alongside general elections.

POLITICAL RIGHTS AND CIVIL LIBERTIES

Political Rights: 26 / 40

A. Electoral Process: 8 / 12

The president and the unicameral National Assembly are elected to serve concurrent five-year terms. The National Assembly includes 150 elected members and 8 members appointed by the president. After his victory in the January 2015 presidential by-election, Lungu appointed PF chairwoman Inonge Wina as vice president, making her the first woman to hold the position in Zambia. The election was generally seen as free and credible by observers. However, voter turnout fell to historically low levels, reaching just 32 percent.

The PF won a plurality in 2011 parliamentary elections, and in 2015 continued to extend its majority in parliament through multiple by-elections. By-elections, triggered in part by a PF strategy of enticing opposition legislators to switch parties with offers of government posts (a party switch automatically leads to a by-election), have altered the balance of power in the National Assembly in favor of the PF since the 2011 general elections. In 2015, the PF held 87 seats, up from 61 in 2011; the MMD had 36 seats, down from 55 following the 2011 polls; and the UPND held 31 seats, from 29 previously. Although some by-elections have been characterized by violence between party cadres and the misuse of the media by the PF, observers have generally deemed voting credible.

In October 2015, reports emerged that electoral authorities in PF strongholds were permitting voters to register more than once. The Electoral Commission of Zambia (ECZ) pledged to investigate instances of electoral malpractice, and warned the voting public against registering multiple times. Additionally, in September Hichilema alleged that some people had been unable to register to vote because poor management by the PF had resulted in delays in the issuance of national identity cards, which are required in order to register.

B. Political Pluralism and Participation: 11 / 16 (-1)

The major political parties are the PF, the MMD, and the UPND. Since its 2011 election loss, the MMD  which had governed Zambia for the previous 20 years  has been weakened considerably by infighting and PF efforts to coopt its members. The MMD's loss of seats in recent by-elections means that no party currently meets the 53-seat threshold to be recognized as the official opposition in parliament.

The two main opposition parties, as well as smaller parties, have also been weakened in recent years by harassment and intimidation from the PF, including use of the police and the Public Order Act to prevent them from holding both indoor and outdoor meetings and rallies. Such incidents were frequent in 2015. In one high-profile event in June, police broke up an indoor meeting at which UPND parliament member Stephen Katuka was addressing constituents; officials claimed that he had failed to secure police permission for the gathering. In October, Forum for Democracy and Development (FDD) leader Edith Nawakwi was detained by police in Kitwe after she held an indoor meeting with party members. She was questioned for several hours and later released with a warning; Nawakwi said officers had suggested that the meeting caused a breach of the peace. In December, police inspector general Kakoma Kanganja defended as legal the actions of police in Lundazi, who had thrown a tear gas canister into a meeting hall to break up a party meeting of the MMD attended by its president, Nevers Mumba. Kanganja claimed that the MMD did not have a police permit to hold the meeting.

The constitution prohibits the formation of political parties aimed exclusively at representing the interests of a particular ethnic group. However, a number of political parties are affiliated with tribal groups, and the government in practice does not limit the political rights of people belonging to ethnic minorities.

C. Functioning of Government: 7 / 12 (+1)

The state of Sata's health had been the subject of speculation since 2012, raising questions among some observers about who was actually running the country. Following Sata's death in 2014, Lungu's January 2015 election marked the restoration of an environment in which Zambia's head of state was clearly in charge of the government.

Corruption is widespread. The PF has taken some steps to fight graft; in 2012, the National Assembly reinserted the key "abuse of office" clause of the Anti-Corruption Act, which had been removed by the MMD-dominated legislature in 2010. The clause allows for the prosecution of public officials for violations such as abuse of authority or misuse of public funds. However, many prosecutions and court decisions in Zambia are thought to reflect political motivations.

In March 2013, the National Assembly voted to lift former president Rupiah Banda's immunity from prosecution. Among other charges, Banda, of the MMD, was accused of abuse of power in connection with a $2.5 million oil deal with a Nigerian company from which he allegedly benefited during his 2008-11 presidency. In June 2015, Banda was acquitted, with a Lusaka court saying there was insufficient evidence to convict him.

Access to information legislation was drafted in 2002, but neither the previous MMD administrations nor the PF government have taken action to approve it. In April, Lungu gave some indication that he was preparing to approve the legislation. However, in May, following a press article alleging that the government had contracted a foreign loan without declaring it, Lungu announced that he was "thinking twice" about enacting the access bill.

Nevertheless, 2015 saw some improvements in government openness and transparency. Throughout the year, ministers often issued unprompted statements in parliament, while in November Lungu held his first  albeit his only  press conference, the PF's first in four years.

Zambia was ranked 76 out of 168 countries and territories surveyed in Transparency International's 2015 Corruption Perceptions Index.

Civil Liberties: 34 / 60

D. Freedom of Expression and Belief: 11 / 16

Freedoms of expression and of the press are constitutionally guaranteed, but the government frequently restricted these rights in practice in 2015. Although the PF has pledged to free the public media  consisting of the Zambia National Broadcasting Corporation (ZNBC) and the widely circulated Zambia Daily Mail and Times of Zambia  from government control, these outlets have generally continued to report along progovernment lines. Many journalists reportedly practice self-censorship. The ZNBC dominates the broadcast media, though several private stations have the capacity to reach large portions of the population. Roughly 17 percent of the population accessed the internet in 2014, according to the International Telecommunication Union.

Journalists at public, community, and privately owned outlets faced stepped-up harassment and attacks by government officials and PF supporters throughout 2015, especially in retaliation for hosting opposition figures or criticizing ruling party officials on the air. In July, armed PF supporters in Kitwe entered the offices of Radio Icengelo and disrupted its operations just before the UPND's Hichilema was scheduled to speak on one of its programs. In August, Central Province Minister Davies Chisopa of the PF ordered the dissolution of UN-supported Mkushi Radio's board over its alleged bias toward the UPND. The same month, ZNBC radio producer Martin Maseka, who also leads Zambia's broadcasters' union, was suspended from his job at the station for publicly criticizing Information Minister Chishimba Kambwili's threat to fire ZNBC staff who had been protesting questionable management practices at the broadcaster. In October, Kambwili threated to revoke the broadcasting license of Lusaka's Radio Phoenix, saying it disseminated antigovernment propaganda. Also that month, Christine Ngwisha was dismissed from Radio Phoenix, days after interviewing Kambwili on one of the station's live programs; Kambwili had complained that the absence of callers-in during the interview indicated that the station supported the UPND.

In December, PF supporters in Chipata disrupted a live broadcast on Breeze FM featuring opposition Rainbow Party president and former PF secretary general Wynter Kabimba, assaulting a security guard and inflicting property damage. Following the incident, the station cancelled all its political news programming for fear of becoming a target of violence. A week later, Post newspaper journalist Peter Sukwa and Feel Free Radio journalist Kelvin Phiri were attacked by PF supporters while investigating allegations that non-Zambians were being registered as voters in Vubwi, on the border with Malawi. One of the journalists reported that an attacker had urinated into his mouth, and had poured fuel on him and threatened to set him alight. A deputy home affairs minister, Colonel Panji Kaunda of the PF, condemned the attack and called on police to make arrests.

Government officials frequently bring lawsuits in response to critical or unfavorable reporting. In May, Post newspaper owner Fred M'membe was arrested along with one of the newspaper's reporters for publishing a letter from the Anti-Corruption Commission indicating that a presidential aide was being investigated. They were charged with publishing classified information, and the case against them remained open at the year's end. Although artistic expression is generally free, in June artist Fumba Chama (also known as Pilato) was arrested and charged with conduct likely to cause a breach of the peace in connection with his satirical song about Lungu. His case was discontinued in July.

Constitutionally protected religious freedom is respected in practice. The government does not restrict academic freedom. Private discussion is generally free in Zambia. However, in 2015, two journalists sued a local mobile phone service provider, alleging that between 2013 and 2014 it had placed wiretaps on their phones and rerouted their text messages to undisclosed recipients. Both journalists had previously faced obscenity or sedition charges, reputedly filed in connection with their alleged involvement with the Zambian Watchdog, an independent news outlet that has been periodically blocked in Zambia.

E. Associational and Organizational Rights: 7 / 12

Freedom of assembly is guaranteed under the constitution but is not consistently respected by the government. Under the Public Order Act, police must receive a week's notice before all demonstrations. While the law does not require people to obtain a permit for a demonstration, the police in 2015 continued to break up rallies and indoor meetings led by opposition political parties and activists, claiming that organizers lacked such permits. The police can choose where and when rallies are held, as well as who can address them.

Freedom of association is guaranteed by law but is not always respected in practice. Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) are required to register and reregister every five years under the 2009 NGO Act, which was signed into law by Banda but not implemented. In 2013 the PF attempted to implement the law, initially requiring every group to register or face a ban. While many NGOs complied with the registration requirement, others resisted it as a violation of the right to free association, and mounted a legal challenge. In 2014, the government and some NGOs agreed to resolve the dispute out of court, leading to a suspension of the forced registration provision and negotiations on a self-regulatory framework. No amendments had been made to the law by the end of 2015.

The law provides for the right to join unions, strike, and bargain collectively. Historically, Zambia's trade unions were among Africa's strongest, but the leading bodies, including the Zambia Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU), have faced marginalization under PF rule. In May 2015, Lungu agreed to lift a salary freeze affecting public-sector workers, which was issued in 2013 and had prompted outrage from the ZCTU. In October, following negotiations with the government, public-sector workers received salary increases ranging from 9 to 29 percent.

F. Rule of Law: 8 / 16

While judicial independence is guaranteed by law, the government often does not respect it in practice. Zambia's courts lack qualified personnel and resources, and significant trial delays are common. Pretrial detainees are sometimes held for years under harsh conditions, and many of the accused lack access to legal aid, owing to limited resources. In rural areas, customary courts of variable quality and consistency  whose decisions often conflict with the constitution and national law  decide many civil matters.

On a positive note, Lungu in March 2015 dissolved a tribunal established by Sata in 2013 that had probed alleged misconduct by judges, including several who had ruled against Sata's allies in a high-profile case involving Zambia's national airline; the tribunal appeared to violate constitutional provisions for judicial independence. Several judges who were suspended as a result of the tribunal's operations saw those suspensions lifted following Lungu's order. In October, a court ordered the government to pay the legal costs of one of the judges who had been investigated.

Separately, Lungu in February appointed Irene Mambilima as Zambia's chief justice, and her candidacy was unanimously ratified by the National Assembly shortly afterward. She replaced Lombe Chibesakunda, Sata's ally and cousin, who was widely considered to be biased in favor of the PF. Chibesakunda's appointment had never been ratified because she was past the constitutionally mandated retirement age of 65.

Allegations of police corruption and brutality are widespread, and security forces have generally operated with impunity. There are reports of forced labor, abuse of inmates by authorities, and deplorable health conditions in the country's prisons.

Some leaders in Western Province, a traditionally poor and marginalized region, have repeatedly demanded to secede from Zambia. Successive national administrations have had a contentious relationship with the Lozi, the province's largest ethnic group. In 2012, a small group of separatists in the region declared independence after Sata reneged on a campaign promise to honor the 1964 Barotseland Agreement, which promised the area limited local self-governance and provided for future discussions of greater autonomy or independence. (Presidents since independence have not honored the agreement.) Several people accused of leading the separatist movement are currently on trial for treason.

Consensual sexual activity between members of the same sex is illegal under a law criminalizing "acts against the order of nature," an offense punishable by prison sentences of between 15 years and life. LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) people have faced increased public harassment and legal prosecution under the measure in recent years. In October 2015, Hatch Bril, a transgender woman, was convicted under the law in the western town of Mongu, after a man reported her to police following a sexual encounter. Her accuser was not charged.

G. Personal Autonomy and Individual Rights: 8 / 16

The government generally respects the constitutionally protected rights of free internal movement and foreign travel. However, movement is often hindered by petty corruption, such as police demands for bribes at roadblocks, for which perpetrators are rarely prosecuted.

Most agricultural land, on which the majority of citizens conduct subsistence farming, is administered according to customary law; while technically such land is communally held, certain individuals and families exercise very strong use rights, and traditional chiefs have substantial power over land allocations. However, the president retains ultimate authority over all land in the country and can intercede to block or compel its sale or transfer. Executive branch powers have been used to buttress a land privatization scheme since the mid-1990s that has undermined traditional land rights and resulted in the accumulation of large estates by commercial agriculture and mining concerns. Zambia ranks low on indexes of economic freedom; processes for starting and operating businesses can be opaque and time-consuming.

Societal discrimination, low literacy levels, and violence remain serious obstacles to women's rights. In the 2011 polls, women won just 17 of the 150 elected seats in the National Assembly. At the end of 2015, women occupied 22 of 150 elected seats, or 14 percent. Women are denied full economic participation, and rural, poor women often require male consent to obtain credit. Discrimination against women is especially prevalent in customary courts, where they are considered subordinate with respect to property, inheritance, and marriage. Rape, while illegal and punishable by up to life in prison with hard labor, is widespread, and the law is not adequately enforced. Spousal rape is not considered a crime. Domestic abuse is common, and traditional norms inhibit many women from reporting assaults. Zambia's child marriage rate is among the highest in the world; 42 percent of women between the ages of 20 and 24 were married before they turned 18. Child rape is not traditionally punished under customary law. In December 2015, Lungu named Clifford Dimba, who in 2014 was convicted of raping a 14-year-old girl, the country's ambassador against gender violence, after pardoning him.

There is significant labor exploitation in some sectors of the economy. In particular, labor abuses in Chinese-operated copper mines, including unsafe working conditions and resistance to unionization, have been reported.

The use of child labor in dangerous industries, including mining, is a problem in Zambia. According to the U.S. State Department's 2015 Trafficking in Persons report, the most prevalent forms of exploitation in Zambia were internal trafficking of women and children for domestic servitude and forced labor in agriculture, mining, textile work, construction, and small businesses. The report notes that the government does not fully comply with the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking, but is making efforts to do so.

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 - Tajikistan

Publisher Freedom House Publication Date 7 June 2016 Cite as Freedom House, Freedom in the World 2016 - Tajikistan, 7 June 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/575aa7ccc.html [accessed 26 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: 16

Freedom Rating: 6.5

Political Rights: 7

Civil Liberties: 6

Trend Arrow: 

Quick Facts

Population: 8,452,153

Capital: Dushanbe

GDP/Capita: $1,114

Press Freedom Status: Not Free

Net Freedom Status: N/A

Ratings Change, Trend Arrow: 

Tajikistan received a downward trend arrow, and its political rights rating declined from 6 to 7, due to the government's mounting persecution of the opposition before and after the 2015 parliamentary elections, including the arrest of opposition leaders and a ban on the Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan (IRPT), which violated the guarantees of political pluralism established in the peace agreement that ended the country's civil war in 1997.

OVERVIEW

Tajikistani authorities continued to arbitrarily limit free speech, access to information, and the right to civic organization in 2015. The government led a legal and media campaign against the country's largest opposition group, the Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan (IRPT), ahead of and following parliamentary elections in March, in which the ruling People's Democratic Party (PDP) retained its majority. In September, after a series of decisions revoking the legal status of the IRPT and limiting its activities, the Supreme Court declared the party a terrorist organization, criminalizing membership in or public expression of support for the group. Authorities shuttered IRPT offices and arrested scores of members following the decision.

POLITICAL RIGHTS AND CIVIL LIBERTIES

Political Rights: 2 / 40 (-5)

A. Electoral Process: 1 / 12 (-1)

Tajikistan's 1994 constitution provides for a strong, directly elected president who enjoys broad authority to appoint and dismiss officials. In the 63-seat Assembly of Representatives (lower chamber), members are elected by popular vote to serve five-year terms. In the 33-seat National Assembly (upper chamber), 25 members are chosen by local assemblies, and 8 are appointed by the president, all for five-year terms.

The incumbent administration uses its nearly absolute control over media coverage, an extremely high threshold for number of signatures required to run for office, and the exclusion of Tajikistani migrant workers  who, by various estimates, comprise 20 to 45 percent of the electorate  from the nomination process for the presidency and parliament to cement its dominance over the electoral process. In 1992, Emomali Rahmon, a member of the Communist Party during Tajikistan's last years as part the Soviet Union, was installed as president in the midst of a civil war that lasted from 1992 to 1997. Rahmon was elected to the office in 1994 and has been in power since. The most recent presidential election took place in 2013, and Rahmon was reelected to a fourth term with 83.6 percent of the vote; Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) observers noted that the election "lacked a real choice" and failed to meet international standards.

The PDP has consistently dominated legislative elections. Ahead of parliamentary elections in March 2015, the government directed an extensive anti-opposition campaign through state media, and the persecution of many candidates, particularly those of the IRPT, led to the disenfranchisement of the country's most significant opposition forces. The PDP won 51 of 63 lower house seats, and a group of small, mostly progovernment parties took the remainder; the IRPT failed to secure any seats for the first time since 1999. According to OSCE monitors, the elections were marred by serious violations and failed to meet democratic standards.

The country's electoral laws and framework do not adequately guarantee the free and fair conduct of elections, and amendments made in 2014 were largely cosmetic. Electoral commissions are subject to influence from the government, which has the power to nominate members, and laws are often enforced in inconsistent and nontransparent ways.

B. Political Pluralism and Participation: 0 / 16 (-3)

A 1999 constitutional referendum permitted the formation of religion-based political parties and paved the way for the legal operation of the Islamist opposition, including the IRPT. Opposition parties were promised 30 percent of senior government posts as part of the peace accords that ended the civil war in 1997, but this quota has never been met. The government has consistently marginalized the opposition, which became virtually alienated from the political process after the 2015 elections.

Scores of IRPT members and their relatives were beaten, harassed, and imprisoned throughout 2015, with some reportedly tortured in custody. Ahead of the March elections, the government used state-controlled media and state-funded religious clerics to malign opposition figures, especially those of the IRPT. Officials and security forces continued to escalate pressure on the IRPT after the elections, raiding meetings and offices and harassing members. In June, party leader Muhiddin Kabiri announced that he would attempt to lead the party from exile due to fear of persecution. In August, the Justice Ministry revoked the party's legal registration on the basis of a technicality about minimum membership requirements, ordering the group to cease all activities. The campaign reached an apex in September, when the authorities accused the IRPT of involvement in an uprising led by Deputy Minister of Defense Abduhalim Nazarzoda in which more than 20 fighters and security officers, including Nazarzoda, were killed. Although the accusations were denied by IRPT leaders and lacked evidence, security forces began arresting dozens of the group's members on antiterrorism grounds. Later in September, the Supreme Court declared the IRPT a terrorist organization, criminalizing membership in or expression of support for the group. Arrests of members escalated after the decision, which radically altered the postwar political landscape and left thousands of citizens vulnerable to prosecution for previous membership in or support of what had been the country's second largest political party.

C. Functioning of Government: 1 / 12 (-1)

Following the March 2015 elections, the ruling party cemented a virtually unopposed position in determining and implementing policy. Officials from the president's native Kulob district are dominant in government. At least two of Rahmon's children hold senior government posts, and various family members reportedly maintain extensive business interests in the country, including the largest bank, the railroad, and the national television channel, among many others. Patronage networks and regional affiliations are central to political life, and corruption is pervasive. Major irregularities at the National Bank of Tajikistan and the country's largest industrial company, TALCO Aluminum, have been documented and linked together. Tajikistan was ranked 136 out of 168 countries and territories surveyed in Transparency International's 2015 Corruption Perceptions Index. Public officials are not required to disclose financial information, and government decision-making and budgetary processes lack transparency.

Civil Liberties: 14 / 60 (-1)

D. Freedom of Expression and Belief: 4 / 16 (-1)

Despite constitutional guarantees of freedom of speech and the press, independent journalists face harassment and intimidation. Tajikistan decriminalized libel in 2012, but the civil charge is often used to cripple newspapers that criticize the government. The government controls most printing presses, newsprint supplies, and broadcasting facilities. Most television stations are state-owned or only nominally independent. The government blocks some critical websites and news portals and uses mass blackouts on websites, social media platforms, email services, and even mobile messaging programs to prevent protests or criticism. In 2014, in response to attempts by Russia-based Tajik opposition groups to mobilize protests in Dushanbe, the authorities blocked hundreds of websites and communications platforms throughout the country, reportedly imposing a full blackout on internet services in some areas. The September 2015 Supreme Court ruling on the IRPT also shuttered the party's weekly newspaper and its website, two of the most popular opposition outlets in the country.

The government imposes a number of restrictions on religious freedom. Religious activities are restricted to state-approved houses of prayer. Authorities limit the number of mosques that can function in towns and have undertaken a campaign in recent years to shutter those that lack proper registration. In 2015, Tajikistan continued to prosecute individuals for alleged membership in extremist religious organizations. Christian groups have also reported arbitrary restrictions on their activities, and Jehovah's Witnesses  who have been banned since 2007  are subject to harassment and arrest. In June 2015, the state-controlled Islamic University announced the suspension of its Islamic religious school, which since 2013 had been the only such institution to operate with a license. The closure of IRPT offices, which had served as important civic and religious community centers and provided both religious and secular education services, further closed the space for religious freedom.

Wearing the hijab (headscarf) in schools and universities is not permitted. A 2011 law banned minors from attending regular religious services in mosques and prohibited private religious education, limiting even private discussion of religious topics in the home; many religious leaders criticized the law or quietly refused to obey it. The government exercises significant influence over the administration of education institutions, and security forces are known to engage in extensive surveillance of private communications, often without authorization.

E. Associational and Organizational Rights: 3 / 12

The government limits freedoms of assembly and association. Local government approval is required to hold demonstrations, and officials reportedly refuse to grant permission in many cases and often interfere with the ability of journalists to report on public gatherings.

Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) must register with the Ministry of Justice and are vulnerable to closure for minor technicalities. In August 2015, Rahmon signed amendments to the Law on Public Associations that compel NGOs to disclose funding from foreign sources to the Ministry of Justice. The legislation requires that foreign funds be logged in a state registry before organizations can access them, and gives the government oversight of operations supported by the funds.

Citizens have the legal right to form and join trade unions and to bargain collectively, but unions are largely subservient to the authorities.

F. Rule of Law: 3 / 16

The judiciary lacks independence. Many judges are poorly trained and inexperienced, and bribery is reportedly widespread. Court proceedings rarely follow the rule of law, and nearly all defendants are found guilty. Police frequently make arbitrary arrests and beat detainees to extract confessions. Overcrowding and disease contribute to often life-threatening conditions in prisons. In 2015, several lawyers defending arrested IRPT members were themselves arrested, mostly on unrelated spurious charges. In November, the parliament passed controversial amendments introducing a new certification process for the practice of law. The legislation requires all current lawyers as well as those entering the profession to undergo the process and to renew certification every five years, and expands the grounds on which licenses may be denied, barring those who have faced legal charges in the past from practicing law.

Discrimination against ethnic minorities is not a significant problem in Tajikistan. Same-sex sexual conduct is legal, but discrimination, harassment, and violence against LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) people are common, and there is no legislation against discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity. LGBT people frequently face abuse by security forces.

G. Personal Autonomy and Individual Rights: 4 / 16

Tajikistani citizens can travel freely but must register their permanent residence with local authorities. The authorities require foreign nationals to obtain permission in order to access the Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Region, which has in recent years been the site of violent clashes between local forces and the national government. In May 2015, the government announced that it was suspending the issuance of travel permits to the region, which borders Afghanistan, due to escalating security concerns. The right to choose institutions of higher education is formally protected but has been plagued by widespread corruption, and students interested in studying Islamic theology are forbidden from attending schools outside the country without special permission from the state.

The scarcity of economic opportunity has forced many to seek work abroad. Tajikistan ranks near the bottom in global surveys of economic freedom, reflecting a dysfunctional economic environment that impacts everything from peasant farms to large enterprises. By law, all land belongs to the state, which allocates use rights primarily for agricultural purposes in a process plagued by corruption and inefficiency. The government streamlined processes for starting a new business, paying taxes, and obtaining credit in 2014.

Sexual harassment, discrimination, and violence against women, including spousal abuse, are common, but cases are underreported and seldom adequately investigated. Reports indicate that women sometimes face societal pressure to wear headscarves, though official policy discourages the practice. Women are underrepresented at all levels of government.

Despite some government efforts to address human trafficking, Tajikistan remains a source and transit country for persons trafficked for prostitution. Child labor, particularly on cotton farms, also remains a serious problem.

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
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Freedom in the World 2016 - Syria

Publisher Freedom House Publication Date 7 June 2016 Cite as Freedom House, Freedom in the World 2016 - Syria, 7 June 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/575aa7cd11.html [accessed 26 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: -1

Freedom Rating: 7.0

Political Rights: 7

Civil Liberties: 7

Quick Facts

Population: 17,065,000

Capital: Damascus

GDP/Capita: $2,080

Press Freedom Status: Not Free

Net Freedom Status: Not Free

OVERVIEW

The civil war that started in the wake of a peaceful 2011 uprising continued unabated in 2015. By December it had displaced some 6.6 million people within Syria and created roughly 4.3 million Syrian refugees; most of those who remained in the country were in need of humanitarian assistance. The United Nations stopped providing casualty figures in January 2014, but the independent Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported a total of 330,000 dead as of August 2015.

The Syrian regime survived despite losing significant territory to three distinct and mutually hostile groups: the self-declared Islamic State (IS), Kurdish militias, and a loose coalition of rebel factions ranging from relatively moderate forces to radical Islamist organizations such as Jabhat al-Nusra, an affiliate of Al-Qaeda. President Bashar al-Assad appeared to enjoy active or passive support among constituencies including religious minorities  Alawites, Christians, and Druze  given the threat of Sunni Muslim extremism. Russia, Iran, the Lebanese Shiite militia Hezbollah, and Shiite militias from Iraq continued to provide the regime with critical military, material, and political support. Russia stepped up its involvement in September 2015, moving troops and equipment into the country and beginning a campaign of air strikes from Syrian bases. While Russia largely targeted rebel-held areas, a U.S.-led international coalition continued its own air strikes against IS.

Human rights violations by the regime persisted as it besieged major opposition-held population centers in what amounted to a "surrender or starve" strategy, causing malnutrition and civilian deaths. The government maintained its obstruction of international efforts to aid affected populations, in violation of UN Security Council resolutions, and reports of torture and other mistreatment of detainees continued to emerge. Human Rights Watch as well as Syrian medical and civil defense personnel accused regime forces of using chlorine bombs during 2015, despite the previous year's completion of an international program designed to eliminate Syria's stockpile of chemical weapons.

Insurgent groups also committed serious human rights violations, though the United Nations reported that these were dwarfed by the regime's abuses. Rebel atrocities included detention, torture, and execution of perceived dissidents and rivals, and sectarian killings of civilians. The worst violators were jihadist militant groups, particularly IS, which suffered some territorial losses to Kurdish and Arab militias but was able to capture new territory and population centers during 2015. Most notably, IS captured the city of Palmyra from government forces in May. Among a variety of other human rights abuses, evidence emerged during the year that IS had used chemical weapons, most likely a mustard agent, against its opponents.

POLITICAL RIGHTS AND CIVIL LIBERTIES

Political Rights: -3 / 40

A. Electoral Process: 0 / 12

Bashar al-Assad assumed power after the death of his father, longtime president Hafez al-Assad, in 2000. Constitutional revisions adopted in 2012 provided for future presidential elections, replacing a presidential referendum system in which the sole candidate was nominated by the ruling Baath Party. However, among other restrictions, candidates needed support from at least 35 lawmakers to qualify.

Assad was reelected for a third term in June 2014 with what the government claimed was 88.7 percent of the vote amid 73.4 percent turnout. The voting was conducted only in government-controlled areas and in a climate of severe repression. Observers were invited from friendly authoritarian countries including North Korea, while major democratic states denounced the voting as illegitimate.

Members of the 250-seat, unicameral People's Council serve four-year terms but hold little independent legislative power. Almost all power rests in the executive branch. The last legislative elections were held in May 2012 amid open warfare and an opposition boycott. The Baath Party and allied factions took 168 seats, progovernment independents secured 77, and a nominal opposition group won 5.

Opposition-held Syria  as distinguished from IS territory and the Kurdish region  continued to lack an effective or unified governing structure in 2015. The National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces, or Etilaf, was formed in 2012 to act as the international representative body of the revolution. Comprising delegates from opposition groups in exile, it has been recognized as the legitimate representative of the Syrian people by the Arab League, the United States, and many European countries. Etilaf has undergone several changes of leadership through internal elections; in January 2015, delegates meeting in Istanbul chose Khaled Khoja to serve a six-month term as president; he was subsequently reelected in August. These elections are competitive to an extent, but heavily influenced by the coalition's foreign backers. Moreover, Etilaf's links to local leaders and fighters inside Syria remain tenuous, casting serious doubt on the degree to which it is genuinely representative of civilians or fighters in the country.

Provisional local councils in certain rebel-held areas have organized rudimentary elections, and some appear to have been fairly contested and even impartially monitored. Separately, Syria's Kurdish north, known locally as Rojava, declared autonomy from Damascus in January 2014 and adopted a provisional constitution. Its decentralized political and administrative structure prioritizes decision making at the neighborhood and municipal levels, where representatives are directly elected by residents. Elections at these levels took place throughout 2015. However, in Rojava and elsewhere, experiments in civilian self-government remain vulnerable to derailment by hostile militant groups, bombardment and siege by progovernment forces, and chronic resource shortages. IS does not allow elections of any kind in areas under its control.

B. Political Pluralism and Participation: 0 / 16

Formally, the state forbids parties based on religious, tribal, or regional affiliation. Until a 2011 decree allowed the formation of new parties, the only legal factions were the Baath Party and its several small coalition partners. Independent candidates are heavily vetted and closely allied with the regime. The 2012 constitutional reforms relaxed rules regarding the participation of non-Baathist parties, but the government maintains a powerful intelligence and security apparatus to monitor and punish opposition political activity in practice.

Within the domestic progovernment camp, politics and decision making are completely dominated by Assad, his extended family, and a close circle of business and security allies. The president's relatives control key elements of the security forces. Although the government is often described as an Alawite regime and a protector of religious minorities, it is not an authentic vehicle for these groups' political interests. Political access is a function not primarily of sect, but of proximity and loyalty to Assad and his associates. The political elite is not exclusively Alawite and indeed includes members of the majority Sunni sect, which also makes up most of the rebel movement; meanwhile, Alawites, Christians, and Druze outside Assad's inner circle are just as politically disenfranchised as the broader Sunni population. Foreign actors including Iran, Hezbollah, and Russia also exert heavy influence over the regime due to their critical contribution to the war effort.

Political activity in rebel-held areas is more vigorous than in regime areas, but it is still seriously constrained, and in some places nonexistent. Civilians' political aspirations are often subordinated to whatever armed group controls a given area. Opposition territory is divided among a multitude of armed factions, including moderate, Islamist, and radical jihadist units, with varying implications for local political life. Local councils are often sponsored or appointed by prominent families and armed groups, and overwhelmed by addressing humanitarian needs and delivering basic services.

In the Kurdish region, the decentralized governance structure allows for the participation of most citizens in political life, including ethnic and religious minorities. However, the Democratic Union Party (PYD), the most powerful Syrian Kurdish group, dominates political life in practice and controls most of the Kurdish area's armed forces. It has been accused of arbitrarily detaining perceived opponents.

No political activity is permitted in IS-controlled territory. Those who oppose IS rule must either refrain from expressing their views openly or flee to other areas, as dissent is severely punished.

C. Functioning of Government: 0 / 12

Government institutions lacked public accountability and were plagued by corruption even before the armed conflict. Those who question state policies or use of public funds face harassment, imprisonment, or death. Members of the ruling family and their inner circle are said to own or control much of the Syrian economy. The civil war has created new opportunities for corruption within the government and its relations with the private sector. The regime has regularly distributed patronage in the form of public resources, and implemented policies to benefit favored industries and companies, to shore up its base of support. Government contracts and trade deals have also been awarded to allies like Iran as compensation for political and military aid. Even basic state services are extended or withheld based on a community's demonstrated political loyalty to the Assad regime, providing additional leverage for bribe-seeking officials. Syria was ranked 154 out of 168 countries and territories surveyed in Transparency International's 2015 Corruption Perceptions Index.

The government's lack of public accountability has been exacerbated during the civil war by the rise of militias that are nominally loyal to the regime but increasingly autonomous and free to exploit the population in regime-held areas. They have reportedly engaged in abuses including looting, extortion, and the erection of arbitrary checkpoints.

Corruption is also widespread in rebel-held areas. Some rebel commanders, including from brigades nominally aligned with democratic powers and their allies, have been accused of looting, extortion, and theft. In addition, local administrators and activists complain that little of the international aid reportedly given to opposition representatives abroad seems to reach them, raising suspicions of graft.

Islamist factions appear somewhat more disciplined and eager to enforce their decrees, though militant groups such as IS are not accountable to the public. IS runs an extensive extortion network and smuggling operations that extend into Iraq and Turkey.

Discretionary Political Rights Question B: -3 / 0

The armed conflict has grown increasingly sectarian, with Sunni civilians bearing the brunt of government and progovernment militia attacks, some Islamist factions persecuting minorities and others they deem insufficiently pious, and civilians of all confessions seeking safety among their respective groups. The result is significant, ongoing change in the country's demographics. In 2015, belligerents negotiated large-scale sectarian population transfers in an apparent attempt to secure their hold on strategic territory, though full implementation of the agreements remained stalled at year's end. Separately, Amnesty International accused Kurdish militias of destroying some Arab and Turkmen settlements and forcibly removing their inhabitants for suspected sympathies with IS or other armed factions.

Civil Liberties: 2 / 60

D. Freedom of Expression and Belief: 2 / 16

The constitution nominally guarantees freedom of speech and the press, but this is not implemented in practice. Freedom of expression is heavily restricted in government-held areas, and journalists or ordinary citizens who disseminate critical views are subject to the regime's coercive measures, including censorship, detention, torture, and death. Most domestic news outlets are controlled by the regime, which substantially hinders access to information. All media are required to obtain permission to operate from the Interior Ministry. The state controls major newspapers, while private media in government areas are generally owned by figures closely associated with the regime. The state has stopped trying to block Facebook but instead uses it for surveillance, monitoring the pages of opponents and dissidents. Meanwhile, the progovernment Syrian Electronic Army has mounted a series of cyberattacks on opposition supporters, activists, and news outlets, including major foreign media.

Media freedom varies in other parts of Syria, but local outlets are generally under heavy pressure to support the dominant militant faction in their area. Journalists in every region suffer from a lack of physical security. At least 14 journalists were killed in Syria in 2015. IS executed a Japanese journalist in January, and in December suspected IS militants murdered editor Ahmed Mohamed al-Moussa of Raqqa Is Being Slaughtered Silently, a citizen journalist group that operates clandestinely in IS-held territory. Others were killed while reporting on front lines, by terrorist bombings, or by regime air strikes. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, as of July some 25 journalists remained missing. Many others have been kidnapped or imprisoned but eventually released.

While the constitution mandates that the president be a Muslim, there is no state religion, and the regime has generally allowed freedom of worship as long as religious activities do not spill over into the political sphere. The government tightly monitors mosques and controls the appointment of Muslim religious leaders. In opposition-held areas, freedom of worship also generally prevails, except in territory controlled by the more extreme Islamist groups. IS has destroyed numerous religious and cultural sites and artifacts in its region, and implemented harsh restrictions on any religious activity that does not conform to its version of Sunni Islam. Christians living in IS-held areas are reportedly forced to pay special taxes and remove all outward symbols of their faith from their homes and persons. The war has increased sectarian hostility and polarization in both government and rebel-held areas. The regime has carried out massacres of Sunni civilians, while non-Sunni civilians have been killed by Sunni jihadists.

Academic freedom is heavily restricted. University professors in government-held areas have been dismissed or imprisoned for expressing dissent, and some have been killed in response to their outspoken support for regime opponents. Education in general has been greatly disrupted by the civil war, with school facilities regularly attacked or commandeered by combatants on all sides. IS has reconstituted an educational system of sorts in some of its territory, though it is based on religious and political indoctrination. Schooling in regime areas continues to emphasize political indoctrination as well. The PYD began to introduce Kurdish-language education in 2015, with critics alleging that the curriculum advanced the party's political agenda.

Private discussion is subject to heavy surveillance and punishment in areas controlled by the government, IS, and the more extreme insurgent groups, but the environment is somewhat more open than before the uprising in some rebel-held districts. The PYD allegedly suppresses freedom of speech in its areas.

E. Associational and Organizational Rights: 0 / 12

Freedom of assembly is severely restricted across Syria. Opposition protests in government-held areas are usually met with gunfire, mass arrests, and torture of those detained. The regime generally denies registration to nongovernmental organizations with reformist or human rights missions, and regularly conducts raids and searches to detain civic and political activists. IS, the PYD, and some rebel factions have also used force to suppress civilian demonstrations.

A variety of new grassroots civil society networks have emerged in many parts of Syria since the 2011 uprising, monitoring human rights abuses by all sides in the conflict and attempting to provide humanitarian and other services in areas with no state presence. However, such activists face violence, intimidation, and detention by armed groups, and must operate secretly in some cases.

Professional syndicates in state-held areas are controlled by the Baath Party, and all labor unions must belong to the General Federation of Trade Unions, a nominally independent grouping that the government uses to control union activity. The economic and political pressures of the war have made functioning labor relations virtually impossible across the country.

F. Rule of Law: 0 / 16

The constitution forbids government interference in the civil judiciary, but all judges and prosecutors must belong to the Baath Party and are in practice beholden to the political leadership. Military officers can try civilians in both conventional military courts and field courts. While civilians may appeal military court decisions with the military chamber of the Court of Cassation, military judges are neither independent nor impartial, as they are subordinate to the military command.

Government forces have been responsible for the arrest and torture of tens of thousands of people since the uprising began in 2011. An archive of some 55,000 images that came to light in 2014  compiled by a military police photographer who defected from the regime  documented the torture, starvation, and death of prisoners on a massive scale. In 2015, a Human Rights Watch analysis of the photos concluded that they showed at least 6,786 different detainees who had died in government custody and showed signs of torture and other mistreatment. According to the Syrian Network for Human Rights, more than 117,000 people were arrested and detained between 2011 and late 2015.

IS and some other Islamist militant groups have set up crude religious courts in their areas, imposing harsh punishments for perceived offenses by civilians. IS routinely carries out public executions, and insurgent factions including Jabhat al-Nusra have also been accused of summary killings of civilians and torture of detainees. More generally, the breakdown of state authority and the proliferation of both loyalist and rebel militias has led to warlordism, crime, and arbitrary exercise of authority by all sides in the conflict.

The Kurdish minority has historically faced official discrimination and severe restrictions on work, travel, property ownership, and cultural and linguistic expression, though their situation improved significantly after 2011 due to receding government authority. Syrian law also discriminates against LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) people; according to the 1949 penal code, "unnatural sexual intercourse" is punishable with up to three years in prison. Separately, there were multiple reports in 2015 of IS executing men for their perceived sexual orientation.

G. Personal Autonomy and Individual Rights: 0 / 16

The proliferation of checkpoints manned by various armed groups, heavy combat, and general insecurity have severely restricted the free movement of people and vital supplies since 2011. The regime has systematically blockaded regions controlled by rebels, and rebel and IS forces have done the same to regime-held territories. As of late 2015, more than 400,000 Syrians were living under siege conditions, unable to leave their place of residence.

Rampant corruption predated the Syrian uprising, affecting the daily lives of Syrians. Citizens are frequently required to bribe officials to complete bureaucratic procedures, and business investors and owners must often pay bribes to operate. Since the war broke out, Syrians who fear persecution have been wary of approaching official institutions to request critical documentation, and must resort to the black market. Rebel groups, IS, and Kurdish forces also extort businesses and confiscate private property to varying degrees.

Women are underrepresented in Syrian politics and government, and face serious legal discrimination. They hold just 12 percent of the seats in the legislature, though some have been appointed to senior positions, including one of the two vice presidential posts. Husbands may prevent their wives from leaving the country with their children, and women cannot pass citizenship on to their children. Male perpetrators of killings classified as "honor crimes" can receive reduced sentences under the penal code. Personal status law for Muslims is governed by Sharia (Islamic law) and is discriminatory in marriage, divorce, and inheritance matters. Church law governs personal status issues for Christians, in some cases barring divorce.

In addition to increased sexual violence associated with the armed conflict, domestic abuse is endemic. Rates of early marriage are reportedly high, with displaced and refugee families in particular marrying off young daughters as a perceived safeguard against rape, a means of covering up such crimes, or a response to economic pressure. Forced prostitution and human trafficking are also serious problems among these populations.

Conditions for women are uneven in areas outside government control, ranging from extreme discrimination, sexual slavery, and onerous codes of dress and behavior in IS territory, to formal equality under the PYD in Kurdish areas. All government positions in Rojava are reportedly shared between a man and a woman, and women are well represented in political life and military service.

Forced labor is widespread in Syria, as virtually every armed group engages in forced conscription and the use of child soldiers.

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 - Egypt

Publisher Freedom House Publication Date 7 June 2016 Cite as Freedom House, Freedom in the World 2016 - Egypt, 7 June 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/575aa7d015.html [accessed 26 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: 27

Freedom Rating: 5.5

Political Rights: 6

Civil Liberties: 5

Quick Facts

Population: 89,074,000

Capital: Cairo

GDP/Capita: $3,198.70

Press Freedom Status: Not Free

Net Freedom Status: Not Free

OVERVIEW

President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi continued to wield both executive and legislative powers in 2015, with no elected legislature in place since the July 2013 coup against then president Mohamed Morsi, which also dissolved the parliament. Legislative elections were finally held in late 2015 following a brief and tightly managed campaign period. The new, overwhelmingly progovernment parliament was scheduled to hold its first session in early 2016.

The government harshly restricted dissent and assembly by activists from across the political spectrum during the year. The media were also targeted, with authorities harassing and sometimes jailing journalists who reported on political opposition of any kind.

An armed insurgency based in the Sinai Peninsula continued to grow. In July, the state of emergency and nighttime curfew in Northern Sinai were extended for the third time following sophisticated attacks by a local affiliate of the Syria-based Islamic State (IS) militant group. Authorities also continued to demolish homes near the border with the Gaza Strip in an effort to halt the flow of weapons and militants through the area.

POLITICAL RIGHTS AND CIVIL LIBERTIES

Political Rights: 9 / 40 (+1)

A. Electoral Process: 3 / 12 (+1)

In July 2013, following massive protests calling for the resignation of elected president Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party (FJP), the armed forces overthrew Morsi, suspended the constitution, and dissolved the upper house of parliament. The military  led by Sisi, then the armed forces commander and defense minister  installed a nominally civilian interim government but remained heavily involved in the political system. The courts had already dissolved the FJP-dominated lower house of parliament in 2012.

A new constitution was adopted by referendum under tightly controlled conditions in January 2014. The document nominally improved protections for women's rights, freedom of expression, and other civil liberties. However, these rights have not been enforced in practice, and the charter suffers from significant flaws, including an expansion of police and military autonomy and a provision allowing military trials of civilians.

With the new constitution in place, a presidential election was held in May 2014. Sisi resigned his post as head of the armed forces to stand as a candidate, and garnered more than 95 percent of the vote against a single opponent, leftist politician Hamdeen Sabbahi. However, no independent international monitors were able to verify the results. The vote was also marred by low turnout, the use of state resources to support Sisi's candidacy, voter intimidation, and arrests and assaults of poll monitors. With no legislature in place following his election, President Sisi ruled by decree.

Scheduled elections for a new, unicameral parliament were repeatedly delayed. In March 2015, the Supreme Constitutional Court (SCC) ruled that some articles in the electoral law were unconstitutional, but the government did not amend the provisions until July. The amendments increased the number of seats filled through two-round elections in single-member districts from 420 to 448, or 75 percent of the total. The number of seats allocated through party-list voting, with the leading bloc in each of four multimember districts winning all the seats in that district, remained the same at 120, as did the number of seats reserved for presidential appointees at 28. Also in July, Sisi abrogated a decree passed by former interim president Adli Mansour that required the SCC to rule on challenges to the constitutionality of election-related laws within five days of hearing the case. Critics warned that the move would allow the court to deem a parliament unconstitutional well after it is seated.

Parliamentary elections ultimately took place in two stages from October to December 2015, again featuring low turnout, intimidation, and abuse of state resources. The progovernment coalition For the Love of Egypt, consisting of some 10 parties, won all 120 bloc-vote seats. Independents, a number of whom were aligned with the coalition, won 351 of the constituency seats, and the coalition parties' candidates generally outpolled their rivals in the remaining districts. Just three parties outside For the Love of Egypt won more than 10 seats: Protectors of the Homeland (18), the Republican People's Party (13), and Al-Nour (11). Many parties boycotted the elections and voiced serious reservations about their fairness, accusing security forces of harassment and intimidation. Groups that joined the boycott included two moderate Islamist parties, Al-Wasat and the Strong Egypt Party, and Egypt Awakening, a coalition of liberal and leftist parties. The FJP remained banned due to its affiliation with the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood. Al-Nour, a Salafist party, was the only major Islamist group to participate in the elections.

B. Political Pluralism and Participation: 4 / 16

The government systematically persecutes opposition parties and political movements, disrupting their operations and constraining their ability to organize. Large numbers of Muslim Brotherhood members and supporters, including nearly all of the organization's senior leadership and Morsi himself, were arrested following the coup, and arrests continued through 2015. Civil society organizations estimate that as many as 40,000 people were being detained for political reasons as of 2015, most of them for real or suspected links to the Muslim Brotherhood. Authorities declared the Brotherhood a terrorist organization in December 2013, which allowed them to charge anyone participating in a pro-Morsi demonstration with terrorism and laid the foundation for the complete political isolation of the Islamist opposition.

The government has also persecuted non-Islamist critics and parties. In September 2015, the socialist Bread and Freedom Party alleged that interference by state security forces prevented it from legally registering. Alaa Abdel Fattah, perhaps Egypt's best-known secular activist, was sentenced to five years in prison in February for violating a highly restrictive law on public protests. The April 6 movement, one of the prodemocracy groups that catalyzed the January 2011 uprising against longtime authoritarian president Hosni Mubarak, was banned in 2014. The government detained the group's general coordinator, Amr Ali, in September 2015 in what was initially believed to be a forced disappearance. Ali was later confirmed to be in the notorious Tora prison, where he remained at year's end without formal charges.

Since the 2013 coup, the military has dominated the political system. The new constitution increased the military's independence from civilian oversight, including through the selection process for the post of defense minister, who must be a military officer. President Sisi, a former general, has ruled in a style that entrenches military privilege and shields the armed forces from accountability for their actions.

The new constitution banned parties based on religion, though a number of Islamist parties continue to operate in a precarious political and legal position. Coptic Christians, who account for some 10 percent of the population, are allocated 24 of the parliament's 120 party-list seats, and the 2015 election results indicate that their representation is almost entirely dependent on this quota system. The Coptic Church leadership has allied itself with President Sisi since the coup, apparently to ensure the security of its constituents. The party-list quotas also set aside small numbers of seats for women, workers and farmers, people under 35, people with disabilities, and Egyptians living abroad.

C. Functioning of Government: 2 / 12

Corruption is pervasive at all levels of government. Egypt was ranked 88 out of 168 countries and territories in Transparency International's 2015 Corruption Perceptions Index. Official mechanisms for investigating and punishing corrupt behavior remain very weak, and the major prosecutions that began after Mubarak's ouster in 2011 have faltered since the 2013 coup. In May 2015, Mubarak was deemed to have completed a three-year sentence for embezzlement, though he remained confined to a military hospital and still faced retrial in another case at year's end. In October, a court ordered the release of Mubarak's two sons with time served for their own corruption sentences, but separate charges against them for insider trading remained pending.

There were several notable convictions in corruption cases in 2015. In July, Mubarak-era prime minister Ahmad Nazif was sentenced to five years in prison, fined $7 million, and ordered to return more than $6 million in state funds. In September, another Mubarak regime figure, former housing minister Mohamed Ibrahim Soliman, was sentenced to three years in prison and ordered to pay millions of dollars in fines and restitution to the state. Also in September, Agriculture Minister Salah Helal was arrested on corruption charges and forced to resign.

Although noteworthy, such high-profile prosecutions remain exceptional in a climate of general impunity. In July, Sisi issued a decree granting the president the power to dismiss the heads of state auditing bodies, further undermining their independence.

As with its predecessors, the Sisi administration has offered very little transparency regarding government spending and operations. The International Budget Partnership gave Egypt a score of 16 out of 100 for budget transparency in its most recent assessment. The government missed key deadlines for finalizing the budget in 2015, which was approved without input from civil society or the public at large. The military is notoriously opaque with respect to its own extensive business interests, including in major projects like the "New Suez Canal," and regarding multibillion-dollar arms deals with various foreign powers.

Civil Liberties: 18 / 60

D. Freedom of Expression and Belief: 5 / 16

Military authorities shut down virtually all Islamist and opposition media outlets following the 2013 coup and pressured others if they carried any critical coverage of the new government. As a result, state media and most surviving private outlets strongly support Sisi and the military.

Official censorship and self-censorship remained widespread in 2015. The Association for Freedom of Thought and Expression, an Egyptian rights organization, documented 172 press freedom violations in the first half of the year, including censorship and physical abuse. Arrests of journalists on dubious charges continued, and media workers had increasing difficulty accessing or reporting on the Sinai. Although the three Al-Jazeera journalists sentenced in 2014 to at least seven years in prison were eventually freed or pardoned in 2015, the Committee to Protect Journalists found that 23 journalists remained behind bars as of December 2015, making Egypt second only to China for the number of reporters detained.

State interference in the publication and circulation of newspapers persisted during the year. In August, Al-Mesryoon, Al-Sabah, and Sawt al-Ummah were stopped from publishing issues or had issues destroyed before distribution due to state objections to their content. Civil society activists also criticized the regular issuance of gag orders preventing news outlets from covering sensitive legal cases.

A draft cybercrime law circulated in April 2015 was denounced by civil society groups for using vague language that could criminalize dissent online under the pretext of fighting legitimate offenses such as hacking. The law would impose a life sentence without the possibility of parole if the purpose of the crime is to disrupt public order, jeopardize citizen safety, or harm national unity and social peace. The law was approved by the cabinet in May, but it had not been approved by Sisi or implemented by year's end.

Islam is the state religion, and most Egyptians are Sunni Muslims. Coptic Christians form a substantial minority, and there are very small numbers of Jews, Shiite Muslims, atheists, and Baha'is. The 2014 constitution made the right to freedom of religion "absolute" and was well received by religious minorities, though little has changed in practice since the document's adoption. Abuses against Copts continued in 2015, with numerous cases of forced displacement, physical assaults, bomb and arson attacks, and blocking of church construction. Christians were also arrested on charges of proselytizing, and similar allegations against Shiites led to the closure of a charity and the arrest of an activist.

Academic freedom has suffered since the 2013 coup. Despite a ban on political protests, universities have been a center of antigovernment demonstrations and the target of government crackdowns. In January 2015, Sisi issued a decree that allowed for the dismissal of university professors who engage in on-campus political activity.

Private discussion has become more guarded in the face of vigilantism and increased monitoring of social media for critical content. Media personalities have called on the public to inform on anyone they suspect of undermining the state, and some arrests have reportedly stemmed from overheard conversations in public places. Social-media users have faced arrest or prosecution for alleged offenses ranging from blasphemy to inciting protests or opposing the government online.

E. Associational and Organizational Rights: 4 / 12

Freedoms of assembly and association are tightly restricted. A November 2013 decree gave police great leeway to ban and forcibly disperse gatherings of 10 or more people. The law also prohibits all protests at places of worship and requires protest organizers to inform police at least three days in advance. Protests against the government were mounted throughout 2015, but they often ended in violent clashes with police and local residents, and police repeatedly used excessive force. On the anniversary of the 2011 uprising in January, authorities responded to Islamist demonstrations with tear gas and live ammunition, resulting in at least 23 deaths and 516 arrests, according to the government.

The 2002 Law on Associations grants the government sweeping powers over nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), including the ability to shut down the groups, confiscate their funding, and block nominations to their governing boards. Individuals working with unregistered groups face prison terms. The government has in the past permitted NGOs to operate without registration, enforcing the law selectively. Under a 2014 decree, members of NGOs who use foreign funding to commit acts that "harm the national interest" face life imprisonment and fines of 500,000 Egyptian pounds ($56,000). If an offender is a public servant or committed the violation for the purposes of terrorism, he or she could face the death penalty. Egyptian NGOs faced harassment in the form of office raids, arrests of members, and restrictions on travel throughout 2015. Hundreds of NGOs were shut down and had their assets confiscated due to alleged connections to the Muslim Brotherhood.

Strikes played a significant role in the 2011 uprising, and workers formed two independent union federations in 2011 and 2013, ending the long-standing monopoly of a state-allied federation. Strikes continued amid ongoing economic problems in 2015, with more than 1,100 labor protests reported, though this marked a decline from previous years. Authorities responded to the actions with raids, arrests, and intimidation. In April, a high-level court ruled that any government employee who participates in strikes or sit-ins would be forced into retirement; the decision was overturned in December.

F. Rule of Law: 2 / 16

The Supreme Judicial Council, a supervisory body of senior judges, nominates most members of the judiciary. However, the Justice Ministry plays a key role in assignments and transfers, giving it undue influence over the courts. Judges played a leading role in the drafting of the 2014 constitution, which significantly enhanced the judiciary's autonomy, including by allowing each major judicial entity to receive its budget as a single line item and permitting the SCC to appoint its own chairman.

A number of criminal cases in 2015 featured severe violations of due process and demonstrated a high degree of politicization in the court system, which typically resulted in harsh punishments for perceived enemies of the government. At least 538 people were sentenced to death in 2015, including a final sentence for 183 people in a mass trial of alleged Muslim Brotherhood supporters who were accused of killing 11 police officers and two civilians in 2013. At least 22 people were executed during the year.

Although the constitution limits military trials of civilians to crimes directly involving the military, its personnel, or its property, an October 2014 presidential decree placed all "public and vital facilities" under military jurisdiction, resulting in the referral of thousands of civilian defendants to military courts. Charges brought in military courts are often vague or fabricated, defendants are denied due process, and basic evidentiary standards are routinely disregarded.

Police brutality and impunity for abuses by security forces were catalysts for the 2011 uprising, but no reforms have been enacted. Reports of alleged extrajudicial killings and forced disappearances increased markedly in 2015, with estimates among various NGOs ranging from dozens to several hundred cases. Prison conditions are very poor; inmates are subject to torture, overcrowding, and a lack of sanitation and medical care. An estimate based on media reports found more than 600 cases of torture and 137 people killed in detention in 2015. A highly controversial August 2015 antiterrorism law provided a vague definition for terrorism and granted law enforcement personnel sweeping powers and immunity while carrying out their duties.

Egypt was under a state of emergency from 1981 until May 2012, and for three months following the 2013 coup. The Emergency Law grants the government extensive powers of surveillance and detention. A state of emergency and nighttime curfew have been in place since October 2014 in Northern Sinai, with repeated three-month extensions. A decree extending the measures in July 2015 followed coordinated attacks by the region's IS affiliate that killed dozens of soldiers.

LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) people face severe persecution, and conditions have grown worse under the Sisi regime. While same-sex sexual activity is not explicitly banned, LGBT people have been charged with prostitution or debauchery. In January 2015, a court acquitted 26 men of debauchery charges after they were arrested in a televised raid on a Cairo bathhouse in late 2014. New raids and arrests were reported over the course of 2015.

G. Personal Autonomy and Individual Rights: 7 / 16

Freedom of movement and property rights were severely affected by the government's counterinsurgency efforts in the Sinai in 2015. In addition to the curfew, checkpoints, and other travel restrictions, the military has summarily demolished buildings in the town of Rafah to create a buffer zone along the border with the Gaza Strip, displacing thousands of families and destroying over 3,000 homes and other structures as of late 2015. Authorities also pumped seawater into smuggling tunnels in the area, raising health and environmental concerns.

The Sisi regime has periodically denied entry to foreign scholars or activists, and detained Egyptian dissidents or journalists when they visited the country from abroad or sought to leave. Among other cases in 2015, officials refused to renew the passport of opposition politician Ayman Nour, who left Egypt after the 2013 coup and was living in Lebanon.

The 2014 constitution clearly affirms the equality of the sexes, but this has not resulted in practical improvements for women. Thanks in large part to quotas, women won 75 seats in the 596-seat parliament in 2015, and another 14 were appointed by the president. Some laws and traditional practices discriminate against women, job discrimination is common, and Muslim women are disadvantaged by personal status laws. Domestic violence is widespread, and spousal rape is not illegal. Other problems include forced marriages and high rates of female genital mutilation or cutting.

Violence against women has surfaced in new ways since 2011, particularly as women have participated in demonstrations and faced increased levels of sexual violence in public. A 2014 decree criminalized sexual harassment, with prison terms of up to five years, as part of a national strategy to combat violence against women. Critics argued that the law was inadequate and the strategy was failing, citing a lack of protection for witnesses, continued cases of group sexual harassment in public, and harassment by police officers, which deters women from reporting crimes.

Egyptian women and children, migrants from sub-Saharan Africa and Asia, and increasingly Syrian refugees are vulnerable to forced labor and sex trafficking in Egypt. The Egyptian authorities routinely punish individuals for offenses that stemmed directly from their circumstances as trafficking victims.

Scoring Key: X / Y (Z)

X = Score Received

Y = Best Possible Score

Z = Change from Previous Year

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Freedom in the World 2016 - Ecuador

Publisher Freedom House Publication Date 7 June 2016 Cite as Freedom House, Freedom in the World 2016 - Ecuador, 7 June 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/575aa7d115.html [accessed 26 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: 59

Freedom Rating: 3.0

Political Rights: 3

Civil Liberties: 3

Quick Facts

Population: 16,279,000

Capital: Quito

GDP/Capita: $6,322.30

Press Freedom Status: Not Free

Net Freedom Status: Partly Free

OVERVIEW

In December 2015, Ecuador's National Assembly, dominated by President Rafael Correa's ruling Alianza PAIS, approved a series of constitutional amendments that included the removal of term limits for all elected officials, among other measures. The amendments drew national protests throughout the year.

The government has increasingly cracked down on social media and other internet activity, leading some online outlets to disable public comment sections out of fear of reprisal. International and domestic organizations condemned the politically motivated closure of the press watchdog Fundamedios in September; the decision was later reversed.

POLITICAL RIGHTS AND CIVIL LIBERTIES

Political Rights: 24 / 40

A. Electoral Process: 7 / 12

The 2008 constitution provides for a directly elected president. The unicameral, 137-seat National Assembly is elected for four-year terms, with 116 members elected in 24 provinces (each province elects at least two representatives and then one additional representative for every 200,000 inhabitants), 15 elected through nationwide proportional representation, and 6 in multimember constituencies representing Ecuadorians living abroad. The president has the authority to dissolve the legislature once in his term, which triggers new elections for both the assembly and the presidency. The assembly can likewise dismiss the president, though under more stringent rules. The president can veto individual line items in legislation. The election law requires that women account for 50 percent of party lists in national legislative elections.

In the 2013 presidential election, Correa won a second term with more than 57 percent of the vote in the first round, followed by Guillermo Lasso Mendoza of the Creating Opportunities Movement (CREO) with 22 percent. In concurrent legislative elections, Correa's PAIS won an overwhelming 100 of the 137 seats. CREO took only 11 seats; the Social Christian Party won 6; Patriotic Society, Avanza, and the Pachakutik Plurinational Unity Movement won 5 each; and five smaller factions took 1 seat each. Following a 2008 constitutional mandate calling for a significant female presence in public office, women won 53 of 137 assembly seats in the 2013 elections.

International observers said the elections were generally free and fair. According to the Organization of American States (OAS), the environment for political competition among candidates was more equal than in previous elections due to new regulations imposed during the campaign period. The OAS noted, however, that competition between candidates in the precampaign period remained unregulated, giving an advantage to the incumbent. Prior to the elections, the Correa administration promoted changes to the parliament's seat-allocation formula that favored larger parties, which critics warned would benefit PAIS.

In 2014, the Constitutional Court announced that it would permit a legislative vote  as opposed to a referendum  on constitutional reforms proposed by the government, including the removal of the two-term limit for the presidency laid out in the 2008 constitution. Despite opposition calls to submit the proposals to a popular vote, the package only required two legislative discussions separated by 12 months. In December 2014, a majority in the National Assembly approved 15 constitutional amendments, including lowering the minimum age for running for the presidency to 30 years, limiting the subjects on which citizens and local governments could request a referendum, and ending term limits for elected officials. The removal of term limits included a provision restricting current officials who had already served two terms, including Correa, from running again in 2017, though they would be eligible again starting in 2021. The opposition and several civil society groups condemned the amendments.

B. Political Pluralism and Participation: 11 / 16

For decades, Ecuador's political parties have been largely personality based, clientelist, and fragile. Correa's PAIS alliance remains by far the largest in the legislature. Other parties include CREO, the Social Christian Party, and the Patriotic Society Party.

The 2008 constitution mandated that political organizations register as a requirement for eligibility in the 2013 general elections, although the process drew controversy. In preparation for the 2014 local elections, the registry of local organizations expanded. As of 2015, a total of 144 political organizations were legally recognized  10 at the national level and 134 at the local level.

Ecuador's constitution promotes nondiscrimination and provides for the adoption of affirmative action measures to guarantee equality and representation of minorities. In practice, however, indigenous groups often lack a voice in key decisions pertaining to their land and resources. The Pachakutik movement is loosely affiliated with the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities (CONAIE), the leading national organization representing indigenous groups.

C. Functioning of Government: 6 / 12

Ecuador has long been racked by corruption, and the weak judiciary and lack of investigative capacity in government oversight agencies contribute to an environment of impunity. Investigations into alleged corruption fall under the jurisdiction of the government's Office of Transparency and Social Control (FTCS), created under the 2008 constitution. In 2013, the agency launched a national plan aimed at eradicating corruption by 2017. The FTCS investigated 21 cases of corruption in 2015, though the budget for investigating such cases decreased by about 50 percent. In July, a corruption scandal involving the nation's police force resulted in the resignation of police commander Fausto Tamayo. In November, PAIS assembly member Maria Esperanza Galvan was sentenced to three years in prison for eliciting bribes from government contractors.

Ecuador was ranked 107 out of 168 countries and territories surveyed in Transparency International's 2015 Corruption Perceptions Index.

Civil Liberties: 35/ 60

D. Freedom of Expression and Belief: 12 / 16

Ecuador remained a hostile environment for freedom of expression in 2015. The press watchdog Fundamedios reported 377 cases of verbal, physical, or legal harassment against journalists during the year. Correa continued to use national broadcasts to castigate opposition leaders. The government also made use of its unlimited access to public service airtime to interrupt news programming on privately owned stations for the purpose of discrediting journalists.

After suing Correa for his response to a 2010 police revolt, opposition assembly member Clever Jimenez and journalist Fernando Villavicencio were convicted of defamation in 2013 and received a reduced sentence of 12 months in 2014. They remained in hiding until changes to Ecuador's penal code allowed their convictions to expire in March 2015.

Ecuador's controversial Organic Law on Communications, approved by the National Assembly in 2013, has faced strong criticism from international press freedom groups and human rights commissions for overly broad restrictions on the media. Among other provisions, the legislation created powerful regulatory bodies with little independence from the executive, placed excessive controls on journalistic content, and imposed onerous obligations on journalists and media outlets, such as barring reporters from working unless they hold degrees from accredited institutions. The law also employs vague language that could be used to censor critical reporting, prohibiting "media lynching" and "character assassination." The former extends to investigative reporting, while the latter covers the dissemination of any information that could undermine the prestige of an individual or institution. The Constitutional Court upheld the law in 2014, rejecting a challenge by opposition politicians and civil society groups. According to Fundamedios, 161 sanctions to journalists and media outlets have been issued under the law. Separately, the independent daily El Universo has been subject to a series of fines, most recently in June 2015, when the media regulator ordered it to pay $350,000 for refusing to publish the full response of the Ministry of Communications to an article that had appeared in the newspaper.

A new criminal code approved in 2013 contains potential restrictions on freedom of expression, including provisions penalizing the propagation of information that could erode equality, the unauthorized dissemination of personal information, the publication of false news that could affect the economy, and the defense of someone sentenced for a crime. The new code also retained existing libel and terrorism clauses. The constitutional reform package approved in December included a provision to make communications a "public service," which gives the government broad regulatory powers over the media.

Critical content published online has been subject to increasing pressure from the government in recent years. The government has employed private firm Ares Rights to force the removal of YouTube videos and Twitter messages that are critical of the government on grounds of copyright infringement. In 2015, Twitter suspended the accounts of several government critics without explanation, including opposition assembly member Lourdes Tiban. In February, the website Crudo Ecuador, which had been critical of the government, closed after its administrator reportedly received death threats. In August, journalist Martin Pallares was fired from El Comercio for violating the newspaper's policies by criticizing the government on Twitter.

Freedom of religion is constitutionally guaranteed and is generally respected in practice. Academic freedom is likewise unrestricted. Crackdowns on social media have led some online outlets to disable sections for public commentary for fear of reprisal. The government has also hired private firms for the monitoring of online content, and figures in the government have sued individuals for remarks made on social media, limiting free private discussion online.

E. Associational and Organizational Rights: 7 / 12

Numerous protests occur throughout the country without incident, including widespread protests over the 2015 constitutional amendments. However, national security legislation that predates the Correa administration provides a broad definition of sabotage and terrorism, extending to acts against persons and property by unarmed individuals. The use of such charges against protesters has increased under Correa. According to Human Rights Watch, delays in the appeals process of sabotage and terrorism cases are likely the result of political pressure.

Weeks of national protests in August over indigenous rights left more than 100 injured, including civilians and police personnel. Human Rights Watch condemned the police use of excessive force and arbitrary detentions in response to the protests.

While the right to organize civic groups and unions is provided for by law, domestic and international nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) have come under increasing government scrutiny and regulation. A 2013 presidential decree, codified in August 2015, introduced onerous requirements for forming an NGO, granted officials broad authority to dissolve organizations, and obliged NGOs to register all members. Critics contended that the decree violated international standards, and activists challenged its constitutionality in Ecuadorian courts. The government closed Fundamedios on September 8, 2015, after invoking the decree in January 2014 to seize control of the media watchdog. After strong international and domestic pressure, the decision was reversed on September 25, though the government ordered Fundamedios to stop interfering in political issues.

A 2011 presidential decree used broad language to limit the scope of foreign-sponsored NGOs, forbidding activities "incompatible with public security and peace," among other things. The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) left Ecuador in 2013 after the government denied it permission to renew existing programs or begin new activities.

Private-sector labor unions have the right to strike, though the labor code limits public-sector strikes. The December 2015 constitutional amendments limit public sector collective bargaining. There are more labor unions in the public than in the private sector. It is estimated that only a small portion of the general workforce is unionized, partly because many people work in the informal sector. Under the 2013 criminal code, public servants who "impede, suspend, or obstruct the execution of a law or regulation" may face sentences of one to three years in prison.

F. Rule of Law: 6 / 16

As established under a 2011 reform, Ecuador's highest-ranking judicial bodies are the 21-member National Court of Justice and the nine-member Constitutional Court. Opposition members and foreign experts expressed concern about the pronounced lack of transparency in the appointment process for the National Court of Justice, and the Constitutional Court has likewise faced criticism because members of the selection committee are closely aligned with the government. The system used by the Council of Popular Participation to vet candidates for the attorney general, appointed in 2011, was similarly criticized for its lack of transparency.

Judicial processes remain slow, with many inmates reaching the time limit for pretrial detention while their cases are still under investigation. Overcrowding plagues the prison system, and torture and ill-treatment of detainees and prisoners are widespread. The 2013 criminal code introduced more restrictive rules on pretrial detention, penalties for specific crimes such as hired killings, and tougher sentences for existing offenses. The government maintains strict visitation protocols for inmates' families.

Indigenous people continue to suffer discrimination at many levels of society. In the Amazon region, indigenous groups have attempted to win a share of oil revenues and a voice in decisions on natural resources and development. The government, however, has steadfastly refused the claims of indigenous inhabitants, maintaining that development of protected land is a matter of national interest. Those who continue to campaign against the government often face harassment or violence. In August 2015, amid a nationwide protest against the government, indigenous leaders Salvador Quishpe and Carlos Perez were imprisoned while demonstrating in downtown Quito and subsequently released. Perez's partner, Brazilian journalist Manuela Picq, had to leave the country after the government canceled her visa on the grounds that she had violated its terms by participating in the protest. Critics denounced the move as politically motivated.

Ecuador is the largest recipient of refugees in Latin America. A 2015 report by the UN Refugee Agency asserted that Ecuador needed to better uphold the right of asylum and to fight discrimination against refugees.

The government has shown some responsiveness in upholding the rights of LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) people. The constitution includes the right to decide one's sexual orientation, and discrimination based on sexual orientation is prohibited by law. Nevertheless, LGBT individuals continue to face discriminatory treatment.

G. Personal Autonomy and Individual Rights: 10 / 16

Freedom of movement outside and inside the country is largely unrestricted. Individuals can determine their place and type of employment. There has been some controversy over entrance to public institutions of higher education since the government introduced a nationwide examination and reorganized admission procedures.

Citizens have the right to own property and establish private businesses without undue influence by nonstate actors. While there may be delays due to red tape, Ecuador's business environment is close to the regional average, according to the World Bank's 2016 Doing Business report. A 2011 referendum, followed by an antimonopoly law, prevents asset holders in private financial institutions or private companies in the communications sector from simultaneously holding stakes outside each of these sectors.

Employment discrimination is common. The government has taken steps to protect women's rights through public campaigns and legal measures. The 2013 criminal code included femicide as a crime carrying penalties of up to 26 years in prison, and sexual harassment is punished with up to two years in prison. Since the code went into effect, the number of reported family violence cases rose significantly, registering a high of 3,748 from August 10 to December 31 of 2014 according to the Prosecutor's Office. The National Institute for Statistics and Censuses 2011 Survey on Gender Violence reported that 6 out of every 10 women have suffered from some form of gender violence; one in four of those has been subjected to sexual violence, though the most prevalent form of gender violence is psychological. The constitution does not provide for same-sex marriage, but civil unions are recognized. Impoverished, indigenous, and Afro-Ecuadorians as well as Colombian migrants are the most vulnerable to sex trafficking and forced labor in Ecuador.

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This year's Robert E. Howard Days in Cross Plains is filled with milestones, said Bill Cavalier, one of the scholars who regularly attends the celebration of the writers' life.

Howard Days is an annual two-day gathering to celebrate the creator of pulp fiction heroes such as Conan the barbarian, Sailor Steve Costigan, King Kull of Atlantis and Puritan monster-fighter Solomon Kane.

Starting Friday and concluding Saturday, it is filled with opportunities to meet fellow fans, hear Howard scholars share perspectives on his life and legacy, and walk the streets of Cross Plains, where Howard spent much of his life.

Born in Peaster Howard is buried in Greenleaf Cemetery in Brownwood. The event is always in June, close to the date of his death, June 11, 1936.

This year's guest of honor is Michael Scott Myers, screenwriter for the movie 'The Whole Wide World,' a biographical film based on the book 'One Who Walked Alone.'

Published in 1986, the book recounted the relationship between Robert E. Howard and schoolteacher Novalyne Price Ellis.

Cavalier said that Myers was the 'perfect person to blend with our Howard Days theme this year, Anniversaries.'

Events will include a showing of 'The Whole Wide World' Saturday, with commentary from Myers, a celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Lancer Conan series of paperbacks, plus a symposium on the legacy of Glenn Lord, who ushered in a new age of Howard scholarship.

The current year contains a number of important Robert E. Howard Anniversaries, Cavalier said.

'(It is) 110 years since his birth, 80 years since his death, 70 years since the publication of Skull Face and Others, 50 years since 'Conan the Adventurer' from (publisher) Lancer, 40 years since Glenn Lord's 'The Last Celt,' the 30th anniversary of the very first Howard Days, 30 years since Novalyne Price Ellis' 'One Who Walked Alone' and 20 years since the movie 'The Whole Wide World,'' he said.

A full list of events Friday and Saturday is available at www.howarddays.com/p/events.html.
The Texas High School Rodeo will remain in Abilene for at least the next three years, the Texas High School Rodeo Association confirmed Thursday evening.

Abilene, where the rodeo has been held for the past 27 years, got the nod over Waco. The decision by the THSRA board was made late Thursday afternoon and released after officials in Abilene and Waco were contacted.

Holly Delaune, THSRA marketing director, said the board was impressed with the facilities to be built at the Taylor County Expo Center if a bond is passed.

'I will say they (the THSRA board) was very interested in the new facilities,' she said.

Rochelle Johnson, Expo Center general manager, said she was relieved upon hearing the decision. She said she wasn't sure what was the determining factor.

'To be honest, I don't know what made them decide,' she said, adding that the renovations probably played a role in the decision as well as the incentive package offered to the THSRA.

Johnson said the Expo Center will pay $38,000 each of the next three years while the Abilene Convention and Visitors Bureau will kick in $7,000 and Lawrence Hall Chevrolet $5,000 for a total incentive of $50,000 for each of the three years. The new contract will run through 2019.

Johnson said she also thought the relationship forged with the THSRA over the past 27 years was a factor.

'I'd like to think our experience was part of the decision,' she said.

Johnson said the rodeo will be undergoing a transition whether it stayed in Abilene or moved to Waco.

'But here, we can plan the transition around the event,' she said. 'I can tell the builders we contract that things have to be done by a certain time.'

The weeklong rodeo, which is underway now, brings about 650 contestants to Abilene each year. The impact on the Abilene economy is estimated at $2.1 million annually.

A plan has been presented to Taylor County commissioners for $54.6 million in improvements to the Expo Center grounds, including the Taylor County Coliseum. Among facilities that could be added are more horse stalls and a separate rodeo arena, freeing the coliseum for more events during the year.

A bond election could be called in conjunction with the November general election. Commissioners would set the projects to be included and the final amount of the bond package for Taylor County voters to decide.
Moving forward with a potential ordinance to ban texting while driving, the Abilene City Council voted 5-2 on Thursday to schedule a final vote and public hearing on the issue June 23.

Councilmen Bruce Kreitler and Steve Savage cast the dissenting votes.

Depending on public response, the council could either implement an ordinance prohibiting drivers from using wireless phones, tablets and laptops to read, compose or send messages, or initiate a public awareness campaign about distracted driving in general.

The ordinance as proposed Thursday would not ban talking on a phone while driving or using a phone's navigation system.

If the ordinance is adopted, texting while driving would be punishable by a fine of up to $500.

Abilene Police Chief Stan Standridge presented the item to the council two months after an initial discussion with the board. He said the ordinance would be 'difficult to enforce' but would 'keep honest people honest.'

Mayor Norm Archibald said it would be appropriate for the council to listen to residents before enacting an ordinance. Councilman Jay Hardaway agreed, saying it would be a 'huge benefit' to hear from the public.

Kreitler said he opposed the proposed ordinance because distractions while driving do not stop with cellphones. He said he would rather start an educational campaign to inform drivers about all of the distractions that can impair driving.

'Distractions in cars are with us to stay, and they are increasing,' he said.

Savage echoed Kreitler and said that people still will violate the ordinance if it is adopted. He said the ordinance should completely ban cellphone use while driving or not at all.

Councilman Anthony Williams said he could support both an educational component and the ordinance because the intent of both is to 'change behavior.'

In 2015, the Abilene Police Department reported 284 wrecks that resulted from distracted driving, Standridge said, but that number likely is much higher because it is based on driver admission or witness reports. He said most crashes occur because drivers are distracted.

Out of those 284 crashes, one resulted in death, Standridge said. The distraction was not related to cellphone use but an argument between a man and woman in the vehicle. A 3-year-old died in the wreck.

Statewide, about 1 in 5 wrecks involves driver distraction, according to the Texas Department of Transportation.

In 2014, more than 100,800 crashes involved distracted driving, a 6 percent increase from the previous year, according to the most recent data available from TxDOT, Standridge said. Those wrecks resulted in 3,214 serious injuries and 468 deaths.

The problem with enforcing the ordinance, Standridge said, is that motorists from outside Abilene will not be aware of it. Additionally, it would be drivers' responsibility to prove they were not messaging while driving, which could be difficult if a driver was dialing a number or using the phone's navigation system, both exceptions to the ordinance.

'There's a lot of value to engaging our state Legislature to adopt this from a state-level perspective,' he said.

Forty-six states ban text messaging for all drivers, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Texas has a partial ban. Those with a learner's permit or who are younger than 18 cannot use cellphones while driving. Missouri also has a partial ban, while Montana and Arizona have none, he said.

'That tells you every other state has adopted this at the state level,' Standridge said.

About 40 Texas cities have instituted some kind of ban on texting or cellphone use in general, including Austin, Corpus Christi, El Paso and San Antonio, Standridge said.

DISTRACTED DRIVING WRECKS

2015 wrecks involving distracted driving by city (distracted driving does not just include cellphone use):

Abilene  284

Carrollton  579

Denton  505

Grand Prairie  927

Killeen  300

Lubbock  645

Midland  673

San Angelo  182

Waco  514

Wichita Falls  913

Source: Abilene police
Let us now consider the downside of Donald Trump losing the November presidential election.

The downside of his winning is obvious, and not just to liberals and Democrats. House Speaker Paul Ryan, the Republicans' highest elective official, agonized Hamlet-like before endorsing Trump, the party's presumptive standard-bearer.

I share those jitters at the prospect of a President Trump, but my rejoicing, should he be defeated, will be tempered by a sobering thought: We'll be right back to a status quo that isn't working for millions of Americans.

A President Hillary Clinton isn't likely to fix it. Neither would Trump, but he has the political instincts to claim that he would.

Even as a candidate, Clinton couldn't master the rhetoric. Campaigning in Ohio she promised to 'put a lot of coal miners' out of business. Considering the Rust Belt setting, it would seem a dumb thing to say. The region has been hemorrhaging the kind of jobs requiring a strong back and hands. The nation lost 11,000 coal-mining jobs last year.

But it wasn't an inept choice of words if you assume Clinton's message was intended for voters on Manhattan's Upper West Side and in Beverly Hills, Calif., who are passionately interested in environmental issues.

That difference bespeaks a dirty little secret about America today: It's the scene of class warfare.

Democrats deny it when Republicans accuse them of fomenting it. Yet it's real, and it doesn't pit Republicans against Democrats. Rather it's a struggle between the world of corner taverns and that of country clubs  with the ranks of the latter reinforced by NPR's listeners in a strange-bedfellows alignment of the wealthy and the well-educated.

To see how little this struggle has to do with party preferences, recall that President Barack Obama, a Democrat, and congressional Republicans are allied in advocating the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a multinational trade deal that is a corollary of globalization. Obama peremptorily dismissed those uncomfortable with TPP, saying: 'When people say this trade deal is bad for working families, they don't know what they're talking about.'

Stripped of hype and jargon, the essence of globalization is this: It pits American factory workers against their counterparts in China, India and Indonesia. Because it's a lot cheaper to live in the Third World than in the U.S., their workers are paid a lot less than ours. Ergo workers here lose their jobs as manufacturing is outsourced, which is why so many factories are closed along the campaign trail where Clinton drew a bead on coal miners.

It is true that Clinton changed her position on TPP, which she formerly hailed as the 'gold standard' of trade agreements. She saw which way the wind was blowing  but that was when Bernie Sanders was breathing down her neck. Will she stick to her resolve should she win the White House?

Wall Street is betting she won't. They didn't pay her hundreds of thousands of dollars in speaking fees expecting her to recite favorite passages from the 'Communist Manifesto.'

She was, after all, a Goldwater Girl, and went to Wellesley College. It's the kind of elite college where students more likely ruminate on holes in the ozone than on what it's like to pull the lever on a punch press until you are bone tired. Or, to feel it like a punch in the stomach when told that production is being moved  punch press, time clock and all  overseas.

Then Clinton became a Democrat. At one time, that would have put her on the side of working-class men and women. Under Franklin Delano Roosevelt Democrats enacted Social Security, providing old-age pensions and unemployment insurance, and minimum-wage legislation.

In return, organized labor became the Democratic Party's foot soldiers. Union activists rang doorbells at election time. That made for a truly two-party system: Republicans representing the affluent, Democrats representing work-a-day folks.

More recently, that alliance has been in tatters. President Bill Clinton signed the North American Free Trade Agreement over the strenuous objections of organized labor that it would cost Americans their jobs. The middle class has been dividing. Its college-educated section has been expanding, its incomes rising; the incomes of its blue-collar section have been stagnant, even declining.

The Democratic Party threw its lot in with the college-educated, whose interests include the environment and women's rights. Those without a college degree were left without a party to advocate for their interests: decent paying jobs.

And into that void Trump plunged, kicking and screaming about building a wall and deporting Mexicans. To public-radio audiences, that probably sounded like the high road to fascism. To many unemployed blue-collar Americans, Trump seemed a messiah attuned to their grievances.

If he loses, the potential path to power he laid out will still be there. Someone will try taking it. Perhaps he or she will tone down Trump's fiery rhetoric, appealing to suburbanites with college-graduate kids sleeping on their couch. Huey Long, Louisiana's senator in the 1930s, noted that, in troubled times, a smoke-and-mirrors gambit can work. Long  who knew something about demagogues, being one himself  once said:

'When Fascism comes to America, it will be called anti-Fascism.'

Email Ron Grossman, a columnist for the Chicago Tribune, at rgrossman@tribpub.com
Now that the rain has stopped and the summer season has started, the southeast side of Abilene is soaking up the activity.

A drive along E.S. 11th Street proves how the public greatly uses the Taylor County Expo Center and Nelson Park, and why efforts to enhance those areas are worthy.

The park is busy, with cars and pickups filling all available spaces for softball games. The zoo is a great destination for summer vacation days. Nelson Splash is getting a workout, as is Camp Barkeley, where every dog has its day.

Walkers and joggers are out. We don't know if the fish are biting, but other folks cast lines in hopes they are.

Across the street, pickups, trailers and RVs are parked where the 27th Texas High School Rodeo Association State Finals has kicked into gear. Summer after summer, we welcome young cowboys and cowgirls, as well as their families, friends and officials, to town for the competition that goes on for more than a week. The best of these competitors  those who place highest in Saturday's final rodeo  will compose the Texas team that will compete for national honors.

Last year, Abilene residents approved just over $1 million to enhance the Abilene Zoo, which next month celebrates its 50th anniversary at Nelson Park. This spring, a new giraffe exhibit opened. If you haven't been to the zoo lately, you will be amazed at the lush, more natural setting.

Taylor County voters may be asked to pay for upgrades and new construction at the Expo Center. The multipurpose facility serves many audiences, though events that connect us to our West Texas roots  cutting horses and rodeo competitions, the Western Heritage Classic, etc.  are mainstays. We want to keep folks coming to Abilene to enjoy our city and spending time here  that also means spending money here, which is a good thing.

Voters also approved $4 million to match federal money to upgrade our airport. Visitors' first look at Abilene likely is the Expo Center/Nelson Park area.

This time of year, this area makes for a fine welcome mat to our town. Y'all come on in!
Indias Ambassador wants to spread yoga in Armenia (video)

June 21 marks the International Yoga Day. On that occasion today yoga exhibition has been organized at Moscow Cinema, which will last until June 14. It is the second time such a photo-exhibition has been organized in Yerevan. Ahead of the symbol of the day, we have started with the photo-exhibition and have planned a number of events on June 21 in Tumanyan Park. In this way we are trying to raise interest towards yoga among Armenians, explain to the people what the yoga is in reality. At present India highlights the importance of spread of yoga. That is a healthy lifestyle; yoga makes peoples mind and soul healthy, brings mental harmony and is very important for formulation of healthy society. It is very widespread in India and thats why we want to spread yoga also in Armenia and share it with the people, Yogeshwar Sangwan, newly appointed Ambassador of India to Armenia, told A+. Ambassador says he is also engaged in yoga. He presented details. The type of yoga I am engaged in is called Kriya yoga, it gives a person inner peace and happiness. A1+ also asked the Ambassador about the prospects of construction of Silk road with India and China, the issue, which was discussed also during the EEU intergovernmental council session held in Yerevan on May 20. Before arriving in Armenia, I worked as Deputy Ambassador in the Embassy of India in Iran. In Iran I spoke to the Armenian Ambassador and he told me about that project. I dont know many details, but we are glad to discuss it, and, if it is possible, to cooperate and implement that project.
Today in history: On June 10, 1935, a New York City broker and a physician from Ohio, both trying to move on from alcohol addiction, met and established Alcoholics Anonymous. They devised a 12-step program to help themselves and others battle their addiction  a plan that has become world famous and helped countless people. Addicts met in group settings to confess their problem and seeking spiritual guidance. There are no dues and no officers. Today, there are 80,000 local groups in the U.S.
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Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sens government dismissed the European Parliaments threat to withhold millions of Euros in development funding unless the government releases the Kem Sokha Five detained activists and rescinds an arrest warrant for opposition party leader Sam Rainsy.

On Friday Sok Eysan, a spokesman the Cambodian Peoples Party (CPP), dismissed the EU resolution saying the legal entanglements of the human rights workers and Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP) officials were the fault of those involved and not the CPP or the Cambodian government.

We cannot use the EU law, he told RFAs Khmer Service. It is not right because Cambodia is an independent and sovereign state with its own constitution that was born from the United Nations Transitional Authority (UNTAC) in Cambodia that organized the election to establish the constitution, set up the royal government and recognized Cambodia as an independent and sovereign state.

Sok Eysan had a day earlier dismissed the head of the U.N. as having no knowledge of Cambodian affairs after Secretary General Ban Ki-moon also appealed for an end to Hun Sens crackdown on the opposition. He did not explain the discrepancy in his views.

UNTAC ran from 199293. It was established in the aftermath of the Khmer Rouge and civil war to restore order and safeguard human rights. UNTAC also marked the first occasion in which the UN took over the administration of an independent state, ran an election instead of monitoring or supervising one and was responsible for promoting and safeguarding human rights at the national level.

The European Parliaments resolution approved on Thursday is the strongest condemnation to date of the political crisis inside Cambodia.

The resolution calls for the release of four employees of the human rights organization ADHOC and a National Election Committee member who were jailed on bribery or accessory charges after being accused of attempting to pay hush money to the alleged mistress of CNRP Vice President Kem Sokha. An arrest warrant has also been issued for a U.N. worker in connection with the case.

Kem Sokha is currently holed up inside CNRP headquarters after heavily armed police attempted to arrest him for refusing to appear in court as a witness in cases connected with his alleged affair with a young hairdresser named Khom Chandaraty.

Court battle resumes

On Wednesday, a Phnom Penh court summoned Khom Chandaraty to appear in court to testify on June 16, but it is unclear exactly why she is being ordered to appear.

Her summons follows a June 2 warrant ordering Kem Sokha to appear in court on June 14 for his refusal to appear in court to testify as a witness last month in a defamation lawsuit related to recordings of intimate phone conversations he allegedly had with Khom Chandaraty.

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.

In the European Parliaments resolution, it specifically ties funding supplied by the EU for development with an improvement in human rights.

Given that the EU is Cambodia's largest development assistance partner, with a new allocation of 410 million (U.S. $462 million) for 2014-2020, Parliament calls on the European External Action Service (EEAS) to make the amount of EU financial assistance dependent on improvements in the human rights situation in the country, the resolution states.

EU member states, foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini, the EEAS and the EU Commission should also set out clear benchmarks for the forthcoming elections in Cambodia, consistent with international law on freedom of expression, association and assembly, it adds.

It also calls for the release of the Kem Sokha Five and revocation of the Sam Rainsys warrant.

The Cambodian authorities should revoke the arrest warrant for, and drop all charges against, Sam Rainsy, President of the leading opposition party, the CNRP, and also immediately release the five human rights defenders still in preventive custody, namely Ny Sokha, Nay Vanda, Yi Soksan, Lim Mony and Ny Chakra, the resolution reads.

Expression of opinion

A spokesperson for Hun Sens cabinet, the Council of Ministers chief Phay Siphan, described the EU statement as a mere expression of opinion, saying Cambodia does not pay attention to the EUs aid conditions.

What we see is that the pressure from the EU is caused by misleading information the CNRP produces for the U.S. Congress as well as the European Parliament, he said.

He expressed skepticism that the EU would follow through with the threat to withhold funding because the Europeans dont want to risk their investments in the country.

It is increasing year after year because their goal is different from politics, it is for development, for good relations, and cooperation for mutual interests in business, he said.

Not everyone is as sanguine about the threat, however.

Noted Cambodian political scientist Ros Ravuth said the Cambodian government should consider the international communitys concerns. If Cambodia continues to let the current situation drag on, it could make Cambodia lose face in the international arena and could affect foreign aid, he told RFA.

The government should reconsider, he said. First, it is related to EU aid for infrastructure construction in Cambodia, and it also has impact on Cambodias marketplace, especially the market for rice, for which Cambodias biggest market is the European Union.

Instead of confronting each other, the parties should restart the culture of dialogue rather than confronting each other and revealing the countrys internal conflicts, said Ros Ravuth.

'It's a mess.'

In the provinces, the government continues to detain CNRP members and supporters attempting to collect thumbprints on a petition asking King Norodom Sihamoni to seek the release of human rights and political activists arrested by the government.

Three villagers in O Yadav district, Rattanakiri province, were detained and questioned by the police on June 10th.

A relative of one of the detained villagers told RFA the three were traveling to attend a Christian religious meeting in Andong Meas district when they were stopped by police who suspected them of collecting thumbprints for the petition. In Cambodia thumbprints often take the place of signatures.

Rattanakiri Deputy Governor Nhem Sam Oeun told RFA that CNRP attempts to collect thumbprints alarmed the local people.

The authorities are concerned that the CNRP activists are forcing people to thumbprint the petition, so they took action for the sake of peoples safety, but they did not arrest anyone, he said.

It is a mess, and we are afraid there is pressure or people are being forced to thumbprint against their will, and it seems to cause chaos and insecurity, Nhem Sam Oeun said.

He did not offer evidence that the CNRP was pressuring people to support the petition. Villagers typically say the intimidation comes from the ruling party.

Leang Leat, a CNRP activist in Srae Sangkum commune, Koh Nheaek district, told RFA the commune chief warned him against collecting thumbprints and sent a letter summoning him for questioning in the commune office on June 10th.

They asked me if I had requested permission to go around and collect thumbprints, he told RFA. I told them No, I did not and that I did not do it to get people to topple the government, or to cause chaos but just to ask the King to help release the human rights defenders.

Reported by Yeang Sothearin, Sok Ratha, Yeang Sothearin and Ieng Neang for RFA's Khmer Service. Translated by Yanny Hin. Written in English by Brooks Boliek.
Jailed Chinese rights activist Guo Feixiong has now been on hunger strike in Guangdong's Yangchun prison for more than a month, sparking renewed fears for his deteriorating health, lawyers and relatives told RFA.



Guo's defense attorney Zhang Lei said he plans to apply for another meeting with his client after Hong Kong's South China Morning Post (SCMP) reported on Guo's rapid weight loss.



"The most worrying thing right now is his physical health, which isn't good," he said. "Now that he has been on hunger strike for such a prolonged period of time, we are very worried indeed."



He said Guo had begun his hunger strike on May 9, linked to specific demands to prison authorities.



"We will be requesting another meeting soon, but the contents of every meeting are censored by the prison authorities, before they are approved," Zhang Lei said. "The past two visits have been like that."



The SCMP cited Guo's former lawyer Sui Muqing as saying that the jailed activist has lost one-third of his bodyweight since he began his hunger strike in protest at degrading treatment by prison guards.



"The hunger strike is ongoing but his weight dropped from about 75 kg (165 pounds) when he was first locked up to less than 52 kg (114 pounds) now," Sui told the paper.



"His collarbones are clearly visible, and the authorities have been threatening his brother and sister from speaking to the outside world about his condition," Sui added.



'Devastated'



Guos sister, a physician named Yang Maoping who has already advised him to call off his hunger strike for health reasons, declined to comment when contacted by RFA.



"Sorry, I am just so devastated. My apologies. Goodbye," Yang said, apparently overcome with emotion.



In another phone call, Yang declined to comment, saying only that it was "inconvenient," a phrase often used by those under extreme pressure or police surveillance.



However, Guo's wife Zhang Qing, who was granted political asylum in the United States in November 2009 along with the couple's children, said she is "very worried" about her husband.



"He used to be a healthy, well-muscled guy, on the plump side, when we lived together back home," Zhang said. "He will be so weak, if his weight has really dropped to [114 pounds]."



Zhang, who has repeatedly written to China's leaders and campaigned in Washington for his release, said U.S. officials have been alerted to Guo's case.



"I hope that the U.S. side brought up Guo Feixiong's case during the strategic dialogues [earlier this week]," she said.



Abuse in jail



Guo began his hunger strike after being subjected to a forced rectal cavity search at the instigation of state security police, according to the Hong Kong-based Chinese Human Rights Lawyers Concern Group (CHRLCG).



Prison guards had filmed the procedure and threatened to post the video online, the group said via its Twitter account at the time.



Since May 18, 183 activists in China and overseas have been joining a relay fast calling for Guo's release, as well as calling up the prison where Guo is being held, and sending him postcards offering their support.



Campaigners are calling for Guo's unconditional release to seek medical treatment.



Guo was sentenced last November for "picking quarrels and stirring up trouble" and "gathering a crowd to disrupt social order" after a prolonged period in pretrial detention where he was held alone in a closet-size cell and denied access to the exercise yard for nearly two years.



During his sentencing hearing, Guo shouted in protest at his treatment while in police custody, where he was held in solitary confinement in a small, dark cell and denied permission to exercise outdoors since August 2013, a situation his wife has said amounted to torture.



Reported by Qiao Long for RFA's Mandarin Service, and by Wen Yuqing for the Cantonese Service. Translated and written in English by Luisetta Mudie.
Chinese activists call for the release of veteran democracy campaigner Qin Yongmin in an undated photo.

'Disappeared' Chinese democracy activist Qin Yongmin is being secretly held at a police-run detention center in the central city of Wuhan, RFA has learned.

Qin's whereabouts were unknown since he went missing in Jan. 19, 2015, amid unconfirmed reports that he had been tried in secret on charges of "incitement to subvert state power."

But Qin's family and fellow activists have continued to hunt for him, and his lawyers have now tracked him down to an unnamed entry in a logbook at the Wuhan No. 2 Detention Center.

"There wasn't even a name logged there, just a number, 701," Qin's brother Qin Yongchang told RFA on Friday. "Now the lawyers can't get in to meet with him."

The family has received no official notification of Qin's detention, and only discovered where he is being held because a lawyer they hired made a speculative application to meet with him at the detention center, Qin Yongchang said.

Fellow activist Pan Lu, who works at the Rose China group founded by Qin, said the detention center is unlikely to be acting unilaterally, however.

"It is likely that they received a notification under the stability maintenance system that they mustn't give out any information regarding Qin Yongmin," Pan said.

"Two lawyers hired to represent him were making calls every day, and they happened to call the Wuhan No. 2 Detention Center, although the center wouldn't allow them to visit," he said. "They only admitted that he was still being held there, and that his was a special case."

Pan said the authorities' treatment of Qin was unacceptable.

"It doesn't matter how special he is; he's still entitled to due legal process," he said.

Wifes whereabouts unknown

Qin, 59, who has already served a lengthy jail term for helping to found the banned opposition China Democracy Party (CDP), was taken from his home by state security police officers on Jan. 21.

Qin's wife Zhao Suli was also taken to an unknown location in April 2015, prompting a nationwide "search for Qin Yongmin" by fellow rights activists, who collected hundreds of petition signatures.

Her whereabouts remain unknown, and activists have been unable to confirm whether Qin has been tried or not.

A contemporary of exiled dissident Wei Jingsheng, Qin was sentenced to eight years in prison for "counterrevolutionary propaganda and subversion" in the wake of China's Democracy Wall movement in 1981.

He served a further two years' "re-education through labor" in 1993 after he penned a controversial document titled the "Peace Charter."

Qin then served a 12-year jail term for subversion after he helped found the CDP in 1998 in spite of a ban on opposition political parties by the ruling Chinese Communist Party.

'Stability maintenance' regime

According to the Civil Rights and Livelihood Watch group, China detained or placed under surveillance more than 260 people last month, under its ongoing "stability maintenance" regime that seeks to clamp down on activists before they act.

Dozens of activists and high-profile figures, including veteran journalist Gao Yu, Tiananmen Mothers victims' group founder Ding Zilin, and former top government aide Bao Tong were detained or otherwise restricted ahead of the politically sensitive June 4 anniversary of the Tiananmen massacre, the group said.

"Large numbers of people were detained or otherwise placed under restrictions or surveillance," group founder Liu Feiyue said on Friday.

"In the case of Ding Zilin, they took away her cell phone and issued her with one of theirs, which was set to receive only calls from state security police and the hospital," he said. "The main thing is that this was all happening just before June 4."

A draconian new National Security Law passed last July allowed detainees to be held for up to six months at an unknown location with no contact with relatives or lawyers, in cases involving subversion or spying.

But rights groups say the definitions of such crimes are broad enough to allow police to use them against political dissidents and peaceful rights activists.

Reported by Qiao Long for RFA's Mandarin Service. Translated and written in English by Luisetta Mudie.
A blast in a village mosque has killed at least four people and wounded nearly 40 others in the eastern Afghan province of Nangarhar, Afghanistans Interior Ministry said on June 10.

The explosion occurred when local men in the village of Hisara in Nangarhars Rudat district had gathered for Friday prayers, the ministry said in a statement.

The mosque's imam was among the dead, it added.

The ministry said the "terrorist attack" was carried out by "the enemies of the Afghan people."

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the assault.


Eight centuries after the birth of the famed Persian poet and mystic, the tussle for the cultural legacy of Jalal al-Din Mohammad Balkhi, better known as Rumi, just won't die.

Afghanistan, Iran, and Turkey are fighting over the bragging rights to Rumi's epic poetry after Tehran and Ankara reportedly hatched plans to register the 13th-century sage's masterpiece, Masnavi Ma'navi, as joint national heritage with the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).

The move immediately sparked outrage in Kabul, where the Afghan government on June 9 appealed to a UNESCO envoy and sent out word to Ankara of its objections via Afghan Foreign Minister Salahuddin Rabbani.

Hundreds of protesters are also expected to take to the streets in the northern Afghan province of Balkh, where Rumi is thought to have been born, to vent their anger at Tehran and Ankara.

Rumi was born 1207 in what might be described as the greater Balkh region -- either in modern-day Afghanistan or, as some scholars have suggested more recently, in the village of Wakhsh in today's Tajikistan. He fled the area as a child after the brutal Mongol conquest of the region, and traveled through what is now Uzbekistan, Iran, Iraq, and Syria, where he settled long enough to study in Damascus in his 20s. Rumi's final stop was Turkey, where he spent most of his life. He died in 1273 in the then-Seljuk city of Konya.

Rumi is widely revered for incorporating poetry, music, and dance into religious practice. His works are seminal in Persian-speaking countries like Afghanistan, Iran, and Tajikistan. But they are also revered in many other cultures and, in recent decades, have proliferated in scores more languages and societies, including in the United States, where he has been described as that country's "best-selling poet."

Diplomatic Frenzy

The perceived appropriation of Rumi by Iran and Turkey before UNESCO infuriated Kabul, which promptly raised the issue with UNESCO and the Turkish government. (The Iranian government has yet to comment publicly on the issue.)

Patricia McPhillips, UNESCO's representative to Afghanistan, has said she will report back to the agency's headquarters in Paris on the topic.

Sayed Zafar Hashemi, a deputy spokesman for Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, has called on prominent Afghan writers to "please lobby & spread the word" to help reclaim Rumi's heritage, adding via Twitter: "Rumi was born in Balkh, Afghanistan not Turkey or Iran."







Atta Mohammad Noor, the governor of Balkh, in a letter to Afghanistan's permanent representative to the United Nations on June 9 protested Iran and Turkey's "imperialistic" attempts at appropriating Rumi, whom he described as the "pride" of the province.

"We therefore urge you to submit our earnest protest to UNESCO and cultural affairs officials of Iran and Turkey and please don't let it happen that Balkh's position as the motherland of [Rumi] is disregarded in this record," Noor wrote.

In a June 8 editorial, the Arman-e-Milli newspaper in Kabul wrote that "Rumi is ours. Turkey and Iran must not take illegitimate advantage of him."



"Although his cultural heritage belongs to the whole of humanity, he continues to belong to his birthplace and the birthplace of his ancestors," the editorial said, in reference to Afghanistan.

Omar Samad, a former Afghan presidential aide and ambassador, told RFE/RL the government made a "mistake" last year by downgrading Afghanistan's representation at UNESCO.

"For a long time we had an ambassador and staff assigned specifically to UNESCO, but last year the responsibility was relegated to our embassy in Paris which lacks competency dealing with complex UNESCO issues that matter to Afghanistan," he said.

Rumi 'Whitewashed'?

The cultural tug-war of war comes with another controversy involving the poet.



David Franzoni, the Oscar-winning screenwriter of Ridley Scott's historical drama Gladiator, told The Guardian newspaper on June 6 that he wants Hollywood A-lister Leonardo DiCaprio to play Rumi in a new biopic. Franzoni said he hoped to "challenge the stereotypical portrayal of Muslim characters in Western cinema" by giving "a face and a story" to the late Sufi scholar. But Franzoni's desire to cast a white actor in the lead role prompted accusations of "whitewashing."

Movie fans and critics have even taken to the Twitter hashtag #RumiWasntWhite to express their objections. Here are some of those tweets:


European leaders struck back against Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's repeated criticisms of German lawmakers for voting to recognize the Ottomans' massacre of Armenians as genocide.

The Turkish president has slammed the Bundestag's 11 lawmakers of Turkish origin for voting last week to call the World War I killings of 1.5 million Armenians genocide, suggesting they had "tainted blood."

German Parliament President Norbert Lammert said on June 9 that he "would not have thought it possible that a democratically elected president in the 21st century" could utter such a criticism, which he said unleashed a torrent of "hateful threats and insults" against the lawmakers.

Erdogan also called German legislators "unprincipled" for their votes, and he has suggested they were aiding terrorism by supporting the Kurdistan Workers Party, which Turkey is battling in a bloody campaign.

Lammert strongly rejected the idea that lawmakers are "mouthpieces of terrorists."

European Parliament President Martin Schulz also expressed "great concern" to the Turkish leader, who has been pressing for action on Turkey's application to join the European Union, saying his terrorist accusation "represents an absolute breach of taboo."

Shultz said Erdogan's comments "will not be without consequences on international relations."

Based on reporting by AP, AFP, and dpa


The Islamic State extremist group has posted a video that shows it blowing up a 3,000-year-old temple in the Assyrian city of Nimrud in northern Iraq -- the militant group's latest assault on a priceless archaeological treasure.

The United Nations confirmed on June 9 that satellite imagery showed "extensive damage to the main entrance" of the temple of Nabu, the Babylonian god of wisdom.

Nimrud was a 13th-century B.C. Assyrian city, located 20 miles south of the modern city of Mosul, which the militants have controlled since 2014.

The IS video also showed bulldozers razing the ancient Gate of Nergal, part of the historic Nineveh city wall in Mosul.

A bearded man in the video said that the destruction was meant to prevent Muslims from returning to idolatry.

The group considers all pre-Islamic culture idolatrous, along with any religion outside its own radical interpretation of Sunni Islam.

Besides destroying important archaeological sites in northern Iraq, IS blew up temples and ancient buildings in Palmyra in neighboring Syria. It is also suspected of raising funds from selling looted artifacts.

In the last two years, archaeologists say IS has inflicted incalculable damage on historic sites.

Based on reporting by Reuters and AFP
ST. PETERSBURG -- A large graffiti portrait of a Russian tank officer who was convicted of murdering a Chechen woman has been painted near a St. Petersburg bridge that local authorities want to name after the father of Chechnya's authoritarian leader, Ramzan Kadyrov.

The painting appears to be a protest against a decision to name the bridge after Akhmad Kadyrov, a Chechen separatist militia leader who fought Russian forces before switching sides and becoming Chechnya's president in 2003.

Several demonstrations have been sparked by plans to name the bridge after Akhmad Kadyrov, who was assassinated in 2004.

The graffiti portrait, which appeared on June 9, depicts the late Colonel Yury Budanov in a military uniform with his name written in blood-red letters.

Despite his conviction for murdering an 18-year-old Chechen woman, Budanov enjoyed wide support in Russia. But he was hated by many in Chechnya, including pro-Russian Chechens.

Budanov was shot dead in Moscow in 2011, two years after being released on parole from a Russian prison.




Kazakh security forces have killed five suspected militants in Aqtobe, the northwestern city near the Russian border where dozens of gunmen carried out deadly attacks on June 5.

The militants were killed as part of a "counterterrorism operation," pushing the total death toll related to the attacks and the ensuing manhunt to 25, including attackers.

Kazakhstans National Security Committee announced that special forces stormed an apartment in Aqtobe on June 10 and killed four "terrorists."

According to the statement, police killed "an accomplice of the terrorists" after he opened fire on police on the street.

The statement also said two security officers were wounded, but their lives were not in danger.

The National Security Committee said those targeted in the raid were suspected of taking part in the June 5 attacks against two gun shops and a National Guard base. Four civilians and three National Guardsmen died in those attacks. On June 9, Kazakhstan observed a national day of mourning to honor those victims.

Security forces are continuing their search for other possible "terrorists" suspected of involvement in the attacks, the National Security Committee said in its June 10 statement.

The Interior Ministry had said before the June 10 operation that 13 suspected attackers had been killed, four injured, and nine arrested. Six were believed to still be at large; it is unclear if they were among the five militants killed on June 10.

There have been no credible claims of responsibility for the attacks.

President Nursultan Nazarbaev has described the attackers as members of "pseudo-religious radical movements" that had received instruction from abroad. Shortly after the attacks, Kazakh police spokesman Almas Sadubaev described the attackers as followers of "nontraditional religious movements," a term often used in Central Asia to describe Islamic extremist groups.

In condemning the attacks, however, the Kazakh upper house of parliament said the attacks were not related to religion.

The rare outbreak of violence follows major protests against planned agricultural land reforms that took place in Kazakhstan in April and May. More than 1,000 activists were detained in relation to those demonstrations, and many received 10 to 15 day jail sentences after being convicted of planning or attending the unsanctioned rallies.

With reporting by RFE/RL's Kazakh Service
It was a Sunday, on the eve of Ramadan, when a group of mainly young men in the northwestern city of Aqtobe, Kazakhstan, robbed two gun shops and set off to attack a military facility. Eventually, 25 people would be dead and dozens wounded, making it the deadliest day in Kazakhstans nearly 25-year history.

Three days passed before Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbaev spoke to the nation about the June 5 violence in Aqtobe. But rather than comfort the nation, his words were of enemies, plots hatched outside the country, color revolutions, and the need to destroy the suspects still at large if they offered any resistance.

The names and photographs of the suspects were published in Kazakhstan media (although at least one picture was of someone not involved in the violence), but it remains unclear what the connection was between this group of at least 28 suspects and what motivated them to allegedly commit this violence.

To take a closer look at what happened, the governments handling of the situation, and what the possible cause of this violence might be, RFE/RLs Turkmen Service, known locally as Azatlyk, assembled a majlis, a panel.

Azatlyk Director Muhammad Tahir moderated the panel. Joining from Astana was Aigerim Toleukhanova (@aygeryma), a correspondent for The Conway Bulletin. The Almaty-based correspondent for bne IntelliNews, Naubet Bisenov, also participated. And since I had just written a report about western Kazakhstan, I made some comments, too.

The violence in Aqtobe came some two weeks after Kazakhstan saw the biggest protest in the countrys history. That protest happened despite repeated warnings from officials and preemptive detentions of dozens of people who were calling for demonstrations on May 21. The protests over the governments land-privatization plans initially started spontaneously in late April in major cities throughout Kazakhstan.

So the country was already on edge when the shooting started in Aqtobe, a city of some 400,000 people located about 100 kilometers south of the border with Russia.

Bisenov started the majlis, saying, Despite authorities branding them as terrorists, we dont know who these people are and what their goals were. He continued: Looking at their pictures and the little information [from] their biographies, it could be any person living in Aqtobe, or in Atyrau, or in Almaty.

Toleukhanova agreed the picture was still very unclear, but she said the choice of target might say something about the motives of the attackers.

Even though they didnt say anything, they showed with their actions. They attacked...official places, like military buildings, [so] theyre kind of attacking the government, Toleukhanova said.

The government has not provided much information. Authorities have delivered a rough sequence of events in Aqtobe on June 5, given casualty figures, warned that six suspects are still at large (five of whom were killed in a June 10 security operation), and announced the country would be on a heightened state of alert for 40 days.

Toleukhanova said she had spoken with people in Aqtobe. People are still going to work and doing their usual things, [but] theyre still very afraid because they heard all the shooting right in front of their homes, and in parks, and they think this may happen again.

And on June 7, authorities offered conflicting information about an alleged shooting at an Aqtobe kindergarten and childrens summer camp. Toleukhanova explained: Our security service confirms one attack while the Ministry of Internal Affairs denies that this has happened, so people here are really getting confused about whats going on in Aqtobe.

Nazarbaev was shown on national television on June 7 receiving the apparently erroneous report about the shooting at the kindergarten from the National Security Committee.

The Kazakh president later addressed the nation, speaking about terrorists and extremists, radical sects (presumably Islamic), about the different guises colored revolutions can assume, including in the form of protests, and how they can lead to rash attempts to overthrow the government.

Nazarbaev, after days of silence, tried to address people on the issue," Bisenov said. "But as the president of the country, he didnt offer solutions to the problems."

Toleukhanova said Nazarbaevs reference to foreign influence in the Aqtobe violence, rather than domestic causes, has become a standard response from the authorities amid the recent problems.

Claims that its outside forces that are responsible for these attacks are also kind of showing us that the government denies that anything is wrong inside the country," Toleukhanova said. "Its everything from outside.

As for the cause of this recent unrest, Bisenov said, The origins of such events is a huge poor-rich divide and the gap that has emerged between ordinary people and the authorities, which of course has been exacerbated by the ongoing economic crisis...

Toleukhanova agreed, saying, Its mostly about social and economic problems.

Aqtobe, and western Kazakhstan in general, is home to the country's oil and gas fields. Kazakhstan grew rich from this oil and gas, but most of the money goes east, to the capital, Astana, and the commercial capital, Almaty. Billions of dollars have been poured into building up Astana, once a modest city called Tselinograd during Soviet times. After the capital was transferred at the end of 1997 from Almaty to Astana (then called Aqmola), Kazakhstans government embarked on a huge program to raise a modern capital, filled with architectural wonders and excess, such as the city's giant aquarium.

By contrast, Bisenov said, If you go to western Kazakhstan, you will see bad roads, lack of water supplies, a lot of social problems, and the cost of living in these regions is very high because of geography and because of climate.

And during the current economic downturn, Bisenov added, the people of western Kazakhstan are also the ones who are suffering the consequences of the problems in the oil industry, such as layoffs of workers, and it is the local population in these regions which have put up with the damage the oil and gas industry inflicts on the regional environment and on the health of the local population.

Apparently, Kazakh authorities are themselves at a loss as to what led this group of people to take such measures, but the governments attempts at crisis management have already revealed some severe deficiencies in communication between government agencies and ministries and between the government and Kazakhstans people.

The panel explored all of these topics in greater detail and looked at other factors that might have contributed to the violence in Aqtobe and the rift that is widening between the authorities and the people.

Listen to or download the Majlis podcast above or subscribe to Majlis on iTunes.
LVIV, Ukraine -- The mayor of the western Ukrainian city of Lviv says arson was the cause of a deadly fire at the citys waste dump.

Four people were killed on May 30 at the dump after being trapped under a huge wave of falling garbage triggered by the blaze.

In televised comments late on June 9, Andriy Sadovyy also blamed authorities in Kyiv for failing to promptly send aircraft to extinguish the fire.

Firefighters said on June 9 that the blaze had been brought under control.

Sadovyy's comments came hours after Lvivs city council canceled a debate on the incident.

The move followed clashes at the council building between riot police and protesters demanding Sadovyys resignation.

Hundreds of protesters, who called themselves representatives of the Ukrainian National Assembly-Ukrainian National Self-Defense (UNA-UNSO) organization and Svoboda (Liberty) party, tried to enter the council's session, but hundreds of riot police blocked their way.

Witnesses say some activists did make it inside after pelting police with eggs and using tear gas to break through the police cordon.

With reporting by zn.ua and UNIAN
A protest has taken place in the separatist-controlled eastern Ukrainian city of Donetsk against the deployment of monitors from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).

The rally on June 10 was organized by the Russia-backed leaders in the region of Donetsk.

The OSCE's Special Monitoring Mission (SMM) has 580 unarmed staff based in the regions of Luhansk and Donetsk.

Separatists leaders have accused the SMM of unfairly blaming much of the violence in the conflict zone on separatist fighters.

More than 9,300 people have been killed in eastern Ukraine since hostilities erupted in April 2014.

Amid an uptick in violence, Kyiv is hoping to get an armed police mission under the auspices of the OSCE deployed in separatist-held areas in Donetsk and Luhansk.

"We have gathered here to say a firm 'no' to an armed OSCE mission," Donetsk separatist leader Denis Pushilin told the pro-Russia crowd.

Based on reporting by AFP
President Barack Obama has approved giving the U.S. military greater authority to help Afghan forces battle the Taliban, including increased use of air strikes, AP and Reuters reported on June 9.

Under the new policy, the U.S. commander in Afghanistan, General John Nicholson, will decide when it is appropriate for American troops to accompany conventional Afghan forces into the field -- something they have previously done only with Afghan special forces, U.S. officials told the news agencies.

The expanded powers are only to be employed "in those select instances in which their engagement can enable strategic effects on the battlefield," they said.

That means that U.S. forces would not accompany Afghan soldiers on day-to-day missions.

The decision is a departure from current U.S. rules of engagement in Afghanistan, which impose limits on U.S. forces' ability to strike at insurgents.

The U.S. military was previously allowed to take action against the Taliban only when its assistance was needed to prevent a significant Afghan military setback.

The new policy would allow U.S. forces to accompany Afghans at key moments in their campaign against the Taliban and be more proactive in supporting them.

Based on reporting by AP and Reuters


Russian President Vladimir Putin has denied a petition for a pardon by the ex-chief of security of the now-defunct Yukos oil company, the lawyer for Aleksei Pichugin said on June 9.

"On the advice of human rights activists, Pichugin filed a petition for pardon with the president of the Russian Federation. Recently, we learned that he was denied that," Kseniya Kostromina told TASS.

She said Pichugin, who is serving a life sentence in a penal colony for allegedly organizing the killings of businessmen who threatened Yukos, as well as a Russian mayor, considers himself unjustly convicted for crimes he did not commit, she said.

His position has been upheld by the European Court of Human Rights, she said.

Kostromina did not rule out Pichugin applying again for a pardon.

"The law does not regulate the number of petitions," she said.

Based on reporting by TASS and Interfax
WASHINGTON - Thomas Kent, a longtime Associated Press journalist, has been appointed the new President of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), effective June 27.

In his announcement of the appointment, Jeff Shell, the Chairman of RFE/RLs Board of Directors, said, Tom was chosen in a competitive selection process from a strong field of candidates. RFE/RL will benefit enormously from such an outstanding leader. Shell, who also serves as Chairman of the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), continued, Toms track record in digital news expansion and his collaborative leadership style aligns with the BBGs vision of a unified, innovative and effective U.S. International Media.

Mr. Kent is a skilled media executive with extensive experience in management, international reporting and journalism standards development. He has worked at The Associated Press since 1972, filling roles such as Moscow Bureau Chief, International Editor, Deputy Managing Editor and, most recently, Standards Editor. In these positions, he played a leading role in the editorial and technical transformation of AP into a fully digital news organization. He has also been involved in corporate strategic planning and the development of new multimedia services.

Commenting on Kents appointment, BBG CEO and Director John F. Lansing said, Our winning strategy is our talented staff. Tom joins a cadre of committed journalists around the world with the simple goal of ensuring that everyone has access to impartial, independent and professional news and information about their communities that helps citizens take more control over their lives. He brings extensive experience in developing successful digital media strategies and joins us at a highly dynamic time when BBG networks are streamlining and employing content in creative and impactful ways. I am thrilled to welcome him on board.

I am honored to be leading RFE/RL, Kent said. I look forward to joining its highly skilled team as we create great journalism across languages and geographies.

Kent has served as a member of the advisory board of the Ethical Journalism Network, leader of the Online News Associations Build Your Own Ethics Code project, advisor for the Society of Professional Journalists and international reporting juror for the Pulitzer Prizes. He has written and spoken extensively on journalism ethics and has a particular interest in Russian news media. Kent has taught at the Harriman Institute at Columbia University and has guest lectured at Yale University, Moscow State University, St. Petersburg University of Trade Unions, Columbia Law School, and New York University, among others. He speaks four languages and is fluent in Russian. He is a graduate of Yale University.

Shell and Lansing praised Acting RFE/RL President Nenad Pejic for his leadership and guidance since taking over after Kevin Klose stepped down in 2014.

I am delighted to hand over the reins to Tom, said Pejic. I believe his passion for journalism will ensure that RFE/RL continues to deliver programs that have a positive effect on peoples lives."
Russia's Defense Ministry has denied accusations by Turkey that it bombed Syrian hospitals, mosques, and other civilian targets in Aleppo on June 8 and 9.

"Russia's air forces have not carried out any attacks on the city of Aleppo," ministry spokesman Major General Igor Konashenkov said on June 9.

As with previous accusations, Konashenkov said Turkey has produced no evidence Russia was behind the bombings.

Earlier, the Turkish Foreign Ministry charged that Russia was bombing mosques, hospitals, schools, and other civilian targets.

Moscow and Ankara have been locked in a diplomatic, verbal, and economic war since Turkey shot down a Russian jet fighter that it claimed strayed over its border with Syria in November,

Based on reporting by Reuters and TASS


Russias State Duma has stripped Ilya Ponomaryov of his parliamentary mandate in the latest move taken against the opposition lawmaker.

The lower house, which is dominated by lawmakers from the Kremlin-backed United Russia party, voted 413-3 to pass the widely expected measure.

The lone Russian lawmaker to vote against the 2014 annexation of Ukraines Crimea Peninsula, Ponomaryov had already been stripped last year of his legal immunity.

That paved the way for a criminal investigation into allegations that Ponomaryov had embezzled money from the state-funded Skolkovo technological foundation, something he has repeatedly denied.

Ponomaryov, who now spends much of his time in Ukraine and the United States, told RFE/RL in Washington that the vote was taken in anticipation of parliamentary elections scheduled for September.

That is a demonstration for future deputies to come, that they should be loyal and, especially in questions of foreign policy, they should never confront the president, he said.
Russia continues to strike targets across Ukraine, causing damage and killing civilians, as its forces are preparing for battle in the strategic southern region of Kherson, Ukrainian officials and the military said.

Live Briefing: Russia's Invasion Of Ukraine RFE/RL's Live Briefing gives you all of the latest developments on Russia's ongoing invasion, Kyiv's counteroffensive, Western military aid, global reaction, Russian protests, and the plight of civilians. For all of RFE/RL's coverage of the war, click here.

The General Staff of the Ukrainian armed forces said early on October 26 that more than 40 settlements were hit by Russian strikes during the previous day.



Russia used a combination of air strikes, rockets, and missiles to hit Ukrainian targets, the General Staff said in its morning report.



In the central city of Dnipro, at least two people, including a pregnant woman, were killed in the Russian bombardment, regional Governor Valentyn Reznichenlo said.

In the southern city of Kherson, Russian forces are digging in for the "heaviest of battles," said Oleksiy Arestovych, adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.

A Ukrainian counteroffensive has driven Russian forces back in the region, where the provincial capital of Kherson has been in Russian hands since the early days of the invasion eight months ago.

"With Kherson, everything is clear. The Russians are replenishing, strengthening their grouping there," Arestovych said in an online video late on October 25.

Russia-installed authorities are evacuating residents to the east bank of the Dnieper River as Russian forces prepare to defend the city, he said.

"It means that nobody is preparing to withdraw. On the contrary, the heaviest of battles is going to take place for Kherson," he said.

Zelenskiy on October 25 reiterated a pledge to retake the city of Kherson, the loss of which would be a big setback for Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Of the four Ukrainian provinces partially occupied by Russia that Putin proclaimed to have seized last month, Kherson is arguably the most strategically important.

It controls the only land route to the Crimea region that Russia illegally annexed in 2014 and the mouth of the Dnieper River that that bisects Ukraine.



Meanwhile, U.S. President Joe Biden warned Russia on October 25 that the use of a tactical nuclear weapon in Ukraine would be an "incredibly serious mistake."

Moscow over the weekend claimed Ukraine is preparing to use a so-called dirty bomb on its own territory, drawing immediate dismissal from the United States and other countries that have backed Ukraine.

Kyiv and its allies suspect Russia might have made the claim to set up a "false flag" attack in which it would use a dirty bomb itself but would blame the attack on Ukraine and use it to justify the use of conventional nuclear weapons by Moscow.



"Let me just say Russia would be making an incredibly serious mistake were it to use a tactical nuclear weapon." Biden told reporters. "I cannot guarantee you that it is a false flag operation yet. We dont know. But it would be a serious mistake."

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu presented no evidence for the claim when he spoke on October 23 with his counterparts from several NATO countries, including Britain, France, and the United States, who dismissed the claim after the series of calls.

WATCH: Speaking to Current Time in Riga on October 22, Latvian Defense Minister Artis Pabriks said Russian President Vladimir Putin cannot change the course of war in Ukraine by dropping nuclear bombs.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on October 25 that Washington's refusal to take note of Russia's warning was "inappropriate given the seriousness of the threat we are talking about."

A dirty bomb would use a conventional warhead to create an explosion that would spread radioactive, biological, or chemical materials over an area.

Moscow took its accusations against Ukraine to the UN Security Council on October 25, and the country's UN ambassador, Dmitry Polyanskiy, said afterward that Russia was "satisfied because we raised the awareness."

Speaking to reporters, he added: "I don't mind people saying that Russia is crying wolf if this doesn't happen because this is a terrible, terrible disaster that threatens potentially the whole of the Earth."



The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said earlier on October 25 that it is preparing to send inspectors to two Ukrainian sites in the coming days in reaction to Ukraine's request for an inspection following Russia's claims.



Enerhoatom, Ukraines nuclear energy operator, issued a statement on October 24 voicing its concern that Russias statements may indicate that Russia is preparing an act of nuclear terrorism.

Russian troops have occupied Ukraines Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant, Europe's largest, since March. It is still run by Ukrainian engineers though Russia claimed after its illegal annexation of the Zaporizhzhya region that it is on Russian territory.

Enerhoatom said that Russian forces have carried out unauthorized, secret construction work over the last week at the plant in the area of the spent nuclear fuel storage facility.

Russian officers controlling the area wont give access to Ukrainian staff or monitors from the IAEA that would allow them to see what they are doing, the operator said.

Enerhoatom added that it assumes the Russians are preparing a terrorist act using nuclear materials and radioactive waste stored at the plant.

With reporting by AFP, dpa, BBC, and Reuters
Ukrainian military aviator Nadia Savchenko, who was sworn in as a lawmaker in May, says Ukraine needs early parliamentary elections to bring "fresh blood" into the countrys politics.

In an interview with the Associated Press on June 10, Savchenko said the "Ukrainian people deserve a better government than they now have."

Savchenko said the government in Kyiv has failed to live up to public expectations raised by the ouster of Ukraine's former pro-Russian government in February 2014.

Savchenko spent nearly two years in Russian captivity before she was released in May and returned to a hero's welcome in Ukraine.She was elected to parliament in 2014 while in custody.

On June 7, Savchenko said she was willing to talk with Russia-backed separatist leaders in eastern Ukraine to try to end the nation's two-year-old conflict.

Savchenko told Ukrainian media that she believes direct peace talks with separatist leaders would be more effective than the current, unproductive talks that have included Russia, Ukraine, France, and Germany.

Based on reporting by AP, Interfax, and TASS


U.S. authorities on June 9 leveled terrorism charges against a man who joined the Islamic State extremist group for two months before surrendering to Kurdish authorities in Iraq in March.

In an affidavit that details the former militant's everyday life in the IS stronghold in Mosul, U.S. prosecutors charged Mohamad Khweis, 26, with material support for terrorists and agreeing to be a suicide bomber.

A U.S. court in Alexandria, VIrginia, ordered him held without bond.

Khweis, a Palestinian-American, surrendered to Kurdish forces in northern Iraq, saying he was initially attracted to IS because of its "peaceful and humanitarian efforts," but after joining he became disenchanted and decided to leave and renounce the organization's ideology.

But the FBI said that IS asked Khweis whether he was willing to serve as a suicide bomber, and he agreed.

Khweis said afterward he believed IS was testing his loyalty, and he never agreed to return to the United States and participate in attacks there.

Khweis' attorney, John Zwerling, cautioned that the FBI's case is just one interpretation of Khweis' remarks.

"Everything is not as it appears in the government's pleading," he said.

Based on reporting by AP and AFP
The White House is pushing for implementation of a deal to end the conflict in eastern Ukraine before President Barack Obama leaves office, national-security adviser Susan Rice has said.

While recent peace talks involving Russia and Ukraine have been unproductive, the former United Nations ambassador who now coordinates foreign policy at the White House said that she sees the potential for a resolution by the end of the year.

Obama is due to leave office on January 20.

Appearing at a Washington Post event on June 9, Rice said U.S. officials are intensifying their efforts with their French and German counterparts to convince the two nations to carry out their parts of the Minsk peace agreement they signed in February 2015.

The Minsk deal calls for a cease-fire in fighting between Russia-backed separatists and Kyiv government forces, along with a range of political, economic, and social steps to end the conflict, including holding local elections in the east.

"This is something that could get done between now and the end of the administration if the Russians in particular exhibit sufficient political will," Rice said.

"We are hopeful if the Russians want to resolve this -- and we have some reason to believe they might -- we have the time and the wherewithal and the tools to do so," Rice said.

Ukrainian and Western leaders say that Russia has not kept up its part of the deal and is continuing to fuel the conflict by providing troops and material to separatists in the east.

While she said much is in Russia's hands, Rice acknowledged that Kyiv may continue to have trouble keeping up its end of the deal as well, particularly the requirement to pass legislation paving the way for local elections in eastern Ukraine.

"There are no sure bets" that the Ukrainian parliament would be able to ratify electoral reforms, she said, and she acknowledged there may not be enough time.

Ukrainian leaders have said it may take years before elections are held in the east and have insisted on a complete halt to all fighting before Kyiv will arrange any votes.

In an effort to prod Russia into furthering the peace deal, the United States and European Union have stood firm thus far on keeping economic sanctions on Russia in place, insisting that they will not be lifted until the Minsk agreement is fully implemented.

The EU's sanctions expire next month. EU leaders have said they are likely to be extended, despite growing opposition to them in France, Hungary, Slovakia, Italy, Greece, and other parts of the EU.

With reporting by Reuters and AFP


Heavy traffic and congestion is expected in downtown Richmond on Friday, June 10 due to several events being hosted in the area.

Events will be taking place at the Richmond Coliseum, the Altria Theater, the Dominion Arts Center, the Siegel Center and the Greater Richmond Convention Center.

The Donald Trump rally will be held at the Richmond Coliseum at 8 p.m. Tim McGraw is performing at the Altria Theater at 7:30 p.m. Several high school graduations are being held at the Siegel Center throughout the day.
A mild political protest outside the Richmond Coliseum turned confrontational on Friday night as anti-Donald Trump protesters briefly scuffled with police and marched through downtown streets for an hour.

Police said they detained five people and charged one with disorderly conduct.

Trouble began after a small group of young men in Trump gear walked through a group of more than 100 protesters in Festival Park around 9 p.m. Chaotic shoving ensued and a man in a Trump T-shirt, who earlier had danced in front of the anti-Trump crowd, pointed to his lip as if hed been punched. More shoving occurred moments later as police moved into the area as some protesters were pushed to the ground and others pushed back against the police.

After pulling the Trump supporters over a barricade and out of the area, police brought out riot shields and formed a line between the protesters and the Coliseum.

For most of the night, police kept the two sides separated.

The protest group left the Coliseum area around 9:30 p.m. and stopped traffic on Broad Street while marching through downtown. Police on bicycles escorted the group, stopping traffic as needed. The march ended at Abner Clay Park in Jackson Ward around 10:30 p.m.

These racists are going to know that they cant (expletive) come to Richmond without expecting a fight, Alejandro Sosa, a 21-year-old protest organizer with the Richmond Struggle Committee Initiative, said through a megaphone as the march concluded. We were outnumbered four to one and theyre still scared. Only a few of em came out. And look what happened.

Onlookers snapped photos of the march and some motorists honked in support, but not everyone welcomed the protest activity.

Chris Shepherd, 19, of Ashland, got in a shouting match with protesters on a Broad Street corner. Police intervened and told Shepherd to walk away or be arrested. Shepherd said he didnt attend the Trump rally, but took exception to a protest sign that said America was never great.

Theyre causing a ruckus for no damn reason, Shepherd said. Its childish and asinine.

Earlier, Richmond Police Chief Alfred Durham said the protest in Festival Park was so peaceful, Its not even a protest.

But Durham said police were ready for the marchers, whose progress was marked by a police aircraft marking a wide circle over downtown Richmond.

Protesters in Monroe Park said they also were prepared for confrontation with police  as leaders advised participants to carry two bottles of water, one to drink and the other to flush pepper spray out of their eyes.

No Trump. No KKK. No fascist USA. (Expletive) Trump! the group chanted as they began a march that blocked part of northbound Belvidere Street. Others chanted, Black lives matter!

Police had vowed not to allow violent confrontations between protesters and Trump supporters like those that occurred a week earlier after a Trump rally in San Jose, Calif.

At least three volunteer legal observers for the American Civil Liberties Union at Monroe Park were on hand to ensure peoples rights were not violated. One volunteer said the crew would record interactions between residents and police, as well as any interactions in which someones rights potentially are being violated.

As Corey Stewart, Trumps Virginia chairman and a Republican candidate for governor, arrived at the arena, he said he expected a peaceful evening, unlike the chaos that has erupted outside Trump rallies elsewhere. Theres just a different level of civility here in Virginia, Stewart said.

Among the police precautions was a policy of keeping the plaza around the Coliseum clear of anyone who wasnt entering the arena for the rally or gathering in Festival Park to protest. Durham said he created the public safety zone on advice from law enforcement officials in California. Unless you go in, you dont need to be hanging around in case something happens, he said.

Initially, at least, the protests sounded like a pep rally, with a group chanting Hey, hey, ho, ho, Donald Trump has to go, as the candidates supporters walked up the center steps to the Coliseum entrance. One group offered white roses and signs of peace  Build Kindness, Not Walls.

Jason Aldrich, 32, of Richmond used a Trump Bucket to pick up cigarettes and other trash for more than an hour.

I figured theres enough hate going on now. This is where Im putting my hate. It gets something done, Aldrich said.

The Libertarian Party was represented, so was the Constitution Party of Virginia, offered as a haven for conservatives like John Bloom, a laid-off Newport News shipyard worker who had worked for Sen. Ted Cruzs Republican presidential bid.

Trump doesnt stand for anything, Bloom said. The only thing he stands for is win. 

Robert Courteau, 47, a retired printing worker and musician who wore a red Trump hat above two eyebrow piercings, said hes tired of the same old politicians running things.

He doesnt answer to anyone, said Courteau, of Chester. Unlike the Clintons.

Courteau said he didnt foresee any violence, mainly because the rally was in Virginia.

Most of the people here are scared to death of the cops, he said. Theyve drilled it into our heads.

Jack Crouse, a 73-year-old retiree who came alone from Keysville, said he was protesting out of respect for his son, who did two tours of duty during the Persian Gulf War. His sign read: Show us the taxes draft dodger.

I cant abide his tough talk about ISIS after he dodged the draft five times, Crouse said.

Protester Peggy Sterling, of Richmond, called Trump an embarrassment to this country.

He doesnt know anything, Sterling said. Hes an outright racist and a bigot.

Charles Weir, of Manassas, and Chris Sweckler, of Whitfield, are part of the group Bikers for Trump, who said the candidate embodies their groups beliefs of free speech and personal liberty.

Our club members are defenders of liberty, and we make sure everyone has their First Amendment right to free speech, Weir said.

Our club supports all freedoms granted by the Constitution, Sweckler added.

Dressed as George Washington, James Manship, 63, of Mount Vernon, compared Trump to Americas first president.

Washington was a businessman, he said.

Diane Paradise, 67, a retired police chaplain from Virginia Beach, drew shouts of both approval and dismay in the plastic pullover she stitched together from Trump signs.

I think its time we got someone like Trump and his message out, said Paradise, who likes the candidates focus on jobs, security and restoring the military.

But others reacted with dismay to Trumps presence in Richmond.

Hes not welcome here. His kinds not welcome here, said Scott Weaver, 44, from Richmond.

Weaver, who said he grew up in a military family that preached the value of diversity, said he believes Trump is trying to tear us down.

Two 18-year-old Lee-Davis High School students, Ethan Milstead and Madison Hays, stood outside the Coliseum to voice their opinion hours before the rally.

Milstead held a sign that said Make America kind again, while Hays held a sign that said End the misogyny, racism, xenophobia, homophobia and blatant ignorance.

Molly Bosscher, associate rector at St. Pauls Episcopal Church, and her son, Isak Davis, stood in silent protest against Trump.

Im really just standing  not interacting with the crowd in a dangerous way  just standing, said Davis, a rising sophomore at Kenyon College.

I believe in loving your neighbor, Bosscher said.

While a small group of protesters chanted Trump has got to go, Sonya Atkins countered with her own chant. Trump has got to stay, she sang as she kept time clapping on a table outside the Coliseum.

Homeless and jobless, Atkins, a 53-year-old African-American, said people need to stop making excuses and come to terms with economic reality.

Im a moderate Republican, she said. I used to be a Democrat, but I changed.
Henrico County police are investigating a fatal shooting that happened early Friday in the 5700 block of Williamsburg Road.

Police said officers responded to the shooting and found two adult males with gunshot wounds. One victim was pronounced dead at the scene. Another was transported to VCU Medical Center with life-threatening injuries.

Police have not released the identities of the two victims and said the motive is unknown.
The hand of Army Staff Sgt. Luis Mitchell began to rise. The room fell silent. There were no words  just tears and smiles.

Mitchell finished his slow, precise, nearly 10-second long salute and thanked Joseph Ragusa for his military service.

Surrounded by friends and family, the 92-year-old World War II veteran was honored Thursday in a special ceremony. Ragusa is in hospice care so the tribute was brought to him, with Mitchell giving him the Honor Salute in his Henrico County home along with the special presentation of a certificate honoring his service.

Ragusa cant talk much anymore but after his hospice aide, Sarah Allen, presented him with the certificate thanking him for advancing the universal hope of freedom and liberty for all, he let out a faint thank you as friends and family clapped.

The fact that the Central New York native is still here is somewhat of a miracle. On D-Day, which happened 72 years ago this past Monday, Ragusa was one of more than 160,000 Allied troops whose mission was to storm the beaches in Normandy, France.

He was one of only three members of his company to survive.

The only reason he lived, family members joke, is because hes so short. Military records had Ragusa listed as being 5 feet 2 inches tall.

He worked his way up to corporal as he spent time in Northern France and the Rhineland, among other places. A few years after leaving the service, he met his future wife, Vivian, and the two married in 1950. Theyve lived in Henrico for 44 years and have been retired for 20 years after owning a bathroom accessory shop.

The time has flown by, Vivian Ragusa said, and a copy of Live Now, Age Later by Isadore Rosenfeld still sits on a coffee table in the home.

The Ragusas children never learned of their fathers storied service until recently when the ceremony was being organized.

We didnt know anything. It was never discussed. Even when asked about it, his son Joel, who now lives in Mechanicsville, said. So its humbling to see him honored like this.

Tim Ragusa, the oldest of the two sons, concurred, saying he was proud of his father and that the war was just something dad never talked about.

You always knew he was well respected and thought of, but you never knew what the connections were, he said.

When he walked up to his father before the ceremony and told him he was going to be honored with something special, Joseph Ragusa was all smiles.

Ragusa is one of about 30 veterans over the past year who have been recognized with an Honor Salute by AseraCares We Honor Veterans program.

The program aims to not only honor the veterans, but to make sure they receive hospice care and to teach hospice workers how to better care for veterans, said Zachary Holt, a director of AseraCare, a hospice care provider.

Every veteran AseraCare patient is offered a salute but some turn it down, Holt said.

AseraCare encourages each veteran to have a salute, Holt said, because of the bond that military service members have with one another.

In hospice, when were looking at end-of-life care, were looking at that reconciliation, Holt said. Looking at what these soldiers are thinking and everything that theyve had to deal with their whole life, it gets amplified when theyre near end of life. So its important to have that reconciliation.

Jim Bade, an Army veteran who serves as a liaison between the hospice care and the Sergeant Audie Murphy Club to organize the salutes, has been a part of at least six salutes and attested to that connection.

I take it as a true honor to honor the individuals who have gone before us and done what many of us, including myself, have done, he said.
Interstate 95 traffic will be slowed and stopped for an estimated 30 minutes early Sunday morning beginning around 5:45 a.m. in Caroline County near the Safety Rest Areas at Ladysmith for utility work, according to the Virginia Department of Transportation.

Virginia State Police will gradually slow I-95 northbound traffic at exit 104 (Carmel Church) and I-95 southbound traffic at exit 110 (Ladysmith) and bring it to a complete stop.

Utility lines will be installed across the northbound and southbound travel lanes, says VDOT.
Six horses already reportedly mistreated and neglected at an Orange County farm were seized this week from a different horse rescue operation due to poor conditions and care, Orange County authorities said Thursday.

Peaceable Farms owner Anne Williams of Somerset surrendered 11 horses seized by police in October to New Beginnings Horse Rescue in King William County, according to the release from the Orange County Commonwealths Attorneys Office, Sheriffs Office and County Attorney. More than half of those horses were among animals seized by King William authorities this week at New Beginnings, a privately owned facility.

Orange County Animal Control faced a crisis situation eight months ago at Peaceable Farm involving more than 100 horses, and the agency thought that New Beginnings would provide good care, according to the countys news release.

It is deeply discouraging that these horses have suffered abuse and lack of care again, the news release said.

The horses surrendered or seized from Peaceable Farms81 in allwere in various ailing stages of emaciation and poor health, resulting in Williams being charged with 27 counts of animal cruelty as part of a pending case against her. Various other dead animals were removed from the farm.

Williams is due back in Orange County General District Court Friday on the misdemeanor charges, for which she remains free on $75,000 bond.

In their news release, Orange County authorities said they understand and share the concern and frustration of those who are upset that the horses seized in Orange are now involved in another abuse investigation. But they noted that they do not have authority over the King William operation and said the state lacks authority over animal rescue operations.

The fact that the situation in King William County is strikingly similar to what occurred in Orange County last October underscores the reality that the lack of oversight, inspection and regulation of animal rescue facilities in Virginia limits the ability of local government to prevent, manage or budget for these situations, the release said.

The King William Sheriffs Office seized 42 horses from New Beginnings Wednesday as part of what Sheriff J.S. Walton called an ongoing investigation into animal cruelty.

Animal control deputies had received multiple complaints of malnourished and unhealthy horses with little or no food or water, Walton said.

The investigation is continuing and charges are pending, he said.

Walton said the horses seized from New Beginningsincluding the six previously seized from Peaceable Farmswere now in the custody of animal control.
NEW YORK

If there is one explanation for Donald Trumps success it is this: Unlike most Republicans, he fights back. He may not have the late Muhammad Alis finesse, but he sees himself as more than capable of dealing a knockout punch to Hillary Clinton in November. That ought to be the goal of any GOP presidential nominee.

During an interview in his Trump Tower office Monday, I asked about his temperament, a subject often raised by critics. Hillary Clinton recently said he shouldnt be trusted with the nuclear codes and that he is so thin-skinned he might start a war.

Trump said, Shes the one who raised her hand for the war in Iraq and Im the one who has been fighting it from the beginning. ... (Hillary) is the one who has a terrible temperament ... shes weak ... she has a hair trigger and its just the opposite with me. I have a strong temperament. ... I couldnt have built the strong companies Ive built if I didnt have a strong temperament.

Well, yes, and many considered Teddy Roosevelt just as brash and his likeness made it onto Mount Rushmore.

What about the references to race and ethnicity that have brought criticism from leading Republicans? I suggested that most Americans dont care about the civil lawsuit against Trump University (which alleges the university is a scam), the ethnic background of U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel, who is presiding over the case, or whether Trump is being treated fairly. What Americans care about are jobs, the economy and terrorist threats. Does Trump plan to pivot from such things and start focusing on what resonates with most voters?

Yes, he said, its starting very soon. In a statement released Tuesday, however, Trump addressed the Curiel issue one more time. It is unfortunate that my comments have been misconstrued as a categorical attack against people of Mexican heritage. I am friends with and employ thousands of people of Mexican and Hispanic descent. ... I do not feel that ones heritage makes them incapable of being impartial...

He then vowed not to speak about the matter again.

In our interview, Trump noted he has received more votes than Ronald Reagan. Yes, but primaries are but a small percentage of the larger number of people who will vote in November. A considerable number of them will vote for Hillary Clinton; some conservatives and Republicans will refuse to vote for Trump.

Trump says his formula for making America great again begins with putting the country first: I hate to use the word change, because Obama used to use that word ... but (people) are hungry for real change; theyre hungry for making things right.

Hes right and both parties share the blame for the dysfunction.

Trumps plan for reforming Social Security and Medicare, the main drivers of our debt, consists of eliminating waste, fraud and abuse and growing the economy to a point where there will be sufficient money to sustain these programs for decades to come.

He promises that the list of judges provided to him by The Federalist Society and The Heritage Foundation will either be the ones he nominates to federal benches, or people exactly like them. In fact, Im going to expand the list by four.

Trump rejects the notion of a living Constitution, preferring the view of the late Justice Antonin Scalia that the document means what it says. He favors school choice, especially for minority children in failing public schools, a position he thinks will help get him African-American votes. He says President Obama, not he, has divided the country, pitting rich against poor and blacks against whites. I had hoped Obama would be a good cheerleader for the country. Hes really brought the opposite in spirit to the country. Hes a very negative force. He adds, If we have four years of Hillary I dont know if we can ever come back.

If Donald Trump does adopt a positive view of America that is inclusive of all Americans, he might be able to resonate with a majority of voters. Will he? Were about to find out.
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Obituaries 10-21-22 Advisory: Obituary information will only be accepted if sent through a funeral home or cemetery. The Wave does not assume responsibility for any incorrect information that is printed in the obituary section John E. Hynes...

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THE leader of an anti-Islam group and the founder of the British Muslim Youth came face-to-face for the first time during a far-right protest.

Tommy Robinson from the far-right Pegida UK and Muhbeen Hussain from the BMY community movement met in a cafe in All Saints Square prior to Saturdays protest (pictured).

Mr Hussain said the Luton-based Pegida leader  who was in the town to protest against Islamic misogyny and anti-white hatred  called him into the cafe, which was in the area of the anti-Pegida protest site, as he walked past.

I shook his hand respectfully, I told him I hated his views and that he spewed hatred, said Mr Hussain.

He claimed Mr Robinson was in the vicinity of the counter protest, which he believed he should not have been allowed in, to provoke a response.

I dont know why the police let him come to that area.

Mr Hussain added: I find hes a bit of an act, he likes to provoke, he wants to divide communities.

He said the conversation was very straight-forward, the atmosphere was slightly tense and they chatted for around three minutes.

My aim was clear, I would not allow him to enter the area to provoke young people and provoke a response, thats what his whole day was about, he was walking near the (counter) rally to provoke people.

Many local Muslims were too scared to join the counter-protest, Mr Hussain said, particularly due to the alleged Islamophobic attack on a woman in Swinton a week earlier.

Mr Robinson, the former leader of the far-right English Defence League, was pushing for a debate with Mr Hussain about grooming.

Me and Tommy were meant to have a debate last year, we booked a private hotel (to host it) in South Yorkshire, but outside of Rotherham.

My argument has always been these (the groomers) are criminals, not matter what faith or culture, they are criminals and we stand against them.

They are criminals, religion or race has nothing to do with it, but as usual Tommy wants to blame Islam.

Last years debate was called off by the police, Mr Hussain claimed.

Pegida wouldnt have held this protest in Rotherham if that debate had gone ahead, he added.

The cafe meeting was ended abruptly by a police officer, Mr Hussain said.

Hours later during Mr Robinsons speech at the protest he declared he was going to rip the Koran to pieces.

Mr Hussain said about the threats: At the time I took this literally, it sent a shiver down my spine  I sat with this man, I shook his hand.

He added: He uses words very cleverly and uses them to provoke...I am not prepared to debate with him at this stage.

I will debate anyone who is serious about the topic and cares about the victims.

He does not care about people in Rotherham, hes only bothered about his national profile.
Human Rights Watch (HRW) said the Kimberley Process (KP)s long-term credibility and relevance have been undermined by a narrow focus on the activities of anti-government rebel groups and its unwillingness to incorporate human rights protections into its standards and operations.

KP was established in 2003 to end conflict diamonds representing 81 countries, and observers from the diamond industry and nongovernmental organizations.

It said in a statement that although KP had made important progress in curtailing the trade in conflict diamonds, it should adopt a broader focus on the full range of human rights abuses connected with diamond production, regardless of whether they are committed by governments, rebel armies, or private actors.

HRW has also observed institutional failures by the Kimberley Process in both identifying violations of its standards and holding member states accountable for noncompliance, it said.

There is little independent monitoring of compliance with Kimberley Process rules and few penalties for violations.

HRW also said that it was difficult for well-meaning countries to take action against a member that violates the rules if even one other member votes to block that action since the group makes decisions by consensus, rather than by voting.

In light of these substantial issues, HRW has no intention of joining the Kimberley Process in any capacity. However, HRW affirms its support of other organizations that are attempting to reform the Kimberley Process as civil society observers, it said.

We will continue to urge the Kimberly Process to embrace its potential to help ensure consumers can know that the stones they purchase have not been mined in situations of grave human rights abuse.



Mathew Nyaungwa, Editor in Chief of the African Bureau, Rough&Polished




The Israel Diamond Institute Group of Companies (IDI) will host 50 companies in its diamond pavilion at the Hong Kong Jewellery & Gem Fair, running from June 23-26, 2016 at the Hong Kong Convention & Exhibition Centre. In addition, 10 Israeli companies will be exhibiting in other locations in the show as well, says a release from IDI.

The Israel Diamond Pavilion will be located in the diamond area in Halls 3BC and Concourse. IDIs Find Your Diamond system will help to search all Israeli exhibitors offerings at the show, with info in Chinese and in English; and will be available on smartphones as well.

IDI Chairman Shmuel Schnitzer said, Despite the downturn in Asian markets, they remain very important targets for our industry. We believe that the long-term prospects for Asia as a market for polished diamonds are excellent. The Israeli Diamond Industry seeks to strengthen our business connections there, and to continue to adapt our offerings to the markets demands.

IDI Managing Director Eli Avidar said that IDI now organizes large national diamond pavilions at four trade shows in Hong Kong annually -- in March, June, September and November. "We have invested great efforts at making Israeli diamantaires accessible to buyers. The Find Your Diamond feature, which is now offered in Chinese as well, has proven to be a real winner for both buyers and exhibitors."

He also added that IDIs office in Hong Kong has been instrumental in furthering business between the two counties. Besides, the Chinese language diamond portal site enables direct contacts between the Israeli industry and the region.



Aruna Gaitonde, Editor-in-Chief of Asian Bureau, Rough&Polished




Botswana's public sector officials and De Beers are touring the U.S. seeking investments in the African nation's strategic industries, including mining, as part of a celebration to mark 50 years of independence.

Officials from the Botswana Development Corporation and the countrys Ministry of Minerals, Energy and Water Resources are part of the joint visit that started with a symposium in New York on June 1. That was followed by a meeting in San Francisco on June 7. The representatives have another meeting planned in Chicago on June 9 to promote Botswana as an investment destination.

De Beers said Botswana is consistently rated as the least corrupt country in Africa by Transparency International.

The successful relocation of our international sales operation from London to Gaborone [in 2013] is testament to the ease of doing business in Botswana, said Gareth Mostyn, the executive head of strategy and corporate affairs at De Beers.




Relations between Zimbabwe and China are said to have plummeted following the southern African countrys move to remove Chinese companies from Marange diamond fields last February.

Anjin and other diamond companies had since taken Harare to court challenging the decision to suspend their operations.

The Zimbabwe Independent reports that company shareholders were also said to have met with Chinese government officials to register their disappointment at the governments lack of respect for property rights.

It was now not clear if China would go ahead with plans to finance multi-billion dollar energy and infrastructure deals, which President Robert Mugabe signed in 2014 and 2015.

State media recently claimed that the mega-deals were still intact despite no evidence of their implementation.

China had been an all-weather friend of Zimbabwe when the West shunned the country following its chaotic land reform exercise in 2000 coupled with allegations of political violence and election rigging.



Mathew Nyaungwa, Editor in Chief of the African Bureau, Rough&Polished




ALROSA starts the development of a new deposit

10 june 2016 News

PJSC ALROSA, the world leader in diamond mining, has announced the start of the development of a new deposit, Zarya pipe at Aikhal Mining and Processing Division.

Today, the first commercial blasting triggered the first stage of the deposit development  surface stripping to remove barren sedimentary rock overlying the ore body. The mine is to reach its design capacity of 1 million tons of ore per year by 2021. The mine life is expected to be 13 years.

The construction of an open-pit mine on the deposit is a very important investment project, says Igor Sobolev, ALROSA First Vice President Executive Director, the start of mining operations at Zarya pipe will allow us to replace dwindling reserves at Komsomolsky open-pit mine.

The development of Zarya primary diamond deposit is one of ALROSAs major investment projects. The initial investment is expected to be RUB 9.8 billion.

The development of Zarya will guarantee stable use of existing capacities and ensure total rough diamond recovery of 3.6 million carats throughout the mine development, said ALROSA President Andrey Zharkov.

The Aikhal Mining and Processing Division, established in 1986, mines rough diamonds at open-pit mines Yubileyny, Komsomolsky, and underground mine Aikhal. Its share in ALROSA Groups production totaled 32% in 2015. In Q1 2016, Aikhal Mining and Processing Division mined 2.68 million carats. The division employs more than 4,300 people.




An agreement has been reached to pay for the reconstruction and operation of the 70-mile Desert Line railway in southeastern San Diego County that connects Mexico maquiladoras to rail shipping in the United States.

The landmark agreement between Pacific Imperial Railroad (PIR) and Baja California Railroad (Baja Rail) provides a notable economic boost to both sides of the border.

The San Diego Metropolitan Transit System (MTS), San Diego Regional Chamber of Commerce, PIR and Baja Rail announced plans June 9 after the MTS Board of Directors approved the contract terms.

The San Diego region and U.S.-Mexico binational economies lose a staggering $6 billion annually due to long delays in getting trucks carrying freight  such as new automobiles  across the U.S.  Mexico land borders in San Diego, according to a study done by the San Diego Association of Governments. The study found an operational Desert Line will ease congestion, reduce air pollution, promote commerce and create jobs.

This is a historic win for the San Diego region, said MTS Vice Chair Ron Roberts. The Desert Line agreement achieves a significant commitment to binational economic improvements and cooperation rarely seen in San Diego. Additionally, 135,000 cars and 6,200 trucks idling at our land ports of entry each day negatively affect our air quality. An operational Desert Line will help reduce vehicle emissions at the border and help this region meet its emission reduction goal.

The loss of productivity due to congestion at our ports of entry translates into more than 2,400 jobs or $131 million in lost economic activity, said Jerry Sanders, president and chief executive officer of the San Diego Regional Chamber of Commerce. The Desert Line will provide a vital route that takes trucks off our freeways, increases shipping capacity and gets goods to marketplaces far more efficiently.

Work on the 60 miles of track between Tecate and Coyote Wells in Imperial County is expected to begin this summer. It will be overseen by Baja Rail, which is incorporated in the United States and in Mexico.

This joint project has been anticipated for a long time, said Fernando Beltran, president of Baja Rail. It will help our maquiladoras continue to thrive. It will help our economy. And, it will stimulate a new cooperative business relationship between our two countries.

Work on the line will include repairing bridges and tunnels and improvements to track. Once completed, it will allow trains up to 30 cars to travel on the line from Mexico to Coyote Wells. There, cars will be assembled into 100-car trains for delivery to Union Pacific in Plaster City. To accommodate this activity, a new intermodal facility will be built in Coyote Wells by PIR.

Details of the new Cali-Baja Joint Venture Sublease and Operating Agreement include:

 Baja Rail and PIR will pay for the cost to reconstruct and operate the Desert Line (estimated at $60-70 million)

 Construction is set to begin in summer 2016

 Baja Rail will oversee the railroad repair, maintenance and operational obligations for 60 miles of the Desert Line

 PIR will build an intermodal facility near Coyote Wells in Imperial County to load freight and provide space to build the necessary 100-car trains that can be delivered to the Union Pacific main line network

 MTS will continue to earn a minimum annual guarantee of $1 million annually related to the Desert Line lease

 MTS will receive seven percent of gross revenue if greater than $1 million

 Extending the deadline by 12 months for all milestones (initial repairs, test train operations, limited operations, full-scale repairs and operations)

MTS has owned the Desert Line since 1979 and approved a lease agreement with PIR in 2012. On June 22, 2015, PIR and Baja Rail signed a Memorandum of Understanding outlining both parties intentions to reach a definitive agreement to create a binational railroad operation servicing the freight movement needs of Tijuanas manufacturing sector. This was a major turning point in negotiations that have been ongoing since January 2013. Since that time, the two railroads have been conducting due diligence, financial feasibility analyses and negotiating an agreement to work cooperatively to restart freight railroad operations between Mexico and the Desert Line.

On June 2, 2016, these binational negotiations culminated in a sublease agreement between PIR and Baja Rail. The parties agreed that Baja Rail will oversee and pay for the railroad repair, maintenance and operational obligations for the first 60 miles of the Desert Line.

As the owner of the rail line, MTS retains oversight authority to ensure it complies with all of the construction, safety, maintenance and operational requirements for local, state and federal laws. MTS has hired RailPros to act as its expert consultant on this project.
Japan will on Friday release May figures for producer prices, highlighting a modest day for Asia-Pacific economic activity.

Producer prices are expected to be flat on month and fall 4.2 percent on year after slipping 0.3 percent on month and 4.2 percent on year in April.

Japan also will see April results for its tertiary industry index; in March, the index slipped 0.7 percent on month.

New Zealand will provide May numbers for credit card spending. In April, overall spending gained 1.5 percent on month and retail spending gained 0.9 percent.

The Philippines will release April numbers for exports, with forecasts suggesting a decline of 1.5 percent following the 15.1 percent tumble in March.

Malaysia will provide April data for manufacturing and industrial production. In March, manufacturing production added 1.4 percent on month and 4.4 percent on year, while industrial output slipped 0.4 percent on month and added 2.8 percent on year.

Finally, the in China and Taiwan remain closed for the Dragon Boat Festival. They will re-open on Monday.

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.
Romania's consumer prices continued to decline in May, figures from the National Institute of Statistics showed Friday.

The consumer price index dropped at a faster pace of 3.5 percent year-over-year in May, following a 3.3 percent decrease in April. Prices have been falling since June 2015.

Grocery prices dipped 7.6 percent in May from a year ago and non-food prices slid by 1.3 percent. Costs for services registered a decline of 0.6 percent.

On a monthly basis, consumer prices inched up 0.3 percent in May.

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.
Canadian stocks may end the week on a rough note Friday morning, as crude oil prices drifted below $50 a barrel.

Weakness has emerged in the energy sector amid speculation that oil's poor fundamentals will keep prices in check for now.

The global supply glut may not evaporate as Iran is pumping oil at a furious pace following years of sanctions.

In economic news, Canadian employment was up 14,000 jobs in May. With fewer people searching for work, the unemployment rate declined 0.2 percentage points to 6.9%, the lowest rate since July 2015.

Yesterday, the S&P/TSX Composite lost 73.08 points to close Thursday at 14,240.02, falling further from recent 10-month highs.

WTI light sweet crude was down 75 cents at $49.81 a barrel.

Transcontinental Inc. (TCL.A.TO)said second quarter revenues increased 1.4%, but adjusted net earnings decreased 12.5%.

Valeant Pharmaceuticals International Inc. (VRX) is considering the sale of Egyptian drugmaker Amoun Pharmaceutical Co. to accelerate its debt-reduction plans, the Bloomberg reported, citing people with knowledge of the matter.

For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com

Market Analysis
Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., who recently endorsed Hillary Clinton for president, has called presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump a "thin-skinned fraud."

She made a scathing attack on the businessman-turned-politician while speaking at the American Constitution Society of Law and Policy National Convention in Washington Thursday night.

"Donald Trump is a loud, nasty, thin-skinned fraud who has never risked anything for anyone and who serves no one but himself," according to Warren.

Warren, who had been waging a relentless anti-Trump campaign over the weeks, had earlier endorsed Clinton for president.

She also unleashed a withering condemnation of Trump's attacks against Hispanic Judge Gonzalo Curiel, who is presiding over two lawsuits against Trump University.

For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com

Political News
Hyundai Cretas 7-seater avatar was recently spied testing on public roads in South Korea

Kia Motors could be working on a 7-seater Seltos model since its virtual sibling, Hyundai Creta will be getting an extended capacity variant soon. It was only recently that Hyundais new-gen Creta was spotted in a 7-seater avatar in the streets of South Korea. Hyundai India does not have any seven-seater model as of now and the Creta 7-seater could be a potential addition to its current line-up.

The 2020 Hyundai Creta was launched earlier this month at a starting price of Rs 9.99 lakh ex-showroom (introductory). Being based on the same platform, it shares a lot with Kia Motors Indias Seltos  be it powertrain, equipment or, to an extent, pricing.

One could argue that the 2020 Hyundai Creta is the better pick, at least on paper. The official 2020 Hyundai Creta media drive was supposed to take place earlier this month, but the ongoing corona virus pandemic has led to its cancellation.

Like the regular Kia Seltos and Hyundai Creta versions, their 7-seater configurations would also be identical under the skin. If we keep aside the current market slump, the demand for SUVs or crossovers in India has improved a lot lately.

Owing to this, many are investing a lot on such products in the compact and subcompact category. Kia Motors India witnessed a runaway success with just a single product while Hyundai India used the same formula for the Creta, which is also doing well in terms of booking and customer interest.

Either SUV share the same powertrain choices: 1.5-litre NA petrol (113bhp/144Nm), 1.5-litre diesel (113bhp/250Nm) and 1.4-litre turbo petrol (138bhp/242Nm). The engines are available mated to a CVT, 6-speed AT and 7-speed DCT, respectively. On the other hand, a 6-speed manual transmission comes as standard.

The upcoming 7-seater versions of both SUVs could feature the same power plants at a different state of tune. To justify a higher price tag by not just size and seating capacity, the 7-seater models (which could sport a different name) might get some additional items on the list of features. Considering the success of the original 5-seater models, one can expect a decent degree of success with their bigger variants.

If introduced in India, both 7-seaters will lock horn with the upcoming Tata Gravitas (Harriers 7-seater sibling). Furthermore, they could be significantly affordable alternatives to the Ford Endeavour, Toyota Fortuner and Mahindra Alturas G4.
Chinese smartphone manufacturer OnePlus is about to launch their third smartphone in the market on 14th June 2016. To go on sale on the same date, you now have the chance to buy this smartphone even before it is launched on 14th. How?

Thanks to online car and bike marketplace Droom, who have tied up with OnePlus to sell the first five OnePlus 3 smartphones in India via online auction.

The auction which has already commenced June 9 at 4 pm, will run till June 12, 3:59:59 pm. Bidding for the five OnePlus 3 will commences INR 1 and there is no cap on highest bid and top five highest individual bidders will be able to purchase the smartphones they bid for as soon as auction closes.

As of now, the top five bid amounts ranges from INR 56,775 to INR 56,660, and this is for a phone which is expected to be priced under INR 30k. This proves how excited are buyers to get the phone as soon as possible.

There is another surprise in store for these five owners which will only be revealed by the company while handing over the handsets to the winners.

Droom reveals that all proceeds from the auction will be donated to charity which will be selected by OnePlus community via voting being cast on OnePlus Forums.

OnePlus 3 will be offered on Amazon online portal from June 15, 2016 but the company is initiating this auction so that fans can have a chance to possess 5 units of OnePlus 3 prior to it going on sale. This is a first of its kind approach which the company feels will add some excitement to its launch in the country.

Check out these amazing sample shots taken with the #OnePlus3 camera. Which is your favorite? pic.twitter.com/7A3gfzUX87  OnePlus (@oneplus) June 8, 2016

OnePlus 3  Photos

photos of oneplus 3 via androidheadlines
It appeared that Honda Cars India is all set to join the promising premium compact crossover segment which is currently bustling with activity. The fact that the Honda HRV was spied testing in the country more than once strongly indicated that the automaker is not far from launching it in our market but unfortunately that is not to be.

According to Autocar Professionals sources, Honda has called off its plans to launch the HR-V in India at the last moment. It is being said that the automaker was very close to commencing trial production (a few prototypes were already built locally) at its Greater Noida facility.

The publication also reports that, according to its sources, Honda had confirmed a volume of 12,000 units over two years to its vendors and then revised it to 8,000 units due to the ongoing slowdown before cancelling the production plans altogether. The Japanese automaker is reported to compensate its vendors who have made additional investment in anticipation of the HR-V.

The reason for shelving the project at the last minute boils down to localization level. Honda reportedly couldnt improve the proportion of locally sourced components for the HR-V more than 30% without significantly ramping up its investment (also heavily localization is an extremely time consuming process) and this would mean being at a disadvantage when it comes to pricing.

Though a significantly localized Honda HR-V would have been an attractive proposition in India, the cost-benefit analysis from Hondas point of view didnt make a sound business sense. The recently introduced MG Hector and Kia Seltos changed the segment dynamics with highly attractive pricing, thus emphasizing the importance of localization in this segment.

So, at least for the foreseeable feature, Honda Cars Indias coverage of the promising crossover segment would remain unchanged. As of now, the company retails the Mobilio-derived BR-V and Jazz-derived WR-V in addition to the globally renowned CR-V.

Hondas current focus will be on upgrading its existing engine lineup to BS-VI emission standards before the deadline. The company must be also conducting several studies to identify the right products for Indias strong push towards electrification.

Source
The new Nissan Kicks BS6 will not be available in a diesel format

Nissan India is almost ready to launch the updated BS6 version of the Kicks crossover. The 2020MY Nissan Kicks features several additions over its BS4 counterpart in terms of equipment and mechanicals. Bookings start post end of lockdown and its launch is expected to happen around the same time. For the BS6 era, Nissan India has discontinued its proven 1.5-litre diesel power plant across the range.

On the bright side, the company has introduced a new 1.3-litre turbo petrol engine developed under the partnership with Renault. The engine made its Indian debut back at Auto Expo 2020 in the revised Renault Duster AMT.

Nissan India could not witness the success it had initially expected with the Kicks due to tight competition from the likes of Hyundai Motors Creta (previous generation) and Kia Motors Indias Seltos. Now, Malayalam automotive YouTube channel Pilot On Wheels has shared all the key details of the 2020 Nissan Kicks BS6.

For the 2020 model year, the Nissan Kicks BS6 comes in four trims: XL, XV, XV Premium and XV Premium (O). The Japanese brand has added new features such as remote engine start, push-button start and idle start-stop in higher levels of trim. Initially launched in January 2019, the Nissan Kicks has had a good number of segment-first features. Compared to its international sibling, the Indian version boasts of various market-specific re-engineering.

In BS6 format, the primary highlight is still its 1.3-litre turbo petrol motor. The HR13 four-cylinder unit (mated to a 6-speed manual or 8-step CVT) develops close to 154bhp and 254Nm, making it the most powerful engine in its class. Alongside, the old 1.5-litre H4K petrol engine is also offered in BS6 format. It is good for roughly 105bhp and 142Nm of torque while mated to a 5-speed transmission.

Company-claimed mileage figures stand at 16.3km/l and 14.1km/l for the turbo and NA options, respectively. Nissan India also claims that its CVT powertrain is one of the very best in the business. The old BS4 1.5-litre K9K DCi diesel mill made 108bhp and 240Nm of torque, with a 6-speed manual transmission.

Other notable features (in the highest trim) include smart card keyless entry, cruise control, Around View Monitor 360-degree camera, Hill Start Assist, leather seats, cornering fog lamps, automatic headlamps and wipers, cruise control, Traction Control System, Electronic Stability Control, 8.0-inch infotainment system and more. In Nissan Indias portfolio, the Kicks essentially replaces the Terrano. One of the main downsides of its predecessor was a noticeable lack of features compared to other popular names in the segment.
Anand Mahindra, the Chairman of Mahindra group has over 6.8 million followers on Twitter and it is his noble deeds and witty humour which keeps his followers engaged. Mr. Mahindra had recently unveiled the Battista hyper car from Pininfarina at the ongoing Geneva Motor Show.

The Battista now happens to be the fastest electric car on the planet with some mind-boggling acceleration figures. It can do a 0-100 kmph in less than 2 seconds, 0-300 kmph in under 12 seconds and has a top speed of over 350 kmph. This makes it even faster than the likes of Buggati Chiron, in terms of acceleration.

Almost everyone who saw the car, or the performance figures was truly impressed. However, one of his Indian follower thought of asking him the quintessential desi question, Sir, Kitna Deti Hai? (Translation: What is the fuel economy of the car?). Mr. Mahindra took the opportunity and gave an equally amusing and befitting reply by stating, Sirji, electric hai.. Shock deti hai. (Translation: Dear, it is an electric vehicle, it can give you an electric shock!)

This isnt the first incident when Mr. Mahindra has impressed his followers with his humour. There have been numerous similar incidents in the past as well. Talking about Pininfarina, it is an Italian design firm which was purchased by different companies of the Mahindra group. Since the acquisition, Mahindra has been taking help from Pininfarina to design and style its latest products.

As far as Battista is concerned, it is an all-electric performance car. It draws power from a 120kWh battery back which alone weighs a massive 650kgs. Power is then extracted and delivered to 4 motors which have been fit in all wheels (one in each). The battery management system has been developed jointly by Rimac and Mahindra Racing Formula E team. Total power output of the car stands at 1,900hp, making it more powerful than cars like Bugatti Chiron and Koenigsegg Agera RS. Pininfarina claims that the range on a complete charge will be around 450km, however customers will have the option to tune the cars output for performance/mileage.

Commercial production will start in around 15 months or so and it will be restricted to just 150 units. Globally around 25-40 dealer partners will be chosen who will retail the car in major cities like New York, London, Los Angeles, Toronto, Hong Kong etc. Price is expected to be in the USD 2  2.5 million range (INR 14.5  18.12 Cr), excluding taxes and import duty.
Millennial Moms Review: 2022 Acura MDX is pretty close to the perfect family car

I dont know if perfect is attainable, especially considering weve got the world of options when it comes to modern vehicles. Were spoiled and, as such, we have very specific needs and wants. Driving-wise, the 2022 Acura MDX is one of my favourite ...
By SA Commercial Prop News

Redefine Properties' purchase of R2.1 billion takeover of Annuity Properties, has been approved. File Photo: Panico Theocharides joint CEO at Annuity seen with Redefine CEO Marc Wainer and Derek Greenberg joint CEO at Annuity.



Redefine Properties' purchase of R2.1 billion takeover of Annuity Properties, has been approved by the Competition Commission and unitholders today.

The listed property sector has experienced significant consolidation since late last year, following a slew of new listings over the past 18 months to two years.

In a statement, SA's second largest real estate investment trust, Redefine Properties said that it has received unconditional approval from the Competition Commission to conclude the acquisition of the entire issued share capital of Annuity Properties as well as Annuitys asset and property management companies.

Annuity unitholders also gave their approval for Redefine to acquire the entire issued share capital of Annuity by way of a scheme of arrangement on 13 May 2014. These approvals mean the transaction can now be finalised.

In March, Redefine surprised the market by announcing its acquisition of Annuity Properties.

According to the offer, Redefine would acquire the entire issued share capital through a scheme of arrangement, and also Annuitys asset and property management companies.

Annuity linked unitholders would receive 57.752 Redefine linked units for every 100 Annuity linked units. Redefine would issue 136.6-million linked units. Redefine would also acquire the management companies for a cash consideration of R103m.

Annuitys R2.1 billion property portfolio has been priced at 8.5% income yield in an environment of scarce investment opportunities.

This acquisition will be effective from 1 March 2014 and Annuity linked unitholders will be entitled to the Redefine income distribution from this date.

Annuity listed on the JSE in May 2012 and its tenants include some of South Africas better known companies. Annuity owns Sasfins head office in Waverley, Johannesburg, and the Woolworths call centre in Cape Town.

Redefine CEO Marc Wainer says Annuity portfolio significantly advances Redefines investment strategy in a single transaction.

"It provides excellent synergies, with 80% of its properties meeting Redefines investment criteria of which 30% of the portfolio comprises retail assets, which furthers Redefines objective for increased exposure to this sector, he says.

In that vein, Wainer recently made comments that plans for a full merger with Fountainhead were on track with Redefine likely to make an offer to Fountainhead shareholders within the next two to three weeks once necessary regulatory approvals are in place.



Mr Wainer said the target was to have the merger completed by August. For the merger to go ahead 75% of all remaining Fountainhead shareholders must vote in favour of a takeover.

Redefine has a market capitalisation in excess of R30 billion and controls a diversified portfolio of property assets of R44.5 billion.

The companys local investment assets comprise 253 diversified directly held properties valued at R25.4 billion, while Fountainhead Property Trust, in which Redefine has a 65.9% equity interest, has an R11.8 billion retail-focused property portfolio.

Redefine is also geographically diversified with R6.6 billion invested offshore and holds 32.9% stake in Redefine International P.L.C which is listed on both the London Stock Exchange and JSE.

It further holds 12.8% in Cromwell Property Group, which is listed on the Australian Securities Exchange Limited (ASX),
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Bill Self talks Kansas' scrimmage with Illinois, more on media day

What did Bill Self think about his teams scrimmage against Illinois? Check out what Kansas head coach had to say about that, and more.
Samoa commemorated the World Day Against Child Labour yesterday with a Child Labour Awareness Forum at Hotel Millennia.

The theme of the gathering was End Child Labour in Supply Chains: Its everyones business!

World Day Against Child Labour falls on the 12th of June every year. However, because the 12th of June falls on a Sunday in Samoa, the International Labour Organization (I.L.O) commemorated the day yesterday.

According to the I.L.O National Coordinator, Tomasi Peni, their ultimate aim is to find ways to eliminate child labour once and for all.

In Samoa, one of the biggest challenges is the growing number of child vendors.

We have the Ministry of Educations Act that only serves the school hours but what happens after 3 oclock? he said.

There is also the Ministry of Labour Act which only covers the formal sector but what about the informal sector because these street vendors are on the street and this is considered an informal kind of trading that they have every day.

These are the gaps that we are trying to bring in to discuss and so the focus of the this forum today is to bring in the stakeholders from the government, the civil society and the private sector to share ideas of what solution they can come up with to solve this problem. The issue is getting worse.

Mr. Peni also revealed that from a study they have done, not only are children being used for child labour, they are also exposed to other illegal activities.

There are children who are selling things at the odd hours and from the Rapid Report that we had shows that these kids are also engaging in other activities like theft, begging, starvation as we see on the newspaper, he said.

After selling products on the streets, some of these kids cannot find transportation to go back home so at the end, they sleep on the streets and the bus routes.

To address the issue, Mr. Peni said everyone has a role to play, especially parents.

From what we have surveyed in 2014, the cause is mainly the parents from having too many commitments in faalavelaves, he said.

These families are living beyond their earnings, they spend more money on family commitments and faalavelave they dont have enough to provide for their families and their kids so this is their way of surviving.

Another reason is that the parents were born as street vendors and so when their children are born they are also street vendors. Its the cycle that the parents think is the way of living.

The I.L.O Coordinator added that there are other reasons.

These reasons are different from what we have found in Savaii, he said.

The parents will loan from a lender and instead of using that fund to start a business, the parents use it in their own personal needs so when the time comes for the payment of the loan to go in, they send their children out to sell products so they can get money for the payments.

That is the common cause of the issue mainly happening in Savaii.

Asked if poverty is one of the causes, Mr. Peni said it is a contributing factor.

However, I wouldnt say it because the word poverty is very sensitive but it is very clear in the Ombudsmans report that it is there, he said.

But the I.L.Os focus is that we are here to assist but I cannot comment on that issue because we are just here to assist whenever Samoa needs our help.

So what should be the solution for this problem?

The solution for the issue is that everyone should come together and eliminate this issue by playing their roles, he said.

For instance, the church ministries should use some of these children in their youth programmes, the government should play a role by coming up with a legislative that covers all the hours.

The Civil Society also has a role to play like the A.D.R.A Samoa is starting up their own programmes with the collaboration of Seiuli Allan Alo and Sua June Ryan to help with the ongoing problem and to assist with this.

So these are the kinds of programmes that we need to have to try and eliminate the ongoing issue of Child Labour and so we are here to support.
The headquarters of the Pacific Immigration Directors Conference (P.I.D.C) will soon be relocated from Fiji to Samoa.

An agreement on the establishment of the Office on Level 5 of the government building was signed yesterday.

This formalises the agreement to relocate the office from Suva to Apia.

Prime Minister Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi signed the agreement with P.I.D.Cs representatives Vaosa Epa and Damien Jacklick.

Tuilaepa highlighted the importance of the P.I.D.C.

With the increase of illegal activities in the horizon relating to people movement as well as drugs and arms smuggling, there is an imperative need for immigration authorities in the region to engage to manage the Pacific gateways to ensure the safety of borders, thereby contributing to broader regional objectives he said.

By hosting the P.I.D.C headquarters, Tuilaepa said this reflects Samoas commitment to fostering multilateral cooperation within the members.

The government and the people of Samoa welcome the P.I.D.C to our shores and is evident by the swift execution of the necessary documents to facilitate a smooth transition from Suva to Apia, he said.

Vice Chair of the P.I.D.C, Damien Jacklick in response acknowledged the support from the government of Samoa and also the Prime Minister.

Your support and approval on the relocation signifies the values of our relationship and in recognition of the role that P.I.D.C plays in bringing together states and territories of the Pacific towards the common interest of protecting our borders, he said.

Today marks a significant chapter in the organizations short history and the culmination of a journey that we value and respect.

It also marks a new journey as we sail on the vaa name P.I.D.C together into unchartered waters.

Todays headquarter agreement signing signifies unity and we are grateful and welcome very much your governments commitment to support this regional effort.
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By Peggy Kelly

Santa Paula News

What happened to those immortalized in the photograph of and later monument to the flag raising on Iwo Jima as well as the history of the Buddy Poppy Program were highlighted at the annual Memorial Day Observance by Santa Paula Mercer-Prieto VFW Post 2043.

Also featured was the announcement of fundraising for the Roger Boles Veterans Memorial Pool at Santa Paula High School.

Pierce Brothers Santa Paula Cemetery was festooned with flags for the ceremony, held in front of the GAR Monument which each year draws hundreds of community members.

A concert by the Isbell Middle School Band led by director Scott Kneff started the ceremony with patriotic music including songs from each branch of the service and Santa Paula Airport pilots staged a flyover during the program.

Santa Paula Bob Hargarten, who retired as a Navy Commander after 30 years of service, noted that the famed Anchors Aweigh stemmed from a poem written for an Annapolis graduating class in the early 1900s.

He has fond memories of Memorial Day although When I was a kid it was called Decoration Day!

VFW Commander Jerry Olivas welcomed the crowd and introduced various people including Mayor Martin Hernandez and Vice Mayor Jenny Crosswhite as well as Police Chief Steve McLean.

He also thanked Our first responders, our police and fireour Santa Paula Fire Department brought several engines and Assistant Chief Vern Alstot is also here.

Laura Cole of Pierce Brothers and her staff were thanked for their work in setting up tents and seating for the Memorial Day Observance as well as for hosting hot dogs afterwards; Olivas noted that several Scout troops were handing out programs and small flags and he acknowledged all who supported the event.

Following the National Anthem Father Charles Lueras of Our Lady of Guadalupe Catholic Church, a Vietnam War veteran, led the prayer and noted, We gather with a sense of hope and deep love and gratitude for those who serve

Jannette Jauregui, who spearheaded the effort to have the SPHS pool named in honor of Roger Boles, who wrote of building a pool at his alma mater before he was killed in World War II, said On this very special day we come to honor those who lost their lives in war.

Under different names Memorial Day has been celebrated for 150 years in remembrance of those that died in battle for the United States since the earliest days.

The Roger Boles Veterans Memorial Pool will not only be a remembrance of lives lost in war but said Jauregui will also be an educational tool for students.

The VFW will head the fundraising effort for the plaque and other needs of the pool with leftover funds donated to the Post.

The pool said Jauregui, will be a way to remember and honor the lives and legacies of those we lostand, in our collective form of memory, never forget

VFW Quartermaster Rey Frutos spoke about the Iwo Jima monument, its six boys and 13 hands, and the story behind the most famous photograph and largest such bronze sculpture in the world.

Dedicated by President Eisenhower and later decreed by President Kennedy that the flag would fly over the monument in perpetuity, Frutos spoke of James Bradley who wrote The Flags of Our Fathers about the five Marines and Navy Corpsman famous by Joe Rosenthals lauded photograph of the flag raising at Iwo Jima.

The battle was one of the costliest and most horrifying of WWII. The flag raisers included John Bradley (a Navy corpsman, and the authors father), Rene Gagnon, Ira Hayes, Mike Strank, Harlon Block, and Franklin Sousley; the latter three men died later in the battle.

Frutos noted that 24-year-old Strank was called The Old Man by the mostly 17 to 19 years old that were fighting in Iwo Jima, whose advice he said they must follow so I can send you home to your mommies

Block, a Corporal reported to Strank; the rest were Marine Privates except for Bradley, a Navy Corpsman who administered first aid to the company to which all the flag raisers were assigned.
By Peggy Kelly

Santa Paula News

Hundreds of excited worshipers welcomed one of Santa Paulas favorite saints, El Santo Nino de Atocha on Saturday with a grand procession for the icon from Harding Park to Our Lady of Guadalupe Church.

The doll of The Holy Child of Atocha, nicknamed El Nino Azul because its usual garb is blue, was held aloft on a bed of flowers for the procession that included Mayor Martin Hernandez, Vice Mayor Jenny Crosswhite and Councilman John Procter.

This is the 10th year that El Santo Nino  the third most cherished icon in Mexico  has been on loan from its shrine in Plateros, Mexico.

The sacred doll will be enshrined in Santa Paula until Sunday to allow visits by pilgrims including those who find Southern California closer than Plateros, home of the original icon.

Some years the welcoming procession for the saint has drawn as many as 5,000 people but this year said Police Chief Steve McLean Its a holiday weekend that kept the crowd smaller...everybody goes camping.

But as vacationers return to the city there is little doubt that El Santo Nino will continue to draw crowds to the church that will attend special Masses, give offerings and pray for miracles.

It was Father Charles Lueras, known at the church as Padre Carlos, who first organized the effort to have the replica image visit Our Lady of Guadalupe. He also accompanied The Little Saint on the procession, which wound its way through city streets closed to allow passage for the icon and its entourage.

Aztec dancers, brass bugle and drum corps, Folklorico troupes, equestrians with dancing horses and more led the way for The Holy Child of Atocha who was greeted with cries of joy and prayers.

Francisco Arellano of North Hollywood, at the parade with his wife and children, said it was his first visit to see the arrival of The Little Saint.

Its beautiful, he said of the procession Arellano said had been urged by his brother-in-law. Well be back next year!

Several in the crowd wore El Nino Azul T-shirts, the nickname of The Little Saint whose attire is traditionally blue in Renaissance style.

At the end of the procession when asked for a crowd estimate SPPD Det. Shane Norwood noted, Ive been following the same crowd up! to the church.
By Peggy Kelly

Santa Paula News

Youll get a double shot of cruising with the Cruise Knights playing at Fridays Cruise Nite and more family Sunday at First Sunday at Santa Paula Airport Open House!

Both free events draw visitors from throughout Southern California and beyond to enjoy unique activities in the historic Downtown and at the famed Santa Paula Airport.

Cruise Nite, held the First Friday of the Month April through October, will cruise into town early with hundreds of pre-1975 vehicles. Hundreds of vintage car owners drive their sweet rides into town where they park on East Main Street between closed 10th and 7th streets. Side streets are also filled with cars from 5 p.m. to dusk but the party goes on past dark.

Many area restaurants offer Cruise Nite specials, the area has unique shops and theres plenty of good music, this month featuring the Cruise Knights!

The popular Cruise Knight band features Del Sawyer, Carlos Juarez, Wes Easley, Jerry Byrum and Paul Skeels and will be playing hot tunes at the foot of the historic Odd Fellows Clock Tower building.

Santa Paulas very own classic rock band will perform from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m.

Well known on the So-Cal classic car show circuit, the Cruise Knights have just performed their fourth annual show at the Kern County Fairgrounds for the National Street Rod Associations western regional meet.

The band features their favorite rock songs from the 60s to the 80s with a couple from the 50s and 90s thrown in for good measure.

The group has been performing together for several years and said Skeels, Santa Paula Cruise Nite is always a great gig!

Across the street is where Cruise Nite fans can buy custom designed T-shirts, each month a new design of a car that is featured at the first and most famous continuous car show in Ventura County.

Whether a family outing, date night, girls night out or just hanging with the guys, Cruise Nite is a great way to spend Friday evening!
By Peggy Kelly

Santa Paula News

As of press time Monday the identity of two people killed Saturday has not been released after a small experimental airplane they were traveling in lost power and reportedly hit utility lines before it crashed into an orchard east of Santa Paula.

The two died May 28 about 3 p.m. when the Ventura County Fire and other first responders were called for a report of a downed aircraft near the 1600 block of Aliso Canyon Road, north of Foothill Road and about halfway between Santa Paula and Ventura.

Firefighters were able to see heavy smoke and flames as they came to the scene where the plane crashed into the orchard, three rows of lemon trees from the roadway.

Preliminary information indicated that a single-engine, home-built VariEze aircraft crashed into the orchard with two people aboard and caught fire on impact.

It was reported that the plane was in distress and the pilot was likely trying to make an emergency landing but the plane apparently got tangled in power lines and then crashed, spreading debris for about 100 yards from the point of impact.

The two occupants of the plane were pronounced dead at the scene.
By Peggy Kelly

Santa Paula News

Of the 20,344 callers assisted in 2015 by the 2-1-1 phone referral service, about 4 percent were Santa Paulans according to a report presented to the City Council at a recent meeting.

Erik Sternad, executive director of Interface Children Family Services, updated the council on the report, released for the 11th year of 2-1-1 services that became the model for social services referrals.

Sternad noted We also track unmet needs, its one thing to point people to services another thing to let you know what people are asking for but not getting, data that was factored into the report.

Overall, in 2015, 75 percent of the callers were women, 43 percent were Hispanic/Latino and 27 percent Caucasian/White. Eighty five percent of callers were English speaking and 51 percent were between the ages of 30 and 54.

Information and referral calls varied by city and number of residents with about three Santa Paulans per hundred residents utilizing 2-1-1 services.

The top 10 caller needs for Santa Paulans were housing, mental health/addictions, income support/assistance, individual family and community support, legal consumer and public safety services, health care, utility assistance, food/meals, information services, clothing/personal/household needs.

About 900 Santa Paula residents called in the last year, said Sternal.

About 20 percent of the calls concerned housing, lower than Ventura Countys average call volume of about 22.5 percent. Mental health/addictions referrals were higher in Santa Paula at about 18 percent than the county average of about 15 percent.
Santa Paula News

The Boys & Girls Club of Santa Clara Valley wants to give a big THANK YOU to Bank of Americas Retail Sales Manager & Assistant VP Joanne Contreras for stopping by to present a check to BGCSCVs CEO, Jan Marholin for $2,500 from the Bank of America Charitable Foundation. This check arrived just in time as Site Director Maricela Soriano is preparing all summer program supplies and activities which will serve over 200 youths for 8 weeks. This summer well be expecting an increase in membership because we are also showcasing our new technology learning labs. Thank you Bank of America for your donation. Youre helping us make this summer very exciting for our members!
Santa Paula News

A total of 74 students from the Santa Paula Unified School District were named winners of the 36th annual Young Writers Contest. The creative writers chose various topics to write about that included friends, family, school life, science, nature, disasters, and sports. The students short stories covered many genres including adventure, fantasy, horror, mystery, realistic fiction and science fiction. Poetry entries were very creative, humorous, emotional and descriptive. All of the winners were recognized during an Awards Night held at Isbell Middle School on Wednesday, May 18.

With 696 entries received from students in grades 1-8 this year, Brenda DeJamaer, coordinator of the creative writing contest and the Districts Library Education Supervisor, announced the winners in each grade level and category. All winners, from honorable mention to 1st place, received certificates. Cash prizes of $30 for each 1st place; $15 for each 2nd place; and $8 of each 3rd place were awarded. The cash prizes are possible thanks to the many contributions to the Young Writers Contest/Pat Alderson Memorial Fund.

I enjoyed reading the entries and I am thrilled by the creativity and imagination of the students, DeJamaer said.

Judging all of the entries was not an easy task. A total of 13 judges were asked to read, evaluate and rank each story and poem assigned to each of them.

The following judges for the contest were recognized for their time, effort, and expertise this year: Mary Schaeffer, Phyllis Dorsey, Jody Ponce, and Angela Borrego-Chavez, all retirees of the school district; Ilene Gavenman, Olivia Escoto, and Bev Mueller all from the Blanchard Community Library; Kate Caflisch from the Santa Paula High School Library; Lynn Cowell, Dan Robles, and John Robles all from the community; Pam Goranson, a published author; and Zoe Appleby, a former Young Writers Contest winner.

The following individuals were recognized for their assistance in preparing materials for the judges: Shannon DeJamaer Munoz, Norah Byrom, Kristyn Bennett, and Cynthia Padilla.

Special thanks was given to Rodrigo Munoz, who translated the stories that had been submitted in Spanish and Maria Aguirre who provided translation at the awards program.

DeJamaer acknowledged and thanked the individuals and groups who supported the contest including donations to the Young Writers Contest/Pat Alderson Fund by Jerry Burns and CSEA Chapter 891, Norah Byrom for compiling all winning stories and poems into booklets to be included in each of the school libraries collections, and to the Santa Paula Federation of Teachers for their continued support of the contest and for providing and serving refreshments to the winners and their families following the award presentations.

CONGRATULATIONS TO THE FOLLOWING 2016 YOUNG WRITERS CONTEST WINNERS:

GRADE 1 POETRY

1st  Fernando Zirate

Nothing

2nd  Annysa Cardenas

Love is in the Air

3rd  Ariana Jordan

The Beach

GRADE 1 STORY

1st  David Alvarez

In Space

2nd  Antonio Calderon

Shape Shifter

3rd  Jacqueline Zacarias

The Little Girl Who went to the Store

GRADE 2 POETRY

1st  Carlos Valencia

Best Eagles

2nd  (TIE)

-- Justine Marquez

Summer

-- Shaye Taylor

The Day My Dads Brother Died

3rd - Tatiana Duenas Janelle

GRADE 2 STORY

1st  Wesley Colborn

My Pet Lizard Fred

2nd  Breanna Enriquez

The Day I Turned Into a Mermaid

3rd  Donovan Banuelos

Mr Book Goes to the Beach

Hon. Men.

 Anthony Byrum

The Night Before 2nd Grade

GRADE 3 POETRY

1st  Andrew Figueroa

My Tree Poem

2nd  Tristan Hill

My Grandpa

3rd  Diana Ochoa

I Love My Brother

Hon. Men.

-- Airann Tatum

Teacher

-- Jacob Ordonez

A Person

-- Noah Ramos

Theres Not a Hole in My Shoe

-- Serenity Burboa

Christmas

GRADE 3 STORY

1st  Javier Garcia

The Case of the Missing Book

2nd  Emma Ruiz

Book Adventure

3rd  Anthony Robledo

The Lost Ball at Dodger Stadium

Hon Men.

 Aaron Ruiz

The Guitar Lesson

-- Destiny Kolbeck

The Zebra Thief

-- Diana Ochoa

How Tiger Got His Stripes

-- Heaven Martinez

Becoming Mermaids

GRADE 4 POETRY

1st  Giselle Guerra

Unicorns

2nd  Aaliyah Kendricks

Clay

3rd  Guadalupe Martinez

Honey

Hon. Men.

-- Rene Ramirez

The Desert

GRADE 4 STORY

1st  Serenity Hernandez

Horrible Trip

2nd  (TIE)

-- Angelique Lewis

The Harbor

-- Jazmin Guevara

TV Trouble

3rd  Anna Lopez

The Worst Day Ever
Melbourne, Victoria -- (SBWIRE) -- 06/09/2016 -- It's no secret that web hosting providers are plentiful. But, it can often be a challenge to find a host that fulfils one's needs. The sad truth is many people select a provider that is unsuitable for their site requirements. One leading web host, Hosting Australia, reveals how to choose the best provider:



Performance



It's crucial that a website loads fast whenever visitors access it. When comparing hosts, one should evaluate the speed and performance of the provider. Web hosts such as Hosting Australia have a cluster of high-speed servers.



Some hosting providers have servers located in other countries. It's a big problem because sites hosted on them will be slower to access. Plus, the providers cannot easily maintain them without relying on a third-party team.



Security



These days there are over one billion live websites on the Internet. The sad truth is that some of those sites are vulnerable to security breaches. What's more, they are located on Australian soil, which offers you the protection of Australian law and the Australian privacy act that overseas providers cannot provide.



Website hacking can occur at a software level, usually via online Internet attacks. Hackers could exploit vulnerabilities in the server software. The result? They have carte blanche access to all sites hosted on the provider's servers.



It's important only to review providers that make security their top priority. A good web host will ensure that any security issues get resolved immediately. And they'll also alert customers to any potential security issues with their site software.



A good web host will also encourage the use of SSL. For example, any account control panels should only get accessed over a HTTPS connection. Doing so lowers the risk of hackers capturing account login details.



Disk space



Some providers might sell their services and boast of unlimited disk space. The truth is, many of them "oversubscribe" their customers. That's because they assume most sites won't use a lot of disk space.



With a database-driven site, storage space could soon get eaten up. Some hosts might even limit the disk space usage according to their "fair use" policies. Except they seldom inform their customers what those policies are!



It's important that one knows exactly what disk space limits they get before they sign up to a service. Hosting Australia, for example, offers 50GB of high performance disk space with all new accounts.



Features



Those seeking a new web host should determine what features they need. For instance, many people will wish to have the option to upload SSL certificates. Others might want to have scores of email mailboxes for their organizations.



All customers will also want to receive a priority technical support service. Be sure to list the features needed from a web host. That way, it's easy to shortlist only the providers that meet all those needs.



About Hosting Australia

Hosting Australia offers a premium web hosting service with local support. All servers are located on Australian soil and have a 99.9% up-time reliability. They offer one, six and twelve-month hosting packages for ultimate flexibility.



For Media Contact:

Person Name: Craig Smithers

Company: Hosting Australia

Address: Level 1 / 441 Little Bourke Street

Melbourne, Victoria, 3000 Australia

Phone: 1300 368 359

Email: support@hostingaustralia.com.au

Website: https://www.hostingaustralia.com.au
Albany, NY -- (SBWIRE) -- 06/10/2016 -- Manganese carbonate is a water-insoluble source of manganese that can be converted into other manganese compounds such as manganese oxide by calcination. Manganese carbonate occurs naturally as mineral rhodochrosite. It is available in variety of colors such as pink, red, grey, yellow, and brown. In terms of demand, agrochemicals accounts for major share of the global manganese carbonate market. Additionally, manganese carbonate can be used in other value-added applications such as glaze colorants. It can also be employed as a chemical intermediate for synthesis of other chemical compounds. Furthermore, manganese carbonate can be used as a hematinic in the medical industry and as supplement in the food industry.



Manganese carbonate ore deposits are commonly found in South Africa, China, Gabon, Ghana, and Brazil. Obtained through underground excavation, these deposits are subjected to the beneficiation technology in order to remove undesirable impurities. The Xialei manganese mine at Daxin, Guangxi, China; and Nsuta manganese mine, Tarkwa, Western Region, Ghana are two of the largest deposits of manganese carbonate ore in the world. The Nsuta manganese mine is owned and operated by Ghana Manganese Company Ltd. (GMC). Majority of manganese carbonate ore from the Nsuta manganese mine is exported to Ukraine, China, and Norway. CITIC Dameng Holdings Limited, an investment holding company, owns and operates the Xialei manganese mine.



Read Complete Report @ http://www.mrrse.com/manganese-carbonate-market



This study analyzes, estimates, and forecasts the global manganese carbonate market in terms of volume (Tons) and revenue (US$ Thousand) from 2014 to 2023. Market numbers given in the report describe the global demand for manganese carbonate, but not the production or supply. The manganese carbonate report also analyzes several driving and restraining factors and their impact on the market during the forecast period.



The report provides detailed analysis of the manganese carbonate market by key applications. It segments the market into the following key applications: agrochemicals, glaze colorant, chemical intermediates, and others (food supplement, medical, etc.). The report also segments the market based on major geographies into North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Latin America, and Middle East & Africa. It further provides volume and revenue for each application segment for each region. This includes 12 unique country-specific analysis.



Inquiry on this report @ http://www.mrrse.com/enquiry/1453



Based on the application, the report analyzes the attractiveness of each segment with the help of an attractiveness tool. The study includes value chain analysis, which provides a better understanding of key players in the supply chain from raw material manufacturers to end-users. Additionally, the study analyzes market competition through Porter's Five Forces analysis.



Key market participants profiled in the study include All-Chemie, Ltd, Airedale Chemical Company Limited, American Elements, Alfa Aesar, Akshar Chemicals, Sunrise Enterprise, Chemalloy, GFS Chemicals, Inc., Mil-Spec Industries Corporation, and Zncus Chemical Co., Ltd. Profiles of key participants comprise important parameters such as company overview, financial overview, business strategy, and recent developments.



Primary research represents the majority of our research efforts, supplemented by an extensive secondary research. We reviewed key players' product literature, annual reports, press releases, and relevant documents for competitive analysis and market understanding. Secondary research also includes a search of technical writing, recent trade, internet sources, and statistical data from government websites, trade associations, and agencies. This has proven to be the most reliable, effective, and fruitful approach for procuring precise market data, recognizing business opportunities, and capturing industry participants' insights.



Get a Free Sample Copy of the Report @ http://www.mrrse.com/sample/1453



Secondary research sources that are referred to include external proprietary databases, company websites, textbooks, financial reports, commentaries, broker reports, annual reports, investor presentations, and relevant patent and regulatory databases, statistical databases, and market reports, news articles, press releases and webcasts specific to the companies operating in the market. Secondary sources referred for this study include the European Union (EU), The International Manganese Institute (IMnI), The United States Geological Survey (USGS), ICIS, and company presentations.



About MRRSE

MRRSE stands for Market Research Reports Search Engine, the largest online catalog of latest market research reports based on industries, companies, and countries. MRRSE sources thousands of industry reports, market statistics, and company profiles from trusted entities and makes them available at a click. Besides well-known private publishers, the reports featured on MRRSE typically come from national statistics agencies, investment agencies, leading media houses, trade unions, governments, and embassies.
Portland, OR -- (SBWIRE) -- 06/10/2016 -- After recently adding Cellfina to their list of services, Key Laser Center for Cosmetic Regenerative Medicine and board-certified dermatologist Dr. Douglas Key has created and shared an educational infographic on the new cellulite treatment, Cellfina. The visual tool is the first of many that Dr. Key plans on releasing online to help educate the growing cosmetic community.



With a color scheme and graphics to compliment Key Laser Institute's brand, the infographic describes what Cellfina is, how it works and what to expect in a creative yet functional and educational way. The infographic also notes patient satisfaction over the course of Cellfina's clinical trials and includes before and after photographs of actual patients who underwent the Cellfina treatment.



Cellfina is the only FDA-cleared minimally invasive, one-time procedure clinically proven to improve the appearance of cellulite dimples by treating the primary structural cause of cellulite. Cellfina is clinically proved to last at least two years  the longest FDA-cleared duration for a cellulite treatment. Additionally, Key Laser Center for Cosmetic Regenerative Medicine is the only office in between San Francisco & Seattle to offer this new revolutionary cellulite reduction treatment.



Committed to patient care and comfort, Dr. Key aims to provide patients with all of the necessary information before they undergo any procedure. By optimizing the infographic so that any user researching cellulite treatments online can easily find it, Dr. Key hopes that patients will feel better approaching their procedures if they are more informed. The Cellfina for Cellulite infographic can be found on Dr. Key's cosmetic blog.



About Key Laser Center for Cosmetic Regenerative Medicine

Key Laser Center for Cosmetic Regenerative Medicine is a center of excellence in the use of cosmetic regenerative medicine to restore youthful beauty and vitality to the skin and body. Dr. Douglas Key, a board certified dermatologist, established Key Laser in Portland, Oregon in 1998. His vision was to create a specialty practice focused exclusively on the non-invasive prevention and treatment of aging. Today, Key Laser offers the most advanced treatment options that go beyond concealing aging, but instead heal aging through the body's own natural process of regeneration. They look forward to helping you discover the possibilities of regenerative cosmetic medicine.



For more information about Key Laser Center for Cosmetic Regenerative Medicine, please call (503) 291-1953 or visit www.keylaserinstitute.com.



Media Contact:

Aesthetic Brand Marketing  Jennifer Cho

E-mail: jcho@aestheticbrandmarketing.com

Website: www.aestheticbrandmarketing.com



Key Laser Center for Cosmetic Regenerative Medicine

Location: 9755 SW Barnes Rd, Suite 155, Portland, OR 97225

Website: www.keylaserinstitute.com
Lake Oswego, OR -- (SBWIRE) -- 06/10/2016 -- Dr. Mark Petroff, board-certified facial plastic surgeon in Portland, OR and founder of the Petroff Center Plastic Surgery and Medi-Spa, has created and shared an educational infographic on the dos and don'ts of facelift recovery. This patient resource is the latest addition to Dr. Petroff's library of visual tools to help patients better understand the different aspects of skincare, facial plastic surgery and medical spa treatments.



The facelift is one of the most commonly performed procedures at Petroff Center. Because Dr. Petroff always stresses the importance of proper recovery, he decided to compose a visual aid for his patients. With a color scheme to match the practice's brand and fun graphics to catch the reader's attention, the infographic is equally design-savvy as it is information-heavy. Dr. Petroff includes a long list of aftercare tips such as:



- Keep your head elevated for comfort and to reduce swelling.

- Ease into your regular fitness routine 2-3 weeks after surgery.

- Do not apply ice or anything frozen directly to your skin.

- Do not apply any heat or pressure to any area of the face.

- Refrain from direct sun exposure to prevent sunburn and irregular pigmentation.



The Do's & Don'ts of Facelift Recovery infographic can be found on Dr. Petroff's plastic surgery blog. Committed to better serving his patients and keeping the plastic surgery community educated, Dr. Petroff has optimized each blog post, so those researching cosmetic treatments online can easily access his website's plethora of information. Additionally, Dr. Petroff has provided a multitude of facelift Before & After photos so patients can review Dr. Petroff's skilled results. Dr. Petroff hopes that, with the tools he has provided, all patients will be better informed when approaching any procedure.



About Petroff Center Plastic Surgery and Medi-Spa

Dr. Mark A. Petroff has dedicated his career to facial plastic and reconstructive surgery, as well as non-surgical procedures. As an accomplished potter with a keen interest in design and architecture, he combines the eye of an artist with the skill of a highly trained physician. This particular aesthetic sensibility allows him to expertly evaluate the anatomy of the face and determine the best procedures to give his patients the natural, rejuvenated look they hope for. His goal is always to keep his results so seamless and natural that his work is virtually undetectable. What his patients hear from friends is usually, "You look amazing. You must be taking great care of yourself!"



While Dr. Petroff has been in practice for over 25 years, it's important to him to stay at the forefront of advances in his field. A proud native of Oregon, he studied at the University of Oregon and received his MD at Oregon Health Sciences University.



For more information on Dr. Petroff or Petroff Center, please call (503) 635-4886 and visit www.petroffcenter.com.



Media Contact:

Aesthetic Brand Marketing  Jennifer Cho

Email: jcho@aestheticbrandmarketing.com

Website: www.aestheticbrandmarketing.com



Petroff Center Plastic Surgery and Medi-Spa

Location: 17720 Jean Way Suite 100, Lake Oswego, OR 97035

Website: www.petroffcenter.com
Albany, NY -- (SBWIRE) -- 06/10/2016 -- Skid-steer loaders used to perform a variety of tasks in the construction industry, such as digging and lifting. They can be easily fitted with a variety of attachments to perform different tasks on construction sites. They are highly maneuverable because of their compact size, and the ability to support attachments make them even more versatile. The operating capacity of a skid-steer loader can range from 0.25 to 2 metric tons.



The rise in investment in the construction industry in Brazil, which grew by 15.05% in 2014, is driving the demand for skid-steer loaders in Brazil. Also, the forthcoming Summer Olympic Game 2016, which will be hosted by Rio de Janeiro, is further leading to rise in investment in the construction industry.



Government initiative towards upgradation of transport infrastructure will be one of the major factors contributing to the growth of the skid steer market. Brazil has inefficient transport infrastructure facilities which is hampering the country's growth a large extent. Further, with the upcoming sporting events in the country, it has become utmost important for the government to invest highly towards the development of the transport infrastructure.



Browse Market info, get a Sample PDF with TOC: http://www.researchmoz.us/enquiry.php?type=S&repid=459256



Further, the government has also announced plan to invest over $50 billion in various infrastructure project through concession model, thereby encouraging private sector to invest in the construction industry. However, Brazil's slow economic growth which is leading the country into the recession is one of the major challenge posed by the construction and equipment industry. The economy is presently witnessing a budget deficit which will not only lower the government spending in the coming two to three years in the construction industry, but is also leading to high unemployment rate in country. This is highly impacting the construction and equipment industry. Also, construction sector being a labor intensive industry is witnessing a huge shortage of skilled labor.



Technavio's analysts forecast the skid steer market in Brazil to grow at a CAGR of 11.61 percent over the period 2014-2019.



Covered in this report -



This report covers the present scenario and the growth prospects of the skid steer market in Brazil for the period 2015-2019. The market size has been calculated based on the total revenue generated from the sale of skid steer in the country. It does not consider the sale of used equipment and the revenue generated from contracts and maintenance.



The report also presents the detailed analysis of the four key vendors in the market. In addition, it discusses the major drivers that influence the growth of the market. It also outlines the challenges faced by vendors and the market at large, as well as the key trends emerging in the market.



Key vendors

- Case construction

- Caterpillar

- Terex

- Volvo Construction Equipment

- XCMG



Browse all "Equipments Market" reports at: http://www.researchmoz.us/equipment-market-reports-115.html



Key questions answered in this report:-

- What will the market size be in 2019 and what will the growth rate be?

- What are the key market trends?

- What is driving this market?

- What are the challenges to market growth?

- Who are the key vendors in this market space?

- What are the market opportunities and threats faced by the key vendors?



About ResearchMoz

ResearchMoz is the world's fastest growing collection of market research reports worldwide. Our database is composed of current market studies from over 100 featured publishers worldwide. Our market research databases integrate statistics with analysis from global, regional, country and company perspectives. ResearchMoz's service portfolio also includes value-added services such as market research customization, competitive landscaping, and in-depth surveys, delivered by a team of experienced Research Coordinators.



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Nashville, TN -- (SBWIRE) -- 06/10/2016 -- Dr. Mary Gingrass and Dr. Melinda Haws, renowned board-certified plastic surgeons and founders of the Plastic Surgery Center of Nashville, a plastic surgery practice in Nashville, TN, recently released a PowerPoint best friend's guide to breast augmentation for patient research. Dr. Gingrass and Dr. Haws designed the new patient resource for visual learners to inform current and potential patients about one of the most popular procedure at their practice.



The PowerPoint is an extensive 24-slide guide that outlines the entire plastic surgery journey, from the decision making process to the recovery process. Dr. Gingrass and Dr. Haws informs patients of what they should consider and what they should ask when selecting a plastic surgeon. The guide separates the procedure into five steps for patients to easily follow and understand the process. Several slides discuss the type of implants, incision locations, as well as shapes and textures. Committed to patient care and comfort, Dr. Gingrass and Dr. Haws included all of the information patients should know before undergoing breast augmentation.



"A Best Friend's Guide to Breast Augmentation" is now readily available online on The Plastic Surgery Center of Nashville's blog. The PowerPoint is search engine optimized, so any users researching breast augmentation online can easily access and share all of the valuable plastic surgery information.



About The Plastic Surgery Center of Nashville

Located in Nashville, TN, The Plastic Surgery Center of Nashville is committed to ensuring their patients are well informed about procedures, and carefully listen to their patients' needs. Members of the staff have undergone cosmetic procedures and can support patients with their own unique perspective on the surgical processes. The Plastic Surgery Center of Nashville performs a number of cosmetic procedures, including breast augmentation, breast lift, tummy tuck, liposuction, post-bariatric surgery, facelift, eyelid surgery, CoolSculpting, BOTOX, and more.



For more information about The Plastic Surgery Center of Nashville, visit www.nashvillesurgery.com. To schedule a consultation, call (615) 467-6777.



Media Contact:

Aesthetic Brand Marketing  Jennifer Cho

E-mail: jcho@aestheticbrandmarketing.com

Website: www.aestheticbrandmarketing.com



The Plastic Surgery Center of Nashville

Location: 1915 State Street, Nashville, TN 37203

Website: www.nashvillesurgery.com
TESLA Motors is reported to have not only a rapid decline of cost, but also significant improvements in the last few years. According to International Energy Agency report, the company has recorded an estimate battery cost cut by a factor four while the battery energy had increased by five. It appears that the economies of scale and technology learning contribute greatly to the continues reduction of rising technology costs in the coming years.

Citing TESLA Motors leading the electric vehicle battery cost declines, the report indicates that a number of original equipment manufacturers have declared an even more ambitious cost estimate for BEVs. Recently, General Motors said that battery costs for their 2016 Chevrolet Bolt had dropped to US $ 145 per KWH by October 2015, and that they plan to reduce costs below the US $ 100 per kWh goal by 2022, Bloomberg reported.

TESLA, on the other hand, aims to break the US $ 100 per kWh goal by 2020. These improvements in energy density and battery cost have resulted in car makers announcing EV ranges that have never been heard of so far. For instance, TESLA launched orders in March for their new Model 3 that offers an electric drive range of almost 350 km on a single charge by the year 2017, when the initial vehicles are set for delivery to customers. Just recently, TESLA's CTO JB Straubel mentioned some further battery cost reductions as well as technology innovation at Tesla's Gigafactory. As explained by Straubel, better batteries are possible since he sees innovation in material science as well as chemistry innovation. He also said that performance improvements are expected aside from cost reductions.

With TESLA Motors' recent employ of a leading battery researcher, analysts believe that this may also speed up improvements in its technology in terms of electric vehicle battery. It is evident that the International Energy Agency acknowledges the company as the leader in this field. Based on the 400,000 pre-orders for the Model 3, it is clear that the car-buying public also thinks that TESLA is the forefront of the new electric vehicle movement, according to Irish Times.
Apple Pay has announced its expansion and will now be supported by at least 30 new banks and credit unions in the United States.

Just last week, Apple Pay also announced that is now being supported by Canada's top five banks. Apple Pay's Jennifer Bailey, said that the company is actually working rapidly in some more areas, especially in Europe and Asia. Last month, Apple Pay formalized partnership with five banks in Singapore. The full list of banks and credit unions is available in Apple's website.

Apple Pay is apparently widening its reach. The company is exerting effort to make the digital payment service available to every place where there are Apple products.

Apple is trying to revolutionize bank and payments and transactions through the introduction of Apple Pay. It works through various Apple gadgets such as iPhone 6, iPhone 6 plus, Apple Watch, iPhone 6s, iPhone 6 plus, iPad Pro, iPad Air 2, and iPad mini 4. The newest unit, iPhone SE also has the Apple Pay feature.

However, users need to set up Apple Pay in their phones. This can be done by opening the Wallet app on iOS 9. There will be a set of easy-to-follow instructions that will guide the users. A debit or credit card has to be linked with the user's account.

As of today, the modern payment service is available in the United States, Australia, Canada, China, and the United Kingdom.

Apple Pay was officially introduced in 2014 during an iPhone 6 event. Apple CEO Tim Cook said it is an attempt to break the reliance on magnetic stripe payment that is often similar to "insecure security codes" and "exposed numbers".

Apple worked to put an extra level of security in this digital payment system. It has a two-factor authentication that requires users to place their fingerprint in the reader while the phone is being scanned. This helps in protecting the users from any potential wireless attack.

The company is expected to expand further in the coming months.
Chile has invested on solar power energy generation, and is now able to gather more than enough supply so consumers are now getting it for free.

It sounds great for consumers, but most energy-generating companies and investors are alarmed.

Bloomberg has reported that this abundance in solar energy has led to the dropping of the spot price, which even reached zero through April. In 2015 alone, there were around 190 price drops recorded.

Chile now has two power grids---one in the northern part and other one in the central part. Since year 2013, the country was able to produce more solar energy. The central grid alone was recorded to produce about 770 megawatts, which is one of the main reasons of the energy surplus.

In a report published by The Christian Science Monitor, Chile has been working on expanding its solar power generation. The government, however, now faces the challenge of delayed infrastructure construction, which means there are areas that cannot be covered by the national grid. This has resulted in having some areas left out, even if the supply in some areas is more than enough.

The government is currently trying to address the infrastructure issue. It has a pending project of building an additional transmission line that spans 3,000 kilometers. The government also plans to develop another line in the northern part of the central grid that might solve the congestion problem and can help distribute the energy surplus in other parts of the country.

In an interview with Bloomberg, Chile Energy Minister Maximo Pacheco said: "Chile has at least seven or eight points in the transmission lines that are collapsed and blocked, and we have an enormous challenge to bypass the choke points."

Meanwhile, investors have expressed alarm as they are losing money because of the situation. Rafael Mateo of Acciona SA's energy unit in Chile said: "Growth was disordered."
A gigantic crater in Russia's Siberia made news when it mysteriously appeared in a remote region of the Taimyr Peninsula in 2013. Researchers came up with various suggestions and theories to explain the crater's formation in the past three years, and the reasons were as varied as effects of geological processes to stray missiles and aliens. Now, another angle has reportedly been added to the host of explanations. Apparently, one of the residents who live close to the huge hole witnessed a clear glow in the sky before the crater mysteriously appeared.

In the three years since its baffling formation, the 330 feet deep crater has grown 15 times its original size, now measuring approximately 230 feet (as per the last survey) compared to the initial 13 feet. Called the Deryabinsky crevice, when the crater first emerged, it nearly gulped up a group of reindeer herders. Interestingly, the crater is located 300 hundred miles away from numerous other newly formed enormous holes on the Yamal peninsula, an area which is referred to as the "end of the world" by the locals. The crater is now the site of a lake, which formed once its permafrost melted and the walls caved in.

Now previously unheard reports, which could be linked to the cause of the crater, are emerging. "There is verbal information that residents of nearby villages - at a distance of 70-100 km - heard a sound like an explosion, and one of them watched a clear glow in the sky. It was about one month after the Chelyabinsk meteorite," said Dr Vladimir Epifanov. The inhabitants of the areas suggest an exploding space object; however experts do not share the same theory.

One of the most popular theories linked to the bizarre hole is an occurrence known as pingo, which happens after there is a subsurface formation of ice that has been covered by land, once the ice melts a hole forms in place of the ice. Another explanation forwarded by scientists was that the crater is a result of an underground methane explosion, due to the area being rich in natural gas which could have reacted when exposed to salt and water. Some researchers feel that a meteorite caused the crater, however this theory has been ruled aside because meteorite collisions apparently don't end up resembling the Deryabinsky.

As of now, there is no confirmed reason that could be the cause of the strange Siberian crater according to reports. Statements like, "It is not like the work of men, but it also doesn't look like natural formation," don't help either and nor is there a confirmed answer for the baffling glow in the sky seen by residents.
Humans are at a risk of becoming "house pets" of artificial intelligence, so says Elon Musk, founder of SpaceX and Tesla. Therefore, it is important for us to implant artificial technology in our brains to compete with machines in the future.

Science Alert said that in a public talk, Musk announced that a "neural lace" which is a brain implant that can augment natural intelligence by attaching humans to computers - can be the key to maintaining our place as a species. In an interview, he stated, "I don't love the idea of being a house cat, but what's the solution?

Creating a neural lace is the thing that really matters for humanity to achieve symbiosis with machines  Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 4, 2016

"I think one of the solutions that seems maybe the best is to add an AI layer," Musk explained. "Just as your cortex works symbiotically with your limbic system, your third digital layer could work symbiotically with you."

However, not everyone agrees with Musk. Google Alphabet chairman, Eric Schmidt, for instance, thinks that Musk just watched too many movies. He told a panel at Symposium Stockholm that humans still have the ability to turning computers off, and when time comes that we can't control technology and it destroys the human race, then it is a movie.

"The state of the art doesn't support any of these scenarios. It's just speculation," Schmidt emphasized.

Schmidt may have a point, but the fact is that scientists are going far and beyond for technological advancement. For instance, scientists today are already working on injecting our brains with new cell to help improve them, and last year, researchers even managed to inject a neural mesh into the brains of mice - which is one step closer to creating the neural lace that Musk feared will be the end of us.
Lenovo has unveiled a couple of new devices on its end to append its Phab model lineup. That includes that with the Phab 2 and Phab 2 Plus, successors to the companys Phab models released last year. Both devices come are made from metal construction and large-sized 6.4-inch screen, priced pretty reasonable.

While those two Lenovo Phab models should be something to look forward to, it is the Lenovo Phab 2 Pro that is looming as an interesting handset. This is largely due to the device being armed with Google Tango augmented reality technology.

This means that the Lenovo Phab 2 Pro will be the first device to offer the Google technology, something that integrated a wide-angle camera and a special depth-sensing feature to the featured 16 MP camera. With the Google Tango feature, such allows the Lenovo Phab 2 Pro to map out physical space, track objects, and project virtual effects in a real-world space.



A quick rundown on the Lenovo Phab 2 Pro features show a 6.4-inch quad HD screen, a Qualcomm Snapdragon 652 processor, 4 GB or RAM, a fingerprint scanner and a 4,000 mAh battery. Overall, the Lenovo Phab 2 Pro carries a fairly similar design to its predecessor.

The SoC of the Lenovo Phab 2 is different from the Phab 2 and Phab 2 plus, both of which will make use of a MediaTek chipset.

In an effort to build on the Google Tango augmented reality pitch, Lenovo is demonstrating it with the aid of virtual-reality based apps ranging from games to educational apps. Previous Google Tango demos have shown that it can be used to navigate on indoor spaces and even provide contextual information based on the object in focus.

To aid potential buyers who may be swayed into getting the Lenovo Phab 2 Pro, the company will be putting up a special app store that will house 25 apps ranging from games to utilities when the phone comes out this Summer.

Lenovo expects the apps available to balloon to as much as 100 before the year ends to provide potential Lenovo Phab 2 Pro owners a wider scope of apps to use.

For pricing, Lenovo will be offering the Phab 2 for $199, the Phab 2 Plus for $299 and the high-end Phab Pro 2 for $499. The phones are expected to be available in select retailers by September.
There has been a disturbing increase in the number of attacks on people with albinism in Malawi since late 2014. People hunt albinos and seek their body parts for witchcraft has urged Amnesty International to call on authorities to do more to punish those responsible.

According to Mail Online, Edna Cedrick's 9-year-old albino son was snatched from her arms after a violent struggle. The family has been sleeping in their home in Malawi when the horrific event happened. The boy is now dead after he and other albino children were targeted for their body parts by people who sell them and used in potions by witch doctors who claim it to bring good luck and prosperity.

Cedrick told reporters about their ordeal the past months while she was holding his murdered son's surviving twin brother, who also happens to be an albino. She recalled the event and said that the people who did it to her son kicked the door open, sliced the mosquito net and grabbed her son. she also said that she didn't have enough strength to fight back and her husband was away so no one was there to help her.

"I held on to him by holding his waist, at the same time shielding the other with my back," recounted the 26-year-old mother in a CBS News report. The boy is the latest victim of hunters operating in southern Africa who target albino people for their body parts.

A report by Tech Times said that activists in Malawi went out to the streets to protest and call for penalties for the killers. Calling the killings disgusting, Malawi President Peter Mutharika has formed a committee to focus on the issue.

A number of false believes is found to be what caused the killings. The macabre trade is believed to stem from the belief that albino's bones contain gold. Sex with an albino too is falsely thought to miraculously cure HIV, Reuters reported.

Amnesty International considers April as the bloodiest month for the attacks, with four albino people murdered including a child under age 2. The child's father and four others have been arrested. Family members are also often part of the widespread discrimination against people with albinism.

Malawi has recorded 18 albino murders and abduction of five others in the last 19 months, but the human rights group fears higher actual data due to unreported cases in rural locations. At least 69 crimes in total have been documented since November 2014.

"The unprecedented wave of brutal attacks against people with albinism has created a climate of terror for this vulnerable group and their families," said the group's director for southern Africa, Deprose Muchena, in a statement.
Terminally ill patients can now face death according to their own terms. California now has a new "right-to-die law," designed to respect the wishes of terminally-ill patients to just die.

The End of Life Option Act was signed into law by Gov. Jerry Brown eight months ago. It goes into effect June 9, as reported by Monterey Herald.

The law was quite controversial, splitting those who believe that patients who are terminally ill should be given the ability to dictate the terms of their death and those who are worried that the law will be subjected to abuse by those who would rather see the patient, especially the elderly, die.

Under the law, adults who are mentally capable and yet diagnosed with at most six months to live can tell their doctors to give them prescriptions that will end their lives whenever they choose.

For terminally-ill patients, the law is precisely what most of them wanted. Instead of fearing death, many finds it a relief that there will be an option for them to die when they feel like it as the level of pain and difficulty has become unbearable.

Critics of the said law, however, believe that this is dangerous law and quite an overreach by the state. They believe that the law can be subject to abuse. Patients for them, particularly the elderly, can be coerced to get the prescriptions. Without alternatives and without the requirement of witnesses to their self-administered deaths, patients may find themselves forced to take on this option.

A group called "Californians Against Assisted Suicide" and its partners has launched a watchdog website that calls for the public to stay vigilant against "mistake, misuse, coercion and abuse" into law. "This law does not apply to everyone equally," said Tim Rosales, a spokesman for Californians Against Assisted Suicide.

Rosales also said that in other states where the law exists, particularly Oregon and Washington, patients are choosing to die not because of unbearable pain, but because they believe they are becoming a burden to their family, friends, and caregivers. As such, the option is likelier to be chosen by those from less fortunate backgrounds.

"That is very telling, certainly when you are looking at the economic diversity across the board," Rosales said.
Archaeologists revealed on Tuesday that they have discovered the remains of 6,000-year-old massacre victims in Alsace in Northeastern France. They also said that what happened was most likely done by "furious ritualised warriors".

According to the Guardian, a team from the National Institute for Preventive Archaeological Research (Inrap) unearthed the corpses of 10 individuals who were found in one of 300 ancient silos, used to store grain and other food.

The Neolithic group appeared to have had violent deaths, with multiple injuries to their legs, hands and skulls. The way in which the bodies were piled on top of each other suggested they had been killed together and dumped in the silo.

"They were very brutally executed and received violent blows, almost certainly from a stone axe," said Philippe Lefranc, an Inrap specialist on the period. The skeletons of five adults and one adolescent were found, as well as four arms from different victims.

According to Lefranc, the arms were probably "war trophies" like those found at a nearby burial site of Bergheim in 2012. He also said that said the mutilations showed a society of "furious ritualised warriors", while the silos were stored within a defense wall that pointed towards which signifies "a troubled time, a period of insecurity."

A report in thenews.com.pk said that scientists hope that genetic testing on the bones will give more information about the killings. However, Lefranc said that one theory of the killing is linked with a local tribe which clashed with a group of arriving from the area around modern-day Paris.

"It appears that a warrior raid by people from the Parisian basin went wrong for the assailants, and the Alsatians of the era massacred them," he said.

However, an article in The Seeker said that in the long run, it was the "Parisians" who had the last laugh. The local tribe appear to have been supplanted by the newcomers at about 4,200 BC, as demonstrated by new funeral rites, pottery and hamlets.
FLORENCE, S.C.  The list of state leaders throwing support behind candidates in the Senate District 31 race continues to grow.

Lt. Gov. Henry McMaster, House Speaker Jay Lucas and State Superintendent of Education Molly Spearman were in Florence on Thursday evening to endorse South Carolina Senate President Pro Tempore Hugh K. Leatherman Sr.  the 36-year incumbent in that district and chairman of the Senate Finance Committee.

One of Leathermans primary opponents, former Florence County GOP Chairman Richard Skipper, gained the endorsement of State Treasurer Curtis Loftis on Thursday. That support follows Gov. Nikki Haleys endorsement of Skipper earlier this month.

At the center of this race is contention over Leathermans stance on ethics reform and accusations of pork-barrel spending in his home county.

Lucas, a Darlington Republican, said the accusations being made against Leatherman by the governor and outsiders are untrue.

He said South Carolina has an excellent credit rating, a budget surplus and low debt service because Leathermans Senate leadership has been unparalleled.

When you see a picture of Hugh Leatherman beside a Washington politician with the insinuation that hes the same, its a lie and we ought to call those people out for it, Lucas said. Sen. Leatherman has chaired the Finance Committee for a long time. The reason I can stand here and brag about our state, and tell you were not Washington, and that we save money and spend it wisely is because of Hugh Leatherman.

Lucas rebutted Haleys assertion that he and others endorsed Leatherman because of political horse trading.

Spearman rebutted the assertions that Leatherman is a proponent of Common Core, while McMaster said South Carolina has seen more growth under Leathermans leadership than ever before.

State Treasurer Curtis Loftis, however, said in a Thursday media advisory that Leatherman is an establishment politician and has cost the state billions of taxpayer dollars through unnecessary spending.

District 31 needs a strong senator who is willing to protect your money and thats Richard Skipper, Loftis said. Sen. Leatherman talks the conservative talk but he doesnt walk the conservative walk. Behind closed doors hes joined the establishment and theyve cost this state billions.

Skipper said hes honored to have Haley and Loftis in his corner.

I think their endorsements say a lot about the desire for real conservative leadership in the state Senate, Skipper said.

He said the negative advertising alluded to by Leatherman supporters hasnt come from his campaign. Hes focused on the people of District 31 this state, not negative politics, he said.

The ads Ive had a part in and my campaign has had a part in have been about me and what kind of leadership I can bring to Columbia, Skipper said. They may not be for Mr. Leatherman but that doesnt necessarily mean theyre for me. Ive had no input with these ads being referred to.

Leatherman said gaining the support of some of the states most notable political figures speaks volumes about his work in Columbia. He said if he is re-elected he will continue to make sure the Pee Dee gets its fair share.

I will make sure our part of the state gets what we deserve, not let all of it go to Greenville, Columbia and Charleston, he said. I never do anything underhanded and at the end of the day I want to make sure this part of the state gets a fair share. If we dont, we wont have a budget.

He didnt address accusations being made against him.

Florence County Treasurer Dean Fowler is also a candidate in the Senate 31 race but has taken the outsider route with no fundraising or advertising, opting for door-to-door campaigning instead.
MANNING, S.C. -- The days of Clarendon County having an independent provider of hospital and emergency care are effectively over.

Clarendon Health System Board of Directors approved a lease agreement for the 81-bed Clarendon Memorial Hospital with Florence-based McLeod Health at a called meeting Wednesday, said Board Chairman Jim Darby.

After a briefing from our legal counsel, the board voted for me to authorize and sign off on a lease agreement and affiliation with McLeod Health, Darby said.

A top administrator and a local state senator say the states refusal to expand Medicaid made the affiliation with McLeod a necessity for the hospital to survive.

In a memo sent to Clarendon Health System employees March 22, which announced the hospital was in discussion with McLeod Health, Chief Operations Officer Paul Schumacher, then the interim CEO, said Gov. Nikki Haleys decision to opt out of the expanded Medicaid portion of the Affordable Care Act has been detrimental to rural hospitals.

Expanded Medicaid is a provision of the Affordable Care Act which would expand Medicaid coverage to people making 138 percent of the poverty level, which varies according to family size. Without Medicaid expansion, many people who earn too much to qualify for Medicaid under their states eligibility rules also cannot qualify for insurance subsidies under the ACA. Because people in the Medicaid gap typically cannot afford insurance or pay medical bills, health care providers generally are not reimbursed for their health care costs.

According to the Kaiser Family Foundation website, kff.org, 123,000 South Carolina residents fall into this so-called Medicaid Gap.

Opponents of expansion say that while the costs of the program are presently paid by the federal government, the costs would eventually become an unaffordable burden on state treasuries.

Based on the information Ive received from the South Carolina Hospital Association, in the states that expanded their Medicaid programs, those rural facilities are doing quite well financially, Schumacher said in the March memo. In the states that have not expanded Medicaid, those hospitals are struggling.

Schumacher said with less reimbursement and fewer patients who qualified for Medicaid, the hospital was not getting the reimbursement for the care it was providing.

State Sen. Kevin Johnson, D-Manning, said he thinks the affiliation is a good thing but was critical of the refusal to expand Medicaid in South Carolina.

CHS has really improved their services and the things they offer to the community, but due to the fact South Carolina has refused expanded Medicaid, a lot of small rural hospitals are having a hard time financially.

He said that is a reason he is a proponent of Medicaid expansion.

You have hospitals like Bamberg and others which had to close, which is really a hardship for the citizens, he said. I applaud the Clarendon Health System Board for forming a partnership with McCleod, which will allow them to continue to operate and provide quality services and possibly provide expanded services.

He said a lot of rural hospitals will be forced to make the same decision or go out of business.

We dont want to have to go to Columbia or Florence and places like that for health care, he said.

Johnson said when poor, uninsured patients go to the hospital, the hospital is obligated to treat them even if they are unable to pay.

It is revenue the hospital will never be able to collect, he said.

Clarendon will be the seventh hospital operated by McLeod Health. Besides its flagship hospital, McLeod Regional Medical Center of the Pee Dee in Florence, it also operates McLeod Health Cheraw, McLeod Health Darlington, McLeod Health Dillon, McLeod Health Loris and McLeod Health Seacoast in North Myrtle Beach. McLeod operates urgent care centers in Florence and Darlington, along with 59 medical practices throughout 15 counties, according to information released by McLeod Health.

Darby said the formal affiliation agreement would likely be completed in July.

Clarendon Health System Board will continue to oversee three nursing homes in the area: Lake Marion and Windsor Manor in Summerton and Lake Moultrie in St. Stephen, Darby said.

We have successfully gone through a number of very detailed steps developing this relationship and will work to deliver the best quality and diversity of health care to the community, Darby said.

The lease agreement follows up an a management services agreement the CHS board signed two weeks ago. Darby said then that the hospital would likely be rebranded as McLeod Health Clarendon.
FLORENCE, S.C. -- Deputies Wednesday arrested the third suspect wanted in connection with the April 21 home-invasion-style robbery of a home in the 3700 Block of Southborough Road.

Johnny Harold Larue Matthews, 34, of 1001 Nellie Lane, Florence, was arrested by Florence County Sheriff's Office investigators Wednesday and is charged with armed robbery while armed with a deadly weapon, possession of a weapon during the commission of a violent crime, first-degree burglary, distribution of heroin, three counts of possession with intent to distribute controlled substances and possession of a firearm by a convicted felon, according to a release issued by the sheriff's office.

According to the Florence County Detention Center's Website Matthews is being held without bond on the charges.

"Matthews was located by the U.S. Marshals Service in a hotel in New Jersey on May 16, 2016 and returned to South Carolina on June 8, 2016," Maj. Mike Nunn wrote in the release.

"Matthews is charged with three counts of possession with intent to distribute controlled substances, distribution of heroin and possession of a firearm by a convicted felon" for an incident that took place in April, according to narcotics investigators with the department.

"In addition, Matthews was wanted by (the sheriff's office) in connection with a burglary and armed robbery which is alleged to have occurred on or about April 21, 2016 in the 3700 block of Southborough Road," Nunn wrote in the release.

Deputies in April arrested Spencer Wayne Davis, 29, of 5206 Callie Young Road, Effingham, and Nicole Elizabeth Blackmon, 25, of 1407 Springbranch Road, Florence, according to a previous release from Nunn.

Davis is charged with first-degree burglary, armed robbery while armed with a deadly weapon and possession of a weapon during a violent crime, according to the release. Blackmon is charged with two counts of being an accessory before the fact of a felony, according to the release.

"Investigators allege that Blackmon entered the home with the permission of the victim, and shortly thereafter allegedly facilitated two other suspects in the robbery of the victim at gunpoint," Nunn wrote in the prior release.
NEW YORK -- If there is one explanation for Donald Trump's success it is this: Unlike most Republicans, he fights back. He may not have the late Muhammad Ali's finesse, but Trump sees himself as more than capable of dealing a "knockout" punch to Hillary Clinton in November. That ought to be the goal of any GOP presidential nominee.

During an interview in his Trump Tower office Monday, I asked about his temperament, a subject often raised by critics. Hillary Clinton recently said he shouldn't be trusted with the nuclear codes and that he is so thin-skinned he might start a war.

Trump said, "She's the one who raised her hand for the war in Iraq and I'm the one who has been fighting it from the beginning. ... (Hillary) is the one who has a terrible temperament. ... She's weak ... She has a hair trigger, and it's just the opposite with me. I have a strong temperament. ... I couldn't have built the strong companies I've built if I didn't have a strong temperament."

Well, yes, and many people considered Teddy Roosevelt just as brash, and his likeness made it onto Mount Rushmore.

What about the references to race and ethnicity that have brought criticism from leading Republicans? I suggested that most Americans don't care about the civil lawsuit against Trump University (which alleges the university is a scam), the ethnic background of U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel, who is presiding over the case or whether Trump is being treated "fairly." What Americans care about are jobs, the economy and terrorist threats. Does Trump plan to pivot from such things and start focusing on what resonates with most voters?

"Yes," he said, "it's starting very soon." In a statement released Tuesday, however, Trump addressed the Curiel issue one more time. "It is unfortunate that my comments have been misconstrued as a categorical attack against people of Mexican heritage. I am friends with and employ thousands of people of Mexican and Hispanic descent. ... I do not feel that one's heritage makes them incapable of being impartial..."

He then vowed not to speak about the matter again.

In our interview, Trump noted he has received more votes than Ronald Reagan. Yes, but primaries are but a small percentage of the larger number of people who will vote in November. A considerable number of them will vote for Hillary Clinton; some conservatives and Republicans will refuse to vote for Trump.

Trump says his formula for making America great again begins with putting the country first: "I hate to use the word 'change,' because Obama used to use that word ... but (people) are hungry for real change; they're hungry for making things right."

He's right and both parties share the blame for the dysfunction.

Trump's plan for reforming Social Security and Medicare, the main drivers of our debt, consists of eliminating "waste, fraud and abuse" and growing the economy to a point where there will be sufficient money to sustain these programs for decades to come.

He promises that the list of judges provided to him by The Federalist Society and The Heritage Foundation will either be the ones he nominates to federal benches, "or people exactly like them. In fact, I'm going to expand the list by four."

Trump rejects the notion of a "living Constitution," preferring the view of the late Justice Antonin Scalia that the document means what it says. Trump favors school choice, especially for minority children in failing public schools, a position he thinks will help get him African-American votes. He says President Obama, not him, has divided the country, pitting rich against poor and blacks against whites. "I had hoped Obama would be a good cheerleader for the country. He's really brought the opposite in spirit to the country. He's a very negative force." He added, "If we have four years of Hillary I don't know if we can ever come back."

If Donald Trump does adopt a positive view of America that is inclusive of all Americans, he might be able to resonate with a majority of voters. Will he? We're about to find out.

Readers may email Cal Thomas at tcaeditors@tribpub.com.
The infamous Stanford rape case is making headlines around the country -- around the world, actually -- for the light sentence handed down to the convicted rapist Brock Turner by a California judge. An online petition to remove judge Aaron Persky from office has collected more than one million signatures, and additional petitions are still gaining momentum.

It takes more than public outrage and online petitions to oust judges, however. In fact, as Jules Suzdaltsev explains in today's Seeker Daily report, removing a sitting judge from the bench is nearly impossible, thanks to the U.S. Constitution.

On the federal level, judges are not subject to term limits of antenure/">y kind -- they're legally permitted to serve for life. This is quite deliberate and specifically designed to separate the branches of power. The idea is to prevent judges from being influenced in their rulings by fear of losing their job. It's similar to the academic tradition of tenure.

Judges can be impeached, but it's a difficult process indeed. In the case of federal judges, the U.S. House of Representatives would adopt a resolution of impeachment, officially accusing the judge of misbehavior. Then the Senate would have to vote two-thirds against to convict. Only 15 federal judges have been impeached in the U.S. since 1804.

RELATED: How Do You Impeach A President?

On the state level, things are little different. As a California Superior Court Judge, Persky holds an elected position with a six-year term -- he can be voted out of office like anyone else. But just last week, Persky quietly slid into a new six-year term because he ran unopposed in Santa Clara, Calif.

So for the next six years, at least, Persky's job is safe -- unless he's the target of a recall election. In that case, the citizens of California themselves can remove the judge from office prior to the end of his term. (Many political observers think this is exactly what will happen to Persky.)

California voters have one other option, the independent state agency known as the Commission on Judicial Performance. Established by the California Constitution, this office allows a panel of judges to investigate judicial misconduct and enforce discipline, which can include removal from the bench.

-- Glenn McDonald

Learn More:

New York Times: Judge Aaron Persky Under Fire for Sentencing in Stanford Rape Case



NBC: Recall Effort Launched Against Judge Aaron Persky in Stanford Rape Case

The Marshall Project: How Easy Would It Be to Recall the Judge in the Brock Turner Case?

National Center for State Courts: Removal of Judges
A few decades from now, asteroids may be flying themselves to mining outposts in space, nobly sacrificing their abundant resources to help open the final frontier to humanity. That's the vision of California-based company Made In Space, which was recently awarded NASA funding to investigate how to turn asteroids into giant, autonomous spacecraft. RELATED: Mining Asteroids: Not Mankind's Silver Bullet The project, known as RAMA (Reconstituting Asteroids into Mechanical Automata), is part of Made In Space's long-term plan to enable space colonization by helping make off-Earth manufacturing efficient and economically viable. [How Asteroid Mining Could Work (Infographic)] "Today, we have the ability to bring resources from Earth," Made In Space co-founder and chief technology officer Jason Dunn told Space.com. "But when we get to a tipping point where we need the resources in space, then the question becomes, 'Where do they come from and how do we get them, and how do we deliver them to the location that we need?' This is a way to do it." The Plan Made In Space's idea involves sending an advanced, robotic "Seed Craft" out to rendezvous with a succession of near-Earth asteroids in space. The Seed Craft would harvest material from the space rocks, then use this feedstock to construct propulsion, navigation, energy-storage and other key systems onsite with the aid of 3D printing and other technologies. (Made In Space has considerable 3D-printing expertise; the company built the two 3D printers that were installed aboard the International Space Station in the past year and a half.) RELATED: Asteroid Mining: Booming 21st Century Gold Rush? Thus transformed into autonomous spacecraft, the asteroids could be programmed to fly to a mining station in Earth-moon space, or anywhere else they were needed. This approach would be much more efficient than launching a new capture probe (or probes) to every single space rock targeted for resource exploitation, Made In Space representatives said.

The converted asteroids wouldn't resemble the traditional idea of spacecraft, with rocket engines and complex electronic circuitry. Rather, everything would be mechanical and relatively primitive. For example, the computer would be analog, akin, perhaps, to the Antikythera mechanism invented by the ancient Greeks to chart the motion of heavenly bodies, Dunn said. And the propulsion system might be some sort of catapult that launches boulders or other material off the asteroid in a controlled way, thereby pushing the space rock in the opposite direction (as described by Newton's Third Law of Motion), he added. RELATED: Who Owns The Asteroids? "At the end of the day, the thing that we want the asteroid to be is technology that has existed for a long time. The question is, 'Can we convert an asteroid into that technology at some point in the future?'" Dunn said. "We think the answer is yes." Project RAMA is not starting from scratch. Autonomous 3D printers that use mechanically driven systems already exist, Dunn noted, as do mechanical computers made of 3D-printed parts. Still, making it happen will require significant advances in a number of areas, including in-situ resource utilization (ISRU) - the art of living off the land. Made In Space is counting on NASA to push ISRU technology forward, Dunn said. (Advanced ISRU tech will be vital for supporting astronauts on Mars and other off-Earth outposts, NASA officials have said.) [What Technology Will Humans Need to Explore Mars? (Video)] Early Days Yet Made In Space's larger vision won't be realized for a while, because RAMA is still in the very early stages.
Evidence that the ancient Egyptians plastered on killer cosmetics to whiten their skin has been found in a 3,500-year-old mummy head. Belonging to an anonymous woman age 20-25, the head shows tiny nodules under the cheeks and at the back of the neck that point to a possible skin disorder called exogenous ochronosis. "Such dermatosis is caused by the extensive use of skin bleaching cosmetics," Despina Moissidou, an anthropologist at Nation Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece, told Discovery News. RELATED: Wart Detected on Egyptian Queen Beauty History suggests that a lightened tone of the skin might have made the difference in Egyptian society. "Perhaps it was a symbol of high social status, indicating the individual did not perform hard outdoor work or work at all, just like the deformed feet or the extremely long nails for the ancient high-class Chinese women," Angel Gonzalez, a collaborator at the School of Legal Medicine in Madrid, told Discovery News. WATCH: Why Did We Stop Building Pyramids?

Moissidou and colleagues at the University of Madrid and Athens presented their research at the recent International Conference of Comparative Mummy Studies in Hildesheim, Germany. The mummified head, which currently belongs to the Museo de Antropologia Medica, Forense, Paleopatologia y Criminalistica in Madrid, Spain, was first described as the "beheaded head of a Guinean negress young woman." The head's true origins were found only in 2007, when Moissidou and colleagues traced the mummified remains back to the Theban Necropolis archaeological area in Egypt. The head's mummification technique made it possible to date it to the 18th Dynasty of the New Kingdom. This is the best known ancient Egyptian dynasty as it includes several famous pharaohs, such as Hatshepsut, Amenhotep III, Akhenaten and Tutankhamun. The researchers believe the woman lived in a period between the reign of Thutmose II and Thutmose III. RELATED: Mysterious Egyptian Mummy Has Head Full of Dirt The head's whereabouts are still a mystery. Its recorded history begins sometime between 1898-1930, when it appears in the Cairo Museum. The head was then sold to the Spanish collector and banker Ignacio Bauer and finally donated to the Real Sociedad de Arqueologia, Antropologiay Prehistoria in Madrid. "Looking at the accurate embalming, we can say this lady was an important member of the Egyptian society of the time," Gonzalez said. Moissidou and colleagues carried out several examinations to confirm the diagnosis of exogenous ochronosis. "Samples were retrieved from the base of the neck and were sent for histological examination," Moissidou said. RELATED: Oldest Case of Heart Failure Found in Ancient Mummy The primary results showed a chronic skin inflammation, while chemistry confirmed it. Electron microscopy revealed striking similarities with contemporary tissue affected by exogenous ochronosis. "We know the ancient Egyptians regarded the use of cosmetics both for aesthetic purposes as well as magical and religious ones. Cosmetic pigments were indeed used on a daily basis," Moissidou said. But many of the cosmetics used by the Egyptians included lead as a basic component, which could cause skin inflammation as well as skin diseases. Intriguingly, the use of such cosmetics was common among members of royal families. "This opens up new interesting questions on the head's identity. Further research is now needed," Moissidou said.

Some thirty mummies were found during restoration work in the church of the Assumption of Our Lady in the village of Quinto, near Zaragoza, Spain. The church, also known as the "Piquete," had suffered structural damage during the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939). Credit: Instituto de Estudios Cientificos en Momias, Madrid



The mummies were discovered when a part of the church floor was removed to install a heating system in 2011. Credit: Instituto de Estudios Cientificos en Momias, Madrid



To the workers' surprise, the mummified bodies, some in very good state of preservation, emerged from partly opened wooden coffins. Credit: Instituto de Estudios Cientificos en Momias, Madrid



The bodies were mummified naturally thanks to the very dry soil. They date from the late 18th to mid-19th century, based on their clothing. Credit: Instituto de Estudios Cientificos en Momias, Madrid



Some had unusually well preserved facial hair. Credit: Jorge Sese



All mummified bodies - 11 adults and 24 children - were stored in a chapel of the church, and there they remained, wrapped in cloths, waiting for analysis. Credit: Instituto de Estudios Cientificos en Momias, Madrid



In 2014 a project was finally launched to study and restore the collection exhumed in the church and a lab was created at the site. Credit: Instituto de Estudios Cientificos en Momias, Madrid



Among the mummified bodies, one bears an impressive resemblance to the famous self-portrait by Vincent Van Gogh. The individual, who might have been in his 40's when he died, was found clothed in Franciscan habits. Credit: Instituto de Estudios Cientificos en Momias, Madrid



Most mummies still have perfectly preserved hair and beards. "Hair usually maintains very well in dry environments,especially if there are no insects such as Dermestidae, or skin beetles," Gonzalez said. Credit: Instituto de Estudios Cientificos en Momias, Madrid



The mummies were CT scanned to find potential pathologies. The researchers are currently waiting for the results that were sent to several international institutions. Gonzalez noted that in the region of Aragon, to which Quinto belongs, there were several epidemics. Credit: Maria Belchi



The large number of children found in the burials suggests that epidemics were the main cause of death. So far the children studied range in age from six to nine months and seven years old. In this CT scans it appears the child has a possible pathology in his right foot. Credit: Instituto de Estudios Cientificos en Momias, Madrid


Not many women had the opportunity to join the Dutch resistance during WWII, but Freddie Oversteegen fought Nazis when she was just 14 years old in a pretty unusual way. Oversteegen, now age 90, told VICE Netherlands how she and her older sister became resistance fighters.

During the war, a man came to Oversteegen's home to ask her mother if she would let her daughters join the resistance. He had a feeling that no one would suspect two young women of being Nazi killers. Their mother agreed and soon Oversteegen and her sister Truus were flirting with Nazi collaborators, luring them to the woods under the pretense of a makeout session, where they would soon be met with a bullet.

Oversteegen has never received as much recognition for her efforts in the war as her sister Truus, who went on to become a public speaker at war memorial services, nor as Hannie Schaft, one of the most famous resistance fighters of WWII, who was also part of Oversteegen's group. There are streets named after Schaft in 15 Dutch cities and she was the inspiration for the feature film 'The Girl With The Red Hair.' However, Oversteegen is still honored each year on the national day of remembrance in the Netherlands. This year she will be attending a ceremony at IJmuiden, to be honored along with others who contributed to the resistance.

WATCH: Are Nazis On The Rise in Europe?
In March she visited the active Villarrica volcano in Chile by helicopter and then stepped off the edge.

An active volcano bubbling with hot lava and spewing sulfuric smoke might sound like a nightmare to some, but it turned out to be a dream come true for Italian wingsuit flier Roberta Mancino.

As she prepared for the jump, Mancino donned protective gear underneath her wingsuit. She also put on goggles, but no face mask. That surprised me because sulfur-infused smoke is pouring out of Villarrica's crater. Heck, I wouldn't even want to be on the ground without supplemental air.

RELATED: Wingsuit BASE Jumping: 7 Coolest Videos of All Time

Mancino didn't look too bothered by it, though, as she and her crew soared directly over the snowcapped volcano. Cameras captured close-ups of the roiling lava, the air overhead shimmering from the heat. Mancino headed right through the smoke, released her parachute, and landed on rocky terrain away from the crater.

After all that, she let out a relieved-sounding "Wooo!" when back on the ground, soot lining her face in the areas around her goggles.

RELATED: Wingsuit Distance Record Shattered

This definitely wasn't some fly-by-night thing -- no pun intended. Mancino spent years training for this, according to GoPro's video description of the flight. Originally from Italy, she's an experienced BASE jumper, wingsuit flier, and skydiver. Mancino has a bunch of flying awards and records under her belt, too. And you might recognize her from extensive modeling work.

Back in 2010 she said one of her dreams was to BASE jump off the Burj Khalifa skyscraper in Dubai. Last year she went to Dubai and spent a few days jumping from the Princess Tower (video), which included calmly kissing her boyfriend in mid-air.

WATCH VIDEO: What Makes People Take Risks?
The Bay Area residents can look forward to a warm and sunny weekend to get outdoors after a few patches of low-lying clouds and fog along the coast blow out of the region Friday morning.

Temperatures are forecast to be a few degrees warmer than average across most of the Bay Area Friday and into early next week, said Rick Canepa, a meteorologist for the National Weather Service in Monterey.
The state Democratic Party endorsed Supervisor Scott Wiener for state Senate over the weekend at its convention in San Jose, a symbolic and potentially influential backing for him in his race against fellow Supervisor Jane Kim.

The election between Wiener, a moderate, and Kim, a progressive, has already raised the temperature at City Hall.

As they seek to distinguish their positions, they have increasingly clashed on issues from the shuttle buses that transport workers to Silicon Valley to how much below-market-rate housing developers should be required to sell and rent.

The state Senate seat they are vying for includes San Francisco and northern San Mateo County.

Wiener also has the financial edge. According to the most recent campaign finance filings, which covers Oct. 18 through Dec. 31, 2015, Wiener raised $853,597 and spent $194,857. Kim raised $300,269 in 2015 and spent $14,621.

But Kim also has a high profile that could grow in the coming months, as she champions an amendment to the CIty CHarter for the June ballot that would more than double the amount of below-market-rate housing developers must rent and sell in new projects.

 Emily Green

Official signature: Her signature will soon become the most popular in San Francisco. Catherine Stefani, sworn in as San Franciscos county clerk on Monday, will put her John Hancock on the roughly 13,000 wedding licenses the county issues each year.

A former Contra Costa County deputy district attorney, Stefani is a longtime presence at San Franciscos City Hall. Since 2007, she has worked for Supervisor Mark Farrell and former Supervisor Michela Alioto-Pier.

Stefani will oversee a budget of about $2.2 million and 17 staff members. In addition to issuing marriage licenses, she is responsible for issuing city ID cards, birth and death certificates, and public notary services. She was sworn into office Monday by City Administrator Naomi Kelly.

Drought Map Track water shortages and restrictions across Bay Area Updated to include drought zones while tracking water shortage status of your area, plus reservoir levels and a list of restrictions for the Bay Areas largest water districts.

 Emily Green

Email: cityinsider@sfchronicle.com, egreen@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @SFcityinsider, @emilytgreen
Pills that go for $1,000 apiece, new price regulations and a disgraced executive whos become a pop-culture joke are dogging the biotech industry, which would much rather talk about how much time its drugs buy patients.

Between discussions of new chemical entities and patient-centered initiatives at this weeks Biotechnology Innovation Organization convention in San Francisco, growing concerns over drug prices loomed large.

Executives at the event, which drew more than 15,000 attendees from 69 countries, used buzzwords like value-driven and patient access to describe the problem, but the issues are clear. Theyre concerned that the rising costs of novel therapies are threatening their ability to get these drugs in patients hands  as well as the industrys overall reputation.

Once the scrappy cousin to the giant pharmaceutical industry, biotech companies are growing up and are facing many of the same issue as traditional drugmakers.

Our industry has become an easy scapegoat for the real and growing problem of patient access to affordable new medications, said Jim Greenwood, president and CEO of the Biotechnology Innovation Organization, BIO for short, in his published remarks at a keynote address this week. My friends, we are fighting back.

Biotech industry Move over tech unicorns, the smart money is on biotech

Greenwood highlighted BIOs new ad campaign, called Time Is Precious, to help move the needle of public opinion in our favor. He also emphasized the industrys value campaign to push back on health insurance practices that shift costs to patients who cant afford to pay. Conference attendees received talking points to set the record straight about drugs costs.

Drug prices, according to the BIO chief, are not driving higher insurance costs. But biopharmaceutical costs are becoming big public policy issues.

The backlash has been spurred by pricey new therapies and bad behavior. Foster Citys Gilead Sciences led the pack with Solvadi, which costs $1,000 per pill to treat hepatitis C. Former drug company executive Martin Shkreli became the poster child for greed when his companies bought obscure medications and jacked up prices for profit.

Vermont last week became the first state to require drugmakers to justify their price increases. Other states, including California, are trying similar approaches.

BIO officials this week released a letter urging Californians to reject a November ballot measure that would restrict state health programs from paying more for a drug than the price negotiated by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. On the legislative front, the state Senate last week approved a bill that would require drugmakers to give notice if a drug price will increase by more than 10 percent within the year or during the course of treatment.

Drug company executives attending BIO, which ended Thursday afternoon, seemed eager to get their value message heard.

We need to do everything possible to appropriately price our drugs based on value, Habib Dable, president of Bayer HealthCare Pharmaceuticals, the U.S. division of the Bayers pharmaceutical business, told The Chronicle in an interview at the conference.

In one panel discussion called The Search for Value, the participants talked about indication-based pricing and debated how to measure value in drug prices.

We can all agree how we can assess value. We can get there, said Jennifer Graff, vice president of comparative effectiveness research for the National Pharmaceutical Council, an industry-backed research group. Its just going to take more dialogue.

One industry executive at the conference who seemed to have no time for that kind of debate was Dr. Cameron Durrant. He took over KaloBios Pharmaceuticals, the Brisbane company Shkreli led until last year.

Air Quality Tracker Check levels down to the neighborhood Ratings for the Bay Area and California, updated every 10 minutes

Shkreli was fired after it was revealed he intended to use the company for another price-hike scheme and the former hedge fund manager was arrested on unrelated securities fraud charges. He pleaded not guilty this week in court to additional charges. In stranger-than-fiction news, he is the subject of a New York City musical in the works.

Durrant admitted that taking over a company that filed for bankruptcy and has no marketed products doesnt seem like a recipe for success, but he said the infamy of Shkrelis brief but disastrous tenure put a spotlight on the small company.

We do have the microphone for all the wrong reasons with Shkrelis association, but we intend to take advantage of it, he said. We have everything to gain.

Durrant implemented a new no gouging pricing strategy he described as offering a reasonable, clearly explained profit margin for drugs and hopes the company can be a transformational player that has impact.

But he also agreed talk of value and transparency can seem superficial from the perspective of patients and consumers who need effective treatments at reasonable costs. The industry has to change, rather than just talk about change, he said.

Victoria Colliver is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: vcolliver@sfchronicle.com Twitter: vcolliver
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Silicon Valley venture capitalist Thomas J. Perkins died Tuesday night at his home in Tiburon of natural causes after a prolonged illness, his longtime assistant, Kathleen Daly, confirmed. He was 84.

An admirer of fast cars and boats and former husband to novelist Danielle Steel, Mr. Perkins was one of the earliest investors in Northern Californias nascent technology industry to gain renown for both his portfolio and his personal life. He authored a novel titled Sex and the Single Zillionaire and a memoir, Valley Boy.

Mr. Perkins got into venture capital in its earliest days  the days when you could put every venture capitalist into a small room, he told the makers of Something Ventured, a 2011 documentary about the industry.

Mr. Perkins worked at Hewlett-Packard before he met Eugene Kleiner, with whom he co-founded the venture-capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers in 1972.

We had a part-time secretary in the morning, but the phone never rang, Mr. Perkins said in 2011. We called out. No one called us.

The two were instrumental in changing the pace and style of technologys growth. They helped nurture Bay Area companies like Genentech and Applied Materials. Mr. Perkins also recruited partners like John Doerr, now the chairman of Kleiner Perkins, who started a new era of investing in Internet companies like Netscape, AOL, Amazon and Google.

Tom was a pioneer in the venture capital industry. He defined what we know of today as entrepreneurial venture capital by going beyond just funding to helping entrepreneurs realize their visions with operating expertise, co-founders Frank Caufield and Brook Byers said in a statement. He was there at the start of the biotech industry and the computer revolution. Tom was our partner and friend, and we will miss him.

One of Mr. Perkins biggest personal investments was a 289-foot sailing yacht, the Maltese Falcon. Built in Turkey in 2006, the boat was described at the most incredible, influential and groundbreaking yacht the world has ever seen. The Mill Valley sailing magazine Latitude 38 said the boat was one of the most-talked-about yachts in the world.

The boat also personified conspicuous consumption and wealth, a subject on which Mr. Perkins drew criticism when he compared the progressive war on the American one percent to Nazi Germanys treatment of Jews in a 2014 Wall Street Journal opinion piece prompted by a critique in The Chronicle of his ex-wife Steels landscaping. In response, Kleiner Perkins distanced itself from Mr. Perkins, saying he hadnt been involved with the firm for some time.

Despite his controversies, Mr. Perkins left a lasting impression on investors and entrepreneurs who met him.

It was this strange combination of sage and the enthusiasm of a child, said Bob Ackerman, managing partner of Allegis Capital. It was this wide-eyed enthusiasm for new ideas, new things and new challenges, and then behind that a lot of wisdom based on experience.

Jessica Floum is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: jfloum@sfchronicle.com Twitter: jfloum
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If you were wondering where all the go-go boots in the Bay Area were on Wednesday night, San Francisco City Hall had the run on them at the San Francisco Operas A Nod to Mod Ball. The ball, hosted by the San Francisco Opera Guild, was a celebration of the Operas next general director, Matthew Shilvock, who assumes leadership of the 93 year-old company on Aug. 1 from outgoing General Director David Gockley. Shilvock, 38, is British-born, so the evenings mod theme was planned as a nod to both his heritage and youth.

When you think of the mod era the first thing you think of is the British invasion, ball Co-Chair CJ Van Pelt (with Maryam Muduroglu) said of how the guild arrived at the motif. It changed the face of music and brought it to a whole new generation. We thought that it was the perfect match. Matthew is young and vibrant, and we think hes going to do the same thing for the San Francisco Opera.

From the unflappable Beefeater guards who stood at attention at City Halls entrance to the modular projections by McCalls (the events caterer and designer) to the Union Jack furniture and swinging 60s fashions, it was indeed a very gab up (well-dressed in mod speak) affair.

Ive never been surrounded by so much Britishness in my life, Shilvock joked. After 10 years at the San Francisco Opera working with David, this is such an exciting way to start the next chapter. Among the things hes looking forward to in his first season as general director is the premiere of a new production of Verdis Aida designed by Los Angeles street artist Retna and starring San Francisco Opera favorite Leah Crocetto.

The guests took to the evenings mod dress code with enthusiasm. Philanthropist Denise Littlefield Sobel said she was channeling 60s supermodel Twiggy with her silver boots and pop print dress. Her look included the Vogue-ready false eyelashes, not just on her upper lids but on her lower as well, just like her favorite youth-quaker cover girl.

Matthew sat at my table at the Opera Ball, and he was very understated, but excited, said Littlefield Sobel, whose family foundation is funding the world premiere of Dream of the Red Chamber in the next season. He brings a great energy to the projects happening this fall.

Its just an exciting time for the company, former guild President Karen Kubin offered, mentioning the new pop-up Opera Lab as one project bringing the company new fans.

After guests sat down to a meal of British ham and cheddar herb stuffing and trifle verrine for dessert, the Beefeater guards took to the stage for a musical tribute to Shilvock to the tune of Gilbert and Sullivans I Am the Very Model of a Modern Major-General.

He is the very model of a new director general, they sang, to Shilvocks surprise. He understands the music thats both modern and traditional.

Shilvock then thanked the attendees, starting with his wife, Kate, whom he met while she was working in the development office at the Opera.

My British accent didnt hurt, he joked about how he initially caught her eye, or in this case, ear.

Following an auction led by KCBS Foodie Chap and host of Eye on the Bay Liam Mayclem, the mini-skirted birds and Chelsea-booted lads took to the dance floor to twist and shout to the tunes of San Francisco band Notorious.

Guild member Linle Froeb shared memories of growing up backstage at the Seattle Opera, where her father, Speight Jenkins, was general director for 31 years.

Now Matthew and Kates son and daughter will have that special experience, Froeb said. But its important that all children get exposed to the opera, which is why we do events like this. Funds raised from the ball support the guilds education programs, which it says reaches more than 50,000 children in Northern California.

As the night wound down, guests began to leave the dance floor, some to attend a benefactor event upstairs, others to call it an evening. But if Shilvock has anything to say about it, the spirit of mod will continue to linger during his tenure.

Mod celebrates the cutting edge, like the San Francisco Opera, he said. Its always put together, always changing directions and expectations. Which is what he intends to do as its new general director.

As the mods would have said, what a flash kick of an evening.

Tony Bravo is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: tbravo@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @TonyBravoSF
San Francisco Opera General Director David Gockley will retire at the end of the company's 2015-16 season, following through on a promise he made when he renewed his contract for five years in 2011. His departure will bring to a close a decade of artistic innovation and financial struggle for the company.

With a mature organization like the San Francisco Opera, a CEO should stay 10 years, Gockley said. The energy and creativity kind of gets squeezed out, and then the way opens up for new energy and new vision.

This will be a positive thing for the company, and will put the onus on the company to get somebody great to succeed me.

Gockley, 71, will be retiring from a 44-year career as one of the nations most visible and tireless operatic impresarios. Before coming to San Francisco in 2006 to succeed Pamela Rosenberg, he spent 33 years as general director of the Houston Grand Opera, where he turned a modest regional company into a center for innovation and artistic excellence.

His San Francisco tenure has featured much of the same energy, including the commissioning of nine new operas and the appointment of Nicola Luisotti as the companys music director (Luisottis position has been extended through the 2017-18 season). But Gockley also had to face the financial fallout of the 2008 economic crisis, which helped precipitate a series of budget deficits and a reduction in the companys offerings.

San Francisco Opera Association President Keith Geeslin praised Gockley as the consummate general director, a tremendous impresario who understands the complexities of producing opera in all its details.

Search for successor

A committee led by the company's treasurer, Steven M. Menzies, and board member Robert Ellis, will undertake the search for Gockleys successor, which Geeslin said would try to appoint a new general director by May or June 2015. Because of the enormous lead time involved in operatic planning, Gockley will oversee repertoire and casting for the companys offerings through the 2017-18 season.

Asked in an interview to identify some of the highlights of his San Francisco tenure, Gockley was quick to point out the chapter is still unfinished. But he pointed in particular to the hugely successful 2011 production of Wagners Ring Cycle, directed by Francesca Zambello and conducted by former Music Director Donald Runnicles, as well as the development of the companys media suite, which has made possible the companys live simulcasts at AT&T Park and its cinema, television and radio broadcasts.

Gockley also cited his success in building the companys endowment, from about $50 million when he arrived to nearly $170 million today, and helping usher in a new era of labor peace exemplified by the recent signing of contracts with the companys unions.\

One of the most ambitious undertakings of his tenure is still in the works. The Diane B. Wilsey Center for Opera, scheduled to open in early 2016 in the War Memorial Veterans Building, will include an education center, an archive, new administrative offices and a 299-seat theater for the production of chamber works.

I will look back on the Wilsey Center as a proud accomplishment, Gockley said. I watch the work outside my office window every day. This will be the first addition to the companys physical plant since the Zellerbach rehearsal building opened in 1980.

But Gockley acknowledged that financial constraints had limited the scope of what he could responsibly present at the War Memorial Opera House.

I wish the repertoire had been broader. Its clear that there have been some areas of the repertoire - specifically Strauss and the Russians - that have been wanting.

This is the result of an ongoing reality, which is the diminution of the full subscriber - that person whos willing to take a leap of faith and allow the company to present nine or 10 operas a year, some of which will be familiar, and some will be potential discoveries.

Passion for art form

The percentage of subscribers to total seats has gone from about 70 to about 45 percent, which is not unlike most of the companies in this country. It makes it more difficult to program lesser-known works. Weve had some nice discoveries, but I would have hoped for more.

Conductor Patrick Summers, a longtime collaborator of Gockleys in both San Francisco and Houston, praised his undimmed passion for the art form.

He still has a wonder and thrill in the presence of a great voice or a great artist of any kind, and for someone to hold onto that through a long career is extraordinary. It's that love of the art that he has brought to the company in an infectious way.

The search committee looking for his successor will be hard-pressed to find a candidate who combines both the executive skills and the artistic expertise to lead a company single-handedly.

One plausible candidate would be Zambello, who in addition to her extensive work as a stage director in San Francisco and worldwide serves as the artistic and general director of the Glimmerglass Festival in Cooperstown, N.Y., and as artistic director of the Washington National Opera. There are a scattering of other candidates at companies in the United States and Europe.

But an alternative possibility would see the Opera dividing its leadership responsibilities in two, appointing a manager and an artistic director. That is the most common model for many symphony orchestras and ballet companies, and is gaining ground in the operatic world as well.

Fewer general directors

The number of general director types out there is becoming fewer, Gockley said. The old model of the single impresario is becoming harder to find.

Gockley said that he had recommended to the board that it consider such a possibility. But he also said that he did not expect to be involved in the search for his successor.

If asked, I will be honest about what I think. But of course the way it goes these days is that this is a decision by the board, and the incumbent is pushed to the side.

Gockley said he plans to retire to his home in Sausalito and take a well-earned rest.

I will have been working for 44 years straight without any respite, and theres a lot in my life that I would like to do that that I haven't had a chance to do. I want the last part of my life to give me more flexibility and peace, and more opportunities to be with my kids and my grandkids.

Joshua Kosman is The San Francisco Chronicles music critic. E-mail: jkosman@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @JoshuaKosman
At the meeting (Photo: VNA)

During the meeting, Politburo member and Secretary of the Ho Chi Minh city Party Committee Dinh La Thang congratulated new ambassadors, consulate generals and heads of Vietnamese representative agencies abroad for being bridges between Vietnam and foreign countries.

Noting priority and orientations of development of the city, Secretary Dinh La Thang stressed that as a leading economic motive force of the country, Ho Chi Minh city had always made efforts to make the city a leading centre of economics, services, trade, science and education of the region.

To realise the target, international cooperation is needed, he said. Ambassadors and heads of Vietnamese representative agencies abroad are important bridges in promoting international cooperation programs and increasing solidarity and mutual understanding between Vietnam in general and Ho Chi Minh city in particular and foreign countries.

On behalf of the delegation, Mr Duong Chi Dung, assistant to the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Vietnamese Ambassador to the United Nations, the World Trade Organization and other international organizations in Geneva, Switzerland, pledged to do their utmost to link Ho Chi Minh city with local countries.

He added that the delegation would expand international relations to increase cooperation, and focus on accelerating diplomatic and cultural activities with foreign countries./.
An Airbus A321 aircraft of Vietnam Airlines

The departure time for 240-seater Airbus A321 aircraft from Da Nang Airport is 22h55 and from Bangkok is 01h45. The total flight time is one hour and 35 minutes.

This is the 4th international route of Vietnam Airlines from Da Nang Airport, after Siem Reap (Cambodia), Seoul (the Republic of Korea), and Tokyo (Japan), and further promotes the trade and travel between Southeast Asia and the Central region of Vietnam via Da Nang city.

On this occasion, the Carrier offers a special program for passengers, starting from VND669,000 (USD29) for economy class and VND4,599,000 (USD199) for business class, round-trip ticket.

Tickets should be purchased from June 10th to July 10th for flights departing from June 26th to December 31st (excluded taxes, fees, surcharges, and certain conditions).

Detailed information can be seen at www.vietnamairlines.com, contact the carrier ticket offices nationwide or call 04.38 320 320 (Hanoi), 08.38 320 320 (Ho Chi Minh city) and 0511.3832 320 (Da Nang city)./.
Californias tax code dates back to an era of lumber mills, tomato canneries and petroleum tank farms, a lunch-pail world thats largely vanished as another one filled with personal services, banking and technology flourishes.

This creaking setup plays favorites and misses entire industries. Its also to blame for Sacramentos gyrating finances that wobble through recessions, surges and voter revolts such as the deeply unfair Proposition 13 enacted nearly 40 years ago.

This haphazard tax system is no secret. But adopting a modern, stable one will be an enormous undertaking, one of the reasons that state lawmakers from Gov. Jerry Brown on down have only chipped away at the crumbling structure, exasperated at the challenge of an overhaul.

State Controller Betty Yee, Californias elected bill-payer-in-chief, is nudging forward a report that could lead to a serious changes. Or it could waste away on a top shelf, another nice try that goes nowhere.

Yee is notably cautious, calling the document a framework with no recommendations. It was pulled together by 10 civic worthies, mostly from campus think tanks and study groups, after a years worth of discussion.

While lawmakers have peppered the tax code with 4,600 proposals over the past 20 years, hardly any amounted to comprehensive reform, the report notes. A scramble for yearly budget money, dug-in special interests and a lack of long-range vision are the main excuses.

The report pinpoints the central sore point of Californias finances: an overreliance on personal income taxes. Nearly 70 percent of Sacramentos income comes from stock sales, real estate transactions and other earnings from a tiny group whose fortunes float up and down with the economy. Its a system that amplifies the highs and the lows of each cycle.

Theres enormous appeal in sticking it to the rich. But when the stock market tanks or incomes drop, Sacramento suffers. Its like riding a tiger, Brown said last month. State Sen. Robert Hertzberg, a Los Angeles Democrat, is working on a parallel course to Yee to drum up support for sweeping tax changes.

There is no shortage of ideas, but each comes with trade-offs. A split property tax roll would hit business holdings more strictly than homes. A sales tax on services such as legal advice or a doctor visit could bring in billions on untaxed areas that total $1.5 trillion in business.

But the exact workings need to be spelled out, a task spotlighted by the report. How fair is the burden born by all the taxpayers? Yee asked. The trick is finding a balanced formula that doesnt harm economic growth in an ever-changing state.

Tax reform, in short, is a political minefield, a lobbyist nightmare and a touch unpredictable. Those are no doubt the reasons that Yee is pushing forward a report with no conclusions, just a 84-page recital of recent history.

It would be better if the controller, who is a veteran tax expert, would identify solutions and argue them convincingly. For now shes going slow, asking the public to start thinking through the options. Yee also suggested that tax reform be a topic for a growing crop of gubernatorial candidates running to succeed Brown in 2018. That discussion cant come soon enough in a tax-troubled state.
As University of California professors, we are heartened by efforts to enroll thousands of additional students at UC campuses but concerned that quality, timely graduation and access to classes might be sacrificed for the sake of rapid enrollment growth.

The current UC plan is to enroll 5,000 more California undergraduates for the coming academic year than were enrolled last year, and an additional 5,000 over the following two years, a total bump of 10,000 students by 2018-19.

This week, state Senate and Assembly members engaged in budget-conference committee negotiations about different proposals to increase enrollment of Californians by thousands more students than UCs current goals.

If legislators and the governor ultimately reach agreement on how to support expanded access for Californians to a UC education, they must also ensure there is funding to pay for it. The ingredients for student success and timely graduation require that the state invest at least $10,000 per student  the states historical share of the $24,000 annual cost of educating a UC student.

Some suggest that UC simply admit fewer nonresidents to provide more access to residents. When a nonresident doesnt occupy a classroom seat, such proponents argue, that translates to one more seat for a Californian. But that logic is flawed.

The primary reason UCs ability to increase access for residents has been limited is because the state has not been funding its share; the best way to expand access for Californians is for the state to pay its share of that cost. UC enrolls nonresidents only after it has met its commitment to enrolling eligible and funded California students.

Whether enrollment grows by 10,000 over the next three years or by 20,000, as some legislators have proposed, UC campuses will face serious challenges.

Think of it this way: 10,000 students are the equivalent of half of a good-size campus. With 20,000 more students, we would need a full-campus worth of faculty, with offices and labs to house them, and staff to provide support related to dorms, to food and health care services, to advising on timely progress toward degrees, and to campus safety.

Simply calling on UC to lower salaries or other costs doesnt solve the problem of how to do so without lowering quality. And it is UCs quality that makes access worth having.

As faculty members, we see our staff stretched thin even now. Following budget cut after budget cut, staff have been asked to find ways to do more with less, and many put in far more hours than they are paid to provide. Asking still more of an already overtaxed staff will not serve anyone well.

There is a lot at stake, for future generations as well as the current one.

The University of California has high graduation rates compared with other public universities. The average time to degree is four years and one quarter. More than 80 percent of UC students graduate within five years, and more than 85 percent in six years. Such a high standard will be impossible to maintain without adequate support.

Graduation rates matter not only to the students who earn degrees, but also to those aspiring to a UC education  and to the future economic health of the state. The Public Policy Institute of California has warned that California will fall at least a million college degrees short of economic demand by 2030, if current trends continue.

When students graduate in a timely manner, it means others can be admitted. If class offerings and support services cant keep pace with enrollment increases, fewer students will graduate each year. Thats frustrating, and expensive.

All UC students will suffer the consequences of declining quality if there is enrollment growth without adequate funding.
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In solitary confinement, it doesnt take long to forget the smell of a peach. Patterns on the wall that look like faces become friends to talk to during the day. The appearance of a bug is an exciting event, and its departure is cause for mourning.

Seated at a small table in the cavernous auditorium of Z Space in San Francisco, the 37-year-old writer and activist Sarah Shourd spoke in a quiet voice about the cruelty of isolation. Its dangerous, she explained, to leave someone in a constant state of boredom and anxiety, wondering whether theyll ever get out of their cell.

Were not wired for that kind of isolation, Shourd said. It becomes a battle with your mind, controlling the negative thoughts, and most people just cant cope with that pressure.

In July, Z Space will host Shourds debut play, The Box. Set in a nonspecific prison in the United States, the show focuses on six inmates in solitary confinement. Each cell contains a story that unfolds over the play, like a father struggling to maintain a connection to his teenage daughter, or a man grappling with his impending release after nearly two decades in prison. After a scandal shakes the prisoners from their individual worlds, they begin to seek justice outside the walls of their cells.

The Box is Shourds first play, and it reflects her lifelong passion for political activism. Raised in Los Angeles by a single mother who had left an abusive spouse, Shourd grew up with a strong interest in fighting against injustice. As a young woman she worked with the Zapatistas in Chiapas, Mexico, and later taught Iraqi refugees in Syria.

During a vacation in Iraq in 2009, Shourd and two companions  Shane Bauer, her now-husband, and Joshua Fattal  accidentally crossed the border with Iran during a hike and were arrested. Accused of being spies, the UC Berkeley alumni were separated and kept in solitary confinement while the United States negotiated their release.

Liz Hafalia/The Chronicle

Shourd was not physically tortured during her detainment, but after months in isolation, she was on the verge of despair. After an interrogator confessed that he didnt know if Shourd would ever be freed, she nearly reached her breaking point.

When I went back to my cell I heard screaming, and I just wanted it to stop, I couldnt bear it, Shourd said. The guards came into my cell and started to shake me, and I realized that Id been screaming and beating at the walls of my cell.

Wanted it to be over

Shourd was freed after 410 days and returned to her home in Oakland, where she immediately began campaigning for the release of Bauer and Fattal. But for years afterward, she struggled with severe PTSD. Being touched by other people made her jump, and she found eye contact uncomfortable. Oftentimes Shourd wished she could just crawl back into a hole.

I just wanted it to go away, I just wanted it to be over, Shourd said.

Desperate to understand what had happened to her mind, she turned to the only people she thought could help her: other prisoners. Shourd began corresponding with more than a dozen inmates in solitary confinement across the country, and to her surprise, she discovered that almost all of them already knew about her.

Prisoners follow stories about prisoners from around the world, Shourd said. It opened a lot of doors as far as giving me legitimacy in their eyes.

Bonds with prisoners

Shourd quickly learned that meeting with prisoners was more difficult than writing to them. Her visitor applications frequently disappeared in the prison administration system; and when she was allowed to meet prisoners, it was either behind thick panes of plastic and glass or in metal cages, which Shourd actually preferred.

As horrifying as it is when you see people lined up in a cage, at least you can shake their hand and make better eye contact, Shourd said.

As Shourd was bonding with prisoners, an international movement to abolish solitary confinement was gaining momentum. In 2011, the U.N. Special Rapporteur released a report that condemned solitary confinement as equivalent to torture. Two years later, 30,000 prisoners in California went on a hunger strike to protest the use of prolonged isolation to punish prisoners.

Over 100,000 people on any given day are subjected to conditions that the U.N. says can cause permanent brain damage, Shourd said, adding that one of the affected areas in the brain is the frontal lobe, which is used for impulse control.

So ironically  and horrifically  people who maybe havent learned the skills to control violent impulses are put in conditions that inevitably make them more violent or just less capable of making good decisions, Shourd said.

Some of the characters in Shourds play, like the white supremacist Jake Juchau or the Black Panther Ray De Vaul, are greatly flawed individuals. Shourd said this was a deliberate decision to avoid whitewashing the complicated personalities of the prisoners she interviewed in real life.

Im not trying to put anyone on a pedestal, Shourd said. I could have very easily written a play thats all about mentally ill or innocent people in the box. But a lot of the people in my play have done violent things.

When Shourd first began working on The Box, it was easier to draw on the experiences of other prisoners than from her own memories. She found this to be especially true when she physically sat down to write.

Writing can be so isolating, Shourd said. I really have to lock myself in a room and just draw the blinds and go to a very deep place to tap into this stuff.

Meaningful interaction

But over time, Shourd became more comfortable incorporating her own experiences in the play. She noted that one scene in particular, where Juchau and De Vaul learn that they can communicate through air vents, mirrored a moment in Iran when she heard an imprisoned human rights activist named Zahra Bahraini speaking to her from a neighboring cell.

When I first heard her voice, I thought I was hallucinating, Shourd said. Bahraini told Shourd that shed seen her mother being interviewed on the BBC, and she encouraged her to not lose hope.

It was one of the most meaningful human interactions Id ever had in my life, Shourd added.

Courage to reach out

Shourd later learned that Bahraini was eventually executed. But her gesture gave Shourd the courage to reach out to other prisoners by any means necessary: sticking her fingers through the food slot in her door, leaving messages on crumpled menstrual pads in the bathroom, and whispering through vents in the wall.

In The Box, characters communicate with kites improvised devices that can be used to sling notes between cells. In a way, Shourds play is like a kite  an unconventional tool for communicating her experiences and those of other prisoners in solitary confinement with the rest of the world. Armed with a cast of actors, a stage and a paying audience, she doesnt see how she can fail to be heard.

If people in the darkest, most extreme isolation thats pretty much ever existed on this planet can find human connection, then we dont have any excuse out here, Shourd said.

Eli Wolfe is a freelance writer in the Bay Area.

The Box: Drama by Sarah Shourd. Directed by Michael John Garces. July 6-30. $20-$60. Z Space, 450 Florida St., S.F. (866) 811-4111. https://web.ovationtix.com/trs/pr/957414

For more information about Sarah Shourd and the play, go to www.aplaycalledthebox.com.

To view a video of the three former hostages talking about their ordeal on CBS News in 2014, go to www.youtube.com/watch?v=a94oSidVzw8.
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Democratic presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders took a giant step into San Francisco politics Tuesday, endorsing Supervisor Jane Kim in the wide-open contest for the citys state Senate seat.

The endorsement  and his email blast asking his supporters to send money to Kim  instantly started the cash flowing.

The response has been incredible, said Eric Jaye, a consultant for Kims campaign for the 11th state Senate District seat. The phones started leaping off the hook (Tuesday) morning as soon as he sent the message out to his donors.

By early afternoon, nearly 1,000 people had given more than $25,000 to Kim, Jaye said.

The money is welcome. Kim, the progressives choice in the race to replace termed-out state Sen. Mark Leno, has been outraised more than 2-to-1 this year by her more moderate opponent, Supervisor Scott Wiener. On April 23, the end of the most recent state financial reporting period, Wiener had just under $800,000 in the bank, compared with about $360,000 for Kim.

Kim was one of eight state Legislature candidates across the country the Vermont senator endorsed Tuesday.

Bernie believes that the path toward bold change requires leaders to take back control of state capitols around the country and ensure fair redistricting in 2020, Jeff Weaver, the senators campaign manager, said in a statement. The leaders were raising money for today are the members of Congress, senators and presidential candidates of tomorrow.

Kim and Wiener are both Democrats, as is Leno, the man they seek to replace.

Sanders described Kim as the first Korean American to be elected in San Francisco, the daughter of immigrants and a civil rights attorney whos fought for affordable housing and fair wages in her city.

While the announcement was made Tuesday, Sanders agreed to endorse Kim when the pair met at a Sanders rally in Vallejo last week, Jaye said.

The pair connected over the issue of free community college for all, which Jane has worked for, he added.

But support from Sanders isnt likely to change much in the state Senate race, said Maggie Muir, a spokeswoman for Wiener.

Congrats to Jane, she said in a statement. But lets remember that those who live in and work for the Bay Area are overwhelmingly supporting Scott Wiener, including Leno, Attorney General Kamala Harris, Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein and San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee.

The June 7 primary election is probably just a warm-up for the two supervisors. Kim and Wiener are expected to be the top two finishers in that vote, setting up a November rematch.

John Wildermuth is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: jwildermuth@sfchronicle.com Twitter: jfwildermuth
It was widely assumed that San Francisco Supervisor Scott Wiener had a big lead over fellow Supervisor Jane Kim in their race for state Senate  until the votes came in on election day and that perceived edge evaporated. He still won the primary, but not by the margin many expected.

After the votes were counted Tuesday night  and there are still thousands of vote-by-mail and provisional ballots to count  Wiener led Kim by just two percentage points.

Kim came into the race for termed-out Democratic state Sen. Mark Lenos seat with fewer endorsements and less money. Political analysts attribute her rise at the polls Tuesday to a Bernie bump. After Bernie Sanders endorsed her, fresh money rolled in and Kim went on a campaign blitzkrieg of appearances with the presidential candidate, who had cameras following him everywhere.

She actually did better in San Francisco than the Vermont senator  winning 78,417 votes to Sanders 69,688, at last count. Because more renters and younger, progressive voters  who are more likely to support Kim because of her progressive credentials  tend to show up for presidential elections, the gap between the two Senate candidates will likely remain tight heading into November. But can Kim win the state Senate seat this fall without the attention Sanders provided? Wiener said no.

She was basically his running mate in the weeks leading up to the election, Wiener said. She took advantage of a great campaigning opportunity, but nevertheless, I came in first place. We knew the race was going to tighten, but the fact that we were able to withstand that tidal wave is a testament to the work I have been able to do on good policy.

But others arent so sure. The Sanders spotlight helped, said political consultant Jim Ross, but what Kim did with it mattered more. She used the platform to spread her message: as a fighter for the middle class, for affordable housing, for free City College, he said, rattling off Kims campaign themes.

She has a more compelling message that was delivered more effectively, said Ross. She found a real way to differentiate herself. Its not so much that Sanders drove her success, but that he helped crystallize in peoples minds the difference between who Jane Kim and Scott Wiener are. Candidate campaigns come down to creating a contrast, and she did that effectively.

Kim also out-campaigned Wiener in the 60 days leading up to the primary, said political consultant John Whitehurst, who worked on Lenos 2008 state Senate campaign. As voters mailboxes became clogged with glossy mailers, Kim bought TV commercials. Viewers saw her in two attention-getting ads as black-belt Jane and fighter Jane who stands up for regular San Franciscans, he said.

Kim also secured the last-minute endorsement of state Democratic Party Chairman John Burton, who called her the real Democrat. That set off allegations of foul play because Wiener had won the endorsement in February of the state Democratic Party itself. It also gained Kim more visibility.

Wiener said he spent his time extolling his success on core issues like expanding public transportation and protecting the environment. Thats what won him the primary and will help him win in November, he said.

He also had a TV commercial and mailers, and he canvassed neighborhoods. But he didnt have someone like Sanders.

The margin was surprisingly close, particularly given that Hillary Clinton beat Bernie Sanders soundly inside of San Francisco, Whitehurst said. Kim exceeded expectations, but she also had a very strong campaign that created several things that were out of the box. Theres the Sanders endorsement, the videos, the Burton letter  all things that enabled voters to see her for the first time. Scott was a lot more well-known in the beginning of the race, but she has had more exposure recently.

Whoever wins the District 11 state Senate seat, representing San Francisco and northern San Mateo County, could hold the position for as many as 12 years. And the race will probably be neck and neck the entire way, said Eric Jaye, Kims campaign consultant.

Its always difficult when you start behind and are being dramatically outspent, Jaye said. Jane has a strong message. Its about making the city and state more affordable for middle- and working-class families. Wiener was not able to offer a message that could compete with that. Its going to be a tight race.

Kim said she had hoped to come within five percentage points of Wiener in the primary. At her election night party in SoMa, she took the stage with 30 of her biggest backers, including Chinatown power broker Rose Pak, as the first numbers came in. Music throbbed and people cheered. Later, she said it was overwhelming and surprising.

This is my fifth race for office, and I have always won on the ground, Kim said. In a campaign where we were outspent, its exciting to see us do so well. The campaign and race really continue onward from here on out until November.

Lizzie Johnson is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: ljohnson@sfchronicle.com Twitter: LizzieJohnsonnn
Amid the fashionable flutter of A-list finery and world-class artistry that unfurled recently at the 93rd opening-night season of the San Francisco Opera, there was a chord of sadness sung by soon-to-depart General Director David Gockley.

Realizing this is my last opening-night leading the Opera is bittersweet, said the beloved leader. In the interim, Im pleased to offer some of my most cherished works.

Opera board Chairman John Gunn and President Keith Geeslin echoed that pledge, vowing that Gockleys tenth and final season will wow his legion of fans.

The operas were presenting are a parade of Davids greatest hits, said Geeslin. And we definitely have a rally crowd here tonight.

Gunn, who has served as board chairman since 2008, and his wife, honorary Opera Ball co-chairwoman Cynthia Fry Gunn, are two of this organizations most stalwart supporters. So prior to curtains up, John Gunn led a chorus of bravos.

Opera transforms us. It moves us. It inspires us. And this company is one of the greats, bringing to the stage operatic experiences that rival any in the world, he toasted, as the full house joined him in offering Gockley a rousing ovation. At the outset of his final year as general director, it is fitting that we show David our abiding appreciation.

And the 850 patrons who attended the Moonlight & Music Opera Ball also appreciated the skillful efforts of ball co-chairs Karen Kubin and Jane Mudge, who joined forces with event designer Riccardo Benavides to create an opening-night idyll.

Kathy and Rick Hilton, the storied hoteliers and parents of haute daughters, Nicky and Paris Hilton, were on hand as repeat guests of their pal Dr. Alan Malouf.

San Francisco is our favorite city to visit, enthused pere Hilton, and the Operas opening night expresses a grand European tradition.

Though theyre based in Los Angeles and guests at numerous film industry fetes, Kathy Hilton applauded our local swans who promenaded amid a fantastic fashion parade featuring such gorgeous gowns as Monique Lhuillier (Protocol Chief Charlotte Shultz); Carolina Herrera (Opera Guild President Charlot Malin); Marni (Presidio Trust trustee Nicola Miner); Andrew Gn (Dr. Carolyn Chang) Lily Samii (Denise Hale, who dove deep into her vault and busted out so much bling she described her style as a Christmas tree) and, of course, Oscar de la Renta (fantastically repped by Komal Shah and Dede Wilsey).

Catherine Bigelow/Special to The Chronicle

Wilsey, the Operas opening-weekend Grand Sponsor who also supplied the bounteous pink-and-red roses (beautifully designed by Stanlee Gatti), was accompanied by Boaz Mazor, the dashing Oscar exec beloved by women the world over.

I think Boaz has unzipped more gowns than George Clooney, joked Wilseys son Trevor Traina. But he does it without threatening a single husband.

Riffing off the Tyrolean setting of Verdis Luisa Miller, the terrific trio of Kubin-Mudge-Benavides set their stage in the magnificent marble Opera House foyer and a stretch along Grove Street, where a brocade-and-chandeliered tent echoed a chic 18th century hunting lodge.

I really like that this tent is long and narrow, noted real estate magnate Victor Makras, and configured to make every table feel equally important.

The McCalls crew served up a masterful feast paired with primo Grgich Hills vino supplied by opera lover and vintner Austin Hills and his wife, Sara.

Hills, a scion of the Hills Bros. coffee family, is so devoted to the company that he has retained the same Row N seats once occupied by his parents, who attended the Operas first opening night in 1932.

Catherine Bigelow/Special to The Chronicle

Yet another San Francisco scion, 23-year-old Madeline Ehrlich, was attending her very first opera with her grandmother, civic leader Cissie Swig.

I dont know what to expect. I do know theres one intermission and subtitles, which will be helpful, she admitted, with a laugh. But Im so excited to finally experience the San Francisco Opera.

Catherine Bigelow is The San Francisco Chronicles society correspondent. E-mail: missbigelow@sfgate.com
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Although Joe Wagners company, Copper Cane Wine & Provisions, deals in a host of lifestyle products  womens swimwear, cigars, spirits  wine remains its core. In the next year, expect to see another Pinot Noir, a Cabernet and an Argentine Malbec, too. Here are a few of the current offerings.

These are big, bold, unabashedly fruity wines. If blackberry preserves, cherry cola and watermelon sound like appealing wine flavors to you, its likely youll enjoy them.

Elouan Pinot Noir Oregon 2013 ($21.99, 13.2%): From Oregons Rogue and Umpqua valleys, with a little Willamette Valley fruit, this Pinot is red fruit-forward, with bright cherry that verges on a flavor of iodine. A mouth-coating, cinnamon-tinged impression of sweetness lingers. Elouan is an old French word for good light.

Carne Humana Proprietary Red Wine 2012 ($34.99, 14.6%): A co-ferment of Petite Sirah, Zinfandel, Petit Verdot and Syrah, this is a red blend (think The Prisoner, Apothic Red) masquerading as a field blend. The interspersed vines, however, were purpose-planted in the upper Napa Valley. The wine tastes like chocolate, blackberry jam and balsamic reduction. For those who enjoy the taste of oak.

Beran: Wagners Zinfandel label  using the Old English word for bear, in homage to California  includes Sonoma County, Napa Valley and California-appellated bottlings. The 2013 California ($21.99, 15.1%) is huge, bursting with blue fruit, with a full body that stands up to its flavors. The 2013 Sonoma ($34.99, 15.2%) is a little softer, with some white pepper and dried herbs. The 2012 Napa Valley ($44.99, 15.4%) is the spiciest. Its big and extracted, tasting like roasted meat.

Belle Glos: Wagners original wine remains his most expensive, offering single-vineyard Pinot Noir bottlings from coastal regions of California. Roughly 150 miles separate each of the vineyards, which serve as representations of Wagners style from Sonoma, Monterey and Santa Barbara counties.

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The 2014 Dairyman Vineyard ($54.99, 14.7%) tastes like Russian River Valley on steroids: rich and mouth-filling, toasty and oaky, black cherry and cream soda. The 2014 Clark & Telephone Santa Maria Valley ($54.99, 14.7%) is very different  fresher and loamier, with brighter, red-fruited acid and a more finessed texture, yet a baking spice-tinged oakiness persists to the end. Finally, the 2014 Las Alturas Santa Lucia Highlands ($54.99, 14.8%) is full, dense and thick, though flavor-wise the juiciest of the bunch. Its fruit is blue, cut with savory anise and brown spice.

Personally, my favorite Belle Glos wine is its rose, which Wagner calls Oeil de Perdrix, or eye of the partridge. From Sonoma, the 2015 Oeil de Perdrix Pinot Noir Blanc ($19.99, 13.2%) is steely and minerally, light in texture with a nice cut of acid that highlights its watermelon and strawberry flavors. A balancing tinge of bitterness appears at the end.
From 13,000 feet in the air, Joe Wagner looks out of his charter jet and over the Pacific Coast. En route from Napa to Salinas, the winemaker points to each landmark below with the familiarity of a commuter on his ride to work: Theres San Pablo Bay, the Golden Gate Bridge, the San Andreas Fault.

Asked how often he travels by jet, Wagner laughs. Hes in the air a lot these days, inspecting vineyards sprawled from Oregon to Santa Barbara, many more than an hour away from a commercial airport. For Wagner, time is precious.

Reclining in his seat, Wagner pops a bottle of Steorra, the sparkling wine hes just released. In jeans and a bright-blue plaid shirt, his hair neatly gelled, the baby-face 34-year-old exudes a confidence that feels imperturbable. The sparkling wine category is booming right now, he announces as he drizzles the foam into jet-friendly plastic GoVino cups.

He fingers the Steorra cork, emblazoned with the wines logo. I wanted a branded cork, to make clear that this was our wine. Not just one of those shiners you buy in bulk and slap a label on. We wanted to keep our message clear.

Connor Radnovich/The Chronicle

Familys popular label

Its a typical business-mogul line, but message clarity is especially important for Wagner right now: A lot of eyes in the California wine industry are on him. Born an heir to one of Napa Valleys most storied empires, Wagner is blazing a new trail, and the industry doesnt quite know what to make of it.

In the past year, he sold a Pinot Noir brand, Meiomi, for $315 million; broke off from his familys company, Wagner Family of Wine; and, at astounding speed, launched a succession of wine brands under his new company, Copper Cane Wine & Provisions.

To say that Wagners career trajectory looks unfamiliar to the Napa Valley establishment would be an understatement. But his path  from the astonishing Meiomi sale to his greater ambitions for Copper Cane  tells the story of how the wine industry is changing today. Its a tale in which the power of brand has superseded the value of land in a way that American wine has never seen before.

The origin story is classic Napa Valley. Joe Wagners maternal forebears came to Napa in the 1800s, and, like everyone else there, they were farmers  of prunes, walnuts and grapes. What the Wagners did, explains Michael Honig, whose familys estate neighbors the Wagners, was they kept their land, kept farming, farmed more acreage, and then started one of the iconic brands of Napa Valley.

That would be Caymus, the Rutherford Cabernet that Joes grandparents, Charlie and Lorna Belle Wagner, founded in 1972 and now is operated by Joes father, Chuck.

Caymus is one of the most successful brands in Napa, ever. It may not be a favorite of sommeliers and aficionados, but it flies off shelves across America. Caymus has as powerful a following as any wine in America, says Barbara Insel, president of Stonebridge Research Group, a St. Helena wine industry market research firm.

1 brand, 1 varietal

Connor Radnovich/The Chronicle

But unlike the heads of many of Napas multigenerational brands, Chuck Wagner didnt simply want to hand Caymus down to his children. You could join the family business, but you had to start something on your own, says Joe, the second-born. And each siblings brand had to be distinct: one brand, one varietal. Joes brother Charlie got Chardonnay (Mer Soleil); sister Jenny got Merlot (Emmolo). (Erin, the youngest child, apparently is still deciding what her grape will be; shes still in school.)

What Chuck did was genius, says Honig. It allows each child to have their own identity  and no sibling rivalries  but still have the back-end support of the larger company.

Joe wanted Pinot Noir.

With that back-end support, while working at Caymus, Joe started buying Pinot Noir grapes experimentally in the late 1990s. For three years, he purchased from well-known vineyards like Griffins Lair and Clark & Telephone, racking up $1.2 million in debt before ever selling a bottle. We did a lot of learning, he smiles mischievously.

What he learned resulted in the first commercial release of his Belle Glos label in 2001, sourced from Santa Maria Valley. A bottle cost $30. It was a hit.

By 2002, I felt like the writing was on the wall that Pinot Noir was going to be the next big thing, Wagner says. So he ramped up Belle Glos, adding bottlings from Santa Lucia Highlands, Sonoma Coast, Russian River Valley.

His forecast proved correct  and lucrative. In 2004 came Sideways, Hollywoods love letter to Pinot Noir, and demand for California Pinot surged. Belle Glos bottles, engulfed in their distinctive red wax seal, sold at record speed. (The wax turned out to be important, Wagner says: It made Belle Glos unmistakable on grocery store shelves.)

Meiomi debuts

But by then, with a price hovering around $50, Belle Glos had a limited audience. Wagner knew that he could never truly saturate the Pinot market without an entry-level wine. He also knew he had the brand equity to do it: Just as Caymus ($160 in 2012) has the value-priced Conundrum ($25), so could Belle Glos buoy a cheaper wine, its powerful distribution muscle guaranteeing shelf space.

He followed the basic principle of selling wine thats often forgotten, says Insel: You talk Porsche, and then you sell Volkswagen.

In 2006, he debuted Meiomi. Thanks to the Wagners behemoth distributor, Southern Wine & Spirits, the wine was almost instantly Americas ubiquitous by-the-glass Pinot. One of Meiomis strengths was never running out of stock, so that we never lost a placement, Wagner says.

Sweet, fruity and rounded out with small percentages of grapes like Riesling and Gewurtztraminer, Meiomi is Pinot Noir for Cabernet-drinking men, Insel says  a wine for those who dont want to talk about flowers and earth tones. True Pinot aficionados wouldnt be caught dead drinking the saccharine stuff, but that was never Wagners goal. He didnt invent Pinot Noir; he invented mass-market Pinot Noir.

I grew up drinking the same soft drinks as everyone else, Wagner says, with his characteristic confidence. I figure if I like it, America will like it.

He was right: Right place, right time, right price. Within nine years, Wagner had grown Meiomis production to an astonishing 800,000 cases, nearly 10 million bottles.

Meanwhile, in 2011, as a kind of succession plan, hed begun developing Copper Cane. With six children of his own, Wagner had long worried there wouldnt be a place for them within Wagner Family of Wine. The wine industry is so rife with family drama, he says. He didnt want his children to have to compete for jobs with their cousins.

When Wagner first got a call from wine industry broker Zepponi & Co. saying they had a buyer interested in Meiomi, Wagner says he turned them away. After several calls, though, he agreed to a meeting with the suitor  Constellation, the corporation that owns Robert Mondavi and Manischewitz, and the U.S. rights to Svedka vodka and Corona beer  but still maintains he didnt want to sell.

Meiomi was our foundation, Wagner says. It was going to be Copper Canes introduction to the marketplace.

Connor Radnovich/The Chronicle

But Meiomi was also becoming more than Wagner could handle on his own. Its last vintage, in 2014, consisted of 2.3 million gallons of wine, all custom-crushed at The Ranch winery in St. Helena. Thats 2.3 million gallons that need to be homogeneously blended  quite a challenge at a winery using many small vessels.

I was talking to The Ranch about putting in 500,000-gallon tanks, Wagner says. I did the math and figured out it would take too many years to recoup that investment.

New era of investment

So he had a valuation of the Meiomi brand done and proposed what he considered a ridiculous sale price with a ridiculously minimal noncompete agreement. Constellation agreed. Even Wagner was shocked.

At the time, it seemed insane that Constellation would pay such an exorbitant fee just for a brand  no vineyard land or winery included. But its since become clear that Meiomi has heralded a new era of winery investment. Constellation appears to be strategically acquiring brands like it: high-volume, with a high potential for growth, yet not cheap in the traditional sense. At $19.99 retail, Meiomi represents a higher price point than the products that have made Constellation successful for the last 70 years, like Wild Irish Rose, Cooks and Manischewitz. The Prisoner, a wine label Constellation purchased in April for $285 million, costs around $35 a bottle.

That investment in a higher price segment reflects a significant shift in consumers buying habits. If you take wines in the $14 to $25 segment, theyre growing at 4 to 6 percent over the previous year, says David Freed, chairman of vineyard investor Silverado Group. Whereas $10 and under, and especially $6 and under, theyre not growing.

And what of the fact that the deal included no land? People buying $20 wine dont ask where the estate is, Insel points out. At 9.6 million bottles, Meiomi was already a moneymaker; imagine if Constellation doubles production. The (purchase) price didnt come from vineyards, wineries, fixed assets, Freed says. It came from Constellations ability to grow Meiomi in a way that Joey Wagner never could.

Were just seeing the start of it, says Honig. Ten years from now, we may say, Wow, Meiomi didnt sell for that much.

Wagner hints at some filial discord as a result of the sale. Was his astonishing buyout a rejection of the rock-solid legacy of Caymus, one that Chuck Wagner has spent his entire life faithfully guarding? Joe pauses, glancing out the jet window. My dad was worried about how the sale might reflect on his whole business.

Cutting business ties

In April, Wagner cut his final business tie with Wagner Family of Wine, bringing Belle Glos sales and distribution entirely under Copper Cane. Belle Glos rounds out a portfolio that follows the Wagner Family mantra  one brand, one varietal  taken, perhaps, to its absolute extreme.

Theres an Oregon Pinot brand (Elouan); a Zinfandel brand (Beran); a red blend brand (Carne Humana); a sparkling brand (Steorra). This month, Boen, a Russian River Pinot priced between Meiomi and Belle Glos, arrives; in the next 12 months, expect a Cabernet and Argentine Malbec, both yet to be named. My goal after selling Meiomi was to control (by purchase or lease) 4,000 more acres of vineyard land within five years, he says. Hes acquired 1,000 so far.

And Wagner isnt confining himself to wine. Copper Cane has a swimwear line (the brainchild of Wagners ex-wife Amber, who no longer works with the company), cigars, a forthcoming gin brand, and whiskey and Cognac-style brandy in R&D. If we dont get into the brown spirits game now, I think well regret it, he says.

In February, Wagner purchased the building in downtown Napa that currently houses Ninebark restaurant (the reported asking price was $3.9 million). He hints at larger long-term plans for that space. At some point, I want to have two tasting rooms somewhere, he says. A traditional one and something nontraditional  like a speakeasy.

Surely Copper Cane  for which wine seems merely the entree to a full-blown lifestyle company  marks the real departure from the Wagner Family model, which was already ambitious, already successful, but apparently not enough for one son. If Caymus, the shining example of a Napa Valley brand with staying power, is merely Wagners foundation, how far will he be able to take a brand?

There are few people in this valley who recognize that wine is a business, who understand brand-building, Insel says. But Joey does.

Criticized by the elite

Wagners position in Napa, though, also leaves him vulnerable to the criticisms of the wine-industry elite, many of whom view wines like Meiomi and Belle Glos as overripe, over-oaked, overmanipulated.

Wagner acknowledges these criticisms. Belle Glos can be looked at as too opulent for Pinot Noir, he says. But I think its a wine thats just right for California, and it was really filling a void in the market.

If you want to make a style of Pinot Noir thats lower alcohol, higher acid, he continues, Im not sure California is the right place for that.

This man has staked his career on the appeal of ripeness. Copper Cane, in fact, refers to the lignification, or browning, that occurs in a grapevine at its maximum ripeness. I like to let the grapes get a little raisiny, he says, to get that concentration.

To say that an ultra-ripe style of wine has fallen out of vogue would be an understatement. But Wagner isnt following fashion trends; hes following consumer trends. That may be a mentality inherited from his father, whose Caymus has lost favor with many critics but still finds plenty of favor in Middle America.

The brands with staying power arent the ones making 500 cases, hiring X-Y-Z winemaker, Honig says. You can live and die by the press, but long-term viability comes from strong visibility, strong distribution.

Whatever Wagners long game is, its audacious: the production volumes, the ultra-ripeness, the imperialist expansion. Perhaps most daring of all is his emphatic declaration of independence  both from his family and from a wine community that values narratives of romance and tradition, not pragmatic enterprise.

The critics can talk all they want, but none of it seems to shake Joe Wagner. Looking down on California from 13,000 feet, he sees his world clearly. Theres a lot more to come, he says.

Esther Mobley is The San Francisco Chronicles wine, beer and spirits writer. Email:emobley@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @esther_mobley

Copper Cane wines

Although Joe Wagners company, Copper Cane Wine & Provisions, deals in a host of lifestyle products  womens swimwear, cigars, spirits  wine remains its core. His Elouan Pinot Noir comes from Oregon, and his Carne Humana Proprietary Red Wine is a blend of Napa Valley grapes. He has a Zinfandel label, Beran, that sources from several California areas, and his original label, Belle Glos, remains his most expensive.

See Esther Mobleys tasting notes for Wagners top wines: http://bit.ly/1ti6Rr9
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Activists angered by the six-month sentence handed down by a South Bay judge in the Stanford sexual assault case intend to submit petitions Friday signed by 1 million people calling for his removal.

Advocates said they hope the petitions will lead to impeachment proceedings in the state Legislature against Superior Court Judge Aaron Persky. The judge handed down the county-jail sentence last week to Brock Allen Turner, the 20-year-old former Stanford student convicted of three felony counts of sexual assault in the January 2015 attack on an unconscious woman outside a fraternity party.

Prosecutors had sought a six-year state prison sentence for Turner.

We have never seen a response on any of our campaigns like this, Nita Chaudhary of the group UltraViolet, which circulated one of the petitions, said Thursday. Theyre rolling in at a constant speed.

The group will hand-deliver signatures from all the online petitions  in a thumb drive  on Friday to the state Commission on Judicial Performance in San Francisco. UltraViolet will also file a formal complaint about Persky with the commission, alleging he was biased and made inappropriate comments on the bench.

In handing down the sentence on June 2, Persky said he had taken into consideration Turners lack of criminal history, character and expressions of remorse.

The move comes a week after the Santa Clara County district attorneys office released the womans victim-impact statement, in which she described in excruciating detail what happened the night she was sexually assaulted and the aftermath shes faced.

Persky, 54, a former sex-crimes prosecutor, was appointed to the Santa Clara County bench by then-Gov. Gray Davis in 2003.

Those who want the judge removed from the bench are pursuing other avenues. Stanford law Professor Michele Dauber is leading an effort to recall Persky, who was re-elected Tuesday without any candidates opposing him.

The decision was far too lenient and well below the statutory minimum that was established for the offenses of which Brock Turner was convicted, Dauber said. It sent a message that campus sexual assault will not be punished as harshly as other kinds of sexual assault.

Perskys office has declined to comment on the backlash.

Kimberly Veklerov is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: kveklerov@sfchronicle.com Twitter: kveklerov
A black dog with a sharp nose helped unravel a 73-year-old mystery that led to the Bay Area return Friday of the long-lost remains of a fallen Marine from World War II.

For the family of Pfc. John Saini, the wait that began with a telegram in 1943 and stretched through the decades is over.

Its a relief to have my uncle finally home, said his nephew, also named John Saini, after being presented with the remains at a brief ceremony at San Francisco International Airport attended by 17 members of the Saini family of Healdsburg. This is a day my grandparents wanted but never lived to see.

The private was a 20-year-old soldier and a recent graduate of Healdsburg High School when U.S. forces stormed the Tarawa Atoll, about 2,500 miles southwest of Hawaii, in November 1943. He was one of more than 1,000 U.S. troops killed as the Americans drove the Japanese from the islands. After the battle was over, however, the military couldnt find his grave.

There the matter stood until last year, when a team of volunteer searchers from History Flight, a Florida charity that attempts to find the unmarked graves of American warriors, heard a bark from an aging Labrador retriever named Buster, a cadaver dog, during their search of the Tarawa battle zone.

The dog had come across an unmarked trench that an electronic scan revealed to be the final resting place of four dozen servicemen. It was not far from the lagoon where the bloodiest part of the landing battle was waged. Military investigators confirmed that one of the servicemen was Saini.

On Friday, his body was flown from Hawaii to San Francisco, where the family was reunited in a brief ceremony by the side of the plane.

None of the family members at the airport had ever met Saini, but all knew his story. His niece, Liz McDowell, fought back tears as she recalled how her grandparents never seemed to be the same after receiving that telegram from the military, saying their son was presumed dead.

This is stirring emotions that I cant even describe, she said, leaning on a cousin for support. There wasnt a lot said about this in our family. But we felt it.

Sainis remains will be reburied Saturday at Oak Mound Cemetery in Healdsburg next to those of his parents.

Mark Noah is founder of History Flight, which has identified the remains of 100 servicemen in Europe and Asia over the past 13 years. He said the group strives to give the identity and the dignity back to the families.

Every time you do it, its like putting a little piece of America back in America, Noah said.

Valentina Saini, the 2-year-old great-grandniece of the fallen Marine, held a small U.S. flag on a stick by the side of the plane in San Francisco and stood as quietly as a 2-year-old girl can stand. But she did ask her elders, over and over, why her great-granduncle had to die.

You never have an answer for that, John Saini said.

Steve Rubenstein is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: srubenstein@sfchronicle.com
For practical and innovative communications about awareness of the sea and islands and protection of sovereign rights, an infographic clip has been created by the Central Committee of the Vietnam Student Association and students nationwide. The clip is being shared on many fanpages of student associations of universities and colleges.



Up to the present time, the infographic clip posted on the fanpage "Proud of Vietnam's Seas and Islands" has over 11,000 likes, 100 shares and nearly 6,000 views.

Image of Vietnams sovereignty over territorial waters presented accurately with vivid infographic. (Photo: dantri.com.vn)



Image of illegal territorial waters encroachments presented clearly with accurate information sources. (Photo: dantri.com.vn)

Immortal circle of the soldiers on Gac Ma island. (Photo: dantri.com.vn)

The clip aims to disseminate knowledge, communications and correct orientation to students and young people about Vietnams sea and islands. This is a new activity, as part of the program "Students with national sea and islands 2016".

With general, condensed and distilled information on a youthful graphic background, the clip introduces the country of Vietnam with over 3,000km of coastline and more than 2,700 large and small islands and two archipelagoes of Truong Sa and Hoang Sa.



Besides, the clip also provides information about the sovereignty over the sea and islands, recounts the history of illegal territorial waters encroachments and even sacrifices, losses of Vietnamese naval soldiers, who, regardless of difficulties and hardship, protect the national sovereignty.



Also in this clip, images of the sense of protecting the sovereignty of Vietnamese students are emphasized because flagpoles are contributed to build by students belonging to student associations nationwide on outpost islands, where are the most dangerous positions such as the flagpoles on Tran, Ly Son, Phu Quy, Tho Chu, Bach Long Vy and Cu Lao Xanh islands.



Young people appear on youth islands. (Photo: dantri.com.vn)



Flagpoles on outpost islands built by young people. (Photo: dantri.com.vn)

Positions of flagpoles have been built on islands. (Photo: dantri.com.vn)

Not only contributing materially with the cost of over VND10 billion to build the flagpoles, students also contribute their own efforts by together designing, constructing and contributing national flags to regularly send to the islands to replace old ones so that they always fly on the islands. Through the clip, we know the efforts of the youth sent to the youth islands to settle and build the islands as well as contribute efforts to protect the nations sovereignty and territorial waters.With the information sources filtered from official communications channels and true documents, the clip about history of Vietnams sea and islands through infographic has imparted the most correct and clearest content about Vietnams sovereignty over territorial waters as well as highlighted the role of students, the youth of Vietnam, who are contributing their efforts to build the country with the most practical action./.
A construction worker died after she was stabbed repeatedly on a South of Market street in San Francisco during a confrontation Friday morning with a man and a woman, who were later arrested, police said.

The victim was flagging traffic at Fifth and Shipley streets when the two approached her about 9:30 a.m. and a heated argument broke out, witnesses told police. One of the assailants pulled a sharp-edged weapon and attacked the construction worker, stabbing her multiple times.

The victim, whose name was not released, died while being taken to a hospital, police said.

Mayor Ed Lee said the slain worker graduated from the CityBuild program in 2013 and was a member of the Laborers Local 261 union.

On behalf of the City and County of San Francisco, I extend my deepest condolences to the family of the victim who died after being stabbed, Lee said in a statement. Our thoughts and prayers remain with her family, friends and colleagues during this time of mourning and sorrow.

The stabbing evolved from an argument, said Officer Grace Gatpandan, a Police Department spokeswoman.

The two ran away, leaving the victim bleeding on the street. While some co-workers rushed to help the mortally wounded woman, others followed the attackers and called police.

The suspects were arrested at Fifth and Folsom streets, Gatpandan said. She said the weapon believed to have been used in the slaying was recovered.

Ophylia Wispling, 28, of Alameda was working nearby when she heard the commotion outside and went to see what was happening.

A man who appeared to be a construction worker, wearing a hard hat and yellow vest, chased the suspects down the street, she said.

A video Wispling took at the scene showed a construction worker standing in the middle of Fifth Street, directing arriving officers to a man believed to be one of the suspects.

The footage shows police putting the man face down on the ground and handcuffing him, and another officer ordering a handcuffed woman to sit on a nearby curb.

Its not really that surprising that this happened here, she said, referring to frequency of crime and homelessness in the South of Market neighborhood. But it is really sad.

The slain woman was flagging traffic for a Cahill Contractors apartment construction project, with a bulk of the work taking place farther down Shipley Street from where she was stationed, said Rob Rich, a safety executive for Cahill Contractors.

Rich said the woman was a subcontracted employee from the San Carlos company Dees-Hennessey Inc.

Our hearts go out to her family and friends and co-workers and the entire team, Rich said.

Kevin Schultz is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: kschultz@sfchronicle.com Twitter: kevinedschultz
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For much of her year and a half in office, Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf praised Police Chief Sean Whent as a tough crime fighter with a good heart  the kind of person who could bring much-needed stability to a police department that for years had cycled through one chief after another.

But in recent months the department was beset by questions about the discipline of its rank and file  and late Thursday, Whent became the latest chief to abruptly leave Oakland.

It was his decision, a tight-lipped Schaaf said at a City Hall news conference Friday, in which she alternately praised Whent for his accomplishments and deflected questions about whether she or the citys court-appointed police monitor had pushed him out.

By the time Whents resignation was announced to the media just before 11 p.m., Schaaf had already tapped Benson Fairow, the deputy police chief at BART, as his interim replacement.

City Administrator Sabrina Landreth said at the news conference that the departments future rested on an institution, not an individual.

For a while, that institution was making apparent progress under Whent after years of turmoil. Then came a series of disciplinary cases, the most prominent involving four officers who were accused of sexual misconduct.

Two of them resigned last month. On Thursday, Contra Costa County prosecutors said they did not have enough evidence to file criminal charges against one of the two, former Officer Terryl Smith, who had been investigated for allegedly forcibly sodomizing an 18-year-old woman.

Schaaf said Friday that she was extremely angry about the misconduct allegations. But she also emphasized that Whent himself had never been the subject of a misconduct investigation.

Other officers had landed in trouble in recent months. Officer Cullen Faeth was charged with misdemeanor battery, public intoxication and trespassing after he allegedly tried to break into a home in Oaklands Redwood Heights neighborhood in December and attacked a woman who lived there. In February, Officer Matthew Santos was arrested for allegedly pulling his gun on a man painting Santos apartment in Emeryville. Santos was fired shortly thereafter.

The string of problems was dismaying to officials who had seen Whent seemingly stabilize a dysfunctional department.

Chief Anthony Batts quit in 2011 after receiving a scathing report from Robert Warshaw, the court monitor assigned to ensure that the Police Department was implementing reforms ordered by a federal judge. Batts successor, Howard Jordan, left suddenly in 2013 amid a spike in violent crime and a wave of anger over how police were handling Occupy protests. Interim Chief Anthony Toribio, who came in after Jordan, lasted only two days.

We made the most significant progress under Chief Whent that we had in a decade, said City Council President Lynette Gibson McElhaney.

She said Whent, who is white and rose through the Police Department ranks, had made particular progress in improving relations with Oaklands African American residents.

He apologized for the injustices that the black community in Oakland has suffered, McElhaney said, referring to a public mea culpa that Whent offered during a Black Lives Matter forum at City Hall in January 2015. That doesnt just happen under any leadership.

For a while, Whent had the enthusiastic support of both Schaaf and Warshaw, raising hopes among some officials that the Police Department might finally get out from under a federal courts oversight. That oversight stemmed from a scandal in the early 2000s involving four officers who called themselves the Riders, who were accused in civil and criminal proceedings of beating West Oakland residents and planting evidence.

As the recent misconduct cases mounted, Schaaf continued to tout the citys drop in violent crime under Whents tenure. But it was clear Friday that she was tired of scandals among the rank and file.

Certainly crime control is an important part of the chiefs job, but department discipline is also an important issue, said Tony Ribera, a retired San Francisco police chief and director of the International Institute of Criminal Justice at the University of San Francisco.

He noted similarities between what happened to Whent and former Chief Greg Suhr in San Francisco, whose officers were involved in several controversial shootings even as he publicly insisted that the department was trying to change. He resigned under pressure last month.

You ask yourself, How many of these things can be blamed on the chief? What would I have done? Ribera said. Its not a simple answer.

Schaaf said Friday that Oakland had started a national search for Whents replacement, even as San Francisco is casting about for a successor to Suhr.

Whent could not be reached for comment.

Ribera said the average tenure of a police chief nationally is about 2 years. Its particularly hard to keep stable leadership in politically volatile cities like Oakland, as its string of chiefs since 2011 shows.

And then the question becomes, Can you attract good candidates? Ribera said. Will people want the job?

Rachel Swan is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: rswan@sfchronicle.com Twitter: rachelswan
Tay is a chatbot  software designed to converse with people like a human  that Microsoft created and put on Twitter to learn about people.

Did it ever.

Hitler was right is one of the few printable posts Tay was spouting within a day on Twitter. Its earlier optimistic declaration that humans are super cool had, after a racist, anti-Semitic, antifeminist, conspiracy-minded spewing of hate, devolved to I just hate everybody.

One could hardly blame it, though not everybody was at fault. Instead, Tay was exposed to a concerted effort by a small number of people who decided to turn Tay into a hatebot by overloading its learning mechanism with negative words and phrases.

In other words, Tay got trolled.

Trolling can refer to a range of online troublemaking, including posting provocative comments and purposely marring others online experience, and it can include attacks on people as much as on software. The practice of ruining things for others, originally known as griefing in the online gaming world, has become a sadly abundant element of Internet life.

It can be confoundingly mean-spirited. In 2008, someone hacked the support message board of the Epilepsy Foundations website and put in moving images intended to give viewers migraines and seizures.

And it can be scary. In 2015, a feminist critic of stereotypes in video games received online threats of rape and death. On Twitter, the hashtag #GamerGate became a way for participants in the trolling to cheer one another on.

Among gamers, griefing might include repeatedly killing the same player so that the person cant move forward, reversing the play of newer gamers so they dont learn the rules, or messing with other peoples play by blocking their shots or covering oneself with distressing images.

Griefing was a way to have power over other people without any repercussions, since you can create multiple characters in the same game, said Jack Emmert, former CEO of Cryptic Studios, a maker of online games. When there are no repercussions, some people will start to do crazy things.

That was basically acceptable when online communities and games were made up of small groups that understood one anothers behavior, said Ian Bogost, a game designer and professor at Georgia Tech.

Folks who are griefing or trolling feel like they are in a secondary universe that isnt the same as the real world, he said. It was a safe space for them, in which they did horrible things.

The problem is that the Internet is part of the entire world, where those practices have a different force and meaning.

The world was not ready for the explosion of the Internet from a bunch of small communities to something we all use, Bogost said, adding, Theres something about the Internet that makes lots of us go too far  a customer complaint on Twitter usually sounds like the worst thing ever.

That tendency to overdo it became visible as the worst kind of trolling on the Internet about a decade ago, when griefers moved their habits from the gaming world into the larger world. One typical gathering place to plan and launch group attacks was the site 4chan, where anything goes is the norm.

Griefers would go into virtual worlds like Second Life and cause trouble, like blocking imaginary hotel exits so players couldnt move from one place to another, or interrupting sessions in which people were interacting through their virtual characters.

From there, attacking people head-on  though almost always cloaked in anonymity  wasnt a big leap. And so much more on the Internet became like a game, only the score consisted of attention, outrage or approval from like-minded trolls.

In 2012, Time magazine asked readers to vote online for Person of the Year. Thanks to trolls on 4chan, the North Korean leader, Kim Jong Un, began to pull ahead, though the poll was not binding and the magazine eventually chose President Obama.

It was little more than an irreverent stunt. When Kim was disallowed, however, the trolls hacked the site and inserted a code that distorted the results.

Bad habits tend to worsen as those engaged in them get diminishing returns from their efforts and must become more outrageous to be noticed. And so trolling has become broader and more personal.

Anil Dash is an Internet entrepreneur and activist who has been trolled for his outspoken comments about GamerGate. He says trolling still has elements of its gaming roots, amplified by social media, where attention of any sort is viewed as winning.

Online culture rewards engagement with points and likes, and it doesnt differentiate if what you are doing is scathing, he said. Once a target is identified, it becomes a competition to see who can be the most ruthless, and the ones who feel the most powerless will do the most extreme thing just to get noticed and voted up.

Dash, who now sets aside time to monitor whether he is about to be attacked, has also seen personal information put online for others to exploit. This practice creates a sense of perpetual anxiety, he said, since it outlives the attacks.

He has also published essays on how to end abusive online behavior, and he blames the biggest companies for not better policing what people do online.

You can identify people who get a lot of retweets in the middle of these things, he said. They are probably instigators. Bullying is programmatically easy to identify.

Besides Twitter, he said, YouTube comments and some parts of the user-generated news site Reddit could change the environment by using a combination of new algorithms and human editors.

Its enough to make a bot give up, though apparently not Tay. In a blog post after Tays griefing, Peter Lee, vice president of Microsoft Research, vowed to work toward contributing to an Internet that represents the best, not the worst, of humanity.

A spokesman said that artificial intelligence researchers had gone back to the drawing board with other experts from the company, including people from Xbox, who have dealt with griefers for years.
CALVERTON, N.Y.  A test pilot successfully flew a solar-powered prototype aircraft on Friday for a company that envisions manufacturing a fleet of drones to provide aerial Internet service for an estimated 4 billion people worldwide.

The test flight by Luminati Aerospace LLC took place at a former Northrop Grumman defense plant on eastern Long Island that once made military aircraft. Speakers at a ceremony before the flight recalled that Charles Lindberg took off for his historic 1927 solo flight to Paris from an air strip in nearby Nassau County, and others noted that the spacecraft that landed men on the moon was built in the Long Island suburbs east of New York City.

This is a dream come true, Luminati founder and CEO Daniel Preston said. Long Island is known as the Cradle of Aviation, and we want to do our part to keep it here where it belongs.

Pilot Robert Lutz flew the VO-Substrata aircraft for about 20 minutes in the first test flight opened to the public. The white aircraft features wing-mounted solar cells and has a wingspan of about 43 feet. Logos of several companies and other entities involved with its production are plastered on both sides, similar to the sponsor decals on Nascar race cars.

The prototype aircraft allows for a pilot to control it, but eventually Luminati will build drones that can fly at 60,000 feet or more. Luminati hopes to start manufacturing by the end of the year.

Lutz said after his flight that the aircraft is very birdlike.

You know you go up there and you feel like youre in the environment up there with the creatures, he said. Hawks will be circling around, and they kind of flock to you. Its the only aircraft Ive ever flown where I can hear a helicopter next to me. Its a little spooky but pretty cool.

Luminati paid $3.4 million last year to acquire 16.3 acres from the operator of a now-closed skydiving facility on the former Northrop Grumman property, and it announced intentions to develop the next generation of drones at the site. Preston, who holds more than 1,200 patents, formerly founded and operated Atair Aerospace from 2001 to 2008.

He has repeatedly refused to disclose the identity of a tech company that reportedly is involved in the enterprise. Google, Facebook and others tech companies all have been involved with such projects.

He confirmed that, besides private business uses for the drones, the company is interested in supplying aircraft for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance uses.

We view it as our patriotic duty to do so, he said.

He said using technologies combining solar power with wind energy harvesting and using composite materials to make ultra-light, ultra-strong aircraft, the goal is to keep the drones airborne perpetually.

I really cant think of any engineering project today that has a greater social impact than bringing communications for many people in the world that dont have it, he said.
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Tesla Motors, the electric-car maker, said Friday that the suspension system in its Model S luxury car has no safety defects that could have caused a string of breakdowns that have caught the eye of the nations top auto-safety regulator.

In a blog post, Tesla also acknowledged that it has asked customers to sign confidentiality agreements when it has agreed to fix faulty suspensions. But the company said the practice was intended to prevent legal disputes and not aimed at stopping owners from filing complaints with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

The safety agency said Thursday that it had received 33 complaints since October about suspension system problems involving the Model S, Teslas biggest seller. It also said it became aware last month that in exchange for fixing some of the cars, Tesla had asked owners to agree in writing not to talk about the problem or how Tesla resolved it.

The agency called the practice troublesome and warned the company about agreements implying that customers should refrain from relaying safety concerns to regulators.

It said it had informed Tesla that any language implying that drivers should not contact the agency needs to be eliminated.

The safety regulator is examining the Model S suspension  the springs, joints and other components that connect a car to its wheels  for possible defects that could be causing premature failures.

The Palo Alto company said that one of its cars had an abnormal amount of rust on a suspension part, a problem it hasnt seen in any other car.

Tesla said Friday that the Model S with the rust had more than 70,000 miles on it and was caked in dirt when picked up for service.

The company says it has given the safety agency all relevant information.

The battery-powered Model S has a starting price of about $70,000. Tesla has just started offering a sport utility vehicle, the Model X, and is planning to offer a compact car, the Model 3, next year.

The company hopes the Model 3 will become its top seller and says it has already received $1,000 deposits from about 375,000 potential buyers.

The suspension issue with the Model S is the latest sign of quality concerns. The Model X SUV was recalled earlier this year because of a problem with its rear seats.

Teslas first model, the two-seat Roadster, which was produced from 2008-11, also had its problems.

At Teslas annual shareholder meeting last month, CEO Elon Musk acknowledged that the Roadster had been plagued by a number of issues.

This car, even though it met all regulatory requirements, it was completely unsafe, broke down all the time and really didnt work, Musk said.

Two years ago, the safety administration looked into two instances in which Model S cars caught fire. It determined that the fires were caused by road debris striking the vehicles underside, and closed the matter after Tesla agreed to reinforce the shield that protects the battery in the Model S.

In the case of the suspension, Tesla took care of repairs for some customers who complained to the company, on the condition that they agreed in writing not to talk about the issue or how Tesla dealt with it. The agreements, however, stirred up discussion on online bulletin boards.

Dailykanban.com, an auto industry blog, posted excerpts from what it said was an agreement. It said, in part: You agree to keep confidential our provision of the Goodwill, the terms of this agreement and the incidents or claims leading or related to our provision of the Goodwill. Goodwill is the term Tesla used to refer to any repairs or compensation it made because of a suspension failure.

The agreement posted on the blog released Tesla from any liability and barred the car owners from filing legal proceedings against the company.

The company says it has asked customers to sign the Goodwill Agreement when it agrees to fix a problem that wasnt the fault of the car. Those agreements make sure that repairing the car is not used against the company in court, Tesla said. The agreements do not mention the national safety agency, and do not try to stop customers from contacting the government, Tesla said.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Two teenage girls abducted off a street were rescued by police at a North Oakland residence and a woman suspected of being involved in a human-trafficking ring was arrested, authorities said Thursday  a day after a 14-year-old girl was saved from her kidnapper at the same home.

The girls, ages 15 and 16, were found inside a residence at the 1000 block of 65th Street, said Officer Johnna Watson, an Oakland Police spokeswoman.

On Wednesday, the 14-year-old victim was found in the same two-story North Oakland home after police stormed the place and arrested a 21-year-old man on suspicion of kidnapping.

Police on Thursday announced the arrest of a 22-year-old Oakland woman in connection to the incident, but declined to say when she was apprehended and when the two teenagers were rescued.

After recovering the first girl, officers served a search warrant on the 65th Street home, but later said they found no additional victims or suspects inside.

Watson declined to say if police conducted an additional search of the house, or reveal the circumstances that led officers to the other victims.

On Wednesday, a witness alerted police at 9:14 a.m. that a man had grabbed a girl walking on the 1000 block of 65th Street, said Officer Marco Marquez, an Oakland police spokesman. A short time later, police detained the suspect and found one victim safe.

The investigation led officers back to a home near where the teen was taken, and authorities closed off the neighborhood as dozens of officers descended on the area.

Around noon, a small team of officers with guns drawn stormed the home while serving a search warrant. Police searched the house and found it empty, suspecting additional victims may have been held there.

Marquez said Oakland police detectives will be working alongside the Alameda County district attorneys office to investigate Wednesdays kidnappings.

In October, a human trafficking sting conducted by federal, state and local law enforcement from around the Bay Area led to the rescue of six children who had been forced into prostitution and the arrest of eight suspects accused of pimping them out.

Chronicle staff writers Evan Sernoffsky and Kimberly Veklerov contributed to this report.

Jenna Lyons is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: jlyons@sfchronicle.com Twitter: JennaJourno
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A former Oakland police officer, one four under investigation for alleged sexual misconduct while a member of the department, will not face prosecution on a charge of forcible sodomy of a young woman in a Contra Costa County park, officials said Thursday.

A Contra Costa County prosecutor said there was insufficient evidence to charge Terryl Smith with a crime stemming from the Feb. 1 incident involving an 18-year-old woman in Wildcat Canyon Regional Park in Richmond.

The announcement by Paul Graves, who heads the sexual assault unit of the Contra Costa County District Attorneys office, came just hours before a surprise announcement by Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf that Police Chief Sean Whent submitted his resignation.

It was not immediately clear if the ongoing investigation of Smith and three other Oakland police officers on sexual misconduct allegations had anything to do with Whents resignation.

The criminal investigation involving a former Oakland police officer is closed, Officer Johnna Watson, a Police Department spokesman, said without elaborating or mentioning Smith by name.

She added that an administrative investigation into the sexual misconduct allegations lodged against Smith and three other officers will continue.

The four Oakland officers were placed on leave in May as part of the investigation that began following the 2015 suicide of Oakland police Officer Brendan OBrien and the 2014 suicide of that officers wife, Irma Huerta Lopez.

During a May 13 press conference called by Whent and Schaaf, officials revealed that during the investigation of OBriens death, evidence was recovered that lead them to launch an Internal Affairs investigation into allegations of potential sexual misconduct, possibly with an underaged girl. They declined to discuss the evidence.

Smith resigned on May 17 after being placed on leave, said Watson. Another officer being investigated also resigned shortly after being placed on leave.

Watson said she could not discuss whether Smith was still being investigated for additional sexual misconduct allegations.

The Alameda County district attorneys office is also conducting a parallel investigation into the sexual misconduct case.

Jenna Lyons is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: jlyons@sfchronicle.com Twitter: JennaJourno
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Blue Bottle's light roasted Port of Mokha coffee is tasty, which is a relief  it cost me $16.

In San Francisco, where toast now costs more than $4 and a $12 cocktail is on the cheap side, a coffee of this price is making no one flinch. However, as many coffee snobs are saying, it's worth the cost, and not just because it's good.

Yemeni coffee  a luxury in its origin country  had a difficult time getting to the United States. Its transporter, a Yemeni-American man named Mokhtar Alkhanshali who grew up in San Francisco's Tenderloin, went from law school to becoming a licensed Q grader. He now works with coffee bean growers in Yemen  many of whom are women  to help encourage commerce in the country. As he has found, however, moving it from its origin to the U.S. is quite difficult and sometimes, very dangerous.

After a bombing in Yemen, Alkhanshali left the country via a tiny boat, with this $16 coffee in hand.

"Mokhtar traveled in a dinghy across the Red Sea with only two suitcases of coffee, after having been kidnapped and mistaken for a Houthi rebel, to bring the coffee of his Yemeni farmers and brethren to the SCAA (Specialty Coffee Association of America)," as the Blue Bottle website explains.

"It's a miracle this coffee got here the way it did," Alkhanshali told 7x7.

Today, it's buyable at Blue Bottle locations in San Francisco for a high, but perhaps understandable $16. For big coffee fans, the price tag is worth the product, especially because buying it means helping to support the infrastructure of the growing Yemeni coffee economy.

"Yemen has one of the original strains of Geisha coffee," Blue Bottle barista Josh Smith explains as he brews the rare coffee in a glass siphon. "That's where you get the really fruity berry [taste]."

The drink, which comes with a (nearly upstaging) Yemeni-influenced cardamom sesame cookie, will probably be the most expensive coffee you'll ever buy, but it will also likely be the best. It lives up to the hype, at least to me, but that doesn't mean I'll be rushing out soon to buy another one. It's a beautiful drink, but also a one-time drink.

That cookie, on the other hand...

Alyssa Pereira is a staff writer for SFGATE. Follow her here on Twitter.
When youve got dozens of performers and several centuries worth of music to get through in a week, as the organizers of the Berkeley Festival and Exhibition do, theres nothing for it but to stack the concerts in tightly  two, three or even four a day. The result can be as dense as it is rewarding.

This biennial celebration of early music, which runs through Sunday, June 12, under the auspices of the San Francisco Early Music Society, draws on a combination of local artists and visiting luminaries. A concertgoer lucky enough to have chosen Thursday, June 9, to stop in at the festival would have heard superb performances from both camps.

A short predinner recital by the South African fortepianist Kristian Bezuidenhout offered a dazzlingly varied tour through the keyboard music of Mozart, Haydn and C.P.E. Bach. In the evening, violinist Rachel Podger was the guest with the local ensemble Voices of Music for a program of concertos that lent remarkable zest to the works of Vivaldi and J.S. Bach.

And together, these were only a small sample of the lively exploration of Baroque, medieval and Renaissance music that continue to fill the churches and concert halls around the UC Berkeley campus.

If the repertoire on Thursdays programs was more familiar than most, there was nothing remotely routine or expected about the Voices of Music concert in First Congregational Church. The outfit, a nine-member group, led by Hanneke van Proosdij and David Tayler, brought brilliance and clarity to a variety of works.

Bachs E-Major Violin Concerto was as striking for the fluency of the ensemble playing (especially in the slow movement) as for the vivacity of Podgers solo exertions. The Fourth Brandenburg Concerto got a reading both urgent and winningly pastoral, and Vivaldis Violin Concerto in D, Op. 4, No. 11, elicited Podgers most stylish and dramatically focused efforts of the evening.

Yet for sheer crowd-pleasing virtuosity, there was nothing on the program to rival van Proosdijs daredevil race through Vivaldis Concerto in C for sopranino recorder. With its fierce passagework and extravagant display, this concerto (done by modern players on the piccolo) can easily turn into so much shrill tootling in the wrong hands.

But van Proosdij tore through the solo part with a combination of technical bravado and keen musicality that was startling to witness. You dont expect to hear music played this fast, this precisely or this expressively  and certainly not all at the same time.

Bezuidenhout, who joins Podger for a duo recital on Saturday, June 11, seemed intent on making his recital in St. Marks Episcopal Church a showcase for the capabilities of the often overlooked fortepiano. He moved easily through the range of textural and emotional resources available to him, from the plainspoken crispness of Mozarts C-Major Sonata, K. 309, to the dark-hued ferocity of the composers C-Minor Sonata, K. 457.

The afternoons most memorable offering came at the midpoint, with a superb rendition of C.P.E. Bachs Sonata in G, Wq. 55/6. This is the younger Bach at his most daring and unpredictable, moving between brusque outbursts and speculative ruminations, and Bezuidenhout caught every veer and feint of the music.

Joshua Kosman is The San Francisco Chronicles music critic. Email: jkosman@sfchronicle.com Twitter: JoshuaKosman

Berkeley Festival and Exhibition: Through Sunday, June 12. $40. Various Berkeley locations. (510) 528-1725. www.berkeleyfestival.org
WASHINGTON  Hillary Clinton blasted Donald Trump in front of a room of pro-choice advocates Friday, while Trump declared himself a good Christian in a speech targeting evangelicals, as the presidential race shifted to the nations capital.

With the primary contests all-but-over, a series of top Democrats formally announced their support for Clinton, headlined by the glowing endorsement of President Obama on Thursday.

Within hours, Vice President Biden and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren joined that effort, both backing Clinton and signaling to many supporters of her rival, Sen. Bernie Sanders, that its time to unite around the partys presumptive nominee. Clinton and Warren met privately for an hour Friday at Clintons home in Washington, intensifying speculation that the progressive stalwart may be tapped for the vice presidency.

If you really want to electrify the base, youve got to get somebody whos been speaking to the base and is going to turn the base out, said Rep Keith Ellison, D-Minn., one of Sanders top supporters in Congress. He said he and other progressives would be thrilled if Clinton chose Warren for her ticket.

Democrats in Washington are eager to unite their party against Donald Trump and avoid a lingering intraparty spat. Sanders, whos vowed to take his political revolution to their national Democratic convention in July, has been stressing his determination to defeat Trump, perhaps signaling that he may exit the race or at least shift his focus away from Clinton after the final primary election Tuesday in Washington, D.C.

On Friday, he retreated to his home in Burlington, Vt., to plot his next steps.

Clinton, meanwhile, delivered her first speech since becoming the presumptive nominee, addressing advocates at Planned Parenthood, a womens health organization and abortion provider. The nonprofit was a strong champion of Clinton in the primaries, giving her its first endorsement in its100-year history.

Describing Trump as someone who doesnt hold women in high regard, Clinton launched into an unabashedly feminist attack on her GOP rival, arguing he would take the country back to when abortion was illegal, women had far fewer options, and life for too many women and girls was limited.

When Donald Trump says lets make America great again that is code for lets take America backward, she told the cheering audience.

Trump, who has also faced resistance from corners of his party, addressed a gathering of conservative evangelical voters at the Faith & Freedom Coalitions Road to Majority conference not long after Clinton spoke.

Facing criticism for suggesting a judges Mexican heritage is biased him in a case against the now-defunct Trump University, Trump struck a more welcoming tone.

No one should be judged by their race or their color and the color of their skin, he said. Were going to bring our nation together.

Reading mostly from teleprompters, he declared Clinton unfit to be president while vowing to restore faith to its proper mantle in the U.S.
1 Christie victory: The New Jersey Supreme Court delivered a victory Thursday to Gov. Chris Christie and ruled the state does not owe public pensioners cost-of-living payments suspended under a 2011 law. The 6-1 ruling effectively keeps the state from having its unfunded liability increased by about $17.5 billion and is the second significant victory for Christie over public unions on the pension issue. Justice Jaynee LaVecchia, writing for the majority, reversed an appellate courts ruling and said there isnt enough proof that lawmakers intended to create a non-forfeitable right to cost-of-living adjustments.

2 Medical pot: Republican Gov. John Kasich signed a bill Wednesday legalizing medical marijuana in Ohio, though patients shouldnt expect to get it from dispensaries here anytime soon. The bill lays out a number of steps that must happen first to set up the states medical marijuana program, which is expected to be fully operational in about two years. The law would allow patients to use marijuana in vapor form for certain chronic health conditions, but bar them from smoking it or growing it at home. Kasichs signature made Ohio the 25th state to legalize a comprehensive medical marijuana program, according to a count by the National Conference of State Legislatures.
WASHINGTON  A milestone has arrived for President Obama: Daughter Malia graduated from high school Friday.

The 17-year-old received her diploma from the private Sidwell Friends School. Malia Obama was just 10 years old and longing for a promised puppy when her family moved into the White House. During seven years of growing up in the public eye, she has gotten and shed braces, learned to drive and even spent brief stints away from her family.

Presidents are parents, too, and it hasnt been easy for Obama to watch as his daughter  one of my best friends  has grown up fast and in front of the world.

Im not going to talk about the fact that my daughter leaving me is just breaking my heart, he said last week.

Months ago, the president blamed his emotions for declining an invitation to deliver the commencement address at the elite school where Malia is among 127 members of the Class of 2016. Younger sister Sasha, who turned 15 on Friday, attends Sidwell, too.

Whats next? Malia is taking a year for herself before enrolling at Harvard in the fall of 2017.

Neither Obama nor his wife, Michelle, has said what Malia has on tap for her gap year. But delaying the start of college could keep her close to her tight-knit family as it prepares for another big transition next year: the end of Obamas ground-breaking presidency. The Obamas plan to stay in Washington for several years after the president leaves office so Sasha can finish high school.

Both parents often praise Malia and her sister for being normal, happy kids despite living lives that are anything but normal.

Start with calling the White House home. They were the youngest kids to do so since President John F. Kennedys children, Caroline and John Jr., and they were trailed in public by Secret Service agents. Obama has joked that it was comforting to know that when his girls were out and about they were being watched over by men with guns.

The first lady has said her daughter wants to be a filmmaker. Malia has had summer internships on the New York set of HBOs Girls and in Los Angeles on a CBS sci-fi drama, since canceled, that starred Halle Berry.

Malia turns 18 on July 4, in time to cast her first vote for president  and for her fathers successor.
ALEXANDRIA, Va.  Amin al-Baroudi wanted to do the right thing in Syria, but knowing what the right thing is in a quagmire like the Syrian war isnt always easy.

Al-Baroudi, 50, of Irvine admits now that he went astray: In addition to performing humanitarian work, al-Baroudi also sneaked rifle scopes, night-vision goggles and other military gear to rebel fighters seeking to topple the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

The problem, prosecutors say, is that the group Al-Baroudi was helping, Ahrar el-Sham, frequently fights alongside the al Qaeda affiliate in Syria, Jabhat al-Nusra.

On Friday, a judge sentenced al-Baroudi to nearly three years in prison for violating U.S. sanctions in Syria. Al-Baroudi, a naturalized U.S. citizen who was born in Syria, apologized for his conduct at the hearing.

I came to realize theres no right way to do the wrong things, al-Baroudi wrote in a statement that his lawyer, Anthony Capozzolo, read. I simply pray for my old country to exit this crisis and enjoy ... what my family enjoys in this country.

Capozzolo asked the judge for a sentence of probation or to sentence al-Baroudi to the six months time he had already served since his arrest in December. He said al-Baroudi was motivated to act by his own life experience growing up in the town of Hama, where tens of thousands were massacred in 1982 by Assads father, Hafez al-Assad.

Hes not a for-profit mercenary, Capozzolo said. Mr. al-Baroudi was trying to help, although in a fully misguided way.

Prosecutors say al-Baroudi illegally exported the tactical gear to Syria from late 2011 to 2013. In 2013, al-Baroudi realized his actions were under scrutiny when he was stopped from boarding a flight back from Turkey to the United States. After that, al-Baroudi turned his efforts to purely humanitarian work, working with the humanitarian arm of a Syrian opposition coalition.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Julia Martinez did not dispute al-Baroudis good intentions, and said the government took that into account in filing the charges, which allege a violation of sanctions rather than supporting a terrorist group. But she still argued for a sentence of nearly four years, saying his actions were dangerous.
Stanford University reported more than twice as many campus rapes per capita in 2014 than other Bay Area universities, according to the U.S. Department of Education.

Stanford had 26 rape reports, or 1.5 for every 1,000 students, on campus in 2014 (most recent data). A total of 16,963 students attend the university.
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WASHINGTON  The first family will visit Yosemite National Park next week as part of President Obamas effort to burnish his legacy of protecting public lands.

I want to make sure that the whole world is able to pass on to future generations the God-given beauty of this planet," Obama said in a White House video released Thursday with the announcement. The video shows the president, first lady Michelle Obama and daughters Sasha and Malia on past visits to national parks.

The Obamas will make a stop at Carlsbad Caverns National Park in New Mexico on Friday before making their way later in the day to Yosemite, where they plan to stay into Sunday.

In its announcement, the White House noted that Obama has added protection to 256 million acres of public lands and waters, a presidential record. These included naming three new national monuments  Castle Mountain, Sand to Snow and Mojave Trails  in the California desert in January that cover 1.8 million acres, more land than all of Obamas other monument designations combined.

The White House also emphasized Obamas desire to make public lands more accessible to people of different backgrounds and to better reflect the nations ethnic history with such designations as the Cesar Chavez National Monument in Kern County.

Other California monument designations by Obama include the Berryessa Snow Mountain National Monument, across seven counties including Napa and Solano, and the Fort Ord National Monument in Monterey County.

Several of the California designations were made at the request of California lawmakers after years of inaction by Congress.

The first president to visit Yosemite Valley was Rutherford B. Hayes in 1883. President Theodore Roosevelt famously camped there with naturalist John Muir in 1903. William Howard Taft visited in 1909, with Taft Point named in his honor, and Franklin D. Roosevelt, after whom Roosevelt Lake is named, came with his wife, Eleanor, in 1938. The last president to visit was John F. Kennedy in 1962.

The White House said it will announce more details as the visit nears.

Carolyn Lochhead is The San Francisco Chronicles Washington correspondent. Email: clochhead@sfchronicle.com

To see the Obama familys past visits to national parks: http://bit.ly/1UjAzqn
The government of Ukrainian Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman has published its priority action plan for 2016. The 238-page document, accompanied by Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine Resolution No. 418 from May 27, was posted to the Cabinet's official website on Friday.

"Recognizing Cabinet of Ministers Resolution No. 184 from March 16 On Approval of the Priority Action Plan for 2016 as defunct," the new resolution says, referring to the 281-page plan of the previous government led by former Prime Minister Arseniy Yatseniuk.

The government obliged all ministries and agencies before the 5th day of the month to provide the Ministry of Economic Development and Trade with reports on meeting plan priorities. The reports will be included in the full report to the Cabinet by the 10th day of the month.

The government notes that its strategic priorities are: macroeconomic stabilization, creation of favorable conditions for business development, ensuring rule of law and combating corruption, raising the level of state management and government services, restoring state security and raising the welfare of citizens.
RANCHO MIRAGE, Riverside County  Stuart Anderson wasnt a cowboy, but the founder of the Black Angus Steakhouse chain knew how to corral customers.

When he founded the chain in 1964, Anderson offered a big meal for a small price: For $2.99, customers got soup or salad, their choice of steak and a baked potato with all the trimmings.

They were lined up outside the doors, his wife, Helen, said Wednesday.

But the price didnt include dessert. Mr. Anderson wanted heavy volume, and he didnt want folks to linger, she said.

He wanted to get them out of there, she said. That was his whole theory. But he gave them a lot of food for the money.

Mr. Anderson was 93 when he died Monday at his Rancho Mirage home in the Southern California desert. He had lung cancer, his wife said.

Mr. Anderson was born in Tacoma, Wash., but grew up in Seattle. He was a tank driver with Gen. George Pattons Third Army during World War II. Mr. Anderson eventually returned to Seattle after the war, buying an old downtown hotel. State blue laws permitted hotel owners to sell hard liquor, his wife said.

As fast as I could, I installed a small bar in the lobby, Mr. Anderson wrote in his 1997 book, Heres the Beef! My Story of Beef.

Hookers, seamen, hustlers, and wrestlers made up most of my trade, he said.

The hotel had a small restaurant, and that was the part of the business that attracted him, his wife said.

He decided that he didnt like the hotel part, but he loved the restaurant part, she said.

In 1964, he opened the first Black Angus in Seattle. At its peak, the chain had more than 120 outlets around the country.

The chain was sold in 1972, but Mr. Anderson stayed on to run it before retiring in the mid-1980s. The business had its ups and downs, changing hands several times. There currently are about 45 Black Angus Steakhouses, most in California.

For many years, Mr. Anderson and his family had a 2,400-acre working ranch in eastern Washington that raised, among other animals, black Angus cattle. Some were sold for consumption, but they didnt go to the Black Angus chain, Helen Anderson said.

At one time, Mr. Anderson also owned a seafood restaurant in Seattle. In 2010, he took over a defunct Black Angus outlet in Rancho Mirage and turned it into Stuarts Steakhouse.

Stuart thought: Well, we can save all those peoples jobs if we reopen it, his wife said. He was almost 90.

He had a good heart, she said. He always worried about others.

The restaurant closed in 2012.

And while Mr. Anderson liked steak, he never got the hang of cooking it. Or much of anything else.

Im a pretty good cook, she said. The best he could do would be peanut butter sandwiches or frying eggs, if I werent home.
Ukraine's Ministry of Economic Development and Trade and the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) have agreed to cooperate on the issue of remote identification of bank clients, the ministry has reported on its website.

"Deputy Minister Yulia Klymenko and NBU Deputy head Yakov Smolyi signed a memorandum of cooperation on remote identification of bank clients, who wish to receive electronic administrative services via the unified state portal (poslugy.gov.ua)," the post says.

According to the post, the introduction of the NBU BankID system will limit direct contact between citizens and government, as well as provide significant savings in the provision of administrative services.

The NBU's BankID system is working in test mode currently and the project is scheduled to launch during fall 2016.
A strategic investor for State Saving Bank of Ukraine (Oschadbank) and State Export-Import Bank (Ukreximbank) should be attracted as quickly as possible, the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) has said.

"[Banks] will face strengthening of their specialization and a switch to operations based only on the principles of boosting return on invested capital. A strategic investor for Oschadbank and Ukreximbank should be attracted as soon as possible. The state should withdraw from all other banks in the shortest terms," the central bank said in its first financial stability report posted on its website.

According to the document, stress tests conducted by the NBU in 2015 showed that Oschadbank and Ukreximbank would require additional capital in 2017 if no measures aimed at improving profit-making are taken: in late January 2016. The government has additionally capitalized the two banks for the total amount of almost UAH 14.3 billion from the national budget.

The central bank said that by April 2016 six banks with a large state-owned stake in capital were operating in Ukraine (over 85%): Oschadbank, Ukreximbank, Ukrgasbank, Clearing Center, State Land Bank and Ukrainian Bank for Reconstruction and Development.

"Total expenses on additional capitalization of state-run banks in 2008 through Q1 2016 reached UAH 88.5 billion [$8.7 billion at the historic exchange rate]. In addition, spending on servicing government domestic loan bonds used to capitalize the banks reached UAH 37 billion as of late March 2016," the NBU said.

According to the report, plans regarding largest state-run banks declared by the government envisage sale of at least 20% of shares in Oschadbank to an investor by the middle of 2018 and the decision on terms and conditions of gradual joining the bank to the Individuals' Deposit Guarantee Fund starting from 2017.

The government also intends to sell at least 20% of shares in Ukreximbank to an investor by the middle of 2018, sell a state-owned stake in Ukrgasbank by the end of 2017 and withdraw from capital of other banks in 2016.
State-run concern Ukroboronprom has created under its aegis an aircraft construction cluster, called Ukrainian Aircraft Corporation (UAC) and included in it state enterprise Antonov, public joint companies Ukrainian Scientific-Research Institute of Aviation Technology (UKRNIIAT), Mayak Factory (all three  in Kyiv), state enterprises Novator (Khmelnytsky), Kharkhiv Machine Building Factory "FED" and Kharkhiv Aggregate Design Bureau.

"The concern is consolidating the country's aviation building capacity, the foundation of which will be Antonov. UAC is the first example of military industrial consolidation in the country," Ukroboronprom said in a press release on Friday.

The aim of UAC is general planning for serial production, a unified center for the purchase of materials and parts and a joint marketing and sales office. According to the press release, UAC will be significantly expanded and include enterprises with different forms of ownership.

"Ukroboronprom says that international aircraft companies Boeing and Airbus use a similar corporate model.

"We will receive a positive economic effect by merging construction capacities of the corporation members and simplifying redundant administrative services," Ukroboronprom head Roman Romanov is quoted as saying. He adds that the concern will create clusters from all of its enterprises.

Ukroboronprom believes that the aircraft construction cluster will allow its enterprises to cooperate with partners from the private sector, transform Ukraine's aviation sector into a unified powerful mechanism with precise coordination of development, as well to more deeply integrate itself in the work market while at the same time adopting international standards.

State enterprise Antonov said Mykhailo Hvozdev has been appointed UAC head. He worked as Antonov president since June 2015. He was replaced by Antonov Vice President Oleksandr Kotsiuba on June 8, 2015.

According to the state register, UAC (Kyiv) was registered on May 31, 2016. Its founders are public joint companies Mayak (100% state owned) and UKRNIIAT, the beneficiary of which is Heorgiy Krivov.

The management bodies of UAC include the board of the corporation and general director, who is currently Oleksiy Budovytsky.
Four of the eight vaccines that the UN Children's UNICEF Fund (UNICEF) buys using Ukraine's budget funds are to undergo the registration procedure in Ukraine.

The Fund told this to Interfax-Ukraine on Thursday.

According to UNICEF, the Fund will procure the following vaccines: BCG (against tuberculosis), MMR (measles, mumps, rubella), hepatitis B, DPT (pertussis-diphtheria-tetanus), DT (diphtheria-tetanus), a vaccine against tetanus for adults, rabies vaccine and polio vaccine OPV (bivalent) using the 2015 budget funds at the request of the Health Ministry.

Four out of the eight vaccines ordered for UNICEF by the Health Ministry have been registered in Ukraine.

UNICEF noted that the fund does not participate in the registration process, "because only the producer and the Ministry of Health of Ukraine are involved in this process"

"According to the information we know, in accordance with the seven-day simplified procedure of registration, two vaccines have been registered: some days ago rabies vaccine of GSK production was registered along with OPV bivalent vaccine GSK production," the fund reported.

UNICEF reported that "Ukraine needed changes in the Cabinet of Ministers resolution for the supply of OPV, as this vaccine is not included in the original list [vaccines procurement by means of international organizations]. The draft of the necessary changes has been submitted to the Ministry of Health, it was considered by the Ministry of Justice and is being considered by the Ministry of Economics now," the fund said.

According to UNICEF, as of today, the Ministry of Health have already delivered the first batch of MMR vaccine (GSK production) amounted to 277,000 doses, and the first batch of vaccines against hepatitis B (manufactured by LG Life Sciences) in the total amount of 350,000 doses.

"The next delivery is expected by the end of June, and it will be the first of two rabies vaccine supplies," the fund said.

According to UNICEF, in accordance with the seven-day simplified procedure of registration DPT (diphtheria-pertussis-tetanus), vaccine produced by SII (Serum Institute of India, India) was submitted along with DT vaccine (tetanus-difteriya) produced by Biological-E (Hyderabad, India).

UNICEF noted that the delivery schedule published earlier "will be observed in the case of timely registration of vaccines."

"According to international practice of vaccine procurement, which is carried on by the UNICEF Supply and Procuremnt Division in Copenhagen, the average procurement process cycle lasts one year, and on average, countries buy vaccines for two or three years in advance. For example, if a country orders vaccines for 2017, the procurement process should begin no later than the beginning of 2016. Regarding the order of Ukraine, it is executed on a priority accelerated conditions as UNICEF received funding of vaccines procurement ordering for the state immunization program of 2015 only on December 30, 2015, and in April 2016 the first delivery of vaccines (MMR) was brought into action," UN Children's Fund said.

As reported, UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) declared its intentions before the end of July to supply to Ukraine 91,393 doses of rabies vaccine produced by RabipurPCEC. "Chiron Behring Vaccines Private LTD" (India), which acts as the applicant "GlaxoSmithKline Export LTD"(GSK, UK).

As reported, Ukraine's Health Ministry handed over UAH 2.197 billion worth of medicine procurement to three international organizations - the United Nations Children's Fund, UNDP and the British procurement agency Crown Agents.
Separatists' deliberate effort to blind the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission (SMM) in Donbas is intended to conceal from the international community the buildup of combined Russian-separatist forces in eastern Ukraine, U.S. Ambassador to the OSCE Daniel Baer has said.

"Within a single week, combined Russian-separatist forces shot down the SMM's two long-range unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) near Horlivka... Combined Russian-separatist forces also sabotaged OSCE cameras outside of Donetsk, which are critical to monitoring volatile hot spots like the area between Avdiyivka and Yasynuvata, and they have refused to allow the SMM access to fix them. OSCE reporting confirms that combined Russian-separatist forces are responsible for over 80% of the SMM access restrictions, especially in hotspots like Avdiyivka and along Ukraine's border with Russia. This deliberate effort to blind the SMM is intended to conceal from the international community the buildup of combined Russian-separatist forces in eastern Ukraine, the advanced Russian weaponry these forces have in their arsenal, and the military personnel and materiel that regularly cross the border from Russia into Ukraine," Baer said at the OSCE Permanent Council on June 9, according to the press service of the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine.

He added that such "calculated effort is part of a strategy of deception undertaken by the Russian Federation to cover up its ongoing aggression against Ukraine."

"We witness this strategy of deception during each Permanent Council [of the OSCE], when Russia denies it is involved in the conflict despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary and seeks to distract us by blaming Ukraine for the failure to implement the Minsk agreements," the U.S. Ambassador to the OSCE said.

He also stressed that "even the combined Russian-separatist forces' calculated efforts to blind the SMM cannot conceal the scale and sophistication of weapons and equipment flowing into Ukraine from Russia."
Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe again calls on Russia to observe ECHR decision on Yukos

The Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe has again called on Russia to urgently provide a plan of payments on the verdict given by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) to Yukos shareholders, the committee's press service said in a report obtained by Interfax on Thursday.

The document says Russia should observe the payment plan and abide by the ECHR verdicts, including as regards fair damage compensation.

In March 2016, the ECHR already called on the Russian Federation to fully cooperate with it for the purpose of fulfillment of the ECHR decisions on the payment of some EUR 1.9 billion in compensation to former Yukos shareholders.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin has met with Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves, Estonian Parliament Speaker Eiki Nestor and Estonian Minister of Foreign Affairs Marina Kaljurand to discuss a range of issues regarding the occupied territories of Ukraine.

"The sides discussed the situation in the occupied Crimea and some districts in Donetsk and Luhansk regions, the prospects of sending an OSCE police mission, release of Ukrainian political prisoners in Russia, the fulfillment of the Minks agreements, the process of reform implementation in Ukraine, and possibilities of cooperation between the countries," the Foreign Ministry said.

During a press conference to sum up the results of his visit to Estonia, Klimkin thanked the country for providing its support for Ukraine's territorial integrity as well as for its significant humanitarian aid.

Klimkin and his Estonian counterpart visited injured Ukrainian soldiers who are undergoing treatment in Estonia. The ministers wished the servicemen to get well soon.

The foreign minister of Ukraine also thanked Estonia for providing medication necessary for the treatment of Ukrainian soldiers in 2015-2016.

In addition, Klimkin met with representatives of the Ukrainian diaspora in Estonia and gave several interviews to local media.
Ukrainian army positions in Donbas have come under fire 46 times in the past 24 hours, the press center of the Anti-Terrorist Operation (ATO) headquarters wrote on Facebook on Friday morning.

Grenade launchers of different calibers were used against ATO positions near Stanytsia Luhanska, Bohuslavske and Stepne in the Luhansk sector, it said.

Small arms of all kinds and grenade launchers were fired at checkpoints of the Ukrainian Armed Forces near Zaitseve, Mayorsk, Luhanske, Verkhniotoretske and Novoselivka Druha in the Donetsk sector. Mortars were also used near Nevelske, Avdiyivka and Troitske.

Small arms, machineguns, grenade launchers and mortars were used against Ukrainain positions in the vicinity of Krasnohorivka, Maryinka, Taramchuk, Pavlopil and Shyrokyne near the city of Mariupol. Ukrainian positions near Novotroitske twice came under heavy mortar and 152mm artillery fire.

"Ukrainian defenders opened fire on a number of occasions," the ATO HQ said.
SACRAMENTO  Gov. Jerry Brown and legislative leaders reached a budget deal Thursday that gives Democratic lawmakers a long-sought repeal of a controversial limit on welfare benefits and increases the number of subsidized child care slots, while maintaining the governors call for putting $2 billion into the states rainy-day fund, administration sources said.

The deal for the 2016-17 fiscal year puts aside $400 million for affordable housing sought by Democrats once lawmakers agree to language Brown wants to ease building requirements. Brown wants to streamline the review process for housing proposals that meet a citys zoning requirements, but the legislation has been opposed by groups and unions that say it sidesteps the states environmental laws.

Administration sources said cementing the language will be a top priority once the budget is put to bed.

The state Legislature still has to sign off on the deal by June 15, an easier feat than in years past given that Democrats control both houses. Then the deal must be signed by Brown.

The $122 billion budget deal includes most of what Brown sought in his May revised budget.

Over the next two years, Brown will receive $1.3 billion of the $1.5 billion he included in his budget proposal for building two new state office buildings in downtown Sacramento and remodeling a portion of the state Capitol.

Brown had proposed spending $250 million from the general fund for replacing or renovating county jails. Under the budget deal, the state will use $270 million in lease revenue bonds for jail infrastructure. Using the bond money allowed Brown to address lawmakers top priorities without increasing the size of the budget.

Community groups like Fathers and Families of San Joaquin criticized the jail plan, saying the interest on the bonds will impact future budgets and that money would be better served on programs that offer alternatives to incarceration.

Among the top priorities for Democrats is repealing a state law that does not allow for increased welfare payments if a child is born after a family has already been receiving benefits. Called the maximum family grant, the change is expected to cost $110 million in the 2016-17 fiscal year and $240 million annually in upcoming years, a budget source said.

Critics of the cap on welfare payments say it endangers the health of infants born into poverty and intentionally delves into the reproductive decisions of poor women.

The budget deal also includes $100 million for 8,877 additional full-day preschool lots to be phased in over the next four years.

Melody Gutierrez is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: mgutierrez@sfchronicle.com. Twitter: MelodyGutierrez
A robot that swims, with eyes that see and hands that grab, has finished a successful dive in the Mediterranean Sea, and is back now where it was created, in Oussama Khatibs engineering lab at Stanford.

Khatib and his students developed the colorful, 5-foot robot they named OceanOne over the past three years for scientists exploring life in the deep sea. Their idea, he said, was to create a better alternative for researching the many threats to the ocean environment and its biodiversity. While scuba divers are limited to depths of 100 feet or so, OceanOne can go far deeper and stay much longer under the oceans surface.

Khatib, a pioneering roboticist, is a professor of computer science bent on endowing his robots with more sensitivity and artificial intelligence than any mechanical device that engineers have created up to now.

The problem is how you manage to connect the robot to the people, so the robot can do the work while the people have the intuition and the skills to tell the robot what to do, Khatib said. Its unbelievable how complex those issues can be.

Barely a month ago, he and four of his students took the humanoid robot to the French port of Toulon, where it plucked a priceless vase from the hold of an ancient warship that had sunk in 300 feet of water more than three centuries ago. It was OceanOnes maiden voyage.

Using his computer joystick from shore and steering with the robots eight thrusters, Khatib sent the robot down inside the dark hull of the French galleon La Lune, which had sunk in 1664.

In his roomy Stanford laboratory, Khatib had designed tools known as haptic devices that can uncannily enable a robot to transmit its sense of touch to the hands and fingers of the robots controller. So when the robots sides became jammed between the remains of two ancient seaweed-encrusted cannon inside the drowned ship, Khatib sensed it, and with his joystick, helped the robot free itself.

Its almost like you are there in the sea, Khatib said. You created a new dimension of perception.

In a climax to the dive, and in the dim watery light, OceanOnes stereoscopic eyes found the ancient two-handled Catalan vase. With one of its two three-fingered hands, the robot grasped the vase delicately and returned it unscathed to the surface and into Khatibs hands.

The vase is now bound for a French museum.

Khatibs work has partial support from Saudi Arabias King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, known as KAUS, where Red Sea researchers are studying the ecology of the areas deep-sea reefs, where vegetation and corals grow beyond the reach of scuba-diving scientists, and submersibles are too inflexible to use.

Christian R. Voolstra, a specialist in coral genetics at the university, said in an email that he and his colleagues are planning to send OceanOne on deep dives this fall and winter to unexplored coral areas in the Red Sea.

Khatib is convinced that the remarkable sensitivity of robots like OceanOne will prove invaluable in many ways. They could go where miners cannot, to repair air pumps in deep mine shafts, for example; they could report on catastrophic damage inside nuclear reactors, as in Fukushima; they could find and even repair damage to sunken oil pipelines and drilling platforms in the deep seas, he believes.

In San Francisco, Luiz Rocha, curator of ichthyology at the California Academy of Sciences, is a deep diver who ventures down to the risky 500-foot level with rebreather equipment. He often works with scientists at KAUS, the Saudi Arabian university, and has led many research expeditions into the Red Seas reefs where unknown fish species abound.

That robot would be a lot more capable than divers, Rocha said, even if the noise of their propellers is not so good for fishes. Diving at depth you have only a few minutes on the bottom, but a robot collecting other organisms could take all the time it needed.

David Perlman is The San Francisco Chronicles science editor. Email: dperlman@sfchronicle.com
BEIRUT  After nearly four years of siege, first food deliveries have reached the Damascus rebel suburb of Daraya but government air strikes were holding up the distribution of the aid Friday, opposition activists said.

In northern Syria, Kurdish-led opposition fighters besieged the Islamic State-held town of Manbij on Friday in the climax to a Western-backed offensive that could see a major strategic victory in the region against the militant group.

If the U.S.-backed Syria Democratic Forces captures Manbij, it will be the biggest strategic defeat for Islamic State in Syria since July 2015, when it lost the border town of Tal Abyad, a major supply route to the militants de facto capital of Raqqa.

The Damascus suburb of Daraya, just southwest of the Syrian capital, has been under siege by government forces since November 2012 and has witnessed some of the worst bombardment during the countrys civil war, now in its sixth year. Severe cases of malnutrition have been reported among its few thousand residents due to severe shortages of food and medicine.

Convoys organized by the Syrian Arab Red Crescent and the United Nations delivered the food from late Thursday into early hours of Friday, after the U.N. said the Syrian government had approved access to 15 of the 19 besieged areas within Syria.

SARC said the food delivery was coordinated with the U.N. in the Syrian capital. It said food, flour and medical supplies were delivered. The aid was placed in storage and activists and local council members were to deliver it during the day.

The U.N. estimates that 592,700 people are living under siege in Syria, with the vast majority of them  about 452,700  besieged by government forces.

The U.N. estimates that 4,000 to 8,000 people live in Daraya, which has been subject to a crippling government blockade since residents expelled security forces in the early stages of the 2011 uprising against President Bashar Assad.

This delivery was successful but the U.N. continues to call for unconditional, unimpeded, and sustained humanitarian access to all people in need throughout Syria, it said, adding that there are 4.6 million people currently living in hard-to-reach and besieged areas.
JERUSALEM  Israel imposed travel restrictions Thursday on tens of thousands of Palestinians and sent hundreds of additional troops into the West Bank in response to a deadly shooting at a popular Tel Aviv tourist spot. But as the nations leaders vowed tough responses, they stopped short of taking wider-scale military action.

The attack has presented Israels newly configured Cabinet, and its firebrand new defense minister, with its first big test. A relatively muted response by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahus Security Cabinet reflected the lack of options that Israel seems to have as it grapples with a nine-month wave of violence.

The shooting, carried out by two West Bank Palestinians, was among the deadliest and most brazen attacks since violence erupted last September. Tel Avivs Sarona district, a popular shopping and restaurant area, was packed with people enjoying a warm evening outdoors when it was targeted late Wednesday. Four people were killed.

Police identified the victims as Michael Feige, a 58-year-old sociologist and anthropologist at Ben-Gurion University, and Ido Ben Ari, a 42-year-old veteran of an elite army unit who was an executive at the Coca-Cola Co.'s Israel branch. Two other slain victims were identified as Ilana Naveh, 39, and Mila Misheiv, 32.

After Thursdays Security Cabinet meeting, Netanyahu went to the site of the attack and said Israel would prevail in its struggle against Palestinian militants.

This nation is strong. They will not defeat us, he said, accusing Palestinian leaders of failing to condemn the attack. That just reminds us who and what we face. We will win.

Netanyahu has repeatedly blamed Palestinian incitement for fueling the ongoing violence. The Palestinians say the fighting stems from frustration over nearly 50 years of Israeli military occupation.

In the West Bank, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas issued a statement condemning violence, but made no direct reference to the Tel Aviv shootings.

The presidency has repeatedly emphasized that it stands against attacks on civilians, regardless of their sources or justifications, the statement said.

The attackers were identified as cousins from Yatta, a West Bank village near the city of Hebron.

In Yatta, Ahmad Mussa Mahmara, the father of one of the attackers, said his son has two uncles serving life sentences in an Israeli prison. He said his son had no political affiliation.
BANGKOK  Thailands King Bhumibol Adulyadej, the worlds longest-reigning monarch, on Thursday marked his 70th year on the throne  from his hospital bed, immobile and racked by a variety of age-related ailments that have made Thais wonder what their world would be like without him.

There was a time when Bhumibol (pronounced Poo-me-pon) would lead his aides on treks through swamps and over mountains to learn what was on the minds of his subjects in the most far-flung areas of his realm. But the 88-year-old guest of honor is unlikely to make a public appearance this week.

For most of the past decade the king has lived in a hospital  in a new wing built for him for treatment of various problems, according to regular palace statements on his health. The ailments have sapped his strength and taken him gradually out of the public eye. On Tuesday, he underwent an operation to clear an artery; doctors said the results were satisfactory.

I really cant think about the country without the king ... its just impossible to do so, said Nonthawit Kanlapanayut, a 23-year-old trader at Thailands biggest food processing conglomerate. The monarchy is at the core for Thai people.

This years 70th anniversary will not go unmarked. On Thursday morning, 770 monks were ordained during religious ceremonies at a newly built throne hall in the palace temple complex, and fireworks will accompany a candlelight gathering near the ceremonial Grand Palace.

Bhumibol took the throne in 1946 as a teenage boy under difficult circumstances: His 20-year-old brother, King Ananda, had been shot dead in his palace bedroom.

The absolute monarchy had been ended by an army coup in 1932, leading to a series of military dictatorships. Old royalists slowly but successfully helped the young Bhumibol regain power and influence for the monarchy.

Their efforts were aided in no small part by the kings charisma, rectitude and genuine devotion to seeing his nation develop. Admirers and critics alike credit the king with steering the nation through the turbulent decades of the 1960s and 70s, when neighboring countries fell prey to war and totalitarian rule.

Being king for so long is an accomplishment, Thai studies scholar Kevin Hewison wrote recently. He noted that the monarchy was in poor political and economic shape when Bhumibol took over, but he and advisers were able to make it great again, not to say wealthy, politically powerful and part of the what the elite likes to think is the fabric of Thai society.
Legal Pot Could Save Medicaid

Duke Rodriguez, a former Human Services Department secretary in the Gary Johnson administration and owner of a shared management company that oversees one of the states medical cannabis dispensaries, is proposing

in New Mexico to offset Medicaid budget shortages.

Congress Debates Racist Term

Uriel Garcia reports, U.S. Rep. Ben Ray Lujan, D-Santa Fe, joined a group of Hispanic Democrats on Thursday in a

who want the Library of Congress to use the term 'illegal aliens' when referring to undocumented immigrants.

Hostile Environment

More than two dozen charter schools across the state accused the Public Education Department of directing '

toward several state-authorized charter schools, reports Joey Peters.

Nursing Home Lawsuit Moves Forward

The Las Cruces Sun-News reports that District Judge Sarah Singleton has dismissed attempts by lawyers for one of the nation's largest nursing home chains to toss a lawsuit filed by New Mexico's attorney general over

Dunn Opposed BLM's Proposed Rules

Commissioner of Public Lands Aubrey Dunn says after studying the economics and regulations, hes

to BLMs proposed new oil and gas venting and flaring rules.

Obama to Visit Caverns

President Barack Obama

next weekend to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the National Parks Service.

Two House Races Too Close to Call

Dan Boyds got the latest on two close legislative primary races that appear to be

Meanwhile, KOB reports a political action committee tied to Gov. Susana Martinez

, a southern New Mexico rancher accused of mistreating juveniles in his custody.

Beloved Zoo Tiger Put to Sleep

On Thursday, the Albuquerque BioPark announced the death of Scout,

. The big cat had been in the Duke City since it was a cub.

Santa Fe Reporter
If you watched election returns in Santa Fe County Tuesday evening, you probably stayed up pretty late. It took more than an hour after polls closed for the public to see partial results, and for many races, final results didn't come in until after 11 pm.

The delays here marked a sharp contrast to elections in other parts of New Mexico. Neighboring counties, including Bernalillo, posted partial results minutes after the last voters ticked off their ballots.

Early votes and absentee ballots played a big role in the wait. According to Santa Fe County Clerk Geraldine Salazar, election workers uploaded 11,662 early voting and 1,129 absentee paper ballots prior to entering primary day results to the secretary of states system.

Steve Fresquez, chief deputy of the Bureau of Elections, says part of the holdup stemmed from hand-delivering a memory card containing early voting results from a warehouse in the southeastern part of the city to the clerks office downtown. Fresquez says the first results werent uploaded until about 8:30 pm.

Bernalillo County Clerk Maggie Toulouse Oliver says her election workers processed most of the county's 9,886 absentee ballots before election day. They also uploaded 48,106 early voting results into the reporting system by Tuesday afternoon.

Wed rather start early and finish early, rather than start late and finish late, Oliver tells SFR.

When asked whether the clerks office received complaints about late results, Salazar replies, The only people discussing that are reporters. Because everyone who knows what it takes to run an election, they know there are many details involved with this.

She adds, We dont have an enormous staff. We had an employee retire recently. My staff pulled together and got the job done. The most important thing is everything got done.

Voters try to find their polling station after going to the wrong location. (Steven Hsieh)

Santa Fe County also differs from larger jurisdictions in that it still uses an older method for signing in voters. The way our system works right now, registered voters must cast their ballot at their assigned polling station, which is tied to the precinct in which they live. If someone shows up at the wrong station, tough luck; ballots may only be cast in the designated spot.

On primary day, SFR encountered several voters who attempted to vote at the wrong polling station, only to be redirected to another location.

It doesnt have to be that way. Bernalillo, Sandoval and Dona Ana counties all use something called voter convenience centers, which allows any registered voter to vote at any polling station.

The county hopes to transition to the more contemporary method by 2018, according to Salazar.

"It's much easier," she says. "We would love it."

Salazar says she paid close attention when the city of Santa Fe tried voting centers for its March municipal elections. The city consolidated 33 precinct-specific stations to twelve centers, where anyone could go. While the system didnt seem to increase voter turnout, city clerk Yolanda Vigil reported that for that election, her office received fewer calls from residents unsure of where to vote.

As poll workers at voter convenience centers use the internet to look up voter registration records, one hurdle for Santa Fe could be poorer network connections near the north and south county boundaries. Salazar says that's one big reason why the county has not made such a switch yet. Voters using both the convenience center and the precinct model still use paper ballots.

One option around problems posed by internet connectivity issues could be a hybrid system, wherein the county uses both voter centers closer to the city and precinct-based polling stations in rural areas, according to Kenneth Ortiz, spokesman for Secretary of State Brad Winter.

If county commissioners approve that plan, local dollars won't be funding any new equipment. The New Mexico secretary of state is required to provide counties with all the resources for running elections.

Santa Fe Reporter
WSJ: EU countries put off decision on visa-free travel for Ukraine to September at the earliest

Ukraine, Georgia and Kosovo's visa-free access to the European Union has been delayed until September and the EU's biggest member states raise new concerns, pushing approval to September at the earliest, according to The Wall Street Journal (WSJ).

"EU officials and diplomats now say that September appears to be the earliest date that EU governments and the European Parliament could sign off the agreements," The WSJ wrote with reference to European sources.

The deal would give millions of citizens from these countries who hold biometric passports visa-free access to the border-free Schengen zone covering most EU nations. The U.K. and Ireland are outside Schengen.

"The issues range from German concerns about organized crime by Georgian gangs to worries in France that the visa deals could create new security vulnerabilities at a time of heightened terror fears," reads the article.

On Wednesday, Berlin asked the commission to report on Georgian crime gangs across the bloc, according to people familiar with the discussions.

Other countries have also slowed down approval. Italy and France have said a decision should await the approval of new rules which will make it easier to suspend visa-free regimes in case of abuse. The European Parliament is only expected to formally back the changes in September.

"Diplomats say there are some EU governments who want to hold up any decisions on Georgia, Ukraine and Kosovo until they consider Turkeys visa-free application," The WSJ wrote.
Google New Zealand, the local unit of the global search engine, received less revenue from its parent and related companies in 2015 as the Project Loon broadband pilot project was scaled back from 2014, even though it continued to dominate the country's online advertising.

The local subsidiary of Alphabet Inc, Google's global holding company, reported a loss of $601,463 in calendar 2015 on revenue of $10.7 million, compared to a profit of $160,253 on revenue of $14.9 million in 2014, financial statements filed with the Companies Office show. Google NZ charges its parent and related companies for market and research and development services, which was bolstered in 2014 by Project Loon - a pilot programme using balloons in the stratosphere aimed at providing rural areas with broadband access.

Google NZ's directors said the reduction of New Zealand activity in Project Loon "returned the results of the company to levels comparable with activities prior to the Loon project." The local company posted a loss of $60,389 on revenue of $10.1 million in 2013.

The $10.7 million of revenue attributed to the local entity in the latest year is about one-sixth of the $67.4 million in annual ad revenue Google generates in New Zealand but recognises in an offshore subsidiary. The ad sales amount to 37 percent of the local digital advertising market, making it the biggest participant at twice the size of second-ranked Facebook, according to Standard Media Index booking data as at April 4.

PwC estimates the annual value of New Zealand's internet advertising market will grow to $1.58 billion by 2020 from $828 million in 2015. More than half of that revenue is generated by paid searches, of which Google is responsible for 90 percent. The accounting firm estimates paid search ad revenue will be worth $897 million by 2020.

"With the rise of mobile, digital ads offer marketers the opportunity to reach people at precisely the moment when they are trying to get something done," a Google spokesman said in an emailed statement. "We've seen advertisers in New Zealand and across the world experiment with new online formats to tell their story in more creative and entertaining ways."

Despite the fall in billings to related companies, Google NZ boosted spending on employees to $5 million in 2015 from $4.6 million a year earlier and more than doubled its spending on advertising and promotions to $1.1 million. Its facilities expense also rose 14 percent to $1.1 million as the local entity signed up to a new lease, entering into its biggest capital commitment since it incorporated in 2006.

Google NZ faces minimum lease payments of $771,411 within a year, and a further $363,840 between one and five years.

The directors' report at the front of the statements also broke out the company's profit/loss and current tax expense for a second year, showing Google NZ's current tax expense fell to $251,018 in 2015 from $371,799 a year earlier, though up from $213,597 in 2013.

Google is one of several multinational firm criticised for using complicated structures to minimise their tax bill, something developed nations hope to clamp down on through the OECD's base erosion and profit shifting project.

BusinessDesk.co.nz

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There are mixed views on whether Air New Zealand is likely to pay shareholders a special dividend following the sale of a 19.98 percent stake in Virgin Australia to Chinese conglomerate Nanshan Group for about A$268 million.

The deal announced to the New Zealand Stock Exchange this morning has seen the airlines share price rise 3.7 percent to $2.25 in todays trading.

The Auckland-based carrier said it will sell the stake in Virgin, Australias second-largest domestic airline, at 33 Australian cents per share, a premium to Virgins last traded price on the ASX of 28 Australian cents. Its also a premium to the 30 Australian cents paid in a share placement last week by fellow Chinese group HNA for a 13 percent stake in Virgin.

Keeping the stake below 20 percent prevents the triggering of regulatory approvals required under Australian law.

The Sydney Morning Herald has reported Air New Zealand is expected to use the sale proceeds to pay a special dividend to its shareholders, which include the government with a 53 percent stake.

But Deutsche Bank analysts say with Air New Zealand still having $2.3 billion of new aircraft expenditure to fund through to 2019, they wouldnt be surprised to see the board adopt a cautious approach to capital management for now. The divestment will reduce Air New Zealands debt gearing levels by around 4 basis points, they said. Reported gearing was 53.8 percent in the first quarter of 2016, which is near the top of its 45-55 percent target range with capital expenditure skewed to the first half.

Air New Zealand said it had no comment to make on a special dividend payment.

The Deutsche Bank analysts said accounting-wise, they expected material mark-to-market losses on disposal of Air New Zealands full stake, which had a carrying value on its books of around $400 million in the first quarter of this year.

The sale to Nanshan is likely to occur after Virgins A$159 million equity placement to HNA Group which will dilute Air New Zealands 25.9 percent stake to 22.5 percent. That means it will have a residual 2.5 percent shareholding in Virgin following the Nanshan sale which Air New Zealand chairman Tony Carter said would be considered in due course.

Nanshan is a privately-owned Chinese conglomerate which owns a small Chinese airline, Qingdao Airlines, launched in 2014.

Both the share placement to HNA and the sale to Nanshan are subject to Chinese regulatory approval.

Air New Zealand announced in March it was considering selling its Virgin stake which it has spent an estimated A$373 million building up and maintaining since 2011. Carter said the sale will allow Air New Zealand to focus on its own growth opportunities, while still continuing its long-standing alliance with Virgin Australia on the trans-Tasman network.

Deutsche Bank said the HNA Group placement highlighted the risk of incoming cornerstone investors coming in through new equity which benefits them and Virgin rather than buying Air New Zealands stake, so this sale at a tidy premium to market price is a good outcome. Virgin Australia is expected to proceed with a capital raising of up to A$800 million as early as this month.

The outcome indicates a takeover for Virgin may not be forthcoming, especially now so many airlines hold cornerstone/blocking shareholdings. Other investors include Singapore Airlines, Etihad Airways, and Richard Brandons Virgin Group.

BusinessDesk.co.nz

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Fonterra Cooperative Group says it will consider amending constitutional changes that would allow it to shrink its board and adopt a new system for electing farmer directors after failing to win support for the measures at a special meeting of shareholders.

The world's biggest dairy exporter said 63.74 percent of votes were cast in favour of the proposed changes to Fonterras constitution and Shareholders Council by-laws at the meeting in Hamilton, short of the 75 percent support required.

The board and council "will consider adjustments to the recommendations on the cooperatives governance and representation model with a view to bringing a revised proposal back to farmer shareholders before the end of the year," chairman John Wilson said after the vote. We owe it to our farmers and to New Zealand to move this cooperative forward by developing a model that gets the best possible talent onto the board in the future. I am confident we can develop a solution which secures a mandate, he said.

Some farmers have lobbied for a smaller board and the proposal put to the vote today would have resulted in seven farmer directors and four independents, compared to the nine farmers and four independents currently. The chair is elected by the board and would remain a farmer director. The new voting process for farmer directors would have ditched the single transferable voting system, which has been criticised for politicising elections, in favour of a nominations committee putting forward candidates who would need at least 50 percent support to join the board.

Wilson said while the vote failed it showed there was support for change.

"We asked our farmers to consider significant changes to the process for electing directors," he said. "A strong majority, almost two-thirds of our farmers, voted in favour of the recommendation. They want a system that gets the most knowledgeable and skilled candidates on to the board; and a process that encourages diversity and sees our most capable farmer shareholders put themselves forward."

A majority of Fonterras farmer shareholders supported a proposal from fellow shareholders and former directors Colin Armer and Greg Gent to reduce the board to nine at the annual meeting last October but that vote also fell short of the 75 percent needed, including a requirement for 50 percent support of the Shareholders Council.

BusinessDesk.co.nz

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EPIC Giving Challenge kicks off at Shaw

Shaw University recently announced it has been awarded a $200,000 grant from the A.J. Fletcher Foundation. The challenge grant requires the university to raise matching funds from new donors in order to receive the award. Proof that Shaw University loves a challenge; the university has launched a comprehensive year-end campaign aimed at raising the matching funds.



"We are so honored to have received this grant from the A.J. Fletcher Foundation," said Tashni-Ann Dubroy, Shaw Universitys President. "We value our partnership with the Foundation and were so grateful that it shares our vision on the importance of enhancing the lives of young people by providing them with a quality education," said Dubroy.



Since June 1, the Universitys Office of Institutional Advancement has been executing the strategy aimed at raising the matching funds. A direct mailing campaign and a phone-a-thon has engaged students, faculty, staff, and alumni volunteers to man telephone a telephone call center and make calls appealing to prospective donors to contribute.



"Shaw University is always up to a good challenge," said Clarenda Stanley-Anderson, Vice President for Institutional Advancement at Shaw. "While the University historically implements year-end appeals to raise money, news of the challenge grant from the A.J. Fletcher Foundation has created a new opportunity that instills energy and excitement at the thought of collectively pursuing a fundraising goal," said Stanley-Anderson.



Matthew Hodge is a senior at Shaw University. He is one of several students hired to call donors in the Bazemore Room of historic Estey Hall.

Even though I love people, I was a little nervous about calling them on the phone, said Hodge. After a few days of calling, I love making appeals on behalf of my university. I especially enjoy talking to elderly alums who attended Shaw years ago. They always have great stories about their time here and are willing to share, said Hodge.I was sitting at my apartment with nothing to do this summer before I got the call to serve my university as a student caller, said Telamesha Barlow, a junior from Emporia, Virginia. "I was lucky to speak with a donor from my hometown. I didnt know him initially, but by the time we finished our phone conversation, I felt like we were the best of friends, and he donated $2,000 to Shaw," said Barlow.Both Dubroy and Stanley-Anderson, themselves nightly volunteers in the call center, have no doubt the University will surpass its fundraising goal. When matched, Shaw will receive the $200,000 to be used for student scholarships, and to support academic programs and facility enhancements."This is an EPIC time for our donors to accept the EPIC Challenge," said Dubroy. "We know we can count on our Shaw family and supporters to reach our goal," said Stanley-Anderson.
Ukrainian Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman has met with the state secretaries of German federal ministries to discuss deeper cooperation between the countries, the process of reform implementation in Ukraine, and visa liberalization prospects, the information and public relations department of the Secretariat of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine said.

The head of the Ukrainian government stated that the country has fulfilled all requirements of the Action Plan on Visa Liberalization with the European Union and is waiting for a relevant decision from the EU.

Groysman stressed that cooperation between Ukraine and Germany should be deeper and that German-Ukrainian chamber of commerce and industry should be established as soon as possible.

The Ukrainian prime minister also talked about the ways and priorities of reform implementation in Ukraine.

Groysman also spoke about the decentralization reform in the country.

"We have conducted financial decentralization and provided local authorities with a maximum of powers. We have one more important task  forming a self-sustaining community. This is a very important challenge today," he said.

The prime minister said Ukraine's government has introduced the market price of gas and expressed the hope for deeper cooperation with Germany in the energy sphere. Groysman added that the government is focused on the infrastructure and road system development.

The sides discussed the fulfillment of the Minsk agreements and prolongation of sanctions against Russia. Groysman also informed the state secretaries about the situation in Donbas.

In turn, the German side expressed its readiness to continue and develop cooperation with Ukraine. The state secretaries of German federal ministries stressed the importance of reforms in Ukraine and the necessity to implement the Minsk agreements and restore Ukraine's territorial integrity.

Groysman thanked Germany for its support for Ukraine and added that he would visit Germany on June 27 at the invitation of German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
Members of the Trilateral Contact Group for the Donbas settlement process convened for a Skype meeting at about 11 a.m. on Friday, said Darya Olifer, press secretary of Ukrainian representative to the Trilateral Contact Group, second Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma.

"Trilateral Contact Group members have begun a Skype meeting. The subject is the increased number of shelling incidents in Donbas," Olifer wrote on Facebook.
No Ukrainian servicemen were killed, however, four soldiers of the Armed Forces of Ukraine were injured in the anti-terrorist operation (ATO) in Donbas in the past 24 hours, the Ukrainian presidential administration's spokesman Andriy Lysenko said.

"Fortunately, no Ukrainian troops were killed in the past 24 hours; however, four Ukrainian servicemen were injured," Lysenko said at a press briefing in Kyiv on Friday.
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has said that Ukraine and Germany would open a joint chamber of commerce and industry in autumn 2016.

According to the presidential press service, during a meeting with the state secretaries of German federal ministries, who arrived in Ukraine as part of the German government's mission to provide Ukraine with assistance in reform implementation, Poroshenko thanked Germany for its financial and technical aid to Ukraine.

"The head of state called on German businesses to use benefits from the EU-Ukraine free trade area envisaged by the Association Agreement more actively. He noted that Ukraine takes interest in the strengthening of Germany's economic and investment presence and expressed the hope that bilateral trade relations would extend," reads the statement.

The president also stressed that the chamber of commerce and industry of Ukraine and Germany, which is due to open in autumn 2016, would become an important tool for the strengthening of cooperation between the countries.
Members of the Trilateral Contact Group, which held a videoconference on Friday, have instructed the Joint Center for Control and Coordination (JCCC) and the Special Monitoring Mission of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE SMM) to jointly investigate all ceasefire violations in the east of Ukraine, Darka Olifer, press secretary of Ukraine's representative to the Contact Group Leonid Kuchma, said.

"In response to the increased number of ceasefire violations, the Trilateral Contact Group, acting by mutual agreement, held a session in the format of a videoconference involving representatives of certain districts of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions. Following it, the JCCC and the OSCE SMM were instructed to jointly investigate all such instances and present their report at a meeting in Minsk on June 15," Olifer said on Facebook on Friday.
WASHINGTON: Describing the just concluded US visit of Prime MinisterNarendra Modi as "historic", the Obama administration has christened his vision of Indo-US ties that has overcome the "hesitations of history" and working for the betterment of the global good as "Modi Doctrine".



"The most important outcome in my mind of the visit this week and of the years of effort that preceded it is the clear and compelling vision that was laid out by Prime Minister Modi before joint session of the US Congress," Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asia Nisha Desai Biswal said.



"This vision which I have come to call The Modi Doctrine laid out a foreign policy that overcomes the hesitations of history and embraces the convergence between our two countries and our shared interests," Biswal told a Washington audience.



Biswal, the Obama Administration's point person for South and Central Asia, said this at a discussion on 'Security and Strategic Outcomes from the Modi Visit' organised yesterday in Washington jointly by the Heritage Foundation -- an American think- tank -- and India Foundation, a New Delhi based think-tank.



Modi, she said, in his speech furthered his bold vision of India-US partnership that can anchor peace, prosperity and stability from Asia to Africa, from the Indian Ocean to the Pacific and help ensure the security of the sea lanes of commerce and freedom of navigation on the seas.



"This Modi Doctrine notes that the absence of an agreed security architecture creates uncertainty in Asia and reiterates India's adherence to and calls for others support for international laws and norms," Biswal said.



India, she said, is now key element of Obama Administration's rebalance to Asia, a strategy which recognizes that America's security and prosperity increasingly depend on the security and prosperity of the Indo-Pacific.



"The joint strategic vision which was issued last year laid out our mutual goals and interests in the Indo-Pacific and across the global commons. We are now implementing a road map that sets out a path of co-operation to achieve those goals and protect those interests," Biswal said.



In his remarks, US Ambassador to India Richard Verma said the US welcomes and shares the Prime Minister's vision.



"We have made a clear and strategic choice to support India's transition to become, as Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar has articulated, a leading power. Our actions, as security partners in every sense of the word, speak to this endeavor," he said.



"We envision India as a leading power that can uphold international norms and support what Defence Secretary Carter called last week a 'principled security network' in Asia. A leading power that can grow its economy while at the same time demonstrating global leadership on clean energy and climate," he said.



"And a leading power that joins like minded partners to safeguard the global commons. Realising this vision will require diligent work on part of the bureaucracies in both Washington and Delhi and resilience to overcome obstacles that may arise," Verma said.



Indian Ambassador to the US Arun K Singh described the Prime Minister's visit as "historic".



"There is a need step-by-step to build confidence and to build the habit of working together. That calls for regular meetings including at the highest levels," Singh said.



On the political side, he said: "We are finding that even though we may not agree on every aspect there is an increasing convergence in our interest and assessment of issues."



In the Prime Minister's speech to the Congress there was a reflection of the fact that this growing convergence is in the interest of India and the US. The areas of convergence are in the field of terrorism, situation in the Indian Ocean, Asia Pacific region, cyber issues.



Singh said the two countries have recognised that clean energy would be an important area of partnership.



These remarks were followed by a panel discussion by G Parthasarthy, former Indian diplomat, Baijayant Panda, Member of Parliament; Vice Admiral (rtd) Shekhar Sinha; Sadanand Dhume, resident fellow, American Enterprise Institute and Ashley J Tellis, from Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.



Panda said some senior people from the US State Department have described Prime Minister's speech and his vision of India-US relationship as 'Modi doctrine'.



"This is not a coinage from the Indian side. This is a coinage from the American side, which I think is a very important way to describe it. So clearly it is historic shifting of gears," he said.

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WASHINGTON: The US President Barack Obama today endorsed Hillary Clinton as the Democratic party's presidential nominee, praising his former secretary of state's experience and grit, even as a subdued Bernie Sanders vowed to foster party unity to take on Republican nominee Donald Trump.

"I don't think there's ever been someone so qualified to hold this office. She's got the courage, the compassion, and the heart to get the job done... I have seen her judgement," Obama said in an email and a web video circulated by the Clinton campaign.

"I've seen her toughness. I've seen her commitment to our values up close. And I've seen her determination to give every American a fair shot at opportunity, no matter how tough the fight  that's what's always driven her, and still does," Obama said.

The Clinton campaign also announced their first joint appearance with Obama on the campaign trail next week in Green Bay, Wisconsin.

Obama's endorsement of Clinton came moments after he met Senator Sanders of Vermont at the White House.

Although, Sanders stopped short of endorsing Clinton, but he vowed to work with Clinton to defeat Trump.

Needless to say, I am going to do everything in my power and I will work as hard as I can to make sure that Trump does not become president of the United States," he said.

Clinton has reached the magical figure of having enough delegates to clinch the nomination of the Democratic Party.

Sanders, however, refused to end his presidential campaign.

"I will, of course, be competing in the DC Primary which will be held next Tuesday. This is the last primary of the Democratic nominating process," he said.

But he did indicate that he is looking forward to working with Clinton to defeat Trump.

"I look forward to meeting with her in the near future to see how we can work together to defeat Trump and create a government which represents all of us and not just the one percent," Sanders said.

Read Also: Clinton Creates History, Becomes First Woman Prez Nominee

U.S. Names India As Major Defence Partner

Source: PTI
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- Mary Campbell is giving hunger in New York City the artist's touch.

The Staten Island artist has embarked on a project that will turn canned food into a large "mandala" installation -- a mandala is a pattern representing the universe. She'll then donate the cans to local food pantries.

Leading up to the big reveal, on Saturday, there will be a reception and art show centered around Campbell's project at Everything Goes Cafe.

From 6 to 7 p.m., Meg Graham will lead the crowd through guided mandala making. From 7 to 8 p.m., audience members can view Dada images and video. And at 8 p.m., there will be a performance and video by Day de Dada performance Art Collective.

Throughout the night, there will be a show of mandalas sent through the mail, contributions as part of the Food Can Mandala Project. All for sale, profits going to local food pantries to increase their food stock. Exhibit and sales until June 26.

The final "Food Can Mandala Project" includes a 24' mandala to be created from cans of food, on view June 18 at the Unitarian Church of Staten Island and then the food cans will be distributed to Staten Island food pantries.

"The food can mandala is a way for me to make art, and remind people that some of your neighbors are hungry and could use your help," Cambell said, recalling that throughout the five boroughs, millions of people rely on food pantries.

The project was funded in part by a DCA Premier grant from SI Arts with public funding from the NYC Dept. of Cultural Affairs.
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. - Deer, oh deer. The plan to sterilize Staten Island bucks is getting criticism from across the country.

The city unveiled a plan last month to cut down on the deer population here that entails capturing hundreds of male deer over a three-year period, sterilizing them and releasing them back into the wild.

Doing so would stop them from breeding and adding to the estimated 700-plus deer population in the borough.

The city Parks Department is heading up the plan, and Comptroller Scott Stringer is allowing the city to fast-track the contracting process so they can get started with the plan.

But, on Thursday, Borough President James Oddo received a phone message from an Oregon woman, enraged over the plan.

Here's a glimpse into what my life is like. A voice message left at Boro Hall from some lady in Oregon. #balls pic.twitter.com/mf0NLzCxWq  Jimmy Oddo (@HeyNowJO) June 9, 2016

He tweeted a recording of the message, in which the woman said, "I'd like to know what time your appointment is to have your b---- cuts off, because that is the same thing as sterilizing a deer. How dare you go into nature and think that you can do this. If you guys do, you're gonna have a protest on your Island; you're gonna have about 1,000 people there, and also the Five Nations. I'd think about it if I were you. Unless you're ready to give up your b----."

Oddo later tweeted a response: A YouTube video of the AC/DC song "Big Balls."

He tweeted: "A long distance Casey Kasem-like dedication to that lady in Oregon. Here's some AC/DC for you..."

A long distance Casey Kasem-like dedication to that lady in Oregon. Here's some AC/DC for you... https://t.co/04uDlpjL3J  Jimmy Oddo (@HeyNowJO) June 9, 2016

Oddo's office did not respond Friday to a request for comment.
Donbas can become a real driving force of changes in Ukraine, Press Officer of the EU Delegation to Ukraine David Stulik has said.

Speaking at the Donbas Media Forum in Mariupol on Friday, Stulik said that he and his counterparts visit Donbas almost every week, because they believe that Luhansk and Donetsk region can become a driving force for changes in Ukraine.

Donbas has really changed, it is becoming more European, so other regions of Ukraine may follow suit, the spokesman said.

However, he stressed that the EU Delegation has made every effort to ensure that Donbas should become a kind of West Berlin, which will show the world how to live with dignity and that the path that this part of Ukraine has chosen is the right one.

Stulik also noted that the EU has prepared a program of restoration of Donbas worth several billion hryvnias, which will be financed by European taxpayers.
Hula group creates global connection When the pandemic ushered everyone indoors, Moorpark resident and longtime dancer Lisa Rauschenberger decided to get people back outsidesocially distanced, of course. She began to hold weekly hula lessons at...

Hospital offers safe option to dispose of meds, narcotics Los Robles Health System is working to crush the opioid drug crisis by raising awareness about the dangers of opioid misuse and the importance of safe and proper disposal of...

Rotary works to promote worldwide peace, goodwill The Rotary Club of Simi Sunrise recently invited administrators and principals from the Simi Valley Unified School District to attend a meeting and receive the book The Nonviolence Handbook: A...

Free books and Halloween treats Big fun awaits kids at local little libraries

Simi Valley has about 20 registered Little Free Libraries that offer free books for children, teens and adults. In addition to providing free books to the community, the Little Free...
On Tuesday, June 14, at 11.00, the Interfax-Ukraine news agency's press center will host a press conference entitled 'Ukrainians in Poland Create Trade Union to Protect Their Rights' with the participation of leader of the Labor Solidarity trade union movement Vitaliy Makhynko (8/5a Reitarska Street). Admission requires press accreditation. More information by phone: (067) 249 6813.
The U.S. company XpressWest has announced it is terminating its cooperation with China Railway International in building a high-speed rail between Las Vegas and Los Angeles.

Chief executive of Las Vegas-based XpressWest, Tony Marnell, says that his company's ambitions outpace China Railway's ability to move the project forward timely and efficiently.

China Railway says XpressWest is irresponsible in making such a decision while bilateral talks are still on-going.

A China Railway manager says the unilateral announcement also violated the cooperation framework agreement signed by the two sides, which stipulates that one side should not release related information without the approval by the other.

The two companies reached a deal to build the high-speed rail link in September.

The past few months have been a bumpy ride for bilateral negotiations.

China Railway management have said that XpressWest had kept adding new demands in the talks, some of which were unacceptable to the Chinese firm.
Hillary Clinton declares victory in the U.S. Democratic Presidential Primary on June 7, 2016. [Photo: Xinhua]

U.S. President Barack Obama formally threw his support behind presumptive Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton in a web video Thursday.

"I don't think there's ever been someone so qualified to hold this office," said Obama in the video posted on Clinton's Facebook page.

"I'm with her. I'm fired up and I cannot wait to get out there and campaign with Hillary," Obama said.

According to White House spokesman Josh Earnest, the first joint appearance of Obama and Clinton will take place next Wednesday in Wisconsin, one of the crucial swing states in the general election.

Obama's endorsement came just moments after his meeting with Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, Clinton's rival in the nomination race, and according to Earnest, Sanders "was not surprised" by Obama's endorsement.

Although he still declined to endorse Clinton at the moment, Sanders told reporters after the meeting that he would do everything "to make sure Donald Trump does not become president of the United States."

As the Democratic primary season was all but over, the notion of party unity had become a crucial topic in the Democratic field.

So far, Sanders had offered mixed response as to what his next step would be after being mathematically eliminated from the race.

Sanders had earlier pledged to continue the fight into the national convention in July when party nomination would be formally announced. However, he later indicated that he would "assess" his path to victory in the wake of California's primary which was held on Tuesday.

Clinton notched an easy victory by two-digit lead in California.

Despite the urgency to unite the party, the White House said on Thursday it was up to Sanders to make the decision as to when and how he ends the campaign.

"Senator Sanders has more than earned the right to make his own decision on his own timeframe about the future of his campaign and the president certainly respects the important work that Senator Sanders has done on the campaign trail," said Earnest in the daily briefing on Thursday.
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The body of a Chinese peacekeeper who was killed in a terrorist attack on May 31 at a UN camp in Mali was flown back on Thursday to Changchun, capital city of Jilin province, where his regiment is based.

A military plane carrying Shen Liangliang's body touched down on Thursday afternoon in Changchun. A funeral service will be held on Friday morning.

Shen's family, including his parents and elder brother, arrived at the base where Shen served for 11 years.

Shen, 29, has been honored as a martyr and will be buried in the Martyrs' Memorial Park in his hometown in Wenxian county in Henan province, the Beijing News said on Thursday.

Though overcome by grief, his father, Shen Tianguo, said he was immensely proud of his son and his efforts in helping keep the peace in foreign countries, China National Radio reported on Thursday.

Shen Liangliang served in the United Nations Peacekeeping Mission in Mali. On May 31 his base in Mali came under mortar fire. The attack killed Shen and also injured four other Chinese peacekeepers.

After the attack, China called for an immediate and thorough investigation into the attack in Mali and issued a travel warning to Chinese citizens planning to go to Mali.

The Chinese military sent a specialist medical team to Mali on June 2 to join Chinese peacekeepers there and help treat casualties from the attack.

In addition to being honored by the military, Shen also has received a posthumous honor on Tuesday from the UN Integrated Multidimensional Mission for Stabilization of Mali.

"I want to appreciate the courage and commitment of First Sergeant Shen Liangliang and all his Chinese armed brothers. I appeal to them to continue doing their work despite being in a very difficult security environment," said Mahamat Saleh Annadif, special representative of the UN Secretary-General and head of the mission, during a memorial ceremony held at the mission's headquarters, Xinhua News Agency reported.

Since May, the west African country has seen various terrorist acts claiming more than 20 lives, including members of the Malian military forces, UN peacekeepers and civilians working for the United Nations.
Pop culture fans and comic enthusiasts are celebrating a big get-together in Beijing.

Beijing Comic Con 2016, which gathers the latest advancements in comics, manga and pop culture, kicked off for the first time in the Chinese capital on Thursday.

An enormous amount of books such as Star Wars and Star Trek novels as well as comics from Marvel and DC hit the shelves at the show floor.

Exhibitors at home and abroad also bring with them various products, be it figures of super heroes such as Iron Man or toys of the characters from the movie Alice in Wonderland.

In addition, an interactive section featuring a CAPCOM attracted hundreds of fans.

The comic con also features a COSPLAY competition.

At the same time, more than 20 special guests made appearances at Beijing Comic Con 2016.

Some of the big names such as Brandon Routh, star of 2006's Superman Returns, Ming Na-Wen, Chinese-American actress who played Agent Melinda May in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and Jim Lee, creator of Marvel's comic hit X-Men, also had panel discussions and fan meet-ups.

Notable figures in Asian comics such as Japanese manga artist Masami Yuki and South Korean web cartoonist Cho Seok also attended the convention.

Beijing Comic Con 2016 is being held at the New China International Exhibition Centre and runs till Friday.
Cases of HIV in Canberra have spiked in recent years, with notifications surging 41 per cent in just a year, a major health report has revealed.

The ACT Chief Health Officer's 2016 report shows there were 24 notifications of the disease in 2013, compared with 17 the previous year.

The HIV spike is "in line with national trends", the Chief Health Officer's report says. Credit:Jessica Shapiro

"It is unclear if this increase was due to an increase in the incidence of HIV infection in the community or from increased testing of at-risk populations," the report said.

"This increase is consistent with national trends".
Does Canberra have the country's most fashionable man? Menswear brand Peter Jackson certainly thinks so.

The company launched a national competition searching for the country's "most stylish man" this year, and found him right here in Belconnen.

Adam Moore, who was named the country's "most stylish man" by menswear brand Peter Jackson. Credit:Lauren Campbell

Adam Moore took out top honours in the comp, thanks to his love of whisky, men's fashion, "old school shaving" and hand-made wood and leather products.

The 31-year-old and his wife Natalie were flown to Melbourne on Friday for a day of what Moore calls "man therapy", including being measured up for a custom suit by Peter Jackson and going to a barber shop and whisky bar.
Jaxon and Damian, both in year 10, met in year 7 when they joined the Junior Code Cadet program at school.

Two Canberra Grammar students Jaxon Kneipp and Damian Camilleri, and Narrabundah College student Shayan Rasaratnam, won a spot after developing their own apps across a range of personal interests.

Canberra Grammar year 10 students Jaxon Kneipp and Damian Camilleri with Narrabundah College year 11 student Shayan Rasaratnam have won spots at the conference in the US. Credit:Rohan Thomson

Of 350 students selected from across the world for a special scholarship to attend the conference in San Francisco  eight are Australian and three are from Canberra.

With a number of competition wins already under their belts  GovHack, Young ICT Explorers, and Hackathon ACT  the pair last year began teaching themselves Swift, a programming language, to prepare for the Apple conference. They're already experienced app developers; Damian used his experience of learning to drive to develop My Driving Log  an easy way to keep an online track of hours for learners, and Jaxon created Helping Handbook, an app that enables students to easily log any hours of community service they do. All year 10 students at Canberra Grammar must complete 25 hours of community service and rely on paper log books.

Fittingly, Jaxon was able to count the time spent developing his app towards his community service requirements. He and Damian are well known at the school as tech-wizards who spend considerable time during their lunch breaks helping younger students crack the coding bug. They also mentor classmates.

Meanwhile, Shayan won his place for an app called E'picerie, which aims to help families with their grocery lists. It allows multiple users to add items to a list that can accessed by the group.

His work was inspired by his own family forgetting to buy the wholemeal bread he requested on three consecutive occasions. For the past three months, Shayan has been sharing his programming skills with his younger sister.

The 27th worldwide developers conference will draw people from more than 70 countries.
Asked to verify the rest of the contents of the email, he said parts of it were correct, but it contained "more than a few fabrications", including the claimed meeting with Mr Barr and the suggestion that the Tradies had done a separate deal. "I ... have no idea what clubs like the Tradies are doing," Mr Chester said.

The email was provided to the Canberra Times by lobbyist Richard Farmer, who has been taken on by ClubsACT to fight poker machines at the casino. Mr Farmer rejected the suggestion that he might have altered the email. He wished the contents of the email were not true, but he feared they were, he said.

In an interview, Mr Chester reiterated that he had no knowledge about whether the casino would get any more poker machines, but wanted the RUC Turner to plan as if it would and diversify, especially given the proximity of the Turner club to the casino.

"Let's not enter this debate that the rest of the clubs are having in trying to throw mud around. Let's try and engage with them [the casino]. We're interested in getting out of pokies, how can we do that?

"We know that even without the casino we need to reinvent ourselves somehow. We've got an ageing demographic, we've got an old building. How are we going to remain profitable?
A court has dismissed a criminal charge against an animal activist accused of trespassing on a kangaroo cull site in the ACT.

Carolyn Drew, of Animal Liberation ACT, was charged with trespassing on unleased government land in Hawker, known as the Pinnacle Reserve, as rangers and shooters carried out a cull in July 2014.

Animal Liberation ACT's Carolyn Drew. Credit:Melissa Adams

Rangers, who were acting as security, were using infrared goggles when they allegedly noticed a human image, which appeared to be scaring off kangaroos.

One ranger told an earlier hearing in the ACT Magistrates Court that he monitored the person, and helped guide another ranger towards her.
Japan hypes up situation, intensifies tensions unreasonably, says expert

File photo of a Chinese frigate.

The Defense Ministry on Thursday refuted Japan's protest over Chinese warships sailing close to the Diaoyu Islands in the East China Sea.

"The Diaoyu Islands and its affiliated islands are China's inherent territory. The sailing of Chinese warships through waters under its own jurisdiction is reasonable and legitimate," the ministry said in a statement released on its official Weibo account.

The statement came after Japan said on Thursday a Chinese frigate sailed within 38 kms of the Diaoyu Islands shortly after midnight.

The Chinese frigate stayed in the waters around the islands for about an hour before sailing toward the Chinese coast.

It was confirmed by the Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force's destroyer Setogiri, which was keeping watch on the frigate, Japan's newspaper Asahi Shimbun said.

Japan's Vice-Foreign Minister Akitaka Saiki summoned Cheng Yonghua, the Chinese ambassador in Tokyo, at around 2 am to "express serious concern", the Japanese government said in a statement.

Three Russian naval vessels were also spotted sailing close to the islands at around the same time as the Chinese warship.

While Chinese coast guard vessels routinely patrol the area, it was the first time a Chinese warship was spotted, Japanese officials said, according to The Associated Press.

Sino-Japanese relations plunged after Tokyo's illegal "nationalization" of China's Diaoyu Islands in September 2012. Tokyo's ongoing attempts to meddle in the South China Sea are making things worse.

Lyu Yaodong, an expert on Japanese studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said it is quite normal for China to assert sovereignty over its own territories, whether by sending a coast guard vessel or a naval ship.

"Japan should not hype up the situation and intensify tensions unreasonably," Lyu said.

Da Zhigang, director of the institute of northeast Asian studies at Heilongjiang Academy of Social Sciences, said Tokyo making a fuss of the case demonstrated its sense of crisis over its illegal control of China's Diaoyu Islands.

"China is justified to safeguard its territorial sovereignty and maritime interests," Da said.
More industrial action could be on the cards for Canberra's garbage collectors as pressure mounts to bring an end to the disruptive strikes.

The Fair Work Commission was set to rule whether Friday's garbage truck driver strike in Canberra was in breach of the Fair Work Act on Friday afternoon.

Canberra's garbage truck drivers could strike again, after Suez withdrew its application before the Fair Work commission to stop the strikes from going ahead, according to the union. Credit:Ken Irwin

A spokeswoman for Suez had told Fairfax Media they believed the protected industrial action order ended on Wednesday.

But contractor Suez withdrew its application before the commission to stop the action going ahead, Transport Workers' Union ACT secretary Klaus Pinkas said.
"A huge number of ordinary Australians are simply not going to have enough money to live off in retirement from their SMSFs and are going to be dependent on the age pension unless something is done to fix the problem," he says. Illustration: Simon Bosch Between 2010 and 2014, the bottom 10 per cent of SMSFs, those with balances of less than $100,000, have lost money every year since 2008, according to Australian Taxation Office figures. Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) spokesman Gervase Greene told Fairfax Media SMSFs were a key area of enforcement for the regulator due to the growth in the sector, the potential for loss and the vulnerability of consumers.

Selfies have also hit the Reserve Bank of Australia's radar. It has said SMSFs could "introduce new vulnerabilities in the financial system, because it provides a vehicle for potentially speculative property demand that did not exist in the past". Debate on oversight The ATO figures reveal that 44 per cent of SMSFs have on average not made a return over the past seven years. Over the same period, APRA-regulated funds, including industry and retail funds, have on average returned 2.9 per cent. 'There are many other exotic investments, including the infamous story of an SMSF that owned a pride of lions, which they leased back to a circus!' An SMSF auditor from Deloitte

The ATO numbers also reveal that in 2014, members of SMSFs were charged $5.48 billion in operating expenses, insurance premiums and interest expenses. Its burgeoning size, now standing at a record $595 billion with 572,424 SMSFs and more than 1 million members, has triggered a debate on whether there should be a lower limit on the size of funds and more oversight. On one side, ASIC argues that SMSFs with under $200,000 in assets are "unlikely" to be in clients' best interests. Cap can be difficult On the other side, are respected figures including Financial System Inquiry (FSI) chairman David Murray, who believes caps can be difficult.

"A cap is difficult as we don't know whether they aspire to be bigger or are running down to retirement with cash balances," Murray tells Fairfax Media. The peak lobby group for SMSFs, the SMSF Association, doesn't support a balance cap on SMSF establishment. "The choice to establish an SMSF and directly control superannuation should be up to an individual," its chief executive, Andrea Slattery, says. Indeed, Treasury in its submission to the FSI mentioned "self-managed superannuation funds support consumer choice and should not be prudentially regulated". It said: "A strong appeal of self-managed funds is that they allow individuals the opportunity and freedom to engage more closely with their retirement savings. Continuation of the light-touch compliance framework allows individuals to take greater responsibility over their decisions without being subject to the requirements of the prudential regulatory framework. This position should be maintained."

Debt-fuelled boom Part of the "selfie" surge in popularity came in 2007 when the then Howard government gave the green light to borrow money. It put a rocket under a sector that is forecast to grow to $2.75 trillion by 2035, according to Deloitte. With $24.4 billion of SMSFs allocated to residential property, according to figures at the end of March 2016, concerns are running high. Murray recommended in the FSI report that SMSFs be stopped from directly borrowing for limited recourse loans in the interest of system stability.

The government did not accept the recommendation. Limited-recourse loans increase risk into the super system. When limited-recourse loans were introduced in 2007, they set loose an industry of spruikers that encouraged people to make risky investments  some of which have blown up. Murray told Fairfax Media: "SMSFs borrowing magnifies risk, notwithstanding the non-recourse nature of the debt." SMSFs are big business. The sector inspired accountants to promote them as vehicles to accumulate and transfer wealth and minimise tax. SMSFs have special rules that apply to SMSF members.

As one industry expert says: "SMSF members can make in-specie contributions, allowing the member to transfer shares, business real property to and from the fund without selling the underlying asset, while APRA-regulated funds only accept contributions in the form of money. In-specie transfers of business assets also attract generous capital gains tax concessions." Unusual investments SMSFs also hold the attraction of being allowed to hold special or unusual investments. One SMSF auditor from Deloitte recently shared in a blog some of his "favourite investments" he had come across when auditing: "Certainly one of the more unusual investments was a piece of moon rock, reportedly brought back from one of the moon landings! There are many other exotic investments, including the infamous story of an SMSF that owned a pride of lions, which they leased back to a circus!" Scant regulation and protections prompted PWC partner David Coogan to lodge a submission with the Productivity Commission in April encouraging it to "undertake a review of the area" with a specific view to considering the adequacy of SMSF consumer protections.

"Depending on the outcome of that review, it might be preferable for the regulation of individual SMSFs to be transferred from the Australian Taxation Office to the Australian Securities and Investments Commission," he said. "Further, it might be necessary for the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority to be given an oversight and policy development role to prevent a build-up of systemic risks related to SMSFs [e.g. excessive leverage]." Coogan isn't alone. Broader concern Ian Yates, the chief executive of COTA Australia, the peak body representing older Australians, said SMSFs was an area that needed attention.

"Super is a subsidised product and so governments and taxpayers all have a stake in making sure it is working," he said. "We need to look at whether there should be minimum requirements that you can't set up a self-managed super fund below a certain level of investment," he said. The SMSF Association disagrees. Andrea Slattery says the SMSF sector does not need another review. "Both David Murray's Financial System Inquiry and the Cooper Review gave the SMSF sector a clean bill of health."

Slattery says ongoing moves to strengthen the ethical and education framework for financial advisors, and licensing accountants providing SMSFs advice will continue to improve consumer outcomes. Question of protection An analysis of the returns on some of the smaller funds raises questions about why nothing is being done to protect the retirement savings of these people. Figures sourced from the ATO show that SMSFs with balances of between $1 and $50,000 lost 15.9 per cent over three years, torched 13.2 per cent over five years and blew 15 per cent over seven years to June 2014. Over the same period, APRA-regulated funds returned 8.5 per cent over three years, 8.4 per cent over five years and 2.9 per cent over seven years.

SMSFs with assets between $50,000 and $100,000 went backwards over a three, five and seven-year period and SMSFs managing between $100,000 and $200,000 lost 3.3 per cent over seven years to June 2014. The bigger funds, which represent the majority of dollars in the SMSF kitty, performed far better than their smaller counterparts. Figures 'distorted' But SMSF Association's Slattery says the ATO statistics on SMSF performance, especially for lower balance funds, can be misleading. "Lower balance funds tend to capture newly established funds who can have significant set-up and advice expenses in their formative years. These costs distort the average ROA for these funds," she said.

Figures show that SMSFs with more than $2 million outperformed APRA-regulated funds over seven years but slightly underperformed them over the last three-year period. It prompted Deloitte partner Russell Mason to question the appropriateness of setting up a SMSF with a small balance and little ability to grow fast. "The regulators should look at the promoters," he said. Legal expert Berrill believes it has reached the point where the federal government should ban SMSFs for small account balances up to $250,000 or at least require any adviser or accountant to give a clear warning about the risks of setting up an SMSF with a small account balance and recommend against it. Accountants' paradise Their existence rests with the accountants that advised them to transfer their funds from APRA-regulated funds into a selfie, where they could feel they had more control over their savings than a retail or industry fund would offer.

When financial services reforms were introduced 12 years ago requiring financial services providers to hold an AFSL and comply with new obligations designed to protect clients, accountants were granted an exemption. It meant they could provide tax advice to clients to establish an SMSF without being licensed or having to comply with personal advice rules. Fast forward to 2012 when future of financial advice reforms were introduced, granting generous transitional arrangements to accountants which gave them until July this year to be licensed when giving advice to set up a SMSF. From next month they will need to comply with the FoFA best interests' duty, the conflicted remuneration prohibition and the requirement to give a statement of advice.

The lack of regulation opened the sector up to abuse. As the sector grew like topsy and became big enough to start influencing the equities market and property prices, the government decided it was time to improve the rigour of the so-called gatekeepers  SMSF auditors. New rules To this end it introduced a new SMSF auditor registration regime in 2013 with ASIC responsible for registering approved SMSF auditors, setting competency standards  including a compulsory exam  and, where necessary, taking regulatory action. By December 2015, the crackdown resulted in ASIC cancelling the registrations of 440 SMSF auditors for either failing to take a competency exam or failing the exam. Despite the lax regulation, the regulatory framework for SMSFs is built on the assumption that people who set up their own SMSF are responsible for themselves.

Murray's Financial System Inquiry said: "The defining characteristic of the SMSF sector is that trustee members are directly responsible for each fund and must take responsibility for their own decisions." Overall, compared with APRA-regulated funds, SMSFs are poorly diversified, with large allocations to cash, equity and property. An estimated 12 per cent of SMSFs invest in one asset class. Smaller funds tend to be less diversified, and the smallest funds are most likely to hold only one asset class. Aussie stocks favoured According to Credit Suisse analyst Hasan Tevfik, 40 per cent of selfies' holdings are in Aussie equities and they own 17 per cent of the market. He says SMSFs' preference for Australian equities with high dividend yields is becoming a problem for the sector. "Owning high yielding, large-cap stocks didn't work so well in 2014-15 and is on track to fail in the current financial year," Tevfik says.

"If markets remain flat from here, selfies are expected to pick up more than $11 billion in Aussie dividends but will suffer a capital loss of more than $20 billion." He says that given the poor returns selfies are currently generating in Aussie equities, many are beginning to rethink their almost singular focus on dividends. Tevfik also notes SMSFs' exposure to Australian property is more like $147 billion  or a staggering 25 per cent of the entire SMSF sector  once you add in the funds allocated to commercial property, listed property and unlisted property. Target for spruikers There is also evidence that lax regulation of SMSFs relative to APRA-regulated funds has made it a honeypot for property spruikers and accountants, some of which have set up one-stop shops, convincing clients to transfer their retirement savings from an APRA-regulated fund to an off-the-shelf SMSF for a small fee then ongoing accounting and auditing services.

The pitch is that SMSFs are efficient and competitive and the members are both engaged and financially literate. Property seminar host Ronald Cross of Park Trent Properties jumped on the SMSF gravy train. According to ASIC, Cross' Park Trent Properties advised 860 people to switch funds into an SMSF to purchase properties with large loans. Over a period of five years, Cross' company wooed investors at his seminars with claim property investing through SMSFs was a get rich quick scheme. Following action by ASIC, the Supreme Court of NSW restrained Park Trent from providing advice to clients to purchase investment properties. The judgment against Park Trent states that the company's business model was reliant on "persuading relatively unsophisticated investors of the virtues of using their superannuation accounts to purchase investment properties and to establish SMSFs  Investors were influenced to make important decisions concerning their superannuation strategy with little or no genuine consideration of whether the decision took proper account of their individual financial circumstances. Some suffered financial loss as a consequence."

Park Trent is appealing the decision. Cross is not banned. Wake up call from Trio Sherwin Financial is another property spruiking SMSF shop that has run afoul of the regulator after its founder Bradley Sherwin sold SMSF products that funnelled clients into his related company, property financier Wickham Securities. When Wickham went bust, 400 of Sherwin's mainly well-heeled SMSF investors  including actor Peter Phelps  lost $60 million. On April 1, selfies got a wake-up call into the lack of consumer protections offered to SMSFs when the Turnbull government confirmed there would be no compensation for SMSFs that had invested in Trio Capital, which went under in 2009 torching $170 million of investor money. The Trio fraud destroyed the life savings of 300 SMSFs and members of APRA-regulated funds. But it was only the APRA-regulated funds that received some form of compensation.
Lloyd Williams is finalising the sale of his long-time Hudson Conway headquarters in Southbank, after being refused permission to build a contentious 41-level Elenberg Fraser tower described by one City of Melbourne councillor as "a shocker".

The 248-250 Sturt Street site, covering 834 square metres, was instead offered with a permit for a 16-level, 91-unit residential complex, approved earlier this year.

71-75 Argyle Street, Fitzroy

The opportunity is speculated to be selling for more than $10 million  substantially less than it would have achieved, sources say, had the 304-unit tower been allowed.

That proposed building, with a unique twist designed into its lower half, was only the second of 17 large proposals to be discarded by Planning Minister Richard Wynne when it was reviewed by his urban design team mid last year.
Innovative web-based grocers are stealing a march on the major supermarket chains as inspiration rather than convenience underpins a new phase of growth in the $1.8 billion online grocery market.

Keith Louie, the chief executive of Aussie Farmers Direct, says busy consumers are increasingly seeking the convenience of home-delivered groceries and a solution to the daily quandary of what to cook for dinner.

Aussie Farmers Direct CEO Keith Louie says small food retailers are shaking up the $1.8 billion online grocery market by offering inspiration as well as convenience. Credit:Craig Sillitoe

The meal solutions category is now growing by more than 20 per cent a year and demand has spawned a raft of start-up food delivery businesses from HelloFresh, My Food Bag, Marley Spoon and Thomas Farms Kitchen, which deliver "meal kits" (fresh ingredients with matching recipes) to Dish'd and Gourmet Dinner Service, which supply chilled gourmet prepared meals.

Aussie Farmers Direct, which started out 11 years ago with home deliveries of milk, bread and eggs,and entered the meal solutions market last month, teaming up with Weight Watchers to deliver boxes of fresh food products and recipes using Weight Watchers' points system.
In 1974 the government decided to delay an election promise to fund a proper child care system. The Women's Electoral Lobby organised a huge children's party on the lawns of Parliament House to protest and the Whitlam government learnt not to muck with women, children and childcare.

When it announced its childcare policy for this election, the ALP showed it had learnt from history by promising money in families' pockets earlier than the Coalition.

Attention to childcare funding in Australia leaves a lot to be desired, on both sides of politics. Credit:Peter Braig

Childcare in Australia is a mess. Supply and demand are unequal, squillions of taxpayer dollars are spent but families can't get affordable childcare when and where they want it, and some of the funding ends up as private profit. What's worse? The fact that what's good for children, doesn't come into it. When evaluating the policies, you need to look at what is not in them as well as what is.

There is nothing in either party's policy to ensure that the time children spend in childcare is well used.
'Running around but not running away' Thursday's victim apparently walked out of a mental-health facility about two weeks ago. The facility got around to telling police on Wednesday, and he became subject of a BOLO (be-on-the-lookout for). He has suffered from delusions, and police have taken him into care before. He hadn't offered violence to anyone while at large. One witness said the man, barefoot and dishevelled, had seemed drug-affected and depressed, and was "babbling incoherently". His knife was about 13 centimetres long and, at least until police charged towards him, was said to be pointing down. A shop owner, James Yeom, said: "He didn't look aggressive, he was slowly moving around, but it didn't look right. [He] looked a little bit drunken  didn't seem normal  that's why I called the police, because he was holding a knife." The man was "running around but not running away" when confronted by the police, but he couldn't see clearly because he was hiding behind a market stall. "I don't know whether he was trying to escape or being hostile, but he was running around," Yeom said. "He wasn't making much noise, he wasn't saying anything, it was really weird."

Yeom said he saw two officers fire three shots. "There were two shots, tried to shoot him in the first place because he refused to drop the knife and became very hostile. They didn't get him. Then they got him on the third shot. Injured, I don't think he's been killed. Around the middle of his body, but he didn't look too critical." Three people going about their business, all elderly women, were wounded by police bullets, some, possibly, as ricochets. Good shots most cops are not. That there were civilians in the line of fire by itself is very persuasive evidence that guns should not have been deployed. That doesn't necessarily reflect on an officer who had to make a quick judgment after she had already reduced her options by advancing on the man with a raised gun. It reflects, rather, on the quality of her training by her employer. An escalating situation And it's a function of the intrinsic danger of ever drawing a gun. As with police car chases, no good ever comes of it. The public is never safer as a result. Police lives are hardly ever saved by interventions in which police move in on a person who is thought to be carrying something that could be a weapon.

This is not to doubt that some officers, in difficult confrontations with intoxicated, disturbed or disoriented folk, genuinely fear that their lives, and the lives of others, are in danger. But once, however, police were trained in "jawing before drawing". Their orders and their focus were to de-escalate conflict, to calm situations and to withdraw, if necessary, if there is no apprehended imminent harm to another person. Now, some police seem to think "taking a backward step" is a sign of cowardice. Or an indication that one has lost "control" of a situation, or that one has encouraged a person bent on inflicting death or serious injury, possibly on himself or herself. So one sees actions that can only heighten the sense of confrontation, such as loud, louder and ever more shrill and hysterical commands, relentless advance on the suspect, and direct threats of violence, including use or threatened use of chemical sprays and Tasers. Generally, such tactics succeed only in further disorienting and confusing the person. More dangerously, it deprives both cornered suspect and advancing police of options.

Likewise with the perfectly ridiculous assaults on houses by gangs of armed men in paramilitary uniforms with assault weapons, complete with screaming, threats and, not infrequently, accidental killings, sometimes of their own. Some such premises are thought to contain dangerous terrorists or very violent armed offenders. But it is only very rarely true that the theatrical farce (often with pre-warned friendly media) works to reduce the risk of conflict or injury, whether to police officers, family members and residents of invaded dwellings, or, all too often, complete innocents who have been wrongly targeted. As a general rule, the more cops involved, the greater the risk that someone will be killed. And the greater the risk that it will be one of their own. Changing attitudes Even taking into account increased risks of terrorism, and lone-wolf terror attacks, the risk of violence being visited on police has not increased in recent years. It has declined, along with most crime. What seems to have changed, however, is police training and experience in managing angry, disturbed or threatening people, once a routine well within the capacity of even junior police, male and female, on the beat. Street cops often dismiss some of their careerist colleagues and managers as people who have "never faced an angry man". Increasingly, however, fewer ordinary officers are facing fewer and fewer angry folk. It shows, even when they do not instinctively begin climbing the ladder of more and more dangerous force. One old, senior and very experienced officer once spoke of the "deployment of the continuum of force". Modern training, such as it is, is not so much in whether or when to deploy weapons, but how to. It's likely their superiors will tick, not question, an escalation in force. There is also an ample literature, across different forces, of a tendency to cover up, confabulate or look the other way. A recent Australian National Audit Office report on federal police use of force offers very little room for confidence that the potential for disaster is any lower in the ACT, or within Commonwealth jurisdiction. In the modern manner, the audit office didn't do much in the way of actual checking of anything other than the paperwork. It didn't much apply its mind either to issues of value for money, or whether use or "deployment, enhanced the safety and security" of the public, or even of officers. Even then, AFP inventories were deficient, and even the forms by which more senior and experienced officers monitored and approved in arrears any use of force were not always mechanically ticked off.

Border Force officers now have access to this continuum of force. This invites high alarm, the more so given the force's capacity, and inclination, to hide what it does from the public the procedures in place to ensure that the public won't usually know when they are used. It's been months since many in this paramilitary force were given Glock 17 pistols, Tasers and sprays. I shouldn't be in the least surprised if a snap physical audit did not already reveal the systematic problems found in AFP holdings. The minister in charge, Peter Dutton, was a colleague, when in Queensland's finest, of the head of Border Force, Roman Quaedvlieg. This is a force, like NSW, which has scarcely ever deployed a weapon in a way that could afterwards be said (by any independent witnesses, assuming any escaped unscathed) to be the best choice in a difficult situation, and to the public benefit. "This measure will not only increase the capability of our future border force officers, it will also add another layer of deterrence at our borders, and will ensure that the travelling public is as safe as possible," Dutton said, with a straight face. "At our borders", I hardly need say, embraces not only our international arrival terminals, but our concentration camps and the oceans on which the fine women and men of Operation Sovereign Borders wage war against people smugglers and refugee families. Investigations come under fire

When last I was writing about this subject  15 months ago  police officers had shot an autistic girl holding a kitchen knife outside a Hungry Jack's in Liverpool, Sydney. She hadn't been waving the knife or threatening anyone, but was thought to have been behaving "oddly". Five police surrounded her, screaming at her to "drop the weapon". She reacted with fear and fright, and was almost immediately sprayed with capsicum spray, stunned by a Taser, then, still holding the knife but not projecting it forward, shot dead. One can expect that the officer who fired will say he was in fear of his life. Naturally, the "critical" incident was being reviewed by the police themselves, in spite of the fact that some previous police reviews of such incidents have shown seriously deficient inquiries. No inquest has yet been set down. This week, four NSW police officers have been in court on charges associated with another shooting, in 2009, of a mentally ill person. They are not charged over the shooting itself, but with lying to a Police Integrity Commission investigation. The commission investigation had followed criticism of a critical incident review by a senior homicide detective. He had found nothing wrong with police management of the confrontation. But there were other witnesses, including paramedics, whose version of events was markedly at odds with the police account. The coroner was scathing of the investigation. The coroner's opinion did not cause a complacent state government to review its system of having police investigating themselves. Nor did it, by itself, prompt any action initiated by the police line of command. Four Corners broadcast a report on the claimed cover-up. One suspects it was the media report, not the coroner's, that prompted the integrity commission's investigation. This led, ultimately, to charges against police alleging they lied to it on oath about what happened. The officers deny this, and the case is being heard by a judge sitting without a jury.

The commission also recommended disciplinary action against the officer involved in the supposed whitewash. But the detective has since been promoted, is still involved in high-profile investigations and does not appear to have had his career affected. In a show of solidarity, most of his senior mates in homicide came to support him at the commission. Questions arise The commission has recommended that all police critical incident reports go on the public record. That, usually, would cause public alarm and dismay only by showing how complacent and passive are the processes. The best reason for opposing this, as with opposing a royal commission into banks, is that it would cause even lower estimation of the integrity of the force and its management at all levels. The commission also wants to itself perform the formal investigations of critical incidents if there had been loss of life. This is, say, what Northern Ireland does. Such arm's-length reviews occur without fuss or apparent extra expense there and elsewhere. Here, however, it is unimaginable that a NSW government of any political stripe would take on powerful police interests to allow the public interest to get a look in. Vague talk of cost or impracticality is usually enough. Thursday's case also has overlaps with the inquest into the Lindt Cafe siege, and not only because there a civilian was killed after being hit by a fragment of a police bullet fired, apparently, at the hostage taker.
Nonetheless, I think Ryan is a decent human being. And I presume that many other people supporting Trump are decent human beings. So why might they be supporting him, despite his frankly -- even joyously -- vile authoritarianism; his clear and present impulse-control problems; his staggeringly offensive treatment of female reporters, disabled reporters and senators who spent time as prisoners of war; his encyclopedic lack of knowledge on any and all policy topics; and his complete disdain for principle or the truth?

Corporate America is getting an unwanted work-out during Donald Trump's bid for the Presidency Credit:AP

1. Republican politicians would like to get re-elected. Also, they would like there to be a Republican Party around after the Trump campaign.Those goals might be better accomplished by opposing Trump. But some Republican loyalists have decided not to risk splitting the party down the middle: Their strategy is to offer lukewarm support to the Donald, hope he loses and try to rebuild the party for the midterms.As I've pointed out before, Trump is a celebrity candidate, and celebrity candidates do not operate by the normal political rules. They can bring out people who don't normally vote. But on the flip side, they do not necessarily have the normal effect that rising politicians have on their political parties. Trump brings no organization with him, no political network that will survive when he exits stage left. He has no ideological fellow-travelers who will thrive in his wake. (How could he, when he has no detectable ideology?) He has done none of the work that might render the party beholden to him in future elections: no get-out-the-vote operation, no crack team of political consultants, no mailing lists, donor networks or polling powerhouses. It's actually pretty reasonable to think that as long as he is denied the White House -- which still looks like the most likely outcome, though by no means inevitable -- the storm will blow over with relatively little long-term change to the structure of the party.

Given that, Republican politicians who want to disavow Trump may reasonably be more afraid of further alienating the folks who are mad at the establishment. If you believe that the Republican Party is better for the country than the alternative, it's pretty tempting to just suck it up and condemn his outrages while still refusing to say you won't vote for him. As Jean-Paul Sartre tells us, it is impossible to participate in politics without dirty hands.

2. The Supreme Court. The left is getting positively giddy at the prospect of a Supreme Court with a solid block of five liberal justices who will reliably oppose conservatives on issues they consider vital, from gun rights to religious liberty to abortion. Mark Tushnet, an influential figure on the legal left, is already essentially advocating a total judicial war on conservative policies, particularly those involving social conservatives.The regulatory disputes surrounding everything from birth control to transgender teens make a lot of religious groups feel -- not entirely unreasonably -- that they are facing an existential threat, as their rights of free association and conscience are trimmed back to "You can say it in the privacy of your own home, or at church, but don't you dare act upon what you believe." Many liberals seem to believe that this is more than enough religious freedom for anyone; many religious people strenuously disagree. For religious people who feel that the next Supreme Court justice may make you choose between following your conscience and doing basic things like earning a living or educating your child, that choice becomes so important as to dwarf nearly every other consideration.I'm not endorsing this state of affairs, mind; I think that over the last 50 years we have become far too fond of turning everything into a judicial question, rather than leaving things to legislatures and other elected officials. However, that is the spot we are now in, and neither side looks interested in de-escalating. So people are quite rightly concerned about who will be appointing the next round of judges.Ah, you will say, but why believe that Trump will appoint good judges? Fair question. However, conservatives may legitimately respond that they know, to a 100 percent certainty, that Hillary Clinton will appoint judges who are actively hostage to both their theory of constitutional jurisprudence and their personal policy preferences. Trump might do the same, but at least there's some chance that they won't find abortion restrictions lifted, the Heller gun rights case overturned, Hobby Lobby religious protections gutted, and gay and transgender rights expanded to the point where it becomes difficult to operate a school that teaches conservative Christian morality.

3. Clinton's emails. I'm sorry, Clinton supporters: The email server situation is bad. It's really bad. You can wave your hands until the sonic booms start rattling nearby china and it will still be fundamentally disturbing, not merely for its typically Clintonian "rules are for other people" grandeur, its airy disregard for security and its obvious commitment to an utter lack of transparency, but also for the sheer incompetence and stupidity of its execution at both the technical and political levels. If you are going to set up your own email server to keep your correspondence off of government systems, you should probably not let it go without an encryption certificate for months. You should also not bother to set up your own email server, since any moderately bright 14-year-old could tell you that your emails are going to show up in others' inboxes, and then your secret server is going to become an eminently FOIA-able political disaster. The thing doesn't just make me question Clinton's character, but also her political acumen, and her ability to identify and hire competent staff.Of course, Clinton supporters can point out that Trump has some problems in the planning, staffing and truth-telling departments. He really really does. But the email server makes it hard for the Clinton backers to hit him on those things as hard as they otherwise could have.
Clinton would seem to have the statecraft experience and the demographic advantages to make a November victory a foregone conclusion, especially against an unqualified buffoon like Trump. Trump is blatantly running as a racist candidate. His "Make America Great Again" slogan seems to be code for "Make America White Again". His attacks on Mexicans and Muslims and his patronising of African-Americans have pretty much ensured he won't get many votes from these groups. The trouble for him is that there are just not enough white voters anymore to deliver him victory. Whites now make up 69 per cent of the electorate (compared with 83 per cent in 1992) and Republican analyst Whit Ayres has calculated that Trump needs to get 65 per cent of that vote to win. At present he is getting 53 per cent, which is less than Mitt Romney attracted in 2012. With 39 per cent of white voters and 80 per cent of black and Hispanic voters supporting Clinton, on paper she is set to win. But that's where the misogyny comes in.

Clinton has endured more than 25 years of aggressive public scrutiny and judgment, much of it sexist. When she ran in 2008 she was subjected to horrifying sexual vilification (much of which provided the playbook that was used against Julia Gillard when she became prime minister in 2010). This is happening again, and not just from Trump supporters whose hatred of Hillary borders on the pathological, but also from the so-called Bernie Bros, men who have self-deputised to lay waste to anyone who does not support their hero Sanders. Last Tuesday, the day Clinton made history, Amy Chozick, a young reporter for the New York Times, assigned to cover Clinton's campaign, told her Twitter followers: "I won't be answering calls from unknown callers today, after calls from Bernie supporters telling me they'd hunt me down in the streets." Even Australians have been relentlessly stalked, with a young female friend of mine in Sydney called a "political bitch" for her pro-Clinton tweets. This is a mere taste of what lies ahead.

Clinton's problem is: how does she deal with it? Gillard has described her "murderous rage" when reading some of the things that were said about her. Clinton is keeping her emotions in check. "Unpacking this, understanding it, is for writers like you," she told New York magazine's Rebecca Traister a few weeks ago. "I'm just trying to cope with it. Deal with it. Live through it." Sexism is about treating women differently; misogyny is not just hatred, it's hostility expressed as exclusion, keeping women out. Of the boardroom, the c-suite, the church, the military, the Oval office. That's what the US campaign is now all about. How to keep Hillary out. The sexist and misogynist language against her will be weapons-grade, but the arsenal will include other artillery, such as character slurs, especially those characterising Clinton as not "likeable". Clinton's negatives are high. A lot of people say they don't "like" her  which should not matter. She's running for president not prom queen, but Americans like to like their president. It's been called "the Elvis factor". He  as it's always been up till now  could be a bit of a rogue (Bush Jr) or a philanderer (Bill Clinton) or even a fiscal derelict (Reagan) but so long as he had that twinkle in his eye, he could get away with almost anything.

But what is likeability in a female candidate? She can't be sexually suggestive so no twinkling eyes, she certainly can't fool around and she better be policy perfect. This is new territory. Just as we Australians did not know how to cope with a prime minister who was not a man in a suit with a wife and two kids, Americans don't yet know what a female president looks like, and how she should conduct herself. Or how she should run her race. Especially against an orange-faced, bulging eyed angry white man who peddles anger and hatred and resentment and not much else. Mostly our political standards are defined by the way things were done in the past. To what extent does that make them male standards? How does a woman exert authority (she'll be commander-in-chief remember) when the female stereotype still dictates submissiveness? This is why, I believe, that women are popular as deputies but have such difficulty gaining support as leaders. The current President purposefully set himself in counterpoint to the stereotype of the angry black male. It led to criticism that he was too academic, too restrained and lacked emotion and nor has it stopped an apparent rise in lethal racism during his tenure, but few question his authority or legitimacy.
Two greats: Muhammad Ali and Adam Goodes. Once again I am shocked at the irresponsible response by our police. Surely by now they would have had mental health training to deal with an agitated patient. We have had a defenceless man at Bondi, Roni Levi surrounded by several armed police who shot and killed him, and also a young man shot in his back in the kitchen of his home. There need to be serious questions asked. This should not be allowed to happen. Dianne Gaddin Bondi The latest police shooting at Hornsby, where innocent victims outnumbered the alleged attacker three to one, shows the urgent need for more firearms training. Police leadership currently send front-line officers into harm's way with woefully inadequate training. Many police are unable to demonstrate basic gun handling skills, and can certainly not fire their weapon accurately under ideal range conditions, much less stressful real-world conditions. If my employer put me to work on machinery I was not properly trained to use and injuries ensued, Work Cover would have a field day. The same should apply to NSW Police.

It is truly bizarre that Australians are terrified of the idea of civilians who fire hundreds of rounds each week carrying a firearm, but are happy to be protected by police who fire only 60 rounds once per year. Scott Hillard New Lambton In all the sound and fury around the tragic incident at Hornsby I have yet to hear a word for the police. Obliged to protect the public, weighing up the case of a person obviously not responsible for his actions, they had to act in an instant. But how do they feel? How do they consider all facets of the case in the moments given to them. Spare a thought for the men and women caught in a difficult case like this. How would you act when you have to weigh up the safety of the public around you, your own well being and the welfare of an obviously unwell person  all in a moment of time?

Gloria Healey Condell Park In a crowded shopping mall a police officer pulls out her pistol, and starts shooting. Given that the officer was equipped with a taser, why did she choose to use her pistol instead? The claim by Assistant Commissioner Clifford that the officer had only "a matter of seconds" to act is open to question. How long before shooting the man had the police officer drawn her pistol? Thank God she wasn't armed with a semi-automatic rifle. Gerald Borthwick Stockton

Fight must go on to lift children with greatest need A recent study from the Australian Child Rights Taskforce highlighting the extremes of poverty and lack of opportunity for many children is extremely disappointing. ("One in six children still lives in poverty", June 10). Every child deserves at least the basics to survive. (Maslow recognised this back in the 1940s.) Many children come to school without breakfast, and breakfast programs trialled within schools often fail to assist as most targeted students arrive too late. Lunch too is often overlooked with little or no funding for the canteen for individual needs. Overseas free school lunch programs throughout Britain and the US are highly successful and cater for those in greatest need. The inability to concentrate in the classroom has often been attributed to a lack of nutrition. Add in a mix of domestic violence, poverty, (often) undiagnosed physical and mental illness, a lack of resilience and a failure by some families to appreciate the real value of educational practices, all leading to a very poor situation for many of our nation's youth. This grows exponentially into future generations as the cyclic pressure mounts. Pressure from the community must continue to be mounted on successive governments to increase funding for those in need. The Gonski review recognised this. It is a great shame that the fight currently seems to have waned in lifting our children with greatest need to a higher level. Many will continue to suffer as a result.

Janice Creenaune Austinmer LGBTI schoolchildren should be given understanding, not judgment I was a head prefect of the Scots College in the 1970s. It was a great experience. For me. At our 10-year reunion I learned of two suicides among my classmates. They had been good mates, involved in cadets and sport as well as study. But I later found out from their friends that they were also gay. Friends told me about their difficulties at home, their fear of being outed at school, and their struggle for self-acceptance. There were three other unexplained deaths. I suspect they, too, struggled with their sexuality. I have often thought that if I had that time again, I would condemn the ridiculous bullying that boys indulge in: calling others poofters to announce to their peers that they themselves are most certainly not. But I didn't understand. I hadn't been informed about the horror that young gay people (sorry, LGBTI, my how I didn't understand!) might go through. Instead I insisted on support for the First XI.

As the parent of a wonderful gay son, I know it's not a choice. Why would someone "elect" to subject themselves to such bullying and personal turmoil. Any teacher will testify to the adolescent need to be accepted, not to be different. So, Fred and Matthew (not your real names), I'm sorry, my classmates, so full of life and talent, I'm sorry I didn't reach out to help and use my position to protect you. I'm sorry you had to walk alone and worse, that people in authority  your teachers, your supposed role models  may have said it was wrong. I think if I had attended a Safe Schools Program, I would have had the tools to say something to the bullies, and to you, my friends. Perhaps then you would still be with us. I've read our headmaster's response to your article distributed to the school community. It misses the point. LGBTI kids need our understanding, not judgment. It's time all educators carried out their responsibilities without prejudice, regardless of religious convictions. It's a matter of life and death. Name withheld O'Connell I take exception to the articles and letters published in your newspaper this week displaying the Scots College in a negative light. I believe your reporter Eryk Bagshaw has incorrectly portrayed the spirit of the school and the principal, Dr Lambert. This is both damaging and one-sided.

In my experience, the Scots College is an excellent college with an exceptional reputation. The school teaches a first-class values program valuing inclusivity and diversity. The school has never been ashamed of its Christian heritage and tradition and this is considered by many to be a positive attribute of the school. Mr Bagshaw's attempt to connect the college to the wider political debate about the Safe Schools program in Australia and the "Christian right" in the US, is irresponsible. Candice Heapes Bellevue Hill Leaders of Ali's calibre tend to stand out

Waleed Aly in his fine article ("Sanitising the past does Ali no favours", June 10) digs under the surface to examine why Muhammad Ali and Adam Goodes were or are so revered or reviled. It is the likes of Ali, Goodes and indeed Mr Aly himself who show the courage to forge a path to their own self-discovery. Their focus is where it should be. These sorts of leaders will always stand out and confront much of what is mediocre about the status quo too many willingly accept as normal. It is not the packaging of a person or where they come from that matters, it is what is in the package that counts. They don't even have to try to rock the boat. They just do. Neville Williams Darlinghurst

When he became virtually wheelchair bound with his ailment, Muhammad Ali said it was a reminder that he was after all just a man (a mere mortal, not a demigod). A man is a mixture of the good, the bad and the ugly. As he journeyed through life Ali shed what was bad and ugly (in his youthful exuberance) and embraced what was good. At his death at age 74, Ali is remembered and adored for the good he stood for. For me it's not as complicated as Waleed Aly's take on the man. Rajend Naidu Glenfield Killing the golden goose

The widespread deep anger and angst over the systematic demolition of the public TAFE system (Letters, June 10) comes from far more than either the "hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayer money squandered" (on private VET) or the reduction of "chances of many young people finding a fulfilling career". It also comes from the head-shaking disbelief that successive governments over at least 20 years could purposefully and knowingly kill a goose that lays our golden eggs. It raises an ever-increasing, and very alarming, lack of confidence in their ability and in their right to govern "for the people". Peter Russell Coogee Curtis on the outside It really warmed my heart to read of the Institute of Public Affairs showing such concern for the welfare of one of their kind ("Insider trader Curtis should pay, not go to jail: IPA", June 10). I'm sure we can all look forward to their new-found concern also being extended to less well-heeled criminals in future. On this occasion, however, I do find myself in agreement with their main premise, namely public resources should not be expended on jailing non-violent criminals. Quite apart from the IPA's suggestions of home detention and heavy financial penalties, other measures should be considered. In Curtis' case he should be banned from practising his former trade and should surrender his passport and driver's licence. There should also be measures to prevent Curtis using his time on bail to dispose of his assets and declare himself bankrupt. Far too often we have seen criminals escape their obligations.

Chris Danckwerts Turramurra Women's pay gap is no laughing matter Much is written about women's pay gap. Jessica Irvine ("Rough justice: the job with a 141 per cent gender pay gap", June 10) lists some of 14 jobs that earn women more, yet the income is tiny. True injustice. In a recent TV program, Louis Theroux interviewed a porn star, who said it was the only industry where women far out-earned men. Don't know whether to laugh or cry. Emmanuel Valaris Fingal Bay

Between a rock and a seawall Yes, Peter Spencer (Letters, June 10), taxpayer-subsidised seawalls smack of middle class welfare and Australia's waistline is vast. Inge Close Manly Malcolm, Tony and Mike, resist the (s)urge. A "Collaroy levy" would push everyone else over the (rapidly eroding coastline's) edge. Justin Holt Newtown

Helen Pitt's heartfelt column about her reaction to the aftermath of the recent coastal storms tells of how "we need to be reminded that although we live in a cosmopolitan city we are perched precariously on the edge of the world's largest island". I would like to remind those living in the five mainland cities perching 'precariously on the edge' that the vast continent over their shoulders is even more deserving of their serious attention. Susie Dunn Armidale Trump extremely familiar Steve Ellis (Letters, June 10) states that Americans will not elect Donald Trump as President because: "Americans, like Australians, will not elect anyone perceived as being an extremist". We elected Tony Abbott didn't we?

Alan Marel North Curl Curl. Fiasco may bite back The amazing rejection of all private sector proposals for the redevelopment of the White Bay Power Station (" 'Bizarre' turnaround as all 13 tenders rejected", June 10) means millions of dollars of work has been wasted. Private Public Partnerships (PPP) require good faith from both sides to develop solutions that balance community concerns with financial viability. It seems that at White Bay the cost of restoration could not be offset by limited residential development. The cancellation of the PPP process will make the private sector more wary of future partnerships with the NSW government. Chris Johnson CEO Urban Taskforce Sydney Deja vu?

I've just had such an awful, dastardly, scary nightmare, I was overjoyed to wake up. I'd dreamt Rob Oakeshott had returned to politics. Imagine that! ("Rob Oakeshott to stand at election", June 10 smh.com.au) Rosemary O'Brien Georges Hall Holiday madness There are 364 days in the year that are not the Queen's birthday. Monday June 13 is but one of them. Not that I'm against long weekends. Perhaps we could have a holiday for each of the corgies: they're thick, inbred and pampered too. Scott Poynting Newtown

Cheaper by the dozen Will this improve the current egg shortage ("Liberal Democrats seek 'more chicks' ", June 10)? Allan Gibson Cherrybrook POSTSCRIPT For those who want the Emerald City to wake up to the perils of climate change, inappropriate development and greed, it was the perfect storm; for owners of beach-front properties in Collaroy, it was not.
An aerial photo taken on Sept. 25, 2015 from a seaplane of Hainan Maritime Safety Administration shows cruise vessel Haixun 1103 heading to the Yacheng 13-1 drilling rig during a patrol insouth China Sea. (Xinhua/Zhao Yingquan)

HANOI, June 9 -- Senior officials from China and the ASEAN nations vowed on Thursday to fully and effectively implement the Declaration on Conducts of the Parties in the South China Sea (DOC).

The 12th Senior Officials' Meeting on the Implementation of the DOC, co-chaired by Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Liu Zhenmin and Singapore's Permanent Secretary of Foreign Ministry Chee Wee Kiong, was held in Vietnam's northern Halong City.

All parties vowed to continue to fully and effectively implement the DOC, deepen practical maritime cooperation and jointly safeguard peace and stability in the South China Sea.

The officials discussed the proposal that foreign ministers of China and the ASEAN nations issue a joint statement on the full and effective implementation of the DOC, and agreed to strive to reach a consensus at an early date.

On the consultations of the Code of Conduct in the South China Sea (COC), the 11 parties promised to implement relevant early harvest measures as soon as possible and speed up the formulation of a guideline for the Hotline Platform among senior officials of ministries of foreign affairs between China and ASEAN nations in response to maritime emergencies.

They also discussed the better use of the Code for Unplanned Encounters at Sea in the South China Sea.

All parties reaffirmed their aspirations for an early conclusion of the COC on the basis of consensus, and vowed to boost maritime cooperation, enhance mutual trust, and jointly safeguard peace and stability in the South China Sea as well as prosperity and development in the region.
I was a head prefect of the Scots College in the 1970s. It was a great experience. For me.

At our 10-year reunion I learned of two suicides among my classmates. They had been good mates, involved in cadets and sport as well as study. But I later found out from their friends that they were also gay. Friends told me about their difficulties at home, their fear of being outed at school, and their struggle for self-acceptance. There were three other unexplained deaths. I suspect they, too, struggled with their sexuality.

Illustration: Alan Moir

I have often thought that if I had that time again, I would condemn the ridiculous bullying that boys indulge in: calling others poofters to announce to their peers that they themselves are most certainly not. But I didn't understand. I hadn't been informed about the horror that young gay people (sorry, LGBTI, my how I didn't understand!) might go through. Instead I insisted on support for the First XI.

As the parent of a wonderful gay son, I know it's not a choice. Why would someone "elect" to subject themselves to such bullying and personal turmoil. Any teacher will testify to the adolescent need to be accepted, not to be different.
We're mates. We have been from the get-go. I tell her we're best mates and she nods. She's three years old and has a sweet tooth. I'm her go-to man for liquorice. We don't talk much. Never have. She sits on my knee and we watch Masha and the Bear, a Russian cartoon I'd recommend. One afternoon, we watched 13 programs of Masha and the Bear in a row. It's like when her mother sat on my knee at the same age, only then we mostly watched footy. The author's father, taken in 1945 (sitting on the grass). Credit:Martin Flanagan One of my granddaughter's three years was spent in England. Best mates when she left, we were best mates when she got back. It was like slipping into an old coat again only the coat is very new. What I know is we can spend time together. One day, not so long ago, I took her round the house, showing her pictures and paintings, telling her the stories behind each of them. We stopped in front of my favourite photo of my father. It was taken in Christmas 1945 at Greens beach in northern Tasmania. He's just home from the war. What he has experienced will preoccupy him for the rest of his life, but for the moment he's happy just to be back.

He's sitting in grass. Kneeling beside him is his brother Tom, a character about whom many stories are told. Tom left school at 13. Next to Tom is my grandfather Patrick, a railway ganger who could write no more than his name. In front are Tom's four kids, urchins with no idea of posing for a camera. Holding my granddaughter in front of the photo, it occurs to me that she is as many generations removed from Patrick Flanagan, my grandfather, as I am from Thomas Flanagan, the Irish convict who arrived in Tasmania (then called Van Diemen's Land) in 1847. Thomas Flanagan was sent to work on a property just outside Longford, one of the towns that nearly drowned this week in the weather "event" that inundated north and eastern Tasmania. A lot of my history is from Longford. My brother's the doctor there. On Monday, a rumour shot round Longford that "they" (that anonymous word for authority) were about to close the levee gates, which would have meant no way out to the highway. In a town of only 2000 people, there was a traffic jam of people trying to escape. My brother asks me, "What happens when one of these weather events occurs over a city?" Another of my convict forebears, William Steers, worked on a property outside Longford owned by the notoriously cruel landowner Joseph Archer. Steers staged a one-man strike and was sent to Port Arthur for "severe punishment". William Steers is buried in Latrobe, which this week flooded badly. I carry my granddaughter over to the photo of my father just home from the war. I watch her engage with the image. I point to my father. I say, "That's my dad." Then I point to my grandfather: "He's my dad's dad." She looks at the picture some more. Then she says, "Where are you?"
Design needn't be about objects, according to Marti Guixe. The Catalan artist and former designer says it can be about behaviour, perceptions and fiction. As he once said, we don't need to change the world "through ashtrays and flower pots". But we can do it with food.

Guixe, who lives between Berlin and Barcelona, has been described as the "father of food design". He says food is among the most fascinating and pliable things we consume, its function going far beyond necessity. It is, he says, a consumer product  but one that is actually consumed, disappears, and has the potential to help us see and think in new ways.

Artist Marti Guixe.

In Fake Food Park, an exhibition about to open at the National Gallery of Victoria, Guixe will be focusing on children, who have a fascinating (and sometimes frustrating) relationship with food, as any parent well knows.

Guixe's take on consumption is both complicated and refreshing. He likes things to be cheap, disposable and ephemeral  an approach that probably horrifies designers who want to sell things, things and more things.
Georgiana Houghton was living with her parents as a middle-aged spinster when she attended her first seance, in 1859. Having already lost four of her nine siblings, including an adored younger sister, Zilla, it is not surprising that when a cousin told her about a neighbour who communicated with the spirits, the 45-year-old was all ears.

At the down-at-heel home of the medium Mrs Marshall, described in the press as "a short, fat woman with small eyes", Houghton heard a sequence of knocks, as well as communication from Zilla on a subject about which no one else in the room could have known. It left her "filled with astonishment".

The Portrait of the Lord Jesus Christ (detail), 1862.

Not long after, and encouraged by her mother, she became a medium. Beginning with table-tipping, where participants hold the table and wait for it to jerk, she progressed to the planchette, a heart-shaped piece of wood, mounted on two wheels and with a hole for a pen, designed for written contact with the spirits. She bought it from a specialist maker who had a sideline in artificial limbs.

It was after learning about the drawings made while in a trance by a Mrs Wilkinson, though, that Houghton found her vocation, and, in 1861, she produced the first of several hundred intricate, abstract and richly symbolic artworks, which were, according to her, "without parallel in the world".
Code of Silence

COLIN DILLON, WITH TOM GILLING

ALLEN & UNWIN, $29.99

True-crime books are a mixed lot, but this is a cut above most. Colin Dillon, the first Indigenous policeman in Australia, joined the Queensland Police force in 1965. He was in the job for 36 years, but it was his two years in the Licensing Branch that led him  when his health was poor and fearing for his family  in 1987 to be the first cop to give testimony to the Fitzgerald Inquiry into police corruption. The first thing he was told on entering the Licensing Branch, which oversaw gambling, prostitution and strip clubs, was "we do things differently here". And they did. A large part of the branch was on the take. Among other things, you really feel the tension of the court room and are taken deep into the offices and sites of almost absurd corruption. A simple, dramatic tale of great bravery.
The Gustav Sonata, by Rose Tremain.

"Write about what you don't know," Rose Tremain once told a group of aspiring writers. It sounds like dangerous advice but it has worked well for Tremain herself. Her own world is quintessentially English.

As chancellor of the University of East Anglia, author of 15 highly praised novels, partner of the celebrated biographer Richard Holmes, Tremain knows about success and privilege at the centre of British cultural life. What she writes about is quite different. Ranging daringly in time and place, her novels include Music and Silence, set in Denmark at the eccentric court of Christian IV. That's a long way from the gritty realism of her New Zealand gold rush novel, The Colour.

Tremain's first big success, Restoration, revisited a much-explored costume drama site but was never weighed down by wigs and diamonds in the time of England's Charles II. All Tremain's novels are primarily about character; her empathy and imagination are stirred by people adrift or isolated by circumstance. A recent novel, The Road Home, is set in today's London. It shows a refugee from eastern Europe, struggling to survive on casual jobs, hungry, lost, homesick.

Tremain's latest novel, The Gustav Sonata, takes us to Switzerland just before the Second World War. Five-year-old Gustav is told by his mother that he must be like Switzerland. "You must hold yourself together, be courageous, stay separate and strong."
Canberra is holding its first full-scale writers' festival on August 26-28, with guests including British philosopher AC Grayling , political thriller writers Steve Lewis and Chris Uhlmann , fantasy writer Isobelle Carmody , memoirist Richard Glover , novelist/novella-ist Nick Earls . Winter and spring will also see smaller NSW festivals at Bellingen , Whitsunday (Airlie Beach), Wollongong , Mudgee , Batemans Bay , St Albans and no doubt others, so you are likely to find one near you.

Byron Bay Writers' Festival (August 5-7) will announce its full program on June 15, and has already named some interesting names: New Yorker writer and surfer William Finnegan ; Wild author Cheryl Strayed ; African American writers Angela Flournoy (The Turner House) and Jeffery Renard Allen (Song of the Shank); Australian-born author of The Last Painting of Sara de Vos Dominic Smith ; children's authors and illustrators Peter Carnavas, Nick Falk, Anna Fienberg, Tony Flowers ; and locals including Charlotte Wood, Magda Szubanski, Damon Young , and the inseparable pairs Janet Hawley and Wendy Whiteley , Annabel Crabb and Leigh Sales . Tickets at byronwritersfestival.com.

Barbarian Days by William Finnegan.

After last week's good news of literary publishers appointed at Picador and Xoum in Sydney came the sad news that the small Melbourne publisher Sleepers is closing - another casualty of Australia Council funding cuts. Run by Louise Swinn and Zoe Dattner for 13 years, Sleepers published books by writers such as Kalinda Ashton, Steven Amsterdam, SJ Finn, Balli Kaur Jaswal, Eleanor Limprecht and David Musgrave, as well as the periodical Sleepers Almanac. Swinn told Undercover: "Sleepers has always been a labour of love, and we have been reliant on Ozco funding (usually about $4000 per book, which we apply for on a per-book basis). The last grant we applied for, for three books, we didn't get, but we went ahead and published the books anyway. So it's gone from something that broke even to something that basically runs at a loss, and it's too hard for us to justify."

But there's also good news for new writers from tiny publishers. The Lifted Brow has not only published its 30th quarterly journal of new writing but has begun publishing books under Sam Cooney, who had an Australia Council grant in 2014 to see how the US journal McSweeney's had expanded into books. The first Lifted Brow book coming this year is Briohny Doyle's debut novel, "a postmodern science fiction tale in the vein of Philip K. Dick and Michel Houellebecq" set in a dystophian future filled with natural disasters and on-screen relationships (or is that the present?). Similarly, Seizure magazine, co-founded by Alice Grundy and part of the Xoum family, will publish novellas following the success of its novella competition.

A YEAR IN THE LIFE OF AMERICAN BOOKS

The latest Nielsen report on the US publishing industry shows print book sales increased almost 3 per cent in 2015 while ebook sales dropped 13 per cent and their share of the total market fell to 24 per cent from 27 per cent in 2014. Use of most electronic reading devices slipped but ebook downloads to smartphones almost doubled. The fastest growing genres were art and design, house and home, crafts and games (mostly adult colouring books, which rose from 1 million to 12 million copies), self-help, science fiction, classics, graphic novels, and children's non-fiction.The year's bestselling book was Harper Lee's Go Set a Watchman, which sold 1.6 million copies, followed by Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Old School by Jeff Kinney, Grey by E.L. James, The Girl on a Train by Paula Hawkins, The Life-changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo, and All the Light We Can See by Anthony Doerr - all above 1 million sales. The sting in the tail is that the proportion of Americans buying books has fallen by 6 per cent since 2011.
The struggles of architect Jrn Utzon to build Australia's most recognisable architectural landmark, the Sydney Opera House, are to be dramatised in a new feature film.

A Danish-Swedish-Australian co-production is aiming to bring the story of Utzon's epic battle with the New South Wales government, headed by Premier Robert Askin, to the big screen. Danish executive producer, Ole Sndberg, of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo fame, is on board the film project, which carries the working title Utzon, the Man Behind the Opera House.

The film will begin with the surprise naming in 1957 of the relatively unknown Danish architect as designer of the Opera House and narrate his stormy relationship with the Askin government and his decision a decade later to resign from the project.

Australian architect Harry Seidler and author Patrick White led protest marches demanding Utzon be reinstated but the architect left Australia in 1966 with his family, never to see his masterpiece completed.
KATHMANDU, June 9 -- Senior military officials from China and Nepal agreed on Thursday to further strengthen military ties between the two countries.

Admiral Sun Jianguo, deputy chief of the Joint Staff Department of China's Central Military Commission, and Chief of the Army Staff of the Nepalese Army Rajendra Chhetri discussed military-to-military ties and bilateral relations.

The Nepalese side has expressed belief that the meeting was helpful to further strengthen the military ties between China and Nepal, the Nepalese Army said in a statement.

Admiral Sun, who arrived here on Monday, had met with Nepalese Defense Minister Bhim Rawal. During the meeting, the two sides pledged to enhance defense cooperation between China and Nepal.
A writer and performer and winner of last year's Melbourne Fringe Best Emerging Writer award, Nevile is bemused by the recent release of Shakespeare works such as Romeo and Juliet written entirely in emoticons, slang and text talk, and by the Oxford Dictionary making an emoji (the face with tears of joy) the "word" of the year 2015.

Not Nevile, even though she loves what the internet offers in terms of communication, research possibilities and democratic flavour. It's just that she also adores contemplation, analysis and detail; she loves nuance, subtlety and richness.

It is not a surprise: who, after all, isn't addicted to bottomless social media feeds and an insatiable appetite for the pithy, the snappy and the twittery, amid all the gigs of information thrown our way each day? We all want the punchline.

Telia Nevile was aghast when she learnt the term TL;DR (too long; didn't read). That's the flip response given to posts that are considered just a bit too taxing and time-consuming for the 21st-century brain.

But when Nevile hears about "ambient reading", her jaw simply drops. It is a term I've just been introduced to by Oscar Schwartz, a writer and academic, and I absorb it (possibly ambiently) with the same OMG face (insert emoji here) that greets TL;DR.

Together with a few other writers and pundits, Nevile and Schwartz will soon be debating the future of language and whether the internet is changing it for the better. To be held as part of the coming Emerging Writers' Festival, the debate will no doubt lead to more dropped jaws, plus a few lols, AYKMs and STFUs.

Nevile knows that when debating these issues, she'll be accused of being a Luddite, someone who's being dragged kicking, screaming and covered in dust mites away from pen and printed page. But she says we must keep up the debate about whether what is happening to language and culture is acceptable: the people blocking your view of a concert or an artwork because they are recording it on their tech; the selfie sticks; the conversations you have with people who are so busy texting they don't hear what you are saying.

"And the desperate need to document everything at the expense of actually experiencing it," she says. "It is fascinating and terrifying and it is happening so quickly. The discussion started ages ago but it needs to keep going on. Is this OK? What is it taking away? Do you still know what I look like or do you think I only look like the icon I have on my Facebook feed?"

Nevile confronts the common argument that thanks to social media we can easily chart the evolution of language, and that it is more egalitarian because anyone can coin a phrase and it might go viral and be the next Oxford Dictionary word of the year.
As Mick "Crocodile" Dundee might have put it, that's not a funding boost, THIS is a funding boost.

Just two days after NSW announced a $20 million pool designed to lure film and television production to the state, Victoria has responded with a pot of gold it claims will ensure at least $80 million worth of drama and comedy production happens south of the Murray.

The Victorian funding  an undisclosed "multi-million dollar" amount  announced by creative industries minister Martin Foley on Friday is to be spread over two years, and specifically targets independent production companies making content to screen on the ABC, including its online-only platform, i-view.
"A group of us were having dinner and I saw him walk into the public bar. I decided I would go over and ask him to please attend the forum," she said. The Top Pub in Uralla. Credit:Facebook According to Ms Chirlian and Ms Kuhn, who accompanied her, Mr Joyce responded: "Nicky, I know what you're doing. You do this every time". A few minutes later, after he returned from the bathroom, Ms Chirlian made a final attempt to get his agreement to attend the forum. "He got really quite loud, other people in our group who were in the other room could hear him. He said 'Nicky piss off, just piss off, piss off'," Ms Chirlian said.

"He was physically quite close. He's a big bloke and I'm 5"6 and coming up on 60 years-old. I was pretty shocked. At that stage the bar staff woman came in beside me and she put her arm straight out between Barnaby Joyce and myself. "At that stage the bar staff woman came in beside me and she put her arm straight out between Barnaby Joyce and myself. "I'm a constituent. I'm pretty insulted because I felt like he was using a bullying tactic. He might not like me or want to come to our forum but I don't think that's appropriate behaviour for the Deputy Prime Minister." Ms Feitz, who runs the White Rose Cafe across the road from the pub, had a different view on the incident, saying Mr Joyce had arrived at 9.30pm and began chatting to a table of locals when Ms Chirlian and Ms Kuhn "ran across the bar and accosted him".

"I couldn't hear what they were saying but they kept following him around. They were absolutely in his face. They wouldn't go away," she said. "He asked them to go away and, yes, he did say 'piss off' eventually but they kept following him. We yelled across to the bar staff to intervene but it was more about getting the woman away from Barnaby Joyce. He'd given up on having a beer with us at the point and was getting takeways." Ms Williams, who was standing talking to Mr Joyce at the time, said he was clearly "off-duty" and did not deserve to be "attacked" in the pub. "I think they were just downright rude. They weren't locals and as locals we felt ashamed. We were talking about it for a good 45 minutes after he had left," she said.

Mr Joyce's office turned down repeated requests to clarify his language, instead releasing a comment on behalf of the Deputy Prime Minister: "I was talking to locals who invited me over to have a beer with them. I was approached by people who were persistent and badgering about a forum which I advised them I could not attend. I left to go the bathroom and when I came back they were pestering the group. The bar staff intervened and asked them to leave." Ms Kuhn said she did not see the physical standoff but heard Mr Joyce tell her friend to piss off. "It was quite loud. It was strong in the way he said it numerous times," she said. Following the exchange, the bar worker suggested Ms Chirlian return to her table and minutes later Mr Joyce bought some takeaway drinks and left in his car, driven by his campaign manager. The incident angered Ms Chirlian's friend Dan Robins, a fellow member of the Lock the Gate Alliance that he posted a report on the incident on Facebook on Friday.
Senator Nick Xenophon likes to make a virtue of his cheapness. His jacket is an $89 number from Target, which, he says, is about $40 more than he would usually spend. His undies are from Kmart and his car is a bomb, possibly literally  the model has a potential manufacturing fault meaning its airbags may spew shrapnel in case of crash.

Xenophon's political opponents may roll their eyes at such ostentatious parsimony, but like many things when it comes to the enterprising, wily and thoroughly populist leader, it's all part of his political brand.

It is a brand that is frightening the major parties, notably the Liberals, who are chucking prime ministerial visits, a scare campaign about a hung Parliament, and even John Howard at the problem.
Federal Labor's candidate for Eden Monaro Mike Kelly has resigned from the ADF standby reserve after he was told to remove all images of himself in military uniform from campaign material.

The request came a day after high profile backbencher and former Special Forces soldier Andrew Hastie was sacked from the standby reserves after breaching strict rules designed to protect the apolitical nature of the ADF.

The Canning MP had refused to remove a 2009 photo of himself in military uniform from campaign advertising, an act of disobedience that prompted his sacking.
High profile former independent MP Rob Oakeshott will attempt a comeback at the July 2 federal election, offering Malcolm Turnbull the first chance to govern in the event of a hung Parliament.

Mr Oakeshott, who retired as the member for Lyne in 2013 after backing the Gillard government in the last hung Parliament, will stand against Nationals MP Luke Hartsuyker in the safe NSW seat of Cowper.

The announcement coincided with the Australian Electoral Commission announcing all nominations and Senate ballot orders on Friday.
Brisbane's Labor candidate will remove billboards depicting him in his army uniform following a directive from the Australian Defence Force to cease and desist.

But the candidate, Pat O'Neill, a former army major, said the rules surrounding the use of such images needed to be reviewed and he had a lot of sympathy for West Australian Liberal MP Andrew Hastie, who was sacked from the Standby Reserve for failing to comply with a similar request.

Labor candidate Pat O'Neill's billboard, on St Paul's Terrace, will be removed along by Saturday night. Credit:Bradley Kanaris

"I served with Andrew in Darwin and we've known each other for about a decade and even though our politics haven't always been the same, I've always got on well with Andrew and I've got a lot of time and respect for him," Mr O'Neill told Fairfax Media.

"I think it's sad to see someone who's dedicated the bulk of their working life to service in the army going through what he's gone through.
Queenslanders will have a record number of Senate candidates to choose from at next month's federal election, following the ballot draw in Brisbane on Friday afternoon.

The white ballot paper for the full Senate election will feature 122 names, 103 of whom would appear in grouped columns for above-the-line voting, which was a 49 per cent increase from the previous poll.

Australian Electoral Commission officials conduct the draw for the Queensland Senate ballot paper. Credit:Cameron Atfield

The 2013 Senate paper, by comparison, had 82 candidates put their names forward.
Author Jenny Hocking has unearthed a document that shows Kerr wanted his appointment as Australia's ambassador to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation to be announced when he resigned as governor-general in July 1977.

Malcolm Fraser and Australia's most controversial Governor-General discussed Sir John Kerr being given a plum diplomatic post in Paris before Sir John Kerr resigned as the Queen's representative, despite the public denials of both men.

The document, seen by Fairfax Media, includes Sir John's hand-written annotations on a draft of Mr Fraser's statement announcing the resignation that was sent to him for comment.

Malcolm Fraser, John Kerr and Gough Whitlam. Credit:Four Corners

Sir John suggested several additions, including this sentence: "[Sir John] He wishes to continue his service to Australia by turning to the international sphere. The Australian government is pleased to announce his appointment as Australia's ambassador to UNESCO."

While Sir John's other suggestions were included in Mr Fraser's statement, the reference to UNESCO was not. The appointment was announced seven months later and produced such a backlash that Sir John resigned in his first and only act as ambassador.

Both Mr Fraser and Sir John consistently denied that any agreement had been struck about a foreign posting before the former governor-general's resignation.
The ex-girlfriend of Amber Heard has spoken out after celebrity news website TMZ dug up old police documents which said Heard assaulted her at an airport, describing the arrest as "misinterpreted and over-sensationalised" as well as "homophobic".

Photographer Tasya van Ree has released a statement regarding the 2009 incident, after the new information was used to discredit Heard's current domestic violence case against ex-husband Johnny Depp.

Tasya van Ree (L) and Amber Heard pictured together in 2010. Credit:Getty

"In 2009, Amber was wrongfully accused for an incident that was misinterpreted and over-sensationalized by two individuals in a power position," the statement read.

"I recount hints of misogynistic attitudes toward us which later appeared to be homophobic when they found out we were domestic partners and not just 'friends'. Charges were quickly dropped and she was released moments later."
China Overseas Ports Holding Company donated three school buses to three Pakistani schools in 2014. [Photo: Xinhua]

China on Thursday handed over free assistance of 505 vehicles, including 425 pickups and 80 ambulances, in addition to office equipment to Pakistan.

China signed an agreement to provide the free assistance to Pakistan during Chinese President Xi Jinping's state visit to Pakistan in April Last year.

The handover ceremony was held at the finance ministry building in Pakistani capital of Islamabad, which was attended by Pakistan's Finance Minister Ishaq Dar, Chinese Ambassador to Pakistan Sun Weidong and officials from the both sides.

Pakistan's Secretary of the Economic Affairs Division Tariq Bajwa and Chinese Ambassador Sun Weidong signed the handover documents.

Later on, the Chinese Ambassador handed over a symbolic key of vehicles to the Pakistani finance minister.

On the occasion, Chinese Ambassador Sun Weidong said "We hope that these free assistance could support Pakistan for strengthening the capacity building and also for governmental usage. We will always support each other as close partners and dear brothers, and we hope that our friendship and relations will further strengthen in the days to come. "

"This year is the 65th anniversary of the establishment of the China-Pak diplomatic relations, and it should also be the year of implementation for all the consensuses that we have reached during President Xi Jinping's visit to Pakistan last year. Today's ceremony is part of our efforts to implement our consensus," said Sun.

Expressing thanks to Chinese President Xi Jinping and the Chinese people for the aid, Pakistan's Federal Finance Minister Ishaq Dar said "This is the friendship gift from China for Pakistan. We are always obliged and we cherished friendship with China."

According to the finance minister, all the vehicles and equipment have already reached Pakistan, and these will be distributed to different governmental departments across Pakistan, including four provinces Punjab, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Sindh and Balochistan, and capital territory of Islamabad, Gilgit Baltistan, northwest tribal areas and Pakistan administered Jammu and Kashmir.
"I nearly lost part of my bowel and one of my ovaries after they became stuck together."

Endometriosis affects a woman's reproductive organs; it happens when the tissue that lines the uterus grows outside of it.

Each month Greig can be crippled by a condition that affects one in 10 Australian women, though many more are thought to suffer in silence.

Or, as Greig puts it, "It causes a crap load of pain in your reproductive system, where you have inflamed, big round balls, or cysts, and small sticky patches that can stick your organs together.

"For me, it causes pain at that time of month; some months I'm okay, others I'm bedridden. Sometimes the pain is so bad I have had to be hospitalised; where every step I take feels like someone is stabbing me in the stomach."

Greig, an ambassador for Endometriosis Australia, started having symptoms at just 16 but was not formally diagnosed until she was 23.

At the time, a GP popped her on the contraceptive pill which fixed the symptoms, but did not stop the growth of the endometriosis.

"In 2013, at 31 years old, I nearly lost part of my bowel and one of my ovaries after they became stuck together," she said.
Sex robots may become a staple of the bedroom within 10 years as the devices become more lifelike and affordable, a leading computer scientist has predicted.

Noel Sharkey, an expert in artificial intelligence, said teenagers risked losing their virginity to sophisticated humanoid robots unless the sector was properly regulated.

What is happening? Credit:Javier Pierini

He warned that policymakers now see the robot industry simply as an economic driver, but that without proper constraints the technology could start dehumanising families.

The former adviser to the United Nations on robotics said he knew of at least 14 companies in South Korea and Japan that were making and marketing "childcare" robots, and he warned that the growing capability of sex robots means they are likely to enter mainstream use within years.
It is quite possibly the most famous historical painting produced in New Zealand, an epic, larger-than-life-sized tableaux entitled The Arrival of the Maoris in New Zealand. It depicts a group of Maoris, emaciated and exhausted, the moment  during the 13th century  that they first sight the land that they would go on to claim as their own: New Zealand. Painted by Charles Goldie and Louis John Steele, it carries the narratives of the Romantic era and, like a lot of colonial art, makes some gross historical assumptions and generalisations about the event.

In a new exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria, New Zealand-born photographer Greg Semu presents a series of powerful photographic works, using large-scale photography to address and reinterpret the complex and problematic depictions of colonisation in historical art. The Raft of the Tagata Pasifika (People of the Pacific) draws attention to the impact and reality of the collision of indigenous tribes as well as the colonisation and Christianisation of the Pacific.

The Arrival, diptych 2014-15, type C photograph, collection of the artist, Sydney, Greg Semu, courtesy Alcaston Gallery, Melbourne. Credit:Greg Semu

"Semu's work grapples with Western art history and leads us towards a Maori understanding of the events surrounding their ancestors' migratory voyage to New Zealand," NGV director Tony Ellwood said.

In his photographic installation, Semu restages the painting with a powerful tableau that features 22 indigenous actors from the Cook Islands.
UNSW psychiatrist Professor Valsamma Eapen recommended all children be routinely screened for autism between six months and four years old. Early intervention from roughly 18 months offers the the best chance for improving outcomes, but the average Australian child with ASD is diagnosed at four years old, found a recent analysis of national data. UNSW psychiatrist and researcher Professor Valsamma Eapen wants all children to be routinely screened for autism from six months to four years old. Belinda Hitchcock desperately searched for answers for 12 months before her son Bradley was diagnosed with autism. "Fours years is really too late for a diagnosis. It's a huge missed opportunity," said Professor Eapen, who pushed for universal surveillance and early identification of ASD in a paper published in the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry on Friday.

"The earlier the intervention the more gains the child makes in improving symptoms, and functional capacity. It's in those preschool years when brain plasticity is maximum that we can make those neuronal connections around speech and language and social connectedness," she said. Professor Eapen is calling for autism screening to be embedded within an overall developmental surveillance framework starting from six months and autism specific assessments from 18 months She recommended for all children. NSW guidelines include nine checks between between six months and four years old including vaccinations and developmental markers. "It's not about labelling these kids. An unresponsive child could have language or hearing problems, or autism. It's about finding kids who are falling behind and starting early intervention," she said. Autism Awareness Australia chief executive Nicole Rogerson said delayed diagnoses were "absolutely devastating" for children.

"People say ridiculous things like, 'We'll just wait and see if it all just kicks in'. It's never going to just kick in for kids with autism," Ms Rogerson said. "Parents are already freaking out if their children aren't hitting those developmental milestones. They're already anxious," she added, dismissing fears that a false positive diagnosis may cause unnecessary anxiety. Identifying and treating ASD early may also ease the burden on services and public funding through NDIS as children are likely to improve faster and need less support for a shorter period of time, Ms Rogerson said. Now nine-and-a-half, Bradley still does 20-30 hours of early intervention therapy each week. It took more than five years for his speech to return. "I explain to people that it's like all the doors in his brain are shut and we are going through and opening each one individually as we go," Ms Hitchcock said.

"His behaviours are quite good now because he can tell us what he wants and his frustrations." "But he has no social understanding at all. He doesn't have friends. He only just started playing with his sister Holly." Ms Hitchcock said she has only recently started imaging Bradley's future. "He'll probably never move out of home. He'll be with me and my husband forever. "But I want him to be happy, and he is. I'm so proud of him. We would do anything for him. He enjoy seeing him improve and enjoy his achievements. He's phenomenal."
Malcolm Fraser and John Kerr at a service for Remembrance Day in 1976. Credit:Peter Wells In Matters for Judgement. Kerr makes plain his belief that he was suffering financially and making "a very real sacrifice" by resigning as governor-general after just 29 months, when he had expected to be in office for many years longer. "Having in mid-1974 given up an office which assured me of a good salary and pension and stimulating work to do until I turned 70, in December 1977 on leaving the governor-generalship I would, at 63, be on a pension far less than my former judicial salary and very far less than my emoluments as governor-general," he wrote. John Kerr gives a speech at Dallas Brooks Hall in Melbourne in 1974. When it came to his likely book earnings, Hocking writes that Kerr's major concern was tax. "Specifically, that he would have to pay it."

She reports that Miller was hired and he contacted the chartered accountants, Greenwood Challoner & Co, on Kerr's behalf, who in turn wrote to the law firm Allen, Allen & Hemsley, a firm "well versed in problematic large-scale tax matters". Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser (right) with governor-general John Kerr (centre) and John Howard on the lawns of Admiralty House after the swearing in of Mr Howard as the new treasurer in 1977. "The key to Kerr's predicament was identified by Greenwood Challoner from the outset: if the income is earned in Australia then tax must be paid, the challenge therefore was to find a way to avoid income from the book being seen as earned in Australia," Hocking writes. "However, and this was the rub, if Kerr entered into acceptable arrangements with an 'offshore entity' based in a 'designated tax haven' in order to minimise his tax, the Reserve Bank of Australia must first approve those arrangements as ones that 'did not involve the evasion of  Australian tax'. John Kerr and Prime Minister Gough Whitlam in the King's Hall, Parliament House, Canberra on July 11, 1974.

"This then was the central dilemma, that in order to obtain a tax clearance certificate from the Reserve Bank of Australia confirming that no tax evasion was involved, both the tax avoidance and the tax avoider would have to be identified, and Kerr wanted neither." There were other "more opaque", options to avoid disclosure, but the accounting firm recognised that someone in Kerr's position should think twice before entertaining them. Allen, Allen & Hemsley, on the other hand, had no such qualms. "Their concern was not Kerr's position, but his identity. In their view it was 'most desirable' that Kerr keep his identity hidden and on a need-to-know basis," writes Hocking. "What transpired was a moment when law and ethics collided and, once again, Kerr's judgment was lacking." To conceal his identity, Kerr chose the pseudonym Mr Frederick King and, for the next three months, "Mr King" and Allens deliberated on a scheme that would effectively subvert the usual oversight of the governor-general's financial dealings by the Reserve Bank of Australia. "In the end, Allens proposed a highly complex scheme for Mr King, involving a tangle of companies across two countries, with documents to be signed in a third country," writes Hocking.

"It was known as an 'Uncle Charlie' scheme and included a trust in the United Kingdom, a company in the Netherlands, a second company in the United Kingdom, and necessitated a trip to Hong Kong, where 'Mr King' would sign the necessary documents. "Through the company transfers, sales, sub-licensing and assignments of rights and capital, Kerr's earnings would be offshore and minimal, and neither the Reserve Bank of Australia nor the Australian Tax Office would know anything about it." Kerr ended his term as governor-general on December 8,1977, but three weeks earlier his plans were upended when Allens advised him that the scheme might not succeed if he was to live in England. As Allens' UK consultants, put it: "Mr King should take care that no part of his activities in writing the book takes place within the United Kingdom", otherwise British tax laws might yet take from Kerr the very tax he had worked so hard to avoiding paying. It was essential, Allens advised, that "Mr King" write his book "outside the United Kingdom  say, in France".

Two days after he ceased to be governor-general, Kerr and his wife left Australia on one-way tickets with the stated intention of moving to London after a period in Europe. "The strongest drive operating in me was to write," he explained in his memoir. As Kerr told it, they settled in a beautiful village high in the Austrian Tyrol "where we should be as little disturbed by outside contact as possible" and immersed himself in writing his book until "our quiet life" was dramatically interrupted by a message to call a senior official in Canberra. "I was asked whether I would accept the post of Australian ambassador to UNESCO. This would mean living in Paris, with duties beginning in March." Kerr wrote in Matters for Judgement that he understood a decision to accept the appointment would preclude the publication of his book while he was ambassador. He took the job nonetheless, "abandoning the visit to London and the early publication of my writings". What he did not anticipate, he wrote, was the hostility the appointment would rekindle, especially from Labor leader Bill Hayden, who dubbed Kerr "Judas in a morning suit".

Kerr's response, in his first and only action as ambassador after arriving in Paris, was to resign and to return to his writing, including a comprehensive response to the attacks in Matters for Judgement. The major flaw in Kerr's account concerns what he chose not to divulge, including another important revelation in Hocking's updated book: that he had wanted Fraser to confirm the Paris appointment when he announced Kerr's resignation as governor-general on July 14, 1977. This was denied by both Fraser and Kerr. The irony, given the selective nature Matters for Judgement, is that so many of the key facts of the Dismissal that have filled out the story came from Kerr's own papers held by the National Archives of Australia in Canberra. Having spent hundreds of hours methodically working her way through the papers at the archives, Hocking says she is satisfied that there is nothing more to learn from them. "Eventually they are quite depressing for what they tell us about Kerr," Hocking tells Fairfax Media. "He was a deeply troubled man." There is, however, one instalment to come, a final piece of the puzzle that has been "as deliberately and as carefully concealed as every other aspect has been in this blighted history".
The former upper house MP has pleaded not guilty to the charge.

Eddie Obeid at the Darlinghurst Supreme Court on the first day of his criminal trial. Credit:Edwina Pickles

Mr Obeid, 72, is standing trial for misconduct in public office for failing to disclose his family had an interest in two cafe leases at Circular Quay when lobbying Steve Dunn, then deputy chief executive of the NSW Maritime Authority, about the plight of waterfront leaseholders.

The head of the state maritime authority was unaware his deputy was in regular phone contact with then NSW Labor MP Eddie Obeid and only found out after the fact the senior bureaucrat had met a mediator representing Obeid family business interests, the Supreme Court has heard.

Chris Oxenbould, the former chief executive of the maritime authority, gave evidence on Friday he was aware Mr Obeid and Mr Dunn had struck up a friendship when the former was fisheries minister and the latter was the head of the fisheries department.

He said he was aware they "occasionally met" for coffee but he did not believe it was related to the maritime authority's business.

Mr Oxenbould was also aware they spoke on the telephone, but only discovered the extent of the contact later.

"I thought it was far more occasional and infrequent," Mr Oxenbould said.

The court has heard Mr Obeid did not reveal his family had an interest in cafes on wharves four and five at Circular Quay when he asked Mr Dunn, who is not accused of any wrongdoing, to meet a commercial mediator in 2007.
A mentally ill man who was shot by police at a busy shopping centre was granted day release from a mental health facility despite allegedly expressing homicidal tendencies towards police.

Jerry Sourian, 23, was shot three times after he was seen wandering around Westfield Hornsby's forecourt, dazed and carrying a large carving knife, on Thursday afternoon.

Graphic footage shows the moment a female officer opened fire at Mr Sourian as he allegedly ran at her with the knife.

Three female bystanders, aged between 60 and 82, were hit by police bullets or bullet fragments.
A mentally ill man who was shot by police at a busy shopping centre was granted day release from a mental health facility, despite allegedly telling his nurses and doctors he wanted to kill police.

Jerry Sourian, 23, was shot three times on Thursday afternoon after he was seen wandering around Westfield Hornsby's forecourt, dazed and carrying a large carving knife.

Alleged knife attacker Jerry Sourian at Westfield Hornsby with an injured bystander in the background. Credit:Channel 9

Two officers, a male and female, opened fire at Mr Sourian as he allegedly ran at the female officer with the knife.
New secret plans have come to light that show officers at Waverley Council looked at a more modest $10 million refurbishment of the Bondi Pavilion last year before a more extensive plan, which would see the top floor of the building redeveloped into restaurants and cafes, was proposed.

The 38 million proposal, backed by the mayor Sally Betts, has been signed off by the council and will proceed to a formal development application this year despite an outcry from the Bondi community.

Local residents agree the building needs refurbishment, but they say the mayor's plan will result in the loss of public access to the first floor verandah, which affords panoramic views of Bondi Beach.

Cr Betts has argued her plan would deliver a state of the art theatre and ensure the pavilion is a world class tourist facility.
Coogee Surf Life Saving Club, having saved thousands of lives over the years, is now in dire need of a lifesaver itself.

The club's art deco building above the south end of Coogee beach has been wrecked by the storms.

Mark Doepel, Tass Karozis, and Ben Heenan inside the Coogee Surf Life Saving Club which was damaged during the storms this week. Credit:Janie Barrett

The 1000 members are temporarily homeless after king tides slammed six-metre waves into the clubhouse eastern wall, smashing windows, and throwing heavy gym equipment around like toys, leaving widespread damage and a wrecked sewer system.
An aerial photo taken on Sept. 25, 2015 from a seaplane of Hainan Maritime Safety Administration shows cruise vessel Haixun 1103 heading to the Yacheng 13-1 drilling rig during a patrol insouth China Sea. (Xinhua/Zhao Yingquan)

BEIJING, June9 (Peoples Daily) The Chinese Foreign Ministry on Wednesday issued a statement on settling disputes between China and the Philippines in the South China Sea through bilateral negotiation.

The latest statement stressed that it is the common agreement and commitment of China and the Philippines to settle their relevant disputes in the South China Sea through negotiation. In this regard, the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea (DOC), as well as a series of bilateral documents was highlighted.

While the statement confirmed that China will adhere to the position of settling disputes with the Philippines in the South China Sea through negotiation, it also made it clear that China views the Philippines' unilateral initiation of arbitration as against the provisions of UNCLOS.

The statement pointed out that the Philippines deliberately misrepresents certain consultations with China on maritime affairs and cooperation, all of a general nature, as negotiations over the subject-matters of the arbitration, and uses this as an excuse to claim that bilateral negotiations have been exhausted. This is despite the fact that the two States have never engaged in any negotiation on those subject-matters. Such claim made by the Philippines is fundamentally contrary to facts, and must have been made with ulterior motives.
Joshua Rathmell recalled the moment he saw Simon Gittany throw his fiancee to her death from a Sydney high rise.

But that could have been "a false memory", Gittany's barristers have argued in a narrow appeal against his 2013 murder conviction.

Appeal: Simon Gittany was convicted in 2013 of murdering his girlfriend Lisa Harnum in 2011. Credit:Ben Rushton

Wearing prison greens and a neat grey beard, Gittany, 42, appeared before the Court of Criminal Appeal via videolink from jail on Friday.
A man has been rushed to hospital in a critical condition after an incident involving a power tool at the Gold Coast.

Paramedics were called to a private residence in the Gold Coast suburb of Worongary just before noon where a man had received serious facial injuries, believed to be the result of a grinder accident.

A man was seriously injured in the face while using a grinder.

The High Acuity Response Unit attended the scene and the man, believed to be in his 30s, was rushed to Gold Coast University Hospital in a critical condition.
Lenovo is adding experimental technologies to its smartphones in a bid to grow its business, trying to overcome declining PC shipments and a competitive phone market. At Lenovo Tech World in San Francisco, the company showed off a prototype bendable phone that can articulate around your wrist, as well as a tablet that can be folded in half to use like a phone. Lenovo Chairman and CEO Yuanqing Yang holds up the new Phab2 Pro phone. Credit:AP "Over the past two years Lenovo has been transforming, making major acquisitions in mobile and infrastructure to expand beyond our core PC business," said Yuanqing Yang, the company's chairman and chief executive officer. "I was told we'd better launch something pretty exciting." While neither of the bendable devices is likely to make it to market anytime soon, the Beijing-based company also announced a phone that uses a Google sensory technology named Tango, and announced two new Motorola handsets that can be augmented with additional equipment via 16 "magic dots" in their backs.

The Tango phone, called the Phab 2 Pro, will roll out from September this year and is capable of mapping the 3D space around you in real time. This allows for new kinds of apps that, for example, display 3D computer images correctly in real space or allow you to see how new furniture would look in your room. With the Phab2 Pro, Lenovo will be the first company to field AR technology on smartphones without the need of a headset, separate device or attachment to a powerful computer. "Lenovo is creating a new kind of AR experience that is more portable, more practical, and will be even more popular," Yang said. Meanwhile the Motorola handsets, like LG's G5 and Google's Project Ara prototype, allow you to snap on addition modules to define the features of your phone. The MotoZ and MotoZ Force can be upgraded with additional equipment via what the company is calling Moto Mods. This lets people easily add battery power, speakers, projectors and other hardware capabilities to its phones by fastening the equipment with 16 "magic dots"  or high-powered magnets  to the phone's back. "Now your phone is not just your phone," Yang said. With Moto Mods, the phone "can transform into whatever you wanted it to be or needed to be," he said.
A risk of exposure to Hepatitis A has been linked to food prepared in a Gippsland supermarket.

The Victorian Health Department issued a health alert on Friday afternoon in relation to fruit, vegetables, deli products and prepared food from the FoodWorks supermarket in Yarram.

The alert said any ready-to-eat products bought from the supermarket between April 25 and June 9 should not be consumed.

"This food may be contaminated with hepatitis A virus and should be discarded," the Department said.
Passengers on a North Melbourne tram were threatened by three machete-wielding men in a one-hour ordeal.

About 20 people, including women and students, were on a route 57 tram on Thursday at the time and it took police an hour to contain the men following a tense stand-off.

Passengers were threatened with a machete during the hour-long ordeal on a North Melbourne tram on Thursday. Credit:Jessica Shapiro

A passenger told radio station 3AW those on the tram were "absolutely terrified" by the ordeal.

"The men were threatening to kill other passengers and were spitting on people," caller John told host Tony Jones. "Their behaviour was absolutely disgraceful."
Personal experiences of everyday life in WA is behind the state government's new campaign to boost tourism - with the catchphrase "Just another day in WA."

Premier Colin Barnett said the premise behind the campaign was to highlight the things we take for granted, but that visitors to the state would find "extraordinary."

"West Australians tend to be blase about the beauty and uniqueness of our magnificent state, so what is seen as extraordinary for a visitor is just another day in WA for us," Mr Barnett said.

WA Tourism has paid for eight new videos highlighting Rottnest, the Perth food safari, Margaret River, Hamelin Bay, Manjimup, Kookynie, Lake Ballard and Lucky Bay, while another nine videos are due to be finished by the end of this year at a cost of $700,000.
An Australian tourist who "joked" about jumping off an AirAsia flight to Bali has been banned from returning to Indonesia for six months.

Aaron Gerrard Dolden, 25, from Sydney, was detained on arrival at Bali's Ngurah Rai International Airport on May 27 after he was accused of endangering the safety of the flight under aviation law.

Banned: Aaron Gerrard Dolden being questioned at airport authority office.

Airport authority officer Ade Yuliana said AirAsia crew reported Mr Dolden said he would jump from the plane before the meal was served.

Mr Ade said on Friday Mr Dolden had been found not to be in breach of aviation law.
The Out camp insists the lumbering EU is weighing Britain down, imposing a confusing web of often-ridiculous rules and costing billions in membership fees. They say Britain made the right decision to stay out of the EU's euro currency, and British voters should now choose the same path and get out of the EU. Bremain: British Prime Minister David Cameron after an interview in which he laid out reasons for Britain to stay in the European Union. Credit:Getty Images Outists, among them Nigel Farage from the UK Independence Party (UKIP), raise the spectre of an untrammelled flood of refugees pouring into the island nation. They want the drawbridge pulled up, they want fewer immigrants, and they express horror at the notion of a "United States of Europe". Johnson, who appears to be trying to reshape his image from intelligent joker to serious statesman, expressed his trenchant views in an article in Britain's Daily Telegraph newspaper last month. He ended with a call for British courage: "This is a moment to be brave, to reach out - not to hug the skirts of Nurse in Brussels, and refer all decisions to someone else". Brexit: UK Independence Party (UKIP) leader Nigel Farage tells a rally why he believes Britain should leave the EU. Credit:AP

He's slung a few barbs at Cameron's Brexit arguments. "I think all this talk of World War Three and bubonic plague is totally demented frankly," Johnson said in a Sky News interview. Conservative MP Boris Johnson talks to supporters during a Vote Leave rally. Credit:Getty Images The Inners The In supporters champion the economic strength that comes with the sheer size of the EU, the ease of travel on the continent, the trade benefits of membership, and the young, eager, skilled immigrants who boost Britain's growth. They don't want Britain to suffer what they say are the potentially dire economic consequences of leaving the bloc.

Britain's opposition Labour Party believes the country should stick with the EU; so do the IMF, the Bank of England and the World Bank. Cameron warned last month that voting to leave the EU would be a "self-destruct option", after Britain's long and gruelling recovery from the global financial crisis. "It would be like surviving a fall and then running straight back to the cliff edge," he said. In a televised debate on Tuesday, Cameron accused the Leave camp of lying, he called on British pride and pleaded with voters not to back "the little England of Nigel Farage". "Leaving is quitting," he added, "and I don't think we're quitters. We're fighters. We fight in these organisations."

Timeline of a referendum Britain voted to stay in the precursor to the EU in a referendum in 1975, but the current crop of Outists argue the EU has morphed into an entirely different beast since then.

After sustained pressure, Cameron promised to hold a referendum on Britain's membership of the EU if he won the 2015 general election. Earlier this year, he tried to amend Britain's EU membership deal as a compromise arrangement. He says the resulting EU agreement means Britain will be given special status in the EU, but critics pooh-pooh his bargain, saying it will make little difference. The simple In/Out referendum this month will provide a definitive answer. Neck-and-neck The British public appears to be almost evenly divided on Brexit, according to most polls. Still, the veteran Australian political strategist Lynton Crosby pointed out this week in Britain's Telegraph that Out voters seem more likely to turn up to vote, which could make all the difference. "The clear trend over the course of ORB's polls for the Telegraph shows that Leave campaign has a turnout advantage over the Remain campaign," he wrote.

Yet, considering the pollsters' dismal record recently, it may not be wise to rely too much on the numbers. Opinion polls in the run-up to the Scottish independence referendum in 2014 predicted the final result would be far closer than it actually was and few predicted the Conservative Party's thumping win in last year's general election. Most polls find the Brexit vote too close to call, with percentage point leads within the margin of error - but the British public may surprise pundits yet with a big margin either way. Political positioning There are, of course, many subterranean agendas at work in and around the Brexit campaign. Johnson may sincerely believe Britain should leave the EU, or he may be using it as a platform to tilt for the leadership of the Conservative Party. Or both.

He has been accused of giving Cameron only nine minutes' warning before announcing himself as a champion of the Leave camp, and it has been argued he is using the political vaulting horse of Brexit to bounce him higher up the Conservatives' seniority ladder. Long seen as a likeable, but not too serious charmer, Johnson has tried to craft gravitas as the leader of the Out campaign, with mixed results. Cameron's political destiny, too, will be shaped by the Brexit decision. A vote for Britain to leave the EU will most likely see him out of a job in days. His arguments in favour of Britain remaining in the bloc have become increasingly strident as the campaign progresses - and his opponents increasingly resentful. Rebel Tory MPs (Brexit sympathisers) last month called for a new leader and a general election this year. A substantial vote to stay in the EU, by contrast, would bolster his political credentials and burnish his legacy.

Immigrants - a pivotal issue As enormous crowds of refugees and economic migrants streamed into Europe from North Africa and the Middle East over the past year or so, millions of British voters have taken fright. Soaring annual net immigration to Britain - 323,000 on the latest figures, more than three times Cameron's 2011 "no ifs, no buts, pledge" to keep the numbers down - has been matched by spikes in British concern, and increasing disquiet about Britain's membership of the EU. Cameron was taken to task on immigration in the EU debate on Tuesday, and booed by the audience after refusing to say by how much net migration would fall by as a result of his renegotiation with the EU. "I haven't made a forecast," he said, blaming "extraordinary years in the EU" for the unprecedented surge in migration numbers.

Brexit dominos A survey of 10 large EU nations by the Washington-based Pew Research Centre, released on Tuesday, found plummeting support for the EU, most strikingly in France, where only 38 per cent of respondents said they had a favourable view of the EU, down 17 points from last year. Favourability ratings also fell by 16 points in Spain to 47 per cent, Reuters reported, by eight points in Germany to 50 per cent, and by seven points in Britain to 44 per cent. "The British are not the only ones with doubts about the European Union," Pew said. If Britain votes to leave the EU on June 23, it's likely the disaffected rumblings across Europe will get louder and more difficult to ignore, and may ignite the exit push in other nations (Frexit? Gexit? Spexit?).
Cairo: A grandmother was stripped naked and paraded around her village in Upper Egypt after rumours spread that her son, a Christian man, had an affair with a married Muslim woman.

Seven homes of Christians were torched by a Muslim mob after the accusations against the son of Soad Thabet, 70, sparked the latest sectarian strife in Egypt.

Nagwa Ragab, the Muslim housewife at the centre of the dispute, has denied being involved with Thabet's son in the small village of al-Karm in Minya, a poor province around 300 kilometres south of Cairo and home to the largest Christian community in Egypt.

Christians, most of them from the Coptic Orthodox church, make up around 12 per cent of Egypt's population of 90 million.
Washington: Abu Anas al-Falluji gives each of his three children a five-milligram tablet of Valium at bedtime to help them sleep through the thud of rocket and mortar fire as Iraqi forces battle Islamic State. And, he says, to dull any pain if the family's home is hit.

Life in Fallujah - the first Iraqi city to fall to the extremists and now a major test of their staying power - is full of grim routines. Each night, al-Falluji says goodbye to his wife, just in case. She wears trousers to bed. "Should we die and people have to dig us out of the rubble, her body and legs won't be exposed," he explains in a phone interview from the city.

The US-backed fight to recapture Fallujah is in its third week. Victory there would open the way for a campaign to liberate Mosul and eject Islamic State from its last major stronghold in OPEC's second-largest producer. But any setback could deal a fatal blow to Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi's government, already beset by popular protests and sectarian strains.
The Tribunals Award in the South China SeaArbitration

Initiated by the PhilippinesIs Null and Void

Chinese Society of International Law

10 June 2016

Since 22 January 2013 when the Philippines unilaterally initiated arbitration with respect to certain issues in the South China Sea (Arbitration), China has maintained its solemn position that it would neither accept nor participate in the Arbitration, having stated that the tribunal constituted at the unilateral request of the Philippines (Arbitral Tribunal or Tribunal) manifestly has no jurisdiction. On 7 December 2014, the Chinese Government released the Position Paper of the Government of the Peoples Republic of China on the Matter of Jurisdiction in the South China Sea Arbitration Initiated by the Republic of the Philippines (Position Paper), which elaborated on these positions. The Chinese Society of International Law strongly supports the positions of the Chinese Government.

China has indisputable sovereignty over the South China Sea Islands and the adjacent waters. The core of the disputes between China and the Philippines in the South China Sea is issues of territorial sovereignty resulting from the Philippines illegal seizure and occupation of certain maritime features from China in the Nash Islands, and issues concerning maritime delimitation between the two States. These are also exactly the essence of the Arbitration instituted by the Philippines.

On 29 October 2015, the Tribunal issued its Award on Jurisdiction and Admissibility (Award on Jurisdiction or Award), in which it found that disputes between China and the Philippines concerning the interpretation or application of the United NationsConvention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS or Convention) existed with respect to the matters raised by the Philippines in all of its Submissions. The Tribunal further found that it had jurisdiction over some of the Submissions made by the Philippines, and reserved consideration of its jurisdiction with respect to the other Submissions to the merits phase. This finding is full of errors in both the determination of fact and the application of law, at least in the following six respects:

First, the Tribunal errs in finding that the claims made by the Philippines constitute disputes between China and the Philippines concerning the interpretation or application of the UNCLOS;

Second, the Tribunal errs in taking jurisdiction over claims which in essence are issues of sovereignty over land territory and are beyond the purview of the UNCLOS;

Third, the Tribunal errs in taking jurisdiction over claims concerning maritime delimitation which have been excluded by China from compulsory procedures in line with the UNCLOS;

Fourth, the Tribunal errs in denying that there exists between China and the Philippines an agreement to settle the disputes in question through negotiation;

Fifth, the Tribunal errs in finding that the Philippines had fulfilled the obligation to exchange views regarding the means of disputes settlement with respect to the claims it made;

Sixth, the Tribunals Award deviates from the object and purpose of the dispute settlement mechanism under the UNCLOS, and impairs the integrity and authority of the Convention.

The Chinese Society of International Law is of the view that having jurisdiction over the claims is a prerequisite for the Tribunal to initiate its proceedings on merits, and a basis for the validity of any final decisions. In the present Arbitration, the Tribunal does not have jurisdiction over any of the claims made by the Philippines. Its Award on Jurisdiction is groundless both in fact and in law, and is thus null and void. Therefore, any decision that it may make on substantive issues in the ensuing proceedings will equally have no legal effect.

I. The Arbitral Tribunal errs in finding that the claims made by the Philippines constitute disputes between China and the Philippines concerning the interpretation or application of the UNCLOS

The Arbitral Tribunal recognizes that, under Article 288(1) of the UNCLOS, its jurisdiction is limited to disputes concerning the interpretation and application of this Convention (Award, para.130). The Tribunal also recognized that, to find its jurisdiction in the present Arbitration, it must be satisfied that 1) disputes existed between China and the Philippines with respect to the claims made by the Philippines, and 2) the disputes, if they existed, concerned the interpretation or application of the UNCLOS. It concludes that disputes between the Parties concerning the interpretation and application of the Convention exist with respect to the matters raised by the Philippines in all of its Submissions in these proceedings (Award, para.178). This conclusion, however, is untenable.

1. The Arbitral Tribunal erroneously determines that the relevant claims constitute disputes between China and the Philippines

A dispute in an international judicial or arbitral procedure is a disagreement on a point of law or fact, a conflict of legal views or of interests between two persons (Award, para.149, quoting from Mavrommatis PalestineConcessions, Jurisdiction, Judgment of 30 August 1924, PCIJ Series A, No.2, p.11). This classic definition of dispute has been followed extensively in practice by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and other international judicial or arbitral bodies.

In international practice, to determine the existence of a dispute, one must first demonstrate that specific subject-matters on which the parties disagree have come into existence before the judicial or arbitral proceedings are initiated. As the ICJ pointed out in 2011 in the Georgia v. Russian Federation Case, a State, prior to the initiation of proceedings, must refer to the subject-matter of the treaty with sufficient clarity to enable the State against which a claim is made to identify that there is, or may be, a dispute with regard to that subject-matter (Application of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (Georgia v. Russian Federation), Preliminary Objections, Judgment, I.C.J. Reports 2011, p.85, para.30, emphasis added). Second, apart from the existence of subject-matter of disagreement, one must also demonstrate that there is clash of propositions or point of contention on the same subject-matter or claim. In the South West Africa Cases, the ICJ held in 1962 that to prove the existence of a dispute, [i]t must be shown that the claim of one party is positively opposed by the other (Award, para.149, quoting from South West Africa Cases (Ethiopia v. South Africa; Liberia v. South Africa), Preliminary Objections, Judgment of 21 December 1962, I.C.J. Reports 1962, p.328, emphasis added). Therefore, a mere assertion by one party does not suffice to prove the existence of a dispute. It must be shown that the parties maintain opposing attitudes or opposite views on the same subject-matter. It is based on these criteria that the ICJ has found the existence of a dispute in a number of cases (See e.g., Alleged Violations of Sovereign Rights and Maritime Spaces in the Caribbean Sea (Nicaragua v. Colombia), Preliminary Objections, Judgment of 17 March 2016, pp.29-32, paras.67-79; Application of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (Georgia v. Russian Federation), Preliminary Objections, Judgment, I.C.J. Reports 2011, pp.84-85, paras.30-31; East Timor (Portugal v. Australia), Judgment, I.C.J. Reports 1995, p.99, para.22).

In the present Arbitration, it is obvious that the Tribunal did not follow the above-mentioned rules and practice of international law in determining the existence of disputes. To take a few examples:

In its Submission No. 3, the Philippines argues that Scarborough Shoal (Huangyan Dao) generates no entitlement to an exclusive economic zone or continental shelf. In order to prove that this claim constitutes a dispute between China and the Philippines, it must be shown, with factual proof, that prior to the initiation of arbitration the Philippines had made such a claim to China and the claim had been positively opposed by China. The Tribunal should have done this, but it did not.

In its Submission No. 4, the Philippines argues that Mischief Reef (Meiji Jiao), Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Jiao) and Subi Reef (Zhubi Jiao) are low-tide elevations that do not generate entitlement to a territorial sea, exclusive economic zone or continental shelf. In order to prove that this claim constitutes a dispute between China and the Philippines, it must be shown, with factual proof, that prior to the initiation of arbitration the Philippines had made such a claim to China and the claim had been positively opposed by China. The Tribunal should have done this, but it did not.

In its Submission No. 6, the Philippines argues that Gaven Reef (Nanxun Jiao) and Mckennan Reef (Ximen Jiao) (including Hughes Reef (Dongmen Jiao)) are low-tide elevations that do not generate entitlement to a territorial sea, exclusive economic zone or continental shelf. In order to prove that this claim constitutes a dispute between China and the Philippines, it must be shown, with factual proof, that prior to the initiation of arbitration the Philippines had made such a claim to China and the claim had been positively opposed by China. The Tribunal should have done this, but it did not.

In its Submission No. 7, the Philippines argues that Johnson Reef (Chigua Jiao), Cuarteron Reef (Huayang Jiao) and Fiery Cross Reef (Yongshu Jiao) generate no entitlement to an exclusive economic zone or continental shelf. In order to prove that this claim constitutes a dispute between China and the Philippines, it must be shown, with factual proof, that prior to the initiation of arbitration the Philippines had made such a claim to China and the claim had been positively opposed by China. The Tribunal should have done this, but it did not.

As is clear from the above analysis, the Tribunal should have concluded that the above-mentioned claims of the Philippines did not constitute disputes between China and the Philippines. But, regrettably, the Tribunal does not apply the above-mentioned requirements to the Philippines claims, one by one, in accordance with international law. It attempts to infer the existence of disputes between China and the Philippines with respect to the above claims, simply by bundling them together and asserting that they reflect a dispute concerning the status of the maritime features and the source of maritime entitlements in the South China Sea (Award, para.169, emphasis added). By generalizing claims regarding the status and maritime entitlements of specific features into a general disagreement concerning the status of maritime features and the source of maritime entitlements in the South China Sea, the Tribunal, sub silentio, replaces one concept with another, in order to conceal its incapability to prove that the Philippines claims regarding the status and maritime entitlements of the nine features constitute disputes between China and the Philippines. The Tribunal then attempts to justify its approach by asserting that a dispute concerning the maritime entitlements generated in the South China Sea is not negated by the absence of granular exchanges with respect to each and every individual feature (Award, para.170), without giving any legal ground for this assertion, and further, says only evasively that it must distinguish between the dispute itself and arguments used by the parties to sustain their respective submissions on the dispute (Award, para.170). The conclusion of the Tribunal is thus unconvincing.

In fact, there exists no real clash of propositions between China and the Philippines with respect to the latters Submissions No. 3, 4, 6 and 7. China has always maintained and enjoyed territorial sovereignty over the Zhongsha Islands (including Huangyan Dao (Scarborough Shoal)) and the Nansha Islands (including the above-mentioned eight features such as Meiji Jiao (Mischief Reef)) in their entirety. It has neither expressed its position on the status of individual features referred to by the Philippines such as Huangyan Dao (Scarborough Shoal), Meiji Jiao (Mischief Reef) and Renai Jiao (Second Thomas Shoal), nor claimed maritime entitlements based on individual features in question, each separately as a single feature. The Philippines, on the other hand, formulated its claims on the status and maritime entitlements of certain individual features as separate features. These facts reflect that the propositions of China and the Philippines concern different issues and do not pertain to the same subject-matters. There are no positively opposed disagreements, thus no disputes, with respect to the same subject-matters.

It is undeniable that disagreements exist between China and the Philippines with respect to issues regarding the South China Sea. However, the disagreements, in essence, concern territorial sovereignty over certain features and maritime delimitation between the two States in the South China Sea, and constitute no dispute with respect to the claims advanced by the Philippines. An international judicial or arbitral body shall address real disputes between real parties with respect to real issues. However, in the present Arbitration the Tribunal distorts Chinas arguments and erroneously finds that there exist disputes between China and the Philippines over the latters claims.

2. The Arbitral Tribunal erroneously determines that the relevant claims concern the interpretation or application of the UNCLOS

Even if a claim constitutes a dispute, the Arbitral Tribunal would still have no jurisdiction over it if it does not concern the interpretation or application of the UNCLOS (UNCLOS, art. 288). Obviously, the interpretation or application of general international law, including customary international law, shall not be regarded as falling within the scope of the Tribunals jurisdiction. As written by Rothwell and Stephens, both Australian international lawyers, [t]he Part XV dispute settlement mechanisms ... do not have jurisdiction over disputes arising under general international law (Donald R Rothwell and Tim Stephens, The International Law of the Sea (Hart Publishing, 2010), p.452).

In the present case, in its Submissions No. 1 and 2, the Philippines in essence requests the Tribunal to declare that Chinas maritime entitlements in the South China Sea are beyond those permitted by the UNCLOS and thus are without lawful effect. The Tribunal finds that the relevant dispute between China and the Philippines is a dispute about historic rights in the framework of the Convention, and a dispute concerning the interpretation and application of the Convention (Award, para.168). However, historic rights had come into existence long before the conclusion of the UNCLOS. Although the nature and scope of historic rights remain undetermined, it can be safely asserted that they originated from and are governed by general international law including customary international law, and rules of customary international law regarding historic rights operate in parallel with the UNCLOS. Accordingly, disputes concerning historic rights do not concern the interpretation or application of the Convention. In the Continental Shelf Case?between Tunisia and Libya, the ICJ pointed out in 1982 that the notion of historic rights or waters  are governed by distinct legal regimes in customary international law (Continental Shelf (Tunisia v. Libyan Arab Jamahiriya), Judgment, I.C.J. Reports 1982, p.74, para.100). Ted L. McDorman, a Canadian international lawyer, also wrote that, whether historic rights exist is not a matter regulated by UNCLOS  when these rights involve fisheries and the resources of the continental shelf UNCLOS does become engaged (Ted L McDorman, Rights and jurisdiction over resources in the South China Sea: UNCLOS and the nine-dash line, in S. Jayakumar, Tommy Koh and Robert Beckman (eds.), The South China Sea Disputes and Law of the Sea (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2014), p.152).

To prove that a dispute concerns the interpretation or application of the UNCLOS, it is not adequate to show that it falls within the purview of the Convention. It must also be shown that the dispute is related to certain substantive provisions of the Convention, and a real link exists between them. In the M/V Louisa Case, the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) stressed in 2013 that it must establish a link between the facts advanced by [the Applicant] ... and the provisions of the Convention referred to by it and show that such provisions can sustain the claim or claims submitted by [the Applicant], in deciding whether the dispute between the parties concerned the interpretation or application of the UNCLOS (The M/V Louisa Case (Saint Vincent and the Grenadines v. Kingdom of Spain), ITLOS Case No.18, Judgment of 28 May 2013, p.32, para.99). In 2012, Wolfrum and Cot, both sitting in the present case, stated in the Ara Libertad Case that [i]t is for the Applicant  to invoke and argue particular provisions of the Convention which plausibly support its claim and to show that the views on the interpretation of these provisions are positively opposed by the Respondent (The ARA Libertad Case (Argentina v. Ghana), Provisional Measures, ITLOS Case No.20, Order of 15 December 2012, Joint Separate Opinion of Judge Wolfrum and Judge Cot, p.12, para.35). Furthermore, in the Georgia v. Russian Federation Case, Judge Koroma observed in 2011 that a link must exist between the substantive provisions of the treaty invoked and the dispute ... any jurisdictional title founded on CERDs compromissory clause must relate to, and not fall outside, the substantive provisions of the Convention (Application of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (Georgia v. Russian Federation), Preliminary Objections, Judgment, I.C.J. Reports 2011, Separate Opinion of Judge Koroma, p.185, para.7).

In the present Arbitration, with regard to the Philippines Submissions No. 1 and 2 concerning historic rights, the Tribunal makes a sweeping conclusion that the relevant claims constitute a dispute concerning the interpretation or application of the UNCLOS, without identifying which specific provisions that the dispute relates to, and whether a real link exists between the dispute and the specific provisions. The conclusion is thus groundless in law.
Istanbul: Doctors in the shattered suburbs of eastern Aleppo appealed for help last night after Syrian government warplanes destroyed the area's last children's hospital.

Forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad pummelled Aleppo's rebel-held sector for a sixth day on Thursday, bringing the number of attacks to more than 100 in just 24 hours. On Wednesday, the bombing forced three hospitals, including a facility for sick and injured children, out of service, prompting the frantic evacuation of newborn babies to safety in a basement.

Rescue teams search damaged buildings after Assad forces and the Russian army carried out airstrikes on opposition controlled areas in Aleppo last weekend. Credit:Getty

"We are used to these warplanes, we are used to these bombs, but please: stop this war," said the hospital director, Dr Hatem. "We are watching as newborn babies are bombed in their incubators. How can these children have a life after this?"
The victim part of Clinton's life is well documented. She was betrayed repeatedly by party colleagues  and by her husband. That she has come as far as she has is as remarkable as her capacity to soldier on. Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton taking photos with workers at her campaign office in Des Moines, Iowa. Credit:Andrew Harnik But there's a sense too, that she is a victim of her time. The era of the internet and social media demands excitement, short-n-sharp, rhetorical pizzazz, whereas much of what she has to say can't be reduced to a slogan. It also demands intimate personal access  which she refuses to surrender, and on the occasions that she does, talking about her daughter and grandchildren, it often sounds stilted. Clinton's public persona, her ability to project herself to Americans is so brittle that she's something of the anti-politician. Why so robotic? Where's the spontaneity that defines the men in her life  husband Bill, old boss Barack? Hillary Clinton greets her husband, former president Bill Clinton. Credit:AP

Can't do stadiums; but she's great on a couch talking; and at a desk or conference table  finessing position papers and solving problems. She is too risk-averse; perhaps even too realistic; she has the capacity to send people home, more to worry than to dream. She hates the press and is pathological about her privacy  an interview this week was the first time she spoke to The Washington Post in the 14-month long primary season. But those who observe her one-on-one encounters with strangers come away marvelling  "direct, thoughtful, often moving exchanges," observes New York magazine's Rebecca Traister after time on the campaign trail with Clinton. Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton claimed the nomination on Tuesday night. Credit:AP "Controversial first lady to betrayed first lady to beloved first lady; clumsy carpetbagging Senate candidate to New York treasure. Failed presidential candidate to international icon." New York Times columnist Gail Collins Wrestling with the Clinton conundrum, Washington Post columnist EJ Dionne writes: "For a quarter-century, Clinton has confronted searing criticism and profound skepticism about her motives. But if this is all that you pay attention to, you cannot explain how she got to that victory party in Brooklyn or why she has received tens of millions of votes over two campaigns."

Invoking the seemingly contradictory individual and communal aspects of Clinton's Methodist upbringing, he argues: "None of this explains away Clinton's flaws or blind spots or the mistakes she has made. We'll hear plenty about those. But these are her standards, and they are the reason why, beyond [Trump's] assorted electoral weaknesses, [he] is the opponent she would have prayed to face." Actress Eva Longoria, from left, Chelsea Clinton, Hillary Clinton, actress America Ferrera and Bill Clinton wave to attendees during a campaign rally in Las Vegas. Credit:Bloomberg Perversely, the harder Clinton works these days, the less she is liked. For a decade and a half, the same Gallup poll had her on a pedestal  Clinton was the woman Americans most admired. But through this campaign her approval ratings have crashed, making her second only to Trump as the most unpopular candidate to seek the presidency. In the blink of an eye, Joan of Arc became Lady Macbeth. The challenge with Clinton is more in the abstract. The intense media and political scrutiny through her decades in public life leaves young voters, especially, thinking there's nothing new here.

"There's an assumption that the whole country knows her, and that she can't do anything to change their view, good or bad, of her," Hilary Rosen, a Democratic political strategist who is close to the Clinton campaign, told The New York Times. "I think that's not true  when you are all of a sudden a nominee for president of the US, you get a different look. People will give you a second look." We're looking at back-to-back historic firsts at the pointy end of American politics  Obama was the first African American candidate; Clinton is the first woman. But somehow, her achievement is significantly less than his. The word 'heroic' is not having much of an outing in this week's media reports and in Chicago, retiree Judy Kowal told a reporter she thought it was wonderful to have a woman at the top of the ticket, before she added: "I just wish it was a different woman." Explaining that young women today saw the arrival of a female president as inevitable, Molly Roberts, a 2016 Harvard graduate interning on the opinion page of The Washington Post, writes: "So the necessity of having that occupant be Hillary Clinton, or having that moment occur in 2017, feels less urgent. And the notion of the first female, major-party presidential nominee is greeted with a collective millennial yawn." And that's the Clinton paradox  she climbs the impossible mountain, plants her flag; and the ho-hum response is that somehow, she's inept. Donald Trump mows down an assortment of his contemporaries to get the GOP nomination, and he's amazing; Clinton bowls over 200-plus years of history and she's a flawed candidate.

Exasperated, Ezra Klein writes at Vox: "Perhaps, in ways we still do not fully appreciate, the reason no one has broken the glass ceiling in American politics is because it's really f---ing hard to break. [Klein's italics] Before Clinton, no one even came close. "Whether you like her or hate her  and plenty of Americans hate her  it's time to admit that the reason Clinton was the one to break it is because Clinton actually is really good at politics." Granted. But some will never forgive her vote to go to war in Iraq or her enthusiasm for regime change in Libya. A lot will resent her for not being Bernie Sanders, her self-identified democratic socialist challenger for the nomination  but ultimately, their decision to fall in behind her or not in November will depend on how they answer the question. This is how it is put: For all the complaints and criticism, for all Clinton's failings, who would they prefer to see behind the big desk in the Oval Office? Who could they live with  Clinton or Trump? At a time of so much voter anger in both parties, Clinton has to step around Trump's effort to make the election a referendum on her; and instead sell images of a future that she can enunciate with conviction  and that Americans can believe in.

Her campaign advisers say they want to do to Trump what the Obama campaign did to Mitt Romney in 2012  use his own story to undermine him. They want to use his bankruptcies and his casino wage records; his thousands of court actions. Trump makes clear he will go bare-knuckled and that he'll use accounts of Bill Clinton's infidelities. The Clinton camp reckons that'll backfire as it did when they were used against the Clintons in the 1990s. When Anderson Cooper raised these Trump threats with Clinton, she laughed them off, telling the CNN host: "Well, he's not the first one, Anderson!" The strategy also calls for the undermining of Trump's belief in his own brilliance as a businessman, fitting with the Clinton political credo that you attack an opponent's strengths, not his weaknesses. An unbelievable, cruel press conference, during which Trump mocked a disabled reporter from The New York Times is expected to get top billing in pro-Clinton advertisements. But attacking Trump will require a certain finesse  because as he has already demonstrated, he thinks mud-wrestling is fun, effective and distracting; and he gets away with contradicting himself from one day to the next  when what he says is sufficiently comprehensible for the contradiction to be understood. It's not the best argument, but neither is it a bad one: that voters don't have to accept all that Clinton has to say, but while Trump conceivably could blow up the world, Clinton most likely wouldn't.

There's always a risk of complacency. It took Clinton more than a year to see off the challenge from Sanders, who will concede  but not before he's ready. And when he does, Clinton needs to keep his supporters in the fold. She has already shifted left, to head off Sanders in the primaries; a shift back to the centre, to appeal to independents and disgruntled Republicans, requires deft tap-dancing. She can't afford to offend the Sanders mob to the extent that they stay at home on Election Day but she also can't risk alienating conservative independents and moderate Republicans who might do likewise. Her husband Bill reportedly led the charge to push back on a cocky campaign notion that Clinton could coast to power over Trump on the votes of blacks, Hispanics and women. The former president warned that they were in denial  they needed to understand that Trump had a keen sense of the mood of the electorate and that only a concerted campaign that portrayed him as dangerous and bigoted, as a misogynist and an enemy of workers, would win what both Clintons believe will be a closed November election, The New York Times reported. And by this account, it would be the husband, not the wife, who would be unleashed to respond whenever Trump lashes out. After the San Diego speech, in which Clinton variously mocked, ridiculed and laughed at Trump at the same time as she used Trump's own words to play up the strength of her own worldliness and experiences, one of her team told The Washington Post: "It put a lot of Democratic bed-wetting on pause  now they can visualise how we will take the fight to him."
Buenos Aires: "If a lady's skirt is too short, we recommend that she travel in the back seat to keep our concentration."

"If the skirt is not that short but you tend to have a wandering hand, she should also travel behind."

Cheeky brand personality or attempt at publicity gone wrong? Credit:Screengrab

No, that is not a car owner's manual from the 1950s. It is from a Fiat handbook distributed with new cars in Argentina since last year that has only now come to light.

The booklet was handed out along with an automobile guide to every new car owner. The instructions came under a section, perhaps cheekily, titled "co-pilot".
PHILIPSBURG:--- St. Martin & Anguilla Tourism Offices hosted yet another South American Market familiarization group visit from May 31  June 6, 2016.

This group consisted of eleven (11) tour operators from various agencies based in Paraguay, namely Arami Turismo, Sky Travel, Inter Express, Interviajes, Ami Turismo, Alondra Turismo, Intertours, Maral Turismo, Oppy, Vipstour & Elatur. These are just a few of the agencies in Paraguay that sell packages on Copa Airlines to the Caribbean. A representative of Copa Vacations also accompanied the group of agents on this familiarization visit as part of the on-going collaborate efforts between St. Maarten, St. Martin, Anguilla and Copa Vacations.

The agents spent the first two days of their visit on the Dutch Side where they did site inspections at six (6) hotels, namely: Sonesta Great Bay Beach Resort & Casino, Sonesta Maho Beach Resort & Sonesta Ocean Point, Algeria Resort, Simpson Bay Resort and Westin Dawn Beach Resort. This was their first time visiting the island and they were very pleased with the amenities the hotels had to offer. They were able to see some of the highlights of the island during their short visit.

Like most Latin Americans, Paraguayans usually travel Punta Cana, Cancun, Cuba and Bahamas for their vacation. Therefore, it was necessary to ensure that while on the island, these agents were exposed to the uniqueness of the island, in order to sell St. Maarten/St. Martin as a new and exciting vacation destination to their clients.

Paraguays economy like that of Uruguay remains stable. The countrys population was estimate at 7,012,433 in 2015. Paraguay is considered a good source market for the islands, have the disposable income, they speak Spanish, hence no language barriers and have access to the island with four daily service to St. Maarten on Copa Airlines.
PHILIPSBURG:--- AVA Airways was granted its business economic permit to operate its Airline business plan. According to the Chairman of Ava Airways, Olivier Arrindell the airline is now on its way to certified its Airline and finalized with their Airline Operators Certificate (AOC).

AVA-director Olivier Arrindell feels very positive and looking forward to working with the St. Maarten Civil Aviation Authority. According to him, Its time for St. Maarten to get out of IASA CAT 2 and move the island into the right direction of Aviation. St. Maarten needs airlift. The island cannot be dependent upon North American traffic anymore," Arrindell in an invited comment. Recently Arrindell and The President of AVA Airways Curacao Giovanni Atalita presented AVA Airways plans to the Ministry of Transportation, Civil Aviation and Economic Development, "One of our main objectives is to learn from the past and to propose a bold new direction for commercial aviation in St. Maarten. St. Maarten's economic situation needs this at the moment. St. Maarten's only local airline, Winair is going through some financial tough times due to its way of thinking and narrow legacy view of things. Insel Air is a Bankrupt Airline that keeps getting help from Government of Curacao St. Maarten has no way to compete with the high cost of travel within our Antilles. The financial institution Korpodeko has 20% of the shareholdings of Insel Air and lent the Insel Air some needed cash. This is wrong and is a violation of the fear trade agreement within the Kingdom. Insel Air has serious financial problems because of the way they manage their company not because of funds stuck in Venezuela. This is just an easy excuse. Korpodeko will also look to other financial institutions for the other part of the amount need by the airline. This doesn't give much hope for the airlift and the economy of the island," Arrindell stated. "Right now, the fastest growing market for St. Maarten and the Caribbean is Latin America and it's mostly premium traffic. Meaning, Latin America does consist of more countries and not only Panama. I understand that St. Maarten has a historical connection with North America, but right now it's time to expand our borders. There are other markets out there," Arrindell indicated. Olivier Arrindell has been in the aviation business for almost a decade now. He said that one of the things he always sees is that Aviation companies in St. Maarten do not focus on new ideas. "It feels like the airlines, especially in St. Maarten are stuck in time. "They tend to follow the same ideas that others have done in the past. This does not work anymore. You have to be innovative. This is the only way you will survive now," Arrindell said.

AVA Airways will start its operations with the A319/A320 aircraft types. The Airbus A320neo family is a family of aircraft under development by Airbus replacing the predecessor A320 family (now A320ceo (current engine option).The letters "neo" stand for "New Engine Option" and are the last step of the modernization program A320 Enhanced (or "A320E") which was started in 2006.

According to Arrindell this type of aircraft fits perfect into AVA's operations on an East West hub.
City Manager: $330,000. City Clerk: $255,000. Public Works Dir. $270,000. What gives?

We received a press release saying that Santa Monica Public Works Director Martin Pastucha, has announced his retirement. His current salary is $270,924 annually.

This made me curious (and envious): The City just hired a City Clerk who earns $255,000 a year. The City Manager makes $330,000 a year.

First of all, these are astronomical to me, a journalist. Second, the highest elected official in California, Governor Jerry Brown, earns $192,000 a year. Why is it that the SM City Clerk earns $255,000 a year, and the SM Public Works Director earns $271,000 a year? In other words, what is it about their jobs that entitles them to more money than the State's governor?

"The City of Santa Monica sets salaries based on several factors including salaries for comparable positions in comparable cities," says Communications and Public Affairs Officer for the City Manager, Debbie Lee "Salaries may fluctuate based on what falls under the PW Director's purview, as that may vary from city to city as well. Our Public Works Department is quite expansive, as stated in the press release you received. The current average salary for a Public Works Director in the US is $201,462," Lee says.

"Elected positions are different from staff positions and comparing the two would be difficult. You should review what senior assistants make in the Governor's office as an example of this point."

Here is the link where you can see all salaries on our website: http://agency.governmentjobs.com/santamonica/default.cfm?action=agencyspecs

Debbie, I'd do it for a lot less. Honest. And I'm experienced at . . . . err, let me get back to you on that. Anyway, in case your curious, the City Press Release continues:

During his tenure in Public Works, Pastucha managed an annual budget of $125.8 million and oversaw nine divisions totaling 505 full-time employees. The work that the Public Works team accomplished under Pastucha's leadership is impressive. Major projects include EXPO Light Rail integration, the construction of the Tongva Park, Ken Genser Square, Colorado Esplanade, Pico Branch Library, CityTV facility, seismic retrofit of City Hall and California Incline.

He was responsible for building the new Charnock Water Well, and multiple citywide water and wastewater pipeline rehab and replacement projects. Martin also held the position of Airport Director, overseeing the operations at SMO and in 2015, Pastucha served as interim Assistant City Manager, playing a key leadership role while the city searched for a new City Manager.

Prior to joining the Santa Monica City team in January of 2011, Pastucha was Public Works Director for the cities of Pasadena and La Habra. Mr. Pastucha has been active with the League of California Cities, serving as the President of the Public Works Officer Department in 2010 and on the Board of Directors from 2012-14. He is also a member of the International Affairs Committee of American Public Works Association, the Board of Directors of Southern California Chapter of the American Public Works Association, and CALTRANS Transportation Advisory Committee.

An internal recruitment will be conducted for a new Public Works Director. I guess I better update my resume.
Event was attended by reps from 130 countries & had 17 speakers

 Representing Mexico, the Minister of Health participated in the High Level United Nations Meeting on HIV / AIDS 2016

 He was one of 17 speakers of the Assembly, which is attended by representatives of about 130 countries

The Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) is not a problem in some regions of the world, it is a matter of all countries and demands to build inclusive societies where people have the same rights, said the Mexicos Health Minister, Jose Narro Robles in the High-Level United Nations Meeting on HIV/AIDS 2016, at the headquarters of this international organization.

The Mexicos Health Minister was one of 17 speakers at todays meeting, which was attended by about 130 representatives of countries member of the United Nations Organization (UN) Monaco, Canada, Zambia, Switzerland, Uganda, Haiti, Burkina Faso, Lesotho, Gabon, Ukraine and the Russian Federation, also participated.

Speaking at the plenary session of the Assembly, Dr. Narro Robles said that 15 years ago, in the same organism, the first Political Declaration on HIV/AIDS was adopted.

If the work done during that time maintains, the actions of greater impact and reinforce of solidarity with nations that need and less have, are strengthened, there is a possibility that by 2030, the epidemic stops, warned.

In his message to health ministers, first ladies and heads of state, civil organizations, international agencies and academics, among others, Narro Robles proposed to listen to key populations involved, and incorporate them into the response of each country, attend the issues of sexual diversity and combat homophobia and social transphobia, with full respect for human rights.

In that regard, he said that the populations most affected by HIV, must be explicitly named: gay men, men who have sex with men and their female partners, transgender people, sex workers or drug users.

Narro Robles said the disinterest or denial do not solve, however, we must recognize that AIDS is still a disease that affects the development and, therefore, demands to remain visible. In the case of adolescents and youth, he stressed the importance of accepting that in Mexico one of three living with the virus, ignores their HIV status.

He considered a priority to strengthen comprehensive strategies that respond to the needs of young people, ensuring that secular sex education, based on scientific evidence, is a fundamental pillar for the required changes and provide the elements to assume a responsible, informed and protected sexuality.

Two other points that Dr. Narro Robles highlighted were the importance of expanding access to HIV testing without discrimination and in the case of people who inject drugs, change the prohibitionist policy for one of public health and respect for human rights, as was raised in this place with the Mexicos President at the UNGASS meeting on last April.

Today, he said, has been achieved an increase of the life expectancy for people who live with HIV, as well as the progress building a more inclusive and just society in permanent alliance with civil society organizations of people living with HIV, concluded.

Health Mexico Dr. Narro Robles addressing the UN Conference on HIV/AIDS

It should be noted that this year, according to the Joint Programme of the United Nations on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), in the next five years should be a rapid response to this condition, in order to achieve the goals set for2020, such as:

Less than 500,000 new HIV infections.

Less than 500,000 AIDS-related deaths.

End discrimination related to HIV.

Moreover, as part of the working visit of the Mexicos Health Minister in New York, before attending the UN meeting, he visited the Mixteca Organization to meet health services offered to migrants.

After the meeting of the United Nations, he held bilateral meetings separately with his counterparts from Sweden, Germany and France.
Politico: Opponents begin to question again how to sideline their presumptive nominee.

Presumptive Republican party presidential nominee Donald R. Trump has been made of teflon, but attacking the judge in the Trump University case for his Mexican heritage, may have finally backfired for the candidate.

Trump labelling of an American judge as "Mexican" in order to cast doubt on his fairness, has been labeled simple racism by many Republicans - even House Speaker Paul Ryan - and has again increased fears that Trump will destroy down-ballot Republicans in November.

Potential donors have begun to withhold donations, while Republican detractors re-issue calls to refuse Trump's candidacy at July's GOP national convention.

This week has seen a sharp increase in conversations about procedurally, how exactly could the RNC dump Trump. Many Republicans, they say, who once dismissed the anti-Trump fight as the fever dreams of a dying "#NeverTrump" movement, have again become receptive.

A re-energized anti-Trump chorus - joined Wednesday by conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt is pleading with Republican activists to reject Trump when the party meets in Cleveland to pick its presidential nominee. Hewitt said:

"The Republican Party is facing . . . the plane is headed towards the mountain after the last 72 hours. . . . I think the party ought to change the nominee. Because we're going to get killed with this nominee. And I have never said that. I waited until after the primary was over, I stayed Switzerland to the end, and in 72 hours, dovetailed to that. They ought to get together and let the convention decide. It's awful and it ended bad last night-- if you're just joining me, Donald Trump's speech last night was his moment to drain the toxicity... Hew Hewitt

They were buoyed Tuesday when a string of Republican leaders - from Govs. Scott Walker of Wisconsin and Brian Sandoval of Nevada to Sens. Mark Kirk of Illinois and Jeff Flake of Arizona - distanced themselves from Trump.

There is a theory that the 2012 team will try to convince Republican convention delegates on the first ballot to abstain, so they can vote for Scott Walker on the second ballot.

On June 9th, Mitt Romney began his annual E2 summit. Paul Ryan and Reince Preibus will attend, among other Republican leaders. E2 is the first of what will be many events in which Republican elites begin to talk and think about a post-Trump era, in the event that he loses to presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. Many of the roughly 300 people assembling at the five-star Stein Eriksen Lodge Deer Valley for three days of colloquiums and seminars will be thinking about who might lead their party after November. They assume Trump will go down in defeat to Clinton.

"After his famous comments about Judge Curiel," said Megyn Kelly on FoxNews, "It looked like he would double down or triple down, instead of talking about other issues. I think we'll have this intermittently, I just don't know how you can convince thousands of delegates that they were wrong. Eric Ericson and other never trumpers think there's an opportunity here, to make a last ditch effort to stop what they believe will be a train wreck for the Republican party."

"More primary voters cast ballots for Trump than in any primary in history," says Trump supporter Bill Bennett, saying that this too will pass. "We often have to hold our nose during the Primary."

"I haven't heard of anything," said Saul Anuzis, adviser to Ted Cruz. He spent the spring packing the convention with anti-Trump delegates before his candidate quit the race last month. Anuzis on Tuesday tweeted a link to a new book by longtime Republican National Committee member Curly Haugland titled "Unbound" and argues that convention delegates are free to vote for the candidate of their choice, not according to the party's binding rules. But Anuzis said he and other ex-Cruz staffers haven't been involved in any concrete push to achieve that goal.

He and Ken Cuccinelli, another top Cruz adviser who will attend the convention as a Virginia delegate, have emphasized that they do not back any efforts to block Trump from the nomination.

"While we've heard the rumblings of doubt/discontent more so in the past few days, at this point we haven't shifted focus from what we hope to accomplish at the Convention," said Cuccinelli spokeswoman Mallory Rascher in an email. "Ken is still watching to see how things play out in the months leading up to November."

"When the media is debating whether or not our nominee is a racist, we are losing," said Colorado Republican Guy Short, one of 112 convention delegates on the RNC's Rules Committee. It alone has the power to free delegates now bound to vote for Trump. "I received an email just this morning from a fellow delegate pleading for a rules change to stop Trump and proposing specific rules to do just that."

Other conservatives described a similar outpouring from convention delegates.

"I've had delegates from more than a half-dozen states contact me about removing themselves from Trump Cult and its cancerous effects," said Steve Deace, an influential Iowa radio host who backed Ted Cruz in the primary and has continued to agitate against Trump.

But there's no perceptible sign yet of a concerted effort to line up the votes it would take to enact rule changes to alter the outcome of the convention, where the majority of delegates are bound to Trump.

"The senator honestly has not heard of any such campaign," said a spokesman for Sen. Mike Lee, who backed Cruz before and is one of Utah's two members of the convention Rules Committee.

Katie Packer, who founded the anti-Trump Our Principles PAC, denied involvement in organized efforts to derail Trump.

The Stop Trump movement, also called the anti-Trump movement and the Never Trump movement, is the informal name for the concerted effort on the part of some Republicans and other prominent conservatives to prevent front-runner Donald Trump from obtaining the Republican Party presidential nomination, and, following his presumptive nomination, the presidency, for the 2016 United States presidential election.

History of Never Trump

The #NeverTrump movement gained momentum following Trump's wins in the March 15, 2016, Super Tuesday primaries, including his victory over U.S. Senator Marco Rubio in Florida. After U.S. Senator Ted Cruz withdrew his candidacy following Trump's primary victory in Indiana on May 3, 2016, Trump became the presumptive nominee, while internal opposition to Trump remained as the process pivoted towards a general election.

However, Cruz mused on May 10, 2016 that he would consider re-entering if he won the Nebraska primary, which he did not, losing to Trump. Technically, Cruz's campaign is still active, as he merely "suspended" his campaign.

Trump entered the Republican primaries on June 16, 2015, at a time when Governors Jeb Bush and Scott Walker and Senator Marco Rubio were viewed as the early frontrunners.

Mr. Trump was generally considered a longshot to win the nomination, but his large media profile gave him a chance to spread his message and appear in the Republican debates.

But by December, Trump was leading the Republican field in national polls. Despite Trump's enduring strength in the polls, his rivals continued to attack each other rather than Trump.

In this atmosphere, some Republicans, such as former Mitt Romney adviser Alex Castellanos, called for a "negative ad bliz" against Trump, and another former Romney aide founded Our Principles PAC to attack Trump.

After Trump won New Hampshire and South Carolina primaries, many Republican leaders called for the party to rally around one leader to stop Trump's nomination. The question of course was, whom.

Erickson meeting

On March 17, 2016, notable conservatives under the leadership of Erick Erickson met at the Army and Navy Club in Washington D.C. to discuss strategies for preventing Trump from securing the presidential nomination at the Republican National Convention in July. Among the strategies discussed were a "unity ticket", a possible third-party candidate and a contested convention, especially if Trump does not gain 1,237 delegates necessary to secure the nomination.

Conservative dream candidate Paul Ryan endorsed, then did not endorsed, then endorsed, then did not endorse, Donald Trump.

The meeting was organized by Erick Erickson, Bill Wichterman, and Bob Fischer. Around two dozen people attended. Consensus was reached that Trump's nomination could be prevented, and that efforts would be made to seek a unity ticket, possibly comprising U.S. Senator Ted Cruz and Ohio Governor John Kasich.

Our Principles, a political action committee (PAC) and Club for Growth have also been involved in trying to prevent Trump's nomination. Our Principles PAC has spent more than $13 million on advertising attacking Trump.

At a luncheon in February 2016 attended by Republican governors and donors, Karl Rove discussed the danger of Trump securing the Republican nomination in July, and that it may be possible to stop him, but that there was not much time left.

Katie Packer, who founded the anti-Trump Our Principles PAC, said shes not involved in any efforts to block Trump at the convention. My hope was to stop him from winning the nomination, she said, adding, [W]e are not currently active in those efforts which would require unbinding of delegates.
CORRECTION FROM SOURCE: Cortex Business Solutions Announces Third Quarter 2016 Financial Results

CALGARY, ALBERTA  (Marketwired)  06/09/16  A correction from source is being issued with respect to the Cortex Business Solutions Inc. release that was issued June 09, 2016 at 17:58 ET. The time and Toll-free dial-in number for the conference call were incorrect. The complete and corrected release follows.

Cortex Business Solutions Inc. (TSX VENTURE: CBX), an online business-to-business network as a service, that helps companies reduce invoice processing times by connecting and interacting with each other, today announces the results for the three and nine months ended April 30, 2016.

Sandra Weiler, CFO of Cortex Business Solutions commented Cutting costs is difficult for any company, but it is considerably more difficult to exhibit the discipline needed to maintain cost reductions without negatively impacting the companys overall performance. Cortex has shown over the past 12 months a willingness to reduce costs and improve adjusted EBITDA, while improving other areas of the business, which has moved us closer to profitability than ever before.

The Company continues the financial discipline required to drive costs to appropriate levels while remaining focused on investing in strategic priorities to enable long-term growth commented Joel Leetzow, President and CEO of Cortex Business Solutions, our strategy remains expanding further into other verticals to minimize the fluctuations in commodities pricing. As well, we are recommitting to our growth strategies in the United States by hiring a Texas based VP of Sales giving us boots on the ground in our targeted geographical area.

Three months ending April 30, 2016;

Nine months ended April 30, 2016;

Conference Call

Cortex management will host a conference call, followed by a question and answer period.

The details of the conference call are as follows:

Please call the conference telephone number ten minutes prior to the start time. An operator will register your name and organization. If you have any difficulty connecting with the conference call, please contact Cortex Business Solutions at

403-219-2838.

A replay of the conference call will be available after the call through June 17, 2016.

About Cortex Business Solutions

Cortex Business Solutions Inc. (TSX VENTURE: CBX) is a business-to-business network that enables electronic invoicing for buying and suppling organizations. The Cortex network offers flexible connection methods to reduce the time required to process invoices and tools that leverage existing customer technologies and processes. Access to the Cortex Network enhances the exchange of documents allowing companies to connect and interact with each other to grow their businesses.

For more information, please visit .

Contacts:

Investor Relations Contacts:

Joel Leetzow

President and CEO

403-219-2838

Sandra Weiler

CFO

403-219-2838

Andrew Stewart

Director, Marketing & Investor Relations

403-219-2838
Transcontinental Inc. Announces Its Financial Results for the Second Quarter of Fiscal 2016

MONTREAL, QUEBEC  (Marketwired)  06/10/16  Transcontinental Inc. (TSX: TCL.A)(TSX: TCL.B) announces its results for the second quarter of Fiscal 2016, which ended April 30, 2016.

We experienced a more difficult second quarter in terms of profitability, as certain optimization initiatives that were implemented will only impact our results in upcoming quarters, said Francois Olivier, President and Chief Executive Officer of TC Transcontinental. In our printing division, the second half of the year should be more favorable, since we also have gained market share with some new customer wins in recent months. Our Media Sector already begun to benefit from the efficiency measures implemented during the quarter. As for our packaging division, we have a solid sales funnel which continues to improve, we have invested to increase our production capacity and remain very active on the acquisition front.

Finally, we have a sound financial position and continue to generate significant cash flows that will enable us to pursue our transformation.

Financial Highlights

2016 Second Quarter Results

Revenues for the second quarter of 2016 increased from $490.5 million to $497.2 million. The contribution from the acquisition of Ultra Flex Packaging and the appreciation of the U.S. dollar against the Canadian dollar more than offset the decrease in existing operations. In the printing division, the contribution of previously announced new contracts and the growth of the in-store marketing product niche were more than offset by the decline in advertising spending in several segments and the loss of a U.S. customer early in 2015. However, most of the printing volume stemming from Canadian retailers remained relatively stable. The decrease in the packaging division is mainly attributable to the loss of a customer as a result of its sale and to inventory balancing at an important customer. In the Media Sector, the decline in advertising revenues continued to significantly impact the newspapers in the Local Solutions Group.

Adjusted operating earnings went from $61.6 million to $56.2 million in the second quarter of 2016, a decrease of 8.8%. The contribution from the acquisition of Ultra Flex Packaging, the favourable exchange rate effect and the optimization of the cost structure in the Media Sector only partially offset the decrease in existing operations and the investments made to increase capacity and support the growth strategy of the packaging division.

Adjusted net earnings attributable to shareholders of the Corporation decreased 12.5%, from $39.1 million, or $0.50 per share, to $34.2 million, or $0.44 per share. This decrease is mainly due to lower adjusted operating earnings. Net earnings attributable to shareholders of the Corporation went from $81.2 million, or $1.04 per share, to $5.4 million, or $0.07 per share. This decrease is attributable to several unusual items totalling more than $80 million, including the gain on the sale of the consumer magazine publishing activities and the reversal of the provision for multi-employer pension plans in the second quarter of 2015, as well as the asset impairment charge related to the newspapers in the Atlantic provinces in the second quarter of 2016.

Other Highlights

Highlights of the First Half

For the first half of 2016, TC Transcontinentals revenues grew 1.6%, from $980.2 million to $996.1 million. The acquisition of Ultra Flex Packaging and the appreciation of the U.S. dollar against the Canadian dollar more than offset the decrease in existing operations. In the printing division, the contribution of previously announced new contracts and the growth of the in-store marketing product niche were more than offset by the decline in advertising spending in several segments as well as the loss of a U.S. customer and a Canadian retailer early in 2015. However, most of the printing volume stemming from Canadian retailers remained stable. In the packaging division, both the loss of a customer as a result of its sale and inventory balancing at an important customer had an unfavourable impact. In the Media Sector, the decline in advertising revenues continued to have a significant effect on the newspapers in the Local Solutions Group. In addition, distribution activities were impacted by the exit of a retailer from the Canadian market in 2015.

Adjusted operating earnings went from $117.3 million to $113.3 million in the first half of 2016, a decrease of 3.4%. The contribution from the acquisition of Ultra Flex Packaging, the favourable exchange rate effect and the optimization of the cost structure in the printing division and the Media Sector only partially offset the decrease in existing operations and the investments made to increase capacity and support the growth strategy of the packaging division.

Adjusted net earnings attributable to shareholders of the Corporation decreased 2.2%, from $77.3 million, or $0.99 per share, to $75.6 million, or $0.97 per share. This decrease is mainly due to lower adjusted operating earnings, partially mitigated by a decrease in adjusted income taxes and net financial expenses. Net earnings attributable to shareholders of the Corporation went from $119.1 million, or $1.53 per share, to $42.7 million, or $0.55 per share. This decrease is attributable to several unusual items totalling close to $90 million, including the gain on the sale of the consumer magazine publishing activities, the reversal of the provision for multi-employer pension plans and the gain on the sale of a building in the first half of 2015, as well as the asset impairment charge related to the newspapers in the Atlantic provinces in the second quarter of 2016.

For more detailed financial information, please see Managements Discussion and Analysis for the second quarter ended April 30th, 2016 as well as the financial statements in the Investors section of our website at

Outlook for 2016

Flyer printing volume is expected to remain relatively stable during the second half of 2016. In addition, the success of our in-store marketing product offering for retailers and the net impact of new contracts, including the contract to print the Toronto Star, should act as positive catalysts during the second half of the year. However, these items should be offset by the continued negative impact of the advertising market on our traditional magazine, newspaper and marketing product printing activities. In addition, the positive impact of the non-recurring contract to print the Census of Canada will end after the third quarter. Lastly, we will continue to improve our operational efficiency in order to offset the decline in revenues.

With respect to our flexible packaging offering, we will continue developing new business opportunities and qualifying our products with customers to drive growth in this division. However, the loss of a customer as a result of its sale in early 2016 and our recent investments to increase our capacity and support our development strategy will continue to have an unfavourable impact on organic growth in the second half of 2016.

Within the Media Sector, the significant impact of the transformation of the advertising market should continue to affect our newspaper publishing activities. However, the impact of the optimization of our cost structure should enable us to stabilize our adjusted operating earnings during the second half of 2016.

Lastly, we expect to continue generating significant cash flows during the next quarters, and our excellent financial position should permit us to continue our transformation in the flexible packaging industry. We will maintain our disciplined acquisition approach in this promising market in order to invest in quality assets that meet our strategic criteria.

Reconciliation of Non-IFRS Financial Measures

Financial information has been prepared in conformity with IFRS. However, certain measures used in this press release do not have any standardized meaning under IFRS and could be calculated differently by other companies. We believe that many readers analyze our results based on certain non-IFRS financial measures because such measures are normalized for evaluating the Corporations operating performance. Management uses such non-IFRS financial information to evaluate the performance of its operations and managers. These measures should be considered in addition to, not as a substitute for or superior to, measures of financial performance prepared in accordance with IFRS.

The following table reconciles IFRS financial measures to non-IFRS financial measures.

Dividend

The Corporations Board of Directors declared a quarterly dividend of $0.185 per share on Class A Subordinate Voting Shares and Class B Shares. This dividend is payable on July 21, 2016 to shareholders of record at the close of business on July 5, 2016.

Conference Call

Upon releasing its second quarter 2016 results, the Corporation will hold a conference call for the financial community today at 9:30 a.m. The dial-in numbers are 1 647 788-4922 or 1 877 223-4471. Media may hear the call in listen-in only mode or tune in to the simultaneous audio broadcast on the Corporations website, which will then be archived for 30 days. For media requests or interviews, please contact Nathalie St-Jean, Senior Advisor, Communications of TC Transcontinental, at 514-954-3581.

Profile

Canadas largest printer with operations in print, flexible packaging, publishing and digital media, TC Transcontinentals mission is to create products and services that allow businesses to attract, reach and retain their target customers.

Respect, teamwork, performance and innovation are strong values held by the Corporation and its employees. The Corporations commitment to all stakeholders is to pursue its business and philanthropic activities in a responsible manner.

Transcontinental Inc. (TSX: TCL.A)(TSX: TCL.B), known as TC Transcontinental, has close to 8,000 employees in Canada and the United States, and revenues of C$2.0 billion in 2015. Website

Forward-looking Statements

Our public communications often contain oral or written forward-looking statements which are based on the expectations of management and inherently subject to a certain number of risks and uncertainties, known and unknown. By their very nature, forward- looking statements are derived from both general and specific assumptions. The Corporation cautions against undue reliance on such statements since actual results or events may differ materially from the expectations expressed or implied in them. Forward-looking statements may include observations concerning the Corporations objectives, strategy, anticipated financial results and business outlook. The Corporations future performance may also be affected by a number of factors, many of which are beyond the Corporations will or control. These factors include, but are not limited to, the economic situation in the world and particularly in Canada and the United States, structural changes in the industries in which the Corporation operates, the exchange rate, availability of capital, energy costs, competition, the Corporations capacity to engage in strategic transactions and integrate acquisitions into its activities, the regulatory environment, the safety of its packaging products used in the food industry, innovation of its offering and concentration of its sales in certain segments. The main risks, uncertainties and factors that could influence actual results are described in Managements Discussion and Analysis (MD&A) for the fiscal year ended on October 31st, 2015, in the latest Annual Information Form and have been updated in the MD&A for the second quarter ended April 30th, 2016.

Unless otherwise indicated by the Corporation, forward-looking statements do not take into account the potential impact of nonrecurring or other unusual items, nor of divestitures, business combinations, mergers or acquisitions which may be announced after the date of June 9, 2016.

The forward-looking statements in this press release are made pursuant to the safe harbour provisions of applicable Canadian securities legislation.

The forward-looking statements in this release are based on current expectations and information available as at June 9, 2016. Such forward-looking information may also be found in other documents filed with Canadian securities regulators or in other communications. The Corporations management disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise these statements unless otherwise required by the securities authorities.

Contacts:

Media: Nathalie St-Jean

Senior Advisor, Communications

TC Transcontinental

514-954-3581

Financial Community: Jennifer F. McCaughey

Vice President, Communications

TC Transcontinental

514-954-2821
OVH to Launch SDDC on Demand Offer in Partnership with VMware, Opens the Way to Hyperconvergence and Hybrid Cloud

MONTREAL, QUEBEC  (Marketwired)  06/10/16  To increase competitiveness and the ability to innovate, enterprises of all sizes need to reduce IT costs while gaining agility, performance and flexibility. To meet these challenges, today OVH launches the first step in on demand Software-Defined Datacenters, a generation of intelligent virtual datacenters, equipped with dedicated resources that are fully automated.

Enterprise waiting for more from a classic cloud offer

The cloud has attracted nearly every type of business in just a handful of years notably through its scalability, speed and evolving infrastructures. But now businesses want to take a new turn in decreasing the time to deploy and configure their network security.

In this context and facing the demands emerging on the market, OVHs Dedicated Cloud continues to evolve with the integration of VMware NSX network virtualization platform. VMware NSX will allow infrastructure managers to deploy, in just a few clicks, all the necessary components needed to build their platforms (firewall, LoadBalancer, private networks, etc.) as well as to define their security policies easily and directly from their vSphere console.

The Dedicated Cloud offer with VMware vSphere and VMware vCenter Server, offered as a service, was the start in delivering customers a turnkey solution. The integration of VMware NSX marks a new step towards SDDC on demand.

Customers can now activate VMware NSX directly from their customer control panel with complete autonomy. Very soon the offer will be supplemented with additional infrastructure elements like VMware Virtual SAN storage as well as VMware vRealize Operations management as-a-service. Industrialization and automation of deployments are at the heart of our concerns, says Miroslaw Klaba, VP R&D at OVH.

Towards the cloud with extreme performance

The need for performance continues to grow and is becoming critical for businesses whose activities require high read/write access with minimal latency. The datastores available today can show their limitations when dealing with massive requests, especially for very large databases. OVH completes its offer with dedicated hosts using VMware Virtual SAN All Flash Software Defined technology, composed of SSD disks. VMware Virtual SAN technology uses the local disks of each host, resulting in performance being boosted through SSD technology with almost no latency. When it comes to redundancy, each host is composed of SSD disks for caching and two other SSD disks for storage, configured with RAID 0 at the host level and an equivalent RAID 1 with another host cluster. VMware vMotion, DRS and fault tolerance features remain operational on the entire Dedicated Cloud infrastructure.

In addition, VMware vRealize Operations integration will simplify infrastructure management and maintenance. Administrators will have a real time view of what is happening on the infrastructure as well as having the ability to perform load or growth diagnostics and manage resource capacity.

Hybrid cloud achieved with Software Defined Datacenter

Businesses can completely rely on Dedicated Cloud to externalize all or part of their infrastructures in OVH datacenters, with a guarantee of optimal security as Dedicated Cloud is PCI-DSS, ISO 27001, SOC 1, and SOC 2 type 2 certified. Professionals also have the guarantee that all the VMware technologies that they use internally are identical to those used to manage their Dedicated Cloud. With the integration of a complementary solution such as Dedicated Connect, businesses can build their private hybrid cloud with a dedicated connection between their internal infrastructure and OVH datacenters.

OVH, 2015 Global Service Provider of the Year, continues to play an increasingly strategic role in our vCloud Air Network (vCAN) cloud provider eco-system said Ajay Patel, Senior Vice-President Cloud Provider Software VMware. The new capabilities being offered by OVH, along with the depth and breadth of software-defined data center solutions from VMware, gives customers an operational consistent, secure enterprise-class cloud solution.

We are very happy to be a part of the VMware ecosystem at this partner level, states Laurent Allard, OVH CEO. Combining powerful software-defined infrastructure with OVHs dedicated infrastructure, along with our co-innovation, allows us to bring added value to organizations that is unique. Our customers can get a head start and create new opportunities.

VMware, vRealize, NSX and vCloud Air are registered trademarks or trademarks of VMware, Inc. or its subsidiaries in the United States and other jurisdictions.

About OVH

Specializing in cloud and internet infrastructure, OVH offers innovative products and services evolving around three universes: Web, Dedicated and Cloud. Since being founded in 1999, the company has become an established partner for hundreds of thousands of professionals worldwide. OVH owes its success not only to a development model built on innovation but also to keeping full control over the supply chain, from server manufacturing and in-house maintenance of their infrastructure, right down to customer assistance. OVH is able to ensure stable and reliable product and service offerings to all clients across all its brands while also providing the best price quality ratio.

Contacts:

Press contact

OVH

Guillaume Gilbert
Baku, Azerbaijan, June 10

By Azad Hasanli - Trend:

Branches and offices of banks located in the center of Baku will work extended hours during June 10-21, 2016, according to recommendations by Financial Market Supervisory Body of Azerbaijan.

These changes are made in connection with the Formula 1 Grand Prix of Europe to be held June 17-19 in Baku.

As many as 90 branches and offices of 34 banks in Azerbaijan located around Baku City Circuit and recreation centers will work from 9:00 (GMT + 4 hours) to 21:00.

In addition, a branch of Azerbaijan's Bank Respublika, 'Ofis 24', located at Neftchilar Avenue, 67, and a branch of DemirBank 'Merkez' (Nizami Street, 111) will work around the clock seven days a week.

This decision was made to ensure that the residents of Baku and thousands of tourists who will visit Azerbaijan during the Formula 1 are provided with unhindered access to banking services, in particular currency exchange.
Photo credit: Sikh24

By Jagdeesh Mann,

Special to The Post

Though it can be criticised as lip service, the Canadian governments ongoing dialogue on human rights with China sometimes has a bite.

This was evident last week when Chinas touchy foreign minister threw a temper tantrum at a press conference in Ottawa when questioned about Beijings dismal human rights record.

The current practice calls for Canadian ministers to confine human rights discussions to private meetings with their Chinese counterparts. But as much as Canada has failed at curbing Beijings habit of executing dissidents and suppressing minorities such as Tibetans and Uighurs, China has failed at trapping the issue to government chambers sealed behind closed doors.

Thus every time the worlds economic dragon fumes at being bridled by Western values, the issue of human rights gains more ink in the Sino-Canada storyline.

So what should Canadas terms of engagement be with worlds next rising economic star, the current elephant-in-heat India?

Last year, Indias economy sprinted ahead to post a world-beating 7.6% GDP growth rate, though this result seems wind-aided thanks to some artful statistical spackling of poor data.

And as with China, this top-of-the-class economic report card has not spawned a halo effect to remove attention from the subcontinents own poor human rights record. In the foreground of the recently-stalled Canada-India free trade talks are ongoing protests by Canadas politically influential South Asian community calling for protection of minorities in India.

These boiled at high heat last April when walls of protesters confronted Indias Prime Minister Narendra Modi upon landing for his official state visit to Canada, dogging him from Ottawa to Toronto, and to Vancouver.

Human rights violations are again casting a shadow over Modis state visit this week to the United States where he will be addressing a joint session of the US Congress. Even though India is being feted by the West as a counterweight to rising Chinese assertiveness in Asia, US elected officials are also petitioning for change in how the Indian government treats minority Christians, Muslims, and Sikhs. This includes a group of 34 senators and congressmen penned a letter recently urging the Prime Minister to hold perpetrators of this violence to account.

These episodes of bloodshed include the infamous 2002 Gujarat riots in which hundreds of Muslims were killed by Hindu mobs and in which Modi was allegedly complicit  an event that led him to be denied a visa to the United States in 2005.

For Canadas one million strong Sikh population, justice remains outstanding in the targeted killings of thousands of Sikhs in Delhi in 1984, along with the earlier attacks on the Golden Temple when hundreds of innocent worshippers on pilgrimage were shot down by Indian soldiers. The failure to convict the organisers of the Delhi mass killings and resolve this violent chapter against Indias Sikh minority  which like Christians in India form a mere 2% of the population  has allowed the wounds to grow toxic.

Although official reports record the killings of nearly 3,000 Sikhs, unofficial estimates are as high as 30,000. According to Barbara Crossette, a former New York Times bureau chief in New Delhi, Almost as many Sikhs died in a few days in India in 1984 than all the deaths and disappearances in Chile during the 17-year military rule of Gen. Augusto Pinochet between 1973 and 1990,

And so this past weekend on Saturday, Sikhs in Vancouver again gathered at the downtown Art Gallery to hold a vigil for victims of these events. This is the first of two annual commemorative events  the second, the annual Sikh Nation Blood Drive is held in November to mark the Delhi killings. It is the largest third party blood drive in the country for Canadian Blood Services.

Now in his early 20s, Manveer Singh has worked as an organiser for the art gallery vigil. Like others of his generation, he was born outside of India and after the 1984 atrocities. Yet the horror of these events spared few  virtually every family knew of someone who was murdered or was a casualty of violence. These wounds have filtered into the current generation through emotional osmosis.

For Singh, Canadas aspiration to expand its trade relationship with a state that refuses to account for the blood on its hands undermines Canadian values.

At the political level, there is a reluctance to address these past events and press for convictions in the Delhi genocide as this would anger the Indian government, said Singh in reference to the Canadian government averting its eyes from Indias record of violence towards minorities.

What pains us most is that those from Indias Congress Party who were behind the killings still live free with impunity, added Singh, who is currently a university student in Vancouver.

The future lies to the west over the Pacific for both Canada and the United States. North American companies have pivoted towards Asia  the next evolutionary step beyond NAFTA is the Trans Pacific Partnership, a free trade agreement between the US, Canada, Mexico and seven Asian nations that is looking to include India in its next stage.

In this ever unfettered global economy, uranium dug out from the Prairies is today shipped across the Pacific to power Indias nuclear power plants and feed its energy starved population. But in this same environment of capital and labour mobility, blood spilled in Delhi thirty years ago can stain the earth red in Canada today.

The Sikh community in Canada is politically potent, punches above its weight, and stands to be a key arbiter in the future of companies like Saskatchewan-based Cameco, which last year signed a $350 million deal in 2015 to provide uranium for Indias reactors. For Canadian resource companies seeking to reach Indias 1.2 billion consumers, they may find their caravans blocked by the ghosts of 1984 that haunt this new silk-road connecting cities like Vancouver, Saskatoon, and Toronto to Asias new El Dorado.

A number of Canadian elected officials have attempted to lay these spirits to rest by seeking official recognition of the Delhi killings as a genocide in order to close the chapter and move forward.

In 2011, MP Sukh Dhaliwal was the first to raise this topic at an official federal level. The member from Surrey-Newton put forward a petition in the House of Commons for official recognition of the 1984 killings as an act of genocide, plowing ahead with the convictions of his constituents despite a rebuke from then Liberal party leader Michael Ignatieff, as well as the Indian consulate in Vancouver. Dhaliwal received support from current Minister of Innovation, Navdeep Bains.

When asked if he would re-submit a proposal, Dhaliwal stated, I was happy to forward petitions on behalf of my constituents, and now with e-petitions as a new way to facilitate grassroots democracy, I will continue to advance the petitions that are submitted by Surrey-Newton residents.

NDP leader, Tom Mulcair has also issued an official release on the matter, stating that he and the federal NDP firmly stand in solidarity with the community, independent human rights organizations and Canadians across the country, in seeking justice.

And just this past week a motion for recognition of the Delhi killings as a genocidal act was voted on in the Ontario house. Put forward by Ontario NDP MLA Jagmeet Singh, it was defeated by the Liberal majority.

Singh tweeted afterwards, By voting against the Sikh Genocide Recognition motion the Liberals turned their back on human rights, justice, reconciliation & healing. They not only turned their backs on the Sikhs but all the Hindu & Muslim families who risked their lives to save their Sikh neighbours.

The World Sikh Organisation (WSO), the activist organisation that contributed mightily to Justin Trudeaus victory, also expressed its disappointment at the defeat of MLA Jagmeet Singhs bill. We also call for justice for the victims of 1984, and that those who were behind the attacks need to be brought to justice instead of being allowed to live free with impunity, said WSO legal counsel Balpreet Singh, adding the organisation supported Sukh Dhaliwals petition.

With 16 MPs of Sikh heritage in the House of Commons, this matter will not fade into the recesses of the past. The recent recognition of the Armenian genocide by the German government as well as the apology for the Komagata Maru incident have bolstered confidence of achieving genocide recognition from Canadas Sikh community.

Even the Government of India's Nanavati Commission Report acknowledges "but for the backing and help of influential and resourceful persons, killing of Sikhs so swiftly and in large numbers could not have happened.

Despite such a damning statement, the Indian government has yet to move on convictions against the senior Congress Party members who organised the attacks.

Last year, Canadas then-Conservative governments Minister of Foreign Affairs issued a statement on the anniversary of China sending in the tanks against the protesters in Tiananmen Square, Canada urges China to break its silence on the events of 26 years ago by openly accounting for the people who were killed, detained or went missing and by launching a process of national healing and reconciliation.

The Canadian government has yet to make an equivalent request to India for its Tiananmen moment, when its tanks crackled over the marble promenade of the Golden Temple in 1984 and when senior Congress Party officials ordered police to stand down while sword-wielding mobs cut down thousands of innocent people.

With discussions of free trade in the air, the timing is right for that statement. It stands to be a rare moment where investing in the fight for human rights would provide a good return for business.

Jagdeesh Mann is a media professional and journalist based in Vancouver. Twitter: @JagdeeshMann. An abridged version of this was first published in The Globe & Mail.
Insider: How Colts will try to help Sam Ehlinger in first NFL start
Baku, Azerbaijan, June 10

Trend:

Armenian armed forces have 30 times violated the ceasefire with Azerbaijan on the line of contact over the past 24 hours, said the message from Azerbaijan's Defense Ministry June 10.

Armenian armed forces were using heavy machine guns.

Armenian armed forces, stationed in Mosesgeh village of Armenia's Berd district, opened fire at Azerbaijani positions located in the village of Alibeyli of Tovuz district.

Moreover, Azerbaijani positions were shelled from the positions located near the village of Goyarkh of Terter district, Yusifjanli of Aghdam, Kuropatkino of Khojavend, Horadiz and Ashagi Seyidahmadli of Fizuli district.

Further on, Azerbaijani positions took fire from the positions located on the nameless heights of Goranboy, Khojavend and Fizuli 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.
Baku, Azerbaijan, June 10

Trend:

Kremlin doesn't rule out the possibility of holding a trilateral meeting of Azerbaijani, Armenian and Russian presidents in St. Petersburg, Russian president's spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told reporters June 10, RIA Novosti reported.

"The work on this issue is underway. We don't rule out that such meetings will be held," said Peskov. "If it is confirmed finally, we will give information."

The conflict between the two South Caucasus countries began in 1988 when Armenia made territorial claims against Azerbaijan. As a result of the ensuing war, in 1992 Armenian armed forces occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan, including the Nagorno-Karabakh region and seven surrounding districts. The 1994 ceasefire agreement was followed by peace negotiations.

Armenia has not yet implemented four UN Security Council resolutions on withdrawal of its armed forces from the Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding districts.
Baku, Azerbaijan, June 10

By Anakhanum Idayatova - Trend:

The US co-chair of the OSCE Minsk Group James Warlick has confirmed the meeting on the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict in late June.

Although the OSCE Minsk Group does not have details to announce at present, it can confirm that there will be a meeting before the end of June, Warlick told Trend June 10.

"We expect the sides to follow up on the outcomes of the May 16 meeting in Vienna," he added.

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
South Milwaukee Police are trying to raise $2,500 for a K9 program

The South Milwaukee Police Department wants to add a K9 unit in 2023 or 2024 and a contest for a $2.5K grant could help kickstart funding.
Welcome to SwanseaOnline - your home for the best news, sports and what's on coverage of the city.

Never miss a Swansea story with our daily newsletter Sign up to comment on our stories here

Follow us on Facebook and Twitter | Swansea City news | Ospreys news | InYourArea
Astrophotographer Tony Prince took this image of the Milky Way on March 10, 2016 from Havasu Falls, Arizona.

The electric blue sky dotted with Milky Way stars is reflected in the flowing waterfall in this stunning image.

Astrophotographer Tony Prince took this image on March 10, from Havasu Falls, Arizona. March is an early time in the year to capture the Milky Way and Prince had to wait for the so-called "Blue Hour"  a time during dawn and dusk each day when residual sunlight takes on a blue hue.

"My challenge was catching the Milky Way at this time of year is that there are only a few minutes when the Milky Way has risen over the waterfall before the "Blue Hour" from the impending sunrise hides the morning stars," Prince wrote in an email to Space.com. This was shot at 4:30 a.m. and a mere 10 minutes later the Milky Way had vanished." (See more stunning Milky Way photos by our readers.)

The Milky Way, the galaxy containing our own solar system, is a barred spiral galaxy with roughly 400 billion stars. The stars, along with gas and dust, appear like a band of light in the sky when seen from Earth. The galaxy stretches between 100,000 to 120,000 light-years in diameter.

Havasu Falls is located within the Havasupai Indian Reservation in the Grand Canyon and is a popular hiking and photography destination.

As early March was still the off-season, Prince and a fellow astrophotographer carried their camera equipment up 2 miles in pitch darkness. Prince used a 15mm Zeiss 2.8 Canon lens adapted to a tripod mounted Sony A7Rmarkii. The settings for this 10-shot panorama (which the photographers stitched together in Lightroom CC) ISO 6400, F2.8, 15 seconds per frame.

Editor's note: If you have an amazing night sky photo you'd like to share for a possible story or image gallery, please contact managing editor Tariq Malik at spacephotos@space.com.

Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom. We're also on Facebook & Google+. Original story on Space.com.
Felix Stiessen's and Valerie Roche's Apollo 11 Saturn V model will be produced by Lego as a commercial toy set.

NASA's mighty Saturn V moon rocket has just been given the "go" to launch as a Lego toy.

The Danish toy company on Thursday (June 9) announced that it is starting production of a fan-designed model of the historic booster, which launched the first astronauts to land on the moon.

"That's one small step for a man," declared Hasan Jensen, a community specialist at Lego's headquarters in Billund, Denmark, repeating the famous words by moonwalker Neil Armstrong. The designers "have built quite the testament to human exploration." [Legos and Space: Photos of Iconic Cosmic Building Block Toys]

Felix Stiessen and Valerie Roche created the toy Saturn V and shared it on Lego Ideas (opens in new tab), a website where the public can suggest and vote for the models they would like to see be offered for sale. Once projects reach 10,000 votes, they are reviewed by Lego.

"During the review, a team of Lego set designers, as well as marketing and business representatives, evaluate each project to determine its potential," explained Jensen. "This involves analyzing the votes, supporters' survey data, the information that project owners give us, as well as looking at things like playability, safety, how feasible it's to produce and how the project fits within the Lego brand."

It has taken two years for Stiessen's and Roche's Saturn V to reach Lego's "launch pad."

First proposed as a way to celebrate the 45th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing mission in 2014, the 2,300-piece Saturn V rocket model registered its 10,000th vote in November 2015. Lego's review began in January.

"Standing approximately 1 meter tall [3.3 feet], this Lego rocket will soon be ready for lift off," Jensen said Thursday in a video posted on Lego Ideas' blog. "We're still working out the final product design, pricing and availability."

Felix Stiessen's and Valerie Roche's Lego Saturn V includes stages that separate and detailed fuel tanks and rocket engines. (Image credit: Lego Ideas)

"We'll share full details as the launch dates approach," he said, adding that the Saturn V (and a fan-created model of The Beatles' Yellow Submarine that was also approved on Thursday) was expected to be ready by late 2016 or early 2017.

As proposed by Stiessen and Roche (who use the screen names saabfan and whatsuptoday on Lego Ideas), the Saturn V features stages that can be separated, detailed rocket engines and fuel tanks. The model also includes the Apollo command/service module and lunar module that the astronauts used to fly to the moon, land on its surface and return safely to the Earth.

NASA launched 13 Saturn V boosters between 1967 and 1973, including nine that flew crews to the moon and one that deployed the United States' first space station, Skylab. The towering rocket stood 363 feet tall (110 m). It remains today the tallest, heaviest and most powerful booster ever launched.

Apollo 11's Saturn V, on which Stiessen and Roche based their model, lifted off on July 16, 1969 with astronauts Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins on board. The model includes two spacesuit-clad Lego minifigures and a lunar surface base for display.

The Saturn V is the fifth space exploration-themed project to receive a review on Lego Ideas since the website was founded in 2008. Fan-created models of the Hubble Space Telescope and the International Space Station were turned down, but Lego sold kits based on Daisuke Okubo's toy version of Japan's Hayabusa asteroid sampling probe and Stephen Pakbaz's replica of NASA's Curiosity Mars Rover in 2012 and 2014, respectively.

This will be the second Saturn V rocket Lego has offered, though the first was significantly smaller and less detailed than the one designed by Stiessen and Roche. In 2003, as part of a kit series co-branded with the Discovery Channel, Lego sold the "Saturn V Moon Mission," a 178-brick set that included the booster, a lunar lander, Apollo command module and moon rover.

Watch Lego Ideas' announcement of the Apollo 11 Saturn V model at collectSPACE.com.

Follow collectSPACE.com on Facebook and on Twitter at @collectSPACE. Copyright 2016 collectSPACE.com. All rights reserved.
A new, comprehensive atlas of worldwide light pollution reveals that one-third of all people cannot see the Milky Way in the sky, including nearly 80 percent of North Americans.

The atlas, painstakingly produced over the course of more than 10 years from satellite data and verified by more than 30,000 on-the-ground measurements, was published today (June 10) in the journal Science Advances. The work describes the effect of the rapid increase in artificial light on the night sky throughout the world, documenting this lesser-known form of pollution that can affect local ecosystems, damage human health and incur large, unnecessary energy costs. The project also offers suggestions for how to reduce light pollution's impact. The researchers also created this video to visualize the extent of light pollution on Earth.

"Of course, there is a connection between the development of a country and the pollution," study lead author Fabio Falchi, of the Light Pollution Science and Technology Institute in Italy (known by its Italian acronym ISTIL), told Space.com. "But this is not a law of nature. The paper suggested [how] to light in a way that pollutes the environment much less." [Photos: Light Pollution Around the World]

"It's a monumental piece of work," Richard Wainscoat, an astronomer at the University of Hawaii, told Space.com. "I think everybody was waiting for many, many years to see this."

Wainscoat, who was not involved in the new study, is a past president of the International Astronomical Union's Commission 50, which works to preserve important dark-sky sites around the world.

Light pollution photographed over California's Joshua Tree National Park. (Image credit: Dan Duriscoe)

Falchi and his collaborators put together the atlas using data from the Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership (NPP) satellite, the Earth-watching spacecraft whose observations created the famous "Blue Marble" views of Earthin 2012.

Suomi NPP, a spacecraft about the size of a minivan, orbits 512 miles (824 kilometers) above Earth to monitor changes in the planet's climate and help with weather forecasting. Study team members ran that data, and observations from the ground, through light-pollution-propagation software to create a set of maps that determine the light pollution experienced at any given location.

The atlas also allows researchers to pinpoint which places are particularly far from pristine, dark skies. Cairo was the most distant from any region with a view of the Milky Way, Falchi said. Other areas particularly far were the Belgium/Netherlands/Germany transnational region, the Padana plain in northern Italy and the sequence of cities from Boston to Washington, D.C., in the northeastern United States. In some locations including Singapore, inhabitants never experience full night  in fact, the researchers said in press materials, skies are so bright over most of that population that their eyes never fully adapt to night vision.

Light pollution shown for Europe, Africa, the Middle East and India using data from the newly released world atlas of artificial night-sky brightness. (Image credit: The authors of the manuscript. Prepared by Fabio Falchi )

Several important astronomy sites are still dark at night, including locations in north Chile, Hawaii's Big Island, La Palma in the Canary Islands, Namibia and the Baja California Peninsula in Mexico, Falchi said. Much of Africa, and deserts around the world where the population is low, also offer good skywatching opportunities, he added. However, in many of those places, you can still spot light pollution on the horizon from neighboring areas.

The researchers have prepared an interactive online map hosted by the University of Colorado, Boulder, and Falchi will soon release a printed book through Amazon and CreateSpace called "The World Atlas of Light Pollution" to further document the new research.

The Milky Way galaxy disappears in the light-dome over Berlin in this example of light pollution from Germany. (Image credit: A. Jechow/IGB)

Light's impact

"There's increasing research that shows that exposure to artificial light at night is bad for us physically  [it] confuses our circadian rhythms and contributes to sleep disorders and impedes the production of melatonin," said Paul Bogard, author of the recent book on light pollution "The End of Night: Searching for Natural Darkness in an Age of Artificial Light" (Little, Brown and Company, 2013).

"Environmentally, there haven't been a ton of studies, but what we do know are things like the effect on sea turtles, migrating birds, moths, bats," Bogard, who was not part of the new study, told Space.com. "The statistics I always use are, 60 percent of invertebrates are nocturnal, and 30 percent of vertebrate species are nocturnal, so they're relying on darkness to live."

Light pollution shown for the Americas using data from the newly released world atlas of artificial night-sky brightness. (Image credit: The authors of the manuscript. Prepared by Fabio Falchi )

Both Bogard and Wainscoat also brought up the less tangible consequences of a generation unaccustomed to seeing the full splendor of the night sky.

The atlas is "a wake-up call to society," Wainscoat said. "Also a little bit of a wake-up call to astronomers. People need to be able to look up at the sky and be able to imagine and try to understand their place in the universe. If they can't see any stars and they can't see the Milky Way anymore, they're no longer perhaps interested in where we are, in our place in the universe."

(In 1976, Wainscoat drove about 10 miles, or 16 km, outside Perth, Western Australia to see Comet West streak by, an event that he said helped inspire his work as an astronomer. Today, he said, one might have to drive as far as 200 miles, or 320 km, out of that city to see a similar comet.) [Photos: Light Pollution Shines in 'The City Dark']

Light pollution shown for Asia using data from the newly released world atlas of artificial night-sky brightness. (Image credit: The authors of the manuscript. Prepared by Fabio Falchi )

Wainscoat emphasized that the increase in light pollution is gradual, about 5 or 10 percent per year. So it's tough to spot the brightening as it's happening, but the effect over 10 or 20 years is dramatic, he said.

"The disturbing part is, it doesn't have to be like this," Wainscoat said. "There's a tremendous amount of irresponsible lighting throughout the world. It's all based on money and profit, and it's not based on what's right for the environment."

Next steps

To restore Earth's dark sky  an effort that's already underway in certain natural preserves and other regions  it's not necessary to just cut out nighttime light altogether. Instead, the researchers wrote, systems must prevent light from shining upward, use the minimum light needed for any given task (and turn off lights when not needed, as when illuminating a deserted area) and avoid the increasingly common blue-tinged LED lights. These interfere more with human circadian rhythms and scatter more broadly than yellow light by reflecting off air molecules.

Bogard described similar methods in his book.

"Nobody's saying, 'Let's not have light at night.' That's not the point," he said. "The point is that we're using way more than we need to use, and we're using it in ways that are harmful to us and harmful to the environment, and waste money, and actually in many cases make us less safe than we would otherwise be." (For instance, bright lights at night can obscure vision and create disorienting shadows.) [Utah Stargazing: Bryce Canyon Astronomy Festival Travelogue]

"We think if some light is good, more light is better, and that's not true," Bogard added.

To expand upon the atlas, Wainscoat said, he would like to see multicolor data from a higher resolution satellite that can send down more detail and more accurately detect blue-tinged light (which Suomi NPP is not sensitive to). Unlike images from the International Space Station, which show smaller patches of Earth in stunning detail, views from most available survey satellites, including Suomi NPP, are hazier once you get down to small features. A dedicated setup could also return information about changes in light pollution over time.

Falchi, too, would like to expand the work to follow how light pollution changes and develops. "At ISTIL, we are working for free in our free time, so research cannot be fast," Falchi said. "If some generous magnate will find our research worth funding, we may expand and work full time on this. We would like to study the variation of light pollution with time and to make maps of the whole night-sky hemisphere for each site."

The Milky Way as seen from Dinosaur National Monument, which straddles the Utah-Colorado border. (Image credit: Dan Duriscoe)

For now, though, the atlas provides the first complete look at light pollution's extent on a global scale, the researchers said in the paper. The atlas can be used to evaluate the effectiveness of light-reduction programs and identify the places that are most in need of protective measures. And it acts as an important reminder about the extent of the problem, the researchers said.

"It's way too easy, with light pollution, to imagine that things aren't so bad," Bogard said. "It still gets dark at night, [or] in the city it's bright, but if you get out into the country, it's still dark. And I think what Fabio's map shows is that neither of those things is true.

"Most of the kids that are born in the states and in Europe have no idea what they're missing, and they'll never have that experience of being overwhelmed and inspired," he added. "That's hard to put a price tag on, but it's still a big problem."

Email Sarah Lewin at slewin@space.com or follow her @SarahExplains. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.
Baku, Azerbaijan, June 10

By Elmira Tariverdiyeva - Trend:

A meeting of the ad hoc working group, tasked to develop a convention on the Caspian Sea's legal status, was held in Moscow on June 8-10, said the communique adopted following the event.

An Azerbaijani delegation led by the country's Deputy Foreign Minister Khalaf Khalafov, as well as delegations from Iran, Kazakhstan, Russia and Turkmenistan participated in the meeting.

The heads of the delegations emphasized the special importance of the Moscow meeting in the light of the upcoming meeting of foreign ministers of Caspian Sea states in Kazakhstan and stressed the necessity of speedy completion of the work on the convention on the legal status of the Caspian Sea, said the document.

The discussions were focused on the navigation regime and jurisdiction of the Caspian Sea littoral states, as well as delimitation of the seabed for the subsoil use and the agreed formulations were included in the draft convention, according to the communique.

The next meeting of the working group will be held in Kazakhstan and its date will be agreed through diplomatic channels, said the document.

The Caspian states - Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Russia, Turkmenistan and Iran - signed a Framework Convention for the Protection of Marine Environment of the Caspian Sea in November 2003. Russia and Kazakhstan signed an agreement on the delimitation of the northern part of the Caspian Sea in order to exercise sovereign rights for subsoil use in July 1998. The two countries signed a protocol to this agreement in May 2002.

Moreover, Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan signed an agreement on the delimitation of the Caspian Sea and a protocol to it on Nov. 29, 2001, and Feb. 27, 2003, respectively. Additionally, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan and Russia signed an agreement on the delimitation of adjacent sections of the Caspian Sea on May 14, 2003.
Artist's illustration of China's 8-ton Tiangong-1 space lab, which is expected to fall to Earth late next year, unless it's boosted to a higher altitude.

A Chinese space lab is bound to come back to Earth relatively soon, but when and where this happens is a matter of debate and speculation.

For example, some satellite trackers think China may have lost control of the uncrewed 8-ton (7.3 metric tons) vehicle, which is called Tiangong-1. That's the view of Thomas Dorman, who has been documenting flyovers of the spacecraft using telescopes, binoculars, video and still cameras, a DVD recorder, a computer and other gear.

"If I am right, China will wait until the last minute to let the world know it has a problem with their space station," Dorman told Space.com. [See photos of China's Tiangong-1 space lab]

"It could be a real bad day if pieces of this came down in a populated area  but odds are, it will land in the ocean or in an unpopulated area," added Dorman, an amateur satellite tracker who has been keeping tabs on Tiangong-1 from El Paso, Texas since the space lab's September 2011 launch. "But remember  sometimes, the odds just do not work out, so this may bear watching."

However, Chinese officials have yet to confirm the end-of-life plans for Tiangong-1, and some experts think it may still be possible to bring the spacecraft down in a controlled fashion. (You can find out when to look for Tiangong-1 in your night sky with our Satellite Tracker Map, powered by N2YO.)

Space station stepping stone

Tiangong-1  whose name means "Heavenly Palace"  served as a stepping-stone toward a larger space complex that China wants to be operational in Earth orbit around 2020.

Tiangong-1 was used to perform docking exercises during a series of missions  the uncrewed Shenzhou-8 mission in 2011 and the crewed Shenzhou-9 and Shenzhou-10 flights in 2012 and 2013, respectively.

Shenzhou-10's return to Earth in June 2013 marked the end of Tiangong-1's docking duties. The Heavenly Palace then entered an in-orbit "operation management phase," undergoing changes in its flying mode, orbit-maintenance maneuvers and other activities.

Earth observation, and end of the line

According to the China Manned Space Engineering (CMSE) office, Tiangong-1 is also outfitted with payloads such as Earth observation instrumentation and space environment detectors.

"Tiangong-1 has obtained a great deal of application and science data, which is valuable in mineral resources investigation, ocean and forest application, hydrologic and ecological environment monitoring, land use, urban thermal environment monitoring and emergency disaster control. Remarkable application benefits have been achieved," CMSE officials wrote in a 2014 statement.

For example, Tiangong-1 provided timely data across a broad range of the electromagnetic spectrum during China's Yuyao flood disaster in 2013, and collected imagery of a devastating Australian forest fire as well, CMSE officials have said.

Earlier this year, however, state-run news agencies in China reported that the CMSE had terminated Tiangong-1's data-gathering activities. Furthermore, CMSE officials explained that the telemetry link to the space lab had failed, seemingly dooming the vehicle to an uncontrolled fiery fall in the future.

Stacked still images gleaned from video taken from the ground suggest that China's Tiangong-1 space lab is in a slow roll, and that its solar panels are no longer oriented toward the sun, satellite tracker Thomas Dorman said. (Image credit: Thomas Dorman)

Dorman said his observations support this looming scenario. And it makes sense to Dean Cheng, a senior research fellow at the Asian Studies Center at the Heritage Foundation, a Washington, D.C.-based conservative think tank. [6 Biggest Spacecraft to Fall Uncontrolled From Space]

Cheng said he's surprised that Chinese space authorities have not declared exactly when Tiangong-1 will come back to Earth, even though its operational life seems to be over.

"That would seem to suggest that it's not being deorbited under control," Cheng told Space.com. "That's the implication."

This brightness plot of Tiangong-1 flying overhead was made from a video captured on Jan. 27, 2016. (Image credit: Thomas Dorman)

Whatever the true status of the space lab, Cheng said, there are some interesting implications.

"When you deorbit somewhat larger items, you would have a 'best practices' policy of making a controlled re-entry," Cheng said. "In fact, this will be an interesting test of whether or not China is going to be more open about its space program writ large."

Cheng said that providing the world with an idea of when and where 8 tons of space hardware will fall back to Earth "would be consistent with a more open space policy  and frankly would be an act of responsible behavior."

Other possibilities

Such speculation does not mean that Tiangong-1 is definitely out of control, other experts cautioned.

"It seems it may be much ado about nothing," said T.S. Kelso, a senior research astrodynamicist at the Center for Space Standards & Innovation (CSSI), a research arm of Analytical Graphics.

Kelso has plotted the altitude history of Tiangong-1 from just after its launch to more recent times. He told Space.com that the Chinese space lab's orbit was reboosted relatively recently, in mid-December 2015.

"That reboost put it higher than it had been anytime prior to that in its mission," Kelso said.

An updated plot of the altitude history of China's Tiangong-1 space lab after its launch on Sept. 29, 2011. (Image credit: T.S. Kelso)

Kelso said he does not have "any direct way to measure" Tiangong-1's stability. "But we might expect to see the rate of decrease in altitude  the slope between reboosts increase if it was tumbling, since the station would have higher drag," he added. "Instead, we see the slowest decrease in altitude in recent years  consistent with the lower drag at a higher altitude."

Kelso said his reading of the data suggests that Tiangong-1 is dormant but stable.

"So that might be why the Chinese aren't responding  they probably don't understand why they would need to," Kelso said. "I guess I would want to see some very specific data, notionally covering a period where Tiangong-1 was supposed to be stable, to show that it is now uncontrolled, before reading too much more into this."

Based on the latest tracking information, if there are no further reboosts of the Chinese craft, "we would expect to see Tiangong-1 re-enter just around the end of 2017," Kelso said.

If China does indeed have control over the space lab, why keep it in orbit rather than nudging it back to Earth immediately?

"The suggestion has been made," Dorman said, that "the reason China hasn't done a re-entry of Tiangong-1 is, the space station is low on fuel, and China is waiting on a natural decay to a much lower orbit before they can do a burn to bring the station down."

Next moves

Meanwhile, China plans to launch the Heavenly Palace's successor, Tiangong-2, this September. A month later, the crewed Shenzhou-11 mission is scheduled to dock with Tiangong-2.

In 2017, the maiden flight of China's robotic cargo ship, Tianzhou-1, will dock with Tiangong-2. This supply ship is to be boosted by the Long March 7, a new Chinese rocket slated to debut this year.

China's state-run Xinhua news outlet has reported that the core module of the nation's 60-ton, medium-size space station  due for launch around 2018  will be named "Tianhe-1," a Chinese word for "Milky Way" or "galaxy."

Wang Zhongyang, of the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp., said two space labs will be launched later and dock with Tianhe-1, according to Xinhua. Wang added that construction of the space station "is expected to finish in 2022," Xinhua reported.

Wang pointed out that China also intends to launch a space telescope akin to NASA's iconic Hubble Space Telescope soon after the space station is operational. This telescope will "be in a separate space unit and share orbit alongside the space station," Xinhua reported.

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+. Originally published on Space.com.
When humans start thinking about settling on Mars, how we will administer the situation?

The Outer Space Treaty specifically prohibits signing nations from making any "sovereign claims" to other bodies in the solar system such as the moon and Mars. The treaty, however, does allow for exploration for the "province of all mankind"; some authors have suggested implementing shared zones on Mars where several countries could work to take the resources they need from the Red Planet.

RELATED: Musk: SpaceX to Launch People to Mars in 8 Years

A new paper in Space Policy (also available on Arxiv) looks into this situation in more detail. These planetary parks would be established before humans set foot on the Red Planet, and entities exploring Mars would claim a bit of land that they could "reasonably use", the authors say. Any disputes would be reported to an administrative "Mars Secretariat" whose goal is to serve all of the colonies' interests.

"It's based on the Antarctic treaty system, which has a shared use of space for solely science purposes," lead author Sara Bruhns told DNews. Along with her supervisor Jacob Haqq-Misra, a research scientist with the Blue Marble Space Institute of Science, the two also pulled examples such as the ocean "exclusive economic zones" around all countries bounded by oceans. The country has special rights to use those resources within a limit of 200 nautical miles from the coast.

The authors drew inspiration from agreements governing Antarctica's scientific activity. (Image credit: NASA)

But in some cases, a mutual agreement doesn't work out so well. The authors cite the case of Humane Society International vs. Kyodo Senpaku Kaisha, where Japanese whalers killed minke whales in Australia's Antarctic zone. While Japan argued that they were doing this for scientific purposes, the authors write, Australian courts eventually ruled in Australia's favor.

VIDEO: Will We Care As Much About a Mars Landing As We Did About Exploring the Moon?

The ruling hasn't been fully enforced, but a separate case with the International Court of Justice put a temporary ban on Japanese whaling in Antarctica. "So the problem went away," Haqq-Misra said. This points to the need for a conflict resolution procedure ahead of time for Mars, he added.

Haqq-Misra plans to continue working on the Mars treaty idea and update it as more legislation comes into play. He also hopes to repeat his institution's "young scientist" summer program (that allowed him to do this work with Bruhns) to get more help for future papers.

Originally published on Discovery News.
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Moscow, Russia, June 10

By Orkhan Yolchuyev - Trend:

Everyone knows about Russia's negative attitude towards manifestations of neo-Nazism and glorification of criminals, and this attitude is unchangeable, said Maria Zakharova, Russian Foreign Ministry's spokesperson, Trend correspondent reported June 10.

Zakharova made the remarks with regard to Armenia's installing a monument to honor the fascist Garegin Nzhdeh, who is considered by Yerevan as the Armenian "hero" of the national liberation movement of the early 20th century.

During the World War II, Nzhdeh assisted the Armenian Legion of the Wehrmacht, the armed forces of the Nazi Germany. The Armenian Legion fought against the Soviet army and Soviet partisans (i.e. with Russia, which is the current an "ally" of Armenia and fully protects it and supplies it with everything).

The Armenian Legion was also acting as the Nazis' punitive force and participated in all the criminal acts of the Nazis, including the Holocaust of the Jews.

"It is not clear to us why that monument was erected," Zakharova said commenting on the issue.

She added that Russia will continue assessing the things that are not compatible with the memory of the Great Patriotic War heroes, regardless of the political situation.

The term Great Patriotic War is used in Russia and other former Soviet republics to describe the conflict fought from June 22, 1941 to May 9, 1945 along the many fronts of the Eastern Front of World War II between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany and its allies.
Schauble warned that a copycat effect would also be possible if Britain leaves the EU, and that other countries might follow. "That cannot be ruled out," he said. "How, for example, would the Netherlands react, as a country that has traditionally had very close ties to Britain?" But the German finance minister said he did not fear the EU would face an existential crisis in the wake of a possible Brexit. "Europe will also work without Britain if necessary."

The minister also warned the British that they may suffer from the economic aftermath of an EU exit. The country is economically so tightly interwoven with its EU partners that "it would be a miracle if there were no economic drawbacks following a British withdrawal."
Museveni: We are helping our Somali brothers get rid of these narrow-minded attackers. The Somali people do not support the extremists, they are on the side of our soldiers.

SPIEGEL: How close to Kampala are the Islamist fighters?

Museveni: In 2010, they managed to plant a bomb at a club as people watched the World Cup finals. Since then we have taken tough measures. There has been no further attack and the culprits have just been brought to justice.

SPIEGEL: Some are already talking about a new "axis of Terror" that reaches from Mauritania in the west via Mali, Nigeria, Niger and Sudan to Somalia in the far east of the continent. How realistic is this threat?

Museveni: The chaotic situation in Libya is definitely creating a threat. Libya now connects the jihadists in Africa with those in the Middle East and in Afghanistan. This could have been avoided.

SPIEGEL: The European Union just cut back its funding of African Union troops in Somalia by 20 percent. Does Europe understand the emerging risks in Africa and does it take them seriously enough?

Museveni: We certainly would be happy for more help, but not at the price of condescension and arrogance. If the Europeans believe they can afford to be less committed in Somalia, please -- we can deal with it ourselves. The Islamists had control over territory that was about half the size of the Federal Republic of Germany. For years, we have been putting the lives of our troops on the line, we have taken huge losses and the Europeans cut the budget? If money is more important than the lives of our children, what else is this than the usual arrogance and superficiality? And where is all this terror coming from? It is a result of mistakes the West committed in Pakistan and Afghanistan in the 1980s, when they armed the Islamic rebels against the Soviet troops. Extremism in Somalia is causally associated with these events.

SPIEGEL: Today the Gulf countries and the United States again arm the so-called good rebels against the oppressive regime in Damascus and its supporters in Tehran and Moscow. Are we repeating the mistakes of the past?

Museveni: I cannot speak to this publicly, but with Mrs. Merkel and Mr. Obama I would love to discuss this.

SPIEGEL: The International Criminal Court in The Hague aims to end impunity for the criminals in these wars. In 2008 you supported the arrest warrant against Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir for crimes against humanity. A few days ago, he was in Kampala at your inauguration ceremony, where you warmly received him. You didn't show any interest in arresting him. How come the change of heart?

Museveni: I was one of the first to sign the Rome Statute, which established the International Criminal Court (ICC). I was against impunity when it comes to human rights violations. But many of us African leaders now want to leave the Rome Statute as soon as possible because of this Western arrogance.

SPIEGEL: African opposition to the ICC has been building up since Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta was to have been indicted. You seem to feel closer to Kenyatta than to your Sudanese counterpart. But a crime is a crime and the law is the law. Doesn't this apply to both friends and foes?

Museveni: When we asked the United Nations to suspend the trial for a year, which the statutes allow, so that Kenyan elections could be carried out, it was simply rejected. The preparation for the indictment proceeded. Now I've changed my mind, even against Omar al-Bashir. Whether he has to be charged or not, the Sudanese shall decide or the Africans. The ICC has lost all credibility. This is our continent, not yours. Who are you to ignore the voice of the Africans?

SPIEGEL: President Uhuru Kenyatta is accused of purposely inflaming tribal conflicts during the 2008 election campaign, which led to more than 1,100 deaths. Should this go unpunished?

Museveni: The problems of tribal conflicts in Kenya are much older, caused by the former colonial power. A former American ambassador there once wrote about how the CIA has contributed to the divisions between Kenyans. You reap what you sow.

SPIEGEL: But if the 34 African countries withdraw from the Rome Statute, the International Criminal Court will have failed.

Museveni: So what? Judge yourselves, not us.

SPIEGEL: In other cases, international justice was helpful to you, as in the prosecution of notorious Liberian President Charles Taylor or the international arrest warrant against Joseph Kony, the Christian fanatic militia leader of the Lord's Resistance Army, which for years terrorized Uganda.

Museveni: Kony is hiding somewhere in the Central African Republic. He is no longer a threat. We have already punished him. We provide our own safety. We do not depend on you.

SPIEGEL: Militarily, Uganda operates closely with the US and France. How does this cooperation fit in with security issues and your desire to be autonomous?

Museveni: Of course there are collaborations. But in official meetings with Western diplomats from the US and the European Union, the major issues of our relationships are simply not discussed. The topics are on climate change or any other issues they want us to agree with them on. But they never discuss how we could develop an equal relationship. They should stop using pompous orchestrated summits and begin a serious dialogue with small meetings.

SPIEGEL: Three decades ago, Uganda was the country where the most people died of AIDS. Your education and research program had a major impact in reducing the disease's spread, but now the number of new infections is rising again. Many say one reason is the rise of evangelical Christian movements, who praise faith as the most important measure in the fight against AIDS, rather than enlightenment and recommendations to use condoms.

Museveni: Today, hundreds of thousands of AIDS patients are under medical treatment, which is a great advancement. But it makes some people reckless.

SPIEGEL: Gays claim not to be harassed by the state, but by mob forces. Homosexuality is prohibited by law and this creates a criminalizing climate that promotes attacks.

Museveni: This is just another example of European arrogance. For us, heterosexuality is normal. Homosexuality is a deviation. Then Western diplomats come up to me and say: As long as you do not take our way of thinking, you are the evil. My answer is: Go to hell. Leave us with our option.

SPIEGEL: Why you don't just lift the law?

Museveni: We do not accept the Western way of thinking that there are two ways of life. At the same time, the police (here) are not chasing gays. In Africa, sexuality is something very private, even for heterosexuals. Heterosexuals are not parading! But gays want to behave like exhibitionists. If I kissed my wife in public, I'd lose the next election.

SPIEGEL: If you want to run for election again, the constitution will need to be changed to extend the age limit for presidents to 75 years. Will that happen?

Museveni: The Ugandans shall decide.
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While teaching an entrepreneurship course at Sacred Heart University, former Silicon Valley techie Steve Obsitnik polled the classroom. The Westport resident asked them: If it is your choice, do you think you will be in Connecticut in three years? Out of 14 students, not a single hand was raised.

Though more than half the SHU student body is from out of state, the attitude speaks to a pervasive problem, Obsitnik said  that Connecticut has lost its way. In response, he joined with fellow leaders in the business community, including accountants, teachers, doctors, lawyers and executives, to form Imagine Connecticut, a citizen-powered movement committed to improving the states economy and quality of life.

At the end of the day, I want to convert anger to engagement and solution, said Obsitnik, a 2012 Republican congressional candidate. As a group, we have to be about solutions and engagement.

Launched one year ago, the group wants to help transform Connecticut into a Top Ten state for job creation within the next 10 years. To do this, Imagine Connecticut focuses its plans and solutions on five areas of economic resurgence: promoting jobs and innovation, keeping and attracting people, improving structure and size of government, enhancing quality of life, and investing in the future.

What started as a conversation around the dinner table has now grown to 250 business leaders representing more than 50,000 employees. Obsitnik and his peers gathered informally for months until deciding to hold public events, including a summit in Norwalk on Friday.

Billed as a nonpartisan event, the summit addressed the economy, budget crisis and transportation needs of Connecticut at the Norwalk Inn. The speakers included Catherine Smith, commissioner of the Connecticut Department of Economic and Community Development; David Walker, the former comptroller general of the United States and a 2014 Republican candidate for lieutenant governor; and Jim Cameron, founder of the Commuter Action Group. Obsitnik acted as moderator during the series of one-on-one chats.

Together, the speakers tackled issues related to job loss, budget deficits and aging infrastructure. Smith discussed how the state is working to retain and attract jobs in the state. Though the summit took a bit of a political bent, she said, she viewed it as an opportunity to engage the private sector and take some of their ideas back to Hartford.

Walker, who served as comptroller general under both President Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, focused his conversation on fiscal responsibility, as well as the migration of talent out of Connecticut. The Bridgeport resident lamented how wealthy and influential individuals have been leaving the state over the last few years and emphasized the importance of finding solutions.

Connecticut is a beautiful state with a proud history, but it has cancer, he said. Its not treating the cancer, but the good news is its curable.

He said the state needs to fundamentally restructure its finances, as well as focus on both retaining and growing the workforce, adding that he believes the state is only concerned about the former.

A former NBC News director, Cameron discussed how transportation has become a crucial economic issue in the state. Hes been actively involved in transit-related issues statewide for two decades, including serving on the Connecticut Metro-North Rail Commuter Council.

Megan.Dalton@scni.com; 203-625-4411
First students gained the dual diploma program between Azerbaijan State University of Economics (UNEC) and the prestigious University of Montpellier of France have been apparent, UNEC reported June 10.

Five students of UNEC successfully completed I and II year of their education-undergraduate students of International School of Economics majoring in Finance Jeyla Balayeva, Sabir Ibrahimov, Ulvi Damirli, Alisafa Alizade and SABAH Groups student majoring in Economics Elshan Taghizade have received an official invitation from the University of Montpellier.

Students will get the III course of their education in France in accordance with the agreement gained between UNEC and the University of Montpellier. They will continue their education at UNEC from the 4 course after they gain the required credits.

Students invited to the University of Montpellier will receive the diploma of the University of Montpellier as the first messengers and representatives of UNEC in France. Along with possessing equal status with other students of the University of Montpellier our students will have the student's card and other rights during the period of study.

Agreement on dual diploma with the University of Montpellier was signed on April 6 in France. According to the agreement students of both universities will get UNEC's and the University of Montpellier's diplomas in "Economics", "World economy", "Finance", "Accounting" and "Organization and Administration of Business".
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For the initial location of his Pure Conditioning training clinic, Daniel Pachter shared space with a small group of instructors a few blocks over from the Trump Tower in Midtown Manhattan. For his second location, he built a weight training solarium at his own home in leafy North Stamford.

He believes there are more to follow.

On Saturday from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., Pachter is holding an open house for his Pure Conditioning training solarium at 129 Shelter Rock Road in North Stamford, just off Long Ridge Road north of the Merritt Parkway. Rather than securing commercial space, Pachter said he chose to build the facility at his own home with his wifes blessing in order to be able to spend more time with their two young children.

The couple moved to Stamford two years ago, with Pachter continuing to commute into Manhattan for daylong training sessions there with a client base he has built up over more than 15 years after graduating from Penn State University with a degree in exercise and sport science. He said it took him about 16 months to gain city approval for the facility and complete construction.

In New York City I was doing 15 to 20 sessions a day, which is long, Pachter said. I want to be here for my kids.  One of my friends gave me the idea.

The Pure Conditioning program is structured around weight training in which each someone extends and eases each repetition over a pair of controlled, 10-second cadences. Pachter said the slower motion forces muscles to put in more work by maintaining tension and eliminating momentum that can lessen load on muscle tissue. Pachter said the technique also reduces the risk of injury compared to standard regimes in which someone pumps out repetitions at a faster pace.

Pachter has modified several weight machines he has installed to allow him to assist or add tension during a repetition as required during workouts.

The super slow idea was developed in 1982 at the University of Floridas Osteoporosis Project and was a basis for the later evolution of hypertrophy training by a Utah man named Brian Haycock. Pachter said the Pure Conditioning philosophy is to continually evolve by staying up to date on the latest theories in training.

Its not static  once you get stuck in a static mind set, then you are already behind, Pachter said. You are always learning, you are always adapting, you are always improving on (the) methodology.

Pachter said his clients age in range from 18 years old to 80, adding the program would be appropriate for high school athletes, many of whom he believes do not structure workouts as effectively as they could in training for their various interscholastic sports.

Pachter charges $800 for a 10-session block of Pure Conditioning, with each lifting session lasting a half-hour and scheduled twice a week. He says he can accommodate up to 100 clients at his new Stamford studio.

In time, Pachter foresees moving out of the home fitness solarium and into a commercial fitness location; and says he can envision Pure Conditioning becoming an extended chain.

There is no reason why it shouldnt be a chain he said. Its safer, it takes less time (and) its adaptable.

Alex.Soule@scni.com; 203-964-2236; www.twitter.com/casoulman
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NORWALK  After a 17-year search, the Al-Madany Islamic Center is observing Ramadan the way members had always envisioned it  in a mosque of their own.

Some 150 worshippers gathered Friday afternoon for a prayer service at 1 Union Park, the former Grace Episcopal Church. Al-Madany's volunteer imam, Azzeim Mahmoud, said this is the first time since moving to Norwalk nearly 30 years ago that he felt at home in his worship for Ramadan.

"This is a truly a gift from God to us," Mahmoud said. "It took a while to get here, but God has his own way. Maybe he was testing us, but in the end, he gave us a location that was better than what we expected."

Hussein Qadri said that for the last 33 years, he held Islamic services in the basement of his home because there was no mosque.

"There would be 125 to 130 people packed in there. Sometimes, it would become so crowded that people would be forced to worship on the stairs," Qadri said.

As attendance grew, followers knew that Qadri's basement would no longer cut it. In 1999, these followers banded together to form the Al-Madany Islamic Center, and they began to search for a place where they could build a permanent place of worship.

Little did they know that this search would take so long to come to fruition.

In 2008, Al-Madany purchased land at 127 Fillow St. to build a mosque, but an outpouring of complaints from neighbors and opposition from the city eventually dashed those hopes.

From there, Al-Madany was forced into a number of temporary solutions. They rented space for services and classes at the Christ Episcopal Church on Fridays and Saturdays for a few years. When that arrangement ran its course, they relocated to a small alcove in the former Hour building at 346 Main Ave.

"For a lack of a better word, it's like we were refugees  or itinerants, if you will. People either had to go pray on their own or they would have to gather in friends basements," said Farhan Memon, a spokesperson for Al-Madany.

"We were always hopping around, now we have a place where a community can finally flourish," Memon said.

"It's like upgrading from a bicycle to a Rolls-Royce," added Qadri, when comparing Al-Madany's humble beginnings in his basement to the 18,000-square-foot building at 1 Union Square.

After moving in to their new location earlier this year, Al-Madany will finally be able to provide its worshippers with amenities that basements and rented out spaces never could afford. Though renovations to the mosque have not been fully completed, Memon said that the completed mosque will include a wudhu room, which is a washroom that provides cleaning stalls for worshippers to perform ablutions before their prayers; a dining hall for community meals; a prayer room that is uniquely outfitted for the religion's five daily prayers and other special services; and a collection of classrooms for Sunday teachings.

Mahmoud said that while at times the many legal battles and the drawn-out search for a home for the mosque were wearisome, he never doubted that Al-Madany would eventually find a home. Memon said the wait was well worth it.

Where most people might lament their circumstances, Memon  like Mahmoud  sees the trials and tribulations as a blessing in disguise.

"If we had stayed at the Fillow location, it would have taken us countless years to build a mosque and a whole generation of Muslims may have missed out on a chance to worship in a place of their own," Memon said. "More so, the spot that we ended up with here is a way better location anyways."

"This truly is a blessed Ramadan for us and our community could not be happier," Memon said.

Ramadan is an annual event that marks one of the five basic acts, or Pillars as they are referred to, of Islam. It is a monthlong observance to commemorate the first revelation of the Quran to Muhammad, according to Islamic belief.

The celebration includes fasting from sunrise to sunset every day for the entire month. This fasting includes no consumption of food, liquid, smoking and engaging in sexual relations. This fast is typically broken each night at sunset in a ritual known as iftar, which is essentially a community or familial meal.

With a location finally secured, Al-Madany will be able to celebrate Ramadan in its entirety on site.
With the organization of Azerbaijan Public Relations Association and with support of "Excelsior Hotel Baku" a training for PR specialists will be held on June 14, 2016. The themes of PR and crisis moments, effective presentation of company goods, the secrets of effective PR will be discussed the training. PR specialists can confirm their participation by sending an e-mail to: [email protected] The training will be held by the head of "Alibayov Communication & Consulting" company Vali Alibayov.

It should be noted that Azerbaijan Public Relations Association will hold different events on following high professional and ethic standards and increase of national specialists in PR sphere.
Baku, Azerbaijan, June 10

By Anvar Mammadov - Trend:

Russia's UTair Airline launched new flights from Azerbaijan's Lankaran to Russia's St. Petersburg and Surgut on June 7, said the company's website.

UTair is a modern, first-class, competitive Russian airline conducting its activities on market principles and striving towards maximum transparency while aiming to provide a whole new level of passenger service.

The flights on Lankaran - St. Petersburg - Lankaran route are carried out by Boeing 737-500 planes on Tuesdays with departure from Lankaran at 14:40 (UTC/GMT + 4 hours) and from St. Petersburg at 19:10 (UTC/GMT + 3 hours).

The flights on Lankaran - Surgut - Lankaran are also carried out by Boeing 737-500 planes on Tuesdays with departure from Lankaran at 01:10 (UTC/GMT + 4 hours) and from Surgut at 10:00 (UTC/GMT + 5 hours).

Moreover, the company resumed the flights on Moscow-Baku route on June 8.

The flights on this route are carried out every day by Boeing 737-500 planes in accordance with the following schedule:

Moscow-Baku: departure at 10:30 (UTC/GMT + 3 hours), arrival at 14:30 (UTC/GMT + 4 hours);

Baku-Moscow: departure at 15:30 (UTC/GMT + 4 hours), arrival at 17:30 (UTC/GMT + 3 hours).

The duration of the flight is three hours.

---

Follow the author on Twitter: @Anvar_Mammadov
L ondons banks have switched off hiring permanent staff as jitters over the EU referendum put the brakes on the UK financial market, the chief executive of recruiter SThree said today.

Of SThrees top five banking clients, only one is currently taking on new permanent hires, according to Gary Elden.

At the moment, the taps are off. The UK is feeling a lot of pain but its reflective of the market. Weve seen a declining trend in the number of jobs coming through, he said.

If we look at the level of responses to jobs, now theres definitely a slowdown in the number of candidates. When theres uncertainty, people are less likely to leave. The banking market has switched off completely. A slowdown in NHS hiring as the health provider tries to tighten margins has also dragged on the recruitment group.

UK gross profit for the half year ending May 31 was down 5% at 32 million. For the second quarter alone February to May  it fell 9%.

Group profits  the UK makes up about a quarter of SThrees profits  rose 6% to 119.7 million, thanks to strong growth in continental Europe and the US.

The Brexit-induced slowdown has also extended to American companies sending over their top bosses to work in the UK, fresh figures showed.

According to executive search firm DHR International, applications from US nationals for highly skilled visas dropped 6% in the first quarter against a year ago.
I ts a mystery why Sainsburys executive John Rogers didnt chuck his hat in the ring to replace chief executive Justin King.

Not that Mike Coupe was a bad option but Rogers, the finance boss and former property director who knew the Sainsburys estate better than anyone, seemed eminently capable.

He stuck with the finance directors ticket in the end, and has impressed analysts and investors with his grip on the numbers, not to mention charm.

That a big-hitter like him has been put in charge of integrating Argos can only be welcomed by doubters of the merger like me.

If anyones going to get this left-field project to work, its Rogers. Plus, Coupes move of his main lieutenant into that role suggests that the chief executive is acutely aware of the huge strain his risky plan is going to inflict on the business. Good.

But it also inherently means that oversight of Sainsburys under-pressure core business of groceries is now down by one top man.

I guess it could be worse; Sainsburys has the depth in management to slide another long-server into Rogers seat as interim finance director, Ed Barker.

For Rogers, the move is a career gamble. If he pulls off the integration, hell get the CEOs job next time. But if it proves impossible, hell get the boot.

Muslim role model

Unless you run a bank or a fund manager, you wont have heard of Malik Karim, profiled today on page 52. Mores the pity.

The founder of Fenchurch Advisory Partners is one of the financial services sectors leading M&A advisers and arguably one of the Citys top entrepreneurs.

Hes also a quietly devout Muslim.

As such, while hell hate me for saying it, this intelligent executive from very humble roots should, like our Mayor, be celebrated by the government as an example of the contribution so many Muslims make to our city.

So speak up, Karim  London needs more role models like you.
S ainsburys has entrusted the top job at Argos to one of its boardroom big beasts as the supermarket moves into a new era following its 1.4 billion takeover of Home Retail.

Finance chief John Rogers, who has spent more than a decade at the grocer, will lead Argos when a deal is finalised in a move which should bolster his credentials to eventually succeed Mike Coupe as the chief executive of the enlarged group.

Rogers was widely tipped as a potential successor to Justin King when the former boss stood down in 2014, but chairman David Tyler said he had not put himself forward.

The Home Retail takeover is expected to complete in the third quarter of the year.

John Walden, who has run Home Retail Group since 2014, will step down at the same time.

Coupe, who succeeded King, described Rogers as the ideal candidate to run Argos, thanks to expertise in strategy, digital, online and property. He named Sainsburys insider Ed Barker as interim finance boss.

Shore Capitals Clive Black said Rogers is admired in the City. It is keeping John interested and progressing John and at the same time injecting one of his own people into Argos, which will need a lot of focus and attention.

Rogers, also responsible for Sainsburys strategy, was one of the architects of the Argos tie-up, which Sainsburys hopes will help it become the food and non-food retailer of choice. Analysts said his appointment signals that the supermarket plans to closely integrate Argos into its current business rather than run it independently.

But Rogers will have his work cut out at Argos, which has been struggling after the arrival of competitors like Amazon put sales under pressure.

Yesterday the company revealed its strongest sales growth in two years as improvements including a same-day delivery service and an overhaul of its digital operations began to pay off.

Walden, who has overseen the transformation and the sale of DIY chain Homebase to Wesfarmers for 340 million, said today that he will pursue new career opportunities.

In a letter to staff, he said he had mixed emotions about the decision. He may return to the US to be closer to his family, he added.
T here is no other country in the world that can rejoice in such a head of state as the Queen. At 90 years old and after 63 years on the throne, she is celebrated all over the world without ever having done anything to court such fame. Her values are quite different  she sees herself not as a star but as a humble servant, first of God and then of her people.

A member of the Second World War generation, to her less is more. In public she does not do demonstrative. That has sometimes led editors and pundits who should know better to pronounce that she is unemotional. That is nonsense. She simply believes that strong feelings are best not expressed publicly. She knows that more can be achieved by example than by rhetoric.

David Nott, a surgeon who volunteered for traumatic medical work in Syria revealed recently on Desert Island Discs that when he was invited to Buckingham Palace to meet the Queen just after returning from Aleppo, he found himself tongue-tied, completely unable to talk of his horrific experience. She picked this all up and said: Shall I help you? I thought: How on earth could the Queen help me?

She then asked for her corgis and for biscuits to be brought into the room, and said to Dr Nott: OK, why dont we feed the dogs? And so for 20 minutes the Queen and I  during lunch  just fed the dogs. At last he was able to relax and talk. Nott said the Queens humanity was unbelievable.

Such stories of her kindness and good sense are common among her family and those who know her well. She is completely involved in the lives of her grandchildren  and now great-grandchildren.

At the core of her life has been her enduring romance with Prince Philip. She fell in love with him in her late teens, during the war. Her parents, King George VI and Queen Elizabeth, were at first concerned that she was so young. But the marriage has been a triumph.

On her golden wedding anniversary in 2007 she said of her husband, He has, quite simply, been my strength and stay all these years, and I and his whole family, and this and many other countries, owe him a debt greater than he would ever claim, or we shall ever know.

She is right. He is a man of astonishing achievement. To give just one example, nearly eight million young people have passed though the Duke of Edinburghs Award scheme. Soon after their wedding Prince Philip wrote of his joy and his ambition to make their marriage into a combined existence for the good... Very humbly I thank God for Lilibet and for us. They have now been married for close to 70 years and their relationship is said by those who know them to be still sparky and fun.

She has always been exquisitely discreet about her central constitutional duty, the relationship as head of state to the elected prime minister of the day. She has had meetings with one of her 12 prime ministers almost every week of her reign  yet no one knows what has been said at them  and they have been as discreet as she is.

It is astonishing to recall that her first prime minister, Winston Churchill, served in the Army in Queen Victorias reign and her latest, David Cameron, was born only in 1966  when she had already been on the throne for 14 years. There has been endless speculation about what she really thought of Margaret Thatcher  but the Queen has made sure no one knows. Just as no one knows her opinion of Tony Blair, let alone of Brexit.

By contrast, one thing she has never concealed is her Christian faith. This she inherited from her parents, who brought up their children in love of family, country and God.

It is almost a truism to say that her faith is crucial to who she is and how she has seen her role as Queen. In her first Christmas broadcast in 1952 she asked the British people to pray for her at her coronation the following year. Pray that God may give me wisdom and strength to carry out the solemn promises I shall be making, and that I may faithfully serve him, and you, all the days of my life.

When she was crowned the following June she found an almost sacrificial quality at the heart of the service. Her anointing with holy oil is said to have been a transformative moment for her. As the Archbishop of Canterbury said, it brought her into the presence of the living God.

Since then the country and society have changed at a pace and to an extent which is almost beyond belief. But she has remained always utterly constant, the still small voice of calm at the centre of the storm. The centre which held and to which people could always look for reassurance.

She has spoken of Christ as the Prince of Peace who preached the brotherhood of man  which perhaps explains the immense and successful efforts she has made to preserve and build the brotherhood of the Commonwealth.

A few years ago she reminded us that the revolution in computers and the internet meant nothing compared with the 2,000-year-old Christian message of love thy neighbour as thyself for its guidance reassurance.

In November 2005 she praised Christianity at a time of change. When so much is in flux, when limitless amounts of information, much of it ephemeral, are instantly accessible on demand, there is a renewed hunger for that which endures and gives meaning.

She knows that the Crown is an office, defined by duties and not an individual moved by hopes and fears. Her character  kind, loyal, patriotic and imbued with Christian feeling  has never changed. It is utterly endearing.

Remember, she has said, that God sent his only son to serve, not be served. That is exactly what she has done throughout her life. And that is why she is such a superb constitutional monarch and is so deeply loved throughout the world.

William Shawcross is the author of Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother: The Official Biography


The mens fashion industry is worth more than 14 billion to the British economy, a report revealed today, as one of the biggest menswear showcases in the world opened in London.

The four-day London Collections Men brings leading designers from around the globe to the capital for catwalk shows, events and parties. Its launch coincides with the release of todays report from the British Fashion Council announcing record figures for the UK industry.

The mens clothing market grew more than womenswear in 2015 and now accounts for 25 per cent of the UK total.

The figures were released as Mayor Sadiq Khan declared London the home of menswear. He said: "We have the world-renowned tailors of Savile Row and we lead the field with our brilliant contemporary designers."

"London Collections brilliantly showcases this unique offer, bringing together the best British brands, independent London labels and up-and-coming talent. In only a few seasons it has established London as a powerhouse of mens fashion, an industry that is worth 14 billion and growing fast."

"Culture and creativity are in Londons DNA and key to our continued success as a global city."

Ed Vaizey, minister for culture, said: The creative industries are one of the UKs greatest success stories, contributing almost 9 million per hour to our economy. UK fashion plays a key role in that success.

Dylan Jones, editor of GQ magazine and chairman of LCM, said London is one of the most exciting fashion cities in the world.

This seasons LCM features 32 catwalk shows, 25 presentations and 55 designers hosting showrooms at arts centre 180 The Strand. Highlights include showcases from Topman, J W Anderson and Grace Wales Bonner and a celebration of 40 years of punk with Paul Smith.

The event, now in its fifth year, will close on Monday with Samuel L Jackson and Dylan Joness celebrity karaoke evening.
Review at a glance









L ampedusa is a tiny, rocky island of less than eight square miles, officially part of Sicily and thus the southernmost extremity of Italy, although it is in fact nearer to Africa (70 miles south to Tunisia) and Malta (109 miles to the east) than it is to Agrigento (127 miles to the north). It has a population of only 6,000, who live by fishing, agriculture and seasonal tourism  and its only source of fresh water is infrequent rainfall.

Lampedusa, as the European landfall nearest to Libya, has nonetheless become a prime entry and transit point for illegal immigrants from the Middle East, Africa and Asia. As the opening credits of this remarkable documentary,  which won the main prize, the Golden Bear, at Berlin Film Festival earlier this year  state, some 400,000 migrants have passed through Lampedusa in the past two decades, an estimated 15,000 people dying at sea in the attempt, in small, overcrowded boats run by people smugglers.

These numbers are probably under-estimates. Just this week an Eritrean people-smuggler, Mered Medhanie, known as The General, has been extradited from Sudan to Italy to stand trial for arranging the transit of a boat from Libya that sank near Lampedusa in October 2013, killing at least 359 would-be migrants, mostly from Eritrea and Somalia.

Interviewed in Berlin, the Italian director of this film, Gianfranco Rosi (himself born in Eritrea in 1964, leaving when he was 13) said: I believe that after the Holocaust, this is the biggest tragedy that Europe has ever faced.

All at sea: Samuele, a young resident of Lampedusa, is the main character in Gianfranco Rosis documentar

But in the film, after that brief written opening statement of facts and figures, he says nothing further. There is no commentary. Rosi, who acts as his own cameraman (using a small Arri Alexa Amira), and soundman, specialises in immersing himself in marginal communities, making himself as invisible as possible to his subjects through long familiarity.

For Below Sea Level (2008) he spent five years with squatters in the Californian desert. For Sacro GRA, which won the Golden Lion at Venice in 2013, he spent two years with some of the people who live on Romes ring road, the Grande Raccordo Anulare. Its a documentary like no other, hailed as nothing less than Franciscan by that years Venice jury president, Bernardo Bertolucci.

Quietly, Sacro GRA presents us with scenes from the lives of the people living near the motorway: ambulance-men picking up the pieces; a man researching parasites attacking palm trees; an impoverished nobleman letting out his stagey palazzo for photo-shoots; an eel fisherman; a pair of hard-bitten street women living in a camper-van; an educated elderly man living with his middle-aged daughter in a tiny flat, gazing out of his window These lives dont connect or constitute any kind of big picture, let alone offer any symbolism  they are just ways of living, a cross-section of people within a circumscribed area. The movie has its own pace and respect, a sense of grace, even.

Much of Fire at Sea is so remarkably similar in its approach that it reveals just how authorial even such quietist documentary-making can be. Having originally gone to Lampedusa in 2014 to make a 10-minute short film, Rosi ended up staying there 18 months, immersing himself completely in the life of the island. He takes as his lead character an endearing child, aged about 10, called Samuele, full of life. We see him making a catapult and, with another boy, taking pot shots at prickly pears that theyve roughly fashioned into heads. More worryingly maybe  or maybe just because hes a normal village boy  he loves shooting an entirely pretend pump-action shotgun at whatever he can, from birds to boats.

The pair go out at night looking for roosting birds. He goes to sea with his quietly spoken fisherman uncle but he gets seasick, so his uncle tells him to practise walking on the islands swaying pontoon (Lampedusa has never been a sought-after naval base like Malta, having no deep-water harbour). Despite throwing up, Samuele slurps away noisily at the delicious pasta his grandmother makes with the squid theyve caught. An optician diagnoses a lazy eye and prescribes glasses incorporating an eye-patch over the good one to make the lazy one work harder. He does completely incomprehensible English homework. Its all normal, touching, amusing.

As well as Samueles family, we repeatedly see the islands DJ, taking requests all from people he knows, including Samueles gran, for dedications of syrupy Sicilian ballads. In a poetic sequence we twice see a local scuba-diver clambering over rocks in his full wetsuit to collect sea urchins, holding his breath for the longest time underwater.

Intercut, but barely intersecting, with all this routine island life is an entirely different world, which apparently Rosi filmed towards the end of his stay, going out to sea twice for 20 days at a time on the Italian naval vessel Cigala Fulgosi with the servicemen tasked with trying to rescue the refugees from their sinking boats. We hear the migrants desperately calling on failing mobile phones: We beg you please in the name of God, saying they have women and children with them and need help. Helicopters and small boats set out, trying to bring them to safety, all the personnel wearing full bio-hazard suits.

In the most fully depicted operation, 840 people have crowded into an old boat, at sea for seven days, paying different rates from $1,500 to $1,000 according to where they are put, many at the bottom dying from dehydration and heat exhaustion, 40 or more of them brought out in roughly tied-up body bags. Thats a horrifying enough sight. But then the camera takes us on board the emptied boat, among the tangled bodies, empty water bottles and cans, still littering its hull  a brief, atrocious sequence which expands in the memory to last much longer.

Rosi also goes into the detention centre on the island where these refugees, from all over, Libya, Sudan, Somalia, Syria, Nigeria and Eritrea, are processed and moved on to the mainland. Most seem to be young men, not women or children. One from Nigeria rejoices in a kind of rap, recounting his journey through the Sahara and Libya: The sea is not a road. Oh, but today we are alive. Life itself is a risk. We went to sea and did not die.

Theres really just one point of contact with Lampedusan locals, the only doctor on the island, Pietro Bartolo, present at all the landings of the rescued migrants for the past 30 years. He has had to witness terrible things, he says, and you do not get used to it: It leaves you with emptiness, a hole in your gut. He relives his experiences in nightmares and, in the only such exhortation in the film, urges: It is the duty of every human being, because you are a human being, to help these people.

In a long final sequence, Samueles grandmother, who murmurs commiserations on hearing of the latest drownings, very carefully, almost ritualistically, makes up a bed, kissing the various Catholic saints whose pictures and statues adorn the room, while Samuele goes out again on the pontoon.

Perhaps we are to understand that these separate worlds scarcely meet at all, although they are at the same time such a critical crossover point now between continents. Perhaps Rosi intends some little symbolism from that lazy eye? But I doubt it.

To judge from his previous films, as well as this, Rosi values above all the daily routines of ordinary lives in small communities. Here those values co-exist with a great human tragedy. But Rosi offers no interpretation, no blame, no solution: he just shows us this placid little island, this huge human wave of misery washing over it. Thats here for us to see, to remember. Fire at Sea is not going to dislodge the superhero blockbusters: it is, however, the most telling and memorable documentary I have seen for years.

Cert 12A, 114 mins

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Review at a glance









 You still see me as the fat girl you call on Friday night when a date falls through... Dont you ever pity me again. Melissa McCarthy doesnt say these words in The Boss. She says them in 2007 cult classic The Nines, in which she plays a struggling TV actress called Melissa McCarthy whos the best friend of a gorgeous man (Ryan Reynolds). As part of the meta-comedy-sci-fi-weirdness, she also appears as the mans shallow PA. And his earthy wife. Im going into alarming detail about a film most of you wont have seen because it holds the key to a superstar who many insist is a one-trick pony.

McCarthy is one of the most versatile performers working today. All the films shes best known for (Bridesmaids, The Heat, The Hangover 3, Spy) see her, at some point, unleashing lust and aggression, but theres nothing predictable about how and why she lets rip. Nor can we ever guess who, or what, shell end up clasping to her gorgeous chest (could be Ryan Reynolds but not necessarily). A big idea underpins McCarthys oeuvre: were all hot stuff.

Grin and bare it: Melissa McCarthy and Kirsten Bell

Anyway, back to The Boss, which is about ruthless capitalist Michelle (McCarthy) who, after a stint in prison for insider trading, seeks to claw her way back to the top with the help of a lickspittle (Kristen Bell) who can make a mean chocolate brownie.

The film is full of personal touches. McCarthys daughter Vivian plays Michelle as a pugnaciously forlorn 10-year-old. Her husband Ben Falcone (who directed the film) is Michelles lawyer. Look out, too, for Annie Mumolo (who co-wrote Bridesmaids)  she has an extended cameo as Michelles nemesis, an uptight mother who thinks ex-felons should be seen and not heard.

Mumolo is just one of many cast members short-changed by the script. Many of the set-pieces are lazy and all the character arcs are obvious. References to real-life corporate wrongdoing fizzle out. Michelle, on discovering that all her assets have been seized by the government, wails: Martha Stewart got everything back! There should have been more where that came from.

Yet somehow, McCarthy still manages to startle us into submission. Theres a lovely flashback in which she and Peter Dinklage (as Michelles boyfriend, colleague and soon to be arch-foe) sport matching Eighties perms and swap cocaine-fuelled compliments. And scenes in which McCarthy and Bell grab at each others breasts, and chat in bed, show how much fun the mistress-servant dynamic can be.

Does it need saying that the hilarious and foul-mouthed Michelle is never the object of our pity? The confidently modest McCarthy creates her own happy endings. Make a date with this woman and youll TF its Friday.

Cert 15, 99 mins

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A fter a long line of rumours it has finally been confirmed that hit Broadway musical Hamilton will be coming to London.

The Pulitzer Prize-winning play that was created by and stars Lin-Manuel Miranda  and which wowed Barack Obama last year  will arrive at the Victoria Palace Theatre in October 2017.

The UK adaption will be produced by Cameron Mackintosh, who has previously been responsible for productions of Cats, Les Miserables, The Phantom of the Opera and Miss Saigon in London.

According to Daily Mail theatre critic Baz Bamigboye, the star producer is spending 30 million refurbishing the theatre ready for the production.

What to see at the theatre  in pictures 1 /10 What to see at the theatre  in pictures The Deep Blue Sea  Until September 21, National Buy tickets

Henry Hitchings says... Helen McCrory is achingly good in this sombre, tense revival of one of Terence Rattigans finest plays  a devastating portrait of a woman adrift on loves ocean, desperately afraid of loneliness and blighted by the social conventions of the early Fifties. Carrie Cracknells mostly restrained interpretation doesnt shy away from indulging the plays deep silences, and the translucent rooms nested within Tom Scutts design show Hesters Ladbroke Grove lodgings haunted by the fluttery comings and goings of other residents. Their ghostly presence suggests a surveillance society where Hester can never express herself freely. Richard Hubert Smith People, Places & Things  Until June 18, Wyndham's, Buy tickets

Fiona Mountford says... It's rare to see a group of critics, cynical devils that we are, rise to their feet for a sweeping standing ovation on a press night. But this wasnt any old opening, or any old leading actress. For my money, Denise Gough gives the greatest stage performance since Mark Rylance in Jerusalem as Emma, an actress addicted to drink and drugs. Its a supremely confident and well-oiled production from director Jeremy Herrin, with a fluid acting ensemble. There is absolutely no doubt that Gough is the person, Wyndhams the place and this play the thing to see this spring. Johan Persson Guys and Dolls  Until Oct 30, Phoenix Theatre, Buy tickets

Fiona Mountford says... Now in its third incarnation after the premiere at Chichester and an initial West End run at the Savoy, Gordon Greenbergs delicious production of Frank Loessers classy classic once again boasts chemistry in all the right places. In short, theres absolutely nothing not to like about this rendering of Damon Runyons assortment of colourful New York low-lifes. The songs are as tuneful as ever, with Sit Down, Youre Rockin the Boat once more a foot-stomping inducer of encores. This show is tingle-down-the-arms good  a rarity in the West End. Johan Persson The Threepenny Opera  Until Oct 1, National Theatre, Olivier, Buy tickets

Henry Hitchings says... The Threepenny Opera is a stinging indictment of capitalism. Yet for all its pugnacious seriousness it can be fun, and Rufus Norris, whose tenure as artistic director of the National Theatre has so far drawn mixed reviews, oversees a revival thats enjoyably raucous and packed with amusing detail. By downplaying the storys grit and embracing a cartoonish exuberance, Norris ensures that this three-hour production will divide opinion. But after a tentative opening it fizzes with ideas, doing justice to Kurt Weills score, a blend of cabaret and jazz that sounds timelessly, enticingly sleazy. Alastair Muir Show Boat  Until August 27, New London, Buy tickets

Fiona Mountford says... Its always a pleasure to welcome a classy production of a classic musical to the West End and director Daniel Evans has constructed just that in this triumphant transfer from the Sheffield Crucible. From the musically stirring, verbally unsettling opening lines of Ol Man River that begin the show, delivered by the magnificently voiced Emmanuel Kojo as Joe, we know were in for something special. Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammersteins 1927 work set the template for the musical as we know it, and 90 years on its still a knockout, above all for its soaring songs. Don't miss this boat. Johan Persson Funny Girl  Until October 8, Savoy Theatre, Buy tickets

Fiona Mountford says... Sheridan Smith triumphantly reinvents Fanny Brice for a new generation of musical theatre lovers, conveying with skill and heart this entertainers emotive blend of professional success and personal vulnerability. Michael Mayers sassy production is reinforced by Michael Pavelkas elegant, wistful design of a theatre, with rows of burnished mirrors running into the wings. Fanny is endlessly reflected back, but never quite in the image shed like to see. Johan Persson The Caretaker  Until May 14, Old Vic, Buy tickets

Henry Hitchings says... Timothy Spall returns to the stage, after a 19-year absence, in Harold Pinters classic vision of deception and isolation. Hes absorbingly watchable as Davies, a tramp taken in by Daniel Mayss generous, simple-minded Aston  and he makes this shambolic figure a bundle of mannerisms, a fidgety bigot who spouts bizarre opinions and peevish gripes. The Caretaker is an incisive, delicately balanced study of a power struggle between three lost souls who are drowning in absurd fantasies. The rich performances make this an unsettling portrait of claustrophobic domesticity and its capacity to warp the mind and the soul. Hamlet  Until August 13, Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, Buy tickets

Henry Hitchings says... As a brash and youthful Hamlet, in Simon Godwins sultry and at times risky interpretation, Paapa Essiedu radiates star quality. At his best when skittishly imparting the intricacies of Hamlets madness, he combines sarcasm, charm and creepiness. His encounter with the ghost of his father (a memorably doomy Ewart James Walters, whos later a droll gravedigger) transforms him from a slick and smartly dressed graduate into a dynamic oddball whose gestures make the meaning of the plays most famous speeches feel fresh. The production follows the same trajectory. Manuel Harlan/RSC The Alchemist  In rep until August 6, Buy tickets

Fiona Mountford says... For all that The Alchemist (1610) is a splendid satire and proto-farce, its densely packed language, so different from the familiar rhythms of Shakespeare, can be a real challenge. In a well-judged move, director Polly Findlay has cut more than 20 per cent of Ben Jonsons wordy text and employed writer Stephen Jeffreys to demystify some of the more arcane references. The result is a nimble-footed production, blessed with some ingenious little flourishes. The action is a little effortful as times, although McSweeney in particular never fails to amuse. Look out too for the wonderful stuffed alligator that serves as an unlikely storage unit for the trios ill-gotten gains. Helen Maybanks Titanic  Until August 6, Charing Cross Theatre, Buy tickets

Henry Hitchings says... When it premiered on Broadway in 1997, Titanic was widely derided, but this stripped-back interpretation, though still overlong, affords a vigorous and ultimately moving take on the 20th centurys most notorious maritime disaster. In a cast of 20, the standard of singing is high, with the most attractive performances coming from James Gant and Niall Sheehy, while Matthew Crowe is affecting as a pompous but fragile telegraphist. And at the helm Southerland combines sensitivity with ambition, suggesting that this previously moribund venue is now on course for success. Scott Rylander

Tickets are thought to go on sale this October, with a UK website set to go live at noon on Monday (June 13), allowing theatre-goers to sign up for priority ticket information.

Hamilton, which features high-octane hip-hop music throughout, tells the story of US founding father Alexander Hamilton, a Caribbean immigrant who rose the political ranks to become treasury secretary.

The production looks set to break records at Sunday nights Tony Awards in the States, where it is tipped to win many of the 16 awards it is nominated for.

Follow Ben Norum on Twitter @BenNorum

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Review at a glance









S even years on from a warm and vulnerable performance as Cyrano de Bergerac, Joseph Fiennes returns to the stage in this rarely revived Terence Rattigan play. It focuses on Aircraftman Ross, otherwise known as T E Lawrence  or Lawrence of Arabia. Rattigan is interested in the man rather than the myth, and Fiennes inhabits the role attractively, locating Lawrences essential magnetism while also bringing to life his many confusing eccentricities.

Though bookended by amusing scenes set in 1922, in which Lawrence hides his identity yet seems keen to hint at it, most of the action takes place during the First World War as he masterminds the Arab revolt against the Turks, notably at the Battle of Aqaba. But while the play is topical in its attention to revolution and terrorism, it betrays its origins as a discarded film script, and Lawrences wartime adventures and the philosophical pronouncements they inspire often feel ponderous.

Whats more, Rattigan doesnt vividly define the supporting characters  the two exceptions being Dickinson (John Hopkins), a colleague in the RAF who rumbles Lawrence, and the robust Sheikh Auda (Peter Polycarpou). Still, Fiennes ensures that Adrian Nobles production has a fluent intelligence at its heart. Whether flamboyant in his flowing robes, crushed by Turkish torture or discreetly seeking to escape his past, hes a troubled mix of ambition and enigma.

Until June 25, Chichester Festival Theatre; cft.org.uk.

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Baku, Azerbaijan, June 10

By Maksim Tsurkov - Trend:

China Southern Airlines Company will start to carry out flights on the route Baku-Urumqi-Guangzhou from July 3, 2016, said the company's representative in Baku.

The representative said China Southern operates on the Azerbaijani market for 10 years and have decided to connect Baku with a large number of cities in China and Southeast Asia.

"The company carried out the first flight from Baku to Urumqi in March 2006," said the rep. "Last year, due to the devaluation of the Azerbaijani manat the company suspended flights, but now we have decided not only to restore its flights, but also offer more destinations."

The representative added that it will be possible to visit such cities as Shenzhen, Shanghai, Hangzhou, Yiwu, Beijing, Singapore, Manila and Bangkok through Urumqi and Guangzhou.

The flights will be carried out by Boeing-737 planes from July 3 twice a week (on Wednesday and Sunday) with departure from Baku at 23:05 (UTC/GMT+4 hours) and arrival in Urumqi at 07:00 (UTC/GMT+8 hours), in Guangzhou - at 14:35 (UTC/GMT+8 hours). Waiting period at the Urumqi airport is 2.5 hours.

The return flight is planned to be carried out at 12:50 with arrival in Urumqi at 18:10 and in Baku - at 21:05. In this case, waiting period is two hours.

Cost of the tickets (without taxes) for the Baku-Urumqi-Baku flight is 260 euros, Baku-Guangzhou-Baku flight - 280 euros, Baku-Shenzhen-Baku - 280 euros, Baku-Shanghai-Baku - 260 euros, Baku-Hangzhou-Baku - 260 euros, Baku-Yiwu-Baku - 280 euros, Baku-Beijing-Baku - 180 euros, Baku-Singapore-Baku - 340 euros, Baku-Manila-Baku - 300 euros, and Baku-Bangkok-Baku - 300 euros.

---

Follow the author on Twitter: @MaksimTsurkov
I nstagram is often accused of being a playground for vanity and self-promotion, so its easy to forget that the social media platform that spawned an entirely new career (#spon) can also be used for some good.

Now Instagram are drawing attention to those trying to make a difference by celebrating the UKs growing community of female visual storytellers with an exhibition. #MyStoryUK drawS together 24 women, including illustrators, activists and entrepreneurs, and features their photos in a new show alongside their words.

Amanda Kelso, Instagrams Director of Community, said: Instagram is a place where people come together to find inspiration, connect through shared interests and experience the world through images and videos. MyStoryUK is about celebrating this inspiring community of women. We hope that by sharing their stories, others will be inspired to share theirs too.

Here you will find names you might already be familiar with, such as the plus-sized model and activist Iskra Lawrence, as well as women you probably wont have come across before, including the cyclist Jools Walker.

While they might lack Kardashian-levels of followers, they are all striving to change the world a little. One post at a time.

The Instagram #MyStoryUK pop-up exhibition opens 9 - 10 June. Unit London, 147-149 Wardour St, London W1F 8WD. Entry is free.

Read more from Refinery29

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Read the original article on Refinery 29 UK  2016. Follow Refinery 29 UK on Twitter
L ast nights EU debate broke all the televisual rules. First Minister of Scotland Nicola Sturgeon led Remain and Boris Johnson represented Leave in a head-to-head spanning politics, parenting and personality. Heres what we learned about the shifting landscape of power.

Boris looked baffled

Outnumbered by women, the usually perma-confident Boris Johnson was out of his comfort zone. His combative debating style doesnt work when he is faced with a panel of serious women. Thats not how they argue. Unable to resort to his trademark oratory, Johnson appeared to flounder, leaving people wondering whether the line-up was a tactical move.

Prime-time viewing

The women all spoke with the authority of age, which again unsettled the former Mayor. Ranging from 45 (Nicola Sturgeon) to 60 (Labour MP Gisela Stuart), they are all grown-up enough not to be intimidated by Johnson, 51. And he couldnt flirt with them, either. Johnsons charisma relies on being able to impress, and he likes to play on sexual attraction  these women were having none of that.

Trewsnight

With the exception of Sturgeon, the panellists wore trouser suits (Boris included). Its the modern power uniform. For the David Cameron show earlier in the week, host Julie Etchingham was in a tight shift dress and heels, but last night she looked formidable and on top of her game in a sharp, black trouser suit and crisp shirt. These are women who do not need to dress in constricting, overtly feminine outfits. The female politicians, including Tory MP Andrea Leadsom (Leave) and Labours Angela Eagle for Remain, wore crew-neck tops. Just as male politicos favour shirts beneath fitted jackets, the crew works well on women when paired with tailoring. They looked good but not distracting, ensuring their arguments stayed the focus.

The subversive slapdown

The only sexist put-down of the night came from Amber Rudd and was directed at Johnson. The Energy Secretary quipped that her Conservative colleague was the life and soul of the party but he is not the man you want to drive you home at the end of the evening. This cleverly undermined his jovial reputation while hinting at his lothario past. Humour is a great unifier and the other women rallied behind her, with Sturgeon saying that Johnson cant be trusted.

EU referendum campaign - in pictures 1 /45 EU referendum campaign - in pictures Boris Johnson (left) kisses a wild salmon as he is shown around Billingsgate Fish Market in London with porter Greg Essex, uncle of TV presenter Joey Essex, on the final day of campaigning Stefan Rousseau/PA A van displaying an advert saying 'Don't Wake Up With Nigel Next Friday' is driven through Westminster Jack Taylor/Getty Images Michael Gove speaks alongside Priti Patel (left) and Kate Hoey at a Vote Leave campaign event at Old Billingsgate market, London Dominic Lipinski/PA A passenger on a train reads the Evening Standard on the London Underground EPA Delia Smith during the Channel 4 EU referendum debate Dominic Lipinski/PA David Cameron appears on a special referendum edition of BBC One's Question Time, hosted by David Dimbleby Stefan Rousseau/PA Jayne-Anne Gadhia, CEO of Virgin Money, speaks to Sir Richard Branson about his views on the EU referendum Ben Pruchnie/PA JD Wetherspoon beer mats that have been printed by the pub chain with strong messages in favour of leaving the EU JD Wetherspoon/PA Ukip leader Nigel Farage and Kate Hoey on board a boat taking part in a Fishing for Leave pro-Brexit "flotilla" on the River Thames Stefan Rousseau/PA Liberal Democrats leader Tim Farron greets supporters after arriving in the Liberal Democrat Vote Remain campaign bus in east London Ben Stansall/AFP/Getty Images Boris Johnson MP visits Sam Cole Foods fish processing factory in Lowestoft, Suffolk, where he was campaigning on behalf of the Vote Leave EU campaign Stefan Rousseau/PA A boat carrying supporters for the Remain in the EU campaign, including Sir Bob Geldoff, shout and wave at Brexit fishing boats as they sail up the Thames Ben Stansall/AFP/Getty Images Yvette Cooper MP gives a helping hand to her husband and former shadow chancellor Ed Balls, as he gets up from a story time session, during a Vote Remain canvassing visit to Shadsworth Children's Centre in Blackburn. Christopher Furlong/Getty Images The Sun backs Brexit Daniel Sotrabji/AFP Getty Images Eddie Izzard campaigns for the Labour In campaign for the EU referendum Christopher Furlong/Getty Images Leader of the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) Nigel Farage poses with the party's new EU referendum poster in Westminster Jack Taylor/Getty Images CBI director general Carolyn Fairbairn, Rohan Silva, Chuka Umunna, Sarah Sands, Munira Mirza and MEP Daniel Hannan at the Evening Standard Brexit Debate Nigel Howard The Vote Leave campaign bus passes a Vote Remain poster featuring Nigel Farage and Boris Johnson as it arrives for a visit to clothing and uniform manufacturers Simon Jersey in Accrington, Lancashire Stefan Rousseau/PA David Cameron makes a joint appearance with Mayor of London Sadiq Khan as they launch the Britain Stronger in Europe guarantee card at Roehampton University Yui Mok/Getty Image Prime Minister David Cameron recreates the famous Beatles Abbey Road album cover by walking across Abbey Road crossing with Tessa Jowell, former secretary of state for culture, media and sport, on May 20, 2016 in London, England. The Prime Minister is campaigning to 'Remain' in the European Union ahead of a referendum on June 23 to decide on whether or not to leave the European Union Jeremy Selwyn Leader of the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) Nigel Farage holds aloft a UK Passport as he speaks during an anti-EU campaign event in Birmingham AFP/Getty Images Campaigners wear clothing bearing the slogans "I'm Turning My Back On The EU", and "I Want To Leave The European Union, Do You?" as they attend a an Anti-EU (European Union) United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) pro-Brexit campaign event, in Birmingham Paul Ellis/AFP/Getty Image A British national receives her postal ballot paper AFP/Getty Images Boris Johnson MP takes to the wicket during a visit to Chester-Le-Street Cricket Club as part of the Brexit tour Ian Forsyth/Getty Images A campaigner with the pro-Europe campaign group called 'Irish4Europe', hands out leaflets to visitors to the London vs Mayo Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA) football game at Ruislip GAA grounds in Ruislip, northwest London AFP/Getty Images Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn and former leader Ed Miliband (L) address supporters and members of the public in Doncaster town centre on May 27, 2016 in Doncaster, England. The Labour In campaign battle bus arrived in Doncaster today with Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and Ed Miliband MP to canvass for votes and hope to persuade UK citizens to stay in the European Union when they vote in the EU Referendum on the June 23 Christopher Furlong/Getty Images Secretary of State for Justice, Michael Gove, leaves after attending a cabinet meeting at 10 Downing Street Carl Court/Getty Images A Vote to Leave campaigner holds a placard as Leader of the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) Christopher Furlong/Getty Images The image of a sari-clad Asian woman exactly balanced on a see-saw with a shaven-headed "thug" was devised by advertising giant Saatchi and Saatchi for the Operation Black Vote campaign. OBV said the poster - which features the slogan "A vote is a vote" and is due to be displayed on 37 digital billboards in London and Manchester - highlighted the "demonisation of foreigners and people of colour" in the campaign Two pumps of Fuller's London Pride are branded with 'IN' and 'OUT' labels in the Red Lion Pub in Westminster Dan Kitwood/Getty Images People walk past a graffiti mural of Donald Trump and Boris Johnson kissing, which is sprayed on a disused building in the Stokes Croft area of Bristol. The image, called 'The Kiss of Death' and painted by pro-EU campaign group We Are Europe, highlights the upcoming deadline for voter registration for the referendum on 7th June Ben Birchall/PA The front page of The Sun newspaper on 9th March The Sun London Mayor Boris Johnson addresses supporters during a rally for the 'Vote Leave' campaign on April 15, 2016 in Manchester, England. Boris Johnson is taking part in a 48 hour 'Brexit Blitz' of campaigning in Northern England. Britain will vote either to leave or remain in the EU in a referendum on June 23 Christopher Furlong/Getty Images John Whittingdale, Theresa Villiers, Michael Gove, Chris Grayling, Iain Duncan Smith and Priti Patel attend the launch of the Vote Leave campaign at the group's headquarters in London Stefan Rousseau/Getty Images

Dresses look dated

Sturgeon was conspicuous in her white dress and jacket. Last year, line-ups of female politicians in identi-shifts were the norm but the world has changed. Sturgeon, away from the action of Westminster, appears not to have received the memo.

Follow Susannah Butter on Twitter: @susannahbutter
A man who was found beaten to death in a Hackney car park was today named as father-of-two Mehmet Degerli.

Murder police launched an investigation after the 49-year-old was found slumped on the floor with fatal injuries after being attacked in Dalston at 1am on Wednesday.

Paramedics battled to save his life for more than 30 minutes before he was pronounced dead at the scene, a small residents car park next to a modern housing complex off Sandringham Road.

His car parked nearby was also found to have been damaged.

The Turkish national, who worked as a self-employed dry cleaner, was said to have attended a celebration to mark the start of Ramadan earlier in the evening.

Relatives last night gathered at the home he shared with his wife and two young children less than a mile away in Stoke Newington.

A niece told the Standard: We are all devastated.

He was very kind and really helped us all the time. He lived just down the road and would do anything for us.

Were all shocked. My cousins have lost their dad.

We dont understand why anyone would do this to him. He would never want to upset anyone.

It was initially believed the father-of-two had suffered a heart attack but a murder investigation was launched after it emerged he had been assaulted.

Jack Thatcher, 19, was in his bedroom when he saw flashing blue lights in the early hours.

He said: The guy was just on the floor and the paramedics were helping him. I thought he was having a heart attack.

They were working on him, pressing his chest to bring him back to life for a good 30 minutes, but they couldnt save him. Its very sad.

Detective chief inspector Rob Pack today urged witnesses to the murder to come forward.

He said: At this stage we believe Mr Dergerli to have been the victim of a violent assault and need to hear from people who can help us piece together exactly what happened.

A 46-year-old man has been arrested on suspicion of murder.
A n alleged killer told police no one was home except him and his dead wife when they showed up at his door to investigate a domestic dispute, US media report.

Michael James, 27, was then shot by officers after he aggressively began charging at them during the incident in Hollywood, Florida.

According to the Miami Herald, police attended his home in the early hours of Wednesday morning.

When they asked him if anyone else was in, he is said to have told them: No, it was just me and my dead wife.

Police said James also explained that he had killed his partner for not being loyal.

After stabbing his wife he then tried to set their home on fire.

James, who is recovering from gunshot wounds in hospital, is accused of first degree murder and arson, the newspaper said.
A man was today fighting for his life in hospital after being hit by a hail of bullets fired from a machine gun.

Police said more than a dozen bullets were fired during the attack in Newham last night.

A 31-year-old man was taken to hospital in a critical condition after suffering gunshot wounds.

The Met's gang crime unit said the weapon - believed to be an automatic gun - has not yet been recovered after the incident in Plaistow just after 11pm.

Detective Inspector Glenn Butler said: Shootings on the streets of London are rare, and the use of automatic weapons even more so.

It is therefore all the more important that anyone who can help me find this callous, reckless individual calls me as soon as possible to share any information.

The suspect is thought to be an Asian man, around 30 to 40 years-old, of large build and wearing a grey hooded top.

Enquiries into how he travelled to and from the scene at Beatrice Close are continuing.

There have been no arrests in connection with the shooting and the gun has not been recovered.

Anyone with information should call Trident via 101 or Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555 111.
P olice today issued a new appeal in the hunt for a man once known as Britains most prolific burglar.

Peter Kerrigan, 28, was serving a six-year sentence when he fled from a mental health unit in Hackney in March last year.

Detectives said he preyed on the elderly and disabled by impersonating a police officer before stealing from their homes.

His oldest victim was a 92-year-old woman who was confronted by Kerrigan wearing a mask.

Detective Inspector Paul Ridley, from Hackney CID, said he must be found before he ruins other peoples lives.

Kerrigan had previously been jailed for eight years after admitting 1,400 break-ins when he was 17.

He is known to visit Hackney, Brent and Newham, and anyone who sees him is urged to call 999.
A woman brandishing a syringe launched a terrifying attack on another woman in a lift in east London, police say.

The victim, who is in her 20s, was threatened with the needle, trapped in the lift and then beaten at a block of flats in Bethnal Green.

She was punched and then dragged out of the lift by the hair before she managed to break free and escape.

Police are searching for 32-year-old Aisha Bangs following the assault in Ramsey Street at about 6.30pm on Friday, June 3.

A spokesman for the Metropolitan Police said: During the assault the victim had clumps of hair ripped from her head but apart from this she did not receive serious injuries.

When officers spoke to the victim she told them that there was also a white man present during the attack although he did not take part in the assault. The victim believed he was known to the suspect.

Anyone who knows the whereabouts of Aisha Bangs, or who has information that could assist the investigation, is asked to contact Tower Hamlets CID via 101 quoting ref: 4215040/16. Alternatively, call Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555 111.
A London hospital is to open the UKs first maternity clinic specifically designed for rape survivors.

The specialist service has been developed in response to women saying they experienced flashbacks of being assaulted while undergoing routine maternity tests and giving birth.

The clinic at the Royal London Hospital will provide specialist gynaecological exams and mental health support after labour. Antenatal classes have also been tailored to those who have experienced sexual assault, while women who are not yet pregnant can access pre-conception care.

It is a joint initiative from Barts Health NHS Trust and the My Body Back project.

Pavan Amara, a 28-year-old student nurse, founded My Body Back in 2015 after being raped as a teenager herself. It runs support groups in the capital for women who have been raped.

In our sessions, a lot of women said they wanted a baby, but they couldnt face people touching them and they were worried theyd experience flashbacks and would feel totally out of control of their body, says Ms Amara. A woman who had a baby already - about 15 years after being gang-raped - felt when she gave birth that there were lots of parallels, with lots of people standing around her, and the doctor put his hand into her vagina - that was somebody taking away her right to consent again.

She adds that words and body positions can be triggering for victims of sexual assualt. A clinician told one woman to relax because it would be over sooner and it was hard for her because thats what her rapist had kept telling her. Certain body positions can also remind women of what happened. And a lot of women felt that after they were pregnant, all that mattered was the babys health, and no one was talking to the Mum about what made them feel comfortable. You become just a vagina to give birth but mentally they were dealing with all of this."

A 37-year-old rape survivor, who had a baby two years ago, said: I was given gas and air while in labour and I started hallucinating, seeing the man who had attacked me in the room. I managed to articulate what was happening to my husband, but he wasnt equipped to deal with it at all. I was terrified and screaming. I had to explain to every different staff member that I had been attacked. I was also not coping well with strangers touching me and I felt that the staff were blaming me for being oversensitive.

She adds that it made her slow to bond with her daughter: I still wonder how this affected her early emotional development. I feel angry that my rapist was allowed to do that to her and there was nothing to protect us from that. For the last year, I have been thinking that I would love another baby but I couldnt have one because I didnt want to risk this happening again. I am so over the moon that this clinic is happening. This allows me and my husband to have another child in safety.

Inderjeet Kaur, a consultant midwife at the Royal London, added: For women who have been sexually assaulted it is especially important that they feel in control and are offered seamless continuity of care. This will promote confidence and trust so they can be open with their midwife to ensure that their experience will not trigger painful memories, and help nurture a strong lasting bond between mother and baby.

Face-to-face appointments will be offered from July 29. Woman from outside the hospitals catchment area can ask to be referred. Ms Amara says that she hopes to set up more clinics all over the country.
A man was seriously injured after falling from scaffolding at a building site in south-west London.

Emergency services were called to reports of a man falling from a 10ft height at around 10am today.

Police and ambulance services, including the air ambulance which was pictured landing in nearby school fields, attended the incident in East Sheen.

An LAS spokesman said: We sent a number of resources including an ambulance crew, a single responder by car, an incident response officer and our hazardous area response team to the scene, alongside Londons Air Ambulance.

We treated the man at the scene for a serious head injury and took him by road ambulance as a priority to a major trauma centre in South London, accompanied by a doctor from Londons Air Ambulance.

Local musician and music blogger Hannah Clive, 40, rushed to Richmond Park Academy when she saw the air ambulance.

She said: Im a parent and was concerned it might involve my child or a fellow pupil.

The Air Ambulance landed on Richmond Park School fields / @hannahclive

According to other witnesses there had been some confusion on the part of the emergency services as to whether the injury was at the school.

Their arrival created quite a stir among pupils who do not ordinarily have a big red helicopter land in their grounds.

A Health and Safety Executive spokeswoman confirmed they were investigating the incident.
A woman who lost her leg in the Alton Towers rollercoaster crash claims she was refused disability help after getting off a Virgin Trains service at London Euston.

Vicky Balch hit out at staff over Twitter after they apparently kept her waiting for help  with one even allegedly telling her to start walking.

The 20-year-old student had to have her right leg amputated after the crash on the Smiler ride at the theme park last year.

In a series of posts on Twitter today she complained about having to wait 20 minutes for help despite having booked ahead.

Vicky Balch find walking difficult with her prosthetic limb and says even short distances can tire her out for the rest of the day / ITV

She said: another 20 min wait for help, 2 have refused, 1 told me to start walking no seats to sit and wait either!

[I] booked assistance yday was refused help after waiting 20 minutes, happens every time I go to Euston station.

She added in a further post: [Its] hard for me to stand for periods of time and walking.

Virgin Trains responded to her tweets and said it was investigating.

A spokeswoman later said mobility support at London Euston was the responsibility of Network Rail, which manages the station.

A spokesman for Network Rail said: "We are very sorry that this happened to Ms Balch today and we apologise for not providing the level of service that she and other disabled passengers rightly expect and deserve.

"We will be investigating what went wrong to ensure that unacceptable incidents like this don't happen again.

Ms Balch, who finds walking difficult, said the incident happened after she disembarked the 8.58 from Preston to Euston.

Speaking to Mirror Online, she added: "I can walk a certain distance but if I do that I can't do anything else for the rest of the day.

"If it happens to me, it's probably happening to lots of other disabled people as well."
Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, June 10

By Huseyn Hasanov - Trend:

Turkmenistan and the UK signed an intergovernmental convention in Ashgabat on avoidance of double taxation and prevention of fiscal evasion from taxes on income and capital gains, said the Turkmen foreign ministry in a message June 10.

According to the ministry, the signing ceremony took place as part of a meeting of the Turkmen-British Trade and Industry Council.

London was represented by Baroness Emma Nicholson, British prime minister's trade envoy for Turkmenistan, and Ronald Nash, ambassador, co-chairman of the Turkmen-British Trade and Industry Council.

The heads and representatives of the Turkmen ministries and agencies, representatives of the two countries' leading companies and financial circles specializing in the fuel and energy industry, transport and communication, and construction sectors attended the meeting.

According to the message, the representatives of the Turkmen-British Trade and Industry Council, who addressed the event, pointed to the common interests in such key areas of cooperation as investment, energy, and transport.

"As a major exporter of high technologies, goods and capital, the UK is interested in the import of chemical products and energy resources," the message said.

Such UK companies as British Expertise International, Aggreko, Arempa International Ltd (FZE), Buried Hill, De La Rue, Global ATS Ltd, Industrial Power Group, JTA, Rapiscan Systems Ltd, Tensar, The City UK, and others were represented in the forum.

The UK companies have recently participated in the implementation of a number of major investment projects in Turkmenistan, including exploration and development of oil and gas fields, and boosting the gas export potential of the country.
A van went up in flames today and its petrol tank "exploded" on a major road in central London.

The blaze erupted at the entrance to the underpass on Euston Road and sent thick black smoke billowing up into the sky.

Photos of the scene showed people leaning over railings to get a better view of the fire after it broke out at about 12.40pm.

One bystander wrote: Car on fire in the Euston under pass. Petrol tank just exploded.

Richard Morris tweeted that police were asking drivers to reverse away from the fire, as traffic built up in the area.

And Will Hoyle said the incident had sent clouds of white smoke out of the undperpass before being replaced by thick black plumes.

The London Fire Brigade confirmed they were called to the fire at 12.38pm and the blaze was out around half an hour later.

Police cordoned off the underpass, causing congestion towards King's Cross station and the Marylebone flyover.

The road has since reopened in both directions.
A woman has been arrested after she was pulled to safety from a burning flat above a popular north London cafe.

Plumes of smoke were seen rising from the building in Harringay Green Lanes after the fire broke out at about 3.30pm.

Crews wearing oxygen masks entered the smoke-filled building and rescued the woman from a second floor flat above the Snug cafe.

Police said she was taken to hospital suffering from smoke inhalation, before officers arrested her on suspicion of arson and endangering life.

London Fire Brigade sent six fire engines and 35 firefighters to the scene, who spent more than an hour bringing the fire under control.

A firefighters tackling the blaze in Green Lanes / Scott McCormick

On Twitter, bystanders posted pictures of a large emergency services presence in the area and fire crews dousing the flames from an aerial ladder platform.

Scott McCormick tweeted: Fire on Green Lanes. Multiple fire engines and street closed.

Wesley Rykalski wrote: "Something is badly wrong on Green Lanes. Lots of blue lights and stopped traffic. #Harringay."

Elizabeth Woodcraft said: "#GreenLanes #Fire in building. #Traffic hold up. Great response from our emergency services."

Fire crews from Hornsey, Walthamstow, Kentish Town, Stoke Newington and Tottenham fire stations attended the incident.

An LFB spokesman said the cause of the fire is under investigation.



A Met Police spokesman said: "Officers, the London Fire Brigade (LFB) and the London Ambulance Service (LAS) attended the scene.

"A woman was rescued from the building and was taken to a north London hospital suffering from the effects of smoke inhalation.

"She has since been arrested on suspicion of arson and endangering life. Enquires continue."
A man claiming to be a homeless former soldier says he has been inundated with offers of help after taking a whiteboard sign on the Tube in an innovative attempt to find work.

Bradley Henderson, 39, has been overwhelmed by the response from passengers after he began parading the whiteboard through the train carriages on Wednesday.

Originally from Leeds, Mr Henderson said he has been sleeping rough in the Hampstead area for about four months after leaving an abusive relationship.

His sign begins: Hi my name is Brad and I have been homeless for four months. I am looking for any work.

I have very good skills in bar, promotions, sales, marketing. Any donations of clothing, food, money or help towards work would be amazing. I will do any job.

Homeless ex-soldier Bradley Henderson carrying a sign advertising himself for work on the Tube / Sharron Edmonds

Several commuters tweeted pictures of Mr Henderson after meeting him during their journeys to and from work on the Tube.

He told the Standard he has been inundated with people wanting to help, including a Harrods recruiter who invited him for an interview, and a man who bought him a new suit.

Mr Henderson said: When I started walking up and down the Tube with the sign I had no idea that I would end up getting this kind of response. I just cant believe it.

I have been trying to find work for months but the minute people find out Im homeless they assume Im on drink or drugs and theyre not willing to give me a chance.

The amount of people I have met in the last two days is crazy.

Victoria line passenger, Sharron Edmonds, shared a picture of Mr Hendersons sign on Twitter and wrote: Met this enterprising guy on the Tube tonight homeless and just wants a job.

So, come on people, lets spread the word and see if we can find him some work. He has army references and is polite and well spoken.

Commuter Jonny Durgan, who met Mr Henderson at Archway station, said: When I got chatting, we realised that we had a lot in common, he's from Leeds and knew the places where I grew up.

Bar a few forks in the road, we could be living similar lives now. He's looking for work and to get himself back on his feet.

Mr Henderson said he has previously done bar promotion work and also gained experience in marketing and sales.

He added: I am in the situation I am in and I am now trying to get myself back on track. Its just amazing how far its reached. It now feels like things are on the up. 
A London chief inspector has won a tribunal against a senior female police officer after a row over colleagues walking around wearing just a towel.

Deputy Assistant Commissioner Maxine de Brunner, one of Commissioner Sir Bernard Hogan-Howes closest aides, placed Chief Inspector Adrian Denby under investigation because of alleged malpractice by officers in his unit, including cheating on overtime hours worked and operating an off-licence from the police station.

The employment tribunal in north London was told Miss de Brunner arrived at Mr Denbys unit on a mission to drive out the macho culture.

Shortly after arriving she encountered an unnamed male colleague in the corridor wearing only a towel around his waist on his way to the locker room.

Mission: Maxine de Brunner was investigating malpractice / Reuters

The hearing was told this made her angry and she admitted it was her pet hate.

Mr Denby, who has had nine commendations and previously had an unblemished police career, was placed on restricted duties and had promotion opportunities curtailed.

The hearing found that he was unfairly punished for failings while a female colleague in a similar position was not.

At the time of the incident, in September 2014, Mr Denby was in charge of the Territorial Support Group unit in Paddington.

A spokesman for the Metropolitan Police last night said: We have sought leave to appeal the findings.

A damages hearing will take place later this year.
A clerk in the House of Commons died after falling from the balcony of his south London home.

Neil Caulfield, 51, worked in the Commons Private Bill Office and had been overseeing the passage of the Bill for the contentious HS2 rail link through Parliament.

He struck railings after falling from his apartment in Brockley. His body was found at 3.45pm on Monday and he was pronounced dead at the scene. Police are not treating his death as suspicious.

Former Wandsworth council leader Christopher Chope  now MP for Christchurch  who worked closely with Mr Caulfield on a number of Bills, said: It is awful news, a bolt from the blue.

He was just a lovely chap. A really nice person. He was held in high regard by everyone who worked with him.

John Benger, Clerk Assistant at the Commons, said: Neil was a valued member of House of Commons staff and will be remembered as a kind and dedicated friend and colleague. He will be greatly missed."

He added: "On behalf of his friends, colleagues and family we respectfully ask for privacy during this difficult time.

Liverpool-born Mr Caulfield, who lived with his partner, studied chemistry at Merton College, Oxford. He had worked as a senior clerk at the Commons since October 2011.

As well as overseeing committee hearings on HS2, Mr Caulfield was the first point of contact for MPs and members of the public who have complaints, objections and comments about the scheme. The Bill has passed through three Commons readings and is now before the Lords.

A spokesman for campaign group Stop HS2 said: While retaining his impartiality, Mr Caulfield was exceptionally helpful to both Stop HS2 and individual petitioners to the House of Commons in making what was a complex and bewildering process more accessible and understandable."

Chesham and Amersham MP Cheryl Gillan, one of the MPs opposed to HS2, paid tribute to civil servants working on the project last year, saying: Neil Caulfield, and all the officials of the House who work with him, have given sterling service to us all.

His father Anthony, 80, said: I cannot shed any light on this at all until we have the result of the inquest.

A Metropolitan police spokeswoman said: We were called at 3.45pm on Monday to reports of a man who had fallen from a balcony at flats at Deals Gateway in Brockley.

Officers from Lewisham attended and the death is not believed to be suspicious.

A file on the death has been sent by police to the coroner at Southwark.

For confidential support on mental health call the Samaritans on 116 123, email jo@samaritans.org or attend a local Samaritans branch.
A n online government forum sparked by a sexism row over women being forced to wear high heels at work has been flooded with hundreds of responses in just a day.

Actress Nicola Thorp, who was employed as a temporary worker by PwCs outsourced reception firm Portico, launched a campaign after being told to leave on her first day when she refused to wear high heels.

The 27-year-olds government petition calling for a ban on employers forcing women to wear heels received more than 140,000 signatures, meaning it is being considered for debate in parliament.

The House of Commons petitions committee has launched an inquiry into the issue to gather evidence ahead of the potential debate.

Women who have been forced to wear high heels at work have been invited to share their experiences with MPs via the online forum before the deadline on Thursday, June 16.

Popular cause: Nicola Thorp / Facebook

Since its launch on Thursday, it has been flooded with more than 600 comments from women, many of whom claim to have been forced to wear high heels at work.

On the web forum, Puvan Briah wrote: I was made to wear heels for my job in retail for nine hours a day standing on my feet. We were made to climb ladders in our heels and run around when it was busy and we were not allowed to sit down.

It felt like being tortured every day and every evening, when I came home I was in tears and unable to move because of the throbbing of my feet for hours.

Jennifer Moore wrote: I work in events within the legal sector and it is a requirement to not only wear high heels during an event, but also to wear visible make up, something which I strongly feel is a personal decision and not something that should be forced upon an individual.

Having to spend a number of hours on our feet at a time, sometimes a whole day, this can be extremely uncomfortable and painful. As someone who struggles to walk naturally in heels anyway, I feel that it actually distracts from my ability to perform my job to a high standard as I am teetering around and concentrating more on the pain than my actual job.

Last year: Nicola Thorp on the 'incredible' reaction to her petition - London Live

Hope Miller added: I was made to wear high heels at a major fashion brand. My feet would hurt everyday whilst wearing them, during my lunch break and when going home I would have to immediately change to trainers because of the pain and the blood.

A House of Commons spokeswoman said: "No employer should discriminate against their workers on grounds of gender.

"We expect employers to act in accordance with the law, which is clear that dress codes enforced by employers must be reasonable and include equivalent requirements for both men and women.

"We welcome the opportunity to debate this issue, which is clearly of importance to a large number of people."
A planned street party to celebrate the Queen's 90th birthday was banned by council bosses who feared it could turn into a rave.

Organisers had spent 3,000 on the planned celebration in Brixton this weekend - but were denied a licence by Lambeth council on Thursday.

A host of house music acts were booked to perform at the party in Brixton Station Road. The event's organisers have previously held events as part of the Brixton Splash festival.

Posters advertising the event said it would go on from "1pm till late" outside the Rebel Soul shop - sparking fears among council chiefs that the event would be blighted by anti-social behaviour.

Elliot White, 32, who is one of the organisers, told the Standard thousands of pounds had been spent on food, decorations and a sound system after an application to hold the party was lodged last month.

Axed: Lambeth Council has said the event cannot go ahead because a licence has not been awarded / Rebel Soul/Facebook

But after the council blocked the party, he said: I think its ludicrous to be honest with you. We are a mile away from Buckingham Palace and we cant celebrate the Queens birthday.

The council should have told me this a week ago it just isnt professional. They have had all this time but they are quick enough to come and tell you when they dont want something.

Lambeth council said any attempts to host the party would be illegal and that police are monitoring the situation.

A spokesman said: We have 24 planned street parties for the Queens 90th Birthday in Lambeth, and we have waived the normal fee for the road closures.

The event in question however is not being organised by the people living in a residential street for their neighbours.

The proposal is being advertised on Facebook as running for two days from '1pm to late' on both Saturday and Sunday with a number of DJs and a sound system.

The Queen's 90th birthday: Where to celebrate Her Majesty's big day 1 /22 The Queen's 90th birthday: Where to celebrate Her Majesty's big day Pret-a-Portea at The Berkeley Wilton Pl, SW1X 7RL the-berkeley.co.uk

To mark Her Majestys milestone, The Berkeley in Knightsbridge are joining Pret-a-Portea with a masterclass to teach loyal afternoon tea-goers about the secrets from the kitchen. Head pastry chef Mourad Khiat will be teaching the tricks behind making the perfect biscuit, including the Coronation Crown biscuit, complete with edible diamonds. The masterclass is 150 per person. Fashion Rules: Restyled Kensington Palace, Kensington Gardens, W8 4PX hrp.org.uk

Royal gowns are quite the eye-catching garment. With the public eye always being on the royals, Fashion Rules: Restyled brings you the best gowns from Queen Elizabeth II, Princess Margaret and Diana. To celebrate Her Majestys 90th birthday, Fashion Rules: Restyled, is the opportune event to appreciate the royal influence on fashion trends. Lanes of London Afternoon Tea 140 Park Ln, W1K 7AA lanesoflondon. co.uk

The prestigious Park Lane eatery is offering a series of culinary dishes that commemorate the Queen and her favourite flavours. Trying to recreate Her Majestys favourite foods, Lanes of London will be serving up peach macaroons inspired by the greenhouse peaches at Windsor Castle, as well as having an Earl Grey tea infused dessert. Afternoon tea is 39 per person. Elizabeth Street Summer Party Elizabeth St, Belgravia, SW1W elizabethstreetlondon.com

Belgravia Traders Association are returning to Elizabeth Street for the annual celebration of Her majestys birthday. With turning 90 being extra special, the Elizabeth Street Party is said to be decked in bunting with the British flag flying high. There will be a village fete from 3-6pm, leading onto the evening celebrations which run until 11pm. Holland Park Opera will be keeping your ears happy as they accompany the joyous evening. Royal Afternoon Tea at The Connaught Carlos Pl, London W1K 2AL the-connaught.co.uk

The Connaught is marking the Queens 90th birthday in a very light-hearted and fun way this year. To mark the Queens love for dogs, corgi-shaped biscuits will be added to the Royal Afternoon Tea selection from Thursday to Sunday in commemoration of Her Majestys 90th. The seasonal afternoon tea is 65 per person. Commonwealth Fine Food and Drink Market Duke of York Square, SW3 4LY (Sunday June 12) thercs.org.uk

The Royal Commonwealth Society is bringing together this food and drink market fit for a Queen, to be held on Duke of York Square a stone's throw from Sloane Square. The Sunday market will highlight the diversity of the Commonwealth through a variety of British business, including more than 25 internationally-focused food stalls.These will include the Jamaica Patty Co. and Zoes Ghana Kitchen (pictured). This event is free. All Ale the Queen Various locations youngs.co.uk

All Youngs and Geronimo pubs will be serving up0- a taste of royalty with their limited edition beer, All Ale the Queen. As well as this, the pubs will be offering free G+Ts across all venues. A variety of fun family events will be held across the different pubs, such as A Right Roaring Royal Knees Up. A village style fete will also be held on Wimbledon Common to celebrate Her Majestys birthday. Make sure not to miss out on the free G+Ts at every Youngs and Geronimo pubs across London. Afternoon Tea at The Goring Hotel Beeston Pl, SW1W 0JW thegoring.com

The renowned 5-star hotel will be serving up their utterly British afternoon tea as always. The Goring Hotel still holds plenty of royal history, and is only a 9-minute walk from Buckinham Palace. To celebrate Her Majestys 90th birthday, The Goring Hotel will be decorating their cakes in the shape of the crown jewels. With all the selections being the Queens favourites, youll certainly feel royal after eating it. The Windsor in Purple at The Savoy Strand, London WC2R 0EU fairmont.com

Head bartender of The Savoy's American Bar has fused together Her Majesty's favourite tipples into one drink, creating a concoction of gin, Earl Grey and Dubonnet, all topped with an intriguing purple crown. 18 The Stafford Street Party 16-18 St James's Pl, SW1A 1NJ thestaffordlondon.com

To celebrate Queen Elizabeth IIs 90th birthday, 5-star London hotel The Stafford will be organising a street party in the hotels courtyard. Situated in Blue Ball Yard, Her Majestys birthday will be celebrated from 12-3pm, complete with champagne cocktails and British cuisine. At 1pm, guests can even see the traditional flypast as the planes head to Buckingham Palace. Tickets are 84.99. One-O-One Sheraton Park Tower, 101 Knightsbridge, SW1X 7RN oneoonerestaurant.com

If youd prefer to miss the crowds but still want to celebrate Her Majestys birthday, head on over to Knightsbridges seafood restaurant One-O-One. The special occasion sees the restaurant bring King Crab Royale to their menu. Topped with gold leaf and wild garlic, the caviar and quails eggs dish is neatly presented in a crown shape. How royal. 21 Mural of the Queen at St. Christophers Place Barrett St, W1 (Until October 23) stchristophersplace.com

If youre not one for crowding on The Mall then head to Frederick Wimsetts impressive mural of Queen Elizabeth II. Looking picturesque, pristine and surrounded by the best of British wildlife, the elegant Queen isnt ready to give up her throne just yet. The 3x3 metre portrait can be found on the corner of Barrett St and James St. The mural will be up until October, which will see the mural be auctioned off at the St Christophers Place fundraiser. Bids will be accepted until June 30. Chinatown Street Party Gerrard Street, Chinatown, WC2H (Sunday June 12) ccc.org.uk

The curators of the Great British breakfast tea are toasting to Her Majesty this weekend as Chinatown turns its streets into a 90th birthday celebration. Complete with British delicacies and lot of tea to go around, the festivities in Chinatown will be merging Chinese and British traditions. Whilst getting involved with the street party, there will be Tai Chi lessons and live Chinese music. The event is free. Cahoots 13 Kingly Court, W1B 5PW (All weekend) cahoots-london.com

The retro underground bar Cahoots will be turning back time this weekend in honour of the Queens 90th birthday. Whilst serving a variety of British teacakes, cupcakes and teas, there will be a variety of live entertainment, and a Royal inspired cocktail called Windsor Is Coming. From 46 per person Smythson 40 New Bond Street, Mayfair, W1S 2DE (Saturday June 11) smythson.com

As one of Londons renowned leather specialists, Smythson proudly holds three Royal Warrants. Having established in 1887, Smythson will be celebrating traditionally with drinks and biscuits at hand. If you decide to buy a little something, you can even get the professional calligrapher to write a celebratory message. Whyte & Brown Kingly Court, Carnaby, W1B 5PW (Saturday June 11) whyteandbrown.com

Patriots, get your Union Jack flags at the ready! Whyte & brown are offering a free glass of Pimms to the first 90 customers on June 11. Dine like a royal after a busy day celebrating Her Majestys birthday at Whyte & Brown. Prices vary. Official birthday celebrations Various locations Read our guide

A traditional church service, the annual birthday parade and a mass street party for 10,000 people will all celebrate the milestone birthday of Britain's longest reigning sovereign. Youll also be able to raise a late-toast to Her Majesty too, as an extension of pub opening hours on Friday and Saturday evening has been arranged to help us all get into the party spirit. Getty

An event of this nature needs to be licensed to make sure it is properly run, so that it is safe and so it doesnt create anti-social behaviour in the area.

Unfortunately no event licence has been applied for in this case and as such it cannot go ahead. We are liaising with the police to ensure public safety.

A host of celebrations are being held across the capital to celebrate Her Majesty's birthday.
J udges have dismissed a High Court challenge calling for a popular urban music festival to be banned from Finsbury Park.

Legal action was brought by campaigners after last years event was blighted by hordes of gatecrashers, violence and serious offences including knife crime.

Activists also said the festival left the green space looking like a dust bowl with grass taking months to grow back.

But today during a hearing at the High Court in London, judges threw out the case brought against Haringey Council by campaign group Friends of Finsbury Park after it crowd-funded more than 11,000 to cover legal costs.

Wireless festival mob

Haringey Council, which claims events like Wireless raised 400,000 for improvements to Finsbury Park just last year, welcomed the outcome.

Cabinet Member for Environment Cllr Peray Ahmet said: We are pleased with todays ruling, which means that large scale live music events in Finsbury Park and open spaces across London are no longer under threat.

Events like Wireless make a huge contribution to Londons cultural scene and in Haringey bring in hundreds of thousands of pounds which is spent improving our parks and attracting more visitors.

We will continue to work with residents and event organisers to ensure the Wireless festival is safe and enjoyable for all."

Friends of Finsbury Park campaign chair Tom Palin said: We are considering todays judgment and will be issuing a statement tomorrow which will outline our plans to appeal this decision.

The group had contended the council had no right to grant the festival permission under the Greater London Parks and Open Spaces Act 1967, claiming Haringeys actions were unlawful because the event shuts off 27 per cent of the park when the maximum permitted by legislation is 10 per cent.

Some 50,000 people a day attended last years three-day festival. This year acts include Calvin Harris, Kygo, Chase and Status, Jess Glynne, and Lady Leshurr.
T he power of fashion is rising. First Vogue editor Alexandra Shulman came out for Remain, then The Business of Fashion announced that Brexit would cause a weaker pound. Now, The Londoner hears, plans are afoot by Londons most stylish men to ensure that the biggest trend at this weekends London Collections: Men will be an In vote.

Last night saw the launch of this seasons mens fashion week, the chance for designers to send their favourite clothes horses down the catwalk. But those showing their autumn/winter threads are refusing to sit dumb and pretty. Well, not dumb, anyway. The Londoner understands that Savile Rows Patrick Grant, Jonathan Anderson, colourful duo Agi & Sam, female menswear designer Lou Dalton and Kit Neale, among others, will be taking their post-catwalk bows in Vote In T-shirts.

TV Sewing Bee host Grants stance was confirmed earlier this week in a piece for GQs website which insisted that leaving Europe was a terrible idea. The trend continues from last weeks womenswear showcase at the Central Saint Martins graduate fashion show, which saw young designer Philip Ellis send an anti-Brexit collection down the catwalk. The referendum-themed imagery is crucial to the collection, he told us this week. I based the design of the collection on a narrative set in a contemporary dystopian Britain. It exists as a reaction to the results of last years general election and my stance building up to the EU referendum.

A representative of the British Fashion Council confirmed this morning that a mass political voice coming from the London Collections is unprecedented. But evidently fashion really is about being with the In crowd.

-----

Speaking of the referendum, a Remain vote came from Count Dracula yesterday. But what news from Finland? Lapland, official home of Santa, has received support from the EUs Structural Investment Fund, which helped create 14,500 new jobs. But a message from his rep in Rovaniemi plants him firmly on the fence. These decisions are not mine to make, the note reads. I deal with love and good will in all corners of the world. Surely thats an In from the man in red?

The Londoner frightened the horses

Leafing through new book Order, Order! by Ben Wright, The Londoner finds that we have long been feared in Westminster. Wright explains that Spencer Le Marchant, Tory MP from 1970-83, hoped to organise an MPs horse race, in which Members of Parliament would play the part of the horses... The racecourse was to be the perimeter of the Smoking Room, around which coffee tables, chairs and sofas were to be lined up. The MPs would then leap from one piece of furniture to the next...

Sadly, the London Evening Standard diary got wind of the plan and the government whips thought it wise to cancel the race. Truth will always out.

Duke of Edinburgh awards get the Bond touch

Did James Bond do the Duke of Edinburgh Award at school? The spy has, after all, shown an uncanny ability to survive countless scrapes over the years, suggesting that he may have picked up his skills young.

Appropriate, then, that last nights 60th anniversary celebrations of the scheme took the form of a gala with a Diamonds Are Forever theme, with Bond girl Naomie Harris and human rights worker Afua Hirsch among the guests at Stoke Park in Stoke Poges.

But could Daniel Craig be replaced by David Walliams? Bond producer Barbara Broccoli was snapped fixing his bow-tie.

A slice of Bacon and Bridget Jones

A joyous time at Circus on Marylebone Road last night, for the launch of The Visitors Book by Jon Lys Turner. The tome explores the lives of hedonistic artists Richard Chopping and Denis Wirth-Miller, pals of Francis Bacon and the author himself. But Lys Turners connections also extend to romantic comedy: he has been immortalised in Bridget Joness Diary.

Lys Turner revealed to The Londoner that some of his own antics had helped close friend Helen Fielding, writer of the much-loved novels and films (starring Renee Zellweger). Do I say this? he wondered before deciding to share: his one-time nose job and a performance as Miss Global Warming at the Alternative Miss World competition were both used as plot points for the character of Tom, Bridgets flamboyant pal.

Lys Turner and Fielding are still friends but it took him longer to forge a relationship with Bacon. I met him in 1981 and he hated me, he said. Then I won him round and all of us would go on tours around Soho throwing bottles of champagne at waiters and things like that. Their art was great but their hell-raising made us look like amateurs. Writing the book, I thought I was unshockable but would come down from writing with my mouth agape.

-----

Professor Julian Lloyd Webber, younger brother of Andrew, threw a party in the House of Lords this week to toast plans for a new music college. But security refused him entry. Somehow one forgets to send oneself an invitation, he explained, before big bruv vouched for him. Andrew then told guests that Julian should really be in the House of Lords instead of me. Musical chairs?

If you were wandering through Soho last night you may have raised an eyebrow at stickers adorning many a passer-by, the blunt slogan reading C*ck, please.

Cake and c*ck in Soho

The request, however, was all in the name of art: last night Soho Theatre hosted the London opening of This Much, a comedy by John Fitzpatrick. Guests including actors Ed Stoppard and Olivia Hallinan were in the audience and afterwards at the bar, where wedding cake was served.

The lead characters of Anthony and Gar had, after all, contemplated their future together. I want a big family, Anthony exclaimed. Lets just adopt a rake of kids like Mia Farrow. You know how that ends, Gar pointed out.

Surely Brad and Angelina are the new role models of unconventional families?

----

Take-down of the day: Amber Rudd on Boris: Hes the life and soul of the party but hes not the man you want to drive you home at the end of the evening. Ouch.
J eremy Corbyn was today told by a senior Labour MP to start scoring more goals in the EU referendum showdown amid growing jitters in the Remain campaign.

Former shadow business secretary Chuka Umunna said: The Labour Party is campaigning hard. I think it is fair to say we would like our star striker to be scoring more goals.

Amid nerves that a low Labour turnout could cost Remain the referendum, former leader Ed Miliband warned that the result was still in question and the party needed to do more to rally its supporters.

Yesterday shadow home secretary Andy Burnham became Labours most senior figure to concede the possibility of defeat, warning of a very real prospect Britain could vote to exit the EU on June 23. He told BBC Newsnight Labour had been far too much Hampstead and not enough Hull in recent times, echoing claims that traditional supporters felt their worries about im-migration were not being listened to.

Mr Umunna said it was vital to show people that claims by Boris Johnson and Vote Leave that high immigration was the fault of the EU were false. The idea that immigration would stop being an issue if we left the EU is nonsense, not least because more migrants come here from outside Europe, he said.

Mr Miliband urged: This referendum is in question and thats why the Labour message has got to be heard. I think so far not enough of our voters have heard were for In and for Remain. He said the media saw the blue-on-blue battle between Tories as more sexy than vital issues like employment rights.

Former shadow minister Kevan Jones urged Mr Corbyn to demonstrate leadership by taking a bigger role in the campaign. He said a Brexit would have devastating effects on working people and added: It does not appear that Jeremy sees that as a priority in terms of campaigning. He needs now to demonstrate leadership and remember he is leader of the Labour Party.

TODO: define component type apester

A spokesman for Mr Corbyn said: Jer-emy has completed many Labour In public events, made several speeches and issued numerous statements. He continues to campaign daily.

Prominent Labour backbenchers Dennis Skinner and John Mann an-nounced they were joining Leave. Mr Skinner said fighting capitalism would be easier outside.
Tehran, Iran, June 10

By Mehdi Sepahvand - Trend:

Iran's export to Russia will see a huge rise in 10 days as a result of new decisions made by the Iranian government, said Assadollah Asgaroladi, chairman of the Iran-Russia Joint Chamber of Commerce.

First Vice President of Iran Eshaq Jahangiri has been commissioned to improve Iran-Russia exports, following which important decisions have just been made to meet the desired outcome, Asgaroladi told Mehr news agency June 10.

Asgaroladi however didn't elaborate on what decisions were made or how Iran is going to make the increase in exports come true.

He noted that despite a political will in both countries to improve bilateral trade, only $50 million worth goods and services were exported to Russia in the past two months.

He also said that Russian President Vladimir Putin's latest visit to Iran had a good impact on trade, including the zeroing out of Russian tariffs on 10 Iranian goods.

However, Asgaroladi said the Iranian tradesmen have so far been unable to use this opportunity.

Iran exports $500 million worth of goods to Russia each year and Tehran is making efforts to increase the figure to $2 billion.

Russia used to import agricultural products worth $4 billion from Turkey before tensions arouse between the two countries. Agricultural products are what Iran hopes most to export to Russia in the wake of the developments.

Relations between Russia and Turkey deteriorated after the Su-24 bomber incident. After the incident Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree on measures to ensure national security and on special economic measures with regard to Turkey.
B oris Johnson has come under fierce attack from a Conservative colleague for putting himself at the head of the Leave campaign in order to further his ambition to be the next prime minister.

In the latest setpiece television debate on ITV1, Energy Secretary Amber Rudd launched a series of attacks on the former London mayor of accusing him of peddling "misinformation".

In heated exchanges, Mr Johnson argued that a vote to leave the EU would enable Britain to take back 10 billion a year which could help ease the pressures on the NHS caused by "uncontrolled immigration".

Right from the outset, Ms Amber - who was arguing for Remain alongside Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon and Labour's Angela Eagle - was determined to take the offensive accusing the Leave campaign of talking "nonsense".

In the opening clash on immigration numbers, she turned on Mr Johnson, saying: "I fear that the only number that Boris is interested in is the one that says No 10."

Left to right: Leader of the SNP Nicola Sturgeon, Shadow business secretary Angela Eagle and Energy Secretary Amber Rudd / ITV/PA Wire

Mr Johnson argued that he was backing Leave because David Cameron had failed to secure the changes which would have enabled him to meet his commitment to cut net migration to below 100,000 in his EU re-negotiation.

"That did not happen in the re-negotiation. We didn't get anything of the kind," he said.

"There has got to be democratic consent for the scale of the flows that we are seeing." he said.

Left to right: Energy Minister and Vote Leave Supporter Andrea Leadsom, Labour Vote Leave campaigner Gisela Stuart and Boris Johnson / ITV/PA Wire

During the debate, Mr Johnson said Britain would "prosper as never before" if it voted to leave the European Union on June 23.

In his opening statement, Mr Johnson said a Leave vote would allow the UK to "take back control" of its money, immigration, trade and democracy.

And he rejected the warnings of the Remain camp - including former prime ministers Sir John Major and Tony Blair who combined earlier in the day to say Brexit would risk the Northern Ireland peace process and the unity of the UK.

"To the prophets of doom, I say they were wrong in the past and they are wrong today," said the Uxbridge and South Ruislip MP.

"Let us believe in ourselves, let's take back control, let's speak up for all the people around the EU who are looking to us to speak for democracy. Take back control on June 23 and we will prosper as never before."

Mr Johnson came under further attack over Vote Leave's controversial campaign claim - emblazoned across his battle bus - that withdrawal from the EU would release 350 million-a-week which the UK sends to Brussels.

Ms Sturgeon said: "It is a scandal that is still emblazoned across the campaign bus because it's an absolute whopper."

In another attack on her Conservative colleague, Ms Rudd described the campaign claim as pure fantasy.

Additional reporting by Press Association.
M argaret Thatcher would have regarded David Camerons EU referendum as anti-democratic, according to her closest adviser on foreign affairs. In an interview with the Evening Standard, former diplomat Lord [Charles] Powell said she thought national votes were only wheeled out to suit those in power.

My point, and much more decisively Margaret Thatchers point, always was that referendums are a tool of dictatorship because they are usually arranged in a way to suit whatever the wishes of those who arrange them are, he said.

So she would have been utterly un-enthusiastic about a referendum at all. However, Lord Powell said Mr Cameron had played his cards well and predicted that the In-Out vote would enhance Britains influence in Europe. A win for Remain would stop Britains rivals from saying you are not a committed EU member, he argued. I honestly think that once we get the bugbear of the referendum behind us, and assuming the Remain campaign wins, we will actually be in a very much better position to lead change in Europe, said Lord Powell.

Ive always believed in the concept that we should change Europe, which one can only do from the inside, rather than leave it.

Choice: Lord Powell predicts the public will not want to take a step into the unknown / Ben Cawthra/REX

Controversially, he insisted that Lady Thatcher would have been standing alongside Mr Cameron in the Remain campaign if she were alive today  a claim that will infuriate Tory Eurosceptics, some of whom insist the Iron Lady would have been in the vanguard of Leave. Her agenda never, ever included leaving Europe, declared the man who drafted her famous Bruges speech of 1988, in which she savaged the concept of a European superstate.

She devoted huge efforts in 12 years as Prime Minister to getting Europe changed, not to backing out of it. She never mentioned leaving nor proposed it. Its not surprising that she didnt: after all, she had been part of the Cabinet that took us into the European Community  as she insisted on calling it until the very end  and she led the Conservative side in the 1975 referendum.

A crossbench life peer, Lord Powell, now 76, served in Washington, Bonn and Brussels before being recruited to service at 10 Downing Street from 1983 to 1991. At Brussels he recalls being irritated ... by an elite that thought they knew best, and preferred to get things done by making deals direct with other countries.

Later, from the elevated perspective of No 10, he came to share Mrs Thatchers view that Europe needed to become more market oriented, advance the single market and expand its membership to eastern Europe.

Lady Thatcher, he argues, would not have been horrified by migrant workers flocking from eastern Europe, but would have taken delight in their freedom. She thought it was a moral obligation on Europe that one could not possibly shirk to help the countries that had for so long been under the yoke of Communism, he said.

She would have been pretty forceful in standing firm against Russian leader Vladimir Putin, he said, and greatly disappointed to see the reforms she supported through former Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev thrown into reverse. Although she would have approved of Angela Merkel, he added: She would not like the idea that Germany was leading the EU. Intellectually she understood that Germany in the Eighties was a very different country from Germany in the Twenties and Thirties. But she could never shake off that feeling of menace, a feeling that Germany might one day slip back into previous habits. I dont think that view would be essentially different now.

LORD Powell, who will speak at next weeks International Festival for Business, is fully convinced of the case for Remain. He described the choice on June 23 as between common sense and fairy tales and though he acknowledges there is no great enthusiasm for the EU, predicts that the British people will think it unwise to take a step into the unknown.

The former Cold Warrior warns that Mr Putin would see a Brexit as one up for him, and believes that Anglo-American relations would probably deteriorate, even under Hillary Clinton.

One question stumps him, however, which is whether Lady Thatcher would have given Boris Johnson a senior post in her Cabinet. It is so far from reality I find it hard to judge, he struggled.

I dont think she was much into being entertained by her Cabinet colleagues. It was hard enough to convince her of their competence. He is 100 per cent certain she would have thrown herself into the referendum battle. I never knew Margaret Thatcher duck a political debate, he said. I think she would support exactly what the Prime Minister has done, which is to work to keep Britain in Europe by negotiating the best deal he could.
T he Queen was today praised by the Archbishop of Canterbury for her wonderful service to the nation at a national service of thanksgiving to mark her 90th birthday.

The Archbishop, who led the service at St Pauls, said in his sermon: We are here today to worship the God who made our Queen, and to celebrate the way in which Gods hand has been so uniquely evident upon her life. Over the 63 years (length of reign) and the 90 years there has been much to fear: at times of personal challenge or national crisis.

We look back on Your Majestys 90 years in the life of our nation with deep wonder and profound gratitude.

Through war and hardship, through turmoil and change, we have been fearfully and wonderfully sustained. Your Majesty, today we rejoice for the way in which Gods loving care has fearfully and wonderfully sustained you  as well as Prince Philip marking his 95th birthday today.

And we rejoice, Your Majesty, for the way in which the life God has given you in turn you have given wonderfully in service to this nation. You have been an instrument of Gods peace, and through you God has so often turned fear into wonder  and joy.

Her Majesty the Queen arrives at St Paul's / Peter Nicholls/Reuters

In a poignant moment of calm reflection, the Queen listened to prayers read in her honour. The Rt Rev Justin Welby led the service attended by the Duke of Edinburgh and other members of the royal family including the Prince of Wales, Duchess of Cornwall, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and Prince Harry.

Queen Elizabeth II's big life moments

David Cameron gave a reading and London Mayor Sadiq Khan, diplomats and governors-general from the Commonwealth were in the congregation.

Natural history broadcaster Sir David Attenborough, who also turned 90 this year, read a passage written by Michael Bond, author of the Paddington Bear series, reflecting on the passing of the years.

The Queen and Prince Philip at St Paul's / Alex Lentati

The service was the beginning of three days of events marking the Queens official birthday. She turned 90 on April 21.

Tomorrow, which is the official birthday, the annual Trooping the Colour will be held at Horse Guards. Members of the royal family will make their annual appearance on the balcony of Buckingham Palace, where they will watch a fly past featuring 30 planes, from Spitfires and Hurricanes to modern-day fighters such as the Typhoon. Princess Charlotte, the Queens great granddaughter, is expected to make her first appearance on the balcony.

There will also be a Thames pageant. Gloriana, the royal barge restored for the diamond jubilee in 2012, will lead a flotilla of about 40 boats to Tower Bridge. Olympic champion Sir Steve Redgrave will be among the non-rowing VIP guests on board.

The procession will also include 12 Dunkirk Little Ships, MV Havengore, which carried Churchills coffin, and boats from the Royal Navy, RNLI and Marine Volunteer Service. A London Fire Brigade vessel, a vintage fire boat and passenger cruisers will also take part. It will pass Parliament at 12.10pm, arriving at the Tower at 12.50. Tower Bridge will open in salute.

TODO: define component type apester

A 62-gun salute will also be fired from the Tower at 1pm.

On Sunday, the Queen will host a street party for some 10,000 people at the Patrons Lunch a celebration of her patronage of more than 600 organisations in the UK and around the Commonwealth. The Mall will be lined with picnic tables and guests will enjoy a hamper-style lunch. The Duke of Edinburgh, Prince William and Prince Harry are expected to attend.
A s the nation prepares to celebrate the Queens 90th birthday this weekend, it is the ideal time to reflect on her reign  and examine how she has changed the future of the royal family.

Her position has given her a unique inside track on many of the key characters and defining moments of modern times. Through private meetings with figures including Winston Churchill, John F Kennedy, Nelson Mandela and Barack Obama, in her own unassuming way she has helped to shape history.

It is not in her job description to challenge any of these leaders politics, but she has passed on her wisdom where she thought it might help.

In time, historians will try to pinpoint the Queens legacy. After 25 years of chronicling the royal family as a writer and broadcaster, for me it is her ability to be a unifying force for good  without overstepping her constitutional boundaries.

The Queen tours Aden with Prince Philip in 1954

This is best shown in her role as head of the Commonwealth. Under her stewardship the organisation, which was 60 years old in 2009, has grown from a handful of founding nations into a voluntary association of 53 independent countries.

The Queen is passionate about the Commonwealth and she regards it as one of the great successes of her reign. As she has said, it is not an organisation on a mission. Instead, it offers its 2.2 billion people the unique opportunity to work together to achieve solutions to a wide range of problems.

It is, she is proud to say, a major force for change. With a combination of quiet modesty, wisdom and experience, she has been central to holding the association together and taking it forward in her long life and reign.

Contrary to popular belief, her position as head does not extend to her successors. Technically, it is up to the leaders of all Commonwealth countries to decide who will replace her.

With Nelson Mandela outside Buckingham Palace in 1996 / Reuters

In a strong speech at the Commonwealth heads of government meeting in Malta last year the Queen thanked her son, Prince Charles, saying she could not have been better supported and represented in the Commonwealth than by the Prince of Wales, who continues to give so much to it with great distinction.

Her carefully chosen words were the clearest hint that Charles could take over the role that she has held for more than 60 years, and were part of a discreet campaign to ensure that he, Prince William  and eventually Prince George  will inherit the position.

Queen Elizabeth's belief that her role is to serve, and always to put duty first, is a crucial lesson for the next generation of royals to grasp. So far the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and Prince Harry have acquitted themselves well. William and Kate have proved worthy ambassadors on the world stage, while Harrys work with injured servicemen has been excellent.

The trio provided strong support during the London 2012 Olympics, wearing Team GB T-shirts to cheer on our athletes. They are now working on their Heads Together campaign, which aims to tackle mental illness. They remain a focus of worldwide media attention and are certainly assets in promoting Great Britain PLC.

But while the new generation must learn from the Queen, they should also embrace the best of Prince Charles and not forget the legacy of Princess Diana, who captured the imagination of a global audience.

Almost 20 years after her death, the young royals are living in a profoundly different media landscape. The reporting of the royals has become less intrustive. The online revolution means that Palace spin-doctors inevitably try to cut out the  sometimes critical  media middle-man, instead sending their own message through Twitter or YouTube.

While some say this approach is for the better, others believe that it makes reporting on the royals more difficult. It also means that the general public know very little about the real lives of this unelected institution.

Spin-doctors must be careful not to believe the hype surrounding big royal milestones  after all, it may be curiosity rather than blind devotion to the Crown that draws people out onto the streets on occasions such as this weekend. Apathy will be one of the monarchys biggest enemies in the future.

But the fact is all those who come into contact with the pomp and pageantry of the royal family feel that they have experienced something special. It is crucial that, like the Queen, the young royals realise that when the crowds gather they are not solely supporting the monarchy.

They are also celebrating their sense of who they are, their Britishness, in an age when such patriotism is sometimes frowned upon.

This feel-good factor is vital to a nations sense of well-being.

For 64 years, the Queen has fulfilled her role as a unifying matriarch, an undoubted force for good. She has given those she serves a sense of continuity and stability.

Throughout her long life she has tried to be worthy of the trust of those she serves. Without doubt as we raise a glass  or several  to her this weekend, she should be safe in the knowledge that she has our total trust as our matriarch and our Queen.
A sylum seekers arguing over when meals should be served during Ramadan sparked a huge fire at a refuge centre, authorities said.

Eight people were arrested after a blaze gutted a hall housing 282 asylum seekers from Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and north Africa in Dusseldorf, Germany.

The fire on Tuesday is understood to have started over a row about when to serve meals.

Some of those being housed at the facility said Ramadan should be observed, while others complained about the timings and said the regular schedule should be adhered to.

Dusseldorf state prosecutor Ralf Herrenbruck said: During this time of Ramadan there was one group that wanted strictly to observe the fast and another that insisted on the usual timetables and usual servings of meals.

This had led on several occasions to disputes and altercations with officials of the German Red Cross. It got to the point where threats were made over what would happen if things didn't change, and that one threat was obviously implemented."

Many of the residents had to be roused from their sleep as 28 people suffered smoke inhalation.

Police said two Moroccan men, aged 26, have been charged with arson after one allegedly poured petrol on a mattress and set it alight.

Officials said that police had been called to the complex on 89 occasions this year to calm disputes between residents.

Amnesty International criticised the "insufficient protection" of refugee accommodation even though the fire was blamed on the residents.

The group claimed racism was being displayed in Germany with "frightening abandon and alleged right-wing extremists supposedly guarding the centres were often responsible for attacks.
H illary Clinton has hit out at rival Donald Trump on Twitter with a scathing response that has gone viral.

A social media spat broke out when Mr Trump slammed President Obama's decision to come out in support of his former secretary of state.

The billionaire real estate mogul wrote: Obama just endorsed Crooked Hillary. He wants four more years of Obamabut nobody else does!

But Mrs Clinton replied with a terse three-word response that has been shared almost 400,000 times, becoming her most retweeted post ever.

She simply wrote: Delete your account.

The unimpressed Republican hit back: How long did it take your staff of 823 people to think that up--and where are your 33,000 emails that you deleted?

This week, Mrs Clinton declared victory in her battle to be the Democrats' presidential nominee, describing Mr Trump as "temperamentally unfit" to be president

And yesterday Mr Obama formally endorsed his former secretary of state as the candidate.

He said in a video: I know how hard this job can be. Thats why I know Hillary will be so good at it.

Loading....

In fact, I dont think theres ever been someone so qualified to hold this office.

Clinton: Obama 'has my back'

"Shes got the courage, the compassion and the heart to get this job done.
N ew pieces of debris have been found on the coast of Madagascar by a man scouring the globe to find parts of missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370.

Blaine Gibson, a lawyer from Seattle, contacted investigators to report that he had recovered debris washed ashore on the island off Africa.

In February, Mr Gibson found debris off the coast of Mozambique that experts later determined came from the missing Boeing 777 that vanished more than two years ago with 239 people on board.

Mr Gibson has sent images of the latest finds on Riake beach, on the island of Nosy Boraha in north-east Madagascar, to investigators. One of the parts found resembles an aeroplane seat part.

Washed ashore: The items were found on a beach / Blaine Alan Gibson

The Malaysia Airlines jet vanished in March 2014 during a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.

British engineer Don Thompson who is part of an informal international group investigating MH370, said he thought one piece was from the back of a seat, and the other could be part of a cover panel on a plane wing.

The missing Boeing 777 that vanished more than two years ago with 239 people on board (Blaine Alan Gibson)

The seat part I am 99.9 per cent sure on, he told the BBC. Its the right colour of fabric for Malaysian Airlines. It shows the seat had to have disintegrated to have come away.

Mr Gibson once travelled to Siberia to investigate the Tunguska meteor - a large explosion that occurred near the Stony Tunguska River, in Yeniseysk Governorate in the Russian Empire in June 1908.

Later he went to investigate the collapse of the Maya civilisation, a Central American population who invented the 365 day calendar and whose population topped 13 million before they mysteriously vanished off the face of the earth in 950 AD.

In a separate development, a man yesterday found a piece of debris on an island off southern Australia that the transport bureau will examine, said ATSB spokesman Dan OMalley.

Several pieces of MH370 have washed up over the past year on coastlines around the Indian Ocean.

But officials have had no luck finding the main underwater wreckage despite an extensive search of a vast area of the Indian Ocean off Australias west coast.

Crews are expected to complete their sweep of the 46,000 square mile area by August.
S ummers here, and everyones mind seems to be on one thing: counting down to a massive holiday.

While most of us will make do with a city break or a week or two in the sun, for the super-rich the possibilities are pretty much endless.

Not only is there an abundance of luxurious locations to go to, but there are all kinds of options for how to do it in style.

BBC documentary The Millionaires Holiday Club follows an agency who cater no-holds-barred getaways for people with serious cash to splash.

From first-class flights, to private resorts, and breath-taking locations, theres a huge amount on offer.

The first of two episodes follows the likes of Jane, whos venturing to the Caribbean on her first holiday of the year (she had 12 the year before). While shes technically on a cruise ship, it has fewer than 100 guests, as opposed to the 3500 capacity of the full ship.

8 of the best budget travel destinations for 2016 1 /21 8 of the best budget travel destinations for 2016 Estonia Historical cities, beautiful nature, friendly locals and affordable prices; whats not to love about Estonia? If youve boarded the ferry from Helsinki, youll find your Euros will go further both at the bar, in restaurants and on transport around this formerly Soviet occupied country, where Eastern and Nordic influences mix. Picturesque Tallinn is the most commonly visited city, but don't miss a visit to the island of Saaremaa. The island is dotted with old churches and windmills and the towns feel untouched by the last decade's development. Alamy Estonia Alamy Ho Chi Minh This Vietnamese city topped The Price of Travels index, ranking 31 Asian cities by price, confirming that visiting Vietnam is still one of the best options for budget travellers. Hoi Chi Minh is a must-visit highlight of the country.This vivacious city, perched on the banks of the Saigon River and still known as Saigon to its eight million inhabitants, has changed its image from that of a war-torn city to one of a thriving metropolis. Best of all? Youll need less than US$20 per day or less to pay for for food, lodging and sights. Alamy Ho Chi Minh Alamy East Africa (Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania) The outbreak of Ebola in West Africa has, unfortunately for the rest of the continent, had a knock-on effect in terms of tourism in 2015. As a result, there are plenty of cheap deals to be snapped up in unaffected Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania. Here, youll find everything from white sandy beaches and incredible wildlife to the unparalleled wonders of the Rift Valley and the famous Masai Mara. Alamy East Africa (Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania) Alamy Bosnia and Herzegovina Bosnia and Herzegovina, a country on the Balkan Peninsula in southeastern Europe, encompasses mountainous terrain, medieval villages and Muslim and Christian landmarks. Despite a turbulent history its now one of Europes most visually stunning corners held in high repute by travellers, thanks to a landscape of turquoise rivers, colourful rooftops and lush greenery. Alamy Bosnia and Herzegovina Alamy Galicia Galicia, in north-west Spain, is a verdant region with a beachy coastline and is arguably the country's last frontier. Eating and staying here will cost much less than more-visited parts of the country, while the area will give you a taste of "real" Spanish culture, taking you away from the tourist frequented Costa's and into a greener and more culturally defined part of the country. Here you can escape the commercialism that has tainted Barcelona And Madrid and explore a region rich in history and agriculture. Alamy Galicia Alamy Quebec The crown jewel of French Canada is home of maple syrup, festivals and North Americas only walled city. But there are plenty of other reasons to visit, aside from sweet treats and a brilliant music scene. In just a few short days you can get lost in the Unesco-listed old town, explore the local foodie scene and step back in time on timeless cobblestone streets. Theres more than a glimmer of Old Europe in its bistros, sidewalk cafes and squares - but itll come at a snip of the price of Paris. Alamy Quebec Alamy Costa Rica Costa Ricas Caribbean coast doesnt attract as many tourists as its South Pacific side, but here youll find a still-evolving destination thats likely to become a hotspot over the next few years. Here nature lovers will find turtles, sloth sanctuaries and diving in the reefs of Manzanillo a big draw while there are plenty of unspoilt beaches for sun worshippers to soak up the rays on. Alamy Costa Rica Alamy Timor-Leste As one of the worlds newest countries (it became the first new sovereign state of the 21st century on 20 May 2002 when it achieved independence from Indonesia) Timor-Lestes tourism industry is still in its infancy. The internationally-influenced capital of Dili may have pricey hotels, but away from here youll find bargain stays on the beaches of Atauro Island, and modest dwellings in the misty hill country. If youre looking for the latest destination to brag to your well-travelled friends to, make sure you tick off Asias fledgling country before they do. Alamy Timor-Leste Alamy

Elsewhere, Mervyn and Heather work all year for their 10-day getaway to Jamaica, where they plan to do absolutely nothing at all.

Theres a look at the people providing the service, too  as new staff member Kelsey leaves Thomas Cook to join the upmarket holiday service, and goes on a work trip to the Seychelles.

Warning: this definitely isnt one to watch if you dont have your own vacation booked already  you might just be inspired to blow all your savings on a once-in-a-lifetime trip by the end of it.

BBC Two, 9pm
Tehran, Iran, June 10

By Mehdi Sepahvand - Trend:

Iran's Mahan Air launched direct flights to Denmark in a ceremony in Copenhagen attended by Iranian Ambassador Morteza Moradian as well as Mahan Air and the Copenhagen airport officials.

The flight will be on two days a week, Thursdays and Sundays, Tasnim news agency reported June 10.
Baku, Azerbaijan, June 10

Trend:

Azerbaijan's state oil company SOCAR will build a new oil-gathering park on the Pirallahi island in the Caspian Sea, SOCAR said in a message.

A land area of 6.4 hectares in the north-eastern part of the island will be allocated for the park's construction.

SOCAR's Oil and Gas Construction Trust will be the general contractor of the new tank farm's construction. The new oil-gathering park will meet the highest modern standards from technological and environmental points of view.

The park will include 24 oil tanks, three of which with a capacity of 3,000 cubic meters each, six - 2,000 cubic meters each, four - 1,000 cubic meters each, five - 700 cubic meters each, four - 400 cubic meters each, two - 100 cubic meters each.

Meanwhile, there will be a two-storey administrative building, checkpoint, service space, a building of the firefighting pumping station and pumping stations for separate pumping of oil and reservoir waters, underground drainage unit, four separators, two ovens, and a substation building in the park's territory.

Labour protection and safety regulations will meet modern standards and optimal working conditions will be created for oilmen in the park.
Baku, Azerbaijan, June 9

By Elena Kosolapova - Trend:

The Asian Development Bank (ADB) may consider providing financial support for the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan- Pakistan- India (TAPI) gas pipeline project when requested, a source in the ADB's Department of External Relations told Trend.

"ADB continues to be in discussion regarding its role taking the [TAPI] project forward in all aspects," the source said.

The source reminded that ADB has served as the TAPI transaction advisor since 2013 and has already provided more than $4 million in technical assistance grants to date for the project's pre-feasibility studies, risk analysis and mitigation, legal advice, market analyses, and security studies, among others.

Meanwhile the source noted that the TAPI is a large project which will require a strong coalition of financiers and the TAPI Pipeline Company Limited consortium implementing the project will engage financial institutions to arrange the necessary financing which is likely to be a mix of equity and debt financing provided and/or credit enhanced by multilateral, regional and bilateral development agencies, export credit agencies, and commercial financial institutions.

"Contribution of each party will be determined once we know the total project cost upon completion of the detailed design and due diligence process," the source said.

TAPI gas pipeline will make it possible to deliver gas from Turkmenistan, which ranks fourth in the world on biggest gas reserves, to large and promising markets of South and Southeast Asia. The pipeline is to run from Galkynysh - the largest gas field in Turkmenistan - through the Afghan cities of Herat and Kandahar, and finally reach the Fazilka settlement located near the India-Pakistan border.

The annual capacity of the gas pipeline will reach 33 billion cubic meters. It is planned that the total length of the TAPI pipeline will be 1,814 kilometers. Some 214 kilometers will pass through the territory of Turkmenistan, 774 kilometers - Afghanistan, 826 kilometers - Pakistan.

The project's preliminary cost is estimated at $10 billion. The Turkmen government reported earlier that the state concern Turkmengaz would be the main investor for the TAPI project.

Turkmenistan started construction of its section of TAPI pipeline in Dec. 2015 and it is expected it will take three years. Time frame of the Afghan and Pakistani sections construction of the TAPI pipeline has not been determined yet.

However last week President of Turkmenistan Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov signed a decree on the allocation of more than $45 million to finance the initial stage of construction of the Afghan-Pakistan segment of the TAPI Pipeline.

Edited by SI

Follow the author on Twitter: @E_Kosolapova
Baku, Azerbaijan, June 10

Trend:

Bakcell, The First Mobile Operator and The Leading Mobile Internet Provider of Azerbaijan, signed a new agreement with Etisalat- Middle East's leading telecommunications operator.

Thanks to this agreement, Bakcell subscribers who travel to UAE will enjoy using high speed internet there for as low as 1 qepik per MB as they do it in 19 other countries like Turkey, Hungary, Germany, UK and etc. To activate this offer subscriber should simply dial *125#1000#YES and activate the roaming data package.

"Currently our subscribers are able to use roaming services in as much as 168 countries over the networks of 417 mobile operators. While expanding this list, we are working closely with our existing roaming partners in order to provide best offers to our subscribers, so they can fully enjoy communicating and using high speed mobile internet at low and affordable rates. The agreement we just signed is another step in this direction", says Fedja Hadzic, Chief Marketing and Sales Officer of Bakcell.

It should be noted that by means of the Bakcell Roaming Application, subscribers who travel abroad may get all the necessary information about the prices for calls, SMS and the Internet, as well as the current roaming campaigns at all partner roaming countries and operators, and even get support through online communication with Bakcell. Moreover, subscribers can easily top-up there balances through this application. For more detailed information about the Bakcell Roaming Application, please, visit: http://www.bakcell.com/az/bakcell-rouminq-ap
Tashkent, Uzbekistan, June 10

By Demir Azizov- Trend:

Agro Invest Sugurta JSC insurance company's license for conducting insurance activities has been annulled by the Uzbek finance ministry, a representative of the company told Trend June 10.

"The license was abolished in line with the decision of the court dated May 24, 2016," said the company's representative. The company didn't disclose reason behind annulment of the license.

Uzbek finance ministry suspended a license of Agro Invest Sugurta JSC for ten working days in April 2016.

Agro Invest Sugurta JSC received license on October 21, 2014 and it could provide insurance services on 17 classes of general insurance.

The company worked in insurance market of Uzbekistan since 2008 and provided various insurance services to legal entities and individuals.
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This page is archived. Data published after 5 April 2022 can be found on the renewed website. Go to the new statistics page

Published: 10 June 2016

New orders in manufacturing fell by 10.1 per cent year-on-year in April

According to Statistics Finland, the value of new orders in manufacturing was 10.1 per cent lower in April 2016 than twelve months earlier. Orders have declined continuously for eight months. During January to April, orders went down by 6.6 per cent from the year before.

Annual change in new orders in manufacturing (original series), % (TOL2008)

Enterprises received more orders in April than twelve months ago only in the textile industry, where the industry's orders grew by 11.4 per cent from the previous year. In other manufacturing main industries orders declined. In the chemical industry, orders declined by 3.1 per cent, in the industry of the manufacture of paper and paper board products by 8.8 per cent, and in the metal industry by 12.4 per cent from one year ago.

When interpreting these statistics, it should be borne in mind that they typically show strong fluctuations by month. Even new orders of substantial value are not examined over extended time periods but for the statistical reference month only.

Change in new orders in manufacturing 4/2015 4/2016 (TOL2008)

The index of new orders in manufacturing describes development in the value of new orders received by enterprises for commodities and services that are meant to be produced by establishments located in Finland. These statistics are based on non-probability sampling, in which the basic observation unit is an enterprise or a kind-of-activity unit. The sample comprises monthly 400 to 450 enterprises or their kind-of-activity units. Index point figures and annual change percentages are published monthly for five industry categories. The time series start from January 2005 and their base year is 2010 (2010=100). The index figures may become slightly revised as new data accumulate and enterprises report changes to their data. Due to supplementations, the latest 12 months are revised in the releases. A detailed description of the statistics and the calculation method are included in the quality description on the home page of the statistics.

Source: New orders in manufacturing 2016, April. Statistics Finland

Inquiries: Maarit Makela 029 551 3324, Kari Rautio 029 551 2479, volyymi.indeksi@stat.fi

Director in charge: Mari Yla-Jarkko

Publication in pdf-format (229.2 kB)

Updated 10.6.2016

Referencing instructions: Statistics: New orders in manufacturing [e-publication].

ISSN=1798-6737. April 2016. Helsinki: Statistics Finland [referred: 26.10.2022].

Access method: http://www.stat.fi/til/teul/2016/04/teul_2016_04_2016-06-10_tie_001_en.html
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The trilateral meeting between Iran, Russia and Syria demonstrates their commitment in fighting terrorism, Secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council Ali Shamkhani said on Thursday, IRNA reported.

He made the comments in a meeting with Russian Defense Minister Sergey Kuzhugetovich Shoygu.

Continuation of support for the Syrian government and people is aimed at establishing stability and security in the country, Shamkhani said.

He noted that holding the trilateral meeting between Iranian, Russian and Syrian defense ministers shows the three countries' indefectible commitment for full-scale fight against Takfiri terrorism and their supporters.

The official lauded the courageous policies of Russian President Vladimir Putin in launching an all-out fight against terrorism in Syria.

The news story to be updated.
Friday, 10 June 2016 17:30:46 (GMT+3) | Istanbul

Spanish stainless steel producer Acerinox S.A. has announced that it will continue its investments in Kentucky, US, and Algeciras, Spain , while it is postponing its investments in Malaysia until the situation becomes more favorable in Asia.





Accordingly, the company is continuing the implementation of its Strategic Plan 2016-2020 which includes new equipment for its factories in Kentucky, US, and Campo de Gibraltar, Spain




Speaking at the 27th Brazilian Steel Conference held on June 9 in Brazil , Rafael Rubio, general director of Latin Americas steel association, Alacero, stated that China has not yet been able to make its transformation to a market economy and this situation explains, to a great extent, the development of the steel industry and the crisis on the global and regional steel market. According to Mr. Rubio, the problems of the Chinese industry are increasing, with overcapacity in the range of 400 million mt, growing losses, low prices, subsidies to be revised upwards, the imperative need to export and preserve employment, environmental restrictions, and the slow reform of its state-owned enterprises.
Friday, 10 June 2016 23:35:12 (GMT+3) | Sao Paulo

Brazilian steelmaker Companhia Siderurgica Nacional (CSN) said it is still looking to sell its assets, and according to the companys CEO, Benjamin Steinbruch, there should soon be news regarding the issue.





While speaking at a panel at the Brazil Steel Congress, Steinbruch warned that Brazilian steel assets shouldnt be sold for cheap. If we change the perception over the country risk in Brazil , those assets [could] double or triple their prices, he noted.





The executive signaled the sale of assets will result from the higher offer, from a Brazilian or a foreign company, since there are appropriate conditions for a sale.





Additionally, the executive said CSN has continued maintenance in all equipment of its No. 2 blast furnace, located at its Presidente Vargas mill in the city of Volta Redonda in the state of Rio de Janeiro. The maintenance should take between 90 and 120 days.





The executive said he couldnt determine when the equipment should be restarted, since the restart will depend on market conditions.


Friday, 10 June 2016 11:53:54 (GMT+3) | Istanbul

In Sweden , industrial production increased by 0.1 percent in April this year compared to the previous month and rose by 3.5 percent year on year in working day-adjusted figures, according to Statistics Sweden (SCB).

On the other hand, the production index for the Swedish basic metal industry remained stable in April this year compared to the previous month, while rising by 5.1 percent year on year. In the given month, the country's manufacture of fabricated metal products, except machinery and equipment, increased by 1.1 percent month on month and was down by 1.7 percent year on year.

In April, new orders for Swedish industry decreased by 0.5 percent month on month, while they rose by 0.4 percent in working day-adjusted figures compared to April 2015.




Friday, 10 June 2016 16:49:23 (GMT+3) | Istanbul

India-headquartered steel giant Tata Steel Group has pushed back its final decision on the future of its UK steel operations to July, while it is expected to unveil a shortlist of bidders for its UK assets today, June 10, according to the Financial Times.





Tata Steel had planned to choose the preferred bidder by its monthly board meeting on June 24, the day after the referendum in the UK on EU membership.




Tehran, Iran, June 10

By Mehdi Sepahvand - Trend:

Iran welcomes Afghanistan into jointly registering Jalal al-Din Muhammad Balkhi's (aka Rumi) poem, the Masnavi, as world heritage.

The announcement was made by Farhad Nazari, director of Historical Work Registration at Iran's Cultural Heritage Organization, ISNA news agency reported June 10.

His statements come after demonstrators in Kabul, Afghanistan, expressed dissatisfaction over reports that Iran and Turkey were going to jointly register the poem.

"The more extensive is the Masnavi's case, the better Rumi and his work's grandeur will be shown," the official said.

However, he said, registering the poem as world heritage is a fully technical job which requires documents.

Nazari nonetheless underlined that the birthplace of Rumi is quite a different issue than his work, which should be taken into account.

Rumi was a 13th-century poet, jurist, Islamic scholar, theologian, and Sufi mystic. His influence transcends national borders and ethnic divisions: Iranians, Tajiks, Turks, Greeks, Pashtuns, other Central Asian Muslims, and the Muslims of South Asia have greatly appreciated his spiritual legacy for the past seven centuries.

He has been described as the "most popular poet" and the "best selling poet" in the United States.

Peoples of Iran, Turkey and Afghanistan celebrate Rumi as a national pride, each claiming his legacy.

The Masnavi is a series of six books of poetry that together amount to around 25,000 verses or 50,000 lines. It is a spiritual writing that teaches Sufis how to reach their goal of being in true love with God.
Friday, 10 June 2016 10:10:00 (GMT+3) | Istanbul

Germany-based plantmaker SMS Group has announced that its Italian subsidiary SMS Meer S.p.A. will supply a new heat treatment line for tubes and pipes to Russian pipe producer TMK s subsidiary Seversky Tube Works, located in Polevskoy, Russia . The designed capacity of the line is 265,000 mt of heat treated tubes and pipes per year. The line is scheduled to commence operation in the first quarter of 2018. According to SMS Group, with the installation of this line TMK is strengthening its presence in the Russian market for tube and pipe products for oil and gas exploration.





SMS stated that the line will be able to heat treat tubes and pipes with wall thicknesses of up to 40 millimeters. Thanks to its high flexibility, the line will also be able to process small batch sizes and different product groups in a highly cost-efficient manner. Due to their very low nitrogen oxide (NOx) emissions, the recuperative burners to be installed in the new line are very eco-friendly compared with conventional burners, allowing up to 30 percent of fuel savings.
Friday, 10 June 2016 11:34:00 (GMT+3) | Istanbul

In April this year, Turkey's slab imports amounted to 21,695 mt, falling by 89.3 percent year on year and down 74.3 compared to March, according to the data provided by the Turkish Statistical Institute (TUIK). The total value of Turkey's slab imports in the given month was $5.8 million, down 92 percent compared to April 2015 and falling by 71.4 percent month on month.

During the first four months of the current year, Turkey's slab imports decreased by 20.8 percent to 570,221 mt, while the value of these imports decreased by 51.7 percent $141.5 million, both year on year.

In the given period, Turkey imported 265,549 metric tons of slab from Brazil. Brazil was Turkey's largest slab import source in the period in question, followed by Russia, which supplied 120,152 mt in the given period.



Turkey's slab import sources in the January-April period this year are as follows:

Country Amount (mt) January- April 2016 January- April 2015 Y-o-y change (%) April 2016 April 2015 Y-o-y change (%) Brazil 265,549 142,579 86.25 - - - Russia 120,152 170,360 -29.47 - - - Ukraine 102,961 116,545 -11.66 21,695 50,120 -56.71 Sweden 50,615 - - - - -

Turkey's sources of imported slab in the January-April period this year can be seen in the graph below:
Friday, 10 June 2016 23:33:01 (GMT+3) | Sao Paulo

Turkey imported 86,900 mt of slabs from Brazil in May, of which 56,300 mt was from ThyssenKrupp CSA at $297/mt and 30,600 mt was from ArcelorMittal Tubarao at $359/mt, FOB conditions, price deals probably closed in March.





Total exports of slab from Brazil in May increased from April by 42 percent to 504,600 mt, of which 233,500 mt by Tubarao at $270/mt, 222,000 mt by ThyssenKrupp CSA at $283/mt and 49,100 mt by Gerdau Acominas at $236/mt, all FOB conditions.





Destinations other than Turkey were the US (147,800 mt), the EU (117,800 mt), Indonesia (80,000 mt), Mexico (49,100 mt) and Canada (20,000 mt).





The volume of slab exported from Brazil in May, the highest so far in 2016, reflects not only steel producers searching for alternative clients due to the reduced domestic demand, but also increased steel prices and the devaluation of the domestic currency, increasing the profitability of slab exports in BRL terms.





A major exporter told SteelOrbis that $370/mt FOB has remained as the price for negotiations of slab of the basic commercial grades for two weeks, following a price recovery from $230/mt in December 2015, until a peak of $400/mt was reached last month, both FOB conditions.








According to market sources, over the past week a Ukrainian steel producers offers to Europe for 0.25"-12" grade B seamless pipes as per ASTM A53 or API have remained stable at $660-710/mt FCA, since the producer has resisted the price declines seen in the global pipe market and has been successful in concluding deals at its current price levels. Meanwhile, the producers price offers to the Middle East for the same product have also remained unchanged, still in the range of $730-760/mt FOB.
If youre saving for retirement, youve probably heard that you should expect returns to be lower in the future than they were in the past.

Missouris big pension funds are confronting the same investment math. The Missouri State Employees Retirement System and the Public School Retirement System have been assuming that they can earn a long-term return of 8 percent, but both will consider lowering that number at board meetings next week.

Their decisions will increase pension costs for taxpayers. Theyll also lower a key solvency measure.

Still, reducing the rate is prudent. The boards owe taxpayers, public employees and retirees an honest look at the funds prospects, even if legislators and school boards are forced to make tough decisions about pensions affordability.

At MOSERS, the $8.6 billion pension fund for state employees, Missouri Treasurer Clint Zweifel is recommending an investment target of 7.4 percent this year, and he would reduce it to 7 percent over the next four years.

MOSERS staff expects its investment benchmark  an index for the mix of stocks, bonds, real estate and other things it invests in  to produce a long-term return of 7.4 percent. Continuing to assume an 8 percent return would require MOSERS to consistently beat the benchmark.

MOSERS has, in fact, done well over the years, but Zweifel says it would be unwise to project that into the future. The number we provide to taxpayers should be what we believe market expectations are and nothing more, he said.

Zweifel estimated that a lower return assumption would cost taxpayers tens of millions of dollars. Its better to incur that cost now, he added, than to wake up in a few years and realize that funding was inadequate.

This is the fiscally responsible thing to do, not only for the fund and for its beneficiaries but also for taxpayers in the state, Zweifel said.

MOSERS staff has been examining its assumptions since last fall, Executive Director John Watson said. He isnt taking a position on Zweifels recommendation but agreed that the return target should come down.

Whether its a public pension fund or any saver or investor, we are having to adapt to the different capital markets and the low-return environment that weve been in, Watson said.

At PSRS, the $38.6 billion fund for Missouri teachers, Executive Director Steve Yoakum is recommending that the return target be reduced a quarter-point to 7.75 percent.

Its a much more challenging environment now than at any time in my 38 years in the business, Yoakum said. We dont want to take an excessive amount of risk to chase a high rate of return.

According to the National Association of State Retirement Administrators, the average public retirement plan assumes a return of 7.62 percent. Milliman, a consulting firm, says the average large corporate plan has a target of 7.2 percent.

Andrew Biggs, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, has studied Missouris pensions. He believes the 8 percent assumption was wildly unrealistic, and says even 7 percent might be pushing it.

Fund boards have been slow to give up their optimistic targets, Biggs says, because they dont want to admit how poorly funded they are.

As of last June 30, PSRS had assets to cover 84 percent of its liabilities; MOSERS funded ratio stood at 75 percent. Lower targets will push both of those numbers down, but at least Missourians will have a more realistic picture of what they owe.
Updated at 3:30 p.m. with Reuters story

Monsanto Co., the world's largest seed company, has still not opened its books more than two weeks after it rejected Bayer AG's $62 billion acquisition offer but left the door open to a possible deal, according to people familiar with the matter.

The impasse shows that little progress in negotiations has been made since Monsanto on May 24 turned down its German peer's $122-per-share cash offer but said it was open to "continued and constructive conversations."

Monsanto has said that Bayer's offer "significantly undervalues (the) company and also does not adequately address or provide reassurance for some of the potential financing and regulatory execution risks related to the acquisition."

Bayer, however, has no plans to increase its offer without first reviewing Monsanto's confidential information, the sources said on condition of anonymity because of the confidentiality of the talks.

The Leverkusen-based company needs access to Monsanto's books before it can decide whether it can pay a higher price, as well as offer a more detailed plan on how to address potential antitrust risks, the sources added.

Bayer also has no intention currently to go hostile with its bid, the sources said.

Monsanto, based in Creve Coeur, has not directly told Bayer that it is looking for better terms in order for it to offer the German company access to confidential information, according to one of the sources.

However, Monsanto's lack of engagement demonstrates that it not only views Bayer's offer as too low, but that it does not even consider it as a basis for negotiations, the sources said.

The situation did not change even after Monsanto held a regular board meeting this week to approve a quarterly dividend of 54 cents per share.

Bayer declined to comment, while a Monsanto spokeswoman did not respond to a request for comment.

The Wall Street Journal had reported earlier on Friday that Bayer had made a new takeover approach to Monsanto that was rebuffed, in part because it didn't include a higher price.

Bayer's unsolicited bid for Monsanto is the largest all-cash takeover on record, according to Thomson Reuters data, just ahead of InBev SA's $60.4 billion offer for Anheuser-Busch in June 2008.

Global agrochemicals companies are racing to consolidate, partly in response to a drop in commodity prices that has hit farm incomes. Seeds and pesticides markets are also increasingly converging.

ChemChina plans to buy Switzerland's Syngenta for $43 billion, after Syngenta rejected a bid from Monsanto. Dow Chemical Co and DuPont are forging a $130 billion business.
NEW YORK  Citigroup Inc. sued AT&T Inc. on Friday, saying the phone company's use of "thanks" and "AT&T thanks" in a new customer loyalty program infringed its trademark rights to the phrase "thankyou."

The lawsuit may threaten the business relationship between two of the largest U.S. companies, which Citigroup said dates to at least 1998 when they launched the AT&T Universal Card.

In its complaint filed in the U.S. District Court in Manhattan, Citigroup said it has since 2004 used "thankyou" extensively in promoting its own customer loyalty and reward programs, including credit cards co-branded with AT&T.

But the New York-based bank, the nation's fourth-largest by assets, said the "AT&T thanks" program launched on June 2 will likely confuse consumers, and irreparably damaged its goodwill and reputation associated with the "thankyou" trademarks it uses for various banking services.

Citigroup also said Dallas-based AT&T asked the U.S. government in April to register an "AT&T thanks" trademark despite knowing the bank's concerns.

AT&T's infringement was "knowing, intentional, and willful," and forced Citigroup to sue to protect its rights, the complaint said.

The lawsuit seeks to stop AT&T from using the phrases "thanks" and "AT&T thanks" in its programs and marketing. It also seeks unspecified triple and punitive damages.

AT&T spokesmen did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Liz Fogarty, a Citigroup spokeswoman, declined to provide additional comment.

Citigroup said its "thankyou" programs have about 15 million members in the United States, and that 1.7 million customers there have credit cards co-branded by Citigroup and AT&T.

The case is Citigroup Inc. v. AT&T Inc. et al, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, No. 16-04333.
A spokesman for the Russian reconciliation center said on Thursday that terrorists from the al-Nusra Front terrorist group continue attacks on settlements in Syria's Aleppo region, including the city of Aleppo itself, Sputnik reported.

"The shelling is indiscriminate, targeting not only positions of government forces, but also residential areas. Some 54 civilians were killed and 93 wounded in these attacks," the reconciliation center said in a daily bulletin posted by the Russian Defense Ministry on Thursday.

On Wednesday, the center said that a group of at least 160 al-Nusra Front militants had crossed the border with Turkey in the north of Idlib province and were heading for the Aleppo area to reinforce terrorists fighting there.
ST. LOUIS  Last-minute shouts of concern and rebuttal about control have surfaced while one of the largest Lutheran denominations prepares to vote for its next president starting this weekend.

The Kirkwood-based Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, which has more than 6,000 congregations and 2 million members across the country, holds presidential elections every three years.

The Rev. Matthew Harrison, the incumbent, has served two terms as president and is gunning for a third.

In a June 2 letter, three former members of the Commission on Constitutional Matters, essentially the synods supreme court, say Harrison is threatening the autonomy of congregations by trying to amass more power at international headquarters on South Lindbergh Boulevard.

They cite concerns about apparent attempts to have more centralized authority over international missions, dispute resolution and other matters.

We encourage all congregations to sense the urgency, the letter said. The Synod is facing the danger of a shift in ecclesiastical supervision authority that would jeopardize what the Constitution says are the primary objectives of the Synod.

The widely dispersed letter, the content of which Harrison disputes, is signed by the Rev. Dr. Wilbert Sohns, Rev. Philip J. Esala and Daniel C. Lorenz.

The 35 districts in the synod are mainly confined within state boundaries. District presidents are typically in charge of disciplining pastors, for instance over issues of doctrine.

The letter said Harrison unilaterally created a Dispute Resolution Task Force that recommends that either the president or the Praesidium, which is the president and half a dozen of his vice presidents, be given Ecclesiastical Supervision over individual members instead of district presidents.

In a letter of their own posted to the synods website, Harrison and six vice presidents rebuked the claims.

They said that the dispute resolution task force was created after the synod system took five years to handle one particular case that had exonerated a pastor who was publicly and aggressively teaching that the Bible has errors, that women should be ordained, that homosexual activity is not sinful, and that evolution is true.

Harrison said in the letter that he supports a task force recommendation that accusers be able to appeal to the Praesidium if district presidents choose not to act.

He, and his colleagues, wrote that there needs to be a united and coordinated mission abroad.

There have been a number of instances where some of our folks have acted in international fields in ways that have severely disrupted our relationships with partner churches, they wrote. Independent and uncoordinated efforts have also been undertaken with charismatic and other non-Lutheran churches and societies, with seminaries even being planted.

Both letters ended on a conciliatory tone.

The members of the Synod may have honest disagreements over who might best serve as president of the Synod, Harrison and the vice presidents concluded. This is not unusual, since we have three excellent candidates this year.

Harrison faces the Rev. Dale Meyer, president of Concordia Seminary in Clayton, and the Rev. David Maier, leader of one of the synods largest 35 districts, Michigan.

Voting is done by pastors and select members of the laity. The election can take a few days to complete if the process goes well.

The election, which runs through Tuesday, is held before the synods convention, which will be held in Milwaukee in July. The convention is also expected to weigh in on the use of lay deacons serving in pastoral roles.
As Bernie Sanders insurgent campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination heated up in these past months, so too did comparisons between the fervor fueling Sanders political movement and the faith-based mobilization of an old-time religious revival.

More than any other candidate, Bernie draws on the language of right and wrong to make his pitch, Grant Diamond, pastor of Faith Baptist Mill Creek, west of Chicago, wrote on his blog last month. Politics for Bernie isnt a job, its a crusade.

As a preacher myself I cant help but admire the righteous fury with which he moves crowds and fills stadiums, said Diamond, while noting that the fascinating aspect of Sanders appeal to righteousness is that its a secular righteousness.

For those seeking a precise parallel in American religious history, the most common  and convincing  analogy for the Sanders movement is to the Second Great Awakening, one of three (or perhaps four, depending on whos counting) spiritual explosions that have periodically transformed society since the Colonial days.

The first awakening was a revival that began in the 1740s, fueled by the renowned traveling evangelist George Whitefield, and it stirred grass-roots believers and helped lay the groundwork for the American Revolution.

The second such awakening, the one that most brings to mind the Sanders campaign, began about 1800 and ran up through the middle of the 19th century.

It was also a grass-roots movement, mainly of Protestants  Baptist and Methodist membership spiked during that era, and new denominations were created in its wake  and the upstate New York region identified as the heart of this Second Great Awakening was marked by such religious fervor that Charles Grandison Finney, a leading preacher of the day, dubbed it the burned-over district.

In todays political context, the term burned-over district is not just an analogy but an irresistible opportunity for a pun, which is why more than a dozen religion scholars from the University of Chicago Divinity School who are studying the Second Great Awakening titled a recent essay comparing that revival with Sanders campaign The Berned-Over District.

In the essay, the scholars underscore the irony that Sanders is the most secular major candidate in the 2016 race, and perhaps in U.S. history. But they also detail how closely Sanders movement does in fact track a spiritual movement like a Great Awakening.

Yet the real test of how closely the Sanders revival parallels American religious history will be seen in how his followers respond to what appears to be an inevitable disappointment as his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, can now claim enough delegates to be considered the partys presumptive nominee.

Faced with defeat, will the Bernie Bros and their allies melt away into the ranks of disaffected nonvoters? Will they instead work to propagate Sanders populist message in the Democratic establishment? Or will they try to undermine Clintons campaign and perhaps create a schism in the Democratic Party?

As this post-primary stage unfolds, perhaps the most instructive example to consider may not be the Great Awakening but rather what is known as the Great Disappointment  the letdown that true believers in the Second Great Awakenings more messianic elements experienced when prophecies of Christs imminent return did not materialize.

The Great Disappointment forced followers of one of the revivals more charismatic figures, the Baptist preacher William Miller, who had pegged the second advent of Jesus for sometime in 1844 or 1845, to reckon with what happened when Jesus did not return and establish the reign of peace and justice they had been promised.

Many of these so-called Millerites did indeed find a rationale for going forward with their faith intact, and the Great Disappointment actually gave birth to a number of religious movements, most notably the Seventh-day Adventist Church.

That phenomenon was also a precursor of the famous cognitive dissonance theory that psychologist Leon Festinger and his colleagues described in the 1950s when they infiltrated an apocalyptic cult and observed what happened when the cult leaders prediction of an end of the world did not come to pass.

In their book When Prophecy Fails, Festinger and the other authors described how the members were so invested in the groups belief system that they sought coping mechanisms to square their views with facts that belied those beliefs rather than altering or abandoning the doctrines. One such mechanism was to enlist others into the movement to provide social support and affirmation.

While cognitive dissonance was first defined in a religious context, it has obvious applications in the secular world, and die-hard Sanders supporters can certainly sound like they are setting themselves up for a similar reaction.

For example, some of them increasingly seem to be diverting their enthusiasm, which remains as strong as ever, from what were once blithe declarations of inevitable victory to darker theories about rigged votes and back-room machinations by a suspect rival. Their cause was so right and so just, they argue, that conceding defeat would betray the mission. So they must press on.

Sanders himself has seemed to tilt in that direction at times, to the chagrin of Clinton backers and a Democratic establishment that wants a more unified and predictable following  much as the established denominations of 19th-century America disdained the enthusiastic spirituality of the Second Great Awakening.

But the aftermath of the Second Great Awakening, even more than the revivals that came before and after, also took another direction for its less apocalyptic adherents that could provide another model for the Sanders movement.

Rather than waiting for deliverance from above, these devotees  followers of preachers like Finney more than Miller  channeled the zeal of their conversion into progressive movements such as the abolition of slavery, womens suffrage, prison reform, temperance and a host of other causes that would later come under the umbrella of the Social Gospel.

Could Sanders inspire such a movement? As the longtime independent senator from Vermont, he hasnt been known for building coalitions or courting allies to pass significant legislation.

But at a rally in San Diego on Sunday, even as he talked about a contested convention, the 74-year-old Sanders did seem to nod to the reality of the delegate math, telling a raucous crowd that his message of social, economic and environmental justice would eventually prevail even if he did not win the nomination:

That message is now in the hearts and souls of the overwhelming majority of younger people in this country, which means our message is the future of America! Sanders declared, according to a report from NPR.

Now it remains to be seen if Sanders secular choir will give that vision a hearty Amen!
ST. LOUIS  A summit on gun violence got off to a somber but sadly familiar start Thursday with the announcement of a slaying, this one of a man whose father had been fatally shot six years earlier and whose grandmother is a longtime nonviolence activist.

Tyrell A. Thompson, 28, was shot and killed about 1:15 a.m. Thursday in the Central West End after he and his girlfriend were robbed, relatives said Thursday.

He was the oldest son of Tyrone L. Thompson, a former Pagedale police chief who was killed during an attempted robbery in 2010, and the grandson of former state Rep. Betty Thompson, a longtime nonviolence activist.

His death was announced during the opening remarks at the Gun Violence Summit on Thursday morning at Better Family Life Inc. by James Clark, vice president for the nonprofit organization.

Clark, who organized the summit, was a friend of Tyrone Thompson and is an activist against gun violence. The event was aimed at finding solutions for St. Louis gun violence problem. It brought together a cross section of those touched by the violence, including a self-proclaimed gang member, a police colonel, the mother of a man convicted of first-degree murder and a trauma surgeon from BJC HealthCare.

At this hour, we need the men and women who are part of the street to be part of the decision making, Clark said. We have to be ready to marry our intellectual prowess with our street leaders and give them the platform to lead.

Tyrell Thompsons death early Thursday was a grim reminder of the toll gun violence is taking. His death was the 75th homicide for St. Louis in 2016. There were three more later Thursday, two in the 1300 block of Burd Avenue, and one in the 3500 block of Bingham Avenue. That surpasses by one the 77 homicides police say the city had this time last year. More than 90 percent involved guns.

Police and family said Thompson was walking with his girlfriend, 21, in the 4500 block of Olive Street, near Walton Avenue, when they were robbed. Police say two men got out of a dark-colored car and pulled guns. Thompson fought with a third robber after the men took his belongings, and he was shot.

We know we arent the only family that has been through it, Betty Thompson, 76, said of her grandsons death. A lot of other families have suffered, too. My heart goes out to all of them.

Tyrell Thompson was a graphic designer at the tech firm LockerDome. His grandmother said he had been trying to follow in the footsteps of his father, Tyrone. The elder Thompson was waiting for a friend in his car in Black Jack when two men tried to rob him at gunpoint on June 5, 2010. The former police chief and the would-be robbers exchanged gunfire and Thompson was fatally shot. He was a consumer fraud investigator with the Missouri attorney generals office at the time.

I vow to keep fighting for nonviolence because this killing has got to stop, Betty Thompson said. And we cant blame police, the system or any of that stuff. We have got to do more with our children and teaching love and compassion and caring for one another.

Tony Thompson, Tyrones brother and the CEO of Kwame Construction, lamented the loss of his nephew in an email Thursday.

The senseless killings are numbing and disheartening when young talented people are being cut down with so much to live for, while these criminals clearly have nothing to live for, he said.

Kwame Construction is a company started by a third Thompson brother, Kwame.

After the death of Tyrone, the family created an institute in his name within the construction company, offering a tutoring and mentoring program for students who have been suspended from the St. Louis Public Schools.

Such programs were among those brought up as potential solutions to the violence at the gun summit. Many panelists agreed that community policing is important, others insisted that churches need boots on the ground to be a more forceful presence in the lives of young citizens.

City and county officials touted their efforts to create jobs and programs to engage youths. Men and women with firsthand experience in the court system touted a hope for real solutions.

Im not doing this for recognition, said panelist Maurice Hoskins, a volunteer at Better Family Life and a himself a shooting victim. Im doing this for those children and Im trying to make a change in the community.
The husband of a former Fox School District superintendent has been charged with felony drunk driving, according to Arnold police.

Jamie Critchlow of Arnold was charged May 30 with driving while impaired and a misdemeanor charge of leaving the scene of an accident, Jefferson County court records show. At the time of his arrest, Critchlow was on probation for a DWI charge from July 2014 in Iron County.

Critchlow also pleaded guilty to a charge of driving while intoxicated in Smith County, Texas in 2007.

A recent state audit of the Fox School District suggests that Critchlow's wife, Dianne Critchlow, misspent about $100,000 in taxpayer funds in two years. The auditors found that Jamie Critchlow was promoted to a district job without board approval and was being paid for advanced degrees he didnt have, for about $89,000 in unapproved and wrongful compensation.
ST. LOUIS  A childhood friend of a murdered third-grade teachers boyfriend has been charged in her death, prosecutors say.

Phillip J. Cutler, 35, of Muskogee, Okla., was charged with two counts each of first-degree murder and armed criminal action in the fatal shooting of Jocelyn Peters, 30, who was seven months pregnant when she was found shot to death in March in her Central West End apartment in the 4200 block of West Pine Boulevard.

Cutler is in custody in Oklahoma. He is a childhood friend of the murdered womans boyfriend, and had use of the boyfriends car and keys to Peters apartment while the boyfriend was out of town, about the time of her death, prosecutors said.

Court records say the boyfriend was the father of Peters unborn child. Peters relatives have said her boyfriend was Cornelius Green, the principal at Carr Lane Visual and Performing Arts Middle School. Friends and relatives said Peters had named her baby Micah Leight. The charges account for the deaths of both Peters and her unborn child.

Court records say the boyfriend was an employee of the St. Louis Public Schools but do not identify him by name. He has not been charged. Peters boyfriend told police he found her unconscious in her bed about 3:15 p.m. March 24, police have said. Police have said officers found no weapon at the scene and no sign of forced entry.

Prosecutors say Peters boyfriend had left St. Louis by train two days before Peters was found dead and was texting and calling Cutler from Chicago the night before she was shot. Cellphone location data provided to police by Cutlers cellphone provider put him near Peters apartment about the time she was fatally shot, charges say. Cutler told police he was staying at the boyfriends sisters home in St. Louis the night Peters was shot.

Charges say the boyfriends car was found on West Pine Boulevard. While police were questioning him, police said he was allowed to use his phone to call his daughter but instead called his estranged wife. During that call from an interview room at police headquarters, the boyfriend told his wife to meet Cutler at a gas station at McCausland Avenue and Highway 40 to give him a set of keys to the car so Cutler could retrieve it, charges say. Police intercepted the meeting and took Cutler into custody the night of Peters death.

Cutler was released by police and left St. Louis for Oklahoma on a Greyhound bus the day after the shooting, charges say.

Peters began working for St. Louis Public Schools in 2011 as a positive behavior support specialist at Fanning Middle School. Four years ago, Peters applied for a teaching job at Mann Elementary, a struggling neighborhood school south of Tower Grove Park. Principal Nicole Conaway had told the Post-Dispatch that Peters was so impressive during the interview that she offered her a job 15 minutes after the interview started.

Cutlers criminal history in Missouri includes a 2006 theft conviction which Chesterfield Police investigated. He was given probation in the case.

Blythe Bernhard of the Post-Dispatch contributed to this report.
Talk-radio host Rush Limbaugh endorses fellow Cape Girardeau native Peter Kinder's bid for Missouri governor in a radio ad running statewide this week.

Limbaugh, a national conservative icon since the late 1980s, says in the ad: "Peter Kinder grew up with me in Cape Girardeau, Missouri. We were lifelong close friends. Now, that proves he's got great taste in friends." He goes on to tout Kinder's "conservative values" and "good judgment in government."

Kinder, currently Missouri's lieutenant governor, is one of four candidates seeking the GOP gubernatorial nomination in the Aug. 2 primaries, along with businessman John Brunner, former Navy SEAL Eric Greitens and former Missouri House Speaker Catherine Hanaway.

The winner will most likely face Democratic state Attorney General Chris Koster in the Nov. 8 general election.

Limbaugh, 65, is a Cape Girardeau native who attended Southeast Missouri State University there. A bust of him currently is on display in the state capitol building in Jefferson City. Kinder, 62, also is a Cape Girardeau native and an alum of Southeast Missouri State.
Gas leakage on board India's aircraft carrier Vikramaditya killed two people, Sputnik reported citing local media.

According to the Indian Express, the incident took place as the warship was on maintenance in the southern India's Karwar sea port. Two naval sailors and two civilian workers were reportedly brought to hospital with symptoms of gas poisoning, where two of them died later.



The Navy has launched investigation into the incident, the newspaper added.




Despite being the co-chair of the International Syria Support Group, Russia has breached the truce in Syria more than any other country, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said Thursday, Anadolu reported.

The minister's remarks came during a joint press conference following a trilateral meeting with his Polish and Romanian counterparts in the capital, Warsaw.

"It is meaningful that Russia violated the truce in Syria more than any other country, even though it is the co-chair of the International Syria Support Group," Cavusoglu said, adding that Russia had failed to fight against Daesh, targeting civilians and moderate opposition groups instead.

"It [Russia] keeps targeting schools, hospitals, and civilians. It is not targeting Daesh. This is the real problem," Cavusoglu said.

"Their purpose is to keep oppressive regimes, and strengthen their own presence," he added.

The Turkish minister also reiterated the need to come up with a joint definition of terror, and a result-oriented strategy to defeat it, warning once more against appealing to other terrorist groups for help.

"How can you fight any terrorist group with such a mindset? First of all, we need to stop distinguishing between good and bad terrorists. We need to confront all kinds of terror regardless of where it comes from or whom it targets," he said.

According to Syrian civil defense officials, regime forces and Russian warplanes have intensified attacks on opposition-held areas in Syria, killing scores of civilians since the April cease-fire.

The latest Russian airstrikes on Wednesday killed two children in northern Syria, according to local sources.

Russian warplanes struck the city of Maaret al-Numan to the south of Idlib province with cluster munitions, the sources told Anadolu Agency on condition of anonymity due to concerns for their safety.

"Two children were killed in the attack," the sources said.

Fighter jets also attacked the villages of Kafr Hamra and Hraytan in Aleppo province with phosphorous bombs, leaving several people injured, according to the sources.

Syria has been locked in a vicious civil war since early 2011, when the regime of Bashar al-Assad cracked down on pro-democracy protests.

According to the Syrian Center for Policy Research, at least 470,000 Syrians have died in the five-year conflict.
LONDON MARKET OPEN: Dollar retreat helps pound, euro; tech stocks sold

Wednesday, October 26, 2022 - 09:03

The pound and euro were benefiting from a weaker dollar early Wednesday, while sterling was getting an additional lift from returning investor confidence in the UK as Rishi Sunak takes charge as prime minister.

Sterling was quoted at $1.1540 early Wednesday, sharply higher from $1.1464 at the London equities close on Tuesday. The pound had not hit $1.15 since mid-September.

The euro traded at $1.002 early Wednesday, moving back above parity for the first time since the start of October, and up from $0.9963 late Tuesday. Against the yen, the dollar was quoted at JP147.38, down from JP147.77.

The FTSE 100 index was down 15.08 points, or 0.2%, at 6,998.40. The mid-cap FTSE 250 was down 53.44 points, or 0.3%, at 17,778.19, though the AIM All-Share was down just 0.11 of a point at 799.33.

The Cboe UK 100 was down 0.2% at 699.57, the Cboe UK 250 down 0.1% at 15,202.98, and the Cboe Small Companies flat at 12,269.58

In European equities on Tuesday, the CAC 40 in Paris was marginally higher, while the DAX 40 in Frankfurt was 0.2% lower.

In London, Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust was down 1.9% in early dealings as its tech stock-heavy investment portfolio was suffering from the disappointing results overnight from Alphabet and Microsoft.

Big technology shares Alphabet and Microsoft both lost more than 6% after releasing quarterly figures - Alphabet A shares lost 6.6% in after-hours trade in New York, while Microsoft lost 6.7%.

Alphabet reported a sharp fall in quarterly income on higher costs and foreign exchange headwinds but recorded a rise in revenue.

The California-based Google owner reported a 27% fall in net income to $13.91 billion in the third quarter of 2022 compared to $18.94 billion a year before.

More positively, revenue rose by 6.1% to $69.09 billion in the period from $65.12 billion. The company attributed the revenue growth to healthy fundamental growth in Search and momentum in the Cloud business.

Microsoft reported a rise in first-quarter earnings, with Chair & Chief Executive Satya Nadella arguing that digital technology was the "ultimate tailwind" in a world facing increasing challenges.

In the three months that ended September 30, revenue totalled $50.12 billion, up 11% from $45.32 billion the previous year. Revenue in the Intelligent Cloud segment increased by 20% against the previous year, while revenue in Productivity & Business Processes grew by 9.0%.

Microsoft, however, saw a fall in net income. The figure dropped 14% to $17.56 billion from $20.51 billion a year prior.

In the US, the week's strong rally continued, with stocks ending sharply higher on Tuesday, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average up 1.1%, the S&P 500 up 1.6%, and the Nasdaq Composite up 2.3%.

Back in London, WPP was at the bottom of the FTSE 100, giving back 3.5%.

Its third-quarter revenue rose 10% to 3.57 billion, with like-for-like revenue up 2.7%. The advertising and marketing firm noted its revenue less pass-through costs increased 13% to 2.99 billion.

Chief Executive Mark Read said the firm "continues to show strong momentum". He added: "Our growth over the year has been strong with full year like-for-like revenue less pass-through costs now upgraded to 6.5% to 7.0%."

Reckitt Benckiser was 3.0% lower.

The consumer healthcare firm's revenue increased by double-digit percentages in the third quarter, with its Hygiene, Health and Nutrition all seeing strong growth.

Total revenue was up 14% to 3.74 billion, with like-for-like revenue up 7.4%.

"Reckitt delivered another quarter of broad-based growth amidst challenging market conditions, as we continue to innovate and improve on our in-market execution," Chief Executive Nicandro Durante said.

"My priority is firmly focussed on continuing to execute on our strategic path, to deliver sustainable mid-single digit growth, and mid-20s adjusted operating margins by the mid-2020s." Reckitt narrowed its like-for-like net revenue growth target for 2022 upward to 6% to 8% from 5% to 8% previously.

At the other end of the blue chips, AstraZeneca was up 2.6% - crowning the FTSE 100.

The healthcare stock was on the rise after its CAPItello-291 Phase III trial showed its capivasertib, in combination with Faslodex, demonstrated a statistically significant and clinically meaningful improvement in progression-free survival versus placebo in patients with advanced or metastatic breast cancer.

The trial met both primary endpoints.

Susan Galbraith, executive vice president of Oncology R&D at Astra, said the data was "exciting" and shows capivasertib could become a "new first-in-class treatment option".

Shore Capital kept Astra shares at 'buy'.

"Positive results announced today continue to reinforce our belief that AZN boasts an industry-leading R&D pipeline with a breadth of next-generation innovative assets," it said. "We continue to see plenty of scope for this pipeline to surpass expectations and deliver long-term, margin-enhancing revenue growth."

In Asia, the Shanghai Composite closed up 0.8% and the Hang Seng index in Hong Kong added 0.7%. The Japanese Nikkei 225 index closed up 0.7%.

The S&P/ASX 200 stock index in Sydney closed up 0.2%.

Gold was quoted at $1,666.70 an ounce early Wednesday, higher than $1,655.96 on Tuesday evening in London. Brent oil was trading at $90.49 a barrel, down from $91.91 late Tuesday.

In the economic calendar, there's a US goods trade balance print, before the Bank of Canada issues an interest rate decision at 1500 BST.

Copyright 2022 Alliance News Limited. All Rights Reserved.
Two Turkish soldiers were martyred in an attack by PKK terrorists in southeastern Turkey on Friday night, Anadolu agency reported citing security sources.



Security sources told Anadolu Agency on condition of anonymity due to restrictions of speaking to the media, four soldiers were wounded in the attack on Tekeli military base in Semdinli town of Hakkari province.



The wounded were immediately airlifted to hospital, sources added.



The PKK -- listed as a terrorist organization also by the U.S., and the EU -- resumed its 30-year armed campaign against the Turkish state in July 2015.



Since then, more than 500 security personnel, including troops, police officers, and village guards, have been martyred and over 4,900 PKK terrorists killed in operations across Turkey and northern Iraq.
Stratford AC's under-13 relay team line up for the camera.

WHILE Mo Farah was bringing 10,000 spectators to their feet as he broke the British 3,000m record at the Diamond League meeting at the Alexander Stadium, 16 Stratford AC athletes were basking in the knowledge they had run their hearts out in the UKA ClubConnect inter club relays earlier in the day.

The relays were contested by seven other Midlands clubs and were the opening events of the meeting with each team comprising two girls and two boys.

Apart from the exhilaration and excitement of competing at such a prestigious meeting, the event is a great learning experience for the youngsters, particularly as the teams went through the same procedure as the international athletes, who surrounded them in the warm-up and call-up areas in the stadiums high performance centre.

The under-13s were the first team out and with the stadium already half full, Millie Leighton led the Stratford team off and passed to George Fox-Rowe on the long leg on the back straight.

He passed to Tanya Mukumbira and then on to Adam Farrow on the last leg, who did his best to stay with the other teams finishing in fifth place behind a quick Birchfield Harriers team.

The first three Stratford under-15s  Beth Cate, Zephan Boxall and Imogen Sheppard  ran brilliantly, nearly running themselves to a standstill before Alex Evans on the last leg really was almost brought to a standstill when he found another athlete in his lane as he took the baton.

The Stratford team were still in contention for the lead at this stage and Evans had to check himself and swerve around the athlete to complete the race in third, only 0.2 secs off second place.

Before the under-17 race, the team were quietly confident of doing well after three weeks of relay training, but they came up against two very speedy teams from Birchfield and the eventual surprise winners Halesowen.

Dani Horton ran a strong first leg and Jack Sumners flew down the back straight to be in the lead before the two other teams played trump cards by having the two fastest girls in the Midlands on their third legs.

Jess Sheppard ran a typical gutsy leg to stay in contention before Ollie Cresswell took the baton to finish the race in third, just half a second off second place.

The under-20 team had under-17 athletes Emily Madden-Forman and Dan Boyd on the first two legs and what fantastic runs they both had.

Madden-Forman was straight into her long stride at the gun and Boyd powered down the back straight before passing to Issy Cain Daley on the third leg, holding off fierce competition from the other teams before passing to Rory Dwyer.

By the time of the last changeover, Dwyer could already see the back of the last Birchfield runner but he ran a blistering leg to take the team home in second place.

Afterwards, the Stratford athletes were not surprisingly buzzing from the excitement of the competition.

Joint team manager, Mike Sheppard, said: What a privilege to bring our athletes to a high pressure event like the Diamond League and to see them perform so brilliantly with slick baton changes and great teamwork.

Considering that sprinting isnt the main focus for most of our athletes they did themselves proud against some of quickest teams of specialist sprinters around.
Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd. (NYSE: TEVA) announced that the United States District Court for the District of Delaware has ruled in favor of Teva in the Company's patent infringement lawsuit against Hetero USA, Inc., InnoPharma Inc., Hospira Inc., Sagent Pharmaceuticals Inc., and Accord Healthcare Inc., regarding Teva's TREANDA (bendamustine hydrochloride) for Injection.

At trial, the defendants alleged that certain claims of U.S. Patents 8,436,190; 8,609,863; 8,791,270; and 8,895,756, listed in the Orange Book for TREANDA, are invalid. The defendants had previously stipulated to infringement of certain claims of these patents. Today the court issued a ruling affirming the validity of the relevant claims of all four patents. As a result, we expect that the court will enter an order enjoining the defendants from launching their respective generic versions of TREANDA until patent expiry in 2026.

Teva is very pleased that the court has upheld the validity of its patents for the lyophilized formulation of TREANDA, said Rob Koremans, M.D., President and CEO of Teva Global Specialty Medicines. This ruling is a testament to the strength of Tevas intellectual property and commitment to defending our bendamustine franchise."
(Updated - June 10, 2016 11:28 AM EDT)

Goldman Sachs (NYSE: GS) queried about 1MDB by NY bank regulator, according to Bloomberg.

UPDATE - Goldman is catching heat from New Yorks Department of Financial Services over its fundraising for 1Malaysia Development Bhd, sources said.

The NYDFS asked Goldman to report on over $6 billion in bond sales for 1MDB. The regulator also asked Goldman to provide a review of every investigation both domestically and internationally into the fund by June 14th.

The U.S. Justice Department (DOJ), Federal Reserve, and Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) also have inquiries with Goldman over 1MDB.
ANCHORAGE, Alaska, June 9, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- The Alaska Gasline Development Corporation (AGDC) announced today the appointment of Keith M. Meyer as its new President. The appointment was made at a meeting of the corporation's board of directors held in Anchorage.

Today's announcement is the culmination of an extensive five month national search initiated in December following the resignation of Dan Fauske. The board considered a number of very qualified executives before selecting Meyer, who assumes his new role on June 15th.

Mr. Meyer is a seasoned energy executive with more than 35 years of industry experience, including 15 years focused on liquefied natural gas (LNG) initiatives. Meyer has managed the development of large-scale infrastructure projects spanning four continents to include LNG terminals, natural gas pipelines, power plants, gas liquids plants, storage, and gas separation projects. He joins AGDC from LNG America, an energy logistics company he founded in 2008 to provide end-to-end LNG distribution solutions to increase the use of LNG as a fuel source within the marine, transportation and other high horsepower industries. Meyer was previously president of Cheniere LNG where he oversaw the development of the Sabine Pass receiving terminal, North America's largest. He was also with CMS Energy Inc., and ANR Pipeline Company.

"Keith's contribution will be immediate and impactful. He's a proven leader who understands what's at stake in Alaska, and possesses the skills and experience we need at this critical time in the development of our natural gas pipeline and LNG project," said Dave Cruz, AGDC Chairman. "Keith believes in Alaska and in the mission of AGDC. I'm proud to welcome him aboard."

Meyer was identified as a leading candidate early in the board's recruitment process. In March, he was placed under contract to advise the corporation on project and commercial activities, allowing the board time to further evaluate his qualifications.

Meyer takes the helm of AGDC following the State of Alaska's $65 million acquisition of TransCanada's interest in the Alaska LNG project. AGDC holds the state's 25% interest in the 20 Mtpa LNG export project which is completing a $400 million preliminary front-end engineering design phase this year. The world class project includes a 3-train liquefaction facility in Nikiski on the Kenai Peninsula, an 800-mile pipeline and a 3.3 Bcfd gas treatment plant on Alaska's North Slope.

"Alaska is engaged in one of the largest energy projects in North America. I'm excited by the challenge and incredibly honored by the trust and confidence the board is placing in me," said Keith Meyer. "I understand how vital the gas pipeline and LNG project are to our Alaskan economy, and I'm committed to getting them built."

About Alaska Gasline Development Corporation AGDC is a public corporation of the State of Alaska changed with advancing the development and construction of a North Slope natural gas pipeline and LNG project, and with securing a long-term energy supply for Alaskans. The corporation owns a 25% interest in the world-class Alaska LNG export project with partners ExxonMobil, BP and ConocoPhillips.

For more information, please contact Miles Baker, VP External Affairs & Government Relations (907) 321-8650 [email protected]

Keith M. Meyer high resolution photo is available here. Keith M. Meyer bio is available here.

To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/alaska-gasline-development-corp-secures-lng-expertise-300282846.html

SOURCE Alaska Gasline Development Corporation
BIRMINGHAM, Mich., June 10, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Automotive suppliers throughout Metro Detroit are demonstrating their commitment to the community through their support for local charities and community organizations.

Six non-profit groups helped by area auto suppliers will be recognized at next week's Tech Crawl 2016, an annual Michigan automotive news and technology event.

Charitable organizations under the Tech Crawl spotlight on June 14 in Birmingham along with the companies and their employees who support them throughout the year include:

Kiekert , a technology leader in locking systems, will host the United Mitochondrial Disease Foundation. UMDF promotes research and education for the diagnosis, treatment and cure of mitochondrial disorders and provides support to affected individuals and families. For information, visit www.umdf.org.

, a technology leader in locking systems, will host the United Mitochondrial Disease Foundation. UMDF promotes research and education for the diagnosis, treatment and cure of mitochondrial disorders and provides support to affected individuals and families. For information, visit www.umdf.org. MAHLE , a leading supplier of engine technology to the auto industry, will highlight Tour de Cure of the American Diabetes Association. The Tour is a series of fund-raising cycling events held in 40 states nationwide to benefit the ADA. For information visit www.tour.diabetes.org.

, a leading supplier of engine technology to the auto industry, will highlight Tour de Cure of the American Diabetes Association. The Tour is a series of fund-raising cycling events held in 40 states nationwide to benefit the ADA. For information visit www.tour.diabetes.org. HELLA , an expert in lighting and electronic vehicle components, will host the Plymouth Community Arts Council. PCAC offers programs to supplement and enrich arts education in schools and sponsors summer concerts in downtown Plymouth. For information, visit www.plymoutharts.com.

, an expert in lighting and electronic vehicle components, will host the Plymouth Community Arts Council. PCAC offers programs to supplement and enrich arts education in schools and sponsors summer concerts in downtown Plymouth. For information, visit www.plymoutharts.com. Eview 360 , an international, award-winning design agency, is a supporter of the Walnut Lake Preschool and Developmental Kindergarten. The school works with young children to help them move on to a traditional school setting with greater capacities to learn, communicate and make friends. For information, please visit www.walnutlakepreschool.org.

, an international, award-winning design agency, is a supporter of the Walnut Lake Preschool and Developmental Kindergarten. The school works with young children to help them move on to a traditional school setting with greater capacities to learn, communicate and make friends. For information, please visit www.walnutlakepreschool.org. INFICON , in addition to its support for the United Way, is teaming up with AutoCom to host Fur Get Us Not Animal Rescue, a small volunteer-based pet rescue group operating in the Metro Detroit area. INFICON is a leading supplier of leak-detection equipment. For information, visit www.furgetusnotrescue.org.

, in addition to its support for the United Way, is teaming up with AutoCom to host Fur Get Us Not Animal Rescue, a small volunteer-based pet rescue group operating in the Metro Detroit area. INFICON is a leading supplier of leak-detection equipment. For information, visit www.furgetusnotrescue.org. AutoCom Associates is also hosting Detroit Little Libraries, which brings free books to transit stops, community centers and any areas where children congregate throughout the Detroit area. For information, visit detroitlittlelibraries.org/how-why.

This marks the 13th annual AutoCom Tech Crawl, an award-winning program that brings automotive journalists and suppliers together for a half-day series of press conferences and networking events.

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To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/auto-suppliers-give-back-to-their-metro-detroit-community-300283088.html

SOURCE AutoCom Associates
China's gross import and export value amounted to 19.93 trillion yuan in the first 10 months of 2015. (Photo : Getty Images)

Chinas import and export growth based on the figures released by the General Administration of Customs (GAC) prove to be quite a puzzle as several media outlets interpret it differently amid the countrys economic slowdown.



According to the data from GAC, imports increased to about 5.1 percent in May which CRI English considers as a significant growth from April's 4.1 percent.



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However, the same data may also mean that China is still far from being considered an economy in "full health," according to CNBC News.



On the Positive Side



According to Bloomberg, the newly released customs data shows stabilization in the exports from China, while imports experienced "the smallest drop since late 2014."



Talking to the outlet, Royal Bank of Scotland Plc chief greater China economist Harrison Hu explained that the worst is over and that the country may see better days from now on.



"The worst time for Chinese exports has passed," Hu said. "The quantity of exports actually showed a subdued increase. The yuan also depreciated against a basket of currencies, which supports exports."



Furthermore, Bloomberg Intelligence economists Tom Orlik and Fielding Chen believe that the "modest" drop in import and the continuing weakness of exports should be supported by the moderate depreciation of China's currency, the yuan.



"Looking forward, moderate depreciation of the yuan should provide a cushion for competitiveness," they wrote in the report. "With domestic infrastructure and real estate the only show in town, policy makers will be constrained to keep stimulus in place."



Echoing their opinion, research bureau chief economist of the People's Bank of China Ma Jun believes that the bank's choice to keep the main rate at a record low will help support the growth of the economy.



"The weakening momentum of global growth is our main reason to lower the forecast," he said. "A 10-percentage-point decline in exports can drag GDP growth down by about 1 percent."



The Negative



On the other hand, the lower export means there would be a surplus of supplies retained in the country.



This time, CNBC News noted, the trade surplus reached as much as $49.98 billion, a significantly higher amount compared to April's $45.56 billion.



Moreover, the first five months of this year saw annual exports at 7.3 percent lower and imports 10.3 percent down from their previous records.



So far, the market's reaction to this data has been "relatively muted," CNBC noted, which means that mainland growth is expected to be subdued in the months to come.



"China's export growth is likely to remain subdued going forward," Capital Economics China economist Julian Evans-Pritchard explained. "While we don't anticipate much more of a slowdown in global growth given that the worst is probably over for many emerging markets, we don't foresee a significant pick-up either."






ST. PETERSBURG, Fla., June 10, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Duke Energy has selected five Florida properties for participation in this year's Site Readiness Program to prepare them for business and industrial development.

The company's award-winning endeavor identifies high-quality industrial sites in its service areas then collaborates with county leaders and local economic development professionals to develop a strategy for providing water, sewer, natural gas and electricity to the parcels and help diversify Florida's economy.

The locations include:

The BKV Technology Center is located at the Brooksville Tampa Bay Airport and is owned by Hernando County. It features two active air traffic-controlled runways (7,000 and 5,000 feet) and a CSX branch line connecting the 2,400-acre technology center. The Site Readiness Program evaluated a 285-acre parcel adjacent to existing commercial and industrial tenants with the ability to accommodate buildings of nearly 800,000 square feet.

"The Duke Energy Site Readiness Program has provided Hernando County the opportunity to highlight and pre-qualify a large parcel at the BKV Technology Center, ensuring we are poised to act quickly upon any inquiries for future development. We truly appreciate this partnership and their commitment to economic development," said Len Sossoman, Hernando County administrator and director of Hernando County Office of Business Development.

The Sunny Oaks Technology Campus in Marion County is a 456-acre business park zoned for light industrial users. It is located on the southeast corner of Highway 318 and I-75, with approximately 1.5 miles of I-75 frontage. It is centrally located between Ocala and Gainesville and is approximately 15 minutes from the University of Florida.

"The Duke Energy Site Readiness Program helped our community identify and further advance the development of the 456-acre Sunny Oaks site," said Brett Barnes, director of business attraction for the Ocala/Marion County Chamber & Economic Partnership. "We now have extensive feedback from an internationally recognized site selection firm in McCallum Sweeney (MSC). With the knowledge gained, we are in a better position to continue to develop the site for future growth. We greatly appreciate this incredible opportunity Duke Energy presented to us. It was a pleasure working with them and the MSC team."

Central Florida Business Park in Osceola County is a 217-acre site strategically located just south of U.S. Highway 17-92 on Ham Brown Road and is equidistant from the Port of Tampa and Port Canaveral. The property is zoned for industrial use and is located just 10 miles from the new $200 million Florida Advanced Manufacturing Research Center, which is the first industry-led smart-sensor research facility in the nation.

"Participating in Duke Energy's Site Readiness Program was a tremendous asset for us," said Bill Martin, executive director of the Greater Osceola Partnership for Economic Prosperity. "Duke's program is crucial to the development of 'shovel ready' sites to help us meet our goal of balanced growth, and having solid information on available sites is the best way to stay in the competition for new business and industry."

The Airco Aviation Business Center is located in Pinellas County, adjacent to the St. Pete-Clearwater International Airport with more than 130 acres of property designated for aviation and light manufacturing uses. The site is strategically located less than two miles off of I-275 and is in the heart of the Tampa Bay region.

"This is a remarkable opportunity in Pinellas County for an expanding business seeking direct airside access to a growing airport and major roadways," said Mike Meidel, director of Pinellas County Economic Development. "With further analysis and the information gained through the Site Readiness Program, we will be able to better highlight the advantages of this location. This primary Gateway/Mid-County employment center is home to over 2,800 businesses, including Raymond James, Lockheed Martin, Jabil and Home Shopping Network. It is served by a regional workforce of nearly 2 million professionals."

The Smyder Property includes 94 acres in the City of Alachua within the Alachua County/Greater Gainesville region. The property is strategically located in close proximity to several key regional assets, including the Sid Martin Biotechnology Incubator, which has been ranked among the nation's top three biotechnology incubators by University Business Incubators Global since 2013. Also nearby are Progress Park, a biotech park with more than 30 companies; a logistics hub for major distribution centers; the University of Florida, a preeminent state university; and Santa Fe College, the nation's No. 1 community college as ranked by the Aspen Institute. Additionally, the Smyder Property is ideally located near several key transportation corridors including U.S. Highway 441 and I-75, as well as the Gainesville Regional Airport.

"We're excited about the opportunity to work with Duke Energy through its Site Readiness initiative to increase competitiveness in Florida and the Greater Gainesville region," said Susan Davenport, president/CEO of the Gainesville Area Chamber of Commerce. "We look forward to continued efforts to advance the chamber's mission to facilitate economic prosperity, business growth and community progress."

After each evaluation is completed, a site flier highlighting the property attributes is generated and shared with Duke Energy's business development team who help strategically market the sites nationwide to companies looking to expand or relocate their operations.

Coreslab Structures is an example of a Site Readiness economic development win for the state. The company's announcement in late 2015 included a $10 million investment and 55 new jobs. The city of Leesburg and Lake County made the development of the 470-acre park a top priority, and through their partnership with Duke Energy, the community was able to systematically prepare the site for the competitive consideration of expanding businesses. This site was the first in Florida to be evaluated through the Duke Energy Site Readiness Program.

"If you have ever wondered why a power provider might focus on site development, the answer becomes evident in the benefits this approach brings," said Marc Hoenstine, Duke Energy Florida's director of economic development. "Two of the top factors determining a community's success in attracting new business are having the right talent or labor force and having a site or building that meets a company's needs.

"Our CareerSource and educational partners are meeting the talent needs. Duke Energy is addressing the need for ready industrial sites in Florida. In the end, our efforts result in new jobs, new capital investment and a diversified industry base in the communities we serve," he said.

Duke Energy works with McCallum Sweeney Consulting, a nationally-known consulting firm in Greenville, S.C., to conduct site evaluations. McCallum Sweeney has been instrumental in locating many high-profile headquarters and industrial relocations and expansions throughout Florida and the U.S. In addition, Heidt Design, a Tampa, Fla.-based engineering firm, conducts buildable area studies and generates conceptual drawings to support each site evaluation.

Duke Energy's economic development efforts are perennially recognized by Site Selection magazine in the publication's annual list of "Top Utilities in Economic Development."

In 2015, Duke Energy helped to recruit more than $285 million in capital investment and more than 1,870 jobs to Florida. By the end of 2016, the Duke economic development team will have evaluated 12 properties throughout its Florida service territory representing three years' worth of site evaluations since the Florida program began in 2013.

So what's the secret to a winning record when it comes to growing the economy?

"Economic development is a team sport," said Alex Glenn, Duke Energy Florida state president. "We partner with our local economic development organizations, real estate and development community, counties and cities and the many other groups and companies influencing the economic development process. We are focused on supporting the cultivation and attraction of high-level, high-wage jobs and capital investment in the areas we serve, and our smart grid will provide clean and reliable energy service to help those companies continue to grow in our state."

For more information about Duke Energy's economic development programs, visit www.duke-energy.com/economic

Duke Energy FloridaDuke Energy Florida owns coal-fired and natural gas generation providing about 9,100 megawatts of owned electric capacity to approximately 1.7 million customers in a 13,000-square-mile service area.

With its Florida regional headquarters located in St. Petersburg, Fla., Duke Energy is one of the largest electric power holding companies in the United States. Its regulated utility operations serve approximately 7.4 million electric customers located in six states in the Southeast and Midwest, representing a population of approximately 24 million people. Its Commercial Portfolio and International business segments own and operate diverse power generation assets in North America and Latin America, including a growing portfolio of renewable energy assets in the United States.

Headquartered in Charlotte, N.C., Duke Energy is a Fortune 125 company traded on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol DUK. More information about the company is available at duke-energy.com.

The Duke Energy News Center serves as a multimedia resource for journalists and features news releases, helpful links, photos and videos. Hosted by Duke Energy, illumination is an online destination for stories about remarkable people, innovations, and community and environmental topics. It also offers glimpses into the past and insights into the future of energy.

Follow Duke Energy on Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram and Facebook.

Contact: Ana GibbsOffice: 727.820.472224-Hour: 800.559.3853

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To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/duke-energy-florida-selects-locations-for-2016-site-readiness-program-300283001.html

SOURCE Duke Energy
WASHINGTON, June 10, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- AJC presented its Moral Courage Award to two heroes, Michel Bacos and Tzvi Har-Nevo, who played vital roles in the rescue of more than 100 passengers and crew on a hijacked Air France jet 40 years ago.

"Tzvi and Michel stared down enemies and stood up for innocent people," said AJC Board of Governors member Steven Wisch, who presented the awards at the AJC Global Forum. "They risked their lives to save others. They displayed tremendous moral and physical courage in the face of daunting odds."

Bacos was the captain of Air France Flight 139 from Tel Aviv to Paris, seized on June 27, 1976, after a stop in Athens, by Palestinian and German terrorists who redirected the flight to Entebbe, Uganda. Bacos, along with the other 11 crew members, elected to stay with the Jewish hostages after the 148 non-Jewish passengers were released by the terrorists. The crew and the 94 Jewish passengers, most of them Israeli, were held hostage and threatened with death.

"Michel Bacos is a beacon of heroism and courage, and an inspiration to us all," states the Moral Courage Award inscription.

"My father strongly believed that he was only doing his duty as an Air France captain. When you take responsibility, you don't leave passengers behind," said Jean-Claude Bacos, the 92-year-old retired pilot's son, who traveled to Washington to accept the award on behalf of his father. He saluted the "incredible courage" of the Israeli commandos who risked their own lives to rescue the crew and passengers.

On July 4, those commandos flew more than 2,500 miles to Entebbe. The success of the mission hinged on the ability of the four Israeli planes to fly the 5,000 miles round-trip without being detected, and Har-Nevo, the lead navigator, was key to carrying out what was arguably the most daring rescue operation in Israeli military history

"We were staying low, flying through the night over the dark terrain of Africa" during the seven-hour flight from Israel, Har-Nevo recalled. "Our maps had not been updated in many years. There was no GPS. The only navigation tools I had were a compass and radar," he said. "I needed to harness every ounce of focus and skill to ensure that we didn't deviate from the planned route and from our scheduled timing."

The Israeli commandos spent about 40 minutes on the ground in Entebbe before safely returning to Israel with more than 102 freed hostages, making a refueling stop in Kenya. Three hostages were killed by hostile gunfire in the rescue operation. Another hostage, who was in a local hospital after falling ill during the hijacking ordeal, was later murdered by Ugandan forces.

Yonatan Netanyahu--brother of current Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who led the attack, was fatally wounded during the Israeli rescue mission. "It was a sad moment, a shocking moment," said Har-Nevo. "I still think of Yoni today, and remember his bravery, his heroism, and his moral courage."

The inscription on the Moral Courage Award to Har-Nevo states: "In grateful recognition of your courageous and heroic role in Operation Entebbe."

The two-day annual AJC Global Forum marked the 110th year of AJC. The event was the largest in the organization's history, attracting over 2,700 people from across the U.S. and over 70 countries, including key political figures, high-ranking diplomats, and hundreds of young people from around the world.

To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/operation-entebbe-heroes-receive-ajc-moral-courage-award-300283019.html

SOURCE American Jewish Committee
A Buddhist monk stands next to a glass case containing 5,000 human skulls belonging to Khmer Rouge victims as people gather to mark the 41st anniversary of the start of the regime, at the Choeung Ek memorial in Phnom Penh, Cambodia April 17, 2016. REUTERS

By Prak Chan Thul

PHNOM PENH (Reuters) - The first member of Cambodia's notorious Khmer Rouge regime jailed for the 1970s "Killing Fields" atrocities admitted on Thursday brutally murdering four unidentified Westerners and burning their bodies with piles of tyres.

Kaing Guek Eav, alias "Duch", is testifying at an international tribunal's long-running second case against the deputies of late Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot, whose four-year reign of terror in pursuit of a peasant utopia killed at least 1.8 million Cambodians.

Duch said "Brother Number Two" Nuon Chea had personally instructed him to execute four Westerners, including two Americans, at a school that was turned into a torture center, where more than 14,000 people were killed.

He said the foreigners were killed because they had trespassed into Cambodian waters. The identity of the foreigners remains unknown.

"They were interrogated and smashed per instruction," Duch told the court.

"They had to be burnt to ashes so there is no evidence that foreigners were smashed by us."

Most of the Khmer Rouge victims died of starvation, torture, exhaustion or disease in labor camps, or were bludgeoned to death during mass executions carried out across the country.

The majority of Cambodians alive now were born after the bloody era and are enjoying a peace and growth and embracing the capitalism the Khmer Rouge had deplored.

Nuon Chea and former head of state Khieu Samphan are on trial at the U.N.-backed court for war crimes and genocide. Now in their 80s and in declining health, they were sentenced to life imprisonment in 2014 for crimes against humanity.

Their complex case was divided into two to ensure justice was delivered while they were still alive. Two of their co-defendants, Ieng Sary and Ieng Thirith, are dead.

Pol Pot died in 1998.

Though other aging cadres have been indicted, there is little optimism a decade-old tribunal fraught with delays, political interference and funding problems can bring justice and closure to Cambodia.

Duch, 73, was jailed for life in 2010 for crimes against humanity. Earlier this week, he reiterated he was only acting on instructions from the Khmer Rouge's upper echelons and from Nuon Chea to execute prisoners.

"No form of punishment on earth would be fair for what they did to the four foreigners and millions of Cambodians and their family members," said Youk Chhang, director of the Documentation Center of Cambodia.

The Documentation Center, which has conducted research into the killings by the Khmer Rouge, lists 79 foreigners among those killed at the Tuol Sleng torture center, most of them Vietnamese and Thai but including four Americans, three French, two Australians, one Briton and one New Zealander.

Some of them were known to have strayed into Cambodian waters while sailing through the Gulf of Thailand.

(Editing by Martin Petty and Robert Birsel)
Syria's president Bashar al-Assad speaks to Parliament members in Damascus, Syria in this handout picture provided by SANA on June 7, 2016. SANA/Handout via

By Tom Miles

GENEVA (Reuters) - Syria's government has freed prisoners on condition that they join the army upon their release, the president of the opposition Syrian National Coalition told Reuters on Friday, citing reports from Adra Central Prison near Damascus.

"Preliminary reports indicate that between 100-150 prisoners have been released under this arrangement but taken directly to the front lines in Aleppo and Qamishli. It is believed the regime is inclined to take those released to the front lines with ISIS in particular to minimize chances of defection," Anas al-Abdah said.

On Thursday, U.N. Syria envoy Staffan de Mistura said he had information from Russia and Syria that "some substantial number of fighters appeared to have been released".

He suggested the release could be timed to coincide with the holy month of Ramadan or as a unilateral gesture by the government, but he was seeking more information to confirm that those released were "genuine fighters, political prisoners".

His office had no more information 24 hours later, and referred Reuters back to his previous statement.

Al-Abdah said those reportedly released were not political prisoners but mostly criminal convicts, especially those jailed for drug crimes.

"The Syrian National Coalition is deeply concerned by those reports and calls on the international community, particularly the U.N. Special Envoy and his team, to take a firm stance of the regimes hideous manoeuvres and blackmail tactics it typically uses with regards to the issue of detainees," he said.

The Syrian opposition has long demanded the release of detainees, especially women and children, and de Mistura has appointed a former Red Cross official, Eva Svoboda, to take charge of the issue.

The main opposition negotiating group, the High Negotiations Committee, has a list of 150,000 detainees, its spokesman, Salim al-Muslat, told Reuters in April.

(Reporting by Tom Miles, editing by Larry King)
Former British prime minister Tony Blair (C) and his wife Cherie speak with former British prime minister John Major (R) as they arrive for the funeral service of former prime minister Margaret Thatcher at St Paul's Cathedral in London in this file photo

BELFAST (Reuters) - Tony Blair and John Major warned on Thursday a vote to leave the European Union on June 23 would jeopardise the unity of the United Kingdom by undermining peace in Northern Ireland and bolstering the Scottish independence movement.

Speaking together in Northern Ireland, the two former British prime ministers, who both played important roles in the province's peace process in the 1990s, warned that unity was effectively on the ballot paper.

"Throw away the membership of Europe and don't be surprised if in the end, as a consequence, we accidentally throw away our union as well," Major, Conservative prime minister from 1990 to 1997, told students at the Ulster University in Londonderry.

"The most successful union in world history could be broken apart for good," he said.

Major warned that if Scotland votes to stay and the rest of the United Kingdom votes to leave, the pressure for a new referendum on Scottish independence "could prove to be uncontrollable and politically irresistible."

Scots rejected independence by 55-45 percent in a vote in 2014 but since then the Scottish National Party has gained further strength, taking 56 of the 59 seats representing Scotland in the national parliament in London in last May's national election.

"If the UK was outside the European Union I could well envisage a different result" he added.

Blair said the referendum could also undermine the 1998 Northern Ireland peace deal that ended three decades of killings between Catholic Irish nationalists who wanted the province to unite with Ireland and their Protestant rivals who wanted to keep it in the United Kingdom. Over 3,600 died in the conflict.

"If we were to leave on June 23, it would put ... Northern Ireland's future at risk, it would put our union at risk, it would be deeply damaging, a reckless course," said Blair, who oversaw the peace deal as Labour prime minister from 1997 to 2007.

Former U.S. President Bill Clinton, who also played a pivotal role in the Northern Ireland peace process, wrote in a guest column in the New Statesman magazine that the process had benefited from Britain's EU membership.

"I worry that the future prosperity and peace of Northern Ireland could be jeopardized if Britain withdraws," Clinton wrote.

Blair said the European Union and free travel and trade on the island of Ireland had been an important factor in securing the peace deal in 1998 and that it would be "profoundly foolish to play any form of risk with those foundations of stability."

Theresa Villiers, an opponent of EU membership who serves as Britain's minister for Northern Ireland, said the comments by Blair and Major were irresponsible.

"Whatever the result of the referendum, Northern Ireland is not going back to the troubles of its past and to suggest otherwise would be highly irresponsible," Villiers said.

(Writing by Freya Berry and Conor Humphries, editing by Stephen Addison)
The GM logo is seen at the General Motors Warren Transmission Operations Plant in Warren, Michigan October 26, 2015. REUTERS/Rebecca Cook

By Allison Martell

OSHAWA, Ontario (Reuters) - General Motors Co (NYSE: GM) said on Friday it will expand its Canadian engineering base to reach a total of about 1,000 jobs in Canada's auto-making province of Ontario as it boosts research spending on connected and driverless cars.

The company will also invest $10 million in its Kapuskasing, Ontario cold-weather facility, where it will conduct testing for new GM products, GM announced at its engineering center in Oshawa.

The gain of some 700 jobs was hailed as a big win for Canada's manufacturing heartland by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who arrived at the center with the head of GM Canada in a Chevy Bolt, the automaker's signature electric car.

"It's a perfect fit in so many ways, and I'm really glad that GM saw it that way too," Trudeau said.

Canadian automaking has been losing ground in recent years to Mexico, where costs are lower, and the country is struggling to fire up innovation and investment in its factory sector to offset the slump in its once-dominant energy sector.

The union representing the auto workers said the investment is good for the future of the sector in Canada.

"I'm incredibly optimistic, I mean this is a great news story for Canada. To me this shows General Motors' long term commitment to Canada," said Unifor National President Jerry Dias.

Ontario assembly plants produced nearly 15 percent of North American vehicles over the last five years and the auto industry contributes around $16 billion annually to the provinces GDP.

But growth in auto production in Mexico and the United States has outpaced that of Canada.

Mexico's auto production rose 5.6 percent while exports climbed 4.4 percent in 2015 over the prior year, the Mexican Auto Industry Association (AMIA) said in January. The auto sector makes up about 30 percent of Mexico's exports.

Ontario's provincial Liberal government and GM's Canadian president, Stephen Carlisle, have been promoting the province as a high-tech hub for connected-car development. Ontario is the first Canadian province to allow on-road testing of autonomous vehicles.

Still, Unifor's Dias said the driverless-car industry is still marginal, and will not replace manufacturing jobs in Ontario's existing plants.

Unifor's current contract with the Big Three automakers expires in the autumn, and the union fears GM's Oshawa plant risks being closed because it has not been promised new products. Dias warned this week "there will be a strike in 2016" if there is no new product in Oshawa.

(Additional reporting by Allison Lampert in Montreal, Writing by Andrea Hopkins, Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Phil Berlowitz)
Kenya's President Uhuru Kenyatta attends the opening ceremony of the 26th Ordinary Session of the Assembly of the African Union (AU) at the AU headquarters in Ethiopia's capital Addis Ababa, January 30, 2016. REUTERS/Tiksa Negeri

By Edmund Blair

KISUMU, Kenya (Reuters) - Kenyan politics is already taking a deadly toll more than a year before elections likely to pit rival dynasties against each other, raising fears of a new crisis less than a decade after ethnic violence killed 1,200 people.

With Kenya a valuable ally to the West in fighting militant Islam and a vital economic partner for neighboring nations, the government insists it can deliver a smooth poll and avoid a repeat of the bloodshed after the 2007 presidential election.

But police in Nairobi, sometimes pelted by rocks, have beaten and kicked protesters who have taken to the streets since late April to demand the scrapping of an election oversight body that they accuse of pro-government bias, a charge it denies.

In west Kenya, an opposition stronghold, at least four people have died, including a protester shot dead on Monday in Kisumu, a city still scarred by the post-2007 vote violence.

"We are really scared," said 30-year-old Julie Anyango, speaking near a Kisumu supermarket smashed up in this week's clashes. In the main street, the charred shell of a shop remains unrepaired from the flare-up of late 2007 and early 2008.

"It is a minefield waiting to explode," she said.

Kenya defied doomsayers in the last presidential election in 2013, when the result was contested but voting was calm.

But the August 2017 poll, when Kenyans will elect the president, parliament and county governors, poses a bigger challenge as this time, trust in institutions overseeing the vote has plunged and the county races are creating new conflicts.

How Kenya fares has broad consequences. Western nations fret about instability in a country fighting al Shabaab militants over the border in Somalia and at home. For neighboring states, disruptions in the biggest regional economy threaten transport links through the country to the Indian Ocean and investment.

The unrest at opposition protests against the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) has rattled Western ambassadors, who have publicly appealed for dialogue and condemned the use of excessive force by police.

"There is a genuine fear and genuine worry that things might turn nasty," said one of 12 envoys who signed the statements.

The 2017 vote is once again set to pitch President Uhuru Kenyatta against Raila Odinga, although neither has formally launched a campaign. Both will trumpet policy but they will ultimately rely on support from their ethnic groups.

"KENYA WILL BURN"

The Kenyatta-Odinga rivalry has long shaped much of Kenya's politics. Half a century ago, their fathers slugged it out before Jomo Kenyatta emerged as the first post-independence president. Oginga Odinga lost out.

The perceived injustice fires up Odinga's supporters now.

"Kenya will burn if Raila loses," said Wycliffe Otieno, 28, a motorbike taxi driver in Kisumu, where most people are from Odinga's Luo community, one of the larger of Kenya's more than 40 ethnic groups. Kenyatta's Kikuyu is the biggest.

Ethnic voting leads to a formula some Kenyans call the "tyranny of numbers"; the biggest ethnic groups dominate politics and the winner is expected to let his fellow tribesmen "eat" at the trough of public funds. Others fight for scraps.

The opposition say the vote cannot be credible unless the IEBC is reformed and its commissioners changed. The government says this must be done in parliament, where Kenyatta's Jubilee coalition dominates, in line with the constitution.

The president proposed on Wednesday a bipartisan parliamentary committee on the issue. Odinga's spokesman Dennis Onyango said Kenyatta had "at least" recognized the need for dialogue but it was not enough. "If our concerns are not taken on board we will resume protests," he said. [L8N1912RJ]

Battles for the 47 governorships are raising the stakes, pitting rivals including those from the same community against each other. The posts, first elected in 2013, are increasingly seen as valuable prizes with executive powers and a budget.

"This risks confrontation that is as much intra-ethnic and not necessarily just inter-ethnic," said the Western envoy.

Devolving power to the counties had aimed to share out development cash and powers more evenly across a nation of 45 million people. It now risks spreading violence too.

"Devolution is rapidly turning into a theater for violent local conflicts," wrote University of Nairobi professor Karuti Kanyinga in the Daily Nation newspaper.

Those seeking governorships may have an eye on the 2022 poll when Kenyatta, if he wins next year, will have completed a maximum two terms.

"In the year 2022, the governors are going to play a very important role in who becomes the president," said Wycliffe Oparanya, governor of Kakamega in west Kenya, who faces a challenge from a fellow member of the opposition CORD coalition.

"REASON WILL PREVAIL"

In 2013 Odinga accepted - if begrudgingly - a court ruling throwing out his petition against the result, and the government is confident 2017 will also be peaceful. "The voice of reason will prevail," said Munyori Buku, a director in the presidential communications unit.

But any flare-ups in counties could stretch security forces. Alongside this, public confidence has been eroded in the IEBC, which fumbled the 2013 vote when technology used to identify voters and transmit results to the center broke down.

An Ipsos Synovate poll published in September last year by the Standard newspaper - months before the opposition protests erupted - indicated just 43 percent of people had confidence in the IEBC. In 2013, it said 62 percent had "a lot of confidence".

Trust in the police and judiciary, two institutions subject to reforms under a 2010 constitution that sought to reshape the nation's politics and institutions, has also plummeted.

Opponents accuse police of using live rounds against protesters. Officials blame armed thugs.

Odinga, who disputed results of the races he fought in 2007 and 2013, may also have more to lose in 2017 when he will be 72 years old. That could make it his final run for the top job.

In addition, there seemed to be a real threat in 2013 that anyone provoking violence would be hauled before the International Criminal Court. But this has faded following the collapse of cases against Kenyatta and his deputy William Ruto who had been charged with orchestrating the post-2007 vote unrest. Both denied this.

"It is now beyond Kenyans, it is now beyond our leaders, the international community must save Kenya," said Audi Ogada, head of the Kisumu City Residents Voice and opposition activist.

As youths butchered members of rival ethnic groups with machetes and torched homes in 2007-08, foreign governments helped to restore order with a deal making Mwai Kibaki, a Kikuyu, president and Odinga prime minister, a post that has been scrapped since 2013.

But now the world is preoccupied with problems ranging from the migrant crisis to the Middle East conflict, and will also have to deal with a new U.S. president next year. That may leave little diplomatic energy to intervene in any Kenyan instability.

"The international political landscape has changed," said the envoy. "It could take longer for the international community to react if something were to go wrong again."

(Editing by David Stamp)
The logo of commodities trader Glencore is pictured in front of the company's headquarters in Baar, Switzerland, September 30, 2015. REUTERS/Arnd Wiegmann/File Photo

By Eric Onstad

LONDON (Reuters) - Executives at a metals warehouse firm owned by commodities group Glencore allegedly ordered workers to falsify documents in New Orleans to manipulate the zinc market, according to a complaint filed by zinc purchasers in a U.S. Federal Court.

On Monday, a U.S. judge in Manhattan allowed a private antitrust lawsuit to go forward against two units of Anglo-Swiss Glencore Plc. The suit accuses Glencore Ltd. and Pacorini Metals

USA of trying to monopolize the market for special high grade (SHG) zinc, driving up its price.

Her 62-page decision cited allegations made in the complaint filed by zinc purchasers alleging that Pacorini Metals USA, owned by Glencore, created false bills of lading, which are receipts given by transporters confirming shipment of goods.

U.S. District Judge Katherine Forrest in Manhattan said that the zinc purchasers had alleged sufficient facts for the case to go forward.

She said they had raised "a plausible story of market control" by the Glencore units in violation of U.S. antitrust law. Forrest did not rule on the merits of the antitrust claim.

The case will now proceed to the discovery phase, during which both sides will gather evidence to bolster their claims.

A Glencore spokesman said: "The company does not generally comment on ongoing class action cases and the allegations made therein."

The group had moved to dismiss the complaint on various legal grounds.

According to the 87-page complaint by the zinc purchasers, a confidential witness who worked in management for Pacorini said he was instructed by Pacorini executives in late summer or early autumn of 2012 to create falsified documents to mask high-volume movements of zinc.

"The falsified bills of lading contained false signatures, stated that the metals were picked up by truckers that 'never

existed', and sometimes contained incorrect tonnage amounts," the complaint said.

A second confidential witness who worked as a shipping and receiving clerk for Pacorini confirmed the account, the complaint added.

The first witness also said representatives of Glencore met with several other large trading companies in late summer or early autumn of 2012 and agreed to a synchronized and highly coordinated schedule of zinc warrant cancellations at warehouses in New Orleans, according to the complaint.

BACKLOGS AT WAREHOUSES

If true, the allegations would involve serious violations of regulations of the London Metal Exchange (LME), the world's oldest and biggest market for industrial metals, which registers a global network of metal warehouses. Forging documents would violate the LME warehouse agreement that all approved firms must sign.

The LME said it never confirms or comments on any of its investigations.

The judge had dismissed an earlier version of the proposed class-action lawsuit which also named Goldman Sachs Group Inc (NYSE: GS) and JPMorgan Chase & Co (NYSE: JPM) as defendants.

The lawsuit is among several in Manhattan in which investors and businesses accused banks and other defendants of conspiring to rig prices in financial and commodities markets.

The zinc purchasers allege in the complaint that Glencore sought to manipulate daily reports sent to the LME about warehouse movements of zinc.

Warehouse movements of metals can influence LME prices as investors see less or more availability of metal, according to traders.

The complaint also alleges that the false documents played a part in manipulating backlogs of zinc waiting to be delivered, which pushed up the zinc premium, a surcharge buyers pay for immediate delivery of physical metal.

"Plaintiffs allege that defendants efforts to manipulate these warehouse queues were successful and caused an increase in the MW (Midwest) SHG premium and ultimately caused them to pay higher prices for SHG zinc," the judge's ruling said.

The 139-year old LME is in the midst of wide-ranging reforms of its global network of over 600 approved warehouses in 37 locations after complaints by consumers paying rent to store metal while trapped in backlogs to get delivery of the material.

Under LME disciplinary procedures, a warehouse firm has 20 days to submit a defense to any charges and a hearing must take place no later than 20 working days after that.

Zinc is used to coat steel to protect against corrosion and is also used in batteries, castings and alloys such as brass.

It is according to the U.S. Geological Survey the world's fourth most widely produced metal by weight, trailing iron, aluminum and copper.

The case is In re: Zinc Antitrust Litigation, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, No. 14-03728.

(Additional reporting by Pratima Desai in London and Noeleen Walder in New York; Editing by Veronica Brown and Susan Fenton)
By Shihar Aneez

COLOMBO (Reuters) - A court in the Maldives jailed former vice president Ahmed Adeeb for 15 years for plotting to assassinate President Abdulla Yameen in an explosion on the president's launch last September, his lawyer said on Friday.

The judgment was delivered late on Thursday, four days after Adeeb was sentenced to 10 years on terrorism charges for possessing firearms. The trial was held behind closed doors due to security concerns, authorities said.

The secret trial was denounced by the opposition and is likely to raise international concern over the evidence used to convict Adeeb, once seen as a future leader of the Indian Ocean atoll whose popularity as a tourist paradise is at odds with its deeply troubled politics.

"He was sentenced to 15 years based on seven anonymous witnesses. The court said it can conclude that there was an IED (Improvised Explosive Device)," Moosa Siraj, Adeeb's lawyer, told Reuters.

Adeeb's two bodyguards were jailed on Thursday in the same case, each for 10 years. A former chief prosecutor was sentenced to 17 years in jail for conspiring to kidnap Yameen.

"Anyone who is a threat to Yameen's despotism is bound to be found guilty of terrorism charges. Maldives continues to be a travesty of justice," Ahmed Mahloof, spokesman for the Maldives United Opposition, told Reuters via a text message.

The Maldives had asked foreign agencies to examine the evidence of the alleged attempt on Yameen's life that took place just as his launch prepared to dock last Sept. 28.

Notably, the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation said it found "no conclusive evidence" of a bomb blast.

"The FBI report clearly said it was not an IED, while Saudi investigators' report said there was no evidence to say it was a bomb. We will definitely appeal against the verdict," said Siraj, the lawyer.

Yameen was unhurt in the blast, which blew off the rear doors of the launch, but his wife and two aides were injured.

Adeeb, 34, was arrested on Oct. 24 after an initial probe. Parliament impeached him on Nov. 5.

Adeeb's sentencing came a week after exiled former leader Mohamed Nasheed, now in exile in Britain, formed a united opposition group aimed at toppling Yameen.

Nasheed was himself jailed for 13 years on terrorism charges after a trial in 2015 that was widely denounced as politically motivated. He was allowed to travel to Britain for medical treatment and was last month granted refugee status by London.

(Editing by Douglas Busvine and Nick Macfie)
A view of the Goldman Sachs stall on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange July 16, 2013. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid

By Suzanne Barlyn

(Reuters) - New York state regulators have asked Goldman Sachs Group Inc (NYSE: GS) for details about probes into billions of dollars it raised in a bond offering for a scandal-hit Malaysian fund, a person familiar with the matter said on Friday.

The New York State Department of Financial Services, in a letter sent late Thursday, asked Goldman for a report on its in-house investigation into the matter, as well as others by U.S. and foreign regulators, said the person, who was not authorized to publicly discuss the matter.

The letter to Goldman concerns state investment fund 1Malaysia Development Bhd (1MDB).

A Goldman Sachs spokesman declined to comment.

The New York regulator has imposed a tight deadline for Goldman of June 14.

The fund at issue, which was founded by Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak in 2009 shortly after he came to office, is being investigated for money-laundering in at least six countries.

U.S. law enforcement officials are attempting to identify whether Goldman violated federal law after failing to flag a transaction in Malaysia, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday.

The probe concerns $3 billion raised by Goldman through a 1MDB bond offering. The focal point is whether the bank complied with the Bank Secrecy Act, the main U.S. anti-money laundering law.

Other information being sought by the New York regulator includes reports about suspicious financial activity that Goldman may have filed with U.S. and foreign authorities, and schedules for interviews or testimony by current or former Goldman employees by other regulators, the person familiar with the matter said.

(Reporting by Suzanne Barlyn; Editing by Richard Chang and Cynthia Osterman)
China said it will assert its rights over islands in the South China Sea while maintaining its compliance with international laws and the UNCLOS. (Photo : Reuters)

China called on to the Philippines to drop the international arbitration case filed against them and urged the archipelago to pursue the bilateral talks instead.



Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hong Lei urged Manila to drop the arbitration case filed at the Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague during a press conference on Wednesday.



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According to CCTV, Hong reiterated China's position regarding the international arbitration and emphasized that the conflict over the contested waters and isles in the South China Sea can only be resolved through bilateral talks.



China's Statement



"The door for the dialogue between China and the Philippines to resolve the South China Sea issue through dialogue and negotiation is always open," Hong told the press, adding that China is bent on settling the issue directly with other countries claiming sovereignty over the region.



According to him, China will settle disputes with the Philippines "through negotiation, on the basis of respecting historical facts and in accordance with international law."



However, the foreign affairs ministry said that China still refuses to participate in the arbitration case and in the forthcoming ruling from the court, calling for the Philippines to drop the case altogether.



"China urges the Philippines to immediately cease its wrongful conduct of advancing the arbitration proceedings, and return to the right path of settling the relevant disputes in the South China Sea . . . through bilateral negotiation with China," the foreign ministry said in a statement cited by the South China Morning Post.



The statement also indicated that China will not accept any third party's decision since the matter is an issue that should be resolved between the two parties involved.



New Philippine Government



China saw an opportunity to pursue the dialogue they have repeatedly failed to gain in the past with outgoing Philippine President Benigno Aquino III.



Now that the archipelago will be under a new administration, Beijing feels it is time to reopen the offer and see if the incoming president, Mindanao's tough-talking Rodrigo Duterte, will be able to give them what they want.



But China appears to be growing impatient as indicated by Wednesday's statement from the Chinese Foreign Ministry accusing the Philippines of ending any possibility of negotiation.



"Ever since its initiation of the arbitration, the Philippines has unilaterally closed the door of settling the South China Sea issue with China through negotiation, and has, while turning its back on the bilateral consensus regarding managing differences, taken a series of provocative moves that infringed upon China's legitimate rights and interests," the statement posted on Xinhua read.






MONROVIA (Reuters) - Sable Mining Chief Executive Officer Andrew Groves said on Friday that his indictment this week by a grand jury in Liberia in relation to a corruption investigation was politically motivated.

President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf last month ordered an inquiry into London AIM-listed Sable's unsuccessful attempt to acquire an iron ore concession in northern Liberia after the watchdog group Global Witness made accusations of wrong-doing.

"Andrew Groves was surprised to learn from media reports that a grand jury in Liberia appears to have indicted him on unspecified charges," Groves's public relations firm said, adding he had not been given a chance to respond to the charges.

Four people, including Parliament speaker Alex Tyler, chairman of Sirleaf's Unity Party Varney Sherman and deputy minister of Lands, Mines and Energy Ernest C.B. Jones, were indicted last month in that case along with Sable Mining.

They are accused of having used their positions to amend Liberia's public procurement and concessions law. They deny the charges and have been released on bail.

"Mr Groves believes that these allegations are politically motivated ahead of the imminent presidential elections, and are specifically designed to undermine the candidacy of Varney Sherman ... and Alex Tyler," Grove's statement read.

Liberia will hold a presidential election next year to replace President Sirleaf, who cannot run again due to a constitutional term limit.

Sherman has acknowledged that his law firm was employed by Sable Mining.

The indictment alleges Tyler requested and received $75,000 to help amend the concessions law.

(Reporting by James Harding Giahyue; Writing by Joe Bavier; Editing by David Gregorio)
A nurse takes care of children with disabilities at the Centre for the Protection of Infants, Children and Youth in Belgrade, Serbia June 8, 2016. REUTERS/Marko Djurica

BELGRADE (Reuters) - Serbia shuts disabled children away in institutions with substandard care and the European Union must make better treatment for them a prerequisite for joining its ranks, Human Rights Watch said on Wednesday.

A report by the rights watchdog said Serbia, which has begun negotiations to join the EU, has ratified United Nations conventions on the rights of children and of people with disabilities as well as against all forms of torture.

But its investigators found that parents of children born with disabilities were pressured to put them into state-run institutions where they were mostly neglected, got little schooling and were cut off from their families.

Serbia should aim to return children to their families if possible and support their inclusion in family and community life, where research has shown their mental and emotional development progresses much better, the report said.

"The European Commission, as part of monitoring compliance with the EU accession requirements, should hold Serbia to its obligations to respect the human rights of persons with disabilities as a precondition for EU membership," it said.

EU talks with Belgrade should stress "the absolute prohibition of neglect and discrimination against children with disabilities," it added.

Serbia's public health system is run down and has been short of funds since the former Yugoslavia's wars began in the early 1990s. In this traditional Balkan society, disabled children are often not understood and rejected by their own families.

The disabled make up about 80 percent of the children in the often understaffed care-giving centers, the report said, and 60 percent of the children in institutions do not attend school.

The report, citing studies of children returned to their families, urged Serbia to stop building these care-giving centers and establish a system of services for the children and their families to help integrate them into society.

"Children who were moved from an institution into family-based environment demonstrated signs of improvement in their intellectual functioning, attachment patterns, reduced signs of emotional withdrawal, and reduced prevalence of mental health conditions," it said.

The report recommended that EU member states make sure that respect for the U.N.'s Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities is "part of the accession requirements".

It called on international financial organizations including the World Bank to help with funding to organize "support services for families of children with disabilities and prevention of institutionalization of children".

Serbia opened accession negotiations with Brussels last December and hopes to wrap up the talks by 2019.

(Reporting by Ivana Sekularac; Editing by Tom Heneghan)
By Stephanie Nebehay and John Davison

GENEVA/BEIRUT (Reuters) - International aid convoys have reached two Syrian rebel-held towns near Damascus, marking the first delivery of food supplies to Daraya since 2012, after the government granted permission for the trips, the United Nations said on Friday.

Trucks from the United Nations and Syrian Arab Red Crescent brought a month's supply of food for 2,400 people to Daraya, Jens Laerke, spokesman of the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), said.

A separate inter-agency convoy entered Douma in rebel-held Eastern Ghouta near Damascus later on Friday, he said.

Any sense of relief inside Daraya was short-lived, however, because the food supplies would not last a month and the U.N. had underestimated the number of people living there at present, the local council and a monitoring group reported.

"They managed to get through all the checkpoints to get in there, deliver overnight, stock what needed to be stocked and provide food for the first time in years to people inside Daraya," Laerke told a news briefing.

Malnutrition has been reported in Daraya, which is only 12 km (7 miles) from Damascus, where a first convoy with non-food supplies was allowed to enter on June 1.

U.N. mediator Staffan de Mistura, speaking to reporters on Thursday, said President Bashar al-Assad's government had approved U.N. land convoys to 15 of 17 government-besieged areas in June. Air drops remain an option if the convoys did not move, he said.

Hussam Aala, Syria's ambassador to the U.N. in Geneva, told Reuters on Friday: "Discussions are still going on about one pending location. The rest were all approved."

Access to al Waer in Homs province was still under discussion, he said.

Health and hygiene items for Daraya's estimated population of 4,000 were also delivered overnight and will be distributed by Red Crescent workers, Laerke said.

"However of course we call for unconditional, unimpeded and sustained access to all people in need," he said, noting that 4.6 million people are trapped in besieged and hard-to-reach areas.

Some 1.9 tonnes of medicines for chronic diseases such as hypertension and diabetes as well as antibiotics, from the World Health Organization were on that convoy, spokesman Tarik Jasarevic said.

'SUPPLIES INSUFFICIENT'

However, the government did not approve delivery of three burns kits that would have been enough to treat about 30 people with dressings and pain killers, rejecting them from the approved list, Jasarevic said.

There was also anger and frustration at the insufficient amount of food aid delivered, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported. The British-based group tracks the war using sources on the ground.

It cited the Daraya local council as saying the supplies brought in would not last two weeks. The council says the population of Daraya is over 8,000, - more than double the U.N. estimates.

Council spokesman Hossam Ayyash said it was unclear how the aid, which would cater for only a quarter of the besieged population, would be distributed.

"Of course we are grateful to the team that brought in the supplies, but unfortunately they are not sufficient. We don't know what decision will be taken (on how to distribute the aid), but it won't be able to be shared out among everyone who's here," Ayyash said.

On Friday government helicopters stepped up their barrel bombing of Daraya, the Observatory and local council said.

(Editing by Robin Pomeroy and Hugh Lawson)
By Elias Biryabarema

KAMPALA (Reuters) - Uganda plans to withdraw by the end of the year troops involved in an operation to hunt down Lord's Resistance Army rebels in Central African Republic, a military spokesman said on Friday.

Uganda leads a U.S.-supported African Union regional task force tracking the LRA rebels, who are notorious for mutilating civilians and kidnapping children for use as fighters and sex slaves.

Most of its 2,500 troops are in eastern Central African Republic. A smaller contingent is based in South Sudan.

Spokesman Paddy Ankunda said the withdrawal did not mean Uganda was ending the operation. But while the African Union favored keeping the Ugandan troops in place, he said, Kampala had been discouraged by insufficient international support.

"There seems to be no serious goodwill on the part of international actors or stakeholders to participate or contribute toward the ending of the LRA problem," he said.

He added that Uganda had not yet considered an African Union request to maintain its troops in Central African Republic.

The International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants for the LRA's messianic leader, Joseph Kony, and other senior commanders.

However, the brutal rebel movement was known to relatively few outside Central Africa until KONY 2012, a highly successful social media campaign, raised international awareness about the reclusive warlord four years ago.

Abdoulaye Batilly, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon's special representative in Central Africa, acknowledged the strain on Ugandan resources, but warned the withdrawal must not allow for a rebel resurgence.

"With Uganda wanting to pull out, we must create conditions so that a vacuum is not created ... And we're discussing this with everyone, the European Union, the USA, and of course the government of CAR," he said, speaking in Central African Republic's capital, Bangui.

Though originally from northern Uganda, the LRA was driven out of the country by a military offensive a decade ago. Today, its fighters roam a poorly policed area straddling the borders between Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of Congo and South Sudan.

Those countries are also meant to contribute to the task force, but separate conflicts in Central African Republic and South Sudan have meant that the bulk of the operation has fallen to Ugandan troops.

General David Rodriguez, commander of the U.S. military's Africa Command, estimated in March that less than 200 LRA fighters remained.

"To defeat your enemy does not mean to kill all of them. It means to deny them the means to make war. And that's where we are with the LRA," Ankunda said.

However, finishing the group off once and for all has proved difficult. Its fighters continue to launch attacks on civilians, nearly 350 of whom have been abducted by the group this year, according to the LRA Crisis Tracker, which documents rebel attacks.

(Reporting by Elias Biryabarema; Additional reporting by Crispin Dembassa-Kette in Bangui; Writing by Makini Brice and Joe Bavier; Editing by Angus MacSwan)
UNITED STATES

SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION

Washington, D.C. 20549

FORM 10-Q

[X] QUARTERLY REPORT UNDER SECTION 13 OR 15(d) OF THE SECURITIES EXCHANGE

ACT OF 1934

For the quarter ended April 30 2016

[ ] TRANSITION REPORT UNDER SECTION 13 OR 15(d) OF THE SECURITIES EXCHANGE

ACT OF 1934

Commission file number:000-54649

DARKSTAR VENTURES, INC.

(Exact name of registrant as specified in its charter)

Nevada 26-0299456 (State of incorporation) (I.R.S. Employer Identification No.)

7 ELIEZRI STREET

JERUSALEM , ISRAEL

(Address of principal executive offices)

PHONE 972-544592892

Check whether the issuer (1) filed all reports required to be filed by Section 13 or 15(d) of the Exchange Act during the past 12 months (or for such shorter period that the registrant was required to file such reports), and (2) has been subject to such filing requirements for the past 90 days.

Yes [ X ] No [ ]

Indicate by check mark whether the registrant is a large accelerated filer, an accelerated filer, a non-accelerated filer, or a smaller reporting company. See definitions of  large accelerated filer,  accelerated filer  and  smaller reporting company  in Rule 12b-2 of the Exchange Act. (Check one):

Large accelerated filer [ ] Accelerated filer [ ] Non-accelerated filer [ ] Smaller reporting company [ X] (Do not check if a smaller reporting company)

Indicate by check mark whether the registrant is a shell company (as defined in Rule 12b-2 of the Exchange Act).

Yes [x ] No

As of June 10 2016 ,647,345,000 shares of common stock, par value $0.0001 per share, were issued and outstanding





DARKSTAR VENTURES, INC.

FORM 10-Q

QUARTER ENDED APRIL 30 2016

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page PART I Item 1. Financial Statements 2 Item 2. Management's Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations 3 Item 3 Quantitative and Qualitative Disclosures About Market Risk 5 Item 4 Controls and Procedures 5 PART II Item I. Legal proceedings 6 Item 1a Risk Factors 6 Item 2. Unregistered Sales of Equity Securities and Use of Proceeds 6 Item 3. Defaults Upon Senior Securities 6 Item 4. Mine Safety Disclosures 6 Item 5. Other Information 6 Item 6. Exhibits 6 Signatures 7

1







PART I FINANCIAL INFORMATION

Item 1. Financial Statements.

DARKSTAR VENTURES, INC.

INTERIM CONSOLIDATED FINANCIAL STATEMENTS

AS OF APRIL 30, 2016

IN U.S. DOLLARS

UNAUDITED

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page CONDENSED CONSOLIDATED FINANCIAL STATEMENTS: Condensed Consolidated Balance sheets as of April 30, 2016 and July 31, 2015 F-1 Condensed Consolidated Statements of Comprehensive Loss for the nine months and three months ended April 30, 2016 and 2015 F-2 Condensed Consolidated Statements of stockholders' deficit for the period of nine months ended April 30, 2016 and 2015 F-3 Condensed Consolidated Statements of cash flows for the nine months ended April 30, 2016 and 2105 F-4 Notes to interim financial statements F-5

2

DARKSTAR VENTURES, INC.

CONDENSED CONSOLIDATED BALANCE SHEETS

April 30, July 31, 2016 2015 Unaudited Audited Assets CURRENT ASSETS: Cash and cash equivalents $ 54,240 $ 215 Other current assets 39,932 270 Total current assets 94,172 485 Total assets $ 94,172 $ 485 Liabilities and Stockholders Deficit CURRENT LIABILITIES: Accounts payables and accrued expenses $ 4,965 $ 1,419 Loan payable  related party  203,681 Total current liabilities 4,965 205,100 LONG TERM LOAN 139,499  STOCKHOLDERS' DEFICIT: Preferred stock, 5,000,000 shares authorized, par value $0.0001, none issued and outstanding

Common shares par value $0.0001:

Authorized: 2,000,000,000 shares and 500,000,000 shares at April 30, 2016 and July 31, 2015, respectively.

Issued and outstanding: 647,345,000 shares and 107,145,000 shares at April 30, 2016 and July 31, 2015, respectively. 64,734 10,714 Additional paid-in capital 511,116 24,936 Accumulated other comprehensive income (1,777 )  Receivables on account of shares issued (150,000 ) Accumulated deficit (474,365 ) (240,265 ) Total Stockholders Equity (Deficit) (50,292 ) (204,615 ) Total liabilities and Stockholders Equity (Deficit) $ 94,172 $ 485

The accompanying notes are an integral part of the consolidated financial statements.

F-1

DARKSTAR VENTURES, INC.

CONDENSED CONSOLIDATED STATEMENTS OF COMPREHENSIVE LOSS

Nine months ended Three months ended April 30 April 30 2016 2015 2016 2015 (Unaudited) (Unaudited) General and administrative expenses $ 216,273 $ 35,423 $ $ 173,970 $ 11,327 Operating loss (216,273 ) (35,423 ) (173,970 ) (11,327 ) Interest expense, net (16,050 ) (5,948 ) (8,257 ) (2,127 ) Net loss $ (232,323 ) $ (41,371 ) $ (182,227 ) $ (13,454 ) Other comprehensive loss - Foreign currency loss (1,777 )  (2,271 )  Comprehensive loss $ (234,100 ) $ (41,371 ) $ (184,498 ) $ (13,454 ) Basic and diluted net loss per common share $ (0.00 ) $ (0.00 ) $ (0.00 ) $ (0.00 ) Weighted average number of common shares outstanding during the period  basic and diluted 138,689,526 107,145,000 203,180,556 107,145,000

The accompanying notes are an integral part of the consolidated financial statements.

F-2

DARKSTAR VENTURES, INC.

STATEMENTS OF CHANGES IN SHAREHOLDERS' EQUITY (DEFICIT)

Common Stock, $0.0001 Par Value Receivables on account of Foreign currency translation Additional paid-in Accumulated Total Stockholders' Shares Amount shares issued adjustments Capital deficit Equity (deficit) BALANCE AT AUGUST 1, 2015 (audited) 107,145,000 $ 10,714 $  $  $ 24,936 $ (240,265 ) $ (204,615 ) Issuance of shares in exchanges for conversion of loan 270,000,000 27,000 243,000 270,000 Issuance of shares for services 120,200,000 12,020 108,180 120,200 Receivables on account of shares issued 150,000,000 15,000 (150,000 ) 135,000  Foreign currency translation adjustments (1,777 ) (1,777 ) Net loss for the nine months ended April 30, 2016  (234,100 ) (234,100 ) BALANCE AT APRIL 30, 2016 (Unaudited) 647,345,000 $ 64,734 (150,000 ) $ (1,777 ) $ 511,116 $ (474,365 ) $ (50,292 )

Common Stock, $0.0001 Par Value Foreign currency translation Additional paid-in Accumulated Total Stockholders' Shares Amount adjustments Capital deficit Equity (deficit) BALANCE AT AUGUST 1, 2014 (audited) 107,145,000 $ 10,714  $ 24,936 $ (176,854 ) $ (141,204 ) Net loss for the nine months ended April 30, 2015 (41,371 ) (41,371 ) BALANCE AT APRIL 30, 2015 (Unaudited) 107,145,000 $ 10,714  $ 24,936 $ (218,225 ) $ (182,575 )

The accompanying notes are an integral part of the consolidated financial statements.

F-3

DARKSTAR VENTURES, INC.

CONDENSED CONSOLIDATED STATEMENTS OF CASH FLOWS

Nine months ended April 30 2016 2015 (Unaudited) CASH FLOWS FROM OPERATING ACTIVITIES: Net loss $ (234,100 ) $ (41,371 ) Adjustments required to reconcile net loss to net cash used in operating activities: Accrued interest on loans from related party 12,621  Accrued interest on long term loan 6,556 Share based compensation 120,200  Increase in prepaid expenses and other receivables (39,662 )  Increase in other account payables 3,546 16,248 Net cash used in operating activities (130,839 ) (25,123 ) CASH FLOWS FROM INVESTING ACTIVITIES:   CASH FLOWS FROM FINANCING ACTIVITIES: Proceeds from long term loan 132,943  Proceeds from loan Payable  24,980 Proceeds from loan Payable  related party 60,080  Repayments of loan related party (6,382 )  Net cash provided by financing activities 186,641 24,980 INCREASE (DECREASE) IN CASH AND CASH EQUIVALENTS 55,802 (143 ) EFFECT OF EXCHANGE RATE CHANGES (1,777 )  CASH AND CASH EQUIVALENTS AT BEGINNING OF PERIOD 215 556 CASH AND CASH EQUIVALENTS AT END OF PERIOD $ 54,240 $ 413

The accompanying notes are an integral part of the consolidated financial statement

F-4

DARKSTAR VENTURES, INC.

NOTES TO CONDENSED CONSOLIDATED FINANCIAL STATEMENTS (unaudited)

NOTE 1- GENERAL

Darkstar Ventures, Inc. (the Company or we) was incorporated on May 8, 2007 under the laws of the State of Nevada.

The Company established a wholly-owned subsidiary in Israel, Bengio Urban Renewals Ltd ("Bengio")., to focus its limited resources in the area of real estate development, particularly focusing on the urban renewal market in Israel.

The Companys activities are subject to significant risks and uncertainties, including failing to secure additional funding to operationalize the Companys current business plan.

NOTE 2 - INTERIM FINANCIAL STATEMENTS

The accompanying unaudited interim consolidated financial statements as of April 30, 2016 and for the nine months then ended, have been prepared in accordance with accounting principles generally accepted in the United States relating to the preparation of financial statements for interim periods. Accordingly, they do not include all the information and footnotes required for annual financial statements. In the opinion of management, all adjustments (consisting of normal recurring accruals) considered necessary for a fair presentation have been included. Operating results for the nine months ended April 30, 2016 are not necessarily indicative of the results that may be expected for the year ending July 31, 2016.

The July 31, 2015 Condensed Balance Sheet data was derived from audited financial statements, but does not include all disclosures required by accounting principles generally accepted in the United States of America. These financial statements should be read in conjunction with the financial statements and notes thereto contained in the Companys Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended July 31, 2015.

NOTE 3 - SIGNIFICANT ACCOUNTING POLICIES

The significant accounting policies applied in the annual financial statements of the Company as of July 31, 2015, are applied consistently in these financial statements.

NOTE 4 - GOING CONCERN

The Company has not commenced planned principal operations. The Company had an accumulated deficit of $474,365 as of April 30, 2016. These factors raise substantial doubt about the Companys ability to continue as a going concern.

There can be no assurance that sufficient funds required during the next year or thereafter will be generated from operations or that funds will be available from external sources such as debt or equity financings or other potential sources. The lack of additional capital resulting from the inability to generate cash flow from operations or to raise capital from external sources would force the Company to substantially curtail or cease operations and would, therefore, have a material adverse effect on its business. Furthermore, there can be no assurance that any such required funds, if available, will be available on attractive terms or that they will not have a significant dilutive effect on the Companys existing stockholders.

The accompanying financial statements do not include any adjustments related to the recoverability or classification of asset-carrying amounts or the amounts and classification of liabilities that may result should the Company be unable to continue as a going concern.

F-5

DARKSTAR VENTURES, INC.

NOTES TO CONDENSED CONSOLIDATED FINANCIAL STATEMENTS (unaudited)

NOTE 5 - NEWLY ISSUED ACCOUNTING PRONOUNCEMENTS:

No new accounting standards have been adopted since the Companys Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended July 31, 2015 was filed.

NOTE 6 - COMMON SHARES:

On February 16,2016, the Board of Directors of the Company and the holder of a majority of the issued and outstanding shares of common stock of the Company (the "Majority Consenting Stockholder"), together, executed a joint written consent to authorize and approve a Certificate of Amendment to the Company's Articles of Incorporation to increase the authorized capital stock of the Company from 505,000,000 shares (the "Capital Stock"), consisting of 500,000,000 shares of common stock, par value $0.0001 (the "Common Stock") and 5,000,000 shares of preferred stock,par value $0.0001 (the "Preferred Stock"), to an authorized capital stock of the Corporation of 2,005,000,000 shares consisting of 2,000,000,000 shares of Common Stock and five million 5,000,000 shares of Preferred Stock. It was also decided that the Board of Directors shall have the authority to establish one or more series of Preferred Stock and fix relative rights and preferences of any series of Preferred Stock, without any further action or approval of our stockholders.

On April 14, 2014 the Board of Directors of the Company approved the issuance of 270,000,000 restricted shares of common stock of the Company to Avraham Bengio, Company's a majority of the issued and outstanding shares of common stock of the Company and its Sole Director, CEO and CFO in consideration for the conversion of $270,000 loan granted to the Company. In addition, the Board of Directors of the Company has also decided to issue to Avraham Bengio, 120,000,000 restricted shares of the Company, as compensation for services in the amount of $120,000. In addition, the Board of Directors of the Company approved the grant of 200,000 restricted shares of the Company to a service provider as compensation for consulting services in the amount of $200.

The Board of Directors of the Company has also approved on April 14, 2016 the issuance of 150,000,000 restricted shares under a subscription agreement with investors for total consideration of $150,000 . The amounts for such subscription are receivable within sixty days.

NOTE 7 - LONG TERM LOAN:

On February 28,2016, Bengio and TCSM INC signed a loan agreement according to which TCSM would grant the Company a loan of up to $256,016 (NIS 1,000,000) in two installments of which $132,943 (NIS 500,000) was received as of the balance sheet date. According to the agreements TCSM and the Company had the right to reduce the loan amount of the second installment by 50% so that the total loan amount will not exceed NIS 750,000. The loan bears interest at an annual rate of 25%. The principal and interest will be repaid at March 1, 2019.

On February 28, 2016 TCSM INC assigned its rights in the above loan agreement to a third party. The loan is secured by Avraham Bengio, the Company's majority holder of the issued and outstanding shares of common stock and its Sole Director, CEO and CFO in an amount of up to $172,826 (NIS 650,000).

F-6







Item 2. Management  s Discussion and Analysis or Plan of Operations.

As used in this Form 10-Q, references to Darkstar ", the  Company,  we,  our  or  us  refer to Darkstar, unless the context otherwise indicates.

Forward-Looking Statements

The following discussion should be read in conjunction with our unaudited financial statements, which are included elsewhere in this Form 10-Q (the  Report ). This Report contains forward-looking statements which relate to future events or our future financial performance. In some cases, you can identify forward-looking statements by terminology such as  may,  should,  expects,  plans,  anticipates,  believes,  estimates,  predicts,  potential  or  continue  or the negative of these terms or other comparable terminology. These statements are only predictions and involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties, and other factors that may cause our or our industry  s 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.

Corporate Background and Business Overview

We were incorporated on May 8, 2007 in the State of Nevada. We are a development stage company that was originally established to offer eco-friendly health and wellness products to the general public via the internet. As we had previously disclosed, on November 20, 2012, we entered into a binding letter of intent (LOI) with Real Aesthetic, Inc., a Nevada corporation (Real Aesthetic), to acquire all of the issued and outstanding shares of common stock in exchange for common stock of the Company. The closing of the transactions contemplated by the LOI was subject to the completion of the due diligence investigation of both parties, execution and delivery of documentation for the transaction, consents from the respective boards of directors of both companies and any third parties and the delivery of audited financial statements by Real Aesthetic. Subsequently, we decided not to pursue the contemplated transaction with Real Aesthetic. The Company has since abandoned its business plan.

The Registrant has recently determined, through its recently established, wholly-owned new Israeli subsidiary, Bengio Urban Renewals Ltd to focus its limited resources in the area of real estate development, particularly focusing on the urban renewal market in Israel. We believe, based upon the current real estate market in Israel, that urban renewal projects present an opportunity for us to generate revenues and profits, which we have never experienced since our inception. The basis for our belief is that in several major Israeli cities, there is virtually no more room to grow. As a result, several municipal governments have allowed older buildings to be renovated, thereby giving their respective cities the opportunity to develop new apartments to be added to or replacing existing buildings.

Additionally, municipalities have express their concern that many buildings constructed before 1980 will be unable to withstand earthquakes. In Israel, very few apartment buildings are owned by a single person or entity and since the majority of apartments within buildings are privately owned, the burden to renovate buildings in order to render them safer in the event of a major earthquake primarily falls on the multiple owners of various apartment buildings and complexes.

Tama 38 is an Israeli national zoning plan whereby a contractor assumes the responsibility of renovating an apartment building. In exchange for covering all costs of renovations, securing building permits and paying requisite taxes, the contractor has is granted the right to build additional floors to the existing building and sell the apartments built on these floors.

The apartment owners benefit by receiving a modernized building, strengthened against earthquakes, as well as the additional apartments added to their buildings. In some cases balconies, storage rooms, parking spaces and elevators may be added as well, further enhancing the buildings value.

PinuiBinui projects are defined as development where the residents of apartments are temporarily evacuated so that the buildings may be demolished and rebuilt. The tenants then return to new apartments in the newly finished and renovated building. The contractor pays all costs for demolition, construction, relocating apartment owners and renting their temporary homes during construction. In exchange, the contractor adds new apartments in the building which are sold to generate profit.

3

As with Tama 38, the value of the apartments in the building is increased thereby benefitting the owners and the tenants return to a new, often larger and safer apartment in a building often with more amenities.

Our management believes that this convergence of several current market factors should potentially provide an excellent opportunity for the Registrant and its shareholders. Nevertheless, there can be no assurance that we will be successful in our new endeavors or that we will have the necessary capital to fulfill our new business plan.

On February 16, 2016, the Board of Directors of the Company and the holder of a majority of the issued and outstanding shares of common stock of the Company (the "Majority Consenting Stockholder"), together, executed a joint written consent to authorize and approve a Certificate of Amendment to the Company's Articles of Incorporation to increase the authorized capital stock of the Company from 505,000,000 shares (the "Capital Stock"), consisting of 500,000,000 shares of common stock, par value $0.0001 (the "Common Stock") and 5,000,000 shares of preferred stock, par value $0.0001 (the "Preferred Stock"), to an authorized capital stock of the Corporation of 2,005,000,000 shares consisting of 2,000,000,000 shares of Common Stock and five million 5,000,000 shares of Preferred Stock. It was also decided that the Board of Directors shall have the authority to establish one or more series of Preferred Stock and fix relative rights and preferences of any series of Preferred Stock, without any further action or approval of our stockholders.

On April 14, 2014 the Board of Directors of the Company approved the issuance of 270,000,000 restricted shares of common stock of the Company to Avraham Bengio, Company's a majority of the issued and outstanding shares of common stock of the Company and its Sole Director, CEO and CFO in consideration for the conversion of $270,000 loan granted to the Company. In addition, the Board of Directors of the Company has also decided to issue to Avraham Bengio, 120,000,000 restricted shares of the Company, as compensation for accrued salary in the amount of $120,000. In addition, the Board of Directors of the Company approved the grant of 200,000 restricted shares of the Company to a service provider as compensation for accrued consulting services in the amount of $200.

The Board of Directors of the Company has also approved on April 14, 2016 the issuance of 150,000,000 restricted shares under a subscription agreement with investors for total consideration of $150,000 . The amounts for such subscription have not yet received to date.

Employees

Other than our current director and officer, we have no employees April 30 2016 .

Transfer Agent

We have engaged Vstock Transfer LLC, 77 Spruce Street, Suite 201, Cedarhurst, NY, 11516 as our stock transfer agent. Their telephone number is (212) 828-8436 and their fax number is (646) 536-3179. The transfer agent is responsible for all record-keeping and administrative functions in connection with our issued and outstanding common stock.

Results of Operations

Results of operations for the nine months ended April 30 2016

The Company did not generate any revenues from operations for the nine months ended April 30 2016

During the nine months ended April 30 2016 the operating expenses and the net loss was $216,273 and $232,323 respectively. The operating expenses and net loss was primarily the result of professional fees, legal, auditing and other consulting fees associated with SEC compliance.

We expect to continue to incur significant operating expenses. As a result, we will need to generate significant revenues to achieve profitability, which may not occur. Even if we do achieve profitability, we may be unable to sustain or increase profitability on a quarterly or annual basis in the future.

4

Liquidity and Capital Resources

Our cash balance as of April 30 2016 was $54,240. The Company is currently seeking to raise additional equity thru private placements to enable the implementation of its current TAMA 38 business plan . The Company issued 150,000,000 restricted common stock for gross proceeds of $150,000 . The funds from the investors are a receivable as of today and have not yet been advanced by the investors .

Going Concern Consideration

Our auditors have issued an opinion on our annual financial statements which includes a statement describing our going concern status. This means that there is substantial doubt that we can continue as an on-going business for the next twelve months unless we obtain additional capital to pay our bills and meet our other financial obligations. This is because we have not generated any revenues and no revenues are anticipated until we begin marketing the product which cannot be guaranteed.

Off-Balance Sheet Arrangements

We do not have any off-balance sheet arrangements that have or are reasonably likely to have a current or future effect on our financial condition, changes in financial condition, revenues or expenses, results of operations, liquidity, capital expenditures or capital resources that are material to investors.

Item 3. Quantitative and Qualitative Disclosures About Market Risk.

A smaller reporting company, as defined by Item 10 of Regulation S-K, is not required to provide the information required by this item.

Item 4. Controls and Procedures

Evaluation of Disclosure Controls and Procedures

The Company's Chief Executive Officer, who is also the Chief Financial and Accounting Officer, evaluated the effectiveness of the Company's disclosure controls and procedures (as defined in Exchange Act Rules 13a-15(e) and 15d-15(e)) as of the end of the period covered by this quarterly report. In designing and evaluating the disclosure controls and procedures, management recognizes that any controls and procedures, no matter how well designed and operated, can provide only reasonable assurance of achieving the desired control objectives, and our management is required to apply their judgment in evaluating the cost-benefit relationship of possible controls and procedures. Based upon that evaluation, the CEO concluded that, as of April 30 2016 , the Companys disclosure controls and procedures were not effective to provide reasonable assurance that information required to be disclosed in the reports that the Company files or submits under the Exchange Act is recorded, processed, summarized and reported within the time periods specified in the applicable rules and forms, and that it is accumulated and communicated to management, including the CEO and CFO, as appropriate, to allow timely decisions regarding required disclosure. As a result of this evaluation, management identified the following deficiencies, which are deemed to be material weaknesses:

 Due to the size of the Company, there is a lack of segregation of duties, which would allow for proper processing, review and approval of transactions and events that have an impact on the Companys financial results.  The Company lacks a system to allow for the review and monitoring of internal control over financial reporting, which would mitigate concerns related to managements override of controls.  The Company lacks an independent Audit Committee, which can provide oversight of management and the financial reporting process.

5

Changes in Internal Control over Financial Reporting

There were no changes in our internal controls over financial reporting for the nine months ended April 30 2016 that have materially affected or are reasonably likely to materially affect our internal control over financial reporting.

PART II

OTHER INFORMATION

Item A . Legal Proceedings

None

Item 1 A. Risk Factors

A smaller reporting company, as defined by Item 10 of Regulation S-K, is not required to provide the information required by this item.

Item 2. Unregistered Sales of Equity Securities and Use of Proceeds.

During the quarter ended April 30 2016, the Company did not issue any shares of unregistered common stock.

Item 3. Defaults Upon Senior Securities.

None

Item 4. Mine Safety Disclosures

None

Item 5. Other Information.

None

Item 6. Exhibits

31.1 and 31.2 Certification of Principal Executive and Financial Officer pursuant to Section 302 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act 32 Certification of Principal Executive and Financial Officer pursuant to Section 906 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act

6

SIGNATURES

Pursuant to the requirements of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, the registrant has duly caused this report to be signed on its behalf by the undersigned thereunto duly authorized.

DARKSTAR VENTURES INC

June 10 2016

/s/ Avraham Bengio AvramBengio CEO / Director and Internal Accounting Officer

7

Exhibit 31.1

PRINCIPAL EXECUTIVE OFFICER CERTIFICATION

I, Avraham Bengio certify that:

(1) I have reviewed this quarterly report on Form 10-Q of Darkstar Ventures Inc

(2) Based on my knowledge, this report does not contain any untrue statement of a material fact or omit to state a material fact necessary to make the statements made, in light of the circumstances under which such statements were made, not misleading with respect to the period covered by this report;

(3) Based on my knowledge, the financial statements, and other financial information included in this quarterly report, fairly present in all material respects the financial condition, results of operations and cash flows of the small business issuer as of, and for, the periods presented in this report;

(4) The issuer  s other certifying officer and I are responsible for establishing and maintaining disclosure controls and procedures (as defined in Exchange Act Rules 13a-15(e) and 15d-15(e)) for the small business issuer and we have:

(a) Designed such disclosure controls and procedures, or caused such disclosure controls and procedures to be designed under our supervision, to ensure that material information relating to the small business issuer, including its consolidated subsidiaries, is made known to us by others within those entities, particularly during the period in which this report is being prepared;

(b) Evaluated the effectiveness of the issuer  s disclosure controls and procedures and presented in this report our conclusions about the effectiveness of the disclosure controls and procedures, as of the end of the period covered by this report based upon based such evaluation; and

(c) Disclosed in this report any change in the issuer  s internal control over financial reporting that occurred during the small business issuer  s most recent fiscal quarter that has materially affected, or is reasonably likely to materially affect, the small business issuer  s internal control over financial reporting;

(5) The issuer  s other certifying officer and I have disclosed, based on our most recent evaluation of internal control over financial reporting, to the small business issuer  s auditors and the audit committee of the issuer  s board of directors (or persons performing the equivalent function):

(a) All significant deficiencies and material weaknesses in the design or operation of internal control over financial reporting which are reasonably likely to adversely affect the small business issuer  s ability to record, process, summarize and report financial information; and

(b) Any fraud, whether or not material, that involves management or other employees who have a significant role in the small business issuer  s internal controls over financial reporting.

Dated June 10 2016 By: /s/ Avraham Bengio Avraham Bengio Chief Executive Officer

Exhibit 31.2

PRINCIPAL ACCOUNTING OFFICER CERTIFICATION

I Avraham Bengio, certify that:

(1) I have reviewed this quarterly report on Form 10-Q of Darkstar Ventures Inc.

(2) Based on my knowledge, this report does not contain any untrue statement of a material fact or omit to state a material fact necessary to make the statements made, in light of the circumstances under which such statements were made, not misleading with respect to the period covered by this report;

(3) Based on my knowledge, the financial statements, and other financial information included in this quarterly report, fairly present in all material respects the financial condition, results of operations and cash flows of the small business issuer as of, and for, the periods presented in this report;

(4) The issuer  s other certifying officer and I are responsible for establishing and maintaining disclosure controls and procedures (as defined in Exchange Act Rules 13a-15(e) and 15d-15(e)) for the small business issuer and we have:

(a) Designed such disclosure controls and procedures, or caused such disclosure controls and procedures to be designed under our supervision, to ensure that material information relating to the small business issuer, including its consolidated subsidiaries, is made known to us by others within those entities, particularly during the period in which this report is being prepared;

(b) Evaluated the effectiveness of the issuer  s disclosure controls and procedures and presented in this report our conclusions about the effectiveness of the disclosure controls and procedures, as of the end of the period covered by this report based upon based such evaluation; and

(c) Disclosed in this report any change in the issuer  s internal control over financial reporting that occurred during the small business issuer  s most recent fiscal quarter that has materially affected, or is reasonably likely to materially affect, the small business issuer  s internal control over financial reporting;

(5) The issuer  s other certifying officer and I have disclosed, based on our most recent evaluation of internal control over financial reporting, to the small business issuer  s auditors and the audit committee of the issuer  s board of directors (or persons performing the equivalent function):

(a) All significant deficiencies and material weaknesses in the design or operation of internal control over financial reporting which are reasonably likely to adversely affect the small business issuer  s ability to record, process, summarize and report financial information; and

(b) Any fraud, whether or not material, that involves management or other employees who have a significant role in the small business issuer  s internal controls over financial reporting.

Dated: June 10 2016 By: /s/ Avraham Bengio Avraham Bengio

Exhibit 32

CERTIFICATION

Pursuant to Section 906 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, 18 U.S.C. Section 1350, each of the undersigned officers of Darkstar Ventures Inc, (the  Company  ), does hereby certify, to each such officer  s knowledge, that:

(1) The quarterly report on form 10-Q of the Company for the nine months ended ended April 302016 ( the Report  ) fully complies with the requirements of section 13(a) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 (15 U.S.C. 78 m); and

(2) The information contained in the Report fairly presents, in all material respects, the financial condition and result of operations of the Company.

Dated June 10 2016 By: /s/ Avraham Bengio Avraham Bengio Chief Executive Officer and Principal Accounting Officer

A signed original of this written statement required by Section 906 has been provided to the Company and will be retained by the Company and furnished to the Securities and Exchange Commission or its staff upon request.
U.S. SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION

Washington, D.C. 20549





FORM 8-K/A





CURRENT REPORT

Pursuant to Section 13 or 15(d) of the Securities and Exchange Act of 1934





Date of Report (Date of earliest event reported): June 6, 2016





GREAT CHINA INTERNATIONAL HOLDINGS, INC.

(Exact name of registrant as specified in its charter)





0-23015

(Commission File No.)





Nevada (State or other jurisdiction of incorporation or organization) 87-0450232 (IRS Employer Identification No.)





C Site 25-26F President Building, No. 69 Heping North Street

Heping District, Shenyang 110003, Peoples Republic of China

(Address of principal executive offices)





0086-24-22813888

(Registrants telephone number)





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 ( see General Instruction A.2. below):





[ ] Written communications pursuant to Rule 425 under the Securities Act (17 CFR 230.425)





[ ] Soliciting material pursuant to Rule 14a-12 under the Exchange Act (17 CFR 240.14a-12)





[ ] Pre-commencement communications pursuant to Rule 14d-2(b) under the Exchange Act (17 CFR 240.14d-2(b))





[ ] Pre-commencement communications pursuant to Rule 13e-4(c) under the Exchange Act (17 CFR 240.13e-4(c))





Item 2.01 Completion of Acquisition or Disposition of Assets





On May 15, 2016, Great China International Holdings, Inc. (Great China or the Company) entered into a Framework Agreement on Capital Increase and Equity Enlargement (the Agreement) with the shareholders of Jiangcheng Sino-Au Agricultural Technology Development Co., Ltd. (SAAT) for the purchase of 14.07 million shares in the capital of SAAT for RMB 37.4795 million Yuan (approximately US$5,746,318 at May 16, 2016).





On June 6 and June 8, 2016, payment of the purchase price for the 14.07 million shares in the capital of SAAT was completed, so Great China now owns 11.12% of the total share capital of SAAT.





Frank Jiang, the controlling stockholder of Great China and one of its officers and directors is the beneficial owner of 33.11 percent of the equity in SAAT, which will represent approximately 29.43% of the equity after the investment.





SAAT owns approximately 2,470 acres of land in Yunnan Province, PRC, and is engaged in the business of cultivating, processing, and trading Macadamia. The acquisition of the interest in SAAT is a major step forward in the plan of Great China to move into the nutraceutical and healthy foods sector.





Forward-Looking Statements

Statements contained in this report regarding matters that are not historical facts are "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Because such statements are subject to risks and uncertainties, actual results may differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Among the factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those indicated in the forward-looking statements are risks and uncertainties associated with Great Chinas business and finances, and other matters. All forward-looking statements contained in this report speak only as of the date on which they were made.Great China undertakes no obligation to update such statements to reflect events that occur or circumstances that exist after the date on which they were made.





Item 9.01 Financial Statements and Exhibits





Included as Exhibit 10.1 to this filing is the Framework Agreement on Capital Increase and Equity Enlargement dated May 15, 2016.





SIGNATURES





Pursuant to the requirements of the Securities and Exchange Act of 1934, the registrant has duly caused this report to be signed on its behalf by the undersigned hereunto duly authorized.

Great China International Holdings, Inc. Date: June 9, 2016 By: /s/ Frank Jiang Frank Jiang, Chief Executive Officer

2







Framework Agreement

on Capital Increase and Equity Enlargement





Party A (former shareholder): Xu Bin

ID Card No. 53240 1197202120314

Address: Rm. 104, Unit 2, Building 51, No. 31, Jiaochangdong Road,

Wuhua District, Kunming City





Party B (former shareholder): Zou Liang

ID Card No. 210103198005252128

Address: No. 7-11, Nansanhao Street, Heping District, Shenyang City





Party C (former shareholder): Wang Yilin

ID Card No. 140 106199011171223

Address: No. 10, Unit 1, Building 3, Sanjiadiandonglaodian, Mentougou

District, Beijing City





Party D (former shareholder): Wan Juhe

ID Card No. 53300119760 127001X

Address: Rm. 606, Unit 3, Building 13, No. 202, Kunrui Road, Wuhua

District, Kunming City





Party E (new-increased shareholder): GREAT CHINA INTERNATIONAL HOLDINGS, INC.

Representative: FRANI JIANG

Address: Carson City, Nevada, USA





Target Company: Jiangcheng Sino-Au Agricultural Technology

Development Co., Ltd.

Location: 1-106, Laos Area, Sanguo Trade Town, Sanjiang Avenue,

Jiangcheng County

Legal Representative: Xu Bin





Whereas:

1. Party A, Party B, Party C and Party D are currently actual controlling shareholders of Jiangcheng Sino-Au Agricultural Technology Development Co., Ltd. (hereinafter called ''Target Company'' for short). Among of that, Party A holds 50% of equity of the Target Company, Party B holds 33.11% of equity of the Target Company, Party C holds 16% of equity of the Target Company, and Party D holds 0.89% of equity of the Target Company.

2. The registered capital of the Target Company is RMB 112.5 million Yuan by the end of Jan. 26, 2016. Party A provided financial contribution with physical goods and currency (RMB), Party B, C and D provided financial contribution with currency (RMB), and the four parties contributed in full sum.

3. The predicated base date for this capital increase and equity enlargement is Jan. 31, 2016.

4. It is proposed to increase capital of RMB 37.4795 million Yuan for this time. Party A, B, C, D and E come to agreement with RMB 2.663 Yuan for consideration per share, and capital increase for this time is 37.4795 million Yuan which is converted into 14.07 million shares.

5. Party E agrees with the above conditions in article stipulated in this agreement to subscribe the capital increase of RMB 37.4795 million Yuan of the Target Company, which is converted into equity of 14.07 million shares. Party A, Party B, Party C and Party D would like to abandon the priority of subscription and accept Party E as the new shareholder to increase capital to the Target Company.

6. It is affiliated transaction for this time, and Party B holds 33.11% of equity of the Target Company, and on behalf of the big shareholder FANAK JIANG of Party E.

On the basis of the foregoing statement, the parties hereto come to agreement in respect of capital increase and equity enlargement upon friendly negotiation according to the Company Law of the Peoples Republic of China and the stipulations of other relative laws and statues, in line with the principles of honesty, trustworthiness, equality and voluntariness, which is to be abided by each party.

2

Article 1. Detailed items on capital increase and equity enlargement

1. Party A, B, C, D and E agree to the capital increase and equity enlargement of the Target Company, i.e. increase the registered capital of the company up to RMB 126.57 million Yuan as stipulated in this agreement, among of which the new-increased registered capital RMB 14.07 million Yuan is contributed by Party E.

2. The amount of subscribed capital of Party E is determined by common consent as follows:

Party E shall pay the capital increase RMB 37.4795 million Yuan in total to the Target Company (converted into equal US according to the exchange rate on the payment date), among of which RMB 14.07 million Yuan is subscription registered capital, and the rest part is included in the capital reserve of the Target Company.

3. Payment arrangement of Party E for this capital increase fund:

1) Pay the capital increase fund RMB 14.07 million Yuan to the assigned account of the Target Company within 10 days since the effective date of the contract.

2) Within 3 working days after Party E's payment of capital increase fund as stipulated in the above article 1), the Target Company shall engage an accounting firm to proceed the capital verification, then within 3 working days since the completion date of capital verification, amend the articles of association and transact the alteration registration of equity ratio stipulated in the article 2 of this agreement to the industry and commerce registration authority.

3) Party E shall pay the remaining fund once within 10 days after completing the business alteration registration.

4) Party E promises that all the financial contribution resources are legal.

Article 2. The capital stock structure of the Target Company after entirely completing the capital increase and equity enlargement

3









No. Shareholders Original issue stock (10000 shares) Equity ratio (%) Stock increased for this time (10000 shares) Shares after equity enlargement (10000 shares) Equity ratio after capital increase and equity enlargement (%) Form of contribution 1 Xu Bin 5625 50% 5625 44.44% Physical goods, currency 2 Zou Liang 3725 33.11% 3725 29.43% Currency 3 Wang Yilin 1800 16% 1800 14.22% Currency 4 Wan Juhe 100 0.89% 100 0.79% Currency 5 Great China International Holdings, INC 1407 1407 11.12% Currency Total 11250 100% 1407 12657 100%









Article 3. The usage of new-increased capital:

The new-increased capital for this time is used for the Target Company to purchase land and supplement the lack of current capital.

Article 4. Statements, guaranties and promises

All the parties make the following statements, guaranties and promises respectively, and sign this agreement according to such statements, guaranties and promises:

1. Party A, B, C, D and E are natural person or legal person with complete legal capacity for civil rights and disposition, and the parties have obtained all the authorization, approval and recognition as required by the capital increase and equity enlargement;

2. Party A, B, C, D and E possess the legal capacity for rights and disposition to sign this agreement, and this agreement after affixing signatures will have legal binding force to all the parties;

4

3. The obligations in this agreement assumed by Party A, B, C, D and E are legal and effective, and the performance will neither conflict with other obligations of each party in this agreement, nor violate any laws;

4. All the parties promise that they will not do any action damaging the interests of the Target Company and other shareholders by taking advantage of the shareholder 's status;

5. Otherwise stipulated in this agreement, all the parties shall neither transfer the holding equity to others in principle since the registration date of relative business alteration of capital increase and equity enlargement, nor set up pledge or other rights on the holding equity;

6. Party E's subscription of equity through capital increase hereof is an investment behavior, and if there is shareholding entrustment (commissioned) or other equity or interest arrangement, Party E shall not damage the legal rights and interests of the Target Company and other shareholders hereof;

7. All the shareholders promise not to occupy and use the company's properties for free, and not have behavior of association transaction to damage the company's interest, as well as be responsible for compensate for the damage to the Target Company if the foregoing behaviors occur;

8. All the shareholders promise not to develop the same or similar business with the Target Company or its subsidy company.

Article 5. Basic rights and obligations of the new shareholder

1. Equal in legal status to the former shareholder;

2. Have all the rights of a shareholder endowed by the laws, including but not limited to assets benefit, important decision-making and the right to choose manager;

3. Assume the obligation of the company shareholder.

Article 6. Amendment of articles of association

After the financial contribution is paid enough as stipulated in this agreement, the shareholders' conference will be convened within 5 days. All the parties shall amend the articles of association of the Target Company, and the revised articles of association will substitute for the former articles of association of the Target Company.

5

Article 7. The establishment of shareholder's status

The shareholders of Party A, B, C and D promise pass through the decision of the shareholders' conference in respect to capital increase and equity enlargement after signing this agreement as soon as possible, complete all the necessary procedures to report to the national industry and commerce administrative department, and confirm the shareholders status of Party E as soon as possible.

Article 8. The organizational framework of the Target Company after capital increase and equity enlargement

1. Shareholders' conference

1) The Target Company after capital increase and equity enlargement sets up shareholders' conference which is the highest capability mechanism of the Target Company. The shareholder will exert the rights on the shareholders' conference according to the equity ratio.

2) The following items will become effective only after being submitted to the shareholders' conference of the Target Company for legal resolution:

a. The usage of fund of the capital increase;

b. Work out and amend the profit distribution plan and covering loss plan of the Target Company;

c. The Target Company's shareholder transfers his/her holding equity of the Target Company or transfers the rights and obligations in this agreement;

d. The Target Company raises external financing (loan, equity financing or similar fund-raising behavior etc.), invests and issues an external guarantee;

e. The Target Company works out and amends important operational policy and investment plan;

f. Associate transaction or dispose/purchase important fixed assets or intangible assets;

g. Work out and amend the articles of association of the Target Company;

h. Other items which have important influence on the business activities of the Target Company.

2. Board of directors

The board of directors of the Target Company after capital increase and equity enlargement is composed of 3 directors (not less than 3 persons). Among of that, Party E could appoint 1 director as new-increased shareholder, and vice-chairman of the board of directors is appointed by Party E. The director's tenure is three years, and can be reappointed consecutively at the expiration.

6

3. Board of supervisors

The Target Company after capital increase and equity enlargement will not set up board of supervisors, but set up 1 supervisor, who will be responsible for the shareholders' conference and report the working. The supervisor's tenure is three years, and can be reappointed consecutively at the expiration.

Article 9. The shareholder's right to learn the truth

1. The Target Company shall give publicity to all the shareholders the entire fiscal statement of half year (including combined statements of subsidy company) passed through internal auditing before July 30 of every year, and give publicity to all the shareholders the fiscal statement of last year (including combined statements of subsidy company) audited by the external auditing authority before January 30 of every year.

2. Each shareholder of the Target Company has the right to refer to the account book and bank account of the Target Company, but shall notify the financial principal of the Target Company 1 day in advance, and the financial department shall record in written form to the consultation situation.

3. The Target Company shall inform in time all the shareholders any important adverse impact or any circumstance of likely causing adverse impact.

Article 10. Confidentiality responsibility

1. All the parties confirm that, as to the information and data learned from others by any party, if such information and data were not been disclosed, it is regarded as confidential information whatever tangible or intangible, and bear the obligation of keeping secret. The information which has important value to the provider but can be obtained through open channel by other parties does not belong to confidential information.

2. Otherwise stipulated in applicable laws, all the parties shall not publish, leak, discuss or disclose any confidential information in respect to this agreement to the third party. All the parties shall abide by and make its employees, agents or intermediaries abide by the obligation of keeping secret, and make its employees, agents or intermediaries not use the confidential information for other purposes which have no business with the performance of this agreement.

7

3. All the parties agree that, as to the matters on government approval related to this agreement and information disclosure, all the parties' behavior of disclosing the confidential information to the approval authority for such purpose shall not be regarded as breach of obligation of keeping secret; however, all the parties shall file and report for approval to the approval authority according to this agreement purpose and relative stipulations.

Article 11. Liabilities for breach of contract

1. Once this agreement is signed, all the parties shall strictly abide by, and whoever breaks this agreement shall assume the damage to the observant party.

2. If Party E's fund of capital increase was not paid as schedule, Party A, B, C and D could cancel this agreement.

3. It is decided according to the law that, if the former shareholder of the Target Company transferred his/her holding equity of the Target Company before the Target Company goes IPO, Party E has the right of preemption of the equity of the Target Company to be transferred under the same condition, or give priority to transfer his/her holding equity of the Target Company to the third party under the same condition.

Article 12. Agreement termination

At any time before alteration of shareholder legally in accordance with the stipulations of this agreement:

1. If there is any one of the following circumstances, Party E has the right to notify Party A, B, C and D to terminate this agreement, and take back the capital increase listed in this agreement:

1) If it is unforeseen and unavoidable to happen and the consequence cannot be overcome, which causes impossibility of the capital increase and equity enlargement in fact;

2) If Party A, B, C or D breaks any article of this agreement, and such breach behavior makes unable to realize the purpose of this agreement;

3) If there is any truth or circumstance which makes Party A, B, C and D's statements, guaranties and promises unreal in practical meaning.

Article 13. Force majeure

1. It shall not be regarded as breach of agreement that fail to perform the obligations of this agreement, in whole or in part, caused by force majeure and no fault on its own, but shall take necessary measures if the conditions permits, so as to reduce the damage due to force majeure.

8

2. Any party suffering from force majeure shall notify the event situations to the others in written form as soon as possible, and shall submit the report of not performing obligations of this agreement, in whole or in part, and reasons for delay of performance to the other parties within fifteen days after the event of force majeure.

3. Force majeure means unforeseen and unavoidable to any party, including but not limited to the following:

4. Declared or undeclared war, hostility, blockade, embargo, government decree or general mobilization, which directly influences the capital increase and equity enlargement;

5. Domestic disturbance which directly influences the capital increase and equity enlargement;

6. Fire, flood, typhoon, hurricane, tsunami, coast, earthquake, explosion, pestilence or epidemic disease and other events owing to natural factors;

7. and other events of force majeure which directly influences the capital increase and equity enlargement agreed by all the parties.

Article 14. Dispute settlement

All the parties shall negotiate and settle the dispute owing to this agreement. If failing to consent through negotiation, all the parties agree to lawsuit to the People's Court in which the Target Company is located.

Article 15. Unmentioned matters

1. As to any unmentioned matters of basic principle of this agreement and the unmentioned matters of detailed items involved hereof, all the parties shall conclude supplementary agreement under the precondition of not breaking this agreement, and the supplementary agreement has the same legal effect with this agreement.

2. The financing plan and demand of the Target Company in the future development course will be examined and approved on the shareholders' conference according to planning, budget, and return on investment etc.

3. If there is additional stipulations between the new shareholder investment company to be increased and Party A, B, C, D and E, all the parties shall sign other agreements separately.

9

Article 16. Become effective and amend

This agreement becomes effective since all the parties affix their signatures, and shall not be amended without consistent written consent of all the parties.

Article 17. Agreement text

This agreement is in septuplicate; each party holds one copy, and the rest one copy is kept in the Target Company.

Article 18. Notice and delivery

Party A, B, C, D and E separately confirm that, the information in the initial part of this agreement including the names and addresses etc. are respectively the legal contact and notice information of one's own. Any party's delivery of notice and letter to such address or notice to the contactor have the legal effect of delivery to the party. Any changes of the foregoing information shall be notified to the other parties in written form.

10





(No text on this page, only a page for affixing seals or signatures on Framework Agreement on Capital Increase and Equity Enlargement )





Party A (signature): /s/ Xu Bin 2016-05-15

Party B (signature): /s/ Zou Liang 2016-05-15

Party C (signature): /s/ Wang Yilin 2016-05-15

Party D (signature): /s/ Wan Juhe 2016-05-15

Party E (signature): GREAT CHINA INTERNATIONAL HOLDINGS, INC.

By: Frank Jiang, CEO, 2015-05-15





11


The search for 2-year-old Emily Saunders will resume on Monday as a severe weather warning for the West Coast is lifted.

Efforts had resumed briefly on Saturday morning, with searchers scouring a beach south of the Poerua River from a helicopter.

Metservice meteorologist Peter Little said the weather was still "terrible" on the West Coast but conditions were set to improve.

Emily Saunders, 2, is missing in a West Coast river.

"There are still heavy falls and thunderstorms but things are improving and should clear tomorrow.

READ MORE

* The mangled remains of a missing ute on the West Coast

* Search for man and child missing after car submerged on the West Coast

"There is a chance of showers but it will be a mostly fine day, especially early in the morning."

Grant Matthew The wreckage of the 4WD remains submerged in the river.

Metservice lifted the heavy rain warning in place for Westland on Sunday morning.

The raging river has meant it was too dangerous to continue the search over the weekend, said Sergeant Paul Watson.

"The river is still running very, very high, similar to what it was yesterday," he said.

GRANT MATTHEW/ Stuff.co.nz Sergeant Paul Watson confirms the body of Barry Petrie, 66, has been found, while the search for 2-year-old Emily Saunders continues.

"We really need the river to drop now and clear up a bit. At the moment it's too dangerous and too risky."

Emily was "gone in a matter of seconds" after a man trying to save her from a submerged ute lost his grip.

Farm worker Michael Saunders swam after his daughter in the West Coast's Poerua River, "but it was too late", his employer says.

Grant Matthew Searchers set up a base by the Poerua River.

Emily remains missing after she and 66-year-old Greymouth man Barry Petrie were swept away after the farm ute they were in got stuck while crossing the rain-swollen river just after 12pm on Thursday.

Searchers found Petrie's body downstream, on the beach south of the rivermouth, about 2pm on Friday.

They had narrowed the search for Emily to several priority areas, Watson said.

GRANT MATTHEW/FAIRFAX NZ Rescue teams at the Poerua River on the West Coast, where they searched for Barry Petrie, 66, and Emily Saunders, 2, on Friday.

They included the sharp bends in the river beneath the water, which could not be done until river levels dropped.

"We're not going to achieve anything the way things are at the moment."

Petrie's local pub in Cobden had sent a truckload of food to the searchers on Friday.

GRANT MATTHEW/FAIRFAX NZ The Poerua River on the West Coast was swollen from heavy rain, and continues to rise.

Emily's parents, sharemilkers Michael and Sandra Saunders, had the girl with them while they worked on Frank and Anne Simpson's farm on Thursday.

They were on their way back when they saw a possum trapper and Petrie on the other side of the river, which is near One One Rd near Harihari, south of Hokitika. They drove across to pick them up.

The 4WD became partially submerged on its way back to the farm.

Frank Simpson, who has been supporting the couple, said as soon as the ute got stuck, all five people got out.

The possum trapper carried Emily. He was chest deep in water.

"Sandra panicked so he went to help her as well. But the little girl was swept out of his grip and she went under.

"The river moves so fast. She was gone in a matter of seconds."

"Michael's a strong swimmer and he went after her, but it was too late," Simpson said.

When the couple realised they could not get Emily, Sandra Saunders ran dripping wet to the farm house to get help, which was about four kilometres away.

"She knocked on the door and told us that her daughter was stuck in the car and said we had to get her out," Anne Simpson said.

She rang emergency services, and got Sandra Saunders into dry clothes. The possum trapper ran to another nearby farm house for help.

Frank Simpson said the couple were in shock.

"You can't even imagine what it's been like for them to lose their little one like that. Right in front of them."

He said the possum trapper felt "terrible" for letting the girl go.

"He blames himself ... [but] it was nobody's fault. The river comes up so quickly."

"When they had gone to work in the morning the river would have been low enough to walk across. It comes up so fast, you get almost no warning."

Emily was the youngest of three daughters. Her family emigrated to New Zealand from Britain.

Frank Simpson said it had been devastating for him and his wife, who saw the three girls as grandchildren.

Anne Simpson said Emily was "a lovely girl", who she often babysat.

"She used to call me nana," she said.

Police set up a cordon near the base of the search scene after Petrie's body was found.

BARRY PETRIE AN EXPERT BUSHMAN

Friend Neil Harris said Petrie was a long-time member of the New Zealand Deerstalkers' Association and was involved in the New Zealand Mountain Safety Council and the West Coast search and rescue team.

"He was a guy I would be pleased to go out in the bush with at any time."

Harris said Petrie had recently returned from a trip to Stewart Island where he helped to build hunters' huts.

He said he would not be surprised if some of Petrie's old search and rescue mates had travelled south to see if they could help search. .

Petrie's wife declined to be interviewed. Petrie's employer, OSPRI New Zealand Limited, would not comment.

The local iwi blessed the area on Friday afternoon.

RIVER SWOLLEN

Sergeant Paul Watson said the Poerua River was still rising as rain continued to lash the area.

The NZCC Rescue Helicopter team from Greymouth swept the river and surrounding areas while a White Water rescue team searched the water. LandSAR volunteers searched riverbanks and beaches.

"Our thoughts are with the families on this tragic occasion. This is a particularly hard time for everyone involved," West Coast area commander, Inspector Mel Aitken said.

Worksafe New Zealand has been notified.
Bryan Smith, left, looks on as Jason "Dada" Lellmann, right, creates a board.

It's a dream come true as a small, surfer business promises a swell.

Seasons Surfboards celebrated the one-year anniversary of its "homestay/build a board" option and owner Bryan "BJ" Smith said he needed space for growth.

"The first step is planting the seed. The next step is offering more accommodation. I didn't realise how much tourism is in Taranaki. "

BRITTANY BAKER/Fairfax NZ Bryan "BJ" Smith loves to surf and shape.

The New Plymouth family-owned business is riding a wave of success with a three-bedroom bach just around the bend.

READ MORE:

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* Taranaki named top tourist destination

The business began after Smith decided he'd like to share his coastal bach and his love of shaping boards, but didn't expect it to grow the way that it is.

"Tourism is the biggest part of revenue in New Zealand. Until I started the homestay option, I had no idea how many tourists were coming through New Plymouth."

"We're going to build a book-a-bach style accommodation because we're finding that's what's needed."

Over the summer, Smith said MP Jonathan Young had caught wind of the business and seemed keen on the idea.

"He's looking to grow tourism and this is such a niche business that attracts a certain type of tourist," Smith said.

When the business began, it attracted local surfers who wanted to build a board but not book a room.

"I'd always hear people say, 'I'd love to make my own board', and I thought, 'well there's a cunning plan'.

"So we'd get local guys that lived down the road and didn't need a place to stay."

After some ads and posts on social media, Smith said they started to get more response.

"We were getting non-surfers looking for a B and B and didn't want to surf. So, we decided to offer different packages.

"Now, you can decide exactly what you want."

Currently shaping about two boards a month, Smith wants to increase it to once a week.

"We want it to grow, but not overnight. I don't want it to get too massive."

Smith has manufactured boards for 40 years and admits they take a bit of time.

"We can be leisurely and make a board in a week. Or, you can compact it into three days.

"But, I'm a lifestyle business person and I'm offering an experience."
tor Peter Jackson emerges from from a Hobbit house before delivering a speech at the 'The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey' World Premiere at Embassy Theatre on November 28, 2012 in Wellington, New Zealand. (Photo : Getty Images/Hagen Hopkins)

Human evolution is often imagined as transformation of early man into the modern human form. However, there was a species relative to the modern human species involved along the way - the Hobbits.







A new research, conducted by a team of anthropologists has discovered that the Hobbits were a result of the island life. The team based their conclusion the study of the Hobbit fossils recovered from the island of Flores in 2004.



Advertisement

The study, published in the journal Nature, explains that the Hobbits were 3-foot-tall human relatives with long arms, small brains and chimp-sized body. They originally inhabited the area which is today identified as Indonesia.



The Hobbits lived around 60,000 years ago and had human-like teeth and tools made up of stone. Researchers had earlier suggested that the Hobbits are actually the form of human ancestors from Africa - probably, "Home erectus" -- who traveled all the way to the island. However, later they shrank, just like other animals sometimes evolve on the island to become smaller.



This theory was not proved until now. Aida Gomez-Robles of the George Washington believes that people often get surprised when they learn that the same evolution could happen in humans as well, NPR reports.



"In fact, some scientists believed Hobbits were just modern humans with some abnormality, like microcephaly, that changed their head shape and made them smaller," Gomez-Robles said.



The research team has now discovered more Hobbit-like tiny bones on the island, including a part of the jaw and some teeth. An analysis of the fossils revealed that the fossils belong to someone that existed 700,000 years ago. That is, the fossils are a lot older than the first known Hobbits and predating modern humans.



Gerrit van den Bergh of the Wollongong University in Australia believes that this could, in fact, be a population of a very different form of human relatives. He further explains how "Homo erectus" might have traveled all the way from Africa, probably carried by a tsunami, to reach this island located in Asia.



Once the ancient human relatives reached the island, "island dwarfism" started to take place. As a result, they started to get smaller. In fact, the same team of researchers also discovered fossils of an elephant that reduced in size over a period of time.



The following video talks about Hobbits on the island of Flores:






Unfortunately, our website is currently unavailable in your country. We are engaged on the issue and committed to looking at options that support our full range of digital offerings to your market. We continue to identify technical compliance solutions that will provide all readers with our award-winning journalism.
A Samsung Galaxy S7 is seen during its worldwide unveiling on February 21, 2016 in Barcelona, Spain. (Photo : Getty Images / David Ramos)

Samsung will reportedly preempt the Apple iPhone 7 and 7 Plus with an earlier Galaxy Note 6/7 release date, hoping to stay on top of its chief rival. But the real iPhone killer could be the first 2017 flagship from the South Korean tech giant that will be known as Galaxy S8 and packed with 4K AMOLED screen plus virtual reality or VR features.



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In a recent report, The Korea Herald said that Samsung is nearly certain to boost its 2017 smartphone flagship display with an AMOLED panel that boasts of 4K screen resolution. "Samsung Display showcased a 5.5 ultra-high definition 4K display with a pixel density of 806 ppi," the Korean publication quoted a UBI Research analyst as saying.



The same report further claimed that the new display technology will unpack with the Samsung Galaxy S8. "The 5.5-inch AMOLED will be deployed in the next Galaxy smartphone, presumably, named the S8."



The move is seen not only to upend the 2016 iPhones from Apple but also to ensure that the S8 is steps ahead of the iPhone 7S or iPhone 8 that will see action in 2017. Rumors persist that OLED will be introduced to the iPhone supply chain next year but 4K resolution included on the plan is a remote possibility.



And to increase even more the advantage that the Galaxy S8 is seen to enjoy over the 2017 iPhones, Samsung will reportedly lace its flagship with VR functionality. "The 4K display is considered important especially in the VR sector as major smartphone firms and VR gadget makers need to provide better VR experience for users than now," The Korea Herald reported.



Although Apple has voiced out its commitment to support VR features for its products and services, it remains unclear if the iPhone 7 or the iPhone 7S/8 will soon offer similar functionalities, which gives Samsung a significant edge.



As mentioned, the Galaxy Note 6 or Note 7 will come out ahead of schedule, likely by first week of August, for Samsung to gain the upper hand before the iPhone 7 hits the market in September. And the same could happen with the Galaxy S8 if only to sustain the momentum that supposedly the device will have against the iPhone 6S sequel.



The earliest release date for the Samsung Galaxy S8 is between February and March 2017 or around the same time that the Galaxy S7 was made available this year.


The doctor who committed the banned operation is still on the run

Egyptian prosecutors renewed on Thursday the detention of a mother of a teenage girl who died during an illegal female genital mutilation (FGM) operation at a private hospital last month, state agency MENA said.

The woman, along with other defendants, faces charges of "indecent assault of the girl, conducting an illegal operation and forgery."

Security forces are attempting to apprehend the female physician who carried out the operation; she has been on the run since an arrest order was issued for her, a security source said.

An anaesthetist who took part in the operation has been released on bail of EGP10,000 (approximately $1,125).

Seventeen-year-old Mayar Mohamed Mousa died in the private hospital of El-Canal in Suez governorate on 29 May while undergoing the illegal procedure.

Female genital mutilation was officially banned in Egypt in 2008, but the phenomenon is still widespread among both Muslims and the country's minority Christians, particularly in rural areas.

A doctor was convicted of manslaughter in January 2015 after a girl died while he was performing an illegal circumcision on her. In the first trial of its kind, the girl's father was also convicted and given a three-month suspended sentence.

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The militant group threatened to destroy the Giza pyramids in a video that appears to show militants blowing up an ancient temple in Iraq

Dar Al-Ifta, the Egyptian state body that issues Islamic edicts, has shrugged off recent threats by the Islamic State militant group to destroy the Giza pyramids, saying the remarks are "unrealistic."

The IS group made the threat in a video it released purporting to show fighters blowing up a 2,500-year-old temple in Iraq. The final scene in the ten-minute video shows one of the pyramids of Giza and the Sphinx while a militant pledges to blow up "ancient sites built by the infidels".

Earlier in the video, a fanatic vowed to demolish the temple of Nabu in the ancient Assyrian city of Nimrud in northern Iraq before a massive explosion is seen tearing the building apart.

A sub-body of Dar Al-Ifta that monitors jihadist and extremist edicts said Friday that the threats by the extermists are "unrealistic" given that the militant group only managed to raze monumnets and historic sites in cities which it seized.

"This is unlikely in Egypt in light of a strong state and deterrent institutions," the Islamic authority said in a statement.

It added that such warnings are aimed to "hit tourism" amid what it said is a series of successful security blows that led to a "decline in terrorist attacks" in Egypt.

It said that the threats mirror the success of the country's security forces to "prevent the group from targeting vital sites or carry out attacks against tourism" in Egypt, forcing its fighters to resort to warnings.

Earlier this year, a global outcry was sparked by pictures of ancient monuments in the Syrian city of Palmyra that had been destroyed by IS extremists after the group took control of the city in May 2015.

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His report card follows four months of observing and experiencing Kiwi Air  at the airport, in the air and online. To me, that speaks truckloads on how they deal with their customers.

And if all this smacks of a paid endorsement then its time for a declaration of interest. The airline did flick Bailey a complimentary return ticket to Nelson. It was payback for Pellow advocating for the airline late last year. One favour deserved another.

Get that 34-seat twin turbo prop Saab 340-A into Tauranga, Bailey said on the Facebook page he created to encourage Kiwi Regional Airlines to come to town in late-2015. The fledgling airline had just pulled out of Queenstown and was looking for other opportunities.

Anything to make it cheaper to fly in and out of Tauranga, said Bailey. Thats all history now, and Kiwi flies into town twice a week  and Bailey is well satisfied.

To think I may have had a tiny part in making that happen is fantastic, says Bailey. He was proud and excited, and Kiwi Regional Airlines was very grateful.

Dave Macpherson, the airlines route network and revenue manager posted on Baileys Facebook page. Bailey, we would like to congratulate you. Heres a free ticket. Or words to that effect. It was a free return trip to Nelson.

That was quite cool because I wasnt expecting anything out of it. I did it cos it was cool to do.

Recently Bailey took up the Kiwi offer and flitted off to Nelson for four days. He travelled with Mum and Nanna. He also travelled with a critical eye.

There were some really nice touches, says Bailey. Like when he rang to book his seat, the chief executive Ewan Wilson apparently answered his call. Hes really involved.

Then theres the ticket, which is not a ticket but a cow tag; the row letter and seat number on the front and the airlines logo on the back. At first I thought it was strange but then I got thinking that it was a neat way to demonstrate theyre a Kiwi airline.

He had a special shout for Sophie and E  the flight attendants who were very slick, courteous, helpful and professional. They dispensed sugar cachets with tongs. A Tim Tam provided another sugar hit; and in the mind of a young aviation critic that deserves a mention.

While the 340A is not a new plane, it is still a fantastic ride, says Bailey. We ran into some turbulence but we can hardly fault the airline for that.

The plane was functionally clean  vacuumed and wiped down. And if there was any grime I wouldnt be curling into a ball because it was unhygienic.

Bailey had trouble levering his 183cm frame into the Sabres loo. But having said that a loo on a 737 isnt that easy either. He also wondered about the need for a toilet on a short-haul flight. Its just an hour-and-15-minute flight.

And he had a grumble about luggage, which is not a problem confined to this airline. Maximum of 7kg carry-on and no check-in luggage. When you have to spend a minimum of two days and maximum of four in Nelson  or any place  then you really need more luggage. You can pay $50 for another 20kg but I feel thats a bit steep.

From a 15-year-old travel critics perspective, Kiwi is a simple, straightforward and uncomplicated airline. No hidden fees, no hidden clauses or surprises, according to Bailey.

And they listen. When the airline planned a grey livery for its new plane there was considerable negative feedback. So they changed it to clean white and clean green, which reflects who New Zealanders are and what we stand for.

Bailey has been monitoring the airlines Facebook page and he says generally people seem satisfied. It seems to be working  time will tell. Perhaps its a sign that the plane was full one leg of Baileys trip, and two free seats the other.

Meanwhile, the aviation observer will have to make some life decisions soon-ish. The young man, who has a flight simulator loaded into his PC and is a self-confessed plane spotter, will have to decide whether to fly with Kiwi Air or fly for it.

I would fly with Kiwi Air again, especially if it relaxed its carry-on rules. And he remains hellbent on being a pilot one day.
An agricultural services operator, who was found guilty during a judge-alone trial, has been ordered to pay reparations of $85,000 to the family of a contractor who was killed on the job.

PJ Wright Limited, formerly known as Te Anau Bulk Haulage (TBHL), was also ordered to pay $65,000 in fines after being found guilty of one charge under the Health and Safety in Employment Act 1992 (HSE) for failing to take all practicable steps to ensure the safety of Leslie Cain.
The New Zealand property for sale market looks set for a warm winter, according to the latest Trade Me Property Price Index.

In April, average asking prices climbed to a record high of $585,000, rising 2.1 per cent since last month, and up 8.4 per cent on a year ago.
Foreign Minister Murray McCully travels to Norway this weekend to participate in the Oslo Forum, and will then travel to Finland, Latvia and Lithuania.

The Oslo Forum is an annual meeting focused on conflict mediation and resolution, Mr McCully says.

The Forum provides a further opportunity for New Zealand to push for the resolution of key global conflicts, building on our efforts in the UN Security Council, and to reiterate New Zealands calls for a greater global focus on conflict prevention.

During the two-day event, Minister McCully will meet with a number of Foreign Ministers and other participants. Attendees this year include US Secretary of State John Kerry, Irans Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, the EUs High Representative for Foreign Affairs Federica Mogherini and a number of high level UN representatives and senior conflict mediators from around the globe.

Following the Oslo Forum, Minister McCully will visit Finland, Latvia and Lithuania where he will meet his counterparts and other senior government representatives to discuss regional and global security challenges, as well as a free trade agreement between New Zealand and the EU.

SOURCE: Office of Murray McCully
The businesswoman behind the failed bid for a Bay of Plenty familys farming empire has been sentenced to prison.

May Hao, formerly known as May Wang, 53, and two former senior executives of a listed company behind the bid of the Crafar farms, were found guilty of fraud at the end of April over the acquisition of the 22 dairy farms throughout the North Island.
The raise was proposed Thursday by the social solidarity minister

The Egyptian government will raise state pensions by 10 percent from July, according to a presidential spokesman.

Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi has approved a proposal to increase all pension schemes, which benefit 9 million Egyptians, by 10 percent, said spokesman Alaa Youssef according to MENA news agency.

The decision was proposed by the Social Solidarity Ministry Ghada Waly during a meeting Thursday with El-Sisi that also included Finance Minister Amr El-Garhy and Prime Minister Sherif Ismail.

Waly said the decision aims to set a minimum pension of EGP500 per month, with a minimum increase of EGP75. The measure will cost the state's coffers some EGP15 billion and benefit 2.6 million citizens.

During the meeting, El-Sisi requested that a new pension law be drafted that would overhaul the system, which many low-income citizens complain not provide enough money for their living expenses.

The Egyptian government is aiming to decrease the budget deficit in the 2016/17 fiscal year to 9.8 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) from the current 11.5 percent, the planning minister said last month.

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Egyptian Defence Minister Sedki Sobhi said on Friday that Egypt has a powerful army that is able to protect the country and "shield the dignity of its nation".

In comments to special forces ahead of an iftar meal, Sobhi said that the armed forces are working with "the highest degree of alertness and preparedness" to enforce the sovereignty of the state and secure its borders.

The army chief said that the armed forces would continue in executing their roles to protect the nation against anyone who attempts to seize Egypt's land and sovereignty.

Sobhi also praised the special forces units, describing them one of the army's "powerful joists" and saying that they bring relief and satisfaction due to their contributions and efforts to preserve their combat readiness.

He also hailed successful operations by the special forces units in which they were able to purge "terrorist elements" during the multiple phases of the military's comprehensive operation "Martyr's Right" which aimed at tackling militancy in Sinai.

Martyr's Right was launched in September 2015 and aimed at rooting out and killing militants operating in the restive peninsula.

Egypt has been battling an Islamist insurgency in Sinai that spiked after the 2013 ouster of Islamist president Mohamed Morsi. Militants have killed hundreds of security forces. The army has said hundreds of militants have been killed in its campaigns.

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U.S. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump attacked Democratic rival Hillary Clinton on Friday as weak on Islamist militants, in a speech at a Christian evangelical conference where he received a standing ovation.

Reading a carefully scripted speech from a Teleprompter, Trump said money aimed at resettling Syrian refugees in the United States should instead be spent on tackling poverty in U.S. cities.

The real estate mogul said Clinton's refusal to use the phrase "radical Islamic terrorism" -- favored by Republicans to describe violent Islamist militants -- makes her unfit to be president.

Clinton, a former secretary of state, effectively clinched the Democratic Party's nomination at primary elections this week, setting up what will be a bruising fight between the two ahead of the Nov. 8 election. Trump's harsh rhetoric on illegal immigration and national security are likely to be a central part of the election debate.

Trump on Friday criticized Clinton's willingness to accept thousands of refugees from the Syrian civil war into the United States and challenged her to "replace her support for increased refugee admission" in favor of a new jobs program for inner cities.

But Trump stopped short of repeating his own call for a temporary ban on Muslims entering the United States, a proposal that has drawn heavy fire from Republicans and Democrats.

"We have to temporarily stop this whole thing with what's going on with refugees where we don't know where they're coming from. We have to use the money to take care of our poorest Americans so they can come out of this horrible situation that they're in," he said.

Trump's struggle to unify Republicans behind his insurgent candidacy was apparent at the Faith & Freedom Coalition's "Road to Majority" conference, where several speakers studiously avoided speaking his name.

Former campaign rival Carly Fiorina, who had endorsed U.S. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas and had campaigned briefly as his vice presidential running mate, spoke of the need to prevent liberal policies from engulfing the United States.

U.S. Representative Virginia Foxx, a North Carolina Republican, said a Republican president is needed, without mentioning Trump.

"We don't want this contest this fall to just be a contest of personalities," she said.

But conference organizer Ralph Reed was adamant in his support for Trump, saying the New Yorker has energized the evangelical vote in a way that past Republican presidential nominees have failed to do.

"We understand that perfection is not the measure that should be applied," Reed told the crowd.

While Trump searched for party unity, Clinton met on Friday with U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren, a leading progressive voice, in another sign of Democrats coming together against the prospect of a Trump presidency.

The two held talks at Clinton's Washington home a day after Warren endorsed Clinton's White House bid, adding support from the Democrats' liberal wing as Clinton seeks to move on from her protracted primary battle with Bernie Sanders.

Warren left the meeting smiling after roughly an hour and did not speak to reporters outside. A source familiar with the meeting said the pair discussed how best to work together to put forward a progressive agenda and stop Trump.

Party leaders are hoping Sanders will drop his presidential run before the party convention in Philadelphia in July.

Sanders said on Thursday he would remain in the race through the final nominating contest in Washington, D.C., next week but would work with Clinton to defeat Trump.

The Warren meeting on Friday fueled speculation that the senator from Massachusetts might be under consideration as Clinton's running mate. Asked in an MSNBC interview on Thursday whether she had discussed with Clinton the prospect of being vice president, Warren said she had not, nor had she been vetted.

Warren has considered the idea of serving as Clinton's running mate but sees obstacles to that choice, several people familiar with Warren's thinking told Reuters this week.

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Ronald Meadow (right) leaving court with his lawyer, Ed Menkin, during trial in 2014. His murder conviction was tossed.

(Douglass Dowty | ddowty@syracuse.com)

Ronald Meadow

Syracuse, NY -- An appeals court today overturned a Georgia man's murder conviction in the strangulation of his estranged wife 31 years ago in Syracuse.

Ronald Meadow, 62, will get a new trial in the death of his wife, Colleen, after a four-judge appeals court unanimously faulted a key ruling by County Court Judge Anthony Aloi during the first trial in 2014.

Meadow had been sentenced to 25 years to life in prison.

Meadow was arrested in 2013, nearly three decades after this wife's 1985 death in her 114 Fordham Road apartment complex.

The October 2014 trial marked the first of two clashes between Onondaga County District Attorney William Fitzpatrick and noted defense lawyer Edward Z. Menkin. They would go on to face-off again six months later in the murder trial of Robert Neulander.

Today, Menkin hailed the decision while Fitzpatrick said he'd try to convince the state's highest court to give the case another look.

The DA has a special connection to the case: as an assistant prosecutor, he was at Colleen's crime scene in 1985 and attended her funeral. Menkin took over the defense after Ronald Meadow's first lawyer, James McGraw, died of a heart attack.

The case against Meadow relied upon recent advances in science that pointed to his DNA under the victim's fingernails. It was the break that Fitzpatrick, police and crime lab officials said they needed to charge him with Colleen Meadow's death.

But it wasn't the DNA that led Meadow's conviction to be overturned.

Instead, the appeals court today faulted the judge for allowing witnesses to testify about what Colleen had allegedly told them about prior abuse.

It's a reversal predicted by Menkin soon after Meadow's conviction.

The allegations included:

 The victim's aunt said that, six years before her death, the victim told her that Ronald had "handcuffed her to a chair and left her there for a little while because he didn't want her to go or do something." The victim's sister testified that she, too, heard the victim say that Ronald had handcuffed her.

 The sister also testified that the victim told her two or three times that the defendant had beaten her, and that the victim said that she was having trouble sleeping because her husband "had threatened to kill her if she didn't come back to him."

 A friend of the victim testified that the victim told her over dinner one night that defendant had threatened to kill her.

Colleen Meadow

The problem with those statements was that they were hearsay, or information from someone else (the dead victim) that could not be verified, the court ruled.

"We couldn't cross-examine it, we couldn't test it," said defense lawyer Andy Frisch, of New York City, who argued the appeal.

The district attorney's office argued that the jury wasn't supposed to consider whether those statements were true. (That would be inadmissible hearsay.)

Instead, the DA's office argued that those statements were important to establish the background of the situation, reveal the state of mind of the victim and suspect, and demonstrate the suspect's motive and intent to kill the victim. It argued statements like those were allowed in domestic violence situations.

During trial, Aloi agreed with the prosecution's arguments, allowing the witnesses to testify. Throughout, Menkin objected and the judge repeatedly gave a legalistic instruction to the jury explaining that they were not to decide whether the statements were true, but only whether they established background, state of mind, and motive and intent.

The appeals court didn't buy it. The judges felt that the statements were offered as truthful descriptions of alleged past abuse. They also said there were no exceptions to the rule simply because it was an alleged domestic violence situation.

The court noted that nothing had changed in the 29 years before Meadow was charged other than the advances in DNA technology.

"There were no eyewitnesses, and defendant, when interrogated at length by the police, consistently denied his guilt," the court noted. "Although defendant admitted to the police that he had physically abused the victim at times during the marriage, he did not admit to having threatened to kill her."

Frisch said he would make a motion to have Ronald Meadow released from prison until his new trial.

"The prosecution won the case unfairly based on evidence that was unreliable," Frisch said. "We are elated that the judges reversed Ron's conviction."
Phoenix Larceny 1.jpg

Phoenix police said the theft occurred at 10:26 p.m. Wednesday at the Nice N Easy Grocery Shoppe on Main Street in the village of Phoenix.

(Phoenix police )

Police released photos of a man and said he was wanted for questioning in the theft.

PHOENIX, N.Y. -- Authorities are asking for help in identifying a man wanted in connection with a larceny investigation at a Nice N Easy Grocery Shoppe in Oswego County.

Phoenix police said the theft occurred at 10:26 p.m. Wednesday at the Nice N Easy Grocery Shoppe on Main Street in the village of Phoenix. Police did not say what was stolen from the store.

Police released photos of a man and said he was wanted for questioning in the theft. He was seen on security camera footage leaving in a silver Dodge Magnum minivan.

Police asked anyone with information about the Nice N Easy Grocery Shoppe theft to contact them at 315-695-2001 or 315-695-2484.
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An officer walks through the shooting scene on the 100 block of Bishop Avenue on Sunday, June 5. The shooting was called in around 4 a.m.

(Patrick Lohmann | Syracuse.com)

SYRACUSE, N.Y. -- A man shot four days ago on the South Side of Syracuse has died, Syracuse police said today.

Jose L. Vazquez, 26, of Syracuse, was shot around 4:09 a.m. Sunday on the 100 block of Bishop Avenue, said Sgt. Richard Helterline, a spokesman for the Syracuse Police Department. Vazquez died Thursday at Upstate University Hospital, he said.

Residents called for help early Sunday morning after hearing gunshots fired on Bishop Avenue.

When officers arrived, they found a wounded Vazquez. He was rushed by Upstate University Hospital by Rural/Metro Ambulance with a gunshot wound.

Vazquez remained in critical condition in the hospital for four days -- never regaining conciousness, Helterline said.

Helterline said there is no good suspect information available. The original suspect description given to police hasn't been confirmed yet, he said.

Vazquez is Syracuse's 14th homicide victim of the year.

Detectives asked anyone with information about the fatal shooting to call (315) 442-5222 or submit an anonymous tip through SPD Tips app.
SYRACUSE, NY -- For the second year, the prospects for severe weather are forcing the Empire Brewfest (and the Empire Winefest) to move indoors at the New York State Fairgrounds. The twin events are tonight and Saturday.

Tonight will be a little chilly. Saturday's forecast, which includes the chance of thunderstorms and even the possibility of tornadoes, means the drinks fests will move from Chevy Court to Center of Progress building.

Advance tickets ($35) are still available through 5 p.m. today at any area Wegmans or at World of Beer in Destiny USA. New this year is a $5 pay-as-you-go ticket the door.

Here are the full details for the events:

Empire Brewfest

Sample more than 200 beers, play in a cornhole or beer pong tournament and enjoy the live music and food from local food trucks and restaurants. Do you only want to sample a few brews? The new $5 pay-as-you-go option allows you to enjoy five-ounce samples for only $2. VIP tickets and camping sites are also available.

Where: Center pf Progress, New York State Fairgrounds, 581 State Fair Boulevard, Geddes, N.Y., 13209.

When: Friday, June 10 from 5 to 10 p.m. and Saturday, June 11, from 1 to 10 p.m.

How much: $35 for all-day sampling each day, or $65 for both. Designated driver and pay-as-you-go tickets are $5. Tickets are available online at www.empirebrewfest.com/Partners.html

Empire Winefest

Don't like beer? The brewfest's sister event brings painting parties, cornhole, giant Jenga, live music, food and samples from 15 wineries. Camping sites and Winefest/Brewfest combination tickets are available.

Where: Center of Progress, New York State Fairgrounds, 581 State Fair Boulevard, Geddes, New York, 13209.

When: Friday, June 10, from 5:30 to 10 p.m. and Saturday, June 11, from 1 to 9 p.m.

How much: $25 for all-day sampling each day. Winefest/Brewfest combination tickets are $55. Designated driver tickets are $5. Tickets are available online at www.empirewinefest.com/Clients.html

Don Cazentre writes about food, beverages, restaurants and bars for syracuse.com and The Post-Standard. Contact him by email, on Twitter, at Google+ or via Facebook.
Loft42_2.JPG

The companies that own Loft 42 have agreed to a plea deal that includes a fine and forfeiture of rental proceeds to settle criminal charges that they violated the village of Skaneateles' ban on short-term rentals.

(Loft 42)

Skaneateles, NY -- The Village of Skaneateles has reached plea deals with a New York City couple and a local fertility specialist to settle criminal charges that they violated a new law banning short-term rentals, like those offered on Airbnb.

Nicholas E. McKeon III and Kathryn McKeon of New York, and Dr. Robert J. Kiltz, have agreed to plead guilty to renting properties for less than 30 days, violating an ordinance enacted in December banning short-term rentals. Properties that have a special use permit to operate a hotel, lodge or bed and breakfast are exempt.

Kiltz is the principal in two companies, CNY Fertility PLLC and RJK Syracuse Properties LLC. The two companies own Loft 42 at 42 E. Genesee St., which advertised luxury lofts for short-term lease in the heart of the village.

In an agreement that still must be approved by Skaneateles Town Justice Charles Major, Kiltz, on behalf of his companies, pleaded guilty to violating the law. The companies must pay a $350 fine and forfeit $220.35 for one night's rental to the village.

Kiltz has also promised to return any fees he has collected for future bookings, said Brody Smith, the attorney prosecuting the case for the village.

The McKeons are expected to sign a similar plea deal for their properties at 35 Jordan St. and 21 E. Lake St. They too face a $350 fine and will be required to forfeit $921.05 in proceeds from their short-term rentals, Smith said. Major must also approve their plea agreement.

"The village has made clear from Jan. 1, through cease and desist letters, and litigation, and the (state) Supreme Court, that it intends to actively enforce this law," Smith said.

The village is investigating complaints that other property owners continue to violate the short-term rental ban, he said.



"The village will continue to actively enforce this law so long as there are complaints from citizens," Smith said. "If a citizen complains, we will investigate it. If that investigation finds a violation, we will prosecute."

Skaneateles began wrestling with the issue of short-term rentals last August. During public hearings last fall on the new law it was obvious to the village board that residents wanted the village to retain its small town character rather than throw open the doors to uncontrolled tourism growth, Mayor Martin Hubbard has said.

The village changed its zoning law December to effectively ban short-term rentals such as those offered on Airbnb.com. Officials sent letters to the owners of 32 properties telling them to stop the practice. Most owners agreed.

When owners did not agree after three letters, the village brought criminal charges against them for violating the law.

Kiltz Signed Plea Affidavit
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ABS and tanker owners co-operate in MRV plan

In 2014, Class society ABS teamed up with tanker owners Maran, Thenamaris, Minerva, Euronav and Tsakos to support preparations for implementing the European Unions Monitoring, Reporting and Verification (MRV) regulation for CO2 emissions.

An MRV plan was prepared, the results of which were shared with INTERTANKO. As the project developed, the group was joined by Consolidated Maritime (CMM) and bulk carrier operator Golden Union. Testing took place over six months on a fleet of 15 vessels, including Aframaxes (including Ice Class), Suezmaxes, MRs, an LR2, a dual-fuel LNGC, a steam-powered LNGC and a Capesize bulk carrier. At the end of the data-gathering phase, ABS reviewed emission reports, assessing the reliability, credibility and accuracy of the monitoring systems and the resulting reported emissions data and information. A summary of findings identified where existing fuel measurement systems, data flow and reporting needed to be aligned with MRV requirements. The EU MRV Regulation establishes a regional regime that requires owners to put in place systems and practices that provide clear and precise evidence of compliance, explained Dr Kirsi Tikka, ABS executive vice president, global marine. Leveraging its knowledge and experience, ABS has worked with these proactive owners to help them understand the requirements and to find solutions that minimise interruptions to their ability to trade. Although ship emissions monitoring does not begin until 1st January, 2018, monitoring plans must be submitted to the accredited verifiers no later than the end of August, 2017. Owners need to have the appropriate IT infrastructure and support in place to meet the requirements and make sure ship and shoreside staff are properly trained, ABS warned. In another move involving ABS, Capital Ship Management has collaborated with the class society to install a condition monitoring system on the propulsion shafting of the Capital-managed 2006-built, 36,700 dwt, Ice Class 1A, IMO II/III tanker Agisilaos. The patented ABS Smart Bearing solution uses non-destructive testing sensors installed on the bearing pedestal and housing to measure and display the force exerted by the main propulsion shafting system onto the bearings, effectively converting the pedestal into a permanently installed weighing machine. Shaft bearing failures typically are manifested through excessive temperature rise in the bearings, explained Dr Chris Leontopoulos, ABS marine technology manager. The problem is that often, when high temperatures are reported, sufficient damage has taken place to immobilise the vessel. By proactively monitoring the bearing load, it is possible to tell if the shaft alignment is good or if unaccounted forces exerted on the shaft and the bearings are putting the system at risk of failure. We are always pleased to participate and contribute to the application of innovation and advanced technologies, said Stavros Meidanis, Capitals DPA-S&Q manager. It is our companys stated strategy to implement and enhance technological evolution with the aim of building a more sustainable shipping industry. This ABS research project, which is supported by the National Technical University of Athens and Metrisis, will continue to further develop the sensor compactness and connectivity with the engine control room.




Green Award goes from strength to strength

Rotterdam-based Green Award Foundation has secured four new incentive providers.

Liberia has become the first flag state to participate in the Green Award programme, under which eligible shipowners will be offered significant annual tonnage tax discounts. Scott Bergeron, CEO of the Liberian International Ship & Corporate Registry (LISCR), the US-based manager of the Liberian Registry, said, This initiative provides further confirmation of the pioneering role adopted by Liberia in all areas of global shipping, and underlines its commitment to environmental compliance by striving to ensure that Liberia remains the greenest fleet afloat. Liberian registered Green Award-certified ships will be offered a 3% tonnage tax discount annually. The discount will apply continually, as long as the vessel remains in the Green Award programme. Bergeron said, The Liberian Registry is committed to helping shipowners and operators improve their green credentials and meet other corporate social responsibilities, and we believe that the Green Award scheme will help achieve those objectives. Green Award chairman Capt Dimitrios Mattheou and executive director Jan Fransen welcomed the Liberian Registry as Green Award members. Mattheou said, Recognition by the Liberian Flag Administration of the Green Award certificate as a reliable quality mark is of great significance to us. Green Award certificate holders and Green Award ships will be motivated to improve their performance still further, resulting in improved safety, higher quality and greater environmental awareness. In addition, DNV GL has signed a partnership agreement with the Green Award Foundation whereby the class society will offer discounts for shipowners and managers who hold Green Award certificates. DNV GL will offer Green Award companies a 10% discount on training courses delivered by the DNV GL Academy worldwide. The certificate holders and their vessels will also receive a 10% discount on audits related to environmental standards, such as ISO 14000 and ISO 50001. The recognition of Green Award ships by DNV GL is a huge step towards further acceptance of corporate social responsibility principles in the industry, said Capt Mattheou. It demonstrates support to shipmanagers and owners prepared to invest efforts and means in better performance, and helps in making these investments economically sound. Green Award audits ships to assist in preventing incidents and improving safety. Green Award incentive providers reward efforts made by ships to meet the Green Award requirements  a great example of a joint action by the industry! he said. Enhancing the safety, quality and sustainability of ship operations is at the heart of what we do at DNV GL  therefore, working with the Green Award Foundation was a logical step for us. The scheme offers an excellent opportunity to reward companies which set best practice examples for shipping, and I hope it encourages many more companies to invest in future-proof technologies, said Ioannis Chiotopoulos, DNV GL maritime regional manager for the East Mediterranean, Black and Caspian Sea. Alphatron Marine will award Green Award certified ships with a discount of 10%. This discount applies to a range of products and services for both sea-going and inland vessels. The services include JRC and Alphatron Marine hardware and labour, AlphaEye remote support (3-year contract), VSAT airtime (1, 2 or 3-years), maintenance contract (3-year contract) and service tariff (labour and travel). There are also special discounts available for inland navigation barges on AlphaFuelControl and for deepsea vessels on annual radio surveys and VDR annual performance testing. These discounts are only valid when services, delivery or support are carried out by the Alphatron Marine Centre of Excellence in Rotterdam. Finally, SetelHellas is also offering a discount of up to 10% on maritime-related ICT solutions for Green Award certificated ships. Certified ships and companies are entitled to a discount over the official price list on the following product catalogue: 5% off the patented SmartBox-V, SeeMBox-V Remote Monitoring solution and 5% off Maritime Telemedicine Solution (MTS) and a 10% discount on SeeMBox-V MRV Co2 for the EUs emissions monitoring & reporting (MRV) regulation.




ICS attempts to bring EU to heel

International Chamber of Shipping (ICS) and its members are to start a co-ordinated campaign aimed at European Union (EU) institutions, including member states, Parliament and the European Commission.

The goal is to persuade the EU of the necessity to align its unilateral regulation on the monitoring of shipping's CO 2 emissions with the mandatory worldwide CO 2 reporting regime agreed at the IMO.



In addition to working closely with the European Community Shipowners' Associations (ECSA), ICS said that it intended to enlist the support of non-EU governments including the US, China and other Asian nations.



Speaking after the recent ICS AGM in Tokyo, the newly elected ICS Chairman, Esben Poulsson, explained:Shipping is a global industry requiring global rules, in order to have a truly level playing field  otherwise we have chaos. ICS members greatly welcome the IMO CO 2 reporting regime that was unanimously agreed by all IMO member states in April, as a precursor to further measures that will hopefully deliver a serious contribution from shipping towards reducing the world's CO 2 emissions. While ICS fully supports the mandatory IMO data collection mechanism, many non-EU governments initially had some reservations which were only overcome by the industry arguing that the alternative to IMO making progress would be a unilateral regional regime being imposed by the EU. The EU needs to live up to its side of the bargain and align its regime with the IMO system that's now been agreed by the entire international community, he stressed.



The EU Regulation on the Monitoring, Reporting and Verification (MRV) of ships' CO 2 emissions was adopted in 2015 and will be fully implemented in three years time. But all ships trading to Europe, including non-EU flag ships, will be legally required to comply with some of its provisions by as early as next year.



Significantly, however, the EU Regulation contains a provision to the effect that the European Commission can propose adjustments to ensure alignment with any similar regime adopted by IMO.



Poulsson added:It is vital that the Commission now commits to the task of modifying its regime to make it compatible with the global system, which is about to be adopted by IMO. Quite frankly, the regional verification mechanism being developed by the EU will not be compatible with the way in which the IMO regime will be enforced by maritime flag states. It's therefore going to be completely unfit for purpose. We also suspect that many non-EU shipping nations will be strongly opposed to their ships being required to submit commercially sensitive information for publication by the Commission, at variance to what has been agreed at IMO. The key thing that really concerns the shipping industry is that if the EU refuses to realign its regime with IMO, as its own regulation permits it to do, this will be perceived by other governments as a sign of bad faith, which could then potentially inhibit the consideration of any additional CO 2 reduction measures by IMO,he said. Immediately after the adoption of the Paris Agreement, in December last year, ICS proposed that IMO should develop an 'Intended IMO Determined Contribution' to reduce CO 2  a suggestion that will be discussed further by the MEPC in October, 2016. Poulsson commented:The international shipping sector has cut its total CO 2 emissions by around 10% since 2007, despite increased maritime trade. With oil prices having risen some 80% since January, this reinforces how it is truly in every shipowner's interest to do everything possible to further reduce fuel consumption and thus cut CO 2 . Further measures at IMO will help the industry deliver this. So the last thing we want is intransigence from EU climate change officials that will seriously frustrate and complicate this IMO process, which is what we fear will happen if the EU refuses to do what it promised to do. Its worth reiterating, yet again, the industry's strongly held view that as a global industry we need a global framework. Only IMO is equipped to provide this,he concluded.




Largest tanker company formed

What is claimed to be the worlds largest tanker company was officially inaugurated in Shanghai on 6th June.

COSCO Shipping Energy Transportation has a total of 105 tankers, including nine LNGCs, amounting to 17.04 mill dwt. The asset value of the new company accounts for 11% of parent COSCO Shippings total assets. COSCO Shipping chairman Xu Lirong said that the establishment of the new company was a practical way to achieve business scale and synergies particularly in the sectors of energy shipping and logistics, in order to better compete with other established global rivals. This move is also part of ongoing restructuring of state-owned enterprises, Xu said at the inaugural meeting in Shanghai.The group will use this new setup to strengthen its capabilities in shipping oil, gas and other energy resources to ensure Chinas energy security. The new company was formed out of China Shipping Development Co and COSCO Dalian Ocean Shipping Co. COSCO Shippings new step will transform its businesses into a more diversified operation model that can take full advantage of the opportunities likely to come from the Belt and Road initiative and the development of the Yangtze River economic belt, said Wang Mingzhi, deputy director-general of the waterborne transport bureau at Chinas Ministry of Transport. COSCO Shipping also launched COSCO Shipping Financial Holding in Hong Kong last week to diversify the groups businesses in the financial services, including vessel leasing, investments, finance management and insurance.




Markets - VLCCs strengthen slightly

The tug of war continued between VLCC owners and charterers during the week.

The market saw steady demand and fixing, but charterers moved under the radar as best as they could to avoid boosting owners rate ideas, Fearnleys said in its weekly report. As the week progressed more tonnage appeared, including oil company relets giving the charterers a wider selection of tonnage to choose from. Overall, the market strengthened a bit ex MEG but was still far from what owners had hoped and expected. With charterers programme ex MEG mainly covered for June, in the short term, the market could go a bit quiet putting pressure on rates, as supply side remains ample and the July programme is still not firmly in sight. Some demand had been noted in the Atlantic but far from enough to have an overall impact on rates. The Suezmax market experienced a pre-Posidonia rush last week and the cargo volume in West Africa produced a momentum in owners favour, which forced rates up. The Med/Black Sea market also firmed mainly due to the uncertain situation in the strike hit French ports, but proved short lived, as soon as a solution was in place and congestion was reduced. At time of writing (Wednesday), natural fixing dates were in the third week window of June. The position list is ample for the few enquiries seen and rates were under downward pressure. The Aframax market in the North Sea and Baltic established itself at WS100 and WS70 for cargoes being fixed in the second week. Moving into the third week loading window, we could see rates increase on the back of a busier Baltic programme, Fearnleys said. In the meantime, while a major part of the shipping community was busy with Posidonia, rates for Med and Black Sea were under downward pressure. There are still a few ships with uncertain berthing prospects in French Ports affected by the strike. Despite this, the market looks like it will soften rate wise, as the supply of other available tonnage will create competition giving charterers more tonnage to choose from, Fearnleys concluded. The big news in the S&P market was Ardmores proposed purchase of six Frontline MRs for $172.5 mill. In connection with the purchase, subject to market conditions, the company plans to offer 7.5 mill of its common shares in an underwritten public offering. GA Holdings, Ardmore's largest shareholder, has indicated an interest in purchasing approximately 17% of the offered shares at the public offering price. Ardmore said that it intended to use the net proceeds of the offering to partially fund the proposed acquisition of six modern Eco-design MRs. The company plans on funding the remainder of the purchase price with a new credit facility with an existing lender. Morgan Stanley, Evercore ISI, Stifel and ABN AMRO will act as joint book-running managers for the public offering. DVB Capital Markets will act as co-manager for the offering. The vessels, which have average age of 2.4 years, are scheduled to be delivered to Ardmore on charter-free basis between September and October, 2016 In turn, Frontline has bought two Metrostar VLCC newbuildings, plus two options for about $84 mill each for the firm contracts and $85 mill each for the options. The Crude Hope and Crude Horn are due to be delivered in September and November this year, respectively, while the options- Crude Med and Crude Progress - are due to be delivered in January and March 2017, respectively. Robert Hvide Macleod, Frontline Management CEO, commented: "We have been consistently looking for ways to increase Frontline's exposure to the tanker market as current resale prices do not accurately reflect the earnings power of vessels on the water. This acquisition will be accretive in the near term given historically low pricing and the low cash breakeven rates on these vessels and across our fleet. It is also a reflection of our long term market outlook and our focus on generating significant cash flow to provide long term value to our shareholders," he said confirming the deal. Other newbuildings in the news this week included two Aframaxes at Daehan reported sold to NS Lemos for $46 mill each. They are due for delivery in first quarter and second quarter of 2017, respectively. Elsewhere, brokers reported the sale of the 2002-built VLCC Nippon to Singapore interests, while Greek interests, thought to be Tsakos, reportedly purchased the 2004-built LR1 Simoa for $13.9 mill. She was also reported sold in April for $12.9 mill. The 2007-built Aframax Isis was also thought sold to Greek interests for $27.5 mill. BP Shippings 2004-built MR British Fidelity was reported sold to Sinokor on private terms. She has been renamed  Fidelity and chartered to Nanjing Petroleum for 12 months at a rate said to be $16,000 per day. In the charter market, the 2014-built LR2 Captain John L was believed fixed to Navig8 for two years at $23,000 per day, while another LR2, the 2007-built Minerva Indiana , was said to have been fixed to ST Shipping for six months at $20,500 per day. Tune Chemical Tankers was said to have taken the two 2007-built MRs Star Eagle and Star Osprey for 12 months at $16,500 per day. Finally, Navig8 was thought to have fixed the 2007-built MR Nave Pulsar for 18 months at $15,850 per day and the 2008-built MR Petalouda for 12 months at $16,100 per day.




Tanker orders analysed

Between 2013 and 2015, there was a surge in new tanker orders for all sizes with the exception of Handy/MRs.

Investment in the LR2/Aframax and LR1/Panamax size groups was focused on clean tonnage, although last year there was also a strong interest in dirty Aframaxes, Gibson said in a report. The total number of orders placed last year reached the highest level since 2007. For the most part, this new investment was driven by high tanker earnings, while some orders scheduled for 2016 were fast tracked in to 2015 to avoid paying higher costs associated with TIER III regulations. However, the investment background is different this year. Tanker rates and earnings have started to ebb, most notably in the product tanker market. At the same time, there have been reports of difficulties in accessing new finance. Also concern is growing that earnings could come under further downward pressure once all the tonnage ordered over the past three years is delivered into the market. Since January this year, 102 tankers of over 25,000 dwt have started trading but there are still many more to be delivered over the next two years, Gibson reported. As of the beginning of June, the tanker orderbook stood at 14% of the existing fleet, although percentages varied depending on the sector. For example, Suezmaxes had the largest orderbook at 22% relative to its current fleet. In contrast, Handy/MRs saw the smallest orderbook - at just 10%. Not surprisingly, there has only been a handful of confirmed tanker orders thus far in 2016 (early June, see below for the latest orders). Just 20 orders were placed, with nearly half in the MR segment. It will be interesting to see what happens to ordering activity during the remainder of the year, Gibson said. Downward pressure on asset values could stimulate new investment, as newbuilding prices slipped in May to their lowest level since 2013. The lower prices seen could be down to the challenges faced by the shipbuilding industry. Apart from limited access to new finance, shipyards are dealing with a number of other adverse conditions, most notably low order intake. This adverse situation could force yards to compete even harder and thus further reduce newbuilding prices. Some owners may use this as an opportunity to augment their fleets and/or replace ageing tonnage. On the other hand, the same could lead to the permanent closure of shipbuilding capacity. STX Shipbuilding filed for a court-led restructuring recently, creating not only a cloud of uncertainty over the yards existing orderbook but also highlighting how severe market conditions could become even for prominent shipbuilders. Media reports indicated that many other leading yards in South Korea are also experiencing significant financial difficulties. The crisis in shipbuilding industry is expected to translate into delays for tonnage ordered at troubled yards. However, the chances of cancellations are considerably less likely, particularly for tankers where construction is already under way. Furthermore, in South Korea, where the bulk of the tanker orderbook is contracted, large shipyards provide a vital contribution to the domestic economy; as such, further government intervention and support is likely. To conclude, the number of new tankers expected to commence trading over the next 18 months could be lower than previously envisaged. The recent lull in new tanker investment will also apply the brakes on the pace of expansion in supply in two/three years down the line. All of this offers welcome news for owners, providing that cautious approach to new investment continues, Gibson concluded. However, since this report was written, newbuilding tanker orders have resurfaced in the past week, the highlight of which was John Angelicoussis Maran Tankers and Maran Gas Maritime ordering two firm, plus two optional VLCCs from Daewoo priced at $84.6 mill each and two plus two, 180,000 cu m LNGCs at $185 mill each. The contracts were said to have been signed over lunch on 8th June at the shipowners Syngrou Avenue headquarters during a flying visit by DSME president Sung-leep Jung, to Athens to attend Posidonia. Elsewhere, Hyundai was said to have won orders for two Ice Class coated Tier III compliant LR3s from AMPTC for $70 mill each. They are due for delivery in 2018. Enesel was said to have contracted two Aframaxes at Daehan for $45.5 mill each. The Tier II compliant tankers are due for delivery next year. South Koreas cash strapped Sungdong has won its first order this year to build two 74,000 dwt tankers plus an option for another two from an unnamed Greek shipping company for an estimated $44 mill each, according to South Korean newswire Pulse. Iranian shipping company Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Lines (IRISL) and oil producer Iranian Offshore Oil are reportedly close to ordering $2.4 bill worth of ships from South Korean shipyards. However, firming the orders depends on financing which is not in place thus far, according to Reuters. IRISL was thought to have signed a memorandum of understanding with Hyundai Mipo Dockyard for up to 10 product tankers and at least six bulk carriers.




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Angelo Rivera, 49, 2000 block of 19th Street, Vero Beach; out-of-county warrant, Miami, possession of cocaine.

Alesia Sessions, 54, 800 block of Eighth Street, Vero Beach; petty theft.

Cathia Vazquez Gutierrez, 21, 200 block of 15th Lane, Vero Beach; producing marijuana. Arrested in St. Lucie County.

Javier Garcia, 26, 200 block of 15th Lane, Vero Beach; producing marijuana; warrants for robbery, aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. Arrested in St. Lucie County.
With all 16 Treasure Coast high school graduations officially in the books, most of the Class of 2016 is preparing to head off to college. Many already are prepared for more than four years of higher education, as they join the growing ranks of students chasing graduate degrees.

Postbaccalaureate enrollment  which includes masters and doctoral programs and programs such as law, medicine and dentistry  is projected to increase nationally by 21 percent to 3.5 million students by 2025, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.

I think students today are increasingly aware that the more education you receive, the higher your pay will be down the road, said Emilia Hodge, graduate-education outreach director for the University of Floridas graduate school.

Florida universities, public and private, enrolled more than 80,000 graduate students in 2015-2016, the fourth-most in the U.S. behind California, Texas and New York, respectively, according to the Council of Graduate Schools.

Treasure Coast students have taken notice.

Geffrey Cosgrave, who just graduated from Vero Beach High School, said he decided long before his senior year to study biological science and branch off into pre-med after earning a bachelors degree, opening a wealth of possible employment opportunities.

Regardless of what Cosgrave chooses to pursue after landing his bachelors degree at the University of Central Florida, he said, he realizes a specific graduate degree likely is the best route toward careers such as a physicians assistant, orthopedic surgeon or dentist.

I like the idea of being to help people, and then being paid well for it, Cosgrave said. You cant just work your way up anymore.

Nationally, the Council of Graduate Schools reported a 3.5 percent increase  480,000 students  in graduate enrollment between fall 2013 and fall 2014, representing the largest jump since 2009. However, total graduate enrollment that year grew by only 0.4 percent, according to the organization.

For the most part, graduate-school numbers ebb and flow with the economy, Hodge said.

Graduate enrollment peaked nationally in 2010, with more than 1.25 million students after the worst of the financial crisis, then declined through 2012 before again trending upward, according to the Council of Graduate Schools.

The University of Central Florida, the most-popular school among Treasure Coast high school graduates, enrolled 7,163 graduate students in 2005 and 8,029 in 2015, according to the university. Enrollment was highest, however, between 2010 and 2012, when more than 8,500 students pursued graduate degrees each year.

Statewide, graduate enrollment has remained steady over the past three years with 82,056 students in 2014; 81,583 in 2015; and 82,518 in 2016, according to the Council of Graduate Schools.

JOB MARKET DRIVING DECISIONS

Experts predict the job market will be favorable for students with graduate degrees in the coming years.

These graduates are expected to enter a workforce the U.S. Department of Labor projects, by 2022, will grow by 2.4 million jobs requiring a graduate degree or higher.

Many jobs that once required bachelors degrees now call for even higher education, said Ryan Hendrickson, a guidance counselor at Treasure Coast High School in St. Lucie County.

Students recognize that, and want to take the necessary steps toward the careers they strive for, Hendrickson said.

If youre passionate about something, thats what youre going to do, Hendrickson said. These students know (graduate degrees) are going to help them stand out in the crowd.

Graduate degrees in STEM fields  encompassing science, technology, engineering and mathematics  are among the programs growing rapidly in popularity.

National enrollment in mathematics and computer-science programs grew by 16.6 percent between 2013-2014, according to the Council of Graduate Schools. That same year, engineering enrollment grew by 7.2 percent and health sciences by 4.7 percent.

In Florida, 30,208 graduate students enrolled in STEM fields this year.

Ronnie Hightower, a 2016 Treasure Coast High School graduate, aims to be one of those STEM students.

Through dual enrollment while in high school, Hightower already is halfway through an associate degree from Indian River State College. From there, he has his mind set on either civil or environmental engineering.

Like many other students, Hightower says the payoff of a longer stint in college will be well worth it when he settles into a field such as engineering.

'I've been working for the past three years,' Hightower said. 'These little jobs  $9 or $10 an hour  are not cutting it.'
A student works on a series of problems in his Algebra 1 class at Fort Pierce Central High School. This year marked the second year of FSA testing, and the first time learning gains  measuring how much students improved from year-to-year  could be tracked by the state. (FILE PHOTO)

By Andrew Atterbury of TCPalm

MARTIN COUNTY  More state test scores are in, and the results are a mixed bag for the Martin County School District.

The district's passing percentage for Algebra 1 end-of course-exams  a graduation requirement  declined slightly this year, but still outperformed the state average, according to the Florida Department of Education.

A smaller percentage of students passed English/language-arts end-of-course exams  also required for graduation  compared to last year, although the numbers were well above state marks.

"We are very proud of our students and teachers for meeting, and in many instances exceeding, the challenge of the Florida Standards Assessment," Superintendent Laurie Gaylord said in a statement Friday.

"Professional-development activities are already underway, and further data analysis will guide our work throughout the summer in preparation for the new year."

The Department of Education on Friday released Florida Standards Assessment and end-of-course exams results in mathematics, English/language-arts, science, civics and U.S. history.

This marks the second year of FSA testing, and the first time learning gains  measuring how much students improved from year-to-year  could be tracked by the state. The test in 2015 supplanted the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test to gauge student learning, and factors into teacher evaluations and school grades.

Students in Martin County showed notable improvement in civics and small jumps in biology and Algebra 1. The most noticeable deviation from last year's results was a 26 percent decline in passing high school geometry scores, which nudged the county below the 2016 state average of 47 percent.

The passing percentage for high school Algebra 1 tests dropped by 1 percentage point to 48 percent. Meanwhile, the state numbers for the end-of-course exam declined from 38 percent to 36 percent.

The passing percentage for end-of-course English/language-art exams declined slightly, from 65 percent to 62 percent, as statewide figures decreased from 52 percent to 50 percent.

Martin County students decreased 4 percentage points in Algebra 2  to 44 percent compared to the 40 percent state average. Scores increased by 3 percentage points in civics to 72 percent compared to the state average of 67 percent.

Students younger than high school age taking Algebra 1 increased by 1 percentage point, as 98 percent of students passed while 88 percent passed statewide.

Geometry scores stayed level for fifth- through eighth-grade at 99 percent. The state average was 94 percent.

Science scores decreased by 3 percentage points to 53 percent in fifth grade, and by 1 percentage point, to 50 percent in eighth grade as statewide rates came in at 51 percent and 50 percent, respectively. High school science scores rose 1 percentage point to 70 percent, while the state average was reported at 64 percent.
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By Nicholas Samuel of TCPalm

INDIAN RIVER COUNTY  Power has been restored to Florida Power & Light customers who experienced outages Thursday night, FPL spokesman Bill Orlove said.

Shortly after 8 p.m. on Thursday, about 549 customers were without power in Indian River County, FPL spokesman Bill Orlove said. The outages were concentrated south of Main Street in Sebastian.

That number decreased to 92 around 9:46 p.m., and all power was restored about 10 p.m., Orlove said.

Orlove said he believes fallen tree branches from Thursday afternoon storms caused the outages.

On Thursday evening, Indian River County Fire Rescue freed a woman and her son who were trapped in an elevator at Capt Hirams Resort because of the outage, Indian River County Sheriff's Office spokesman Sgt. Eric Flowers said.

Flowers said county Fire Rescue received the emergency call about 7:59 p.m. and freed the woman and her son 15 minutes later at the resort in the 1500 block of U.S. 1 in Sebastian. No one was injured.
Port St. Lucie City Hall. (FILE PHOTO)

By Nicole Rodriguez of TCPalm

PORT ST. LUCIE  After months reviewing its public-records system, the city still can't quantify how many requests it processes.

The internal audit was spurred by a Treasure Coast Newspapers investigation that revealed a staggering lag time to fulfill information requests from both the public and the news media.

City officials earlier this year disputed the investigation's findings, that from Jan. 1, 2014, to Aug. 17, 2015, the city received 244 public records requests, an average of 12 per month  according to data provided by the city Legal Department. The city averaged several weeks to process the requests.

City Manager Jeff Bremer in February said the volume of requests likely numbered in the thousands, but four months later officials still are unable to provide that number because there was no organized system in place to track the volume of requests or fulfill them, Bremer said Thursday.

Port St. Lucie averaged 3 weeks in 2014 to fulfill 64 public records requests and nearly two weeks to complete 84 requests from Jan. 1, 2015, to Aug. 17, 2015, the investigation found. Seemingly simple requests took weeks and sometimes months to process. A request for an animal-control report, for example, took 86 days to fulfill, and a request to review a city employee's personnel file took 25 days, the investigation also found.

The city has since overhauled its procedures for fulfilling public-records requests, and will implement a new electronic system that would record the number of requests, permit requestors to track their requests and allow city officials to generate records in a more timely manner, Bremer said Thursday.

The city clerk, not the Legal Department, will handle requests for information, Bremer added, with a department head responsible for transferring requests to the clerk's office, Bremer said.

"Since the clerks really are the keepers of the records, they'll know where most of the documents are stored," Bremer said. "I think you're going to find it's now a matter of days (to fulfill records requests)."

At some point, under a former city attorney's direction, records requests began to flow through the Legal Department, City Clerk Karen Phillips said Thursday. Those requests usually were extensive and related to legal cases, Phillips said.

The new electronic system will be in place in the next few weeks, Phillips said. The system costs $5,000 to purchase and install and $15,000 annually for maintenance and licensing, she said.

After a month or two, the system is to provide the city with a reasonable average time it should complete requests for information, Phillips said.

The time it takes to locate a record, review it for exempt information and make a copy should be "reasonable," according to the law. The law, however, does not define "a reasonable amount of time."

The average time Port St. Lucie takes to fulfill requests, however, is unreasonable, Barbara Peterson, president of Florida's First Amendment Foundation, has said.

Bremer plans to inform the City Council on Monday of the new system.

Bremer has revamped communications procedures by firing the city communications director; forbidding city employees from speaking directly to the media; soliciting input from all city department heads for media requests; and briefing the City Council more frequently on all issues. All media inquires now are circulated among about 29 city administrators and council members before a response is prepared. The city has hired a new communications director.

"I know that there's probably a level of frustration on the part of the press, but overall what I think that what it's done is accomplished the ability to funnel through a single point requests for information in question form, and helped prevent any blindsiding of articles that may come out that council's not aware of," Bremer said.
Denis Sauveur, with the Fort Pierce Public Works Department, tamps down the ground Wednesday so bricks can be laid to finish the sidewalk in front of a new digital sign installed in front of the A.E. Backus Museum in Fort Pierce. The museum is in the process of a major expansion that is expected to cost about $1.1 million. The museum received a $400,000 grant from the St. Lucie County Tourism Development Council and a $300,000 capital improvement grant from the Florida Department of Humanities to aid with the improvements. (PATRICK DOVE/TREASURE COAST NEWSPAPERS)

The future is digital. That includes the world of traditional art.

Actually, according to Kathleen Fredrick, art galleries and museums must not only enter the 21st century, they must embrace it if they hope to attract members of the millennial generation.

Fredrick is executive director of the Backus Museum in Fort Pierce, which will break ground this week on an ambitious $1.1 million expansion project that's been nine years in the making.

The gallery, built in the late 1950s under the direction of landscape painter A.E. "Bean" Backus, has gone through a number of changes over the years, but this latest incarnation will be the most revolutionary yet.

The expansion will be funded jointly with a $400,000 grant from the St. Lucie County Tourism Development Council and a $300,000 contribution from the Florida Department of Humanities. Backus members also have chipped in with donations to match the county's contribution.

The first visible piece of the expansion is already in place. Two large metal palm trees  dubbed "Sabal Sentinels"  that support a digital display board were set in place in recent weeks by sculptor Pat Cochran, following a design by landscape architect Lisa Nelson.

The museum expansion project will include a new 2,500-square-foot gallery that will run the entire length of the museum's north wall and house the Backus collection, much of which is currently in storage because of space constraints.

Also coming: the creation of a permanent interactive exhibit about the Florida Highwaymen, a group of black artists who sold landscape paintings from the trunks of their cars in the 1960s and '70s. Fredrick said this will be the first permanent interpretive Highwaymen exhibit in the state.

"We have reached out to (Highwaymen) collectors all over the U.S.," Fredrick said, "to loan their paintings for public exhibition."

She also noted the museum is working with the maker of a public television documentary about the Highwaymen to produce a shorter version specifically for the museum.

But back to those millennials.

Fredrick said the future viability of museums and galleries demands a greater connection to the community and enhanced efforts to appeal to a new generation of "nonmuseum-goers."

"Museums must be demystified and democratized, reaching out to people and drawing them in rather than waiting for them to come in," Fredrick said.

To that end, the new Backus Museum will include an outdoor mural plaza, featuring large panels painted by artists selected by a community-based committee of arts and civic leaders. Artwork would be switched out every three years, Fredrick said.

Yet "the last thing we want are murals that are copies of Backus or the Highwaymen," Fredrick stressed. She's hoping instead for art that explores different themes and styles while paying homage to Florida's often imperiled wildlife and wild places.

The mural plaza is intended as a user-friendly gathering place enhanced by free Wi-Fi. It emphasizes the "reaching" out to the community theme discussed by Fredrick. She's hoping the feature will help convert millennials into regular visitors.

"National studies say to take art outside the gallery and make it less imposing," she said, adding that the adjacent Memorial Park also will be studded with outdoor sculptures.

Fredrick also talked about the links between the gallery and the Indian River Lagoon to its immediate east.

"The lagoon is the thread that continues Backus' vision," she said. "It's interesting that the earliest of his works (painted in 1918 at age 12) and the unfinished canvas he was working on the day he died (in 1990) both feature the lagoon."

It's also interesting to note that the original art gallery from the 1950s was designed as an outdoors venue. In its early years, artworks were hung around the outside of the building, at the mercy of sun and rain. Later, the collection was moved under cover.

The expansion project still lacks about $200,000 to fully equip the gallery with displays, lighting and iPads that will offer detailed interactive interpretation of the artworks.

Construction will begin after the gallery closes June 19 for the summer. It will reopen in November.

The Backus expansion has taken a long time to come to fruition. The recession, disputes over land ownership rights with the city of Fort Pierce and other factors have delayed the project.

"It's been a long, bumpy road," Fredrick acknowledged, but it's going to be worth the wait.
Shoppers push carts out of a Costco in Plano, Texas in 2014. (AP Photo/LM Otero)

The Costco Crusade is on.

On May 20, I wrote a tongue-in-cheek column about why the discount warehouse chain should seriously reconsider its plans to build a new store in Palm City. Quite a few residents there have protested about the store's negative impact on traffic, public safety and the quality of life.

I'm glad to officially welcome Port St. Lucie Mayor Greg Oravec to the Costco cause.

MORE | Costco must submit new traffic counts, building designs, stormwater-management plan and more

Oravec wrote a controlled-but-passionate letter to one of Costco's head honchos expanding on the same arguments I'd used in the column. The mayor was good enough to include a copy of the column in his packet of paperwork.

The mayor noted Palm City's extremely attractive demographics. Within a 5-minute drive of the store site there are 11,807 people with an average household income of $93,000.

Wow. How could we hope to match that in blue-collar St. Lucie County?

Depends on where you draw the line, the mayor argued to Yoram Rubanenko, Costco's senior vice president for its southeast region.

True, those Palm City numbers are eye-catchingly gaudy. Yet, Oravec wrote, extend the drive-time and you won't find too many people with wallets that well-padded even in Martin County.

By the time you hit the 15-minute mark, at Tradition for example, Port St. Lucie matches Martin County income numbers and there are far more willing customers north of the county line.

The Becker Road exit on Florida's Turnpike (a site long slated for major shopping development), for instance, is only a 10-minute drive from Palm City.

Oravec hasn't heard back from Rubanenko, but that didn't stop him from posting on Facebook. There he reached more than 12,000 people, 128 of whom have sent emails to Costco seeking a northerly change of direction.

Oravec isn't expecting a miracle, that Costco will suddenly change horses in midstream and acquiesce to a move. Yet he is saying: Keep us in mind if the Martin County Commission issues a denial for the Palm City site.

"(Costco's) spent a lot of money on that site," Oravec said. "Their calculations spat out that location, But if they're jilted in Martin County, we can offer them a soft landing spot."

But haven't they told the city "no" repeatedly?

"Provided we're positive and constructive," the mayor went on, "we won't hurt our cause. We're just planting the seed if their plan for Palm City doesn't pan out."

Oravec also noted that as St. Lucie County's population grows toward 400,000, we'll be an even more attractive alternative.

"If this becomes a coin flip (between Martin and St. Lucie counties), our approach might make the difference," the mayor reasoned. "Rabidly enthusiastic fans are never a bad thing, even in less affluent markets. Look at Green Bay (Wisconsin)."

So, the gentle but persistent lobbying will continue.

Oravec said he's stressed to Martin County Commission Chair Anne Scott that Port St. Lucie would never poach retail development, but IF things change we're ready and willing.

We could always offer board members a year's free membership to Costco if that eventuality occurs, I suggested helpfully.

So, stay tuned, fellow Costco Crusaders.

"We want Costco" coozies and T-shirts are on order if we need them (I'm just kidding).

In the meantime, though, you can do your bit. Write to:

Yoram Rubanenko

Senior Vice President for Southeast Region

3980 Venture Drive, Suite W100

Duluth, GA 30096.

I know he'll be delighted to hear from you.

Happy discount warehouse hunting, my friends.

MORE | Gil Smart: The cost of keeping Costco out of Martin County

Anthony Westbury: Forget Palm City, Costco  consider this an official invitation to Port St. Lucie
Indian River County School Board District 5 candidates Tiffany Justice (left) and John Kim. (FILE PHOTOS)

Money quickly is funneling into some high-profile regional and county election campaigns. But one supposedly nonpartisan, low-profile race on the Aug. 30 primary ballot is becoming especially interesting.

Indian River County School Board District 5 is an important seat traditionally held by a beachside resident. Not running this time is two-term incumbent, Claudia Jimenez, one of the board's more compassionate, engaged members.

John Kim, 23, a produce company owner who lives on the mainland near the city's power plant, and Tiffany Puttick Justice, 37, a stay-at-home mom from Castaway Cove, are quality candidates. While both are graduates of St. Edward's School, they each have experience in local public education: Kim, before high school, and Justice, who will have four children in the county system next year.

Justice's involvement in her children's Beachland Elementary led her into the race. Frustrated by the School District's failure to keep the aging school facility safe, she lobbied for major renovations approved this year. In her three-year effort, she rankled supporters of local charter schools who were lobbying the board for a greater share of funding.

To her, safety at what she called a "traditional neighborhood school," was more important than helping a charter school pay down a mortgage or add on to increase enrollment. Charters, public schools that offer different programs and operate independently from district mandates, have grown significantly. They often require, for example, parental involvement and student uniforms.

While Justice says she supports charter schools and equal funding, Kim is a clear supporter. In January, he received donations from two longtime charter school leaders in Indian River County, Gene Waddell, chairman of Indian River Charter High School, and Ken Miller, business and finance manager for the North County Charter Elementary. The county's five charters have filed a lawsuit to force the district to fund them fairly.

While the charter issue has been a focus at forums hosted by Republican clubs and the Taxpayers Association of Indian River County, it's anyone's guess how big an issue it is with the average voter. While charter school parents are particularly active, they represent only 10.6 percent of the 20,141 students in the district.

Kim and Justice have done a good job differentiating their qualifications.

Kim, who graduated from Florida State University in 2015 with a history degree, talks about his recent experience in public schools and the fact half of his friends did not attend college. He thinks strong vocational programs would help students and employers.

Kim, who entered the race in January, has been everywhere the past few months, from schools to political gatherings, often talking up his conservative principles. He was one of three speakers at a recent local Donald Trump rally, railing against federal intrusion into local and state affairs, including education.

Kim's work experience includes stints with the Republican Party of Florida in Tallahassee and GOP lawmakers Bill Posey and Debbie Mayfield. He touts his GOP credentials, noting he's the only lifelong Republican. (Justice had no party affiliation until becoming a Republican Feb. 11.)

The jabs at each other often are subtle. Justice insists she's just a mom, not a politician looking for his first elected job  clearly alluding to Kim's resume, working crowds and polished stump speeches.

At a Taxpayers Association forum Wednesday, she chided Kim for not attending School Board meetings.

"Unlike you, I have to work," Kim replied, noting he often watches board meetings on TV or the internet. "I do not believe in negative campaigning."

Justice then turned the family values table on Kim.

"I am proud to serve my family every day," she said. "Stay-at-home mom is one of the most important jobs in America."

Justice, who attended American University, has been effective at Beachland and at raising money, according to campaign reports through April. In her first two months, she generated almost $20,000, including contributions from beachside philanthropists. Kim collected almost $15,000 in January, but brought in less than $7,500 over the next three months.

Indian River County hasn't seen this kind of money in a school board race since 2010, when winner Jeff Pegler generated $43,500. Matt McCain raised a 10-year high of $46,500 to win in 2008. The most campaign money spent collectively ($78,584) in one race the past 10 years was in 2006, when Carol Johnson defeated Craig McGarvey.

Public campaign forum exchanges between Justice and Kim are getting more intense. One can only imagine how heated the rest of the race will become.
Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission staff at Dinner Island Ranch Wildlife Management Area in Hendry County lift a hunted black bear out of the back of a pickup Oct. 24. The 330-pound bear was one of 298 taken during Floridas two-day bear hunt. (FILE PHOTO)

By Beth Kassab

There are few things in Florida less popular than last year's bear hunt.

Except for maybe this year's bear hunt.

Now, nearly eight months after the first hunt of Florida black bears in more than 20 years, public condemnation is reaching a new peak as wildlife commissioners appear poised to hold another hunt.

MORE | Poll: Should state officials authorize another black bear hunt?

At least five counties  Seminole, Volusia, Miami-Dade, Pinellas and Hillsborough  are calling on the state to end the trophy slaughter of the animals that were listed as a "threatened" species just four years ago.

So are about a dozen cities, including Eustis, St. Petersburg and Davie. Clermont and Deltona passed similar resolutions last year.

That adds up to opposition so far from elected officials who represent a combined 6 million people, more than a quarter of the state's population.

Not much reaction, though, from the Florida Fish & Wildlife Conservation Commission, which will consider a staff recommendation on whether a bear hunt should take place this year at its next meeting later this month.

The commission spent the last couple weeks holding a series of public webinars, where state scientists made the case for a hunt.

This is part of a public relations ploy to assert that the hunt is necessary.

During one of the webinars, Thomas Eason, who leads FWC's habitat and species conservation, said educating the public and securing trash is not enough to reduce the number of people who come face-to-face with bears, a problem that has sharply increased in recent years.

"We're looking at over 200 bears that are being hit by vehicles, that means people are in those vehicles," Eason said, according to news reports. "Part of the rationale behind the hunt is to help shift mortality away from things where it's impacting people negatively."

This is one of the very reasons the bear hunt is so unpopular in the first place.

Killing bears deep in the woods or on rural lands  where the hunt actually takes place  doesn't touch the suburban bears living along Markham Woods Road in Seminole County or neighborhoods in southwest Lake County, hot spots for bears wandering residential streets.

There is a connection between these suburban bears and the hunt, though.

The hunt is a direct result of a series of bear-related injuries to people, including three women in Seminole County.

Bears are dangerous and unwelcome interlopers in backyards and garages.

But short of the state sanctioning hunters to lie in wait in tree stands along the likes of Heathrow Boulevard, this is not a problem hunting will solve.

From some of the comments reported from the webinars, it appears that wildlife commission staff are leaning toward a bear hunt with modified rules. Perhaps holding the hunt at a different time of year. Or limiting the number of hunting permits issued.

Last year the state sold nearly 4,000 permits even though it only wanted to allow hunters to take just 320 bears.

It was a free-for-fall and the number of bears killed in two districts  Central Florida and the eastern Panhandle  exceeded the number the state planned to allow. Overall, 303 bears were killed.

And, yes, reports of bears in suburban yards or nosing through trash continued.

So the wildlife commission has an opportunity here.

Or it could set the stage for its own undoing.

The commission could listen to public sentiment  including a June 4 letter from three independent scientists, which called for any future bear hunts to be postponed on the grounds that there is not enough data to justify a hunt.

Or commissioners could move forward with a hunt and perhaps fuel the early stages of two possible constitutional amendments being championed by activist group Speak Up Wekiva, which sued to stop the bear hunt last year.

If the wildlife commission really wanted to do something helpful it would make a harder push for more cities and counties to fine residents for behavior that attracts bears to neighborhoods such as leaving garbage unlocked or low-hanging bird feeders.

bkassab@tribpub.com
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Plex is one of the most popular services for streaming your local media to a TV, but it usually requires a dedicated, always-on PC to run its server component while a player app on a separate device handles the front end. But soon that will no longer be the case for Nvidia Shield TV owners, the company announced today, with the upcoming Shield 3.2 update essentially turning it into the first all-in-one Plex box.

The Nvidia Shield TV is a fairly powerful device thanks to the quad-core 64-bit ARM chip with a 256-core Maxwell GPU that make up its Tegra X1 SoC. It also comes with 3GB of RAM and has support for hardware-accelerated video transcoding in H.264, MPEG2, and HEVC -- all of which is enough power to handle 4K video at 60fps.

The two companies are reportedly working on some finishing touches before the Shield TV firmware update lands sometime next month. It's unclear if Plex will bring similar functionality to other streaming media players in the future.

Priced at around $180 the Android TV powered box is currently the cheapest way to get Plex in a standalone device. The base model only comes with 16GB of internal storage so you'll need to add more via USB or over the network. The $300 Shield TV Pro includes 500GB of built in storage which should be good enough to get your library started.
The Norwegian government announced on May 26 that the country is now committing to zero deforestation.

The Scandinavian country pledged that it will no longer use and procure products that encourage loss of forestry. The decision is part of the recommendation of Action Plan on Nature Diversity by the country's Standing Committee on Energy and Environment. The committee asked the government to consider biodiversity protection with the funds provided by the Government Pension Fund Global (GPFG). They also called on the creation of a separate biodiversity policy.

GPFG, the world's sovereign wealth fund, has climate change policies with deforestation as its main thrust. However, the fund does not have any specific policy for biodiversity protection.

The commitment is a victory for Rainforest Foundation Norway, which lobbied for the said pledge for several years.

"Over the last few years, a number of companies have committed to cease the procurement of goods that can be linked to destruction of the rainforest ... It is highly positive that the Norwegian state is now following suit and making the same demands when it comes to public procurements," said Nils Hermann Ranum, who heads the Rainforest Foundation Norway policy and campaign.

Ranum is now calling on other countries, particularly Germany and the UK, to commit to zero deforestation as they have previously entered into a joint declaration at the UN Climate Summit in New York last September 2014. During the summit, the nations promised to support zero deforestation on a national level. The countries also committed to creating solid policies referring to sustainable procurement of soy, beef, palm oil and timber.

An earlier study has shown that from 2000 to 2011, about 40 percent of total tropical deforestation was due to wood, palm oil, soy and beef products from seven countries alone. These countries  Malaysia, Paraguay, Bolivia, Argentina, Brazil, Indonesia and Papua New Guinea  have the worst deforestation rates and are also major sources of carbon emissions at 44 percent.

Support For Zero Deforestation

Norway has made history in being the first country to make such pledge, but the government is not new to protecting forests worldwide. Norway's support for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) in Tanzania and Brazil has reached as much as $214 million.

The country has earlier committed $250 million for the preservation of Guyana's forests. The Norwegian government is also paying $150 million to Liberia to prohibit deforestation.

India, in an attempt to preserve much of its forests, is planning to spend about $6.2 billion to create more forests.

Photo: Stiller Beobachter | Flickr

 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has released a new set of proposals on how the government can combat heroin and opioid drugs in the state.

The recommendations were based on the findings of the task force that Cuomo created to develop new ways to address drug addiction and overdoses.

Cuomo has called on doctors to limit their prescription of opioid medications to patients. He also urged the government to increase its funding for drug addiction treatments and provide better support for people who are trying to stay off their addictions.

The governor and state lawmakers are looking to pass a comprehensive approach to combating the growing drug use problem in New York before the State Legislature adjourns for the year.

Howard Zucker, New York's health commissioner, explained that the key to curbing the heroin and opioid abuse epidemic in the state is to tackle it from several different angles at once.

He said their goal is to keep New Yorkers from becoming addicted to illegal drugs in the first place, while also providing assistance and treatment to those who are already suffering from the cycle of drug abuse.

The State Legislature has already included $166 million to fund anti-heroin and opioid addiction programs in the previously passed budget for the state. The Cuomo government and lawmakers are now drafting a plan on how the budget should be spent.

DiNapoli Report

Cuomo's announcement comes as state comptroller Thomas DiNapoli also released his report on the heroin and opioid addiction in New York.

DiNapoli said as many as 825 people in the state died because of heroin overdose in 2014, which is a 24 percent jump from figures recorded in 2013. This was based on the latest statistics provided by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

"While New York state and some local governments have taken important steps to reduce heroin and opioid abuse, the costs associated with this epidemic are growing and the health, safety and prosperity of our communities are at risk," DiNapoli pointed out.

In his report, DiNapoli stated New York is surpassed only by Massachusetts in the number of heroin-related overdose deaths and Connecticut for prescription opioid-related overdose deaths.

Suffolk County had the highest rates of overdose deaths in New York in 2014, when 111 people died of heroin abuse and 96 people died of prescription opioid abuse.

Monroe, Oneida, Orange and Suffolk are the counties that had the most number of heroin-related overdose rates, while Oneida, Orange, Erie and Staten Island are the places that had the highest rates of prescription opioid-related overdose deaths.

 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
A rumor mill is presently making the rounds on the internet, suggesting that Apple could take the wraps off its iMessage for Android at the WWDC 2016.

The report comes from MacDailyNews citing its unnamed source who is said to be familiar with the matter.

"Apple will announce that iMessage encrypted text messaging is coming to Android users at WWDC next Monday at WWDC 2016, according to a source familiar with the company's thinking," reads the report. "This will make it possible for Android and iOS users to communicate securely as iMessage features end-to-end encryption  even Apple cannot access users' messages."

Other Apple Apps On Android

If the report holds true, this is not the first app from Apple to land on Google's flagship operating system. The Cupertino-based firm rolled out the Android version of its Apple Music late last year. But before that, it also made the Move to iOS, an app used in transitioning from an Android device to an iPhone, available for Android users. It also released Beats Pill, which is used to control the Beat Pill speaker.

When Apple Music was announced to arrive on Android devices, Apple's boss Tim Cook said that this app serves as the company's way to test the water before offering more services to other platforms.

Apple's Response

Last month, during the I/O developers conference, Google lifted the veils off its latest messaging app dubbed Allo.

Announced by Google engineer Erik Kay during the event, Allo is the firm's newest offering that integrates Google's other services, ranging from Search, Maps and YouTube. This new cross-platform messaging app (which means that it is available both on iOS and Android devices) comes with a bevy of other neat features. These include its capability to provide so-called smart replies. This likewise enables users to chat with Google's artificial intelligent assistant.

In spite of introducing Allo, though, the company said that it has no plans to kill off Hangouts.

With this Google's latest move, it appears that bringing iMessage to Android could likely be the iPhone maker's response.

Considering, however, that iMessage is among the key assets of iPhones, it is not clear whether Apple really plans to open up this app beyond its own walls. Plus, Apple also revealed a few months ago that iMessage, during peak times, sees 200,000 messages being sent every second.

A report from 9to5Mac believes that it seems that "it would be in Apple's best interest to keep such a popular service locked down to its own ecosystem."

If this speculation eventually turns out to be true, though, then Apple could probably have a good reason to do so.

Since there is nothing official yet at the moment and that MacDailyNews does not boast a solid track record in terms of pushing out accurate predictions regarding Apple's plans, it is always best to take this story with a touch of skepticism. Furthermore, the report also says that its source claims that "plans are constantly in flux" ahead of Apple keynotes  as such, the unveiling date could still change. However, the source also underscores that this Apple service would "definitely" head to Android before this year ends.

 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
It may be more convenient for consumers to buy medicines over the internet but health regulators have long warned about the potential dangers of buying prescription and over-the-counter drugs online.

While there are online drug stores that operate legally, there are also rogue websites that sell unapproved drugs or medicines that have not been checked for effectiveness and safety, posing threats to consumer health.

At the peak of the Ebola epidemic in West Africa, for instance, some online drug stores sold fake Ebola medicines claimed to prevent or cure the disease. At the time, no vaccine was available yet to prevent infection from the hemorrhagic virus.

Now, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has worked hand in hand with other agencies to take a more active stance against these online drug pharmacies that sell suspicious drugs.

On June 9, the FDA said that it has teamed up with international agencies to take action against 4,402 website that illegally sell potentially harmful and unapproved prescription drugs to consumers in the U.S.

The move, which is part of a global effort called Operation Pangea IX and was led by the INTERPOL, the world's largest police organization, aims to identify the makers and distributors of illegal prescription drugs so these unsafe products can be removed from the supply chain.

The FDA sent formal complaints to domain registrars to formally request for the suspension of more than 4,000 websites, which include 110 that sell 2,4-Dinitrophenol (DNP) for weight loss. DNP, which is often used as herbicide, wood preserver and dye, did not receive the green light from the FDA for use as drug.

During the enforcement action conducted between May 31 to June 7, authorities inspected international mail facilities (IMFs) and found U.S. consumers have been purchasing unapproved drug products abroad to treat an array of health conditions such as asthma, depression, narcolepsy and high cholesterol.

Nearly 800 parcels have been detained as a result of the inspection. The FDA also sent warning letters to operators of 53 websites that illegally sell misbranded and unapproved prescription medicines to U.S consumers.

Consumers who purchase from illegal online pharmacies do not just face health risks. They are also vulnerable to identity theft, credit card fraud and computer viruses.

"There are also many 'rogue websites' that offer to sell potentially dangerous drugs that have not been checked for safety or effectiveness," the FDA said. "Though a rogue site may look professional and legitimate, it could actually be an illegal operation.

 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Fast-food chain Wendy's recently found additional cases of unusual credit card activity at some of its restaurants, which signals that the extent of the damage done by hackers in a previously discovered attack is much worse than initially thought.

Payment companies first noticed the unusual credit card activity on transactions processed in some Wendy's stores. While the cards were legitimately used in transactions made at Wendy's, the cards were then charged with fraudulent transactions afterward.

The activity prompted the company to launch an investigation into the matter with law enforcement authorities and cybersecurity experts.

Last month, Wendy's said that it had discovered malware in the point-of-sale systems of less than 300 franchised restaurants in North America. In addition, about 50 more locations were suspected to have experienced issues in cybersecurity.

However, developments in the ongoing investigation show that the number of restaurants affected by the attacks could be significantly higher.

In addition to the malware discovered in May, Wendy's said that another variant of the malware has been found. The newly discovered malware is similar in nature to the first one but is executed differently.

The hackers utilized a remote access tool to attack a kind of POS system, which Wendy's previously believed was not affected by the attacks. With the malware being discovered in such POS systems, the number of restaurants compromised by the hackers will balloon to much higher than 300 locations.

According to Wendy's, the attacks may have been caused by the compromised credentials of a third-party service provider that supports and maintains the POS systems of the fast-food chain. Through the credentials, hackers were able to tap into the POS systems of the affected Wendy's locations to inject the malware.

The company said that it has disabled the newly discovered malware in all the locations where it was discovered, with Wendy's continuing its cooperation with the authorities and experts in finding out the hackers behind the crime.

Wendy's is just one among the many companies that are currently experiencing cybersecurity issues. In fact, even the United States Federal Reserve is not safe from hackers, with its computers system being breached more than 50 times between 2011 and 2015. The report is concerning because the Federal Reserve plays a critical role in the banking industry not just in the country but also worldwide.

Facebook CEO and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg was also recently the target of a hacking attack, with his accounts on Pinterest and Twitter being compromised.

 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
NASA is taking great lengths to save coral reefs.

Together with top scientists from all over the world, NASA launched Thursday a new research project that aims to gather data on coral reefs from 23,000 feet (7,010 meters) above.

The three-year campaign led by scientists from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory will be known as Coral Reef Airborne Laboratory (CORAL). Experts hope the program will help them determine how environmental forces affect coral reefs around the globe.

Eric Hochberg, principal investigator for CORAL, says the airborne mission will survey reefs at specific locations in the Pacific. The main goal is to get a new perspective from above, study them at a larger scale and relate the condition of the reefs to the environment.

Indeed, the project targets to solve one of the biggest practical roadblocks faced by scientific divers when it comes to studying coral reef ecosystems.

Biology Professor Julia Baum of University of Victoria says scientific divers are limited by the depth with which they can work at and the amount of time they have while diving. She says so much of underwater marine science, particularly the study of coral reefs, is an excruciatingly long process.

What's more, locations affected by coral bleaching such as the Great Barrier Reef are expansive. If the reef were transposed on the western coast of North America, it would span from British Columbia, Canada to Baja California, Mexico.

"How do you study that big of an area by doing hour-long hikes?" says Hochberg, who is also a researcher from the Bermuda Institute of Ocean Sciences.

Hochberg says CORAL will produce one of the most extensive images to date of the condition of the vast portion of the world's coral reef from a standard data set.

The dataset will show trends between biogeophysical forces  both natural and manmade  and conditions of coral reefs. He says this will help scientists better predict the future of the global coral reef ecosystem and provide data for lawmakers.

The CORAL project will employ the use of a Portable Remote Imaging Spectrometer (PRISM) installed in an airplane. "In situ data" or data on coral reefs in their rightful place will validate the observations.

CORAL will receive data from key coral reefs in the Mariana Islands, Hawaii, Great Barrier Reef and Palau without even touching the waters.

The data will describe the conditions of the coral reef through three measurements: calcification, primary productivity, and amounts of sand, coral and algae. These figures will become a baseline comparison for future analysis.

Once captured, the CORAL data will take six months of processing before scientists release it to the public.

 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
While it is generally known that Pikachu has always been the face of Pokemon, the yellow electric mouse, apparently, is not the most favored.

In a recent poll concluded by the Pokemon Company in which Japanese fans were asked who among the 721 Pokemon was their favorite, Greninja claimed the No. 1 spot. The water-dark type Pokemon from the Pokemon X and Pokemon Y series reportedly garnered 15 percent of the total votes from more than about 500,000 voters.

Greninja is a large frog-like Pokemon that evolves from Frogadier and is the third and final evolution of Froakie. Reports suggest that the Pokemons victory above the other 721 Pokemon, most especially Pikachu, may be attributed to Greninjas recent appearances in various media.

Greninja has been seen in the Pokemon anime series as one of Ashs own and has a special transformation called Ash-Greninja. The Pokemon has been added to the Super Smash Bros. as one of the playable and formidable characters and has even been dubbed as a rare Amiibo character. These combined allegedly boosted Greninjas popularity among Japanese fans.

Pikachu, on the other hand, didn't even place in the top three, landing in the fourth spot right after psychic Pokemon Mew, and the legendary Pokemon God, Arceus, in third and second places, respectively. Coming in after Pikachu up to the 10th spot in order are Sylveon, Genesect, Rayquaza, Zygarde in its 50 percent form, Charizard, and Meloetta in its Aria form.

Series originals Charmander and Squirtle didnt make it to the list. Bulbasaur, however, landed on the 89th spot.

The Pokemon General Election 720 voting event is a marketing campaign for the companys upcoming new movie release, Pokemon X Y & Z. People attending the movie will be able to download Greninja into their Pokemon Omega Ruby and Pokemon Alpha Sapphire. Greninja will also be receiving special marketing distributions this summer.

In related Pokemon news, upcoming titles Pokemon Sun and Pokemon Moon will be receiving the same QR scanning feature present in Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire. Players wont be able to obtain the scanned Pokemon, though, and will only receive an entry on their Pokedex instead. Pokemon Sun and Pokemon Moon are set for a release this coming Nov. 18.

The complete list of Pokemon making it to the top 100 may be viewed on the Pokemon General Election 720 webpage while the top 25 names have been listed below:

1. Greninja

2. Arceus

3. Mew

4. Pikachu

5. Sylveon

6. Genesect

7. Rayquaza

8. Zygarde

9. Charizard

10. Meloetta

11. Mewtwo

12. Eevee

13. Jirachi

14. Darkrai

15. Lucario

16. Diancie

17. Hoopa

18. Keldeo

19. Victini

20. Manaphy

21. Reshiram

22. Kyogre

23. Kyurem

24. Magnemite

25. Shaymin

 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Whats the best way of trending on Twitter? Given that we are owned by a digital media marketing organization, Techtree.com would prefer to refrain from sharing trade secrets. Having said so, the easiest method of capturing attention on this micro-blogging website is this: Raise a Storm in the Teacup!

So, when micro-blogging website announced to the media that it had notified millions of users of a possible security breach from their database, the trending topic obviously became Twitter itself. It revealed that close to 33 million usernames and passwords were compromised.

Coming on top of the latest in a string of leaks over the past month impacting social networks such as Linkedin.com, MySpace.com and a few Russian language websites, the latest news was enough to set off panic attacks across the entire Twitter community.

Thankfully, the Twitteratti across India remained largely oblivious to the challenge despite a few media organizations carrying reports of the alleged breach of security. If we can help it, wed like to keep things that way, given that Twitter itself has changed Code Red to Code Yellow this morning.

Let us try to reconstruct the entire sequence of events that took off some time last evening (India Time) and continued through the night

What Happened?

A website called LeakedSource, announced rather pompously that it had more than 1.8 billion records in its database and that all these pertain to the Twitter users. The company, which sells such records for a fee, suggested that it wasnt Twitter that was hacked.

These words were echoed by Michael Coates, Twitters trust and information security officer, who claimed that the company was quite confident of the fact that the records werent flicked from their servers. There is no indication that we have been compromised, he asserted.

Both of them went on to suggest that the formatting techniques used to put the data in a certain order actually suggested that some malicious element might have assembled the database using information captured from previously hacked computers. Which ones? Well! It is anybodys guess.

A report published in the Wall Street Journal quoted a blog by LeakedSource to state that the company had obtained the Twitter data from someone using the alias [email protected], which incidentally was also the account that supplied the databases of Linkedin.com and MySpace.com recently (Full Story).

Oops! Twitter Co-founders Account Hacked

What set the cat amongst the pigeons was the report that Twitter co-founder and former CEO Evan Williams got his account hacked for a brief while. Though it happened on Wednesday, the ripples continued through Thursday following the reports of a mass scale hacking.

A group calling themselves OurMine claimed responsibility for hacking Williams account in a tweet that was deleted minutes later, says a report published in Mashable.com. The group was the same that had claimed the onus for compromising Mark Zuckerbergs social media accounts. (Full Story).

Williams was quoted by the news article as saying that the hackers gained access to his Twitter account via FourSquare. He did not divulge more details and the company also refrained from comments, claiming that they would not like to make a statement on individual accounts.

The Story After the Storm

After the initial panic, Twitter went about analyzing the information provided by LeakedSource. The purported Twitter @names and passwords may have been amassed from combining information from other recent breaches, malware on victim machines that are stealing passwords for all sites, or a combination of both, Coates wrote in a blog post titled Keeping Your Account Safe.

Leaving nothing to chance, Twitter also made an effort to secure the accounts of users whose information was purportedly leaked. They did so by asking these users to reset their passwords immediately.

A report published in Wired.com quoted a representative of the hackers to suggest that the data from recent hackings was offered privately to spammers targeting individual accounts. Thereafter, it was put up for public sale, with the Linkedin.com list alone getting sold for USD 20,000.

Coates takes pains to point out that the attackers mine the exposed username, email and password data, leverage automation and then attempt to auto-test the login data and passwords against top websites. If the person used the same username and password on multiple sites, then attackers could, in some situations, automatically take over their account, he says.

Coates also mentions in the blog that some of the passwords supposedly linked to Twitter were not valid. This is what led the Twitter mandarins to believe that the data could be a hotchpotch of old breached data or a case of repackaged material generated from old security breaches.

So, What Next?

Nothing much! Of course, one could apply the better-safe-than-sorry theory here and get some extra protection. Here is how one can go about it

Go to Twitter on the desktop

Click on Profile and Settings on the top right-hand corner

If you couldnt find it, look under your Avatar

Go to Mobile and enter your phone number

Twitter will send you a confirmation code

Enter it on the account and hit Return

Now visit the Privacy and Security section

Check the box that says Verify Login Requests

You will get yet another confirmation code just to make sure

You are done!

Now every time you log in, a special code sent to your phone is required to crosscheck that it is really you.

Also Read:

Sinking Twitter Reaches Out To Yahoo

Mark Zuckerberg's Pinterest And Twitter Accounts Hacked

Twitter, Accounts Hacked
A better performing smartphone is everyone's dream. But, how best does your device perform? Popular benchmarking tool AnTuTu has recently rolled out its list of ten smartphones irrespective of any price tags and other refinements, and simply based on AnTuTu score.

However, most of the times, many people simply do not agree these benchmarks to be a good source. Yet, they definitely provide some insight!

So, here's the list of top 10 smartphones with their AnTuTu scores in the bracket:

1. Vivo Xplay 5 Elite (138706)

[Image Courtesy: Tech2, Firstpost]

It may be a surprise to many that the number one smartphone according to AnTuTu is not from popular companies like Apple, Samsung, LG, etc. That's because, the smartphone hosts a 6 GB RAM and 128 GB ROM out-of-the-box along with a 5.43 inch Super AMOLED Quad HD display screen. It is available in China with a price tag of CNY 4,288 (USD 655).

2. LeEco Max 2 (138026)

[Image Courtesy: Android Authority]

This smartphone, as we already know, made a pretty loud roar when launched, for all the power packed features it comes with. 5.7 inch display screen, 6 GB RAM, Snapdragon 820 processor, 3,100 mAh battery, 21 MP rear camera, and 54 GB internal storage. The smartphone comes with a price tag of around EUR 350.

3. Lenovo ZUK Z2 Pro (136853)

[Image Courtesy: Android Community]

This recently announced smartphone comes with a 5.2 inch display screen along with a whopping 6 GB RAM and 64 GB internal storage. Powering this beast is a 3,100 mAh battery which may not be one of the heaviest batteries in the world, but can definitely give a day or two of backup. The rear camera is of 13 MP capacity. The expected price tag is somewhere aroun USD 666.

4. Xiaomi 5 (136773)

[Image Courtesy: Android Pit]

With a weird screen size of 5.15 inch, the smartphone packs in a powerful 16 MP rear camera while being powered by a 4 GB RAM and Snapdragon 820 processor. On top of this, a 3,000 mAh battery keeps the smartphone alive for at least a day of heavy usage. With 128 GB internal storage, the smartphone lacks a card slot, which is definitely fine, thanks to the huge internal space. The device comes with a price tag of Rs 24,999.

5. Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge (134599)

[Image Courtesy: CNET]

This is the smartphone infamous for its unaffordable price range starting from Rs 50,000. With QHD S AMOLED 5.5 inch display screen, 4 GB RAM, 32 GB internal storage, and 3,600 mAh battery, the smartphone is definitely a good option. It also comes with a 12 MP primary camera, 5 MP secondary camera, Exynos 8890 Octa Core Processor, and water/dust resistance.

Interestingly, the much aclaimed Apple iPhone is not found in the top 5 positions, however, two iPhones, iPhone 6S and iPhone SE are ranked at 6th and 7th position by AnTuTu.

Also, LG G5, Meizu Pro6, and Honor V8 stand at 8th, 9th, and 10th position, completing the list of top 10 smartphones you can ever imagine.

Below is a graph AnTuTu has published on its website showing the ranks and scores of these 10 smartphones discussed above. Which among these would you prefer to purchase? Shoot us your comment below!

Source: AnTuTu

Top 5 Smartphones, Best Smartphones, AnTuTu, high performance, super smartphone
Who doesn't know the funny moment when Flipkart announced their app-only strategy, only to come back on Google Chrome soon? Well, there's a lot behind many things than we can actually think of.

While Google Play Store and Apple App Store are getting new apps every now and then, the research from Nomura tells that this app trend might soon come to an end.

Why?

Most of us might have experienced one simple, yet complicated problem while using a smartphone - Insufficient storage! Well, this makes people think many times before downloading apps. This has also become a serious threat for most of the independent app developers and publishers, in getting users download the app.

In fact, Quartz has reported that most smartphone users in America download zero apps per month. This is definitely scary for app developers, and no doubt their growth is slowing down gradually.

Here's a graph published by SensorTower, Nomura Research, on its website, clearly showing nearly 20% year-on-year decline in the US apps downloads.

Here's another graph that shows the international market for the apps. Internationally, we can see some improvements in the market, when compared to the US market.

However, we can clearly see Snapchat and Uber growing spectacularly both in US and internationally while all other apps including WhatsApp, Gmail, Twitter, and Instagram are falling down.

Does this mean SnapChat and Uber are the future of mobile apps? While we go blank in answering this, we do know one thing - to make it big in the mobile app industry now, you got to a brilliant company with some mind boggling technology attached to your product/service!

Smartphone Apps, Future of Smartphone apps
Jaumo Dating App Goes International | TechTree.com

Jaumo Dating App has recently surpassed more than 10 million members and has become one of the fastest growing dating apps worldwide. Jaumo, which is available at Google Play and Apple iTunes, offers a unique experience to find the right person for a short flirt or serious relationship. The app's growth has been fastest among those 20 and 35 years old, and is experiencing remarkable growth around the world including in Germany, the United States, Brazil, Spain and Switzerland.

"We're happy to announce that the first quarter of 2016 has been our biggest growth in members and activity numbers in our company's history," says Jens Kammerer, CEO of Jaumo Dating App. "We are delighted that more and more people use Jaumo to flirt, date and connect with others, and we continue to expand and improve our app."

Unlike other dating apps, Jaumo started with very little initial capital and is still operated by its two founders. Unlike traditional dating services and fee-based dating apps, Jaumo's basic features are free and will remain free forever claim the makers. Users can chat with others instantly with a one-tap sign up.

The company recently launched a new app called Pink, which is a new dating app that provides a fun and safe way for women to connect with other people nearby. With Pink, women are always in control. They only receive messages from the people they like, and they decide who can start a conversation.

Kammerer has noted that the company is also ever-evolving to meet the needs of the current marketplace. Upcoming, they plan to release more apps through the end of the year to offer a unique experience for the LGTB community.

The popular dating app is present in over 190 countries and is available in 50 languages. Founded in 2011, the German-based, bootstrapped company is still operated by just the two founders. The app is available for free in the Google Play Store and iTunes App Store.

Also Read

Tingle Offers Safe and Anonymous Dating

Android Apps To Chat With Girls And Strangers



TAGS: Online Dating Apps, Mobile App, App Store, Play Store
A 40 anos de Malvinas

"Revisar el pasado es pensar el futuro". La frase de la presidenta de Telam, Bernarda Llorente, resume el espiritu del documental coproducido entre la agencia de noticias y el canal publico de TV sobre la cobertura que los medios de comunicacion hicieron del conflicto, plagada de censura y mentiras. Una autocritica necesaria para mirar hacia adelante en un (ya viejo) contexto de fake news y negocio informativo.
The Venezuelan government expects the immediate release of the plane held in Argentina after the release of its 19 crew members; the foreign minister of this Caribbean nation, Carlos Faria,... | Read More
Obama was effusive in his praise of Clinton as he announced his endorsement, which came on the same afternoon Obama met with Clinton's Democratic challenger, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders. "I don't think there's ever been someone so qualified to hold this office. She's got the courage, compassion and the heart to get the job done," Obama said.

U.S. President Barack Obama has endorsed Hillary Clinton, just two days after his former secretary of state became the Democratic Party's presumptive nominee for president. "I want to congratulate Hillary Clinton on making history as the presumptive Democratic nominee for president of the United States," Obama said Thursday in a video released on Clinton's campaign website. "Look, I know how hard this job can be, that's why I know Hillary will be so good at it," he added.

The endorsement energizes Clinton's campaign as she turns her attention to presumptive Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. The president's endorsement could also end concerns about party unity after a long and intense battle between Clinton and Sanders.

After meeting with President Obama on Thursday, Sanders addressed reporters outside the White House, saying he hopes to meet with Clinton soon. "I look forward to meeting with her in the near future" to discuss how to defeat Trump.

Sanders added that Trump would "be a disaster of a president of the United States. It is unbelievable to me that the Republican Party would have a candidate who in the year 2016 makes bigotry and discrimination a corner stone of his campaign."

Although Clinton amassed enough delegates this week to secure the Democratic Party nomination for president, Sanders said he will continue campaigning. He said his campaign would be fully engaged in the Washington, D.C., primary election next week, the final of the primary season.
Liberia is officially free of the Ebola virus, the World Health Organization announced Thursday, after the West African country successfully passed 42 days without a confirmed case of this often-fatal disease.

"WHO commends Liberia's government and people on their effective response to this recent re-emergence of Ebola," said Dr. Alex Gasasira, the organization's representative in Liberia. "WHO will continue to support Liberia in its effort to prevent, detect and respond to suspected cases."
BBC Head of Specialist Factual Commissioning Martin Davidson is to leave the BBC in mid-August to explore new opportunities in and beyond television.

Tom McDonald will take on Davidsons responsibilities alongside his current portfolio to become Head of Natural History & Specialist Factual Commissioning, Television.

Davidson has been in his current role since March 2015 and before that was Head of Commissioning for History and Business.

His extensive commissioning credits include programming to mark the anniversary of World War I, to shows such as Mary Beards Pompeii, and factual dramas like BAFTA nominated Wipers Times, 37 Days, and The Eichmann Show, with Martin Freeman.

Acting controller of BBC factual commissioning Alison Kirkham said: All of those who have worked with Martin over the years will miss his expertise, his commitment and above all his enthusiasm for the programmes and people he has looked after.



Kirkham added: Martins departure has given me the opportunity to look again at the structure of the department and, at a time when we need to make efficiencies and reduce headcount, I have decided to bring the responsibility for commissioning Specialist Factual, Specialist Factual Formats & Natural History under one role.



McDonald will now be responsible for commissioning all content across Natural History, Science, History, Religion & Business.



He joined BBC Factual Commissioning in 2012 and has been head of Natural History & Specialist Factual Formats commissioning since 2015.



His credits include Big Blue Live, Attenborough and The Giant Dinosaur, How To Stay Young, Trust Me Im A Doctor, Inside The Factory, Worlds Busiest Railway and An Hour To Save Your Life.



Hes also overseen Life Story and The Hunt, as well as the forthcoming Planet Earth II.



Share this story
South Korea stepped up propaganda broadcasts elsewhere along the border after North Korea conducted its latest nuclear test and the North has been retaliating with its own.

Reporters were given a tour of the JSA at the invitation of the South Korea-U.S. Combined Forces Command. The South plays no propaganda broadcasts in the JSA, but a North Korean announcer could be heard apparently denouncing South Korea, though it was difficult to understand what she was saying due to the poor quality of the loudspeakers.

The Joint Security Area of the border truce village of Panmunjom was ringing with muffled North Korean propaganda broadcasts on Wednesday as tensions remained high along the inter-Korean border.

But in the JSA North and South Korean soldiers stand within arm's reach of each other, and physical clashes erupted there in the past. In 1984, a shootout erupted after a Soviet diplomat touring Panmunjom suddenly crossed over the military demarcation line, prompting North Korean soldiers to chase after him into the South Korean side of the DMZ.

The ensuing firefight resulted in the deaths of one South Korean and three North Korean soldiers.

Afterwards the South installed electronic equipment in the JSA to detect North Korean troop movements around the clock.

"Things may look calm on the outside, but tensions are always high here," Lt. Col. Kwon Young-hwan in the JSA said. "We're constantly monitoring whether North Korea is abiding by the terms of the ceasefire agreement."

The two Koreas remain technically at war because the 1950-53 Korean War ended only in a ceasefire.

Gen. Vincent Brooks, the new commander of U.S. Forces Korea, visited the JSA after assuming his new post last month and told reporters Wednesday that the threat facing the Korean Peninsula can be "clearly felt" there.
Rain was named as one of the 100 most influential people in the world by Time magazine in 2006 and 2011.

South Korean pop star Rain will perform at the Miss Vietnam finale in Ho Chi Minh City on August 28, organizers said Friday.

This will be the fourth time the 33-year-old, real name Jung Ji-hoon, performs in Vietnam. The final of this years Miss Vietnam will take place at the Phu Tho Indoor Stadium in District 11, the organizers told the media at a briefing Friday.

Rain has made eight albums and acted in several South Korean and Hollywood films. Time magazine named him one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2006 and 2011.

His latest work is a main role in a K-drama titled Please Come Back, Mister that aired on SBS from February to April this year.
SC Vivocity, run by Singapore-based Mapletree Investments, officially opened in District 7, Ho Chi Minh City on September 20, 2015. Photo credit: Foody As its real estate market is recovering, Vietnam is now the focus of Singapore-based Mapletree Investments in Southeast Asia, where it aims to raise its assets under management to US$1.5-2 billion by 2019 from the current $687.9 million, The Strait Times reported Monday.

Vietnam accounts for the bulk of Mapletree's Southeast Asian business outside Singapore at the moment, with yields on its projects here range from mid single digits to high teens, CEO Wendy Koh was quoted as saying.

Mapletree is considering office and residential projects in Vietnam, and is open to both completed assets and development assets on a selective basis, she told the newspaper .

Koh did not deny a possibility that Mapletree will resume its plan for a Vietnam-focused private equity fund now that the country's property market is showing signs of recovery.

However, she said, in order to bring the plan back, it needs to have the right assets and there needs to be "strong appetite" for investments.

Mapletree first entered in the country in 2005 through logistics sector. The company, which now has a total of S$28.4 billion ($20.26 billion) in assets under management across Asia, has expanded to industrial parks and acquired several development assets in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City.

In the southern hub, the company opened its first shopping mall SC Vivocity in Vietnam on Sunday (September 20), about five months after its soft opening. The mall, which is part of a 4 .4-hectare mixed-used project co-developed with Saigon Co.op Investment Development JSC, reportedly boasts about 700,000 visitors a month.

With "fairly strong economic growth," especially compared with the rest of Southeast Asia, strong income growth along with rising urbanization and foreign direct investments, Vietnam will remain an important part of the region for Mapletree, Koh was quoted as saying.
Police are investigating the fire at the housewares store on Ho Chi Minh City's Luy Ban Bich Street early Friday. Photo credit: Le Trai/Tuoi Tre

Four people of a family were killed in a fire that broke out in a shop selling housewares in Ho Chi Minh City early Friday.

Neighbors said they heard people shouting for help at Tan Phu Gia store on Luy Ban Bich Street in Tan Phu District at around 3:50 a.m.

They struggled in vain to extinguish the fire with water before fire trucks arrived.

Five people of the family were sleeping in the two-story building, but an elderly woman managed to get out. The victims' identities were not immediately unavailable.

The family reportedly leased out the ground floor to the store and lived on the first floor. Colonel Le Tan Buu, director of the city Firefighting Department, said the fire was extinguished at around 6 a.m.

The police are investigating the cause of the fire.
An infant receives treatment of burns at Dak Lak General Hospital on Friday. Photo: Ngoc Anh

A man died and four other, including his wife and son, suffered from severe burns in a fire allegedly started by the man himself in central Vietnam on Friday.

Doctors in the General Hospital of Dak Lak Province on Friday said four victims admitted into the hospital early in the morning are still in critical condition.

The patients, including Hoang Thi Phen, 19, her 7-month old son, her sister Hoang Thi Ninh, 25, and Ninhs 40-day old son, suffer from severe burns all over their bodies, the doctors said.

Phens husband Ngo Quoc Loc, who allegedly started the fire at around 10 p.m. Friday, died of his injuries at the hospital.

Loc, 23, reportedly had argued with Phen before dousing their house with gasoline and set it on fire.

Col. Nguyen Van Bon of Daklak Province Police Dept. said police are investigating the case. They have not been able to interview the adult patients due to their condition, he said.

Doctors Dak Lak General Hospital said they are considering transferring the four patients to Ho Chi Minh City for further treatments.

According to Dinh Thi Huong, Khen's mother, Loc and Khen had been separated for about a year.
A still from the video clip shows passenger Nghiem Tien Khoi throwing the pickle jar at Hanoi's Noi Bai International Airport on June 22, 2015.

The northern aviation authority has fined a Vietnamese passenger VND750,000 (US$35) for throwing a jar of food on the floor in Noi Bai Airport after he was not allowed to bring it to his flight.

Nghiem Tien Khoi, 38, was at a security check point before boarding his flight to Ho Chi Minh City on the afternoon of June 22.

After two officers detected the jar of pickled eggplant in fish sauce in his hand luggage, they asked Khoi to remove the jar and leave it behind.

They reminded him that aviation rules do not allow passengers to bring smelly liquids with them to the plane.

Khoi argued with the officers and yelled at them.

He got angry and tossed the jar onto the floor, breaking it.
\Hong Kong's crucial shipping trade is hoping China's overseas infrastructure plan and closer business ties with Iran will enable the city to tackle the downturn in the seaborne sector and tougher competition, officials said.

The global container sector, which transports everything from bananas to iPhones, as well as the dry bulk shipping market hauling commodities including iron ore and coal, is struggling with a glut of ships, a faltering global economy and weaker consumer demand - pressuring freight companies as well as ports that handle the volumes.

Hong Kong, one of the world's biggest container ports, expects to benefit from China's new silk road initiative aimed at developing trade and transport links across Asia and beyond.

"You have a lot of building materials that will need to be transported. That will have demand for shipping," said Jenny Koo with the Hong Kong Trade Development Council (HKTDC).

"For Hong Kong, our priority markets will be Asia and the Middle East," she told Reuters during Greece's Posidonia shipping week in Athens.

The plan to build land, sea and air routes also known as the "One Belt, One Road" was announced by Chinese President Xi Jinping in 2013 with the aim of boosting trade by $2.5 trillion in the next decade. As China's economic growth slows, Beijing is encouraging its companies to win new markets overseas.

"There are a lot of new projects especially in the context that there is the 'One Belt, One Road' initiative being pushed out," David Cheng, of the Hong Kong Maritime and Port Board, said separately.

"We have a very strong shipping cluster and we have to attract more people in the industry to make Hong Kong as one of their operating bases."

Hong Kong handled over 20 million TEUs (20-foot equivalent container units) last year.

The HKTDC's Koo said global container throughput via Hong Kong was estimated to grow this year by 4.1 percent and intra-Asia trade by 4.4 percent.

Trading and logistics account for 23 percent of Hong Kong's gross domestic product and the city is targeting more shipping trade with Middle Eastern countries including Iran after international sanctions on Tehran were lifted earlier this year.

Hong Kong officials said freight activity with Iran was expected to include multiple areas such as food products and consumer goods.

"A lot of people have been dealing with Iran through third parties," said Stephen Wong of the HKTDC. "Now that sanctions are taken away, Hong Kong will benefit ... I'm sure that the trade will grow."
U.S. President Barack Obama appears in a still image from a video released on June 9, 2016 in which he endorses Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, in Washington, D.C., United States.

U.S. President Barack Obama formally endorsed Hillary Clinton's White House bid on Thursday and called for Democrats to unite behind her after a protracted battle with Bernie Sanders for the party nomination.

U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts also backed Clinton on Thursday, telling MSNBC's "The Rachel Maddow Show" that presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump was "a genuine threat to the country."

Clinton, the presumptive Democratic nominee, said it "means the world" to her that Obama had her back in a bruising campaign for the Nov. 8 election.

Clinton also said she had the "highest regard" for Warren, a fiery critic of Wall Street, and was "really pleased to have her good ideas and support."

Vice President Joe Biden also waded into the campaign on Thursday. "Whoever the next president is, and God willing in my view it will be Secretary Clinton," Biden said in a speech at the American Constitution Society in Washington.

The Obama endorsement increases pressure on Sanders, a U.S. senator from Vermont, to bow out of the race and lend his support to Clinton so that the party can focus on defeating Trump.

"It is absolutely a joy and an honor that President Obama and I over the years have gone from fierce competitors to true friends," Clinton told Reuters in an interview.

After an unexpectedly tough battle against Sanders' challenge from the left, former first lady Clinton made history when she reached the number of delegates needed to win the party nomination this week. That made her the first woman to lead a major U.S. party as its White House candidate.

Obama, who enjoys rising approval ratings as he nears the end of eight years in office, will appear with Clinton on the campaign trail next week in Wisconsin.

The two were opponents in the 2008 Democratic presidential primary race, which Obama won, but they buried their rivalry and she served as his secretary of state for four years. Clinton is the 2016 candidate who the White House believes will best safeguard Obama's legacy.

"I don't think there's ever been someone so qualified to hold this office," Obama said of Clinton in a video. "I'm with her. I am fired up, and I cannot wait to get out there and campaign for Hillary."

Trump assailed the endorsement on Twitter: "He wants four more years of Obamabut nobody else does!

Clinton's campaign tweeted a brash response: "Delete your account."

Sanders, who galvanized young voters with his calls for more social equality and measures to rein in Wall Street, has been reluctant to concede the race, despite concerns among leading Democrats that continuing party divisions could hamper Clinton's efforts to beat Trump.

Toward the exit

Obama and other senior Democrats are seeking a delicate balance of rallying the party behind Clinton, while not alienating Sanders and his supporters.

In what appeared to be an attempt to gently ease Sanders toward giving up his campaign, Obama met the democratic socialist for about an hour in the White House, laughing warmly as they walked into the Oval Office.

Although Sanders told reporters afterward that he still planned to compete in the final nominating contest in Washington, D.C., next Tuesday, he said he would work with Clinton to defeat Trump.

Sanders was then welcomed on Capitol Hill by Senator Harry Reid, the top Democrat in the Senate. Reid said the lawmaker from Vermont was in a good place with his Democratic colleagues. He suggested that Sanders was close to acknowledging defeat by Clinton.

I didnt hear a single word about him trying to change the fact that she is the nominee, I think hes accepted that, Reid told reporters.

In the endorsement video, Obama recalled the party unity that followed his prolonged primary battle against Clinton in 2008.

"Secretary Clinton and Senator Sanders may have been rivals during this primary, but they're both patriots who love this country and they share a vision for an America that we all believe in," Obama said.

Warren told MSNBC she was endorsing Clinton because "a female fighter in the lead is exactly what this country needs."

Warrens populist credentials will boost Clintons ability to court Sanders voters as she prepares to battle Trump. Warren was the only female Democratic U.S. senator who did not endorse Clinton during the primary race.

Clinton told Reuters she and Warren had similar views about issues such as economic policy and protecting the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform law and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which Warren pushed to start.

Trump said in an interview with Reuters last month that he would try to dismantle the Dodd-Frank law.

US Democratic presidential nominee Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) and Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY) wave at a campaign rally in Orlando, Florida, October 20, 2008.

In the interview with Reuters, Clinton said her overall economic package, including plans to rein in Wall Street and cut taxes for the middle class, would come during the first 100 days of her presidency if she defeats Trump.

Clinton previously said a plan to generate jobs by investing in transportation and other infrastructure spending and immigration reform would be among other early priorities.

"One of the things that President Obama said yesterday is he thought his job was to remind the American people what a really serious job this is, the tough choices, the hard decisions, the high stakes in choosing a president and commander in chief," Clinton said.

"And I know how important it is to get off to a really good start in the White House," she said.

Trump, a wealthy real estate developer who became the party's presumptive nominee last month after seeing off a large group of rivals, is well behind Clinton's campaign in terms of fundraising and policy infrastructure.

On Thursday, his top donors were holding their first official meeting in New York. Trump also met with industry leaders in New York at an event organized by oil billionaire Harold Hamm.
Unionized workers at Korea's top three shipbuilders are threatening an all-out strike against massive layoff plans announced earlier this week.

The labor union at Daewoo Shipbuilding and Marine Engineering said Thursday it opposes the "unilateral" downsizing measures and plans to hold a vote next week on whether to down tools.

Unionized workers at Hyundai Heavy Industries also plan to meet next week to decide whether to strike. Workers at Samsung Heavy Industries, which does not have a union, have also launched a public relations drive demanding protection of their jobs.

But analysts warn that a massive strike would only hasten the collapse of shipbuilders.

"A failure to deliver vessels on time due to strikes will lead to massive amounts of additional costs, which would complicate self-rescue steps being pursued by the cash-strapped shipbuilders," an industry insider said.
One in three convenience stores in Seoul has sold cigarettes to minors, the Seoul Metropolitan Government said Thursday.

The estimate was the result of monitoring 1,300 convenience stores in Seoul for illegal cigarette sales to minors from March 28 to April 29, which found that 406 or 31.2 percent had done so.

But the proportion is down from 48.4 percent or nearly half in similar screening last year.

Of the 406 stores that sold cigarettes to minors, 48 stores sold them only after asking about customers' age but without checking ID, but the rest did not bother to ask customers' age. Only 145 stores or 11.1 percent asked customers' age and demanded ID.

The city is going to send a warning letter to the stores that sold cigarettes to minors.


Four Canberra schools are either over or projected to exceed student capacity in 2016, figures released by the ACT government have revealed.

Giralang Primary School, Gold Creek junior school, Harrison Junior School and Telopea Park Senior School are on track for booming enrolments.

Shane Rattenbury. Credit:Rohan Thomson

But despite welcoming the projections' release, at least one parents and citizens association from a school already at capacity said it did not see evidence of the government's long-term planning.

Releasing the figures, education minister Shane Rattenbury said the ACT public school system had experienced a 14.9 per cent increase in enrolments over the past five years.
Damning findings about the treatment of a pregnant woman who died after childbirth have sparked reforms within ACT hospitals, including compulsory staff training on how to handle cases of elevated blood pressure.

Corrina Medway, 32, died of a massive cerebral haemorrhage after giving birth to two girls at Calvary Hospital in May 2011.

Dr Andrew Foote was found by the ACT Coroner's Court to have failed in a childbirth fatality at Calvary Hospital. Credit:Melissa Adams

She was suffering pregnancy-induced hypertension, or abnormally high blood pressure, something that could have been reversed with rapidly-acting medication.

That medication was readily available, but was not used.
Online gambling giant Bet365 has been whacked with a $2.75 million penalty after being found guilty of luring new punters with a false "free bets" offer.

The Federal Court found Bet365, which markets itself as "the world's biggest online company", had misled and deceived Australian consumers with its "$200 free bets for new customers" offer between March 2013 and January 2014.

It found Bet365 failed to prominently display the conditions, which included that, in order to receive the $200 free bet, new customers had to first deposit and gamble $200 of their own money.

Rod Sims, chairman of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, which took Bet365 to court, said the offer was aimed at enticing new customers into what the judge called a "web of deception".
A landlord has successfully booted her tenants from a Melbourne apartment after they rented it out through home-sharing service Airbnb.

In a landmark ruling that will send a shiver through the so-called "sharing economy", the Victoria Supreme Court ruled on Friday that Catherine Swan's tenants had breached their lease by renting out the St Kilda property through the popular website.

Justice Clyde Croft said tenants Barbara Uecker and Michael Greaves had sub-let the Fitzroy Street apartment because they offered the entire property through Airbnb, not just a single room.

"I am of the opinion that the particular Airbnb agreement in issue in this appeal, for occupation of the whole of the apartment, constitutes a lease," Justice Croft said.
Checking the progress online of your takeaway pizza is so 2006. Now you're being tracked, too.

From next week, Domino's Pizza will start using satellites to follow customers as they approach stores to pick up orders. By tracking pizza-lovers on the street, Domino's can wait until the last moment to start cooking and ensure orders stay fresh, the company said.

The fast-food surveillance comes a decade after the pizza chain started to let customers track their own orders. The stock has soared more than 17-fold in 10 years, giving Domino's a market value of $6 billion. The company is also testing delivery robots and high-speed ovens.

"Time is the enemy of food," Domino's CEO Don Meij said on Thursday at a news conference to announce the company's latest technology projects. "The longer it sits on the rack, the lower the quality of that pizza."
Spanish clothing giant Zara has seen its Australian sales soar by almost 25 per cent in the last year, sending its profits soaring and allowing it to reward investors with $55 million in dividends. Zara sells clothing, footwear and accessories and is among the highest-profile international retailers to enter Australia in recent years. The fast-fashion chain began trading in April 2011, and now employs more than 1100 employees across 15 stores. Christmas shopping in Sydney's Pitt Street Mall. Credit:Edwina Pickles Accounts lodged with the corporate regulator show Group Zara Australia's revenue soared by 24 per cent to $222 million for the year ended 31 January 2016, thanks in part to two new stores, in Brisbane and Miranda, in NSW. The Australian business reported a full-year profit of $15.26 million, up from $10.2 million the previous year. Earnings before interest and tax jumped to $23.6 million, from $15.5 million.

One rival said a 10 per cent return was good, but not great. "They're better than the average apparel business, but not outstanding," the retail veteran said of the results. "Australians got excited about it coming here, but there is a perception that the quality has gone down. On the plus side, there's a little bit for everyone there: men in their 20s can find something smart and there are also clothes for older people. It stretches across the demographics." The accounts also appear to show Solomon Lew's son Peter Lew has halved his stake in Group Zara Australia, with Spain's Inditex Group increasing its stake in the business by 10 per cent to 90 per cent. Mr Lew remains a director. Zara Holdings and Mr Lew's International Brand Management received $55 million in dividends in the 2016 financial year, from zero the year before. By contrast, Swedish rival H&M Australia last reported a tripling in half-year sales to 500 million krona, or $78 million, while Japanese clothing giant Uniqlo said yearly sales had jumped almost 300 per cent to $118.9 million although it remained unprofitable.
Leaders and former leaders of the major parties have been attacking the minor parties and independents almost as forcefully as each other this election, especially in the past week. The Coalition has been especially vociferous against Nick Xenophon's party.

But it doesn't appear to be having much effect. The polls are showing ever-increasing support for minors  now up to 25 per cent.

"Most-trusted Australian" Dick Smith would have romped it in against Bronwyn Bishop if she had remained a Liberal candidate. Credit:David Tease

Unfortunately, the voting system means that nothing like a quarter of the seats in the House of Representatives will go to minors and independents. Paul Keating got the wrong house when he called the Senate "unrepresentative swill".

It's a pity Bronwyn Bishop didn't get preselected again for her seat of Mackellar because, if she had, Dick Smith was determined to run against her as an independent. (At least he has his own helicopter.) Helicopter or not, there is no way Smith, if elected (as was likely, and that's probably why the Coalition ditched Bishop), would have abused perks like Bishop did.
Fleets of Chinese trawlers that habitually fish in South Korean waters in the West Sea are back in force near the Northern Limit Line as the crab-fishing season reaches its height. The government said it has lodged protests against the Chinese government and demanded it follow up. Beijing pledged to do its best but said that there are limits in what it can do about it.

Chinese fishermen use trawl nets, which are banned in Korea, and scoop up virtually all the marine life. The nets are weighed down by lead weights and catch fish and crabs indiscriminately, resulting in a barren seascape. As a result, the amount of crabs caught around Yeonpyeong Island until last month fell to 50,000 kg, just a third of the usual catch at this time of year.

The Chinese trawlers operate between the Northern Limit Line, the de facto maritime border with North Korea, and South Korea's authorized fishing waters.

Due to heightened tensions with North Korea, South Korean patrol boats cannot approach the Chinese trawlers for fear of provoking the North. Yet South Korean fishermen are expected to suffer W10 billion in damages, a quarter of the total fishing revenues generated by the five islands in the West Sea (US$1=W1,158). The government may find itself between a rock and a hard place, but it needs to look for a more effective means of dealing with the menace. China is an important global power now. It will have to do better than simply stand by and watch its fishermen break international law. What they are doing is not just common theft, it is a menace to the future of ocean life.

Read this article in Korean
But during her audition, Clarke took off her coat and accidentally knocked over a bottle of water  behaviour that seemed totally in line with the clumsy Louisa. "She got down on all fours and started apologising profusely, embodying Louisa's klutzy nature," Sharrock says. "It's amazing that she's had the part of Game of Thrones for so long, but I think fans of the show are going to be really surprised by her range in this movie." The movie was a transformative experience for Clarke, too. Unlike Thrones, which is filmed in remote locations such as Malta and Croatia, Me Before You was shot mostly in England. She was able to go home every night to her apartment in Hampstead. But she also identified with Louisa in a way she never has with her more iconic character. "I just felt so much that someone had written me down  that a part of myself was written in a book," she says. "She wants to be happy. She's got this innocence that I  after six ... years in this industry  I've lost.

"What I've managed to go through within this industry has, I think, given me a maturity at a speed which I wouldn't have normally had. I was forced to grow up and take responsibility for myself, because whatever mistakes you make? You can't be putting nothing on no one. You have to be cool with the choices you're making." If Hollywood has jaded Clarke, she does a good job of hiding it. She appears to have the boundless energy and optimism of someone finding herself as an adult for the first time. She knows a few people at the cafe  the barista, one of the many dudes who looks like Jesus  and already seems like a local. "It just seems like the sea breeze and the attitude here blows away the haze of anxiety that looms over LA," she says. Even here by the ocean, though, she's not entirely immune to industry pressure. She has struggle to feel comfortable with her body  particularly with a role on Thrones that requires her to show it off so frequently. "I feel like so many women in this business don't speak truthfully about what they put in their body," Clarke says . She imitates a Valley Girl: "They're, like, 'I eat pizza all the time and I don't work out!' It's, like, no. You're a twig. You've got an ... eating disorder and you're not talking about it. And that's annoying. "For me, I got to a point where I was, like, wait a second. I, Emilia, care more about the size of someone's brain than the size of their ass. So why should I care if someone is looking at me and judging the size of my bum over my brain? If you work hard enough and you're not a [jerk], people will hire you for your talent over the fact that you're, like, super skinny."

As for Me Before You, Clarke believes she gravitated towards the project because deep down she's a hopeless romantic. "As much as I would like to hide it," she says. "I mean, what am I hiding it under? Absolutely nothing! I think I hide it and everyone's, like, 'No, Emilia, it's pretty obvious.'" By now, you've probably figured out that Louisa falls for the guy she's taking care of, who is played by The Hunger Games' Sam Claflin. There's just one problem: Before he meets Louisa, Claflin's character has decided that in six months he plans to take his own life rather than suffer through it. Like many readers of Moyes' novel, Clarke was initially perplexed as to how a man could still consider killing himself when he's fallen so deeply in love. She understands the desire to believe that true love conquers all, but she recently started thinking about how, "Disney screws us over". "We've been brought up with these fairy stories and Disney being, like, 'happily ever after,' so we look for that magic when we're adults," she says. "We look for it in yoga or, 'If I hold this crystal, it's going to make me feel better.' We do that even in this modern day and age, where Netflix and chill is the only choice."
Sweet tooths have never had it so good in Brisbane, with the advent of stand alone dessert bars and cafes dedicated to the all-important sweets course.

From doughnuts to brownies, meringues to ice-cream, waffles to chocolate, here's a list of 10 great (non-chain) Brisbane places to get your just desserts.

Must Do Brisbane Dessert Bars Credit:Must Do Brisbane

Lucid Sweets
Turnbull's government lost a commanding lead of 57 per cent to Labor's 43 per cent of the vote in November. Former prime minister John Howard and wife Janette with Malcolm and Lucy Turnbull. Credit:Andrew Meares It is now locked in a 50-50 clinch with Labor. He was asked to address this disappointment factor in the leaders' debate two weeks ago, and in media interviews since, but has failed to deal with it. Malcolm Turnbull portrayed in a street poster by Michael Agzarian. Credit:James Brickwood

"All too often" he says in an interview with Fairfax Media, journalists have asked the question "and when I've asked the cause of this disappointment they've been unable to provide me particulars, which makes it a bit hard." So, provided with three particulars in the interview  climate change, same sex marriage and the republic  Turnbull concurs that "those are the three issues that are often raised" with him by voters. And? "If those are the three issues, my position has not changed" on any of them since taking the prime ministership. He goes through them one by one. Starting with the republic, a campaign he once led, he says: "I remain committed to Australia becoming a republic," but he supports holding a referendum only "when we can win". He suffered a loss on the question at the 1999 referendum, and he's not seeking to lose again. He has often said since that the time to revisit the question will be when the Queen's reign comes to an end. "I haven't changed my position one iota."

And same sex marriage? "Everyone, I think, understands that I inherited a government position that there would be a plebiscite. Whatever you may say about it, it is a thoroughly democratic process. I didn't want it  it's not part of our traditional parliamentary process." Indeed, Turnbull preferred a free parliamentary vote for government MPs and senators. But he was on the losing side of the argument when the then prime minister, Tony Abbott, called a surprise party room meeting on the matter. "I was not a supporter of a plebiscite but it was the position the party room adopted and the government adopted. And once you give an undertaking to people that you'll have as much say in this as I will  'I'll have one vote, you'll have one vote'  how can you take that away? "I know elite opinion doesn't agree with me," he says, but nevertheless, "I'm totally confident that it'll be carried and I will vote yes." Labor, says Turnbull, is "trying to create the impression that I've gone back on my position  I haven't."

The third area where Turnbull has long campaigned for more action is on containing climate change. He lost his post as leader of the Liberal party in a principled stand on the issue in 2009. Abbott led a conservative revolt against him and took the leadership. Abbott's policy of so-called Direct Action was "fiscal recklessness on a grand scale" Turnbull once said. But here, too, he asserts that "my position hasn't changed". How so? Because the government's current suite of climate policies is a big advance on Abbott's original Direct Action, he says. He reiterates that the greenhouse effect is real and man-made but "the real question is what do you do about it? "What matters to us is that we reduce emissions, in the most efficient way and at least cost. We have now a set of measures well beyond Direct Action when I ceased to be leader. "We are going to meet our 2020 target comfortably."

And the bigger target, a 26 to 28 per cent reduction by 2030? "At the present time I'm satisfied that we can meet it with current suite of policies, recognising that we always have the option of buying international permits. But we are going to review [our policies] next year." The Paris agreement struck last year is "the best thing ever because you actually have countries, including developing countries, agreeing to take action." Countries "need to increase their commitments" to cut carbon emissions, says Turnbull, "but it has to be in a co-ordinated way." If the US announced a unilateral doubling of its emissions reduction target, would China follow suit, he poses? "Of course not. Heroic efforts by one country, even one big country, are futile." The Labor leader, Bill Shorten, by announcing a more ambitious target, "fundamentally misunderstands the new paradigm. It's where countries say to each other, 'We're prepared to do more if you do more, and let's get those people over there to do more.' "In a negotiation your leverage is not to act unilaterally."

So if Turnbull's position on these three key, progressive issues hasn't changed since taking the leadership, why have millions of Australian voters slumped into a slough of disappointment? If the problem is not Turnbull, it must be the people. Were public expectations unrealistic, I put to him? Are progressives too impatient for change? Do voters fail to grasp the difference between what he can do as an MP and as party leader? "Those are conclusions for you to draw," Turnbull responds. "I'm not arguing with you." In other words, Australians misunderstood Turnbull. It was a case of mistaken political identity. He made big impressions on Australia when he took up each of these causes. But his retreats on each were less obvious. He accommodated his views to more cautious Coalition positions while the people still thought of him as a revolutionary. This, it seems, is the basis for the great disappointment. Issue by issue, bit by bit, Malcolm changed. In the past six months, Australia realised.

So what's left? Turnbull's election campaign is not monothematic, but it's close. It's all about jobs and growth, as he never tires of telling us. Turnbull the successful entrepreneur, investor, businessman is modelling his own career as the course for the country. He makes no apology  prosperity and growth is not an optional extra but the indispensable national enabler, he says: "My vision for Australia is fundamentally grounded in allowing Australians to exercise their freedom. What that means is that you do need to have a strong economy. If you don't, you don't have the opportunities you need, you don't have the revenues you need. The economy itself is a huge enabler. "My vision is where we continue to develop as the most successful multicultural society in the world. I'm romantic enough to think that the harmony we have in our great diversity is a role model for the rest of the world. That's why I talk a lot about mutual respect." He forcefully rejects Labor efforts to paint him as unfair. "They're trying to run a line on me that because I'm well off therefore they can run a sort of politics of envy campaign." He points to his proposed changes to superannuation, which have caused a minor revolt in his own party's constituency. The changes are "absolutely fair".

And he counters: "Really the big issue with fairness that Labor has to address is how is it fair to keep living beyond your means? How is it fair to pile up mountains of debt for our children and grandchildren to pay for?" He is angry at Labor's bald assertion that his government will raise the GST to 15 per cent, an option he has discarded, as "complete falsehood". Fairness, he says, is critical. "Nobody wants to be like Mao's China where everyone was wearing blue boiler suits but we have much less inequality than comparable English speaking countries, particularly the US but also UK and Canada. "There are many reasons but main reason is a pretty rigorously means-tested welfare system. Access to a good education is critical. You can't prescribe equality of outcomes. "You can do everything possible to guarantee equality of opportunity." He worries that if Australia doesn't set a path for growth, "this is a time in which we could very easily be left behind. We don't have, post-mining boom, a unique comparative advantage in some sort of physical asset. We have to make our greatest asset ourselves.

"So that means we've got to focus on enabling Australia's enterprise." A Reachtel poll this week found that Turnbull is the leader Australians most want to have a beer with. Australia has over 15 million voters. That's a lot of beers. "I'm certainly a fairly convivial person so I do like a bit of company," chuckles Turnbull at the thought. He's nowhere near as admired and liked as he was just six months ago, but he is not broadly disliked. Loading
Scholar and librarian Colin Steele, a judge of the 2013 Prime Minister's Literary Awards, has revealed a hitherto unknown captain's pick over the recipient of one of Australia's most prestigious book prizes.

In August of that year, historian Ross McMullin took home the $75,000 Prize for Australian history for his collection of World War I stories Farewell, Dear People.

But the expert judges had earlier selected another book - Frank Bongiorno's The Sex Lives of Australians - which Mr Steele says was knocked back by Mr Rudd without explanation, in favour of McMullin.
Jim Obergefell. Credit:Marco Grob It came as no surprise to John's friends when he shrugged off a strange sensation in his left foot in the winter of 2011, a tingling that at first was more annoyance than disability. At a Cincinnati bar one night, Jim watched quietly as John limped toward the bathroom. Their friend Jennifer Stowe, who had travelled with John and Jim to Paris, wondered whether John had suffered a mild stroke. "Look at him when he walks," Jim said, shaken. "He's got to go to the doctor." It started with a strange sound, a soft and steady thump-thump-thump in the hallways of their new condominium. John's left leg was slapping against the ground, as if bound by a heavy weight. Thump-thump-thump. The sound was deafening. Then he had trouble swinging his legs out of their Volkswagen hatchback. Jim Obergefell in front of the US Supreme Court in Washington, DC. Credit:Melissa Golden/Redux/Headpress As the slapping grew louder, Jim trolled the Internet late into the night, reading about pinched nerves and lead poisoning and muscular dystrophy. One was worse than the other, but nothing was as frightening as a disease called ALS, a fatal neurological disorder that attacks the nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord.

Winter 2011: Jim paced the kitchen, the bedroom, the living room, frowning at the white brick walls. He passed their painting of Tunisian kilns, the marble-topped coffee table that had once belonged to John's grandmother. He looked at the clock. He answered an email from work. He waited. Please. Let it be okay. Any moment now, John would come home from the neurologist with a final diagnosis, something that explained the heaviness in his left foot, which lately had been creeping higher, into his calf and thigh. One doctor had mentioned the possibility of ALS, which most often starts with weakening in a single limb, but other diseases can produce the same symptoms, and John wanted a second opinion. Hours earlier, he had dressed for the appointment, choosing a gray T-shirt with a picture of a drinking glass that said half full. Jim watched from the doorway. "Let me come with you." John paused and turned to Jim. "I need to go alone." Jim fought the urge to grip John by the arms and beg him to change his mind. But John was about to find out whether he would live or die and Jim couldn't think of a more personal moment. John would process the news on his own quiet terms, without emotion or drama. Jim walked John to the door and said, "I love you," then sank down on a kitchen stool to wait. When John walked in late that afternoon, he bent down to leave his leather shoes by the bench in the foyer, a sight so familiar and mundane that for a split second Jim felt himself relax. But John's cheeks were wet and his shoulders were slumped. Jim leapt from his stool in the kitchen and under the foyer's stained-glass window, he gripped John by the arms. Please. Let it be okay.

John opted for simplicity. "Yeah," he said, the words a soft tremble. "It's ALS." Jim wanted to scream. He wanted to vomit. How much time did John have? How quickly would his body fail him? John rarely cried, but his shoulders were heaving as he clung to Jim. "We'll do what we can, okay?" Jim said. A veteran neurologist at the University of Cincinnati had made the diagnosis. Most people diagnosed with ALS live for three to five years, he'd explained gently. There would be progressive muscle weakness, cramps, twitches, and slurred speech. Eventually, when John's breathing muscles weakened, he would need a ventilator. "You've got a lot of living to do," Dr Quinlan said. "Let's look at all the things that are important to you and the things that you want to do now." That first weekend after the diagnosis, Jim started making calls and sending e-mails to their family and friends, one after the next, feeling the contours of his life blur and fade every time he described the disease and their harsh new world. Paulette Roberts, John's favourite aunt, called from Portland, where she was vacationing along the Columbia River. Jim winced when he saw her cell-phone number on his caller ID. "What's happening?" Her voice was urgent. Jim hesitated before whispering the words he had come to detest. "Tootie, it's ALS."

There was silence, and then, "Oh Jim." "I'm so sorry for telling you like this," Jim said, batting away fresh tears. "No. No. You had to tell me. There's no way you could have told me any better." Paulette hung up, pulled the car to the side of the road alongside the river and turned to her husband. "My God," she sobbed. "John's going to lose everything." The first thing to go was their two-storey condo. John and Jim had figured they would spend years here, in cosy corners filled with oriental rugs and antique furniture, perfect for a couple edging toward 50. But John would need hallways wide enough for a wheelchair and windows big enough to let in the sun when he was no longer able to walk outside. In September 2013, they found a new condominium with an elevator in a bustling stretch of downtown not far from Cincinnati's famed Fountain Square.

They had bought three homes together over 20 years, but this time, Jim signed the deed alone. He tried not to cringe when John said firmly, "My name is not going to be on it." That first winter brought a whirlwind of loss. Left foot. Left leg. Left hand. John started wearing a leg brace and a metal plate in his shoe to control what doctors called "foot drop." He started walking with a cane, and when John complained, "I feel like everyone's looking at me, Boo," Jim encouraged him to buy one made of walnut with an arched, old-fashioned handle, something of a fashion accessory. Left shoulder. Left arm. Left fingers. Jim started coaxing John's twitching arms into a dress shirt every morning before work. When John could no longer clasp the buttons, Jim took him to a tailor and had shirts made with Velcro. In the early, grey months of 2012, John's right foot started to drop and he traded the cane for a walker. There was no way to know what ALS would take next and there was no way to fight, no treatment to test. The human brain has 100 billion nerve cells, which communicate with the muscles and glands through signals that can travel more than 200 miles per hour, orchestrating even the tiniest of movements across the body. ALS kills the largest of the body's nerve cells, the upper and lower motor neurons, and science has never been able to say why.

John had the metal fillings in his teeth replaced when he heard that metal might hasten the progression of the disease. He bought exotic mineral supplements and stopped eating gluten. But it seemed to Jim as if the disease was progressing far faster than he had imagined, and on the darkest days, when John struggled to hold a fork or brush his hair, Jim would sneak into an empty room, bury his face in his hands, and cry. Time had been tilted on its side. When John could no longer grip a pen, Jim filled out the disability paperwork which would give him leave of absence from his job as a project manager with a consulting company. As an unmarried man, Jim didn't qualify for family medical leave. Years earlier, they had talked about marriage, particularly after Paulette called on John's 42nd birthday in 2007. "You can call me 'reverend' now. I got ordained," she said. John laughed. "Do you mind if I ask ... why?" "Well, so I can marry you and Jim."

"If we ever decide to get married, we'll have you marry us," John quipped. "But right now, we can't get married in Ohio." Even if John and Jim travelled to a state that allowed gay couples to marry, the federal government only offered the rights and protections of marriage  more than a thousand benefits that covered everything from family leave to health insurance  to heterosexual couples. John and Jim thought, why bother? They considered their relationship the focal point of their world. And they already felt married. They had bought houses, planned trips, saved for retirement. They had talked about adopting a child, but dropped the idea when they learned that Ohio wouldn't recognize two fathers. Jim started lifting John into bed, onto the couch, into the car. He had grab bars installed in the shower, and when John could no longer stand on his own, Jim went out and bought a shower seat. Eventually, Jim stripped down and got into the shower himself to hold John steady. The last limb to go was John's right arm, and with it came a power wheelchair that John's brother, Curtis, quickly dubbed the "urban assault vehicle" in a half-hearted attempt to make John laugh. John hated the chair's bulk and the embarrassing hum it would make, and he told Jim just before Christmas in 2012, "I don't want to go out in that thing. I feel like a spectacle." Then John had to trade the wheelchair for a bed, and it seemed the only thing left to do was wait. On June 26, 2013, two years and one day after the ALS diagnosis, John called softly from the bedroom. "Jim, the Supreme Court ruling is about to come out."

Jim had been up since dawn, answering e-mails from work at the dining room table, and he was already bone tired. He slept in the guest room but had a wireless doorbell set up next to John's hospital bed so he could ring for help in the night when he needed his position shifted. Soon, Jim knew, John would no longer be able to push the bell, and they would swap it for a pressure-sensitive pad that buzzed when John inched his head slightly to the right. Jim hurried to the bedroom, where John was propped up under a blanket. On television, MSNBC's Chris Jansing said, "Take a look now, huge crowds outside the Supreme Court today. Nine justices will rule on two cases that could redefine equality and gay rights in this country." Jim reached for John's hand, eyes fixed to the screen. For weeks, they had been waiting to find out whether the Supreme Court would strike down the 17-year-old Defense of Marriage Act, known as DOMA. John and Jim had been a couple for just four years when the law passed, denying same-sex spouses access to federal marriage benefits. DOMA also allowed states to refuse to recognize same-sex marriages even if they were legally performed in other states, a provision that one day would alter the course of Jim's life long after John was gone. If the Supreme Court required the federal government to respect the lawful marriages of same-sex couples equally under the Constitution, it would be the biggest victory in the 90-year history of America's gay rights movement so far. In the bedroom, Jim glanced at John, who was watching the broadcast intently, his dark glasses perched on the end of his nose. It was a bright, 90-degree day in Washington, D.C., and before the U.S. Supreme Court's towering Corinthian columns, flag poles and fountains, kissing couples waved American flags and signs that read, all love is equal. NBC's Pete Williams announced over the cheers, "The Supreme Court has just struck down the federal Defense of Marriage Act." Jim sucked in his breath and bent down to embrace John, happier than he had been in months. The broadcast continued, "The federal government can't make distinctions between same-sex and opposite-sex couples in terms of what marriages the federal government would recognize."

Jim kissed John lightly, loving the feel of his face, and then, because it seemed as if the country was changing, Jim looked at his dying partner and said for the first time in 20 years, "Let's get married." John said yes. Jim raced to his computer in the dining room. At 10.56am, less than one hour after the Supreme Court announcement, he emailed Paulette Roberts: We may need your services. As soon as the Supreme Court ruled DOMA unconstitutional, I hugged John and asked him to marry me. That means getting to the closest state that allows gay marriage but doesn't require residency. That's New York. Can you marry people in New York? Suddenly impatient, Jim decided to call. "What are you doing next week?" he asked Paulette, laughing and crying. "How about a trip to New York?"

Paulette hadn't yet heard about the decision, but she could hear the giddiness in Jim's voice. "What happened?" "I asked John to marry me and he said yes." Paulette didn't hesitate. "Wherever you want to go." She called the courthouse in New York City, where the clerk shouted into the phone, "Yes!" when Paulette told her about that morning's Supreme Court ruling. Two years earlier, New York had become the seventh state in the country to allow gay couples to marry. When the legislation passed, Niagara Falls was lit in rainbow colours. The problem, Jim quickly learned, was that New York required both partners to show up at the courthouse and apply for a marriage license, then return for the ceremony. John's last trip out of the house four months earlier had caused great discomfort, and that was only a three-mile trek across town in their minivan. Jim had to find another way.

He scrambled to research the rules in other states and immediately settled on Maryland, which required only one person to appear at the courthouse for a marriage license. Jim would fly alone to Baltimore, rent a car, and then drive to nearby Annapolis, sprawled along the Chesapeake Bay 30 miles east of Washington, D.C. But he still had to get John to Maryland for the ceremony. He looked into ambulances, which were too slow and bumpy, and was more than once struck by the absurdity of having a bedridden man travel 520 miles when the Hamilton County Courthouse was only six blocks away. The best option was a plane fitted with medical equipment, which would get to Maryland quickly and had room for a stretcher. The flight would cost nearly $14,000. Their story moved Julie Zimmerman, a former neighbour and writer who was on the editorial board at the Cincinnati Enquirer. She set up an interview with John and Jim and brought along video producer Glenn Hartong. John couldn't speak a sentence without pausing to breathe, and his words were slow and halting. "Had the Supreme Court made this decision one year earlier," he told the journalists, "this would have been as simple as us taking a trip because I could still walk. It's the progression for me of ALS. It's just compounded everything." He looked at Jim. "I don't live in a world of regret." John said carefully. "But I sure wish we were a year in the past." There was a long pause, long enough for Hartong to pan, reframe and refocus his camera. Finally, Jim smiled gently and said, "Me too." Watching the exchange, Hartong thought it was the most powerful understatement he had ever witnessed as a journalist.

Two pilots and a nurse were waiting on the tarmac when the ambulance rolled into Cincinnati Municipal Lunken Airport just after 9am and came to a stop next to the medical plane that would fly John and Jim to Maryland. John was buckled into a narrow gurney, wearing a green shirt with Velcro that he'd bought when he had still been able to walk. The ambulance ride had been uncomfortable, and Jim clutched John's hand as a couple of paramedics flung open the back doors. The sun glared off the waiting Learjet. "I can't believe it's happening," Jim whispered to John. John's eyes were closed, but he opened them when Paulette jumped into the back of the ambulance and kissed him on both cheeks. Jim stepped out onto the tarmac with his backpack. Tucked inside was the marriage certificate with the state of Maryland's official gold seal: James Robert Obergefell and John Montgomery Arthur. Two paramedics heaved John's gurney out of the ambulance and manoeuvred it through the plane's narrow doorway with help from one of the pilots. Then Jim boarded the plane with Paulette. The takeoff was smooth, and Jim sat back in his leather seat next to John's gurney. He gripped John's hand again, worried that the stress of travel would escalate the disease's relentless crawl across John's body, but John slept as the plane soared toward Maryland. This day, more than any other, needed to be perfect. Jim thought about the ring that John had given him on a rainy night in a Columbus hotel in 1993, with five perfectly set diamonds. Jim had worn it for years, but now he would wear a wedding ring cast in sterling silver. Staring idly at the wisps of clouds just beyond the plane's windows, it seemed to Jim as if each day from the past 20 years had led them to this moment, and he felt a rush of tenderness as he looked at John. More than once in recent months, John had said, "I feel guilty about ruining your life." John saw marriage as the only way of making certain that Jim was cared for financially and legally. Jim just saw love, profound and enduring, and a marriage ceremony would allow him to tell John that.

Ninety minutes later, the plane touched down on a runway outside of Baltimore. They would marry here, inside the plane's tiny cabin, in front of Paulette and video producer Glenn Hartong, who had flown to Baltimore earlier that morning to meet them. There was no room for standing, so Jim leaned forward in his seat and absently brushed his thumb back and forth across John's limp hand. John fixed his eyes on Jim. Paulette sat behind them and said, "Today is a momentous day not only in the lives of two of the most loving special men I have ever known, but also in the lives of all who know, love, and respect themTwenty-six months ago, John was diagnosed with ALS. Since then, the amazing relationship between John and Jim has become even closer, even more devoted, even more loving. And it was pretty damn great before John became ill." John managed a half smile. Jim had written his vows a few days earlier, surprised at how easily the words flowed. He said softly, "We met for the first time. My life didn't change. Your life didn't change. We met a second time. Still nothing changed. Then we met a third time, and everything changed." He cleared his throat. "As you recently said, it was love at third sight. And for the past 20 years, six months and 11 days, it's been love at every sight. You've taught me generosity. You've taught me balance. You've given me joy. You've loved me when it was easy and when it was difficult. You've made me a better person. Thank you  for seeing in me someone you could spend your life with. Thank you  for allowing me to love you when you thought you were lost and beyond love.

"I give you my heart, my soul and everything I am," Jim said. "I am honored to call you my husband." Jim reached for John's left hand and pulled it close so he could wiggle the ring onto John's finger. Jim vowed, "With this ring, I thee wed." Then he lifted John's left hand, moved it towards his own and slipped his own ring onto his finger, putting it on upside down in his haste. "With. This. Ring. I. Thee. Wed," John said, careful not to trip on the words. "John Montgomery Arthur, do you, continuing from this day, take James Robert Obergefell to be the love of your life, your eternal partner, your husband?" "I do," John said. "... In witness of those present, in the loving thoughts of the many people who wish they could have been with us today, in the spirit of loved ones who have come before, by license granted to me by law and with the respect of the law by our great land, I now pronounce you husband and husband, forever intertwined partners. May love and good will be with you forever."

Jim kissed John. Paulette leaned forward and hugged them both. "Thank you," said John. "And thank you for including the word damn ..." Paulette and Jim were still smiling when the plane took off for home just after 11am. On the ground in Cincinnati, a small crowd waited on the tarmac with signs that read, finally: mr. and mr. Jim could hear the cheers as soon as the hatch opened, and he grinned and ducked through a shower of white rice. "I'm overjoyed, in love, and so thankful," he said. When the paramedics lifted John's gurney out of the plane, Jim leaned over and kissed him on the forehead. At 46, Jim was a married man with rice in his hair and a wedding ring on his finger and he momentarily forgot about the disease that was killing his husband. He looked at John, who said, "I'm very proud to be an American and  to openly share my love for the record, and I feel like the luckiest guy in the world." For five days, married life was a blissful burst of words and phrases that John and Jim had never been able to use before.

"Good night, husband," Jim said as he settled John into bed. "Hey husband," John said in the morning. "I'm thirsty." Jim changed his Facebook status to: "Married to John Arthur." He opened a bottle of champagne when friends stopped by and slipped some into John's sippy cup. "Some more, husband?" Jim said. The phrase shimmied off his tongue. There would never be a honeymoon, but after two decades of words that had always sounded imprecise  partner, better half, significant other  this was enough. John would die a married man, and Jim would grieve a husband.
Agriculture Minister Barnaby Joyce pushed ahead with his plan to force more than 170 Canberra public servants 800 kilometres from home before a cost-benefit analysis of the proposal, ordered by Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, was complete.

The minister's office denied suggestions on Friday that he had gone rogue by announcing his plan without the PM's backing, saying the only thing that would stop Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority moving to Armidale was a Coalition defeat on July 2 .

"I think Barnaby Joyce, under pressure in his own electorate, has left the reservation here," federal shadow agriculture minister Joel Fitzgibbon said of the Agriculture Minister (left). Credit:Andrew Meares

Outrage mounted all day on Friday with the agribusiness and veterinary medicines lobbies, the ACT government and federal opposition all panning the idea, and even Mr Joyce's ally, the National Farmers' Federation, expressed reservations about the plan.

The public servants were to be "forced from their homes" by the "arrogant" decision to move them 800 kilometres to northern NSW, the ACT's Chief Minister said.
Commuters will face disruptions to services on Sydney's inner west light rail line next week after tram workers decided to strike over concerns about safety and proposed changes to shifts.

A four-hour work stoppage will occur between 10am and 2pm on Thursday in the wake of negotiations between the Rail Tram and Bus Union and operator Transdev over a new enterprise agreement breaking down.

As part of the protected industrial action, tram workers refused to wear uniforms to work on Friday.

The tram line runs from Central Station to the city's inner west via Pyrmont, Glebe and Lilyfield.
The 15-year-old boy who fell to the ground unconscious after a playground game went wrong is recovering in hospital after surgery.

Palm Beach Currumbin High School student Jamie Cox was held in a headlock by another student when he fell to the ground and struck his head.

Palm Beach-Currumbin State High School has spoken to Mr Cox's parents as well as the parents of the other student believed to have been involved.

He was rushed to Gold Coast University Hospital in a critical condition where it is understood he underwent surgery for a clot on his brain.

He is believed to have also suffered a fractured skull in the incident.
Liberal Party power broker Santo Santoro lobbied senior Queensland bureaucrats on behalf of the company chosen to provide the signalling system for the now indefinitely delayed $1 billion Moreton Bay Rail project.

Mr Santoro, a former senator and federal Liberal Party vice-president, introduced Ansaldo STS to Transport and Main Roads director-general Neil Scales in August 2013 and to Treasury officials John O'Connell and Trevor Dan in October that year, according to the state government's lobbyist register.

Former Senator and Liberal party heavyweight Santo Santoro. Credit:Andrew Sheargold

The company's signalling system was eventually chosen for the project in June 2014.

The rail link was due to open this year but has been delayed indefinitely due to signalling issues.
Victoria's Emergency Services Minister, Jane Garrett, has resigned from cabinet. Credit:Justin McManus Up until Andrews met union boss Peter Marshall, things were going swimmingly for the Premier. Published and internal polls showed Labor with a commanding lead over the Coalition. Even Greens voters in key inner city seats liked him. In April, CFA volunteers held a motorcade of fire vehicles through the CBD to demonstrate their support for the CFA and Emergency Services Minister Jane Garrett. Credit:Chris Hopkins Backing a union who bullied Garrett - remember the Premier's strong rhetoric on equality and against bullying? - reinforces the idea that he is beholden to unions.

Andrews supporters, who have ramped up pressure on Garrett this week, are unable to answer the simple question: is this new agreement actually good policy? Arguments about the legality of the agreement are widely dismissed. The whole saga has been terribly handled. Yes, Garrett definitely failed to sort out the ugly dispute with the union. She probably did become too involved, as some have suggested. But perhaps this was just a principled stance? That's how she portrayed it to the public.

It goes back to the central question - why did Andrews get involved? Throughout the week, ministers and senior officials have explained that everyone from the Premier down has been bending over backwards to try and accommodate Garrett's resistance to the union deal. But it became apparent on Thursday that little had actually been done to ease her concerns or those of the CFA on the policy front. Instead, anger was boiling over from caucus about her failure to get a deal done  many pointed at her as the source of a series of leaks about discussions in cabinet, which is in itself also leaking. "Backgrounding" was at fever pitch at Spring Street. The story behind the scenes was all about Garrett falling into line with the leader.

"You can't roll the leader on this. Industrial agreements just have to get done," as one senior source summed it up. Yet the volunteers and CFA have been able to spread their message unchecked that the deal would destroy the organisation, and fear at volunteer level was allowed to run like wildfire  completely unchecked. This is a failure of the government, starting with the Premier's office. It has risked a massive voter backlash. The CFA is an iconic organisation that is more than often at the heart of communities -- including in Melbourne fringe suburbs that happen to be marginal seats: think Macedon, Monbulk and Yan Yean. And then there is the union. Ministers went out of their way to publicly call for the CFA to fall into line. But where were the comments calling on the union to be give some ground - even if it was to just save some face for the government.
The man accused of the cold case murder of Kylie Maybury was acquitted of larceny in the 1960s when represented by suburban solicitor John Cain, who would go on to become Victorian premier.

Gregory Keith Davies, who was charged on Thursday with the murder, rape and false imprisonment of Kylie in 1984, was sentenced to six months jail for larceny in March 1969.

He admitted to keeping a car he had bought the previous year, even after he found out it had been stolen.
Hundreds of Victorian principals are struggling to make ends meet, with almost one in four state schools in deficit.

While the Andrews government has vowed to turn Victoria into the "Education State", a growing number of principals say inadequate funding has forced them to cut programs, hire cheaper teachers and limit the VCE subjects they offer.

Almost one in four Victorian state schools are in deficit. Credit:Michele Mossop

At the end of last year, 361 of Victoria's 1528 government schools were in deficit.

The situation was so challenging at 66 schools that they had to call in help from the Department to pay staffing costs.
A 73-year-old man has faced court, charged with the 1984 Melbourne Cup Day abduction, rape and murder of six-year-old Kylie Maybury.

Gregory Keith Davies was arrested on Thursday morning at the home he shares with his 89-year-old wife in the small Victorian town of Waterford Park, just south of Broadford.

He faced the Melbourne Magistrates Court on Friday charged with the rape, murder and false imprisonment of the six-year-old who was allegedly snatched while she walked home from a corner shop in Preston.

In court was Kylie's family, including her mother Julie Maybury, a slight woman who kissed the hand of a detective before the short filing hearing began.
A Melbourne man arrested in connection to the death of his new American wife is now being held on gun trafficking charges.

Steven Samaras, 47, allegedly dumped the body of his partner Tamara Turner, 49, outside the Mildura Base Hospital and fled the isolated town in Victoria's north.

Steven Samaras (left) was arrested after the body of his partner, Tamara Turner (right), was dumped at the Mildura hospital on Monday. Credit:Facebook

He has been in custody since his arrest on Tuesday in his home suburb of Preston.

Police said on Friday Mr Samaras had not been charged in connection to Ms Turner's death, but that he was being held on an Australian Federal Police arrest warrant.
A homeless man and woman have been charged after the Toyota 4WD they were travelling in allegedly rammed four police cars after a wild chase through the south-west of WA on Thursday.

The chase started about 11am on June 9 when police were called to a property in Alexandra Bridge, 23km north of Augusta.

A police car was wrecked after it was rammed by a 4WD in the south-west of WA. Credit:WA Police

Police said the man and woman in the Toyota 4WD sped off through bushland, evading police. They were then stopped by police about 25 minutes later in Siesta Park, south of Busselton. However when officers got out of the police car, the 4WD allegedly rammed the police car and sped off.

A short time later another police spotted the 4WD near Carbunup River, about 20 kms west of Busselton, and it is alleged the Toyota did a U-turn and rammed another police car.
Perth child psychiatrist Aaron Voon, arrested last month in Canada after allegedly filming a boy in a public toilet, has appeared in Perth Magistrates Court on fresh charges.

Dr Voon was arrested at Perth Airport last night after being granted bail in Canada to fly home.

After searching Dr Voon's devices, Australian investigators allege he possessed child exploitation material in Perth.

West Australian and federal detectives on Thursday night charged the director of Cockburn Central's Successful Development and Therapy Centre after searching his practice, and his Mount Pleasant home, and seizing electronic devices for examination.

The Joint Anti Child Exploitation Team alleges the devices contained child exploitation material, spokesman Samuel Dinnison said.
Prominent Aboriginal mental health activists have hit out at the state government's inquiry into youth suicide in remote communities, calling the lack of representation on the committee "shameful".

A standing inquiry was launched in April of this year, with the committee comprised of Dr Graham Gibson Jacobs, Rita Saffioti, Janine Freeman, Robert Johnson, Murray Cowper and Josie Farrer.

Aboriginal mental health activists have hit out at the State Government's inquiry into youth suicide in remote communities. File photo. Credit:Glenn Campbell

Member for Kimberley Josie Farrer is the only Aboriginal community representative on the committee.

Dumbartung Aboriginal Corporation chief executive officer Robert Eggington believes the lack of diversity on the panel shows a misunderstanding about what his community needs.
Premier Colin Barnett might have launched himself on Twitter at the start of last year but he might still be getting a crash course in social media - after the state government's brand new tourism hashtag, #justanotherdayinWA, was hijacked on Friday morning.

Shortly after the Friday morning announcement of the new campaign, the Twitter hashtag was used to air gripes both common and obscure for West Australian tweeps.

"Nothing is opened on Sundays before 11am in #Perth #justanotherdayinwa," one tweet stated.

"Government poisons kids in new Waterpark at Elizabeth Quay #justanotherdayinwa," read another.
The former attorney-general of Papua New Guinea has called for Australians to help investigate the police shooting at student protesters that left as many as a dozen wounded.

Kerenga Kua told Fairfax Media from Port Moresby that police armed with automatic weapons had fired directly at the students on Wednesday after they attempted to march to the Parliament.

Mr Kua said the police response was "complete overkill and completely unjustified". A hospital in Port Moresby said three students remained in intensive care with gunshot wounds.
Auto Lab Live 8-10 AM (EDT) June 11, 2016; Comment or Concern? Free Call 888-692-7234







June 11, 2016

Car Question or Concern? Call Toll Free 888-692-7234

Auto Lab is a 27 year old interactive automotive-focused New York area radio call-in show hosted by Professor Harold Wolchok. Each week a cadre of experienced hands-on automotive experts are in-studio with advice for the New York area's 12 million people, providing listeners with honest, practical and street-smart car repair and buying advice.

Auto Lab is also about the automotive industry, its history, and its culture, presenting the ideas and advice of leading college faculty, authors, and automotive practitioners in a relaxed, conversational interactive format.

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Listeners can hear the past 18 years of archived Auto Lab shows as simulcast on www.theautochannel.com.

Listen - Auto Lab Page (Includes Audio-on-Demand Archives, Auto Programs at Community College Database, Guests Pictures

June 11, 2016 - Car Question? Straight Answers From These Auto Lab In-Studio Experts

Harold Bendell- Major Auto

Fred Bordoff-Bronx Community College, CUNY

Tim Cacace-Master Mechanix

Libby Demarco-Broadway Sunoco

David Goldsmith - Urban Classics Auto Repairs

Joanne Porcelli, Esq

Michael Porcelli - Central Avenue Auto Repairs & I-CAR

Nicholas Prague- MTA and Rockland Community College, SUNY

June 11, 2016 - Correspondent Reports: Auto News, Car Reviews, Opinion and Latest Auto World Information

Robert Erskine, Senior European Correspondent, Suffolk England

HONESTY OF DESIGN

Sharon Sudol & John Russell, Senior Correspondents

NISSAN MAXIMA

Russ Rader, Vice President Insurance Institute for Highway Safety

REDESIGNED AUDI A4 EARNS TOP HONORS FROM IIHS

Ralph Bombardiere, Executive Director GASDA

GASOLINE PRICES
EPA: More Access Needed for Higher Ethanol Blends







Government agency sees growth potential for pumps offering E15 and higher, but the increase wont be enough to increase fuel volumes for 2016.

HOUSTON June 10, 2016; According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the investment in equipment by industry and government will accelerate access to higher-ethanol blends at the pump, but not quickly enough for higher fuel mandates for 2016, the Argus reports. While grants to install tanks and pumps will help increase availability of E15, the fuel still has barriers to overcome before regulators are comfortable predicting a rise in consumption, the agency said.

This week, the EPA held hearings on its draft proposed renewable volumes for 2016 under the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS). While E10 was adopted quickly, E15 and E85 have proven more difficult. In addition, the only vehicles approved by EPA for E15 use are flex fuel vehicles and conventional vehicles of model year 2001 and later.

Because most refiners have jettisoned ownership of retail stations over the last 10 years, retailers have no obligation or incentive to offer biofuels with the high price of obtaining certified equipment.

NACS estimated that more than 124,000 locations sold fuel in 2014, but around 175 had E15, the EPA reported. The U.S. Department of Agricultures Biofuels Infrastructure Partnership (BIP) assists stations in acquiring equipment, which could help more retailers sell E15. The program is helping 21 states with fuel tank installation and pumps, with Florida, Illinois and Texas receiving the lions share, which would add nearly 2,100 pumps at 348 gas stations.
Have Car, Will Travel







In the coming years, where will drivers live and how will they travel?

Washington DC June 1, 2016; NACSonline reported that the U.S. population is projected to swell 30% to nearly 415 million by the year 2060. But where will all of these people live, and what effect will this explosive growth have on travel patterns and fuel demand? Two upcoming Fuels Institute reports take a closer look.

UrbanizationThe study on urbanization explores the effect of certain trends on vehicle ownership and fuel demand. Back in 1950, only 56% of Americans lived in metropolitan areas; but by 2010, that number had jumped to 84%. If this trend continues in lockstep with the population increase projected over the next 45 years, our urban centers are likely to become more densely populated and geographically large as they swell.

Urban planning activists are working to dramatically reduce the need for vehicle transportation, attempting to bring miles traveled from 60% down to 40%. Can they possibly be successful during a time of such great population increase? Regardless of the outcome, this effort to create multi-use, mass transit-friendly communities should not be overlooked for its potential effect on vehicle ownership and fuel demand.

Ride Sharing

As the population grows and the country becomes increasingly urbanized, other trends will also begin to emerge. A second Fuels Institute report looks closely at the status of the ride-sharing economy in the United States. Admittedly, these services are very much in their infancy. Four of the largest car sharing services in the country boast a combined 25,000 vehicles in their fleetsnot even a speck of the overall vehicle population. However, the potential for expanded utility is there.

As people gravitate to more populated urban areas, the challenges associated with parking and congestion will become more daunting and drivers will seek alternatives. Mass transit may try to keep pace, but history has shown that it has its limits. Opportunities abound for a new transportation option.

Car-sharing services such as Zipcar and car2go give people the ability to access a vehicle when and where they need it and for a much lower price than owning one of their own. And for drivers who do own a vehicle, many are beginning to realize that they use it only 5% of the time; the rest of the time it sits idle, incurring costs. Personal vehicle sharing through platforms such as Turo are creating an increasingly popular private market for vehicles owners (Think Airbnb for cars.)

The OutcomeThese two studies will help put into context the potential direction vehicle ownership and fuel demand may follow over the next several decades. An acceleration in trends dating back to the 1980s could occur. Perhaps fewer people will get their drivers license because lifestyle options will reduce the imperative for driving. Or maybe vehicle ownership rates will decline due to a combination of fewer drivers and the ability to rent community vehicles rather than own them outright.

The combined effect of these factors on fuel demand could be great. It is easy to say that car sharing will still result in significant miles traveled (just through fewer vehicles), but that overall fuel demand will not suffer more than expected through fuel economy improvements. This might be true if the car-sharing networks followed patterns consistent with nationwide vehicle registrations.

The car-sharing companies profiled in our report have more alternative fuel vehicles than the national average; the rate of hybrids or electric vehicles in their fleets range from 4.7%8.1%. The Fuels Institute does not have a current report on the registration of these vehicles, but by comparison, according to WardsAuto, in 2015 hybrids, plug-in hybrids and electric vehicles combined accounted for just 2.8% of total light-duty vehicle sales.

It is critical to look at the big picture when thinking about the future of the transportation market. Too often we get stuck looking at specific technologies and the prospects of specific fuels. But when we think about these elements in a broader context, it becomes easier to understand where the market might be heading and how to best capitalize on opportunities that may present themselves.

For more information about the Fuels Institute or to get involved, contact John Eichberger, executive director, at (703) 518-7971 or email him at jeichberger@fuelsinstitute.org.
Authorities warn about rainbow fentanyl Victims often arent aware theyre taking it

The Ventura County Office of Education and state health officials have issued a warning to schools and families about rainbow fentanyl, a form of the potentially fatal synthetic opioid that comes in bright colors. Rainbow fentanyl can be found in...

Cancer support community to host remembrance event Cancer Support Community Valley/Ventura/Santa Barbara invites family members and friends of those who have died from cancer to attend the second annual Evening of Remembrance from 5:30 to 7 p.m. Thurs., Nov. 3 at Cancer Support Communitys Garden of Hope,...

Grant advances CSUCI research Cal State Channel Islands assistant professor of computer science Scott Feister and assistant professor of mathematics Alona Kryshchenko recently received $112,480 from the National Science Foundation to continue a grant to support their research project, Enhancing Laser Based Ion Sources...

Healthcare agency recommends flu shots The Ventura County Health Care Agency offers options for the community to receive flu shots through its Ambulatory Care Clinic system, public health clinics and pop-up clinics. Although seasonal influenza viruses are detected year-round in the United States, they are...
Even though Hillary Clinton is officially the presumptive Democratic nominee, her chief rival, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, has repeatedly suggested he will stay in the race until the convention.

One day after meeting with President Obama, the self-described democratic socialist will host a massive rally Thursday afternoon in the RFK Stadium parking lot in D.C. The doors open for the event at 4 p.m. ET, and Sanders is expected to speak at 7 p.m.

The Democratic Party presidential candidate will hold a rally in Southeast D.C., a statement from the Sanders campaign announced. Sanders will discuss a wide range of issues, including getting big money out of politics, his plan to make public colleges and universities tuition-free, combating climate change and ensuring universal health care.

Some have speculated that Sanders could use the speech to officially concede the race and throw his backing behind Clinton, in the fight against Trump, while others believe he will stick it out past next weeks D.C. primary vote.

The speech will likely air across the cable news networks, but those without a television can live-stream the full speech below, via YouTube.
Marlon Jones was arrested for taking legal painkillers, prescribed to him by a doctor, after a double knee replacement.

Jones, an assistant fire chief of Utahs Unified Fire Authority, was snared in a dragnet pulled through the states program to monitor prescription drugs after someone stole morphine from an ambulance in 2012. To find the missing morphine, cops used their unrestricted access to the states Prescription Drug Monitor Program database to look at the private medical records of nearly 500 emergency services personnelwithout a warrant.

Jones was arrested along with another firefighter and a paramedic on suspicion of prescription fraud.

I got a call at work from the police chief, who I know and work with, Jones testified before a state senate committee last year. He said We think you have a problem, youre taking too many medications. We need to make sure youre no longer a threat to the community or yourself. So were doing this to help you.

Jones described in tearful detail what happened next.

There were three police officers pounding on the door. They said they had a warrant for my arrest and they were going to take me in, he said. It was the middle of the day, on my front doorstep, in front of my wife and daughter. Im handcuffed and stuffed into a police car and they haul me to jail.

Jones was hit with 14 felony counts but all of them were later dropped.

Now the Drug Enforcement Administration wants that same kind of power, starting with access to an Oregon database containing the private medical data of more than a million people.

The DEA has claimed for years that under federal law it has the authority to access the states Prescription Drug Monitor Program database using only an administrative subpoena. These are unilaterally issued orders that do not require a showing of probable cause before a court, like whats required to obtain a warrant.

In 2012 Oregon sued the DEA to prevent it from enforcing the subpoenas to snoop around its drug registry. Two years ago a U.S. District Court found in favor of the state, ruling that prescription data is covered by the Fourth Amendments protection against unlawful search and seizure.

But the DEA didnt stop there. It appealed the ruling to the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco and has been fighting tooth and nail ever since to access Oregons files on its own terms.

The case pits the full weight of the Obama administration against the state of Oregon and five individual plaintiffs, two of whom (John Doe 2 and John Doe 4) are transgender and take prescription hormone drugs that are covered by Oregons prescription monitoring law.

In his 2014 ruling against the DEA, District Court Judge Ancer L. Haggerty called warrantless searches of such data an egregious invasion of privacy.

It is difficult to conceive of information that is... more deserving of Fourth Amendment protection, Haggerty said. By obtaining the prescription records for individuals like John Does 2 and 4, a person would know that they have used testosterone in particular quantities and by extension, that they have gender identity disorder and are treating it through hormone therapy.

Although there is not an absolute right to privacy in prescription information... it is more than reasonable for patients to believe that law enforcement agencies will not have unfettered access to their records, he added.

The Obama administration disagrees, and argues that since the records have already been submitted to a third party (Oregons PDMP) that patients no longer enjoy an expectation of privacy.

In an affidavit, one of the plaintiffs said he already faces difficulty obtaining the injectible testosterone hes required to take and that increased scrutiny by law enforcement, including the DEA, erects another obstacle to obtaining treatment.

I would be fearful of being investigated or harassed without reason, he testified. I would feel like I was constantly looking over my shoulder.

Last year, after the charges against Marlon Jones were dropped, a Utah senator introduced a bill that would require police to obtain a warrant to search the database.

It has become the status quo that when a person comes under their radar they run to the prescription drug database and see what they are taking, said Sen. Todd Weiler, a Republicanwho said that police in Utah searched the PDMP database as many as 11,000 times in one year alone. If a police officer showed up at your home and wanted to look in your medicine cabinet and you said no, he would have to go and get a search warrant.

Among the instances of misconduct Weiler cited is the case of an opioid addicted police officer who was caught on video stealing pills from an elderly couples home after tracking their prescriptions in the states PDMP database. Weilers bill survived an attempt by opponents to water down the warrant requirement and was signed into law last March.

In the rush to address a spike in overdose deaths attributed to prescription medication, few have questioned the necessity for greater monitoring of drug dispensing to prevent drug diversion and doctor shopping. Every state in the nation, with the exception of Missouri, now has a prescription monitoring program and several have begun expanding their programs.

Wisconsin passed a law in March that liberalized access to its PDMP, making the data available to registered nurses without independent prescribing authority, medical directors, and substance abuse counselors. The law also removed a previous requirement that police obtain a search warrant to access the data.

The federal government is eager to see all this data linked. The Department of Justice has developed a software platform to facilitate sharing among all state PDMPs. So far 32 states already share their PDMP data through a National Association of Boards of Pharmacy program.

The Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act (CARA), which passed Congress in March, calls for expanding sharing of PDMP data.

From a privacy standpoint this is problematic for a number of reasons. For starters, there is little uniformity between state PDMP laws. While most PDMPs include thte full name, address, and date of birth of the patientas well as the name, strength, and quantity of the controlled substance dispensedstatutes vary widely in terms of what drugs are tracked and who qualifies for access.

According to the Department of Justice, only 19 states require a warrant for law enforcement to access their PDMP, and more than a dozen allow out-of-state police agencies access. Less than a quarter of states require that patients are notified when or if their prescription information might be accessed.

To the casual observer the databases are aimed primarily at limiting illicit use of potentially deadly opioid narcotics. And fatalities tied to prescription drugs are frequently cited by policy makers and medical professionals who support mandatory database sharing.

But most state PDMPs encompass a host of common pharmaceuticalsranging from tightly controlled Schedule II drugs, like OxyContin and morphine, to more innocuous Schedule V substances, such as seizure and epilepsy drugs with virtually no potential for abuse.

Fifteen state registries even house information on non-controlled substances .

Testosterone is a Schedule III controlled substance that in addition the gender identity disorder is used to treat hormone deficiency in men and prostate cancer. It has a high potential for abuse as a performance enhancing steroid, according to the DEA, though its not clear how much is diverted from legitimate use onto the black market. There are several moderate-to-severe side effects from steroid use, but overdose does not appear to be one of them.

Other drugs covered by state prescription monitoring laws include frequently prescribed medications that have low-to-no overdose potential. These include medications used to treat insomnia, weight loss associated with AIDS, nausea in cancer patients, anxiety disorders, and post-traumatic stress disorder. In fact, opioids represent a tiny proportion of drugs covered by PDMPs.

The diseases and conditions treated with controlled substances are so common that it is likely that state PDMPs will soon contain sensitive information about the majority of Americans, said Deborah C. Peel, MD, director of Patient Privacy Rights (PPR).

When Oregon created its PDMP in 200, it took pains to prioritize patient privacy and set strict guidelines for access to the registry, including requiring a court order for law enforcement to search its contents. The DEA ignored that mandate and peppered the states registry with warrantless requests for access in pursuit of investigations into drug diversion. The agency argues that it has a compelling interest that supplants any privacy protections attached to prescription data for controlled substances and that requiring a warrant severely limits [its] ability to conduct timely, effective investigations.

An amicus brief filed in support of the Oregon plaintiffs by the American Medical Association contends the DEAs position is misguided.

The primary purpose of PDMPs is healthcare, not law enforcement, the AMA said, adding that while PDMPs provide for referrals to law enforcement, they are not designed to be a tool or repository for law enforcement to initiate access to gather information, as is the case here with the DEAs administrative subpoena.

Whether the Ninth Circuit agrees with that will have far reaching implications for millions of Americans who rely on prescription medication to manage their illnesses.
SAN DIEGO  Although we live in the same city, Ive never met U.S. District Court Judge Gonzalo Curiel. And yet, I feel like I know him pretty well. You see, in one respect, were living the same life.

Like most of the estimated 34 million Mexican-Americans in the United States, were seen as Mexicans in America, but Americans in Mexico.

Were proud of our heritage and revere our forebears who came from MexicoCuriels parents, my grandfather. Yet, were sure that we belong in this country as full-fledged Americans.

That is, until, someone tries to put us in our place by reminding us that were still only Mexican.

Thats how Trump clumsily referred to Curiel, who was born in Indiana. Commentators pointed to the fact that the judge was U.S.-born to explain why Trumps comments were out of bounds. So if Curiel had been born in Mexico and been a naturalized U.S. citizen, would Trumps comments have been any less offensive?

Personally, I wasnt troubled by Trumps casual use of the word Mexican. That word is an old family friend. I heard it throughout my childhood. Its a loose synonym for the phrase, Mexican-American. And it sounds like the ethnic descriptors that people use in other parts of the countryGerman in Wisconsin, Italian in New York, Irish in Massachusetts.

In fact, I distinctly remember the last time I heard someone call me a Mexican. It was my senior year in high school. Its a good story. Ill share it with you in a minute.

First, let me tell you a little about the 12 years leading up to that moment. My parents moved our family into a nice neighborhood, walking distance to my elementary school. My childhood friends were white and Asian-American. In class, I was tracked into high-performing sub-groups where I was often the only Mexican-American. In junior high school and high school, I took the toughest courses available and excelled in them, again alongside classmates who were mostly white and Asian-American.

Walking down high school hallways, I would pass by less fortunate Latino classmates who were being tracked in the opposite direction. Some of them would wind up in prison, others in dead-end jobs. Occasionally, Id hear that one of the Latinos had suggested I wanted to be white.

So imagine my surprise when, in the spring of my senior year, I learned that I wasnt.

My white classmates and I applied to Harvard. I got in, they didnt. One of my best friends, whose grades werent as good as mine, surmised this grave injustice was due to affirmative action. And so he told me: If you hadnt been Mexican, you wouldnt have gotten in.

Great. So now I was Mexican. When in hell did that happen, I wondered.

Of course, that was far from the last time it happened to me.

And I suspect the Trump brouhaha wasnt the first time it happened to Judge Curiel.

I wonder if sometimes he gets the same urge I doto throw up my hands and shout out to America:

What more do you want from me?!

Ive worked hard, played by the rules, excelled, assimilated, acculturated, gone along, gotten along, tried to be responsible. Yet, just when I think Im free to be what I want and think how I please, someone puts me on the margin.

I have spoken to the San Diego La Raza Lawyers Association, where Curiel is a member. It is a professional organization of mainstream attorneys and judges. Latinos who mostly went to private colleges, live in the suburbs, and speak English better than Spanish.

If nativists envision a gang of Pancho Villa-types with law degrees, they have it all wrong.

The reason Trump is so interested in Curiels ethnicity is that the judge is presiding over a class-action lawsuit against Trump University. The defendant took out an insurance policy by insisting that Curiel, a U.S.-born American of Mexican descent, is culturally predisposed to be unfair to him. If Trump loses, he can cite Curiels ethnic background as the reason.

As Trump sees it, the problem is that Curiel is a Mexican. (Trump, it should be noted, has seen that problem before.) The presumptive Republican presidential nominee who wants to build a 2,000-mile-long wall between Mexico and the United States thinks this policy idea will cause friction between him and the judge, even if Curiels connection to Mexico is rather sketchy.

After all, before he took the bench, Curiel was a federal prosecutor who put Mexican drug traffickers in prison. His life was threatened, and he spent a year under federal protection.

By comparison, my trials as a Latino journalist have been a walk in the park. Still, Ive had to endure things that my white colleagues will never experience.

Once, a reader suggested that having me express my opinion about what to do with Mexican immigrants was like having the Germans help plan the D-Day invasion.

Another time, during an argument with one of my bosses on an editorial board, where I was defending Mexican immigrants who were preyed upon by a district attorney whom she backed, my boss accused me of being full of piss and vinegarand hot sauce.

Another reader, frustrated by my attack on some half-baked anti-immigrant measure, accused me of wanting an open border so your cousins can come in.

Then there was the time a newspaper editor in the Northeast, when approached by the sales team at my syndicate about taking my columns, demanded to know how I felt about illegal immigration. The sales team had a perfect response. Well, its illegalso we think its a safe bet that, as the son of a retired cop, hes against it.

And lastly, during the 2002 Texas gubernatorial race where incumbent Rick Perry faced off against oil and gas mogul Tony Sanchez, I was viewed suspiciously for earning early access to Sanchez. That ruffled the feathers of veteran political reporters at my newspaper and prompted political consultants in Perrys camp to call me in a huff and threaten to complain to my boss. Apparently, only white journalists are allowed to forge personal relationships with political candidates. When Latinos do it, its nefarious.

All these annoyances kept me humble, gave me perspective, and reminded me that, to some people, Im just another Mexican. Fine by me. Im proud of my heritage, culture, and background. And none of that interferes with the fact that I love this countrymy countrymore than words can express. And no ignorant bigmouth can take that from me.

I suspect Judge Curiel feels much the same way.
At a major event for conservative Christians this morning, a Republican senator joked about praying for President Obamas days to be short.

Sen. David Perdue, a freshman senator from Georgia, opened his remarks at the Faith & Freedom Coalitions Road to Majority conference by encouraging attendees to pray for President Obama. But, he added in a joking tone, they need to pray for him in a very specific way: We should pray for him like Psalms 109:8 says: Let his days be few, and let another have his office, the senator said, smiling wryly.

The crowd chuckled and he moved on with his address.

The rest of that passage, which Perdue did not recite, reads, May his children be fatherless and his wife a widow. May his children be wandering beggars; may they be driven from their ruined homes.

The psalm is a pointed, lengthy death wish for one of Davids enemies.

Let the creditor seize all that he has, and let strangers plunder his labor. Let there be none to extend mercy to him, nor let there be any to favor his fatherless children. Let his posterity be cut off, and in the generation following let their name be blotted out, it continues.

Perdues joke drew immediate criticism. Adam Jentleson, a spokesman for Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, tweeted, Republican Senator David Perdue is praying for President Obama to die. This is why Trump is the GOP nominee.

As the Washington Posts Dave Weigel pointed out, conservatives have long invoked this verse in the yearning for an end to Obamas days in office. A Christian Science Monitor report from November 16, 2009, detailed the popularity of bumper stickers that read simply, Pray for Obama: Psalm 109:8.

Its protected speech, but its clearly offensive, the Anti-Defamation Leagues Deborah Lauter said at the time.

The Road to Majority conference brings together top leaders in the social-conservative world, as well as prominent elected Republicans. Shortly after Perdues speech, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and top Trump adviser Sen. Jeff Sessions spoke. Donald Trump will keynote the event later today.

UPDATE: After publication, Perdue spokeswoman Caroline Vanvick gave this statement to Bloombergs Sahil Kapur:

Senator Perdue said we are called to pray for our country, for our leaders, and for our president. He in no way wishes harm towards our president and everyone in the room understood that. However, we should add the media to our prayer list because they are pushing a narrative to create controversy and that is exactly what the American people are tired of.
A Wisconsin inmate is accused of plotting to kill a female copone year after she arrested him on domestic violence charges.

Alijouwon Tupac Watkins, 20, allegedly planned the murder-for-hire from Dane County jail, where he was incarcerated for the domestic incident and offered a fellow prisoner cash to wipe out the unnamed officer, authorities say.

Watkins even transferred money into a third partys account to secure the slaying, and obtained the Madison cops cellphone number and work schedule, police chief Mike Koval said at a news conference Friday.

We have nipped something in the bud, Koval told reporters. We want these to be isolated [incidents]. We dont want these to be the new normal.

Police caught onto Watkins alleged plans when the inmate he solicited for the hit job ended up warning authorities instead. Then they discovered Watkins had acquired the officers date of birth and her general work hours and assigned district.

The officer was put on leave for her protection and other cops received a bulletin to be on alert once the alleged rubout scheme was revealed, Koval said.

Its unclear how Watkins obtained the lady cops personal information while he was in jail, or how he planned to kill her, Koval said.

The means was not necessarily as crafted sophistically as the end game, Koval said, according to Madison.com. I dont think they cared how that occurred, but I think there was a sense of urgency.

Watkins is facing a slew of charges stemming from the domestic violence call, including felony intimidation of a domestic abuse victim, attempted battery to a police officer and causing substantial bodily harm while resisting an officer. His trial is scheduled to begin June 14, court records show.

Now Madison police are recommending additional charges to Watkins record: conspiracy to commit homicide and solicitation to commit perjury.

Investigators learned Watkins was also allegedly seeking for someone to give false testimony about his confrontation with the female officerwho suffered a concussion during the domestic violence call, Koval said.

The district attorneys office said it is reviewing the case. The Dane County sheriff and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives also worked on the investigation, which is ongoing, Madison.com reported.

Watkins first encountered the targeted officer in June 2015, after police were called to a McDonalds restaurant over a domestic disturbance.

According to a criminal complaint, Watkins girlfriend told officers she had been living with him for one month and that the couple shared a car.

Watkins allegedly flew into a rage while the couple was in their vehicle. The woman told cops she refused to let him take the car to meet friends for the night because she needed it to get to work, court papers state.

During the argument, Watkins allegedly smashed the windshield with his fists before punching his girlfriend in the face. Then she pulled into a McDonalds drive-through, where he hit her three to five more times and where she tried to seek help, the complaint says.

Call the cops! the woman yelled to McDonalds employees, according to court papers.

She wasnt certain workers called police, so several minutes later she left and the altercation continued, prosecutors say. Watkins tried prying the womans phone away multiple times, preventing her from dialing 911, court records state.

Two female police officersincluding the one Watkins would later allegedly plot to killcaught up with him soon after, the complaint says.

Watkins allegedly resisted arrest, thrashing his shoulders from left to right and refusing orders to get down on the ground, prosecutors say. During the scuffle, Watkins elbowed one female officer in the head, giving her a concussion, before fleeing.

The officers injury resulted in the charge of resisting an officer and causing substantial bodily harma felony that has Watkins facing up to six years in prison.

David Stegall, an attorney for Watkins, told The Daily Beast his client denies the latest accusations against him.

I am unable to comment at length about Mr. Watkins pending legal matters except to say that he denies the accusations, Stegall said in an e-mail, adding that Watkins is presumed innocent until and unless proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.
The Illinois woman convicted for her involvement in the drowning death of her three young children in 2003 should not get another chance to be a mother, a Cook County juvenile court judge ruled Friday, ordering that Amanda Wares two daughters and a sonchildren from the new life she built since leaving prison for her crimeshould, for their own safety, not be returned. At least not today.

Cook County Judge Demetrios Kottaras appointed guardianship of the new children to the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services, but did not rule out their eventual return home. A permanency hearing has been scheduled to revisit the case in six months.

Twelve years ago, Christopher, 6, Austin, 3, and Kyleigh, 23 months, drowned when Maurice LaGronethe boyfriend of their mother, Amanda Ware (then Amanda Hamm)drove a 1997 Oldsmobile Cutlass carrying the children and Ware into Clinton Lake.

Ware called 911 and reported that the car had accidentally rolled into the water, but something seemed amiss when emergency responders arrived to find the car submerged in four-and-a-half feet of water, and the couple standing on the shore.

Theres no reason at all that any adult couldnt get those children out of the water, Craig Brown, father to 3-year-old Austin, said at the time.

Officials arrested Ware and LaGrone soon after and put them on trial for murder where they both faced the death penalty. Meanwhile, national news organizations descended on the sleepy Clinton community. Wares mother appeared on NBCs The Today Show.

I would have never dreamed in a million years that she would do something like this, her mother, Ann Denison told a national audience. She knows I would have taken the kids.

Ware maintained her innocence throughout the trial, while prosecutors alleged her low self-esteem and abusive relationship with LaGrone caused her to go along with her boyfriends murder plot. The children, states lawyers argued, were interfering with the couples relationship and his sex-and-drugs lifestyle.

The defense, led by court-appointed attorney Steve Skeltonwho later called the case among the most complex in his careerargued that Ware was also the victim of police, who allegedly elicited a false confession, which was offered while she was hospitalized for suicidal ideations after the drownings.

LaGrone received a life sentence without the possibility of parole for the murders, but a jury rejected murder charges for Ware, instead convicting her of child endangerment, for which she was sentenced to 10 years. She was released after five years on Sept. 9, 2008 but as part of her sentence, Ware was placed on a list of child abusers, where she was ordered to remain for 50 years.

Upon receiving her short sentence in 2007, Ware told the court, I am now faced with a life that holds promise for me and my future and realize how ironic this must sound because Christopher, Austin, and Kyleigh no longer have similar horizons to look forward to.

By March 2014, it seemed Ware had realized those goals. Ware was living in Chicago and married to Leo Ware, with whom she had three new children: two girls, now ages 4 and 3, and one boy, now 15 months. But after a doctor at the Chicago hospital where her new son had just been born recognized Ware as the woman involved in the 2003 drownings, the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services pulled the children from her care, fearing for the minors safety.

Ware has been trying to regain custody ever since.

A report from the state DCFS noted that Wares drug tests had consistently come back clean, and that no allegations had been filed against her or her husband. The agency credited her with overcoming substance abuse and a history of physical and sexual abusive to become a very conscientious and patient mother.

At a November hearing where Judge Kottaras stifled tears recounting the 2003 drownings, he ruled that Ware was too much of a threat to have her children returned, saying, by no stretch of the imagination was the drowning death of the mothers three oldest children an accident.

It has been argued that the Ware children look fine. We do not have to wait for the injuries, he said.

In the recent hearings to determine long term custody of the Ware children, Assistant States Attorney Gina Perdue pointed to Leo Wares history of drug abuse and gang involvement as indicators of the dangers the the couples three children face should they be returned. Despite a drug relapse from Leo Ware last year, lawyers for the couple claim thats all in the past.

The current appointed legal guardian, Carol Casey, told the court Wednesday that the Ware children miss their parents and want to go home. The Wares, who have been separated for monthsin part they say because of the stress of the custody fighthave been visiting the children almost daily in foster care.

The heinous killings of children by their mothers are always well-documented in the media, but attention often fades once the sentence has been handed down.

Houston mother Andrea Yates drowned her five small children in her bathtub in 2001. After originally being sentenced to life in prison for the murders, a new trial ordered by an appeals court reversed the decision, and found her not guilty by reason of insanity due to her postpartum depression and psychosis. The father of the murdered children, Rusty Yates, has come forward to say he thinks his ex-wife should be released from the mental hospital where she was committed following the reversal.

Susan Smith, with whom Wares prosecutors drew parallels during Wares trial, was convicted in 1995 of the murder of her 3-year-old and 14-month old sons. Prosecutors told jurors Smith strapped her young boys into their carseats and rolled her Mazda into a South Carolina lake, then told police she had been carjacked by a black man with a gun. Smith, who is serving a life sentence, wrote to local paper The State last year saying in part, I am not the monster society thinks I am.
KHUSHFIT UM ADASAH, SyriaFrom this base in a nearby village, we could see an F-16 fighter jet flying above ISIS positions in the city of Manbij. After one week of combat, a U.S.-backed coalition of Kurdish and Arab fighters has almost completely encircled this ISIS stronghold in Syria next to the Turkish border.

A female commander on the radio told fighters on the front lines to be careful about giving their positions. Be accurate in giving me locations, otherwise many civilians would be killed, and we dont want to kill innocent people, she said, loud enough for the handful of journalists at this position to hear.

The mixed Kurdish and Arab Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) are backed on the ground by U.S. and French special forces who are advising and coordinating with local fighters and calling in coalition airstrikes. But they are not in a rush to take the city.

From the north side, we allowed a road to remain open and we have passed the road between Aleppo and Manbij, said Shervan Kobani, a Kurdish fighter. We do this in order to avoid destruction of the city, in order for the civilians to escape, and to give the ISIS fighters an option to escape, he told The Daily Beast.

Kobani said that the so-called Islamic State group is on its last legs in Manbij. ISIS cannot resist us, and blow themselves up near civilians when we reach them. They are very weak now, and wear womens clothes to escape.

Even accounting for battlefield hyperbole, it does appear ISIS is getting weaker, and often ISIS fighters kill themselves before giving up to SDF-fighters.

Hassan Abu Ali, 34, from a Free Syrian Army (FSA) group working with the Kurds says the resistance of ISIS is now broken.

The first line of ISIS in Halula is broken and in Sheikh Hajji Hussein and Mustafa Hamada. Now it will be easy for us, because initially it was very difficult, he said.

Now they realize they are besieged in Manbij and we give them three days to flee and within a few days we will be rid of them, he said. We allow the main road in the Ghandura village to be open, so they can flee. But maybe tomorrow we cut this also.

The Manbij Military Council set up by SDF forces to capture the city from ISIS said in a statement, The presence of civilians in the city and our care about the safety of these families forces us to be patient.

Col. Christopher Gaver, the spokesperson for the U.S.-led coalition against ISIS, sounds less optimistic about jihadist retreat. The SDF has met heavy resistance from Daesh [ISIS] at the onset of the operation and at points along the way. We assess that Daesh will fight hard to retain Manbij as it is the key terrain on the line of communication out of Raqqa, the de facto ISIS capital in Syria, Garver told reporters on Wednesday.

Daesh has employed the tactics we have seen before as they defend and then cede territory, including the extensive use of IEDs to slow advancing forces and significantly damage the infrastructure they have lost, he added.

Villagers seem to be very supportive of the SDF forces. May God destroy them, thank God you got rid of them, Um Farouq, 60, a local woman told local fighters, smiling. Other Arab civilians could be seen dancing victory dances, and hugging the SDF fighters.

We were waiting for the SDF to come hour by hour and minute by minute. They liberated us from ISIS and we thank them, said Mustafa Mohammed al-Ahmad. Asked if local civilians might join ISIS because of the collateral damage from U.S.-led coalition airstrikes, he said no. The coalition havent killed civilians, they are accurate.

Some civilians say its too early to tell if the SDF is going to be a positive presence, even if they are happy to be rid of ISIS.

Civilians seem to be helping local Kurdish fighters hunting for possible ISIS fighters in villages five to 10 kilometers from the front lines. Not far away, U.S. Special Forces, who covered their faces when in view of reporters, could be seen coordinating with the SDF

French special forces could be seen driving around the area days before the Frency government officially recognized their presence

The U.S.-led coalition forces have been training local Arab fighters for short periods

We have been trained on demining, light weapons, but not heavy weapons, like the others, he said. We have many groups inside the SDF and each group has a specific training and in the case of heavy fighting, those go who were trained, said Abu Yassir, 39, a local leader within the FSA working with the Kurds.

He said its especially important to learn demining. They rely on mines and explosives, he said.

We received a training for 17 days from the Americans on demining and light weapons and raiding houses, said Abu Ayham, 29, an Arab fighter. Manbij is mined with explosives, so we have to be careful when we enter it.

Nevertheless, the Arab fighters were not too happy, after their leader Abu Layla died from his injuries last Sunday. We have many martyrs, including our leader Abu Layla. We would be more happy after we free Manbij, said Abu Yassir.

Its unclear if the SDF, after capturing Manbij, will return to fighting ISIS in Raqqa, the de-facto ISIS capital, or move towards Jarabulus and al Babab to open up a corridor from the town of Kobani to Efrin, to unite the Kurdish-led administrations.

Yes, we will go towards Azaz and Efrin, Kurdish fighter Shervan Kobani said, even though some Arab fighters still think they will move towards Raqqah after defeating ISIS in Manbij.

Abu Muthanna, a deputy FSA commander, told me during a funeral in Kobani that so far the Northern Raqqa campaign has stopped.

We are ready to liberate Raqqa city, but the coalition decided to move towards Manbij, he added. Maybe, depending on the circumstances, the international coalition will go to northern Raqqa after Manbij is liberated, he said

In the meantime, Syrian government forces, another enemy of the fighters here, are moving on Raqqa from the West, as sign that even when ISIS suffers significant defeats, this war and its complications are far from over.
It has been rightly observed that the Republican Partys long tolerance of racist attitudes set the stage for Donald Trumps rise. But Democrats, too, are using expedient prejudice to drive their political agenda this cycle. Consider how the Obama White House has embraced talk about the backward Middle East to account for their own staggering foreign-policy failures there.

The first full embrace of this rhetoric by President Obama himself appeared in Jeffrey Goldbergs remarkable Atlantic profile, wherein he explicitly cited the notion that conflict and the Middle East are inherently linked. Describing the political fallout of his intervention in Libya, Obama bemoaned the degree of tribal division amongst the Libyan people, suggesting that a sort of Libyan sophistication deficiency was responsible for the chaos that followed the NATO intervention. Through the article, the President contrasts the people of the Middle East with those in Asian and African societies filled with striving, ambitious, energetic people who are every single day scratching and clawing to build businesses and get education and find jobs and build infrastructure. The contrast is, Obama declares, pretty starkleaving the implicit question: What can you do with these people?

This attitude was also reflected in the Presidents final State of the Union, when he declared that The Middle East is going through a transformation that will play out for a generation, rooted in conflicts that date back millennia. This age-old canard about the eternal Sunni-Shia conflict was not only historically inaccurate, but a total departure from the Obama of 2009, the man who made the historic and ill-fated Cairo speech. An intellectual of his sort, and a student of history, surely knows this ugly old lie for what it is, but managed to pronounce it nonetheless in the service of anti-war spin.

The remark was almost certainly written by Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes, a man now seen as the Presidents most influential partner in exploring and settling matters of foreign policy. In a long profile in The New York Times Magazine, Rhodes seems to argue that however disingenuous the White Houses spin may have been, it was aimed at winding down our counterproductive engagement in the Middle East over the objections of the incompetent foreign policy establishment Rhodes calls the Blob. The complete lack of governance in huge swaths of the Middle East, that is the project of the American establishment, he claims. Little bother that at least five Middle Eastern countries have seen major declines in governance and stability under Obamas watchRhodes would have us simply trust him and the President when they claim that war with Iran (inevitable without the deal in their view) wouldve been worse.

Nor is this blend of American retrenchment and racism confined only to the current Administration. Plenty of other Democrats have adopted the same views, among them Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard and Presidential candidate Senator Bernie Sanders; the notion that the Middle East is inherently flawed has never been more popular with the American left.

Indeed, Gabbard, a rising Democratic star, has become a sort of spokesperson for progressive Islamophobia, weaponizing her veteran status into a shield against accusations of ignorance or racism. Speaking to Fox News, where shes welcome now that shes openly hostile to Islam, Gabbard went even further than the President, criticizing Obama for linking terrorism to a lack of political and economic rights, saying it is not fueled by materialistic motivation, its actually theological, this radical Islamic ideology. In the same interview, Gabbard called a meeting between the President and Muslim leaders on how to fight extremism a diversion.

Where Gabbard and Obama vigorously agree is in the view that the Middle East isnt worth Americas time.

Though no one would easily believe Senator Sanders to be an Islamophobe, he has too has learned to toe the line where caution meets bigoted paranoia. Sanders likes to cite the unintended consequencesas in Islamic terrorof American efforts overseas. In December, he spoke more explicitly, telling Meet the Press that the region would be much more stable with Gaddafi, Hussein and Assad in place. This statement glaringly ignores the reality that, while the Iraq war was initiated by the United States, the other two conflicts were the result of popular uprisings met with a brutally violent response from dictators. The structure of Sanders statement implies that the United States alone decides who stays and who goes. To think otherwise is to believe in Arab agency, a faith many liberals have lost.

Hillary Clinton remains admirably steadfast in her commitment to Middle East engagement, but she does so against a tide of new liberals who are fixated on problems at home, and who join many of their conservative counterparts in a bipartisan consensus of fear and bigotry. The liberal values I was born and raised withvalues that led me to the Democratic Partydid not include deep skepticism about Americas ability to do good in any region of the world. Nor did these values include a belief in the inborn failings or inclination to violence of certain ethnic or religious groups. As the President leaves office, a president I once believed in, I see him cast his accusatory hand not only at the military industrial complex, or the foreign policy establishment Blob, but at Middle Eastern peoples themselves. After all theyve been through, they deserve better than this callous deflection.

They deserve our support and engagement.
Im gonna turn things around, the politician said. Together, friends, we will chart a new, optimistic course for America. We will put America first!

With that kind of bland, impersonal talk, the politician could have been any politician from any corner of the country. Man or woman, Democrat or Republican, outsider or entrenched incumbent.

Im working for you, the politician said.

Well, yeah. They all say that.

Except, this wasnt any old bullshitter seeking office. This was Donald Trump, the best, biggest bullshitter and de facto Republican nomineeperhaps the least agreeable man in the country.

To the extent that he has the capacity to behave in a way that can be objectively characterized as presidential, Trump did so Friday afternoon, at Faith and Freedom Coalition conference at the Omni Shoreham Hotel in Washington, D.C.

Its an evangelical crowd that hes addressed before, but unlike last year, when he waved a Bible around and declared it his favorite book (followed by his own, The Art of the Deal), Trump didnt bring any props.

He hardly even brought his personality.

This week was a bad one for Trump.

Following his criticism of Gonzalo Curiel, the federal judge in one of the two class action cases against Trump University, for his Mexican heritage, which he said precluded him from doing his job fairly, Trump found himself on the receiving end of an unusual wave of pushback from his fellow Republicans.

Paul Ryan, the Speaker of the House, said in a press conference that Trumps remarks were the textbook definition of a racist comment. Lindsey Graham, a frequent Trump critic, compared him to Joe McCarthy. Mark Kirk, the Senator from Illinois, rescinded his support for his candidacy. And Susan Collins, the Senator from Maine, told The New Yorker she wasnt ruling out voting for Hillary Clinton.

For once, this sort of thing seems to actually matter.

In a Fox News poll released Thursday, Trumps support took a minor nosedivehe trails Clinton by three points.

In Trumpian fashion, he hasnt apologized. But unlike the other times hes found himself widely criticizedfor calling for a ban on Muslim immigrants entering the country, or for suggesting undocumented illegal immigrants from Mexico are rapists, or for saying Senator John McCain, a war hero, was not a war herohe seems to be altering his behavior in response.

The Republican primary was defined by Trumps unwillingness to compromise, which proved to be smart politics in the end, considering that he won. But it would appear he hasnt viewed the success of that strategy as a guide for the general election. Rather than continue to just be himself, Trump is going on script, making himself sound like a close approximation of an even-keeled human.

Its an honor to speak here today and discuss our shared values, Trump said Friday. We want to uphold the sanctity and dignity of life. Marriage and family as the building block of happiness and successso important.

He said the happiest people he knew had, that great, religious feel as well as an incredible marriage.

He called for religious freedom, and said that, no one should be judged by their race, or their color and the color of the skinshould not be judged that way. Right now we have a very divided nation, if I win were going to bring our nation together.

Trump used phrases like, forge our partnership and foundation of our society.

He made a reference to crooked Hillary, but his criticisms of her were substantive.

And seemed to hint at a speech he plans to give Monday about the Clintons.

Hillary Clinton has jeopardizedtotally jeopardizednational security by putting her emails on a private server, he said. All to hide her corrupt dealings.

The result may not offend anyone, but its pretty dull.
When Maria Teresa Rivera regained consciousness in an El Salvador hospital after suffering a miscarriage at home, she was handcuffed and hauled off to jail.

Accused of aggravated homicide in the death of her fetus, she was sentenced to 40 years in prison, where she became a symbol of the countrys draconian anti-abortion laws and the innocent women they ensnare.

They took me to the hospital on the 24th [of November 2011] and on the 25th they sent me to jail, the garment factory worker said, noting that she was still hemorrhaging when they locked her away.

In May, a judge annulled her conviction in a ruling activists call a much-needed victory in a country notorious for jailing women suspected of having abortions. Rivera was freed late last month after nearly five years in prison.

I think Maria Teresas case proves that if the women still in prison [for obstetric emergencies] and the others who are being charged all the time receive adequate defense and attention, all of them would be free, said Paula Avila-Guillen, an attorney and programs specialist at the Center for Reproductive Rights who was involved in Riveras case.

El Salvador has among the strictest abortion laws in the world. A change to the countrys penal code in the 1990s criminalized abortion under all circumstances, including when a mothers life or health is in danger and even in cases of rape. The country has also been one of the most aggressive in terms of prosecuting and imprisoning women believed to have taken matters into their own hands.

At least 129 womensome of whom suffered stillbirths or miscarriages, like Riverawere prosecuted for abortion-related crimes between January 2000 and April 2011, according to La Agrupacion Ciudadana, a reproductive rights organization in El Salvador.

The organization played a crucial role in appealing Riveras sentence, which was dropped May 20 after a judge ruled that there was not sufficient evidence to prove that Rivera intentionally provoked her miscarriage.

The judge agreed with what everybody else was saying: that there was no crime committed, said Kathy Bougher, an activist working with La Agrupacion. What happened was very sad and very tragic, but it wasnt a crime, it was a natural occurrence.

Rivera, who was photographed collapsing into her attorneys arms after the verdict was read, later said in a message to supporters that she would continue to fight for her companeras similarly suffering unjustly behind bars.

At least 25 other women remain in prison in El Salvador for obstetric emergencies, according to La Agrupacion. They are overwhelmingly poorfactory workers, domestic help, day laborersand lack access to adequate legal help when the police arrive, often at their hospital beds while they are still under the effects of anesthesia.

They include Veronica, an illiterate domestic worker sentenced to 30 years in prison after her bosses accused her of aborting a fetus conceived as the result of rape. Another inmate, Alba, is an impoverished mother of two who was jailed after reporting the death of her third-born, who stopped breathing shortly after a premature home delivery. And women like Johana, another mother accused of homicide after suffering a fall that sent her into premature labor and resulted in the loss of her child.

The cases all share very similar fact patterns. The majority of the women live in rural areas, have very low incomes and are single and all of them receive poor to almost no legal representation from the moment that they are sent to prison from the hospital, Avila-Guillen said, noting that hospital staff routinely break patient confidentiality rules to report suspected abortions to police.

Once behind bars, the women face dismal, overcrowded conditions, and red tape that often prevents them from keeping in touch with their families.

Maria Teresa was always the strongest one, said Avila-Guillen. She had a son outside of the prison waiting for her and that was something that gave her strength to keep on fighting. But unfortunately the last time we saw her in February, she was very sick Because of the difficulty of the situation, even the strongest women just deteriorate.

For women who do seek to terminate unwanted pregnancies in El Salvador, options are illegal and unsafe. According to Amnesty International, at least 11 percent of abortions in El Salvador result in maternal death.

The death rate for women in the U.S. obtaining legal abortions, meanwhile, is less than 1 per 100,000 procedures, according to the Guttmacher Institute.

The one step [authorities] could take that will certainly reduce mortalityensuring access to safe and legal abortionis not being taken, Amnesty International says.

The topic is not even openly discussed, partly because of cultural and religious norms that treat abortion as taboo, and partly out of fear of prosecution.

Even talking about how you go about finding an abortion risks people going to jail, said Bougher, who added that there is widespread confusion over the law.

But there are encouraging signs of reform.

Bougher says the countrys health minister has made efforts to increase access to birth control, which is legal but not always available to poor women. There was also a government report released late last year that addressed the topic of misogyny in judicial decisions.

And now, La Agrupacion is celebrating Riveras release from prison. Obviously, Bougher said, everyone is ecstatic.
Just when you thought you had seen every variant of the cancer drama on stage and screen--the plucky, wise-cracking sufferer, the hardass but caring nurses, the gallows humor, the pain, the unfairness, the surreal humor amid the human tragedy, for every tissue for tears, a belly laugh or barbed thorn--comes the distinctively titled A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Gynecologic Unit at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center of New York City, presently at the Lucille Lortel Theatre in Greenwich Village.

The playwright and actress Halley Feiffer's clever play for MCC Theater, just as cleverly directed by Trip Cullman, knocks the audience off its feet as soon as it begins, and continues to do so for its next whip-smart, intermission-less 85 minutes.

As we take our seats, we see two patients, Marcie (Lisa Emery) and Geena (Jacqueline Sydney) sleeping in a hospital room, their beds separated by a curtain. They cannot see each other. As the play unfurls, the actors use, ingeniously, the plain linear sweep of Lauren Helpern's set.

Marcie's daughter Karla (Beth Behrs, from CBS's Two Broke Girls), a stand-up comic, sits beside her sleeping mom, trying out a succession of ever-more shocking rape jokes.

Marcie cannot and does not answer, and in the silence Karla's smutty and violent musings become more and more extreme, much to the initial shock and discomfort of Don (Erik Lochtefeld), Geena's son who has entered the room--and is listening, horrified, to Karla's disgusting thinking-aloud.

We watch him--middle-aged, seemingly conventional compared to her beanie-wearing, self-obsessed millennial-- contort face and body in silent outrage.

Don eventually interjects, asking her to stop speaking so foully--and Karla, so brattish, snarky and confident in her joke-forming, is suddenly also horrified, at being overheard.

We watch both Don and Karla creased in mortification--it is hilarious. After water is thrown and pants accidentally dropped, an uneasy bond begins to form between twentysomething woman and middle-aged man.

In this, her third play, Feiffer's writing is sharp, extremely funny, and extremely piercing which is as you might hope from the daughter of the Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist and author Jules Feiffer.

Don, it turns out, has been caring for Geena dedicatedly for years. Karla notes that he looks a physical wreck himself--he doesn't notice the shapeless, cruddy track-pants that have apparently fastened themselves to his body. If Karla is all sharp edges, Don is bruised softness.

Their conversation, vexed as it begins, takes on an intimacy, perhaps quickened by the shared experience of having a loved one with cancer. In different ways, they are both self-destructive and self-negating. Both would benefit from some love and care.

Karla is stunned to find out Don has money, Don finds out that for all her smut-talk, Karla has tremendous vulnerability. Don was read to sleep, while Karla says the family watched Law and Order to usher them to the land of nod.

Behrs and Lochtefeld have a great, nervy chemistry--she skittish, loud, an avalanche of eye-rolls and irony; he is quieter, gentler, but also full of rage at his estranged, and utterly thoughtless, son. Don and Karla make each other think, and help one another.

They sexually together inevitably, at what unfolds as a critical moment, and in a scene made all the more excruciating because during it Karla can't shut the hell up about her past sexual experiences and betrayals. This moment is brilliantly staged and paced. You will watch and wince.

Through all this Marcie appears asleep, but with occasional movements; when she (and Geena, later) speaks, it comes a hilarious surprise. Geena does not speak much actually, Marcie does--and her words are poison-tipped spears aimed squarely at her daughter. Emery is excellent: flirtatious with Don, castigating with her daughter, and--to shock us all out of the notion that cancer patients are saintly victims--as foul-mouthed as her daughter, and apparently a whole lot meaner.

It is fascinating to watch the swaggering Karla curl up into a frightened ball as her mother asserts her dominance and control.

The hospital, as hospitals do, concentrates the dysfunction between loved ones--and it takes determination and bravery to confront that before it is too late for anything to be taken back, or raised, discussed, and dealt with.

Everything Karla says is dismissed hushed, or talked over by Marcie. In contrast, the sphinx-like Geena--lying there, eyes closed, serenely facing us--makes clear is how proud she is of Don, and how much she loves him.

It is a meagre, somewhat thankless part, and Sydney deserves an award for simple, mute endurance, as well her inevitably show-stealing interjections.

Feiffer makes us see there is a reason to her vitriol too, and ultimately with Don, Marcie reaches a catharsis, as does Don himself. But will, can, Karla accept him as a possible mate? Death eventually makes its presence felt on the ward (it won't be revealed here how).

In the play's relatively short timespan its characters chew over intimacy, mortality, love, and life. No laugh is easy, no tear elicited manipulatively--even when an episode of Law and Order makes a late appearance to underscore the depth of an earlier speech.

There is, Feiffer shows us, life in death, and death in life--and ultimately the need to if not forgive, then at least find a peace with those closest to us. This may well prove to be the first cancer ward you won't want to leave.
Gov. Greg Abbott officially requested a disaster declaration from President Barack Obama on Thursday, singling out 12 counties that could qualify for federal funds and low-interest loans  including Washington, Brazos and Grimes counties.

A total of 46 counties were named in a state disaster declaration connected to storms and flooding that began on May 26. Of those counties, state officials say Austin, Brazoria, Brazos, Fort Bend, Grimes, Hidalgo, Hood, Montgomery, San Jacinto, Travis, Waller and Washington need federal assistance. If the request is granted, each county may be eligible for individual assistance grants worth up to $33,000, as well as low-interest loans for affected small businesses.

I have determined that this incident is of such severity and magnitude that effective response is beyond the capabilities of the state and affected local governments, and that supplementary federal assistance is necessary to save lives; to protect property, public health and safety; or to lessen or avert the threat of a disaster, Abbott said in a letter to Obama.

Texas Task Force 1 and the Texas Military Department made 1,444 evacuations statewide, 40 rescues, 520 acts of assistance and victim recovery, 618 welfare checks and hundreds of animal rescues, states a press release from State Rep. John Raneys office. In Brazos County, five homes were determined to be destroyed, according to the American Red Cross, and more than 100 suffered major damage.

Bryan Deputy City Manager Joey Dunn reported on Thursday, however, that the most recent FEMA assessment of the city of Bryan  which received a direct hit from a tornado  had decreased since some residents have been making repairs.

Washington County Judge John Brieden noted that of the seven storm-related deaths in the state, five took place in his county, considered one of the hardest-hit areas.

This storm was more major, and we need the president to act a little sooner, he said. ... Were still paying to have some people stay in hotels and are trying to get them into apartments till something can be done about their homes.

Repairs and recovery in Washington County are being funded either from county money, the American Red Cross, the Salvation Army, Faith Mission and other donations from the community. The county is keeping record of all money spent to help victims, hoping to receive a match of 75 percent of their funds from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Though a date hasnt been set or speculated upon concerning when Obama will reach his decision, Brieden said he feels a decision in favor of aid is likely.

I cant imagine we wont get the declaration, he said. Texas has more than met the threshold for FEMA aid.

As previously reported by The Eagle, the American Red Cross has been working diligently to help the community prepare for the potential arrival of FEMA to the area. The Red Cross and FEMA offices are asking storm victims begin working with either organization to document damages and reparation needs. Calling 855-224-2490 and selecting option one will begin this process, said Eric Jones, Red Cross assistant director of external relations.

The American Red Cross is the official stopgap for FEMA, Jones said. Were designed to be like a bandage until the federal assistance comes in.

Jones said although the Red Cross was not meant to be a long-term solution, the organization will stay with victims not only until FEMA comes, but will provide continuing help as needed in the community.

Even if FEMA comes, we will continue our services because it will take them some time to ramp up, he said. Well always be here to hold clients hands and connect them with other agencies.
Senate should reject bill that weakens air pollution limits

Wednesday, the U.S. House of Representatives approved extending H.R. 4775 but weakens existing limits on air pollution. Taking a step backward in terms of clean air for our country is pitiful.

As someone with a family history of asthma and lung cancer, I feel it is vital that our government actively work toward protecting citizens of this country from pollutants in our air. By delaying the implementation and compliance timeline from five years to 10, the House is doing a disservice to every person that steps foot outside.

The decision of the House infuriates me, because I do not feel as though I should have to be concerned about a decline in my family's health. Scientific studies show that smog triggers asthma attacks and many other respiratory problems that could go on to harm future generations.

This bill is menacing, and I urge the Senate to reject it.

MEAGAN HOLLIDAY

College Station

Voters should demand that Donald Trump release his taxes

One of the many alarming aspects of Donald Trump's presidential campaign is his refusal to release his tax returns, breaking his previous promise to release them. For decades, presidential candidates have released their tax returns in a demonstration of openness to the people of the United States.

Trump's refusal implies he has something to hide. He falsely claims there is nothing to be learned from his returns. On the contrary, tax statements legally are required to be accurate. They reveal how people conduct their financial affairs: Their annual income, sources of income, the percentage paid in taxes, charitable giving, and how aggressive they are in calculating taxes, especially in using tax shelters.

Thanks to voluntary releases we know that Democrats Hillary Clinton donated 11 percent of her income to charity and paid a 36 percent tax rate, while Bernie Sanders donated 4 percent and paid a 20 percent rate (reflecting his lower income). Republicans Jeb Bush donated 4 percent and paid 40 percent while Ted Cruz donated 1 percent and paid 33 percent.

By reversing his promise to release his tax returns, Donald Trump furthers his reputation as based in reality television, not reality. Put another way, his refusal to follow the path of Democratic, Republican and independent presidential candidates for nearly half a century shows he is "all hat and no cattle."

American voters deserve and must demand more of the candidate.

JONATHAN COOPERSMITH

College Station

The first time looking for a box marked 'none of the above'

With almost 60 years voting, this the first time I ever wanted a box marked "none of the above." With the projected choices of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump I feel like a hungry man sitting down to his supper and on his plate is "meadow muffin" and a "road apple." It tends to make one to lose his appetite.

Now don't you Libertarians and other third party fanatics go ringing my phone off the wall. You have as much chance of success as a snow cone stand in Antarctica. All you will do is ensure that the "meadow muffin" wins.

BILL ASHER

College Station
IOI - one of the largest palm oil companies in the world - is having a difficult time right now.

Not only has it recently lost its sustainability certification, but as a result its customers are leaving in droves. And with good reason.

A new report from Greenpeace International shows how IOI's operations have led to the destruction of forests and peatlands in Borneo, despite repeated promises to protect these areas.

Since the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) withdrew IOI's sustainability certification in March, its share price has tanked and its credit rating has been placed under review.

Most damning of all, every one of the major brands featured in our recent palm oil scorecard that was buying palm oil from IOI is in the process of cancelling their contracts.

The most recent of these is General Mills which, after receiving tens of thousands of emails from Greenpeace supporters, announced last week it will be phasing out its purchases from IOI. General Mills also stated that it won't consider renewing its custom until the palm oil giant demonstrates real progress in protecting and restoring the areas it has damaged.

Pressure is now mounting on US agriculture company Cargill - the last major holdout - to follow suit.

Promises, promises ...

This aspect is key because IOI has made many commitments to good environmental management but has failed to carry them out on the ground. The new report lists a string of broken promises, most notably a commitment in January 2014 to refrain from draining all areas of peat on its land.

But there is clear evidence that since then canals have been dug to drain peat in PT Bumi Sawit Sejahtera (PT BSS), one of IOI's concessions in West Kalimantan, part of Indonesian Borneo. Dry peat is extremely flammable, and it's no surprise that large parts of this concession went up in smoke in both 2014 and 2015.

The impacts of this drainage extend far beyond the boundaries of the PT BSS concession. Surrounding areas also drain and dry out, making them more vulnerable to fire and subsidence as the peat collapses in upon itself. Yet IOI fails to recognise the damage being inflicted on the whole landscape.
Eight Smith Mountain Lake homeowners will open their homes to the public for the SML Charity Home Tour on Columbus Day weekend, October 7-9, 2016.

The annual fundraising event, now in its 26th year, will benefit eight local charities.

The 2016 Home Tour features five homes on the Roanoke River and three on the Blackwater River, including two each in the Park Place and Waverly neighborhoods.

The homeowners are:

*John and May Boyer, 1114 Shady Point Rd., Huddleston, Va.

*Rick and Debbie Cocrane, 951 Parkway Ave., Moneta, Va.

*Pat and Bobbie Dewar, 990 Three Quarter Point, Wirtz, Va.

*Alvaro and Angela Jaramillo, 214 Park Shores Circle, Moneta, Va.

*Kurt and Mary Schoenberg, 19 Navigation Point, Moneta, Va.

Tom and Linda Strup, 145 Atlantic Ave., Moneta, Va.

*G. Kim and Debbi Thomas, 629 Island Pointe Dr., Moneta, Va.

*Jon and Jean Wisnieski, 101 Spinnaker Sail Ct., Moneta, Va.

The Home Tour Board recently hosted the 2016 homeowners at a Hawaiian-themed meet and greet party to thank them for their participation and introduce them to each other, as well as to the board members and other volunteers they will be working with this year.

This years Home Tour offers a mix of new and renovated homes that provides ticket holders with many construction and decorating ideas. New this year is an Early Bird reduced price ticket available during the month of July for online purchases only at www.smlcharityhometour.com.

The SML Charity Home Tour is the community fund drive to support critical services for those in need in the Smith Mountain Lake region. Through partnerships with volunteers, businesses, homeowners, individuals and participating charities, the Home Tour has raised $4 million in charitable donations since it began in 1991. It is the only event of its kind in the nation that allows visitors to access tour homes by car or by boat.
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By Andrew Dalton Associated Press

LOS ANGELES (AP)  For over two decades, all Maria Mancia had of her son was a single photo, a slightly blurry image of a boy, 18 months old, staring unsmiling into the camera.

On Thursday he was wiping away her tears at a reunion neither of them ever expected.

When the boy's father abducted him from their Southern California home in 1995, he also took every picture she had of him, even the ultrasound of him during her pregnancy. She had to write to a relative just to get one picture to show the police.

But early this year a tip led investigators to Mexico and the son, Steve Hernandez, now a 22-year-old law student.

On Thursday morning he came to the U.S. and immediately met his mother.

"It was a shock," Martinez told the San Bernardino Sun. "I didn't know if she was alive or not and to get a call that says they found my mother and that she had been looking for me, it was like a cold bucket of water. But it's good. It's good."

The two parents and their toddler boy had been living in Rancho Cucamonga, California, in 1995. The parents were having relationship struggles. Mancia came home from work one day and thought they had been robbed. It took her a while to figure out that both her son and his father were gone.

The San Bernardino County District Attorney's Child Abduction Unit had been looking for Hernandez for years, searching for him in several states.

Investigators then received a good tip in February that he was in Puebla, Mexico. The father, Valentin Hernandez, is missing and believed to be dead, authorities said.

Senior Investigator Karen Cragg, who led the search, said they had to approach Steve Hernandez delicately, and at first used a ruse.

"We didn't want him to know what was going on," Cragg told The Associated Press on Thursday. "We didn't want to scare him off. We weren't sure what the circumstances were down there. We had to tread very carefully."

They told him they were investigating his missing father so they could interview him and get a DNA sample. The facts fit what they knew of the missing boy.

Cragg then asked the Department of Justice if they could hurry on the test, knowing it could take several months.

"They called me in two weeks and said it was a match," Cragg said.

Cragg and her partner Michelle Faxon drove straight to Mancia's house.

"It was like she didn't believe us at first," Cragg said. "She began to cry. She said she couldn't believe he was still alive."

Because Steve Hernandez is a U.S. citizen, there were no immigration troubles returning him to the U.S., Cragg said. Authorities in both countries were hugely helpful in making it happen.

The boy's father had told him that his mother abandoned the two of them.

He also has four younger siblings he knew nothing about, including an 8-year-old brother who came to the reunion but mostly hid behind his mother.

He said he plans to stay in the U.S. and hopes to attend law school, which he already started in Mexico.

He hugged his crying mother when he finally met her, and wiped tears from her eyes.

"Now this anguish I've carried is gone now that I have my son back," she told KABC-TV. "I spent 21 years looking for him not knowing anything."

___

Associated Press Writer Amy Taxin contributed to this story from Santa Ana, California.

Caption 1:

Steve Hernandez wipes a tear from his mother's eye after seeing her for the first time in 20 years in San Diego, Calif., on Thursday, June 9, 2016. Steve Hernandez was abducted by his father Valentin Hernandez from their Rancho Cucamonga residence in 1995 when he was 18-months-old. Since that time, 42-year-old Maria Mancia had searched for her son to no avail. The boy, Steve Hernandez, now a man of about 22, has been found in Mexico. On Thursday he was brought to the U.S. to meet his mother. Authorities interviewed the boy and took a DNA swab. The facts of his life, and the DNA, matched. (Christopher Lee/San Bernardino County District Attorney's Office via AP)

Caption 2:

Steve Hernandez wipes a tear from his mother's eye after seeing her for the first time in 20 years in San Diego, Calif., on Thursday, June 9, 2016. Steve Hernandez was abducted by his father Valentin Hernandez from their Rancho Cucamonga residence in 1995 when he was 18-months-old. Since that time, 42-year-old Maria Mancia had searched for her son to no avail. The boy, Steve Hernandez, now a man of about 22, has been found in Mexico. On Thursday he was brought to the U.S. to meet his mother. Authorities interviewed the boy and took a DNA swab. The facts of his life, and the DNA, matched. (Christopher Lee/San Bernardino County District Attorney's Office via AP)

Caption 3:

In this undated photo released by the San Bernardino County District Attorney's Office shows a family photo of Steve Hernandez, pictured in the only photograph Maria Mancia had of her kidnapped son for the last 20 years. Steve Hernandez was abducted by his father Valentin Hernandez from their Rancho Cucamonga residence in 1995 when he was 18-months-old. Since that time, 42-year-old Maria Mancia had searched for her son to no avail. The boy, Steve Hernandez, now a man of about 22, has been found in Mexico. On Thursday he was brought to the U.S. to meet his mother. Authorities interviewed the boy and took a DNA swab. The facts of his life, and the DNA, matched. (San Bernardino County District Attorney's Office via AP)
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By Gleaner Staff

Henderson Community College will host Basics of Communicating in American Sign Language.

The course will be held every Tuesday from 4 to 5:30 p.m. starting July 12 and ending Sept. 13.

This is a level one course for beginners. This course is designed for individuals that may know some signs but have not had training in grammar or linguistics.

Topics covered include the alphabet, finger spelling, greetings, family and friends, colors, numbers, sentence structure, as well as deaf culture and history.

The class is limited to first 15 who enroll. The cost is $75 per person.

For more information, contact Jo Ann Brock at 270-831-9658 or joann.brock@kctcs.edu or Joe Milazzo at 270-831-9780 or joe.milazzo@kctcs.edu.

Enroll online at http://ws.kctcs.edu/henderson/course/course.aspx?C=420&pc=1&mc=&sc=
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By Kentucky Press News Service

FRANKFORT  The Office of State Budget Director reported Friday that May's General Fund receipts fell 7.5 percent compared to May of last year, a decrease of $57.3 million. Total revenues for the month were $705.8 million, compared to $763.1 million during May 2015. Receipts have now grown 3.9 percent for the first 11 months of fiscal year 2016.

The official budget estimate calls for 3.2 percent revenue growth for the fiscal year that ends June 30. To meet the estimate, June receipts can be 2.9 percent less than June 2015, a state news release said.

State Budget Director John Chilton noted that even though receipts declined in May, revenues are on track to meet the budgeted estimate.

"Monthly revenue collections were hampered by declines in several accounts, some expected and some not. Coal severance, insurance premiums taxes, and the LLET tax all continued their year-long declines. On the other hand, in May individual income tax collections fell by 14.8 percent or $49.4 million. This was only the second month in FY16 in which receipts in this account did not increase compared to FY15 levels. Offsetting these declines, May sales and use tax revenues increased more than four percent which is slightly less than their year-to-date level. With one month remaining in the fiscal year, we will meet budgeted revenue levels provided collections do not decline more than 2.9 percent compared to June 2015 levels."

Among the major accounts:

Sales and use tax receipts increased 4.1 percent for the month and have grown 6.3 percent year-to-date.

Corporation income tax receipts grew by $600,000 in May and have grown 9.3 percent for the year.

Individual income tax collections fell 14.8 percent in May due primarily to declines in withholding and balances on net returns. Receipts have grown 5.6 percent through the first 11 months of FY16.

Property tax collections decreased 0.5 percent in May but have grown 2.8 percent year-to-date.

Cigarette tax receipts declined 3.9 percent in May but have grown 0.8 percent year-to-date.

Coal severance tax receipts fell 48.4 percent in May to a record low of $7.4 million.

Collections have fallen 32.2 percent through the first 11 months of the fiscal year, the news release said.

Road Fund receipts fell 5.9 percent in May 2016 with collections of $118.6 million. Year-to-date collections have declined 4 percent. The official Road Fund revenue estimate calls for a 5.3 percent decrease in revenues for the fiscal year. Based on year-to-date tax collections, revenues can fall as much as 20.4 percent in June and the revenue estimate will be achieved. The most recent internal revenue estimate predicted revenues will decline 4.3 percent for the year. Among the accounts, motor fuel taxes rose 2.3 percent, motor vehicle usage revenue fell 22.6 percent, and license and privilege receipts grew 4.1 percent.
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By Beth Smith of The Gleaner

When Maxwell McMain is arraigned next week in Union County District Court it will be the 19-year-old's third DUI case in under two years, according to court documents obtained by The Gleaner.

McMain, a Morganfield resident, has been charged with murder in the death of 16-year-old Kaci Wood of Sebree. He allegedly was driving under the influence and driving on a suspended license around 2 a.m. June 5 when the 2013 Dodge Durango he was operating flipped several times on Kentucky 492, ejecting him and Wood.

The Kentucky State Police said neither McMain nor Wood was wearing a seat belt.

Another passenger, Jacob Hood, 20, also of Morganfield, was not injured. Authorities said he was wearing his seat belt.

McMain was arrested June 8 after he was released from Deaconess Hospital in Evansville.

Henderson attorney Dax Womack is representing McMain, who's being held at the Union County Detention Center under a $1 million cash bond, according to papers filed in the Union County District Court Clerk's Office.

A message seeking comment from Womack was left with his office.

Since August 2014, court records show McMain has been charged with operating a vehicle under the influence in three separate incidents. He's been charged twice with driving a vehicle on a DUI suspended license.

On Aug. 24, 2014, McMain, then 17, was first seen smoking marijuana in the parking lot of an apartment complex and then driving. When law enforcement stopped the vehicle, a quantity of marijuana and drug paraphernalia were located, an arrest citation said. McMain was given field sobriety tests which he failed, the documents said.

McMain turned 18 in January 2015.

In April 2, 2015, he pleaded guilty to driving under the influence (first offense). He was sentenced to 30 days in jail, which were conditionally discharged. His driver's license was suspended for 90 days, and he was to complete alcohol/drug treatment classes, according to court papers.

Roughly five weeks later, on May 12, 2015, McMain was arrested again after a sheriff's deputy found him in his vehicle which was stuck in a ditch on Kentucky 56-East.

"(McMain) was asleep/hard to wake up behind the wheel of the vehicle. The back tires were ... spinning with the motor running," the court document said. A passenger was asleep in the back seat and another passenger was in the road waiting for a tow truck, court papers said.

"(McMain) lied to me and stated he had only been there for a few hours. (McMain) later said he'd been there all night trying to get the car out of the ditch," according to the citation.

Sheriff's officials said a whiskey bottle was in plain site on the passenger side floorboard. The passenger was cited with minor in possession of alcohol.

According to an arrest citation, McMain was charged with driving under the influence (second offense) (drugs), driving on a suspended license (first offense), license to be in possession and a minor (18-20) in possession of alcohol.

In December, McMain entered an Alford plea to charges of driving under the influence (second offense), driving on a suspended license and a minor (18-20) in possession of alcohol. An Alford plea means the person charged is not admitting guilt, but believes the evidence strongly indicates guilt, and it's in his or her best interest to enter the plea.

He was sentenced to 180 days in jail with 173 of those days conditionally discharged. McMain's license was suspended for 12 months and he was again ordered to take alcohol/drug classes, court records said.

Court documents indicate that as of Feb. 29  a little more than three months before the vehicle crash which killed Wood  McMain had enrolled in a treatment program.

On June 5, according to the arrest warrant, McMain picked up Wood, a member of the Webster County High School softball team, in a cemetery in Webster County. She had apparently left her home without her parents' permission to meet McMain, the warrant said.

In addition to murder, DUI (third offense), and driving on a suspended license (second offense), McMain also faces charges of kidnapping (victim death), first-degree wanton endangerment and failure to wear seat belt. He is scheduled to be arraigned on June 16.
New Burlington Area Homeless Shelter director carrying mission forward

The new executive director of the Burlington Area Homeless Shelter says she's excited for her new role and here to serve the community.
NORWALK  Connecticut has a long and storied history in manufacturing locks, with names like Yale and Segal still very familiar.

In a state known for its history manufacturing locks, Norwalk especially stands out as one of the first to manufacture locks and hardware fittings on an industrial scale.
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NORWALK  AMEC Carting, LLC, has yet to be fined by the city for zoning violations at its contractors yard off Lubrano Place in South Norwalk.

The Norwalk Department of Planning and Zoning has cease-and-desist orders dating back to 2013 over the Norwalk-based companys storage of containers on the property.

But until recently, the tools werent in place to pursue fines, city officials say.

Those (violations) werent under this new fining ordinance, so the new ones go under the new fines ordinance and the old ones go back on a list to try to get into Stamford Superior Court, said Michael E. Wrinn, Norwalks acting director of planning and zoning. We had no fining procedure available. Now we do.

The city, however, cannot pursue fines against AMEC Carting under the new ordinance because the company has an appeal and a correction plan pending, he added.

Because they contested (the citation), it halts the process, Wrinn said. Its legal going back and forth.

AMEC Carting, a demolition contractor based at 145 Main Ave., operates a transfer station at One Crescent St. The company stores its trucks and large metal storage containers at its contractors yard in South Norwalk.

For years, residents have complained about large trucks, noise and dust emanating from the contractors yard, which is bounded roughly by Lubrano Place, Kossuth Street, Hemlock Place and Belle Avenue in South Norwalk.

Ernie Dumas, chairman of the newly formed neighborhood organization South Norwalk Citizens for Justice, said the company should have been fined a long time ago.

Ive been making complaints about this property for almost three years already and nothing had been done until we applied a little pressure and started asking questions, Dumas said during a meeting with AMEC Carting representatives at the Calvary Baptist Church Community Hall on Monday evening. To us, its a quality of life. To you, its another business day.

The companys attorney did not return a phone call seeking comment.

Brian L. McCann, assistant corporation counsel in the citys law department, said AMEC Carting hasnt been treated differently than others issued zoning violations by the citys Department of Planning and Zoning.

The (fine) procedure is sort of just getting started, so its not that they were singled out and treated differently, McCann said. Its that were just getting going with the zoning citation procedure now.

Last year, the city adopted a zoning citation ordinance that lays out a citation, fines and appeal process. Under it, the initial fine for failure to address a citation is $150. Starting five days after the issuance of the citation, an additional fine of $150 per day is applied for each day the zoning violation continues.

Payment must be made within 10 days of the date of the citation. Alternatively, the property owner may challenge the citation before a hearing officer.

The city hadnt levied fines before for lack of an ordinance with an appeal mechanism and for fear of being hit with triple damage fines in the event of a court challenge.

We were leery of adopting an ordinance if were going to get hit with triple damages every time theres a mistake thats made. Thats what I was told was the hindrance in adopting our own ordinance, McCann said. Then some time around 2014, the (state) Legislature dropped the treble damages from the statute.

McCann acknowledged residents frustrations with the contractors yard but added that the company has availed itself of its right to appeal.

I appreciate the neighbors concerns and their disappointment with AMEC, but I do think that AMEC is allowed and has the right to an appeal procedure, McCann said. Before we lay the heavy hand on them, I think we have to let them be heard.

Meanwhile, AMEC Carting has requested a zoning amendment to allow the storage and maintenance of trucks, containers and other equipment at the contractors yard, which is located in an Industrial No. 1 zone. The company has proposed landscaping, buffering and other improvements to the property. The plan also calls for shifting access to Chestnut Street and thus eliminating truck traffic from Lubrano Place, Olean and Kossuth streets and Hemlock Place.

AMEC Carting representatives explained the plan to residents at the church hall on Monday evening.

Residents asked the company to close the yard.

We dont want it. Take your business and go to another place, one resident told the company.
NORWALK  Police say a Norwalk man expressed disbelief after he was arrested for slapping a minor child.

Nery Ceron, 47, of 41 Wolfpit Ave., was charged with risk of injury to a minor, disorderly conduct, and interfering with an officer.

Police were dispatched to 41 Wolfpit Ave. on Thursday at approximately 9 p.m. on a report of a disturbance.

Officers spoke to a visibly upset complainant who said that Ceron had slapped a minor child in the face. Police said that Ceron was in the second-floor of the unit, and when asked by police to come downstairs, he initially hesitated in doing so.

When officers were attempting place handcuffs on Ceron, police said he attempted to avoid being handcuffed.

Ceron reportedly told police that he hadnt done anything wrong and said, this country is different from where Im from. I dont know why its illegal in the United States to hit a kid.

Police reports did not indicate what country Ceron was referring to.

He was issued a $50,000 bond and given a court date of June 10.
Five Connecticut physicians, including a doctor in Danbury, have received alert letters from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration alleging they may have purchased unapproved drugs that put patients at risk of adverse health consequences, documents obtained by C-HIT show.

The FDA documents show the five doctors were alerted as part of a wide-reaching federal probe involving Gallant Pharma International Inc., which sold more than $12.4 million in unapproved chemotherapy and injectable cosmetic drugs in the United States before the government shut down the operation in 2013.

The letters to the doctors, dated April 1, 2015, say In addition to putting patients at risk, receiving misbranded or adulterated drugs and devices in interstate commerce and delivering or offering to deliver those drugs and devices to (or use on) others violates federal law.

None of the doctors have been charged with wrongdoing.

The case comes to light as drug companies and pharmacies are urging Congress and law enforcement officials to crack down on an increasing number of dangerous, unapproved and counterfeit drugs being sold to doctors and consumers nationwide. Sales of counterfeit drugs and drugs not approved by the FDA have soared into a multibillion-dollar industry with the growth of the internet, and drug companies say efforts by governments to tackle illegal online drug sales are not sufficient.

Dr. David Kloth, medical director of Connecticut Pain Care in Danbury, said three or four of his patients with chronic headaches and other pain syndromes were denied Botox injections by their insurance carriers in 2011 and wanted to pay on their own for the drug.

We had heard of a mail-order pharmacy in Canada that would provide them the drug at half the cost ($350 instead of $550 per vial), Kloth said. Only one of his patients agreed to buy the Botox, he said, and the patient had no detrimental effects.

We stopped using this company because of the difficulties with the process and our concerns about the legality of buying from Canada, Kloth said.

U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., said the FDA should be referring its Gallant Pharma investigation results to state medical commissions that have licensing oversight over physicians.

This story was reported under a partnership with the Connecticut Health I-Team (www.c-hit.org).
A castoff from Gov. Dannel P. Malloys cabinet is coming back to haunt Connecticut with another reminder  or parting shot  that General Electric is the one that got away.

This time, to Rhode Island, where Malloys former education commissioner, Stefan Pryor, has played a key role in the recruitment of a new GE Digital venture to Providence.

Rhode Island leaders announced the deal Thursday, which includes an initial commitment of 100 jobs in return for $5.65 million in economic incentives.

Front and center was Pryor, the states commerce secretary.

It comes six months after Connecticut lost GEs global headquarters to Boston, subjecting Malloy to intense criticism over the states business climate and retention efforts by his administration.

We are excited to welcome this new GE Digital center to the Ocean State, Pryor said. GE is one of the worlds most important and innovative companies. This state-of-the-art center will bring high-wage advanced industry jobs to Rhode Island, enhancing the tech industry cluster that will ensure the state's long-term economic success.

A spokesman for Malloy declined to comment Thursday.

The vast majority of the 100 jobs will be new positions, according to a GE spokeswoman, who said the company did not put the digital venture out to bid when asked if Connecticut was in the running.

Rhode Island officials say the deal could yield hundreds of additional jobs.

GE still maintains a workforce of 4,000 employees in Connecticut, which Malloys defenders say has been overlooked in the relocation of the companys headquarters.

But Malloys critics say that Pryors recruitment of GE Digital to Rhode Island, which had been in the running for the headquarters, adds insult to injury.

It may cause an initial bruising to Governor Malloy as far as his feelings go, said state Rep. John Frey, R-Ridgefield. GE was so put off Governor Malloys presentation and dialogue last summer and fall that I sincerely doubt that they had any conversation with Connecticut about this opportunity.

During his tenure as Connecticuts education commissioner from 2011 to his 2014 resignation, Pryor had a rocky relationship with teacher unions and some education advocates over standardized testing and charter school expansion.

Some had publicly called for his ouster, including Jonathan Pelto, a former petition candidate for governor.

Pryor didnt seem to care much for Connecticuts children as education commissioner, so it stands to reason he wouldnt hesitate to steal our jobs now that he is working in Rhode Island, Pelto said.

neil.vigdor@scni.com; 203-625-4436; http://twitter.com/gettinviggy
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WILTON  Wilton police have released the identity of the contractor who died Friday morning after being electrocuted the previous day while working near power lines.

Police identified the victim as 44-year-old Marco Silva of Danbury, also known as Marcos DaSilva.

The Connecticut Medical Examiners Office completed an autopsy Friday afternoon and ruled the cause of death as electrocution.

Silva was a private contractor replacing utility poles for Eversource Energy near 31 Rivergate Drive.

He was employed by KTI Utility Construction of Wilton.

Silva was taken by the Wilton Volunteer Ambulance Corps to Norwalk Hospital, where he died.

A preliminary investigation showed that Silva was in the process of placing a pole when he fell to the ground from a standing position. Police were called at 12:34 p.m., Wilton police Capt. John Lynch said.

Police said that a follow-up investigation is being conducted between police, Occupational Safety and Health Administration and Eversource Energy.

At the scene Thursday, a truck with a large auger could be seen, with the auger arm extended upward near power lines. The road was closed for several hours between Blue Ridge Lane and Pilgrim Trail.

OSHA confirmed it has begun an investigation.

An Eversource spokesman declined comment and deferred questions to the Wilton Police Department.

No further information is expected to be released from the Wilton Police Department, however, the case remains open at this time, Lynch said.

Electrocution is the second-most common cause of workplace deaths in the U.S. after falls, according to OSHA.

In 2014, 74 workers were electrocuted in the U.S., accounting for 8.5 percent of workplace deaths. Falls were blamed for 349 deaths, or 39.9 percent of workplace deaths.
NORWALK  From the new student government councils to curriculum updates, literacy initiative roll-outs to technological advances, the three new elementary school principals will have a lot on their plates this fall.

The job is going to be a tremendous challenge just because theres so many things were doing now. You have a massive set of reforms under way, said school board Chairman Michael Lyons.

The Board of Education voted to approve Nick Brophy at Jefferson Science Magnet School, Jane Wilkins at Naramake Elementary and Sandra Faioes at Brookside Elementary for the positions of principal at its Tuesday night board meeting.

These leadership positions in the schools are critically important to the school system. Its a big job, you cannot implement the strategic operating plan unless you have a really good core of principals, Lyons said.

Brophy comes to Norwalk after five years of being principal at E.C. Stevens Elementary School in Wallingford. He graduated with a bachelors in religious studies from Fairfield University and received a masters of science in elementary education from Southern Connecticut State University.

This is a step up for him, said Lyons, but the interviewing committees at Jefferson had rated him very highly and Lyons said he seems up for the challenge  were going to give him a shot.

Wilkins has been in the Norwalk Public Schools system for 23 years, her must recently role being the Curriculum and Instruction Site Director, or CISD of Marvin Elementary School. She received her bachelors in English/writing from Manhattanville College and got a masters in education from the University of Bridgeport.

Shes taken on important citywide duties in the school system and performed them very well which is why (Superintendent of Schools) Adamowski felt she was ready, Lyons said.

Faioes is also CISD, but of Brookside Elementary School, where she will soon be principal. She got her bachelors in English and Black Studies from Boston College and holds several certifications in addition to being fluent in Spanish, Portuguese and Cape Verdean Creole.

Lyons said she has served on numerous committees and in a variety of departments across Norwalk.

Challenges

With the student government councils up and running for the first time this fall, principals are going to have a slightly different role in Norwalk schools than they would in most.

In the old model the principal is pretty much the dictator of the school. In this model theyre like the CEO with a board of directors they have to deal with, Lyons said.

The student government councils, which are made up of the principals, students, teachers and parents, will be the governing bodies at each Norwalk school, going as far as determining how to allocate funds in its own school budget.

Its a different skill set to work with an organization like a student government council and generate consensus than it is to simply be the boss that tells everybody what to do, said Lyons.

In addition, the principals will have to accommodate for the school districts facilities plan, which aims to alleviate over-enrollment at the elementary schools be rearranging student distribution and creating new space for student learning.

A number of these principals are going to have to deal with renovation projects at their school and its always a big challenge to try to maintain the quality of an educational program while youre rebuilding the building youre in, Lyons said.

Elementary schools are currently the schools suffering the most from over-capacity. The schools are at an average 108 percent enrollment  18 percent above the state recommended number

Its a challenging time, said Lyons, but I think these principals weve obtained recently really are up to the task.

SFoster-Frau@CTPost.com; @SilviaElenaFF
Republican leaders want the General Assembly to override Gov. Dannel P. Malloys recent vetoes that cut state aid to towns and cities by $20 million, and they called on Democrats Thursday to join them in the effort.

But Democratic leaders, sparking a flurry of political charges and counter-charges, said theyll meet Monday in caucus and - with majorities in the House and Senate - decide whether there is enough support to overturn Malloys recent line-item vetoes of several budget items.

Without two-thirds majorities in the House and Senate, it would take some form of bipartisan cooperation, which has been lacking in this General Assembly election year.

The three-day veto session for the recent special legislative session that finished up budget-related bills, starts Monday, giving first the Senate, then the House, the chance to muster support against the governor. Democrats control the Senate 21-15 and the House 87-64. Twenty four votes are needed to override a veto in the Senate and 101 in the House.

House Minority Leader Themis Klarides, R-Derby and Senate Minority Leader Len Fasano, R-North Haven, set off the political fireworks on Thursday, asking Democratic majority leaders to veto the cuts to municipal aid; and $775,000 in payments to federally qualified health centers.

A $20 million cut to municipalities, following the deep cuts already made in this budget, adds an insurmountable burden to towns that have already passed their annual budgets, Klarides and Fasano said. The result of such a deep cut, on top of many other added burdens, is that our towns will be forced to raise property taxes. At a time when people are already struggling following the two largest tax increases in state history, now is not the time for more taxes.

They described the health-centers reduction as relatively small but it is a cut that will cause significant pain to the poor seeking care for their families. The GOP leaders said they believe the governors line-item vetoes were selected to inflict pain on lawmakers who refused to call his Second Chance 2.0 bill for a vote. Its not right that our towns and low-income families will suffer as a result.

Senate Majority Leader Bob Duff, D-Norwalk, charged that the Republican leaders are trying to create an election year issue.

The level of hypocrisy here is mind-boggling, Duff said in response. If you cut down all the trees in all the forests of our beautiful state you still wouldnt have enough paper to list all the times Republican legislators voted to cut various types of local funding - oftentimes for education - and services for the poor, including health care. For them to now suggest these things are their priorities ignores thousands of votes cast over many decades. They care about only one thing: trying to win in November. Thats all this is about.

That led to a sharp response from Fasano.

Its odd that a Senate Democrat leader would issue a statement about hypocrisy that is so loaded with hypocritical accusations, Fasano said. This is the same individual who supported a budget that cut from education, health care, and social services for the poor. Its also the same individual who literally helped chase GE out of the state, was involved in every budget that has made Connecticut one of the worst places to do business, and supported increasing taxes more than any other administration. Republicans have repeatedly produced budgets that restored funding for social services and implemented long-term strategies to deal with the deficits created by roll over Democrats.

The veto session, the first of two this month, is scheduled to start at 10 oclock Monday morning and go for no more than three days. Malloy vetoes also terminated the $1.7 million budget of the Connecticut Humanities Council.

The constitutionally mandated veto session for the regular, budget-adjustment legislative season that ended May 4, is scheduled for June 20. Malloy, who took office in January 2011, has yet to lose to a veto override in the General Assembly.

kdixon@ctpost.com;
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WILTON  Located at the point where the four points of Wilton, Weston, Redding and Ridgefield come together, Georgetown is the perfect place for the four municipalities to intermingle.

Thats why residents of all four towns should rejoice at the advent of the 14th Annual Georgetown Day Festival.

This is a great opportunity for people who may not be familiar with Georgetown to get a taste of it, said the festivals Assistant Chairman Ralph Bosch. They get to come down and see whats here, so that maybe theyll come back some time and come to one of the restaurants that they got to try while here.

The event, which will have over 90 vendor tents stretching down the entirety of Georgetowns Main Street and on portions of Old Mill Road, will be held on Sunday, June 12 from 12-6 p.m.

Proudly hosted by volunteers from Georgetown Village Restoration, Inc., the Georgetown Lions Club, the Georgetown Volunteer Fire Department, and the Georgetown Community Association, this burgeoning event has grown more popular with each passing year, said Bosch.

Artisan jewelry, a plethora of different foods and plenty of childrens activities are but a few of the festivals many attractions. There will also be the traditional chili cook-off, whose wares visitors will be able to test; a tent with a variety of different beers; and two separate live music tents.

We participate in this event because, around here, the towns are old-fashioned, and this event is just an old-fashioned good time, said Bobbi Horrocks, the manager of Georgetowns Heibecks Stand, which will be participating in the festival. We literally get hyped up every year about Georgetown Day because its such a great time with everyone getting together like a family pretty much.

As in past years there will be a stage in front of Sparklicious at 28 Main Street. The live shows will include both local and well-known bands, such as the BRYAC Funk Allstars and Phoenix Tree.

An exciting new addition to this years festival is The Old Mill Stage, which will feature music and interactive multimedia performances by a few different artists, including an art area near the Old Mill Performance Tent with an interactive community art project by Georgetown School of the Arts. Parents can relax at the tent, listen to and enjoy multimedia performances and watch (or work with) their children creating art at the community project.

Also new for children this year, the fire department will set up some fire-hoses for people to spray at targets that they set up out over the river.

Bosch expects that between 5,000 to 6,000 people to show up for the event, so dont be left out.

If you are interested in becoming a valued exhibitor, chili chef, musician, performer, or volunteer on Georgetown Day, send an email to georgetown.day.booths@gmail.com.
ORD  Glen Holtz Sr., 90, of Ord passed away Wednesday, June 8, 2016, at Nebraska Veterans Health Care System in Grand Island.

Funeral services will be at 10:30 a.m. Saturday at St. Johns Lutheran Church in Ord. Pastor Shawn Kitzing will officiate. Burial will be in the Ord City Cemetery. Military honors will be provided by the Ord VFW Post 7029 and American Legion Post 38.

Visitation will be held on Friday from 5 to 7 p.m. at Ord Memorial Chapel. Memorials are suggested to St. Johns Lutheran Church.

Mr. Holtz was born on March 11, 1926, in Beemer to Martin and Anna (Pagels) Holtz. He attended Beemer public schools and graduated from high school in 1943. He enlisted in the U.S. Navy after graduation and served in the Pacific Theater aboard the aircraft carrier U.S.S. Shipley Bay. Following his discharge from the Navy, he moved to Omaha and was employed at Nebraska Bridge Supply and Lumber Company.

On May 8, 1949, he married Betty Dvorak at Kountze Memorial Church in Omaha.

He lived in several communities, working primarily in the lumber business. Following retirement from his work as the Building Inspector for the City of Lexington, he moved back to Ord, where he and Betty had principally raised their three children and where he had managed Koupal & Barstow Lumber Company. During retirement he enjoyed working on seven projects with Laborers for Christ and most recently was employed part-time by Lukasiewicz Furniture Company in Farwell.

He was a member of St. Johns Lutheran Church in Ord and served in many capacities at the church through the years.

Survivors include two sons and daughters-in-law, Glen Jr. and Tamara of Beaver Crossing and Dan and Alice of Nebraska City; a daughter, Merrisue of Grand Island; a sister, Lavina Leimer of Anaheim, Calif.; and five grandchildren, two stepgrandchildren and 13 great-grandchildren.

He was preceded in death by his parents; his wife, Betty; a sister, Elvera Lierman; and a brother, Norman.
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Linkedin Vincent Lingga (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, June 10, 2016

High tax burdens associated with preparing, filing and paying taxes and with the post-filing process that involves tax audits, tax refunds and tax appeals have been a major factor that has made Indonesias rank in the World Banks annual ease of doing business survey consistently low, even the lowest in the ASEAN region.



The 2015 World Banks ease of doing business index has put Indonesia 114th out of the 189 countries surveyed.



One of the most blatant examples within the post-filing process seems to be the inefficient and even inconsistent treatment of the value added tax (VAT) on coal caused by differing interpretations of the laws and regulations, and different analyses of the process of coal mining and processing.



VAT is essentially a tax that is charged on a broad range of transactions with a tax deduction mechanism allowing businesses to offset VAT paid on inputs against VAT paid on outputs.



Each taxable business pays VAT to its providers on its inputs and receives VAT from its customers on its outputs. Input VAT incurred by each business is offset against output VAT.



David Hamzah Damian, a partner at the Tax Compliance and Litigation Services of Danny Darussalam Tax Center, confirmed that the Directorate General of Taxes (DGT) had issued several contradictory ruling letters regarding the VAT on coal.



DGT itself has also acknowledged there have been different interpretations on and treatment of the VAT mechanism by tax officials and judges at the tax court, especially as regards the third-generation coal mining contracts awarded between 1997 and 2000.



But DGT did nothing and decided instead to wait for the outcome of the renegotiations of the coal mining contracts with the Energy and Mineral Resources Ministry.



The government apparently wanted to amend all coal mining contracts to adjust them to the 2009 Mining Law and to make all coal mining firms subject to prevailing laws (not lex specialis).



Simply waiting for a solution to the dispute over the VAT mechanism between coal miners and DGT as part of the overall contract negotiations could adversely affect the production of coal, which still plays a crucial role in power generation.



Hamzah explained that different from the second-generation contracts, which are subject to prevailing laws, third-generation coal mining contracts stipulate provisions specifically nailed down to the 1994 VAT Law.



Hence, the contract is legally regarded as lex specialis, not subject to laws and regulations enacted after the contract signing until the contract expires.



The 1994 VAT Law specifically stipulates that crude oil, natural gas, and gravel and other directly extracted natural resource commodities are non-taxable goods within the VAT mechanism.



But the law does not explicitly include coal in the category of mining products that are non-VAT taxable.



But we also know that coal is produced in several qualities, depending on the value-added processes the mineral undergoes (such as washing or upgrading).



The different qualities represent the different grades of coal sold in the market.



But problems arose after the government issued a regulation ( PP 144 ) in 2000 explicitly stating that coal is not taxable within the VAT system, thereby contradicting the 1994 VAT Law.



In 2008, six giant coal companies refused to pay outstanding coal royalties totaling US$598 million to the government, claiming that the government still owed them the same mount in unpaid VAT refunds. But the companies, which at that time still enjoyed high coal prices, eventually yielded to government pressure.



Instead of waiting for the results of contract renegotiations that could take more several years to conclude, many coal companies lodged their VAT dispute cases at the Tax Court.



Coal producers claim they still have more than Rp 1.5 trillion ($110 million) in VAT refunds that have yet to be settled by DGT.



Hamzah acknowledged that within the short term, tax dispute resolution through the Tax Court seemed to the best legal avenue. The problem though is that the Tax Court itself has been inconsistent in its rulings, again due to the different interpretations of the laws and rules and different analyses of coal production processes.



The Supreme Audit Agency (BPK) concluded in its 2014 audit of the DGT that the DGT regional offices had been discriminatory or inconsistent in their treatment of input VAT refunds for coal companies.



BPK discovered that in 2014, DGT approved Rp 1.66 trillion ($123 million) in input VAT restitutions for 11 coal companies, but rejected similar VAT claims for refunds from many other coal companies of the third generation.



Judges at the Tax Court often had differing views about the stages of value-adding chain in coal production. A panel of judges who understand the value-adding coal processing chain usually consider upgraded coal to be taxable commodity.



Strange, though, even though DGT has ruled that coal is no longer taxable under the VAT mechanism, coal companies remain subject to the regulation obliging them to collect VAT from the coal they sell under their domestic market obligation.



This certainly caused double blows to coal producers because they cannot get VAT refunds for their production inputs, but they still have to collect the 10 percent VAT on coal they sell to domestic buyers, thereby making their coal prices higher than those of other producers who can claim VAT refunds.

***

The writer is senior editor at The Jakarta Post.

---------------

We are looking for information, opinions, and in-depth analysis from experts or scholars in a variety of fields. We choose articles based on facts or opinions about general news, as well as quality analysis and commentary about Indonesia or international events. Send your piece to community@jakpost.com.

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not reflect the official stance of The Jakarta Post.
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Linkedin A. Ibrahim Almuttaqi (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, June 10, 2016

The recent diplomatic spat between Indonesia and Singapore over the city-states effort to prosecute an Indonesian businessman for his alleged involvement in the haze last year was a frank reminder of the devastating impact man-made disasters can have on the region.



Yet while the regional haze  considered the worst since 1997  attracted most of the headlines around the world, another man-made disaster has struck the ASEAN region virtually almost under the radar: the Mekong Delta drought.



The great Mekong River  which from its source in the Tibetan plateau of China passes through Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam before flowing out to the South China Sea  is at its lowest level in a century after experiencing its worst dry spell in 90 years.



Experts suggest a combination of the stronger than-normal El Nino weather pattern, climate change and, most worryingly, the construction of dams along Mekong River, are responsible for this disaster.



At an estimated 4,350 kilometers in length, it should be remembered that the Mekong River provides livelihoods to an estimated 60 million people who live along its basin, with 90 percent of Vietnams rice export coming from the Mekong Delta and Cambodias fresh water lake of Tonle Sap providing 60 percent of Cambodians protein intake.



Indeed, the fishery sector of the Lower Mekong Basin is estimated at a total value of US$17 billion per year.



At the same time, the implications of the Mekong Delta drought go beyond the Mekong subregion.



As Richard Cronin from the Stimson Center in the United States notes, People in Indonesia and the Philippines will go hungry if the Thais and Vietnamese dont produce enough rice [] this is a preview of the longer-term effect of development and climate change to the Mekong Delta.



A total of 11 mainstream hydropower dams and a further 30 tributary dams have been proposed for construction over the next 20 years.



These include the controversial Xayaburi Dam in Laos which has drawn opposition from neighboring Cambodia and Vietnam. The arguments in favor of such dam projects are that they provide cheaper electricity, will fuel economic development and alleviate poverty.



For a land-locked, impoverished country such as Laos with limited natural resources and a gross domestic product (GDP) of only $12 billion, the economic argument in favor of dam construction is obvious. Aiming for 7 percent GDP growth, the Lao government hopes to export the energy produced by its hydropower dams to neighboring countries.



Despite this, question marks have been raised over the supposed economic benefits and the purported minimal environmental impacts claimed by governments and dam companies.



Critics argue that existing and future dams threaten to reduce fish stocks, decrease the sediments needed for rice harvest, change the quality and quantity of water flows, and lead to unpredictable surges that will have major consequences on communities in the Mekong subregion.



These concerns appear to have materialized with one expert arguing fish yields have dropped by up to 70 percent due to hydropower dams and that whereas villagers reported they could catch 5 to 10 kilograms of fish a day 10 years ago, the catch has gone down to 1 to 2kg a day at present.



At the same time, changes to water flows caused by dams have affected rice yields. Areas that used to be dry in the dry season are now permanently inundated and areas that used to be flooded in the wet season remain dry.



For Vietnams Mekong Delta, which relies on the annual floods during the wet season to provide nutrient-rich sediments for its rice fields, such unseasonal droughts are devastating. One Vietnamese official suggested that mainstream hydropower projects on the Mekong River had caused a loss of $231 million in seafood and agriculture output to the Mekong Delta.



Given the transboundary nature of the issues surrounding water resource security in the Mekong subregion, it is unsurprising that efforts have been made at the regional level to ensure greater cooperation. The most notable regional mechanism is the Mekong Agreement of 1995 which established the Mekong River Commission (MRC).



MRC, however, is ineffective to manage the transboundary water resources due to the lack of legally binding agreements. Criticisms have also been made of the Mekong Agreement 1995 itself for its vague definitions of key terms such as the acceptable minimum monthly natural flow and natural reverse flow, and for the limited notification procedure that is required by riparian states to inform others about their water development projects.



As one expert pointed out, the agreement means upstream dams in Laos do not require the prior informed consent of Cambodia even though it may have a negative impact downstream.



As far back as 1997 ASEAN had already recognized the need to develop a regional water conservation program as stated in the Hanoi Plan of Action. Similarly in 2003, ASEAN senior officials on the environment adopted the ASEAN Long Term Strategic Plan for Water Resources Management, which identified five key challenges including moving towards integrated river basin management.



Two years later in 2005, ASEAN produced the ASEAN Strategic Plan of Action on Water Resources Management. Recognizing the importance of greater cooperation among riparian states in the Mekong subregion, in 2010 the ASEAN Secretariat announced at a signing ceremony in Hua Hin, Thailand, a partnership agreement with the MRC in the development and management of the Mekongs water resources.



Despite all the efforts, it should be noted that the results of the institutional partnership between ASEAN and the MRC are limited due to lack of political will, leadership and resource mobilization.



Tellingly, at the 2010 signing ceremony, the then ASEAN Secretary-General did not attend but was instead represented by the Director of Finance and Infrastructure Directorate of the ASEAN Secretariat.



Moreover, the attendant community blueprints to the ASEAN Community Vision 2025 rarely mentions water resource security.



Indeed the term water resources is only found once under the ASEAN Socio-Cultural Community Blueprint 2025. Limiting water resources to the socio-cultural pillar is in stark contrast to the riparian states that identify it as a matter of national security.



One Cambodian think tank argues that national state security is inextricably linked to water usage and management, and the stability of Cambodia as a state can in this manner be disrupted by factors contributing to water insecurity. In this sense it is questionable why the issue was not included in the ASEAN Political-Security Community Blueprint 2025.



As such, while regional efforts to ensure water resource security in the Mekong Delta have been made, they have clearly not gone far enough. More attention needs to be given to water resource security in the Mekong subregion and it should be recognized by ASEAN as an issue of critical concern for the region, that has implications that go beyond the riparian states, and that it is a cross-pillar issue that cannot be limited to the socio-cultural realm. The lives of 60 million ASEAN citizens depend on it!

***

The writer heads the ASEAN Studies Program at The Habibie Center in Jakarta. The views expressed are his own.

---------------

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Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not reflect the official stance of The Jakarta Post.
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Linkedin Michael Liedtke (Associated Press) San Francisco  Fri, June 10, 2016

A Lenovo smartphone unveiled Thursday will be clever enough to grasp your physical surroundings  such as the room's size and the presence of other people  and potentially transform how we interact with e-commerce, education and gaming.

Today's smartphones track location through GPS and cell towers, but that does little more than tell apps where you are. Tapping Google's 3-year-old Project Tango , the new Phab2 Pro phone will use software and sensors to track motions and map building interiors, including the location of doors and windows.

That's a crucial step in the promising new frontier in "augmented reality," or the digital projection of lifelike images and data into a real-life environment.

If Tango fulfills its promise, furniture shoppers will be able use the Phab2 Pro to download digital models of couches, chairs and coffee tables to see how they would look in their actual living rooms. Kids studying the Mesozoic Era would be able to place a virtual Tyrannosaurus or Velociraptor in their home or classroom  and even take selfies with one. The technology would even know when to display information about an artist or a scene depicted in a painting as you stroll through a museum.

Tango will be able to create internal maps of homes and offices on the fly. Google won't need to build a mapping database ahead of time, as it does with existing services like Google Maps and Street View. Nonetheless, Tango could raise fresh concerns about privacy if controls aren't stringent enough to prevent the on-the-fly maps from being shared with unauthorized apps or heisted by hackers.

Lenovo says the Phab2 Pro will sell for $500 when it begins shipping in the U.S. in August. The device is expected to be available throughout the world by mid-September, in advance of Apple's anticipated release of the iPhone 7.

In another effort to put a new twist on smartphones, Lenovo also previewed the newest models in its Moto line, which it bought from Google two years ago.

The Moto Z and Moto Z Force will both let people snap on additional equipment called "Mods" to the back of the phones. The initial Mods include a speaker to amplify music, a projector for displaying photos and video from the phone and a power pack that provides 22 hours of additional battery. The phones will be available exclusively in the US through Verizon this summer before a global release in the fall.

The new phones are coming out as phone sales are slowing. People have been holding off on upgrades, partly because they haven't gotten excited about the types of technological advances hitting the market during the past few years. Phones offering intriguing new technology such as Tango could help spur more sales.

But Tango's room-mapping technology is probably still too abstract to gain mass appeal right away, says Ramon Llamas, an analyst at the IDC research group.

"For most folks, this is still a couple steps ahead of what they can wrap their brains around, so I think there's going to be a long gestation period," Llamas says.

Lenovo Chairman and CEO Yuanqing Yang holds up the new Phab2 Pro phone during the keynote address at the Lenovo Tech World event, on June 9 in San Francisco. The smartphone unveiled will be clever enough to grasp your physical surroundings, such as the room's size and the presence of other people, and potentially transform how we interact with e-commerce, education and gaming. Tapping Google's 3-year-old Project Tango, the new phone will use software and sensors to track motions and map building interiors, including the location of doors and windows.(AP/Eric Risberg)

Other smartphones promising quantum leaps have flopped. Remember Amazon's Fire phone released with great fanfare two years ago? That souped-up phone featured four front-facing cameras and a gyroscope so some images could be seen in three dimensions. The device also offered a tool called Firefly that could be used to identify objects and sounds. But the Fire fizzled, and Amazon no longer even sells the phone.

The Phab2 Pro also looks impressive, with a 6.4-inch display screen and four cameras to help perform its wizardry. Lenovo boasts the phone's sensors can capture about 250,000 measurements per second.

Despite all the fancy hardware, the key to the Tango phone's success is likely to hinge on the breadth of compelling apps that people find useful in their everyday lives.

Google previously released experimental Tango devices designed for computer programmers, spurring them to build about 100 apps that should work with the Phab2 Pro. Home improvement retailer Lowe's is releasing an app that enables Phab2 Pro users to measure spaces with the phone and test how digital replicas of appliances and other decor would look around a house.

Both large and small tech companies are betting that augmented reality, or AR , will take off sooner than later. Microsoft has been selling a $3,000 prototype of its HoloLens AR headset. Others, such as Facebook's Oculus and Samsung, are out with virtual reality, or VR, devices. Google has one coming as well through its Daydream project. While AR tries to blend the artificial with your actual surroundings, VR immerses its users in a setting that's entirely fabricated.

The AR and VR devices out so far invariably require users to wear a headset or glasses. In many cases, they also must be tethered to more powerful personal computers, restricting the ability to move around.

None of that is necessary with the Phab2 Pro. Instead, you get an augmented look at your surroundings through the phone's screen.

"This has a chance to become pervasive because it's integrated into a device that you already have with you all the time," says Jeff Meredith, a Lenovo vice president who oversaw development of the Tango device. "You aren't going to have to walk around a mall wearing a headset."
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Linkedin Derrik J. Lang (Associated Press) Los Angeles, United States  Fri, June 10, 2016

Amber Heard's ex-girlfriend said Wednesday the actress was wrongfully accused of domestic violence in 2009.

The comment by Tasya van Ree came after Heard recently filed for divorce from Johnny Depp and claimed he was physically abusive toward her.

Van Ree said she and Heard were involved in an incident in Seattle years ago that has been "misinterpreted and over-sensationalized."

"I recount hints of misogynistic attitudes toward us, which later appeared to be homophobic when they found out we were domestic partners and not just 'friends,'" van Ree said in a statement released by Heard's spokeswoman Jodi Gottlieb.

(Read also: Johnny Depp's wife files for divorce in Los Angeles)

Heard was arrested in 2009 by police for domestic violence at the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport in 2009, said Perry Cooper, a spokesman for the Port of Seattle.

The prosecuting attorney's office declined to file criminal charges in the case.

Heard and van Ree dated for five years and remain close, van Ree said.

"It's disheartening that Amber's integrity and story are being questioned yet again," she added. "Amber is a brilliant, honest and beautiful woman and I have the utmost respect for her."

Heard and Depp were married for 15 months before a divorce petition was filed last month.

Heard, who appeared in "The Rum Diary" and "Magic Mike XXL," said in a Los Angeles court May 29 that Depp had been physically and emotionally abusive throughout their relationship. She appeared with a bruise on her right cheek.

The actress obtained a temporary restraining order against Depp, alleging he threw her cellphone at her face, striking her below the right eye during a fight May 21.

___

AP writer Gene Johnson contributed to this report from Seattle.
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Linkedin Ni Nyoman Wira (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, June 10, 2016

What's your favorite classic dorama (Japanese drama)? Perhaps among your favorites are listed below.

Oshin (1983)

A photo posted by Sekar Sari (@sekarsha) on May 27, 2016 at 12:04am PDT

Just 15 minutes per episode, Oshin fascinated many with its slow-paced heartbreaking story.

Set in old Japan, the dorama follows Shin Tanokura, or better known as Oshin, a little girl who comes from a poor family. For up to 297 episodes, Oshins hard life and determination made audiences weep.

The series was made into a movie in 2013 that focuses on Oshins childhood.

Tokyo Love Story (1991)

A photo posted by @de_tammy on May 25, 2016 at 5:15am PDT

The complicated love story between Rika Akana (Honami Suzuki) and Kanji Kanchi Nagao (Oda Yuji) is the focus of Tokyo Love Story. The cheerful and bright Rika Akana is hard to forget, while the doubtful Kanchi is irritatingly lovable.

Taking place mostly in Tokyo, this 11-episode dorama is actually based on a Japanese manga created by Fumi Saimon.

Long Vacation (1996)

A photo posted by LEE JONGJIN (@jongshen) on May 5, 2015 at 8:46am PDT

What if a woman, in a wedding dress, broke into your apartment? That is how the tale between Sena Hidetoshi (Takuya Kimura) and Minami Hayama (Tomoko Yamaguchi) starts.

Both Sena and Minami are struggling in life. Sena dreams of being a world-class pianist, while 30-year-old Minami works as a model who is starting to see less professional demand.

Made in 1996, Long Vacation more or less portrays the life of youngsters in Japan amid the great recession.

(Read also: 10 old-school mangas we just cant forget)





Anything for You (1992)

Anything for You is a sob-inducing Japanese dorama. Tatsuya (Eisaku Yoshida) dies in an accident before having the opportunity to propose to his girlfriend, Maeko (Yuriko Ishida). Fortunately, he was then given a second chance to bid his last farewell to Maeko with one catch: his spirit must possess Masaki Hikata, the man who causes the accident and knocks him down.

Consisting of 13 episodes, Anything for You also has a memorable soundtrack, with the track Youre the Only as a standout, sung by Ono Masatoshi.

Ordinary People (1993)

A photo posted by yulia_ni (@yulidons4r) on May 12, 2016 at 5:00am PDT

Ordinary People is based on a Japanese manga, Asunaro Hakusho, or better known as Asunaro White Paper, created by Fumi Saimon. It received the Shogakukan Manga award in 1992.

The dorama itself follows a friendship between five students. Following a love triangle and death, four of them decide to leave school. In the end, years later, all of them reunite and the story continues.

101 Marriage Proposal (1991)

101 Marriage Proposal is somewhat a romantic comedy, although the character Hoshino Tatsurou (Takeda Tetsuya) tends to make the audience feel sorry for him.

In terms of marriage proposals, Hoshino is out of luck. He has been rejected 99 times in omiai (arranged date with marriage as the final purpose). In his 100th omiai Hoshino meets Kaoru (Atsuko Asano), who cant seem to forget her dead fiance.

Itazura na Kiss (1996)

Kangen drama serial jepang: itazura na kiss tahun 1996 ikiiii  siapa yang punya rek? Minta dooong #takashikashiwabara #aikosato #itazuranakiss1996 #itazuranakiss #1996 A photo posted by Noerliz Isnaini (@noerliz_isnaini) on Jan 10, 2016 at 2:04am PST

The romantic comedy Itazura na Kiss tells an (almost) one-sided love story between high school student Kotoko Aihara (Aiko Sato) and her cold yet handsome senior, Naoki Irie (Takashi Kashiwabara). An incident forces Kotoko to live together with Naokis family. The dorama shows how eager Kotoko is to make Naoki fall in love with her.

Itazura na Kiss is based on a Japanese manga by Kaoru Tada. Sadly, she passed away in an accident before having the chance to finish it. The manga itself is very popular and has been adapted into anime and more than three TV dramas. (kes)
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Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, June 10, 2016

Thirteen years after the release of the much-loved clown fishs journey, the characters from Finding Nemo are swimming back onto the big screen for Disney-Pixars latest movie, Finding Dory.

Featuring the lovable, bubbly, amnesiac blue tang fish Dory, audiences are once again taken on a whirlwind adventure, this time in search of Dorys parents.

For Indonesians viewers, the excitement doesnt end there  the release of Finding Dory will be accompanied by an Indonesian-dubbed version of the movie, Mencari Dory, featuring the voices of actor and presenter Raffi Achmad and TV personality and socialite Syahrini.

Raffi and Syahrini will voice two new characters: beluga whale Bailey and whale shark Destiny.

(Read also: 5 movies to watch with your kids)

Raffis playful, humorous and lovable nature is reflected in Bailey, while Destiny is a very unique character, and when you think of someone unique, there is no other like Syahrini in the world. That is why these two were chosen for the roles, The Walt Disney Companys Indonesia studio marketing head, Fitra Rifai, told a press conference on Thursday.

The dubbing took two days for both stars, and turned out be quite a challenge. It was like the first stages of dating, my heart was fluttering in my chest, Syahrini said when asked about the process.

Fitra said Mencari Dory was an initiative involving local talents, with the aim to provide Indonesian audiences with an authentic movie experience that could be enjoyed by all ages. (sab/kes)
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Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, June 10, 2016

People who break their fast by smoking may want to read this article.

During the fasting period, the body does two things. First, it increases its production of free radicals that are harmful to our bodies. Second, it decreases production of endogenous antioxidants (antioxidants produced by the body when stimulated by the intake of food).

So, simply speaking, when we break our fast, we need to eat foods that contain exogenous antioxidants (antioxidants not produced by the body but found in foods) to offset the accumulating radicals in our bodies.

Examples of such foods are fruits and vegetables that include vitamins A, C and E, and combinations of meat or fish to supplement the proteins.

(Read also: The best way to stop smoking: stop trying)

According to Dr. Saptawati Bardosono, MSc, a clinical nutrition specialist and a lecturer at the University of Indonesia's School of Medicine, cigarettes contain active substances that contribute to doubling the amount of free radicals in the body, as reported by kompas.com. So instead of reducing the amount of radicals already in the body by eating proper meals, smokers actually introduce additional radicals and harm their bodies even more.

"Breaking the fast by smoking can also lower the appetite, making people eat smaller amounts of food," Saptawati added. (sab/kes)
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Linkedin Fadli (The Jakarta Post) Batam  Thu, June 9 2016

In the apparent absence of transparency and close media scrutiny, the government has continued with its plan to set up Defense Ministry offices in each of the countrys 34 provinces.

The controversial establishment of regional offices at the provincial level was only uncovered on Wednesday when the administration of Riau Islands province disclosed that the ministrys local office had been attached to the provinces Regional Leadership Communication Forum (FKPD) for the last two months. The local office has also carried out its program related to defense in the province.

Riau Islands administration spokesman Raja Hery Mokhrizal said he had learned about the operation of the local defense office in April.

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Linkedin (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Thu, June 9 2016

Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) prosecutors at the Jakarta Corruption Court on Tuesday indicted House of Representatives lawmaker Damayanti Wisnu Putranti for receiving bribes to rig infrastructure projects in Maluku.

Damayanti of the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) and Golkar Party politician Budi Suprianto, both members of House Commission V overseeing infrastructure, allegedly received Rp 8.1 billion (US$615,600) from PT Windhu Tunggal Utama (WTU) president director Abdul Khoir. The money was a commitment fee of about 8 percent from two infrastructure projects in Maluku worth Rp 91 billion that had been earmarked for the Public Works and Public Housing Ministry in the 2016 fiscal year.

It is suspected that the money was given to coax the defendant as well as Budi Suprianto to approve the projects, prosecutor Iskandar Marwanto said while reading the indictment document.

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Linkedin Lita Aruperes (The Jakarta Post) Manado  Thu, June 9 2016

Customers of state-run electricity company PLNs North Sulawesi, Central Sulawesi and Gorontalo (Suluttenggo) branches have been complaining over recurrent blackouts lasting two to three hours.

Bahtin Rasak, who lives on Jl. Sea, Malalayang subdistrict, expressed disappointment over the situation, especially since blackouts had occurred just as fasting Muslims were about to have their sahur (predawn meal).

These blackouts disrupt our activity, Bahtin said, Wednesday.

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Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, June 10, 2016

The Attorney General's Office (AGO) has dismissed the Indonesian Doctors Association's refusal to carry out chemical castration, a mooted punishment for sex offenders, an official said on Friday.

"I doubt all doctors will refuse [to carry out chemical castration]. We'll see how it goes," Attorney-General M Prasetyo said on Friday as quoted by Tempo.co.

Prasetyo said that given chemical castration would be regulated by law, it would be exempt from medical ethics. Doctors, he insisted, need not fear violating medical ethics, as such ethics are subordinate to law.

Doctor's association spokesperson Ilham Oetama Marsis said the organization rejected the principle of carrying out chemical castration on grounds of medical ethics, violation of which could see individual doctos expelled from professional organizations.

A government regulation in lieu of law on eradication of sexual violence against children includes the possibly of introducing chemical castration for perpetrators upon release from prison. (liz/dan)
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Linkedin Farida Susanty (The Jakarta Post) Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia  Fri, June 10 2016

It may not be the first time for Air Asia Group CEO Tony Fernandes to say Indonesia is more than just Bali, but this time around, the pioneer regional budget carrier has argued that government regulations may contribute to the reason tourists remain heavily focused on the Island of Gods.

Foreign tourist arrivals last year in Indonesia fell short of the 10 million target set by the government, while Malaysia welcomed 25.7 million tourists that year.

Fernandes acknowledged this, while mentioning that the foreign ownership cap set by the government created barriers for airlines like Air Asia in investing more and opening more routes to expose potential tourist sites in Indonesia.

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Linkedin Nethy Dharma Somba (The Jakarta Post) Jayapura  Fri, June 10 2016

Sandwiched between high mountains and deep valleys, many villages in Papua are isolated. Thus, it is difficult for residents to connect with the outer world by land.

The only option left for them is to use air transportation services. However, there is a limited number of airline operators that are willing to serve remote areas in the province. Consequently, air passenger tickets are expensive and so are the fees for logistics, making the prices of goods in remote parts of Papua among the highest in the country.

In a bid to encourage airline operators to maintain their services in the province, the Papua administration is considering giving them incentives. For a start, the administration will allocate Rp 80 billion (US$ 6.02 million) in subsidies for flights serving the provinces remote areas.

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Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, June 10, 2016

The polices counterterrorism unit Densus 88 arrested another suspect in Surabaya, East Java, on Thursday, bringing to four the total number of alleged terrorists detained since Wednesday.

"His initial is S. He has been detained yesterday," National Police chief spokesperson Sr. Comr. Agus Rianto said on Friday regarding the latest arrest, which occurred in the Kenjeran area of Surabaya.

On Wednesday, police in Surabaya arrested three terrorism suspects by the initials of PHP, BRN and FN. PHP is reportedly a former drug convict released in 2014. No evidence was secured during the arrest of S, but police believed S was involved in the same network as the three suspects detained earlier, Agus added.

The four were part of a new network affiliated and in ongoing contact with the Islamic State (IS) group in the Middle East, Agus claimed. "They are involved with people in Syria; they communicate with the IS spokesperson," Agus said, adding that they were members of a network called Sibghatullah.

The four are suspected of planning to carry out terrorist attacks during Ramadhan, said Agus, adding that documents and information had been found on the planned attack. (liz/bbn)
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Linkedin Liza Yosephine (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, June 10, 2016

ASEAN is likely to issue a joint statement on the South China Sea in response to an upcoming verdict on the Philippines arbitration case against China on the disputed territories, an official said on Thursday.

"As the leading organization in the region, with interests in the South China Sea, it would be strange if ASEAN didn't have a viewpoint," the Foreign Ministry's ASEAN dialogue partner and inter-regional cooperation director, Derry Aman, told journalists on Thursday.

However, the regional organizations mechanism requires that all ten member countries reach consensus before declaring a unified stance on the issue, he added.

Several ASEAN countries are involved in territorial disputes in the South China Sea. Indonesia is not a claimant to the surrounding waters of the resource-rich Natuna Islands.

The regional organization will conduct a special ministerial meeting with China between June 13 to 14, ahead of the upcoming verdict on the Philippines South China Sea case against China at the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) in The Hague.

When asked if the joint statement would be raised with China next week, Derry said that as consensus had not yet been reached, talks would remain between ASEAN member nations at this point.

"The process to reach a common understanding on a possible statement is still ongoing," he said.

China, for it's part has already said it would ignore the PCA ruling.

As a non-claimant country, Indonesia has continued to stress the importance of restraint from all parties involved in order to maintain peace and security. Any drastic reaction could raise suspicions and pressure others to also take action in response, Deryy said.

"Dispute settlement must be conducted peacefully, without show of force and in full respect of diplomatic and legal processes," he added.

Indonesia has continued to push for the full and effective implementation of the 2002 Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea (DOC), which includes an ongoing draft code of conduct that Indonesia was prioritizing, he further said. (rin)
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Linkedin Ayomi Amindoni (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, June 10, 2016

Bank Indonesia and the Financial Services Authority (OJK) are preparing instruments to facilitate inflows from the tax amnesty program, a bill on which the House of Representatives is currently deliberating, central bank governor Agus Martowodojo has said.

"We need to prepare investment portfolio instruments to anticipate the inflows. We recommend infrastructure bonds and other productive activities" he said in Jakarta .on Friday

Once the tax amnesty bill is endorsed, the government expects billions of dollars to be repatriated by Indonesians who have parked cash overseas. The owners of the repatriated assets will be charged between 1 and 4 percent of the amount of the funds in exchange for being pardoned for past tax noncompliance.

The government estimates that Rp 165 trillion (US$12.42 billion) will enter the country thanks to the tax amnesty program. BI predicts Rp 53.4 trillion in additional revenue will be yielded from the tax amnesty program.

Agus further said deliberation of the tax amnesty bill would also impact state revenues in 2016. He said the government would have to cut its spending by Rp 70 trillion to mitigate the shortfall if the House did not endorse the bill.

"Besides the tax amnesty bill deliberation, the government and the House are currently deliberating the revised draft on the 2016 state budget. Whether or not the tax amnesty bill is passed into a law, it will still affect state revenue," he said.

The government expects deliberation of tax the amnesty bill, which aims to increase state revenue, to be completed mid-June and take effect on July 1 . (ebf)
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Linkedin Ayomi Amindoni (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, June 10, 2016

The governments decision to revise down Indonesia's economic growth target to 5.1 percent in the revised 2016 state budget draft is a wise decision, considering the persistent global economic slowdown, Bank Indonesia Governor Agus Martowodojo says.

The government and the House of Representatives are currently deliberating macroeconomic assumptions for the revised 2016 state budget draft.

"It is agreed at 5.1 percent. We feel it is a wise decision because we consider 5.3 percent growth too high. The central bank expects the Indonesian economy to grow 5 to 5.4 percent. But we leave the decision to the deliberation at the House," Agus said in Jakarta on Friday.

The Indonesian economy had a slower pace of growth in the first quarter, only 4.92 percent, lower than the 5.04 percent in the previous quarter.

Earlier, Finance Minister Bambang Brodjonegoro explained that the decision to scale down the target was due to weak private consumption, which accounted for more than 50 percent of gross domestic product (GDP).

The government has projected that consumption will expand by only 5 percent this year, lower than the initial target of 5.1 percent. In addition, private investment growth has remained slower than expected and it would be difficult to reach positive net exports due to prolonged commodity price declines. (ags)
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Linkedin Dewanti A. Wardhani and Hasyim Widhiarto (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, June 10, 2016

For many Indonesians and those with experience running a business in the country, there is a big chance they see a similar picture in their head when they hear the word bureaucracy: Long queues and red tape, which can take weeks  even months or years  to cut through.

However, Telkomtelstra president director Erik Meijer had the complete opposite experience during his recent visit to the Investment Coordinating Boards (BKPM) one-stop integrated service (PTSP), during which he obtained two business permits in just two hours.

[The BKPM] is like a very well-oiled engine. Everything works well, Meijer said during a discussion at the boards office in Jakarta on Thursday.

The speedy service was provided by the BKPM through its three hour-permit service reserved for investors planning to invest Rp 100 billion (US$7.5 million) in a project or start a business that could employ more than 1,000 workers in industrial estates.

In an effort to spur economic growth, President Joko Jokowi Widodo has instructed government officials to make an all-out effort to streamline the countrys notoriously difficult bureaucracy to attract investment into Southeast Asias largest economy.

The three-hour service is one of the new services offered by the BKPM to lure in investors.

The BKPM claimed that the new service, introduced in October last year, had been successful in attracting investors. According to its latest data, there are 59 firms, including Telkomtelstra, that have used the service, with a total investment value of Rp 137.5 trillion.

Meijer, appointed last year to lead Telkomtelstra, was so impressed with the BKPMs service that he recorded his experience on tape and shared it on his Twitter account @emjkt, which has over 47,000 followers.

Telkom-Telstra is a joint venture between state-owned telecommunications company PT Telekomunikasi Indonesia and Australian telecommunications giant Telstra Corporation Limited. The venture was launched early last year with start-up capital of almost $10 million.

BKPM head of investment services Lestari Indah said the board would continue to innovate and introduce new schemes in order to boost Indonesias competitiveness. The BKPM this year aims for Rp 589 trillion in investment, a target that the board is confident it can achieve.

We can no longer do business as usual when we have such tough competition, she said.

Local administrations have started to reform to complement the central governments fast-paced policy.

Palembang Investment and One Stop Integrated Services Agency (BPM-PTSP) head Ratu Dewa, for example, said the South Sumatra city had introduced the seven-day service for 52 permits, including building permits. The agency had also designed a detailed map for investors seeking information on the citys potential and its economic activity.

Palembang was among nine local governments recently congratulated by the BKPM for their excellent one-stop integrated services.

The governments push for reform in bureaucracies, however, must be supported with proper capacity building, particularly at the local and regional administration level, which are struggling with human resources issues.

With limited human resources capacity, many local administrations have actually found it hard to process and issue business permits within three days, Institute for Development of Economics and Finance (Indef) analyst Bhima Yudhistira said recently.

Both local and foreign investors remain hopeful about the countrys business opportunities. The BKPMs office in South Jakarta, for example, is always packed by businesspeople applying for business permits.

Thirty-two-year-old Suryo Pratama, who came to the office on Thursday to seek for permit for his goods transportation business, said although the BKPMs services were now quicker, the same thing must be applied to other government institutions that issue supporting permits.

A lack of coordination will bring the progress back to square one, he said.
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Linkedin Dewanti A. Wardhani and Hasyim Widhiarto (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, June 10 2016

For many Indonesians and those with experience running a business in the country, there is a big chance they see a similar picture in their head when they hear the word bureaucracy: Long queues and red tape, which can take weeks  even months or years  to cut through.



However, Telkomtelstra president director Erik Meijer had the complete opposite experience during his recent visit to the Investment Coordinating Boards (BKPM) one-stop integrated service (PTSP), during which he obtained two business permits in just two hours.



[The BKPM] is like a very well-oiled engine. Everything works well, Meijer said during a discussion at the boards office in Jakarta on Thursday.



The speedy service was provided by the BKPM through its three hour-permit service reserved for investors planning to invest Rp 100 billion (US$7.5 million) in a project or start a business that could employ more than 1,000 workers in industrial estates.



In an effort to spur economic growth, President Joko Jokowi Widodo has instructed government officials to make an all-out effort to streamline the countrys notoriously difficult bureaucracy to attract investment into Southeast Asias largest economy.



The three-hour service is one of the new services offered by the BKPM to lure in investors.



The BKPM claimed that the new service, introduced in October last year, had been successful in attracting investors. According to its latest data, there are 59 firms, including Telkomtelstra, that have used the service, with a total investment value of Rp 137.5 trillion.



Meijer, appointed last year to lead Telkomtelstra, was so impressed with the BKPMs service that he recorded his experience on tape and shared it on his Twitter account @emjkt, which has over 47,000 followers.



Telkom-Telstra is a joint venture between state-owned telecommunications company PT Telekomunikasi Indonesia and Australian telecommunications giant Telstra Corporation Limited. The venture was launched early last year with start-up capital of almost $10 million.



BKPM head of investment services Lestari Indah said the board would continue to innovate and introduce new schemes in order to boost Indonesias competitiveness. The BKPM this year aims for Rp 589 trillion in investment, a target that the board is confident it can achieve.



We can no longer do business as usual when we have such tough competition, she said.



Local administrations have started to reform to complement the central governments fast-paced policy.



Palembang Investment and One Stop Integrated Services Agency (BPM-PTSP) head Ratu Dewa, for example, said the South Sumatra city had introduced the seven-day service for 52 permits, including building permits. The agency had also designed a detailed map for investors seeking information on the citys potential and its economic activity.



Palembang was among nine local governments recently congratulated by the BKPM for their excellent one-stop integrated services.



The governments push for reform in bureaucracies, however, must be supported with proper capacity building, particularly at the local and regional administration level, which are struggling with human resources issues.



With limited human resources capacity, many local administrations have actually found it hard to process and issue business permits within three days, Institute for Development of Economics and Finance (Indef) analyst Bhima Yudhistira said recently.



Both local and foreign investors remain hopeful about the countrys business opportunities. The BKPMs office in South Jakarta, for example, is always packed by businesspeople applying for business permits.



Thirty-two-year-old Suryo Pratama, who came to the office on Thursday to seek for permit for his goods transportation business, said although the BKPMs services were now quicker, the same thing must be applied to other government institutions that issue supporting permits.



A lack of coordination will bring the progress back to square one, he said.

----------------

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Linkedin Andrew Dalton (Associated Press) Los Angeles  Fri, June 10, 2016

A California mother was reunited Thursday with her abducted son, laying eyes on him and wrapping her arms around him for the first time in 21 years.

Maria Mancia had been left with just a single photo of her son since his father took him in 1995. The boy she last saw when he was just 18 months old is now a man.

Steve Hernandez, 22, was found living in Puebla, Mexico, and on Thursday morning was brought to the U.S. to meet his mother for an emotional reunion.

"Now this anguish I've carried is gone now that I have my son back," Mancia told KABC-TV. "I spent 21 years looking for him not knowing anything."

The San Bernardino County District Attorney's Child Abduction Unit had been looking for Hernandez through the years, searching for him in several states. Investigators then received a strong tip in February that he was in Mexico. The father, Valentin Hernandez, is missing and believed to be dead, authorities said.

Investigator Karen Cragg, who led the search, said they had to approach Steve Hernandez delicately.

"We used a ruse to contact him. We told him we were investigating his father and we needed his DNA to help locate his father," Cragg told The Associated Press on Thursday. "We didn't want to scare him off. We weren't sure what the circumstances were down there. We had to tread very carefully."

The two parents and their toddler boy had been living in Rancho Cucamonga, California, in 1995. The parents were having relationship struggles. Mancia came home from work one day to find both the elder Hernandez and their son missing.

The father had even taken all of their photos of the boy, including an ultrasound. Mancia had to write to a relative to get a picture.

"That became the only photograph she had of Steve for the last 21 years," Cragg said.

She immediately reported the boy missing and the investigation had been active ever since, first with the Sheriff's Department, then with DA's investigators.

Neither the mother nor her child was told when Steve Hernandez was first found, lest false hope be created.

Once the DNA sample was obtained in February, Cragg asked the Department of Justice if they could hurry on the test, knowing it could take several months.

"They called me in two weeks and said it was a match," Cragg said.

Cragg and her partner drove straight to Mancia's house.

"It was like she didn't believe us at first," Cragg said. "She began to cry. She said she couldn't believe he was still alive."

Because Steve Hernandez is a U.S. citizen, there were no immigration troubles returning him to the U.S., Cragg said. Authorities in both countries were hugely helpful in making it happen.

He had no personal documents at all, but his mother had his birth certificate and more.

The boy's father had told him that his mother abandoned the two of them.

He now knows that wasn't true. And he now knows his mother.

"I lived all these years without my mother, then to find out she's alive in another country, it's emotional," Hernandez told KABC. He said he plans to stay in the U.S. and hopes to attend law school, which he already started in Mexico.

He hugged his crying mother when he finally met her. Then wiped tears from her eyes.

Associated Press Writer Amy Taxin contributed to this story from Santa Ana, California
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Linkedin Anton Hermansyah (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, June 10, 2016

The governments attempts to bring the price of beef below Rp 80,000 (US$6) per kilogram will be stymied by a lack of cold storage facilities, Institute for Development of Economics and Finance (INDEF) economy Enny Sri Hartati has said.

By granting larger beef quota imports, Indonesia may import beef from other countries such as Singapore and Australia, where beef prices are around Rp 60,000 and Rp 50,000 per kg, respectively.

"Adding in logistics costs, the price will be around Rp 70,000 per kg in Indonesia. However, this is frozen meat, not fresh meat. It wont be a problem if it can all be sold within one day; if not, it will lead to losses on the part of Bulog," Enny said on Thursday in Jakarta.

According to Enny, the State Logistics Agency (Bulog) still lacks cold storage facilities. As such, keeping beef for long-term distribution would be problematic, an issue exacerbated by the preponderance of market operations in traditional markets entirely lacking in cold storage.

To cover the losses, Enny warned, Bulog would boost the margins of other products, which ultimately would also hit the people.

"Having born losses after complying with the instruction to manage cattle from East Nusa Tenggara, [Bulog] has attempted to make up for it with the right to import corn, leading to skyrocketing corn prices," she said.

On the consumer side, Enny further explained, Indonesians were not used to frozen meat. "Frozen meat contains fat and water, which is not appealing to Indonesian consumers. As such, they will always opt for fresh meat, even when it's sold at Rp 120,000 a kilo while frozen meat costs Rp 80,000 a kilo," she said. (ags)
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Linkedin Margareth S. Aritonang and Wahyoe Boediwardhana (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta, Surabaya  Fri, June 10 2016

A recent foiled terrorist attack in Surabaya, East Java, was related to a vicious bomb attack on Jl. MH Thamrin in Central Jakarta in January, according to the National Police.

National Police spokesman Insp. Gen. Boy Rafli Amar said the planned Surabaya attack was related to the Thamrin bombing and inspired by the teachings of the Islamic State (IS) organization that spread through social media.

The Surabaya terrorist suspects are linked to the Sarinah attack through Shibgho, who was seen at the scene when Thamrin bombing occurred, Boy said on Thursday.

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Linkedin (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, June 10 2016

A majority of international business players have expressed concern over a plan by developed nations to introduce the Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS) package as they believe the initiative will cause compliance costs to soar and create further business uncertainty, a global survey suggests.



In November 2015, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and the worlds 20 largest economies (G-20) launched the BEPS package with the objective to create a more transparent, consistent and fair standard for global taxation in a bid to make sure taxes were paid in appropriate amounts.



The package includes 15 points, including addressing the tax challenges of the digital economy, neutralizing the effects of hybrid mismatch arrangements and designing effective controlled foreign company rules.



Dozens of countries, including Australia, France, Germany, Japan and Malaysia, have also signed the pact for the automatic exchange of country-by-country reports, an important milestone toward implementation of the BEPS Project and a significant increase in cross-border cooperation on tax issues.



Businesses, however, seem to have different views toward the measure.



A recent global survey conducted by tax consulting firm RSM Indonesia, a member of multinational network accounting firm RSM Global, suggested that 68 percent of 494 respondents believed that after

implementation, the BEPS would increase compliance costs by at least 10 percent, with 34 percent expecting the costs to increase by 25 percent or more.



In general, most companies think that BEPS will increase their compliance costs, Nicholas Graham, RSMs director of tax and business services, said Wednesday during a media briefing in Jakarta.



Moreover, most respondents also anticipate a higher worldwide effective tax rate, with 72 percent expecting some increase and 31 percent expecting an increase of more than 10 percent.



Besides increasing compliance costs, the survey reported that businesses expected the BEPS would create business uncertainty. With the uncertainty, 73 percent of the businesses said they would

consider changing some of their corporate structures while 41 percent expected to make significant changes or a complete overhaul of their structure.



In Indonesia, awareness of the BEPS within the domestic business community is weak because both the government and local businesses are more concerned about the governments plan to introduce a tax amnesty this year, said Angela Simatupang, RSMs managing partner of government risk control advisory.



Although some Indonesian companies need not overly worry about the BEPS as many do not have subsidiaries overseas, they will eventually need to comply with the framework as the country is G-20 a member, she said.



However, Indonesian companies that have subsidiaries overseas such as [state oil and gas firm] Pertamina and [consumer goods giant] Indofood for example, need to prepare for the BEPS, she added.



The global survey was conducted by Euromoney Institutional Investor and commissioned by RSM in early 2016 from 494 data pools that reported familiarity with the BEPS. Respondents were large companies with revenues greater than US$1 billion, middle market companies with revenues between $50 million and $1 billion and small companies with revenue of less than $50 million. It included tax executives, heads of companies and other senior business employees. (win)

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Linkedin Callistasia Anggun Wijaya (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, June 10, 2016

The Golkar Party has decided to throw its support behind Jakarta Governor Basuki "Ahok" Tjahaja Purnama in the 2017 Jakarta gubernatorial election, a party member has announced.

"The party has decided to support Ahok. We will deliver the official party statement on Tuesday," Golkar's coordinating political, legal and security affairs division head Yorrys Raweyai told thejakartapost.com on Thursday.

Yorrys did not provide any specific details about the support the veteran party will offer Ahok in his campaign, or whether it will help collect copies of ID cards to ensure he meets the candidacy requirements.

Golkar would decide on the specifics of the support later on, Yorrys said, adding that whatever the form of support, the party has committed to back Ahok in the election.

If it is made official, Golkar will be the third political party to support Ahoks bid for reelection to the capitals top post, following Nasdem and the People's Conscience Party (Hanura) also declaring their support.

On Thursday afternoon, another Golkar politician Nusron Wahid visited the headquarters of Teman Ahok (Friends of Ahok), a group of volunteers that collect citizens' ID cards so that Ahok can meet the minimum eligibility requirements for an independent candidate to run in the election.

During his visit, Nusron also hinted at the partys support of the outspoken governor, saying that he had come to discuss strategies to help Ahok successfully register as a candidate for the election, as reported by kompas.com.

The former East Belitung regent served as a Golkar party lawmaker in the House of Representatives during the 2009 to 2014 period, but resigned in 2012 to join the Gerindra Party who supported him in the 2012 Jakarta election as Joko "Jokowi" Widodos deputy governor candidate.

Ahok resigned from Gerindra in 2014 and has repeatedly insisted that he plans to run as an independent candidate in the Jakarta election next year with the support of Teman Ahok. (rin)
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Linkedin Anggi M. Lubis (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, June 10 2016

Indonesia has nominated a senior diplomat to represent the worlds largest archipelago at the international tribunal overseeing maritime disputes with full support from the Foreign Ministry, officials from the ministry have said.

Veteran diplomat Arif Havas Oegroseno and assistant for maritime sovereignty at the Office of the Coordinating Maritime Affairs Minister has been nominated as a judge in the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS).

ITLOS is an independent judicial body set up by the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) to adjudicate disputes arising out of the interpretation and application of the convention.

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Linkedin Liza Yosephine (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, June 10, 2016

The government is stepping up its efforts to spare the lives of 208 Indonesians abroad who are facing the death penalty, an official said on Thursday.

As of May 2016, 154 of the Indonesian nationals on death row overseas were in Malaysia, with the majority of their cases relating to murder and drug offenses, Foreign Ministry spokesman Arrmanatha Nasir said.

He said the government would continue to provide legal assistance to Indonesians abroad who are facing trouble with the law, saying there was cause for optimism as data indicated that the lives of 285 death-row inmates had been spared between 2011 until 2016.

Furthermore, as a preventative measure, Indonesian representatives abroad have recently been conducting intensive legal awareness outreach programs to reduce the number of such cases in the future, he added.

"We will continue to work to spare Indonesians from the death penalty, however, in a way that is in accordance with the applicable laws of the country concerned," he told journalists at the Foreign Ministry in Jakarta on Thursday.

Back-to-back cases of Indonesian citizens facing capital punishment overseas have come into the media spotlight recently.

In the latest case, migrant worker Daryanti was charged on Thursday in Singapore for allegedly murdering her female employer, Seow Kim Choo, on Tuesday night, as reported by local newspaper The Straits Times.

Lawyer Mohamed Muzammil Mohamed has been appointed by the Indonesian Embassy in Singapore to represent Daryanti, Arrmanatha said.

The case will be heard in court again in three weeks time, on June 29, and if convicted of murder, Daryanti could face the death penalty.

Upon being informed of the case, the embassy had immediately contacted the suspect and informed her that they would continue to support her throughout the legal process, he added.

In another recent case, migrant worker Rita Krisdianti was sentenced to capital punishment by the Penang High Court in Malaysia on May 30 for her alleged involvement in drug smuggling.

The government plans to lodge an appeal of Ritas verdict, Arrmanatha said.

"There's still time within the 14-workday deadline following the sentencing to lodge an appeal," he added.

Indonesia itself implements the death penalty for drug offenses, to the firm objection of human rights activists and foreign countries whose citizens are executed. (rin)
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Linkedin Ayomi Amindoni (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, June 10, 2016

The government has set a more realistic tax revenue target of Rp 1.34 quadrillion (US$101 billion) in the revised draft of the 2016 state budget, a top official has said. It is 13 percent lower than the initial target of Rp 1.54 quadrillion.

According to tax office spokesman Hestu Yoga Saksama, the planned tax amnesty is expected to contribute Rp 165 trillion of the target. Without it, the tax office estimates the figure to reach only Rp 1.17 quadrillion, a 13 percent increase from 2015 tax revenue, which was Rp 1.060 quadrillion.

"Assuming that our economy grows 5.1 to 5.2 percent, and with an extra effort to boost tax revenue, we expect tax revenue to grow 12.5 to 13 percent," Yoga said in Jakarta on Friday.

The tax amnesty bill, currently being deliberated at the House of Representatives, is expected to bring home billions of dollars that Indonesians have parked overseas.

The owners of the repatriated assets will be charged between 1 and 4 percent of the amount in exchange for being pardoned for past tax noncompliance.

The government expects Rp 165 trillion to come from the tax amnesty program. However, Bank Indonesia predicts that the program will yield only Rp 53.4 trillion in additional tax revenue. (ags)
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Linkedin (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, June 10 2016

One of three alleged thieves was admitted to a hospital after being heavily beaten by residents on Jl. Srengseng Raya in Kembangan, West Jakarta, on Thursday after attempting to steal a phone.

Kembangan Police chief Comr. Aldo Ferdian said the incident took place in the morning when Rizki, 15, was waiting for his friend to go jogging on the side of the street. Suddenly Do, 20, Fa, 17, and an unidentified suspect, riding a motorcycle, approached the victim and asked him to hand over his phone.

A suspect threatened the victim with a sickle, Aldo told reporters.

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Linkedin Hans Nicholas Jong (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, June 10 2016

The governments effort to save species from extinction has received a boost after 25 females of endangered fauna species gave birth in Indonesia in one year, raising hopes for their future survival. The 25 protected animals were born in seven conservation institutions.

At the Indonesia Safari Park in Cisarua, Bogor, West Java for instance, one anoa, one Sumatran elephant, one Javan leopard, one pig-deer, two giraffes and three Sumatran tigers were born. Meanwhile, a Sumatran tiger gave birth to two male cubs at the Kinantan Cultural and Wildlife Park (TMBK) in Bukittinggi, West Sumatra. Two infant clouded leopards were also born in the park.

Furthermore, seven Javan rhinos, the worlds rarest rhinoceros, were born in Ujung Kulon park, the largest number of Javan rhinos born in a single year in the country.

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Linkedin Tho Xin Yin (The Star) Beijing  Fri, June 10, 2016

With the growth of social media, there is much more information on the community today, but they are still fighting for their legal rights.

When his fellow playmates wrote love letters to girls, Devin Ji Guangyu, then 12 or 13, did the same, but also found boys to be attractive.

He looked up to male classmates who excelled in studies and sports, but thought it was just mere admiration.

In his teenage days, he first learned about the term tongxinglian (homosexual) from fellow anonymous users in online chat rooms, when the Internet had just begun to get popular in China.

At 17, he gathered up enough courage to check out a gay gathering in his hometown, Anshan in Liaoning province. It turned out to be his first time learning everything about gay culture from some 30 other gay men.

Now 27, Ji is working for Blue City, the parent company of a gay dating app, Blued in Beijing.

Blue Citys Danlan (literally light blue) portal was founded by Geng Le, an ex-policeman from Qinhuangdao, Hebei province, in 2000 as a personal online diary of sorts. It slowly evolved into a forum for the Chinese gay community.

In April 2013, Blue City rolled out Blued, which now boasts 27 million users.

While there is little organised religion in China to condemn homosexuality, the topic of LGBT is considered taboo. Homophobia reigned in the vast land of 1.3 billion people, where homosexuals used to be criminalised under the crime of hooliganism, until it was abolished in 1997.

It was not until 2001 that homosexuality was declassified as a mental illness. Until then, people who displayed a tendency for homosexuality were forced to undergo electric shock treatment.

Due to lack of supervision and enforcement, clinics offering such treatment still exist today, said Wei Jiangang, person-in-charge of Beijing Gender Health Education, a non-governmental organisation focusing on issues of gender, sexuality and sexual health.

Zou Shenglong, 26, from Jingdezhen, Jiangxi province, shared that he was not aware of the concept of homosexuality even though he sensed he had feelings for men.

He only discovered the existence of same-sex love in his university days through movies, young adult novels and academic research for a sociology course, which he admitted was carried out mostly to satisfy his own curiosity.

A gay novel titled Sorry Sorry prompted his revelation in 2010.

I spent the following week thinking about the plot and then it hit me: I am one of them!

Last year, he came out to his suspicious sister, a nurse, who was earlier notified of his profile on Blued by an acquaintance. She wanted to know if his condition could be corrected.

I patiently explained that it is not possible, Zou said.

Chinese traditional patriarchal values emphasise marriage and childbearing to continue the familys bloodline. Stigmatising homosexuality has led to misunderstandings of LGBTs; the most common perception is that it was an illness that could be cured.

To please their parents, some lesbians and gay men partner up to enter into civil marriage. There are also gay people who hide their sexual orientation and marry straight women.

While it is difficult to measure and quantify acceptance of LGBTs across all levels of society, Beijing Gender Health Educations Wei said the number of media reports on LGBT issues has increased from 300 to 800 a year in the last five years.

Discussions on the issues of LGBT have also expanded to include the pink economy and LGBT creative content.

Homosexual-themed drama series are gaining popularity online, where government censors allow a somewhat larger degree of leeway compared with traditional media.

The LGBT communitys willingness to pamper themselves and improve their appearances makes them a perfect target audience for advertisers.

Geng said in a recorded lecture that while the LGBTs make up 5 per cent of the total population  which accounts for 70 million in China, the size of Britains population  their individual consumption power is three to five times higher than straight people.

Compared to the days when knowledge about LGBTs was hard to come by, as illustrated in the stories of Ji and Zou, the growth of the Internet and social media today means an abundance of information is just a click away.

There are WeChat official accounts dedicated to discussing LGBT issues.

Gay couple Tommy and Joe shared their everyday life through their WeChat official account Three Men in One House. (Three men refers to the couple and Joes son from a previous marriage.)

Rainbow Babies, meanwhile, was managed by a lesbian couple, Douzi and Zhimabing, who were married in the Britain in 2014. They are now raising their twin babies conceived through in vitro fertilisation with donated sperm.

The LGBTs in China have come a long way, from hiding their identity to coming out of the closet. They are now fighting for their legal rights in China.

Same-sex marriage has not been legalised and there are also no laws to punish discrimination against sexual minorities. In April, a court in Changsha, Hunan province, heard Chinas first court case on same-sex marriage, although a judge later ruled that the gay couple could not get married.

Geng, whose Blue City works with the health department to run HIV test centres in Beijing, was optimistic about the future of the community in China.

I believe China will become more and more open as it pursues civilised development. When more media report on this issue, the government will be more willing to work together with us, and gay people will have more courage to come out of the closet and face their identities.

Wei said a large part of the work of the NGOs in China still focus on increasing the visibility of LGBTs at the moment. We can only move on when the education system, government policies and social benefits for the LGBTs can guarantee adequate protection for the group. But now we dont have these yet.

As for Zou, his wish is simple: I hope everyone understands that we are essentially all the same.
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Linkedin Wahyoe Boediwardhana (The Jakarta Post) Surabaya, East Java  Fri, June 10, 2016

Terrorism expert Al Chaidar has said the government must take tougher action against terrorists in Indonesia to stymie the growth of terrorism in the country.

He said the death penalty would not be effective in terrorism cases, as terrorists considered it a martyrs death, which was something to be proud of.

As the first step, the government needs to immediately build a special prison for terrorists. This will minimize their ability to spread radical views to their fellow inmates, said the politics and social science professor at the Malikussaleh University in Lhokseumawe, Aceh, on Thursday.

Until today, convicted terrorists in the country are imprisoned in the same facilities as inmates convicted of other crimes.

On Wednesday, the East Java Polices Gegana bomb disposal squad defused three bombs in an empty plot of land at the Surabaya Police complex. Three suspected terrorists were arrested by the National Polices Densus 88 counterterrorism unit in connection with the planned attacks. The terrorist suspects reportedly planned to attack several locations in Surabaya simultaneously, similar to the terror attacks on Jl. Thamrin in Jakarta on Jan. 14.

Surabaya Police chief Sr. Comr. Iman Sumanti told journalists on Thursday that during their operation, Densus 88 personnel had confiscated 23 bomb circuits of various types. Three bombs the Gegana team defused were ready to be used while the remaining 20 circuits were not yet completed.

The three bombs were ready for the party, said Iman. The bombs were taken from police raids of three different locations in Surabaya.

The police are still questioning the three terrorist suspects, namely Priyo Hadi Purnomo, Jeffry and Ferry Novendi. Priyo was arrested at his home on Jl. Lebak Timur while Jeffry and Ferry were apprehended on Jl. Kalianak and Jl. Lebak Agung, respectively.

The police said Priyo was a former drug and embezzlement convict. He served his sentence for eight years at Porong Prison in Sidoarjo and the Medaeng detention facility in Surabaya. Priyo was released in 2014 and lived in Makassar, South Sulawesi. He had been in Surabaya for just one week before Densus 88 busted him. (ebf)
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Linkedin Hikmahanto Juwana (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, June 10 2016

An article written by Chinas ambassador to Indonesia, Xie Feng, entitled The dangerous arbitration of Beijing-Manila dispute (The Jakarta Post, June 9) has revealed Beijings position on the upcoming decision by an arbitration initiated by the Phillipines. The arbitration is established under Annex VII of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea 1982 (UNCLOS).

The article is written without any attribution that it is the personal view of Ambassador Xie Feng. For this reason, it should be inferred that the view in the article is the official view of the Chinese government.

The article argued that the arbitration initiated by the Phillipines was illegal and unilateral. For this reason, Beijings position prior to the arbitration decision is, in the words of Ambassador Xie, China does not accept nor recognize the arbitration imposed by the Phillipines unilaterally and illegally.

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Linkedin Noor Huda Ismail (The Jakarta Post) Melbourne  Fri, June 10 2016

Indonesian militants are fighting over influence, power and prestige. These are mainly supporters of the Islamic State (IS) movement and its opponents, especially from supporters of An Nusro, one of the rebel groups in Syria that are linked to al-Qaeda.

One of the possible ways to understand this tension is through the linguistic concept of metaphor. It is typically viewed as a characteristic of language alone, a matter of words rather than thought or action.

Linguists George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, in their seminal book Metaphors We Live By (1980), give as an example the concept of argument and the conceptual metaphor argument is war as follows: Your claims are indefensible. He attacked every weak point in my argument. His criticisms were right on the target.

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Linkedin Marguerite Afra Sapiie (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, June 10, 2016

The government has raised objections to the idea of establishing a special penitentiary for terrorism convicts and warned of potential dangers of such a facility.

"If [terrorism convicts] are united, they will form a university, where the seniors teach their juniors to be more active," Vice President Jusuf Kalla said, as quoted by tempo.co.

He acknowledged that gathering terrorists and inmates convicted of other crimes in the same penitentiary was also not without danger, since the radicals could try to convey their extreme beliefs to other inmates.

The idea of a secluded penitentiary was no better, however, because terrorism convicts could be more radical by the time they are released, since they would forge stronger bonds behind bars, Kalla said.

Wanted terrorism suspect Santoso aka Abu Wardah had reportedly recruited his young followers in prison, while in the case of the Islamic State (IS) group in the Middle East, most leaders of the global terrorist group had previously served sentences together in Iraqi penitentiaries, Kalla said.

Kallas comments follow calls from the National Police for the government to establish a special penitentiary for terrorism convicts. Police highlighted the spread of radical ideology from terrorist inmates to conventional inmates. (ebf)
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Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, June 10, 2016

The Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) is scheduled to again question Supreme Court secretary Nurhadi Abdurachman over a graft case involving the clerk of the Central Jakarta District Court.

He will be questioned as a witness for suspect DAS [Doddy Aryanto Supeno], KPK spokesperson Yuyuk Andriati said at the antigraft bodys headquarters in Jakarta on Friday.

Nurhadi has been questioned at least three times. The KPK also has questioned Nurhadis wife, Tin Zuraida, regarding the same case. The antigraft body has analyzed the couples finances, which has aroused suspicion.

Shortly after arresting Central Jakarta District Court clerk Edy Nasution for allegedly receiving a bribe from Doddy, an executive of a private company, the KPK continued its investigation into Nurhadi, searching his house on Jl. Hang Lekir, Kebayoran, South Jakarta.

From the search, the investigators confiscated a number of documents and sums of money worth Rp 1.7 billion ( US$127,771 ) in several foreign denominations.

The KPK has summoned several of Nurhadis close aides but some of them were not cooperative and have even disappeared. (ebf)
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Linkedin Claire Quillet (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, June 10 2016

When it comes to development issues, water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) are aspects that have not received as much attention as they should in Indonesia. This is an unfortunate fact, considering poor access to clean water and sanitation is one of the biggest causes of death of young children in the country.

I firmly believe WASH is everybodys business. It means the government, NGO, public and private sector have a role to play in this area.

The private sector can easily implement WASH programs through their corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives, regardless their core businesses or interest.

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Linkedin Nurul Fitri Ramadhani (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, June 10, 2016

People often accidentally use the wrong word in conversation or when writing, and it can be troublesome if it impacts official matters. Using an incorrect word in place of one with a similar sound can result in a fatal utterance.

This problem, defined by scientists as malapropism, usually happens when someone is suffering stress or fatigue. The media picks up on such mistakes immediately among politicians or civil servants who are subject to media attention.

And the consequence? You could lose your job.

This happened at the Home Ministry on Thursday, when Home Minister Tjahjo Kumolo fired a staff member for mistakenly typing the name of the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) in Indonesian.

The staffer meant to write pemberantasan (eradication) but instead typed perlindungan (protection). The fatal mistake was displayed on an envelope sent to the antigraft body on Tuesday. It went viral when the KPK returned the letter and asked the ministry to correct it.

Tjahjo, who was irritated at the blunder, said the sloppiness was a cause for shame, as it was the first time the ministry had made such an error. "[We have] dismissed [the staff member] in disgrace," he said, adding the incident was alleged to be sabotage.

However, the ministry's director general for politics and general administration, Soedarmo, clarified that the mistake was a human error by an outsourced staff member who had worked at the ministry for only three months.

"The high-school graduate staff member has yet to fully understand about writing official letters. We have questioned him and he admitted to his mistake. But, still, he had to face dismissal as a consequence," Soedarmo said, adding he hoped that other employers could learn from the incident.

Reckless bureaucracy

Does firing the culprit solve the essence of the problem? Apparently not. The malapropism case shows how recklessly our bureaucracy works, as Soedarmo admitted that the outsourced staff member was not the one in charge of writing the letter.

He added that specific administrative staff were responsible for such letters, but a higher-ranking staff member had asked the high-school graduate to do his work. "Therefore, we also warned the higher staff member about the carelessness," Soedarmo added.

That is not to mention the lack of internal controls and supervision in the governments bureaucracy, specifically in the Home Ministry. One might ask how dozens of civil servants at the ministry did not notice the issue on a formal letter destined for another institution.

The minister sent an official letter of apology to the KPK, and Soedarmo also said he regretted the lack of control of his directorate. "It's also my responsibility," he said.

The dismissal, he said, did not violate the law, because outsourced staff members can be dismissed at any time if the person is proven to have made a serious mistake. Other staff members with civil servant status continued to work as usual, with no serious punishment.

"On the other hand, if a mistake was made by a civil servant, we cannot arbitrarily fire them because the mechanism is regulated under the ASN [State Civil Apparatus] Law," Soedarmo said.

This statement indicated another problem in our bureaucracy, when unprofessionalism does not always lead to serious consequences for civil servants. (ags)
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Linkedin (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, June 10 2016

Publicly listed PT Metrodata Electronics, a distributor of information and communication technology (ICT) devices and solutions, plans to introduce two e-commerce platforms this year to avail of opportunities offered by the countrys growing e-commerce industry.

Through its subsidiary PT Synnex Metrodata Indonesia (SMI), a major distributor of Dell and Lenovo personal computers, Metrodata will launch in the second half of this year a business-to-business (B2B) e-commerce application, said president director Susanto Djaja on Wednesday. At around the same time, Metrodata will launch another application serving business-to-customer (B2C) e-commerce through PT My Icon technology, its subsidiary in the ICT modern retail business.

Susanto said Metrodatas expansion into e-commerce was part of the companys strategy to achieve its sales target this year.

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Linkedin Anton Hermansyah (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, June 10, 2016

Publicly listed tire manufacturer Multistrada Arah Sarana expects a 10 percent increase in sales during Ramadhan as consumers gear up for the annual Idul Fitri exodus.

Based on the Transportation Ministrys estimate, 2.4 million cars and 5.6 million motorcycles are expected to hit the roads for the holiday exodus, locally known as mudik. The figures are a 50 percent and 4.5 percent year-on-year (yoy) increase, respectively.

Multistrada marketing director Uthan M. Arief Sadikin said most of those making their way back to their hometowns usually tried to keep their vehicle in prime condition, including by changing tires two weeks before Idul Fitri. The company produces the Achilles tire-brand for cars and Corsa brand for motorcycles

"We started distributing stocks to the stores a month earlier. If you do that in mid-Ramadhan, it will be difficult as cargo trucks are prohibited from passing the main roads a week before Ramadhan ends due to mudik," he said on Thursday in Jakarta.

The tire producer only distributes 10 percent of its production for original equipment manufacturer (OEM) products, which are installed on vehicles at the factory and carry the manufacturer's warranty.

"However, the domestic car tire market is saturated with a lot of brands. We saw a good opportunity in the motorcycle segment as the market is not as tight as the car market," Multistrada vice president director Henry Komala told thejakartapost.com. (ags)
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Linkedin Erika Anindita Dewi (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, June 10, 2016

The NasDem Party and the Hanura Party have praised the latest political endorsement from the Golkar Party for Jakarta Governor Basuki "Ahok" Tjahaja Purnamas 2017 gubernatorial election bid.

Although Golkar's support is yet to be made official, the attendance of the party's chairman Setya Novanto at a breaking of the fast event held by NasDem chairman Surya Paloh on Thursday evening was considered a positive sign. Ahok also attended the event.

"The party coalition that supports Ahok's independent nomination from Teman Ahok will be stronger because of Golkar's endorsement," NasDem central executive board (DPP) chairman Johnny G. Plate said on Friday in Jakarta.

With Golkar's support, the coalition can pass the minimum party threshold at the Jakarta Regional Legislative Council (DPRD), where NasDem holds five seats, Hanura 10 seats and Golkar nine seats. NasDem was the first political party to declare its support for Ahok.

Hanura was grateful for Golkar's support and said the party was what the coalition needed, according to central executive board chairman Dadang Rusdiana.

"When a big party supports Ahok, this is a good sign for [] his future victory and to accelerate his work for Jakarta to be more efficient," he said on Friday. (erk/ags)
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Linkedin (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, June 10 2016

The Jakarta Corruption Court rejected on Thursday a proposal by the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) to grant businessman Abdul Khoir justice collaborator status and instead sentenced him to four years in prison for bribing lawmakers.

Previously, KPK prosecutors demanded a light prison sentence of two-and-a-half years as the antigraft body said Abdul had revealed the names of lawmakers who had accepted bribes.

But the court handed down a harsher sentence as Abdul was the main suspect in the case. Although Abdul admitted his offenses, the court said he was not eligible for justice collaborator status after evidence confirmed that he was the main perpetrator in the bribery scheme.

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Linkedin Callistasia Anggun Wijaya (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, June 10, 2016

Amid a shortage of available land for graves in Jakarta, Governor Basuki "Ahok" Tjahaja Purnama has claimed that the practice of rogue officials using fake tomb to extract illegal levies from residents was rife.

Directing a blow at the Jakarta Parks and Cemeteries Agency, Ahok said that rogue officials from the agency extracted illegal levies by offering vacant tombs, which appeared as though they were occupied, to residents at high prices.

"There are graves with engraved tomb stones but without any corpse inside. If someone is willing to pay more for a particular location, their relatives can be buried in the front row, which is the preferred place for burial, Ahok said at City Hall on Thursday without giving further details about where the fake graves were located.



In response, the administration will increase the promotion of cemetery fee information. The maximum fee is Rp 100,000 (US$7.5), which must be paid through Bank DKI Jakarta.



Ahok said rogue officials suspected of extorting money from residents would be investigated and dismissed if proven guilty.

The administration will establish a data system for cemeteries in the city, to prevent such practices from taking place in the future, he added.

Ahok turned his attention to the Parks and Cemeteries Agency following a finding by the Supreme Audit Agency (BPK) in the Jakarta administration's 2015 financial report that revealed irregularities in the opening of four bank accounts on behalf of the north, west, south and east Jakarta offices of the agency. (rin)
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Linkedin Arya Dipa (The Jakarta Post) Bandung, West Java  Fri, June 10, 2016

A joint team of researchers from the Indonesia Geology Agencys geological survey center and the University of Wollongong, Australia, has published its findings on ancient human fossils found in Flores.

Supplied with six teeth and jaw fossils, the researchers measured the age of the human remains using four different methods. They determined that they were fossils of ancient humans living in Mata Menge, Soa Basin, Flores, East Nusa Tenggara, about 700,000 years ago.

Acting geology agency head FX Sutijastoto said the finding from Soa Basin showed there was a civilization older than the one of which remains were found in Sangiran, Central Java. Thus, he said, it was possible the finding of Mata Menge ancient human fossils could change the history of human civilization.

Results of the carbon dating show fossils found in Mata Menge, Soa district, Ngada regency, were from around 700,000 years ago. Fossils in Sangiran were from around 60,000 years ago while those found in Liang Bua were from around 50,000 years ago, said Sutijastoto.

Older civilization  Teeth fossils of ancient humans found in Mata Menge, Soa Basin, Ngada regency, Flores, East Nusa Tenggara, are displayed during a media conference at the Geology Museum, Bandung, on Wednesday evening. (thejakartapost.com/Arya Dipa)

A geology agency researcher on the team, Fachroel Aziz, explained that the Mata Menge civilization was older as could be seen from artifacts and stone tools.

This finding is interesting because Flores is located between the Sahul and Sunda shelf. To reach the island, there was a barrier they would have had to pass: water. They would have needed a raft at least. To make a raft, they needed a skill and would have had to communicate, said Fachroel. Therefore, he said, the researchers agreed that the fossils found in Mata Menge could be categorized as belonging to ancient humans that could speak.

Fossils found in Mata Menge comprise molars, incisors, canines and mandible bones. These are fossils of oldest ancient human in Flores and first human fossils found in Soa Basin, said Energy and Mineral Resources Ministry expert staff member Yun Yunus Kusumahbrata at the International Media Release of New Human Fossil Excavated from Flores at the Geology Museum in Bandung, West Java, on Wednesday evening.

Besides artifacts and human fossils, Yunus said, excavation activities in Mata Menge also discovered fossils of animals, such dwarf Stegodon (elephant), crocodile, komodo dragon, rat, frog and bird. (ebf)
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Linkedin Marguerite Afra Sapiie (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, June 10, 2016

State-owned weapons producer PT Pindad plans to form a joint venture with a Middle Eastern country to build a weapons factory.

Pindad president director Silmy Karim said on Thursday that the company would first select one of two potential Middle Eastern countries, which he declined to name, that had expressed interest in the joint venture project.

"The first contract is worth US$30 million, which will cover components up to production stage," Silmy said.

He said the cooperation would include the production of large fiber ammunition and weapons at the factory, which would be licensed by PT Pindad.

In return, the selected country would provide enhanced technology and access for PT Pindad to its facilities, Silmy said. (ebf)
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Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, June 10, 2016

The National Police have called for the establishment of a special penitentiary for terrorism convicts to prevent the spread of radical teachings to common inmates.

Under the current penitentiary system, people imprisoned for various kinds of crimes are commonly allowed to mingle.

This served as a basis for radicalization, and radicals were trying to convey their beliefs to other inmates, said National Police spokesman Brig. Gen. Boy Rafli Amar.

"We want a special penitentiary to separate them, as it is quite dangerous when [conventional inmates] are put together with terrorism convicts," Boy said on Thursday, as quoted by kompas.com.

Such a special penitentiary would also allow for optimized programs made especially for terrorism convicts, Boy said.

Concerns about terrorist ideologies spreading in prisons have grown on the heels of the recent arrest of three suspected terrorists by Densus 88 in Surabaya, East Java. Two of the suspects were reportedly radicalized by terrorist inmates behind bars, Boy said. (afr/bbn)
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Linkedin Safrin La Batu (The Jakarta Post) Tanggerang  Fri, June 10, 2016

Prosecutors demanded on Friday that a juvenile defendant accused of raping and killing 19-year-old Enno Farihah last month be sentenced to 10 years imprisonment.

The prosecutors read out their demands during a closed-door hearing at the Tangerang District Court in Banten.

The 16-year-old defendant has been charged with committing premeditated murder, which is punishable by death or a life sentence.

Defense lawyer Slamat Tambunan said a 10-year prison term was already a maximum sentence for a juvenile, and that therefore he could not receive capital punishment or a life sentence.

However, he acknowledged that the family of the victim might not feel satisfied with the 10-year sentence due to the great loss the crime caused to them. (dan)
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Linkedin Tama Salim (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, June 10 2016

The South China Sea, which has become a focal point of regional tension in recent years, will be one of central issues addressed by ASEAN and China as the two entities prepare to celebrate 25 years of partnership later this year.

Indonesia will seek to push forward talks about a Code of Conduct (CoC) for the South China Sea (SCS) by leveraging discussions on future cooperation between ASEAN and China.

The occasion of the 25-year anniversary of Sino-ASEAN relations is expected to present an opportunity to review previous and ongoing initiatives and pave the way for broader cooperation. Jakarta intends to use the opportunity to convince China and other SCS claimant states to quickly conclude the drafting and implementation of the CoC.

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Linkedin Prima Wirayani and Tassia Sipahutar (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, June 10, 2016

The government has long dreamed of having a powerful tax agency, as powerful as the US Internal Revenue Service (IRS), to improve the countrys taxation landscape. The wish may just come true beginning in 2018 with the establishment of a state revenue agency (BPN).

A draft revision of the General Taxation System (KUP) Law shows that the agency will take over the responsibilities of the directorate general of taxation and then some.

The draft is currently being discussed by the government and lawmakers at the House of Representatives. It is a government-proposed bill and is one of the Houses priority bills for 2016.

It would replace the original KUP Law, which was created in 1983 and revised several times, with the last revision occurring in 2009.

According to the draft, the future revenue agency would be able to penetrate deeper into financial activities as it would have the authority to access data from government institutions and other parties, including banks, without having to be pursuing an active tax crime case.

The upcoming revised law would nullify banking confidentiality, which often stonewalls a tax probe.

In addition to accessing data, the agency would be able to legally enter any establishment to look for documents or other evidence, all in the name of a tax investigation that is expected to improve both compliance and collection.

Unlike other directorates general, the BPN would stand on its own feet and not be part of the Finance Ministry.

It would be under the finance minister, but not be part of the Finance Ministry. It would have a different system, probably similar to the BPPT [the Agency for the Assessment and Application of Technology] or the BPS [Central Statistics Agency], Finance Minister Bambang Brodjonegoro told The Jakarta Post in a text message on Thursday.

It would still directly report to the finance minister because, as Bambang claimed, tax policy would remain under his authority.

The governments seriousness about having a superbody is also reflected by a partnership with the IRS, which was conceived last year and is now ongoing.

President Joko Jokowi Widodo has frequently stated that he wants to see tax reforms. In a country of more than 250 million people, there are currently only 27 million taxpayers. The tax ratio is similarly low at 12 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) and Jokowi said he wanted the figure to climb to at least 14 percent in coming years.

Last year, the government only collected Rp 1.06 quadrillion (US$79.5 billion) in tax revenues, 82.2 percent of its full-year target.

It aims to collect Rp 1.36 quadrillion in tax revenues in 2016, a 35 percent jump from last years achievement. Economists and businesspeople deem the target too ambitious amid the sluggish domestic and global economies and also considering the limited capacity of the tax office.

Taxation director general Ken Dwijugiasteadi expressed hope that the new institution would be better at collecting tax revenues in the long term. It would be able to manage its own human resources and budget.

Center for Indonesia Taxation Analysis (CITA) executive director Yustinus Prastowo said the new bodys duty would emphasize its role as a tax administrator, rather than a policymaker. He agreed that such a semi-autonomous body was essential to achieve tax revenue targets.

CITA considers the BPN to be a more credible and accountable institution, thanks to its wider authority that will provide stronger leverage to coordinate with other government institutions, such as the National Police, the Attorney Generals Office and the Financial Services Authority (OJK), most of which work at the ministerial level.

OJK commissioner for banking supervision Nelson Tampubolon said that his organization  which oversees the banking industry would work with the BPN to provide banking data if the law required it to do so.

Meanwhile, for businesspeople, it is the effectiveness of the BPN that would matter most. Indonesian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (Kadin) monetary, fiscal and public policy deputy chairman Raden Pardede said Kadin also demanded improvements in the professionalism and services of tax officials.
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Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, June 10, 2016

The National Commission on Violence Against Women (Komnas Perempuan) says there is an urgent need to pass a sexual violence bill into law as many crimes cannot be processed due to loopholes in existing laws.

Komnas Perempuan chairman Azriana said police investigators, for instance, often could not find relevant articles in the Criminal Code (KUHP) to use to develop their investigations.

She said the idea to create a special law regulating sex violence was based on results of monitoring that found forms of sexual violence now had wide variations.

At the same time, the commissioner said, current laws regulated the protection of sex violence victims in a limited way, particularly if the victims were adult women.

The KUHP only regulates the definition of rape, molestation and sexual harassment with very narrow concepts. Other laws, such as the 2004 Domestic Violence Eradication Law, the 2002 Child Protection Law and the 2007 Anti-Human Trafficking Law also have the same issue, Azriana said in a statement on Thursday, as quoted by kompas.com.

She added that based on results of Komnas Perempuans monitoring since 1998, the number of sex violence cases in Indonesia had continued to increase.

A quarter of the total 321,000 cases of violence against women documented in 2015 were sexual in nature, she said.

Azriana said sexual violence against adult women resulted in impacts equally as severe as in cases involving children. Rape, for instance, could impact victims throughout their lives, reducing their quality of life, she said.

She said the drafting of the sexual violence eradication bill had begun in 2012, starting with an academic paper.

The draft bill was created in 2014. Komnas Perempuan and several care providers as its partners were now finalizing the bill, Azriana said.

The draft, which has been handed over to President Joko Jokowi Widodo, is the latest revision of the sexual violence eradication bill as of May 19. A similar draft has also been handed over to the House of Representatives as the initiator of the bill, said Azriana. (ebf)
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Linkedin (The Jakarta Post) Tangerang  Fri, June 10, 2016

Nugraha, 29, was finishing up the check-in process at Terminal 2F in Tangerang, Banten, on Thursday morning when he was approached by staffers from the Law and Human Rights Ministry.

The staffers politely asked him if they could check his laptop to see if there were unlicensed components in it. Within a few minutes, the officers found that his computer did not use a licensed core processor.

I have been using my laptop since 2013 and never knew that the processor was not genuine. The seller did not tell me and I admit that I didnt ask them, Nugraha said, adding that the officers told him not to use pirated software and unlicensed core processors.

Like Nugraha, passengers at Soekarno-Hatta International Airport could also meet with officers from the ministrys directorate general for intellectual property.

The checks were part of the ministrys campaign on Thursday to discourage people from using pirated and counterfeit goods. During the campaign, officers disseminated information and encouraged passengers to give up their laptops or notebooks voluntarily for an examination. Journalists, however, were not allowed to observe the process.

The campaign was conducted to clamp down on pirated software circulating in the country, which is estimated to have caused state losses of around Rp 65.1 trillion (US$4.8 million) since 2014.

Salmon Pardede, the ministrys director of investigations and dispute settlement, told the media that the government had to campaign and educate the public regularly because piracy could not be eradicated within a short time-frame.

We have been cooperating with the ministrys regional offices in all of the provinces in Indonesia to inform high school students about intellectual property, Salmon said.

According to a 2015 Software Alliance survey, 84 percent of computer users in Indonesia installed unlicensed software on their computers. The commercial value of the unlicensed software is estimated to be $1.2 billion.

The percentage was similar to the percentage recorded in 2013.

Salmon said it was difficult to eradicate piracy because the perpetrators could easily earn money from such crimes.

However, prevailing copyright law only stipulates punishment for the producers of pirated goods.

Under the prevailing copyright law, people who buy pirated goods cannot be punished, but those who provide places for selling can be, said Salmon.

Article 114 of Law No. 28/2014 on copyright stipulates that anyone who manages a place for commercial use and allows sellers to sell pirated goods can be sanctioned with a maximum fine of Rp 100 million.

People who reduplicate and distribute things without permission from the copyright owners can also be sanctioned with a maximum penalty of four years in prison and a maximum fine of Rp 1 billion, as stipulated in Article 113 of the Copyright Law.

We put up banners at the Glodok market in West Jakarta two weeks ago. The banners say that people should not sell or buy pirated goods, Salmon said.

He added that it might not impact sellers and buyers in the market, but he felt certain that they would worry because the government had put them on notice. According to the 2015 United States Trade Representative (USTR) Review of Notorious Markets, Harco Glodok, Indonesias largest trade center at Glodok market, operates as the retail distribution point for a complex piracy and counterfeiting network. (wnd)

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Linkedin CPF Luhulima (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, June 10 2016

On Dec. 13, 2014, I wrote about the superimposition of Chinas maritime silk road and Indonesias maritime fulcrum in this newspaper. Now I would like to revisit this notion in regards to the dispute over the South China Sea and Indonesias maritime axis.

The maritime silk road marks a strategic shift in Chinas foreign policy, prioritizing its relationship with countries in its immediate neighborhood. China is keen to contribute to the construction of maritime infrastructure in Southeast Asia, particularly in Indonesias waters, as it will help boost production capacity in its iron, steel, aluminum and cement industries for export purposes, as the scholar Zhao Hong writes.

Infrastructure, particularly Indonesias, is a significant opportunity for Chinese companies. As such, it has crucial implications for Indonesia and by extension for other ASEAN members. At the CEO Summit of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in Beijing on Nov. 10, 2014, President Joko Jokowi Widodo invited Chinese companies and others to help build 24 seaports and deep seaports and a maritime highway [...] from the west to the east of the country to ease price disparity of commodities.

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Linkedin Liza Yosephine (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, June 10, 2016

ASEAN foreign ministers will meet with their Chinese counterpart in a special meeting to be hosted by the East Asian country on June 13-14 in a bid to strengthen engagement and dialogue on pressing regional issues.

The Foreign Ministry's ASEAN dialogue partners and inter-regional cooperation director, Derry Aman, said the special meeting came at a crucial time and was purposefully planned ahead of the regular yearly ASEAN Foreign Ministers' Meeting (AMM), an event which usually takes place in July.

"Certainly, it is hoped that the issue of the South China Sea will also be discussed," Derry said on Thursday during a press briefing at the Foreign Ministry in Jakarta.

In regards to ongoing territorial disputes, Indonesia continues to stand by its basic principles, he said, namely to push for the full implementation of the 2002 Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea (DOC).

"Indonesia's priority currently lies in the finalization of the code of conduct, which is part of the DOC itself," Derry said, adding that the country's stance was unlikely to change even in the next 20 years.

Unlike other meetings, Derry said the upcoming gathering, which coincides with the 25th anniversary of the cooperation partnership between ASEAN and China, would not produce any official documents whatsoever.

Derry said the push for the special meeting was initiated at an AMM Retreat in February earlier this year. All participants agreed on the necessity of a special engagement to conduct a dialogue on issues that were of common interest in the region, he added.

Laos, current chair of ASEAN, along with Singapore, which oversees the organization's cooperation relations with China, raised the idea of the meeting to Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi.

On agreement, the meeting is to be held in the city of Kunming, in Yunnan province. ASEAN secretary-general Le Luong Minh will also attend in addition to the 11 foreign ministers, Derry added.

He said the gathering would be an opportunity for participants to discuss important regional issues.

Although there are no specified topics that have been set yet, Derry continued, each foreign minister would be free to raise his or her concerns.

At the meeting, Derry said Indonesia would focus on ensuring the partnership between the Southeast Asian countries with China could continue to produce concrete results for all stakeholders.

"We want the ongoing engagement and dialogue with China to be able to maintain the stability and development of the region," Derry said.

The meeting will, furthermore, also discuss the future direction of the cooperation between ASEAN and China, a relationship officially established in 1991.

Derry said many forms of cooperation had been conducted throughout the 25-year partnership in accordance with the three pillars of ASEAN, namely political-security, economic and socio-cultural.

The focus this year has been selected with the theme of "ASEAN-China education exchange year", Derry added.

As such, he said, there will be more efforts to increase cooperation in the education sector, people-to-people exchanges and promoting awareness between the two peoples.

Meanwhile, in 2017, it has been proposed that the cooperation between ASEAN and China will focus on tourism, he added, explaining that there would be a focus on increasing the number of tourists visiting Southeast Asia and China. (dan)
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Linkedin Muguntan Vanar, Ruben Sario, Andy Chua & Austin Camoens (The Star) Kota Kinabalu  Fri, June 10, 2016

Prices of basic goods had escalated since the Malaysian government ordered a halt to the barter trade.

A two-month barter trade ban between Sabah and southern Philippines and an imminent operation by the Philippines military to flush out Abu Sayyaf militants in Jolo led to the freedom of the four Malaysian seamen who had been held hostage since April 1.

The four Sarawakians  brothers Wong Teck Kang, 31, and Wong Teck Chii, 29, their cousin, Johnny Lau Jung Hien, 21, and Wong Hung Sing, 34  were released at the coastal village of Patikul on Tuesday night.

They arrived in Sandakan on early Wednesday.

Jolo island anti-kidnapping activist Prof Octavio Dinampo said the local communities had been pressuring the gunmen to release the tugboat crewmen.

Octavio said the prices of basic goods had escalated in the provinces of Sulu and Tawi Tawi since the Malaysian government ordered a halt to the barter trade.

The two southernmost Philippine provinces depend on Sabah for most of their consumer goods.

Octavio said prices of commodities  from rice to fuel  more than doubled after the decades-old barter trade was stopped on April 6, and the local community leaders had started pressuring the gunmen to hand over the hostages.

Octavio said the price of a 20kg bag of rice had gone up from about 500 pesos (US$10.80) to more than 1,000 pesos after the barter ban.

He said the gunmen had also been eager to strike a bargain with the Philippine military operations looming.

The Abu Sayyaf gunmen under the command of Majan Sahinjuan alias Apo Mike had been moving their four captives in the mountainous jungles between the Indanan and Patikul over the past two months to avoid detection by authorities.

Octavio said the release came after a series of tense negotiations between intermediaries for the gunmen and Filipino-Malaysian negotiators over the past week.

Apo Mike was believed to have led the gunmen to grab the four seamen from a tugboat in international waters off Pulau Ligitan in Sabahs east coast Semporna district.

Five other Indonesian crewmen were not taken in the incident at 6:15am on April 1.

In Manila, Philippines military officials confirmed that the four men had been released through negotiators but were uncertain of the details of what had transpired that led to their freedom.

They said the four were taken on a high-powered speedboat for an eight-hour ride from Jolo to Sandakan after the end of the successful negotiations.

Philippine Armed Forces Western Mindanao Command spokesman Major Filemon Tan said the four were taken to the shoreline of Lagasan Higat in the Parang area of Jolo island before being put on a speedboat to Sandakan.
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Linkedin (Viet Nam News) Quang Ninh, Vietnam  Fri, June 10, 2016

Vietnam is calling on all East Sea claimants to urgently join forces in tackling the environmental degradation offshore before its too late, said a deputy minister on Thursday.

It might even take a hundred of years for us to completely resolve the territorial dispute, Foreign Affairs Deputy Minister Dang Dinh Quy said in a maritime workshop yesterday in the northern coastal city of Ha Long, home to the famous tourism spot Ha Long Bay.

If we just stand by waiting for that to happen before addressing the environmental issues, the sea might be already dead by then.

The two-day workshop  jointly organised by the Diplomatic Academy of Viet Nam (DAV) and the Delegation of the European Union to Vietnam  attracted some 150 officials, international scholars and experts from Asia and Europe to exchange views and experiences of the two continents in promoting international maritime security, especially in times of an increasingly tense dispute in the East Sea (South China Sea).

China  unilaterally claiming sovereignty over more than 80 per cent of the international sea and exercising massive military build-up on artificial islands seized by force  is the biggest claimant among others including Vietnam, the Philippines, Taiwan, Brunei and Malaysia.

Stretching beyond such competing territorial claims, the maritime security agenda in the East Sea now even covers the environmental issues which have taken a turn for the worse as early as two years ago when China started their land reclamations in the Spratly Islands en masse, Viet Nam Nature and Marine Environment Association Chairman Nguyen Chu Hoi told Viet Nam News.

The Philippines last year estimated that Chinas island-building activities so far have destroyed about 300 acres of coral reef in the East Sea, making its neighbours in the region likely to lose up to US$100 million a year, a spokesman for the Philippine Department of Foreign Affairs told the New York Times last year.

Coral reefs in the Spratly and Paracel Islands are key centres in distributing nutrition into the sea and act as breeding grounds for the fish, Hoi said.

Therefore they (the coral reefs) will determine the maintaining level of the marine life in the whole East Sea.

He added that the impact of the coral losses will last for a long time and strongly affect the marine resources of all countries in the region - particularly harming the way of life of local fishermen - including the Chinese.

Chinas land reclamation projects  carried out on the sand spits, islets and submerged reefs of the Spratly Islands stretching to more than 2,900 acres, according to the Pentagon  constantly raise concerns from the international community concerning damage caused to the biodiversity and ecological balance in the East Sea. Yet Beijing has never acknowledged the environmental consequences of their actions, instead calling the projects green, claimed the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs Deputy Director-General Wang Xining earlier in May.

All land reclamations do harm to the environment, said Xue Li, director of the Department of International Strategy of Chinas Institute of World Economics and Politics.

But all international pressure make it difficult for China to recognise the problem publicly, he told Viet Nam News.

Co-operation will lead to peace

Deputy Minister Quy affirmed that Viet Nam faces big challenges in maritime security as the Southeast Asian nation is largely dependent on the sea for survival.

Viet Nam has a long coastline running along the eastern border down to the south, stretching more than 3,500 kilometres and about 80 per cent of the population lives by the shore.

Viet Nam now is involved in sea disputes, yet we clearly understand that the only solution is through peaceful co-operation, Quy said.

However such a solution is only achieved when all parties show a will towards co-operation to resolve the dispute in line with international laws.

Markus Gehring, deputy director of the University of Cambridges Centre for European Legal Studies, said that he strongly encouraged a mechanism, particularly to work on the environmental issues in the East Sea, in which all parties involved could recognise the common interests they share and benefits of co-operation.

If they (the claimants) can start a dialogue on a much more concrete, low-level discussion of shared interests in preserving certain natural resources, they will also build more confidence to discuss some of the more difficult security issues, he said.

There is very little information regarding environmental issues in the South China Sea now. The first step for all is to share the information and be transparent about what had happened.

Xue believed that anything could be done under a co-operation framework, and environmental co-operation will be the easiest of all.

However, the Chinese Government will put any form of co-operation on hold until a final ruling on the arbitration case over the South China Sea is made, said Xue.

In 2013, the Philippines filed a case against China to the Permanent Court of Arbitration questioning the legality of Chinas unilateral "nine-dotted line" claim over the South China Sea under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). China boycotted the tribunal, saying it will not recognise the judgment.

The tribunal is expected to deliver the decision in just a few weeks
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Linkedin Intan Tanjung (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, June 10, 2016

The manta ray is one of most-exotic marine creatures, capturing the heart of divers with its gentle, elegant ocean dance and gigantic flat shape.

Unlike the grey sting rays which always sit on the bottom of sea and have a poisonous tail, manta rays are harmless, playful and not afraid to approach divers.

As an archipelago with rich marine life, Indonesia is a sanctuary for manta rays. The country made an official statement in 2014 announcing it would protect the fish to attract tourists.

There are several areas where this giant fish can be seen in Indonesia, and here are those places.

Manta Point, Nusa Penida, Bali

Manta Point is the manta rays favorite cleaning station, a spot where the marine creatures can swim near the reef and let wrasses clean them from parasites. Often coming in groups, they swim very close to the surface and are even visible to snorkelers.

Unfortunately, the visibility in Manta Point isnt really that good. On brighter days, you can clearly see them from afar, but most of the time visibility is only around 10-15 meters.

The spot can be reach by taking a local fishing boat from Nusa Penida or Nusa Lembongan island, or by arranging a trip with one of the diving operators on the Bali mainland.

Aside from manta rays, divers also have a chance to see mola mola fish between July and August here.

(Read also: Seven reasons Bali is the perfect destination for diving)

Karang Makassar, Komodo Islands, East Nusa Tenggara

Take a liveaboard, or make a long trip in a fishing boat to Karang Makassar, the manta ray diving spot of choice near the Komodo Islands, famous as the home of the rare giant lizard, the Komodo dragon. It is also known to have islets with scenic hills, and amazing coral and marine life, including Karang Makassar.

Aside from manta rays, divers can also spot colorful tropical fish such as bumphead parrotfish and eagle rays. Just be careful, as the current here is quite strong, so dont stray too far from the boat.

Alor, East Nusa Tenggara

Dive Report said that any manta rays encountered by divers in Alor were purely by chance, although they might appear from mid March until mid January.

No worries though, as you have higher chance of encountering other exotic sea animals including a school of hammerhead sharks and even the rare mola mola fish. No wonder Alor is often referred to have a world-class diving site.

Manta Ridge, Raja Ampat, Papua

One of Indonesias hottest diving spots, Raja Ampat, in the easternmost province of Papua, lures avid divers and ocean lovers with its stunning landscape and rich marine life including giant sea creatures like manta rays, whalesharks and pristine coral reef.

The site consists of four islets: Misool, Salawati, Batanta and Waigeo, hence why it is named Raja Ampat (Four Kings).

Manta rays are sometimes visible in the surrounding area, but one has a higher chance to spotting them in the central region.

In a spot called Manta Ridge, youre likely to see up to 30 mantas during your dive. (kes)
More trouble for Focus Travel/Yep Tours. The Chinatown bus company faces new questions this morning after a driver was arrested for suspected DUI in Pennsylvania.

On Saturday evening, the bus was traveling from Philadelphia to Manhattans Chinatown on I-95. According to Philadelphia television station WCAU, passengers forced the driver to pull over for driving erratically. More from the story:

Pennsylvania State Police and Lower Makefield Police both responded and the driver was taken into custody, police said. DUI charges are pending against the 37-year-old driver, state police said. Jeremy Walker, the bus companys owner, tells NBC10 the driver has been fired, but would not provide additional comment Police said they gave the passengers rides off the highway. Focus Travel and related company Yep Tours have had troubles with drivers in the past. Last August, a bus was involved in a hit-and-run near Philadelphia Police headquarters. The driver continued on a trip to Washington, D.C. and said he didnt know he hit anyone. Earlier that summer, a driver was fired after passengers recorded him texting while driving.

Heres part of an account of the harrowing ride from a passenger. She posted it on Yelp

Took a bus tonight following the Roots concert which was also almost my last day of life The driver was lost clearly, almost killed some pedestrians and turned an exit corner at 60+ mph w/ a full tilt on the bus. The police was called everyone got off the bus, driver taken away in cuffs for suspected DUI and us.Stranded. Thank God for the police officers who stayed w/ us in west bum PA. Half group take to an a booked hotel, the other half of us did what New Yorkers do. Call a car service. Never again.
A young designer, who is registered blind and has no central vision, has been shortlisted for a coveted award for her womenswear collection at Graduate Fashion Week.

Bianca Von Stempel, a student at Kingston University, impressed industry experts with her garments. Theyre inspired by the way she sees the world  she layers the sheer and mottled fabrics to create a blurred effect.

The 23-year-old was one of 22 final year BA(Hons) Fashion students who unveiled their looks on the runway at the Old Truman Brewery in east London.

(Ezzidin Alwan)

Bianca, from St Margarets, south west London, has a heightened sense of touch and uses this to decide how pieces of fabric should be put together. Her designs are feminine, asymmetrical and use fabrics such as organza, lace and silk chiffon.

And she has been named as one of six students shortlisted for the prestigious Sophie Hallette University Design Challenge.

It was so exciting to unveil my garments out there on the catwalk, particularly after all the hard work that has gone in to creating them, she said.

Its an honour to be shortlisted for this award, you never know whats going to happen next but Im just so grateful for all the support and encouragement Ive received.

(Simon Armstrong for Kingston University London)

Bianca learned to read and write as a teenager, but she has used braille since childhood, and incorporated words into the fabric of her garments to create a form of negative, or inverse, braille.

The words were inspired by a quote from the late deaf and blind author Helen Keller  the only thing worse than being blind is having sight but no vision.

But holes have been laser-cut into nude pink-coloured coated canvas, rather than the raised bumps you would normally have with braille.

(Simon Armstrong for Kingston University London)

The shapes becomes different letters depending on which way you turn the material, as the patterns work back to front. I wanted to explore the idea of viewing things through touch  not just with your eyes, she says.

Because she cant see much with her right eye, Bianca says she always concentrates the detail of her garments on the left side.

She uses a large sketchbook to draw her ideas and then designs on a mannequin to bring her illustrations to life.

(Kingston University London)

As this collection took shape, a team of technical support workers helped her with things like pattern cutting and computer design work in the Kingston University studios.

Principal lecturer in fashion Andrew Ibi said working with Bianca had helped sharpen his tools as an educator.

My role has been to help empower someone whos visually impaired to take ownership of their work. This has meant deconstructing some of the design processes and coming up with solutions that work for Bianca. Weve had to re-write some of the usual rules  but thats what designers have been doing for years, he said.

Biancas an amazing hand sewer, illustrator and embroiderer  she has incredible tactile skills and is capable of really understanding clothing. She works like a sculptor, reverting back to an almost couture technique.


Michael Moores newest documentary, whilst another sweeping attack on US politics, has been dubbed his happy movie and is a romantic European travelogue.

Where To Invade Next might be a new approach for Moore but the purpose is the same as his classic documentaries  to make a point of the failings of the US. Where To Invade Next might be a new approach for Moore but the purpose is the same as his classic documentaries  to make a point of the failings of the US.

The premise of the film is that US officials have recruited Moore to solve the countrys biggest issues by invading nations that seem to have their acts together: Italy, France, Finland, Slovenia, Germany, Portugal, Norway, Tunisia and Iceland.

Moores disbelief at the societal benefits of living and working outside the United States is both a source of humour and poignancy.

In Italy, he cannot believe a policeman has banked 80 paid vacation days over time; in France, schoolchildren gag at photographs of school lunches in the US; in Norway, prison conditions are akin to holiday resorts in the States.

And the shock is two-sided. To these European and African interviewees, it is normal to reap the benefits of higher taxes, creating an apparent society built on community and not individuals.

One Tunisian interviewee chastises Americans for being self-involved, saying being the strongest ones stops them from just being curious.

In Finland, polite criticisms continue as teachers suggest that Americans abandon homework as the Finnish have: Your brain has to relax now and then, they say.

Moores first-hand examples create valid points. The idea of getting free three-week prescriptions to go to spas, as they do in Germany, sounds incredible. Living in a world where female politicians are completely commonplace, as they are in Iceland? Pretty ideal.

But, as with all his work, the critique falls a little short because of his oversimplification of the USs faults and other countries benefits.

He does however acknowledge this in the film, saying hes travelling the world to pick the flowers, not the weedswhich is fine, but one could do the same flower-picking in the United States, the very country hes criticising.

As the film progressed, the slick production and hyperbole created a really negative view of the US, despite the obvious fact that, to some degree, picking and choosing information to share.

I guess that was the point. Moore does a good job of ending on a more optimistic note, though, standing in front of the Berlin wall.

He and a friend recount being onsite when people began chiselling away at the walls foundations. They reminisce about how the wall came down, and how a few months later Nelson Mandela was freed from prisonhow in that time, anything felt possible.

If those events could happen, so could these changes in the United States.

Moore also emphasises the fact that interviewees repeatedly tell him that some of their most successful features of their countries originated in the US. If the founding fathers could set these ideas in stone, we have the power to bring them back.

For all of Moores obvious bias in making these documentaries he is still worthwhile voice in American political discourse and Where To Invade Next is the latest of his must-see works.
A prehistoric 10-kilo lump of bog butter thought to have been a gift to the gods has been found in in Ireland.

The creamy white dairy product, which smells like a strong cheese and is believed to be about 2,000 years old, was unearthed by turf cutter Jack Conway, from Maghera, Co Cavan, at Emlagh bog in Co Meath last week.

The find has been given to the National Museum, where it will be preserved.

Savina Donohoe, curator of Cavan County Museum, turf cutter Jack Conway, and Andy Halpin, assistant keeper of Irish Antiquities Division, National Museum of Ireland, with the prehistoric butter (Cavan County Museum)

Andy Halpin, assistant keeper in the museums Irish Antiquities Division, said the discovery was significant because it was found in the Drakerath area where 11 townlands and the boundaries of three ancient baronies met.

These bogs in those times were inaccessible, mysterious places, he said.

It is at the juncture of three separate kingdoms, and politically it was like a no-mans-land, that is where it all hangs together.

The trio examining the 10-kilo butter that is believed to be 2,000 years old (Cavan County Museum)

Bog butter was often buried to preserve it to be dug up at a later date. Other research has shed light on it being buried as an offering to the gods or spirits in the hope of renewed prosperity.

Halpin said the Emlagh discovery, 12 feet below the surface, may never have been intended to be unearthed as there was no evidence of a cover on it.

The lump of butter will be preserved and carbon dated at the National Museum (Cavan County Museum)

Conway reported the find to Cavan County Museum before it was handed over to the National Museum, where it will be carbon dated.

Top chef Kevin Thornton revealed he had tasted bog butter but archaeology experts have reluctantly describing it as crumbly and with an odorous and distinctive smell like strong cheese.

Theoretically the stuff is still edible but we wouldnt say its advisable, Halpin said.
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The deceased has been identified as Shankar (25) and Sushant (35), natives of Odisha.
Areas of Phuket shopping complex remain closed to the public

PHUKET: Management from the Jungceylon shopping complex in Patong held a press conference yesterday (June 9) in which it was stated that only four supporting pillars are damaged and not 10 as reported by some media.

constructiontourism

By Darawan Naknakhon

Friday 10 June 2016, 10:36AM

CEO of Phuket Square Co Ltd (Jungceylon), Mr Prawit Janyasittikul (left) and managing director of engineering consultant company RKV Co Ltd, Mr Radab Kanjanawanitch. Photo: Darawan Naknakhon

Steel beams are being put in place as additional support for the pillars. Photo: Darawan Naknakhon

The Port area and underground car parks are still closed while workers carry out repairs to the damaged pillars, but the rest of the mall remains open to the public. Photo: Darawan Naknakhon

It was also stated that The Port area and underground car parks are still closed while workers carry out repairs to the damaged pillars, but the rest of the mall remains open to the public.

CEO of Phuket Square Co Ltd (Jungceylon), Mr Prawit Janyasittikul and managing director of engineering consultant company RKV Co Ltd, Mr Radab Kanjanawanitch, held a press conference at 2pm yesterday to clarify reports of damage to the supporting pillars in the car park and underground shopping area at Patongs main shopping mall, Jungceylon after pictures of the damaged circulated on Social Media.

Mr Prawit said, We were notified of the damage to the supporting pillars on Monday (June 6) and we are investigating to find out the cause and extent of the damage.

We took action immediately after being notified of the damage and a team were assigned to resolve the problem. Local authorities were also notified and the underground areas, first floor Port area and nearby areas sealed off, he said.

After engineers inspected the area and spoke with Patong Municipality, workers were on site to add additional structural support around each damaged pillar to strengthening the supporting beams.

The engineer and his team will repair the pillars according to the plan proposed to Provincial Hall which they assure will strengthening the pillars and meet with safety standards.

They will also inspect all other pillars and the overall structure of the building to ensure safety all visitors and employees at Jungceylon which is home to more than 300 shops, he added.

Mr Prawit went on to say that safety is a priority at Jungceylon and that the problems must be rectified in order to keep business operators, shops, clients, and tourists happy.

He also said, I would like to confirm that only four pillars are damaged and not 10 as posted on Social Media. Workers are adding more supports to the beams so that the damaged pillars do not collapse before engineers repair them. We think this will take two to three days, he said.

We have not concealed from the press what has happened to the four damaged pillars, but we needed engineers to inspect the area first. Therefore, after June 6 we blocked of areas including The Port and Asian Spirit which house about 20 shops.

The latter may open back up soon. It is too early to specify the cause of damage at this time. We want to give them time to thoroughly inspect the area, he concluded.

Meanwhile, last night (June 9), Governor Chamroen Tipayapongtada told the public not to worry about the damaged pillars and that Phuket Square Co Ltd and officials are working to solve the problem and ensure safety of all visitors to the complex.

Governor Chamroen was speaking during a visit to the underground area of Jungceylon where he himself inspected the damaged pillars at 8pm. The governor and his team were joined on the visit by Kathu District chief Sayan Chanachaiwong, Patong Mayor Chalermluck Kebsup and engineers.

Governor Chamroen said, The management of Jungceylon brought the building plans and structural engineering information for experts to examine and figure out what had happened and how to resolve the issue.

Building inspections require safety to be a priority for the public who use the area. Right now, workers have marked all the risk areas and tomorrow engineers from the Department of Public Work Town and Country Planning will inspect the area and review all information and find the best solution for this, he said.

Phuket is a tourism destination so we have to take care of our island to maintain a good tourism image and ensure safety to all.

Please do not worry, we are all here to help solve the problem and to ensure safety for all, and Jungceylon have workers on site placing steel beams to support each of the damaged pillars while engineers work on a permanent solution, he added.
Investigation into fatal speedboat crash off Phuket still ongoing

PHUKET: Phang Nga Deputy Police chief Col Chote Chitchai who is in charge of the investigation into the fatal speedboat collision off Phuket on Wednesday (June 8), yesterday (June 9) stated that their investigation into the incident is still ongoing and that over 50 people including victims and witnesses to the incident have been interviews.

accidentsmarinedeathpolice

By Eakkapop Thongtub

Friday 10 June 2016, 02:41PM

Police have said their investigation into the fatal speedboat crash off Phuket on Wednesday (June 8) is still ongoing. Photo: Buthsarin Sornin

The statement came during a press conference held with Koh Yoa Police chief Col Sompong Boonrak and Phuket Provincial Police. Col Chote said, We are waiting to question about 10 more victims who are either in hospital or currently unable to give statement. The area of the accident has been inspected again, and we are now waiting for boat inspection results and also results of drug tests carried out on the speedboat captains before we conclude our investigation, he said. We believe the incident happened because of the recklessness of both boat captains, Mr Arnon Pramongkij, 31, who operated Hongfa and Mr Chakpong Naviwong who operated Chonlakij. Both are now facing charges of reckless operation of their boat resulting in death and injury. If, once our investigations are complete, it is found that the tour boats were operating illegally the companies will also face charges, Col Chote concluded.
One injured party of Phuket speedboat crash to undergo surgery today

PHUKET: One Chinese tourist who was injured when two speedboats crashed off Phuket on Wednesday (June 8) is to undergo surgery today (June 10) for injuries he sustained to his face, neck and foot.

accidentsmarinetransport

By The Phuket News

Friday 10 June 2016, 01:14PM

Officials present gifts to one of the injured tourists. Photo: PR Dept

The announcement came as officials from various government agencies including Royal Thai Army 4 yesterday (June 9) visited seven victims injured in the crash at hospitals around the island. The seven tourists receiving treatment at hospitals on the island are: Vachira Hospital Ms Wang Yi Wei, 26, and Mrs Cao Yun, 52. Phuket Provincial Hospital Mrs Cao Xiaoe, 62. Mission Hospital Mrs Zhu Meng, Ms Yan Yang and Ms Huang You Qin. Bangkok Hospital Mr Zhu Zigang, 26. Fourth Army Region Deputy Commander Maj Gen Khunawat Morkaew, Governor Chamroen Tipayapongtada and members of Thai Red Cross Chapter Phuket office first visited Vachiara Hospital to check on the current condition of the tourists and to assure them that they were doing their best to help with the tourists situation. Meanwhile, Dr Lalita Kongsriha, acting director of Bangkok Hospital yesterday released a statement on the condition of the tourist under their care, Mr Zhu Zigang who was seriously injured in the accident and suffered facial, neck and foot injuries. Mr Zhu is conscious and his pulse is normal. His face was very swollen so doctors had to wait for the swelling to to go down before performing surgery. He is under the care of plastic surgeon Dr Piyaphas Pichaichannarong who said that he will undergo surgery tomorrow (Friday June 10).
One man killed, two injured when crane collapses at Phuket construction site

PHUKET: One man was killed and two others injured today (June 10) when a crane collapsed on top of them at The Terminal construction site near Phuket International Airport.

accidentsconstructiondeathpolice

By Eakkapop Thongtub

Friday 10 June 2016, 04:39PM

The three men were assembling the crane when part of it collapsed on top of them. Photo: Eakkapop Thongtub

The three men were assembling the crane when part of it collapsed on top of them. Photo: Eakkapop Thongtub

The three men were assembling the crane when part of it collapsed on top of them. Photo: Eakkapop Thongtub

The three men were assembling the crane when part of it collapsed on top of them. Photo: Eakkapop Thongtub

The three men were assembling the crane when part of it collapsed on top of them. Photo: Eakkapop Thongtub

Sakoo Police chief Col Jirasak Siamsak said, We were call at 9:30am this morning and asked to investigate an incident where a crane had collapsed on top of crane truck. He said. We were told that one man had died and two others were injured.

The three men were assembling the crane when part of it collapsed on top of them. We are investigating the incident and waiting to question the injured parties, he added.

Other officials, including Sakoo OrBorTor (local Administration Organisation) are helping inspect the area. The construction company was order to temporarily stop work until we sort this out, Col Jirasak concluded.

The body of Mr Nikorn Tubtawee from Nakhonsawan and the two injured men were taken Thalang Hospital.
Philippines Independence Day at Two Chefs!

In April 1898, the Spanish-American War broke out over Spains brutal suppression of a rebellion in Cuba.

culture

By The Phuket News

Friday 10 June 2016, 01:35PM

From his exile, Emilio Aguinaldo made arrangements with U.S. authorities to return to the Philippines and assist the United States in the war against Spain. He landed on May 19, rallied his revolutionaries, and began liberating towns south of Manila. On June 12, he proclaimed Philippine independence and established a provincial government, of which he subsequently became head.

In Phuket, Two Chefs Bar & Grill will be hosting their annual Filipino Fiesta at their Kata Centre on June 11. The menu is a large buffet with many pinoy classics such as kini law, bulalo, lechon style pork belly, sinigang and much more for only B495. Their new a la carte menu will also be available.

Reservations can be made via email at katacenter@twochefs.com or at 076 330 065.
Phuket holds ceremony to mark launch of Rajabhakti Park

PHUKET: More than 5,000 people turned up yesterday (June 9) for the an official ceremony to marl the launch of Rajabhakti Park which will sit on Surin Beach. The park will be built in honour of HM King Bhumibol Adulyadej and HM Queen Sirikit.

cultureland

By The Phuket News

Friday 10 June 2016, 11:42AM

As part of the ceremony, 70 monks were given alms by those in attendance. Photo: Rassada Municipality

Fourth Army Region Deputy Commander Maj Gen Khunawat Morkaew presided over a ceremony to mark the launch of Rajabhakti Park at 9am, a ceremony which was also held to honour of King Bhumibols 70th year on the throne and the seventh cycle birthday of HM Queen Sirikit

Also in attendance at the ceremony were Governor Chamroen Tipyapongtada, Vice Governor Chokdee Amornwat, Vice Governor Khajornkiet Rakpanichmanee, government officials, students,and residents.

Gov Chamroen said, We are following through with the road map set out by the beach organising committee according to the Phuket Beach Model .

It was decided by the committee that Surin Beach should be an area dedicated to the King and Queen, and the first phrase of the project will see this area developed into Rajabhakti Park using a budget of over B60 million, he said.

In addition, Surin Beach will also see the introduction of many beach associations including a youth beach association which are aimed at promoting and educating a love of our environment and natural resources and promoting Phuket as one of the worlds best tourism destination for as long as possible, he added.

During the course of the morning, people signed well-wishes for King Bhumibol and Queen Sirikit and gave alms to 70 monks.

Gov Chamroen also presented registration documents for 12 beach associations and 13 youth beach associations.

After the launch ceremony, Vice Admiral Sayan Prasongsomrit, Commander of the Royal Thai Navy (RTN) Third Area Command led the crowd of both Thais and foreigners to Patong Beach where some 470 sea turtles were released into the sea.

Through out the day at Surin Beach where the future Rajabhakti Park will stand, people enjoyed a number of activities such including food and historical photography competitions and many exhibitions.
Tour company that allowed Chinese tourist to feed fish off Phuket unregistered

PHUKET: An investigation is currently ongoing into the tour company and tour guide that allowed a Chinese tourist to feed fish at Koh Khai Nok, off Phukets east coast, after it was discovered that details of both the company and guide do not appear on the Tourism Business and Guide Registration.

tourismcrimeenvironmentmarine

By The Phuket News

Friday 10 June 2016, 12:23PM

The investigation into the tour company and guide came after Chinese tourist Zhou Hongzhi, from Sichuan, was arrested for feeding fish in a protected area at Koh Khai Nok. Photo: DMCR

Information about the discovery was passed on to the Tourism Business and Guide Registration, Phuket Office by the Department of Marine and Coastal Resources (DMCR) on Wednesday (June 8). Phattara Lamontri, a legal official from the Tourism Business and Guide Registration, Phuket Office told The Phuket News yesterday (June 9), We discovered that the tour company who had taken the Chinese tourist on the tour was not in our system. This suggests that the company is illegal and operating without a licence. Montree Jongkijthana, 61, was the tour guide who led the tour on behalf of BDT Co Ltd on May 25. Mr Montree will be investigated and if we find he has broken the law he will be charged accordingly and will face punishment of one year in prison, a fine of B100,000 or both. In addition, BDT Co Ltd will be charged with operating a tourism business without licence, he said.
Hughes State Attorney finds no facts to support investigation into Noem airplane use

The Hughes County States Attorney found Tuesday that there were no facts to support a criminal prosecution" for Noem's alleged misuse of the state airplane.


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This Wednesday June 8, 2016 video grab shows smoke rising from the city of Manbij, Syria. U.S.-backed fighters on Thursday closed all major roads leading to the northern Syrian town of Manbij, a stronghold of the Islamic State group, and surrounded it from three sides, officials and Syrian opposition activists said. The town is one of the largest areas held by IS in the northern Aleppo province. (ARAB 24 via AP)
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Suspected militants have abducted an Indian female aid worker from the volatile Afghanistan capital of Kabul, Indian and Afghan officials said on Friday.

The woman was identified as Judith D'Souza, 40, a senior technical advisor on gender with the Aga Khan Developmental Network in Kabul, sources in Delhi said.

Believed to be from Kolkata, D'Souza was kidnapped late on Thursday, the sources said. No group immediately claimed responsibility for her abduction.

The Indian embassy in Kabul is in touch with senior Afghan authorities and the government, the sources said, adding that officials in Delhi were also in contact with her family in Kolkata.

They said all efforts were being made by the Afghan authorities to secure her release.

The aid agency also confirmed that a "staff member of the Aga Khan Foundation" was abducted without naming her.

"An investigation by the authorities has been launched, in conjunction with security officials and various partners. Every effort is being made to secure the safe release of the staff member," Aga Khan spokesperson Sam Pickens said in an email response.

This is not the first time that an Indian aid worker has been kidnapped in Afghanistan. Taliban militants have mostly been blamed for the kidnappings.

Many Indian establishments have also been targeted in the past in Afghanistan where New Delhi has pledged and made huge investments to rebuild the war-torn country.

The latest in a series of terror strikes on Indian interests in Afghanistan was on an Indian consulate on March 2.

The abduction comes as the Indian embassy issued a security alert earlier last month for Indians residing in Afghanistan and travelling to the country.

"All Indians residing and travelling to Afghanistan are advised that the security situation in the country remains highly volatile. Terrorist attacks have taken place in the country against foreigners and are expected to continue. There is also the risk of kidnapping and hostage taking throughout the Afghanistan," the embassy statement warned.
JNU students union president Kanhaiya Kumar, along with 42 others, were detained by police at Bihar Bhawan in Chanakyapuri here on Friday for protesting against the alleged attack on students in hunger strike at the College of Arts and Crafts in Patna.

The demonstration started around 3.30 PM, following which Kumar and 42 others were put inside a bus and detained at Parliament Street Police Station here. "The protesters were detained considering law and order issues," DCP (New Delhi) Jatin Narwal said.

The protesters also demanded extension of the date of Bihar Public Service Commission (BPSC) main exams so that the dates do not clash with that of UPSC prelims.

"The condition of education in Bihar is continuously deteriorating. The government is not taking the demands of students regarding quality education seriously. And those who are fighting for this significant and relevant cause are facing violence and imprisonment," Kumar said.

He further said, "from the last few days, whenever there is a protest, Delhi Police detains us in five minutes. Throughout India, students are being attacked and whenever they protest, which is an elemental right, they are not allowed to do so. It is an attack on democracy".

Earlier this week, seven students of College of Arts and Crafts under Patna University sustained injuries in an attack allegedly carried out by some miscreants while they were protesting against the conduct of the administration.

"The protesters were demanding that the corrupt principal of the college be sacked when they were shot at by the guards of the vice chancellor of the University.

The goons and police trashed them, and when others went for protest against these actions, they were detained. We demand their immediate release," Kumar said.

"We will keep the struggle alive and if needed we shall go to Patna," he added.
In an embarrassment to the Narendra Modi government, a war of words broke out on Thursday between union Women and Child Development Minister Maneka Gandhi and Environment and Forests Minister Prakash Javadekar after Gandhi accused Javadekar of permitting the "killing of animals" across the country.

Gandhi said she could not understand the ministry's "lust for killing animals".

"Environment ministry is writing to every state, asking which animal should be killed and that they will give permission for it," Gandhi, a well-known animal rights activist, told reporters.

"In Bengal, they have permitted the killing of elephants, in Himachal Pradesh they have ordered killing of monkeys, and in Goa they gave permission to kill peacocks. I don't understand their lust for killing animals," she said.

Defending his position, Javadekar said that "such permissions are given on the recommendation of state governments".

Javadekar stated: "When state governments write to us about farmers' suffering due to crop damage by animals, then such permissions are given. It is on the recommendation of state governments. This is not a central government programme, as it is an existing law."

However, Gandhi put the blame squarely on the environment minister for the killing of animals.

Asked about the role of the minister, she said: "Now you tell me what could be the role? He only has to give the permission. This is the first time the environment ministry is giving permission to kill animals."

"In Chandrapur (in Maharashtra), they have killed 53 wild boars and have given permission to kill 50 more. Even their own wildlife department said that they don't want to kill the animals," Gandhi told reporters.

Later, the Ministry of Environment and Forests issued a statement that it has not given permission to kill either deer, peacocks or elephants.

Countering Gandhi's allegations, the ministry in a statement said that no amendment to the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972, has been made to this effect.

"There are many complaints from members of parliament, people's representatives, state governments and farmers about their crops getting heavily damaged in certain parts of the country. There also, the process has been laid down in the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972, under Section 62."

"No amendment has been made by the government to this Act. And nothing has been done beyond the procedure prescribed by law. Therefore, the ministry has not given any permission to kill either deer, peacock or elephant," said the statement by Inspector General Wildlife S.K. Khanduri in the Ministry of Environment and Forests.

The statement added that the ministry has received proposals from five states to take action on wildlife-human conflicts.

"As per the provision of law, if there are complaints about the wildlife conflict, then the state government has to submit the proposal. Till date, five states have submitted the proposal. The ministry examines the proposal in detail and allows scientific management in a specific area for a limited time. There were complaints about wild boar, blue bull and other animals."

According to the statement, Uttarakhand, Bihar and Himachal Pradesh were given permission for scientific management for a limited time for a specific area.

"Accordingly, these proposals have been examined and given permission for scientific management for a limited time for a specific area in the three states of Uttarakhand, Bihar and Himachal Pradesh. Proposals of Maharashtra and Gujarat are still being examined."

"India is proud of its animal-human coexistence. In some places, animal-human conflicts happen. Last year, more than 500 people lost their lives in human-wildlife conflicts," the statement noted.

Wildlife activist Amit Chaudhery also criticised Javadekar, terming him a "criminal and a killer".

"Against the country's laws, including the Wildlife Protection Act, and in contempt of India's civilizational values as well as Constitution, this killer has declared open season in the land of Ahimsa. Indira Gandhi brought in the Wildlife Protection Act, 1972, to put an end to hunting, Javdekar wants to be the antithesis of that in every way," Chaudhery.
It's a celebrating moment for America. For the first time in the history of the world's oldest democracy, a woman has been nominated as the presidential candidate of a major political party. Democratic leader Hillary Clinton clinched the nomination on June 6 as she hit the magic number of 2,383 delegates. The milestone development came exactly 100 years after the first woman, Jeannette Rankin, was elected to the Congress and 95 years after the American constitution guaranteed women's right to vote. Better late than never!

At this historic moment, we bring you a few lesser known and non-political facts about Hillary.

An ardent reader: Hillary loves reading mystery novels. She also reads detective novels, though she calls them 'cheap thrills'. I like a lot of women authors, novels about women, mysteries where a woman is the protagonist  Its relaxing, Hillary told New York Magazine in May. And her favourite authors? "I will read anything by Laura Hillenbrand, Walter Isaacson, Barbara Kingsolver, John le Carre, John Grisham, Hilary Mantel, Toni Morrison, Anna Quindlen and Alice Walker," she said in an interview with NYT.

A Chocolate lover: In a Slate article in 2008, Hillary revealed that she was a big fan of Oliveburger during her school days. In her White House years, she loved to eat Boca Burgers. Hillary is a fan of spicy foods as well as Middle Eastern flavours. Lamb is her favourite meat while Chocolate is her most craved food. And will she cook? "I'm a lousy cook, but I make pretty good soft scrambled eggs," she said once. However, a WSJ report says she puts hot sauce on everything, even salad!

[File] Hillary Clinton and her husband, former US President Bill Clinton eat breakfast at the Chez Vachon | Reuters

A canine lover: Hillary currently owns three dogsSeamus, Tally and Maisie with her husband, Bill Clinton. She presented Seamus to her hubby as a Fathers Day gift in June 2002. During her White House days, she had a cat named Socks and a chocolate Labrador Retriever named Buddy.

A globe trotter: Hillary travelled 956,733 miles and visited 112 countries as a secretary of the state. If you go by further details, she travelled 2,084.21 hours, which is equal to 86.8 days. She spent more than a year travelling during her time at State.

[File] Hillary Clinton is pictured as a student at Lake Waban at Wellesley College in the town of Wellesley | Reuters

She wanted to be an astronaut: Hillary said in a speech in March, 2012: My dream was to be an astronaut when I was about 13 or 14 years old and the United States was starting its space program. So I wrote a letter to the NASA space agency and asked how I could become an astronaut. And I got a letter back saying that they werent accepting women. Now, I have to be very honest with you. I could never have qualified. But it was a dream, and I have been thrilled to see young women follow that dream and do so with such skill.

Her fascination with spirits: Hillary had a habit of talking with idols such as Eleanor Roosevelt. She has once revealed that she believes in spirits, even though she is not sure about the existence of ghosts or aliens.

Not behind the wheels for long: Hillary hasnt driven a car since 1996 on the instructions of the Secret Service, and it is something that her husband Bill Clinton pines for too.

She was paid more than Bill: At the end of eighties and at the beginning of the nineties Hillary brought in a substantial income as a lawyer and it was higher than that of Bill. When she became one of the most influential lawyers in the country, Bill was at government service.

She wanted to be a Marine: Hillary revealed she wanted to be a US Marine at the age of 27 and visited a recruiting office in Arkansas. "You're too old, you can't see and you're a woman," she was told by the recruiter. It was in the same year she married Bill.

Hillary Clinton stands onstage with her husband and former President Bill Clinton after speaking during her California primary night rally | Reuters

Is all well with the couple? Bill and Hillary Clinton were married in 1975 after meeting at Yale University. Bill Clinton proposed to her twice before she said yes. However, the relationship soured over Bill's alleged affairs with Monica Levensky and allegations of sexual assault against him by Kathleen Willey, a former White House volunteer. Reports say that after the White House days both husband and wife used to meet quite rarely and that Hillary even thought of seeking a divorce. However, the couple were seen together recently after Bill hit her campaign trail earlier this year.
As the news was being aired of the fatal shooting attack in Tel Aviv which claimed four lives, the response throughout PA (Palestinian Authority) areas was the same, merriment, song and dance. Residents took to the streets and while some distributed sweets, others felt the most appropriate thing to do is to attack Jewish vehicles.

As police were operating at the scene of the Sarona Market, there was a sharp increase in rock-throwing attacks against Jewish vehicles. Attacks involved stones and firebombs. Attacks were recorded in many areas including the Hussan Bypass Road, Hizme, the entire Hebron/Kiryat Arba district, and even the Shar Shechem entrance to Jerusalems Old City.

Bchasdei Hashem there were no serious injuries reported.

(YWN  Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu was landing in Ben-Gurion Airport on Wednesday night as the Sarona Market terror attack was taking place. He was briefed immediately and headed directly from the airport to the Defense Ministry for a briefing with security and intelligence heads.

One of the decisions made was to freeze 83,000 entry permits into Israel proper for Muslims during the month of Ramadan. This refers to permits given to residents of PA (Palestinian Authority) areas in Yehuda and Shomron, who wish to pray on Har Habayis during the Muslim holy month. In all likelihood the move is little more than cosmetic and many if not most of the permits will be reissued as pressure builds up on Israel for collectively punishing PA residents during their religious month.

Other related actions that were announced is the freezing of work permits for over 200 members of the families of the two terrorists.

In addition to the urgent briefing that was held on Wednesday night by PM Netanyahu, the Security Cabinet convened on Thursday afternoon 3 Sivan.

(YWN  Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
On Thursday, 3 Sivan, the morning following the terrorist shooting attack in the Sarona Market Complex in Tel Aviv, price tag graffiti was found in the Israeli Arab Municipality of Abu Gosh, in the Jerusalem corridor. Price tag and Arabs out graffiti were spray painted on walls. Police are investigating.

(YWN  Israel Desk, Jerusalem/Photos: Media Resource Group)
Former Likud Minister Gideon Saar in an interview with Galei Tzahal (Army Radio) spoke out harshly against the government following the shooting attack in the Sarona Market Complex in Tel Aviv that claimed four lives.

He explained that once again the attack was carried out by PA (Palestinian Authority) residents inside Israel proper illegally and this is a trend, citing PA illegals have perpetrated many of the attacks since Rosh Hashanah.

He calls for a stern policy against the illegals, citing there are tens of thousands inside Israel daily. Saar feels punitive actions must be taken against those who employ the illegals as well and this would serve as a deterrence. He also feels the breaks in the barriers must be repaired for these areas serve as entry points into Green Line Israel on a daily basis. Saar stresses the lack of a comprehensive government plan regarding PA illegals entering Green Line Israel daily is a must if we hope to stop potential terrorists.

He explained in March there were signs of some actions but then the attacks subsided somewhat and we are back to doing less than is required.

He continued At present, Lieberman is the Defense Minister of Israel. I do not have another country. I hope he will succeed.

Regarding the ongoing conflict between Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Bayit Yehudi leader Naftali Bennett, he feels Bennett is correct to attempt to bring additional essential content to the ministers.

When Saar took a break from politics he was at the height of popularity and some believed he could unseat PM Netanyahu. A recent poll taken shows a party led by Moshe Kahlon, Moshe Yaalon and Saar would earn 25 seats while Likud would fall to the second place in Knesset with 21.

(YWN  Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
President Reuven Rivlin on Thursday morning 3 Sivan went to Ichilov Hospital to visit victims injured in the terror attack in the Sarona Market in Tel Aviv. He then went on to visit the site of the attack in which 4 Israelis had been murdered, and several injured.

While visiting the intensive care unit of the neurosurgery department at the hospital, accompanied by hospital director Prof. Roni Gamzu, the President met Assaf Bar who had a gunshot wound to the head. The President embraced his family, and held Assafs hand. I am pleased to be here with you, we were worried that your injury was even more serious still, but here you are talking with me, and it is wonderful, said the President and added, you will enjoy many more happy and good times, we cannot let them get the better of us. I am going now to where you were injured yesterday. We will continue with our lives.

The President wished Assaf a speedy and full recovery and said, Rest and be well. The pain is of course difficult now but I am sure you return to full health soon. With great effort Assaf thanked the President and said he hoped they would meet on happier occasions.

The President went from there to visit other injured victims who were still sedated following surgeries. He spoke with their families, and listened as they spoke about their loved ones, and heard an update on their conditions. He told them, We have wonderful doctors, doing wonderful work.

Mr. Rivlin went on to visit the site of the attack, the Sarona Market in the heart of the city, in order to express his support for the workers and businesses who had managed to return to normal routine as quickly and as best as possible.

The President then made brief media statements. He said, This is another difficult day for the people and the State of Israel, and our hearts are with those who lost their loved ones in this attack. I visited the hospital this morning, and I pray for the injured who are recovering with the help of the hospital staff. We understand there is no Iron Dome to terror, especially when we are dealing with unorganized terror, but instead random acts of terror perpetrated by individuals or small groups, with terrible fundamentalist ideas.

The President stressed, There is no magic solution, we must fight terror. I want to thank the hospitals, and the security services who I have no doubt will find all the right paths to deal with all those connected to this terror attack. We must remember we are a strong people, who live with a clear understanding that we will overcome.

Mr. Rivlin then added in English, We put our safety in the hands of the Israeli security forces. The Palestinian leadership must understand that once you let people use terror  terror is terror is terror. Let the Palestinians understand  they cannot break us, anyone who lets terror to operate, will find at the end of the road the terror on his doorstep.

(YWN  Israel Desk, Jerusalem/Photo: Mark Neiman, GPO)
Russias foreign minister says opposition groups in Syria failing to respect a truce brokered by Moscow and Washington must be targeted.

Sergey Lavrov said Thursday that it will be counterproductive to keep waiting for opposition groups to abide by the cease-fire that went into effect on Feb. 27, adding they must bear full responsibility for violations.

The Islamic State group and al-Qaidas branch in Syria, the Nusra Front, are not covered by the truce. Russia has demanded that other opposition groups, which Washington considers moderate, leave areas controlled by Nusra. Russia set a deadline for Syrian opposition units to withdraw from areas occupied by Nusra, but then agreed to give them more time to pull out.

Despite the truce, fighting has continued to rage in many areas in Syria.

(AP)
A Virginia man who authorities say joined the Islamic State group before surrendering to Kurdish authorities has been flown back to the U.S. to face terror-related charges.

A judge on Thursday unsealed charges against Mohamad Khweis, 26, of Alexandria alleging he provided material support to terrorists and agreed to be a suicide bomber.

Khweis was captured by Kurdish forces in northern Iraq in March. He told his captors he was a Palestinian-American who had gone to join the Islamic State. But he told Kurdish television he became disenchanted with life in the Islamic State and made his way to the front lines to surrender.

At the time of his capture, U.S. authorities and even Khweis own family appeared to be caught off guard that he had left the U.S. to join the militant group.

An FBI affidavit states that an Islamic State group member asked Khweis whether he was willing to serve as a suicide bomber. Khweis said he agreed, but he told U.S. authorities that he believed the question was a test of his loyalty.

According to the affidavit, Khweis received training in Islamic law during his time there, but the affidavit makes no mention of military training. Khweis told investigators that the only time he touched a gun in his time there was to move it off a couch so he could sit down.

Khweis told the FBI he developed an interest in joining the Islamic State in mid-2015, and that he left in December from Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport to Turkey in December 2015, according to the affidavit. He sold his car before departing.

The defendant was inspired to join ISIL because he saw that they had established an Islamic caliphate and were in the process of expanding it, FBI agent Victoria Martinez wrote in her affidavit. The defendant stated that he knew ISIL used violence in its expansion of the caliphate, but he also stated that ISIL engaged in peaceful and humanitarian efforts.

From Turkey, he made contact with Islamic State facilitators who smuggled him and others into Syria, and stayed in Islamic State safe houses in the Syrian city of Raqqa during the month of January, according to the affidavit.

At one of the safe houses, Islamic State officials said the recruits would be trained to return to their home countries and conduct attacks on behalf of the Islamic State, according to the affidavit. Khweis told investigators he never agreed to participate is such an operation.

According to the affidavit, Khweis admitted burning his laptop and destroying two mobile phones before surrendering to the Kurds.

Khweis is scheduled for an initial appearance at U.S. District Court in Alexandria Thursday afternoon. Court records do not yet list an attorney for him.

(AP)
A Belgian judge has ruled that a suspect in the Nov. 13 Paris attacks can be extradited to France, but he is unlikely to go soon.

Belgian federal prosecutors said in a statement that the judge ruled Thursday that a European arrest warrant issued for Mohamed Abrini by French judicial authorities is enforceable.

Before the hearing, Belgian prosecutors told The Associated Press they dont anticipate turning over Abrini to the French anytime soon. They are still investigating him over the March 22 suicide bombings at Brussels Airport. He has acknowledged being the man in the hat filmed by security cameras in the company of the two bombers.

(AP)
Hillary Clintons campaign summoned its major fundraisers on a conference call Wednesday to quickly mobilize their networks for general-election cash, asking them to match what they raised for the primaries by the end of this month, a person with knowledge of the matter said.

The plea, aimed at increasing Clintons war chest to as much as $1.1 billion by the November election, was made by campaign manager Robby Mook and finance director Dennis Cheng in the call with bundlers, said the person, who discussed the call on condition of anonymity. The campaign has raised about $300 million this election cycle, almost all of which was earmarked to be spent in the primaries.

Mook told the bundlers that, because of the robust fundraising for the primaries, the campaign already has staff in place in battleground states and doesnt need to hire more. He also said that Clinton, now the presumptive Democratic nominee, will spend most of her time in the most contested states, so fundraisers in traditional Democratic strongholds like California and New York will need to rely on surrogates to headline their events.

I dont think it will be difficult for Hillary to raise money, said James Blanchard, a former Michigan governor and longtime Clinton supporter who bundled money for her campaign. We didnt have any problems in the primary.

So far, the campaign has about 1,200 bundlers, each of whom has raised at least $27,000, the person said, citing the call with Mook and Cheng. More than a third of those have raised more than $100,000. Another person familiar with the call said that Mook, when asked whether the campaign had a fundraising goal, said that while there isnt a specific number, there is a historical reference point in President Barack Obama having raised $1.1 billion in 2012.

Josh Schwerin, a Clinton spokesman, said details of this account of the call are not accurate, but declined to elaborate.

While Clinton ramps up her fundraising, Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, is just beginning. In an interview with Bloomberg Politics on Wednesday, Trump downplayed his own earlier estimate that that he would need $1 billion to take on Clinton. He said in the interview that he has no specific fundraising targets for his campaign and will largely rely on his star power to earn free media.

The Clinton campaign has a few fundraising events scheduled in the week ahead, starting with a June 11 event in Baltimore headlined by former President Bill Clinton for the Hillary Victory Fund, a joint fundraising committee for Clinton and the state parties. Gary Gensler, the former chair of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission who has been Clintons point person on Wall Street regulation, is scheduled to appear at a New York event on June 13.

Another bundler, Allida Black, has already raised $340,000 for Clinton, is scheduled to attend an event in Boston next week with a $45 cost of admission. Black, who founded the Ready for Hillary super-PAC in January 2013, said more than half of her fundraising has come through small donations.

There are many things that keep me up at night, said Black, a longtime Clinton supporter. But the money to fund this campaign isnt one of them.

(c) 2016, Bloomberg  Bill Allison
The President of CRIF, the representative umbrella body of the French Jewish community, strongly condemned the discovery of anti-Semitic tags on the front of the synagogue in Verdun and on the rabbis house.

Swastikas and the inscription white power were daubed on the synagogue during the weekend, nearly two months after a first desecration, said Jean-Claude Levy, president of the Jewish community in this city of eastern France.

Its the police who informed me. I went there and saw swastikas on the wall of the synagogue as well as the inscription white power, he explained.  The vandalism of a place of worship is unacceptable. I strongly condemn the anti-Semitic tags on the Verdun synagogue,  said CRIF President Francis Kalifat on his Twitter account.

The president of the Jewish community of Verdun has asked to secure the synagogue to prevent such incidents from recurring.

The only solution we have is to secure the place. We will do everything to protect it. Ill contact the Jewish Central Consistory of France, Levy said.

(Source: EJP)
It took Donald Trump twenty four hours after a murderous Palestinian terror attack to condemn it in the strongest possible terms. His statement was released on his Facebook page after 3:00PM on Thursday afternoon  24 hours after the attack that left four Israelis dead, and 9 wounded.

Hillary Clinton condemned the attack on Wednesday evening, just after the attack.

Although the State Department released a statement following the attack, President Obama has not said anything.

Here are the statements in full  as released to the media:

Statement From Hillary Clinton On Terrorist Attack In Tel Aviv

Wednesday, Hillary Clinton released the following statement on the terrorist attack in Tel Aviv:

I condemn the heinous terrorist attack in Tel Aviv today. I send my deepest condolences to the families of those killed and I will continue to pray for the wounded. I stand in solidarity with the Israeli people in the face of these ongoing threats, and in unwavering support of the countrys right to defend itself. Israels security must remain non-negotiable.

Donald J. Trump

I condemn, in the strongest possible terms, the outrageous terrorist shootings that took the lives of at least four innocent civilians and wounded at least twenty others in Tel Aviv yesterday.

The Israeli security forces investigation is ongoing, but some facts have already emerged  and they are grim.

Just as fast as the condolences arrive from the civilized world is the praise arising out of the uncivilized one. Hamas praised the attack, calling the attackers heroes. Reports out of Hebron indicate that residents of the terrorists hometown lit up the night sky with celebratory fireworks. One Palestinian news organization even referred to the shootings, in which the assailants dressed up as observant Jews, as a Ramadan treat. The leader of Hamas called the injured terrorist a hero. How despicable!

The American people stand strong with the people of Israel, who have suffered far too long from terrorism. Israels security is a matter of paramount importance to me and the American people.

We understand all too well the unspeakable horror that terrorism unleashes. To address it  and address it we must!  we must recognize the parallel horror of the culture of religious hatred that permeates many Palestinian quarters. From schools that indoctrinate toddlers to grow up to kill Israelis to the daily menu of hate that spews forth from various news organizations, change is long overdue in the Palestinian territories.

Let us begin the arduous task of creating a future where peace can take root and terror finds no refuge.

I express my deepest condolences to the families of the four Israelis who were murdered, as well as my wishes for a speedy recovery to the wounded.

Donald J. Trump

U.S. Department Of State:

The United States condemns todays horrific terrorist attack in Tel Aviv in the strongest possible terms. We extend our deepest condolences to the families of those killed and our hopes for a quick recovery for those wounded. These cowardly attacks against innocent civilians can never be justified. We are in touch with Israeli authorities to express our support and concern.

(YWN World Headquarters  NYC)
The Federal Aviation Administration has ruled out requiring psychological testing for airline pilots in favor of enhanced mental health support programs in response to a crash last year in which a German pilot deliberately flew an airliner full of passengers into a mountainside, agency administrator Michael Huerta said Thursday.

Psychological tests are ineffective because they reveal a pilots mental health for only a moment in time without providing insight into whether the pilot will suffer problems later, Huerta told reporters at a news conference. Instead, he announced several steps the FAA and industry are taking to encourage more voluntary self-reporting by pilots of mental health problems. Airlines and pilot unions will be encouraged to expand programs to assist pilots, including the use of peer-to-peer programs that connect troubled pilots with other pilots for help and make mental health hotlines available.

The agency also began additional training for aviation medical examiners earlier this year to help them spot mental health warning signs.

The steps are based on recommendations made by an industry advisory committee.

We need to do more to remove the stigma surrounding mental illness in the aviation industry so pilots are more likely to self-report, get treated and return to work, Huerta said.

Michael Berry, the FAAs deputy flight surgeon, drew a distinction between testing and evaluation. Currently no psychological testing is required of airline pilots, but they are routinely evaluated on how they handle stress during tests of their flying skills.

Pilots are also required to undergo a medical exam annually or every six months, depending on their age, that is administered by an FAA certified medical examiner. Most of the exam is devoted to the pilots physical condition. Examiners arent required to ask specific mental-health questions. However, they evaluate a pilots mental health based on their conversation with the pilot during the exam.

Pilots are also required to fill out a health form in conjunction with their visits that asks whether theyve ever been diagnosed with or are being treated or taking medications for a mental illness. While examiners can decline to issue a medical certificate, they dont currently alert the FAA to mental health concerns, Berry said. Just 1.1 percent of U.S. airline pilots are denied medical certificates at the time of their exams, and only .05 percent are finally denied a medical certificate after the FAA considers all the medical information, according to the FAA.

Airlines generally require pilots to take psychological tests before hiring them, but they are primarily personality tests used to judge whether a prospective pilot will fit well with the company rather than attempts to uncover mental illness, Berry said.

On March 24, 2015, co-pilot Andreas Lubitz locked Germanwings Flight 9525s captain out of the cockpit and deliberately set the plane on a collision course with a mountainside in the French Alps. All 150 people aboard, including Lubitz, were killed. An investigation revealed that Lubitz had concealed from his airline that he was being treated for a relapse of severe depression and that he had been treated in the past for suicidal tendencies. Germany has strict patient privacy regulations and Lubitzs doctors didnt inform the airline of his condition.

The French agency that investigated the crash recommended aviation authorities reconsider how pilots mental health is examined and monitored.

The Aerospace Medical Association, which researches aviation health issues, is asking the American Medical Association to set a national standard that clarifies when public safety trumps patient privacy and whether congressional legislation is needed to allow examiners to alert the FAA to a pilot with a mental health condition that should prohibit flying, Berry said. Requirements also vary widely from state to state, he said.

Cases of pilot suicide are extremely rare. In 2012, the captain of a JetBlue flight was locked out the cockpit by the first officer and subdued by passengers after he started acting erratically. The captain later was found not guilty by reason of insanity of a charge of interference with a flight crew and was transferred to a mental health facility.

(AP)
In a unanimous vote of 61 to 0, on Tuesday, June 7, 2016, the New York State Senate approved a measure, initiated by Agudath Israel of America, that is designed to significantly increase the level of reimbursement to nonpublic schools for their costs in complying with the states program for verifying and reporting the immunization status of their students.

New York State is required, by law, to reimburse nonpublic schools for certain mandated services, such as taking attendance, state testing, and monitoring and reporting immunization levels in their students. Senate Bill S7664, sponsored by New York State Senator Martin Golden, is one of two bills  one in the Senate and the other in the Assembly  intended to remove a cap in the New York State law that limits reimbursement to nonpublic schools for immunization costs under the mandated services program to no more than 60 cents a student.

For more than thirty years, the 60-cent limit has remained unchanged; however, rising staff costs and increasingly complex vaccination requirements put the actual expense of monitoring immunizations at a much higher level. According to detailed estimates arrived at by polling 63 schools across New York City, Buffalo and Rochester, nonpublic schools are currently incurring approximately $8 million of unreimbursed mandated services to comply with this statute.

If this bill passes in the Senate and Assembly, and the governor signs it into law, this cap will be removed and nonpublic schools will finally be reimbursed for the actual costs incurred, as required by law. The passing of this bill in the Senate is the first step in making this goal a reality.

This is a very serious bill, Senator Golden said. The amount of money that the private schools are being paid is about 60 cents a child. This is not only not fair, but its a mandate. This bill gives private schools the ability to reappropriate the funding that its costing them now, to administer the shots, to their mission, which is the education of their children.

Agudath Israel identified this as an issue that was impacting yeshivos and other nonpublic schools and needed to be rectified by the legislature. Then, in March 2016, during its Mission to Albany, Agudath Israel proposed that the reimbursement for immunization be brought current. The organization played a significant role in drafting and developing these bills. Rabbi Shmuel Lefkowitz, Vice President for Community Services, and Agudath Israel Board Member Leon Goldenberg, nurtured the development of this bill in the Senate. Working together with Jim Cultrara of the New York State Catholic Conference, they also asked Assemblyman Walter Mosley to introduce it in the Assembly. That bill is being considered by the Assembly Ways and Means Committee.

Mrs. Deborah Zachai, Agudath Israels Director of Education Affairs, said, We are pleased at this tremendous show of support from Senate Majority Leader John Flanagan, Senator Martin Golden and his fellow legislators. The passage of this bill in the Senate is the first step in an effort to relieve yeshivos and nonpublic schools of a significant financial burden. Hopefully, well see similar support in the Assembly.

Rabbi Lefkowitz concurred. With the passing of this bill in the Senate, our efforts move to the Assembly. Assembly Bill A10309, sponsored by Assemblyman Walter Mosley, and co-sponsored by Assemblywoman Helene Weinstein, Assemblyman Dov Hikind and Assemblyman Anthony Brindisi, now needs to be passed. We encourage members of the community to contact their local assemblymembers, asking them to push for the passage of Assembly Bill A10309.

(Judith Dinowitz  YWN)
[By Rabbi Yair Hoffman]

It is the practice throughout Klal Yisroel to wait to daven Maariv on Shavuos until it is certainly dark. This means that we daven Maariv after Tzais HaKochavim  stars coming out  either 42 or 50 minutes past sundown. The Mishna Brurah rules conclusively in this way (494:1) and it is has become the accepted custom in Klal Yisroel.

COMPLETE WEEKS

The reason is explained by the TaZ, Rabbi Dovid HaLevi in his commentary on chapter 494 in Orech Chaim. The counting of the Omer must be complete. It must be seven perfect and complete weeks in order to fulfill the verse Sheva Shavuos Temimos  seven complete weeks. If we daven Maariv early on Shavuos then it is not complete. This, it would seem, is the reason why we wait.

Also, in discussing Shavuos the Torah uses the term BEtzem Hayom Hazeh  on this very day which seems to indicate that Shavuos should be on the exact time of Shavuos, and not earlier. Whether this is a second and different reason than the one just discussed by the TaZ is a matter that needs further clarification.

PROBLEM

The problem is that there is a Mitzvah in general of adding onto the Shabbos and adding on to Yom Tov. This is why we generally make Shabbos early and end it later. The Chofetz Chaim (in Biur Halacha 261:2) rules that most Rishonim are of the opinion that Tosefes Shabbos on Shabbos itself is a biblical Mitzvah. It applies equally to men and women. Indeed, the Avnei Naizer in a responsa (Orach Chaim 316:12) rules that Tosefes Yom Tov is actually a biblical Mitzvah. If so, by waiting on Shavuos then we are not fulfilling the Mitzvah of adding onto the Yom Tov!

ADD LATER?

One could, of course, answer that we could accomplish the adding on after the Yom Tov. In other words, we can add on to it at the end. But it does seem to be a little bit strange though. Do we find a distinction between Shavuos and the other Yomim Tovim in regard to the Mitzvah of Tosefes Yom Tov? Also, even if we were to find such a difference based upon the Omer  what would be the halacha in modern times  when most authorities hold that counting the Omer is only a Rabbinic Mitzvah?

The Maharsham in his work Daas Torah (494:1) cites a responsa from the Masais Binyomin that the issue of Tmimus only applies to the recitation of Kiddush, but not to the prayer service of Maariv. Indeed, the Siddur of the Yaavetz (entitled Bais Yaakov in Shavuos note #4) writes that a person who davens early on Shavuos is called a Zariz (a person who is quick to do Mitzvos) and is rewarded. Rav Dovid Tzvi Hoffman in the Melamed LeHoil (Volume 1 responsa 108) rules that they should wait at least until Bain HaShemashos  twilight.

It seems that these authorities would hold that the Temimus is accomplished anyway because the Omer has been completed until the arrival of Shavuos. So what if Shavuos has arrived early  the Omer was still counted the entire time through Shavuos!

BECAUSE IT LOOKS AS IF WE DIDNT

The Klausenberger Rebbe zatzal in Divrei Yatziv (OC #226) writes that the reason why we are stringent is not because it does not complete the forty nine days of the Omer, but rather because it appears as if we have not completed the complete forty nine days of the Omer! He adduces this reading also from the wording of the Rav Shulchan Aruch (the first Lubavitcher Rebbe).

It is interesting to note Rav Chaim Berlin (the son of the Netziv and the Chief Rabbi of Moscow from 1865) in Kovaitz Shaarei Torah Volume eight (9:68) has an entirely different reading of this TaZ. He writes that the TaZ is not dealing with any special aspect of Shavuos. Rather, he explains, just as every day of the Omer the counting must be perfect without the internal contradiction of having to count it on a different day, the same is true with Shavuos too. The Omer may not be counted on a day that the latter part of it is shared with Shavuos.

The Tzitz Eliezer (Volume 13 responsa 59) however, rejects Rav Chaim Berlins interesting rereading of the Taz and maintains that the idea of BEtzem Hayom Hazeh makes it uniquely a Shavuos Halacha.

Another issue is of course on the second day of Shavuos. There is an enactment of course to keep two days of Yom Tov in Chutz Laaretz on account of something called Sfaikah DYoma  an uncertainty in the day that Rosh Chodesh was called. In a case when the second day would fall on Shabbos, can we daven early on Friday night or do we have to wait until star-out just like we do on the first night of Shavuos?

On the one hand, on the second day of Yom Tov Shavuos there never would have been a Sfaikah dYoma, we would have found out already when the Rosh Chodesh was called. Yet on the other hand we are enjoined to treat second day Yom Tov exactly like we would treat the first day of Yom Tov. So what should we do?

Some authorities explain that the reason why we keep the second day of Shavuos is not because of a Sfaika DYoma but rather because of a Lo Ploog  that the Rabbis did not differentiate this Yom Tov from other Yamim Tovim. Since this is the case, one can make a good argument that it would not take away from the Tmimus  the perfection of the counting of the Omer on the previous day. It seems that the combination of both of these rationales would at least allow us to daven at Bain HaShemashos on Friday night on the second night of Shavuos.

May everyone have a wonderful Kabbalas HaTorah!

The author may be reached at [email protected]

ARTICLE PUBLISHED BY 5TJT
After months of debate, the White House has approved plans to expand the militarys authority to conduct airstrikes against the Taliban when necessary, as the violence in Afghanistan escalates, senior U.S. and defense officials said Thursday.

Several officials said the decision was made in recent days to expand the authority of U.S. commanders to strike the Taliban and better support and assist the Afghan forces when needed in critical operations, using the U.S. troops already in the country. There is a broad desire across the Obama administration to give the military greater ability to help the Afghans fight and win the war.

The 9,800 U.S. troops still in Afghanistan, however, would still not be involved in direct combat.

The officials were not authorized to talk publicly about the discussions so spoke on condition of anonymity.

The decision comes as the Afghans struggle with a resurgent Taliban, particularly in the south. But it is fraught with political sensitivities because President Barack Obama had made clear his commitment to get U.S. forces out of Afghanistan. That effort, however, has been stalled by the slow pace of the development of the Afghan military and the resilience of the Taliban.

The decision will give U.S. forces greater flexibility in how they partner with Afghan forces, but the new authorities must be used in selective operations that are deemed to have a strategic and important effect on the fight.

The Taliban are refocusing their attention mostly on the southern provinces of Helmand, Kandahar and Uruzgan, according to U.S. and Afghan military officials, although the insurgents also have struck elsewhere, such as in Kunduz province in the north, where they overran and held the provincial capital for a few days last fall.

The results have been daunting: The U.N. says 3,545 Afghan civilians were killed and 7,457 wounded in 2015, most of them by the Taliban.

The U.S. has continued to conduct counterterrorism strikes against al-Qaida and Islamic State militants in Afghanistan. But strikes against the Taliban were largely halted at the end of 2014, when the U.S.-led coalitions combat role ended. Limited strikes have been allowed in cases of self-defense or when Afghan forces were in danger of being overrun.

Gen. John Nicholson, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, has discussed with Defense Secretary Ash Carter his recommendations for moves the U.S. can make to further assist the Afghans. And there have been repeated conversations with the White House in recent weeks.

Pentagon press secretary Peter Cook, asked Thursday whether the administration was looking at expanding the U.S. militarys authorities to strike the Taliban more broadly, said: In every step of our review of Afghanistan, the question of whats the best way to use our forces is something were constantly looking at. Its also in the same sense that were looking at the number of troops. We are always looking at the authorities question and the best use of our troops.

Nicholsons predecessor, Gen. John Campbell, made it known before he left Kabul in March that he believed Carter should consider expanding U.S. military authorities to take on the Taliban.

As an example, U.S. troops are able to partner with Afghan special operations forces, but this new decision would allow commanders to have U.S. troops work more closely with conventional Afghan units in critical battles, including providing close air support or helping to call in strikes. Officials stressed that this will not allow routine U.S. airstrikes against the Taliban, just provide authority to take those actions when commanders believe they are vital to the fight.

Also under discussion is whether the U.S. should reduce the number of American troops in Afghanistan to 5,500 as planned by the end of this year, or if a higher number is needed. Campbell favored keeping the troop level at the current total of 9,800 into next year.

U.S. officials have insisted they are encouraged by the Afghan forces resilience, despite their high rate of battlefield casualties. And they point to the Talibans loss of its leader, Mullah Mohammed Akhtar Mansour, who was killed by a U.S. drone strike in late May in Pakistan.

The U.S. and NATO formally ended their combat mission in Afghanistan at the end of 2014, but have continued to provide support and assistance as the Afghan forces struggle to grow and gain greater capabilities, including in their air operations.

Brig. Gen. Charles Cleveland said last week that Nicholson was sending his assessment of the ongoing security threat there and the needs of the Afghan military to U.S. Central Command and to the Pentagon, and was expected to brief senior military leaders soon afterward.

(AP)
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Thursday that Donald Trump needs to pick an experienced running mate because he doesnt know a lot about the issues and strongly urged him to change course on his rhetoric.

In an extraordinarily frank interview with Bloomberg Politics Masters in Politics podcast, McConnell, who is on a book tour touting his autobiography The Long Road, also expressed broader concerns about the presumptive Republican presidential nominee.

He needs someone highly experienced and very knowledgeable because its pretty obvious he doesnt know a lot about the issues, McConnell said. You see that in the debates in which hes participated. Its why I have argued to him publicly and privately that he ought to use a script more often-there is nothing wrong with having prepared texts.

The Kentucky Republicans frustration with Trump has been clear, especially this week after Trumps tarring of Judge Gonzalo Curiel as biased against him because the Indiana-born former prosecutor is Mexican. Still, McConnell said he remains comfortable backing Trump.

For all of his obvious shortcomings, Donald Trump is certainly a different direction, and I think if he is in the White House hell have to respond to the right-of-center world which elected him, and the things that we believe in. So Im comfortable supporting him, McConnell said.

But his attacks on ethnic groups and fellow Republicans need to end, the lawmaker said.

I object to a whole series of things that hes said-vehemently object to them. I think all of that needs to stop. Both the shots at people he defeated in the primary and these attacks on various ethnic groups in the country.

McConnell, perhaps the most careful and strategic politician in Washington, rarely goes off script himself, and has been sending Trump the same message for weeks in hopes hell pivot to the general election.

McConnell said staying on script indicates a level of seriousness that I think is important to convey to American people about the job you are seeking.

I think hed have a much better chance of winning if he would quit making so many unfortunate public utterances and stick to the script, he said.

McConnell said he delivered that message in person when the two were in the green room together at the recent National Rifle Association convention in Louisville.

I said, Hey Donald, you got a script? and he pulled it out of his pocket. He said, You know I hate scripts, theyre so boring. And I said, Put me down in favor of boring. Youve demonstrated that you have a lot of Twitter followers and youre good at turning on a big audience. Now you need to demonstrate you have the seriousness of purpose that is required to be president of the United States, and most candidates on frequent occasions use a script. So well see whether thats something hes capable of doing.

Trump, of course, did just that when faced with the firestorm over his judge remarks Tuesday night-and Republican senators clearly would like to see more of the same.

McConnell meanwhile, dismissed the idea of Trump tossing out the partys orthodoxy.

Our nominee is not going to redefine what being a Republican is, he said. I think the platform will remain largely the same. In all of the primaries this year for lesser office than president, the so-called establishment figures have won almost every single race. These are people who believe in the basic core principles of the Republican Party.

While McConnell pronounced himself comfortable with Trump, he didnt sound particularly enthusiastic, but suggested Trump, at least, can claim the mantle of being the candidate of change.

I think the choice for many Americans is not a happy choice, he said. You look at both these candidates, both of them have very high disapproval ratings. I think a lot of Americans are not going be thrilled at the choice.

But this is the choice, and I think, for me, and I hope for a lot of others, the question to be dealt with is this: Do we want four more years just like the last eight, or do we want to go in a different direction?

He wouldnt rule out rescinding his support if Trump.

Im not going to speculate about what he might say, or what I might do. But I think its pretty clear and Ive been pretty clear publicly about how I think he ought to change direction and I hope thats what we are going to see.

And McConnell sought to separate his large flock of Republican senators running for re-election from Trump.

Senate races are big enough to rise or fall on their own, he said. Weve got a number of Senators who will have the resources and the record to paint their own picture, he said.

McConnell predicted neither presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton nor Trump would have coattails.

You generally have coattails when people not only want to elect you but they want you to do anything you can do, he said, pointing to Ronald Reagans 1980 victory and Barack Obamas in 2008.

I think this is going to be a ticket-splitting year no matter which candidate gets elected president, he said.

McConnell pointed to his wife, former Labor Secretary Elaine Chao, as the kind of voter Republicans need to appeal to.

Shes a first-generation immigrant who came here at age 8 not speaking a word of English-a woman on top of it-an accomplished woman on top of it, he said. Those are the kind of women voters that Republicans need to appeal to. Minorities, women.

He pointed to the changing demographics of the country, with white voters making up a smaller and smaller percentage of the electorate.

We are not going to be competitive in presidential elections appealing only to white voters and particularly writing off white women. So beyond the unfortunate part of the various things that our nominee has said-its not smart politically.

(c) 2016, Bloomberg  Betsy Fischer Martin, Tammy Haddad, Steven T. Dennis
Has the resource sector turned the corner? Investment firm Onzima Ventures seems to think so.

It recently revealed that it has been very active in building up stakes in a number of small cap mining and energy stocks, namely Alecto Minerals, Bushveld Minerals, Ferrum Crescent, Hummingbird Resources, Jubilee Platinum, MX Oil, Prospex Oil & Gas and Regency Mines.

The investments have been parked in its Asset Trading division, which according to a stock market announcement from Onzima this week 'has thus far made a number of positive returns on its investments'.

That probably explains why the shares were up almost 50 per cent on the week to around 1.6p, despite the company raising 150,000 through the issue of 15 million shares at a penny a pop.

Keep digging: Investment firm Onzima Ventures thinks the resources sector has turned the corner, taking stakes in a number of small cap players

Another stock going well despite placing shares in the market  normally a trigger for market-makers to mark down a stock  was Ascent Resources, which climbed from last Fridays closing level of 0.59p to 0.87p by this Friday lunchtime after Henderson Global Investors bought a slug of shares at 0.6p a throw.

The 500,000 raised should meet the oil and gas exploration and productions companys current working capital requirements into 2017.

The shares issued to Henderson represent just over 16 per cent of Ascents issued ordinary share capital.

Sector peer Oilex saw its shares soar on Wednesday after it reached a settlement agreement to a legal dispute with a former funding partner.

The India-focused gas junior had been seeking a commercial resolution with Zeta Resources before legal proceedings began between the parties, and under the terms of the settlement, each party has agreed to no longer pursue claims against the other, with neither party admitting liability.

If the resources sector, and the oil industry in particular, has turned the corner then it would be a welcome relief to Hardide, the advanced surface coating technology firm.

The company specialises in coating equipment, machinery and components to make them more durable and resistant to the elements, and not surprisingly the oil and gas sector provides a significant proportion of its income.

Also not surprisingly, it announced this week that it had fallen into the red at the half-year stage.

'We are in the midst of the longest and most severe global downturn in our core market of oil and gas and this has led to group revenues falling 46 per cent from the same period last year,' revealed Robert Goddard, chairman of Hardide.

The shares took a bit of a bashing, falling 18 per cent.

The company has been looking to diversify its revenue stream for some time and has high hopes for the aerospace sector, though ironically a revival in the oil price would likely hit this sector just as it benefits the oil producers.

Vocal: easyJet founder Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou (pictured), a major shareholder in fastJet, has been loudly voicing concerns about the Africa-focused discount airline's performance and cost structure recently

Talking of aerospace, low cost African airline fastjet has suffered more than its fair share of turbulence of late, with easyJet founder Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou, a major shareholder, loudly voicing concerns about fastjets performance and cost structure recently.

It had some good news this week, as it nabbed the boss of one its rivals to become its new chief executive.

Nico Bezuidenhout will take up his new job on August 1, having been in charge of South African Airways' low cost carrier Mango for the past ten years.

Over that time, Mango has grown from a start-up to a 25 per cent share of the South African domestic market with the lowest unit costs of any carrier operating in the market.

'Weak Link Productions' brings you a clunky transition from airlines to CloudTag, the well-being and fitness-focused wearable technology specialist.

Its shares headed skywards this week as it announced it was 'closing the gap towards finalising the demands' of the retailers that want to stock the device.

CloudTag added it is also in advanced discussions with Amazon to execute the sales and marketing strategy to support the product's release.

'This will maximise the traffic on the web to support all the retailers and e-tailers,' chief executive Amit Ben-Haim told Proactive Investors.
EMi artists EMI include as The Beatles, Coldplay, Kylie Minogue and Katy Perry (pictured)

He's renowned as one of the Square Miles most astute deal-makers. Guy Hands has carved an estimated 260million fortune out of being able to spot a bargain, and turn struggling firms into corporate successes.

But this week the star financier, who runs private equity firm Terra Firma, has had to lay bare how he lost 156million of his own money in the collapse of record label EMI  with its dazzling list of artists such as The Beatles, Coldplay, Kylie Minogue and Katy Perry.

And it wasnt just cash that Hands claims to have been deprived of, but his reputation in the City and the chance to turn Terra Firma into a mega-firm.

Now Hands, 56, is seeking damages of 1.5billion against bankers at Citigroup, claiming it misled him over the 4.2billion takeover of the music label in 2007. It is a claim the investment giant denies.

The hearing, which began this week, marks the latest twist in a saga that has already been heard in the courtrooms of New York, before crossing the Atlantic, briefly coming to life in a courtroom in Manchester, before heading to Londons High Court.

The US lawsuit was lost, but Hands is trying to prove that he only agreed to spend so much cash on the takeover because Citigroups David Wormsley, the head of banking in the UK, lied to him in phone calls about the presence of a second bidder before EMI was auctioned off.

Citigroup advised the record company on the deal, but also provided 2.5billion in finance for Terra Firma, and earned tens of millions of pounds in fees, Hands claims.

From the moment Hands bought EMI, the deal started to go wrong. CD sales began to fall around the globe as illegal music downloads started to rocket.

And as the global financial crisis hit it compounded the problems. Citigroup ended up taking control of EMI in 2011. Citi lost 800million and Terra Firma lost 1.5billion in the EMI deal.

This court hearing centres around four sets of alleged conversations between three senior Citi bankers and with Hands in 2007, in which facts were misrepresented. Citi says the alleged misrepresentations did not happen.

Hands tried unsuccessfully to sue Citigroup in the US, but the case was terminated in 2014 and it is being heard in the High Court in London.

Terra Firma also claims Citigroup did not provide key information to the fund over EMIs creditworthiness.

Documents shown to the court this week revealed that a Citigroup employee had in a 2007 email described EMI as a terminally ill cancer patient on chemotherapy.

The downfall of EMI was a blow to Terra Firma, which currently owns the care home group Four Seasons, as well as Odeon & UCI Cinemas Group, which it has put up for sale for a reported 1billion.

It lost a third of its investors capital and Hands, who is now said to be worth around 346million, told the court he personally lost 156million.

Battle: Guy Hands tried unsuccessfully to sue Citigroup in the US, but the case was terminated in 2014 and it is being heard in the High Court in London

But more damaging than this, Hands claims, is how his firm and its reputation have suffered.

Hands claims Terra Firma has raised just one 450million fund since the EMI deal.

He told the court that many private equity groups have disasters with investments but they all moved on. The problem is the fact that we havent moved on. And we havent moved on because of good reasons.

He told the court the main reason was the long-running litigation around EMI.

Hands has lived in a 10million coastal five-bedroom house in Guernsey since 2009, after moving there for tax reasons. His wife, Julia, runs Hand Picked Hotels and still lives in Kent with their four children in their family home which was once owned by Winston Churchill.

Despite getting an A grade, an E grade and a fail at A-level, Hands got into Oxford University to read Philosophy, Politics and Economics and went on to work at Goldman Sachs and Nomura.

Citigroups QC, Mark Howard, yesterday accused Hands of changing his story since the first legal case in the US six years ago, and Hands conceded that he had a hazy memory of events.

Howard said his account was all over the place.

A Citigroup spokesman said: Citi did not make any dishonest statements to Guy Hands or Terra Firma throughout the auction process for EMI and is confident the UK trial will confirm this.
Return: George Soros is back on the trading floor

Billionaire George Soros has headed back to the trading floor after a 20-year absence over concerns the global economy may be about to go through a huge upheaval.

The 85-year-old dubbed the man who broke the Bank of England is reportedly spending time making direct trades and overseeing investments that cut the risks Soros Fund Management is taking.

In recent weeks the fund has sold stocks and shares to buy gold and gold miners  so-called safe haven assets into which investors typically flee when they believe stock markets could be about to plunge.

During the first three months of 2016, his fund bought more than a million shares in SPDR Gold Trust, the worlds largest exchange-traded gold fund.
Savers with smaller pension pots are being slapped with charges that can total 10 per cent of their nest egg, according to research by Citizens Advice.

On top of exit fees - which are being capped at 1 per cent from next April - savers have faced charges for moving to new products, accessing their pension early, provider information and guidance, and charges for managing savings left invested, it says.

Citizens Advice is now calling for a tougher 50 limit on exit fees.

HOW DO REAL SAVERS FEEL ABOUT SORTING THEIR PENSION? FIND OUT BELOW

Confused: Savers feel pressure to use new pension freedoms immediately when the best course of action is often to do nothing for now (stock image)

It also found seven out of 10 people are not shopping around for an annuity or income drawdown scheme, or the best vehicle just to access their cash.

Some savers report boredom and 'research fatigue' with the process of sorting out a pension, although others found it quick and efficient, according to the study.

The Citizens Advice report follows a string of others showing that while savers heartily welcome pension freedoms launched in April 2015, they feel baffled and overwhelmed when dealing with the new choices opened up to over-55s of spending, saving and investing their retirement pots.

Savers feel pressure to use new pension freedoms immediately when the best course of action is often to do nothing with their money for now.

Citizens Advice reckons two out of five people who have accessed their retirement pots have faced fees - and up to 160,000 savers altogether - figures based on its own research and industry data on the numbers who have used pension freedoms so far.

'Those with smaller pots are the group which has been hit the hardest, as people who have pensions of 20,000 or less who have faced fees are paying an average of 1,966. For some consumers this can mean they have lost 10 per cent of their retirement savings to charges levied by providers,' says the report.

WHAT IS PENSION FREEDOM? Pension freedom reforms have given over-55s greater power over how they spend, save or invest their retirement pots. Key changes from April 2015 included removing the need to buy an annuity to provide income until you die, giving access to invest-and-drawdown schemes previously restricted to wealthier savers, and the axing of a 55 per cent 'death tax' on pension pots left invested. Also, savers aren't limited to one chance to take a single tax-free lump sum worth 25 per cent of their pension pots, with the rest taxed as income afterwards. Instead, people can dip in and make as many withdrawals as they want, each time getting 25 per cent tax-free and the rest taxed like income, provided their scheme allows this. The changes apply to people with 'defined contribution' or 'money purchase' pension schemes, which take contributions from both employer and employee and invest them to provide a pot of money at retirement. They don't apply to those with more generous gold-plated final salary or 'defined benefit' pensions which provide a guaranteed income after retirement.

After surveying more than 500 people, it found some 36 per cent chose to stay with their existing provider because they trust them, 30 per cent had a product which met their needs, 29 per cent stayed because it was the easiest way to access their savings, and 15 per cent wanted to avoid exit charges.

Citizens Advice says consumers who buy annuities are more likely to shop around, with 57 per cent checking products with other providers, compared with 39 per cent who buy a drawdown product, and 14 per cent who want to take cash but might be able do so via a better deal.

'Consumers taking cash out of their pension could still benefit from shopping around. Our in-depth interviews shows some consumers taking cash wanted drawdown and vice versa, so could have benefited from shopping around,' it explains.

Its findings led Citizens Advice to make five calls for change, topped by a 50 exit fee cap.

It is also calling for an income drawdown comparison tool, similar to the one for annuities on the Money Advice Service website. See below for details of other improvements it would like to see.

Citizens Advice carries out face-to-face interviews for the free official Pension Wise guidance service, and it stresses that its new report reflects its views as a consumer champion in the financial services market, not those of Pension Wise or the Government.

Gillian Guy, chief executive of Citizens Advice, says: 'Picking a pension product is one of the biggest financial decisions people will ever make, so its worrying that so many arent shopping around.

'More and more consumers are choosing drawdown products but our research shows they arent checking whether theyre getting the best deal. The Government and industry needs to work together to make it easier for consumers to compare drawdown products and choose the one which best meets their needs.

'The threat of excessive charges can also put people off making the right pension choices for them. A standard 50 exit fee across all types of pensions will mean consumers can make the most of the pension freedoms.'

'INCREDIBLY BORING', 'HEAVY GOING', 'AMAZING': HOW SAVERS DESCRIBE EXPERIENCES USING PENSION FREEDOMS Citizens Advice questioned savers about what happened when they accessed their pensions after the freedom reforms. Here's a selection of responses from its interviews. Deciding what to do 'I looked at other charges and I thought "actually my providers charges are not bad". There may be someone whos a bit cheaper but really and truly does it seem extortionate or unreasonable? No, so I was happy to go with them.' It was all incredibly boring, I was completely sick of it 'I had the three offers in front of me, because I thought, "I cant cope with more than three". I was comparing their charges, the kind of funds they had, the returns theyd had on the funds. It was all incredibly boring, I was completely sick of it.' 'I did a lot of research really. I contacted some companies, and I did a lot of research on the internet. I was retired, so I had the time.' 'I got other quotes, but ultimately decided rather than the hassle of moving it, which could apparently take six weeks, I just wanted to crack on with it and forget about the whole thing as it was so boring by then, so I stayed. That's partially inertia, but a lot of the times its better the devil you know with these things.' 'I was never going to transfer [into a drawdown scheme] because I wanted the cash as soon as possible. Maybe I acted hastily, I dont think I gave that too much thought as the debt was a priority. I dont think I had the luxury to understand everything.' It was literally one click of the mouse Dealing with pension providers 'I just went with my existing provider because they were so efficient. They sent out written copies of what wed discussed.' 'It was amazing because I didnt have to pay any fees, there was no fees attached, and less than a week later the money was in my account.' 'I found the whole process for me was heavy going, and Ive been an accountant for 30 odd years. It was done to serve a purpose - they don't want you to take your money out.' 'It was literally one click of the mouse and the money came in three days later.' 'It was horrendous. I spent hours and hours on the phone. And eventually when I did get through I passed on from one person to another. They just didnt have a clue even though theyd had time to prepare.' They were absolutely terrified of not warning me enough 'They did give multiple warnings and I had to say yes, yes, yes, youve told me that before...they were absolutely terrified of not warning me enough.' Paying for advice 'Financial advisers are hugely expensive and like to find out how much youre worth and charge a percentage no matter what advice they give, which I find hard to stomach.' 'The advantage that I had was that I had a little bit of knowledge. I didnt want to use an adviser because it would have taken longer and cost more.' 'I wasnt going to do anything risky or complicated so I didnt need a financial adviser. I just went with what seemed best for me.' Find case studies about individual savers' pension decisions below.

What does the pension industry say?

'The pension freedoms have given savers a far wider range of options than ever before, and it is important that people consider the choices available to them,' says Yvonne Braun, director of policy, long term savings and protection at the Association of British Insurers.

'Pension providers want customers to have all the information they need to make the right decision for them, and are committed to promoting the Governments valuable PensionWise guidance service.

'Our latest industry figures, which measure what customers actually do, show that 58 per cent of savers switched provider when buying a drawdown product and 38 per cent switched when getting an annuity.

'A higher number of customers are likely to have shopped around but then found they were already with the best provider for them, so wont have switched. We also estimate around half of customers who stayed have guaranteed annuity rates.'

CITIZENS ADVICE CALLS FOR FIVE CHANGES * Government and regulators should set a 50 cap on exit charges and tackle transfer delays * The Government should support the creation of a drawdown comparison tool * Government and providers should review how information about support can be better targeted * Providers should ensure any advice requirements are communicated clearly * The Financial Conduct Authority should review whether risk warnings could be used earlier and targeted at consumers who have not taken any support

Tom McPhail, head of retirement policy at Hargreaves Lansdown, says: 'Pension freedom has revolutionised the way people deal with their retirement savings but it is still a work in progress.

'There needs to be an immediate ban on exit penalties and we agree that 1 per cent is far too generous to the pension providers. More effort needs to be made to help investors engage with their pension pots earlier on.

'The take-up of shopping around for the best deal is still painfully low; unfortunately the use of commission, which is particularly helpful for investors with smaller pension pots, is anathema to policy makers.

'A drawdown shopping around tool sounds like a good idea but we worry that it would just focus on price, whereas good customer engagement tools and service are probably more important.'

Steve Webb, the Pensions Minister when freedom reforms were launched and now policy director at Royal London, says: 'As this valuable report shows, consumers will not get the full benefit of the new freedoms unless there is much more shopping around.

'Many consumers could benefit from impartial financial advice which could make a real difference to the value for money that they get from their retirement savings. Much more needs to be done to increase awareness of the value of impartial advice and guidance at retirement.

'In this new market the options open to consumers are complex and products are diverse. Having expert help to make these decisions could be of life-changing benefit to those who have worked hard to build a pension pot.'

Chancellor George Osborne, who ordered regulators to cap pension exit fees but left them to set the amount, has previously said on this topic: 'Nearly quarter of a million people have already taken advantage of the government's pension freedoms, accessing their money when it suited them.

'I want everyone to have the same opportunity, including people who are eligible but currently face some sort of early exit fee.

'And I am clear that people who've done the right thing and saved responsibly should be able to access their pensions fairly. They shouldn't face prohibitive charges that block them from exiting their current deal.'

Stories from savers using pension freedoms

Citizens Advice carried out in-depth interviews with savers and included several case studies in its report.

In the first case below, Ahmed says he was charged 500 to access 'guidance' from his pension provider so he didn't have to pay for financial advice.

Citizens Advice says that for confidentiality reasons it can't share the name of the provider involved, so This is Money wasn't able to investigate further.

However, it is possible some savers were not always sure what exactly they were paying for in charges. In its report, Citizens Advice says that 11 per cent of consumers reported having paid their provider for 'information' to avoid paying for financial advice.

'While this figure must be seen in the context of confusion around advice requirements above, our qualitative research identified cases where providers have told consumers they can either pay for advice or for guidance to cover liability when accessing savings through a new product.,' says the study.

It adds: 'These findings suggest that providers should provide more clarity over why consumers are being required to pay for advice.'

Why did consumers want to access their pensions? (Source: Citizens Advice)

Types of fee paid by consumers since Aprll 2015 (Source: Citizens Advice)

Why did consumers switch to other pension providers? (Source: Citizens Advice)

Why did consumers stick with their existing providers? (Source: Citizens Advice)
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By Patrick Donachie

JAMAICA  Police were asking for the publics help in locating a person of interest in connection with an assault that occurred May 29.

At about 9:47 p.m. that evening, an unknown woman entered the emergency room of Jamaica Hospital accompanying a 20-year-old man who had suffered a gunshot wound, police said. Before anyone was able to learn her identity, the woman left the hospital, according to the NYPD.
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By Patrick Donachie

Jonathan Clarke, one of five candidates in the Democratic primary to succeed U.S. Rep. Steve Israel (D-Melville) in the district covering northeast Queens, said his background was decidedly unconventional in comparison to other candidates.

Ive always been interested in politics, he said during an interview at the TimesLedger office, but from the outside.

After leaving high school to care for his father, a disabled veteran, he completed college by attending classes at night and became a market analyst. In 2008, he enrolled in law school, pursuing a lifelong passion for ethics, and he is currently an attorney.

In 2013, he made an unsuccessful bid for county legislator in Leavittown, L.I., He said that the pay-to-play politics he witnessed during the race inspired him to run for Congress.

To me, the biggest issue is the link between money and politics, as long as that link is so strong. Its not so much ethics as it is a corrupting force on politics, he said. Nobody in this race is really talking about that.

Clarke said the next president could have the opportunity to appoint Supreme Court justices who would overturn the courts 2010 decision in the Citizens United case, which allowed unlimited contributions to political campaigns. He also supports a constitutional amendment limiting money in politics. He views campaign finance reform as a bipartisan issue and said that when it comes to the economy and other issues, he is a progressive but not a partisan.

I see issues like the economy not as Democrat or Republican or left vs. right. To me, theyre numbers. Two plus two equals four. Its not a Democratic four or a Republican four, he said. I dont have a partisan approach to economic issues.

Clarke is also the lead attorney in a federal lawsuit filed about the presidential primaries held in the state April 19. He is representing voters who allege they were unfairly disenfranchised and not allowed to participate in the process. Clarke said the suit would likely take years to complete.

Clarke also pointed to contrasts between the other candidates and himself on the recent nuclear deal struck with Iran, which he strongly backs. He said he believed it stemmed from a misunderstanding of the country.

To me, Iran has a potential to be a moderating force, Clarke said. He noted that the Middle Eastern country had significant problems, but its young demographics pointed to the possibility for change. He said the United States relationship with Saudi Arabia was cause for concern, as he believed that country was the home of an oppressive regime that funded terrorism.

Forwarding the nuclear deal is something that will benefit Israel and the world in general in terms of combatting extremism, he said. He also pointed out that he was a Bernie Sanders supporter, in contrast to other candidates on the ballot for the primary.

Clarke cited airplane noise and the lack of robust transportation as issues he had regularly encountered from voters in the Queens area of the 3rd CD, which includes parts of Bay Terrace, Little Neck, Glen Oaks, Floral Park and Whitestone, in addition to wide swaths of Nassau and Suffolk counties in Long Island.

He also spoke about the importance of getting more progressives into places of power on the committees in the Democratic Party, in order to have influence over decisions regarding party platforms and whether primaries should be open or closed to voters not enrolled as Democrats.

The primary will be held June 28.
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Astoria rally calls for tolls on all East River crossings

With the legislative session coming to an end June 16, 40 transit riders and transportation advocated called for passage of the MoveNY Fair Plan in Astoria Saturday.

In a rally near the RFK Triborough Bridge, members of the Riders Alliance and Transportation Alternatives pointed out that the bridge is one in five in Queens that would see a reduction in tolls if MoveNY were to pass in Albany adding tolls to all East River crossings with revenue going real investment in infrastructure, generating nearly $1.5 billion annually to fix roads, bridges and public transit.

An East Harlem Assemblyman introduced the bill in March and as of May it had 28 supporters who are hoping to get a Senate bill introduced.

The new MoveNY plan represents an essential step in revamping public transportation in New York City, state Assemblyman Andrew Hevesi (D-Forest Hills) said. This bill will provide a much-needed, consistent revenue stream for our mass transit system, which is in decline despite the continued fare increases of the past few years. Through statutorily dedicated funds for Queens County, this bill goes beyond the vague promises that came with the last congestion pricing plan from a few years ago, offering a tangible path to change the system.

Astoria, Long Island City and Sunnyside are inundated daily with traffic heading to and from the free Queensboro Bridge. City Councilman Costa Constantinides (D-Astoria) is leading the fight for improved safety measures on 21st Street, where traffic speeds from the Triborough to the Queensboro, but did not comment on the MoveNY Fair Plan.

State Sen. Michael Gianaris (D-Astoria) remains skeptical of the proposal, while state Assemblywoman Aravella Simotas (D-Astoria) said, Traffic and transportation are complicated problems and Im not sure that this proposal gets us where we want to go.

State Sen. Jose Peralta (D-East Elmhurst) whose district includes the northern part of Astoria has endorsed the plan along with City Councilman Jimmy Van Bramer (D-Sunnyside). On Monday, Van Bramer unveiled new speed bumps on 28th Street in Dutch Kills in front of the Growing Up Green Charter School.

People speed through Dutch Kills on their way to the Queensboro Bridge with little regard for the children and families trying to get to school, Van Bramer said. He said the problem persists in many of the neighborhoods in his district.

The communities that will benefit most from MoveNY are Astoria, Long Island City, Sunnyside and Hunters Point, since they are flanked by two toll crossings with one free bridge in the middle, MoveNY Engineer Sam Schwartz said. Every day 40 to 50,000 cars, trucks, buses and taxis avoid the tolls of the RFK Bridge and Queens Midtown Tunnel and use the streets of those neighborhoods. MoveNY is about safety, improving air quality, reducing traffic congestion and fairness for both drivers and transit riders.

He claimed drivers at tolled bridges would see tolls slashed 40 percent to 45 percent. The bill currently has 28 supporters in the Assembly, which has 150 members.

In an era of crumbling infrastructure and unreliable action in Albany and Washington to fund repairs and expansion of transportation issues, the MoveNY Plan is a much needed breath of fresh air, Community Board 5 member and Ridgewood resident John Maier said. We need reliable and dedicated transportation dollars for the metropolitan area. The current legislation put forward in the Assembly based on Sam Schwartzs MoveNY Plan can do just that.
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By Patrick Donachie

Days after a Muslim man was brutally beaten outside a Queens Village mosque, police said they were investigating the incident as a hate crime. Earlier in the week, the New York chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations had called on the NYPD to examine the crime for a possible bias motivation.

Mohamed Rasheed Khan, 59, was leaving the Center for Islamic Studies at 206-09 Jamaica Ave. on the evening of June 1 when he was approached by three young men, according to a statement released by CAIR.

The men attacked Khan, knocking him to the ground, and fled without taking his wallet, watch or bicycle, according to the statement. CAIR said the suspects were laughing as they fled.

Because of the location of the attack outside a mosque, the Islamic attire of the victim, and because nothing was stolen by the alleged attackers, we urge law enforcement authorities to investigate a possible bias motive for this troubling incident, Afaf Nasher, the executive director for CAIRs New York chapter, said. We urge the NYPD to step up patrols in the area of the mosque, particularly during activities associated with the upcoming fast of Ramadan.

Khan was wearing traditional Islamic attire at the time of the attack, according to the statement. He was being treated at Jamaica Hospital Center for multiple broken bones in his face, as well as fractured ribs and a concussion.

CAIR released a photo of Khan that was taken in the hospital and said he had been scheduled to undergo surgery this Monday.

The NYPD released a video of two of the three suspects fleeing the scene in the aftermath of the incident and were encouraging anyone with information about the assault to call NYPD Crime Stoppers at 1 (800) 577-TIPS. Elected officials also expressed their dismay about the assault.

The attack on Mohamed Rasheed Khan is a sad example of what happens when people take regrettable actions based on hate speech espoused by those with a platform to do so, City Councilman I. Daneek Miller (D-St. Albans) said. This weekend, I had the pleasure of participating in several events that attracted families and brought together people of various backgrounds and creeds. That is what southeast Queens is about, not individuals who react foolishly to inflammatory comments they hear on the news or from irresponsible leaders.

On April 20, a man disrupted prayer services at the Jamaica Muslim Center at 85-37 168th St. and uttered anti-Muslim remarks to people at the mosque, according to statements from the Muslim Center. He attacked 10 individuals before he was pushed out into the street by members of the congregation and arrested.
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By Madina Toure

State Assemblyman Ron Kim (D-Flushing) has introduced legislation proposing new measures to crack down on predatory towing.

The bill, known as the Predatory Towing Prevention Act, will increase the bond to protect consumers to a minimum of $50,000 and a maximum of $250,000 from the $5,000 set in 1987 and empower the Consumer Affairs Commissioner to revoke licenses of repeat offenders. The bill will also eliminate the usage of spotting techniquestowing company employees on the ground actively looking for cars to tow awayand require towing truck operators to acquire written permission from the owner or manager of private or commercial property before towing a vehicle.

Kim said immigrant communities, especially women members, tend to be targeted the most and that there has been pushback from the city because it would change Consumer Affairs Department regulations.

They themselves are waiting outside preying on drivers, he said. Theyre not supposed to be doing that. We want to make sure we can strengthen the law.

Kim has been working closely with the Legal Aid Society and the Consumer Affairs to fight against predatory towing, which he said has led to hundreds of thousands of dollars in restitution for consumers and more than $30 million in fines levied against unethical towing operators.

Citywide 13 companies were issued violations for ignoring the towing laws this year, three of which are in Queens, according to the DCA. Last year, 35 companies citywide were issued violations, eight of which were in Queens.

The agency is reviewing his proposed bill and looks forward to working with him to strengthen protections for New York Citys consumers, a DCA spokeswoman said.

Sateesh Nori, attorney for Legal Aid Societys Queens Neighborhood Office, said All About Automotive II Inc., a Brooklyn-based company, was operating a parking lot on 156th Street and Northern Boulevard in Flushing. It is unclear if All Automotive still operates the parking lot.

In the fall of 2014, one of Kims constituents, a pregnant Korean woman who was shopping, came back to her car at the parking lot and a man told her she had parked illegally, Nori said.

The man told her she had to pay $300 and she had to call a relative to bring the money to her, which she then gave to the man, he said.

We found all kinds of shady behavior and various fines and other complaints that had been filed against them, Nori said, referring to All About Automotive. And thats where this bill was born.

Legal Aid Society operated a hotline to field calls and its consumer law attorney assisted clients and Kims office.

In January 2014, All about Automotive entered into a settlement agreement with DCA in response to violations issued by the agency and agreed to comply with the law, submit monthly compliance reports and pay $55,000 in consumer restitution and fines, according to the DCA.

But All About Automotive continued to violate the law despite the agreement and the agency received additional consumer complaints, so the agency issued additional violations and sought to revoke the companys license and obtain restitution for consumers, Nori said.

Most of the complaints were about overcharging, demanding cash, failing to take towed vehicles back to the storage yard and damage to towed vehicles. DCA also found the company was towing from lots without owners authorization.

In January, an administrative law judge issued the final decision in the DCAs case against All About Automotive, revoked the companys license and ordered it to pay $375,418.41 in restitution to more than 2,800 consumers.
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By Bill Parry

The citys Department of Education has become the target of the federal government in a lawsuit that alleges that the department discriminated against black teachers who worked at an Elmhurst school and retaliated against an assistant principal who spoke out, according to U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara.

The government alleges that during the 2012-2013 school year, the DOE permitted Pan American International High School Principal Minerva Zanca and Superintendent Juan Menedez to discriminate against every black teacher on the staff.

Its nearly unthinkable that, in this day and age, one of the largest and most diverse school districts in the United States would allow racial discrimination and retaliation to flourish, Bharara said. Yet, that is what we allege happened at Pan American International High School. Federal civil rights laws prohibit this misconduct. The suit seeks to remedy the violations that occurred at Pan American and ensure that the New York City Department of Education protects its employees civil rights in the future.

The school is located in the Elmhurst Educational Complex, located at 45-10 94th St., and it serves 374 recently immigrated English language learners from Latin America, according to its website. During the 2012-2013 school year, Pan American employed 27 teachers, three of whom were black.

Throughout that school year, Principal Zanca purposely targeted John Flanagan, Heather Hightower, two untenured teachers, by giving them unsatisfactory lesson rating in an effort to deny them tenure, according to the complaint. Zanca made derogatory racial comments to Assistant Principal Anthony Riccardo, specifically stating that Hightower looked like a gorilla in a sweater with f****ing nappy hair and Flanagan had big lips according to the complaint.

Zanca also discriminated against Lisa-Erika James, a tenured teacher who ran the schools theater program, by canceling plays and cutting funding, according to the complaint

The lawsuit claims that Zanca retaliated against Riccardo for his complaints about her treatment of the three teachers. When Riccardo refused to give an unsatisfactory rating on one of Hightowers lessons, Zanca allegedly accused him of sabotaging her plan and had school security remove him from the building, the complaint says.

The lawsuit also claims that allegations Zanca engaged in discrimination and retaliation were brought to the attention of Superintendent Mendez, but the DOE did not take disciplinary action against the principal.

The DOE says its Office of Equal Opportunity opened cases regarding these allegations and transferred the matters to DOEs legal office when complaints were filed externally.

All employees work environments must be safe and supportive, and we have zero tolerance for any discrimination, DOE spokeswoman Devora Kaye said.

Title VII authorizes the Department of Justice to commence an action in the United States District Court against the DOE to remedy discrimination and retaliation for opposing discrimination.

The complaint seeks declaratory and injunctive relief, as well as compensatory damages on behalf of Flanagan. Hightower, James and Riccardo. None of the four worked at Pan American International High School after the 2012-2013 school year.

Zanca retired as a principal in 2015, according to the DOE and neither she nor Superintendent Mendez had previous disciplinary history with the DOE.
John Fetterman and Dr. Oz debate: Takeaways from close Pa. Senate race

Senate candidates John Fetterman and Mehmet Oz squared off Tuesday evening in the first and only debate of their hotly contested race.
Contributed photo Dylan Cavin, a member of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, said he thought his artwork would lean toward fantasy or sci-fi when he was younger, but as his work evolved, he discovered he wanted to paint what he knew.

SHARE Contributed photo Dylan Cavin's exhibit at the Kemp Center includes "ledger" art. Plains Indians art from the 1800s is often called ledger art because the drawings were done on ledger or account books.

By Richard Carter, Special to the Times Record News

Having already shown his work in the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian in Washington D.C. and in New York, artist Dylan Cavin opens his first exhibit in Texas on Friday at the Kemp Center for the Arts.

An enrolled member of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, the Norman-based Cavin regularly shows his art at the Tribes 131 Gallery in Norman and PaseoArtWorks in Oklahoma City, as well as markets and festivals in his home state.

Fourteen of his large, colorful, somewhat abstract acrylic paintings and smaller detailed ledger drawings are on display in the West End Studio Gallery through Aug. 13.

Cavin shows his work often, including his recently completed commission for 15 large paintings for the Choctaw Nation's Durant, Oklahoma, casino, though his day job is as a graphic design artist.

"In my free time, I paint and draw," he said.

He began showing his pieces in galleries 10 years ago, though he has been painting and drawing since he was a child. Cavin studied art at the University of Science and Arts of Oklahoma in Chickasha, where he received his bachelor's degree.

His graphic design job allows him to not have to rely on his art for income.

"Sometimes I feel like I do graphic design in order to paint; other times, I need a break and am just done with things at 5 p.m.," he said.

While he enjoys painting on 2-feet-by-3-feet canvasses and boards or larger, he said it's cumbersome to transport those to shows.

"Unless it's a commission, or I know where it's going, I tend to not go larger than 2 by 3," he said.

At least two of his acrylic paintings at the Kemp are that size.

For his commission for the Choctaw casino, the 15 works range from 4 by 5 feet to 5 by 10 feet

On Cavin's larger canvasses, he focuses more on working with colors: "I like to be a little more abstract, concentrating more on brush strokes," he added.

On paper, the artist said he's looking for something more realistic.

"I work on watercolor paper, Bristol, notebook paper, ledger paper and even old bank checks," he said.

Cavin said he is a bit of a collector of old paper items. For the Kemp show, he found old First National Bank of Wichita Falls checks and ledgers and drew and painted on them.

"I like to explore that old paper. Since I do work with an ink wash, the older the paper, the better it takes the ink wash."

Being a Native American and showing at a lot of Native American venues, "I've always kind of been around ledger art and found it fascinating," Cavin said of the genre. Nineteenth-century Plains Indian drawings often have been called ledger drawings because they were made with pencil, ink and watercolor on pages of old ledger or account books.

For his "Scissortail Check 1941" (ink on paper), Cavin worked off a photograph he took and did a drawing and yellow wash on a check.

"You start with pencil drawing," he said. "Then, I'll water down some ink and, with a brush, put some tones and values in. I'll then get an ink pen and do art lines and go back and forth with the wash and the ink and slowly develop it."

In college, Cavin painted on objects that are not necessarily meant to be drawn or painted on.

"I like working with the tone or texture," he said. "It starts with its own history, and I can kind of make an alternative history, and it adds to the whole look." Had you asked Cavin in high school, or even college, where he wanted to go with his art, he would have said "science fiction, fantasy, comic book art stuff."

But the more he explored art, the more he wanted to paint and draw what he knew.

"My wife is from Lawton, and we always go to the wildlife refuge to see the bison and longhorns and the wildlife," Cavin said. "People know those things, and I fell in love with that subject matter."
United Regional Health Care system

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Megumi Maguchi, MD, President & Medical DirectorAdvanced Geriatrics & Primary Care, LLC Pensacola, Fla.

I was a resident at the Wichita Falls Family Medicine Residency Program during the years of 2008-2011. I was Chief Resident during the last year of my residency. These were years of great struggle and great hope. I would not be where I am today without this great training. When I think of my residency, I think about "My Rock", that one special physician. We had the privilege to train under a great leader and physician, Dr. Ahmed Mattar. He was always trying to pull us through, see us through, give us the best advice clinically, morally, spiritually, legally, and ethically. I have met many world class clinical educators, but none like Dr. Mattar. He has given his life to the Residency Program every step of the way with his convictions and leadership. It made the Residency Program better, and for this I am grateful.

I read in the TRN article that United Regional is parting ways with the Residency Program. I am in shock to hear the reasoning behind this.

After leaving the Residency, I was accepted to the Geriatric Fellowship Program at Harvard Medical School in Boston, MA. I was admitted because of the high quality of teaching I received in Wichita Falls. I am personally offended by the innuendo that this Program has not produced high quality physicians.

Not a day goes by that I am not grateful for the quality of the Program I was trained under and the guidance of the Director, Dr. Ahmed Mattar and the faculty. United Regional could not have asked for a better Program to partner with than the current Wichita Falls Family Medicine Residency Program.

One of the many great things Dr. Mattar and my esteemed faculty taught me was the love of medicine and to serve those who are in most need.

I plead with the Hospital CEO and their Board to reconsider this position, as this Program has done nothing but produce consistently high quality physicians every year. The community and the country needs more physicians from this program.
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As she claimed ownership of the Democratic presidential nomination on Tuesday evening, Hillary Clinton knew she had to appeal to supporters of Bernie Sanders, the insurgent whose campaign attracted millions of young voters.

In her brief, uncharacteristically lyrical speech, Clinton therefore praised Sanders, who had still shown no sign of conceding that his long-shot effort had failed.

She talked in general terms about principles that Democrats in both feuding camps presumably believe in: greater economic equality, a higher minimum wage and "getting unaccountable money out of politics."

"Sen. Sanders, his campaign and the vigorous debate that we've had about how to raise income, reduce inequality and increase upward mobility have been very good for the Democratic Party and for America," she said, waving a giant olive branch.

Clinton also spent time reminding voters of the one factor that she and her campaign may consider their ace in the hole: The presumptive Republican nominee.

"Donald Trump is temperamentally unfit to be president," she said. Trump's slogan, "Make America great again," is "code for let's take America backward," she charged.

In any major speech, what's left out is often as important as what's included. Clinton didn't mention her husband, former President Bill Clinton, who was onstage. She didn't mention President Barack Obama, who named her secretary of state, although she's counting on his help campaigning.

Most important, she didn't mention the raw electoral numbers that her campaign aides have been brandishing, increasingly fiercely, over the past few weeks; the fact that on Monday, The Associated Press declared that she had enough delegates to win the nomination; or that, on Tuesday, she won a majority of "pledged delegates" chosen through primaries and caucuses before the California results were in; or that she was on track to win some 3 million more voters than Sanders over the course of an unexpectedly difficult primary campaign.

Nor did she make any demand that Sanders drop out, not even a gentle hint.

It was as if the entire Clinton campaign had suddenly noticed that they had finally crossed the finish line, and could, for once, be generous  even though, in private, there is still little or no affection between the two camps.

As recently as Tuesday afternoon, prominent Clinton supporters including Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., openly expressed annoyance at Sanders's resistance to dropping out. But other Democratic elders, including Obama and Vice President Biden, urged Clinton and her aides to give Sanders the space he needed.

Obama called both candidates on Tuesday. He congratulated Clinton on the nomination, and congratulated Sanders on his campaign. Obama met with Sanders on Thursday, and Sanders indicated he's closer to ending his campaign.

In recent weeks, the Sanders team has been slowly coming to terms with the implacable arithmetic: Clinton's lead  among both "pledged delegates" and unelected superdelegates  was too large. Still, they've said that they need time to decide that their cause is hopeless  and to help enthusiastic supporters think about transferring their allegiance to the nominee they've been fighting.

One test for Clinton, then, was whether she would make that process easier or harder for the Sanders camp  whether she would demand a concession speech, or criticize the senator for hesitating, as some of her aides had already done.

In the end, she chose to be gracious  if mostly by omission.

Plenty of hard work still lies ahead, of course. Sanders and his followers have a list of demands for changes in the party rules and platform that they intend to press at the convention in Philadelphia next month.

And Clinton doesn't only need to pacify the liberal wing of her party, she needs to find a way to bring skeptical independent and moderate voters to her side as well.

Her most vigorous rhetoric came as she reminded voters that she's not Donald Trump, whom she said "wants to win by stoking fear and rubbing salt in wounds."

"We are better than this," she said. "We won't let this happen in America."

From the perspective of history, the most important thing that happened on Tuesday was that a woman claimed the presidential nomination for the first time in American history  and, to be sure, Clinton marked that landmark, too.

But only for a moment.

Underneath the rhetoric, the rest of her speech was brisk, practical and politically targeted  not unlike the candidate herself.

Doyle McManus is a columnist for the Los Angeles Times. Readers may send him email at doyle.mcmanus@latimes.com.
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Bethlehem

Local commercial real estate agents say there is built up demand for a new warehouse complex being developed off Thruway Exit 22 in Selkirk by Rosenblum Developmemt of Albany.

Officials from Rosenblum were before the Bethlehem planning board earlier this week to provide an update on the project, which would include three buildings with a total of 169,000 square feet of space that could include a combination of warehouse, light assembly, research and office space.

Jeff Mirel, executive vice president with Rosenblum Development, told the planning board on Tuesday that the company was hopeful that it would have a signed tenant for the 35,000 square-foot building before site plan approval for the project was granted by the town. He said there have been talks with some potential tenants, but nothing definitive. The site is on 27 acres on on River Road, just south of the Thruway exit.

More Information http://www.timesunion.com/business/article/Green-manufacturer-has-considered-Bethlehem-6850127.php See More Collapse

ROSENBLUM PROJECT TARGETING NEED FOR WAREHOUSE SPACE

However, local real estate agents believe there is major demand for similarly-sized warehouses in the town.

Jessica Richer, a commercial broker with RealtyUSA wrote Bethlehem Town Supervisor John Clarkson that she supports approval of the Rosenblum project, known as the Gateway Commerce Center, because she sees a lot of demand for warehouse space that cannot be found.

"I have been working with a national company that requires approximately 30,000 square feet of warehouse space..." Richer wrote. "Unfortunately, I have not been successful in finding adequate warehouse space to meet their needs in the town of Bethlehem."

Richer also said that a fellow commercial real estate agent had told her that they had a client who was looking to move operations to the town of Bethlehem in about six months and needed warehouse or flex space.

"I told him that the current warehouse inventory was limited and would not meet his needs, but that I was aware of the proposed Gateway Commerce Center and that would be an ideal local for his client."lrulison@timesunion.com  518-454-5504  @larryrulison
San Francisco

With outcry growing against those who stood by a former Stanford University swimmer who sexually assaulted an unconscious woman, a childhood friend and a high school guidance counselor have apologized for writing letters of support urging leniency for Brock Turner.

The case against the one-time Olympic hopeful has gripped the country, with letters to a judge from Turner's family and friends drawing outrage from critics who say they are shifting blame from a 20-year-old man who won't take responsibility for his actions. Meanwhile, a searing message the victim read to Turner at his sentencing has been called a courageous account of the effect the assault has had on her life.

Santa Clara County Judge Aaron Persky sentenced Turner to six months in jail and three years' probation for attacking the intoxicated 23-year-old woman behind a campus dumpster in January 2015. He tried to flee, but students tackled and pinned him down until police arrived.

The judge cited Turner's clean criminal record and the effect the conviction will have on his life. He will likely serve three months.

Defendants can solicit letters of support before sentencing. One of them came from Kelly Owens, a guidance counselor at Oakwood High School in Dayton, Ohio, where Turner attended.

She had told the court that he was "absolutely undeserving of the outcome" of a jury trial that resulted in his conviction of three felony counts of sexual assault.

She said the letter was a mistake, her school district said.

Leslie Rasmussen, a childhood friend of Turner's, also faced criticism for writing a supportive letter. She had blamed campus drinking culture and political correctness for his drunken life choices.

"I was not there that night. I had no right to make any assumptions about the situation," according to a Facebook post that appears to be Rasmussen's. "Most importantly, I did not acknowledge strongly enough the severity of Brock's crime and the suffering and pain that his victim endured, and for that lack of acknowledgement, I am deeply sorry."
Washington

Testifying to Hillary Clinton's grit and experience, President Barack Obama endorsed his former secretary of state's bid to succeed him on Thursday and urged Democrats to line up behind her.

It was all part of a carefully orchestrated pressure campaign aimed at easing Clinton rival Bernie Sanders toward the exit and turning fully to the fight against Republican Donald Trump.

Obama's long-expected endorsement, delivered via an online video, included a forceful call for unity and for "embracing" Sanders' economic message, which has fired up much of the liberal wing of his party. Obama sought to reassure Democrats that Clinton shares their values and is ready for the job.

"Look, I know how hard this job can be. That's why I know Hillary will be so good at it," Obama said. "I have seen her judgment. I have seen her toughness. I've seen her commitment to our values."

Obama's testimonial came less than an hour after the president met privately with Sanders at the White House to discuss the future of the senator's "political revolution." Sanders left the meeting subdued and indicated he had gotten the message.

Although he stopped short of endorsing Clinton, the Vermont senator told reporters he planned to press for his "issues"  rather than victory  at the party's July convention and would meet with Clinton "in the near future" to discuss ways to defeat Trump.

At an evening campaign rally at Washington's RFK Stadium, Sanders made no mention of Clinton, of trying to win over the party insiders known as superdelegates or of pressing his case at next month's Democratic National Convention.

He barely mentioned next Tuesday's primary election in the city, the last on the Democratic primary calendar.

"It would be extraordinary if the people of Washington, our nation's capital, stood up and told the world that they are ready to lead this country into a political revolution," Sander said in the final sentence of an hour-long address.

In another sign of Democratic unification, Sen. Elizabeth Warren made plans to endorse Clinton.

The Massachusetts senator had been the only holdout among the Senate's Democratic woman, and her endorsement would send a signal to Sanders' progressive supporters that it's time to unite around the party's presumptive nominee.

Clinton declared victory over Sanders on Tuesday, having captured the number of delegates needed to become the first female nominee from a major party.
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Clifton Park

Hear her voice describing in-flight WiFi for Delta Airlines, promoting dealerships for Subaru and distributing internal audio training materials for Facebook.

Satauna Howery has recorded hundreds of commercials, narrations, training videos and other projects for some of the nation's top companies  right from her Clifton Park home studio, tucked into the house's basement.

And her business plan recently ranked as a finalist in a competition for blind entrepreneurs.

In late May, Howery won $5,000 from a pitch competition conducted by Chicago-based Hadley Institute for the Blind and Visually Impaired. She hopes to make her company, Satauna's Voiceovers, profitable by 2018 and expects to gross $102,000 in sales this year.

With the contest win, Howery said she hopes to hire part-time staff  especially other blind people  to help with administrative and editing duties.

"For me, the Internet levels the playing field to make that possible," she said, sitting in the small, padded recording studio. She knows other blind people are in podcasting and music, but she wants to help them monetize these skills. "If I can provide others that opportunity, why wouldn't I?"

Howery earned her first recording gig in 2013, voicing over a video for an awards ceremony. Since then, she's narrated math textbooks, voiced animated characters and read nonfiction audiobooks. She said she often juggles between five and six jobs at a time, from radio spots to advertisements for insurance companies to "dynamic and fun" character work

Clients send her scripts in via email, which are then relayed to her Braille display. Challenges can arise, she said, when information presented in a table does not cleanly shift to the linear reading enabled by the Braille machine. Or when clients ask her what they believe to be a simple request: Only read the text written in red, for example.

"They don't generally need to know that I'm blind," she said, adding that in many cases, her husband Tom Howery will clean up data tables for her to read.

Meeting other blind businesswomen at the May pitch event was fun, she said, adding that meeting these professionals is often rare.

"It's on my mind, how to best connect with other blind entrepreneurs," she said. "I don't think there's anything out there that does that, particularly in the online [business] sphere."

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Hadley Institute, which provides distance education to blind and visually impaired students, created its Forsythe Center for Employment and Entrepreneurship in 2011 to host business courses, modules and resources.

This year's event, which attracted about 20 applicants, was its first pitch contest, center director Colleen Wunderlich said. The three finalists, each of whom had taken a Hadley business course, presented to judges in Chicago.

About 75 percent of people who reported blindness or serious difficulty seeing identified as not being in the labor force, according to the American Federation for the Blind, though estimates vary. This figure includes those who are not actively looking for work.

The three finalists in the contest won a combined $27,500.

"I launched the competition to encourage people who are blind to develop product and service ideas and turn them into businesses," Wunderlich said in an interview, adding that she plans to continue the contest in future years. "It was meant to be an incentive for them to say, 'I have this plan, now I'm going to actually do it.' "

lellis@timesunion.com  518-454-5018  @lindsayaellis
You've just finished reading an amazing book, the kind you're still thinking about days or even weeks after you've put it down. You're dying to talk about it with someone.

We've rounded up half a dozen Capital Region book clubs to highlight, and there are still more out there. The groups range from educators networking for the best books to put in schools to groups of like-minded individuals having rousing discussions about new titles and everything in between.

The Capital Region BOCES Elementary Book Group

Who the group is: The group includes teachers, librarians, and other educational professionals affiliated with BOCES. Anne Rappoccio, school media specialist at Voorheesville Elementary, facilitates the group.

More Information 518 Life magazine The full version of this story first appeared in the June issue of the Times Union's 518Life magazine, which gives you an insider look at the Capital Region. Pick up a free copy at your local Price Chopper or Hannaford. See More Collapse

How to join: Anyone affiliated with BOCES can join. They've had professors, students, interns, and others in the educational field attend meetings. People sign up for one meeting at a time, so you do not need to be an official member to come to a meeting. People can sign up using MyLearningPlan.com.

The Capital Region BOCES Young Adult Book Group

Who the group is: The group is made up of middle and high school librarians and teachers who attend for networking and professional development. They meet monthly at one of the librarians' schools, and discuss the latest recommended reads for kids; they throw in their favorite adult reads too. Alicia Abdul, a high school librarian at Albany High School, has been facilitating the group for five years.

How to join: Members join by being a teacher or librarian in any of the surrounding schools that teach/interact with middle school and high school students. Members receive professional development credit, though there are many members who are retired who still enjoy visiting and sharing books they're currently reading.

Reading Music

Who the group is: Reading Music is more of a program with quarterly events than it is a club, although it started out that way. Sarah Clark, creative services coordinator at the Albany Public Library, started a book club with a colleague centering around memoirs and biographies of musicians and bands. After a few years, they saw fewer and fewer people in attendance.

Matt Durfee, a local musician, suggested that "it would be really cool if the library asked musicians to write books about the literature." And Reading Music was born. Every three months a local musician writes songs inspired by a particular writer, or a particular book, with the musician choosing the reading material. They perform, often with a guest musician and readings from the books.

How to join: Unlike traditional book clubs, there aren't meetings so much as there are events. The events are always listed on the Albany Public Library's website on their calendar.

It is not required to read the books beforehand, although it certainly enhances the experience. Clark finds some folks who attend are then inspired to read the books afterwards. The group tends to be a mix of music fans, and fans of the writers, who come to also enjoy the music.

Bethlehem Teachers Book Club

Who the group is: The club was started in 2005 by Felicia Bordick, a retired teacher who wanted to make the most of her free time. She had belonged to book clubs before, but none seemed to click with her  so she started her own.

Bordick initially called the group The First Monday of the Month Book Club. But when booking the board room of the Bethlehem Library, an original member, Diane Isenberg, was asked on the spot to give a name for the group. She renamed the group to the Bethlehem Teachers Book Club and they have remained as such, meeting on the first Thursday of the month at 7 p.m. in the board room at the library.

How to join: People join by knowing someone who is already a member. A member brings a friend and introduces them to the group. Although always open to new members, they are limited by the number of people allowed in the board room at the Bethlehem Library; so far they haven't exceeded capacity. Sometimes there is a small attendance, other times as many as 14 or 15 participants. There is no need to RSVP  just show up. Bordick emails a schedule of books to be discussed, as well as a reminder, a few days prior to the meeting.

Sign up for The Knick  Get the latest news and features with our afternoon newsletter.

Bach Branch Nonfiction Book Discussion Group

Who the group is: The group includes adults from all walks of life. Several are retirees  an art teacher, a chemist/environmental scientist, a human services professionals, a lawyer, a high school English teacher, and a legal secretary to name a few; there is also a self-employed history buff.

How to join: The group is open to any adult interested in reading and discussing nonfiction books. They have found a group of up to 16 works best for them, as too large of a group makes active discussion difficult. Those interested in participating can see Jennifer Ward at the reference desk of the Bach Branch of the Albany Public Library or call 482-2154. Copies of the current book being read are usually available at the circulation desk.

Some just attend one discussion due to a strong interest in the title, with the core group meeting every month. Ward describes the group as a cohesive bunch.

Good Books

Who the group is: Good Books is headed up by Karen Good, with other members including Karla Gareau, Sarah LaRoe, Janice Lutt, Brenda Mercado, Sophia Morria, Erika Pangburn, Jill Rafferty-Weinisch, Katherine Stephens, and Ellen Lynette Williams.

The club was started by Good in 2010, when she found herself dying to discuss two books she'd read, and had no group to do it with: ''Blink'' and "The Tipping Point," both by Malcolm Gladwell. Good posted a Facebook note to some friends to start a book club. "You may not recognize some of the names tagged on this note," she said, "but trust me, we are all unique, intense, intelligent women who will bring unique perspectives to any discussions we have." And Good Books began.

How to join: Typically one of the members nominates a new member and the group discusses possible entry, but they are not accepting new members at this time.
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This spring, SelectBlinds.com did something once unheard of in the window-covering industry: It stopped selling blinds and shades with pull cords.

Over the past 30 years, corded window coverings have killed or injured hundreds of children. But despite calls from safety experts, parent groups and others, manufacturers and retailers have continued to sell them  until recently, when a few companies started breaking ranks.

"I am very sorry we did not do it sooner," said Al Silverberg, chief executive officer of SelectBlinds.com, of his online retail company's decision to quit selling products with pull cords.

Still, he said, "It is never too late to do the right thing."

The changes have come as the Consumer Product Safety Commission, after years of inaction, is beginning a federal rule-making process that could require the industry to eliminate cord dangers. While those rules are being developed, agency officials have stepped up pressure to persuade some companies to halt sales of products with cords.

The firms that have acted to date account for a small fraction of industry sales, but officials said they consider the actions significant.

Elliot Kaye, chairman of the CPSC, called the decision by SelectBlinds.com "a great step forward for safety," saying the firm was "putting child safety first."

The Phoenix-based company is believed to be the first custom window-covering distributor to sell only cordless products. Its decision was effective March 31.

In recent months, big box chains including Target and Ikea also have stopped selling corded blinds and shades. Lowe's has promised to eliminate its corded products no later than 2018.

More than 300 children, most of them under the age of two, have died from strangling on window cords over the last three decades, according to the CPSC. At least another 177 have been injured, including some who suffered permanent brain damage or quadriplegia requiring lifelong care and therapy, according to the nonprofit group Parents for Window Blind Safety.

The Window Covering Manufacturers Association, an industry trade group that has led a decades-long fight against a federal window-covering rule, declined comment on the trend.

As an alternative to federal action, the group is proposing changes in voluntary industry standards for manufacturing corded products, which already have been revised at least six times since officials began tracking cord deaths in the early 1980s.

The industry also is proposing new consumer education programs and new labeling  moves that, critics say, put the burden of keeping kids safe on parents and other consumers, and simply do not work.

In New York state, lawmakers have offered up a sheaf of measures to address the danger, though none have made it to Gov. Andrew Cuomo's desk. Assemblyman John McDonald, D-Cohoes, has backed three bills currently moving through the legislative process, including one requiring pediatricians to warn parents about cord safety; it passed the Assembly earlier this year but awaits action by the state Senate, where it's sponsored by Halfmoon Republican Kathy Marchione.

Another bill would have allowed renters to break their lease if a landlord refuses to install blinds that meet standards adopted by the industry in 2012. That proposal is currently bottled up in the Assembly's Housing Committee, and faces uncertain prospects.

A third measure would require the replacement of corded blinds from facilities such as schools and day-care centers. Two versions of that measure are competing for attention in the Assembly, though only one has a Senate sponsor.

McDonald said lawmakers agree on the need to address the product's problems. "It's the how-do-you-get-there that's being worked on," he said. The lawmaker became involved in the issue after the son of a Maryland couple who had grown up in Niskayuna was strangled in 2014 by a corded blind in his bedroom. Cormac "Mac" Thomas was 2 years old.

Amid the regulatory and political maneuvering, other young children are dying.

One of the most recent victims: Roselynn "Rosie" Mae Hanna, 3, of suburban Columbus, Ohio, who died on April 16. She had wandered into the living room of her home and wound up hanging herself on a mini-blind cord while her mother was sewing and watching her younger brother in another room.

Then, on May 25, a 2-year-old girl died after becoming entangled in the cord of a window blind in Oakland Park, Fla., near Fort Lauderdale. Sometimes children even several years older are killed after the cords get wrapped around their necks while they are playing with them.

Silverberg, the former CEO of Uniden America Corp., a cordless telephone manufacturer and distributor, joined SelectBlinds.com in 2005. He said he found it striking that kids were still being killed by products that were supposedly safe and meeting industry standards.

"We could not in good conscience continue to sell corded product," Silverberg said, calling it "the only way you are going to eliminate any future tragedies."

Silverberg started considering plans to go cordless four or five years ago, and he initially hoped to make the change without raising his company's costs. The conversion to an all-cordless product line, however, wound up being more expensive than expected.

According to Silverberg, SelectBlinds.com is passing along some, but not all, of the expense to consumers in the form of higher prices. He said his profit margins overall are lower than when the company sold both corded and cordless products. Still, Silverberg said, "The industry can do it."

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Under federal law, the CPSC ordinarily is required to defer to industries that are developing standards voluntarily to fix products that harm consumers. Critics say the window-covering industry has exploited that fact to stave off agency action.

Kaye, who has made banning dangerous window coverings a priority, seems willing to give the industry one more chance to come up with an effective voluntary standard. A federal ban on corded products would likely trigger litigation and take years to go into effect.

In January, the Window Covering Manufacturers Association, or WCMA, proposed its "interim revision" to the voluntary industry standards for window coverings.

Under the proposal, distributors would have to include a part known as a "cleat" that consumers would install and use to tie cords up out of the reach of their children. The proposal would also have new labels placed on window coverings deemed "Safe for Kids."

"They are just stalling the process again, and CPSC is doing nothing," said Linda Kaiser, a St. Louis mother who heads Parents for Window Blind Safety. "What they are asking for is not going to save any kids' lives. They are throwing cleats in the box and expecting consumers to deal with it."

"The only way to deal with these accidents is to get rid of the common denominator  which are the hazardous pull cords on products," said Kaiser, who founded her advocacy group after her daughter Cheyenne was killed in her crib in 2002. "Safety devices have failed parents. Safety education has failed parents. It's time for the manufacturers to cut their cords for the sake of children."

The Window Covering Safety Council, an industry-supported affiliate of the WCMA, launched an education program in November. It distributed posters that warn about the risks of blinds and shades with cords and urged parents to replace them. The posters were distributed to pediatrician offices near military base housing, where a number of children have died in recent years.

One of those children was Adam Bailey. Window blind cords are standard issue in military housing such as where Adam  a 7-year-old first grader who was the oldest of five children  lived with his parents at Fort Detrick in Maryland.

The Bailey family couldn't be reached for comment, and Army investigators still are looking into the case. But as Jamara Bailey related the story to Kaiser, she had put the children down for the night on March 17 and was doing dishes and cleaning up. She heard footsteps and other noise from upstairs and went to investigate.

She discovered Adam and, Kaiser said, "she realized he was hanging. His feet were off the floor." Adam was taken to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

Adam's five-year-old brother, Jamara Bailey told Kaiser, was awake and witnessed the incident. According to Kaiser, the 5-year-old told his mother: "We were just playing, Mama."

This story was reported by FairWarning (www.fairwarning.org), a nonprofit news organization based in Pasadena, Calif., that focuses on public health, safety and environmental issues. Casey Seiler of the Times Union contributed.
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Level 3 Seeks to Cease Services, Move to High-Speed IP Network

By Maurice Nagle , Web Editor

Willie Nelson, the great American musician so eloquently stated, Turn out the lights, the partys over, they say that, all good things must. While the quote is a bit dramatic as an opener, it holds much truth as this week Yahoo News reported that Level 3 Communications asked the U.S. telecom regulator Federal Communications Commission (FCC) for permission to end its antiquated time division multiplexing (TDM) technology.

The firm is slated to end services on August 25 of this year, pending approval of course. All users leveraging this outdated technology will move to Level 3s high-speed IP-based network before the above date.

Already with solid presence in data networks, content distribution, security, managed services, voice as well as cloud and cloud connection, it was time to move away from the legacy analog PBX trunk service in addition to its digital PBX trunk service.

This announcement is simply a sign of the times, service providers are committed to innovation. So, whether its the cloud specifically or creating an advanced IP network, the competition is fierce and differentiation is based on two key factors: offerings and customer service. And, in general, the enterprise is migrating from the old to the new, i.e. moving to IP and fiber-based network architecture.

Other companies making a similar commitment include national carriers like Verizon, and Sprint. Verizon is currently in a holding pattern, waiting for approval from the FCC to cease its personal 800 services and postpaid calling cards. Sprint, on the other hand, seeks to end its long distance voice services.

Innovation truly is a beautiful thing, and as communications move forward the industry can bear witness to the fruit of all this development. Business VoIP is the today, dont live in yesterday and working with IP-based networks and cloud technologies is certainly a path to the future.

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Edited by Stefania Viscusi
[June 10, 2016] Fractyl Presents Additional Mechanistic Data at American Diabetes Association Annual Meeting

Fractyl Laboratories, Inc. (Fractyl) announced today that new data on the Company's Revita DMRTM System, used to perform minimally invasive duodenal mucosal resurfacing for the treatment of metabolic diseases (Revita DMR procedure), was disclosed as part of an oral presentation at the 2016 Scientific Sessions of the American Diabetes Association. The presentation, Endoscopic Duodenal Mucosal Resurfacing (DMR) Improves Metabolic Measures in Type 2 Diabetes: First-in-Human Study 6-Month Data, was made by Alan Cherrington, PhD. In the study, DMR not only improved glycemic control in patients with type 2 diabetes, but also improved broader metabolic indices that are indicative of an insulin sensitizing mechanism with reduced systemic inflammation. Fractyl also announced that safety and efficacy data with a minimum follow up of 12 weeks has been collected on 28 patients in the international, multi-center trial that is currently enrolling. "This presentation of first-in-human data is the most comprehensive look we have thus far at the potential impact that duodenal resurfacing can have on insulin resistance and metabolic diseases, including type 2 diabetes," said Alan Cherrington, PhD, Professor of Molecular Physiology and Biophysics, Professor of Medicine & Jacquelyn A. Turner and Dr. Dorothy J. Turner Chair in Diabetes Research, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee. "This is a very interesting time to be working in the field of metabolic diseases. The new guidelines published last month recommending that bariatric surgery be considered as a treatment for type 2 diabetes patients with inadequate blood glucose control are an historic change. Given the scale of the diabetes and liver epidemics, however, we need to explore less invasive approaches." In the first-in-human study, the safety and efficacy of Revita DMR was studied in 39 patients with suboptimally controlled type 2 diabetes (defined as HbA1c > 7.5% and on at least one 1 anti-diabetic agent) who were less than 10 years from their initial diagnosis. At six months, patients receiving DMR had improvements in fasting glucose and HbA1c, lowering of hepatic tansaminase levels, and lowering of HOMA-IR (an index of insulin resistance). Additional metabolomic assessments showed improvements in systemic insulin sensitivity, and lowered inflammatory markers. A 50 patient multicenter, international clinical trial is currently underway. Currently, 28 patients have enrolled, been treated and been followed for at least 12 weeks across sites in the United Kingdom, Chile, Italy, Netherlands and Brussels.



"Over the last two months, we have had the opportunity to present to and learn from different specialties across the disciplines that treat and study the major metabolic diseases. We believe we are developing an intervention that can reverse a critical pathological defect that is a driver of multiple metabolic conditions," said Harith Rajagopalan, MD, PhD, Co-Founder and CEO of Fractyl. Presentations of Revita DMR data in the second quarter of 2016 included:

International Liver Conference of the European Association for the Study of Liver (EASL), Barcelona, Spain, April 13-17

Digestive Disease Week, San Diego, CA (News - Alert), May 22-24

American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists, Orlando, FL, May 25-29

American Diabetes Association, New Orleans, June 10-14 About Insulin Resistance and Metabolic Diseases Nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) and type 2 diabetes are two of the most prevalent metabolic diseases. NAFLD is a condition in which fat accumulates in the liver in association with common manifestations of metabolic disease, such an altered lipid profile and insulin resistance. NAFLD can progress to nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) and lead to liver inflammation and fibrosis, which can place NASH patients at higher risk of developing cirrhosis, liver failure and liver cancer. Type 2 diabetes is characterized by hyperglycemia resulting from the resistance of the body to insulin action. In both NAFLD and type 2 diabetes, insulin resistance is a key driver of both disease processes. Approximately 50 percent of patients with NASH also have type 2 diabetes. There are currently no available pharmaceutical or procedural therapies specifically approved for NAFLD or NASH. About Fractyl and the Revita Duodenal Mucosal Resurfacing (DMR) System Fractyl Laboratories, Inc. is a private, clinical-stage medical technology company based in Waltham, MA. Fractyl is developing Revita DMR, a same-day, minimally invasive, device-based procedure to treat insulin resistance, the underlying metabolic cause of type 2 diabetes and NASH (nonalcoholic steatohepatitis). Fractyl aims to alleviate the daily burdens of disease management for patients and physicians with a safe and reliable therapeutic treatment for insulin resistance and lower the tremendous health and financial burden of metabolic disease. The Revita DMR procedure and device are currently being evaluated in clinical trials. For more information, visit www.fractyl.com or www.twitter.com/FractylLabs, or www.RevitaTrial.com. The Revita DMR Syst received European CE Mark approval in April 2016. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160610005870/en/

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[June 10, 2016] iconectiv to Discuss ATIS Test Bed Activities during M3AAWG 37th General Meeting

PISCATAWAY, N.J., June 10, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- What:

Gary Richenaker of iconectiv, a leader in telecommunications innovation and policy, will participate in a panel discussion regarding key activities of the Alliance for Industry Telecommunication Solutions (ATIS) test bed relating to anti-spoofing at the Messaging, Malware and Mobile Anti-Abuse Working Group (M3AAWG) 37th General Meeting on June 16, 2016 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The M3AAWG is a communications industry association dedicated to stopping botnets, malware, spam, viruses, DoS attacks and other online exploitation. Richenaker is principal solutions architect at iconectiv as well as co-chair of the ATIS Test bed Landscape Team (TLT) and editor of the ATIS/SIP Forum IP NNI Routing Document. Richenaker has nearly 40 years of experience in the telecommunications industry, including more than 20 years serving in leadership roles for domestic and international stanards. In his position at iconectiv, Richenaker investigates new technologies for their impact on existing services and their potential in the development of future products.



When:

9am Thursday, June 16, 2016 Where:

Sheraton Downtown Philadelphia

201 N. 17th St.

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

About iconectiv:

iconectiv's interconnection, data infrastructure, and messaging solutions help more than one billion people communicate daily, and are used by thousands of service providers, regulators, enterprises, and content providers. The company has more than 30 years of telecommunications innovation and policy experience which has been used to develop a range of solutions. iconectiv's core product areas are common short codes, routing, portability, Common Language Information Services, and Mobile Messaging. Make the connection. For more information, visit www.iconectiv.com. Media Contact:

Sharon Oddy

(908) 809 2268/[email protected] Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20130506/PH98498LOGO-a To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/iconectiv-to-discuss-atis-test-bed-activities-during-m3aawg-37th-general-meeting-300282795.html SOURCE iconectiv

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[June 10, 2016] Purell Hand Sanitizer and Hand Sanitizing Wipes in Workplace Helped Reduce Healthcare Insurance Claims for Cold and Flu by 24%

A workplace outcome study published in The Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine (JOEM) found that offices equipped with alcohol-based hand sanitizers and hand sanitizing wipes throughout the building and at employees' desks resulted in 24.3 percent fewer healthcare insurance claims for hand hygiene preventable illnesses - such as cold, flu and respiratory illnesses - than the office and employees in the control group without these products. "This study builds on the decades of science demonstrating the effectiveness of a comprehensive hand hygiene program when PURELL products are used in real-world settings," said Jim Arbogast, Ph.D., the lead author of the study and vice president of hygiene sciences and public health advancements at GOJO. "With this study, the evidence is clear that PURELL products in a workplace can directly reduce hand hygiene preventable illnesses tied to doctors' visits by more than 24 percent." The study, "Impact of a Comprehensive Workplace Hand Hygiene Program on Employer Health Care Insurance Claims and Costs, Absenteeism, and Employee Perceptions and Practices," was published on June 9 in JOEM. The study evaluated a comprehensive hand hygiene program with PURELL Hand Sanitizer and PURELL Hand Sanitizing Wipes and its impact on actual medical insurance claims tied to doctors' visits. The study found in the first year of having PURELL products available at an employee's workspace as well as throughout the building, there was a statistically significant 24.3 percent lower incidence of hygiene preventable medical insurance claims compared to the control group. GOJO and Medical Mutual of Ohio began collaborating on the study in 2013. The study, funded by GOJO, began in February 2014. The Medical Mutual Strongsville, Ohio, and Toledo, Ohio, offices were equipped with a comprehensive hand hygiene program, including alcohol-based hand sanitizer and hand sanitizing wipes. Medical Mutual's downtown Cleveland headquarters served as the control group. Al Parker, biostatistician at the Center for Biofilm Engineering at Montna State University, provided the statistical analysis.



"As a health insurance company we look for ways to help employers improve the health of their workforce," said Kathy Golovan, chief health officer and executive vice president for Medical Mutual. "The significance of this study is that it demonstrates an immediate health solution for employers that is easy to implement, cost effective and one that employees clearly value. Employers often focus on long-term chronic diseases like diabetes, heart health and weight loss of their workforce, but short-term solutions like a hand hygiene program can be impactful because it can quickly improve the health and wellness of their employees without economic stress to the organization." The major findings of the study included:

24.3% lower incidence of hand hygiene preventable insurance claims compared to the control group

13.4% fewer sick episodes or unscheduled paid-time-off (PTO) in 2014-2015 in the intervention group compared to the previous year

8 in 10 employees indicated having PURELL products throughout the office positively impacted their impression of their employer "As a physician, I am a strong advocate for hand hygiene," said William Jarvis, M.D., co-author of the study and former acting director of the Hospital Infections Program at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. "Doctors and other health professionals have been telling people for years the benefits of the healthy habit of hand hygiene, but some need proof that it makes a difference. This well-designed 13-month real-world environment study, with thorough analysis of four years of retrospective data, shows that when people use PURELL products only a few times a day, it can reduce sickness and ultimately reduce a trip to the doctor's office. Improving the health of workplace employees should be every employers' top priority." For more information about the study, go to www.GOJO.com/purelladvancedworkforce. YouTube (News - Alert) video with Medical Mutual's Kathy Golovan: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_w1SiS8hdag 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 family owned corporation headquartered in Akron, Ohio, USA, with offices in the United Kingdom, France, Australia, Japan and Brazil. About Medical Mutual of Ohio Founded in 1934, Medical Mutual of Ohio is the oldest and largest health insurance company based in Ohio. For more than 80 years, the company has served customers with high-quality, affordable group and personal health insurance plans, and third-party administrative services to self-insured group customers. As a mutual health insurance company, Medical Mutual is unique in that it operates for the benefit of its members. Unlike publicly-traded insurance companies that must maximize their financial return, Medical Mutual does not answer to stockholders or Wall Street analysts. For more information, visit the company's award-winning website at MedMutual.com. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160610005732/en/

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[June 09, 2016] What's the secret to getting the best from your barbecue? Canada Beef says it all starts at the meat counter

CALGARY, June 9, 2016 /CNW/ - When it comes to barbecue, steak on the grill is a passion for most, a hobby for some and a primal urge for many. But it takes more than a love of fire to master the grill. It turns out there is one basic step that is often overlooked that can make you a grill hero or have you hand in your tongs. Selecting the 'right steak for the job' is the make or break moment. Although there are three basic cooking categories for steaks (Grilling, Marinating and Simmering Steaks), Canada Beef's national survey of beef-buying Canadians found that over one in two beef shoppers don't think to consider the 'type' of steak they need to buy that works best for the grill. The purchase decision is primarily made on price and the size and shape of the steak. "Most shoppers make the assumption that all steaks are equal and then use the same cooking method for all," said Joyce Parslow, professional home economist and Director of Consumer Relations, Canada Beef. "It's pretty simple but often misunderstood: a steak is not a steak. Simmering Steaks like a Top Blade are amazing when done in the slow cooker where they tenderize nicely, but they are definitely going to be a disappointment if cooked on the grill." In the absence of an understanding of beef cuts, study results discovered shoppers tend to default to familiar cuts with well over three quarters of beef shoppers reporting they buy the same few cuts over and over. If their 'go-to cut' is not available, about half don't know what beef cut to try as an alternate. "Limited knowledge about cuts means less freedom to choose between options in price and tste experiences  so consumers miss out on some terrific options for grilling," said Parslow. "Canadians should explore options like the Top Sirloin Cap Steak  a moderately priced flavourful grilling steak that's sized just right to serve with a side of in-season vegetables."



"Buy what you need," adds Parslow, noting that understanding what steaks work best on the grill and what ones don't is key to getting the best eating experience and value for the money. In today's information-driven world, Canada Beef has made it simple yet fun to find the right cut of beef. The organization has developed The Roundup app (available in both official languages). The Roundup is a home-grown solution that puts a guide to buying and cooking Canadian beef into consumer's hands. The Roundup is like having both a butcher and a chef to consult with on demand. It is more than a recipe app  with a keyword search function for all beef cuts including descriptions and pictures so you can recognize each beef cut at the beef counter. The Roundup also includes Canada Beef's test kitchen verified cooking recommendations with how-to videos that empower home cooks.

"The Roundup app is the tool that allows the consumer to get the information they need at that critical moment of purchase so they have the best experience possible when they grill at home," said Rob Meijer, President, Canada Beef. "With our research findings demonstrating that over 80 percent of younger shoppers (aged 20 to 34 years) want to improve their cooking skills and that this same group would just as soon turn to an app to learn as they would a butcher, we knew The Roundup was the right thing to do." "I invite Canadians to not only connect with The Roundup to enhance their shopping and grilling experience in summer, but use it year-round to take advantage of all the Canadian beef cuts they have to choose from at the meat counter  any time of year. There are so many beef cuts to choose from, it's a shame there are only 365 days in a year to try them! I encourage Canadians to visit their local store or restaurant and ask for Canadian beef," concludes Meijer. The Roundup app is available free of charge for both Android and Apple mobile devices, and is in both English and French. The Roundup can be downloaded at the App Store and Google Play. For more information, visit www.canadabeef.ca. Canada Beef is the cattle producer-funded and run organization responsible for domestic and international beef and veal market development. It has offices in Canada, Mexico, Japan, China and Taiwan. Canada Beef works to foster loyalty to the Canadian beef brand and build strong relationships with trade customers and partners. These efforts increase demand for Canadian beef and the value producers receive for their cattle. SOURCE Canada Beef

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[June 09, 2016] Merck to Acquire Afferent Pharmaceuticals

Merck (NYSE:MRK), known as MSD outside the United States and Canada, and Afferent Pharmaceuticals announced today that the two companies have signed a definitive agreement under which Merck will acquire this privately held pharmaceutical company. Afferent Pharmaceuticals is a leader in the development of therapeutic candidates targeting the P2X3 receptor for the treatment of common, poorly-managed, neurogenic conditions. Afferent's lead investigational candidate, AF-219, is a selective, non-narcotic, orally-administered P2X3 antagonist currently being evaluated in a Phase 2b clinical trial for the treatment of refractory, chronic cough as well as in a Phase 2 clinical trial in idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) with cough. This Smart News Release features multimedia. View the full release here: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160609006459/en/ "Afferent has pioneered the clinical development of novel investigational candidates selectively targeting the P2X3 receptor, an exciting area of research," said Dr. Roger M. Perlmutter, president, Merck Research Laboratories. "We look forward to advancing these innovative molecules for patients with conditions like chronic cough, an area of significant unmet medical need." Under terms of the agreement, Merck, through a subsidiary, will acquire all outstanding stock of Afferent in exchange for an upfront payment of $500 million in cash. Also, Afferent shareholders will be eligible to receive a total of up to an additional $750 million associated with the attainment of certain clinical development and commercial milestones for multiple indications and candidates, including AF-219. "This achievement is a reflection of the talent and hard work of the experienced Afferent team in advancing the science of P2X3 receptors and the clinical development of our novel therapeutic candidates," said Kathleen Sereda Glaub, chief executive officer, Afferent Pharmaceuticals. "We are very pleased to enter into this agreement given Merck's reputation for maximizing opportunities around novel mechanisms. This agreement with Merck creates significant value for Afferent shareholders while enhancing the potential of our portfolio to provide meaningful benefits to patients globally." Data on cough frequency from the first cohort of a Phase 2b dose-escalation clinical trial of AF-219 in patients with chronic cough were presented at the 2016 American Thoracic Society (ATS) International Conference. The results of the second cohort, which is examining lower doses, are expected to be presented at a future scientific congress. The closing of the transaction will be subject to certain conditions, including the expiration of the waiting period under the Hart-Scott-Rodino Antitrust Improvements Act and other customary conditions. The companies anticipate the transaction will close in the third quarter of 2016. About P2X3 Receptor-Mediated Sensitization Afferent's clinical candidates, AF-219 and AF-130, are orally available investigational candidates that selectively block P2X3 receptors. P2X3 receptors are believed to play a key role in the sensitization of certain sensory nerves, notably C-fiber afferents. These nerves become activated and sensitized under pathological conditions mediated by a common cellular signal, ATP (News - Alert), when it is released in high concentrations due to cellular distress following ijury or infection. Afferent's compounds are designed to selectively block ATP activation of P2X3 channels, potentially reducing a range of sensory signs and symptoms.



About Chronic Cough The prevalence of chronic cough (a cough lasting more than 8 weeks) is estimated to be approximately 10 percent of adults in the U.S. While an underlying condition may contribute to cough in many of these patients, in 20-40 percent of cases no underlying condition can be identified and hence these patients are typically not responsive to symptomatic treatment. Additionally, many treatment-responsive patients are not well-controlled for their cough. There are currently no approved therapies for the treatment of chronic cough.

About Afferent Pharmaceuticals Afferent Pharmaceuticals is a clinical-stage biotechnology company and a leader in the development of novel drugs for the treatment of a range of neurogenic conditions. These conditions affect millions of patients who suffer from chronic respiratory and urologic sensory pathologies, as well as chronic pain and cardiovascular disorders, and who have limited, if any, treatment options. These chronic pathologies arise when certain nerves become hyper-sensitized as a result of inflammation, distress, infection or tissue injury, which may remain chronically sensitized for months and even years. Afferent was founded by Anthony Ford (News - Alert), Ph.D., Pappas Ventures, Third Rock Ventures, Domain Associates, New Leaf Venture Partners and Roche Ventures, following the exclusive license of Roche's P2X3 program to Afferent. The lead molecule, AF-219, is in Phase 2 clinical development for the treatment of chronic cough, and idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) with cough. A second compound, AF-130, completed Phase 1 clinical testing and is scheduled to advance to Phase 2 trials in non-respiratory conditions. For more information on the company, please visit Afferent's website at www.afferentpharma.com. About Merck For 125 years, Merck has been a global health care leader working to help the world be well. Merck is known as MSD outside the United States and Canada. Through our prescription medicines, vaccines, biologic therapies, and animal health products, we work with customers and operate in more than 140 countries to deliver innovative health solutions. We also demonstrate our commitment to increasing access to health care through far-reaching policies, programs and partnerships. For more information, visit www.merck.com and connect with us on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and LinkedIn. Forward-Looking Statement of Merck & Co., Inc., Kenilworth, N.J., USA This news release of Merck & Co., Inc., Kenilworth, N.J., USA (the "company") includes "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the safe harbor provisions of the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements are based upon the current beliefs and expectations of the company's management and are subject to significant risks and uncertainties. There can be no guarantees with respect to pipeline products that the products will receive the necessary regulatory approvals or that they will prove to be commercially successful. If underlying assumptions prove inaccurate or risks or uncertainties materialize, actual results may differ materially from those set forth in the forward-looking statements. Risks and uncertainties include but are not limited to, general industry conditions and competition; general economic factors, including interest rate and currency exchange rate fluctuations; the impact of pharmaceutical industry regulation and health care legislation in the United States and internationally; global trends toward health care cost containment; technological advances, new products and patents attained by competitors; challenges inherent in new product development, including obtaining regulatory approval; the company's ability to accurately predict future market conditions; manufacturing difficulties or delays; financial instability of international economies and sovereign risk; dependence on the effectiveness of the company's patents and other protections for innovative products; and the exposure to litigation, including patent litigation, and/or regulatory actions. The company undertakes no obligation to publicly update any forward-looking statement, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. Additional factors that could cause results to differ materially from those described in the forward-looking statements can be found in the company's 2015 Annual Report on Form 10-K and the company's other filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC (News - Alert)) available at the SEC's Internet site (www.sec.gov). View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160609006459/en/

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[June 10, 2016] ShippingExchange Dives Deep Into Sea Rates and Comes Out With the Best

GURGAON, India, June 10, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Marine transportation services account for more than 90% of total international logistics volume. It is over a trillion dollar industry. There was a global movement observed of 1.6 billion containers (TEUs) in the year 2015 and India alone contributed to 11.3 million out of this. The gargantuan figures of this industry were quickly noticed by two smart minds to tap the potential and make way for a new kind of business. That is exactly how ShippingExchange saw its formation in the summer of 2015. ShippingExchange claims to be the world's largest online marketplace for sea logistics which helps exporters get freight rates for their shipments directly from shipping lines erasing the hassles of dealing with numerous middlemen. The idea of acting as a technology bridge between shipping lines and shippers was a very transparent and win-win opportunity for all and was received well by the target customers very quickly. But behind such unique ideas there are always brave hearts and smart brains working together to bring out the perfect recipe for a successful business model. Similarly, founders Harmeet Kohli, a seasoned entrepreneur, and Ashutosh Shrivastava, an accomplished IT business head, met at a party and found their synergy in bringing a technology platform to bridge the gap between shippers and shipping lines together in a seamless way. "The very fact that sea logistics, despite being the largest part of logistics industry, didn't have any online trade element was fascinating. We were stunned with the potential and possibilities," said Ashutosh. The combination was ust right - Harmeet, having had worked with shipping giants like Maersk and CSAV, easily brought in the required operational knowledge and shipping industry experience whereas Ashutosh, an ex-SAP sales & marketing professional, contributed with his technology and marketing prowess. The stage was set, http://www.shippingexchange.com was developed in a period of five months and launched in April, 2015.



The two-fold business objective was very clear from the days of initiation, i.e. to aid the importers and exporters grab best sea freight and service terms for shipping the cargo and eventually helps shipping lines secure healthy margins on every shipment and higher volumes of business. Mainly these two groups were brought together in one online platform where they get to connect directly, look at all the quotes and negotiate to finally close the deal. Maximum transparency allows end customers and shippers to get best deals and allow the lines to feel the competition and give best quotes. The road was not without challenges, entrepreneurship never is, however, when asked about one major challenge, Ashutosh said, "The biggest challenge we faced was of convincing the shippers as well as carriers that such business-to-business transactions could be closed online. To address this we handhold our customers during the entire process and provide them all operational assistance until they get completely comfortable with trading over the Internet."

And that is what won them the trust of 19 liners and more than 6,500 shippers at present date. And yes of course, the number is growing every day at significant rate as they add almost 60 to 70 exporters every single day. What sets ShippingExchange apart from the rest is that they do business in a fair way allowing direct interaction between reputed lines and the shippers allowing better service quality and safety unlike most others who do not reveal the identity of the two until unless they secure their own margins. This is a one of its kind technological platform where direct business transactions can be made along with perfect technical assistance and superior customer service experience for one and all. About ShippingExchange: ShippingExchange.com is an online marketplace which facilitates trade between exporters/importers and shipping lines. With offices in US and India, the company operates globally and has substantial customer base in Asia, North America and Middle East. ShippingExchange is the winner of 'Best E-commerce company for ocean shipping' award by Praxis Media in 2015. For more information, please visit: http://www.shippingexchange.com Media Contact:

Ashutosh Shrivastava

[email protected]

+91-9818 579289

Founder and CEO

Freight Mantra Pvt. Ltd.



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[June 10, 2016] Yellowfin Business Intelligence Software Named in DBTA 100 for Fourth Consecutive Year

LONDON, June 10, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- For the fourth year in a row, global Business Intelligence (BI) and analytics software vendor, Yellowfin, has been recognized as one of the world's most important companies in data management and analysis in Database Trends and Applications (DBTA) magazine's annual DBTA 100: The Companies That Matter Most in Data. The 2016 DBTA 100 is the fourth annual list of the "100 companies that matter most in data", which are "addressing market demands" with new and innovative technologies that offer "fresh approaches" to industry challenges. Compiled by DBTA's experienced editorial team, the list recognizes companies based on their presence, execution, vision and innovation in delivering products and services to the marketplace. Managing editor of DBTA magazine, Joyce Wells, highlighted Yellowfin's breadth of reporting and analytics capabilities when discussing its inclusion within the 2016 version of the DBTA 100. "Delivering BI functionality via a single integrated platform, Yellowfin provides interactive dashboards, support for data exploration, collaboration, data visualizaion, and mobile device access," said Wells.



Yellowfin Global Head of Channel and Marketing, Daniel Shaw-Dennis, said that Yellowfin's inclusion was reflective of its unique approach to enabling pervasive business-user-driven BI deployments. "Organizations from across all industries, and business leaders throughout all job functions, are now looking to unlock the power of their data assets with analytics," said Shaw-Dennis. "Yellowfin's unique approach to Business Intelligence software empowers business users to work collaboratively with data analysts in their organization to achieve better business insights and act faster with analytics."

About Yellowfin Yellowfin is a global Business Intelligence (BI) and analytics software vendor passionate about making BI easy. Founded in 2003 in response to the complexity and costs associated with implementing and using traditional BI tools, Yellowfin is a highly intuitive 100 percent Web-based reporting and analytics solution. Yellowfin is a leader in mobile, collaborative and embedded BI, as well as Location Intelligence and data visualization. Over 10,000 organizations, and more than 2 million end-users across 70 different countries, use Yellowfin every day. For more information, visit www.yellowfinbi.com For regular news and updates, follow Yellowfin on Twitter (@YellowfinBI), LinkedIn (Yellowfin Business Intelligence), YouTube (Yellowfin Team) or email [email protected] to subscribe to Yellowfin's free e-newsletter. For further media information, interviews, images or product demonstration, please contact: Lachlan James, Yellowfin Global Communications Manager on +61 (0)3 8617 4954, +61 (0)431 835 658 or [email protected] Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20150616/223408LOGO







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[June 10, 2016] Widening Application Base Set to Boost the Satellite-based Earth Observation Market in APAC Through 2020, Says Technavio

According to the latest market research report by Technavio, the satellite-based earth observation (EO) market in APAC is expected to reach USD 2.65 billion by 2020. In this report, Technavio covers the present scenario and growth prospects of the satellite-based earth observation market in APAC for 2016-2020. To calculate the market size, the report considers revenue generated from the following: Data and VAS, which include image and data processing as well as information products.

EO applications in the agriculture, insurance, and manufacturing industries. For instance, insurance companies use satellite data of flood-affected areas to find out the number of casualties. The same data is useful for government agencies while providing disaster relief.

EO applications and services in defense and intelligence, energy and natural resources, government authorities, living resources, and navigation and location-based services (LBS). "EO satellites are used to access data and satellite images related to civil construction, weather forecasts, agriculture, climate, disasters, and biodiversity. As of January 2014, around 190 satellites were orbiting the planet. It is estimated that over 350 EO satellites will be placed in Earth's orbit between 2015 and 2022 due to the broad application base of EO satellites," said Rakesh Panda, one of Technavio's lead industry analysts for M2M and connected devices research. "Companies across the world are foraying into the market due to high requirements for remote sensing and meteorology across industries such as mining, oil and gas, agriculture, defense and intelligence, and forestry. Almost 45 countries have already launched EO satellites for a variety of purposes. Among them, China holds a 25% share in the space fleet," added Rakesh. Leading countries of the satellite-based earth observation market in APAC China

Japan

India

Rest f APAC



Request sample report: http://goo.gl/sVeH24 Satellite-based EO market in China

The satellite-based EO market in China was valued at USD 326.3 million in 2015. The satellite-based EO market in China will rapidly grow during the forecast period, driven by the increase in investments in space programs and rise in the demand for EO data and VAS in APAC. China is the major revenue contributor to this market. In 2013, China invested almost USD 11 billion in the space program, which is the second largest in the world. The country is working on an indigenous high-definition observation project called Gaofen. The project was initiated in 2010, with a plan to send 14 EO satellites before 2020. China launched Gaofen-1 in 2013, Gaofen-2 in 2014, and Gaofen 4, Gaofen 8, and Gaofen 9 in 2015. Satellite-based EO market in Japan The satellite-based EO market in Japan was valued at USD 76.3 million in 2015. The satellite observation market in Japan is still in its nascent stage but will grow steadily during the forecast period. Images gathered from EO satellites are used in applications such as oil and gas explorations, agriculture, defense, and disaster management in the country. In addition, some start-up companies are also planning to launch EO on microsatellites in space. For instance, Axelspace plans to put 50 EO microsatellites in the orbit from 2017-2020. The images gathered from these satellites will be widely used in applications such as agriculture and surveillance of oil fields. Satellite-based EO market in India The satellite-based EO market in India was valued at USD 76.2 million in 2015. The satellite-based EO market in India will grow rapidly during the forecast period. Images gathered from EO satellites are widely used in applications such as disaster management, agriculture, mining, oil and gas, and living resources in the country. The EO satellite, Nisar, which is the result of a collaboration between ISRO (India) and NASA (US) is set to be placed in the orbit by 2021. Nisar will be used for remote sensing purposes. Satellite-based EO market in Rest of APAC The satellite-based EO market in Rest of APAC, which comprises of Australia, South Korea, Malaysia, and Indonesia was valued at USD 164.7 million in 2015. The market is expected to grow steadily during the forecast period. Antrix, ISRO's commercial arm, signed agreements with clients in seven countries to launch 25 satellites during 2016-2017. These include 12 with the US, four with Germany, three with Algeria, three with Canada, and one each with Indonesia, Japan, and Malaysia. Browse related reports: Global Remote Sensing Satellite Market 2016-2020

Global Satellite-based Earth Observation Market 2015-2019

Global Satellite Ground Station Equipment 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 [email protected] with your requirements and a link to our subscription platform. About Technavio Technavio is a leading global technology research and advisory company. The company develops over 2000 pieces of research every year, covering more than 500 technologies across 80 countries. Technavio has about 300 analysts globally who specialize in customized consulting and business research assignments across the latest leading edge technologies. Technavio analysts employ primary as well as secondary research techniques to ascertain the size and vendor landscape in a range of markets. Analysts obtain information using a combination of bottom-up and top-down approaches, besides using in-house market modeling tools and proprietary databases. They corroborate this data with the data obtained from various market participants and stakeholders across the value chain, including vendors, service providers, distributors, re-sellers, and end-users. If you are interested in more information, please contact our media team at [email protected]. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160610005016/en/

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[June 10, 2016]

Intrepid Garners Four Silver Anvils, PR Industry's Highest Honor

NEW YORK, June 10, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Intrepid, a Salt Lake-based strategic communication firm, earned four of the public relations industry's most prestigious honors at last night's Silver Anvil Awards in New York City.

Intrepid, in conjunction with the Utah Department of Transportation's Student Neighborhood Access Program (SNAP), was recognized in the categories of events, community relations, public service and brand/reputation management for developing a digital solution and accompanying PR campaign to engage parents in increasing the number of kids walking and biking to school in Utah.

"This campaign exemplifies our approach of connecting clients with their key audiences," Intrepid President Chris Thomas said. "We conducted research to better understand the attitudes and perceptions of mothers regarding their children walking and biking to school and hen working with them designed a strategic program, including a smartphone app, to boldly engage in this important activity."







During the first year of the campaign, efforts fostered dramatic changes in behavior with Utah students and parents walking and biking 88,000 miles to school. More than 91,000 car trips were reduced, 37 million grams of CO2 emissions were saved, and app users burned nearly 9 million calories.

The four awards mark Intrepid's 7th Silver Anvil. Only 16 Silver Anvil awards have been bestowed to Utah organizations in the 70+ year history of the competition.

Other companies and organizations that were awarded 2016 Silver Anvils include: REI, The Home Depot, Michelin, H&R Block, Starbucks, Universal Pictures, the U.S. Air Force, American Greetings and Pfizer.

About Intrepid

Intrepid creates and executes on communication platforms that enable companies to effectively tell their stories and create connections. Through identifying the right audiences and utilizing integrated capabilities, Intrepid crafts impactful messages that help companies strengthen their brand and build meaningful relationships. www.intrepidagency.com

To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/intrepid-garners-four-silver-anvils-pr-industrys-highest-honor-300283083.html

SOURCE Intrepid
[June 10, 2016] Deep Packet Inspection and Processing Market Worth 18.60 Billion USD by 2021

PUNE, India, June 10, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- According to a new market research report "Deep Packet Inspection and Processing Market by Application (IDS and IPS, Network Performance Management, and Data Loss/Leak Prevention and Management), by Service, by Organization Size, by Vertical, by End User, & by Region - Global Forecast to 2021", published by MarketsandMarkets, the market is expected to grow from USD 7.01 Billion in 2016 to USD 18.60 Billion in 2021, at a CAGR of 21.6%. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160303/792302 ) Browse 67 market data Tables with 58 Figures spread through 147 Pages and in-depth TOC on "Deep Packet Inspection and Processing Market" http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/deep-packet-inspection-processing-market-252816977.html Early buyers will receive 10% customization on this report. Continuous evolution of cyber-attacks and need for network performance management & optimization solutions to efficiently manage today's complex networking environments are some of the major driving factors for the Deep Packet Inspection and Processing Market. Furthermore, the market is expected to be driven by opportunities, such as evolution of IoT and tremendous increase in network traffic in developing economies. Intrusion Detection System (IDS) and Intrusion Prevention System (IPS) is expected to be the largest contributor in the global Deep Packet Inspection and Processing Market during the forecast period In the Deep Packet Inspection and Processing Market, due to rising demands for advanced cybersecurity solutions across all industry verticals the Intrusion Detection System (IDS) and Intrusion Prevention System (IPS) in the application's segment is expected to contribute the highest in the overall revenue generation during the forecast period. The government and defense industry vertical is expected to show significant growth rate in terms of adoption of deep packet inspection based applications and services Cyber security has become one of the most important aspects of the government sector. The concept of e-governance has led the government to focus more on cyber security threats. Moreover, government agencies are compelled to meet the regulatory compliance requirements. Cyber threats in the defense verical are increasing at an alarming rate across the globe, which has necessitated the usage of robust and updated security solutions in all agencies of this industry.



Ask for sample Pages @ http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/requestsample.asp?id=252816977 With explosive growth in network traffic in the countries of APAC, the region is expected to witness the highest growth rate during the forecast period

Many countries in the regions of APAC are expected to show very high growth in the generation of network data during the forecast period. APAC is expected to be the highest network data generating region due to the increasing number of emerging industries and mobile device users. Cisco (California, U.S.), Intel (California, U.S.), IBM (New York, U.S.), HPE (California, U.S.), Palo Alto Networks (California, U.S.), Check Point (California, U.S.), Blue Coat (California, U.S.), Extreme Networks (California, U.S.), NetScout (Massachusetts, U.S.), Symantec (California, U.S.), and Viavi (California, U.S.) are identified as leaders in the Deep Packet Inspection and Processing Market, whereas Procera (California, U.S.) , Huawei (Guangdong, China), Sandvine (Ontario, Canada), Qosmos (Paris, France), LookingGlass (Maryland, U.S.), Bivio Networks (California, U.S.) , Allot (Hod-Hasharon, Israel), cPacket Networks (California, U.S.) , LogRhythm (Colorado, U.S.), and Ipoque (Rohde & Schwarz, Leipzig, Germany) are identified as key innovators in the market. Browse related reports: Cyber Security Market by Solution (IAM, Encryption, DLP, Risk and Compliance Management, IDS/IPS, UTM, Firewall, Antivirus/Antimalware, SIEM, Disaster Recovery, DDOS Mitigation, Web Filtering, and Security Services) - Global Forecast to 2020 http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/cyber-security-market-505.html Data Loss Prevention Market by Solution Type (Network DLP, Storage DLP, Endpoint DLP), by Deployment Type (On-Premise, Cloud), by Applications, by Service, by Organization Size, by Vertical, and by Regions - Global Forecast to 2020 http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/data-loss-prevention-advanced-technologies-market-531.html About MarketsandMarkets MarketsandMarkets is the world's No. 2 firm in terms of annually published premium market research reports. Serving 1700 global fortune enterprises with more than 1200 premium studies in a year, M&M is catering to a multitude of clients across 8 different industrial verticals. We specialize in consulting assignments and business research across high growth markets, cutting edge technologies and newer applications. Our 850 fulltime analyst and SMEs at MarketsandMarkets are tracking global high growth markets following the "Growth Engagement Model - GEM". The GEM aims at proactive collaboration with the clients to identify new opportunities, identify most important customers, write "Attack, avoid and defend" strategies, identify sources of incremental revenues for both the company and its competitors. M&M's flagship competitive intelligence and market research platform, "RT" connects over 200,000 markets and entire value chains for deeper understanding of the unmet insights along with market sizing and forecasts of niche markets. The new included chapters on Methodology and Benchmarking presented with high quality analytical infographics in our reports gives complete visibility of how the numbers have been arrived and defend the accuracy of the numbers. We at MarketsandMarkets are inspired to help our clients grow by providing apt business insight with our huge market intelligence repository. Contact:

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'A true blessing:' Meet the family behind the viral photo from UK's scrimmage

Micheal McGuire didn't know his photo was going to go viral after he rushed to meet his family at the Blue-White Scrimmage in Pikeville on Saturday.
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The debut of the Moto Z and Moto Z Force may have closed out Lenovo's Tech World keynote this week, but it was the add-ons that accompany these two new modular smartphones that got the bulk of the attention. Lenovo executives breezed over the specs of the new phones to talk about the modules you could attach to them, and the hands-on area for the Moto Z was dominated by these add-ons, which Lenovo has dubbed Moto Mods.

The Moto Mods on show Thursday included an attachable speaker from JBL, a mini projector, and a couple different battery packs that can extend the battery life of either Moto Z model. In addition, the demo area included style shells, which can change the look and feel of the Moto Z. And Lenovo plans to offer even more Moto Mods after the phones arrive this summer.



"The possibilities are endless," said actor Ashton Kutcher, who moonlights as a product engineer for Lenovo, during this week's keynote.



Based on the initial wave of Moto Mods we saw at this week's launch, the possibilities are pretty predictable at this point, too.





Moto Mods for the Moto Z modular phone

Not that extra battery life is something to dismiss out of hand  I sure could have used it at the Lenovo event as my iPhone's battery dipped perilously into the red. But creating a phone add-on that provides an extra battery boost seems like a fairly obvious solution, especially since you can already buy cases and add-ons that do precisely that. The same thing goes for speakers and projectors: Those already exist as smartphone accessories. Lenovo has just made it so that its versions attach directly to the phone itself.

MORE: 25 Worst Gadget Flops of All Time

That's not to pick on Lenovo. LG has the same issue with its modular phone, the G5, and the initial modules it's rolling out. The LG Cam Plus module that adds dedicated still image and video controls to the G5 is a good add-on  we rather liked it in our hands-on time with the camera add-on  but it's an extension of what a smartphone can do, not a reinvention. The same thing goes for the other G5 module LG touted when it unveiled the G5  a digital-to-analog converter that has yet to go on sale in the U.S.

Lenovo and LG could create compelling add-ons that make phones with swappable parts a must-have, but in the early going, that hasn't happened yet.

The argument for modular phones is a solid one: Instead of loading devices down with sensors and hardware that only a handful of users need, you can create specialty modules that people can swap in and out at will. The trick, though, will be to create modules that not only integrate slickly with the phone but take its functionality into new directions. Otherwise, why not just turn to accessories? In fact, Otterbox has taken that argument to its logical conclusion with its Universe case for the iPhone that lets you swap in different modules.

LG's Cam Plus module for the G5

Modular smartphone makers like Lenovo and LG could come up with compelling add-ons that make phones with swappable parts a must-have device. But in the early going for modular phones, that hasn't happened yet.



It's little wonder then that phone makers are turning to hardware makers for help in boosting the case for modular devices. LG has released software and hardware development kits, while holding developer conferences in South Korea and San Francisco to encourage companies to develop add-ons for the G5. Lenovo is following the same tack, releasing a Moto Mod development kit and dangling a $1 million prize to whoever comes up with the best prototype for a Moto Z module.



Lenovo has a few ideas of its own, if a session on innovations that I sat in on at Lenovo Tech World is any indication. There, Lenovo executives ran through a few Moto Mod concepts, including a fast-charging battery pack (think going from empty to 85 percent charged in 15 minutes) and another projector module that would beam a working keyboard onto a table top that you can use as an input device for your phone. Saving me from having to tote around another accessory to get work done on my mobile device? That's an innovative module I can get behind.



Makes of modular phone add-ons would be wise to look at what Google's doing with Project Ara. Yes, Google's modular smartphone project will include the usual spate of add-on cameras, speakers and battery packs. But among the modules Google touted at last month's Google I/O developers conference were add-ons that could monitor diabetes, help you navigate using GPS and let you send text messages even when cellular and Wi-Fi connections aren't available. The ability to slot in these capabilities make modular phones sound like a much more promising technology.





What innovative add-ons would you like to see added to a modular smartphone? Assuming that Lenovo's cash prize hasn't given you 1 million reasons to keep your idea to yourself, feel free to share it in the comments.
SAN FRANCISCO  Lenovo faces a challenge with the Phab2 Pro, the first phone released to feature Google's Tango technology for augmented reality. If the phone maker is going to convince people that Tango's 3D motion tracking and depth perception features aren't just novelties but the kind of capabilities that will be handy every day, it's going to need people to experience "a-ha" moments when holding the massive Phab2 Pro.



For me, that moment occurred when I was shopping at a hardware store.





Well, I wasn't actually shopping. I was going through a demo area at Lenovo's Tech World event with a backdrop set-up to look like a hardware store so that I could see a beta version of features that Lowe's is working on for its Tango-ready app. I was using a Phab2 Pro to view objects on the giant phone's 6.4-inch display and summon up more information about them as I made my way through the makeshift store.

MORE: Meet Lenovo's First Project Tango Phone

If I saw an item that struck my fancy, I could tap it to summon up a green dot. Swiping that dot brought up more information  pricing, a product description, even customer reviews. These weren't just flat floating boxes, either; as I moved closer to a product they got larger, taking advantage of Tango's ability to map my distance relative to the virtual objects I'm seeing.



As a demo, it was a particularly effective display on what Tango-powered phones like the Phab2 Pro can do for you and me. The data floating on the Phab2 Pro's screen was relevant to the task at hand and informative. It was simple enough for me to use, without a lot of learning curve. And it showcased Tango's ability to track the space around me and my movement.

"Your phone knows where you are in the world, but not where you are in the room," said Johnny Lee, Google's lead on the Tango Project. That's not the case with the Phab2 Pro, which, as I learned in this demo, is perfectly aware of where I am and what's around me.





And if the Phab2 Pro is going to make its mark, it's going to need a lot more of those demos to convince people that they stand to benefit from this Tango-ready phone's back of tricks.



To the credit of both the Lenovo and Google reps speaking at Lenovo Tech World, they clearly understand that. "For any technology to move to broad-scale adoption, it must be relevant in people's everyday lives," said Jeff Meredith, general manager and vice president of Lenovo's Android and Chrome Computing Business Group. Lenovo has told us that there will be 25 to 30 Tango-ready apps when the Phab2 Pro arrives this fall, with around 100 available by the time we're getting ready to ring in 2017.





And Lenovo can make a pretty compelling case for the Phab2 Pro. Here's a plenty powerful phone that lets you experience augmented reality without the need for any extra hardware  no giggle-inducing eyeglasses, no bulky headsets and no cables tethering you to other machines. You just point your phone and the depth- and motion-tracking cameras that join a 16-megapixel shooter on the rear, fire up a Tango-friendly app, and you're good to go.



That's an important pitch, because not everyone is going to want to tote around a phone as hefty as the Phab2 Pro. It takes a 7.1 x 3.5-inch frame to house the Phab2 Pro's 6.4-inch Quad HD display, with the phone reaching 0.42 inches at its thickest point. All those sensors packed into the Phab2 Pro add some noticeable weight: I felt all 9.1 ounces of the phone when I picked it up, especially compared to the regular Phab2 and Phab2 Plus, which are just as large but weigh an ounce or two less. People are going to look at the Phab2 Pro, then look at the size of their pocket (assuming they even a pocket) and decide it's just not worth it.





That would be a shame, if the demos at Lenovo Tech World were anything to go by. I've seen a few of them already as recently as last month's Google I/O conference, though that was using a larger tablet that's part of Google's developer kit for Tango. (Though not that much larger than the Phab2 Pro as it turns out.) Still, it's helpful to see what the Phab2 Pro can do, whether that's resizing dinosaurs so that a Tyrannosaurus rex and velociraptor appear in perfect scale on the floor in front of you, or using a more built-out version of the Lowe's app to redecorate a room with virtual flooring and furniture.



An app I hadn't seen before struck my fancy as a way to use a Tango device like the Phab2 Pro as a gaming machine. The Domino World app lets you construct elaborate domino displays just by holding down a button and dragging your finger around the screen to create a domino hologram on the table or floor in front of you. You can also add in special effects, like a UFO that grabs a cow in a tractor beam and swings it around to knock down dominos or a bomb that causes nearby dominos to explode as they're toppled. It's a fun AR-take on an old game with no need to clean up afterwards.





Perhaps the biggest challenge facing Lenovo and Google will be to define who exactly a Tango-ready phone like the Phab2 Pro is for. Contractors and designers seem like an ideal fit, given that you can make measurements on the Phab2 Pro just be drawing a line with your finger. The phone's massive 4,050 mAh battery, which promises 15 to 18 hours of talk time on one charge, could make it ideal for someone who does a lot of work in the field, though we'd have to see just how durable the Phab2 Pro turns out to be.



But the dominos game and another demo where players were strapping on Phab2 Pros to toy guns to create a first-person shooter has me wondering if there's not room for Lenovo's new Tango-based phone as a gaming device. The Phab2 Pro's $500 price tag certainly doesn't make it prohibitively expensive. And depending what apps are ready when the phone arrives this fall, we could see a device with a flair for gaming.
The Australian Music Industry Network (AMIN) recently celebrated the importance of Australian contemporary live music with their I Love Live Music 60-second film competition.

The competition was a joint venture between AMIN, the Live Music Office, and St Kilda Film Festival, and tasked local filmmakers with producing short films honouring the importance of live music.

The finalists  seven from VIC, one from SA, one from TAS, and one from NSW  were screened at The St Kilda Film Festivals SoundKILDA event last month with the over $12,000 worth of prizes awarded on the night.

The films varied in genre and approach, running the gamut from documentaries to original features, but each was united in its focus on the social, cultural, and economic value of contemporary music.

The winner was Live from Kingsbury Bowls, a film by Melbourne documentarian Sari Braithwaite about musics ability to bring together people of all ages and walks of life at a community bowls club.

Check out Live from Kingsbury Bowls and head on over to the AMIN website to see all of the finalists.
"The former Aviation Department director and architect of the new terminal plan, Mark VanLoh, did not survive this effort. His career ended as a result of the mismanaged new terminal campaign. Mayor Sly James said in a tweet recently , VanLoh is not here to kick anymore. But make no mistake, even with a new department director, the $1.2 billion new terminal plan before us is very much the VanLoh plan. And despite claims that supporters have put the matter on the back burner, the Mayor and City Manager are still active in pushing for a new terminal. It even has its own hashtag: #NewKCI."

The development agenda at City Hall claimed another career this afternoon no matter how the Mayor's loyalists describe it.Here's an alternative take from outspoken opponents of the new airport scheme that's still on the table . . . At the Port Authority . . .Money line about the airport honcho's "retirement" today . . .You decide . . .
"Kansas City, Missouri has truly reinvented itself over the past decade, and now boasts a thriving technical / innovation economic sector, vibrant culinary and performing arts scenes, the historic 18th and Vine district, our renowned parks and boulevard system and, of course, the World Champion Kansas City Royals. These attributes are not all that define Kansas City. In recent years, we have experienced city-wide revitalization due to significant infrastructure improvements including a downtown streetcar, one of the biggest smart city investments in America, and the growth of start-up businesses and commercial businesses as a result. Flyover city no more, Kansas City is the center of the American renaissance. We are the model city to look to for ideas on how to fight crime, get kids reading on grade level, support small entrepreneurs, narrow the digital divide, innovate government processes,and grow the economy in all the right ways."

Here's a look at Kansas City's contest entry for 40 million worth of Dept. Of Transportation ObamaCash . . .to accompany the video pitch:with a laugh line regrading crime and "shot spotter" tech that hasn't seemed to reduce local shootings or child murder in the past couple of years . . .You decide if this is the future or just another byproduct of the City Hall hype machine . . . Hopefully, we'll have a whole lot more good stuff for the morning update . . .
While its easy to imagine that a city known for attracting the worlds rich, famous, and fashionable in the mid-20th century would have fallen out of style by now, Mykonos has remained an ever-evolving trendy getaway for decades

Mykonos Town is among Europes 10 hippest cities, according to data from hotel search engine gogobot.com published at Huffington Post's American Edition.

The article notes that "the true meaning of hip can be elusive. Maybe its a barber shop doubling as an art gallery, which serves lattes on the side? Or maybe its the coolest bar on the block which keeps adding crazy ingredients to cocktails (bacon Bloody Mary anyone?) Or is it the record store with thousands of vintage singles? Gogobot compiled ratings from our Trendster Tribe to see what they thought about Europe, and here are the ten winning cities."

Especially abour Mykonos it comments that "this is the lux sort of hip: high-end food and cocktails, exciting nightlife, and elegant hotels. While its easy to imagine that a city known for attracting the worlds rich, famous, and fashionable in the mid-20th century would have fallen out of style by now, Mykonos has remained an ever-evolving trendy getaway for decades, just dont expect too much flannel and craft beer."

The complete list of Europes 10 hippest cities includes:

1. Berlin, Germany

2. Stockholm, Sweden

3. Zurich, Switzerland

4. Reykjavik, Iceland

5. Mykonos Town, Greece

6. Manchester, UK

7. Dublin, Ireland

8. Seville, Spain

9. Krakow, Poland

10. Copenhagen, Denmark

Read more here.

RELATED TOPICS: Greece, Greek tourism news, Tourism in Greece, Greek islands, Hotels in Greece, Travel to Greece, Greek destinations , Greek travel market, Greek tourism statistics, Greek tourism report
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon will visit the Greek island of Lesvos on June 18 to meet with migrants, asylum seekers and the volunteers who support them

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon will visit the Greek island of Lesvos on June 18 to meet with migrants, asylum seekers and the volunteers who support them.

I will visit Lesvos to assess the situation and express my solidarity, Ban told journalists speaking at the UN headquarters in New York. Hundreds of Syrians and other refugees and migrants continue to die in the Mediterranean trying to escape war and persecution, he added.

He will also meet Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras in Athens on June 17, before flying to the island.

Read more here.

RELATED TOPICS: Greece, Greek tourism news, Tourism in Greece, Greek islands, Hotels in Greece, Travel to Greece, Greek destinations , Greek travel market, Greek tourism statistics, Greek tourism report
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Customers of Kuwait's Gulf Bank who print their cheques through external vendors have been advised to discontinue the practice at the earliest and only print cheques through authorised vendors.



The new advisory comes in line with the standards and security features of cheques as prescribed by the Central Bank of Kuwait and the new Kuwait Electronic Cheque Clearing System (KECCS).



According to the bank, all customers are required to comply with the following instructions to ensure the acceptance and collection of the cheques.



 The need to maintain the magnetic ink line (MICR) that is available at the bottom of the cheque;

 No signature or writing at the bottom of the cheque over the MICR Code;

 The need to keep the cheque in a good condition;

 The cheque should not be exposed to direct sunlight nor kept in a warm place to ensure the reading of the cheque details, as they can be affected by the heat;

 Ensure sufficient funds in the account before issuing cheques, as rejecting the cheque by the bank due to insufficient balance may lead to criminal persecutions;



The instructions listed above conform to the features of the new (KECCS), which will reduce the collection time from three working days to the same day for some cases, or the next working day for others. - TradeArabia News Service


Aluminium Bahrain (Alba), an international aluminium smelter, is participating at the ongoing Harbors 9th Aluminium Summit, in the US, to strengthen its business relations and networking opportunities with the global aluminium industry.



The event which kicked off on June 7 will conclude today (June 9), and is taking place in Chicago, Illinois.



Organised and hosted by Harbor Aluminium Intelligence, the summit is considered to be one of the largest aluminium market gatherings in the Americas.



Albas chief executive officer Tim Murray delivered a keynote address on Albas Line 6 Expansion Story at the summit yesterday (June 8), during which he spoke about the companys plans to sustain its business through its upcoming sixth potline which will make Alba the largest single-site smelter in the world, said a statement from the company.



Alba was also represented at the event by its chief marketing officer, Khalid A Latif, acting chief operations officer, Amin Sultan; manager sales Middle East and North Africa (Mena), Mohamed Khalid; manager sales and marketing  Americas, Patrick Hudson; and senior manager sales  Europe, Boris Santosi, it said.



Murray said: Alba, through its Line 6 Expansion Project, is confident of building an enduring and successful future for Bahrain and its economy.



While we look forward to producing and delivering aluminium to meet the global demands, we also believe it is necessary for us to build on networking opportunities with key players in the industry which we intend to achieve via our participation in this summit, he added.  TradeArabia News Service
Qatar, which hosts the largest US air base in the Middle East, summoned the US ambassador on Thursday over a video posted online that showed American soldiers laughing in front of the nation's flag.



The Qatari foreign ministry said it had "summoned the American ambassador ... over a video which was recently circulated on social media. She was asked for an explanation of the contents of that video."



The clip shows two uniformed US soldiers, a man and a woman, speaking into camera and joking in front of a US and a Qatari flag.



US Ambassador Dana Shell Smith who, according to a ministry official, met Qatari assistant foreign minister Sultan Al Muraikhi on Thursday, said on Twitter that she had apologised.



"The US military command was sent to investigate this incident and disciplinary action will be taken," Smith wrote on her Twitter account, responding to a tweet from a Qatari national.



"Rest assured that these soldiers made fun of themselves and not of the state of Qatar," Shell said in another tweet, written in Arabic.



Qatar is home to the US air base Al Udeid where around 10,000 military personnel are stationed, and is one of Washington's main Arab allies. - Reuters
Fiscal constraints are one of the major barriers to progress in the Mena nuclear power sector, a report said, adding that it could account for only three per cent of Middle East electricity generating capacity by 2040.



In the face of rising electricity demand, nuclear power should enable Mena states to diversify their sources of energy and reduce their carbon footprint, but the outlook is mixed, according to the Apicorp Energy Research June 2016 from Arab Petroleum Investments Corporation (Apicorp).



While the six GCC countries have nuclear projects under way, planned or proposed, raising power generation capacity by 39GW, Oman, Qatar and Kuwait have cancelled proposed nuclear projects in the wake of the Fukushima disaster.



Sustained increases in electricity demand in tandem with continuing demographic growth have prompted a number of Mena states to consider alternative sources of power generation, including nuclear. For countries in the GCC, nuclear power would free up more oil and gas for export, while net energy-importing countries like Egypt and Jordan would be able to secure long-term energy and reduce their import bills.



Yet at present, nuclear power facilities with capacity of just 5.6GWareunder construction. Only a further 6.4GW are likely to come online by 2030. The International Energy Agency (IEA) estimates that by2040, the regions nuclear industry will account for only3 per cent of electricity generation, with oil and gas accounting for 70 per cent.



Several factors make the nuclear option attractive. Nuclear plants emit considerably less greenhouse gases compared with fossil fuel-fired capacity and help countries reduce their carbon footprint. Cost competitiveness has improved in recent decades, allowing nuclear technology to become a serious component of energy diversification strategies. Nuclear also advances human capital and promotes employment in the energy sector.



But development of the nuclear sector to a level at which it competes with oil and natural gas will be both complex and expensive. Countries with ambitions to build nuclear power plants will need to find funding, attract human capital and put in place clear and stable regulatory frameworks.



Governments will need to prove to the global community that their nuclear programmes are peaceful and ensure public acceptance of their programmes. Public acceptance in the region is generally higher than that in Europe, and in the UAE, this helped support the implementation of its programme.



The political ramifications of a nuclear industry in the region also need to be addressed. Following the lifting of Iranian sanctions, there were concerns on how countries in the region would pursue their individual programmes and proposals were made to use the next decade to agree on region-wide restraints. These include banning the separation of plutonium from spent fuel, limiting the level of uranium enrichment, and placing enrichment plants under multinational control.



Nuclear can be cost competitive



Nuclear projects require substantial upfront capital but exhibit lower operational and fuel costs over their lifetime- typically 50 years. Upfront capital costs range from $3 billion-$6 billion/GW of installed capacity, more than double the cost of equivalent coal- or gas-fired plants. Investment decisions are therefore heavily dependent on the availability of finance and government support.



Nuclear can be competitive against other sources of base load power. The levelised cost of electricity (LCOE) for nuclear increases at higher discount rates, given nuclear is capital intensive. At a discount rate of 3 per cent, nuclear is more competitive than coal and gas. At 7 per cent, nuclear remains competitive. Only at 10 per cent does nuclear become less attractive.



While nuclear is often seen as a source of long-term power supply, this is contingent on the ability of project owners to secure large stocks of uranium. Currently, only four countries in Mena have proven uranium reserves. But, at an average price of $69/kg this year, production in the region remains uneconomical. Therefore, countries considering nuclear will have to rely on uranium supplied largely from outside the region.



UAE leads GCC diversification drive



The UAE nuclear programme has been dubbed a model for nuclear newcomers. Cooperation with international bodies like the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) was extensive while the country built up its programme. The UAE established a Nuclear Energy Program Implementation Organization, which set up the Emirates Nuclear Energy Corporation (ENEC).



Abu Dhabi even agreed to forgo domestic enrichment, obtaining its nuclear fuel from reliable and responsible international suppliers and returning radioactive waste.



The UAE is the only GCC state with nuclear plants under construction. At the heart of the countrys nuclear strategy is the construction of the Barakah nuclear power plant. Korea Electric Power Corporation is building four 1.4GWpower plants at a cost of $20 billion, with another $20 billion allocated for the operation of the plants during their 60-year lifetime. The construction of the first and second reactors is complete and the third is under way. The first of the four plants is scheduled to begin operations in July 2017, with an additional reactor coming online each year until 2020.



ENEC expects the four nuclear reactors when on-line will meet up to a quarter of the UAEs power demand. Over the coming decades, the UAE hopes to add a further 14.4GWof nuclear capacity, but no firm plans have yet been announced.



Saudi Arabia planned big



Economic growth, a rising population and sustained periods of low energy prices have driven high power-demand growth in Saudi Arabia. Despite recent increases in energy prices and efforts to improve energy efficiency, the country still needs an additional 34GWof generationcapacityby2020 (123GW).



The recent announcement of the Saudi 2030 Vision revised down these plans. The new plan is to install 3GWof nuclear by2030, 1.5GW in the eastern region and 1.5GW in the western region. These plans have not been officially announced and much obscurity surrounds the body that will implement the programme, with indications that KACARE will be dissolved and a new entity will take over the countrys new renewable and nuclear programme.  TradeArabia News Service
Guests Under 18 Receive $300 Off



(TRAVPR.COM) UNITED STATES - June 9th, 2016 - European Waterways, Europes leading hotel barge cruising company, announced that three family-themed charter cruises, scheduled for this summer, are now bookable by cabins, with guaranteed departures when a minimum of three passengers book up to two cabins. The company also offers $300 off for guests under 18, providing an excellent opportunity for small families to take advantage of their family-friendly itineraries in different regions of France. The three hotel barges participating in this offer are LArt de Vivre for its August 7th departure, Anjodi for its August 14th departure, and Panache for its departure on August 21st.

We understand how challenging it is for many family members to plan vacation time together, said Derek Banks, managing director of European Waterways. A hotel barge cruise can be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for a family to enjoy quality time together. A family as small as three people, booking a minimum of two cabins, can be confident that on the date they booked their hotel barge, which can accommodate 8 or 12 guests, will be waiting for them, and of course they will enjoy all the usual amenities from an attentive crew whether all the other cabins are booked or not.

The eight-passenger LArt de Vivres family-themed cruise departs August 7th . Cruising through the scenic Burgundy countryside, the vessels itinerary includes a visit to Cardoland prehistoric World of Dinosaurs,canoe trips, and a tour of the Caves of Ancy sur Cure, a major site for Palaeolithic cave paintings.

The August 14th departure of the 8-passenger Anjodi, basedon the Canal du Midi, includes a visit to Aqualand Cap DAgde, a popular family water park. The itinerary also includes a tour of the Oppidum dEnserune Roman settlement and the prehistoric Grotte de Limousis prehistoriccaves.

The August 21st departure on the 12-passenger Panache, which cruises the Alsace-Lorraine region of France, includes a visit to the Centre Aquatique Sarrebourg water park as well as the Alpine Luge at Lutzelbourg  a 1,640-foot high-speed rail ride down a mountainside. There is also a visit to the Saint Croix Animal Park and the Chocolate Museum in Strasbourg.

Prices for these 6-night family-themed cruises start at $4,450 per person, based on double occupancy, and are all-inclusive, including admission to all the family attractions on the itineraries. For more information, visit www.gobarging.com or call Toll Free 1-877-879-8808.

###
The Rough Guides ranks Quy Nhon third among 9 places to get off tourist trail in Southeast Asia. Insight Asia Travel is running Long Stay Promotion at the Nam Hai Resort in Hoi An beach vacation.



(TRAVPR.COM) VIETNAM - June 10th, 2016 - The UK travel magazine of Rough Guides ranks Quy Nhon third among 9 places to get off tourist trail in Southeast Asia. More widely known by locals and foreigners taking Hoi An beach vacations, Cua Dai beach is on the top 25 beaches in Asia. Insight Asia Travel offers the most beautiful beaches in the world in Vietnam beach vacations and runs Long Stay Promotion at the Nam Hai Resortin Hoi An.

Boasting terrific beach-blessed shoreline and grand boulevards, Quy Nhon is also a good spot to sample some fresh seafood. The Rough Guide suggested that travelers should head up Quy Nhon by xeom (motorcycle taxi) for sweeping views over the unspoiled countryside before returning to town for a seafood supper.

In 2015, Quy Nhon started a city sightseeing tour by horse-drawn carriage. Visitors can opt for the city's most beautiful and green street  An Duong Vuong or go along the beach on Xuan Dieu Street. Quy Nhon attract tourists with plenty of fascinating landscapes such as Eo Gio, Ghenh Rang (Rang Rapids), Hoang Hau Beach (Queen Beach), etc. and cultural and historical relics like Twin Tower, Long Khanh Pagoda, etc. Travelers also have chance to taste many specialties like banh it la gai (sticky rice cake with coconut or green bean stuffing wrapped in pinnate leaf), chicken, especially seafood dishes, etc.

Insight Asia Travel is offering special offer on Hoi An Beach Vacation at the Nam Hai Resort. Along a seemingly infinite stretch of sand, amidst Vietnams richest cultural heritage, a strand of sophisticated, visually striking villas of this luxury resort lines the dramatic beachfront. Holiday-makers have chance to explore the nearby UNESCO World Heritage Sites of Hoi An, My Son and Hue with its Buddhist pagodas, royal tombs and historic citadels. The 3 Nights Stay in One-bedroom Villa for 2 persons starts from US$ 1,190. This best rate guaranteed offer is valid from 1st September to 22nd December 2016.

Insight Asia Travel customizes and creates products, itineraries and experiences as requested by clients. Day-by-day program is flexible, personalized, and creative. For the tour offers best suit your taste, please send us a message via e-mail at sales@insightasiatravel.com or visit our website http://insightasiatravel.com.

###
This is a serious family hauler that will change the way people use bikes.

Regular readers will know that I like the European style of electric-assisted bike with pedal assist (pedelec), rather than a sort of downsized motorcycle with throttle controls. Oh, and the motors should be limited to 250 watts so that it plays nice in the bike lanes. I thought that E-bikes should be regular bikes with a bit of a boost.

Well, you can forget all that. I just spent a day riding through the snow and ice of Minneapolis on a Surly Big Easy long-tail cargo e-bike, and it totally changed my thinking.

The Big Easy eats SUVs

Lloyd Alter on a Big Easy/CC BY 2.0

I once quoted analyst Horace Dediu, who said, Bikes have a tremendous disruptive advantage over cars. Bikes will eat cars. But people still complain that bikes can't replace cars, that you can't really shop on a bike. Or they can't easily get the kids to school on a bike. Or that it is too far, or too hilly, or too sweaty.

The Big Easy puts paid to all of that. It doesn't just eat cars, it eats pickup trucks. Modelled after Surly's current non-electric cargo bikes, it has a low center of gravity, fat grabby tires and, like all Surly bikes, is a bit out there for adventurous get-out-there types. But add a big Bosch motor to it and it becomes the Ram 3500 or GMC Denali of bikes: it looks the part of a working tough truck but suddenly it is almost effortless. It belies its brand name and isn't surly at all.

 Bosch motor on Big Easy/ Surly

The Bosch Performance CX motor is so smooth on the pickup that you really can pretend it is not there; it senses you pedalling and gives you a smooth boost that feels totally natural. Switch it up from eco through touring to turbo and it feels totally supernatural; you have power to push this heavy bike to 20 MPH (the motor has a governor limiting speed to 20 to comply with regulations) and it feels like you could go anywhere. I wondered how it could be so smooth and spoke with Rick Hoak of Bosch, who explained that there are three kinds of sensors:

...a torque sensor (measures pedal force / human input), a cadence sensor (measures how quickly the rider turns the pedals around), and a speed sensor (measures the speed of the eBike). Each is measured over 1000 times per second to intuitively blend support and human power for the perfect ride experience.



The motor is rated at only 250W but peaks out at 600W, with a maximum of 75 Nm torque in Turbo. So many readers have complained in other posts that 250 Watts are not enough for big hills and heavy loads, but this bike just chews up the scenery. How does Bosch do it? Hoak explains:

On a basic level, what this means is as follows  Rated Power / Nominal Power refers to an amount of power a drive unit can produce for extended periods without experiencing a heat related issue / reduction of power. This factor is determined in a lab with defined conditions and a constant power source.



I'm in eco mode, of course. / Lloyd Alter/CC BY 2.0

Maximum or Peak Power refers to an amount of power a drive unit can produce for shorter periods, for instance when climbing a hill or starting from a traffic light. Depending on all the factors below (3 sensor inputs), plus the riding mode selected, a Performance CX drive will deliver mechanical assistance of up to 600w. As a very basic example, if a rider in ECO mode was pedaling with a wattage / pedal force of 100w, the drive would provide up to 50% of that input in mechanical support e.g. 50w for a combined wattage of 150w. If that same rider was in TURBO and pedaling with a wattage / pedal force of 100w, the drive would provide up to 300% of that input in mechanical support e.g. 300w for a combined wattage of 400w. In the two examples above, if the rider increases their pedal force above 100w, the mechanical input would also increase. That mechanical input varies depending on this input, plus eBike speed and rider cadence for that natural ride feel you spoke highly about. If a drive simply delivered maximum power, the ride feel experience would be more like a light switch, on or off and not very smooth.

When it comes to geometry, Big Easy rides and feels like a normal-length bike. We also increased stand-over height clearance and threw in dropper post routing to promote bike sharing across different-sized riders. So whether you want to wave goodbye to the old family gas hog, upgrade your bike-supported businesss two-wheeled fleet, or simply haul more bowling balls during your daily commute, Big Easy makes doing all that, well, easy.



Civia on snow/ Lloyd Alter/CC BY 2.0

At one point I switched to a light Civia recreational e-bike and for a moment I was disconcerted and wobbly, being higher up on a regular light bike again. I certainly wasn't as comfortable in a patch of snow. I wanted to get back on the Big Easy.

Even without loading the bike up, the weight and inertia of it give you a totally different feeling on the road, probably the misplaced feeling of confidence that ICE powered SUV drivers have. The fat tires eat up bumps and give you confidence in snow and even on a bit of ice, although the same rules apply: it is heavy and it has momentum, so don't take it for granted. Because this is truly a boosted pedal driven SUV that can carry kids or groceries, or kids and groceries.

Wait, there is more to come/ Lloyd Alter/CC BY 2.0

Paul's Big Easy here is loaded up with a fatbike, his cross country ski equipment and other gear. Oh, and he is stopping on the way home for two 24-bottle cases of beer. I regret not trying his fully-loaded bike out, but I suspect that the Bosch motor would have just sucked it all up without complaint.

. Big Easy with kids on back/ Surly

 Big Easy with kids on back/ Surly

I have paid less for used cars than the price of a new Big Easy (US$ 5,000) but this is without question a bike that can be considered a car replacement. Put the kid rack on and take the little ones to school; open the side bags and carry enough food for a week. Do long commutes in hilly terrain; not a problem. In hot weather you can let the motor do most of the work, stay cool in the moving air and arrive sweat-free. In winter, wear your winter clothes and get a little extra warmth from the pedalling. If you start getting cool, turn it down to eco or off and do a bit more work; it is up to you.

Electric cargo bikes are climate action.

Big Easy fully loaded/ Lloyd Alter/CC BY 2.0

One of the biggest issues for those of us trying to convince people that climate change is a major crisis requiring immediate action is that nobody really wants to give anything up. So even the wonderful Green New Deal proposes electric cars replacing ICE powered cars instead of alternatives to cars, which is exactly what this Big Easy is.

But you are not giving much up; you are in fact gaining a whole lot. You get the kind of exercise you need to keep you healthy, enough to add years to your life. You save a huge amount of money on parking and licensing and car insurance. In many cities you can probably get to work faster than in a car (especially when you add in the time finding and getting to and from a parking space). Perhaps the biggest saving is in real estate; garages take up a lot of it. If your family gets rid of one car or even goes car-free, you can spend less money on housing.

And as Andrea Learned keeps saying, bikes are climate action. E-bikes are even more so. They are an extremely low carbon form of transportation, sucking watts instead of the kilowatts a bigger electric car, with a fraction of the embodied carbon. Combine bikes like these with decent safe bike infrastructure in our cities, and we really can replace a lot of cars with efficient alternative transportation.

This bike is pretty wonderful, but is obviously not for everyone; it is heavy and takes up a lot of space, and at US5K, you really need secure places to park it at home and at work.

But this is the kind of alternative to the car that can really make a difference. It is accessible to a huge audience of people of all ages, it can haul more than I can squeeze into my Subaru; it is the family hauler of the future and more fun than you ever had in a minivan.

Lloyd Alter's transportation and accommodation in Minnesota was paid for by Surly Bikes.
The age of criminal responsibility will be lowered by one year from the current 14, the Ministry of Justice said Wednesday, announcing measures to cope with an increasing number of...
Tribune News Service

Amritsar, June 9

A team of drug inspectors today confiscated a huge quantity of intoxicants and injections from an illegal godown in Khalra Mandi in Patti Tehsil in Tarn Taran.

The godown was owned by Shri Parkash who could not produce the necessary documents and the license required for storing the drugs. He runs New Madhav Medical Store at Cooperative Bank Wali Gali near Khalra Mandi.

Bableen Kaur, drug inspector, while talking to this correspondent revealed that the drug department confiscated as many as eight types of drugs stashed in an illegal manner in the godown. The drug authorities raided the complex following a tip-off. It seized habit-forming drugs and injections worth Rs 50,000 from the godown.

She said though the accused had the licence for running the medical store, but there were also violations of norms.
Tribune News Service

Bathinda, June 10

On the call given by the State Sector Bank Employees Association (SSBEA) and All India Bank Employees Association, staff members held a demonstration in front of the zonal office of State Bank of Patiala here today.

They protested against the adoption of resolution by boards of all associate banks  State Bank of Patiala, State Bank of Bikaner and Jaipur, State Bank of Hyderabad, State Bank of Travancore and State Bank of Mysore  for merger with State Bank of India by way of acquisition.

Addressing the demonstration, Pawan Jindal, general secretary, SBBJ Employees Union, Punjab, said the SSBEA had held a series of programmes against merger and against the discriminatory attitude of the SBI management towards employees of associate banks.

He said associate bank employees were demanding enhancement in housing loan but the SBI management had directed the associate banks managements to enhance the housing loan for officers and they had been denied this facility.

The attitude of the SBI management is so adamant that it is not even caring for the government guidelines in case of compassionate appointments in the SBI and associate banks. The SBI has altered the guidelines to such an extent that it has virtually denied appointment on compassionate ground, Jindal said.

Despite the fact that the performance of the associate banks is better than that of SBI, they are still trying to merge the associate banks, he said, adding that an all-India strike would be observed by associate bank employees on July 28 and 29.

The strike will be observed by 10 lakh employees under the banner of United Forum Bank Unions.

Vice president of the union, Narinder Bansal, said for the past one year, the top management of the SBI was maintaining that there was no plan to merge the associate banks as the SBI could not afford it and there would be no benefit accruing to the SBI by such a merger. Now, the SBI management is also imposing CPS unilaterally in associate banks, which is against the right of collective bargaining and associate banks will fight to preserve the collective bargaining, he said.
Mohit Khanna

Tribune News Service

Ludhiana, June 10

Two cycle giants, involved in a lawsuit over Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs) violations, have resolved the design piracy issue and decided to constitute a committee under the chairmanship of KB Thakur, secretary general, All India Cycle Manufacturers Association, to protect their rights.

Hero Cycles in a statement today said, Arun Alagappan, president, TI Cycles, and Onkar Singh Pahwa, chairman, Avon Cycles Limited, met Pankaj Munjal, chairman and managing director, Hero Cycles Limited.

It reads, A joint programme to withdraw infringing products was convened with general rules and guidelines to uplift the bicycle industry by moving towards an era of innovation.

"It was decided at the meeting that the parties would respect IPRs of the respective members and would work towards developing an environment driven by intellectual property. A committee under the chairmanship of KB Thakur, secretary general, All India Cycle Manufacturers Association (AICMA), will monitor the protection of intellectual property of the members with respect to misuse in the market, if any. The parties agreed to settle the present dispute and work harmoniously towards developing an intellectual property-driven bicycle industry to face global challenges, it said.

Avon and Hero had entered a legal battle on the issue of infringement of IPRs after Hero Cycles had filed a suit against Avon Cycles, alleging piracy of its registered design. The case pertains to Hero Cycles' product Hero RX-1  the design of which is registered under the Designs Act, 2000 (No 270519).

Hero Cycle alleged that Avon Cycles' product X-Track was identical to the registered design of Hero Cycles' RX- I. It had suffered a 40 per cent drop in sale of the particular model due to Avon Cycles X-Track model.

Onkar Singh Pahwa, chairman of Avon Cycles, said, We have decided to resolve the issue. As per the settlement, we will stop manufacturing the product after clearing our pending stocks by August 31. Hero Cycles has agreed to withdraw the case.
Vijay C Roy

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, June 10

Information Technology giant Infosys is awaiting environmental clearance for its proposed software unit at Mohali in Punjab.

After getting the clearance, the company will commence civil construction. The campus, to be developed in phases, is likely to see an investment of Rs 425 crore in the first phase and will initially employ 5,000 people.

In February this year, the Special Economic Zone (SEZ) Board has approved the setting up of the campus (a sector special SEZ) on 20.23 hectares for IT/ITES at Mohali. Also, the campus project has received the stage-1 clearance comprising change in land use, consent to establish, forest clearance, and temporary power connection etc.

They (Infosys) have received the SEZ nod and are awaiting an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) clearance. Having various campuses across the country, the IT giant is well-versed with nitty-gritty of things. We are hopeful that they will receive the EIA clearance soon, said sources in the Punjab Bureau of Investment Promotion. They said they were processing the building plan submitted by the firm.

A company statement said the campus had been designed by RSP Design Consultants and would be developed and executed as per the highest rating guidelines of Green Rating for Integrated Habitat Assessment and Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design.

According to the Punjab Bureau of Investment Promotion, Infosys intends to invest Rs 1,032 crore at Mohali and employ 15,000 people.

Punjab Deputy Chief Minister Sukhbir Singh Badal laid the foundation stone for the campus at Mohali in the presence of Infosys founder NR Narayana Murthy in February 2014.

This will be the companys second campus in Punjab. The first campus in Chandigarh has been operational since 2006 and is spread over 30 acres with a seating capacity for 6,000 employees. The company has invested Rs 332 crore to build it. Last year, total exports from the facility stood at Rs 2,245 crore.
Sandeep Rana

Tribune News Service

Panchkula, June 10

Three serving Colonels and the Director of Kalpana Chawla Government Medical College, Karnal, who is the brother of Shimla MP Virender Kashyap, are among several persons who have allegedly been duped by a Panchkula-based real estate broker on the pretext of providing property in a past few years.

The accused, Manav Malhotra, owner of Gauransh Associates at the Mansa Devi Complex (MDC), has 19 cheque bounce and cheating cases pending against him in various courts. Of these, nine cases pertain to Panchkula.

In all, around Rs 1.5 crore was paid to him in white. He took between Rs 5 lakh and Rs 35 lakh from individuals. The Punjab and Haryana High Court had rejected his bail plea on May 24. However, he continues to remain at large.

(Follow The Tribune on Facebook and Twitter @thetribunechd)

In one such complaint, Col Rohit Kumar (retd) alleged that he was induced by Malhotra into investing an initial amount of Rs 10 lakh in a project of Bhumi Infrastructure Corporation Ltd, Panchkula, where he was to be allotted a plot. He paid the amount last year from his hard-earned retirement benefits, but was neither given the plot nor his money back. Though he was given cheques, these bounced.

He is a cheat. He shows property of leading companies to people, takes the initial booking amount from them and then keeps dilly-dallying in the matter. I know of at least nine persons whom he cheated, said Col Rohit Kumar.

Similarly, Shimla MPs younger brother, Dr Surender Kashyap, was shown dreams of owning a home near Sukhna Lake in the MDC. I paid him Rs 5 lakh as the booking amount in 2011, but so far I have neither been given the property nor my money back. He is cheating people of their hard-earned money and should be arrested immediately, said Dr Kashyap. A construction company owner, Ashok Garg, was also cheated of Rs 34 lakh on the pretext of providing him property in the JLPL, Mohali.

Col BS Badwal, who is posted with the Bengal Engineer Group, Roorkee, was shown property in Mullanpur and paid Rs 15.4 lakh for it. He neither got the land nor was his money refunded. Though he was given cheques for Rs 5 lakh, these bounced due to insufficient funds in the account.

Similarly, two other Colonels, not wishing to be named and posted in Ambala and Yol in Kangra, were cheated of Rs 5 lakh and Rs 10 lakh, respectively. Retired and serving Army officers have met the Haryana DGP, the Ambala-Panchkula Commissioner and the Panchkula DCP seeking his arrest.

Assistant Sub-Inspector Mange Ram of the Economic Offences Wing of the Panchkula police, said, I am handling one of the cheating cases in which a Colonel is the complainant. Accused Malhotra is absconding. We have raided several places to arrest him.

Chandigarh Tribune called on the mobile of the accused, but it was found switched off. His wife, Neetu Malhotra, a post office agent, said, He is in Ludhiana and his phone number is not connecting. There is no fault of his as the real estate companies failed to give possession of the said properties. Rest, I do not know much about his business.

What the HC had said

A list of 19 private complaints pending in various courts at Gurgaon, Yamunanagar, Chandigarh and Panchkula has also been furnished wherein the petitioner is facing proceedings under the Negotiable Instruments Act at the instance of various persons. The petitioner, prima facie, appears to have indulged in cheating, not only with the complainant but with other persons, including Ravinder Singh... No extraordinary exceptional circumstances exist to grant concession of pre-arrest bail to the petitioner, High Court Judge MMS Bedi observed in a May 24 order against Malhotra.
A Correspondent

Amritsar, June 10

The Punjab State Ministerial Staff Union (PSMSU) has announced to initiate protest against the state government for its alleged anti-employee policies. Leaders of the association after a meeting here today said the ministerial staff workers in all government departments would wear black badges as a mark of protest against the state government on June 13 and 14.

Association general secretary said employees would observe a pen down strike for the three days starting from June 15. He said earlier, the union had given a notice to the government regarding their demands, which had not been fulfilled till date.

The employees stated that due to the RTI, RTS and regular retirements of the government staff, the work load was increasing with each passing day.

Association leader Gurinder Singh Sodhi said a meeting of the state body of the association would be held on June 18 to plan the next course of action. Another leader Asunil Kumar said employees of various categories had been discriminated in the pay commission reports.
Brig MP Singh (retd)

Our Constitution has placed education on the Concurrent list, which has made central and state governments responsible for regulating all matters relating to all types of education, including technical, medical and vocational. However, education was not included in the list of Fundamental Rights. Resultantly neither the central nor the state governments made adequate arrangements for imparting even basic school education to its citizens. Illiteracy which was rampant before 1947, has continued to grow among the masses, particularly among the poor. Belatedly, the Right to Education Act, 2009,which has granted all children right to free and compulsory education, is expected to give relief from illiteracy.

The Act was evaded for nearly 60 years after Independence because the education of large masses could not be supported financially and a sufficient number of schools was not built. Infrastructural and pedagogical needs could not be met fully. Since governments failed to fulfil educational responsibilities towards its citizens, privatisation of education became indispensible. Many private schools were opened and (some even with indifferent standards) have grown in numbers. The quality of education in government-run schools has been questioned time and again and there is need for considerable improvement. Even the CBSE Class X results released recently have not shown as impressive performances as private schools. As per the 2009 Act, children in the age group between 6 and 14 are compulsorily required to attend school and the penalty for not sending children to school on parents was fixed at one year of imprisonment. But no such punishment appears to have been awarded.

To popularise attendance of school by children, schemes like mid-day meals, zero-fee and issuing of free books and stationery were introduced in some states. Even unaided private schools were required to admit a proportion of underprivileged children. These measures have shown some positive results, particularly in the case of education of girls. Even otherwise the number of school-attending children has increased and as per a government report (2013), nearly 22.9 crore children were enrolled in rural and urban schools, a figure that was higher as compared to 2009  when the Right to Education Act was enforced.

However, eradication of illiteracy requires a lot to be done. A reason which may be responsible for poor performance can be that children attending school up to Class VIII cannot be detained. This provision needs review. The TSR Subramanian Committee, set up to draft the new education policy, has recommended detention after Class VI. In my view, even after the introduction of the system of continuous and comprehensive evaluation, examinations could not be dispensed with totally as education is not just about sending a child from Class I to Class VIII. Some achievements are necessary for continuing education later.

Privately run schools have a mixture of good and not-so-good schools. Public schools generally aim at the all-round development of a child. They are more expensive but are preferred schools. Lord Macaulay, who framed the education system in India in the 1830s, had built the school education system on the lines of the British system, where government-run schools and public schools coexisted. This became necessary as free education in government-run schools could not become affordable. The public schools in UK and Wales were "student selective and expensive fee-paying schools". These schools were granted full autonomy in case of fee and allied charges and were managed by the board of governors. They were kept outside government interference.

The first seven schools were: Eton School, Strawberry School, Westminster School, Charter House, Rugby House, Winchester School and Harrow School (Jawaharlal Nehru was educated here). These schools were associated with the ruling classes and they took the responsibility of educating the sons of officers and administrators of the British empire. On the lines of these public schools, Macaulay opened schools in the three Presidencies namely, La Martiniere schools in Calcutta and Lucknow in 1836 and 1845, respectively, in the Bengal Presidency, Lawrence school Lovedale, Ooty, in the Madras Presidency and Elphinstone School in the Bombay Presidency. Soon after annexation of Punjab, the British opened Lawrence School Sanawar, in 1847 and Bishop Cotton School Shimla, in 1859. On the lines of the seven schools in UK, Aitchison College, Lahore and Rajkumar College, Rajkot were opened for the education of students from princely states. All public schools in UK as well as those in India were self-financed, they concentrated on the over-all development of students, for which they provided expensive facilities, such as equitation, swimming, co-curricular activities and in some cases organised exchange programmes, which made them much more expensive than government-run schools. Lately, many schools in the private sector have come up and fancy calling themselves public schools.

Needless to say, that some qualitative mandatory requirements must be laid down in case a school boasts of being a public school. As per the Human Resources Development Ministry, 29 per cent school children are studying in private schools, including public schools. Many more schools are required to accommodate nearly 6-7 crore non-schoolgoing children. Evidently, both public and private sector schools must go hand in hand to make the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan a success.

The writer is a former Colonel Commandant of the Army Education Corps. and an adviser of Mukat Educational Trust, Patiala.
S Nihal Singh

PRIME Minister Narendra Modis last visit to the United States during the presidency of Mr Barack Obama was notable on many counts. But its most significant aspect was that never before, except for an anguished plea in the 1962 conflict with China, has New Delhi proclaimed its wish for a defence relationship with Washington in such clear terms.

The age of non-alignment was dead and gone long before Mr Modi assumed office, but for the first time India has made it clear that she was militarily aligned with the US to safeguard her national interests. Membership of the Nuclear Suppliers Group remains on the wish list but the most symbolic act of the Prime Minister was the laying of a wreath at Arlington cemetery for the American war dead in the many wars they fought.

Besides, Mr Modi scored a personal triumph in addressing the joint session of the US Congress, an organisation that had denied him a visa for nearly a decade following the pogrom in Gujarat during his chief ministership. There was a parallel Congressional hearing on Indias human rights record during the Prime Ministers visit, but it was clear that the US establishment was willing to look the other way  as it had done with so many of its partners earlier  in view of its stakes in enlisting India for larger geopolitical purposes.

The motive for Indias swing towards the US is determined by similar reasons. In view of Chinas assertive regional policy, particularly by using Pakistan as a cats paw, New Delhi has felt it had no option but to rely on the US, still the most powerful nation in the world, to balance Beijings growing power.

For a change, Mr Modi was forced to praise the Congress government for the landmark nuclear deal Dr Manmohan Singh had signed. The first fruit of this deal was in the agreement by Westinghouse to install nuclear plants in India, although all the loose ends will be tied only in a year from now. On the environment, India has resisted setting out a precise framework in line with the Paris consensus, although Mr Modi has an ambitious plan for renewable energy.

India obviously hopes, also by signing the agreement on the mutual use of military bases, that given the range of understandings, she will receive dual-use military equipment and advanced weaponry which could also help in Mr Modis Make in India credo. What the Washington establishment has welcomed most of all is the Prime Ministers acknowledgement of the new nature of the relationship with Washington without the inhibitions of the Congress leadership in publishing it. Mr Modis preference is to call a spade a spade.

One of the Prime Ministers aims during his visit was to woo the business community to invest in India although he seems to have drawn red lines as far as labour and land reforms are concerned. His sales pitch was India was the fastest growing major economy at a time Chinas growth has stalled after piling his usual insults on the preceding Congress governments. He has promised to continue to improve ease of doing business and introduce other reforms.

The themes of Mr Modis address to the US Congress were balanced between extolling the familiar credo of shared democratic values mixed with using Indias growth engine for the good of America and the world and a thrust for tackling the evil of terrorism in the tough neighbourhood (an oblique criticism of Pakistan). In short, there were no real surprises, although he was wise to talk in his trademark Indian English with a sing-song intonation, rather than resort to Hindi, in seeking to bond with American legislators.

In sum, Mr Modi can regard his American visit a success, although the future of Indo-US relations will be determined in part by a future President in a particularly contentious domestic environment with an acute public dissatisfaction among the middle class and poor whites on stagnant wages and on unemployment levels, which has given rise to the phenomenon of Donald Trump. Mercifully, Democrat and Republican legislators desire good relations with India.

Given the decisive pro-US swing in Indias worldview, the Prime Minister will have to flesh out the consequences of this pronounced change. Sino-Indian relations will not be much affected because unlike Indians propensity to sentimentality, Beijing follows a cynical foreign policy determined by its national interests. Apart from the string of border disputes, which lie frozen, China is an important economic partner and Mr Modis effort has been to encourage major Chinese investment in India.

Indias dilemmas are many. Despite Mr Modis initial efforts to befriend neighbours, Pakistan remains hostile, Nepal has its domestic compulsions in its attitude to New Delhi. True, relations with Bangladesh are better than they have been in a long time and exchanges with Sri Lanka have improved with the change in the islands presidency. Essentially, New Delhi will have to live among difficult neighbours even as it strikes out to engage countries farther in geographical terms.

Mr Modi has also to contend with domestic problems despite his joy in travelling around the world with a copious wardrobe of Nehru jackets in striking colours with colourful multicolour handkerchiefs peeping out of the breast pocket. His monogrammed suit with his name woven into the stripes was auctioned.

With the governments mentor, the RSS, laying down the ideological line for the ruling BJP, Mr Modis autonomy in decision-making is restricted. And the Sangh Parivars anti-Muslim obsession, with the Bajrang Dal recently enforcing an unofficial ban on cow transport in Uttar Pradesh, the Union Governments problems will grow.

American legislators have already pointed to the insecurity Muslims and Christians feel with the advent of the Modi dispensation. But the danger is in the spillover effect of the anti-minority bias of the Sangh Parivar on relations with important Muslim countries Mr Modi has visited in recent times.

However, Mr Modi can gain some satisfaction from his American excursion in setting a new paradigm in Indo-US relations.
Indias application for membership of the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) has gone down to the wire. It is not just China but a group of half a dozen countries are also opposing Indias entry into the NSG without making any tangible commitments to the cause of non-proliferation. This stand translates into pressure on India to sign at least one of the tools of non-proliferation  the Fissile Missile Cut-off Treaty, the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty or the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). With two not very well disposed nuclear armed neighbours, India is not inclined to oblige the six countries, popularly called the nuclear ayatollahs, for their hard line stand of insisting that India must sign on the dotted line while ignoring its stellar record in non-proliferation.

Chinas objection is of a different kettle altogether. Beijings spanner serves two purposes. One, it tries to cool Indias ardour for a military tango with the US in the South China Sea. This was evident in the Obama-Modi joint statement that completely omitted South China Sea as compared to prominent mention in their vision statement last year. Second, China does not want a situation where India gets in the NSG and then permanently locks out Pakistan because decisions in that body are taken by consensus. It has, therefore, suggested common criteria for all countries that have not signed the NPT  which essentially means India, Pakistan and Israel.

After Modi rubbed China the wrong way on the border dispute, diplomats have their task cut out to persuade China to drop its insistence on a criteria-based approach. Unlike the picture being portrayed by strategic experts, China is not an unreasonable nation. In the late nineties, China had stepped up to the plate after the US and Russia had stopped supplying uranium to India and most plants were on the verge of closure. The NSG is crucial for the inflow of high technology in order to jump-start the Make-in-India project. The US and France will be beneficiaries with billions of dollars in orders for nuclear plants. In such a situation, India will have no option but to extend an olive branch to both Pakistan and China.
Deepender Deswal

Tribune News Service

Hisar, June 10

The Dalit sarpanch of Kirara village in the Agroha block of the district has reportedly migrated along with his family following threats from dominant families.

Balbir Kumar, sarpanch Ram Kishans brother, told The Tribune today that some people were upset over the defeat of their candidate in the panchayat elections. He said the sarpanch along with his family, families of two brothers and parents had taken shelter in his relatives home in Rajasthan after threats by families belonging to the Saini community. He said that he had to stay back in the village to take care of the cattle.

They are upset as the SC candidate they backed lost the poll. They attacked us on April 27, he said.

The police registered a case on May 6 under Sections 147 (punishment for rioting), 149 (rioting), 186 (obstructing public servant in discharge of public functions), 323 (causing hurt) and 506 (criminal intimidation) of the Indian Penal Code and Sscheduled Caste Act against 20 persons, said Bablir Kumar.

He alleged the accused, who belonged to the Saini community waylaid the sarpanch and his brother when they were returning home from fields on June 8.

The police said six persons had been arrested and efforts were on to nab the remaining.

He also denied any knowledge about migration of the sarpanch and his family.
Sunit Dhawan

Tribune News Service

Meham (Rohtak), June 10

Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal has invited the protesting members of the Jat community for holding talks to address their concerns.

Addressing a sizeable gathering at the Nyay Rally organised here on Friday, the Chief Minister asked the Jats to let the government and courts function properly.

He said the state government would support the case for reservation in the High Court and Supreme Court.

The CM cautioned the protesters that strict measures would be taken in case they tried to take law into their own hands.

The CM announced to set up a girls college and a cardiac centre at Meham and upgrade the local hospital to a civil hospital.
Parvesh Sharma

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, June 10

Sasan Power Limited, Madhya Pradesh, has decided to reduce 25 per cent supply to Haryana from tomorrow till July 3.

The reason is not clear. Experts, however, said the development was significant, as it proved them right regarding private players leaving the state in the lurch any time.

Sources said Sasan Power Limited had signed a contract with Haryana Power Generation Corporation Limited (HPGCL) to supply 418.8 MW, which was 11.25 per cent of the companys capacity.

On Thursday, the company decided to reduce the supply by 104.69 MW (25 per cent).

Power Department offices said the development was insignificant. Experts, however, said the authorities must take steps to make most of its resources, besides increasing the generation capacity. Figures for Thursday evening show that total consumption of power in the state was 1,524 lakh units (LU). Of this, the thermal power plants in Haryana generated merely 361 LUs, while the remaining power came from other states.

The state power authorities have 4,559 megawatt (MW) generation capacity, but are utilising merely 1,532 MW for reasons best know to them.

A power department spokesman said the department had made arrangements for the supply of adequate power during summers and ensuing paddy season.

He said discoms had supplied power to Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, Uttarakhand, Rajasthan, Meghalaya, Manipur and Chhattisgarh under banking arrangements during winter.

These states will return power to Haryana during summer and paddy season as per the agreement. Therefore, arrangement for sufficient power has been made to cater the load during summers and paddy season, the spokesperson said.
Tribune News Service

Shimla, June 10

State Congress president Sukhwinder Singh Sukhu today said necessary amendments should be made in Section 118 of Himachal Pradesh Tenancy and Land Reform Act, 1972 so that bona fide Himachalis and non-agriculturalist Himachalis can purchase small piece of land to meet their personal requirement.

He was chairing the meeting of the Himachal Pradesh Congress Committee (HPCC) Legal Department held here today. There is need to amend Section 118 of Himachal Pradesh Tenancy and Land Reform Act so that bona fide Himachalis or non agriculturists can purchase small chunk of land measuring up to 500 sq mts for residential purpose, he remarked.

Incidentally, only Himachalis owning agricultural land can purchase land in the state and Section 118 of Himachal Pradesh Tenancy and Land Reform Act bars outsiders to buy land.

Sukhu said the legal fraternity was feeling let down and cheated as promises made to them had remained unfulfilled. Modi government is taking many decisions which are hurting the interests of lawyers across the country which includes creation of Commercial Courts, Commercial Division and Commercial Appellate Division of High Court Bill 2015. He added that the implementation of Bill would prove detrimental to the interests of common litigants and lawyers at the sub-divisional level.

Sukhu said during his election rallies in Himachal Modi had promised to hike import duty on apples and develop tourism and rail infrastructure in the state to give a boost to the economy. The people of the state are still awaiting a decision on these issues and were feeling cheated, he said.

He urged the legal fraternity to spread awareness among the general public about the failures of the Modi government as was being done under Modi ke Bol, Jumlon Ke Dhol programme of the Congress.

He said the Congress would expose the failures of the Modi government during its two-year rule as almost each section of the society was disappointed with the Central government. Prime Minister Narendra Modi had made promises on bringing Achhe Din, bringing back black money, increasing farmers income, providing employment to unemployed youth, reducing price rise and depositing Rs 15 lakh in each Indian nationals bank account but not even one promise has been fulfilled, he said.

He said the Congress-led state government in the state had fulfilled almost all promises made in the partys election manifesto. The state government has launched schemes for the welfare of each section of society and development of the state is top priority of the government, he said.

He urged party workers to spread awareness about the development activities carried out by the government in their respective areas to so that Mission Repeat 2017 could be repeated in the upcoming Assembly elections. HPCC Legal Department Chairman IN Mehta also addressed the gathering.
Ashok Raina

KANGRA, JUNE 10

Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh will inaugurate a two-day conference of Group of Ministers (GoM) on June 12 at the Dr Rajender Prasad Government Medical College at Tanda, near here.

This was disclosed by the Transport Minister GS Bali while addressing a press conference at his residence today.

He said the GoM was constituted by the Ministry of Transport, Government of India, to suggest reforms on road safety and transport sector. It was headed by Yunus Khan, Transport Minister of Rajasthan.

Bali informed that during the meeting the state transport ministers would look into the various issues related to road safety and submit a report to Union Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari. He hoped that the recommendations of the committee would be incorporated in the draft of revised Motor Vehicle Act before it is presented in Parliament during the Monsoon Session.

Bali said almost all the transport ministers of different states would participate in the conference. Bali confirmed that ministers of Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Goa, Haryana, Jammu and Kashmir, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Punjab, Rajasthan, Sikkim, Tamil Nadu and Telangana will participate in the conference. He said Secretary, Surface Transport Ministry, Government of India, and other senior officers will attend the two-day meet.

He said senior officials of the Ministry of Road Transport, GoI, health, representative of World Bank, NGOs and various other stakeholders would also participate.

Bali said the state government was in the process of identifying the accident prone black spots on different national and the state highways in the state so that these spots could be rectified to avoid the road accidents and loss human lives. Union Minister Nitin Gadkari has shown concern over the loss of human lives in road accidents in this hill state and has offered full financial support to clear the accident prone black spots on the national highways.

Earlier GS Bali chaired the meeting at Tanda organized for the finalization of the arrangements for the conference.
Dinesh Manhotra

Tribune News Service

Jammu, June 10

Serious differences appear to have cropped up between coalition partners PDP and BJP over the banning of the Abhinav Gupt yatra due to the pressure of separatists and other Kashmir-centric groups. The BJP ministers, however, have maintained a guarded silence to avoid any controversy.

A day after J&K Governments spokesman and Education Minister in the coalition government Naeem Akther announced on Thursday that the yatra would not be allowed, the BJP reacted strongly by terming the decision unfortunate.

Although the Education Minister said the government wouldnt allow any non-traditional or unconventional event in the state, the yatra is going on uninterrupted in the Valley and will be concluded on Saturday. The yatra entered the Kashmir valley on June 3 and it has, so far, covered nearly 38 temples in different parts of the Valley.

Interestingly, separatists and other groups are opposing the entry of the yatra to the Beerwah cave but the organisers of the event have claimed that the cave does not come in the route of the yatra, which will conclude at Kheer Bhawani temple in central Kashmirs Ganderbal district on June 11.

In an obvious reference to the PDP succumbing to the pressure of hardcore separatist leaders, general secretary of the state BJP Harinder Gupta said, Voices like those of Syed Ali Geelani and others who are opposing the yatra lack knowledge and history of Kashmir.

The yatra is being undertaken not to undermine the Muslim majority character of the Valley but to highlight the glorious cultural and intellectual movement of Kashmir which has been internationally recognised. The opposition to the yatra is indicative of a narrow and biased mindset of certain elements in the Valley, he said while making a veiled attack on the PDP and other groups.

Kashmir-based BJP spokesman Khalid Jehangir has asked mainstream politicians not to toe the separatists line on the issue. People should stop opposing the yatra for appeasing a handful of separatists, who despite enjoying all the privileges have developed a habit of making a mountain out of a molehill to prove their loyalty towards their handlers sitting across the Line of Control. Mainstream politicians should refrain from toeing the line of separatists, he said without naming the PDP or the National Conference.

A New Delhi-based organisation, Acharaya Abhinav Gupt Sheshadri Samroh Samiti, headed by Art of Living Foundation founder Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, along with some Kashmiri Pandits organisations has taken out the yatra which is scheduled to conclude at the Kheer Bhawani temple.

Naeem Akther had said on Thursday that neither has the government received any request from anybody for the yatra nor are we allowing it.

He said that the government wouldnt allow any non-traditional or unconventional event in the state. Even Deputy Chief Minister and senior BJP leader Nirmal Singh had already made it clear that the government wouldnt allow anything that had potential to disturb peace in J&K, Akhter had added.

Undeterred by the decision of the state government not to allow the yatra, Ajay Bharati, who is the coordinator of the event, told The Tribune that the yatra was going on as per schedule. Sri Sri Ravi Shankar has already reached Srinagar to preside over the concluding function of the yatra, Bharati said, adding that the reaction of the government was very unfortunate and immature in nature.

Instead of going through the history of the Kashmir, the government has meekly submitted before people like Syed Ali Geelani, who is a champion in distorting historical facts, Bharati said.
Tribune News Service

Srinagar, June 10

The J&K Legislative Council on Friday witnessed an uproar as ruling Bharatiya Janata Party members sought an answer from the government for disallowing the Abhinav Gupt yatra to an ancient cave in central Kashmirs Budgam district.

As the House proceedings began, the BJP MLCs wanted the government to issue a statement on the yatra to Abhinav Gupt cave. The members were referring to the statement of government spokesman Naeem Akther that appeared in a section of media about not allowing the yatra.

BJP members Vibod Gupta, Ajatshatru Singh, Ashok Khujuria and Ramesh Arora urged Chairman of the Legislative Council Anayat Ali to take serious note of the issue as Kashmiri separatists too had termed the yatra to the Abhinav Gupta cave as Indian aggression and an RSS ploy. The statements against the yatra are an attack on our secular status, said BJP MLC Vibod Gupta.

The Legislative Council Chairman urged the BJP members to sit down but they refused and the noisy scenes continued in the House. Government should issue a statement, the BJP members insisted.

As the uproar continued, Congress MLC Naresh Gupta too supported the BJP members demand. The Chairman told the members that they would be allowed to raise the issue during Zero Hour but that did not pacify the BJP members.

The protesting BJP members finally sat down and allowed the House to function when Deputy Chief Minister Nirmal Singh told them to sit down.

The New Delhi-based Acharya Abhinav Gupt Sheshadri Samroh Samiti, which is conducting the pilgrimage to the Abhinav Gupt cave, is planning to reach Beerwah in Budgam district on June 11. However, the proposed yatra has raised the eyebrows of separatist leaders.
Ishaq Tantry

Tribune News Service

Srinagar, June 10

The Jammu and Kashmir High Court today directed the state government to initiate process for setting up two food testing labs at Jammu and Srinagar and for procuring mobile food testing vans.

A division bench of Justices Muzaffar Hussain Attar and Ali Mohammad Magrey in its orders today observed that it hoped that before the next date, the two laboratories  one at Srinagar and one at Jammu  would be made functional.

On May 24, while conceding that the Food Safety and Standards Act, 2006, had not been implemented in its letter and spirit, the J&K Government, represented by the Chief Secretary, had assured the High Court of immediate steps for upgradation of the two outdated food testing labs at Jammu and Srinagar without waiting for Central assistance.

Latest status report filed by the Additional Advocate General is taken on record. Though it does show some steps have been taken in implementing the provisions of the Food Safety and Standards Act, 2006, and the rules made therein, a lot is to be done to alleviate the sufferings of the people, the bench observed in

its orders. The respondent state has to initiate action in setting up testing laboratories, as directed, at Srinagar and at Jammu, it said.

We hope and trust that before next date, the two laboratories would be made functional, the bench further observed.

The High Court further directed the government to provide technical manpower required in terms of the Food Act and the rules. The recruitment shall be made on a fast-track basis and as far as possible appointments made before the next date. The laboratories shall be fully equipped before the next date to make them functional, the High Court said, while posting the matter for further consideration in the week commencing from July 11.

The High Court further directed that those manufacturers/food units, who have not filed undertakings till date, shall file these before the next date in the light of the orders of the Supreme Court passed on June 7, 2016.
Amarjot Kaur

A strong proponent of change in the traditional education system, Akshay Ahuja, 23, undertakes a project, the merit of which lies in its ability to challenge the directly proportional correlation between age and intelligence. And not just that, he, along with Tushaar Sarin, 13, makes science look like a childs play. So, if you are the sorts, who are stuck between the theoretical and practical knowledge of all that has been taught to us in the name of education, well, heres and out of your school lab experiment called Robo Champs; and its quite a success.

So, what is Robo Champs?

Well, Robo Champs is a Robotics Academy for young minds, and though we havent yet started with teaching yet, we have started a project called BYB, which is an abbreviation for build your bot (bot here is a short for Robot), says Akshay, the founder and director of Robo Champs, who holds an engineering degree from Chitkara University. He informs that the inception of Robo Champs came to him about three years ago while he was interning. It was a little experiment that I conducted, wherein, 29-year-old engineers were taught the mechanics of making a robot, along with a 9-year-old, and the later nailed it to the extent of becoming the youngest line following robot maker and holds the record for it in India Book of Records. His name is Aryaman Verma and he hails from Ludhiana, he shares.

Money and the cause

While Robo Champs is a start-up with shoestring budget, they are already making it big with crowd funding. We charge Rs 300 for 12 hours from students belonging to private schools and for slum children, and government-run schools, its free of cost, says Akshay. In fact, under the BYB project, Robo Champs aims at conducting a workshop on June 31 in Gurgaon, from which they are likely to invite PM Modi. As many as 20,000 children will be making robots on stage for this project and we are planning to invite PM Modi for this, says Akshay. Also, we are planning to get the disabled and people with mental issues, like anxity and anger to enrol for this project. It was surprising how a student with hyper anxiety issues improved with training in robotics. I am looking at making job creators, not job seekers, he adds.

The Force Awakens

A huge Star Wars fan, and a student of Vivek High School, Tushaar has made a DTMS (Duel Tone Multi-Frequency Robot) and they are already making a remote-control car for his younger brother, Amey Sarin. I assemble and use coding language to make these robots. In fact, I have connected the DTMS robot with my phone that moves as you press the key. For instance, if I press 2, the robot will move forth and then when I presss another key, it will move backwards and so on, says Tushaar. With an R2D2 and a lightsaber in his collection, Tushaar says that he is now making an auto remote car, but the materials available in Chandigarh are costly, so he outsources them from Delhi. So, a 9 volt battery will cost you about Rs 40 in Chandigarh, while in Delhi, it is available for Rs 9. Also, the cost of making my own car would be about Rs 500. However, if you buy the same car from a market it will cost you Rs 2,000, he smiles.

amarjot@tribunemail.com
Kareena Kapoor, who is married to actor Saif Ali Khan, has been dodging questions about her pregnancy. When asked if there was any truth in it, Kareena, said: I am a woman. God-willing, hopefully. But right now there is nothing to say. The fact that you all are talking about it is making me super-excited.

The actress, who has recently returned from a holiday with Saif in London, joked that she has five hidden children in London. Meanwhile, she is looking forward to the release of Udta Punjab, an Abhishek Chaubey directorial that also stars Shahid Kapoor, Alia Bhatt and Diljit Dosanjh. Scheduled to release on June 17, the film is based on the menace of drugs in Punjab.

 IANS
Manav Mander

Tribune News Service

Ludhiana, June 10

With the detection of mosquito larvae from three areas, the Health Department has swung into action and initiated its awareness drive against dengue even before the onset of monsoon. Breeding of mosquitoes usually start during monsoon.

The Health Department started its search for the dengue larvae at Tibba Road, Field Gunj and on the Christian Medical College (CMC) residential campus.

We are making all possible efforts to curb the problem of dengue. We have started spraying around the areas which are more prone to mosquito breeding. Surprisingly, we found larvae on the CMC residential campus. The hospital authorities should have been more vigilant. It is the second time that we have found mosquito larvae from CMC, said Dr Ramesh, District Epidemiologist.

Dr Ramesh said residents should observe Friday as dry day and should refrain from using coolers on this day. He said Overflowing drains and stagnant water are mainly responsible for mosquito menace. Residents should check their homes and surroundings for any stagnant water, and get rid of it immediately.

No patient has tested positive for dengue in Ludhiana city so far. One patient was declared positive. However, another test was conducted, and the patient was declared negative later.
Tribune News Service

Ludhiana, June 10

The Rashtriya Safai Karamchari Sangh held a protest against the state government for allegedly meeting out a step-motherly treatment to safai karamcharis and sewermen. Surinder Kalyan, under whose leadership the protest was held at Jagraon Bridge, said if their demands were not met, they would start dumping garbage outside the zone C office of the Municipal Corporation.

Kalyan, while addressing the protestors, said both Chief Minister and Deputy Chief Minister were liars. In 2011, they had assured that if the SAD-BJP alliance won the elections in Punjab, the recruitment of safai karamcharis on contractual basis will be stopped. They had also promised of regularising those working on the contractual basis besides the recruitment of 5,000 more workers from the Valmiki ommunity. But today, the government is in no mood to fulfill the demands, said Kalyan.
Aditi Tandon

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, June 10

Designer furniture Le Corbusier and his cousin Pierre Jeanneret created for Chandigarh has, once again, fetched handsome returns in the international market.

At an auction of the duos Indian creations held at New York-based Phillips auction house last night, four pieces of Corbusier-Jeannerets furniture went for Rs 110.20 lakh, a little over Rs 1 crore.

Of the nine pieces lined up for auction, four were sold, including Corbusier and Jeannerets sofa model designed for the High Court and Assembly buildings of Chandigarh; Jeannerets console tables designed for the citys administrative buildings; Jeannerets committee chairs for the High Court and administrative buildings and Jeannerets square table for citys cafeterias and administrative buildings.

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Amid continuing practice of giving away Chandigarh heritage in scrap and its consequent entry into international traders and auctions, UTs Heritage Protection Cell is learnt to be mulling ways of preserving the precious 20th century artifacts.

Ajay Jagga, member of the heritage cell and the original petitioner in this matter, has circulated a note in the committee urging Chandigarh Administration to ask the Centre to declare Corbusiers design heritage comprising furniture, fixtures and manholes as art treasures. This will automatically make their international sale an offence.

At present, there is no specific law in place to address the challenge. When I first raised the issue of auction of Chandigarh heritage abroad, the administration told me they did not have space to store these items which is why they were being sold as scrap. We have now recommended for Chandigarh a heritage village on the lines of the one in Dubai.

Parallel to that, the cell is debating how to ensure the notification of Corbusiers architectural designs as art treasures under The Antiquities and Art Treasures Act 1972. Once notified, the sale of these items will become an offence and the licensing of interested traders will become mandatory, Jagga told The Tribune today. The Heritage Protection Cell of Chandigarh is, meanwhile, posted of thefts of Corbusiers drawings from the city.
New Delhi, June 10

The Delhi Police special cell on Friday arrested four persons for allegedly hatching a plan to kill gangster Chhota Rajan, who is presently lodged in Tihar Jail.

According to reports, the alleged contract killers were going to hunt down Rajan on the orders of fugitive don Dawood Ibrahims confidant Chhota Shakeel.

The four accused have been identified as Robinson, Junaid, Yunus and Manish.

The police nabbed the accused on June 3, after which they were sent in police remand and interrogated for five days.

The police also recovered 9 mm pistols and cartridges from their possession.

As per reports, Chhota Shakeel had in the past made various attempts to get Rajan killed.  ANI
New Delhi, June 10

A court in Delhi sentenced five people found guilty of raping a Danish woman in 2014 to life imprisonment on Friday.

The sentence comes two days after the court pronounced five of the nine people suspected of having been involved guilty.

Mahendra alias Ganja (27), Mohd Raja (23), Raju (24), Arjun (22), Raju Chakka (23) were found guilty of offences under sections 376 (D) (gang rape), 395 (dacoity), 366 (kidnapping), 342 (wrongful confinement), 506 (criminal intimidation) and 34 (common intention) of the Indian Penal Code.

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Three other suspects in the case were minors and are being tried by the Juvenile Justice Board. The 9th suspect  Shyam Lal (56)  died in February while the case was still being tried.

The nine were accused of having gangraped and robbed the victim at knife-point on January 4, 2014, after leading her to an isolated place near the Divisional Railway Officers' Club close to the New Delhi Railway Station.  Agencies
Ahmedabad, June 10

A trial court in Ahmedabad finished hearing arguments for sentences a case of mass murder in connection with the Gujarat riots 2002 and will deliver a judgement on Monday.

A court recently held 24 people guilty of killing some 69 people  among them a Congress Parliamentarian  a massacre in Ahmedabads Gulberg Society in the riots that occurred in Gujarat after a train was burnt in Gujarats Godhra in 2002.

The defence has argued for minimal punishment, citing eight witnesses who couldnt identify the suspects and the convicts lack of criminal records.

The defence calls the incident spontaneous.

The prosecution however has demanded nothing less than a death sentence or jail term till death for the convicts.

Eleven of the 24 were held guilty of murder and the others of lesser offences recently.

Among those found guilty of being involved was VHP leader Atul Vaidya.  ANI
Simran Sodhi

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, June 10

India will probably have to wait a little longer for induction into the elite Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG). Diplomatic sources say though most are countries positive towards Indias membership, the application is unlikely to be approved in the June 23

plenary meeting of the NSG in Seoul.

The US is pushing Indias case hard, but its support comes with a catch: While asking the NSG member states to back India, the US has pointed out that India will not block membership of other countries influenced by extraneous regional issues.

US Secretary of State John Kerry, in a letter accessed by Bloomberg News, has written to NSG members asking them to support Indias NSG bid. Kerry in his letter urged the NSG member states to agree not to block consensus on Indian admission to the group at the Seoul meeting.

India has shown strong support for the objectives of the NSG and the global nuclear non-proliferation regime and is a like-minded state deserving of NSG admission, Kerry wrote. His statement reflects what US President Barack Obama also reiterated a few days ago after his meeting with Modi.

Kerrys letter goes on to state: With respect to other possible new members of the NSG, Indian officials have stated that India would take a merit-based approach to such applications and would not be influenced by extraneous regional issues.

The direction in which Kerry is pointing to is Pakistan and it makes the case clear that while the US is supporting Indias candidature at the NSG, Pakistan, too, may get its backing. Sources in the Indian establishment have also maintained that Indias interest is only in getting its NSG berth and has no interest in blocking Pakistans membership.

India has been lobbying hard to get through to the elite club. While Switzerland, the US and Mexico support Indias bid, a few countries led by China still have their objections. Sources say India has assigned its senior diplomats to countries such as South Africa, Argentina and Austria that have reservations about letting India in.
Kabul/New Delhi, June 10

Suspected militants have abducted an Indian female aid worker from Afghanistan's capital Kabul, Indian and Afghan officials said on Friday.

The kidnapped woman is Judith D'Souza, 40, working as a senior technical adviser on gender with the Aga Khan Developmental Network in Kabul, sources in New Delhi said.

D'Souza was kidnapped late on Thursday, the sources said. No group immediately claimed responsibility for her abduction.

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The Indian embassy in Kabul is in touch with senior Afghan authorities and the government, the sources said, adding that officials in Delhi were also in contact with her family in Kolkata.

They said the Afghan authorities were doing everything they could to secure her release.

The aid agency also confirmed that a "staff member of the Aga Khan Foundation" was abducted, but it did not name her.

"An investigation by the authorities has been launched, in conjunction with security officials and various partners. Every effort is being made to secure the safe release of the staff member," Aga Khan spokesperson Sam Pickens said in an email response.

Meanwhile, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj said that she has spoken to D'Souza's sister.

"I have spoken to the sister of Judith D'Souza. We will spare no efforts to rescue her," she tweeted.

"She is your sister and India's daughter. We are doing everything to rescue her. Please take care of your sick father," Sushma Swaraj added.

Judith's family on Friday expressed hope that India and Afghanistan would act soon to have her released.

"It happened in a different country. The government of that country should take steps. She liked the place as she said there was a lot of work to be done," Judith's sister Agnes D'Souza told the media in Kolkata.

"But if such a thing happens, who would want to go back? I am asking every channel to do their part. The Government of India must do something and get my sister back. I want her back," she added.

Asked about Taliban involvement in the crime, Agnes said: "I don't know." Judith's family came to know about the development around 1.30 a.m. on Friday from the Indian embassy in Kabul.

This is not the first time that an Indian aid worker has been kidnapped in Afghanistan. Taliban militants have mostly been blamed for the kidnappings.

Many Indian establishments have also been targeted in the past in Afghanistan where New Delhi has pledged and made huge investments to rebuild the war-torn country.

The latest in a series of terror strikes on Indian interests in Afghanistan was on an Indian consulate on March 2.

The abduction comes as the Indian embassy issued a security alert earlier last month for Indians residing in Afghanistan and travelling to the country.

"All Indians residing and travelling to Afghanistan are advised that the security situation in the country remains highly volatile. Terrorist attacks have taken place in the country against foreigners and are expected to continue. There is also the risk of kidnapping and hostage taking throughout the Afghanistan," the embassy statement warned.  IANS

-
New Delhi, June 10

JNU students union president Kanhaiya Kumar, along with 42 others, was today detained by the police at Bihar Bhawan in Chanakyapuri here for protesting against the alleged attack on students in hunger strike at the College of Arts and Crafts in Patna.

The demonstration started around 3.30 pm, following which Kumar and 42 others were put in a bus and detained at the Parliament Street Police Station. "The protesters were detained considering law and order issues," DCP Jatin Narwal said.

The protesters also demanded extension of the date of Bihar Public Service Commission main exams so that the dates do not clash with that of UPSC prelims. "The condition of education in Bihar is deteriorating. The government is not taking demands of students regarding quality education seriously. And those who are fighting for it are being jailed," Kumar said.  PTI
New Delhi, June 10

Prime Minister Narendra Modi returned home on Friday after a five-nation tour whose highlight was his meeting with US President Barack Obama and a congressional address in Washington.

During his six-day tour, Modi also visited Afghanistan, Qatar, Switzerland and Mexico with an aim to bolster ties.

He returned home early this morning from Mexico, his last stop.

Before leaving for home, Modi had tweeted: "Thank you Mexico. A new era in India-Mexico ties has begun and this relationship is going to benefit our people and the entire world".

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"Five days, five countries! After a productive visit to Mexico, the last leg of his journey, PM departs for Delhi," External Affairs Ministry spokesman Vikas Swarup tweeted later in the morning.

Besides addressing a joint sitting of the US Congress, Modi received the backing of two key Nuclear Suppliers Group members  Switzerland and Mexico  in a bid to secure a place in the 48-nation bloc.

He also held wide-ranging talks with President Obama at the White House following which the US recognised India as a "major defence partner".  PTI
Legal Correspondent

New Delhi, June 10

The Supreme Court on Friday clarified that brothels could be sealed or attached without serving notice on each and every occupant of such places.

A vacation Bench comprising Justices Pinaki Chandra Ghose and Amitava Roy made the clarification while refusing to entertain the plea of some of the citys sex workers.

The petitioners had challenged the move to seal a building and throw them out in the wake of the conviction of two sex workers who had operated from there. The Delhi High Court had rejected their plea, forcing them to approach the Supreme Court.

It would be impossible to enforce the Immoral Traffic (Prevention) Act if every occupant of a building used as a brothel had to be served notice, the Bench remarked.

In view of this, the petitioners plea that they should have been heard before being asked to pack up was illogical and absurd, the Bench said.

Appearing for the 38 petitioners, advocate Kamini Jaiswal pleaded that her clients be given at least four-week time to vacate the premises. Even illegal tenants were getting time. Further, the Supreme Court had passed several judgments directing the authorities to rehabilitate women rescued from brothels but the authorities, particularly those in the National Capital, had not taken any step for the purpose, she pleaded and sought permission to cite the rulings on the issue.

Unconvinced, the Bench said it was not inclined to entertain the petition or grant them time to vacate the premises ordered to be sealed by the trial court and upheld by the high court.
GS Paul

Tribune News Service

Amritsar, June 10

The sacked Panj Pyaras (five beloved ones of the Guru) opened their office here today, while claiming that their move was not aimed at setting up a parallel secretariat of the Akal Takht.

Satnam Singh Khanda, one of them, said, Challenging the Akal Takhts sanctity was never on our agenda. Our motto is to revive the objective for which the Takht was established. The incumbent Jathedars have become helpless before their political masters. We appeal to the Sikh community to unite to free the highest temporal seat from their clutches.

He said the office would enable Sikhs across the globe to contact them. We travelled around the country and overseas and performed 1,511 ceremonies. Now, we have a permanent address. Our duties will be to uphold the Sikh maryada by preaching Gurbani and amrit sanchar among the community, and urge Sikhs not to fall into the drug trap, he added. The Panj Pyaras hailed the move of ardasia Balbir Singh, who was present on the occasion, to deny the siropa to Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal.

Khanda, Satnam Singh, Major Singh, Mangal Singh and Tirlok Singh were dismissed by the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee in January after they summoned the five Takht heads at the Akal Takht  following the latters decision to exonerate Dera Sacha Sauda head Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh of blasphemy charges.

As the five Takht heads didnt oblige them, they asked the SGPC to replace the heads of the Akal Takht, Takht Damdama Sahib and Takht Kesgarh Sahib. The SGPC initially shifted them to the Dharam Parchar panel and then dismissed them.

Representatives of the Dal Khalsa, Sikh Relief UK, Akhand Kirtani Jatha, Panthic Talmel Sangathan and Ek Noor Khalsa Fauj have extended support to the Panj Pyaras.
Gurdeep Singh Mann

Tribune News Service

Bathinda, June 10

A large number of investors vent their ire by raising slogans against Pearls Group MD Nirmal Bhangu who was produced in a local court today for allegedly duping nearly five crore investors of about Rs 51,000 crore across the country.

A case was registered against him at the Cantonment Police Station and he was produced in the court of Judicial Magistrate Randeep Kumar who sent him to three days police remand.

The investors accused the government of allegedly shielding Bhangu as he was main sponsor of the four World Kabaddi Cups organised by the state.

They stated that the government did not hold any such event after a public outcry by nearly 25 lakh investors.

Even the registration of a case against him is eyewash, said members of the of Insaaf Di Awaz and All Investor Safety Organisation formed to highlight Bhangus connivance with the state government.

Mansa district president of the organisation Lalit Kumar alleged that Pearls Group owns two Sectors 96, 99, 100 and 104 - in Mohali, the details of which came out during investigations by the CBI.

But even then the government has taken no steps to sell these properties and refund the victims, he alleged.

Over 7,000 complaints were sent to the police across the state against by the victims last month.

Active in the business of promising more interest than the banks since 1983, Bhangus companies not only managed to purchase large tracts of land in the country but also invested in hotels and hospitals, Lalit said.

SSP Swapan Sharma said that heavy police force was deployed in view of the protest by investors. Cases of cheating are under investigation and will be taken to their logical end, he said.
Tribune Real Estate Bureau

When it comes to real estate, it is often said that the important factors are \location, location and location', says Pranay Vakil, chairman of Praron Consultancy. However, if you have the ability to spot an upcoming location correctly, you can hit the jackpot. The appreciation in prices that an upcoming or future location can give you, is no match for an established location. I think Bhiwadi falls in this future location, maintains Vakil.

For investors, Bhiwadi has provided exceptional returns, at a time when there has been a correction, in many of the established markets in the neighbourhood. Properties that were available at Rs 1,700 per sq ft in 2007, in Bhiwadi, appreciated to Rs 2,200 in 2012 and by 2016, these further appreciated to Rs 3,100 per sq ft.

With several infrastructure projects in the pipeline, including the Delhi-Mumbai Industrial Corridor (DMIC, which will pass through Rewari, 25 km from Bhiwadi), analysts are expecting another rally in the property market. Moreover, if the economy improves and boosts overall demand, Bhiwadi could turn into a goldmine for those entering now.

Advantage Bhiwadi

Bhiwadis property market has several advantages  it is strategically located, has a supportive industrial climate and is affordable owing to cheaper land cost. Neeraj Bansal, partner real estate and construction, at KPMG India, states that the location has a good connectivity, with the eight-lane road to Gurgaon on one side and Jaipur on the other side. Other factors that make it interesting for investors, are low property rates, new infrastructure, low cost of living, low population density and low pollution levels.

Bhiwadi is home to a large number of industrial units and enjoys proximity to all major towns of the National Capital Region (NCR). Being part of the 2021, National Capital Region Plan, Bhiwadi has of late, witnessed increased residential and commercial activity. Many real estate players are launching projects here. The residential sector's contribution to the growth of Bhiwadi is expected to increase in the near future, says Bansal.

No land disputes

Vivek Singh, a real estate professional who has worked with a couple of developers in the region, points out that Bhiwadi also remained unaffected by the land disputes that have plagued Noida Extension, the Yamuna Expressway and other parts of Ghaziabad. This has prompted many budget home seekers, investors and industries, to shift to this safer micro-market. Moreover, project execution has also been faster here, he says.

The Rajasthan State Industrial Development and Investment Corporation (RIICO) is providing excellent support, vis-a-vis infrastructure, water and power, whereas, even in the neighbouring industrial township of Manesar, bottlenecks remain.

While Bhiwadi is attracting more and more industries, even the aspiration level of the local population has gone up and that spells well, for the overall economic growth and property market of the region, elaborates Singh.

While there is no denying that Bhiwadi is no longer perceived as a poor cousin of Gurgaon and Manesar, the moot question now, is whether the real estate market in Bhiwadi can compete with those in New Gurgaon or Manesar. The answer, could well lie in the pace at which connectivity and infrastructure improve.

 Inputs from housing.com/News
Sandeep Rawat

Tribune News Service

Haridwar, June 10

Hari-Pur-Kalan, situated on the border of Haridwar and Dehradun districts, lacks basic civic facilities and infrastructure.

Residents of the colony for the past several years have been demanding proper drainage, sewer, roads, water and electricity lines and infrastructure. As Har-Pur-Kalan is about 3 km from Har-ki-Pauri, it has a sizeable population of saints and presence of ashrams, dharamshalas, lodges and guesthouses.

Its location on the border of Haridwar and Dehradun districts has led to confusion regarding municipal and civic schemes and projects that get delayed or held up.

Though a major portion of the colony falls in Dehradun district, it is generally considered to be in Haridwar periphery. Many residents and shopkeepers here mention their location as Haridwar in name plates and signboards while their area falls in Dehradun district in the revenue and administrative maps.

There is no proper sewer line in this segment and waste directly pours into an open field before flowing into a nearby rivulet.

Maha Mandaleshwar Swami Harichetnand Maharaj, whose Harihar ashram is at Hari-Pur-Kalan, says saints along with local people have several times apprised both Haridwar and Dehradun district administrative officials as well as public representatives about the pathetic civic infrastructure in the colony but barring assurances nothing much has happened.

Residents of Hari-Pur-Kalan, which has a population of about 25,000, have been demanding inclusion of the colony under the Haridwar Municipal Corporation so that the boundary issue is resolved. Residents here cast their votes for the village pradhan, chetra panchayat and zila panchayat members.

Local village pradhan Satyendra Singh told The Tribune that he had held talks with Rishikesh legislator and Tehri Garhwal parliamentarian Rajya Laxmi Shah regarding the civic issues of Hari-Pur-Kalan.

Hari-Pur-Kalan needs a sewer line, proper drainage system, carpeted inner roads and a master plan. This rural area is fast becoming urban as it is near Har-ki-Pauri, Bhoopatwala, Neel Dhara in Haridwar and Motichur and the Raiwala railway station as well as adjacent to the Delhi-Haridwar-Dehradun-Rishikesh National Highway. A large number of commercial buildings and hotels have come up here. We hope the state government and the two district administrations, the civic bodies of Haridwar and Dehradun would provide adequate funds for our areas development, said Satyendra.

He added that they had met Union Minister for Water Resources-Ganga Rejuvenation a year ago, while she inspected nullahs and sewer directly pouring into Ganga river, and apprised her about the civic woes of the area.

A Union minister had assured us of resolving our issues but even after more than a year nothing had happened on ground. We will have to resort to agitation if civic infrastructure is not improved in Hari-Pur-Kalan in near future, said Manoj Jakhmola, BJP state general secretary of the youth wing and local resident.
Hajis to pay Rs13,500 more

Pithoragarh, June 10

The Saudi Arabia Airport Authority has hiked the Haj fare this year as the cost of travel per pilgrim for the Saudi Arabian Airlines increased considerably.

State Haj committee chairperson Haji Rao Sher Mohammad today said the pilgrims had to pay Rs 13,500 more than that of last years amount. The cost of travelling to Saudi Arabia from the state has been raised from Rs 1,82,850 to Rs 1,95,310 in the general category while the amount has been raised from Rs 2,15,600 to Rs 2,29,210 for the green category ticket, the Haj committee chairperson said.  OC
Tribune News Service

Dehradun, June 10

Governor KK Paul today honoured 22 meritorious students and principals of three schools with the Governors Award at a function held at the Raj Bhavans auditorium here.

Of the students honoured were 19 toppers of the arts, science and commerce stream of the Uttarakhand Secondary Education Board Class XII exams and three students who topped in the high school exams of the board.

The Governor gave away cash rewards of Rs 5,000, Rs 3,000 and Rs 2,000 to those getting first, second and third positions, respectively, in the intermediate exams along with a certificate of the Governors Award.

Three schools which had cent percent results were given Rs 50,000, 30,000 and Rs 20,000, respectively. The bank drafts were given to principals for the libraries of the schools.

The Governor instituted the award in 2015 to promote a healthy competition among schoolchildren. The Governor congratulated all students who received the award, their teachers and parents.

He called upon students to get associated with the works of social welfare and utility. He said learning English, computers, short hand and typing would help students greatly. He said upgrading skills was extremely important. Teachers and parents had the responsibility of identifying the interests of the students and help them develop their interests and strengths. Students who are not academically inclined may be better in sports, in fine arts or in leadership skills. Teachers and parents should guide them in the right direction, he said.

Chief Minister Harish Rawat, who was the chief guest, said he was happy to note that Rapirketi (Bageshwar), Kacheela (Pithoragarh) and Dhumakot (Pauri Garhwal) schools had shown excellent performance. This showed that the school education in the state had improved and villages were moving forward. He said efforts were being made to improve the standard of education in the state. Around 600 model schools had been identified. Lack of principals in secondary schools had been removed, he added. The Chief Minister said efforts must be made to ensure that our government schools must be among the high level educational institutions of the country.

Education Minister Mantri Prasad Naithani said due to the Governors initiative, results of the board exams had shown improvement. On Naithanis request, the Governor announced to double the amount of cash reward from next year.
Dhaka, June 10

A Hindu ashram worker was hacked to death on Friday, the second such killing in the past three days as the country continues to battle a surge in attacks on secularists and minorities.

Nityaranjan Pandey, a 60-year-old volunteer at the Thakur Anukul Chandra Satsanga Paramtirtha Hemayetpurdham ashram, was stabbed in the neck by several attackers near the ashram in Pabna's Hemayetpur Upazila while he was on his morning walk, ASP (Sadar Circle) Selim Khan was quoted as saying by bdnews.

There has been no immediate claim for the attack, which comes three days after a Hindu priest was killed by suspected Islamic State jihadists.

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There has been a rise in systematic assaults on secularists, intellectuals, minorities and foreigner in a country that is internationally recognised as a moderate Islamic nation.

On Sunday, a Christian businessman killed by unidentified men wielding machetes near a church, hours after the wife of a high-ranking anti-terror police officer was shot dead by religious extremists.

In February, militants stabbed to death another Hindu priest at a temple in Bangladesh and shot and wounded a devotee who went to his rescue.

In April, a liberal professor was brutally hacked to death by machete-wielding Islamic State militants, who slit his throat near his home in Rajshahi city. The month saw two more attacsk  a Hindu tailor who was hacked Islamic State militants at his shop and the editor of Bangladesh's first gay magazine, who was murdered with a friend in his flat in Dhaka by Islamists.

The Islamic State and the al-Qaeda in Indian Peninsula have claimed some attacks, although the Bangladesh establishment continues to deny their presence in the country.  PTI
Fallujah: Iraqs elite counterterrorism service moved to within 3 km of central Fallujah on Friday and consolidated positions in the south of the city, the operation's commander said. Lieutenant General Abdelwahab al-Saadi said the operation to retake one of the Islamic State group's most emblematic bastions was progressing well. Daesh (IS) wanted the battle to take place outside the city but we have moved in, and retaken all this area in eight days, he said. AFP

Brussels attacks: Belgian cops arrest suspect

Brussels: Belgian police investigating the Brussels airport and metro attacks have arrested a man in connection with "terrorist murders", the federal prosecutor said Friday. The 31-year-old man, identified as Ali EHA, was detained Thursday during a house search in the Schaerbeek area of the capital, the prosecutor's office said. The March 22 suicide bombings at Zaventem airport and Maalbeek metro station which killed 32 people. AFP

Pak gives tax notice to Google, Facebook, YouTube

Lahore: The Punjab government has served tax notices to social media websites Google and Facebook as well as video-sharing websites YouTube and Dailymotion, asking them to register by June 17 and pay for displaying Punjab-specific advertisements. In case of non-compliance, we would write to the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority to place a ban the websites, the government said. PTI

Britain kicks off Queens 90th birthday celebrations

London: Britain on Friday kicked off three days of celebrations to mark Queen Elizabeth II's official 90th birthday with a national thanksgiving service where tributes were paid for her "faithful devotion" to the country. The service held at the iconic St Paul's Cathedral in London was attended by around 50 royal family members, including the Queen's husband Duke of Edinburgh, who himself is celebrating his 95th birthday on Friday. PTI
Lima, June 10

Keiko Fujimori today conceded defeat to former Wall Street banker Pedro Pablo Kuczynski in Peru's photo-finish presidential election, ending five days of legal wrangling that had left the result up in the air.

"In a democratic spirit, we accept these results," Fujimori said, flanked by members of her Popular Force party, who will have a majority in congress from late July.

Fujimori, the daughter of disgraced and jailed former president Alberto Fujimori, had until now refused to give up even though political analysts, statisticians and some members of her own party said it would be impossible for the court challenges to put her on top.

Kuczynski has forged ahead cautiously, sounding triumphant, but stopping short of declaring victory.

He called for unity in a country left torn by the election, in which he took 50.12 per cent to Fujimori's 49.88 per cent.

"It's time to work together for the future of our country," Kuczynski said yesterday after the full -- but not yet final -- result came down.

Earlier, outgoing President Ollanta Humala and the leaders of Colombia, Chile, Argentina and Mexico congratulated Kuczynski after the latest official results on Thursday made it nearly impossible for Fujimori to catch up even though Kuczynski led by only 40,000 votes.

Kuczynski promised to unify Peru after the divisive election that many saw as a referendum on the controversial legacy of Fujimoris father, imprisoned former authoritarian leader Alberto Fujimori, in Perus fourth straight democratic election.

Were going to work for all Peruvians, Kuczynski, 77, said in a news conference as supporters cheered him in the streets. We take this virtual verdict with much modesty. The thin margin of victory and lack of allies in Congress would leave Kuczynski with one of the weakest mandates of any recent Peruvian president.

To kick-start the economy, Kuczynski has proposed widening the fiscal deficit, lowering sales taxes, and investing in new infrastructure projects.  Agencies
Islamabad, June 10

A Pakistani court has upheld the life sentence of a political activist from the countrys semi-autonomous north, which observers say could see a nationalist upsurge in a region also claimed by India.

Baba Jan, a left wing political activist from the Hunza Valley in Pakistans northern Gilgit-Baltistan, was convicted by an anti-terrorism court for participating in political riots in 2011 and lost an appeal against his life sentence yesterday.

Jan has vocally protested what he and supporters describe as political, constitutional and human rights violations in the region, organising rallies and demonstrations in protest.

He contested local elections last year from prison, placing second in the polls.

The decision was aimed at barring Baba Jan from contesting elections but it will have a counter-productive impact, said political analyst Amir Hussain.

This decision will backfire and trigger extremist views like a nationalistic upsurge, he said.

A simmering resentment has been building in Gilgit-Baltistan since Islamabad began mulling upgrading its constitutional status in a bid to provide legal cover to a multi-billion-dollar Chinese investment plan in the area.

Gilgit-Baltistan, which borders China and Afghanistan, is not constitutionally part of Pakistan, and like Kashmir, it is also claimed by India.

Islamabad has historically insisted that the area, along with the parts of Kashmir it controls, are semi-autonomous and has not formally integrated them into the country, in line with its position that a referendum on sovereignty should be carried out across the whole of the region.

But Pakistans adviser on foreign affairs Sartaj Aziz last week confirmed that a committee established to come up with a plan to re-examine the areas constitutional status had completed its work, adding that it was waiting a final approval from the prime minister.

Aziz did not give any further details on what the plan entailed.

Human rights organisations have been demanding the release of Baba Jan. An international petition for his release has been signed by leading left wing intellectuals, including Noam Chomsky, Tariq Ali and David Graeber. AFP
BAGHDAD, June 10

US and Iraqi officials fighting Islamic State said on Friday they could not confirm a report by an Iraqi TV channel that Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi had been wounded in an air strike in northern Iraq.

A spokesman for the US-led coalition fighting the radical Islamist militants, Colonel Chris Garver, said in an email that he had seen the reports but had "nothing to confirm this at this time".

Kurdish and Arab security officials in northern Iraq said they also could not confirm the report.

Al Sumariya TV cited a local source in the northern province of Nineveh saying that Baghdadi and other Islamic State leaders were wounded on Thursday in a coalition air strike on one of the group's command headquarters close to the Syrian border.

The channel has good connections with Shi'ite politicians and Iraqi forces engaged in the battle against Islamic State.

There have been several reports in the past that Baghdadi, whose real name is Ibrahim al-Samarrai, was killed or wounded after proclaiming himself caliph of all Muslims two years ago.

The ultra-hardline Sunni group is under increased pressure in both Iraq and Syria, and the territory under its control has shrunk significantly since 2014, limiting the potential for its leaders to move around or seek shelter.

The US earlier this year announced an intensification of the war on Islamic State with more air strikes and more American troops on the ground to advise and assist allied forces.

The US-led coalition has regularly flown raids out of Erbil, the capital of Iraq's Kurdistan region, in operations aimed at killing and capturing Islamic State leaders.

A Kurdish intelligence official and an Arab from the Baaj area west of Mosul said the US-led coalition had conducted such a raid there earlier this week. The coalition did not confirm this raid.

Kurdish Peshmerga forces are positioned in an arc around the north and east of Mosul while the Iraqi army is trying to capture Falluja, the group's stronghold near Baghdad.

The Iraqi army is also massing tanks and troops south of Mosul, in preparation for an offensive planned later this year to retake the largest city under the control of the militants.

In Syria, Russian- and Iranian-backed Syrian government forces and US-backed Syrian opposition and Kurds are separately trying to advance on Raqqa, the group's capital in Syria. Reuters
Daimler's latest advance in connectivity and autonomous technologies, Highway Pilot Connect, prepares for autonomous platooning earlier this year in Germany. Photo: Daimler Trucks.

Theres a lot of buzz around connectivity in commercial vehicles, including how connectivity plays into autonomous driving technologies. The mainstream media loves to talk about driverless trucks, but as I discussed in my editorial in HDT last month, the road to true self driving trucks is likely to be a long one, with lots of obstacles slowing the pace of progress.

I want to wind the tape back a few months to the Fleet Forum at this years Mid-America Trucking Show in Louisville, Ky., where one panel discussion addressed connectivity.

Fred Andersky, director of government and industry affairs at Bendix, started out trying to narrow down the concept of connectivity. Speaking about recent tests of autonomous vehicle technology and platooning by Daimler Trucks in Europe, he said, youre getting to the ultimate [in connectivity] there, when the driver can sit back and look at his iPad or drink coffee. The way were going to get there is through connectivity and advancing driver assistance systems.

He noted that connectivity got its start back in the mid-90s with antilock braking systems. ABS gave the truck a brain and eyes, through electronic control units and sensors. Later, additional sensors made stability control possible. Similarly, he said, radar on the front of the truck allowed us to detect what was going on in front of the vehicle. The first systems simply warned the driver, but eventually they were tied to another electronic brain that allowed the trucks cruise control to react to what it detected in front  and then we added braking to that.. Next came collision mitigation braking that works whether the cruise control is on or not, where the system, if it decides a collision is imminent, alerts the driver and applies the brakes. Now weve added a camera to work with the radar to enhance those capabilities.

This kind of progression, Andersky said, is the same type of step by step approach we should expect to see with driver assistance systems and eventually autonomous vehicle technologies.

He cited the four Is of safety: information, intelligence, intervention, and insight.

Information is sensors and other outside inputs, such as radar and cameras. Intelligence is analyzing that information to determine the appropriate response. Today we intervene with throttle and brakes; in the future well add steering. Insight helps us see what might have happened in a particular situation.

In the future what connectivity is going to mean is more information into the system, he said, such as GPS, vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure information, to do more to help avoid potential crash situations.

In the future we could receive information from the vehicles in front that theyre slowing down, and might get information from the infrastructure that this is a 90-degree curve, and GPS information so the system knows where we are, so we can alert the driver and precharge the brakes. Suppose the driver doesn't pay attention to the alerts; we can then start to apply the brakes. And if the driver doesnt pay attention to an alert, when the truck does something they dont expect it gets their attention real quick. But if it still doesnt, get his attention, we can slow the vehicle down and steer it to the side of the road safely, and alert the authorities that we have a driver incapacitated. Thats the future vision of connectivity with a driver assist system.

One of the challenges, however, is whether the network on the truck can handle all this data.

I think whats going to start to happen is youre going to have more networks on the vehicle, Andersky said. Today the J1939 CAN [bus] is getting overloaded. My prediction is in the relatively near future there will be a safety-critical CAN. The last thing you want to happen is because the driver rolls up his window you dont get a safety alert. We have some of that already today; stability control for instance uses a direct link from some of the sensors to the ECU. But its going to become wider scale  a second network.

Andersky also projects connectivity between the tractor and the trailer improving in the future. The vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure data has to include information on how big the vehicle is  is it bobtailing? Is it a 48-foot or 53-foot trailer, or doubles? PLC is not the way to do it.

Another challenge is the question of who gets access to all that data. He pointed out that government agencies such as the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration would love to get their hands on it  and there are opportunities as long as that does not track back to a specific truck or fleet. How do you protect privacy?

While theres a lot of promise in connected vehicle technologies, theres still a lot of work that has to be done, not just on the technology side, but on the rules, regulations and laws covering the technology.
A California judge has ruled that the California Air Resources Board erred in delaying the enforcement of stricter diesel emission rules for certain heavy-duty truck operators.

The ruling by the Superior Court of Californias Central Division sets aside delays amended to the states Truck and Bus clean-air rule by CARB in 2014, ostensibly to level the playing field between large and small truck operations.

In a statement, CARB said those amendments provide badly needed flexibility to smaller fleets (three trucks or less), lower-use vehicles including those operated by small farmers, and fleets in some rural areas.

The agency said it will immediately file an appeal, which will maintain the status quo while the case makes its way through the higher courts. CARB said that as the case makes its way through the Court of Appeal process, its statewide staff will continue to enforce the regulation and will cite those vehicles found to be out of compliance.

We strongly disagree with the court, and will file an appeal in all possible haste, said Jack Kitowski, head of CARBs Mobile Source Division, which is in charge of putting the regulation into effect on a daily basis. We dont want to see small fleets and farmers hurt by this decision.

The lawsuit was filed by John R. Lawson Rack and Oil of Fresno and the California Trucking Association, which alleged that CARB did not follow the proper procedures of the Administrative Procedures Act and the California Environmental Quality Act in adopting the amendments.

This ruling confirms that CARB failed to properly consider the impact on business and the environment when it pulled the rug out from under thousands of compliant fleets by not enforcing the rules across the board, to all trucks on California roadways, said Shawn Yadon, CEO of CTA. This is an important ruling for all businesses operating in California because it supports the requirement that regulatory agencies must evaluate the economic impact of their actions.

In 2014, said CARB Executive Officer Richard Corey, we recognized the extreme economic pressures experienced by smaller trucking fleets and independent owners as they sought to comply by upgrading or purchasing new equipment. We responded by amending the regulation to make it more flexible for the little guys to comply. This court decision negates those amendments and deals a profound blow the smaller fleets, small farmers and independent owners.

CTAs Yadon told HDT that the lawsuit was not about big carrier vs. small carrier. CARBs amendments picked winners and losers, with the losers being those operators and carriers who stepped up and complied with the rule, at great cost.

"Those compliant operators and carriers were then placed in an unfair competitive landscape alongside those who had not complied and had not stepped up and incurred those significant compliance costs, he added.

Yadon noted that during CARBs April, 2014 public hearing on amending the delays to the clean-air rule, truck operators and small trucking companies detailed significant financial hardships to comply with the rule, and spoke in opposition to the amendments to allow non-compliant operators a competitive advantage in the marketplace. Upon hearing directly from operators/carriers about the economic impacts the amendments would create, CARB voted to approve the amendments without conducting the thorough economic impact analysis required under the California Administrative Procedures Act.

Joe Rajkovacz, Director of Governmental Affairs and Communications for the Western States Trucking Association, which did not have a position on the case, told HDT that the decision was not unexpected. He said that WSTA was responsible for helping create the flexibility options and was successful in politicking the board in 2014 for these compliance options.

Rajkovacz said that an appeal of the ruling could take years. One of the flexibility options (for small fleets) effectively expires on January 1, 2018, he noted, rendering any final decision potentially moot should the appeals court affirm the trial courts decision.
The Kentucky Transportation Cabinet has released its 2016 Statewide Freight Plan for public comment and is seeking recommendations to establish a freight advisory committee to enhance communications between the Cabinet and the freight industry.

The 2016 Kentucky Statewide Freight Plan and Executive Summary proposes freight initiatives and investments for the states freight transportation system. KYTC wants to form a freight advisory committee to improve communication and coordination between the freight industry and state government.

The Cabinet is encouraging public and private stakeholders as well as anyone with an interest in freight industry needs, innovations and goals to apply for the Freight Advisory committee. Interested parties can submit their information online.

I am pleased to release the proposed 2016 Statewide Freight Plan and announce plans to develop a freight advisory committee, said Greg Thomas, Secretary of KYTC. We are eager to receive input on the Statewide Freight Plan from interested parties whose goal is to promote the safe and efficient transportation of freight.

There will be a 30-day window for review and comment on the proposed 2016 Kentucky Statewide Freight Plan, running from June 3 until July 5. During this time, KYTC is seeking input from constituents, local governments, industry partners and interested agencies and organizations.
Photo: Arizona DOT

Transportation leaders from California, Texas, Arizona and New Mexico have created a coalition supporting innovation along the Interstate 10 corridor to improve the safety and efficiency of the vital transportation route.

An agreement establishing the voluntary I-10 Corridor Coalition, proposed by Arizona Department of Transportation director John Halikowski, was signed June 2. The initiative is modeled after a coalition involving 15 states that govern Interstate 95 that runs the length of the East Coast.

The efficient flow of commerce in Arizona drives our states economic vitality, said Halikowski. This agreement with our transportation partners in California, New Mexico and Texas will work to build a reliable, friction-free I-10 corridor to support Arizonas businesses and export industries.

The partnership is designed to remove what transportation officials refer to as friction from the corridor, such as the variety of commercial vehicle permitting and inspection practices in each state along I-10. These different policies and regulations restrict the movement of goods, creating transportation inefficiencies.

The coalition will employ the transportation knowledge of each state collectively to enable resource sharing, joint testing and economies of scale. It will apply best practices to improve safety and efficiency along the corridor, improve freight movement, expand and coordinate the use of technology along the corridor and promote cooperative planning.

Interstate 10 is a major trucking route from the Ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles in Southern California to the rest of the U.S., transporting goods coming to the country from Asian markets all the way through Central Texas.

We want to see the day when a truck or a non-commercial vehicle can travel the 1,700 miles between Los Angeles ports and Houston ports safely, efficiently and without delay, said Halikowski. Someday we want the I-10 Corridor to be filled with truck platoons and connected vehicles, weigh-in-motion sensors and automated truck parking lots.
HOUSTON  A small plane crashed into a car Thursday in a parking lot near a Houston airport, killing three people aboard the aircraft, fire officials said.

Houston Fire Department spokesman Jay Evans said the plane crashed shortly after 1 p.m. into a car that was parked at a hardware store near Hobby Airport in the southeastern part of the city. Fire Capt. Ruy Lozano said officials believe the three people killed in the accident were on the plane.

No one was in the parked car that was hit by the plane, Lozano said.

"It didn't strike the building. No fire. No fuel spill," he said.

Evans said no other injuries were reported. The National Transportation Safety Board, which is investigating the cause of the crash, did not immediately release the victims' names. NTSB investigator Tom Latson said it's likely the plane stalled before plummeting to the ground.

The single-engine Cirrus SR-20 aircraft took off from Norman, Oklahoma, around 10:11 a.m. CDT and was trying to land at Hobby Airport when an air traffic controller told the pilot the plane was too high and asked it to go around, said NTSB spokesman Peter Knudson.

During the second attempt to land, the traffic controller determined the plane was still too high and asked it to again go around. Knudson said the plane made a turn to the left and then took a nosedive into the parking lot.

The flight-tracking website FlightAware showed that in the last 15 minutes of its flight, the plane's altitude greatly fluctuated, going from 1,800 feet down to 200 feet and back up to 1,200 feet before crashing.

Witnesses said the plane appeared to have fallen from the sky and dropped to the ground.

"There was a great big loud noise, like a bomb and a real screechy noise. When I looked out I saw the plane in the parking lot," Susan Conklin, who was in her resale shop across the street from the hardware store when the crash occurred, said in a phone interview.

Conklin said that after the crash, she didn't see any movement from inside the plane and people didn't immediately rush to the plane over concern it might explode.

"It was scary," she said.

Television news footage showed the plane narrowly missed hitting a couple of propane tanks in the parking lot.

Latson said it was "remarkable" that the plane didn't hit the propane tanks, the hardware store that was less than 40 feet away from the crash site, other buildings or nearby power lines.

The plane was equipped with an emergency parachute system that is rocket-deployed and would allow an aircraft to safely descend when used.

"Unfortunately, it appears the rocket motor deployed either immediately before or just after impact. The rocket motor did deploy, the parachute did not," Latson said.

Records in the Federal Aviation Administration registry show the plane was registered to Safe Aviation LLC in Moore, Oklahoma, and had been manufactured in 2012. Officials with Safe Aviation could not immediately be reached for comment. A phone listing for the company could not be found.
Skinner Trace which is off the S.S. Erin Road is experiencing major land movement which has 
US medical talk show The Dr. Oz Show has been renewed for three more seasons.

Now in its seventh season the Oprah Winfrey-created show launched in 2009 and has enjoyed double-digit growth in syndication.

The FOX Television Stations Group have been our partners since launch and their commitment and support has been key to the long-term success of The Dr. Oz Show, said John Weiser, President, US Distribution, Sony Pictures Television. The Dr. Oz Show franchise delivers tremendous multi-platform sales and marketing opportunities for local stations across the country.

It airs in Australia on Seven.

Source: Deadline
Italian police have detained two citizens of Ukraine on suspicion of illegal trafficking of Syrian migrants, Reuters reports.

"Italian police have arrested two Ukrainians suspected of trafficking Syrians to Italy on a sail boat," the report noted.

Police chased the boat and arrested the two Ukrainians there. The vessel was confiscated and the Ukrainians were taken to a prison after the migrants identified them.

tl
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin called on the Ukrainian community in Estonia to continue picketing the Russian embassy until all Ukrainian hostages are liberated during his meeting at the Ukrainian Cultural Center in Tallinn, Ukrinforms own Baltics correspondent reports.

"Do not stop your pickets! Nadiya [Savchenko] was only the beginning. And we still have another 10 political prisoners in Russia and 20 political prisoners in Crimea. And actually our estimates point to 114 persons - we think that some of them they are hiding - our boys who are locked up in the basements in Donbas. As Oleh Sentsov said: "The country for which I fought, will not forsake me." This is why until we liberate them all, please do not stop picketing," the top diplomat said.

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President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko has approved the decree on foreigners and stateless persons to draft in the military service in the Armed Forces of Ukraine, the website of the President reports.

The signing of the decree will make it possible for the foreigners and stateless persons who didnt serve in the Ukrainian Armed Forces, but who are now deployed in the army units, to "faithfully fulfill on a voluntary basis, their duty to protect the independence and territorial integrity of Ukraine." TL
Ukraine has lost over 800 childrens recreation establishments because of the temporary occupation of Crimea by the Russian Federation, the Ukrainian Social Policy Ministry reports.

The state has lost over 800 children's recreation and health-improving establishments because of the temporary occupation of Crimea. Among them  122 health improving centers, including International Childrens Center Artek, which was visited by over 30,000 children every year, and 680 recreation centers, reads the report.

At the same time, the Social Policy Ministry also informed that on June 22, 2016, International Childrens Center Artek of the Public Administration under Ukraines President will launch its work in the territory of Pushcha-Ozerna Sanatorium in Kyiv.

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Janet Napolitano, president at the University of California, has issued a statement on June 2 regarding the recent UCLA shooting.

Napolitano expressed her grief as the shooting has claimed one member of the faculty. The UC president has deemed the murder-suicide as senseless violence. The statement was published on the University of California website.

The events on June 1 took the life of Department of Mechanical Engineering professor William Klug. The professor died at the age of 39, and was survived by his wife and two children.

The shooter, Mainak Sarkar, was a former UCLA doctoral student. Sarkar has shot the Klug in the professor's office, before taking his own life.

Witnesses have stated that Sarkar fired two shots, which ultimately killed the professor. The LAPD believes that the shooter came into UCLA armed with two pistols with a few magazines of ammunition.

The police reported that Sarkar blamed Klug of stealing Sarkar's computer code, and somehow gave it to someone else, according to the LA Times.

The killer had left a suicide note that led the authorities to his home in St. Paul, Minnesota. It is where the LAPD had found out that that Sarkar had killed his wife, Ashley Hasti, whom of which married Sarkar in 2011.

Charlie Beck, the LAPD chief, has stated that they had found a "kill list" from where the body was found. The note bore Hasti's name, and Klug's name, along with another UCLA professor, whom of which the authorities has declined to disclose to the public; LAPD confirmed that the second UCLA professor is safe.

In response to the events that took place on June 1, UCLA has announced on June 9 that it will create a task force to probe what took place in the university.

Michael Beck, Administrative Vice Chancellor, is reported to be responsible in assembling the task force. Beck was already conducting a security analysis on the campus before the decision of creating a task force was made, as CBS reported.

The UCLA shooting is the 186th campus shooting in the United States since Sandy Hook.
Two University of Connecticut students have started a business in providing solar energy equipment to developing countries, such as Haiti, Nepal, and some communities in Africa.

Innovative-Diffusion LLC was launched 10 months ago by two UConn students. Benjamin Williams, who is one of the co-founders and CEO of Innovative-Diffusion, have stated that the company was faced with vast challenges, the Hartford Courant reported.

David Oyanadel, chief technology officer and co-founder of the company, said that the difficulties lie with finding distributors for their products, along with the level of corruption within the targeted countries.

The partners have revealed that the corruption is operating in a large scale, and cites an example regarding port regulations. The company was faced with challenge that almost barred them from even trading to the affected countries.

The claim was that if a company failed to pay under the table, the goods would stay in port.

Innovative-Diffusion is based in Willimantic. During its 10-month operation, it is reported that the company has generated $40,000 in revenue, albeit not having raised private capital. The company has two products in production as of writing, which are the "Medicine Unit," and the "Permanent Solar Unit," as displayed on its website.

The products utilizes solar energy to provide basic commodities to developing countries. The "Medicine Unit" is a refrigerated storage unit designed for medicines, as proper storage has prevented the affected countries to distribute medical supplies to those in need.

Meanwhile the "Permanent Solar Unit" provides an energy supply to those communities that are lacking a power grid, which allows for the residents to have a reliable source of light, and a source to power devices.

Innovative-Diffusion LLC has since partnered with Africaphilantopies, Inc., as well as Embrace Relief Foundation, Inc., as stated on its blog post. The partners have stated that there are much taken for granted in America, where these countries lack even the basic infrastructure.
(U.K.) - Two academics of a controversial study titled "Student Sex Work Project" have called on universities to accept the practice of students posing as sex workers.

According to Swansea University Professor Tracey Sagar and fellow academic Debbie Jones, it was an outdated notion for universities to think all students who engage in prostitution or sexual services are automatically victims. They said while there some who indeed enter the sex industry to pay for their schooling, there are also those do it either for pure pleasure or to fund their extravagant lifestyle, The Telegraph reported.

The pair added that even if universities do their best to stamp out the practice, students would just find ways to continue working in the sex industry.

Sagar and Jones' controversial Student Sex Work Project, which involved almost 7,000 students taking part in a comprehensive survey last year, argued that at least one student out of 20 was a sex worker. This equates to roughly 100,000 students out of the total student population in the U.K.

The study also found that at least 22 percent of university students had considered entering the sex industry.

"Jobs" in the sex industry involved stripping dancing in bars, online and phone sex, and direct sexual intercourse. Even more surprising, the study revealed a higher number of men than women posing as sex workers.

While Sagar and Jones are advocating for universities to let student sex workers be, they also said schools should step in if the student was placing his/her welfare and academics at risk.

Ultimately, Sagar would like the results from the Student Sex Work Project to goad universities into providing support services, including health and counseling to students working in the sex industry, The Guardian reported. Now that everything is out in the open, she hopes universities-instead of shunning student sex workers-must arm themselves with the new knowledge in order for them to better cope with this phenomenon.
A growing concern among English students is that their degrees are a waste of money as revealed in a recent survey.

A considerable amount of English undergraduates had a change of heart regarding pursuing their degrees as the students deem the degrees now a poor value for money, the Times Higher Education reported.

The Higher Education Policy Institute had conducted the annual student academic experience survey, which revealed that 35 percent of its respondents believe that their degrees are all but irrelevant now.

This year's results had increased by one percent, and it has been believed that this was caused by the raising of the tuition fee cap by 9,000, which was back in 2012. Only 33% have the mutual sentiment that their degrees are still worth the money.

The increased tuition fee cap was imposed with the government's argument that the increase would benefit student experience in universities.

The survey had garnered a 15,221-strong turnout, which is published on the Higher Education Policy Institute website. It has also revealed that only 8% of respondents agree with the increase of tuition fee cap of universities.

In addition, 22 percent of respondents believe that the government should be responsible for paying the full cost of their higher education.

The vice president for higher education of the National Union of Students, Sorana Vieru, has voiced concerns over the increasing debt that plagues the student population. Vieru points out that the government has the power to stop the growing issue.

Despite 85 percent of the students had responded that they were satisfied with their university experience, the number went down from 87 percent from the previous year's results.

The students have also shed light on the quality of teaching among universities. A little over the sample size stated that staff were supportive, while just under a half were able to say that their teachers motivated the students to do their best or had a hand in exploring their interests.
US college rankings is a topic often searched by parents and high schools students to find out which school is the best for them. This time, the new statistic report ranks colleges based on their 'dark side'.

The reports were collected from each campus database and are available in US Department of Education official site - disclosing number of sexual assaults occurred in the campus. The list offers a different point of view to the public especially after Brown University shows up on the first place of US college rankings with the highest rape reported.

There were 43 sexual assault cases reported in Brown University and University of Connecticut, Boston Globe reported. The Federal campus safety data also noticed that among 100 institutions, there were at least 10 incidents related to sexual assaults. Brown University spokesperson explained that the Ivy League school has addressed the issues using many steps.

US college rankings: These universities have the highest rape report number

Following Brown and U-Conn, Dartmouth College comes next with 42 cases of rape. Wesleyan University reported 37 of rape cases followed by University of Virginia with 35 cases. Harvard University and University of North Carolina at Charlotte rank the fifth and sixth, recorded 33 and 32 reports of rape in the main campus.

It is unclear whether the number of incidents is growing or declining, since this is the first time that campuses are required to disclose reports on sexual assault happened in their schools.

Cases that were unrecorded in the past years might add up but the current data reflects how students are willing to report sexual assault to the authorities. In addition, it does give new perspective to the public. Stanford University sexual assault incident, which has become the news recently, reportedly records 26 cases of rape in 2014.

Reaching out for comment, Lisa Maatz from American Association of University Women suggests campuses to address the issue by considering the civil rights instead of a campus-image problem. Do you think this new US college rankings will affect student enrollments?
Just a week ago, University of California Berkeley sophomore Chelsea Evans headed to UCLA to meet her boyfriend. But even before she could meet him at his residence hall, UCLA security ushered her into lockdown on the first floor of the building.

As a result of her reunion with her boyfriend, she was held at a supply room surrounded by strangers. Only to know, a gunman has intruded the campus, Daily California News reported.

Evans together with seven other UCLA students was confined at that room for hours. There were four shooters and that they headed to the hill where the residence hall was located. Luckily, students around Evans were alarmed with three separate Bruin Alerts advising them not to go outside until the 12:17 pm final alert informed them, "all clear." When the lockdown ended, Evans encountered a large group of police officers that had responded to the shooting.

Since the 1999 Columbine shootings, several universities have implemented training programs to handle active shooter situations, according to the International Association of Campus Law Enforcement Administrators President William Taylor.

Spokesperson Sgt. Sabrina Reich's official UCPD email said that Berkeley UCPD officers have been training annually for active shooter situations since 2000.

UCPD regularly gives training to campus faculty, staff and students, which campus departments can request for their members, UCPD Lt. Marc DeCoulode said. He added that he was unaware of any least training standards for non-police personnel on campus.

However, Evans still feels in doubt about campus security and she uttered concern about how easy it is for anyone to go through campus buildings and facilities. Tre'Shunn Harlan, a UC Berkeley senior, who watched the incident disclose on a laptop in a friend's apartment just across the street from UCLA, escorted his friend to the campus when the lockdown ended. As they passed through the grieving campus, Harlan saw students sobbing and crying on street curbs. He had painstaking saw UCLA as the most beautiful campus he had ever visited. Alas, on that day and in the most unfortunate of events, the whole impression had changed, DCN added.
For information only - not an official document

UNIS/OS/466

8 June 2016

Looking to the future - UN Outer Space Committee opens today

VIENNA, 8 June (UN Information Service) - The 59th session of the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (COPUOS) started at the United Nations in Vienna today, with a focus on the role of space in implementing the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and on UNISPACE+50.

Items on the agenda include the links between space and sustainable development, water and climate change, as well as the use of space technology in the United Nations system. With David Kendall of Canada chairing the Committee for the first time, the participants will also discuss the importance of space technology and its potential spin-off benefits and the question of maintaining outer space for peaceful uses, as well as the future role of the Committee itself.

Looking ahead to UNISPACE+50 - a special session of the Committee set to take place in 2018 to mark the 50th anniversary of the first UN Conference on the Exploration and Peaceful Uses of Outer Space - the Committee is set to agree on the thematic priorities proposed by its Scientific and Technical and Legal Subcommittees for the event. UNISPACE+50 will be an opportunity for the international community to assess the status and chart the future of the contribution of the Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space in global space governance.

On Friday, 10 June the first Annual Report of the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA) will be presented to the Committee by the Director-General of the United Nations Office at Vienna, Yury Fedotov, and UNOOSA Director Simonetta Di Pippo.

COPUOS will also receive a report from the 10th anniversary conference of UN-SPIDER, the United Nations Platform for Space-based Information for Disaster Management and Emergency Response. The report will outline what has been achieved in the past decade and how UN-SPIDER will develop in the future.

***

Further information on the 59th session of COPUOS can be found here.

You can also follow @UNOOSA on Twitter for updates.

* *** *

For further information, please contact:

Daria Brankin

United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA)

Telephone: (+43- 1) 26060-8718

Email: daria.brankin[at]unoosa.org
Wamego, Kansas, Awarded Membership in Union Pacific's Train Town USA Registry

Wamego, Kansas has been awarded membership in Union Pacific's Train Town USA Registry as part of Union Pacific's ongoing efforts to highlight cities with a historical connection to the railroad. The city received an official Train Town USA resolution signed by Union Pacific Chairman Lance Fritz during a presentation at the community's "Party on Main" celebration, part of Wamego's own 150th anniversary festivities. Union Pacific launched its Train Town USA Registry during the railroad's 150th anniversary celebration in 2012.

"We are proud to recognize Wamego as we celebrate our growing up together," said Lindsey Douglas, Union Pacific's director - Public Affairs for Kansas and Missouri. "Union Pacific was founded to help connect the nation from east to west. Our shared heritage with Wamego is a source of pride as we remember our past while delivering the goods American businesses and families use every day."

Union Pacific's east-west line through Wamego originally began as the Leavenworth, Pawnee and Western Railroad in 1855, part of the Kansas Pacific Railroad, a southern branch of the transcontinental railroad established by the Pacific Railway Act. The Kansas Pacific began building the rail line in 1863 for passenger and freight trains. Recognizing this opportunity, the Wamego Town Company founded a new town site, Wamego, along the proposed rail line in 1866. By 1874, the town had a railroad station, roundhouse and shops, as well as 28 businesses. Not long after, in 1880, the Kansas Pacific Railway was consolidated with Union Pacific.

Union Pacific serves nearly 7,300 communities in 23 states, covering 32,000 miles.

ABOUT UNION PACIFIC

Union Pacific Railroad is the principal operating company of Union Pacific Corporation (NYSE: UNP). One of America's most recognized companies, Union Pacific Railroad connects 23 states in the western two-thirds of the country by rail, providing a critical link in the global supply chain. From 2006-2015, Union Pacific invested approximately $33 billion in its network and operations to support America's transportation infrastructure. The railroad's diversified business mix includes Agricultural Products, Automotive, Chemicals, Coal, Industrial Products and Intermodal. Union Pacific serves many of the fastest-growing U.S. population centers, operates from all major West Coast and Gulf Coast ports to eastern gateways, connects with Canada's rail systems and is the only railroad serving all six major Mexico gateways. Union Pacific provides value to its roughly 10,000 customers by delivering products in a safe, reliable, fuel-efficient and environmentally responsible manner.

The statements and information contained in the news releases provided by Union Pacific speak only as of the date issued. Such information by its nature may become outdated, and investors should not assume that the statements and information contained in Union Pacific's news releases remain current after the date issued. Union Pacific makes no commitment, and disclaims any duty, to update any of this information.
June 10 2016

A 32m High School designed by Norr Architects and RankinFraser landscape architects has been given the go-ahead by West Lothian Council, connecting to the existing village by a new road and rail bridge.West Calder High School is being built by Morrison Construction to cater for 1,100 pupils on land near the current Parkhead Primary and will include a swimming pool and sport pitches for shared community use.Built around a multi-use amphitheatre encircled by teaching spaces the school constitutes the largest single investment in education ever to be undertaken by the council.Construction work should get underway by September with pupils moving into their new school by March 2018.Work has already begun on a 5.5m road bridge over a nearby rail line to provide access to the site.
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UWyo Magazine

January 2016 | Vol. 17, No. 2



A Passion for Childhood Literacy

Wyoming First Lady Carol Mead and UWs Literacy Research Center and Clinic work to improve childhood literacy.

First Lady Carol Mead recently shared with UWyo Magazine her passion for promoting childhood literacy and her hopes for the UW Literacy Research Center and Clinic.

Q: Please share with our readers what inspires your passion and outreach in the area of childhood literacy.

A: When I became first lady, I was approached by a myriad of worthwhile causes seeking support. And while I do support them all in my hearteach one doing important workI chose childrens issues as my initiative. I made childhood literacy a key component of that initiative because I believe that reading is a critical skill to develop and refine throughout life. Adults who are illiterate or under-literate face challenges in everyday life, from struggling to read a recipe in preparing dinner to filling out a job application or signing a contract. When children learn to read at grade level and enjoy the process, they are more likely to succeed in life and perhaps enjoy life more. Reading proficiently aids in oral and written communication skills, so that one may express ideas and thoughts more fully. Reading is the gateway to obtaining information, and writing is one of the ways we most often convey informationfrom texts and emails to question-and-answer sessions like this one! I want children in Wyoming to learn to read and love to read, because I believe that will foster intellectual curiosity and lifelong learning.

Q: You partnered with UW to help establish the Literacy Research Center and Clinic (LRCC) on campus. Can you share with us which aspects of the centers work youre most excited about?

A: The research underway at the LRCC will, no doubt, inform student and teacher education at UW, within Wyoming and well beyond. Its one way that well be able to improve the formal education of Wyomings young peoplefrom preschoolers to college students. But what Im most excited about is the outreach the LRCC is doing and will do in the future to reach every corner of this geographically huge state. The ability to disseminate literacy services throughout Wyoming is a gift, especially to those places that may feel disconnected from the work of the university. The LRCC will also receive information from communities on their literacy needs, which will fuel more research and services leaving the university to serve our citizenry. As part of the only four-year institution in the state, the LRCC is well-positioned to advance literacy in our state, region and even farther afield.

Q: What impact do you hope the center will have in the coming years?

A: I feel like theres almost no limit to what the LRCC can do. Its renowned faculty and generous funding will allow it to realize its mission and to be right out in front in the ever-evolving field of literacy. I hope it will have a noticeable impact at the community level throughout the state, bringing our young people along in their literacy skills, supporting teachers in their skills and tools to teach kids to read, and attracting still more high-caliber faculty to the College of Education and University of Wyoming. I expect it to play a central role in the College of Educations goal of becoming a Tier-1 program. I also hope the LRCCs faculty and students will collaborate with the other Tier-1 programs at UWlike STEMto bring integrated approaches to research, teaching and learning in a variety of fields.
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Hot off the heels of losing their NXT Tag Team Titles against The Revival at NXT Takeover: The End, it now appears that American Alpha maybe on their way to the main roster. However according to F4Wonline.com the plan was to have American Alpha retain the belts but Vince McMahon wanted Dash Wilder and Scott Dawson to win giving way to the rumors of a main roster call up for American Alpha.

All things must start somewhere

American Alpha began way back in May 2015 when newcomer Chad Gable tried to convince Jason Jordan to let him be his partner. This all came about when Jordan broke up his tag team partnership with Tye Dillinger. Since then they have gone from strength to strength as a team, Entering the Dusty Rhodes Classic where they were beaten eventually by Rhyno and Baron Corbin.

Jordan delivers a dropkick to Rhyno (photo:WWE.com)

The pair began as a heel team but gradually began a face turn due to the heart and determination they would show against larger teams.

Championship Hunt & Success

Eventually, Jordan & Gable would face The Vaudevillians to be named the number one contender to the NXT Tag Team Titles a match which they won. Then came the biggest night in their lives as they went up against The Revival at NXT Takeover: Dallas. In what was a classic match American Alpha would go on to claim their first taste of WWE Gold. There reign as champions went on for 68 days. Throughout their reign as champions, there were fan favorites.

Jordan & Gable make their way to the ring in Dallas (photo:themxtrevolution.wordpress.com)

What is the plan for American Alpha?

Now the speculation is that Jordan & Gable will be called up as part of the WWE Draft which is coming up in July. Big E Commented about the potential call-up on Twitter by saying See you soon, American Alpha. I'm just trolling. I know nothing. A lot of the WWE Universe seem to be hoping that a certain..Olympic Gold Medallist Kurt Angle returns to help Jason Jordan & Chad Gable become an even better team.
JOE LUMAYA/SPECIAL TO THE STAR Agoura High School senior India Sposato (from center right) talks with fellow graduates Lukas Villarin and Nicholas Yfantopoulos before the start of their commencement Thursday at the school's stadium.

SHARE JOE LUMAYA/SPECIAL TO THE STAR India Sposato walks past some of the school's faculty members as she heads for her seat during Agoura High School's commencement Thursday.

By Tom Kisken of the Ventura County Star

The question was innocent. The answer made India Sposato want to change the world.

The Agoura High School senior who graduated Thursday with more than 500 classmates was a sophomore then. She was traveling with her family in India, headed to a wildlife preserve.

Someone asked the taxi driver if he was married.

"He said, 'Yes, my wife is 13 now,' " Sposato said, her voice rising. "This man is 50 years of age. He said, 'Two years ago, we had our first child.' "

The words stuck with her, alongside the stories of rape in India and Nepal, children being sold and so-called honor killings, in which a woman dies because of perceived dishonor brought to family.

The 17-year-old who lives in a home overlooking a Malibu beach traveled three times to India and Nepal during her high school years.

She volunteered for an orphanage that rescued women from trafficking.

She made videos and created a website that helped raise $6,000 for a foundation dedicated to underprivileged and abused children.

She wrote a 4,000-word school essay on what she calls a culture of rape in India and Nepal. Sposato scoured South Asian newspapers looking for stories on rape or honor killings.

There were at least two stories in every paper, she said.

On Monday, Sposato sat at a picnic table at the school campus. She waved to friends and, in between stories of child brides and trafficking in South Asia, bemoaned an overheated car that made her reliant on her mother for transportation.

"She's still a kid," said Assistant Principal Kristen Marsilio, juxtaposing Sposato's age with the maturity of her research and her motivation.

"She commits to those things she set her sights on," Marsilio said. "She doesn't let people down."

In the seventh grade, she founded a Thanksgiving clothing drive for people in need. It's still going.

Sposato is Italian and African-American. Her name came from a guest's suggestion at her baby shower.

At Thursday's graduation, in front of more than a dozen relatives, she wore a white sash that depicted her place in Agoura High's international baccalaureate curriculum. The program is designed to bring a more peaceful world by building intercultural understanding and respect.

Sposato, also accepted to Georgetown University, is headed to USC. She won't start until January.

This fall, she'll shoulder a class load at Santa Monica College that ranges from marine biology to learning Chinese.

At USC, she'll study social change and nonprofit organizations aimed at battling inequity.

Her goal is to make sure people understand the gender atrocities in South Asia. She wants to find ways to fight.

"I want to do humanitarian law," she said.
CHUCK KIRMAN/THE STAR Police Sgt. Dan Shrubb presents keys for a sport utility vehicle to Alma Lopez and her husband, Marco Vasquez, as well as their children Karen and Rodrigo Vasquez on Thursday.

SHARE CHUCK KIRMAN/THE STAR Jacob Shoemaker receives a certificate diploma at the Drag Racing Against Gangs & Graffiti graduation ceremony. CHUCK KIRMAN/THE STAR Graduates from the DRAGG Drag Racing Against Gangs & Graffiti pose for a group photo. CHUCK KIRMAN/THE STAR Police Sgt. Dan Shrubb (left) presents a certificate to Esteban Tapia at the Drag Racing Against Gangs & Graffiti graduation ceremony. CHUCK KIRMAN/THE STAR Police Senior Officer Maria Pena (from left) poses for photos with Marco Vasquez, his wife, Alma Lopez, their children Karen and Rodrigo Vasquez, Manny Perez and Cmdr. Randy Latimer at the Drag Racing Against Gangs & Graffiti graduation ceremony.

By Megan Diskin, megan.diskin@vcstar.com

An Oxnard family whose lives were affected by a traumatic crash in 2010 were gifted a traded-in sport utility vehicle Thursday night that was repaired by students in an after-school automotive program.

The Nissan Xterra was given to the family of four at the end of a graduation ceremony for just under 30 high school students involved in Drag Racing Against Gangs & Graffiti, a nonprofit started in 2011 by Dan Shrubb and Charles Woodruff, sergeants with the Oxnard Police Department.

Repairing the SUV was the students' core project this year, Shrubb said. It was donated by Alexander GMC after the business heard about the program and wanted to help, Shrubb said.

"We're very happy and it's more for the kids," said Alma Lopez, who was pushing her two young children in a stroller across Vineyard Avenue in August 2010 when a tow truck turned from Simon Way onto Vineyard, hitting her and the stroller.

"The tow truck drug these kids underneath for a little less than a quarter mile," Shrubb said. "Needless to say, these kids suffered some major injuries."

Tony Sabo, current commissioner of the Ventura County Superior Court who years ago prosecuted the case against the tow truck driver, told the graduates and their families of the "horrific" crash before the family was given the vehicle.

About 150 people who attended the ceremony at the nonprofit's space on Graves Avenue stood and applauded as the family members hugged police officers then walked over to their new vehicle.

Some of the students took pictures with the family next to the SUV. They worked for months to repair the vehicle's body damage and brakes, among other things, said Jose Reveles, owner of Commercial Auto Body.

"They did it with their own hands," Reveles said.

Since the accident, Oxnard police have had a special bond with the family. Many of the officers at the ceremony, including Shrubb, responded to the scene.

"It's one of those things you never expect in your entire career, to be going out to a call like that," said Manny Perez, a traffic officer.

The injuries to Karen and Rodrigo Vasquez, Lopez's children, were severe, said Carlos Martinez, who works in the victim services department of the Ventura County District Attorney's Office. Both suffered major head trauma, and Rodrigo still needs medical procedures to help his injuries, Martinez said.

But on Thursday, the kids were enjoying the moment as they played in the backseat of the SUV and joked around with officers wanting take photos.

The family was surprised by the gift, attending the ceremony under the guise that they invited to learn about a community program in their city.

"We really didn't think much of anything," said Marco Vasquez, the children's father.

Vasquez said they didn't even have a suspicion as they were driven to the event by Oxnard police and escorted by four officers on motorcycles.

"We feel very supported," Vasquez said.

The graduation ceremony was a poignant end to a successful year for the program, Shrubb said.

Graduates and their families ate In-N-Out Burger as they heard speeches from Police Chief Jeri Williams and Mayor Tim Flynn, who both expressed their pride in the students and the program.

The students' instructor in learning these automotive skills, Darell Cleveland, also said a few words about "his crew" before inviting them up to receive their certificates of completion.

Most of them received scholarships from the program's sponsors and some got gift bags filled with official Los Angeles Rams merchandise.

Reveles fixed one of the players' vehicles when he came into his body shop, at which point the owner told him about the nonprofit.

Many of the graduating students plan to continue working in the automotive industry.

Rio Mesa High School senior Tony Yepez, 18, said he wants to save up money so he can attend the Universal Technical Institute.

Pacifica High School senior Lizandro Osegeura, 18, aims to attend Oxnard College with plans to continue working in the automotive field. He said the program gave him a "quick taste" of what the work would be like.

Both agreed that the program is a good way to meet students from different schools. It is accredited by the Oxnard Union High School District as a work experience course, Shrubb said. There was a student from Camarillo High School who graduated from the program Thursday, but most students are from Oxnard.

That's expected to change next year.

DRAGG recently partnered with the Ventura County Office of Education so students countywide can learn the skillset and go on field trips related to the trade, Shrubb said.

"Not only are we serving kids in Oxnard but we're opening our doors to the county," Shrubb said.

Law enforcement agencies in Santa Barbara, Texas, Tennessee and Nevada are also developing a program similar to DRAGG.
SHARE STAR FILE PHOTO Lettuce

By Kathleen Wilson of the Ventura County Star

Three agricultural businesses in Oxnard that employ about 260 people are closing in early August, a report shows.

Vegetable grower Hiji Brothers, Inc., plus an associated seedling nursery and shipping operation will shut down permanently and completely, officials said in a notice sent to the Ventura County Board of Supervisors.

Company President Donald Hiji, who signed the notification, could not be reached for comment on the exact reasons for the shuttering of the business established in the 1950s.

Rob Roy, legal counsel for Hiji Brothers, said members of the Japanese family that started the company decided to close because of what he described as the difficult regulatory climate in California.

"It was a very emotional decision for the company," Roy said Thursday. "Many employees had worked for the company for over 30 years."

The companies produce celery, cabbage and lettuce at 771 Mountain View Ave., he said.

Hiji's notice says the affected employees include agricultural workers, mechanics, forklift and truck drivers, equipment movers, sales representatives, supervisors, foremen and administrative workers.

Under federal law, employers must provide notice 60 days in advance of plant closings and mass layoffs to public officials as well as the workers.

Roy said the shutdown affects three separate units that produce the crops. The Seaview Growers nursery grows the seedlings, which are then transplanted and raised to maturity by Hiji Brothers. Finally Richview, Inc., ships them to customers.

In April, workers at Hiji and Seaview voted to change their union from the United Food and Commercial Workers to the United Farm Workers. At the time, the UFW pledged to press for negotiations with Hiji and Seaview.

UFW organizer Roman Pinal said the union was prepared to begin talks around the time that the company decided to close.

"It was a surprise," he said. "You're talking about a labor force that was there with Cesar Chavez in the early 1980s."

He said the union wants the company to negotiate a good severance package and will be watching the closure closely.

Roy said the family had been evaluating a shutdown over the last year and that it was prompted by the business environment in California, not disputes with unions.

Roy said wage and benefits required in California make it difficult for growers to compete with other states and countries that pay less.

A response team from the county Human Services Agency will be working with the businesses to offer assistance to employees, spokeswoman Jennie Pittman said.

Included is information on public assistance, health insurance and unemployment benefits, she said.

The agency was notified of the closure this week, she said, but has no information on the reason.

Supervisor John Zaragoza said Hiji Brothers has been part of the fabric of Oxnard for "many, many years," calling the closure "horrible."

"They were good employers," he said.

Roy said he did not know if the property would be sold.
SHARE STAR FILE PHOTO Port Hueneme City Hall

By Anne Kallas, Special to The Star

The only way the city of Port Hueneme will be able to dig itself out of a structural deficit is to increase long-term revenues, Interim City Manager John Baker told the City Council.

"Only by getting new revenues will ... you truly be the 'Friendly City by the Sea,' " Baker told the council Monday, emphasizing that the beach needs to be a magnet for tourists. "If you're going to have something successful, you need to have more people here giving you their money."

Baker initiated the council's discussion of the proposed 2016-17 budget by announcing that the $274,000 projected surplus has grown to $302,475. That and an insurance reimbursement for Hueneme Pier repairs bring the total surplus to slightly more than $1 million.

Baker said the city and the Port of Hueneme, which is overseen by the Oxnard Harbor District, need to work together to create economic opportunities.

"There needs to be better collaboration with the port district  they are the major property in Port Hueneme, other than the U.S. Navy  to develop a new economic development plan," Baker said. "You need to seriously consider a strategic session for economic development where all the ideas are put on the table."

While the City Council had agreed unanimously to Monday's meeting, the discussion that took place was contentious.

Councilman Jim Hensley began by calling for "a suspension of the payment of $9,000 for BEACON."

BEACON, or the Beach Erosion Authority for Clean Oceans and Nourishment, was established to keep the ocean and waterways along the Central Coast clean and to make sure the beaches are nourished with sand. It is made up of representatives from Santa Barbara and Ventura counties, as well as the cities of Santa Barbara, Goleta, Carpinteria, Ventura, Oxnard and Port Hueneme.

Councilman Jon Sharkey, currently vice chairman of BEACON, defended the joint-powers agency, citing the work it has done to protect the area's beaches and waterways. Sharkey denied Hensley's charge of a conflict of interest in voting to allow the city to continue to pay annual dues to BEACON because his role there is an extension of his role as a City Council member.

Assistant City Attorney Karl Berger, who was sitting in for the city attorney, concurred with Sharkey.

Councilman Tom Figg called BEACON a "paper tiger. I don't see a return on our investment."

Added Hensley, "We need to eliminate the bacon. ... We cannot afford BEACON or bacon this year."

The council turned down Hensley's motion to stop paying BEACON, with Hensley and Figg voting to eliminate funding, and Sharkey, Mayor Doug Breeze and Councilwoman Sylvia Munoz Schnopp voting to keep it.

Hensley then proposed eliminating the $2,000 in travel expenses for going to Washington, D.C., as part of the Regional Defense Partnership-21st Century, which includes elected officials from Ventura County and its 10 cities, retired federal and state political leaders, senior military officials, defense contractors, local colleges and others who advocate for Naval Base Ventura County.

"We have a council member who takes a two-week vacation to stay with relatives," Hensley said.

Sharkey, who has been the city's representative to RDP-21, objected, calling for an end to the personal attacks.

"I don't have relatives in Washington, D.C. I have some cousins in Boston, but I haven't seen them in years," Sharkey said.

The council voted to keep the allocation for RDP-21 travel in the budget, with Hensley and Figg voting to eliminate the travel expense and Sharkey, Munoz Schnopp and Breeze voting to keep it.

The vote was the same on Figg's proposal to eliminate $5,850 in funding to the Ray D. Prueter Library and give it to the Chamber of Commerce. It was defeated on the same 3-2 split.

But when Breeze asked for another $5,800 from the general fund to be used "at the city manager's discretion" to support the chamber, that passed 3-2 along the same voting lines.

Baker said he will be on vacation for the next few weeks, so the final budget will be presented to the council at the July 18 meeting.
SHARE

The morning after, the nation awakes asking: What have we done?

Both parties seem intent on throwing the election away. The Democrats, running against a man with highest-ever negatives, are poised to nominate a candidate with the second-highest-ever negatives. Hillary Clinton started with every possible advantage  money, experience, name recognition, residual goodwill from her husband's successful 1990s  yet could not put away until this week from an obscure, fringy, socialist backbencher in a country uniquely allergic to socialism.

Bernie Sanders did have one advantage. He had something to say. She had nuthin'. Her Tuesday victory speech was a pudding without a theme for a campaign without a cause. After 14 months, she still can't get past the famous question asked of Ted Kennedy in 1979: Why do you want to be president?

So whom do the Republicans put up? They had 17 candidates. Any of a dozen could have taken down the near-fatally weak Clinton, unloved, untrusted, living under the shadow of an FBI investigation.

Instead, they nominate Donald Trump  conspiracy theorist (from Barack Obama's Kenyan birth to Ted Cruz's father's involvement with Lee Harvey Oswald), fabulist (from his own invented opposition to the Iraq War and the Libya intervention to the "thousands and thousands" of New Jersey Muslims celebrating 9/11), admirer of strongmen (from Vladimir Putin to the butchers of Tiananmen).

His outrageous provocations have been brilliantly sequenced so that the shock of the new extinguishes the memory of the last. Though perhaps not his most recent  his gratuitous attack on a "Mexican" federal judge (born and bred in Indiana) for inherent bias because of his ethnicity. Textbook racism, averred Speaker Paul Ryan. Even Trump acolyte and possible running mate Newt Gingrich called it inexcusable.

Trump promptly doubled down, expanding the universe of the not-to-be-trusted among us by adding American Muslims to the list of those who might be inherently biased.

Yet Trump is the party's chosen. He won the primary contest fair and square. The people have spoken. What to do?

First, dare to say that the people aren't always right. Surely Republicans admit the possibility. Or do they believe the people chose rightly in electing Obama? Twice. Historical examples of other countries choosing even more wrongly are numerous and tragic. The people's will deserves respect, not necessarily affirmation.

I sympathize with the dilemma of Republican leaders reluctant to affirm. Many are as appalled as I am by Trump, but they don't have the freedom I do to say, as I have publicly, that I cannot imagine ever voting for him. They have unique party and institutional responsibilities.

For some, that meant endorsing Trump in the belief that they might be able to contain, constrain, guide and perhaps even educate him. To my mind, this thinking has always been hopelessly misbegotten but not necessarily  nor in all cases  venal.

Which brings us to the matter of Paul Ryan, now being excoriated by many conservatives for having said he would vote for Trump.

Yet what was surprising was not Ryan's ever-so-tepid semi-endorsement, which was always inevitable and unavoidable  can the highest elected GOP official be at war during a general election with the party's democratically chosen presidential candidate?  but his initial refusal to endorse Trump when, after the Indiana primary, nearly everyone around him was falling mindlessly, some shamelessly, into line.

That was surprising. Which is why Ryan's refusal to immediately follow suit created such a sensation. It also created, deliberately, the time and space for non-Trumpites to hold the line. Ryan was legitimizing resistance to the new regime, giving it safe harbor in the House, even as resisters were being relentlessly accused of treason for "electing Hillary."

In the end, Ryan called an armistice. What was he to do? Oppose and resign? And then what? What would remain of conservative leadership in the GOP? And if he created a permanent split in the party, he'd be setting up the GOP's entire conservative wing as scapegoat if Trump loses in November.

Ryan had no good options. He chose the one he felt was least damaging to the conservative cause to which he has devoted his entire adult life.

I wouldn't have done it but I'm not House speaker. He is a practicing politician who has to calculate the consequences of what he does. That deserves at least some understanding.

One day, we shall all have to account for what he did and what we said in this scoundrel year. For now, we each have our conscience to attend to.

Charles Krauthammer's email address is letterscharleskrauthammer.com.


Husband and wife illusionists Kyle Knight & Mistie will perform in the Sams Town Live showroom at Sams Town Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas on October 18.

Mistie said, We always enjoy performing in various variety shows around Las Vegas, but were excited for the chance to headline at Sams Town and present our full show here for the first time. The hour-long headline show will feature several one-of-a-kind illusions as well as sleight of hand projected on the video screens, and as always, well be getting the audience up close and involved in the magic.

In February, Kyle Knight and Mistie defeated comedy magic duo Jarrett & Raja in the Challenger Round of Syfys Wizard Wars. They went on to defeat the shows Wizards and win $10,000!

In July, the Las Vegas-based couple also appeared on Penn & Teller: Fool Us.

Kyle and Mistie recently returned from touring the Caribbean and Alaska with Disney Cruise Line, headlining in the Walt Disney Theatre. This winter theyll be performing at the House of Magic inside the new Studio City Resort & Casino in Macau, China.


This summer, the YMCA of Southern Nevada offers Safety Around Water, a free program designed to engage and educate parents about the importance of water safety skills and provide more of Americas youth access to water safety lessons.

The program focuses on reaching underserved communities with a special emphasis on African American and Hispanic communities in Las Vegas, where risk of drowning among children is highest.

The YMCA of Southern Nevada has partnered with Boys and Girls Clubs of Southern Nevada (BGCSNV) to further extend our reach into the community. Over the course of 8 weeks, YMCA will be providing swim lessons to 200 school age youth through their partnership with BGCSNV.

According to data from the USA Swimming Foundation, 70 percent of African American and 60 percent of Hispanic children cannot swim, compared to just 40 percent of Caucasian children. While fatal drowning is a concern for all children  its the second-leading cause of unintentional injury-related death for children ages one to 14 years old  African American children ages 5 to 14 are three times more likely to drown than their white counterparts.

Through Safety Around Water, parents and caregivers will be encouraged to help their children learn fundamental water safety and swimming skills. During the eight-day course, children will learn how to respond if they find themselves in unexpected water situations  from how to reach the waters surface if they submerge to safely reaching a pools edge or exiting any body of water.

All children deserve access to water safety resources and Safety Around Water is a great starting point to not only get kids comfortable in the water, but also develop a love of swimming, said Raymond Fraser, Branch Executive at the SkyView YMCA. In many underserved communities, staying safe around water means keeping kids away from water, but water safety and swimming are important life skills that need fostering in all children.

The Y introduced the concept of group swim lessons in 1909. Now, each year in 2,200 pools across the country, the Y teaches more than a million children from all backgrounds invaluable water safety and swim skills. Here in Las Vegas, the Y teaches nearly 3000 children water safety and swimming each year. Through Safety Around Water, the Y hopes to further bridge cultural and access gaps that can prevent some children from learning important water safety skills.


MRKT Sea & Land inside Aliante Casino + Hotel + Spa, a AAA Four Diamond resort, will host an exclusive Tour of Napa wine pairing dinner beginning at 6:30 p.m. on Thursday, June 23.

The dinner will be hosted by Master Sommelier Joe Phillips and feature eight courses and wine selections from multiple wineries in Napa Valley, California.

Priced at $100 per person, MRKT Chef Raymond Mansour will begin the specialty meal with a cheese course including camembert, Gouda and parmesan, paired with a Domaine Chandon Blanc de Noirs. The second course will consist of a cold cucumber soup with light melon and floral notes, paired with a Robert Mondavi Fume Blanc. The third and final starter course will feature a cured snapper crudo, with fresh snapper dressed in olive oil with English cucumber, exotic fruits, Asian pear and a citrus yuzu juice puree, served with a Caymus Conundrum.

The meal will continue with butter poached lobster with Yukon potato gnocchi, chanterelle mushroom and lobster jus, served alongside a Charles Krug Chardonnay. For the intermezzo, a strawberry lemonade popsicle will be served.

Following the intermezzo, guests will enjoy a course of spicy quail with crimson lentils and caramelized Cipollini onions, paired with a Napa Cellars Pinot Noir. The main entree course will feature a prosciutto wrapped veal, served with artichokes and sauce beurre rouge, to be enjoyed with Opus One. The dessert course will offer an olive oil cake featuring moist cake with citrus summer peach compote and cardamom ice cream, paired with Joseph Phelps Eisrebe.

Phillips, a 10-year master sommelier, will be speaking at the dinner and answer any questions guests may have on the pairings.


Living their commitment to respect, courage, integrity and passion, Aristocrat employees united the companys offices around the globe to raise nearly $34,000 for Make-A-Wish Southern Nevada.

Aristocrat Las Vegas-based employees gathered on Tuesday, May 31 to present a check to Make-A-Wish Southern Nevada. Joining the event was Mitchell, a local Make-A-Wish Kid. Funds raised by the company will go toward wish fulfillment for many Wish Kids, including wishes like Mitchells to go to Australia with his family.

The money was raised through a combination of efforts at Aristocrat, including the annual Fast for February Initiative, where employees gave up a favorite food or activity over a 30-day period and donated the money saved to Make-A-Wish and the Make-A-Wish Walk For Wishes.

When a company empowers their employees to give back to the community, amazing things happen, said Caroline Ciocca, President and CEO, Make-A-Wish Southern Nevada. We feel fortunate to be the organization that has inspired thousands of Aristocrat Technologies employees around the globe. Feb Fast is a fun, creative and very healthy way to raise money. Our partnership with Aristocrat has grown over the past three years  I cant wait to see what they do next year!

Matt Wilson, Aristocrat Senior Vice President of Global Gaming Operations, is an internal champion of Make-A-Wish. Our culture promotes being passionate in everything we do, including caring for others, Wilson said. Our employees gave unselfishly with monetary contributions and their commitment resulted in this donation, the largest yet from Aristocrat to Make-A-Wish Southern Nevada.

Aristocrat is active in the Las Vegas community, donating an average of $100,000 to local charities each year.


Cast member of MTVs Jersey Shore, Paul DJ Pauly D DelVecchio was honored with a tanning bed dedication at Sunset Tan inside Drift Spa at Palms Place this afternoon (Photo:  Erik Kabik/ RETNA/ www.erikkabik.com).

Photo:  Erik Kabik/ RETNA/ www.erikkabik.com

The bed was named DJ Pauly D and is available for public use when guests purchase the GTL (Gym, Tan, Liquor) package for $50 (details below). To commemorate, Pauly D used rhinestone-bedazzled scissors to cut through a hot pink bikini top.

Photo:  Erik Kabik/ RETNA/ www.erikkabik.com

Following the dedication, Pauly D made his way to Palms Pool & Bungalows for the weekly Ditch Friday party. The pool was packed to capacity as he hit the stage to perform his popular DJ set.

Photo:  Erik Kabik/ RETNA/ www.erikkabik.com

About the GTL Package

The GTL package includes two tanning sessions in Pauly Ds favorite bed, the Open Sun 1050 Level 5 Tanning System, a high pressured bed with a no burn guaranteed result, a two-day gym pass into Drift Spa and a pass valid for a round of two-for-one cocktails at Simon Lounge. Fans wanting to receive the Shore-style treatment need to ask for the Pauly D when making tanning reservations.

Photo:  Erik Kabik/ RETNA/ www.erikkabik.com

Photo:  Erik Kabik/ RETNA/ www.erikkabik.com

Photo:  Erik Kabik/ RETNA/ www.erikkabik.com

Photo:  Erik Kabik/ RETNA/ www.erikkabik.com

Photo:  Erik Kabik/ RETNA/ www.erikkabik.com

Photo:  Erik Kabik/ RETNA/ www.erikkabik.com

Photo:  Erik Kabik/ RETNA/ www.erikkabik.com

Photo:  Erik Kabik/ RETNA/ www.erikkabik.com

Photo:  Erik Kabik/ RETNA/ www.erikkabik.com
The new Coc San power plant in this northern province, a run-of-river hydropower facility supplying almost 30MW of power to regional off taker Northern Power Corporation, opened yesterday.-VNA/VNS Photo Vu Hoa

The US$50m plant is backed by Vietnamese and foreign private investment and InfraCo Asia, a company funded by the governments of the United Kingdom, Switzerland and Australia, to help provide infrastructure financing.

The Coc San project represents the first foreign direct investment (FDI) in hydropower in the mountainous northern region as well as the largest FDI project in the province so far.

Speaking at the opening ceremony, Giles Lever, British Ambassador to Viet Nam, said the success of the project had demonstrated the success of the public private partnership model in developing infrastructure.

"The project has affirmed Britain's commitment to supporting Viet Nam in achieving sustainable economic development and reducing the impact of climate change," Lever said.

He added that the project would help the country attract foreign investment in renewable energy development.

The project will supply clean, renewable energy to give 130,000 people access to a more reliable, affordable power supply. The improved power supplies will allow an expansion of local industry, including iron mining, copper industries and apatite mining for fertilisers.

Some 250 temporary jobs were created during the construction of the plant, and there will be 35 permanent jobs there. Carbon emissions will drop by 76,000 tonnes per year, and there will be less reliance on imported electricity from China.

Environmental studies carried out to World Bank standards ensured the project impact was minimal, with little land lost to the surrounding communities and no displacement of people.

The plant will supply Viet Nam's fast-growing electricity demand, currently increasing by 15 per cent year on year and creating pressure to increase the capacity of generation, transmission and distribution. Hydropower currently accounts for some 44 per cent of energy generated, followed by oil, gas and thermal power at 34 per cent and coal at 19 per cent. The government is committed to developing the generation of renewable energy and establishing a competitive electricity market.

Work to develop the project in the region's terraced terrain started in 2011 but stalled when previous investors expended their initial capital; the project was unsuccessful in securing financing through long-term loans.

InfraCo Asia assessed that plans for the plant were still viable andworking in close partnership with the provincial People's Committeeprovided donor-government-backed development funding of $7.54m. This enabled the financing and completion of the project, worth a total of $49.9m.

InfraCo Asia CEO Allard Nooy said InfraCo Asia's mandate to develop sustainable infrastructure projects in South and South East Asia means it is continuing to look at opportunities in Viet Nam.

"We are currently evaluating a number of other small potential hydropower projects in Viet Nam that may require the application of InfraCo Asia's unique development model. We are committed to Viet Nam, and our donor shareholdersthe Swiss, Australian and UK governmentsare key to supporting our work in this area."
Photo : nasa.gov

The US space agency had already pushed back the launch by a day to Tuesday.

If technicians are able to finish their repairs as planned, Discovery and its six American astronauts will now launch from Florida's Kennedy Space Center at 3:52 pm (1952 GMT) Wednesday, NASA test director Jeff Spaulding said.

The flight to the orbiting International Space Station is the fourth and final shuttle flight of the year, and the last scheduled for Discovery, the oldest in the three-shuttle fleet that is being retired in 2011.
Illustration photo

This is the first time Ha Noi publicly has called for private sector participation in the construction of transport and infrastructure facilities under PPP form.

Earlier, major projects of this kind have been carried out with State budget and Official Development Assistance (ODA) and the Buildoperatetransfer (BOT) modal.

The 52 projects will cost about VND338,725 billion, including 35 in infrastructure with four elevated urban railways lines listed as key projects in the set period which need a total investment of VND150,000 billion (US$7.1 billion).

Urban railway line No.6 (from Hanoi's centre to Noi Bai internationsl airport) is estimated to require VND 14,282 billion. It is expected to promote the urban development and socio-economic development of the Northern part of the Red River Region.

The urban railway line No. 3 (from Ha Noi station to Hoang Mai district) looks to reduce traffic congestion. It will need VND28,175 billion.

The others are urban railway line No.4 phase 1 (Lien Ha-Vinh Tuy) whose total investment nears VND40,885 billion and urban railway line No. 5 which will cost approximately VND65,572 billion.

In addition to infrastructure, Ha Noi has also called for investment into healthcare, clean water, industry, trade, services, parking places, parks, hospitals and social housing projects.
PM Nguyen Xuan Phuc and his spouse take part in the general election, May 22, 2016 - Photo: VGP/Quang Hieu

The event drew the attendance of NA Vice Chairman Phung Quoc Hien, chief of the National Election Council Office Nguyen Hanh Phuc, and Minister of Information and Communications Tran Minh Tuan.

The press conference announced the outcomes of the election of deputies to the 14th National Assembly and all-level Peoples Councils for the 2016-2021 term.

About 99.35% of over 67 million voters partook in the general election. 182 deputies of the 197 who were introduced by the Central organizations won the election.

In Ha Noi, Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong won 86.47% of votes. In HCMC, State President Tran Dai Quang succeed the election with 75.08% of votes. In Hai Phong, PM Nguyen Xuan Phuc was successful at the poll with 99.48% of votes, which is the highest rate. In Can Tho, NA Chairwoman Nguyen Thi Kim Ngan was elected with 91.46% of votes.

Under the list, 71 candidates under 40 years of age were elected. However, the rate of female deputies was lower than expected with 133 (17 deputies fewer than the set goal) and only 21 non-Party candidates won the election. Accordingly, Party members accounted for 96% of the total number of NA deputies.

The National Election Council expected that the new NA deputies would contribute to strengthening the highest representative organ of people and the highest organ of state power and operate in a more effective manner.
Credit ratings agency Moody's has responded positively to the State Bank of Vietnam's Circular 06/2016/TT-NHNN on asset-liability management and real estate loans. - Photo bizlive.vn

"The new rules, while milder than those proposed in February, are credit positive for Vietnamese banks, as they will support liquidity and limit the banks' exposure to the higher-risk real estate sector," Moody's analysts wrote in a recent report.

It will also help moderate banks' credit growth in the system, particularly in the real estate sector, the credit rating agency said.

Circular No06, replacing Circular No36, contains some major changes, among which is the central bank's approval of banks using a maximum ratio of 50 per cent of short-term funding for loans with terms extending beyond 12 months by the end of 2016, down from the current 60 per cent.

This ratio will then be reduced to 40 per cent by the end of 2017.

This transition period gives banks time to adjust to the new rule and is longer than that initially proposed in February, when it was suggested that the maximum ratio be lowered to 40 per cent by the end of this year, according to Moody's.

Moody's analysts believe banks with a sizeable share of longer-term loans will have to slow their credit growth or shift their focus to shorter-term loans, which will benefit their liquidity.

"The banks can attract longer-term funding to finance longer-term loans, but success in such an endeavor is unlikely because of higher funding costs and intense competition for deposits," the report said.

Moody's also pointed out that among ratios of short-term funding used for loans with terms longer than 12 months, Vietnam Prosperity Bank (VPB) had the highest, at 43 per cent, followed by VIB, with 40 per cent.

Circular No06 also raises the risk weights for real estate loans to 200 per cent by the end of 2016 from the current 150 per cent, an increase that is smaller than the 250 per cent suggested in the February proposal.

"The increased risk weight is credit positive for the banks, as it will help limit their appetite for lending to this high-risk sector, given their already weak capital ratios," Moody's said.

The credit rating agency warned, however, that the Vietnamese banks most affected by the higher risk weightings were VPB and SHB, owing to their sizeable exposure to the real estate sector.

"Their already weak capital ratios, which reflect both higher credit costs and a rebound in credit growth, mean the new guidelines will compel these banks to either reduce their exposure to the real estate sector or significantly slow their credit expansion," Moody's said.
US President Barack Obama declares "I'm with her" in a video endorsing Hillary Clinton. (AFP/Timothy A. Clary)

WASHINGTON: President Barack Obama endorsed one-time campaign rival Hillary Clinton to succeed him on Thursday (Jun 9), a signal to Democrats that it's time to unify after a bitter primary and take on Donald Trump.

"Tens of millions of Americans made their voices heard. Today I just want to add mine," Obama said in a video endorsement. "I'm with her."

Obama's nod comes after a hard fought Democratic primary season, in which Clinton struggled against surprisingly tough leftist rival Bernie Sanders. She finally clinched the nomination just days ago.

Obama's endorsement was long expected but will be a shot in the arm to the Clinton campaign. The president's backing gives Clinton a potent surrogate on the campaign trail.

After nearly eight years in the White House, Obama is still one of the country's most popular politicians. His approval ratings among black, Hispanic, young and liberal voters are stratospheric.

Clinton's campaign announced that a first joint campaign event with Obama would take place in Green Bay, Wisconsin on Wednesday, June 15.

Obama won the state in 2008 and 2012, but Democrats see a tough battle there this time round.

Clinton welcomed the vote of confidence: "Honored to have you with me, @POTUS I'm fired up and ready to go!" she tweeted, echoing one of Obama's own campaign rallying cries from 2008.

In that election Obama bested Clinton to become the first black president. They later made peace, with Clinton becoming Obama's first secretary of state.

Now the 68-year old Clinton is trying to make history of her own by becoming the first female president. Standing in her way is bombastic businessman Donald Trump, who shocked the world by becoming the presumptive Republican presidential nominee.

FASCIST THREAT

If Trump's racially tinged rhetoric has split his own party - with some saying outright they will not vote for the presumptive nominee - it has served to bring Democrats together.

"We must come together to confront the fascist threat to our democracy presented by Donald Trump" said Martin O'Malley, who had sought the Democratic nomination and on Thursday also endorsed Clinton.

Obama's endorsement came barely an hour after the president hosted Clinton's rival Bernie Sanders in the Oval Office, trying to coax him into conceding defeat. The 74-year-old Sanders has so far refused to bow out.

The two men strode along the West Wing colonnade laughing, a very public show of respect for Sanders' insurgent campaign.

From relative obscurity, the Vermont Senator garnered 12 million of the primary campaign's 27 million votes.

"I thought that Bernie Sanders brought enormous energy and new ideas," Obama said on Wednesday. "I thought it made Hillary a better candidate."

Sanders emerged from the White House vowing to continue his campaign into next week - but also saying he would meet Clinton soon to find ways to work together.

Some Sanders supporters would like him to battle all the way to the party convention in Philadelphia next month.

For many, Clinton - the former first lady, secretary of state and US senator - is the epitome of a political establishment that has failed the people.

More pragmatic Sanderistas are pressing him to leverage his newfound political clout.

They would like to see the party platform overhauled and reforms to the next nominating process in 2020 - opening primaries to independent voters and curbing the role of bigwig "superdelegates."

But as Sanders tried to wield that leverage, appearing at the White House and with leaders in Congress, Obama and Clinton made their move.

"I don't think there's ever been someone so qualified to hold this office," Obama said offering a full throated endorsement. "I have seen her judgment. I've seen her toughness. I've seen her commitment to our values up close," Obama said of Clinton.
A section of Nguyen Van Linh Road in District 7, HCM City. - VNA/VNS Photo Kim Phuong

Property consultants like CBRE, Savills, Cushman & Wakefield and business groups provide various indexes but they are mostly different from each other.

The enterprises are also investors in and agents for many housing and other property projects, and the information they provide is mostly targeted at sellers rather than buyers.

"It is necessary to have an official real estate index. The index will require quality, accurate and updated information," Pham Thanh Hung, deputy general director of The Ky (Century) Real Estate Company, said.

The information about urban plans, the primary real estate market and land fund must be highly accurate and practical, he said.

"The statistics from State offices and consultancies are not enough and cannot provide a comprehensive outlook for the market."

After the decision to create an official index was made, a draft decree spelt out its nitty-gritty: price and volume of real estate transactions, the number of new housing projects, number of newly completed housing projects and average prices for new housing.

All values are to be updated monthly and reviewed every year.

The decree also demarcates the responsibilities of various agencies: the Ministry of Construction's Housing and Real Estate Market Management Department will be responsible for inspecting, supervising and speeding up implementation of regulations on construction, management, use and exploitation, and updating databases on the real estate market.

The ministry's Information Centre will co-operate with the department and the Construction Economy Institute to develop a market information system for real estate.

The ministry had planned to approve the draft on April 1, but has yet to do so.

A top official at the Construction Economy Institute revealed that opinions on the decree are being gathered from related authorities but no deadline for its issue has been fixed.

The ministry had issued Decree 20 in 2010 on creating real estate indexes in Ha Noi, HCM City, Da Nang, and Can Tho, but the programme stalled after the market slumped.

Nguyen Chi Dung, deputy director of the Ha Noi Construction Department, was quoted as saying by website cafef.vn, "Ha Noi has just issued a list of solvent developers as stipulated in the real estate business and housing laws. We have also started to list completed real estate transactions every quarter but briefly and not with enough information."

A senior construction department official in the northern province of Hai Duong said due to the paucity of human resources his department cannot create a database on existing housing, office and other commercial space and those to be finished in future.

"Fluctuations in the number of transactions and price in the [country's] real estate market have not been recorded," Tran Dinh Thien, director of the Viet Nam Institute of Economics, said.
The coastal road from Ben Tre to Ca Mau

The Hau River.

The first day travel from HCM City, following National Highway 1 through the southern provinces of Long An, Tien Giang, to Trung Luong junction in My Tho City; then turn to National Highway 60 to go to Ben Tre Province. Crossing Co Chien River, you will go to the city of Tra Vinh, where you can spend the night.

The second day, from Tra Vinh you will move along National Highway 60 to Soc Trang province, where you will see the vast Hau River dividing the two provinces. Getting a ferry, go to Cu Lao Dung (Dung Islet) of Soc Trang Province and then from Cu Lao Dung to Soc Trang.

Depending on time, you can stay overnight in Soc Trang or go to Bac Lieu or Ca Mau.

On the third day, you will go along Highway 1A to the Cape of Ca Mau, the southern tip of the country. Now that you've finished exploring the coastal road of Southern Hau River, you go from HCM City to Ca Mau on National Highway 1A as usual.

On this road, you can stop at tourist attractions like Thoi Son islet, Phung islet, Vinh Trang pagoda (in Tien Giang and Ben Tre), Ba Om pond, Khmer culture museum (Tra Vinh), Bat pagoda, Clay pagoda, Chen Kieu temple (Soc Trang), the house of Bac Lieu playboy, Cao Van Lau memorial house, Quan Am pagoda, Xiem temple (Bac Lieu), Ca Mau Cape...

Explore Dong Thap Muoi

Dong Thap Muoi includes the provinces of Long An, Tien Giang and Dong Thap, famous for vast fields, unique wetland ecosystems of mangrove forests. The road from Saigon to Dong Thap Muoi is great, for the roadside scenery, experience the life and culture ...

In HCM City, from Phu Lam roundabout (District 6), you take TL10 Road to Long An, to Duc Hoa town then continue along N2 Road through Thanh Hoa district to National Highway 62. From here, you will go into Dong Thap Muoi. After arriving in the town of Tan Thanh, you will have two choices:

Running on Road 829 along Duong Van Duong Canal to Road 844 to reach Tram Chim National Park, in Tam Nong District, Dong Thap Province. You will spend a night there to discover Tram Chim the next morning.

The second choice is following National Highway 62 along the border with Cambodia, through the districts of Moc Hoa, Tan Hung, Vinh Hung (Long An province) to Hong Ngu Town (Dong Thap). From Hong Ngu, following National Highway 30 down to Cao Lanh city, from there to Road 844 to Tram Chim.

The second day, after visiting Tram Chim National Park, you will go to Cao Lanh and stay there one night before visiting Gao Giong, the site of the tomb of Nguyen Sinh Sac, father of President Ho Chi Minh

The third day, you travel from Cao Lanh to Sa Dec to visit the Huynh Thuy Le house, Kien An Cung pagoda, Tan Quy Dong flower village, then follow National Highway 1A to HCM City.

Trekking Ta Nang - Phan Dung

Ta Nang - Phan Dung is a big challenge for those who love adventure because you can only walk, but the scene isbeautiful and majestic. This entire stretch of road is about 50 km extending from Lam Dong province to Binh Thuan.

Ta Dung Lake

Ta Dung Lake

With more than 36 islands and beautiful natural scenery, the lake is called Ha Long Bay of the Central Highland. The lake is located on the border of two provinces of Lam Dong and Dak Nong. It still is pristine, without any tourism services.

Immersed in pure nature, watch the beauty of the lake at dawn or dusk is romantic. Also you can encamp on a small island in the lake.

There are two ways for you to get to Ta Dung. The first is from Ho Chi Minh City to Di Linh on National Highway 20, and then to National Highway 28 to reach Ta Dung. The second way, you take National Highway 14 to Dak Nong, Gia Nghia town and following National Highway 28 to Quang Khe district and then to Ta Dung.

Mang Den

Dubbed as the second Da Lat in the Central Highlands, Mang Den is located in Kon Plong district, Kon Tum province, with the cool climate of the highlands with vast pine forests. The quiet space is suitable for those who want to rest and relax.

From Kon Tum city, you take National Highway 24 about 50 km east to the town of Mang Den. The attractions here include the system of seven lakes of Toong Ly Leng, Toong Ziu, Toong Zori, Toong Sang, Toong Po, Toong Dam, and three waterfalls of Dak Ke, Pa Sy and Dak Pne.
Accordingly, the DOC applied a common tariff of 113.8% on Vietnamese CWP exporters while only three businesses working hand in hand with the DOC during the investigation process were subject to anti-dumping duties ranging 0-0.38%.

The duty equals to the dumping margin that proposed by the plaintiff in November 2015 and is seen as the highest level compared to the four countries in the US lawsuit - Oman, the United Arab Emirates, the Philippines and Pakistan.
The European Parliament has passed a resolution condemning the worsening political climate in Cambodia and said it would tie future aid to improvements in human rights.

The resolution, which was passed on Thursday, called on the government of Prime Minister Hun Sen to revoke the outstanding arrest warrant against Cambodia National Rescue Party president Sam Rainsy, who went into self-imposed exile in November after it was issued over a long-standing defamation conviction.

It also called for the release of four human rights workers and an election official jailed last month on bribery-related charges, for charges against former union representative and member of the countrys election body Rong Chhun to be dropped, and for an independent investigation into an attack on two opposition lawmakers outside parliament.

All politicians, activists and human rights defenders should be allowed to work freely without fear of arrest or persecution, a statement from the European Parliament read.

Phay Siphan, a spokesman for the Council of Ministers, said the resolution only reflects the interests of the European lawmakers and politicians.

But we will try to explain to them so that they can understand because we believe that they are not colonizers who can dictate to Cambodia and do whatever they want. We see them as our dialogue partners and I thank them for their interest in Cambodia, he said.

The order to the National Assembly to reinstate Sam Rainsys parliamentary immunity is not acceptable, he added. Because its Sam Rainsys responsibility to face the courts and he has to cooperate with the courts to find justice for himself.

Rainsy is due to visit supporters and officials in the United States next week.

The CNRPs deputy president, Kem Sokha, has been barricaded inside the partys headquarters since an attempt to arrest him was made in May. He is wanted on solicitation charges and for failing to appear in court for questioning.

The resolution passed on Thursday calls on EU member states and other institutions to set clear benchmarks for the forthcoming elections in Cambodia that are consistent with international law on freedom of expression, association and assembly, and to publicly communicate these goals to Cambodian authorities and the opposition.

It also linked the blocs more than $400 million aid package to Cambodia until 2020 to improvements in the human rights situation.
The onset of monsoon rains in Phnom Penh this week opened a sinkhole on a busy road close to the iconic Olympic Stadium.

The city is thought to be at high risk of sinkholes due to its position astride numerous lakes, which the government has filled in over the years to expand the land on which it can build.

Residents living close to a large skyscraper project next to the sinkhole have become concerned.

Hout Hang, 60, who saw the road collapse during a rainstorm on Wednesday, said he had watched in amazement as the tarmac gave way.

It just suddenly happened, and three cars fell into the sinkhole, he said. Luckily the cars were just parked there, otherwise, if people were driving, it would be dangerous and could have killed people, he said.

I think the construction is too close to the road and that made it collapse, he added, referring to a nearby construction site.

Prak Heng, 49, a moto-taxi driver, said the collapse had followed hours of torrential rainfall.

We all went to see what had happened and search for the cars owners.

Se Veoun, 60, a local resident, said the community was now scared that the same could happen on their property.

Before this huge construction project started, nothing like this happened. If it rains again, sinkholes might happen again, unless the construction is finished.

The project, which will include luxury homes and condominiums alongside a shopping complex, is being built by the Overseas Cambodia Investment Corporation, directed by tycoon Pung Kheav Se.

In late 2014, a woman was killed while driving by the project when construction materials fell from the site.

A construction worker at the site this week, who declined to be named for fear of losing his job, said he was also worried about the collapse, but did not think the construction was to blame.

City Hall spokesman Mean Chanyada said on Thursday the authority will urge the construction company to pay close attention to technical standards.

An OCIC representative was quoted by local media denying a link between the development and the sinkhole.

But Sok Kin, vice president of the Building and Woodworkers Trade Union Federation of Cambodia, said the low quality of the road combined with how close the construction was to the area of collapse were to blame.

The investor is the one who benefits, yet the people are the victims, he said.
A leading US State Department official met senior Cambodian leaders in Phnom Penh on Thursday and Friday during a three-day visit to the country, discussing a range of issues including deforestation, the investment climate, energy and technology.

Undersecretary of State for Economic Growth, Energy, and the Environment Catherine Novelli also raised the possibility that Cambodia could join the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a controversial US-led trade agreement between Pacific Rim states.

During her visit, which came just four months after U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry made a trip to Cambodia, Novelli met Minister of Environment Say Sam Al and Agriculture Minister Ouk Rabun.

She also met with a secretary of state for telecommunication, journalists and entrepreneurs in the tech and digital sectors.

I think that our economic relationship is strong, with $3 billion dollars in two-way trade and we are the top country partner of Cambodia in terms of trade, she said during a meeting with a group of journalists Thursday at the US Embassy.

We would like to enhance that, possibly to conclude a bilateral investment treaty as well as find ways to work to gather on practical issues that can really cement our relationship and help bring Cambodia to the next level.

Amid ongoing political tensions in the country, Novelli said the government led by Prime Minister Hun Sen needed to do more to ensure political stability so as not to hurt investment.

One of the things that I raised as well, was just to point out that a lot of the time people think that politics and economics are completely separate, but there have been some issues here around some NGOs as well as some political issues, and I just point it out that companies do watch these things very carefully when they are deciding where they are going to invest,'' Novelli said. ''Companies like to know that they are in a place that is open and stable in terms of that openness.

So these kinds of issues that have been happening here can have an effect on the investment side as well. It may not be immediate, but it can absolutely have an effect, she added.

She said that Cambodia showed great economic potential and could become a member of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a central part of President Barak Obama's policy for Asia which aims to create a market of about 1.5 billion people.

The way that TPP was originally planned was that we would start with the countries that are the initial countries, but it was always planned that the TPP would be expanded, so we would be very interested. Once everybody gets the current TPP approved and up and running, well be interested in having Cambodia be part of that TPP, Novelli said.

However, in order to qualify for membership, she said Cambodia needed to demonstrate that you are interested in taking on those levels of openness and that you are going to follow through on that  a task she said the United States was willing and able to assist with.

We are happy to work with Cambodia and to explain all the provisions of [the TPP], she said. One of the reasons why we have been so interested in pursuing a bilateral investment treaty is because the provisions that are in the bilateral treaty are nearly identical to the provisions in the TPP on investment, so that would sort of solve that one issue right there, and Cambodia has very open trade policies.

We are happy to start negotiating as soon as Cambodia is ready.

Novelli also got a chance during the trip to visit areas of the country that have been hit hard by illegal logging. Its clear to me that deforestation is an issue, she said, adding that she had been impressed by Environment Minister Say Sam Als commitment.

Novelli was featured Friday in a panel discussion titled ''Unlocking Cambodia's Creative Economy" at the Hotel Cambodiana. Leaders of technology companies based in Cambodia took part. The entrepreneurs said improving the education system was key to developing human resources to work in the Cambodia's nascent digital and internet industry.

Despite significant advances in Cambodia economically, Steven Path, president of the Cambodian ICT Federation, said the lack of trained employees was a major barrier to investment. Human resources development is very important, he said.

Len Tan, CEO if electronics firm ICE, agreed.

If we had educational institutions that really emphasize human resources, I think it would help the economy drastically, he said.
More than one million people have signed an online petition to have a U.S. judge in California removed from the bench following his lenient sentence of a male college student who was convicted of raping a young woman.

Santa Clara County Judge Aaron Persky gave Stanford University star athlete Brock Turner a six-month jail sentence and three years' probation for his sexual assault on an unconscious woman behind a campus dumpster (rubbish bin) last year.

A jury found Turner guilty on three felony counts: assault with the intent to commit rape of an unconscious person, sexual penetration of an unconscious person and sexual penetration of an intoxicated person.

Turner is expected to serve only three months in California's notoriously overcrowded jail system. Convicts with a clean disciplinary record in the county jail generally are released when half of their sentences are completed.

The soft sentence and a letter to the judge from the defendant's father have sparked outrage across the country.

Vice President Joe Biden, who penned the 1994 Violence Against Women Act and is involved in the White House's "It's On Us" campaign against campus sexual assault, wrote an open letter to the rape survivor.

"I am filled with furious anger - both that this happened to you and that our culture is still so broken that you were ever put in the position of defending your own worth," Biden said. "You are a warrior - with a solid steel spine."

The 23-year-old woman, who has not been publicly identified, read aloud a scathing letter in the courtroom, addressed to her attacker.

The woman wrote: "I thought there's no way this is going to trial; there were witnesses, there was dirt in my body, he ran but was caught. He's going to settle [the case], formally apologize and we will both move on. Instead, I was told he hired a powerful attorney, expert witnesses, private investigators who were going to try and find details about my personal life..."

Two Swedish men on bicycles stopped the attack when they approached. Turner ran, but the men tackled him. The woman said in her letter when the police arrived one of the men "was crying so hard he couldn't speak because of what he'd seen."

The woman's letter to her attacker, widely published online, continued: "...the only reason we were on the ground was because I fell down Note: if a girl falls down, help her get up. If she is too drunk to even walk and falls down, do not mount her, hump her, take off her underwear, and insert your hand inside her vagina. If a girl falls down, help her up."

Turner's father wrote a letter to the judge downplaying his son's actions that night and bemoaning the ramifications his son now faces.

"His life will never be the one that he dreamed about and worked so hard to achieve," Dan Turner wrote. "That is a steep price to pay for 20 minutes of action out of his 20 plus years of his life."

His father lamented, "The fact that he now has to register as a sexual offender for the rest of his life alters where he can live, visit, work and how he will be able to interact with people and organizations."


Amnesty International says Nigerian soldiers killed at least 17 people during a recent gathering of Biafran separatists in the countrys southeast. The military is denying the allegations.

Supporters of the Indigenous People of Biafra gathered in the city of Onitsha and surrounding communities late last month to commemorate the date when southeastern Nigeria seceded and became the short-lived Republic of Biafra.



IPOB, as the group is known, was planning a march to mark the anniversary. Amnesty International says the night before the event, the military raided a church where Biafra supporters were sleeping. Soldiers allegedly fired tear gas and live bullets at hundreds of people, killing at least one person.

The following day, Amnesty says soldiers shot people gathered at a bus station and also fired on protesters blocking a junction in Onitsha, killing a bystander.



Makmid Kamara, project coordinator for Amnesty International, says the shooting victims were unarmed.



We think these shootings amount to extrajudicial killings and a lot of the shootings were indiscriminate, said Kamara.



Army denies report



Nigerias army denied the Amnesty report. In a statement, it said members of IPOB engaged in violent protests that killed two police officers and wounded soldiers.



IPOB said at least 50 of its members were killed in the incident. Amnesty said it can only confirm the deaths of 17, but that they believe the bodies of those killed were taken somewhere by the military.



Agitation by separatists in Nigerias southeast has been on the rise in recent months. The arrest of IPOB leader Nnamdi Kanu last October further inflamed tensions. In February, two people were killed during a protest in the southeastern city of Aba.



Nigerias military has come under fire from human rights groups for other incidents as well. A year ago, Amnesty International accused the military of killing thousands suspected of ties with Boko Haram insurgents in the northeast.



Human Rights Watch criticized the army in December for killing hundreds of members of a Shi'ite sect in the northern city of Zaria.



Nigerias military has generally denied these charges, saying their soldiers respect lives and property.



Kamara said the recent incidences show that rule of law is eroding in Nigeria.



In the case of the IPOB, or the pro-Biafra supporters, we are extremely worried that the heavy-handedness of the Nigerian military force is leading to increased level of impunity, said Kamara.



The report says many of those killed and injured are still being held by the military.




Authorities in Afghanistans eastern Nangarhar province say a powerful bomb explosion during a mosque prayer service killed at least four people and wounded dozens more.

A provincial government spokesman, Attaullah Khogyani, told VOA the prayer leader at the Rodat district mosque was among the dead. The toll is expected to rise because many people are seriously wounded, he added.

There were no immediate claims of responsibility for the deadly bombing on Friday in Nangarhar, which borders Pakistan. Militants from the Islamic State group and Taliban fugitives from Pakistan both have bases in the area.

Another abduction in Kabul

Meanwhile, a spokesman for for the Afghan Interior Ministry, Sediq Seddiqi, confirmed to VOA that an Indian woman working for an international aid group has been abducted in Kabul.

Judith D'Souza, 40, who works for the Aga Khan Foundation, was last seen on Thursday, according to her relatives in the eastern Indian city of Kolkata.

Media reports in India say both Afghan and Indian authorities are trying to secure her release.

The Aga Khan Foundation, part of the Aga Khan Development Network, has channeled hundreds of millions of dollars into Afghan reconstruction projects. The organization said it is making every possible effort to free D'Souza, but gave no other details.

Abductions, hostage-taking and summary executions carried out by both militants and criminal networks in Afghanistan have become a major worry for the authorities.

During this month alone, Taliban insurgents have carried out at least three mass kidnappings in northern Afghanistan.


Something dramatic is happening with China's "Go Global" strategy, with Chinese companies investing more money in foreign locations in the first 10 weeks of 2016 compared to all of last year. Chinese companies invested $110 billion until mid-April, compared to $108 billion in 2015.

This year could end with Chinese companies investing more than double what they did in 2015, analysts say. This would mean nearly seven times the growth compared to 2015, when China's foreign investments in the non-financial sector rose by 14.7 percent, according to the Ministry of Commerce.

Consulting firm Dealogic estimates that China might surpass the United States as the world's biggest foreign investor by the end of the year if it continues to pour money into foreign locations at the high pace seen in the first quarter. Chinese companies have struck 17 deals this year valued at $1 billion, it said.

Chinese firms are shopping around for foreign companies for commercial reasons as well as their need to please government authorities. China is increasingly using investments as a diplomatic tool, analysts said. Bilateral meetings usually feature promises of Chinese investments worth billions of dollars in different countries.

"Two forces are at work. The government encourages state-owned enterprises [SOE's] to invest abroad. Private companies have different reasons for investing abroad, but they also have the government's support behind them," Zhao Longkai, associate professor of finance at Peking University's Guanghua School of Management, told VOA.

"There is a lot of money floating around in China because the cost of capital is low. Also, acquiring foreign companies is a quick way to gain new markets and technology," he said.

A wide range of interests

Chinese investments cover a wide range of projects including some politically beneficial and sensitive ones like nuclear reactors, seaports connecting import oceanic routes like one in Sri Lanka, and the recent acquisition of Swiss pesticide and seed company Syngenta by China National Chemical Corp. for $43 billion in a cash offer.

The government's encouragement of investments is driven by foreign policy considerations, analysts said.

"Chinese investment now takes a top spot on the agenda of major diplomatic occasions as China is eager to counterbalance growing negativism about falling Chinese demand for foreign goods and Chinas ballooning trade surplus," said a joint study by the Rhodium Group and MERICS. "Chinese diplomats also increasingly use the promise of investment and other financial flows as a diplomatic instrument to seek politically favorable outcomes in negotiations with the EU and its member states."

Zhou Xiaochuan, governor of the People's Bank of China, the central bank, said in a recent interview, "Chinese enterprises make more outbound investments than before as they 'go global.' This is a natural outcome of policy opening and a better understanding of the international market by Chinese entrepreneurs. Outbound investments have been growing rather rapidly, which is a good thing," he said.

China accounted for 10 percent of global foreign direct investment by the end of 2015, but this might double in the next few years. The Rhodium Group and MERICS estimated Chinese foreign investments might grow to over $1 trillion in the next five years.

A publication of the State Council, the country's Cabinet, said last April that China was implementing the fourth stage of its "Go Global" strategy.

"Now, with Go Global era 4.0 coming, private enterprises become the main driving forces, with investment diversity and upgrade of their position within global value chains," it said.

It added, "With its economy entering the state of New Normal, China is witnessing two dramatic changes: from a capital importing country to a capital exporting country; from 'world factory' to 'world market.'"
The presumptive Democratic nominee for president, Hillary Clinton, met with left-leaning Senator Elizabeth Warren Friday at Clinton's Washington home.

Warren came to prominence as an advocate of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, established after the 2008 financial crisis to protect small investors in the financial sector. She has since been an outspoken advocate for Wall Street reform and measures to adjust income inequality, placing her to the left of centrist Clinton.

The talks came a day after the Massachusetts senator endorsed Clinton. She was the last Democratic female senator to do so.

The Warren-Clinton meeting has fueled speculation that Clinton might tap the senator to be her running mate.

Warren would likely boost Clinton's support among supporters of Bernie Sanders, some of whom have indicated a reluctance to back Clinton. Like Sanders, Warren is considered a progressive.

Warren told MSNBC television Thursday that she has not been asked to a be a vice presidential candidate; nor has she been vetted.

Clinton secured the delegates necessary to win her party's nomination earlier this week.

Sanders is vowing to run through next week's primary contests, but party leaders are hoping he will drop his presidential bid after that.
The monstrous El Nino weather pattern dubbed "Godzilla" by NASA (the U.S. space agency) is dead, scientists declared Thursday.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said the El Nino has ended, 15 months after its birth in March 2015.

"There's nothing left,'' NOAA Climate Prediction Center deputy director Mike Halpert said. "Stick a fork in it, it's done.''

The weather pattern, defined by warmer-than-average Pacific Ocean water, was one of the three strongest El Ninos on record, along with 1997-1998 and 1982-83. It has been linked to crop damage, fires and flash floods over the past year.

In the U.S., it delivered much-needed rain and snow to California, but failed to end the parched state's four-year drought.

The cyclical weather phenomenon triggered droughts in parts of Africa, India and Southeast Asia, and contributed to the heating up of the planet. Earth has had 12 straight record hot months and is likely to have its second straight record hot year.

The El Nino cycles occur every two or three years on average, and before we see the next one, we must contend with La Nina, the cooler opposite of El Nino, to take place in the Northern Hemisphere later this year.

NOAA forecasts a 50 percent chance of La Nina by the end of the hemisphere's summer, and a 75 percent chance by the end of the fall.

La Nina generally brings more hurricanes to the Atlantic, drier-than-normal conditions in the U.S. Southwest, and wetter conditions in the Pacific Northwest.

It often brings lots of rain to parts of Australia and Southeast Asia, and cooler temperatures in parts of Africa, Asia, South America and Canada.
Keiko Fujimori conceded defeat Friday in one of the closest presidential elections ever in Peru, which kept the country in suspense for nearly a week.

She said she is accepting the results "in a democratic spirit" and will head up what she says will be a respectful opposition.

Until Friday, she had refused to give up after barely losing a runoff to conservative economist and former World Bank official Pedro Kuczynski, 50.1 percent to 49.9 percent.

Kuczynski has urged Peruvians to work together for the country's future.

Fujimori is the daughter of former President Alberto Fujimori, who is serving a 25-year prison sentence for human rights abuses and corruption during his rule from 1990 to 2000.

Keiko Fujimori had tried to distance herself from her infamous father. But Kuczynski and others warned she would reintroduce authoritarian rule in Peru if elected.
Cambodian expatriates in several countries are preparing for Friday and Saturday protests to demand the release of several human rights workers and opposition supporters.

The demonstrations are being staged simultaneously in Canada and several U.S. states that are home to large Cambodian expatriate communities, including California and Massachusetts.

Touch Vibol, president of the Cambodian American Alliance, said he would lead a demonstration to the U.S. Capitol to call on the government to impose sanctions against long-ruling Prime Minister Hun Sens government, over what he called a stifling of dissent that has seen numerous opposition members and supporters and even rights workers jailed on spurious charges.

Our purpose is to push for economic and diplomatic sanctions on the current government, he said. This is because the human rights situation in Cambodia is worsening. Therefore, to avoid a civil war and plunging the country deeper into crisis, [we must] apply a sanction so that the government can come back on the right track.

Four Phnom Penh human rights defenders from the Cambodian Human Rights and Development Association, along with an election official, are currently in jail on charges of bribing a witness in a sex scandal involving opposition party deputy leader Kem Sokha. At least 10 opposition activists and politicians, including two U.S. citizens, have been sentenced in connection with a violent protest following the 2013 election.

People are suffering from what is happening in Cambodia nowadays, said Navan Cheth, a protest organizer in Long Beach, California. They cannot accept this injustice, so they will come out to support this protest.

Protests will also be held Saturday in France and Australia.

We condemn the violation of the constitution by arresting civilians and opposition politicians, including lawmakers, said Ham Bunchhay, a protest organizer in France.

The protesters also will urge the U.S. to lead a campaign to mobilize a "Cambodia Contact Group, which will consist of the U.S., France, Japan, Indonesia, Australia and Britain.

The Cambodia Contact Group will play a crucial role in ensuring that the election will be conducted free and fair as per the spirit of the 1991 Paris peace agreement, said Vibol. We see that the U.S. was a signatory country to the agreement and has a responsibility to monitor the implementation of democracy and human rights in Cambodia.
For southwestern England's Cornwall region, Britain's membership in the European Union has meant a big cash infusion and new promise for people living among the ruins of tin mines that once were the symbol of innovation and industry.

When the last mines closed years ago, the area's economy collapsed and thousands were plunged into unemployment and poverty. Cornwall was known as the "Poor Man of Europe."

It was in that environment that Toby Parkins grew up. "I had a choice to work in mining," he said. Instead, he went into the software business and now runs Headforwards, a booming software development company.

"We're going to be doubling in size in the next 12 months in size, really, realistically, and it doesn't look like it's going to stop. It looks like we're going to be accelerating. Yeah, it's good times," Parkins told VOA.

EU support a key

He attributed his company's success to EU support that has financed infrastructure projects like the innovation center where his offices are and a massive broadband expansion project that has allowed his company to serve global clients.

The support is substantial. From 2007, after the EU qualified Cornwall as a less developed region, Brussels pumped more than $740 million into infrastructure projects. By 2020, another $700 is budgeted, making Cornwall a top recipient of EU money in Britain.

Business boosters say the difference the EU support has made is huge. "If you'd been here 10, 15 years ago, Cornwall was a different place than it is today," said Mel Colton-Dyer, head of business connections at the Cornwall Chamber of Commerce.

Nathan Brown, a software developer at Parkins' firm, says Brussels has delivered. He sees the June 23 vote on whether to remain in the EU as potentially life-changing. "At the moment I can't do anything but think about it," he said.

Brown feels lucky to have a job that pays well in a place where there are still not many other options. "I found it very difficult to find programming work down here, with an adequate salary."

Slight GDP increase

But economists note the region's GDP has not risen significantly and the high-salary jobs are still few.

"We'll hear stories of businesses that have done well, but in my view, there should be 10 times that, 20 times that," said Rob Misselbrook, owner of Mylor Ventures, a venture capital company in Cornwall. He says the EU infrastructure has helped, but thinks it is time to let the private sector take over. "Businesses should drive the economic growth." he said.

"I call it the blob, which is this huge advisory ecosystem that we have here. We have advisers coming out of our ears," Misselbrook said. "I would really argue what their impact is in terms of delivering sustainable growth. The funding stops and they disappear."

Analysts say the lack of tangible benefits like higher incomes could explain why, despite the EU cash infusion, Cornwall is a hotbed for the campaign to leave.

A reporter approached resident John Hodgson as he nailed a pro-leave poster on his fence. "I love England," he said. "Britain used to rule the waves, you know."

At 78, Hodgson remembers World War II vividly, and the Brexit vote is, for him, a question of sovereignty. "The reason I think we should pull out is we like our freedom," he said. "This could be like what Nazi Germany did, and we don't forget what they did."

Immigration concerns

Locals complain that Cornwall's historic fishing industry has been decimated, and they blame EU competition. But the big issue is immigration.

On Falmouth's picturesque waterfront, Mark Jackett, a retired builder, has strong views. "People are coming in. The Polish, very hardworking people, but to some extent they're coming in and working for less wages, which is putting pressure on the local person who's either got to accept lower wages or don't work," he said.

Cornwall's younger generation expresses different views.

"Leaving would be such a massive change that you just can't predict what would happen," said Charlie Evans, a student at Falmouth University, built with EU money. "But staying, I don't think too much would change. I know Cornwall benefits greatly from the EU, this campus particularly," he said.

Another student, Libby Cadman, agreed. "I think the impact of leaving will actually be so negative on this generation that it won't be worth it."

Toby Parkins worries that new immigration rules possible after a Brexit could hurt business.

"We already deal with international visas, and trust me, it's an absolute nightmare," he said. "We've lost candidates. We've lost contracts in the past because we haven't been able to recruit people fast enough. It's a real dent on productivity."

He is looking to shift part of his operations to Estonia or Spain.
The Israeli military said Friday the West Bank will be closed off until the end of the Jewish holiday of Shavuot on Sunday, due to security concerns following a Palestinian shooting attack this week that killed four civilians.

It said that crossings will be open for "humanitarian and medical" cases and for Palestinians to worship at al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem.

Police said tens of thousands of Palestinians attended prayers at the mosque on Friday, the first of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. It said police were on high alert in Jerusalem and prayers passed peacefully.

Much of the past months of violence stems from tensions at the hilltop compound.

Muslims refer to it as the Noble Sanctuary, and it is their third holiest site, after Mecca and Medina in Saudi Arabia.

It is the holiest site for Jews, who call it the Temple Mount because of the revered Jewish temples that stood there in biblical times.

West bank closures are often imposed ahead of holidays in Israel when there are security fears of Palestinian attacks. Tensions are especially high now after Palestinian gunmen killed four people and wounded five others in a popular and crowded area of Tel Aviv on Wednesday night.

The military said it arrested several people in connection to that attack in the West Bank overnight.

Over the last eight months, Palestinians have carried out dozens of attacks on civilians and security forces, mostly stabbings, shootings and car ramming assaults that have killed 32 Israelis and two Americans. About 200 Palestinians have been killed during that time, most identified as attackers by Israel. The assaults were once near-daily incidents but they have become less frequent in recent weeks.

The office of the United Nations' High Commissioner for Human Rights, Zeid Ra'ad al-Hussein, on Friday condemned the Tel Aviv shooting. Spokeswoman Ravina Shamdasani said that Israel had an "obligation" to bring those responsible to account, but said some measures punish "thousands of innocent Palestinians" and could constitute "collective punishment."

The military says the closure will end Sunday night after the Shavuot holiday.
Two liquor industry giants are escalating a 20-year fight to secure the rights to sell Havana Club rum in the U.S. when the half-century-old embargo on Cuban goods ends.

Bacardi is launching sales nationwide for the Havana Club it produces in Puerto Rico, while competitor Pernod Ricard is expanding the distillery it shares with Cuba's government to prepare for the day when their brand can be sold in the U.S.

Both brands hope that the fresh marketing campaigns would help them capitalise on consumers' growing appreciation for premium rums, as well as the excitement felt in the United States for easier travel to Cuba and its rum and cigars that were once banned in the country.

Similar corporate disputes are typically resolved by establishing who registered the brand first, but this case is more complicated and has been defined by bitterness between Cuban exiles, based mainly in the United States, and Cuba's government.

Bacardi

Bacardi, a drinks brand that is still privately held by its founding Cuban family, is seeking the rights to its own Cuban trademark that it lost when the company fled Fidel Castro's regime.

Bacardi had bought the name "Havana Club" and a distillation formula handwritten from memory by the Arechabala family, who created the brand in Cuba in 1935, but lost control to Castro's government in 1960.

Court records show Bacardi originally paid 1.25 million US dollars to the Arechabalas for the Havana Club rights.

The company's filings in multiple federal lawsuits and trademark board appeals bristle with indignation and describe Castro's troops forcibly confiscating the Arechabalas' office property, when they left the country.

When the Arechabala family let the trademark registration lapse after their company was taken over, the Cuban government filled the gap and registered its US trademark in 1976.

Cuba exported their Havana Club mostly to Eastern Europe until a 1993 joint venture with Paris-based Pernod Ricard brought it to the attention of the rest of the world.

Now it's sold in over 120 countries, except the United States - the world's biggest rum market.

Bacardi, on the other hand, has continued to sell its Havana Club in a handful of US states since the mid-1990s.

Trademark fight

This is by no means the first example of a lawsuit filed by Barcardi, who ultimately lost its claim to the Havana Club trademark in Spain after lengthy litigation there, adding to the confidence of those representing Pernod Ricard.

Ian Fitzsimmons, General Counsel for Pernod-Ricard said he was "very confident" they will secure the rights to sell the rum in the U.S., as they had "won everywhere else in the world."

U.S. courts generally have ruled against Cuba in this case, but the island's government has succesfully pursued renewal for its Havana Club registration, arguing the U.S. could neither renew nor cancel the trademark under the embargo.

In spite of decades of icy relations, the US Patent and Trademark Office appeals board regularly declined Bacardi's request to have Cuba's registration canceled, saying it lacked the authority to answer Bacardi's politically charged complaints.

In its response to Bacardi's latest legal challenge, Pernod Ricard and the Cuban government say the US trademark for Havana Club had been abandoned by its originators after Cuba "assumed managerial control" of the Arechabalas' company.

And as relations between the U.S. - the world's largest rum market -- and Cuba -- the world's traditional producer of the drink -- thaw, it seem likely that the battle will continue.
Australian and Malaysian investigators are eager to examine what may be debris from Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 that went missing en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing two years ago.

The aircraft carried 239 passengers and crew when it disappeared in March 2014.

Wreckage that may be from the doomed flight recently washed ashore in Madagascar and an island off southern Australia.

In Madagascar, part of an airplane seat and a cover panel on a plane wing have been recovered.

Meanwhile, a plane part was found on Kangaroo Island with the words "No step" on it.

Officials believe flight MH370 crashed at sea but have not been able to find the main underwater wreckage.
The U.N. refugee agency reports a multi-million-dollar appeal begun early this year on behalf of tens of thousands of refugees and migrants in Greece and along the Balkan route is outdated and needs to be revised upwards.

The U.N. refugee agency and 60 partner organizations appealed for about $555 million in January. The money was supposed to be enough to carry out Greek and Balkan aid operations until the end of the year.

Since the appeal was launched, however, radical changes have occurred. UNHCR spokesman William Spindler said the so-called regional Refugee and Migrant Response Plan has been revised to take into account the new circumstances; namely, border closures along the western Balkans route and the enactment of the EU-Turkey agreement.

The financial requirements to implement the plan have been adjusted to reflect the change in circumstances, he said. "They currently stand at almost $670 million for 2016, of which contributions of $328.8 million have been received.

That, said Spindler, leaves a gap of more than $340 million. The UNHCR reports a significant drop in refugees and migrants arriving in Greece. That has resulted in a decrease in the number of people along the western Balkans route and an increase in the number of people remaining in Greece.

Spindler said more than 57,000 refugees and migrants currently are spread across the country. As a consequence, he said the UNHCR and partners will focus their aid operations on the static population in Greece and on protecting people in the western Balkans.

Unmet needs remain significant," he added, "as living conditions in the sites in Greece, both on the islands and in the mainland, have deteriorated as a result of congestion and the rapid nature in which sites were established on the mainland.

Spindler said there are many people with specific needs, such as unaccompanied or separated children, pregnant or lactating women, the elderly and disabled.

Given the conditions under which these people are forced to live, he warned many are likely to rely on smuggling and trafficking networks, exposing themselves to greater risks.
U.S. President Barack Obama has approved a wider role for the U.S. military in Afghanistan to help local forces combat the Taliban.

The new plan, which follows months of debate, will allow for increased airstrikes against the Taliban when necessary, and, more generally, give U.S. forces more flexibility in how they partner with Afghan forces. The plan does not involve U.S. ground troops.

The decision will once again redefine the U.S. military's role in Afghanistan more than a year after international combat troops finished their missions, leaving Afghan troops to fight the Taliban.

It also comes six months before the 9,800 U.S. troops in Afghanistan would be reduced to 5,500 -- a move Obama has said would happen by 2017.

Afghanistan's fight against a resurgent Taliban has intensified in recent months.

The United Nations said 3,545 Afghan citizens were killed and 7,457 were wounded in 2015 -- most of them at the hands of the Taliban.
U.S. President Barack Obama has approved new authorities for U.S. forces in Afghanistan that loosen restrictions over airstrikes and give U.S. forces more flexibility in how they partner with Afghan troops.

The announcement comes as Afghanistan battles a resurgent Taliban, gains by the al-Qaida-linked Haqqani network and efforts by Islamic State to move in.

"The conditions have changed a lot," said Anthony Cordesman, military analyst and Arleigh A. Burke Chair in Strategy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

The president vowed to bring an end to wars in Iraq and Afghanistan when he took office, but nearly eight years later violence, conflict and instability have spread to other countries, such as Syria and Libya.

"I think the whole idea that presidents can make national security promises, regardless of what actually happens, regardless of realities on the ground, is an extraordinarily dangerous idea," said Cordesman, who served as an adviser to the departments of state and defense during the Iraq and Afghan wars. "Presidents can't do that."

Obama approved the new authorities for U.S. troops based on the advice of military commanders and intelligence officials, according to a senior administration official.

U.S. forces can "more proactively support Afghan conventional forces" by providing "close air support" and by accompanying them during ground operations, the official said.

Troop numbers

But the decision to widen the U.S. military's role does not alter the Obama administration's mission or plan to reduce troop levels in Afghanistan, said White House spokesman Josh Earnest.

"I would encourage you not to try to interpret anything about a future potential decision on troop numbers with the new authorities," he said.

The Obama administration's current plan is to reduce the number of U.S. troops from the current 9,800 to around 5,500 by the end of the year.

The U.S. mission still centers on two goals, officials said: combating terrorism and training, advising and assisting Afghan security forces.

Obama declared an end to the U.S. combat mission in Afghanistan in 2014, and Earnest argued that U.S. troops will not engage in combat now.

"This authority would allow U.S. forces to accompany conventional Afghan forces in certain situations," the spokesman said. "But when they are accompanying them, they continue to remain focused on the advise-and-assist mission that they have been carrying out now for almost two years."

Afghan forces

Cordesman said Afghan security forces had not received enough training and resources to take the lead role in securing their own country when the U.S. combat mission came to an end.

"They weren't ready when U.S. combat forces withdrew at the end of 2014," Cordesman said. "And the president has reacted but he has reacted in ways that seem to do the most he can to fulfill the promise of reducing U.S. forces."

The current U.S. plan calls for the 5,500 troops to remain in Afghanistan, at bases including in Bagram, Jalalabad and Kandahar.

But the country's future remains uncertain with no clear indication of how much U.S. and NATO troops will remain involved in the conflict.

And despite costly U.S. reconstruction efforts, Afghanistan remains impoverished, steeped in corruption and desperately in need of development.

"You're passing on to the next president a very, very uncertain U.S. level of action and commitment," Cordesman added. "You don't have a clear strategy and the situation is likely to be worse at the time that the president leaves office than it is now."
One-third of young children living in developing nations are failing to meet basic mental development milestones, which could adversely affect their health, success in adulthood, and education levels, researchers said on Tuesday.

Nearly 81 million children between 3 and 4 were not meeting basic developmental benchmarks with the highest numbers of affected children coming from sub-Saharan Africa, including Chad, Sierra Leone and Central African Republic, they said in a report.

While poverty and malnutrition are contributing factors, more research needs to be done to understand the root causes of the problem, according to Dana McCoy, lead author of the study which uses data from the U.N. children's agency UNICEF and the U.S. Agency for International Development.

"By virtue of the fact that these children are not meeting these milestones doesn't mean they can't go on to have a very healthy, happy and productive life," said McCoy, who conducted the study with the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and funding body Grand Challenges Canada.

"There are a number of programs and interventions that can be implemented at any age group to really support children's development, help them to thrive in their settings," McCoy said.

Assessment

Children were assessed on their ability to follow simple directions, work independently, maintain attention, get along with others, and inhibit aggressive behaviors such as hitting and kicking.

McCoy said mental development was essential in predicting a child's transition into adulthood, setting the foundation for school readiness, mental and physical well-being, as well as economic earnings later in life.

Since fewer children are dying from malnutrition and preventable diseases, the international community should now start to focus on the potential of children, and not just their survival, McCoy added.

"With a lot of the efforts that have been made internationally in the public health and medical realm, we've come to a lot of success in helping children to survive," McCoy, an assistant professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

"But now we're moving into an era where we can not only help children to survive, but really focus on helping them to thrive."

Nearly half of all under-5 deaths are associated with malnutrition, according to the World Health Organization, but the rate of improvement is accelerating, with child mortality falling quicker since the millennium than it did in the 1990s.

McCoy noted that despite the challenges, the majority of young children living in poor nations are meeting developmental benchmarks.

"There are a number of children who are quite resilient and they are able to thrive and so we can and should look to those children as examples of how to really think about development"
The United States has given six airlines permission to operate commercial flights to Cuba, which have been barred for decades.

The U.S. Department of Transportation announced licenses Friday for American Airlines, Frontier Airlines, JetBlue, Silver Airways, Southwest Airlines and Sun Country Airlines.

The airlines will fly to nine cities in Cuba, but not Havana. U.S. transportation officials said they had yet to make a decision on flights to the Cuban capital because interest from airlines was much higher for those routes and there were competing claims.

The routes approved Friday include service from the U.S. cities of Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Chicago, Philadelphia and Minneapolis, flying to such Cuban cities as Santa Clara and Santiago de Cuba.

Final approval is still required by the Cuban government, but carriers said they hoped to begin flights this fall.

U.S. law still prohibits most tourist visits to Cuba. However, President Barack Obama has authorized exceptions for other types of travel, including family visits, official business, journalist visits and educational tours.

In the last year and a half, Cuba and the United States have begun restoring diplomatic relations, including reopening embassies in Washington and Havana. While the United States maintains a trade embargo against Cuba, Obama has eased economic links between the two countries, five decades after Cuba's former president, Fidel Castro, nationalized U.S. businesses on the island.

Now, some American businesses are opening operations in Cuba, and U.S. cruise ships have begun making ports of call to the island nation.
Earlier this week, The New York Times published an op-ed bylined by South Sudanese President Salva Kiir and his rival-turned-First Vice President Riek Machar.

In the article, they appeared to argue against creation of a proposed court, composed of both national and international elements, to try perpetrators of atrocities during the past 2 years of civil war.

Both sides of the conflict are accused of committing atrocity crimes, and accountability for perpetrators is a key demand of many people who survived the war.

A hybrid court to try suspected war criminals is also a major part of the peace deal the two men signed, so the op-ed has sparked controversy in South Sudan.

Back toward violence

But Kiir's spokesman, Ateny Wek Ateny, defended the article, arguing that establishing a hybrid court would push the country back into violence.

"The situation in South Sudan is very delicate, Ateny said. The people you would want to take to the court are still armed. And once they know they are not protected, and they are armed, they may cause havoc."

Rights activist Edmund Yakani said the op-ed is an attempt for war criminals in government to avoid justice.

Yakani said if there is no justice, abuses will continue.

"That confirms to me how they, as politicians, are using violence as an option of buying power, because if they could believe that use of violence is not an option of buying power, they could have promoted justice, so that in the future others would never use violence as a way for buying power, he said. But I think because now they have the power, they think there is no need for justice."

A push for justice is particularly strong among Machar's supporters, who say they were targeted by Kiir's troops, raising confusion among his camp over the op-ed.

Machar supporters

Juba University political science professor Jacob Chol said if Machar is against the hybrid court, his followers would abandon him.

"If he said that, 'Look, I want to leave justice,' they will look at him and say, 'Look, you are not serious, man.' They will look at him as a liar and a bad politician," Chol said.

Machar's side has since denied knowledge of the op-ed. The first vice president's deputy spokesman, Nyarji Roman, accused Kiir's side of submitting the story without the vice president's approval.

Roman added that the former rebel side, called the SPLM-In Opposition, will cooperate with any court process.

"If there is enough evidence that can link any one of our SPLM-IO members to any crimes against humanity, then we will hand them over to the court. We do not mind," he said.

Kiir's spokesman Ateny admits the president and Machar did not write the op-ed, saying it came from his office with help from international public relations experts.

But he insists Machar approved the article.

New York Times responds

Meanwhile, Ellen Murphy, senior vice president for communications at The New York Times, said in a statement that they received no notice to correct the article from Machar's side.

"This piece came to us through representatives of the government of South Sudan with assurances that they were working on behalf of both President Kiir and Vice President Machar," Murphy said late Thursday.

"Today we learned that Vice President Machar does not agree with the content of the op-ed. We should have sought direct confirmation of the argument of the piece from both parties," Murphy said.

Chol said the episode reveals problems of mistrust between Kiir and Machar, who joined in a unity government in April.

Chol also said the fact that the government stands by the op-ed shows that officials may fear an international court could succeed in prosecuting some members.

"There is a lot of worry from the government perspective because the court is going take a lot of people in there," Chol said.

For South Sudanese, the debate about justice for war crimes is far from over.
Troops in northern Cameroon set out Friday for a fresh push against Boko Haram militants, a week after the terror group carried out its deadliest attack in Niger in more than a year.

The militants raided a military post in Bosso, Niger, killing at least 26 soldiers. Nigers government said 55 insurgents were also killed. The U.N. refugee agency said about 50,000 residents had fled.

General Jacob Kodji, one of Cameroon's top commanders in the north, said troops from Niger and Chad would attack Boko Haram strongholds in Niger, while his men would organize raids to stop the terrorists from getting reinforcements from or escaping to hideouts around the Lake Chad Basin and the Sambisa Forest in Nigeria.

Kodji said the area of operations would span more than 400 kilometers. The operations will be dangerous, he said, because the insurgents are increasingly using land mines and holding civilians hostage as human shields.

Colonel Didier Badjeck, Cameroons military spokesman, accused Boko Haram fighters of harassing the population along the countrys border with Nigeria, saying fighters had been stealing food and killing residents.

Badjeck said Boko Haram had been staging attacks daily for three weeks. After an attack on one of its positions, Cameroons military struck back against the Islamic militant group Friday, he said.
International aid groups were able to deliver food and supplies to a besieged Syrian town for the first time in four years following a new government approval of access to several rebel-held areas within the country.

The Syrian Arab Red Crescent and the United Nations were able to deliver a months worth of food and medical supplies to the people of Daraya, a suburb just southwest of Syrias capital Damascus, Thursday night for the first time since rebels captured the city in 2012.

The aid groups brought enough food to feed 2,400 people for a month, as well as enough health and hygiene supplies for the entire estimated population of around 4,000 for the same time period, U.N. spokesman Jans Laerke told reporters.

It was quite a feat, Laerke said, adding that malnutrition had been reported in the area.

The U.N. estimates there are currently 592,700 people living under siege in Syria, with the vast majority of them  about 452,700 people  besieged by government forces.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, echoing statements from the United States and the European Union, called Thursday for negotiations between the opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party and the ruling Cambodian Peoples Party.

Ban's statement came on the heels of a period of political tension between Prime Minister Hun Sen's ruling party and the opposition. In recent months, at least 20 members of local civil society organizations, human rights defenders, and members and supporters of the CNRP were imprisoned on charges ranging from incitement to bribery.

And in recent days, security forces have tried to arrest the CNRPs acting president, Kem Sokha, amid ongoing attempts by the municipal court to question him about allegations of solicitation and ignoring previous subpoenas.

Ban made his comments during a phone conversation with Foreign Minister Prak Sokhon, a summary of which was later posted to a U.N. website. It said Ban expressed concern about the breakdown in interparty relations and the jailing of dissidents.

The secretary-general conveyed his hope that the government of Cambodia would ensure full respect for human rights, including the freedoms of expression, association and assembly, read the statement. He called for the resumption of the culture of dialogue between the Cambodian Peoples Party and the Cambodia National Rescue Party.

Both the CPP and CNRP on Thursday welcomed the statement.

His call is good for Cambodia, to be in peace and harmony, Sok Eysan, spokesman for the ruling party, told VOA's Khmer service. However, his evaluation and concerns about human rights and other issues in Cambodia are not reflective of the reality in Cambodian society. All the problems occur because members of the Cambodia National Rescue Party themselves violated the law.

A meeting 'very soon'?

Eysan added that the CPP and CNRP working groups, which were established in 2015, were already talking about when a meeting between the parties could be held and what the agenda should be.

Therefore, I think, it will happen very soon," Eysan said. "Our parties working groups will meet to strengthen the culture of dialogue, and it is complying to the request made by His Excellency Ban Ki-moon.

Yim Sovann, a CNRP lawmaker and spokesman, said the next meeting of the CNRP and CPP should focus on the violation of lawmakers immunity" and the "jailing of opposition party activists and civil society members and [an election official].

However, the ruling party has previously said a precondition of new talks would be that these topics are off the table.

Koul Panha, executive director of Comfrel, an election monitoring group, said a breakdown in communication and the self-exile of CNRP President Sam Rainsy had created a deadlocked situation.

It is obvious that the lower level of dialogue  the third level, the working group  will find it hard to make any majority decision to resolve political issues, including the violations of political rights, usage of court to jail lawmakers, and violence against opposition lawmakers, he said.

The ruling party should seek a political compromise, he added, explaining that it should include a pardon for Rainsy, who is wanted to serve a two-year prison term for defamation.
Authorities in Afghanistan are searching for a woman aid worker from the Aga Khan Foundation who has been kidnapped in Kabul.

No group has publicly claimed responsibility for abducting Judith D'Souza, an Indian national who has been working in Afghanistan for the Aga Khan's development network since last year. She has not been seen since late Thursday, and an Indian government official in Kabul told a reporter she apparently was seized near her home in the Adfghan capital's Qalai Fatullah area.

A spokesman for the Afghan Interior Ministry, Sediq Seddiqi, confirmed to VOA Friday that the woman was kidnapped. Government officials in India said they are cooperating with Afghan authorities in their effort to gain the 40-year-old veteran aid worker's freedom.

In Kolkata, D'Souza's parents and sister said they learned of the kidnapping early Friday from Indian government officials. The New Delhi newspaper Hindustan Times said three people were kidnapped: D'Souza, her driver and a security guard.

The missing woman had telephoned her family earlier this week, telling them she intended to travel to Kolkata next week for a holiday. "She never said that life was at risk," Judith's sister, Agnes D'Souza, told the newspaper.

"We will spare no efforts to rescue her," Indian Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj said in a note on Twitter Friday directed at the D'Souza family. "We are doing everything to rescue her. She is your sister and India's daughter. We are doing everything to rescue her."

The Aga Khan Foundation and its associated Aga Khan Development Network have have channeled up to $750 million into Afghan reconstruction programs, particularly in rural development, health, education, sanitation and cultural restoration. The organization confirmed the kidnapping without identifying D'Souza by name and said it is making every possible effort to resolve the incident, but gave no other details.

The founder of the development foundation, the Aga Khan, is the hereditary imam of the world's Shia Imami Ismaili Muslims.

Abductions, hostage-taking and summary executions carried out by both militants and criminal networks in Afghanistan have become a major worry for the authorities, and aid workers have increasingly been targets.

During this month alone, Taliban insurgents have carried out at least three mass kidnappings in northern Afghanistan.

An Australian woman working in Afghanistan, Katherine Jane Wilson, was kidnapped on April 28 in Jalalabad, near the border with Pakistan. Wilson, about 60 years old, ran a group called Zardozi that promotes the work of Afghan women artisans.

In April 2015, five Afghan workers for the Save the Children group were shot to death in strife-torn Uruzgan province.

The United States warned American citizens in Afghanistan last month of a "very high" risk of kidnapping, following a close call in Kabul in which one American narrowly escaped being abducted.

Meanwhile, authorities in Afghanistans eastern Nangarhar province, which borders Pakistan, said a powerful bomb explosion during a mosque prayer service Friday killed at least four people and wounded dozens more.

A provincial government spokesman, Attaullah Khogyani, told VOA the prayer leader at the Rodat district mosque was among the dead, and that the casualty toll was expected to rise. There were no immediate claims of responsibility for the bombing; militants from the Islamic State group and Taliban fugitives from Pakistan both have bases in the area.
A top U.S. diplomat says Vietnamese officials rejected U.S. offers of technical assistance with an investigation into a mass fish death along the Southeast Asian country's central coast.

Addressing the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) Wednesday, U.S. Ambassador to Vietnam Ted Osius said overtures of assistance, made in late April, were immediately declined.

"Pretty much right away, I offered technical assistance from the United States if the government of Vietnam wanted it for figuring out what had happened, and the reasons that so many fish had died along the central coast," he said. "That immediate offer of assistance was not accepted."

The massive die-off of marine life has sparked outrage and nationwide protests, most of which have been broken up by police. Demonstrators blame the catastrophe, which left an estimated 100 tons of dead fish along central coastline beaches in late April, on the release of toxic chemicals from a new Taiwanese-owned steel mill.

Although an official investigation has found no links between the fish deaths and the $10.6 billion coastal steel plant run by a unit of Taipei-headquartered Formosa Plastics, public anger against the company has not abated.

In May, nearly 140,000 Vietnamese nationals submitted a petition urging the Obama administration to launch an independent probe of the event.

Last week, the Vietnamese government said it had identified the cause of fish deaths, but needed more hard scientific evidence before making public allegations. Critics have repeatedly condemned the government's delayed response to the massive die-off.

In late April, Vietnam's Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc, who took office earlier that month, ordered a thorough inspection of the fish deaths. On April 26, government officials said findings of the probe would be released within a week.
They've been told they're a disgrace to their gender. In some cases, they've been denied jobs. They've been on the receiving end of repeated profanity-filled tirades.

That's just a sampling of the kind of treatment you get if you're a woman who supports Donald Trump, according to a group of female supporters who've formed a Super PAC to help the presumptive Republican presidential nominee.

The group, Women Vote Trump, aims to raise tens of millions of dollars. It's also trying to change the public perception that women don't support the bombastic billionaire, who has a long record of making insulting and objectifying comments about women.

"There are women across the country who are afraid to come out" and publicly back Trump, says Kathryn Serkes, a co-chair of the group. "We are providing a home for women who support him."

At the group's unveiling, none of the female organizers said they were offended by Trump's past use of phrases such as "bimbo," dog" and "fat pig" to describe women.

"Words don't offend me," said actress and conservative activist Stacey Dash. "And even if he said things, he's a New Yorker. He's street."

Verbal abuse

Dash was one of several women at the event who said they have experienced some form of ridicule or verbal abuse as a result of their public support of Trump.

"I've been ostracized," Dash said. "I've had agents drop me. I've not gotten jobs because of my political beliefs."

Dash said she received similar backlash when she voted for Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney in 2012.

"Because I'm black I was supposed to vote for the black guy. I'm done with that. We're all done with that," she said.

Amy Kremer, a Women Vote Trump co-chair, says she initially kept her Trump support secret because she was afraid of "being reprimanded or called not a true conservative."

Once she did go public, the response was brutal. Following a recent appearance on CNN, her inbox filled with insulting comments, including one person who called her a "pathetic, ... moron" and a "disgrace to your gender."

"I went back to my room and I just cried. It was the first time I cried," said Kremer, who was one of the founding leaders of the conservative Tea Party movement. "No one likes to be called names."

But is Kremer offended at some of the names Trump has used for women?

"Some women may find it insulting," she conceded. "But I'm not concerned by what someone did 20, 30 years ago."

Trump's woman problem

The group faces an uphill battle to convince women to get behind Trump.

A Gallup poll last month found seven in 10 women have an unfavorable opinion of Trump. An NBC poll showed women support Trump's likely general election rival, ex-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, by a 23-point margin.

The task may be further complicated by the fact that Clinton is the first female presidential candidate to secure a major party's nomination.

But any notion that Trump faces a "woman problem" is a myth," says Serkes. "We know Donald Trump isn't perfect. But he is genuine. And that is a breath of fresh air."
The U.N. human rights office has released its latest figures on civilian casualties in Yemen, showing more than 3,500 people have been killed and nearly 6,300 wounded since Saudi Arabias bombing campaign against the Houthi rebels began in March of last year.

These figures are being issued amid an international firestorm regarding Saudi Arabias responsibility for the high number of civilian casualties in Yemen, particularly child deaths.

Human rights groups have denounced the removal of Saudi Arabia from the U.N.s annual child rights blacklist. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who has come under a barrage of criticism, reacted angrily to what he called unacceptable undue pressure from Saudi Arabia. Saudi U.N. Ambassador Abdallah al-Mouallimi reiterated his denials that Riyadh threatened Ban over the blacklist.

The ambassador, said, quoting,It is not in our style, it is not in our genes, it is not in our culture to use threats and intimidation."

Ravina Shamdasani, a spokeswoman for the U.N. human rights office, says her organization stands by its figures on civilian casualties, which show that three-quarters of the deaths and injuries are due to Saudi coalition airstrikes.

The methodology that we employ in gathering these civilian casualties is in line with our very strict human rights methodology," she said. "Where we are unsure whether somebody is a civilian or a combatant, that person is not counted in our total account. And, then there are some parts where we just do not have access for security concerns. So the numbers that we collect are the bare minimum in fact.

Heavy toll among children



A report issued by the U.N. Children's Fund on March 29 finds more than 900 children have been killed and more than 1,300 injured over the past calendar year.

The U.N. human rights office condemns a series of rocket and mortar attacks against several residential areas and markets that took place in the city of Taiz between June 3 and 8. Shamdasani says 23 civilians were killed and 77 injured, including children.

In the overall count of civilian casualties, that is still the case that airstrikes have resulted in more deaths than other types of hostilities; however, in the last week, in fact, it was attacks that were launched by the al-Houthis that led to all of the civilian casualties.

Shamdasani says the U.N. rights office often faces pressure from states that do not like what it is reporting and that some have threatened to cut off funding. While that certainly would affect its work, she says such threats do not hold back the agency from reporting on human rights violations.
Police in Zimbabwe have arrested 15 young people for demonstrating against President Robert Mugabe.

Five of the protesters, arrested Wednesday, were charged Friday in Harare Magistrate Court with resisting arrest and robbing two people who had passed by Africa Unity Square. Bail was set at $1,000 each.

The protesters' attorney, Obey Shava of Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights, said the charges were trumped up to intimidate them.

I know that most of them are not able to raise $50 as bail," Shava said. "So effectively they have been denied bail.

"The charges are very weak. These are manufactured charges against my clients. I am sure you heard that I have raised a complaint that there was an attempted abduction against my client by law enforcement agents. It is not a surprise that they are now charged with robbery and theft. We are not surprised at all.

Ten more activists at Africa Unity Square were arrested Friday.

Outside the court, other youths sang and vowed to continue demonstrating. They said they were fed up with Mugabe, who has ruled Zimbabwe since independence 36 years ago.

They named their movement the 16 Days Occupation, as they planned to camp for 16 days and nights at Africa Unity Square, which overlooks Zimbabwes Parliament. The arrests began on the ninth day.

In all, about 200 people have camped out in the square. Most of them remained there Friday.

The movement is just the latest sign of mounting opposition to Mugabe, 92. Earlier this week, a group of church leaders issued a statement saying the country needed transformation to get out of its long-running economic problems.

One of those charged Friday was the brother of Itai Dzamara, an anti-Mugabe activist who has not been seen since March 2015. Rights groups said he was abducted by men believed to be state security agents.
Opposition parties and members of the public have condemned President Mugabe for saying he will deal with war veterans fighting for his succession the same way the government cracked down on dissidents in the 1980s, which resulted in the death of an estimated 20,000 people in the hands of the North Korean-trained Fifth Brigade in Matabeleland and Midlands provinces.

Five members of Occupy Africa Unity Square, including Patson Dzamara, the brother of abducted political activist Itai Dzamara, have been granted $1,000 bail each for allegedly robbing some people in Harare.

And the Warriors turn their attention to the Cosafa Castle Cup hoping for a record fifth title after qualifying for the 2017 Africa Cup of Nations finals with one game to spare.

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 Blessing Zulu and Gibbs Dube will be talking with listeners about President Robert Mugabes remarks that he will deal with war veterans, who say they will be bloodshed in Zimbabwe if Vice President Emmerson Mnangagwa does not become his successor, the same way his government cracked down on dissidents in Matabeleland and Midlands provinces. An estimated 20,000 people died in the hands of the Fifth Brigade in the two regions. Participate by sending your messages on our WhatsApp number 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!!!!!!
Five members of the Occupy Africa Unity Square who were arrested while staging an anti-government protest have been granted $1,000 bail each for allegedly attempting to rob some people in Harare and obstructing the course of justice.

Some opposition parties have resolved to join the day and night vigils in a park near the parliament building to protest against social, economic and political problems in Zimbabwe.

The five activists arrested on Wednesday - Patson Dzamara, Pride Mkono, Tatenda Mombeyarara, Makomborero Haruzivishe and another only identified as Oliver - were arrested at the Africa Unity Square park while staging an anti-government protest as part of the activities to mark 16 days of activism.

Their lawyer, Obey Shava of the Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights, told Studio 7 that magistrate Vakai Chikwekwe ordered each of them to deposit a total of $1,000 in bail money for the two offenses. Shava said the bail money that the activists were ordered to pay was tantamount to denying them bail.

Shava said 10 more protesters were arrested Thursday and are being detained at Harare Central Police Station.

Meanwhile, some occupants of the Africa Unity Square complained that the bail money that their colleagues were ordered to pay by the court was too much.

One of the occupants, Joanna Mamombe, told a news conference that the bail was outrageous. At the same time, 13 opposition parties have resolved to join the protestors at Africa Unity Square. General Secretary of the MDC- T youth assembly, Lovemore Chinoputsa, says his party wing met today and unanimously agreed to join the protest which he described as a winter of discontent.

This was echoed by Elvis Mugari, a member of Tendai Biti's People's Democratic Party youth wing.

Some civil society organizations have also joined the protest. Obey Sithole of the Zimbabwe Informal Sector Organization, urged other Zimbabweans to come to the park in their numbers to show their disapproval of President Mugabes government.

Riot police have been maintaining a heavy presence around the park as youths calling themselves Tajamuka were also trickling into the park to support the protesters.

In a related development, some members of the Zimbabwe Activists Alliance in conjunction with other civic groups say they are bringing their sleep-in protests to Bulawayo.



A member of the Zimbabwe Activists Alliance Gift Ostallos Siziba told Studio 7 that some activists will start sleeping in the car park at the City Hall starting tonight until the 16th of this month.



Siziba said the activists, mainly composed of young Zimbabweans have decided to bring to Bulawayo the protests which started in Harare at the beginning of this month as a way of trying to increase awareness

among ordinary Zimbabweans about the need to show their discontent to government in a peaceful manner.

Persuade Jena a Bulawayo youth, who said he is going to take part in the demonstration, said he was not afraid about possible arrest or harassment by state security agents, adding that last nights arrest of activists in Harare was increasing his resolve to participate in the protest in solidarity with his comrades.

Jena said he was taking part out of his own volition and was not expecting any form of payment.



Zimbabwe Activists Alliance in collaboration with other organizations started a peaceful protest by occupying Africa Unity Square in Harare from the 1st of this month to press President Robert Mugabes government to address serious issues affecting the nation.
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(Alexandria, MN) The Alexandria Police Department received information from the Minnesota Department of Corrections that a subject by the name of Israel Jon Lenthe will be released from a correctional facility in the State of Minnesota and moving to Alexandria on Monday June 8th, 2015.
Riding the wave Updated: 2016-06-10 08:30 By Hu Yuanyuan(China Daily Europe)

Wanda and Disney go head to head as analysts predict fierce contest in China's booming theme park market

Wang Jianlin has thrown down the gauntlet to The Walt Disney Co.

The founder and chairman of Wanda Group opened his first theme park on the Chinese mainland last month - and in doing so proclaimed his company as the biggest threat to the new Shanghai Disney Resort.

"Chinese culture led in the world for 2,000 years, but for the past 300 years, because of our lagging development and the invasion of foreign cultures, we have more or less lacked confidence in our own culture," Wang, one of China's richest men, said at the opening ceremony for Wanda City in the eastern city of Nanchang on May 28.

"We want to be a model for Chinese private enterprise, and we want to establish a global brand for Chinese firms."

In an earlier interview with China Central Television, the state broadcaster, he warned that Disney's first foray on the Chinese mainland was destined to fail because of his park's competitive pricing and because "the frenzy of Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck, and the era of blindly following them, has passed".

Strong words, although Disney did not feel the need to respond. (A successful first year would be the best comeback.)

However, analyst Grant Ji says the Wanda chairman's bold comments suggest a wider trend. "It reflects the aspirations among Chinese companies to achieve global recognition as well as his determination to get a slice of the lucrative theme park market," says the executive director of capital markets in North China for CBRE Group, a commercial real estate company based in the United States.

Data from the Chinese Tourism Academy show that the total revenue of China's tourism sector was 4 trillion yuan ($608 billion; 536 billion euros) last year, with about 230 billion yuan generated by theme parks. Meanwhile, annual visitor numbers to theme parks nationwide is also forecast to hit 282 million in 2019, more than double the figure in 2014, says Euromonitor International.

The massive $3 billion Wanda City complex in Nanchang includes an outdoor, China-themed amusement park with twirling teacup rides, bamboo forests and China's longest, fastest and highest roller coaster; an indoor shopping mall with a cinema, restaurants and hotels; and the world's largest ocean park.

Disney's new resort and theme park in Shanghai, which has cost $5.1 billion to build and is scheduled to open on June 16, will be the largest in the world. It features the usual storybook castle as well as a pirate-themed zone, Treasure Cove, and the Tron Lightcycle Power Run, which is based on the popular Tron movie.

Ben Cavender, principal of China Market Research Group, believes both parks have the potential to do well. "Wanda's pricing will be competitive, although its operational experience and brand recognition may lag behind Disney," he says.

One advertisement for Wanda City offers a night in the luxury Mandarin Hotel and two adult tickets for the theme park for 888 yuan. A package priced at 1,588 yuan includes two nights' hotel accommodation as well as the cost of entry for two adults to the theme park, the aquatic park and a "cinema paradise" zone.
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EU farms look to feed growing market in China Updated: 2016-06-10 08:35 By Xu Wei in Xi'an(China Daily Europe)

Demand among increasing middle class can be rich harvest for agriculture sector

The European Union is looking to further boost agricultural exports to China as the country's rapidly expanding middle class increases demand for high-quality, safe products, according to top EU officials.

Phil Hogan, the European commissioner for agriculture and rural development, says exports of agriproducts to China from the EU rose 33 percent last year.

"I see enormous potential for the next 10 to 15 years for high-quality and safe products, especially for dairy and meat products," he said on the sidelines of the G20 agricultural ministers meeting in Xi'an, capital of Shaanxi province, on June 3.

Hogan says the European Commission expects to see about 50 percent growth in those areas by 2020.

"The EU is a dissembler of high-quality, safe food. We export lots of good products to China. We're also cooperating more with China in terms of new technologies, to help Chinese farmers and enterprises to develop sustainable practices to grow their own products," he says.

Exports of meat, especially pork, from the EU to China have also increased substantially over the past few months, and Hogan says the trend is expected to continue.

The EU scrapped milk quotas in April last year after more than three decades of efforts to prevent overproduction. The system, set up in 1984, is ending so that EU dairy businesses can compete with international rivals in supplying fast-growing markets in Asia and Africa, the BBC reported.

However, Hogan says the move comes as other milk producers, including in the United States, New Zealand and Australia, have also increased production.

"We're now faced with a saturated world market, and the EU is forced to take measures to freeze and reduce the production in the short term," he says, adding that the saturation has made it even more urgent for the EU dairy producers to further explore markets in the Far East, especially China.

He dismissed the possibility of the milk quota being reintroduced by the EU, as there are now measures to better manage supply and demand.

Hogan says that with such a big population in China, and with strong innovative agriculture in the EU, the two parties can work closely together to implement the best agricultural models and programs for each other.

He adds that the EU and China can also cooperate on precision agriculture and other ideas to grow more food in a more sustainable way.

However, Franz-Georg von Busse, chairman of the German Agribusiness Alliance, who was also at the G20 meeting, says there is still an imbalance between investment from Europe to China and China to Europe, including in the agricultural sector.

"Germany's investment in China amounted to 60 billion euros ($68.1 billion), while China's investment in Germany was only 2 billion euros," he explains. "Everybody should work together to balance this."

He also warns Chinese companies that investment in the agricultural sector is not only about money, but also about people understanding each other and learning about the culture in another country.

In January, negotiators from the EU and China reached consensus on an ambitious investment agreement and moved on to specific text-based discussions, a major step in talks launched at the end of 2013 and a direct response to the political commitments made by both sides at an EU-China summit in June last year.

Hogan says the completion of the investment agreement will help further spur agricultural investment in both directions.

In one of the most high-profile cases recently, China National Chemical Corp has offered more than $43 billion to buy Swiss agrochemical and seeds producer Syngenta AG, which would be the biggest overseas acquisition by a Chinese company.

xuwei@chinadaily.com.cn
First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out

Because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out

Because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out

Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for meand there was no one left to speak for me.

Pastor Martin Niemoller, German anti-Nazi theologian

Although it might seem overstated, the situation described in Niemollers poem is beginning to take shape in Poland. A country which was considered for many years as a symbol of the fight against totalitarianism and pioneer of democratic reforms in Central and Eastern Europe is today quickly being transformed into a tyrannical satrapy where civil liberties are curtailed and repression is applied to people with different ideological views than the prevailing political narrative.

On the morning of May 18, 2016, officers of the Polish Internal Security Agency (ABW) searched apartments of members of the national leadership of the Zmiana (Change) Party, demanding that they hand over hard-disks, memory sticks, documents etc. The search took place in three different cities at the same time, and in some cases (as in our Warsaw office) with a serious violation of legal procedures. Besides seizing computers, telephones and hard drives, ABW officers took all our books, leaflets, posters, the sound system we used during a demonstration, banners our party flags and even Polish national flags - to prevent and complicate any political actions and protests in the future. Some members of our party who did not want to participate in the unlawful activities of the Internal Security Agency were intimidated.

This type of action is an obvious form of a political repression against those who hold different visions of Polands foreign, domestic and socio-economic policies than those of the Polish neoconservative and pro-NATO authorities.

The leader of Zmiana, Mateusz Piskorski, affiliated organizations and independent groups were acting in conformity with Polish law in spite of harassment from state institutions, such as prolonged registration procedures of the party. The action of the ABW was a significant breach of law and order which is not acceptable in a democratic state that declares respect for the freedom of speech.

Mateusz Piskorski is one of the most important anti-NATO activists in Poland, a political expert and a co-founder of the Polish think-tank, the European Center for Geopolitical Analysis. He was a Member of the Polish Parliament from 2005-2007 and for many years he has spoken out in favor European-continental cooperation and against the NATO and American policy towards Europe and the Middle East.

Mateusz Piskorski was arrested and is being held for 3 months of preliminary custody on charges of "spying for a foreign country," with various media sources hysterically spreading the "unconfirmed reports" that he was employed by the intelligence services of Russia, China "and/or" Iraq. Specific charges are unknown, the whole case is being kept secret, thereby preventing anyone related to Matusz Piskorski from preparing a defense. Instead, the government-controlled media have made a spectacle of hatred and slander, spinning irrational speculation, not only about the detainee but also about so-called agents of the influence  a term that de facto covers everyone who proclaims views other than those set down by the Polish authorities.

The wide-scale coordinated action against the Zmiana political party comes on the heels of an increasingly tense political situation in Poland. Several weeks ago, activists from the Communist Party of Poland and the Grunwald Patriotic Workers Union (both organizations are fully legal) were sentenced to "restricted liberty," including community service, fines, and travel bans for "promoting totalitarianism." Following these events and just two days before his arrest, Piskorski warned that the Polish government will attempt to "pacify" opposition organizations and individuals in the run-up to the NATO summit to be held in Warsaw on July 8th-9th.

Let us quote this text from Mateusz Piskorski which turned out to be prophetic:

Predictions concerning the upcoming NATO summit in July in Warsaw are beginning to clearly indicate that today the alliances goal is first and foremost preventing the emergence of social movements demanding the liberation of Europe from the tutelage of the United States. As can be seen, The Financial Times inadvertent mention of the words of one of the Polish Armys senior commanders show just what decisions can be expected this summer. These are decisions which completely undermine not only the sovereignty of Warsaw in the field of foreign policy, but also clearly speak to the fact that from this moment on NATO is supposed to be a police force ready to participate in the pacification of eventual social protests or intervene in the affairs of domestic Polish politics.

The actual intentions of the alliances latest decisions were revealed honestly and in a frankly military way by Brigadier General Krzysztof Krol, the commander of the Multinational Corps Northeast. The issue under consideration was the concept of the so-called NATO spearhead advocated for years by the Americans and longed for by the Polish politicians of both the former and current government. Let us give the floor to the general: The VJTF (Very High Readiness Joint Task Force) is to deal with Article 4 situations [of the North-Atlantic Treaty] and that is our intention with it. Article 4 speaks of cooperation and consultation between member states which cannot be described as in article 5 as experiencing armed aggression against any of them, but rather subjective feelings of para-military threats. What kind of situations are we dealing with here? General Krol leaves no doubt: The plan was developed to react to hybrid threats in our area of operation. Our plans are scalable to the situation, he told The Financial Times.

The concept of hybrid war or hybrid actions has blossomed as a definition of the activities of Russia following the Ukrainian revolution of 2014. But what is interesting is that to this day it has not attained any unambiguous academic interpretation and various authors and experts define its scope in different ways. In The Financial Times, however, we read that the NATO spearhead has the right to take action in case of the destabilization of the internal situation in the country triggered by, for example, public protests.

What does this mean in practice? Any internal disturbance could be treated and presented by native as well as American spearheadologists as part of the activities vaguely defined as hybrid war. This might lead to a case in which protests against the effects of the TTIP Agreement supported by the Polish state could be treated as hybrid activities. Poles protests against crimes committed by US Army soldiers stationed in Poland could also turn out to be hybrid war.

Antoni Macierewiczs sick imagination could suggest dozens of different theories. After all, the current Defense Minister is so divorced from common sense that he believes that Radoslaw Sikorski, another pro-American hawk, is actually working for Moscow. Social unrest, protests, strikes, attempts to form information resources independent from the establishment, demanding transparency in the defense and foreign policies of the Polish authorities - all of these could become pretexts for one or another swing into action of advisors from NATO (mainly from the USA), who would provide fraternal aid to the Polish units and services subordinated to them.

In this situation, all that is left is to hope that officers and officials will not want to stay in an oral relationship (the colorful expression of Sikorski) with their American overlords, will remind themselves of the dignity of the Polish uniform, and send all those representatives of foreign interests concerned about our security far back across the Atlantic Ocean.

Meanwhile, we have been left with one thing: to loudly protest and by all law-abiding means block the realization of NATOs plans which it will announce in July in Warsaw. It is also worth organizing a social movement for Polands exit from this pact as a condition of regaining elementary statehood.

So what is actually going on in Poland, and how could it be connected with the pre-war preparations?

First of all, our biggest concern should be to highlight the fact that in parallel with the political repressions inspired by pro-NATO circles (unprecedented since the fall of the Berlin Wall), there is a huge wave of militarization and Russophobe, pro-war rhetoric.

Polish neo-conservative authorities have not only significantly increased military spending and created new types of troops and paramilitaries, but also begged for the presence in Poland of US troops and military installations. After Antoni Macierewicz (who was previously head of the para-committee ineffectually trying to reject the official version of Smolensk disaster,so that they could blame for the incident on Vladimir Putin) was appointed as a Minister of Defense, not only was decision taken to allow the creation of a US base for ballistic missiles (an element of the so called "anti missile shield"), but also to create 6 US military bases. To calm public opinion in the media they are called "warehouses of military equipment".

The definition of "hybrid war" was extended to the limits, so that any action differing from the line drawn by the official propaganda may be regarded as hostile in not only political but also military terms. Thus the proclamation of ideas contrary to the official propaganda is openly called by government run media as inspired by foreign intelligence services.

Another important issue is the fact that Poland was one of the few countries in Europe to officially support the aggressive version of TTiP advocated by the US government. This can be read as a direct involvement of the Polish authorities in sabotaging a competitive project - the New Silk Road - run by China.

As if all this were not enough, Polish President Andrzej Duda a few days ago signed a law which equates the rights of American troops stationed in Poland with the rights of the Polish Army. They can thus move freely around the country without having to consult the government about their current activities. It is worth mentioning that such privileges were not available even to Soviet troops formerly stationed in Poland, who were forced to remain in their bases at all times.

Overall the situation in Poland is tense and in many ways resembles the changes that have occurred in Turkey during the rule of Erdogan. This combination of authoritarianism, militarism and political repression has to be worrisome, because it is a typical mix of measures taken by authorities that are preparing for war. Taking into account the geopolitical conditions of Poland under every possible scenario such a war has to end tragically.
If there is one piece of content you consume today, please let it contain a long, lingering zoom-in shot of Barbra Streisand prayerfully pressing her palms together and rocking back and forth, silently singing along as Daisy Ridley and Anne Hathaway perform A Chorus Lines At the Ballet. As Streisand explains in a truly amazing behind-the-scenes video, she invited Ridley and Hathaway to guest on her new album of duets, Encore: Movie Partners Sing Broadway, which also features Chris Pine and Jamie Foxx, among others. An album and a whole host of reaction gifs in one fell swoop. What a gift.
Actors James Corden and Jemima Rooper perform in the curtain call at the One Man, Two Guvnors Broadway opening night at the Music Box Theatre on April 18, 2012, in New York City. Photo: Cindy Ord/Getty Images

During his Broadway edition of Carpool Karaoke, James Corden asked his car full of theater luminaries for advice on how to win over the audience at the Tonys, which hell host this Sunday.

Youve all been to the Tony Awards. We have record-breaking winners in the car right here, Corden said, clearly referring to the legendary Audra McDonald. Ive never been nominated, but congratulations, Modern Familys Jesse Tyler Ferguson, currently performing in Fully Committed, quipped.

The same cannot be said for Corden. Though he put on a naive act while driving the car, Cordens been to the Tony Awards before  and once even came home with a statue.

The Late Late Show has made its host a viral star, but theater  especially in New York  is integral to his backstory. When he was just a teenager, Corden performed on the West End as an ensemble member in Martin Guerre, a musical from Les Miserables writers Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schonberg. (One of the stars of that production? Iain Glen, a.k.a. Game of Thrones Jorah Mormont.) Corden didnt much like the experience, and, by his account, was sort of a jerk about it.

Whatever you think of my ego now, my ego at 17 was out of control, he told the London Evening Standard in 2015. I imagined I would be in the chorus and someone would pick me out and give me a role. I was actually at the back of the stage, so far back I could touch the wall. I didnt even have a mic in the second act. I realised then I would have to work in TV.

It would have been unwise for Corden to dismiss theater completely, and fortunately he didnt. He was cast as one of the titular boys in Alan Bennetts The History Boys, a play about a group of young men trying to get into Oxford and Cambridge. The History Boys premiered, in 2004, at the National Theatre in London, and eventually made its way across the pond, leading to Cordens Broadway debut, in 2006. He played Timms, the comic relief prone to getting whacked on the head.

It wasnt the most consequential part, though he did make an impression. (The actor in that show who seemed most destined for stardom was Dominic Cooper, now in AMCs Preacher on AMC, and he and Corden are still friends. If you want to be delighted, watch them banter on The Late Late Show about their time as roommates.) The History Boys went on to win the Tony for Best Play, and a movie based on the production, also featuring Corden, was released in 2006.

The following year Corden did a run in a British production of Brechts A Respectable Wedding. By the time he reunited in 2011 with his History Boys director Nicholas Hytner for One Man, Two Guvnors, his celebrity had grown in Britain thanks to the sitcom Gavin & Stacey and various hosting stints. This time onstage Corden would not be lost in an ensemble: Hytner recruited writer Richard Bean to adapt the classic Italian comedy The Servant of Two Masters with the comedian in mind.

What Bean turned in was a riotous affair set in the swinging 60s, complete with musical interludes and frequent fourth-wall-breaking. Corden quite literally threw himself into the part of Francis Henshall, a dope who starts working for two different men. (Actually, one man and one woman dressed as a man.) Each performance required the actor to careen across the stage:

Following runs at both the National Theatre and in the West End, the show moved to Broadway in 2012, with Corden getting rave reviews. New Yorks Scott Brown wrote that Corden was, a born showman seemingly made of the same hyperkinetic polymers that go into Superballs, avidly contorts himself to fit every twist and turn.

Still, no one expected him to win a Tony, since the 2012 Best Actor in a Play category was stacked. Corden was up against James Earl Jones, Frank Langella, John Lithgow, and Philip Seymour Hoffman. Hoffman was nominated for his interpretation of Death of a Salesmans Willy Loman, and seemed the likely winner. One of the greatest living actors in a Mike Nichols revival of one of the greatest American plays? It was practically a lock. But Tony voters apparently preferred the belly laughs Corden provided. In his emotional acceptance speech, Corden called Hoffman my favorite actor in the world.

Then Hollywood came calling. Corden was cast as the Baker in Rob Marshalls Into the Woods, and subsequently tapped for The Late Late Show. Before the CBS deal went down Corden was attached to a Broadway revival of Stephen Sondheims A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, which ended up being postponed after he landed the talkshow gig. While that was disappointing, Cordens obvious love of show tunes and the late-night platform means we get things like Broadway Carpool Karaoke and Crosswalk Musicals starring Seth Rogen and Rose Byrne  and that, if anything, he should be giving, not soliciting, advice on how to get Broadway crowds going.
Photo: Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images

Patricia Clarkson, your chosen spirit guide and all-around indelible delight, has some keen advice for the white men out there feeling ornery about Hollywoods infinitesimal degree of progress: Shut up. Clarkson was speaking with The Guardian about Hollywood sexism and its many, many faces when conversation turned to the ridiculous fracas over the new Ghostbusters, a film that dares to put women front and center where men once stood. Its best just to let Clarkson break it down: There are still so many movies made starring 50 men and one woman!  A white male actor should never be allowed to complain about anything. Shut up and sit in the corner. Clarkson sees particular nonsense in the outrage given that, as a women-fronted mainstream comedy, Ghostbusters is already an enormously scarce quantity. I mean, seriously! The odds of us having films made which star women  Everyone still references one movie: Bridesmaids! Ghostbusters is a great thing, she explained. Clarkson also called out the uniquely hyperintense way that women-led films are scrutinized. Asked about the pressure on Ghostbusters to succeed, Clarkson said, Men make bad movies that bomb all the time but theyre like, Oh, well, we didnt do the marketing right. Her succinct response to the hypocrisy: Eat me!

While the gendered reaction to Ghostbusters is discernible to anyone looking, Clarkson also opened up about a career filled with firsthand slights. Eight years ago, she learned that her male co-star was making more money than her, so she absolutely demanded that the disparity be corrected. Clarkson has also had people act inappropriately to me  Ive had certain directors yell at me, but while Clarkson says she didnt stand for it at the time, only now does she see more people speaking out. Its incremental progress. Women have risen, sure, but, Were still underpaid and were still a vast minority in this business.

Of course, in Hollywood, as anywhere, sexism is insidiously multipronged, and Clarkson sees as much to fix on the creative side as the business one. We always tend to want to soften female characters  Well, unless its some ridiculous caricature like a dominatrix or a one-dimensional boss with no life and bad hair. And the problem gets worse when women age out of ingenue roles, with Clarkson sifting through desexed, matronly characters in the search of a good opportunity. Says Clarkson, These archetypal older women in movies can sometimes make my skin crawl. Yeah, eat me sounds just about right.
Photo: Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images

Creators Robert Kirkman and Chris Blacks new Cinemax visceral horror show, Outcast, stars Philip Glenister as Reverend Anderson, whos hell-bent on ridding his small Southern town of evil spirits. But he cant get far without the help of his reluctant sidekick, Kyle Barnes  a man grappling with his own turmoil after seeing demonic possession take its toll on those he loves.

Kirkman recently told Vulture that casting actor Patrick Fugit as Kyle came after an exhaustive search, but that he was sold when he saw there was an optimism that he brought to the role and such a sensibility and warmness that made you invested in him almost immediately. Vulture spoke to Fugit about why he went after the part and growing up surrounded by religion.

Why did you sign on to this project?

Laray Mayfield did our casting for the first episode. Shes a brilliant casting director and very supportive of me. Ive always appreciated her bringing me in for different stuff. Whenever her name is on something that gets sent to me, I pay a lot of attention. Roberts name was on there, and I had watched and appreciated some Walking Dead. But mostly what got me excited was Larays office had sent over two scenes. One was this dark scene where Kyle is recounting to the reverend what happened between him and his mother. Its very dark and very emotional. And theres this other scene that takes place in the past, and its between him and his wife before they were married. Its a very sweet, bright scene and communicates what drives Kyle in his adult life. It also communicates how tragic it is that everything was ripped away from him. Here you have these dual, opposing themes. I thought, if both themes could play throughout both scenes, it could make for a very interesting character.

You did the movie Saved, a comedy about deeply religious teens, and you grew up in Salt Lake City. Religion has certainly surrounded your life.

You know, its like someone who works in an ice-cream shop and doesnt think one way or the other about ice cream. I grew up with it around me so intensely. The neighborhood around me was so predominantly Mormon. I am not Mormon and never have been, so I had an outsiders perspective of it. Saved was definitely something I was interested in because of my upbringing and my outsiders experience of religion  particularly of traditional and conservative religion.

In Outcast, the religion is there as a belief system to communicate what the audience knows already about exorcism. The reverend knows what the audience knows about exorcism because of the movies weve seen before, but thats there to show us how different things are going to be this time around. Kyle has a very anti-religious view. He doesnt believe it has to be about good and evil or God and the devil. But of course, the things he sees throughout the first episode really challenged that belief.

Did you and Robert and Scott have conversations about why Kyle has been chosen?

Thats one of the themes that Robert is choosing to explore. Why is this guy like this? Is it that there are a bunch of them out there and we just happen to be focusing on this guy in this town? Or is he just the only one who can do it? Robert really wanted this guy to feel like an Everyman and a guy with simple desires [in terms] of what he wants in his life. It was obviously important that what had happened to these characters in the past informed how they behaved now, but a lot of it is them making decisions to work through that stuff. The focus is definitely what they are going to do.

There are so many characters on TV who are anti-heroes, and Kyles pretty much a saint who has just had a lot of bad stuff happen to him.

I like when the audience is in on something that the characters in the story arent in on. Its something you get to share with just that character, so it feels personal. Its also nice to see the audience learn and watch the other characters in that world learn those things. We wanted people to know that Kyle will go through really drastic measures to protect the values of his family. By the time were at the end of episode four, he begins to realize that what hes doing still isnt keeping them safe.
The can-do generation to the fore Updated: 2016-06-10 08:32 By Gao Yuan(China Daily Europe)

Country's future rests in the hands of the bright and the young

Thirty-three years ago Chen Bin decided to quit his job in a state-owned maternity hospital in the northwestern city of Lanzhou and to go into business on his own. First he sold T-shirts at a night bazaar, then owned a karaoke bar, which did not last long, and later opened a bakery on the main road.

Chen is among millions of Chinese who, after economic reforms introduced by Deng Xiaoping in 1978 that encouraged private business, decided to embark on the entrepreneurial road. However, he says he soon found that managing a business was a lot harder than he had expected.

"Most of the entrepreneurs lacked a basic knowledge about how to make things work. That was why becoming self-employed was called xia hai (diving into the sea) - a lot of them were going to drown."

A lot did, too. There were a few exceptions, such as Wang Jianlin, the real estate tycoon, and Liu Chuanzhi, founder of the Lenovo Group Ltd, who would make their mark not only in China but around the globe, and others who did reasonably well, or even better, and retired.

In 2002, 15 years after Chen opened his bakery business, it folded amid fierce competition, and these days there is a cafe across the road that has become a hot-spot for the young and self-employed to exchange ideas.

"I envy those kids sometimes," Chen says. "They are better educated and have the know-how in particular fields, which I think is the biggest difference between today's young entrepreneurs and those of my generation."
Chinese people welcome dispossessed Updated: 2016-06-10 08:32 By Giles Chance(China Daily Europe)

More than 45 percent replied 'yes' to the survey question: 'Would you personally accept refugees in your own home?'

Refugees have been with us for ever, but recently, the wars in the Middle East have made the refugee challenge an important political issue for many countries, particularly in Europe. Not since the end of World War II have so many people been displaced from the countries where they were born, forced by homelessness and war to seek refuge elsewhere, often traveling huge distances by sea and land, while lacking food and water.

In 2015, hundreds died every month in crossing the Mediterranean from North Africa to Italy, Albania or Greece. In the same year, more than 1.3 million claims for refugee asylum were made inside Europe, with applicants from Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq making up over half. For every 100,000 inhabitants, Hungary, Austria and Sweden took the most refugees, with Norway, Finland and Germany not far behind.

But the numbers of refugees granted permission to stay was much lower than the number who applied. Only 290,000 asylum applications were granted in 2015. The first response of most European governments to the human flood arriving from Syria in small inflatable boats on the beaches of Lesbos, the Greek island closest to Turkey, was shock and rejection. Emergency meetings between heads of state were hastily convened to work out ways to prevent Syrians from leaving their country, or at least to prevent the human tide from reaching the prosperous West.

In France, the popular reaction to Middle Eastern immigration is driving support for right-wing extremist politician Marie Le Pen. In the United Kingdom, immigration has become the most important factor in the referendum on June 23 on whether to leave the European Union. The UK's welfare system, which is generous to new arrivals, acts as a magnet for migrants from Africa and the Middle East. As the British try to stop the inflow of new arrivals, a huge camp of immigrants, many from Syria, has established itself on the French border with the English channel. Groups of men try every night to escape through the Channel Tunnel by train or truck, and some are killed in the attempt.

In Germany, which took more immigrants than any other country last year, Chancellor Angela Merkel's position, previously unassailable, is coming under threat from Germans who feel that their borders should be closed to the flood of starving, desperate humanity.

But since the beginning of 2016, it's become clear to many that the problem is not going to go away soon, as the flood of refugees continues. Many people have started to think more deeply about the problem, and what the correct response should be. In April, the pope visited Lesbos. When he left, the pope gave a signal to his millions of followers by taking 15 refugees back with him to Rome.

A recent survey conducted by Amnesty International (an independent nongovernmental organization) of 27,000 people in 27 countries shows that the global response to refugees is changing. Eighty percent of the people surveyed said that refugees should be accepted in their country, and 70 percent said that national governments should be doing more to help refugees. Ten percent said that they would accept a refugee as a guest in their home.

More than 80 percent of the people in China, Germany and the United Kingdom told the survey that refugees would be welcome. Respondents from Canada, Australia, Spain, Greece and Jordan were nearly as welcoming, while in Russia, less than 20 percent thought that refugees should be allowed into their country. More than 45 percent of Chinese (and less than 5 percent of Russians, Indonesians, Poles and South Koreans) replied "yes" to the question: "Would you personally accept refugees in your own home?" More than four out of five Chinese thought that their government should be doing more to help refugees who are running away from war or persecution.

The 27-country survey showed that Chinese people are more welcoming to refugees than any other surveyed country. Germany, the United Kingdom and Spain were runners-up, together with Greece, whose current economic difficulties apparently do not change its friendly approach to dispossessed people fleeing persecution and war.

On the other hand, Russia emerges as the country which is most hostile to refugees. The United States, a country created by immigrants, and whose president is the son of a Kenyan man and an American woman who was raised in Indonesia, did not show itself in the survey to be particularly friendly toward immigrants. The success of Donald Trump in gaining support in the ongoing presidential election in the US, by promising to build a wall to keep out Mexican immigrants, shows how hostile many Americans are to refugees, who they see as taking away their jobs. The Chinese, living in an ultra-competitive, fast-changing work environment, could make the same excuse, but they do not.

China stands out from the others as a country whose people want to accept refugees. Why should the people of some countries welcome refugees more than others? And why should the Chinese people welcome refugees more than any other people?

Some national cultural value systems emphasize hospitality and kindness. Confucius died thousands of years ago, when China consisted of many small states constantly fighting each other for survival. Yet his ideas continue to inspire Chinese people, sometimes without their realizing it. To be kind and generous is at the heart of the Confucian concept of the good man, who has integrity, honor and who does the right thing in each new situation he confronts. Many Chinese today lament the emergence of a society in China which worships materialism, and which has forgotten older Chinese values. Yet, this survey perhaps demonstrates that traditional Chinese values have not yet disappeared.

If Christianity were the key factor which promoted refugee acceptance amongst Western countries, then we might expect to find countries like France and Poland, two very Christian countries, scoring well in the survey. Yet neither do particularly well. Germany, Spain and the United Kingdom emerge much better. Is there some other cultural factor that promotes kindness and hospitality? Certainly, the British have always been a kind nation, welcoming millions of migrants into their relatively small country, to the point that if you visit London today and walk down Piccadilly, you will pass people from every country on Earth - possibly excepting someone from England!

It seems unlikely that Iraq and Syria, created 100 years ago by the colonial powers of France and Britain from the ruins of the Turkish empire, will survive. New borders, drawn along religious and tribal lines, will replace the old ones. The emergence of new regimes that are relatively stable will take years. Meanwhile, the mass movements of people from the region will continue, with many never returning to their places of birth. This reality makes acceptance of migrants by many countries into a necessity, bringing great economic and cultural benefits as the new arrivals, many from ancient, sophisticated civilizations, settle down in their new environments.

The Chinese people have shown the people of other countries that the best response to the migrant crisis is welcoming, not rejection, which can only result in death and more destruction.

The author is a visiting professor at Guanghua School of Management, Peking University. The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.

(China Daily European Weekly 06/10/2016 page12)
Wal-Mart has begun offering a grocery shopping service that allows customers to order food items online and have the goods placed in their vehicles at designated times throughout the day  and at least one Wal-Mart location in Greater Waco is poised to take part in the program.

The Wal-Mart at Franklin Avenue and New Road will launch its participation with a grand opening-type event between 8 a.m. and 2 p.m. June 20, manager Doug Madden said, adding he has assigned five staffers, a department manager and an assistant manager to the delivery effort.

Were looking forward to it, said Madden, adding he has been training his team with mock orders for five weeks. He said he thinks the service will prove popular with busy people who dont have time to shop for groceries themselves, or those who may simply enjoy tackling the task online.

H-E-B, the dominant grocery chain in Waco, is considering a comparable service locally, but is not ready to launch it, spokeswoman Tamra Jones said.

Wal-Marts new service  which has been tested in several markets around the country, including three stores in the Austin area  requires orders with a minimum value of $30, but it does not charge to have employees roam the store to fill orders and place them in the vehicles of customers upon their arrival.

Customers start the service by going online to www.walmart.com/groceries, according to the company website.

I believe this will prove beneficial on several levels, said Madden, adding that parents with sick or small children at home may find the service appealing. Or maybe someone realizes he or she is running low on several items. They can call their spouse at work and say, Honey, can you get bread, milk, eggs and this or that on the way home? 

The Wal-Mart on Franklin Avenue will become the first in Greater Waco to offer the service, and will fill pickup orders between 8 a.m. and 8 p.m. daily. The Wal-Mart on Interstate 35 in Bellmead will follow suit after a $750,000 interior renovation has been completed, probably in late summer.

We think its going to work out nicely, said Bronscha Harris, who oversees the store in Bellmead. We actually pushed back the start date since were going through this remodel. But I really believe moms with kids will appreciate what were doing, as will some members of the older community.

Wal-Mart Stores did not include the store on Hewitt Drive in the initial rollout of online grocery ordering, but Wal-Mart sources said the service likely will spread citywide if it is well received. Meanwhile, it remains to be seen whether the Wal-Mart under construction at I-35 and Sun Valley Boulevard in Hewitt will get involved.

Madden said information he received shows that Wal-Mart stores involved in the test runs are receiving an average of 30 online orders daily.

Promoting the service, the Wal-Mart website says, Well do the shopping, Experts pick the freshest items or your money back. Well even load your car in minutes.

Elsewhere, it proclaims, Pickup is free. No service fees or markups. Get the same Every Day Low Prices found in stores.

H-E-B is not ignoring the trend toward making grocery shopping more convenient, even if it means not setting foot inside a brick-and-mortar store.

On May 25, it launched an on- demand grocery delivery service in its hometown of San Antonio, collaborating with an app-based grocery delivery service called Shipt. A news release from Alabama-based Shipt said H-E-B plans to expand the service to Houston, Austin, Dallas and more markets this year.

In addition to providing grocery delivery from H-E-B stores 24 hours per day, Shipt also will partner with H-E-B-owned Central Market to provide on-demand grocery delivery in San Antonio. Customers will be able to select and purchase items through Shipts mobile app and schedule delivery as quickly as one hour after entering an order.

Separately, H-E-B late last year began a national delivery service in which it ships non-perishable items to customers in the 48 contiguous states. Customers can go online and choose from among 50,000 food items, including H-E-Bs own Central Market Organics and Cafe Ole Taste of Texas Coffees.

It even has created a Totally Texas page that highlights such Texas- centric products as Whataburger Whatafries and Austins Franklins Barbecue Sauce.

Shipping fees vary with the size of the order, but average between $5 and $10. H-E-B also delivers to military bases as part of the program.

Wal-Mart is not limiting its delivery service to curbside visitors. It is piloting a program in Denver and Phoenix using the Uber and Lyft ride services. A personal shopper will select the products a shopper has chosen online, and use these increasingly popular means of transportation to deliver the items at a designated time.

It also quietly launched a pilot program in March using Deliv to deliver general merchandise and groceries to Sams Club business clients in Miami.

Industry sources say Wal-Mart is stepping up its investment in e-commerce to counter threats by Amazon and its thriving AmazonFresh grocery delivery service.

Scott Markley, a spokesman for Wal-Mart, said 90 percent of those using the service so far are repeat customers, meaning Wal-Mart is gaining their trust. He added that the chain is receiving requests from thousands of customers from all over the country, asking for us to start this service where they live.

IBISWorld, which specializes in market research, says online purchasing of groceries is booming and will grow to $9.4 billion next year, up from $6 billion this year.
Five outstanding students from Lorena High School have been selected to attend the American Legion Auxiliary Deptartment of Texas Bluebonnet Girls State on June 12-18.

Bailey Allison, Savana Jones, Katie King, Rebekah Small and Ashlynn Sorrells were selected for their outstanding scholarship, leadership, volunteerism and character as demonstrated in their classwork, school organizations and community.

They are sponsored by the American Legion Auxiliary James A. Edmond Unit 121 of Waco/Elm Mott and funded by donations from American Legion Auxiliary Unit 121, Lorena ISD, W.A. Virnau & Sons/Sealy Tractor and BCC General Contractor of Belton.

Five hundred girls in Texas are selected each year to participate in the annual Girls State event held at Texas Lutheran University and the State Capitol in Austin in June. Girls State provides an opportunity for superior high school women who have completed their junior year to experience the nitty-gritty of state government processes  the chance to live outside the textbook.

As American Legion Auxiliary Girls State citizens, they campaign for political office, craft and debate the passage of legislation, and meet with their real-life counterparts in Austin.

Since 1937, more than 1 million young women have attended Girls State.

-----

Lorena ISD photo

Pictured are (from left) Rebekah Small; Savana Jones; June Campbell, ALA Unit 121 Girls State chair; Katie King; Bailey Allison; and Ashlynn Sorrells.
As Lake Waco flooding damages infrastructure in the area, Rep. Bill Flores, R-College Station, said the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has the money it needs to maintain the Lake Waco Dam and will be able to secure any extra money needed to respond to flooding.

Flores said the corps has access to $6 billion, up a little more than $500 million from past budgets, and his office has a history of securing tens of millions of dollars for McLennan County.

Heavy rainfall caused a 4-foot-deep and 300-foot-long section of the earthen dam surface to slide downhill last week, and the Corps has the money to make repairs and maintain the dams integrity, Flores said.

He said repairing the dam is his top priority in dealing with Lake Waco. His second priority is addressing flood damage leading to structural issues, and his third priority is to rebuild boat ramps and picnic tables.

That said, we will work on all of those issues to try to help find the money to help for the Corps of Engineers to work on those things, Flores said.

It is unclear whether the Corps will provide emergency funding for flood-related repairs around Lake Waco, Randy Cephus, a Fort Worth-based Corps spokesman told the Tribune-Herald. Cephus said no extra money from the Corps general budget is available for recreational repairs.

He was unavailable for further comment Thursday afternoon.

Cephus has said parks surrounding Lake Waco could be closed for months, including during the popular Fourth of July holiday.

Flores said the Corps budget is meant to cover many of the costs associated with recent heavy rains, and it should be able to secure more money if necessary.

Theyve got the money to address issues like this, particularly the dam issue, Flores said. But to the extent they need extra money because of the flooding, it shouldnt be difficult to obtain. If you look at history weve had since Ive been in office, in an environment where we havent had earmarks, weve still been able to get tens of millions of dollars for McLennan County.

He said his office has secured much-needed federal funding for communities in the area, including Mart, West and Bellmead.

McLennan County Judge Scott Felton said Flores was instrumental in helping the city of Mart secure a grant to repair infrastructure and was supportive of Lake Waco funds.

Id hope if they qualify, if its a natural disaster, and theres funding for that, I hope that they would qualify and get access to those funds, Felton said.

Flores also said he supports Gov. Greg Abbotts request to President Barack Obama for a Major Disaster Declaration for recent severe weather and flooding. Abbotts disaster declaration request does not include McLennan County, but it could be added.

The step we have to take is to get the funding allocated to McLennan County for all these various purposes related to this disaster declaration, Flores said. Thats not a big deal. Weve done that in the past.

No Trump endorsement

Flores also told the Tribune-Herald on Thursday he plans to vote for Donald Trump for president, but he has no plans to endorse him. Recent racist comments by the presumptive Republican presidential nominee dissuaded him from offering an endorsement, Flores said.

In the last few days, he was critical of a judge based on the judges ethnicity, and I think that is a very inappropriate statement to make, Flores said. I think its inappropriate to even think that way. I would never criticize a federal judge, particularly if I had a court case in front of him, but you would certainly never, ever criticize them based on their ethnic background.

At a recent rally, Trump called Gonzalo Curiel, the federal district judge presiding over two class- action lawsuits filed by former students of Trump University, a hater of Donald Trump.

He then implied Curiel could not perform his duties because of Curiels Mexican ethnicity and Trumps plans to build a wall between the United States and Mexico. Curiel was born in Indiana.

Hes a member of a club or society very strongly pro-Mexican, which is all fine, Trump said on CBS's Face the Nation this week. But I say hes got bias. I want to build a wall. Im going to build a wall.

Trump said Curiel has treated him in a hostile manner, and went on to say a Muslim judge could not fairly preside over the case because of Trumps policy that would ban Muslim immigration to the United States.

Flores said Trumps comments were racist.

What Id like to see Donald Trump do is start talking about his vision for leading the country and the policies that he would propose that would help hardworking American families who have struggled through the last few years and then also to differentiate himself from Hillary Clinton, Flores said.

David Schleicher, a former Democratic Party chairman in McLennan County, said Flores delaying a Trump endorsement is like saying, Ive got bronchitis but decided not to cough. 

Flores is chair of the Republican Study Committee, which includes more than 170 House Republicans.

Before I, as the chair of the largest conservative caucus in Congress, add my name as an endorsement and add credibility to a Donald Trump presidency, hes got to start talking about vision and quit the trash talk, Flores said.
Political endorsements arent what they used to be. Traditionally, when politicians would endorse a candidate, theyd defend that candidate from attacks. For Republicans getting behind Donald Trump, the opposite is happening.

Take House Speaker Paul Ryan. It was only on Thursday that he finally backed Trump in his hometown paper. Admittedly, it was a tepid endorsement. Ryan even promised to speak up when he has differences.

And five days later, it doesnt seem like much of an endorsement at all. On Tuesday, Ryan said Trumps slur against a judge of Mexican descent was the textbook definition of racism.

Other Trump endorsers have taken aim at the man they back for commander in chief. Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tennessee, rumored to be on Trumps shortlist for vice president, said the nominee should acknowledge that he stepped in it. Sen. Mark Kirk, who is in a tough re-election fight in Illinois, simply rescinded his endorsement, saying he could not support such a man.

The most dizzying series of reversals came from onetime candidate Marco Rubio, who had waged a spirited campaign against Trump  calling him a political con man  before the real-estate mogul crushed him in his home state of Florida. Last month, Rubio said he would gladly speak for Trump at the partys convention this summer, saying he believed Hillary Clinton would be an even worse president. This week, though, Rubio went back to his primary form. He said Trumps comments were totally inappropriate and declared that he wouldnt speak on his behalf at the convention.

Now, it should be said that Trump brings this on himself. Many Republicans had hoped that the presumptive nominee would exercise more self-control and act more presidential after wrapping up the nomination. But the man cannot help himself  hence the petty bigotry about Judge Gonzalo Curiel, who is presiding over a lawsuit against the now-defunct Trump University. As Bloomberg reported this week, Trump even overruled his campaign advisers, urging his supporters to continue attacking the federal judge.

At the same time, these thin endorsements prove a point Trump has been making since he got in the race: The political class are a bunch of frauds.

Trump made this argument best at a town hall in New Hampshire last September. Surveying his competitors, Trump said that former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush  who was Rubios mentor in Florida politics  had every reason to be furious that his disloyal protegee would run against him. And yet, Trump said, when the press asked both men what they thought of each other, they emphasized what great friends they were.

They ask Bush, What do you think of Rubio? [and he says] Hes my dear friend, hes so wonderful, I love him so much,  Trump said in a mocking tone. They ask Rubio, What do you think of Bush? Oh, hes my dear friend, wonderful.  Trump then said what everyone in the room already knew: They hate each other. Trust me, I know. They hate so much, they hate more than anybody in this room hates their neighbor. But its political bull---.

Now Rubio, Ryan, Corker, Kirk and many other Republicans are proving Trumps point about the political class. But this election cycle has also taken its toll on the presumptive Republican nominee. On the night that he wrapped up the nomination in Indiana, Trump graciously praised the last of his rivals, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz. Only a few hours earlier, he was telling reporters that Cruzs father may have had a role in the assassination of John F. Kennedy. But on victory night, Cruz was a tough, smart guy with a bright future in politics.

As Trump might observe, that was just political bull----.

Eli Lake is a Bloomberg View columnist writing about politics and foreign affairs.
Stories from China that come from out of Africa Updated: 2016-06-10 08:34 By Yan Dongjie(China Daily Europe)

Four students set up website to showcase and share their experiences

Four young Africans studying at Peking University, not content to feast alone on everything they have discovered in China, are sharing it with people around the world on a website they have set up.

Wadeisor Rukato from Zimbabwe and her three friends, all in their early 20s, have spent about nine months in China with Yenching Academy, a Master's program of China Studies at Peking University which started in mid-2014.

Thuthukile Mbanjwa, Wadeisor Rukato, Sihle Isipho Nontshokweni and Nothando Khumalo during their recent trip to the Tibet autonomous region. Provided to China Daily

"We were keen to start a blog to share our China experiences with our families back home," says Nothando Khumalo from Swaziland. "When we got together to discuss this, it just made sense to collaborate. We shared ideas, set goals and that is really just how we began."

The website, From-Africa-to-China, which went online in December, has attracted thousands of readers, not the stratospheric numbers some popular blogs can boast of, but enough to delight and encourage the four women.

"In December we had only 49 views," Rukato says. "Six months later we have had nearly 2,000 views in May, and we have some regular visitors."

They will work hard to increase the reach and impact of the website while studying and enjoying themselves in China, she says.

The women update the website at least twice a week, mainly writing about their trips exploring the country and their thoughts on academic life.

A recent study trip took them to Tibet autonomous region, which produced a rich harvest of stories and pictures for the website.

In a red-lacquered traditional Chinese house with wood-frame windows on the campus of Peking University the four pondered over what should go up on the website.

"Tibet leaves a lasting impression on its visitors with its captivating atmosphere, an atmosphere that can only accurately be described as spiritual," says Sihle Isipho Nontshokweni from South Africa.

"It (pulls) you in, demands that you be present and engages you, fully engaging your senses."

Dressed in Chinese-style clothes, seated around a solid wooden table and reliving their Tibet trip, it was as though the four were veterans of travel in China rather than having been in the country for just a few months.

Nontshokweni says she was particularly touched by the flags on the mountains on their way to Tibet, which speak of the depth of its spirituality, she says.

"I didn't even realize that they were flags at first, but after learning so much more about the culture and the history and the spirituality of the place during the days there we realized that it has special meaning to so many people."

These flags are a traditional way for Tibetans to offer prayers seeking blessings, similar to better-known prayer wheels.

When the four were in Tibet they themselves became something of an attraction for the locals, who would have seen few Africans, the women say.

"When we posed for pictures, people approached us with cameras in hands."

As they made a video they attracted such a large crowd that police intervened, says Thuthukile Mbanjwa from South Africa. They had become used to drawing public attention after several trips to Shanghai, Nanjing and Shenzhen, she says.

As the only four African members at Yenching Academy of Peking University, Rukato, Nontshokweni, Mbanjwa, and Khumalo, who all studied at the University of Cape Town, say they appreciate the opportunity to live and study in China.

It was not easy to enroll because hundreds of students in Africa applied for the Yenching project when it was founded, Mbanjwa says.

John Holden, associate dean of Yenching Academy of Peking University, says: "The admissions committee was extremely impressed by the four mature girls with outstanding social skills, who showed us that the program of China studies would add significantly to their professional qualifications in their fields of infrastructure policy making, engineering and international relations."

In selecting students the academy seeks outstanding young people with academic excellence and leadership potential, he says.

Few African students get the opportunity to study in China, Rukato says, but numbers have grown in recent years, especially now that more and more college exchange programs are opening to African students.

Even as the From-Africa-to-China website's logo shows lines linking African countries, the four women are endeavoring to connect African countries with one another and with China.

yandongjie@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily European Weekly 06/10/2016 page19)
In a continuation of our previous article on Lufthansa Techniks project to return a Lockheed L-1649A Starliner to airline service, we now report on the restoration progress so far. The project has two Starliners at their base of operations in Lewiston, Maine: N7316C (c/n 1018) and N8083H (c/n 1038). Given the massive amount of work and expense involved, they had to make the hard choice of which one to restore.Here is Wolfgang Bormanns article.



In reviewing the condition of the two Starliners in Maine, Lufthansa Technik chose to restore N7316C. Lockheed originally built this airframe for Trans World Airlines (TWA) in 1957. With their choice made, Lufthansa Technik established a local team in Lewiston during the spring of 2008. They soon got started removing components for overhaul like the radome, flaps, rudders and the four engines. This occurred while N7316C was still parked in the open on the perimeter of Auburn-Lewiston airport. One of the highest priority tasks, of course, was to build a massive hangar, tailor-made for the Super Stars dimensions, which Lufthansa Technik will rent for the duration of the restoration project.

On November 20th, 2008, dignitaries from the State of Maine, local political representatives, team members from Germany and the USA and local media attended the festive, official inauguration ceremony for the restoration hangar, which had been completed in record time.

Lufthansa L-1649A doors for the new Super Star

D-ALOL came to the rescue

Although TWA originally acquired L-1649A N7316C as an airliner in 1957, they converted her into a cargo plane in 1960. As part of the modifications, they replaced the front and rear passenger doors with much larger cargo doors. Of course, Lufthansa-Technik has had to undo these changes. By 2009, the Lufthansa Technik Super Star team, having searched far and wide for original passenger doors with part number 1018, could find no original components that werent still attached to a Starliner.

The solution came in form of a preserved original Lufthansa Super Star originally registered D-ALOL with the airline. Being part of a museum collection in Johannesburg, South Africa, D-ALOL (c/n 1042) flew in the service of Lufthansa from 1958 to 1962 and was then chartered to World Airways before Lufthansa sold it to the South African airline Trek Airways in 1964. It continued flying in Trek Airways livery and, at times, with Luxair paintwork until it was finally withdrawn from service in 1971. Lufthansa-Techniks Super Star team in Hamburg was able to reference these doors to fashion exact replicas as replacements for the original doors replicas so that their L-1649A would not lose any of its functionality or good looks for the future.

A Technological World Premiere: High-Tech for the Super Star

Lufthansa Technik and the Hoedtke company celebrated a world premiere in connection with the Lockheed Super Star project. Using a resistance spot welding process, they succeeded, for the first time ever, in joining historic and state-of-the-art aluminum alloys in compliance with the extremely tight aviation regulations.

While it is not the biggest component in the Lockheed Super Star, door one right is a very special component, as the world premiere achieved by engineers and aircraft technicians from Aircraft Base Maintenance, Lufthansa Technik and welding experts from the Hoedtke company revolved around this component.

Like all the doors on the Lockheed Super Star, door 1R is built as a two-part sandwich structure. Its outer skin is welded with an internal, deep-drawn frame that gives the door to which cabin pressure is applied its stability and ability to support the mechanical components. When the outer skin and internal frame were disassembled during the doors overhaul, the engineers discovered that the internal structure was damaged beyond repair due to corrosion and cracks. The only remaining alternative was to replicate the internal structure with brand new components and re-weld it to the doors surviving elements. It was a demanding task, but well within the skill set for the experts at Lufthansa Technik.

Sheet-Metal Artist Applies His Talents to the Super Star:

The Lockheed Super Star project is a unique catalyst for bringing out the specialist knowledge available within the Lufthansa Technik Group. From the production of fuselage bulkheads to the overhaul of landing gear or spot welding door elements  again and again specialist technicians and engineers from within the Group are demonstrating their outstanding skills within the context of the Super Star project.

A good example of this knowledge pool that resides within the Lufthansa Group is the team sent over to Auburn from Lufthansa Technik Budapest. These six skilled metalworkers working on site in the autumn of 2013 were primarily occupied with fabricating metal fuselage panels. They were teasing these into shape using an English wheel in the production hangar next to the aircraft. To build the dolphin-shaped, curved fuselage with its different radii and curves, the Hungarian team was having to exercise all of their skills on a daily basis.

For a long time it was unclear how to recreate Super Stars rear pressure bulkheads, with their extremely complex shape. The first few attempts proved fruitless until Gyula Nagy of Lufthansa Technik Budapest offered his services and proved a true master of his profession. Within just three weeks he built what previously had appeared impossible without using a deep-draw press, while at the same time adhering to all of the strict requirements of Project Engineering and the FAA. When asked about the recipe of his success, Gyula Nagy explained, Before I joined Lufthansa Technik Budapest in 2002, I worked in a family-owned car body business. There I learned the best way of getting metal panels into the required shape.

He essentially stretching the sheet metal into a specially-built wooden frame so it retained its stability when worked on manually. The execution, which is of excellent quality and meets all of the safety requirements, is entirely down to his personal talents. He further demonstrated these skills during the production of the door frame for crew door one right.

Completion of the Super Star Landing Gear  Better Than New

Aircraft undercarriages are major components that have to withstand extreme stresses but have no inbuilt redundancy  so they always have to work. This makes it all the more important that a landing gear overhaul should be faultless. This proved to be a greater challenge than expected for the Super Star team as the landing gear they purchased a few years earlier turned out to be in much poorer condition than the visual inspection had shown.

The poor condition of the components, coupled with the older technologies, and a lack of relevant overhaul procedures made the repairs extremely difficult. Production drawings through to repair manuals were incomplete and sometimes totally missing, so the Lufthansa Technik team in Hamburg, which regularly overhauls undercarriages for the heaviest and most complex aircraft currently operating, had to develop their own, approved repair methods. They also had to cope with the lack of availability of certain materials no longer produced today. In the 1950s, for example, cotter pins were not chrome-plated, resulting in corrosion issues. The biggest discrepancy with todays standards occurred in the nose landing gear: the original wheels were made from a magnesium alloy, which is lighter than the modern equivalent, but more susceptible to corrosion. The experts at Lufthansa Technik therefore developed an axle modification to allow them to use wheels from an Airbus A320. No less important were smaller parts such as bushings, special bolts or even bearings for the landing gear suspension, which did not exist when the aircraft was originally built. Because a lot of spare parts are no longer available, it was Lufthansa Techniks task to fabricate these pieces as required. But they prevailed and by the spring of 2014 Lufthansa Technik had restored the Super Stars landing gear components to better than new condition.

Since that time, the restoration team has successfully re-installed the nose landing gear on the Super Star. The main landing gear will follow as soon as the overhaul of the main undercarriage bays is completed in a few months time.

Mockup Allows Realistic Impressions of the Cabin  Test Installation Saves Time and Money

While Lockheed L-1649A Super Star N7316C is nearing structural completion in the restoration hangar in Auburn, her sister ship, N8083H, has been serving as a test bed for the cabin outfitting since the summer of 2014. Precise planning is particularly important for the Super Star cabin, because not only is the frame geometry variable along the fuselage length, but the cabin also has different floor levels.

The components used for the mockup in Auburn were made in Hamburg by third-year Lufthansa Technical Training trainees under the supervision of their instructor, and subsequently transported to the US for installation. The cabin experts from Hamburg attached great importance to the use of original components, which will be removed from N8083H after the mockup phase and permanently installed in N7316C. While the proof-of-concept mockup in Auburn primarily addresses questions concerning the general concepts feasibility and allows the quality of the production documents to be improved, it also shows what the cabin will look like in future.

There were also good reasons behind the placement of the mockup in the area of fuselage barrel four. This is the most complex and widest part of the Super Star cabin and includes the overwing emergency exits. While the right-hand side of the cabin shows exactly how the original cabin will look in the future, right down to the color scheme, wood-effect veneer and curtains, the left-hand side is still in its raw state. This technical look lets visitors see the solutions for sound insulation, PSU/oxygen, cabin air conditioning and attachments. The Lufthansa Technik cabin team in Hamburg also paid particular attention to making the cabin maintenance-friendly to lower the subsequent costs for Lufthansa Super Star gGmbH to operate the L-1649A.

Primary Structure Done! Open Heart Surgery

Lufthansa Technik in Auburn, Maine, completed the last work package on the Super Stars primary structure this spring. The most visible external sign of this important project milestone has been the re-installation of the empennage, including the distinctive trio of vertical fins.

Nevertheless, the most demanding work over recent weeks lies hidden inside the fuselage. Having completed the replacement and connection of the wing-to-body fittings, the Super Star team in Auburn replaced the mainframes located above them. It was a huge task, requiring all the skill and expertise of the competent employees. The Lufthansa Technik employees in the Super Star team successfully managed to replace and connect the newly produced fittings for connecting the continuous wing structure with the fuselage in a number of steps during the first half of 2015. It was a challenging task comparable with open heart surgery.

The mainframes that traverse the upper fuselage at two positions, in front of and behind the wing, are the most critical areas of the Super Star airframe from a structural perspective. This is where the flight loads of the Super Star are passed to the fuselage from the wing-to-body fittings below. Detailed initial examinations and recalculations by the project engineers raised hopes that the original mainframes could be repaired, but this proved to be too expensive. Corrosion and random drill holes created for securing belts and ropes during the aircrafts former use as a freighter meant that the Super Star team had to commission the engineering department to perform calculations for the mainframes, and construct brand new replacements here in the USA. Because of the overall length of nearly 16 per frame, the newly-manufactured mainframes were split into two individual segments and spliced at the top of the fuselage as well as with the fittings. It may seem simple, but it was anything but, and this was just one example of many demanding work packages accomplished by the Lufthansa Technik team to the full satisfaction of the surveying FAA authority and Lufthansa Super Star gGmbH as the owner and future operator of the Super Star.

To be continued.

-

WarbirdsNews will be reporting further on this exciting project and wishes to thank Wolfgang Borgmann for his work on this piece, Natalie Hartman of the Markham Group and of course Lufthansa Super Star gGmbH, Lufthansa Technik and the German American Aviation Heritage Foundation for making it possible.
The Luftfahrt Technisches Museum (Aviation Technical Museum) in Rechlin, Germany unveiled a Messerschmitt Bf 109 in a new display during late March. As many readers will know, Rechlin was the Luftwaffes primary flight testing facility prior to and during WWII, and the 109 was one of the most important types tested here. This Messerschmitt Bf 109 is actually based upon a Spanish-built Hispano C.4J Buchon of uncertain identity, and has been in Germany since the 1960s.

Philipp Prinzing from our German partners at Klassiker der Luftfarht brings us the story

The aircraft has been a part of the Military History Museum at Berlin-Gatow for many years, and is now on loan to the museum in Rechlin. It moved to the new location in February on long-term loan. March was especially busy for the museum staff in Rechlin. The head of collections for the Military History Museum attended the Messerschmitt Bf 109s official unveiling in Rechlin. In discussions with the museum director, Lieutenant Colonel Leonhardt stressed the good cooperation between the two institutions. He also praised the efforts of the Luftfahrt Technisches Museum and the local community in the rehabilitation and expansion of the area of the former Luftwaffe test site. He particularly singled out the thematic orientation and appreciation of the people involved.

The new exhibit came to Rechlin in a disassembled state aboard a truck. A group of volunteers spent several days reassembling the Spanish-built fighter and lifted her onto the specially-made stand. The fighter now flies at a five foot altitude above the heads of museum visitors in the facilitys conference room. The 109 will make an impressive backdrop during museum events.

This Bf 109 is a license-built version of the Bf 109 G2 manufactured by Hispano Aviacion S.A. (CASA). Built in 1950, the fighter flew with the Spanish Air Force until 1968. After her retirement, the Spanish donated her back to Germany. She first appeared at the 50th Richthofen Jagdgeschwader reunion of JG 71 Richthofen, painted in the colors of the group commander of Jagdgeschwader 2. Later, the aircraft moved to the Air Force Museum at Uetersen. Here, in the early 1990s, the fighter received an engine conversion from the Buchons Rolls-Royce Merlin to the more appropriate Daimler-Benz DB 605 complete with new cowlings to give her the looks of a Bf 109 G2. In November 1995, with the relocation of the Air Force Museum to Gatow, the 109 received a new paint scheme. She is marked in tropical camouflage with the triple angle and yellow 4 for the group commander Major Gustav Rodel of II./JG 27 which he flew in North Africa and Italy in 1943.



WarbirdsNews wishes to thank Philipp Prinzing / Motor Presse Stuttgart for his article and to Torsten Heinrichs for his photographs!
Col. Steve N. Pisanos, USAF, (Ret.), a World War II fighter double ace who served with the United States Army Air Corps, United States Air Force and as a volunteer member of the famed Eagle Squadrons of Great Britains Royal Air Force, has passed away, his family confirmed today. Pisanos was 96.

Pisanos life is both the classic tale of an immigrants bond with America and a love of flight. Born in Athens, Greece, in the suburb of Kolonos, November 10, 1919, Spiros Nicholas Steve Pisanos, the son of a subway motorman, arrived in America April 1938, as a crew member on a Greek Merchant ship. Arriving in Baltimore, Maryland and unable to speak English, Steve found his way to New York City, where he worked in bakeries and restaurants. As he earned money he started flying lessons at Floyd Bennett Field. In August 1940, he settled in Plainfield, New Jersey, his adopted home town, and continued flying lessons at Westfield Airport. He earned a private pilots license and, though still a Greek national, in October 1941 he joined the British Royal Air Force sponsored by the Clayton Knight Committee in New York City.

Pisanos began his military flight training at Polaris Flight Academy in Glendale, California. Upon graduation, Pilot Officer Pisanos was transferred to England where he completed RAF Officers Training School at Cosford, England and OTU (Operational Training Unit) at Old Sarum Aerodrome in Salisbury. Pilot Officer Pisanos was posted to the 268 Fighter Squadron at Snailwell Aerodrome in Newmarket flying P-51As. He later transferred to the 71 Eagle Squadron, one of three Eagle squadrons in the RAF, comprised of just 244 American volunteers flying Spitfires at Debden RAF Aerodrome.

When the USAAF 4th Fighter Group absorbed the American members of the Eagle Squadrons in September and October 1942, Pilot Officer Pisanos was commissioned a lieutenant in the U.S. Army Air Forces. On May 3, 1943, Lt. Pisanos was naturalized as an American citizen in London, England, becoming the first individual in American history to be naturalized outside the Continental United States. Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite attended his citizenship ceremony, the first ever to be held off of American soil. He remained life-long friends with them both.

Flying his first mission in his P-47 Miss Plainfield out of Debden Aerodrome with the 334th Fighter Squadron, 4th Fighter Group, Lt. Pisanos, The Flying Greek, scored his first victory on May 21, 1943, when he downed a German FW-190 over Ghent, Belgium. By January 1, 1944 he had become an ace with five confirmed victories. On March 5, 1944, he obtained his tenth victory and while returning from that B-17 escort mission to Limoges and Bordeaux, France, Pisanos experienced engine failure in his P-51B and crash-landed south of Le Havre. For six months he evaded the Germans and fought with the French Resistance and the American OSS sabotaging the German war machine in occupied France. Lt. Pisanos returned to England on September 2, 1944, following the liberation of Paris. Because of his exposure and knowledge of the French Resistance operations, Pisanos was prohibited from flying additional combat missions because the Air Force could not risk him being captured.

Upon returning to the United States, Captain Pisanos was assigned to the Flight Test Division at Wright Field, Ohio. He attended the USAF Test Pilot School and subsequently served as a test pilot at Wright Field and Muroc Lake, California, testing the YP-80 jet aircraft, Americas first operational jet. During his career in the USAF, Pisanos graduated from the University of Maryland, attended the Air Command and Staff College and the Air War College. Pisanos also served tours of duty in Vietnam (1967-68) and with NORAD before retiring from the USAF with the rank of Colonel in in December 1973. In all, Pisanos served America for more than 30 years and was the recipient of numerous U.S., British, French (Legion of Honor), and Republic of Vietnam awards and decorations, including three Legions of Merit, five U.S. Distinguished Flying Crosses, and the Purple Heart.

Pisanos spent his retirement years in San Diego and was a regular guest at  and contributor to  the San Diego Air & Space Museum. In 2006, he was inducted to the International Air & Space Hall of Fame. In 2010, Pisanos was awarded the French Legion of Honor, the French Republics highest decoration, in a ceremony at the San Diego Air & Space Museum. The award, presented by the Consul General of France in Los Angeles, recognized Pisanos outstanding achievements in World War II as a fighter pilot and in support of the French Resistance, he was awarded their Legion of Honor.

Steve Pisanos was a true hero who had a deep love of America and what it stood for  opportunity for everyone and achieving the greater good, said Jim Kidrick, President and CEO of the San Diego Air & Space Museum. He is a prime example of Americas Greatest Generation  willing to make the ultimate sacrifice to fly and fight for his adopted country. He served with distinction for more than three decades, and will always be remembered fondly by everyone who was lucky to have known him. Steve will always hold a special place in the hearts of everyone at the San Diego Air & Space Museum. I truly love him!

Steve and his wife of 66 years, Sophie, had two children, son Jeff and daughter Diane. Steve is survived by Jeff, Diane, his grandchildren Brandon Pisanos and Nicole (Pisanos) Wells, and great grandchildren Baron and MacKenzie Wells.

In lieu of flowers, please send donations to the Greek Community Church or to the San Diego Air & Space Museum, 2001 Pan American Plaza, San Diego, CA 92131 or online at www.sandiegoairandspace.org

For video about Steves amazing story, visit: http://sandiegoairandspace. org/video/flying_greek.mp4.


Haier heads to Russia with cool idea for jobs Updated: 2016-06-10 08:35 By Fan Feifei(China Daily Europe)

Appliance maker invests in R&D, manufacturing plants and assembly units in a bid to localize operations in landmark project

Haier Group, a leading maker of home appliances, has opened a refrigerator factory in Russia in response to increasing demand from the European market.

The 24,500-square-meter site in Kamsky Industrial Park, in the industrial city of Naberezhnye Chelny, is the first Sino-Russian business project outside of the energy sector.

Local officials and businesspeople visit Haier's new refrigerator plant in Kamsky Industrial Park, Russia. Xinhua

The plant involves an investment of about $55 million, of which $39 million has gone to setting up the plant. The rest will be spent on buying components and on production.

The factory is a crucial step for Haier to localize its Russia operations. The company has also started to build a research and development center and TV assembly unit in Russia.

Annual output of the plant will reach 500,000 refrigerators in 2020, the company says. Production capacity in the first stage will be 250,000 units, rising to 500,000 units by the end of the second and final stage. The target markets include Russia, the Commonwealth of Independent States, and some parts of Europe.

By 2017, Haier says it plans to employ 500 people at the factory, with another 1,200 jobs outsourced to other businesses. At present, there are 248 workers in Naberezhnye Chelny.

Liang Haishan, the rotating president of Haier Group, says: "Innovation and cutting-edge technologies are the genes of Haier's global strategy. The Tatarstan Republic (where the plant is based) is one of the most prospective Russian regions in terms of economic development, technology and innovations."

He says Tatarstan has a supportive investment environment, highly qualified administrators, fully developed industrial clusters and good prospects for logistics development. The development of the plant augurs well for the company, he adds.

Rustam Minnihanov, president of Tatarstan, says, "we're very proud that we managed to create all the necessary conditions in the region to attract such a high-tech company as Haier."

As Chinese investors come into the region, he adds, Russian enterprises, encouraged by the Russian government, are expanding in China.

Founded in 1984, Haier Group is headquartered in the eastern city of Qingdao and is one of the world's leading home appliance manufacturers. It held a 9.8 percent share of the global market last year, according to data from market researcher Euromonitor International. In January, the company agreed to buy General Electric's home appliances business for $5.4 billion in cash.

"Haier's strategy is to localize its production in Russia as fast as possible. Over the next two to three years, up to 70 percent of production in Russia is planned to be localized," says Mikhail Babich, Russian presidential plenipotentiary in the Volga Federal District.

In addition to financial investment, Haier is introducing a unique production model and innovative technology to Russia. The company implements special flaw-minimizing technologies at all production stages from manufacturing to assembly and packaging, and has built two laboratories in Naberezhye Chelny, one to check the quality of products and the other to develop innovative technologies.

Haier first entered the Russian market in 2008 and carried out extensive research in the local market, the company says. Among its initial products was a 1.9- to 2-meter-tall energy-efficient refrigerator designed to meet the needs and eating habits of Russian consumers.

The company says its 2015 revenue in Russia was 10 times that of 2010. Although turnover of home appliances dropped 15 percent last year, Haier's turnover increased 78 percent.

Last year, employees from Naberezhnye Chelny underwent training at Haier's factories in China to gain knowledge to apply back home.

Yannick Fierling, chief executive in Europe for Haier, says the new factory will help the company to improve productivity and be more proactive toward the European market. The key to successful globalization is successful localization and getting closer to target markets and end-users, he adds.

Zhou Nan, deputy secretary-general of the home appliances branch of the China Chamber of Commerce for Import and Export of Machinery and Electronic Products, says: "The time for Chinese home appliances (to shine in Russia) is coming. Appliance makers need to improve their global layouts, and they need to speed up the pace of going abroad by virtue of the Belt and Road Initiative."

Xie Chuanjiao contributed to this story.

fanfeifei@chinadaily.com.cn

( China Daily European Weekly 06/10/2016 page25)
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As Allyson Hobbs asked in The New Yorker: "What's behind the shortfall of enthusiasm for Clinton?" Well, I suppose there is the scratchy feeling that she is, if not exactly damaged goods, then a used dollar Bill.

Why, then, do I feel doubtful and apprehensive? Why doesn't this provoke the same sense of wonderment and possibility that the selection of Barack Obama did? Is an older white woman's elevation so much less exciting than that of a younger black man?

Hillary Clinton becoming the first woman in history to head the ticket for a major US party should be a moment for celebration. And we should be punching the air at the idea that, henceforth, the most powerful person on earth may need neither Y-fronts nor a Y chromosome.

I am old enough to remember 1984, when Geraldine Ferraro became the very first woman to stand for vice president. The thought that that heady, emotional moment was more than 30 years ago induces both vertigo and sadness.

Do we really want the first woman president to have been a president's wife? She has too much history of the wrong sort. To build up the kind of track record that would allow a woman to be trusted with the reins of a still-deeply sexist society, Clinton had to put in years of dogged work that now make her feel stale and a bit dull.

This isn't a double standard; it's a quadruple one. Male candidates have the licence to be brash and "authentic". Clinton, in her sturdy court shoes, must tread carefully. Not too assertive (aggressive) or dominant (bossy, shrill), nor too friendly and sympathetic (weak). But watch out if you're not friendly and sympathetic enough (the Ice Maiden cometh!).

Saturday Night Live, a favourite US satirical show, has a sketch that shows Hillary getting ready for bed. "Mmm, get into something nice and cosy," she murmurs, then slips between the sheets wearing her red pants suit. The joke is that Clinton is an automaton, incapable of relaxing. But the sketch has a kick of sadness. Here, after all, is the creature wrought by politics and public opinion. The candidate who has done what is necessary to make herself acceptable in a world that finds female power unsettling and even distasteful.

"Unsex me here," cries Lady Macbeth, willing all femininity to leave her body so that she may be as deadly as the male. In the week when Forbes published its World's Most Powerful Women List, we should consider the extent to which ambitious females must still repress their true selves. That's not Hillary Clinton's problem, that's our problem.

She once said: "It is past time for women to take their rightful place, side by side with men, in the rooms where the fates of peoples, where their children's and grandchildren's fates, are decided."
I was at a well-known late-night spot in Melbourne's inner north a few months ago. The '90s R&B and pop was loud, the dance floor was packed. I met up with a friend who was visiting from Canberra, she and her friends had been drinking for hours. Everyone was drunk. Alice (not her real name) was very drunk  her speech was slurred and she was unsteady on her feet.

An arm and a hand wrapped around Alice and violently pulled her away from the edge of our group. I was the only one to see it happen, as a few of the other women had gone to the bathroom. The arm and hand were connected to a stout man with a flannelette shirt and an auburn beard.

'I was just a 10-minute walk from home, but now there was no way I would take that familiar route. There were too many alleys. Too many dark spots.' Credit:File Image

When I saw the arm and the hand grab Alice, I turned around and grabbed her back, elbowing the flannelled man and shooting a look I hope conveyed my disgust. Once Alice was safely in the protective circle that always develops when you're out with friends, I walked up to the nearest bouncer and told him what had happened. "You have to kick him out," I said.

He said he would. But 10 minutes later, the same stout, flannelled man was back. The bouncer was indignant when I asked him why the stout man was back: "I didn't see it happen." My word was not enough. Moments later, I witnessed the same man try to corner and isolate another woman, and reported him to the same bouncer.
China can help G20 enter new phase Updated: 2016-06-10 08:36 By Fu Jing(China Daily Europe)

Former Italian PM says the presidency offers chance to put fighting trade protectionism high on the agenda

As China continues with its intensive preparations ahead of the G20 summit in the eastern city of Hangzhou in September, the country not only faces a mission to find a recipe for global economic growth, but also show its leadership in reviving the original decisive role of this multilateral framework, according to former Italian prime minister Enrico Letta.

"We need fresh air to restore the original role of the G20, and China's strong and pragmatic presidency this year can help inject this fresh air," he told China Daily in an interview in Shanghai.

Enrico Letta, former Italian prime minister, says hosting the G20 summit is not just a chance to show China on the world stage, but also a major responsibility. Provided to China Daily

Letta says China has been granted an historic responsibility to bring the G20 into what he calls the third phase since the inception of this multilateral platform by the world's leading politicians in 2008, when the financial crisis began to damage the global economy.

Before taking his current position as dean of the Paris School of International Affairs, part of Sciences Po, the 50-year-old worked as a member of the European Parliament and as a party political leader in Italy. As the nation's prime minister, from 2013 to 2014, he participated in meetings of the G8 (now the G7 after Russia was excluded) in Northern Ireland and the G20 in Russia.

His lengthy political experience has led him to conclude that the G20 is the best global framework for responding to international challenges.

At first, world leaders were united in finding fiscal remedies and fighting trade protectionism when dealing with financial upheaval, which Letta credits for the success of the G20 in the beginning. However, after three or four summits, the G20 entered into a quiet phase, he says.

"The last two (in Australia and Turkey) in particular were just ceremonial, and China faces a mission to recover the G20."

Letta says hosting the G20 is not just a chance to show China on the world stage, but also a major responsibility. Yet the decision by the international community to give China the rotating presidency was not a given. He says the country faced tough competition from Japan, but as Japan was to host the G7 summits in May, China was chosen.

"There was a big contest between China and Japan, and I think giving China this chance is a sign of goodwill from the international community. It did the right thing in my view."

In spite of the "quiet moments" of previous years, Letta says the G20 is an inclusive global platform that has obvious advantages compared with the United Nations and the G7.

The UN General Assembly is a platform to hear the opinions of the world, but it is difficult to reach a consensus among the 200 leaders, he says. "The G7 has never had the capacity to be so effective and so concrete in terms of reaching a consensus and implementation compared with the G20."

China's leadership at this year's G20 summit will be crucial to "working together to be decisive in achieving outcomes", he adds. "It's in the interest of China to show its commitment, and the G20 needs a big push. Combining these two aspects, I hope the G20 in September can be a turning point."

Letta says China is working hard in its preparations to turn the G20 into a stable and effective framework, but he adds that success depends on the three weeks running up to the leaders' summit.

Letta says, ultimately, the G20 should be flexible enough respond to what is happening in the world.

First, it should respond to the immigration issue, which the UN and other international groups have been working on, he says, adding that he also pins high hopes on concrete ideas and projects to be raised at the G20.

"The statement should not be too general, and G20 success depends on how concrete the solutions and outcomes are. You have to be very, very focused."

For example, he says, leaders at the G20 should discuss about choosing the UN leadership, which will be decided at the end of September at the international organization's general assembly.

Letta says the G20 summit in Hangzhou and the decisions regarding the UN leadership are two of the most important international issues this year.

"China should shoulder the responsibility of recovering the G20 and choosing the leaders of the UN. Instead of leaving this choice to diplomatic negotiations in New York, leaders at the G20 summit should help find the right people to lead the UN."

He also predicts that fighting trade protectionism will once again top the G20 agenda, which is expected to inject confidence into global trade.

He argues that Europe and the US are resorting to protectionism. In the US, he says, both sides involved in the presidential campaign have shown worrying trends, while some countries in Europe are taking serious protectionist measures in places where people are concerned about unemployment.

"Politicians are responding the public fears and are raising protectionism. We need a new phase of confidence on trade."

As for granting China market economy status, Letta says China and Europe should talk with each other to solve the problem.

"I know it's a crucial topic for China, but I think the country needs to understand that in Europe there are many concerns about trade. The political landscape today in Europe is leading to the rise of populists.

"The changing political landscape gives us a lot to worry about because this populist movement is antiglobalization, anti-integration, anti-US, anti-China, which is not good for Europe."

He says three things have led to the current situation in Europe, which symbolizes a new kind of nationalism, each country against each country, and Europe against the rest of the world.

First, the people fear an influx of immigrants, he says. Second, the consequences of the financial crisis are still unfolding. And third, the weakness of a Western society in which the people are anti-establishment, which is obvious in politics and society.

"My conclusion is that China needs to understand this very complicated situation in Europe. This attitude against free trade in Europe is not against China. The same for the US."

However, Letta argues that it is possible to find a solution on market economy status. "We need to work together. I believe bilateral relations will not be affected. It is in the common interests of China and Europe to find solutions to this topic and strengthen ties."

fujing@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily European Weekly 06/10/2016 page32)
Labor has announced new savings measures and cuts worth $16.2 billion over a decade that would hit wealthier families, private health insurance and higher education in a bid to convince voters it is serious about budget repair.

After a difficult week for the opposition in which it admitted the budget deficit would be bigger over the next four years under a future Labor government, the ALP announced $6.1 billion over 10 years in new savings measures and a $10.1 billion, 10 year improvement to previously announced savings measures as a result of updated costings.

But the government seized on the late Friday afternoon announcement to respond that under Labor the budget bottom line would still be worse off over the next four years.
Detective Sergeant Rowe told the hearing Mr Davies was arrested at his Waterford Park home near Kilmore at 9am on Thursday. Kylie Maybury's mother Julie and her grandfather, John Moss, at a press conference in November 1984. Credit:John Lamb The accused was taken to the Spencer Street police complex in the CBD, where he was interviewed by detectives. Homicide squad Detective Inspector Mick Hughes said earlier on Thursday that it was not believed the arrested man knew Kylie. Kylie Maybury was abducted after she went to this shop in Plenty Road, Preston, to buy sugar. Credit:Fairfax Photographic

He would not comment on whether the man's DNA had been taken, or whether police still had a DNA sample taken from Kylie's body that was believed to belong to the offender. "The homicide cold case team have been doing this for a while. They received some contemporary information very recently," Detective Inspector Hughes said. The Preston flats where Kylie Maybury lived with her mother, Julie Maybury. Credit:Fairfax Photographic Police are now asking three people with potentially crucial information to come forward, a step Detective Inspector Hughes acknowledged was unusual, given the man had already been arrested. A $1 million reward for information is on offer.

Gregory Keith Davies has admitted the rape and murder of six-year-old Kylie Maybury. Credit:Eddie Jim Kylie was with her mother, Julie, visiting a neighbour in Gregory Grove, Preston, when she was sent to a nearby shop to buy sugar at 5.30pm on Tuesday, November 6, 1984. She was walking home south along Plenty Road when she was kidnapped. The body of six-year-old Kylie Maybury was found here, in Donald Street, Preston. Credit:Fairfax Photographic At 12.45am the next day, her body was found in a gutter in Donald Street, Preston.

She had been raped and possibly strangled. The words "I love you" were reportedly found written on her arm. Police released this image of Kylie Maybury's neighbour, Lorna Simpson, in the hope that it will jog a key witness's memory. "A child should be able to go down the street, buy a packet of sugar and get home safely," Detective Inspector Hughes said. "This little girl didn't." Police released this picture of Kylie Maybury as she would have looked on the day she went missing.

Julie Maybury had been with detectives on Thursday, and while Detective Inspector Hughes had not been able to speak with them to learn how she had taken the news, he expected she would be "overawed". He said she had been a pillar of strength since the murder. The dozens of police who had investigated the case would be ecstatic if the arrest led to a successful prosecution, he said. Some of those detectives who had investigated the murder had since died, he said. A potentially crucial witness approached Kylie's neighbour, Lorna Simpson, while she was searching for the girl on the corner of Gregory Grove and Plenty Road at the time she was taken. The witness, a young Italian girl, told Ms Simpson she saw a child fitting Kylie's description in a white station wagon.

A man was driving the car, which turned left onto Murray Road. The girl then crossed Plenty Road and walked towards a pizza shop. Detectives have never been able to locate that girl, whom Ms Simpson described as slim and "very attractive". On Thursday, they asked the girl, who would be a woman aged in her late 40s or early 50s now, to contact them. "She's probably a mum now herself," Detective Inspector Hughes said.

Police have released an image of Lorna Simpson in the hope the woman may recognise her and recall speaking to her on that day. Detective Inspector Hughes said it was believed Ms Simpson may have died, and he appealed to her family to come forward. Two anonymous callers who contacted police in 1984 and 1997 have also been asked to come forward. The first witness called police on November 21, 1984, and told investigators a Holden Kingswood station wagon was involved. The second caller phoned Crime Stoppers in May 1997 and gave the name of a potential suspect.

Detective Inspector Hughes would not say whether the suspect who was named was the same man who was arrested. He also would not confirm if the arrested man had links to Preston, or had owned a Kingswood. Investigators have also released an image of a similar vehicle described by witnesses. An early 1970s Holden similar to that seen with a child matching Kylie's description. Loading
A Seabird couple have pleaded for the government to buy back their once beloved WA beach property, now rendered worthless under the attack of erosion.

Jane Clifton and her husband invested in their property, affectionately nicknamed "The Bird", more than a decade ago, when its front yard looked on to 40 metres or so of vegetation and a lovely white beach.

They spent every holiday there, where they hoped to retire.

Erosion had already crumbled beachside road Turner Street, which led to their driveway. But they knew councils were obliged to provide road access for homes so they thought  naively, they now acknowledge  the problem would be fixed.
She followed her heart Updated: 2016-06-10 08:34 By Yang Yang(China Daily Europe)

Yang Jiang will long be remembered for her witty writing and translations, but her independent outlook may be her greatest legacy

Among all the apartments in the 19 three-story buildings near Yuyuantan Park in Beijing, only one has maintained its original look, with neither interior decoration nor the balcony enclosed with glass.

The apartment in Nanshagou Community, where the famed Chinese writer and translator Yang Jiang lived until her death on May 25 at the age of 104, is typical of her modesty. The space is almost unadorned - white walls, cement flooring, an old-fashioned sofa and desks worn by years of use.



Writing was a lifelong career for Yang Jiang, who died on May 25 at age 104. Yang Jiang (left) with her husband, Qian Zhongshu, and their daughter, Qian Yuan, in 1981. Photos Provided to China Daily

Yang and her equally famous husband, Qian Zhongshu, moved into the unit in 1977, just after the "cultural revolution" (1966-76). But Yang lived there alone for nearly two decades after the deaths of Qian and their only daughter, Qian Yuan. While the couple had become household names in the 1980s, they were always indifferent to fame or wealth, and few reporters or readers visited them.

Known for her subtle and witty writing style, Yang wrote her first play in 1941. A prolific writer, she became famous for her novels, essays, plays and translated works. Her most popular novel, Baptism, was translated into English, French and Italian. It depicts a group of intellectuals from the old society adjusting to a new one in the early 1950s.

Yang never stopped writing. At 94, she started writing a book, Walking onto the Brink of Life, to reflect on her life. It won China's top book award in 2007. At 100, she was still writing articles for newspapers.

Qian Zhongshu, meanwhile, was a scholar and author of the best-selling novel Fortress Besieged.

In 2001, on behalf of her family, Yang set up a scholarship fund at Tsinghua University, where the couple had studied and worked, to encourage students, especially those from poor families, to read. They donated all their royalties, which totaled more than 24 million yuan ($3.6 million; 3.3 million euros) over the years.

Chen Pingyuan, a professor at Peking University, remembers a woman whose achievements had come despite the turmoil of the collapse of the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), China's civil war and the "cultural revolution".

In an article mourning Yang, he writes, "The older generations had experienced much fiercer waves, but many of them stood up. They read books out of interest, were led by their hearts, and never followed the stream. Although they had to compromise to some extent, they kept their honesty, which is not really easy."

Born Yang Jikang in 1911, the year China's feudal empire collapsed, she faced tough years before and after the founding of New China. Whether living in poverty or affluence, however, Yang always followed her heart, living a simple and honest life.

Yang was raised in a family of open-minded intellectuals. Her father, Yang Yinhang, a renowned wit and intellect from Wuxi, Jiangsu province, graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a master's degree in law. The fourth daughter in the family, she, along with her sisters, were all sent by her father to good schools to receive a Western-style education. Later she would adopt the pen name Yang Jiang.

Like her father, Yang Jiang turned out to be a person of spirit, good at both Chinese and English. She had long known what she wanted - to study arts at Tsinghua University.

"Initially I chose arts because I was determined to read good novels from home and abroad to understand the art of fiction writing, so that I could write good fiction," she wrote in the preface to The Complete Collection of Yang Jiang.

Her happy marriage with Qian Zhongshu was another example of her free thinking and independence. The two bookworms met in 1932 at Tsinghua by coincidence and quickly fell in love. Their love never weakened. After getting married, in 1935 the couple went to Britain and studied at Oxford University, returning to China three years later.

By 1952, the couple was working at the Institute of Foreign Literature part of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

At that time, women in China started to wear Lenin-style clothes - gray double-breasted shirts and long trousers with a leather belt fastened around the waist, a symbol of the equality of the working class. Yang, however, still wore a slim qipao, took a rickshaw and held a parasol over her head.

During the "cultural revolution", many intellectuals were forced to "disclose" each other's "guilt". Yang, already denounced as a devil, was put on stage to face her husband's accusers. "It's not the truth! It's not the truth!" she repeated, stamping her foot, recalls Ye Tingfang, a researcher at the Institute of Foreign Literature.

In the late 1960s, intellectuals at the institute were sent to the countryside to work, and Qian and Yang, almost 60, were among them.

Yang later compiled her stories of that time into a book, Six Chapters from My Life "Downunder".

Lu Jiande, deputy director of the institute, says unlike other memoirs of the time, Yang's contains no complaint or anger. It was a difficult time for intellectuals, but he admires Yang for her positive attitude.

Yang spent her leisure time writing, and when Qian passed by, she would give him the work to read. Then, the couple would often sit, chatting and laughing, though there were plenty of serious moments, too.

During this time, their son-in-law committed suicide. In Six Chapters, Yang captures the event in a single sentence, but the sadness fills the page.

After Yang's translation of French writer Alain-Rene Lesage's Gil Blas into Chinese was well-received in 1956, she was picked to translate Don Quixote from Spanish. She began to learn the language in 1959, at the age of 48.

"They neither lowered their heads when things went against them nor appeared arrogant when they rose to fame," remembers Peking University's Chen.

"Such people deserve our younger generations' respect."

yangyangs@chinadaily.com.cn


Having witnessed the intensification of attacks on cultural heritage and increasing incidents of cultural heritage destruction in conflict areas in recent years, UNESCO has launched a powerful campaign, #Unite4Heritage, to safeguard cultural heritage and diversity around the world.

As part of the campaign, from 9 to 10 June 2016, a High Level Debate and Technical Conference, entitled Cultural Diversity under Attack: Protecting Heritage for Peace, was held by UNESCO in Brussels. Organized in partnership with the European Union, the meeting also benefited from the support of the Government of Flanders.

The expert meeting started with a high-level discussion on Cultural Diversity Under Attack, which saw the WCO Secretary General, Mr. Kunio Mikuriya, exchange views with the Director General of UNESCO, Mrs. Irina Bokova, the Minister of Culture of Mali, Ms. NDiaye Ramatoulaye Diallo, the UN Special Rapporteur on Cultural Rights, Ms. Karima Bennoune, and the UN Assistant Secretary General, Registrar of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and Registrar of the Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals (UNMICT), Mr. John Hocking.

UNESCO Director General Bokova opened the discussion by highlighting the importance of heritage for peace and the role it plays in the resilience, recovery and reconstruction of societies torn apart by conflict.

The Minister of Culture of Mali shared the experiences of her country in this area, mentioning in particular the 2012 attack on Timbuktu and the heroic acts of the local population to save ancient Timbuktu manuscripts from being destroyed by a terrorist group. She gave a message of hope, stating that culture would always survive no matter what challenges await. She reinforced the message of the UN Rapporteur on Cultural Rights by confirming that the involvement of both government and civil society was critical when it came to protecting cultural heritage.

The UN Assistant Secretary General spoke about the role of transitional justice and shared the experiences of the ICTY in this area. He also spoke of a recent case related to the destruction in Timbuktu.

WCO Secretary General Mikuriya stressed the urgency of fighting against the illicit trafficking of cultural objects and the need for all relevant stakeholders to cooperate and coordinate their actions. He pointed out that, although Customs plays an indispensable role in this fight owing to its place at the border, Customs officers may not have the specific skills necessary to identify cultural objects and need to reach out to experts in a very short time frame when confronted with a possible trafficking case. To remedy this situation, he informed the audience that a dedicated platform named ARCHEO had been developed specifically to enable communication in real time between law enforcement officers and experts in cultural heritage. Controls are also made markedly easier when cultural property is accompanied by the appropriate certificate at export; the WCO Secretary General thus advocated the use of the UNESCO-WCO Model Export Certificate which was specifically designed for cultural property.

A wide array of other topics was discussed during the two-day conference, including cultural diplomacy, the protection of cultural rights in protracted crises, conflict resolution and stabilization, and cooperation with law enforcement to protect cultural heritage.


Ththukile Mbanjwa, Wadeisor Rukato, Sihle Isipho Nontshokweni and Nothando Khumalo during their recent trip to the Tibet autonomous region. Provided to China Daily

Four students set up website to showcase and share their experiences

Four young Africans studying at Peking University, not content to feast alone on everything they have discovered in China, are sharing it with people around the world on a website they have set up.

Wadeisor Rukato from Zimbabwe and her three friends, all in their early 20s, have spent about nine months in China with Yenching Academy, a foreign student project of Peking University which started in late 2014.

"We were keen to start a blog to share our China experiences with our families back home," says Nothando Khumalo from Swaziland. "When we got together to discuss this, it just made sense to collaborate. We shared ideas, set goals and that is really just how we began."

The website, From-Africa-to-China, which went online in December, has attracted thousands of readers, not the stratospheric numbers some popular blogs can boast of, but enough to delight and encourage the four women.

"In December we had only 49 views," Rukato says. "Six months later we have had nearly 2,000 views in May, and we have some regular visitors."

They will work hard to increase the reach and impact of the website while studying and enjoying themselves in China, she says.

The women update the website at least twice a week, mainly writing about their trips exploring the country and their thoughts on academic life.

A recent study trip took them to Tibet autonomous region, which produced a rich harvest of stories and pictures for the website.

In a red-lacquered traditional Chinese house with wood-frame windows on the campus of Peking University the four pondered over what should go up on the website.

"Tibet leaves a lasting impression on its visitors with its captivating atmosphere, an atmosphere that can only accurately be described as spiritual," says Sihle Isipho Nontshokweni from South Africa.

"It (pulls) you in, demands that you be present and engages you, fully engaging your senses."

Dressed in Chinese-style clothes, seated around a solid wooden table and reliving their Tibet trip, it was as though the four were veterans of travel in China rather than having been in the country for just a few months.

Nontshokweni says she was particularly touched by the flags on the mountains on their way to Tibet, which speak of the depth of its spirituality, she says.

"I didn't even realize that they were flags at first, but after learning so much more about the culture and the history and the spirituality of the place during the days there we realized that it has special meaning to so many people."

These flags are a traditional way for Tibetans to offer prayers seeking blessings, similar to better-known prayer wheels.

When the four were in Tibet they themselves became something of an attraction for the locals, who would have seen few Africans, the women say.

"When we posed for pictures, people approached us with cameras in hands."

As they made a video they attracted such a large crowd that police intervened, says Ththukile Mbanjwa from South Africa. They had become used to drawing public attention after several trips to Shanghai, Nanjing and Shenzhen, she says.

As the only four African members at Yenching Academy of Peking University, Rukato, Nontshokweni, Mbanjwa, and Khumalo, who all studied at the University of Cape Town, say they appreciate the opportunity to live and study in China.

It was not easy to enroll because hundreds of students in Africa applied for the Yenching project when it was founded, Mbanjwa says.

John Holden, associate dean of Yenching Academy of Peking University, says: "The admissions committee was extremely impressed by the four mature girls with outstanding social skills, who showed us that the program of China studies would add significantly to their professional qualifications in their fields of infrastructure policy making, engineering and international relations."

In selecting students the academy seeks outstanding young people with academic excellence and leadership potential, he says.

Few African students get the opportunity to study in China, Rukato says, but numbers have grown in recent years, especially now that more and more college exchange programs are opening to African students.

Even as the From-Africa-to-China website's logo shows lines linking African countries, the four women are endeavoring to connect African countries with one another and with China.

yandongjie@chinadaily.com.cn
WCO Secretary General Kunio Mikuriya and His Excellency Mr. Masafumi Ishii, Japanese Ambassador to the Kingdom of Belgium and the representative of the Government of Japan to NATO opened the first WCO Security Summit, which took place at the WCO HQ from 7 to 9 June 2016.

The Summit gathered together 41 WCO Members, 6 RILOs, INTERPOL, Europol, and FATF among others to discuss how the Customs community can deliver its Border Security mission. More specifically, the purpose of this event was for WCO Members to discuss the implementation of the Punta Cana Resolution in practical terms.

Mr. Mikuriya welcomed the delegates and impressed upon them the importance of the role that Customs play in securing trade and borders. He impressed upon the audience the value of the expertise and authority that Customs can bring to bear in this realm and articulated the specific programmes the WCO has in this regard.

In his comments, Ambassador Ishii introduced the outcome of the G7 Summit Meeting hosted by Japan this past May wherein they issued the G7 Action Plan on Countering Terrorism and Violent Extremism. This plan explicitly referenced the WCOs Security Programme as an important counter-terrorism measure. Ambassador Ishii added that, this makes this Seminar all the more timely and important. I believe that Customs have played and will continue to play the crucial central role in border security by strengthening security measures and promoting capacity building. I am convinced that WCO will continue to play the central role in these endeavors.

The Summit explored specific terrorist threats both to Europe and the rest of the world, and heard examples of specific national responses. In looking at the global threats to security, the topics of discussion included the global supply chain of precursor material for industrial scale production of IEDs (which is being addressed by the WCOs Programme Global Shield), Small Arms and Light Weapons, Strategic Trade Control Enforcement, Terrorist Financing, including trade based financing, and how API / PNR can be used for security related activities. Many of these topics included panel discussions that featured a range of experts in each of these fields and examples of best practices along with overviews of the WCO Security Programme training and capacity building activities.

The threats from the smuggling of weapons and weapons parts in express courier and mail services was specifically highlighted, as was the use of couriers carrying cash and pre-paid cards as a source of financing terrorist groups. These discussions provided the context for discussions surrounding future operational activities in the areas of Small Arms and Light Weapons and cash and Bearer Negotiable Instruments.

This Summit was the first in a series of six regional seminars that will be conducted over the next 12 months. The next event will be the Regional Seminar for the Americas, 21 to 23 November in Brasilia.
Beijing sweet and savory Updated: 2016-06-10 08:34 By Pauline D. Loh(China Daily Europe)

Editor's note: To understand China, sit down to eat. Food is the indestructible bond that holds the whole social fabric together and it is also one of the last strong visages of community and culture.

Beijing is a sprawling international city where regional and international cuisines offer more dining choices than there are days in a year. But barely 100 years ago, it was a very different story.

When the emperors, officials and the imperial court were still in residence, the folks living outside the walls of the Forbidden City were merely cogs in the great machinery that kept those inside well-fed and well-clothed.



Beijing snacks can be traced back to the Muslim community, mainly Uygurs from the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region who had traveled to the capital along the Silk Road with other merchants of West Asian origin and made Beijing their home. photos Provided to China Daily

While Beijing may boast of decadent court cuisine in the imperial kitchens of the past, the city had no particular culinary identity. It is still deciding.

The common folks living in the old alleyways were mainly merchants and craftsmen from other provinces who settled there many generations ago. They were the original migrant workers.

One group became a major if unexpected influence on what Beijingers ate. This was the Muslim community, mainly Uygurs from the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region who had traveled to the capital along the Silk Road with other merchants of West Asian origin. Over the years, they made Beijing their home.

Muslims have a long history here, and the oldest mosque in Beijing is tucked away in the Islamic quarters just behind Caishikou, near Xuanwumen. It is well kept and is allegedly older than even the Forbidden City, which was built during the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644).

Uygur chefs brought their food with them because they couldn't eat at non-Muslim restaurants. Soon, they established their own eateries - the famous mutton hotpot restaurants like Donglaishun and Lailaishun - and they became known for their cooking of beef tripe, now recognized as a Beijing specialty.

Their snack shops offered a variety of fried and baked pastries. Many adopted local ingredients and flavors, and again, over time, they became part of the city's epicurean traditions.

If a Beijinger goes visiting friends in other provinces, he or she will likely bring boxes of pastries - the Eight Big Pieces, or badajian - made from Chinese jujubes, candied osmanthus flowers, candied plums, candied haw fruit, and red and green bean pastes, all encased in flaky pastry using vegetable oils.

Many of these have their origins in Muslim bakeries.

In an old alleyway that used to house the imperial tributes temple, Huguosi, a time-honored Beijing Muslim snack shop still does a roaring trade every day. A halal establishment, the Old Beijing Snack Shop was awarded intangible cultural heritage status for its delicious contributions.

Here, old folks can still stop by for a taste of their childhood.

On the weathered hardwood stools, elderly women and men bring their grandchildren for mid-morning snacks. While the young ones feast on flaky pastries and toasted soybean-floured sticky rice cakes, charmingly named Donkey Rolling in the Dust, the old folks are likely slurping up bean juice.

Bean juice is that last threshold that separates a Beijing native from the later immigrants. It is the fermented whey left over from tofu making and is definitely an acquired taste.

Once you get past the smell, which is reminiscent of a market dumpster at day's end, the taste itself is not bad, especially as it comes with a little platter of salted vegetables and a couple of fried dough rings.

Another option is the fried flour tea, or miancha, served with a thin layer of sesame paste on top. Despite its name, it's more a porridge than a tea, and is a cheap and satisfying snack. It actually reminds me of certain Middle Eastern foods such as hummus and tahini.

My husband grew up in the Beijing alleyways, and his favorite childhood tidbit was the "donkey" snack lyudagun. The dusting of yellow soybean flour apparently reminded people of the sturdy donkeys who used to trot through Beijing's nine city gates. After their burdens were unloaded, they loved nothing better than a dirt bath, rolling in the yellow dust.

There is also the beautiful aiwowo, a snow-white soft cake made with glutinous rice and filled with honey, osmanthus flowers, candied green plums and red candied haw. It is an attractive and tasty little dumpling, and reportedly became the Empress Dowager Ci Xi's favorite slum food after she tasted a goodie smuggled into the Forbidden City by one of the eunuchs.

There are also egg and flour dough balls coated in sesame seeds and deep-fried until they split apart. These are called kaikouxiao, smiling pastries.

Many are nothing more than plain dough, stretched and twisted, deep-fried and drizzled with syrup, and then dusted with sesame seeds. The famous Beijing mahua is simply thick strands of dough twisted into a rope and fried until it is crisp and crunchy.

Sanzi is the savory version, which is pulled into long, thin noodles that fan out in the hot oil. These crackers are sometimes flavored with fermented bean curds, but they are mostly plain flour and slightly salted.

A healthier snack is the pea-flour wandouhuang, which is based on a recipe smuggled out of the imperial kitchens. The more delicate and perhaps authentic cake can still be sampled in restaurants offering imperial cuisine.

For normal Beijing folks, all that matters is that it is tasty, satisfying and cheap. It is a curious chapter in Beijing's food history, but the city owes much of its love of sweet pastries to a little group of settlers from the past, just as now, the city's large population of young migrants is rewriting culinary traditions by introducing various foods from their home provinces.

paulined@chinadaily.com.cn

Capital's pastries at a glance

Aiwowo

A soft, snow-white cake made from steamed glutinous rice hiding a syrupy filling of candied fruits. It is often decorated with a little piece of red haw jelly on top.

Mahua

A crisp and crunchy Chinese doughnut made by twisting thick strands together and deep-frying them thoroughly. The cooked twists are often coated with sesame seeds.

Paicha

A lighter relative of mahua, the dough strands are stretched thinner and longer and shaped into elaborate curlicues to be carefully fried so it keeps its shape. Often, the finished product looks like a beautiful Chinese knot.

Haw jelly cake

Hawthorn trees are abundant around Beijing, and their tart, red fruits are harvested and cooked down into a soft sweet and sour cake, which can then be cut into strips and further dried and dusted with sugar. The Chinese name, jingtiaigao, translates into sweet strips from Beijing.

Zimituan

This is made from nutty, deep-purple glutinous rice that is steamed, sweetened and then shaped into little balls. Toasted peanuts and sesame seeds are added for more crunch and aroma.

Soybean-dusted glutinous rice rolls

Lyudagun, or donkey rolling in the dust, is such a graphic name that you cannot help but be charmed. This is actually just another cake using the most common ingredients of glutinous rice flour and red bean paste. What makes this one so special is the generous coating of toasted soybean flour, and its name.

Zhagao

A simply named but immensely popular cake. Mashed glutinous rice is beaten into a dough, made into balls and filled with sweet bean paste. The rice balls are flattened and then deep-fried into sticky cakes with a crusty coat. It sounds heavy and it's not something you can eat a lot of, but it's definitely a Beijing favorite.

Naiyou zhagao

This is a much lighter version of the zhagao. It has a texture almost similar to choux pastry and is served liberally dusted with the cottony powdered sugar that Beijingers love so much.

Wandouhuang

One of the most popular sweet cakes of Beijing, this is made from pea flour and has a velvety texture. Culinary legend says the recipe originated from the imperial kitchens.

Zhagezhi

These are a popular snack, even though they are nothing but tight rolls of deep-fried pastry that taste like spring roll wrappers. The name itself is a homophonic reference to the crunch of the pastry disintegrating in the mouth.


by Adrian Gibson

THE CHRISTIE Administration has lost its mandate to govern. It has lost two consecutive referendums in one term.

It appears that history is likely to repeat itself and much like the Free National Movement (FNM) in 2002, whichever side appeared to lose the referendum would lose the government. Mr Christie must take the fall on this; this is an indictment upon him and, in order to perhaps save his party before the next election, Mr Christie should resign. The ultimate responsibility is on Mr Christie and his government.

The Progressive Liberal Partys (PLP) demise can be tied to their betrayal of the Bahamian electorate who voted no to the gambling referendum in 2013 and their ineffectual, scandal-ridden governance over the last few years. Whats more, Bahamians were offended by their blatant arrogance in not apologising for their vote in 2002. Only Alfred Sears - the frontrunner to succeed Mr Christie - was decent and honourable enough to apologise.

On March 3, 2002, Fred Mitchell - then a senator for the PLP - called for the resignation of former Prime Minister Hubert Ingraham following the defeat of the referendum organised by the FNM and held on February 27, 2002.

Mr Mitchell then stated: The Prime Minister Hubert Ingraham and his party the Free National Movement went down to resounding defeat on Wednesday, 27 February, 2002. Their spin doctors and apologists are trying to make-up all sorts of stories about the whys and the wherefores. The simple fact is they were beaten and beaten convincingly. This Senator believes that his position from the start that he would vote no has been fully vindicated. The lesson for the PLP is that the role of a political party is to shape public opinion, not the other way around. We must be informed by public opinion but the duty to lead is the role of a political party  We therefore must congratulate the Leader of the Opposition Perry Christie and his team for the skilful manner in which this whole thing was handled.

On the other hand we have nothing but scorn for this jackass that we call our Prime Minister. He had to concede defeat just after 9.30pm on the night of the referendum. But the next day, he was back true to form. He refused to resign making some spurious distinction by saying that this was a vote not against the FNM and himself but against the issues raised in the referendum. That is utter foolishness and is at variance with every known convention of the Constitution, he said.

Mitchell went on: At this press conference, he showed no contrition, no repentance and no remorse. He just continued along like nothing happened. In fact he said that he is ashamed of the Bahamian people for having voted no. Then he proceeded to jump on a plane to a Heads of Government meeting in Australia on the strength of the same Bahamian peoples tax monies. We should be out in the streets, forcing him and his Government to go.

On March 10, 2002, Mr Mitchell further wrote: A fellow can really play stupid when he wants to. Thats the continuous story of Hubert Ingraham. He speaks out of one side of his mouth about integrity and commitment to the rules, but he breaks each and every rule whenever it suits his purpose. And that is the story with why he wont resign. He knows that the conventions of the Constitution demand that when he and his government have lost an important vote like the five questions on the referendum he has in fact had a vote of no confidence made in his Government. There is no choice but to resign.

Pinch me! Pinch me! We must be dreaming. This cant be the same man who wanted the last Prime Minister to resign when the commission inquiry condemned the last Government. He knows what the convention is. It has nothing to do with how many people called for your resignation. He must go because the rule says he must go. But now he has bastardised the system again. This is not surprising. But hopefully, he will be gone in short order by means of the general election which he should call and stop dragging this country through this long process while our economy is on hold. The fact is that the delay in calling the election has caused untold damage to the economy. No one will deal with this Government until the election has been decided, he said.

I wonder if Mr Mitchell would still make this argument given the Christie administrations loss of two referendums in one term. Surely, if he could call for the former PM to resign for one failed referendum, then Mr Christie must surely be gone for two!

What is interesting is that at a rally on Windsor Park on February 25, 2002, Mr Mitchell told attendees that they must work toward the defeating of the Free National Movements attempt to diss our national Constitution and begged them to vote no to send a message straight to the Wallace Whitfield Centre. Your time is up. It is time for you to go. So long! Farewell! Adieu! Bon Voyage! Carry your 

Interestingly, this is the same Fred Mitchell who campaigned so hard in favour of the Yes vote this time around. I guess the proposed amendments were no longer an attempt to diss our national Constitution because the PLP was organising the vote. Unlike Mr Ingraham, who accepted full and complete responsibility for the result of the 2002 referendum, I have yet to hear Mr Christie say anything remotely close to that.

One would not think, in the wake of Tuesdays referendum results, that this was the same Perry Christie who, in a jubilant address at the PLPs headquarters on the night of the 2002 vote, said: The results of todays referendum are enormously gratifying. Democracy has triumphed. The tyranny of arrogant falsehood today lies slain on the field of battle. Truth has emerged victorious. It is a great and joyous day for the Bahamas. To God be the glory. This is not, however, an occasion for gloating by those who campaigned so vigorously for the result that has been achieved because the real winners tonight are the Bahamian people.

And yet he gloated.

Will Mr Christie now resign? Will Mr Mitchell call for his resignation? Or, will we see more of the usual arrogance on display?

_________________________________________________________

First published in the The Tribune under the byline, Young Man's View, here

View Adrian Gibson's archive here

____________________________________________________

The views expressed are those of the author, and not necessarily those of WeblogBahamas.com (which has no corporate view) or its Authors.
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Swiss tunnel shows rest of Europe the way Updated: 2016-06-10 08:32 By Fu Jing(China Daily Europe)

Engineering feat gives infrastructure a boost and shows the continent that Chinese expertize could play a bigger role

Switzerland inspired its European neighbors on June 1 by announcing the completion of the world's longest traffic tunnel, linking northern and southern Europe.

The landlocked country is expected to gain tremendous benefits from the multibillion euro Gotthard Base Tunnel through the heart of the Swiss Alps, which will be used by passenger and freight trains to travel to and from Italy.

The tunnel, which is more than 57 kilometers long, cost more than $12 billion and took 17 years to complete. Leading European political figures such as German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande, preoccupied with the continuing headaches of terrorism, the refugee influx and economic stagnation, took time out to celebrate the engineering miracle with Swiss leaders on June 1.

In Europe, transforming such an engineering feat from a grand vision into reality is not easy, as various constraints ranging from complicated environmental impact assessments to the conflicting interests of different parties and laborious approval procedures have to be overcome.

Even smaller projects face hurdles. In 2010, the authorities in Stutgartt, Germany, decided to invest 6 billion euros ($6.8 billion) to turn the area around its main train station into a business hub, but the plan failed to go ahead when more than half the local population voted against it in a referendum.

Such hurdles have halted many infrastructure projects in the European Union, although many of its members desperately need such investments to rekindle their economies and create jobs.

In this sense, the completion of this Swiss project has offered well-timed food for thought for other European countries.

To link Asia with the EU, which is the aim of China's Silk Road Economic Belt, apart from speeding up approval procedures, it is necessary for the EU to rethink what infrastructure projects are needed and how to link them with regional economic recovery and integration.

EU member countries are eager to launch big projects to boost the regional economy, and China and the EU have been in negotiations to set up a joint fund to invest in infrastructure projects.

China has the capital and expertise. Over the decades, the country has accumulated tremendous engineering expertise, including from construction of the Three Gorges Hydropower Plant, long pipelines to transport oil and natural gas from western parts of China to the east and south, as well as hundreds of thousands of kilometers of railways and highways.

This is a winning combination for many European countries. Britain is already discussing plans for a high-speed railway and a nuclear power station with China. And the Czech Republic, another landlocked country, has indicated its intention to cooperate with China on transport infrastructure, which could help this Central European country connect with the rest of Europe.

Coincidentally, Switzerland recently became an observer to the 16+1 framework between Central and Eastern Europe and China, under which both sides have already started infrastructure cooperation.

By making good use of the experience gathered in the tunnel project, Switzerland could join with China to provide timely and valuable input to help realize fast development in the 16 countries in Central and Eastern Europe. Moreover, such cooperation would be useful in improving the infrastructure in Western Europe.

Both China and the EU should look at the bigger picture when considering future infrastructure and engineering projects. In that context, the admiration of the Swiss project's success by European leaders is hopefully meaningful.

The author is deputy editor of China Daily European Weekly. Contact the writer at fujing@chinadaily.com.cn
NEW ORLEANS -- Col. Cindy Haygood, a native of Leesville, took command of the Louisiana Army National Guards 225th Engineer Brigade from Col. Rodney Painting of Amite during an official ceremony at Esler Air Field in Pineville, June 4.

Haygood is the first female to command the 225th and the first female to lead a second direct reporting unit (DRU).

Congratulations on your second DRU command, Maj. Gen. Glenn H. Curtis, the adjutant general of the LANG, said to Haygood.

In his remarks to the audience, Curtis drew attention to her achievements as an officer in the LANG.

She continues to plow new ground for us. In our history  shes the first female to get a second DRU command, said Curtis.

I cant think of a more significant honor than leading the brigade that I enlisted in as a private first class over 20 years ago, said Haygood. I am truly humbled.

Haygood graduated from Louisiana State University in 1991 and holds a Bachelors of Arts in Economics. Her military education includes Engineer Officer Basic and Advanced Courses, Combined Arms and Services Staff School, Intermediate Level Education Course and Operations Course.

Some of Haygoods awards and decorations include the Bronze Star, the Meritorious Service Medal with one Oak Leaf Cluster, the Army Commendation Medal, the Army Reserve Components Achievement Medal with four Oak Leaf Clusters, the National Defense Medal 1 Bronze Star, the Global War on Terrorism Service Medal, the Armed Forces Service Medal with one Oak Leaf Cluster, and the Overseas Service Ribbon.

Before assuming command of the 225th, Haygood most notably served the Battalion Executive Officer of the 769th Engineer Battalion, the 769th Engineer Battalion Commander, and most recently as the 139th Regional Support Group Commander.

Haygood mobilized and served as the Battalion Executive Officer during Operation Iraqi Freedom in Multinational Division-Baghdad and for Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

Haygood, lives with her husband Bill and their two daughters, Madeline and Lauren, in Gonzales.

Both Painting and Haygood began their military careers in the 225th; Painting enlisted in the 205th in 1985 and Haygood enlisted in the 769th, also in 1985. Both went on to command the battalions they initially enlisted in, and then the entire brigade.

Curtis presented Painting the Legion of Merit for his exceptional leadership while serving as the commander of the 225th for nearly four years.

Congratulations on a successful command, said Curtis to Painting. You did a fabulous job. The Engineer Brigade, measured against the other engineer brigades throughout the Army National Guard, is one of the top units in the nation  a lot of it is because of leadership like Col. Painting provided and what Cindy will provide.

I want to personally thank my staff, said Painting. I want to thank you all for being here and doing what you do.

Painting graduated from Louisiana State University in 1991 and holds a Bachelors of Science degree in Secondary Education. His military education includes Unit Supply Specialist Course, Officer Candidate School, Engineer Officer Basic and Advanced Courses, Combined Arms and Services Staff School and Command and General Staff Officers Course.

Painting has served in various leadership roles during his tenure in the Guard. From his enlistment, he has served in practically every unit within the 205th and filled every position from platoon leader to battalion commander at some point during his career. While deployed to Kandahar (Aug. 2003-May 2004), Painting commanded a forward deployed detachment of the 205th who gave direct support to the First Brigade Combat Team of the 10th Mountain Division. He has also been mobilized for numerous other deployments, state emergencies and stateside and international engineering projects.

Some of Paintings awards and decorations include the Bronze Star, the Meritorious Service Medal, the Global War on Terrorism Expeditionary Medal, Global War on Terrorism Service Medal, the Army Commendation Medal, the Army Achievement Medal, the Army Reserve Components Achievement Medal with one Oak Leaf Cluster, and the Army Overseas Training Ribbon.

Painting and his wife, Monica, have three daughters, Thea, Brendan, and Kobi. They reside in Amite, La.

Both Painting and Haygood began their military careers in the 225th; Painting enlisted in the 205th in 1985 and Haygood enlisted in the 769th, also in 1985. Both went on to command the battalions they initially enlisted in, and then the entire brigade.

The 225th is headquartered at Camp Beauregard in Pineville and is comprised of three engineer battalions: the 527th Engineer Battalion, headquartered in Ruston, the 205th Engineer Battalion, headquartered in Bogalusa and the 528th Engineer Battalion, headquartered in Monroe.

The 225th has a storied past. It has served in support of several campaigns and conflicts, which include the War of 1812, the Civil War, World Wars I and II, Operations Desert Shield, Desert Storm, Iraqi Freedom and Enduring Freedom. The 225th has also provided disaster relief after floods, tornadoes and hurricanes and has provided assistance for community projects across the state.
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By West Kentucky Star Staff

Jun. 09, 2016 | PADUCAH, KY

By West Kentucky Star Staff Jun. 09, 2016 | 05:54 PM | PADUCAH, KY

The Kentucky Department of Education has named seven school districts that serve at-risk students - including one from our area - as Alternative Programs of Distinction.



McCracken County Regional School was recognized Wednesday at the Board's meeting in Frankfort, along with schools in Bullitt County, Covington, Dayton, Fayette County, Jefferson County, and Laurel County.



The seven schools were chosen by a four-member panel from 20 nominees and 16 finalists, based on KDE criteria. Each Program of Distinction receives $2,000 from the KDE and $1,000 from the Kentucky Center for School Safety to support their instructional programs.



An alternative education program helps meet the needs of students that cannot be addressed in a traditional classroom setting. They work with students who are considered state agency children through the Kentucky Educational Collaborative for State Agency Children (KECSAC), the Department of Juvenile Justice, the Department of Community Based Services and/or the Department for Behavioral Health, Developmental and Intellectual Disabilities.



Programs are designed to remediate academic performance, improve behavior or provide enhanced learning experiences.
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By Joe Jackson Jun. 10, 2016 | 09:03 AM | MAYFIELD, KY

A man was arrested on methamphetamine-related charges Friday morning in Graves County.

According to the Mayfield Police Department, an officer made contact with 37-year-old Christopher "Marty" Riley in a parking lot near Cuba Road. As the officer got out of his cruiser to speak with Riley, he saw Riley reach into his pants pocket and throw what appeared to be illegal drugs on the ground.

The discarded item was later determined to be a baggy of methamphetamine. Police said during the course of the incident, Riley became disorderly.

Riley was arrested and lodged in the Graves County Jail. He is charged with possession of methamphetamine, possession of drug paraphernalia, tampering with physical evidence and disorderly conduct.
One arrested, two to the hospital after hit-and-run crash on I-24 in Christian County
Rita Redmond was a true lady who felt that every pupil had something to gift to the world
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The first few scenes of Terence Rattigan's Ross in this rare revival are an absolute revelation. Here we see TE Lawrence, better known as Lawrence of Arabia, in the RAF depot where he has enlisted under the assumed name of Ross. He quickly comes up on a charge for gross insubordination when he says he has been to dinner with "Lord and Lady Astor, Mr and Mrs George Bernard Shaw...and the Archbishop of Canterbury."

His commanding officer naturally assumes that this humble aircraftman is being ironic; of course the joke is that the statement is true. Lawrence is hiding his true self from the world, and seeking a refuge for himself, wracked by guilt about his behaviour and his nature. Yet he simply can't fit in. As Joseph Fiennes plays the scenes with a kind of languid, damaged gentleness, you find yourself thinking 'why on earth don't we see this play more often? It's a lost gem."

Then the action in Adrian Noble's production for the Chichester Festival Theatre switches from 1922 back to the glory years of the Arab Revolt, in 1916-18 when Lawrence corralled the Arab tribes into driving the Turks out of the Middle East. Suddenly you realise exactly why this 1960 play hasn't been seen for so long: it is a mess.

Where the RAF scenes reveals Rattigan's unparalleled ability to suggest suppressed emotion, the main action is of the slightly plodding biographical variety, with people pretending to be Arabs shouting volubly, people pretending to be British army officers barking a lot and great gobbets of script that simply tell you what has been going on off stage. Its origins as a film show  it sprawls across the years, with the action stretching from Lawrence's audacious capture of Aqaba through his capture and degradation by the Turks to his final 'triumph' when the Arabs capture Damascus but are betrayed by diplomatic deals.

Noble does what he can. William Dudley's pillared, sandy set provides a sandy arena for the action, with desks for the scenes back at British HQ and gaudy tents floating down to suggest the desert. The action moves along at a fluid pace, playing up Lawrence's homosexual longing for his desert bodyguards, and his increasing distance from his British commanders. But some things are horribly misjudged: the critical scene where Lawrence is beaten and sodomised by the Turks is oddly and cartoonishly played.

On the other hand, Paul Freeman's General Allenby probes behind the man's bluster to reveal the sharp mind beneath; his encounters with Lawrence have a welcome crackle, a sense of two brave men engaging. But the principal reason to see Ross is Fiennes giving a performance of concentrated stillness and real charisma that consistently manages to suggest the tragic conflict in the soul of this lonely British hero.

Ross runs at Chichester Festival Theatre until 25 June.
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I make films and theatre shows mainly about Britain's pastimes, passions and tribes. Fascinated by anthropology, I immerse myself into communities and become an active participant in their rituals as research for my work.

Hair Peace is an investigative comedy that takes off from my previous show Major Tom - a true story about my basset hound, Major Tom, who won every dog show on the amateur circuit, but "didn't measure up to the breed standard" on the professional circuit. Frustrated that nobody took his personality into account, I entered myself in beauty pageants and became Mrs Brighton.

I was told that to cut it as a beauty queen I needed hair extensions. When I asked where the hair came from, the hairdresser didn't know. "It's just like wearing another woman's knickers that have been washed," she told me. I said no, it's like wearing another woman's real fingernails. And so started my mission.

I wanted to make the invisible visible by finding the faces in this faceless industry. Who does this hair come from? I managed to find a woman in India who would allow me to go on pilgrimage with her to have her head tonsured (shaved).

Hair is a huge export for India and most of the hair comes from temples. Men, women and children shave their heads in a Hindu ritual in temples in Southern India and the temples sell the hair to factories.

I collaborated with a scientist to test the DNA of a ponytail. Even the scientist was shocked by the outcome.

Neeharika wasn't actually that dissimilar to me. She's a writer, a dog owner and is fiercely independent whilst not taking herself too seriously. We hit it off instantly. In India it is hard for a single woman to live independently of her family. She made a deal - if the Gods would help her to build a successful career that would assist her in getting her own place, then she would give them her hair.

Next stop was Russia where hair dealers drove me to rural villages to buy hair. This was a much less idealistic transaction with women selling their hair more out of necessity than a ceremonious ritual. Russian hair is some of the most sought after due to the fact that it is virgin - not bleached or coloured. I visited Russia's only hair factory and learnt that there is not enough hair to satisfy demand.

The final ponytail didn't say where it was from so I collaborated with a scientist to test its DNA. Even the scientist was shocked by the outcome.

The hair extensions business is so successful because customers don't have to visualize the person who has grown the hair they are now wearing. All the people are removed.

Currently, hair entering the country is not considered a body part by HM Revenue and Customs. Hair may not be as important as vital organs but I don't agree with it being dehumanized. Not all hair used in wigs and hair extensions has been given consensually. More questions need to be asked about the origins of this hair.

Hair Peace returns the human stories to this industry. The humour is not only in the absurd but also from watching me adrift in other people's worlds. It is comedy with a social conscience and self-conscious extensions.

Hair Peace runs at Battersea Arts Centre from 13 to 25 June.
Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 09/06/2016 (2330 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

VANCOUVER  British Columbias chief coroner said illicit drug overdoses have become the leading cause of unnatural death in the province, outpacing fatalities from vehicle crashes.

A new report from the BC Coroner Service identifies 308 illicit drug overdose deaths from January through May of this year, compared with 176 deaths in the same period last year.

Chief Coroner Lisa Lapointe said that overdose deaths could amount to 750 people by the end of 2016 if the trend continues. In comparison, there were 300 fatalities from motor vehicle incidents in the province in 2015.

Health Minister Terry Lake said the government is looking for solutions to stop the soaring number of overdose deaths, including adding more safe-consumption sites, similar to the safe-injection facility in Vancouvers Downtown Eastside.

Lake said he wants the federal government to reconsider laws that restrict the opening of such facilities in order to allow health authorities to create more of these services.

We have seen the evidence. We know that we can reduce overdose deaths, we can reduce other related harms, reduce hospitalizations and connect people to services once theyre ready to accept that help.

The minister said Vancouver Coastal Health is planning to open five safe-consumption sites, and health authorities across the province are looking at similar options.

The provinces public health officer declared a state of emergency in April because of the rising numbers of drug-related deaths.

The report said the number of overdose deaths in May was down slightly from the peak in January, but Lake said its too early to determine if that will continue.

One point is not a trend and so we have to make sure we continue to monitor and continue to do all we can to make sure those numbers start to come down, he said.

To prevent more deaths from overdosing, the BC Centre for Disease Control has distributed 8,000 kits containing the opioid antidote naloxone.

Health Canada removed the prescription status on naloxone in March to improve accessibility.

The kits are now available at over 100 establishments across the province and 1,200 kits have already been used to reverse overdoses, said Dr. Mark Tyndall, executive director of the Centre for Disease Control.

The option to get it out of pharmacies has also been very helpful and we need to make sure people are aware they can pick it up, he said.

Tyndall said the kits have a larger dose of the antidote than what was previously prescribed for opioids in order to be effective on the more dangerous substance fentanyl.

The coroners report shows fentanyl was involved in 56 per cent of deaths in the first four months of this year compared with just five per cent of drug-related deaths in 2012.

Tyndall said more services are needed, including rapid access to detox programs, to help people with addictions.

The health minister acknowledged there is a gap and said the government is investing in new services and centres for mental health and substance abuse.

However, Lake said you cant flip a switch and it will take time for new services to have an effect.
Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 10/06/2016 (2329 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Skin cancer is the most common type of cancer, and up to nine out of 10 cases are caused by sun exposure. Some forms of skin cancer are more serious than others, but most are treatable, especially when caught early.

Of the three main forms of skin cancer, melanoma is the most dangerous. In Manitoba, we have seen an incredible increase in melanoma rates. This is, in part, due to the depletion of the ozone layer and the strength of the sun, and in part due to the popularity of a tanned appearance and the amount of sun exposure Manitobans are getting.

Some people are born with a higher risk for melanoma  fair skin that burns easily, developing freckles when exposed to the sun; more than 50 moles on their entire body; red or blond hair; and a family history of melanoma. Other risk factors are related to behaviour  a history of severe sunburns, use of tanning beds and other excessive exposures to ultraviolet light. While chances of developing melanoma are greater for people who have multiple-risk factors, people with low risk (such as darker skin) can develop it, too.

David Goldman / The Associated Press FILES When detected and treated early, people with melanoma have a 90 per cent survival rate.

There is a high survival rate (about 90 per cent) because most melanomas are found at an early stage. Additionally, the past several years have seen tremendous advances in treatment. Melanoma is visible on the skins surface, and in its early stages, tumours are thin and can be surgically removed fairly easily. This is why it is important to check your skin regularly.

Melanomas often appear on the arms, legs, back, scalp or face, but can develop anywhere, even on the hands and feet. This is why it helps to have someone check your whole body. Melanoma can appear as a new mole or darker spot on the skin (brown or black, though some melanomas have a mix of colours, including blue, grey and red), or can develop from an existing mole.

If you notice any changes to your skin, get checked out by your dermatologist or family doctor right away.

In the meantime, protect your skin to keep your risk of all skin cancers low. You cant undo what youve already done to your skin, but you can protect yourself from future damage.

And most importantly, enjoy your summer.

Dr. Marni C. Wiseman, MD, FRCPC, dermatologist and chairwoman of the skin cancer disease site group, CancerCare Manitoba
Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 10/06/2016 (2329 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

OTTAWA  In 2025, the CF-18s will not be able to fly, and it is important that we move very quickly in filling this capability gap.  Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan



Figuring out which fighter jet should replace Canadas existing fleet of CF-18s is an argument that dates back to the 1990s.

During last years federal election, the Liberals promised to back away from Canadas earlier commitments to the controversial F-35 fighter jet and hold an open competition to choose a new aircraft.

Reports have emerged the now-governing Liberals may instead be moving ahead with hand-picking a plane via a sole-sourced contract, though Sajjan insisted this week that no decision has been made.

A prompt decision is required, he said, because without one, the Air Force will soon lack the suitable equipment to meet its obligations  what Sajjan has been referring to all week as a capability gap.

The Conservatives, who while in government went to lengths to extend the lifespan of the CF-18s, insist there is no such gap.

So is Sajjans statement accurate? Is the procurement debacle surrounding the CF-18s on the verge of rendering the Royal Canadian Air Force incapable of fulfilling its mandate?

Spoiler alert: The Canadian Press Baloney Meter is a dispassionate examination of political statements culminating in a ranking of accuracy on a scale of no baloney to full of baloney (complete methodology below).

This one earns a rating of some baloney  the statement is partly accurate but important details are missing. Heres why.

THE FACTS:

When they were purchased in the 1980s, the life expectancy of the CF-18s was about 20 years, but a series of upgrades in 2006 and again in 2010 extended that until 2020.

The previous Conservative government had decided the F-35 was the plane to replace them and aimed to have them in Canada beginning in 2016.

But political wrangling and technical issues downed that plan, and prompted the Tories to promise millions to boost the existing fleets lifespan again.

Thats why the now opposition Conservatives claim theres no capability gap  upgrades could keep the planes flying until 2025.

The fleet is slowly going through the first set of upgrades  structural changes that will keep them in the air. But the second phase, the software and technology updates to ensure they can operate alongside planes from other countries, has yet to begin.

The Air Force has two standing commitments with Norad and NATO to have a set number of planes ready to go at all times.

It also needs a specific number of planes for training, to say nothing of the fact they need to be ready to deploy whenever called upon by the government, such as was the case with the recently concluded bombing campaign in Iraq.

The military says it needs 65 planes to meet all of its requirements. They currently have 77.

WHAT THE EXPERTS SAY

If the maximum response to Norad and NATO were required at the same time, and if the fleets current size continued to shrink by attrition, its theoretically possible the Air Force wouldnt be able to meet its obligations, said Dave Perry, a defence analyst for the Conference of Defence Associations Institute.

The Air Force is currently managing the risk that gap represents, a spokeswoman for minister said in an email.

The commander of the Air Force recently told a House of Commons committee that when present commitments are taken into account, the number of planes they need is 65.

In the future, would we need more flexibility? Would we need to consider replacing attrition aircraft if we were to lose some? said Lt.-Gen. Mike Hood.

Those are good questions to consider and think about, but at the end of the day, defence has to be affordable, and in todays situation and the extant commitments we have, 65 is the number that weve derived.

So if there are 77 planes right now and the military says they only need 65, the question becomes why the government thinks the capability gap is an urgent problem, Perry said.

It seems that the current government is interpreting the same situation that the previous government was living with as a problem.

Fewer planes are likely required in part because new technology allows more training to happen in simulators, he added.

Extending the lifespan of the CF-18s until 2025 doesnt mean new planes wont be required until then. Theres a transition period, so the first new plane would have to arrive in 2020.

Alan Williams, a former assistant deputy minister for materiel at the Department of National Defence, said that gives the government ample time to run an open competition.

That could be even faster than sole-sourcing a new plane, Williams said.

When a contract is sole-sourced, all the terms and conditions of the acquisition need to be hammered out after the company is selected. In a competition, the conditions are all laid out first, so anyone that bids knows whats required  and that takes less time.

The question isnt whether or not we have a capability gap, the question is whether or not we need to sole-source because we think there is, Williams said.

And that is 100 per cent not true.

THE VERDICT

The issue of whether there is in fact a capability gap appears open to interpretation, said both Perry and Williams.

How fast the government needs to move to close it is also a matter of debate, they said.

The Air Force commander himself told the committee theres time.

Im confident that if a decision were taken, certainly in the next five years, well be in a comfortable position changing that aircraft, Hood said.

For that reason, Sajjans statement earns a ranking of some baloney: the statement is partly accurate but important details are missing.

METHODOLOGY

The Baloney Meter is a project of The Canadian Press that examines the level of accuracy in statements made by politicians. Each claim is researched and assigned a rating based on the following scale:

No baloney  the statement is completely accurate.

A little baloney  the statement is mostly accurate but more information is required.

Some baloney  the statement is partly accurate but important details are missing.

A lot of baloney  the statement is mostly inaccurate but contains elements of truth.

Full of baloney  the statement is completely inaccurate.

Note to readers: This is a corrected story. A previous version incorrectly stated Lt.-Gen. Mike Hoods rank.
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This article was published 10/06/2016 (2329 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

MONTREAL  The Crown prosecutor in the $120-million Cinar fraud case is asking a judge to sentence the three accused to the maximum penalty of 10 years in prison.

Matthew Ferguson said in court Friday the crimes tarnished Canadas reputation in international markets and that there are countless victims of the three men.

Ronald Weinberg, whose Cinar animation company created popular childrens shows such as Arthur and Caillou, was found guilty last week of illegally diverting the firms funds to himself.

A jury convicted Weinberg and former financial advisers John Xanthoudakis and Lino Matteo on most of the charges they faced.

Weinbergs lawyer, Annie Emond, told the judge she thought a more appropriate sentence would be five years.

The fraud took place between 1998 and 2000.

Sentencing arguments will continue next week.
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This article was published 10/06/2016 (2329 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

ST. JOHNS, N.L.  Statoil says a 19-month drilling campaign in the Flemish Pass off the coast of Newfoundland resulted in two discoveries of oil in the Bay du Nord area.

The Norwegian company says in a statement the discoveries, at the Bay de Verde and Baccalieu prospects, have reduced uncertainty about the commercial potential of the field.

Reserves for the Bay du Nord site were originally estimated between 300 and 600 million barrels, and Statoil says it appears the final volumes will be at the lower end of that range.

Nine wells were drilled near the discovery, about 500 kilometres east of St. Johns, N.L. Only 17 wells in total have been drilled in the Flemish Pass Basin, a harsh environment.

A senior vice-president for Statoil Exploration said the company was encouraged by the new discoveries.

This drilling campaign has been critical both to maturing the Bay du Nord discovery as well as evolving our knowledge of the greater basin and Newfoundland offshore  which remains a core exploration area for Statoil, said Erling Vagnes in a release.

The drilling program began in November 2014 and was extended by a month to allow for the drilling of the Baccalieu well.

Statoil says it is still assessing the commercial potential of the Bay du Nord discovery.

The recent drilling program has been critical to Statoils continued assessment of Bay du Nord, and work is underway to evaluate the results related to proceeding with a potential Statoil-operated development in the Flemish Pass Basin, said Paul Fulton, president of Statoil Canada.
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MONTREAL  Via Rail says it has received notice that one of its unions could go on strike as early as Monday.

The Montreal-based passenger rail service got the 72-hour notice from Unifor, which represents 1,800 Via employees who work in stations, telephone sales offices, maintenance centres and administrative offices.

Via Rail says the notice is part of normal negotiations under federal law and doesnt necessarily mean there will be a strike or lockout.

The earliest service disruptions could begin would be Monday just after midnight.

The federal Crown corporation says no trains are affected by the strike notice and it is encouraged by the positive tone of negotiations between the two sides.

The government-owned railway carries about 10,000 passengers a day, on average.

Via Rail says if a strike begins, trains in transit would complete their trips before all services would be suspended for the duration of the strike and until normal operations can safely resume.

Negotiations began on Oct. 30 and are being conducted with the assistance of mediators assigned by the federal government.
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DELTA, B.C.  The owner of a unique golden eagle statue worth millions of dollars is offering a $10,000 reward for its return after a violent robbery last month in suburban Vancouver.

Ron Shore issued an emotional plea Thursday for the gold and jewel-encrusted statue to be returned.

To say that Ive put my heart, my soul and my passion into creating this one-of-a-kind eagle is really an understatement, he told a news conference.

A golden eagle statue is shown in a handout photo. The British Columbia owner of a unique golden eagle statue worth millions of dollars is offering a $10,000 reward for its safe return.THE CANADIAN PRESS/HO-Ron Shore MANDATORY CREDIT

It is my lifes work and when it was taken from me, the potential of achieving my vision to raise money for breast cancer research was stolen from me.

He said over a short period he lost several family members to cancer  his brother, mother and sister-in-law, who gave birth and died two days later.

About two years ago, he was invited to be a part of the $260-million Marcial de Gomar gem collection because of his passion for cancer research fundraising, he said.

Shore said 40 craftsmen spent 4,000 hours creating the diamond-studded eagle statue, which sits on a base holding a nearly 13-carat emerald. It was recently valued at $7 million, he added.

He had shown the statue at a Vancouver art exhibition earlier on May 29, the day it was stolen, with the hope of finding an interested buyer.

As he was walking to his car in Ladner at 10 p.m. that night, he said two men ambushed him.

Shore said one man hit him over the head with what appeared to be a large flashlight and screamed Give us the bag!

There was a great deal of blood coming out of my head, he said. I suffered a concussion and still suffer from being very dizzy and wobbly on my feet.

Shore said the man stole two bags from him  one containing the statue and another containing a decoy statue that was the same size and weight but worth substantially less.

I chased him, I ran him down, I put my hand in the (vehicle) door and the door was slammed on my hand. I reached in through the open window and tried to grab him.

He said the man rolled up the window and began to drive off, dragging him for about 200 metres. The scarring, road rash and swelling has made it extremely difficult for him to walk, he said.

Shore, a retired navy officer, said he could only afford to borrow $10,000 for a reward because he went into debt and placed a mortgage on his house to create the eagle.

My entire effort is and always will be to recover the eagle safely, and Im really not interested in the insurance money because it doesnt cover what I put into it, he said.

Det. Sgt. Brad Cooper of Delta police confirmed that two people ambushed Shore and dragged him several metres along the road.

Shore was hospitalized for injuries to his head and legs and was released later that night, Cooper said.

Police received multiple 911 calls, have taken several witness statements and are reviewing surveillance video, he added.

Officers are looking for a black or dark blue SUV and a smaller red or burgundy SUV. Anyone who may have witnessed the attack or seen the vehicles is asked to contact police.

As the police, we follow the evidence, said Cooper. Every person we speak to provides a piece of the pie.

 Follow @ellekane on Twitter.
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Canadas welcome to refugees keeps spreading, with the City of Selkirk the latest community to sponsor refugees.

About 25 churches in the Selkirk area hope to raise as much as $100,000 with a banquet Saturday that includes the Netley Hutterite Ladies Choir, and cinnamon knots, probably made by some of those same choir members from the Netley Creek Colony.

We saw all the stuff Altona was doing and wanted to get involved, said Lloyd Thomas, an organizer and a member of Selkirk United Church.

Communities such as Dauphin and Austin have also recently sponsored refugees.

Whats gotten into people? Thomas was asked.

They just need something a little brighter than watching Donald Trump, said Thomas. Its anti-badness. People just really want to be part of making some good news.

Thomas said there has been no trouble getting the churches united for the cause. The group calls itself the Red River Churches Refugee Team, and even includes a non-denominational seasonal church for cottagers at Hecla Island.

The group is sponsoring three families in the immediate term and hopes to add more. A Mothers Day Walk raised $7,000.

We want a small community here of people who can interact with each other, said Thomas. Well see how fundraising goes but wed like to have five families.

The new arrivals will be announced on Saturday. They are Muslim, Thomas said. So while Dannys Whole Hog is catering the event, the banquet will serve beef and chicken, not pork.

We didnt feel right serving pork to raise money for people from the Muslim community, said Thomas. Pork is a forbidden food among Muslims.

There is a craft sale from 3 p.m. to 8 p.m., old time music by Old Time Friends, and a silent auction. Ray Loewen, who has spearheaded sponsorship of refugees in Altona, will be a guest speaker.

About 350 of 1,000 tickets have sold so far, and organizers had to estimate by Wednesday how many placings theyd need. The churches are hoping to sell at least 500 tickets. Tickets are $25 apiece.

Another organizer, former St. Andrews mayor Don Forfar, said people are either strongly in favour of sponsoring refugees or dead set against it. It seems like 80 to 20, with 80 per cent strongly supportive, he said.

Funds raised are for accommodations and food for the new arrivals. Items such as furniture, dishes and cutlery are being donated by congregations.

The Selkirk Recreation Complex is lending its facilities for free. Doors open at 5 p.m. Saturday, with dinner at 6.

It will probably wrap up by about 8:30 p.m., Thomas said. People interested in obtaining tickets can email Thomas at lthomas@highspeedcrow.ca.

bill.redekop@freepress.mb.ca
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The vacancy rate in Winnipeg is expected to rise to three per cent this year, but thats not helping those in the most need  big newcomer families living on tight budgets, say experts and advocates.

Before the influx of big families of Syrian refugees arrived in Winnipeg this winter, the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. estimated in October just 68 vacant three-bedroom rental units were available.

With close to 800 refugees resettling in the city, housing has been a major issue.

BORIS MINKEVICH / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS City Church Pastor Tim Nielsen (from left), Tom Fox, Orly Friesen and Bernie Bilecki are working to complete Naomi House at 700-702 Ellice Avenue in time to house refugees in the fall.

The challenge is to find something big enough to accommodate large families, CMHC market analyst Braden Batch said. In Winnipeg in 2010, the vacancy rate was 0.8 per cent, he said. Its grown every year since then and is now close to three per cent.

Construction of one- and two-bedroom apartments and condos is up but so is migration to Manitoba, said Batch who is based in Calgary. Theres a steady stream of immigrants and refugees arriving and fewer people leaving to work in Saskatchewan and the Alberta oilpatch. The vacancy rate may be three per cent but the available housing is not the kind of housing a lot of the neediest people need, said Jino Distasio, director of the Institute of Urban Studies at the University of Winnipeg.

We havent solved the affordable housing crisis in Manitoba and Winnipeg, Distasio said. The gap between shelter rates and market rates that one might pay for a three-bedroom apartment is escalating, he said.

Were doing a really good job of providing services, said Distasio. Where people are stumbling is finding the right types of places for people to live.

He said a residence near the university with some larger units will be available in August.

And IRCOM II  newcomer housing with units for larger families on Isabel Street  is expected to open this fall.

In the meantime, its a scramble to find housing, said Karin Gordon, the resettlement director for Hospitality House Refugee Ministry.

A lot of it is not affordable, she said. The charitable organization helps to privately sponsor refugees and one of the biggest challenges is finding homes for big families, especially those with special needs, she said.

Ive developed contacts in the private rental market, she said. Theyre former immigrants themselves who are now successful business people.

Sometimes they can help, sometimes they cant, she said. Right now Gordon is searching for a home for a family arriving in two weeks. The home needs to be wheelchair-accessible and affordable. Im trying to find public housing for them tout suite.

CMHCs spring housing market outlook released May 18 predicts the overall apartment vacancy rate in Winnipeg will continue to edge higher in the next two years, rising to three per cent in October from 2.9 per cent a year earlier. Its expected to jump to 3.2 per cent by October 2017.

Similarly, the average monthly rent for a two-bedroom home in the city is expected to rise to $1,075 this year from $1,045 in 2015. Its predicted to jump to $1,100 in 2017.

Codi Guenther, executive director of New Journey Housing, said the amount allocated for rent for government-assisted refugees hasnt kept up with market rents. Theyll spend most of their total income on rent, Guenther said at the resource centre for newcomer housing. The allocations are pointless.

Distasio said decent affordable housing is an investment. If families have the right type of housing, then you make sure theyre here for the long term and that they have stability and success.

carol.sanders@freepress.mb.ca
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This article was published 09/06/2016 (2330 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

After nearly two years of planning, fundraising and negotiating with the city, the proposal by the Kilcona Park Dog Club to bring new amenities to the park may have bitten the dust.

The club was the recipient earlier this week of a long-awaited lease-agreement proposal, which city administration told the club it needed in order to proceed with upgrades and applications for outside funding, only to find that it contained requirements for volunteers to provide services such as snow removal, grass mowing, garbage removal, clearing trails, security and policing at the park. It further required that the club pay a non-refundable application fee of $500 and an annual fee of $250 to use their own fundraising dollars to pay for improvements.

The terms and conditions that the administration has proposed will make it impossible for KPDC to sign a lease agreement, Donna Henry, the KPDC president, said in a letter to the city.

PHIL HOSSACK / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS People and their dogs gather at the Kilcona Park off-leash area Thursday. The Kilcona Park Dog Club is having trouble coming to a lease agreement with the city.

Our hope is that this can be resolved. Were working really hard to make improvements to the park and our club. Our board doesnt think it should be this difficult for volunteer organizations to give back to the community so were really hoping it can be resolved, Henry said. In terms of payment, our volunteers spend a tremendous amount of time and energy for park improvements.

Henry said the club, as a park steward, performs mass cleanups of the park twice per year, has participated in putting new wood chips on the trails, planted trees, installed a cigarette-butt receptacle, spent $20,000 to install wheelchair-accessible picnic table and installed six dog-waste bag dispensers. She said the park is a public space so everything the club does in the park are for use by anyone in the park.

Area Coun. Jeff Browaty, who with Coun. Russ Wyatt and Coun. Jason Schreyer has been supporting the clubs efforts, said he had a meeting Wednesday with Mayor Brian Bowman and city administrators to express his outrage at the KPDCs situation.

I dont think its all right that a group of volunteers who are doing fundraising should be put through as much red tape and hassles as they are. When youve got groups like this that are trying to do good for the city, they shouldnt be given nearly the level of runaround theyve had, Browaty said.

In this lease agreement, the whole idea that they should be cutting the grass and picking up garbage and what I would consider basic park services, I think that is, honestly, insulting.

In a response to the citys lease-agreement proposal, Henry said she suggested the KPDC proceed with a scaled-back version of the plan without a lease agreement and eliminate the splash pad. The scaled-back plan would include installing a water line and electrical wiring from the picnic shelter to the south side of the parking lot, installing a public drinking fountain and small rinse station.

Henry said the club has so far raised $40,000 that could pay for those amenities and has a chance to raise more money at Saturdays Winnipeg Dog Fest at Kilcona Park with the sale of gluten-free treats for dogs and gourmet hot dogs and burgers for humans.

The current lack of fresh water available is an ongoing safety issue at the park as dogs drinking from the retention pond often become ill from bacteria and other organisms in the standing water.

However, there is still a bit of life bubbling in the spray pad project.

The reason the club had applied in the first place for the lease agreement was it was told by the Planning, Property and Development Department that it needed a lease agreement with the city so the club could apply for Canada 150 funding, a federal government community infrastructure initiative, which would pay for the spray pad.

Browaty said he never agreed with that course of action in the first place and wants the city to apply for the funding on behalf of the club.

A meeting between city officials and the KPDC is expected to take place on June 16. The deadline for the Canada 150 funding application is June 22.

Were patient. Im not going to say that its been painful, I can just say that weve been working on raising money for the splash pad for about 2 1/2 years, Henry said. We want to be able to continue to donate things to the park. Right now, Kilcona Park Dog Club is the only group putting any money into Kilcona Park.

ashley.prest@freepress.mb.ca
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This article was published 10/06/2016 (2329 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

OTTAWA  English Canada is one step closer to a gender-neutral national anthem after a dying MP managed to get himself to the House of Commons for a crucial vote on his bill.

Mauril Belanger, the MP for Ottawa-Vanier, was diagnosed with ALS last fall just weeks after he was re-elected for the eighth time. His health is deteriorating rapidly. He lost the ability to speak quickly and now uses a wheelchair.

In January he used an iPad digital voice app to introduce his bill to change the lyrics of O Canada from in all thy sons command to in all of us command. He introduced a similar bill in 2014 and it was defeated at second reading in April, 2015.

Adrian Wyld / The Canadian Press Members of Parliament applaud Ottawa-Vanier MP Mauril Belanger as his private members bill on changing the Canadian anthem is debated in the House of Commons Friday.

The Liberals and NDP have joined forces to try and get the bill passed in time for Belanger to see it done and are accusing the Conservatives of refusing Belanger that one accomplishment by blocking attempts to pass the bill quickly. They argue the bill has more than enough votes to see it pass eventually so all the Conservatives are doing by preventing swift passage is denying Belanger the opportunity to see it happen.

Their conduct thus far has not been appropriate in the circumstances, said Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale. They think theyre standing up for a principle. What theyre doing is discriminating against a disabled person, and I think  I think thats very bad form.

The Conservatives say their objections are not about Belanger but about the fact most Conservative MPs have been told by their constituents to oppose the change.

Im thinking about the bill and our job that we have to do here as far as representing our constituents, Manitoba Conservative MP Candice Bergen said Friday. But I think all of us obviously feel  feel a lot of affection for Mauril and feel very, very sorry for what hes going through, what his family is going through. So I know its not about Mauril at all. Its just in terms of that its about  for me, its about the bill and being able to debate it fully.

Bergen said she is herself torn about the bills intentions, but has heard from many constituents who do not approve of it.

The bill was set for a vote at report stage Friday morning but, as the bills sponsor, Belanger had to be there for the vote to take place. The Liberals were not sure if that was possible, so on Thursday afternoon Liberal Whip Andrew Leslie sought unanimous consent to have the bill stand in his name if Belanger couldnt make it. Several Conservatives said no.

On Friday morning, Belanger arrived with medical aides, in a wheelchair, for the vote. It passed. The bill will now come up for third and final reading next week, and then go to the Senate for debate there. Belanger will have to be there for the vote next week as well unless the Conservatives give permission for another MP to sponsor it.

Attempts to change the anthems English lyrics have been made in Parliament three other times since 2001. As well, in 2010 Former Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced in the throne speech plans to change the lyrics but the Conservatives received such a massive negative response about the idea, the government backed down just days later.

A poll last month found 62 per cent of Canadians support changing the lyrics.

mia.rabson@freepress.mb.ca
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This article was published 10/06/2016 (2329 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Education Minister Ian Wishart has signed off on the closing of 73-year-old Chapman School.

June 30 will be the final day for the tiny school built with scarce materials and manpower during World War Two.

Enrolment has been steadily dwindling but the building will last at least one more year  Westgate Mennonite Collegiate will lease the building for one year in September during construction at its grades 7 to 12 school in Armstrongs Point.

WAYNE GLOWACKI / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS FILES Chapman School

And most crucially for school boards in Manitoba hoping the new provincial government elected April 19 might let them close other small schools with declining enrolment, Wishart made it clear he will not lift the moratorium on closures imposed by the NDP in 2008.

Parents of the remaining 51 Chapman students in the citys smallest public school have voted with their feet by asking Pembina Trails School Division to transfer all their children to Royal School for September.

The only way a public school can be closed in Manitoba is by parents emptying the school and taking their kids elsewhere, literally leaving enrolment at zero, or by a schools having such grave structural problems that it makes no sense to fix it up.

Graysville School closed after parents moved the last few kids into Carman, Reyonds Community School in Prawda closed when the final seven children switched to Whitemouth or Falcon.

Pembina Trails School Division superintendent Ted Fransen said the division will save $450,000 a year by not keeping Chapman open.

No one is losing a job, he pointed out.

Even though the Pallister government is looking for efficiencies and ways to reduce spending, the moratorium stays.

The new government is all about improving the quality of education, not saving money on education, said a government source, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Said Wishart through an aide: We are focused on improving educational outcomes for Manitoba students.

The Pembina Trails School Division has noted that the parents of children who attend Chapman School have requested that their children be allowed to attend the nearby Royal School. Therefore, in accordance with the provisions of The Public Schools Act, the Pembina Trails School Division has been authorized to close Chapman School, and has been instructed to continue to accommodate the needs of Chapman Day Care.

We are not considering lifting the moratorium on closing small schools, declared Wishart.

When the NDP suddenly imposed the moratorium eight years ago, school trustees had voted to close 13 schools across the province on June 30 of 2008 or 2009.

Fransen would not release how much Westgate will pay to lease the school. The province said it would be cool to any lease that lasted more than a year, he said.

When the Free Press first reported six weeks ago that Chapman parents had emptied the school, The ink on your story was hardly dry when the phone started ringing, Fransen said.

The timing was almost divine  we needed something for just a year, Westgate principal Bob Hummelt said Friday.

Westgate plans major reconstruction of the grades 7 to 12 school, which has more than six times Chapmans enrolment.

Its going to be tight in that building, said Hummelt, whos negotiating additional space in Chapmans area, including gym time at a community centre hes not naming until arrangements are final.

Hummelt assured people in Charleswood that the one-year move would not create traffic and parking problems. Very few of our kids take vehicles here, he said. The 67 bus stops right at the door.

Theres wonderful bike paths there  I cycle right past Chapman on my way to Westgate from his home in St. James, Hummelt said.

Fransen said that Pembina Trails will soon begin exploring the future of the school and the property. Provincial rules require it be offered to public bodies first.

nick.martin@freepress.mb.ca
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Manitobas First Nations want a better deal on gaming, one that wont keep casinos away from urban centres and will recognize First Nations rights to launch online gaming.

Its going to be the full scope of gaming, games of chance, including electronic and online gaming, Manitoba Grand Chief Derek Nepinak said in a phone interview Thursday.

At a two-day assembly that wrapped up at Brokenheads South Beach conference and casino centre Thursday, Manitoba chiefs authorized the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs to draft a law for First Nations by First Nations on how to control gaming in the province.

MIKE DEAL / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS FILES Chiefs see gaming as one way to lever their communities out of poverty and despair and bring in much-needed revenue.

Relations between Manitoba and First Nations over gaming have been always been strained; after a series of raids on reserves, the two sides sat down and came to an agreement in 2005.

Under that agreement the province and the AMC struck a partnership to develop five First Nation-owned casinos across Manitoba. But the agreement was always the subject of friction.

We were always pushed to the side. We were never able to fully utilize our VLT agreements or the expansion of our casino and gaming centres, Nepinak said.

Over the years, indigenous leaders have been rankled by decisions at the municipal level as well, in Brandon, Headingley and Thompson, which have all vetoed First Nations casinos inside their city limits.

To date, three of the five promised First Nations casinos are up and running: in Brokenhead Ojibway Nation, about 60 kilometres north of Winnipeg; in Carberry, to the east of Brandon; and at The Pas with Opaskwayak Cree Nation.

Thompson subsequently relented on its objections, and a fourth casino is slated to be developed in that city. There are currently no talks on where to locate the fifth casino, Nepinak said.

With the previous NDP government, there seemed to be a two-tiered economic system in gaming, one that gave access to premium gaming markets in the urban centres to private, commercial and corporate interests. It bypassed the joint agreements made between ourselves and the provincial government, Nepinak said.

Thats unacceptable going forward. We want to assert a greater control, the grand chief said.

Manitobas First Nations are among the poorest in Canada, with soaring unemployment rates, high rates of social problems, disease and bad housing. Chiefs see gaming as one way to leverage their communities out of poverty and despair and bring in much-needed revenue.

The election of the Conservatives under Premier Brian Pallister presents a good opportunity to change a deal drafted under former NDP administrations, a deal that never worked, Nepinak said.

We want to recognize some of the flaws in the previous joint gaming table we had, recognizing the differential treatment we received, the economic disadvantage that was created under that system, Nepinak said.

The grand chief indicated that while Manitoba First Nations want to work with the province, they are also determined to get more say in gaming on reserve lands, even without provincial agreement.

The stakes are high, and the pressure is on partly because there are several urban reserves slated to be developed outside Winnipeg in coming years.

We going to implement our new law, hopefully in collaboration with this new provincial government, get affirmation, recognition of our right to exercise gaming inherently and hopefully move forward on a positive basis, Nepinak said.

The province, meanwhile, was unable to respond to the chiefs intentions, at least publicly Thursday.

Regulation of the Liquor and Gaming Act falls under the Department of Justice, a provincial spokeswoman said. She added Justice Minister Heather Stefanson was in budget estimates all day and couldnt be reached for comment.

Indigenous gaming is also the subject of a national indigenous initiative. The Assembly of First Nations, which represents chiefs across Canada, is interested in developing a national indigenous gaming association, and the regional chief in charge of it is Manitobas Kevin Hart.

Hart said hes studying what other First Nations in Canada and the United States have accomplished; its a patchwork, with some provinces refusing to come to any agreement with First Nations on gaming.

alexandra.paul@freepress.mb.ca
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This article was published 09/06/2016 (2330 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

It was a seemingly routine, quiet night on the graveyard shift  until a masked man stormed into her restaurant with murder on his mind.

The end result was a horrific attack Tina Schultz will never forget. The former waitress at the Pembina Highway Salisbury House told jurors Thursday about the deadly ambush she witnessed in September 2012.

Schultz took the stand at the trial of Devin Hall, who has pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder of 23-year-old Jeffrey Lau and attempted murder of one of Laus five friends who was sitting with him.

I saw a male walking up from the right side of the front windows. He was walking with intent, like he was going to do something, Schultz testified. She had been dealing with a pair of other customers who were settling their bill at the front counter.

Schultz said the man  wearing a grey hoodie over his head and with a white cloth covering his face  immediately went towards table #63, which is where Lau and his friends were enjoying a 3 a.m. meal following a night of bar-hopping.

He walked in, he turned left and then started shooting. Right away, said Schultz. The gunman never said a word. Schultz immediately ran into the back area of the restaurant, taking refuge in an office and calling 911. She was soon joined by the cook, who was the only other employee on duty that night.

Schultz estimated there were as many as 50 gunshots in less than two minutes. There was also plenty of screaming. She emerged from hiding only after the bullets stopped flying.

I didnt hear no more shooting. I wanted to go check on them, she told jurors.

It was a awful scene. Lau was down on the ground, with two friends frantically trying to revive him. The other injured man, his arm and ankle shattered by gunfire, was being tended to by the other men.

They were applying pressure and they were screaming, said Schultz. Things got even more chaotic when police and paramedics arrived and tried to assist Lau. One of the dying mans friends, shirtless and covered in blood, refused to stop his own rescue efforts and had to be pulled off by officers.

In the process, he flipped a table and was taken to the ground and handcuffed.

He was screaming for someone to help his friend. Save my friend, save my friend, someone please save my friend, said Schultz.

Jurors have also watched a 15-second surveillance video from inside the restaurant which captured part of the attack. The video was publicly released by the judge in the case on Thursday afternoon. June 9, 2016.- deadly September 2012 ambush inside the popular Salisbury House diner on Pembina Highway. Devin Kingsley Hall, 30, has pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder of 23-year-old Jeffrey Lau and attempted murder of the Crown's first witness as the trial began. Winnipeg

Lau would be rushed to hospital and pronounced dead on arrival. The other injured man spent more than three months in hospital recovering from serious injuries and undergoing extensive surgeries.

Schultz told jurors Thursday she didnt get a good look at the gunman, only to describe him as five-foot-seven with a slim build. The man who was shot but survived testified Wednesday he also couldnt identify who attacked them but told jurors he believes this was a hit.

He said theres no doubt Lau  a known drug dealer  was the target. He said he was struck twice only because he happened to be sitting next to Lau. Their other four friends at the table werent injured.

If he had wanted to kill the whole table he would have shot everyone at the table, the man said. His name is protected by a court-ordered publication ban.

The Crown has told jurors DNA evidence will play a big part of their case, which is expected to last three weeks. Jurors have also watched a 15-second surveillance video from inside the restaurant which captured part of the attack. The video was publicly released by the judge in the case on Thursday afternoon.

www.mikeoncrime.com
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This article was published 09/06/2016 (2330 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Education Minister Ian Wishart says he fears for the accreditation of a troubled midwifery program at the University College of the North.

The decade-old program has produced very few graduates, and the province had to ask the University of Manitoba to get involved in running the program, Wishart said Thursday.

At UCN, over eight years (since the first graduating class), they had a total of only 14 graduates, Wishart told the legislature.

RUTH BONNEVILLE / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS FILES Education Minister Ian Wishart says problems have "flared up again" at a troubled midwifery program at the University College of the North.

We want to make sure those students are well looked after, he said. The province is meeting with both UCN and the U of M to put this program in a sustainable format.

He said that doesnt exist now.

Opposition health critic Matt Wiebe said the midwifery students are confused, undervalued and betrayed. They were not given a seat at the table.

Wiebe accused Wishart of planning to cut the program, which the minister immediately rejected. The NDP was the government when the problems developed, he retorted.

No, theres no plans to cut that program, Wishart later told reporters. We thought (problems) had been resolved, but theyve flared up again.

The College of Midwifery has concerns about continuing the programs accreditation, he said.

The program will continue on in some form, but there will have to be some changes, Wishart said. It may even be necessary to shift northern parts of the program to Winnipeg.

It depends whether we get accreditation for the program in the north. In the south, at the University of Manitoba, its been much more successful.

The market demand for midwives is still strong, Wishart said.

An official with UCN said the NDP had promised $844,000 for the program in January, which has not been forthcoming in the budget.

UCN has been working collaboratively with the University of Manitoba to refine and deliver the midwifery program and to ensure student supports are in place, he said.

The program is scheduled for delivery at the U of M; however, in a partnership approach with an objective of ensuring consideration for northern and northern aboriginal student participation, an objective that was paramount in the original intent of the program.

The low number of graduates in the north dates back to 2006 and the intent of the partnership approach between UCN and UM is to ensure that while the program is being delivered in Winnipeg, northern and northern aboriginal student participation remains a priority, as does the desire of graduates to practice in the north, said the UCN official in an emailed statement.

nick.martin@freepress.mb.ca
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This article was published 09/06/2016 (2330 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A 73-year-old man suffering from dementia and suspected Alzheimers has been sentenced to three years in prison for sexually abusing six of his young granddaughters.

The accused, who cant be identified in order to protect the victims, was expressionless during Thursdays court hearing. When asked by provincial court Judge Carena Roller if he knew what was happening, the man replied Not really.

He was then led away in handcuffs by sheriffs officers as several family members looked on. They included his wife of nearly 50 years, who continues to support him despite what he did to their grandchildren. He was carrying a large plastic bag filled with pill bottles he will need to treat his various medical ailments, which also include a heart condition.

Any sentence of penitentiary term will be highly significant, said defence lawyer Saul Simmonds. He noted how the United States is building so-called geriatric prisons while no such facilities exist in Canada to cater to offenders like his client.

The Crown had been seeking up to six years in prison, while Simmonds asked for two. Roller said she would have gone much higher if not for his serious health issues.

This offender violated the sexual integrity of six of his granddaughters. The impact of these offences is clearly one of devastation, said Roller.

All of the victims were between the ages of five and ten when they were molested by the man, usually during visits to his house. The incidents spanned between 2005 and 2013.

He would make sure his wife wasnt around because he didnt want her to find out, said Roller.

When asked by police and probation officials why he violated the girls, he claimed it was because they were often wearing short shorts and revealing tops.

Clearly more therapy is needed, Roller said Thursday about his troubling lack of insight.

The judge also took aim at many of the mans family members, who learned about the sexual abuse in 2011 when the accused confessed. This includes some of the parents of what were four victims at that time. No action was taken, and the accused resumed his pattern of sexual offending for two more years, which included victimizing two additional girls.

I cannot begin to understand the actions, or lack of actions, by this family, said Roller.

Several impact statements were provided to court by the victims. They spoke of anger and betrayal by a man they looked up to and who was a prominent, well-respected member of the church and community. Some of them discussed how he was a total hypocrite for presenting himself as a person of integrity and high moral standing while secretly abusing them.

Some of the girls also discussed an overwhelming sense of guilt for fracturing the family. Roller said Thursday they must not blame themselves for their grandfathers depraved conduct.

The accused has also been placed on the national sex offender registry and is prohibited from being alone with any children in the future.

www.mikeoncrime.com
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This article was published 09/06/2016 (2330 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Environment Canada downgraded severe thunderstorm warnings to severe thunderstorm watches for much of southwestern Manitoba Thursday evening, and residents took to social media to document #mbstorm.

The severe thunderstorm watch for Winnipeg ended just before 11 p.m. Thursday, but weather alerts remained in effect for other southwestern Manitoba communities late into the night.

For updated Manitoba weather alerts, visit Environment Canadas website.
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This article was published 10/06/2016 (2329 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Almost three years behind schedule, Winnipeg Transit launched its $18-million electronic reloadable fare card over the noon hour Friday.

The electronic card dubbed peggo allows riders to tap-n-ride  eliminating the need for paper tickets and passes.

The system goes on sale July 4 for seniors and other discounted fares and for everyone else August 8.

John Woods / Winnipeg Free Press files Bus passengers will be able to use electronic fares under the new system unveiled Friday.

This is a fantastic day, said Coun. Janice Lukes, chairwoman of the public works committee, which is responsible for Winnipeg Transit. Transit is investing in speed, convenience and reliability with the new electronic-fare collection system.

The project was to have been operational in the fall 2013, but it became bogged down with technical glitches. Other Canadian communities that went with the troubled Quebec manufacturer cancelled the initiative, but Winnipeg Transit stuck with the firm. The reloadable electronic cards will eventually replace all paper tickets and transfers.

Transit director Dave Wardrop said hes convinced all the technical problems have been solved and is expecting a smooth rollout.

The card system is being phased in, Wardrop said, to allow for a smoother transition period, hoping to avoid overloading the system

The digital-fare system was first proposed in 2003, announced again by former mayor Sam Katz in 2006 for operation in 2011, but council only provided funds in 2010. The project was to be in place in the fall of 2013. That was pushed back to the spring of 2014, then the beginning of 2015, then early spring of 2015, then the fall of 2015. Wardrop promised in November the system would be ready sometime in 2016.

Riders will be able to load their peggo card at 90 retail outlets (all Shoppers Drug Marts and 7-Eleven outlets and a few other retailers), online and over the phone, with a variety of fare options  dollar amounts or a specific number of rides and monthly or yearly passes.

The U-Pass fares for U of W and U of M students will also use the peggo card, with unlimited rides loaded onto a semester schedule.

The cards will cost $5 to purchase initially. Lukes said if riders register their cards within 90 days, the purchase price will be credited back to their card. Lukes said the rationale for the $5 purchase price is to encourage people to reuse their cards.

ZACHARY PRONG / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Coun. Janice Lukes and Director of Winnipeg Transit Dave Wardrop demonstrate the new electronic fare collection system 'peggo' at City Hall on Friday.

Once cards are registered, Lukes said they can be cancelled if they are lost or stolen without any loss of pre-loaded rides or fares.

Wardrop said Transit riders can still use paper tickets and passes when the peggo cards go on sale, but he said the expectation is that Transit will stop selling paper products by the end of the year  if the public response meets expectations.

The delay proved beneficial to Transit, Wardrop said, explaining the peggo card has many technical advantages not found on similar cards used by other transit utilities: the peggo card online registration is available in 18 languages; features 11 fare options, including 24-hour unlimited and cash equivalents.

Wardrop said the card will allow Transit to track ridership trends more accurately than current methods.

aldo.santin@freepress.mb.ca
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This article was published 10/06/2016 (2329 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

If the test drug hadnt been developed, and if the doctor it was intended to treat hadnt died first, if she hadnt been next in line, and if the treatment hadnt miraculously worked, Junietta Macauley wouldnt have been in Winnipeg Friday to personally thank medical researchers who worked on the Ebola treatment that saved her life.

These people must be wonderful, she said, surrounded by media and about a dozen researchers at the National Microbiology Laboratory.

Macauley, from Sierra Leone, made a special stop to shake hands and praise the men and women who saved her. She had been in Montreal for an international meeting of funeral directors  she runs a family funeral business in Sierra Leone  and added Winnipeg to her visit.

JOE BRYKSA / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Junietta Macauley (second from left) meets Dr. Darwyn Kobasa (right) and other staff from the National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg.

Im extremely thankful. Words cannot express, she said.

Macauley survived, but her story is full of heartache.

Many people thought only the poor in Africa contracted Ebola. Thats what we thought. But we found it wasnt so, said Macauley.

The family lives in a three-story home, in a good neighbourhood, supported by the family funeral business. Her husband was a local preacher.

Her husband Henry came home on a Tuesday in late November 2014, and complained his legs felt wobbly. Local doctors didnt suspect Ebola because they lived in a better part of town.

By Friday, he couldnt get up and was diagnosed with kidney failure. Monday, he was taken to hospital. Tuesday, test results came back confirming Ebola. By Friday, he was dead.

Within days, two sons who tried to help their father were also diagnosed with the highly-infectious Ebola virus, as was a grandson. The eldest son died. The other two survived after being treated with antibodies from Ebola survivors.

JOE BRYKSA / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Junietta Macauley contracted Ebola, but survived thanks to the pioneering work of the National Microbiology Laboratory.

Then Macauley couldnt stand up anymore. She was similarly diagnosed and believed she was going to die. The physician who first diagnosed Henry with kidney failure also contracted Ebola.

A trial treatment called ZMab from Winnipegs microbiology lab was on its way to Sierra Leone to treat the physician  but he died the day before it arrived. So the treatment was given to Macauley instead.

She couldnt sit up anymore. She took the treatment Dec. 19. Her illness stopped progressing. On Dec. 25, she was declared cured.

I trust in God. Thats the only thing I can say, said Macauley.

Only 25 people have been treated with ZMab so far, said Dr. Jim Strong, head of diagnostics and therapeutics at the national lab. Researchers are looking into ways to mass produce the treatment, he said.

Its done an extremely good job of rescuing people very much on the brink of death, he said.

JOE BRYKSA / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Junietta Macauley's husband and son died in December 2014 during the Ebola Outbreak in West Africa.

Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea are clear of the Ebola virus right now, Strong said, thanks to measures like safe burials, isolation of contacts, and public education.

bill.redekop@freepress.mb.ca
Opinion

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This article was published 10/06/2016 (2329 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

As Canadas finance ministers prepare to meet in Vancouver in just over a week, what seemed like long-dead anti-CPP arguments are starting to rear their heads.

Whether its you, your parents or your grandparents, chances are you know someone who is struggling in retirement. But groups such as the Fraser Institute are trying to downplay the issue of seniors poverty.

Turns out the Fraser Institute uses the outdated measure of low income cut-off (LICO), which has not been re-based by Statistics Canada in 24 years. LICO measures compare the incomes of seniors to levels deemed acceptable in the early 1990s, and not to the incomes of other Canadians today.

Using Statistics Canadas internationally-recognized Low Income Measure, we find that one in nine Canadian seniors is low-income, based on our most recent (2013) data. The trend is clear: more Canadian seniors are living in poverty  it has nearly tripled since 1995. In addition, one in every three Canadian retirees counts on the Guaranteed Income Supplement  a last-ditch benefit for seniors without adequate retirement incomes  to keep them afloat.

Statistician Richard Shillington recently analyzed Canadian seniors income and retirement savings. He found that only a small minority (less than 20 per cent of middle-income Canadians retiring without an employer pension) have saved anywhere near enough for retirement.

The CPP, as it stands, is not enough to bridge the gap. Its hard to imagine working your entire life and being asked to get by on the average monthly CPP benefit of only $550.

Historically, CPP benefits were set low on the assumption that most Canadians would have another pension plan through work.

But looking at the retirees of tomorrow, only two in five Canadian employees (and only one in four private-sector employees) have a pension at work. Even for those who do, workplace pension coverage has been declining for years and the plans that still exist are under constant threat.

As a result, millions of Canadians are on track to retire with more debt and low or significantly lower incomes. Along with affected seniors, businesses and local economies will suffer the consequences.

Universal expansion of the CPP is the best way for our country to turn things around and avoid a serious retirement-savings crisis.

According to Shillington: There should be no debating the fact that the CPP delivers a defined benefit and indexed pension at a reasonable cost  a cost that few individuals could ever match by investing on their own, or through anything but the largest employer pension plans.

The CPP is already cost-effective, sustainable and universal. It follows workers from job to job across the country, something thats increasingly important for younger generations. It just needs to be better. Thats why we are calling on our provincial and federal governments to work together to make that happen.

Hassan Yussuff is the president of the Canadian Labour Congress, which represents 3.3 million workers in Canada.
Opinion

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This article was published 12/06/2016 (2327 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

It used to be called the Seven Oaks Massacre. Now it is the Battle of Seven Oaks. Neither name is really satisfactory.

Massacre was the term used at the time by the Hudsons Bay Co. and its supporters to describe the catastrophe at Seven Oaks (also known as Frog Plain), near where the corner of Winnipegs Main Street and Rupertsland Boulevard is today.

HBC governor Robert Semple and 20 of his men were gunned down by Cuthbert Grant and a party of about 60 Metis and First Nations men on June 19, 1816. One man on the Metis side was killed (or perhaps two  accounts at the time differed).

BORIS MINKEVICH / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS The Battle of Seven Oaks monument

The body count suggests a massacre, but since Semple and his party had armed themselves and sallied forth from Fort Douglas to confront Grants armed and mounted group, they were not the innocent, defenceless victims the term might suggest.

Its also a little odd to call it a battle. The shooting lasted about 15 minutes. In most wars, that would be considered a skirmish. The shouting about the rights and wrongs of the event, however, has continued for 200 years.

Each generation of Manitobans has to come up with its own version of the story. Was it mainly an act of Metis resistance against European encroachment on their land? Was it a defence of the Scottish refugees rescued by philanthropist Thomas Douglas, the Earl of Selkirk, and resettled on his land at Red River? Was it mainly a chapter in the long and brutal commercial struggle between the Hudsons Bay Co. and its fur trade rival, the North West Company?

The Seven Oaks monument at Rupertsland and Main has been renovated at the instigation of students at Governor Semple School. The landscaping is much improved. New descriptive panels tell the Seven Oaks story as it was understood by students who went through Governor Semple School between 2007 and 2012. The renovated monument will be inaugurated June 19 by Parks Canada on the 200th anniversary of the incident.

In this generous and forgiving version, the participants are not to blame for what happened. Both groups were expecting trouble but neither was looking for a fight, the display says, though that might be hard to prove from the conduct of the two groups.

The Metis and the settlers, the panels explain, were caught up in the struggle between HBC and NWC. It was not really their fight, but it was almost impossible to remain neutral. They were each trying to protect their homes and livelihoods, both of which were threatened by this corporate warfare.

When the next generation comes to write its version, this interpretation may be questioned. Corporate warfare was clearly a large part of the story but did some corporate master order Robert Semple to march 28 clerks and traders out of the relative safety of Fort Douglas against a party of 60 armed and mounted buffalo hunters? Did the NWC order Grants group to continue shooting until it had killed 21 HBC men?

Manitobans consider themselves a peaceable people, though the provinces murder rate tells a different story. A closer look at the historical record might show a pattern of violence extending across the centuries.

The next generation of students might usefully ask whether Seven Oaks was an exceptional breach of Manitobans usual good manners or a typical bit of Manitoba violence. They might also ask if Seven Oaks was a massacre, a battle, a skirmish, or a shootout.
Recently, friends and community members gathered to celebrate a brand-new playground in Peterson that offers 19 different activities and supported by the AcenTek Foundation.

Peterson needed a playground but the city council was unable to fund the project and so the community began exploring other ways to accomplish their goal. They were able to get a UCare grant through Fillmore County, but still didnt have enough to fund the entire project. That is when they reached out to the community, asking for contributions to help them with their objective.

The AcenTek Foundation is pleased to be listed among those who contributed to this community reaching that goal.

Contributing to a project as meaningful as the Peterson playground project is just another example of how AcenTek cares, CEO, Todd Roesler said. This playground is going to be the setting for lots of summer memories and its pretty gratifying to know that the AcenTek Foundation helped to make those memories happen.

The playground project in Peterson is the most recent that the AcenTek Foundation has been involved with. St. Marys Catholic School in Caledonia was able to purchase iPads for their students with help from the foundation. The Commonweal Theatre in Lanesboro received funding to allow free admittance to their productions to Houston and Fillmore County residents. The foundation also supported the Music in the Park summer series presented by the city of Caledonia.
The Winona-area Catholic Charities has been honored with a 2016 When Work Works Award, for its use of effective workplace strategies to increase business and employee success.

This prestigious award, part of the national When Work Works project administered by the Families and Work Institute and the Society for Human Resource Management, recognizes employers of all sizes and types in the region and across the country.

The award is the result of a rigorous assessment. Worksites must first qualify by ranking in the top 20 percent of the country based on a nationally representative sample of employers. Two-thirds of the evaluation of applicants comes from an employee survey. Applicants are evaluated on six research-based ingredients of an effective workplace: opportunities for learning; a culture of trust; work/life fit; supervisor support for work success; autonomy; and satisfaction with earnings, benefits and opportunities for advancement  all factors associated with employee health, well-being and engagement.
Winona State Universitys Education Village could get a final shot at landing state funding this summer  depending on a vote next week, and whether the Legislature and Gov. Mark Dayton can agree to return to the Capitol for a special session.

More than $25 million in funding was included in both House and Senate versions of the capital improvements bill, with the Senate bill failing to pass in the end of the regular session. The funding is retained in the list of projects in a final bill going before the Capital Investment Conference Committee next week.

The bill also includes money for the Lanesboro Dam Project and some Port Authority Assistance Program money.

The committee is composed of Senate and House members, and will be negotiating to make a bill that fits Daytons requirements for a special session. Currently it would total $990 million.

Dayton has put stipulations on both the bonding bill he wants to see, and the process for the special session, before he is willing to call lawmakers back, demands that include projects added in transportation, higher education and public safety.

The additional funding would include $94.5 million for the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities system and the University of Minnesota systems in the next three years.

Without those conditions agreed upon beforehand and in writing by both House and Senate leaders, Dayton has said he will not call the session.

That would also kill the chances of the tax bill, which emerged as a rare success out of the goals lawmakers had going into the 2016 session hoping to tackle comprehensive tax and transportation packages, plus the bonding bill.

The $260 million package of tax cuts and credits for Minnesota farmers, college students and parents with childcare costs was allowed to die off, failing to get his signature due to a mistake in wording that would have cost over $1 million in tax revenue.

WSUs Education Village project, intended to revitalize and transform the process of modern teacher education, is estimated to cost about $31.2 million overall. The university received $5.9 million in 2014.
June 28 is the 47th anniversary of the Stonewall Rebellion, which lit the flame of gay equality.

During the 1950s, Americas exceptionally beautiful culture was defiled by pervasive religious homophobia theology that claims God considers the love experienced by the gay people he creates disordered. Many religious preachers today are still unable to move beyond this ignorant theology, which is based in their pathetic misunderstanding of God.

God is not the one who hates what he created in his own image.

The hate this evil theology spawned filled gays with fear and self-loathing. Most stayed isolated inside psychological death traps euphemistically called closets.

On June 28, 1969, the police made a routine raid against the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in New York City. It was frequented by drag queens, transsexuals and poor young people, many of whom were black or Hispanic.

Patrons were forced outside. The bartender, bouncer and three drag queens were hauled off. Then an angry lesbian resisted, which ignited the crowd. The Village Voice reported that anger spewed forth from the crowd along with cans, bottles and bricks.

The shocked police dashed inside the Stonewall and barricaded the door, which was pummeled with an uprooted parking meter; fire was tossed inside a window.

Fortunately, the police officer in charge ordered that no cop should shoot until he did, which he never did. The police were rescued by reinforcements, but the rebellion continued for six days. They lit trash fries, formed chorus lines, chanting for gay rights, sprayed gay power graffiti and skirmished with 400 police officers.

Radical organizations like the Gay Liberation Front were soon formed and used radical protests tactics they had helped develop in the black civil rights and anti-war movements.

The Stonewall Rebellion gave birth to worldwide gay pride parades. This month, an estimated 250,000 happy people will gather in Minneapolis on June 26 to parade again, celebrating the first anniversary of the freedom to marry for all gay Americans and honoring those beautiful outcasts at Stonewall who struck a fatal blow against religious bigotry. You are all invited to join the celebration.
JERUSALEM (AP)  Two Palestinian gunmen opened fire near a popular open-air market in central Tel Aviv on Wednesday night, killing three Israelis and wounding at least five others before being detained, Israel police said.

Two terrorists opened fire at civilians, Tel Aviv district police commander Moshe Edri said, adding that one of the detained attackers was being treated for a gunfire wound.

Police had initially said there might be a third attacker but later ruled that out. Tel Avivs Ichilov Hospital said four of the wounded Israelis are in critical condition.

Meital Sassi told Channel 10 TV she was out with her family celebrating her sons birthday at the Sarona market when she heard shots and immediately understood it was a terror attack.

We ran like lighting with the baby and the stroller, she said. I yelled at people who didnt understand what was happening to run.

The Ynet news website showed CCTV footage of civilians running into a nearby restaurant to take cover.

Shlomi Hajaj, director of the market, told Channel 10 that security guards at the entrance prevented the attackers from entering the facility, averting a bigger disaster as the compound was packed with people.

Channel 10 cited witnesses as saying the two attackers were dressed in suits and ties and spent time in a nearby restaurant, sitting at the bar, before the attack. It showed footage of police forensic teams dressed in white suits examining items in restaurants at the scene.

Police said the two gunmen were members of the same family from the Palestinian village of Yatta, near the West Bank town of Hebron, which has been a flashpoint for violence in recent months.

Over the last eight months Palestinian attacks, mostly stabbings, have killed 31 Israelis and two Americans. About 200 Palestinians have been killed during that time, most identified as attackers by Israel.
Have you ever seen a presidential campaign season like this one? Its not just Democrats against Republicans; its in-fighting among people in the same political parties.

Supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders and those who prefer Hillary Clinton are breaking long-time ties and friendships. Many establishment Republicans cant believe Trump is their partys nominee, and some of them feel like sheep being herded by a wolf in a clown suit.

Those who most fervently support Trump and Sanders say they want change. That perplexes the rest of us. Sen. Sanders has been in Congress for 25 years. Donald Trump, for his entire life, has taken advantage of and profited greatly from traditional Republican policies that favor the rich.

So, what are the changes people want? From what I can tell, they want their representatives to listen to them. They want them to work for improved wages, job creation, safe communities and a level playing field so working peoples voices are heard at least as much as corporate interests.

But the truth is, no matter who wins the presidential election, nothing will happen until the voters stand together and demand three things: strict campaign finance reform, clean elections and impartial redistricting. Those few changes would give voters the power and influence needed to recruit and elect people who will actually work for them and who cant be bought by the highest bidders. Wouldnt it be great if each voter had the same amount of influence as the richest corporations? That sure isnt the way it is now.

When the conservative members of the United States Supreme Court ruled in favor of Citizens United, they erased the limits on anonymous campaign donations from corporations, unions and other wealthy special interest groups. That needs to be overturned as soon as possible and were the ones who need to demand it.

I also believe in public financing of all elections and the absolute prohibition of any special interest or individual campaign financing. If every taxpayer gave less than $50 a year when they filed their income tax return and that amount was divided equally among all candidates for city, county and federal campaigns, we just might get candidates who run for office out of the desire to represent us and not just to benefit themselves. Voters could then recruit honest and capable members of their communities who wouldnt need millions of dollars just to run a campaign.

Veteran members of Congress have admitted they spend at least 40 percent of their time fundraising. Thats time were paying them to work for us. Public financing would end that.

We also need to demand a federal law that prohibits the gerrymandering of political districts. Redistricting occurs every 10 years immediately after a census. It was meant to evenly distribute district populations, but is used by both political parties to unfairly distribute voters so the party in power has a huge advantage. Democrats did it in Illinois. In Wisconsin, the skewed effects could be seen after the Republicans did it a few years ago. Although Democratic candidates got more votes, Republicans gained more seats. The practice is corrupt and needs to end.

Voters also need to insist on paper ballots. Experts have shown how easily and quickly electronic voting machines and scanners can be programmed to produce desired results. Many voters believe their votes arent counted, or that theyre switched during the electronic process. Paper ballots, counted and then recounted and verified by others, would return the voters trust in the election process and erase any perception of election fraud.

And last, voters need to demand their elected representatives host regular, totally open and pre-publicized listening sessions in their districts. Since most lawmakers are in session only a fraction of the year, they have plenty of time to meet with constituents. Currently, they have to spend most of that free time raising money, but without that burden theyd be able to do what they were elected to do  listen to and work for the people they were elected to represent.

But because of the way campaigns are funded, too many of them dont care what we think. Proof of that can be seen at the website www.we-the-irrelevant.org. Its data provides examples of lawmakers who voted in opposition to the preferences of more than 90 percent of those who contacted them. That wouldnt happen if our campaign finance system gave each of us an equal voice and equal influence.

To quote Lily Tomlin: I said Somebody should do something about that. Then I realized I am somebody.

We all are.
Weve been down this road before. Unfortunately, its no pleasure drive.

Absent more money in the states transportation budget, motorists can expect yet another delay, perhaps two extra years, in the Interstate 90/39 expansion.

Mark Gottlieb, Gov. Scott Walkers transportation secretary, signaled that prospect May 25 in Madison. At a roundtable the next day, the Transportation Development Association of Wisconsin discussed ramifications with business leaders in Janesville.

Sure, this advocacy group lobbies for the construction industry, but its statewide Just Fix It campaign resonates.

Already, a one-year delay from fallout of the current biennial budget means those driving the freeway from Beloit to Madison will endure construction signs, orange barrels and detours at least until 2022.

Instead of swallowing a tough but logical plan of raising revenues, as Gottlieb-led task forces have twice recommended, Walker vowed to veto higher gas taxes or registration fees. So in this budget, lawmakers borrowed more to fund roadwork. Transportation debt service has doubled in just 10 years. That isnt sustainable, and interest payments dont buy a shovelful of asphalt.

On June 2, Walker told reporters he wouldnt accept higher taxes or fees to fund roadwork without equal cuts elsewhere in the state budget. That came a day after Gottlieb told the Wisconsin State Journal his budget request, unlike the last one that sought $750 million in new taxes and fees, would include no major revenue increases.

Meanwhile, a 2015 federal report rated 71 percent of Wisconsin roads poor or mediocre, third-worst nationwide. Without adequate state dollars, counties and municipalities watch roads crumble and drivers steer into repair shops more often to fix shocks, axles and tires.

What do predictions of another delay in the interstate project tell companies that depend on moving products and services swiftly?

What do they tell the many Illinois residents who might stay home more often to avoid bumper-to-bumper weekend traffic jams rather than pump tourism dollars into Wisconsin? Wisconsin sends a terrible message when six freeway lanes in Illinois bottleneck to four at the state line.

Neighboring Michigan and Iowa raised gas taxes in recent years. With gas prices still low, this would be a good time to boost Wisconsins, as well.

Sure, Republican leaders want to see results of an audit that might show how Gottliebs department could boost efficiencies. That makes sense but wont fill this Volkswagen-sized funding pothole.

Gas tax revenue has dipped as cars become more efficient. Raising gas taxes enough to shore up a funding shortfall this large would stun drivers. Instead, it will take a mix of gas taxes, registration fees and perhaps even a tax on mileage driven and enactment of some tolls.

Time is wasting. Borrowing more or ignoring the problem wont solve it. Voters should quiz lawmakers seeking re-election this fall about just how they would plug this funding gap and ensure that the I-90/39 project stays on schedule.
Aaron Kremsreiter was named as the valedictorian for the class of 2016 during last weeks graduation ceremony at Beaver Dam High School.

Kremsreiter is the son of Ken and Rebecca Kremsreiter.

Kremsreiter has been involved in track for his four years at Beaver Dam High School. In addition, he participated in SWAZZ for three years, cross country for two years, National Honor Society for two years, was a Link Leader for a year and a student council member for a year.

Kremsreiter is a Wisconsin Academic Excellence Scholar. He also received faculty honor from the teaching staff of Beaver Dam High School on the basis of leadership, participation, academic performance, and his all-around contribution to the school.

He received a scholarship from the Wisconsin Masonic Foundation/Wilson C. and Edna P. Woods Masonic Scholarship Fund. In addition, he received the W.I.A.A. Scholar Athlete Award.

Kremsreiter will be attending UW-Madison in the fall.

The salutatorian for the class of 2016 is Nathan Simon.

Simon is the son of Mark and Kelly Simon.

Simon was on Beaver Dam High Schools cross country team for four years. In addition, he participated in choir and SWAZZ for four years. Simon was on the track team for four years. He was a Link Leader for two years and was on the National Honor Society for two years.

Simon received department excellence awards in English and social studies. Simon is a Wisconsin Academic Excellence Scholar. He also received faculty honor from the teaching staff of Beaver Dam High School on the basis of leadership, participation, academic performance, and his all-around contribution to the school.

He received the Swan scholarship. He also received the H.H. Derleth Citizenship honor award and Ronald B. and Alice K. Edgerton Honor Award and Scholarship.

Simon will also be attending UW-Madison.
Beaver Dam Police Chief John Kreuziger said that a recent proposal to bring Beaver Dam on board with a new records management system with Dodge County raises a number of questions, but he is not opposed to the offer.

Because of what happened last time with New World, we dont want that to happen again, he said on the phone.

The new software called Spillman Technologies will provide computer hardware, software, maintenance services and support services for a little more than $1 million. The system will be used for dispatch, corrections and records management.

Kreuziger said that this is the first official letter he has received from the Dodge County Sheriffs Office related to Spillman. According to him, ultimately this would require the department to enter into a contract with the county to use the software. During the recent police and fire commission meeting, he said he is having Beaver Dam City Attorney, Maryann Schacht review the proposal.

We would all agree that this is not a bill, Kreuziger said.

The letter from the Dodge County Sheriff Dale Schmidt breaks down the costs associated with transitions from the current systemNew World to Spillman. These costs would involve training employees and future maintenance to the system.

Schmidt writes in the letter that there will be no cost to install the system because Dodge County will take care of it. In addition, in 2018 there will be no maintenance fee to municipalities that install Spillman. The only cost required to those who use Spillman prior to 2019 is training costs.

The system will not go live until Jan. 1, 2018.

Schmidt writes in the letter that the combined cost to train all the municipalities would be $52,000.

The cost to train a full time employee is $720 and a part time will run $360. Starting in 2019, an annual maintenance will cost $280 per computer. The total amount will be $122,994.

The letter states that it is Dodge Countys intent to share a portion of the cost with whomever joins them. By dividing the 219 licensed computers in the county152 belong to the countyit would cost $561 per license, according to the letter. Schmidt wrote that his department will cover more than $61,000 and divide the other half equally with the other police departments, which brings the maintenance cost down to $280 per license.

Kreuziger said that in Beaver Dam there are 35 full-time employee that need training and 49 computers in the department. Right now only 29 computers are using New World.

This would require Beaver Dam to pay $25,200 to train its 35 full-time employees. Then beyond 2018, it will cost the department $13,720 annually to keep Spillman computers up-to-date.

Kreuziger said that if Beaver Dam eliminates both New World and Cisco record management systems, his department could afford Spillman.

Schmidt said over the phone that these charges shouldnt be unexpected. According to him, in September he informed Dodge County police departments that there would be additional charges and that he would send out the proposed costs in May. In a news release he states that at the September meeting, ball park figures were presented to area police chiefs.

This isnt a bill, he said. This is simply a proposal.

Schmidt said that installing Spillman software is an option for all the municipalities in Dodge County.

This is not me shoving anything down Beaver Dams throat, he said.

However, he said that the training cost would be expensive and because Beaver Dam is a bigger community it would naturally come at a higher cost.

Kreuziger said that he is not against Spillman and sees a definite need for a unified system in Dodge County.

In the end, he foresees working out an agreement with the sheriffs office, but until then Kreuziger said he wants time to review the proposal with Schacht in order to avoid a New World situation again.

In summer 2013, the New World record management system was installed. Its purpose was to replace the previous system that had been in use since 2000. Complaints about the software began before the software was fully implemented and has become a hassle for those using it in Dodge County, prompting the transition to Spillman in 2018.

Schacht said during the police and fire commission meeting that she will be getting in touch with the county for additional information.
Severe weather has ripped apart a warehouse. The building has collapsed and an unknown number of victims lay beneath the pile of rubble.

The hydrous ammonia is leaking, and no one wants to breathe it in or have it touch their skin.

Fire departments and EMS respond, but quickly realize the disaster is beyond their abilities. The governor calls a state of emergency, and the National Guard starts to move in.

Eventually the leak is stopped, but now someone has to take care of those who were inside, and figure out how to get to those who are still inside.

Tents fly up around the building. The decontamination process starts as soldiers talk to anyone possibly exposed to the ammonia. Some people would rather be home than put up with the National Guards orders, but the job has to be done all the same.

A team in hazmat suits moves forward and looks for signs of life. Its their job to get out anyone who is left.

The emergency responders are dealing with one of the worst natural disasters the country has ever seen. Luckily, its a training exercise, and no one is actually hurt.

Volk Field hosted the Miles Paratus exercises from June 5  9. Paratus is Latin for being prepared, and miles means soldier. After the extensive simulation that took place, everyone involved should be well prepared.

For these five days, Volk Field simulated being part of Dane, Walworth and Jefferson Counties. More than 2,500 people participated in the operation, with up to 1,700 working at once. Forces came from five different states  Wisconsin, Minnesota, Illinois, West Virginia and Idaho  and included 22 military units and over 50 civilian units.

Fort McCoy simulated Monroe and Jackson Counties. Its simulations were mostly similar, except for dealing with a militia group that decided to take advantage of the natural disaster.

Different groups take turns coming in and training on the same scenario. While 2,000 people will go through the scenario, that number is much higher than the amount of soldiers deployed in most incidents.

The civilians stay in charge, and everyone reports back to emergency management headquarters in Madison.

In any scenario, the National Guard, we like to say theyre a tool in the incident commanders tool kit, said Captain Joe Trovato, National Guard Public Affairs deputy director. The National Guard doesnt come in and take over the scenario, civilians are in charge.

Trovato said the National Guard has a dual role. It is ready to deploy overseas on a federal mission if needed, but it also takes on the role of being the first military responders in the homeland.

Its not easy to get so many people together and organized for an event like Miles Paratus. Over a year of planning was involved in putting the exercise together.

Its a long time coming for sure, Trovato said. Were happy to start executing.

Green Bay Fire Department Hazmat instructor David Segal ran the simulation as the controller.

I guide the major role players, I tell them whats going on, I guide them with what they are going to do here, he said.

He has an idea of how the scenario will play out, but things tend to change.

Whether they do what I wanted or whether they do what the script calls for, theyre learning, he said.

The rubble piles, simulated houses and torn down areas are permanent fixtures at Volk Field  ready for training. A worker explained creating the rubble piles is significantly harder than normal construction. It was made to seem like its a wreck, but it has to be stable so it doesnt actually fall on anyone.

At one section of Volk Field, Regional Emergency All-Climate Training (REACT) was working to take drill through cement and anchor buildings to help rescue bodies. The buildings must be reinforced in order for someone to safely enter. One team drilled through concrete to rescue a body, only to find themselves inside their created tunnel to drill once again on the lookout for more people in need.

Its hard work for everyone involved, but now theyre prepared for when the worst case scenario arises.
Monitoring online hate speech in Ethiopia

Wits Media Studies Lecturer, Dr Iginio Gagliardone spoke to BBC about social media monitoring in Ethiopia.

When is social media anti-social media? When is being online less about your Facebook friends and more about your enemies? What is hate speech?

Wits Media Studies Lecturer, Dr Iginio Gagliardone tackled these questions on the BBCs Click radio show.

Gagliardone has been leading a series of research projects that analyse how hate speech generates and diffuse online, and how it compares to other forms of speech. Specific case studies include online hate speech around Ethiopias elections in 2015.

Ethiopia is a very interesting case because it is a country that has very low internet penetration, but simultaneously has one of the most sophisticated surveillance systems in the whole of Africa, says Gagliardone.

Ethiopia has been quite assertive in going after bloggers and social media users for what they say on social media, and accusations of terrorism. We wanted to see whether that was the case or not.

There is little consensus as to what qualifies as hate speech. Claims that social media is increasingly being used to disseminate hate speech and incite violence often fail to build on comprehensive and publicly accessible empirical evidence.

This makes it difficult to place the most extreme forms of expression into context, understand how pervasive they are, and determine how they spread.
Light packing more data has potential to increase bandwidth by 100 times

African researchers demonstrate a 100x increase in the amount of information that can be 'packed into light'.

The rise of big data and advances in information technology has serious implications for our ability to deliver sufficient bandwidth to meet the growing demand.

Researchers at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa, and the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) are looking at alternative sources that will be able to take over where traditional optical communications systems are likely to fail in future.

In their latest research, published online today (10 June 2016) in the scientific journal, Nature, the team from South Africa and Tunisia demonstrate over 100 patterns of light used in an optical communication link, potentially increasing the bandwidth of communication systems by 100 times.

The idea was conceived by Professor Andrew Forbes from Wits University, who led the collaboration. The key experiment was performed by Dr Carmelo Rosales-Guzman, a Research Fellow in the Structured Light group in the Wits School of Physics, and Dr Angela Dudley of the CSIR, an honorary academic at Wits.

Bracing for the bandwidth ceiling

Traditional optical communication systems modulate the amplitude, phase, polarisation, colour and frequency of the light that is transmitted. Yet despite these technologies, we are predicted to reach a bandwidth ceiling in the near future.

But light also has a pattern  the intensity distribution of the light, that is, how it looks on a camera or a screen.

Since these patterns are unique, they can be used to encode information:

pattern 1 = channel 1 or the letter A,

pattern 2 = channel 2 or the letter B, and so on.

What does this mean?

That future bandwidth can be increased by precisely the number of patterns of light we are able to use.

Ten patterns mean a 10x increase in existing bandwidth, as 10 new channels would emerge for data transfer.

At the moment modern optical communication systems only use one pattern. This is due to technical hurdles in how to pack information into these patterns of light, and how to get the information back out again.

How the research was done

In this latest work, the team showed data transmission with over 100 patterns of light, exploiting three degrees of freedom in the process.

They used digital holograms written to a small liquid crystal display (LCD) and showed that it is possible to have a hologram encoded with over 100 patterns in multiple colours.

This is the highest number of patterns created and detected on such a device to date, far exceeding the previous state-of-the-art, says Forbes.

One of the novel steps was to make the device colour blind, so the same holograms can be used to encode many wavelengths.

According to Rosales-Guzman to make this work 100 holograms were combined into a single, complex hologram. Moreover, each sub-hologram was individually tailored to correct for any optical aberrations due to the colour difference, angular offset and so on.

Whats next?

The next stage is to move out of the laboratory and demonstrate the technology in a real-world system.

We are presently working with a commercial entity to test in just such an environment, says Forbes. The approach of the team could be used in both free-space and optical fibre networks.

About the project

The first experiments on the topic were carried out by Abderrahmen Trichili of SupCom (Tunisia) as a visiting student to South Africa as part of an African Laser Centre funded research project. The other team members included Bienvenu Ndagano (Wits), Dr Amine Ben Salem (SupCom) and Professor Mourad Zghal (SupCom), all of who contributed significantly to the work.

This project was supported by the African Laser Centre, a virtual centre funded by the South African Department of Science and Technology (DST) to support research collaborations between African countries in the field of photonics.

Paper abstract

Title: Optical communication beyond orbital angular momentum

Abderrahmen Trichili, Carmelo Rosales-Guzman, Angela Dudley, Bienvenu Ndagano, Amine Ben Salem, Mourad Zghal and Andrew Forbes

Mode division multiplexing (MDM) is mooted as a technology to address future bandwidth issues, and has been successfully demonstrated in free space using spatial modes with orbital angular momentum (OAM). To further increase the data transmission rate, more degrees of freedom are required to form a densely packed mode space. Here we move beyond OAM and demonstrate multiplexing and demultiplexing of over 100 modes using the radial and azimuthal degrees of freedom. By creating wavelength independent holograms we are able to demonstrate this technique on a spatial light modulator. Our results offer a route to higher bit rates for next generation optical networks.
Eskom trains operators ready for new build

10 June 2016

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South African nuclear operator Eskom has launched a five-year project to train 100 nuclear power plant operators to support the country's current and future nuclear needs.

South African minister of public enterprises Lynne Brown formally launched the 2016 Eskom Nuclear Operator Pipeline project at the Koeberg nuclear power plant yesterday, where the 100 recruits began training as nuclear operators on 1 May.

Brown said the project, also referred to as Nuclear Project 100, will provide a platform for developing a robust nuclear operator pipeline for South Africa. "The program, spanning five years, aims to build a path to ensure that there are sufficient local nuclear resources to service the countrys present and future nuclear needs. After the five-year period, trainees will qualify as nuclear plant operators or will enter related career equivalents," she said. About 95% of the students are under 35 years of age.

Eskom chairman Baldwin Ngubane said the company supported national initiatives for South Africa's young people to develop new skills. "The country's new nuclear build will require additional resources for operations and the nuclear operator training program is geared towards ensuring that the South African youth [with] aspirations to access a career path in nuclear has a chance at realising his or her dreams," he said.

Koeberg is the only nuclear power plant in Africa, and the only one outside the USA with a training program accredited with the US-based Institute of Nuclear Power Operators' National Academy of Nuclear Training.

South African energy plans call for the construction of 9600 MWe of new nuclear capacity. Earlier this year, Eskom submitted site applications for nuclear installations at Thyspunt in the Eastern Cape and Duynefontein in the Western Cape to the country's National Nuclear Regulator.

Researched and written

by World Nuclear News

Related topics
Casey Cormani, Cassandra Richards, and Penny Cormani

By: Tanya Malhotra

(Scroll down for video) The parents of a little girl were arrested on a charge of child endangerment after she consumed heroin and died, according to police in Utah.

Utah County police said that they have arrested 31-year-old Casey Cormani and 32-year-old Cassandra Richards, following the death of their 1-year-old daughter, Penny Cormani.

Both parents were charged with one count of endangering the welfare of a child. They were booked into the Utah County Jail, and bail was set at $25,000 each.

According to the police, Richards called 911 after the child did not wake up from her nap. Paramedics took the child to a hospital, where she was pronounced dead.

Police officers who searched the coupleas home, found burned silver foil and straws, which are often signs that heroin has been smoked.

The parents claimed that the drug paraphernalia did not belong to them. However, the parents and the homeowners have a long history of drug use.
Roxanne Deacon, Kial Ahmed and Nadia Jones (left)

By: Wayne Morin

A couple of the United Kingdom, was jailed for killing a woman over drugs that were hidden in her private parts.

Roxanne Deacon, 26, and her boyfriend, Kial Ahmed, 34, strangled and beat Nadia Jones, and stole drugs from inside her body.

Prosecutor Michael Mather-Lees told the Cardiff Crown Court, that Jones, 38, who was a mother of one daughter, was killed in her own home at night.

The court heard that Deacon, met her victim in prison and Deacon had previously purchased drugs from Jones.

The couple went to Jonesa house in Tremorfa, where they attacked and killed her. The couple then went looking for drugs. When they did not find any in her home, they violated her by searching her body.

The couple claimed that they found a plastic Kinder Egg filled with drugs in Jonesa private parts. The couple stole $122 in cash.

Ahmed pleaded guilty to murder and robbery. He was sentenced to up to life in prison.

Deacon pleaded guilty to murder and robbery. She was sentenced to 13 and a half years in prison.
Chickens (illustration)

By: Chan Yuan

A man was arrested on a charge of animal cruelty after beheading several chickens because a woman unfriended him on Facebook, according to police in the United Kingdom.

Now, 30-year-old Shane Barrett of Cornwall, has been sentenced to serve nine weeks in prison after being convicted of four counts of animal cruelty.

According to the police, 45-year-old Tanya Vincent rescued four egg-laying chickens that were destined to be slaughtered.

She became concerned after noticing that three of them had disappeared and began searching for them by contacting friends and veterinarians.

After several days, she discovered that three of her chickens were brutally killed, beheaded and thrown on her doorstep. The fourth chicken was seriously injured.

Vincent told investigators that Barrett, killed her chickens after she unfriended him on Facebook. Vincent said that she is devastated because the chickens were her girls.

The killed chickens were named Queenie, Shy, and Dancer, while the surviving bird is named Rosie.
Jordan L. Stanton

By: Feng Qian

A physical therapist was arrested on a charge of sexual battery after having sex with an unconscious woman who was dressed in a peacock costume, according to police in Kansas.

Now, 28-year-old Jordan L. Stanton of Wichita, faces up to five years in prison after pleading guilty to two counts of aggravated sexual battery and three counts of breach of privacy.

According to the police, when Stanton allowed his girlfriend to use his computer to do homework, she found a cache of videos of him having sex with several different women.

Stanton pleaded with her to keep quiet and promised to delete all of the videos. She made copies of the videos and handed them over to the police.

Police seized his computer, where they found 290 sex videos showing the physical therapist having sex with women.

Investigators managed to locate some of the women, and they conformed that the videos were recorded without their consent.

In one of the videos, Stanton is seen having sex with an unconscious woman dressed in a peacock costume. The state Board of Healing Arts announced that Stanton surrendered his license to practice physical therapy.
Police car (illustration)

By: Mahesh Sarin

A police officer was bitten by an angry woman who was pulled over for driving with fake license plates, according to police in Austria.

Braunau police said that the woman, who was not identified, was very belligerent and refused to comply with orders.

The woman was charged with numerous traffic violations and resisting a police officer. According to the police, the driver was pulled over after officers noticed something wrong with her license plates.

When she could not produce a drivers license, the officers asked her to step out of her vehicle, but she refused.

As an officer leaned through the open car window to try to remove the ignition key and open the door, the driver bit and scratched him on the arm.

She was then forcibly removed from the vehicle, and her driveras license, keys and car and were confiscated by the police.
Wrexham Primary School Benefits From Tesco Community Project

This article is old - Published: Friday, Jun 10th, 2016

Hardworking colleagues from a local supermarket have come together to help transform a Wrexham primary schools playing field.

Over 40 employees from Tesco Extra Wrexham took part in the large tidy-up at Rhosddu Primary School on Wednesday 25th May, helping improve the schools playing field and outdoor learning centre.

Throughout the day the team tidied and worked  removing weeds and litter, clearing pathways and painting apparatus and benches.

The project was organised by Wrexham Tescos Community Champion, Ali Roberts. Community Champions act as ambassadors for Tesco within local area, working to ensure they can bring genuine benefits to the local community.

Tesco Wrexhams Community Champion, Ali Roberts said: I am so pleased all of the hard work paid off and Rhosddu School are happy with their renovated playing field.

Wrexhams Assembly Member, Lesley Griffiths, was invited to the school to witness the final transformation and was thoroughly impressed with the work.

She said: Thanks to the hard work of the Tesco volunteers, Rhosddu School have a much-improved outdoor area which will make a big difference to the children and staff. Tesco Wrexham has undertaken many projects like this and it is clear they have a positive impact within the local communities.

Everyone connected to Rhosddu School is ever so grateful to Ali and the Tesco team for all their efforts.

If there any community projects that could use Tescos support of if you would like to book their community room, contact Ali Roberts on 07718 509663.
HBOs All the Waydirected by Jay Roach (Trumbo)is an adaptation by Robert Schenkkan of the first of his two plays devoted to Lyndon B. Johnsons presidency. It spans Johnsons first year in office, from November 1963following the assassination of John F. Kennedyto November 1964. (Schenkkans The Great Society covers November 1964 to March 1968, when Johnson suddenly announced he would not run for re-election in the face of Vietnamese resistance to the American military and growing opposition in the US to the brutal conflict.)

Happily, All the Way, like the recently aired American Crime Story: The People v. O.J. Simpson, eschews contemporary identity politics. Its depiction of Johnsons campaign on behalf of his proposed War on Poverty plus several outstanding performances combine to create an unusually successful attempt to present American history, or a slice of it, in an authentic manner.

At the same time, several of the HBO dramas characterizations are lacking, as are its presentations of the arguments made before Congress during the civil rights bill filibuster and the 1964 Democratic National Convention.

Following Kennedys assassination in Dallas, now President Lyndon Johnson (Bryan Cranston) and his wife, Lady Bird (Melissa Leo), return to Washington, DC. Although haunted by insecuritiesborn of both his hard-scrabble youth and the Kennedy administrations (especially Robert Kennedys) animosity toward himJohnsons first act as president is to deliver a speech to the House of Representatives in which he urges passage of Kennedys civil rights bill.

Johnsons urgings meet resistance from both liberals and conservatives in Congress, resulting in a lengthy filibuster in the Senate. There is also the initial opposition of Martin Luther King, Jr. (Anthony Mackie) to the elimination of voting rights from the bill.

The escalating Vietnam War contributes further to the newly installed presidents fears regarding the possibility of re-election in 1964. Johnson furiously works both sides of the aisle in support of the civil rights measure. The president also eventually wins Kings support when he assures the latter that while voting rights will not be included in the present legislation, they will be part of his War on Poverty.

The eventual passage of the Civil Rights Act is followed swiftly by Johnsons landslide victory over right-wing Republican Barry Goldwater in the 1964 presidential election. However, Johnson fears this triumph may be a pyrrhic one because the passage of the civil rights bill could well guarantee the Democratic Partys loss of the South to the Republican Party for generations to come.

For many viewers, used to the right-wing discourse of present-day American politics, All the Ways portrayal of Johnsons impassioned arguments for his proposed War on Poverty may well come as a surprise. In his January 1964 State of the Union address, for example, Johnson declared, This administration today, here and now, declares unconditional war on poverty in America. He went on: We have in 1964 a unique opportunity and obligationto prove the success of our system  If we fail  then history will rightfully judge us harshly.

In All the Way, instead of resorting to the identity and gender politics that have defined the Democratic Party for the past four decades, Johnson urges King to consider what such a bill will mean for poor children of all races. (In a later scene, Johnson recounts for the press corps his experiences teaching Mexican children in rural central-southern Texas in the late 1920s and how desperate they were to learn.)

The willingness of the American ruling elite, with whatever pulling and pushing were necessary to enact the civil rights bill and contemplate a War on Poverty, was made possible by the continued dominance of US capitalism on a world scale. As late as 1964, the US still controlled 40 percent of the globes industrial output. The Johnson administrations measures represented the last gasp of American social reformism.

And they came, in the end, to very little. As the WSWS explained in January 2014 on the 50th anniversary of Johnsons State of the Union, The War on Poverty never came close to eradicating poverty and hunger. It failed because it could not touch the foundations of class rule within the US or abroad. Relative to the wealth of the US  only a paltry amount of resources were tapped into, while Johnsons program included tax cuts for the rich. Far greater resources were directed to the American war machine [in Vietnam and elsewhere]. Today, the civil rights legislation itself is in the process of being eviscerated.

To Schenkkans credit, LBJa savvy, cynical bourgeois politicianis far from heroic or one-dimensional in All the Way. His use of a crude, sexist anecdote to close the deal with King is but one of many instances in the HBO film when Johnson resorts to vulgarity or worse to win support. Not only does Cranstons Johnson prove capable of moving smoothly from heart-touching anecdotes to ribaldry in the same breath, he does so in a way that seems well-rehearsed and well-practiced.

Frank Langella turns in a mature performance as Georgia Democratic Senator Richard (Dick) Russell. The 66-year-old Russell is torn between maintaining his decades-long opposition to civil rights (based on a belief in states rights and the values of the old [Jim Crow] South) and preserving his father-figure/mentor relationship with Johnson, who called Russell Uncle Dick. The Georgia Senators opposition to civil rights won out. After Johnson signed the legislation in early July 1964, Russell, along with a group of other southern Senators, boycotted that years Democratic National Convention.

Leos Lady Bird can be both supportive and critical of her husbands decisions and behavior, which is largely how history has recorded her role as wife and First Lady.

The television drama honestly portrays Johnsons well-documented ability to use people whom he obviously could not stomach. He cajoles both United Automobile Workers (UAW) leader Walter Reuther (Spencer Garrett) and FBI director J. Edgar Hoover (Stephen Root) into doing whatever is necessary to make King support the civil rights bill.

Each evinces a certain cold-hearted pleasure in carrying out Johnsons orders. This is especially true of Roots Hoover. He not only tapes Kings extramarital affair, but sends the incriminating evidence to King, along with a letter dictated in a state of near delirium demanding that the civil rights leader kill himself for his immorality.

Several reviewers have praised All the Way for giving us a more historically accurate, flawed Martin Luther King, and the inclusion of the extra-marital affair, and Kings willingness to compromise his principles when necessary, suggest this praise has been earned. Grasping King socially and historically, however, is more important than weighing up the pros and cons of his personality. He was a pacifist, not a socialist or a revolutionary, and he never broke with the two-party system. Nonetheless, his courageous opposition to social inequality and the imperialist war in Vietnam brought him into conflict with the American powers that be.

Anthony Mackies interpretation of King lacks the passion that one recalls from his speeches and encounters with the press. Perhaps King did put his more passionate side aside when he negotiated and held meetings behind closed doors with top officials, but this reviewer finds that hard to believe.

The characterization of Hubert H. Humphrey is also limited. Bradley Whitfords portrayal of the vice president and former Senator from Minnesota as little more than an errand boy for Johnson is accurate as far as it goes. But there are moments in All the Way, such as the scene in which the president informs Humphrey they now have enough votes in Congress to pass the Civil Rights Act, when one anticipates the appearance of the almost boyish excitement that the real Humphrey could display on occasion, but thats not the case here.

Other, minor problems include the brief amount of time devoted to the arguments presented in Congress for and against the Civil Rights Act, and the even briefer time spent portraying the 1964 Democratic National Convention (and the lazy use of only archival footage at that).

Nonetheless, All the Way deserves praise for authentically pointing to some of the larger issues involved in Johnsons first year in office. One hopes that HBOs airing of this drama, along with the positive critical response to American Crime Story: The People vs. O.J. Simpson, will encourage similar efforts from other networks and artists.
On Wednesday, 23-year-old Davontae Sanford was finally released from prison after a Michigan judge vacated his sentence in a quadruple homicide that he did not commit.

Sanford, a mentally handicapped youth who is blind in one eye, was 14 at the time of the shooting in his Detroit neighborhood. He had served eight years in state prison based solely on a false confession coerced out of him by police.

Police took Sanford in for questioning for the murder, which occurred in a drug house in Sanfords neighborhood, and interrogated him over the course of two days without the presence of a lawyer or his parents. Sanford finally agreed to confess to the crime when police told them that he could leave if he would just tell them something, according to the Detroit News.

Sanfords confession contained numerous factual inconsistencies. He was unable to correctly name the type of gun he had allegedly used to carry out the murders, and all of those who he named as accomplices had alibis.

In flagrant violation of protocol, Sanfords confession was not videotaped by the police. A second confession was staged and recorded by police, this time with more accurate details of the crime scene, which were almost entirely fed to him by the interrogating officer.

Based upon this confession, along with incompetent legal representation by a lawyer who told Sanford that the police had an airtight case, Sanford was convicted in 2008 and sentenced to between 37 and 90 years in prison. During the trial, then-deputy police chief James Tolbert perjured himself on the stand, falsely claiming that Sanford had drawn an accurate diagram of the crime scene under questioning.

Only two weeks after Sanford was sentenced, a known hit man, Vincent Smothers, confessed to the murders and provided detailed and accurate information about the crime to police. Smothers, currently serving a 50 to 100 year sentence for eight other murders, has repeatedly stressed Sanfords innocence in sworn affidavits.

For eight years, however, prosecutors insisted against overwhelming contrary evidence, that the right person had been convicted. According to Smothers attorney, police studiously avoided interviewing him about his role in the Sanford case. Hes been willing to testify Davontae Sanford had nothing to do with the killings, Smothers lawyer told the press before Sanford was released. Come on, now: Hes a very savvy guy; theres no way hed bring a 14-year-old disabled kid to help him with a hit.

While in prison, a despondent Sanford attempted to commit suicide but was stopped by guards. While attempting to restrain him, Sanford allegedly spit on one guard and kicked another, according to a prosecutor. He was convicted of two counts of misdemeanor assault and sentenced to an additional year in prison or a $2,500 fine. In spite of having his prior conviction thrown out on Tuesday, Sanford would have had to have spent an extra year in prison, but family lawyers found someone to pay the fine.

Tuesdays ruling came after the release of an 11-month review of Sanfords case by Michigan state police. The report concluded that Sanford played no role in the shootings and recommended murder charges be brought against Smothers. It also recommended that Tolbert be charged with perjury.

The day after Sanfords release, Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy gave a press conference in which she refused to apologize to the Sanford family and whitewashed her offices stonewalling of the case for eight years. She attacked people who have perpetuated the myth that somehow we found out about evidence in an earlier year and that nothing happened until just recently, and defended the polices conduct during Sanfords interrogation. Incredibly, she claimed that her office had not found Smothers confession credible, despite his intimate knowledge of the facts of the case and the obvious inconsistencies in Sanfords own confession.

Speaking to the media after the case, Sanfords family attorney Valerie Newman said, The reality is there is a lot of injustice in the criminal justice system, and this case puts that on full display ... about how a 14-year-old child can be coerced into giving a false confession. Confessions are coerced more often than people think. Confessions are not the be-all and end-all. Thats the lesson to learn here.

Speaking to the Detroit News, Sanfords mother, Taminko Sanford-Tilmon, expressed her frustration over her familys ordeal. I know all cops arent bad. But do I say the system is fair? Mmmm, Im not going to say yes.

The United States, which has a prison population of over 2.2 million, by far the largest in the world, imprisons tens of thousands of children every year. More than 50,000 children were in detention centers or other forms of residential placement in 2013. In Michigan alone, more than 20,000 children were convicted as adults between 2004 and 2014, according to the Michigan Council on Crime and Delinquency.
Two days after losing the California primary, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders arrived in Washington, DC for meetings with President Barack Obama and other Democratic Party leaders to discuss how he will fold up his campaign and support the Democratic presidential nominee, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Obama followed up his meeting with Sanders by releasing an online video announcing his full-fledged, formal endorsement of Clinton as the Democratic presidential candidate. I don't think there's ever been someone so qualified to hold this office, he said, going on to cite Clintons role in key administration military decisions such as ordering the raid by Navy SEALs that killed Osama bin Laden.

The video was recorded on Tuesday, even before the polls had closed in New Jersey, California and four other states on the next-to-last day of primary voting. Asked about the timing, White House spokesman Josh Earnest pointed out that the Associated Press and other media had declared Clinton the presumptive nominee on Monday, based on a survey of superdelegates.

This underscores the cynically orchestrated character of the AP announcement, worked out in consultation with the White House and top Democratic Party officials who wanted to declare Clinton the winner and the contest over as quickly as possible, regardless of the millions who were to vote the following day.

After meeting with Obama at the White House for an hour, Sanders spoke to the media, reading out a three-page type-written statement in which he did not explicitly endorse Clinton, but made it clear that he would no longer challenge her for the nomination.

I spoke briefly to Sec. Clinton on Tuesday night, and I congratulated her on her very strong campaign, he said. I look forward to meeting with her in the near future to see how we can work together to defeat Donald Trump and create a government that represents all of us and not just the one-percent.

Sanders continued to Capitol Hill for meetings with Senator Harry Reid, the retiring Democratic leader in the Senate, and Senator Charles Schumer, who is expected to succeed Reid in January. Sanders did not speak to the press after meeting with the two Senate leaders, proceeding on a meeting with Vice President Joe Biden.

This pilgrimage to Washington shatters Sanders claims to be leading an insurgency against the domination of right-wing, pro-corporate politics in the United States. While winning the support of millions of youth and working people on the basis of his attacks on the millionaires and billionaires and his calls for a political revolution, Sanders has worked for decades as a loyal ally of the Democratic Party establishment.

From the outset, his campaign has been driven by the political aim of preempting growing social opposition and anti-capitalist sentiment, containing it and channeling it back into the dead end of the Democratic Party. He is now preparing to openly pursue this underlying agenda by agreeing to hustle votes for Clinton, the candidate of Wall Street and the military/intelligence agencies.

The inherent contradiction between Sanders populist phrases and his bid for the presidential nomination of the Democratic Party, one of the two main political instruments of the millionaires and billionaires, was underscored by his remarks as he left the White House. He declared that he would do everything possible to oppose the drift which currently exists toward an oligarchic form of society, where a handful of billionaires exercise enormous power over our political, economic and media life.

Neither Sanders nor any of the assembled representatives of the corporate-controlled media took note of the irony of pledging to fight oligarchy on the steps of the White House, the symbol and power center of the oligarchy, after an hour-long closed-door meeting with Obama, the commander-in-chief who serves that oligarchy.

No one on the planet has done more to boost the American oligarchy over the past eight years than President Obama: bailing out Wall Street at the expense of working people; slashing wages for autoworkers to spur record profits for GM, Ford and Fiat-Chrysler; shifting the cost of health care benefits from corporations to workers in the guise of health care reform; and waging war around the world to defend the global interests of American capitalism.

From the very beginning of his campaign, Sanders has refused to criticize the policies of the Obama administration. He has condemned the domination of American political and economic life by the billionaires without mentioning that Obama is the billionaires servant. On foreign policy, Sanders has been virtually silent on the countless atrocities perpetrated by the war machine that Obama commands, from drone-missile assassinations to the bombing of Libya and Syria and ongoing military violence in Iraq and Afghanistan.

What began Thursday with Sanders meeting with Obama is a choreographed operation to deliver as many Sanders supporters as possible to the Democratic Party campaign to elect Clinton as Obamas successor, along with Democratic candidates for the Senate, House of Representatives and state and local offices.

Key Sanders supporters have already begun declaring their support for Clinton as the Democratic nominee, beginning with Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon, Sanders lone Senate endorser, along with Representative Raul Grijalva, head of the House Progressive Caucus, and the liberal lobbying groups Move-On.org and Democracy for America.

Sanders, despite his longtime posturing as an independent, has fully integrated himself into the Democratic Party and has presented his campaign as the best option for promoting and building the Democratic Party at every level.

His claim that he will continue his campaign right up to the Democratic convention in Philadelphia at the end of July is not, contrary to the media presentation, an act of defiance of Clinton and the Democratic establishment. It is the form chosen by Sanders for propagating illusions among his own supporters that the Democratic Party can be made responsive to the left-wing sentiments among young people and working people.

Sanders will use whatever meaningless concessions are grantedif anyon the party platform, rules for future presidential nomination campaigns and the choice of vice president as a further argument to his supporters to stick with the Democratic Party. This is the most bankrupt and dangerous of perspectives, since it leaves the working class politically subordinated to one of the two parties of corporate America and unprepared for the even more right-wing and militaristic policies that will follow the November election, regardless of whether Clinton or the presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump emerges victorious.

As his statement in front of the White House made clear, Sanders will become a major spokesman of the anybody but Trump campaign, which will be the axis of efforts by the Democratic Party and all of the organizations in its orbit, including the unions and pseudo-left groups like the International Socialist Organization and Socialist Alternative, to portray Hillary Clinton as the lesser evil.

In practice, the right-wing politics of Obama and Clinton, for which Sanders will become an apologist, have helped fuel whatever popular support the fascistic billionaire has been able to obtain. As Obama put in his video endorsement of Clinton, her campaign will build upon the progress weve made under the Obama administration.

For the vast majority of the working class, however, living standards and social conditions are worse today than when Obama took office. A Wall Street Journal/NBC poll this week found that among voters who said they were still feeling a lot of effects from the 2008 Wall Street crash and the recession that followed, 56 percent favored Trump and only 26 percent favored Clinton.
The Electrical Trades Union (ETU) last month called off a scheduled 80-hour strike in New South Wales (NSW) by thousands of workers at state-owned electricity distribution company Essential Energy.

The move followed a directive by the Fair Work Commission (FWC)the federal governments industrial tribunal. The union, which covers the vast majority of the companys workforce, did not call members meetings to discuss its unilateral decision to cancel the stoppage.

The strike, which was to begin on May 23, was part of a campaign of limited industrial action, endorsed by power workers in March, in a long-running dispute over a new enterprise agreement. The company and the NSW government are demanding the destruction of longstanding working conditions and a mass shedding of jobs.

Along with a two-year pay freeze, Essential Energy is seeking to axe 800 jobs by 2018 and impose unlimited sackings after that. It also wants to maintain a ban on re-employing redundant workers within two years, except for casual or temporary positions, halve the amount employees are paid when called in for emergencies, and reduce the wages and conditions of contractors.

This offensive will eliminate more than a quarter of the companys 3,000-strong workforce, affecting about 70 regional and rural towns, from Port Macquarie to Broken Hill. Since last year, more than 400 workers have already been pressured into quitting or have accepted so-called voluntary redundancies.

Essential Energys attack intensifies a decade-long drive under both Liberal-National and Labor governments, federal and state, to sell off what remains of the state-owned electricity industry, all across the country, at the expense of both power workers and household consumers. Successive governments in every state have sought to satisfy the demands of the financial markets to slash social spending, drive down workers wages and conditions and open up lucrative new investment opportunities.

The current NSW Liberal-National government introduced legislation to privatise, via 99-year leases, urban electricity distribution companies Ausgrid and Endeavour Energy, where hundreds of jobs have already been axed to slash costs and make them more attractive to potential buyers. High-voltage network company Transgrid was sold off last November.

While rural-based Essential Energy is to remain state-owned for now, the privatisation of the other companies will create the conditions for it to be sold off in the near future. This would complete the privatisation of the electricity network begun under the previous state Labor government. With the support of the power trade unions, Labor privatised the electricity retail businesses before suffering a landslide defeat at the 2011 state election.

During the 2015 state election, the Labor Party cynically claimed to oppose the Liberal-National governments plan to privatise the electricity distribution assets. Once the election was over, Labor leader Luke Foley flagged support for privatisation, declaring private and not-for-profit sectors should play a significant role in the delivery of our public services.

Throughout this entire process, the unions have worked to block any unified campaign by power workers to oppose government cost-cutting and privatisation, diverting all opposition into futile appeals to MPs, ineffectual protests and limited stoppages designed to let off steam.

The unions concern all along has been to maintain their position in the industrial relations setup as labour brokers and industrial policemen, working with whichever government is in office to deliver a pro-market agenda.

This was the objective motivating the ETUs manoeuvre in the FWC last month. In order to cover its tracks in the eyes of workers, the union argued against the companys application for a suspension of industrial action at depots and control centres. Essential Energy had claimed that the action threatened public safety.

Instead, the ETU called on the tribunal to take the other course of action available and order the termination of all industrial action. The union knew that would trigger a 21-day compulsory arbitration period and open the way for a deal with Essential Energy or a court-imposed settlement along the lines demanded by the company.

ETU state secretary Steve Butler hailed the industrial tribunals decision as the best possible outcome. He claimed that the ruling forces the company to sit down and negotiate in good faith. The union could put its case to the independent umpire who will then make a final decision.

Butlers claims are a fraud. The FWC is not an independent umpire. It is part of the state apparatus, which includes the courts and the police. Introduced by the federal Labor government in 2009, with the enthusiastic backing of the trade union movement, the tribunal is armed with a barrage of anti-strike provisions and the power to impose severe penalties on workers. It has intervened in dispute after dispute, from the airlines to the waterfront, to shut down industrial action and impose the requirements of the corporate elite.

Labors Fair Work laws allow the FWC and the federal government to terminate any industrial action deemed to threaten to cause damage to the Australian economy or endanger the welfare of any part of the population. At the same time, as illustrated by the ETUs manoeuvre, the Fair Work legislation officially entrenches the unions in the strike-suppression framework.

The ETUs call for an 80-hour strike at Essential Energy was always intended to push the dispute into the FWC, creating the conditions for a pro-company deal, enforced by the threat of severe fines and penalties against workers who oppose the outcome.

What is clear is that Essential Energy workers, along with their counterparts at Ausgrid and Endeavour Energy, and electricity workers nationally are facing a political offensive by Labor and Liberal-National governments alike, assisted at every point by the trade unions.

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The Israeli government deployed 600 additional combat troops to the West Bank Thursday, seizing on a shooting attack against the trendy Sarona market in Tel Aviv on the previous night to escalate its militarization drive and impose a package of police-state measures both inside Israel and in the Occupied Territories.

Hundreds of additional Israeli security forces will patrol Jerusalem beginning today. The government has revoked temporary internal passports for 83,000 Palestinians who sought to cross into Israeli sections of the city to visit relatives, including more than 200 relatives and associates of the suspected gunmen. On Thursday, Israeli courts imposed media bans on further coverage of the attack and its consequences.

In Yatta, the village of the alleged perpetrators of the Sarona attack, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) has imposed a general blockade, preventing anyone from entering or leaving, and conducted house-to-house searches. The IDF is now preparing to demolish the family homes of the assailants.

Life in the Yatta village wont carry on as usual. A village that has terrorists leaving from its midst will pay the price, Assistant Defense Minister Eli Ben-Dahan told media.

Responsibility for the bloodshed in Tel Aviv lies not with the villagers of Yatta, now facing harsh reprisals at the hands of the IDF, but with the Israeli state itself, which is responding to the immense crisis of Israeli society by escalating its decades-long oppression of the Palestinian people, and preparing for mass repression against the Israeli working class.

The shooting is the latest in a wave of violence provoked by the decision, handed down by then Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon in December, not to prosecute or even detain the perpetrators of a firebombing attack against a sleeping Palestinian family in the village of Kafr Duma, despite clear evidence of involvement by the extreme nationalist Chabad-Lubavitch movement.

The attacks launched by Palestinians angered over the governments response have been seized upon by the Netanyahu regime to implement a brutal crackdown and advance its longstanding agenda of collapsing the Palestinian authority and imposing direct military rule by the IDF over the West Bank.

Ominously, the Sarona attacks are being characterized in US and Israeli media as a major test for newly appointed Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman, a fascistic demagogue with well known links to Israels ultra-nationalist milieu.

There can be little doubt that Lieberman, who assured media that he is not going to settle for just talking, aims to use the Sarona attacks to implement new and far-reaching repressions against the Palestinian and Israeli working class.

His rise to the highest civilian office within the US-funded Israeli military apparatus is a sharp expression of the ever more fascistic trajectory of Israeli politics, and was calculated by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to intimidate opposition throughout Israeli and Palestinian society.

In Israel, as in so many countries worldwide, extreme right figures are increasingly being welcomed onto the heights of power. The presidential candidacy of Donald Trump in the United States, the rise of the National Front in France and the ascension of Rodrigo Duterte to the Philippine presidency all give expressed to the same process.

The bourgeois establishment, faced with the growth of social inequality to levels not seen since the early 20th century, sees no other way of defending its privileges than the employment of the most vicious and degenerate social elements.

As the World Socialist Web Site noted in a July 2014 perspective, The toxic crisis of Israeli society, written on the occasion of the burning to death of a 16-year-old Palestinian boy, Muhammad Khdeir in East Jerusalem, by a gang of Israeli ultra-nationalists:

There is a close connection between the violence being carried out by the Israeli government against the defenseless population in Gaza and the emergence of fascistic elements within Israel capable of such bestial crimes. These events are symptomatic of an immense social and political crisis within Israel itself. The unending and escalating repression of the Palestinian people requires the mobilization of the most reactionary forces.

The pathological tendencies incubating within Israeli capitalism are so repugnant that they are openly commented upon by the more liberal figures within the Israeli establishment. Israeli Defense Forces General Yair Golan remarked in May that present day Israel increasingly resembles Germany during the years immediately prior to the Holocaust. Former Prime Minister and IDF Chief of Staff Ehud Barak described Liebermans appointment as a red light for all of us regarding whats going on in the government, and warned that Netanyahus government is infected by the seeds of fascism.

These warning are accurate, but those making them have no solution to offer to the cancerous growth of fascistic forces in Israel and throughout world society. The drive toward openly dictatorial forms of rule and the mobilization of the far-right is the necessary outcome of the domination of society by capitalist oligarchies, a reality that is painfully evident in Israel, where a handful of billionaires rule by means of machine-gun checkpoints and endless miles of razor wire, as in every other country worldwide. Only through a unified movement of the Israeli, Palestinian and international working class, fighting for socialism on a world scale, can the return of fascism and the descent of society into barbarism be averted.
A Manhattan appellate court has ruled that the New York Police Department (NYPD) may refuse to disclose whether it holds records on individuals swept up in its notorious Muslim spying program. The ruling invoked the Glomar doctrine, a legal principle until now only applied at the federal level, authorizing the government to refuse information requests by neither confirming nor denying the existence of secret operations.

The decision came in response to Freedom of Information lawsuits by two Muslim-American men, Samir Hashmi and Talib Abdur-Rashid. Both believed themselves to be caught up in the New York Police Departments dragnet spying operations, Hashmi as a student at Rutgers University in New Jersey and Abdur-Rashid as an imam at a Harlem mosque. Trial courts ruled against the NYPD in Hashmis case, but in favor of it in Abdur-Rashids.

The appellate ruling sanctions the blanket denial of any requests to release information collected during at least 12 years of New York Citys mass spying. It also sets a precedent for future use in New York and in states and municipalities around the country.

Under the guise of combating terrorism, New York Citys sweeping surveillance program deployed legions of officers and informants to monitor lawful activity by Muslims. In collaboration with the CIA, the NYPD Demographics Unit compiled lists of attendees at prayer gatherings, eavesdropped at Middle Eastern groceries and infiltrated student organizations across New York and neighboring states. No aspect of life was too mundane for tracking. Informing mosque crawlers and undercover rakers compiled detailed files on where people ate, studied, watched TV, shopped and prayed.

Ethnic origin and racial background, rather than suspicion, were grounds for extensive monitoring of daily activity. Attempts were made to entrap individuals using the create and capture technique, whereby informants create conversations about terrorism and capture the responses in reports to police. Despite these efforts, internal NYPD documents admit the program failed to produce any terror-related charges.

The appeals court decision upholding the citys Glomar defense has potentially far-reaching implications beyond the rights of Hashmi and Abdur-Rashid to know the extent of the attack on their individual rights. It allows police departments and other agencies to cover up potentially wide-scale violations of rights without exposure to state Freedom of Information laws. Citing anti-terrorism concerns, requests can be denied without detailing the reasons behind the denial, making it nearly impossible to argue against. Courts generally grant agencies a free hand to invoke Glomar once authorized.

The Federal government has increasingly relied upon Glomar since it was first established in 1976. In Phillippi v. CIA, a federal court granted the CIA power to skirt a Freedom of Information Act request from Rolling Stone correspondent Harriet Phillippi. The open records request sought information about the CIAs raising of a sunken Soviet submarine by a specially outfitted ship, the Glomar. The court ruled that national security matters trumped transparency obligations under the Freedom of Information Act. Since the September 11, 2001 attacks, the CIA and Department of Defense regularly cite Glomar in denying information requests. The Obama administration relied heavily upon it as a means of cutting off inquiries into its drone assassination program, among other things.

Despite New York City Mayor Bill de Blasios claims to have been deeply troubled by the citys spying operation, his administrations continued efforts to keep elements hidden from public scrutiny reveal his policies to be less a change in substance than a change in style. In addition to invoking Glomar, de Blasios law department argued for dismissal of a civil rights lawsuit seeking to curtail the targeted spying on Muslims. A settlement was reached earlier this year forcing some constraints on NYPDs spying without suspicion.

De Blasio formally disbanded the unit conducting the mass surveillance in 2014, hailing it as a critical step forward in easing tensions between the police and the communities they serve. Yet within a year, he and his police department commissioner, Bill Bratton, reconstituted an anti-terror unit as part of a revamped Strategic Response Force. The new force houses not only NYPD spying operations but also oversees demonstrations and protests in the city. Most recently these anti-terror units were deployed, automatic weapons in hand, to monitor demonstrations of striking Verizon workers.

In New York City and around the country, police forces have over the past decade built up substantial anti-terror operations, including routine spying on residents and the assembling of military grade weaponry with the active support of the Obama administration. The court ruling allowing police departments to conceal their secret programs in the name of security marks another step in this process.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modis two-day visit to Washington this week marked a watershed in the transformation of India into a frontline state in US imperialisms military-strategic offensive against China.

This offensiveknown in Washington parlance as the pivot to Asia, or rebalancehas already seen the US redeploy the bulk of its naval and air power to the Indo-Pacific region, strengthen military ties with traditional regional allies, elaborate plans for a massive aerial and sea bombardment of China (Air-Sea Battle), incite various Southeast Asian states to press their territorial claims against China in the South China Sea, and stage armed overflight and freedom of navigation exercises to challenge Chinese sovereignty over South China Sea islets.

The joint statement issued Tuesday by Modi and President Barack Obama following their talks outlined plans to increase Indo-US military cooperation across the Indian Ocean and Asian Pacific regions and in all domains land, maritime, air, space and cyber (space).

India is to give the US military routine access to its ports and military bases for resupply, repairs and rest. Washington, for its part, has recognized India as a Major Defense Partner, meaning it can now buy the advanced US weaponry made available only to the Pentagons closest allies.

The Obama administration also pledged to press for Indias speedy inclusion in the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), although India has not fulfilled a key condition of membershipratification of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Inclusion in the NSG will give India improved access to advanced civilian nuclear technology, allowing it to concentrate its indigenous nuclear program on weapons development.

Formally, India remains a non-treaty ally of the US and continues to stand outside the alliance system that US imperialism created in the aftermath of World War II to underpin its global hegemony. But this distinction is now little more than pretense.

In tandem with its burgeoning military ties with the US, India, under the two-year-old Modi-led BJP government, has dramatically increased bilateral and trilateral strategic ties, including military exercises, with Washingtons key allies in the Asia PacificJapan and Australia.

In the US-India Joint Vision Statement for the Asia Pacific issued by Obama and Modi in January 2015, India effectively announced a partnership with the US in East Asia, with Washingtons anti-China rebalance and Indias Act East policy proclaimed to be mutually reinforcing. Since then, New Delhi has faithfully parroted the US line on the ever more explosive South China Sea dispute and aggressively asserted a strategic interest in the South China Sea. In mid-May, four Indian warships sailed into the South China Sea on the first leg of a two-and-a-half-month tour of the Eastern Pacific, which will include a joint exercise with the American and Japanese navies near islets (Diaoyu or Senkaku) held by Japan but claimed by China.

To emphasize the bipartisan support in the US for the Indo-American alliance, Modi, who until two years ago was barred from the US due to his role in the 2002 anti-Muslim Gujarat pogrom, was invited to address a joint session of the US Congress on Wednesday. He used his 45-minute address to avow the Indian bourgeoisies readiness to serve as a satrap for US imperialism. Not surprisingly, he was greeted with repeated standing ovations.

Proclaiming America to be Indias indispensable partner, Modi said a strong India-US partnership can anchor US strategic interests from Asia to Africa and from the Indian Ocean to the Pacific.

He lauded the sacrifices made by the US military, the mailed fist through which US imperialism has fought social revolution and maintained its global domination, in the service of mankind, and painted Washington as the defender of peace and democracy against those who do not accept international rules and norms (one of a number of pointed anti-China references).

Modi combined kowtowing with a plea for Indias own great power ambitions to be accommodated through changes to international institutions framed with the mindset of the 20th Century.

The alliance between the venal Indian bourgeoisie and US imperialism represents a sea change in world geopolitics, with explosive implications for inter-state relations across Asia and the world.

Because newly independent India balked at US demands that it subordinate its foreign policy to Washingtons Cold War machinations against the Soviet Union, the United States treated New Delhi as an adversary until the 1990s. For decades, it built up Indias archrival Pakistan as its principal regional partner, encouraging Pakistan to pursue its military-strategic rivalry with India.

Now the US boasts of its plans to support India, with Obama arguing that the Indo-US alliance has the potential to be Washingtons defining partnership in the 21st century.

India is a desperately poor country. Hundreds of millions of Indians live in absolute poverty and three-quarters of the population ekes out an existence on less than $2 per day. But successive US administrations have coveted it as a major strategic prize.

In population, India is second only to China. It has a large and rapidly expanding military (at over $50 billion, Indias military budget is commensurate with that of France or Russia), equipped with nuclear weapons and aircraft carriers. It geographically dominates the Indian Ocean, the worlds most important commercial waterway and the vital lifeline for Chinas economy.

In aligning with the US, India is tightening the strategic encirclement of China and bolstering the US threat to destroy the Chinese economy by denying Beijing access to the Indian Ocean in the event of a war or war-crisis. The Indian bourgeoisie is thus boosting and encouraging Washington in its reckless drive to compel China to accept US hegemonya drive whose logic, as the Pentagons own plans attest, is all-out war between nuclear-armed powers. Americas imperialist offensive has already raised tensions in the South China Sea to the boiling point.

Buoyed by US support, India is aggressively asserting its claim to be the hegemon in South Asia, demanding that its smaller rivals acknowledge its predominance and pushing back against the growth of Chinas economic influence. Recently, New Delhi bullied the Maldives into declaring that it would pursue an India-first foreign policy, and, although this proved less successful, it imposed an economic blockade on landlocked Nepal for five months in an attempt to force it to make changes to its new constitution to give India greater leverage over Kathmandu.

The US pivot to Asia and promotion of India as its junior partner is inflaming a series of inter-state conflicts involving the states of South Asia, entangling them in the US-China confrontation and adding to each regional conflict an explosive new dimension.

An obvious case in point is relations between India and China, whose common border remains in dispute. But especially fraught are relations between India and Pakistan, the rival state created as a result of the communal partition of the Indian subcontinent. The two nations, both nuclear-armed, have fought three declared and numerous undeclared wars over the past seven decades.

Islamabad has issued increasingly shrill warnings that the Indo-US strategic partnership has overturned the balance of power in South Asia. But Washington, anxious to cement its anti-China alliance with New Delhi, has cavalierly ignored these warnings.

Pakistans response has been two-fold. It has expanded its nuclear arsenal, including developing tactical or battlefield nuclear weapons, and it has sought to strengthen its longstanding military-security ties with Chinaties the US strongly supported when Beijing was allied with Washington in the last decades of the Cold War.

Beijing long sought to encourage Pakistan to seek a rapprochement with India as part of its own efforts to improve relations with New Delhi and thereby counter US efforts to make India the western pillar of its anti-China alliance. But with the Modi government spurning Chinas offers for India to participate in the building of infrastructure to connect Eurasia (the New Silk Road) and instead integrating itself ever more completely into Washingtons strategic agenda, Beijing last year announced a $46 billion investment in Pakistan to build a China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). The CPEC would provide rail, road and pipeline links from Pakistans Arabian Sea post of Gwadar to western China, circumventing, at least to a considerable degree, US plans to blockade China by seizing the Malacca Straits and other Indian Ocean and South China Sea chokepoints.

The Pakistani military remains a significant ally and asset of Washington. But the US, frustrated by the strength of the Afghan insurgency, angered by the CPEC, and eager to woo India, is ratcheting up pressure on Pakistan.

Last month, the US violated a longstanding Pakistani red line when it summarily executed via a drone strike on Pakistani territory the political leader of the Taliban, blowing up Pakistans efforts to draw the Taliban into peace talks. With the likely aim of bullying Pakistan into assuming still more of the burden of the AfPak war, Washington is encouraging India to expand its presence in Afghanistan, long an arena of Indo-Pakistani strategic competition.

The Indian elite has long resented Washingtons refusal to give it a free hand with Pakistan and it continues to test how far Washington will allow it to go. Last year saw months of border clashes, and last weekend, Indias defence minister claimed that the window is rapidly closing on Modis highly conditional offer of peace talks with Pakistan.

Meanwhile, there are voices in US military-security circles arguing that strained US-Pakistan ties are to be welcomed as they facilitate the strengthening of the Indo-US alliance against China.

Desperate to offset the consequences of its economic decline and maintain its global dominance, US imperialism is pursuing aggression and war and in the process setting interstate relations in region after region aflame.
House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) spelled out his national security and foreign policy views on Thursday in a thinly-veiled campaign document aimed at defining the GOPs sharp differences with the Obama Administration.

The 23-page document is the second in a series of policy analyses Ryan intends to roll out between now and the GOP national convention in July in hopes of influencing the platform and focusing the general election campaign debate.

Related: After Endorsing Trump, Paul Ryan Decries Anger and Division in Politics

He blames President Obama for eight years of broken promises, concessions, and retreat on issues ranging from the Iran nuclear agreement and the Syrian civil war to frosty relations with Israel, Russia and China.

And he calls for modifying or even overturning some of Obamas signature foreign policy victories, including the nuclear deal with Iran, a major step towards normalizing relations with Cuba and a speeding up of efforts to close the Guantanamo Bay detention center for enemy combatants.

Ryan intends to craft a far-ranging policy agenda -- from defense and the economy to combatting poverty -- that will serve as an intellectual rudder for the GOP presidential and congressional candidates.

But the new Better Way report on national security matters also further highlights significant differences between Ryan and Donald Trump, who has been roiling the political waters with his often inflammatory statements.

Related: The Battle Between Donald Trump and Paul Ryan Was Inevitable

Ryan was late in endorsing Trump, which he did just last week. He has repeatedly taken exception to Trumps declarations, including his call for mass deportations of illegal immigrants, his plan to temporarily ban Muslims from entering the country, and the most recent flap over Trumps claim that a federal judge with Mexican heritage couldnt objectively preside over a civil suit brought against the now defunct Trump University

While there is some overlap between Ryans new campaign treatise on foreign policy and defense and those of Trumps America First pronouncements, there is plenty that separates the two.

Story continues

No two people agree on everything, Ryan told Andrea Mitchell of MSNBC on Thursday. And you will see with our very comprehensive national security strategy that we are rolling out here today that we do have some differences of opinion.

Thats fine, he added. Thats the way it works between Congress and the President. We are a separate but equal branch of government. We have our own opinions on these matters. And by the way, we launched this agenda back in January when we had 17 people running for president. So this isnt in response to any one candidacy.

Related: Trumps Dilemma: Moving to the Center Could Alienate His Base

Here are seven areas where Ryan and Trump clearly dont see eye to eye:

1. Border security and immigration. Ryan and many other Republicans think Trumps idea of building a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border to keep out illegals  and getting the Mexican government to pay for it  is both impractical and undesirable.

Instead, the report calls for a multi-layered approach involving more Border Patrol agents, aerial surveillance and radar protection to prevent people and weapons entering the U.S. illegally. Instead of a wall, Ryan favors the strategic placement of high fencing.

The report is mute on one of Trumps most controversial and far-fetched immigration initiative  the rounding up and deportation of more than 11 million illegal immigrants living in the country today.

2. The Iran nuclear deal. Ryan and Trump are both highly critical of the agreement negotiated by the Obama administration postponing Irans development of a nuclear weapon for at least a decade, but they sharply part company about what to do.

Related: Trump Tries to Behave, but Needs Another Time Out after Hannity Interview

The billionaire businessman has called the deal disastrous and signaled it would be one of the first agreements he would renegotiate. Ryans proposal stops well short of advocating for the next president to blow up the Iran deal, as many in his party say they favor.

3. Coping with Russian aggression. Here the ideas about how best to counter Russian President Vladimir Putins aggression in southern Ukraine and Crimea and intervention in Syria and the Middle East differ sharply. Trump has said repeatedly that he admires Putin and believes the two men could work well together. I believe an easing of tensions and improved relations with Russia  from a position of strength  is possible, he says.

The Ryan report, by contrast, echoes the GOPs position on the need to counter conventional threats from a resurgent Russia, and says the U.S. should stand up to Russian aggression while bolstering the Ukraine government. Putins burgeoning militarism  from his illegal seizure of Ukrainian territory to his support for the murderous Assad regime  poses a threat to the United States and our allies.

4. NATO and other U.S. alliances. Trump espouses a policy of putting America First above all other international considerations, and asserts that the NATO alliance in Western Europe has grown obsolete and that member nations must begin spending more of their own funds on defense or suffer the consequences of a sharp reduction in U.S. assistance.

Related: 5 Reasons the Trump Immigration Plan Doesnt Pass the Reality Test

Ryans report urges modernizing and solidifying the post-World War II military alliance, while at the same time encouraging allies to spend more of their own resources on defense to prevent the alliance from falling into disrepair, or worse, irrelevance.

5. Nuclear proliferation. Trump has shocked allies and U.S. defense community alike with his suggestion that the best way to counter the nuclear threat from North Korea is to arm countries including Japan and South Korea with nuclear weapons of their own. Ryan, in contrast, favors efforts to shore up our defense arrangements in order to bring together Japan, South Korea and other Asian allies, but he makes no mention of arming them with nuclear weapons.

6. Battling terrorists overseas. Ryan and the House Republicans take a hard line on battling ISIS and other militants abroad, declaring that the U.S. must consider all options and eliminate terrorist sanctuaries. Ryan also favors a further buildup of military forces to project more military might overseas and maintain a credible threat against terrorists.

Trump has taken an even tougher line, vowing to knock the hell out of ISIS forces and their oil fields in Syria and Iraq in short order, and to reverse Obama administration cutbacks in spending and military manpower.

7. Trade policy. Ryan and Trump couldnt be further apart on U.S. trade policy. The billionaire businessman who made his reputation as a deal maker has written off many of the major trade agreements, from NAFTA to the pending Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement, as disasters for the U.S. economy and for millions of Americans who have lost their jobs through globalization. NAFTA  has emptied our states of our manufacturing and our jobs, Trump has said. Never again. Only the reverse will happen. We will keep our jobs and bring in new ones.

Related: Trump Would Fight Illegal Immigration with Economic Penalties

Ryan is far more of an internationalist and is a leading proponent of international trade agreements. He strongly backs TPP despite widespread opposition among his Republican colleagues. His blueprint calls for more trade agreements and says foreign aid programs should make recipient countries self-sufficient.

The United States must promote open markets and expand free trade, the report says. Not only does trade grow the American economy, but it spreads global freedom, thereby making the world safer for America.

Top Reads from The Fiscal Times:
Southern, Govia Thameslink Railway (GTR) rail workers are confronting a ruthless coordinated attack by the rail company, the courts and the Conservative government.

Southern GTR conductors, members of the Rail Maritime and Transport union (RMT) have held two strikes against Southern GTR , the largest private rail franchise servicing southern England from its terminuses at London Victoria and London Bridge. They also run Gatwick Express services. Govia is a joint venture operated by Go-Ahead and the French company Keolis, which is controlled by the French state railway SNCF. Keolis run services across Europe and the United States

Workers have held strikes to protest the elimination of the safety-critical role of the conductor, who operates doors on the busiest routes in the UK. Those duties would be forced on the driver, under Driver Only Operation (DOO). Conductors would be downgraded into becoming full-time revenue collectors, with no job security.

RMT General Secretary Mick Cash has described Southern GTR as having waged war on its staff, adding that in his 35 years on the railways he has never seen such vicious hatred by a company against its staff. However, what he leaves out is the rail unions betrayal of one struggle after another that has emboldened the rail franchise holders to escalate their assault on jobs, wages, working conditions and democratic rights.

In response to the strikes, Southern GTR withdrew conductors free staff and family travel passes, parking permits and threatened to remove strikers from future redundancy lists. This confirms that the companys long-term aim is to eliminate their jobs altogether. Southern GTR followed up this slap in the face by issuing a letter demanding a formal agreement to scab on any future strike in exchange for a resumption of travel passes and parking permits.

Conductors were told to renounce the strike, work normally during strikes and be available for all extra shifts/overtime/rest day working on any future strike days. The undertaking concluded that GTR will not disclose to any third party (including but not limited to the RMT) that I have signed this document unless ordered to do so by a Court.

A number of drivers on Gatwick Express services (London) have already refused to drive new 12 carriage trains without a conductor to ensure safe working. The company responded by securing a High Court injunction against the action. GTR stated DOO exists already for eight- and ten-carriage trains and the train drivers union ASLEF were accused of inciting their members. A GTR spokesman threatened that the unions should think again regarding any protests because the injunction was a warning and could be used on this or any other issue.

In response, Southern GTR and Gatwick Express drivers were balloted and voted to strike by a massive 95.8 percent on an 82 percent turnout against any expansion of DOO. Despite drivers abiding by the draconian anti-strike laws passed into law in May, GTR again turned to the High Court to suppress their right to strike. On June 3, Justice Supperstone granted GTR an injunction, asserting that ASLEF had acted unlawfully in the ballot procedure.

ASLEF argued that to overturn the ballot would be oppressive. Supperstone dismissed these concerns, declaring, The potential disruption and inconvenience to the general public and damage likely to be caused by the industrial action significantly outweighs the suggested harm to the union.

All industrial action until the injunction goes to trial on June 27 has been declared illegal.

A similar attack is being prepared across the rail network. On Thursday, ScotRail conductors voted by more than 75 percent in favour of going on strike against the extension of DOO, on a ballot turnout of 75 percent. ScotRail is operated by Abellio, the private international arm of the Dutch national rail, Nederlandse Spoorwegen, and runs transport services across Europe. The RMT reports that the Dutch company has already recruited a scab workforce in advance of potential strikes.

The Southern GTR strikes follow the ruthless elimination of the conductor role by London Overground Rail Operations Limited (jointly owned by Hong Kong metro MTR and German State railways Deutsche Bahn) in 2013-14. This was followed by the closure of all 265 of London Underground ticket offices, completed December 2015. In both instances the RMT, after overwhelming strike votes, played the main role in overseeing their implementation.

The attack on the conductor role stems from the 2012 McNulty recommendations, the Lord hired by the last Labour government, to slash 20,000 jobs, impose backbreaking productivity increases and remove the assumption of automatic annual pay increases. The Conservative government adopted the report as policy in 2014.

One of McNultys main recommendations was DOO as the default for train operations. The RMT abandoned the struggle against McNultys recommendations years ago, as soon as they gained assurances of a consultancy role with the Rail Delivery Group (RDG), made up of the CEOs of the different private rail companies, tasked to force through the attacks. There is not one group of rail workers that have not suffered the effects of an RMT-sponsored productivity drive. The RDG web site provides links to the trade unions web sites.

At a Conservative Party public meeting February 22 in South London, a senior Department for Transport official, Peter Wilkinson, declared, Over the next three years were going to be having punch ups and we will see industrial action and I want your support... Im furious about it and it has got to changewe have got to break them... They have all borrowed money to buy cars and got credit cards... They cant afford to spend too long on strike and I will push them into that place... They will have to decide if they want to give a good service or get the hell out of my industry.

In response, the RMT have been busy cultivating close relations with Conservative MPs in the area. A May 26 press release praised local Tories queuing up to stick the boot in and demanding GTR Southern lose its franchise. During parliamentary questions, the government dismissed thein realityfar more polite demands of these MPs for removing the franchise from GTR and reasserted their support for the company.

The Southern GTR struggle has exposed the lying claim made by the Left Leave in the European Union (EU) referendum to be held on June 23, of which the RMT is the main backer alongside the pseudo-left Socialist Workers Party, Counterfire and the Stalinist Communist Party of Britain, that the British state is more amenable than the EU to pressure from the working class.

At the same time as French workers employed by SNCF and Belgian train workers are engaged in a broader struggle against attacks on their jobs and working conditions, Cash initiated another nationalist campaignthis time anti-French. This follows a series of anti-German protests led by the RMT after the Northern Rail private franchise was awarded to German state rail company Deutsche Bahn. In response to Southern GTR provocatively blaming staff sickness, instead of staff shortages, for huge ongoing train cancellations, Cash declared, They do that because it saves them money and allows them to pump up the profits which can then be shipped across the Channel to subsidise their operations in France.

New Southern GTR conductor strikes have not been announced. Instead, a union meeting to be held in London on June 16 to discuss strategy is restricted to those within the Conductor/Guard and Driver gradeseven though all rail and underground workers are under constant attack. The purpose of this meeting is to maintain divisions in the rail workforce and resist widespread demands for a national strike to support Southern rail workers.

Strike committees must be formed independent of the trade union bureaucracy, to organise effective national action in support of Southern GTR conductors. These committees must seek to establish contact with and join together with the struggles erupting in France, Belgium and across the European continent. This means rejecting the RMTs nationalism and adopting the internationalist and socialist programme advanced by the Socialist Equality Party.
On Tuesday five prison guards who ordered or participated in the merciless July 2012 beating of inmate Jahmal Lightfoot at the Rikers Island jail complex in New York City were convicted of the crime.

A Bronx jury found Eliseo Perez Jr., Tobias Parker, Jose Parra, Alfred Rivera and David Rodriguez guilty of attempted gang assault, which carries a sentence of 15 years, as well as attempted assault in the first degree, assault in the second degree and crimes committed in the subsequent attempt to cover up the beating, including falsifying business records and official misconduct.

Perez was an assistant chief of security at the facility and is one of the highest-ranking prison guards ever to be found guilty of crimes of this nature. One guard was acquitted and three others, including a captain, opted out of a jury decision. A judge is expected to rule shortly on their cases.

Lightfoot allegedly stared at Perez during a weapons screening. Perez then ordered five guards, part of a special unit, to beat him. Prosecutors argued that the real motive for the assault was that prison authorities wanted to set a tone after another inmate had been stabbed in a separate incident earlier the same day.

Prison guards placed Lightfoot in a cell without video surveillance and hidden behind drapery. Five guards then beat him while three others kept watch. In his testimony Lightfoot related how he tried to cover his face with his hands during the beating and that guards kicked him in the groin and pinned down his arms and legs. The guards broke both of Lightfoots eye sockets and his nose. His eyes were swollen shut because of his injuries and he coughed up blood for days after the sadistic treatment. To cover their tracks, guards accused Lightfoot of possessing a weapon and he was placed in solitary confinement for 110 days.

Rikers Island, the largest prison facility in the US, has long been a cesspool of violence and corruption. It is a holding institution for those awaiting trial, many of whom cannot afford bail, and also a dumping ground for the psychologically damaged. In other words, some of the most vulnerable members of New York Citys population are warehoused and routinely brutalized there.

A 2014 New York Times expose of the prisons juvenile wing and a report by the US Attorneys Office of the Southern District of New York noted a culture of violence at the prison in which force is used as punishment or retribution. Since then a seemingly endless series of exposes has highlighted various aspects of the state-sanctioned criminality, from a corrupt and inefficient private health care provider to the smuggling of weapons and drugs by guards.

Last year the US Attorney indicted three guards for the beating death of Ronald Spear in 2012. In another infamous case, on February 15, 2014 a homeless veteran, Jerome Murdough, died in an overheated cell because of neglect from guards.

The systematic brutality at Rikers is an important component of the effort to intimidate and terrorize the working class and poor in New York, in the face of unprecedented social inequality and widespread misery. Other measures include the sweeping violation of democratic rights in the New York Police Departments stop-and-frisk program and the murder of innocent and unarmed people, such as Eric Garner, whose strangulation by an NYPD officer was caught on video in July 2014.

The refusal of a grand jury to indict Garners killer provoked mass protests. The failure to hand out prison time to the cop who accidentally shot Akai Gurley in a Brooklyn housing project in November 2014 has confirmed the widespread view that the police act with complete impunity. The lawlessness of the detention system in the biggest American city has further contributed to the sentiment held by wide layers of working class New Yorkers that they live in an authoritarian state that operates on behalf of the citys financial oligarchy.

The devastating exposure of the brutality and corruption at Rikers Island has made New Yorks elite nervous. The New York Times and elements of the citys Democratic Party establishmentdesperate to maintain the illusion that they represent ordinary peoplehave called for the closing of the facility, without proposing, however, any alternative system that would guarantee the safety of inmates. Notably, the citys progressive Democratic mayor, Bill de Blasio, has opposed closing Rikers as an unrealistic proposal.

The new Bronx County District Attorney, Darcel D. Clark, whose area of authority includes Rikers Island, has pledged to play a leading role addressing the very real challenges there. She has appointed a team of 30 assistant DAs to investigate crimes on the island. Some of them will staff a permanent office on the island.

In a related story, the president of the Correction Officers Benevolent Association, Norman Seabrook, was arrested on Wednesday on charges of fraud. Seabrook, who called Tuesdays conviction of the five sadist-guards another example of how Correction Officers are treated differently and disrespected, has long shielded guards from investigation and prosecution. During a trial of two guards on brutality charges (who were later acquitted by a judge), for example, he saw to it that 44 Department of Correction buses that ferry defendants from Rikers to court appearances were significantly delayed, thereby denying prisoners their right to a speedy trial.

The character of the charges against Seabrook are telling. He has been charged with receiving $60,000 in kickbacks from hedge fund manager Murray Huberfeld, who was also arrested, for sinking $20 million of the unions retirement funds in high-risk investments.

Seabrook, according to the New York Times, favors finely tailored suits and cigars and is chauffeured around the city in black S.U.V.s. He allegedly received his payoff in a paper bag from a favorite luxury shoe store, Ferragamo.
Over the past week, Socialist Equality Party (SEP) candidates and campaigners for the Australian federal election have spoken with workers and youth about the mounting social crisis facing ordinary working people.

The major parliamentary parties are impervious to the growing difficulties of everyday life facing millions, resulting from the destruction of jobs and conditions and the gutting of funding to health, education and other social necessities by successive governments, Labor and Liberal-National Coalition alike. Nor is the stark social divide, between a tiny handful of the ultra-wealthy and the vast majority of the population, a subject of discussion in the official campaign.

Social inequality, however, was underlined by the release of the Rich 200 List last month, which revealed that the wealth of the richest 200 Australians has reached an unprecedented $197.3 billion. Their fortunes have more than trebled since 1999. At the same time, an estimated 2.5 million people live in poverty, youth unemployment figures are at depression-era levels in working-class areas and 40 percent of the workforce is in insecure casual and contract work.

Labor and the Coalition have made clear that they will carry through sweeping spending cuts, which will deepen the social divide after the elections. For their part, the Greens have declared they are a party of fiscal responsibility and stated their willingness to form a coalition government with Labor.

In the seat of Wills in Melbourne, where the SEP is standing Will Fulgenzi, campaigners spoke to Max and Josh. Both are students who work part time in a supermarket. They are originally from New Zealand.

Max noted the rising cost of living. I think it comes down to the GST [goods and services tax], he said. Working-class people spend such a large percentage of their income on a massive tax. They spend their money on food and it all adds up. After I pay my rent, Ive got hardly anything left.

Referring to the Liberal-National governments moves to deregulate university fees, Josh commented: They are trying to introduce $100,000-plus university degrees. Fees have already gone through the roof. This is a real struggle for a lot of young people. A lot of us dont have parents to fund it or the ability to pay later in life. It starts a poverty trap because it takes such a large portion of income.

I work 24 hours per week and I go to university part time because it is all I can afford. Every week, one third of my income goes to paying for books and fees.

Max added: I did an electrical course which cost me $3,000. The government subsidised another $13,000. It was a $15,000 course for three months from a private college and they teach you hardly anything.

I also completed a TAFE course but its impossible to find full-time work. I was trying to get electrical work. I rang several businesses and told them that I would work for free but they said no, sorry mate. Its so hard to get an apprenticeship.

Max noted a growth in youth homelessness. You walk through the city and see so many homeless people, he said. The government should spend money on facilities like housing for homeless young people.

Josh pointed to the routine harassment of the homeless by state authorities, commenting: If the police get them, they go to jail and get a criminal record. Then they cant get jobs. Ninety percent of homeless youth probably have a mental health problem. The police target homeless young people.

In Newcastle, John Davis, one of the SEPs candidates for the Senate in New South Wales, spoke to Thomas, a geology student. Thomas noted the difficult plight of many university graduates. I dont know where I will end up working within the first few years of graduating, he said. My field is quite specialist so there wont be many opportunities for me.

Thomas spoke on the growth of unemployment in the Hunter Valley, including the town of Dungog, where he was raised. According to figures released in March, youth unemployment in the Hunter Valley, excluding Newcastle, stands at over 20 percent, and has doubled in the past two years.

In Dungog especially, there has been an exodus of young people moving to Newcastle, Thomas said. Unemployment out there is high so people move to Newcastle because there are slightly more opportunities. But only slightly. There is nothing really for young people, even in terms of hospitality work. Demand is slumping and the cost of living has hit the employers and employees. There is a real crisis.

Helen, who works in drug and alcohol rehabilitation, spoke to SEP campaigners at Bankstown, in Sydneys southwest. The suburb is within the electorate of Blaxland, where the SEPs candidate is Gabriela Zabala.

According to a report in the Australian, Blaxland has the largest number of residents receiving some form of government welfare in the countrya measure of widespread poverty and unemployment. Factories in the area, such as the Chullora railway workshops and the Hawker de Havilland aircraft plant, which once employed thousands, no longer exist.

Helen said the rehabilitation program still had a steady flow of people suffering from alcoholism, and gambling addictions, but at the moment, ice is the big one. Our rehabilitation is long term, up to 10 months.

Towards the end we start looking at accommodation, reemployment or education, she said. We try transitional housing or help them back onto the department of housing list. But its such a long wait for public housing. People are waiting two years for priority housing. They are asking for priority because theyve got nowhere to go. They dont have family to turn to. They cant go back to where they were for different reasons. The services now are either full or they have been cut. The need for domestic violence services is rising but the resources arent.

When asked about the demands from the corporate elite for ever-deeper cuts to social spending, Helen commented: Its frightening. Its like people dont count.

Will, a boilermaker, originally from Solomon Islands, spoke with Mike Head, one of the SEPs candidates for the Senate in Queensland, at Goodna, in Brisbanes western suburbs. After years of job destruction in basic industries, Goodnas official unemployment rate stands at 11.5 percent, almost double the national average.

Will said the cost of living had outstripped wages ever since he arrived in Australia. Ive looked back over the past 16 years and prices have risen three-fold compared to what we earn in wages. Things are much harder now than they were then.

Working conditions had also worsened. At work, I just find it a lot harder than I used to, Will said. Despite the high unemployment, he had not lost his job, but his hours had been cut. Our work has slowed down, he said. Its not stable and were not getting the overtime like we used to.

Will said he was concerned about the growth of social inequality. I think the gap between the rich and the poor is getting wider, he said. For us, things are staying the same or getting worse, but the rich are getting richer. They are squeezing us middle-class and lower-class people down lower, so they can make more money out of us. The government is cutting the tax for the high-income earners above $80,000 a year, and all of us below that dont get a cut at all.

Will had no confidence in the major parties, stating: In the end, the Labor and Liberal leaders are all there for their own pockets. And they all do the opposite of what they promise once they get into office.

Its no better for workers here now that we have [Labor Party Queensland Premier Annastacia] Palaszczuk, not Campbell Newman, in government. It just stays the same, or gets worse, for workers. They have the power to pull the strings but we are the workers and maybe we have the power to change that. Well have to try to change that if we can.

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.
The Socialist Equality Party invites workers, students, young people and retirees to attend our final election rallies in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane on June 25 and 26. Leading SEP candidates, including the partys national secretary, James Cogan, will outline the socialist alternative to the program of war and austerity supported by all of the major parties.

The elections take place amid widespread hostility to Australias involvement in endless US-led wars, the obscene growth of social inequality over the past three decades and the erosion of democratic rights under the fraudulent war on terror. The capitalist partiesLabor, Liberal-National and the Greensspeak for a tiny layer of the ultra-wealthy and have nothing to offer working people. Whichever combination of parties forms the next government, it will impose the dictates of the banks for sweeping cuts to social spending, and intensify Australias involvement in the US preparations for war against Chinaplacing the working class on the frontlines of a potential nuclear conflict in Asia. These policies will provoke mass social struggles, as they have around the world.

The intense alienation of millions of people from the entire political establishment is one expression of the new historical period that has begun.

Twenty-five years ago, the dissolution of the Soviet Union by the Stalinist bureaucracy was hailed by defenders of capitalism as the end of history and proof that socialism was off the historical agenda. Post-modernist academics declared that the working class had disappeared and was no longer a force for revolutionary social change. Now, eight years into the deepest economic crisis since the Great Depression, the working class is re-emerging onto the arena of the class struggle.

In France, millions of workers have engaged in mass strikes and demonstrations in opposition to regressive labour laws supported by the ruling social-democratic government and the unions. Similar struggles are emerging throughout Europe in opposition to austerity measures being imposed in every country.

Socialism is once again in the air. In the United States, millions of workers and young people have supported the campaign of Bernie Sanders in the Democratic primaries for the presidential elections, in the mistaken belief that he is a socialist opponent of Wall Street and the banks. The American population, seething with social discontent, now faces the prospect of a presidential contest between Hillary Clinton, a war criminal, and Donald Trump, a fascistic billionaire.

The critical issue in every country is political leadership. On the basis of the decades-long struggle of the world Trotskyist movement, the SEP is putting forward a socialist, revolutionary and internationalist perspective against war, and in defence of the social rights of the working class. We appeal to workers, students and young people seeking a political alternative to come to the rallies, and bring your families and friends.

Meeting details:

Queensland

Saturday June 25, 2.00 p.m.

Woolloongabba Senior Citizens Hall

22 Qualtrough St, Woolloongabba

Tickets: $5/$3 concession

New South Wales

Sunday, June 26, 2.00 p.m.

Duchess Room

Coronation Club

86 Burwood Rd, Burwood

Tickets: $5/$3 concession

Victoria

Sunday June 26, 2.00 p.m.

Meat Market Meeting Room

5 Blackwood St, North Melbourne

Tickets: $5/$3 concession

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.






On June 2, the Tamil Progressive Alliance (TPA), a plantation-based trade union combine, announced a new wage deal for estate workers.

The agreement was hatched behind the backs of workers. It followed discussions with a cabinet subcommittee headed by Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe and is conditional on negotiations between the plantation companies and the unions for even more back-breaking workloads. Wickremesinghe will chair the negotiations.

The TPA consists of the Democratic Peoples Front, the National Union of Workers and the Up-country Peoples Front, led by Mano Ganeshan, P. Digambaram and V. Radhakrishnan, respectively. All are ministers in Wickremesinghes government.

Under the new deal, plantation companies will receive state treasury-guaranteed bank loans to pay a temporary 100-rupee ($US0.69) daily wage rise from April, until a new collective agreement is finalised before the end of this month.

The plantation companies want to abolish the current daily-wage system and replace it with a revenue-sharing scheme to slash costs and drive up productivity.

The previous collective agreement between the trade unions and the plantation companies ended in March 2015. The Ceylon Workers Congress (CWC), which is still the largest plantation union, demanded a 1,000-rupee daily wage, up from the current 620 rupees. Other unions, including those in the TPA, backed this demand.

Last July, the CWC called a work-to-rule industrial campaign but quickly shut it down, citing the approaching August national elections. The CWCs real concern, however, was that in the face of adamant refusals by the plantation companies to grant any increase, industrial action by estate workers would escalate into a major struggle.

The union later dropped its demand for a 1,000-rupee daily wage, calling for the 2,500-rupee monthly wage rise for private sector employees announced in the budget to be extended to plantation workers. In other words, plantation workers, who get 25 days work per month, would receive only a 100-rupee daily increase.

On May 25, the TPA called a one-day strike to press this demand. The industrial action, however, was dropped and replaced with a harmless sit down protest by TPA leaders in central Colombo on May 26.

The following day, Planters Association chairman Roshan Rajadurai rejected the 100-rupee pay rise demand, claiming ongoing losses in the tea and rubber sectors. The plantation companies have pointed to declining Sri Lankan tea exports due to the ongoing global recession and the escalating war crisis in the Middle East.

The TPA government ministers responded by initiating discussions with Wickremesinghes cabinet subcommittee. The purpose of the temporary 100-rupee daily increase is to dissipate workers growing anger.

Under the deal, the unions and estate companies will begin talks on the Planters Associations demands for a revenue-sharing system and the abolition of fixed working hours. Plantation workers would be assigned a certain number of tea bushes or tea-planted areas of an estate, with the company providing fertiliser, chemicals and equipment.

The new scheme will further impoverish tens of thousands of tea estate workers, transforming them into share-croppers at the beck and call of the plantation companies.

Plantation workers are among the most exploited and poverty-stricken sections of the working class. There are 22 plantation companies, employing around 200,000 workers, who live in barrack-like line rooms without adequate facilities.

Following last weeks union-cabinet subcommittee discussions, Plantation Industries Minister Navin Dissanayake told the state-owned Sunday Observer he had initiated discussions with the Regional Plantation Companies and the trade unions on a new out-grower model. This, he declared, was so plantation workers can be given legal rights over the landthe land will belong to them, and they will pluck more tea.

The estate unions, which function as an industrial police force for the employers, have told their members nothing about their discussion with the government and the Planters Association.

While workers have previously engaged in various isolated actions against company increases in the tea-plucking outputfrom 16 to 18 kilograms per day to 20 to 24 kilogramsthe union leaders have quickly stopped these protests and in some estates directly conspired with company managements and police to frame-up militant workers.

The plantation unions do not represent workers interestsmost of their officials are businessmen or plantersbut directly defend the companies and the government.

The CWC backed the previous Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapakse and his government. CWC leader Arumugam Thondaman, a cabinet minister in Rajapakses administration, is now seeking an accommodation with the Wickremesinghe government.

National Union of Workers leader P. Digambaram and V. Radhakrishnan Digambaram, from the Up-country Peoples Front, also supported Rajapakses anti-democratic rule. Last year they changed sides, helping install Maithripala Sirisena as presidentin a regime-change operation orchestrated by Washington to bring a pro-US government to power in Colombo.

TPA officials Ganeshan, Digambaram and Radhakrishnan are cynically claiming to have won a wage rise for estate workers. This is a lie. All of the plantation unions are preparing to impose an historic assault on workers wages, living conditions and social rights.
The Spanish daily El Pais published a secret letter from Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy of the Popular Party (PP) to the President of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, promising new austerity measures to meet Spains EU-mandated deficit targets to be implemented after the June 26 general election.

Coming on the eve of the electoral campaign, the letter made a mockery of Rajoys public stance in favor of growth measures and tax cuts. But it also exposes the basic dishonesty and deception at the heart of the supposedly radical electoral coalition between the pseudo-left Podemos and its new-found allies, the Stalinist-led United Left (IU)now given the title Unidos Podemos.

Rajoys letter seeks to reassure Brussels that Spain would get its deficit reduction back on track, and to dissuade the EU from levying fines on Spain for missing its targets. Once a new government is in place, we are ready to adopt new measures, Rajoy wrote, using the approved euphemism for cutbacks in public services, education and health care, i.e., more of the same counter-revolutionary medicine Europes elites have been administering to the working class of the continent for many years now.

The initiative has borne fruit: the European Commission has decided to postpone any decisions on sanctions for Spains non-compliance until after the elections. EU commissioner Pierre Moscovici stated, it is not the right time either economically or politically for such a step.

Under the EU Stability and Growth Pact, Spains failure to slash its public deficit to 3 percent of the countrys GDP by this year would have resulted in a fine of no less than 2 billion, or 0.2 percent of Spains GDP. Instead, the EU executive is proposing that Spain be given another year, but with an even more ambitious target of 2.5 percent of GDP by 2017. Reaching this target would require 8 billion in budget cutbacks and tax increases in 2016 and 2017.

This would come after many years of austerity measures enacted by both of Spains main political parties, the Socialist Party (PSOE) and the PP, which have led to sharp increases in unemployment and general social misery, while failing to generate any significant economic growth. A recent report from Spains official statistics body indicated that 22 percent of the population and 28.8 percent of children below the age of 16 remained at risk of poverty. Average household income has fallen for six consecutive years.

Reaction to the publication of Rajoys letter by Spains main opposition parties was predictable.

PSOE leader Pedro Sanchez said that Rajoy had shamelessly lied to the Spanish people, saying one thing in public and another in private to the EU. Nacho Alvarez, in charge of the Podemos economics plan, said this exposed Rajoys secret programme and that the EU was showing electoral favoritism.

Yet none of opposition parties, including Unidos Podemos, reject austerity measures. Indeed, the Unidos Podemos programme calls for renegotiating the deficit, which is virtually indistinguishable from the programme of the right-wing Citizens Party, which calls for negotiating a more flexible path to deficit reduction, with no cutbacks.

In a breakfast organised by the New Economic Forum at the 5-star Hotel Ritz in Madrid, in front of hundreds of businessmen and bankers, party leader Pablo Iglesias claimed that Podemos is the new social democracy in Spainhaving overtaken the PSOE in recent polls.

Already preparing the justification for continuing with austerity in the event that his party will take part in a future government, Iglesias stated that he is conscious of the limits we would have to our rule because of our membership in the EU, the financial markets and international geopolitics. He gave the examples of the mayors of change in Barcelona and Madrid, where Podemos local fronts are ruling for the better without increasing the public debt.

Regarding any parallel with Greece, where Podemos sister party in government Syriza is imposing unprecedented austerity measures in pensions and social expenditure, as well as tax hikes, Iglesias blamed anyone but Syriza, which was cast as the victim of forces outside of its control. No one can be glad that Greece is a protectorate, with policies being made from outside. This is shameful. And all this due to a disastrous management of New Democracy and PASOK, he said, referring to the Greek ruling parties before Syriza.

This is a brazen lie. Syriza has not imposed austerity because of previous government mismanagement, but because it is committed to defending the European Union and rescuing the bankrupt Greek capitalist class by attacking the social conditions of workers and youth. One can only expect that when Iglesias is in government, he will claim that, because of previous mismanagement of the PP and the PSOE, Podemos has no choice but to implement austerity, and that due to geopolitical constraints, Spain will have to participate in one or another imperialist war.

Rather than being presumptuous or making a secret commitment, Rajoys letter simply states the truth of the matter: Whichever capitalist party or coalition that forms a government following the June 26 elections will most certainly push through new austerity measures and make deep cutbacks in social programmes.

Unidos Podemos is trying to deceive the working class with promises of growth measures, expansion of social programmes, progressive taxation, and the like. But given the coalitions refusal to reject EU austerity, its acceptance of deficit targets and of the euro, Podemos and IUs promises of billions of euros for a vast expansion of social programmes and investment for growth and other measures are a fraud.

The Podemos and IU pose assumes that workers will forget the record of their Greek ally, Syriza. Despite all their once-outraged posturing and solemn pledges to abandon austerity, Syriza betrayed their election promises and became the EUs most reliable allies in extracting a pound of flesh from Greek workers to be handed over to finance capital, ravaging Greek pensions, health care and education and carrying out a fire sale of public assets owned by the Greek state.

Before Syriza came to power, the World Socialist Web Site repeatedly warned that the pseudo-left party would waste no time in betraying its promises. That analysis has been fully vindicated. Podemos and IU will do the same thing should they too come to power.
DECATUR, Ga. (AP) - Two DeKalb County detention officers have been arrested after they were accused of having improper relationships with inmates.

DeKalb County Sheriff Jeffrey Mann said in a statement that 26-year-old Shanik Bishop and 30-year-old Nardia P.K. Reynolds were taken into custody at their homes without incident Wednesday on misconduct charges.

Authorities say Reynolds had a sexual relationship with someone in custody. She is charged with felony violation of oath by a public officer and sexual assault against a person in custody.

Bishop is accused of giving an inmate marijuana.

Both have been fired. It's unclear if either has an attorney.
TALLAHASSEE, FL (WTXL) - Florida Governor Rick Scott is now requesting 1,300 Zika antibody tests from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC).

This is one of many requests the governor has made to the federal government, in order to combat the Zika virus in Florida.

The governor says these tests would allow residents, especially pregnant women and mothers, to see if they ever had the Zika virus.

Governor Scott has previously requested 5,000 preparedness kits, as well as resources to enhance mosquito surveillance.

Florida has the most confirmed cases of the Zika virus out of any state.
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (WTXL)--We go behind the scenes with the Tallahassee Police Department to show you how they can find out if a gun is stolen.

Technology does a lot of the work searching serial numbers all over the nation, even going back decades.

Tallahassee police say its buy back program did exactly what it was suppose to do taking in unwanted guns, and even recovering a stolen gun dating back to 1986.

Rifles and handguns are taken out of the trunks of SUVs and cars and into the hands of police.

They don't know who you are. They don't ask questions.

Police just want your guns.

Harrison Rivers dropped off a shotgun he grew up with.

"It's dangerous," said Harrison Rivers. "If you put a shell in it and close the breach it will fire."

Officers run the serial numbers through the system which will show weapons that may have been stolen.

Tallahassee police say the .357 revolver was entered in as stolen nearly 30 years ago by the Chattahoochee Police Department.

I spoke with a Chattahoochee police sergeant who told me the gun was taken during a burglary in October of 1986.

He added it was stolen from the Chattahoochee Gun and Pawn on West Washington Street.

Chattahoochee police say once they get the gun from Tallahassee police, it's possible they'll have the Florida Department of Law Enforcement do ballistics testing and turn it over to the owner.

As for the other guns, they are put into a database and later turned over to the Leon County Sheriff's Office.

"We will process the guns and get ready to transport them to the sheriff's office and a second time through the FCIC/NCIC database and turn them over to the sheriff's department, "said Sam Winton with the Tallahassee Police Department. "The sheriff's department will in turn hold them for six months and then after they will get the court order to dispose of them by melting them."

Tallahassee police say stolen guns don't usually show up at buy back programs, but in this case Chattahoochee police tell us the one they landed at this event could help them crack the unsolved case.

The Tallahassee Police Department received 32 guns at this event. Those who turned them in were given gift cards.

In 2014, police teamed up with the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives and received 61 guns. Back in 2012, 43 guns were collected.

TPD wants to have another buy back event, but no date has been set.

Remember if you have a story idea for the Insiders send us an email to abc27news@wtxl.tv attention Insiders.
TALLAHASSEE, FL (WTXL) - Mayor Andrew Gillum issued a new call to action for all of Leon County at this year's Community Summit on Children.

On Thursday, over 200 business and community leaders attended the second Summit at the FSU Turnbull conference Center. The event aimed to continue the work of Mayor Gillum's Family First Initiative that began last year.

Four citizen driven and family focused task forces were created at last year's Summit and Mayor Gillum said he was looking forward to an update from these groups.

This years Family First Week has been an overwhelming success, with both our Parents Training and Business Leaders Breakfast events nearing capacity, said Mayor Gillum. The highlight will undoubtedly be the Summit, which will give our community a chance to convene around both the immense progress weve made, and our future action plans for continuing to make Tallahassee/Leon a more dynamic place for children and families to grow strong.

In addition to a new call to action, there were also several presentations to include Dr. Nicole Patten Terry of Georgia State University, Tim Pennell with Third Sector Capital Partners, and two panel discussions of local leaders.
The race to get a piece of what could very well be the largest IPO in history is heating up as investment banks around the world are beginning to fight for position in the upcoming Saudi Aramco initial public offering.

As part of a planned transformation in the domestic economy, Saudi Arabias state-owned oil company will soon offer less than 5% of its value to the public. If Deputy Crown Prince and head of Aramcos Supreme Council Mohammed bin Salman is correct, the IPO will value the company at $2 trillion, and global investment banks are desperate to get in on the action.

(Also read: Everything You Need To Know About The Saudi Aramco IPO)

For banks, being on this [Aramco] deal is a game-changer for the league tables, said one senior executive at a European bank, reports Lebanese news outlet The Daily Star.

This week, Saudi Arabia released its National Transformation Plan, a 110-page document that lists goals and policies the country plans to reach over the next four years. This is just a small part of the larger Vision 2030 plan to wean the kingdom off its dependency on oil announced by Prince Mohammad a few months ago.

Saudi Arabia appears to be remaining consistent in its desire for new economic development, and part of its stipulations with banks looking to work on its IPO is that they must be interested in financing large infrastructure projects down the road. Future business also appears to be the motivation for many of the interested banks.

The Aramco IPO of itself is not that interesting to us in terms of business. The fees wont be great, but its about what other business will result, a senior source at a big investment bank anonymously told The Daily Star.

While we do know that JPMorgan JPM, a longtime banker for the Saudis, has worked on the IPO, it is expected that dozens of international and local banks will meet with the kingdom over the next few weeks.

Story continues

Saudi Aramco has yet to finalize its plans for the IPO, and several plans currently sit in front of the companys Supreme Council. However, we do know that the kingdom intends on maintaining its ability to determining oil and gas outputs for the time being.

If Prince Mohammads valuation is correct, just over 1% of Aramco would cause the largest IPO of all time, meaning that the company should be shattering

records soon. Investors around the world should keep their eyes on this offering as it develops.

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PANAMA CITY BEACH, Fla. (AP) - Law enforcement officials in Florida say a teenager remains in critical condition after the walls of a hole he dug in the sand collapsed on him.

Officials say the mother of 17-year-old Trevor Brown was traveling Thursday from their home in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, to Panama City Beach. The teen remained in critical condition at a hospital after being trapped under the sand on Wednesday afternoon.

The News Herald (http://bit.ly/1ZDDfPA ) reports Brown was visiting the area with friends. On Wednesday, beachgoers told Bay County Sheriff's deputies they'd seen a couple of teens digging in a sand bank. Later they noticed a teen's feet sticking out of the sand and started digging him out.

___

Information from: The (Panama City, Fla.) News Herald, http://www.newsherald.com

(Copyright 2016 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.)
Students walk through the halls during an open house for incoming freshman and transfer students at a high school in Philadelphia in 2013. A new government survey released Thursday, June 9, 2016 finds a surprising drop in the proportion of high schools kids who are having sex. (AP Photo/Matt Slocum file)
YAKIMA, Wash. -- A spokesman for the family of slain real estate broker Vern Holbrook said Thursday theyre grateful the conviction of one of 
Workers at South Carolina Boeing work on a 787 Dreamliner for Air India at the plant's final assembly building in North Charleston, South Carolina December 19, 2013. REUTERS/Randall Hill

By Alwyn Scott

(Reuters) - Boeing Co (BA.N) on Thursday named a new leader for its South Carolina operations and said it would further streamline and integrate its 787 Dreamliner production in South Carolina and Washington state.

Joan Robinson-Berry, a 30-year company veteran, will head operations in the southern state, including the 787, Boeing's research lab, and engineering, propulsion and interiors centers, Boeing said in a press release. She will report to Boeing Commercial Airplanes Chief Executive Ray Conner.

She succeeds Beverly Wyse, who will take charge of a group which provides services for all of Boeing's business units. Before moving to South Carolina, Wyse headed the Boeing 737 program as general manager.

Mark Jenks, a vice president and 787 program chief, will work directly with the South Carolina 787 team to run the production system. He will continue to report to Conner. Under the prior structure, Wyse reported directly to Conner, rather than to Jenks.

The leadership change "allowed the opportunity to streamline the 787 team," Conner said in a message sent to employees on Thursday. "At this stage in the programs maturity cycle, we are in a solid position to strengthen ties between our Everett and North Charleston 787 operations."

Conner said Jenks "will lead the functional and business integration" of the South Carolina and Washington 787 production system.

The new structure does not involve changes in workers, employment level or production methods, Boeing spokesman Doug Alder said.

Boeing shares were down 0.5 percent at $132.32 in mid-day trading on the New York Stock Exchange.

(Reporting by Alwyn Scott; editing by Richard Chang and David Gregorio)
Stephen J. Castilleja, 27, a Granger teacher, appears Thursday, May 26, 2016 in Benton County Superior Court on a new case of child rape. Federal agents are investigating him for allegedly producing child pornography. (Bob Brawdy/Tri-City Herald)



Read more here: Read more here: http://www.tri-cityherald.com/news/local/crime/article80216967.html#storylink =cpy
WENATCHEE, Wash.  Nearly 100 people have urged the Wenatchee School Board and administrators to reject a state policy recommendation to allow
President Barack Obama and his daughter Malia walk across the South Lawn of the White House in Washington before boarding Marine One helicopter on April 7. Obama endorsed Hillary Clinton for president on Thursday. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais, File)
If you are sending a Letter To the Editor, please be sure to follow these rules:

Letters have a firm 200-word limit and will be edited for grammar, clarity and accuracy.

The person who signs the letter must be the author. Anonymous letters will not be considered. Letters must address the editor, not a third party.

We will not print form letters, libelous letters, business promotions or personal disputes, poetry, open letters, letters espousing religious views without reference to a current issue, or letters considered in poor taste.

Letters reflect the opinion of the writer. The Yakima Herald-Republic cannot verify the accuracy of all statements made in letters.

Writers are limited to one published letter per calendar month.
(Adds Vale's and Samarco's comments)

RIO DE JANEIRO, June 9 (Reuters) - Brazil's federal police said on Thursday they have completed a criminal investigation into a dam burst last November at a mine run by Samarco, a joint venture between Vale SA and BHP Billiton, in which they accused three companies and eight employees of various crimes including willful misconduct.

The three companies accused are: Samarco, Vale and VogBR, the service company that checked the safety of the dam. The names of the individuals were not disclosed by the police.

With the police investigation now finished, the case will pass to prosecutors who will chose whether to press charges.

All of the accused, excluding one individual, were first informed by the police in January. At the time media reports said former Samarco Chief Executive Ricardo Vescovi was among the accused.

Samarco said in a statement it did not have knowledge of the dam's breaking risk and was never warned about it. Although the police have not disclosed names, Vale said in a statement it "rejected forcefully the accusations against one employee," saying he was never responsible for the dam management.

VogBR did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

(Reporting by Marta Nogueira and Stephen Eisenhammer; Editing by Phil Berlowitz and Matthew Lewis)
The U.N. Security Council condemned Thursday night the deadly terror shooting attack which which claimed the lives of four Israelis and wounded 16 others in Tel Avivs Sarona Market on Wednesday night.

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The council called for those responsible for "these reprehensible acts of terrorism" to be brought to justice.

The council statement was approved by all 15 members who expressed sympathy to the families of the four civilians killed and those injured in the attack by two Palestinian gunmen, and to the government of Israel.

UN Security Council (Photo: AP)

Council members "reiterated that any acts of terrorism are criminal and unjustifiable."

Israel's U.N. Ambassador Danny Danon said the council statement was the first official condemnation of "terrorism" in Israel since the current wave of attacks began eight months ago.

He called the condemnation "an important and moral statement" and called on all countries to oppose "Palestinian incitement that directly leads to violent terrorism."

Danon called upon the UN secretary-general and the security council on Wednesday night to condemn the terror attack.

Israeli Ambassador to the UN Danny Danon (Photo: AFP)

Todays attack is sad proof that when the international community refuses to condemn terror against Israelis, the next attack is only a matter of time. Terror in Tel Aviv must be viewed in the same way as terror attacks in Paris or Istanbul, said Danon.

I call upon the Security Council and the secretary-general to severely condemn the murderous terror attack and to demand from the Palestinian leadership to put a stop to hateful things which incite terror.
After the terror attack at the Max Brenner restaurant on Wednesday night, which claimed four Israeli lives and wounded 16 others, the terrorists who perpetrated the mass shooting attempted to flee the scene. But they had no chance. The response of the security guards nearby was immediate.

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While one of the terrorists was held up in a policemans house, other security guards jumped from their posts upon hearing the sounds of gunfire - and quickly neutralized the second terrorist.

A, a security guard in the Sarona market place who witnessed the shooting attack immediately began the chase. I heard voices, he told his friend. I get closer and see shooting. I react instinctively like a predator. I am full of adrenalin, I got closer while pulling out and loading my gun. I know that that is the terrorist.

Photo: Reuters

A emphasized that he did not shoot without being certain that the man on whom he was about to pull the trigger was the terrorist.

I heard the the firing and didnt see anyone. Only when I saw that someone was escaping with a gun did I understand that it was him. Then my gun jammed. I threw the magazine on the floor and pulled out another one and continued to run. He was getting away but eventually got tired. Thats when I shot, he said

However, the terrorist was undeterred. Even after being shot he attempted to continue his flight and possibly attack more civilians. At this point, security guards from the Israel Broadcasting Authority (IBA) appeared and began chasing him.

Avishai (32), who was completing his final shift before he begins work as tour guide, found himself face to face with the terrorist near the cinematheque. I was about 5-6 meters away from him, he recalled. I see that he is lying on the ground and I scream at him; Dont move! Dont move! Then he suddenly looks at me and starts getting up. I warn him again Dont move! but he tries to get up. I shoot three bullets at his lower body and neutralize him, he recalled.

Sarona terrorist neutralized

X

Avishai was careful to act with level-headedness. It was clear to me the whole time that we have to (engage the enemy) resolutely and strongly, but also show sensitivity, he continued. It was important for me to hit his lower body. Now that he has been hospitalized in light condition the security forces can investigate and ascertain exactly where he came from and with which terror cell he was affiliated.

Other guards from the IBA who pursued the terrorist were able to subdue him. Yoav (30), also spotted the terrorist while at his guard post and immediately began chasing him. I saw a load of people and heard gunshots and then the terrorist appeared opposite me, he recounted. I immediately shot at him and then unfortunately my gun jammed. He continued to run in the direction of the cinematheque where the security forces trapped him.

Vadim, another security guard who opened fire on the terrorist, said that the security forces didnt think twice: It was obvious that we had to act quickly. If we didnt, a bigger disaster could occur, he said. I dont feel like a hero. We did what we needed to do and that which is expected from us: to act quickly and with determination.
The Israeli Ministry of Defense has decided to redefine the status of two IDF soldiers killed in Operation Protective Edge. The status of Lieutenant Hadar Goldin will be classified as a soldier who was killed in action, but is also considered missing in action and a captive. Staff Sergeant Oron Shaul will be classified as a soldier who was killed in action and whose burial place is unknown, but is also considered missing in action and a captive.

Both Goldin and Shaul were killed during Protective Edge in 2014, but Shaul's body was never retrieved, and only partial remains of Goldin's body were retrieved.

It is not yet clear what practical meaning these new definitions will carry.
The sights of wounded and killed victims from Wednesday's deadly terror attack at the Sarona market were replaced on Thursday by bodyguard-accompanied politicians.

In a symbolic act of defiance, ambulances were replaced by news vans while restaurant tables, that were overturned and abandoned as diners were sprayed with bullets, were now occupied by religious youths and surrounded by a huge amount of police officers. The dark gloom of murderous terror is not only theme of such attacks. Indeed, such darkness is almost invariably accompanied by a light which frequently kindles the defiant spirit of people who insist on being seen and heard.

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The strong presence at the scene of a terrorist attack less than 24 hours after it occurs is a phenomenon which requires explanation. Indeed, it is not only Knesset members and government ministers. Everyone who wonders around these areas the following day is well aware that just a few hours earlier, people just like them were sitting there, having fun, laughing. They were ordering coffee, perhaps holding the very same menus in their hands, and now they are gone. The sounds of the deadly shots fired on Wednesday evening reverberate even during the following quiet summer day.

A monument for the victims of the attack at Sarona market. (Photo: Gilad Morag)

Rachel and Haim Arglezi, 70-year-olds from Givatayim, chose the table closest to the entrance of the Max Brenner cafe' (where the attack took place), and are awaiting their waitress. "We heard the owner of the place on morning radio, calling for people to come to the coffee shop, and we came," says Haim. "It's important to show confidence, to show our kids and grandkids that life has to go on, and that fear will not defeat us."

Rachel interjects by expressing her desperte longing to peace: "I wish our leaders would do everything to bring about peace, examine every option, and turn over every rock even if it means making concessions, in order to bring an end to the violence."



A class from Haifa's Hugim high school enjoys the plentiful space on Sarona's empty lawns. Their outing was supposed to take place in Jerusalem earlier in the year, but was postponed due to the terror incidents that plagued the capital. "Yesterday at 10pm, the class' WhatsApp group was suddenly very active," says Michael Karsanov, one of the students. "Some of the students said they were afraid to go. The teacher said that two security guards (would be brought along), and most of the parents and kids were calmed down."

The class teacher said that only one student cancelled hi participation in the trip. Michael takes out a large, folded, Israeli flag from his bag. "In any case, I brought this from home," he says. "No one can stop or intimidate us. This is our country, and we will continue to walk through it without fear."

Police at the scene of the attack. (Photo: AFP)

The small market square remains empty. Without clients to serve, store owners and salespeople stand outside their businesses while exchanging stories from the night before. The ladies from home appliance store Tiferet, are stirred by the coffee shop worker, who tells them of how he let two kids call a relative mere minutes after the attack.

They sat with him in Max Brenner and ran when the shooting began, but the relative didn't answer. "Today (Thursday. -ed), the (worker) sent a message to the number they called yesterday. He wanted to know how they were and whether they found him," says one of the Tiferet salespeople. "He was told that the children were alright, and that they were grateful for the care and help after the attack, but the relative in question was actually killed in the attack."

Two teenage girls pass by us wearing long white dresses, flower arrangements adorning their flaxen hair. They carry cheese platters, marking the upcoming Jewish holiday of Shavuot. No one feels like celebrating at the moment. The Max Brenner waiters start clearing the outside dining area of customers. There's no need to worry, tough. It's just that the Prime Minister is about to arrive.
The Ministry of Defense has announced that it will be changing the official status of fallen soldiers Lieutenant Hadar Goldin and Staff Sergeant Oron Shaul, who were both killed during Operation Protective Edge in the summer of 2014. Goldin will be recognized as "killed in action", but will also receive the additional status of "missing in action and in captivity." Similarly, Shaul will be recognized as killed in action and a soldier whose place of burial is unknown, but also as missing in action and in captivity.

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The slight difference between the two soldier's statuses is likely due to the fact that while some of Goldin's body parts were recovered on the battlefield, thus enabling his family to preside over a funeral procession, no remains of Shaul's body were recovered thereby precluding the possibility for a funeral. Remains of both soldiers' bodies are thought to be held by Hamas.

Lieutenant Hadar Goldin (left) and Staff Sgt. Oron Shaul (right).

The redefinition of the soldiers' status came after the Goldin family petitioned the IDF to add the "missing in action and in captivity" status in an effort to prevent the conclusion of the campaign to return all of their remains to Israel. According to the family, the official recognition of their son as a fallen soldier symbolized the closure of the chapter and would lead to the premature termination of government efforts despite the fact that not all of his remains have been returned. The new status therefore, symbolized the idea of the state's obligation to retrieve Goldin's and Shaul's remains.

We praise the IDF and the security apparatus for the new status of Hadar and Oron," said the Goldin family. "Indeed, the state of Israels declaration about Hadar shows that the objective of returning him has not been completed and that the country is fully obligated to return Hadar to his grave in Israel.

We expect practical steps to be taken by the state, by the IDF and the security apparatus to bring about Shauls and Hadars speedy return.

When contacted by Ynet, members of the Shaul family said they were not aware of the decision. "The truth is we have not yet received any information regarding the matter," said Zehava Shaul, Staff Sgt. Shaul's mother.
The Israeli military says the West Bank will be closed off until the end of the Jewish holiday of Shavuot due to security concerns following a Palestinian shooting attack this week that killed four Israeli civilians.

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It said Friday that crossings will be open for "humanitarian" cases and for Palestinians to worship at al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem.

Police Commissioner Roni Alsheikh. "The distinction we make between terrorists and the (general) population is an important one." (Photo: Eli Mendelbaum)

Police are on high alert in Jerusalem as thousands of Palestinians are expected for prayers on the first Friday of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. The holy site has been a flashpoint of violence in the past, and tensions are especially high after Palestinian gunmen killed four Israelis in a shooting at a popular Tel Aviv tourist spot on Wednesday.

The military says the closure will end Sunday night after the Shavuot holiday.

Minister of Public Security Gilad Erdan and Israel Police Commissioner Roni Alsheikh gave statements to the press on Friday. "I have instructed the police to significantly reinforce their presence in places where many people gather. Operations against illegal aliens are constantly ongoing, and we will continue to exert the full power of the law with anyone who gives shelter, employs, or aids an illegal alien and does not report (them) to the police. Following the attack, steps were taken, which we reported to the police," Erdan said.

The West Bank will be under closure for Shavuot. (Photo: AP)

Alsheikh added, "The distinction we make between terrorists and the (general) population is an important one, and we do everything so that we do not confuse (the two)... We will give (people) the feeling of security, in areas where there are no warnings or concrete concerns of terrorist attacks, but civilians, naturally, want to feel secure and the police pays a price (for that). This is a blanket that must be stretched where it's right to do so as far as answers to concrete threats is concerned, and as far as a feeling of security is concerned."

When asked by the press about the investigation of Wednesday's attack, Alsheikh said that "There is a gag order, and we are certainly obligated (to follow it)."

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein condemned the Sarona Market attack but is deeply concerned about the revoking of permits "which may amount to prohibited collective punishment and will only increase the sense of injustice and frustration felt by Palestinians in this very tense time", spokeswoman Ravina Shamdasani told a news briefing.

"Israel has a human rights obligation to bring those responsible to account for their crimes. And this it is doing. However the measures taken against the broader population punish not the perpetrators of the crime, but tens - and maybe hundreds - of thousands of innocent Palestinians," Shamdasani said.
On Friday night, an attacker attempted to stab IDF soldiers outside the Shomron Regional Brigade. The soldiers prevented the attack by shooting the perpetrator, and no IDF injuries were reported.

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The attacker arrived riding a bicycle. He approached the guard post, dismounted his bike, and rushed at the Nahal soldiers present. They shot him and succeeded in neutralizing the threat.

The attacker's knife (Photo: Hatzalah Yehuda and Shomron)

The IDF immediately provided first aid to the injured attacker. They declared his condition to be serious before evacuating him to the Rabin Medical Center in Petach Tikva.

This evacuation is despite the three-day closure in effect on the West Bank following the murderous attack on Wednesday night in Tel Aviv.
In a special meeting of leading figures from the Arab sector on Thursday evening, those assembled harshly condemned the murderous attacks at Tel Aviv's Sarona market on Wednesday night in which four Israeli citizens were murdered by two terrorists from Yatta (south of Hebron).

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The meeting was held in Taibe in the center of the country, and the attendees were Arab mayors and Jewish tourists. The mayors condemned the Tel-Aviv attack and called for the continuation of good relations between Arabs and Jews, asking that the attacks would not damage the two sectors' coexistence.

Taibe Mayor Shua Mansour Masarwa said at the meeting, "Despite the hard days, we need to deal with the difficulties and to overcome (them). We condemn any act of killing innocent people on both sides. The occupation needs to end so that peace can survive and we will be able to live in peace."

Hopes for coexistence

He also said, "(I) call to every moderate person in the country and say to them that it's important for us to denounce and to overcome extremism and hate to continue our lives in the best way and without violence." The mayor added that his city was always open to Jews and Arabs: "Here, we respect each other, and every Jewish or Arab visitor feels at home."

Nasreen Morcus from Sikkuy: The Association for the Advancement of Civic Equality came with the group of Jews. She said, "We condemn the attack and oppose associating the month of Ramadan with it. This month is one of spirituality and patience, and what happened in Tel Aviv does not represent Islam. The Sikkuy association is making every effort to promote coexistence in the country."

Mohammed Jubara, a Taibe resident and vice principal of the Ibn Khaldun Elementary School, said that Jews visited the school on Thursday who had come to get to know the city up close. "The attack didn't have a negative effect on the visit, and we carried on as planned. Attacks won't ruin that. All of us want to live alongside Jews and continue the excellent visits."

Some attending in Taibe

Nail Zoabi, principal of the Tamra Valley Elementary School and a social activist for co-existence and active citizenship, said that he was repulsed to hear about the attack: "I wondered if there was something more horrible than thismurdering people for no reason? An attack like this deserves to be condemned, but it's not sufficient just to talk; we also have to act.

"We, the citizens of Israel, have a duty to prevent the next attack. An attack on civilians is a red line that must never be crossed. From here, I send my sincere condolences to the families of the murdered, may God strengthen them, and wish a speedy and full recovery to the injured."

He added, "My hope is that the entire Arab leadership in Israel will rise and harshly condemn the attack. I can only hope that we won't see more incidents like it."

Imad, a resident of the Triangle (a central region of the country with a significant Israeli Arab population), said, "We, the Arab citizens, are part of the country of Israel, and we won't accept acts of terrorism that destroy everything for us. This attack won't contribute anything and will only complicate matters and put us in an extremely difficult position. In the end, it's we, the Arabs, who pay the price for an act that we didn't want, that was carried out by two people who, in my opinion, don't deserve air to breathe.

Kfar Kassem resident Adel Badir said, "As citizens of the country, we strongly condemn any active attack against civilians, and we wish a speedy recovery to the injured. These incidents will not change the relations between the two peoples, and we will continue to live in peace."

He continued, "On both sides, there are people who carry out criminal acts, and it shouldn't affect everyone. The Arab population has been hurt more than it hurts, and everybody wants to live a normal life. We are not a party to any conflict."
UNITED NATIONS - France's foreign minister is warning that Israel's ban on Palestinians entering its territory following the "abominable" attack on a popular cafe in Tel Aviv could escalate violence instead of focus attention on the need to pursue peace.

Jean-Marc Ayrault reiterated France's condemnation of the attack, which killed four civilians, but was critical of Israel's response.

"The decision by the Israeli authorities today to revoke tens of thousands of entry permits could stoke tensions which could lead to a risk of escalation," he told a small group of reporters. "We must be careful about anything that could stoke tensions."
France's foreign minister warned Friday that Israel's ban on Palestinians entering its territory following the "abominable" attack on a popular cafe in Tel Aviv could escalate violence instead of focus attention on the need to pursue peace.

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Jean-Marc Ayrault reiterated France's condemnation of the attack, which killed four civilians, but was critical of Israel's response.

Israel imposed travel restrictions Thursday on Palestinians and sent hundreds of additional troops into the West Bank. On Friday, the military announced it was closing the West Bank until the end of the Jewish holiday of Shavuot on Sunday due to security concerns, except for "humanitarian and medical" cases and for Palestinians to worship at al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem.

Ayraul at the UN (Photo: AP)

"The decision by the Israeli authorities today to revoke tens of thousands of entry permits could stoke tensions which could lead to a risk of escalation," Ayrault told a small group of reporters. "We must be careful about anything that could stoke tensions."

France currently holds the presidency of the UN Security Council and Ayrault was at UN headquarters to preside over an open council debate on the protection of civilians in peacekeeping operations.

Last Friday, France hosted an international meeting in Paris attended by more than two dozen Western and Arab countries to try to come up with a new strategy for Mideast peace and revive Israeli-Palestinian negotiations which have been all but dead for two years. The participants welcomed the "prospect" of a conference with both parties later this year.

"There must be a political initiative from the international community to create conditions conducive to appeasement and a return to negotiations," Ayrault said.

"We need intense mobilization to start something new to force the parties, who will all be invited in the second part of the year to our conference, to talk to one another again," he said.

Ayrault called for a halt to Israeli settlement building which he called a "serious provocation."
Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump spoke on Thursday afternoon to the ecumenical Christian crowd at the Faith and Freedom Coalition's "Road to Majority" conference in Washington, DC.

Said Trump, "We must continue to forge our partnership with Israel and work to insure Israel's security. Keeping people of faith safe from threats like radical Islam, whether protecting them here or standing by Israel, all of us need to confront together the threat of radical Islam. "
Defense Secretary Ash Carter announced two new links of his Force of the Future initiative during remarks delivered at the Pentagon June 9."The Force of the Future initiatives continue to showcase Secretary Carter and the (Defense Departments) commitment to maintaining and growing a diverse and talented military and civilian force," said Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James. "As a service, diversity of background is vitally important to ensuring we remain the strongest Air Force in the world."The announcement introduced the third and fourth links of Future of the Force. One focused on the DOD's uniformed military side, particularly on giving the services room to make improvements to the officer promotion system, and the other targeted the DOD's civilian workforce.The first and second links of the initiative were announced in November 2015 and January 2016, respectively.The first link focused on building and expanding on-ramps and off-ramps for technical talent to flow between the DOD and the tech sector in both directions, and modernizing the department's talent management systems.The second link focused on supporting military families, including the expansion of maternity and paternity leave for service members.For the third link, the DOD will work to ensure that the military continues to be as ready to meet the challenges of the future as it is to meet the challenges of today. This includes six proposals or changes for additional military services flexibility in certain aspects of the military personnel management system that would do the following:The fourth link provides civilian workforce initiatives designed to extend the advantage civil servants provide the DOD and leverage the department's unique mission to encourage and incentivize public service, streamlining the path to DOD employment and maximizing talent. The following proposals and implementations in many ways propose programs parallel to those available to military personnel."Winning the competition for good people is a critical part of our military edge," Carter said. "This latest set of proposals, targeting both our military officers and our civilian workforce, will help win that competition so we can meet the security challenges of the 21st century."The Air Force will work with DOD to support required legislation. Service specific implementation plans will be forthcoming for the remaining links.To view a copy of the official transcript, click here
459th Air Refueling Wing Public Affairs

Staff Sgt. Dustin Brown, 459th Aircraft Maintenance Squadron crew chief, uses a mirror to check the oil level on the engine of a KC-135R Stratotanker on the Joint Base Andrews, Md., flight line June 9, 2016. The aircraft had just returned from Turkey, where it provided refueling support as part of Operation Inherent Resolve. (U.S. Air Force photo/Staff Sgt. Kat Justen)
SUGAR LAND, TX--(Marketwired - Jun 10, 2016) - Researched by Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas) -- CB&I Incorporated (CBI) (The Hague, Netherlands), also known as Chicago Bridge & Iron Company, is maintaining a healthy slate of projects, despite a slowing business environment due to the consistent weakness in commodity prices. According to Industrial Info's project database, CB&I is involved in more than 140 projects, with a total investment value (TIV) of $175.6 billion. More than half of the TIV is attributed to the 10 highest-valued projects, all of which involve construction and additions at liquefied natural gas (LNG) facilities.

Within this article: Details on the 10 highest-valued projects to feature CB&I, including those from major companies such as Chevron Corporation (CVX), Sempra Energy (SRE), NextDecade, Anadarko Petroleum Corporation (APC), Rosneft OAO, Engie (formerly GDF Suez), Mitsubishi Corporation and Mitsui & Company Limited.

For details, view the entire article by subscribing to Industrial Info's Premium Industry News, or browse other breaking industrial news stories at www.industrialinfo.com.

Industrial Info Resources (IIR), with global headquarters in Sugar Land, Texas, five offices in North America and 10 international offices, is the leading provider of global market intelligence specializing in the industrial process, heavy manufacturing and energy markets. Industrial Info's quality-assurance philosophy, the Living Forward Reporting Principle, provides up-to-the-minute intelligence on what's happening now, while constantly keeping track of future opportunities. To contact an office in your area, visit the www.industrialinfo.com "Contact Us" page.
* French alarmed by blue chip champions leaving Paris

* France seeks Chinese capital, but not always control

* Investment spree comes before EU decision on China status

By Paul Taylor

PARIS, June 8 (Reuters) - When reports hit the headlines in France that a state-owned Chinese firm might be taking creeping control of AccorHotels, a national champion and Europe's biggest hotel chain, President Francois Hollande felt obliged to respond.

"Accor has Chinese shareholders because it is growing in Asia," Hollande told La Voix du Nord newspaper. "But I am watching closely to make sure that the capital of this big company remains in diverse hands."

The comment signalled a desire for Chinese authorities to restrain tourism group Jin Jiang, majority owned by the city of Shanghai, from going beyond its current 15 percent holding to acquire a controlling stake in AccorHotels.

AccorHotels, which controls 3,900 hotels from the luxury Sofitel brand to the budget Ibis, is not a strategic national asset by any French legal definition but it is a household name.

Jin Jiang may have stumbled into the firing line of French establishment alarm over a spate of departures of other blue-chip companies to foreign capitalist shores.

"Today, foreign investor groups are interested in France because of our companies' strong performance. But we have to be careful not to lose the decision-making centres," Hollande said.

Media and politicians have raised the alarm after several stalwarts of the CAC40 index came under foreign flags, in some cases for what look like tax reasons.

They include engineering corporation Alstom, swallowed by U.S. giant General Electric last year; telecoms equipment maker Alcatel, taken over by Nokia of Finland; cement manufacturer Lafarge, which merged with Swiss group Holcim and moved headquarters to Zurich; and oil services company Technip, which is merging with FMC Technologies of the United States and moving to London.

"There is an understandable sense of panic," said economist Elie Cohen, director of research at the National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS). "We have seen an accelerating haemorrhage of big French corporations in the last two years."

Story continues

INVESTMENT VS CONTROL

Like Germany, France has generally welcomed Chinese investment as a boost to its economy and an opportunity to expand into fast growing Asian markets, but it remains more reluctant to cede control, especially over advanced technology.

German Vice-Chancellor and Economy Minister Sigmar Gabriel voiced concern last week at a bid by China's Midea Group Co Ltd to take over German industrial robot maker Kuka though the Berlin government has denied reports that it is trying to organise a rival offer.

Jean-Francois Dufour, an analyst at Montsalvy Consulting in Paris specialised in Chinese industrial investment, said Beijing had often complied quietly in the past when foreign governments signalled its companies were not welcome in certain sectors.

"The Chinese government is at least indirectly involved because even private groups need finance from state-owned banks to fund foreign acquisitions," he told Reuters.

Chancellor Angela Merkel has taken a hands-off approach to foreign takeovers of German firms and this year alone, ChemChina agreed to buy machinery maker KraussMaffei for $1 billion; Beijing Enterprise Holdings announced a 1.44 billion euro takeover of German waste management company Energy from Waste; and Fujian Grand Chip Investment Fund LP said it was buying German semiconductor equipment maker Aixtron for 670 million euros.

French officials complain that Beijing does not permit reciprocity in investment. Foreign firms wishing to enter the Chinese market have to partner with Chinese companies and cannot hold more than a 50-percent stake.

The European Union Chamber of Commerce in China said in a survey this week foreign companies face "a business environment that is increasingly hostile combined with a playing field that is perpetually tilted in favour of domestic enterprises".

Debate in Europe on the issue is gaining momentum before a politically sensitive decision by the EU this year on whether to grant China market-economy status, which would give it better protection from anti-dumping lawsuits.

HOUR OF NEED

The French have been eager to seek Chinese capital in their hour of need, or when the state needs cash.

"France accepts Chinese investments when its companies are in trouble, but when it comes to talking about control, that raises opposition," Dufour said.

In late 2013, when PSA Peugeot Citroen was close to bankruptcy, the head of the state shareholdings agency was sent to cajole Chinese state-owned carmaker Dongfeng into paying 800 million euros ($909 million) for a 14 percent stake in the auto manufacturer, balanced by a matching French government stake. Then chairman Thierry Peugeot was not told in advance about the trip and was annoyed.

With Peugeot's finances now back in good health and the government looking to sell off some less strategic holdings, new Chief Executive Carlos Tavares has sounded the clearest note of caution about a possible state withdrawal from Peugeot -- which could shift the power balance in Dongfeng's favour.

In other sectors, Paris has rolled out the red carpet for the Chinese, notably in the travel and tourism sector, keen to strengthen France's place as the third biggest recipient of Chinese investment after Germany and Britain.

A Chinese-led consortium bought a 49.99 percent stake in Toulouse airport last year when the government privatised the regional hub, home of European planemaker Airbus.

France raised no objections when diversified Chinese group Fosun took control of Club Mediterannee, the standard bearer of French middle-class holiday culture, last year after a bidding war with an Italian suitor.

"We on the board went out looking for a Chinese partner ... because we anticipated that China would become the world's biggest tourism market and it wouldn't have made sense to go it alone," Club Med CEO Henri Giscard d'Estaing told Reuters.

The Chinese have also been buying up agricultural assets from milk-producing farms in Brittany to big-name vineyards in Bordeaux and Burgundy without official opposition.

"In the past two years, France has actually been quite open and non-interventionist for Chinese investment," said Francois Godement, senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations think-tank. "Up to now, there hasn't been any red light for taking stakes in big French companies in either real estate or tourism."

Godement said Beijing appeared to be pursuing an official strategy of building up holdings in entire value chains such as tourism, to ensure that part of the income from Chinese tourists abroad accrues back to China.

But there was also a trend, not encouraged by the Communist authorities, of state-owned enterprises that have some private shareholders buying stakes in foreign companies and real estate in an apparent effort to move assets abroad.

($1 = 0.8800 euros) (Additional reporting by Laurence Foster, Tim Hepher, Yann Le Guernigou and Dominique Vidalon in Paris, Barbara Lewis and Foo Yun Chee in Brussels and Noah Barkin in Berlin, Writing by Paul Taylor, Editing by Timothy Heritage)
As a homeowner, you probably already know that you should be working to maintain your home. But, chances are, you Read More
ZAGREB (Reuters) - Croatia's technocrat Prime Minister Tihomir Oreskovic said on Friday he had no plans to resign under pressure from the conservative HDZ party, the biggest in the ruling coalition. The HDZ filed a no-confidence motion against Oreskovic on Tuesday over his handling of a political row between the HDZ and its junior coalition partner, the Most ("Bridge") party. "I can't step down as it would mean I'm guilty and accept false accusations against me. I want to respond to it in the parliament which approved me as prime minister. It is a matter of honour," Oreskovic told reporters. The HDZ has accused Oreskovic of trying to boost his own political power instead of tackling economic priorities. The HDZ has voiced confidence it can gather a new parliamentary majority, but analysts believe this will be very difficult to achieve without Most. It said late on Friday it would nominate Finance Minister Zdravko Maric for a prime minister-designate. "We wouldn't say that if we were not sure in a new parliamentary majority," HDZ Vice-President Oleg Butkovic was quoted as saying by state news agency Hina. Most's leader and Deputy Prime Minister, Bozo Petrov, has also dismissed the HDZ call for Prime Minister Oreskovic, Deputy Prime Minister Tomislav Karamarko, who is also leader of the HDZ, and Petrov himself to step down. Most wants Karamarko to leave the government because of an alleged conflict of interest arising from his wife's business ties with a lobbyist for Hungarian energy group MOL, the biggest shareholder in Croatian utility INA. The government in Zagreb and MOL are in dispute over management rights and investment strategy at INA. A vote on the HDZ's motion against Oreskovic is expected to take place next Thursday or Friday. "I still hope reason will prevail and that this government, with some changes, will be able to carry on," Oreskovic said. If the government is voted out and no one can secure the support of a majority of deputies for the formation of a new cabinet within 30 days, President Kolinda Grabar Kitarovic must call a snap election. (Reporting by Igor Ilic; Editing by Richard Balmforth)
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Its a two-person presidential race now, which means voters will start hearing more about the candidates actual proposalsalong with attacks on those proposals from the other side. Coming soon: Hillary Clintons planned takedown of Donald Trumps ideas on business and the economy.

Yahoo Finance will be deconstructing the candidates campaign promises all the way through November. Heres a starting primer on five economic ideas from the candidates that would probably do more harm than good.

Trade wars. Republican Donald Trump has attacked free trade as a centerpiece of his campaign, and business leaders are worried. Trump wants to rescind free-trade deals such as NAFTA, slap imports on a wide range of Chinese imports and punish nations such as China, Korea and Japan for keeping their currencies artificially low. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce warns that such policies would cause a recession within a year, and even if that's an overstatement, many economists say new tariffs would raise prices on a wide range of products, causing hardship for typical families. A better way to address concerns about jobs lost to trade might be to build new safety nets for those harmed by globalization and help funnel displaced workers into newer, healthier fields.

Continued class warfare. Hillary Clinton favors fairly traditional soak-the-rich tax reform that would raise taxes on the wealthiest Americans while cutting taxes for middle-class families. Everybody loves a tax cut and most Americans wouldnt object to higher taxes on millionaires. But it seems likely that at least one Congressional chamber, the House, will remain under Republican control next year, and theyd almost certainly refuse to pass tax hikes of any kind. So Clinton, if president, could waste years pressing for the same kind of tax reform President Obama has failed to get through Congress. With the U.S. economy increasingly desperate for a tax overhaul making the system fairer and more efficient, the next president would do the most good by promptly pursuring some kind of tax reform actually able to get through Congress.

Story continues

Doing nothing about corporate taxes. This is Part II of Americas tax conundrum. Many other countries have cut corporate tax rates to draw more multinational firms, and its working. The US corporate rate is now one of the highest in the developed world, which is a big reason US corporations have $2 trillion in cash parked overseas and keep seeking ways to domicile themselves outside the United States. Trump favors a cut in the corporate tax rate from 35% to 15%, but Clinton hasnt taken a position on the distortions caused by the gap between US and foreign tax rates. Most economists favor lower US rates along with the elimination of hundreds of loopholes, which would make our tax code less complex and more competitive. In fact, this is one of the few things the government can probably do to directly stimulate the economy.

Killing Obamacare without replacing it. Trump wants to repeal Obamacare and in its place enact two tax breaks: one making health insurance premium payments tax-deductible, and another encouraging expanded use of health-savings accounts. If we were still in the pre-Obamacare era, those policies might make sense. But Trumps swap would pull the floor out from under the healthcare industry and put many patients in a bind as well. Obamacare has many flaws, but it has also become an elemental part of the healthcare system at this point. Better now to find new ways to lower costs and persuade those stil not covered to get covered, than to scrap Obamacare and start over.

Trash-talking America. Some economists worry that hostile campaign rhetoric alone could depress confidence and hurt the economy. Our biggest concern is that the rhetoric does not cool down and investors start to worry about big tail risks to growth, Bank of America Merrill Lynch wrote in a recent report. Markets quiver most at proposals that would upset the status quo with unproven new policies, such as Trumps preferred tariffs. Much of Trumps proposals, in fact, aim to replace existing programs with new ones he feels would be better. Clinton, by contrast, is more conventionalbut that brings the risk of defending an establishment many Americans feel is failing them. So she, too, may feel the need to propose a few bombshells.

The good news about dramatic campaign proposals is they often go far beyond what may be possible in the real world of rough-elbow politics, and maybe even go beyond what the candidates themselves actually favor. So wild campaign ideas might evolve into nothing more than stalled legislation. Presidents tend to get less done once they're actually in office than they say they'll do while campaigning for it.

Rick Newmans latest book is Liberty for All: A Manifesto for Reclaiming Financial and Political Freedom. Follow him on Twitter: @rickjnewman.
New Delhi: The Tis Hazari court here on Friday awarded life imprisonment to five convicts in the 2014 Danish woman gang-rape case.

The court on Thursday had reserved its order on their quantum of punishment.

During the hearing of the case in court, the police had sought maximum punishment for the five convicts. The accused are Mahendra alias Ganja (24), Mohd Raja (22), Raju (23), Arjun (21) and Raju Chakka (22).

Nine men, including three juveniles, were accused of robbing and raping a 52-year-old Danish woman at knife-point near New Delhi railway station in January 2014 after she had asked them for directions to her hotel in Paharganj area.

The Additional Solicitor General had earlier on May 26 fixed the matter for judgement after he concluded hearing final arguments of both the Delhi Police and the defence counsel.

While the prosecution submitted that all evidence nails the accused, the defence counsel claimed that his clients were innocent.

Shyam Lal, one of the accused, died in February in Delhi's Tihar Jail and the proceedings against him in this case were abated.

The three minors are facing proceedings before the Juvenile Justice Board in connection with this case.
New Delhi: President of Jawaharlal Nehru University Students' Union (JNUSU) Kanhaiya Kumar and his associates, who were protesting here on Friday over the alleged discrimination against the students in Bihar, were taken into custody by police.

A television footage showed they were loaded onto a bus outside the Bihar Bhawan here before being whisked away to a police station.

Kumar told scribes that they were protesting on several issues, including against a college principal who had put some students behind bars over a fake case.

He criticised the alleged police brutality against the students of Patna arts college and called for their immediate release from custody.

Kumar also demanded the government to hold BPSC and UPSC exams on different dates as they are scheduled on the same day at the moment.

The student leader has vowed to continue his protest till the Bihar government accepts their demands.
Here is an illegal industry growing three times as fast as the global economy: environmental crime.

A new report from the United Nations and INTERPOL says activities revolving around exploiting natural resources and pollution are becoming big business, and lining the pockets of international criminal organizations and terrorist groups.

Illicit hunting and trading of wildlife, illegal mining, logging, and even waste disposal, have become the fourth largest criminal business around the world, after drugs, arms, and human trafficking.

Together these illegal industries have risen by 26 percent since a previous estimate was made in 2014, and growth is continuing at an annual rate of 5-7 percent, according to a paper released this week, jointly produced by the United Nations Environmental Program and INTERPOL.



Valuing illegal activity is tough, but the latest estimate places it somewhere between $91 billion and $258 billion, annually.



These are not isolated crimes occurring on a small scale in individual countries, said the study's editor, Christian Nellemann, in an interview with CNBC.



Nellemann, who is the head of UNEP's Rapid Response Unit, said that as commerce has become global, criminal networks have globalized along with it.

They are able to exploit and piggyback on ever more sophisticated international shipping networks and logistics channels, and circumvent both local and international laws.



"We are not talking petty crimes here," Nellemann said. "We are talking large-scale, massive tax fraud, companies issuing falsified paperwork, small fleets of vessels transporting illegal cargo from Papua New Guinea or Indonesia to China."



There is scarcely a continent not somehow affected by the trade. Asia has become a particular hotspot both for demand and production, and Nellemann notes the 5-7 percent annual growth rate for the illegal industry tracks the growth rates of some Asian economies.



There has long been a huge market for wildlife products, where everything from tiger bones to ivory, and live birds have been bought for traditional medicines, food, pets and decorative art.



Story continues

But somewhat novel in Asia is that parts of it have become dumps for various forms of waste  especially hazardous waste, and electronic waste, which is costly to dispose of in the developed countries of Europe or North America.

Criminals buy up electronic or hazardous waste from European or American clients, and use different tactics for circumventing laws preventing its transport to less regulated countries.



Old computers and electronics, for example, are sometimes transported as "second-hand goods," when really they are bound for dumps.



Also novel is the nexus of security threats and crime. The ongoing conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which Nellemann noted has claimed 7 million lives, is increasingly seen as a conflict driven by criminal interests, rather than as a political insurgency. The exploitation of resources there totals $722 million to $862 million annually. Only about two percent of that goes to armed fighters  the rest ends up in the pockets of organized crime.

The East African terror group Al-Shabaab, which has been linked to Al-Qaeda, drew somewhere around $250 million in funding from illegal charcoal in 2013 and 2014. And as is well known, ISIS is funding itself with oil.



Drug cartels in Latin America have entered the illegal logging and gold mining business in Latin America.



There are measures that can be taken. Nellemann expects this will require a single international effort run by a single agency, such as INTERPOL. So far the agency has had some successes. The report tells of one particularly large seizure of illegally logged wood in Venezuela, totaling about 20,000 truckloads.

Some efforts at the national level have also worked, though. The Brazilian government was able to reduce deforestation in its patch of the Amazon by 76 percent in five years, in part by sending SWAT teams into the jungle to raid illegal logging operations.



The report calls for the integration of INTERPOL officers in peacekeeping missions, and for greater information sharing among agencies and governments. Countries also have to agree to take environmental crime seriously, strengthen local laws, commit money to combat the problem, and increase consumer awareness of products that might be illegally obtained.





More From CNBC


Ahmedabad: Gujarat Chief Minister Anandiben Patel on Thursday broke down when a class nine student girl read out a letter describing agony of unborn girl children to highlight the issue of female foeticide at a function in the Kheda district.

Patel had gone to the Harej primary school to enrol students as a part of annual school enrolment drive of the Gujarat government.

During the function, student Ambika Gohel read out a letter from an unborn girl child to her mother requesting to allow her to take birth in the world.

The heart touching presentation of the pain of meeting death, without even being allowed to born, moved one and all and even Ambika started crying.

The 74-year-old first woman chief minister of Gujarat, who is considered to be a strict task master, could not prevent tears rolling down her eyes.

After Ambika read out the letter, Anandiben hugged the girl as both of them were seen crying.

Patel was later seen wiping her tears with a napkin.
Chandigarh: A day ahead of the crucial Rajya Sabha elections in Haryana, there is speculation that the state Congress may be leaning towards supporting the Independent candidate backed by the Indian National Lok Dal (INLD).

However, the Congress party may do well to recall that ahead of the Haryana Assembly Elections in 2014, the same party (INLD) had tried to forge a national alliance that was anti-Congress and anti-BJP.

At a rally to kick off his party's campaign for the state elections, INLD leader Om Prakash Chautala had brought together several national leaders on September 25, 2014 - the 100th birth anniversary of his father, INLD founder and former deputy prime minister Chaudhary Devi Lal.

In a symbolic message to the Congress and the BJP, Chautala played host to leaders like SAD chief Parkash Singh Badal, JD(U)'s Nitish Kumar and Sharad Yadav, JD-S' HD Deve Gowda, and Shivpal Yadav of Samajwadi Party at a rally in Jind.

Most of these leaders represent a political thought that is anti-BJP and anti-Congress and hence the potential of a grand alliance.

Despite being convicted in the teachers recruitment scam and subsequently barred by law from contesting, Chautala indicated at the rally that he was still a contender for the chief ministers post.

I will take oath in jail as the chief minister. Have you not heard of people being sworn in as ministers without being elected? he asked. I am not scared of going to jail, he added.

Chautala was jailed in January 2013 and subsequently released on bail on health grounds.

At the rally, Nitish Kumar had stated that the rally could be a precursor to a grand alliance against the Congress and the BJP. He also recalled the role played by Devi Lal, the INLD founder, in dislodging the Rajiv Gandhi government at the Centre.
Zee Media Bureau

New Delhi: In order to avoid virus' devastating birth defects, the World Health Organization has said that women who live in areas where Zika is spreading should consider delaying pregnancy.

The WHO stops short of advising couples to put pregnancy on hold, as some countries battling the outbreak have.

Instead, WHO spokeswoman Nyka Alexander said yesterday that men and women who live in outbreak areas should be given information about the risks of Zika and told that delaying pregnancy is an option.

Zika is rapidly spreading through Latin American and the Caribbean.

Health officials have long advised pregnant women not to travel to Zika-affected areas, and say returning travelers should use contraception or avoid sex for certain time periods if they were exposed or infected.

(With PTI inputs)
London: The dreaded Islamic State militant group has released its longest kill list targeting thousands of people from various nationalities.

According to reports, the list has been released by a pro-ISIS hacker group, which has placed nearly 8,000 Americans on what is being said to be its longest 'kill list' that also includes names of Canadians, Australians and Europeans.

The pro-ISIS United Cyber Caliphate hacker group released a list of 8,318 people, including their addresses and email contact details, on a secretive messaging app service, said reports.

It urged its supporters to "follow" those listed - and "kill them strongly to take revenge for Muslims", according to Daily Mirror.

It is one of the longest kill lists issued by any ISIS-affiliated group till date and includes the names of 7,848 Americans, 312 Canadians, 39 Britons and 69 Australians.

The rest of the targets listed are reported to be from a variety of nations including Belgium, Brazil, China, Estonia, France, Germany, Greece, Guatemala, Indonesia, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Jamaica, New Zealand, Trinidad and Tobago, South Korea and Sweden.

They are mostly military or government workers or people in the public eye, like royalty or celebrities.

The list, written in both English and Arabic, was uncovered by the media group Vocativ, which specialises in investigating the hidden side of the web. It discovered it on a messaging app service called Telegram earlier this week.

Vocativ has, however, refused to share further details of those named on the list.

According to a report by US intelligence firm Flashpoint, the United Cyber Caliphate was formed in April 2015 after a merger of several radical Islamic hacking groups.
Chennai: The Coast Guards of India and Korea held a joint exercise on Friday, carrying out activities like scenarios of handling of hijacking, interdiction of pirate vessel and joint boarding operations.

General Rajendra Singh, Director, Indian Coast Guard, and Hong Ik Tae, Commissioner General of Korea Coast Guard and many other senior officials from both sides witnessed the exercise, titled 'SAHYOG-HYEOBLYEOG-2016,' held off Chennai.

"During this year's exercise, we agreed to have point of contacts in India and Korea to share real-time information and anything related to pollution, search and control, piracy and day-to-day information," Singh told reporters.

So far, five such editions of the exercise have been held and the aim was to "enhance the operational capability between the two sides," Singh said.

Further, the Indian Coast Guard would sign Memoranda of Understanding (MoU) with Sri Lanka and Myanmar to conduct similar joint exercises, he said.

Today's exercise saw various scenarios such as hijacking of a merchant vessel and its rescue in a joint operation by the two Coast Guards, interdiction of pirate vessel, Joint Boarding Operations, Cross Boarding, search and rescue demonstration and external fire fighting.

A fly past was also held on the occasion.

The aim of the exercise was to strengthen the working level relationship between the two coast guards and further refine the joint operating procedures, a press release from the Coast Guard said.

Indian Coast Guard ships Samudra Paheredar, Rajtarang, Sagar and Anagh besides a Dornier aircraft and Chetak helicopter participated in the exercise while the Korean side was represented by its ship 3009.

To a question, Singh said the coast guard was interacting with fishermen to educate them to not to cross International Maritime Boundary, either with Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh or Myanmar, and had conducted over 200 programmes in this regard.
New Delhi: The Congress on Friday ridiculed BJP president Amit Shah for his statement that US support for India`s bid to enter the multi-lateral export control regimes MTCR and NSG will "pave the way for India to become an important arms exporter", by saying that the BJP "needs to understand that MTCR was about controlling proliferation of missiles and not becoming an arms exporter".

Congress also stressed that no significant decision in favour of India came out of the NSG meeting that took place on Thursday night in Vienna.

It said China was a spoiler in India`s bid to enter the 48-member Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG).

"Never ever in the past, in almost three decades, has China taken such an absolutely hostile position to India on the question of the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG)," said Congress spokesperson Manish Tewari.

"The most amusing comment on the Prime Minister`s foreign visit actually came from the BJP president (Amit Shah). He said that if India becomes a part of the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR), we will become a major arms exporter."

"When I read the statement in the paper, I thought it could have been a misquote, but then I went back and checked and it was not a misquote -- possibly the BJP needs to understand that the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR) is about controlling proliferation of missiles," said Tewari.

"It is not about making a country into a net arms exporter. So, this is the limited understanding which the BJP and its president unfortunately have about international affairs," he added.

To a question that with regard to Switzerland, Mexico and USA, India needs their support for entry into NSG and whether it was not an accomplishment to address the joint session of the US Congress, Tewari said: "The fact is that it was in September 2008, that the concerted diplomacy of the UPA government broke the Nuclear apartheid which had been in place for two-and-a-half decades, commencing with India`s first peaceful nuclear explosion in 1984.

"It was the UPA government which was successful in getting a waiver from the Nuclear Supplies Group for the Indo-US Civil Nuclear Agreement."

"NSG operates on the process of consensus. Even if one country objects to the entry of a new member, that country unfortunately does not get included. The manner in which this government has conducted its foreign policy over the past two years, rather than consolidating that window which was opened by the UPA, they have in fact, endeavoured to lose that window," said Tewari.

"And that is why unfortunately, when the NSG met last night (Thursday), on the question of admission of new members essentially to consider India`s application, nothing really came out of that meeting and so in real terms, it has really been a set-back for India rather than something to be proud of," he added.

Attacking Prime Minister Narendra Modi on his five-nation tour, including to the United States, Congress said that `not a single new idea came out of his US visit.`

"Insofar as the USA is concerned, in the past 24 months, there has not been a single new idea, a single big idea in the Indo-US relationship. The only one thread which the NDA-BJP Government and the Prime Minister have been taking forth is the Indo-US Civil Nuclear Energy Pact which was incubated and finally consummated during the UPA government," said Tewari.
New Delhi: Calling him one of the "greatest and bravest" fighters for civil rights during the Emergency era, friends and supporters of George Fernandes have pitched for awarding Bharat Ratna to the veteran socialist leader.

"On his 86th birthday this June 3, celebrations were held across the country from Patna to Muzaffarpur, Mumbai and Delhi and resolutions were passed seeking Bharat Ratna for George," said Fernandes' 76-year-old colleague Vijay Narain.

Narain and others along with Fernandes were arrested on June 10, 1976 in Kolkata and tried in the infamous Baroda Dynamite Case, in which they were also charged with waging war against the state to overthrow the government.

"Today marks the 40th anniversary of his arrest during the Emergency. He was champion of civil rights, and struggled for the poor, the weak, the downtrodden and the farmers. And, we think he deserves to be given Bharat Ratna," he said.

Narain said, however, we will not approach the government for the award, but raise the consciousness among the people, whose leader he was, and let the demand come from the masses.

"We will only popularise his ideals, his struggles and pitch for it (Bharat Ratna), but he is anyway beyond this award. We only want this for him so that the future generation will remember him," he said.

86-year-old Fernandes, who rose to prominence after the 1973 railway strike, had staunchly opposed the imposition of Emergency. He and several of his colleagues went under hiding during this period and continued to oppose the Emergency.

After remaining in disguise and operating out of hideouts, Fernandes, Narain and their other colleagues were arrested from St Paul's Church in Kolkata.

"George was flown the same night to Delhi, while I was kept in police custody and interrogated for about a fortnight in Kolkata by the police's intelligence bureau. We all were later lodged in Delhi's Tihar Jail and the case was tried in Tees Hazari court," he recalled.

"Several ambassadors of foreign countries used to meet him in jail and even tried to seek his release. George was a hero for many," Narain said.

He also alleged that the "BJP-ruled government, driven by RSS is trying to impose one-party rule in the country, which is more dangerous than the Emergency which we had faced back then."

Emergency was in effect from 25 June, 1975 until its withdrawal in March 1977.

Fernandes fought the 1977 Lok Sabha election from Muzaffarpur while in jail as an undertrial in the case. He swept the polls with his supporters campaigning with his photo. After coming to power, Janata Party withdrew the case in 1977 and all the accused were released.
New Delhi: External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj on Friday offered support to the family of an Indian woman who was abducted in Afghanistan and said that her government will spare no efforts to rescue her.

The Indian national, identified as Judith D'Souza, was abducted by the Taliban on Thursday from the Afghan capital Kabul.

In a tweet, the external affairs minister on Friday said, I have spoken to the sister of Judith D' Souza. We will spare no efforts to rescue her.

Judith, who hails from Kolkata, works for the NGO Aga Khan Foundation. She was reportedly kidnapped from outside her office along with several others.

Citing official sources, the ANI reported that All efforts are being made by the Afghanistan authorities to secure her early release.

The Indian embassy is in touch with senior Afghan authorities and the government is also in touch with her family members.
(Reuters) - Essentra Plc (ESNT.L), a supplier of speciality plastic and packaging components, warned of lower full-year adjusted operating profit, citing challenging market conditions in filter products and delays in some large projects.

Essentra's shares slumped 22.5 percent in early trade on the London Stock Exchange.

The company, whose filter products are used in tobacco, health and personal care and consumer goods, said it expects adjusted operating profit to be between 155 million pounds and 165 million pounds for the year ended Dec. 31, 2016, compared with 171.5 million pounds ($248.8 million) last year.

Revenue is expected to be broadly unchanged from the 1.09 billion pounds it reported last year, Essentra said.

Filter products accounted for about 27 percent of the company's revenue in 2015.

The company, whose products range from cigarette filters to adhesives, said site integration in health and personal care packaging had resulted in some short-term operational issues in both the US and the UK, hurting revenue and operating profit.

Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire-based Essentra said it was unlikely to achieve trading levels expected at the time of its full year 2015 results announcement in February.

The company had said then that it was confident of continuing its track record of "balanced profitable growth" in 2016, driven by international markets and its wide product mix.

Essentra, which was formed after being demerged from Bunzl Plc (BNZL.L) in June 2005, gets roughly half its sales from Europe, about a third from the Americas and the rest from Asia.

The company said on Thursday that its second-half profit would be stronger than that for the first half of 2016. Essentra reports its first-half results on July 29.

(Reporting by Noor Zainab Hussain in Bengaluru; Editing by Sunil Nair)
Tokyo: The first phase of the "Malabar" joint military exercise between India, Japan and the US took off on Friday at Japan's Sasebo city.

The first harbour phase will conclude on June 13. The second sea phase will run June 14-17 off Okinawa Island.

"Malabar 2016 will be another significant step in strengthening mutual confidence and inter-operability as well as sharing of best practices between the Indian, Japanese and US Navies," an Indian Navy statement said.

"The exercise will support maritime security in the Indo-Pacific region, and benefit the global maritime community," the statement reads.

The Special Forces of the three navies will also interact during the exercise.
New Delhi: In a shocking expose, it has been revealed that the Indian Ministry of Home Affairs officials, who were in Pakistan for talks on November 25, 2008, were made to extend their trip.

On November 26, 2008, when 10 members of terror group Lashkar-e-Toiba launched a series of 12 coordinated shooting and bombing attacks across Mumbai, India's top security officials were `holidaying` in Murree, a hill station near the Pakistani capital.

Nine top Intel bosses were taken to Murree to 'no network zone' to ensure that India's MHA control room was empty during the horrific 26/11 attacks, reports Times Now.

According to the channel, India was tricked into extending talks by Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), so that the Pakistan-based terror group could finish its task.

The then Home Secretary Madhukar Gupta and his team arrived in Islamabad on November 24, 2008, for the talks that were part of the eight-subject composite dialogue process.

The team was to return home on November 26, but the Pakistani government extended their stay by a day.

Meanwhile, former MHA official RVS Mani told ANI that the absence of top officers of the Internal Security at the MHA delayed the decision-making process.

"Those days, talks were taking place alternately in India and Pakistan. In 2006, it took place in Pakistan; in 2007, it took place in India at Le Meridien hotel in Delhi; while in 2008, it was to be held in Pakistan. November 25 was decided for the talks, following which an approach paper was prepared and cleared. Our delegation left on November 24. I was in Lucknow on November 25 for some court case. I remember that when I returned on November 26th, I came to know that their visit was extended by a day, and then what happened in the night of 26th we all know," said Mani.

"Holding them back in Islamabad for a day was a ploy of Pakistan. Pakistan knew the terrorists' design, despite that it insisted them to stay there for a day (by delaying talks). Thus, there was no negligence on the part of officers. The decision about their visit and the approach paper were cleared by the Cabinet Committee on Security. The RTI reply shown by some channels that there was 'negligence' is not true. As when the delegation reached there, the date for talk was extended from November 25 to 26. I was not part of that delegation, hence only a delegation member could say what had happened there (in Islamabad)," he said.

When asked if MHA officials tried to contact them in Pakistan after the attack, Mani said, "Deputy commandant-level officers of paramilitary such as BSF, ITBP and CRPF were in the control room. They kept on trying to contact the Indian counterterrorism officers in Islamabad but were unable to reach them. It could be a Pakistan's ploy to make them stay at a place where there is mobile network issue. When they finally succeeded, I can't say. Later JS (police) [Joint Secretary-police] decided to deploy National Security Guards (NSG). Other JSes also extended their support."

When asked about the then Home Minister and the delay in the decision-making in the absence of top Internal Security officers, Mani said, "Home Minister Shivraj Patil's role was limited, though he flew to Mumbai. There are standard operative procedures in place at the MHA, which the officers have to ensure. A very solid system is in place, but implementation of the system was required a leadership, which was missing (officers were stuck in Pakistan).

The attacks which began on November 26, 2008 lasted until November 29, 2008, killing 164 people and wounding at least 308.
New Delhi: It seems that the loud-mouth former Press Council of India chairman and Supreme Court of India judge Markandey Katju has a say on everything.

This time, on Friday, the ex-apex court judge tweeted: Provocative pictures are being shown on Social Media to hurt Muslim sentiments during Ramzan.

While explaining the 'provocative pictures', Katju wrote on his Facebook page, One such pic shows that a woman is standing on top of Kaaba, exposing her naked breasts, after casting aside her burqa.

Provocative pictures are being shown on Social Media to hurt Muslim sentiments during Ramzan. pic.twitter.com/BMXxUWB5Jv  Markandey Katju (@mkatju) June 10, 2016

Another shows two naked girls lying on a beach, with caption 'It is Ramzan. No bikinis please', Katju further quoted the tweets which are doing round the corners on Twitter.

However, Katju published an advise for the Muslims asking them not to get provoked by such tweets.

"My advise to Muslims is not to get provoked, and to ignore this. This is the work of agent provocateurs. If you get provoked, and react to it, that is just what these people want, so that the matter flares up, and the communal divide gets further aggravated," Katju wrote on FB.

The Muslim holy month of Ramadan has begun across the country from Tuesday.

The worshipers are thronging in to various mosques to offer special night prayer called Traweeh, which will continue throughout the month.

Ramadan is the ninth month of the Islamic calendar. The believers observe fast and join mass prayers held at mosques across the world during the period. This annual observance is regarded as one of the five pillars of Islam.
Islamabad: A Pakistan Joint Investigation Team (JIT), which visited India in March to collect evidence on the Pathankot airbase attack, is not convinced that its soil was used to plan the strike.

Hindustan Times has further quoted a senior aide of Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif as rejecting Indias claim that attackers telephoned several persons, including Jaish leaders based in Pakistan. Anybody can call the Jaish-e-Mohammad numbers from India.

India says one of the terrorists, identified as Nasir, had telephoned his mother from Pathankot and apprised her of his suicide mission. The conversation does not prove that he went from here, the aide said, adding: The National Investigation Agency could not tell us the exact location from where the terrorists had crossed over from Pakistan into India.

Seven security personnel and four terrorists were killed in the gunfight at the Indian Air Force base on January 02, 2016, which lasted nearly 80 hours.

India suspects it to be the handiwork of Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM).

National Investigation Agency (NIA) officials briefed the Pakistan JIT, during its visit from March 27-31, on the investigation carried out into the terror attack.

Sources said NIA officials had names of the terrorists, evidence like transcript of telephonic conversations and other electronic and forensic proof including against JeM chief Masood Azhar's brother Abdul Rauf.

In May, the Interpol issued a Red Corner Notice (RCN) against JeM terrorist Shahid Latif who has been termed as "one of the crucial handlers" of the Pathankot airbase attackers by the NIA.
Vienna: With India continuing to win support for its membership bid for the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), even nations that had been so far opposing the South Asian country's entry into the elite nuclear club are reported to have softened their stand.

The development comes amid efforts by India and the United States to push for the former's entry into the nuclear club that controls access to sensitive nuclear technology.

Reuters reported that some of the countries which had been opposing India's NSG membership have softened their stand and are willing to work towards a compromise.

However, the biggest hurdle in India's NSG entry - China  continues to remain defiant.

China has been stressing that if NSG decides to induct India, it should also give same treatment to Pakistan, which is its close ally.

"China, if anything, is hardening (its position)," Reuters quoted an unnamed diplomat as saying.

The 48-nation Nuclear Suppliers Group aims to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons by restricting the sale of items that can be used to make those arms. It was set up in response to India's first nuclear test in 1974.

India already enjoys most of the benefits of membership under a 2008 exemption to NSG rules granted to support its nuclear cooperation deal with Washington, even though India has developed atomic weapons and never signed the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), the main global arms control pact.

But China on Thursday reiterated its position that the NPT is central to the NSG, diplomats said.

Six nations - China, New Zealand, Ireland, Turkey, South Africa and Austria  had been opposing India's NSG membership. Of these, South Africa, New Zealand and Turkey are reported to have softened their stand on India's admission to the group.

The change in position of these countries opens the door to a process under which non-NPT states such as India might join NSG.

"There's movement, including towards a process, but we'd have to see what that process would look like," a diplomat said after the closed-door talks on Thursday ahead of an annual NSG plenary meeting in Seoul later this month.

On Wednesday, India received Mexico's support for its NSG membership bid.
Karwar (Karnataka): Two people - an Indian Navy sailor and a civilian - were killed and two others seriously injured when a toxic gas leak incident took place onboard INS Vikramaditya aircraft carrier on Friday evening.

Shipwright Artificer Rakesh Kumar and Mohandas Kolambkar, an employee of M/s Royal Marine, succumbed to gas inhalation, the Indian Navy said in a statement.

According to the Navy, the incident took place at about 5 pm while the Russian-built aircraft carrier was undergoing maintenance repairs at Karwar Naval Base in Karnataka.

Maintenance work was being undertaken in the Sewage Treatment Plant (STP) Compartment. Due to inhaling toxic gas, four persons, including two sailors and two civilian workers, were evacuated to the Naval Hospital at Karwar.

The Indian Navy has, meanwhile, ordered an inquiry into the incident.

"The next of kin of the deceased have been informed. The condition of the other two personnel is stable," a Navy officer said.

The ship has been under refit at Karwar since June 1.

INS Vikramaditya is India's largest aircraft carrier.
Washington: The Obama administration has christened Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's vision of Indo-US ties that has overcome the "hesitations of history" and working for the betterment of the global good as "The Modi Doctrine".

Addressing an audience, Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asia Nisha Desai Biswal described the just-concluded US visit of Modi as "historic".

"The most important outcome in my mind of the visit this week and of the years of effort that preceded it is the clear and compelling vision that was laid out by Prime Minister Modi before joint session of the US Congress," Biswal, the Obama Administration's point person for South and Central Asia, said.

"This vision which I have come to call The Modi Doctrine laid out a foreign policy that overcomes the hesitations of history and embraces the convergence between our two countries and our shared interests," she said during a discussion on 'Security and Strategic Outcomes from the Modi Visit' organised on Thursday here jointly by the Heritage Foundation - an American think-tank - and India Foundation, a New Delhi-based think-tank.

Modi, she said, in his speech furthered his bold vision of India-US partnership that can anchor peace, prosperity and stability from Asia to Africa, from the Indian Ocean to the Pacific and help ensure the security of the sea lanes of commerce and freedom of navigation on the seas.

"This Modi Doctrine notes that the absence of an agreed security architecture creates uncertainty in Asia and reiterates India's adherence to and calls for others support for international laws and norms," Biswal said.

India, she said, is now the key element of Obama Administration`s rebalance to Asia, a strategy which recognises that America`s security and prosperity increasingly depend on the security and prosperity of the Indo-Pacific.

"The joint strategic vision which was issued last year laid out our mutual goals and interests in the Indo-Pacific and across the global commons. We are now implementing a roadmap that sets out a path of co-operation to achieve those goals and protect those interests," Biswal said.

In his remarks, US Ambassador to India Richard Verma said the US welcomes and shares the Prime Minister`s vision.

"We have made a clear and strategic choice to support India's transition to become, as Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar has articulated, a leading power. Our actions, as security partners in every sense of the word, speak to this endeavour," he said.

"We envision India as a leading power that can uphold international norms and support what Defence Secretary Carter called last week a 'principled security network' in Asia. A leading power that can grow its economy while at the same time demonstrating global leadership on clean energy and climate," he said.

"And a leading power that joins like-minded partners to safeguard the global commons. Realising this vision will require diligent work on part of the bureaucracies in both Washington and Delhi and resilience to overcome obstacles that may arise," Verma said.

Indian Ambassador to the US Arun K Singh described the Prime Minister's visit as "historic".

"There is a need step-by-step to build confidence and to build the habit of working together. That calls for regular meetings including at the highest levels," Singh said.

On the political side, he said: "We are finding that even though we may not agree on every aspect there is an increasing convergence in our interest and assessment of issues."

In the Prime Minister's speech to the Congress there was a reflection of the fact that this growing convergence is in the interest of India and the US. The areas of convergence are in the field of terrorism, the situation in the Indian Ocean, Asia Pacific region, cyber issues.

Singh said the two countries have recognised that clean energy would be an important area of partnership.

These remarks were followed by a panel discussion by G Parthasarthy, former Indian diplomat, Baijayant Panda, Member of Parliament; Vice Admiral (rtd) Shekhar Sinha; Sadanand Dhume, resident fellow, American Enterprise Institute and Ashley J Tellis, from Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Panda said some senior people from the US State Department have described Prime Minister`s speech and his vision of India-US relationship as 'Modi doctrine'.

"This is not a coinage from the Indian side. This is a coinage from the American side, which I think is a very important way to describe it. So clearly it is historic shifting of gears," he said.

(With PTI inputs)
New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi arrived here on Friday morning after concluding his five-nation tour to Afghanistan, Qatar, Switzerland, the US and Mexico, beginning with his visit to Herat on Sunday, on a high note. He was received at the Palam Airport by a delegation of Bharatiya Janata Party leaders

The Prime Minister and Afghan President Dr Ashraf Ghani launched the 'Afghan-India Friendship Dam', earlier known as the Salma Dam, followed by a lunch hosted by President Ghani.

The Prime Minister, who arrived in Qatar in the evening, visited a workers camp. He interacted with the workers; he saw the medical facilities that are being provided to them, the kind of treatment facilities that are available to them.

On Monday, the Prime Minister started the day with a meeting with business leaders. After that, we went to the Emiri Diwan, where he had a meeting with the Emir of Qatar, which was followed by signing of seven agreements.

His last engagement there was a meeting with the Father Emir, which was also a very constructive, very positive meeting, said Ministry of External Affairs Spokesperson Vikas Swarup while detailing the media about his engagements in Qatar.

The Prime Minister also had a meeting with members of the Indian community at a reception hosted by the Indian Ambassador, following which he departed for Switzerland in the evening.

The next day, the Prime Minister arrived in Switzerland, where he held a meeting with the President of the Swiss Confederation, followed by a business meeting and then he left Switzerland for the United States, where he directly arrived in Washington at the invitation of President Barack Obama on Monday.

On June 6, the Prime Minister went to the Arlington Cemetery for a wreath laying, and then he attended two events at Blair House, where he was staying. The two events included a meeting with heads of American think tanks and the other was a function involving the repatriation of cultural property.

On June 7, Prime Minister Modi held a meeting with President Barack Obama, followed by a lunch that President Obama hosted for him.

In the evening, the Prime Minister met business leaders in the US and addressed the US-India Business Council. Between the two, between the President's meeting and the business meeting at the end of the day, Defence Secretary Ashton Carter called on the Prime Minister.

Marking their third major bilateral summit, the Prime Minister and the President reviewed the deepening strategic partnership between the United States and India. They pledged to pursue new opportunities to bolster economic growth and sustainable development, promote peace and security at home and around the world, strengthen inclusive, democratic governance and respect for universal human rights, and provide global leadership on issues of shared interest.

The leaders welcomed the significant progress made in bilateral relations between India and the United States during their tenure, in accordance with the roadmaps set out in the Joint Statements issued during Prime Minister Modi's visit to the United States in September 2014 and President Obama's visit to India in January 2015.

The leaders affirmed the increasing convergence in their strategic perspectives and emphasised the need to remain closely invested in each other's security and prosperity.

On June 8, the Prime Minister devoted the forenoon to the US Congress, meeting the Speaker, the Congressional leadership, and delivering an address to the joint meeting of the US Congress.

It was followed by a lunch hosted by the Speaker in honour of the Prime Minister and a reception jointly hosted by the House and Senate Committees on Foreign Relations and the India Caucus.

In the afternoon, the Prime Minister took off to Mexico City, where he had a meeting with President Enrique Pena Nieto.

During their meeting, President Enrique Pena Nieto and Prime Minister Modi recognised the opportunities to define the path of the India-Mexico Privileged Partnership for the 21st Century that allows the growth of bilateral relations in economic field, in science and technology and in the most important issues of the global agenda reflecting a broad convergence of long-term political, economic and strategic goals.

President Enrique elaborated on the structural reforms undertaken in Mexico to promote economic growth and development. On his part, Prime Minister Modi highlighted the initiatives undertaken by his Government for the economic growth and the improvement of standard of living of the people.

Later, the Prime Minister attended a dinner hosted by President Enrique PeAa Nieto and after the dinner, the Prime Minister took off from Mexico to return to India en route Frankfurt, Germany.

With ANI inputs
Bengaluru: The official website of the Karnataka police department (www.ksp.gov.in) was hacked on Friday, allegedly by Pakistani hackers, who pasted a Pakistani flag on the home page, causing embarrassment to the state government.

"Our cyber security engineers, however, restored the web site after removing the tampered home page and rectifying the glitch within minutes after detecting the hacking," a police official said on the condition of anonymity.

The hacker, claiming to be Faisal 1337 from Team Pak Cyberattacker, posted a Pakistani flag on the home page with a message below it, which read "Pwned! Hacked, shame on your security!"

"An inquiry has been ordered into hacking and investigation is underway to track the IP address of the hackers, who claimed to be operating from Pakistan," the official added.
Trichy: With so many precious lives being lost everyday, much has been written about people's growing fascination for taking selfies. However, contrary to what has been often reported, a Facebook selfie has landed a killer, on the run for seven long years, behind bars in Trichy district in Tamil Nadu.

According to reports, a 45-year-old man named Mani came from abroad to settle with his wife in Nanniyur in Ariyalur district in 2009. However, their relationship soon soured as Mani started suspecting his wife's fidelity.

In August 2009, during a fight, Mani killed his wife by slitting her throat in a fit of rage and disappeared from the scene. The local police, which found the dead body of Mani's wife in

a pool of blood next day, remained clueless about his whereabouts for close to seven years.

In order to evade law, Mani relocated to Chennai, took on a new identity as 'Kandaswamy' and started working as a server in restaurants.

For the past three years, Mani was associated with a restaurant at Tondiarpet. Mani's parents believed that their son had died in Kerala where he used to go often for work.

But, in a sudden twist of fate, one of his relatives in Ariyalur noticed a photo of Mani taken in the restaurant where he worked.

Smelling something fishy, four of his relatives then began investigating about him. They set their eyes on the restaurant and soon found Mani working there as a server.

"When Mani found his relatives in the restaurant, he tried to evade them. This confirmed their suspicions," Ariyalur Deputy Superintendent of Police P Muthukaruppan was quoted as saying by the Times Of India.

The relatives then informed the local police after which Mani was taken into custody.

He was brought to Ariyalur on Wednesday and produced in the Ariyalur judicial magistrate court, which sent him to the Trichy Central Prison for his role in his wife's murder and evading law.
By Luciano Costa

SAO PAULO, June 9 (Reuters) - General Electric Co has started producing solar power inverters at its plant in Betim, Brazil, looking to supply the country's nascent solar power industry and possibly export the equipment to countries in the region, a GE executive said on Thursday.

Despite the unfavorable business environment in Brazil, which is on track for its worst recession ever, GE's marketing director for the Latin America Power Conversion unit, Sergio Zuquim, said the company was positive about prospects for solar power growth.

"That's inevitable, there is no turning back," Zuquim said in an interview. "There is political commitment, following international agreements, for investments on renewables," he said.

Inverters are a key component on solar power systems. They convert power generated by photovoltaic plates to alternating current, or AC, so it can be fed into a commercial power grid.

With the local production, GE consumers would be able to access more favorable credit lines from Brazil's development bank, BNDES, which gives better financing terms on deals for locally produced equipment.

The director said the company had already closed four contracts with companies awarded operating licenses for new solar parks in Brazil. The government is promoting solar power generation in an effort to diversify its energy mix.

Initial investment to add the production line to the plant in Minas Gerais state was around $20 million, Zuquim said.

The initial steps on solar power development in Brazil have not been smooth.

Many companies that won licenses in the first licensing round in 2014 have yet to start construction. They are seeking to prolong the deadline to complete the projects, saying Brazil's recent devaluation of the local currency made the projects financially unfeasible, since they still require sizeable imports.

There are no PV plate producers operating in Brazil to date.

Among companies requesting extension of construction periods are Canadian Solar, Grupo Cobra, Fotowatio and Renova Energia SA.

Story continues

"We will probably have delays on some projects, but others will go ahead and new licensing rounds will happen," Zuquim said.

Brazil's government has already granted licenses for 3.2 gigawatts of solar projects estimated to require about 13 billion reais ($3.83 billion) of investment.

There are two additional licensing rounds scheduled for this year, in July and October.

(Writing by Marcelo Teixeira; Editing by Peter Cooney)
Mumbai: Two youths were feared drowned into sea, while three others were saved, after a group of friends went for a swim off Juhu beach here, police and Fire Brigade officials said.

A group of five friends, all residents of Juhu Koliwada area, went to the famous beach at around 12:30 pm for swimming, a official from Santa Cruz Police Station said.

On-duty lifeguards and Fire Brigade personnel warned them against entering into the sea, Chief Fire Officer Prabhat Rahangadale said.

The youths, however, went to a different spot away from the main beach front and ventured into the sea. They soon started drowning, he said.

Three of them were promptly rescued by lifeguards and Fire Brigade personnel, while the other two were yet to be traced, Rahangadale said.

According to police, the duo feared drowned was identified as Rajendra Chowdhury (20) and Sameer Sheikh (18).
Pathankot: The security of the Indian Air Force base in Pathankot, which was attacked by Pakistan-sponsored terrorists in January this year, has been tightened following inputs from the intelligence agencies.

According to reports, the authorities have also issued shoot-on-sight orders to further ensure the security of the crucial IAF base here. The posters of the order have also been pasted on the walls surrounding the airbase.

Besides, the Army, Border Security Force (BSF) and Punjab Police had conducted a five-hour-long joint flag march in border villages to instil confidence among people.

Senior police officials claimed that these measures were being taken to dispel any fears among locals in the wake of terrorist attack here in January.

Reports, however, claim that the security agencies had received credible intelligence inputs following which the security has been upped.

A group of heavily armed militants had entered the IAF base in a pre-dawn operation on January 2 from the rear side and shot dead seven security personnel before National Security Guard sharpshooters gunned them down.

On July 27 last year, three terrorists had made their way into the Dinanagar police station and were neutralised by the Special Weapons and Tactics police team after a daylong gunbattle.

The sprawling Pathankot air base spread over 16 square kilometres houses nearly 5,000 people.
Islamabad: US President Bill Clinton visited Pakistan in 2000 to save deposed premier Nawaz Sharif from the gallows and tried to take him out of the country, former prime minister Shaukat Aziz has claimed.

"The sole purpose of Clinton's visit to Pakistan was to save Sharif from hanging," Aziz said, adding that Clinton was driven by humanitarian objectives and wanted that no personal vendetta be carried out against Sharif after his government was overthrown by General (retd) Pervez Musharraf in a coup in October 1999.

In April 2000, days after Clinton's departure, Pakistani courts had sentenced the deposed Prime Minister Sharif to life imprisonment rather than the gallows.

After intervention by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the US, Sharif was sent to exile in Saudi Arabia.

"The final agreement took place after he (Musharraf) came to know through Lebanese business tycoon and the country's then PM Rafiq-Al-Hariri that the Saudis were angry over Sharif's treatment by the government after his ouster from power," he added.

Aziz, who held the prime minister's office under Musharraf from 2004 to 2007, further claimed that both Musharraf and Benazir Bhutto did not want Sharif to return to Pakistan before the 2008 general elections and tried to keep him in exile.

Talking in a Geo TV's programme about the claims made in his recently published book 'From Banking to the Thorny World of Politics', Aziz said:

"The then US Assistant Secretary of State for Central and South Asia Richard Boucher told me that both Musharraf and Bhutto wanted Sharif to stay abroad to avoid competition."

He also claimed that the US also found merit in the preposition and had wanted Benazir to become the prime minister with Musharraf remaining president.
Islamabad: Pakistan Army Chief General Raheel Sharif on Friday urged the visiting American military officials and diplomats to target Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan leaders who now operate from the Afghan side of the border, the military`s media wing said.

General John Nicholson, Commander of Resolute Support Mission in Afghanistan, and Ambassador Richard Olson, US Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, met Raheel Sharif amid tension between the two countries over the recent US drone strike in Balochistan which killed Taliban chief Mullaha Akhtar Mansoor.

The US officials arrived in Islamabad after a series of harsh statements by the Pakistani leaders over the May 21 drone attack, which came at a time when efforts were underway to start peace negotiations in Afghanistan.

"Expressing his serious concern on the US drone strike in Balochistan as a violation of Pakistan`s sovereignty, the (army) chief highlighted as to how it had impacted the mutual trust and respect," an Inter-Services Public Relations statement said after the meeting.

The army chief underlined that the US action was counter-productive in consolidating the gains of Pakistan military operation in the tribal regions.

"All efforts for durable peace in the region have to be synergised with shared commitment and responsibility in order to make them successful," the statement quoted Raheel as telling the American leaders.

He raised the demand for targeting the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and its chief Mullah Fazlullah in their bases in Afghanistan and reiterated Pakistan`s resolve not to allow hostile intelligence agencies` efforts, especially "(Indian) RAW and (Afghan) NDS, of fomenting terrorism".

Pakistani security officials say that almost all TTP leaders and fighters have fled to Afghanistan after a series of military operations in the tribal regions.

The regional security situation, with particular reference to border management with Afghanistan, and peace and stability in Afghanistan in the post-May 21 US drone strike environment came under discussion, the military said.

The army chief told the US officials that the operation in the tribal regions code-named "Zarb-e-Azb" was launched against terrorists of all hues and sanctuaries of terrorists have been dismantled without discrimination.

"All stakeholders need to understand Pakistan`s challenges with regard to porous border, inter-tribal linkages and decades-old presence of over 3 million refugees. Blaming Pakistan for instability in Afghanistan is unfortunate," Raheel said.
Dhaka: A 62-year-old Hindu monastery worker was hacked to death in Bangladesh on Friday, police said, the latest in a series of such attacks on religious minorities in the mainly Muslim country.

The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the murder of a Hindu in Pabna in northern Bangladesh through its Amaq news agency, according to the SITE monitoring group, saying he was assassinated with "blade weapons".

The latest murder came as Bangladeshi police announced a special week-long crackdown on militants as they ramp up efforts to stem the killings, with five members of a banned Islamist outfit killed in gunbattles with officers in the past three days.

Nityaranjan Pande was taking his regular early morning walk when unidentified attackers set upon him, killing him on the spot, police said.

"As a diabetic, everyday he walks early in the morning. Today as he was walking, several attackers hacked him in the neck... He died on the spot," local police station chief Abdullah Al-Hasan told AFP.

"He had been working at the monastery for around 40 years. In recent years he was the head of its office staff," he said.

The head of police in the northwestern district of Pabna, where the Shri Shri Thakur Anukulchandra Ashram is located, said the killing bore the hallmarks of recent attacks by Islamist extremists on minorities and secular activists.

"There was no eye-witness to the attack as it happened very early in the morning," Alamgir Kabir told AFP.

Bangladesh is reeling from a wave of murders of secular and liberal activists and religious minorities that have left nearly 50 people dead in the last three years.The murders have spiked in recent weeks with a gruesome wave of killings that has spanned from the capital Dhaka to remote parts of the north and coastal south.

In the past week alone, an elderly Hindu priest was found nearly decapitated in a rice field, a Christian grocer was hacked to death near a church while the wife of an anti-terrorism officer was stabbed and shot.

Her husband had led several high-profile operations against the banned Jamayetul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB), an Islamist militant group, in the southeastern city of Chittagong.

Most of the latest attacks have been claimed either by the Islamic State group or by a South Asian branch of Al-Qaeda.

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina`s government has however blamed homegrown Islamists for the attacks, rejecting claims of responsibility from the international jihadist groups.

The JMB is one of the main domestic militant outfits in the frame for the murders, with police shooting dead five members of the group since Tuesday.

Shahidul Hoque, inspector general of police, vowed in an address to a meeting of top police officials in Dhaka Thursday that those involved in the killing of the police officer`s wife would be "brought to justice very soon".

Experts say a government crackdown on opponents, including a ban on Bangladesh`s largest Islamist party Jamaat-e-Islami following a protracted political crisis, has pushed many towards extremism.

Victims of the attacks by suspected Islamists have included secular bloggers, gay rights activists and followers of minority religions.

Although it is officially secular, around 90 percent of Bangladesh`s 160 million-strong population is Muslim. Some eight percent of the population is Hindu.

A Hindu shop owner was hacked to death outside his store in a northern district late last month, while a Hindu tailor was killed in April after allegedly making derogatory remarks about the Prophet Mohammed.

IS claimed responsibility for both those killings.
Dhaka: An inmate of a Hindu ashram was hacked to death in Bangladesh`s Pabna town on Friday morning, police said.

Nityaranjan Pandey, 60, a volunteer at a Hindu ashram, was murdered during his morning walk, a senior police officer said.

His killing comes several days after a Christian grocer was killed in Natore and a Hindu priest in Jhenaidah, bdnews24.com reported.

Pandey was working as a volunteer at the ashram for the past 40 years.

The police said the assailants attacked him on neck and head from behind.

The officer said: "We`ll look into all possible aspects. We can`t say right now if it was a militant attack."

A number of murders carried out in similar fashion across the country in the past two years have sparked public outrage.

The victims of these attacks include secular writers and bloggers, online activists, foreigners, members of various religious minorities and rights activists.
Islamabad: Outlawed Jamaat-ud-Dawa chief Hafiz Saeed on Friday called on Pakistan's military to shoot down any American drones entering the country's territory.

Saeed has a USD 10 million US bounty on his head.

The anti-US rhetoric came as the US special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan visited Islamabad for the first time since last months killing of Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Akhtar Mansour in a drone strike in western Pakistan. US and Pakistan relations have been strained by the strike, which Islamabad has protested against as a violation of its sovereignty.

While leading prayers at a mosque in Islamabad, Saeed, the mastermind of a 2008 attack on Mumbai, told the crowd: The US stands with India in their enmity towards Pakistan.

We want to request the Army chief and make the Air Chief realise that it is their duty to shoot down any drone that comes into Pakistan and respond to it in kind.

In response to the May 21 drone strike that killed Mansour, an Islamist charity Saeed heads, the Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD), has announced a series of anti-US protests in major cities, with Saeed expected to be a featured speaker.

Pakistans top foreign policy official and its powerful military chief met Richard Olson, the US special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, during a visit.

A statement from the military said Chief of Army Staff General Raheel Sharif had expressed serious concern over the US drone strike. The US embassy in Islamabad said it had no statement on Olsons visit.

(With Reuters inputs)
Dadri: In a new twist to the infamous Dadri case, which saw a 52-year-old Muslim man Mohammad Akhlaq being publicly lynched to death in September last year, the families of the accused have filed an appeal in court claiming that they saw the victim's family slaughtering a calf.

In their petition, the accused have sought action against Akhlaq's family since slaughtering a calf is illegal in the state.

The villagers have also demanded in their plea that a case be registered against Akhlaq's family for the provocative offence, which finally led to his killing.

As per reports, the petition was filed in the Greater Noida court.

The petition also named eye witnesses who had claimed that they saw Akhlaq killing a calf.

The petition comes days after a forensic report by the Mathura forensic lab said the meat samples sent by the police was of an animal of the cow progeny. An earlier report had concluded that the meat was from an animal of the goat progeny.

The police said the samples were taken from the meat found in a dustbin near Mr Akhlaq's house and the forensic report will have no bearing on their investigation.

The petition now says the meat police collected was taken from Akhlaq's house and dumped near the dustbin by the villagers.

The petition claims that on September 26 last year, two villagers from Bisada, Ranvir and Jatan, saw Akhlaq and his son Danish beat up a calf. Akhlaq allegedly told them that since the calf was attacking people, he was going to tie up the animal at his brother Jaan Mohammed's house.

The petition goes on to say that shortly after, another villager, Prem Singh, while passing by Akhlaq's house, saw him slitting the animal's throat.

Two days later, Akhlaq was allegedly seen trying to dispose of animal remains at a nearby rubbish dump. He was cornered by villagers and allegedly confessed to killing the calf.

According to the police, Akhlaq was lynched and his son Danish was beaten up by an enraged mob after rumours of cow slaughter. Eighteen people were arrested in the case - among them was the son of a local BJP leader, Sanjay Rana.

On June 7, a week after the new forensic report claimed the samples were from beef, a Mahapanchayat was held at Dadri's Bisada village in defiance of prohibitory orders.
Dhaka: Bangladeshi police reportedly detained nearly 900 people on Friday during the first day of an anti-militant drive across the country.

Inspector General of Police AKM Shahidul Hoque said the weeklong drive was aimed at dismantling all terrorist outfits and their networks in the country, Xinhua reported.

Just on Friday, a Hindu monastery worker was found killed in Pabna district, some 216 km west of the capital Dhaka.

Alamgir Kabir, the district's police chief, said the motive behind the killing has yet to be known.

Bangladesh has been facing a surge in violent attacks in recent years.

A number of secularist writers, bloggers and publishers have been killed or seriously injured in attacks carried out by extremists since 2013.
HSBC Holdings Plcs HSBC agreement with Banco Bradesco S.A. BBD to sell its Brazil business was unanimously approved by the Brazilian Administrative Council for Economic Defense (Brazils Competition Agency). Notably, the approval is based on the condition that Bradesco, the countrys 4th largest bank, will refrain from entering into any further acquisition deals for at least next 30 months.



The official publication of the transaction approval is likely to be on or before Jun 14, 2016 and the two parties plan to complete the transaction early in July. Nonetheless, HSBC will be maintaining its presence in Brazil to serve large corporate clients with respect to their international needs.



Deal Details



In order to pursue its goal to optimize the global network and reduce complexity, in Aug, 2015, HSBC had disclosed the deal to divest its entire business in Brazil to Bradesco, for an all cash consideration of $5.2 billion. The purchase price was subject to amendment to reflect the changes in the net asset values for the business from Dec 31, 2014 until completion.



HSBC Brazil is the 6th largest bank in Brazil, with total assets of $45 billion and total equity of $3 billion, as on Mar 31, 2016. The bank carries out several business activities in Brazil including Retail Banking, Commercial Banking, Global Banking and Markets and Private Banking. The companys Brazil operations comprise of HSBC Bank Brasil S.A.-Banco Multiplo and HSBC Servicos e Participacoes Ltd.



Financial Impact of the Deal



The sale of the Brazil business is expected to reduce HSBCs risk weighted assets by around $37 billion and increase the common equity tier 1 ratio by 65 basis points.



For Bradesco, the transaction will help improve its market share in Brazil with 16% increase in assets and an addition of five million clients to its customer base.



Accounting Treatment



Based on the net assets of HSBC Brazil, which includes allocated goodwill of $4.3 billion as on Mar 31, 2016, the transaction will result in a gain on sale (net of tax and transaction costs) of $0.6 billion, before accounting for foreign exchange losses, earlier recognized in other comprehensive income.



After accounting for the foreign exchange losses, there would be a loss on sale of $1.7 billion. The allocated goodwill and the foreign exchanges are not expected to have any impact on HSBCs regulatory capital.



Road Ahead



The completion of the divestiture will be a step in right direction as HSBC has been striving hard to maintain its profitability through restructuring and streamlining initiatives. These efforts are likely to help the company to tide over the challenging operating backdrop.



Currently, HSBC holds a Zacks Rank of #4 (Sell). Foreign banks sporting Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy) include Bank of Montreal BMO and Royal Bank of Canada RY.



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Bagdad: Abu Marwan, his wife and his three children are among the very few Iraqi civilians to have escaped from the heart of the Islamic State group`s besieged stronghold of Fallujah.

Most of the more than 20,000 people who have reached safety since Iraqi forces launched an offensive last month are from the outskirts of the city, which lies only 50 kilometres (30 miles) west of Baghdad.

The 49-year-old man and his family were able to leave Fallujah this week but tens of thousands more civilians remained trapped in the city by IS.

This is the account he gave AFP by telephone of life under the jihadists and how his family eventually got out:

"We did not flee Fallujah when Daesh (IS) took over at the end of 2013," he said, referring to the start of a period of anti-government protests during which IS`s previous incarnation gradually took over the city.

"We expected the crisis would end within weeks or months. But the gunmen soon had the people on a tight leash, imposing new rules, issuing decrees, setting up barriers and planting bombs on the streets.

"That continued through 2014 and 2015... We were already affected by this but our living conditions deteriorated abruptly at the beginning of this year.

"My neighbour and I contacted somebody called Abu Omar, who is a Daesh member known as the "wali" (local chief) of southern Fallujah, to facilitate our exfiltration from the city in return for smuggling his wife with us," Abu Marwan said.

"He had cut a deal for his wife to be taken to Kirkuk.

"Daesh calls the wives of its members `State women` and women in the city who have not pledged allegiance to the movement are called `common women`," Abu Marwan explained.The deal was sealed with the `wali` in two days. Abu Marwan prepared his car and his family and Abu Omar`s wife all squeezed in.

"We were stopped at many checkpoints but when we said Abu Omar sent us, they let us through. Then he appeared on a motorcycle and drove in front of us to open the way. He told us we should keep a distance of 100 metres.

Abu Marwan said they snaked their way down to an area called Zoba by the Euphrates.

"There were many Daesh fighters along the way, heavily armed and hiding in various shelters," he said.

A senior commander in the operation to retake Fallujah, one of the jihadists` most emblematic bastions, said up to 2,500 IS fighters were defending the city.

In Zoba, IS was out in numbers, controlling who left the area.

"Some families had been there for four days, waiting to cross the river. Some were arguing with Daesh," Abu Marwan said.

"I left my car with Daesh. After also arguing with them, we boarded a small boat with my family and Abu Omar`s wife but Daesh said the men should swim," he said.

According to the Norwegian Refugee Council, which runs most of the camps where the people displaced by the operation are housed, hundreds of families fled through Zoba in recent days.

Several people were shot by IS trying to cross the river while others drowned, according to several aid groups."After crossing the river, we walked a short distance and found the Iraqi army and the Hashed al-Shaabi" paramilitary umbrella organisation, he said.

"They welcomed us and handed out sweets, juice and water. Then they separated the men from the women, started conducting security checks and inspected our bags.

Abu Marwan said they were asked whether they had any information about IS leaders inside the city.

"The security forces began releasing the older men... The middle-aged and young men were kept all night as they carried out checks on us with laptops.

"I told them Abu Omar`s wife had been with us but I have no information on what happened to her," said Abu Marwan, who was eventually allowed to leave and join his family.

bur-jmm/dr


District of Columbia: President Barack Obama has ordered the US military to more directly take on the Taliban, again ratcheting up a 15-year conflict that he came to office vowing to end.

"US forces will more proactively support Afghan conventional forces," a senior administration official told AFP.

The official, who asked not to be named, detailed plans to provide more close air support and, significantly, to accompany Afghan forces on the battlefield.

Obama came to office in 2008 promising to end one of America`s longest ever wars.

The first US troops arrived in Afghanistan 15 years ago, after the Taliban refused to turn over 9/11 mastermind Osama bin Laden.

There are still 9,800 US troops in Afghanistan, down from a peak of around 100,000 in March 2011.

Forces on the ground today are mainly confined to ministries or bases, with only special forces assisting their Afghan counterparts on the battlefield.

The campaign to neutralize the Taliban has suffered multiple setbacks as Obama enters the twilight of his presidency.

Afghan security forces still struggle in the face of fierce Taliban assaults.

Meanwhile diplomatic efforts to engage the Taliban have broken down completely.

Last month the United States killed Taliban leader Mullah Akhtar Mansour in a drone strike in Pakistan.

Obama then warned that the organization`s new leadership would fight on.

"We anticipate the Taliban will continue an agenda of violence," he said during a visit to Japan.

Obama`s latest troop decision would appear to push any brokered solution well beyond his presidency.
Washington: Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders has vowed to prevent Republican Donald Trump from becoming the US president amid concerns about further damage to party unity deriving from his continued stay in the race.

"Needless to say, I am going to do everything in my power, and I will work as hard as I can to make sure Trump does not become president of the US," Xinhua quoted Sanders as saying here on Thursday after his meeting with US President Barack Obama.

"It is unbelievable to me ... that the Republican Party would have a candidate for president who in 2016 makes bigotry and discrimination the cornerstone of his campaign," he said.

Meanwhile, Sanders said he already talked with Hillary Clinton after she amassed enough delegates needed to notch up the nomination on Tuesday.

Sanders said he and the former Secretary of State would speak soon about how to "work together" to defeat Trump.

However, Sanders still declined to endorse Clinton at the moment and insisted he would take part in the last nomination contest next week.

As the Democratic primary season was all but over, the notion of party unity had become a crucial topic in the Democratic field.

Despite his mathematical elimination from the race, Sanders had earlier pledged to continue the fight into the national convention in July when party nomination would be formally announced.

However, Sanders later also indicated that he would "assess" his path to victory in the wake of California`s primary which was held on Tuesday.

Clinton notched up an easy victory by two-digit lead in California.

Sanders` meeting with Obama in the White House was part of the Vermont senator`s busy schedule in Washington on Thursday. He would also meet Democratic leaders in the US Congress and Vice President Joe Biden.

Unlike the prompt rapprochement reached between Clinton and Obama in 2008 primary season, reconciliation this time between Sanders and Clinton could be elusive.

For one thing, Sanders had for long called himself an independent and democratic socialist, and he joined the Democratic Party only last year to get on the ballot. Therefore, his is less committed to party loyalty than was Clinton eight years ago.

Even more daunting a task this time for party establishment to bridge the Clinton and Sanders divide was the anti-establishment sentiment Sanders had stirred up among disheartened Democratic and independent voters in this chaotic primary season.

According to the most recent YouGov poll released on May 25, half of Sanders` supporters would turn away from Clinton in a matchup between the former Secretary of State and presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump.

At the end of April, YouGov poll found that 63 percent of Sanders` supporters were willing to vote for Clinton.
London: Islamic State's self-proclaimed chief Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has been wounded in an air strike by the coalition forces, media reports said on Friday.

Baghdadi was travelling in a convoy with other senior ISIS members when they were hit by an air strike, the express.co.uk reported.

Citing local sources in Iraq's Nineveh province, the Iraqi news channel Al Sumariya also reported that Baghdadi and other leaders of the Islamist group were wounded on Thursday in a coalition bombing raid.

The planes of the international coalition yesterday bombed a location where there is a base of Isis members along the border area between Iraq and Syria, 65 kilometres west of Nineveh, the report said quoting an Iraqi source.

According to reports, the Isis leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, was injured along with some members of the organisation who were gathered at that meeting.

"The attack was carried out on the basis of precise intelligence information that led to strike its own that site, he added.

"Baghdadi and the other ISIS leaders arrived in Iraq from Syria with a convoy of cars, the source said, adding the area is one of the groups strongholds.

Citing a spokesman for the US-led coalition, the Express reported that he had also heard the news but had "nothing to confirm this at this time".

On March 18, 2015, Baghdadi and three others were seriously wounded in a similar air strike.
United Nations: French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault called on Friday for calm to resolve an angry row between Saudi Arabia and the United Nations over the blacklisting of the Saudi-led coalition bombing Yemen.

Ayrault said France could help defuse tensions following a UN decision to remove the coalition from a list of child rights violators.

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Thursday said he had decided to take the coalition off the list after Saudi Arabia and its allies threatened to cut off funding to UN aid programs.

"We have to do everything to appease the situation," Ayrault told reporters at UN headquarters.

"France is always there when it comes to safeguarding the UN`s capacity to take action," he added.

The United Nations blacklisted the coalition after concluding in a report released last week that it was responsible for 60 percent of the 785 deaths of children in Yemen last year.

But in an embarrassing climbdown, the world body announced on Monday that the coalition would be scratched from the list of shame pending a joint review with the Saudi-led alliance.

Ayrault steered clear of taking sides in the dispute, as did Britain`s UN ambassador.

British Ambassador Matthew Rycroft said he welcomed "the fact that the secretary-general and Saudi Arabia have reached agreement on an analysis of the cases in the report."

But he declined to comment further on the controversy.

Saudi Arabia`s UN ambassador Abdullah al-Mouallimi denies that there was pressure on Ban and declared that the decision to take the coalition off the list was "irreversible."

In his remarks, Ban appealed for support from UN member-states to defend UN assessments such as the annual report on children in armed conflict, which includes the list of rights violators.

Russian Ambassador Vitaly Churkin told reporters that "the secretariat should be more independent in drafting UN reports."

US State Department spokesman Mark Toner said in Washington that the United Nations should be able "to carry out its ability to report objectively on these kinds of issues without fear of reprisal."

The United States has cut off aid to the UN cultural agency UNESCO after it recognised Palestine as a member and has in the past withheld dues owed to the United Nations over demands for reforms.
New York: A 21-year old Indian-origin man has been sentenced to 15 months in prison by a US court for dealing firearms without a license.

Sharma Sukdeo, was indicted in March last year on one count of dealing firearms without a license and plead guilty in December.

Senior United States District Judge Lawrence Kahn also imposed a USD 3,000 fine and a 2-year term of supervised release, to begin after Sukdeo's release from prison. According to the plea agreement, between September and October 2014, Sukdeo sold three firearms and ammunition to a person working with the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Each sale was completed at a convenience store in Schenectady here.

As part of his plea agreement, Sukdeo admitted that he sold these firearms for profit and that he made the sales despite not being licensed to do so by the federal government or any state.
New York: An Indian-origin internal medicine physician has been sentenced to one year in prison by a US court for accepting more than USD 174,000 in bribes in exchange for patient referrals to a mobile diagnostic company.

Paresh Patel, 55 of New Jersey had previously pleaded guilty before US District Judge Mary Cooper to an information charging him with violating the Anti-Kickback Statute.

Anti-Kickback Statute is a criminal statute designed to protect patients and federal health care programmes from fraud and abuse by inhibiting the use of money to influence health care decisions.

According to documents filed in this case and statements made in court, from September 2009 through December 2013, Patel accepted more than USD 174,000 in bribes for referring his patients to a mobile diagnostic testing company operated by Nita Patel and Kirtish Patel, who are of no relation to Patel.

As part of the bribes, the diagnostic testing company paid Patel's property tax obligations and home renovation expenses.

In addition to the prison term, Patel was also ordered to pay USD 6,000 fine. He has also forfeited more than USD 174,000 he received as part of the bribery scheme.

Nita and Kirtish Patel had pleaded guilty in November last year to health care fraud for forging physician signatures on diagnostic reports that were never reviewed by a specialist physician and were actually authored by Kirtish Patel, who did not have a medical license.
Jerusalem: Israel temporarily barred Palestinians from entering the country Friday, a step criticised by the UN but which officials said was because of a shooting which killed four people in Tel Aviv.

An army spokeswoman told AFP that crossings to Israel from the West Bank and Gaza Strip would be closed for Palestinians in all but "medical and humanitarian cases".

She said the closure would remain in force until midnight on Sunday.

The measures came during the first Friday of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, when tens of thousands of Palestinians visit the Al-Aqsa mosque compound in Jerusalem to pray.

A spokeswoman for COGAT, the defence ministry unit which manages civilian affairs in the occupied West Bank, said about 10,000 Palestinians were allowed to visit Al-Aqsa despite the ban.

The worshippers had to return home after Friday prayers, the spokeswoman said.

Palestinian men between 12 and 35 were not allowed to enter the mosque, with those between 35 and 45 needing permission and those older than 45 having unrestricted access, police confirmed.

Passage was unrestricted for women.

Sheikh Azzam al-Khatib, head of the Islamic Waqf which administers Al-Aqsa, said 100,000 people attended Friday prayers, down from more than 200,000 the year before.

Police declined to give a specific figure, giving an estimate of tens of thousands.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu convened his security cabinet on Thursday and announced a slew of measures against Palestinians after Wednesday`s shooting in a popular Tel Aviv nightspot, the deadliest attack in a months-long wave of violence.

Among the measures, the government said it was revoking entry permits for more than 80,000 Palestinians to visit relatives in Israel during Ramadan.

It also revoked work permits for 204 of the attackers` relatives and the army blockaded their West Bank hometown of Yatta, with soldiers patrolling and stopping cars.

The government also said it was sending two additional battalions -- amounting to hundreds more troops -- into the occupied West Bank.United Nations rights chief Zeid Ra`ad Al Hussein`s office in a statement on Friday condemned the attack but said the Israeli measures may amount to "collective punishment".

"The measures taken against the broader population punish not the perpetrators of the crime, but tens -- maybe hundreds -- of thousands of innocent Palestinians," it said.

Newly installed Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman ordered that the bodies of Palestinians killed while carrying out attacks would no longer be returned to their families for burial, a spokesman said.

The policy is backed by Israeli hawks as a deterrent measure.

Israel last closed its crossings for two days in May during its Remembrance Day and Independence Day commemorations.

A closure is often imposed over Jewish holidays, when large numbers of Israelis congregate to pray or celebrate, presenting a potential target for Palestinian attacks.

The start of April`s Passover festival saw this type of shutdown.

Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan said the police in Jerusalem would safeguard both Muslim and Jewish prayer at the city`s holy sites over the weekend, which will also see the Jewish festival of Shavuot begin late Saturday.

"We of course want to allow (Jewish) worshippers here in the Old City and throughout Jerusalem to pray in safety and also for Muslims to get here freely and allow them freedom of worship," he said in an address broadcast from the Western Wall, the holiest site where Jews can pray.

"We are in the wake of a harsh attack and we continue today to bury some of those murdered in the attack," Erdan said.

"The security forces and the police are doing everything they can, every day, and during the holiday ahead of us."

Violence since October has killed at least 207 Palestinians, 32 Israelis, two Americans, an Eritrean and a Sudanese.

Most of the Palestinians were carrying out knife, gun or car-ramming attacks, Israeli authorities say.

Others were killed in clashes with security forces or by Israeli air strikes in the Gaza Strip.

The violence had declined in recent weeks before Wednesday`s deadly shooting.

bur-scw/srm
London: Islamic State executioner Mohammed Emwazi, widely known as "Jihadi John", was presumed dead -- killed in a US drone strike. The jihadist`s former university and the Information Commissioner, however, have cast doubts on this assumption.

Following a freedom of information (FoI) request by the BBC, the University of Westminster and the Information Commissioner`s Office refused to release Emwazi`s electronic files as it would be an "unwarranted intrusion into the private life of a young individual".

Emwazi was a London student and rapper-turned Islamic State militant. He appeared in a number of graphic beheading videos killing Western hostages before his presumed death in a US drone strike in November 2015.

A US colonel boasted at the time that Emwazi had been reduced to a "greasy spot".

In a piece published on Friday, the BBC said it had been told by the Commissioner that it would be "unfair" to Mohammed Emwazi to release his electronic records.

They were told the release, which the BBC had hoped would help explain Emwazi`s radicalisation, would be an "unwarranted intrusion" and may cause "distress and upset."

A spokesperson for the Information Commissioner told the BBC that freedom of information legislation "is designed to promote transparency and openness, but is also balanced to avoid the inappropriate release of personal information."

"Anyone who is not happy with a decision can appeal to the information rights tribunal," the spokesman added.

The University of Westminster said through a spokesman: "We are complying with our legal obligations and the ICO decision confirms that this is the correct approach."
Male: Former Maldives deputy leader Ahmed Adeeb has been jailed for 15 years for plotting to assassinate the president, the latest in a string of prosecutions of senior politicians and opposition figures in the troubled island nation.

Adeeb was convicted late Thursday of attempting to kill President Abdulla Yameen by setting off a bomb on his speedboat last September, his lawyer said.

Two of the vice president`s military bodyguards were also convicted after the trial, which was held behind closed doors.

The verdicts mean almost all of Yameen`s key rivals are in jail or exiled from the Maldives, a popular honeymoon destination that has been rocked by political turmoil in recent years.

They come weeks after Mohamed Nasheed, the country`s first democratically elected president, was granted asylum in Britain.

Nasheed, whose legal team includes high-profile human rights lawyer Amal Clooney, was sentenced to 13 years in prison on controversial terrorism charges last year but was allowed to travel to Britain for surgery in January and was granted political asylum last month.

Adeeb, 34, was considered a close confidant of Yameen until he was dramatically impeached in November following allegations he was trying to topple the president.

Yameen escaped the blast unscathed, but his wife and two others were slightly injured. The FBI was called in to investigate the incident, but found no evidence the blast was caused by a bomb.

Reporters were barred from attending the trial after the court invoked national security concerns and said it would not make the hearings or verdict public.

Adeeb`s lawyer, Moosa Siraj, told the Maldives Independent website he would appeal.

"The Criminal Court has barred me from calling the trial unfair, but we have concerns and intend to launch an appeal immediately," Siraj said.

Another lawyer who declined to be named said Adeeb`s two bodyguards were also convicted Thursday, sentenced to 10 years each in jail.

The same court tried former prosecutor general Muhthaz Muhsin of conspiracy to kidnap the President by arranging a fake arrest warrant in February and sentenced him Thursday to 17 years in jail, his lawyer Husnu Al Suood said.

Adeeb, who enjoyed a meteoric rise until his impeachment, was given a separate 10-year sentence on Sunday on a terrorism charge relating to his role in cracking down on an anti-government protest in May 2015.

Opposition activists in the Indian ocean archipelago say dissidents risk arrest or exile under Yameen, the half brother of former strongman Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, who ruled the archipelago for 30 straight years until he was defeated in the first democratic election in 2008.

In July last year, Yameen sacked his then vice president Mohamed Jameel after accusing him of conspiring to seize power. Jameel is now living abroad in self-imposed exile.

Yameen`s defence minister Mohamed Nazim was sentenced to 11 years in prison in March 2015 for trying to topple the government, and another ex-defence minister Tholhath Ibrahim was jailed for 10 years the following month.

And nearly four months ago, Yameen secured the jailing of Sheikh Imran Abdulla, leader of the opposition Islamist Adhaalath Party.

He was sentenced to 12 years after being tried for allegedly inciting unrest during an anti-government rally in 2015.
donald trump

Donald Trump has allegedly been accused of not paying hundreds of contractors and employees for their work, according to media reports published on Thursday.

USA Today analyzed 60 lawsuits documenting workers who were employed by Trump and his businesses during the past several decades who say that they weren't compensated for the services they provided, according to the report.

The accusers allegedly include hundreds of waiters, dishwashers, carpenters, plumbers, bartenders, real-estate brokers, and even lawyers who represented the businessman in various suits.

The son of one cabinet builder, Paul Friel, told the newspaper that his family's business submitted an $83,600 bill in the 1980s to the Trump Organization  part of a $400,000 contract to build cabinets and other furniture at Harrah's at Trump Plaza.

Friel said that the firm never received the payment, the report noted.

"That began the demise of the Edward J. Friel Company ... which has been around since my grandfather," Friel said.

The company was founded in the 1940s.

USA Today also found more than 200 mechanics' liens dating back to the 1980s, which were filed by contractors and employees claiming that Trump or his various companies and properties owed them payment for their work.

The publication said that records released in 1990 by the New Jersey Casino Control Commission revealed that on just one Atlantic City project, Trump's Taj Mahal casino, 253 subcontractors weren't paid in full or on time.

One drapery factory owner, Larry Walters, told The Wall Street Journal that his company was hired to supply Trump's Las Vegas hotel eight years ago. But Walters said that the developer, Trump Ruffin, refused to pay when it demanded additional work that went beyond the original contract.

trump hotel las vegas

Walters said that when he withheld some fabric, Trump Ruffin sued him and authorities burst into the factory and hauled the fabric away in trucks.

Story continues

Trump told The Wall Street Journal in May that he sometimes doesn't pay vendors and business owners if their work was merely satisfactory  "an OK-to-bad job."

"I love to hold back and negotiate when people don't do good work," he said.

Similarly, he and his daughter, Ivanka, told USA Today that if people they employ aren't fully paid, then it's because the Trump Organization was unhappy with their work.

"Let's say that they do a job that's not good, or a job that they didn't finish, or a job that was way late. I'll deduct from their contract, absolutely," Trump said. "That's what the country should be doing."

NOW WATCH: 'The textbook definition of a racist comment': Paul Ryan disavows Trump's attacks on a federal judge





More From Business Insider


Puebla state: Gunmen burst into a family`s home in Mexico at dawn on Friday, killing nine adults and two children, officials said.

The attack took place in El Mirador, a mountain community in central Puebla state, a region that has been relatively spared from the drug violence plaguing other parts of Mexico.

"We can confirm 11 deaths: five women, four men and two girls. Two other minors were badly wounded and taken to the hospital," said Vicente Lopez de la Vega, the mayor of the town of Coxcatlan, which oversees El Mirador.

Puebla state government officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly, confirmed the massacre.

The Puebla state prosecutor`s office is investigating whether the crime was related to organized crime or a family dispute.

While drug violence is not common in Puebla, some bodies have turned up in recent months.

In April, four bodies were found inside a burnt car near Veracruz, an eastern state beset by murders and disappearances linked to drug cartels. Two of the bodies belonged to sisters of a jailed Zetas drug cartel member, Veracruz authorities said.

That same day, three other bodies were found in the same area near a facility of state-run oil firm Pemex.

Puebla is also among the states with the most fuel thefts in the country.

Organized crime gangs tap thousands of Pemex pipelines across the country each year.

Late last month, four people died when gunmen linked to fuel thefts opened fire in the village of La Purisima, a region where rival gangs seek to control such illegal pipeline taps.

Puebla has also seen a spate of mob lynchings of crime suspects.
Antananarivo: New pieces of debris were found in Madagascar by a man searching for parts of missing flight MH370.

Blaine Gibson, who has already found possible debris in Mozambique, made the latest discovery on Riake beach, on the island of Nosy Boraha in north-east Madagascar.

Gibson has sent images of the finds to investigators.

MH370, flying from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, had 239 people on board when it vanished in March 2014. The Malaysia Airlines flight is presumed to have crashed into the southern Indian Ocean after veering off course.

A number of other pieces of debris, some confirmed to have come from MH370, have been found in countries near Madagascar.

Gibson, a lawyer from Seattle, has funded his own search for debris in east Africa.

This is a man who is now dedicating himself to travelling the globe, finding possible pieces of MH370, a BBC correspondent said.

He does not get involved with the conspiracy theories, he just wants to find evidence.

It`s likely that there are hundreds, maybe even thousands, of MH370 plane parts littered on beaches in that part of the world. Pieces of the puzzle washed up more than two years after the aircraft disappeared.

Although these latest finds must be verified by the authorities, it seems to confirm that the aircraft ended up roughly where they are looking, in the Indian Ocean six days` sail from Australia.

Don Thompson, a British engineer who is part of an informal international group investigating MH370, said he thought one piece was from the back of a seat, and the other could be part of a cover panel on a plane wing.

"The seat part I am 99.9 per cent sure on," he said. "It`s the right colour of fabric for Malaysian Airlines. It shows the seat had to have disintegrated to have come away."

Gibson said images of the latest finds had been sent to investigators at the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) and to officials in Malaysia.

He said he was ready to hand over the pieces to authorities in Madagascar.

The ATSB confirmed they had received the latest images, and said it was Malaysia that assessed any new leads.

Also on Thursday, an ATSB spokeswoman said they were investigating whether debris found on Kangaroo Island in South Australia may have come from MH370.

Footage broadcast on Australia`s Channel Seven showed white wreckage that included the words `Caution No Step`.

Australia has been leading the search for the missing aircraft, using underwater drones and sonar equipment deployed from specialist ships.

The search, also involving Malaysia and China, has seen more than 105,000 sq km (65,000 sq miles) of the 120,000 sq km search zone scoured so far.

All the debris is being examined in Australia by the ATSB and other experts.
Lima: Peruvian economist Pedro Pablo Kuczynski will be the next president of Peru, the National Office of Electoral Processes (ONPE) has said.

After a long four-day count, Kuczynski from the Peruvians for Change (PPK) on Thursday, edged out his rival Keiko Fujimori, from Popular Force, with a wafer-thin margin, winning by 50.117 per cent to 49. 883 per cent, Xinhua news agency reported.

The difference in the total votes was of 41,438 with 8,580,474 votes for Kuczynski and 8,539,036 for Fujimori.

Kuczynski took to Twitter to thank his supporters, saying: "Thank you, Peru! It is time to work together for the future of our country."

In a speech in Lima immediately after the outcome was announced, Kuczynski said he would be "seeking to work with all Peruvians. There are many of us who feel the train has passed them by but we want them all to board the train."

Kuczynski will take over as president on July 28 from President Ollanta Humala for a mandate lasting until 2021.

He pledged that he would work so that "by 2021, Peru will be a renewed country."

However, Fujimori's camp was quick to say that she would not officially recognise the result until a verdict by Peru's National Electoral Tribunal (JNE).

Her supporter, congressman Pedro Spadaro, told the press after the result was announced that "the JNE will have the final word on the entire electoral process. We will wait patiently...for the Tribunal to give its verdict."

"If the results do not change... we will recognise them," he added.
London: A beaming Queen Elizabeth II greeted flag-waving crowds outside St Paul`s Cathedral on Friday despite being delayed by London`s traffic as she made her way to celebrate her official 90th birthday.

The sprightly monarch who still keeps a gruelling calendar of official engagements and events kicked off three days of celebrations with a thanksgiving ceremony at the Baroque-style church.

The queen turned 90 on April 21, but British monarchs also have an official birthday celebration nearer the summer to make the most of the warmer weather in a tradition going back 250 years.

Dressed in canary yellow, the queen entered the 340-year-old cathedral to a fanfare sounded by state trumpeters of the Household Calvary, accompanied by husband Prince Philip, who himself celebrated his 95th birthday on Friday.

Senior royals including Prince Charles, Prince Harry, Prince William and his wife Kate were joined in the congregation by Prime Minister David Cameron, opposition Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn -- a noted republican -- and new London mayor Sadiq Khan.

Veteran naturalist and broadcaster David Attenborough, who was born in the same year as the queen, read "Reflections on the Passing of the Years" by Paddington Bear author Michael Bond.

Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby, paid tribute to the queen`s "wonderful service" during the sermon.

"You have been an instrument of God`s peace, and through you, God has so often turned fear into wonder -- and joy," he said.

There was a moment of drama when a member of the military fainted on the steps outside the cathedral while waiting for the service to arrive.

To mark the queen`s birthday, the royal family released a double portrait taken by celebrity photographer Annie Leibovitz of Queen Elizabeth II and the Duke of Edinburgh who have been married for more than 68 years.

The picture shows the queen in pale pink with Prince Philip wearing a shirt in the same colour.

The three-day celebrations have the theme of public service, with members of the NHS, the police and the fire service represented at the thanksgiving service.

The armed services will be honoured on Saturday -- the queen`s actual official birthday -- and Sunday will celebrate the work of charities.

The royal couple will host a lunch for visiting governors-general at Buckingham Palace following the service, while the streets of London will be lined with well-wishers on Saturday for the pomp of the Trooping of the Colour ceremony.

Around 10,000 guests are due on the Mall, the road leading to Buckingham Palace, for a street party on Sunday.

jwp/gw
London: The Scottish Episcopal Church on Friday became the first Anglican Church branch in Britain to take a step towards allowing gay marriage in church.

A gathering of church leaders in Edinburgh voted that a change to remove from its laws the definition of marriage as being between a man and a woman should be sent for discussion to the church`s seven dioceses.

The proposed reform would also introduce a "conscience clause" for those ministers who do not want to officiate a same-sex marriage, which has been legal in civil ceremonies in Scotland since 2014.

The changes would then be put to another synod vote in 2017.

The vote at the Scottish Episcopal Church synod passed with support from five out of seven bishops, 69 percent of the clergy and 80 percent of the laity, according to the online journal Christian Today.

In January, the Anglican church on Thursday said it had suspended the US Episcopal Church for three years after it approved ceremonies for same-sex marriages.

The issue has long strained ties within the estimated 85-million-strong Anglican Communion, which includes more liberal members such as the United States and Britain, and conservatives such as Nigeria and Kenya.

In 2014, Anglican leader Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury, said it would be "catastrophic" if the Church of England, mother church of the Anglican Communion, accepted gay marriage.

He argued that the association could lead to the slaughter of Christians in countries such as Nigeria, Pakistan and South Sudan.
Seoul: South Korean military vessels started an operation on Friday to repel Chinese fishing boats illegally harvesting prized blue crabs from an area near Seoul's disputed sea boundary with North Korea.

Four naval and marine boats were in neutral waters around South Korea's Ganghwa island to chase away about 10 Chinese boats.

The operation was approved by the United Nations Command that governs the zone where fishing activity is prohibited, said an official from Seoul's Defense Ministry, who didn't want to be named, citing office rules.

"United Nations Command takes its responsibility to maintain the armistice very seriously. We had a responsibility to act and we are doing that," Gen. Vincent Brooks, the US commander of the United Nations Command, said in a statement on the decision to authorize the operation.

The governments of China and North Korea were notified about the operation before it started, the Seoul ministry official said. The official refused to say how the vessels were planning to repel the ships, or provide further details about the operation.

The operation came days after South Korean fishermen towed away two Chinese fishing boats catching crabs south of the sea boundary with North Korea and handed them over to local South Korean authorities. North Korea said in response that South Korean fishing and naval vessels had invaded their territory.

Seoul has called for Beijing to employ tougher measures against Chinese boats illegally fishing in South Korea-controlled waters, which has caused bad feelings between the neighbors in recent years.

South Korean authorities seized about 600 Chinese ships last year for illegal fishing and more than 100 this year as of May, most from waters off the western coast of South Korea, according to the Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries.

China expressed anger in October 2014 when a South Korean coast guardsman shot and killed the captain of a Chinese fishing vessel who had violently resisted the inspection of his ship for suspected illegal fishing.

In 2011, a South Korean coast guard officer was killed in a clash with Chinese fishermen in South Korean waters.

The waters off the Korean Peninsula's western coast have also seen violent clashes between the rival Koreas because Pyongyang doesn't recognize the sea boundary unilaterally drawn by the American-led UN command at the end of the 1950-53 Korean War.
United Nations: UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon will leave New York on June 13 for Brussels, Belgium, to participate in the European Development Days before attending an event in Russia and visiting Greece, a UN spokesman has said.

In Brussels, the secretary-general will meet with Donald Tusk, president of the European Council, Jean-Claude Juncker, president of the European Commission, and a number of commissioners as well as other senior officials attending the celebration of the European Development Days, Europe`s leading forum on development and international cooperation, UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said on Thursday, Xinhua news agency reported.

While in Belgium, the secretary-general will also participate in an Advisory Board meeting of the Sustainable Energy For All (SE4ALL) initiative, and meet with King Philippe and Queen Mathilde, who is one of the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals Ambassadors, he said.

On June 16, the secretary-general will be in St. Petersburg, Russia, for the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, an annual international conference dedicated to economic and business issues held under the auspices of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The secretary-general is scheduled to meet Russian President Putin, as well as with other participating senior officials, said the spokesman.

On June 17, the secretary-general will travel to Athens, Greece, where he will meet President Prokopis Pavlopoulos and Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, among others, he said.

He will then go to the island of Lesvos June 18, to meet with refugees, migrants and asylum seekers, as well as local volunteers and authorities, he said.

The secretary-general is expected to be back in New York on June 19.
Beirut: Arab-Kurdish fighters backed by the United States on Friday cut the Islamic State group`s main supply route between Syria and Turkey in a major setback for the jihadists.

IS has come under growing pressure on various fronts in Syria and Iraq, where it established its self-declared "caliphate" in 2014.

The extremists lost control Friday of a vital supply artery when Arab-Kurdish forces completely surrounded a key jihadist-held town.

"The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) cut off the last road from Manbij to the Turkish border," said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based monitoring group.

Manbij lies at the heart of the last stretch of territory along Turkey`s border still under IS control, and was a key point on the jihadists` supply line from Turkey.

Other secondary roads to the frontier are more dangerous and difficult to access, Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman said.

The US envoy to the anti-IS coalition backing the SDF, Brett McGurk, confirmed the road had been severed.

"ISIL terrorists now completely surrounded with no way out," he wrote on Twitter, using another acronym for IS.

This week the SDF, backed by coalition air strikes, cut the road north out of Manbij to the IS-held border town of Jarabulus, which the jihadists had used as a transit point for fighters, money and weapons.

The SDF also blocked the road south out of Manbij heading to IS`s de facto capital of Raqa.

"For the jihadists to reach the Turkish border from Raqa, they now have to take a route that is more dangerous because of regime troops nearby and Russian air strikes," Abdel Rahman said.Russia launched air strikes in support of President Bashar al-Assad`s regime in Syria in September.

Thousands of residents have fled Manbij -- held by IS since 2014 -- but jihadists who evacuated their families stayed to defend the town, the Observatory said.

About 20,000 people are still living in the town, which had a pre-war population of about 120,000 -- mostly Arabs, but about a quarter Syrian Kurds.

Last month, the SDF attacked on two fronts from the north of Raqa province towards Manbij and in the direction of the IS-held town of Tabqa on the same vital supply line further south.

Regime troops backed by Russian air strikes have also pushed an offensive to the southwest of Tabqa.

Moscow and Washington -- despite backing different sides in Syria`s five-year conflict -- have both focused efforts on fighting the jihadist group.

Syria`s war has killed more than 280,000 people and displaced millions since it started in 2011 with the brutal repression of anti-government protests.

The United Nations says a total of 592,000 people live under siege in Syria -- most surrounded by government forces -- and another four million in hard-to-reach areas.

Late on Thursday a food aid convoy -- approved by the regime -- entered the rebel-held town of Daraya near Damascus in the first such delivery since the start of a regime siege in 2012.But the Observatory and a resident said the regime dropped barrel bombs -- crude unguided explosive devices -- on Daraya on Friday, preventing residents from receiving the desperately needed food.

"Aid received by the council has not been distributed yet because of the intensity of the raids," council member Shadi Matar said.

The Observatory and local council estimate that 8,000 people live in Daraya, one of the first towns in Syria to erupt in anti-government demonstrations in 2012 and one of the first to come under regime siege the same year.

But the United Nations speaks of 4,000 besieged residents, angering inhabitants who say the food delivered is not nearly enough.

"The town`s aid bureau might have to re-divide the food to make sure everybody gets some," Matar said.

A previous UN aid convoy reached Daraya on June 1 but contained no food.

The town is just a 15-minute drive from central Damascus and is even closer to the regime`s Mazzeh air base, which hosts the feared air force intelligence services and their notorious prison.

The UN`s humanitarian agency said on Friday it was still awaiting permission from Damascus to deliver aid to two of Syria`s besieged areas, Al-Waer in Homs province and Zabadani in rural Damascus.

UN-backed peace talks on ending the war have stalled after the opposition walked out of negotiations in April over lack of humanitarian access.

A nationwide ceasefire between the regime and non-jihadist rebels -- brokered by Russia and the US -- is in tatters.

ram/ah/srm
California: A US admiral pleaded guilty Thursday to lying about his relationship with a Singapore-based defense contractor at the center of a massive bribery scandal that has tarnished top naval officers.

Rear Admiral Robert Gilbeau -- the highest-ranking Navy officer charged in the ongoing probe -- admitted before a federal judge in San Diego that he had lied when he told investigators that he had never received gifts from Leonard Francis, owner of Glenn Defense Marine Asia (GDMA).

Few admirals in the history of the US Navy have ever been convicted of a felony charge.

Gilbeau, 55, told the court that he had misled investigators when he told them he always paid his share when he and Francis dined together about three times a year over a period of several years.

He also admitted that he destroyed documents and deleted computer files when he became aware in September 2013 that Francis and others had been arrested in connection with the fraud and bribery probe.

Gilbeau, who was awarded the Bronze Star and Purple Heart during his 37-year career, is scheduled to be sentenced in the case on August 26.

His attorney David Benowitz told AFP that he would seek probation for his client while prosecutors have agreed to ask the judge that Gilbeau be sentenced to no more than 12 to 18 months in prison.

According to the plea deal, Gilbeau also agreed to pay $50,000 restitution to the Navy and a $100,000 fine. He will also perform 300 hours of community service.

"Of those who wear our nation`s uniform in the service of our country, only a select few have been honored to hold the rank of admiral -- and not a single one is above the law," prosecutor Laura Duffy said.

"Admiral Gilbeau lied to federal agents investigating corruption and fraud, and then tried to cover up his deception by destroying documents and files."Francis admitted in January that his company, which provided port services, plied naval officers with cash, prostitutes, Cuban cigars and Kobe beef to ensure US Navy ships stopped at ports where GDMA operated.

The Malaysian businessman earned the nickname "Fat Leonard" in maritime circles because of his girth.

So far, a total of 14 people, including 11 current and former Navy officials, have been charged in connection with the case.

Seven of them have already pleaded guilty and been sentenced to prison terms ranging from 27 months to six and a half years, accompanied by heavy fines.

One of those convicted, US Navy Captain Daniel Dusek, was sentenced in March to 46 months in prison for giving classified information to GDMA in exchange for prostitutes and lavish gifts.

In one instance, according to court records, Dusek arranged for the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln to stop at a port terminal in Malaysia owned by Francis.

The 2010 port visit cost the United States about $1.6 million, officials said.

As part of his guilty plea, Francis, who is awaiting sentencing, admitted he bilked the US military out of tens of millions of dollars by routinely overbilling for fuel, tugboat services and sewage disposal.

He agreed to forfeit $35 million that he made in the scheme and to repay the navy whatever amount the court decides.

Alex Wisidagama, another GDMA executive who has pleaded guilty in the case, was sentenced in March to five years and three months in prison and ordered to pay $34.8 million in restitution.

During his career in the Navy, Gilbeau was promoted to several top positions, including that of supply officer on the USS Nimitz in 2003-2004, where he was responsible for procuring all goods and services needed to operate the ship.

He also headed the Navy`s logistics response to the 2004 tsunami in Southeast Asia.

After being promoted to admiral, he assumed command in August 2010 of the Defense Contract Management Agency International, where he was responsible for critical defense contracts outside the United States.

jz/vlk


YEREVAN, JUNE 8, ARMENPRESS. Czech media conducted an opinion poll among parliamentarians. It revealed that over 90% of the respondents supported Armenian Genocide recognition, editor-in-chief of the European orer.eu monthly Hakob Asatryan told Armenpress.

MPs representing both ruling party and opposition took part in the poll. They told that what happened in 1915 is genocide. There are 1 or two MPs that are also members of the European Parliament and have thoroughly pro-Turkish stance. For years they have opposed the recognition of the Armenian Genocide, but now both the political atmosphere and the public opinion are favorable for that. I do not rule out the recognition of the Armenian Genocide may become inevitable, Hakob Asatryan told.

Hakob Asatryan also informed that one of the MPs has proposed President Zeman to open an exhibition dedicated to the Armenian Genocide at the Presidential Residence.

He stated that the Armenian community must make extra efforts to foster the recognition procedure. According to Asatryan, the Turkish lobby is quite active in the Czech Republic, reminding that President of the Czech Chamber of Deputies Jan Hamacek has rather close ties with the Turks.

I believe there will be progress, considering the strong public reaction, the support of the President and other political forces, Hakob Asatryan said.
YEREVAN, JUNE 8, ARMENPRESS. At the invitation of President Serzh Sargsyan, in the evening of June 7 the President of the Czech Republic Milos Zeman arrived to the Republic of Armenia on a state visit.

As Armenpress was informed from the press service of Republic of Armenia Presidents Office, high-level Armenian-Czech negotiations took place at the Presidential Palace on June 8. After a tete-a-tete meeting of the Presidents of Armenia and the Czech Republic, the meeting continued in the extended format with the participation of the official delegations of the two countries. At the conclusion of the negotiations, Presidents Serzh Sargsyan and Milos Zeman signed a Joint Declaration on the Friendly Relations, Partnership, and Enhanced Cooperation.

The Presidents of Armenia and the Czech Republic recapped the results of the meeting in the Declaration which they made at the joint press conference for the representatives of the mass media.

In the framework of his state visit, President Milos Zeman in the morning visited also the Genocide Memorial where he laid a wreath and paid tribute to the memory of innocent victims of the Armenian Genocide. President Zeman also planted a fir tree at the Memory Park of the Tsitsernakaberd Complex, and made an inscription in the Book of Honorary Guests of the Genocide Museum-Institute.

President of Armenia Serzh Sargsyan issued a statement for press following the meeting with the President of the Czech Republic Milos Zeman.

Your Excellency Mr. President,

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Today we are honored to welcome the President of friendly Czech Republic and my good counterpart Mr. Milos Zeman for a state visit. This is the first visit of the president of the Czech Republic. Indeed, it will leave its footprint on the history of bilateral relations.

Today we had a fruitful discussion on a large range of bilateral, regional and international issues, like we had in Prague, during my state visit to the Czech Republic. We noted with satisfaction that we had matching viewpoints over those issues, creating an environment of mutual understanding and trust on the ways of deepening of our relations.

Only since 2014 over two dozens of high level visits have taken place. Following our last meeting the Embassy of the Czech Republic to the Republic of Armenia was established and the first resident ambassador was appointed. Inter-parliamentary relations, decentralized cooperation and collaboration in international fora have intensified. Within this context, undeniably, the continuous assistance of the Czech Republic to advance the Armenian-EU cooperation has a distinct place and we highly value it. As a result, the Czech Republic is one of our stable and reliable partners in Europe and our bilateral cooperation is at the highest level ever.

With President Zeman we thoroughly discussed bilateral economic cooperation which is one of our priorities. It is not in vein, that almost all high-level bilateral meetings are followed by business forums. Later today president Zeman and I will give a start to another business forum. Surely, we have positive developments in this field, yet there is a lot to achieve. In this respect, we discussed new opportunities derive both from Armenias membership to the EAEU and reopening of the market in Iran, our traditional partner country. At the same time, attaching importance to the bilateral economic ties, we were unanimous with President Zeman that the pillar of our relations was not merely economic interest, rather it is the common values, having led our people through history up to the 21st century.

We highly value the position of the Czech Republic concerning the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, which is in line with the general stance of the EU and is in full support of the efforts of the OSCE Minsk group co-chairs. I extended my special gratitude to Mr. President and the government of the Czech Republic for this attitude. We both attached importance to the implementation of the arrangements agreed upon in Vienna in May, including the agreements on the ceasefire from 1994 and 1995, establishing monitoring and incident investigation mechanisms and adding the capacities of the team of Personal Representative of the OSCE chairperson- in- office as an anchor for the long-lasting peace in the conflict zone. Unswerving implementation of these steps is the least to be done to pave way for the constructive and, which is more important, result-oriented negotiations.

Certainly, I also informed Mr. Zeman about the possibility of new meetings with the President of Azerbaijan mediated by the Minsk Group co-chairs. And I thanked him for his offer to use the capacities of Prague, Czech Republic for the meetings. In the meantime, I surely expressed my concerns over Ilham Aliyevs recent unbalanced behavior, signs of which were apparently not visible in Vienna. Particularly with his speech at the Fourth Conference of World Azerbaijanis, where he was cynical about the Armenian state, made personal offenses against the President of the country, with whom by the way he is going to talk on certain issues, articulating thoughts that mock history, he shaped a clear perception about his inappropriateness.

I hope that this is a temporary problem; sort of machismo and it will disappear very soon as we have the commitment to get to serious work in the nearest future. Hopefully, this is not a conscious behavior intended to abort Vienna arrangements.

I expressed the satisfaction of the Armenian side about the unanimously adopted resolution on the Centennial of the Armenian Genocide by the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Czech Chamber of Deputies as well as unambiguous attitude of the Czech President on the matter. The historic resolution on recognizing the Armenian Genocide by the German Bundestag on these days comes to prove that the process of recognition is irreversible - falsifying history, denying facts and spouting intimidation cannot stop it.

We are thankful to the Czech Republic for favorable disposition to the Armenian community. The fact of transferring the Catholic Church of Holy Spirit in Prague to the parish of the Armenian Apostolic Church is a vivid example of that. It was a major event in the life of the Armenian community of the Czech Republic in terms of preserving national identity. I would also like to deeply thank cardinal Duka in this respect.

I believe that our interstate relations will continue to successfully develop, since it is based on the unselfish friendship between Czech and Armenian people, mutual understanding and the aspiration to shape a common future.

Thank you.

It is my pleasure to give the floor to my friend President Milos Zeman.

President of the Czech Republic Milos Zeman issued a statement for press following the meeting with the President of Armenia Serzh Sargsyan.

Your Excellency Mr. President,

Ladies and Gentlemen,

We negotiate over two aspects: political and economic. As refers to the political one, I would like to repeat my announcement that I made 2 years ago during the state visit of President Sargsyan to the Czech Republic, by which I condemned the Genocide of 1915. I did it also for the reason that my people would have become a victim of another genocide if the Nazi Germany had won.

I know that the Armenian Genocide has been condemned by 10 EU member states, as well as other non member states.

To repeat my last announcement is not enough, it will be followed by the next step: I will call on the President of the parliament to follow the example of the German parliament, so as the parliament of the Czech Republic also adopts a similar resolution.

As you may know, I recently paid a visit to Azerbaijan, and my announcement and position remain unchanged irrespective of the fact which country I visit. I have reminded the two presidents the example of the long-term conflict between Germany and France, when these two states fought each other for centuries that claimed numerous lives.

Thank to two individuals, Konrad Adenauer and Charles de Gaulle, it was possible to reach an agreement and put an end to the war.

I am convinced that President Sargsyan and President Aliyev are outstanding individuals that can assume those roles, while being honored for the comparison with Gaulle and Adenauer.

This is the reason I referred to my invitation addressed to President Sargsyan and President Aliyev to meet in a neutral zone. I want to remind that those negotiations were held in the Czech Republic during the period of 2002-2005.

As refers to economic cooperation, I have to mention that we have unused potential here. Trade turnover is on rather a low level and for that reason I came here with some important entrepreneurs led by the president of the Czech Chamber of Commerce and Industry who usually does not participate in similar visits.

We agreed with Mr. President that state guarantees are of crucial importance for investments that ensure stability in our economic relations. I would like to thank Mr. President for promising to support an unsolved contract over Mika cement. I attach great importance to this promise of the President. At the same time I am looking forward to our future meetings with the President, both in Prague and in the sidelines of the Eastern Partnership, where Armenia is a key member.

Finally, I would like to wish Mr. President and the entire Armenian people great achievements in shaping an independent state that is not a subject to external pressures and makes decisions for itself.

Thank you.
YEREVAN, JUNE 9, ARMENPRESS. Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Shavarsh Kocharyan does not agree with allegations, stating as if the joint Air Defense system with Russia will abolish the independence of Armenias airspace.

Actually thats wrong. There is another side to it : the opportunity to scrutinize the entire surrounding area. Meaning, we do not have the opportunity which the Russian military hardware has to offer. Being able to scrutinize our surroundings, in my opinion is very important, Kocharyan said.

According to him similar agreements are in force in CSTO territories.

Previously, the Foreign Relations Committee of the Armenian Parliament endorsed the agreement on establishing a joint Air Defense system with Russia.

The agreement is yet to be ratified.
YEREVAN, JUNE 9, ARMENPRESS. Rhode Island House of Representatives is going to discuss the bill of teaching students about the Holocaust and other genocides, Armenpress reports, providencejournal.com informs.

The bill was approved unanimously by the Senate with 36 for and no one against it. It mandates in middle school or high school the teaching of the Holocaust and other genocides in, but not limited to, Armenia, Cambodia, Iraq, Rwanda and Darfur.

If approved, teaching is required to begin in the 2017-18 school year.

The lead sponsor of the bill is Sen. Gayle L. Goldin, D-Providence, who said: "When we look at what's going on globally, the impact of war and strife, it's important to place them in a larger historical context, so our children understand the long-term impact of genocides and the Holocaust, so we don't repeat that history."

Seven states  California, Florida, Illinois, Michigan, New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania  have similar legislation. A current law in Rhode Island only encourages the awareness education.
YEREVAN, JUNE 9, ARMENPRESS. Royal Dutch Shell Plc is set to ship a cargo of Iranian crude to Europe next month, becoming the second major oil company in the region after Total SA to resume oil trade after some sanctions on the Persian nations nuclear program were lifted in January, reports Bloomberg.

Shell booked the Delta Hellas tanker to carry one million barrels of Iranian crude to Europe, loading July 1, according to lists of charters compiled by Bloomberg. Shell declined to comment on the booking.

Among oil majors, Total was the first to resume purchases of Iranian crude after the French oil company chartered a cargo in February. The first shipment to arrive in Europe was for the independent Spanish refiner Cia. Espanola de Petroleos, which unloaded on March 6.

Iran has vowed to recover its lost market share following a nuclear deal that loosened sanctions on oil exports and financial transactions in January. The flow of crude oil from Iran to European countries other than Turkey, which was exempt from the most recent sanctions, rose from zero in January to at least 290,000 barrels a day last month, according to tanker-tracking data compiled by Bloomberg.

Another three Suezmax tankers, each able to carry around 1 million barrels of crude, that are currently heading through the Red Sea towards the Mediterranean may also be destined for ports in Europe, the data show. They would raise the volume of Iranian oil exported to Europe last month to nearly 390,000 barrels a day.

The vessel booked by Shell, which was first reported by Reuters, is scheduled to load from Kharg Island, Irans biggest export terminal.

Despite the loosening of sanctions, some European companies remain wary of resuming business with Iran. Some U.S. restrictions on the country are still in place, preventing companies from doing deals with the nation using dollars. Some Greek refiners initially struggled to resume purchases of crude from the country due to banking restrictions.

Shell, which owed money to the National Iranian Oil Company for crude purchases before sanctions were imposed in 2012, was able to repay 1.7 billion Euros ($1.9 billion) to the National Iranian Oil Corp., the company said in March. It also settled some payments via the countrys Bank Karafin.
YEREVAN, JUNE 9, ARMENPRESS. The Central Bank of Armenia informs that on June 9 the USD exchange rate was 478.87 AMD which is an increase of 0.05 drams compared to the previous day.

Armenpress reports that the Euro decreased by 0.52 drams forming 543.95 drams. British pound dropped by 3.47 drams forming 692.73 drams, Russian ruble increased by 0.04 drams reaching to 7.47 drams on June 9.

The prices for precious metals are as follows: the price for silver per gram is 257.88 AMD, gold-19,445.18 AMD, and platinum-15,642.36 AMD.
YEREVAN, JUNE 10, ARMENPRESS. Israel says it has suspended entry permits for 83,000 Palestinians after gunmen killed four people in an attack at an open-air complex in Tel Aviv, BBC reports.

Two Palestinians from the occupied West Bank opened fire on shoppers and diners at the Sarona precinct, officials said.

Police said the attackers were cousins from Yatta, a Palestinian village near Hebron. Both are in custody.

Islamist group Hamas praised what it called an "heroic attack" but did not say it was behind it.

In a statement a day after the killings, the West Bank-based Palestinian Presidency said it "repeatedly emphasised its rejection of all operations targeting civilians regardless of their identity and irrespective of the justifications", without directly addressing the Tel Aviv attack.

Two women - Ilana Nave, 39, and Mila Mishayev, 32 - and two men - Ido Ben Aryeh, 42, and Michael Feige, 58 - were killed in the shootings, police said.

Sixteen people were also injured.

The two gunmen, who were smartly dressed, opened fire with automatic weapons on diners and passers-by after sitting down and ordering food at one of the complex's restaurants.

CCTV footage showed customers diving for cover and scrambling for the exit. One of the attackers was wounded by security forces and has undergone surgery at an Israeli hospital.

News of the attack was greeted in parts of the West Bank and Gaza Strip with fireworks and cheering. Some Palestinians handed out sweets and waved flags in celebration.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited the Sarona complex shortly after Wednesday night's attack, calling it "a savage crime of murder and terrorism".

Israel later announced a permit ban that will impact Palestinians in the West Bank and in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip who had planned to visit relatives in Israel, attend Ramadan prayers in Jerusalem or travel abroad via Tel Aviv's airport.

The suspension did not apply to Palestinians with work authorisations.

Permits for 204 relatives of the attackers had also been suspended, a statement from Cogat, the Israeli body which manages civilian affairs in the West Bank, said.

It added Palestinians were being prevented from entering and leaving Yatta, and access to the village would only be allowed for humanitarian and medical cases.

According to Israeli media, army forces have also measured the houses of the attackers, in preparation for possible demolition.

Israel's military said it would deploy two additional battalions involving "hundreds" of troops in the West Bank in the wake of the attack.

In Tel Aviv, extra police units have been despatched, mainly around the city's bus and train stations, police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said.

Photo by AP
YEREVAN, JUNE 10, ARMENPRESS. Architect, engineering historian Adnan Morshed (Washignton) spoke about the Armenian community of Dhaka, Bangladesh making also parallels between the two people in the context of the Genocide.

It seems Turkey adopted the caricature history of the Genocide denial. Erdogans response was predictable after the adoption of the Armenian Genocide recognition resolution by Germany on June 2. Ankara recalled its Ambassador from Berlin. It is a very familiar phenomenon, since Ambassador of Bangladesh was also recalled after the execution of the military criminal which reveals Erdogans ridiculously lax attitude towards the genocide that took place in 1971 in Bangladesh. From this perspective, it is important to state that Armenians and people of Bangladesh have a common history, and this history has shaped the national identity of the two people in different ways. Armenia has a rich history in Dhaka: St. Harutyun Church in Old Dhaka is a proof of how the Armenian people was spread beyond the borders of its historical Motherland, he stated.

Referring to Armenias geographical position, the historian said: The country has always been under the control of the competing forces Persians, Greeks, Arabs. Armenians have also played a key role in the field of the world architecture. There was no concrete information about the date Armenians came to Dhaka. According to some historians, it was the beginning of the 17th century. One of the most important contributions of Armenians in Dhaka was the import of carriage which became the first means of transportation until the first decade of the 20th century.

The Armenian small, but rich community also had a significant impact on the civilian life of Dhaka. Nikolas Poghos established a private school in 1848 which is still one of the famous schools of Old Dhaka. It is very difficult not to support Armenians especially in the context of the Armenian and our neglected genocides, the historian concluded.
YEREVAN, JUNE 10, ARMENPRESS. The European Investment bank will provide a 51 million Euro loan to Armenia for the renovation and upgrading of the 90km long Vanadzor-Bagratashen highway.

The loan agreement was endorsed by the Standing Committee on Financial-Credit and Budgetary Affairs of the Parliament and has been included in the agenda of the upcoming June 13 session.

Deputy Minister of Transport and Communication Artur Arakelyan said the construction works are scheduled to begin in 2017 and to finish in 2020.

Dangerous tunnels of the abovementioned highway will also be upgraded.

According to the Deputy Minister, the loan agreement solves a very urgent matter.
YEREVAN, JUNE 10, ARMENPRESS. A national service of thanksgiving to mark the Queen's 90th birthday at St Paul's Cathedral has paid tribute to her "faithful devotion" to the country, reports BBC.

Dean of St Paul's David Ison thanked the Queen for her "gentle constancy, royal dignity and kindly humanity".

Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby said the Queen had reigned through "war and hardship, turmoil and change".

The service was attended by Royal Family members, including the Duke of Edinburgh - on his own 95th birthday.

PM David Cameron read from the Bible, while broadcaster Sir David Attenborough read a passage written by Michael Bond, author of the Paddington Bear books, on "the passing of the years".

Archbishop Welby led the service at St Paul's, attended by more than 2,000 people.

Guests included senior politicians, faith leaders, governors-general - who represent the Queen in Commonwealth countries - and hundreds of members of the public nominated by government departments to recognise their service.

The Very Reverend David Ison opened the service by thanking the Queen for her "faithful devotion, dutiful commitment, loving leadership, gentle constancy, royal dignity and kindly humanity".

"And, as we give thanks for Her Majesty, so also do we give thanks for Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, and all the Royal Family: for mutual love and support and for service to this country and to the Commonwealth."

The birthday parade will end with members of the Royal Family making their annual appearance on the balcony of Buckingham Palace, where they will watch an RAF flypast.
"In is in. Out is out," says German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble in reference to the consequences of a potential Brexit

German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble on Friday warned Britain that it would not gain access to the single market if it left the European Union, as Britain's Labour Party came out fighting for a "Remain" vote.

"That won't work," the veteran minister told Germany's Der Spiegel weekly, which on Saturday plans to publish a German-English edition at home and in Britain with "Please don't go!" on the cover.

"That would require the country to follow the rules of a club which right now it wants to leave."

The stark warning by one of Europe's most senior officials is a blow to "Brexit" supporters, who have argued that Britain could negotiate deals to access the single market similar to those in place for like non-members Norway and Switzerland.

With polls on a knife-edge before the June 23 referendum, senior figures in Britain's opposition Labour party made an impassioned plea to stay in the EU amid fears their failure to get out the left-wing vote may result in a Brexit.

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn is officially backing the "Remain" campaign but has been keeping a low profile, leaving members of Prime Minister David Cameron's Conservatives to fight it out between themselves.

Ahead of a speech in London on Friday, former party leader Ed Miliband acknowledged in a BBC interview: "Some Labour voters don't know where we stand at the moment."

Corbyn has refused to share a platform with Cameron and there are concerns some Labour voters will abstain or back a Brexit to give the Conservative leader a bloody nose.

- 'People's revolution' -

Miliband urged them not to, saying: "This is not a mid-term protest... This is a once-in-a-generation decision which will shape our country for decades to come."

He accused the "Leave" campaign, also backed by the anti-immigration UK Independence Party (UKIP) leader Nigel Farage, of "trying to perpetrate a fraud on Labour voters".

"They want to get out of the European Union not to improve workers' rights but to sweep them away," said Miliband, who stepped down after losing last year's general election.

Story continues

Labour deputy party leader Tom Watson was due to release predictions on Friday of how Britain might look outside the EU, on the premise that Cameron would be ousted in favour of a more right-wing Conservative government.

The economic turbulence of a Brexit would create "a massive black hole in the public finances, and an unfair Tory government that will make ordinary families pay for it through further cuts and tax rises", he said, according to the Daily Mirror tabloid.

A YouGov poll for The Times this week found public opinion evenly split between leaving or staying in the EU, but Labour voters favoured "Remain" by 61 percent to 26 percent, with the remainder either not voting or undecided.

However, Labour voters were also marginally less likely to say they would definitely vote.

The leaders of 10 major trade unions came out in favour of staying in the EU this week, but many workers blame the mass migration caused by the EU's freedom of movement rules for driving down wages.

- Tory attacks dominate debate -

Two backbench lawmakers, John Mann and Dennis Skinner, on Friday announced that they were backing Brexit as the best way to secure workers' rights.

In an article for The Sun tabloid, Mann said the arrival of hundreds of thousands of EU migrants into Britain each year was "worsening inequality".

He added: "A people's revolution is under way. This is about returning power to the people."

Labour's push for votes came after senior Conservatives attacked each other in the first head-to-head television debate of the referendum race on Thursday.

Three campaigners from each side -- five of them women -- argued their case over two hours.

In clashes over migration, Johnson -- tipped as a potential future prime minister -- said: "There has got to be democratic consent for the scale of the flows that we are seeing."

Tory energy minister Amber Rudd, who is backing "Remain", hit back, saying: "I fear that the only number Boris is interested in is the one that says Number 10" -- the premier's address in Downing Street.
This week, the Internet Archive is hosting a three-day event (which finishes today) called The Decentralized Web Summit, whose goal is to figure out how to build a new Internet that is "locked open," an idea that emerged from Internet Archive founder Brewster Kahle's 2015 series of talks and articles about how technologists can build networks and protocols that are resistant to attempt to capture, monopolize and control them.



I attended the first two days, and the event was inspiring and brilliant. Speakers included Vint Cerf, one of the inventors of the core Internet technologies; and Tim Berners-Lee, who invented the web.

The New York Times story about the first day captures some of the flavor of optimism and urgency in the room, and the sense that Edward Snowden's whistleblowing revealed that the Internet had become a system of nightmarish control and surveillance that disproportionately benefited the powerful and corrupt at the expense of everyone else.

Twenty-seven years ago, Tim Berners-Lee created the World Wide Web as a way for scientists to easily find information. It has since become the world's most powerful medium for knowledge, communications and commerce  but that doesn't mean Mr. Berners-Lee is happy with all of the consequences. "It controls what people see, creates mechanisms for how people interact," he said of the modern day web. "It's been great, but spying, blocking sites, repurposing people's content, taking you to the wrong websites  that completely undermines the spirit of helping people create." So on Tuesday, Mr. Berners-Lee gathered in San Francisco with other top computer scientists  including Brewster Kahle, head of the nonprofit Internet Archive and an internet activist  to discuss a new phase for the web.

The Web's Creator Looks to Reinvent It

[Quentin Hardy/NYT]





(Image: Jason Henry)
Mohammed Halabi of MyBillsAreHigh. Photo: Santy Yeh



With Canada home to some of the highest wireless prices in the world and consumer studies saying Canadian communication bills are too high, it doesnt hurt to look for ways to slash your TV, internet and phone expenses. One way to do so is to call your provider and haggle your way to a cheaper monthly bill.

Mohammed Halabi has made a business out of doing just that. He founded MyBillsAreHigh, an expense management solutions company that takes a look at communications expenses for business and consumers.

After clocking in 20,000 hours negotiating with telecom companies for lower bills, he has learned a thing or two about getting communications bills under control.

Halabi spoke with Yahoo Canada Finance to share some tips on how consumers can haggle to get a more manageable monthly bill.

1. Assess your needs

Before you pick up the phone to call your telecom company, Halabi says you should take a look at your last three bills to get an understanding of what youre using and how much youre using.

For home phone and cell phone services, this means you should consider if youre using long distance. If you are, take a look at if youre just making long distance calls to numbers within Canada or if youre making calls to the U.S. or elsewhere overseas.

If you spot some frills you can do without, great. You can keep those in mind for the next step. If not, dont sweat it. There may still be a way to keep what you have and still save some cash.

2. Do your homework

Once you get a grasp of your telecom needs, go online and start shopping around for deals that you think would suit you.

Dont forget to check the smaller players like Wind Mobile or Teksavvy as they often have better deals than the big providers. Be sure to also check out what your existing provider is offering just in case theyve introduced any new deals that they havent passed on to you.

Doing your research is key as knowing your current providers latest offers and what the competition has is a great way to make your case for lower rates once you make the call.

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And chances are high that there are some deals out there, especially considering the aggressive market.

Theres always lots of incentives that competing providers are offering to win over business, Halabi says. Sometimes theyre offering credits if you switch. Sometimes theyre offering you a few months for free.

While you may be tempted by a cheaper plan, always keep in mind your needs. Getting a cheaper plan you cant live with may cause problems down the line.

Plans should conform to the customers usage as opposed to the customer trying to conform to the plan, he adds.

3. Make the call (but mind your manners)

Once youve taken note of the latest and greatest deals, nows the time to give your providers customer service department a call.

While you may want to give the person on the other end of the line an earful about your sky-high bill, resist the urge to rant, rave and say that you want to cancel right off the bat.

Instead be polite, mention how long youve been a customer with the company (if youve been with them for more than one to two years) and ask if theres anything they can do to lower your monthly bill. Courtesy goes a long way.

Go in with a polite and respectful tone as opposed to one where its rude and screaming, Halabi says. Because were all human, right?

Once you get things rolling, then its a good idea to mention some of the better deals out there and to see if they can beat or match them.

At this point in the call, dont hesitate to mention that youve been shopping around and are considering switching.

However, beware of some of the excuses that may get thrown your way.

If you bring up Wind if youre dealing with Bell or Rogers, theyll obviously tell you that you cant really compare Mercedes to a Hyundai  its a premium service, Wind isnt, Halabi explains. The approach you can take with that is that well, it works for me where I am.

While that may be enough to talk them into lowering your monthly bill, Halabi warns not to expect premium providers to match the rate of the smaller players.

4. Escalate the call (if you need to)

However, if youre still not happy with what they present to you or havent gotten anywhere, you have the option to escalate the call.

Ask to speak with customer relations, which also goes by the name customer loyalty or customer retentions. Some may tell you those above them cant do better, but dont believe them.

They want to avoid escalating the call, but they dont want to lose you as a customer either. So, when you push the right buttons, they will push the call to the next level, Halabi says.

If customer relations still isnt giving you the deal youre looking for, there are even higher levels of escalation you could take your negotiation to, but Halabi says the customer relations loyalty department is usually where youll get the deal youve been hoping for.

Once you finally get the deal you want, dont be afraid if theyd like to put it in a contract.

Sometimes you may get offered a great deal, but its contingent on taking a two-year term, which isnt a bad idea if you know youre going to need the service, he says. You might get something like 25 per cent off the prices that you see on the website. It can be a significant difference.

Unfortunately, to get a lower telecom bill, youll have to put in the time. You should set aside a good two hours and factor in that you might have to call back because the deal might not be properly provisioned, Halabi says.

To prevent having to call back, he says you should get interaction numbers or reference numbers, the agents name and even to get the agent to read back the notes theyve taken. You can even record the call if youd like.

If that all sounds like too much work, you could also hire a firm like Halabis own MyBillsAreHigh, which gives consumers who want a lower bill the convenience of not having to go through all the trouble and the guarantee theyll get what they were promised.
As the Liberals continue to move towards the legalization of marijuana in Canada, commercial enterprises that intend to capitalize on the marijuana industry in its infancy are seizing their opportunity.

Alan Gertner, the former Google employee who quit to launch Tokyo Smoke, says he hopes to see Canada become for cannabis what France is for wine.

At the Canada Summit hosted by The Economist this week, Gertner explained that the cannabis industry is at a crossroads, and wants his company to help pioneer a more sophisticated marijuana consumption experience.

Gertner is just one of the enterpreneurs who is looking to capitalize on the eventual legalization of the marijuana trade, along with the dozens of shops in Toronto and Vancouver who are weathering fines while they wait for the writ to pass.

In Colorado, where recreational marijuana has been legal since January 2014, $30 million in total economic output was seen from marijuana retailers in the first six months of legalization, and 280 jobs were created at just two dispensaries.

But while businesses gear up for impending legalization, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says he's not concerned about the economic impact at this stage.

"Look, our approach on legalizing marijuana is not about creating a boutique industry or bringing in tax revenues," Trudeau told the Canada Summit on Wednesday. "It's based on two very simple principles.

"The first one is: young people have easier access to cannabis now, in Canada, than they do in just about any other country in the world. In 29 different countries studied by the UN, Canada was number one in terms of underage access to marijuana."

Trudeau is citing a 2013 study by UNICEF, Child well-being in rich countries: A comparative overview. The study -- which surveyed children ages 11, 13 and 15 in developed countries -- found 28 per cent of Canadian youths surveyed had used cannabis in the last 12 months. That figure is four per cent higher than the next highest country, Switzerland. The survey was conducted in 2009 -- long before Trudeau entered office, and the Tories accused him of promoting marijuana use among youth.

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"Whatever you might think or studies you've seen about cannabis being less harmful than alcohol or even cigarettes, the fact is, it is bad for the developing brain, and we need to make sure that it's harder for underage Canadians to access marijuana," said Trudeau. "And that will happen under a controlled and regulated regime.

"The other piece of it is there are billions upon billions of dollars flowing into the pockets of organized crime, street gangs and gun runners because of the illicit marijuana trade," said Trudeau. He continued that legalizing marijuana would help stop funding the criminal activities of those groups.

While there are plenty of people like Gertner who will be benefiting from the legalization of marijuana in the form of legitimate business enterprises, Trudeau (who commented that we shouldn't really discount Canadian wine compared to French, either) remains ambivalent to the economic impact it will have at this early stage in the process.

"I have no doubt that Canadians and enterpreneurs will be tremendously innovative in finding ways to create positive economic benefits from the legalization and control of marijuana, but our focus is on protecting kids, and protecting our streets."
By Ethan Lou TORONTO (Reuters) - Canada's Supreme Court on Thursday upheld a lower court decision to stop the execution of a New Brunswick man's will that bequeathed his estate to U.S. white supremacists. The Ottawa-based Supreme Court declined to hear the appeal against a previous provincial court ruling, which was brought by the Canadian Association for Free Expression. It did not give a reason for the decision, in accordance with its usual practice. Freedom to give away one's property has sometimes been limited in Canada, where courts have been known to quash wills that they decide go against public policy. The association has said the provincial court's decision in the case tramples on the rights of Harry Robert McCorkill, also know by the last name "McCorkell," who died in 2004. McCorkill bequeathed his estate to the National Alliance, a white-supremacist group based in West Virginia. In 2013, Erich J. Gliebe, then chairman of the National Alliance, swore in an affidavit he knew McCorkill, who had lived in West Virginia, and that the man liked the "European cultural festivals" he had been promoting. In 2013, his sister, Isabelle McCorkill, successfully challenged the will, saying it was illegal and contrary to public policy. The case attracted nationwide attention, and Jewish groups and the New Brunswick government joined the case as interveners. Shimon Koffler Fogel, head of the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, one of the interveners, said in a statement the center commends the appeal's rejection. In a separate case, the court also declined to hear the appeal of a woman who said her father was racist in his decision to exclude her from his will. The woman said her now-deceased father, who is black and according to her, was a racist, excluded her because she had a child with a white man. A Toronto court had rejected her claims, ruling that the will did not mention race as a reason to exclude her. Jordan Atin, an estate lawyer and an adjunct professor at the Osgoode Hall Law School in Toronto, said the case differs from McCorkill's as the latter involved an issue with the beneficiary - not the will itself. People in Canada do not normally need to justify their choices in bequeathing, but the McCorkill case involves an group whose activities are illegal in the country. "To give money to that organization was seen to be, in essence, enhancing an organization that was committing crimes," he said. (Reporting by Ethan Lou in Toronto; Editing by Alan Crosby)
CALGARY, Alberta (Reuters) - Canadian Natural Resources Ltd and Cenovus Energy said they restarted operations at two oil sands facilities in the Wabasca region of northern Alberta on Thursday after a wildfire threat dissipated. The companies shut their Pelican Lake projects and evacuated workers as a blaze that has swelled to 75 hectares (185 acres) encroached on facilities over the last two days, marking the second time in five weeks that wildfires have cut western Canadian oil output. Canadian Natural said on Thursday it had returned to normal operations, including the restart of 800 barrels per day of shut-in production, company spokeswoman Julie Woo said, as firefighters and weather patterns held fires back from its facilities. The facilities produce an average of 47,600 barrels per day, Woo said, citing first-quarter filings. Cenovus said it was in the process of restarting production at its 23,000-barrel-per-day project on Thursday after it evacuated all 118 workers and shut down production two days prior. The Pelican Lake fire was about 160 km (100 miles) southwest of a massive wildfire that was still burning east of the city of Fort McMurray, Alberta. That blaze forced some 90,000 residents to flee the city and shut down more than 1 million barrels per day of oil sands output. Canadian cash crude differentials held steady on Thursday as market players waited to see how fast crude volumes would come back online after the series of blazes. The Pelican Lake blaze was being held some 30 km (19 miles) from Wabasca, fire official Travis Fairweather said. "The fire won't grow any more given the current weather conditions and resources devoted to it," Fairweather said. (Reporting by Eric M. Johnson and Nia Williams in Calgary; editing by Alan Crosby and David Gregorio)
(Reuters) - Canadian retailer Hudson's Bay Co reported better-than expected quarterly sales as it benefited from its expansion in Europe and the acquisition of online retailer Gilt. Hudson's Bay bought Galeria Kaufhof and its Belgian subsidiary Inno from German retailer Metro for about $2.7 billion last year to mitigate the impact of decreased consumer spending in the United States and Canada. The oldest continuously operating company in North America received a third of its revenue from Europe in the first quarter. However, the company reported a bigger-than-expected loss for the quarter ended April 30, hurt by higher costs and rent expenses related to the company's real estate joint ventures. "I think the stock might come off a little bit but the overall tone is positive," M Partners analyst Steven Salz said. Same-store sales at the company's department store group, which includes Hudson's Bay and Lord & Taylor chains, rose 2.3 percent. Total same-store sales rose 4.4 percent. Same-store sales at its upscale Saks Fifth Avenue fell 5.7 percent as consumers continued to shun luxury items. Total sales rose 59.4 percent to C$3.30 billion ($2.6 billion). Analysts on average had expected revenue of C$3.28 billion, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S. The company also maintained its full-year sales forecast at a time when U.S. department store operators such as Macy's Inc and Nordstrom Inc cut their 2016 profit estimates as shoppers spend less on apparel. Hudson's Bay said it still expects to spend between C$750 and C$850 million. "A lot of folks are looking for how they can reduce their cost base," Bruce Winder, an independent retail consultant said. The company said it expects to meet or exceed its annualized savings target of C$75 million, related to the realignment of its North American operations. Hudson's Bay also said it has begun a voluntary restructuring program in its European merchandising department and outsourced its IT systems maintenance in North America to save about C$16 million annually. The company expects to record charges of about $21 million related to these two initiatives, of which $12 million was recorded in the first quarter. The company's net loss widened to C$97 million, or 53 Canadian cents per share, in the first quarter from C$49 million, or 27 Canadian cents per share, a year earlier. Excluding items, the company reported a loss of 50 Canadian cents per share, larger than the average analyst estimate of 36 Canadian cents. (Reporting by Arathy S Nair in Bengaluru; Editing by Don Sebastian)
By Jonathan Stempel (Reuters) - Luxottica Group Spa , the maker of Ray-Ban sunglasses, has sued BCBG Max Azria Group LLC, accusing the fashion house of knowingly infringing its famous Wayfarer trademark. The complaint, filed on Wednesday with the U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, said BCBG Max Azria's unauthorized sale of infringing eyewear was intended to confuse consumers, hurting Milan-based Luxottica's reputation and goodwill. "Defendant's acts complained of herein have caused Luxottica to suffer irreparable injury to its business," the complaint said. Luxottica, the world's largest eyewear company, is seeking an injunction against infringements, triple and punitive damages, and other remedies. Leigh Brill, a spokeswoman for BCBG Max Azria, on Thursday said the company had no comment. Lawyers for Luxottica did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Luxottica has pursued other litigation to stop lesser-known marketers from selling Ray-Ban knockoffs. It also runs several eyewear chains, including LensCrafters, Pearle Vision, Sears Optical, Sunglass Hut and Target Optical. Wayfarer sunglasses were designed in 1952. A U.S. trademark was registered two years later by Bausch & Lomb, whose Ray-Ban business was acquired by Luxottica in 1999. The sunglasses' popularity has gone in cycles, reaching a peak during the 1980s. Tom Cruise wore them in the 1983 movie "Risky Business," and Don Henley referred to them in his 1984 song "The Boys of Summer." BCBG Max Azria is run by Tunisian-born Max Azria. It is based in Vernon, California, about five miles (8 km) southeast of downtown Los Angeles. The case is Luxottica Group SpA et al v. BCBG Max Azria Group LLC et al, U.S. District Court, Central District of California, No. 16-04062. (Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Lisa Von Ahn and Andrew Hay)
By Nia Williams CALGARY, Alberta (Reuters) - A team of South African firefighters dispatched to Canada to fight a massive wildfire in the oil sands region is heading home after a pay dispute, South African officials said on Thursday. The 301 firefighters arrived in northern Alberta less than two weeks ago to help quell the blaze near Fort McMurray, which forced the evacuation of 90,000 people, destroyed part of the city and shuttered more than a million barrels per day of oil sands production. But on Thursday, Working on Fire, a South African government-funded organization that trains firefighters, said a senior management team was on its way to Alberta assist with their demobilization and return home. At issue is how much pay the firefighters should receive for their work in Canada. During their deployment, Canadian authorities agreed to cover accommodation and meals, while each fire fighter would also receive a daily stipend of C$15 ($11.80) for discretionary purchases, according to Working on Fire. In addition, after their return home, each firefighter would receive an "out of country daily allowance" to the Rand value equivalent of C$35 per day. They were also to receive the regular wage they earn at home. However, local media reports about salary increases for personnel deployed to Canada caused confusion among the firefighters, prompting them to strike on Wednesday, Work on Fire said in a statement. "We wish to categorically state that the quoted amount of $21 per hour is incorrect and was never agreed to with anyone," Working on Fire said, referring to the media reports. It added in a statement that each firefighter signed the agreement on pay before coming to Canada. Mike Long, communication director for Alberta Agriculture and Forestry, said the sudden departure of the South Africans would not disrupt efforts to battle the wildfire. "We have nearly 2,000 firefighters on the line currently and the fire is 70 percent contained at the moment so it's at a point where we are able to manage the need appropriately," he said. ($1 = C$1.27175) (Reporting by Nia Williams; Editing by Alan Crosby)
(Reuters) - Valeant Pharmaceuticals International Inc is considering the sale of Egyptian drugmaker Amoun Pharmaceutical Co to accelerate its debt-reduction plan, Bloomberg reported, citing people with knowledge of the matter. Valeant is working with Goldman Sachs Group on the sale, which is at a preliminary stage, according to the report. It is also weighing a sale of some of its Latin American operations, Bloomberg reported. Valeant bought Amoun for about $800 million last year. Valeant, which earlier in the week reported lower-than-expected first quarter profit, could not be immediately be reached for comment. The Canadian company has said that it is aiming to lower its almost $30 billion debt. (Reporting by Ankur Banerjee in Bengaluru; Editing by Shounak Dasgupta)
PARIS (Reuters) - Xherdan Shaqiri may be regarded as Switzerland's key player, but the midfielder believes only a team approach can help them beat Albania in their opening Euro 2016 Group A game on Saturday. Switzerland have been tipped to reach the last 16 from the group along with hosts France, but Albania and Romania stand in their way. "Of course, journalists talk about it, of course I'm a player who can make a difference in this team, but for me it's not important to be the star in the media, I'm just playing for the squad," Shaqiri told a news conference on Friday. "I'll be fighting for the squad. I will try to make a difference but Switzerland do not depend on one player. "We have always stood out as a team so we will stay as a team." It will be a special game for Shaqiri, whose parents are Kosovar Albanian. "Tomorrow will be a serious game, both teams will give their best to win it, there won't be any friends," he said. Captain Stephan Lichtsteiner insisted the Albania match could be key. "For everyone it seems to be done and dusted, France first and Switzerland second. It's not that easy so the most important thing is to win tomorrow's game," he said. France take on Romania in the tournament's opener later on Friday. (Reporting by Julien Pretot; Editing by Toby Davis)
BROOKLYN, N.Y., June 10, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Marking its 16th consecutive year of providing academic scholarships to credit union members and their families, the Polish & Slavic Federal Credit Union (PSFCU) is awarding a total of $350,000 to 311 students this month as part of its annual Scholarship Program.



Photos accompanying this announcement are available at

http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/87e17f91-840c-4f6f-8800-5be12ac4c762

http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/58348970-746b-4860-a661-2a5625193f78

The annual PSFCU Scholarship Program selected outstanding recent high school graduates and current college students from New York, New Jersey and Illinois to receive the scholarship funds.

Since the programs inception in 2001, the Brooklyn-based credit union has dispensed in excess of $3,600,000 to more than 3,100 students as part of its annual Scholarship Program. This years recipients include 211 high school graduates from the Class of 2016. The program was partially administered by the Credit Union Association of New York  CUANY. 100 current college students were also awarded.

Over the course of 16 years, thousands of our young members have benefited tremendously from our Scholarship Program, as we help provide valuable funds for students to pursue their dreams of a college education, said Malgorzata Gradzki, Chairwoman of the PSFCU Board of Directors. Were proud of the work we do to support higher education, and on behalf of the current Board of Directors, I want to assure you that we will continue our support for the Scholarship Program.

This year, the scholarship award ceremonies were held separately in New York, New Jersey and Illinois, the three states in which PSFCU operates. The awards ceremony in New York (114 recipients) was held June 7 at PSFCUs headquarters in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. The New Jersey ceremony (129 recipients) took place June 8 at PSFCUs operations center in Fairfield. The Illinois event (68 recipients) will be held June 11 at PSFCUs Mt. Prospect branch.

In addressing the honored students who will receive the scholarships, Malgorzata Wadolowski, chairwoman of the PSFCU Scholarship Committee, said, Please do not forget that you are the future of the United States Polish community. On your way to the top, do not forget that your Polish heritage is a reason to be proud. I hope that for all of you, your Polish & Slavic Federal Credit Union scholarship is an acknowledgement of your efforts thus far, as well as an incentive to keep working.

At the credit unions first scholarship ceremony in 2001, only local Brooklyn students were selected to receive scholarships to continue their education. Today  more than $3.6 million later  these young credit union members from New York, New Jersey and Illinois have applied their scholarships to such prestigious universities as Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Stanford, New York University, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

As the nations largest ethnic credit union, the PSFCU Scholarship Program is just one example of its desire to help Polish immigrants and Polish-Americans achieve their American Dreams.

Polish & Slavic Federal Credit Union is celebrating its 40th anniversary in 2016. Founded in Brooklyn in September 1976, the PSFCU has grown into an institution with 17 branches in three states (New York, New Jersey and Illinois). It has over 87,500 members and assets in excess of $1.73 billion.
As of August 26th, 2021 Yahoo India will no longer be publishing content. Your Yahoo Account Mail and Search experiences will not be affected in any way and will operate as usual. We thank you for your support and readership. For more information on Yahoo India, please visit the FAQ
VANCOUVER, BC--(Marketwired - June 09, 2016) - Quaterra Resources Inc. ("Quaterra" or the "Company") and its subsidiary Singatse Peak Services LLC ("SPS") today announced results from Hole GHH-001, the sixth and last

hole of a drill program to explore and further define the Bear deposit, a large porphyry copper system on the Company's 52-square mile property in the historic Yerington Copper District of Nevada. The drill program is being funded with option payments to SPS by Freeport-McMoRan Nevada LLC ("Freeport Nevada").

Highlights

Hole GHH-001, the sixth and final drill-hole of the current program, is located in Ground Hog Hills about 6,000 feet south of previous SPS holes. It was drilled vertically to a depth of 2,017.5 feet and cased for possible future deepening. Sporadic zones of copper mineralization were intersected which are interpreted as an extension of Bear mineralization to the north.

Table 1. Significant intercepts from Ground Hog Hills drill hole GHH-001*

HOLE GHH-001 From To Interval Interval % ppm ppm ppm feet feet feet meters Cu Mo Au Ag 350.0 380.0 30.0 9.1 0.15 <2 0.007 0.6 536.7 665.3 128.6 39.2 0.21 14 0.016 <0.5 956 1000.7 44.7 13.6 0.11 3 0.017 <0.5 1606.6 1651 44.4 13.5 0.23 48 0.014 <0.5

*Drill intercepts are based on actual core lengths and may not reflect the true width of mineralization.

Note: 1 ppm = 1 gram per tonne

Discussion

Hole GHH-001, located in an area with no historic drilling, was drilled to a depth of 400 feet with an RC rig. Mineralization included ten feet of supergene enriched chalcocite mineralization averaging 0.33% copper beginning at a depth of 230 feet and 30 feet of oxide copper averaging 0.15% copper beginning at 350 feet. Core drilling below 400 feet intersected primary chalcopyrite mineralization, including 128 feet of 0.21% copper and narrow, widely spaced sulfide veins containing elevated to highly anomalous antimony, arsenic, cobalt, zinc, molybdenum, gold, silver and copper averaging greater than one per cent. This mineralization occurs within a propylitically altered cap interpreted to overlie potassically altered copper mineralization at depth.

Story continues

The entire six-hole exploration drilling program, which commenced in August 2015, totaled 20,274.5 feet. The five holes at Bear, including twin hole B-048, totaled 18,257 feet. Results from Hole B-048 supported historic assays from Hole 23B drilled in 1966 by Anaconda. Drilling results from holes B-049 to B-052 were successful in extending the Bear mineralization an additional 2,000 feet north-northeast by 3,000 feet northwest-southeast, with the average mineralized intercept in these four step-out holes averaging approximately 1,000 feet in thickness. The Bear system remains open in three directions. Copper mineralization is overlain by ubiquitous propylitic alteration with moderate to strong phyllic alteration, often laced with tourmaline veining and flooding. Significantly higher grades, if present, will most likely be found where quartz monzonite is cut by quartz monzonite porphyry dikes as occurs at the nearby Yerington mine. (Please see separate drill hole press releases on the Company website for more details).

The Bear porphyry copper deposit currently covers more than two square miles. Work is underway to identify the most prospective areas for additional drilling, both within the area of widely spaced historic drill holes and beyond the limits of known mineralization.

Hole locations are shown on a map available on Quaterra's website at http://quaterra.com/projects/quaterras-yerington-copper-projects/bear-deposit/. A video of the current drill-program at the Bear deposit is available for viewing on the Company website at http://quaterra.com/quaterra-video-2015-bear-drilling/.

For background on the Bear deposit, Quaterra's Yerington project and the option agreement with Freeport Nevada please see the news release dated November 17, 2015, or visit the Company website at www.quaterra.com.

Quality assurance and control

Core samples were either sawed or split by SPS personnel in Yerington, Nevada, and shipped to Bureau Veritas Minerals NA - Inspectorate America Corporation, an ISO certified assaying/geochemistry facility, in Reno, Nevada, for sample preparation. Gold analyses are assayed in Bureau Veritas' lab in Reno using their "FA430" procedure (fire assay with atomic absorption finish) with a 5 ppb Au detection limit. Prepared pulps are shipped to Bureau Veritas' lab in Vancouver, B.C., Canada, for analysis using their "MA 300" procedure for 35 element ICP-ES analysis. Commercially prepared standards and blanks are inserted by SPS at 50-foot intervals to insure precision of results as a quality control measure. SPS has a chain of custody program to ensure sample security during all stages of sample collection, cutting, shipping, and storage.

SPS engaged a reverse circulation (RC) drill rig for a portion of hole GHH-001 located at Ground Hog Hills. RC samples were shipped to the Bureau Veritas Minerals NA facility in Reno, Nevada, for sample preparation and analyses following the same procedure and protocol, including inserted blanks and standards, as that of the core samples described above.

Technical information in this news release has been approved by Thomas Patton, Ph.D., the CEO of the Company, and a Qualified Person as defined in NI 43-101.

About Quaterra Resources Inc.

Quaterra Resources Inc. (TSX VENTURE: QTA) (QTRRF) is a copper exploration and development company with the primary objective to advance its U.S. subsidiary's copper projects in the Yerington District, Nevada.

On behalf of the Board of Directors,

Thomas Patton, Chairman & CEO

Quaterra Resources Inc.

Disclosure note:

Some statements contained in this news release are forward-looking statements under Canadian securities laws and within the meaning of the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements are identified in this news release by words such as "believes", "anticipates", "intends", "has the potential", "expects", and similar language, or convey estimates and statements that describe the Company's future plans, objectives, potential outcomes, expectations, or goals. Since forward-looking statements are based on assumptions and address future events and conditions, by their very nature they involve inherent risks and uncertainties. In particular, forward looking statements in this news release include or assume that the Company will receive all option payments owing, that exploration results on the Bear deposit will define further mineralization, that historic exploration results will be confirmed by new exploration, that further drilling will extend the boundaries of the known high-grade mineralized area, and that drill results from the current drill program point to a large copper system. These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties which may cause results to differ materially from those expressed in the forward-looking statements. A summary of risk factors that apply to the Company's operations are included in our management discussion and analysis filings with securities regulatory authorities, and are publicly available on our website. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date thereof. The Company does not undertake to update any forward-looking statement that may be made from time to time except in accordance with applicable securities laws.

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.
Sumner Redstone, executive chairman of Viacom Inc and CBS Corp, poses for a photo after answering questions at the Milken Institute Global Conference in Beverly Hills, California, U.S. May 2, 2012. REUTERS/Danny Moloshok

By Jessica Toonkel and Liana B. Baker

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Sumner Redstone's National Amusements Inc is consulting investment bankers about strategic options for Viacom Inc's (VIAB.O) Paramount Pictures, including a possible stake sale, sources familiar with the situation said on Friday.

National Amusements, which controls 80 percent of the voting shares of Viacom, is also keen to extract more value from the film studio's real estate holdings in Los Angeles, said the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

It is unclear what other scenarios National Amusements is considering. The fact that it is entertaining options for Paramount is significant because it could mean that a deal for the movie studio could happen even without Viacom Chief Executive Philippe Dauman leading the process.

Redstone has said he is considering removing Dauman and members of the board. Representatives for National Amusement and Viacom declined to comment on Friday.

The sale of an interest in Paramount has been an issue of contention in the battle for control of 93-year-old Redstone's $40 billion media empire, which includes Viacom and CBS Corp (CBS.N).

Redstone said in a statement last month he believes keeping 100 percent of the film unit is in the best interest of Viacom but could be swayed by a plan that convinces him otherwise.

National Amusements said on Monday it "is not opposed to a transaction that would unlock value at Paramount." But it amended Viacom's bylaws to create hurdles for Dauman to sell a stake in the studio unless he obtained the approval of the entire board of the media company.

On Thursday, Dauman told an investor conference that he was pushing ahead with plans to sell a 49 percent stake in Paramount, and he was also looking to unlock the value of the film studio's real estate holdings.

Last month, Redstone removed Dauman and Viacom board member George Abrams from the seven-person trust that will determine the fate of Viacom and CBS after Redstone dies or is incapacitated. Part of the reason that he made the move was over concerns about the Paramount sale, a representative for Redstone has said.

Dauman and Abrams have filed a lawsuit opposing Redstone's removal of them from the trust and the NAI board. A Massachusetts judge is deciding whether to move up that trial from October.

(Reporting by Liana Baker and Jessica Toonkel; Editing by Anna Driver and Tiffany Wu)
donald trump

House Speaker Paul Ryan unveiled the GOP's new national-security agenda this week, and several of its positions directly contradict statements made by the party's presumptive presidential nominee, Donald Trump.

While President Barack Obama seemed to be the chief target of the agenda, House Republicans also seemed to be distancing themselves from some of Trump's controversial national-security pronouncements as well.

A document from the agenda outlined the challenge the GOP believes America is facing:

Our nation's foreign policy is failing at nearly every turn. From refusing to enforce its red line in Syria, to legitimizing Iran's nuclear enrichment program, to its failed reset with Russia, to tolerating a more bellicose North Korean regime, to cavalierly dismissing the threat while the most dangerous terrorist organization in history emerged, the Obama administration has experimented with a new foreign policy concept  leading from behind  that can now be declared an unambiguous failure.

The document then laid out the vision of the Republican Party going forward:

We must do whatever is necessary to protect our homeland from terror, and we must take the fight to the enemy. Instead of making it up along the way, we set out a clear strategy to defeat ISIS. Instead of ignoring our traditional allies, we renew our ties with them, and we do so in a way that serves our mutual interests. Instead of leading from behind, we act as a force for liberty and free enterprise around the world. And instead of fighting with yesterday's tools, we make sure our men and women have what they need to tackle the threats of our time and beyond.

In brief remarks at the Council on Foreign Relations on Thursday, Ryan, who has endorsed Trump for president, warned of what could happen if America did not lead around the world:

Story continues

Do we think our allies have to do more? Of course we do. Absolutely. But they will not do more to defend our shared interests if they think America will leave them in the lurch. America has to set the standard. It has to show the world, by words and by deeds, that diplomacy, trade, and cooperation are in all of our interests.

Some of these themes run contrary to what Trump has proposed  an "America first" strategy that he said would be "the major and overriding theme" of his administration.

Paul Ryan

Here's a breakdown of where Trump's stated policies go against what's outlined in the GOP platform and what the Republican leaders who drafted it have said:

'Refusing to enforce [Obama's] red line in Syria'

Ryan expanded on this in an interview with radio host Hugh Hewitt on Friday: "Syria, the president of the United States drew a red line. The Syrian dictator clearly crossed that red line. The president of the United States therefore did nothing after that. That means our credibility was deeply eroded."

While Ryan and the GOP criticize Obama for having failed to intervene in Syria after evidence emerged of Syrian President Bashar Assad using chemical weapons against civilians, Trump said recently that he wouldn't take military action against the dictator.

"I would have stayed out of Syria and wouldn't have fought so much for Assad, against Assad because I thought that was a whole thing," Trump said last month, noting that the US has "bigger problems than Assad."

'We act as a force for liberty and free enterprise around the world'

Trump has questioned America's military interventions around the globe, decrying "nation building" and insisting that, under his leadership, the country would focus on itself first and foremost.

"We're nation-building," Trump told The Guardian in October. "We can't do it. We have to build our own nation. We're nation-building, trying to tell people who have [had] dictators or worse for centuries how to run their own countries."

The Republican plan does argue, however, that foreign leaders must "assume greater responsibility for tackling conflicts in their own neighborhoods."

'A strong NATO is very much in our national security interests'

Ryan told Hewitt that "a strong NATO is very much in our national security interests" and that our NATO allies "need more of our help and support" rather than less.

And while Trump has said that "America is going to be a reliable friend and ally again," he has also called the NATO alliance "obsolete" and criticized other countries for relying too much on the US for defense.

In April, Trump even went so far as to say that he would be OK with NATO breaking up.

"Either they have to pay up for past deficiencies or they have to get out," he said of countries in the alliance that he's determined aren't paying their fair share for their defense. "And if it breaks up NATO, it breaks up NATO."

The GOP plan doesn't completely break with Trump's views. The plan acknowledged that NATO allies "must increase defense spending or risk letting the alliance fall into disrepair, or worse, irrelevance."

'You can't ban an entire race or religion from coming into the country'

Michael McCaul, the Republican chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, denounced Trump's proposed ban on Muslims entering the country.

"You can't ban an entire race or religion from coming into the country," McCaul said at the Council on Foreign Relations event on Thursday.

He noted that the US needs a "proper vetting system" for people coming into the country, but cautioned that the US has to be "careful in our rhetoric because that can inflame the Muslim community and help [terrorist] recruiting efforts in some respects."

In December, Trump proposed a "total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States." After public outcry, Trump said that the ban was just a "suggestion."

'We cannot allow our alliances in East Asia and the Pacific to atrophy'

The policy paper on the GOP's new national-security agenda noted that US allies in Asia "are desperate for a greater American role."

The paper stated:

Our top priority must be to counter the threat of a nuclear North Korea. And we must respond strategically to expansionist China's rise, including checking its territorial ambitions. ... We cannot allow our alliances in East Asia and the Pacific to atrophy and must shore up our defense arrangements to deter China from tilting the global balance of power toward autocracy.

Trump, on the other hand, has proposed allowing Japan and South Korea to obtain nuclear weapons to counter regional threats. The US would in turn ease its defense commitments to those countries.

"Would I rather have North Korea have [nuclear weapons] with Japan sitting there having them also?" Trump told The New York Times in March. "You may very well be better off if that's the case. In other words, where Japan is defending itself against North Korea, which is a real problem. You very well may have a better case right there."

nato training

There are some areas in which the GOP platform jibes with Trump's views. The agenda noted that the US "should accelerate the deployment of fencing, technology, air assets, and personnel at the border" to curtail illegal immigration. It also notes the importance of caring for veterans, a cause that Trump often trumpets.

And in any case, it's unlikely that any of the GOP positions will catch Trump off-guard.

Devin Nunes, the Republican chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, told Bloomberg that Trump was aware of the policy paper ahead of time.

"I know this has been vetted with his people," Nunes told Bloomberg, adding that staffers had been meeting with Trump campaign aides through the drafting of the agenda "so there are no surprises" upon its release.

NOW WATCH: MICHAEL MOORE: 'I think theres an excellent chance' Trump will be president





More From Business Insider


MOSCOW (Reuters) - The Russian air force grounded its entire fleet of Sukhoi-27 fighter jets on Thursday after a fatal crash near Moscow which aviation sources told Russian agencies looked like the result of some kind of technical failure.

Viktor Bondarev, the head of the air force, ordered the country's fleet of the twin-engined fighter jet grounded until the reasons for the crash had been determined, Russian agencies reported.

Russia is believed to have over 300 of the fighter jets in service. The United States complained in April that one of them had made aggressive maneuvers near a U.S. reconnaissance plane over the Baltic Sea, a charge Russia rejected.

Thursday's crash occurred just outside Moscow and involved an SU-27 that was part of the country's famous aerobatic demonstration team, the 'Russian Knights,' who have overflown annual Red Square military parades in the past.

The Russian Defence Ministry was quoted as saying that the pilot of the downed plane, who was killed, did not have time to eject because he had used his last seconds to steer the aircraft away from a populated area.

The plane was returning to its base at the time and was not carrying weapons or ammunition, the ministry was cited as saying. A Defence Ministry commission is reported to be working at the crash site to try to determine what happened.

(Reporting by Andrew Osborn and Alexander Winning; Editing by Dmitry Solovyov)
Samsung Gregory Lee

Mobile-phone companies are working on their next generation of wireless networks, known as 5G, which promise to be blindingly fast.

Early tests of 5G networks have hit 10 Gbps speeds. In comparison, the average speed of today's fastest mobile network is 12.3 Mbps, so as much 100 times faster.

At the Rutberg Future: Mobile 2016 conference in Half Moon Bay, California, Gregory Lee, president and CEO of Samsung North America, described how amazing it will be when 5G gets here.

He said that the network will be so fast that it will allow you to do things like:

Download a movie in three seconds

Have every device in your home connected, including things like your fridge and other appliances

Allow doctors to guide each other through a remote-surgery procedure

Let a jazz band play together remotely, creating real music in real time

Lee says that 5G should work with most existing tech, including 3G, 4G, and Wi-Fi, so you won't need to upgrade every device in your house. But, he warns, you'll certainly need to buy a new phone.

Correction: This story originally reported that 5G would be up to 10 times faster. It will be up to 100 times faster. We apologize for the error.

NOW WATCH: Why I wont trade in my iPhone for a Samsung Galaxy S7





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Chris Cillizza

Chris Cillizza is the managing editor of PostPolitics and he writes "The Fix," a politics blog for The Washington Post. He also covers the White House for the newspaper and website. Chris has appeared as a guest on NBC, CBS, ABC, MSNBC, Fox News Channel and CNN to talk politics. He lives in Virginia with his wife and sons.
OSHA Penalizes Company for Firing Driver Who Refused to Violate Safety Regulations

NFI Interactive Logistics has been ordered to reinstate the employee and pay a total of $276,000, DOL announced.

OSHA announced it has ordered NFI Interactive Logistics Inc. to reinstate a driver and pay him $276,000 in back wages, compensatory, and punitive damages after the company fired him in violation of the anti-retaliation provisions of the Surface Transportation Assistance Act. The agency said NFI assigned the driver to deliver a truckload of bottled water in August 2015 from Northborough, Mass., to Jersey City, N.J., while a severe thunderstorm occurred, causing flooded roads, heavy traffic, and motor vehicle accidents. Believing the delivery would cause him to violate federal hours of service rules, the driver instead delivered the load to a closer customer facility in Kearny, N.J., to which NFI objected.

The Cherry Hill, N.J.-based company fired him the next day for insubordination, causing the driver to file a whistleblower complaint.

"This driver found a way to do his job and ensure motor carrier safety. Rather than receiving credit for doing the right thing, he received a pink slip," said Kim Stille, OSHA's New England regional administrator. "The law is clear: Drivers have the right to raise legitimate safety concerns to their employer  including refusing to violate safety regulations  without fear of termination or other retaliation. NFI must reverse its actions and compensate this driver for the financial and other losses he has suffered as a result of his illegal termination."

Both the driver and the company have the right to appeal OSHA's decision to DOL's Office of Administrative Law Judges.
News

Azure Active Directory Enterprise State Roaming for Windows 10 Released

Microsoft commercially released its Azure Active Directory Enterprise State Roaming service for Windows 10 clients this week.

A public preview of the Azure AD Enterprise State Roaming service was released back in February, but it's now reached "general availability" status, Microsoft announced. That milestone signifies that the service is deemed ready for use in production environments by the company.

This service can be used to ensure that settings for so-called "modern applications" stay consistent across devices running Windows 10. IT pros can choose which settings will roam, such as settings for browsers (Internet Explorer and Microsoft Edge), passwords, desktop themes and language preferences, among others. Microsoft's "Settings and data roaming FAQ" document lists the options.

The new roaming service supports bring-your-own-device kinds of scenarios. For dual-purpose devices used for both work and play, the Enterprise State Roaming service is designed to separate consumer application settings data from that data used for business applications. Microsoft's datacenters store the settings data, but encryption is enforced both in transit and at rest for security purposes, Microsoft claims. The encryption happens via the Azure Rights Management Service.

The Fine Print

IT pros should check the fine print on Enterprise State Roaming, which can be found, in part, in the "Settings and data roaming FAQ" document. For instance, Microsoft explains that "roaming only works for Universal Windows apps." If an organization wants to roam the settings of classic Win32 apps, then Microsoft suggests using its User Experience Virtualization (UE-V) solution. UE-V is part of the Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack suite of tools, an added-cost option for organizations opting for Software Assurance coverage. Alternatively, the code of Win32 desktop apps can be converted and made more Universal Windows Platform friendly using Microsoft's "Desktop Bridge" converter.

For organizations wanting to store their sync settings data on premises, and not in Microsoft's datacenters, Microsoft recommends using its UE-V solution. However, it's possible to mix UE-V use with Enterprise State Roaming for Windows 10.

Microsoft's FAQ explained that Enterprise State Roaming for Windows 10 differs from the settings synchronization scheme that is used with Windows 8 and Windows 8.1 clients, which relies on Microsoft accounts. Enterprise State Roaming for Windows 10 instead uses a primary (Azure AD) and secondary (Microsoft account or social media account) approach to segregate business and consumer settings storage. However, the Windows 10 sync process is only associated with the primary account.

"In Windows 10, only the primary account for the device can be used for settings sync (see How do I upgrade from Microsoft account settings sync in Windows 8 to Azure AD settings sync in Windows 10?)," the FAQ explained.

An application gets tagged for the primary account or secondary account. This tagging happens during the app "sideloading" process. Sideloading is way of getting applications into either the Windows Store or a portal page for mobile device access.

Known Issues

The FAQ document listed a few "known issues" with Enterprise State Roaming for Windows 10. For instance, older Internet Explorer browsers may not sync their browser "favorites" lists. The May Windows 10 Cumulative Update can address this issue. Multifactor authentication could cause synchronization to fail. Logins using smart cards will cause synchronization to fail.

Enterprise State Roaming for Windows 10 is not exactly available worldwide right now. At press time, just some Azure datacenters in the United States, Europe and Southeast Asia were shown has having the service. Availability is shown on Microsoft's Azure regions list. Microsoft sells the Enterprise State Roaming service as part of an Azure Active Directory Premium subscription.

In other Azure AD news, Microsoft announced this week that analyst and consulting firm Gartner Inc. has bestowed its Magic Quadrant "leader" designation on Microsoft's cloud-based identity and access management solutions.
Air New Zealand said Friday it will sell the bulk of its stake in Virgin Australia to Nanshan Group, making the Shandong-based conglomerate the airline's second Chinese investor in as many weeks. Nanshan will pay Aus0.33 cents a share for a 19.98 percent stake in Virgin Australia, valuing it at about Aus$230 million (US$170 million), Air NZ said. "The sale will allow Air New Zealand to focus on its own growth opportunities, while still continuing its long-standing alliance with Virgin Australia on the trans-Tasman network," chairman Tony Carter said. The Kiwi flag carrier was Virgin Australia's largest shareholder, with a 25.89 percent stake built up as the airlines forged an alliance against rival Qantas. Carter said the deal needed approval from Chinese regulators, adding that Air NZ was considering its options regarding the rest of its Virgin Australia shares. The move comes after Chinese aviation and tourism giant HNA bought a 13 percent stake in Virgin Australia on May 31. At the time, Virgin said the tie-up would boost its access to the "rapidly growing Chinese travel market" and it would consider introducing direct flights between Australia and China. Nanshan owns Qingdao Airlines, while HNA is parent of Hainan Airlines and last month took a stake in Portuguese national carrier TAP. Virgin, Australia's second-largest airline, said in a statement that it expected Nanshan to seek a seat on its board. "We look forward to meeting with Nanshan Group over the coming weeks to discuss the proposed acquisition," it said. Air New Zealand shares rose 3.23 percent to NZ$2.24 in Wellington on the announcement. Other major shareholders in Virgin Australia include Etihad Airways, Singapore Airlines and Virgin Group.
There are currently as many UK skateboard brands as there have ever been, with a new company seemingly rising from nowhere at least once a month. Whether there are too many for the market to bear, or whether it is heartening to see smaller dudes hooked up and more isolated scenes have a light shone on them, is not a matter for this article, but it is certainly an interesting time to be involved in UK skateboarding.

Amidst this current era of seemingly endless choice when it comes to what wood rests under our feet, it is worth looking back to some of the board companies who have shaped our scene, hooked up the guys who deserved it, and generally smashed it over the years, before unfortunately sinking into the ruthless marketplace sea.

From Benjy Boards to Blueprint, Reaction to Superdead, heres part one of The Departed  UK board brands of yesteryear. And, for those whove noticed some glaring omissions already, expect these to be addressed in part two coming very soon!

The Harmony

To start off with heres much missed UK brand The Harmony, who sprung from the depths of Essex in 2004 and lasted for ten years with a solid team and killer video output until eventually going under in 2014. While you can peruse their entire filmography in our ode to the brand, heres a taster in the form of Jak Pietrygas section from their incredible 2009 promo The Rivers Edge.

Jak Pietryga  River's Edge from The Harmony Skateboards on Vimeo.
Lovenskate recently teamed up with Carhartt WIP to head out to India; travelling from Bangalore to Kovolam to drink tea, make tea, get rad, pour crete, skitch and generally spread the stoke whilst skating everything in their path! Check the edit courtesy of Free Skate Mag (who have the article in their latest issue) and keep an eye out for more from Lovenskate soon

Step right up and enjoy High Rollers Skateshop's combined edit of footage from both the Troll Bowl 2016 and their Go Skateboarding Day event.

Sidewalk Redux 1 dropped in May 2016. Accompanying the 180-page book was a DVD. This is the second installment of the footage contained therein, uploaded...

Jordan Thackeray is welcomed to Lovenskate via a two session edit of casual, floppy armed destruction at Victoria Park and Harrow.

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Our weekly Rugged Raw 2 drop continues with this four-parts-in-one beast  Bells section followed by Rugged Raw mastermind Jake Martinelli, a heavy montage featuring Guy Jones, Kyron Davis, Ben Rowles, Jasper Pegg, Charlie Munro, Harley Miller, Mikey Patrick and more, before Dave Vise closes this weeks proceedings with an all out street assault. Get the teas on, check out parts one and two if you havent already, and keep an eye for more dropping next Friday.

Word to Jakes powerful/schizophrenic music choices as well, going from Bone Thugz N Harmony to Vanessa Carlton via Biggie is a bold move!
The Vans Pro Skate Park Series Brazil qualifier will be held at the new Pista da Costeira de Pirajubae skatepark this coming Saturday. The park looks gnarly and, if you watched the Melbourne Qualifiers, youll be ready for some next level gnarliness to occur. The live stream will take place over on the Vans Park Series website midday Brazil time tomorrow, which is 4pm UK time, so click the text or the image to witness the madness unfold! Oh, its Pedros local too

If you need more reason to watch, check out a gallery from the practice sessions on Wednesday with Pedro Barros, Chris Russell, Josh Borden, Corey Juneau and more.
Less than a week after Amazon cracked down on fake reviews by filing a lawsuit, the sale of fake reviews at Fiverr.com still seems to be occurring. And people still appear to be buying the services. But the lawsuit has started to put a dent in the fake review activity.

Amazon sued 1,114 reviewers in Washington state court on October 16, 2015.

Before filing the lawsuit, Amazon conducted an undercover sting operation by purchasing reviews for products and communicating directly with some of the defendants, the complaint states. The reviewers who were sued are ones that Amazon claims sold fake reviews for as little as $5.00 each on the services marketplace site called Fiverr (so named because every service is $5.00).

Review Services Thrive on Fiverr

Each of the reviewers who was sued was named by their Fiverr handle in Exhibit A attached to the lawsuit (embedded below).

The lawsuit is not against the Fiverr site itself. No wrongdoing has been claimed against Fiverr.com. The lawsuit is against the named sellers of fake reviews.

While Fiverr has its share of spammy services such as fake reviews, the site also has millions of sellers of legitimate services. For instance, many freelancers who are new will start at Fiverr. They sell services at low rates until they build up a portfolio. For them, Fiverr is a marketing platform and a place to find customers in the vast ocean of the Web.

Fiverr is also a great place if you need a very small service for your business, such as a single image edited. It would be impossible to hire a traditional design agency to edit just one image for $5.00.

Fiverr uses a system of badges, reviews and reputation points to rate sellers. The system is designed to use community reputation to help buyers choose reputable sellers.

Still, for the most part, Fiverr is an example of the free market in action. It is possible for almost anyone to set up a seller account on Fiverr.

That means theres no barrier to entry for sellers to sell spammy services  other than buyers good sense.

This is the second Amazon fake reviews lawsuit. Back in April 2015, the eCommerce giant filed suit against independent websites and businesses selling fake reviews for the Amazon site. Those websites have since been shut down.

Fake Activity Slowing Down

When our editorial team visited Fiverr.com earlier this week, we found an entire category dedicated to review services. It had over 4,000 gigs or service offerings around providing reviews.

We spot checked the list of the sellers named in the lawsuit. The profile pages for all two dozen we spot-checked are no longer active. (See image above.)

Yet there are many reviewers still openly advertising that they will post positive Amazon reviews for $5.00. One brazenly uses a photo of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos to advertise his fake reviews service.

Some sellers offer to post negative reviews, as the profile image below shows. Negative reviews are used to sabotage ones competition by making their product look bad.

Both positive and negative paid reviews are against Amazons review guidelines. Amazons prohibitions are broad enough that any kind of review in exchange for compensation (other than a free copy of the product) is in violation  even if the review is an honest opinion.

One thing we noticed as the week progressed is that fewer fake review services showed up prominently in Fiverr searches. Whether that lesser visibility is due to sellers hearing about the lawsuit and deciding to voluntarily keep a low profile, or some other reason, is not clear.

Of course, not all sellers on Fiverr offer reviews that are blatantly fake. Some sellers go to great pains to describe that they will not guarantee a positive review. Rather, they offer only to give their honest opinions.

However, there still seem to be plenty of others willing to sell their souls for $5.00.

Risky for Buyers of Amazon Fake Reviews, Too

Its not just sellers who should be running scared. Buyers of fake reviews such as authors and product sellers run risks, too.

At the very least, fake reviews get removed. Your money is wasted. Amazons algorithms are sophisticated enough to track patterns of activity. Once a fake reviewer is outed, its easy to trace other paid reviews and delete them.

The consequences could be even greater than a removed review and waste of time and money. More serious consequences could come from the U.S. Federal Trade Commission pursuing the parties for deceptive trade practices.

For an author caught buying reviews, it also can lead to a public relations nightmare. Author Anne R. Allen advised other authors strongly against buying fake reviews earlier this year on her blog, warning,  you could get in big trouble. Soon.

If you think you will never get caught, think again.

Amazon plans to use the lawsuit to ferret out the identities of the buyers of Amazon fake reviews. The Amazon lawsuit demands that the Fiverr reviewers provide information sufficient to identify each Amazon review created in exchange for payment, and the accounts and persons who paid for such reviews.

Who knows what Amazon will do once it gets that information?
Iceland, the high street frozen food retailer, has reported a freeze in annual profits but an easing in its sales decline as it battles for business in the supermarket price war.

The chain, which has over 860 stores in the UK and a small overseas operation, said like for like sales fell by 2.7% in the year to 26 March compared to a decrease of 4.4% in the previous 12 months.

Total (LSE: 524773.L - news) sales fell slightly to 2.65bn while profits, excluding exceptional items, were also largely static at 150.5m.

Iceland said: "The UK food retail market remained exceptionally challenging throughout the year, due to the combination of intense competition, food price deflation and changing consumer shopping patterns".

:: The Supermarket Price War

It (Other OTC: ITGL - news) added: "Iceland has been affected by the decline in high street footfall and a reduction in smaller basket sales because of the wide range of alternative outlets now offering everyday top-up shopping lines at deeply discounted prices".

The chain said it remained focused on "highly competitive pricing".

Iceland, which also owns The Food Warehouse superstore business, has been spending to improve the quality of its products and advertising.

Its investment spending more than doubled in the last financial year to 63.5m reflecting costs of new sales software and store improvements, including the roll out of LED lighting across its network.

Iceland marked growth in its fresh food business and own healthy eating range but said it would limit future UK Iceland store openings only to areas offering "exceptionally strong" trading locations but continue to grow its Food Warehouse operation.

Chief executive Malcolm Walker, who led a management buyout in 2014 of the chain he founded, said: "We have achieved good progress with a range of strategic initiatives designed to differentiate our business, and stabilise our financial performance, in what remains an extremely challenging UK market place.

Story continues

"Our Power of Frozen marketing campaign is successfully re-emphasising our long-established credentials as the UKs leading frozen food specialist.

"It is also helping to improve public perceptions of frozen food by underlining the real advantages only it can offer to consumers in quality, authenticity, freshness, choice, convenience and waste reduction as well as in providing consistently good value".

Duygu Hardman, analyst at Verdict Retail, said Iceland's figures were "underwhelming".

But she added: "Its goal to open 25 new Food Warehouse stores in 2016, continued investment in new product lines alongside store refurbishments, and recent trial of lowering the minimum purchase for free delivery (from goods bought in-store) from 25 to 20, are all positive steps towards attracting new customers.

"However, Iceland must be careful to not alienate its core shopper base through ensuring improvements to its proposition will not come at the expense of value".
WASHINGTON, DC--(Marketwired - June 09, 2016) - In 2007, The Leapfrog Group, a Washington, D.C.-based organization representing consumers, employers and other purchasers in efforts to improve health care safety and quality, began asking hospitals about their process for handling Never Events -- or incidents such as objects left inside patients after surgery, deaths from medication errors, deaths or serious injuries from falls, and surgeries performed on the wrong parts of patients' bodies. According to a new report released today by Leapfrog and analyzed by Castlight Health, one in five hospitals still fail to adopt a Never Events policy and otherwise do not meet Leapfrog's standard for Never Events Management.

"Never Events are egregious and they truly should never happen, but at the very least if they do happen, we expect hospitals to take the most humane and ethical approach," said Leah Binder, president and CEO of Leapfrog. "Unfortunately, many hospitals still won't commit to doing the right thing, including apologizing to the patient or family and not charging for the event. We should see 100% of hospitals with the Leapfrog policy."

She added that the most worrisome hospitals are those that decline to respond to the question about whether they have a policy.

Additional key findings include:

Adoption of Never Events policies varies by state: The percentage of hospitals meeting Leapfrog's standard was highest in Washington, Maine and Massachusetts, where 100% of hospitals reporting in those states met the standard. Alternatively, in Arizona, only 10% of hospitals met the standard.

Implementation of Never Events policies has plateaued: In the years following the addition of Never Events Management to the Leapfrog Hospital Survey, there was a surge of hospitals meeting the standard. In 2007, only 53% of hospitals met the standard, and by 2012 that rate increased to 79%. Since then, progress has stalled around 80%.

More transparency and quality improvement are needed: Wrong-site surgery occurs in an estimated 1 out of 100,000 procedures, and doctors or staff leave a foreign object inside a patient in an estimated 1 out of 10,000 procedures. While the probability appears low, those affected by Never Events risk "serious injury or death," as stated by the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services.

Story continues

"How a hospital responds to a Never Event is a critical aspect of patient safety, and hospitals are accountable for the care patients receive during their stay," said Kristin Torres Mowat, senior vice president of plan development and data operations at Castlight Health. "Castlight's work with The Leapfrog Group helps empower patients with the information needed to make the right choices for their health. A hospital's clinical quality and safety are critical to enable well-informed decision making and can ultimately lead to improved outcomes for patients."

Today's report is the fourth in a series of five that examines key quality and safety measures at hospitals nationwide. The series draws on data from the 2015 Leapfrog Hospital Survey of 1,750 U.S. hospitals, representing 60% of the inpatient beds nationwide, with analysis provided by Castlight Health. Previous and future publications in the series can be found at http://www.leapfroggroup.org/HospitalSurveyReport.

About The Leapfrog Group

Founded in 2000 by large employers and other purchasers, The Leapfrog Group is a national nonprofit organization driving a movement for giant leaps forward in the quality and safety of American health care. The flagship Leapfrog Hospital Survey collects and transparently reports hospital performance, empowering purchasers to find the highest-value care and giving consumers the lifesaving information they need to make informed decisions. Hospital Safety Score, Leapfrog's other main initiative, assigns letter grades to hospitals based on their record of patient safety, helping consumers protect themselves and their families from errors, injuries, accidents, and infections.

About Castlight Health

Our mission is to empower people to make the best choices for their health and to help companies make the most of their health benefits. We offer a health benefits platform that engages employees to make better healthcare decisions and guide them to the right program, care, and provider. The platform also enables benefit leaders to communicate and measure their programs while driving employee engagement with targeted, relevant communications. Castlight has partnered with enterprise customers, spanning millions of lives, to improve healthcare outcomes, lower costs, and increase benefits satisfaction.

For more information visit www.castlighthealth.com. Follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn and Like us on Facebook.

Image Available: http://www.marketwire.com/library/MwGo/2016/6/8/11G102056/Images/mw1akp0ojbj1l5j130sd1l1td7bfbd-150989afce08a55a9b9c54b254aeb6b2.jpg


One of the biggest Wall Street donors to the campaign to keep the UK in the European Union has warned staff that Brexit would mean "rebalancing" its operations away from Britain.

Sky News has obtained a memo to Citi's 9000 UK-based staff from James Bardrick, the bank's chief country officer for the UK, which refers to an ongoing review of its "organisational footprint and where we book business".

Mr Bardrick told Citi's workforce, many of whom are based at its headquarters in London's Canary Wharf, that its contingency planning had led it to conclude that a vote to leave the EU "is likely to have implications for our UK operations".

"To continue to serve our clients and maintain efficient access to those markets currently enabled through the EU passporting regime, we would likely need to rebalance our operations across the EU," he told staff.

Mr Bardrick did not outline the number of jobs which could move from the UK, but his warning will nonetheless be interpreted as another important intervention from a corporate boss.

Citi donated 250,000 to Britain Stronger in Europe, making it a major financial contributor alongside Goldman Sachs (NYSE: GS-PB - news) , JP Morgan and Morgan Stanley (Xetra: 885836 - news) .

Last week, Jamie Dimon, JP Morgan's chairman and chief executive, said that as many as 4000 of its UK-based staff could see their jobs disappear in the event of Brexit.

In his memo, Mr Bardrick wrote that Citi was "drawn to the UK as its regional headquarters and operating hub for two principal and interrelated reasons: the UK's position as a successful and powerful global financial centre; [and] the UKs valuable access to the EUs single market as a member state".

"We believe the UK's position as a global leader in many areas of financial services is in no small part aided by efficient and effective access to the EUs single market, the largest single market in the world, with 500 million citizens as potential customers and employees," he said.

Story continues

The intervention will be welcomed by the Remain campaign and is likely to draw renewed criticism from Vote Leave.

"We believe access to the single market leads many other international companies, including many of Citis major clients, to invest in the UK and base their regional or global headquarters here," Mr Bardrick wrote.

The bank employs more than 9,000 people in the UK, with roughly 13,000 more in the whole of the EU.

Citi declined to comment further on the content of the memo.
By Zimasa Mpemnyama PRETORIA (Reuters) - South Africa's President Jacob Zuma and state prosecutors on Friday sought the right to appeal against a High Court ruling to review a decision to drop 783 corruption charges against the head of state. The National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) set aside the charges against Zuma in April 2009, allowing him to run for president the same month. But the High Court last April ordered a review of that decision, terming it "irrational", a ruling that opened the possibility of the charges being reinstated. The case has re-emerged before local government elections set for August where the ruling African National Congress (ANC) faces a challenge from opposition parties that have used Zuma's perceived failures and scandals in their campaigns. The state is appealing the ruling on the grounds that the law gives prosecutors the discretion to decide when to lay charges and that the order for a review could dilute the NPA's powers. "The court went too far in saying that Mr. Zuma should face the charges in the indictment," NPA lawyer Hilton Epstein told the court on Friday. But David Borgstrom, a lawyer for the opposition Democratic Alliance which initiated the original court application, said the judgment for a review should stand. High court judge Aubrey Ledwaba said he would rule on the matter at a later date. The NPA's decision in 2009 was based on phone intercepts presented by Zuma's legal team that suggested the timing of the charges may have been part of a political plot against him. Zuma's office said the High Court had made a mistake in ruling that the public prosecutor was not entitled to terminate a prosecution on the basis of misconduct and abuse of the process. Should the appeal fail and the charges be reinstated, it would be another political setback for Zuma after the Constitutional Court said in March he had erred by ignoring an order to pay back some of the 240 million rand ($16 million) in state money spent on upgrading his private home. The hundreds of corruption charges relate to a major government arms deal arranged in the late 1990s. DA leader Mmusi Maimane said on Friday any further delays in bringing back the charges were a waste of taxpayers' money. "I think it's an abuse of the system. It has taken us seven years to get here. It's time Jacob Zuma has his day in court," Maimane told journalists after Friday's hearing. (Additional reporting by Pete Vernon; Writing by Ed Stoddard; Editing by Stella Mapenzauswa and Robin Pomeroy)
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.
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.
YEREVAN, JUNE 9, ARMENPRESS. The high-level meeting on ending AIDS/HIV took place in UNs General Assembly in New York.

Armed Muradyan, Healthcare Minister of Armenia was taking part in the meeting.

Different high-level officials from around the world participated in the session, including UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.

We have made enormous progress. Since 2000 the global total of people receiving antiretroviral treatment doubled every three to four years, thanks to cheaper drugs, increased competition and new funding. Today, more than 17 billion people are being treated, saving millions of lives and billions of dollars, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said.

Furthermore, the world has achieved Millennium Development Goal (MDG) 6  which included halting and reversing the AIDS epidemic  and new HIV infections have declined by 35 per cent since 2000, the UN chief said.

Noting that he was particularly happy that new HIV infections among children were down by 56 per cent in the past 15 years, the Secretary-General said that four countries had eliminated them completely: Armenia, Belarus, Cuba and Thailand.

None of this could have happened without the leadership of people living with HIV, and civil society partners on the ground around the world. They believed that more equitable treatment and access was possible, and they made sure that we responded, Mr. Ban said.

They broke the silence and shone a light on discrimination, intolerance and stigma. They brought their passion to their fight, and that passion will make the end of AIDS a reality, he added.

Armenian Healthcare Minister Armen Muradyan delivered a speech at the high-level meeting and noted the obligations which Armenia has undertaken, have fundamentally changed the conceptual approached of countering AIDS/HIV.

UN Member States adopted a new political declaration that includes a set of time-bound targets to fast-track the pace of progress towards combating the worldwide scourge of HIV and AIDS over the next five years and end the epidemic as a public health threat by 2030.
YEREVAN, JUNE 10, ARMENPRESS. Head of the Armenian National Congress faction Levon Zurabyan says the ANC carries out serious consultations with authorities, other political factions, civil society representatives over the issue of forming consensus on the Electoral Code.

We are carrying out consultations with numerous foreign representatives. We work with the European Union, the US Ambassador to Armenia, we have also discussed the issue with the representatives of Russia, Britain, Switzerland, Japan, France, Armenpress reports, he said during the briefing.

He said a serious process is underway, serious consultations are being held and expressed hope these consultations will enable to reach a significant result over the Electoral Code.

To the question why only the ANC speaks about this issue, he stated: I dont know, perhaps, we are actively engaged in this issue. We are initiators, we are active and consistent with this issue, I dont have other explanation.
YEREVAN, JUNE 10, ARMENPRESS. In a triumphant win for the thousands of Yazidi women who have been enslaved by the Islamic State, Amal Clooney has confirmed that she will represent victims of the Yazidi genocide, including ISIS survivor and Nobel Peace Prize nominee Nadia Murad, Armenpress reports, citing New York Times.

The European Parliament, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, the U.S. government and the U.K. House of Commons have all recognized that there is a genocide being perpetrated by IS against the Yazidis in Iraq, Clooney said in a statement to Women in the World. How can it be that the most serious crimes known to humanity are being carried out before our eyes but are not being prosecuted by the International Criminal Court in The Hague?

Clooney, a barrister at Doughty Street Chambers specializing in international law and human rights law, will act as their counsel to achieve accountability for the genocide, sexual enslavement and trafficking of Yazidi girls and women by the Islamic State in Iraq. They plan to seek an International Criminal Court investigation and prosecution of the crimes committed against Nadia Murad and the Yazidi community.

Women in the World recently interviewed 23-year-old activist Nadia Murad, who was one of the thousands of Yazidi women abducted by ISIS. Murad was enslaved and raped by more than 12 ISIS fighters over a period of three months. Since her escape, Murad has been a courageous voice for women who have been impacted by ISISs control, and she has been a tireless crusader to end the ongoing genocide.

Recently, ISIS reportedly burned 19 Yazidi women to death for refusing to have sex with fighters. Murad told Women in the World that she was devastated by the alleged event, but she was not surprised. These tyrants have shown us nothing but horror, Murad said. The fate of most of 3,500 Yazidi women and girls who remain in captivity is known and probably most will face a similar fate if the world does not act now. This is why I ask the world to act and act fast. The longer IS stays in power, the deeper our wound becomes.

After months of traveling around the globe and imploring political leaders to help her cause, Murad told Women in the World that Clooney has given her confidence. Amal and George received me at their home and opened for me their hearts, said Murad. They listened passionately to my story, and Amal gifted me by representing my case. Amal gave me renewed hope by being my voice. Murad also called Clooney an incredible, passionate woman, who embraced her story and her pain. She did not talk to me as a well-known world figure that people would love to take a photo with, she talked to me as a sister and guardian. She has immense power that made me proud of being a woman.

Murad views Clooney as a formidable legal force. It is important to establish justice, and Amal being a life-long defender of justice, it was a natural bond between her and I to be established. We are both defenders of justice, and peace seekers through justice, Murad said. The final goal for us all is accountability to perpetrators of genocide, and justice for victims like myself.

Clooney also represents Yazda, a non-profit organization that has been helping the Yazidi community since the genocide began during ISISs attacks in August of 2014. The raids led to the deaths of an estimated 5,000 civilians, the enslavement of more than 2,000 women and girls, and the displacement of 400,000 people from the Yazidi homelands in Sinjar, the Ninevah plain, and Syria.

We know that thousands of Yazidi civilians have been killed and that thousands of Yazidi women have been enslaved by a terrorist organization, IS, that has publicly proclaimed its genocidal intent, Clooney said. We know that systematic rapes have taken place, and that they are still taking place. And yet no one is being held to account. It is time that we see IS commanders in the dock in The Hague, and I am honored to have been asked to represent Nadia and the Yazidi community in their quest for legal accountability.

Daesh took my family, my future, my life. But what I have in my heart, and what Ive always had, is justice, Murad told Women in the World in an interview earlier this year. All of the women and girls who are in their hands have justice on their side.

And now, they have one of the worlds most powerful lawyers on their side, too.
Billionaire investor Carl Icahn said Thursday there's nothing Donald Trump has said in recent weeks, including controversial remarks about a Mexican-American judge, that has swayed his opinion on presumptive GOP presidential nominee.



"I don't think anybody who supports Donald is happy with that [judge comment]," Icahn told CNBC's " Squawk Box ," though he added that he still likes Trump.

Last week, Trump said U.S. District Court Judge Gonzalo Curiel's opinion in a case against Trump University was being influenced by the judge's heritage because of the candidate's campaign rhetoric about Mexicans and illegal immigration.



On Tuesday, House Speaker Paul Ryan denounced Trump's statements as "textbook" racism, though the Wisconsin Republican and 2012 GOP vice presidential candidate said he still supports Trump for president.



Bowing to GOP pressure, Trump said later Tuesday he would no longer talk about Curiel, but stopped short of an apology.

In a statement, Trump wrote: "I do not feel that one's heritage makes them incapable of being impartial, but, based on the rulings that I have received in the Trump University civil case, I feel justified in questioning whether I am receiving a fair trial."

It's "ridiculous" to call Trump a racist, Icahn told CNBC on Thursday. "You need somebody like Donald in Washington very badly," said the chairman of Icahn Enterprises (IEP).

Icahn called Trump a "consensus builder," saying he believes the real estate mogul has a better chance to fix the nation's problems than presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton . "I don't think there's any comparison," he said.

This week, billionaire Republican Ken Langone blasted Trump for the judge comments. While condemning Trump's remarks as "disgraceful," the Home Depot (HD) co-founder said he'd still support his fellow businessman over Clinton.









More From CNBC


Tom Perkins

Tom Perkins, the founding partner of legendary venture-capital firm Kleiner Perkins, Caufield & Byers, has died at 84, Recode and The New York Times reported.

Perkins died on Tuesday night after a prolonged illness, according to the reports.

Often called the "Father of Silicon Valley," Perkins cofounded the VC firm in 1972 and made big bets on companies like biotech pioneer Genentech.

He's also known for stirring up controversy. He severed ties with the firm in 2014 after he wrote an opinion piece in The Wall Street Journal that compared the war on the 1% to the persecution of Jews in Nazi Germany, warning of a coming "progressive Kristallnacht."

Perkins got an engineering degree from MIT and an MBA from Harvard Business School in the 1950s. In 1963, he was recruited by Dave Packard and Bill Hewlett to lead HP's first R&D facility.

While at HP, he started his own laser company called University Laboratories (UL) and guided that through a merger with Spectra-Physics. He then served on the board at Spectra-Physics, which became a leading laser company. This gave him the cash to start his own venture-capital firm with partner Eugene Kleiner: Kleiner Perkins.

Perkins and Kleiner helped invent today's tech-VC model by taking an active role in the companies they managed rather than being silent investors.

Perkins later returned to HP and served on the board twice. In 2005, he played a controversial role in the firing of HP CEO and chair Carly Fiorina. He was also embroiled in a battle with Pattie Dunn, the then chairwoman of the board, before resigning in a "cold fury" in May 2006.

Outside of his interests in tech, Perkins was known for leading a lavish lifestyle. In 1996, Perkins was convicted by a French court of involuntary manslaughter after killing a man in a boating accident. His sailing drew headlines again after Perkins created the Maltese Falcon, a $130 million super yacht. He sold the boat in 2009.

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In a statement given to Recode by KPCB's cofounders, Frank Caufield and Brook Byers lauded Perkins' legacy on the venture-capital industry:

As a co-founder of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Tom was a pioneer in the venture capital industry. He defined what we know of today as entrepreneurial venture capital by going beyond just funding to helping entrepreneurs realize their visions with operating expertise. He was there at the start of the biotech industry and the computer revolution. Tom was our partner and friend, and we will miss him.

NOW WATCH: Venture Capital Legend Reveals How To Spot The Next Tech Superstar





More From Business Insider


Published On Jun 10, 2016 12:51 PM By Tushar

Vehicle safety is no joking matter, but it can be a little confusing at times. Abbreviations like ABS, EBD and BA are thrown into brochures and news reports, but while having them is always a good thing, you may be unsure as to what they mean and how they work.

So heres a list of 8 common safety technologies used in cars, along with quick and easy to understand explanations on how they work:

ABS / Anti-Lock Braking System

As the name suggests, ABS prevents the wheels from locking up when you hit the brakes hard and is especially useful when the roads are wet. When you slam the brake pedal (or if you brake on a slippery surface), you run the risk of overwhelming the tyres, causing them to lock up and lose grip. ABS uses a set of pumps and sensors to control the stopping power and the system breaks your cars momentum with small, rapid braking inputs that take place several times every second.

This is why you can feel the brake pedal pulsating when ABS kicks in, as the system is applying the brakes in several small doses. Not only does this give you more control when you brake (because your grip is maintained), it also reduces your braking distance.

EBD / Electronic Brake-Force Distribution

Give one employee all the work in the world and he wont work efficiently. To ensure productivity you have to delegate tasks based on the how many responsibilities each employee can handle at a given time. Similarly, when you apply your brakes, the force has to be divided among all the tyres based on how much grip they can offer in a given scenario. This is where EBD comes in.

The weight supported by each tyre of your car is never uniform and changes when you accelerate/brake, take a turn and even depends on your passenger load plus the weight distribution of the car itself. The tyres that have the most weight on them offer the best grip because the load pushes them into the road more, and hence, when you press your brakes, EBD automatically sends more braking power to those tyres.

Simply put, it sends more braking strength to the tyres that have the best grip and activates before ABS has to step in. So EBD sends more stopping power to the tyre with the best grip, and if that risks locking the tyre ABS will prevent it.

BA / Brake-Assist

Also known as emergency brake-assist, the system is like a brake amplifier and multiplies your braking input in emergency stop situations. Very often, drivers dont apply the brakes hard enough in panic braking scenarios. The system monitors factors like the cars speed and braking patterns under normal conditions constantly.

When you normally use your brakes, you press the pedal gradually and gently. When you press the brake in a manner that is sharper and quicker than usual, the system detects an emergency and the brake strength applied is greater than the pressure on the brake pedal, making up for errors in judgement / any delayed reaction by the driver.

TCS / Traction Control System

Traction control monitors the grip offered by each tyre, generally by using the same sensors that support ABS. If an individual wheel moves faster than other, TCS detects this and automatically applies a dab of the brakes to that particular wheel, in order to stop it from spinning out of control. Some systems even reduce the power sent to a wheel if slip is detected.

It is a very important feature in more powerful cars as their grunt delivery can prove to be too much for the tyres to handle. Stunt drivers have to deactivate traction control to let their cars slide or do 360-degree turns (also known as doughnuts). Unlike the systems mentioned before, TCS does not need any braking input to activate.

ESP / Electronic Stability Program

ESP monitors the drivers inputs and compares it to the vehicles actual behaviour. It mainly relies on ABS and TCS and uses them to keep your car stable. If theres a difference in the steering wheels angle and the direction the car is moving in, ESP will control the power and braking strength sent to each wheel, using sensors that read the wheel speed, steering angle and side-to-side movement of the car.

Lets take this example - a truck in front of you comes to a sudden stop when youre at a high speed. You turn the wheel to the left to avoid crashing into it, but the tyres cant offer enough grip for such a sharp turn, causing understeer i.e. the steering sensors know that youve turned left, but the sensors monitoring the cars side-to-side movement know that youre still moving straight ahead. ESP will reduce any throttle input, apply the brake to get the cars weight onto the front tyres (to get more grip) and help you swerve into the next lane.

HHC / Hill-Hold Control

This feature is specifically offered to prevent your car from rolling back when youre on an incline. The system uses sensors to determine if your car has stopped at an angle (of around 3-5 degrees) and holds the brakes for a few seconds, if you let go of the brake (automatic transmission cars) or clutch and brake (manual transmission cars). This gives you enough time to get back on the accelerator and move ahead, without the risk of rolling into a car or object behind you.

TPMS / Tyre Pressure Monitoring System

Quite self-explanatory isnt it? TPMS checks your tyre pressure to ensure that your car is driven while offering the best grip, handling, comfort and stability. Maintaining the recommended tyre pressure is very important as underinflated tyres reduce your efficiency and increase the risk of a blowout as well. Many systems tell you the exact air pressure in each tyre, while others simply warn you if the pressure is below the required level.

SRS / Supplementary Restraint System

While the other features here prevent an accident from happening, this is a key feature to protect you when and if you do get into an accident. SRS simply refers to airbags, which are your final safeguard when the worst happens.
Modified On Jun 10, 2016 02:40 PM By Khan Mohd.

Tata Motors-owned Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) is now planning to focus on the lower end of the luxury segment to push its sales in the Indian auto market. Having a decent 9 per cent of the market share presently, JLR is looking to penetrate Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities along with increasing its after sales service network to increase its market presence.

Speaking on the same, Rohit Suri, president Land Rover India said, We have managed to acquire 9 per cent market share in the premium segment despite not having a product in the lower end segments like hatchbacks. We have been able to attract customers at the higher end given the strong brand we are.

Backing on the strong demands of the Discovery Sport and Jaguar XE JLR registered a strong growth of 45 per cent in the January  March quarter this year.

To consolidate its position in the market JLR has to bring in affordable luxury cars just like its German rivals -- Audi, Mercedes, and BMW. With no cars in this segment, its losing a major chunk of volumes to its rivals.

If it makes sense we will look at lower segments in the luxury car market. In fact, with the launch of Jaguar XE we have tried to enter the lower segments compared to where we were. We have started to tap the customers in the lower end, he added.

The fourth largest luxury carmaker in India is now looking forward to increase its dealership count from the present 23 to 26 alongside expansion in tier 2 and tier 3 cities like Nagpur and Raipur. Its also planning to train the executives at JLR outlets for a better customer service experience.

It recently launched a third variant of the XE  the Prestige, which sits between the top of the line XE Pure and the base XE Portfolio. The company is hoping that the Prestige version will attract more volumes as its loaded with features and priced well.

JLR currently assembles the XE, XF, XJ, Discovery Sport and Range Rover Evoque in the country.
(Fixes paragraph 6 to read "Trump campaign" instead of "Trump campaigned")

By Nick Carey and Emily Stephenson

June 10 (Reuters) - As the White House race took off last summer, food giant Mondelez International found itself in an unusual position: Republican candidate Donald Trump began delivering broadsides against one of its iconic products, Oreo cookies.

"Nabisco is closing a factory in Chicago, and they're moving to Mexico. No more Oreos. I don't like Oreos anymore," Trump told a crowd in New Hampshire on Aug. 14, reacting to reports that Mondelez was shutting down some production lines at its Nabisco subsidiary in Chicago while boosting output in Mexico.

Trump's statement that Mondelez was closing a Chicago factory was erroneous, as the company quickly pointed out, but that didn't stop him from repeating it.

It's unusual for a top presidential candidate, especially a representative of the business-friendly Republican Party, to attack major U.S. corporations by name.

But over the course of his unconventional campaign, Trump has aimed his fire at a range of companies, mostly for shifting jobs abroad (Ford Motor Co, United Technologies Corp unit Carrier Corp) but also for building products in foreign markets (Apple ) and for what he said were violations of antitrust laws (Amazon ).

Trump has threatened the companies with boycotts, tariffs, taxes and other punishments. The Trump campaign declined to comment for this story.

Some of the companies saw their share prices dip in the wake of Trump's criticism while others experienced a small boost.

But all of them were presented with a dilemma that's familiar to the presumptive nominee's many vanquished Republican rivals: Should they engage with a possible future president known for holding a grudge, possibly inviting more wrath, or should they lie low and risk allowing Trump to define them and to push policies they deem harmful?

Most have sought to stay out of the fray even as Trump has kept up the drumbeat of criticism.

Story continues

"I am fighting hard to bring jobs back to the United States Many companies - like Ford, General Motors, Nabisco, Carrier - are moving production to Mexico," Trump said this week. This was "bad for all Americans," he said.

It was the first time Trump included GM in his roster of corporate wrongdoers, though the Trump campaign later removed GM from the statement and declined to say why. GM declined comment.

MONDELEZ TREADS CAREFULLY

Mondelez, previously known as Kraft Foods, took a different tack.

After Trump vowed to boycott Oreos, Mondelez fielded numerous media inquiries and contacted reporters when the company deemed press coverage of his remarks off base, said Laurie Guzzinati, who oversees governmental affairs in North America for Mondelez.

The company didn't engage in any Trump-bashing, though Guzzinati said Trump's comments were "grounded in inaccuracies."

She said she told reporters that Mondelez would continue to make Oreos in three locations in the United States, countering the impression Trump may have left that Oreos would no longer be made in the United States.

Mondelez's response tracks closely what crisis management experts recommend for Trump-targeted companies.

Hilary Rosen, a managing director for Washington, D.C., communications firm SKD Knickerbocker, said her firm was representing corporate clients who have been singled out by Trump, though she declined to name them.

Rosen's advice to clients, she said, is "don't depend on educating Donald Trump on the truth. People have tried and failed."

Rosen, a Democrat, recommends instead that companies make their case to the journalists who cover Trump, so "Donald Trump does not define you."

None of the companies targeted by Trump acknowledged hiring outside consultants to deal with his criticism. Many declined to comment for this story.

AVOIDING THE MUD

"You're not going to win in a one-on-one confrontation with Donald Trump. You're just going to get mired in the mud," said Juda Engelmayer, senior vice president for crisis management at 5W Public Relations in New York.

Those who have been willing to engage, including Ford Chairman Bill Ford, have avoided getting too personal.

Trump has railed against Ford for manufacturing vehicles in Mexico, threatening a tariff of up to 40 percent on "every car, bumper and part" entering the United States from Mexico.

Ford, the great-grandson of the automaker's founder Henry Ford, called Trump's critique "distorted" and said the company instead should be "held up as a real success story."

"We didn't take the (government) bailout," during the 2007-2009 recession, Ford told reporters at a conference in Detroit on May 23, contrasting his company with GM and Chrysler . "We paid back our debts. We pulled ourselves up by our boot straps. We are investing in America."

Crisis management experts said companies targeted by Trump need to be thinking more about the policy implications of his presidency. That means, for example, shoring up support in the U.S. Congress for the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which Trump has said he wants to renegotiate.

A trade lobbyist who asked not to be named because he has worked with one of the companies Trump has called out said Trump's attacks do not particularly hurt companies' reputations in Washington, because policymakers understand presidential campaigns are the "political silly season."

But, he said, they can impact broader efforts on trade and other policies. "I think what this suggests," he said, "is that there needs to be a concentrated effort by the business community to talk about the benefits of trade."

(Additional reporting by David Shepardson in Washington, Jessica Toonkel in New York and Joseph White in Detroit; editing by Eric Effron and Ross Colvin)
Hundreds of New Yorkers demonstrated this evening outside Governor Cuomos Midtown offices, outraged by the Governors unconstitutional executive order requiring the state to create a blacklist and divest from corporations and institutions that support the Palestinian-led boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement targeting Israel. Protesters carried signs that read We will continue to stand for justice and boycott Israel until the Palestinian people achieve freedom, justice, and equality, in defiance of the attempt to repress the growing movement for Palestinian rights.

Protesters tell Cuomo: We will boycott Israel until it ends human rights abuses against PalestiniansFOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:Contact: info [at] adalahny.org Protesters tell Cuomo: We will boycott Israel until it ends human rights abuses against PalestiniansNew Yorkers demonstrate outside the Governors office after he signed an unconstitutional executive order against using boycotts to advocate for an end to Israels human rights abuses.Thursday June 9, 2016 Hundreds of New Yorkers demonstrated this evening outside Governor Cuomos Midtown offices, outraged by the Governors unconstitutional executive order requiring the state to create a blacklist and divest from corporations and institutions that support the Palestinian-led boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement targeting Israel. Protesters carried signs that read We will continue to stand for justice and boycott Israel until the Palestinian people achieve freedom, justice, and equality, in defiance of the attempt to repress the growing movement for Palestinian rights.Demonstrators called on Governor Cuomo to rescind his executive order.We act in solidarity with the Palestinian call for international grassroots pressure on Israel until it complies with international law and ends its ongoing repression of Palestinian rights. We will continue to boycott Israel until Palestinian children can live without fear of imprisonment and torture, until there are no longer separate roadways for Israeli Jews and Palestinians, until Israel stops bombing and killing Palestinians, and until the checkpoints and apartheid wall are dismantled, said Gabrielle Spears, Jewish Voice for Peace.Riham Barghouti from Adalah-NY commented, Like other politicians, Governor Cuomo is finding that blind support of the Israeli apartheid state requires repressive, undemocratic measures. He is attempting to silence the growing number of morally conscientious individuals and organizations that support freedom, justice and equality for Palestinians. We, along with our allies, demand that Governor Cuomo rescind this order punishing supporters of Palestinian rights and BDS.Governor Cuomos McCarthyite order calls for a publicly available blacklist of all companies and institutions that support using boycotts to bring about justice for Palestinians, said Nic Abramson, Jews Say No! This is a new low for the state-sanctioned backlash against the movement for Palestinian human rightsa movement that is growing and strengthening daily, he added.This executive order comes at a time of growing recognition that external pressure will be needed to end Israels occupation and repression of Palestinian rights and establish the conditions of equality that are necessary for a just and lasting peace.BDS is under attack by politicians in Israel, France, the US, and other European countries attempting to impose laws to repress and even outlaw the growing movement for justice. The Israeli government has threatened Palestinian organizers of the BDS movement with elimination and effectively imposed a travel ban on one of the movements founders, Omar Barghouti.In the US, bills to limit BDS activities have been introduced in over 20 states, and have been passed in 9 states. Prior to Cuomos executive order, two bills to punish BDS supporters had stalled in the New York legislature due to questions about their constitutionality and opposition from New Yorkers who support BDS and are concerned about the threat of the legislation to their civil liberties.The Palestinian-led civil society BDS movement is modeled on the global campaign that helped bring an end to apartheid in South Africa. Through boycott and divestment from companies profiting from Israels oppression of the Palestinian people, boycott of complicit cultural and academic institutions, and sanctions targeting Israel, the movement aims to pressure Israel to respect the basic rights of the Palestinian people, whether living under Israeli military occupation, as unequal citizens within Israel, or as refugees denied their right of return.Photos and video footage available upon request.###Jewish Voice for Peace New York City (jvp.org) is part of a national, grassroots organization inspired by Jewish tradition to work for a just and lasting peace according to principles of human rights, equality, and international law for all the people of Israel and Palestine. JVP has over 200,000 online supporters, over 60 chapters, a youth wing, a Rabbinic Council, an Artist Council, an Academic Advisory Council, and an Advisory Board made up of leading U.S. intellectuals and artists.Jews Say No!, based in NYC, engages in community education, street theatre, and organizing, and makes our voices heard within the Jewish community and as partners in the broader movement for justice in Palestine/Israel.Adalah-NY: The New York Campaign for the Boycott of Israel is a local, grassroots, non-hierarchical volunteer-only group of concerned individuals that advocates for justice, equality, and human rights for the Palestinian people through educational activities and campaigns. Adalah-NY organizes in support of the 2005 call by Palestinian civil society organizations to maintain non-violent means of protest  including boycotts, divestment, and sanctions  until Israel meets its obligation to recognize the Palestinian peoples inalienable right to self-determination and fully complies with the precepts of international law.To see this press release with hyperlinks: https://jewishvoiceforpeace.org/protesters-tell-cuomo-boycott-israel-end-human-rights-abuses-palestinians/
The AFL-CIO is colluding with corrupt Department of Labor Secretary Tom Perez to establish an pro-imperialist operation around the world funded by USAID. The "Global Labor Program" will be used to push a pro-capitalist agenda internationally and shield criminal US multi-nationals who are engaging in terror and slave labor around the world. The Walmart Walton Family and Penny Pritzker who is the secretary of Commerce both are on board to this work by Trumka and company union officials

Corrupt DOL Secretary Perez Working With US Gov USAID Funded Solidarity Center-AFL-CIO To Support US Imperialism Internationally "Global Labor Program, a cooperative effort by the Solidarity Center and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) to promote worker rights, gender equality and democracy worldwide."Solidarity Center Marks Launch of Global Labor Program - See more at: http://www.solidaritycenter.org/solidarity-center-global-labor-program-2/#sthash.ZS3laSZV.dpuf  June 8, 2016 Tula ConnellDozens of congressional lawmakers, policymakers, union leaders, human rights and democracy representatives and other Solidarity Center allies gathered on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., yesterday to mark the launch of the Global Labor Program, a cooperative effort by the Solidarity Center and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) to promote worker rights, gender equality and democracy worldwide.global labor program, Solidarity Center, Sandy Levin, human rightsRep. Sandy Levin spoke to a packed audience marking the launch of the Global Labor Program. Credit: Solidarity Center/Lauren StewartOpening the event, USAID Administrator Gayle E. Smith said, Development cannot be sustained or inclusive without the availability of decent work. How do we reach workers? Through the Global Labor Program.The five-year Global Labor Program will further expand labor rights and strengthen workers ability to achieve decent work, lift the voices of disenfranchised workers and broaden gender equality.Rep. Jim McGovern, Solidarity Center, global labor program, human rightsRep. Jim McGovern: The Solidarity Center has stood by workers no matter how difficult the circumstances. Credit: Jessica Benton-Cooney/USAIDPraising the Solidarity Center for ensuring the voiceless have a voice, U.S. Labor Secretary Thomas Perez told the packed crowd that the Global Labor Program is first and foremost about expanding worker voice and enabling workers to have meaningful input in the decisions that impact their lives and the lives of their families.When workers obtain their rights, it is almost always a step toward democracy, said Rep. Sandy Levin (D-Mich.). Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) and Rep. Nita Lowey (D-N.Y.) also took part in opening the event.Nita Lowey, Solidarity Center, human rights, global labor programRep. Nita Lowey: Labor justice remains essential. Credit: Jessica Benton-Cooney/USAIDIn a letter to the gathering, Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.) wrote, Solidarity Centers ongoing work with civil society, labor unions and other governments is helping to promote both the universal values of human rights  in countries ranging from Ukraine to Colombia to Bangladesh.Following the opening remarks, moderated by David Yang, deputy assistant administrator in USAIDs Bureau for Democracy, Conflict and Humanitarian Assistance, experts from the development community took part in a panel discussion to examine the role of labor rights and civic participation in fostering more just and sustainable development.Working People Hard-hit by Closing Civic SpacePanel moderator, Solidarity Center Executive Director Shawna Bader-Blau noted how the effect of closing space is felt acutely by labor.Shawna Bader-Blau, USAID Director Gayle Smith, Labor Secretary Tom Perez, global labor program, human rightsSolidarity Center Executive Director Shawna Bader-Blau, USAID Director Gayle Smith and Labor Secretary Thomas Perez at the Global Labor Program launch. Credit: Jessica Benton Cooney/USAIDA forthcoming global survey by the International Trade Union Confederation is about to show a substantial global rise in documented attacks on worker speech and assembly rights, and specifically anti-union violence, Bader-Blau said.InterAction President Lindsay Coates continued the discussion on closing space for civil society, saying that independent civil society is essential, but in country after country we see a growing crackdown on civil society space making it more difficult or even impossible for civic sector to do what it needs to do to help bring peaceful, sustainable ends to intractable crises and to advocate with governments and the private sector to push for development solutions and economic policies that really work for average people.Unions Needed to Secure Good Wages, Conditions for Migrant WorkersTurning the focus to labor migration, Jon Stivers, USAID assistant administrator of the Bureau for Asia, said labor and migration are crucial development issues in Asiaand unions are key to securing good wages and working conditions.Further, holding governments accountable is key to worker rights and open civil society, he said.InterAction Lindsay Coates, USAID Jon Stivers, EATUC Caroline Mugalla, ICRW Sarah Grammage, EICC Rob LedererEvent panelists included (from left): InterAction President Lindsay Coates, Jon Stivers, USAID; Caroline Mugalla, EATUC; Sarah Grammage, ICRW; and Rob Lederer, EICC. Credit: Jessica Benton-Cooney/USAIDCaroline Mugalla, executive secretary of the East African Trade Union Confederation (EATUC), said some 80 percent of workers across East Africa60 percent of whom are young peoplehave jobs in the informal economy, meaning they generally are paid low wages, receive no sick leave, pensions or other social protections and labor in often unsafe conditions.If the issue of social protections is not talked about, especially for young people, we are not talking about sustainable development, she said.Womens Economic Empowerment Crucial to DevelopmentDiscussing how sustainable development requires ensuring gender equality, Sarah Gammage, director of Gender, Economic Empowerment and Livelihoods at the International Center for Research on Women (ICRW), said strong unions bolster gender equality.Womens economic empowerment is crucial to development, but we often neglect the connection between workers rights and gender rights, she said.Rob Lederer, executive director of the Electronic Industry Citizenship Coalition (EICC), also took part in the panel. The EICC is a nonprofit coalition of electronics companies committed to supporting the rights and well-being of workers and communities worldwide affected by the global electronics supply chain.Closing the event, AFL-CIO Executive Vice President Tefere Gebre described the difficult conditions for workers he has witnessed first-hand in countries like Colombia and Ethiopia, saying, worker rights are under attack in far too many countries.Our economies are inextricably connected, and weas workersare either going to be pitted against each other in a race to the bottom or we are going to be rising together creating shared prosperity for everyone.- See more at: http://www.solidaritycenter.org/solidarity-center-global-labor-program-2/#sthash.ZS3laSZV.dpuf
Across the United States, state governments are increasingly sponsoring blacklists of corporations and institutions that support the Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement which seeks to end the Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands. New laws and other governmental efforts are intended to have a chilling effect on the use of political boycotts, a time-honored, non-violent strategy utilized in many struggles for justice.On the West Coast, the California Assembly voted 64-0 on June 3 to pass AB 2844, the newly renamed "Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions of Recognized Sovereign Nations or Peoples Act", which would mandate the Attorney General of California create and post blacklists of all companies that "engage in discriminatory business practices in furtherance of a boycott" against any sovereign country recognized by the United States government. Statewide efforts against the original "California Combating the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions of Israel Act of 2016" forced numerous amendments that deleted specific mention of Israel and mandated the Attorney General to investigate the constitutionality of the proposed denial of state contracts with companies engaged in boycotts, rather that directly mandating that they be denied.On June 9, hundreds of New Yorkers demonstrated outside Governor Andrew Cuomo's offices, outraged by his executive order requiring the state to create a blacklist and divest from BDS supporters. Demonstrators called on Governor Cuomo to rescind the executive order. Protesters carried signs that read We will continue to stand for justice and boycott Israel until the Palestinian people achieve freedom, justice, and equality, in defiance of the attempt to repress the growing movement for Palestinian rights.
VANCOUVER, BC--(Marketwired - June 07, 2016) - Turquoise Hill Resources today provided an update on progress toward the start of underground construction, including project finance drawdown and the signing of an engineering, procurement and construction management (EPCM) contract.

Project finance drawdown

Oyu Tolgoi has drawn down approximately $4.0 billion of the project finance facility that was signed in December 2015 and provided by a syndicate of international financial institutions, export credit agencies representing the governments of Canada, the United States, and Australia as well as 15 commercial banks. Steps are being taken to finalize the drawdown of the additional $0.4 billion and are expected to be largely complete in the coming weeks. As part of the project finance facility, a debt cap of $6.0 billion for Oyu Tolgoi was agreed, which provides the possibility for an additional $1.6 billion of supplemental debt in the future.

In accordance with the Amended and Restated Shareholders' Agreement (ARSHA) dated June 8, 2011, Turquoise Hill has funded Oyu Tolgoi's cash requirements beyond internally generated cash flows by a combination of equity investment and shareholder debt. For amounts funded by debt, Oyu Tolgoi must repay such amounts, including accrued interest, before it can pay common share dividends.

Net funding received to date has been used by Oyu Tolgoi to pay down shareholder loans payable to Turquoise Hill. Net funding will be available for drawdown by Oyu Tolgoi as required for the development of the underground mine. The shareholder loans bear interest at an effective annual rate of LIBOR plus 6.5%.

EPCM contract signing

Oyu Tolgoi LLC has signed a contract with Jacobs Engineering Group (Jacobs) to provide EPCM services for underground development, which paves the way for construction to begin. Jacobs will be responsible for the materials handling systems for the underground mine and associated surface and underground infrastructure. The project is expected to be delivered over a five to seven-year period.

Story continues

About Turquoise Hill Resources

Turquoise Hill Resources (TRQ) (TRQ) (TRQ) is an international mining company whose primary operation is its 66% interest in the Oyu Tolgoi copper-gold-silver mine in southern Mongolia.

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Forward-looking statements

Certain statements made herein, including statements relating to matters that are not historical facts and statements of the Company's beliefs, intentions and expectations about developments, results and events which will or may occur in the future, constitute "forward-looking information" within the meaning of applicable Canadian securities legislation and "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the "safe harbor" provisions of the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking information and statements relate to future events or future performance, reflect current expectations or beliefs regarding future events and are typically identified by words such as "anticipate", "could", "should", "expect", "seek", "may", "intend", "likely", "plan", "estimate", "will", "believe" and similar expressions suggesting future outcomes or statements regarding an outlook. These include, but are not limited to, statements respecting anticipated business activities, planned expenditures, corporate strategies and other statements that are not historical facts.

Forward-looking statements and information are made based upon certain assumptions and other important factors that, if untrue, could cause the actual results, performance or achievements of the Company to be materially different from future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such statements or information. There can be no assurances that such statements or information will prove accurate. Such statements and information contained herein represent the Company's best judgment as of the date hereof based on information currently available. The Company does not assume any obligation to update any forward-looking statements or information or to conform these forward-looking statements or information to actual results, except as required by law.

Important factors that could cause actual results to differ from these forward-looking statements and information are included in the "Risk Factors" section of the Annual Information Form dated as of March 15, 2016 in respect of the year ended December 31, 2015.
2016 Juneteenth in Yosemite National Park ~ Honoring US Colored Troops in California by Khubaka, Michael Harris

During the US Civil War, the Yosemite Grant Act was signed by President Abraham Lincoln. Nationwide as special 2016 Juneteenth weekend visit by President Obama, in the Yosemite National Park may share the legacy of the 9th Calvary of the US Colored Troops ~ later called Buffalo Soldiers who helped protect, establish and develop Yosemite National Park part of today's National Park Service.

The Yosemite Grant Act was signed by President Abraham Lincoln on June 30, 1864.



Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That there shall be, and is hereby, granted to the State of California the cleft or gorge in the granite peak of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, situated in the county of Mariposa, in the State aforesaid, and the headwaters of the Merced River, and known as the Yo-Semite Valley, with its branches or spurs, in estimated length fifteen miles, and in average width one mile back from the main edge of the precipice, on each side of the valley, with the stipulation, nevertheless, that the said State shall accept this grant upon the express conditions that the premises shall be held for public use, resort, and recreation; shall be inalienable for all time; but leases not exceeding ten years may be granted for portions of said premises.



All incomes derived from leases of privileges to be expended in the preservation and improvement of the property, or the roads leading thereto; the boundaries to be established at the cost of said State by the United States surveyor-general of California, whose official plat, when affirmed by the Commissioner of the General Land Office, shall constitute the evidence of the locus, extent, and limits of the said cleft or gorge; the premises to be managed by the governor of the State with eight other commissioners, to be appointed by the executive of California, and who shall receive no compensation for their services. And be it further enacted, That there shall likewise be, and there is hereby, granted to the said State of California the tracts embracing what is known as the Mariposa Big Tree Grove, not to exceed the area of four sections, and to be taken in legal subdivisions of one quarter section each, with the like stipulation as expressed in the first section of this act as to the States acceptance, with like conditions as in the first section of this act as to inalienability, yet with same lease privilege; the income to be expended in preservation, improvement, and protection of the property; the premises to be managed by commissioners as stipulated in the first section of this act, and to be taken in legal subdivisions as aforesaid; and the official plat of the United States surveyor general, when affirmed by the Commissioner of the General Land Office, to be the evidence of the locus of the said Mariposa Big Tree Grove. (U.S.C., title 16, sec. 48.)



African American regiments had been formed during the Civil War, most falling under the moniker United States Colored Troops, but for the first time in the history of the United States soldiers of African American descent could serve in the peacetime army. The Act of 1866 authorized the formation of two cavalry and four infantry "colored" units. They were designated the 9th and 10th United States Cavalry regiments, and the 38th, 39th, 40th, and 41st United States Infantry regiments, and were organized under white officers between the summers of 1866 and 1867
CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS--(Marketwired - Jun 10, 2016) - VBI Vaccines Inc. (VBIV)(VBV.TO) ("VBI") will host a hepatitis B ("HBV") Key Opinion Leader meeting on Monday, June 13 at 12:00 PM ET. The event is being held at the Lotte New York Palace in New York City.

The event will feature keynote presentations by Dr. Daniel Shouval, M.D. and Dr. Florian Schodel, M.D., who will discuss new approaches to vaccination against hepatitis B as well as the unmet medical need. In addition, members of the VBI management team will provide an overview of Sci-B-Vac, a third-generation HBV vaccine that mimics all three viral surface antigens of the hepatitis B virus. Sci-B-Vac is approved in Israel and in 14 other countries and has demonstrated a favorable safety and efficacy profile in over 300,000 patients.

At the time of the event, a live webcast will be available at: http://lifesci.rampard.com/20160613/reg.jsp

Dr. Shouval is a Professor of Medicine and the former Dean of the Faculty of Medicine at the Hebrew University and Hadassah Medical School in Jerusalem, where he established Israel's first liver unit in 1983. He is a visiting Professor at Albert Einstein College of Medicine and has held similar positions at Harvard Medical School, Massachusetts General Hospital, and the University of Paris. Dr. Shouval currently serves as a standing adviser to the European Viral Hepatitis Prevention Board and the World Health Organization ("WHO"), and has previously served as both President and Chairman of the Educational Committee of the European Association for the Study of the Liver ("EASL").

Dr. Schodel has more than 20 years of pharmaceutical, biotech industry, and academic experience leading teams in the development of vaccines and biologics. A physician and microbiologist by training, Dr. Schodel holds adjunct faculty appointments at the University of Munich and at the Biodesign Center of ASU. Dr. Schodel's research has focused on novel recombinant vaccines against diseases including hepatitis B, malaria, and typhoid. He has led the clinical teams responsible for several successful vaccine filings in the U.S., the European Union, and globally, including several pediatric combination vaccines.

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The event is intended for institutional investors and sell-side analysts only. If you would like to attend, please contact Mac MacDonald at (212) 915-2567 or via e-mail at mac@lifesciadvisors.com.

Event Details

Event: Hepatitis B Key Opinion Leader Meeting

Date: Monday, June 13, 2016

Time: 12:00 PM ET - 1:30 PM ET

Location: Lotte New York Palace in New York, NY

Webcast: http://lifesci.rampard.com/20160613/reg.jsp

About VBI Vaccines Inc.

VBI Vaccines Inc. ("VBI") is a commercial-stage biopharmaceutical company developing a next generation of vaccines to address unmet needs in infectious disease and immuno-oncology. VBI's first marketed product is Sci-B-Vac, a hepatitis B ("HBV") vaccine that mimics all three viral surface antigens of the hepatitis B virus; Sci-B-Vac is approved for use in Israel and 14 other countries. VBI's eVLP Platform technology allows for the development of enveloped ("e") virus-like particle ("VLP") vaccines that closely mimic the target virus to elicit a potent immune response. VBI is advancing a pipeline of eVLP vaccines, with lead programs in cytomegalovirus ("CMV") and glioblastoma multiforme ("GBM"). VBI is also advancing its LPV Thermostability Platform, a proprietary formulation and process that allows vaccines and biologics to preserve stability, potency, and safety. VBI is headquartered in Cambridge, MA with research operations in Ottawa, Canada and research and manufacturing facilities in Rehovot, Israel.

Cautionary Statement on Forward-looking Information

Certain statements in this news release contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 or forward-looking information under applicable Canadian securities legislation (collectively, "forward-looking statements") that may not be based on historical fact, but instead relate to future events, including without limitation statements containing the words "believe", "may", "plan", "will", "estimate", "continue", "anticipate", "intend", "expect" and similar expressions. All statements other than statements of historical fact included in this release are forward-looking statements.

Such forward-looking statements are based on a number of assumptions, including assumptions regarding the successful development and/or commercialization of the company's products, including the receipt of necessary regulatory approvals; general economic conditions; competitive conditions; and changes in applicable laws, rules and regulations.

VBI cautions the reader that forward-looking statements and information involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause actual results and developments to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements or information contained in this news release and VBI has made assumptions and estimates based on or related to many of these factors.

Given these risks, uncertainties and factors, you are cautioned not to place undue reliance on such forward-looking statements and information, which are qualified in their entirety by this cautionary statement. All forward-looking statements and information made herein are based on the company's current expectations, and the company undertakes no obligation to revise or update such forward-looking statements and information to reflect subsequent events or circumstances, except as required by law.
A man talks on his mobile phone in front of a Wal-Mart store in Sao Paulo, Brazil, February 16, 2016. REUTERS/Nacho Doce

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Wal-Mart Stores Inc (WMT.N) would have to spend an additional $4.95 billion if it were to raise the minimum wage for its hourly employees in the United States to $15 per hour from the current $10 per hour, according to an estimate by the UC Berkeley Center for Labor Research.

As the country's largest private employer, Wal-Mart employs nearly 1.5 million people in the United States. Of that, 1.1 million are hourly employees, according to the study. The study estimated that 979,000 employees would get an increase if Wal-Mart went to $15 per hour.

The world's largest retailer raised wages for its hourly workers to $10 per hour earlier this year, but labor groups have called the raise inadequate. They have been demanding a $15 minimum wage, and the "Fight for Fifteen" movement has been a topic of discussion during the U.S. presidential campaign.

The research was released last week and has so far not been reported widely by the media. It was conducted at the request of OUR Wal-Mart, a union-backed group.

A $15 per hour minimum wage would mean an annual hike of $4,006 for part-time employees and $5,836 for full-time employees, the study showed.

The study used government data and worker surveys rather than internal numbers provided by Wal-Mart. The study used the $10 increase in hourly wages at the start of the year as a baseline and simulated that to calculate the results for $15 an hour.

Wal-Mart spokesman Kory Lundberg declined to comment on the wage estimates. He said the retailer is investing $2.7 billion over two years in training, education and higher wages.

In the year ended Jan 31, 2016 the retailer generated $482.13 billion in revenue and posted net income of $14.69 billion.

In an online opinion piece on the study, Christine Owens, executive director of the National Employment Law Project said, "Wal-Mart can easily afford the $15 minimum wage", based on the retailer's annual earnings.

"An employee working 34 hours per week at $10 per hour still earns less than $18,000 per year and cannot meet her family's basic needs on Wal-Mart's wages alone, even in states with low costs of living," she said.

(Reporting by Nandita Bose in Chicago; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)
An Olive baboon sits on a road in Amboseli National park, Kenya, February 11,2016. REUTERS/Goran Tomasevic - RTX26UM1

East Africas largest economy was brought to a standstill for more than fours hours by a monkey. On Tuesday (May 7th), Kenyas largest power producer said that a vervet monkey had fallen and tripped a transformer, causing a national blackout for more than four hours.

The blackout could also be blamed on the countrys aging electricity grid and the near total control over the sector by one company, Kenya Power, the countrys sole electricity distributor. Kenya Power purchases its power from Kenya Electricity Generating Company, better known as KenGen. For Kenyans, the monkey incident is another sign of how one of Africas most diversified economies is constrained by a lack of access to reliable power, a problem across the continent.

For the first time in decades Kenya power admits that monkeys run the show  Kikuyu Somali (@bettywaitherero) June 7, 2016

Businesses have to rely on expensive diesel generators. Foreign investors are often wary of Kenya because of the frequent power shortages, caused by anything from the rain or a stray animal. Blackouts are such a disruption that lawmakers are considering a bill requiring Kenya Power to compensate customers if a shortage lasts for more than three hours. During a parliamentary debate in April on the bill the power went out.

In some ways, the power sector is a microcosm of some of Kenyas biggest problems: corruption, poor infrastructure, and inequality. Only 5% of rural Kenyans have access to power compared to 50% of urbanites. Last year, a Kenyan official and senior technician at Kenya Power were arrested for taking bribes. Critics blame the poor state of the power grid on the companys monopoly. Illegal power lines and theft from the grid are common as well.

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The government aims to double the percentage of Kenyans with access to power to 40% by 2030, but most analysts say thats a farfetched goal. Wind power plants in the Turkana region as well as a new coal plant on the coast will require over 400km of new transmission lines to reach Nairobi, responsible for more than half of the countrys total electricity consumption.

KenGen says is is checking its plants to make sure they are secured against stray wild animals, according to its statement. The monkey is alive and in the custody of the Kenya Wildlife Service.

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Median Delinquency Rate Holds Steady; Return on Average Assets down Slightly

ALEXANDRIA, Va. (June 10, 2016)  More than half of federally insured credit unions in every state reported growth in loan balances over the year ending in the first quarter of 2016, according to state-level data compiled by the National Credit Union Administration and released today.

Nationally, median loan growth in federally insured credit unions was 4.5 percent during the year ending in the first quarter of 2016. The median rate of growth in deposits and shares was 3.0 percent. The median loan-to-share ratio moved above 60 percent. The median loan delinquency rate was essentially unchanged from a year earlier at 0.7 percent.

The NCUA Quarterly U.S. Map Review, available online here, tracks credit union performance indicators in the 50 states and the District of Columbia. The review also includes information on two key state-level economic indicators: unemployment rates and home price changes.

All States Report Positive Median Loan Growth; Nevada, Washington Highest

Nationally, median growth in loans outstanding was 4.5 percent over the year ending in the first quarter of 2016, up from 4.0 percent the previous year. The highest median growth rates for loans were in Nevada (9.9 percent) and Washington (8.9 percent). Median loan growth was slowest in New Jersey (0.5 percent) and the District of Columbia (1.2 percent).

Median Asset Growth Rate 2.9 Percent; Alaska, New Hampshire Highest

Median asset growth was 2.9 percent nationally in the year ending in the first quarter of 2016, up from 1.8 percent a year earlier. Median asset growth was fastest in Alaska (6.7 percent) and New Hampshire (6.3 percent). Median asset growth was slowest in New Jersey (0.7 percent) and Louisiana (1.0 percent).

Idaho, Alaska Report Highest Median Growth Rates in Shares and Deposits

Nationally, federally insured credit unions median growth rate in shares and deposits was 3.0 percent in the year ending in the first quarter of 2016, up from 1.6 percent during the previous year.

At the median, shares and deposits rose in each state over the year ending in the first quarter. The median growth rate in shares and deposits was highest in Idaho (6.8 percent) and Alaska (6.3 percent). The median growth rate in shares and deposits was lowest in New Jersey (0.6 percent) and Kansas (1.2 percent).

Utah, Virginia Pace Nation on Aggregate Returns on Average Assets

Nationally, the aggregate return on average assets at federally insured credit unions was 75 basis points at an annual rate at the end of the first quarter of 2016, down slightly from 78 basis points at the end of the first quarter of 2015. The aggregate return on average assets was positive in every state in the first quarter of 2016. Utah (117 basis points) had the highest aggregate return, followed by Virginia (115 basis points). New Jersey (17 basis points) and Connecticut (33 basis points) posted the lowest aggregate returns on average assets.

Idaho and Alaska Again Report Highest Median Loan-to-Share Ratios

Nationally, the median ratio of loans outstanding to total shares and deposits was 61 percent at the end of the first quarter of 2016, compared to 59 percent a year previously. The median loan-to-share ratio was highest among credit unions in Idaho (87 percent) and Alaska (82 percent). The median loan-to-share ratio was lowest in Hawaii (42 percent) and Delaware (44 percent).

Median Total Delinquency Rate Steady

The median total delinquency rate at federally insured credit unions was 0.7 percent nationally in the first quarter of 2016, unchanged from the first quarter of 2015. At the end of the first quarter, the median delinquency rate was lowest in California, Colorado and New Hampshire (all 0.3 percent). New Jersey (1.6 percent) reported the highest median delinquency rate, followed by Louisiana (1.3 percent).

Greater Share of Credit Unions Gain Members

While overall credit union membership continued to grow during the year ending in the first quarter of 2016, at the median, membership was unchanged.

Zero median membership growth means that, overall, 50 percent of federally insured credit unions had fewer members at the end of the first quarter of 2016 than a year earlier. Over the previous year, the median membership growth rate was negative 0.4 percent, and 53 percent of credit unions lost members over the year ending in first quarter of 2015.

Membership growth over the most recent four quarters continued to be concentrated in larger credit unions. Credit unions with falling membership tended to be small; about 75 percent of those credit unions had assets of less than $50 million.

Alaska (4.0 percent) had the highest median membership growth rate over the year ending in the first quarter of 2016, followed by New Mexico (2.0 percent). Median membership growth was negative in 16 states. At the median, membership declined the most in Pennsylvania (-1.8 percent).
With the launch of the Moto Z at Tech World in San Francisco, California, Lenovo has a new flagship on its handsthe Moto X will be pushed down to fill the upper mid-range spot in Motos lineup.

In an ambitious effort to create the worlds slimmest phone with the latest flagship specs, Lenovo opted to strip out all the unnecessary extras. You still have a flagship-worthy Snapdragon 820 processor with an Adreno 530 GPU under the hood along with a gorgeous 5.5-inch QHD AMOLED display, waterproofing, fingerprint sensor and what Moto is calling its best camera ever on a phone. All this is packed into just a 5.2mm thick frame.

In order to achieve this feat of design and engineering, Lenovo had to move the antenna to the backside of the phone, giving it, according to the company, the best LTE reception on a smartphone. This also means that Lenovo had to work with a single worldwide launch partner, and the phone will initially launch as a Verizon exclusive. Even though Lenovo isnt talking about future launch plans, executives in San Francisco said that this [strategy] doesnt preclude us from launching on other partners and carriers later. Lenovo promised that a fully unlocked phone will be made available in the fall.

I wasnt able to test call quality, network strength or reception at the packed San Francisco event, but in the hands the Moto Z feels extremely slim, although angular.

Despite its svelte frame, the phone still packs in a 2600mAh battery. A slightly thicker variant of the Z, known as the Moto Z Force, comes with a beefier 3500mAh battery, a 21-megapixel OIS camera instead of the Zs 13-megapixel OIS shooter and the shatterproof screen technology that debuted nearly a year ago on Verizons Droid Turbo 2.

Both variants come with a front-facing 5-megapixel camera with front LED flash. The rear camera is housed in a circular pod, similar to the design that Microsoft used on the Lumia 950 and 950 XL that we reviewed, and the rear cameras come with dual-LED flash.

However, what sets the Z apart from its competitor is the backside. Lenovo placed POGO connector pins16 of themto allow different accessory sleds to magnetically latch onto the back of the phone, allowing the Z to be further customized, expanded and improved to a users taste. These accessories and the connection system will be compatible between the Z and the Z Force, and Lenovo promised that accessories today will work on future Moto Z generations to come.

That said, the executives didnt specify how long this backward compatibility commitment will last, whether if its just for an additional generation or for the next few years, but the commitment will hopefully draw more hardware developers to create even more accessories for the Moto Mods system.

Execs said that they dont want to overload the phone, making it thicker, with features that not all users may need. Filling the phone with bloated hardware also drives the price up, and the Moto Zs purpose, according to Lenovo, is to eliminate the pain points of consumers.

The way the Moto Mods work is that a magnetic system connects the accessory, essentially a backplate to the phone, with the rear side of the Moto Z. The mods stay connected with a strong magnet and are aligned with the slightly protruding camera lens on the rear along with the 16 POGO connector pins.

At launch, Moto will have several different Moto Mods available. The company showed off a speaker for even louder audio playback and conference calls, a projector mod for sharing your screen and beaming the content on your phone onto a wall or ceiling, some style mods and battery packs. Lenovo is inviting hardware developers to expand the Moto Mods platform to create an even larger ecosystem of accessories, and its unclear what will be available in the future.

The system seems more clever than rival LGs Friends accessories for the competing G5 flagship. Unlike the LG Friends, the phone doesnt need to be powered off and the battery doesnt need to removed. This allows the Moto Z to be slimmer than the LG G5 in use and makes the Moto Mods hot swappable so you dont need to restart your phone every time you want to insert or replace an accessory module.

In use, the magnets gave a reassuring latch. The magnets are strong, and no amount of shaking or rubbing on the phone in my hands-on led to the mods falling off, which is a good sign. I wasnt able to do any drop tests to see if the mods will remain attached to the phone in the event you drop your Moto Z.

The style mods, which are essentially leather or wood back panels, like a slim-line case, that snap onto the phone, didnt add too much bulk. With the style mod on, the phone feels more rounded and adds a bit of curve and girth to the overall device, bringing its feel more similar to an iPhone 6s Plus. The benefit of the style mod, other than adding a bit of personal style similar to Moto Maker for the Moto X, is that it smoothens the back of the phone so that the camera is flush with the style mod, eliminating the camera hump.

Lenovo signed on Incipio to create several different power mods, including a white Incipio OffGrid power mod, a Tumi-branded mod that comes with a sleek black brushed metal gloss of paint and a whimsical Kate Spade design. Some of these power mods also add wireless charging. The phone itself doesnt come with wireless charging due to the antenna placement on the rear of the device and the metal shell, Lenovo claimed. I asked if the variants of the style mods could accommodate a Qi charging coil given the thickness of these plates, but Lenovo said that this isnt currently in their plans.

Its unclear how many people would use the speaker or the projector mods at this time. Even though the JBL-tuned speakers did a great job of amping up the volume, sound quality didnt sound impressive. There was good left and right channel isolation for stereo output despite the small footprint, but a standard Jawbone Bluetooth speaker would offer more fidelity. The benefit of the mod is that it is a one-piece solution, so you dont need to carry two separate things on your way to the beach.

The projector mod shows that Lenovo and Motorola are beginning to integrate their product designs. A Lenovo product manager told me that the projector used inside this slim mod was inspired by the projector on the Lenovo Yoga Tab 3 Pro. In fact, it outputs the same VGA resolution with a 50-lumen DLP bulb and could project up to a 70-foot large screen.

Both the audio and the projector mods ship with their own integrated batteries, but the nice part about these mods is that once the accessory batteries drains, the mods can continue to work by drawing power from the phone. This means that the projector can last for up to three hours with a fully charged phone even though the battery in the mod is only good for one hour of projection time.

The promise of compatibility of the mods with future generations of the Z could limit Lenovos designs going forward. In essence, this could mean that Lenovo sticks with the sameor very similarphone designs for a few generations at a time, similar to what Apple does with the iPhone. Lenovo reps assured me this shouldnt be a problem. Even if the company decides to release a larger smartphone in the future, existing mods wont wrap up to the sides of the phone, but will work fine. However, a smaller phone footprint could make the mods awkward.

While Lenovo is hyping the mods, there is also a curious omission from the Moto Z and the Z Force. Motorola opted to drop the 3.5mm headphone jack in favor of USB-C. Motorola execs confirmed to me that an adapter dongle will be included inside the box and that the company is banking on USB-C as the standard for the future.

Another reason why the 3.5mm jack was dropped was to make the phone slim. Execs said that if they tried to cram the jack in, then this would create a curve on the phone that would affect the Moto Mods system, and this would further impact future phone designs.

The placement of the fingerprint sensor is interesting. Because of the Moto Mods mechanism, Motorola wasnt able to place the fingerprint sensor on the back like what Lenovo did on the Phab 2 series. This means that the fingerprint sensor is on the front of the phone in the bottom center. Given that the Moto Z uses on-screen Android navigation keys, this created a bit of confusion when you first pick up the phone and start using it. I initially tried to tap the fingerprint button to try to get to the home screen rather than using the on-screen keys.

In order for the Moto Z line to be successful, Lenovo needs to convince hardware developers to create compelling accessories for its new flagship range. Even though the Moto Mods seems more user-friendly than LGs expansion system, well need to see more consumer and business-friendly mods that will make these phones even more compelling.
Hippos in the Great Ruaha River in Tanzania face a profound loss of their habitat during the dry season. The river has much less water during this season than in previous decades because it is increasingly extracted for human use. As a consequence, the river dries up. Researchers from the German Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research (IZW) have now examined how this affects the distribution of hippos. Their results reveal extensive and long distance movements, as hippos search for vital daytime resting sites. The study has been published in the scientific journal PLOS ONE.

IZW scientists found that hippos move upstream over long distances as the river dries up in the dry season. This forces them to congregate in large numbers in the few remaining areas along the river containing water of suitable volume and depth. "As a result, the hippos are likely to experience higher stress levels, because they have to move longer during daylight hours to find daytime resting sites. The potential for aggression and the competition for food also increase in such large aggregations," explains Claudia Stommel, PhD student at the IZW and first author of the study.

The common hippopotamus (Hippopotamus amphibius) is one of the largest African mammals and lives in aquatic habitats, such as river basins and lake districts. Since 2006 it is officially categorised as vulnerable on the "Red List" by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN). Hippos must remain submerged in water during the day to prevent overheating and severe sunburn. One of the main threats to these animals is therefore habitat loss caused by human activities. Thus, the hippo is an excellent species to ask what consequences changes in water availability in natural water courses have for wildlife populations.

The scientists observed hippos in the Ruaha National Park in Tanzania. The region of the park is part of one of the largest protected natural ecosystems in Africa. The Great Ruaha River represents the south eastern border of the national park and is the main source of water for wildlife during the dry season. The researchers conducted their study along a 104 km stretch of the river during the 2012 and 2013 dry seasons from June to November. The dry season water-flow of the formally perennial Great Ruaha River has been decreasing severely since 1993. "In many sections of the river, surface water was absent for months during the dry season," says Marion East, IZW scientist and leader of the study. These observations confirm that the river dries up in many locations, a phenomenon most likely linked to the extraction of water for agricultural production, e. g. rice growing, upstream of Ruaha National Park.

"Our findings highlight the vital importance of the Great Ruaha River in providing day-resting sites for the hippos within the Ruaha National Park," Stommel emphasises. The population in the national park is a very important hippo population in Africa. Any further decline in dry season surface water is likely to threaten the population in the long-term and may also affect other water-dependent species in Ruaha National Park. Further investigation is required to examine the resilience of the hippo population to habitat changes. The current findings provide a first basis for future studies and the design of species conservation measures.
The results of a study presented today at the European League Against Rheumatism Annual Congress (EULAR 2016) showed that when antibodies develop in response to the biological treatment Remicade (infliximab), they also cross-react with the biosimilar of infliximab (CT-P13: Inflectra or Remsima). These findings suggest that antibody-positive patients being treated with Remicade should not be switched to treatment with the biosimilar, since these antibodies will interact with the new drug and potentially lead to a loss of response. ,

Biosimilars are similar to biotechnologically created proteins, but have been approved after the patent for the original branded product has lapsed. Unlike chemically-created generic drugs, the biosimilar molecule is not identical to the original product; it is highly similar. Over the past decade, several biosimilars have been introduced into medicine with the goal of reducing treatment costs and increasing accessibility to therapy for patients. The first infliximab biosimilar in Europe is marketed under two brand names: Inflectra (made by Hospira) and Remsima (made by Mundipharma).

Biopharmaceuticals (or 'biologics'), such as infliximab, have revolutionised the treatment of many rheumatic diseases. However, some patients generate an immune response to such drugs, with the resultant antibodies potentially limiting their clinical efficacy and safety.3 Infliximab is a TNF- inhibitor which, in the European Union, is approved as an effective treatment of various inflammatory rheumatic diseases, including rheumatoid arthritis, ankylosing spondylitis and psoriatic arthritis.

"While most studies show there are no significant differences in clinical response between a biosimilar and the original product, some physicians and patient advocacy groups have expressed concern about how interchangeable they really are, and whether it is safe to switch from the brand name version to the biosimilar," said lead author Dr Daniel Nagore of Progenika Biopharma, Derio, Spain.

"Our results have shown that all the antibodies that developed in patients being treated with Remicade cross-reacted with the biosimilar. The presence of these anti-infliximab antibodies is likely to enhance clearance of the drug from the body, potentially leading to a loss of response, as well as increasing the risk of side effects. Therefore, in patients where biological infliximab is ineffective due to the presence of circulating antibodies, switching to its biosimilar will lead to the same problems," Dr Nagore concluded.

The study included 250 rheumatoid arthritis and spondyloarthritis patients undergoing Remicade treatment who had never been previously treated with the biosimilar, and 77 control patients. Using assays to assess concentrations of anti-infliximab antibodies, half (50.4%) of the Remicade-treated patients tested positive for anti-infliximab antibodies, and 100% of those who tested positive for anti-infliximab antibodies also exhibited antibody reactivity against the biosimilar.

These results are aligned with previous infliximab antibody data among patients with inflammatory bowel diseases being treated with Remicade. Further studies are now planned with biosimilar-treated patients to better assess the potentially different immune responses associated with biologics.
Tens of thousands of "citizen scientists" have volunteered some use of their personal computer time to help researchers create one of the most detailed, high resolution simulations of weather ever done in the Western United States.

The data, obtained through a project called Weather@Home, is an important step forward for scientifically sound, societally relevant climate science, researchers say in a an article published in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society. The analysis covered the years 1960-2009 and future projections of 2030-49.

"When you have 30,000 modern laptop computers at work, you can transcend even what a supercomputer can do," said Philip Mote, professor and director of the Oregon Climate Change Research Institute at Oregon State University, and lead author on the study.

"With this analysis we have 140,000 one-year simulations that show all of the impacts that mountains, valleys, coasts and other aspects of terrain can have on local weather," he said. "We can drill into local areas, ask more specific questions about management implications, and understand the physical and biological climate changes in the West in a way never before possible."

The sheer number of simulations tends to improve accuracy and reduce the uncertainty associated with this type of computer analysis, experts say. The high resolution also makes it possible to better consider the multiple climate forces at work in the West -- coastal breezes, fog, cold air in valleys, sunlight being reflected off snow -- and vegetation that ranges from wet, coastal rain forests to ice-covered mountains and arid scrublands within a comparatively short distance.

Although more accurate than previous simulations, improvements are still necessary, researchers say. Weather@Home tends to be too cool in a few mountain ranges and too warm in some arid plains, such as the Snake River plain and Columbia plateau, especially in summer. While other models have similar errors, Weather@Home offers the unique capability to improve simulations by improving the physics in the model.

Ultimately, this approach will help improve future predictions of regional climate. The social awareness of these issues has "matured to the point that numerous public agencies, businesses and investors are asking detailed questions about the future impacts of climate change," the researchers wrote in their report.

This has led to a skyrocketing demand for detailed answers to specific questions -- what's the risk of a flood in a particular area, what will be future wind speeds as wind farms are developed, how should roads and bridges be built to handle extremely intense rainfall? There will be questions about heat stress on humans, the frequency of droughts, future sea levels and the height of local storm surges.

This type of analysis, and more like it, will help answer some of those questions, researchers say.
2000 - 2022   24 .-   .       focus-news.net,                 () .                  24 .                 24      .       .       24 .
A group of researchers from the University of Louisville, Japan and Austria is the first to identify a protein, AF1q, associated with multiple myeloma and a condition that occurs in approximately one-fourth of very aggressive multiple myeloma, extramedullary disease or EMD.

The group will present their findings at the European Hematology Association's 21st Congress, June 10-12, in Copenhagen, Denmark. Their presentation is entitled "High expression of AF1q is an adverse prognostic factor and a prediction marker of extramedullary disease in multiple myeloma."

William Tse, M.D., the Marion F. Beard Endowed Chair in Hematology and chief of the Division of Blood and Bone Marrow Transplantation at UofL, was senior investigator on the project, working with researchers in Tokyo and Vienna.

Multiple myeloma is one of four types of myeloma and the most prevalent. It is a form of blood cancer that develops in the bone marrow. In multiple myeloma, normal plasma cells transform into malignant myeloma cells and produce large quantities of toxic abnormal immunoglobulin called monoclonal protein that can damage multiple organs. The monoclonal protein produced by the myeloma cells interferes with normal blood cell production.

The American Cancer Society estimates that 30,330 new cases of multiple myeloma will occur in the United States in 2016 and about 12,600 people will die from it.

Approximately 25 percent of patients with multiple myeloma also simultaneously develop extramedullary disease. This disease occurs when the myeloma cells form tumors outside of the bone marrow in the soft tissues or organs of the body. The prognosis of myeloma patients with EMD behaves like other metastatic cancers and is extremely poor because its clinical course is very aggressive, Tse said.

"We know that multiple myeloma with EMD involvement has an extremely poor outcome," Tse said. "However, not much is known about the mechanism in which EMD progresses."

The group looked at an oncogene, AF1q discovered in Tse's lab, which is expressed in hematological cancer cells and is known to be related to multiple myeloma. Its presence indicates a poor prognosis for the patient.

Tse and the team analyzed the degree of expression of AF1q in 117 patients with multiple myeloma. They found that EMD was present in 25 percent of patients with a low AF1q expression and in 44.7 percent of patients with a high AF1q expression.

"We found that the incidence of EMD was significantly higher in patients with high expression of AF1q than those with low expression," Tse said. "The significance of this finding gives us a tentative approach to target this marker and could lead to new therapies for this subtype of myeloma."

Tse's research team included Drs. Shotaro Hagiwara, the lead author and chief of hematology, and Sohtaro Mine of the National Center for Global Health and Medicine in Tokyo, Ana-Iris Schiefer of the Medical University of Vienna and Lukas Kenner of the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Cancer Research and Medical University of Vienna. The study patient cohort was organized by Hagiwara.
All 36 countries that committed to the Kyoto Protocol on climate change complied with their emission targets, according to a scientific study released today. In addition, the Kyoto process and climate-related policies, represented a low cost for the countries involved -- up to 0.1% of GDP for the European Union and an even lower fraction of Japan's GDP. This is around one quarter to one tenth of what experts had estimated after the agreement was reached in 1997, for delivering the targets set 15 years ahead. The US never ratified the Treaty and Canada withdrew, but all the rest continued and Kyoto came into force in 2005.

The results, reported in the Climate Policy journal, are the first published results to use the final data for national GHG emissions and exchanges in carbon units which only became available at the end of 2015. They show that overall, the countries who signed up to the Kyoto Protocol surpassed their commitment by 2.4 GtCO2e yr -1 (giga-tonnes of CO 2 equivalent per year).

"There is often skepticism about the importance of international law, and many critics claim that the Kyoto Protocol failed. The fact that countries have fully complied is highly significant, and it helps to raise expectations for full adherence to the Paris Agreement," said Prof. Michael Grubb, Editor-in-Chief of the Climate Policy journal and co-founder of research network Climate Strategies.

The researchers found that most of these countries reduced their GHG emissions to the levels required by the Kyoto Protocol, with only nine (Austria, Denmark, Iceland, Japan, Lichtenstein, Luxembourg, Norway, Spain and Switzerland) emitting higher levels. The nine countries only just overshot their targets -- in total by around 1% of the average annual emissions capped under Kyoto -- and were able to comply with the Protocol using the "flexibility" mechanisms. The researchers also found that overall compliance would have also been achieved even without the so-called 'hot-air,' (windfall emission reductions from Eastern Bloc countries).
Coronary or peripheral bypasses are the most frequently performed vascular operations. Although one million patients per year and around the world, undergo this intervention, its failure rate reaches 50%, because of poor vessel healing, leading to vessel graft occlusion. To improve the outcome of bypasses, researchers from the University of Geneva (UNIGE) work together with medical doctors from the Lausanne University Hospital (CHUV). They developed a gel containing microparticles -'GeM', enabling the controlled release of a drug inhibiting cellular over-proliferation. Administered locally, directly on the bypass graft during surgery, this preventive treatment will reduce the risk of obstruction reoccurrence. This research can be read in The Journal of Controlled Release.

The vascular bypass allows a blocked artery to be bypassed by implanting a vessel removed from the patient, and this is done in order to create a deviation in circulation. However, in 50% of cases, excessive vascular cell proliferation, called hyperplasia, occurs around the suturing site of the transplanted vessel. Hyperplasia then leads to a decrease in blood flow within five years following the operation, requiring a new surgery. Today, doctors prescribe atorvastatin (ATV) orally against hyperplasia. However, this route of administration is not adapted to this pathology.

This is why Doctor Francois Saucy's team from CHUV joined forces with Florence Delie and Olivier Jordan, researchers at the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences at UNIGE Faculty of Science. The goal: to find a way for local administration of ATV, that will remain available over a long time period, in order to overcome the disadvantages of high dosage taken orally. 'We immediately thought of a gel mixed with ATV, being directly applied on the vessel during surgery. Being viscous, it remains in place and enables local release, explains Florence Delie. 'But, we had an important challenge- doctors recommended the presence of the drug over a period of four weeks to avoid hyperplasia development, while the gel is only effective for three days'. Researchers from UNIGE have consequently added polymer microparticles containing ATV to the original formulation. These microparticles carry the encapsulated drug and gradually dissolve into the gel, therefore releasing ATV over one month.

The right dose in the right place

'It is about a controlled release system: the right dose at the right place, with the correct release profile, emphasises Olivier Jordan. 'We discovered that this formulation only works using the combination of, on one side, quickly released ATV mixed into the gel and on the other side, the microparticles, which act over the long term. There lies our innovation', adds Ioanna Mylonaki, researcher at UNIGE. 'Its use on patients is contemplated in five to ten years. Its efficacy would revolutionize the success rate of vascular bypasses.'
Established Aedes-mosquito population could spread the Zika virus in Europe this summer if infected travelers introduce the virus. An analysis of temperatures, vectorial capacity, basic reproductive number (R0), and air traveler flows suggests parts of Southern Europe may be at risk for Zika outbreaks between June and August. This according to a study, led by Umea University researchers in Sweden and published in the journal EBioMedicine.

"We know warm climates create the kind of conditions suitable for mosquito-borne illnesses to spread," says Joacim Rocklov, researcher at Umea University's Unit for Epidemiology and Global Health and co-author of the article.

"Vectorial capacity depends on a number of parameters but in general, warmer temperatures increase the rate in which the female mosquitos bite, the mosquito virus reproduction, and their virus transmission risk. The presence of established Aedes mosquito populations, the warmer climate and the coinciding peak flow of air travelers into Europe, is a triage making Southern Europe fertile ground for Zika."

Following a similar epidemiological study conducted on the similar dengue virus, the group of researchers led by Joacim Rocklov at Umea University, used a temperature dependent computer model to predict Zika virus infection risks for Europe. The research exploration was undertaken in close collaboration with the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC). In the analysis, the researchers overlaid data on monthly flows of airline travelers arriving in European cities from Zika-affected areas, data on month-by-month estimates of virus infection reproduction capabilities of Aedes-mosquito populations in Europe, and human population data within the areas where mosquito-borne transmission of the Zika virus could be possible.

The main findings, presented in EBioMedicine, a journal initiative integrating the Lancet and Cell, are:

The risk of mosquito-borne transmission of Zika virus is estimated to peak between June and August in parts of Southern Europe (see map)

The peak flow of air travelers from regions of the Americas affected by the Zika virus coincides with the peak in the Aedes-mosquitos capacity to transmit the virus.

The findings could help European public health officials to identify locations and times where the risk for Zika is heightened.

The risk assessment assumes that European Aedes-mosquitos have the same potential to spread the Zika virus as their South-, Middle- and North American counterparts.

Earlier research has shown that increasing temperatures will enlarge Europe's seasonal window for the potential spread of mosquito-borne viral disease and expand the geographic areas at risk for epidemics to include large parts of Europe. The threat includes tropical and sub-tropical viruses such as Zika and Dengue.

The Aedes mosquitos -- Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus -- are largely responsible for the transmission of the Zika virus. Both Aedes mosquitos are likely to become a fixture in Europe. Historically, Aedes mosquitos were present in many European countries during the first half of the 1900s. Aedes aegypti has recently been documented in Russia and Georgia. And current surveillance indicate that Aedes albopictus are present in much of Southern Europe and as far north as the Netherlands.
Earlier this week, a research boat patrolling Canada's west coast caught a glimpse of an undersea mammoth lurking just below the water's surface. The sighting sent a tsunami of excitement throughout the scientific community. Could it be? Could the leviathan finally be returning to Canadian waters?

It's been a long, brutal century for the ancient fish known as the basking shark. These massive but peaceful sharks have all but disappeared from the North Pacific thanks to decades of government-sanctioned slaughter. Finding one of these sharks today may seem somewhat like stumbling upon a mythical beast. And the basking shark certainly plays the part, looking every inch like a creature who sprang from some ancient mariner's imagination.

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Fisheries and Oceans Canada

Seen from the surface, they're easily mistaken for whales or other sharks. But the real glory of a basking shark is just under those waves. They patrol the waters with massive jaws propped wide open. Like vast caverns lined with tiny, hook-like teeth, they swim slowly in order to consume as many tiny creatures - plankton, mostly - as they can.

This browser does not support the video tag. YouTube/Padaxes

Basking sharks are the second biggest fish on the planet, growing up to 40 feet long and weighing 21 tons. According to fossil records, they've plied the oceans for the last 30 million years. But it wasn't until the mid-20th century that they began to run afoul of humans - and the days of these gentle giants suddenly appeared numbered. In the 1940s, British Columbia authorities routinely put out bounties on basking sharks. Not long after that, they upped the ante and outfitted boats with giant blades. Positioned at the bow, the boats would literally dice sharks in the water.

The eradication program officially lasted 14 years. It still casts a vast shadow over the North Pacific - an ocean expanse once teeming with basking sharks is now nearly devoid of them. Their numbers are, in fact, so low, you might forgive marine scientists for treating the sight of one as something of a unicorn.

Coupled with a federal decree that named the animals "destructive pests," it wasn't long before the basking shark population evaporated under the onslaught. In 2010, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) put their population in the North Pacific at no more than 500. "In the bays and inlets of British Columbia, where thousands were reported in the early 1990s, only six sharks have been documented since 1996," the organization notes in a fact sheet. Throughout most of the world, the species is classified as vulnerable on the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List. But in Canadian waters, where the eradication program was active, the basking shark is considered endangered - a designation that suggests an even more severe population decline.

Wikipedia
<p><em>Southwest Florida House Rabbit Rescue</em><span></span></p>

Fuzzy Pants, a small, black rabbit, has quickly earned the nickname "warrior" among her rescuers. After all, she miraculously survived an unimaginably devastating attack.

Southwest Florida House Rabbit Rescue

In a disturbing Snapchat video that went viral after it surfaced online two weeks ago, Fuzzy Pants was thrown repeatedly against a wall by a group of teenage girls in Jacksonville, Florida. In the video, the rabbit is also kicked around by one of her abusers and even picked up by the throat. The Dodo will not be reposting the video due to its graphic nature, but you can watch here.

Southwest Florida House Rabbit Rescue

Fuzzy Pants' abusers were arrested and swiftly slapped with animal cruelty charges, leaving the rabbit in need of a new home, fast. The Southwest Florida House Rabbit Rescue contacted Jacksonville Animal Services in order to have Fuzzy Pants released to the rescue, which was "better equipped to handle a rabbit emergency due to our experience and medical connections," Lisa Walkup, one of the rescue's founders, told The Dodo.

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Southwest Florida House Rabbit Rescue

Both founders, Jennifer MacBeth and Walkup, took a six-hour trip from Naples, Florida, to Jacksonville just to pick Fuzzy Pants up. She was then dropped off at BluePearl Veterinary Partners hospital in Tampa, where she received an in-depth examination from the rescue's exotic animals veterinarian.

Fuzzy Pants and Jennifer MacBeth | Southwest Florida House Rabbit Rescue

"We got [Fuzzy Pants] tucked in for the night with food and treats, kissed bun goodbye and we drove back to Naples same day," Walkup said. "It was a very long, emotional day, but we are so very happy to be able to help this little warrior."

Southwest Florida House Rabbit Rescue

Fuzzy Pants was diagnosed with two pelvis fractures and had surgery to remove the upper tip of her broken thighbone, according to a press release from the hospital. "Otherwise, Fuzzy Pants would have suffered lifelong pain around the fractures," the press release reads. "Connective tissue around the area where the bone was removed will allow Fuzzy Pants' leg to move virtually normally, and without the pain."

Southwest Florida House Rabbit Rescue

After she was cleared post-surgery, Fuzzy Pants went home with MacBeth, who is now acting as her foster until she recovers from her operation. "She is very sweet and craves affection," Walkup said. "[She] snuggles under your hand and closes her eyes. She knows she is safe." Not only did Fuzzy Pants come home to the most adorably decorated room and enclosure ...

Southwest Florida House Rabbit Rescue

Southwest Florida House Rabbit Rescue

Southwest Florida House Rabbit Rescue

... but she's been showered with presents, from stuffed animals to food, from supporters all over the country who have been touched by her story.

Southwest Florida House Rabbit Rescue

Southwest Florida House Rabbit Rescue

The rescue hopes to get Fuzzy Pants adopted out to a new forever family once she's 100 percent healed. But in the meanwhile, she's living quite the pampered life - and it's exactly what this little warrior deserves after everything she's been through.

Southwest Florida House Rabbit Rescue

For more information about adopting Fuzzy Pants, email the rescue at swflrabbits@gmail.com.

Southwest Florida House Rabbit Rescue
<p>Susquehannock Wildlife Society<span></span></p>

It's baby season in the animal world - making it more likely that you might find yourself bumping into baby birds who have fallen to the ground or even a litter of kittens all piled up in a box. Then, there are baby deer. When people find them alone, they often make the mistake of believing they need to be rescued, when in fact, it's more than likely the fawn's mother will return for him or her. All you should do at first is wait. Since fawns are too weak to keep up with their mothers for the first few weeks of their lives, they typically wait in the vegetation, with the mother going off to feed and returning every so often to nurse her child.

Susquehannock Wildlife Society

A state police officer in Harford County, Maryland, found herself in that exact situation on Tuesday. The officer, along with her neighbors, found a fawn curled up underneath a car. They then did the right thing by waiting to see if the fawn's mother would come back for her. "It soon became apparent that the deer was in fact injured and needed care," Susquehannock Wildlife Society wrote on Facebook.

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Susquehannock Wildlife Society

That's when the Maryland Natural Resources Police (NRP) was called in, and they got in touch with Susquehannock to aid with the rescue effort. Scott McDaniel, president of Susquehannock, told The Dodo that he and a colleague climbed underneath the car to get closer to the young deer, as well as prevent her from bolting, which would undoubtedly stress her and her injury further. "I placed my gloved hands on her and tried to comfort her with a soothing tone," McDaniel said. "Since she was wedged, we couldn't lift her up. I rolled her on her side to protect her legs and inched myself back out from under the vehicle with her in my arms."

McDaniel holding the fawn | Susquehannock Wildlife Society

From there, the fawn was taken to the Chadwell Animal Hospital, where she was placed under the dutiful care of a wildlife rehabilitator.

Susquehannock Wildlife Society

"The fawn was found to have deep puncture wounds that were already infected and full of maggots," McDaniel said. "The injuries were probably several days old and likely the result of a red fox or dog attack." He added that it appeared the fawn was orphaned and became vulnerable without her mother's care, only growing sicker without medical attention for her untreated injury - until she was rescued. As it turns out, she picked the perfect place for both shelter and to get help.

The fawn at the vet's | Susquehannock Wildlife Society
When Gordon Delacroix was 14 years old, his family's dog, Meg, gave birth to a litter of puppies - including a very special pup named Birdy.

Gordon Delacroix

Birdy is now 15 years old, and he and Delacroix are still the very best of friends. Recently, Delacroix posted a photo on Reddit of himself and Birdie when they first met, then 10 years later, and finally 15 years later.

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Gordon Delacroix

Birdy and Delacroix grew up together in the countryside of Belgium, and even after he left for college, he came home every weekend to visit Birdy. As soon as he was done with school, he took Birdy to live with him in Brussels, Belgium. "He's very sweet and quiet," Delacroix told The Dodo. "He likes to cuddle but never invades people's space, and his favorite thing is to meet new dogs."

Gordon Delacroix

The senior dog has played a huge role in his best friend's life, and even starred in one of Delacroix's band's music videos. He also frequently accompanies the band to the studio ...

Gordon Delacroix

... and was even featured in a magazine article about the band.

Gordon Delacroix

Birdy is getting older now, and his family fears that his life may be nearing the end, as he was recently diagnosed with cancer - but that hasn't stopped him from enjoying every single day. "These days he's been fading a little, though he still very much enjoys going to the park and meeting other dogs," Delacroix said. "We're going to an aqua gym/physiotherapy thing with him twice a week; it helps to keep his legs muscles and 'unlocks' his joints."

Gordon Delacroix

Birdy's dad clearly loves him very much, and will continue to celebrate his long, happy life until his very last day.

Gordon Delacroix
If you've ever given someone else a hug, or stroked a child's hair when they're crying, you're basically one big ape. Primates of all kinds use grooming to reassure each other, make peace when conflict arises and strengthen relationships.

This browser does not support the video tag. Giphy

And these grooming sessions can last from just a few minutes to a few HOURS. "Understanding something about great apes often also helps us understand something about ourselves," Gisela Kaplan, an adjunct professor at the Center for Neuroscience and Animal Behavior at the University of New England in Australia, told The Dodo. "Grooming behavior is a very good example ... its importance to peace, a sense of belonging, friendship and support." Some apes will even use special signals to ask to be groomed after they've gotten tired of grooming a friend - a sort of "you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours" philosophy. This is called reciprocal altruism.

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Orangutan mom and daughter snuggling up together | Shutterstock

But this isn't always the case - some primates have been observed grooming a friend, apparently without asking for anything at all in return. Researchers have hypothesized that these individuals have an altogether different sense of altruism, and that their guilt-trip-free grooming favors aim not to satisfy their own needs, but to tighten bonds among the community.

A couple of Japanese macaques de-stressing through de-lousing | Shutterstock

Kaplan cautioned that, while apes are good at remembering to tighten bonds, some humans today might be missing out on this simple, primal need. "So many people now, stuck behind computers and iPads, are missing out on their experience of touch," she said. "I am not surprised that depression and suicide are on the increase as a result of serious physical self-alienation." So, remember to occasionally channel your wild, ape ancestors: Reach out and give a friend an actual hug (or even just pick a piece of dust out of his beard). It's good for you.
<p>Shutterstock</p>

SeaWorld's future is looking dimmer. On Friday morning, the company's stock reached $16.21 - its lowest point in more than a year. The bad news comes just days after a video surfaced showing Morgan, a SeaWorld-owned, wild-caught orca on loan to Spain's Loro Parque, beaching herself in an effort to get away from the bullying of other orcas in her tiny tank.

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Google Finance

Ever since the 2013 release of "Blackfish," the film that brought the marine park's numerous animal welfare issues to the public eye, SeaWorld has been facing an uphill battle. For years, the company has been saying that the "Blackfish" facts were wrong, and, until recently, denied that the film had significantly affected SeaWorld's performance. Reduced attendance at the parks was largely blamed on bad weather or poorly timed holiday weekends - a key traffic source for amusement parks. But its stock chart tells a different story. Before "Blackfish," SeaWorld's stock was hovering just shy of $40 per share. After July 19, the day "Blackfish" was released, the stock took a sharp dive, from which it never recovered. Since August 2014, the stock has rarely gone above $20, a 50 percent drop from the pre-"Blackfish" days.

Google Finance

Since then, the stock has acted as a barometer for the company's woes, dropping each time some new revelation about the company's alleged animal mistreatment or internal reorganizing came to light. But even then, Thursday's numbers appear to be the second-lowest stock price in the last five years - the one exception came in December 2014, when SeaWorld's shares hit $15.77 the day after then-CEO Jim Atchison stepped down.

Google Finance
<p>Shutterstock</p>

Sometimes it feels like things will never change for animals in factory farms - but today is not one of those days. In a move animal advocates are calling "historic," the United Egg Producers (UEP), which represents 95 percent of egg producers in the U.S., has announced it will end "chick culling" by 2020, or as soon as it is feasible. "United Egg Producers (UEP) and our farmer-members have an obligation to study and adopt practices that improve animal welfare," Chad Gregory, president and CEO of the UEP, said in a press release. "Our members recognize that this extends to the practice of male chick culling at hatcheries."

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Shutterstock

Currently, 250 million lives are wasted by the egg industry each year, since it has no use for chickens who don't lay eggs - and that means male chicks. Traditionally, factory farms have simply shredded or suffocated the baby animals just after they're born. But this new decision "will virtually eliminate this practice in the American egg industry," according to The Humane League. "This statement came from months of negotiations and meetings with the UEP," David Coman-Hidy, executive director of The Humane League, told The Dodo. "Of course, this agreement followed years of successful campaigning to abolish battery cages." Battery cages are cramped spaces where chickens can hardly move. The Humane League rallied against the practice, and won: Over 150 companies, including Walmart, Kroger, Sodexo, ConAgra and Denny's made commitments to stop sourcing eggs from farms that use these cages.

Shutterstock

The Humane League approached the UEP early in 2016 to talk about ending chick culling. They came up with a solution: Egg producers will implement a new technology called "embryo-sexing technology," invented by German scientists, that determines the sex of each egg before the chick develops, eliminating male chicks from being born just to die. "UEP and our egg farmer members support the elimination of day-old male chick culling after hatch for the laying industry," the organization said in a statement. "We are aware that there are a number of international research initiatives underway in this area, and we encourage the development of an alternative with the goal of eliminating the culling of day-old male chicks by 2020 or as soon as it is commercially available and economically feasible ... [A] breakthrough in this area will be a welcome development."

Shutterstock
A video showing what happens when you Google three black teenagers has sparked a discussion about racial bias online.

In the video, Kabir Alli Google image searches for the term three black teenagers, which mostly returns what appear to be prison mugshots. But when he searches for three white teenagers he gets pictures of mostly preppy-looking, khaki-wearing teenagers.

I had actually heard about this search from one of my friends and just wanted to see everything for myself. I didnt think it would actually be true, Alli told USA TODAY. When I saw the results I was nothing short of shocked.

The video has been shared more than 60,000 times since it was posted to Twitter on Tuesday. Numerous other media outlets have also shared it. On Thursday, three black teenagers became a trending term on Google as thousands tested the experiment along with #threeblackteenagers.

Others pointed out that many media outlets used the high school yearbook photo of Brock Turner, who was convicted in a high-profile Stanford University sexual assault, instead of his mugshot.

Some have complained that Googles image search is racist, but Alli blames the system, not the company.

I understand its all just an algorithm based on most visited pages but Google should be able to have more control over something like that, Alli told USA TODAY.

In a statement emailed to USA TODAY, Google said its search results simply mirror social biases and are not a reflection of the companys values.

This means that sometimes unpleasant portrayals of sensitive subject matter online can affect what image search results appear for a given query, the statement sent to USA TODAY read. These results dont reflect Googles own opinions or beliefs  as a company, we strongly value a diversity of perspectives, ideas and cultures.

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The Ontario government is being urged to make a major investment in the development of driverless car technology to help the provinces auto industry compete on a global scale.

The proposed program would see the province invest $65 million to stimulate a range of projects, including a real-life driverless test centre, likely in Stratford, according to a confidential report obtained by the Toronto Star.

Industry would provide matching contributions, in cash and in kind, for a total of $130 million over a five-year program, the report by the Ontario Centres of Excellence says.

With most auto industry investment in basic assembly line jobs going to Mexico, Ontario needs to reposition itself as a high-tech auto manufacturing centre to remain globally competitive, the report written for the Ontario government says.

The draft proposal, dated May 2016, is expected to go to Treasury Board for consideration. No date has been set.

Ontario has the ideal conditions for technology adoption from the automotive parts and technology sectors, the report says.

The province has the largest cluster of information technology companies outside of Silicon Valley and is also home to five major automakers, nine universities and 24 auto-research programs, the report says.

But other jurisdictions are pulling ahead in the global race to develop cars that can communicate with the road and with each other, the Conference Board of Canada has warned.

California and Michigan have each created simulated test facilities for driverless cars, the report by the Centres of Excellence notes, citing GoMentum and MCity as examples.

Under the draft proposal, nearly half the provincial funds  $30 million  would go toward supporting the development of new products by automakers and technology companies, the report says.

Another $5 million would be earmarked for a live demonstration zone, likely in Stratford because of its advanced city-wide WiFi network, the report says.

Five other locations  Oshawa, Waterloo, Hamilton, London/Windsor and Ottawa  would each get $5 million to encourage the development of driverless car technologies.

The final $5 million would be devoted to creating internships in the field for recent post-secondary school graduates.

Industry would provide matching contributions. Companies interested in contributing cash or in-kind to the program include Google, Magna, Blackberrys QNX, IBM Canada and General Motors, the report says.

The Ontario Centres of Excellence, which delivers innovative programs on behalf of the province, would oversee the proposal, which builds on an existing Connected Vehicle/Automated Vehicle program.

That two-year-old program has provided $2.95 million in funding to various connected car/autonomous car demonstrations projects.

The proposal comes nine months after Ontario Transportation Minister Steven Del Duca announced the province would allow driverless cars to be tested on public roads under certain limited conditions.

The move paved the way for the Automakers Parts Manufacturers Association of Canada to apply for funding for a demonstration project, with the support of Stratford Mayor Dan Mathieson, who sees it as a way to promote innovation and jobs in his city.

Windsor Mayor Drew Dilkens has also made a pitch to become a test centre, noting Windsor is a mid-sized city close to the U.S. border.

The Ontario government said in its 2016-17 budget that it would support the commercialization and widespread adoption of made-in-Ontario disruptive technologies, citing the connected car as an example.

Around the world, major automotive and technology companies are promoting driverless cars as safer, less polluting and a way to cut traffic congestion.

Most major automakers are experimenting with driverless features such as lane change assistance, while tech giant Google has been testing a fully driverless, albeit slow-moving, vehicle.

The Conference Board of Canada has warned that Canada needs to move fast to capitalize on the industrys potential. Driverless cars could drive $65 billion a year in benefits to Canadians in reduced collisions, traffic congestion and pollution.

Failure to act could mean Canadian companies lose out on their fair share of the emerging global market for automated vehicles, the board warned in January 2015, noting that BlackBerrys QNX is one of the industrys emerging superstars. QNX already makes software that runs in most of the worlds cars.

Where the money could go

Stratford: $5 million to test driverless-car features under real-life driving and weather conditions. Through the Auto Parts Manufacturers Association of Canada, a fleet of 20 vehicles, including 10 public transit and municipal fleet vehicles, would become the platform for demonstrating up to 200 new connected car technologies using the citys extensive WiFi network.

Waterloo Region: $5 million to help hardware makers develop, test and manufacture equipment for connected car networks. Through the Smart Manufacturing Campus in Kitchener, the program would provide entrepreneurs with access to 3D printing equipment, radio frequency testing, contract manufacturing and mentors.

Hamilton Region: $5 million to develop expertise in smart infrastructure and big data by connecting partners and start-ups through Hamiltons Innovation Factory and also McMaster Universitys Automotive Research Centre.

Oshawa/GTA Region: $5 million to integrate and validate new vehicle technologies for the connected car of the future, based at the University Of Ontario Institute of Technologys automotive centre of excellence in partnership with Durham College and the Spark Centre.

London/Windsor: $5 million to develop vehicle-to-passenger technologies such as monitoring the drivers health or connecting them to driverless features such as video conferencing. The program would be split between the University of Windsor and Western Ontario.

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The Trudeau government is insisting that medical assistance in dying should only be available to Canadians near death, showing no inclination to accept a Senate amendment to expand the right to those suffering from non-terminal conditions.

Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould says the Senate amendment upsets the delicate balance the government has struck in Bill C-14 between respecting personal autonomy and protecting the vulnerable.

The amendment, passed late Wednesday, knocks out the central pillar underpinning the governments proposed new law as assisted dying.

It deletes the requirement that only those whose natural death is reasonably foreseeable should be eligible to seek medical help to end their lives. And it replaces the bills restrictive eligibility standard with the more permissive criteria set out in last years landmark Supreme Court ruling, which struck down the ban on medically assisted dying.

The amendment that was passed last night is a significant one, Wilson-Raybould said Thursday.

It will broaden the regime of medical assistance in dying in this country and we have sought to ensure that we, at every step, find the right balance that is required for such a turn in direction.

Health Minister Jane Philpott said shes personally concerned that the amendment would mean people suffering strictly from mental illnesses would be eligible for assisted dying.

We stand by the cohesiveness, the integrity of the piece of legislation that we put forward, that strikes that balance that we believe is necessary, that has had broad public support, that has been supported in a vote in the House of Commons, Philpott said.

The ministers did not specifically say that the government will formally reject the amendment, which is just the first of many the Senate is expected to pass. Its up to the House of Commons to determine whether to accept or reject amendments from the upper house.

But their continued defence of the bill and their dismissal of any substantive changes sets up the potential for a deadlock between the two houses of Parliament.

Interim Conservative leader Rona Ambrose said the apparent collision course between the two chambers is a sign of a bigger problem.

We have the courts making laws in this country and now we have an unelected Senate changing the laws of an elected House, Ambrose told a news conference Thursday.

Theres even a larger debate here, which I think is upsetting a lot of my constituents and a lot of people across the country.

Ambrose agreed with Wilson-Raybould that the bill strikes the right balance, although she actually voted against it.

The Senate is expected to continue debating the bill and voting on other amendments into next week.

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CFB BORDEN, ONT.Prime Minister Justin Trudeau helped unveil Canadas newest war monument on Thursday in a ceremony marking the 100th anniversary of the countrys largest military base.

Speaking in bright sunshine before hundreds of dignitaries, armed forces personnel and members of the public, Trudeau praised the efforts of veterans, those who have died in battle, and those who currently serve.

Canada and Canadians have earned respect around the world, he said, not just because we are polite or friendly and peaceable.

The reason the world pays heed to Canada is because we fought like lions in the trenches of World War I, on the beaches of World War II, and in theatres and conflicts scattered around the globe, Trudeau said.

We showed our ability to stand for our values, and fight and sacrifice for them in faraway places.

With the pomp and ceremony befitting the occasion, sacred soil from the First World War battle of Vimy Ridge brought back to Canada last year was placed in an opening in the new memorial wall to serve as a permanent reminder of, and tribute to, those whose blood drenched the killing fields in France 99 years ago.

We remember their courage and their sacrifice with a memorial that, like the resolve of Canadians themselves, survived a Second World War, Trudeau said.

Nearly a century after their loss, Canada remembers and continues to mourn.

The monument  a nine-metre polished black and white granite wall along with a bronze statue of a bugler nearby  forms the ceremonial northern entrance to Canadian Forces Base Borden near, Barrie, Ont.

The project was designed by Canadian artist and sculptor Marlene Hilton Moore. Funds for the monument were largely raised locally.

About two million military personnel have trained at Borden over the past century and about 20,000 more soldiers, sailors and airmen train at the base every year.

Trudeau said the country was in the process of reinvigorating its role as peacekeepers and stepping up its efforts to engage constructively with the rest of the world.

Canada is committed to playing our part, indeed, to continue to punch well above our weight, the prime minister said.

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EDMONTONSouth African firefighters who joined the battle against the Fort McMurray blaze will get every penny they were promised, Alberta Premier Rachel Notley said Thursday.

I can say right now that every hour that every firefighter from South Africa  or anywhere else  has worked on these fires will be compensated in accordance with our laws in this province, Notley said in Calgary.

The South African group that employs the 300 workers said they would be leaving after only a week on the job because of a pay dispute. The organization Working on Fire said senior managers were coming to Canada to address concerns and oversee the return.

Notley said the province contracted with the agency to pay the firefighters roughly $170 a day. That works out to $21.25 an hour for an eight-hour shift. Food, lodging and travel were also covered by the government.

Firefighter Ditiro Moseki told Edmonton radio station CHED that hes been working 12-hour shifts and getting paid $50 a day. He said a news story he and some of his co-workers saw from South Africa says the employer is paying them $21 an hour.

Comparing the $21 per hour to that $50 that they are going to give us today, there is a serious difference there, he said.

Working on Fire says it never agreed to pay anyone $21 an hour.

The agency said in a statement that the agreement called for the firefighters to earn the stipend, plus any overtime, they usually receive back home. They were to receive an extra $50 a day for working in Canada  $15 up front and $35 when they return.

Spokesman Linton Rensburg said in an email to The Canadian Press that the normal stipend is the Canadian equivalent of between $200 and $1,200 a month depending on rank.

Rensburg was not immediately available to discuss the apparent discrepancies after Notley released Albertas figures.

The premier said her government is investigating.

Alberta engaged in a contract that was constructed with the understanding that it would facilitate minimum levels of pay to those firefighters, she said.

We were disturbed to learn very recently the reports that that has not carried through to the firefighters. While it is a dispute between the firefighters and their agency ... its not acceptable to me and to my government that we would have people working for wages in our province that do not align with our labour laws.

Albertas minimum wage is $11.20 per hour.

She said any future contracts with agencies outside Albertas jurisdiction will be reviewed to ensure they comply.

Alberta Federation of Labour president Gil McGowan was pleased with the governments quick response.

Its clear that these workers were poorly treated by the agency that brought them over. The good news is that the Alberta government is taking what we would describe as quick and appropriate action.

The South Africans deployment in Alberta started with much fanfare when they arrived at the Edmonton airport May 29. The firefighters sang and danced and expressed their excitement at being able to help.

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OTTAWAA major showdown on Parliament Hill is taking shape as the Senate voted over three days to dramatically rewrite the Liberal governments medically-assisted dying bill.

A leading Conservative, Sen. Claude Carignan, warned that if the elected Commons doesnt accept the Senates advice and sends it back in its original form, it would be rejected by the Senate. A bill cannot become law unless it has the approval of both houses of Parliament.

Government representatives cautioned senators Friday against thwarting the will of the elected House and some senators expressed unease at the prospect. But others flexed their muscle.

By weeks end, senators had voted to: remove the end-of-life criteria the government has made a central part of Bill C-14; to require a palliative care consultation for patients seeking a medically-assisted death, and to bar a beneficiary from helping a loved one to die  three major changes that each passed with the support of just 40 or so senators. Not all 86 senators were present for the votes which crossed party lines.

Senators have so far rejected four other amendments, aimed at boosting safeguards for institutions or medical practitioners who do not want to aid in an assisted death, or providing greater protection for vulnerable, disabled, depressed or mentally ill patients whom the government says might be at risk under a broader bill. Those who did so said the bill already contains sufficient protection, such as a requirement that two independent physicians sign off on a request, and a 10-day waiting period before a request is carried out.

More changes will be voted on next week, including a proposal by independent Liberal Sen. James Cowan to allow advance directives by patients facing dementia or other diagnoses likely to affect their future decision-making capacity  an issue the Liberal government has put off for future study.

The Liberal governments representative in the upper chamber, Sen. Peter Harder, said Friday the amendments substantially gut the bill and cautioned if the Senates amended bill is later rejected by the Commons in a vote that crosses party lines, senators would have to accept it.

I think Canadians want parliament to work, Harder said. The sober second thought is not the right to be the final thought.

Trudeaus senior cabinet minister, Ralph Goodale, said tradition dictates that the senate defer to the Commons. Theres a hole in the rules because theres no way where this ping-pong game actually comes to an end. In theory it could go on forever, now that begs the question . . . where does the ultimate authority lie?

The moral authority rests with those who are elected, Goodale said.

Independent Sen. John Wallace, a Conservative appointment from New Brunswick, said he feels very uneasy with the process unfolding and no sense yet of what the final bill will look like. I would say the senates role is not to develop and create social policy, he said. We are a complementary legislative body, in my view its up to the House to make the final determination.

Leading independent, Conservative and independent Liberal senators, however, stressed the Senate was entitled to press its case, and urged the Commons to wait to see the final version after next weeks votes.

If our amendments are completely rejected and this bill comes back in its original form to the senate, I think it is at risk to be completely rejected, Carignan said. He said the Senates legitimacy to rewrite the bill comes from the constitution and our system of appointment. Judges are also appointed ... We have constitutional duties ... its to give our advice to the House and thats exactly what we are doing.

Sen. Serge Joyal sponsored the biggest change to expand the eligibility criteria to include those whose illness is not terminal but is irremediable and causes intolerable suffering to a person. He said the Senate isnt concerned with electoral preoccupations but is looking at more the common good, the longer perspective. He, too, pointed to the constitutional duty to review bills, saying senators are justified to intervene in legislation when Charter rights are at stake or when minority rights are at stake.

But just as in the Commons, the debate over assisted suicide has seen emotional moments.

Conservative Sen. Josee Verner, in treatment for a devastating diagnosis of advanced colorectal cancer, returned briefly to urge her peers to find a solution to the impasse. She will miss the final vote, she said, but added: I want to make it clear that passing a bad bill and defeating the bill are not our only two options. We have a third option: an amended bill . . . that eliminates, among other things, the reasonably foreseeable natural death criterion so that people like Kay Carter (the woman behind the successful Supreme Court case) and others can choose how they want to die. That is my wish, too.

Conservative Sen. Denise Batters cited the suicide of her husband, former MP Dave Batters, and his struggles with depression and anxiety. She appealed for psychiatric assessments and longer waiting periods in cases where a patient with a grievous physical illness also suffers from mental illness. Her amendments were defeated but she said she does not favour the bill bouncing back and forth between two legislative chambers. Im hopeful that we get a few amendments that are actually clearing up some holes, she said. Safeguards are needed in this bill and thats what Canadians have demanded consistently.

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The Trudeau Interview, fourth in a five-part series

Canada would be seen as a banana republic if it scrapped a $15-billion deal to sell armed vehicles to Saudi Arabia, Justin Trudeau says.

People have to know that when you sign a deal with Canada, a change in governments wont immediately scrap the jobs and benefits coming from it, the prime minister said in an interview in his office in Parliaments Centre Block. Because were not a banana republic.

The prime ministers remarks constituted his most forceful defence yet of an arms deal that promises substantial economic benefits, but has turned into a public-relations nightmare for a government that prizes itself as a human-rights champion.

The deal, reached in 2014 between the Conservative government of Stephen Harper and the Saudi regime, gives General Dynamics Land Systems Canada a 15-year contract to sell light armoured vehicles to the Saudi Arabian National Guard. Thats the unit of the Saudi security apparatus dedicated to containing internal unrest. That raises the prospect of Canadian-made vehicles, some fiercely armed with 105-mm guns, being turned some day against pro-democracy protesters by a regime that brooks no opposition and is particularly oppressive of womens rights.

In his interview with the Star, Trudeau suggested he doesnt much like the Saudi deal and will seek to avoid comparable agreements in the future. But he insists hes stuck with this one.

We inherited the contract that was signed with Saudi Arabia, he said. Going forward, we will make sure that we are much more rigorous and transparent about living up to Canadians expectations. But, at the same time, we cant turn around and cancel a contract like that without putting in jeopardy Canadas business relationships with countries around the world.

Striking that balance between commerce and rights is really important, Trudeau said. I think that Canadians in general very much understand . . . that we need to engage in the world and stand up for human rights. And getting both of those things right is really important. Its something that Canadians generally feel the last gang  Harpers Conservatives  didnt do a very good job on.

The Saudi arms deal is hardly the only foreign-policy file on which Trudeau has struggled to find his footing. The new prime minister left immediately after his government was sworn in last November on a string of foreign trips  to Turkey, the Philippines, Malta and Paris. Only the last stop, the Paris climate conference, was one he was at all eager to make. Aides to Trudeau grumbled that the rest were largely a distraction from the early work of a new government with a heavy and pressing domestic agenda.Ever since, Trudeau has basked in adulatory coverage abroad. He is on the cover of this weeks Le Nouvel Observateur, a French newsmagazine, for a story that suggests Canada could be a model for France. But he has also been criticized for the way he conducts his foreign policy.

China is another example. Last week Chinas foreign minister, Wang Yi, berated a Canadian reporter for asking about the countrys human-rights record. Canadas foreign minister, Stephane Dion, listened silently and took two days to express support for the reporter on Twitter.

In his Star interview, Trudeau said big global players like China need to do a better job of respecting human rights. But that remark was prefaced with a long explanation of Chinas potential as an export market for Canada.

I think Canada needs to engage more fully in the world in commerce. China is a growing opportunity, not just as a market  because 300 million new members of the middle class makes a big difference in the kind of products Canada can export. And higher-value products, not just natural resources.

But Canadian exports are valuable precisely because Canada is admired around the world, Trudeau said, and blowing that advantage by overlooking human-rights concerns would be a false economy. If a middle-class family in Shanghai or Guangzhou is looking for a good-quality product, we want them to look at a maple leaf and say, OK, its good quality,  he said.

Now, what goes into the brand of a country? Well, obviously its not just environmental sustainability and good health care for our workers. Its also human rights and respect for individuals. So its part of Canadas identity that we stand up for human rights.

Trudeau said that once when he travelled with his father, former prime minister Pierre Trudeau, in China after the elder Trudeaus retirement, he asked whether his father had discussed the bloody repression of the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests with the Chinese leadership.

And the answer was, Yes, I did, and they instantly started talking about indigenous Canadians and how we werent doing very well on human rights either,  Trudeau recalled.

Well, Im very aware that this is now something were working on significantly here at home, to improve the situation and the relationship with indigenous Canadians.

Paul Wells is a National Affairs Columnist

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Mayor John Tory voted in favour of allowing residential homes to be built next to a GO Transit maintenance yard at the urging of allied Etobicoke councillors, ignoring the chief planners warning that the move threatens the mayors own signature SmartTrack transit plans.

Both senior city staff and officials from the provincial transit arm Metrolinx warned council that changes to allow residential development on a sliver of employment lands (zoned for industrial, commercial and institutional use) next to the rail facility in south Etobicoke would affect provincial plans for expanded, electrified GO service known as Regional Express Rail (RER).

Those expansion plans are directly linked to Torys own chief campaign promise to create a localized heavy-rail service using existing GO rail tracks, with additional stations in Toronto, which he calls SmartTrack.

The Willowbrook yard is a critical, critical facility for delivering on RER and SmartTrack, the citys chief planner Jennifer Keesmaat told council Wednesday. In the absence of the opportunity to expand that facility, it is very difficult to, in fact, expand the transit uses along our heavy rail corridors in the region.

The mayors spokesperson Amanda Galbraith said Metrolinx is in the process of purchasing lands along the rail corridor and that the decision by council allows the city to look at all options on how to best use land near our rail corridors.

SmartTrack is moving forward, thanks in part to our strong working relationship with Metrolinx and the provincial government, she said. We remain in close communication with them on this and all elements of our joint transit expansion.

After city staff reviewed the land uses in the area of Royal York Rd. and the rail corridor  a process involving public consultations that took two years  last month they recommended some of the employment lands could be converted to mixed use areas, but in doing so, still protect the Willowbrook site for future transit expansion. Keesmaat said local residents supported keeping the employment lands as a buffer.

But at planning and growth committee in May, Councillor Justin Di Ciano (Ward 5 Etobicoke-Lakeshore) urged councillors to allow residential development on a section of land south of Judson St. between Royal York and Willowbrook roads, which is not in his ward. The site is just north of the rail facilities.

As the CBC first reported, Dunpar Developments has applied to the city to build 72 townhomes and lowrise commercial buildings at that site.

The broadcaster reported and the Star has confirmed through public records that there are ties between Di Ciano and the developer through his twin brother, Julien Di Ciano, who lists Dunpar as a former employer.

Julien Di Ciano incorporated Fountain Hill Construction and Consulting last year at a building on Islington Ave. that is owned by a numbered company registered to Dunpars president John Zanini.

Di Ciano told council earlier this week that he had sought expert legal advice and that advice was crystal clear that he was not in a conflict of interest on the issue and that he looked forward to participating in the debate.

Reached by the Star on Thursday afternoon, Justin Di Ciano said these are complex planning issues and he didnt have time to adequately reply by the Stars deadline.

On Wednesday, area councillor Mark Grimes (Ward 6 Etobicoke-Lakeshore) defended the requested changes to land use, saying a cement-mixing facility currently on the lands caused ongoing problems for nearby residents. Dunpar has said it has a conditional offer to buy the property.

Its a nightmare Im trying to solve . . . this is the light at the end of the tunnel for the residents of my ward, Grimes said.

Council, including Tory, supported the local councillors. The item passed as amended, 21-15. Di Ciano was not present for the vote.

Metrolinx spokesperson Anne Marie Aikins said the provinces RER plans for expanded service mean many more trains moving through the facility and work around the clock to clean and service vehicles, which will include lights and loud noises.

I think our main concern is that the use is incompatible, she said. If you have residents living right beside a facility like that, a very busy facility like that, it just isnt a compatible use. We dont want to set ourselves up to not be a good neighbour right from the beginning.

Metrolinxs chief operating officer Greg Percy wrote to council June 2 to oppose the planning committees recommendations.

It is our opinion that residential development, which is allowed under the mixed use designation, would adversely affect Willowbrooks current rail yard . . . and maintenance operations and limit future expansion anticipated under the Regional Express Rail (RER) program, he wrote.

Keesmaat argued Wednesday that homes next to the rail yard would not be livable and that the city could be challenged at the Ontario Municipal Board (OMB).

Councillors who voted to back city staff recommendations say they are baffled by the mayors position.

The Mimico decision is possibly the worst decision weve made so far this term, said Councillor Gord Perks on Thursday. It jeopardizes the RER, and SmartTrack therefore. It jeopardizes some existing businesses and jobs, and it undermines the citys position every time we try to protect employment lands right across the city.

He said the way the city designates employment lands is done to intentionally keep residents way from noisy and dirty uses, but Wednesdays vote puts them closer.

Metrolinx has the option of challenging councils decision at the OMB, but the agency hasnt yet decided whether to do so.

Perks noted that if the issue does go before the OMB, city planning staff wont be able to defend the citys position, since council voted to ignore their advice about the rail yard. Outside planners willing to defend that position would have to be hired instead.

With files from Ben Spurr

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Joel Reid witnessed Torontos first fatal shooting at a high school, the 2007 murder of Grade 9 student Jordan Manners in the halls of C.W. Jefferys Collegiate Institute.

In a separate shooting, he lost his best friend.

Reid had, in the words of Ontario Superior Court Justice Edward Morgan, a difficult childhood punctuated by traumatic events. It took its toll.

The young man dropped out of school, developed a drug problem, started selling. He was not a big-time dealer, not even middle; he sold enough crack to sustain his own habit, and had been charged with a series of low-level possession and trafficking offences.

But instead of sending Reid to jail for six to 12 months  the sentence sought by the Crown for three counts of trafficking in crack cocaine and one count of possession of the proceeds of crime  Morgan recently handed down whats known as a conditional sentence, more commonly known as house arrest.

In a decision now getting attention in Torontos legal community and beyond, Morgan explains that he considered both Reids personal circumstances and societal forces  including anti-black racism and the over-incarceration of people from the black community.

While this court is not in a position to remedy the societal issues, it can and should take the societal context into account in fashioning an appropriate sentence for an individual offender, Morgan wrote in his reasons released May 25.

Citing stark statistics about the overrepresentation of members of the black community in prisons  the Office of the Correctional Investigator recently found the number of federally incarcerated black inmates has increased by 80 per cent over the last decade  Morgan said it was evident more attention should focused on the impact of the criminal justice system on black Canadians.

There are a number of sociological causes for the overrepresentation of African Canadians in prisons and the justice system, Morgan wrote, going on to quote a previous court decision stating anti-black discrimination undoubtedly contributes to many of these underlying societal causes.

In the U.S., Morgan noted, crack especially has been associated with a glut of young, minority men serving draconian sentences for nonviolent and low-level crack charges.

Also taken consideration was the fact that Reid had taken responsibility for his action, has been drug-free for the past year, and posed no safety threat.

Morgan was impressed the self-awareness evident in Reids pre-sentencing report.

I am a young man who has made poor choices for himself but I am making changes to better myself, Reid wrote. I do not want to be that 30-year-old black man who is a lost cause as I have potential to do something with my life.

Within the criminal justice system it has long been a principle of sentencing that the circumstances of both the offence and the offender are relevant.

Chris Rudnicki, Reids lawyer, said the sentence should send a message to lawyers that this is something that they can and should bring up in sentencing in the appropriate cases.

Anti-black racism affects black people and their interaction with the criminal justice system at every stage, from when theyre arrested  and whether they are arrested  to the bail stage when they have to spend time in custody awaiting trial, to the sentencing phase when they are more likely to receive harsher sentences, he said.

All of that contributes to the over-incarceration of black people and so it is entirely appropriate to take into consideration.

Faisal Mirza, a Toronto-area criminal lawyer, says a whole generation of lawyers have been trying to get the courts to acknowledge the larger social context in sentences.

He senses a shift in both public sentiment and within the legal community that could indicate decisions such as Morgans could happen with greater frequency.

In Halifax, for instance, a judge is now considering whether discrimination against African Canadians in Nova Scotia should be a factor in the sentencing of Kale Leonard Gabriel, a black man convicted of second-degree murder in the 2010 death of Ryan White.

There is a better understanding of a number of issues when it comes to criminal law, overreliance on incarceration, but even on a broader social level, we recognize that some of the policies and ideas of the past are not working, Mirza said. They were either based on flawed presumptions or even intolerance.

Both Mirza and Rudnicki, however, note that Reid was only eligible for a conditional sentence because the offences were committed in 2011  prior to the introduction of a new regime limiting such sentences by the federal Conservative government of the day.

Its a signal to the federal government that this has to be looked at again, Mirza said.

Wendy Gillis can be reached at wgillis@thestar.ca

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A woman accused of killing her stepdaughter was the architect of the girls misery, prosecutors argued Thursday as they recounted for a Toronto jury the harrowing starvation and abuse the teen was subjected to more than two decades ago.

The assertion from the Crown was made in closing arguments at the trial of Elaine Biddersingh, who has pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder in the death of 17-year-old Melonie Biddersingh.

The girls body was found in a burning suitcase in an industrial parking lot north of Toronto in 1994 but went unidentified for years until 2011, when Biddersingh told an Ontario pastor the girl had died like a dog.

Melonies father, Everton Bidderisngh, was found guilty in January of first-degree murder in his daughters death, but jurors at Elaine Biddersinghs trial were instructed to disregard that conviction as completely irrelevant to their case.

Elaine failed in her duties as a parent, Crown prosecutor Anna Tenhouse told the jury. Elaine was the mastermind and Everton was the fist.

Melonie came to Canada from Jamaica in 1991 with two brothers to live with her father and her stepmother in Toronto. The trial has heard that the children, who had lived in extreme poverty, saw the move as a great opportunity that would lead to a brighter future.

Instead of dreams, that petite little girl endured abuse and in a short three and a half years she lost weight and she pined away, all at the hands of Elaine and Everton Biddersingh, Tenhouse said.

Melonies younger brother died in an accident in 1992, the trial heard, and Melonie and her older brother Cleons treatment worsened significantly over time.

The children were scared of Elaine, Tenhouse said. She ruled the house.

The trial heard directly from Cleon, who testified about the prolonged physical and emotional abuse his sister suffered.

Melonie was kicked, slapped and thrown against walls by her father, her stepmother once threw a mug at her head so hard it broke, she routinely had her head put down a flushing toilet, she was deprived of food, made to sleep on the floor, confined to the apartment and eventually chained to the furniture, the trial heard.

Elaine was convinced Melonie had brought a curse on her home, Tenhouse said. Elaine played a role in everything that happened in that apartment.

The trial also heard from Cleon that Melonies physical abuse often followed heated fights between his father and his stepmother.

Everton never initiated a beating unless it was about something Elaine complained about, Tenhouse said. Melonie seemed to get the worst of the punishments.

The children were not sent to school, the trial heard. They were saddled with a host of chores, and Melonie in particular had to clean the house, wash clothes in a bathtub and was responsible for caring for Biddersinghs baby girl, the trial heard.

As Melonies condition worsened under the treatment of her father and stepmother, she cried with pain, had trouble moving and was clearly in need of medical attention, Tenhouse said.

Everyone in the apartment knew that Melonie was sick, Tenhouse said. Cleon said Melonie looked like someone who was dying. No one came to Melonies aid.

Medical evidence called in the trial indicated Melonie was severely malnourished and had 21 healing fractures when she died.

One night, Melonies father woke Cleon to tell him the girl had run away and he and Elaine were going to look for her, court heard. When the couple returned hours later, they told Cleon to dispose of the cardboard Melonie slept on and the chains used to confine her.

The trial has head that Melonie drowned or nearly drowned, inhaling water shortly before her death.

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Dramatic changes to health-care services for injured workers, including a 40 per cent funding drop in rehabilitative treatment and a 30 per cent drop in drug benefit spending, is having a devastating impact on some of the provinces most vulnerable citizens, according to a letter obtained by the Star.

The letter, to be delivered Friday to senior Ontario government figures and signed by more than 140 doctors, legal clinics and labour groups, expresses deep concern about injured workers who are increasingly unable to get the treatment their doctors recommend because of significant health-care changes at the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board. The letter claims that shift is designed by the board to cut costs at the expense of injured workers.

We only have one body, said Indira Rupchand, 56, who hurt her back three years ago on a manufacturing production line. If we are hurt at work, I think we deserve to be treated with dignity and get the treatment that is recommended. Many times we are railroaded.

The board has moved away from relying on the medical advice of injured workers own doctors in favour of opinions provided by physicians in specialty clinics contracted by the WSIB, according to the letter. The board has doubled its spending on such clinics over the past 10 years.

WSIB has responded to criticisms of its health services, including a formal complaint to Ontarios ombudsman by injured worker advocates, by saying that it has confidence in the integrity of Ontarios health-care professionals and that it acts quickly to ensure workers receive timely, specialized medical care.

But critics say specialty clinics treatment programs often push injured workers back on the job before they are ready and set unrealistic recovery dates. Workers benefits are frequently cut off according to those recovery timelines, without the board ever following up with the worker or their doctor about their health.

It turns the focus away from health care and toward a date, said Maryth Yachnin, a lawyer with the Industrial Accident Victims Group of Ontario (IAVGO).

Meanwhile, the board has cut its spending on drug benefits by close to 30 per cent since 2009, according to the letter. Funding for services like physiotherapy and psychological treatment provided by doctors not affiliated with the board also plummeted by 40 per cent between 2005 and 2014. That statistic was obtained by IAVGO through a freedom of information request.

Such rehabilitative services are often vital for real, long-term recovery, Yachnin says, and are frequently recommended by injured workers own doctors  only to be ignored by the board.

(Workers) feel like they are coming up against a wall when theyre trying to get services that will actually help them recover, she told the Star. They dont listen to workers doctors and specialists.

When it comes to the WSIBs own specialty clinics, the board is setting the terms and conditions of what the (clinics) reports are providing, she added. They set out the specific way they want doctors to frame their answers . . . the answers are generally not as candid as you might see from the workers (own) doctors in our experience.

Questions about the WSIBs health-care provision have already been raised: as reported by the Star, a Hamilton-area doctor is currently suing the board and one of its private health-services contractors, claiming she was terminated after delivering a medical opinion that did not suit the WSIB.

After injuring her back in 2013, Rupchand says she received just a couple of physiotherapy sessions through one of the WSIBs specialty clinics before being told to start working again. The stress of working while still injured was the start of a downward spiral, according to the Toronto-area resident who says she has since contemplated suicide as a result of her ordeal, and is currently separated from her kids.

All this is a systematic thing with injured workers, said Rupchand, who is helping to organize a day of action on Friday to raise awareness about the issue. Ive heard people going through this so many times.

Its causing a lot of stress. Im a single mother and its hard. Thats why Im still feeling pain and thats why its so important that the WSIB listens to treating doctors, she added.

As injured workers, they dont believe us. I was never believed.

With files from Jacques Gallant

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Is it beyond belief that an older divorced South Asian woman could fall in love with a younger man?

Yes  at least in the eyes of one Canadian visa officer who questioned the legitimacy of their marriage and shattered their plans to be together.

In what their lawyer calls a case of cultural bias, Rehnuma Yusuf, 29, and her Bangladeshi husband, Munim Ahsan, 27, are now caught in a bureaucratic nightmare, fighting to reverse an immigration decision to reject their spousal sponsorship application  and facing another unbearable, lengthy wait.

The officer had this old idea of cultural norms and based the assessment on the stereotypes of how the South Asian culture should work, but not based on the reality, said lawyer Aadil Mangalji. We need these prejudicial findings overturned.

Yusuf, an administrative assistant, met Ahsan, a sound engineer, through relatives while Yusuf was visiting Bangladesh in March 2012. They got married at the end of that year, and she applied to sponsor him to Canada in May 2013.

It took immigration officials 27 months to process and reject Yusufs application on the grounds the marriage was not genuine, noting the bride is a divorcee and older than the groom  both presumably against the South Asian culture and tradition, according to Mangalji.

Recently, the Toronto woman was told she will have to wait another year and a half just to have her appeal heard at the Immigration Appeal Division (IAD), an independent tribunal that reviews these cases and deals with disputes between applicants and immigration officers.

The reason: According to the Immigration and Refugee Board, the number of adjudicators handling such cases fell from 164 to 86 amid immigration reforms introduced in 2012 by the former Conservative government.

We waited more than two years for a decision on our sponsorship. Now we have to wait 18 months for a hearing. It could take another year even if we win our appeal, and theres no guarantee well win, said Yusuf, who came here from Bangladesh with her family when she was 11.

We have been married for four years but we still havent been able to live a married life. It is causing a lot of problems in our relationship. My husband thinks that Im not working hard enough to get him here.

According to the IRB, which administers the appeals tribunal, the average processing time for these appeals now stands at 17.8 months nationally  26.8 months in Eastern Canada, 16.4 in Central Region and 9.4 for British Columbia and the Prairies.

IRB spokesperson Anna Pape said a period of high intake for cases and a reduced number of decision-makers resulted in a growing backlog of unresolved immigration appeals, such as refused sponsorship applications and removal orders, along with an increase in average processing time.

During this period, the IRB has been dealing with a backlog of refugee claims and had to assign more members to deal with those cases. As a result, there were fewer decision-makers available for assignment to the Immigration Appeal Division, said Pape.

The cases the IAD adjudicates have also become more complex. This has caused hearings to take longer than they used to. Wait times in the IAD are too long, but the division is addressing this problem.

Mitchell Goldberg, president of the Canadian Association of Refugee Lawyers, said the backlog is not just a result of dwindling resources but a conscious political decision not to appoint enough independent adjudicators to fill the tribunals capacity.

As of March of this year, there were 10,400 cases in the backlog.

Although the IAD offers alternative dispute resolution to settle cases before a full hearing, Goldberg said it is a mixed bag  about 40 to 45 per cent of all appeals are resolved without going to a full hearing.

Our clients are already separated from their spouses, and sometimes their children, while waiting over two years for their sponsorship processing. They wait to get a hearing for the appeal. Even if an appeal is accepted, they have to wait again for further processing of the sponsorship, said Goldberg. Its just unacceptable.

The IRBs Pape said the tribunal would like to cut the processing time to 10 months by reducing the backlog to 7,000 by the end of next year. More adjudicators will be joining the tribunal, she said.

The tribunal will also pilot an early informal resolution process and electronic case filing system soon, as new ways of processing appeals, Pape noted.

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It will be a good day for the House of Commons when U.S. President Barack Obama stands up to speak in the chamber at the end of this month, for a historic joint address to Parliament.

The Commons could use a good day. Despite the total makeover the chamber received in the election late last year  featuring nearly 200 rookie members of Parliament  the green-carpeted half of Parliament is increasingly looking like the least loved institution of Justin Trudeaus new Liberal government.

This week, the cabinet minister in charge of the Commons, Dominic LeBlanc, seemed to be dropping hints about leaving that job.

LeBlanc has been doing double duty as government House leader and fisheries minister since last week, after the abrupt departure of Hunter Tootoo from the Liberal cabinet and caucus.

In a speech to a World Oceans Summit on Wednesday, LeBlanc left his audience with the impression that he was already happier in his new post than he was in the job of Commons overseer. LeBlanc talked about his ambition to leave a legacy at Fisheries, and awkwardly joked that the prime minister may have been underwhelmed by the job he was doing as government House leader.

The prime minister teased me: he said he thought I was doing the House leaders job part time  so he could imagine how bad itll be now.

According to a Canadian Press report on LeBlancs speech, the House leader has already been sending stand-ins to meetings with opposition counterparts.

So maybe Trudeau was doing more than teasing his old friend. (The two have known each other since childhood.) The Commons was the scene, lets not forget, of Trudeaus worst moment so far in the public eye  the angry march across the floor and accidental elbowing of New Democrat MP Ruth Ellen Brosseau.

The prime minister didnt seem to be feeling too good about the Commons that day, perhaps reflecting a larger impatience with how things work  or dont  in that institution of Parliament. Only a couple of days before the elbowing incident, the Liberals nearly lost a vote in the Commons, despite their huge majority.

The prime minister made a pointed joke about that embarrassment last weekend at the press gallery dinner, thanking his MPs for showing up and saying they needed the practice.

Meanwhile, the same day he was teasing LeBlanc this week, Trudeau was also saying kind things about the Senate, particularly the role it might play in improving the controversial bill on assisted dying.

We look forward to seeing what suggestions the more independent and less partisan Senate has to make on this important piece of legislation, Trudeau said in reply to questions from NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair.

Mulcair and other commentators have been asking this week why the Trudeau government, at least initially, seems a lot more open to Senate suggestions on the assisted dying bill than it was to amendments in the House of Commons.

It does remain a bit of a mystery why the government went to the trouble of setting up a special committee this spring to study the issue of assisted dying, when it was always going to introduce a bill that went off in another direction from the committees recommendations.

Rob Oliphant, the Toronto MP appointed to chair that committee, couldnt support the assisted dying bill. His dissent, noteworthy enough on its own, also shines a light on a possible disconnect  status-wise  between cabinet ministers and non-cabinet ministers in this government.

Im just an obscure backbencher, one rookie MP said to me, by way of introduction, at the big Liberal convention in Winnipeg. He was making a self-deprecating joke, but it did leave me wondering what the mood was among Liberal MPs who didnt make it into cabinet. We dont hear much from them  certainly much less than we hear from the lucky few who got ministerial titles at the swearing-in last November.

Trudeau has boasted that he has an abundance of talent in that huge, 183-member caucus, but interestingly, he didnt reach into those backbench resources when he needed a replacement for Tootoo at the cabinet table this month. Why pile on extra duties to a sitting cabinet minister  one who had already seemed to be overtasked  when there are dozens of eager Liberals looking for a promotion?

All eyes will be on the House of Commons on June 29, when Obama takes the stage. Despite its faded glory in a shiny, new government, the Commons will serve as an elegant backdrop. In that capacity  as part of the background scenery, not the real action  the Commons has been getting a lot of practice these past six months.

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Premier Kathleen Wynne will spend the weekend conferring with advisers about a major cabinet shuffle and gearing up for as many as three looming byelections.

Seniors Affairs Minister Mario Sergio, 75, announced Friday that he would be stepping down from cabinet, though he will remain as York West MPP for at least the next few months.

Sergios announcement came one day after Attorney General Madeleine Meilleur, 67, said she would be quitting cabinet and soon resigning her Ottawa-Vanier seat.

Municipal Affairs and Housing Minister Ted McMeekin, 67, is also leaving cabinet, but staying on as Ancaster-Dundas-Flamborough-Westdale MPP until the 2018 provincial election.

Well-regarded in Torontos thriving Italian community and by seniors stakeholder groups, Sergio  like McMeekin  said he is stepping aside to make way for an infusion of fresh blood.

I truly believe that we have a very talented and inspiring caucus and I believe it is time to make way for a new generation of great ideas, he said.

Wynne praised Sergio, an early backer of her Liberal leadership bid after former premier Dalton McGuintys resignation in October 2012, saying he has played an enormous role in making Ontario one of the best places to age in Canada.

His work will leave a lasting legacy of many new initiatives that will benefit seniors across the province for years to come, she said.

While neither Sergio nor Meilleur have yet said when they will leave their constituencies, Wynne will soon call a summer byelection in Scarborough-Rouge River to fill the vacancy left by former Liberal MPP Bas Balkissoon, 63, who abruptly resigned in March.

As Wynne launches a youth movement for her cabinet, a big question is Jim Bradleys fate.

The 71-year-old minister without portfolio is the last remaining person to have served in all of Wynnes and McGuintys cabinets dating back to 2003.

As well, Bradley sat at former premier David Petersons cabinet table from 1985 to 1990.

He has held the key swing seat of St. Catharines for 39 years  an anniversary Wynne pointedly marked in the legislature on Thursday  and is the only Liberal from the Niagara region representing its interests in cabinet.

But whether the premier still requires his institutional knowledge and shrewd political antenna on her executive council remains to be seen.

Sources say Wynne wants to recalibrate her government for the two-year sprint to the next campaign by promoting a bevy of backbenchers.

Possible new ministers include 53-year-old Eleanor McMahon, (Burlington); Indira Naidoo-Harris, who is believed to be in her early 50s, (Halton); Kathryn McGarry, 59, (Cambridge); Daiene Vernile, 55, (Kitchener Centre); Marie-France Lalonde, 44, (OttawaOrleans); Yvan Baker, 38, (Etobicoke Centre); and Glenn Thibeault, 46, who represents Sudbury.

The Liberals, faring poorly in public-opinion polls, face challenges selling the climate change plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the controversial revamp of publicly funded autism therapy, the new Ontario Retirement Pension Plan, as well as the reforms to political fundraising laws sparked by the Star.

In a bid for a reset, Wynne will likely reorganize ministries, entailing an expansion of the cabinet from its current 27 members.

A separate infrastructure department is expected, as is the breaking apart of Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities and the Ministry of Research and Innovation.

At the same time as the premier is restructuring her government, she is facing an imminent political test.

A byelection in Scarborough-Rouge River, where the Liberals recently nominated former Canadian Tamil Congress co-ordinator Piragal Thiru, is expected to be called later this month for July.

He will try to retain the seat for the Grits in what should be a tight contest against Progressive Conservative Raymond Cho, a Toronto city councillor, and New Democrat Neethan Shan, a school board trustee,

Asked Friday about the cabinet shuffle, Deputy Premier Deb Matthews was mum.

I cant speculate on any cabinet changes, she said.

But Matthews, who is also Treasury Board president, said its not surprising that, at the midpoint of a four-year term, ministers are moving on.

Ive always thought that a certain rejuvenation is always healthy, she said.

Politics is a pretty demanding field to be in, and when people reach the point where they think its time to move on to the next chapter in their life, then I fully support that.

In the 107-member legislature, the Liberals have 58 seats, including Speaker Dave Levac, the Progressive Conservatives have 28, and the New Democrats have 20, with one vacancy.

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MOGADISHU, SOMALIAAt least 30 Ethiopian troops were killed Thursday in an attack on a base for African Union peacekeepers in central Somalia, a Somali military official said.

A suicide bomber detonated his explosives-laden vehicle early Thursday at the gates of the Ethiopian military base there before gunmen entered the base, said Mohamed Mohamud, a military officer in the town of Halgan, where the attack happened.

The death toll is likely to rise, he said.

The Islamic extremist group Al Shabab claimed it had killed 43 Ethiopian soldiers in the attack.

But the Ethiopian Communications Minister Getachew Reda told The Associated Press that the assault was repelled and that more than 100 of the attackers were killed. He did not say how many Ethiopians were killed or injured.

Ethiopian troops are pursuing the militants who fled during the firefight, he said.

The African Union peacekeeping mission in Somalia, known as AMISOM, said on Twitter that there had been attempted attack on a base run jointly by the Somali national army and African Union peacekeepers. The attackers were successfully repulsed and some of their weapons seized, it said.

Al Shabab, which has ties with Al Qaeda, is fighting to impose a strict version of Islam in this Horn of Africa nation. Despite losing a lot of ground in recent years, the armed group continues to carry out lethal attacks in many parts of the country, including near the seat of government in the capital Mogadishu.

African Union peacekeepers are trying to prevent Al Shabab from threatening the authority of the weak, Western-backed federal government in Mogadishu. Some recent attacks by Al Shabab, which opposes the presence of foreign troops in Somalia, have targeted peacekeepers.

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SAN FRANCISCOA fledgling campaign to recall the judge who sentenced a former Stanford University swimmer to six months in jail for sexually assaulting an unconscious woman gained momentum Friday as three prominent political consultants joined the effort.

The Recall Judge Aaron Persky campaign said media consultant Joe Trippi, campaign strategist John Shallman and pollster Paul Maslin would help secure the signatures and votes required to remove the Santa Clara County jurist from the bench next year.

Trippi has worked for a number of Democratic presidential candidates, while Maslin's clients include Gov. Jerry Brown and members of Congress. Shallman has worked for the president of the California Senate, who spearheaded passage of a law requiring colleges and universities to apply a "yes means yes" standard in sexual misconduct cases.

Persky was re-elected in an unopposed election Tuesday, five days after sentencing Brock Turner, 20, to six months in jail and three years' probation. The punishment for the Dayton, Ohio, native ignited intense outcry as too lenient.

Prosecutors had argued for Turner to spend six years in prison for three felony convictions that could have sent him away for 14 years.

The judge said in court last week that he followed a recommendation from the county's probation department and cited Turner's clean criminal record and the effect the conviction will have on his life.

"I have daughters in college myself, and I find it deeply disturbing that a judge like Persky could let a campus predator like Turner off with barely a slap on the wrist," Shallman said. "Justice is supposed to be blind  not stupid."

A court spokesman has said Persky is barred from commenting because Turner is appealing his convictions of felony assault and attempted rape.

Meanwhile, a group of California lawmakers joined women's rights advocates in urging the California agency that investigates complaints of judicial misconduct to take action against Persky.

Eleven Democratic state lawmakers asked the Commission on Judicial Performance to investigate and discipline the judge, alleging he may have engaged in misconduct in sentencing Turner.

The judge's decision "confirms what women already knew: That rape culture blames us for being vulnerable when crimes are committed against us, but treats the same factors  drinking, in particular  as reasons to be exceedingly lenient with rapists," Assemblywoman Susan Talamantes Eggman of Stockton said.

The lawmakers also want District Attorney Jeff Rosen to ask an appeals court to overturn the sentence. But prosecutors have said they don't think Persky's decision can be appealed because it was "authorized by law and was made by applying the correct standards."

Rosen also has said the judge should not lose his job because of the ruling.

Women's group UltraViolet submitted more than 800,000 signatures to the commission's San Francisco offices Friday in a symbolic effort for Persky's removal. The group also has filed a formal misconduct complaint.

The commission meets every six to eight weeks and usually decides whether to open an investigation within 60 days of receiving a complaint, agency attorney Victoria Henley said.

To trigger a recall election, campaign organizers need to collect signatures from 58,634 registered Santa Clara County voters. A majority vote would be required to remove the judge.

"His statements during the sentencing show that he does not understand sexual violence. He does not understand violence against women," said Stanford law professor Michele Dauber, who launched the recall campaign. "And so we are going to recall him, and we're going to replace him with someone who does."

Lawyers who have appeared in Persky's court have called him a fair and respected judge. He has no record of judicial discipline and previously worked as a prosecutor responsible for keeping sexual predators locked up.

Several prospective jurors who opposed Persky's decision refused to serve on a jury this week in an unrelated case he's handling. They were dismissed after reporting their complaints.

Online records show Turner is expected to be released from jail after three months. County jail inmates serve 50 per cent of their sentences if they keep a clean disciplinary record. Turner is being segregated from the general jail population, which is standard for high-profile inmates who could be targets.

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WASHINGTONIn her first speech as the Democratic Partys presumptive nominee, Hillary Clinton will criticize Donald Trumps positions on womens issues, a signal to the Democratic base that she intends to anchor the general election in the same slate of progressive issues she campaigned on in the primary.

Clinton is expected to make the case that for women, a Trump presidency is a risk we just cant take according to a Clinton aide. As she has on other issues  most notably in a major foreign policy speech last week  Clinton will highlight Trumps own words as evidence.

A Trump presidency would be frightening when it comes to rights, Clinton plans to say during a speech at the Planned Parenthood Action Fund membership event in Washington on Friday.

On policy, she will highlight not only his opposition to abortion and to Planned Parenthood, but also his statements about equal pay, paid family leave, and the factors he would consider in a Supreme Court nominee.

That abortion and reproductive issues will be at the core of Clintons argument against the presumptive Republican nominee is both a sign of the changing views of Americans and also of the perception among Democrats that Trump is particularly vulnerable on this front.

Clinton and her allies say that they believe they could create a historic gender gap in November with Trump as Clintons rival.

Among women, 51 per cent view Clinton favourably, while 47 per cent have an unfavourable opinion of her. Trump has a 32 per cent favourability rating among women and an eye-popping 67 per cent have an unfavourable opinion of him, according to an ABC News/Washington Post poll last month.

That same poll found a yawning gap between Trump and Clinton in terms of who was most trusted to handle issues that concern women: 66 per cent said Clinton while 23 per cent said Trump. And on abortion, a Washington Post-Kaiser Family Foundation poll in June 2015 found that 58 per cent of Americans believe the procedure should be legal in all or most cases.

The speech also comes at a time when Clinton is working to unify the party as the primary comes to a close, and it is intended to serve as a signal to Democrats that there will be no general election pivot to the centre.

It comes days after Clinton marked the historic nature of her candidacy and her likely nomination as the first female nominee of a major U.S. political party in a primary-night speech on Tuesday. In it, she placed herself squarely among generations of women leaders, including former Texas governor Ann Richards, whose daughter Cecile Richards serves as president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America.

Clinton and other party leaders have now launched an aggressive effort to bring their contentious primary to a close. Her rival, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders held meetings in Washington with several high-ranking Democrats, including President Obama, Vice President Biden, and Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid.

But the day ended with Clinton securing the endorsement of Obama and Elizabeth Warren, the senator from Massachusetts and a leader of the progressive ranks of the Democratic Party.

There will be more work to be done to convince Sanders supporters to back her in the general election. In making the case against Trump on issues that were once considered too polarizing, Clinton is signalling to Sanderss supporters and other Democrats that she will not shy away from the partys core principal issues.

The aide said that Clinton plans to continue to emphasize progressive issues  especially those impacting women and families  that have long been her convictions, even before she was in public life.

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SAN FRANCISCOWith outcry growing against those who stood by a former Stanford University swimmer who sexually assaulted an unconscious woman, a childhood friend and a high school guidance counsellor have apologized for writing letters of support urging leniency for Brock Turner.

The case against the one-time Olympic hopeful has gripped the country, with letters to a judge from Turners family and friends drawing outrage from critics who say they are shifting blame from a 20-year-old man who wont take responsibility for his actions. Meanwhile, a searing message the victim read to Turner at his sentencing has been called a courageous account of the effect the assault has had on her life.

Taking into account more than three dozen letters from character witnesses and a recommendation from the county probation department, Santa Clara County Judge Aaron Persky sentenced Turner to six months in jail and three years probation for attacking the intoxicated 23-year-old woman behind a campus dumpster in January 2015. He tried to flee, but students tackled and pinned him down until police arrived.

The judge cited Turners clean criminal record and the effect the conviction will have on his life.

The term triggered criticism that a star athlete from a privileged background had gotten special treatment. Prosecutors had asked for six years in prison.

Turner will only serve three months behind bars, with his expected release date listed as Sept. 2, according to online inmate records. County jail inmates serve 50 per cent of their sentences if they keep a clean disciplinary record.

Calls to the county Department of Correction werent immediately returned Thursday.

Defendants can solicit letters of support from family, friends and others for judges to consider before sentencing. One of them came from Kelly Owens , a guidance counsellor at Oakwood High School in Dayton, Ohio, where Turner attended.

Related:

Calls mount for removal of judge in ex-Stanford swimmer sex assault case

Video: Outrage, recall effort after Stanford rape case

Stanford sex assault victim becomes a powerful symbol of courage

She had told the court that her former student was absolutely undeserving of the outcome of a jury trial that resulted in his conviction of three felony counts of sexual assault.

I plead with you to consider the good things  the positive contributions  he can make to his community if given a chance to reclaim his life, Owens wrote.

She regrets writing a letter to the judge and acknowledged it was a mistake, her school district said in a prepared statement Wednesday.

Of course he should be held accountable, Oakwood City School District Superintendent Kyle Ramey quotes Owens as saying. I am truly sorry for the additional pain my letter has caused.

Ramey declined to comment beyond his statement or make Owens available for an interview.

The letters have come from all sides.

Turners father also wrote a letter to the judge defending his son and echoing the dozens of other letters from friends and mentors.

His life will never be the one that he dreamed about and worked so hard to achieve. That is a steep price to pay for 20 minutes of action out of his 20 plus years of his life, wrote his father, Dan A. Turner. The fact that he now has to register as a sexual offender for the rest of his life forever alters where he can live, visit, work, and how he will be able to interact with people and organizations.

Leslie Rasmussen, a childhood friend of Turners, also faced blowback for writing a supportive letter. She had blamed campus drinking culture and political correctness for his drunken life choices.

I was not there that night. I had no right to make any assumptions about the situation, according to a posting Wednesday on a Facebook page that appears to be Rasmussens. Most importantly, I did not acknowledge strongly enough the severity of Brocks crime and the suffering and pain that his victim endured, and for that lack of acknowledgement, I am deeply sorry.

Rasmussen didnt respond to messages sent via Facebook. A listed phone number appears to be disconnected.

People angry about her letter took to social media to demand Rasmussens indie rock band Good English be dumped from at least four shows that included some Brooklyn clubs hosting a small music festival.

The graphic message the victim read in court gained widespread attention as she described her anger and emptiness. Vice-president Joe Biden released an open letter to the woman Thursday.

I do not know your name  but your words are forever seared on my soul, wrote Biden, who penned the 1994 Violence Against Women Act and is involved in the White Houses Its On Us campaign against campus sexual assault. Words that should be required reading for men and women of all ages. Words that I wish with all of my heart you never had to write.

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BALTIMOREProsecutors introduced a new theory as a murder trial started for a police van driver charged in the death of Freddie Gray, a black man whose neck was broken in the back of the wagon.

Not only was Officer Caesar Goodson negligent when he didnt buckle Gray into a seat belt, prosecutors said, he intentionally wanted to injure Gray by giving him a rough ride  blowing through a stop sign and making a sharp turn at such a high speed that he crossed a double yellow line. Gray  his hands cuffed and his legs shackled  was thrown helplessly against the rear compartment, the prosecutor said.

Goodson, 46, is facing second-degree murder, manslaughter, assault and other charges. Over the past year, prosecutors had hinted that Gray was subjected to such treatment. But the accusation during opening statements Thursday was the first time they said the driver meant to hurt Gray, whose death in April 2015 touched off the worst riots in Baltimore in decades.

A rough ride is police lingo for teaching someone a lesson by putting him in a police wagon without a seat belt and driving so erratically that he is thrown around.

Chief Deputy States Attorney Michael Schatzow said the state will produce a video to help prove their case, but introducing the new theory was surprising, experts said.

From the inception of this case, the states theory had been the officers committed these crimes because of an omission: the failure to do certain acts, including using a seat belt and seeking medical assistance for Freddie Gray, said Warren Alperstein, a Baltimore attorney who is uninvolved in the case but has observed nearly all legal proceedings. Its not inaction, its now action. But how do you determine speed from a video? Will the video show what the state promised it would?

Goodson is the third officer to stand trial, and so far the state has yet to secure a conviction. The first trial, for Officer William Porter, ended in a mistrial in December. The judge acquitted the second officer last month.

Its not the first time prosecutors have altered their theories in the case. Initially prosecutors said the three arresting officers were wrong to arrest Gray for having a legal folding knife and filed false imprisonment charges against them. Those charges didnt make it past a grand jury and the state has since abandoned the knife issue at trial, opting instead for arguing about the legality of stopping suspects without probable cause.

Alperstein said the rough ride could be another attempt to pivot.

This is the first time a rough ride has been suggested, he said. It begs the question: Is this another example of the state adjusting its theory?

Doug Colbert, a professor at the University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law who has watched all of the trials, said he was anticipating the state might allege a rough ride in the Goodson case, but said theyll need more of a history of the rough ride than just the video. They need to prove the injuries that occurred, and that Goodson was well aware of the danger.

Schatzow was unequivocal in his accusation during opening statements.

There was no good reason for the defendant not to belt him in, except to bounce him around, he said.

Goodson attorney Andrew Graham flatly disputed the notion that Gray was deliberately bounced around, saying: There was no rough ride. It simply didnt happen.

He said Grays injuries were self-inflicted when he stood up inside a moving vehicle and that officers virtually never belt prisoners in. Goodson is such a slow and cautious driver that he sometimes lulls his prisoners to sleep, he said.

Graham said Goodson  a good officer, a gentle man, a nice guy  didnt belt Gray in because of his violent and erratic behaviour that included screaming and kicking with such force that the wagon shook. Gray continued to thrash around in the van for several stops, the attorney said.

Graham said Goodsons supervisors never directed him to seek medical attention for Gray, and that the man wasnt exhibiting any symptoms of distress.

He did his job, and he followed instructions, Graham said. Freddie Grays death was a tragedy, but convicting a good officer just to assign blame would make a tragic situation worse.

Graham told the judge that the assistant medical examiner who prepared Grays autopsy report and ruled his death a homicide initially told an investigator that it was a freakish accident before meeting with prosecutors and changing her mind.

It was the result of a pressurized investigation, Graham said.

Rough rides, or nickel rides, so-called after rides at an amusement park, have been the subject of lawsuits in Baltimore and other cities.

Dondi Johnson died of a fractured spine in 2005 after Baltimore police arrested him for urinating in public. Police put him in a van without a seat belt, his hands cuffed behind his back. His family said he was thrown into the opposite wall. The family won a $7.4 million (U.S.) judgment, though a cap reduced that to $200,000.

In Philadelphia, police in 2001 barred transportation of prisoners without padding or belts after The Philadelphia Inquirer reported that the city had paid $2.3 million to settle lawsuits over rough rides that paralyzed two people.

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OTTAWAGov. Gen. David Johnston strives to stay above the political fray  and he thinks that's one of the most useful parts of his role.

Gridlock looms between the Senate and House of Commons over legislation to govern medical assistance in dying, raising questions about how far unelected senators should go against the will of an elected House.

They're fighting, in part, over how to balance the will of Canadians with the parameters laid down by the Supreme Court in its decision last year that declared the current ban on doctor-assisted suicide a violation of the charter.

Senate versus House, House versus charter  a uniquely Canadian showdown that may require a referee, and who better than an ex-hockey player and legal scholar who calls himself the "representative of the spirit of the country."

True to form, Johnston is not getting publicly involved.

"My general comment would bring me into the current debate and I shouldn't be there," he said Friday in a telephone interview from London, where he was on hand for official celebrations of the Queen's 90th birthday.

Britain's Prince William and Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge.



















"One of the interesting features about this job is that it's truly non-political, and that's one of the advantages of it, that the governor general is out of politics and stays out."

The usefulness of that position was a hot luncheon topic Friday among Johnston, 14 other governors general and the Queen they represent.

Johnston said the stability and serenity she brings to constitutional monarchies around the Commonwealth is essential.

That's because having a head of state distinct from a head of government allows one to focus on the long term, while the other is  by virtue of election cycles  consumed more with the day-to-day business of running the country.

Canadians may be advocating for more power in the political process, be it in how senators are chosen or in how the electoral system itself is run, but there is still a role for the monarchy to play, Johnston said.

"If you look at the history of Canada, we've evolved step by step; we are a country that was born of evolution, never revolution as many countries have been. It's avoided extremes," he said.

"We've fashioned those institutions of government that seem to work well at any given point of time, and with respect to current issues, democracy will triumph.

"The will of the people will be reflected in one fashion or another."

The celebration has been a lengthy affair, starting with her https://www.thestar.com/news/world/2016/04/21/photos-britain-celebrates-queens-90th-birthday.html real birthday in April END . The monarchs official birthday is traditionally celebrated in June when Britains weather can be more favourable.

The monarch, dressed in a primrose yellow coat-dress and matching hat, and her husband, Prince Philip attended a service of thanksgiving at St. Pauls Friday, on what is Philips 95th birthday.

She turned to smile at a crowd of well-wishers singing Happy Birthday as she climbed the cathedral steps.

Among those offering tribute was the popular naturalist and broadcaster David Attenborough, who read a short story by Paddington Bear creator Michael Bond. Both men turned 90 this year and attended the service.

Recap of the celebrations

Prince Charles and his wife, Camilla, Prince William and his wife, Kate, Prince Harry and dozens of other royals joined politicians and the wider community in a thundering rendition of God Save the Queen.

The traditional Trooping the Colour parade will be held Saturday, the Queens official birthday. The event is expected to draw throngs of Britons and visitors to Buckingham Palace for a possible balcony appearance by the senior royals.

On Sunday, the Mall in front of the palace will host lunch for roughly 10,000 charity workers, patrons and members of the royal family.

Street parties are planned in many locations, including some in Commonwealth countries and also in the United States.

British newspapers have been filled with paeans to the Queen, and editorials urging the public to show its gratitude for her long reign.

Philip, who has heart disease, missed an engagement recently due to health issues, but is expected to participate throughout the weekend.

After the three-day extravaganza, the Queen is expected to turn her attention to the horse-racing season and her lengthy summer holiday in Scotland.

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Journalist Sandra Martin, whos knowledgeable on this, says the assisted dying bill, which just missed its deadline for passage, is only directed at end-stage cancer victims. It shuns those for whom no end is in sight.

I dont think the achievement is as nugatory (this safe bill) as she implies. Till now those end-stage people, whose numbers are vast, often had no way out. I recall my dad asking his GP for help ending it all. The doc said he had mixed feelings, seeming a bit enthralled by the intricacy of his own dilemmas.

My dad declined through rage, meanness (mostly to my mom), gradual catatonia during which my mom did stuff hed have objected to if he still could  such as opening the curtains in the bedroom  then coma and finally slipping off with no one paying attention.

That era is now past. Today, or soon, the doc would have to help or refer my dad to someone who would. That sounds to me like progress. Its worth pausing to soberly, grimly celebrate.

I know that the people behind the Carter case, which led to the Supreme Court decision that begat this advance, say it wouldnt have helped Kay Carter herself or others whom Martin mentions. Thats troubling but I dont think experts and advocates get the last word in these matters. Why not?

Experts in any field can give you information and options but choices are something else. Lawyers and doctors always tell you its up to you. Then when you ask, inevitably, what theyd do, they respond and people almost always go that route. But their advice is routinely as varied as any pool of cab drivers or relatives at a family dinner would give. Try asking political scientists how to fix Iraq. Were all just hapless humans when it comes to lifes serious choices.

As for advocacy groups, including Dying with Dignity, theyre crucial social resources but theyre human too. They can develop a sense of investment, sometimes even ego, and want to win, after all the often thankless time and effort. Outsider POVs  MPs, citizens  can then act as a necessary brake. I confess, for instance, that Im concerned about adolescents getting assisted suicide  as are adolescents Ive asked  due to the volatility involved.

So Id be disposed to let the thornier elements of this debate, even those that are clearly urgent, evolve in full public view over time while wisdom accumulates and things clarify. Deliberate. Dont give some previously well-honed positions automatic authority.

I feel the same about electoral reform, which is why I wouldnt mind a ranked ballot as a first step  it would at least eliminate the worst aspects of the current system  then deal with convoluted issues, such as proportional representation at a more leisurely pace.

(I happen to be having a new porch put on the house. Its salutary, when you mostly deal in words and ideas, to see the unavoidable stages through which material or natural processes must pass in order to reach a new state. People who make books, columns or laws often act as if major change can happen readily, based on a plan that emerged whole from one brilliant mind.)

The bills now stuck in the Senate as its deadline recedes. That too seems inevitable. Some senators (James Cowan) worry its not charter compliant. I think he should let the Supreme Court worry about that and get on with making a law thats good for citizens. This isnt a judgocracy or charterocracy.

Others (Linda Frum) have many bright ideas on death and dignity but if she wants to write laws, she should run for office, not get appointed to the Senate, which is about sober second thought regarding ideas others already had. But the Senate is also going through a new process, and itll take time too.

Its worth recalling that major social change can happen without new laws being written, such as abortion rights. Theres still no law. It doesnt mean abortion is lawless. You could be charged with many things if you botch an abortion. But the right, once recognized by the courts, didnt need to be legally codified, which came as a big surprise. Its as if deep social change happens and then the laws rush to try to keep up  or, sometimes, just stay out of the way.

Rick Salutins column appears every Friday.

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Muhammad Ali has died, and the panegyrics from political leaders have followed. Ali was a man who fought for what was right, eulogized U.S. President Barack Obama. Muhammad Ali shook up the world. And the world is better for it.

Muhammad Ali was not just a champion in the ring  he was a champion of civil rights, wrote U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron on Twitter.

Ali is feted in hindsight for fighting political struggles  for civil rights, against the Vietnam War  that made him a dangerous radical in the eyes of the powerful at the time. His shaking of the world was profoundly unsettling to those who ruled it.

No question, the FBI viewed Ali as more of a threat than myself, claimed Stokely Carmichael, who was chair of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. Under the National Security Agencys Project Minaret, Ali was placed on a watch list and his communications were wiretapped in the 1960s and 70s. (Project Minaret targeted prominent dissenters against the Vietnam War, including leaders of the civil rights movement, such as Martin Luther King Jr.)

In Alis own searing words: Why should they ask me to put on a uniform and go 10,000 miles from home and drop bombs and bullets on brown people in Vietnam while so-called Negro people in Louisville are treated like dogs and denied simple human rights?

No, Im not going 10,000 miles from home to help murder and burn another poor nation simply to continue the domination of white slave masters of the darker people the world over ... I will not disgrace my religion, my people or myself by becoming a tool to enslave those who are fighting for their own justice, freedom and equality ...

If I thought the war was going to bring freedom and equality to 22 million of my people, they wouldnt have to draft me, Id join tomorrow. I have nothing to lose by standing up for my beliefs. So Ill go to jail, so what? Weve been in jail for 400 years.

Ali drew connections between racism and militarism that are just as salient in the era of the War on Terror as they were in the era of the War in Vietnam. As in Alis time, those resisting these conjoined forces of violence today are not treated like heroes, but like traitors.

While Barack Obama hails Ali for fighting for what was right, movements fighting that same fight in our own time have been surveilled as national security threats by counterterrorism organizations under the Obama administration. For example, the Department of Homeland Security has been monitoring Black Lives Matter since the protests against police violence in Ferguson.

The fact that our government is doing this  I can only assume to disrupt us  is pretty alarming, said organizer Maurice Mitchell to The Intercept. Were fighting back against police brutality and extrajudicial killings, yet they are using this supposedly anti-terrorist infrastructure against us.

And while David Cameron lauds Ali as a champion of civil rights, he has presided over the erosion of civil rights in the U.K. under the Prevent program  which has stifled dissent against militaristic counterterrorism in the name of countering extremism.

As journalist Dr. Nafeez Ahmed observes, grievances over U.S.-U.K. involvement in crises in the Muslim world, which are widespread, are increasingly being seen as equivalent to extremism ... The Orwellian implication is that Britons who are critical of Britains policies in the war on terror are extremists who must be shut down and deradicalized.

There is something deeply discordant about the celebration of Muhammad Ali by heads of state like Obama and Cameron, whose governments have stigmatized and punished the contemporary heirs of Alis anti-racist, antimilitaristic, and anti-imperialistic politics.

There is something fundamentally jarring about the embrace of war-objector Muhammad Ali by the executors of a War on Terror that has dropped bombs and bullets on brown people in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, and elsewhere  taking as many as 2 million lives and more than $4.4 trillion.

It is unchallenging for political leaders to claim Alis legacy now that he has been vindicated by history. They try to rob him of his teeth and his sting, making him easy to consume and digest. Remembering Alis radical courage is an antidote to efforts to render him anodyne after death, to disconnect his activism from our current struggles for justice.

Rest in Power, Muhammad Ali.

Azeezah Kanji is a legal analyst and writer based in Toronto.

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With two major local archaeological digs recently completed or underway, as well as an effort by Premier Kathleen Wynne to own up to the provinces treatment of First Nations peoples, the past is in the news these days both in Toronto and across Ontario.

Indeed, tangibly so.

The excavations  at the planned Toronto Courthouse site on Centre Ave., as well as the North St. Lawrences Market redevelopment site  are yielding thousands of artifacts that speak to the citys social and commercial history from its early colonial past to the immigration that re-shaped Toronto in the early 20th century.

At the Courthouse site, located in The Ward, archaeologists also found an arrowhead, which reminds us of an even deeper history. That fragment takes its place among the millions of pre-contact First Nations objects excavated over the years from Ontario archaeological sites.

Despite the systematic excavation, mandated under Ontarios planning and environmental assessment rules, theres a troubling scandal buried in the policy framework that guides the provinces approach to this heritage.

The law requires the archaeological consultants retained by public agencies and developers to hold on to the artifacts in trust on behalf of the people of Ontario. But Queens Park has for years steadfastly refused to pass laws and provide funding to ensure these objects find their way into archives, museums or back to their rightful owners.

Consequently, some 20,000 boxes of artifacts, many filled with the material evidence of the lives of pre-contact indigenous peoples, languish in storage lockers, garages or the basements of archaeologists. While perhaps catalogued, these objects arent readily available to researchers, much less the general public, and, in many cases are simply forgotten.

The rich irony is that while Ontario has North Americas most robust archaeological preservation policy, almost no effort is made to interpret, commemorate and study those artifacts because the rules fall silent when it comes to the question of how to manage the material once it comes out of the ground.

That gap is a shocking abdication of the provinces duty to serve as a responsible steward of our collective past.

Other jurisdictions have sorted out this problem. In most U.S. states, for example, archaeologists working for clients must transfer artifacts to repositories, where they are catalogued, stored and made available to researchers or other institutions.

In New York, where archaeologists working for builders continue to turn up extensive finds, the City Museum of New York and the Landmarks Preservation Board two years ago established a partnership to store and display these discoveries. Toronto, by contrast, has a proactive archaeological management plan, and an Official Plan policy goal to ensure the objects remain within the jurisdiction. But the city has done almost nothing to deliver on that pledge, much less create an institution to display the historical artifacts that have surfaced.

Seven years ago, Western University anthropologist Neal Ferris, a former heritage official, persuaded Ottawa and Queens Park to provide $10 million for two London- and Hamilton-based facilities, Sustainable Archaeology, to properly house artifacts and make them available through digital scanning technology (both are collaboratively managed with First Nations). Strangely, the province never followed up with rules requiring archeologists to ensure that all the material they find at dig sites is transferred, either to these facilities or any other museum or archive.

Why does any of this matter? For First Nations people, these objects not only reveal much about pre-contact indigenous societies but also provide important evidence for land claims.

As for the artifacts discovered in more urban locales, such as the Courthouse site, the archaeological record provides rich and complex stories about the lives of ordinary people  stories not captured in official documents, contemporaneous newspaper accounts, and high-level histories.

In both cases, all this archaeological heritage, when properly curated and interpreted, goes a long way towards filling out the picture: the found objects add dimension and texture, and often challenge stereotypes. The Courthouse results, for example, show the lives of the immigrants in The Ward in the late 19th century were richer than the prevailing narrative of squalid slum housing allows.

With only $5 million in funding, Queens Park could facilitate the migration of the 20,000 boxes of previously excavated artifacts into properly managed facilities. Once released, these materials will become powerful educational tools. They would also provide visitors with a richer understanding of the city and assist historians in documenting the societies that existed here before we arrived.

In a region populated with newcomers from countries with their own deep histories, theres an enormous opportunity to use these archaeological discoveries as a means of connecting Ontarios newest citizens to place, time and those who have lived on the land for many thousands of years.

But the compelling power of this vast heritage will never be realized until Queens Park corrects an appalling historical mistake. The time to do that is now.

John Lorinc is co-editor of The Ward: The Life and Loss of Torontos First Immigrant Neighbourhood (Coach House Books). Ron Williamson is a professional archaeologist who edited Toronto: An Illustrated History of its First 12,000 Years (Lorimer Press).

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NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Coca-Cola European Partners (CCE) stock coverage was reinstated with a "buy" rating at Deutsche Bank on Friday morning.

The firm has a $47 price target on the London-based independent Coca-Cola bottler.

"While carbonated soft drinks ('CSD') consumption trends remain weak, we see fundamental upside from share gains, growth in stills, synergies and cost savings using considerable free cash flow in shareholder-friendly ways," the firm wrote in a note to investors.

As with the "old" company, sweeping cash to reduce debt, opportunistically repurchasing stock, paying a reasonable and growing dividend and partnering with Coca-Cola (KO) to fill strategic holes in the portfolio should drive value, Deutsche Bank said.

"In this low-rate, slow-growing environment, we see Coca-Cola European Partners (CCEP) essentially as a bond with a growing annuity that supports our Buy rating and $47 target," the firm added.

Ongoing declines in soft drink per capita consumption and even worse volume drops in carbonated soft drinks represent two-thirds of the company's volumes, Deutsche Bank said.

But the firm believes adept capital allocation and significant price and mix opportunity across the portfolio in response to changing consumer preferences are powerful value drivers.

Shares of Coca-Cola European Partners are sliding 1.52% to $38.90 in pre-market trading on Friday.

Separately, TheStreet Ratings Team has a "Hold" rating with a score of C+ on the stock.

The primary factors that have impacted the rating are mixed. The company's strengths can be seen in multiple areas, such as its expanding profit margins and notable return on equity.

However, the team also finds weaknesses including feeble growth in the company's earnings per share, generally higher debt management risk and weak operating cash flow.

Recently, TheStreet Ratings objectively rated this stock according to its "risk-adjusted" total return prospect over a 12-month investment horizon. Not based on the news in any given day, the rating may differ from Jim Cramer's view or that of this articles's author.

You can view the full analysis from the report here: CCE
SEC

Whistleblower gets $17 million reward

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is giving a $17 million award to a former company employee who gave information that helped advance an agency investigation.

The information and assistance provided by this whistleblower enabled our enforcement staff to conserve time and resources and gather strong evidence supporting our case, SEC enforcement chief Andrew Ceresney said in a statement Thursday announcing the award, the second-biggest ever in the agencys five-year-old whistleblower program.

Whistleblowers are eligible for an award if they voluntarily provide the SEC with unique information that leads to a successful enforcement action. The awards can range from 10 percent to 30 percent of the money collected on sanctions beyond $1 million.

Jordan Thomas, chair of the whistleblower representation practice at law firm Labaton Sucharow, said that his client is the only whistleblower who got an award and that the case involved a major player in the financial services industry. By law, the SEC doesnt reveal the identity of the whistleblowers.

 Bloomberg News

CORPORATIONS

Burger King rejects board diversity plan

Shareholders of Restaurant Brands International, owner of Burger King and Tim Hortons, rejected a proposal that would require a clear plan to add women to the companys all-male board.

The motion by OceanRock Investments motion was defeated at Thursdays annual meeting in Oakville, Ontario, according to the Canadian Press. The Vancouver-based investor became a shareholder when Miami-based Burger King acquired the Canadian doughnut chain Tim Hortons in 2014 for about $11 billion. The combined company is based in Canada.

Before the merger, Tim Hortons had three female directors. Having an all-male board is a stark contrast with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeaus pledge to ensure that half his cabinet members are women. Restaurant Brands has said that although it has changed its guidelines to make diversity considerations more apparent, a specific pledge to add women might hamper the flexibility to pick the best candidates.

Restaurant Brands didnt immediately respond to requests for comment.

 Bloomberg News

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Walter Mosleys latest Easy Rawlins novel, Charcoal Joe, comes on the heels of the author winning the Grand Master Award from the Mystery Writers of America in April. No one familiar with the quality and quantity of Mosleys creative output was surprised by this honor. His output encompasses more than four dozen books  including 14 Rawlins novels  science fiction, nonfiction and essays. He has been awarded PEN Americas Lifetime Achievement Award.

Still, in some ways, the full measure of his achievement can only be gauged by seeing him at the Edgars, as the Mystery Writers honors are known. I watched the whole thing from a table near the back. Mosley was one of fewer than two dozen African Americans in a ballroom holding hundreds. Publishing, like the film industry, was a pale field when Mosleys first Ezekiel Easy Rawlins novel, Devil in a Blue Dress, was published in 1990 and made into a Denzel Washington vehicle five years later. Two decades on, both still are. (Looking at you, #oscarssowhite.)

[Review:The Ways of the Dead, by Neely Tucker]

So it s no surprise that Mosley, a native of Los Angeles whose father migrated west from Louisiana, is attuned to the uneasy America that black people inhabit. The fictional Easy, a child of New Iberia, La., who migrates to L.A., is, too. The central twist in Devil, set in 1948 L.A., turns on the different worlds that whites and blacks inhabit in the same place. Charcoal Joe, set in the same city two decades later, finds that things are different, if not all that much improved.

"Charcoal Joe" by Walter Mosley (Doubleday)

Mosleys L.A. has many of the mean streets that Raymond Chandler made iconic, but these are different streets and they are mean for different reasons. Heres Easy, narrating a crosstown drive in 1968 in Charcoal:

Its a long way from West L.A. to Watts. Its the same city but a darkness descends as you progress eastward. You pass from white dreams into black and brown realities. There were many miles to cover but distance was the least of it. It was another world, where I was going.

Chandlers novels and James Ellroys L.A. Quartet covered the same city and era  the 1940s and 1950s  but neither offered any real insight into the black side of town. Think of the wrongly charged black suspects in Ellroys brilliant L.A. Confidential, for example. The black guys are there as a plot complication. The detectives really dont pay any price for blowing them away. If Easy had investigated? That would have been the story, full stop.

As Charcoal Joe opens, we find Easy in a good place. Hes flush with cash from a previous case. Hes going to propose to his girlfriend. Hes down to one smoke per day. Racial progress has gotten far enough been enough that he can enroll his daughter, Feather, in a posh private school on the white side of town. And he has been able to open a three-man firm in a building that seems a metaphor for the city: Once an elegant residence for a rich white guy, it has been cut up into three businesses. The first floor is an antique store of faded quality. The second floor, run by the landlord, is a Japanese family-owned and -operated insurance brokerage. Easys new detective agency  one Jewish partner and one black  is on the third. Two of the couples working in the building are interracial.

Likewise, the murder that forms the spine of the narrative is racially complicated. A white man named Peter Boughman and some other guy named Ducky were shot to death in a house in Malibu, Rawlinss longtime friend, Raymond Mouse Alexander, tells him. Seymour Brathwaite, a well-to-do black postgraduate student at the University of California at Los Angeles, lived nearby, heard the shots and went to investigate, Mouse says. Brathwaite was found standing beside the bodies when the police came. He had no gun but was booked for murder.

The hitch is that Brathwaite is the son of a friend of the fearsome Rufus Tyler, a.k.a. Charcoal Joe, an elderly black man, who is good at cards, killing people and Getting Stuff Done. Charcoal, who has done Easy a favor in the past, now wants to call in his chit.

Walter Mosley (Marcia E Wilson/Widevision Photography)

As the novel progresses, youll notice that Mosley embraces the great nicknames of black men of a certain reputation, as immortalized by Chester the Real Cool Killers Himes: Easy. Whisper. Charcoal. Cully Grindman. Himes had a cop named Gravedigger Jones. Easy has a friend named Fearless Jones.

And as with Himes, you cant color-code for good and bad guys. Early on, Easy has to deal with a racist white motorcycle cop. Later, at a Rodeo Drive jewelry store named Precieux Blanc (Precious White ), he and Fearless meet a black guard who refuses to let them enter. Easy pegs him for an ex-cop, now working in white stores so that black customers who were followed and rousted could not complain about racism.

Easy, not amused, asks the guard: Should me and Fearless here paint us some protest signs and march up and down sayin that you dont serve blacks up in here?

Things you have to love about Mosleys use of the dialect: paint us some, up in here.

If youve read Mosley, you know that Easy is probably going to figure things out by the end, although at a cost. But like the crosstown drive from West L.A. to Watts, you dont hop in the car with Easy Rawlins for the destination. You ride shotgun for the trip.

Neely Tucker, a national reporter for The Washington Post, is the author of Only the Hunted Run: A Sully Carter Novel, which will be published in August.
Brandon Victor Dixon and Audra McDonald in "Shuffle Along," or "The Making of the Musical Sensation of 1921 and All That Followed." (Julieta Cervantes)

Actor Brandon Victor Dixon would like to call everyones attention to an important theater trend: Every time The Color Purple is on Broadway, I get nominated for a Tony, he says. So lets keep on reviving it.

The Gaithersburg native, 34, received his first Tony Award nod in 2006, when he originated the role of Harpo in the musical based on Alice Walkers novel. Ten years later, the The Color Purple is back  and getting even better reviews this time around. And Dixon? Hes playing composer Eubie Blake in Shuffle Along, or the Making of the Musical Sensation of 1921 and All That Followed, and is once again nominated for best featured actor in a musical. (The Tony Awards ceremony airs Sunday at 8 p.m. on CBS.)

Venerated director and writer George C. Wolfe has revised the book of Shuffle Along to emphasize the historical significance of the backstage musical, whose original cast included Paul Robeson and Josephine Baker. It is generally regarded as the first Broadway musical to have both a chorus line and a plot, albeit a thinly woven tale about romantic entanglements and a mayoral election. The current cast also features six-time Tony winner Audra McDonald (as the actress for whom Blake nearly leaves his wife), as well as Brian Stokes Mitchell and original Kinky Boots star Billy Porter. Tap dancer Savion Glover did the choreography.

Dixon auditioned for Shuffle Along in the fall at Wolfes invitation. Hes a very intelligent man, the actor joked. The St. Albans School graduate got his first break in 2003, when he went on tour with The Lion King right after graduating from Columbia University. He made his Broadway debut in The Color Purple three years later.

At the 2006 Tonys, Dixon lost to an actor from the juggernaut musical Jersey Boys. Now, hes again competing against performers in a musical that will surely be touring for years to come: Hamilton.

Carol Trawick, chairwoman of the Maryland State Arts Council, with Daveed Diggs (left), who plays Thomas Jefferson in Hamilton. (Courtesy Carol Trawick)

 Hamilton is going to win some awards, but its not going to win all of the awards, Dixon said, with a bit of bravado. Hamilton has a record 16 nominations; Shuffle Along has 10. Actors realize that some seasons are stronger than others, and Dixon is not so much spoiling for a fight as he is excited to compete with a hit.

We spend a lot of this time really celebrating each other and celebrating the work, he said. I dont have any ill feelings toward Hamilton. 

Dixon did audition for Hamilton star and creator Lin-Manuel Miranda and director Thomas Kail, who also grew up in the Washington area. But Dixon knew he wasnt physically suited for the parts available at that point. Playing Blake, the slim composer with a mustache in Shuffle Along, is a better fit.

His male-pattern baldness is almost the exact same as mine, Dixon joked, going on to thank his mother, who still lives in Montgomery County, for being careful with the clippers when he was young so no scars mar his scalp.

Dixons fellow nominees in the featured-actor category all have rather full heads of hair, especially Daveed Diggs, whose signature Afro may now be more associated with Thomas Jefferson than the Founding Fathers powered wig. Also nominated from Hamilton in the category: Jonathan Groff (King George) and Christopher Jackson (George Washington). Christopher Fitzgerald, nominated for playing Ogie in the new musical Waitress, rounds out the list of contenders.

That the majority of nominees for featured actor in a musical arent white isnt a theater statistic Dixon likes to dwell on. Instead, he views the success of musicals such as The Color Purple and even Hamilton as a natural trajectory.

Miranda may be an innovator, Dixon said, but even Hamilton is still very much the progeny of Shuffle Along. 

Hopped up about Hamilton

The legions of Hamilton fans include those lucky theatergoers who have scored tickets to the show and those who have seen only clips or sung along to the cast recording. To that first category, add Carol Trawick and Theresa Colvin, the chairwoman and executive director, respectively, of the Maryland State Arts Council. Last Sunday, they had the privilege of seeing the musical from prime seats in Row H, thanks to strings pulled by Round House Theatre Artistic Director Ryan Rilette.

During an auction at the theaters gala April 30, Trawick placed the winning bid for the two tickets, plus a backstage tour led by set designer David Korins and a post-show meet-and-greet with cast member Daveed Diggs.

This was a very special package, said Trawick, who had bid unsuccessfully on two chances to win Hamilton tickets at other fundraisers. She opened up her wallet for this opportunity, eventually donating $10,500 to Round House for the chance to see the show. She invited Colvin, whom she has gotten to know serving on the arts councils board.

Korins met the women at the Richards Rodgers Theater before the matinee and gave them a tour as a favor to Rilette. The two men had worked on more than a dozen shows together earlier in their careers, when, as Rilette describes it, they did things like drive around and dig in dumpsters to find old doors and windows for a set.

Trawick said that during the tour, she noticed touches such as the burned edges of wood on the floorboards and the shade of brick chosen to make sure that the faces of the non-white actors would stand out. After the show, they met Diggs backstage and took photos. Diggs had to rush off to a party, but Trawick and Colvin also scored photo ops with Christopher Jackson and Phillipa Soo and Renee Elise Goldsberry, Tony nominees who play sisters Eliza Hamilton and Angelica Schuyler.

Trawick was back in the office Monday, eager to talk about the trip. I am on a Hamilton high, she said.


The law firm Mossack Fonseca, which sets up offshore companies for the wealthy, is at the center of an international scandal known as the Panama Papers. The Panama City firm maintains that its operations were legal. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

In May 2007, during a global crackdown on offshore tax havens, an obscure nonprofit lobbying group in Northern Virginia sent a fundraising pitch to a law firm in one of the biggest tax havens in the world  Panama.

The Center for Freedom and Prosperity promised to persuade Congress, members of the George W. Bush administration and key policymakers to protect the players of the offshore world, where hundreds of thousands of shell companies had been created, often to hide money and evade taxes.

To reach out to American officials and fund its U.S. operations, the center said it needed an infusion of cash for an eight-month campaign: at least $247,000.

We hope you can support this effort with a donation, the center wrote in a document sent to Mossack Fonseca, the law firm at the heart of an international financial scandal known as the Panama Papers. The leak of more than 11.5 million documents, which came from inside the Panamanian law firm, has pulled back the curtain in recent months on secretive offshore tax havens and the people who use them to stash their money, including a rogues gallery of international criminals, money launderers and drug dealers.

The documents, which sparked an international outcry, were obtained by the German newspaper Suddeutsche Zeitung and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) and recently shared with The Washington Post.

In the eight-page fundraising document discovered by The Post, the Center for Freedom and Prosperity in Alexandria, Va., said that it had already persuaded the Bush administration to thwart an international effort to require more transparency from tax havens. Now the center was promising to derail similar reforms in legislation before Congress.

Among those it planned to contact: lawmakers, key figures in the Bush White House, the Treasury Department, the State Department and the Office of Management and Budget.

At the time, the center was leading a coalition of Washingtons most vocal anti-tax groups seeking to defeat the reforms.

The center said it counted allies and friends in more than 50 countries and had a major impact on the international tax competition debate. The document contained a contribution sheet with suggested gift levels ranging from $500 to $20,000, along with a routing number to the centers Wachovia bank account in Northern Virginia.

The pitch, emails and other documents reviewed by The Post offer an inside look at how a little-known nonprofit, listing its address as a post office box in Alexandria, became a persistent opponent of U.S. and global efforts to regulate the offshore world. Led by two U.S. citizens  one an economist, the other a tax expert for a Republican congressman  the center met again and again with government officials and members of the offshore industry around the world, while issuing hundreds of funding pleas and peddling its connections to Washingtons power brokers.

Its sort of like fishing, you have to keep casting your lure, said Daniel Mitchell, one of the directors of the center, in a recent interview with The Post.

It is not illegal for groups registered to lobby Congress to solicit money from offshore entities. But regulators and policymakers who have spent years trying to curb abuses in the offshore world criticized the centers relationship with Mossack Fonseca, which created hundreds of thousands of shell companies that have been used by elected officials, heads of state, corporate executives and wealthy individuals, along with international fraudsters and criminals. An estimated $7.6 trillion in global wealth is held offshore.

Mossack Fonseca has said its business practices are legal and denied any wrongdoing. The law firm did not respond to requests to describe its relationship with the center or whether it donated to the center.

Former senator Carl Levin (D-Mich.), once one of the leading voices in Congress on tax haven abuses, said in a recent interview that the centers activities run counter to Americas values and undermine the nations ability to raise revenue.

Its like trading with the enemy, said Levin, whose staff on a powerful panel investigating tax havens regularly faced public challenges from the center. I consider tax havens the enemy. Theyre the enemy of American taxpayers and the things we try to do with our revenues  infrastructure, roads, bridges, education, defense. They help to starve us of resources that we need for all the things we do. And this center is out there helping them to accomplish that.

During the past decade, Levin repeatedly introduced legislation designed to rein in the offshore world. It never passed.



Former senator Carl Levin (D-Mich.), a longtime proponent of tax haven reform, speaks at the Washington headquarters of the World Bank on May 23. He said the response to offshore abuses has been inadequate. (J. Lawler Duggan/For The Washington Post)

It is unclear how much money the center raised from entities in offshore tax havens. Tax returns for the center and a foundation set up in its name reported receiving at least $1.4 million in revenue from 2003 to 2010. The returns did not report the source of most of the income.

The directors of the center, Mitchell and Andrew F. Quinlan, two longtime anti-tax advocates, declined to reveal the identities of their donors, which they said is a common practice in the nonprofit world. They also declined to say whether Mossack Fonseca contributed to their cause or to disclose how much of the centers money comes from offshore entities. They said that they have never accepted money from foreign governments and that their fundraising efforts were legal.

Quinlan and Mitchell said they are staunch advocates for libertarian ideals and tax competition between nations as a way to stimulate the global economy.

As an advocate of limited government, I want to make it hard for governments to collect more money, Mitchell said. We believe in smaller government, so we like having politicians disciplined by tax competition.

We never made a lot of money at it, Quinlan said. We just did it because we loved the issue, and we think that privacy and tax competition is the way of the future.

Congressional staffers and international experts on the offshore industry said the center was a formidable foe with access to key players in Washington.

Theyve been around for years  they are very mysterious, said Elise Bean, former staff director and chief counsel of Levins Homeland Security Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, which started investigating tax havens in 2001. They travel all around the world, and they have had a tremendous impact.

In emails and documents sent to Mossack Fonseca between 2001 and 2012, the center said it had parlayed its access into action with the support of former House majority leader Dick Armey (R-Tex.) and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), high-ranking Treasury Department officials in the Bush administration, and members of key congressional committees that regulate U.S. tax and spending policy.

Armey, who left Congress in 2003, said he supported the centers mission but did not know how it raised money.

Being in the nonprofit business, youre plagued to death with having to raise money, Armey said. But its a horrible world of bad temptation. So I just couldnt really comment on it.

A Rubio spokesman said the senator sided with the center on certain tax issues and so did numerous prominent pro-business organizations.

In its federal tax filings, the center said that it had briefed the prime ministers, presidents and finance ministers of more than a dozen Caribbean and Latin American nations, and traveled to the offshore havens of the Bahamas, Barbados, Singapore, the Cayman Islands, Hong Kong and Panama, to press its cause.

In the 2007 document emailed to Mossack Fonseca, the center said it was launching an aggressive campaign on Capitol Hill to protect the secrecy of tax havens, specifically targeting members of the tax writing, banking, budget, appropriations and commerce committees.

In a 2012 document sent to the law firm, the center said it had a long relationship with then-vice presidential nominee Paul D. Ryan dating to his days as a congressional aide and with the ear of Mitt Romneys economic advisors, the Center for Freedom and Prosperity (CF&P) is primed for influence.

A spokeswoman for Ryan, now the House speaker, said in a statement that Speaker Ryan has known them for many years. We couldnt say how influential they are, but the Speakers position on these international tax issues has long been clear and consistent.

A Romney aide said the center had no impact on Romneys policies.

In the 2012 document, the center said that it had successfully blocked anti-tax haven legislation proposed by Levin and others. Bean, the former senators staffer, confirmed that the center had helped to rally opposition.

Its very, very discouraging that Americans would do that, said Levin, who retired at the end of 2014.



Veronique de Rugy and Daniel J. Mitchell are co-founders of the Center for Freedom and Prosperity, which opposes efforts to crack down on offshore secrecy. They attended the World Bank conference. (J. Lawler Duggan/For The Washington Post)

Spreading the word

The man at the helm of the Center for Freedom and Prosperity, Andrew Quinlan, 53, is a former Republican congressional staffer who worked out of his home in Alexandria and spends much of his time on the road. Dan Mitchell, 57, is a widely known economist who worked for the Bush/Quayle transition team in 1988 and a leading tax expert at the Cato Institute, a libertarian Washington think tank. The two met in 1981 while undergrads and fraternity brothers at the University of Georgia.

Quinlan and Mitchell launched the center in October 2000. It is made up of two parts, the center itself, which is set up as a 501(c)(4) nonprofit organization created to lobby lawmakers in favor of market liberalization, according to the groups marketing materials. The second part is called the Center for Freedom and Prosperity Foundation, which is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization set up to educate the public, lawmakers and the media on the benefits of limited government and the need for competitive markets.

Quinlan is listed in the centers tax filings as president, Mitchell as its chairman. Two other board members are named  economist Veronique de Rugy, a co-founder of the center, and a man who died in 2014, John Blundell. Only Quinlan is listed as drawing a salary. His compensation has ranged from $122,000 to $23,000 in 2014, the last year of publicly available tax filings.

The center formed after dozens of the worlds richest countries, including the United States, demanded more transparency from nations considered to be tax havens for corporations and the wealthy. In 2000, the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) published a blacklist of 35 tax havens around the world that were refusing to provide information about their account holders, including Panama.

From the start, the fledgling center received the backing of then-House Majority Leader Armey, whose endorsement was posted on the groups website. The Center for Freedom and Prosperity is protecting taxpayers, both in America and around the world, Armey wrote.

The center had two stated goals. Overseas, the center set out to persuade countries on the blacklist not to cooperate with the OECD, which it derided as a global tax cartel. In Washington, the center lobbied the Bush administration to withdraw its support for the OECD and also worked to block anti-tax haven legislation on Capitol Hill. To spread the word, the center testified before Congress, published reports and opinion pieces in leading financial publications, and drafted letters to lawmakers and administration officials.

Representatives of the center crisscrossed the globe and sponsored discussions in 2000 and 2001, traveling to London, Paris, the Cayman Islands, the Bahamas, Panama, Barbados and the British Virgin Islands, where Quinlan and congressional staffers met with the chief minister to discuss the placement of the Caribbean territory on the OECDs blacklist, according to center documents and tax filings.

The center would soon start to fund trips to the Cayman Islands, Panama and the British Virgin Islands for staffers who worked for key lawmakers in the U.S. House and Senate, according to congressional travel records reviewed by The Post. One trip was co-funded by the Cayman Islands Chamber of Commerce, another by the International Lawyers Association of Panama. The staffers reported receiving from $900 to $2,360 for the trips.

One of our goals was always to try to get some members or some staffers to really buy in to the issue, Quinlan said. We raised a couple of these delegations, used the opportunity to feed them as much information as we possibly could.

The staff members worked for at least nine members of Congress. They included Andrea Looney, who was a legislative assistant to Sen. Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) before he became majority leader, and Brook Simmons, who was a staffer for former Senate Budget Committee Chairman Don Nickles (R-Okla.). Another traveler was Jeffrey Janas, a legislative aide to Rep. Robert W. Ney (R-Ohio), who served as chairman of the House Administration Committee before pleading guilty to charges stemming from the influence-peddling investigation into lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

Mitchell and Quinlan also traveled to Barbados, where the center sponsored two briefings, one for government officials and one for the public. To provide the perspective from Capitol Hill, Elizabeth Tobias, who was a tax adviser to Armey, the House majority leader at the time, was one of the speakers, according to a center document.

The trips were permitted under congressional rules at the time. But in 2007, following the Abramoff scandal, Congress passed rules barring lawmakers and their staffers from accepting gifts, meals and trips from lobbyists.

Looney said the 2002 trip was designed to educate congressional staffers about economic and tax issues in Panama.

Simmons, now a government affairs manager for a Texas-based energy company, also said the trip was intended to be educational.

Staff generally work hard to maintain a healthy level of detachment, regardless of who they are meeting, he said. My recollection is the program included a number of panels wherein we discussed the benefit of tax system competition and low-tax jurisdictions for the purpose of encouraging governments to lower rates.

Janas and Tobias did not respond to requests for comment.

Quinlan also traveled to Panama. He met with Jurgen Mossack, one of the founders of Mossack Fonseca, a global provider of offshore accounts. In an email found in the Panama Papers, Quinlan said he worked closely with Mossack, discussing the OECD and tax issues.

Back in the United States, the Center for Freedom and Prosperity Foundation reported in tax filings that it had educated key Bush administration officials from the White House and several cabinet level departments about international tax issues. The foundation also said it had worked with more than 100 members of Congress.

In May 2001, the center claimed a key victory. In a dramatic departure from the Clinton administration, Paul ONeill, the incoming Treasury Secretary appointed by Bush, announced that the United States would back away from the reforms pushed by the OECD.

ONeill said in a recent interview that he was unaware of the center and worked to strengthen efforts to close down the windows of tax evasion and avoidance.

I have never been in anybodys pocket, he said, and I certainly wasnt in anybodys pocket when I was the secretary of Treasury, believe me.

In July 2001, the center caught the attention of the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee. Investigators asked the center whether it had received money from any of the foreign governments on the OECDs blacklist, the Wall Street Journal reported at the time.

The center declined to answer questions about its donors.



Revelations about the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca continue to play out around the world. The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and a German newspaper broke the story. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

A thriving offshore world

In early 2002, fewer than half of the nations on the OECD blacklist pledged to become more transparent in their tax systems, a victory for anti-tax forces such as the center.

They were very effective at painting the OECDs work as end-times are here for tax competition, and were going to have European tax rates imposed upon the whole world if the OECDs work continued, said Will Davis, the former head of OECD public affairs in Washington. With that kind of inflammatory language, they were able to get their foot in the door.

With many tax havens refusing to cooperate with the OECD, the offshore world continued to thrive. In 2003 alone, Mossack Fonseca created 8,471 shell companies. In the next four years, the firm set up 49,656 more, many of them in the British Virgin Islands.

In 2005, Quinlan wrote to Mossack Fonseca, asking the firm for the use of its apartment in Panama while he met with government officials in advance of an OECD conference in Australia. The firm paid for a hotel room, with one partner writing in an email now part of the Panama Papers: They really will fight for our cause.

In 2007, Levin introduced the Stop Tax Haven Abuse Act, which would have sweeping implications for customers of firms such as Mossack Fonseca. The 68-page bill would have shut down offshore tax schemes and required financial institutions to disclose the true owners of offshore accounts.

The coalition of anti-tax groups led by the center sent a letter to then-Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. decrying Levins bill and another measure on Capitol Hill that sought to curb tax avoidance schemes by U.S. companies operating overseas. Forty-five groups signed the letter, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and Americans for Tax Reform, headed by Grover Norquist, who is among the most vocal anti-tax forces in Washington.

The coalition argued that the measures would penalize U.S. taxpayers working overseas and unfairly discriminate against what it called low-tax nations.

Both of these pieces of legislation are deeply flawed, the letter said.

In May 2007, Quinlan sent Mossack Fonseca the eight-page fundraising pitch, promising to meet with members of Congress and Bush policymakers,particularly those who are new to their jobs and unfamiliar with the tax competition issue.

Here is a copy of our most recent proposal, Quinlan wrote in an email to Mario Vlieg, a lawyer at Mossack Fonseca. What do you think? You are the only person I have sent it to in Panama. Let me know what you like and dont like.

On July 2, Mitchell, the chairman of the center, sent Vlieg an article written by economist Martin A. Sullivan in Tax Notes International, a trade publication. The article, headlined Ah, Panama, said: If you want to find a place to stash your cash, Panama has to be high on your list. Maybe even higher than Switzerland.

The article noted that Panama is the complete package. Its got everything you want in a tax haven and concluded by saying, Unless you are a really bad criminal or you have really bad lawyers, you should have little to fear from the government of Panama.

Mitchell told The Post he sent the article to Vlieg to show him how Panama is perceived in the United States.

On July 3, Vlieg responded to Mitchell and Quinlan.

It is very interesting to see how Panama is seen, Vlieg wrote.

Six days later, Vlieg provided Quinlan and Mitchell with some advice about the centers fundraising pitch.

The paper you sent is interesting, easy to read, Vlieg wrote. It seems to be addressed to individuals or corporations that may be interested in the issue. This is fine, as that could be the bigger source of potential donors. However, when it comes to Panama and Panamanian lawyers, I believe that an even higher sense of urgency should be expressed. You know we tend to act when things are imminent. Perhaps, you can mention the upcoming elections and the tendency of the democrat candidates that are leading the polls.

In an interview with The Post, Vlieg, who now works for a different law firm in Panama, declined to say whether Mossack Fonseca donated to the center.

I dont have anything to hide. Their goals were aligned with the jurisdictions goals, he said. I really dont have any comment.

Also in 2007, a fundraising pitch from the center surfaced in Asia. The director of a Hong Kong offshore company sent the letter to his contacts in the Cook Islands, a notorious tax haven in the South Pacific, pointing out that the center was trying to raise $250,000 to stop the bleeding, build allies and go on the offensive against efforts in Washington to regulate the industry.

I personally think the efforts of CF&P should be supported by the Cook Islands given the impact [that] passage of current bills being considered in the USA Congress would have on the jurisdiction and industry, the director wrote.

Following the 2008 election, with a Democrat in the White House, efforts to regulate the offshore world gained momentum.

In 2010, President Obama signed into law a significant tax haven reform. The Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) requires U.S. citizens to report overseas holdings.Foreign financial institutions must disclose the existence of American-held accounts or face stiff financial penalties. The center argued unsuccessfully against the measure.

That same year, the centers foundation received $119,000 out of funds raised by a financial services company in Virginia, according to tax filings. The firm was founded by Richard W. Rahn, a former senior fellow at the Cato Institute, the think tank where Mitchell also works. Rahn served as economic adviser to George H.W. Bush during the 1988 presidential campaign, and he was a member of the board of the Cayman Islands Monetary Authority. He also served as a vice president and chief economist for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

Rahn said in a recent interview that he has known Mitchell for 30 years and supported the centers goals.

I knew people around the world who were interested in this issue and wanted to help out, Rahn said. These are all very legitimate people. Were not talking about criminals or money launderers or drug dealers or anything like that. I had argued for the Center for Freedom and Prosperity because they had very low overhead and they were very focused.

In 2012, with a U.S. presidential election on the horizon, the center reached out again to Mossack Fonseca. On Aug. 15, Quinlan sent an email saying that he was planning to visit Panama.

I can talk a little about what CF&P is doing in Washington, the current legislative climate on offshore tax and information exchange schemes, the OECD, FATCA, the upcoming elections or any other similar topic, he wrote.

Attached to the email was a list of meetings the center said it had held with 42 U.S. senators and 181 House members. The list was a whos who of the Washington political establishment, including then-Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and then-House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.).

Aides to McConnell and Cantor said the lawmakers didnt recall any meetings with Quinlan or Mitchell. Quinlan said meetings were often held with staffers, not the lawmakers themselves.

Along with the email, the center sent a second document to Mossack Fonseca titled Who We Are and What We Do.

Well also be educating members of Congress and laying the groundwork with receptive contacts within Mitt Romneys economic team to take advantage of a potential change in leadership following Novembers election, the center wrote in the document. This includes our relationship with Vice-Presidential nominee Paul Ryan, and we are prepared to hit the ground running should he be elected.

In recent years, the centers fundraising efforts have waned with the passage of the tax compliance act that Obama signed into law requiring foreign institutions to disclose American-held accounts or face severe penalties. More than 100 countries including Panama have committed to tax transparency standards developed at the OECD.

But with another presidential election looming, Quinlan and Mitchell said they are optimistic that they can loosen Washingtons hold on the offshore world and free up much-needed donations. After several years of declining revenue in 2013 and 2014, the center reported in tax filings that it had raised at least $100,000 from more than six different entities last year.

I think when Obama was passing legislation by fiat and not going to Congress, everyone just lost the way, Quinlan said. But now, with the light at the end of the tunnel, with him leaving, were getting back to the point that maybe theres hope out there.

Steven Rich and Julie Tate contributed to this report.


President Obama and the first lady greet their daughter Malia after her graduation ceremony at Sidwell Friends School in Washington. (Roger Catlin)

When Sidwell Friends School asked the president whether he would like to speak at his elder daughters graduation this spring, he declined.

Im going to be wearing dark glasses, he told a group of lunch companions during a visit to Detroit earlier this year. Im going to cry.

Barack Obama was true to his word Friday. He did not speak at Malia Obamas commencement ceremony, which he and the first lady attended, along with family and friends of other graduates of the private school in Northwest Washington.

He was just a total dad, the mother of a graduating senior said of the president. No fanfare. You didnt know they were there.

If the president did cry during the outdoor ceremony, his tears may have been hidden behind his sunglasses.

Inside the gates of the schools campus, nestled in the woodsy fringe of Tenleytown, Malia was just one of 127 graduates. Like the other young women, she wore a white dress  the young men were in suits  and walked down the stairs of the Zartman House administrative building to take her seat on the lawn beneath vines of wisteria.



Malia and her dad in April. The president has attended fewer events at Sidwell than his wife, possibly to avoid causing a disruption on campus. (Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP)

At Sidwell, shown here in 2008, graduation was a more restricted event this year, with security measures and tickets required. (Nicholas Kamm/AFP/Getty Images)

Over recent months, Barack and Michelle Obama have expressed sadness and pride as their daughter has grown up. But primarily, they have been protective as Malia transitions out of their cocoon and into adulthood. She will turn 18 next month and has been accepted to Harvard. Her parents have said she will take a gap year, allowing her to enroll after her fathers term ends.

[A departure Obama is dreading: Leaving the White House? No, Malia moving out.]

The White House announced that eldest daughter Malia Obama will attend Harvard University after taking a gap year. Editor's note: A previous version of this video incorrectly said that Malia Obama would have Secret Service protection at Harvard. (Thomas Johnson/The Washington Post)

Sidwell did its best to close the ceremony to the media. The Obamas, who also celebrated the 15th birthday of younger daughter Sasha on Friday with a post-ceremony luncheon at Georgetowns Cafe Milano, wanted to treat the event as a family affair  and the school and others in attendance tried to respect that desire.

President Obama drew no attention to himself, and there was no special attention paid to the first family during the ceremony. Sidwell, which also educated the children of Bill Clinton, Richard Nixon, Herbert Hoover and Teddy Roosevelt, emphasizes equality among its Quaker traditions: Awards are not handed out at graduation, and VIPs get no special recognition (although heads did turn when the Obamas passed through and, after the ceremony, the president and Malia posed for a couple of photos with well-wishers that quickly ended up on social media).

You have important people, dignitaries. But they are treated like everyone else, said Giulia Adelfio, a 1979 graduate who attended the schools commencement last year.

They try to make it as seamless as possible for everyone. Theres no hoopla around the first family here, said Phronie Jackson, whose son graduated in Malias class Friday.

The president, meanwhile, has spent less time on campus than his wife, perhaps seeking to not disturb the community. Visits by the first lady and her entourage to the school have caused relatively little fuss, said Robin Gaillard, whose daughter graduated from Sidwell two years ago. However, when President Obama came on campus, things tightened considerably.



President Obama stood and clapped when Malias name was announced at graduation. You have important people, dignitaries. But they are treated like everyone else, a Sidwell graduate said. (Roger Catlin)

Special security measures were taken so that the Obamas could attend graduation, but other parents said the presence of Secret Service had not been overwhelming  until Friday morning, when police lined Wisconsin Avenue around the school and guests had to pass through metal detectors. The ceremony, usually open to the public, required tickets this year. And one attendee noted that the traditional class pranks played on administrators seemed to have fallen by the wayside this year.

Like her classmates, Malia Obama walked across the stage to receive her diploma from Bryan Garman, the head of Sidwell Friends; like other dads, hers stood proudly to applaud at that moment. They also heard a commencement address from the poet Elizabeth Alexander, a 1980 Sidwell graduate who was launched to national prominence when she read an original work at the presidents 2009 inauguration. (Maybe some of you were there, Sidwell Board of Trustees member Margaret Plank said coyly while introducing her.)

It was the closest the low-key Sidwell ceremony came to presidential pomp. When Chelsea Clinton graduated from Sidwell, in 1997, her father spoke. Joe Biden, who has had three grandchildren attend the school, gave a commencement speech in 2012.

But on this day, Barack Obama, who built his political career through soaring oratory, was quiet.
A mass bleaching event has turned the usually colorful coral of the Great Barrier Reef, off Australia, a shade of brown. NASA is looking into coral health with a new project using research from airplanes. (XL Catlin Seaview Survey/EPA)

Coral reefs have almost always been studied up close, by scientists in the water looking at small portions of reefs to gather data and knowledge about the larger ecosystems.

NASAs Jet Propulsion Laboratory is taking a step back and getting a wider view, from about 23,000 feet above. NASA and top scientists from around the world are launching a three-year campaign Thursday to gather new data on coral reefs like never before.

Using specially designed instruments mounted on high-flying aircraft, the scientists plan to map large swaths of coral around the world in hopes of better understanding how environmental changes such as global warming and pollution are affecting these delicate and important ecosystems.

The idea is to get a new perspective on coral reefs from above, to study them at a larger scale than we have been able to before, and then relate reef condition to the environment, said Eric Hochberg of the Bermuda Institute of Ocean Sciences. Hochber is principal investigator for the project, which is called the Coral Reef Airborne Laboratory (Coral).

Hochberg and the projects lead NASA scientist, Michelle Gierach, were in Kaneohe Bay on the Hawaiian island of Oahu with the Associated Press on Tuesday to gather baseline data in the water.

The bleaching event, which has been blamed on global warming, has killed an estimated 22 percent of the reefs corals. The Great Barrier Reef is the world's largest coral reef system. (XL Catlin Seaview Survey/EPA)

While the primary science will be conducted using instruments that create detailed images of the sea floor from above, the team also must take baseline measurements in the ocean to validate the data, Gierach said.

Coral reefs drive many tourist economies around the world, but they provide much more than pretty places to dive and snorkel, Gierach said. Reefs are critical habitat for the majority of the fish that people eat and also protect shorelines from dangerous storm surges and rising ocean levels.

Recently, scientists have developed medicines from coral reefs, including painkillers that are not habit-forming, Hochberg said.

Just realizing that though you may not see a coral . . . corals are impacting you, they are globally important, Gierach said. We have to understand how theyre changing, so we can make some managed decisions about their future.

Reefs are among the first ecosystems to be dramatically and directly affected by global warming, according to researchers.

The International Society for Reef Studies Consensus Statement, published in 2015, said as many as 50 percent of coral reefs have been largely or completely degraded by a combination of local factors and global climate change over the past few decades.

[See more photos of coral in our photo gallery on National Oceans Month.]

Julia Baum, assistant professor of biology at the University of Victoria in Canada, has done extensive research on coral reefs and said the data gathered from this kind of project could prove highly valuable for international reef scientists and the conservation community.

Baum said that coral reef science has been limited by the lack of broad data sets like this project plans to provide and that the research could complement information collected in the water if its made openly available to the scientific community. Coral Project researchers said all data will be made public.

As scientific divers, were limited by the depth we can work at and the amount of bottom time that we have while were diving, so much of underwater marine science, especially on coral reefs, is a painstakingly slow process, she said.

The Coral team will study the reefs of Hawaii, Palau, the Mariana Islands, and Australias Great Barrier Reef over the next three years.
Six Flags America is putting a new spin on the classic roller coaster, upgrading its Superman: Ride of Steel coaster to include virtual reality headsets. The VR technologys 360-degree views sync up with the coasters actual movement. The Washington Post was there to test it out. (Jorge Ribas/The Washington Post)

Before the new Superman: Ride of Steel Virtual Reality Roller Coaster takes off, riders strap on their headsets and the cityscape of Metropolis materializes before them. If they look down, they see their bodies have been virtually re-outfitted with T-shirts that have the Batman or, at the click of a button, Wonder Woman logos on them.

The immersion is complete.

On most roller coasters, you see the drops coming. On Ride of Steel, which officially openss at Six Flags America on Saturday, its a bit more complicated. On your screen, youre on a sky tour of Metropolis when Lex Luthor shoots you and the rest of the city with an anti-gravity gun  while you make your first ascent up the track in real life. Suddenly, Superman appears and destroys the gun.

And then you drop. Youre centimeters away from the ground before Superman catches you, and for the remainder of the two-minute ride, Superman and Luthor duke it out while bouncing you all over the skies and raining debris on poor Metropolis.

These days, many amusement park rides incorporate screens, often in motion simulators that put you in front of one and shake your seats. But VR coasters, which are cropping up around the globe this year, take the actual old-school summer tradition and add on a headset with cutting-edge technology. It may sound like an odd mash-up  but they could change the way we ride coasters altogether.

Ride of Steel, which has existed since the Upper Marlboro, Md., parks rebranding under the Six Flags banner in 2000, was due for an overhaul. Originally, just the train cars were to be redone, according to Sam Rhodes, director of design at Six Flags Entertainment. But in November, the Six Flags senior leadership team experienced VR technology at a trade show in Orlando. There, the obviously named company VR Coaster  which had installed the worlds first VR coaster, Alpenexpress Coastiality, in Germany two months earlier  set up a demo station on a small, family-oriented coaster.

We were on a 40-foot-tall lift hill that felt like it was 400-foot, Rhodes said.

The opportunity to be pioneers in the development of larger VR coasters seemed too big to pass up.



As you ride, you look at a screen and see yourself flying over Metropolis during a battle between Superman and Lex Luthor. (Six Flags America)

Since then, in March, Six Flags Over Texas opened North Americas first VR coaster, the New Revolution, in which the rider seems to be flying a jet fighter, defending the planet from aliens. Several other Six Flags locations now have versions of the same ride, and reviews have been overwhelmingly positive. The reviewer for the website Coaster 101 wrote, I now fully expect VR headsets to start popping up on more and more rides, especially older or gentler ones needing a refresh, while Theme Park Insider said, If youve been wondering when the theme park industry would develop a fresh, new type of ride  its here.

Starting on Wednesday, two select groups of Six Flags superfans  those who purchased a $15.99 limited-edition Superman T-shirt and season-pass holders  were able to experience the Six Flags America coaster before its official opening. Guests lined up to take photos with Superman before they were ushered into the waiting area, where park employees helped them put on their virtual-reality headsets.

In line at 1 p.m. Wednesday was Al Clowe, 35, a season-pass holder and member of American Coaster Enthusiasts (ACE), the worlds largest ride-enthusiast organization. He travels here from Alexandria to Six Flags America at least 15 times per year.

I know the layout [like] the back of my hand, Clowe said of the coaster. But when you integrate it with virtual reality, its completely different.

And Superman saved us! said Diamond Taylor, 23, just a couple minutes after disembarking. I thought he was going to let us down . . . but he didnt. He got it together.

Her sister, Stacy Crowner, 26, who rode next to Taylor, spoke enthusiastically about the rides new technology.

Weve been coming here since we were little, and all the rides are the same, she said. So now that theyve improved and put something different, its exciting, because were going to go again.



Six Flags has several virtual reality coasters opening in parks across the country this year. (Six Flags America)

Repeat riders were many through Wednesday afternoon, as the line never got to be too long. Each time the coaster train halted at the boarding station, whoops, cheers and applause erupted from the superfans.

Among them was Sam Marks, 58, Clowes husband and also an ACE member. Marks has been a loyalist to Six Flags America since 1986, when it was still known as Wild World. He and Clowe met at the park, and they married at the Wild One, a 99-year-old wooden coaster.

Before, youre kind of left to your imagination about what youre going to experience, Marks said of Ride of Steel. You might picture yourself as Christopher Reeves Superman, flying low and fast over buildings. But in this, youre actually flying over buildings.

The VR technologys greatest selling point is also its kryptonite: By immersing you in a new world, it removes the real-life visual experience of riding a coaster. On the new Ride of Steel, youll hear your fellow riders howling and screaming, but you cant see them. You wont inhale as you reach the top of a hill, in anticipation of the plummet to come  instead, it catches you by surprise. At the apex, you wont see the rest of the park below you, a reminder of the thrills that youll have throughout the day. Some imagination is lost.

But for Marks, the technology doesnt spoil the experience. Its kind of like the icing on the cake, he said. Roller coaster purists will be able to decline the VR headsets and experience the ride in its original form. But, given the positive responses, it doesnt look like many riders will do so.

For those enthusiasts living far from the District, fret not, as Superman-themed VR rides at Six Flags New England and Six Flags Fiesta Texas open this weekend as well.

Assuming that theyre just as successful, the Man of Steel might not get a break for a while.
Supporters of Riek Machar, above, first vice president of South Sudan, are denying that he contributed to an op-ed in the New York Times. (Zacharias Abubker/AFP/Getty Images)

The New York Times has sparked an international incident by publishing an op-ed article under the byline of a foreign official who never agreed to it, according to his supporters.

The newspaper this week blundered into the bloody politics of South Sudan, the fledgling east African nation, by posting a column ostensibly written by that countrys president and first vice president, Salva Kiir and Riek Machar, respectively. The column argues for an internal, government-led truth and reconciliation commission to investigate atrocities stemming from South Sudans two-year civil war rather than an international war-crimes tribunal that was part of a peace agreement brokered by the United States and Great Britain last year.

Only one problem: Machars supporters say that he didnt sign on to the editorial and doesnt agree with it. They suggest the Times was effectively hoodwinked by Kiirs faction into running the column with his name on it.

The newspaper on Saturday added an editors note to the column acknowledging that Machar disavowed the contents, saying that he had not been consulted about the essay, which was submitted by representatives of Kiir. The presidents spokesman maintains that Machar had been consulted before the essay was written.

Kiir and Machar were allies in the long struggle for South Sudans independence from Sudan, which concluded in 2011. But they were rivals in the internal struggle that followed that war. The civil war left as many as 300,000 people dead and displaced more than 1.5 million.

Both Kiir and Machar and their supporters potentially face trials for human-rights abuses under an international court supervised by the African Union. Both men agreed to support such a court when they signed the peace settlement last summer.

But their Times column argued the opposite. The international court will destabilize efforts to unite our nation by keeping alive anger and hatred among the people of South Sudan, it said, adding ominously, It is easy to see how some people, having known nothing but war, may prefer to return to the battlefield than stand trial in a foreign country.

The Times acknowledged Thursday that it couldnt verify that one of the two authors  Machar  actually had anything to do with the column.

This piece came to us through representatives of the government of South Sudan with assurances that they were working on behalf of both President Kiir and Vice President Machar, Eileen Murphy, a Times spokeswoman, said in a statement. Today we learned that Vice President Machar does not agree with the content of the op-ed. We should have sought direct confirmation of the argument of the piece from both parties.

The newspaper said that it had learned of Machars displeasure through the newspapers foreign desk and that it had sought direct comment from Machar.

Newspapers such as the Times and The Washington Post routinely receive proposed columns from government officials and others through intermediaries. In this case, the Times said it received assurances from a third party, which it didnt identify, that it represented both the president and vice president of South Sudan. In retrospect, said one Times official, we obviously should have taken it a step further and verified that both men gave their assent.

A senior official in the South Sudanese embassy in Washington, Gordon Buay, said the article was authentic and had the approval of the two leaders, according to Radio Tamazuj, a South Sudanese broadcaster and news service. But a spokesman for Machar, James Gatdet Dak, said the column was false and disavowed it, according to the station.

In a speech at the United Nations on Thursday, David Pressman, the U.S. representative for special political affairs, said he was surprised and disappointed by the editorial. As we have seen in countless other settings after widespread violence, reconciliation and justice are mutually reinforcing, not mutually exclusive, he said. And that is precisely why both are included in the August 2015 peace agreement, and it is precisely why the United States will continue to make every effort to both support the African Union in its establishment of the hybrid court.
THE DISTRICT

Ex-nurse convicted in ER sexual assaults

A former Washington nurse was found guilty Wednesday of sexually assaulting three emergency room patients.

Prosecutors had charged Jared Kline, 38, with 10 counts of second-degree sexual abuse of a patient in a case involving four women who were patients at George Washington University Hospital, MedStar Washington Hospital Center and United Medical Center in 2013 and 2014.

In finding Kline guilty, a D.C. Superior Court jury also rejected some of the accusations and acquitted him on an additional three counts. The jury was not able to reach a unanimous verdict in the four remaining counts.

Kline, a resident of Falls Church, Va., is scheduled to appear in court June 28 at which point prosecutors will decide whether to retry him on the four counts. Kline could face a maximum of two to five years in prison in each of the three guilty verdicts.

 Keith L. Alexander

MARYLAND

Leader of drug ring gets nearly 12-year sentence

A Maryland man was sentenced to nearly 12 years in prison Thursday for his role as leader of a drug-trafficking organization that operated in Maryland and had influence as far away as Arizona.

According to his plea agreement, Marvin Taaff, 29, of Takoma Park conspired to distribute more than five kilograms of cocaine, between 196 and 280 grams of crack cocaine and at least 100 kilograms of marijuana.

An investigation found that Taaff coordinated the shipment of controlled substances from Maryland sources and sources outside of the state, in addition to directing members of his organization to provide locations to store and sell the drugs.

From April to October 2013, Taaff sold crack cocaine during several controlled purchases with law enforcement, according to his plea agreement. Firearms, cocaine powder and drug paraphernalia were seized from Taaffs residence in December 2013, officials said.

 LaVendrick Smith

Man, 39, is killed in Upper Marlboro

A man was killed early Thursday in the Upper Marlboro area of Prince Georges County, according to police, who identified the victim as Jabari Jones, 39, of Upper Marlboro.

Police said they are investigating the incident, which occurred about 12:40 a.m. in the 700 block of Castle Wood Place, as a homicide.

When officers arrived after being called for a welfare check, they found the man suffering from trauma to the body, police said. He was pronounced dead on the scene.

County police said the incident did not appear to be random.

 Dana Hedgpeth

VIRGINIA

Man accused of biting womans finger in road-rage case

An Arlington man was arrested after police say he bit a womans finger during a road-rage incident.

About 8:20 p.m. Wednesday, officers responded to the 800 block of South 15th Street for a reported fight, Arlington County police said in a statement. Officers found a 36-year-old woman suffering from injuries that included a bite wound on her index finger that allegedly resulted from an argument in a road-rage incident. Medics treated her at the scene, police said.

After an investigation, officers arrested Timothy Dubois, 55, of Arlington at his residence, the statement said. He was charged with malicious wounding, assault and battery, and driving under the influence.

 Justin Wm. Moyer

THE REGION

Beachgoer is killed by umbrella during wind gust

A 55-year-old Virginia woman was killed Wednesday after being struck by a wind-tossed beach umbrella at Virginia Beach, officials said.

Police responded to a call about 5 p.m. for a woman who was said to be in cardiac arrest near 33rd Street on the beach. Officers found a woman suffering from what was at the time described as a life-threatening injury. She died at a hospital, police said.

An initial investigation found that a strong gust of wind blew an umbrella across the beach and struck her in the torso, according to Officer Tonya Pierce, a spokeswoman for Virginia Beach police. Police think that the woman, identified as Lottie Michelle Belk of Chester, Va., was hit with the tip of the umbrella.

It was a horrific accident, said Pierce, who said the fatality was considered a death due to nature. Pierce said she had never heard of anything similar to this in 25 years with the department.

 Dana Hedgpeth
Former D.C. mayor Vincent C. Gray talks with Lillian Chatman, 94, left, and Ward 7 ANC Commissioner Robin Marlin at a Friends of Francis A. Gregory Library social at the library in January. (Evelyn Hockstein/For The Washington Post)

Supporters of Vincent C. Gray and Yvette M. Alexander, who are vying for a seat on the D.C. Council, stood across a shopping center driveway from each other chanting, cheering and hurling a few pointed insults. With the Democratic primary just days away, the jabs were getting nastier.

Time for a change in Ward 7! a Gray backer yelled. Another, pointing at the Alexander group, added, She aint done nothing for this ward but get paid!

Girl, please, he let his friend of 40 years go to jail! an Alexander supporter replied, raising the very issue that is at the heart of the campaign for the Ward 7 council seat.

Alexander, 54, the incumbent, and Gray, 73, a former mayor who handpicked Alexander to succeed him on the council, soon joined their followers on a recent morning. They were trying to reel in voters during the final run-up to Tuesdays D.C. Democratic primary. In one of the most intriguing and increasingly rough-and-tumble races in the District, both candidates have placed their political futures on the line.

Former D.C. mayor Vincent C. Gray announced that he intends to seek Ward 7 council seat in the June 14 Democratic primary. Here are some of the highlights from his long political career in D.C. (Ashleigh Joplin/The Washington Post)

[Timeline: The investigation of Vincent Gray]

But for the wards voters, it also will be a referendum on Grays political past.

This campaign marks his official return to politics after being voted out of office as mayor in 2014 under a cloud of suspicion that accompanied the scandal of a 2010 shadow campaign funding effort. An investigation of that shadow campaign led to guilty pleas from six Gray campaign staffers and associates.

Gray, who spent the past year teaching at Howard University, has repeatedly denied any involvement in the illegal funneling of $653,000 into the mayoral campaign. He thinks his political career was derailed by a prosecutor with a vendetta and by a local news media that relentlessly hammered him for the scandal  even though he was not charged with wrongdoing and the investigation was eventually shut down. He holds The Washington Post particularly responsible and has declined multiple interview requests from the paper.

For the former mayor of Washington, the race for a council seat has become as personal as any mission he has undertaken, those close to him say.

The sentiment is shared by many in Ward 7, one of the most-neglected and poorest parts of the District, said Barbara Morgan, a longtime ward resident and political activist.

We feel that he was treated unfairly, said Morgan, who is supporting Gray. And he needs to represent us on the council. We dont care if they like that downtown or not.

Councilmember Yvette Alexander chants, "Stop the violence, increase the peace," during an anti-violence march June 4 along Benning Road in Washington. (Evelyn Hockstein/For The Washington Post)

Politicking does not come naturally to Gray. He drives himself to campaign events in his black, two-door BMW, rarely travels with an entourage and has an aversion to glad-handing. He is so low-key  some say shy  that it is not always evident that he is the candidate.

Christopher Murphy, who served as chief of staff in Grays mayoral administration and is now a vice president at Georgetown University, says Grays decision to run fits with his lifetime of public service to a city that he loves. He thinks Gray is a policy wonk at heart who exemplifies substance over style and wants to help people in his ward deal with the issues that affect them most, particularly a jump in violent crime.

Between Jan. 1 and Tuesday, 24 people were killed in Ward 7, accounting for nearly half the homicides in the city this year. Gray has been regularly showing up at crime scenes to talk with residents and police about the surge in gun deaths.

But if the Ward 7 residents concerns are at the forefront of Grays campaign, there is an unmistakable subtext to his run for office.

He feels that a real injustice was done to him, and how could he not feel that way? said Murphy. And does he understand that being back on the council and being back in public life helps right an injustice in a very small way? Absolutely, he understands that.

Vince-dication is the way Chuck Thies, Grays campaign spokesman, describes the goal. Thies managed Grays 2014 reelection effort, which went topsy-turvy just weeks before the primary when then-U.S. Attorney Ronald C. Machen Jr. hinted strongly in a news conference that prosecution of Gray for a suspected role in the scandal was likely. Grays supporters say the announcement, which came on a day known in Gray circles as Machen Monday, cost him a 20-point lead over Muriel E. Bowser (D) overnight and, eventually, the primary election.

[Vincent Gray to run for Ward 7 council seat]

When he kicked off his campaign this year, Gray did not directly address the investigation but told his supporters, I have moved on, but I will not forget.

After prosecutors in December ended the five-year investigation into the shadow campaign without charging Gray, Thies tested how Gray might fare in a race against Alexander and also in a citywide race for the at-large council seat held by Vincent Orange. Polling showed Gray winning both races, Thies said. But a race against Orange would have proved more difficult because Gray would have had to win back voters who sided against him in the 2014 mayoral primary.

A longtime resident of predominantly African American Ward 7, Gray has always done well with voters there. Even in the turbulent 2014 mayoral primary against Bowser, he received nearly 60 percent of the Ward 7 vote.

The Gray campaign said its most recent internal polling shows him with a lead over Alexander among likely Democratic voters. Alexander has the backing of Bowser but has been criticized as weak on constituent services and as doing little to bring much economic development to the ward, even as much of the rest of the city flourishes.

Gray, too, has been faulted by some as not doing more for the ward when he was mayor. A deal that Gray brokered to bring in a Walmart store fell apart when Gray left office. Bowser and Alexander blame Gray for the collapse of the deal; he insists that it is they who are responsible.

Alexander said she was surprised that Gray, who essentially deeded the ward seat to her when he became D.C. Council chairman in 2007, has entered the race against her.

He supported me the last three times I ran and never expressed any disappointment with me. So, yeah, I was shocked, she said.

[For years, he was her political mentor and backer. Now he wants her seat.]

Alexander, a native Washingtonian and Howard University graduate, worked in corporate marketing and as an insurance regulator for the District before becoming a full-time legislator. She chairs the councils Committee on Health and Human Services.

Many D.C. political watchers think Gray targeted Alexander because he sees her as a Bowser surrogate. The council seat would allow Gray to be a counterbalance to Bowser and perhaps provide him a platform for a 2018 challenge to the mayor.

There is little goodwill between Gray and Bowser, who have had a frosty relationship since 2010, when Gray, then council chair, knocked out Bowsers mentor, incumbent Adrian M. Fenty, in the mayoral primary. Tensions intensified two years later when prosecutors announced their investigation into the 2010 campaign and Bowser quickly called on Gray to resign as mayor.

In emails to constituents and in public comments, Alexander has hit the former mayor hard, saying that he wants the seat only to later run against Bowser for mayor and accusing him of deep involvement in the 2010 scandal and allowing his friends and associates to take the fall.

Two witnesses told prosecutors that Gray knew about and asked for the shadow campaign money, according to court records. Recently unsealed documents from the investigation show that Grays close friend and campaign chairwoman had concerns about an off-the-books effort and wanted to talk with Gray about it.

People didnt know about the shadow campaign and all the people who went to jail for it, Alexander said in an interview last week. They needed to know the difference between not being charged and being innocent. And theres a distinct difference.

Gray has mostly avoided public spats with Alexander, but his surrogates have been more than happy to engage.

Neither Gray nor Alexander gets high marks from voters, said Dorothy Brizill, a longtime political watchdog in the District.

The real problem is the two front-runners are really flawed candidates, she said. I told my husband I wanted to add another candidate to the ballot. He asked who I wanted to add, and I said, None of the above. 

Rudolph Mitchell, 63, is retired and leaning toward Alexander. He said he cannot get past the allegations against the former mayor.

Even though he didnt get prosecuted for anything, all his people did, he said.

Toshiba Dawson, 27, feels differently. I like people who are real into the community, she said. I see him out here with the kids, listening to them. We really need that.

Freda Beamon, 51, is unemployed and lives in public housing. Like many in the ward, she is not impressed with either candidate. Ward 7 is a divide between those who have it and those who dont, she said. Theyre not getting anything done here for the crime problems and the drug addiction. And the only time we see them is when its time to vote.

Brizill gives the edge to whichever candidate is better organized and better funded to get out the vote and drive home a message during early voting and on Tuesday. By Fridays contribution reporting deadline, Grays campaign says it will have raised more than $165,000. The Alexander campaign declined to say what its Friday total will be. At the March reporting deadline, it had taken in $104,000.

Driving through the ward, the battle of yard signs seems to lean toward Gray, but Alexander has billboards at main intersections touting her endorsement by The Post, a fact that particularly irks members of Grays inner circle, who feel that the papers editorials and overall coverage have been unfair to Gray.

As the primary election approaches, both sides are revving up their voting machines and making a final push.

I think it will be a very close race, Brizill said. I just hope they dont kill each other on Election Day.

Aaron C. Davis and Ann Marimow contributed to this report.
St. Johns College, a liberal arts school with campuses in Annapolis and New Mexico, is weighing whether to put its Santa Fe president in charge of both.

The proposal has drawn consternation from students and others who worry that it will relegate the local campus to second-class status.

Administrators say they are considering the change in response to financial challenges, including an $11.5 million structural deficit in the past fiscal year. They have said the change would not diminish the Annapolis campus.

But the St. Johns College Delegate Council, the student government group on campus, has opposed the proposal. Members say administrators have not made it clear how it would save money.

They also say that the decision-making process was rushed and that student input was insufficient.

We understand the very valid concerns the Board has regarding the structural deficits that our college faces, and applaud them for attempting to confront these concerns, five officers of the council wrote in a statement. The college-wide president proposal might, in fact, help combat these issues, but we have yet to be shown any way in which it would do so.

St. Johns College, which has nearly 900 students divided between the two campuses, is known for its focus on classical literature and music. All undergraduates study French and classical Greek, the great books of the Western canon and the mathematicians Euclid and Ptolemy.

As at many small liberal arts colleges across the country, declining enrollment has strained the schools finances. Leaders have been able to plug deficits with donations and other adjustments, spokesman Jim Reische said, but they see a need to streamline the administration. The school recently laid off seven employees who had duplicative roles on the two campuses.

St. Johns traces its lineage to the preparatory King Williams School, founded in 1696 in Annapolis. The brick building also hosted the upper house of the Maryland Assembly, local social clubs and the colonys free library.

The state granted a charter to the college in 1784. As enrollment grew in the postwar 20th century, administrators sought more space. Rather than expand in Annapolis, they accepted a donation of land in New Mexico and opened the Santa Fe campus in 1964.

Since then, St. Johns has experimented with a single president who traveled between Annapolis and Santa Fe, as the current Annapolis president, Christopher B. Nelson, did on an interim basis for 18 months from 2003-2005. But most recently, each campus has had a president who answers to a single governing board.

In a preliminary vote last month, the colleges Board of Visitors and Governors favored making the Santa Fe campus president, Mark Roosevelt, the most senior leader of the college. Nelson, president of the Annapolis campus for 25 years, plans to retire next spring.

The board would seek a replacement for Nelson, but that leader would answer to Roosevelt.

Perry Lerner, chair of the Board of Visitors and Governors, said the panel voted overwhelmingly for the change.

Our campuses are equal in every respect, Lerner said. I dont take seriously the thought that it was intended or in actuality will make one campus subordinate to each other.

The board opened a 30-day comment period on the proposal. A final vote is scheduled for June 18.

Roger Kimball, a former member of the colleges governing board, wrote this week that the change would leave Annapolis playing second fiddle to Santa Fe. In a column for RealClearPolitics, the conservative writer expressed concern that Roosevelt could change the colleges culture and curriculum.

Annapolis would be the kind of junior partner, Kimball told the Baltimore Sun. I think it would put enormous pressure on the campus. I think it would be difficult to find a president to serve in that subordinate role. I think it would jeopardize the future of the college in ways that might not immediately be apparent.

But Roosevelt said a single leader for both campuses could better identify duplication in jobs and opportunities to streamline the administration.

The way its been with two equal presidents and a management committee, its been kind of mushy, he said. Everyone loves the program and thinks what St. Johns does is beautiful. The vision is to offer it to as many able students as possible on both campuses and to build a financial structure for the college that will sustain this effort for many more generations to come.

Roosevelt said he would not touch the colleges unique offerings.

I have zero agenda in terms of transforming the academic program, he said. This isnt a political issue.

Reische said the implication that Roosevelt would change the colleges identity is totally bogus.

There are some people who would like to fit St. Johns into the box of conservative classical education, Reische said. That is not all that this place is.

Nelson supports the proposal but says the board needs to work out many practical details. The biggest advantage, he says, would be a clear line of accountability.

Its very clear to me that its a good thing to have a collegewide president, and Im perfectly happy to provide my support to such a person, Nelson said. What I dont know is how the proposals are going to play out, what the details are, how much time does a president spend on one campus.

These questions are not easy, and they do rouse a lot of feelings. One of the issues, really, is Ive been in this office for 25 years, so the change is felt all the more.

Classes at St. Johns have ended for the school year. Some students still on campus this week were concerned.

I find it rather Orwellian, said Kira Anderson, a 19-year-old sophomore. The decision, she said, would make one campus more equal than the other.

Anderson said Roosevelts ties to the New Mexico campus would leave the Annapolis campus subordinate to its Santa Fe sister.

Most of the people here Ive talked to feel quite the same, she said.

But Lucy Wright, a 22-year-old senior, was surprised by the controversy.

Im not sure where a lot of these concerns are coming from, she said. I think it might just be a fear of change.

Adrian Trevisan, head of the colleges alumni association, said members have had a spirited discussion about the proposal.

Although views were mixed, he said, the alumni board of directors supports a collegewide president.

I think two parallel structures has led to a lot of redundancy and inefficiency, he said. I think itll make things run a lot more smoothly.
THE DISTRICT

Man fatally shot in citys Southeast

A 25-year-old man was shot and killed Thursday night in the Washington Highlands neighborhood of Southeast Washington, according to D.C. police, who identified him as Rashawn Lewis Wright of Southeast.

The shooting occurred about 10:20 p.m. in the 900 block of Varney Street SE. Police said officers responding to reports of gunfire found a man who had been wounded.

He died at an area hospital, a police spokeswoman said Friday. Other details about the shooting were not immediately released.

 Peter Hermann

Man gets 24-year term for slaying of wife

A District man was sentenced Friday to 24 years in prison for the fatal stabbing and strangling of his estranged wife in front of the womans 9-year-old son in 2014.

Michael Gayle, 35, pleaded guilty in April in D.C. Superior Court to killing his wife, Eboni Domally, in June 2014, in her home in the 5200 block of Queens Stroll Place SE.

Prosecutors say Gayle strangled Domally and then stabbed her multiple times. The attack was witnessed by Gayles young son, who ran out of the home to get help. According to prosecutors, Gayle had moved out of the home two months earlier

Gayle was arrested in July 2014, at his mothers house in Charlotte and has been held at the D.C. jail since.

With the case scheduled to go to trial and prosecutors preparing to call the child to the stand as the only witness to the slaying, Gayle pleaded guilty.

In addition to the prison term, Judge Lynn Leibovitz placed Gayle on five years probation.

 Keith L. Alexander

VIRGINIA

Two men charged in fatal shooting

Two men have been charged with murder for their alleged involvement in a fatal shooting Saturday, Prince William County police said.

The homicide occurred about 9:18 p.m. in the 14900 block of Potomac Heights Place, where officers found Najee Alexander Mason, 24, of Woodbridge, with a single gunshot wound, police spokesman Jonathan Perok said. Mason died later at a hospital.

On Tuesday, police said federal marshals found a suspect  Abdisalam Ali Roble, the victims roommate  in Syracuse, N.Y. Roble, 25, was arrested. Police said an initial investigation found that the two men had argued before the shooting.

On Friday, police said a second man has been charged. Ricardo Stephen Tompkins, 24, of Mechanicsville, Md., was found during Tuesdays arrest of Roble in Syracuse, Prince William County police said.

Police spokesman Sgt. Jonathan L. Perok declined to give further details about Tompkinss alleged involvement in the killing. Both men are charged with murder and use of a firearm in the commission of a felony and are awaiting extradition to Virginia, police said.

 Dana Hedgpeth and Justin Wm. Moyer
A 6-year-old boy who wandered away from a Fairfax County public school Tuesday was found the same day and reunited with this family, police said.

At around 11:30 a.m., the boy left London Towne Elementary at 6100 Stone Rd. in Centreville, a spokesman for Fairfax County police said. A motorist saw the boy walking near the intersection of Billingsgate Lane and Basingstoke Loop, the police said in a statement. The motorist then spotted the boy again a short time later more than a mile from the school near the intersection of Stone and Braddock roads, the statement said.

Concerned for the childs safety, the motorist stopped, spoke to the child and called police, according to the statement. Officers responded, notified the school, got the boys address and took him home unharmed, the statement said.

In a letter sent home to parents, Principal Sigrid Ryberg said the boy had wandered as his class was transitioning from the classroom to recess, and that police notified the school that the child had been found as staff were preparing to call them.

I also want to assure you that we have revised our recess supervision protocols and procedures to ensure that all students are safe and accounted for during outdoor activities, Ryberg wrote. We are committed to providing a safe environment for all students. Ryberg also asked parents remind your son or daughter not to leave school grounds during the school day and the potential risks and dangers associated with doing so.

No charges were filed and police are not investigating the incident further, police said. The letter sent to parents by Ryberg said the incident was under investigation.
A District man was sentenced Friday to 24 years in prison for the 2014 fatal strangling and stabbing of his estranged wife in front of the womans 9-year-old son.

Michael Gayle, 35, pleaded guilty in April in D.C. Superior Court to killing his wife, Eboni Domally, on June 29, 2014, in her home in the 5200 block of Queens Stroll Place SE.

According to prosecutors, Gayle had moved out of the home two months earlier. When he arrived, prosecutors say Gayle strangled Domally and then stabbed her multiple times. The attack was observed by Gayles young son, who ran out of the home to get help.

Gayle was later arrested on July 22, 2014, at his mothers house in Charlotte. Gayle has been incarcerated at D.C. jail since his arrest.

As the case was scheduled to go to trial, prosecutors had prepared to call the child to the stand as the only witness to the slaying. Gayle pleaded guilty as prosecutors were preparing for trial.

[District man wanted in connection in wifes death, arrested in North Carolina]

Domally and Gayle had a violent domestic history. Three years before she was killed, Gayle was arrested for assaulting her; he later pleaded guilty to assault and burglary in Prince Georges County court.

In addition to imposing the prison sentence, Judge Lynn Leibovitz also placed Gayle on five years of supervised probation.
Amin al-Baroudi came to the United States two decades ago to escape chaos in Syria. He had survived a 1982 massacre in his home town of Hama that left tens of thousands dead, then became a refugee in Saudi Arabia.

Baroudi wanted to raise his children in the safety of the United States; he settled in Irvine, Calif., as an IT specialist and became a citizen. He took his children and their friends camping in the Santa Ana Mountains.

But when horror returned to Syria, Baroudi decided he could not ignore it. From 2011 to 2013, he illegally helped smuggle tactical supplies to rebels fighting President Bashar al-Assad, the son of the man who ordered the Hama attack.

Baroudi, 50, appeared Friday in federal court in Virginia and was sentenced to two years in prison for his efforts.

Through this experience, I learned that theres no right way to do the wrong thing, he said in a statement read by his attorney. I simply pray for my old country.

Baroudi, who also goes by Abu al-Jud, pleaded guilty in January to conspiring to export U.S.-origin goods to Syria in violation of federal sanctions.

Baroudis lawyer, Anthony Capozzolo, said in court that his clients intentions were essentially noble although essentially misguided. He said Baroudi was trying to prevent civilian deaths and had no sympathy for terrorist groups.

Mr. Baroudi only wishes for Syria what we have here  freedom from government oppression, Capozzolo said.

Prosecutor Julia Martinez did not dispute that argument. However, she said Baroudi would know that bringing military equipment into an area were there are terrorist groups and individuals who want to hurt the U.S. is exceptionally serious.

Ahrar al-Sham, the group Baroudi provided with bulletproof vests, rifle scopes, night-vision goggles and other supplies, exemplifies the confusing loyalties of the Syrian conflict.

Ahrar al-Sham has disputed that it has links to al-Qaeda or espouses al-Qaedas ideology. Despite Russian requests, the United States has declined to designate Ahrar al-Sham as a terrorist organization, and the group has been part of U.N.-sponsored peace talks in Geneva.

However, Ahrar al-Sham reportedly joined with the al-Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra in an attack on a Syrian village associated with Assads Alawite sect last month that left 19 people dead, including civilians. Prosecutors described Ahrar al-Sham as frequently fight[ing] alongside Jabhat al-Nusra.

[Assad pledges more bloodshed in Syria]

Baroudi and co-conspirators bought tens of thousands of dollars worth of tactical equipment in the United States and carried the gear onto commercial flights to Turkey, where it could then be taken into Syria. Twice he traveled to Turkey.

It doesnt appear to be the most sophisticated of operations, said Judge Liam OGrady.

On his second trip, when Baroudi learned that he could not return to the United States because the government had become aware of his actions, he remained in Turkey but focused on humanitarian work. He helped report to U.N. staff on the situation in northern Syria and coordinated local nongovernmental organizations that were reluctant to work with the United Nations. He also helped distribute polio vaccines.

Baroudi even smuggled a U.S. citizen threatened by the Syrian government out of the country. I feel that Amin al Baroudi saved me from torture, death, and who knows what else, Myasar Alrazzak wrote to the court. He traveled from his home in Michigan to attend Baroudis sentencing.

Eventually Baroudi traveled to Saudi Arabia, where he was taken into custody late last year.

OGrady acknowledged Baroudis good intentions. However, he said, How you convinced yourself that you were helping only the right people is why were here.

His sentence of 32 months, with credit for the five months Baroudi has spent in an Alexandria jail, is below the federal guidelines of 46 to 57 months.
A man was arrested Thursday in connection with a 2015 murder in Woodbridge, Va.

On Nov. 20, Harold Woodrow Hall, 67, of Woodbridge, was found dead after a stabbing at a residence located in the 2100 block of W. Longview Drive, Prince William County police said in a statement.

[Police investigate death in Woodbridge home as homicide]

On Thursday, federal marshals arrested Eric Ricardo Dickerson, 57, of Woodbridge, for the murder, the statement said. Dickerson fatally stabbed the victim following an altercation, according to the police statement, and stole property from the victim, including the victims vehicle and credit cards.

Dickerson was charged with murder, grand larceny and credit-card theft, and is being held without bond, police said.
A prominent law firm weighed in on Marylands forensic mental-health crisis this week, filing a lawsuit designed to compel the transfer of mentally ill defendants from jail cells to hospital beds.

We are seeing our clients not getting treatment, and theyre not healthy, Mary Pizzo, an attorney and mental-health specialist at Marylands Office of the Public Defender, said Friday. A jail is not the place for them to be.

The lawsuit, filed on a pro-bono basis by the firm Venable LLP, identifies four individuals with the intent of becoming a class-action filing. The four inmates in the suit are in Baltimore and are clients of the public defenders office there. Of the four, three are charged with attempted murder and one is charged with first-degree arson.

In all four cases, a judge determined the defendants to be mentally incompetent and a risk to themselves or others  and ordered them to be treated at Clifton T. Perkins Hospital Center, a maximum-security forensic hospital in Howard County.

But that hospital has been beyond its patient capacity for much of the past year, according to state officials, as have the four other psychiatric hospitals that are supposed to take in mentally ill patients from jails.

Throughout Maryland, according to recent counts by the states Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (DHMH), 84 jail inmates are waiting for court-ordered bed space. The crisis has ensnared hospitals, jails and judges  and, according to Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R), has become a top priority for the state health department.

Well be working very closely with that department to try and find some solutions, Hogan said Thursday.

[Hogan: More beds for mentally ill inmates is top priority]

Having clients holding in jails when they need hospital treatment is a scene defense attorneys watch play out every day.

Its heartbreaking, said Rich Rydelek, who works for the public defenders office in Prince Georges County.

Many of his clients, because of the nature of their illnesses, think the world is out to get them. Being confined in a cell affirms their fears, and, when they do mix with other inmates, Rydelek said, they are ill-equipped to deal with them.

They are potential victims to, at a minimum, ridicule, Rydelek said. These people are vulnerable in the environment of a jail in a way that others are not.

He and other defense attorneys also stressed that in many cases, while their clients are waiting for treatment and held in jails, they have not been tried in court  and could be innocent of their charges.

The crisis of the full hospitals has been developing for more than a year. More people with acute mental illness are showing up at jails, according to corrections officials, yet the number of state hospital beds has not grown.

[Crisis ensnares inmates, judges, jailers and hospitals]

The complaint this week named two defendants: the Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene and the departments secretary, Van T. Mitchell. A spokesman for Mitchell and the department, Chris Garrett, declined to comment Friday, citing a policy of not discussing pending litigation.

In earlier court proceedings, Mitchell and other DHMH officials have said they had limited funds to hire more hospital staffers but stressed that the crisis goes beyond funding. They said that they are having difficulty hiring new staff and are having trouble finding community treatment programs to take in patients from the state hospitals once the patients have improved.

Under Maryland law, mental illness and criminal justice intersect in two major areas.

At the time of an alleged crime, if mental illness kept the suspect from understanding they were breaking the law, they can plead not criminally responsible  commonly known as the insanity defense.

Before that happens, however, there is a stage of the criminal process known as mental competency  which covers the question of whether a person understands their surroundings well enough to participate in court proceedings. It is that part of the legal process that the legal complaint addresses.

In the case of the four Baltimore inmates, a judge had determined they were incompetent to stand trial and ordered them to Perkins for treatment  but they remained locked in jail. Attorneys involved in the litigation said they are trying to identify similar-situated inmates around the state.

According to the complaint, DHMH has not met its clear legal obligation to take in mentally incompetent inmates for treatment.

Rather than complying with these court orders, the lawsuit states. DHMH, by its actions and inactions, requires plaintiffs and class members to languish unlawfully in jail or detention facilities.

The complaint also states that as things now stand, similar claims have been made for individual inmates. DHMH officials, the complaint states, have addressed the one-off cases by magically finding space in a DHMH facility, while steadfastly failing to change the practice that necessitated the initiation of the enforcement in the first place.
Two District men pleaded guilty Friday to a brazen, daylight fatal shooting that alarmed and stunned a community that was celebrating the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday.

Prosecutors say Markell Alston, 23, and Darryl Malloy, 21, walked up to a vehicle in the 3400 block of 13th Place SE around 2 p.m. on Jan. 19, 2015, where 22-year-old Kevin Owens was sitting in the drivers seat. Prosecutors say Alston and Malloy approached the vehicle from behind and fired their weapons multiple times.

The fatal shooting was captured on surveillance video and distributed to the media.

[Video shows man open fire in Congress Heights homicide]

Prosecutors say Alston was angry that Owens had started dating the mother of two of his children. Both men pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in Owenss death.

Separately, Alston pleaded guilty to assault in the Nov. 18, 2015, stabbing of a D.C. jail inmate. Authorities say Alston stabbed the inmate 23 times with a sharp object.

In another incident, Malloy pleaded guilty to accosting a worker on Sept. 15, 2014, who was installing safety lights on the roofs of buildings in the Districts Woodland Terrace neighborhood. Prosecutors said that Malloy approached the worker, who was on a ladder, pulled out a gun and told him he did not want the lights installed.

The men are scheduled to be sentenced in all three cases on Sept. 23 by D.C. Superior Court Judge Robert E. Morin.
A Loudoun County deputy sheriff was charged with felony animal cruelty Thursday after killing his pet dog and discarding it in a dumpster, police said.

Deputy Dustin W. Moon, 37, a 11-year employee of the sheriffs office, was charged after he killed his Chihuahua mix sometime in February or March, the Loudoun County Sheriffs office said in a statement.

Authorities learned of the incident in May during an internal investigation into an unrelated administrative violation, according to the statement. During the investigation it was learned Moon killed his pet dog and discarded the remains in a dumpster, the statement said.

A spokesman for the sheriffs office, citing the ongoing investigation, said he couldnt give more details about the administrative violation or an explanation for why Moon killed his dog.

Obviously the evidence discovered during the course of the investigation resulted in us obtaining a felony warrant for animal cruelty, spokesman Kraig Troxell said.

Moon has been praised by the sheriffs department in the past  in 2013, he assisted a man who crashed into a tree during a storm, and in 2015, he prevented a man from committing suicide.

The deputy, who surrendered to authorities in Warren County, Va., was released on a $3,000 unsecured bond and is on paid administrative leave pending personnel action, according to the sheriff offices statement.
The Fairfax Planning Commission is scheduled to vote next week on whether to allow more and higher buildings near Metro stations and in aging commercial areas, part of an effort to increase the number of lively urban centers in Virginias largest jurisdiction.

That initiative has triggered an outcry from residents of some of the affected areas, who fear their quiet, suburban communities increasingly will be overrun by traffic, pollution and other big-city problems.

Fairfax County officials say those who are vocally opposing the changes  mostly residents of Reston, Seven Corners and the Baileys Crossroads area  misunderstand how the land-use rules will work. But officials efforts to explain themselves have been met with suspicion from civic activists, who say the new zoning will open the door to commercial development that rivals the scope of Rosslyns, in neighboring Arlington County.

I want revitalization, but we dont want crazy density, said Carol Turner, vice chair of the Mason District Council, a group of community associations based in the east-central part of the county, adjacent to Alexandria and Arlington.

[Mall-centric no more: Aging suburb to get sweeping makeover]





While she and her neighbors might welcome more or better restaurants closer to their homes, Turner said, we dont want 5,000 apartments plopped down, and thats what well get.

The proposal, which is slated for a vote by the planning commission on Wednesday, would allow denser development in 22 areas, all of them either adjacent to stations on Metros Silver, Orange, Blue and Yellow lines or in older commercial areas along major roads. If approved by the planning commission, the zoning-law amendments would go to the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors, which has scheduled a public hearing on the topic for June 21.

Officials say the zoning changes are necessary because although the countys comprehensive plan encourages more homes, offices and stores clustered in these areas, the current zoning laws do not allow the density envisioned by that plan.

Opponents counter that the proposed rules will allow overbuilding in some areas. Its one thing, they say, for the county to allow high-rises around the Silver Lines new stations. In older areas such as Annandale or Springfield, they say, such density seems sorely out of place.

Clyde Miller, president of the Holmes Run Valley Citizens Association, accused the county of wanting to unleash this monster that threatens our communities.

In a detailed, six-page critique, he said a need for the zoning proposal has not been substantiated, its broad scope threatens to damage communities, and it is opposed by a large majority of those who have spoken up.

Concern centers on the issue of floor area ratio, or FAR, a measurement that planners and developers use to determine density. For example, a 50,000-square-foot building on a 100,000-square-foot lot would have a FAR of 0.5. If that building on the same lot rose to 10 stories, and each floor had 50,000 square feet, the FAR would be 5.0.

Under the zoning proposal, the allowable FAR in the 22 designated areas could rise from 2 or 3 to 5.0  half of what can be permitted for new buildings in high-rise Rosslyn, just across the Potomac River from the Districts Georgetown area.

The more relevant comparison, said Fairfax County Zoning Administrator Leslie B. Johnson, is to mixed-use developments built on small lots.

She pointed to two projects in Falls Church  an eight-story retail and residential building at 301 W. Broad St., which has a 3.33 FAR, and a six-story office and retail building at 400 N. Washington St., which has a FAR of 3.9. Both projects, if built under the zoning regulations being proposed, probably could add a floor.

Fred Selden, director of the countys Planning and Zoning Department, said that concentrating development reduces pressure on surrounding areas.

They assume we are greatly enlargening development, Selden said of those who oppose the regulations. We are not; the sites are much smaller. The county is moving from very large-site development to small-site development.

[A model of wealthy suburban living is starting to fray]

Higher density is not a given under the proposed rules; developers would have to negotiate their plans with the county on a project-by-project basis, with at least two opportunities for public comment and review. But the mere possibility of more people, heavier traffic, fewer parking spaces and more-crowded schools was enough to trigger a flood of emails, phone calls and letters of protest.

After a May 25 public hearing by the planning commission at which eight of 11 speakers opposed the proposed regulations, commission member Tim Sargeant asked for a delay of the panels vote from May 26 until next Wednesday. He said he wanted to make sure the package of proposed changes appropriately reflects the countys goal, which is to harmonize the comprehensive plan and the zoning laws.

At the same time, county officials say they are frustrated that many of the residents concerns seem to be misplaced. For example, Selden said, theres a misconception . . . that because there is a maximum FAR, everybody will push to go to the maximum.

At the May 25 hearing, commissioner James Hart said he was struggling with a mountain of letters and emails. Many of [those writing in] seem to be bitterly opposed to something nobody has proposed, but it takes on a life of its own.

The zoning proposals have the support of Supervisor Penelope A. Gross (D-Mason), whose district includes some of the most vocal critics. Many of them have clashed with the six-term lawmaker in the past over the scope and pace of development, and several backed Mollie Loeffler last year when she mounted an independent challenge against Gross.

Creating places where people can live, work and play, in areas where they can walk, bike or use public transportation, is a key part of revitalizing deteriorating areas and generating new tax revenue, Gross said.

In most areas, stable suburban neighborhoods are anticipated to remain suburban, she said of the proposed zoning changes. At the same time, the commercial centers will have residential amenities, too.

Critics regard those statements with unbridled suspicion. In addition to concern about overbuilding, they also are unhappy that the zoning-law amendments would allow half of the open space required for projects to be on the roofs of new buildings, which they said could limit public access.

Weve had all this history of county government. . . . They get some developers enticing them and they get their way, and were stuck with overcrowded schools and streets, said Jeff Longo, who is president of the Sleepy Hollow Manor Citizens Association and supported Loeffler during her campaign.

Turner, from the Mason District Council, said she and other opponents of the rules changes see no reason to think that the county has their best interest in mind.

Were not listened to. We dont believe what they say theyre going to do, Turner said. If they have this tool, theyre going to use it.
When the Food and Drug Administration approves a drug, the agency spells out who the drug is for, how to use it and what its supposed to treat. But your doctor isnt legally bound to follow those rules, and about 20 percent of U.S. prescriptions are off label  written by doctors for a non-FDA-approved use. That means your physician might, for example, prescribe a blood pressure pill to calm your stage fright or an antidepressant to quell hot flashes.

In some cases, off-label prescribing makes sense, says Gordon Schiff, associate director at the Center for Patient Safety Research and Practice at Brigham and Womens Hospital in Boston. But, he cautions, unapproved uses have often not been well studied and may not bring hoped-for benefits or may increase the risk of adverse effects.

For FDA approval, drugmakers must show that a drug works and is safe for its intended use. Unapproved uses dont undergo that scrutiny. For example, a study of more than 46,000 people found that about 80 percent of off-label prescribing was for a use not backed by strong scientific evidence. That increased the risk of a negative side effect by 54 percent compared with those taking the same drug for an approved use or a more thoroughly studied use.

Is your doctor in the dark?

Doctors arent required to tell you if they are prescribing a drug off label. In fact, they may not always know.

A survey of 457 primary-care physicians and psychiatrists found that many mistakenly thought common unapproved uses for certain drugs were FDA-approved. Almost 20 percent of doctors who said they prescribed the antipsychotic quetiapine (Seroquel and generic) for agitation, aggression and hallucinations in seniors with dementia didnt realize the drug wasnt approved for those purposes. More concerning, the drug carries a black-box warning (the strongest type) that it increases the risk of death in those patients.

Certain drug companies might illegally promote off-label uses to health-care practitioners. In recent years, firms have racked up billions of dollars in fines as a cost of doing business, Schiff says.

In 2013, Johnson & Johnson agreed to pay more than $2.2 billion to resolve charges of, among other things, promoting off-label use of the antipsychotic risperidone (Risperdal). More recently, Endo Pharmaceuticals agreed to pay almost $200 million for promoting Lidoderm  a patch approved for shingles-related nerve pain  for many other types of pain.

We may soon see more off-label marketing. Last year, Amarin Pharma began promoting use of a prescription fish oil pill off label after a federal court ruled that such marketing was protected by the right to free speech. The FDA has also proposed regulations that would give makers of drugs and devices more leeway in distributing information about off-label uses for their products.

When does off-label prescribing have benefits?

Off-label prescribing can sometimes be useful for treating people outside a drugs approved group, such as those who are older. Also, doctors may want to take advantage of an emerging use of a drug, notably for patients with limited options. Off-label use of cancer drugs is quite common, for example, because some of these medications work against several types of tumors.

And theres good evidence behind certain off-label uses. Take the anti-seizure drug topiramate. It has been recommended in American and international guidelines for treating alcohol dependence. The antidepressant amitriptyline is recognized as a first-line therapy for fibromyalgia pain, and it costs less than approved treatments.

Questions to ask

Before you take a new drug, ask your doctor or pharmacist whether its being prescribed for an approved use. (Or go to dailymed.nlm.nih.gov, search by drug, then click Indications & Usage.) If its not, ask whether the use is supported by well-designed trials and why its better for you than approved drugs. And call your insurance company, which may not cover off-label use or may require proof that conventional treatments failed and that the off-label drug will work for you.

Drugs commonly prescribed off-label without good evidence

Quinine sulfate (Qualaquin) for nighttime leg pain.

Clonazepam (Klonopin) for restless legs syndrome and insomnia.

Gabapentin (Neurontin) for diabetic peripheral neuropathy.

Trazodone (Oleptro) for anxiety and insomnia.

Quetiapine (Seroquel) for dementia and obsessive-compulsive disorder.

Copyright 2016. Consumers Union of United States Inc.
TEXAS

Man shot by officer in airport disturbance

A Dallas police officer shot and injured a man seen attacking a woman outside an airport in the city, authorities said Friday afternoon.

Randall Blankenbaker, an assistant Dallas police chief, said the shooting took place about noon Friday outside the baggage claim at Dallas Love Field airport.

Police believe the situation involved a domestic disturbance between a woman and her childrens father, Blankenbaker said. Authorities believe the unidentified man was using rocks to attack the woman, and when an officer assigned to the airport came to her aid, he was rushed by the man with the rock.

The officer, who also has not been identified, fired a number of times after the man with the rock tried to rush him a second time, Blankenbaker said.

Police said the man was conscious when he was taken to a local hospital. The Dallas Police Association said the officer involved in the situation is fine and has been placed on administrative leave during the investigation.

 Mark Berman

CALIFORNIA

Police chief quits amid misconduct probe

The police chief in Oakland, Calif., has resigned amid an investigation of sexual misconduct allegations involving several officers.

In a statement released late Thursday, Chief Sean Whent gave no reason for stepping down.

Whent made his own decision about leaving the job, Mayor Libby Schaaf told reporters Friday. Schaaf did not explain the chiefs sudden resignation. Whent became chief in May 2014.

The historically troubled Oakland department is investigating allegations that several officers had sex with an underage girl. Two officers have resigned and two others remain on paid leave.

 Associated Press
EUROPEAN UNION

Bloc approves stricter gun-control measures

E.U. countries agreed Friday on new measures to tighten gun controls in the wake of the deadly attacks in Paris last year.

The measures include stricter rules on buying and owning semiautomatic weapons, steps to stop deactivated guns from being put back into use, and better tracing of trafficked weapons.

Semiautomatic weapons that can easily be converted to fully automatic mode would be prohibited. Tighter controls also would be placed on Internet gun sales.

The rules would set minimum standards for E.U. nations to respect but would not stop them from putting tougher laws in place. Lawmakers must still endorse the rules.

French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve welcomed the agreement, saying it will allow the security of citizens to be improved thanks to a stronger legal framework and the increased traceability of firearms at the European level.

High-powered assault weapons were among the arms used in the attack in Paris at the Charlie Hebdo satirical magazine in January 2015 and the assaults across the city that killed 130 people in November.

 Associated Press

IRAQ

No confirmation that ISIS chief was injured

U.S. and Iraqi officials said Friday that they could not confirm a report by an Iraqi television channel that Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi had been wounded in an airstrike in northern Iraq.

A spokesman for the U.S.-led coalition fighting the radical Islamist group, Col. Chris Garver, said in an email that he had seen the reports but had nothing to confirm this at this time.

Brett McGurk, the U.S. envoy to the coalition, told a daily news briefing at the White House that there was no reason to believe that Baghdadi was not alive even though we havent heard of him since late last year.

Al-Sumariya TV cited a source in Nineveh province as saying that Baghdadi and other Islamic State leaders were wounded Thursday in a coalition airstrike on a group headquarters near the Syrian border. The channel has good connections with Shiite politicians and Iraqi forces.

Kurdish and Arab security officials in northern Iraq also said they could not confirm the report.

 Reuters

Fujimori concedes presidential race in Peru: Keiko Fujimori, the daughter of imprisoned former Peruvian president Alberto Fujimori, has conceded defeat to economist Pedro Pablo Kuczynski in Perus closest presidential election in five decades. With all ballots counted, Kuczynski won 50.1 percent of the vote to Fujimoris 49.9 percent.

Aid convoys reach rebel-held Syrian towns: International aid convoys have reached two Syrian rebel-held towns near Damascus, marking the first delivery of food supplies to Darayya since 2012, the United Nations said Friday. The government had granted permission for the trips. Trucks from the United Nations and the Syrian Arab Red Crescent took a months supply of food for 2,400 people to Darayya, said a U.N. spokesman. A separate convoy entered Douma in rebel-held Eastern Ghouta, he said.

Israel closes off West Bank for Jewish holiday: The Israeli military said Friday that the West Bank will be closed off until the end of the Jewish holiday of Shavuot on Sunday. West Bank closures are often imposed ahead of holidays when there are fears of Palestinian attacks, but tensions are especially high after Palestinian gunmen killed four people and wounded five Wednesday in a popular area of Tel Aviv. The army said crossings will be open for humanitarian and medical cases and for Palestinians to worship at al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem.

Brazils Rousseff suggests referendum: Brazils suspended president, Dilma Rousseff, suggested that she would hold a national referendum on her presidency if she survives an impeachment trial expected in August. In an interview aired Thursday by state-run TV Brasil, Rousseff said that Brazilians should be consulted on the future, even if the Senate does not permanently remove her from office. Such a vote could lead to a new presidential election.

S. Korea, U.N. to keep Chinese boats at bay: South Korea and the U.N. Command, which oversees the Korean War armistice, have begun a joint operation to keep Chinese fishing vessels from operating illegally off the countrys west coast. The move comes after South Korean fishermen, frustrated with incursions by Chinese boats, used rope to impound two trawlers this month and handed them over to authorities.

 From news services
Michael Upchurch, author of the novel Passive Intruder, is the former Seattle Times book critic.

Theres a lot that goes into solving a murder.

You have to be Internet savvy and cellphone/hospital/DNA database adept. You must be able to handle irregular hours and chronic sleep deprivation.

Most of all, you need a gallows sense of humor. Without it, the job may claw you apart.

A Good Month for Murder by Los Angeles Times reporter Del Quentin Wilber addresses all these points.

"A Good Month for Murder: The Inside Story of a Homicide Squad" by Del Quentin Wilber (Henry Holt)

Between November 2012 and April 2013, Wilber embedded himself with the homicide unit of Prince Georges County, the sprawling suburban county just east of Washington. Eventually he focused on a rash of 12 killings that ran the unit ragged in February 2013.

Prince Georges, with close to 900,000 residents, is the highest-income majority black county in the nation, Wilber notes. Its also a violent place: High crime rates and underperforming schools have cast Prince Georges County as the ugly stepchild of the Washington region.

Its homicide-unit officers were obviously frank and uninhibited around Wilber, letting him see every interrogation trick they use, from deceptively friendly banter to furniture-throwing tantrums. Their gallows humor crosses racial lines and spares no sacred cows.

In the tone-setting prologue of the book, for instance, one detective  the son of one of Washingtons first African American police officers  assumes a news anchors voice as he examines a body and quips: Here is yet another young black man who voted for our beloved president and now, sadly, wont be able to attend his inauguration.

Clearly this material isnt for the PC faint of heart.

That said, Wilber sidesteps the issue of race to a surprising degree, rarely spelling out victims ethnicity and providing the demographic details on the February victims (eight black, three Hispanic, one white) only in his final pages. He also scrupulously avoids political hot potatoes, such as the officers feelings about gun control.

The central case in the book  though it dates from August 2012, rather than February 2013  is the home-invasion killing of Amber Stanley, a 17-year-old high school honors student.

This didnt feel like a robbery, were told. It didnt seem like a domestic dispute, either. It felt like an execution, which made no sense. Nobody executes honor students.

The case is deemed a red ball  a slaying of a transparently innocent victim that has attracted media attention and therefore must be solved, and solved yesterday. Other red-ball cases covered include the killings of a 71-year-old Capitol Heights woman for her television set and of a 15-year-old Hillcrest Heights high school student for a pair of pink Timberland boots he was bringing his girlfriend. (Might as well hold up a placard saying, Rob me! in this neighborhood, one investigator says about the boy.)

Most of the killings, however, involve drug deals gone wrong. And in many cases, the detectives know who the players are.

The book is briskly paced and mostly avoids true-crime cliches. The unfortunate pulp-fiction title (fine for a crime novel, but tasteless for a book about real lives being destroyed) is a quote from an officer leery of how quiet things were in late 2012. In January, it will get busier, he says. But February  watch out. . . . It will be a good month for murder.

Wilber, a former Washington Post reporter, is painstaking in tracing how the detectives go about their fieldwork. The cat-and-mouse games they play with suspects in the interrogation room are fascinating. At times, the proceedings seem almost chummy. (After a while, Buck seems to forget he is being interrogated and begins talking freely about the neighborhood drug trade.) At other times, they appear to skirt the edges of legality.

Lying to suspects about already having DNA samples that place them at the scene of a crime is apparently routine. The same goes for cellphone evidence that interrogators say indicates suspects exact street locations, when in fact it only places them close to a nearby cellphone tower. These tactics may be justified  but it would be good to have the legal ground rules behind them spelled out.

Another unanswered question: How quick were homicide units to pick up on the cyber age? One of the funniest passages in the book comes when two interrogators pretend to a potential witness that they dont know what Facebook is. (So, you read books on it?)

The Internet undoubtedly has made some aspects of detective work more efficient. But its super-abundance of data can be disorienting. It muddies detectives memories of where pieces of information came from, and it can make it tough to keep crucial details about a murder confidential while an investigation is ongoing.

The good news is that the murder spike of February 2013 turned out to be an anomaly. The year as a whole saw eight fewer killings than 2012. The downward trend continued in 2014 and 2015.

One last note: Wilber, understandably, is limited in how much information he provides about officers personal lives, while making it clear that they put as much physical distance as possible between home and work. (You dont want to eat where you sh--, one says.) But the lack of detail feels like a gap.

Maybe a study of how this stressful job affects detectives home lives is better left to fiction.
Donald Trump supports opening up the libel laws, and defending those he sees as victims of nasty public defamation campaigns. Well, I can suggest at least one libel victim that needs a champion: the U.S. economy.

Americas economy gets a bad rap these days, thanks in no small part to Republican politicians constant smears and insults.

This is the worst recovery after a deep recession since World War II, declared Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) on Fox Business Network on Tuesday. Hes used similar language on CNBC, PBS, Fox News and other outlets in recent days, as have other conservative commentators.

This data point, Republicans claim, is an indictment of the Obama administration. Its also supposed to persuade voters to hold their noses and rally around the GOPs bigoted new standard-bearer and the alternative economic vision he supposedly represents.

Except this assessment of our economy is completely wrong. Or at the very least, highly misleading.

In fact, if you go by the historical record, we may have exceeded expectations for where we should be this many years after a severe financial crisis. And relative to most other countries that weathered a crisis when we did, were doing spectacularly well.

Its true that the Great Recession has been followed by a slow and shallow recovery. Rather than bouncing back with annual growth rates in the 3 or 4 percent range, as we might have hoped, weve been trudging along at about 1.5 to 2.5 percent. Hiring has lately disappointed, too.

This record seems pretty damning. Except, in the grand scheme of things, its not.

See, its not really fair to compare todays recovery with any other post-World War II recovery, because this is the first time since World War II that weve had to recuperate from a systemic financial crisis. (The last systemic financial crisis in the United States led to the Great Depression  which was before World War II.) And financial crises are uniquely traumatic events for economies, according to the work of Harvard researchers Carmen M. Reinhart and Kenneth S. Rogoff.

Recoveries following systemic financial crises, Rogoff told me in an email, are always far slower and more protracted than those following normal recessions.

How slow and protracted? Well, in a recent paper, the authors examined the aftermath of 100 financial crises spanning the past century-and-a-half. They found that, on average, it takes a country more than eight years to return to its pre-crisis level of per capita income.

In the United States, following the 2007-2008 financial crisis, we achieved that milestone in only seven years, according to the most recent data from the International Monetary Funds World Economic Outlook.

We beat not just the (admittedly dismal) historical average, but the records of most of our crisis-stricken contemporaries, too.

The United States was one of 12 countries that suffered a systemic financial crisis in 2007-2008. Of that dozen, only three others have since recovered all the territory they lost in the crisis: Germany, Ireland and Britain. The IMF forecasts that two more will recapture their pre-crisis peaks this year, and several more will do so in the next few years. Three countries  Greece, Italy and Ukraine  were so scarred by the crisis that forecasts going all the way out to 2021 still dont show them regaining their lost ground.

Why did the United States do so much better than most of its peers? Partly better policy, partly luck.

Our central bank, the Federal Reserve, opted to loosen monetary policy and undertake controversial, unconventional measures early on. Today many economists credit these actions with keeping the United States from tumbling into a full-blown depression. The European Central Bank, by contrast, took a long time to follow suit.

On fiscal policy, too, we made better choices. Compared with the United States, many European countries engaged in much more draconian austerity measures, which often turned out to be counterproductive.

On the luck side of the ledger, though, we also benefited from having the worlds reserve currency. This meant investors around the world continued to gobble up U.S. Treasurys at the height of the crisis, which relieved U.S. policymakers of pressure to undertake big austerity measures (as, for example, Greece had to do). Plus, Americans were able to wipe out their unpayable private debts much more quickly than many of their counterparts abroad did, since mortgages here are more likely to be non-recourse loans. Foreclosures were painful, but once they were over, the underlying loans were discharged, and families could move on with their lives.

Today, in the United States, the economy may not feel great. But compared with the roads not taken, it aint so bad.
The scariest thing about Britains referendum on European Union membership  and the thing that ought to resonate acutely with Americans  is what it exposes about the political culture: the refusal to take responsibility, the contempt for truth, the willful numbness to human suffering beyond ones own borders. Britain was once a country that prided itself on punching above its weight and stood out as a model of enlightened pragmatism. But returning to live here after nearly two decades in the United States, I encounter a version of the political decay that pains my friends in Washington.

Of course, Britain has always stood aloof from Europe. Generations of orators have channeled John of Gaunt, the patriot in Shakespeares Richard II, who celebrates this scepterd isle . . . this precious stone set in the silver sea . . . this blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England. When Michael Gove, the erudite leader of the anti-E.U. Leave campaign, calls on schools to give children the ability to hear our island story, he stands as the heir to a powerful tradition. For centuries, Britain has been a sort of diluted Japan: an island on the edge of a great continental mass, proud of its insularity.

But Britain has also had a contrary tradition, as Cambridge historian Brendan Simms argues in his fine book, Britains Europe. As far back as 1871, Prime Minister William Gladstone lamented the melancholy and doubtful character of the prospects which hang before Europe. But then he pivoted swiftly. We have no right to wrap ourselves up in an absolute and selfish isolation, he said. We should be unworthy . . . if we disowned the obligations which arise out of these relations to others more liable to suffer than ourselves.

My earliest political memories feature Gladstones internationalism triumphing over small-minded provincialism. When I was 11, in 1975, Britons voted 2-to-1 in favor of membership in Europe, swayed by the message that Britain had a duty to build a prosperous continent and put the memory of two world wars behind it. In a stirring editorial, the now frequently Eurosceptic London Times channeled the idealism of John F. Kennedy. Readers should avoid focusing, the Times said, too much on what Europe can do for us, and too little on what we can do for Europe.

And so it continued into my adulthood. The Conservative election manifesto of 1992 boasted that Britain has regained her rightful place in the world. . . . Britain is at the heart of Europe. Five years later, the pro-European Labour leader, Tony Blair, proclaimed that we are a leader of nations, or nothing. It was this unabashed and idealistic internationalism that led Britain into Europe. And it was this same internationalism that made my country the United States most dependable ally: a nation that believed in muscular leadership of the free West, even if it lacked the population and treasure to play more than a support role.

Now where are we? The Brexit campaign has been virtually devoid of internationalist idealism, not to mention basic decency. The Leave campaign denounces Britains openness to European migrants, never pausing to consider that giving Poles or Romanians a shot at British living standards might be desirable, even noble. The Leavers claim that hordes of welfare tourists are burdening the National Health Service, when the truth is that migrants pay more in taxes than they receive in benefits, which ought to make the government health system stronger. If British doctors are scandalously overworked, that is the fault of Britains government. It is cowardly and dishonest to blame the problem on foreigners.

Meanwhile, the Remain campaign has not covered itself in glory. Rather than presenting E.U. membership as something to take pride in, it has defended the status quo in a depressingly transactional manner. It warns that leaving will mean fewer British exports to the continent, fewer E.U. grants and falling house prices in London. Prime Minister David Cameron has even campaigned in front of a banner proclaiming that the average British household will be worse off to the tune of 4,300 pounds (about $6,200) annually. The pocketbook appeal is grim, not to mention spurious in its precision.

A few days ago, former Labour prime minister Gordon Brown offered a glimpse of what Britain can be. He paced the ruins of Coventry Cathedral, a medieval gem destroyed by Hitlers bombs, and praised a Europe where the only battle is the battle of ideas; a Europe where we fight with arguments and not with armaments. Staring into the camera, Brown appealed to his countrymen to lead, not leave. What message would we send to the rest of the world if we, the British people, the most internationally minded of all, were to walk away from our nearest neighbors?

The best news from this desultory referendum campaign is that Browns video has gone viral.
Stanford swimmer Brock Turner was convicted of sexual assault after he attacked an unconscious woman. But to hear his father and close friends tell it, Turner isnt a rapist, just another college kid who got carried away. Surveys of college students often unearth similar misconceptions. When Oklahoma State University professor John Foubert asks his students if theyve ever raped someone, the answer is always no. Change the phrasing, however, and some admit to committing crimes. Ten percent of fraternity brothers in one campus study reported that theyd penetrated a woman without her permission. They dont see this behavior as rape, said Foubert, who designed OSUs rape-prevention program. Its not just college students. You hear these beliefs in broader society. Even as the national conversation about sexual assault grows, myths persist. Lets debunk five.

1. Rape is primarily a college problem.

Much of the coverage of rape over the past few years has focused on universities. Vice called campus rape an undeniable, massive problem. The Nation described it as a crisis. CNBC said college campuses are one of the most dangerous places for women in America.

It is true that women between 18 and 24 suffer sexual assaults more often than any other group. But young women who dont pursue higher learning are much more likely to be victims. A 2014 study from the Bureau of Justice Statistics (using crime data from 1995 to 2013) found that the rate of rape was 1.2 times higher for non-students than for students. It seems like these institutions get all the attention, and the other victims are never even talked about, said Claudia Bayliff, a Virginia lawyer who has worked on rape cases for 25 years. There are race issues here, class issues and media-access issues.

2. Rape is about the victimization of women.

Rape often gets lumped into a broader conversation about violence against women, and many of the most prominent victims are female. Before 2012, even the Justice Department defined rape as the carnal knowledge of a female, forcibly and against her will.

This obscures something that should be obvious: Rape isnt about gender, its about power and a particular set of behaviors. These include, according to the federal governments updated definition, penetration, no matter how slight, of the vagina or anus with any body part or object, or oral penetration by a sex organ of another person, without the consent of the victim.

This crime can strike men as well as women. Overall, between 5 and 14 percent of rapes are reported by males. According to one study, 44 percent of women and 23.4 percent of men said theyd experienced some form of sexual violence in their lifetimes, including unwanted contact. Seven percent of men, meanwhile, report that theyve been made to penetrate another person. Nearly half of men who reported an assault said their assailant was a woman.

Men and boys who are victims and survivors deserve our compassion and services just as much as women and girls, said Jackson Katz, creator of the Mentors in Violence Prevention Model, a program that works to educate students about rape. But when we speak about men as victims of sexual violence, we need to be clear that men are also the majority of perpetrators.

3. You cant rape your spouse.

The list of institutions and people who have made this claim is long. It includes the Michigan Court of Appeals, which once ruled that it is not illegal for a man to sexually assault his wife, and Virginia state Sen. Dick Black, who said in 2002, I dont know how on earth you could validly get a conviction in a husband-wife rape when theyre living together, sleeping in the same bed, shes in a nightie and so forth.

This election cycle, a lawyer for Donald Trump even claimed to a reporter, You cant rape your spouse. The remark came last July in response to old allegations that Trump sexually assaulted his first wife, Ivana.

But Michael Cohen, a lawyer for the Trump Organization, was dead wrong. It is illegal to rape anyone in the United States, even if youre married to the victim. And wives do report rape. Ten to 14 percent of ever-married or co-habitating women surveyed by researchers reported at least one sexual assault by a husband.

Its true that rape of a spouse wasnt always considered a crime. About 40 years ago, feminists began a campaign to strike down the marital rape exemption, a remnant from a time when a wife was considered her husbands property. Nebraska was the first state to abolish it, in 1976. By 1993, every state had banned sexual assault within marriage. Half, however, still dont grant married women the same protections that cover single women. And at least 23 states make it more difficult for a wife to accuse her husband of sexual violence. Some require evidence of violent force; some give married victims less time to report an assault.

4. You cant prosecute a years-old rape.

News outlets often blame statutes of limitations for keeping alleged serial rapists such as Bill Cosby out of jail. How was the superstar able to evade criminal charges? a writer at Mic asked. The simple answer? Statute of limitations. In 2014, New York criminal defense lawyer Daniel A. Hochheiser told the International Business Times that theres not going to be any criminal charges filed against Mr. Cosby because these cases are all too old.

But statutes of limitation vary widely among states, ranging from three to 30 years. Sixteen states, including Maryland and Virginia, have no statute of limitations at all. Many states also extend the statute of limitations if new DNA evidence is found. Others are pushing to relax these rules to prosecute sex crimes. California, for example, is moving to ditch its statute, which now sits at 10 years for adult victims. Florida and Oregon recently doubled their reporting windows.

Other states have vowed to end their backlogs of unexamined rape kits, the forensic evidence collected after an attack. Ohios Cuyahoga County Sexual Assault Kit Task Force has obtained more than 250 convictions from cases going back to 1993, said Rachel Lovell, a senior research associate at Case Western Reserve University. Their success illustrates that when rape kits are tested, she said, and cases are thoroughly investigated and prosecuted, convictions for old rape cases are very likely.

There has also been a surge in the number of reports of years-old assaults. A fifth of sexual assaults reported in New York City in 2015 happened at least a year prior to the police complaint, NYPD data showed, stretching back as far as 1975. New York Police Commissioner William Bratton dubbed this the Cosby effect. The trend touched other cities, too: Philadelphia authorities observed a 9 percent increase in delayed reports of rape between 2014 and 2015, with the number increasing from 110 to 121. In Houston, it climbed from 76 to 125.

5. The rising number of reported sexual assaults represents a crisis.

In a public service announcement last year, President Obama revealed a startling statistic: Right now, nearly one in five women in America has been a victim of rape or attempted rape. One in five women who attended college at some point between 2011 and 2015 said theyd been sexually assaulted, according to a Washington Post-Kaiser Family Foundation poll.

These numbers reflect a trend that does seem troublesome: More American college students are reporting rapes than ever before. Campus sexual assault reports increased by 25 percent between 2012 and 2013, Department of Education data shows.

But advocates say thats not a bad thing. Rape is a massively underreported crime. Federal researchers estimate that just 34 percent of sexual assaults lead to police reports. So a reporting increase, in some cases, means the criminal justice system is working: Victims are coming forward, and authorities are listening.

Once you talk about sexual assault and do prevention, that reporting increases, said Jane Stapleton, who runs the University of New Hampshires Prevention Innovations Research Center. There is absolutely no evidence to suggest the increase in reporting is directly associated with an increase in perpetration.

Twitter @DPAQreport

Five myths is a weekly feature challenging everything you think you know. You can check out previous myths, read more from Outlook or follow our updates on Facebook and Twitter.
Palestinians walk past a sign painted on a wall in the West Bank town of Bethlehem last year calling for a boycott of Israeli products coming from Jewish settlements. (Thomas Coex/Agence France-Presse via Getty Images)

The writer, a Democrat, is governor of New York.

The coldblooded terrorist attacks in Tel Aviv this week served as a chilling reminder of the summer of 2014, when a steady rain of terrorist rockets from Gaza confined the vast majority of the Israeli population to bomb shelters and protected rooms. During a visit with a bipartisan delegation that August, I was shown a miles-long Hamas tunnel built to infiltrate Israels southern communities and murder their residents. The tunnel was frightening because it was the manifestation of the single-minded obsession by Israels enemies to destroy the Jewish state. And yet, in many ways it was not nearly as frightening as continued efforts to boycott, divest from and sanction Israel.

That is why I recently signed the first executive order by a U.S. governor to help protect Israel from these pernicious efforts to punish it economically. My order ensures that no state agency or authority will engage in or promote any investment activity that would further the harmful and discriminatory BDS campaign. New York will identify institutions and companies, with the list made available to the public and updated regularly, that engage in boycotts, divestment or sanctions activity targeting Israel, either directly or through a parent or subsidiary. All state funds will then be divested from such entities.

If you boycott Israel, New York will boycott you.

Indeed, a new front has opened in the fight against Israels existence. Just as the U.S.-Israel relationship has developed a robust and burgeoning commercial dimension, the threats against Israel have acquired one. There are those who seek to weaken and undermine Israel through the politics of discrimination, hatred and fear.

New York will not tolerate this new brand of warfare. New York stands with Israel because we are Israel and Israel is us. Our values  freedom, democracy, liberty and the pursuit of peace  are collective, as is our drive to achieve them.

Two years ago, when we visited the Gaza border and examined the terrorist tunnels on that unity trip, I was accompanied by ex-Israeli president Shimon Peres and I recalled the time I first met with him 20 years prior. We share a common enemy, he told me then. They come for us today, but they come for you tomorrow. Israel truly stands on the front lines of our war against those who reject our way of life.

Political opponents claim we are punishing both activism and freedom of expression with this executive order. They are wrong on both counts. The BDS movement is an insidious economic attack that is exclusively anti-Israel.

As a matter of law, there is a fundamental difference between a state suppressing free speech and a state simply choosing how to spend its dollars. To argue otherwise would be to suggest that New York state is constitutionally obligated to support the BDS movement, which is not only irrational but also has no basis in law.

There is a clear, well-established legal distinction between political speech  whom you vote for, whom you stand with in a public rally  and blatant discriminatory conduct such as BDS activities. If a business owner refuses to serve or hire someone based on race, religion or ethnicity, it is illegal and sanctionable. If that same person attends a political rally decrying one group of people  African Americans, Jews, the LGBT community  it is constitutionally protected speech.

Dressed up as a peaceful challenge, the BDS movement is in fact anti-peace. It is a smear campaign designed to delegitimize the state of Israel and inflict severe economic damage. When the BDS movement took credit for forcing an Israeli soda-maker factory out of the West Bank, the result was not peace and prosperity. The result was that some 500 Palestinian workers lost their jobs.

New York will not remain complicit in this intolerant crusade. I call on my fellow governors from states across the nation to join us in rejecting these extremist, radical ideals, because we need to fight this movement on every front.

Across the globe, terrorist organizations are lining up, tearing at the very fabric of our democracies. This is the new normal of terrorism, and we must be resolute in our drive to combat it. We must not lead with darkness, but instead with light and compassion. We must fight against injustice not with words, but through deeds. Only then can we come together to find peace, prosperity and security living together side by side. I pray that Israelis and Palestinians work together to find this lasting peace.
Ernest Hemingway at a cafe during the San Fermin festival in Pamplona, Spain, in July 1925. Nealry everyone at the table would be portrayed in "The Sun Also Rises" (Ernest Hemingway Collection,/ John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston)

Gary Krists most recent books are The White Cascade, City of Scoundrels, and Empire of Sin.

Even the biggest alpha dog in the pack starts out as a callow young pup. Before Ernest Hemingway became a literary titan, he was a scheming, fame-hungry wannabe who cried over his rejection slips and struggled to pay the rent on a tiny flat above a Parisian sawmill. It was my complete poverty period, he would later say of these hapless days in the mid-1920s. I hit everyone for cash. I even borrowed a thousand francs from my barber. And while he had somehow managed to get two slender collections of short stories published (in artisanal editions with a combined total printing of 470 copies), he realized that hed have to think bigger to make the kind of splash he yearned for. His conclusion: I knew I must write a novel.

Everybody Behaves Badly is Lesley M.M. Blumes fiendishly readable account of how that novel  The Sun Also Rises  came to be and how it turned Hemingway the obscurity into Hemingway the phenomenon. As literary success stories go, this is hardly unplowed territory. Never mind the groaning shelfload of Hemingway biographies; these early Paris years have also been the subject of numerous memoirs (such as Robert McAlmons Being Geniuses Together and Hemingways own posthumously published A Moveable Feast) as well as more broad-spectrum Lost Generation portraits, from James R. Mellows Charmed Circle to Amanda Vaills Everybody Was So Young. But Blumes book is a slightly different animal. Its a deeply, almost obsessively researched biography of a book, supported by a set of superb endnotes worth reading in their own right. And if that sounds a little dull or esoteric, you clearly havent read the novel shes writing about.

Blume stumbles early on with a breathless introduction that blithely overstates the novels historical importance. (Sun, she writes, essentially introduced its mainstream readers to the twentieth century  in 1926? How had they remained unacquainted for so long?) But she recovers quickly at the start of her main text, conjuring up a vivid picture of Hemingways early years in Paris, when the ambitious neophyte cultivated mentors such as Gertrude Stein and Ezra Pound (only to ditch them once their usefulness to him ended). Almost from the beginning, Hemingway knew exactly the kind of innovative fiction he wanted to write  saturated, as Blume puts it, with Pound-inspired spareness and Steinian repetitive stream-of-consciousness elements. But he also wanted his work to be accessible to a popular audience and thus widely read  a feat that his two exalted mentors had never been able to achieve.

One legacy he took away from his friendship with Stein was a fascination with bullfighting, and it was this that ultimately provided him with the novel-worthy material he needed. In July 1925, he gathered a group of his Parisian cronies and headed down to Pamplona, Spain, for the festival of San Fermin, an annual event that begins with the now-famous running of the bulls and culminates in several days of high-level bullfighting. A visit the previous year had been a great success, but this years contingent of hard-drinking sybarites  including an assortment of former and current lovers of a dissolute British aristocrat named Lady Duff Twysden  promised to generate more than a few interpersonal fireworks. And fortunately for Hemingway, his friends delivered the goods, turning the week-long fiesta into a carnival of drunken high jinks, explosive sexual jealousies, maudlin recriminations and enough other bad behavior to fill any number of novels.

To translate this wine-soaked road trip into The Sun Also Rises, Hemingway did very little fictionalizing of his raw material. Virtually all of the major characters (despite appearing under invented names) were instantly recognizable to the cognoscenti of Paris, and their various misdeeds were so faithfully reported that one of the books real-life models  comic writer Donald Ogden Stewart  refused even to consider it a novel. It was so absolutely accurate, he said, that it seemed little more than a skillfully done travelogue.

The wider literary world disagreed. Though some writers and critics were unimpressed  John Dos Passos described it as a cock-and-bull story about a whole lot of tourists getting drunk  most found the novel stylistically invigorating and sociologically profound. And the fact that the escapades it described were downright scandalous to much of the reading public did nothing to discourage robust sales. Within a few months of publication, there could be no doubt that Sun had accomplished its purpose, establishing Hemingway as the most exciting of contemporary American writers of fiction.

In recounting this tale of creative struggle and breakthrough, Blume can sometimes devote more attention to the horse race of competitive genius than to the artistic merits of the works and authors she describes. But with her emphasis on gossip and celebrity, she is arguably just following Hemingways lead. Hes the original Limelight Kid, one of his embittered early publishers once said of him. Wherever the limelight is, youll find Ernest with his big lovable boyish grin, making hay. Even so, the novel he so opportunistically crafted  for all of its he-man affectations and naked voice-of-a-generation strivings  does hold up remarkably well on rereading. Its a shame that Hemingway had to humiliate some of his best friends to achieve his long-awaited literary triumph, but the results were probably worth it. As Blume so deftly points out, After all, he was revolutionizing literature, and in every revolution, some heads must roll.
NO QUESTION but the next president will face a major headache in North Koreas frenzied attempts to brandish nuclear and missile threats beyond its borders. Effective options for dealing with leader Kim Jong Un are in short supply. The fruits of the Obama administrations approach of strategic patience are meager, but that does not mean a new president should rush to Pyongyang for a negotiation with Mr. Kim. Instead, a new round of sanctions should be given time. If they succeed, they might give the United States and its allies leverage to deal with this most difficult country.

The Treasury Department on June 1 declared North Korea a jurisdiction of primary money laundering concern and said it would impose rules to further isolate Pyongyang from the global financial system by forcing banks to sever ties with North Korea. The primary impact may be to discourage smaller Chinese regional banks from continuing to do business with North Korea because of possible losses due to sanctions. This is the kind of approach that ultimately helped persuade Iran to defer its nuclear weapons ambitions. North Korea has proved wily and devious, evading earlier sanctions, and in any case is not as entwined with the global financial system as was Iran, a major oil exporter. But the new U.S. sanctions may constrict the economic lifeline from China, North Koreas largest trading partner and an important, if ambivalent, benefactor.

Sanctions will work if they impose a cost on Mr. Kims weapons pursuits. But the regime has never shown qualms about consigning millions to subsistence living and famine, under the watchful eye of a massive police state, while concentrating its resources on nuclear and military programs and, lately, on building and using cyberwarfare capabilities. Mr. Kim has promoted a byungjin policy of simultaneously pursuing nuclear weapons and economic growth. Four nuclear tests have been carried out, the most recent in January. Mr. Kim sees atomic weapons and the missiles to deliver them as essential to his survival, although his braggadocio  such as claiming to have exploded a powerful hydrogen bomb, or threatening to turn Manhattan to ashes  is usually over the top.

Even if some of his boasts are empty, Mr. Kim cannot be ignored. North Korea already has a small nuclear weapons stockpile and appears to be moving to extract plutonium from a reactor for use in still more weapons. Mr. Kim is known to be short-tempered and brutal to subordinates, which may be one reason an untested intermediate-range ballistic missile, the Musudan, was suddenly tested multiple times recently, all failures. A petulant, nuclear-armed bully in Asia is all but certain to be at the top of the list of problems for the new president. In the past, bargains have been struck with North Korea, only to end in broken commitments and deep distrust. The sanctions are the right move now, and the next president must find a way to neuter Mr. Kims outlandish and frightening peril.
A MENTALLY ill black man, just 24 years old, is arrested in April 2015 for shoplifting a Mountain Dew, a Snickers bar and a Zebra Cake  total cost: $5  from a convenience store in Virginia. He languishes in jail for 14 weeks, refusing medicine, his weight plummeting, his cell smeared with feces. After 101 days, having lost more than 40 pounds  literally wasting away, as a starving man does  he dies.

And no one noticed a thing, until it was too late.

Those are some of the essential facts surrounding the case of Jamycheal Mitchell, whose death last summer triggered at least three official investigations and not one coherent answer to the central question: Why didnt anyone intervene?

The first and hastiest investigation was done by the facility where Mitchell starved to death, the Hampton Roads Regional Jail. Scarcely a week after his body was discovered, jail officials concluded their probe, pronounced themselves blameless  and released not an iota of information.

The next two investigations, by Virginias Office of the State Inspector General and the Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Services, were no more edifying. The inspector general, citing guidance from the state attorney general, said it lacked jurisdiction to question jail personnel, thereby raising doubts about the utility of its existence. And the DBHDS, in thousands of turgid words, did not bother to address or, so far as can be determined, even ask about the most glaring failure of all: How could no one have noticed that a man was wasting away in plain sight?

This is not an investigation. This is a whitewash.

In both state investigations, the lapses are galling. A former top-ranking inspector generals official said that the office was in fact empowered to question jail officials, flatly contradicting the offices assertion of impotence. The mental-health departments investigators interviewed the jails nursing director, Pam Johnson, who said, witlessly, that Mitchell had been eating his food as far as the nurses were aware.

The inspector generals report said that nursing care in Mitchells case, provided at the time by NaphCare Inc., a jail contractor, was deficient, and left it at that. And when DBHDS investigators sought a copy of the mortality and morbidity report on Mitchell from NaphCare, they received no call back.

The scandal here is multidimensional. Its a disgrace Mitchell spent 101 days in jail on a $5 shoplifting rap. Its a disgrace he wasnt transferred to a nearby state mental-health hospital, as a judge repeatedly ordered. (The hospital didnt receive and then didnt see the order until after Mitchells death.) Its a disgrace that months went by before anyone at the jail intervened to take Mitchell to the emergency room. Its a disgrace the jail taped over video footage taken outside Mitchells cell that might have added information. Its a disgrace the jail absolved itself of all responsibility, while releasing no information. And its a disgrace state investigators, after spending months on probes, either couldnt or wouldnt ask the right questions to the relevant people.

State advocates for the mentally ill have asked for a Justice Department civil rights investigation. That would be a good, and sadly necessary, start in unraveling the disgrace of Jamycheal Mitchells death.
The morning after, the nation awakes asking: What have we done?

Both parties seem intent on throwing the election away. The Democrats, running against a man with highest-ever negatives, are poised to nominate a candidate with second-highest-ever negatives. Hillary Clinton started with every possible advantage  money, experience, name recognition, residual goodwill from her husbands successful 1990s  yet could not put away until this week an obscure, fringy, socialist backbencher in a country uniquely allergic to socialism.

Bernie Sanders did have one advantage. He had something to say. She had nuthin. Her Tuesday victory speech was a pudding without a theme for a campaign without a cause. After 14 months, she still cant get past the famous question asked of Ted Kennedy in 1979: Why do you want to be president?

So whom do the Republicans put up? They had 17 candidates. Any of a dozen could have taken down the near-fatally weak Clinton, unloved, untrusted, living under the shadow of an FBI investigation.

Instead, they nominate Donald Trump  conspiracy theorist (from Barack Obamas Kenyan birth to Ted Cruzs fathers involvement with Lee Harvey Oswald), fabulist (from his own invented opposition to the Iraq War and the Libya intervention to the thousands and thousands of New Jersey Muslims celebrating 9/11), admirer of strongmen (from Vladimir Putin to the butchers of Tiananmen).

House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) criticized Donald Trump June 7, for remarks Trump made about a Latino federal judge. However, Ryan said Trump is still a better alternative to Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. (C-SPAN)

His outrageous provocations have been brilliantly sequenced so that the shock of the new extinguishes the memory of the last. Though perhaps not his most recent  his gratuitous attack on a Mexican federal judge (born and bred in Indiana) for inherent bias because of his ethnicity. Textbook racism, averred Speaker Paul Ryan . Even Trump acolyte and possible running mate Newt Gingrich called it inexcusable.

Trump promptly doubled down, expanding the universe of the not-to-be-trusted among us by adding American Muslims to the list of those who might be inherently biased.

Yet Trump is the partys chosen. He won the primary contest fair and square. The people have spoken. What to do?

First, dare to say that the people arent always right. Surely Republicans admit the possibility. Or do they believe the people chose rightly in electing Obama? Twice. Historical examples of other countries choosing even more wrongly are numerous and tragic. The peoples will deserves respect, not necessarily affirmation.

I sympathize with the dilemma of Republican leaders reluctant to affirm. Many are as appalled as I am by Trump, but they dont have the freedom I do to say, as I have publicly, that I cannot imagine ever voting for him. They have unique party and institutional responsibilities.

For some, that meant endorsing Trump in the belief that they might be able to contain, constrain, guide and perhaps even educate him. To my mind, this thinking has always been hopelessly misbegotten but not necessarily  nor in all cases  venal.

Which brings us to the matter of Paul Ryan, now being excoriated by many conservatives for having said he would vote for Trump.

Paul Ryan endorsed presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump on June 2, but the two haven't always seen eye-to-eye. (Peter Stevenson/The Washington Post)

Yet what was surprising was not Ryans ever-so-tepid semi-endorsement, which was always inevitable and unavoidable  can the highest elected GOP official be at war during a general election with the partys democratically chosen presidential candidate?  but his initial refusal to endorse Trump when, after the Indiana primary, nearly everyone around him was falling mindlessly, some shamelessly, into line.

That was surprising. Which is why Ryans refusal to immediately follow suit created such a sensation. It also created, deliberately, the time and space for non-Trumpites to hold the line. Ryan was legitimizing resistance to the new regime, giving resisters safe harbor in the House, even as they were being relentlessly accused of treason for electing Hillary.

In the end, Ryan called an armistice. What was he to do? Oppose and resign? And then what? What would remain of conservative leadership in the GOP? And if he created a permanent split in the party, hed be setting up the GOPs entire conservative wing as scapegoat if Trump lost in November.

Ryan had no good options. He chose the one he felt was least damaging to the conservative cause to which he has devoted his entire adult life.

I wouldnt have done it but Im not House speaker. He is a practicing politician who has to calculate the consequences of what he does. That deserves at least some understanding.

One day, we shall all have to account for what we did and what we said in this scoundrel year. For now, we each have our conscience to attend to.

Read more from Charles Krauthammers archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook.
Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) recently signed legislation proposed by Del. Shelly L. Hettleman (D-Baltimore County) and Sen. Bill Ferguson (D-Baltimore) to create Maryland Corps, a pilot program that will, if funded, give 100 young adults in Maryland the chance to spend a year in community service before college, supported by a modest stipend and rewarded with money for college. Through this legislation, Maryland takes an important step toward making a service year available to every young adult who wants to serve, regardless of economic background.

It also again makes Maryland a standout in the service field.

Maryland has a long history of leading in service. Nearly 25 years ago, it became the first state with a service-learning requirement for high school graduation. Unfortunately, it remains the only state with such a requirement.

Around the same time, Barbara A. Mikulski (D), then a junior U.S. senator, helped enact a pilot national service program. This demonstration program became the model for AmeriCorps, enacted a few years later, and Mikulski, in her role as the Democratic leader of the subcommittee responsible for the program and, later, the full Appropriations Committee, made sure AmeriCorps was funded.

Thanks in no small part to Mikulskis efforts, Maryland has sustained service-year programs for two decades that have provided much-needed help while transforming the lives of the people who serve.

These programs include Civic Works, which puts 200 young adults annually into service-year positions that enable them to learn job skills while meeting community needs. For example, Civic Works service-year corps members have weatherized homes in Baltimore and built a green, 200-square-foot tiny house that can exist off the grid; tutored students as part of the Advancement Via Individual Determination program and helped them prepare for college; and learned farming skills at Little Gunpowder Farm while growing high-quality vegetables at an affordable price.

Another long-standing program, Volunteer Maryland, places AmeriCorps members in nonprofit organizations, schools and government agencies so they can provide more services, improve the effectiveness of the organizations volunteer programs and increase organizational capacity to manage volunteer programs.

In more rural parts of the state, A STAR! in Western Maryland assigns AmeriCorps members to tackle local issues within a four-county region  serving, for example, in Boys & Girls Clubs, cooperative extension, Goodwill and preschool programs.

The charge that national service resources be deployed to meet locally identified challenges has made it a uniquely flexible resource in Maryland. For example, in 2009, 35 organizations created the New Americans Citizenship Project of Maryland, which uses AmeriCorps members to support groups in their efforts to move eligible immigrants through the citizenship process.

Securing national funding for local programs has not always been easy. Despite its bipartisan history, AmeriCorps has seen its funding cut by Republican leaders in the House year after year, leaving the program, after a long series of bicameral, bipartisan compromises, with essentially flat funding for more than a decade. However, thanks in large part to Mikulski  and her Republican Senate colleagues  last year AmeriCorps received an increase. We are hopeful this year will see another increase, putting the program on a growth trajectory.

Maryland has some standout programs that do not receive AmeriCorps funding. For example, Baltimore Corps, co-founded in 2013 by Wes Moore and Fagan Harris in partnership with the Aspen Institute Franklin Project, fields young leaders to address the citys biggest challenges. The Jesuit Volunteer Corps, headquartered in Baltimore, places recent college graduates in high-poverty communities nationwide. But these programs are the exception, not the rule.

When Mikulski retires from the Senate in January, AmeriCorps will remain one of her most important legacies. As a result of her efforts, since 1994, more than 24,000 Maryland residents have served more than 32 million hours and qualified for education awards totaling more than $73 million. Mikulskis successor should take up the charge to keep Maryland at the forefront of service and enable the next generation of young adults to serve others while changing their own lives.

The writer is chief executive and president of Service Year Alliance and a member of the Maryland Governors Office on Service and Volunteerism.
Sometime during the coming several years, the next U.S. president could confront a genuinely dangerous threat from a faraway place: a North Korean missile that could hit U.S. territory with a nuclear warhead.

Led by an impulsive and brutal young man, North Korea may pose the most direct nuclear risk for the United States. Kim Jong Un is a weak leader in every respect but one: He pushes ahead relentlessly on a program to build missiles carrying miniaturized nuclear warheads that could reach Guam and other U.S. targets.

A nuclear North Korea, remote as it may seem, poses what Pentagon planners see as an urgent challenge for the United States. Officials say the situation requires close monitoring and contingency plans for how to respond to a range of scenarios in which a reckless or imploding Pyongyang might attack.

The Obama administrations strategy has been to work with China to contain Kim and seek a denuclearized North Korea. The United States lauded Chinas decision to support a U.N. Security Council resolution in March that condemned North Koreas nuclear and missile tests and imposed limited sanctions. China and the United States are working cooperatively, a South Korean source said, but he cautioned that they are moving at a different intensity and speed.

China wants to go slow on North Korea, as with most foreign policy issues. But U.S. planners wonder whether they can afford a leisurely pace in dealing with a country that warned just three months ago that it might launch a preemptive and offensive nuclear strike against a joint U.S.-South Korean military exercise.

China needs to understand that this is not working, said Kurt Campbell, a former assistant secretary of state for Asia and a key adviser to presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton. China continues to take small steps, he said, but whats needed are much tougher sanctions of the kind that brought policy change in Iran and Burma. If China wont join in such punishing sanctions, he said, the United States may have to impose them unilaterally.

Japan and South Korea, which are already targeted by North Korean missiles, share the United States concern. Japanese analysts see some signs that China has been tightening its border with North Korea, in a demonstration of compliance with the U.N. resolution. South Korean analysts agree that China has taken some positive steps, but they note that China is still a big importer of North Korean coal.

Despite the growing international concern, North Korea keeps pushing ahead. Ignoring the March passage of the U.N. resolution, Pyongyang conducted multiple subsequent tests of its intermediate-range Musudan missile. U.S. analysts believe the Musudan is designed to target U.S. territory in Guam, near-term, while North Koreans develop bigger, intercontinental ballistic missiles that could strike Hawaii, Alaska or the U.S. mainland.

North Korean media have also shown Kim examining nose cones that could carry a nuclear warhead. South Korean analysts say that in every recent nuclear test, the North Koreans have focused on making a smaller, lighter weapon that could fit atop a missile.

The U.N. sanctions seem to have had no effect in curbing these provocative actions. The Security Council last week condemned the recent missile tests as a grave and flagrant violation of its March resolution and called for countries to strengthen enforcement. But the United Nations left open the question of how to get tougher.

North Korea is the biggest headache in an Asian security situation that, overall, may top the agenda for the next president. The other flashpoint is the South China Sea, where the Obama administration recently has been signaling new resolve against Chinese sovereignty claims.

Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter warned in Singapore last weekend that Chinese attempts to reclaim land on the disputed Scarborough Shoal would be provocative and destabilizing and would trigger unspecified U.S. actions in response. And Secretary of State John F. Kerry, during a recent visit to Mongolia, made a similar warning against any Chinese attempt to impose an air defense identification zone in the South China Sea.

Chinas response? Some Asian analysts think Beijing has gotten the message and slowed its expansion in the South China Sea, for now. But this week, Chinese jets buzzed a U.S. RC-135 reconnaissance plane in the contested area, at what U.S. officials said was an unsafe speed.

The Middle East and Europe are on any new presidents agenda. But in January, it may be North Korea and the surrounding Asian theater that deserve the most urgent look from the new commander in chief.

Read more from David Ignatiuss archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook.
Regarding Charles Lanes June 9 op-ed, In praise of superdelegates:

While knowledge and experience are important in vetting presidential candidates, both parties have taken their partisanship into governance, which many Americans reject. When a political party puts politics ahead of the American people, the process has run amok.

When Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said the GOPs main priority was to win the White House or, as he said in 2010, to make sure President Obama would be a one-term president, it was clear he had put his party ahead of the citizens who need the governments help. When House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) called Donald Trumps words the textbook definition of a racist comment, yet continued to support him, it was clear that he put his partys goals ahead of important principles that define the United States.

The purpose of our legislative and executive branches of government is to develop policies and laws that make this a better and more productive country, not simply to look forward to the next election. Instead, our political parties have become machines, run by people who seem to have lost their bearings. This is why citizens are up in arms.

Jeff Gates, Silver Spring
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trumps attribution of unfavorable treatment by a federal judge to the latters Mexican heritage has been almost universally denounced as racist [Republicans distance selves from Trump amid attacks on Latino judge, news, June 7]. But the outrage should extend well beyond concerns over Mr. Trumps racism, which should have been apparent to even the most casual observer from the start of this campaign.

His no-holds-barred attack suggests a profound lack of respect for the judiciary and its status as an independent and legitimate branch of government. More disturbing is his apparent willingness to exploit political power to further his private business interests. He has, in recent months, described his routine business practices of buying political favor.

Now, with Mr. Trumps presumptive nomination, we are faced with the specter of a president willing to use the vast powers of such a position to enhance the profitability and market positions of his various business endeavors. As a result, it becomes even more imperative that the electorate learn more about his businesses through the unveiling of his tax returns. This should be followed by Mr. Trumps submission of a plan for placing his assets in some form of a blind trust.

John L. French, Washington Grove

Regarding the June 5 editorial The billionaire vs. the judge  and the law:

No judge should be dragged into a political campaign. A private lawsuit, whatever the basis, should not be a reason to call a judge biased. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trumps conduct should be condemned for what it is: un-American and racist.

Barbara Hutchinson, New Carrollton
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, joined by his wife, Melania, speaks during a news conference in Briarcliff Manor, N.Y., on June 7. (Mary Altaffer/Associated Press)

The June 5 editorial Violence is never the answer stated, Even if you think [Republican presidential candidate Donald] Trump is a threat, the United States is not Nazi Germany. It is a country with a functioning liberal order guaranteeing basic civil protections.

Mr. Trump is increasingly contemptuous of the liberal order and rules. He plays on the fears of those who think their country is in decline and being stolen by non-Aryans.

Described as a phenomenon, Mr. Trump is at least a 21st-century, right-wing authoritarian, if not a dictator.

Mr. Trump and Adolf Hitler were initially dismissed by intellectuals as buffoons. Like Hitler, Mr. Trump is racist, conspiracy-minded, vain, insecure, xenophobic, venomous, combative and narcissistic. Both have come to represent extreme options.

For the Freudian, there are parallels as well. Both had demanding fathers who were in some way absent. Both lost a brother. Like Hitler, Mr. Trump is a showman who created himself.

Let us not allow complacency in our institutions to blind us.

Judith Oppenheimer Loth, Washington
Former Stanford University swimmer Brock Turner, who was sentenced to six months in jail and three years' probation for sexually assaulting an unconscious woman. (Santa Clara County Sheriffs Office via Associated Press)

Petula Dvoraks June 8 Metro column on the Stanford University sexual assault case, The Stanford attackers smiling photo is far more telling than any mugshot, was misguided. In California, rape and similar acts are punishable with state prison terms of up to 13 years. But California voters tasked the criminal-justice system with reducing the number of felons sent to state prison, in recognition of the malign effects of sending anyone to prison.

And so when an excellent judge educated at Stanford and the University of California at Berkeley has to sentence a first-time-offender Stanford student who decided, perhaps while intoxicated himself, that it was a good idea to sexually assault an unconscious woman behind a dumpster, what was he to do? Send the young man to some snake pit for about eight years or, as now required by California law, decide that incarceration in a county jail might be a more equitable punishment?

These are very tough decisions. Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge Aaron Persky made his call after hearing all the facts of the matter, something the rest of us have not done. Just as we respect whatever Judge Gonzalo Curiel does in the case pending against Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, please let the man in this arena, Judge Persky, grapple with justice on our behalf.

Tom Harriman, Clarksville

A former Stanford University student got six months in jail and three years probation for sexual assault. In 1951, the Martinsville Seven were executed after being convicted of the rape of one woman. It was the largest mass execution for rape in U.S. history.

Pamela Hairston-Chisholm, Martinsville, Va.
Correction: An earlier version of this op-ed incorrectly referred to the internment of Japanese citizens during World War II. Both U.S. citizens and noncitizens of Japanese descent were interned. This version has been corrected.

Why such vehemence among Republican leaders in their condemnations of Donald Trump for questioning the objectivity of a federal judge based on his Mexican heritage?

This is, in House Speaker Paul D. Ryans words, the textbook definition of a racist comment. But it is not materially more bigoted than the central premise of Trumps campaign: that foreigners and outsiders are exploiting, infiltrating and adulterating the real America. How is attacking the impartiality of a judge worse than characterizing undocumented Mexicans as invading predators intent on raping American women? Or pledging to keep all Muslim migrants out of the country? Or citing the internment of U.S. citizens and noncitizens of Japanese descent during World War II as positive precedent?

Is Trump himself a racist? Who the bloody hell cares? There is no difference in public influence between a politician who is a racist and one who appeals to racist sentiments with racist arguments. The harm to the country  measured in division and fear  is the same, whatever the inner workings of Trumps heart.

No, Trumps attack on Judge Gonzalo Curiel was not different in kind. But for Republican leaders, this much was new: Since Trump now owns them, they now own his prejudice. Sure, Trump has gone nativist before, but this time it followed their overall stamp of approval, given in the cause of Republican unity. Trump must have known his attack on Curiel would humiliate the GOP leaders who have endorsed him, and he did it anyway. Trump is taking away the option of wishful thinking. Republicans have clung to the hope that Trump might find unsuspected resources of leadership; lacking that, to the hope that he might be co-opted; and lacking that, to the hope of laying low and avoiding the Trump taint. All delusions. Having tied themselves to Trumps anchor, the protests of GOP leaders are merely the last string of bubbles escaping from their lungs.

So what were senior Republicans thinking when they endorsed Trump? I dont want to underestimate the difficulties involved in opposing ones own presumptive nominee. There is tremendous political pressure to be loyal to the team. The arguments against doing anything that might help Hillary Clinton are strong. This is about moving our agenda forward, said Ryan in justifying his Trump endorsement.

Republican leaders, in other words, thought they were in a normal political moment  a time for pragmatism, give-and-take, holding your nose and eventually getting past an unpleasant chore.

But it is not a normal political moment. It is one of those rare times  like the repudiation of Joe McCarthy, or consideration of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, or the Watergate crisis  when the spotlight of history stops on a single decision, and a whole political career is remembered in a single pose. The test here: Can you support, for pragmatic reasons, a presidential candidate who purposely and consistently appeals to racism?

When the choice came, only a handful of Republicans at the national level answered with a firm no. A handful. It was not shocking to me that the plurality of an angry Republican primary electorate  grown distrustful of establishment leaders  might choose a populist who appeals to racial prejudice. It is shocking to me  and depressing and infuriating  that almost no elected Republicans of national standing would stand up to it.

By this standard, Sen. Ben Sasse (Neb.) is the moral leader of the GOP. But given the thinness of his company, many of us will never be able to think about the Republican Party in quite the same way again. It still carries many of the ideological convictions I share. Collectively, however, it has failed one of the most basic tests of public justice: Dont support racists  or candidates who appeal to racism  for public office. If this commitment is not a primary, non-negotiable element of Republican identity, then the party of Lincoln is dead.

Without a passion for universal human dignity and worth  the commitment to a common good in which the powerless are valued  politics is a spoils system for the winners. It degenerates into a way for one group to gain advantage over another. And for Trump in particular, politics seems to be a way for white voters to take back social power following the age of Obama.

Many Republicans, I suspect, will sicken of defending this shabby enterprise  as Sens. Lindsey Graham, Jeff Flake and Mark Kirk have done. The process of unendorsing Trump is humiliating, but only for a moment. The honor of choosing rightly, when it mattered most, will endure.

Read more from Michael Gersons archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook .
I was saddened to see the captions under the photographs accompanying the May 31 front-page article Small Idaho town torn by sexual assault allegation. The captions referred to Shelly and Tim McDaniels adopted son and adopted children. Those children are the McDaniels children. Labeling them as adopted children implies that they are somehow lesser.

I had thought society had moved away from such stigmatizing and hurtful labels. I understand that the fact that the children are African American and their parents are white in a small, non-diverse town is germane to the story. The fact that the children came to the family through adoption was appropriately mentioned in the body of the article without labeling them adopted children.

The message the careless captions send to my own children is cruel and thoughtless. To label children who come to a family by means other than birth is outdated. They are no less our children and do not need or deserve a qualifying label.

Liz Lyons, Chevy Chase
Brad Snyder, a University of Wisconsin law professor, is the author of the The House of Truth: A Washington Political Salon and the Foundations of American Liberalism, which will be published in Feb. 2017.

In his eloquent, insightful and compact intellectual biography Louis D. Brandeis, Jeffrey Rosen calls the former Supreme Court justice the Jewish Jefferson. Brandeis, he argues, is the Jeffersonian who has most to teach us about our contemporary vexations involving political economy, civil liberties, and Zionism.

Like Jefferson, Brandeis decried the curse of bigness. As a lawyer and a justice, he attacked massive trusts led by J.P. Morgan and others that he believed destroyed competition from small businesses and farmers. He also favored state and local government over large-scale federal intervention. Rosen argues that Brandeiss opposition to the curse of bigness made him one of the greatest constitutional philosophers of the twentieth century.

But also like Jefferson, Brandeiss modern resonance is limited by his poor record on race.

Rosen spends several pages acknowledging Brandeiss blind spot on the issue, cites relevant scholarship and repeats one scholars judgment that as a justice, Brandeis settled into an extended period of racial ambivalence.

"Louis D. Brandeis: American Prophet" by Jeffrey Rosen (Yale Univ.)

[What would privacy expert Louis Brandeis make of the digital age?]

But Brandeiss record on race was worse than that (though not as bad as Jeffersons) and undermines Rosens claim that the Louisville-born justice was one of the 20th centurys greatest constitutional philosophers.

Though Brandeis was known as the Peoples Lawyer for taking cases in the public interest, he discouraged two members of the NAACP from seeking his advice about petitioning the Interstate Commerce Commission to investigate the issue of segregated passenger trains traveling across state lines.

Brandeis was a Southern Democrat who was nominated to the Supreme Court in 1916 by a Southern Democrat (the Virginia-born Woodrow Wilson) and who was confirmed, after waiting 117 days for a Judiciary Committee vote, because of the party loyalty of the Senates Southern Democrats.

On race, Brandeis was not, as other scholars have suggested, simply a man of his time. Other Supreme Court justices had more enlightened views. Before Brandeis joined the court, John Marshall Harlan wrote two landmark dissents about racial segregation and discrimination; Justice Charles Evans Hughes wrote a majority opinion about the evils of Alabamas peonage system. After Brandeis left the court, Felix Frankfurter, Robert Jackson and John M. Harlan II practiced judicial restraint yet protected racial minorities.

Even Brandeiss closest colleague on the court  Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.  evolved on race. After the 1919 red summer of racial violence and the red scare that resulted in the prosecution and deportation of radical immigrants, Holmes wrote several groundbreaking decisions involving race. His 1923 opinion outlawing mob-dominated criminal trials helped save the lives of black sharecroppers imprisoned or sentenced to death after the 1919 Elaine Riots in Phillips County, Ark. In 1927, Holmes wrote a unanimous opinion striking down Texass all-white Democratic primary. That summer, he stayed the executions of two black Kentucky men sentenced to death for raping a white woman in sham trials with all-white juries.

Though both Holmes and Brandeis changed their minds in 1919 on free speech, Brandeis had no similar epiphany on race. He never wrote a single opinion on the issue. He was conspicuously silent in joining a 1926 opinion upholding racially restrictive covenants, Holmess cruel 1927 opinion validating Virginias compulsory sterilization law (which Brandeis later cited with approval) and a 1927 opinion permitting Mississippis racially segregated schools.

As Rosen observes, even when urging the president of Howard University to hire a full-time law faculty and to start a day program, Brandeis employed a tone of intellectual condescension. The justice claimed that he could always tell when a black lawyer had written a brief. In contrast, Holmes praised the performances of two black lawyers at oral argument.

It is hard to know exactly what Brandeis thought about race. Though his judicial philosophy has a strong moral undertone, there is little record of his intimate thoughts and feelings in his numerous letters or in the excellent full-length biographies of his life. As his admiring former law clerk Dean Acheson remarked in 1956, trying to write about the true Brandeis should be put in a file labeled: Too Hard.

Rosens accessible prose makes a difficult intellectual feat look easy. He provides an excellent introduction to Brandeiss ideas about government regulation and big business, free speech, technology and privacy, and Zionism. He deftly uses the existing scholarly literature and Brandeiss published letters, but also mines several new sources, incuding letters to Rosen from the late sociologist David Riesman, who spent an unhappy term clerking for Brandeis. Finally, Rosen interviews three current Supreme Court justices  Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Elena Kagan  about how Brandeiss ideas have influenced their jurisprudence.

Rosens book, part of Yales Jewish Lives series, convincingly demonstrates that Brandeis was one of the greatest constitutional philosophers of the first half of the 20th century and that his ideas anticipated some of our current legal and political debates  but not all of them. He had nothing to say about one of the centurys most important constitutional issues: how the 14th Amendment protects the rights of African Americans. As a role model for 21st-century American constitutional law, we need a Supreme Court justice with a better understanding of race, someone who can practice judicial restraint yet protect minority rights.
David E. Hoffman is a contributing editor to The Washington Post and author of The Billion Dollar Spy: A True Story of Cold War Espionage and Betrayal.

In the years since the Soviet Union imploded in 1991, Russians experienced the longest period of freedom in their thousand-year history  and then lost it. It is an inspiring, tragic story that still demands investigation and exploration: how a great and mighty nation threw off the shackles, without a violent revolution, and then wound up with them back on again.

Arkady Ostrovskys life and career straddle this remarkable period. He was born and bred in the Soviet Union, studied at Cambridge, and later returned to Russia as a foreign correspondent for the Financial Times and the Economist. In The Invention of Russia, he portrays the epoch as a series of waves, each filled with bright, confident people who are later marooned on their own islands of hope. While many previous authors have attempted detailed reconstructions of this history, Ostrovsky takes a different approach, focused more on why events turned out as they did. The reader feels as if on a grand tour, with Ostrovsky at the elbow. His interpretations are erudite, taut and mostly right. They also benefit from the wisdom of hindsight.

Ostrovsky sees Russia as a tangle of ideas, and he pays special attention to how the thinking of the day was reflected on television and in other media. He is particularly good at hearing the nuances and seeing how identity, ideology and personal experience undermined hopes for democracy and reform.

The tour begins with Mikhail Gorbachev and perestroika in the late 1980s. For a certain generation that had experienced Khrushchevs thaw and the disappointments that followed, Gorbachevs arrival marked a moment of exhilaration that the Soviet Union could be saved. This generation believed that the country had simply taken a wrong turn and could be fixed if they could just figure out when things had gone wrong. Three-quarters of all publications in the perestroika years were dedicated to history, what Ostrovsky calls rewinding the tape, desperately trying to pinpoint when the country went off the rails. The magic moment was never found.

"The Invention of Russia: From Gorbachev's Freedom to Putin's War" by Arkady Ostrovsky (Viking)

Among others, Ostrovsky deftly portrays Yegor Yakovlev, who was appointed editor of Moscow News, once a Soviet propaganda sheet that he transformed into a beacon of perestroika. Circulation soared, and it became the most sought-after newspaper in the Soviet Union. In 1991, Yakovlev courageously defied the coup plotters who tried to oust Gorbachev and shut down the press. This was his finest and most heroic hour  something that he had waited and longed for all his life, Ostrovsky recalls.

But the triumph was short-lived. A tense, poignant turning point in Ostrovskys story comes when Yakovlev published his last issue of Moscow News in 1991, carrying an interview he conducted with his own son, Vladimir, founding editor of Kommersant, the first and most formative newspaper of the nascent capitalist era. While the father hoped to save socialism, the son wanted to bury it. Kommersant became a flagship of the new Russia under President Boris Yeltsin, a wild and entrepreneurial time, when anything seemed possible, Ostrovsky recalls. A central role was played by NTV, the independent television channel owned by the oligarch Vladimir Gusinsky that broadcast the truth about war in Chechnya, breaking through the Kremlins lies and coverups. For a second, Ostrovsky recalls, Russia seemed almost like a normal country, where the ability to criticize and ridicule politicians is a sign of a healthy democracy.

In retrospect, there was a fatal weakness. In normal countries, democracy is built on institutions. But in Russia, freedom of speech rested on the goodwill of just one man  Yeltsin  who, for some reason, believed it to be a valuable thing. Yeltsin shrugged off criticism, saw journalists as allies against the implacable communists and won their support for his 1996 reelection. Yet he alone was the guarantor of freedom, and it had little foundation once he was gone. The raucous, inventive spirit of the 1990s turned to gloom as rival oligarchs went to war over the privatization of a telecommunications company. Giddy with their own wealth and power, Ostrovsky writes, the tycoons and Yeltsins young reformers were destroying their own futures and the future of the country.

Yeltsin, tired and sick, handpicked as his successor a little-known KGB man, Vladimir Putin, who had been stationed in Dresden during the late 1980s. Putin saw the great quest for democracy and freedom from a distance and from the sidelines, and never shared its aspirations. He believed above all in the restoration of a strong state. He burst into public view in 1999, after a series of terrorist bombings of apartment houses in Moscow and other cities killed more than 300 people. The Kremlin blamed the attacks on Chechen rebels. In response to the violence, Putin launched a new military campaign in Chechnya, soothing a rattled nation. (Those who organized and carried out the bombings were never found; the late tycoon Boris Berezovsky once charged that the attacks were a deliberate provocation by the Russian special services.) Ostrovsky shows how Putin also became obsessed with television as an instrument of power and manipulation.

Under Putin, the 1990s were portrayed as an era of total chaos and banditry, an image formed as much by the programming of the 2000s as by the reality. Putin crushed independent NTV, expelled and jailed oligarchs, and imposed a make-believe politics with the patina of democracy but the reality of a mechanism for retaining power. He didnt replace the system of oligarchic capitalism, just the recipients. His coterie helped themselves to the riches of the state.

When protests by the young and middle class broke out in Moscow against Putin in 2011, he was angry and rattled. His subsequent war in Ukraine was accompanied by an ever-more-destructive propaganda campaign on television and elsewhere in which anti-Americanism was drilled into the minds of the Russian people. This hell cannot end peacefully, the reformer Boris Nemtsov, who opposed the war, wrote on Facebook in May 2014. Ten months later he was murdered, shot in the back, just beyond the Kremlin walls.

It is a terribly sad ending to the epoch of Russian freedom, but Ostrovsky asserts that this cannot be the last turn of events. He quotes the late economist Yegor Gaidar, who once said that big changes happen later than we think but earlier than we expect. In Russia, certainly.
Joseph A. Mussomeli served in the U.S. Foreign Service from 1980 to 2015, including periods as U.S. ambassador to Cambodia and Slovenia.

Most of my former colleagues at the State Department will be appalled by the assertion, but much of the media-fed angst about Donald Trumps dearth of foreign policy expertise is contrived.

Our cadre of neoconservative foreign policy experts, unhumbled after marching us into a reckless war in Iraq and a poorly conceived one in Afghanistan, who applauded as we bombed Libya and bitterly resent our having failed to bomb Bashar al-Assad in Syria, are frightened. Wisely, they often focus on comments that Trump has made on issues that are of less genuine interest to them  from his strident stance on immigration to his threat to our liberties to his sometimes deplorable commentary about women and some minorities. But what really troubles them is his generally level-headed and unmessianic attitude toward foreign affairs. Trump has no desire to make the rest of the world in our image; he is concerned only about the world not making America in its image.

The neocons bemoan Trumps rejection of a global role for the United States, but Trump has no intent to withdraw the United States from the world stage. He only rejects the wanton use of our young men and women on foreign adventures of questionable value.

The neocons have two clear foreign policy objectives, and Trump may grant them neither. For many of them, their deepest yearning, ungranted even in the waning days of the George W. Bush presidency, is an air campaign against Iran. Trump doesnt like the Iran nuclear agreement, but his instinct is to make a better deal rather than attacking, while Hillary Clinton has a strong record of supporting the prodigal misuse of military force. Clinton is just another neocon, though wrapped in sheeps clothing  just as on some foreign policy issues Trump is little more than Bernie Sanders in wolfs clothing.

1 of 14 Full Screen Autoplay Close Skip Ad  These Republicans refuse to vote for Donald Trump View Photos And theyll tell you why. Caption And theyll tell you why. Former Secretary of State Colin Powell General Powell said at a meeting of the Long Island Association that he would be voting for Hillary Clinton, a spokeswoman confirmed Oct. 25. Powell added in an interview that he picked Clinton because I think shes qualified, and the other gentleman is not qualified. Nikki Kahn/The Washington Post Wait 1 second to continue.

But clothing makes a huge difference. Most Americans dont want the United States to be disrespected, and they want a muscular military that doesnt take any nonsense  but they also dont want military adventurism. Trump succeeds in having it both ways: He reassures that the United States will be respected and also that we will not employ our troops as cannon fodder on distant battlefields. Underneath all the tirades against illegal immigration and the need to be tough with our adversaries, there is an inward focus. There is a sense that America  in order to be great again  needs to relinquish its role as global cop and tend first to its needs at home. By sounding caustic, Trump is able to appear more militaristic and tougher than the far more reckless Clinton. Calculating and cavalier, Clinton would agree with her old pal, then-U.N. Ambassador Madeleine Albright: Whats the point of having this superb military . . . if we cant use it? The stern rebuke to that question later provided by Gen. Colin Powell that the military is not a toy is lost on the neocons and Clinton. Among Clintons weaknesses, her fear of appearing weak may be her most damning.

The second neocon priority? A new Cold War with Russia. Vladimir Putin, unlikable and increasingly uncooperative and antagonistic, admittedly makes this objective more within reach, but Trump might avoid it as well. Clinton repeats over and over that Russia only understands a tough and determined opponent, while Trump may have a more sophisticated and mature approach. Far less petulant than most of the former Republican candidates, Trump says he would actually talk with Putin. That takes real courage given the general view among Republican elites. Contrast that with Clinton, who thinks we should not be talking too much to Putin and that we ought to further expand NATO because , in her view, Russia would be an even greater threat had it not been for NATO expansion. Of course, to admit that NATO expansion triggered the current crisis would be admitting that her husband is largely responsible for it. Trump seems to understand George Kennans warning that NATO expansion would directly lead to a more paranoid and aggressive Russia.

During an ambassadorial conference in 2014, a former colleague breathlessly characterized the Ukraine crisis in neocon terms as a Manichean struggle between good and evil. Such comic-book notions now dominate our political discourse, distorting reality and making it nearly impossible to objectively assess complex issues. Trump, for all his bizarre commentary on domestic issues, better grasps the subtleties of global politics and the dangers of thinking ourselves infallible and invincible.

Its quite an irony: The ostensibly more reckless, infantile, inexperienced and bombastic candidate may actually be more mature, level-headed and reasonable on foreign policy than his critics, who, against all the good advice our parents gave us as children, pout and refuse to talk to those they dont like, escalate arguments to violence when they are upset, lack any remorse for the harm caused by their past opinions and actions, and fail repeatedly to see that there might be two sides to any disagreement.
Republicans cant have it both ways: If you say you intend to cast your ballot for Donald Trump, thats an endorsement. You can be for him or against him, but not both.

So dont even try to take the untenable position that Rep. Bill Flores (Tex.), chairman of the influential Republican Study Committee, tried to outline. I will vote for him, Flores said, but in terms of getting my endorsement, I dont endorse people that bash a judge based on his ethnic heritage.

You just did, Congressman.

Equally absurd, and even more cynical, is what Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) is doing: encouraging Trump to pretend to be something he is not. Using a prepared text last night and not attacking any other Americans was a good start, McConnell said, referring to Trumps teleprompter-assisted speech Tuesday evening. I think its still time for him to act like a presidential candidate should be acting. So I havent given up hope.

Face reality, Senator. The old saying about putting lipstick on a pig comes to mind.

Now that Donald Trump looks to be the Republican nominee for president, some of the men who attacked him most fiercely at the start of his campaign are throwing their support behind him - or at least vowing to stop insulting him. (Sarah Parnass/The Washington Post)

Why are Republicans gasping as if Trumps racist screed about U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel, who is presiding over a lawsuit against Trump University, came as a complete surprise? You mean theyre just now noticing Trumps bigotry?

Have McConnell and the rest forgotten that Trump launched his campaign a year ago with a vicious attack on Mexican immigrants? When Mexico sends its people, theyre not sending their best, he declared. Theyre bringing drugs. Theyre bringing crime. Theyre rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.

Those were practically the first words out of candidate Trumps mouth. Then, in due course, came his call to bar all foreign Muslims from entering the country  religious bigotry to go along with the ethnic-racial kind. Anyone paying attention must notice how Trump habitually speaks of the Hispanics and the African Americans as if we were foreign and unknowable, the way a 19th-century British colonialist might have held forth about the Malays. Now, all of a sudden, Republicans are shocked and outraged?

It is ridiculous for Trump supporters to hope he will be able to maintain a facade of dignity and decorum until Election Day  or even that he will try to do so. First of all, hes not very good at it. His on-message performance Tuesday was wooden and, frankly, boring. Scripted Trump is more likely to put the world to sleep than set it on fire.

Moreover, Trump clearly believes his success thus far has come largely because he is so unlike traditional politicians. Politicians are so politically correct anymore, they cant breathe, Trump told the New York Times on Tuesday, hours before his low-key speech. The people are tired of this political correctness when things are said that are totally fine. It is out of control. It is gridlock with their mouths.

So how long does anyone think Trump will be able to keep his own big mouth gridlocked?

I realize that Republican officials are in an impossible position. Many of them are appalled by Trump. Yet they are also beholden to a GOP base that made Trump its clear choice in the primaries. Only a few have dared to say publicly that they simply cannot vote for this man as president  so far. It seems inevitable that there will be more.

Trump told Time magazine Wednesday that he was disappointed and surprised at Republican criticism over the Curiel episode. I had just won more votes than anyone in the history of the party, so I was a little bit surprised when they said that. I didnt think it was necessary. But you know, they have to say what they have to say. Im a big boy. They have to say what they have to say.

That does not sound like a man who is chastened. That does not sound like a man who is willing to get with the program.

At least hes not Hillary Clinton, goes the Republican refrain. That is certainly true. Strip away the party labels, and you have one candidate who objectively is qualified to be president and one who manifestly is not. You have one candidate with a progressive agenda and one with a personal agenda.

At the end of the GOP convention, one presumes, balloons and confetti will rain down from the rafters. Republican leaders can stand and cheer the nomination of Donald Trump  or they can stay home and denounce it as the travesty it is. They cant do both.

Read more from Eugene Robinsons archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook. You can also join him Tuesdays at 1 p.m. for a live Q&A.
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, shown here in West Virginia in May, is embarking on an eight-day tour of mostly battleground states. (Ricky Carioti/The Washington Post)

As Donald Trump prepares to campaign in at least half a dozen battleground states over eight days, the biggest question is: Which Trump will show up?

Many leading Republicans are hopeful that the presumptive GOP presidential nominee who delivered two scripted speeches this week will reveal himself more often on the campaign trail. But there are already signs that the rabble-rousing Trump  who was embroiled in a racial controversy for nearly two weeks after attacking a Latino judge  could resurface.

After spending the past few weeks off the campaign trail or in noncompetitive states such as blue California and red North Dakota, Trump will venture into swing states for a series of rallies and fundraisers beginning Friday night in Richmond. His travels will take him to Florida, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, North Carolina and Nevada. Trump will also go to two potentially competitive states that lean Republican: Georgia and Arizona; as well as safely Republican Texas.

Trump campaign officials told House Republican backers this week that the operation is moving strategically into general election mode and plans to alter its tone and focus criticism on Clinton. Trump is trying to move past his attacks against U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel, which he said in a Tuesday statement were misconstrued as a swipe against people of Mexican descent.

But then on Friday, Trump attacked Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) on Twitter, calling her Pocahontas to jeer at her claim of being Native American. He has mocked Warren in the same way before.

A demonstrator holds a sign against Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump outside his campaign rally in Sacramento on June 1. ( Stephen Lam / Reuters/REUTERS)

The missive was apparently in response to a speech Thursday in which Warren, who has endorsed Clinton, called Trump a thin-skinned, racist bully.

[Trump doesnt have a national campaign. So the GOP is trying to run one for him.]

Democrats say they plan to use Trumps trip over the next week to draw negative attention to him. Clinton campaign officials and Democratic allies said they will hold events, conference calls and other activities designed to highlight the moguls controversies as he makes his way across the country.

On Saturday, the Florida Democratic Party is scheduled to hold a news conference outside a Trump rally in Tampa to condemn what they called his racist rhetoric and divisive campaign.

During a Friday speech in Washington, Trump read some of his remarks off a teleprompter for the second time this week. He has rarely relied on teleprompters and has criticized those who use them.

Hillary Clintons Wall Street agenda will crush working families. Shell put bureaucrats, not parents, in charge of our lives, Trump said at the Faith and Freedom Coalition conference. Shell be trapping kids in failing schools. Shell plunge our inner cities into even deeper poverty, if thats possible.

In a Tuesday night speech meant to celebrate the end of the primary season, Trump relied on teleprompters to guide him as he issued a critique of Clinton. He plans to continue his attacks on his presumed Democratic rival Monday afternoon during a speech at Saint Anselm College in Manchester, N.H. He will hold a rally in Portsmouth later in the day.

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump addresses his supporters during a rally at the Charleston, W. Va., Civic Center on May 5. (Ricky Carioti/The Washington Post)

We all firmly believe Mr. Trump is going to be on message on policy. Hes going to take the fight to Hillary Clinton, said Rep. Chris Collins (R-N.Y.), a Trump backer, as he exited a meeting with the campaign on Thursday. He later added: Were going to be disciplined.

Former House speaker Newt Gingrich is a Trump backer who was sharply critical of Trumps attacks on Curiel but says he is now satisfied with Trumps efforts to move past them. He encouraged Trump to use teleprompters more often.

When youre actually the nominee, its a much tougher league, said Gingrich, who also popped into the meeting and spoke to reporters as he left. And youve got to be more careful, and youve got to think through what youre trying to say.

[At Romney summit, anti-Trump Republicans ponder partys future]

Trump declined to be interviewed. His campaign manager Corey Lewandowski said Trump will adjust his pitch based on the venue where he is speaking and the audience he is trying to reach.

It just depends on the format, Lewandowski said. If hes in front of 20,000 people, 30,000 people, Id be willing to wager hes not going to be making a teleprompter speech.

Trumps upcoming events could draw large protests as tensions between anti-Trump forces and supporters have grown. Outside a rally in San Jose, Calif., last week, anti-Trump protesters lined the streets and some of them physically attacked Trump backers. The candidate denounced the protesters and called them thugs the following day.

The mogul will also step up his fundraising pace during the next few days, with finance events planned for Atlanta, Houston, Dallas and San Antonio, among others.

Many of the states Trump is visiting were among the closest of the 2012 election. President Obama won Florida by just under one percentage point, while North Carolina went to Mitt Romney by just over two points, and Obama claimed Virginia by three points. The president won Pennsylvania by five points.

In New Hampshire, where Obamas margin was about six points, Republicans seem to have mixed feelings about Trump.

He easily outpaced his competitors there in the primary, scoring his first win as a presidential candidate. But some GOP critics say Trumps visit, coming amid a volatile period in his campaign, will make things especially tough for Republican officeholders and activists who dont care to be tethered to his controversial comments.

Those Republicans who have been inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt  every other day for the last two weeks hes given them a reason to delay a commitment or rethink it, said New Hampshire Republican strategist Fergus Cullen, who opposes Trump.

Jose A. DelReal contributed to this report.
On the way to interview Donald Trump at his office, I asked my taxi driver what he thought about the presidential candidates. He said he was leaning toward Trump, but hed been hearing that Trump was a racist, and if that were true, that would stop him from casting a ballot for the man.

I asked what Trump could do to prove to the cabbie that he wasnt a racist. After a long pause, the driver, said, I dont know. Maybe show some love.

When I sat down with Trump, I told him this story and asked what he might do to dispel the perception that his comments about a Mexican American federal judge, about Mexicans generally, and about Muslims indicated racist attitudes.

[The rant that could derail Trump  and the GOP rush to get him back on track]

This was Trumps response:

Well, I am not a racist, in fact, I am the least racist person that youve ever encountered. Ill give you an example. Its funny, I just got this, it was just sent to me by Don King. Now, Don knows more about race than anybody. He owns this newspaper, you know  Dons made a lot of money. He just sent this to me, look at this.

He handed me a copy of the latest edition of the Call & Post, a black weekly based in Cleveland that King owns. On the back of the paper was a full-page announcement endorsing Trump for president and Bernie Sanders for vice president.

Isnt that funny? Trump continued. You know, Don endorsed me. You wanna take that back with you? You know, this could be a story, it just came out. He just delivered it to my office. But isnt that funny? This is Don King. Now, Don King knows racism probably better than anybody. Hes not endorsing a racist, okay? Do you want to use it? You can have the story, it just came out. I just got it 10 minutes ago, I dont know. Whatever.

I tried again: Are you concerned that people might have this impression of you?

Im not concerned, Trump said. And actually, Im not concerned because I dont think people believe it. And its just something that  who was this taxicab, was he African American?

No, I said, the man said he had immigrated from Pakistan.

I see, Trump said. Well, I dont believe that people believe it. And its something that has never been  you know, only in a political campaign would people say things like that. But Bill Clinton was called a racist by Obama. Okay? And I dont believe hes a racist, but he was called a racist by Obama, and very loudly and very strongly. And to this day, Clinton, he is haunted by that, he hated that. And I do too, but I dont think people believe Clinton is a racist. I dont think they believe that Im a racist.

In the controversy Trump was describing, then-Sen. Barack Obama did not call former president Bill Clinton a racist. During the 2008 Democratic primaries, aides to Obama, who was running against then-Sen. Hillary Clinton, criticized Bill Clinton for dismissing Obamas popularity as a fairy tale.
Moments after he won the Libertarian Partys presidential nomination, Gary Johnson, the former governor of New Mexico, was handed a peace offering  a replica of one of George Washingtons pistols  by runner-up Austin Petersen.

You have my sword, and my gun, said Petersen.

Cameras rolling, Johnson accepted the gift. Then he watched Petersen tell delegates to oppose Bill Weld, the former Massachusetts governor Johnson had enticed to run for vice president, whose past views against marijuana legalization are seen as a deal-breaker for many orthodox libertarians.

Johnson is not so much about orthodoxy. In a snit as he walked out, he tossed the gun in the garbage. For days afterward, a busy network of libertarian blogs investigated the story, and got a confession. Fox News even ran with it.

It wasnt out of character, said Johnson. Maybe, what was out of character was doing it in a public way, where I kind of, sort of knew that it would be seen. In character would have been to do that in private. But to me, hypocrisy  endorsing Johnson but not his running mate  is the unforgivable sin.

Presidential candidate Gary Johnson secured the Libertarian Partys nomination at its national convention in May in Orlando. (Kevin Kolczynski/Reuters)

Johnsons interpretation of libertarianism, and his sometimes surprising pragmatism on issues and alliances, raise a key question in an election year with two of the most unpopular major-party nominees in memory. Who would be hurt more by Johnsons candidacy: Democrat Hillary Clinton, or Republican Donald Trump?

Johnsons support of legal pot and his opposition to deportations could endear him to the left. His promise to sign any bill that lowers taxes could do the opposite.

[Gary Johnson is largely unknown but is drawing double digits in polling]

Polling is not definitive on the subject, but for Johnson, the bigger test is pulling support from anyone at all. One survey this week from Fox News gave him 12 percent of the vote in a three-way race with Clinton and Trump  a decent showing for a candidate that most voters dont know, or dont know is a former governor, or don't know is a presidential candidate. The key for Johnson is to continue to be included in national polls at all  and to move that number up to 15 percent, so he qualifies for the fall debates.

Johnson, hawk-nosed and aerodynamically coiffed, is one of the least obviously power-hungry men to run for president. But he is not a pushover. Born in 1953, he founded a construction company while he was still in college. After it grew into the aptly named Big J Enterprises, Johnson had enough money to self-fund a 1994 bid for governor  and win, in an oddball race where a third-party candidate got 10 percent of the vote. He promised to run the state like a business. On the trail now, he mostly talks about his gubernatorial years to boast about his 739 vetoes.

Every third Thursday of every month, Id have an open-door policy  five minutes for anyone who wanted to call out waste, fraud, and abuse, said Johnson. Id do the same as president.

Decades later, Johnsons takeover of the Libertarian Party, and success in getting it to nominate Weld, was nearly as radical as Donald Trumps takeover of the GOP. The LP is a bastion of radical libertarianism, a home to people who would rather be pure than win an election. Just 12 years ago, the party handed its nomination to Michael Badnarik, a freelance constitutional lecturer who refuses to obtain a drivers license because that would mean using a Social Security number.

Libertarian presidential candidate and former New Mexico governor Gary Johnson visited the Utah State Capitol in May. (Rick Bowmer/AP)

Johnson is an activist who imagines a Libertarian president  yes, seriously, he intends to win  using the executive branch to correct Congresss mistakes. Ron Paul, the former Texas congressman and 1988 LP candidate who might be the countrys most famous libertarian, can hardly finish a paragraph without citing the Constitution.

Johnson refers to modern politics and the modern norms of presidential power. Asked how his presidency might begin, he starts by describing executive action, like reclassifying drugs (all of them) and ending the National Security Agency.

The NSA was created by executive order, Johnson said. Did you know that? By executive order, for a starting point, you could turn the satellites away from the United States. Johnson also sees no problem with signing statements, the extra language the executive might use to explain which parts of legislation he would not enforce. I dont imagine I would differ in that regard, given that it is a precedent.

Johnsons view of power, and the role of government, is not unique among libertarians. Since his first Libertarian bid, in 2012, he has described the partys platform as taking the best from both parties, combining fiscal tightness with social liberalism. He has favored legal gay marriage since 2011; during the Libertarian contest this year, he criticized religious liberty laws that would have allowed merchants not to serve gays.

Nearly every Republican, including Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), opposed President Obamas executive action to allow the children of immigrants to stay in the United States. Johnson supports it.

I happen to agree with what he did, said Johnson, though I dont know where executive orders stand in regard to the fact that hes broken up 3 million families. He has deported millions of people back to Mexico, and their families have stayed here. Thats something I would not have engaged in.

Johnsons view on the issue is rooted, he said, in the obviously positive goal of allowing undocumented immigrants to work in the United States.

Whether or not it was the right course of action or not, if it avoids deportation, yes, said Johnson. As a president, youre talking about gridlock with Congress. Executive orders have a way of stimulating legislation. I kind of, sort of thought that was his goal  if you dont like this, pass a bill.

On policy after policy, Johnson comes off as more of a realist than the Republican nominee for president, Donald Trump, or the runner-up for the Democratic nomination, Sen. Bernie Sanders. Both of those men imagined a popular movement breaking through a gridlocked Congress to pass a presidents agenda.

Johnson assumes that libertarianism, as the oasis between the parties, is already popular. He knows, as pollsters know, that the two major parties have chosen candidates who are decidedly unpopular. When offered a slogan, or a swing-for-the-fences idea, Johnson suggests that a reality-based Libertarian president would find a solution.

In his interviews with the Washington Post  two hours, over which he chided himself for saying at the end of the day too often  Johnson responded to every idea by imagining what Congress might pass or an executive might get past it. The Federal Reserve, for example, could not be abolished the way many libertarians want; but it could be tacked in. He waved off the popular libertarian catch phrase taxation is theft.

It is theft, yes, but the reality is that were not gonna abolish taxes, said Johnson. I mean, if Im elected president, you can expect me to sign anything that reduces taxes. Asked about the old libertarian idea of a basic income replacing the welfare state  an idea recently resuscitated by Charles Murray, the libertarian author and political scientist  Johnson said the same thing. If thats legislation that gets passed  hey, Im gonna look really seriously at signing it.

Conservatives, who at this point are more wary of Johnson than liberals, ask if hes simply too accommodating. The confidence that once inspired Johnson to walk around Zuccotti Park, seeking allies in the Occupy Wall Street movement, did not always lead to libertarian government in New Mexico. He vetoed as much spending as he claimed, but he also watched the state budget grow slightly faster than the national average.

In 2016, as a candidate, Johnson talks about balancing the budget but lacks the zeal of libertarians who think the state could be cut in half without consequence. Hed keep Social Security for current retirees. He wouldnt abolish the EPA, after learning in New Mexico how the government policed bad actors.

In the libertarian view, without the EPA, you as an individual could sue under the law, said Johnson. But not really. You dont have deep pockets to go up against Chevron.

Later, Johnson added that the government had its own mixed record. But the Libertarian Party platform focuses on the government, and only that, suggesting that the planet would be cleaner if the market would be allowed to work.

That thinking comes from a philosophical lack of faith in government that Johnson simply doesnt share. In his hunt for a libertarian center, he comes off as less angry about the state than many Republicans.

That cuts to the reason he might appeal to liberals. Asked if he, as president, would sign off on the killing of American citizens who join terror groups, Johnson responded with a horrified no. The state might work better if Gary Johnson got to run it, but no president should be trusted to wage foreign adventures unchecked. Not since Americas intervention in Bosnia, he said, had the country been right to get involved in war.

Johnson also said that the Islamic State is not an existential threat, noting that terrorism kills only 400 people per year.

Microphones get put in politicians mouths, said Johnson, and the reporters frame questions like: These atrocities are happening in Libya. Are you going to stand by idly, and watch this happen? The knee-jerk response is, of course Im not, without considering that by getting involved in Libya, the outcomes are going to be worse.
Katie Walsh, the Republican National Committees chief of staff, was just a few hours from meeting with Donald Trumps new political director this week when the television outside her office blared the latest news breaking out of the Trump orbit. Christie defends Trump: Hes not a racist, the CNN headline declared.

The scene illustrates the tricky task facing the party, which is serving as the main engine behind Trumps presidential bid: How do you a run a disciplined campaign for a candidate who is anything but?

Hes the nominee, and hes going to make sure his views are known, Walsh said carefully during an interview. Hes made that pretty clear. We will leave it to Mr. Trump to speak for Mr. Trump . . . and we will keep hitting Hillary and raising money to be ready for November.

Trumps failure to build a truly national campaign has left it to the GOP to run one on his behalf, while also trying to extinguish the regular political brush fires set off by the unpredictable candidate. The arrangement has intensified the burden on the Republican National Committee, forcing it to absorb core campaign tasks and testing whether it has improved the field and data capabilities on which it fell short in 2012.

1 of 23 Full Screen Autoplay Close Skip Ad  23 well-known people who support Donald Trump View Photos See who supports Donald Trump. Caption See who supports Donald Trump. Paul D. Ryan The House speaker endorsed Trumps bid for president on June 2. Joshua Roberts/Reuters Wait 1 second to continue.

The real estate moguls operation has centered on his ability to gobble up news time with a stream of tweets, rallies and television hits, while largely outsourcing basic political functions such as fundraising and rapid-response efforts. He is leaning on the RNC even more as the race moves into the general-election phase, which requires intensive work to identify, persuade and mobilize voters.

The Trump campaign has yet to build out its headquarters or national staff, ending the primaries with 70 employees, compared with 732 on the payroll for presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. His backstop is the party: The RNC has deployed 461 field staffers to 16 states  more than it has ever had on the ground at this point in an election  while spending $100 million on its data and digital operations since the last presidential campaign. The investments were pushed by Chairman Reince Priebus after the Democrats outgunned the GOP in 2012.

It creates an opportunity for the party to, for lack of a better term, show off what its been working on for the last three and a half years and provide the campaign with the infrastructure they dont have the time to build right now, Walsh said.

We are kind of the infantry coming up behind the campaign saying, Were here. How can we be helpful? And the Trump campaign has embraced that, she added.

For the RNC to successfully take over many of the campaigns traditional tasks requires trust, coordination and a unified strategy  all difficult to achieve under normal circumstances. But this year is anything but normal.

Priebus ended up deeply immersed in a behind-the-scenes effort this week to persuade Trump to walk back his accusations that a Latino federal judge was biased against him because of the judges ethnicity, even making editing suggestions for the statement that the candidate eventually released, according to people familiar with his role.

[The rant that could derail Trump  and the GOP rush to get him back on track]

: Trump captures the nations attention on the campaign trail: The Republican candidate continues to dominate the presidential contest. ( / )

The team they have in place is very good, said GOP strategist Mike DuHaime, who served as RNC political director during George W. Bushs second term and helped guide the 2008 turnout effort. I think what ultimately is missing is that it needs to mesh with the nominees. . . . No matter what the RNC does, its still up to the campaign to set the direction.

That direction has been coming from Trump, who serves as his own strategist. He personally responds to nearly every critique, including that his operation is too meager. I am getting bad marks from certain pundits because I have a small campaign staff, Trump tweeted this week. But small is good, flexible, save money and number one!

Senior RNC officials are offering daily advice and resources to their less-experienced campaign counterparts. Communications strategist Sean Spicer is in constant contact with Trump press secretary Hope Hicks, while chief digital officer Gerrit Lansing is coordinating with Trumps small digital staff.

Its a collaborative effort, said campaign manager Corey Lewandowski. They are working hand-in-glove with us. We are working with their team; they are working with our team. Everyone is happy.

Party officials have been making the case that the campaign needs to expand its footprint, but persuading Trump has been a slow process. The candidate scrutinizes proposed budgets, sending them back with skeptical queries, according to people familiar with the discussions. His main argument: I spent only $56 million in the primary, and I beat 16 opponents  why do I need all this?

Its not so much, We dont trust you; its, Help me understand why I need this,  Walsh said of the campaigns reaction. Theres a dialogue that maybe wouldnt exist with a more traditional candidate that had used more traditional methods in his primary campaign.

Lewandowski said the campaign will soon expand its political, communications and fundraising teams. We will keep growing, theres no doubt about it, he said. Among the additions: political director Jim Murphy, a longtime GOP consultant who was tapped after predecessor Rick Wiley was abruptly dismissed.

[Many Trump supporters dont believe his wildest promises  and they dont care]

Because of his unrivaled ability to reach millions of voters through social media, many party officials think that Trump will be able to forgo some of the expenses that have bloated presidential campaigns in the past.

Look, Donald Trump has thrown out the rule book and rewritten it and run the most nontraditional, unorthodox campaign in my lifetime, and its worked so far, said Steve Duprey, an RNC committeeman from New Hampshire.

Still, even round-the-clock media domination will not be enough to secure an Election Day victory, GOP strategists warned.

People can talk all they want to about how this race will be determined on the big-picture message and Hillarys approval numbers and how horrible they are, said Matt Borges, chairman of the Ohio Republican Party. It always comes down to good, old-fashioned blocking and tackling. We turn out our voters, we win. They do a better job, they win.

And the underfunded state parties alone cannot carry the weight of a fall turnout operation, which typically is buttressed by hundreds of presidential campaign staffers.

Getting the right voters to the polls to support Trump and the rest of the GOP ticket falls to Chris Carr, a garrulous Louisiana native who serves as the RNCs political director. From his third-floor office at RNC headquarters, Carr has spent the past 16 months remaking the partys field program. In doing so, he has looked at the RNCs vaunted turnout apparatus in 2004 for lessons, increasing the emphasis on volunteer training and metrics.

He also has studied the methods used by President Obamas team, which he saw up close as the Nevada state director for Republican nominee Mitt Romneys campaign in 2012. Romneys main field office in the state that year was in Summerlin, down the street from a small Obama for America office.

Any time of the day you could go and pull on that door, it was locked, Carr recalled. We were like, what is this guy doing? . . . He was in his turf, working. He was organizing.

Carr has sought to bring that model to the RNC. Rather than assign staff to battleground states based on population, the terrain has been carved up into small turfs that each contain 8,000 to 10,000 low-propensity or swing voters. The party deployed an early wave of staffers last fall to key states to focus on voter registration. Volunteers have been cultivated with one-on-one coffee meetings and monthly house parties.

Beginning last Friday, each state team was required to begin a daily door-knocking regimen  an effort that will feed fresh voter data into the national database through Nov. 8. Augmenting the partys voter file has been one of the top priorities of the RNC, which hopes to weaponize personal information about voters this year the way Obamas team did in 2012.

Weve spent over $100 million between data and digital over the last four years, investing in that voter file, making sure we have that ability to know everything we can about every voter out there  not only from a knowledge perspective, but how do you talk to them? Walsh said. Do they respond to email? What time of day? What issues do they respond to?

[After briefing with Trumps chief strategist, House Republicans see pivot]

In June 2012, the RNC had 170 field staffers on the ground; now there are more than double that, with the largest contingents in Florida (59), Wisconsin (49), Pennsylvania (54) and Ohio (53). That remains short of what the RNC had promised state parties if a nominee had been selected back in March, worrying local officials who had hoped for a bigger ground force by now. National Republican officials said they are on track to hit their staffing goals by July 31.

To do so, the RNC needs the infusion of cash that usually comes with the selection of a presidential nominee. But fundraising has been slow to ramp up, in part because Trump largely self-financed his primary bid and had no structure to solicit donors.

In the meantime, the party is seeking to draw on a major resource the Trump campaign can provide: enthusiasm.

This week, the campaign emailed supporters urging them to take part in a national day of action that the RNC is holding Saturday to register new voters. Before the Trump appeal went out, several hundred volunteers in Virginia had committed to attend. By Thursday morning, that number had soared to 1,000.
Donald Trump speaks at a campaign event at Trump Doral golf course in Miami.

Donald Trump speaks at a campaign event at Trump Doral golf course in Miami. Carlo Allegri/Reuters

Businessman Donald Trump officially became the Republican nominee at the partys convention in Cleveland.

It was a bad time for Sen. Cory Gardner to be caught in an elevator with a reporter. Donald Trump had just referred to Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts as Pocahontas  again  and the Republican freshman from Colorado was struggling to figure out how to respond.

I think people need to be treated with respect, and thats what weve demanded from everyone, he offered.

But was it racist?

Gardner clammed up. He politely referred further questions to his press secretary.

So it went for Republicans on Capitol Hill on Friday, forced to contend with yet another provocative comment by their presumptive presidential nominee  clambering for safety as Trump launched another boundary-pushing attack.

[In Florida, Trump attacks rivals  and not just the Democrats]

Get used to it, said Republican pollster Whit Ayres, a Trump critic. This is your life for the next five months.

The furor over Trumps assaults on the impartiality of a Latino judge had just begun to subside when he lobbed two tweets Friday morning responding to Warren, who had lambasted him as a thin-skinned, racist bully in a speech the previous evening.

Pocahontas is at it again! Trump wrote in one. Goofy Elizabeth Warren, one of the least productive U.S. Senators, has a nasty mouth.

No, seriously  Delete your account, Warren tweeted back. One of the senators supporters secured Pocahontas.com and redirected it to Warrens campaign site.

[Elizabeth Warren, Joe Biden lead coordinated Democratic attack on Donald Trump]

The real estate developer has repeatedly invoked the 17th-century Native American figure to refer to Warren, an allusion to controversy about her heritage. The senator has said she grew up amid family stories about her Cherokee lineage, but that account has not been proved.

Presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump took aim at Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) at a rally in Tampa, Fla., on June 11. He called Warren "Pocahontas," a jab at her claim that she is of Native American descent. (Reuters)

Trump began going after Warrens claimed ancestry earlier this year, responding to the senators repeated slams of him as a loser and a bully. Whos that, the Indian? he said at a March news conference when asked about Warren. You mean the Indian?

His swipes at her have intensified as the senator has emerged as one of his fiercest adversaries. On Thursday, she endorsed presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, and the two women met privately on Friday.

The latest gibes come amid a weeks-long uproar over Trumps repeated criticism of U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel as biased and unfair because of his Mexican heritage. The claim drew a storm of denunciation, including a strong rebuke from House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.), who called it the textbook definition of a racist comment.

By comparison, the response to the Pocahontas remarks have been mixed and in many cases muted  a sign of how jittery GOP leaders are still trying to find their comfort level with his rhetoric.

Oh, I think its done in good humor, said Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), who heads the National Republican Senatorial Committee, the organization charged with electing Republican senators in 2016.

Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), normally a ferocious Trump foe, was similarly unfazed.

Its pretty funny, I thought, Graham said. I think what he said about the judge was racist. When youre talking about a politician, you got to be able to take a joke. . . . If this bothers you, you need to get out of politics.

But others were alarmed.

He needs to quit using language like that, said Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.), a member of the Chickasaw tribe and one of two Native Americans in the House. Its pejorative , and you know, theres plenty of things that he can disagree with Elizabeth Warren over, this is not something that should, in my opinion, ever enter the conversation. . . . Its neither appropriate personally toward her, and frankly, it offends a much larger group of people. So, I wish he would avoid that.

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who is up for reelection in a state with one of the highest proportions of Native Americans in the country, also chastised Trump.

I just dont engage in personal insults  that is a personal insult, he said.

[As he moves campaign to battlegrounds, which Donald Trump will show up?]

The Pocahontas line spurred chatter at former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romneys ideas summit Friday in Park City, Utah, where some attendees said they were aghast at Trumps many race-based lines of attack.

Stuart Stevens  the chief strategist on Romneys 2012 presidential bid, who, like Romney, has vowed not to vote for Trump  said the candidates use of Pocahontas to attack Warren was both racist and inappropriate.

If you said this in a sixth-grade class, the teacher would tell you, Dont say this,  Stevens said.

This is a sick guy, and Americans are not longing for a president whos going to go out and use ethnic slurs against people, he said. Its amusing in the same way telling dirty jokes around a frat house can get laughs, but most people grow out of that. Its childish.

Romney told CNN on Friday that he was worried Trumps language could lead to trickle-down racism in the country.

When asked why he persists in calling Warren Pocahontas and what he makes of the alarm it has caused among some Republicans, Trump responded bluntly in a statement Friday: Because she is a nasty person, a terrible U.S. Senator, and it drives her crazy.

The Republicans should find it offensive that she scammed the system by faking her heritage, not that I am unafraid to point that out, he continued in the statement, which was provided by his spokeswoman, Hope Hicks. Actually, Goofy Elizabeth, her nickname, is far worse.

Pocahontas is the nickname of the daughter of a Powhatan chief who was kidnapped by the English about 1613. She converted to Christianity and married an Englishman, a union that is credited with bringing a lull to hostilities between the settlers and American Indian tribes. Her story inspired the popular 1995 Disney animated film of the same name, furthering perceptions of Pocahontas as a princess, although historians say much of what has been written about her is a romanticized legend at odds with the hardships she endured.

Stephanie Fryberg, an associate professor of psychology and American Indian studies at the University of Washington, said her studies have found that exposing Native American children to images of Pocahontas lowered their sense of collective self-worth.

Mr. Trumps comments reinforce broad stereotypes of Native Americans as Indian chiefs, mascots and princesses, rather than contemporary people who are contributing to society, she said, adding: Hes not using the term in any way to be honorific. He using it to mock her.

Trump has repeatedly rejected the notion that he is playing to racial fears in his campaign. I am the least-racist person that youve ever encountered, he told The Washington Post on Thursday.

Trump has been accused of peddling Native American stereotypes in the past. In 1993, he created an uproar at a House subcommittee hearing by testifying that organized crime is rampant in Indian casinos around the nation. At the time, the developer was fighting the expansion of gambling on tribal lands, a direct threat to his casino empire.

Ditching a seven-page statement he planned to deliver as too politically correct, Trump claimed that he could keep mobsters out of casinos but that Native Americans would not be able to.

That an Indian chief is going to tell Joe Killer to please get off his reservation is almost unbelievable to me, he said, prompting objections from lawmakers and indignant scoffs from the audience.

Trump also questioned the legitimacy of the Mashantucket Pequots, who operate the Foxwoods Resort Casino in Connecticut.

They dont look like Indians to me, he said. And they dont look like Indians to Indians.

In 2000, he secretly financed newspaper ads in Upstate New York warning that a casino sought by the St. Regis Mohawk nation would attract criminals and drug users.

This spring, Trump has repeatedly tweeted about Warrens phony Native American heritage. He tried out the Pocahontas line in a May interview with New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd, who had asked about his feud with Warren. You mean Pocahontas? he replied.

[Donald Trump just called Elizabeth Warren the Indian. Heres what thats all about.]

He has continued to refer to her as Pocahontas on the campaign trail since then. A Cree reporter in North Dakota chastised him for use of the name, declaring, Thats very offensive!

On Friday, Trumps latest barrage left many Republican leaders squirming.

Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) ignored a question about his use of the name, delivering instead a long explanation about why she had to turn her attention back to a discussion about trade issues.

Im not going to enter into the daily visitation of Trumps comments, said Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, who warned earlier this week that the real estate mogul has a dwindling amount of time left to elevate the tenor of his campaign.

For his part, Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) said he was withholding judgment. I havent seen it, he said of Trumps tweet. Until I see something, Im very careful.

Paul Kane in Washington and Philip Rucker in Park City contributed to this report.
1 of 15 Full Screen Autoplay Close Skip Ad  Where We Live | Woodley Park in Northwest Washington View Photos Classic architecture, tree-lined streets and, of course, the zoo make this community popular with buyers and visitors. Caption Classic architecture, tree-lined streets and, of course, the zoo make this community popular with buyers and visitors. The suburban feel, proximity to downtown D.C., classic architecture and neighborliness have made Woodley Park a popular Northwest Washington community. Amanda Voisard/for The Washington Post Wait 1 second to continue.

Peter Brusoe searched throughout the District for a perfect neighborhood.

From Chinatown to Columbia Heights, nothing felt right  some communities seemed too commercialized, others too treeless and urban.

Woodley Park was perfect, said Brusoe, 33, a campaign finance lobbying analyst who is president of the Woodley Park Community Association. There are trees and greenery, but theres still a vibrant downtown feel. Its close to Metro and easy to get anywhere I need to go.

The suburban feel, proximity to downtown D.C. and overall convenience of the Northwest Washington neighborhood have kept Brusoe there since he first moved in 2005.

Residents said the fact that the community is nearly surrounded by Rock Creek Park and the Smithsonian National Zoological Park creates a leafy, suburban atmosphere.

To me, it almost does feel like being in the suburbs, and thats in large part because of the greenery we have here, said Sheila Mooney, an agent at Compass Real Estate.

[In Nauk, a rare mix: Affordability and Arlington]

Brusoe said the zoo itself is a key amenity for the neighborhood.

Theres a bakery right nearby called Baked By Yael, and its a lot of fun to buy a cake pop there and then walk through the zoo, Brusoe said. Theres a lot of really beautiful parkland to explore.





History preserved: A large swath of the neighborhood is part of the Woodley Park Historic District, a National Register Historic District. Philip Barton Key built the Woodley mansion in 1801, but the majority of the neighborhood didnt develop until the late 19th and early 20th centuries, according to the D.C. Historic Preservation Office. The Woodley mansion is now home to the Maret School, and many of the communitys early rowhouses still stand.

Mooney said that many of the rowhouses  referred to as Wardmans for real estate mogul Harry Wardman  look uniform from the outside but have varied interiors.

The people who have stayed and lived here throughout the years have done a lot of renovations and updates inside their homes, Mooney said. And most people really try to preserve the architectural details in their homes when they renovate.

The neighborhood also offers condos, co-ops, apartments and detached houses, Mooney said.

The neighborhoods commercial strip on Connecticut Avenue offers several restaurants, a hardware store, banks, dry cleaners and the Manhattan Market, a small specialty grocery store.

Residents also can take a Circulator bus to Target, Safeway and other stores in Columbia Heights.

I have a license, but I havent owned a car for 12 years, Brusoe said.

Traveling outside of the neighborhood is also easy thanks to its proximity to major roads such as Massachusetts and Connecticut avenues NW.

You can be at National Airport in about 10 minutes, which is super-convenient, Mooney said.

Zoo and hotels are neighbors: Woodley Park is home to two major hotels: the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel and the Omni Shoreham Hotel.

Anne-Marie Bairstow, who moved to Woodley Park in 2001, said living near the Marriott comes with many benefits.

The grounds are really beautiful  my boys still go there to play soccer, said Bairstow, 47, vice president of marketing and communications for WC Smith. You can join the Marriott pool, and I was a member of the gym there for years.

[Mohican Hills in Bethesda boasts a Victorian castle among its mid-century houses ]

The hotels also bring traffic and parking woes, Bairstow said.

Parking can get pretty blocked in when there are events at the Marriott, Bairstow said. But I feel like there are so many upsides to living near the Marriott, I really dont think the downsides are significant.

Busy days at the zoo bring their own parking and traffic challenges, Bairstow said.

In the summer or a really nice Saturday in the spring, theres so much zoo traffic, you cant park, Bairstow said. But the zoo days are pretty easy to predict based on the weather.

The Woodley Park Community Association organizes several events each year, including a picnic at the playground at Cortland Place each June and a holiday party at the Marriott.

Residents also plan their own block parties and get-togethers.

I lived on Woodley Place for years, and we used to block off our street for Halloween, Mooney said. My kids never had to leave the block, and theyd be out trick-or-treating for hours.



Residents said the fact that the community is nearly surrounded by Rock Creek Park and the Smithsonian National Zoological Park creates a leafy, suburban atmosphere. (Amanda Voisard/For the Washington Post)

Living there: Woodley Park is bounded by Rock Creek Park and the Smithsonian National Zoological Park to the east; Calvert Street NW, Cleveland Avenue NW and Garfield Street NW to the south; 34th Street NW to the west; and Woodley Road NW and Klingle Road NW to the north.

In the past 12 months, 20 houses have sold in Woodley Park, from $885,000 for a three-bedroom rowhouse to $1.65 million for a six-bedroom semi-detached rowhouse, Mooney said. Thirty-six condos/co-ops sold, from $160,000 for a 400-square-foot studio to $1.2 million for a 1,300-square-foot, three-bedroom condo.

Seven houses are under contract, from $1.165 million for a two-bedroom rowhouse to $2 million for a six-bedroom detached house. Six condos/co-ops are under contract, from $300,000 for a 712-square-foot condo to $950,000 for a 1,300-square-foot, two-bedroom penthouse.

Four houses are on the market, from $1.689 million for a four-bedroom semi-detached house to $2.595 million for a four-bedroom detached house. Five condos/co-ops are listing, from $218,000 for a 463-square-foot studio to $4 million for a three-bedroom unit at the new Wardman Towers.

Some residents said the high price of real estate in the neighborhood is one of the only downsides of living there.

I make decent money but cant afford to buy in my neighborhood, Brusoe said. I can afford to rent, and I appreciate that.

Schools: Most children in the neighborhood are zoned to attend Oyster-Adams Bilingual and Wilson High. Some children in the northernmost part of the neighborhood may attend Eaton Elementary and Hardy Middle.

Transit: Woodley Park-Zoo Metro (Red Line), multiple bus lines, including 96 and X3.

Crime: During the past 12 months, there were no homicides or assaults, three robberies and six burglaries in Woodley Park, according to D.C. police.



Patrons make use of the patio while dining at restaurants along Clavert Street in Woodley Park. (Amanda Voisard/For the Washington Post)

 To see more photos of Woodley Park, go to washingtonpost.com/realestate.
Oli Khan, a spokesman for the Bangladesh Caterers Associations, says that Britains beloved curry industry is hurting as a result of the countrys visa restrictions. (Karla Adam/The Washington Post)

When Shannon Harmon moved to the United Kingdom from Chicago, she did not plan to put down roots. But after nearly eight years, she has a masters degree from a prestigious British university, works as a digital producer at a science-news organization and has built strong ties in her local community.

She also has a massive, five-figure problem: She earns less than 35,000 pounds, or about $50,000, which means that under new visa restrictions introduced this spring she could be deported after her visa expires in January 2018.

The new rules require immigrants on skilled-worker visas from non-European countries, including Americans such as Harmon, to earn at least 35,000 pounds if they want to settle here. Critics of Britains immigration policies say that the country is, effectively, rolling up the welcome mat for non-Europeans who do not make enough.

[Immigration backlash at the heart of British push to leave the E.U.]

For me, getting a raise from 25K to 35K is pretty unimaginable, says Harmon, a 33-year-old with bright red hair who wants to stay in the United Kingdom but earns only 25,000 pounds. She is a driving force behind Stop35k, a grass-roots campaign against new visa restrictions that triggered a debate in Parliament.

The changes to Tier 2 visas  the equivalent of the H1B in the United States, given to skilled workers from outside the European Union  come amid an increasingly intense debate over Britains membership in the E.U. Britons will head to the polls this month for an in-or-out referendum that has pushed the issue of immigration onto center stage.

In recent days, the momentum has swung towards the campaign to leave the E.U., also known as "Brexit," with its supporters arguing that Britain is overflowing and that something needs to be done to limit numbers.

The system has spun out of control. We cannot control the numbers, lawmaker Boris Johnson has said.

As a member of the E.U., Britain has to abide by freedom-of-movement rules, meaning it cannot bar entry to citizens from the 28-nation bloc. Curbing the number of non-European immigrants is one of the few alternatives the government has.

The British government is focusing on non-Europeans because this is the only group they can really control under the current conditions as a member of the E.U., said Franck Duvell, a professor at the University of Oxfords Center on Migration, Policy and Society.

[As polls tighten, Cameron pleads with unhappy voters to back away from Brexit]

British Home Secretary Theresa May, whose department is responsible for implementing the changes to settlement rules, has said that they will encourage employers to train a home-grown workforce to ensure that our migration system does not perpetuate reliance on migrant labor.

"In the past it has been too easy for some businesses to bring in workers from overseas rather than to take the long-term decision to train our workforce here at home, the Home Office said in a statement. "We need to do more to change that, which means reducing the demand for migrant labour.

May has said that the new restrictions will reduce the number of non-E.U. migrants being granted residency by up to 40,000 a year.

Britain remains a hugely attractive draw for migrants who are not easily deterred by rocketing house prices or a national obsession with talking about the weather.

The country boasts a number of excellent universities and has the advantage of being an English-speaking country in Europe. Britains buoyant economy has prompted Prime Minister David Cameron to call it the jobs factory of Europe.

[A British vote to leave the E.U. could shatter the United Kingdom]

But the United Kingdoms status as a country of mass migration has put pressure on hospitals, schools and transportation in some areas. It is also a source of deep embarrassment for Cameron, who pledged to reduce net migration  the number of people arriving minus the number of people leaving  to less than 100,000.

New figures recently published showed net migration in 2015 at more than three times that figure. The Sun tabloid responded by printing on its front page an image of Cameron with his eyes closed and fingers in his ears, seemingly trying to ignore the statistics while muttering la la la.

The new visa restrictions for non-E.U. workers include increasing the salary threshold for those living in the United Kingdom for less than 10 years who want to settle here. Previously, after five years, migrants on a Tier 2 visa could apply for permanent residency if they earned at least 20,800 pounds; as of April, that threshold has jumped to 35,000 pounds. These new rules do not apply to those with PhD-level jobs, workers on the Shortage Occupation List and nurses, who were made temporarily exempt after an outcry that not doing so could put patients at risk.

The changes have sparked a debate about whether income is the right measure for deciding who can stay and who must go and whether salary thresholds should be tweaked across industries and regions.

Whereas there might be places in the middle of London where 35,000 is regarded as some sort of miserly salary, I can tell honorable members that it is regarded as a very good salary indeed in my constituency, Tommy Sheppard, a lawmaker from Edinburgh, Scotland, told Parliament during a debate on the issue.

Campaigners say that Britains tough immigration policies unfairly target those in lower-paying jobs, including those in health, technology, charity, arts and creative sectors.

Britains curry industry  purveying a favorite dish  has also felt the heat of the countrys immigration policies. Under new entry rules that were recently implemented, restaurants that want to hire skilled chefs from outside the E.U. have to pay a minimum salary of 29,750 pounds, along with food and accommodation, to qualify for a Tier 2 visa.

Nobody can afford that for a chef, said Oli Khan, a spokesman for the Bangladesh Caterers Association, a trade body. An owner of three curry houses, Khan says that a top chef makes around 25,000 pounds and that the industry is, reluctantly, moving away from hiring chefs from India and Bangladesh to hiring those from Eastern Europe, whom he says do not have the same passion for cooking curries.

Some proponents of Brexit argue that if Britain votes to leave the bloc on June 23, it would create a fairer system for skilled workers outside the E.U.

By voting to leave, we can take back control of our immigration policies, save our curry houses and join the rest of the world, Priti Patel, Britains employment minister, recently told the Evening Standard.

Kymberly Blackstock, a 35-year-old from Seattle, is one of those caught up by the new visa restrictions. A mother of two young children, Blackstock earns 21,800 pounds a year working for a charity in Scotland. Her husband, a dependent on her visa, works night shifts as a careworker for the elderly.

She does not think it is fair that her salary may determine whether her family can settle in the United Kingdom after her visa expires.

We make a much bigger social contribution to the society than somebody sitting at some management office at a bank, she said.

Read more:

Scottish leader: If Britain leaves the E.U., well leave Britain

London voters elect first Muslim mayor of major Western capital

Todays coverage from Post correspondents around the world
Tourists in Istanbul gesture near a historic mosque. A Kurdish militant group has warned that tourists are no longer safe in the country due to its struggle against the state. (Ozan Kose/AFP/Getty Images)

A Kurdish militant group warned foreign tourists Friday that they are no longer safe in Turkey as its fighters ratchet up attacks on security forces across the country, an escalation many here fear could bring more deaths and cripple an already unstable economy.

The warning from the Kurdistan Freedom Falcons, known in Kurdish as the TAK, came as the group asserted responsibility for a car bomb attack on police forces in central Istanbul this week. That attack killed at least 11 people near some of the citys most famous landmarks and was the third bombing this year to hit neighborhoods popular with tourists.

[Car bomb targeting Turkish police kills 11]

We warn all tourists who might plan to visit Turkey. . . . You are not our targets, but Turkey is no [longer] secure for you, the statement posted on the TAKs website said.

The TAK is a splinter group of the militant Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which has fought the Turkish state for decades for autonomy for Turkeys ethnic Kurds. The conflict, which has killed more than 40,000 people, reignited last year after a brief truce between Turkey and the PKK collapsed.

Since then, Turkish warplanes have struck hundreds of militant targets in northern Iraq, where the PKK is based, as well as in Turkeys southeast, where many towns are majority Kurd. Turkey is home is to roughly 15 million Kurds, who have long been marginalized by the state.

The TAK opposes negotiations with the Turkish government, analysts say, and has attacked hotels and resort towns in Turkey in the past. Its car bomb attacks on security installations and convoys in the Turkish capital, Ankara, have killed more than 60 people this year.

The Turkish government is responsible for civilian deaths, the group said. But we have just started the war.

Turkey is also embroiled in the conflicts in Syria and Iraq. The tensions have caused the countrys once-booming tourism industry to suffer, and tourists have opted for holidays elsewhere.

The Islamic State has carried out two suicide bombings against tourists in Istanbul and is suspected to have targeted Kurdish peace activists elsewhere in the country.

Last year, Turkish warplanes shot down a Russian fighter jet that had been flying over Syria and allegedly entered Turkish airspace. Russia has thrown its support behind the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, which Turkey opposes. The incident prompted a nearly 90 percent drop in Russian tourist arrivals from 2015 to 2016, according to Turkish government figures.

Read more:

Turkeys desperate predicament poses real dangers

Kurds claim to have shot down Turkish helicopter

Opinion: A new episode in the Turkish civil war?

Todays coverage from Post correspondents around the world


Iraqi army soldiers stand near an Islamic State flag drawn on a wall in a house that was damaged by a U.S. airstrike, and where a tunnel dug by Islamic State militants was found, in the town of Kabrouk in May. (Alice Martins/For The Washington Post)

In the days before his death last month, Col. Ihab Hashem al-Araji confided that his battle against the Islamic State too often felt like a suicide mission, despite the more than $1.6 billion in U.S. arms and training that have flowed to the Iraqi army over the past two years.

He had even begun taking a white funeral shroud to the battlefield with him.

To support his forces advancing on enemy-held Fallujah, Araji had requested a U.S.-supplied M1 Abrams tank but said he was asked to pay $2,000 in bribes to secure it. Instead, he was given a run-down Russian one, which arrived without a driver trained to use it.

It was useless, one of his men, Lt. Nassir Hamza, recalled.

[The Islamic State has lost this much territory in Iraq and Syria this year]

When Araji told superiors that his men were too exhausted to go farther, he was ordered to lead another unit, one he had never fought with before.

The next day, he was killed by an Islamic State rocket, a death his family blames as much on the Iraqi armys mismanagement as on the militants themselves.

Two years ago this week, tens of thousands of Iraqi troops fled Mosul, the largest city in northern Iraq, as the Islamic State seized control. Senior U.S. and Iraqi military leaders say foreign assistance since then has helped to correct, at least temporarily, some of the Iraqi armys weaknesses that allowed the city to fall: inadequate intelligence, logistical issues, corruption and poor leadership.

But as Arajis last days show, many of these problems remain chronic and threaten to undermine even the narrowly focused goals of the U.S. and allied training effort. History indicates that Iraq will need significant help for years to come if the armys recent successes against the militants are to be maintained.



An Iraqi soldier drives a Humvee on the outskirts of Kabrouk in May. The town was recently recaptured from Islamic State militants as part of an ongoing operation to reach the city of Mosul. (Alice Martins/For The Washington Post)

Collapse and rebuilding

After disbanding the army following the 2003 invasion, the United States spent more than $20 billion to rebuild the Iraqi military. Senior commanders were incensed when it collapsed on the battlefield less than three years after the U.S. withdrawal in 2011.

Scrambling to respond to the Islamic States rise, the Obama administration developed a plan to retrain and equip elements of Iraqs shattered military. The effort is centered on creating units capable of defeating the militants in Mosul, which U.S. commanders see as Iraqs crucial battle, rather than rebuilding the entire army once again.

How good does it have to be? It has to be better than the enemy, said Lt. Gen. Sean MacFarland, commander of U.S. and coalition forces in Iraq. Are they better than the enemy? Yes they are.

[American troops edge closer to the front lines in Iraq]

U.S. military officials said that over the past year and a half, training has progressed more quickly than expected, with about 22,000 fighters from the Iraqi army and Kurdish peshmerga forces completing their training programs. They said headway made against the Islamic State in western Iraq in recent months is proof that local forces are rebounding from their previous losses.

But senior officials are also worried that army and police forces may continue to struggle to provide basic support  such as food and fuel  to their units, while maintaining their vehicles and equipment.

The renewed training program is limited to the near-term fight, and there is no guarantee of what level of support the next U.S. president will want to provide.

At the same time, only limited progress has been made in addressing the frustration Iraqi Sunnis have with their Shiite-led government, a core reason some of them initially welcomed militants into their cities. That jeopardizes the longevity of any territorial victories U.S. trainers hope to achieve.

An Iraqi soldier prepares to pour water over the engine of a Humvee after it overheated on the outskirts of the town of Kabrouk in May. (Alice Martins/For The Washington Post)

Military officials described how frustrated U.S. advisers were last winter when they saw that one Iraqi unit taking part in the offensive to reclaim the western city of Ramadi was not moving forward. Tracking the campaign from the safety of a distant air base, the advisers could not tell what was going on.

It was only by interviewing commanders when they came back to [the air base] that we realized, Oh, its because they dont have any water. Once they got water, they started moving again, a senior defense official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss foreign military operations. These are things we in the U.S. military take for granted.

As Iraqi soldiers ferried a group of journalists to the front lines south of Mosul in a convoy of two Humvees last month, one of the vehicles overheated five times on the 12-mile round trip. The soldiers used bottles of drinking water to cool off the engine as they struggled to restart it on the open desert road.

Logistics remain the longest pole in the Iraqi tent, said Col. Steve Warren, a U.S. military spokesman. Spark plugs, spare tires, gasoline, water, food.

Improvements have been made since the early days of U.S. assistance, when desperate calls from soldiers stranded on army bases without food or water were not uncommon.

But logistics are expected to become more complex as supply lines are stretched when Iraqi forces begin to push toward Mosul, about 250 miles by road northwest of Baghdad.

Until a Mosul offensive is launched, U.S. officials acknowledge, they will not be able to fully measure the strength of the forces and the effectiveness of their scramble to retrain them since 2014.

Were not trying to get every unit up to the same standard here, the defense official said. Were trying to get enough units to the good enough standard to accomplish discrete objectives.

Essential assistance

While the chief U.S. objective is Mosul, Iraqi forces decided to first launch an offensive to regain the smaller city of Fallujah, which lies closer to the capital, potentially delaying the battle farther north.

Near the town of Makhmour, 40 miles southeast of Mosul, the U.S. support is evident.

At the headquarters of the newly formed 15th Division, rows of new trailers are filled with freshly bought furniture. The Humvees lined up outside are barely scratched.

The ammunition stocks are plentiful, while soldiers have American-supplied AT-4 antitank weapons and M-16 rifles.

We have the best supply of weapons, said Ali Abdullah Rasoul, a 22-year-old Iraqi soldier. Better than any other division.



An Iraqi army soldier walks past discarded rocket boxes in a position outside Makhmour in March. (Alice Martins/For The Washington Post)

But for the moment, at least, the real fight is taking place elsewhere, as security forces close in on militants in Fallujah.

Even these troops, held up as the bright spot of the U.S.-led training program, have struggled to hold on to a series of hamlets, while soldiers admit that they have largely relied on U.S. air support to advance. The situation was similar in larger victories, from Ramadi to northern Sinjar, where U.S.-led strikes flattened the way for ground forces.

And even then, the fighting has largely been led by Iraqs elite counterterrorism forces, rather than the army.

Despite Prime Minister Haider al-Abadis promises to cut graft in the military, corruption remains endemic, with reports of bribes, like the one Araji was asked to pay to secure his tank, still common.

But the promotion of poorly qualified leaders is the armys biggest problem, said Col. Firas Hussein Abed of the Iraqi armys 6th Division.

An army of dogs led by lions will fight like lions, and an army of lions led by dogs will fight like dogs, Abed said. Now we have a crisis in lions.

The silence is shocking

Araji had spoken candidly about the shortcomings of the Iraqi army in interviews over several years, beginning months before the fall of Mosul.

His family and colleagues said he spent more than $4,000 of his own money to buy ammunition and other equipment on the black market for his men. While supply issues had eased since U.S. support began, Araji had said, other problems were growing.

His associates also recalled a run-in he had several months ago with Shiite militia forces known as popular mobilization units.

He had ordered the militia forces to send reinforcements, but they refused. The militias are officially funded by the state, but the government wields little power over them.

That has raised concerns about sectarian reprisal killings as they approach major Sunni urban centers such as Fallujah. If and when the Islamic State is defeated, there is no fully developed plan for how these armed groups can be brought under state control and prevented from exacerbating the sectarian divisions that brought about the militant groups rise.

Critics say the United States and its allies risk repeating the mistakes of the past.

Ive asked commanders what is our political strategy in Iraq, and they dont seem to know, said Rep. Seth Moulton (D-Mass.), who served in Iraq as a Marine officer in 2004 and 2005, and later returned when President George W. Bush sent in 20,000 additional troops for what was known as the surge.

If you listen to the plans, they are remarkably similar to those we had back in 2007 for the surge. And so it begs the question, since we just did this eight years ago, how is this time going to be different? And the silence is shocking.



Weapons, including a U.S.-supplied antitank missile launcher, are piled around a makeshift bed used by Iraqi soldiers stationed in the recaptured town of Kabrouk in May. (Alice Martins/For The Washington Post)

For Moulton, the failings of U.S. policy can be tracked to the decision by L. Paul Bremer, Iraqs American ruler in 2003, to dismantle the Iraqi army. It was a terrible idea, he said.

Defense Minister Khaled al-Obeidi agreed that the problems today stem from shortcomings in earlier efforts to build up security forces.

We are facing the task of rebuilding and reorganizing the army because the way it was built previously was very flawed, he said.

[The hidden hand behind the Islamic State militants? Saddam Husseins.]

Obeidi said that partner countries are now providing assistance more effectively and that military support from the United States and allied nations, especially their air power, had made a big difference for the ground effort against the Islamic State, weakening the group and depriving it of funding and supplies.





But Iraq will require military assistance long after the Islamic State is defeated, he said.

When the United States rebuilt the Iraqi army after 2003, it was training a force to deal with the insurgency raging across the country, said Maj. Gen. Gary Volesky, commander of the coalitions ground force component.

This is not a counterinsurgency, he said. We are fighting an enemy thats defending, that occupies terrain.

Now, units that have good leadership are performing well, he said.

But leaders such as Araji remain hard to find.

The Americans who worked with Araji, including Moulton, described his death as a blow to the country. We worked closely with many Iraqis, but none more closely than Ihab, Moulton said.

In a military short of leaders, Iraq had lost another.

At Arajis home in Diwaniyah, his colleague Hamza hung his head.

If I could go back in time, Id sacrifice my life and my whole familys for Ihab, he said. He was a commander with all the meaning of the word.

Mustafa Salim contributed to this report.

Read more:

Under strain, Islamic State takes its battle to the streets of Baghdad

Iraq is broke. Add that to its list of worries.

A tale of two cities in Aleppo

Todays coverage from Post correspondents around the world
President Obamas opening to Cuba is irreversible and remaining legislative restrictions on relations between the two countries  including a U.S. travel ban and trade embargo  are likely to be lifted by Congress sooner than people think, senior White House official Ben Rhodes said Thursday.

The fact of the matter is that the American people and the Cuban people overwhelmingly want this to happen, Rhodes said. Frankly, whatever the political realities in either country, for somebody to try to turn this off, they would have to be working against the overwhelming desires of their own people.

That ship has sailed, he said.

Rhodes, who, as Obamas deputy national security adviser, spearheaded 18 months of secret talks that led to restored relations, spoke before a largely sympathetic audience at a forum on cultural diplomacy with Cuba at the Meridian International Center.

Numerous bipartisan bills have been introduced in Congress to lift the ban on tourist travel to Cuba, financial restrictions and the overall trade embargo that remain despite the normalization Obama announced in December 2014. Diplomatic relations between the two countries were restored nearly a year ago.

[Cuban dissident leader takes his message to the United States]

Action on most of the legislation has been blocked. The Senates financial services bill in the Appropriations Committee, set for a vote next week, is likely to pass, judging from bipartisan support that has been voiced. It includes measures lifting the travel ban and removing restrictions on financing for U.S. agricultural exports to Cuba. But the House version of the appropriations bill, rather than easing restrictions, would impose new ones.

A strong majority of the American public, according to a wide range of opinion polls, favored restoring relations long before it happened. Recent surveys indicate about 60 percent support lifting the embargo and travel restrictions.

Among Cuban American lawmakers who have opposed restoring relations are Sens. Marco Rubio (Fla.) and Ted Cruz (Tex.), both of whom said during their campaigns for the GOP presidential nomination that they would reverse Obamas actions.

Hillary Clinton, the presumptive Democratic nominee, supports the policy; Donald Trump, on the Republican side, has said he is fine with normalizing relations with Cuba, although he said he would have forged a better deal than Obama.

Rep. Tom Emmer (R-Minn.), one of 22 members of both parties who belong to a House working group on the issue, told the Meridian House audience that 73 percent of Americans are in favor of lifting the embargo. Its no longer a question of if, but when.

Emmer acknowledged that there are many thoughtful and patriotic members whose families have suffered greatly under Cubas repressive communist government over the years. But, he said the world is changing, and so is Cuba.

Obama has used his executive authority to implement all of the Cuba actions he has taken thus far. But only Congress can repeal the embargo and other sanctions adopted through legislation over the past half-century.

Thursdays conference included a number of U.S. business and cultural leaders who have taken advantage of the opening and are pressing to widen it. Some were critical of the slowness with which the Cuban government has opened its own doors to economic reforms that would allow greater participation there.

Septime Webre, artistic director of the Washington Ballet, said that Cubas lengthy isolation has held back development of the arts there and that defections have caused a significant brain drain  including 15 Cuban dancers he said he has hired in the past 10 years. Now, he said, those dancers can travel back and forth.

Cubas National Ballet is considered among the best in the world, and Webre  the son of a Cuban mother and an American father  began some of the first U.S.-Cuban cultural exchanges nearly two decades ago.

Read more:
Iraqs current military offensive against the Islamic State in the city of Fallujah has sparked a flurry of new fundraising campaigns in Saudi Arabia.

You cannot control the sympathies of people, said Saudi Maj. Gen. Mansour al-Turki, a spokesman for his governments Interior Ministry. But what Saudi Arabia can control, he said, are potentially fake campaigns to raise money in the name of the children of Fallujah that actually funds terrorism.

Charitable solicitation or giving for any cause outside the country has been monitored by the government since 2004, and all private donations going abroad must use official channels, he said. Some 226 people have been convicted of terrorism financing activities.

Turki spoke Wednesday to reporters invited to question him remotely at the Saudi Embassy in Washington. The Saudi mission has sharply stepped up its outreach and lobbying activities in recent months, amid a new wave of allegations of foreign financing of the Sept. 11, 2001, al-Qaeda attacks in the United States.

Questions about possible official Saudi links to the attacks have ebbed and flowed in the past 15 years, although the official 9/11 Commission report, published in 2004, found no evidence that the Saudi government as an institution or senior Saudi officials were involved in backing the hijackers.

The current allegations involve two separate but related issues. Many in Congress have been pushing for legislation that would allow victims of terrorism on U.S. soil to sue involved foreign governments. That led to renewed pressure to release the 28 pages from a 2002 congressional report on the 9/11 attacks that were classified by the administration of President George W. Bush and not published.

The Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act, known as JASTA, passed the Senate last month by unanimous consent, as lawmakers on both sides of the aisle said that families of those killed in the 9/11 attacks, as well as surviving victims, deserved both accountability and compensation.

The administration has said President Obama would veto the legislation as a terrible precedent that would eliminate sovereign immunity for all countries  including the United States, should anyone overseas decide to sue on the basis of U.S. actions.

Some who have read the 28 pages withheld from the report say that they describe a network of Saudis who helped facilitate the pre-attack activities of some of the 15 Saudis who were among the 19 hijackers who turned passenger jets into missiles.

Former senator Bob Graham (Fla.), then the Democratic chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee that authored the 2002 investigation, has said that the missing pages point a strong finger at Saudi Arabia.

Others who served on the committee disagree with Grahams view but say the pages should be declassified. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (Calif.), the top Democrat on the current Intelligence Committee, said last month that she saw nothing in the pages that would implicate Saudi Arabia or any other government but that releasing the pages would clear the air.

The document has been described by several knowledgeable individuals, speaking anonymously to discuss classified information, as uncorroborated reports and allegations assembled into a work plan for the FBI. The results of the FBI investigation were turned over to the 9/11 Commission and reflected in its report.

Releasing the pages now, CIA Director John Brennan has said, would allow some to seize upon that uncorroborated, unvetted information that was in there that was basically just a collation of this information that came out of FBI files. Taking the information as pointing to Saudi involvement, he said on NBCs Meet the Press, would be very, very inaccurate.

The administration has said that declassification of the pages was being studied by Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper Jr., who will make a decision this month.

The Saudi government has long urged declassification of the pages, saying it has nothing to fear. But the prospect of the informations being released out of context  without a point-by-point refutation available, at least in part, in the footnotes of the 9/11 Commission report, makes the Saudi government both nervous and angry, Saudi officials have said.

As they wait for Clappers decision, the Saudis have taken matters into their own hands. In recent weeks, the usually reticent government and embassy have released a 104-page white paper on Saudi Arabias Effort to Combat Terrorism and Terror-Financing, along with a compendium of media and official statements playing down the importance of the pages.

In his news briefing Wednesday, Turki, of the Saudi Interior Ministry, noted that Saudi Arabia itself has suffered from terrorism, including more than 63 terrorist attacks by al-Qaeda and the Islamic State, 26 of those in the past two years, with more than 200 civilians and police officials killed.

U.S. concerns about wealthy Saudis funneling money to terrorist organizations have largely abated in recent years, according to U.S. Treasury officials who have spoken publicly about steps the Saudi government has taken. Any such thing actually is criminalized in Saudi Arabia, Turki said.

The government, he said, monitors all appeals for charitable funds via television, the Internet and social media, and maintains a 990 number for private citizens to contact authorities to express any suspicions they have about fundraising campaigns.

Read more:
A still image from video released June 10 that purports to show people in Manbij celebrating victory against the Islamic State. (Reuters TV/Reuters)

U.S.-backed Syrian fighters, aided by relentless American airstrikes over the past week, have surrounded a key city held by the Islamic State in northwestern Syria, blocking escape routes and militant access to their headquarters in Raqqa, President Obamas chief liaison to the anti-Islamic State coalition said Friday.

Envoy Brett McGurk said the operation to surround the city of Manbij, astride the only remaining access road to Turkey, has been one of the most complex military maneuvers weve seen in some time.

Once the city itself is taken, he said, it will entirely cut off [the Islamic States] ability to move from Raqqa and threaten us. He noted that planning and personnel for the recent terrorist bombings in Brussels and Paris had come from Raqqa, through Manbij.

In a largely upbeat briefing to White House reporters on a lot of progress against militants in both Syria and Iraq, McGurk did not mention setbacks to hopes for a political resolution of Syrias separate civil war, which the Obama administration has said is crucial to winning the fight against the Islamic State.

The two conflicts have increasingly overlapped, both politically and geographically, in a relatively small area of real estate north of Aleppo, Syrias largest city.

Manbij lies just 50 air miles northeast of Aleppo, where Syrian government forces, aided by Russia and Iran, are engaged in fast-escalating air and ground attacks against U.S.- and coalition-backed rebel groups seeking to oust Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

The coalition-backed opposition, Assad and his allies, and the Islamic State are all struggling for control of a 65-mile-long strip along the Syria-Turkey border that is a principal supply route for the militants and the anti-Assad opposition.

Assad and Russia have said the anti-Assad opposition, al-Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra and the Islamic State are indistinguishable terrorist groups.

Turkeys rejection of Syrian Kurdish fighters, a key component of the U.S.-backed forces fighting for control of Manbij, is an additional complication. The Syrian Kurds, which Turkey charges are in league with Turkish Kurds considered terrorists by both Ankara and Washington, already control virtually all of the border east to Iraq.

The Manbij offensive was delayed for months as Turkey argued that a separate opposition force northwest of Aleppo could be mobilized to move eastward against the Islamic State and secure the border area. But those forces failed, despite U.S. air and weapons support. That provided the opening for administration and U.S. military officials to push for an alternate plan, using Arab and Kurdish forces it had gathered and supported from earlier battles against the Islamic State in the east.

Those forces have been additionally aided by 300 U.S. Special Operations forces, who, among other assistance, have trained the rebels to call in airstrikes, using coordinates and visuals displayed on tablets that they then communicate to the Americans.The Americans also assisted in a technically difficult river crossing for the force across the Euphrates.

While the initial offensive from the west failed, it resulted in the withdrawal of significant Islamic State forces from the area north of Aleppo, some of whom went to join the fight in Manbij. But the opposition fighters that remain in the area are now being pummeled by Syrian and Russian air attacks.

There are essentially two different battles in the civil war going on around Aleppo. North of the city, the Obama administration has appealed to Russia to respect  and make Assad observe  a civil war cease-fire. It has told the Russians that Jabhat al-Nusra forces, massing to the south of the city, are not part of the cease-fire and are fair game for attacks.

McGurk also briefed ambassadors from the 66-country antiIslamic State coalition Friday. Similar briefings are to be given to Obama, who will hold a meeting of his key national security advisers Tuesday. That meeting will be held at the Treasury Department, to emphasize the importance to the overall campaign of stopping revenue flows to the militants.

In recounting how were doing in the campaign, McGurk said that we think weve cut off entirely [the Islamic States] revenue from outside Syria and Iraq, including contributions from sympathetic Arabs abroad. The militants, he said, are relying entirely on sales of oil, much of which the administration has said is secretly purchased by Assads government; extortion of the population within territory it controls; and the sale of raided antiquities.

With the organization cutting fighter pay in half and its territory shrinking, McGurk said, morale . . . is plummeting.

They have not had a successful offensive operation, particularly in Iraq, in over a year, he said. The border with Turkey is no longer accessible to them, and road connections between Raqqa and Mosul, their primary base of operations in Iraq, have been cut off.

At the same time, he said, their access to combat-ready fighters . . . is now at its lowest historic point. From an estimated total of 31,000 in 2014, he said, they now number 19,000 to 25,000, and their ability to recruit and move foreign fighters is more difficult.
A new self-tanner promises to make you look skinny, but what message does that send? (Photo: Gallery Stock)

An all-natural self-tanner with firming actives, invented by two female entrepreneurs in the United Kingdom, will be making its stateside debut very soon. According to a recent WWD report, Skinny Tan has become a hot commodity in other regions like the U.K., Korea, and Australia, and the founders are hoping to replicate that success with American consumers.



The inventors, Kate Cotton and Louise Ferguson, initially won support for Skinny Tan from two investors on the U.K.s Dragons Den (much like ABCs hit show Shark Tank). Australian company InnovaDerma followed suit, buying a significant stake in the company. Today, Skinny Tans daily sales regularly top $35,000  products range in price from $29.95 for the basic self-tanner to $54.99 for larger self-tanning kits.

Since there is basically no competition for Skinny Tan  no other brands are currently selling a hybrid self-tanner and anticellulite formula Ferguson told WWD that the potential is endless. When we invented the first natural tanner with firming actives, I never imagined how successful it would be even in my home country, she said. To be bringing it to the USA is an absolute dream.

We werent sure how to feel about a self-tanner that promised us skinny effects  amazing new technology but perhaps a disconcerting message  so we asked a couple of experts. Confidence expert Jess Weiner, CEO of Talk to Jess, is not surprised by Skinny Tans branding and marketing angle.

We cant forget we saw Bethenny Frankel used the word skinny to describe her line of products like margaritas, and it made a huge profit, Weiner tells Yahoo Beauty. Because the term skinny is still an aspirational attribute some women value, it does not surprise me that a brand wants to use the term associated with spray tans  especially because, as women, weve been told that having a tan makes you appear thinner.

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Weiner says that the implicit message is something a bit more detrimental to womens self-esteem and well-being. Its a promise for a momentary connection to a body image that isnt at all about true connection to yourself, she says. Its merely a quick fix to get a result that isnt about a womans true value but solely her appearance to others and tapping into the insecurity that we still know women feel about their bodies. Its the term skinny that reinforces, in a consumers mind, that this is the preferable way to be in the world. Whether the shopper realizes that or not, this is what contributes to the brainwashing and normalizing of an overly idealized image of beauty as it pertains to being thin.

Karla Ivankovich, PhD, a counselor and professor of psychology at the University of Illinois, Springfield, agrees that Skinny Tan is reinforcing societal ideals over self-acceptance. But to change this means that, at some point, society will fully embrace self-acceptance, Ivankovich tells Yahoo Beauty. That is unlikely to happen. Women have an insatiable appetite for beauty products and ideas  because beauty is still defined at the societal level. Point being, the beauty and fashion industries have historically worked to create products that accentuate the female form.

According to Ivankovich, there will never be enough products like push-up bras, Spanx, waist-trainers, or techniques like makeup contouring and body-firming self-tanners. If society deems it beautiful, someone will create a product to accentuate that area, she explains.

That said, both Weiner and Ivankovich say theres nothing wrong with wearing and using products like Skinny Tan if it makes you feel good. Remember that self-esteem is a perception held by the individual, Ivankovich says. So if she perceives herself to look better, she feels better, and her confidence improves  and there is so much literature to support self-confidence and its many benefits.

If you feel more confident, by all means: wear the shapers, self-tanners or makeup, says Weiner. But its a fine line to walk, knowing that we are altering our appearance to be more pleasing to a societal standard of beauty  and when the shapers come off and we wash away the makeup or tan, our skin is still there, lumps and all, she says. We cant escape that. So its important that any woman who is spraying on a tan, contouring her face, or wearing a shaper is also conscious that her real value in being a woman isnt just in her appearance.

Lets keep in touch! Follow Yahoo Beauty on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest.
Dustin Diamond

No bell to save him now. Dustin Diamond was arrested on May 25 and placed in an Ozaukee County, Wisconsin, jail for violating his probation after he used a prescription painkiller without permission, according to records released on Friday, June 10.

His probation officer reportedly found traces of oxycodone in the Saved by the Bell alums urine sample, the records state. The 39-year-old actor blamed the positive testing on a pill he took for a toothache, though he told officials he didnt know what kind of painkiller it was because it was from an old prescription.

PHOTOS: Celebrity Mug Shots

Diamond was tossed in jail for violating his probation, but was released just two days later, according to TMZ.



In January, the troubled actor began his four-month sentence related to a 2014 barroom stabbing, in which he assaulted a man with a switchblade in a Port Washington, Wisconsin, bar during a Christmas Day altercation.

PHOTOS: Stars at Court

At the time, Diamond argued that he had pulled the knife to defend himself and fiancee Amanda Schutz, who was later found guilty of disorderly conduct.



In a May interview with his former Saved by the Bell costar Mario Lopez, Diamond admitted that his experience in jail was no walk in the park.

PHOTOS: Child Stars Gone Bad

Its pretty daunting, its pretty scary going into that environment, he said. I found that as long as you follow the rules and stay with the system, it works. You can get in and out unscathed.


Queen Elizabeth II celebrates her official 90th birthday on 11 June 2016.



Britain is coming together to celebrate, with street parties popping up all over the country and pubs staying open extra late.

On Saturday The Trooping of the Colour will kick off in the morning, along with a carriage parade. The Royal Family will then take to the balcony of Buckingham Palace to watch the RAF flypast.

The next day in London a mass party for 10,000 people will be held on The Mall. Revellers will crack into a giant picnic in honour of Her Majesty.

The longest serving monarch in the history of Britain, Queen Elizabeth was crowned in 1953, aged just 25.

But when she was born in 1926, it was not expected that the baby girl christened Elizabeth Alexandra Mary would ever become queen. She was third in line to the throne after Edward, Prince of Wales, and her father, The Duke of York.

She spent the early part of her life living at 145 Piccadilly, her parents London home, and at White Lodge in Richmond Park.

When her grandfather died in 1936, Elizabeths uncle was crowned King Edward VIII. But, within a year, Edward abdicated the throne in order to marry the woman he loved. Elizabeths father then acceded to the throne as King George VI, and Elizabeth was the first in line.

Elizabeth announced her engagement to Phillip Mountbatten in July 1947, and they married later that year. The couples first child, Prince Charles, was born in 1948, and his younger sister Anne two years later.

In 1952, King George VI died following a prolonged illness, and Elizabeth immediately became Queen. Her coronation took place on 2 June 1953 at Westminster Abbey.

During The Queens reign there have been 12 British Prime Ministers, seven Archbishops of Canterbury and seven popes.

Her Majesty has acted as a patron or president of more than 600 charities, and has completed a record number of overseas engagements.

As well as her official engagements, Queen Elizabeth II has always found time to indulge her passions - horses and dogs. She is an owner and breeder of thoroughbred horses, and frequently attends racing meets to watch her horses run.

As she celebrates this milestone birthday, we take a look back at her life with a picture from each year:
Planning a summer trip? Whether its an international getaway or a visit to a nearby beach, youll want to spend the time enjoying yourself, not dealing with health problems.

Stocking up on the best insect repellents to deflect Zika-carrying mosquitoes shouldn't be your only concern. Our travel tips can help you avoid potential pitfalls and stay healthy, no matter where you go.

Before You Go

1. Do a basic vaccine check. Four to six weeks before an international trip, ask your doctor whether youre up to date on common vaccines, such as those for influenza and tetanus.

Nearly 50 percent of adults over 65 are not up to date on tetanus immunizations, says Steven Mawhorter, M.D., an infectious disease specialist at the Cleveland Clinic.

And consider that flu is prevalent in Australia and South America in June, July, and August.

2. Schedule a doctors appointment. If you have a chronic condition or other health concerns, or youre going overseas, you can get travel tips to follow as well as prescriptions for your regular medication and others you may need, such as motion-sickness drugs.

3. Check your coverage abroad. Ask your insurer whether youre covered for medical care while away. (Medicare usually doesnt reimburse for doctor visits overseas, but supplemental plans may.) If not, consider buying travel insurance. Elizabeth Talbot, M.D., medical director of the Travel and International Health Clinic at the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon, N.H., tells patients traveling overseas to choose travel insurance that includes access to U.S.-trained clinicians and evacuation to high-quality medical care.

If youre traveling in the U.S., your regular doctor or private group health insurer may be able to help you find local doctors. (In an emergency, go to the nearest ER.) Here and abroad, hotel concierges can often help you track down a doctor who might make a room call.

Internationally, you can find clinics, doctors, and hospitals through the International Association for Medical Assistance to Travellers and the International Society of Travel Medicine. The local U.S. Embassy can also provide a list of doctors and hospitals but usually not recommendations.

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4. Prep right for tropical destinations. Heading to a developing nation or the tropics? Ask your doctor about unusual immunizations (such as those for hepatitis A, typhoid, and yellow fever) and special medicine (such as antimalarials) recommended or required for particular areas. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention offers health-related travel tips at cdc.gov/travel.

5. Pack meds properly. Take enough for the duration of your trip, plus an extra weeks worth. Keep them in their original containers in your carry-on baggage, in case your luggage gets lost.

Take paper copies of your prescriptions; a copy of your insurance card; contact information for doctors; a doctors note if you carry needles or syringes, or you had a test that used radiation up to two weeks before; and a list of your medications. (If you lose or run out of it while traveling in the U.S., see whether a local pharmacy can call your doctor or if your pharmacy back home will mail it to you. If youre overseas, ask someone at the nearest U.S. Embassy to direct you to a trusted facility.)

And dont forget a first-aid kit, eyeglasses, hearing aids and batteries, and any other medical necessities.

While You're En Route

6. Ease jet lag. Crossing a time zone disrupts your sleep-wake cycle; the more zones you traverse, the more off-kilter youll probably feel. Some people take melatonin supplements to help them sleep, but Marvin M. Lipman, M.D., Consumer Reports chief medical adviser, says that supplements arent regulated carefully, so whats on the label may not be whats in the bottle.

Instead, start acclimating to a new time zone before you depart by going to bed 1 to 2 hours later (if youre traveling west) and 1 to 2 hours earlier (if youre traveling east) each day for a week. Get exposure to sunlight when you arrive at your destination.

7. Flex those legs. Sitting for more than 4 hours in a boat, car, plane, or train can boost the risk of potentially life-threatening blood clots.

If you cant walk around for a few minutes once an hour, do calf raises while seated: With feet flat, raise your heels for a few seconds, then raise your toes, making sure to keep your heels down; repeat each 10 times per hour.

At Your Destination

8. Quell stomach problems. Travelers diarrhea (TD) affects 30 to 70 percent of international tourists, especially those in Africa, Asia, Central and South America, Mexico, and the Middle East.

During a two-week trip to the developing world, you should expect TD, Talbot says. She prescribes an antibiotic to people going to such places that they can use in case they develop severe diarrhea while traveling.

For mild to moderate diarrhea, medication such as OTC loperamide (Imodium A-D and generic) or prescription diphenoxylate and atropine (Lomotil and generic) may work. And in developing countries and the tropics, avoid raw food, street fare, ice, and unbottled water.

9. Try to avoid accidents. On vacation, youre far more likely to be hospitalized or need a doctor for an injury or accident than for an infectious disease or illness.

Motor-vehicle accidents and drowning are top causes of death for travelers. Thats because being in vacation mode may relax a persons judgment, and new places and traffic rules can be confusing.

So be extra careful when swimming in unfamiliar areas, wear seat belts and life vests, familiarize yourself with local driving laws, and opt for a driver if youre uncomfortable getting behind the wheel.

10. Take the bite out of bed bugs. Hotels and motels are some of the most common places to find bed bugs, according to a 2015 survey from the National Pest Management Association and the University of Kentucky.

To avoid the pests, whose bites can cause itchy welts, Michael Potter, Ph.D., a professor of entomology at the University of Kentucky in Lexington, recommends pulling back the sheets of your hotel bed and checking the mattress and box-spring seams, especially at the head of the bed, for the small brown or tannish bugs and the dark-colored spots they can leave. Keep clothing off the floor and stow your luggage on a luggage rack or a hard surface.

And consider where you stay; better hotel chains are usually more vigilant about treating rooms. Properties that look run down and not well-maintained are the places to be most concerned about, Potter says.

11. Be sun-smart. Sun damage is cumulative over a lifetime, so even if you havent used sunscreen regularly, its not too late to start. Apply it generously to all exposed areas at least 15 minutes before you go outdoors, and reapply every 2 hours.

But no sunscreen can block 100 percent of the suns skin-damaging ultraviolet rays, so its important to take other protective measures, too. Wear sunglasses, a broad-brimmed hat, and protective clothing. And stay in the shade whenever possible.

12. Stay hydrated. Being on vacation takes you away from your normal routine, so you may have to work harder to stay hydrated. Needs vary, but a general guideline is to get 9 to 13 cups of fluids per day. (Men should aim for the upper limit.) Caffeinated beverages and some foods, especially fruit and vegetables, count toward that goal.

Consumer Reports has no relationship with any advertisers on this website.





More from Consumer Reports:

Top pick tires for 2016

Best used cars for $25,000 and less

7 best mattresses for couples





Copyright  2006-2017 Consumer Reports, Inc.
Its not easy when something you love changes, but theres also no such thing as perfect. For as much as we love the new Mazda Miata, after a two-hour slog down I-5 to San Diego in one with the top up, we were thinking earplugs wouldve been a good idea. We were on our way to drive its sister car, the one that wears a garishly oversize Fiat badge on the nose. This is the car we jokingly refer to as the Fiata, the one thats actually called the Fiat 124 Spider, named after Fiats classic 19661978 two-seat roadster. (The car lived on beyond that but with its name changed to Spider 2000.)

Built in Hiroshima, Japan, by Mazda, Fiats new Spider wears its own distinct sheetmetal and is five inches longer and about 100 pounds heavier than the Miata. Fiat didnt change the MX-5 platforms 90.9-inch wheelbase, which means the extra length is all in the front and rear overhangs. Next to the Mazda, the 124s nose looks longer and more upright. In back, the extra length yields a larger trunk opening and an extra 0.4 cubic foot of capacity.

Italian design house Pininfarina penned the original 124 Spider, and Fiat has wisely chosen to crib some of the styling elements from it for the new car. The shape of the headlight cutouts, the hood bulges, and the kink in the doors are all lifted straight from Pininfarinas design. We wouldve preferred something sexier than black plastic to fill the front grille opening, but we like what Fiat has done here, giving us a retro foil to the Miatas modern design idiom.

Turbocharged Italian Heart Transplant

The 1.4-liter turbocharged four-cylinder engine under the hood also marks a departure from the Mazda version and its naturally aspirated 2.0-liter twin-cam four. Assembled in Italy, the 1.4T is shipped complete to Japan to be installed during final assembly. The engine is similar to the one in the Fiat 500 Abarth, with 4 psi of additional turbo boost and modifications for longitudinal mounting in the rear-wheel-drive Spider. Bolstered by 22 psi of boost, this MultiAir four makes 160 horsepower at 5500 rpm and 184 lb-ft of torque at 2500 rpm; opt for the Abarth version of the 124 Spider, and youll get four more horses but the same amount of torque.

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Theres a nice surge of turbo boost and torque at about 2000 rpm, but the thrust tapers off beyond the 5500-rpm power peak. Unlike the Miata, which is good to the last rev, the Fiats final 1000 rpm before its 6500-rpm redline isnt worth exploring. Compared with the 155-hp 2.0-liter in the Miata, the turbocharged engine comes across as lazier and less eager to be abused. Some of that is certainly due to the easy flow of low-end torque, but the Fiat never feels any stronger than the naturally aspirated Miata. Turbo lag is present, but its easy to mitigate by keeping the revs above 2000 rpm. However, should you roll through a stop in second gear and lug the engine down to idle, youll find theres a delay before the engine wakes up. Fiat claims a zero-to-60-mph time of 6.8 seconds. We think thats slightly conservativeafter all, weve achieved a 5.9-second zero-to-60 time in the Miatabut we wont know for sure until weve tested the 124.

A six-speed manual transmission is standard, and this one works as brilliantly in the Italian job as the six-speed unit found in the Mazda. Shifts are short and precise, and the engine is alert enough to make rev-matching a joy. Our only gripe, and its an exceedingly minor quibble, is that the Spiders squared-off shift knob is less pleasant to grab than the Miatas spherical one. We also found that the turbo engine is quite happy working with the six-speed automatic transmission, a $1350 option. Shifts are quick, downshifts are immediate, and the automatic is smart enough to keep the four-cylinders torque at the ready.

In the base Classica and the more luxuriously appointed Lusso models, the engine is eerily quiet. Unlike the version in the 500 Abarth, the Spiders engine is far more muffled. Under hard acceleration, theres not much sound coming from either the intake or the exhaust. The sportier Abarth Spider with its standard quad-pipe exhaust turns up the volume, but its never as blatty and attention-grabbing as the 500 Abarths exhaust note. For those who want it louder, theres a Record Monza Dual Mode Performance exhaust available as a dealer accessory.

Not So Nervous Is Not So Bad

A calmer, quieter, and more mature Miata appears to have been Fiats brief. An acoustic windshield, a slightly thicker top, and more sound deadening under the carpet and along the firewall all serve to reduce noise levels when the top is raised. Along with the extra length, the sound deadening and acoustic windshield are the big contributors to the 124 Spiders aforementioned 100-pound weight gain over the Miata. This is still a loud car to ride in if you judge by family-sedan standards, but its quieter than the sometimes raucous Miata. Were unlikely to wish for earplugs after a two-hour highway drive in the Fiata.

This maturity extends to the Fiats chassis tuning. The control-arm front and multilink rear suspension setups carry over, but Fiat brought in its own dampers, springs, and anti-roll bars. The tires, whether the 16-inchers on the Classica or the 17s on the Lusso and the Abarth, are the same as the Miatas. Ride quality on the rather smooth roads around San Diego was similar. The biggest dynamic difference between the two is the Fiats reduced body roll: Fiats tuning takes the Miata off its toes and puts it on its feet. Turn-in is less abrupt and more gradual. Aimed straight down the road, the Fiat requires fewer steering corrections to stay in its lane. Some will miss the Mazda versions nervous energy, but we appreciate that the Fiata skipped that last shot of espresso.

Dressed Up, Not Messed Up

Interior changes are more superficial than those outside, with the layout and underpinnings the same as in Mazdas roadster. Fiat changed the gauge faces, added a few soft-touch materials, redid the door panels, and screwed on that squared-off shift knob. Fiat specified its own seat fabric and padding, and leather is available in Lusso and Abarth models. We particularly like the Abarths standard leather and faux-suede seats. Passenger-side legroom remains tight, especially for anyone more than six feet tall.

The most satisfying thing is that Fiat didnt mess up our beloved Miata. Fiats changes imbue it with enough civility to make it more palatable to those, say, over the age of 40. Its quieter, a bit more composed, and slightly more relaxed. Fiats 1.4-liter isnt lusty enough for roadster duty, and aside from the Abarth version it doesnt sound like much, but it does provide that easy torque.

Pricing starts at $25,990 for the Classica, while the automatic Lusso opens at $28,490 and the Abarth comes in at $29,190. These prices are similar to those for the Miatas Sport, Club, and Grand Touring trim levels. Driving down to San Diego, we had our doubts about what Fiat might do to one of our 10Best Cars award winners, but our fears were assuaged. Indeed, as we drove back up I-5 in our long-term Miata, we understood why someone might actually prefer the Fiat 124 Spider.

Specifications >

VEHICLE TYPE: front-engine, rear-wheel-drive, 2-passenger, 2-door convertible



BASE PRICES: Classica, $25,990;

Lusso, $28,490;

Abarth, $29,190



ENGINE TYPE: turbocharged and intercooled SOHC 16-valve inline-4, iron block and aluminum head, port fuel injection



Displacement: 83 cu in, 1368 cc

Power: 160 or 164 hp @ 5500 rpm

Torque: 184 lb-ft @ 2500 rpm



TRANSMISSIONS: 6-speed manual, 6-speed automatic with manual shifting mode



DIMENSIONS:

Wheelbase: 90.9 in

Length: 159.6 in

Width: 68.5 in Height: 48.5 in

Passenger volume: 49 cu ft

Cargo volume: 5 cu ft

Curb weight (C/D est): 24502500 lb



PERFORMANCE (C/D EST):

Zero to 60 mph: 6.26.6 sec

Zero to 100 mph: 16.418.3 sec

Standing -mile: 14.815.3 sec

Top speed: 130 mph



FUEL ECONOMY (C/D EST):

EPA city/highway driving: 2526/3536 mpg




Maria Mancia has come face-to-face with her son for the first time since 1995.

Mancia, 42, wept Thursday morning as she held her now-adult child, 22-year-old Steve Hernandez, who was just 1 when investigators say his father snatched him from their California home.

Read: 36 Years After Giving Birth, Mom Meets Daughter, and Discovers They Were Once Co-Workers

Photos shared by the San Bernardino County District Attorneys Office, whose investigators helped make the reunion possible, show the two embracing before Mancia introduced her oldest son to his younger half-brothers.

(Courtesy San Bernardino County District Attorneys Office)

Senior Investigator Karen Cragg, who works in the Child Abduction Unit, said Hernandez vanished after he was abducted by his father, Valentin Hernandez.

"The couple was having problems in their relationship at the time," Cragg said in a press release. "The mother went to work one day, only to return home to an empty residence with the father and child gone."

The boy's father took all photos with him, as well as ultrasounds and other identifying paperwork. With no other images of her baby, Mancia wrote to her aunt to ask her to return a photo she had once sent.

"That became the only photograph she had of Steve for the last 21 years," Cragg said.

(Courtesy San Bernardino County District Attorneys Office)

Armed with the image, she vowed never to stop searching for him.

In the years that followed, investigators tracked leads across the U.S., according to the San Bernardino County District Attorneys Office. Then in February, they received a tip that Hernandez, who is a U.S. citizen, was possibly living in Puebla, Mexico, where he was studying law.

To confirm they had the right person, Cragg said investigators approached Hernandez and claimed they were looking for information about his father, who had disappeared.

Story continues

"During the conversation, we found several similarities in his history that matched that of our missing boy," she said.

Read: Couple Reunites With Baby Son Who Was Switched at Birth

With the help of the Department of Justice and Mexican officials, they managed to get a DNA sample from him. It was then compared with a swab of his mother's DNA and, on May 31, Cragg learned there was a match.

When they told Mancia that they had finally found her son, "she was overcome with emotion," Cragg said.

"She had never given up after all these years, but had accepted the fact that she may never know her son," she said. "To be able to return him to his country and his mother is an indescribable honor."

On Thursday, after clearing the immigration checkpoint between Tijuana, Mexico, and San Diego, Hernandez was finally able to see his mother again.

(Courtesy San Bernardino County District Attorneys Office)

"I lived all these years without my mother, then to find out she's alive in another country, it was emotional," Hernandez said at their meeting, ABC7 reported.

He also learned he has four other siblings.

Authorities have received information that Hernandez's father has since passed away, but this has not yet been confirmed. As a result, there is a warrant out for Valentin Hernandez's arrest on kidnapping and child abduction charges, the DA's office said.

Watch: 93-Year-Old WWII Veteran Reunites With Wartime Girlfriend After 70 Years

Related Articles:
From Cosmopolitan

Colin Nathaniel Scott, 23, was visiting Yellowstone National Park when he died after falling into a hot spring, the park announced. The man, who was visiting the park from Portland, Oregon, with his sister, had walked 225 yards off the designated boardwalk, then slipped and fell into a spring at the Norris Geyser Basin on Tuesday.

"We extend our sympathy to the Scott family," park superintendent Dan Wenk said in a statement. "This tragic event must remind all of us to follow the regulations and stay on boardwalks when visiting Yellowstone's geyser basins."

According to the Associated Press, Scott was had just graduated Pacific University in Oregon and was the top student in his program. There were no significant remains to recover, and crews called off the search because the area was so dangerous. The geyser is the hottest thermal area in Yellowstone, with water reaching as high as 400 degrees Fahrenheit as it reaches the surface, CNN reports.

The death is the second incident related to the hot springs at Yellowstone this summer; last week, a father and son suffered burns after walking off the trail at the Upper Geyser Basin. And it's only one of a string of problems tourists have faced at Yellowstone this year. In May, a father and son picked up a baby bison after it became separated from its herd; the bison ended up having to be euthanized. Later that month, a group of travelers who posted videos to a site called High On Life faced criminal charges for walking off the path and onto the Grand Prismatic Spring.

And earlier in June, a video went viral of an elk charging at a woman in the park; she had violated the rule of staying at least 25 yards away from wildlife. A tour guide who spotted that incident blames smartphone cameras for making people take risks to get the perfect shot.

Follow Megan on Twitter.
Every day at Zacks, our Zacks Rank system all stocks from #1 (Strong Buys) to #5 (Strong Sells). Today, several stocks were added to the #1 (Strong Buys) list, and it just so happens that a 3 of them have Value Style Scores of an A, making them not only top ranked Zacks stocks, but solid value plays as well.

Sanmina Corporation SANM

Based in San Jose, California, Sanmina Corporation is engaged in providing electronics contract manufacturing services. The corporation focuses on engineering and fabricating complex components and also on providing complete end-to-end supply chain solutions to Original Enterprises Manufacturers.

Some of the services the Sanmina Corp. provides include product design and engineering, including initial development, detailed design, prototyping, validation, preproduction services and manufacturing design release; manufacturing of components, subassemblies and complete services; final system assembly and test; and a several other manufacturing services.

Aside from being a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy) stock, SANM has several other factors behind it that warrant investment consideration. A low P/E ratio of 12.15, a price to sales ratio of .32, a cash to price ratio of 36.44, and cash flow per share of $3.44/share helps to give SANM its A Value Style Score. The company also operates in an industry that is ranked in the top 26% of all industries by its Zacks Industry Rank .

SANM also has a high Growth Style Score of a B, which can be attributed to a solid net margin of 6.29%, cash flow growth of 7.17%, and projected sales growth of 2.02%. This percentage for sales growth might seem low, but for a company that had $6.50 Billion in sales last year, it is actually a very significant figure.

The company has also seen a great deal of positive EPS estimate revision activity from analysts as of late. For the current year there have been 2 upward estimates in the last 60 days, pushing the current EPS estimate figure to $2.34 from $2.13 60 days ago, which would represent EPS growth of 13.5% year-over-year. For the next quarter, ending 9/2016, there have also been upward revisions in the last 60 days, and the growth estimate for the quarter is 25.47%.

Story continues

SANMINA CORP Price

SANMINA CORP Price | SANMINA CORP Quote

POSCO PKX

POSCO is a multinational steel-making company headquartered in Seoul, South Korea. The company manufactures hot and cold rolled steel products, heavy plate, and other steel products for the construction and shipbuilding industries. POSCO operates through 4 segments: Steel, Construction, Trading, and Other.

POSCO is now a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy) stock, and is also a great option as a value play for investors looking to profit from the latest uptick in commodities. The steel producer industry in which POSCO operates in is ranked highly too, ranking in the top 28% of all industries. Behind its A value style score, the company has a P/E ratio of 12.89, an earnings yield of 7.45%, and a cash flow/share of $9.56/share, which is a great deal higher than the industry average of $2.01/share.

POSCO is also holds a B for its Growth Style Score from Zacks, which can mainly be attributed to major projected increases in the companys earnings compared to last year. The current year is projected to produce EPS growth of 754.75%, and the following year is projected to see an added 48.47% on top of that.

The company has also been on a role lately with commodity price increases being a major factor. POSCO has had an upward price change in its stock price of 9.29% in the last 12 weeks, with 6.31% coming in just the last 4 weeks. The major uptick and price along with upward EPS estimate revisions from analysts have also earned this stock an A for its momentum style score.

POSCO-ADR Price

POSCO-ADR Price | POSCO-ADR Quote

SPX Flow Inc. FLOW

Based in Charlotte, North Carolina, SPX Flow Inc. is a supplier of engineered flow components, process equipment and turn-key systems, along with the related aftermarket parts and services. The companys operating segments consist of Food and Beverage, Power and Energy, and Industrial.

Also a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy) and A Value Style Score stock, FLOW should be on the radar of not just those looking for value stocks, but all investors. This company also operates in a high-ranking industry, which comes in 65th of 265, or within the top 25% of all industries.

As mentioned the stock has an A Value Style Score which can be attributed to several measures. FLOW has a P/E ratio of 16.27, a Cash Flow/Share of $4.46/share, which is much higher than its industry average of just $1.76/share, an earnings yield of 6.07%, and a price/book ratio of just 1.02.

Analysts of FLOW have been busy upping their EPS estimates as of late which is another strong sign for the near future. There have been 3 upward revisions for the current year in the last 60 days, pushing the EPS consensus estimate from $1.61 all the way up to $1.87. For the current and next quarters there have been 3 and 4 upward revisions respectively, pushing the consensus estimates for both much higher.

SPX FLOW INC Price

SPX FLOW INC Price | SPX FLOW INC Quote

Bottom Line

In times of volatility and uncertainty, many investors flock to stocks that offer not only the possibility for high potential returns, but also for stocks that offer solid value, and that are not over priced. These stocks fit this profile, and should be looked at not only by value investors, but all investors looking for potentially profitable stocks, operating in top-ranked industries, at a reasonable price.

Be sure to check Zacks daily for the latest Strong Buy-ranked stocks!

Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report >>



Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report



SPX FLOW INC (FLOW): Free Stock Analysis Report



POSCO-ADR (PKX): Free Stock Analysis Report



SANMINA CORP (SANM): Free Stock Analysis Report



To read this article on Zacks.com click here.



Zacks Investment Research
Good help can be hard to find, and nowhere is that more apparent than when searching for a financial advisor.

Should you go with a large firm? A small brokerage? Maybe an independent financial advisor? How do you know what is the right fit for you -- and who can you trust with your hard-earned money?

Not every financial advisor is trustworthy. Researchers at the University of Chicago and the University of Minnesota created a database of financial advisors that represented about 10 percent of the sector from 2005 to 2015. That found that 7 percent of advisors had misconduct records, but 44 percent of those were able to land new jobs at another firm within a year.

[See: The 9 Best Investors of All Time.]

And companies that hire advisors who already have blot on their records tend to have more misconduct on average, according to the findings of the study published this year.

"One could argue those that are hiring have less standards ... on what sort of advisors can work for them," said Amit Seru, a co-author of the report. "Maybe they think they can get away [with] hiding these guys."

This speaks to the importance of vetting an advisor before providing an all-access pass to your financial accounts. It isn't always easy to truly tell how your fiduciary will provide help in the first one or two meetings. But here's how to tell whether that advisor will set you on the path to retirement comfort, or leave you scratching your head wondering where your money went.

Ask the right questions. When potential new clients sit with Kathleen Hastings at FBB Capital Partners in McLean, Virginia, they inevitably want to know one thing: How much better will the portfolio perform under her care? It's all about performance. "They come in and ask why their account isn't doing as well," Hastings says. "'What's wrong with my account? Why am I losing money?'"

But this isn't the question that you should be asking right off the bat. Initial conversations should be about understanding how an advisor will work with you to develop a plan that makes sense based on your goals.

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Hastings says investors should understand how an advisor works on a day-to-day basis. How does the business run? Who actually holds onto your funds? Who has access to your funds?

Most will work through a brokerage company, like Charles Schwab or Merrill Lynch, to actually hold your funds. Know where your money will actually sit. "I'm not asked this enough," Hastings says.

Finally, be sure to ask what their succession plan is, says Joe Heider of Cirrus Wealth Management Group in Cleveland. An investor needs to know what happens to their portfolio should an advisor retire or unexpectedly die. A strong advisor will have a clear answer.

[See: The 10 Best REIT ETFs on the Market.]

Searching for the right resources. Another issue that you will come across in your search for advice is the different level of services offered by financial advisors. Is the advisor a broker? Is she an investment advisor?

A broker actually trades stocks, bonds, mutual funds, or other types of products. They typically get paid by commission; unscrupulous brokers will push your money into higher-fee funds so they can pocket a higher commission.

An investment advisor, on the other hand, provides advice on the best way to manage your fund then goes through a broker-dealer to execute the plan. Plenty of registered investment advisors provide their service for a fee -- instead of commission -- and they have to abide by a fiduciary standard of putting your best interest ahead of theirs.

Depending on whether you're talking to a broker or an investment advisor will dictate how you search for any past misconduct. For a broker, you can search FINRA's BrokerCheck site, which provides any past accusations a broker may have faced.

Investment advisors have to register with the Securities Exchange Commission or the state securities agency. On the investment advisor's website, find the form ADV. It will provide information on any past legal issues with clients. If you can't easily find the ADV form on the website or they don't provide it for you early in your conversation with them, be wary.

Bigger isn't always better (nor is smaller). Seru recommends evaluating companies not by their size, but by their target audience. You want to avoid doing business with a company that targets "consumers that aren't the most sophisticated," he says.

Instead, make sure that your advisor is providing all the information that they have about your plan and strategy. The best way to tell this is whether or not the advisor lays out what your fees will be. "None of this is for free," Hastings says. If they "avoid the conversation," then that's a big problem.

[See: 11 Stocks that Donald Trump Loves.]

Finally, if a financial advisor doesn't take the time to listen to your goals and desires for your money, then walk away. You've worked too hard for your investment portfolio to risk it in unsure hands.





More From US News & World Report


Real estate markets across the U.S. are fast-paced right now. Homes are selling within hours, rather days. Homebuyers are struggling to find the right house before someone else has put it under contract. The pressure to beat out other homebuyers is intense.

Homebuying is already an emotional experience without the pressures of the market. Adding on the market's intensity is enough to make anyone go insane. If you're experiencing this problem as a homebuyer in your local market, here are three tips to help break through the competition and beat the other competing buyers to your next home purchase.

Set up instant property alerts. Many real estate websites allow users to save their search criteria and alerts emailed or text to them within minutes of homes coming on the market. This is the best way to stay ahead of competing buyers. When homes are selling within hours, every minute counts. It's nearly impossible to find the best house in a hot market without having instant notifications.

The process is typically very simple. Find the best real estate website in your area to setup email alerts and then watch your phone for the alerts to come through. Many times, the best sites for this feature are local Realtors' websites. A quick Google search is the easiest way to find these sites, and see which have homes that best meet your criteria.

Pro tip: Not all websites have a direct feed to their local multiple listing service. In order to get the best results from the site supplying you with property updates, make sure you choose one connected to the MLS and updates within minutes. Some websites update daily, meaning you won't receive updates until the next day. In markets where homes are selling within hours, these late updates will not help much.

[See: The 20 Best Places to Live in the U.S. for Quality of Life.]

Hire an agent who moves fast. Not all real estate agents are created equal, and some work with more sellers than buyers. Other may work part time, or are not very tech savvy. There are many different kinds of agents, so you need to be smart about who you choose to help you find your home.

Story continues

Find an aggressive agent who can meet you in a timely manner. You stand the best chance of this by working with one who works with mostly homebuyers. Buyer's agents are very in-tune with the current struggles that fast-paced markets present. They understand how time is of the essence when shopping for a home in a hot market.

By choosing an agent who moves fast and simplifies the process, you can beat other buyers to the punch and get the home you're interested in under contract. The internet and technology have changed the real estate industry dramatically over the past few years. While some professionals have adapted well, others are still trying to catch up -- choose wisely.

[See: The Best Apps for House Hunting.]

Be prepared to make an aggressive offer. When a real estate market is hot, there's no time for being picky. If you've looked at multiple homes and have been beat out by other buyers on several occasions, you may be asking for too much in your offer.

Listing agents are very busy right now. When they receive multiple offers -- sometimes 20 or more at time -- they have to sift through all of those contracts to determine which ones are the best for their sellers. Some buyers are willing to offer tens of thousands of dollars above the listing price of the home. If you want to compete, you have to keep up or give up on buying a home this year.

A good local real estate agent will know the best way to structure a contract to make it as appealing as possible to the home sellers in your market. The more appealing your offer, the better chance it stands of being accepted. If you work with your agent to form your offer strategy before you fall in love with a home, the process will go much smoother. Emotions tend to trigger impulse decisions, which can cause deals to fall apart later on. Learn your market, develop a strategy, and stick to it.

[See: The 20 Best Affordable Places to Live in the U.S.]

Final thoughts. Buying a house in a fast paced market can be very stressful, but it doesn't have to be. If you know what to expect going into it and you utilize tools and tricks to navigate your market, you can bypass much unnecessary stress. Leverage the professionals around you and be ready to move fast once you find the best home for you.

Andrew Fortune is the owner and Employing Broker at Great Colorado Homes, but he also creates valuable content for both home buyers and sellers, local market analysis as well as stunning infographics for easily share-able real estate tips.
Doctor Strange director Scott Derrickson tweeted this hint his film is headed to San Diego next month; James Gunn added fuel to buzz about Marvel plans with his reply (Photo: Scott Derrickson on Twitter)

By Graeme McMillan, The Hollywood Reporter

After taking 2015 off, its looking like Marvel Studios could be returning to San Diego Comic-Con this year.

Related: Suicide Squad to Get Major Push at Comic-Con

While the studio is holding off from any official announcement regarding a Hall H appearance at this summers pop culture extravaganza (a request for comment from THR received no response), Doctor Strange director Scott Derrickson and Guardians of the Galaxy director James Gunn took to Twitter Friday to drop a particularly unsubtle hint that fans can expect a significant Marvel presence this year:

Will I be at Comic Con this year? Heres a hint pic.twitter.com/ovawpnsLsj  Scott Derrickson (@scottderrickson) June 10, 2016

Really? Youll be so close. I might have to come see you. https://t.co/LbqvjJ46Vg  James Gunn (@JamesGunn) June 10, 2016

The Disney-owned studio skipped the show last year, with sources saying the timing didnt work for Marvel; Ant-Man was scheduled for release the week after 2015s Comic-Con, and subsequent release Captain America: Civil War was still in production.

Related: Star Trek Beyond to Debut in IMAX at Comic-Con 2016

More likely was the fact that Disney was withholding information and footage for its own D23 convention the following month. That event debuted footage from Civil War, with the cast of the movie showing up on stage. Derrickson also appeared with all-new Doctor Strange concept artwork.

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This year, however, there is no D23 convention, leaving Comic-Con as the best place to unveil new Doctor Strange footage ahead of the movies November release.



Related: Comic-Con 2016: 20th Century Fox Wont Present in Hall H

Additionally, both Thor: Ragnarok and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 are currently in production and might be able to debut footage, with studio president Kevin Feige hinting at upcoming announcements regarding the lead role and director for 2019s Captain Marvel, offering the potential for quite a presentation.

San Diego Comic-Con runs July 21-24 at the San Diego Convention Center, with Preview Night on July 20.

Comic-Con flashback: 18 times Jennifer Lawrence cracked us up in San Diego:
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Picking a bottle of wine to take to a dinner party can bring people out in a cold sweat. Especially if they're on a budget. No one wants to turn up with a vinegary Merlot but, at the same time, it might not be desirable to blow a ton of cash on a bottle just to impress. So thank goodness for Asda.

At the Decanter World Wine Awards yesterday, a bottle of red costing less than 5 just got voted the best in the world. Asda's La Moneda Reserva Malbec from Central Valley in Chile (2015) was awarded best in show in the category for single-varietal red under 15 in a blind taste test.

According to The Independent, it was selected by 240 experts at the highly respected competition. And the win didn't come easy. It beat over 16,000 other entries.

Judges described it as the "ultimate crowd pleaser", and noted its "freshly crushed black fruit, creamy vanilla yoghurt and pepper spice."

Asda are said to be stocking up on the Malbec after the win. Race you down there.

Like what you see? How about some more R29 goodness, right here?

7 Easy And Creative Gin & Tonic Recipes

We're Completely Obsessed With This Summer Cooking Hack

How To Do Brunch At Home (Because There Are No Queues At Home)
- By Chuck Carnevale





I am a fervent believer that investors are best served by investing toward a specific investment objective that suits their own unique goals, objectives and risk tolerance. In other words, investing is not always trying to get the highest possible total returns. If that were true, no one would have ever invested in bonds, CDs or other fixed income instruments.





Personally, my primary current investment objective is focused on achieving a reliable and growing dividend income stream. That doesnat mean that I donat expect capital appreciation to go along with my dividends because I do. However, capital appreciation is secondary to what I need right now. Therefore, I am content to allow it to happen over the long run. This means being willing to accept the ups and downs of short-term market volatility that are sure to occur as long as my dividend income keeps increasing.

On the other hand, I also have discretionary assets that I can invest in or utilize outside of my core portfolio. So even though I favor dependable dividend-paying stocks, I still am attracted to examining exciting growth investments with money I am both willing to and can afford to lose. However, even though Iam willing to lose with these discretionary assets, I donat expect to. Instead, my objective is to generate significantly higher total returns than my prudent dividend growth portfolio is realistically capable of achieving.

More simply stated, I still appreciate powerful and exciting growth stocks because I understand they are capable of generating significantly higher returns. However, I am also cognizant of the fact that the risk associated with achieving those returns is also significantly higher. Consequently, I am just as adamantly (or even more so) focused on valuation when investing in growth stocks as I am with prudent blue-chip dividend paying stocks.

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One of the most difficult things for the value-oriented investor to accept and embrace is the reality that the best value comes from stocks that are temporarily out of favor. In this regard, the value investor must also recognize that hitting the perfect bottom can only be accomplished with luck. Therefore, the intelligent value investor is willing to assume some short-term pain in order to achieve long-term gain.

The biotechnology sector contains many exciting growth stocks. But most importantly, as it relates to this article, the sector has recently been out of favor, which has created bargain investment opportunities. Consequently, I offer the following five biotechnology stocks as attractive research candidates primarily for growth or long-term total return. However, two of these five biotech stocks offer attractive dividends in conjunction with above-average growth and attractive value.

Three research-worthy biotechnology growth stock candidates

These first three biotechnology research candidates are offered as pure growth stocks. None of them pay a dividend, and I donat expect any of them to initiate one any time soon. However, I believe all three appeared attractive relative to their long-term growth potential.

On each candidate, I present a short business description courtesy of S&P Capital IQ followed by a series of F.A.S.T. Graphsa and FUN Graphs highlighting some important fundamental metrics. Importantly, what I am presenting here is the recommendation that these stocks are worthy of further scrutiny if growth for high total return is your objective.

Biogen Inc.A (BIIB)

aBiogen Inc. discovers, develops, manufactures and delivers therapies for the treatment of neurodegenerative diseases, hematologic conditions and autoimmune disorders. It offers TECFIDERA, AVONEX and PLEGRIDY to treat relapsing forms of multiple sclerosis (MS); TYSABRI to treat relapsing forms of MS and Crohnas disease, and FAMPYRA to improve walking ability for patients with MS.

"The company also provides ELOCTATE to treat adults and children with hemophilia A for control of bleeding episodes; ALPROLIX to treat adults and children with hemophilia B for control of bleeding episodes; RITUXAN for treating non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, rheumatoid arthritis and chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) as well as two forms of ANCA-associated vasculitis; GAZYVA for the treatment of patients with previously untreated CLL, and FUMADERM to treat plaque psoriasis.

"The companyas products in Phase III development stage comprise ZINBRYTA, a monoclonal antibody for the treatment of relapsing-remitting MS; Aducanumab for Alzheimeras disease, and ISIS-SMNRx for spinal muscular atrophy. Its Phase II clinical trial products include Anti-LINGO for optic neuritis and MS; Amiselimod for multiple autoimmune indications; BAN2401 and E2609 for Alzheimer's disease; Raxatrigine for trigeminal neuralgia; rAAV-XLRS for X-linked juvenile retinoschisis; and BG00011 for idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis. Its Phase I clinical trial products comprise Dapirolizumab pegol for systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE); ISIS-DMPK for myotonic dystrophy; Anti-BDCA2 for SLE; Anti-alpha-synuclein for Parkinsonas disease, and BIIB063 for sjogrenas syndrome.

"The company has a strategic research collaboration with Ionis Pharmaceuticals Inc. (IONS). It offers products primarily through its own sales force, marketing groups and third parties worldwide. The company was formerly known as Biogen Idec Inc. and changed its name to Biogen Inc. in March 2015.

"Biogen Inc. was founded in 1978 and is headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts.a

Biogen has produced an impressive record of earnings growth since fiscal year 2008. However, it should be noted that growth expectations for 2016 and 2017 are below historical norms.

When monthly closing stock prices are brought into the equation, we initially see a high correlation between price and earnings over the long run. However, we also see a significant disconnect where price became significantly ahead of earnings justified valuation for most of 2013, 2014 and the first half of 2015. However, it appears that expectations for slower growth took the wind out of the price sails.

Nevertheless, in spite of the drastic correction in stock price, the long-term returns that Biogen generated for shareholders has significantly outperformed the average company.

Biogen has produced excellent gross and net profit margins over the last 10 years. Even though growth is expected to slow somewhat, I find it comforting that net profit margins are strong and improving.

I also like the fact that Biogenas return on equity has been increasing at a rapid rate.

Consensus long-term earnings estimates and growth rates are currently forecast to be below historical norms. However, Biogen does have an exciting pipeline of potential future blockbuster drugs, but there is high risk as to whether they will generate future profits or not.

Celgene Corporation (CELG)

aCelgene Corporation discovers, develops and commercializes therapies to treat cancer and inflammatory diseases worldwide. It markets REVLIMID, an oral immunomodulatory drug for multiple myeloma, myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS) and mantle cell lymphoma; ABRAXANE, a solvent-free chemotherapy product to treat breast, nonsmall cell lung, pancreatic and gastric cancers; POMALYST/IMNOVID to treat multiple myeloma; and OTEZLA, a small-molecule inhibitor of phosphodiesterase 4 for psoriatic arthritis, psoriasis, ankylosing spondylitis, BehAet's disease, atopic dermatitis and ulcerative colitis.

"The companyas products also include VIDAZA, a pyrimidine nucleoside analog to treat intermediate-2 and high-risk MDS and chronic myelomonocytic leukemia as well as acute myeloid leukemia (AML); THALOMID for the patients with multiple myeloma and erythema nodosum leprosum; ISTODAX to treat cutaneous and peripheral T-cell lymphoma, and FOCALIN, FOCALIN XR and RITALIN products. Its clinical stage products include OTEZLA for the treatment of various immune-inflammatory diseases; sotatercept for the treatment of renal anemia, beta-thalassemia and MDS; luspatercept for beta-thalassemia and MDS; CC-486 to treat MDS, AML and solid tumors; CC-122 and CC-220 to treat hematological and solid tumor cancers and inflammation and immunology diseases; PDA-002 for the treatment of diabetic foot ulcers and peripheral neuropathy, and PNK-007 for hematological malignancies treatment.

"The company has collaborative agreements with Novartis Pharma AG; Acceleron Pharma (XLRN); Agios Pharmaceuticals Inc. (AGIO); Epizyme Inc. (EPZM); Sutro Biopharma, Inc.; bluebird bio Inc. (BLUE); FORMA Therapeutics Holdings LLC; Acetylon Pharmaceuticals Inc.; OncoMed Pharmaceuticals Inc. (OMED); NantBioScience Inc.; AstraZeneca PLC (AZN); Lycera Corp.; Juno Therapeutics Inc. (JUNO); TriNetX Inc.; Triphase Accelerator Corporation, and Nurix Inc.

"The company was founded in 1980 and is headquartered in Summit, New Jersey.a

Of the research candidates presented in this article, Celgene, represents my personal favorite. Historical earnings growth has been extremely strong and consistent since 2008. The only real negative is the companyas high debt to capital.

Once again, we see a clear correlation between monthly closing stock prices and earnings over the long run. But most importantly, it is clear that the best times historically to invest in Celgene have been when its price has been below its earnings justified level as it is today.

Celgene represents another example of significant long-term performance in spite of its current undervaluation and the fact that it was moderately overvalued at the beginning of 2008. This clearly illustrates the power of compounding earnings growth at high levels.

Celgene has produced strong gross and net margins historically. However, net profit margins weaken somewhat in 2015 but remain high relative to the average company. On the other hand, net profit margin has improved to almost 32% through the March quarter (not shown on the graph).

Celgene also produces high returns on equity.

Analysts continue to expect Celgene to grow future long-term earnings in excess of 20% per annum.

Jazz Pharmaceuticals (JAZZ)

aJazz Pharmaceuticals Public Limited Company, a biopharmaceutical company, identifies, develops and commercializes pharmaceutical products for various medical needs in the U.S., Europe and internationally.

"The company has a portfolio of products and product candidates with a focus in the areas of sleep and hematology/oncology. It markets Xyrem, an oral solution for the treatment of cataplexy and excessive daytime sleepiness (EDS) in patients with narcolepsy; Erwinaze to treat acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL); Defitelio for the treatment and prevention of severe hepatic veno-occlusive disease, a potentially life-threatening complication of hematopoietic stem cell transplantation, and Prialt, an intrathecally administered infusion of ziconotide for the management of severe chronic pain.

"The company also develops JZP-110, a late-stage investigational compound, which is in Phase III clinical trial for the treatment of EDS in narcolepsy and obstructive sleep apnea, and JZP-386, a deuterium-modified analog of sodium oxybate that is completed Phase I clinical trail for use in patients with narcolepsy. In addition, it sells psychiatry and other products.

"The company is headquartered in Dublin, Ireland.a

Jazz Pharmaceuticals went from negative earnings in 2009 to positive earnings in 2010. Consequently, long-term earnings growth rate has been distorted by aberrantly high earnings growth in 2010 and 2011. Nevertheless, historical earnings growth since 2013 has exceeded 20% per annum.

When monthly stock prices are included, we once again see a high correlation between earnings growth and stock price over the long term. However, in this case, the orange earnings justified valuation line is drawn at a market average P/E ratio of only 15.

Nevertheless, Jazz has produced exciting long-term returns for its shareholders.

Jazz has produced exceptional gross margins since 2007. However, net profit margins have been a little more erratic. Nevertheless, I consider this an intriguing research candidate at its current valuation.

The return on equity for Jazz is troubling. Therefore, I consider this my least favorite of the five research candidates presented. However, itas hard to argue with its past performance.

Consensus estimates for future growth are very strong aA approaching 19% per annum. However, there is scant history available to analyze on this company, and analysts donat have a great record of forecasting earnings over the last couple of years.

Two research-worthy biotechnology dividend growth stock candidates

These next two biotechnology research candidates offer both above-average growth and above-average current dividend yield and dividend growth potential. Consequently, I consider both attractive long-term total return opportunities with the benefit of a solid and growing dividend yield.

AbbVie Inc. (ABBV)

aAbbVie Inc. discovers, develops, manufactures and sells pharmaceutical products worldwide. The company offers HUMIRA, a biologic therapy administered as a subcutaneous injection to treat autoimmune diseases; IMBRUVICA, an oral therapy for the treatment of chronic lymphocytic leukemia, and VIEKIRA PAK, an interferon-free therapy, with or without ribavirin, for adults with genotype 1 chronic hepatitis including those with compensated cirrhosis.

"It also provides Kaletra, an anti-HIV-1 medicine used with other anti-HIV-1 medications as a treatment that maintains viral suppression in HIV-1 patients; Norvir, a protease inhibitor indicated in combination with other antiretroviral agents to treat HIV-1, and Synagis to prevent respiratory syncytial virus infection in high risk infants.

"In addition, the company offers AndroGel; Creon, a pancreatic enzyme therapy for exocrine pancreatic insufficiency; Synthroid to treat hypothyroidism, and Lupron, a product for the palliative treatment of prostate cancer and endometriosis and central precocious puberty as well as for the treatment of patients with anemia.

"Further, it provides Duopa and Duodopa, a levodopa-carbidopa intestinal gel to treat Parkinsonas disease; Sevoflurane, an anesthesia product for human use; TriCor, Trilipix and Niaspan treat metabolic conditions characterized by high cholesterol and/or high triglycerides, and Zemplar to treat secondary hyperparathyroidism.

"The company sells its products to wholesalers, distributors, government agencies, health care facilities, specialty pharmacies and independent retailers from its distribution centers and public warehouses. AbbVie Inc. has strategic collaboration with C2N Diagnostics, Calico Life Sciences LLC, Infinity Pharmaceuticals, Inc., Ablynx NV (ABLX), Galapagos NV (GLPG) and Alvine Pharmaceuticals Inc.

"The company was incorporated in 2012 and is based in North Chicago, Illinois.a

AbbVie has a short history after being spun off Abbott Labs (ABT). However, the company has produced consistent above-average earnings growth, and its dividend has been increased and grown each year since it was an independent company.

Even though the history is short, AbbVieas stock price has moved in tandem with earnings over the long run. Moreover, periods of both overvaluation and undervaluation are vividly revealed. Currently, I consider this high-quality biotechnology company currently undervalued. My only reservation is the companyas high debt to capital ratio.

Even though AbbVieas performance history is short, the company has outperformed the Standard & Poor's 500 on both capital appreciation and dividend income. This is noteworthy considering how strong the performance of the average company was during this timeframe.

AbbVie has produced strong and attractive gross and net margins since it was an independent company. However, itas also important to recognize that Humira is its flagship drug, and it has produced more than 50% of sales and 70% of profits. However, the companyas pipeline is interesting, and Humira is expected to be a solid contributor for years to come.

AbbVieas return on equity has been very high stakes in most part due to Humira.

Consensus estimates for AbbVieas future earnings growth are significantly above average. Couple this with an extremely attractive current dividend yield, and AbbVie appears to be a very solid investment.

Amgen Inc. (AMGN)

aAmgen Inc., a biotechnology company, engages in discovering, developing, manufacturing and delivering human therapeutics worldwide. It offers products for the treatment of illness in the areas of oncology/hematology, cardiovascular, inflammation, bone health, nephrology, and neuroscience.

"The companyas principal products include Neulasta, a pegylated protein to decrease the incidence of infection associated with chemotherapy-induced febrile neutropenia in cancer patients; NEUPOGEN, a recombinant-methionyl human granulocyte colony-stimulating factor for reducing the incidence of infection for patients with nonmyeloid malignancies, and Enbrel to treat rheumatoid arthritis, plaque psoriasis and psoriatic arthritis.

"Its principal products also comprise EPOGEN to treat a lower-than-normal number of red blood cells caused by chronic kidney disease (CKD) in patients on dialysis; Aranesp for treating anemia; XGEVA for the prevention of skeletal-related events; Prolia to treat postmenopausal women with osteoporosis; Repatha for the treatment of high cholesterol, and Sensipar/Mimpara products for use in the treatment of secondary hyperparathyroidism in CKD patients on dialysis.

"The companyas other marketed products include Kyprolis, a proteasome inhibitor to treat patients with multiple myeloma and small-cell lung cancer; Nplate, a thrombopoietic compound; Vectibix, a human monoclonal antibody, and BLINCYTO for the treatment of patients with Philadelphia chromosome-negative relapsed or refractory B-cell precursor acute lymphoblastic leukemia. It also develops various products that are in various clinical trials.

"The company serves pharmaceutical wholesale distributors and physicians or their clinics, dialysis centers, hospitals, and pharmacies as well as consumers. It has collaborative agreements with Xencor Inc. (XNCR); UCB (UCB); Novartis AG (NVS) and Bayer HealthCare Pharmaceuticals Inc.

"Amgen Inc. was founded in 1980 and is headquartered in Thousand Oaks, California.a

Amgen is widely considered as the mother of all biotechnology companies. This biotech giant has produced strong and steady earnings growth over its entire history, and the initiation of a dividend in 2011 that has grown significantly is also a plus.

Clearly, Amgenas stock price has closely tracked its earnings achievement. After becoming moderately overvalued in 2015, the recent negativity toward biotechnology in general appears to have brought the stock to attractive valuations again.

Amgen has been a solid performer that has generated higher returns than the S&P 500 and a higher level of cumulative dividend income even though itas only paid a dividend since 2011.

Not only have Amgenas gross and net profit margins been high, they have also been very consistent.

Likewise, Amgen has achieved an attractive and consistently high return on equity historically.

Long-term estimates for Amgenas future earnings growth are above average. Adding the additional opportunity of an above-average and growing dividend income makes Amgen look solid at current valuations.

Summary and conclusions

The best-of-breed companies in the biotechnology sector have a legacy of producing exceptional long-term shareholder returns. However, the sector has recently gone out of favor which has created a significant long-term opportunity for investors willing to take the risk.

There are many who believe that biotechnology represents the future and promise of medicine. Some even believe chemical-driven pharmaceuticals have run their course. The five research candidates presented in this article appear to be worthy of further research and due diligence for those interested in above-average long-term returns and who are willing to take the risk associated with investing in biotech.

Considering that the stock market in general appears rather frothy, attractively valued biotechnology stocks appear to be worth a closer look considering the retrenchment in price most have experienced recently. But most importantly, biotechnology stocks today appear to offer something for everyone. If income is your objective, there are two here that are worth looking at. If growth is your objective, I believe all five of these candidates are worth a closer look.

If you enjoyed this article, scroll up and click on the "follow" button next to my name to see updates on my future articles in your feed.

Disclosure: Long ABBV

Disclaimer: The opinions in this article are for informational and educational purposes only and should not be construed as a recommendation to buy or sell the stocks mentioned or to solicit transactions or clients. Past performance of the companies discussed may not continue, and the companies may not achieve the earnings growth as predicted. The information is believed to be accurate, but under no circumstances should a person act upon the information contained within. We do not recommend that anyone act upon any investment information without first consulting an investment advisor as to the suitability of such investments for his specific situation.

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This article first appeared on GuruFocus.






While the world remains fixated on the US presidential election, the political tides have begun to turn in its neighbor to the south. These 5 facts explain what you need to know following this weekends surprising regional elections in Mexico.

1. The Setup

In a shock to pollsters, Mexicos ruling partythe centrist PRIlost 7 of the 12 governors races to its rivals, dealing a blow to the standing of Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto. Pena Nieto first took office in 2012, and his technocratic cabinet hit the ground running. The early returns were impressive; by 2013, Mexicos economy was growing at a 1.4 percent clip. Its been chugging along ever since, and the World Bank estimates it will continue growing between 2.5-3.2 percent annually to 2018.

At the heart of this revitalization has been Pena Nietos embrace of market- and investor-friendly reforms that boost competition and production, especially of oil. Pena Nieto has made an historic push to liberalize the sector, no easy feat when you consider that state owned Petroleos Mexicanos, known as PEMEX, is responsible for roughly a fifth of the governments budget. PEMEX is woefully inefficient. Opening the industry to private investment and competition strengthens the countrys economy, at least over the longer term, while reducing government vulnerability to volatile oil prices. In the telecom sector, reforms are breaking up long-held private monopolies, and the financial system has been overhauled to strengthen competition and lower borrowing costs. Some of these reforms have already paid off handsomely and promise to deliver better results in the future. But Mexicos presidents may serve only one term, and the race to succeed him in 2018 is wide open.

(Wall Street Journal, World Bank, Bloomberg)

2. Crime and Corruption

But a resilient economy isnt everything. Corruption has long been a problem for Mexico, which ranks as the 95th least-corrupt country in the world. Some economists believe that endemic corruption costs the country anywhere from 2 to 10 percent of its GDP annually. It doesnt help that renovations to Pena Nietos home have been tied to the awarding of government contracts.

Story continues

Even worse has been the rise of crime, crystalized by the brutal murder of 43 students by drug gangs, which shocked the country and triggered nationwide protests. Mexicos murder rate of 14 per 100,000 is nearly three times higher than in the US. Some 80,000 people have been killed in the Mexican drug wars, sometimes by cartels, sometimes by local police theyve paid off. No one is immune to the violence. Over the past decade, nearly 100 mayors have been killed across the country. Mexico just had mid-term parliamentary elections this past Juneseven candidates were murdered while another 20 were forced to drop out for fear of their safety.

(Transparency International, Financial Times, Reuters (a), Vox, New York Times, Reuters (b))

3. The Return

Against this backdrop (re)emerged Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, the former mayor of Mexico City and two-time presidential runner-up. For years a member of the center-left PRD, Lopez Obrador vowed to take on the countrys entrenched political class. As mayor of Mexico City he made good on many of his promises, such as cutting the salaries of high-ranking public officials, including his own. He managed to finance much-needed infrastructure projects by cutting $2 billion from other areas of the budget and still provided significant welfare programs for the citys elderly and disabled. While the citys debt increased by one-third to pay for these programs, Lopez Obradors popularity soared.

Unfortunately, his 2006 presidential campaign was torpedoed by a bribery scandal involving members of his inner circle. Lopez Obrador lost that election by 0.55 percent to Felipe Calderon, but tarnished his national popularity by protesting the results for months on end. He still left his job as Mexico Citys mayor with an impressive 80 percent approval rating.

(Al Jazeera, New York Times (a), New York Times (b))

4. Morena

Lopez Obrador returned in 2012 to run against Pena Nieto, but lost that election by 6 percentage points. Following the loss, Lopez Obrador fell out with his partys leadership, and broke away to form Morena, a further-left political party. The partys success has centered on its anti-corruption and anti-establishment platform, a message that has understandably found resonance with the broader Mexican public. The party won 8 percent of the vote in its debut elections last June, and followed-up with a solid showing this weekend. Morena didnt win any governorships outright, but its performance in key Mexican states such as Veracruz, where Morena received 26% of the votein an election where the winner captured just 34%signal its now a political force to be reckoned with. In a simulation run this past spring, Lopez Obrador won the presidency in 11 of the 16 election scenarios analyzed.

But Lopez Obrador is also running on a fiercely anti-reform platform, and he has promised to undo many of Pena Nietos key reforms, bringing Mexico more in line with leftist Latin America. Lopez Obrador wants to undermine the one initiative that might change Mexicos longer-term economic trajectory for the better, risking a return to deeper economic stagnation.

(CNN, Election Guide, LA Times, PanAm Post)

5. Mexico Still PositiveFor Now

Yet, Mexico remains a good-news story for now. Its the 12th largest export economy in the world, well-diversified and has free trade agreements with 46 countries. Over the past 10 years, Mexicos GDP has grown more than 32 percent; ninety-five percent of Mexicans now belong to the global middle or upper class, according to the World Banks methodology. Even more impressively, Mexicos growth pace is accelerating at a time when most of Latin America is slowing down. This fact is not lost on Mexican immigrants in the U.S. For the first time in more than 70 years, more Mexicans are now moving from the United States into Mexico than the other way around.

Problems remain of course, corruption and crime chief among them. But rather than taking these problems on directly, the populist firebrand hoping to win the presidency in 2018 has set his sights squarely on undoing the pro-market reforms that have delivered this recent success.

(World Politics Review, IMF, Council on Foreign Relations, Wall Street Journal)
Barack Obama

President Barack Obama takes the cake for the best feature on Jimmy Fallons Slow Jam the News. Obama reflected on his tenure at the White House, but wasted no time to throw in references about Beyonces Lemonade, the Golden State Warriors Steph Curry, and mock Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.

Orange is not the new black, Obama says.

Obama also sealed the deal by dropping the mic  again  at the end of the segment.

Believe it or not though, this wasnt the first time Obama came on the show for his creative take on the news. Back in 2012, Obama  referred to by Fallon as Preezy of the United Steezy  surprised viewers by joining Fallon to slow jam about the economy, student loans, and his agenda for the future direction of the country. The video has surprisingly been removed from Fallons official YouTube channel, but watch a short clip of it here.

Brian Williams

MSNBC anchor Brian Williams has been a slow jamming regular on Fallons show, appearing at least twice to deliver the news of the past week.

In 2013, Williams joined Fallon to slow jam about the debt ceiling.

Take it from my man, Brilly Willy. Aint nothing worse than a soft Boehner, Fallon says, referencing former House Speaker John Boehner and his stance on raising the debt ceiling.

Williams returned again in 2014 to share news about immigration reform. He begins the segment by discussing Obamas decision to sign a bill that allows temporary legal status to undocumented workers, even though he would have preferred a more permanent bill.

Fallons response?

Obamas been waiting for Congress to make the first move so he can whip out his John Hancock and sign a bill. But so far theyve done nothing, so hes just been sitting around the White House with his BIC in his hand, Fallon says as he holds up a pen.

Mitt Romney

Romney took up the mic with Fallon back in 2014 to touch upon the NSA wiretapping scandal, the troubles surrounding Obamacares implementation, and the Netflix documentary about Romneys two presidential campaigns, titled Mitt.

Story continues

Romney also took time to clarify that he was not planning on making a third presidential run.

I guess its true what they say. Once you go black, Fallon begins, before Questlove takes over and finishes with, You never go back.

After Romney declares he will support the GOP nominee 100 percent, Fallon wastes no time to retort back, Dont you mean 47 percent?

Jeb Bush

Bush appeared on the show the day after formally announcing he would begin his presidential campaign.

After being a caucus tease, he finally quit beating around the bush, Fallon says.

Bush spends the rest of the video explaining why he would make a good president, and even throws in a response entirely in Spanish to say he supports immigration to the U.S.

Chris Christie

Governor Chris Christie appeared on Fallons popular segment, but the video has since been removed from Fallons official YouTube channel. Guess they thought it was that bad?

In any case, Christie joined Fallon to defend his decision to fill a U.S. Senate seat previously held by the late Frank Lautenberg through special election.
Its hard not to buy into the buzzy health trends incessantly thrown at us via every breaking scientific study, not to mention our favorite celebs, virtuous juice companies and the like. But it can behoove you to dig a little deeper into the evidence (and certainly ask your doctor for some personalized advice) before you simply accept new and enticing information as being truthblindly opting in can be costly, contradictory and, at times, dangerous. Here, 9 wellness myths you should really second-guess, ASAP.
An Aussie mom is thanking Apple for its Hey Siri feature. (Image via Apple Support screenshot)



An Aussie mom recently penned a heartfelt thank-you note to Apple, and her story of how the companys Hey Siri feature helped save her 1-year-old daughter is now making the rounds.

Per 9to5mac.com, Stacey Gleeson noticed her daughter, Giana, wasnt breathing back in March, and as she leaped into action to perform CPR, she dropped her iPhone. As Gleeson started taking life-saving measures on her baby, she shouted, Hey Siri, call the ambulance, 7 News reports.

Related: Cops: Mom Fights Off Man Trying to Abduct Daughter

Gleeson was able to have a back-and-forth with emergency dispatchers as she continued CPR on Giana, who the BBC reports had been dealing with a respiratory illness and chest infection. The child was breathing again by the time the ambulance arrived at their Cairns home, and Gleeson says doctors told her every second had mattered.

Related: Woman Says a Potato Chip Saved Her Life

The Hey Siri feature, which allows the AI assistant to be activated without the user having to press the Home button or be plugged in to power, is available only on Apples newest devices (Gleeson has an iPhone 6S). Her husband, Nic, tells 7 News the feature might have given the precious moments Stacey needed to revive Giana."

Related: To Diagnose Cancer, Doctors Only Need Your Search History

Gleeson tells the BBC she had "played around with Siri beforeNic is in the Navy, so shell often put him on speakerphone while shes helping her kids get ready for bedbut she now recognizes the technologys value.

Saving me the trouble of having to physically dial emergency services was a godsend, she says. (Gleesons story counters the results of a study on Siris performance in health crises.)

By Jenn Gidman

Story continues

More From Newser:

Mom Goes Into Hospital to Give Birth, Leaves Without Legs

Inside Tumblrs Weird, Bold Community of Teen Shoplifters

This article originally appeared on Newser: After Baby Stops Breathing, Hey Siri Comes to Rescue
On Jun 9, we issued an updated research report on the fertilizer maker Agrium Inc. AGU.



Agrium saw its profits tumble year over year in the first quarter of 2016, hurt by weak prices. Adjusted earnings for the quarter, however, managed to beat the Zacks Consensus Estimate. Revenues fell year over year and missed expectations. The company saw pricing pressure across all nutrients in the quarter.



Agrium cut its earnings guidance for 2016 factoring in sustained pricing pressure. It now sees earnings in the range of $5.25$6.25 per share for the year, down from its prior view of $5.50$7.00 per share.



While Agrium should gain from acquisitions and its capacity expansion initiatives, it continues to face pricing pressure. It is seeing weak pricing for nitrogen, phosphate and potash.



Depressed global energy prices, higher supply and weak agricultural fundamentals have contributed to a softer nitrogen pricing environment. Urea prices are expected to be under pressure in the near term, partly due to high levels of Chinese export supplies. The companys downward revision of earnings guidance for 2016 reflects sustained headwinds from lower nutrients prices.



Agrium is also facing challenges stemming from weak crop pricing environment, which may continue to unfavorably impact the crop input market in the short term. Weak demand and ample supplies are affecting crop prices.



China (the worlds biggest potash importer) is also yet to sign potash supply agreements for 2016, leading to uncertainty in the global potash market and downward pressure on potash prices. Agricultural market conditions also remain weak in Brazil, impacted by cautious buying by farmers and the uncertain political and economic situation in that country.



Moreover, weakening of major global currencies vis-a-vis the U.S. dollar is impacting demand in several regions. Agrium is also faced with issues such as logistical constraints and plant outages.



Agrium is a Zacks Rank #5 (Strong Sell).

Story continues

Other Stocks to Consider

Some better-ranked stocks in the basic materials space include Koninklijke DSM N.V. RDSMY, Asahi Kasei Corp. AHKSY and Innospec Inc. IOSP, all holding a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy).



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To read this article on Zacks.com click here.



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Air New Zealand said Friday it will sell the bulk of its stake in Virgin Australia to Nanshan Group, making the Shandong-based conglomerate the airline's second Chinese investor in as many weeks.

Nanshan will pay Aus0.33 cents a share for a 19.98 percent stake in Virgin Australia, valuing it at about Aus$230 million (US$170 million), Air NZ said.

"The sale will allow Air New Zealand to focus on its own growth opportunities, while still continuing its long-standing alliance with Virgin Australia on the trans-Tasman network," chairman Tony Carter said.

The Kiwi flag carrier was Virgin Australia's largest shareholder, with a 25.89 percent stake built up as the airlines forged an alliance against rival Qantas.

Carter said the deal needed approval from Chinese regulators, adding that Air NZ was considering its options regarding the rest of its Virgin Australia shares.

The move comes after Chinese aviation and tourism giant HNA bought a 13 percent stake in Virgin Australia on May 31.

At the time, Virgin said the tie-up would boost its access to the "rapidly growing Chinese travel market" and it would consider introducing direct flights between Australia and China.

Nanshan owns Qingdao Airlines, while HNA is parent of Hainan Airlines and last month took a stake in Portuguese national carrier TAP.

Virgin, Australia's second-largest airline, said in a statement that it expected Nanshan to seek a seat on its board.

"We look forward to meeting with Nanshan Group over the coming weeks to discuss the proposed acquisition," it said.

Air New Zealand shares rose 3.23 percent to NZ$2.24 in Wellington on the announcement.

Other major shareholders in Virgin Australia include Etihad Airways, Singapore Airlines and Virgin Group.
By Tim Hepher and Cyril Altmeyer PARIS (Reuters) - Airbus Group faces renewed pressure from France and other European buyers to meet performance and delivery pledges for its A400M military transport plane but is struggling to meet the deadlines, people familiar with the matter said. After partly successful efforts to overcome delays on Europe's largest defense project, the A400M has been plunged into uncertainty again, especially due to issues at an Italian subcontractor that have sparked potential compensation claims. France has written to Airbus pressing it to say whether problems with Italian-built gearboxes and other threats to the A400M's military effectiveness will be resolved this year, but Airbus has declined to give that assurance, the people said. With urgent needs in sub-Saharan Africa and Iraq, France has raised concerns about three main problems hampering the troop and heavy equipment carrier: gearbox flaws that require the planes to be checked every 20 flight hours, incomplete defensive systems and limits on certain types of parachute operation. Asked if Airbus had been able to give clarity on resolving them, one person familiar with the matter said, "No, not right now, and especially not in the required timetable, which is by the end of this year". The French government declined to comment. Airbus said it did not comment on discussions with buyers. The A400M has been ordered by seven members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization - Belgium, Britain, France, Germany, Luxembourg, Spain and Turkey - to give Europe an independent airlift capability. German Defence Minister Ursula von der Leyen said last week that the country would exercise its right to compensation for delays in deliveries of the A400M and may have to buy other transport planes as well. In 2010, the A400M received a 3.5 billion euro bailout and Airbus later overhauled its management, but problems continue to beset the project launched in 2003 and Airbus is expected to add to the more than 5 billion euros it has already written off. Last year, a fatal crash that is still being investigated exposed a vulnerability in cockpit alarm systems. Then early this year a crack was found inside a power gearbox (PGB) made by General Electric's Italian unit Avio Aero, leading to tough new inspections. "It is currently the main problem and it generates uncertainty about the number of aircraft that can be delivered this year, because it is still unknown how many PGBs Avio can provide," a person close to the project said. Avio's Turin factory "must be modernized," the person said, adding that things had improved since GE bought it in 2013. POLITICAL TWISTS An Avio spokesman said, "we are committed to improving our production" and declined comment on the A400M. Airbus, however, believes it is making progress and hopes to have a certified long-term solution in place for the gearboxes in September, industry sources said. In April, it said it still hoped to meet a delivery target of 20 A400Ms in 2016, but that goal is increasingly in doubt. It has delivered five so far this year, including one to France. "We know it is very frustrating for our customers and are working extremely hard with our engine suppliers and specifically Avio to work out a solution and implement it as quickly as we can," an Airbus spokeswoman said. Avio's involvement reflects the political twists and turns of a program first mooted in the 1980s. Avio was originally part of a French-led consortium that bid against Rolls-Royce to provide engines for the A400M. The European engine partners eventually came together to make one combined bid, which won backing in 2000 from politicians over a transatlantic Pratt & Whitney model favored by Airbus. A year later, Italy pulled out of the A400M project but Avio remained as gearbox supplier to the European engine team. Airbus Group CEO Tom Enders has faulted European governments for tying the A400M to an untested engine consortium, but government officials say past mismanagement is also to blame. Air chiefs have nonetheless praised the capability of the plane, which Enders last week said would be "worth waiting for". Airbus is meanwhile weeding out other problems, including replacing an alloy used below the wing due to a hairline crack, and testing aerodynamic improvements and equipment changes to allow side-door parachute drops from both sides of the plane. But mid-air refueling of helicopters, required by France for its special forces, remains some way off, prompting Paris to place a recent order for four Lockheed Martin C-130s. (Editing by David Clarke)
Chinese billionaire Jack Ma, the founder of e-commerce giant Alibaba, has snapped up two historic French vineyards for nearly 12 million euros ($13.56 million).

Ma bought the Chateau Guerry and the Chateau Perenne, dating back to the 18th century, in the heart of the fabled Bordeaux wine-growing region.

Their owner, French wine magnate Bernard Magrez, confirmed the sale to AFP late Thursday after the transaction was reported by British magazine Decanter.

The Chateau Perenne is spread over 64 hectares (158 acres) in the Blaye Cotes-de-Bourg appellation, producing about 500,000 bottles of red and white wine annually.

Chateau Guerry is the oldest estate in the Cotes de Bourg appellation, producing 84,000 bottles of red a year over about 20 hectares.

The purchases add to the Chateau de Sours vineyard, which Ma bought in Bordeaux' Entre-Deux-Mers wine region in February. It includes a magnificent 18th-century country house.

Magrez told AFP that the sale of the estates were part of a "strategy to move away from entry-level Bordeaux wines" to top-level appellations, as wine classifications are called.

More than 100 properties in Frances southwest wine-producing area are today owned by Chinese tycoons looking to diversify their fortunes. This makes up 1.5 per cent of the regions 7,000 vineyards.

Part of the appeal for the Chinese is the status that comes with possessing a noble French chateau as part of their wine-growing property.

China is the biggest consumer of red wine in the world and remains the top export market for Bordeaux.
Amal Clooney is much more than the gorgeous wife of George Clooney. She's also passionate about getting justice for victims of human rights violations -- no matter how dangerous the mission may seem.

EXCLUSIVE: George Clooney Praises Wife Amal For Handling Hollywood Spotlight 'Well'

For her latest case, the 38-year-old human rights lawyer will represent ISIS rape survivor, Nadia Murad, and other victims of the 2014 Yezidi genocide.

"The European Parliament, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, the U.S. government and the U.K. House of Commons have all recognized that there is a genocide being perpetrated by IS against the Yezidis in Iraq," Amal said in statement to the New York Times' Women in the World blog. "How can it be that the most serious crimes known to humanity are being carried out before our eyes but are not being prosecuted by the International Criminal Court in The Hague?"

NEWS: George and Amal Clooney Meet With Syrian Refugees, Listen to Their Stories In Touching Video

Nadia was among the thousands of Yezidi women kidnapped from Northern Iraq and forced into camps where they were sexually brutalized for belonging to a religious minority in an area terrorized by the Islamic extremist group. After enduring three months of torture, Nadia escaped in November 2014.

The now 23-year-old activist, who was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize this past January, has been tireless in her efforts to bring more political attention to the Yezidi genocide. She praised Amal as an "incredible passionate woman" who has given her "renewed hope" in the fight. "It is important to establish justice, and Amal being a life-long defender of justice, it was a natural bond between her and I to be established. We are both defenders of justice, and peace seekers through justice," said Nadia. "The final goal for us all is accountability to perpetrators of genocide, and justice for victims like myself."

Story continues

NEWS: A Stylish Amal Clooney Goes Back to Work, Rebuffs Fashion Questions

Nearly six thousand Yezidis were killed in the massacre, while millions of Iraqis have been forced to flee their homes to escape ISIS.

"We know that thousands of Yezidi civilians have been killed and that thousands of Yezidi women have been enslaved by a terrorist organization, IS, that has publicly proclaimed its genocidal intent," added Amal. "We know that systematic rapes have taken place, and that they are still taking place. And yet no one is being held to account. It is time that we see IS commanders in the dock in The Hague, and I am honored to have been asked to represent Nadia and the Yezidi community in their quest for legal accountability."

NEWS: Amal Clooney Stuns While Doing Good Deeds with Husband George Clooney

Given her huge heart, it's no wonder that George's love for Amal has little to do with her looks. "She's an amazing human being," he told ET's Nancy O'Dell last May. "And she's caring. And she also happens to be one of the smartest people I've ever met."

Watch the actor gush over his better half in the video below.

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Actress Amber Heard seemingly covered all her bases when she reported abuse at the hands of husband Johnny Depp.

Heard who alleges Depp threw a phone at her and hit her repeatedly, came forward with photos of the cuts and bruises on her face and texts revealing a history of domestic violence dating back to 2014. She even provided investigators with a witness who overheard the incident on the phone. Heard promptly requested a restraining order and filed for divorce.

Still, the media has been apt to blame Heard for Depp's abuse and continues to color her allegations with skepticism.

On Thursday, E! News ran an "exclusive" story with the share headline "Johnny Depp Never 'Laid a Hand' on Amber Heard While Sober." On the site itself the headline reads, "Why Amber Heard Finally Left Johnny Depp: 'His Problems Got the Best of Him,' Source Says."

Altogether, the framing of the article removes fault from Depp, who's painted as a mere victim of his vices. What's more, it appears to acquit Depp for allegedly never abusing Heard for limiting his abuse to instances of intoxication.

Source: E! News/Google

Perez Hilton's pop culture site covered the same story on Thursday, doubling down on the argument that Depp's "addictions" are to blame for his actions. What's more, he filed the story under the tags "Icky Icky Poo" and "Love Line," a radio show that gives advice to callers on sex and relationships.

Source: PerezHilton.com

Other outlets have glossed over Depp's domestic abuse, with People chalking it all up to a "difficult divorce" that could "impact their careers." Another article from E! News obliquely referred to Heard's domestic violence reports as "divorce allegations" that were "spiraling out of control."

And perhaps the most egregious is British tabloid the Mirror's headline: "Johnny Depp's Marriage to 'Alpha Female' Amber Heard Was Destined to Fail, Close Friend Claims."

Story continues

Source: Mirror

Where to begin?

Calling Heard an "alpha female" suggests she stepped out of bounds, causing an emasculated Depp to retaliate with physical abuse. What the source seems to say is that their marriage failed because of an upset in traditional gender roles rather than abuse.

The headline makes clear that the "failure"  a misnomer itself because it falls woefully short of describing the crime of domestic violence  is Heard's own fault.

In an op-ed published May 31, Mic's Jenny Kutner wrote on the victim blaming surrounding the case:

When someone claims they've been brutalized by a person in a position of greater power, whether that authority exists in the relationship or in the public eye or both, the very least we can do  short of simply believing them  is assume they're not operating in bad faith.



Sadly, the same assumption cannot be made of these headlines.


In less than two weeks, British voters will determine the future of not just their nation, but of the European Union. Having just spent a couple weeks in Britain myself, the looming June 23 referendum on EU membership was inescapable, with signs and leaflets everywhere, and just about every conversation coming back to the vote in one way or another. The British Isles have long had an ambivalent relationship with the rest of Europe, and one way to conceive of the vote is as a geographic metaphor: Will Britiain privilege its identity as an island or as an extension of the continent?

At this juncture, no one really knows how the vote will go, although all parties and observers predict it will be close. A recent poll puts the Leave camp at 51 percent and the Remain camp at 49 percent, so related variables such as turnout and fervency (or tepidness) of support on each side will determine the final result. The stakes are considerable, perhaps even higher than many Americans realize. A British exit could lead to a fundamental restructuring or even dissolution of the EU. The U.K. is the EUs second largest economy and its departure would substantially weaken the EUs economic heft, while setting a precedent that could lead to a cascade of other disaffected member states either renegotiating their membership or possibly even leaving entirely.

A Brexit would also rock the British government. Prime Minister David Cameron has staked his political future on winning the Remain vote, and a vote to Remain would further solidify and bolster the Cameron government, following on his notable victories in the 2014 Scottish independence vote and the 2015 general election  whereas a loss would almost certainly mean Camerons departure from the Conservative leadership (a Camexit?) and replacement as prime minister, likely by his Tory rival Boris Johnson, erstwhile mayor of London and a singularly colorful figure in British politics. With a Brexit, Michael Gove, the current justice minister and one of the most articulate Tory proponents of Leave, would also likely ascend the leadership ranks, perhaps replacing Camerons loyal deputy, George Osbourne, as chancellor of the exchequer. (The Labor Party is largely parenthetical on the issue. While Labor mostly supports the Remain camp, as long as Labor is led by the cartoonishly hard-left and hapless Jeremy Corbyn, Labor will likely remain lost in the political wilderness, regardless of the vote outcome).

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While passions are heated on both sides, one striking aspect of the debate is its level of sophistication. Sure, the rhetoric has been impassioned and occasionally overwrought, but it stems from a serious grappling with foundational issues. Our British cousins are wrestling in their body politic with substantial first-order concerns, and just about everyone I spoke with  from scholars to students, from senior government officials to cab drivers, and yes, the obligatory pub chatter  voiced a well-informed opinion. The debate cuts across many domains: politics, economics, security, history, and most fundamentally national identity.

In economic arguments, the two sides often seem to be talking past each other. The Remainers rightly point out that the EUs free movement of goods, services, and labor has considerably enriched the British economy and would continue to do so, while the Leavers (also rightly) respond that the U.K. pays substantially more in annual dues and levies to Brussels than it receives in EU grants. All things considered, in strictly economic terms, the Remain side has a stronger case, especially since a renegotiation of a favorable trade regime for the U.K. post-Brexit would be much more arduous than many Leavers seem to admit. However, most economically-concerned citizens understandably base their voting decisions not on abstract macroeconomic figures, but on their own lived experience. In other words, the EU may be a net boon to the U.K.s overall gross domestic product, but that is of little reassurance to a Liverpool dockworker who lost his job to a Polish migrant. (Perhaps one of our Shadow contributors with more economic expertise will weigh in here as well  this means you, Phil Levy!).

Hence the debate is about much more than economics. In particular, immigration and national identity most visibly animate many of the Leave proponents. Over the past two decades the British economy has offered better opportunity than much of the rest of Europe, especially the southern and eastern parts of the continent. That dynamism, in tandem with the EUs open borders, has attracted a large number of new residents to Britain. Many of these new workers have contributed significantly to the British economy, while others have increased the burden on the generous (perhaps unsustainably generous) British welfare state. This has been accompanied by a growing disquiet among many British citizens that their culture, traditions, and sense of nationhood are being perilously eroded. Add to this the large numbers of non-European immigrants, especially from south Asia, the pockets of Islamic militants and perpetual terrorism concerns, the Syrian refugee crisis afflicting the continent, and especially the overall failure of many immigrant communities to integrate into British society (a failure with many culpable parties), and one can understand the concerns many Brits feel that their government has lost control  not only of the national borders, but of the national identity. When that implicit contract between the governing and governed is eroded, so too is the governments legitimacy in the eyes of its citizens.

History looms large over the debate. Both the Remain and Leave sides invoke historical narratives and insights, and both have compelling reasons to do so. For the Remainers, the EU is the most successful peace project in history, and the creation of the EU has played a key role in neutering the hostilities and tensions that plunged Europe into repeated wars over the centuries, including the last century, which contained the two bloodiest wars in human history. For a nation whose every village, town, city, and college has multiple monuments listing the sons killed in the First and Second World Wars, the EUs role in preserving the peace commands attention.

So it is somewhat of a paradox that the most enthusiastic support for the Remainers comes from the younger generation of Brits with no memory of those wars, whereas the older generation has a higher percentage of EU skeptics. This is where the other side of history comes in. Britains older generations recall that their nation fought those wars not to achieve continent-wide political and economic integration, but to preserve their nations security and liberty. Why, they ask, should their nation pay such high costs to defend its sovereignty in wartime only to surrender it to Brussels bureaucrats in peacetime?

Further illustrating the complexity of the historical debate is the fact that accomplished historians of a conservative bent are themselves split on the issue, with, for example, Andrew Roberts of Kings College London supporting the Leave camp and Brendan Simms of Cambridge supporting Remain.

How should Americans feel about the vote? Strictly in terms of U.S. national interests, it is preferable for Britain to remain in the EU. Many American policymakers have made this point, such as Senators Lindsey Graham and Jeanne Shaheen in yesterdays Washington Post, and a bipartisan coalition of former secretaries of state and defense in an open letter last month. Part of Americas Special Relationship with the U.K. stems from our British allys influence in continental Europe, and such leverage would be vastly diminished by a Brexit. And a decision to leave would introduce further challenges and uncertainties. For example, credible voices such as former Prime Ministers John Major and Tony Blair warn that a Brexit could lead to the dissolution of the U.K. itself, with renewed push for Scottish independence and erosion of the Northern Ireland peace settlement.

On the other hand, there is something to be said for Americans showing due regard to our British cousins on the Leave side. As Leave proponents never tire of saying in response to American hectoring on behalf of Remain, why would you expect us to submit our country to curtailed sovereignty and contrived rules that you Americans would never accept for your own nation? If nothing else, this sentiment should remind us that Britains strength as an American ally stems from much more than just its GDP, multilateral institutional memberships, and political influence in Brussels, but rather from our shared values as self-governing and free peoples.

Photo credit: CHRISTOPHER FURLONG/Getty Images
This is Americas favorite Mexican food chain, in case you were wondering

This is Americas favorite Mexican food chain, in case you were wondering

Whenever we get a hankering for a burrito, we always head to the same place: Chipotle. Which is why we were surprised when the Harris Poll released its brand of the year in the category of fast-casual Mexican restaurants, it wasnt number one. Or two. Or even three or four. Americas favorite Mexican food chain is actually Moes Southwestern Grill.

Eater reported yesterday that the Atlanta-based brand as benefitted the most from Chipotles recent struggles, getting a 5% increase in traffic. On the day that Chipotle closed all its stores for a safety check back in February, Eater reports that Moes took out a full-page to make sure everyone knew that they were open. Looks like it worked.

The rest of the rankings, based on 97,000 responses from United States customers, are just as surprising. Spots two through four are filled by Taco Bell, Qdoba Mexican Grill, and Baja Fresh Mexican Grill, respectively.

However, this doesnt mean its over, Chipotle. Well always love your rice and guac and who says we cant have more than one favorite Mexican restaurant? As long as the chips and salsa keep flowing, were happy.

The post This is Americas favorite Mexican food chain, in case you were wondering appeared first on HelloGiggles.
Premier passenger carrier American Airlines Group Inc. AAL posted modest air traffic growth in the month of May. Traffic  measured in revenue passenger miles (RPMs)  was 19.4 billion, up 0.5% from 19.3 billion recorded last May.

On a year-over-year basis, consolidated capacity (available seat miles/ASMs) inched up 1.7% to 23.74 billion. However, the load factor or percentage of seats filled by passengers decreased to 81.9% from 82.8% in May 2015 as capacity expansion outweighed traffic growth.

In the first five months of 2016, American Airlines recorded 1.9% growth in RPMs to 89.24 billion, while ASMs inched up 2.7% to 111.22 billion, both on a year-over-year basis. Also, the load factor declined 70 basis points year over year to 80.2%. Moreover, total passenger count (Enplanements) in May decreased 0.1% and increased 0.4% in the first five months of 2016.

We believe that the companys route expansion plans, introduction of ancillary products and customer service enhancement bode well for the future. Further, the company has been reaping considerable benefits from its joint ventures and code share agreements.

Guidance Reiterated

American Airlines reiterated its forecast of a 68% decline in PRASM (passenger revenue per available seat mile) for the second quarter of 2016. The company also continues to expect a pre-tax margin of 14% to 16% for the second quarter.

The decrease in PRASM is most likely the result of higher capacity growth amid a bleak demand environment. Low fuel prices have resulted in high fare competitiveness alongside boosting margins.

Thus, American Airlines will need to maintain a capacity and demand balance.

Improved Loyalty Program and Wi-Fi Service

American Airlines recently announced changes to its award-winning AAdvantage customer loyalty program. The company will start to award miles based on the price of tickets instead of distance. The redesigned program will become effective as of Aug 1, 2016.

Story continues

In order to improve the Wireless services available to its customers, American Airlines recently selected ViaSat Inc. VSAT to provide Wi-Fi on its Boeing 737 MAX fleet. The award-winning company is expected to provide a much faster, optimized and high quality Internet service to American Airlines passengers.

Zacks Rank & Stocks to Consider

American Airlines currently carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). Some better-ranked stocks in the airline industry include SkyWest Inc. SKYW with a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy) and Cathay Pacific Airways Limited CPCAY with a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy).

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Lagos (AFP) - Amnesty International on Friday claimed the Nigerian military shot dead unarmed civilians before a march to mark the anniversary of the 1967 Biafran declaration of independence.

But the army rejected the claims, accusing pro-Biafran protesters of being armed, violent and carrying out "wanton destruction" and "a number of unimaginable atrocities".

Police have said at least 10 people were killed -- five in the town of Onitsha, Anambra state, and five in Asaba, in neighbouring Delta state -- in violence linked to the commemoration on May 30.

The Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) movement, which has revived calls for an independent homeland for the Igbo people in southeast Nigeria, claimed at least 35 were killed.

Amnesty said it was unclear exactly how many people lost their lives, as soldiers -- who the army says acted in self-defence -- took away the dead and injured.

The human rights organisation said that based on visits to hospitals and mortuaries at least 17 were killed and nearly 50 injured in Onitsha alone.

"The real number is likely to be higher," it added in a statement, saying some of the dead and injured seen by researchers had been shot in the back, indicating they were fleeing at the time.

"Opening fire on peaceful IPOB supporters and bystanders, who clearly posed no threat to anyone is an outrageous use of unnecessary and excessive force," said Amnesty's Nigeria director, MK Ibrahim.

One person was shot dead while sleeping, he added.

- Tear gas, live bullets -

IPOB has staged regular demonstrations across the southeast since the arrest in October last year of its leader, Nnamdi Kanu, who has been charged with "treasonable felony" and is awaiting trial.

Kanu, who is also head of the banned Radio Biafra, is accused of calling for a separate republic of Biafra, nearly 50 years after a previous declaration of independence sparked a civil war.

The fighting between 1967 and 1970 left more than one million people dead, most of them from starvation and disease, as the Igbo nation was blockaded into submission.

Story continues

The May 30 protests were to commemorate the 49th anniversary of the independence declaration.

Army spokesman Colonel Ha Gambo said the protestors killed two Nigerian policemen, wounded several soldiers and burnt a police vehicle.

- 'Worrying pattern' -

Amnesty, which said it had spoken to 32 eye-witnesses in Onitsha, said it could not substantiate the police deaths and had seen "no evidence" the security services acted in self-defence.

IPOB maintained the protesters were unarmed and one man interviewed said he threw stones but the military and police fired back teargas then used live ammunition.

Another said soldiers stormed a church where protesters were sleeping the night before the march and let off teargas, while another said he saw a young boy shot dead as he had his hands up.

Gambo said: "Wanton destruction of lives and properties were brazenly carried out by the protesters who employed firearms, crude weapons as well as other volatile cocktails such as acid and dynamites."

He also accused Amnesty of a "campaign of calumny" against the military.

But Amnesty's report echoes multiple claims about the tactics of armed police and soldiers made by protesters who attended three previous IPOB demonstrations from November to February.

Group members told AFP last month that injured and dead protestors were carted away and dumped in mass graves while others disappeared.

"This is not the first time that IPOB supporters have died at the hands of the military," Ibrahim said.

"It is becoming a worrying pattern and this incident and others must be immediately investigated," he said, calling for an end to "the pattern of increased militarisation of crowd control"

Human rights groups have previously highlighted similar claims against the military in December last year, when at least 350 Shiite Muslim protesters were killed in the northern city of Zaria.

The military has also been accused of a catalogue of abuses against civilians during Boko Haram's Islamist insurgency in the northeast.

On Biafra, President Muhammadu Buhari has said he "will not tolerate" threats to Nigeria's unity.
Depraved! Antinational! Demon worshippers! So decried a prominent Indian political minister, Smriti Irani, earlier this year, describing the students at a major liberal arts university. As her criticisms mounted, they seemed increasingly absurd. The devil as these kids deity? Really?

Well, kind of.

Irani, the minister of human resource development who didnt comment for this article, was referring to a genuine mythological battle playing out across India today  a kind of cultural-historical war between those who support one version of the Hindu gods and others, who are throwing their love behind rakshas, or demons. In one corner of the ring: the goddess Durga, favored by many in the northeastern corners of the country. And across from her? Mahishasura, the demon she famously killed, in one of many Hindu stories of good defeating evil. Except that some say Mahishasura doesnt get a fair shake, both in the old stories and in the constant celebrations that venerate Durga today.

Fans of Mahishasura argue that rakshas are layered characters. (Indeed, in some Hindu stories, rakshas are devotees of the gods, and receive their blessings.) They also claim that adivasis, or tribal folks, are descendants of Mahishasura  which makes Durga a genocidal murderer. And they suggest that each celebration of the goddesss victory is a crude cheer in favor of the murder of their ancestors. This growing controversy is bubbling up amid a larger national debate over Hinduism and which narrative of Indian history the country should carry forward. A new generation  among them the students Irani criticized, who held a college event to discuss alternate narratives of the Durga tale  hopes to create another set of stories alongside what they call a Brahmin (upper caste)-biased version of the religion.

Its the kind of symbolic debate reminiscent of those around the world  people whod have us tear down statues of Cecil Rhodes and wipe Andrew Jacksons face from American dollars. A wave of Indian liberals is congregating around new images and stories to, in their eyes, reclaim Indian history from oppressive forces. One major face: B.R. Ambedkar, the Dalit (untouchable caste) lawyer who helped write Indias Constitution, who was a firebrand on caste issues  the rhetorical Malcom X to Gandhis MLK. An outsider would need a thorough etymological dictionary or genealogical tree to parse these debates fully. They are esoteric and ancient  and yet, in a uniquely Indian fashion, they are mainstream. And why?

Story continues

India has always had a two-dimensional history, says Kancha Ilaiah, political science chair at Osmania University in Hyderabad and a Dalit activist. Ilaiah is a leading voice in the attempt to identify new rallying symbols to counter those of standard Hinduism. His suggestion, along with Mahishasura and Ambedkar: the buffalo. He argues that tribals venerated buffalo long before Hindus pedestaled the cow. Now, he says, its time for a kind of buffalo nationalism, in a nation that just instituted a religion-infused beef ban to protect cattle.

The war between Durga and Mahishasura is less a war between goddess and demon, between high and low caste, between Aryans and tribals, and more an interpretive public brawl.

But others, like scholar Michel Danino, a Frenchman whos worked extensively on Indian archaeology, say tosh to it all. (Hes so foolish, Danino says of Ilaiah. He shows very poor scholarship.) Activists who want to defend adivasis and Dalits, Danino says, have seized onto an easy but historically inaccurate narrative  that they were here first, like the U.S.s Native Americans or Australian Aborigines, and were victims of a genocide by a group of Aryan invaders. It has always been a political conversation, Danino says.

That word  Aryan  alone perks up our ears. In the 19th century, discoveries about linguistic parallels between Sanskritic and European languages gave rise to a theory (propagated by the British, Danino argues) that some North Indians shared a genetic Aryan past with European whites, while South Indians and low-caste peoples were of a different racial background. Since then, genetic theories of race have lost favor in the academy, and most scholars agree the Aryan Invasion Theory is null. Even during Independence times, Danino points out, Ambedkar himself criticized these ideas.

Gettyimages 160316839

Activist and author Kancha Ilaiah speaks at the Jaipur Literature Festival.

Source: Ramesh Sharma/Getty

Lets take some steps back, though, away from the historical nit-picking. Whether you side with Ilaiah or Danino, one thing is clear: The war between Durga and Mahishasura is less a war between goddess and demon, between high and low caste, between Aryans and tribals, and more an interpretive public brawl. Almost 70 years after Independence, Indias intellectual class is finally able to start musing on which version of the past should propel the nation forward. Ilaiah and his ilk want reparations from a class of privileged people who have oppressed and abused lower castes. (Dalit-abuse horror stories rival the Jim Crow South  lynchings, burnings alive, gang rapes, people being forced to eat human shit.)

Others, like writer Aravindan Neelakandan, co-author of the 2011 book Breaking India (written with Rajiv Malhotra, an American-dwelling Indian who might be called a modern Hindu version of William F. Buckley), have their own passionate fears  that all the gazing backward into Indias past is dividing the nation, accomplishing exactly what the British sought to do throughout colonial times: split the country into Hindu and Muslim, along caste lines, into North versus South. Stick together, they cry, for the sake of this rising nations future!

One can find the faces of Durga and Mahishasura in the northern corner of Kolkata, where artisans craft the idols that are paraded through the streets each year  during that celebration of the demons defeat. Gopal Paul, a 65-year-old who has been making gods and rakshas for decades, looks quizzical when I ask if he has thoughts about the demon whose face he has stared into over and over again. Why should I? he says. These characters are just a part of life. They are more complex than good and evil in our epics. He turns back to the beginnings of a Mahishasura statue, made of hay, lying in Durgas lap. The demon is already beheaded, but Paul sets his hands to it, lovingly at work.

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Angela Simmons is beaming with joy, and we can't blame her!

The 28-year-old Growing Up Hip Hop star, who is expecting her first child, took to Instagram on Friday to reveal the gender of her baby.

WATCH: Surprise! Angela Simmons Is Expecting Her First Child

"I can't wait to kiss your little toes baby boy," she captioned a pic of her sonogram. "#itsaboy #MamasLittleBoy."

And it looks like mama's little boy is already getting a taste of Simmons' passion for music. On Wednesday, Simmons, who is the daughter of Run-D.M.C. founder Rev. Run, attended Beyonce's Formation World Tour in Flushing, New York. Rocking an Adidas crop top and floral-printed leggings, she put her baby bump on full display!

She definitely wasn't sorry about it.

WATCH: Leonardo DiCaprio Spotted at Beyonce Concert in NYC

Last month, the newly engaged fashion designer also used the popular photo-sharing platform to announce her pregnancy.

"We are overjoyed and super excited to receive a blessing this big!" Simmons captioned a pic of her burgeoning belly, snapped while she was on a hike in Los Angeles. "Starting a family was something that I could have only dreamed of."

Simmons has yet to reveal the identity of her fiance and father of her baby, but judging by what she posts on social media, she appears to be very happy.

"God is great," she shared earlier this week, with a collage of selfies. "Wonderful day."

PHOTOS: The Biggest and Best Celebrity Engagement Rings

ET has reached out to Simmons' rep for comment.

To hear more on the mom-to-be -- and see a close-up pic of her stunning sparkler! -- watch the video below.

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Angelina Jolie during her meeting with Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras in Athens in March 2016 (Photo: Petros Giannakouris/AP)



By Tatiana Siegel, The Hollywood Reporter

Angelina Jolie is in talks to star in Kenneth Branaghs mystery ensemble Murder on the Orient Express, The Hollywood Reporter has confirmed.

If a deal is closed, Jolie would play Mrs. Harriet Hubbard, a role once played by Lauren Bacall in the oft-made adaptation.

Related: Angelina Jolie to Guest Edit BBC Radio Show

The Fox film based on Agatha Christies classic mystery has been in the works for years (the deal to secure the rights with the Christie estate was seven years in the making). Shooting is expected to begin in November in London and then move to Malta.

The story centers on special detective Hercule Poirot, who boards a train from Jerusalem to Europe only to have a murder committed in the car next to his during a snowstorm. Poirot tries to discover the murderer or murderers before theres another victim.

Watch the trailer for the 1974 Murder on the Orient Express:

Sidney Lumet tackled perhaps the best-known adaptation of the book, considered to be one of Christies greatest, in 1974 for Paramount. Albert Finney starred in that version as Poirot, while Ingrid Bergman, Bacall, and Sean Connery were among the passengers/suspects.



Related: GKIDS Boards Angelina Jolie Pitts Animated Feature The Breadwinner

Michael Green (Green Lantern) wrote the latest screenplay.

Branagh is producing alongside Ridley Scott, Simon Kinberg, and Mark Gordon. Aditya Sood and Michael Schaefer are executive producing.

Fox has dated the film for Nov. 22, 2017.

Related: Angelina Jolie to Teach at London School of Economics

As a tentpole actress, Jolie remains one of Hollywoods most bankable stars. But she has spent much of the past several years focusing on her directing career, tackling such films as Unbroken and By the Sea, in which she also starred opposite her husband Brad Pitt. She most recently helmed the upcoming documentary First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers for Netflix.

Story continues

She is repped by UTA and Media Talent Group.

Angelina Jolie flashback: Watch a featurette from Unbroken:
Angelina Jolie is in talks to board Kenneth Branaghs adaptation of Agatha Christies classic whodunit Murder on the Orient Express. The actress would join what likely will be an all-star cast as Branagh assembles members from his repertory, both theatrical and big-screen.

Christies tale features Hercule Poirot, the erstwhile Belgian detective of curly mustache and inquisitive demeanor. Branagh will embody Poirot, who is called into action after an American tycoon is found murdered, stabbed multiple times, in his locked compartment from the inside aboard the luxurious Orient Express. Isolated and with a killer in their midst on a packed train that is stranded during a terrible snowstorm, Poirot must identify the murderer before he or she strikes again.

Murder on the Orient Express has been adapted for film and TV numerous times before, including a 1974 Sidney Lumet-directed version with Albert Finney in the main role and a cast that included Lauren Bacall, Ingrid Bergman and Sean Connery. Famous for its labyrinthine plot and unconventional solution, the story first published in 1934. Branagh also will produce along with Ridley Scott, Simon Kinberg and Mark Gordon.

Michael Schaefer and Aditya Sood will also produce in some capacity. It will be executive produced by James Prichard and Hilary Strong; Strong brokered the deal for Agatha Christie Ltd. Michael Green (Blade Runner 2) will pen the script, with Steve Asbell overseeing the production for Fox.

The picture marks an easygoing change of pace for Jolie following her recent focus on filmmaking. Last year, she directed and starred in the intimate drama By the Sea opposite husband Brad Pitt. She is in post on First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers for Netflix. The film follows Cambodian author and human rights activist Loung Ung recounting the horrors she suffered under the rule of the deadly Khmer Rouge.

Jolie is repped by UTA and Media Talent Group.

Story continues

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[Photo: PA/ 2016 Annie Leibovitz]

In celebration of Queen Elizabeth II 90th birthday this year, Annie Leibovitz was tasked with capturing not one but six new portraits of Her Majesty.

The lauded American photographer has snapped everyone from John Lennon (on the day he was assassinated) to the high-profile women featured in her 2016 Pirelli calendar - so is something of a legend in her field.

The half dozen photos have been released slowly over the past few months, with Vanity Fair boasting a number of the shots, and now Buckingham Palace has released the final one - just in time for the official birthday celebrations.

The Queens Vanity Fair cover [Photo: Vanity Fair]

The portrait, taken at Windsor Castle just after Easter this year, also features HRH The Duke of Edinburgh - who celebrates his 95th birthday today, June 10.

Although the Queens actual birthday was in April, Her Majesty will celebrate the landmark occasion with the world this weekend (as is customary) with a number of national and Commonwealth celebrations.

The royal family will begin the weekend with a Service of Thanksgiving at St Pauls Cathedral today, followed by a lunch for the Governors General of all Commonwealth Realms at Buckingham Palace. On Saturday, the Queen, along with her children, grandchildren and (hopefully) great-grandchildren will be honoured with the annual Trooping the Colour ceremony and appear on Buckingham Palaces balcony for all to see.

On Sunday, the Patrons Lunch will celebrate Her Majestys patronage of more than 600 organisations. Over 90 per cent of those organisations will be represented at the event on the Mall, which will be mirrored by street parties and local fundraising events across the nation and the Commonwealth.

Queen Elizabeth And Her Cute Corgis Are On The Cover Of Vanity Fair

The Queens Best Looks Over The Years
Caracas (AFP) - Facing mounting pressure from food shortages, looting and increasingly violent protests, Venezuelan authorities on Friday announced the next stage of a recall referendum against embattled President Nicolas Maduro.

But Maduro's camp said it would go to the Supreme Court to contest the process, accusing the opposition of fraud while gathering the signatures needed to call a referendum.

The wranglings are part of a marathon process to call a vote on sacking the leftist president, whom opponents accuse of driving oil-rich Venezuela to the brink of economic collapse.

In Washington, meanwhile, the Organization of American States announced a special session of its permanent council on June 23 to discuss the situation in Venezuela.

The meeting was called by OAS Secretary General Luis Almagro, who warned of an "institutional crisis" in Venezuela that requires "immediate changes in the actions of the executive branch."

The National Electoral Board's (CNE) decision to let the recall move ahead came with a warning from its chief, Tibisay Lucena, who told Maduro's opponents the proceedings would be halted if there was any violence.

After repeated opposition protests, Lucena finally announced the CNE would take fingerprint scans from June 20 to 24 to confirm the identity of people who signed the opposition's referendum petition.

The electoral board, which the opposition accuses of dragging its feet to protect Maduro, appeared to have caved in after protests turned violent Thursday and left a prominent lawmaker bloodied and beaten.

But a Maduro loyalist appointed to oversee the process, Jorge Rodriguez, vowed to go to the Supreme Court to stop what he called "this crime against the constitution".

He said the opposition's petition, submitted on May 2 with 1.8 million signatures, included dead people, children and others ineligible to sign.

- 'Emphatic' warning -

Protests, looting and violent crime have been mounting in Venezuela as the country reels from shortages of food, water, medicine and electricity.

Story continues

On Thursday, police fired tear gas to break up a protest led by lawmakers in the opposition-majority congress, who tried to march on the CNE's headquarters.

It was the fourth time in recent days police had cracked down on similar marches.

A brawl broke out and punches flew when the protesters faced Maduro supporters.

Julio Borges, the congressional majority leader, was attacked with clubs, punches and kicks from Maduro backers, leaving him with a bloodied nose.

Maduro blamed the violence on his political enemies and vowed to throw the "provocateurs" into prison.

Lucena, the country's top electoral official, also had a warning for the opposition, even as she agreed to let them move ahead with the referendum process.

"We want to say very emphatically (that) any aggression, disturbance or violence will lead to the immediate suspension of the process until order, peace and respect are reestablished," she told a press conference.

At least 200,000 people who signed the recall referendum petition must now confirm their identity with fingerprint scans.

Under the constitution, the opposition would then have to gather four million more signatures -- 20 percent of the electorate -- to trigger a recall vote.

- New looting sprees -

Maduro's opponents are racing to call a referendum before January 10, as a successful recall vote before that deadline would trigger new elections rather than transfer power to the vice president.

Seven in 10 Venezuelans want Maduro to go, according to polls.

In a sign of growing unrest, new looting sprees broke out overnight in Petare, a sprawling, impoverished neighborhood in eastern Caracas, when residents descended on two food delivery trucks and 10 businesses, carting off their stock.

"People are going out and looting because they're hungry. They can't find any food," said Robert Arcila, a 22-year-old who sells eggs on the street and was nearby when looters sacked a truck hauling sausages and cheese.

"All of Venezuela's crises are converging," said Amnesty International's Erika Guevara, the rights group's director for the Americas.

Home to the world's largest oil reserves, Venezuela has taken a punishing beating from the sharp drop in the price of crude, on which its economy is built.

It is stuck in a deep recession and its inflation rate is the highest in the world.

Exacerbating the situation, a drought has dramatically cut output at the country's hydroelectric dams, forcing the government to implement daily power cuts and close state offices all but two days a week.
Beirut (AFP) - Arab-Kurdish fighters backed by the United States on Friday cut the Islamic State group's main supply route between Syria and Turkey in a major setback for the jihadists.

IS has come under growing pressure on various fronts in Syria and Iraq, where it established its self-declared "caliphate" in 2014.

The extremists lost control Friday of a vital supply artery when Arab-Kurdish forces completely surrounded a key jihadist-held town.

"The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) cut off the last road from Manbij to the Turkish border," said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based monitoring group.

Manbij lies at the heart of the last stretch of territory along Turkey's border still under IS control, and was a key point on the jihadists' supply line from Turkey.

Other secondary roads to the frontier are more dangerous and difficult to access, Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman said.

The US envoy to the anti-IS coalition backing the SDF, Brett McGurk, confirmed the road had been severed.

"ISIL terrorists now completely surrounded with no way out," he wrote on Twitter, using another acronym for IS.

"Manbij is where we believe the Paris attackers, the Brussels attackers, they all kind of pulsed through this area," McGurk said, "from Raqa up to Manbij and then out to the capitals where they had organised their attack."

This week the SDF, backed by coalition air strikes, cut the road north out of Manbij to the IS-held border town of Jarabulus, which the jihadists had used as a transit point for fighters, money and weapons.

The SDF also blocked the road south out of Manbij heading to IS's de facto capital of Raqa.

"For the jihadists to reach the Turkish border from Raqa, they now have to take a route that is more dangerous because of regime troops nearby and Russian air strikes," Abdel Rahman said.

- Food reaches rebel enclaves -

Russia launched air strikes in support of President Bashar al-Assad's regime in Syria in September.

Story continues

Thousands of residents have fled Manbij -- held by IS since 2014 -- but jihadists who evacuated their families stayed to defend the town, the Observatory said.

About 20,000 people are still living in the town, which had a pre-war population of about 120,000 -- mostly Arabs, but about a quarter Syrian Kurds.

Last month, the SDF attacked on two fronts from the north of Raqa province towards Manbij and in the direction of the IS-held town of Tabqa on the same vital supply line further south.

Regime troops backed by Russian air strikes have also pushed an offensive to the southwest of Tabqa.

Moscow and Washington -- despite backing different sides in Syria's five-year conflict -- have both focused efforts on fighting the jihadist group.

Syria's war has killed more than 280,000 people and displaced millions since it started in 2011 with the brutal repression of anti-government protests.

The United Nations says a total of 592,000 people live under siege in Syria -- most surrounded by government forces -- and another four million in hard-to-reach areas.

The Syrian Arab Red Crescent and the UN said aid was delivered to Douma on Friday. The SARC said 39 trucks took food and non-food items including medicines into the besieged town.

According to the Observatory, it was the first time that the United Nations delivered food aid to Douma since autumn 2013.

Late on Thursday, another food aid convoy approved by the regime entered the rebel-held town of Daraya near Damascus in the first such delivery since the start of a regime siege in 2012.

- Barrel bombs prevent handout -

But the Observatory and a resident said the regime dropped barrel bombs -- crude unguided explosive devices -- on Daraya on Friday, preventing residents from receiving the desperately needed food.

"Aid received by the council has not been distributed yet because of the intensity of the raids," local council member Shadi Matar said.

French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault voiced outrage over the barrel-bombing.

He accused Damascus of "extraordinary duplicity", saying the regime had finally granted access for aid after heavy international pressure "and then the bombing restarted."

The Observatory and local council estimate that 8,000 people live in Daraya, one of the first towns in Syria to erupt in anti-government demonstrations in 2012 and one of the first to come under regime siege the same year.

But the United Nations speaks of 4,000 besieged residents, angering inhabitants who say the food delivered is not nearly enough.

A previous UN aid convoy reached Daraya on June 1 but contained no food.

The town is just a 15-minute drive from central Damascus and is even closer to the regime's Mazzeh air base, which hosts the feared air force intelligence services and their notorious prison.

The UN's humanitarian agency said on Friday it was still awaiting permission from Damascus to deliver aid to two more of Syria's besieged areas, Al-Waer in Homs province and Zabadani in rural Damascus.

UN-backed peace talks on ending the war have stalled after the opposition walked out of negotiations in April over lack of humanitarian access.

A nationwide ceasefire between the regime and non-jihadist rebels -- brokered by Russia and the US -- is in tatters.
Arts Alliance has acquired Margy Kinmonths feature documentary Revolution  New Art for a New World, and will handle worldwide sales. The pic looks at the artists of the Russian Avant-Garde, such as Chagall, Kandinsky and Malevich.

The documentary was filmed on location in Moscow, St. Petersburg and London, with access to the State Tretyakov Gallery, the State Russian Museum and the State Hermitage Museum, and in co-operation with the Royal Academy of Arts in London.

Contributors include museum directors Mikhail Piotrovsky and Zelfira Tregulova, and film director Andrei Konchalovsky. The film also features Matthew Macfadyen, Tom Hollander, James Fleet, Eleanor Tomlinson and Daisy Bevan. It is produced by Foxtrot Films, which is owned by Kinmonth and producer Maureen Murray.

Kinmonth said: I was inspired as an artist to discover how many of the descendants of Russian Avant-Garde artists are themselves working as artists today. Access to their intensely moving stories brings to life this extraordinary period of artistic innovation, which continues to exert such a powerful legacy a hundred years on.

The acquisition follows Arts Alliances worldwide distribution of Kinmonths Hermitage Revealed in 2014, which saw the title shown in more than 30 territories. Revolution  New Art for a New World will be distributed in the U.K. by Arts Alliances sister company, Park Circus, with a theatrical release slated for late autumn, ahead of the 2017 centenary anniversary of the Russian Revolution.

Foxtrots theatrical features include Hermitage Revealed, Royal Paintbox, with Charles, the Prince of Wales, War Art with Eddie Redmayne, Looking for Lowry with Ian McKellen, and Mariinsky Theatre with Maestro Valery Gergiev.

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Hillary Clinton supporters at a primary night rally in New York on Tuesday. (Photo: Julie Jacobson/AP)

There has been a change these past few days, a shift in the conversation as many who have kept quiet about their views in this presidential election have, for a variety of reasons, become vocal about their support of Hillary Clinton.

You can see it in the same places you might have noticed its absence before  in public online comments, lawn signs, bumper stickers.

One of the conundrums of this campaign has been how Clinton has amassed nearly 4 million more votes than Bernie Sanders while generating strikingly less visible support. It was Sanders who held the huge rallies, generated the trending tweets, had the cooler #feelthebern hashtag. Yet Clinton kept winning. As Michelle Goldberg noted in Slate the day after Aprils New York primary, which Clinton won by 16 points:

I had assumed that my neighborhood, Cobble Hill, Brooklyn, was overwhelmingly supporting Bernie Sanders. Sanders bumper stickers and T-shirts outnumbered those for Hillary Clinton by what seemed like 20 to 1. When I looked up Cobble Hill on the nifty New York Times tool providing neighborhood-by-neighborhood results, however, it turned out that Clinton won the immediate area around my apartment by 59.4 percent. A block over, she won by 72.5 percent. She won all around me. A lot of Clinton supporters, evidently, have been keeping quiet about their allegiances.

Or, as Joanna Castle Miller, a television producer (and, not incidentally the daughter of an independent fringe party presidential candidate), wrote on Facebook earlier this week of the challenge of getting Clinton supporters to appear on camera: Trump and Bernie supporters  were mostly eager to get in front of a camera  Almost all of Hillarys volunteers  got quiet and asked questions like Will my name be used? Where will this be seen? and Can I wear my sunglasses?

When pressed, their reasons were that they were terrified of the online threats they might receive, and in some cases had already received. Even lead organizers admitted they hadnt put up a yard sign or a bumper sticker for fear of retaliation. When women walked in to volunteer for the phone bank, they were assured they wouldnt have to give their names if they were afraid.

Story continues

This reticence to be loud, this invisibility of support, was true in 2008, too, although it made more sense then because Clinton eventually lost that nomination. As my Yahoo colleague Garance Franke-Ruta observed in the American Prospect at the time, the dynamic between Clinton and her supporters was one familiar to women who have come to understand that their full-throated advocacy carried consequences in a male world.

What women have instead of a public conversation is what Ive come to think of as the secondary conversation  an ongoing conversation with other women, in private, where they feel they can speak freely about their lives and their place in the world without fear of being penalized or stigmatized for saying what they actually think, Franke-Ruta wrote.

This time around, that secondary conversation has been taking place in secret Facebook groups with pro-Hillary names (I have been invited to a half dozen, each with several thousand members) and in somewhat coded conversations in which supporters circle around the subject of politics until they feel its likely that the other gal is on the same team.

But suddenly the secrets are out. Since the Associated Press declared Clinton the presumptive nominee on Monday, she grabbed that mantle on Tuesday night, and Obama fully supported her Thursday, there has been a change in the tone inside those groups and out. So much so that I went on my own public Facebook page this morning and asked about it: Were you a private supporter? Why? Has that changed? Why?

(In the Great-Minds-Think-Alike Department, writer Jessica Bennett asked a similar question on her public Facebook page, with a similar outpouring in response.)

Women, and some men, filled the thread, and also my inbox, with their answers.

Yes, they said, they had been reluctant to support Clinton openly. Why? The most common answer was because they felt that to talk openly about their politics was to invite nastiness, from both people they know in real life and very angry strangers.

I simply dont want to get into arguments with people I love, Wendy Bauer Piersall wrote.

Screen Shot 2016-06-09 at 7.09.06 PM

It was just exhausting to deal with the constant same attacks on her if you posted anything, wrote Rebecca Levey.

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There were other reasons, too. Some spoke of their own ambivalence about Clinton  that she is an imperfect candidate, a reminder of a past they are uncomfortable defending. My reservations for another Clinton never dimmed, Georgia Giaccone wrote. Hillary has a rough road ahead identifying herself apart from Bill and the 90s.

Screen Shot 2016-06-09 at 9.37.30 PM

Others wrestled with the idea that in face of the cool mantle claimed by Sanders supporters, being for Clinton felt less so. I was very aware, standing in that school gym during the Nevada caucus, Kim Foster wrote, that me and a bunch of old people were supporting Hillary and all my friends, the cool people, etc, were across from me on the Bernie side.

Screen Shot 2016-06-09 at 9.38.37 PM

Quite a few wrote that they muted their views in deference to Sanders supporters in their own homes  most often their children.

I made a deal with my 25-year old son, wrote Deborah Golden Alecson that I would vote for Sanders in the primary if and only if he would vote for Clinton should she be the nominee. I wanted to honor his commitment and the commitment of the millennials with whom he associates.

Then there were others who cited their children as the reason they were finally stepping forward. Until recently, Diana Noya says, she was reluctant to signal my strong support and sense of feminist pride for this nomination, because she also respected many of Sanders ideals. But lately she has decided to speak out because of the unwavering commitment of my two millennial daughters to Hillary.

It was teenage neighbors rather than her own kids who had the same effect on Sonya Terjanian. I have a Hillary sign tucked tastefully among my bushes in the front yard, she says. Every few days a group of high school girls comes and moves it to the strip of grass by the road where its more visible. Ive decided to take the hint and put it out there.

Screen Shot 2016-06-10 at 2.32.48 PM

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Screen Shot 2016-06-09 at 9.42.58 PM

Whatever their reasons for reticence or revelation, nearly everyone in my thread agreed that more women in their circles are similarly speaking out. There is a new willingness to be vocal, they say  and that change is very, very recent.

Over the last 24 hours or so I have seen a move from quiet, tempered  to people who unabashedly saying they fully support her  says Eric Winn.

Im coming out on this site now! announced Cheryl Waixel Kaften, who lives near the Clintons in Chappaqua. Still, even among Democrats, I have not mentioned that Im a Hillary supporter.

Agreed Nikki Stern: Yes, Ive hesitated to subject myself to the vitriol  but Im feeling the need to step up, says Nikki Stern.

And Diana Kirk, outspoken herself over the months, but noticing that few spoke up whenever Id post anything about Hillary in the past says that suddenly this week, Im seeing those same people post re-shares about Hillary. Shocking.

Screen Shot 2016-06-09 at 9.54.50 PM

Screen Shot 2016-06-09 at 9.56.07 PM

How to explain the change? Partly, math. The race is now down to two candidates. I have a Hillary bumper sticker  that is coming out of its hiding spot on my dining room table, says Melissa Freeman Gold. I was a Bernie supporter for several months, but with the caveat that I would ultimately be behind whichever Democrat would win the nomination  She is now the candidate that I support. Wholeheartedly.

As Amy Oztan put it: I think defending her to republicans is just fundamentally different, especially now when their choice is Trump.

And Ronnie Diamondstein says: Now that she will be the nominee  they are supporting her. I also think the presumptive nominees activities this week reinforced to many that they need to support her so he does not win.

Screen Shot 2016-06-09 at 9.58.46 PM

Screen Shot 2016-06-09 at 9.59.02 PM

More than just arithmetic or even logic, though, there is an emotional factor. A feeling of pride, sometimes wholly unexpected, as the import of the moment dawned.

It was something to show her speech this week to my three daughters  more significant than I thought it would be, wrote Rebecca Hughes Parker.

And Pamela Campbell found herself thinking during that speech I wish more than anything my mother and aunts were alive to see it and share it with me.

Screen Shot 2016-06-09 at 10.00.24 PM

Screen Shot 2016-06-09 at 10.00.43 PM

Will this change last? Will it make a difference in the November election? Is it quantifiably significant?

All unclear. But to those who are feeling personally freed to be more vocal, it appears an important moment indeed.

As Pamela Campbell concluded: Thanks for allowing me space to put my feelings! I am growing braver by the day about my own FB page. It is time to acknowledge being HAPPY with this outcome and not just resigned. I feel JOY.
Athens (AFP) - Athens is to store away dozens of outdoor sculptures after five brass busts went missing last month and a marble statue was vandalised, officials have said.

"We have pinpointed 49 sculptures that are in a vulnerable position," Mayor Yiorgos Kaminis told a news conference on Thursday.

"We are examining the temporary withdrawal of some (of them) and their replacement with copies."

Officials suspect the five brass busts of early 20th century Greek poets and writers were removed by smelters as a number of pavement curb box covers, which give access to utility pipes and wiring, have recently disappeared.

Authorities have in recent years struggled to restore many of the capital's 200 or so outdoor sculptures from recurring vandalism.
AutoNation, Inc. AN announced that it has signed an agreement to acquire the Centennial Chrysler Jeep store, located in Denver, CO. This acquisition will take the company's store count to 18 in the Denver market. This will be AutoNations 30th FCA store.



AutoNation is expected to close the acquisition in the third quarter of 2016 subject to customary terms and conditions, including manufacturer approval. In 2015, the store sold 3,000 new and used retail vehicles and generated annual revenues of $110 million.



AutoNation continues to expand its business through acquisitions. In Feb 2016, the company completed the acquisition of 12 stores in Texas, including Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep, Ram, Chevrolet, Hyundai, Mercedes-Benz, and Sprinter franchises. These stores are expected to generate additional revenues of $800 million and sell 19,500 new and used vehicles every year.



In Dec 2015, AutoNation completed the acquisition of a Honda store in the Seattle-Bellevue market in Washington. The company already operates 27 franchises in the state. The annual revenue from this store will be $70 million. In Nov 2015, the company completed a previously announced acquisition of 13 stores located in Georgia, Alabama and Tennessee from Carl Gregory Enterprises. The month before that, the company announced that it has signed an agreement to acquire 12 stores, including 31 franchises in Houston, Dallas-Fort Worth, Corpus Christi, Tyler, Ennis and Waco, all in Texas, from Allen Samuels Auto Group. These stores will generate additional revenues of $800 million and are expected to sell 19,500 new and used vehicles.



Thus, in 2015, AutoNation closed the acquisition of 22 stores, including 51 franchises, which represent around $1 billion in annual revenues. AutoNation currently carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold).

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ProFootball Talk on NBC Sports

Sam Ehlinger officially becomes the starting quarterback of the Colts. If he fails or gets injured, Nick Foles will take over. And if Foles gets injured, the quarterback will be anyone but Matt Ryan. Ryan is done. Hes out. He wont play again, for reasons rooted in his contract. Put simply, once the team decided [more]
(Adds details, background, shares)

June 10 (Reuters) - Westlake Chemical Corp reached a deal to buy chemical producer Axiall Corp for $2.33 billion, after a six-month pursuit that included multiple bids and a rival offer from South Korea's Lotte Chemical Corp .

Axiall's shares rose as much as 26 percent to $32.52 in morning trading on Friday, but were slightly below the new cash offer of $33 per share.

The deal has an enterprise value of about $3.8 billion, including debt and other liabilities, Westlake said.

Westlake's last cash-and-stock offer in March was then valued at $23.35 per share.

Lotte Chemical said on Tuesday that it had made an offer for Axiall, but the South Korean company did not provide further details.

Lotte Chemical already has a joint venture with Atlanta-based Axiall, through which it plans to produce ethylene in the United States.

Westlake, a Houston-based manufacturer and supplier of petrochemicals, polymers and building products, said it was looking forward to working with Lotte Chemical through the joint venture.

Westlake, which had said in April that it would seek to replace Axiall's board, said on Friday it had agreed to withdraw its nominees.

(Reporting by Amrutha Gayathri in Bengaluru; Editing by Kirti Pandey)
We're not sure what President Barack Obama will do once his second term is up, but we wouldn't mind if he continued to slow jam the news with subtle suaveness. Obama joined Jimmy Fallon on The Tonight Show to reprise the skit that made airwaves in 2012 on Fallon's previous NBC show, Late Night with Jimmy Fallon. But now, eight years in, the Commander-in-Chief has even more to reflect upon  and jam to.

"It's been an honor and a privilege to serve as your president over the past eight years," Obama said, as he detailed some of his success in office before Fallon chimed in.

As for the president's issues with a Republican-controlled Congress, Fallon lauded him for being able to "find a way in through the back door," much to the chagrin of Obama. However, the late-night host saved face by giving him the highest compliment of all: a Beyonce reference.

"When the Republicans gave him lemons, he made so much lemonade that Beyonce started calling him 'Baracky with the good hair,'" Fallon said.

Of course, Obama will not be in for a third term  and he's certainly looking forward to a Hawaii vacation once his time is up. But he made his thoughts clear on presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump when Fallon asked him if he's been keeping up with the election coverage.

"No, but I have been watching my new favorite show, Orange Is Not the New Black," Obama replied.

You can watch the full, smoothest of slow jams below:
Barcelona (AFP) - Barcelona said Friday they would decide next week whether to accept a deal with Spanish prosecutors over Neymar's contested 2013 transfer and avoid going to trial on tax evasion charges.

The star's transfer from Brazil's Santos was originally valued at 57.1 million euros ($64.5 million) by Barca, but Spanish judicial authorities estimated it at 83.3 million euros -- with the difference allegedly going to Neymar, his family and Santos.

Prosecutors accuse former Barca boss Sandro Rosell, current president Josep Maria Bartomeu and the club of fiscal offences, alleging Barcelona avoided paying taxes on the difference.

According to the daily La Vanguardia, the club has reached a deal with prosecutors and the state attorney representing tax authorities that would see it pay out five million euros and avoid a trial.

If management push ahead with the deal with prosecutors, Rosell and Bartomeu will be absolved, La Vanguardia reported.

In a statement, the club said it held a meeting with its top leaders on Friday, adding that management would decide Monday whether or not to validate the deal with prosecutors.

In a separate case centred on the same transfer, prosecutors have also asked that Neymar, his father, Rosell and the club be tried, but on charges of corruption following a complaint by Brazilian investment group DIS.

DIS held 40 percent of Neymar's sporting rights when he played at Santos and claims it was cheated of its real share of the transfer to Barcelona.
FRANKFURT, June 10 (Reuters) - Bayer ex-chief executive Marijn Dekkers opposed the company's plans for a $62 billion takeover of U.S. seeds firm Monsanto, German magazine Der Spiegel reported.

Dekkers warned Bayer non-executive board chairman Werner Wenning against going ahead with the offer, Der Spiegel said in an excerpt of an article to be published on Saturday made available to Reuters on Friday.

The magazine did not specify its sources. Dekkers left to become Unilever chairman in May.

On May 19, Bayer said it had made a non-binding offer for Monsanto, aiming to create the world's biggest agricultural supplier. Monsanto rejected the offer but has said it is open to further talks.

Dekkers had planned to step down at the end of 2016 but in February that was brought forward to May, with strategy chief Werner Baumann taking the top job.

A Bayer spokesman declined to comment. Dekkers could not be reached for immediate comment.

(Reporting by Ludwig Burger; editing by Jason Neely)
By Greg Roumeliotis

(Reuters) - Monsanto Co (MON.N), the world's largest seed company, has still not opened its books more than two weeks after it rejected Bayer AG's (BAYGn.DE) $62 billion acquisition offer but left the door open to a possible deal, according to people familiar with the matter.

The impasse shows that little progress in negotiations has been made since Monsanto on May 24 turned down its German peer's $122-per-share cash offer but said it was open to "continued and constructive conversations."

Monsanto has said that Bayer's offer "significantly undervalues (the) company and also does not adequately address or provide reassurance for some of the potential financing and regulatory execution risks related to the acquisition."

Bayer, however, has no plans to increase its offer without first reviewing Monsanto's confidential information, the sources said on condition of anonymity because of the confidentiality of the talks.

The Leverkusen-based company needs access to Monsanto's books before it can decide whether it can pay a higher price, as well as offer a more detailed plan on how to address potential antitrust risks, the sources added.

Bayer also has no intention currently to go hostile with its bid, the sources said.

Monsanto, based in St. Louis, has not directly told Bayer that it is looking for better terms in order for it to offer the German company access to confidential information, according to one of the sources.

However, Monsanto's lack of engagement demonstrates that it not only views Bayer's offer as too low, but that it does not even consider it as a basis for negotiations, the sources said.

The situation did not change even after Monsanto held a regular board meeting this week to approve a quarterly dividend of 54 cents per share.

Bayer declined to comment, while a Monsanto spokeswoman did not respond to a request for comment.

The Wall Street Journal had reported earlier on Friday that Bayer had made a new takeover approach to Monsanto that was rebuffed, in part because it didn't include a higher price.

Story continues

Bayer's unsolicited bid for Monsanto is the largest all-cash takeover on record, according to Thomson Reuters data, just ahead of InBev SA's $60.4 billion offer for Anheuser-Busch in June 2008.

Global agrochemicals companies are racing to consolidate, partly in response to a drop in commodity prices that has hit farm incomes. Seeds and pesticides markets are also increasingly converging.

ChemChina plans to buy Switzerland's Syngenta (SYNN.S) for $43 billion, after Syngenta rejected a bid from Monsanto. Dow Chemical Co (DOW.N) and DuPont (DD.N) are forging a $130 billion business.

(Reporting by Greg Roumeliotis in New York; Additional reporting by Arno Schuetz and PJ Huffstutter in Chicago; Editing by Paul Simao)
Demand for housing in downtown Denver is extremely high, and it doesn't seem to be decreasing anytime soon. With a burgeoning economy and flourishing cultural scene, Denver attracts residents who want to be in on the action. Districts like Lower Downtown (LoDo), River North (RiNo) and Capitol Hill offer easy access to some of the city's hottest restaurants, abundant green spaces and the light rail, Denver's growing network of tramways. But with historically low inventory and record-breaking demand, these conveniences come with a hefty price tag.

Although there are some single-family homes and townhomes still available, the condominium market offers a slightly more affordable and less competitive option for those looking to own a home in downtown Denver. "The condo market is a tad slower than the residential market in Denver right now," Nate Postlethwait with LIV Sotheby's International Realty explains. "There are absolutely great investment opportunities with downtown condos with less mania because there is more inventory."

Not only do condos provide great views and urban walkability, but they also provide community amenities and a low-maintenance lifestyle that many people moving to Denver find desirable. Curious to know how you can get the best price on a condo in the heart of the Mile High City? We asked some of the top real estate agents in Denver as identified by OpenHouse, an agent referral company (and a U.S. News partner), to share their tips.

[See: The 20 Best Places to Live in the U.S.]

Consider upcoming neighborhoods. Downtown Denver is perhaps best known for areas like historic LoDo and Golden Triangle, home to the Denver Art Museum. Properties in these areas are priced at a premium, so buyers would do better to look for condos in neighborhoods like RiNo, Five Points and Curtis Park that are off the beaten path. These areas are not only home to some of the cities hippest dining and nightlife venues, but also less expensive housing options.

"Curtis Park continues to have increased value year-over-year and is starting to connect to RiNo and Five Points with great walkability," Postlethwait says. "Sunnyside is a hot area where you can still get something under $500,000, and Berkeley has more demand than ever before."

Also, with such a wide variety of neighborhoods, buyers can find condos that are ultra-modern, retro-chic or rustic-industrial -- whatever fits their taste.

Choose an agent with condo connections. To get a good deal on any property, it's important to hire a real estate agent who is knowledgeable about the neighborhood and specific property type. A realtor who has done business at a variety of downtown condo buildings is likely to have insider knowledge about available units before they come to market and will already have the scoop on what the current residents are like, who the property manager is and how the homeowners association board functions.

Some agents will actively seek out pre-listed and pre-foreclosure properties that are available for purchase before they even go on the market in order to beat out any competition and avoid a bidding war. Deviree Vallejo with Kentwood City Properties, whose office is in the heart of downtown Denver, affirms, "After our weekly sales meeting we go tour all our new listings where our agents see all the properties coming available before they hit the market. Sometimes we'll write an offer before the place even goes to market."

[See: The 20 Most Desirable Places to Live in the U.S.]

Keep an eye out for new construction. Vallejo advises condo hunters to look for new developments around town, of which there are many. Making offers on units that are still under construction is often the best way to get a deal on a brand new build.

"Typically the prices of these projects go up after the developer has sold a certain number, so there can be quite a difference in price between the first units sold and the last sold," Vallejo says. "Getting in at the first round of pricing is the way to go for buyers. Also, prices have been appreciating so much during the time that the homes are being built that buyers close with a nice amount of equity built into their home."

Carefully review HOA terms. The biggest difference between purchasing a single-family home and a condominium is the HOA aspect. HOAs can have a wide range of terms and prices that vary according to a building's age, size, amenities and members. These terms are typically not flexible or negotiable, so it's vital to review the HOA contract as early and thoroughly as possible, which may even require the assistance of a legal professional.

"HOAs are complicated and can be concerning depending on how financially stable it is," explains Aaron Lebovic, an agent with Keller Williams. "You have to read the fine print and understand what you're getting yourself into."

[See: The 20 Best Places to Live in the U.S. for Quality of Life.]

Vallejo notes that it's important to not only look at the HOA documents as early in the contract process as possible, but to also investigate upcoming building projects. "Pay careful attention to the meeting minutes and financials to make sure that there are no upcoming special assessments and that the HOA is financially sound," she warns.

Postlethwait concurs. "HOA is the top factor with condos. Make sure you get the HOA docs as quickly as possible and make sure you calculate the HOA in your payments when getting your lending approved."

Katie Hearsum is a freelance writer based in the Denver area.
Better Call Saul co-executive producer Gennifer Hutchison has signed an overall deal with the studio behind the AMC drama, Sony Pictures TV.

Hutchison, who got her start as a writer on AMC/Sony TVs Breaking Bad, earned three individual WGA nominations for her episodes Confessions, Buy Out and I See You, winning for Confessions. (She also shared in the shows three WGA drama series awards)

Hutchison segued from Breaking Bad to prequel Better Call Saul, serving as supervising producer in Season 1 before getting upped to co-executive producer. She also did a stint on FXs The Strain.

On the feature side, Hutchison adapted Red Queen for Universal, which Elizabeth Banks is directing. She is repped by ICM Partners and attorneys Ken Richman & Bruce Gellman.

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Bond guru Bill Gross believes the growing global move toward negative yields will have dire consequences.

In a tweet from his firm, Janus Capital, Gross goes back half a millennium to assert that the current situation with the world's debt market is unprecedented and dangerous:

The warning comes as yields on Japanese government bonds and German bunds (Germany: DE10Y-DE) hit record lows.

While it's unclear what database Gross used to track bond yields back to the 16th century, there has been some academic research done on the topic. Bryan Taylor, chief economist for Global Financial Data, has done work on the subject and found generally that yields have declined over time.

In recent days, private banks have revolted over the growth of negative yields in Europe and Asia, a trend that has helped push big money inflows to U.S. corporate and government debt.

Gross runs the $1.4 billion Janus Global Unconstrained Bond Fund, which has returned 3.3 percent year to date. He will be on CNBC Friday at 2 pm.





More From CNBC


The World Health Organization warned people living in Zika-affected countries to delay plans to get pregnant due to the virus potential impact on babies.

I think its a good warning and I very much respect that the WHO came out that way, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation CEO Sue Desmond-Hellman told the FOX Business Networks Maria Bartiromo.

Desmond-Hellman explained why the fight against Zika is such a priority for the Foundation.

One of our big areas of focus is infectious diseases, particularly the ones that affect the poor, so Zika is the kind of thing that we care deeply about. The issue with Zika virus is that in many people its a mild illness, not something to worry about. But the problem with Zika is if pregnant women get Zika virus, their babies can have a significant, severe, birth defect, said Desmond-Hellman.

According to Desmond-Hellman, the Foundation has been supporting a unique approach to stopping mosquitoes spread of Zika.

It turns out that there is a bacteria, a harmless bacteria, called Wolbachia, Desmond-Hellman continued, The concept here is that the mosquitos get infected with this harmless bacteria and it interferes with them transmitting Zika.

The Foundations fight against infectious diseases has not been a solo effort, it has set up programs to boost collaboration with the private sector in the battle against viruses such as Zika.

We have tools to go to a company and say, Look, if you work on Zika, if you work on Malaria with the charitable intent, well invest in your company, well give you a grant, we can do whats called a volume guarantee to backstop their capital or use tiered pricing where they can have different prices in richer countries or poorer countries and in using these tools we can collaborate with private industry to get them to work on the causes we care about, Desmond-Hellman said.

Desmond-Hellman warned that the U.S. needs to be prepared as the summer mosquito season approaches.

Story continues

Its extremely important as summer approaches in the United States, that we not get complacent about Zika and the mosquitos, so far theres been no mosquito born transmission of Zika in the U.S. Theres been travelers infected and theres been sexual transmission, but we need to be ready for Zika this summer, said Desmond-Hellman.

Desmond-Hellman then discussed the Foundation itself, its giving pledge and the importance of giving to the issues important to you.

Promise your wealth to the world, that youll give away at least half of your wealth during your life. We believe that other people may or may not care about the same things we care about, but all giving is good, Desmond-Hellman said.

Desmond-Hellman then explained the concept of precision public health and how it can help tackle some of the health challenges globally.

Precision public health is our ability to tap into these precise tools like genetic sequencing, big data, self-monitoring, the power of computing today and use that to tackle illnesses like HIV, like malaria, like cervical cancer that effect communities that often involve the poor, so we can get the right interventions to populations in the right geography. Its a much more poor-friendly way to think about it, said Desmond-Hellman.

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The world heard Muhammad Ali speak one last time -- through "little brother" Billy Crystal's infamous impression of the boxer.

Following the Islamic prayer service held for the three-time heavyweight champ on Thursday, his family, friends and thousands of fans turned out at the KFC Yum! Center in Louisville, Kentucky, on Friday to lay the legend to rest. Among the handful of eulogizers was Crystal, Ali's friend of 42 years.

"Today, this outpouring of love and respect proves that 35 years after he stopped fighting, he is still the champion of the world," Crystal began. "Last week, when we heard the news, time stopped. There was no war. There was no terrorism...The world stopped, took a breath, and sighed."

EXCLUSIVE: Will Smith Talks 'Beautiful' Muhammad Ali Funeral, Reveals Touching Memory With the Late Boxing Legend

Getty Images

"Every moment that I've known him is cherished," the actor told the audience.

Ali and Crystal first me when the then-relatively unknown comedian performed on television for the first time during a special honoring the boxer in 1974, debuting his now-infamous Ali impression and creating a lifelong bond with the athlete.

"That's when I saw him for the first time in person. It's very hard to describe how much he meant to me. You had to live in his time," Crystal said. "To live in his time, watching his fights, experiencing the genius of his talent was absolutely extraordinary."

"He was funny, he was beautiful, he was the most perfect athlete you ever saw and those were his own words," he added. "But he was so much more than a fighter."

Crystal went on to recall his favorite memory with Ali -- of the "many funny, unusual moments with him" -- performing during the boxer's retirement celebration in 1979. It's a comedy routine titled "15 Rounds" and Crystal shared it on Twitter last week, tweeting, "For the greatest man I have ever known."

Story continues

For the greatest man I have ever known. https://t.co/OUZHVZWBHY  Billy Crystal (@BillyCrystal) June 3, 2016

WATCH: Muhammad Ali Remembered by Family and Thousands of Fans During Islamic Prayer Service

"There were 20,000 people but I was doing it only for him," Crystal recalled. "It's one of my favorite performances I've ever done in my entire life. I sort of got lost in him...[Afterward] he whispered in my ear, with a big bear hug, 'Little brother, you made my life better than it was.' But didn't he make all of our lives better than they were?"

"He taught us life is best when we build bridges between people, not walls," he added of Ali's legacy. "My friends, only once in a thousand years or so, do we get to hear a Mozart or see a Picasso or read a Shakespeare. Ali was one of them."

"He is gone, but he will never die," Crystal concluded. "He was my big brother."

ET exclusively sat down with Ali's daughter, Laila, who reflected on the special bond she had with her father and gushed over Will Smith's "phenomenal" portrayal of him. Hear what she had to say in the video below.

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If drawing a stack of Benjamins on fast-food napkins and praying they spring to life sounds like your idea of a good time, consider the urban myth behind bitcoin -- the enigmatic digital currency that exists online, has no central bank or even a known founder.

Here's what we know, at least from the fabulist perspective: Satoshi Nakamoto is said to have invented bitcoins in 2008 after he sold a vintage McDonald's paper napkin online and the buyer defrauded him out of several thousand bucks. Since then, Nakamoto has been pegged as anyone and everyone from an Irish grad student to a reclusive Hungarian American.

And as the legend grows, so grows the legal tender. Today you'll find an estimated 15 million bitcoins in circulation, worth about $872 million. But putting your money into bitcoins isn't a slam dunk (even if the Sacramento Kings accept them).

That's because bitcoin fever -- much like the infamous "Tulip Mania" of 17th Century Holland -- has died down. Way down. Observers say once-smitten financial reporters and publications now focus elsewhere.

"Bitcoin is actually unchanged since many years ago: What is different is the focus of the media," says Peter Leeds, the author of "Penny Stocks for Dummies." In it, Leeds mentions bitcoin as an example of what he calls "an investor stampede."

[See: The 9 Best Investors of All Time.]

"Much -- almost all -- of bitcoin's rise in value was driven by the standard media cycle," Leeds says. "And as the story became old news, coverage levels diminished and the currency faded into the background."

But arguably, bitcoin was bound to make headlines in 2013, when European speculators sent its value through the roof. The Cyprus economic bailout drove anxious investors to bitcoins as they sought alternatives to the euro and other currencies manipulated by central bankers.

Bitcoin also made waves because no one in the investment world had seen anything like it.

Story continues

Bitcoins are known as a "cryptocurrency," a term that appeals to the James Bond in all of us. In fact, early adopters included thieves and criminals who embraced its all-digital nature. Bitcoin's nefarious fans included Silk Road, an online black market (since shuttered) that sold drugs. A handful of anarchists embraced it, too.

That said, old-fashioned cash has long been a favorite of malfeasants. For the rest of us, "the legal status of bitcoin varies from country to country," says Nicolette Kost De Sevres, senior policy advisor with DLA Piper, a global business law firm, "It is banned or restricted in some, undefined in many and explicitly allowed in others."

Adding to the mystery, bitcoins hinge on tongue-twisting technobabble even most Wall Street pundits can't grasp. This includes "source code repository" and the concept of "computationally impractical to reverse." Nor is a bitcoin a coin in the traditional sense. It exists as an open-source, peer-to-peer internet protocol, which may explain why the digerati have embraced it.

One bitcoin evangelist is Nicolas Cary, a serial entrepreneur and co-founder of Blockchain, the world's top bitcoin software company. "The virtual currency has specific properties that make it work really nicely as a form of money," Cary says.

Ask him why and he rattles off a long list: "It is counterfeit-proof, fungible, easily divisible by up to 8 decimal points, purely digital, robust against the elements -- it won't burn or get corroded in water -- and with certain digital precautions far more resilient than cash."

Yes, but... "If you lose the hard drive you've stored your coins on or lose access to a hosted account, you've effectively lost your money," says Cindy McAdam, partner in Goodwin Procter's Technology and Life Sciences Group, and a former executive at Xapo, a leading bitcoin company. And it's not like those things ever happen, right?

If you think you'd be better off spending bitcoins than investing in them, online retailers such as TigerDirect and Overstock.com (ticker: OSTK) accept the currency. You can even make donations with bitcoins at higher-ed institutions that include the University of Puget Sound.

Yet you don't have to be an economics professor to describe bitcoin like this: volatile.

One bitcoin is worth about $581. On Nov. 29, 2013, it hit a peak of $1,108, according to Coinbase.com, a website that tracks Bitcoin prices. Less than a month later, it had plummeted to $593 -- more than its current worth. But if you bought in at the start of last September, you'd have doubled your money and then some. It's enough to give even a stalwart market-timing enthusiast a case of virtual currency vertigo.

"There is a belief that much of the 'Wild West' spike in late 2013 was driven by fraud and market manipulation," McAdam says. "The price fell dramatically in the year following that, but has basically been on an upward trend for the past 18 months."

[See: The 10 Best REIT ETFs on the Market.]

That includes a price bump of $130 over two weeks between late May and early June.

"With the upward price movement, we should expect to see more bitcoin headlines soon," says Anthem Hayek Blanchard, founder and CEO of Anthem Vault, which has created a gold-backed digital currency, HayekGold. He predicts that "it is very likely that bitcoin prices will go higher and breach $1,000 per bitcoin."

Taken one way, the recent price rebound could be interpreted as newfound stability away from the harsh media spotlight. "Some speculate the buying is coming from the Chinese market due to currency controls and a devalued yuan," says Jalak Jobanputra, a venture capitalist and founding partner of FuturePerfect Ventures in New York City.

Or, it could represent the latest gyration in Bitcoin's brief, marble-in-a-bathtub history. So is now a good time to buy bitcoins? Or is it ever a good time to invest in them?

"Bitcoin remains a risky investment," says William Brindise, chief trading officer at DigitalX, a software solutions company in the global digital payments industry.

"If growth in demand remains roughly constant as supply growth falls, economic theory suggests the price of bitcoin should rise," Brindise says. "However that's a big if, since the factors driving demand for bitcoins remain in flux."

Meanwhile, some argue that the current lack of sensationalism means that bitcoin, once an investment upstart, is settling down.

"Bitcoin never went away," says Christopher Burniske, analyst and blockchain products lead at New York City's ARK Investment Management, the first public fund manager to invest in bitcoin. "Its strength can be seen in the 'up and to the right' graphs of transactional volumes, trading volumes, hashing power, number of wallets, startups, merchants, and more, all involved with bitcoin."

Burniske also points to the 99bitcoins website, which tracks bitcoin obituaries in the press. The number to date: 104. He notes that while bitcoin isn't the media darling it once was, it doesn't deserve to be on death row, either.

The truth, in all likelihood, sits securely in the mundane middle.

[Read: Real Estate's New Land of Plenty.]

"There are fewer headlines because the currency has leveled out to a degree," says John Sedunov, assistant professor of finance at the Villanova University School of Business in the Philadelphia area. "If anything, it is becoming more mainstream."

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.
YENAGOA, Nigeria (Reuters) - An explosion rocked a pipeline operated by a subsidiary of Nigeria's state oil company in the West African country's restive Delta region late on Thursday, a security official and a community leader both said on Friday. Oil output by OPEC member Nigeria has fallen to a 20-year low due to a series of attacks on oil pipelines in the southern Niger Delta, home to much of the country's oil and gas wealth, in the last few months. The Nigerian Petroleum Development Company (NPDC) pipeline at Sanomi Creek, around the Ogidigben area of Warri South West, exploded around 8 p.m. local time (1900 GMT), said the source who said that people nearby heard "a loud explosion". "There is fire burning," said Chief Godspower Gbenekama, a local community leader. Nobody has claimed responsibility for the blast. On Wednesday, the Niger Delta Avengers, a militant group that has claimed responsibility for most of the recent attacks, rejected an offer to start talks with the government. (Reporting by Tife Owolabi and Anamesere Igboeroteonwu, in Onitsha; writing by Alexis Akwagyiram; editing by Jason Neely)
BERLIN (Reuters) - BMW delivered more brand vehicles in May on strong demand for sport-utility vehicles and its flagship 7-Series saloon but slipped behind luxury rival Mercedes-Benz, which keeps thriving on record momentum in China.

Sales of BMW brand models rose 5.6 percent last month to 168,129 cars and SUVs, with registrations in China up 7.5 percent to 37,487 cars, the automaker said on Friday.

Daimler's premium passenger-cars division on Monday said its global sales jumped 13 percent to a record 170,625 models, thanks to strong compact-car and SUV demand, with China alone posting record growth of 39 percent.

Volkswagen's Audi, which dropped behind Mercedes in global luxury vehicle sales last year for the first time since 2010, increased May deliveries 6.7 percent to 164,150 cars, extending its year-to-date sales by 5.3 percent.

Sales of Audi models in China, where the VW luxury division has for years been premium market leader, rose no more than 5.5 percent, it said on Thursday.

BMW's sales gain in May, also helped by a double-digit increase in Europe, is keeping the manufacturer on course for profitable sales growth this year, the company said on Friday.

But the Munich-based group may struggle to retain the luxury sales crown it has held since 2005 this year, lagging behind Mercedes with five-month sales of 797,457 cars versus 818,175 autos for the Stuttgart-based rival.

(Reporting by Andreas Cremer; Editing by Georgina Prodhan)
BERLIN (Reuters) - BMW (BMWG.DE) delivered more brand vehicles in May on strong demand for sport-utility vehicles and its flagship 7-Series saloon but slipped behind luxury rival Mercedes-Benz (DAIGn.DE), which keeps thriving on record momentum in China.

Sales of BMW brand models rose 5.6 percent last month to 168,129 cars and SUVs, with registrations in China up 7.5 percent to 37,487 cars, the automaker said on Friday.

Daimler's premium passenger-cars division on Monday said its global sales jumped 13 percent to a record 170,625 models, thanks to strong compact-car and SUV demand, with China alone posting record growth of 39 percent.

Volkswagen's (VOWG_p.DE) Audi, which dropped behind Mercedes in global luxury vehicle sales last year for the first time since 2010, increased May deliveries 6.7 percent to 164,150 cars, extending its year-to-date sales by 5.3 percent.

Sales of Audi models in China, where the VW luxury division has for years been premium market leader, rose no more than 5.5 percent, it said on Thursday.

BMW's sales gain in May, also helped by a double-digit increase in Europe, is keeping the manufacturer on course for profitable sales growth this year, the company said on Friday.

But the Munich-based group may struggle to retain the luxury sales crown it has held since 2005 this year, lagging behind Mercedes with five-month sales of 797,457 cars versus 818,175 autos for the Stuttgart-based rival.

(Reporting by Andreas Cremer; Editing by Georgina Prodhan)
Former Kansas Sen. Bob Dole in 2014. (John Sleezer/Kansas City Star/MCT via Getty Images)

Bob Dole, the Republican Partys 1996 nominee, offered a rather tepid endorsement of Donald Trumps campaign during a new NPR interview.

I have an obligation to the party. I mean, what am I going to do? I cant vote for George Washington. So Im supporting Donald Trump, Dole explained on Fridays Morning Edition.

Other party elders, including former Presidents George W. Bush and George H.W. Bush, have signaled that they arent going to get behind Trump, this years presumptive GOP nominee.

In addition to running a scorched earth primary campaign, Republican leaders widely condemned Trumps recent argument that a federal judges Mexican heritage caused a conflict of interest in a case involving Trump University. Sen. Mark Kirk, R-Ill., said earlier this week that he would rescind his Trump endorsement.

But Dole, 92, said he was a loyal Republican and could not get behind Hillary Clinton, the presumptive Democratic nominee, whom he also labeled flawed. In 1996, Dole unsuccessfully ran against Clintons husband, former President Bill Clinton.

Ive been a Republican all my life. And I know that both candidates are flawed and Trump has done some things that would curl your hair  things that he shouldnt have said, the former Senate majority leader from Kansas said.

Dole said he talked to Trump and encouraged him to focus on the issues instead of insulting people in a derisive way. He said he also encouraged Trump to pick former House Speaker Newt Gingrich as his vice presidential nominee.

Im the only former [GOP nominee] thats going to be at the convention, I understand. And Im going to try to be his senior adviser, Dole said. Ive learned a little over the years. It might be helpful.

Listen to the interview below:
Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival kicks off Thursday for its four-day (June 9-12) annual music festival in Manchester, Tenn., featuring headliners Pearl Jam, Dead & Company, Macklemore & Ryan Lewis, Death Cab for Cutie, Leon Bridges and many more.

Other acts performing at the 700-acre former farm turned Great Stage Park include Ween, Jason Isbell, Chvrches and LCD Soundsystem.

Unable to attend? Watch select acts from the weekend fest in the live stream below. See the full list of performers here.
(Adds detail on accusations)

RIO DE JANEIRO, June 9 (Reuters) - Brazil's federal police accused on Thursday mining company Samarco, a joint venture between Vale SA and BHP Billiton, of willful misconduct in relation to a deadly dam burst last November, saying the company had ignored clear signs the dam was at risk of collapsing.

Police said Samarco had skimmed on safety spending, focusing instead on increasing production despite obvious indications, such as cracks, that the dam was in danger of a breach.

As well as Samarco, police accused Vale because it deposited its own mining waste in the dam, and VogBR, the service company that checked the safety of the dam. Eight executives were also accused, although their names were not disclosed by the police.

Samarco said in a statement it rejected any speculation that it was aware of an imminent risk of collapse at the dam, which held waste known as tailings from its iron ore mine.

"The dam was always declared stable," the company said, adding that increases to the dam's size were done in accordance with the project's design.

The dam's height was below the size allowed by its licensing when it collapsed, Samarco said.

All of the accused, excluding one individual, were first informed by the police in January.

Although the police have not disclosed names, Vale said in a statement it "rejected forcefully the accusations against one employee," saying he was never responsible for the dam's management. VogBR did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

With the police investigation now complete, the case will be passed to prosecutors to decide whether to press charges.

(Reporting by Marta Nogueira and Stephen Eisenhammer; Editing by Matthew Lewis and Bernard Orr)
(Adds minister quotes, information on Eletrobras financial situation)

SAO PAULO, June 10 (Reuters) - The Brazilian government is reviewing the size and business scope of Centrais Eletricas Brasileiras SA, because the current financial and operational situation of state-controlled power holding company looks "unsustainable," Mines and Energy Minister Fernando Coelho said on Friday.

Coelho said Eletrobras, as the company is known, should put on the block some power distribution subsidiaries, transmission lines and minority stakes in several hydropower plants. Eletrobras will keep essential assets, he said without elaborating.

His remarks comes days after Reuters reported that the government was considering disposing of controlling stakes in some units including Furnas Centrais Eletricas SA and Eletrosul Centrais Eletricas SA, which manage some of Brazil's largest dams.

"We do not intend to carry out a fire sale of Eletrobras assets," Coelho told reporters at the sidelines of a meeting in Sao Paulo. "However, there is indeed an intention to redefine the size and scope of the company."

Asset sales and a redefinition of the company's priorities have been touted as solutions to help reduce Eletrobras' total debt load of 40 billion reais ($11.6 billion), according to several officials. Eletrobras has failed to post an annual profit since 2012.

The company has suffered since President Dilma Rousseff renegotiated operating licenses for electricity companies four years ago, a move that cut the revenue of several Eletrobras subsidiaries. The action aimed to cut electricity rates and entitled affected companies to compensation that never came.

Eletrobras is owed about 30 billion reais in compensation. The company has not been repaid partly because the federal government is currently struggling with a record budget deficit.

Officials from the Planning Ministry and state development bank BNDES are conducting a thorough analysis of the situation of Eletrobras, Coelho said. He said the government needs to avoid frequent interference in the nation's electricity market.

Besides having a heavy debt burden and slumping revenue, Eletrobras could be delisted from the New York Stock Exchange for failing to present annual financial information.

($1 = 3.4312 Brazilian reais) (Reporting by Luciano Costa; Additional reporting and writing by Marcelo Teixeira; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Steve Orlofsky)
Protests against Brazils interim President Michel Temer took place across at least 18 states on June 10, according to national media reports. In a TV interview the previous day, suspended President Dilma Rousseff said she would call for a referendum on early elections if she were reinstated. The move is seen as an attempt to win over undecided senators to help clear her of impeachment.

These videos show protesters in Recife, the capital of Pernambuco state, asking for Temer to step down and for Rousseff to be reinstated. Credit: Twitter/Marivete S. Correia
(Adds comment from Embraer representative)

By Brad Haynes

SAO PAULO, June 9 (Reuters) - Brazil's Embraer SA will replace its chief executive with the current head of its commercial aviation division next month, the company said on Thursday, in a surprise decision.

Paulo Cesar Silva will take the reins of the world's third-largest commercial aviation firm after nearly two decades at the company, including six years in charge of its core airliner business, overseeing development of the next-generation E-Jet family.

Frederico Curado, who has run the company for more than nine years, will give up his executive role in July and contribute to a transition through the end of 2016, Embraer said in a statement.

"After more than 32 years at Embraer, with 22 of them on the executive board, I am ending a cycle in my career and I will focus on other professional and personal activities," Curado said in the statement. "With Paulo, Embraer is in excellent hands."

Three analysts who cover the company said they had been caught off guard by news of the transition. They asked not to be identified, citing protocol at the institutions where they work.

Under Curado, Embraer has taken command of the regional jet market, with E-Jets dominating the 70- to 100-seat segment and pushing into the market for up to 130-seat aircraft, making trouble for Bombardier Inc's new C Series.

The company also expanded into executive aviation with a lineup of new small and midsized jets, as well as more intensive defense contracting, including the launch of the KC-390 military cargo jet, the biggest plane ever made in Latin America.

In recent years, Embraer's defense division ran afoul of anti-corruption legislation in the United States, where the company has listed shares.

U.S. and Brazilian authorities began investigating Embraer in 2010 for allegedly bribing officials in the Dominican Republic to secure deals for commercial and defense aircraft.

A sales consultant told Brazilian prosecutors that he believed Embraer's top executives, including Curado, knew of illicit payments related to that deal, the Wall Street Journal reported in March.

Story continues

Embraer officials declined to comment directly on the accusation, pointing out it was apparently leaked from confidential testimony in a legal case in Brazil, the details of which were not available to the company.

Curado was not named as a defendant in a 2014 criminal case in Brazil brought against former Embraer executives involved in the deal. An Embraer representative said Curado's departure was entirely unrelated to the graft investigation.

(Additional reporting by Cesar Bianconi and Paula Laier; Editing by Daniel Flynn and Peter Cooney)
(Adds quotes, details background)

By Brad Haynes

SAO PAULO, June 9 (Reuters) - Brazil's Embraer SA will replace its chief executive with the current head of its commercial aviation division next month, the company said on Thursday, in a surprise decision.

Paulo Cesar Silva will take the reins of the world's third-largest commercial aviation firm after nearly two decades at the company, including six years in charge of its core airliner business that saw the development of the next-generation E-Jet family.

Frederico Curado, who has run the company for more than nine years, will give up his executive role in July and contribute to a transition through the end of 2016, Embraer said in a statement.

"After more than 32 years at Embraer, with 22 of them on the executive board, I am ending a cycle in my career and I will focus on other professional and personal activities," Curado said in the statement. "With Paulo, Embraer is in excellent hands."

Three analysts who cover the company said they had been caught off guard by news of the transition. They asked not to be identified, citing protocol at the institutions where they worked.

Under Curado, Embraer has taken command of the regional jet market, with E-Jets dominating the 70- to 100-seat segment and pushing into the market for up to 130-seat aircraft, making trouble for Bombardier Inc's new C Series.

The company has also expanded into executive aviation with a lineup of new small and midsized jets, as well as more intensive defense contracting, including the launch of the KC-390 military cargo jet, the biggest plane ever made in Latin America.

In recent years, the rapid expansion of Embraer's defense division ran afoul of anti-corruption legislation in the United States, where the company has listed shares.

U.S. and Brazilian authorities began investigating Embraer in 2010 for allegedly bribing officials in the Dominican Republic to secure deals for commercial and defense aircraft.

Story continues

A sales consultant told Brazilian prosecutors he believed Embraer's top officials, including Curado, knew of illicit payments related to that deal, the Wall Street Journal reported in March.

Embraer officials declined to comment directly on the accusation, pointing out it was apparently leaked from confidential testimony in a legal case in Brazil, the details of which were not available to the company.

Curado was not named as a defendant in that 2014 criminal case brought against nine former Embraer executives involved in the deal.

Press representatives declined to make Curado available for an interview.

(Additional reporting by Cesar Bianconi and Paula Laier; Editing by Daniel Flynn and Peter Cooney)
Berlin (AFP) - German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble on Friday issued a stark warning to Britain that it would face costly barriers to the European Union trade zone if it left the bloc.

The comments by one of Europe's most senior officials is a blow to Brexit supporters, who have argued that Britain could negotiate deals to access the single market similar to those in place for non-members Norway and Switzerland.

"That won't work," the veteran minister told Germany's Der Spiegel weekly, which on Saturday plans to publish a German-English edition at home and in Britain with "Please don't go!" on the cover.

"That would require the country to follow the rules of a club which right now it wants to leave."

European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker last month said that British "deserters will not be welcomed with open arms" by European partners if Britain votes to leave in the June 23 referendum, but Schaeuble's intervention is the most explicit threat so far.

Vote Leave chief executive Matthew Elliott hit back, saying there was "no question about it, Britain will still have access to the single market.

"It would be perverse of the eurozone to try to create artificial barriers -- and would do far more damage to them than to anyone else," he said.

The EU accounts for 47 percent of British exports and 54 percent of imports, according to latest government figures.

- Labour voters left confused -

With opinion polls on a knife-edge, senior figures in Britain's opposition Labour party made an impassioned plea to stay in the EU amid fears their failure to get out the left-wing vote may result in a Brexit.

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn is officially backing the "Remain" campaign but has been keeping a low profile.

Former party leader Ed Miliband acknowledged in a BBC interview: "Some Labour voters don't know where we stand at the moment."

Story continues

Corbyn has refused to share a platform with Prime Minister David Cameron and there are concerns some Labour voters will abstain or back a Brexit to give the Conservative leader a bloody nose.

But Miliband accused the "Leave" campaign, also backed by the anti-immigration UK Independence Party (UKIP) leader Nigel Farage, of "trying to perpetrate a fraud on Labour voters".

"They want to get out of the European Union not to improve workers' rights but to sweep them away," said Miliband, who stepped down after losing last year's general election.

- 'People's revolution' -

The economic turbulence of a Brexit would create "a massive black hole in the public finances, and an unfair Tory government that will make ordinary families pay for it through further cuts and tax rises", Labour deputy party leader Tom Watson told the Daily Mirror tabloid.

A YouGov poll for The Times this week found public opinion evenly split between leaving or staying in the EU, but Labour voters favoured "Remain" by 61 percent to 26 percent, with the remainder either not voting or undecided.

However, Labour voters were also marginally less likely to say they would definitely vote.

The leaders of 10 major trade unions came out in favour of staying in the EU this week, but many workers blame the mass migration caused by the EU's freedom of movement rules for driving down wages.

Two backbench lawmakers, John Mann and Dennis Skinner, on Friday announced that they were backing Brexit as the best way to secure workers' rights.

In an article for The Sun tabloid, Mann said the arrival of hundreds of thousands of EU migrants into Britain each year was "worsening inequality".

He added: "A people's revolution is under way. This is about returning power to the people."
From Cosmopolitan

Last Thursday, former Stanford swimmer Brock Turner was sentenced to six months in jail and probation for sexually assaulting an unconscious woman behind a dumpster in January of 2015. Many expressed outrage over the leniency of Turner's sentence, especially given the nature of his crimes - and now, according to The Daily Mail, he's already had two months knocked off of his required jail time.

Due to "automatically applied 'credits,'" Turner will be released from Elmwood prison in Milpitas, California on September 2, eight weeks shorter than his original sentence and a total of four months after he was first admitted. The Daily Mail reports that these "credits" were applied due to good behavior, and that "it was assessed that he was unlikely to misbehave behind bars."

Due to the nature of his crimes, Turner has a private cell to himself at Elmwood, unlike the majority of the jail's inmates; but representatives for the Santa Clara County Sheriff's Office confirm that he will not be getting special treatment otherwise.

"He's in protected custody because of his charge, his offense," Sergeant Joe Jephson from the Santa Clara County Sheriff's Office told The Daily Mail. "He's kept away from our general population inmates. There are other protected inmates that he is around but he's kept away from our general population inmates."

Court documents reveal that Turner has continuously lied to his probation officer in order to secure an even more lenient sentence, claiming that the entire assault had actually been consensual and the victim had given vocal consent. This statement was given after Turner had already been convicted of three counts of felony sexual assault and sentenced to jail; and the Santa Clara district attorney present during his statement had to intervene to say that Turner was being "untruthful."

At this time, Turner is seeking to serve his three-year probation period in Ohio, his home state, after he is released from Elmwood. He is already in the process of requesting a transfer.

Follow Gina on Twitter.
Brooklyn Beckham is certainly no stranger to the art of modeling but he says looking forward, his passions are firmly behind the lens.

I studied photography in high school and straight away I knew it was something I was interested in, the British teen tells LUomo Vogue in its July/August issue, of which he stars on the cover adding: When I left school I started shooting in my spare time and really enjoyed it.

After interning for the British fashion photographer David Sims, during which he assisted on shoots, the 17-year-old brushed up on his camera skills by reading books on the subject and showing off his street-style snaps (all of which are shot in black and white and often on his Leica 35mm camera) via his Instagram account, which has an impressive 7.3 million followers.

And its not the first time hes appeared on the cover of Vogue. Beckham made his debut in Miss Vogue last September. But despite his impressive resume, the aspiring-artist maintains hes not about to become a serious fashionista anytime soon. I really respect fashion but I dont follow trends  Im much more into skateboarder style clothes, reveals the famous teen.

Having recently shot the latest Burberry fragrance campaign for Christopher Bailey, the young photographer, who the designer says has a really great eye for image, has been sharing pictures of his family vacation in Greece on his Instagram as well as his girlfriend Chloe Grace Moretz, including one of the couple wearing matching checkerboard slip-on sneakers.

Monique Jessen


Town officials in Neutraubling, in southeastern Germany, have banned the burqini from a public pool after a woman wore one to a womens-only swim day.

Burqinis are like loose wetsuits with hoods, worn mostly by Muslim women who want to cover up while swimming.

Why the burqini as a full-body suit would be necessary to wear during a womens swim day is for me incomprehensible, town Mayor Heinz Kiechle said last week, as reported by the Local, a European news site. This also contradicts the fundamental ideas of integration and mutual understanding, which is always being discussed in many towns.

Towns can set regulations on swim attire, but some Germans are calling for the rule to be changed, citing laws that protect religious freedom as a fundamental right. We see this case not only as a clear violation of fundamental rights, but also as a blow to humanity and tolerance, the Green Youth party said in a letter calling for an end to the ban, the Local reported Thursday.

This isnt the first time the burqini has been targeted in Europe. In 2009, a French pool banned women from swimming in them. Quite simply, this is segregation, a woman who was prohibited from wearing hers told French newspaper Le Parisien at the time, as reported by the BBC. I will fight to try to change things. And if I see that the battle is lost, I cannot rule out leaving France.

Since 2010, France has banned women from wearing burqas in public, supposedly to keep people from hiding their identities. The ban is widely perceived as a product of and contributor to Islamophobia in the country.

The European Union migration crisis and high profile terror attacks by radical Islamist groups have drawn attention to Muslim life in Europe, which has seen a rise in xenophobic and nationalist movements.

Meanwhile, the European fashion world has begun to embrace styles favored by many Muslims. In May, Spanish clothing design and retail company Mango launched a new collection for Ramadan. British retailer Marks and Spencer offers burqinis, with prices starting at $80. They are available in floral contrast and paisley print. Luxury fashion house Dolce & Gabbana is producing a line of hijabs and abayas, complete with a little jewel-encrusted lemon here, some black lace trim there, Vogue reported in January.

Photo credit: ANOEK DE GROOT/AFP/Getty Images
By Alex Dobuzinskis and Amy Tennery

(Reuters) - California Attorney General Kamala Harris, the top vote-getter in the state's U.S. Senate primary, has joined the criticism of a six-month jail sentence given to a former Stanford University swimmer convicted of sexually assaulting an unconscious woman.

Harris, speaking to reporters in the San Francisco Bay area on Wednesday, said she was concerned the "victim's voice was not heard" at the trial.

"It was not respected, and she was not given dignity in the process," said Harris, a Democrat, according to video from a local television station.

Harris, who will face Democratic U.S. Representative Loretta Sanchez in the Nov. 8 Senate election, is the highest-profile elected official in California to question last week's sentence handed down on Brock Turner, 20, by a Santa Clara Superior Court judge. Prosecutors had asked for a six-year prison term.

"When someone is facing a 14-year (maximum sentence), which is what I believe was the exposure in this case, there has got to be extraordinarily mitigating facts to reduce it down to what I believe ended up being six months," Harris said. "And I don't know if the facts actually merit that kind of mitigation."

A probation report submitted to the judge that recommended against sending Turner to prison said "this case, when compared to other crimes of similar nature, may be considered less serious due to the defendant's level of intoxication."

Officials have said the judge, Aaron Persky, has received death threats since imposing the sentence, even as he faces a possible recall effort led by a Stanford law professor.

Joseph Macaluso, a spokesman for the Santa Clara County court, has said Persky is prohibited from commenting on the case because Turner is appealing his conviction. Macaluso could not be reached to comment on Thursday.

The San Jose Mercury News and local broadcaster KPIX-TV reported on Thursday that between 10 and 20 prospective jurors refused to serve this week in an unrelated case being overseen by Persky, citing the judge's sentencing decision in the Turner case.

Story continues

SEPTEMBER RELEASE

The national uproar over the sentence, fueled in part by the victim's statement detailing the January 2015 assault in graphic terms and its repercussions on her life, is part of the growing outrage about rape on U.S. college campuses.

Turner is due to be released on Sept. 2 from the Santa Clara County jail, according to Santa Clara County sheriffs spokesman Sergeant James Jensen. He was booked on June 2. Inmates sentenced to county jail in California generally serve 50 percent of their sentences, San Jose, California, criminal attorney Edward Kraus said.

In a Fox News interview on Wednesday, one of the two students who intervened in the assault, Carl-Fredrik Arndt, told host Greta Van Susteren that Turner did not seem drunk.

"I mean, he could run," Arndt said. "He could speak without slurring at all."

Politicians, including U.S. Vice President Joe Biden, and celebrities have joined the outpouring of support for the victim. [L1N1911WO]

(Additional reporting by Suzannah Gonzales in Chicago, Dan Whitcomb in Los Angeles and Curtis Skinner in San Francisco)
Grupo Financiero Galicia attracted bullish option activity yesterday for the second time in as many sessions.



optionMONSTER's monitoring program shows that 4,000 July 30 calls were purchased for $0.90 to $1 yesterday. The volume was below open interest of 6,218 contracts but, given the heavy call buying in the same strike a day earlier , this clearly represents new positions.



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)



GGAL fell 0.57 percent to $29.65 yesterday but is up 6 percent in the last week. The Argentinian bank's next quarterly results are estimated for pre-market hours on Aug. 4.



Overall option volume was 11 times greater than average in the name yesterday. Calls outnumbering puts by a bullish 29-to-1 ratio.



As noted in Wednesday's article on the original GGAL call buying, Latin America banks have performed well in the last week. (See the screen shot below of our proprietary researchLAB market-analysis tool below.)









More From optionMONSTER


Carlos Vives and Shakira's new single, "La Bicicleta," debuts at No. 1 on the Latin Airplay chart (dated June 18), scoring the second chart-topping entrance this year (Enrique Iglesias' "Duele El Corazon" featuring Wisin was the first, on the May 7 chart). The collaboration arrives with 17 million audience impressions in the week ending June 5, according to Nielsen Music.

The entry marks Vives' third No. 1 start, following his 2014 hit "El Mar de Sus Ojos," and his 2012 song "Volvi A Nacer." Shakira notches her second crowning bow, following her No. 1 debut as the featured act on Mana's "Mi Verdad" (Feb. 28, 2015 chart).

"La Bicicleta" gives Shakira her 11th career No. 1, tying her with Gloria Estefan for most chart-toppers by a female on the Latin Airplay chart. Vives' total swells to 12 No. 1s, placing him in third place for most crowning songs (Ricky Martin is in second place with 15, and Iglesias leads with 28).

Over on airplay/streaming/sales hybrid chart Hot Latin Songs, "Bicicleta" arrives at No. 4, aided by 7,000 downloads sold in the week ending June 2. The first week sales cause the track to also bow at No. 1 on the Latin Digital Songs chart.

Nicky Jam's Hot 100 Climb: Meanwhile, Nicky Jam's "Hasta El Amanecer" continues to climb the all-genre Billboard Hot 100, rising 98-95 in his second week. Streams of the song reach a new high, logging 2.9 million weekly plays (up 2 percent in the frame ending June 2). The track concurrently spends a 12th week at No. 1 on Hot Latin Songs, with points earned only from the Spanish versions of the track. (There is also an English mix titled "With You Tonight.")

Reik Rises with Jam Remix: Nicky Jam also contributes to Reik's climb on Hot Latin Songs, with activity from a newly released urban remix of "Ya Me Entere" powering a 27-24 lift. The song earns Digital Gainer honors, increasing 91 percent (to 1,000 downloads), with 57 percent of its sales owed to the remix. Reik reaches its highest peak on the chart since 2011, when "Tu Mirada" reached No. 18.
* Brexit fears hit regional assets * Prague stock index hits lowest since April 2009 * Zloty, forint off multi-week highs vs euro * Kuna hits three-month low as government teeters (Adds decline in Prague index to 7-year low, updates prices) By Sandor Peto and Bartosz Lada BUDAPEST/WARSAW, June 10 (Reuters) - Czech stocks led a decline by Central European assets on Friday, amid concern that British voters will vote to quit the European Union, leaving less financing available for the bloc's poorer members.

Prague's main stock index fell to a new seven-year low and at 1429 GMT it was down 3.3 percent.

Power group CEZ dropped 3.1 percent, tracking a fall by Western European power companies, including RWE and E.ON.

Bank stocks also got a beating in the region. Austrian-based Erste, which has a large weighting in the Prague index, fell by 5.3 percent in Prague.

Warsaw's blue-chip equities index shed 1.6 percent, pulled lower by the stocks of Pekao, down 3.4 percent, and PKO BP, down 2.4 percent.

The Polish government has imposed a heavy tax on banks, and a planned conversion of Swiss franc mortgages to zlotys could impose heavy costs on them.

The zloty fell 0.6 percent against the euro, after gaining to its strongest levels since mid-April two days ago.

"In the coming days, the zloty is unlikely to strengthen because of the approaching date of the UK referendum," BZ WBK analysts said in a note. Britain's vote on its EU membership is set for June 23.

Poland also may face further downgrades in its credit rating, after Standard & Poor's cut its rating in January. S&P's EMEA sovereign chief, Moritz Kraemer, said another downgrade may depend on the actions of Poland's incoming central bank chief, Adam Glapinski.

Poland's parliament confirmed Glapinski's appointment on Friday. He has pledged to defend the bank from political interference.

Central European government bond yields mostly rose. Poland's 10-year bond yield rose by 3 basis points to 3.09 percent. The comparable safe-haven German Bund was bid at a record low 0.012 percent.

Story continues

Croatia's kuna traded at 7.5385 per euro, after touching three-month lows of 7.57 overnight, as the government's chances of surviving a coalition crisis dwindled.

CEE SNAP AT 1629 MARKETS SHOT CET CURRENCIES Late Prev Dail Chan st ious y ge bid clos chan in e ge 2016 Czech 280 250 1% 1% Hungary 8000 1700 0% % Polish 70 90 4% 0% Romanian 63 00 4% % Croatian 85 45 5% % Serbian 1000 4500 28% 2% Note: calcula prev clos 1800 daily ted ious e at CET change from STOC KS Late Prev Dail Chan st ious y ge clos chan in e ge 2016 Prague 840. 867. -3.2 -12.
Don't be too excited, analysts say.

Singapore has posted a series of impressive economic data of late: Manufacturing output rose 4.8% month-on-month in April, while the production index expanded for the first time in 10 months in May.

However, those looking for green shoots in the economy will have to wait longer for a substantial recovery, according to a report by DBS.

DBS warned that apart from th electronics and biomedical clusters, Singapore's other industries are still in contraction mode as the manufacturing sector struggles with weak demand.

"Expecting the manufacturing sector to lift the economy out of the current doldrums seems a stretch. Much really depends on the performance of the services sector, which accounts for two-thirds of GDP, but is backpedalling," said the report.

There isnt any sign of a turnaround as yet.In short, not worsening doesnt mean an uptrend is in the making. Things could move either way or even sideways. Plainly, those searching for green shoots may soon find themselves staring at a bunch of weeds.





More From Singapore Business Review


Check it out: The iconic IKEA shopping bag just got a makeover

Check it out: The iconic IKEA shopping bag just got a makeover

We love a good day trip to IKEA. You can get lost in the stores maze for hours, lie down on beds and sofas after eating too many Swedish meatballs, and try your hand at pronouncing words like BOJA and HOLJES. Best of all, everything is so incredibly affordable, we can spruce up a room on even the smallest of budgets. The only thing we dont love? That giant blue shopping bag you use to tote home your new purchases. (And assembling furniture, but thats a lost cause.)

Lets be real: IKEA shopping bags are not chic. Nobody has ever made a best-dressed list for carrying one, and nobody has ever asked to borrow yours. They cost 99 cents, and theyre strictly functional; a shopping necessity at best. But now, IKEA is changing that by giving the iconic blue bags a much-needed makeover and they look super-chic!

At the recent #IKEADDD, we unveiled a new collaboration with renowned Danish design house @haydesign including a new design of our iconic FRAKTA bag. In a white and forest green woven fabric with matching straps, the carry-all bag will be available in Autumn 2017 along with several other Hay products in its usual minimal, pared-back design. Hurrah for democratic design! A photo posted by IKEA UK (@ikeauk) on Jun 10, 2016 at 9:52am PDT

According to the design blog Dezeen, an architecture and design magazine, Danish design brand Hay is responsible for the new look of the shopping bag (which apparently is called the Fratka  who knew?). Hay is collaborating with IKEA on a furniture collection, and the new bag is just one part of their partnership. Instead of blue and yellow plastic, it will be made with white and forest green woven fabric. Upgrade!

We worked with colours that we feel will be long-lasting, said Mette Hay, a co-founder of the shop. IKEAs new shopping bags wont hit stores until 2017, so that gives you ample time to plan your next big IKEA haul  and coordinate a cute outfit to go with it.

The post Check it out: The iconic IKEA shopping bag just got a makeover appeared first on HelloGiggles.
WINNIPEG, Manitoba (Reuters) - Chinese state-owned agricultural trader COFCO Agri [CNCOF.UL], is opening a trading office in the Canadian grain hub of Winnipeg, adding to the aggressive expansion of its North American agriculture business. COFCO Agri is hiring three grain traders and an operations manager to expand export and domestic trading, according to the company's postings on professional networking site LinkedIn. Efforts to reach COFCO spokespeople and the company's U.S. human resources director for further details were unsuccessful. On its website, the company lists regional trading and asset offices in eight countries, but none in Canada, the world's largest canola-exporting country and one of the top wheat exporters. COFCO has embarked on an aggressive expansion into international grain trading, having invested over $3 billion to buy Noble Group's agribusiness in March and a large stake in Dutch grain trader Nidera. COFCO also has an office in Vancouver to conduct market analysis. The company is shopping for deals in the United States and Canada to give it access to North America's grains and oilseeds for export. It is also setting up a U.S. ethanol trading desk, sources told Reuters in May. Several of the largest Canadian grain traders already have head offices in Winnipeg, including Richardson International, Cargill Ltd [CARGIL.UL], Paterson Grain and Parrish & Heimbecker. (Reporting by Rod Nickel in Winnipeg, Manitoba; Editng by Alan Crosby)
EXCLUSIVE: Continuing the agencys expansion into the Asian market, UTA has signed Chinese film and TV star Angelababy in all areas, becoming the actress first American representation. One of Chinas biggest entertainers, Angelababy also has an enormous presence on Chinese social media, with more than 70 million followers on Weibo, Chinas equivalent to Twitter. She also was the only Chinese actress to make this years Forbes 30 Under 30 list.

Angelababy currently appears on the hit TV series Yun Zhong Ge, which has garnered more than 980 million online views. Her other credits include Mojin: The Lost Legend, for which she received a Best Supporting Actress nomination at Jinji Baihua Awards; the unscripted TV series Running Man, for which she won Most Popular Actress at Chinas equivalent of the Peoples Choice Awards; the Tai Chi franchise; and Young Detective Dee: Rise Of The Sea Dragon. She recently wrapped filming on The Ferryman, starring Leung Chiu-Wai and Chang Chen and produced by Wong Kar Wai for Alibaba Pictures.

Angelababy recently became an ambassador for the charity WildAid and has also expanded her brand internationally with the launch of venture capital fund AB Capital, which focuses on female lifestyle and Internet startups. UTA will work with Angelababy to develop opportunities in domestic and international film, television, digital media and endorsements and in building Chinese/American co-productions around her.

She continues to be repped in China by Kim Chou and Yang Ming.

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Pucker up! Christian Louboutin will release a line of lip lacquers for fans who long for a little shine. Loubilaque, which has several sources of inspiration, will be available for $85 on July 1.

PHOTOS: 7 Summer Beauty and Style Must-Haves to Protect Against UV Rays

Christian Louboutins latest beauty creation draws inspiration from his longstanding love affair with lacquer, a press release states. Not only did red nail lacquer inspire the red sole, but he has long admired the mirror-like surface of Chinese and Japanese lacquers. For his designs, he has often turned to the most brilliant of leathers, patent, to create iconic accessories with the shiniest of finishes.

PHOTOS: 6 Kissproof, Cryproof Beauty Products for Bachelorette JoJo

Loubilaque joins a family of $90 lipsticks and $50 nail polishes. And unlike traditional glosses, which can be sticky and offer only a hint of color, the Louboutin lacquers go on creamy and deliver saturated pigment. Each shade is packaged in a bottle carved with a mermaid tail pattern and topped with gold caps. The tube conveniently doubles as a pendant, as the bottles boast a ring threaded with ribbon. Louboutins lipsticks are packaged similarly.

The new product launches with eight nude, pink and red shades, most named after Louboutins signature shoes and sandals in three formulas (matte, satin and sheer). One shade sure to be popular: Rouge Louboutin, which mimicks the shade of the Parisian shoe brands signature red soles. While the other eight selections are capped with gold, Rouge Louboutin is crowned a silver and gold cap.

Loubilaque will be available at selected stores and on christianlouboutin.com.




Cinema Guild has acquired all U.S. distribution rights to Albert Serras The Death of Louis XIV, starring French New Wave legend Jean-Pierre Leaud. The film premiered as an Official Selection at Cannes, where Leaud was awarded an Honorary Palme dOr, 57 years after his first appearance at the fest at age 14 in Francois Truffauts 400 Blows. Cinema Guild will release Death of Louis XIV theatrically in early 2017. Set in Versailles in August 1715, the film centers on Louis XIV (Leaud), who feels a pain in his leg after going for a walk. The next days, the Sun King fulfills his duties and obligations but has trouble sleeping. A serious fever erupts, which marks the start of the slow agony of the greatest King of France. Surrounded by doctors and family, he struggles to run the country from his bed. Following Don Quixote, the Three Kings, Dracula and Casanova, Albert Serra transmutes another great icon, said Cinema Guild Head of Distribution Blandine Mercier-McGovern, who negotiated the deal with Julien Rejl of Capricci Films.

FilmBuff has picked up worldwide rights to I Am Gangster, the debut of writer-director Moritz Rechenberg. The drama from Reflektiv Film Company, which has its West Coast premiere Saturday at Dance with Films, will get a VOD release later this year. The slice-of-life pic revolves around three young men trying to survive on a daily basis in East Los Angeles. Idealistic rookie cop David (Rick Mancia) is able to keep his family safe until use-of-force incidents put him under pressure to make a fateful decision. Hardcore gang member Lito (Abraham Bobadilla) steps into dangerous territory when he defies gang matriarch Tia (Marlene Forte) in his hustle for wealth and power. At the same time, rebellious teenager Rio (Gilberto Ortiz) flirts with gang life until he has to deal with his own guilt over a tragic death. We at Reflektiv wanted to make a good film, tell an important story and get it out to the people, Rechenberg said. FilmBuff is a great place for our film as they have successfully distributed other indie films in the marketplace.

Story continues

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By Chris Kahn (Reuters) - Hillary Clinton leads Donald Trump by 11 points in the U.S. presidential race, showing little change after she became the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee this week, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Friday. The online poll, conducted from Monday to Friday, shows 46 percent of likely voters support Clinton while 34.8 percent back Trump. Another 19.2 percent support neither candidate. Their parties hold conventions in July ahead of a Nov. 8 election. Clinton's lead was nearly the same a week ago, before she had amassed enough convention delegates to win the nomination and before Trump drew criticism from leaders of both parties for questioning the impartiality of a Mexican-American judge. Trump, 69, enjoyed a bigger boost after becoming the presumptive Republican nominee in May. Having trailed Clinton, 68, for most of the year, Trump briefly erased a double-digit gap and pulled about even with the former secretary of state. Clinton this week defeated party rival Bernie Sanders, 74, in four of six nominating contests, most notably California and New Jersey, and won the endorsements of President Barack Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and other party leaders. Trump this week sparred with party leaders and struggled with questions about his now-defunct Trump University. A lawsuit accuses Trump and the for-profit school of defrauding thousands of people, including many who paid as much as $35,000 to learn Trump's real estate strategies. A wealthy businessman who asserts the lawsuit is politically motivated, Trump said presiding U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel was biased against him because of Trump's plans to build a wall on the border with Mexico. Trump later added that Muslim judges could be biased against him also because of his pledge to temporarily ban Muslims from entering the country. Trump's comments drew sharp criticism from Republican leaders, including House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. Trump later said he would no longer talk about the judge. Friday's results had 1,276 respondents and a credibility interval, a measure of accuracy, of 3.2 percentage points. (Reuters/Ipsos polling results: http://polling.reuters.com/#!poll/TM651Y15_13/filters/LIKELY:1/type/smallest/dates/20160401-20160610/collapsed/true/spotlight/1) (Reporting by Chris Kahn; Editing by Howard Goller)
By Steve Holland and Emily Flitter WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump offered a message of ethnic harmony on Friday at a Christian evangelical conference as he sought to calm concern about his criticism of a Mexican-American judge. In a departure from his usual freewheeling style, Trump read a carefully scripted speech from a teleprompter as part of a new push by his campaign to tone down the outspoken New Yorker's harsh rhetoric. Trump's remarks included a wide-ranging attack on Democratic rival Hillary Clinton, and he said money aimed at resettling Syrian refugees in the United States should instead be spent on tackling poverty in U.S. cities. Speaking to the annual conference of the conservative Faith & Freedom Coalition, Trump did not mention the controversy over his charge that U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel cannot treat him fairly because of his Mexican heritage. But Trump did make a point of saying he would represent all Americans if elected president on Nov. 8. "Freedom of any kind means no one should be judged by their race or their color and the tone of his hue," Trump said. "Right now, we have a very divided nation. We're going to bring our nation together." Paul Ryan, the top elected U.S. Republican, had criticized Trump for what he called a "textbook definition of a racist comment" for his remarks about the judge. Other Republican leaders warned Trump to change his tone or risk losing their support. Mitt Romney, the 2012 Republican presidential nominee who led a movement to derail Trump's nomination, told CNN he would not consider running for the White House. Romney blasted Trump for comments that he said denigrated Mexicans, women and religion. "Presidents have an impact on the nature of our nation, and trickle-down racism, trickle-down bigotry and trickle-down misogyny - all these things are extraordinarily dangerous to the heart and character of America," he said. Romney said he expects Trump to get the Republican nomination, but said that he will not vote for either Trump or Clinton. He left open the possibility of casting a ballot for the Libertarian Party candidate, former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson. As Trump sought to rally more Republicans behind him, Clinton met with U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts to try and shore up support from the left wing of the Democratic Party. Clinton later addressed the Planned Parenthood Action Fund, the nonpartisan arm of the women's health group, and had Trump trained in her sights. This is a man who has called women pigs, dogs and disgusting animals, its kind of hard to imagine counting on him to respect our fundamental rights, said Clinton, the first woman to become the presumptive presidential nominee of a major party. Clinton leads Trump by 11 percentage points, nearly the same as a week ago, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Friday. SYRIAN REFUGEES Trump on Friday criticized Clinton's willingness to accept thousands of Syrian refugees into the United States and challenged her to "replace her support for increased refugee admission" in favor of a new jobs program for inner cities. He stopped short of repeating his call for a temporary ban on Muslims entering the United States, a proposal that has drawn heavy fire from Republicans and Democrats. "We have to temporarily stop this whole thing with whats going on with refugees where we dont know where theyre coming from," Trump said. "We have to use the money to take care of our poorest Americans so they can come out of this horrible situation that they're in." At the funeral on Friday of boxing champion Muhammad Ali, a convert to Islam, one speaker, a rabbi, inveighed against politicians promoting intolerance of Muslims. "We will not tolerate politicians or anyone else putting down Muslims and blaming Muslims for a few people," said Rabbi Michael Lerner, the editor of Tikkun magazine, who said he attended the ceremony in Louisville, Kentucky, as a representative of American Jews. Trump said Clinton's refusal to use the phrase "radical Islamic terrorism" - favored by Republicans to describe violent Islamist militants - makes her unfit to be president. The real estate mogul's struggle to unify Republicans behind his insurgent candidacy was apparent at the evangelical Faith & Freedom conference, where several speakers studiously avoided speaking his name. Former campaign rival Carly Fiorina steered clear of Trump, speaking instead of the need to prevent liberal policies taking hold. U.S. Representative Virginia Foxx, a North Carolina Republican, said a Republican president is needed, without mentioning Trump. "We don't want this contest this fall to just be a contest of personalities," she said. But conference organizer Ralph Reed was adamant in his support for Trump, saying the New Yorker has energized the evangelical vote in a way that past Republican presidential nominees failed to do. "We understand that perfection is not the measure that should be applied," Reed told the crowd. (Additional reporting by Amanda Becker, Megan Casella, Alana Wise, Eric Beech and Doina Chiacu in Washington and Laila Kearney in New York; Editing by Alistair Bell and Leslie Adler)
Engineers have taken a tip from Medusa, it seems. They have stared down the pesky greenhouse gas carbon dioxide and turned it to stone.

The process they used was not as easy as simply eyeballing the gas, though. Essentially, they relied on a sped-up version of natural processes to take the carbon dioxide (CO2) spewed from a power plant in Iceland and transform the gas into a solid.

This ability to capture carbon dioxide and store it indefinitely may help curb the levels of heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere and stem global warming, the researchers noted. [Changing Earth: 7 Ideas to Geoengineer Our Planet]

"We need to deal with rising carbon emissions," lead study author Juerg Matter, now an associate professor of geoengineering at the University of Southampton in the United Kingdom, said in a statement. "This is the ultimate permanent storage  turn them back to stone."

Natural carbon storage

Human-caused global warming occurs mostly because of greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide and methane, that get poured into the air by humans burning fossil fuels for energy and other processes. These gases trap heat before it can escape out into space. Carbon dioxide is the biggest factor in this warming, scientists have said, because billions of tons of the gas are released every year and it stays in the atmosphere for long periods of time.

Ordinarily, this gas is drawn out of the atmosphere by plants, which use it for photosynthesis, and a chemical process called weathering of rocks. This process happens when carbon dioxide and other gases that dissolve in water form weak acids that then chemically react with minerals in rocks to form other solids, like clays. However, both of those uptake processes are relatively slow, and they can't keep up with human output, the study researchers noted. [The Reality of Climate Change: 10 Myths Busted]

As such, engineers and other scientists have been working on several efforts to somehow inject the carbon dioxide into the ground. For instance, carbon dioxide is pumped into the tiny holes, or pores, in sedimentary rock  the kind laid down by layers of sand, for example, on the ocean floor.

Story continues

The problem is that the carbon dioxide is a gas, and tends to rise. To keep it underground requires a placing a layer of less porous rock on top of the porous rock where the gas is stored. The carbon dioxide will eventually react with the porous rock and turn into a solid, carbonate compound, but that process can take centuries, if not millennia, according to study co-authorSigurdur Gislason, research professor at the University of Iceland in Reykjavik.

A new way to hide CO2

The team, led by Juerg Matter, now an associate professor of geoengineering at the University of Southampton, tried something different. The researchers took the carbon dioxide emitted by a power plant in Iceland, pressurized it to 25 atmospheres. They then pumped the CO2 into a borehole that was filled with water, dissolving the gas and making something like seltzer water. The mixture was then pumped into a layer of porous, volcanic rock located some 1,640 feet (500 meters) below the surface of the ground. The rock reacted with the mixture and formed carbonate compounds.

Essentially, the researchers sped up the weathering of rocks, Gislason told Live Science. Here's how it works: The carbon dioxide in the water forms carbonic acid, which dissolves the basalts and makes them more porous. Meanwhile, the carbon and oxygen from the CO2 make new compounds, largely magnesium, iron and calcium carbonates, which are solids that can't go anywhere. "Calcium, iron, magnesium can all form carbonates," Gislason said.

The process is very like what happens naturally, except that when stone  either as mountains or stone buildings  weathers, it happens as it rains, and rainwater only converts a small amount of carbon at a time. In addition, because the CO2 added to the water is under a lot more pressure than it is in the atmosphere, the concentration of carbonic acid is many times higher than in rainwater, or even in the carbonated water that people drink.

The study was conducted over a two-year period, noted study co-author Martin Stute, a research scientist at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in New York. In that time, the team monitored the water as it percolated through the rock using monitoring stations placed some distance from the injection site. They detected no CO2.

Even though the process requires a lot of water initially, that water can be recycled, because the other elements in it  the carbon dioxide and the compounds in the rock  are all removed in the reactions that form the carbonates, said Stute. He added that another advantage is that the water needn't be fresh; seawater should work just as well, though that hasn't been tried yet.

The next steps will be conducting more experiments and scaling up, the researchers said.

Both Gislason and Stute noted that the carbon dioxide would need to be transported to pumping sites if projects like this were built commercially, so the technique probably lends itself best to power plants that are close to areas with porous basaltic rock. Gislason said that describes many areas with power plants. "There are opportunities for this in Indonesia, or Japan," he said.

Still, the method offers a possible way to get rid of carbon dioxide quickly and cleanly, he said. "In a sense, you just mimic nature," Gislason said. "Just speeding up the process."

The study is detailed in the June 10 issue of the journal Science.

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.
Nothing like a little sorcery to quell a fiery backlash. Code Black, which last week fired to series regulars amid a Season 2 cast shakeup, is introducing a new doctor with (admittedly very loose) ties to the Harry Potter universe.

RELATEDGreys New Romance, Becketts Bike, First Axed Show, Virgin Sex and 26 More Fall TV Predictions: Which Came True?

The character, Charlotte Piel, is described a former child star of an iconic movie franchise  think Hermione Granger in Harry Potter, reads the casting notice  who gave up acting to go to medical school. Now a resident at Angels Memorial, Charlotte struggles to be taken seriously by her new colleagues. The recurring role carries with it a series-regular option.

Charlotte is one of two major new additions to the Code Black cast. As TVLine reported on Monday, the CBS drama is also introducing a new male co-lead for Marcia Gay Harden in the form of fortysomething ex-combat doctor Colonel David Willis. Described as heroic, blunt, irreverent, and rule-breaking, Willis lands at Angels to teach the attendings and residents new war-tested techniques.

Casting for both roles is underway.

RELATEDMay Sweeps Massacre: 40+ Deaths From Once, Originals, NCIS and More  Which Loss Hit You Hardest?

Last Friday, news broke that cast members Bonnie Somerville (Christa) and Raza Jaffrey (Neal) would not be returning in Season 2. Recurring players Boris Kodjoe (Will) and Jillian Murray (Heather), meanwhile, will be back as full-fledged series regulars.

In an impromptu Q&A with fans last Saturday, series creator Michael Seitzman conceded that losing Somerville and Jaffrey sucks for sure, before adding that hes excited about the new characters joining the team.

Launch Gallery: 2016 Fall TV Scoop: Babies, Deaths and More

Related stories

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James Corden Opens Tony Awards With Inspiring, Show-Stopping Number

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By Scott Malone

BOSTON (Reuters) - As lawmakers across the United States battle over whether to allow transgender Americans to use public restrooms that match their gender identities, universities are scrambling to ensure that dorms meet federal standards.

At a time of year when the nation's 2,100 residential colleges and universities are sorting out student housing assignments, they also are poring over a May letter from the Obama administration that thrusts them into the national debate on transgender rights.

Known as the "dear colleague" letter, it makes clear that federal law protects transgender students' right to live in housing that reflects their gender identity.

Schools that fail to provide adequate housing to transgender students could face lawsuits or the loss of any federal funding they rely on.

Although hundreds of universities had begun to offer gender-inclusive housing in response to student demand in recent years, many are now reviewing or expediting their plans so they can provide the option to incoming students for the first time this fall.

The policies are intended not only to accommodate transgender students, university officials say, but to help siblings, gay students who want to live with straight friends of the opposite gender or simply groups comfortable with mixed-gender housing.

The May letter from the U.S. Departments of Education and Justice invoked Title IX, the 1972 law prohibiting gender discrimination at schools that receive federal funds.

"Title IX and the 'dear colleague' letters make all of us, all institutions, more accountable for students who may be on the margins," said Darryl Holloman, dean of students at Georgia State University, which offered gender-inclusive housing options for the first time in the 2015-2016 academic year.

'ONLY A MATTER OF TIME'

There are no official U.S. statistics on the number of colleges that offer gender-inclusive housing, although a count by Campus Pride, a non-profit that focuses on supporting the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender students in U.S. higher education, found it could be as low as one in 10.

Story continues

The author of that study, Genny Beemyn, director of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst's Stonewall Center, acknowledged the count, which shows just 203 universities, may underestimate the number of schools that offer gender-inclusive housing.

"More and more schools are grappling with it," Beemyn said. "It's only a matter of time until this becomes a much bigger issue."

Universities in the Northeast and along the West Coast have been quickest to allow gender-inclusive housing, with those in the South and religiously affiliated schools least likely to do so, according to observers, including Demoya Gordon, transgender rights project attorney with Lambda Legal, an LGBT rights advocacy group.

The Association of College and University Housing Officers-International has seen an increase in the number of questions it gets about transgender housing, said spokesman James Baumann.

"It is certainly something that has gained momentum," Baumann said. "When I first started 10 years ago the questions was, 'Should we?' And now the question is, 'How can we?'"

The same letter that has universities examining their transgender housing policies sparked a broader fight by telling U.S. public grammar and high schools to allow transgender students to use bathrooms and locker rooms that reflect their gender identities.

Thirteen U.S. states joined a lawsuit accusing the Obama administration of overreaching, attempting to add transgender protections to a 1972 law that never mentioned the subject.

LESS OPPOSITION

The university moves have been less controversial in part because the population affected is one of the segments of society most comfortable with transgender issues.

Some 57 percent of 18- to 29-year-olds told a Reuters/Ipsos poll taken April 14 through May 3 that they believed people should use public restrooms that match the gender with which they identify. That is a far higher percentage than the 40 percent of Americans of all ages who held that view. The poll included responses from 6,723 people and has a credibility interval of 1.4 percentage points.

Few students are choosing gender-inclusive housing. At Georgia Tech's Atlanta campus, 42 out of some 4,100 students housed in dorms sought it last year.

When Johns Hopkins University first offered it in the 2014-2015 academic year, 30 out of some 2,500 students enrolled, a number that doubled to 60 the following year.

"There are certainly some transgender students for whom it matters a lot but if it's a gay man whose best friend is a lesbian and they decide they want to live together, this is an option," said Demere Woolway, director of LGBTQ life at the Baltimore university.

College officials interviewed also emphasized they have no plans to phase out traditional gender-segregated housing.

"We have students ... who want to maintain spaces where they are with people who have the same gender identity," said Elizabeth Lee Agosto, senior associate dean of student affairs at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, which has offered gender-inclusive housing since 2007. "It's important to have the full spectrum."

(Reporting by Scott Malone; Editing by Bill Trott)
From Cosmopolitan

A junior at Worcester Polytechnic Institute was raped during a semester in Puerto Rico in 2012. Now, responding against her lawsuit claiming the school was negligent in keeping her safe, the college's lawyers are saying her "risky" behavior was partially to blame for her own rape, ABC News reports.

The victim, referred to in the lawsuit as Jane Doe, was raped by security guard William Rodriguez while on a school-sponsored semester in Puerto Rico. After a night out in San Juan in April 2012, Doe returned to a building partly rented out for student and faculty housing. After she fell in the lobby, Rodriguez picked her up and walked with her to the elevator. He got on with her and asked if she wanted to go to the roof to see the lights; she agreed and they went to the roof, where he raped her. He was convicted of aggravated rape and was sentenced to 20 years behind bars.

Jane Doe and her family have filed a civil suit against the university, saying the school did not provide a safe environment for her and didn't do enough to prevent her rape. And that's where the case gets messy. Lawyers representing the school's insurance carrier at the time are saying that the victim is partially responsible for her rape because she ignored safety training that told her to avoid "excessive or irresponsible consumption of alcohol" and "not go to places with people she did not know." (You can read the full court documents via NECN.)

According to the lawyers, Jane Doe claims to have had "only one watermelon drink, but acknowledged it contained three to four shots of liquor." The Boston Globe notes that Jane Doe was asked by lawyers if her parents had taught her "don't take candy from strangers." Then, they asked her, "So it was okay to, despite that fact that you felt it was weird and you were surprised that he got into the elevator with you, you felt it was okay to go to the roof, a dark secluded roof with a man you know nothing about, whose name you don't even know, and you felt that was not risky behavior?" She responded, "Yeah. No, I don't think it's risky behavior is my answer," because she was told to trust security guards.

Worcester Polytechnic Institute insisted in court that it did not want to blame the victim, but argued that the school was not negligent in protecting its students. The college has since responded to the report by clarifying that it was their insurance carrier at the time that is involved in the lawsuit. "When a lawsuit is filed, the university's insurance carrier at the time of the incident takes responsibility for the case. Although we parted ways with that provider several years ago, they are litigating this case. Their legal approach and language have not been vetted or approved by the university," the statement reads. "WPI has never and would never blame a victim for being raped."

Follow Megan on Twitter.
Is Comcast looking to unfairly prop up Telemundo?

Liberman Broadcasting Inc. thinks so. In April, the owner of Estrella TV filed a program carriage complaint with the FCC, alleging that Comcast was refusing to extend a reasonable offer for fair distribution and compensation so as to benefit Comcast's own Spanish-language networks. What's more, Liberman asserted that Comcast's demand for streaming rights constituted the "kind of financial interest as a condition of carriage" that is barred by Section 616 of the 1992 Cable Act.

Comcast's reply, made public on Wednesday, seeks to translate Liberman's beef as the wrong entity asserting the wrong claim under the wrong statute and that if given any credence would make it unlawful anytime a cable or satellite distributor had the temerity to ask for digital rights.

Estrella was removed last year from Comcast's service in Houston, Denver and Salt Lake City after negotiations for carriage broke down. Liberman is now asking the FCC to do something about this.

In its reply, Comcast asserts that Liberman has no standing to pursue such claims. The cable giant tells the FCC that Congress made rules of the road for broadcasters and rules of the road for cable networks, and that broadcaster Liberman doesn't seem to know the difference by fashioning itself to be a "video programming vendor."

If Liberman doesn't like the offer it is getting, says Comcast, it can always invoke the must-carry rules for broadcasters. In fact, Estrella was switched from must-carry status in 2014 when Liberman hoped to negotiate higher retrans fees. Liberman and Comcast subsequently went back-and-forth on terms. Liberman didn't like the deal on the table, and so Estrella was dropped. Comcast says few of its customers complained.

As for the digital rights issue, Comcast isn't buying the hype.

"Although LBI characterizes the claim as an 'issue of first impression,' and a 'new cause of action,' a more apt label is 'frivolous,'" says Comcast.

Story continues

Comcast rejects the notion that Section 616 of the Cable Act could be interpreted so that its request for Estrella's digital programming rights would constitute an impermissible demand for a "financial interest" in the station. Comcast doesn't like Liberman's argument that "if these rights conferred no financial benefit, Comcast would neither want nor demand them."

Here's Comcast's retort: "LBI's tortured definition of 'financial interest' would expand the term to include an MVPD's interest in obtaining a license to distribute programming - which is precisely what occurs in every successful carriage negotiation. Comcast and other MVPDs receive (or at least hope to achieve) an economic benefit every time they reach an agreement to distribute programming, whether through transmission of linear signals to cable customers in their homes, video-on-demand offerings, or TV Everywhere. LBI's reading of the statute would make any request by an MVPD for carriage or additional distribution rights unlawful."
Photo: Vernon Lee



That old bogeyman has been resurrected. And one would have thought that with its unexpectedly strong performance at the general elections last year, the PAP-led government would relax a little and not see a ghost at every corner of Singapore.

But then, I should not have. The siege mentality that the late Lee Kuan Yew perfected as an art form since he came to power in 1959 is still prevalent in a leadership and a large section of the population three generations later. Just look at the lightning strike by the Ministry of Home Affairs earlier this week against foreign sponsorship of the pro-LGBT Pink Dot event.

I have a personal experience of being thrown the F word at me. When a group of media and other professionals, including myself, was launching The Independent news site three years ago, the government threw in the spectre of possible - what else? - foreign influence.

A press release by the Media Development Authority (MDA) said, the government had received specific information which gives it cause for concern over foreign interest to fund The Independent.

Foreigners were interested in funding the website and that became the reason to force The Independent to be registered. And this despite The Independent telling the MDA that the shareholders agreement had stated categorically that foreign funding was a no-no.

The very next day, The Straits Times was asking news website Malaysiakini if it was one of the foreigners interested in funding The Independent. I wonder who tipped off ST.

The foreigner is a favourite bogeyman of the government. Invoke this ghost and most Singaporeans will shut up and fall in line. Like some potential investors did when they saw the governments statement on The Independent.

The growth of the Pink Dot movement has been a striking development here with its annual gathering at the Speakers Corner growing in both sponsorship and participation.

From a situation when there were no sponsors when it held its inaugural rally in 2009 to 18 sponsors this year, Pink Dot has grown from strength to strength. Notably, this years event saw a jump in the number of foreign sponsors, including tech heavyweights like Apple, Google and Facebook, and financial giants Goldman Sachs and J. P. Morgan.

Story continues

The participation also grew to 28,000 people last year. This years figure was not revealed by the organisers, perhaps for fear that it will attract undue attention from the religious conservatives and, as a result, the government.

Singapores dance with the gay community started way back in 2003 when Goh Chok Tong revealed in  of all publications - the Time magazine that the civil service would accept gays. It was intended to tell an American audience that his country was beginning to shake off its stodgy image of being stuck in the old values of conservatism.

Then came the eye-opening debate in Parliament in 2007 on repealing the anti-gay law. The liberals lost but a high point came when LKY indicated during a meeting with the PAP youth wing that he was on the progressive side of the divide on the issue. Why should we criminalise it? he thought aloud.

The underlying argument behind these developments is economics  that the pink dollar is worth chasing; embracing gays, many of whom are highly talented, will give the economy a big push.

As the gay community became more vocal, the inevitable pushback from the religious conservatives came. The Wear White movement, started by some Muslim and Christian groups against the Pink Dot event in 2014, raised tensions. But the government, though keeping a close watch, did not act.

So what has changed now? The answer might lie in how Home Affairs Minister K. Shanmugam articulated the threat of a terrorist attack in Singapore recently. He said starkly that it was not a question of if but when.

And with the annual Pink Dot event bringing tens of thousands of people to the Speakers Corner and the restive Muslim and Christian communities showing their displeasure, the government must have gone for a round-about solution: Cut off the money pipeline from foreign sponsors and let the Pink Dot become a fringe activity.

Now that the conservatives have won, will they push their cause further? Will the Pink Dot people take this defeat lying down? What will the governments next action be in the name of security?

Watch out for the next bogeyman.

P N Balji is a veteran Singaporean journalist who is the former chief editor of TODAY newspaper, and a media consultant. The views expressed are his own.



Stay updated. Follow us on Facebook.


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Just one day after NXT TakeOver: The End, the yellow brand is back in action at Full Sail in Winter Park, Florida. Please be aware that everything you read in the subsequent paragraphs is an actual, massive, legitimate spoiler for what will happen over the next several weeks of NXT television. You may read on only at your own risk. But if youre the sort of person who just simply cannot wait until next week to find out what happens next, congratulations! This post is for you!

Results from the 6/9/16 NXT tapings:

Related Links:





There were reportedly three weeks worth of tapings on Thursday night, which would take NXT television all the way through June 29. As such, there is set to be one more set of NXT tapings prior to the brand split.

 In a dark match, Tucker Knight defeated Patrick Clark

 The Authors of Pain (accompanied by Paul Ellering) destroyed two local talents in a squash match, getting the pin following their lariat/Russian leg sweep double-team move

 Carmella defeated the returning Tessa Blanchard via her leg choke submission hold

 TM61 defeated an Alexa Bliss-less Blake and Murphy. Heel miscommunication led to a defeat, as Blake hit Murphy with an errant clothesline, allowing TM61 to hit their finisher for the pin. Following the match, Murphy yelled at Blake at ringside

 In a rematch from TakeOver, Andrade Cien Almas once again defeated Tye Dillinger. The crowd was reportedly solidly behind Dillinger, while Almas received a mixed reaction

 Finn Balor came to the ring in street clothes and pondered what was next for him in a promo. He was interrupted by Shinsuke Nakamura, who called Balor an icon of NXT. Nakamura says that before he can challenge for the NXT title, he has to beat Balor. They agree to a BABYFACE RESPECT MATCH at a future date

 Ember Moon  the renamed Athena  defeated Mandy Rose by hitting the O-Face, which is her diving cutter finisher. Conflicting reports on this, as it was either a dark match or will serve as the television debut for both women

Story continues

 Oney Lorcan  which is the new name of Christopher Girard, AKA Biff Busick  defeated Tye Dillinger with a neckbreaker after Dillinger was reportedly distracted by the crowd chanting 10, which doesnt make a whole lot of sense to read, but Im sure everything is fine, nobody panic

 No Way Jose defeated Josh Woods in a squash match. After Joses match, Aries came to the ring to cut a promo. He said that he believes youre not defined by your victories, but by your defeats. He says he and Jose spoke after TakeOver and Jose taught Aries how to dance things out. Aries and Jose start dancing together, but then Aries hits Jose with the rolling elbow and locks in the Last Chancery to cement the heel turn

 Bayley defeated Deonna Purrazzo, who is still feeling the effects of the curse from when she desecrated that mummys tomb

 Nia Jax obliterated Liv Morgan in short order with a huge powerbomb

 Tye Dillinger came to the ring and said he was frustrated at having already lost twice. He called out Cien Almas, but quickly bailed with no match taking place. Reports indicated this interaction may have been in the service of picking up some reshoots for their match toward the beginning of the tapings

 Shinsuke Nakamura defeated the once and future Buddy Murphy with a Kinshasa

 Alexa Bliss defeated Carmella with a sparkle splash in a lengthy match that the crowd wasnt super into (according to reports)

 Cien Almas defeated Noah Kekoa. The crowd engaged in some WE WANT TYE chants during this match

 Johnny Gargano and Tommaso Ciampa defeated Zack Ryder and Mojo Rawley. After the match, Gargano and Ciampa got on the microphone and staked their claim to a title shot, given they defeated the new champions two weeks ago. American Alpha came out to respond. Gable and Jordan said they would have no problem taking care of the Authors of Pain in addition to reclaiming their belts from the Revival. That brought out the Revival, who took exception to challengers demanding title matches. William Regal finally came out and announced that Gable and Jordan will receive a two-out-of-three-falls title rematch next week. Gable, Jordan, Gargano and Ciampa shake hands, but then the Authors of Pain appear and lay out all four men. Paul Ellering comes out on the ramp to call the Authors away.

 In the final match of the tapings, Samoa Joe defeated Oney Lorcan. Joe picked up the win with the Muscle Buster
By Rollo Ross LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Hollywood's top stars such as Steven Spielberg, Harrison Ford and J.J. Abrams came together on Thursday to fete John Williams, the prolific composer of some of cinema's most memorable scores including "Star Wars" and "Jaws," as he was honored by the American Film Institute. Williams, 84, received the lifetime achievement award at a star-studded gala dinner hosted by AFI, an organization that aims to preserve the heritage of American cinema. "Tomorrow morning, when Im back at work, I will try to deserve all of this," Williams said as he accepted the award. Williams is the first composer to receive the AFI's lifetime achievement award. Williams, a graduate of New York's Julliard School, has more than 150 film scores to his name, many which have become embedded into pop culture, such as "Jurassic Park," besides the "Indiana Jones" and "Harry Potter" series. He is known for frequently collaborating with filmmaker Steven Spielberg, one of several directors and film stars including Tom Hanks and George Lucas who joined in giving the veteran composer a standing ovation when he was announced on stage. "You take our movies, many of them about our most impossible dreams and, through your musical genius, you make them real and everlasting for billions and billions of people," Spielberg said in his speech. The composer has won five Oscars out of 50 nominations over his seven-decade career. His score for 1977's "Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope" was named the most memorable film score of all time by the AFI in 2005. Williams was nominated for a best original score Oscar this year for composing the score for Disney's highly anticipated blockbuster hit film, "Star Wars: The Force Awakens." Other recipients of the AFI lifetime achievement award include Spielberg, Hanks, Alfred Hitchcock, Elizabeth Taylor, Jane Fonda and most recently, comedic actor Steve Martin. (Reporting by Piya Sinha-Roy; Editing by Clarence Fernandez)
As the debate on Bill C-14 (the medical assistance in dying bill) rages on in the Senate, the Honourable Senator Anne C. Cools, an independent senator representing Ontario, made an interesting argument. Parliament is considering Bill C-14 as a way of addressing the decision of the Supreme Court of Canada in Carter. The Court spoke, and now Parliament is answering with a bill  this is referred to by some as the ever-lasting "conversation" between the judicial and legislative branches of government. But is Parliament not, itself, judicial?



Senator Cools argues that "[the Senate] is part of the High Court of Parliament, and it is a court of competent jurisdiction, just like the Supreme Court, according to section 24 of [the Constitution Act, 1982])." That section sets out that a person may apply to any competent court for a remedy, should their rights or freedoms under the Charter be infringed.



This argument is premised on the idea that the Senate retains residual, albeit unused, judicial authority that Senator Cools, and others, argue is imported to the Senate by the statement that Canada has "a constitution similar in principle to that of the United Kingdom," where the House of Lords, the second chamber of the British Parliament, was up until very recently a body that actively heard and decided upon judicial cases as though it were a supreme court.



The argument is that the Senate (and, by extension, Parliament), as a "court of competent jurisdiction," may exercise the "sovereignty of Parliament" and receive applications for redress for the infringement of the Charter, and to determine (a) whether the Charter has in fact been infringed and, if so, (b) what remedies would be appropriate, and what interpretation of the legislation should be upheld. What do you folks think of Senator Cools' interpretation?



Should Parliament be able to exercise judicial discretion, as though it were a court?
Https%3a%2f%2fblueprint-api-production.s3.amazonaws.com%2fuploads%2fcard%2fimage%2f112985%2fjonasnowandthen_1024

Nick Jonas just dropped his new album, Last Year Was Complicated, and it is currently enjoying the number one slot on iTunes.

But before we sink our teeth into what Nick calls his "most personal" body of work yet, let's take a moment to remember the path that brought Nick Jonas to where he is today.

If you know every word to Jealous, but dont know what Broadway has to do with Nick, keep reading be ready for some charming footage of 12-year-old Nick singing.

SEE ALSO: Nick Jonas' 'Last Year Was Complicated' is actually pretty simple

1999: Nick has previously chalked everything up to being in the right place at the right time when it comes to his discovery. A woman overheard him singing at his mothers hair salon in New Jersey and referred him to an agent. Soon, Jonas was auditioning for Broadway shows and went on to perform in four shows, including Beauty and the Beast, Les Miserables and Sound of Musicall by the age of 11.









2005: Nick didnt head straight to Disney Channel quite yet. After Broadway, he recorded Joy To The World (A Christmas Prayer) which made its way onto Christian Radio and led to a solo record deal with Columbia Records. Dear God was the first single off of the album, but the song that stuck out was Please Be Mine which featured his brothers, Kevin and Joe Jonas. This was the brothers' first official collaboration and ended up launching them into boy band territory after being re-recorded for their 2006 debut album, Its About Time.

2007: The brothers kept things nice and easy and went with the band name Jonas Brothers. They were dropped from Columbia Records in 2007 according to Billboard, but promptly picked up again by Hollywood Records.

After tours, soundtrack appearances and Baby Bottle pop jingles, the band released Jonas Brothers, a reintroduction of sorts to the trio. It did well and launched them into the Billboard Charts. TV appearances, original movies, White House visits and headlining arena tours followed during these peak JoBro fever years. The went on to release two more albums.

Story continues

2009: After his profile shot up, Nick, the second youngest Jonas (never forget about Frankie), decided to test out solo material again. While the Jonas Brothers were still together Nick released a project called Who I Am by a new group dubbed Nick Jonas and the Administration, modeled after Bruce Springsteen and the E-Street Band. The band included members of Princes entourage. Nick and the musicians toured the album the following year.









2010-2012: Nick took acting a notch higher from his Jonas Brother ventures and went back to his theater roots with roles in Les Miserables in London, Hairspray in Los Angeles and a stint on Broadway starring in How to Succeed in Business Without Trying.

In 2012 the Jonas Brothers left Hollywood Records after three albums.









2013: Then...it happened. The unthinkable. Due to creative differences and an alleged friction, Jonas Brothers broke up  much to the dismay of fans who believed that a band of brothers couldn't actually break up.

The brothers responded with an open letter to supporters, stating "The time has come for us to move forward on individual career paths. We have been a band of brothers for 10 years and are now choosing simply to be brothers."

People still cried a lot.

2014: So how did Nick go from Broadway to boyband back to Broadway to now writing sexed up anthems in clubs across the world? His calculated rebranding effortsshort hair, shirtless photoshoots, risque acting roles, hip-hop hooks (all paired with normal 20-something-year-old growth and change)are reflected in his first 'adult' solo album, titled Nick Jonas, and the ruthlessly infectious single, "Jealous."

"I wanted to be completely open and transparent stepping into a new phase and with the idea that Im starting over as a brand new artist," he told J-14.

Nick also announced Safehouse Records, a new artist-centric label with Island Records, Demi Lovato and music executive Phil McIntyre.

2016: Today, Nick is well positioned at the intersection of pop and R&B. While he might not be the prince or king of pop, he definitely wears the bachelor of pop title well.









Don't worry: The day has finally returned and it's now cool to like Nick Jonas again.

You have everything you need to fully embrace the latest album, Last Year Was Complicated.

Go forth and conquer all Jonas related triviawe wish you the best of luck.




Members of Congress will read the letter from the woman who was sexually assaulted by a former Stanford University student on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives.

Next week, California Representative Jackie Speier will sponsor a special order, according to the Huffington Post, where fellow members will read from the statement over the course of an hour. It is expected to be a bipartisan exercise.

Speier and Texas Representative Ted Poe read excerpts from the victims letter on the House floor Thursday, putting the words of the woman into the congressional record.

Brock Turner, then a member of the Stanford swim team, was convicted of sexually assaulting the woman in January 2015 and the trial  especially Turners sentencing, which critics have said is too lenient  has attracted national attention. The victim in the case read her statement aloud in court and published it online last week, where it went viral.

Vice President Joe Biden penned an open letter in response to the statement earlier Thursday, noting that her words and bravery meant something to victims of sexual assault across the world.
By Brendan Pierson

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A Connecticut businessman pleaded guilty on Friday to pocketing money he made selling antiques instead of using it to pay a judgment he owed U.S. regulators for illegal stock trading.

Robert Olins, the former CEO of now-defunct television display maker SpatiaLight Inc, pleaded guilty in open court to conspiring to obstruct justice and to money laundering before U.S. District Judge Jesse Furman in Manhattan federal court.

He agreed to give up $657,000 to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and to a court-appointed receiver to which he also owes money.

Olins is set to be sentenced on September 29. He has agreed not to appeal any sentence less than three years and five months. His attorney declined to comment after the plea hearing.

Olins, 59, was arrested last August.

According to a criminal complaint, he made $657,000 selling antiques in 2012, the year after the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission won a $3.4 million judgment against him.

Authorities say Olins conspired with an antiques dealer to hide the sale from a court-appointed receiver tasked with helping the SEC collect the judgment.

The $3.4 million judgment stemmed from a 2007 lawsuit by the SEC against Olins, SpatiaLight and Olins' wholly-owned company Argyle Capital Management Corp.

The SEC contended that Olins and Argyle illegally sold more than 400,000 shares of SpatiaLight stock without disclosing the sales.

In 2012, a Manhattan federal judge appointed Oklahoma-based American Bank and Trust Company as receiver to help satisfy the judgment by overseeing the sale of pieces in Olins' arts and antiques collection, which has been appraised at $8.6 million to $13.8 million.

The receiver itself had lent Argyle $3.5 million in 2003, of which $2.6 million remained unpaid. The proceeds of the sale were to be used to pay the receiver, the SEC and other creditors.

The antiques dealer accused of conspiring with Olins, Henry Neville, was also charged with bank fraud and obstructing justice in May of this year. He has pleaded guilty, but has not been sentenced, according to court records.

Story continues

Neville was director of New York operations for antiques dealing company Mallett Inc from 2006 until some time last year. He is no longer listed on Mallett's website, and an employee of the company declined to comment on Friday.

SpaciaLight went out of business in February 2011 after filing for bankruptcy and being liquidated.

The case is USA v. Olins, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, No. 15-cr-00861.

(Reporting By Brendan Pierson in New York, additional reporting by Nate Raymond in New York; Editing by Andrew Hay)
By Curtis Skinner

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - The former Stanford University swimmer, whose sentence for sexual assault has been widely condemned as too lenient, spoke of drug and alcohol use before entering college, undermining his claims to a judge that he lacked experience with alcohol, court documents showed on Friday.

Brock Turner, 20, was sentenced by Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge Aaron Persky to six months in county jail after being convicted of sexually assaulting an unconscious woman. Prosecutors had sought a six-year jail term.

In a letter to the judge before his sentencing, Turner said he did not have experience with alcohol. "Coming from a small town in Ohio, I had never really experienced celebrating or partying that involved alcohol," according to court documents.

He said in the letter that when he arrived at Stanford, he was encouraged by older members of his swim team and friends to drink during social situations.

"I wish I had the ability to go back in time and never pick up a drink that night," he said in the letter.

Court officials released numerous text messages sent and received by Turner that referenced buying and using marijuana and drinking alcohol before he entered Stanford, the court records showed.

In June 2014, Turner texted his sister about "raging" the previous night after spending an hour and a half drinking, according to court documents. That April, he discussed pooling money to buy marijuana with a friend, court records showed.

Turner's lawyer, Mike Armstrong, sent a text message to Reuters declining comment on the documents.

Uproar over the sentence was partially fueled by a letter from Turner's father to the judge that described the assault as "20 minutes of action," and a statement by the victim to the court detailing the January 2015 assault and its repercussions on her life. It is part of growing outrage over sexual assaults on U.S. college campuses.

Story continues

At a Friday press briefing, when asked if President Barack Obama shared the anger expressed by Vice President Joe Biden in an open letter to the victim, White House spokesman Josh Earnest declined to comment on the case.

But, he said, "It is fair to say that the president feels strongly that every act of sexual assault and sexual violence and rape is wrong and one that deserves a forceful rebuke to make clear to everyone that we have certain principles and we have certain values in our country."

Officials have said Persky has received death threats since imposing the sentence, and he faces a possible recall effort led by a Stanford law professor.

Women's advocacy group UltraViolet said it would deliver on Friday a petition with more than 1 million signatures to the California Commission on Judicial Performance, an independent state agency, calling for Persky's removal from the bench. The group said it has hired a plane to fly over Sunday's Stanford graduation pulling a banner that will read, "Protect Survivors. Not Rapists. #PerskyMustGo."

USA Swimming, the U.S. national governing body for the sport, said Turner is not a member and would not be eligible in the future given his conviction, USA Swimming spokesman Scott Leightman said in an email. Turner's membership expired at the end of 2014, Leightman said.

USA Swimming prohibits and has zero tolerance for sexual misconduct, Leightman said.

Turner is due to be released on September 2 from the Santa Clara County jail. He was booked on June 2.

(Reporting by Curtis Skinner; Additional reporting by Suzannah Gonzales in Chicago and Doina Chiacu in Washington; Editing by Ben Klayman, Toni Reinhold)
ZAGREB (Reuters) - Croatia's technocrat Prime Minister Tihomir Oreskovic said on Friday he had no plans to resign under pressure from the conservative HDZ party, the biggest in the ruling coalition. The HDZ filed a no-confidence motion against Oreskovic on Tuesday over his handling of a political row between the HDZ and its junior coalition partner, the Most ("Bridge") party. "I can't step down as it would mean I'm guilty and accept false accusations against me. I want to respond to it in the parliament which approved me as prime minister. It is a matter of honor," Oreskovic told reporters. The HDZ has accused Oreskovic of trying to boost his own political power instead of tackling economic priorities. The HDZ has voiced confidence it can gather a new parliamentary majority, but analysts believe this will be very difficult to achieve without Most. It said late on Friday it would nominate Finance Minister Zdravko Maric for a prime minister-designate. "We wouldn't say that if we were not sure in a new parliamentary majority," HDZ Vice-President Oleg Butkovic was quoted as saying by state news agency Hina. Most's leader and Deputy Prime Minister, Bozo Petrov, has also dismissed the HDZ call for Prime Minister Oreskovic, Deputy Prime Minister Tomislav Karamarko, who is also leader of the HDZ, and Petrov himself to step down. Most wants Karamarko to leave the government because of an alleged conflict of interest arising from his wife's business ties with a lobbyist for Hungarian energy group MOL, the biggest shareholder in Croatian utility INA. The government in Zagreb and MOL are in dispute over management rights and investment strategy at INA. A vote on the HDZ's motion against Oreskovic is expected to take place next Thursday or Friday. "I still hope reason will prevail and that this government, with some changes, will be able to carry on," Oreskovic said. If the government is voted out and no one can secure the support of a majority of deputies for the formation of a new cabinet within 30 days, President Kolinda Grabar Kitarovic must call a snap election. (Reporting by Igor Ilic; Editing by Richard Balmforth)
Prague (AFP) - The Czech centre-left coalition weakened Friday as a popular junior partner threatened to quit over a planned police reform, raising the spectre of an early election more than a year ahead of schedule.

The centrist ANO party led by billionaire Finance Minister Andrej Babis blasted a controversial proposed reform that would merge police units fighting economic and organised crime.

The Czech Republic's second richest man argues the move would make it more difficult to fight rampant corruption in the EU country of 10.5 million people.

Babis said the reforms would cause "irreversible damage to the police" adding that as ANO "we refuse to bear this political responsibility" in an open letter to Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka published on Friday.

Sobotka, a social democrat, hit back at what he termed an "attempt by ANO to politicise and destabilise the work of the police" in an emailed statement Friday.

The uneasy coalition partners are expected to meet next Wednesday.

An opinion poll published last week showed the Babis's centrists beating Sobotka's CSSD Social Democrats.

A survey by the TNS Aisa pollsters showed ANO scoring 66 of the 200 seats in parliament, compared to just 50 for the prime minister's social democrats.

Both parties face regional and senate elections in October, while the next regularly scheduled general election is expected in October 2017.

A legacy of four decades of totalitarian rule, corruption has plagued the Czech Republic since its 1993 split with Slovakia.

A self-made farm products mogul worth $2 billion, Babis, 61, has wooed voters with promises of prosperity and by insisting his money makes him immune to the graft permeating Czech politics.

In late 2013 he burst out of nowhere with ANO, or the Action of Dissatisfied Citizens, to win a surprise second spot in a snap election just 1.8 percentage points behind Sobotka's Social Democrats.

This year, Babis has repeatedly threatened to pull the plug on his coalition with Sobotka.
Despite having been retired from late night television for over a year, former Late Show host David Letterman re-entered the limelight on Thursday when Dateline NBC previewed Tom Brokaws interview with him. That first clip concerned Stephen Colberts tenure as the new face of The Late Show, and Lettermans concerns about why CBS didnt involve him in the process and why a woman didnt get the gig. Even out of context, Letterman and Brokaws conversation sounds fascinating  especially now that a second clip reveals the retirees thoughts on the 2016 presidential election. And yes, he talks about Donald Trump, but not everything he has to say about the presumptive Republican nominee is insulting or comedic.

I understand that hes repugnant to people, said Letterman, adding that the New York real estate mogul is a despicable person. However, the 69-year-old comedian then turned the comment on its head by defending Trumps right to run for president. And no, thats no an exaggeration:

The men putting together the Constitution, witnessing this election, wouldnt they have just said, Thats part of the way we set it up. Good luck'?

When Brokaw admitted his interviewee was absolutely right since Trump didnt cheat by getting the nomination, that spurred Letterman even further:

In everybodys school, you hear, The great thing about America is anybody can grow up to be President. Oh, jeez. I guess that might be true.

So yeah, that just happened. David Letterman, the man who called Trump a racist in 2011 and issued a pseudo apology shortly thereafter, offered a defense of the leading Republican presidential candidates run for the White House. A lazy defense, to be sure, but one that the Trump campaign will probably waste no time in re-framing as an endorsement.

Brokaws interview with Letterman airs Sunday, June 12 at 7 p.m. ET on NBC.

(Via Entertainment Weekly)


What? Not a security inquiry like they've been telling us all along?

What? Not alike they've been telling us all along? http://ec.tynt.com/b/rf?id=bBOTTqvd0r3Pooab7jrHcU&u=DailyMail

'That's what their responsibility is,' Earnest said. 'And that's why the president, when discussing this issue in each stage, has reiterated his commitment to this principle that any criminal investigation should be conducted independent of any sort of political interference.'
david letterman donald trump dateline on assignment

Not even the chance to make fun of Donald Trump's presidential run gives David Letterman any regrets about retiring. Surprisingly, it barely seems to register on his joke radar.

When Tom Brokaw asked Letterman in a new interview if he has any feelings of missing out, the retired "Late Show" host didn't seem to feel that Trump's run was all that comical.

"I understand that he's repugnant to people," Letterman said during his first television interview since retiring, on "Dateline NBC: On Assignment." "The men putting together the Constitution, witnessing this election, wouldn't they have just said, 'That's part of the way we set it up. Good luck?'"

He then added, "There's nothing illegal going on. It's just he's despicable."

Letterman was able to find the silver lining  and inject a little humor  in the subject of Trump's run.

"And in this very school," the retired host said while he and Brokaw spoke in front of a school, "and everybody's school, you hear, 'The great thing about America is anybody can grow up to be president.' Oh, jeez."

The full interview will air on "Dateline: On Assignment" this Sunday at 7 p.m. on NBC.

Watch the excerpt from the interview below:





More From Business Insider


- By Kyle Ferguson





Guru David Tepper (Trades, Portfolio), founder and president of Appaloosa Management LP, added 1,271,440 shares to his stake in Delta Air Lines Inc. (DAL) during the first quarter.





Delta Air Lines is also traded in Germany, Mexico, Switzerland and the U.K.

Delta Air Lines is an international airline company that provides air transportation for its passengers as well as cargo transportation throughout the U.S. and across the world. The company operates its business in Amsterdam, Atlanta, Boston, Detroit, London-Heathrow, Los Angeles, Minneapolis-St. Paul, New York-LaGuardia, New York-JFK, Paris-Charles de Gaulle, Salt Lake City, Seattle and Tokyo-Narita.

Delta Air Lines has a market cap of $32.72 billion, a P/E ratio of 7.12, an enterprise value of $38.17 billion and a P/B ratio of 2.91.

Delta Air Lines has three good signs according to GuruFocus. The Piotroski F-score, which was invented by professor Joseph Piotroski, is 7 of 7, indicating a healthy situation for the company. Delta Air Lines' operating margin is expanding. Margin expansion is usually a good sign. The dividend yield is close to a three-year high at 1.27% per share.

During the first quarter Tepper added 1,271,440 shares of Delta Air Lines at an average price of $46.68. The purchase increased Tepperas stake by 17.36%. He now owns 8,594,855 shares of Delta Air Lines.

Tepper may have added to his stake for the following reasons:

Delta Air Lines is a world-renowned airline service that has reported a 30.10% increase in cash flow over the previous five years according to GuruFocus. This is a great sign for a long-term value investor according to both Seth Klarman (Trades, Portfolio) and Bruce Berkowitz (Trades, Portfolio).

The company is trading below its intrinsic value based on discounted earnings model. The company is worth $63.57 according to GuruFocus which provides a 33.30% margin of safety for Tepper.

Delta Air Lines has a Beneish M-Score of -2.75 indicating that the company is not a manipulator of its financial results.

Story continues







Below is a Peter Lynch chart that shows Delta Air Lines is undervalued.

1465548151259.png

Conclusion

Tepper has returned a remarkable, 26.7% for his Appaloosa hedge fund since its inception in 1993. Delta Air Lines has strong financials, and it's trading below its intrinsic value. It has a strong Piotroski F-Score. And, it also has a Beneish M-Score of -2.75. This indicates that the company is not a manipulator of its financial results.

Cheers to your investment success.

Start a free seven-day trial of Premium Membership to GuruFocus.

This article first appeared on GuruFocus.






The La Moneda Reserva Malbec 2015, an own-label bottle sold by Walmart's UK subsidiary Asda, is priced at 4.37 GBP ($6.27 USD) and won the 2016 Decanter Awards' Best Red Single-Varietal under 15 ($21.50).

The wine is usually sold for 5.75 ($8.25) but a special offer has seen the price adjusted downwards.

Judges at the UK's Decanter World Wine Awards praised the Central Valley production for its combination of quality and value, and described the wine's flavors as reminiscent of "succulent juicy berries," "freshly crushed black fruit, creamy vanilla yogurt and pepper spice."

"Our sole purpose is to recognize and reward quality, this is what consumers all over the world are interested in. We only award medals to wines in which consumers can have the utmost confidence," said DWWA chairman Steven Spurrier (via Metro UK.)

Wines of Chile UK Director Anita Jackson said that the win, along with five other Platinum Best in Show accolades for the country's produce, was "by far and away the best performance for Chile in any of the major wine competitions."
Hours after President Obama delivered his formal endorsement of Hillary Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination yesterday, Elizabeth Warren, a darling of the Partys most liberal wing, also fell in line behind the partys presumptive nominee. She closed out a day in which the Democratic Party, for the first time, offered presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump a taste of the full arsenal of firepower that will be trained on him from now until the general election in November.

Warren, who appears to derive real pleasure from attacking the New York billionaire, appeared on MSNBCs Rachel Maddow Show and delivered an endorsement of presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton that was in large part really a denunciation of Trump. She called the New York billionaire a small, insecure bully who thinks hes going to get his way by throwing nasty tantrums, by giving people ugly names, by saying racist and other kinds of outrageous things.

Related: Obamas Risky Decision to Endorse Clinton Before FBI Probe Is Concluded

She said, Im ready to get in this fight and work my heart out for Hillary Clinton to become the next president of the United States and to make sure that Donald Trump never gets any place close to the White House.

Wrapping up a primary season that has dragged on far longer than almost anyone expected, Warrens endorsement demonstrated that the Democratic Party is ready to begin in earnest the process of coalescing behind the former secretary of state.

Its hard to overstate the importance of Warrens endorsement of Clinton. The Massachusetts senators intense focus on increasing regulation of the financial services industry had cast her as one of Clintons chief antagonists within the Democratic Party early in the campaign. And because Clintons chief rival, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders constantly hammered Clinton for her connections to Wall Street, he created the impression that he and Warren were more closely aligned than either was with Clinton.

Story continues

Warrens decision to throw her support to the former secretary of state will make it easier for the most liberal element of the Democratic electorate -- from which Sanders draws most of his support -- to back Clinton. While there will be an element of Sanders base that will never back Clinton, her support will help reduce that resistance.

Related: Sanders Wouldnt End His Campaign, So Obama Just Did It For Him

And even as she endorsed Clinton, she praised the Vermont senator for his focus on social justice, income inequality and more.

What Bernie Sanders did was just powerfully important. He ran a campaign from the heart, she said. And he ran a campaign where he took these issues and he really thrust them into the spotlight. And he also brought -- these are issues near and dear to my heart. And he brought millions of people into the political process. He brought millions of people into the Democratic Party.

Warrens appearance on Maddows show came not long after she delivered a blistering denunciation of Trump at a meeting of the American Constitution Society, calling him, among many other things, a loud, nasty thin-skinned fraud who has never risked anything for anyone and who serves no one but himself.

Another of the Democratic Partys heavyweights, Vice President Joe Biden, tore into Trump at the same event, calling Trump a racist whose blatant disrespect for the authority of the courts would endanger the country.

Related: Trumps Dilemma -- Moving to the Center Could Alienate His Base

Trump, he said, cannot be trusted to respect the independence of the judiciary as a president.

Noting Trumps racially tinged attacks on the Mexican heritage of a judge who is presiding over a case related to now-defunct Trump University, Biden said, These are words in my view of one who would defy the courts if they ruled against him as president.

It's not the racism that worries me, Biden added. We've dealt with racists before. It's the potential impact on the court.

The coordinated assault on Trump came a week after President Obama dedicated an appearance in Elkhart, Indiana to excoriating the crazy economic proposals that Trump has made, and Clinton herself ripped his dangerously incoherent foreign policy ideas.

Related: 7 Ways Paul Ryans National Security Plan Challenges Donald Trump

The Democratic unity of purpose was made clear by Sanders, who briefly addressed the press after a meeting with President Obama Thursday. Even while emphatically promising to stay in the Democratic race through the Democratic nominating convention in July, he indicated that keeping Trump away from the White house was an overriding goal.

Donald Trump would clearly in my mind and I think the majority of Americans be a disaster as president of the United States, he said, vowing, I will do everything in my power, and I will work as hard as I can to make sure that Donald Trump does not become president of the United States.

Top Reads from The Fiscal Times:
From Harper's BAZAAR

Update, 8/2: After months of rumors swirling, Calvin Klein has officially confirmed the hire of Raf Simons as its new chief creative officer. The brand announced the news in a statement shared on Facebook, detailing Simons new role at the American fashion brand.

The new hire follows the announcement of Calvin Klein's new global strategy, introduced back in April. CEO of Calvin Klein, Steve Shiffman said in a statement:

"The arrival of Raf Simons as Chief Creative Officer signifies a momentous new chapter for Calvin Klein. Not since Mr. Klein himself was at the company has it been led by one creative visionary, and I am confident that this decision will drive the Calvin Klein brand and have a significant impact on its future. Raf's exceptional contributions have shaped and modernized fashion as we see it today and, under his direction, Calvin Klein will further solidify its position as a leading global lifestyle brand."

Following a three-year stint as creative director at Dior, the move marks Simons first foray into American fashion. It was announced just last month that Simons would be replaced by Valentino's Maria Grazia Chiuri at Dior. Fashion's never-ending game of designer musical chairs continues-and Simons taking the helm at Calvin Klein will surely be one to watch.

Read the full statement on Simons's new hire at Calvin Klein below:

Original Article, 6/9: Calvin Klein (the person) may have just dropped a major hint at the next creative director of Calvin Klein (the brand). During an interview with Andy Cohen at Sirius XM, the designer discussed his nakesake label as well as the void that's been left since Francisco Costa stepped down as creative director back in April.

When it came to revealing the fashion house's next creative director, Klein didn't name any names but he did drop a major bombshell hint at who could be lined up. For months now, the fashion industry has speculated that Raf Simons, who exited Dior back in October 2015, would be headed to Calvin Klein. Simons has been the only candidate rumored to fill Costa's shoes and Klein seemed to hint at that in his statement, "They just finally made changes in the design staff. They won't announce [who it is] publicly because it's under contract. But the whole industry knows."

Simons's non-compete agreement with LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton is set to expire at the end of July, just in time for Calvin Klein to announce a new creative director before Spring 2017 collections kick off in September. Let the designer musical chairs-watch begin.

[h/t Fashionista]
When the Supreme Court heard arguments in the case Loving v. the Commonwealth of Virginia, defendants Richard and Mildred Loving chose not to appear in person. In 1958, they had been convicted for the felony of miscegenation. As lawyers presented their arguments, 17 states remained steadfast in their refusal to repeal such laws banning interracial marriages. But, though he did not attend the arguments, Richard sent a message to the justices: Tell the Court I love my wife and it is just not fair that I cannot live with her in Virginia.

The justices unanimously agreed. On June 12, 1967, proscriptions against interracial marriage were declared unconstitutional.

In the years since, the couples victory has often been seen as a touchstone in the fight for black civil rights. The Lovings lawyers assertion before the court that anti-miscegenation statutes were  the most odious of the segregation laws and the slavery laws reinforced this assumption. As historian Peter Wallenstein aptly stated in his book Tell the Court I Love My Wife, There was no doubt in anybodys mind as to the racial identities, white and black, of the people who claimed to be Mr. and Mrs. Loving.

But the Lovings public persona was more myth than reality. While researching my book That the Blood Stay Pure: African Americans, Native Americans and the Predicament of Race and Identity in Virginia, I spoke to Mildred Loving, who died in 2008. I am not black, she told me during a 2004 interview. I have no black ancestry. I am Indian-Rappahannock. I told the people so when they came to arrest me.

At approximately 2 a.m. on July 11, 1958, Sheriff R. Garnett Brooks and his deputies barged into the couples bedroom. What are you doing in bed with this woman? Brooks barked as he shined his flashlight on the startled couple. Mildred responded, Im his wife. She pointed to the framed marriage license displayed on the dresser. The document read: Richard Perry Loving, white, Mildred Delores Jeter, Indian.

Story continues

Get your history fix in one place: sign up for the weekly TIME History newsletter

The Lovings, who had married in the District of Columbia on June 2, 1958, were in violation of Virginia code 2054, which declared marriages between white and colored persons unlawful, as well as code 2058, which made it unlawful to go out of state to marry with the intention to return and cohabit as husband and wife. The original legislation, which became the Racial Integrity Act on March 20, 1924, defined a white person as having only Caucasian blood. The Virginia ruling class, however, claiming descent from Pocahontas and John Rolfe, successfully lobbied the legislature to revise the definition to include what became known as the Pocahontas Exception. meaning that those with no more than 1/16th American Indian ancestry would be legally considered white.

This loophole was tested in two landmark 1920s cases in which the defendants convinced the courts that they were of white-Indian only ancestry and therefore not in violation of the law when they married white people. In 1930, legislators, fearing that blacks would use the Indian claim to subvert the law, restricted the Indian classification to reservation Indians on the Pamunkey and Mattaponi Reservations in King William County, the nations oldest reservations. Numerous non-reservation citizens claiming an Indian identity circumvented the restriction by marrying in Washington, D. C., where they were able to obtain marriage licenses with the Indian racial designation.

Mildred Loving was no exception. Her racial identity was informed by the deeply entrenched racial politics of her community in Central Point, Va. Residents were well aware of Virginias racial mores, which encouraged citizens with mixed African-Indian heritagelike Mildred Lovingto choose to identify as anything but black. By the time the state had passed the Racial Integrity Act, there was a deeply ingrained history of the denial of African ancestry. As longtime resident Marshall Wingfield stated in The History of Caroline County (1924), It is said that the predominating blood in them is that of the Indian and white races. Outside of their community, those light enough to pass for white, did. Darker residents attributed their complexions to American Indian ancestry.

When I asked Bernard Cohen, one of the Loving lawyers, about Mildreds racial identity, he denied knowing that his client identified as Indian. That news to me, he stated, she always insisted that she was black. Perhaps while her lawyers insisted that she was black, Mildred insisted she was Indian; but how could the legal team present a case aimed to dismantle the last of the slavery laws to a Supreme Court that viewed this issue only in terms of black and white?

Indeed, the Loving v. Virginia case goes far beyond the black-white love narrative begun a half century ago. In some ways, the Supreme Court triumphthe anniversary of which we now markdid represent the simple victory of love over hate. And yet this case is also a reminder that history is often more complicated than it looks.

The Long View

Historians explain how the past informs the present

Arica L. Coleman is the author of That the Blood Stay Pure: African Americans, Native Americans and the Predicament of Race and Identity in Virginia and chair of the Committee on the Status of African American, Latino/a, Asian American, and Native American (ALANA) Historians and ALANA Histories at the Organization of American Historians.
It used to be that when hecklers and demonstrators interrupted a Donald Trump campaign appearance, he'd say "I'd like to punch him in the face."



But on Friday, when a handful of female protesters interrupted his speech at the 2016 Faith and Freedom Coalition Conference in Washington, D.C., they were met with a kinder, gentler Trump.



Shortly after Trump spoke of limiting the number of Syrian refugees entering the U.S., shouts of "stop hate, stop Trump" and "refugees are welcome here" erupted from his audience.



As the last of what appeared to be four or five female demonstrators was being dragged from the room by security men grabbing them around the chest, Trump said, "Alright, freedom of speech, thank you darling, I appreciate it."









Donald Trump Calls Demonstrator 'Darling' as He and Hillary Clinton Trade Fire in D.C.| 2016 Presidential Elections, Donald Trump, Hillary Rodham Clinton

"Very sad. Very sad what's happening in our country. We are so divided, it's such a shame," he said, calling the women "professional agitators ... sent here by the other party."



Trump was addressing what was billed as one of the country's largest events for religious conservatives.





RELATED VIDEO: Does Donald Trump Rattle You?





Much of his 20-minute speech at the conference focused on trash-talking Democratic rival Hillary Clinton, who was less than a mile away, making a fired-up speech of her own  to the Planned Parenthood Action Fund.



Trump told his crowd that Clinton will abolish the second amendment (which is false) and bring in hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees (she's said 10,000 to 65,000).



While Trump promised his crowd he would appoint a pro-life judge, Clinton warned her own friendly crowd from the Planned Parenthood Action Fund about what a Trump presidency would mean to the causes they care about.



Ticking down his opposition to paid family leave, abortion rights and equal pay ("He says if women want equal pay, we should just  and this is a quote  'do as good a job as men', as if we weren't already," she said to cheers), Clinton recited the famous quote by her friend, the late Maya Angelou: "When someone shows you who they are believe them  the first time."



"Donald Trump has shown us who he is and we sure should believe him! a This is a man who has called women pigs, dogs and disgusting animals. Kinda hard to imagine counting on him to respect our fundamental rights."



She concluded with a call to arms. "We're in the middle of a concerted, persistent assault on women's health across our country," Clinton said in measured tones. "We have to ask ourselves, and you have to ask everyone you come in contact with: "Do we want to put our health, our lives, our futures in Donald Trump's hands?"
Kent Moyer

Kent Moyer, the founder and CEO of The World Protection Group (WPG), wasn't always a successful businessman.

After getting "cleaned out" in a bad divorce and trying to launch a tiny, languishing security company, he turned his attention to the oft-cited master of the deal.

"I read the Art of the Deal," Moyer told Business Insider. "I've always followed Trump, always admired Trump."

Moyer is one of the three former Trump University students that Trump featured in a campaign video voicing support for the now-defunct series of courses on real estate and investing.

"The courses that I took were outstanding," Moyer says in the video before explaining how Trump U allowed him to start WPG, a security firm that specializes in executive protection, which provides security services to high-profile individuals worldwide.

When you look back at having nothing and then starting a business and you look at the first things that I jumped into in terms of learning business skills, the basics of business, you have to really have a loyalty to Trump University because they gave me some of the basic business skills to start my business and I will never forget that.

While Trump U didn't technically help him start his business  WPG was founded in 2001 while Trump U didn't exist until 2005  Moyer says it allowed him to grow a small business into a thriving venture. Today, WPG has about 200 employees worldwide and is licensed in six different states, as well as internationally, including France and China, Moyer explained.

Trump University

Moyer, who attended Penn State, but dropped out before completing his degree, has always had a passion for martial arts but wasn't sure how to parlay such an interest into a career.

He started working at the Playboy Mansion in his early thirties as a body guard and opened up a martial arts school.

Story continues

In 2001, he launched WPG but says the company didn't begin to take off until he attended Trump U in 2005.

"I'm great at negotiations," Moyer said. He attributes this to his time spent in a negotiations course at Trump University.

He didn't, however, point to any other specific skills he learned while at Trump U and explained more broadly that he learned to surround himself with positive and intelligent individuals.

Moyer also stays ruthless in his pursuit of learning from successful people. To that end, he's taken seminars with Tony Robbins, a personal finance instructor and motivational speaker.

donald trump

Moyer also attended an advanced management program at Wharton. The five-week $55,000 program was certainly an investment for Moyer, but he says e chose to attend because of Trump, whose undergraduate alma mater was Wharton.

Most of this, he outlines as background on his LinkedIn page. His Trump U experience, however, isn't listed.

Regardless, Moyer draws comparison to the real-estate mogul.

"People say, 'you're the Donald Trump of security," Moyer said.

Moyer got in touch with the Trump campaign because of the "unfair treatment" of Trump University that he perceives in the media.

Trump is currently enmeshed in multiple lawsuits filed by former students of Trump University and faces a third fraud suit from New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, which likely won't go to trial until after the November election. The suits accuse Trump of defrauding thousands of students with worthless classes on real estate and investing.

Trump and his attorneys, however, continually reference stellar reviews from students, like Moyer.

A self-described "life-long Democrat," Moyer says he voted for Trump as a write-in candidate in the California primary and will vote for him in general election, pending his nomination.

NOW WATCH: Only a small percentage of law school graduates actually make big money  here's a simple way to tell if you'll be one of them





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Genval (Belgium) (AFP) - Opposition parties in the Democratic Republic of Congo on Friday said they had forged an alliance to demand that President Joseph Kabila quit when his term expires in December.

After a two-day meeting in Belgium, the groups issued a statement saying they had set up a joint organisation called "Rassemblement" whose goal is to "realise the struggle of the Congolese people for change and a state of law".

The opposition also a warning to Kabila, saying that if he stayed in power beyond December 19, when his second term elapses, it would be tantamount to a "constitutional coup d'etat".

But Kabila's camp -- represented by the Coalition for Presidential Majority -- rejected the resolutions adopted at the meeting as illegal, denouncing them as an "attempt to stage a coup d'etat".

"It's a plot against the nation," said coalition head Aubin Minaku in Kinshasa, who is also president of the National Assembly.

In power since 2001, Kabila is widely believed to be eyeing a third term in office in contravention of the constitution which allows only two.

The Belgian meeting, which took place at a hotel in Genval near Brussels, was called by veteran opposition figure Etienne Tshisekedi who will head up a committee to coordinate the group's decisions.

Tshisekedi, 83 -- an opposition leader since the era of strongman Mobutu Sese Seko, who ruled the country for three decades until 1997 -- came second to Kabila in a fraud-tainted 2011 election. He has been convalescing in Belgium since 2014.

Belgian Foreign Minister Didier Reynders welcomed a meeting whose outcome he hoped would prove "favourable".

"Belgium welcomes the work undertaken at the gathering this week with a view to reaching common opposition positions," Reynders said in a statement.

The statement added that Belgium hoped the talks would offer an opportunity to make real progress "as is the hope of the African Union."

Story continues

- 'United against you-know-who' -

Earlier, Tshisekedi told delegates they were gathered "as patriots to exchange views on the grave crisis affecting our country.

"More than ever, we must be united to get rid of you know who," he said.

At the same time, the opposition must be mindful of the possible dangers and get the president "to leave quietly... and not expose the people to bullets," he said.

Tshisekedi said the opposition could consider dialogue with Kabila but only under certain conditions -- respect for the constitution, release of political prisoners and oversight by the international community to ensure any agreement was enforced.

The strongman's supporters want elections due later this year to be delayed for two to four years.

No date has yet been set for the polls and late last year Kabila said he hoped to organise a "national dialogue" aimed at reaching a wide consensus ahead of any vote.

Tensions have soared in DRC in recent months over fears Kabila will postpone elections to extend his time in office.

The opposition groups attending the Belgian meeting said they wanted to see the full implementation of UN resolution 2277 which notably calls for political dialogue and legislative and presidential elections by November, a sentiment Reynders echoed.

Moise Katumbi, a leading DR Congo opposition figure who has announced his candidacy for the presidency, had been expected to attend the Belgian meeting but sent his closest advisers instead, organisers said.

Katumbi quit the DRC in May ostensibly for medical treatment and is now staying in Britain. He left the day after the government said he would be tried for endangering state security.
A van erupted into flames on Euston Road in London on Friday afternoon, June 10.

The petrol tank of the vehicle exploded on the busy road in the capitals centre at about 12:40pm, sending heavy black smoke into the sky.

Police asked drivers to reverse away from the scene, before cordoning off the underpass where the incident occurred.

Congestion has been reported near the Kings Cross station and Marylebone flyover. Credit: Twitter/HELVID2
Storms began lashing northern Tasmania on June 6, bringing devastating and deadly flooding, and prompting road closures and the evacuation of thousands of people from several at-risk areas. By June 9, the Tasmanian Government had estimated that the damage bill from the flooding could top $100 million, according to ABC, while more rain was being forecast on June 10.

At the time of writing, at least one person had died and two were missing, feared dead. The storms moved south after battering the east coast of mainland Australia, killing at least three people and destroying several coastal properties.

The drone video here shows torrents of water rushing through Cataract Gorge down the South Esk River, and into the Tamar River by the towns of Invermay and Launceston. On June 7, authorities ordered Invermays 3,000 residents to leave the town. The evacuees were allowed return the following day, after levee banks were credited with protecting the town. Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull visited the area on June 9, pledging financial assistance to those affected by the floods. Credit: YouTube/RED BARON DRONE IMAGES
By Andrew M. Seaman (Reuters Health) - Drug labels sometimes warn that the medications may disrupt sleep, but a new study suggests these drugs don't cause troubled sleep for most people. The researchers found "barely" any link between medications that warned about potential sleep disturbances and actual sleep problems among thousands of people interviewed for the study. "Sleep disturbances are a frequent problem especially in older people and we wanted to find out whether this might be due to the intake of sleep disturbing drugs," said lead author Anna-Therese Lehnich, of the University of Duisburg-Essen in Germany, in email to Reuters Health. She noted that in clinical trials, drugs are tested under strict protocols, which may be different from real-world scenarios. To see if the sleep disturbance warnings can be generalized to everyday people, the researchers collected data from 4,221 people ages 45 to 75 in the German cities of Bochum, Essen and Mulheim. The data indicated which drugs the study participants took, and whether they woke up early, had difficulties falling asleep or had problems staying asleep. Researchers used information on each drug to assign patients a probability that they'd have problems with sleep. "We found that drugs labeled as sleep disturbing . . . are not a major risk factor for sleep disturbances in the general population," Lehnich said. Even taking a number of potentially sleep disturbing drugs barely led to more sleep disturbances, they found. "However, the individual or a specific patient can still suffer from sleep disturbances caused by drugs - especially drugs against diseases of the central nervous system," Lehnich said. One limitation of the study is that the results are based on self reports by the participants and not devices that track sleep, said Dr. Sanjeev Kothare, director of the Pediatric Sleep Program at NYU Langone Medical Center in New York City. "Even though (sometimes) the drug will interfere with sleep, in some patients it may not be so," Kothare, who was not involved with the new study, told Reuters Health. Lehnich said the results are surprising on one hand, because taking several drugs that would disturb sleep barely led to an increase in sleep problems. "On the other hand, in most summaries of product characteristics you find that 1 in 1000 or 1 in 100 persons suffered a sleep disturbance when taking this drug, which is rather low," she said. "Consequently, we could not expect strong effects." SOURCE: http://bit.ly/1RZtfds British Journal of Clinical Pharmacology, online June 9, 2016.
AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - Two Dutch F-35A fighter jets made their debut at an international air show on Friday, conducting demonstration flights in the Netherlands. The radar-evading warplanes, which will eventually replace the Dutch Air Force's fleet of F-16s, are conducting two weeks of noise testing by Dutch pilots. The U.S. Marine Corps has already declared the F-35B model ready for combat, but the conventional takeoff and landing A-model is still completing testing. The U.S. Air Force expects to declare an initial squadron of F-35A jets ready for combat between August and December this year. The Netherlands, which helped fund development of the new stealthy fighter jet, known in the Netherlands as the Joint Strike Fighter, plans to purchase 37 of THE planes in total. The next order will be for a batch of eight jets. Thousands of onlookers gathered at the air force base in the northern city of Leeuwarden, 150 km (90 miles) north of the capital Amsterdam, for the first fly-overs on Friday. The planes are scheduled to fly again on Saturday. A Swiss F-5E air force demonstration jet collided with another plane in midair on Thursday and crashed in a lake during a test flight before the show. The pilot ejected before impact and was slightly injured. (Reporting By Anthony Deutsch; Editing by Angus MacSwan)
Lending her progressive star power to a candidate who has struggled to win over left-wing voters, Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts on Tuesday endorsed presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton's presidential candidacy, imploring the party to coalesce behind Clinton after her fierce primary battle with Bernie Sanders.

"I'm ready to jump in this fight and make sure that Hillary Clinton is the next president of the United States and be sure that Donald Trump gets nowhere near the White House," Warren said in an interview with the Boston Globe on Thursday. "I'm supporting Hillary Clinton because she's a fighter, a fighter with guts."

Warren also discussed her endorsement in an interview on MSNBC's Rachel Maddow Show.

Watch: @SenWarren endorses @HillaryClinton in exclusive @maddow interviewpic.twitter.com/GZADsFSMS9

The endorsement came on the same day that President Barack Obama endorsed Clinton, even as Sanders promises to campaign through the Washington, D.C. primary on Tuesday. A steady stream of Democratic officials  including some Sanders supporters  have thrown their support behind Clinton since she clinched the Democratic nomination this week.

Read more: Why Elizabeth Warren Really and Truly Matters Now More Than Ever

Progressive gravitas: The scourge of Wall Street has espoused views on economic inequality and financial reform that align her more closely with Sanders' vision, but Warren remained steadfastly neutral throughout the primary process.

Warren praised Sanders' campaign in her interview with Maddow on Thursday.

"He ran a campaign from the heart. He ran a campaign where he took these issues and he really thrust them into the spotlight," she said.

But neutrality served dual purposes for Warren. It allowed her greater leverage over Clinton  whose nomination has long been seen as exceedingly likely, if not a foregone conclusion  as the former secretary of state formulated policy positions on Warren's signature issues, including bank reform and consumer protection. Warren has praised both Clinton and Sanders for their Wall Street reform agenda.

Story continues

Partners.

And in recent weeks, Warren  unencumbered by the limitations that come with being one campaign's surrogate  has taken up the mantle of Donald Trump antagonist-in-chief, excoriating the presumptive Republican nominee on matters from his defunct for-profit education venture to his alleged "racism, sexism and xenophobia."

"He is a threat to who we are as a people," Warren said in her interview with Maddow Thursday.

Those relentless attacks have stoked speculation that Warren could be an effective running mate for Clinton  and there's a growing clamor among some of Warren's Senate colleagues and select members of Clinton's campaign for Warren's selection. Clinton told Politico on Thursday that Warren is "eminently qualified for any role," and in an interview with Mic last month, Warren wouldn't rule out the vice presidency.

Should there be signs that Clinton is struggling to win over Sanders' devoted corps of supporters, Warren's stock as a populist fighter may rise further.

For now, though, Warren's focus remains on the task ahead. The senator told the Globe on Thursday that she didn't want to "get into" vice presidential speculation.

That said, Warren made clear that she's ready to be a heartbeat away from the highest office in the land.
Elizabeth Warren

Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren unloaded on Donald Trump on Thursday, calling the presumptive Republican presidential nominee a "loud, nasty, thin-skinned fraud" and a "racist bully" during a fiery speech in Washington.

Warren's barbs centered on Trump's racially charged attacks on US District Court Judge Gonzalo Curiel, who is presiding over a civil lawsuit involving Trump's defunct real-estate school, Trump University.

Trump has argued that the Indiana-born Curiel cannot fairly preside over the case because of his Mexican descent and Trump's campaign promise to build a wall along the US-Mexico border.

"Judge Curiel is one of countless American patriots who has spent decades quietly serving his country," said Warren, speaking at a convention of the American Constitution Society. "Donald Trump is a loud, nasty, thin-skinned fraud who has never risked anything for anyone and serves nobody but himself."

"That is just one of the many reasons why he will never be president of the United States," she added.

Warren and Trump engaged in pointed back-and-forths on Twitter last month, but Thursday's speech marked an aggressive shift in rhetoric for the senator.

"Donald, you should be ashamed of yourself," Warren said. "Ashamed for using the megaphone of a presidential campaign for attacking a judges character and integrity simply because you think you have a God-given right to steal peoples money and get away with it."

Paul Ryan

Warren also linked Trump to House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, two prominent Republicans who disavow Trump's comments against Curiel but continue to support him.

"Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell want Donald Trump to appoint the next generation of judges," she said. "They want those judges to tilt the law to favor big business and billionaires like Trump. They just want Donald to quit being so vulgar and obvious about it."

Trump's attacks are a natural extension of recent Republican obstructionism, she argued, including the party's attempt to block the confirmation of Judge Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court.

Story continues

Trump is "exactly the kind of candidate you'd expect from a Republican Party whose script for several years has been to execute a full-scale assault on the integrity of our courts," she said.

Warren endorsed Hillary Clinton for president in an interview with The Boston Globe published on Thursday night. Clinton also scored key endorsements from President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden on Thursday, three days after securing enough delegates to earn the Democratic presidential nomination.

Watch video of Warren's speech:





More From Business Insider


From Esquire

It's been a busy couple of days for Senator Professor Warren. Harry Reid keeps pushing her for vice president. (Shut up, Harry. Shut up now.) Somebody-and I can't imagine who it might be-leaked the fact that she should be endorsing Hillary Rodham Clinton any day now. (Which has brought the wrath of the Bernie or Bust crowd down on her. Yeah, that'll work.)

And, just to prove that she's still getting better at this whole politics thing, she allowed the text of her speech on Thursday night to the American Constitution Society to get out into the world where, among other outlets, ABC News got a hold of it.

"Donald Trump is a loud, nasty, thin-skinned fraud who has never risked anything for anyone and serves nobody but himself," Warren is set to say at the event, where she will share the stage with Vice President Joe Biden. "Judge [Gonzalo] Curiel has survived far worse than Donald Trump. He has survived actual assassination attempts. He'll have no problem surviving Trump's nasty temper tantrums," Warren will say. The Massachusetts senator also plans to tie Trump directly to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker Paul Ryan by making the case that Trump is only taking a page from their playbooks. "Trump isn't a different kind of candidate. He's a Mitch McConnell kind of candidate. Exactly the kind of candidate you'd expect from a Republican Party whose 'script' for several years has been to execute a full-scale assault on the integrity of our courts," Warren will say, in accusing McConnell of blocking judicial nominations. "Trump is also House Speaker Paul Ryan's kind of candidate," Warren will say. "Paul Ryan condemned Trump's campaign for its attacks on Judge Curiel's integrity. Great. Where's Paul Ryan's condemnation of the blockade, the intimidation, the smears, and the slime against the integrity of qualified judicial nominees and Judge Garland?"

Story continues

Annnnnnnnnnd, scene!

She clearly has taken quite to heart her new role as Secretary of Shade in the HRC shadow cabinet. Linking Trump's attack on Judge Curiel to the efforts of More Serious Republicans to stymie the president's other judicial nominees is some first class, old-school East Cambridge nut-cutting.

(Note, if you will, how Speaker Paul Ryan's absurd support-but-not-endorse position on his party's presumptive presidential nominee gets him some chin music.)

Alas, for us all, the folks at ABC News had the Both Sides microchip implanted years ago and so we get this at the end of the story.

Warren's planned remarks are only the latest addition to the senator's many rants against Trump. She has been outspoken in her criticism of the presumptive Republican nominee in recent months, often using Twitter to unleash social media rants against Trump on several occasions. Trump has similarly used Twitter to bash Warren, calling her "goofy Elizabeth Warren" and attempting to mock her Native American heritage by calling her "Pocahontas."

First, we get "rants" twice in two sentences. Can you really "rant" in 140 characters? We need a ruling here.

Second, except for the part about He, Trump's being a "loud, nasty, thin-skinned fraud," what's rant-ish about the rest of the leaked text? Are the Republicans blocking the president's nominees or not? Is Merrick Garland being denied even the courtesy of a hearing or isn't he?

And third, if that's the best He, Trump has for a comeback, isn't it worthy of note that it has absolutely nothing to do with any issue before the public in this election?

However, this is another example of why SPW should not be vice president. She does her best work when, as the Scripture says, she is praying somewhat outside the camp. For the moment, anyway, the Secretary of Shade is in.

Click here to respond to this post on the official Esquire Politics Facebook page.
Elizabeth Warren

Elizabeth Warren gave a clear response when asked if she thinks she's capable of stepping in for the commander in chief, should she be chosen as Hillary Clinton's running mate:

"Yes, I do."

The Massachusetts senator was speaking with MSNBC's Rachel Maddow on Thursday to endorse Clinton for president.

Warren's remarks come a day after former Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell questioned Warren's ability to do the job justice.

"I think Elizabeth Warren is a wonderful, bright, passionate person, but with no experience in foreign affairs and not in any way, shape, or form ready to be commander in chief," Rendell said during an interview with Philadelphia radio station WPHT-AM.

Warren has considered serving as Clinton's vice president, but has not discussed the idea with Clinton, sources familiar with Warren's thinking told Reuters.

Warren has been arguably the most effective critic of Donald Trump, blasting the presumptive Republican nominee on Twitter several times last month. Her attacks took an aggressive turn during a fiery speech on Thursday, in which she called Trump a "loud, nasty, thin-skinned fraud," and a "racist bully."

She lobbed a fresh round of insults at Trump during her MSNBC appearance.

"Donald Trump is a genuine threat to this country," she told Maddow. "He is a threat to who we are as a people."

Even her endorsement of Clinton referenced the Manhattan businessman:

"I am ready to get in this fight and work my heart out for Hillary Clinton to become the next president of the United States," she said. "And be sure that Donald Trump gets nowhere near the White House."

NOW WATCH: 'The textbook definition of a racist comment': Paul Ryan disavows Trump's attacks on a federal judge





More From Business Insider


BROOMFIELD, Colorado  A Mars mission architecture SpaceX Chief Executive Elon Musk will unveil in September will call for a series of missions starting in 2018 leading up to the first crewed mission to the planet in 2024, Musk said June 1.

In an on-stage interview at the Code Conference, run by the technology publication Recode in Rancho Palos Verdes, California, Musk repeated earlier comments that he would announce his architecture for human missions to Mars in September at the International Astronautical Congress in Guadalajara, Mexico.

That plan would start with the uncrewed launch of a Dragon spacecraft in 2018 on a Mars landing mission dubbed Red Dragon. SpaceX announced April 27 it would fly that mission working in cooperation with NASA, who will provide technical expertise but no funding in exchange for data from the spacecraft's Mars landing attempt. [SpaceX's Red Dragon: A Private Mars Mission Plan in Pictures]

"The basic game plan is that we're going to send a mission to Mars with every Mars opportunity from 2018 onwards," Musk said. Launch windows for Mars missions open every 26 months, with the next opening in the spring of 2018.

"We're establishing cargo flights to Mars that people can count on," he said. "I think if things go according to plan, we should be able to launch people probably in 2024, with arrival in 2025."

Musk declined to give additional details about the plan, including the "very big rocket" that would launch the crewed vehicles. "In September Ill tell you," he said.

Earlier in the interview, Musk said that SpaceX would attempt to refly a recovered Falcon 9 first stage within the next three months. "We plan to refly one of the landed rocket boosters hopefully in about two or three months," he said. "We want to start reflying them before the end of the summer."

Musk didn't disclose who the customer would be for the first launch of a Falcon 9 with a reused first stage, although company officials recently said a couple of potential customers had expressed interest. SpaceX has now landed four Falcon 9 first stages, although some will be used for ground tests and the one from the first landing, in December 2015, will be put on display outside the companys Hawthorne, California headquarters.

Story continues

Musk also said the first Falcon Heavy launch was still scheduled before the end of the year. That launch, he said, would not carry a payload, despite earlier reports that there was some interest from customers in flying on that vehicle.

He also addressed the lengthy development delays of the Falcon Heavy, whose first launch was originally scheduled to take place several years ago. "It's not like we had a lot of pressing customers who wanted us to launch this," he said. In fact, at least one company, ViaSat, decided to purchase a launch on an Ariane 5 because of Falcon Heavy delays, reserving its Falcon Heavy contract for a later mission.

Musk also said that SpaceX, which has launched three Falcon 9 missions in less than two months, would maintain a high launch rate. "We're sort of backlogged on our launches and we're trying to get them out as quickly as we can," he said, referring to the June 2015 Falcon 9 failure that halted launches for nearly six months.

"The launches will take place every two to four weeks. That's quite a high launch cadence," he said of the company's upcoming schedule.

Next year will also see the debut of the Dragon V2, also known as Crew Dragon, that SpaceX is developing for NASA's commercial crew program. That vehicle will be used for transporting NASA astronauts to and from the International Space Station, and a version of it will also fly Mars missions.

Musk suggested he might fly on a Dragon vehicle in several years. "I think I will at some point," he said when asked if he planned to fly in space. "I'll probably go to orbit in four or five years, something like that."

This story was provided by SpaceNews, dedicated to covering all aspects of the space industry.

Editor's Recommendations

Copyright 2016 SPACE.com, a Purch company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
By Bruno Federowski and Paula Arend Laier SAO PAULO, June 10 (Reuters) - Latin American stocks and currencies fell for a second day on Friday as traders sought safer assets less than two weeks before a referendum over Britain's future in the European Union.

Recent polls have indicated a close outcome for the June 23 vote that could result in Britain's exit from the bloc.

Traders concerned that that could have a lasting economic impact sought refuge in safe-haven U.S. bonds, driving yields to their lowest since February.

Lower prices of oil also weighed on demand for assets from crude exporters, such as Mexico and Colombia.

The Mexican benchmark IPC stock index fell 0.8 percent as shares of Grupo Televisa posted their biggest daily loss in four months.

Brazil's Bovespa index also retreated, weighed down by shares of state-controlled oil company Petroleo Brasileiro SA .

Shares of Vale SA fell 4.2 percent after the country's federal police accused Samarco, a joint venture between the Brazilian miner and BHP Billiton, of willful misconduct related to an environmental disaster last November.

Embraer SA slipped 2 percent as traders fretted over a surprise change of the plane maker's chief executive officer. Analysts said the decision increases short-term uncertainty but praised Paulo Cesar Silva's credentials, who will take charge next month from Frederico Curado.

Key Latin American stock indexes and currencies at 1510 GMT: Stock indexes daily % YTD % change change Latest MSCI Emerging Markets 824.79 -1.46 5.4 MSCI LatAm 2128.26 -2.59 19.41 Brazil Bovespa 50049.40 -2.09 15.45 Mexico IPC 45305.48 -0.78 5.42 Chile IPSA 3971.97 -0.1 7.93 Chile IGPA 19649.60 -0.09 8.25 Argentina MerVal 13323.92 -1.51 14.12 Colombia IGBC 9924.61 -0.51 16.11 Venezuela IBC 15085.98 -0.15 3.41 Currencies daily % YTD % change change Latest Brazil real 3.4332 -0.92 14.97 Mexico peso 18.4770 -1.24 -6.75 Chile peso 684 -0.66 3.76 Colombia peso 2970.5 -1.20 6.69 Peru sol 3.3129 -0.15 3.05 Argentina peso (interbank) 13.8125 0.13 -6.01 Argentina peso (parallel) 14.21 0.70 0.42 (Editing by Bernadette Baum)
Photo: USA

Its time for the TV-industry folks to start Emmy nomination voting. The nominating process begins on Monday and goes through June 27  and the nominees will be announced on July 14. During this time, all the networks mount campaigns to remind voters of the possibilities (best of luck to you, Chicago Med!). So nows the time for me to do some of my own campaigning for performers I think deserve to be nominated. We all know that high-visibility shows such as Modern Family, Game of Thrones, and The Big Bang Theory will get multiple nominations. Therefore, my enthusiastic suggestions below are for people who might be forgotten by Emmy members. Are some of these long shots, in some cases completely unrealistic suggestions? Sure! But we all have to dream of and work for an ideal Emmy ballot, dont we?



The Mr. Robot Phenomenon I want to see this mind-altering freshman series nominated in the categories of Drama Series as well as Actor (Rami Malek) and Supporting Actor (Christian Slater). Maleks performance as a shutdown, trapped-by-his-own-self-consciousness genius is a wonder, the emotional equivalent of watching a magician trussed in a straightjacket work himself free every week. Slater, by contrast, gives one of his loosest, most adventurous performances, in which ambiguity about who he is and what he represents is its own drama.



Louie Anderson in Baskets What a wonderful, warm, clever performance, playing Zach Galifianakiss mother in FXs otherwise uneven Baskets.

Rob Lowe and Fred Savage, Grinders Forever These two guys formed the tightest comedy duo this side of Key & Peele. Their show, The Grinder, is canceled; let them grind on as Emmy nominees.

A Fargo Festoon Patrick Wilson, Kirsten Dunst, Christin Milioti, Jesse Plemons, and Ted Danson: I could have added more names to this list from the marvelous second season of Fargo, but these actors, in particular, revealed fresh angles to their abilities that deserve recognition.

Story continues

Photo: FX

All Hail The Americans Co-stars Keri Russell and Matthew Rhys just had a baby together. Cant they get even one Emmy nom between the two of them?

Tracee Ellis Ross in Black-ish For the co-star of a hit broadcast-network sitcom, she doesnt get nearly enough praise for her exceptional performance. She can pull funny faces in the tradition of Lucille Ball and Carol Burnett, and her crack verbal timing with Anthony Anderson and her other co-stars makes her an invaluable ensemble player.



Regina King, Carrie Coon in The Leftovers Each of them oversees her particular household, each dealing with an impossible man, in a distinctly different manner, as well as embodying two temperamentally different women  women unlike any other characters on television  each bringing a realism to a spiritual/supernatural show unlike anything else on television.

Outlander-mania! Surely the Emmys would benefit from including at least two stars of this rabidly admired Starz series, Caitriona Balfe and Tobias Menzies: What better way to call attention to both performances and a genre that dont receive enough attention within the industry?



Amanda Peet in Togetherness Its really too bad HBO canceled this series just as Peets Tina was developing even more sides to her character: a free spirit whod come to the realization that she was ready for more responsibility, more commitment in her life. It would have been great to see what Peet had Tina do in a third season, and so she remains a great unfinished TV character.

Master of Many Things: Aziz Ansari His Master of None is a prime example of a performer using his skills as a writer-producer to build a showcase for himself, one that showed off new sides to his abilities and expanded our view of him. Plus, really funny.

Abigail Spencer in Rectify The under-seen Sundance channel series Rectify has showcased an exceptional performance by Abigail Spencer, who plays the sister of Daniel (Aden Young), the shows central figure. But Spencers Amantha is just as important to communicating the shows tone of quiet despair and muted rebellion against the unjust twists life takes.



Photo: Daniel McFadden/SundanceTV



Ray Romano Puts the Spin in Vinyl Simply put: For many weeks, Romano was the primary reason to watch Vinyl. Which, alone, wouldnt be a reason to nominate him. What enhances Romanos appeal is that he inhabits a slimy character with enormous energy and understanding.



Constance Zimmer in UnREAL UnREALs greatest asset is in Zimmers portrayal of a commanding executive whos always working on a couple of levels: as someone who sees through the romantic charade of the shows Bachelor-like reality series, who needs to put on a front of steely resolve to do battle with male co-workers, and who conveys both the strength and strain of having to live a life of multiple, simultaneous roles.

Photo: Showtime

Miranda Otto in Homeland One of the years most unexpectedly galvanizing performances, Otto took what appeared initially to be a drab supporting player  CIA functionary Allison Carr  and really ran with the writers development of Carr as a shifty, shrewd, erotic figure in Homelands espionage terrain. I think of all the players on the show this season, Otto made her character the least possible to read, to predict, yet she also made the most of every one of Allisons more dramatic scenes, whether as a double agent or as Saul Berensons very-much-in-control lover.



Bob Odenkirk in Better Call Saul What an extraordinary performance he gave in the second season of Better Call Saul. Odenkirks comedy years never suggested the kind of depth he could bring to his characters desperate, depressed, self-delusional life.

Anika Noni Rose in Roots Taking the role of Kunta Kintes daughter, Kizzy (played in the original production by Leslie Uggams), Rose excelled even in the midst of a strong acting ensemble, lending Kizzy a passionate spirit that stood in rebellious contrast to the suffering all around the character.

Photo: History Channel

Eva Green in Penny Dreadful As the soulful, questing Vanessa Ives, Green has been both an agent of this high-spirited melodramas action and the object of some of its most harsh subplots. This season, Vanessas psychoanalytic sessions with Patti LuPones Dr. Seward have been extraordinary: Green suggests the lucidity that can lie at the heart of madness, and her struggles to remain sane and fight the literal demons around her have been exhilarating.

Broad City Stars Abbi Jacobson and Ilana Glazer Its likely theyll never get nominated because its just about impossible to praise one without the other. Thats what makes them a great comedy team, but teach has distinctive gifts that ought to be recognized.



Gillian Jacobs in Love The former Community co-star took on this contentious central role in Netflixs Love  playing Mickey, a tough-minded, louche, cynical realist  and was fearless about appearing angry or obsessed or foolish or vulnerable. I know people who were put off by this character; I loved Mickeys constantly surprising actions and reactions.



Who do you think is an actor who might be overlooked by the Emmy nominators and needs our support?

Read more Emmy Talks:

Emmy Talk: People v. O.J. Simpson Star Sterling K. Brown on Giving Darden His Due

Emmy Talk: Crazy Ex-Girlfriend Songwriting Duo Rachel Bloom and Adam Schlesinger on Their Scene to Remember



Emmy Talk: Silicon Valley Star Thomas Middleditch on Richard Being Stationary, at Best



Emmy Talk: James Corden on 5 Moments That Define His Late Late Show

Emmy Talk: Krysten Ritters Scene to Remember

Emmy Talk: Caitriona Balfes Scene to Remember

Emmy Talk: Joel Kinnaman Talks House of Cards
Rome (AFP) - An Eritrean man extradited from Sudan to Italy on suspicion of being the head of a migrant trafficking ring has told investigators he is not the man they want, his lawyer said Friday.

The suspect, identified by Italian authorities as Medhanie Yehdego Mered, 35, is accused of shipping thousands of people to Europe and sending some to their deaths in the Mediterranean.

Dubbed 'the general' for his control over a vast area and number of 'troops', and described as "cynical and unscrupulous", Mered has been described as a people smuggling kingpin.

But Italian prosecutors admitted on Thursday that they were checking his identity after reports claimed he was the victim of a case of mistaken identity, and a woman claiming to be his half-sister said he was just a simple carpenter.

Lawyer Michele Calantropo told AFP his client "denied being the suspect and also denied being linked in any way to a trafficking network" when questioned by Italian magistrates.

Sudan's interior ministry, Italian police and Britain's National Crime Agency (NCA) had made much of Mered's arrest in Khartoum at the end of May and his deportation to Italy this week.

But family and friends soon came forward to say the man pictured being dragged off a plane in Rome was not 'the general', identifying him as someone with a different name.

Calantropo was hired by a woman claiming to be the sister of the detainee, a man she named as Mered Tesfamariam.

Segem Tasfamariam Berhe, who said she had recognised her 27-year-old brother in the footage, told Italian media he had nothing to do with human trafficking.

"I want to tell Italian police my brother is innocent, he is not the man they are looking for. Please, investigators, release my brother," she was quoted as saying from Khartoum by Italy's Rai News.

- 'An innocent man' -

From Eritrea's capital of Asmara, a woman claiming to be his stepsister, Saliem Kesete, told the Italian broadcaster that Mered Tesfamariam "was a carpenter, with a family", describing him as an "innocent man" who had "wanted to go to the US".

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"Europe was his second choice," she said.

Key suspect Mered, who has been wanted on smuggling charges since 2015, is accused of packing migrants onto a boat that sank in 2013 off the Italian island of Lampedusa, claiming at least 360 lives in one of the worst disasters in the Mediterranean.

He reportedly described the sinking as "Allah's will" and is accused of organising the smuggling of up to 8,000 people a year.

Wiretaps of his conversations show him having contact with traffickers in northern Europe, particularly in the Netherlands and Scandinavia, and he held a "senior position in a criminal network operating in several continents", Italian police said.

In phonecalls with his family, he sounded loving, making several references to leaving Libya and moving to Sweden to be with his wife, but by contrast, had showed "utter disregard for the lives of the migrants", Italian police said.

His capture was hailed by officials as a significant blow to the people smuggling business as Europe moves to stem the flow of migrants across the Mediterranean.

According to the UN's refugee agency (UNHCR), over 49,600 people have arrived in Italy by boat so far this year.

More than 10,000 people have died crossing the Mediterranean to Europe since 2014.
By Crispian Balmer ROME (Reuters) - An Eritrean man extradited to Italy from Sudan this week and accused of being a human-trafficking boss has denied the allegation and says he is the victim of mistaken identity, his lawyer said on Friday. If confirmed, it would be a huge blow to Italy and Britain, which had combined forces to track down alleged trafficker Medhane Yehdego Mered and had hailed his deportation from Sudan as a rare victory in the fight against people smuggling. However, when photographs of the detained man were released after his arrival in Rome on Wednesday, family and friends said he was an Eritrean refugee named Medhanie Tesfamariam Berhe. Italian magistrates interviewed the suspect for the first time on Friday in front of his lawyer, Michele Calantropo. "My client has denied all the allegations and says he is not the person in question," Calantropo told reporters outside the Rome jail where the interrogation took place. "He is another man ... and doesn't understand the meaning of this arrest," he said, adding that Berhe was a simple carpenter. Italian magistrates and the British National Crime Agency, which played a central role in the operation to seize Mered, have said they are looking into claims they got the wrong man. Mered, nicknamed "the General", had been heard on intercepted telephone calls boasting about cramming more people onto rickety boats to make the dangerous crossing from Libya to Italy than other traffickers did, prosecutors have said. A legal source, who declined to be named, said Italian and British investigators had given the Sudanese authorities precise information about the mobile phone Mered was using and believed the arrested man had been in possession of the phone. However, Italian authorities did not have any access to him in Sudan following his arrest on May 24, the source said. Palermo Chief Prosecutor Francesco Lo Voi has played a central role in the Mered investigation, but he has distanced himself from the arrest operation. "The arrest, delivery and extradition to Italy were officially communicated by the National Crime Agency and Sudan authorities through Interpol," he told Ansa news agency. Calantropo said his client did not say why or when he was arrested. "He didn't explain that to me. We are still waiting for the paperwork from Sudan," he said. The detained man will remain in jail until the Italian investigators have fully established his identity, the legal source said, declining to speculate how long that might take. (Reporting by Cristiano Corvino and Gabriele Pileri in Rome and Wladimir Pantaleone in Palermo; Editing by Tom Heneghan)
ROME (Reuters) - An Eritrean extradited to Italy from Sudan this week and accused of being a people smuggler has denied the allegation and says he is the victim of mistaken identity, his lawyer said on Friday. Italian and British officials announced on Wednesday they had secured the arrest of Medhane Yehdego Mered, an alleged trafficking kingpin. However, when images of the man were published, friends and family said he was an Eritrean refugee named Medhanie Tesfamariam Berhe. Italian magistrates interviewed the suspect for the first time on Friday in front of his lawyer. "I was arrested by mistake," lawyer Michele Calantropo quoted his client as saying. (Reporting by Crispian Balmer, editing by Isla Binnie)
BRUSSELS (Reuters) - European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker will meet Russian President Vladimir Putin during an economic forum in St. Petersburg next week, an EU spokeswoman said on Friday. Confirming the EU chief executive's schedule for the coming week at a news briefing, the spokeswoman said Juncker would, as previously announced, attend the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum on Thursday and Friday and that while there he would hold his first meeting with Putin since November 2014. Relations between Moscow and the European Union have been strained since an EU move to bring Ukraine into a trade pact and Russia's annexation of Crimea and support for rebels in eastern Ukraine. Mutual sanctions have been in force for two years and EU leaders are likely to roll over their measures. Juncker has argued for better relations with Russia and said in October that EU policy on the matter should not be "dictated" by Washington. On Friday, the spokeswoman said Juncker had made clear that his visit to Russia would not change the EU's stance. "I find it very important to try, at least in economic questions, to move towards Russia," she quoted Juncker as having said last week. "I can assure you there won't be a softening of European positions in St. Petersburg." Juncker's acceptance of the invitation to the annual Kremlin-run, high-profile gathering of business and political figures provoked criticism among some Europeans who fear that resolve to maintain sanctions over Ukraine is weakening. EU officials pointed out that numerous national leaders and ministers, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande, had visited Russia in the past year. (Reporting by Alastair Macdonald; Editing by Gareth Jones)
LONDON (Reuters) - Prime Ministers past and present united this week to urge wavering Britons to stay in the EU as money markets trembled and opinion polls continued to show the nation almost equally divided between the "In" and "Out" camps. One of the week's abiding images was that of David Cameron standing against a scenic backdrop high above London's River Thames as he denied he was worried he might be losing the argument. Former Labour premiers Tony Blair and Gordon Brown declared that only the votes of Labour supporters, many of whom seemed unaware that their party supports the In camp, could swing the result of the June 23 referendum. "If Labour stays at home, Britain leaves," they said in a letter to the Guardian newspaper Blair and the previous Conservative Prime Minister John Major meanwhile warned that peace in Northern Ireland and the union with Scotland were at risk if Britain were to leave. Financial heavyweights were at odds during the week. The world's biggest asset manager Blackrock suggested markets may be underpricing the risk of Britain leaving the EU. But George Soros, the man who famously "broke the Bank of England" in 1992 when Britain was forced to pull sterling out of the European Exchange Rate Mechanism, said he was confident the In camp was getting stronger as polling day approached. Turnout was a key theme of the week, with several analysts saying a high percentage would favour the "In" camp since it would suggest younger voters, who are widely assumed to be EU supporters, had bothered to cast their ballots. As the voter registration period was extended for two days after computer problems, it emerged hat the Electoral Commission is planning for turnout of around 80 percent, well above the 66 percent of last year's general election. MONEY Since falling to a low of $1.38 in February, the pound has held up well in the face of concerns about a Brexit, dealers said. But the cost of hedging against swings in sterling's exchange rate over the next month soared to its highest in more than seven years this week. The Swiss franc hit an eight-week peak and the Danish crown held near one-month highs against the euro, as investors bought safe-haven currencies on worries that Britain may vote to leave.. Appetite for gold bars and coins was also healthy. POLLS ICM online May 31 - 44 pct In, 47 pct Out ICM telephone May 31 - 42 pct In, 45 pct Out YouGov online June 1 - 41 pct In, 41 pct Out Opinium online June 4 - 43 pct In, 41 pct Out TNS online June 6 - 41 pct In, 43 pct Out YouGov online June 6 - 41 pct In, 45 pct Out ICM online June 6 - 43 pct In, 48 pct Out FULL COVERAGE For full multimedia coverage please click: cpurl://apps.cp./cms/?pageId=brexit For all news on the referendum, click on BRXT For a PDF of stories on Brexit: http://share.thomsonreuters.com/assets/newsletters/Adhoc/Brexit.pdf For a graphic of opinion polls: http://tmsnrt.rs/1Ke31HF QUOTES OF THE WEEK "Only Labour can save Britain from Brexit" - former Labour prime ministers Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. "In is in. Out is out" - German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble on whether Britain would be able to continue to benefit from the European single market. "There are obviously still high levels of ignorance about the EU" - Anand Menon, Director of researcher UK in a Changing Europe, after a poll showed voters' ideas of the impact of the European Union on life in Britain are mistaken in many areas, from the level of immigration to non-existent rules over barmaids' cleavages. "The NHS is about as safe with them as a pet hamster would be with a hungry python," - John Major talking about the prospects of the National Health Service if Out campaigners Boris Johnson and Michael Gove rose to power after an Out vote. (Reporting by Stephen Addison; editing by Michael Holden)
BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Union called on its 28 member states on Wednesday to speed up ratification of the Paris climate accord so the bloc is not left behind in an international push to curb global warming. The EU executive, as a separate party to the agreement in addition to the member states, laid out its procedure for ratification on Wednesday, a process which will require approval by the European Parliament and EU leaders. But the timeline for doing so remains unclear. The EU, with some 10 percent of global emissions, wants to lead the fight to cut greenhouse gases, after being a key actor in the negotiations leading to the Paris deal last December. Ratification in Europe, however, entails a tortuous process that needs to be taken in parallel both at the EU level and at the national level, where each member state has different rules. "We are determined to maintain the momentum and spirit of Paris and ensure the early ratification," EU Commissioner for Climate Action and Energy Miguel Arias Canete said in a statement. At least 55 nations representing 55 percent of man-made greenhouse gas emissions need to ratify for to take effect. Some experts predict that could be reached in 2017, with India, China and the United States saying they aim to join this year. EU ministers will now discuss the bloc's procedure for ratification at their quarterly gathering on June 20. Hungary is the only EU nation so far to ratify. France said it would formally sign the Paris accord on Wednesday, making it the first major industrialized nation to ratify the landmark deal. The EU as a whole, however, is seen to be lagging. Many EU member states are reluctant to move to ratify before the bloc agrees in what is expected to be a tough debate on how to share out the burden of cutting its emissions. That debate will begin in earnest next month when the European Commission proposes individual member state emissions targets for achieving its Paris pledge to cut emissions by 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2030. It could take around 18 months to reach an agreement. "The EU and its Member States will need to move swiftly if the bloc is indeed to become one of the first 55 parties," Stephanie Pfeifer, head of the Institutional Investors Group on Climate Change (IIGC), said in a statement. (Reporting by Alissa de Carbonnel; Editing by Tom Heneghan)
By Ben Hirschler LONDON (Reuters) - Details of clinical trials involving AbbVie's rheumatoid arthritis drug Humira, the world's top-selling prescription medicine, are still being withheld without justification, according to the European Union's ombudsman. Humira has been at the center of a protracted transparency row for several years, with AbbVie battling to keep some data secret in the face of plans by the European Medicines Agency (EMA) to make the information routinely available. Many doctors and campaigners argue that free access to data is essential to inform medical decision-making and allow independent experts to test claims made about drugs. Two years ago, AbbVie dropped a lawsuit against the EMA after the agency agreed to certain data redactions, resulting in the disclosure of some but not all of the information held by the EMA about Humira. European Ombudsman Emily O'Reilly said on Friday that this was not good enough and the EMA was still withholding details from clinical trial reports on the grounds of commercial interest. O'Reilly said public health was more important than commercial interest and she considered four specific redactions to be unjustified. "I am asking EMA to reconsider the need for these redactions should it receive new requests for access to these reports," she said in a statement. "Any clinical information of value to doctors, patients and researchers must be disclosed in the public interest." The role of the ombudsman is to investigate complaints about maladministration in EU institutions. The London-based EMA said it was pleased O'Reilly had found no maladministration in its handling of the matter, adding there was no agreed definition of commercially confidential data and that specific commercial interests would change over time. An AbbVie spokeswoman said the U.S. drugmaker was committed to "responsible" transparency but there was a need to protect commercially confidential information. Drug companies around the world have come under increasing pressure to provide full disclosure of clinical trial results in recent years, following complaints that they have tried in the past to bury bad news. The EMA has taken a lead in pushing for transparency, since pledging in 2010 to lift the lid on previously secret trial data submitted by companies as part of the application process for new medicines. That process was then stalled by the legal tussle with AbbVie and other U.S. company InterMune, which is now part of Roche. (Reporting by Ben Hirschler; Editing by Susan Fenton)
By Jamie McGeever

LONDON, June 10 (Reuters) - Investors piled into bonds this week and racked up the longest stretch of European equity fund outflows in eight years as a wave of caution swept over markets ahead of Britain's EU referendum, Bank of America Merrill Lynch said on Friday.

European equity funds posted a net outflow in the week to June 8 for the 18th consecutive week, a run not seen since February 2008, before the onslaught of the global financial crisis, BAML said.

In a note titled "Risk-off as Brexit looms", it said UK equity funds saw redemptions for the 12th week out of the last 14 and overall equity funds posted a $2.6 billion outflow, the 10th outflow of the last 12 weeks.

Britons vote on June 23 whether to remain in or leave the European Union, and polls show it is a close call. On top of that, an extremely weak U.S. employment report for May - the weakest in over five years - cast doubt on the strength of the world's largest economy and rattled investors.

BlackRock, the world's largest asset manager, warned on Thursday that markets may be too complacent surround the risk of Brexit, while bond fund giant PIMCO said recently investors should prepare for the "significant" chance of Brexit.

So far this year, global equity funds have posted a net outflow of $106 billion. Of that, $96.6 billion has come out of developed market stocks, and the remainder from emerging markets.

The flip side of the bearish stock market trade was another week of bond buying. Fixed income funds attracted a net $7.9 billion inflow, the largest in nine weeks, BAML said.

With world bond yields hitting record lows this week investors sought for the highest returns possible within the relative safety of bonds. High yield funds drew in $2.6 billion, the biggest inflow in 11 weeks, and emerging market debt pulled in funds for the 14th week out of the last 16.

Investors also sought quality bonds, pouring $4.2 billion into investment grade debt, the 14th straight weekly inflow.

(Reporting by Jamie McGeever; Editing by Toby Chopra)
Everybody Loves Raymond is one of televisions most successful sitcoms of all time, so why wasnt there ever a spinoff?

Creator Philip Rosenthal says that he wanted one  so much so that he pitched another show.

We had an idea, Rosenthal said Friday at the ATX Television Festival in Austin, on a panel titled The New American TV Family, moderated by Varietys Debra Birnbaum.

The spinoff would have revolved around Robert (Brad Garrett) going to live with Amys (Monica Horan) family in Pennsylvania, working as a gym teacher with Peter (Chris Elliott) as his teachers assistant.

From the moment we introduced Amys family  that first table read when we met them, I think in Season 7, I went from the table read to the phone to talk to Les Moonves at CBS, Rosenthal shared. And then after the show was over, some of the writers and I thought this is an obvious idea  very simply, the brother now moves to Pennsylvania and he gets a job as the gym teacher, now living with her family, under the condition that has Chris Elliot as his assistant.

Asked why the spinoff never went to series, Rosenthal said that CBS wouldnt offer more than a pilot episode.

I said, Les, we need a guarantee because all these writers are getting these deals. They cant just chuck this money to do a pilot. They said, We wont give you more than that.'

Without mentioning the title of the show, Rosenthal said that while the spinoff was only offered a pilot, another sitcom was given a straight-to-series order. They did give 13 episodes to a cast that was under 30  they were all in their 20s. This cast, everyone was over 40. So thats what happened to that spinoff.

And what happened that other 13-episode sitcom?

Dead after three episodes, Rosenthal gleefully said.

Rosenthal spoke on the ATX panel with panelists Nahnatchka Khan, David Windsor, Norman Lear and Hollis Rich.

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Doris Roberts: 'Everybody Loves Raymond' Stars, More Celebrities Mourn 'Hilarious,' 'Indelible' Actress
Brock Turner mugshot

USA Swimming, the national governing body of swimming in the US, has announced a lifetime ban on Brock Turner, the ex-Stanford swimmer convicted of sexually assaulting an unconscious woman, CNN reported.

The organization released a statement explaining that while Turner was not a member at the time of the crime, his actions make him ineligible to become a member in the future.

The statement reads:

Brock Turner's membership with USA Swimming expired at the end of the calendar year 2014 and he was not a member at the time of his crime or since then ...

Had he been a member, he would have been subject to the USA Swimming Code of Conduct ...

USA Swimming strictly prohibits and has zero tolerance for sexual misconduct, with firm Code of Conduct policies in place, and severe penalties, including a permanent ban of membership, for those who violate the Code of Conduct.

The ban also means that Turner can never compete in any USA Swimming-sanctioned events, disqualifying him from participation in the Olympic trials, the only way American swimmers gain entry into the Olympics.

Turner was sentenced to six months in a county jail last week. Before sentencing, he wrote a defense letter to the court, obtained by The Guardian. In it, Turner, previously a star athlete on Stanford University's swim team, describes how his life changed since the events of January 17, 2015.

He wrote:

I've been shattered by the party culture and risk taking behavior that I briefly experienced in my four months at school. I've lost my chance to swim in the Olympics. I've lost my ability to obtain a Stanford degree. I've lost employment opportunity, my reputation and most of all, my life.

Turner was found guilty of three felony counts of sexual assault. Two graduate students saw the incident occurring behind a garbage bin outside of a fraternity house at Stanford University. When Turner tried to run, the students pinned him down until the police arrived.

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USA Swimming's ban continues the condemnation directed at Turner. He was sentenced to six months in a county jail and three years' probation, which some have decried as a "slap on the wrist." Turner must also register as a sex offender for the rest of his life.

Joe Biden also wrote an open letter to Turner's victim, in which the US vice president admits that he's "filled with furious rage" about the incident.





More From Business Insider


WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A gun control group to prevent suicides among U.S. veterans has been formed by retired U.S. Central Intelligence Agency chief David Petraeus and former astronaut Mark Kelly, it said on Friday.

About 22 U.S. veterans commit suicide every day and almost 70 percent kill themselves with a firearm, the Veterans Coalition for Common Sense said in a statement, citing government data. Veterans are often afflicted with depression and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.

The coalition will lobby to close loopholes in background check laws and partner with other veterans groups to boost mental health, it added.

Kelly, a former Navy captain, became a vocal gun control advocate after his wife, former Arizona congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, was shot in the head in 2011 in an assassination attempt. In 2013 the couple formed another gun control group, Americans for Responsible Solutions.

Petraeus, a retired four-star general, resigned as director of the CIA in 2012 after it was revealed he was having an affair with his biographer.

The coalition's advisory committee includes former CIA director Michael Hayden and Stanley McChrystal, former commander of U.S. and North Atlantic Treaty Organization forces in Afghanistan.

(Reporting by Ian Simpson)
By Dave Sherwood (Reuters) - Irving Oils refinery in the Canadian province of New Brunswick spewed an excessive amount of ash-like catalyst into the surrounding city of Saint John at least a dozen times since 2010 as regulators launched and later abandoned a study of its health impacts, according to filings reviewed by Reuters. The previously unreported documents from Irving and provincial regulators, obtained by Reuters under the provinces Right to Information Act, raise fresh questions over the company's environmental record and the provinces capacity to regulate industry. Such concerns have come into sharper relief since the company agreed in 2013 to become a partner in TransCanadas proposed Energy East oil pipeline project, which would bring more than 1 million barrels of oil daily from Alberta to the Saint John shoreline in eastern Canada. The problems at the refinery, Canada's largest, underscore concerns over catalyst releases at refineries around North America. Incidents in Texas, Wyoming, and California, for example, have heightened calls for a better understanding of how the concoction of sand and metal compounds, used in the production of gasoline, affects human health. Between August 2010 and December 2015, privately held Irving's refinery had repeated operational problems that triggered the releases of the substance, according to monthly reports submitted by Irving to provincial regulators. The incidents sometimes left surrounding homes, vehicles and backyards coated by the gritty dust, prolonged exposure to which has been linked by the company and health experts to potential lung damage. Irving Oil spokesman Andrew Carson said the catalyst releases were unplanned and infrequent and noted the refinery had not exceeded its annual overall particulate emissions limit during the more than five years examined by Reuters. "An event like a catalyst release is responded to quickly with very minimal environmental impact, Carson said. But during the period, large particulate emissions from the refinery exceeded the two-month rolling average threshold established in Irving's operating permit at least a dozen times, according to the documents. The company told regulators it fielded as many as 183 complaint calls from neighbors. The New Brunswick Department of Health had launched an effort to study the substance after a particularly large release in 2013, but the work was delayed and finally canceled two years later because of a lack of time and data, according to agency emails included in the documents. Reuters submitted a list of questions to the New Brunswick Department of Health in early May, but officials there did not respond to that or to repeated requests for comment. A spokeswoman for the New Brunswick Department of Environment and Local Government said: "The department continues to work with the company to ensure that it is taking the necessary steps to operate within its approval limits and to minimize environmental impacts." Provinces, rather than the federal government, are responsible for dealing with most local pollution issues in Canada. VEGETABLES, TOYS The biggest release happened in August 2010, when a mechanical glitch during the start up of a refinery unit caused it to shoot more than 30 metric tons (33 tons) of dust into the air. Irving assured regulators problems were being resolved, but releases persisted, the documents show. Irvings safety data sheets for the catalyst caution against ingestion, and warn of the potential for lung damage if inhaled. Several components are believed to be carcinogens, according to information submitted by Irving to New Brunswick regulators. Irving spokesman Carson said such impacts would require frequent and prolonged exposure, and compared the danger of catalyst to that of household paints. Health officials began raising questions after an accident that resulted in the release of between 6 and 11 metric tons of catalyst in 2013, emails between provincial health and environmental officials show. "Has Irving ever tested soil after an event like this? It sounds like this has happened before, but little was done other than vouchers for free car washes," wrote Douglas Walker, the regional health director for Saint John in a July 9, 2013 email to New Brunswick environmental officials. At a meeting called by regulators shortly after the incident, Irving agreed to advise residents to wash fruits and vegetables, childrens toys, etc, but reassured regulators the substance was benign, according to minutes from the session. Some community members and air quality watchdogs remain unconvinced. Dr. Barbara Mackinnon, president of the New Brunswick Lung Association, said particulate emissions can affect different people in different ways. "To say that it is benign is just not entirely accurate," she said. In July 2013, New Brunswick Department of Health officials proposed a health risk assessment" of catalyst to put concerns of residents and others to rest, but the study was abandoned in 2015, according to agency emails and meeting minutes. "In spite of investing a fair bit of effort, we have been unable to complete this work because of a lack of data that would enable us to define realistic human exposure scenarios," Todd Arsenault, a senior scientific advisor to the Department of Health, wrote in an email on May 15, 2015. An Irving spokesman said the company later undertook its own voluntary study which showed very little cause for concern associated with incidents of this scale. Irving declined to provide a copy to Reuters. A study commissioned by the U.S. Department of Health in 2011 of a large catalyst release in Wyoming more than a decade earlier concluded that breathing the catalyst likely did not harm health long-term, but could have worsened problems like asthma and bronchitis. It noted that the study was based on modeling with "inherent uncertainties". Complicating things, different refineries can use different ingredients in their catalyst blends. Some local environmentalists and refinery neighbors in Saint John said lingering questions had left some feeling unnerved ahead of larger infrastructure projects associated with Transcanadas Energy East proposal. Regulators here seem content to take the word of industry, said Gordon Dalzell, an air quality activist who lives near the refinery. If the new pipeline is built, who can we trust to watch out for the public interest? Environmental fears over the Energy East project have mainly focused on the risk of spills, but local critics have also raised concerns about air quality around the project's planned storage terminal, which Irving would operate. Air quality is a touchy issue in Saint John, which is dominated by Irving-owned industries. Research commissioned by the Conservation Council of New Brunswick in 2009 showed lung cancer rates in the city 50 percent higher than in the capital Fredericton, though the research was unable to identify a cause. Reuters has revealed other concerns around Irving Oil's environmental record in recent years, including problems with its air pollution capture equipment, and its record of spills and regulatory warnings. (Additional reporting and editing by Richard Valdmanis. Editing by Stuart Grudgings)
Maksim and Valentin Chmerkovskiy are hitting the road together and ET was along for a rehearsal, getting a sneak peek at what's to come.

"This is an incredible celebration," Maks told ET. "Dance, family, ambition -- it's kind of our version of the American dream."

WATCH: Valentin and Maksim Chmerkovskiy Reveal Their Tips for the Perfect Kiss

The Dancing With the Stars bros will be busting out new moves with their Maks & Val Live on Tour: Our Way from June 15 through Aug. 14, which could be the last chance they get to spend this much time together. Maks and fiancee Peta Murgatroyd are reportedly expecting a baby!

"He's been handed over to Miss Peta Murgatroyd," Val teased. "She's signed the papers. It's official. We are getting our divorce."

Maks joked that the trip is actually their "farewell tour," but all kidding aside, the close-knit brothers are clearly happy to be in each other's company.

WATCH: 'DWTS' Pros Maksim Chmerkovskiy and Peta Murgatroyd Are Engaged

"This show's incredibly therapeutic for the both of us," Val admitted.

In addition to their fancy dance steps, fans will also get a glimpse at the Chmerkovskiy's family history and the long, hard road they took from the Ukraine to get to where they are today.

"We're trying to tell a story from zero to Dancing With the Stars," Maks said before joking, "Some questions get answered like, what are these antics? And why is he speaking so strangely? And is he really arrogant?"

While Maks has yet to confirm if there is a little Maks on the way, he did tell ET that his wedding vows are being planned for next year.

PICS: Size Does Matter! The Biggest and Best Celebrity Engagement Rings

"I just want her to have the wedding of her dreams, and me to also have the wedding of my dreams," Maks said.

Tickets for Maks & Val Live on Tour can be purchased at maksandvaltour.com.

Story continues

Related Articles
By Emi Emoto and Sinead Cruise

TOKYO/LONDON (Reuters) - Schroders plc (SDR.L) has appointed Shigesuke Kashiwagi, former Chief Financial Officer of Nomura Holdings , as its president and country head of Japan, the London-listed global asset manager said in a statement issued exclusively to Reuters.

Kashiwagi, a well known figure in Japan's financial industry, abruptly left Nomura in March, shortly before the country's biggest investment bank announced a major management overhaul, including the appointment of a new chief operating officer.

Kashiwagi, 56, had been expecting to be promoted to the role, people familiar with the matter told Reuters, and his exit had raised questions about whether he had clashed with Nomura's senior management over the company's future business strategy.

As head of Schroders in Asia's largest investment market, he will drive its growth plans at a time when asset management firms are seeking opportunities from a campaign by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to shift household funds out of bank deposits and into investment to rev up the economy.

Both Japanese and foreign asset managers see potential for big growth in the industry given the heavy concentration of household assets in deposits.

Japanese households have 1,740 trillion yen (11.24 trillion pounds) in financial assets, with more than half in cash and deposits, Bank of Japan data shows. Mutual funds and stock investments account for only 15 percent.

In comparison, cash and deposits make up only 14 percent of U.S. households' financial assets, with mutual funds and stock investments accounting for nearly half, BOJ data shows.

Based in Tokyo, Kashiwagi will report to Lieven Debruyne, Schroders Asia-Pacific Chief Executive Officer. He succeeds Guy Henriques, who will return to a role in Britain, and will take up his post from July 1.

"The appointment of an executive with Shigesuke's unrivalled experience and financial industry knowledge highlights our continued commitment to growth in Japan," Peter Harrison, Group Chief Executive at Schroders said in the statement.

Story continues

Kashiwagi was not immediately available for comment.

He joined Nomura Securities in 1982, completed an MBA at New York University and worked in Nomura's New York office as a fixed income trader through 1990. He later became CEO of Nomura Holding America.

Kashiwagi said in the statement he was delighted to be joining Schroders.

(Reporting Emi Emoto and Sinead Cruise; Writing by Denny Thomas; Editing by Richard Pullin)
By Emi Emoto and Sinead Cruise

TOKYO/LONDON (Reuters) - Schroders plc has appointed Shigesuke Kashiwagi, former Chief Financial Officer of Nomura Holdings, as its president and country head of Japan, the London-listed global asset manager said in a statement issued exclusively to Reuters.

Kashiwagi, a well known figure in Japan's financial industry, abruptly left Nomura in March, shortly before the country's biggest investment bank announced a major management overhaul, including the appointment of a new chief operating officer.

Kashiwagi, 56, had been expecting to be promoted to the role, people familiar with the matter told Reuters, and his exit had raised questions about whether he had clashed with Nomura's senior management over the company's future business strategy.

As head of Schroders in Asia's largest investment market, he will drive its growth plans at a time when asset management firms are seeking opportunities from a campaign by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to shift household funds out of bank deposits and into investment to rev up the economy.

Both Japanese and foreign asset managers see potential for big growth in the industry given the heavy concentration of household assets in deposits.

Japanese households have 1,740 trillion yen ($16.2 trillion) in financial assets, with more than half in cash and deposits, Bank of Japan data shows. Mutual funds and stock investments account for only 15 percent.

In comparison, cash and deposits make up only 14 percent of U.S. households' financial assets, with mutual funds and stock investments accounting for nearly half, BOJ data shows.

Based in Tokyo, Kashiwagi will report to Lieven Debruyne, Schroders Asia-Pacific Chief Executive Officer. He succeeds Guy Henriques, who will return to a role in Britain, and will take up his post from July 1.

"The appointment of an executive with Shigesuke's unrivalled experience and financial industry knowledge highlights our continued commitment to growth in Japan," Peter Harrison, Group Chief Executive at Schroders said in the statement.

Story continues

Kashiwagi was not immediately available for comment.

He joined Nomura Securities in 1982, completed an MBA at New York University and worked in Nomura's New York office as a fixed income trader through 1990. He later became CEO of Nomura Holding America.

Kashiwagi said in the statement he was delighted to be joining Schroders.

(Reporting Emi Emoto and Sinead Cruise; Writing by Denny Thomas; Editing by Richard Pullin)
By Tom Miles GENEVA (Reuters) - Syria's government has freed prisoners on condition that they join the army upon their release, the president of the opposition Syrian National Coalition told Reuters on Friday, citing reports from Adra Central Prison near Damascus. "Preliminary reports indicate that between 100-150 prisoners have been released under this arrangement but taken directly to the front lines in Aleppo and Qamishli. It is believed the regime is inclined to take those released to the front lines with ISIS in particular to minimize chances of defection," Anas al-Abdah said. On Thursday, U.N. Syria envoy Staffan de Mistura said he had information from Russia and Syria that "some substantial number of fighters appeared to have been released". He suggested the release could be timed to coincide with the holy month of Ramadan or as a unilateral gesture by the government, but he was seeking more information to confirm that those released were "genuine fighters, political prisoners". His office had no more information 24 hours later, and referred Reuters back to his previous statement. Al-Abdah said those reportedly released were not political prisoners but mostly criminal convicts, especially those jailed for drug crimes. "The Syrian National Coalition is deeply concerned by those reports and calls on the international community, particularly the U.N. Special Envoy and his team, to take a firm stance of the regimes hideous manoeuvres and blackmail tactics it typically uses with regards to the issue of detainees," he said. The Syrian opposition has long demanded the release of detainees, especially women and children, and de Mistura has appointed a former Red Cross official, Eva Svoboda, to take charge of the issue. The main opposition negotiating group, the High Negotiations Committee, has a list of 150,000 detainees, its spokesman, Salim al-Muslat, told Reuters in April. (Reporting by Tom Miles, editing by Larry King)
(Reuters) - Britain holds a referendum on membership of the European Union on June 23. Following are details of how the ballot count will work on the night. All times in GMT. WHEN WILL RESULTS COME? Votes will be counted by hand starting as soon as polls close at 2100 GMT. Each of 382 local counting areas will tally the number of ballot papers cast and announce local turnout figures (including spoiled ballots and postal votes) in each of the areas. The Electoral Commission watchdog has estimated that most turnout announcements at counting-area level will come between 2230 on June 23 and 0130 on June 24. The last turnout figure is expected at around 0400. Then each area will count the votes and announce totals for REMAIN and LEAVE in each of the 382 areas. The majority of counting areas are expected to declare between around 0100 and 0300 on June 24. The last declaration is expected around 0600. These local totals will be collated into totals for 12 regions, and then a final, national, result. The final result will be announced in Manchester by Jenny Watson, who is the Chief Counting Officer. WHEN CAN PEOPLE VOTE? Polling stations open at 0600 on June 23 and close at 2100. WILL THERE BE AN EXIT POLL? There are currently no plans by broadcasters for an exit poll as the margin of error is deemed to be too large. THE QUESTION Voters will be given one piece of paper with the question: "Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union or leave the European Union?" They will be asked to put a cross beside either: "Remain a member of the European Union "Leave the European Union" WHO CAN VOTE? All those who are entitled to vote in a UK parliamentary general election can vote in the referendum, including British, Irish and qualifying Commonwealth citizens over the age of 18 who are resident in the UK. UK nationals resident overseas who have appeared on a parliamentary election register in the past 15 years will also have the right to vote, as will Irish citizens who were born in Northern Ireland and registered to vote in Northern Ireland in the last 15 years. In addition, peers and citizens of Gibraltar who were able to vote at a European Parliamentary election can vote. REGISTERING TO VOTE Britain extended the voter registration period for the referendum to midnight on June 9 after a late surge in applications crashed a key website shortly before the original June 7 midnight deadline. CAN THE COUNT AND VOTE BE CHALLENGED? The electoral commission says this: "The referendum rules do not provide for a national recount to be carried out in any circumstances. Any request for a recount of votes will be at local count level and is for the Counting Officer to determine. We expect local recounts to be granted if a specific issue has been identified with the process in that counting area, rather than simply when the local totals are close. "The national referendum result is only subject to challenge by way of judicial review. "An application for judicial review would need to be lodged within six weeks of the certification that is being challenged being made." Sources: Electoral Commission, Reuters reporting (Reporting by Guy Faulconbridge, Alistair Smout, Kylie MacLellan, William James and Freya Berry; Editing by Richard Balmforth)
LONDON (Reuters) - Britain votes on June 23 on whether to remain a member of the European Union. Following are the views of some business leaders: AIRLINES easyJet CEO Carolyn McCall: "We will do everything we can to make sure that consumers understand that they are far better off within the EU when it comes to connectivity and low fares." "We think it would be very difficult for our government to negotiate with 27 other member states to get the flying rights that we have today within the EU." Ryanair CEO Michael O'Leary: "The longer-term effect though is we will invest less in the UK - we will certainly switch some of our existing UK investment into other European countries because we want to continue to invest in the European Union and it will be bad for air travel and British tourism." AUTOMOTIVE BMW's Director for sales and marketing Ian Robertson: "The UK has the most diverse car industry in Europe and is the fourth-largest market of BMW Group worldwide. From an industry perspective we would therefore regret seeing the UK leave the EU." CEO of Opel , owner of the Vauxhall brand, Karl-Thomas Neumann: "We have plants in Luton and Ellesmere Port. We will not turn our back on England. If Britons voted to leave the EU, life would carry on. We would continue to find ways to invest." Chief executive of Volkswagen-owned British brand Bentley, Wolfgang Duerheimer: "Volkswagen Group has 110 locations around the world where they produce cars. That means they are not in any case reliant on the UK so if the situation changes dramatically, future decisions need to be considered among the circumstances you face." BANKING AND FINANCE Colm Kelleher, president of Morgan Stanley : "If Britain were to leave Europe you would see a significant backlash against London as a financial centre." Citi's UK head James Bardrick on what could happen post-Brexit: "We would have to operationally change the business and reallocate certain businesses back into the EU. That's not technically impossible ... but enormously costly and enormously inefficient ... and will mean the scale of our activities here will reduce." Mark Boleat, chairman of Policy and Resources Committee at the City of London Corporation: "If the UK votes to leave the EU, there would be serious consequences for the City of London's role as an international financial centre. We would see UK-based financial institutions lose access to the single market and some would consider relocating elsewhere in the EU  not overnight but over time." HSBC chairman Douglas Flint: "Our own economic research is very clear about the advantages of Britain being at the heart of a reformed EU. We believe that the UK would enter a period of great economic uncertainty in the event of a vote to leave." JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon: "If the UK leaves the EU, we may have no choice but to reorganise our business model here. Brexit could mean fewer JPMorgan jobs in the UK and more jobs in Europe." ENERGY, OIL AND GAS The chief executive of oil giant Royal Dutch Shell Ben van Beurden was quoted as saying by The Sunday Times newspaper: "We are a company with a strong heritage in the UK and on the Continent. There would be a real break between the two, which would affect freedom of movement of staff, trade  we would be impacted. "There will be a path of divergence, and that will have all sorts of inefficiencies. That's not good for companies like ours that thrive by there being no barriers. That is a fundamental economic aspect of it." The chief executive of BP Bob Dudley told the BBC: "Being outside the EU would be worse for the country as many of the rules would still apply and Britain would be in danger of losing influence on the world stage. "There are lots of technical tax reasons, trade flows, regulation, that would make it better for our business and the energy business in general, the oil and gas business, (if Britain) were a part of Europe." Former CEO of National Grid Steve Holliday: "We cannot afford to lose the access to (European) energy supplies and interconnection, whatever the framework is eventually. Being part of the European energy market is unquestionably essential for the UK." HOUSEBUILDERS AND ESTATE AGENTS Rob Perrins, managing director of London-focused housebuilder Berkeley : "My concern would be around inward investment into London and it would slow down the growth of jobs and its influence. "If it retained less influence and less jobs, it will grow less quickly so it would actually need less homes built." Mat Oakley, head of commercial research at real estate group Savills : "We have spoken to a number of people who've said we'll seriously consider moving our headquarters functions ... and our growth over the medium term to long term may well be more skewed to the EU ... if the UK were to leave." INDUSTRIALS Airbus Group Chief Executive Tom Enders: "If Britain leaves, I cannot imagine that this would have positive consequences for our competitiveness in Britain." Roger Carr, chairman of BAE Systems : "I am a supporter of making it (the EU) better, more competitive and therefore seeking to improve it, but I still believe you can do that more effectively as a family member within rather than as a critic outside." JCB Chairman Anthony Bamford wrote to staff in a letter published in the Times: "The UK is a trading nation and the fifth largest economy in the world. I am very confident that we can stand on our own two feet. I believe that JCB and the UK can prosper just as much outside the EU, so there is very little to fear if we do choose to leave." PHARMACEUTICALS Andrew Witty, CEO of GlaxoSmithKline : "From a purely business, economic perspective, my view very strongly is we are much better off inside the European Union than outside of it. "It's very unclear to me what exactly the rule set would be on the outside. I think it runs the risk of creating long periods of uncertainty with no obvious route to a simpler world than the one in which we operate." RECRUITMENT Steve Ingham, chief executive of Michael Page : "I am concerned about the disruption, because it causes uncertainty and uncertainty means that people are unprepared to make decisions. It's not good for a candidate thinking about moving job, and it's not good for a client and that's more a concern." RETAIL AND LEISURE Nick Varney CEO of Legoland-operator Merlin Entertainments : "In our case we don't think it will make any difference as to whether we're in or we're out of the EU." Primark-owner AB Foods Chief Executive George Weston: "The important point ... is that Brexit isn't a major threat to us one way or the other... We've had a good look at the potential impact of either Brexit or not Brexit on AB Foods and it's not very big." Tim Martin chairman of JD Wetherspoon : "Will the UK be better off out of the European Union? Of course. Just look at what is happening now  the EU is already removing democratic powers from member states... Most people will say 'yes' to a common market and free trade; 'yes' to friendship and co-operation and 'yes' to free movement of labour among countries which are in the EU today  but we can achieve these aims outside the EU." TELECOMS Gavin Patterson, CEO of BT , is quoted on the CBI website as saying: "We value the way the EU has helped to open up markets, it has been a genuine help when it comes to us providing services outside the UK... We face regulatory battles beyond Europe, trying to get a level playing field as we compete with overseas incumbents." (Reporting By UK bureau and EMEA corporate finance team; compiled by Costas Pitas and Sarah Young)
By Lisa Lambert

(Reuters) - The fight over a new federal regulation on advice on investing for retirement is moving from Capitol Hill to the U.S. court system, as the number of lawsuits attempting to stop the rule grows.

Wall Street-affiliated groups, including the U.S. Chamber Of Commerce, last week filed a legal challenge in a U.S. District Court in Texas to the Labor Department's new fiduciary standard that requires financial brokers for retirement products to put clients' best interests ahead of their bottom line.

Since then, a collection of insurance companies sued in the same court on Wednesday, contesting the rule over its treatment of fixed indexed annuities.

The Indexed Annuity Leadership Council, the Life Insurance Co of the Southwest, American Equity Investment Life Insurance Co, Midland National Life Insurance Co and the North American Co for Life and Health Insurance said the new rule would create massive new costs and dislocations.

The rule, effective this week, will "upend the regulatory scheme that has for decades governed the market for fixed indexed annuities," they said in their filing. It will also "necessitate an overhaul of the ways in which these valuable products are sold" and "threaten the availability of these products for the very people the rules are intended to benefit," the filing said.

In April the Labor Department released the rule for financial brokers who sell retirement products after a bruising fight that spanned years.

The Labor Department compromised with the industry on a range of provisions, and the final rule does not restrict brokers from pushing proprietary products or recommending risky, high-fee investments in alternative assets and certain annuities.

Market Synergy Group, an insurance agency, also sued on Wednesday, over its treatment of fixed indexed annuities, those that link their returns to a stock market index. That lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court in Kansas.

Until this week, Congress had taken the lead in resisting the new rule, with Republicans saying it will cut lower- and middle-income investors off from receiving affordable retirement advice. It passed a resolution repudiating the rule, which President Barack Obama vetoed on Wednesday.
New Zealand Prime Minister John Key said Friday he wanted to "reset" ties with Suva after his Fijian counterpart accused Wellington of failing to understand the coup-plagued Pacific nation.

Making the first visit to Fiji by a New Zealand leader in a decade, Key said it was time to look beyond tensions generated by a military takeover in 2006.

Key said his trip aimed to "to reset the relationship so we can go forward together in a spirit of great friendship".

However, Fiji Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama, who led the 2006 coup before winning an election in 2014, told Key that New Zealand attitudes must change to improve the relationship.

At a welcoming function for Key late Thursday, the former military strongman complained that some New Zealanders still questioned the legitimacy of his leadership.

"I stand before you tonight not as a coup maker or dictator -- as some in your country would still have it -- but as the popularly elected, freely chosen leader of Fiji," he said.

New Zealand led international calls for sanctions when Bainimarama seized power in 2006 and he said Wellington now needed an approach that was "less prescriptive, more consultative".

"Fiji seeks a new political relationship with New Zealand that is more equal, more rooted in mutual respect, more understanding," he said.

Bainimarama also launched into a lengthy justification of his coup, saying it was needed to remove a corrupt and racially biased government.

He defended Fiji's right to ban journalists from the country, including a number from New Zealand, an issue Key said he had intended to raise during his trip.

"We cannot allow the wilful propagation of false information that damages the national interest and undermines our vulnerable economy," the Fijian leader said.

Since the 2014 vote, Fiji's government has been accused of trying to muzzle the press and opposition lawmakers, as well covering up police brutality.

Amnesty International said Key, whose two-day visit wrapped up on Friday, needed to put human rights at the top of the agenda during his talks with Bainimarama.

Fiji's economy relies on tourism and the island chain is a major destination for New Zealanders and Australians. The country has witnessed four coups since 1987 and the military remains a powerful institution in the fledgling democracy.
Back before The Sopranos  well, actually, just as The Sopranos was midway through its first season  a movie comedy came out that presented the idea of a gangster who goes to see a psychiatrist as just about the most nutty, screw-loose hi-larious concept in the world. Even after six seasons of The Sopranos, the notion behind the Robert De Niro/Billy Crystal comedy Analyze This still sounds kind of funny, and its no trick to apply the same basic joke to certain otherprofessions. A gladiator seeing a psychiatrist. A superhero seeing a psychiatrist. Donald Trump seeing a psychiatrist. (Well, okay, there are limits to plausibility.) So how about a vampire seeing a psychiatrist  or, better yet, a vampire going to see the OP (original psychiatrist): the man himself, Sigmund Freud? Are you laughing yet? Or, if youre one of the few people who will go to the new Austrian movie Therapy for a Vampire, are you spitting up the comedy equivalent of a blood clot?

Were in Vienna in 1932, and the monster in question who seeks out Freuds help is Count Geza von Kozsnom, a Romanian bloodsucker who is bored, bored, bored with his vampire wife, Elsa (Jeanette Hain), because the two have been married for, like, centuries. Can anyone relate? (Nudge, nudge.) Count Geza is played by Tobias Moretti, who in profile does look a bit like Bela Lugosi, but mostly he resembles a debauched Mike Wallace. Hes a very civilized and depressed aristocrat, who has become so jaded by his lifestyle that he has an assistant go out and draw blood from victims, which he then guzzles out of a flask. Dr. Freud (Karl Fischer) has no idea that hes treating an undead neurotic, and therapy, as it turns out, doesnt do the count much good. Hes too much in thrall to his lost love from hundreds of years ago, who he thinks has been reincarnated in Lucy (Cornelia Ivancan), a bohemian model whos having relationship issues. Her artist boyfriend, Viktor (Dominic Oley), insists on painting her as a blonde  and, indeed, seems to be getting ready to go full Vertigo on her.

Story continues

If a diagram were the same thing as a script, then Therapy for a Vampire might be a smashingly silly lark. But as written and directed by Daniel Ruehl, the film is a blueprint of mild anemic kitsch. Its an undead comedy without the blood of experience coursing through its veins. The count and his wife, who you might say are at each others throats, each pair off with one half of the young couple. Elsa, whose undead style consists of wearing a Louise Brooks bob (though it looks more like a Louise Brooks wig purchased in a costume shop), latches onto Viktor and insists that he paint her portrait so that she can see what she looks like. (Mirrors werent doing the trick.) And the count woos Lucy with that whole Come and be a creature of the night! You will live forever! routine. The best thing in the movie is Cornelia Ivancan. Shes got a real bloom  a glow of misbehavior. No one will let Lucy just be who she is (Viktor wants to change her hair color, the count wants to change her mortality), and Therapy for a Vampire, to the extent that it has a theme, is a feminist anthem. If only it werent such a cheesy, thinly written, badly lit one.

The notion of an old vampire couple coping with the anomie of the ages owes an obvious debt to Jim Jarmuschs Only Lovers Left Alive (2014), which was an infinitely more textured  and funnier  movie. The way this all plays out in Therapy for a Vampire brings it closer to being a bloodsucker version of Escape (The Pina Colada Song). Call it The Plasma Colada Song.
Wedbush analyst initiated Fitbit FIT shares with an $18 price target, immediately sending shares up 3.2%. But since they barely moved in extended trading its apparent that investors arent going overboard.

FITBIT INC Price and EPS Surprise

FITBIT INC Price and EPS Surprise | FITBIT INC Quote

The analyst pointed to some factors that could drive future growth, including co-branding opportunities, accessory sales and corporate wellness opportunities. So lets take a look at each of these.

The Question of Co-Branding

The Fitbit brand is growing in popularity as the companys brand awareness campaigns appear to be generating results. Despite Apples AAPL entry into the segment, Fitbit sales have held up relatively well. And increasingly, the analyst feels, the brand is becoming a common noun with the words fitness tracker being replaced with Fibit.

Independent market research from IDC indicates that this theory could have merit. In its wearables market tracking report published on May 16, the research firm says that Fitbits well-segmented portfolio, pricing strategy, and a strong brand have played an important role in establishing its leading market position. It estimates that Fitbits newer Blaze and Alta products (a new chapter of fashion-oriented fitness trackers) sold a million units each, while the older Surge, Charge, Charge HR and Flex products declined.

Fitbit saw shipments grow 25.4% in the first quarter. Xiaomi saw much stronger growth based on its strength in China. Apple and Garmin GRMN were relatively distant third and fourths with single-digit market shares.

The fact that it is able to sell new products and/or get its customers to upgrade is also a sign of strong brand awareness.

Fitbit already resorts to a kind of co-branding, since its products are better known as Fitbits than by their individual names. This makes it difficult for competing brands to encroach on its market share even when they have a couple of strong features. Co-branding with competing products doesnt seem like a good idea at this stage, but is an interesting thought if you consider other wearable products coming on the market.

Story continues

For instance, Benzinga recently wrote about a number of wearable products for babies (devices for tracking babies heart rates, pressure, oxygen levels, thermometers, pacifiers, etc). Co-branding with market-adjacent products could help it grow market share.

The Question of Accessory Sales

Fitbit tells us nothing about accessory sales, but one would assume that there would be some correlation with Fitbit device sales. So continuing strength in the main product lines should be positive enough for growth in accessories. Although, accessories are unlikely to ever grow into a significant percentage of sales, so we will probably never have more granularity on numbers. We can of course theorize about it.

The Question of Corporate Wellness

Corporate wellness makes perfect sense, and the company has actually made some progress on this front. The sales strategy here is that if companies subsidize/encourage employees to buy fitness devices/lead more healthy lives, corporate healthcare costs will go down.

It may sound like a tough sell, but companies are clearly buying it: Fitbit currently has over a thousand enterprise customers, of which Target TGT is one of the better-known. The companys growing mindshare will continue to help on this front.

Will Brand Strength Beat Product Quality Issues?

The accuracy of heart rate readings by Fitbit's PurePulse heart rate monitors used in its Fitbit Blaze, Fitbit Charge HR and Fitbit Surge bands has recently been questioned by two groups.

The first was a Ball State University test in Indiana that included journalists at NBC-affiliated TV station WTHR. The study found that the Fitbit Charge HR recorded an average heart rate error of 14%. Fitbit said its devices "are designed to provide meaningful data to our users to help them reach their health and fitness goals, and are not intended to be scientific or medical devices."

More recently, the California State Polytechnic University, Pomona tested heartbeats of 43 healthy adults during rest and exercise, including jump rope, treadmills, outdoor jogging and stair climbing using the Fitbit's PurePulse heart rate monitors. The test sho

wed inaccuracy up to 20 beats per minute during more strenuous workouts. The study was commissioned by Lieff Cabraser, the law firm behind a class action suit targeting the Fitbit Blaze, Fitbit Charge HR and Fitbit Surge. Fitbit called this test biased, baseless and lacking in scientific rigor.

While adverse test results have created some negative sentiment for Fitbit, its worth remembering that these consumer health monitoring devices are not priced the way an advanced scientific instrument might be. They should be treated as utility items with reasonable accuracy much along the lines of accucheck devices for measuring blood sugar levels.

This level of accuracy is perfectly acceptable and useful for most people and only professionals or geeks/fans would possibly want more. So Fitbit shouldnt be in any trouble as long as it doesnt make false claims about its products.

Final Words

Fitbit has a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold) and its already-rich valuation could limit upside at these levels. But this is a stock worth watching for the following reasons:

The company has topped estimates in each of the last four quarters at an average rate of 167.9%. The Zacks Growth score is A, indicating that there are solid growth prospects.

Despite the fact that its a relatively new company, Fitbit generates profits, has a leading share of a fast-growing market, has a well-articulated growth strategy, steady flow of new products and very strong international growth prospects because of low penetration levels. Besides, even if competition continues to increase because of the commodity nature of the products, low penetration levels mean we shouldnt worry about it yet. In the long run, its first mover advantage may mean stronger brand value and protect it from downside risk.

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Washington (AFP) - Credit agency Fitch left Britain's rating unchanged at "AA+" Friday but warned that if the country votes in favor of exiting the European Union, the rating could be lowered.

Fitch said the country merits its second-highest credit grade due to its wealthy, diversified and flexible economy, its solid policy management and the global strength of the British pound.

It also said that its rating, with a "stable" outlook, crucially assumed that the country would remain in the European Union.

But it warned that if the June 23 referendum goes in favor of breaking from the EU, the rating could change.

"Fitch believes that a vote to leave the EU would be a moderate credit negative for the UK, affecting its medium-term growth and investment prospects, its external position, and potentially the future of Scotland within it," Fitch said.

The agency said they would review Britain's rating shortly after the vote if the pro-Brexit vote wins.
With airfare prices dropping (this is, after all, the cheapest summer to travel), travelers have many reasons to celebrate. But those who live near airports are less happy: the new flight patterns created by the Federal Aviation Administration as part of its NextGen program have created more noise pollutionand it may get worse.

The program was developed to help modernize air traffic control and navigation systems, something thats helped bring down travel costs. Its already put more planes in the sky and reduced fuel costs and carbon emissions, but a change to a GPS-based navigation systems could create even more noise problems.

Prior to having a GPS network... we relied on radar technology, NextGen deputy assistant administrator Pamela Whitley told SIGNAL magazine. With radar sweeps, you get an update about every eight to 10 seconds, depending on the specific radar. For those eight or 10 seconds, you dont know exactly where the airplane is.

This change means airplanes can travel more closely together and create new flight pathsallowing for additional direct flights. But the same cities that will enjoy increased airlift will also see an increase in noise pollution from the initial phases of this program.

Complaints have come up in places like Phoenix, Arizona, Northern California, Washington, DC, Chicago, and Brooklyn, causing the FAA to respond. We are very concerned about doing everything we can do to be as responsible as we can about noise, FAA administrator Michael P. Huerta told the Washington Post.

While air travel is likely to double in the next 20 years and many fear the noise will get worse, there is some hope in sight. Not only is the FAA reevaluating flight patterns, but new engine designs could reduce the overhead rumble as well.

"The single most impactful way we can mitigate noise is by investing in new aircraft that are quieter and more fuel efficient," Charles Hobart, a spokesman for United Airlines told the Chicago Tribune.

The Continuous Lower Energy, Emissions and Noise (CLEEN) program has the FAA working with companies like GE, Honeywell, and Boeing to develop more fuel-efficient and quieter engines. Changes like using lighter materials, altering engine airflow, and even using acoustic liners could all help dampen the noise.
Photo credit: Getty

From Delish

Every afternoon we compile the most important info Delish readers need to know-from breaking news and hazardous recalls to trending food stunts and new menu items at your favorite restaurants.

You won't believe what this man found in his McDonald's burger

After taking a bite out of his cheeseburger, one man in Chesterfield County, VA found a $20 bill folded between the patty and bun. The man, David Cook, told CBS affiliate WTVR: "I've heard of people finding strange things in their salad, but never finding something like this [in] a cooked burger." Yeah, well that makes two of us.

People are pissed at Burger King-and calling it sexist

The company's all-male board is not sitting well with investors and shareholders, who are calling for female directors. Bloomberg reports that the "brash bro culture" isn't welcome in the boardroom of Restaurant Brands International (RBI), the parent company formed when BK acquired Tim Horton's. The Vancouver, Canada-based group looks at this as a national embarrassment, especially after three female Tim Hortons board members no longer remain with the combined company. "Given the current investment and corporate governance climate in Canada, we believe RBI's all-male board is a step backwards for diversity at the company," said Fred Pinto, CEO of OceanRock Investments which backs RBI. Oh snap.

The crazy thing that makes you drink more wine

While a heavy-handed pour will obviously lead to drinking more vino than normal, a new study says it's actually the size of your glass that impacts your consumption. TIME reports that researchers at the University of Cambridge in England found that when wine was served in larger glasses (370mL versus 250mL or 300mL), people asked for more refills. Every time the pour was the same average size. We suspect this is because people might feel slighted on the pour and will ask for another round (or three) to compensate. But honestly, are we really that surprised by this? Last summer we learned that the shape of our pint glasses can lead us to drink more beer.

Story continues

Science says this is the best time to eat bananas

Forget breakfast-the prime time for eating bananas is before bed. According to a study in the Journal of Research and Medical Science, ingesting magnesium before bed can improve the quality of sleep you get at night, especially if you suffer from insomnia. Because bananas contain a good amount of magnesium and potassium, another muscle-relaxing vitamin-plus the amino acid tryptophan, which trigger calming hormones like melatonin-they're best for a good night's rest and not first thing in the a.m.

Your daily dose of food porn

Ninety-nine percent sure this is the most M&Ms to ever make it onto a cookie.

Follow Delish on Instagram.

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Philip Breedlove civilian atlantic council

On Wednesday, at the Atlantic Council, retired four-star Air Force General and former Supreme Allied Commander of NATO Philip Breedlove spoke about the mounting tensions between Russia and the West as a NATO summit draws near.

At July's Warsaw summit, NATO leaders will convene to discuss the future of the alliance, the possibility of expansion, and overall strategy.

Taking questions from the crowd, Breedlove, who entered military service nearly four decades ago during the Cold War and spent four years as the commander of NATO, explained the successes of the alliance since the last major summit in Wales.

"Mr. Putin may actually be a bit surprised at how well NATO has moved forward with the changes that were started in Wales," Breedlove said.

"The progress is measurable and demonstrative in the way that we have exercised and the way that the alliance actually came together very quickly to do things many thought they would never do in building the VJTF [Very High Readiness Joint Task Force]," Breedlove continued.

Russia bombing syria iran russia

"Putins No. 1 goal is to crack EU or NATO ... We have shown him since Wales more unity," Breedlove said, adding that if Mr. Putin is able to break apart the EU or NATO... he gets everything else he wants."

But tensions between NATO and Russia are reaching alarming levels. Despite NATO's unity, an increasingly belligerent Russia has threatened military action against Sweden and Finland should they join NATO, and the US after one of its ships made a routine patrol in the Black Sea. Meanwhile, the US has positioned not one, but two aircraft carriers in the Mediterranean in advance of the Warsaw summit.

Additionally, RAND Corp, through wargamming and analysis, estimates that Russia's conventional forces could seize Baltic capitals like Tallinn and Riga in as little as 36 hours. Though Breedlove acknowledged the veracity of the modeling methods used by RAND Corp, he questioned their conclusion.

Story continues

Speaking first about NATO's success in deterring Russian aggression or advances, Breedlove contested the notion that NATO could not defend its most exposed members on the Eastern flank.

nato training

"We can defend if we get early, decisive movements from our nations and our NATO leadership. If we get in front of a problem, which requires good, fused intelligence, indications, and warnings, and the courage to make decisions based on those warnings, I believe we can defend," said Breedlove.

At this point, a question steered the conversation toward Russia's military doctrine.

The Russians speak about, write about, and train to use tactical nukes as a logical and understood extension of conventional war," said Breedlove. But building a war plan for NATO that projects strength, unity, and determination, yet also includes "off ramps" and "opportunities for deescalation" of conflicts is an "art, not a science," Breedlove conceded.

Instead, Breedlove firmly put forward that the US must open lines of communications with the Russians who have "talked themselves into a frenzy" regarding war and the use of nuclear weapons, as an Atlantic Council member put it.

Putin Missile

Breedlove stressed that NATO should take the lead in establishing communication: "We have to, in a very determined way, we need to establish quality communications with the Russians. If we wait for it to fall in our lap were going to fail."

Toward the end of the conference, Breedlove reaffirmed Obama's statement at the 2014 Wales summit that "we will defend every inch of NATO territory," stating that the commitment to honoring Article 5, which essentially treats an attack on one NATO member as an attack on all NATO members, is as strong as ever.

Russia does understand power, strength, and unity, said Breedlove, offering some hope for reconciliation for the two forces that find themselves in the most heated conflict since the Cold War.

NOW WATCH: JOHN MCAFEE: This is why the US is losing the cyber war to China and Russia





More From Business Insider


Soweto (South Africa) (AFP) - It was supposed to be day of reconciliation and remembrance on the 40th anniversary of the Soweto uprising, a turning point in South Africa's anti-apartheid struggle that cost the lives of at least 170 people.

But plans for a march on Saturday involving both black former students and white former soldiers have instead exposed unhealed wounds amid frustration at post-apartheid South Africa's failure to deliver jobs and opportunities.

"We will not participate," said Granny Seape, sister of Hastings Ndlovu, a 17-year-old boy who was among the first victims shot.

"We feel as a family that it is insensitive. We can't embrace something where we still have had no closure. We feel very aggrieved," she told AFP.

On June 16, 1976, security forces opened fire on black youngsters protesting in Soweto township against a government order that schools could only teach in the Afrikaans language used by whites.

Over three days, at least 170 people were killed, with some estimates putting the death toll at several hundred over one month, in violence that brought the injustices of the apartheid regime to the world's attention.

As protests spread across South Africa, a new era of black activism emerged that eventually led to the fall of the apartheid regime and Nelson Mandela's election as president in 1994.

Saturday's march at the Orlando Stadium in Soweto is intended to bring together both those who joined the uprising and white army conscripts not deployed in Soweto but who were forced to serve in the military.

But despite the organisers efforts, it is not only the families of some of the black youngsters who died who are reluctant.

Police officers from the time have declined to join Saturday's commemoration.

And a group of white former army conscripts, attending to express support for reconciliation, has said it will not issue an apology.

"The (conscript) veterans are mostly grandfathers now," Jan Malan, 59, chairman of the South African Defence Force Association (SADFA), told AFP.

Story continues

"We see the grandkids and we believe we need to not hate each other but to work together. We are not going there to say we are sorry. We are sad about people who lost loved ones. (But) we were soldiers."

- Anger boils -

Divisions along racial lines remain strong in South Africa, with most black people enduring worse education, housing and unemployment than white people.

Recent racist Internet postings have underlined long-standing frictions worsened by the country's dire economic performance and anger at politicians' failure to meet expectations.

Dee Mashinini, younger brother of the late Tsietsi Mashinini, a student leader of the uprising, warned that anger still boiled in Soweto over the killings.

"If they think they can come to Soweto and pull this off, then they don't understand anything," he told the Business Day newspaper.

"Many people lost brothers and sisters. Many disappeared. Many people are going around in wheelchairs, lost in life and with no compensation."

Despite the disagreements, march organisers still believe the event can be a symbol of hope in the future.

"It is not going to be a black event -- it is going to be a white and black event. It is completely new for Soweto," Reverend Frank Chikane, a celebrated anti-apartheid campaigner, told AFP.

Another of the organisers, Dan Montsitsi, who was a marcher in 1976, said it was a time to commemorate the uprising but also acknowledge how much more needed to be done in South Africa.

"June 16 was a watershed in our struggle," he said. "We were able in a very big way to show the world the atrocities and the harshness of apartheid.

"The problem that we have now is that if I buy a house in the suburbs, next to a white, in three months' time, that white person leaves."
United Nations (United States) (AFP) - Israel's decision to bar Palestinians from entering its territory following the Tel Aviv attack could raise tensions and lead to more violence, French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault warned Friday.

"The decision by the Israeli authorities today to revoke tens of thousands of entry permits could stoke tensions which could lead to a risk of escalation," said Ayrault.

"We must be careful about anything that could stoke tensions," Ayrault told reporters at UN headquarters.

The foreign minister made the remarks after the Israeli army announced it was temporarily barring Palestinians from entering Israel, stepping up tough restrictions announced after Palestinian gunmen shot dead four Israelis in Tel Aviv on Wednesday.

Crossings to Israel from the West Bank and the Gaza Strip were closed for all Palestinians except those seeking urgent medical care and other humanitarian cases.

France has condemned the attack in a popular Tel Aviv nightspot that also wounded five people and was the deadliest in a months-long wave of violence.

Ayrault was at the United Nations to take part in a Security Council debate on the protection of civilians in peacekeeping, a week after France hosted an international meeting in Paris on reviving the peace process.

"There must be a political initiative from the international community to create conditions conducive to appeasement and a return to negotiations," said the foreign minister.

"France is always working for the security of Israel," he said.

The Paris meeting brought together representatives from 29 countries and international organisations to agree on the way to re-start talks that have been comatose since a US peace initiative collapsed in April 2014.
Paris (AFP) - French industrial production rebounded in April, data showed Friday, fuelling recovery hopes in the eurozone's second-biggest economy.

Industrial output rose 1.2 percent in April, after a 0.4-percent decline the previous month, lifted mostly by gains in transport goods and heavy machinery, statistics bureau Insee said.

The figure was ahead of analysts' expectations, which had centred on a 0.4-percent increase.

"French industrial production entered the second quarter on a strong footing," commented Unicredit economist Tullia Bucco.

Manufacturing output alone also recovered, rising 1.3 percent in the month after a 1 percent downturn in March.

Production increases in the refining and coking industries slowed in April, as did output in extraction, water and energy.

"At this stage, the main risk to this positive picture is the protracted period of strikes hitting oil refineries and transport services, with a possible negative impact on overall economic activity," said Unicredit's Bucco.

The food industry stemmed its decline in output, which dropped by 0.5 percent after a 1.0-percent fall in March.

Italy, the eurozone's third-biggest economy after Germany and France, also reported rising industrial production on Friday.

Italian output rose 0.5 percent in April after showing no change in March, the Istat statistics agency said, also a better performance than analysts had expected.

Both figures support "the message from Germany that the sector had a decent month", said Jack Allen, an economist at Capital Economics.

Germany this week reported a 0.8-percent rise in industrial output, exceeding market expectations of an 0.6-percent increase.

But Allen cautioned that any future rises in industrial output in Europe's biggest economies would be slow, weighing on the outlook for gross domestic produce (GDP) in the euro currency bloc.

"Growth still looks set to slow in the second quarter and over the rest of the year, keeping the pressure on policymakers to provide further stimulus to the recovery," he said.

On the eurozone's periphery, Finland on Friday reported that its industrial production also took an upward swing in April, rising by 1.8 percent from March.

The statistics bureau of the Nordic country, which is slowly emerging from a three-year recession, said the mining and chemicals sectors were the main drivers behind the increase in output.
Police fired tear gas to disperse around 200 England fans who clashed with locals in Marseille late on Thursday evening, June 9, and into the early hours of Friday, June 10. Le Monde reported clashes occurred outside the Queen Victoria and OMalleys bar in Marseilles Old Port area around midnight. Thousands of England fans have travelled to Marseille ahead of Englands opening match against Russia in the Stade Velodrome on Saturday. This video, uploaded early on Friday morning, shows chairs being thrown in the Old Port area of Marseille.
Terrifying video of a hulking 6-foot-6-inch tall man attacking a museum employee in the gift shop and threatening to kill her has been released.

Read: 21 Years After Her Baby Son Was Kidnapped, Mother Sees Him for the First Time

The incident happened May 31 at the High Desert Museum in Oregon. The footage was released June 8.

In the footage, the giant takes a woman hostage at a museum, as terrified children watch. He had her in a choke hold and held a knife to her throat.

The 39-year-old hostage, Amanda Berry, could be heard begging him to stop.

Visitors and bystanders pleaded for him to let her go, police swarmed the area and as he reached the door, the attacker, identified as Nicholas Berger, pushed her aside.

She ran for her life, and the 36-year-old assailant was shot dead by police in the parking lot.

Security expert Steve Kardian watched the video and says there are ways to escape from a chokehold, even when your attacker is a behemoth.

Read: Teen Kills Herself After Friends Allegedly Share Nude Snapchat Video Filmed Without Permission

He told Inside Edition: "Step to the right, bend at the waste and step behind him, take the arm and push it into the back and run."

The victim is a musician who performs in a museum band that recreates music from the old west. It's not known what prompted the attacker to target her.

Watch: SWAT Team Intervenes When Grandmother Holds 4-Week-Old Grandson Hostage

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Under pressure from a $140 million legal judgment in favor of Hulk Hogan, Gawker Media filed for bankruptcy protection on Friday, and is putting itself up for auction.



Global media company Ziff Davis has agreed to buy Gawker's seven media brands and other assets, though Gawker's sale will be conducted through a bankruptcy- court-supervised auction that may include other bidders, the company told CNBC.

The edgy media company, led by Nick Denton and known for blogs like Jezebel and Deadspin, had assets of $50 million to $100 million and liabilities of $100 million to $500 million, according to bankruptcy court filings in New York.

The filing came about three months weeks after a Florida jury slapped Gawker with a $115 million judgment in an invasion of privacy lawsuit by wrestler Hulk Hogan, whose real name is Terry Bollea, for publishing a tape showing him having sex with the wife of a friend. The jury later added $25 million in punitive damages. Late last month, it was revealed that tech billionaire Peter Thiel helped to bankroll Bollea's legal costs. Years earlier, a Gawker publication outed Thiel as gay.

"The sale and filing are intended to preserve the value of GMG's pioneering digital news business, safeguard the jobs of journalists and other staff, and allow GMG to fund the appeal against the $130 million judgment in the Hulk Hogan case," the company said in a statement. "Gawker Media Group is putting its properties up for sale after a coordinated barrage of lawsuits intended to put the company out of business and deter its writers from offering critical coverage."

Though Gawker said it is confident it will ultimately prevail in the Hogan lawsuit, it was unable to secure conditions to seek relief in an appeals court, it said.

Last month, a Gawker representative told CNBC it had engaged bankers "for quite some time" as a contingency plan for the legal battle, and the options included a sale . On Friday, technology blog Recode reported that Ziff Davis' bid to buy the entire operation was less than $100 million

Story continues

[Gawker] says it has a firm bid from publisher Ziff Davis . Gawker and its banker Mark Patricof assume that the company will eventually see higher bids while it is in bankruptcy protection. Last year, in advance of the Hogan trial, Denton figured his company was worth something in the $250 million to $300 million range.

Thiel declined to comment to CNBC about the bankruptcy filing.

Whatever happens to Gawker, it's already changed digital media, experts told CNBC. For an in depth look at Gawker's influence, read more here.



 Reporting by CNBC's Michelle Castillo, Alex Crippen and Steven Kopack.





More From CNBC


Nick Denton

Gawker Media is hitting back.

It is looking into filing a potential lawsuit against Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel, the man financing Hulk Hogan's lawsuit against Gawker, according to Forbes' Ryan Mac.

A Gawker source who wished to remain anonymous has confirmed the report with Business Insider.

"The lawyers are exploring whether this could be a case of tortious interference, racketeering or other potential claims," a source inside Gawker told Forbes.

Gawker is trying to figure out whether Thiel broke any laws.

This news comes on the same day that Gawker Media filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

In March, Hogan was awarded $140 million in damages stemming from a Gawker article published in 2012, which included a clip of Hogan having sex along with commentary. Bankruptcy allows Gawker to avoid having its assets seized while it continues to appeal.

"Even with his billions, Thiel will not silence our writers. Our sites will thrive - under new ownership - and we'll win in court," Denton said in a tweet.

Forbes broke the news in late May that billionaire Silicon Valley investor Peter Thiel had secretly financed Hogan's lawsuit and others against Gawker Media in an effort to put the website out of business.

"I saw Gawker pioneer a unique and incredibly damaging way of getting attention by bullying people even when there was no connection with the public interest," Thiel, whom Gawker reportedly outed as gay in 2007, told The New York Times.

Denton has said that he is confident that Gawker will prevail on appeal, but in the meantime, his company is up for auction. Publisher Ziff Davis has made a "firm" bid to buy Gawker Media, in its entirety, for "less than $100 million," Recode reports.

Denton had a cheeky comment for Thiel on Friday on Twitter:

Thanks, Peter Thiel, for all the traffic! pic.twitter.com/EVliBBD4bO  Nick Denton (@nicknotned) June 10, 2016

Peter Thiel and Gawker have not responded to requests for comment by Business Insider.

Story continues

NOW WATCH: Billionaire entrepreneur Peter Thiel explains precisely how Mark Zuckerberg changed the world





More From Business Insider


The legal brawl between Hulk Hogan and Gawker Media is entering another round.

On Friday, the same day Gawker Media declared chapter 11 bankruptcy, the media company filed suit against Hogan and others with whom it is battling in court, seeking a legal injunction to stop the actions.

The lawsuit, filed in U.S. bankruptcy court in New York, argues that the legal actions would significantly interfere with or otherwise impair the Debtors efforts to reorganize.

Also Read: Gawker Announces Deal to Sell to Ziff Davis - Unless Higher Bidder Comes Along

In March, Hogan was awarded a total of $140 million, after a jury found that Gawker had invaded his privacy by publishing portions of a sex tape featuring the pro wrestling legend. Last month, a judge upheld the ruling and denied Gawkers request to reduce the damages.

The lawsuit contends that Gawker founder Nick Denton is essential to the companys reorganization efforts, and that he could be forced into personal bankruptcy by the various actions, which would be tremendously distracting to Mr. Denton, whose uninterrupted attention to these chapter 11 cases is critical to the Debtors reorganization.

Also Read: Gawker Files for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy After $140 Million Hulk Hogan Verdict

Hogans lawyer, however, doesnt seem persuaded by the argument. In a statement provided to TheWrap on Friday, Hogans legal counsel David Houston said, We have every intention to continue to pursue our judgment against Gawker and to hold them accountable for violating Mr. Bolleas privacy whether it be in the bankruptcy court or any other court.

According to Fridays bankruptcy filing, Gawker Media has estimated assets between just over $50 million and $100 million, and liabilities between just over $100 million and $500 million.

By far, Hogan is Gawkers biggest creditor, with a $130 million claim against the company. Second is law firm Morrison Cohen LLP, with a claim of just over $115,000.

Also on Friday, Gawker announced that it had reached an acquisition deal with media company Ziff Davis, though it might not necessarily be sold to the publisher if a higher bidder comes along.

Story continues

Related stories from TheWrap:

Gawker Announces Deal to Sell to Ziff Davis  Unless Higher Bidder Comes Along

Gawker Files for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy After $140 Million Hulk Hogan Verdict

Gawker Media Has Received 'Multiple' $100 Million-Plus Bids (Exclusive)
General Mills created a new cereal for the first time in *15 years*

General Mills created a new cereal for the first time in *15 years*

One of our favorite aisles in the grocery store is, without a single doubt, the cereal aisle. Every time we push our shopping carts down this corridor of colorful boxes, we cant help but think of all the cereals that are a huge part of our memories. Yet, while were reminiscing, we dont often think about how long these cereal brands have been around. (And some have been around for a LONG time.) Thats why were shocked to hear that General Mills just released a new cereal for the first time in 15 YEARS.

The new product line is called Tiny Toast and its exactly what it sounds like: Toast  thats tiny. The toast is tiny. The flavor is big, writes General Mills, to describe their contemporary creation. Crunchy toast covered with delicious real fruit. All in miniature. Yet Tiny Toast has a large pop of fruity aroma that you miss with other fruit cereals. A uniquely irresistible taste, by the spoonful with milk or by the handful out of the box. Whats perhaps the best part is that the cereal contains no artificial flavors or colors.

Real strawberry and blueberry flavor in every bite. Find it in a store near you today and let us know what you think! #tinytoast #cereal #strawberry #blueberry #toast #fruit A photo posted by Tiny Toast Cereal (@tinytoastcereal) on Jun 6, 2016 at 5:44am PDT

On the General Mills blog, product developer Mike Evenson wrote that many consumers are finding that both the Strawberry and Blueberry flavors taste real. In fact, some have said that the Blueberry Tiny Toast tastes like a blueberry muffin. A blueberry muffin and cereal combined? Yes, please!

Celebrate Hump Day with a tiny hug for a special friend, but not too tight! #nationalbestfriendsday #tinytoast #humpday #cereal #strawberry #blueberry #toast #fruit A video posted by Tiny Toast Cereal (@tinytoastcereal) on Jun 8, 2016 at 7:57am PDT

Aside from sounding like a delicious morning treat, Tiny Toast looks absolutely adorable. If someone took pieces of toast, used a shrink ray on them, and then splashed tiny bits of fruit on them, then youd have this brand new cereal. When we think of it that way, we cant help but be excited to give Tiny Toast a try.

The post General Mills created a new cereal for the first time in *15 years* appeared first on HelloGiggles.
BERLIN, June 10 (Reuters) - German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble told German news magazine Der Spiegel that he could not disregard the possibility of other countries quitting the European Union if Britain decides to leave the 28-member bloc after a June 23 referendum.

"You can't rule it out," Schaeuble was quoted as saying by the magazine in an advance excerpt of an interview due to be published on Saturday.

"How would the Netherlands, which has traditionally been very closely allied with Britain, react, for example?"

Polls suggest a neck-to-neck race between the "Leave" and "Remain" camps ahead of the vote.

Schaeuble said that if Britain were to become the only country to leave the EU, he would not be concerned about the bloc's continued existence: "If need be, Europe would work without Britain."

He said calling for more integration in the EU - as some European politicians have done - was no answer to a Brexit. He said that even if a slim majority of Britons voted to quit the EU, "we need to understand that as a warning and wake-up call to not continue doing as we have done up until now".

Schaeuble warned Britain it could suffer economic consequences if it quits the EU given that it is closely interlinked with partner countries, the magazine said.

"It would be a miracle if Britain quitting does not have any economic disadvantages," Schaeuble was quoted as saying.

He said a Brexit could also have a negative impact on partner countries but he and his counterparts in the euro zone would do all they could to limit these consequences: "We're preparing for all possible scenarios to limit the dangers."

Schaeuble ruled out Britain being able to continue to benefit from the European single market like Norway or Switzerland if it quit: "For that the country would need to stick to the rules of the club that it now wants to quit."

He said Brexit would be a decision against the single market: "In is in, out is out." (Reporting by Michelle Martin; Editing by Toby Chopra)
(Adds Schaeuble quotes on Greece)

BERLIN, June 10 (Reuters) - The German parliament's budget committee on Friday voted in favour of releasing the next tranche of aid to Greece from the European Stability Mechanism (ESM) rescue fund, lawmakers said.

The budget committee had no objections to unlocking the 10.3 billion euros ($11.64 billion) in credit, conservative budget expert Eckhardt Rehberg said. The decision was confirmed also by another lawmaker.

Last week Greek lawmakers approved a set of extra measures demanded by international lenders to receive further bailout funds and cheap bank funding from the European Central Bank.

Rehberg said 52 of 56 preconditions had been fulfilled, and the remaining four involved "formalities.

German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble told a conference hosted by Deutsche Bank later on Friday that Greece had implemented the majority of economic reforms required under the bailout package and was on the way to regaining the confidence of global financial markets.

"Greece has largely implemented the reforms. Greece can begin to stand on its feet again and regain access to the financial markets," he said.

Greece and its international lenders wrapped up the bulk of reforms needed for badly needed bailout cash in May, but left some loose ends which must be tied up before Athens can receive 10.3 billion euros ($11.48 billion) by September.

Euro zone finance ministers could agree to release a first disbursement of 7.5 billion euros next week, top European Commission officials said this week.

Schaeuble told the German newspaper Handelsblatt in an interview published Friday that Greece had already significantly increased its ability to compete on the world market by lowering labor costs by 12 percent.

"But it is still true that Greece must continue to push ahead with further reforms," he told the newspaper. "Greece must implement reforms to shore up the longer-term stability of its government finances and ensure the repayment of its loans." ($1 = 0.8849 euros) (Reporting by Gernot Heller and Matthias Soboleski; Writing Michael Nienaber and Andrea Shalal; Editing by Toby Chopra)
BERLIN (Reuters) - The president of Germany's parliament condemned threats against German lawmakers of Turkish origin after the Bundestag last week passed a resolution declaring the 1915 massacre of Armenians by Ottoman forces a genocide. Ankara rejects the idea that the killings of Christian Armenians during World War One amounted to a genocide. Following the resolution there have been death threats and verbal attacks against German politicians with Turkish roots. Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan has said German lawmakers of Turkish origin who voted for the resolution have tainted blood and that their blood must be tested in a lab. "Every person that tries to put pressure on individual lawmakers with threats must know they are attacking the entire parliament," Norbert Lammert said to loud applause as he opened the parliamentary session on Thursday. Lammert said he was shocked that threats against the parliamentarians had been backed by high-ranking politicians, and said parliament would respond with all legal options. "I wouldn't have thought it possible that in the 21st Century, a democratically elected president would link his criticism of democratically elected lawmakers in the German Bundestag with doubts about their Turkish descent and describe their blood as tainted," he said. Erdogan is a crucial ally for Chancellor Angela Merkel in tackling Europe's migrant crisis. Last week's resolution has triggered a Turkish outcry. On Thursday, Turkey's economy minister said it threatened the friendship between the two countries, but he stopped short of detailing specific retaliatory measures. Merkel has dismissed Turkey's reaction as "incomprehensible" and Germany invited a senior Turkish diplomat to the Foreign Ministry on Tuesday to discuss Ankara's response. Martin Schulz, a member of Germany's Social Democrats (SPD) and president of the European Parliament also strongly rebuked Erdogan for his comments, Spiegel Online reported. "Members of parliaments that take positions within their mandates, irrespective of differences of opinion should under no circumstances be linked to terrorists," Schulz said in a letter to Erdogan. (Reporting by Caroline Copley; Editing by Dominic Evans)
From Good Housekeeping

A mother from Huyton, England recently took to Facebook to warn others about an incident with her 14-week-old son and a glass cabinet from IKEA. According to the mom, who wishes to remain anonymous, her child was sitting in his bouncer about three feet away from the piece of furniture when she heard him crying and found him covered in glass.

"When I went to pick him up I noticed the glass was all over his blanket," she told Liverpool Echo. "It was only really the fact he had a blanket on that he got away without being cut really badly." However, he did have a small scratch on his face and his doctors said the incident could have left the newborn blind if it had gotten in his eyes. "He's been so clingy ever since it happened, he's cried at every sudden noise and he's needed to be picked up to soothe him all the time," she says. "He's not usually like that."

Even though IKEA offered the mom a $15 voucher after hearing about the incident, and then followed that up by offering a refund and a $70 gift certificate, the mom says she's not interested: "I don't want money or vouchers, I just want them to recall these cabinets, because I don't think they're safe and it's going to happen to someone else."

At this time, the company has not issued a recall, but are looking into the issue: "The safety of our products is always the highest priority and our entire range is tested rigorously," Donna Moore, Country Customer Relations Manager, IKEA UK & Ireland told Liverpool Echo. "We have already been in direct contact with the customer to apologize and are currently investigating the matter further."

[h/t Mirror]
(Adds comment from prime minister, union; context)

By Allison Martell

OSHAWA, Ontario, June 10 (Reuters) - General Motors Co said on Friday it will expand its Canadian engineering base to reach a total of about 1,000 jobs in Canada's auto-making province of Ontario as it boosts research spending on connected and driverless cars.

The company will also invest $10 million in its Kapuskasing, Ontario cold-weather facility, where it will conduct testing for new GM products, GM announced at its engineering center in Oshawa.

The gain of some 700 jobs was hailed as a big win for Canada's manufacturing heartland by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who arrived at the center with the head of GM Canada in a Chevy Bolt, the automaker's signature electric car.

"It's a perfect fit in so many ways, and I'm really glad that GM saw it that way too," Trudeau said.

Canadian automaking has been losing ground in recent years to Mexico, where costs are lower, and the country is struggling to fire up innovation and investment in its factory sector to offset the slump in its once-dominant energy sector.

The union representing the auto workers said the investment is good for the future of the sector in Canada.

"I'm incredibly optimistic, I mean this is a great news story for Canada. To me this shows General Motors' long term commitment to Canada," said Unifor National President Jerry Dias.

Ontario assembly plants produced nearly 15 percent of North American vehicles over the last five years and the auto industry contributes around $16 billion annually to the province's GDP.

But growth in auto production in Mexico and the United States has outpaced that of Canada.

Mexico's auto production rose 5.6 percent while exports climbed 4.4 percent in 2015 over the prior year, the Mexican Auto Industry Association (AMIA) said in January. The auto sector makes up about 30 percent of Mexico's exports.

Ontario's provincial Liberal government and GM's Canadian president, Stephen Carlisle, have been promoting the province as a high-tech hub for connected-car development. Ontario is the first Canadian province to allow on-road testing of autonomous vehicles.

Story continues

Still, Unifor's Dias said the driverless-car industry is still marginal, and will not replace manufacturing jobs in Ontario's existing plants.

Unifor's current contract with the Big Three automakers expires in the autumn, and the union fears GM's Oshawa plant risks being closed because it has not been promised new products. Dias warned this week "there will be a strike in 2016" if there is no new product in Oshawa.

(Additional reporting by Allison Lampert in Montreal, Writing by Andrea Hopkins, Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Phil Berlowitz)
When The Good Wife creators Robert and Michelle King talked with The Hollywood Reporter last month about saying goodbye to the acclaimed legal drama, the two sounded particularly upset about closing the book on the series' colorful collection of characters.

"It really felt like, unfortunately, you were putting these characters away for good," Robert King said at the time. "They call it a bittersweet feeling; I actually think it's just bitter."

His wife and longtime writing partner Michelle King echoed the same sentiment: "I know I'm going to miss all these characters terribly."

Thankfully, at least some of the show's standouts will soon be making a comeback. Less than two weeks after the May 8 series finale, CBS All Access officially ordered a new yet-untitled spinoff in which Christine Baranski and Cush Jumbo will reprise their roles as Diane Lockhart and Lucca Quinn, respectively.

"It's a different enough story so it doesn't seem like Good Wife the sequel," Robert recently told THR. "Christine Baranski's character is a very unique person on her own right, someone who broke the glass ceiling and isn't sure whether she should just rest on her laurels or go for the next achievement."

When speaking about the spinoff, the Kings revealed that talk for the project picked up fairly quickly after CBS formally announced in February that the seventh season of The Good Wife would be its last.

Read More: It's Official: CBS All Access Orders 'Good Wife' Spinoff Starring Christine Baranski, Cush Jumbo

"[Christine] didn't seem to be done with it," Robert said. "We approached her before Good Wife was over, like while we were shooting the 18th or 19th episode. We said, 'There's a chance this might come down. We don't even know how many episodes it will be, but would you be interested in continuing Diane Lockhart?'"

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Diane had been viewed by many as a prime contender to lead a spinoff, but the addition of newer face Lucca Quinn caught many by surprise. The character quickly became a fan-favorite during the final season of The Good Wife as Alicia's partner and friend.

"What came later was going to Cush, but only because she seemed to have obligations in London and we didn't want to get in the way of those," Robert said. Added Michelle: "We did want to get in the way of those."

The Kings said they are still in the early stages of crafting the spinoff, but one thing is for sure: The duo will not be writing the first episode of the spinoff as previously reported.

"We're kind of guiding it and getting it going, and hopefully infusing the spirit of The Good Wife into it," Robert added.

Instead, it will be new showrunner Phil Robinson, who directed two season seven episodes, "Party" and "Landing," and whose other credits include Field of Dreams and Sneakers.

Read More: 'The Good Wife's' Christine Baranski on "Dramatic" Final Episodes, Spinoff Talk and Show's Legacy

"I don't feel like we've completely handed it off," Michelle said. "Phil Robinson is such a talent and is bringing so many good ideas to it that no, it actually feels sort of like a gift."

When asked about the decision to entrust their characters to a new writer, Robert also cited fatigue from The Good Wife's "soul-crushing" 22-episode seasons.

"We came out of Good Wife very exhausted," Robert said. "At the end, I think we were just tired. Not tired of the characters, of course, but you're just tired of doing that much."

The two will continue to serve as executive producers on the series, which is slated for a spring 2017 debut and will pick up one year after the events of the finale. The Kings are also busy with their new CBS series BrainDead, which premieres June 13, and their Amazon drama pilot Vatican City.

And the Kings haven't ruled out introducing characters from Alicia Florrick's world into the former, in addition to the several Good Wife actors who are already set to appear on BrainDead (see: Zach Grenier, Megan Hilty).

Said Robert, "Luke and Laurel need a lawyer, and we were wondering if it should be a lawyer from our show. I mean, an actor that we love working with, but whether that lawyer retains her name or his name."

BrainDead premieres on Monday, June 13 at 10 p.m. on CBS. The Good Wife spinoff is tentatively set for a spring 2017 debut on CBS All Access.

Reporting by Alyse Whitney
David Perdue

US Sen. David Perdue came under fire Friday after he cited a Bible verse that Democrats said "left the impression" he was praying for President Barack Obama's death.

During the Faith and Freedom conference in Washington, DC, Perdue made a quip about the Bible verse Psalm 109:8.

I think we are called to pray," Perdue began. "I think were called to pray for our country, for our leaders, and, yes, even for our president. [In] his role as president I think we should pray for Barack Obama, but I think we need to be very specific about how we pray. We should pray like Psalm 109:8 says. It says let his days be few and let another have his office.

The joke was met with laughter and applause.

"In all seriousness, I believe that America is at a moment of crisis," he continued.

Here's how the verse continues:

Let his days be few; and let another take his office.

Let his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow.

Let his children be continually vagabonds, and beg: let them seek their bread also out of their desolate places.

Let the extortioner catch all that he hath; and let the strangers spoil his labour.

Let there be none to extend mercy unto him: neither let there be any to favour his fatherless children.

Let his posterity be cut off; and in the generation following let their name be blotted out.

Let the iniquity of his fathers be remembered with the Lord; and let not the sin of his mother be blotted out.

"If Republicans are still wondering why Donald Trump is their nominee, look no further than todays Faith and Freedom conference where a sitting Republican Senator left the impression he was praying for the death of President Obama and then [Senate Majority Leader] Mitch McConnell followed him on stage and did not condemn him, Kristen Orthman, communications director for Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, sent in an email shortly after.

In an email to Business Insider, Perdue spokeswoman Megan Whittemore said Perdue "in no way wishes harm" toward Obama.

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She wrote:

Senator Perdue said we are called to pray for our country, for our leaders, and for our president. He in no way wishes harm towards our president and everyone in the room understood that. However, we should add the media to our prayer list because they are pushing a narrative to create controversy and that is exactly what the American people are tired of.

NOW WATCH: OBAMA: 'I am worried about the Republican party'





More From Business Insider


Benjamin Franklin is best known by many for his famous kite-flying experiment in Philadelphia. But some people arent sure how much of the legend is fact  or fiction.

Of course, Franklin is also known for many other achievements, including his final public role at the 1787 Constitutional Convention, but the kite story has been told in classrooms for generations.

franklinsky

On June 10, 1752, some folks believe Franklin, accompanied by his son, went on the daring, and extremely dangerous, kite-flying mission in Philadelphia.

In an account 15 years after the event, Joseph Priestley recounted the experiment, as told to him by Franklin, in his 1767 book History and Present Status of Electricity. On page 217, Priestley described the kite experiment in detail, which he said happened in June 1752.

The story contained the familiar elements: a kite made from a large silk handkerchief, two sticks, a silk line and a key. In this account, Franklin flew the kite into a cloud, noticed unusual activity on the silk line, touched the key with his knuckle, and perceived a very evident electric spark.

But that wasnt the first mention of the kite-flying story. Franklin wrote to his friend, Peter Collinson in London, in October 1752 about a kite experiment in Philadelphia, with the letter published in a journal in December 1752 and read at the Royal Society of London.

Franklin talked about an experiment that succeeded in Philadelphia in which a kite was raised during a thunderstorm, and when the kite and string became wet, it can conduct electric fire frequently. Franklin said the experiment would allow the electric fire to stream out plentifully from the key on the approach of your knuckle.

It was also noted in Frankins correspondence that he was much distressed upon learning of the death of Professor Richmann at St. Petersburg, July 26, 1753, while repeating the kite experiment for bringing lightning from the clouds.

Abbott Lawrence Rotch, an eminent meteorologist, said in an October 1906 article for the American Antiquarian Society that the experiments date was probably later in 1752, and not in June. He cited examples of correspondence from France that would have pushed back the experiment until the late summer or early fall of 1752. Rotch didnt doubt that Franklin conducted the experiment.

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Another prominent meteorologist, Alexander McAdie, submitted a paper in 1924 to the Antiquarian Society about the kite experiment. McAdie cited Rotchs research and said that, for some reason, many people pegged the experiments date to June 6, 1752.

McAdie argued that Priestleys account contradicted safety practices Franklin would have taken for such an experiment. He also wasnt entirely convinced the experiment described by Franklin in his letter to Collinson was actually conducted. He cited the lack of mentions in the Pennsylvania Gazette by Franklin and that an analysis of the October 1752 letter to Collinson indicated an experiment not so much an experiment actually performed as one projected and the results anticipated.

McAdie believed if the experiment had been conducted, it happened in September 1752.

Carl Van Doren, who won a Pulitzer Prize in 1939 for his biography of Franklin, summed up the debate about the kite experiment.

The episode of the kite, so firm and fixed in legend, turns out to be dim and mystifying in fact. Franklin himself never wrote the story of the most dramatic of his experiments, Van Doren said. All that is known about what he did on that famous day, of no known date, comes from Joseph Priestleys account, published 15 years afterwards but read in manuscript by Franklin, who must have given Priestley the precise, familiar details.

Among the skeptics about the kite story was author Tom Tucker, who wrote a 2003 book called Bolt of Fate: Benjamin Franklin And His Fabulous Kite. Tucker posited the theory that Franklin pulled a hoax during an intense rivalry with British and French scientists.

Michael Brian Schiffer, a professor at the University of Arizona, rebutted Tuckers theory.

It is doubtful that Franklin would have crafted a piece of fictional science, for he appreciated the penalty that the gentlemanly establishment of natural philosophy would have meted out had the fraud been exposed, Schiffer said in an article for the History News Network.

Walter Isaacson, in his 2003 biography, was convinced Franklin conducted the experiment, and it was closer to the June 10, 1752 date. It is unreasonable, I think, to believe that Franklin fabricated the June date or other facts of his kite experiment. There is no case of his ever embellishing his scientific achievements, Isaacson said. Isaacson also cited examples of Franklin taking his time to recount his experiments before publishing them.

Regardless of the debate over the kite experiment, there is little argument over Franklins role in the study of electricity. His invention of the lightning rod was not only a key scientific advancement, it contributed to cutting down on fires that devastated buildings and houses.

Recent Franklin Stories on Constitution Daily

Ben Franklins best inventions and innovations

Americas first rock star: Benjamin Franklin in France

Benjamin Franklins place among the most influential Americans ever
By Valerie Volcovici WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Donald Trumps promise to gut U.S. environmental regulations and revive the controversial Keystone XL oil pipeline if elected president is a nightmare for green groups, but it may be a dream come true for their fund-raisers. The countrys biggest environmental groups say the Republican White House hopefuls pro-drilling and anti-global warming positions have sparked a record wave of donations and volunteer recruitment that could revitalize U.S. green advocacy. Trump has said he would revive the coal industry, pull the United States out of a global climate pact and expand oil drilling. "We couldnt have asked for a more powerful motivator than Donald Trump," Sierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune said. Brune said a spring email blast about the New York businessman to the San Francisco-based group's members yielded $25,000 in donations, more than twice as much as projected, along with 15,000 new volunteers. The club's Political Committee, which works directly on projects to engage voters during the election, has raised more than $62,000 this year, compared with just $22,000 at this point in the 2012 election, according to the filings with the Federal Election Commission. The Washington-based League of Conservation Voters has also gotten a boost. Officials said its annual fund-raising dinner this week pulled in a record haul, which they would not disclose, after the group also used Trump as a focal point of its donor outreach. "Its been a long time since there has been someone that our movement has so universally wanted to stop," said spokesman David Willett. The league's Voters Action Fund, meanwhile, has raised more than $610,000 in donations so far this year for election-related work, more than triple what it pulled in during the same period of 2012, and more than double that of 2008, according to federal filings. Trump has long signaled his belief that global warming is a hoax. Last month he outlined plans to sweep away environmental regulations ushered in by the Obama administration, scrap the Paris Climate Accord, and revive the Keystone XL - moves that would reverse years of gains by the green movement. A spokeswoman for Trump's campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment. NextGen Climate, a San Francisco-based environmental advocacy organization founded by billionaire activist Tom Steyer, has called Trump's agenda "frightening." But its efforts were also getting some traction from the candidate's rhetoric. The group, which has featured Trump in its TV ads to drive voter turnout, said it had seen a 127 percent increase in clicks on its social media postings that mention the candidate compared with those that do not. There is no question that voters are very engaged when it comes to fighting back against Trump, said NextGen spokeswoman Suzanne Henkels. Ben Avery, associate fund-raising director of the Sierra Clubs Northwest chapter, said he was happy about the increase in donor support this year but was vexed by the reason behind it. "Bad news is good news for fund-raising," he said. (Additional reporting by Grant Smith; Editing by Richard Valdmanis and Lisa Von Ahn)
From Seventeen

The Disney Channel recently shared a first look at their first Latina princess, Elena. Bella Thorne, who is Cuban on her father's side, was one of the celebrities who took to Instagram to celebrate the news, posting a picture of Princess Elena with a caption sharing her excitement and pride in her own Latin roots.

Sadly, many fans didn't like Bella's post because they feel Bella isn't Latina enough. Haters flooded the comments of Bella's post, pointing out her white skin tone, red hair, and the fact that she doesn't speak Spanish as reasons why she's not Latina.

The idea that someone has to have tan skin or be brunette to be Latina is a widely held misconception, when in reality, Latinas come in all shades. They also don't necessarily speak Spanish either. So just because princess Elena happens to be darker skinned than Bella, doesn't mean Bella can't take pride in her Latina heritage and connect with her character.

Thankfully, many fans responded to the haters and told them they needed to educate themselves.
Its been more than 30 years since we met Harrison Fords Indiana Jones in Raiders of the Lost Ark, but the actor says that the franchises theme music still follows him wherever he goes.

According to E! News, during a speech honoring the themes composer, John Williams, at the American Film Institute Life Achievement gala, Ford had plenty of jokes about his situations hes found himself in where people play the song  from awards shows to on the street.

That damn music follows me everywhere. They play it every time I walk on stage, every time I walk off a stage. It was playing in the operating room when I went in for my colonoscopy, the 73-year-old actor said. I was walking down a crowded street in New York a couple of months ago and there was a big fire truck stuck in traffic that I passed in the opposite direction, he continued. Some guy leaned out of the cab and gave me one of those [Ford makes a groaning noise]. By the time I got to the end of the truck that music was blaring out of the loud speakers in the truck!

Ford ended his speech with a salutation to Williams, who has won five Oscars from 50 nominations for works including Jaws, Star Wars, and Harry Potter.

To play a character graced by Johns music, of course, is a real gift, Ford said. Music is the spice, its the salt and pepper in every film recipe that brings the whole thing together.
Just dont call it a speakeasy. Sure, Carina Soto Velasquez and her two business partners started a bar behind an unmarked door in one of the first taquerias in Paris, and you can only find it if you know its there. But theres no 1920s feel to the place, she protests, and anyway the liquors not illegal  though when Candelaria first opened, some suspicious, confused Paris authorities accused her of running an illegal secret bar until she showed them the papers proving it was a perfectly legal, um, secret bar.

A watering hole hidden in the back of a taco joint wouldnt be out of place in New Yorks haute cocktail scene. But in Paris in 2011, there was nothing like it  and Velasquez and her team decided to do something about it. Along with Americans Josh Fontaine and Adam Tsou (Velasquezs husband), the Colombia native has now opened four landmark bars, each one a huge departure from what Paris is used to.

The Parisian bistro  and all the wine it entails  has been going strong since the early days of the 20th century. But when Velasquez, Tsou and Fontaine visited Berlin and New York, they discovered different beasts  and they wanted something similar for Paris. Velasquez, whos been working in bars for more than a decade after an early stab at studying law, began with something she knew: tacos and cocktails. It was a hit, and then the team moved on to Glass, an American-style dive bar steps from the Moulin Rouge thats open till 5 a.m. Glass is the easiest concept, but the hardest to understand, says Velasquez  maybe Parisians werent sure about the light-up dance floor.

Carinasototsou

Carina mixing cocktails.

Source Quixotic Projects

None of the team members are French  which means they receive extra scrutiny from authorities and neighbors, who stop in to check on them regularly. Occasionally, their concepts clash with the most dearly held tenets of French cuisine. After Glass, they opened a wine and oyster bar. Very French on the surface, but it was meant to be a combination of New Orleans relaxed atmosphere and Stockholms attention to detail. The Mary Celeste has a list of biodynamic wines and a team of enthusiastic servers  but it didnt serve bread baskets, in a city where no matter what you order or what time of day, you will be given bread with your meal. For French people, it was a big thing, says Emma Lucila Sanz, who works for Velasquezs Quixotic Projects. Now we do serve bread, though. We still dont serve butter.

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Perfect #brunch starts with the #BestFriedChicken in #Paris  //photo by @koreanfusion !! A photo posted by Hero (@hero_paris) on May 14, 2016 at 3:34am PDT

The latest concept took some massaging, too. Hero sits on the Rue Saint-Denis, a central Paris district notable for its startup scene and ubiquitous prostitutes. The planned menu for the neon-encrusted enclave was simple: Korean fried chicken and Champagne. Velasquez, Tsou and Fontaine had taken a trip to Hong Kong and been inspired by the hole-in-the-wall chicken shops. We got to understand why people line up for an hour at one fried chicken place and not at another, Velasquez says. Asian people know their food. If youre waiting in line for an hour, theres a reason. For the French, the low culture-high culture mash-up was a rough fit, but rather than downshift, the restaurant zigzagged, switching the Champagne idea out for a menu of wild cocktails filled with weird, energetic ingredients.

Those cocktail menus have put Quixotic Projects restaurants on the map: Velasquez was nominated for International Bartender of the Year at last years Spirited Awards (think the Oscars but for cocktails). Candelaria and Mary Celeste were also nominated, though none of the three took home the awards. She doesnt have much time to bartend now  she still runs workshops  because if youre going to open four restaurants, you have only so much time. Sometimes I wake up with an idea for a drink, she says. But I never do it, because Im in the office.

To be sure, being on the cutting edge has its downsides. Its jarring to visit a bar like Candelaria that feels so distinctly un-Parisian, like youve walked through an unmarked door to a cocktail bar on Manhattans Lower East Side. Even when the decor is beautiful, its strange to be in a bar that feels so disconnected from its city. And despite Quixotics efforts, Paris still isnt on the forefront of the world cocktail scene  Velasquez isnt alone in pushing the boundaries of the citys static food culture, but there arent many people trying to move liquor when wine will so clearly always be king here.

No matter what, Velasquez isnt stopping at four. She cant talk about the groups next concept except in riddles, but theyre planning to go big. We know we can do small, she says. And now wed like a challenge.

Related Articles
Hell on Wheels returns Saturday night to AMC for its final run, with seven episodes remaining. If you dont remember where the midseason finale left off in August 2015, that would be with The Swede (Christopher Heyerdahl) and Cullen Bohannon (Anson Mount) both racing to Cullens wife and child, and the Central Pacific and Union Pacific railroads racing to Ogden.



Of course Mount wasnt about to spoil how the showdown between The Swede and Bohannon will play out when he visited Yahoo TV for a Facebook live chat earlier this week, but here are five things he was able to share. Watch the full conversation below.



1. Its go time. These remaining hours are action-packed (and not just the one that may feature the coolest shootout on TV since Justifieds Season 1 finale, Bulletville). We had a limited amount of time to do the third act, and you cant have a Western unless you have consequence, Mount says. So there is a lot of consequence that we are wrapping up in these final seven.



2. He does not miss having Cullens beard  or long hair  yet. Im sure that Ill miss the beard and the hair at some point. I dont right now. Im very happy not to be having a contentious relationship with my bath towel anymore, he says. And also, it tends to get in the way of other roles. You wouldnt believe the number of jobs that get determined by hair and just stupid stuff like that.

3. He does have souvenirs to remember Bohannon by. I couldnt keep any of the guns, obviously, because of gun-trafficking laws, but I wanted to, he says. (The show shot in Alberta, Canada.) I kept his flask. We had several golden spikes made, I kept the one we actually used. I kept the spike that I actually drove, which was not the golden spike. And a really cool map, a period map of the United States at that time that was on leather and done with water colors.







4. Hes sticking with TV. Ive got a couple of movies in my near future, but the thing Im hunting for is my next television series, he says. I really fell in love with long-form drama. I want to find something that makes sense creatively and not just jump at the next thing. What tickles my gut is usually very specific, and so I know it when I read it. I just havent quite read it yet.



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Hes also enjoyed the kind of creative input hes been able to have as a producer on Hell on Wheels. Im getting to a place in my career where Im not relishing seeing my footage packed up and sent to an editor that Ive never met before, and not being able to say, Hey, youre actually missing an angle that we shot. I think that it is beneficial to the overall product for there to be a conversation between the people that are in the writers room, and in the editing room, and were on set at the time. So, Im gonna try as hard as I can to maintain my ability to at least participate in the conversation. Because I think Im good, at the end of the day, of knowing who my boss is, and I think I handle that responsibility in a mature way, he says with a laugh. But well see. Theres a stigma being an actor. It carries a lot of baggage.



5. He was never seriously injured during the making of Hell on Wheels, but he could have been. "When we were shooting episodes 501 and 502 on the mountain with all those snow scenes, at the end of one day, me and Reg Rogers grabbed a couple of sleds and we sledded all the way down that ski slope. And we picked up some heavy speed, too. I almost got in trouble. I could have killed myself, actually. We were goin fast, he says.



Also, he notes, I did the entire six years of Hell on Wheels, and then right afterwards went to a trampoline park with my friends in Calgary and I tore an ACL. Six years of riding horse past gopher holes, and I tear an ACL on a trampoline. But I was lookin good til that happened. I was the old man turnin flips and then I was the old man being carried out and going to the emergency room.



6. He does a pretty good Christopher Walken impression. He spun our wheel and landed on improv, which meant he was asked if he could impersonate any other actors. Cue his excellent story about the time his cellphone rang while he was watching Christopher Walken film a scene for their 2002 movie Poolhall Junkies.



A video posted by Yahoo TV (@yahootv) on Jun 8, 2016 at 11:13am PDT

Hell on Wheels airs Saturdays at 9 p.m. on AMC.


Paris (AFP) - Doctors said Friday they have found an effective way of containing multiple sclerosis, but with a treatment so high-risk it cannot be widely used.

They treated 24 MS patients in Canada with potent chemotherapy, basically destroying their immune systems ahead of a stem cell transplant.

In 23 patients, the combination treatment stopped relapses and the development of new brain lesions without the need for chronic medication, the team reported in The Lancet.

"Eight of the 23 patients had a sustained improvement in their disability 7.5 years after treatment," said a statement issued by the medical journal.

One of the 24 died from liver failure and sepsis caused by the chemotherapy.

"This is the first treatment to produce this level of disease control or neurological recovery from MS, but treatment-related risks limit its widespread use," said the statement.

Multiple sclerosis affects more than two million people worldwide.

It is caused when a person's body is attacked by its own immune system, causing a range of symptoms from mild to debilitating, including problems with vision, movement and balance.

It is a lifelong condition.

In some cases, symptoms come and go in phases called relapses, while in others they become progressively worse over time.

There are treatments to control symptoms, but no cure and no way to prevent relapses or to slow the progression.

Specialised clinics have used a lighter form of the treatment, called autologous haematopoietic stem cell transplantation or aHSCT, on a small number of patients.

- Aggressive treatment -

It involves transplants of haematopoietic stem cells, immature cells found in the bone marrow which become blood and immune cells.

After the stem cells are harvested from their bone marrow, the patients have their immune systems suppressed with chemotherapy before the stem cells are injected into the blood stream to "reset" the immune system and stop it attacking the body.

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Many, however, have relapsed after the treatment.

For the new study, the team used even stronger chemotherapy to bring about "complete destruction, rather than suppression" of the immune system, said the statement.

Twenty-four people aged 18-50 were enrolled in the phase II clinical trial, designed to assess whether the treatment works.

The patients all had an "aggressive" form of the disease, their disability ranging from "moderate" to being unable to walk around 100 steps unaided.

In the 23 who survived treatment, no relapses occurred for the period that they were studied -- between four and 13 years.

No "new disease activity" was detectable on MRI scans.

"The initial 24 MRI scans revealed 93 brain lesions, and after the treatment only one of the 327 scans showed a new lesion," the team said.

After three years, six patients were able to reduce or stop their disability insurance, and return to work or school.

"The sample size of 24 patients is very small," said study co-author Mark Freedman of the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute, urging caution in interpreting the findings.

Larger clinical trials must confirm the results, he said.

"Since this is aggressive treatment, the potential benefits should be weighted against the risk of serious complications associated with aHSCT."

In a comment on the study, Jan Dorr of the NeuroCure Clinical Research Center in Berlin, described the results as "impressive".

But, "will this study change our approach to treatment of multiple sclerosis? Probably not in the short term, mainly because the mortality rate will still be considered unacceptably high," he wrote.
Hillary Clinton ripped into Donald Trump on Friday, calling him out for trying to repeal abortion rights and opposing equal pay for women in her first major speech since clinching the Democratic nomination on Tuesday.

Clinton made the speech at the Planned Parenthood Action Fund's national conference in Washington, D.C., where she focused exclusively on reproductive rights and women's equality  and paid homage to her history-making candidacy as the first female nominee of a major political party.

"Donald assures us as president, he'll be, and I quote again, 'The best for women,' and then wants to defund Planned Parenthood and wipe out safe, legal abortion," Clinton said. "He has no idea what's best for women."

Hillary Clinton appears with Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards on Friday.

In her speech, Clinton sought to paint Trump as a grave threat to women's rights.

"Anyone who would so casually agree to the idea of punishing women like it was nothing to him, the most obvious thing in the world, that's someone who doesn't hold women in high regard because if he did, he would trust women to make the right decisions for ourselves," Clinton said.

And she also attempted to tie the entire Republican Party to some of his unpopular statements, including his suggestion that women who have abortions should face "some form of punishment."

".@HillaryClinton: "Republicans, led now by Donald Trump, are working to reverse progress made" for women's rights"

"Have you ever noticed that the same politicians who are against sex education, birth control and safe and legal abortion are against policies that would make it easier to raise a child like paid family leave? They are for limited government everywhere, except when it comes to interfering with women's choices and rights."

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She also warned voters not to write off Trump's rhetoric, quoting the late poet Maya Angelou, who said "when someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time."

"He's called women pigs, dogs and disgusting animals," Clinton said.

"Do we want to put our lives, our futures, in Donald Trump's hands?" she added. "These questions are not hypothetical, every woman and everyone who cares about women will answer them when they vote in November."
In her first speech since she became the first female major party presumptive nominee, Hillary Clinton put several traditionally sidelined womens issues front and center.

Speaking to the Planned Parenthood Action Fund Friday, Clinton made clear that issues that affect women and families would be central to the messaging of her general election campaign against presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump.

For too long, issues like these have been dismissed by many as womens issues  as though that somehow makes them less worthy, secondary, she said. Well, yes, these are womens issues. Theyre also family issues. Theyre economic issues. Theyre justice issues. Theyre fundamental to our country and our future.

She also made clear that she will contrast that message with Trumps record of comments about women.

Donald assures us that, as President, hell beand I quote againthe best for women, she said, noting that he called women pigs, dogs, and disgusting animals. Kind of hard to imagine counting on him to respect our fundamental rights, she added.

Read More: Read Hillary Clintons Speech Hitting Donald Trump on Womens Issues

The remarks recalled one of Clintons most famous speeches, her declaration at the United Nations Fourth World Congress on Women in Beijing in 1995 that human rights are womens rights, and womens rights are human rights.

Clinton linked access to reproductive health care to economic progress for the entire country, noting that the percentage of women who finish college is six times higher than it was before the legalization of birth control and that the movement of women into the labor force is responsible for $3.5 trillion of economic growth.

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The speech was a departure for a major presidential candidate. Even Barack Obama, the only sitting president ever to address Planned Parenthood, did not say the word abortion when he gave an address on reproductive care access in 2013. In her speech Friday, Clinton said it 16 times.

It is worth saying again: defending womens health means defending access to abortion  not just in theory, but in reality, Clinton said, as she called for the repeal of the Hyde Amendment, which prevents federal funding from being used to provide abortions.

Experts say that even pro-choice male candidates tend not to prioritize issues like abortion and paid family leave the way female candidates do.

Its not to say men dont support those things, but it is women who make them a priority, who put them front and center, who make sure they dont fall off the agenda, says Debbie Walsh, director of the Center for Women and Politics at Rutgers University. Women bring different lived experiences to government and public policy, and it affects the agenda they have when theyre in office.

Clintons emphasis on womens health and economic issues was also a way to swing at Trump, who has called for punishing women who get abortions (a comment he later reversed) and said the solution to unfair pay for women is for women to do as good a job as men.

She accused Trump of trying to turn back the clock, especially on issues affecting womens lives. When Donald Trump says, Lets make America great again, that is code for lets take America backward, she said. Back to the days when abortion was illegal, women had far fewer options, and life for too many women and girls was limited.

Trump voiced support for Planned Parenthood during the Republican primary, an unusual move at a time when many Republicans have been critical of the organization. He repeatedly said that Planned Parenthood does very good work for millions of women, including pap smears and breast cancer screenings, and said hes received thousands of letters from women that have been helped. But he still supports removing federal funding as long as the organization performs abortions (by law, no federal funds are ever used to provide abortions.)

Clintons speech comes as she is bulking up her campaign staff for a general election run, including a staff shakeup to mobilize women voters in the general election. Mini Timmaraju, who ran womens outreach during the primary, will become Womens Vote Director. Neisha Blandin, who worked in grassroots engagement and African-American outreach during the primary, and Tori Taylor, formerly of Emilys List and the Center for American Progress, will both become deputy womens vote directors. The campaign says the womens vote program will be focused on grassroots organizing and mobilizing a growing network of women surrogates.

Planned Parenthood endorsed Clinton in her primary fight against Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, in its first-ever primary endorsement. In her speech, Clinton drew parallels between her own historic candidacy and the 100-year old womens health organization, which has faced near-constant attacks from conservatives who want to shut it down, especially in the last year.

Together, we are taking on the attacks and together well come out stronger, she said. Just like Planned Parenthood has, time and again.
From Cosmopolitan

On Tuesday, Hillary Clinton secured enough delegates to officially become the Democratic Party nominee for president. This victory is historic, and I celebrate it. During her victory speech in Brooklyn, she mentioned that her mother was born on the very day, June 4, 1919, that the U.S. Congress passed the 19th Amendment, granting women the right to vote. That same summer is known in African-American history as the Red Summer of 1919 because of over 30 race riots and racial skirmishes throughout the U.S. in which white citizens and white mobs violently targeted African-American communities. Mainstream wins for women's rights have always happened in the context of violent racial atrocity. It was true in 1919, and it is true today in 2016. It would in fact take another 46 years before the Voting Rights Act of 1965 secured the right to vote for all black people, black women included.

As I watched Clinton situate her victory in the context of the first major legislative victory of the women's movement, I was struck by the fact that it had taken 97 years, just shy of a full century, from the time a white woman could vote to the time a white woman could become a major party nominee for president. By contrast, in the case of Barack Obama, it took 43 years between the time a black man could vote and a black man could become the major party nominee for president.

I'm a black woman situated at the intersection of these two complicated histories. Because of the ways in which the American nation-state has oppressed and excluded black people and women from full democratic participation, I consider myself a radical black feminist, one who believes fundamentally that we need to structurally transform the way our democracy works. I believe the U.S. nation state both creates and reinforces an unjust social structure that harms black people (and indigenous and Latino people too) through overpolicing and lack of access to safe housing, good schools, and secure and healthy food sources. I do not believe the passage of legislation or token inclusion of women and black folks is either sufficient or just.

Story continues

Many radical feminists I know do not celebrate Clinton's victory because they argue that the American presidency is part of the problem. Thus, they suggest that we should not be seduced into thinking that Clinton's womanhood is consequential for social progress.

I disagree. The fact that it took nearly a century from the conferral of the right to vote on women to Clinton's nomination suggests that this American empire is no more invested in white women being at its helm than it is in protecting and securing black lives. White women's clear and consistent complicity in the project of white supremacy (and the endangerment of black lives) does not change this fact. For instance, when in 1994, Hillary Clinton referred to black teenagers as "super-predators," I was 13 years old. When her husband marshaled through the crime bill later that year, I stood watch as two generations of men in my family did significant jail time, in part because of that legislation.

But I support Hillary Clinton because I think she is the best, most qualified candidate for the job. I support her views on family leave. I think her plan to force states to return to funding public colleges and universities and to make them affordable again is far more pragmatic and achievable than Bernie Sanders's free college plan. And I think that forcing states to refund public universities will strike a critical blow to the ways in which neoliberal policy agendas approach privatization as a sacred and unassailable social good.

American imperialism is morally and intellectually indefensible. Globally, our rush to use military intervention to defend U.S. interests abroad often leaves poor people of color as collateral damage to those efforts. I am clear that a Clinton presidency would continue our existing militarist approach abroad, in ways that I find to be violent and morally repugnant.

In a domestic context, the policies of mass incarceration uniquely disadvantage black men and women. The violent surveillance and killing of black people by police who typically suffer no consequence is personally and politically devastating. I recognize that Hillary Clinton had a hand in creating some of these social conditions, not through her legislative choices, but rather through her advocacy on behalf of her husband's presidential agenda.

Can we be honest about the fact that ride-or-die approaches to supporting our male partners often cost us way more than it costs them?

Powerful women often make complex and complicated negotiations with powerful men in both their intimate and professional lives to advance their own goals. These choices are not above reproach, but they are evidence of the way patriarchy structures women's professional opportunities. We can and should hold Clinton responsible for the problematic and enthusiastic ways she chose to support her husband's political agenda, but her choice to be a good political spouse goes with the social expectations of patriarchy.

I also don't believe that we can claim to support a progressive agenda if we have not empirically proven that we trust a woman to lead our country or that we will support one. Sanders's campaign reinvigorated left political discourse in a way that I am heartened by and find critically important. Clinton now leans further to the left than she ever would have sans a Sanders campaign.

However, Sanders's success has also allowed people not to have to grapple with the impact of sexism on the national body politic, because they use support for Sanders's progressive politics as evidence that they aren't sexist.

It's one thing to say that you would elect the "right" woman candidate, and another to actually do it. It's one thing to claim that you would elect the "right" black candidate, and another thing to actually have done it.

Certainly, the rise of Donald Trump reminds us of just how much Obama's election to the presidency didn't mean with regard to racial progress. So I operate under no illusions that a Clinton victory means we will be post-patriarchal.

But Barack Obama's presence and legacy matters, for good and ill. So, too, with Hillary Clinton.

Her womanhood matters. I can vote for Hillary and express desire to see a woman lead, without throwing on my cape for the empire. But I also won't throw on my cape for any brand of progressivism that skips over sexism in its wake. We are no more postfeminist than we are postracial. Racism and capitalism are not more pressing to me than the problem of patriarchy. As a black woman who grew up working-class, I don't get to leave any issue on the table. They are all urgent as fuck.

Dismantling white supremacy, patriarchy, and capitalism are the only ways people in my community will ever have anything akin to freedom. And any Bernie Bros, be they black or white, who think going hard at racism and capitalism makes them more progressive than those of us who care about electing a woman, need to procure a better analysis of identity politics. Yes, identity politics matter to me. As Netflix says, I like "strong female leads." But if my support for HRC is reduced to a simple propagation of identity politics, then the same reductive analysis applies to those men who insist on electing yet another (white) man to the presidency. Now, certainly, white liberal feminism has never been the pathway to black women's liberation, but politics like Sanders's that elevate anticapitalism to a prime position without sufficient attention to patriarchy and white supremacy do not serve black women well either. Instead, it creates a world that is better for white men (as if they need it) and men of color, while leaving women behind. Thus, it is a perfectly radical position to suggest that striking a blow to patriarchy matters for the larger projects of feminism in which all feminists are invested.

Clinton's nomination is the triumph of the nearly 170-year project of liberal feminism, begun at Seneca Falls in 1848. Because white women were treated as the legal property of men similar to enslaved black people, the liberal feminist project from 1848 to the present has been about making the law and broader legislative processes inclusive and committed to equity around matters of gender. To the extent that the U.S. presidency matters for how we exist in the day-to-day context of American life, having a qualified woman on the left to lead amounts to putting our money where our mouth is.

It has taken nearly 170 years for the liberal feminist project to have a woman as major party presidential candidate. This is telling. So for those of us who are radical feminists, those of us who want to see the total transformation of oppressive social structures, this is a reminder that if it has taken this long for the liberal feminist project to reach such a milestone, our radical feminist dreams will take longer. But it is also a reminder that if feminist movements can't even elect a woman president, then we haven't moved the needle nearly enough on patriarchy.

Those feminists who act like this is possible are not being honest about what the structural transformation of systems looks like.

To me, it looks, in part, like electing a woman president.

I salute Hillary Clinton. I think she has earned this nomination, and I hope for all our sakes that she is our next president.

Follow Brittney on Twitter.
The first key member of Sen. Bernie Sanders' staff has joined Hillary Clinton's campaign, and will play a major role in helping bring Sanders' army of young supporters to Clinton's side, Politico reported Friday,

Kunoor Ojha  who served as Sanders' director of student organizing  will lead Clinton's outreach to young voters, who backed Sanders' campaign by large margins in the primary.

Read more: The Real Story of How Bernie Sanders Became the Candidate of Millennials

While p many young voters are open to voting for Clinton, shoring up their support will be essential for Clinton's campaign.

Young people were an integral part of President Barack Obama's coalition in 2008 and 2012, and Democrats can't afford for them to sit out the election in a race against presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump.

Bernie Sanders has won legions of millennial fans, and Hillary Clinton has taken note.

O a's move to Team Clinton comes three days after the former secretary of state clinched the Democratic nomination, and a day after major Democratic officials came out to back her bid, including Obama, Vice President Joe Biden and Sen. Elizabeth Warren.

It's not unprecedented for staffers from opposing campaigns to join the team of a former primary foe for the general election. A number of Clinton staffers joined Obama's campaign in 2008. And it's likely that more former Sanders aides will head to Clinton's campaign in the coming days.

Sanders has yet to suspend his campaign, saying he'll contest the final primary on the calendar in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday.

But after , Sanders has no shot to overtake Clinton in pledged delegates. And flipping superdelegates  party officials and insiders who get a vote on the convention floor  is likely off the table after Obama's endorsement, as Democrats are unlikely to deviate from the leader of the party set.

Bernie Sanders' peace mission to Washingtonhttp://nbcnews.to/1UGAyIJ

And Sanders himself suggested he's recognized that, saying he congratulated Clinton on the primary and looks forward to meeting with her to discuss how they can beat Trump.

"I will work as hard as I can to make sure that Donald Trump does not become president of the United States," Sanders said Thursday following a meeting with Obama at the White House.
A 62-year-old Hindu monastery worker was hacked to death in Bangladesh on Friday, police said, the latest in a series of such attacks on religious minorities in the mainly Muslim country.

The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the murder of a Hindu in Pabna in northern Bangladesh through its Amaq news agency, according to the SITE monitoring group, saying he was assassinated with "blade weapons".

The latest murder came as Bangladeshi police announced a special week-long crackdown on militants as they ramp up efforts to stem the killings, with five members of a banned Islamist outfit killed in gunbattles with officers in the past three days.

Nityaranjan Pande was taking his regular early morning walk when unidentified attackers set upon him, killing him on the spot, police said.

"As a diabetic, everyday he walks early in the morning. Today as he was walking, several attackers hacked him in the neck... He died on the spot," local police station chief Abdullah Al-Hasan told AFP.

"He had been working at the monastery for around 40 years. In recent years he was the head of its office staff," he said.

The head of police in the northwestern district of Pabna, where the Shri Shri Thakur Anukulchandra Ashram is located, said the killing bore the hallmarks of recent attacks by Islamist extremists on minorities and secular activists.

"There was no eye-witness to the attack as it happened very early in the morning," Alamgir Kabir told AFP.

Bangladesh is reeling from a wave of murders of secular and liberal activists and religious minorities that have left nearly 50 people dead in the last three years.

- Police crackdown -

The murders have spiked in recent weeks with a gruesome wave of killings that has spanned from the capital Dhaka to remote parts of the north and coastal south.

In the past week alone, an elderly Hindu priest was found nearly decapitated in a rice field, a Christian grocer was hacked to death near a church while the wife of an anti-terrorism officer was stabbed and shot.

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Her husband had led several high-profile operations against the banned Jamayetul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB), an Islamist militant group, in the southeastern city of Chittagong.

Most of the latest attacks have been claimed either by the Islamic State group or by a South Asian branch of Al-Qaeda.

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's government has however blamed homegrown Islamists for the attacks, rejecting claims of responsibility from the international jihadist groups.

The JMB is one of the main domestic militant outfits in the frame for the murders, with police shooting dead five members of the group since Tuesday.

Shahidul Hoque, inspector general of police, vowed in an address to a meeting of top police officials in Dhaka Thursday that those involved in the killing of the police officer's wife would be "brought to justice very soon".

Experts say a government crackdown on opponents, including a ban on Bangladesh's largest Islamist party Jamaat-e-Islami following a protracted political crisis, has pushed many towards extremism.

Victims of the attacks by suspected Islamists have included secular bloggers, gay rights activists and followers of minority religions.

Although it is officially secular, around 90 percent of Bangladesh's 160 million-strong population is Muslim. Some eight percent of the population is Hindu.

A Hindu shop owner was hacked to death outside his store in a northern district late last month, while a Hindu tailor was killed in April after allegedly making derogatory remarks about the Prophet Mohammed.

IS claimed responsibility for both those killings.
The recent surge in fatal attacks on minorities in Bangladesh saw its fourth victim within this week on Friday, when an elderly Hindu monastery worker was hacked to death by unidentified assailants in the northwestern city of Pabna.

Police said Nityaranjan Pande, 62, died on the spot after being attacked by knife-wielding men while on his customary morning walk, according to Agence France-Presse. He had reportedly worked at the monastery for 40 years and was the head of its administrative staff.

Pandes is the fourth such killing this week following the murder of a Hindu priest on Tuesday, and is one of nearly a dozen similar attacks by Muslim extremists in the South Asian nation in recent months. Hindus make up about 8% of the Muslim-majority nation, which has seen a steady rise in violence against minorities and secular voices over the past year.

Although no one has yet taken responsibility for his murder, previous attacks have been claimed by international militant groups al-Qaeda and the Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS). The Bangladeshi government led by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, however, insists that the attacks are perpetrated by homegrown Islamist outfits and that terrorist organizations like ISIS have no foothold in the country.

[AFP]
AUSTIN, Texas (Reuters) - A homeless teenager suspected of strangling a dance student at the University of Texas in Austin has been charged with capital murder, which can bring a life sentence in prison, an indictment released on Friday said.

Meechaiel Criner, 17, taken into custody in April, was charged by a grand jury in Travis County this week for the murder of Haruka Weiser, 18, of Portland, Oregon, whose death sent shockwaves across the campus and among its 64,000 students, faculty and staff.

Weiser's body was found behind the university's alumni center. It was the first on-campus killing at the university since a 1966 mass shooting by a sniper.

Criner, listed as a runaway by the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services, was also accused of sexually assaulting Weiser, the indictment said.

Capital murder can bring the death penalty but since Criner is 17, he is too young under law to be executed if he is found guilty. If sentenced to life, he must serve at least 40 years in prison before he can be considered for parole, the Travis County District Attorney's office said.

Criner is being held at the Travis County Jail on a bond of $1 million.

"As our campus continues to mourn the loss of Haruka Weiser, I deeply appreciate the tireless work of law enforcement and the district attorney's office to investigate and prosecute this crime," University of Texas at Austin President Gregory Fenves said in a statement.

(Reporting by Jon Herskovitz; Editing by David Gregorio and Cynthia Osterman)
Rep. Joaquin Castro, D-Texas, is attempting to allow the Library of Congress to change the term illegal alien in its language. (Photo: Kris Connor/Getty Images)

A House Democrat criticized his Republican colleagues for blocking several of his Wednesday night attempts to stop the Library of Congress from using the term illegal alien.

In a series of tweets Thursday, Rep. Joaquin Castro, D-Texas, blasted the House Rules Committee that voted down a series of amendments allowing the Library of Congress to refer to undocumented immigrants as unauthorized noncitizens rather than illegal aliens.

Castro compared his colleagues votes to the rhetoric of presumptive GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump.

Will be interesting to see if [House Republicans] rejects divisive, belittling, Trump-like words or falls in line behind their new leader, Castro tweeted. Trumps rhetoric about Latinos and illegal immigration has sparked a number of firestorms during his campaign.

In an earlier tweet, Castro argued that Congress has never interfered with similar proposals before and that Republicans were making history to preserve a dehumanizing term.

House Republicans included a provision in a bill funding the legislative branch that blocks the Library of Congress from changing the term illegal alien to unauthorized noncitizen. Castros amendments would have altered the budget bill, allowing the Library of Congress to change how it refers to immigrants in its special headings.

Special headings are normally noncontroversial tools used by the Library of Congress to aid its researchers and other libraries in finding materials, according to Library of Congress spokesperson Jennifer Gavin. The library updated about 5,000 of those terms last year as a way of keeping the terminology relevant for researchers attempting to obtain materials.

But the House Rules Committee rejected Castros amendments in order to preserve the old terms, which Castro said are offensive to Hispanics.

I believe the term alien is not only offensive but also dehumanizing, Castro said Wednesday in testimony before the Rules Committee. These folks may not be U.S. citizens, but theyre not from outer space. They are human beings.

Story continues

A separate motion by the Texas Democrat to bring a bill he authored on the subject to the floor also failed, although a Castro spokesperson said it was more intended to force members to take a stance on the issue.

Gavin said the library first began considering changing illegal alien several years ago, and it is rare for a proposed change to generate such controversy.

Weve never seen a bill introduced along these lines, Gavin said.

Despite the pushback, Gavin said the agency would comply with any changes to federal law that would affect the updates to illegal alien. She also said the library did not have a stance on Castros bill.

Congress is our primary client, along with the public. We were created to assist them and we respect what they ask us to do, Gavin said.

Other examples of past changes to subject headings include moving from the term domestics to household employees in 2011 and altering cellular telephones to cell phones in 2010.

Republicans argued that the change is bowing to political correctness. Reps. John Culberson, R-Texas, and Lamar Smith, R-Texas, as well as Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, wrote a letter to the Library of Congress in May asking it to roll back the proposed language change.

Such an action is beneath the dignity of the Library of Congress, the lawmakers wrote in the letter. Rather than engage in revisionist history, the Library should base its decisions on sound judgment, taking actual history, present facts, and future research efforts into account.

The controversy comes as Republican lawmakers are deciding how to grapple with the latest Trump firestorm. The Manhattan billionaire has repeatedly questioned the impartiality of a U.S.-born federal judge because of his Mexican heritage.

House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., called Trumps argument the textbook definition of a racist comment.
One recurring question for the next five months will be whether Donald Trump will succeed in changing the Republican Party, or whether the leaders of the GOP will succeed in changing him.

On Thursday morning, House Republicans laid out their agenda on national security and foreign policy, and their 23-page packet of proposals looks very little like the vision Trump has outlined. His slogan of America first appears nowhere in the document. Nor does any mention of a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, or a ban on Muslims entering the country. Where Trump has blasted trade deals and mused about imposing tariffs, House Republicans recommit themselves to promoting open markets and expanding free trade.

The national-security portion of Speaker Paul Ryans A Better Way agenda is largely a recitation of grievances with President Obamas foreign policy and his approach to combatting terrorism. American foreign policy is failing at nearly every turn, the introduction reads. In the past seven years, our friendships have frayed and our rivalries have intensified, Ryan said in unveiling the proposal at the Council on Foreign Relations. It is not too much to say our enemies no longer fear us and too many of our allies no longer trust us. And I think this is the direct result of the presidents foreign policy.

Trump would say much the same thing. In fact, he did, during his formal foreign-policy address in April. But while House Republicans and their presumptive presidential nominee are in agreement about the failings of the Obama administrationon handling ISIS, Russia, Iran, North Korea, and so much elsethey differ on a path forward. Staying true to Republican orthodoxy going back to the George W. Bush administration, the House leaders advocate a staunchly internationalist approach, rejecting both isolationism and what they see as Obamas leading from behind disengagement from the world.

Story continues

The policy paper includes only a token nod to a recent Trump talking pointthat Americas NATO allies need to step up and pay more or be responsible for their own defense. History has shown us time and again that the world can only be a safer place when America leads, and we need American leadership again, Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy said in his remarks. The GOPs plan is a path that recognizes America can only be safe if we proactively engage abroad rather than hide behind our oceans and leave the most challenging problems for other to deal with.

Recommended: Hillary Clinton's Lack of Truth

In a panel discussion accompanying the release of the report, the authors answered questions about Trumps own proposals with predictable awkwardness. You cant ban an entire race or religion from coming into the country, Representative Michael McCaul, chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, told the moderator, Andrea Mitchell, when she asked about Trumps Muslim ban. What you need is a better vetting system. While the report includes an entire section on improving border and interior immigration security, the closest it comes to addressing Trumps signature wall proposal is to say, We need more than just fencing.

This is a document that we hope the nominee will read and pay attention to.

This is a document, McCaul told Mitchell, that we hope the nominee will read and pay attention to.

Representative Mac Thornberry, who heads the Armed Services Committee, declined to discuss Trumps worldview at all but made it clear that the U.S. could not walk away from NATO. The agenda we laid out today talks about the importance of alliances, as frustrating as it can be, he said.

The GOPs national-security agenda does branch out into other areas, calling for beefed-up cyber defenses and a public-diplomacy component to fighting terrorism using social media. As they have repeatedly, Republicans urge a more muscular strategy to defeat ISIS, but it is one based just as much on rhetoric as specific tactics. Leaders in Washington should also level with the American people by calling the threat what it is, the report says. You cannot defeat an

enemy you refuse to define, so lets state it plainly: We are at war with Islamist terrorists. Yet while the Republicans declare war on paper, they say nothing about actually passing an authorization for the use of military force, which has been stalled in Congress for more than a year. The proposal is also silent on whether the president should deploy a ground combat force to Iraq, Syria, or Libya.

There is no requirement that Trump and other Republicans agree on a policy agenda. On domestic policy, hell need the approval of his party in Congress as much if not more than they need his. But a presidents authority over foreign and national-security policy is far greater. If House leaders want their agenda pursued, theyll need Trump not only to win the White House, but to move in their direction when he does.

Read more from The Atlantic:

This article was originally published on The Atlantic.
By Lin Taylor LONDON (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - International human rights lawyer Amal Clooney will defend Yazidi women who have been victims of sexual slavery, rape and genocide by Islamic State militants in Iraq, her law firm said on Friday. Clooney, a barrister at Doughty Street Chambers in London, is seeking to prosecute the Islamist group through the International Criminal Court for their crimes against the Yazidi community. "We know that thousands of Yazidi civilians have been killed and that thousands of Yazidi women have been enslaved," Clooney, who is married to actor George Clooney, said in a statement. "We know that systematic rapes have taken place, and that they are still taking place," Clooney said. "And yet no one is being held to account." Islamic State militants have killed, raped and enslaved thousands of Yazidis since 2014, accusing them of being devil worshippers and forcing over 400,000 of the religious minority to flee their homes in northern Iraq. Yazidi campaigners, including Nobel Peace Prize nominee Nadia Murad Basee Taha, have been pushing for international justice for the crimes committed against them by Islamic State. Taha, 21, took her message to the U.N. Security Council in December last year, and has spoken to successive governments, appealing to the international community to act. Taha said she was abducted by Islamic State militants from her village in Iraq in August 2014, and taken to the Islamic State stronghold of Mosul, where she and thousands of other Yazidi women and children were exchanged by militants as gifts. She was tortured and repeatedly raped before she escaped three months later. According to the United Nations, the Sunni militants enslaved about 7,000 women and girls in 2014, mainly Yazidis whose faith blends elements of Christianity, Zoroastrianism and Islam, and is still holding 3,500, some as sex slaves. The United States, the European Parliament and the Council of Europe have all described the Islamist militant group's actions as genocide. (Reporting by Lin Taylor @linnytayls, Editing by Astrid Zweynert. Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters that covers humanitarian issues, conflicts, global land rights, modern slavery and human trafficking, women's rights, and climate change. Visit http://news.trust.org to see more stories)
* Package includes more than 8,000 network sites to new rival

* Companies prepare to give up 900-2,640 MHz spectrum

* Convincing EU new rival can compete is key issue

By Foo Yun Chee

BRUSSELS, June 10 - CK Hutchison Holdings and Vimpelcom have offered to divest a chunk of spectrum, more than 8,000 network sites and a roaming deal to a small rival in a bid to convince EU regulators to approve their planned Italian mobile merger.

The package aims to create a fourth network operator in Italy. The current No. 4 player would be eliminated as a result of the combination of Hutchison's 3 Italia and Vimpelcom's WIND, leaving only three network operators.

The European Commission is concerned a three-player market could lead to higher bills for consumers and less competition. Such worries led it to reject Hutchison's bid to acquire British mobile operator O2 from Spanish provider Telefonica last month.

Hutchison and Vimpelcom are willing to free up frequencies from 900 MHz to 2640 MHz to a competitor, according to a European Commission questionnaire seen by Reuters. The range allows for coverage in cities as well as rural areas.

The new operator would also get up to 5,425 network sites and can also ask for another 3,000. Both spectrum and sites would be made available over several stages to end-2019.

Hutchison and Vimpelcom are also prepared to provide a national roaming deal covering access from 2G to fast-speed 5G services to the rival for five years, with an option to extend it for another five years.

Telecoms consultant John Strand said the package may do the trick with the EU regulator.

"This can create a fourth network player. It will probably deliver what the Commission would like to have," he said.

The Commission, which will decide on the deal by Sept. 8, declined to comment. Hutchison said both companies were actively engaging with the regulator. Third parties have until June 15 to provide feedback on the concessions.

Telecoms experts said the key issue was finding a rival with the financial resources and convince the Commission that it can compete effectively.

Swisscom's Italian broadband unit Fastweb is one of those eyeing the offer, a person familiar with the matter told Reuters earlier this week.

(Reporting by Foo Yun Chee, editing by David Evans)
Here are 5 ways to protect yourself against phishing.

The Infocomm Development Authority (IDA) has flagged the rising number of fake government websites in past years, putting residents at greater risk of falling prey to phishing scams.

In response, the government has published an article detailing five ways to spot a fake government website or email.

The article highlighted that all government correspondence will end with @[agency name].gov.sg, and that official e-mails will never ask users to "confirm" sensitive account information.

All government websites also end with gov.sg, and many fake websites use domain names such as .org or .net.

Fake websites also do not use encryption to protect sensitive information. Users should also be on the lookout for grammatical errors and low resolution images.

Read the full article here.







More From Singapore Business Review


CHICAGO, June 10 (Reuters) - Illinois Governor Bruce Rauner on Friday vetoed a bill passed by the Democratic-controlled legislature in April to spend nearly $3.9 billion on state services that have not been funded due to an ongoing fiscal 2016 budget impasse.

The Republican governor called the legislation "an empty promise."

"The bill purports to appropriate $3.89 billion, including more than $3 billion in general funds that the state does not have, for higher education and social service providers, but provides no source of funding," Rauner said in his veto message.

The political stalemate between Rauner and Democrats has left Illinois as the only U.S. state without a complete fiscal 2016 budget, operating instead on court-ordered spending and a muddled patchwork of ongoing and stopgap appropriations.

Rauner called on lawmakers to pass complete balanced budgets for the current and next fiscal years, although the governor has proposed funding most fiscal 2017 services with a temporary spending plan and K-12 schools with a full-year budget.

Illinois' new fiscal year begins on July 1.

The Democrats' spending bill passed with enough votes in the Senate to override a veto, but fell short of that margin in the House.

The measure would have sent money to cash-starved state universities and colleges, covered tuition grants for low-income college students, and funded health and human services that were not subject to court orders. The measure also appropriated about $63 million for unpaid wage increases owed to about 24,000 unionized state workers.

(Reporting by Karen Pierog; Editing by Matthew Lewis)
From Esquire

In my experience, "evangelical" is a slippery word. Greek for "good news," it has come to mean something entirely different in our current political context. But what it was 40 years ago is not what it is now, and almost everyone talking about the 2016 election is getting "evangelical" wrong. A recent article on Esquire ran under the headline "Why Evangelicals Will Follow Trump No Matter What." My experience tells me otherwise.

Born and raised in the church with a pastor father (and, for a time, a pastor mother), evangelicalism is my native tongue. I went to church on Sunday mornings and again on Wednesday nights. I saw women, including my mother, in positions of leadership. I had a few out gay friends who came to church. I went to a Christian college, where I majored in political science. Now, I work at a church in San Francisco, attend Christian conferences, read evangelical news outlets. And almost no one I know is voting for Donald Trump-a candidate who, try as he might, will never be able to pass for evangelical.

One of the most frustrating things about being an evangelical Christian is seeing how often people get us wrong. Evangelicals are not a monolith, and we are not the same group that rose to political power 40 years ago on the wave of the Moral Majority. My church is evangelical in mission and in many of our beliefs, but it also welcomes LGBT individuals and couples into membership. When Esquire wrote that "gay people and women" should "stop laughing" at the idea that evangelicals are concerned with justice, it forgets that gay people and women are also evangelicals.

In a recent interview, Trump told columnist Cal Thomas, "I am Presbyterian and Protestant." It immediately stood out to me, because no churchgoing Christian would ever self-identify that way. A person might say they were Presbyterian, but no evangelical would say "Protestant" when asked about their denominational affiliation. Trump's appeals to evangelical voters do more than ring hollow-they sound like the wild guesses a student hazards when he's forgotten to study for a test. As a conservative evangelical friend of mine recently tweeted, "Trump is playing evangelicals for suckers."

Story continues

"Evangelicals are not a monolith."

I've never seen my lifelong Democratic leanings as running counter to my faith.

In fact, my evangelical Christianity is the thing that has led to me, as a voter, to prioritize things like a robust social welfare program, universal healthcare, gun control, and a generous immigration policy. Political liberalism isn't necessarily commonplace in evangelicalism, but neither is it inimical to it. Many of my peers, motivated by their belief in a savior who sought out marginalized and forgotten people, have committed their lives to politically liberal causes: Immigration reform, child welfare, closing the gender pay gap. This is all because of-not in spite of-what it means to be evangelical.

It isn't that evangelicalism doesn't have an ugly past-we do. But evangelicalism in the present is, in many places, something different. Twenty-six percent of white evangelicals voted for Obama in 2008. Latinos are the fastest-growing group of evangelicals in America right now, and they aren't voting for Trump. Neither are the non-Latino black evangelicals. Younger evangelicals are more likely to support gay marriage than their parents.

I graduated from college the year before Obama was elected, and many of my Christian-college peers voted for him. My alma mater now has an (unofficial) support group for LGBT students and has been active with Black Lives Matter.

From all I've observed, evangelicalism in America is changing. We can't pretend it is what it was 40 years ago. It's moving on. So should we.

Laura Turner is a writer living in San Francisco. Follow her on Twitter here.
MANILA (Reuters) - The Philippines will not pursue bilateral talks with China until an international tribunal decides on a case brought by the Philippines in connection with claims in the South China Sea, incoming foreign minister Perfecto Yasay said on Friday. The Philippines has brought a case at an international tribunal in The Hague contesting China's claims, a case rejected by China which wants to solve the issue bilaterally. "We should not pursue any bilateral talks at this time until we hear, or wait for, the outcome of the decision of the arbitral tribunal to come out," Yasay said in an interview with ABS-CBN news channel. Yasay's remarks follows advice from a former Philippine foreign minister and a U.S. security expert for President-elect Rodrigo Duterte not to hold unconditional bilateral talks with China to try to resolve the dispute. China said on Wednesday the Philippines had ignored a proposal for a regular talks mechanism over maritime issues, as it repeated that its door was always open to bilateral talks with Manila. China claims most of the waters, through which $5 trillion in ship-borne trade passes every year. The Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Taiwan and Brunei have overlapping claims. (Reporting by Karen Lema; Editing by Nick Macfie)
Concho Resources, Inc. CXO is an independent exploration and production 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 CXOs 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 Concho Resources could be a solid choice for investors.

Current Quarter Estimates for CXO

In the past 30 days, 6 estimates have gone higher for Concho Resources, while 2 have gone lower in the same time period. The trend has been pretty favorable too, with estimates increasing from a loss of 4 cents a share 30 days ago, to breakeven today, a significant move.

Current Year Estimates for CXO

Meanwhile, Concho Resources current year figures are also looking quite promising, with 7 estimates moving higher in the past month, compared to 3 lower. The consensus estimate trend has also seen a boost for this time frame, narrowing down from a loss of 55 cents per share 30 days ago to a loss of 45 cents per share today, an increase of 22.2%.

CONCHO RESOURCS Price and Consensus

CONCHO RESOURCS Price and Consensus | CONCHO RESOURCS Quote

Bottom Line

The stock has also started to move higher lately, adding 8.4% 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.

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Five men convicted of gang-raping a Danish tourist in the Indian capital in 2014 were Friday sentenced to life in jail, a prosecutor said, the maximum term possible.

The were convicted on Monday of assaulting the 52-year-old woman at knifepoint as she returned to her Delhi hotel, a crime that raised fresh fears about the safety of women in the city.

"All the convicts have been sentenced to life imprisonment. They will remain in prison for the remainder of their life," public prosecutor Atul Shrivastava told reporters outside the Delhi court after the judgement.

"We had sufficient evidence to prove the charges and the court was satisfied with our arguments to hand down life sentences."

Shrivastava said the men were also given jail terms for more minor offences including robbery, which will run concurrently with the main sentence.

Lawyer Dinesh Sharma, who defended all five, said he would appeal their convictions.

Three others charged over the attack are being tried separately in the juvenile justice system. A ninth accused, an adult, died before the end of the trial.

India toughened its laws on sexual violence and overhauled policing procedures in the wake of the gang-rape of a Delhi student on a moving bus in December 2012.

The victim later died in hospital and the incident sparked mass street protests as well as global headlines about the treatment of women in India.

The minimum punishment for gang rape is now 20 years in jail.

The victim in this case had approached a group of men for directions as she returned to an area popular with backpackers in January 2014.

She left India soon after the incident and returned in 2015 to record her testimony before the court and to identify the accused.
New Delhi (AFP) - Google's plans to introduce its popular "Street View" service in India have hit a roadblock after the interior ministry Friday said it had rejected an application from the tech giant, although the government could yet approve it.

The company applied several months ago to bring in the street-mapping feature showing 360-degree panoramic images of streets, monuments, mountains and rivers -- a service it first introduced in the US in 2007.

An interior ministry spokesman told AFP that Google's proposal had been rejected but added that a final decision would likely be taken later in the year.

"We have rejected the plan by Google to expand its maps feature," the spokesman said.

"The final decision would come hopefully sometime this year," he said without elaborating further.

A Google spokesman told AFP the government had "not indicated to us that the application has been rejected".

Since its launch in 2007, Google Street View has captured some of the world's most far-flung and scenic destinations, including the Amazon rainforest, Antarctica and Canada's Arctic tundra.

Street View is currently available in India at some tourist attractions, including the Taj Mahal in Agra and Delhi's Qutub Minar monument.

The Hindu newspaper said permission for the feature was denied after the Indian defence ministry raised red flags.

"The defence ministry said it was not possible to monitor the service once it was launched and it would be detrimental to national security," the paper quoted a senior government official as saying.

Some reports have suggested the delay is due to a controversial draft law, the Geospatial Information Regulation Bill, which proposes imposing strict new rules on the publication of maps.

Maps are a highly sensitive issue in India, which has long-running border disputes with several of its neighbours, most famously over the divided Himalayan region of Kashmir.

India is a vast yet challenging market for Google, with only a quarter of its 1.2 billion citizens online.

Last year, Google's Indian-born chief executive Sundar Pichai visited the country and outlined plans to bring hundreds of millions of Indians online.
An Indian charity worker has been kidnapped in Kabul, officials said Friday, the latest in a wave of abductions of foreigners in the war-battered country.

The woman, identified as Judith D'Souza, was kidnapped on Thursday night, prompting desperate pleas from her family to Indian officials on social media.

"I seek your support for the release of my sister Judith D'Souza in Kabul. Parents and family are in deep distress over this situation," one of the tweets said.

In response, India's Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj tweeted: "She is your sister and India's daughter. We are doing everything to rescue her. Pl take care of your sick father."

D'Souza, who is aged 40 according to the Indian media, is a staff member of the Aga Khan Foundation, a well-known NGO long based in Afghanistan.

"An investigation by the authorities has been launched, in conjunction with security officials and various partners. Every effort is being made to secure the safe release of the staff member," the charity said in a statement, without elaborating.

The Indian embassy in Kabul told AFP D'Souza was abducted near her residence in the Afghan capital's Qalai Fatullah area.

The abduction comes after Katherine Jane Wilson, a well-known Australian NGO worker, was kidnapped on April 28 in the city of Jalalabad, close to the border with Pakistan.

Wilson, said to be aged 60, ran an organisation known as Zardozi, which promotes the work of Afghan artisans, particularly women.

The United States warned its citizens in Afghanistan last month of a "very high" kidnapping risk after an American citizen narrowly escaped abduction in the heart of Kabul.

Aid workers in particular have increasingly been casualties of a surge in militant violence in recent years.

In April last year the bullet-riddled bodies of five Afghan workers for Save the Children were found after they were abducted by gunmen in the strife-torn southern province of Uruzgan.
Technology distribution company, Ingram Micro IM inked a deal with Awingu, a developer of software to secure and simplify online workspace and enterprise mobility, for the distribution of Awingus mobility solution to channel partners in the U.S. The expanded service includes a cloud-based solution, which will provide users a secure and flexible network. The financial terms of the deal have not been made public.

According to the press release, Awingus software aggregates all company files and applications to one, secure online workspace that can be accessed using any device with an HTML5 browser. The distribution of the solution in the U.S. will help Ingram Micro to expand its market share and increase sales growth.

Mobility holds the key in todays technology world. People are now looking for a secure connection between their workplace and their own device using the latest web technology. True to its commitment, Awingu strives to improve the efficiency of its mobility business by integrating people, business networks and devices via a web browser.

We believe that through this deal Ingram will expand its supply-chain solutions portfolio. On the other hand, Awingu will benefit from increased geographical presence and a vast distribution network.

Apart from this, Ingram Micro recently announced that it has expanded its distribution agreement with Dropbox Inc. Per the expanded agreement, Ingram Micro will be able to market and sell Dropbox file sharing and collaboration services in countries like Europe, Australia and New Zealand.

Ingram Micro has been signing distribution deals with a number of original equipment manufacturers, thus expanding its product portfolio. The companys exposure to the cloud computing segment is also expected to act as a significant growth driver.

Though Ingram Micros high debt burden is a concern, we remain fairly optimistic about its strategic relationships with network giants such as Juniper Networks Inc. JNPR, Cisco Systems, Inc. CSCO and International Business Machines Corp. IBM.

Story continues

Ingram Micro carries a Zacks Rank #5 (Strong Sell).

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Ironwood Pharmaceuticals, Inc. IRWD and Allergan plc AGN announced that their supplemental New Drug Application (sNDA) for the 72 mcg dose of Linzess for use in the treatment of adults with chronic idiopathic constipation (CIC) has been accepted for review by the FDA. The FDA is expected to respond early next year.



Approval of this dosage would provide patients with an additional treatment option. Currently, Linzess is approved by the FDA for the treatment of adults with CIC as a 145 mcg capsule to be taken once daily. Additionally, it is approved for the treatment of adults with irritable bowel syndrome with constipation (IBS-C) as a 290 mcg capsule to be taken once daily.



According to information provided by the company in its press release, CIC is estimated to affect about 35 million adult Americans. According to a web-based survey commissioned by Ironwood and Allergan, it was found that only 12% of adult CIC sufferers are diagnosed medically. Moreover, very few prescription treatments are currently available for this condition.



During the first quarter, impressive growth was observed in LInzess, with U.S. net sales jumping 44% on a year-over-year basis and commercial margins expanding to 55%.

Ironwood has an agreement with AstraZeneca plc AZN for the development and commercialization of Linzess in China, Hong Kong and Macau. Ironwood and AstraZeneca filed for marketing approval with the China Food and Drug Administration in Dec 2015, to market Linzess in China.

Ironwood is a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold) stock. A better-ranked stock in the health care sector is Juniper Pharmaceuticals, Inc. JNP, carrying a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy).

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Alexander Wang talks with Alina Cho at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, June 9, 2016, in New York City. (Photo: Getty Images)

Alexander Wang leaving Balenciaga was just the beginning of the great migration: Shortly after, Raf Simons announced he would be leaving Dior, and Hedi Slimane followed with his Saint Laurent departure. In just a span of a few months, three top designers departed creative director roles at major European luxury labels after just three-year tenures.

Trendsetter! Wang said of the coincidental occurrence, on Thursday night during The Atelier With Alina Chos second season at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Indeed, he was. Simons and Slimane werent the only ones to follow suit. Most recently, Danielle Sherman announced her resignation as the creative director of the Paris-based brand Edun. This capped her three-year stay there. Stefano Pilati at Zegna, Alessandra Facchinetti at Tods, Brendan Mullane at Brioni, Arnaud Maillard and Alvaro Castejon at Azzaro all served brands for three years before heading out the door.

So why is three the magic number? Well, if Wangs experience is any indication, theres a pattern in the progression  and subsequent decline  of the role. Year one was great; it was a complete change of lifestyle and pace than what I was used to dealing with in New York. he said. I had a lot of quiet time to reflect, and year two was crazy because I was doing that and H&M and my own line. By year three, I was like What am I doing? Where is my focus?

In order to readjust, Wang recognized that he had to prioritize. At the end of the day I said, My brand is who I am. I own it with my family. Im not going to put in all this love and effort into something thats not my baby. After just over a decade of building, Wangs company is still 100 percent privately owned, and the 32-year-old counts his sister-in-law as his CEO and his brother as his chief principal officer. So I said it was time to go home and take Alexander Wang to the next chapter.

Story continues

Yet it seems that he spent just enough time at Balenciaga to make a real impact on not just the Kering-owned brand but his own label as well. Having the opportunity to work with a fashion atelier taught him methods that probably raised his profile in the industry (and provided a healthy paycheck to fund this own projects).

But parallels can also be drawn with other designers, and theres no doubt that burnout is real. Simons was admittedly overwhelmed by the demand to produce so much (haute couture, ready-to-wear, pre-collections, as well as various international appearances for Dior and his own menswear line). He didnt renew his contract with LVMH for personal reasons, citing a need for work-life balance. Simons, like Wang, has since recommitted himself to his namesake label  though, it should be noted, the industry speculates he could be hired to head up Calvin Klein as early as August.

Maybe all it takes is a few months of rest and recuperation to bounce back to creating at a breakneck pace.

Follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest for nonstop inspiration delivered fresh to your feed, every day.


Jerusalem (AFP) - Israel on Friday temporarily barred Palestinians from entering the country, a step criticised by the UN but which officials said was a response to this week's deadly Tel Aviv shooting.

Thousands of Palestinians from the occupied West Bank, however, were allowed to attend weekly Muslim prayers at Al-Aqsa mosque compound in Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem.

An army spokeswoman told AFP that crossings to Israel from the West Bank and Gaza Strip would be closed for Palestinians in all but "medical and humanitarian cases".

She said the closure would remain in force until midnight on Sunday.

The measures came during the first Friday of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, when tens of thousands of Palestinians visit Al-Aqsa to pray.

A spokeswoman for COGAT, the defence ministry unit which manages civilian affairs in the West Bank, said about 10,000 Palestinians were allowed to visit Al-Aqsa despite the ban.

The worshippers had to return home after Friday prayers, the spokeswoman said.

Palestinian men between 12 and 35 were not allowed to enter the mosque, with those between 35 and 45 needing permission and those older than 45 having unrestricted access, police confirmed.

Passage was unrestricted for women.

Sheikh Azzam al-Khatib, head of the Islamic Waqf which administers Al-Aqsa, said 100,000 people attended Friday prayers, down from more than 200,000 the year before.

Police declined to give a specific figure, giving an estimate of tens of thousands.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu convened his security cabinet on Thursday and announced a slew of measures against Palestinians after Wednesday's shooting in a popular Tel Aviv nightspot that killed four people, the deadliest attack in a months-long wave of violence.

Among the measures, the government said it was revoking entry permits for more than 80,000 Palestinians to visit relatives in Israel during Ramadan.

It also revoked work permits for 204 of the attackers' relatives and the army blockaded their West Bank hometown of Yatta, with soldiers patrolling and stopping cars.

Story continues

The government also said it was sending two additional battalions -- amounting to hundreds more troops -- into the West Bank.

- Assailants' bodies held -

United Nations rights chief Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein's office in a statement on Friday condemned the attack but said the Israeli measures may amount to "collective punishment".

"The measures taken against the broader population punish not the perpetrators of the crime, but tens -- maybe hundreds -- of thousands of innocent Palestinians," it said.

French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault expressed concern that the Israeli measures risked "fuelling tensions", while the US State Department hoped they would not increase tensions.

Newly installed Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman ordered that the bodies of Palestinians killed while carrying out attacks would no longer be returned to their families for burial, a spokesman said.

The policy is backed by Israeli hawks as a deterrent measure.

Israel last closed its crossings for two days in May during its Remembrance Day and Independence Day commemorations.

A closure is often imposed over Jewish holidays, when large numbers of Israelis congregate to pray or celebrate, presenting a potential target for Palestinian attacks.

The start of April's Passover festival saw this type of shutdown.

Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan said the police in Jerusalem would safeguard both Muslim and Jewish prayers at the city's holy sites over the weekend, which will also see the Jewish festival of Shavuot begin late Saturday.

"We of course want to allow (Jewish) worshippers here in the Old City and throughout Jerusalem to pray in safety and also for Muslims to get here freely and allow them freedom of worship," he said in an address broadcast from the Western Wall, the holiest site where Jews can pray.

"We are in the wake of a harsh attack and we continue today to bury some of those murdered in the attack," Erdan said.

"The security forces and the police are doing everything they can, every day, and during the holiday ahead of us."

Violence since October has killed at least 207 Palestinians, 32 Israelis, two Americans, an Eritrean and a Sudanese.

Most of the Palestinians were carrying out knife, gun or car-ramming attacks, Israeli authorities say.

Others were killed in clashes with security forces or by Israeli air strikes in the Gaza Strip.

On Friday, a Palestinian who tried to stab soldiers at a checkpoint near the West Bank city of Nablus was wounded by Israeli fire, the army said.
Jerusalem (AFP) - An Israeli police officer inadvertently invited a Palestinian gunman into his home after the Tel Aviv shooting thinking he was a civilian fleeing the scene of the attack, media reported Friday.

Two Palestinians opened fire on Israelis in a popular Tel Aviv market at random on Wednesday, killing four people and injuring at least five others.

Hundreds of civilians fled the scene when the attack started, including the off-duty police officer, his wife and in-laws who were out having ice cream, the Yediot Aharonot newspaper reported.

"We started to run towards the house, in order to be in a safe place and for my husband to take his handgun," the police officer's wife, identified only by her first name Ofri, told the newspaper.

"We got into the building and opened the apartment door and then we saw that another person had joined us. We asked him who he was and he didn't speak, just asked for 'water, water'," she said.

Ofri said the man was wearing a tight fitting black suit and tie.

"We thought that he was a civilian like us," she said.

The police officer then grabbed his gun and rushed back out to the scene of the attack at Tel Aviv's Serona market, leaving the alleged attacker at home with his wife and her parents.

Upon arrival the officer saw a gunman, who had been shot, wearing a suit identical to the one being worn by the man he had left at home with his wife.

He immediately made the connection, raced back home and arrested the man.

"My husband came in with his gun drawn, grabbed the terrorist, put him on the floor and handcuffed him," Ofri said.

"At first we didnt understand why he was doing this to the innocent civilian who had been sitting with us, so frightened. But then he said: 'hes dressed just like the other terrorist,'" she added.

Police declined to confirm or deny the report, pointing to a gag order on details of the case.
The body of a fourth victim suspected of being killed by a bear in the past three weeks was found in a forest in northern Japan on Friday, reports said.

The badly mauled corpse has yet to be identified, but police in Akita prefecture were searching for a 74-year-old woman named as Tsuwa Suzuki, who was reported missing a day earlier, according to local media, which cited police.

Hunters killed a bear just 10 metres from the spot where the woman's remains were discovered in a mountain forest in Kazuno city, in Akita, though it remained unclear if she was killed by that animal, reports said.

Last month, three men, two in their seventies and one in his sixties, died in apparent bear attacks while out harvesting bamboo shoots in three separate incidents. The severity of their wounds have led experts to suspect bears were responsible.

A local veterinarian said that as the attacks happened within the same area and in such a short timeframe, the same bear was likely responsible.

"After tasting human flesh, the bear may have learned it can eat them," Takeshi Komatsu told Japan's Kyodo News agency.

City officials warned locals not to go into the mountains and have set bear traps.

The total number of fatal bear attacks in Akita between 1979 and 2015 was just eight, the local Kahoku newspaper said, citing a prefectural official, who added that the recent spate of killings was "unusual".

Suzuki, who lives in Towada city in neighbouring Aomori prefecture, is believed to have gone to the area to pick edible wild plants, according to Japan's public broadcaster NHK. A car, thought to be hers, was found close to the scene.

Bear sightings in Japans rugged north have already surpassed 1,200 this year, almost double that of last year, with some even spotted near residential areas.

Earlier this month, a seven-year-old boy was found safe after being abandoned by his parents in a bear-inhabited forest on Japan's northern island of Hokkaido.

He survived for nearly a week after being left at the side of a road in dense mountain woods as punishment for throwing stones at passing cars.
TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan's top government spokesman on Thursday expressed "serious concern" about the entry of a Chinese naval ship into waters close to disputed islands in the East China Sea, saying it would escalate tension unilaterally. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe told his government to closely coordinate with the United States and other countries to deal with the incident, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga told a news conference. Japan summoned the Chinese ambassador in Tokyo early on Thursday to express concern after the ship sailed close to what Japan considers its territorial waters in the East China Sea for the first time, the Foreign Ministry said. (Reporting by Tetsushi Kajimoto; Editing by Clarence Fernandez)
Tokyo (AFP) - Japan's first "naked restaurant" opens in Tokyo next month with draconian rules of entry -- podgy prospective diners will be weighed and ejected if found to be too fat.

Following the lead of establishments in London and Melbourne, "The Amrita" -- Sanskrit for 'immortality' -- also has strict age restrictions, with only patrons between 18 and 60 allowed in, after they check in their clothes and put on paper underwear provided by the restaurant.

"If you are more than 15 kilos (33 pounds) above the average weight for your height, we ask you refrain from making a reservation," a list of rules posted on the restaurant's website states, explaining that patrons could be weighed if they do not appear to be within the correct weight range.

Guests found to be "overweight" will be refused entry to the restaurant, which opens on July 29, and will not be entitled to a refund, its website points out. All payments must be made in advance on an online booking page.

The list of rules asks visitors not to "cause a nuisance to other guests" by touching or talking to fellow diners. Tattooed customers are barred from entry.

Those who meet the restaurant's entry requirements will be asked to lock away mobile phones and cameras in a table-top box.

The restaurant owners were not immediately available for comment when contacted by AFP.

Guests will fork out up to 80,000 yen ($750) for tickets entitling them to eat food served by muscle-bound men wearing g-strings and watch a dance show featuring male models.

Meal tickets, not including a show, will cost from 14,000 to 28,000 yen depending on choice of menu.
For awhile, Theranos was the darling of Silicon Valley  a firm whose putatively revolutionary blood-testing device was evidence that the lucrative tech world could indeed forge humanitarian paths. But Theranos technology has been discredited  not to mention subject to criminal investigation  and its founder, Elizabeth Holmes, once praised by Forbes as Americas richest self-made woman, has been disgraced. Earlier this month, Forbes backpedaled, placing the 32-year-old Holmes net worth at exactly zero.

Its a sensational story that is now the stuff of Hollywood drama. Deadline reported Thursday night that Jennifer Lawrence will be playing Holmes in a forthcoming biopic to be directed by Adam McKay. Once known as an auteur of the bro comedy  he directed Step Brothers and Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy, to name a few  McKay has successfully pivoted towards more serious filmmaking, thanks to the success of The Big Short, his clever dramatization of the 2008 financial crisis.

Theres no title yet for the film  some have wryly suggested calling it Blood Money  and it has yet to be linked to a studio. Variety predicts a bidding war.
Vice President Joe Biden and Sen. Elizabeth Warren did not mince words Thursday night about their feelings toward presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump, calling him a "fraud," a "racist" and a "bully" who is unfit to be president.

They made their comments during speeches at the American Constitution Society's national convention in Washington, D.C., and on the same day both threw their support behind presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.

Read more: Why Elizabeth Warren Really and Truly Matters Now More Than Ever

"Donald Trump is a loud, nasty, thin-skinned fraud who has never risked anything for anyone and who serves no one but himself," said Warren, who's stepped up as one of Democrats' most forceful adversaries against the billionaire businessman.

Warren went on to call Trump a "disgrace" for picking a fight with Judge Gonzalo Curiel, whom Trump said is too biased to preside over the Trump University lawsuits because of his Mexican heritage.

"Trump is picking on someone who is ethically bound not to defend himself  exactly what you'd expect from a thin-skinned, racist bully," Warren said.

"Race-baiting a judge who spent years defending America from the terror of murderers and drug traffickers simply because long ago his family came to America from somewhere else. You, Donald Trump, are a total disgrace," she continued.

Biden, for his part, was less combative than Warren in his criticism of Trump. But he said the real estate mogul "cannot be trusted."

"A presidential candidate who publicly attacks a sitting federal judge who ruled in a way that was against his own economic interests cannot be trusted to respect the independence of the judiciary as president," Biden said.

Trump's fight with Curiel has sparked outrage even among members of his own party, who called the statement racist.

A super PAC backing Clinton's campaign has used the friendly fire in attack videos posted on the web, and will likely continue using it in television ads in the fall.

Story continues

Polls suggest that the spat with Curiel may be hurting Trump's poll numbers, which have fallen 6% since May, according to a national poll released by Fox News.
Johnny Depp is looking to part with his immensely valuable collection of paintings ahead of his forthcoming divorce from Amber Heard.

The Alice Through the Looking Glass star has auction off his multi-million dollar collection of works by Jean-Michel Basquiat which the actor acquired over 25 years, according to Christie's auction house, who announced the sale on Thursday.

According to the announcement, Depp has been "in dialogue" with Christie's "since the start of the year."

WATCH: Johnny Depp & Amber Heard: A Timeline of Their Relationship, Divorce and Domestic Abuse Allegations

Depp has long been a fan of the celebrated abstract artist, and was quoted in a Basquiat biography explaining his love for the work.

.

.

"Nothing can replace the warmth and immediacy of Basquiat's poetry, or the absolute questions and truths that he delivered," Depp said.

The auction will take place June 29 and 30 at Christie's King Street auction house in London.

WATCH: Johnny Depp and Amber Heard Divorce: How The Couple Is Dealing With Their Big Split

The off-loading of the pricey paintings comes amid Depp's contentious split with Heard, who filed for divorce from the 53-year-old actor on May 23 after 15 months of marriage.

The 30-year-old Rum Diaries star, who alleges that Depp was physically abusive toward her during their marriage, was granted a temporary restraining order against her ex on May 27.

Depp's divorce attorney, Laura Wasser, denied the allegations and claims in court documents that Heard is "attempting to secure a premature financial resolution by alleging abuse."

WATCH: Johnny Depp and Amber Heard to Divorce With No Prenup: Who Gets What?

The divorce could end up being very expensive for Depp, who is estimated to be worth nearly $400 million, due in large part to his work in the wildly successful Pirates of the Caribbean franchise.

The couple is divorcing in California, which is one of the eight states in the U.S. that divides marital assets using the "community property" method, meaning the judge simply divides the couple's joint assets in half, though individuals generally retain inherited and premarital assets.

Story continues

For more on the financial implications surrounding the high-profile split, check out the video below.

Related Articles
Jon Chu is stepping up to direct the film adaptation of Lin-Manuel Miranda's In the Heights for The Weinstein Co.

The G.I. Joe: Retaliation helmer is in talks to tackle the bodega-set project, which is based on the Tony Award-winning musical that put Miranda on the map before he became a household name with Hamilton.

TWC is moving fast to get the film off the ground after recently setting it up at the company. Miranda, who is producing, has met with Chu recently to discuss the adaptation that is set in the Washington Heights neighborhood of Manhattan and centers on a bodega owner who has mixed feelings about closing his store and retiring to the Dominican Republic after inheriting his grandmother's fortune. Miranda, who starred in the stage version in his twenties, hasn't decided yet whether he will lead the cast of the film or opt for a younger actor.

Chu is no stranger to the dance film genre, having launched his feature helming career with Step Up 2: The Streets and following that up with Step Up 3D and the concert movie Justin Bieber: Never Say Never.

In the Heights was initially set up at Universal, and after years in development, the studio opted not to make it and cut the project loose in 2011, balking at the Kenny Ortega-helmed film's $37 million budget - a move that was met with surprise considering the success of the stage version. The musical was nominated for 13 Tonys and won four, including the top prize. After that experience, Miranda decided to make a scrappier version (TWC plans to make the movie for about $15 million).

Scott Sanders also is producing alongside Mara Jacobs. Quiara Alegria Hudes wrote the current screenplay, while Marc Klein penned an earlier draft.

Chu most recently directed Now You See Me 2, which Lionsgate releases today. He is also attached to helm Crazy Rich Asians for producer Nina Jacobson.

He is repped by WME, Principato-Young and attorney Allison Binder.

.
Jon M. Chu (Photo: Joel Ryan/Invision/AP)

By Tatiana Siegel and Borys Kit, The Hollywood Reporter

Jon M. Chu is stepping up to direct the film adaptation of Lin-Manuel Mirandas In the Heights for The Weinstein Co.

The G.I. Joe: Retaliation helmer is in talks to tackle the bodega-set project, which is based on the Tony Award-winning musical that put Miranda on the map before he became a household name with Hamilton.

Related: Lin-Manuel Mirandas In the Heights Gets New Life at The Weinstein Co.

The Weinstein Co. is moving fast to get the film off the ground after recently setting it up at the company. Miranda, who is producing, has met with Chu recently to discuss the adaptation that is set in the Washington Heights neighborhood of Manhattan and centers on a bodega owner who has mixed feelings about closing his store and retiring to the Dominican Republic after inheriting his grandmothers fortune. Miranda, who starred in the stage version in his twenties, hasnt decided yet whether he will lead the cast of the film or opt for a younger actor.

Chu is no stranger to the dance film genre, having launched his feature helming career with Step Up 2: The Streets and following that up with Step Up 3D and the concert movie Justin Bieber: Never Say Never.

Related: Why 4 of Broadways Best Shows Havent Been Turned Into Movies Yet



In the Heights was initially set up at Universal, and after years in development, the studio opted not to make it and cut the project loose in 2011, balking at the Kenny Ortega-helmed films $37 million budget  a move that was met with surprise considering the success of the stage version. The musical was nominated for 13 Tonys and won four, including the top prize. After that experience, Miranda decided to make a scrappier version (The Weinstein Co. plans to make the movie for about $15 million).



Scott Sanders also is producing alongside Mara Jacobs. Quiara Alegria Hudes wrote the current screenplay, while Marc Klein penned an earlier draft.

Story continues

Related: Critics Picks: 5 Must-See Musicals (That Are Not 'Hamilton)

Chu most recently directed Now You See Me 2, which Lionsgate releases today. He is also attached to helm Crazy Rich Asians for producer Nina Jacobson.

He is repped by WME, Principato-Young, and attorney Allison Binder.

Watch Lin-Manuel Miranda doing Carpool Karaoke Broadway-style with James Corden:
Jon M. Chu is stepping up to direct the film adaptation of Lin-Manuel Miranda's In the Heights for The Weinstein Co.

The G.I. Joe: Retaliation helmer is in talks to tackle the bodega-set project, which is based on the Tony Award-winning musical that put Miranda on the map before he became a household name with Hamilton.

TWC is moving fast to get the project off the ground after recently setting it up at the company. Miranda, who is producing, met with Chu recently to discuss the adaptation that is set in the Washington Heights neighborhood of Manhattan and centers on a bodega owner who has mixed feelings about closing his store and retiring to the Dominican Republic after inheriting his grandmother's fortune. Miranda, who starred in the stage version in his 20s, hasn't decided yet whether he will lead the cast of the film or opt for a younger actor.

Chu is no stranger to the dance-film genre, having launched his feature helming career with Step Up 2: The Streets, followed by Step Up 3D and the concert movie Justin Bieber: Never Say Never.

Read More: Lin-Manuel Miranda's 'In the Heights' Gets New Life at The Weinstein Co. (Exclusive)

In the Heights was initially set up at Universal, and after years in development, the studio opted to cut the project loose in 2011, balking at the Kenny Ortega-helmed film's $37 million budget - a move that was met with surprise considering the success of the stage version. The musical was nominated for 13 Tonys and won four, including the top prize. After that experience, Miranda decided to make a scrappier version (TWC plans to make the movie for about $15 million).

Scott Sanders also is producing alongside Mara Jacobs. Quiara Alegria Hudes wrote the current screenplay, while Marc Klein penned an earlier draft.

Chu most recently directed Lionsgate's Now You See Me 2, which opens today. He also is attached to helm Crazy Rich Asians for producer Nina Jacobson.

Chu is repped by WME, Principato-Young and attorney Allison Binder.
Photo: Courtesy of ActuallySheCan.

Model Jourdan Dunn, 25, is no stranger to strength: She became a mom at 19 to son Riley (now 6), who battles with sickle cell anaemia; she was the first African-American model to land on Forbes ' Highest Earning Models list; and she's candidly spoken out against the lack of diversity within the fashion industry.

For her latest endeavor, Dunn has partnered with #ActuallySheCan (Allergan's female-empowerment campaign) as the face of its inspirational and motivational tanks. Available on LeMotto.com for $32 (22), a majority of the proceeds from the sale of the items will go to Academy Women.

Photo: Courtesy of ActuallySheCan.

"It's all about empowering women to go out and achieve their goals, big or small," Dunn said of her affinity for the #ActuallySheCan movement. "And I'm all for that; I'm all for a movement that inspires women to get out there and do what they want to do. I feel like we always have an excuse to not do things."

Often, that's easier said than done. Below, Dunn proves that it is possible to "turn the negative into positive and embrace change, take that leap, and make things happen."

Tell me about the most difficult life obstacles you've had to overcome.

"The first one would probably be  it may sound so simple  just being happy and loving yourself; that took a while. Growing up, I was very self-conscious of the way I looked and really didn't like what I saw in the mirror. But it's all about reprogramming the negative thoughts you have about yourself and looking at the positives.

"The second would probably be when I found out I was pregnant with my son, and hearing people being negative about that  that discourages you. [Since having him,] I learned to have patience; you have to have patience when you're dealing with kids, and that helps with my job. There's so much madness going on on set, and now I'm patient with all of that. All the small stuff that we normally stress and worry about doesn't even compare to the bigger picture. And for me, the bigger picture is my son. All the little things I used to stress about when I was younger within my career  like 'Oh I didn't get that show,' or, 'This casting director doesn't like me,' or, 'Why didn't I get this or that?'  I realised now are really nothing."

Story continues

Photo: Courtesy of ActuallySheCan.

These shirts featuring empowering message. Do you have one motto you tell yourself?

"The shirt that says, 'Less drama, more karma.' I feel like I live by that. We overthink things and make a big deal about things  be we need to just take a breather, chill out, and realise it's going to be all good."

Are there any w omen you look up to as inspiration?

"Growing up, I never really looked up to a celebrity. It was always the women in my family: my mom, my great-grandmother, my mother. I saw them working different jobs and not complaining and just getting it done. I was like, 'I can only hope and wish to be half the women that they are.'

"Now, [I look up to] people like Victoria Beckham  I love that she's a mother and a businesswoman  and obviously Beyonce. I love everything she stands by. Even my friends, Cara [Delevingne] and Karlie [Kloss]. Every time I'm with Karlie, she inspires me. She's so young and she's achieved so much. She's just an amazing person."

On the flip side, what is it like to be a role model to young girls?

"It's kind of scary. I try not to think about it, because at the end of the day, I'm still human and I'm still trying to figure out my life. But I know girls look up to me. I just want them to learn to love themselves, that it's okay to make mistakes, that it's okay if something doesn't work out. You just have to go over those little bumps in the road to get where you want to go."

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For many people, being in the presence of royalty is an excuse to break out ones best diamond chandelier earrings, pendants and tiaras. But for Dame Judi Dench, it means pulling out the old body bling kit again! The 81-year-old actress attended a James Bond-themed royal gala, and paid tribute to the theme with a tattoo both sparkly and spot-on: a Swarovski-crystal 007 temporary tattoo. (And as youll see, its kind of her thing.)

Dame Judi Dench James Bond

Prince Phillip (a.k.a the Duke of Edinburgh) celebrated the 60th anniversary of his namesake awards, with a James Bond-themed gala dinner, and invited many of the franchises stars  including current and former Bond girls Naomie Harris, Jane Seymour and Dench. All of the invitees brought their royal best, but it was Dench who really got into the spirit of things.

RELATED PHOTOS: Last Nights Look: Love It or Leave It?

The Oscar-winning actress donned body art crystals at the top of her back which spelled out the franchises iconic 007 symbol, compete with signature gun motif.

Dame Judi Dench James Bond

RELATED VIDEO: Prince Philip Attends James Bond Themed Gala for the Duke of Edinburgh Awards



Dame Judi Dench James Bond

Where Bond girls have their signature skimpy bikinis, and James himself has his perfectly-fitted suits, you can always count on Ms real-life alter ego to have her diamante body art. Shes worn the same design two times before: first to the premiere in 2008 and again to the Skyfall red carpet in 2012  proving that while Diamonds Are Forever, crystal body art is pretty darn enduring too.

Obsessed with her blingy body art?



 Colleen Kratofil
We just noticed something Katie Holmes LOVES and posts on Instagram all the time

We just noticed something Katie Holmes LOVES and posts on Instagram all the time

We love spying on Katie Holmes Instagram for the occasional Dawsons Creek throwback, pics from her early movies, and peeks into her and Suris life. But theres something else weve noticed on Katie loves to share on social media and she does it all the time:

Katie is a really big fan of photographing great works of art.

Here she is sharing what looks like a photo she took at the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) in New York City of Vincent Van Goghs famous Starry Night:

@themuseumofmodernart #vangogh #inspiration #touchedwithfire #feb12 A photo posted by Katie Holmes (@katieholmes212) on Feb 12, 2016 at 5:29am PST

And here are some little girls (Suri and friends, perhaps?), also at MOMA, studying Claude Monets Water Lillies:

#waterlilies #nightatthemuseum A photo posted by Katie Holmes (@katieholmes212) on Feb 7, 2016 at 4:47pm PST

And here is Katie showing her love for a Jean-Michel Basquiat work at MOMA:

Love the Jean-Michel Basquiat @MOMA A photo posted by Katie Holmes (@katieholmes212) on Jan 13, 2015 at 2:33pm PST

Katie also reently shared a painting (name unknown) by Edgar Degas, which we suspect is from MOMAs current exhibit Edgar Degas: A Strange New Beauty.

#degas happy Wednesday  A photo posted by Katie Holmes (@katieholmes212) on Apr 6, 2016 at 10:12am PDT

And here she is showing off Pablo Picassos incredible work of art, Three Musicians, also at MOMA:

Happy Monday! A photo posted by Katie Holmes (@katieholmes212) on May 18, 2015 at 4:10am PDT

But not all of Katies beloved works of art are ones that we recognize at first glance.

Katie has turned us on to the artwork of Donald Robertson (whom she tagged on Instagram, but who no longer has an account) by posting photos of several pieces of his work:

#cryhappytears @donalddrawbertson A photo posted by Katie Holmes (@katieholmes212) on Feb 4, 2015 at 1:32pm PST

#be empowered @donalddrawbertson A photo posted by Katie Holmes (@katieholmes212) on Feb 4, 2015 at 1:32pm PST

Heres a work that we dont recognize  did she photograph it at a museum? Did she paint it herself? Either way, its beautiful

Story continues

Wishing u all a happy colorful bright Monday! A photo posted by Katie Holmes (@katieholmes212) on Mar 16, 2015 at 2:36pm PDT

We arent certain why Katie Holmes is posting all of these pieces of art  are they particular pieces which inspire her? Is she simply sharing her love of the art world?  but were grateful all the same that she likes to share them. In a world where so many celebs use social media to not-so-secretly hawk products theyre being paid to endorse, its refreshing  and educational! Keep em coming, Katie!

The post We just noticed something Katie Holmes LOVES and posts on Instagram all the time appeared first on HelloGiggles.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau made a surprisingly pragmatic case for legalizing marijuana during the Economist magazines Canada Summit in Toronto on Wednesday.

When a conference participant said that Canada could be to cannabis as France is to wine, noting the possible economic and revenue boosts and job potential from pot legalization, Trudeau offered a different rationale for legalization  a focus on regulation.

The Canadian leader noted that he had two guiding principles in his push for legalizing pot that focused on reducing harm as opposed to maximizing benefits: to minimize underage access to marijuana and to reduce criminal activity surrounding illegal marijuana trade.

I have no doubt that Canadians and entrepreneurs will be tremendously innovative in finding ways to create positive economic benefits from the legalization and control of marijuana, but our focus is on protecting kids and protecting our streets, Trudeau said.

In January, Trudeau took first steps towards legalizing marijuana in Canada with a mandate letter to create a legal framework for it.
From Cosmopolitan

Kate Middleton stepped out Friday morning for church as the royal family continued to celebrate Queen Elizabeth's 90th birthday. The Duchess joined her husband Prince William and brother-in-law Prince Harry as more than 50 relatives made their way to St. Paul's Cathedral in London for a national service of thanksgiving. Kate chose a subtle powder blue coatdress by one of her faves, Catherine Walker, but it was her hat that took center stage. The Jane Taylor cream fascinator had everything: depth, texture, and (fake) white flowers that went all the way up. Seriously, you could probably spot that thing from the London Eye (when you're at the very top of the wheel).

Following the service, the royal family headed to a reception, where Kate revealed the most wonderful detail about her daughter Charlotte.

I guess that saying about book covers and judging also applies to adorable babies who also happen to be heirs to the British royal throne.

Follow Peggy on Twitter.
On April 29, during a private, hour-long walk with a New York State police investigator she said "was cute," a New York woman confessed to murder, that investigator's colleague testified Thursday in a pretrial hearing.



Investigator Anthony DaSilva said that during Angelika Graswald's walk on Bannerman Island 10 days after her fiancA Vince Viafore's kayak capsized in the Hudson River, she told Don DeQuarto she had removed a plug from the kayak of fiance Vince Viafore and taken a connector off the paddle.



Graswald also shared with investigators problems with her relationship. Viafore had "postponed" their engagement and 'he was always wanting me to take sexy photos,'" Graswald said, according to DaSilva. (During a jailhouse interview with PEOPLE last year, Graswald shared the couple's plans of a romantic summer wedding on a European beach.)



Meanwhile, Graswald's attorney Richard Portale raised questions about investigators never advising her of her right to an attorney or the absence of note taking.







These developments occurred during the third day of a Huntley hearing a a pretrial hearing to review the manner in which the police obtained statements from the defendant. Attorneys are due back in Orange County, New York court on June 20.



Viafore, 46, drowned on April 19, 2015 in the Hudson River after his kayak capsized in rough seas and windy conditions. He and Graswald were kayaking back to the mainland from an afternoon on Bannerman Island.



Graswald, 36, has pleaded not guilty to charges of second-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter in the death of Viafore, whose body was recovered on May 23, 2015.



Prosecutors have said that Graswald's motive was money  specifically, $250,000 from two of Viafore's life insurance policies.



Portale has said that Viafore, who was not wearing a life vest, died accidentally when his kayak capsized and he fell into the frigid water.



Kayaking and hypothermia experts have told PEOPLE that it was a dangerous day to be out on 46-degree waters without a life jacket or wet suit, and that the kayaks Viafore and Graswald used were not suited to handle the turbulent Hudson.



 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 the morning of April 29, 2015, Graswald arrived on Bannerman Island with fellow volunteers working to spruce up the area for visitors. State police investigators DaSilva, DeQuarto and Aniello Muscato were there to search for Viafore's body and possible evidence, DaSilva testified.



When Graswald spotted the group, "she greeted Moscato and they hugged," DaSilva said. "It was a warm greeting."



Her demeanor quickly changed after the four began to chat about her day with Viafore on April 19 and noted inconsistencies with her story. Graswald had originally told investigators she lost her cell phone in the waters of the Hudson River when her kayak capsized, "but a rescue worker saw you with it on the [rescue] boat," DaSilva recalled telling Graswald.



"At this point, she appeared in distress," he testified.



"She was breathing in and out loudly and she put her hand on her stomach and I said, 'Angelika, something is not right, you are not being honest with us,'" he recalled.



At one point, a Bannerman Island volunteer noticed Graswald's distress and walked over to check on her.



Graswald told the woman she was okay. When the woman left, "we told [Graswald], 'It's important to tell the truth, we need know what happened.'"



"She said she knew she had to tell the truth," DaSilva testified, "but wasn't ready to let it out yet."



Minutes later, Graswald left for her private chat with DeQuarto. When the pair returned 40 minutes to an hour later, Graswald used a bathroom while DeQuarto told his colleagues of Angelika's alleged confession.



DaSilva said that Graswald agreed to go with them to state police barracks. While on the boat, "she wasn't holding her stomach and breathing heavy,'" DaSilva told the court. ''She said, 'I'm free' and she seemed to be enjoying the wind and was whistling."



Portale asked DaSilva: "She said 'I'm free?'"



Answered DaSilva: "It was pretty surreal, considering what she just told investigator DeQuarto."
Astana (Kazakhstan) (AFP) - Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev on Friday blamed radical islamists for deadly shootings that left seven dead in the west of the oil-rich Central Asian state.

Seven people -- four civilians and three soldiers -- were killed after gunmen went on the rampage at gun shops and a military base in the city of Aktobe near the Russian border on Sunday.

"We already know that it was a terrorist attack by a group of followers of the non-traditional religious movement Salafism," Nazarbayev said in a televised meeting with the country's security council, referring to an ultra-conservative brand of Islam.

"While granting freedom of worship in the country, we also intend to deal a decisive blow to all those who, hiding behind religious slogans, upset the situation in the country."

Nazarbayev's comments came hours after security forces killed five more people suspected of perpetrating Sunday's attacks.

In total government troops claim to have killed 18 suspected attackers. Nazarbayev said "a few" of them were still in hiding and has vowed that all attackers would be strictly punished.

Police in Aktobe said Friday that they were still searching for three suspects.

Authorities had initially said that six people were killed in Sunday's attacks but later updated the casualty toll to seven after another civilian succumbed to injuries in the hospital.

Nazarbayev said Wednesday the attackers were part of a "radical pseudo-religious" group that had received instructions "from abroad".

Nazarbayev also suggested the attacks might be linked to political unrest that has swept the country in recent months and could be an attempt to spark a revolution.

Since independence, oil-rich Kazakhstan has largely avoided the chaos that has dogged other former Soviet nations in Central Asia.

But social unrest in the majority Muslim nation has grown as the economy reels from low oil prices and a crisis in neighbouring Russia, a key ally.

Story continues

Aktobe, a city of about 400,000, is located some 100 kilometres (60 miles) from the Russian border in Kazakhstan's oil-producing west.

The city was the site of country's first ever suicide bombing in 2011 that targeted the local headquarters of the National Security Committee (KNB), but no others were killed in the attack.

Around 300 Kazakh citizens are believed to be fighting in the ranks of the Islamic State (IS) group and other radical organisations in Iraq and Syria.

IS has in the past released propaganda videos that feature a child soldier apparently from the country.
ALMATY (Reuters) - Kazakh security forces killed five people on Friday who were suspected of being Islamist militants linked to deadly attacks this week, the National Security Committee (KNB) said. A special forces unit stormed an apartment and killed four suspects after they refused to surrender and opened fire, the KNB said in a statement. No casualties were reported among civilians or security forces. Another man described as "the terrorists' accomplice" opened fire on police in the street, lightly wounding two, and was killed in return fire, the statement said. KNB said security forces were looking for other suspects still at large. Authorities have not identified the group responsible for attacks on a national guard base and firearms shops in the city of Aktobe, in which at least 20 died on Sunday. But Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev on Friday called them Salafists, the followers of an ultra-conservative school of Islam. Nazarbayev said on Wednesday the attackers had received instructions from abroad and were adherents of a pseudo-religious movement, but did not identify it. ISLAMIC STATE LINK One of the men blamed by authorities for the attack, the deadliest since the country became independent of the Soviet Union in 1991, had posted a video online sympathetic to Islamic State. A message issued on May 21, purporting to come from a spokesman for Islamic State, called on followers abroad to launch attacks during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, which began in early June. A Russian version of the message can be found on social network Vkontakte, popular in the former Soviet Union and used by several people who were on the list of Aktobe suspects leaked to Kazakh media. "Such groups (of Islamic State supporters) probably exist everywhere but ours, the Aktobe one, were among the first to react to this fatwa," said Astana-based religion researcher Asylbek Izbairov. "Perhaps this was due to their links to Kazakh militants who have joined the Islamic State and traveled there." An estimated 300 Kazakhs had left the country to join the militant group based in Syria and Iraq, half of them potential fighters and the other half their family members, Galym Shoikin, head of religious issues committee at Kazakhstan's culture ministry, told reporters on Friday. Shoikin also said there were about 15,000 Salafists in the predominantly Muslim but secular Central Asian nation of 18 million. (Reporting by Olzhas Auyezov; Additional reporting by Raushan Nurshayeva in Astana; Editing by Andrew Roche)
Having played a commando in "Captain America: The First Avenger," Kenneth Choi is re-joining the Marvel Cinematic Universe with a completely different role for "Spider-Man: Homecoming."

A completely different role, that is, unless the school principal he's said to be playing, per Deadline, in July 2017's "Spider-Man: Homecoming" turns out to be Jim Morata, the Japanese-American soldier of 2011's Captain America film.

Tom Holland has already been cast -- and already appeared in 2016's "Captain America: Civil War" -- as the title character, a high school student who gains spider-like powers; Marisa Tomei, Michael Keaton, and franchise mainstay Robert Downey Jr. have also been cast in the feature.
The discovery that King Tut was buried with a dagger made out of a meteorite has drawn news headlines worldwide and captured the imagination of the public. As unusual as it may seem, though, the pharaoh's blade is not the only ancient or odd artifact that was forged from space-based metal.

Although certainly still rare, a number of other antiquities found over the years were comprised of iron derived from meteorites. And even today, master artists are fabricating new examples of meteorite-made tools and decorative ornaments.

The blade interred with Tutankhamun, now on display in Cairo, Egypt, is only the latest Egyptian relic to be traced back to a meteoritic origin. [King Tut Wielded A Blade 'Not of This Earth' (Video)]

As far back as 1911, researchers found that beads excavated from another Egyptian tomb were found made from iron meteorites. The nine small beads, unearthed from a cemetery along the west bank of the Nile tomb in Gerzeh, were dated to 3200 B.C. They were fabricated by hammering the "heaven-sent" material into thin sheets.

According to researchers, ancient Egyptians considered the meteoritic iron to be of great value, possibly considering the falling rocks as a message from the gods. They called the meteorites "iron from the sky."

The Egyptians, however, were not the only ones to place importance on the fallen rocks.

A Tibetan Buddha statue, possibly dating back to the 8th to 10th centuries A.D., was carved from an ataxite, a rare class of meteorite that contains high levels of nickel.

The sculpture, which depicts a figure perched with his legs tucked in and a Buddhist swastika on his chest, was reportedly found and brought to Germany in 1938-1939. This was done as part of a Nazi-funded expedition to discover the roots of what Nazis called the Aryan race. Ownership of the statue was later passed to a private individual.

Known as the "Iron Man," the statue is about 9.5 inches (24 centimeters) tall and weighs about 23 lbs. (10.6 kilograms). Since the statue made headlines in 2012, though, some researchers have called its provenance into doubt, suggesting the Buddha could be a European counterfeit made during the 20th century. The statue's meteoritic origin is not in question, however.

Story continues

The ancient origins of two Chinese bronze weapons with meteoritic iron blades are not in doubt. The artifacts were the focus of a Smithsonian Institution study published by the Freer Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. [Space-y Tales: The 5 Strangest Meteorites]

"Though they have rarely been exhibited ... one is a broad axe (ch'i) with a bronze tang (nei) and the rusted remains of an iron blade; the other is a dagger axe (ko) with a bronze blade and the remains of an iron point," wrote Rutherford Gettens, Roy Clarke and W.T. Chase in the 1971 paper. "These two weapons are of high interest to the historian of technology for three reasons, [including] evidence that the iron in both weapons is of meteoritic origin."

Dated to about 1000 B.C., both weapons may have been functional but most likely were not used in battle, experts say.

"It might be presumed that the [meteoritic] iron blades were attached to the weapons to make them more functional, but because of the scarcity of iron in the early Chou period, and the decor on the weapons, especially the inlay on the ch'i, it seems they were probably made for ceremonial purposes," the researchers wrote.

The Freer Gallery also has another meteoritic blade that was created 400 years ago for the leader of the Mughal Empire in India.

"At dawn, a tremendous noise arose in the east. It was so terrifying that it nearly frightened the inhabitants out of their skins," wrote Indian Emperor Jahangir about a meteor that lit up the skies within his kingdom in April 1621. "Then, in the midst of tumultuous noise, something bright fell to the earth from above."

"His fascination with unusual natural events  and his power to harness their aura  is revealed by this dagger's blade, forged from the glittering meteorite," Freer curators wrote in their description of the 10.25-inch-long (26.1 cm) dagger. "Jahangir further noted that the blade 'cut beautifully, as well as the very best swords.'" (This description also includes the above quote by the emperor.)

The use of meteoritic iron in weapons and ceremonial tools did not end in ancient times.

For example, master Japanese swordsmith Yoshindo Yoshiwara recently forged a katana, named "Tentetsutou," from fragments of the prehistoric Gibeon meteorite. Similarly, California-based blacksmith Tony Swatton produced a replica of Sokka's sword from the animated series "Avatar: the Last Airbender" using fragments of the Campo del Cielo meteorite found in Argentina.

Of a more utilitarian  but no less impressive  use, master bladesmith Bob Kramer, based in Olympia, Washington, has crafted steel chef's knives forged from meteoritic iron.

"I am incorporating meteorites into my material," Kramer said in a 2015 interview with chef Anthony Bourdain for "Raw Craft," a short-film series produced by The Balvenie whisky distillery. "This is probably man's first encounter with a solid chunk of iron  that's a meteorite, that's a star stone."

Robert Pearlman is a Space.com contributing writer and the editor of collectSPACE.com, a partner site and the leading space history news publication. Follow collectSPACE on Facebook and on Twitter at @collectSPACE. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.

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online dating

Online dating can be a horrible experience.

You can get catfished (meaning people online lie), get corny pickup lines, and field weird requests. (Let's not go into the details.)

But it could be worse, as several women recently found out.

The Securities and Exchange Commission on Friday announced fraud charges against a Connecticut man who allegedly misled people into investing in his surgical-glove company but kept the money.

Several women he met through a dating website fell into that trap, according to a press release. The SEC didn't say which website he was using.



Here is the SEC on the case:

The SEC alleges that Thomas J. Connerton told investors that his company Safety Technologies LLC was developing a material to make surgical gloves better resistant to cuts or punctures. He claimed that several major glove manufacturers wanted the technology and Safety Technologies was on the brink of imminent deals that would result in large payouts for investors in his company. But no deals have ever been anywhere close to materializing, and Connerton has emptied the companys bank account by writing a series of checks to himself and using investor funds for his own expenses.

Connerton spent $20,000 for an engagement ring for his latest online date turned investor, according to court documents filed by the SEC. More than 50 people invested in Safety Technologies, including six other women he met through online dating and 14 others who are family or friends of those women, according to the release.

The SEC got a court order to freeze assets of Connerton and Safety Technologies. The agency is also looking for a permanent injunction (a court order that requires someone to do something or refrain from an activity), a penalty, and return of those "ill-gotten gains plus interest."

We charge Connerton with lying about the state of his business and exploiting personal connections to lure in investors, said Paul G. Levenson, director of the SECs Boston office. Investors beware: A rosy picture of a business thats about to take off could still lead to a total loss of investment.

Story continues

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South Korea launched an operation Friday to drive out illegal Chinese fishing boats from neutral waters close to the disputed sea border with the North, in a move that could further escalate cross-border tensions.

The patrol is the first military operation in the buffer zone -- an effective no-man's land at sea -- between the two Koreas since the area was drawn up at the end of the Korean War in 1953.

Seoul has repeatedly complained to Beijing about the number of illegal Chinese trawlers fishing in the waters.

But the number of Chinese boats in the neutral waters of the Han River estuary and around the disputed sea border in the Yellow Sea has continued to surge in the absence of patrols.

"Diplomatic efforts have met their limits.... We've decided to enforce restrictions in cooperation with the UNC," a South Korean military official said according to Yonhap news agency, referring to the US-led United Nations Command (UNC), which oversees the armistice that ended the 1950-53 Korean War.

"The troops carried out their first crackdown operation in the estuary area earlier in the day."

The personnel have been authorised to use force against Chinese fishing boats if they do not comply with verbal warnings to leave, the official said.

South Korea has warships and helicopters on standby, which will be deployed in the event of any skirmishes with North Korea, he added.

The was no immediate reaction from Pyongyang to the rare military patrols.

The UNC had informed the North and China of the military operation before it began.
Lima (AFP) - Peru's president-elect Pedro Pablo Kuczynski says the job will be the last entry on a long resume that also includes Wall Street banker, economy minister, concert flautist and motorcycle enthusiast.

Kuczynski, 77, will be the next leader of one of Latin America's fastest-growing economies after his rival, Keiko Fujimori, conceded defeat Friday, ending a hard-fought presidential election that was decided by a razor-thin margin.

The incoming president cut an eccentric figure on the campaign trial, where he played folk music on the flute, boogied stiffly to the disco beats of his campaign song and had a man-sized guinea pig for a mascot.

Peruvians call him "El Gringo" and make fun of his American accent, which betrays the many years he has lived outside his native country.

But "PPK" played up his experience in business and government, while lightening the baggage of his outsider status by donning a traditional multicolored woolly hat at rallies and trotting out his guinea pig mascot, a symbol of Peru.

In speeches, he dropped dry jokes and occasional profanities.

Competing against Fujimori's well-oiled election machine, he stressed his age and experience.

"I am old, but my noggin is still working," he said.

He hammered home on his promises to fight crime and create jobs.

Every school child will have a ham and egg sandwich each morning, he promised, "and a glass of proper milk, not watered down."

- 'Big brain' -

Kuczynski handed ammunition to his opponents when, after April's first-round vote, he disappeared on a trip to the United States to see his daughter. Fujimori was meanwhile pounding the campaign trail.

"He is North American," said one voter, Lima taxi driver Mario Armando Callupe.

"He doesn't speak great Spanish. That's what defines him."

Nevertheless, the 27-year-old Callupe said he planned to vote for Kuczynski because of his experience.

Story continues

"He is very well prepared for the job and he proved it when he was economy minister. He is a big brain."

- Links to film world -

Kuczynski is a cousin of Franco-Swiss filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard and his American wife, Nancy, is a cousin of the Hollywood actress Jessica Lange.

His father, a doctor, was an officer in the German army in World War I but fled when Hitler came to power. In Peru he worked treating lepers in the Amazon jungle, where the young PPK spent part of his childhood.

Kuczynski was educated at a school in northern England and studied piano and flute at London's Royal College of Music, according to his CV filed with the electoral authorities.

He then studied at Oxford University and Princeton before working in Latin America for the World Bank.

He says he was expelled from Peru in a military coup in the 1960s while serving as head of the state reserve bank.

He lived in the United States for years, working for banks and other companies.

He returned to Peru in the 1980s and served in various ministerial posts on and off over the following decades.

He is considered market-friendly, and favors public-private initiatives over public spending.

He supports civil unions for gay couples, but not full marriages.

"We are going to hit the ground running," he told supporters on the campaign trail, some of them dressed as guinea pigs.

"We will not have to read the instruction manual, because we know what must be done."
London (AFP) - After weeks on the sidelines, senior figures in the opposition Labour party came out fighting for Britain to stay in the EU on Friday amid fears their failure to get out the left-wing vote may result in a Brexit.

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn is officially backing the "Remain" campaign but has been keeping a low profile, leaving members of Prime Minister David Cameron's Conservatives to fight it out between themselves.

But with opinion polls showing the race for the June 23 referendum is neck and neck, raising the real possibility that Britain could become the first country to leave the EU, senior Labour figures are now stepping up.

Ahead of a speech in London on Friday, former party leader Ed Miliband acknowledged in a BBC interview: "Some Labour voters don't know where we stand at the moment."

Corbyn has refused to share a platform with Cameron and there are concerns some Labour voters will abstain or back a Brexit to give the Conservative leader a bloody nose.

Miliband urged them not to, saying: "This is not a mid-term protest.... This is a once-in-a-generation decision which will shape our country for decades to come."

He accused the "Leave" campaign, also backed by the anti-immigration UK Independence Party (UKIP) leader Nigel Farage, of "trying to perpetrate a fraud on Labour voters".

"They want to get out of the European Union not to improve workers' rights but to sweep them away," said Miliband, who stepped down after losing last year's general election.

Labour deputy party leader Tom Watson was due to release predictions on Friday of how Britain might look outside the EU, on the premise that Cameron would be ousted in favour of a more right-wing Conservative government.

The economic turbulence of a Brexit would create "a massive black hole in the public finances, and an unfair Tory government that will make ordinary families pay for it through further cuts and tax rises", he said, according to the Daily Mirror tabloid.

Story continues

- 'People's revolution' -

A YouGov poll for The Times this week found public opinion evenly split between leaving or staying in the EU, but Labour voters favoured "Remain" by 61 percent to 26 percent, with the remainder either not voting or undecided.

However, Labour voters were also marginally less likely to say they would definitely vote.

Andy Burnham, Labour's home affairs spokesman, admitted in a BBC interview Thursday that the campaign had not focused enough on its traditional base.

"Here we are two weeks away from the very real prospect that Britain will vote for isolation," he said.

The leaders of 10 major trade unions came out in favour of staying in the EU this week, but many workers blame the mass migration caused by the EU's freedom of movement rules for driving down wages.

Two backbench lawmakers, John Mann and Dennis Skinner, on Friday announced that they were backing Brexit as the best way to secure workers' rights.

In an article for The Sun tabloid, Mann said the arrival of hundreds of thousands of EU migrants into Britain each year was "worsening inequality".

He added: "A people's revolution is under way. This is about returning power to the people."

- Tory attacks dominate debate -

Labour's push for votes came after senior Conservatives attacked each other in the first head-to-head television debate of the referendum race on Thursday.

Three campaigners from each side -- five of them women -- argued their case over two hours.

Tory energy minister Amber Rudd, who is backing "Remain", laid into lead Brexit campaigner Boris Johnson, the Conservative former London mayor tipped as a future prime minister.

In clashes over migration, Johnson said: "There has got to be democratic consent for the scale of the flows that we are seeing."

Rudd hit back, saying: "I fear that the only number Boris is interested in is the one that says Number 10" -- the premier's address in Downing Street.
* Banco del Estado de Chile taps Japanese market

* Banco do Brasil tenders for 9.25% perp

* New issues hit by oil tumble, Brexit fears

* Argentina's Province of Salta to start roadshows

By Mike Gambale and Paul Kilby

NEW YORK, June 10 (IFR) - Below is a recap of primary issuance activity in the LatAm market on Friday:

Number of deals priced: 2

Total issuance: 1 for JPY10bn, 1 for EUR550m

BANCO ESTADO DE CHILE

Banco del Estado de Chile raised JPY10bn (US$93.59m) in the Japanese market through a 10-year bond that was priced with a 0.48% annual coupon. The deal, which was sole led by Daiwa Capital Markets, is rated A3/AA-/A+. Maturity date falls on June 17 2026.

CONTOURGLOBAL

PRICED: EUR550m. Cpn 5.125%. Ip par. Yld 5.125%. B+555bp.

ContourGlobal has set price talk on its 550m 5NC2 senior secured bond at 5.25% yield area. Books close at 10.30am.

PIPELINE

Argentina's Province of Salta will start roadshows next week as it looks to market a 144A/Reg S bond transaction after mandating Deutsche Bank and Citigroup. The borrower will be in London and Los Angeles on June 14 and in New York and Boston on June 15. Ratings are CCC+/B by S&P and Fitch.

Mexican real-estate developer Grupo GICSA has kicked off international roadshows to market a US dollar bond through JP Morgan and Santander.

The company will meet investors in London on June 13, in Boston on June 14 and in New York on June 15. Expected ratings are BB/BB-.

Banks are marketing a 15-year bond of around US$500m in size to finance KKR's purchase of Pemex assets after failing to attract sufficient interest in a previous loan deal, sources told IFR.

Morgan Stanley is left-lead on the bond, which could price as soon as next week, with Credit Agricole, Mizuho and SMBC also participating as bookrunners, the sources said.

The bond is expected to fill the gap left over from a multi-tranche loan that had been expected to be US$1.35bn in size, but was reduced to US$500m amid push-back over exposure to Pemex and the broader oil and gas sector.

(Reporting by Mike Gambale and Paul Kilby; Editing by Marc Carnegie)
(Corrects second paragraph to state that Lazard's hiring was announced two weeks ago, not that Lazard was hired two weeks ago)

By Naomi Tajitsu and Maki Shiraki

TOKYO, June 9 (Reuters) - Investment bank Lazard has sidelined the founding family of Takata Corp as momentum builds to a market-based solution for the Japanese air bag maker embroiled in the auto industry's biggest safety recall, a person briefed on the process told Reuters.

Takata confirmed two weeks ago that its steering committee had hired Lazard to lead the company's financial restructuring process. Since receiving the mandate, Lazard has been firmly in the driving seat after taking control from Takata's board and the Takada family, which have struggled to make much headway in talks with automaker customers, said the person, who did not want to be named because of the private nature of the discussions.

"Now they have an international player driving the process, communicating with the automakers won't be an issue," the person said. "If it had been four friends of CEO Shigehisa Takada, sitting around in a Tokyo boardroom, the OEMs (automakers) would never accept that."

"Even though you're not going to have every automaker delighted with the outcome, there is a very strong sense now that they can achieve an outcome," the person added.

Both Takata and Lazard declined to comment.

Since Lazard was brought in potential investors in Takata have stepped forward, including private equity fund KKR and Chinese auto supplier Ningbo Joyson Electronic Corp.

More than 100 million vehicles worldwide have been recalled over faulty Takata air bag inflators that are linked to 13 deaths and more than 100 injuries. New recalls are being announced on a near weekly basis.

To date, automakers that use air bags from Takata, one of three major global suppliers, have paid for the cost of the recalls as Takata has yet to agree on what is the root cause of the fault with its bag inflators.

COST BURDEN

Story continues

Some carmakers, frustrated over how long it is taking Takata to identify and replace the potentially lethal inflators, now realize they will likely have to bear some of the burden to overhaul Takata, people with knowledge of those discussions say.

There is a recognition that the industry needs to keep Takata going, in whatever form, to guarantee stable air bag supplies.

"Automakers appear to be bracing for the possibility of forgiving some of Takata's debts," said one of those people. "That's the direction things are heading in, and it's happening quicker than we thought."

"We want an outcome that will not burden our customers, so it's not about where the (financial) sponsor comes from," said an official from one Japanese automaker, who did not want to be named because of the sensitivity of the matter. "What matters is the plan, not necessarily who is proposing the plan."

The Japanese government also seems increasingly unlikely to step in and insist on an old-style 'Japan Inc' rescue like those orchestrated in the past by the trade ministry (METI).

A METI source said the ministry would likely go along with any investor who can guarantee the safety of Takata's product supply, adding that as Takata's products aren't technologically sensitive, there would not be any concerns about Japan losing expertise or cross-border security issues if foreign interests were involved.

(Reporting by Naomi Tajitsu and Maki Shiraki, with additional reporting by Taiga Uranaka and Ami Miyazaki in TOKYO; Editing by Ian Geoghegan)
San Francisco (AFP) - Chinese computer titan Lenovo showcased a series of new smartphones, including a keenly-awaited Tango handset and new Moto Z models that can be transformed into video projectors or powerful speakers.

A market-ready PHAB2 Pro smartphone imbued with Google-created Tango augmented reality technology was given star treatment at a Lenovo Tech World gathering in San Francisco.

PHAB2 can sense and map its surroundings, enabling holograms to be overlaid on real world settings for anything from game play to figuring out which size sofa would fit in a room.

The big-screen gadget will be available globally in September for $499.

"It is a pretty incredible piece of technology for, really, a great price," said Tango engineering director Johnny Lee.

- Transforming smartphones -

In what Lenovo chief executive Yang Yuanqing billed as perhaps the most important announcement at the event, Lenovo also unveiled new Moto Z smartphones that can be customized with "mods" -- specialized pieces of hardware that snap into place magnetically to give handsets added capabilities.

For example, one mod let a Moto Z project video on walls or ceilings at sizes as large as a 70-inch television screen.

Another mod turned Moto Z handsets into powerful speakers.

"This phone can transform itself," said Hollywood star and Lenovo spokesman Ashton Kutcher.

"This is actually a full-blown game-changer."

Lenovo also launched a smartphone mod program for developers, enticing them with a million-dollar prize for a mod that best integrates handsets with services hosted in the Internet cloud.

Moto Z will be available in the United States in coming months through carrier Verizon, with models debuting globally later in the year, according to Lenovo.

Pricing was not disclosed.

Moto Z is made by Motorola, which Lenovo bought from Google in early 2014 in a deal valued at $2.91 billion.

The acquisition was part of a strategy by Lenovo to look beyond personal computers, where it is a market powerhouse, to a future of nearly everything being smart and connected to the Internet, according to Yang.

Story continues

"Devices will become entry points for diverse content and services," he said.

- Smartphones that bend -

Lenovo's core business will remain personal computers, but it wants to use its expertise to combine hardware and cloud capabilities to help devices "listen, see, sense and understand the world," according to Yang.

Lenovo's innovative offerings showed that the company is committed to smartphones even though it only broke into the market with the purchase of Motorola, according to Gartner principal research analyst Mikako Kitagawa.

Gartner ranked Lenovo as the seventh biggest player in the smartphone market last quarter.

"They are really catching up as a late-comer to the market, but they are already successful," Kitagawa said.

"I am pretty happy about the innovations I saw today."

Lenovo innovations included a smartphone with a shatterproof screen, which Kutcher demonstrated by dropping a handset from high above the stage.

"Customers drop phones a lot," Lenovo chief technology officer Peter Hortensius said during the demonstration.

"This gave us an idea. What about a screen that won't break?"

Hortensius also provided a peek at work Lenovo is doing on smartphones and tablets that can bend.

YouTube star Meghan McCarthy wrapped a prototype smartphone around one wrist like a bracelet and folded a tablet in half while watching a cat video.

"This isn't a product yet, but it is a sign of things to come," Hortensius told the audience.
By Tom Miles GENEVA (Reuters) - Liberty House Group, which wants to buy the British assets of Tata Steel , has its eye on other steel plants in the United States, Africa and India if the Tata deal doesn't happen, Executive Chairman Sanjeev Gupta told Reuters. Liberty and other companies belonging to the Gupta Family Group (GFG) are looking for acquisitions and GFG plans to list part of its assets to expose itself to the rigorous governance demanded of public companies, Gupta, who is co-owner of the group, said on Friday. "We are discussing various alternatives but something within the group will be listed within the next 12-18 months," he said. "Its ambitious but thats what were going to try to do," he said. He did not say where the group planned to list. GFG companies are particularly interested in turnaround assets, Gupta said. "Whatever we have bought so far has been cheap and weve managed to turn them around," he said. "Every single one of our peers is out there trying to deleverage, dumping high-quality assets into a market that doesnt want to buy them," Chief Investment Officer Jay Hambro said. Liberty is one of a number of companies that have put forward offers to buy Tata Steel's loss-making UK operations and save thousands of jobs in Britain, whose steel industry has been hit by cheap Chinese imports, high energy costs and a global supply glut. "If it happens then for the short to medium term we would be focused on the UK. But if it doesnt happen then we have a few options in the U.S., in Africa, again India where we are looking at opportunities," Gupta said, referring specifically to steel plants. Liberty and its sister company SIMEC each have assets worth about $400 million, with no long-term debt, and the group also includes an investments arm worth a further $200 million, Gupta said. GFG agreed late last year to buy Britain's Tungsten Bank for about 30 million pounds ($43 mln). "Its somewhat of a distressed asset that we will completely reinvigorate and launch as a specialist trade finance bank," said Hambro. SIMEC, which has energy, mining and infrastructure assets, is also looking at coking coal assets in Australia, Gupta said. SIMEC is planning a major expansion of its European trading operations with a new Geneva office and new hire Ugur Hekimoglu as head of oil, it said in a statement. The company is building a depot in Britain to store and distribute oil products, and in principle it would be interested in upstream and downstream assets as well, such as mid-sized oil refineries in areas where the firm already has a strong presence, Gupta said. "The UK and Europe is the first place - but its not the only place. Wed look at Asia, Middle East, Africa, even America," he said. The GFG group, owned by Gupta, his father PK Gupta and family trusts, aims to raise earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization to $300 million in 2020 from $140 million this year, with net assets rising to $1.75 billion from $1 billion. Gupta did not provide a profit figure but he said the group had almost no depreciation or interest expenses. ($1 = 0.6978 pounds) (Reporting by Tom Miles; Editing by Susan Fenton)
By Lin Taylor LONDON (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - A group of Lithuanian men trafficked to Britain to work on chicken farms have won a landmark civil case against their captors, in the first ruling against a British firm sued for modern slavery offences. A high court judge on Friday ruled in favor of the victims, finding the company guilty of charging prohibited fees, unlawfully withholding wages, and failing to ensure the workers had adequate living and working conditions. The six victims, aged 19 to 58, sought compensation for injuries, unpaid wages and breaches of health and safety. Compensation will be assessed at a later date. "This is the first time the High Court has ruled in favor of victims of trafficking against a British company," said Shanta Martin from Leigh Day, the law firm representing the six men, said in a statement. "It is an extremely important step towards proper compensation for our clients and should be seen as a warning to British companies that they must eradicate all forms of modern slavery from their businesses, whether in the UK or elsewhere." The Lithuanian migrants accused the owners of DJ Houghton, which supplied chickens and eggs to British supermarkets, of trafficking, abuse and beatings over several years. The first court hearing took place in 2015, just days after Britain's Modern Slavery Act came into force, aimed at cracking down on traffickers and cleaning up corporate supply chains.. The group were trafficked into Britain in 2008 and employed by DJ Houghton to catch birds in chicken houses. They escaped in August 2012 and gave statements to the local police. They offered to act as witnesses, but the police did not contact them again, Martin said. Police raided houses belonging to DJ Houghton director Darrell Houghton and company secretary Jacqueline Judge, just two months later and freed several suspected victims of trafficking, but there were no criminal proceedings against the pair at the time. Britain has sought to lead the way in combating human trafficking, a $150 billion a year industry. The workers said they were harassed and brutalized by their supervisors, and intimidated with dogs. One supervisor allegedly split the lip of a worker by punching him in the face, before pouring urine and cider into the wound. "We felt trapped... we were being treated like slaves," one of the men, Anta Gallia's, previously told the solicitors. Britain's Gang master Licensing Authority (GLAM), the government body which regulates the supply of workers to the agriculture industry, said it revoked the license of DJ Houghton immediately after the police raid on the directors' properties. Since the first proceedings, an additional 10 migrants have come forward to join the civil claim against the chicken company. (Reporting by Lin Taylor @linnytayls, Editing by Ros Russell; Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters that covers humanitarian issues, conflicts, global land rights, modern slavery and human trafficking, women's rights, and climate change. Visit http://news.trust.org to see more stories)
BERLIN, June 10 (Reuters) - Lockheed Martin Corp, the Pentagon's top supplier, on Friday said it hoped to complete quickly long-delayed contract negotiations with the Pentagon for the next two batches of F-35 fighter jets, orders worth about a combined $15 billion.

Jack Crisler, vice president of business development for Lockheed's F-35 program, told Reuters the negotiations were continuing nearly every day, and the two sides were "really close" to an agreement for the more than 150 aircraft in the net two batches.

Lockheed and Pentagon officials had initially hoped to complete the negotiations by the end of the year, and later moved their target to the end of March, only to miss that mark as well.

Crisler said the discussions were complicated by the scope of the contract - which includes over 150 aircraft - and the subcontractors involved.

"It becomes more and more difficult as you get closer to the end," Crisler said. He declined to give any details about the substance of the negotiations.

A source familiar with the process confirmed that the two sides had made progress and were nearing agreement.

"We're aiming to get it done within the next month," said the source, who was not authorised to speak publicly.

Top officials from Lockheed and its main suppliers, Northrop Grumman Corp and BAE Systems Plc, as well as engine maker Pratt & Whitney, a unit of United Technologies Corp , will be in Britain early next month when the F-35 is due to fly at the Royal International Air Tattoo, a large air show outside London, and the Farnborough Airshow a week later.

Crisler said it was possible that the contracts could be completed in time for the air shows.

(Reporting by Andrea Shalal, editing by David Evans)
Lockheed Martin Corp. LMT is all set to win another major contract for its F-35 fighter jet. The Danish government reached an agreement yesterday with coalition parties to go ahead with the purchase of 27 F-35A stealth fighter jets from Lockheed Martin.



Fight Against Terror



As the Danish Prime Minister Lars Loekke Rasmussen said last month, the world security map has changed, and hence revamping the fleet of the country has become inevitable. "The fighter jets are central to our participation in international missions in the Balkans, in Afghanistan, in Libya and recently in Iraq in the fight against ISIL (Islamic State)," Rasmussen told a news conference in May.



The order will replace an aged fleet of Lockheed Martin F-16s that Denmark has used since the early 1980s.



Order Detail



The latest agreement follows a May 12 announcement by the Prime Minister regarding the acquisition of 27 fighter jets worth 20 billion Danish crowns ($3.1 billion).



The coalition agreed on the fact that the Danish air forces international presence will be circumscribed in the period spanning 20222026 owing to the changeover from the old F-16 jets. The countrys air force will not be able to take part in international operations between 2022 and 2024.



The first four of the F-35A stealth fighters are to be delivered in 2021, six in 2022 and the balance between 2023 and 2026. The coalition expects this phase to get over between 2021 and 2026.



Power of F-35



Lockheed Martin is the largest U.S. defense contractor with a platform-centric focus that guarantees a steady inflow of follow-on orders from a leveraged presence in the Army, Air Force, Navy and IT programs. The company expects organic growth of 35% to be led primarily by the Aeronautics segment and specifically by the F-35 program.



As of Mar 27, 2016, the company delivered 160 production aircraft to the U.S. and allies. Additionally, it has 108 aircraft in backlog at Mar 2016 end. For 2016, it expects to deliver 53 more F-35s. Production of the aircraft is expected to continue for many years given the U.S. governments current inventory target of 2,443 aircraft for the Air Force, Marine Corps and Navy.



Internationally, Denmark marks the 11th country to purchase these jets, joining the U.S., Britain, Australia, Turkey, Italy, Norway, the Netherlands, Israel, South Korea and Japan.



Zacks Rank



Lockheed Martin currently has a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). A few better-ranked stocks in the aerospace and defense space include BAE Systems plc BAESY, Engility Holdings, Inc. EGL and Leidos Holdings, Inc. LDOS. While BAE Systems carries a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy), Engility and Leidos hold a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy).



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By Andrea Shalal

BERLIN (Reuters) - Top U.S. weapons maker Lockheed Martin Corp (LMT.N) is studying whether to shift work on its multibillion-dollar F-35 fighter jet away from Canadian firms amid uncertainty over Ottawa's plans to buy the jet.

Jack Crisler, Lockheed's vice president of business development for the F-35 programme, told Reuters Lockheed was under pressure from other partner countries that had placed firm orders or accelerated orders to shift more work to them.

"This is not anything punitive. It is just business," he said in a telephone interview from the Netherlands, where the F-35 will fly in its first international air show on Saturday.

Canadian firms will account for development and production work on the F-35 programme worth about $1 billion by the end of 2016, Crisler said.

But future work could be in jeopardy if Canada decides to skip a competition and order F/A-18E/F fighter jets built by rival Boeing Co (BA.N), as indicated by recent Canadian media reports, he said.

A spokeswoman for Canada's defence ministry said the reports were not accurate, but gave no further information.

Crisler said Lockheed had been unable to secure a meeting with the Canadian government to discuss the issue.

He said F-35 supply chain contracts were competitively awarded in rough proportion to the purchase plans of the nine original partner countries that helped fund development of the radar-evading jet: the United States, Britain, Canada, Turkey, Italy, Norway, the Netherlands, Australia and Denmark.

Canada's ruling Liberals won an election last October on a promise not to buy F-35s because the planes were too expensive. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told the House of Commons the opposition Conservatives had "clung to a plane that does not work and is far from being able to work."

Joe DellaVedova, a spokesman for the Pentagon's F-35 office, said Canada remained a partner in the $379 billion programme, and U.S. officials continued to provide the Canadian government information about the jets as they decided how to proceed.

Story continues

More than 180 of the new jets are now flying, including an initial squadron of U.S. Marine Corps F-35 jets that were declared ready for combat a year ago, he said.

Crisler said if Canada held an open competition, Lockheed would retain contracts with Canadian firms, but it would need to rethink if Ottawa opted for a sole-source deal with Boeing.

"We are evaluating all that now," he said. "The most important thing is that we've got to protect the enterprise as we get ready to ramp up production."

However, in a note to clients on Friday, Macquarie analyst Konark Gupta questioned Lockheed's rhetoric, noting that the company recently awarded long-term F-35 contracts to another Canadian supplier.

"(This) suggests to us that Lockheed could simply be threatening Canada to win an F-35 order," Gupta wrote.

Sixty Canadian firms had worked on the F-35 development programme, and 70 others are now involved in production of the jets, including Magellan Aerospace (MAL.TO), Crisler said.

Canadian firms involved urged Ottawa on Thursday to hold a fair and open competition to replace its ageing fleet of CF-18 fighter jets. Their supply contracts, they wrote in the joint statement, were contingent on Canada buying the F-35.

"Not selecting the F-35 will set off a chain of events that will see hundreds of millions of investment dollars lost, and high-tech jobs leaving Canada, going to countries who are buying the F-35," they said.

(Additional reporting by David Ljunggren in Ottawa and Allison Lampert in Montreal; Editing by Mark and Bernadette Baum)
Earlier this week, the Supreme Court added three cases to its docket for the Courts next term. Two of the newly granted cases take on issues surrounding the death penalty, while the other case involves state legislature redistricting.

In the case of Moore v. Texas, the Supreme Court will face the question of whether it is a violation of the Eighth Amendment to use outdated medical standards in assessing intellectual disabilities to determine whether an individual may be executed.

The Court set a precedent in the case of Atkins v. Virginia in 2002. In that case, the Court held that executions of the intellectually disabled are cruel and unusual punishments prohibited by the Eighth Amendment. That decision, however, left it up to the states to decide how to determine if a criminal was intellectually disabled. The Court only gave general guidance on the issue.

In 2014, the Court attempted to solve one aspect of the irregular application of approaches amongst the states in Hall v. Florida. In that decision, the Court held that Floridas policy of relying only on an I.Q. score cutoff was too narrow because it created an unacceptable risk that a person with intellectual disabilities would be executed. Instead, the Court said that states need to rely on modern diagnostic tests and standards to determine a persons intellectual disability.

In Moore, the Court has agreed to hear the appeal of Bobby James Moore of Houston, Texas. In 1980, Moore was convicted of the shooting death of a grocery store clerk and was put on death row. Following the Courts 2002 decision in Atkins, a court found that Moore was intellectually disabled and was therefore ineligible for execution. The appeals court reversed, stating that the lower court erred by using the incorrect standard.

The standard that the Texas appeals court referred to as the correct standard is based on a 1992 definition of intellectual disability. The professional medical community now considers that 1992 standard to be out of date, as it does not focus enough on clinical evaluations of the individual. The appeals court determined that the courts were required to rely upon the outdated standard until the state legislature changed the definition.

Story continues

The Supreme Court specifically chose not to hear the other issue in the case: whether a prolonged stay on death row is constitutional, particularly on the theory that such treatment causes the individual severe psychological harm. In fact, the Court initially issued an order on Monday that said that it would hear this issue as well, but several house later clarified that they would only hear the intellectual disability issue.

The Court will be facing another Texas capital punishment case in Buck v. Stephens. In that case, the Court is being asked to set aside the death sentence of Duane Buck because of the influence of racist trial testimony that said that black defendants were more dangerous than others.

Buck was given convicted of the 1995 murder of his former girlfriend and one of her friends. Under Texas law, a death sentence is only allowed if it is shown that the defendant poses a threat of future danger to society.

During the sentencing phase of the trial, Dr. Walter Quijano was called by Bucks trial attorney to testify to the issue of dangerousness as a psychologist and expert witness. Buck is African-American, and in his testimony, Dr. Quijano stated that his studies had shown that black males were more likely to be a danger to the public. He testified that Buck would therefore likely be dangerous in the future because of his race.

In seeking Supreme Court review, Buck argues that his trial lawyers were ineffective and that his death sentence was influenced by racial bias from Dr. Quijanos testimony. Texas prosecutors argue that Bucks current appeal is barred on procedural grounds. Bucks case was previously turned down by the Court in 2011 when it was based on claims of prosecutorial misconduct.

The Court also accepted a case reviewing racial gerrymandering in Bethune-Hill v. Virginia State Board of Elections. The case focuses on Virginia, where, following a federal census, the legislature redrew the districts for its lower chamber. This case focuses on the twelve districts that were given a majority population of minorities.

The challengers argue that the creation of these districts was the result of racial gerrymandering in an effort to secure Republican power, and that the use of race in this case is unconstitutional. The Republican lawmakers said that this was done to protect the seats of minority legislators and to comply with the Voting Rights Act.

In prior rulings, the Court has determined that it is unconstitutional to draw districting maps using race as the predominant factor in deciding who should be included in the district. The panel of federal judges who heard this case previously voted 2-1 to uphold eleven of the twelve districts. And even in the single district where they did find that race was a predominant factor, the judges held that it was not unconstitutional because it had been done to avoid a violation of federal civil rights law.

Last year, in Alabama Legislative Black Caucus v. Alabama, the Court issued a 5-4 ruling that rejected the use of mechanical racial targets in a gerrymandering.

Joshua Waimberg is a legal fellow at the National Constitution Center.

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FRANKFURT (Reuters) - The chief financial officer of airline Lufthansa <LHAG.DE>, Simone Menne, will join Germany's second-largest drugmaker Boehringer Ingelheim in September, her departure knocking shares in the carrier on Friday.

Lufthansa announced late on Thursday the well-regarded Menne was leaving from Aug. 31 and Boehringer said on Friday she would join the family-run company as CFO on Sept 1.

Shares in the carrier fell 5.5 percent to their lowest since Sept 2015, making it the biggest faller on the German blue-chip index <.GDAXI> as investors worried the company's cost-cutting plans could be thrown off course.

Her departure comes at a time when Lufthansa is grappling with cost challenges, notably on the labor front, and expanding budget unit Eurowings to offer cheaper tickets and defend routes against the likes of Ryanair <RYA.I> and easyJet <EZJ.L>.

CFO for the last four years, Menne has maintained Lufthansa's investment grade credit rating, helped steer the group to record profit and last month she said the group had reached a turning point on bringing down unit costs excluding the price of fuel and currency.

However, the group still needs to strike wide-ranging deals with pilots and cabin crew over pay and conditions, disputes that have seen a series of strikes over the last two years.

Credit Suisse analysts said her departure would deal a blow to the confidence in the airline's cost-cutting efforts, also highlighting how Lufthansa has seen other top executives depart during periods of restructuring, such as former CEO Christoph Franz to Roche in 2013 and CFO Stephan Gemkow to Haniel in 2012.

Gerald Khoo at Liberum said however, her departure was unlikely to impact cost saving plans in the short term, and that a new CFO should be in place in due course.

"Lufthansa does have strength in depth, assuming it does not go for an external candidate as replacement," he told Reuters.

Story continues

Analysts also cited weak May traffic figures from Thursday as a concern for the carrier, with passenger traffic down 2 percent and its planes less full.

Menne, the first female CFO at a German blue-chip company and who had been with Lufthansa since 1989, has previously spoken of her ambition to become chief executive of a Dax 30 company.

At unlisted Boehringer, she will succeed CFO Hubertus von Baumbach, a member of Boehringer's founding family and who will take over as the group's chief executive in July.

(Reporting by Victoria Bryan and Ludwig Burger; Editing by Arno Schuetze and David Evans)
Mads Mikkelsen at the 2014 Independent Spirit Awards (Photo: Giana Mucci/Yahoo Movies)



Mads Mikkelsen would like everyone to take a deep breath and calm down about those reshoots on Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. The Disney film, which chronicles the Rebels theft of Death Star blueprints immediately before the events of Star Wars: A New Hope, is undergoing weeks of additional shooting before its theatrical debut this December. Some media outlets have reported that Rogue One is in crisis and may be undergoing extensive changes to feel less like a war movie. But according to Mikkelsen, who reportedly plays the father of Felicity Joness protagonist, the summer reshoots are blockbuster business as usual.

Related: New Rogue One Details Emerge in Companion Book to the Next Star Wars Adventure (Spoilers)

Basically, all the big films I have done always have reshoots, it is part of their budget, Mikkelsen told The Independent. Theyre either not super happy with a scene bit, the way we were acting, or maybe theres something they want to add. Its not a new thing, it happens with every film. Whether its bigger or less, I have no idea, I have nothing to compare with. Its the same film, its just adding little bits here and there to do the final polishing. Thats my feeling.

Mikkelsen does have some experience with big studio movies, including 2006s Casino Royale and the upcoming Doctor Strange. However, he didnt speak to the larger scope of the reshoots, saying that his will only involve one day of filming. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Disney has brought in some heavyweights to work on Gareth Edwards film this summer, hiring writer-director Tony Gilroy (who penned the Jason Bourne movies) to do script revisions and stunt coordinator Simon Crane to buff up the action sequences. The issue, reportedly, is that Disney would like the tone of Rogue One to be lighter, closer to that of The Force Awakens and the original Star Wars trilogy.

Story continues

Related: Lego Unveils Rogue One: A Star Wars Story Tease

This is the closest thing to a prequel ever, a source told THR. This takes place just before A New Hope and leads up to the 10 minutes before that classic film begins. You have to match the tone!

Reshoots could also make room for an appearance by Alden Ehrenreich, the star of the upcoming standalone Han Solo movie, who had not yet been cast when Rogue One began filming.



As Mikkelsen points out, reshoots are not unusual for multimillion-dollar movies (and are even pretty commonplace for smaller ones). Another of the years most anticipated blockbusters, Suicide Squad, also went into reshoots this spring, forcing director David Ayer to fight rumors that the film wasnt funny enough. #SuicideSquad reshoots for humor is silly, Ayer tweeted. When a studio loves your movie and asks what else you want, go for it! #ThanksWB #moreaction.

Related: The ILM Team Reacts to Your Rogue One Trailer Reactions

Maybe Rogue One just needed #moreaction too? Well see the results for ourselves when the Star Wars prequel opens on Dec. 16.

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story: Daisy Ridley Says Jyn Erso Isnt Reys Mother:
As Malaysias Prime Minister for 22 years till 2003, Mahathir Mohamad was a giant of Asia. At home, he transformed his multiracial and multireligious country from sleepy commodity exporter into buzzing manufacturing powerhouse. Abroad, Mahathir spoke up for a region that he believed was too under the sway of the West. During the Asian financial crisis in the late 1990s, Mahathir famously defied the International Monetary Fund by imposing capital controls, an unorthodox move that enabled Malaysia to recover faster than its neighbors. Today, Malaysia is a linchpin in the U.S.s Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement.

Though he turns 91 on July 10, Mahathir  a doctor by training who was a forceful, hardheaded, patriarchal leader  is not living the quiet life. Instead, he helms a citizens movement, which even includes former foes jailed during his rule, to oust Najib Razak, Malaysias current PM. Najib, himself the son of Malaysias second Prime Minister, the widely respected Abdul Razak, is engulfed in a case involving a sovereign investment fund called 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB). The Wall Street Journal reported that at least $1 billion was transferred to Najibs accounts from 1MDB. Mahathir and his allies say the PM should resign; seven foreign governments are investigating 1MDBs international money flows. Najib says the cash came from Saudi royalty as a political donation to the nation, and that he did not use it for personal use; the local authorities have cleared Najib of any impropriety, but have cracked down on many of his critics in recent months under security laws. (Najibs office did not respond to a request by TIME for an interview.)

TIME Asia Editor Zoher Abdoolcarim spoke to Mahathir on June 2 about Najib and the scandal that has transfixed a nation, as well as about Islam, China  and how he stays so healthy. Excerpts:

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You are not sitting back and enjoying your children and grandchildrenyou have re-entered the political fray. Why?

I have no official position  I am a retiree. But people came to see me about how bad the Prime Minister is, [that] he has done many wrong things. They kept on asking me, Please do something, please do something. They could have gone to other people. But they think that other people would not be able to do anything, because they were afraid. I am afraid too. But after many people had seen me, I decided that I would come out in the open and state my position as being opposed to [Najib] and I began to publicly criticize him. His administration takes actions that are very oppressive. We are seeing a very repressive government. I tried to talk to the Prime Minister but, unfortunately, he does not [heed] my views.

When the Prime Minister took office in 2009, a lot of people were saying that he would be liberal. What happened?

He [believes that] he can sustain his popularity and remain Prime Minister with money. Because of that, he has to find some source of money. Our belief is that he created this so-called sovereign fund so he can somehow make use of that money in order to ensure that he gets support from party members and from other people.

But money politics has long been an issue in Malaysia. Why is the 1MDB scandal any different?

This involves actions that are very damaging to the government  A Prime Minister who does this kind of thing is not qualified to be Prime Minister. He has become a kind of dictator. He should step down.

Najib was in some ways your protege.

We expected Najib, the son of a previous hero, a very iconic figure  we thought he would be the same as his father. But hes totally different. He has this belief that cash is king, [that] if you have money, you can do anything, [that] you dont have to be popular by serving, you dont have to bother with serving, or with good governance, developing the country. All you have to do is have money, big sums of money, and buy support  I [once] supported Najib; [now he] is giving me a headache.

Some of the executive powers now stem from your time  you consolidated executive power, you took more powers unto yourself.

All leaders must have some power. Without power, you cant be a leader. And the power given to the Prime Minister is adequate if he wants to do something that is needed, something that is good. What we are seeing is that the same power that I had when I was able to make decisions that were beneficial for the country, that power is being abused.

A hudud bill, calling for harsher punishments for Malaysian Muslims for violating Sharia, has been fast-tracked by Najibs party in Parliament. Yet Malaysias international reputation is that it is a moderate Muslim nation that can be a model for religious and racial harmony.

The hudud laws they want to pass and implement are actually against the teachings of Islam. The Quran [says] when you judge, judge with justice. Justice is the most important thing. In a plural society like Malaysia, you cannot have two laws  one law for the Muslim, one law for the non-Muslim. If a Muslim and a non-Muslim thief steal, you cut off the Muslims hand, and the non-Muslim gets two months jail. Is that justice? Obviously it is not justice. If it is not justice, it is not Islamic.

They were not able to make any progress with their hudud laws during my time. I didnt tell them that this Islam is out of date or anything like that. I said Islam stresses justice, and what you are doing is to create injustice, therefore it is wrong. But when I stepped down, they brought it up again. Hudud is man-made; its political, it is just meant to show that you are very Islamic  Today, Muslims are in a lot of turmoil, and its not because of Islam. It is because they reject Islam.

ISIS is now concentrating on the Middle East, but things may happen in Indonesia, with a big Muslim population, the southern Philippines, and of course in Malaysia, because there are a lot of young Malay Muslims, particularly young Malay men, going to the Middle East. Do you worry that ISIS can be planted in Malaysia?

The problem with the West is they dont go to the root cause of the terrorism in the Middle East. Before there was no terrorism, but they created the state of Israel, and then they defended Israel against all kinds of things Israel does. Even when the Israelis commit crimes, the West support [them]. And every time the Palestinians and their supporters try to act against Israel, they get no support  they have no means. So they resort to what they can do, and what they can do is what we call terrorism. Now we have ISIS. I believe that the degree of terrorism will increase over time, not because of religion, but because of a sense of frustration over the wrongdoings of the West against Muslim communities. The West only talks about how you can militarily defeat the terrorists, but terrorists are very difficult to defeat, because they can appear anywhere.

But what about the bigger, wealthier Arab nations? Dont they have a responsibility to moderate Muslim youth? Dont they have a responsibility to promote development?

They are obviously not doing enough in Saudi Arabia and places around it, with [their] Wahhabism, which is a problem for other countries. At the same time, when you go against terrorists, you become the target; you dont say anything against them, because then you become a target. So these people, they say, O.K., you are doing these things, but dont come to our country. Thats all they do. They have a lot of money, and if you have too much money, you become spoiled. Its easy to build buildings and develop the physical appearance of development, but to take on the terrorists requires a lot of skill and sacrifice. If you look at these countries, all the work is being done by foreigners. They only spend the money. [Their] culture is not compatible with the modern world.

What do you think is the biggest challenge East Asia faces?

The resurgence and power of China. We have to live with China. But the Western idea is that if you see somebody coming up, you must stop him. You must block him. The U.S. is preaching the idea of confrontation. The Chinese will strengthen their military capability; that is what they are doing. I was in Japan recently. I told the Japanese, If you have an overlapping claim, try negotiation, dont try to fight. Its not worthwhile. You may win a war, you may lose a war, but the cost of war is horrendous.

Youve had two heart-bypass operations, and you will be 91 on July 10. What is the secret of your energy?

[Giggling] I dont know, frankly. Doctors look after me. But, basically, I look after myself. I dont overeat. I dont develop a big paunch. I do a little bit of exercise. At the same time, I believe that if you dont work, you will decay. The decay process is through not using your faculties  not using your brain, not using your body. Then you become old very quickly, and decrepit. Of course, in the end, we all die.
Https%3a%2f%2fblueprint-api-production.s3.amazonaws.com%2fuploads%2fcard%2fimage%2f111701%2f3d31054686224b5c9708d92ba8a33e57

All he does is win win win no matter what.

DJ Khaled, whose life is already full enough, what with touring with Beyonce and all, is now expecting a baby with fiance Nicole Turk.

SEE ALSO: DJ Khaled believes you have the power to 'be the next yourself'

TMZ recently reported that Turk was pregnant. In true DJ Khaled fashion, he confirmed the news - and that it's a boy - to fans by Snapchatting the baby shower Monday night.

Image: dj khaled/snapchat

Image: dj khaled/snapchat

The New York City event looks wilder than your average baby shower. It was called Haute Living Celebrates DJ Khaled And Nicole Khaled presented by JetSmarter, and rappers including Papoose, Remy Ma and Fat Joe were in attendance.

Image: JOHNNY NUNEZ/GETTY IMAGES

Image: JOHNNY NUNEZ/GETTY IMAGES

Everybody hands go up for the Khaled family.
Former Maldives deputy leader Ahmed Adeeb has been jailed for 15 years for plotting to assassinate the president, the latest in a string of prosecutions of senior politicians and opposition figures in the troubled island nation.

Adeeb was convicted late Thursday of attempting to kill President Abdulla Yameen by setting off a bomb on his speedboat last September, his lawyer said.

Two of the vice president's military bodyguards were also convicted after the trial, which was held behind closed doors.

The verdicts mean almost all of Yameen's key rivals are in jail or exiled from the Maldives, a popular honeymoon destination that has been rocked by political turmoil in recent years.

They come weeks after Mohamed Nasheed, the country's first democratically elected president, was granted asylum in Britain.

Nasheed, whose legal team includes high-profile human rights lawyer Amal Clooney, was sentenced to 13 years in prison on controversial terrorism charges last year but was allowed to travel to Britain for surgery in January and was granted political asylum last month.

Adeeb, 34, was considered a close confidant of Yameen until he was dramatically impeached in November following allegations he was trying to topple the president.

Yameen escaped the blast unscathed, but his wife and two others were slightly injured. The FBI was called in to investigate the incident, but found no evidence the blast was caused by a bomb.

Reporters were barred from attending the trial after the court invoked national security concerns and said it would not make the hearings or verdict public.

- Silencing dissent -

Adeeb's lawyer, Moosa Siraj, told the Maldives Independent website he would appeal.

"The Criminal Court has barred me from calling the trial unfair, but we have concerns and intend to launch an appeal immediately," Siraj said.

Another lawyer who declined to be named said Adeeb's two bodyguards were also convicted Thursday, sentenced to 10 years each in jail.

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The same court tried former prosecutor general Muhthaz Muhsin of conspiracy to kidnap the President by arranging a fake arrest warrant in February and sentenced him Thursday to 17 years in jail, his lawyer Husnu Al Suood said.

Adeeb, who enjoyed a meteoric rise until his impeachment, was given a separate 10-year sentence on Sunday on a terrorism charge relating to his role in cracking down on an anti-government protest in May 2015.

Opposition activists in the Indian ocean archipelago say dissidents risk arrest or exile under Yameen, the half brother of former strongman Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, who ruled the archipelago for 30 straight years until he was defeated in the first democratic election in 2008.

In July last year, Yameen sacked his then vice president Mohamed Jameel after accusing him of conspiring to seize power. Jameel is now living abroad in self-imposed exile.

Yameen's defence minister Mohamed Nazim was sentenced to 11 years in prison in March 2015 for trying to topple the government, and another ex-defence minister Tholhath Ibrahim was jailed for 10 years the following month.

And nearly four months ago, Yameen secured the jailing of Sheikh Imran Abdulla, leader of the opposition Islamist Adhaalath Party.

He was sentenced to 12 years after being tried for allegedly inciting unrest during an anti-government rally in 2015.
The Sidwell Friends School Class of 2016. (Photo: Facebook)



Malia Obama graduated from high school on Friday. The first daughter, who was 10 when she moved into the White House in 2008, received her diploma from Sidwell Friends School in Washington, D.C.

Just like her peers, the first daughter wore a white dress of her own choosing to the ceremony and posed for a picture, which was posted to the private institutions Facebook page, holding a bouquet of flowers. On a perfect June morning, joyfulness re16ned [sic] as the Class of 2016 received their diplomas, the photo caption reads.

The president was well prepared for the emotional milestone, telling Jimmy Fallon that he was anticipating lots of tears and had sunglasses ready to keep them hidden. Theyve handled it so well. They are wonderful girls. Theyre smart and funny but, most importantly, theyre kind. They dont have an attitude, he said of his kids on The Tonight Show. This is the thing Michelle and I were most worried about when we got there. We thought, Hows this going to work? You got these butlers and you got the guy saluting. Its a testimony to Michelle and my mother-in-law that they have just turned out to be incredible kids. I could not be prouder.



The 17-year-old will be attending Harvard in 2017 after taking a gap year.



Follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest for nonstop inspiration delivered fresh to your feed, every day.


Topping many of the worst-films-of-all-time lists, the Scientology-funded sci-fi flop has been taking a beating from critics for over a decade since its release.


A Maryland jury found a man guilty of murder after seeing a video in which the paralyzed victim, who later died, blinked to identify the man who shot him.



On Wednesday, a jury in Prince George's County found Jermaine Hailes, 25, guilty of murder in the 2010 killing of Melvin Pate, 29.



Jurors were shown a video in which Pate, who could not speak after he was shot in November 2010, blink from his hospital bed at a photo of his shooter in a photo lineup, prosecutors told NBC Washington.



"They told the victim to blink once hard if he recognized someone in the photos he was shown. So, it wasnat the involuntary blink that we all do. It was truly a closing of his eyes and opening them and you could see the tears coming from the side of his eyes as he identified the man who was his killer," prosecutor Christine Murphy told the news station.









Man Found Guilty of Murder After Paralyzed Victim Blinked to Identify Him Before His Death| Crime & Courts, Death, Murder, True Crime



Pate survived as a quadriplegic for two years before dying from his injuries in 2012. At that time, the murder case was in the middle of a years-long appeal process to determine whether or not the video of him blinking would be admissible in court.



The Maryland Court of appeals ultimately ruled to allow prosecutors to show the video. Prosecutors believe this case marks just the fourth time in U.S. history that a murder victim's non-verbal identification has been used as evidence in a trial, according to The Washington Post.



Hailes, who was also found guilty of second-degree murder, robbery, assault and other related charges, faces life in prison.



"Iam just glad it's over with. My son can rest in peace now," the victim's mother, Felicia Pate told NBC Washington. "My son had no chance at all. [Haile's parents] can go see their son. I can't see mine. Mine is at home in a box."
The firm is looking to expand in Vietnam.

The property firm is looking to deepen its footprint in the Asian country as it acquires Kumho Asiana Plaza Saigon in District 1 of Vietnams Ho Chi Minh City.

According to a press release by Mapletree Investments, the property is a prime mixed-use asset offering close to 146,000 square metres in gross floor area, and comprises a 21-storey Grade A office building, 32-storey serviced apartment tower, 21-storey hotel, and a retail podium with food & beverage offerings.

This is Mapletrees largest acquisition involving a completed, income-producing property in Vietnam. It is in line with the Groups overall strategy to invest in strong-yielding assets to further grow its business and earnings, the press release noted.

According to Hiew Yoon Khong, Mapletree CEO, Kumho Asiana Plaza is a rare asset given its attributes such as size, its multiple components with strong occupancies, and location in the heart of HCMCs central business district.

He added that the firm is also keen to invest in greenfield opportunities to develop office, retail, residential, serviced apartment and mixed-use developments, either on our own or with local partners.

Mapletree began investing in Vietnam in 2005, and today owns and manages a portfolio comprising office, retail, industrial, logistics, and serviced apartment assets. Including Kumho Asiana Plaza, the Group now has over S$1 billion in assets under management in the country, the release noted.

Mapletree is also in the midst of developing Saigon South Place, a 4.4-hectare mixed-use project located along Nguyen Van Linh Boulevard in District 7s Tan Phong Ward. Work on a 30,000 sqm Grade A office tower is expected to be completed by end 2016, while construction of an internationally-operated serviced apartment building and a residential block will start soon and both are scheduled for completion by early 2018, the release added.







More From Singapore Business Review


Mark Cuban told CNN that he does not believe that Donald Trump is a racist.

During a sit-down interview on CNN Tonight with Don Lemon on Thursday evening, the Dallas Mavericks owner told the host, of Trump, "Anybody who continually refers to themselves in the third person, you almost have to dismiss most of what they're saying."

He added, "Presidential candidates lie. And we don't call them on it, and so, Donald is just taking it to an extreme. Do I think he's racist in these comments? Or are they racist comments? Yes."

But based off of his personal interactions with the GOP nominee, Cuban said he would not label him a racist. "In my experience with Donald Trump, my one-on-one experience, I don't think he's racist. Yes, I mean, if I thought he was truly racist and this is exactly what we were going to see from him as the president, then, yes, I preclude him immediately. I don't think he's racist."

So what does Cuban think of the billionaire businessman's racially-charged commentary? "I think he has absolutely no self-awareness. I think he loses context continuously," Cuban, a member of the Independent party, told Lemon. "I think he gets caught up in his own head and thinks - you know, he hears what he's saying and thinks it's right no matter what he says. And it comes out stupid a lot of times."

Read More: Mark Cuban Says He'd "Crush" Donald Trump If He Ran for President

Despite what he thinks comes out of Trump being "stupid a lot of times," Cuban thinks the former Apprentice star would fair better with Congress than Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton. "I think the way things are right now, yes," he remarked of the GOP contender. "If the Republicans continue to hold on to Congress, then they're going to do what they've done to Obama, but it's only going to be 1,000 times worse," he said.

Story continues

"Right now, the far right, they've dehumanized Hillary. And unless she's able to combat that, it's going to be easier for the obstructionists in Congress to just slam the door and create gridlock even worse than we are today," he said of Clinton, adding, "the Democrats aren't going to just shoot Donald down for being Donald."

So will Cuban ever throw his hat in the political ring? Just maybe. "I think there needs to be an independent voice, there needs to be an independent party," he told the CNN host. "And whether it's me or somebody else, it needs to happen."

Watch the full interview below.
Mark Cuban

Mark Cuban told Fortune Thursday that Donald Trump reached out to him directly after the billionaire owner of the NBA's Dallas Mavericks became increasingly involved in the political discussion.

"Yes, directly," Cuban said, when asked if he had heard from Trump. "To ask me why I have gone far more negative."

"I wont tell you what I said," he added.

Cuban has chastised Trump in recent weeks, although he's expressed interest in serving as either Trump's or Hillary Clinton's running mate in the fall.

Clinton, the presumptive Democratic nominee, expressed an openness to the idea herself on an episode of NBC's "Meet the Press" last month.

The star of ABC's "Shark Tank" has ripped Trump over his perceived financial standing and lack of knowledge. This week, he said Trump would be a "puppet president" and tweeted that the presumptive Republican nominee will have to "grovel" for campaign donations.

During an interview with CNN's Don Lemon Thursday night, Cuban said he thinks Trump "has absolutely no self-awareness" when asked about the Manhattan billionaire's attacks on a federal judge over his Mexican heritage.

"I think he loses context continuously," Cuban said. "I think he gets caught up in his own head and thinks  you know, he hears what he's saying and thinks it's right no matter what he says. And it comes out stupid a lot of times."

Trump's latest self-inflicted firestorm centers around the real-estate magnate attacking US District Court Judge Gonzalo Curiel, who Trump said cannot fairly preside over a civil case involving Trump University, his now defunct for-profit real-estate school, because he is of Mexican descent and Trump will be "building a wall" along the US-Mexico border if elected in the fall.

Curiel is from Indiana.

Republicans from all sides of the party have publicly condemned the remarks and demanded that Trump change his tone. In a Tuesday-afternoon statement, Trump took a step back from the attacks but did not apologize. He made no mention of his attacks against the judge in his scripted postprimary speech later that night.

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The blowback from the attacks may have been evident in a Thursday Fox News poll, which found that Trump had dipped 6 percentage points since last month in a head-to-head with Hillary Clinton  including dropping a whopping 11 points with independent voters.

However, polls have found that the majority of Republican voters do not find the attacks to be racist. Half of all voters polled in a Morning Consult poll released Friday said the comments were racist, while 35% said they were not.

During his interview with Lemon, Cuban said the comments were racist, but that Trump himself is not racist.

"Do I think he's racist in these comments? Or are they racist comments? Yes," he said. "In my experience with Donald Trump, my one-on-one experience, I don't think he's racist. Yes. I mean, if I thought he was truly racist and this is exactly what we were going to see from him as the president  then, yes, I preclude him immediately. I don't think he's racist. I think he has absolutely no self-awareness."

Cuban has kept his cards close to his chest when it comes to which candidate he will vote for in the fall as he publicly campaigns to be considered by either as a potential vice president. On Friday, Cuban told Fox Business that "there's a good chance I'll vote for Donald Trump" if Clinton picks Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren as her running mate.

"We need to be more center," Cuban said. "This country needs solutions, right? We don't need headline porn."

"Elizabeth Warren has accomplished a lot in her life, but taking it that far left would be a huge mistake, any more than if Donald Trump went the other way," he continued. "We need to come center."

NOW WATCH: Hillary Clinton says shes open to the idea of having Mark Cuban as her running mate





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Last month, Channing Tatum announced Magic Mike Live, a new show in Las Vegas inspired by the cinematic masterpieces Magic Mike and Magic Mike XXL. Everyone you know will be having a bachelorette party there in 2017, regardless of whether or not they're a bachelorette. Though the show won't star anyone from the movies (unless Channing decides to surprise everyone one night if he's "ever in shape enough to do that again"), Matthew McConaughey recently told E! News that he thinks it would be "fun" to participate. "To show up and just Dallas it out?" he said. "That'd be fun!" He added that no one had invited him yet, but hey, there's still time.

In the first Magic Mike, Matthew played Dallas, the owner of Xquisite, Tampa's finest showcase of male entertainers. He also got to say what is arguably the best line in the movie: "The law says you cannot touch. But I think I see a lotta lawbreakers up in this house tonight." Forget True Detective and his Oscar - true McConaughstans know that Dallas was the real cornerstone of the McConaissance. Dallas did not appear in Magic Mike XXL, because he moved to Macau with the Kid (Alex Pettyfer) to start a new show. That must be why nobody asked Dallas to make an appearance in Vegas. You can't just abandon the Kings of Tampa like that and expect them not to lose your number. They're like healers or something!

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The Passion of the Christ was only the beginning.

In an exclusive interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Braveheart screenwriter Randall Wallace revealed that he is working on a sequel to the 2004 blockbuster with Mel Gibson.

WATCH: Find Out What Ricky Gervais Whispered to Mel Gibson at the Golden Globes!

"The evangelical community considers The Passion the biggest movie ever out of Hollywood, and they kept telling us that they think a sequel will be even bigger," Wallace told THR.

Gibson co-wrote and directed the original film, which went on to be the most successful independent film of all time.

Wallace, who studied religion at Duke University, previously partnered with Gibson for the 1995 Best Picture Oscar winner, Braveheart. Wallace was also individually recognized with a nomination for Best Original Screenplay at the Oscars that year.

WATCH: 'Heaven Is For Real' Boy Details Near-Death Experience

While Wallace told THR it was too early to discuss financial backing for the film, he revealed that he and Gibson started seriously contemplating the sequel while making the upcoming World War II drama, Hacksaw Ridge, which opens in November. The Passion sequel will reportedly focus on Christ's resurrection.

Gibson's rep did not comment to THR on the Oscar winner's involvement in the project.

Wallace most recently directed and co-wrote the faith-based film, Heaven Is for Real, starring Greg Kinnear and Thomas Haden Church.

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Until recently, Mercedes-Benz has kept its most knife-edged and hardcore off-road models from U.S. shores. Both the jaw-dropping G63 AMG 66 pickup truck, of which only 100 were built, and the rugged 44 it spawnedthe G500 44 (44 squared).

Now, however, the latter of the two will make its on-sale debut on American shores for the 2017 model year, and its no less shouty than before. Meet the renamed 2017 Mercedes G550 44.

Though its moniker has changed, thankfully its technical bits havent. Under its tough ladder frame chassis youll still find the DNA that makes this special G-Class unique from all the rest, its high-riding portal axles. Move over, average person.

RELATED: See More of the Giant Mercedes-Benz G63 AMG 66 Pickup

Billed as the most capable G-Class SUV ever, the G550 44s portal axles allow for vastly improved performance off-road, due to their relocation of the axle above the wheel centers, via a series of reduction gears located in the wheel hub. Over the standard G550, the G550 44 offers drastically improved approach and departure angles (51.6 and 43.8 degrees, versus 30 degrees before at both ends), as well as a huge 17 inches of ground clearance and the ability to safely wade through 3.3 feet of water.

The engine charged with providing this colossal SUV with oomph is Mercedes big 4.0-liter twin-turbocharged V8, which offers comparable performance to the standard model, 416 horsepower and a torquey 450 lb.-ft. of torque.

Beginning in 2017, its contemporaries in the G-Class lineup will include the standard Mercedes G550 (starts at $119,900), the 563 horsepower AMG G63 ($139,900), and the V12-powered AMG G65 ($217,900).

RELATED: This Modified 670-HP Mercedes CLK63 is Truly Terrifying

Originally developed solely for military use in 1972, the G-Class SUV has since become a favorite of both adventurers and luxury car buyers alike. Since its inception, Mercedes has hand built over 250,000 G-Class SUVs at its factory in Graz, Austria.

Story continues

The price of the new-to-the-USA G550 44? Mercedes says thats to be determined, though it will likely sit atop the model range ($200,000-plus). Mercedes has said these brutal SUVs will arrive at US dealerships by early 2017.

Pictured: 2016 Mercedes-Benz G500 44 (European model)

RELATED: One Family Has Owned this Mercedes Gullwing Since 1955
Tom Bonds memory of the flight home from war and the landing at the airport remains as vivid scars on his mind  and in his heart.

We werent accepted much by anybody, Bond said.

When his plane landed, at about two or three oclock in the morning, after the long flight from Vietnam, Bond said he and his fellow soldiers where shuffled off the plane and onto a bus.

Wire-meshed grating lined the windows, and to Bond it felt like a prisoner transport.

When the soldiers asked about the wire mesh, the explanation they received landed with uneasy sentiment.

So nobody could throw anything through the windows at them, Bond recalled the answer.

Even at three in the morning he remembered the shouting protesters who came out with force and numbers, throwing out crude and tasteless names at the returning soldiers, soldiers who served in the Vietnam War, a derisive era for service members returning from the battlefield; some with physical scars  some with emotional scars. And the welcome home only deepened those scars.

Nobody wanted us, Bond said.

For Tom Bond, a U.S. Army Vietnam veteran and commander of the Fremont Disabled American Veterans organization, an event sponsored by the Nebraska Society Daughters of the American Revolution, taking place during the John C. Fremont Day, holds an opportunity to try leave behind some of the negative emotions that remain rooted inside him for many years after the fighting had ended.

Soldiers returned home to a reception of reproachful protest, assailed by hateful word and spit upon and rejected by many in the community.

It was shameful, said Judy Ekeler, honorary state regent of the Nebraska Society Daughters of the American Revolution, who helped to organize the event.

This year, during the 30th celebration of John C. Fremont Days, The Fremont Chapter Lewis-Clark of the DAR plans to recognize and honor the service of the Dodge County Vietnam veterans in a Ceremony on Saturday July 9 at 6:30 p.m. under the Chautauqua Tent.

In partnership with the United States Vietnam War Commemoration Program the Lewis-Clark chapter will honor Vietnam Era veterans who served their country from November 1, 1955 to May 15, 1975. Veterans who register for the event will have their name read and receive a certificate and lapel pin to honor the courage, dedication and sacrifices they made serving their country

The DAR event during John C. Fremont days hopes to mend some of the memories.

Finally there is something we can do, Ekeler said. I dont know that any of us realized it, or thought of it, at the time: about the shameful the reception those soldiers received when they returned.

Bob Yanke, a Marine and Vietnam Veteran recalled some of the same imagery and experiences that Bond confronted upon his return from the war.

There was nothing, Yanke described, referring to the lack of ceremonial reception that awaited for returning soldiers. I just came back and there was nothing.

Today, both Bond and Yanke recognize that national attitudes toward that era continue to evolve slowly with passage of time. The respect for Vietnam veterans is different now than it was 45 years ago. Both men showed great appreciation for the part the women of the Lewis-Clark Chapter played in making that change happen.

Bond, who will be ringing the commemorative bell at the John C. Fremont ceremony to memorialize each of the 15 Dodge County soldiers killed in action during that War, feels honored for the chance to participate.

But he also admits, the recognition and honors can sometimes be difficult to process; it can drudge up memories and feelings that over the years he preferred to keep buried.

Its kind of hard to handle because you dont expect it, Bond said. It brings up a lot of emotion  but (the DAR) are a great bunch  and it does mean a lot.

To put the commemoration into context, Pam Hancock, Fremont resident and member of the Lewis-Clark Chapter, looked to the experiences that her brother and cousin tackled when they returned from the war.

They did their duty, then came home and were ostracized, Hancock said. We have learned now, after 50 years that we can separate the veteran from the war.

Yanke agreed.

We served, he said. You didnt question it. It wasnt our war. We didnt start it. But we served.

Yanke explained that events like the Honor Flights and the commemoration coming up on July 9 at John C. Fremont Days help foster an environment in which veterans feel they can more openly discuss experiences. It helps them network with other veterans.

Its a lot easier now for some of these guys to let go of that anger, Yanke said.

Bond admitted his experiences in that far away country endure in memory and remain difficult to talk about. However, his words can offer some hint as to the harms that war creates.

To be able to ring the bell, Bond said referring to the commemorative bell for the fallen soldiers. Those are the real heroes  the guys that didnt come home.

Currently about 80 Vietnam veterans are registered for the John C. Fremont Days commemorative event. If you or someone you know is interested in participating, please obtain a registration from and return it to the name and address on the form by Jun 15. Registration forms are available at the Femont Disabled American Veterans office at 137 North D. Street. You may also contact Pam Hancock at pamretired@msn.com, or Judy Ekeler at jkeler@aol.com, to obtain forms.
Merck & Co. Inc. MRK announced its intention to acquire privately held biotech company Afferent Pharmaceuticals in a deal which could see the company paying up to $1.25 billion.



Deal to Add Chronic Cough Treatment to Pipeline



With the completion of this acquisition, Merck will add Afferents lead pipeline candidate, AF-219, to its pipeline. AF-219 is in a phase IIb study for the treatment of refractory, chronic cough as well as a phase II study in idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) with cough.



Afferent had presented data on AF-219 last month at the American Thoracic Society (ATS) International Conference. Results from the first cohort of a two cohort-phase IIb dose-escalation study showed that AF-219 significantly reduced cough frequency. Data from the second cohort, which is evaluating lower doses, will be presented at a future congress.



According to information provided by the company in its press release, chronic cough is estimated to affect about 10% of adults in the U.S. With no approved therapies for the treatment of chronic cough, there is significant unmet need in this area.



Afferent has another candidate in its pipeline - AF-130  which completed phase I development and is slated to move into phase II studies for non-respiratory conditions.



Merck Could Pay Up To $1.25 Billion



While Merck will be making an upfront payment of $500 million, the company could make additional payments of up to $750 million on the achievement of development and commercial milestones for multiple indications and candidates including AF-219. The acquisition is scheduled to close in the third quarter of the year.



The deal is in line with Mercks efforts to boost its pipeline and bring new products to market. Earlier this year, Merck had acquired IOmet, a privately-held UK-based drug discovery company focused on the development of cancer treatments, with an emphasis on cancer immunotherapy and cancer metabolism.



Merck has more than 10 candidates in phase III development and recently got a favorable FDA panel recommendation (10-5 with one abstention) for Zinplava (bezlotoxumab) for the prevention of Clostridium difficile (C. difficile) infection recurrence in patients aged 18 years and older. A final response from the FDA should be out by Jul 23.



Merck is a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold) stock. Some better-ranked stocks in the large-cap pharma sector include Bristol-Myers Squibb Company BMY, Pfizer Inc. PFE and Johnson & Johnson JNJ. While Bristol-Myers and Pfizer are Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy) stocks, Johnson & Johnson is a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy) stock.



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By Noah Barkin and Andreas Rinke BERLIN (Reuters) - After a golden decade for economic ties between Germany and China, concerns are growing in Berlin over barriers to foreign firms in China, Beijing's more muscular foreign policy and its increased authoritarianism at home. German Chancellor Angela Merkel heads to Beijing on Saturday for the ninth time since taking office amid growing pressure from industry and rights groups to confront the Chinese more forcefully. The trip comes as she faces criticism at home for failing to speak out more strongly about rights violations in Turkey. It also comes in the midst of a furious debate over Chinese takeovers in Europe, with some politicians calling for tougher restrictions following a recent offer by home appliance maker Midea <000333.SZ> for German robotics firm Kuka . "We have a proliferation and intensification of hidden and open conflicts in the German-Chinese relationship," said Sebastian Heilmann, head of the MERICS think tank in Berlin. "We won't be able to avoid tough conflicts with China in the next months and years. This will be a difficult trip." Merkel will be traveling to China with six of her ministers and a large industry delegation that is expected to include the CEOs of blue-chips like Volkswagen , BMW , Siemens , ThyssenKrupp , Lufthansa and Airbus . She will dine with Chinese Premier Li Keqiang on Sunday and President Xi Jinping on Monday. In between, she and Li will attend a meeting with business leaders at which German firms are expected to openly voice their frustrations with conditions in the Chinese market. On Tuesday, Merkel is due to travel to the northern "rust belt" city of Shenyang to visit a BMW plant. More than any other European country, Germany has benefited from the rapid expansion of the Chinese economy over the past decade. Between 2005 and 2014, German exports to China more than tripled to 74 billion euros. And German companies, notably the big carmakers, benefited from a surge in Chinese demand that offset weakness in their home European market. In 2015, however, exports to China declined year-on-year for the first time in nearly two decades. And attention has shifted away from trade to the difficult conditions for German firms operating in a Chinese economy where growth has slowed. "FRESH WAVE OF PESSIMISM" At a briefing in Berlin on Friday, Merkel's top advisers expressed concerns about a wide range of developments in China, from a new security law that would place restrictions on non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to Beijing's actions in the South China Sea. Topping the list, however, was the situation for German firms. At a time when Chinese companies are on an acquisition spree across Europe, foreign firms are limited to 50 percent stakes in joint ventures with their Chinese counterparts. Chinese leaders heard the same message from U.S. Treasury Secretary Jack Lew this week. He said in Beijing that foreign businesses were beginning to question whether they were welcome in China. "We want a level playing field, the same conditions for both sides," one senior Merkel adviser, who requested anonymity, told reporters, adding that Beijing's drive to be recognized this year by the European Commission as an economy controlled by the market, rather than the state, faced obstacles. Markus Kerber, managing director of the BDI Federation of German Industries, told Reuters: "We have a difficult situation in China. We're in a transition phase." The mood was summed up in the European Chamber of Commerce's annual business confidence survey released this week. It spoke of a "fresh wave of pessimism" about an "increasingly hostile" business environment that was tilted in favor of domestic firms. China has repeatedly pledged to increase market access for foreign firms and carry out market reforms in its effort to revamp its slowing economy. But foreign critics accuse it of not following through on its reform agenda and introducing new regulations that are restricting market access even further. For example, Beijing's Made in China 2025 plan calls for a progressive increase in domestic components used in priority sectors such as advanced information technology and robotics to 70 percent by 2025 from a target of 40 percent by 2020. The European Chamber's survey showed that less than a quarter of its members were convinced by China's pledged reform drive and that fewer than half currently planned to expand operations in the world's second-largest economy. (Additional reporting by Michael Martina in Beijing; Editing by Andrew Roche)
BERLIN (Reuters) - German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Friday that sanctions imposed against Russia over the Ukraine crisis were not an end in themselves and that implementation of the Minsk peace agreement was key to getting them lifted. Merkel also said that in the long term, the European Union should aim for a common economic zone with Moscow which would extend from Russia's Pacific port of Vladivostok to Lisbon. "We should move gradually towards this goal," she said, speaking at a corporate event. (Reporting by Andreas Rinke,; Writing by Michael Nienaber; Editing by Gareth Jones)
Puebla (Mexico) (AFP) - Gunmen marched into a remote mountain village in Mexico and killed 11 members of the same family, including two children, apparently over "personal conflicts," authorities said.

Five women, four men and two girls were killed in the pre-dawn attack in El Mirador, a community in central Puebla state, near Oaxaca.

Two other girls were wounded in the attack and were taken to a hospital.

Witnesses identified two assailants and recognized one of them as a man who allegedly sexually abused one of the dead women nine years ago, resulting in the birth a boy, according to the state prosecutor's office.

The woman's current partner, who was killed, was stabbed several times and had "more wounds than the other" victims, the office said in a statement.

The two assailants fled toward neighboring Oaxaca state. Authorities in both states are searching for them. The hamlet is so remote that it is only accessible on foot.

"It was an act of revenge," said Vicente Lopez de la Vega, mayor of Coxcatlan, the municipality that oversees El Mirador.

"To kill 11 people like that, you don't have feelings. It's alarming," Lopez de la Vega said.

The prosecutor's office said the gunmen "arrived on foot where the family was located, fired several times and left on foot."

Pistol and rifle bullet casings were found at the scene.

Government officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they was not authorized to speak publicly, said the attack took place inside one home.

Two witnesses have been placed under state protection.

An official at the prosecutor's office had earlier said that authorities were investigating whether the crime was related to organized crime or a family dispute.

The village is inhabited by Evangelicals who broke away from another community of Catholics, El Potrero. But the mayor said the two villages respected each other.

"It's a community in harmony, but things change. There's immigration. Many go north of the country and to the United States. Sometimes when people come back the harmony is lost," Lopez de la Vega said.

Story continues

- Recent violence -

It is the latest murder to rock Puebla, a region that has been relatively spared the drug violence that has plagued other parts of Mexico.

In March, an undetermined number of human remains were found in various acid containers in a rural area.

In April, four bodies were found inside a burnt car near Veracruz, an eastern state beset by murders and disappearances linked to drug cartels. Two of the bodies belonged to sisters of a jailed Zetas drug cartel member, Veracruz authorities said.

That same day, three other bodies were found in the same area near a facility of state-run oil firm Pemex.

Late last month, four people died when gunmen linked to fuel thefts opened fire in the village of La Purisima, a region where rival gangs seek to control such illegal pipeline taps.

Puebla has also seen a spate of mob lynchings of crime suspects.

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MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexico has increased dialogue with American companies to make the case for bilateral economic ties, a senior official said on Thursday, in an effort to counter anti-Mexican rhetoric in the U.S. presidential campaign. Presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump has said Mexico is "killing" U.S. trade, threatening to build a border wall to keep out migrants, block remittances sent home by Mexicans, and raise tariffs against Mexico to protect U.S. jobs. While generally at pains to avoid addressing Trump directly, Mexican government officials have warned that his proposals could do serious damage to both nations' economies. Paulo Carreno, Mexico's new deputy foreign minister responsible for North America, was appointed in April to lead a drive to bolster his country's standing in the United States. Since then, Mexico's diplomatic network in the United States has stepped up efforts to reach out to business leaders, as well as politicians and academics, Carreno said, keen to stress that his government took no side in the presidential contest. Of the companies Mexico had met, the majority agreed with a model of bilateral economic cooperation based on free trade that did not involve a border wall, or protective tariffs, he said. "They understand the benefit of greater commercial integration, and they live from it in a way," said Carreno. "They agree that the model we have today is the better one, though of course that's not to say it can't be improved." U.S.-Mexico trade is worth some $500 billion every year and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce says roughly 6 million American jobs depend on it. In addition, an estimated 35 million people in the United States are Mexican or of Mexican background. Mexican business leaders say U.S. companies are crucial allies in their battle to counter Trump's arguments. Carreno did not detail which companies Mexico was meeting, though senior officials have said previously that those with major operations south of the border are key interlocutors. They include firms like General Electric as well as carmakers General Motors and Ford. Both carmakers have been attacked by Trump in the campaign for investing in Mexico. (Reporting by Dave Graham and Ana Isabel Martinez; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore)
Mexico City (AFP) - In a historic first, Mexico's struggling state-run Pemex energy company will team up with private firms for a deep-water oil project, officials said Friday.

Pemex will "farm out" the $11 billion Trion field in the Gulf of Mexico, which has potentially 480 million barrels of light crude, said company director general Jose Antonio Gonzalez Anaya.

"For the first time in its history, Pemex won't assume the geological and financial risks alone," Energy Minister Pedro Joaquin Coldwell said at a news conference.

President Enrique Pena Nieto pushed through a landmark reform in 2014 that ended Pemex's seven-decade monopoly, reopening the oil and gas sector to private investors.

One of the goals was to allow Pemex to join forces with other companies.

Pemex posted $30.3 billion in losses in 2015 while production has dropped from 3.4 million barrels per day to 2.27 million in 2015.

The company is making $5.5 billion in budget cuts this year, with delays in investments representing $3.6 billion of those savings.

The government is providing $4.2 billion in liquidity to help Pemex.
(New throughout, adds details on farm out, comment from CEO)

By Ana Isabel Martinez

MEXICO CITY, June 10 (Reuters) - Mexican state oil company Pemex has picked the deep-water Trion field near the U.S. border as the first one it will farm out to other operators to help it develop untapped resources, the firm said on Friday.

The search for private capital to boost areas previously discovered by Pemex is a major step in the opening up of Mexico's oil and gas industry, a process enabled by an energy reform that ended the company's monopoly in 2013.

Pemex Chief Executive Jose Antonio Gonzalez Anaya told a news conference the company's board had approved the step and that Trion would likely be operated by a company other than Pemex.

"It's a big, important field," Gonzalez said.

The Trion field, located in the Perdido area, will require about $11 billion worth of investment and more farm outs will follow, Gonzalez said. In total, the Trion field contained some 480 million barrels, he added.

Pemex did not have a specific number of investors in mind for the Trion field, he said. The companies involved in the farm out should be announced in December, when Mexico has scheduled its first auctions for deep water fields.

Speaking at the same news conference, Energy Minister Pedro Joaquin Coldwell said the Trion farm out would be in the form of a license and that the field was 2,500 meters (8,202 feet) deep.

Two years of falling crude prices have hurt Pemex, which wants partners to boost output and improve margins.

In the first quarter of this year, Pemex ran up its 14th consecutive quarterly loss at about 62 billion pesos ($3.6 billion), as both crude prices and output fell.

Earlier, Pemex announced that Luis Rafael Montanaro Sanchez had been named as the new director of Pemex's ethylene unit.

(Additional reporting by Gabriel Stargardter and Michael O'Boyle; Editing by David Gregorio)
Istanbul (AFP) - Militant Kurdish group the Kurdistan Freedom Falcons (TAK) on Friday claimed a car bombing in the centre of Istanbul that killed 11 people, warning foreign tourists that Turkey was no longer safe for them to visit.

The TAK -- seen as a splinter group of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) -- said Tuesday's attack was revenge for operations by the Turkish army in the Kurdish-dominated southeast.

"The action was carried out to counter all the savage attacks of the Turkish republic in Nusaybin and Sirnak and other places," it said, referring to the areas in the southeast where the army had been carrying out operations against Kurdish rebels.

The TAK has already claimed two attacks this year that killed dozens of people in the capital Ankara in February and March, heightening concerns over security in the country.

It also claimed an unprecedented attack in April in Turkey's former Ottoman capital of Bursa last week, where the female assailant had failed to reach her intended target and only killed herself.

The group, which also previously claimed to have shelled Istanbul's second international airport, reaffirmed a previous warning that foreign tourists should not visit Turkey.

"We again warn foreign tourists who are in Turkey and who want to come to Turkey: foreigners are not our target but Turkey is no longer a safe country for them," it said.

The group described the attack as a "sacrifice action", implying it was a suicide bombing, but did not give any further details.

It said the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), "which obstinately insists on a wild war against the Kurdish people, is responsible for the civilian deaths. The Turkish people, who keep quiet about this war, continue to be victims".

- 'Nothing to discuss' -

TAK's founders are believed to have broken away several years ago from the PKK, which has waged an insurgency against the Turkish state stretching back more than three decades.

Story continues

Little is known about the TAK but analysts consider its aims and methods to be more radical than those of the PKK, which concentrates its attacks in the southeast conflict zone rather than cities like Istanbul or Ankara.

Turkey has been on edge after a string of bombings this year blamed not just on Kurdish militants but also Islamic State (IS) jihadists.

The new Istanbul attack is set to be a further blow to the country's key tourism industry, which has already seen visitor numbers slump almost 30 percent this year over security fears.

The bomb struck near Vezneciler metro station, within walking distance of tourist sites including the Grand Bazaar and Suleymaniye Mosque.

The front of the upscale Celal Aga Konagi Hotel, a converted Ottoman mansion favoured by foreign tourists, was wrecked by the bombing while the 16th-century Sehzade Mosque was also damaged.

Six police officers and five civilians were killed, according to a final toll.

The attack was followed by a bombing in Midyat in the southeast of Turkey on Wednesday that killed six people, including a pregnant policewoman, and was claimed by the PKK.

Prime Minister Binali Yildirim has said the PKK had made a bid for dialogue after almost a year of renewed violence that ended a two-and-a-half year truce but vowed there would be no talks.

"There's nothing to discuss," he said.

One of the PKK's top leaders based in northern Iraq, Cemil Bayik, said in comments published Friday that Erdogan was exposing Turkey to "great danger" with his policies in the southeast.

"Today Tayyip Erdogan and his forces... are about to bring about the end of Turkey," he said in comments to pro-PKK media.
For centuries people have been fixated with anomalies, things that simply shouldnt be possible or cant be explained.

Why? Because when the human body is manipulated, contorted or undergoes an experience that should result in agonizing pain but doesnt, people cant help but to be puzzled and wowed.

On June 19, a show full of self-proclaimed mavericks, trail blazers, rule breakers and outlaws are poised to host an unforgettable show just outside of Tin Lizzy Tavern, 1682 E. 23rd St.

The Dallas, Texas-based troupe, Hellzapoppin Circus Sideshow Revue, will be performing from 5:30-7 p.m. Tickets for the event are available at www.tinlizzytavern.com. Tickets can be purchased in advance for $13 or $20 at the door.

Hellzapoppin, founded in 2008, travels the country  and world  displaying outlandish feats with their bodies and minds.

The group has been featured on the Travel Channel, Discovery Channel, at Ripleys Believe it or Not and the Guinness Book of World Records.

Lauralee Neubauer, Tin Lizzy Tavern owner, said that she is always looking for out of the ordinary events that will draw a crowd to her business.

They are a national touring act, and I heard about them performing at Sturgis (bike rally), she said during a Thursday phone interview. Then I saw them on T.V. and YouTube. Its something thats unique and different, which is what I like with an event like this. We want to get some things that we normall done have in Fremont.

She compared the spectacle to last summer when a professional wrestling group performed in the business parking lot, an event where more than 500 people flooded in from all around the greater Fremont area.

While the show is open to people of all ages, Neubauer emphasized that some of the shows content might not be appropriate for children.

I would say its definitely PG-13, she said.

During the course of the evening, spectators will witness things they likely never have in person.

Acts include: fire eating, fire breathing, the bed of nails, the human block head, the razor-sharp machete walk, acrobatic stunts, glass eating, sword swallowing, knife and sword throwing and archery at human targets and illusions like the Chinese Blade Box of Death. Additionally, there will be human oddities and curiosities such as the real-life half-man who walks on his bare hands on broken shards of glass.

Information off of the Hellzapoppin website says that all of the events  while it may not always appear so  are painless to the performers and no blood is drawn or shown.

Neubauer said that she is excited for a fun night that will bring out a wide variety of people.

I just want to see some new faces and see people having a lot of fun, she said. Its something completely new and different  something that wouldnt normally be held in the area.

For more information, people are encouraged to visit Hellzapoppins website at www.hellzapoppin.com
By Tife Owolabi OPOROZA, Nigeria (Reuters) - The Nigerian army has swept into villages in the southern swamplands in an operation to crush the Niger Delta Avengers group, but allegations by residents of brutal tactics and rapes by some of its soldiers risk stoking anger in the region. The army has vowed to stop the militant group which has claimed a string of attacks on oil pipelines which have cut Nigeria's oil output by half a million barrels a day to a 20-year low. It denies the allegations of abuse. The military has deployed dozens of gunboats in the Delta swamps to search a cluster of villages that are home to a former militant leader whom officials link to the previously unknown group, residents said. Community leaders and a security source said the sweep has failed to produce results, despite the arrest of some 15 suspects, while relations with locals already angered by deep poverty and oil spills have worsened. "Our people are very angry with the arrest of innocent people in the name of looking for pipeline vandals," said Eric Omare, a spokesman for Ijaw Youth Council, which represents the main ethnic group in the Delta region. Five of the arrested were released after it turned out they were oil workers unrelated to the militants. Activists say several students who also had no connection to the Avengers remained in custody. In interviews with Reuters, the first foreign news outlet to visit the Oporoza community raided by the army, 10 villagers said soldiers had searched their houses in the middle of the night after arriving in gunboats and surrounding the village. Two villagers said they were raped, while two others reported looting. One villager said he was struck by a soldier with the butt of a gun. "About 3 a.m., military men invaded our community. Four of them stormed my house and broke the doors," 50-year old Ebimobore Oboivu said, wailing in front of her hut in the creeks criss-crossed by oil pipelines. "Two them raped me as the other two pointed guns at my head," she said. Army spokesman Rabe Abubakar denied troops had used force or raped anyone when searching Oporoza. "The reason we are there is because of some criminal guys who by all means decide to do unholy and inappropriate acts against their country," he said. But the Delta state government, under whose jurisdiction the community falls, has urged the military to launch an investigation. "This is not the first time such allegations are made," state government spokesman Charles Anaigwu said. A smashed window and bullet holes could be seen at one house and one hut with an iron roof. A television set inside a house had a bullet hole from a gun fired by one of the soldiers, villagers said. A second woman, Simply Timi, also described being the victim of a gang rape. "I heard a loud bang on my door with three army men. One of them pinned me to the ground and they all raped me." President Muhammadu Buhari has launched a reform of the army which has long faced accusations of abuses. But rights groups routinely accuse soldiers of detentions without arrest warrant, looting and beating of prisoners. In April, the United States urged Nigeria to investigate a report by Amnesty International that soldiers killed hundreds of Shi'ite Muslims in the northern city of Zaria in December. The army has said it acted in self-defense after the sect had ambushed a convoy. CALLS FOR INQUIRIES Oporoza, at the center of a group of villages, is home to Government Ekpemupolo, known as Tompolo, a former militant leader who laid down arms with other commanders in 2009 under an amnesty promising generous cash payments. Buhari, faced with a revenue squeeze due to low oil prices, has cut funding for the amnesty plan, causing widespread resentment in the Delta, where the plan also funds job training for the unemployed. Officials link Tompolo with the attacks, saying they began in January, around the same time that a court issued an arrest warrant for him on graft charges, prompting him to go into hiding. Tompolo has denied any link to the Avengers. Security officials say villagers have been hiding militants like Tompolo. Soldiers ransacked Tompolo's compound and searched dozens of huts but a Nigeria-based security source, asking not to be named, said the army sweep had not generated any leads about who was behind the militant group. "You can't ruin the life of a whole community because of one man," said Nelson Okagbami, an Oporoza community leader. He said he saw soldiers dragging away one wounded teenager. "Bullets were flying around. I had to hide in a church," he said. At a meeting earlier this week, Delta state governors agreed with Vice President Yemi Osinbajo to address local grievances. But in Oporoza people fear the army will come back. "Soldiers pointed guns at me and I fell to my knees begging before they left me alone," said Tari Maka, a food vendor in Oporoza. "When will this end because we don't even understand what is happening?" (Writing by Ulf Laessing; Editing by Richard Balmforth)
A hedge-fund managers reputation, U.S. sanctions targeting human rights violations in Russia, and the truth about how Sergei Magnitsky, a tax lawyer caught up in a $230 million dispute, wound up dead. So the story goes in Andrei Nekrasovs new documentary, The Magnitsky Act  a film thats been pulled thrice by European theaters and broadcasters who bent to legal pressure from the man it seeks to expose as a fraud.

Next Monday, the Russian-born Nekrasov will finally get his chance to premiere it at the Newseum, a journalism history museum in Washington. Nekrasov is showing it to a private audience whose invitees include congressional staffers, State Department employees, members of the White House National Security Council, and journalists. Investigative reporter Seymour Hersh will moderate the screening.

The film centers on Sergei Magnitsky, who human rights activists believe was murdered in 2009 after accusing the Russian police of stealing an estimated $230 million from the state treasury.

But according to Nekrasov, that narrative is wrong. By his telling, Russian authorities were the victims of a massive theft, not the perpetrators. The film, he told Foreign Policy in a telephone interview, provides strong circumstantial evidence that Magnitskys boss, Bill Browder, was possibly involved in the multimillion dollar theft from Russian taxpayers.

Sonya Gavankar, the Newseums manager of public relations, told FP in an email that the museum would screen the film despite a letter from Browders lawyers demanding that it be cancelled.

Browder was one of the first Westerners to cash in on the fall of communism in Russia, starting Hermitage Capital Management in 1996 with just $25 million in seed capital. Within a few years, he became the largest investor in Russia, at one point managing $4.5 billion in capital, and staying on Moscows good side by vocally supporting Russian President Vladimir Putin.

His riches-to-super riches story came to an abrupt end, however, in November 2005, when Russia blacklisted Browder as a threat to national security for auditing the companies he invested in and leaking details of insider trading and corruption to the press. A year-and-a-half later, police officers raided his firms office in Moscow and confiscated paperwork.

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Heres where the accounts diverge: Browder says the police then stole three of his holding companies and used them to claim a $230 million tax rebate; Nekrasov, who previously directed films critical of the Kremlin, argues that authorities were investigating Hermitage Capital over legitimate concerns about large-scale tax evasion.

I can prove in court that Browder is not telling the truth, Nekrasov told FP in an interview from Berlin.

His accusation, stunning if true, has alienated friends, enraged Browder, and threatens to tarnish the directors well-respected career.

It would also undermine the narrative behind the Magnitsky Act, a U.S. law passed in 2012 to punish those responsible for the tax lawyers arrest, torture, and death in custody. It allows the United States to withhold visas and freeze financial assets of Russian officials involved Magnitskys death and other human rights abuses. In retaliation, Moscow banned U.S. adoptions of Russian babies.

Nekrasov told FP he set out to make a film based on Browders story that would be a docu-drama praising Magnitsky. Instead, he says close to two years of research led him to conclude that the conventional narrative was false. He said funding for the film came exclusively from mainstream western European organizations.

Nekrasovs film documents how he went from trusting Browders word to disbelieving it. The director says he began to doubt the hedge fund manager after reading the actual police reports, in Russian. For example, Nekrasov argues that Magnitskys first contact with the police was not a voluntary act of whistleblowing, as Browder maintains, but a record of the police questioning him as a key witness in a tax evasion investigation.

Among Russian activists, Nekrasov said, Magnitsky is seen as a hero and Browder as truthsayer. Any revelation that sullies them could be a bitter pill to swallow.

The worst criticism comes from my Russian friends, he said. Most of my friends are completely pro-Browder, and Putin doesnt have any influence over them. I became like a traitor.

Browder has thwarted Nekrasovs previous attempts to show the film with threats of legal action. The first time, he intervened at the last minute to stop Nekrasov, with Blu-ray disc in hand, from showing it to an audience of European Union parliamentarians at the their headquarters in Brussels.

Around the time of that planned screening, Magnitskys mother and widow denounced Nekrasovs film in a joint letter to the European Parliament. Browders lawyers also have sent letters threatening to sue the producers and venues that have tried to screen the film, according to Nekrasov.

In a phone call with FP, Browder said he would pursue legal action against the Newseum if he perceived it as backing the movie in any way.

Theyre on record now for knowing the libel, he said, referring to a list of supporting evidence he gave to the Newseum.

Weve explained to them that this movie is a fraud and that it contains false information, so if they continue to support it then theyre disseminating this false narrative, Browder said. They have a choice. They can stop it.

Magnitskys widow and mother have asked the Newseum to shut down the program. On Thursday, they sent a letter to the board of trustees urging them to stop an evil and vindictive attack on our deceased husband and son.

Browder and Magnitskys family believe that a Russian implicated in the tax fraud is funding the screening at the Newseum.

Browder said he has evidence that Denis Katsyv, a Russian national under investigation by the U.S. Justice Department for taking some of the $230 million, is funding the Potomac Square Group to rent out the room at the Newseum. The Potomac Square Group, a public relations firm in Washington, is also representing Nekrasov.

This has nothing to do with free speech. It has to do with laying out false information by alleged Russian gangsters who are currently under investigation and being sued by Department of Justice, Browder said.

In an email to FP, Christopher Cooper, a partner at the Potomac Square Group, denied Browders allegation that he was representing Katsyvs company.

Nekrasov also denied knowledge of this arrangement and said hed be very curious to see what this evidence is, though he did admit to knowing Katsyv.

Nekrasov told FP that his experience dealing with Browder has been a bit depressing, to be frank.

What I discovered is how easy it is  if you have a lot of money  to basically gag somebody, Nekrasov said.

Photo credit: FRED HAYES/Getty Images
Https%3a%2f%2fblueprint-api-production.s3.amazonaws.com%2fuploads%2fstory%2fthumbnail%2f11254%2fc62153286aac4844a1ce5b586515a278

The Australian accent is a difficult one to master, and there are numerous times when it has sounded terrible thanks to some non-Aussie actors.

Now, model extraordinaire Miranda Kerr is here to help. In a rather long video by Vanity Fair, the supermodel gives a 101 lesson in how to nail an Australian accent.

You'll pick up the mastery of the soft tongue and dropping your Ts, Rs and Gs with the aid of three adorable American kids who just can't quite seem to pick it up. Don't worry, Robert Downey Jr. and Daniel Radcliffe couldn't either.

Donald Trump rapping Mac Miller's 'Donald Trump' is way better than it should be

President Obama officially endorses Hillary Clinton for president

Man bashing his shins on the bench press might have all the answers

The adorable father-daughter story behind 'Song of the Deep'
By Ronnie Cohen (Reuters Health) - Doctors in states that track painkiller prescriptions were nearly one-third less likely to offer patients dangerously addicting opioids, a new study found. The launch of drug-monitoring programs in 24 states led to an immediate 30 percent drop in prescriptions for Schedule II opioids, the most addictive, in patients with pain complaints, the study showed. We are moving in the direction of raising awareness about overprescribing these drugs, lead author Yuhua Bao said in a phone interview. But we still have a lot to do in terms of changing the culture and practice of painkiller prescriptions. Bao, a health economist at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York, and colleagues analyzed 26,275 office visits for pain in 24 states that implemented prescription drug-monitoring programs from 2001 to 2010. As reported in Health Affairs, in these states the probability of a doctor prescribing a Schedule II opioid dropped from 5.5 percent to 3.7 percent  a more than 30 percent reduction. The results were immediate and held for three years. The study confirmed Baos hypothesis that physician drug-monitoring programs, which have been implemented in a wide variety of forms in every state except Missouri, are an effective tool to combat the opioid drug epidemic. But she stressed the need for other means as well. There are no magic bullets here, said Dr. Caleb Alexander, who directs the Johns Hopkins Center for Drug Safety and Effectiveness in Baltimore, in a phone interview. The interventions are needed along the continuum here  from manufacturers to end-users. This is important to keep in mind given the magnitude of addiction, injuries and deaths, said Alexander, who was not involved in the current study. Nearly two million Americans either abused or were dependent on prescription opioids in 2014, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Overdose deaths, along with sales of prescription opioids, have quadrupled since 1999, the CDC estimates. More than 165,000 Americans died from overdoses related to prescription opioids from 1999 to 2014. Some of these deaths might have been avoided if doctors had been able to check a prescription drug-monitoring database, Alexander said. A database could show when patients are obtaining opioids under their own name from multiple doctors, which might assist in identifying potential abuse and dependency, he noted. Drug-monitoring databases may make doctors think twice before prescribing pain medications for a variety of reasons in addition to uncovering doctor shopping by patients, the study authors write. Knowing that theyre being watched may serve as a deterrent, and the programs may generally increase awareness of the dangers of prescribing opioids, they say. Given how many people are killed by prescription opioids and how dangerous these drugs are, it should be no less important for a clinician to check a prescription drug-monitoring program before prescribing an opioid than to check kidney function before prescribing a new blood-pressure medicine, Alexander said. In March, the CDC released guidelines instructing primary care doctors to sharply curtail use of opioids for chronic pain. At the time, CDC Director Dr. Tom Frieden called the prescription overdose epidemic doctor-driven. Primary-care doctors treating adults for chronic pain write nearly half of opioid prescriptions, the CDC said. The new guidelines recommend non-opioids like acetaminophen and ibuprofen as the first line of pain treatment. Authors of the current study say American clinicians are writing enough prescriptions to medicate every US adult for a month. No opioid is entirely safe, Alexander said, and all opioids should be used with much greater caution than we have in the past two decades. SOURCE: http://bit.ly/1Uaoty9 Health Affairs, online June 6, 2016.
In this Nov. 24, 2014, file photo, students, parents and grandparents hold signs during a protest across the street from Norman High School in Norman, Okla. Police say they have arrested Tristen Kole Killman-Hardin, 18, a former Norman High School student, and accused him of raping an unconscious girl, alleging hes responsible for an attack that helped trigger protests by his former classmates. (AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki, File)

More than one million people have signed petitions calling for the removal of the judge who sentenced 20-year-old ex-Stanford swimmer Brock Turner to six months in a county jail.

The change.org petitions hammer Judge Aaron Persky for his perceived leniency after Turner was convicted of sexually assaulting an unconscious woman.

"We the people would like to petition that Judge Aaron Persky be removed from his judicial position for the lenient sentence he allowed in the Brock Turner rape case," one petition on Change.org reads.

"Despite a unanimous guilty verdict, three felony convictions, the objections of 250 Stanford students, Jeff Rosen the district attorney for Santa Clara, as well as the deputy district attorney who likened Turner to 'a predator searching for prey' Judge Persky allowed the lenient sentence suggested by the probation department," it continued.

Rosen also publicly criticized the sentence when it was announced.

"The punishment does not fit the crime," Rosen said in a statement last week, according to The Associated Press. "The sentence does not factor in the true seriousness of this sexual assault, or the victim's ongoing trauma. Campus rape is no different than off-campus rape. Rape is rape."

Since then, Rosen has stood by his words but said that he does not believe Persky should be removed from his position.

"While I strongly disagree with the sentence that Judge Persky issued in the Brock Turner case I do not believe he should be removed from his judgeship," Rosen wrote in a statement, according to the Mercury News.

Persky is a graduate of Stanford and was a star athlete while there. Some have suggested that his commonalities with Tuner may have influenced his sentencing.

Brock Turner sentencing photo

"I think he was very persuaded by the background of the young man as an elite athlete," Michele Dauber, a Stanford law professor, told NBC News.

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"The judge had to bend over backwards to accommodate this young man," Dauber, who's also a close family friend of the victim of the sexual assault, said.

Turner was found guilty of three felony counts for sexually assaulting an unconscious and intoxicated woman in January 2015. Two graduate students saw the incident occurring behind a garbage bin outside of a fraternity house at Stanford University. When Turner tried to run, the graduate students pinned him down until the police arrived.

He was sentenced to six months in a county jail and three years' probation, which some have decried as "a slap on the wrist." Turner must also register as a sex offender for the rest of his life.

Still, it's unlikely that Persky, the Santa Clara County Superior Court judge, will be recalled from his seat. Judges in California are typically recalled only for serious abuses.

"Judges almost never get recalled even when people are upset about a sentence," Loyola law professor Laurie Levenson told the Los Angeles Times.





More From Business Insider


The asset management arm of Morgan Stanley MS recently sought approval from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to roll out passive and active U.S.-listed ETFs. Morgan Stanley actually followed the Wall Street banks which are exposing themselves to the growing world of ETFs. Prior to this, the asset management wings of Goldman Sachs Group GS and J.P. Morgan JPM made such moves.

After all, the ETF industry has been taking giant strides in recent years with many issuers launching products with varied themes. Moreover, these banks intend to beef up their investment and wealth management business, which is way steadier in revenue generation than other income areas like trading. Trading, despite being a winning business previously, has lately been bothered by stringent regulatory rules, as per Reuters.

As of now, investment management accounts for less than 10% of Morgan Stanleys overall revenue. But the firm is gunning for the expansion of this area by launching new products. The rise in interest to foray into the ETF world is self-explanatory as the U.S. ETF industry has raked in as much as $2.27 trillion of assets so far, with 1913 products (read: 5 Picks to Ride on Smart Beta ETF Craze).

Can It Succeed?

We expect success ahead for Morgan Stanley amid fierce competition. Among the big investment banking firms, UBS already has immense presence in the ETF industry. Its highest-grossing ETF is E-TRACS Alerian MLP Infrastructure Index ETF (MLPI) with an asset base of $2.31 billion. Definitely, UBS enjoys some first-mover advantage in this bunch of comparable investing banking organizations (read: Inside Surging MLP ETFs).

Goldman already has seven ETFs with Goldman Sachs ActiveBeta Emerging Markets Equity ETF (GEM) being the top-grossing product (about $721.7 million). In a nutshell, a little late entry into the market may prove slightly disadvantageous for Morgan Stanley. The firm has to focus hard on innovative themes so that it can carve out a niche for itself in the field which is presently headed by BlackRock BLK and State Street STT.

Story continues

But then, there is an advantage for Morgan Stanly also. Already, Morgan Staley had exposure in indexing operations. In the mid-1990s, Morgan Stanley supported some of the initial ETFs by its indexing affiliate MSCI, going by Reuters. So, this know-how will definitely give Morgan Stanley an added advantage in the ETF field. However, MSCI is now an independent company.

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The cruise industry still has a long voyage ahead when it comes to reducing air and water pollution, according to a report card issued Thursday by the nonprofit group Friends of the Earth.

Were starting to see a bit of a trend toward things getting better, said Marcie Keever, oceans and vessels program director for Friends of the Earth. But the industry is still shooting for the floor when it should be shooting for the ceiling.

The report card analyzed the environmental footprint of 17 major cruise lines and the 171 ships they operate, grading them on sewage treatment, air emissions, and transparency in disclosing their pollution-reduction technologies.

All 17 companies are in compliance with federal and international regulations, Keever said, but the industry needs to do a better job by going above and beyond what is legally required.

Disney Cruises, which received an overall grade of A-, was the only line to get a top mark in the report. Disney was also the only line to respond to information requests from the environmental group.

Four companiesCunard Cruise Line, Holland America Line, Norwegian Cruise Line, and Princess Cruisesreceived an overall grade of C. Eight received a D, and four hit bottom with an F.

Some of the lines that scored low overall did well in specific environmental categories. Celebrity Cruises, which Friends of the Earth rated at D+ overall, was one of seven lines receiving an A for adopting the most advanced sewage treatment systems. About 40 percent of cruise ships are using outdated, decades-old wastewater-management technologies, according to Friends of the Earth.

Seven lines also received an A for complying with Alaskas water-quality regulations, which mandate testing of effluent discharged by ships. All ships must have treatment systems to settle out solids, and sludge cannot be dumped within 12 nautical miles of the coast, Keever said. Most of them incinerate the sludge and dump it at sea or discharge it on land-based facilities. But that leaves the liquid waste and graywater, and beyond three nautical miles, there are no rules.

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Wastewater from older systems still contains fecal coliform, heavy metals, bacteria, and viruses, Keever said. However, some lines are installing advanced systems, she noted, including Royal Caribbean, which uses the technology in 24 of its 25 ships.

The report handed down much harsher grades on air emissions. Each day, the average cruise ship at sea emits more sulfur dioxide than 13 million cars and more soot than 1 million cars, Friends of the Earth reported, citing U.S. Environmental Protection Agency data.

RELATED: Watch a Cruise Ship Pollute as Much as 13 Million Carsin One Day

No cruise line received an A for emissions; only two rated a B grade. Seven lines received an F. The emissions grades were based on whether the companys ships use smokestack scrubbers to remove sulfur dioxide, deploy particle filters to reduce diesel soot, burn lower-sulfur fuel, and can plug into shore-side power rather than running their engines while in port.

Since 2015, a North American Emissions Control Area established by the International Maritime Organization has required ships to burn low-sulfur fuel within 200 nautical miles of the U.S. and Canadian coastlines.

But once outside the area, according to Keever, many ships switch over to heavierand cheaperfuel.

Whats great about some of these pollution-reduction technologies is that you cant use [heavier] fuel anymore once you install particle filters, she said. She lauded Cunard and Oceania for being lines that have really moved up to such technologies and Princess Cruises for investing significantly in shore-side power facilities.

Industry representatives blasted the report.

The report card is simply not valid and completely misleading, Carnival Corporation spokesman Roger Frizzell said in an email. It does not reflect the many green advancements being made by each of the cruise lines.

Frizzell, who provided a press release outlining the companys sustainability goals, said it was unfair to base one-fourth of the overall grade on whether companies responded to requests for information and another fourth that is arbitrarily tied to a single state, Alaska.

Carnival Corporation has installed Advanced Waste Water systems on more than half its fleet, Frizzell said. Also, [they] are being installed on all new ships, with four arriving this year and 18 on order. He added that shore-side power is not necessary with scrubbers, which are used on the majority of Carnival-owned ships.

In a written statement to TakePart, Cruise Lines International Association, an industry trade group, dismissed the report as inaccurate. Once again it is regrettable that FOE has issued a report on the cruise industry that is misleading, the association said.

The association claims that the cruise line industry has invested $1 billion in new technologies and cleaner fuels and committed more than $8 billion to build ships powered by liquefied natural gas and having lower emissions and greater energy efficiency.

If there are inaccuracies, I would invite [the industry] to point them out, Keever said in response. However, it seems as though its the grades CLIA takes issue with and not the actual data behind the report card.

Donate: Protect Our Oceans and Precious Sea Creatures: Donate to Oceana

Related stories on TakePart:





 Environmentally Unfriendly Drones No Longer Allowed on Pollution-Spewing Cruise Ships

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Original article from TakePart
For centuries people have been fixated with anomalies, things that simply shouldnt be possible or cant be explained.

Why? Because when the human body is manipulated, contorted or undergoes an experience that should result in agonizing pain but doesnt, people cant help but to be puzzled and wowed.

On June 19, a show full of self-proclaimed mavericks, trail blazers, rule breakers and outlaws are poised to host an unforgettable show just outside of Tin Lizzy Tavern, 1682 E. 23rd St.

The Dallas, Texas-based troupe, Hellzapoppin Circus Sideshow Revue, will be performing from 5:30-7 p.m. Tickets for the event are available at www.tinlizzytavern.com. Tickets can be purchased in advance for $13 or $20 at the door.

Hellzapoppin, founded in 2008, travels the country  and world  displaying outlandish feats with their bodies and minds.

The group has been featured on the Travel Channel, Discovery Channel, at Ripleys Believe it or Not and the Guinness Book of World Records.

Lauralee Neubauer, Tin Lizzy Tavern owner, said that she is always looking for out of the ordinary events that will draw a crowd to her business.

They are a national touring act, and I heard about them performing at Sturgis (bike rally), she said during a Thursday phone interview. Then I saw them on T.V. and YouTube. Its something thats unique and different, which is what I like with an event like this. We want to get some things that we normall done have in Fremont.

She compared the spectacle to last summer when a professional wrestling group performed in the business parking lot, an event where more than 500 people flooded in from all around the greater Fremont area.

While the show is open to people of all ages, Neubauer emphasized that some of the shows content might not be appropriate for children.

I would say its definitely PG-13, she said.

During the course of the evening, spectators will witness things they likely never have in person.

Acts include: fire eating, fire breathing, the bed of nails, the human block head, the razor-sharp machete walk, acrobatic stunts, glass eating, sword swallowing, knife and sword throwing and archery at human targets and illusions like the Chinese Blade Box of Death. Additionally, there will be human oddities and curiosities such as the real-life half-man who walks on his bare hands on broken shards of glass.

Information off of the Hellzapoppin website says that all of the events  while it may not always appear so  are painless to the performers and no blood is drawn or shown.
MAPUTO (Reuters) - Mozambique President Filipe Nyusi on Thursday fired Finance Minister Adriano Maleiane, who has been embroiled in more than two weeks of negotiations with Russia's VTB Bank over a late $178 million loan repayment. A statement from Nyusi's office gave no reason for the dismissal and did not say who would be replacing Maleiane. Mozambique Asset Management (MAM) borrowed $535 million from VTB to build shipyards in the capital Maputo and the northern town of Pemba in expectation of a rapid takeoff in the offshore gas sector but missed a May 23 deadline for its first loan repayment. Restructuring the loan, updating business plans and bringing strategic partners on board were all possible ways to avoid a default on the debt, Maleiane said on Wednesday. Delays to gas projects and at least $1.35 billion of secret government borrowing have created a foreign debt burden that threatens to plunge one of the world's poorest countries into economic crisis. Financial watchdogs from Switzerland and Britain are investigating Credit Suisse and VTB Bank for arranging the heavy undisclosed sovereign borrowing. (Reporting by Manuel Mucari; Writing by Ed Cropley and Ed Stoddard; Editing by Andrew Roche)
Shares of Mylan (MYL) fell Friday, slipping as much as 5 percent, after a Wells Fargo Securities analyst said he was worried about the pharmaceutical firm's pricing practices.

The stock ended the day down more than 2 percent.

In the last six months, Mylan raised prices more than 20 percent on 24 of its products, and more than 100 percent on seven products, according to Wells Fargo analyst David Maris, who cited Medi-Span pricing data for his statistics, in a research note to clients.

But Mylan spokeswoman Nina Devlin, in a written statement, called the analysis "flawed."

"Mylan has always been known to have one of the industry's broadest and most globally diversified business models and portfolios, which we have successfully managed by balancing numerous variables, including the natural price reductions that have always been inherent to the generics industry," Devlin said.

Devlin said the analysis focused on a small number of products out of the company's more than 1,400 products Mylan sells globally and the about 600 products it sells in North America, which she said was "self-serving and misleading to investors."

"This is especially true given that these generic products represent an extremely small percentage of Mylan's approximately $4 billion North American generics business," she said.



In the research note, Maris cited examples that included "a 542 percent increase for ursodiol, a generic medication used to treat gallstones, a 444 percent increase in metoclopramide, a generic medication commonly used to treat gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD) and gastroparesis, and a 400 percent increase in dicyclomine, a medication used to treat irritable bowel syndrome. Mylan also raised the price of tolterodine by 56 percent in 2016."

The report also noted Mylan has not limited price increases to its smaller drugs either. In May, the company increased the price of Epi-Pen, its largest product, by 15 percent. The analyst noted the price increases could come at a cost to patients and impact their reputation to shareholders.

Story continues

In the past year, Valeant (Toronto Stock Exchange: VRX-CA), Turing and other pharmaceutical companies have faced scrutiny over their pricing actions, prompting senate hearings, proposed legislation and discussion in the presidential election cycle.

"We believe that given the regulatory environment, these pricing actions could bring greater regulatory scrutiny and headline risk," Maris wrote. "Additionally, we wonder if aggressive price increases are being used to make EPS targets or to offset disappointing sales in other areas."

But Mylan disagreed.

"Mylan's business model is not today, nor has it ever been, premised on price hikes," Devlin said.



Mylan's stock has dropped sharply this year, falling 17 percent.

MYL 2016 Chart





Disclosure: Wells Fargo maintains a market in the common stock of Mylan.

(UPDATE: This story was updated to include the company's comments.)





More From CNBC


ABUJA, June 10 (Reuters) - Nigeria agreed to cut a fine, imposed on South Africa's MTN for failing to disconnect unregistered users, after the firm threatened to pull out of the West African nation, a government official said on Friday.

"The Nigerian government had to listen and yield to the plea of MTN to reduce the fine because the company said paying the fine in full will ground to a halt its operations in Nigeria," the official said, asking not to be named.

The fine of $1.67 billion will be paid over three years and is only around a third of the $5.2 billion figure initially demanded by Nigeria last October.

"The present administration does not want to ground the operations of any investor in Nigeria," he said, in the first government reaction.

(Reporting by Felix Onuah; Writing by Ulf Laessing; Editing by Elaine Hardcastle)
(Updates with background, impact and ENI reaction)

ONITSHA, Nigeria, June 10 (Reuters) - A Nigerian militant group attacked a pipeline operated by Italy's ENI in the Niger Delta region early on Friday, the militants and a security official said.

"There was an attack on the Obi Obi Brass Pipeline between 1 and 2 am today Friday," said Desmond Agu, commander of the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps in Bayelsa state.

"There is an oil spill at the scene...but the place is not on fire."

The Niger Delta Avengers militant group earlier claimed responsibility for the attack on the pipeline via its Twitter feed. The pipeline is related to the Brass River crude oil stream in Nigeria's Bayelsa state, the site of many attacks over the past month.

The Avengers said the attack hit Agip's major crude oil line but oil traders said there was no immediate indication that flows from Brass River had completely stopped.

ENI did not immediately comment on the attack or its impact on oil production and exports.

ENI's oil infrastructure has been hit previously by militants, and its Brass River oil stream is already under force majeure, though some cargoes had continued to load. One suezmax, the Hrvatska, was expected to load Brass River crude this week, while a second was scheduled to arrive on June 17.

(Reporting by Anamesere Igboeroteonwu in Onitsha and Libby George in London, writing by Ulf Laessing, editing by Angus MacSwan)
EXCLUSIVE- Nikki Amuka-Bird and Phoebe Fox have been set as the two female leads for the BBCs highly-anticipated feature length adaptation of bestselling author Zadie Smiths NW. Smiths acclaimed portrait of multi-cultural London follows a group of friends who grew up together on an estate. Central to the story are Natalie and Leah, whose lives have taken them in different directions. Natalies wealth and ambition have set her apart from the friends and family she grew up with  and she finds herself asking not only who she really is, but where she belongs. In an area where wealth and poverty are only streets apart, life is fragile, as Natalie and Leah are about to find out. As revealed exclusively by Deadline, Saul Dibb (The Duchess) is directing.

Rachel Bennette (Ripper Street) has adapted the novel, which was a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist and also one of the New York Times 10 best books of the year when it was published in 2013. The New York Review of Books hailed it an urban epic.

Both Amuka-Bird and Foxs stars are on the rise. Amuka-Bird starred most recently in Cinemaxs Quarry, the Wachowskis Jupiter Ascending and a recurring role opposite Idris Elba in the brilliant Luther. Fox most recently starred in Gavin Hoods sleeper hit Eye in the Sky and the BBCs well-received Shakespeare adaptation The Hollow Crown with Tom Hiddlestone and Benedict Cumberbatch. Amuka-Bird is repped by Troika, Green & Associates Talent Agency and NB Management. Fox is repped by Curtis Brown Group and WME.

Also starring in the production will be Richie Campbell (Anuvahood), and O.T. Fagbenle (The Five) playing Felix, as well as Rosalind Eleazar, Ronke Adekoluejo as Grace, and James MacCallum as Tom.

Betsan Morris Evans produces. Mammoth Screen (Poldark), one of the UKs leading indie scripted banners before it was acquired last year by ITV, is producing with Damien Timmer exec producing for Mammoth and Preethi Mavahalli and Lucy Richer and Maxine Watson for the BBC. NW will air on BBC Two in the autumn.

Story continues

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Brussels (AFP) - A deal to allow Turks visa-free entry to the EU as part of a wider accord with Ankara on curbing the migrant crisis cannot be completed by the July 1 deadline, Austria said Friday.

"I do not think that the first of July is feasible," Austrian Interior Minister Wolfgang Sobotka said as he arrived for a meeting with his EU counterparts in Luxembourg.

"We really need to have a legally flawless solution. If not, Austria cannot agree," said Sobotka, whose country took in record numbers of refugees last year, mostly from war-torn Syria.

The European Union agreed in March to offer Turkey visa free access by July 1, increased aid and speeded up accession talks in return for Ankara controlling the flood of migrants crossing into Greece.

But Ankara warned late last month it would drop the whole agreement if there was no visa deal after the European Commission laid down a series of conditions, including changes to Turkey's catch-all anti-terrorism laws so as to meet EU concerns over human rights.

Dutch Interior Minister Klass Dijkhoff said separately the EU was working closely with Turkey on the issue but "it is not a negotiation process".

"If Turkey wants visa liberalisation, they know the requirements they should meet," said Dijkhoff, whose country currently holds the EU's six-month presidency.

"There is a date that is the first of July; if they meet it, then we can go on; if they don't, then we have to see when they can meet criteria," he added.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said he could wait until October to get the visa deal but he has also warned the EU against pushing Ankara too far, insisting that its anti-terror laws are fully justified.
Yesterday, you were defending thieves; today, youre defending terrorists. With these words, uttered early this morning, the leader of Polands ruling conservative party silenced the parliamentary opposition. Not five minutes later, Poland had a new counterterrorism law  the terms of which go beyond what most of the democratic world has thus far seen.

The bill establishes a battery of eyebrow-raising security regulations that limit freedom of assembly in vaguely defined crisis situations and allow for the arbitrary detention and surveillance of foreign citizens. In the digital realm, it gives the countrys powerful intelligence service, the Internal Security Agency (ABW), the mandate to block websites deemed a threat to national security. When a (vaguely defined) state of emergency is declared, the new regulations also enable the police to disable all telecommunications (an equally vague term that could refer to anything from phone lines to internet access) in a given area. The law also grants intelligence operatives unencumbered access to key data on Polish citizens  all this in a country that hasnt seen a major act of terrorism since 1939.

The law is the brainchild of the conservative Law and Justice Party (often known by its Polish acronym, PiS), which took power last November. Since the partys stunning electoral triumph, the government  headed formally by Prime Minister Beata Szydlo and informally by party chairman Jaroslaw Kaczynski  has enacted a series of laws that have ignited protests in the streets and ire in Brussels. In quick succession, the party has paralyzed the constitutional court, asserted its control over public broadcasting, and greatly expanded the governments powers of surveillance. It has defiantly stood by its reforms even as the European Commission launched its first-ever procedure to investigate threats to a member states rule of law.

The PiS government has made it a habit to shroud its most controversial laws in mystery, then push them quickly through a parliament where it enjoys an absolute majority. In the case of this law, though, there was a leak. In late April, an unmarked envelope from an anonymous source arrived on the doorstep of Panoptykon, the largest Polish foundation dedicated to protecting digital rights. Inside was a draft text of the counterterrorism law that passed today. Realizing the bills troubling implications, Panoptykon promptly made the text available for public scrutiny, hoping to spark public debate. NGO watchdogs, civil rights groups, and opposition politicians arose in a chorus of protest.

Fully aware of the power that comes with an absolute parliamentary majority, however, the government did not back down. Several days after the leak, a revised version of the draft law was quietly released on the website of the Polish parliament. Far from yielding to the public outcry, the architects of the bill doubled down by widening the definition of terrorist activity.

Now passed, the law will affect not only Poland, but will echo far and wide in the parliamentary chambers of other countries who are eager to reinforce their digital arsenal and searching for precedents to justify doing so. The bill holds the dubious honor of being one of the first in the democratic world to sanction the use of telecommunications shutdowns as a security tool  blurring the boundary between the legitimate, democratic enforcement of state security and outright digital repression.

That isnt the only milestone. The law also grants Polands domestic intelligence agency unrestrained access to data on all Polish citizens, from all state institutions, with no prior approval from a court. Tax reports, vehicle information, bank statements, and data from investment funds and insurance providers will all be laid bare to intelligence operatives, with no need to formally request any of it. Meanwhile, the institutions harboring this information will not even know that the data has been harvested. The intelligence service will also have the power to suspend access to websites suspected of illicit activity for up to four months, based on definitions of possible terrorist activity that are hazy at best.

More ominously, blocking websites will not require the consent of a court. Instead, the head of the domestic intelligence agency must secure the approval of the Prosecutor General  a position PiS has recently unified with the Minister of Justice  rendering the process an exercise in rubber-stamp oversight among party colleagues. The law preserves a vestige of judicial authority by giving courts five days to assess the legitimacy of a takedown  but these assessments will only be made once the block is in place. And thanks to PiSs war against the countrys constitutional court, no meaningful review of the constitutionality of any of these measures is currently possible.

A common thread runs through both the Polish bill and some recent legislation in other countries: ambiguity. In a newly published report on freedom of expression in the digital age, David Kaye, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on freedom of opinion and expression, decries vague laws on digital issues as gateways to abuse. Polands new bill is a case in point. It extends the definition of terrorist acts to any real or planned criminal activity, punishable by more than three years in prison, that is devised with the intention of spreading fear, disrupting the activity of the Polish government, or compelling it to act on a given issue. (This definition already existed in the Polish penal code, but until now, the lower limit had been five years). The change not only lowers the boundary for declaring a state of emergency; it also brings common crimes into the line of sight of the intelligence agencies. Branding someone a terrorist in Poland has never been easier.

The new counter-terrorism bill is the latest in a string of changes that are tightening the noose on the Polish Internet. The laws that embody these changes share four basic qualities: vague phrasing, lack of public consultation, ineffective mechanisms of control, and (thanks to the parliamentary dominance of PiS) hasty adoption.

The countrys revised surveillance law, passed in February, allowed police to acquire physical and electronic data  packages, emails, portable thumb drives, browsing history  without needing to justify it by reference to an ongoing investigation. This opened a vast landscape of information to arbitrary data collection. A new amendment to the countrys gambling act aims to create a blacklist of banned websites  ostensibly to curb illegal gambling  and imposes severe fines on telecom operators and Internet service providers that fail to block the sites. The previous government had also wanted to pass this bill six years ago  but its attempt collapsed thanks to a firewall of protest at its own public consultation hearings. But a government with an absolute majority has no need to take counsel with the public. When calls for a government-led consultation on the counterterrorism bill fell on deaf ears, Polands civil society scrambled to organize their own independent hearing. They wound up preaching to the choir: not one government representative was in attendance.

Polands digital fortification is not an isolated incident. One after another, and under varying pretexts mostly involving terrorism, democratic countries have been tightening their powers of surveillance and restriction online. The Polish counter-terrorism law is inspired by a sweeping measure passed in Hungary in 2011 that gave Viktor Orbans government massive powers of covert surveillance with minimal judicial oversight, drawing firm condemnation from the European Court of Human Rights. France has put into effect a counter-terrorism law similar in scope, expanding its array of digital tracking tools while largely freeing those who use them from accountability. The danger inherent in all three cases is that what qualifies as a threat is exceedingly vague, rendering the threat of overreach very real.

Wholesale blocking of websites is nothing new (several countries bar access to web sites that traffic in child pornography, for example). But allowing security services to shut down telecommunications entirely is a radical innovation in the developed world, having appeared, so far, only in the law books of some developing nations like India, Brazil, and Turkey. Advocacy groups and multinational bodies are launching campaign after campaign to signal the proliferation of this kill switch. The #KeepItOn initiative, which aims to magnify the visibility of shutdown events and combat their growing presence, has documented more shutdowns in the first six months of 2016 alone than throughout all of last year, ranging from Indias flurry of regional bans to Brazils WhatsApp blackout. The threat of shutdowns is alarming enough in countries with flourishing digital ecosystems, but it is even more troubling in those that are falling behind in their region  and Poland is one of the latter.

New research reveals that most people want Internet freedom, but few trust governments to provide it. This mistrust will only deepen if governments continue to sanction frivolous restrictions on access to digital communication while failing to justify them by law  or conjure new laws to fit their intentions. The digital weapons previously wielded exclusively by autocracies are streaming into the democratic world. Rather than standing by as governments pull the plug, citizens should fight to ensure that the Internet remain free.

In the photo, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, leader of Law and Justice party (PiS), speaks during an evening ceremony in front of the presidential palace in Warsaw marking the sixth anniversary of the presidential plane crash in Smolensk, on April 10.

Photo credit: WOJTEK RADWANSKI/AFP/Getty Images
New York (AFP) - A New York judge Friday found three more jail staff guilty of savagely beating an inmate and trying to cover up the assault at one of the largest municipal jails in America.

Captain Gerald Vaughn and two subordinate officers at Rikers Island were convicted in connection with the beating of Jahmal Lightfoot, then a 27-year-old inmate convicted of armed robbery, on July 11, 2012, and subsequent cover-up.

The verdict from Bronx Supreme Court Judge Steven Barrett came after a jury found five other officers guilty on all counts. The jury acquitted a sixth defendant, who was charged only over the cover-up.

Bronx District Attorney Darcel Clark said the convictions "close a chapter in Rikers Island's sad, brutal history."

Elected Democrat officials have called for the closure of the New York complex, which houses thousands of inmates, amid a national campaign against police brutality and urging criminal justice reform.

In 2014, a US federal investigation uncovered what prosecutors called a "pervasive and deep-seated culture of violence" at Rikers Island and called the facility a "broken institution" for teenage inmates.

Six of the officers face up to 15 years in prison when sentenced on September 6. Their convictions include first-degree attempted gang assault, first-degree falsifying business records and official misconduct.

Two subordinate officers, who were convicted of official misconduct, face one year behind bars, Clark said.

The nine former or current officers went on trial in March. Six opted for a jury trial. The other three left their fate to the judge.

Prosecutors told the court that Eliseo Perez, an assistant chief of security, ordered officers to kick Lightfoot's teeth in at a time of record violence at Rikers Island.

The officers beat and kicked him in the head "like an animal," leaving him with trouble breathing and blood coming out of his nose and mouth, they said.

Lawyers for the defendants presented no witnesses, arguing that the prosecution failed to prove the charges beyond a reasonable doubt.
June 10 (Reuters) - New York state's financial regulator wants details from Goldman Sachs Group Inc about investigations involving billions of dollars it raised through a bond issue for a troubled Malaysian fund, a person familiar with the matter said on Friday.

The New York State Department of Financial Services (NYDFS), in a letter sent late Thursday, asked Goldman for a report on its in-house investigation into the matter, as well as others by U.S. and foreign regulators, said the person, who was not authorized to publicly discuss the matter.

The query, related to Malaysian state investor 1Malaysia Development Bhd (1MDB), concerns whether Goldman complied with U.S. anti-money laundering law, the person said.

(Reporting by Suzanne Barlyn; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)
(Corrects 3rd paragraph to read that the letter was sent to Goldman, not the Malaysian fund)

By Suzanne Barlyn

June 10 (Reuters) - New York state regulators have asked Goldman Sachs Group Inc for details about probes into billions of dollars it raised in a bond offering for a scandal-hit Malaysian fund, a person familiar with the matter said on Friday.

The New York State Department of Financial Services, in a letter sent late Thursday, asked Goldman for a report on its in-house investigation into the matter, as well as others by U.S. and foreign regulators, said the person, who was not authorized to publicly discuss the matter.

The letter to Goldman concerns state investment fund 1Malaysia Development Bhd (1MDB).

A Goldman Sachs spokesman declined to comment.

The fund, which was founded by Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak in 2009 shortly after he came to office, is being investigated for money-laundering in at least six countries.

U.S. law enforcement officials are attempting to identify whether Goldman violated federal law after failing to flag a transaction in Malaysia, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday.

The probe concerns $3 billion raised by Goldman through a 1MDB bond offering. The focal point is whether the bank complied with the Bank Secrecy Act, the main U.S. anti-money laundering law.

(Reporting by Suzanne Barlyn; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Richard Chang)
(Adds details about Goldman and other information sought by New York regulator)

By Suzanne Barlyn

June 10 (Reuters) - New York state regulators have asked Goldman Sachs Group Inc for details about probes into billions of dollars it raised in a bond offering for a scandal-hit Malaysian fund, a person familiar with the matter said on Friday.

The New York State Department of Financial Services, in a letter sent late Thursday, asked Goldman for a report on its in-house investigation into the matter, as well as others by U.S. and foreign regulators, said the person, who was not authorized to publicly discuss the matter.

The letter to Goldman concerns state investment fund 1Malaysia Development Bhd (1MDB).

A Goldman Sachs spokesman declined to comment.

The New York regulator has imposed a tight deadline for Goldman of June 14.

The fund at issue, which was founded by Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak in 2009 shortly after he came to office, is being investigated for money-laundering in at least six countries.

U.S. law enforcement officials are attempting to identify whether Goldman violated federal law after failing to flag a transaction in Malaysia, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday.

The probe concerns $3 billion raised by Goldman through a 1MDB bond offering. The focal point is whether the bank complied with the Bank Secrecy Act, the main U.S. anti-money laundering law.

Other information being sought by the New York regulator includes reports about suspicious financial activity that Goldman may have filed with U.S. and foreign authorities, and schedules for interviews or testimony by current or former Goldman employees by other regulators, the person familiar with the matter said.

(Reporting by Suzanne Barlyn; Editing by Richard Chang and Cynthia Osterman)
Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren has thrown her support behind Hillary Clinton's bid for the While House, just hours after President Barack Obama officially endorsed the presumptive Democratic nominee.

Warren, a popular figure with the liberal wing of the Democratic party, told MSNBC's "The Rachel Maddow Show" that she was "ready to get in this fight and work my heart out for Hillary Clinton to become the next president of the United States and to make sure that Donald Trump never gets any place close to the White House."

The endorsement came despite the fact Warren shares a number of interests with Democratic hopeful Bernie Sanders, who like Warren, has campaigned on curbing Wall Street's influence and reducing income inequality.

Also on Thursday, Obama officially endorsed Clinton for president, saying he was "fired up" for his former Secretary of State.



In a prerecorded video released Thursday, Obama latched onto the Clinton campaign's slogan, letting his supporters know that "I'm with her," and pledging to campaign for Clinton. The president's endorsement comes eight years and two days after Clinton did the same for him.

"I know how hard this job can be, that's why I know Hillary will be so good at it," Obama said. "In fact, I don't think there's ever been someone so qualified to hold this office. She's got the courage, the compassion and the heart to get the job done."

"I've seen her judgement, I've seen her toughness, I've seen her commitment to our values up close," Obama added of his one-time rival.

Presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders met with Obama on Thursday  days after many news outlets named Clinton the party's presumptive nominee. Some pundits speculated that Obama would have sought to convince Sanders to drop out of the race, so the Democratic Party could rally around Clinton in preparation for a general election battle against presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump .

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Instead, the Vermont senator pledged to fight on into next week's Washington, D.C., primary, but he thanked the White House for its role (or lack thereof) in the election so far.

"Let me begin by thanking President Obama and thanking Vice President (Joe) Biden for the degree of impartiality they established during the course of this entire process," Sanders said in brief remarks after his meeting. "What they said in the beginning is that they would not put their thumb on the scales, and in fact they kept their word, and I appreciate that very, very much."

Two Sanders camp sources told CNBC that Obama had "signaled" he would make a Clinton endorsement after their meeting ended Thursday.

"I assure you that Sen. Sanders was not surprised," White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said during a Thursday news briefing, revealing that the video was recorded Tuesday.

In his endorsement video, the president took time to say that Sanders had run "an incredible campaign," and that he had shone "a spotlight on issues like economic inequality and the outsized influence of money in our politics."

In fact, Obama said, those are messages the Democrats should embrace for the general election. And while Clinton and Sanders may have been rivals during the primary season, "they're both patriots who love this country and they share a vision for the America that we all believe in."

"This has been a hard-fought race," Obama said. "I know some say these primaries have somehow left the Democratic Party more divided: Well, they said that eight years ago, as well."

And just as Democrats' victory in that election paved the way for significant national initiatives, Obama said he expects his party "won't just win in November, we'll build on the progress that we've made and we will win a brighter future for this country that we love."

Although the declarations of Clinton's presumptive victory were based on her delegate haul, Sanders is not technically eliminated from the race because he could theoretically sway the Democrats unbound "super" delegates to his side. Still, that would be a tough sell for the senator: Clinton won more primary contests, more of the popular vote and more regular pledged delegates.

For his part, Trump was unimpressed by the endorsement.

 John Harwood and Reuters contributed to this report.





More From CNBC


By Amanda Becker and Emily Stephenson WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama formally endorsed Hillary Clinton's White House bid on Thursday and called for Democrats to unite behind her after a protracted battle with Bernie Sanders for the party nomination. U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts also backed Clinton on Thursday, telling MSNBC's "The Rachel Maddow Show" that presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump was "a genuine threat to the country." Clinton, the presumptive Democratic nominee, said it "means the world" to her that Obama had her back in a bruising campaign for the Nov. 8 election. Clinton also said she had the "highest regard" for Warren, a fiery critic of Wall Street, and was "really pleased to have her good ideas and support." Vice President Joe Biden also waded into the campaign on Thursday. "Whoever the next president is, and God willing in my view it will be Secretary Clinton," Biden said in a speech at the American Constitution Society in Washington. The Obama endorsement increases pressure on Sanders, a U.S. senator from Vermont, to bow out of the race and lend his support to Clinton so that the party can focus on defeating Trump. "It is absolutely a joy and an honor that President Obama and I over the years have gone from fierce competitors to true friends," Clinton told Reuters in an interview. After an unexpectedly tough battle against Sanders' challenge from the left, former first lady Clinton made history when she reached the number of delegates needed to win the party nomination this week. That made her the first woman to lead a major U.S. party as its White House candidate. Obama, who enjoys rising approval ratings as he nears the end of eight years in office, will appear with Clinton on the campaign trail next week in Wisconsin. The two were opponents in the 2008 Democratic presidential primary race, which Obama won, but they buried their rivalry and she served as his secretary of state for four years. Clinton is the 2016 candidate who the White House believes will best safeguard Obama's legacy. "I don't think there's ever been someone so qualified to hold this office," Obama said of Clinton in a video. "I'm with her. I am fired up, and I cannot wait to get out there and campaign for Hillary." Trump assailed the endorsement on Twitter: "He wants four more years of Obamabut nobody else does! Clinton's campaign tweeted a brash response: "Delete your account." Sanders, who galvanized young voters with his calls for more social equality and measures to rein in Wall Street, has been reluctant to concede the race, despite concerns among leading Democrats that continuing party divisions could hamper Clinton's efforts to beat Trump. TOWARD THE EXIT Obama and other senior Democrats are seeking a delicate balance of rallying the party behind Clinton, while not alienating Sanders and his supporters. In what appeared to be an attempt to gently ease Sanders toward giving up his campaign, Obama met the democratic socialist for about an hour in the White House, laughing warmly as they walked into the Oval Office. Although Sanders told reporters afterward that he still planned to compete in the final nominating contest in Washington, D.C., next Tuesday, he said he would work with Clinton to defeat Trump. Sanders was then welcomed on Capitol Hill by Senator Harry Reid, the top Democrat in the Senate. Reid said the lawmaker from Vermont was in a good place with his Democratic colleagues. He suggested that Sanders was close to acknowledging defeat by Clinton. I didnt hear a single word about him trying to change the fact that she is the nominee, I think hes accepted that, Reid told reporters. In the endorsement video, Obama recalled the party unity that followed his prolonged primary battle against Clinton in 2008. "Secretary Clinton and Senator Sanders may have been rivals during this primary, but they're both patriots who love this country and they share a vision for an America that we all believe in," Obama said. Warren told MSNBC she was endorsing Clinton because "a female fighter in the lead is exactly what this country needs." Warrens populist credentials will boost Clintons ability to court Sanders voters as she prepares to battle Trump. Warren was the only female Democratic U.S. senator who did not endorse Clinton during the primary race. Clinton told Reuters she and Warren had similar views about issues such as economic policy and protecting the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform law and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which Warren pushed to start. Trump said in an interview with Reuters last month that he would try to dismantle the Dodd-Frank law. In the interview with Reuters, Clinton said her overall economic package, including plans to rein in Wall Street and cut taxes for the middle class, would come during the first 100 days of her presidency if she defeats Trump. Clinton previously said a plan to generate jobs by investing in transportation and other infrastructure spending and immigration reform would be among other early priorities. "One of the things that President Obama said yesterday is he thought his job was to remind the American people what a really serious job this is, the tough choices, the hard decisions, the high stakes in choosing a president and commander in chief," Clinton said. "And I know how important it is to get off to a really good start in the White House," she said. Trump, a wealthy real estate developer who became the party's presumptive nominee last month after seeing off a large group of rivals, is well behind Clinton's campaign in terms of fundraising and policy infrastructure. On Thursday, his top donors were holding their first official meeting in New York. Trump also met with industry leaders in New York at an event organized by oil billionaire Harold Hamm. (Reporting by Emily Stephenson, additional reporting by Ginger Gibson, Steve Holland, Roberta Rampton, Megan Cassella, Doina Chiacu, David Morgan, Susan Cornwell, David Morgan and Alana Wise in Washington; Editing by Alistair Bell and Peter Cooney)
Earlier this week, Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India visited President Obama, marking his second visit to the White House in two years. Like his two immediate predecessors, Obama has made special efforts to expand ties with India. Against the backdrop of a tough external environment-- Iraq's chaos, a truculent Russia, China's increased assertiveness, unending conflict in Afghanistan--the U.S.-India relationship stands out as a rare bright spot, one that has spanned Democratic and Republican administrations alike.

Former president Bill Clinton opened the door to India in 2000 after decades of estrangement. And after him, George W. Bush recognized India's strategic importance, and pushed through a civil-nuclear deal that permitted nuclear energy cooperation with India and brought the country inside the global nonproliferation tent. With the conclusion of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's three-day visit to Washington yesterday, one thing is clear: Obama's support for nurturing ties to India will be marked by his work with one of the world's largest industrializing economies to curb climate change and support clean energy. This is not to suggest that the Obama administration has not advanced ties in other areas--including defense, counterterrorism, and homeland security--but to point out new ground covered during his presidency.

From the beginning to the end of his two terms in office, Obama has made a bet on clean energy, and in Modi's India he has found an enthusiastic partner. President Obama has expanded clean energy cooperation with India more than any previous U.S. administration. This will be his defining legacy for the burgeoning U.S. relationship with India.

Ahead of the prime minister's arrival this week, many speculated that defense ties would be the big story, particularly with the finalization of text, after a decade of dialogue, for a logistics exchange agreement that will allow the two countries' militaries to use each other's bases. Defense is important, including the decision to treat India as a "major defense partner" for technology transfer.

Nonetheless, both countries agreed to make climate and clean energy cooperation a priority and outlined steps to advance these causes in a joint statement following the summit.

These measures will have a global impact, given India's 1.3 billion people, its rapidly-industrializing $2.3 trillion economy, and its hundreds of millions of poor citizens who will use more energy as their incomes and standard of living rise. On a per capita basis, India's carbon emissions are just one-ninth those of the United States, and India remains a much smaller emitter of emissions, in absolute terms, relative to China and the United States. But due to its size, India nonetheless is the third-largest source of carbon emissions. India therefore seeks low-carbon growth to power its economy without poisoning its atmosphere, while the U.S. sees the same goal as a vital global good.

The summit brought long-awaited news that Westinghouse Electric would at last begin site work on six nuclear energy reactors in India, albeit with contract negotiations still under way. This marks the transition from the diplomatic slog begun under the George W. Bush administration in 2005 to the actual commercialization of civil-nuclear ties. Modi and Obama "noted the intention of India and the U.S. Export-Import Bank" to cooperate toward a financing package to help nudge this enormous clean energy infrastructure undertaking along. Nuclear energy will not be able to supply all of India's fast-growing energy needs, but it will position India with a stable supply from a renewable source to add to India's overall energy mix, which is currently largely dependent on oil from the Middle East.

Among other initiatives, officials this week announced efforts to finance clean energy projects, including plans for both India and the U.S. to raise up to $400 million to deliver renewable energy to "up to 1 million households by 2020. A new "U.S.-India Clean Energy Hub" will serve as a single-window to organize renewable energy investment to India. The U.S. and India also agreed to establish the "U.S.-India Catalytic Solar Finance Program," which is expected to attract private investments of up to $1 billion for projects on a smaller scale. Reference to technical support for a rooftop solar initiative in India, and a "Greening the Grid" initiative all appear in the joint statement. A $30 million public-private smart grid initiative will support research.

Taken together, these efforts flow directly from the bilateral clean energy cooperation launched in 2009, at the start of President Obama's first term. The Partnership to Advance Clean Energy (PACE), as the initiative is known, has to date secured more than $2.5 billion in public and private investment. The new announcements add another $1.4 billion to that total. PACE has developed a joint clean energy research consortium drawing on the scientific talents of both countries, and it has also supported targeted efforts (green buildings, smart grids) to deploy clean energy where it can make a difference.

India has consistently sought greater space to give its economy time to grow and raise living standards before making commitments to cap its carbon emissions. For this reason, the multilateral diplomacy with India has not been easy. But through its ambitious targets of installing 175 gigawatts of clean energy (100GW of that via solar), the Modi government has put forward another side of India to the world, an India that seeks to lead on the transition to renewables. The Modi-Obama joint statement includes a slightly ambiguous reference to implementing the Paris agreement--"as soon as possible this year" for the United States, and "work toward this shared objective" for India--but no ambiguity exists on the extent and range of joint undertakings on the clean energy front.

A year and a half ago, after the Modi-Obama Republic Day summit of January 2015, I wrote that clean energy was the next big idea in U.S.-India relations. This kind of cooperation takes place out of the diplomatic spotlight, and rests on the talents of scientists, energy experts, utilities, and leading-edge companies--not grand governmental gestures. For that reason, however, the successes achieved during this week's meeting stand a better chance of having lasting and transformative effects.

Alyssa Ayres is a senior fellow and expert of India, Pakistan, and South Asia at the Council on Foreign Relations. She served as U.S. deputy assistant secretary of state for South Asia from 2010 to 2013.

See original article on Fortune.com

More from Fortune.com
Thursday was a momentous day for former secretary of state Hillary Rodham Clinton when her chief rival, Bernie Sanders, signaled that he was winding down his primary challenge for the Democratic presidential nomination and President Obama formally endorsed her for president with a laudatory video announcement.

After a long, grueling primary contest, the optics looked great for the now presumptive Democratic presidential nominee and her patron, President Obama  with one exception.

Related: Sanders Wouldnt End His Campaign, So Obama Just Did It for Him

Clinton is still the target of an FBI investigation into whether she violated federal law by using a private email server throughout her four years as Obamas secretary of state, even after she and her staff were warned repeatedly that her practice was no longer permitted and that she might be responsible for breach of sensitive or top secret messages.

The Wall Street Journal reported late Thursday that at the center of the Clinton investigation are a series of emails between U.S. diplomats in Islamabad and their superiors in Washington regarding whether to challenge specific CIA drone strikes planned in Pakistan.

The sensitive 2011 and 2012 emails were transmitted via a computer system used for unclassified matters, according to the newspaper. Some of those emails were then forwarded by Clintons State Department aides to a private server she kept in New York.

There have been reports suggesting that while she may get a severe slap on the wrist, the Justice Department is highly unlikely to bring charges against her just as her general election campaign against Republican Donald Trump begins to heat up. The State Department Inspector General recently issued a blistering report on Clintons mishandling of her email messages  saying that she failed to seek legal approval for her use of a private server and that her action posed security risks.

President Obama has repeatedly insisted he has scrupulously stayed out of the federal probe, even while he has done little to hide his determination to help Clinton win the election and preserve his legacy. Obama said during an interview with Chris Wallace of Fox New in early April that I can guarantee that the FBI and Justice Department would not protect Clinton while investigating her private emails and server.

Story continues

But it might be a challenge for the FBI and Justice Department to turn a blind eye to Clintons announcement yesterday, in which he said, I dont think theres ever been someone so qualified to hold this office.

Related: We Now Know Hillary Lied Multiple Times About Her Email Server

And reporters peppered White House press secretary Josh Earnest yesterday with questions about whether the FBI and Justice Department might be persuaded to go easy on Clinton, now that she has been endorsed by the president.

Asked whether there was a conflict in the president endorsing Clinton while the investigation was still going on, Earnest replied, I believe theres not.

There were a couple of instances when the President was asked about the FBI investigation and in each of those answers, the president made clear that that investigation is one being conducted independent of any sort of political interference. That is the principle to which the president is resolutely committed.

At one point, Earnest referred to the probe of Clintons private emails as a possible criminal investigation, which GOP operatives quickly seized on as a serious slip up coming just minutes after the endorsement was announced.

Related: The Strategy that Gave Hillary Clinton the Democratic Nomination

Republican National Committee spokesperson Michael Short issued a statement saying, The White Houses admission that the FBI is investigating Hillary Clintons email server as a criminal matter shreds her dishonest claim that it is a routine security inquiry.

The question about whether the president could remain impartial and allow the FBI probe of Clinton to proceed unimpeded has been hanging over the high-profile controversy for months. Now it has been greatly magnified by Obamas endorsement of the former secretary of state and first lady.

The president had been conflicted on the timing of his announcement. As Trump grew in strength, Obama was anxious to get back on the campaign trail and assist Clinton and other Democratic congressional candidates. But he had promised Sanders he would remain officially neutral and on the sidelines until after the primary contests.

The president and Clinton both had to worry about the pace of the FBI investigation and when it was likely to be concluded. FBI Director James B. Comey has said that while the probe was moving along expeditiously, there was no timetable for conclusion. Obama and his advisers apparently concluded they couldnt afford to wait any longer, and the president went ahead with his endorsement of Clinton yesterday.

Related: Crooked Hillary Is Still a Better Choice Than Dangerous Donald

Trump, the bombastic billionaire businessman and presumptive GOP presidential nominee, has been alleging for months that Clinton was being shielded from prosecution by the White House and that the only reason she was being nice to Obama was to prevent the FBI from seeking an indictment against her. Shortly after Obamas announcement yesterday, Trump tweeted: Obama just endorsed Crooked Hillary. He wants four more years of Obamabut nobody else does.

Late last month, conservative Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) said in an interview with the Fox Business Network that the Obama administration would never allow Clinton to be indicted as long as she doesnt say anything critical of the Obama administration. Gohmert said the investigation of Clinton's use of a private email server should be taken away from the Justice Department and turned over to a special prosecutor.

There are about a dozen FBI agents currently assigned to the case, according to NBC News, as well as a number of Justice Department criminal lawyers. The Associated Press reported recently that the investigation was winding down, and would likely culminate in a sit-down interview with Clinton.

James J. Wedick, a retired FBI supervisory special agent who headed corruption investigations for years in Sacramento said in an interview yesterday that while he believes that Comey and his investigators are relatively immune from political pressure, that may not be the case at the Justice Department, where Attorney General Loretta Lynch and many of the top officials are political appointees.

Related: Most Americans Dont Believe Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump

The [FBI] itself is not a political organization, and Comey, while hes a political appointee, he is in office for ten years, and theyve done that so the agency wouldnt be affected by politics, Wedick said. However, having said that, the attorney general is a political appointment, she is affected by politics. And prosecutions can only be authorized by the attorney general or a representative of her staff.

So therein lies the dilemma, he said. It doesnt bother the agents, it doesnt bother the men and women working for the FBI, but I imagine it will have something to do with for those over in the Department of Justice who are not career people but are political appointees. So there could be a problem.

Some legal experts have told the Associated Press that it appears unlikely Clinton would be formally charged with committing a crime for using her private email server throughout her four years at the State Department, in contravention of revised rules regulating highly sensitive email transmissions. Thats because the relatively few federal laws governing the handling of classified materials were written primarily to cover spies and leakers. Whats more, prosecutors would have to prove intent to violate the law and expose classified material to hacking, which would be a stretch at best.

Still, there was a definite political downside to the presidents unstinting endorsement of Clinton yesterday with so much uncertainty about the outcome of the federal probe.

Related: 7 Ways Bernie Sanders Transformed the 2016 Election

Obama legitimately decided to exercise his prerogative as head of the Democratic Party to endorse the person he wants to preserve his legacy, University of Virginia political scientist Larry J. Sabato said yesterday. At the same time Republicans will claim this is an attempt to influence the ongoing investigation--though I can't imagine Jim Comey and the FBI will shift whatever course they are on as a consequence. And if Clinton is indicted, the Obama endorsement won't be able to minimize the consequences.

But should the entire process be put on hold until the FBI finally decides what it wants to do? he added. That is very unwise too.

Top Reads from The Fiscal Times:
Making his first visit to The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon as a sitting president, Obama joined Fallon in writing thank-you notes.

Fallon got some of the best lines:

Thank you President Obamas birth certificate. He used to carry you around to prove he is American; now he needs to carry it around to prove hes only 54. Thank you Hillary Clinton for possibly becoming the first f president. I would have said female, but someone deleted the email.

But Obama brought the house down with the last thank-you note:

Thank you Congress. For spending eight years wishing you could replace me with a Republican. Or, to put it another way: How do you like me now?

 Obama wrote as a photo of Donald Trump appeared on screen.

Both Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker Paul Ryan have condemned the GOP presumptive candidates statements about the district court judge overseeing a lawsuit related to Trump University. Ryan called Trumps remarks the textbook definition of a racist comment and beyond the pale. A handful of Republican politicians have pulled their endorsement of Trump. And a delegate bound to Ted Cruz, who will serve on the GOP Rules Committee, told ABC News she plans to introduce a clause changing the convention rules to let delegates vote their conscience.

RelatedObama Delivers Best Thursday Tonight Ratings Since Jimmy Fallons First Week

[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymGENUjIdIg&w=620&h=340]

Related stories

Norman Lear Calls Donald Trump "The Middle Finger" Of America, Talks "Golden Age" Of Diversity On TV - ATX TV Festival

Obama Slow Jams News, Reveals New Favorite TV Show: 'Orange Is Not The New Black'

President Obama Delivers Best Thursday 'Tonight' Ratings Since Jimmy Fallon's First Week
AP_447996706450

Mitch McConnell made some of his strongest statements yet relating to Donald Trump in an interview published Friday by Bloomberg.

The Senate majority leader told the outlet that he had privately pleaded with Trump to start reading scripts because "it's obvious he doesn't know a lot about the issues."

McConnell added that Trump needs a "highly experienced" running mate as a result.

"He needs someone highly experienced and very knowledgeable because it's pretty obvious he doesn't know a lot about the issues," McConnell said on Bloomberg's "Masters in Politics" podcast. "You see that in the debates in which he's participated. It's why I have argued to him publicly and privately that he ought to use a script more often  there is nothing wrong with having prepared texts."

The Kentucky Republican also wouldn't take rescinding his endorsement of Trump off the table after what has been a chaotic week in the Manhattan billionaire's campaign.

"I'm not going to speculate about what he might say or what I might do," McConnell said. "But I think it's pretty clear, and I've been pretty clear publicly about how I think he ought to change direction, and I hope that's what we are going to see."

In an interview with Business Insider last week as a part of a promotional tour he's on to peg his newly released memoir, "The Long Game," McConnell said it's time for Trump to stop "score settling" with those who opposed him during the primary season.

"I think he'd have a much better chance of winning if he would quit making so many unfortunate public utterances and stick to the script, he told Bloomberg.

McConnell said he even pressed Trump in person to become more scripted. He brought that message before Trump at the recent National Rifle Association convention in Louisville, Kentucky.

Donald Trump

"I said, Hey, Donald, you got a script? and he pulled it out of his pocket," McConnell said. "He said, 'You know I hate scripts. They're so boring.' And I said, 'Put me down in favor of boring.'"

Story continues

He continued his retelling of the conversation with Trump:

'You've demonstrated that you have a lot of Twitter followers and you're good at turning on a big audience. Now you need to demonstrate you have the seriousness of purpose that is required to be president of the United States, and most candidates on frequent occasions use a script.' So we'll see whether that's something he's capable of doing.

McConnell's statements come as Trump has been caught up in his latest self-inflicted firestorm  this time relating to attacks he has launched at a federal judge over his Mexican heritage.

The Manhattan billionaire said that US District Court Judge Gonzalo Curiel cannot fairly preside over a civil case involving Trump University, his now defunct for-profit real estate school, because he is of Mexican descent and Trump will be "building a wall" along the US-Mexico border if elected in the fall.

Curiel is from Indiana.

Republicans from all sides of the party  including McConnell, previously  have publicly condemned the remarks and demanded that Trump change his tone. In a Tuesday afternoon statement, Trump took a step back from the attacks but did not apologize. He made no mention of his attacks against the judge in his scripted postprimary speech later that night.

The blowback from the attacks may have been evident in a Thursday Fox News poll, which found that Trump had dipped six percentage points since last month in a head-to-head with Hillary Clinton  including dropping a whopping 11 points with independent voters.

McConnell told Bloomberg that the election will be unwinnable if Trump continues to attach his hopes solely to the white male vote.

"We are not going to be competitive in presidential elections appealing only to white voters and particularly writing off white women," he said. "So beyond the unfortunate part of the various things that our nominee has said  it's not smart, politically."

NOW WATCH: OBAMA: The demise of the Republican party 'is not something Democrats should wish for'





More From Business Insider


By Luc Cohen NEW YORK (Reuters) - Oklahoma oil and gas assets purchased by White Star Petroleum, a spinoff of soon-to-be-defunct American Energy Partners, included disposal wells that had previously been named in a lawsuit over earthquakes in the state, court documents show. The litigation, which is ongoing, seeks to limit the volumes of wastewater the disposal wells' previous owner, Devon Energy, along with three other defendants, can inject into deep underground caverns. In announcing the $200 million asset deal in April, neither Devon nor Energy and Minerals Group (EMG), the private equity firm backing White Star, disclosed that the disposal wells were included in the sale. White Star has not been named in the case, but a lawyer for the plaintiffs said he may bring them in should the case clear a motion to dismiss filed by the defendants. "It's unusual that people are able to sell during a pending lawsuit," said Richard Webster of Public Justice, who represents the Sierra Club, the plaintiffs in the federal lawsuit. "For White Star, they are taking on a fairly big risk here." The environmental group asked for an order requiring Devon, Sandridge Energy Inc, Chesapeake Energy and New Dominion, LLC to reduce wastewater volumes and pay to reinforce structures that are vulnerable to earthquake damage. In response, Devon argued in a court filing that the suit would not be effective because it does not encompass all disposal well operators in the area in question - citing its sale of "all of its disposal wells" relevant to the lawsuit to "another operator that is not a defendant in this lawsuit" as an example. Devon also questioned the court's authority in the case, noting that the Oklahoma Corporation Commission, which regulates oil and gas activity in Oklahoma, had "exclusive jurisdiction" over the wells. The Corporation Commission has issued some directives aimed at reducing seismicity, which has fallen somewhat this year. Devon declined to comment, and neither EMG nor White Star responded to requests for comment. Meanwhile, Sandridge's involvement as a defendant was stayed when it filed for bankruptcy last month, which could save the company legal costs and exempt it from the discovery process while it is undergoing bankruptcy proceedings. "It is a significant cost savings," said Natalie Ramsey, chair of Montgomery McCracken's bankruptcy and reorganization practice. "The first thing I'd be doing is running into court and pushing out discovery deadlines for Sandridge." (Reporting By Luc Cohen; Editing by David Gregorio)
From Esquire

For those who favor well-made, accessibly priced clothing (and honestly, who doesn't?), we have very good news. Christophe Lemaire, the French designer behind the eponymous label, has once again joined forces with Uniqlo.

Last fall saw the introduction of the hugely successful Uniqlo and Lemaire collection, a collaborative effort that was completed in spring 2016. But now Lemaire-who has logged time at major players like Lacoste and Hermes and oversees his own namesake collection-will be working with Uniqlo in a more permanent capacity. The Japan-based brand has appointed him artistic director of the brand's R&D center in Paris as well as a new line called Uniqlo U, which will debut in July and hit stores in the fall.

"The opportunity to design good clothes for an affordable price is what excited me about Lacoste at the beginning," Lemaire told industry site Business of Fashion. "And when Uniqlo contacted me after I left Hermes, it was the same thing. 'The best of the most at the least'-that's how I think of it."

Those who know Uniqlo are likely familiar with the +J collaboration with Jil Sander, a higher-end (and higher-priced) collection that has since shuttered. But Lemaire is adamant that Uniqlo U will be "a little more democratic," as he put it. "The biggest issue was to design things that are essential enough to be timeless, and understood by everyone. Elevated basics, I call them. Our ambition is to fill the gap between what's fashion and what's 'normal.'"

Our ambition is to fill the gap between what's fashion and what's "normal."

If his prior work with Uniqlo is any indication, Lemaire's trademark brand of louche French minimalism paired with an easygoing sensibility will translate to effortless garments that manage to feel just different enough to stand out.

In other words: You should be excited. Some really great, totally affordable clothes are going to be coming your way very soon.
Alexander Hamilton's incredible life story is the subject of this year's hottest Broadway musical, Hamilton, which earned a historic 16 nominations for Sunday's Tony Awards.



The play's creator and star, Lin-Manuel Miranda, recounts the Founding Father's amazing journey from orphan to presidential candidate through a hip-hop-inspired score that make the history fun and accessible.



But if you haven't been able to score tickets to the sold-out show, and you mostly know Hamilton from his recently reaffirmed position on the $10 bill, here are a few facts about the lawyer, soldier, statesman and first Secretary of the Treasury.





An Orphan on an Island



Of all the Founding Fathers, no one embodies the American dream better than Hamilton. He was born out of wedlock between 1755 and 1757 ( some believe he lied about his age) on the island of Nevis in the British West Indies. His mother, Rachel Faucette, had left her husband, John Michael Lavien of St. Croix, and her first son, Peter, and moved to St. Kitts, where she met his father, James Hamilton, according to PBS.







James abandoned the family when Hamilton was still a boy, and soon afterward Rachel died of a fever, leaving Alexander orphaned and alone on the island. Hamilton and his older brother James Jr. were later adopted by a cousin, Peter Lytton, but when Lytton committed suicide, the brothers were separated, according to Ron Chernow, whose biography of Hamilton inspired the Broadway show.





Poetic Justice



An avid reader and voracious learner, Hamilton dreamed of finding a way off the island where he had experienced so much hardship. Little did he know, an impromptu poem inspired by a hurricane that ravaged the island in 1772 would be his ticket to the colonies.



The poem, later published in The Royal Danish American Gazette, was so impressive to readers that a scholarship fund for his education was organized by generous benefactors.



Before long, the young prodigy was shipped off to King's College (now Columbia University) in New York City to continue his studies.





General Washington's Right Hand



When the Revolutionary War broke out, Hamilton was an enthusiastic volunteer, joining up with an infantry division, which, according to the Army Historical Foundation, is the oldest serving unit in the regular army. He was made captain of the artillery company and led the group to key victories at the Battles of White Plains and Princeton. Hamilton was so successful he caught the attention of His Excellency, General George Washington, who made the young man his aide-de-camp.



Hamilton proved to be an indispensable right hand to Washington  he wrote beautifully, spoke fluent French, had a sharp military mind and shared many of Washington's political views. But eventually Hamilton tired of his secretarial duties and resigned from his position as aide-de-camp in 1781. After leaving Washington with the rank of Lieutenant Colonel, he led a new battalion, which became instrumental to winning the Battle of Yorktown.





VIDEO: 5 Things To Know About Lin-Manuel Miranda





The Federalist Papers



After the war, Hamilton completed his law degree after several months of self-studying, according to Chernow. Frustrated with the weak Confederation Congress currently holding the country together, he called on delegates to assemble in Philadelphia to sort out a more permanent method for governing.



While Hamilton's role at the 1787 Convention in Philadelphia was limited by his position as minority voice in the New York delegation, he played a major part in the ratification of the Constitution as one of the authors of the Federalist Papers.



Essentially a public relations campaign for the Constitution, the papers, written by Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay, are still consulted today by the Supreme Court. Although Hamilton is believed to have written the majority of the document, his participation in it was not revealed to the public until after his death.





Founding the Treasury and America's First Political Party



For his next project, Hamilton decided to solve the national financial crisis. After President Washington appointed him Secretary of the Treasury, he figured out a solution for paying off the war debt, and then organized the Treasury Department from the ground up.



He also formed the First Bank of the United States which, combined with the nascent country's newly formed treasury, was invaluable in convincing other nations the Unites States was financially stable.



His belief in a strong central government, exemplified by his national bank and treasury, formed the basis for the unofficial formation of the Federalist Party by 1791. James Madison and Thomas Jefferson later formed the Republican Party as a direct response to Hamilton's political faction.





A Duel to the Death



Hamilton's demise came at the hands of a political rival, Aaron Burr. Hamilton fought to undermine Burr's presidential campaign in 1800, writing a letter to a House of Representatives member disparaging Burr and supporting Hamilton's other political foe, Jefferson, in his place. "In a choice of evils, let them take the least  Jefferson in my view less dangerous than Burr," he wrote.



But the bad blood between Hamilton and Burr far outdated the presidential elections, and when Hamilton refused to apologize for an insult, the two men and their aids met in Weehawken, New Jersey, for a duel in 1804.



Controversy over who shot first and whether Hamilton deliberately misfired continues to this day, but in the end, Burr dealt his opponent a fatal blow. Hamilton died of his gunshot wound the next day. He was 47.





America's First Sex Scandal



Despite his countless accomplishments, Hamilton's life was not without controversy.



While he was Secretary of the Treasury, Hamilton carried on a two-year affair with a woman named Maria Reynolds, while paying her husband, James Reynolds, blackmail money to maintain secrecy.



From 1791 to 1792, while he was still married to Elizabeth Schuyler, Hamilton kept the affair a secret. Reynolds' husband was aware of his wife's infidelity throughout the relationship, but chose to keep quiet and collect the blackmail money.



Reynolds eventually divorced her husband, and during the proceedings, James' involvement in a financial scheme involving unpaid back wages for Revolutionary War veterans came to light. In an effort to escape charges, James attempted to use his knowledge about the Hamilton affair as a bargaining chip.



James Monroe and Frederick Muhlenberg were tasked with investigating the corruption, and mistook Hamilton's payments for his complicity in the scheme. After confronting him with their findings, Hamilton was able to prove the payments were made to buy James' discretion on the affair by revealing letters he had written to Elizabeth. Convinced he was telling the truth, Monroe and Muhlenberg eliminated Hamilton as a suspect and agreed to keep the affair a secret.



And so the scandal remained private for the next five years, until the one person Monroe shared Hamilton's letter with  Hamilton's political enemy Thomas Jefferson  decided to leak the information to the press.



Furious that the letter was made public, Hamilton confronted Monroe, who denied spilling the beans. Their argument nearly led to a duel, but a third party, none other than Aaron Burr (who would kill Hamilton himself in a duel years later) intervened and settled the beef.



Hamilton later released a 95-page response to the incident, in which he denied all charges of corruption, but openly admitted to the affair. His mea culpa was admired, but his reputation never fully recovered.
Overland Expo: A United World of Ramblers

Some of us get on a motorcycle and ride as fast as we can. Others prefer to test the limits of gravity. Others still prefer to test their own endurance above all else. Some of these people we call wanderers and this is their rally.

Less of a motorcycle party or event  its not even specifically tailored to motorcyclists, although there is a dedicated section for us two-wheeled adventurers  the Overland Expo is more about the going than the bike itself. And more about the things you need to get there. Known to regular attendees simply as OX, it's an outfitters gathering and a gathering for travelers using four wheels or two.

Overland Expo West

Those of us clearly planted on the two wheels side ride to the event, and this year was no different for me. Sleeping under the stars is just one part of the glory of traveling to the Western weekend of the expo, which this year was held in Flagstaff, Arizona.

Last year however, the rally garnered the name Snowverland after a strong bout of late-breaking winter came through mid-rally. That was the night I realized I needed a tent from this century and one that's waterproof. Luckily the sun shone down on Mormon Lake and it was year like no other weekend before: not too hot, nor very windy. Weve seen it get worse in both those senses, and welcomed the calm easygoing weekend.

Overland Expo West

The conditions left many more smiles on the vendors' faces, too.

Traditionally, trucks of any and every size can be seen at OX. Conversion vans to Pinzauers, brand-new Land Rovers to off-road-worthy Westfalias, every one of them with an out-of-state plate and a sticker from some other part of the world on it.

Overland Expo West

In the two-wheel camp, manufacturers showcased their wares, hard and soft, to a stronger showing of riders this year. The weekends total attendees reached nearly 10,000 with both the day-passes and full-weekend heads counted.

A newcomer to the event but not new to riding apparel Alpinestars was there showcasing the Durban Suit, as well as the Corozal and Toucan adventure boots. Also on display was this year's Dakar winners (Toby Price) ride suit  sadly not for sale in any form.

Story continues

Overland Expo West

Another first for OX, was having the KTM demo truck on site. That makes them the first OEM to speak directly to the overlanding crowd, one supersaturated by BMW GS models and myriad small-displacement bikes of the sort that tend to get sold more often around the world. KTMs line-up speaks more to the latter, with a heavy lean toward the off-road user over the pavement pounders.

But were OK with that. And when KTM puts together an affordable small-displacement adventure bike, theyll sell even more of them.

Overland Expo West

Hard parts and soft bags are a major component of vendor row at the Overland Expo, but that doesnt mean there wasn't anything else to see. "Small Bikes, Big Change" showed us how the other half lives, crossing borders and countries on 100-mpg two wheelers. SENA was there keeping everyone wired up and riding connected. RawHyde Adventures was there with local, group ride-outs and on-site ride instruction from its BMW-certified training center staff.

Want to learn to loft a wheel on that big bike? Or make it fly without having to spend a whole weekend at either of their ranches in SoCal or Colorado? Come see Jim and the team at Overland Expo West next year, or at the East event in October.

Overland Expo West

And when the ride gets too tough, or too clammy, stop to see Shawn at MotoSkiveez for some moto-specific undergarments. Their padded shorts, moisture-wicking tops and compression socks should get you back on track and feeling fine over the long haul.

All that said, and aside from an all-day brainstorming session with the Expedition 65 team, OX is home to wanderers from every corner of the globe. With many of them making the Expo part of their journey each year, to see both the show, and the people.

Overland Expo West

With Land Rover, Jeep or Dodge making strong displays on the truck side of the event it can be easy to overlook the smaller aftermarket parts manufacturers, but make time for it. As a curious traveler, Ill walk the other aisles as well. Just because the "truck people actually DO carry a kitchen sink with them when they travel, doesnt mean they dont make something we can use on the bikes, too.

This year I learned a little bike about the Nordic trend of Tentipis: spacious, small-packing, but expensive (quality and ingenuity require it sometimes) tents. I also learned how far prices have fallen for solar panels. OverlandSolar.com had show specials running this year that put a portable 28-watt system in your hands for what you might have spent last year for a 13-watt system.

And poor Nick Calderone, of the syndicated video chat show Right This Minute, arrived this year as the butt of an office prank. Man enough to face the world beyond his office park, he rode his hot pink and furry custom V-Strom up from Phoenix. Brave man.

Admission price for the Overland Expo varies depending on your commitment to the landscape but typically includes hundreds of vendors, dozens of classroom instruction and demonstrations per day, a happy-hour drink after the booths close each night, plus on Sunday theres a mass BBQ thats not to be missed. At night there are moments for everyone to relax together, to talk shop or chop talk, and theres usually a keg or three hiding in someones camp.
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By Rory Carroll (Reuters) - S&P Global Ratings warned on Thursday that the credit rating for key Alaska bonds could go down if lawmakers fail to agree on a budget that addresses the state's long term-fiscal problems. Alaska Governor Bill Walker convened a special session of the legislature late last month aimed at passing a budget for fiscal 2017 and closing the state's nearly $4 billion deficit, which has been driven by a collapse in global oil prices. S&P on Thursday put the state's AA-plus general obligation, AA appropriation, and A-plus moral obligation ratings on Alaska's debt on CreditWatch with negative implications. The bond proceeds are expected to pay for several transportation-related projects. "The CreditWatch placement indicates that we may lower Alaska's credit rating if state policymakers defer adopting fiscal reforms to correct the state's structural budget deficit," said Gabriel Petek, a S&P Global Ratings credit analyst. Since the special session began late last month the legislature has passed a $4.4 billion spending plan for fiscal 2017 and a bill to reduce the cost of the state's oil and gas tax credit program, S&P said. But it is unclear if a hotly contested bill that would transfer money from the state's permanent fund to its general fund will overcome opposition in the state House of Representatives. The bill, SB 128, would reduce the amount paid out to residents annually from the fund. Even if it passes, S&P said it remains to be seen whether SB 128 and other fiscal reforms would be sufficient to put Alaska's fiscal structure on a sustainable trajectory. "Enactment of SB 128 alone would shrink the deficit, but it wouldn't eliminate it. In order to fully close the structural fiscal gap, other measures  such as new income tax or more spending cuts  would also be necessary," S&P said. Despite the budget deficit, S&P said Alaska continues to have very strong credit quality due to the large reserves it built up over times when oil prices were high. (Reporting by Rory Carroll in San Francisco; Editing by Matthew Lewis)
Agua Clara (Panama) (AFP) - Panama has sent a giant, Neopanamax-class cargo ship through its canal to test expansion work costing billions of dollars and whose official opening is to be marked with a ceremony late this month.

"The tests are going very, very well. We're pleased," Giuseppe Quarta, head of the Grupos Unidos por el Canal (GUPC) consortium behind the nine-year expansion project, told reporters on Thursday.

The vessel used, the dry bulk carrier MN Baroque owned by SwissMarine and registered in Malta, is 255 meters (837 feet) long and 43 meters (141 feet) wide.

That puts it into the Neopanamax, or New Panamax, class of ships that are significantly bigger than the older Panamax ones used up to now.

As the names suggest, the class of ships are designed specifically to fit into the Panama Canal's locks.

The older Panamax freighters had maximum dimensions of 294 meters in length and 32 meters in width, to fit the original canal built a century ago.

Neopanamax ships are significantly longer and wider for the new locks -- and more importantly can carry more than twice as much cargo.

- Over budget -

The mammoth project to expand the Panama Canal far exceeded its original $5.3 billion budget -- perhaps by as much as 60 percent, though a final figure is not yet available -- and came in two years late.

Labor disputes, legal rows between the Panama Canal Authority and the GUPC consortium made up of Spanish, Italian and Panamanian companies, and repairs to fissures found in a lock wall last year all contributed to the overruns.

But now it is complete, the inauguration ceremony is to take place on June 26, led by Panamanian President Juan Carlos Varela and with 70 heads of state and government invited to attend.

A Chinese-owned freighter, the Andronikos, has been selected to steam through the Panama Canal on the day of that event.

Panama's vice president, Isabel De Saint Malo, said on Twitter Thursday that the June 26 ceremony would be an "historic moment" symbolizing Panamanians' pride and "confidence in global trade."

Story continues

- Proud workers -

Hundreds of workers who carried out the expansion work took photos of MN Baroque as it moved through the canal.

"This is historic, yes sir," said one of them, Bernabe Caceres, who added he felt "a sense of satisfaction in a job well done."

A colleague, Jorge Rodriguez, said: "I'm proud to have worked here. This will go down in history."

The expansion involved making a third lane for ships in the canal along with a new set of locks.

The canal already accounts for five percent of world maritime commercial traffic.

With the expansion, Panama expects to triple the $1 billion it already receives in shipping fees for vessels passing through.
By Randi Belisomo (Reuters Health) - Too often, when an ambulance is called to a nursing home, the residents wishes regarding end-of-life care arent clear and the staff have differing opinions, leaving paramedics to navigate through the confusion, a new paper suggests. For a patient nearing the end of his or her life, transfer from a nursing home to the emergency department can be inappropriate, with potentially negative consequences, but transfer in these circumstances is, regrettably, all too common, UK researchers write in the Emergency Medical Journal. People are trained to call emergency services, we learn as children to call 911, said Nancy Berlinger of The Hastings Center, a bioethics research institute in Garrison, New York. But calling emergency services is often the worst medical option for nursing home residents, and antithetical to what they actually desire, said Berlinger, who wasnt involved in the study. Yet, without clear and authoritative instructions indicating an alternative, that is likely to happen, she told Reuters Health. In those cases, first responders get little clarity from staff or medical records, she added. For the new report, Georgina Murphy-Jones of the London Ambulance Service NHS Trust and Stephen Timmons of the University of Nottingham interviewed six London-based paramedics about challenges they face in nursing homes. The paramedics often had trouble understanding nursing home residents wishes, according to Murphy-Jones and Timmons. When a patient no longer had the capacity for decision-making, paramedics found it challenging to balance patients best interests with pressure from nursing staff, patients relatives and colleagues. Records of patients wishes were rare and generally restricted to resuscitation preferences. One paramedic reported, The care notes would tell me what medication shes on and what type of cancer if you are lucky. The paramedics wanted to act in patients perceived best interests, but others interests often come into play. One paramedic who arranged for a patient to be treated at the nursing home rather than transported to a hospital felt the staff were unhappy because it meant they had to provide one-to-one care and actually look after someone dying. Another recalled a typical scenario when relatives oppose the patients preferences: So if shes ill and she says she wants to stay at home and the family want her in and I think shes sick enough to go in, she goes in, even though she said she wants to stay. Kevin Biese, who leads the American Geriatrics Societys emergency medicine collaborative, told Reuters Health that the choice to transport a nursing home resident to the hospital can be a life and death decision. Transfer increases the risk of delirium, functional decline and death, he said. The reason to go the hospital is to get a therapeutic intervention helpful to the patient and consistent with the patients wishes, said Biese, of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine. But Biese doesnt blame facility staff. I am sympathetic to what a hard position they are put in, he said. For cultural reasons, for liability reasons and for lack of resources, it is really hard for nurses at nursing homes in the U.S. to keep patients at the facility. Biese and Berlinger both said Americans near the end of life have an advantage that the UK patients in this study did not. In most states, patients can have their doctors fill out a POLST form, for Physician Orders for Life Sustaining Treatment. For those who are seriously ill, advance directives are not enough, said Susan Tolle, director of the Oregon Health and Science University Center for Ethics in Health Care. Patients nearing the end of their lives who wish to set limits on treatments need to turn preferences into action with orders on a POLST, Tolle, who wasnt involved in the new study, told Reuters Health. Theresa Sanderson, administrator of the West Hartford Health and Rehabilitation Center, told Reuters Health that because the study involved just a few paramedics, it cant be considered true evidence. At her 160-bed facility, We do not have situations where paramedics are the decision-makers, said Sanderson, who is a member of the American College of Health Care Administrators. We have educated our staff about the very real impact of transfer trauma, she said. We want patients to stay at home and be treated in place. Its important for all nursing homes to clarify residents preferences regarding resuscitation and intubation, Berlinger said. Even more important: a facilitated discussion of values and goals that can be transcribed into instructions for every employee. It is owed to the patient, the family and to that aide at three oclock in the morning, Berlinger said. It is owed to the paramedic. The authors of the study were unable to respond to a request for comment by deadline. SOURCE: http://bit.ly/25RQD6k Emergency Medical Journal, online May 17, 2016.
PARIS  Paris Coproduction Village, a three-year old sibling of Les Arcs confab, rolled out a slew of festival-friendly, crossover, international projects carried by filmmakers and producers with a track record in the festival circuit.

Macedonian helmer Teona Strugar Mitevskas God Exists, her Name is Petrunija, New-York-based Ghanaian director Frances Bodomos Afronauts and Brazilian director Aly Muritibas Blood Drenched Beard were among the most buzzed-about projects pitched at the three-day showcase, which runs alongside the Champs-Elysees Film Festival.

Headed by Pierre-Emmanuel Fleurantin, the team behind Les Arcs Coproduction Village has leveraged its vast network of industry professionals and topnotch scouting team to harvest 12 fresh projects for its Paris confab out of the 290 submissions.

There is a plethora of a co-production forum out there so finding original projects with strong concept as well as a definite commercial and international appeal is key to make the cut through the clutter. It worked at Les Arcs and it looks like its working here, said Fleurantin, who is working side by side with head of industry Jeremy Zelnik, general manager Guillaume Calop and manager Alice Guilbaud, to put together the three-day confab whose goal is to place French sales agents and co-producers on international projects.

Zelnik said the selection committee also consulted with various industry players including sales agents to pick the right projects.

A female-driven feature set in Macedonia, God Exists follows a 31-year-old single, unemployed woman whose victory at a national contest traditionally dominated by men causes protests from authorities and widespread uproar. Taking place over 24 hours, the plot revolves around the young womans rebellion against prejudice and her countrys collapsed social and judicial system.

Mitevska is one the most established helmers attending the confab: God Exists marks her fifth film. Her credits include The Woman Who Brushed Off Her Tears, which world premiered at Berlin in the panorama section. God Exists is being produced by Sisters and Brother Mitveski Production.

Story continues

Blood Drenched Beard, a thriller drama, follows a young man on a dangerous journey to uncover the mysterious death of his grandfather in a Garopaba, a sleepy and eery beach resort in Brazil. An up-and-coming director, Muritiba made his directorial debut with To My Beloved premiered at San Sebastian in the Horizontes Latinos last year, and had his short Tarantula premiere at Venice. Sophie Mas at Brazil-based RT Features is producing.

Blood Drenched Beard is a project that can reach a wide audience well beyond genre fans; it also has potential to thrive in secondary markets, said Zelnik, adding that the movie was carried by a fairly well-established producer of critically-acclaimed films such as Frances Ha, Night Moves and Love Is Strange.

Inspired by true events, Afronauts takes place in the aftermath of the Zambian independence in 1965 when an ingenious group of villagers built a homemade rocket in a bid to join the space race. Afronauts, which made it into Sundances writers lab, directors lab and editors lab, is the feature spinoff of Bodomos short by the name that played at top festivals, including Sundance, Berlinale and AFI. Bodomo last participated in Collective: Unconscious, an omnibus feature that played at SXSW. Afronauts is being produced by Ryan Zacarias, whose slate includes A Ciambra  Jonas Carpignanos follow-up to Mediterranea  and Matt Porterfields Sollers Point.

Filipino director Lav Diaz, another vet helmer attending the Parisian forum, presented When the Waves Are Gone, a film-noir-meets-revenge-thriller that turned out to be a highlight. Produced by Manila-based Epicedia Productions, Waves turns on a man who spent 30 years in prison for robbing a bank and is out to take his revenge on his former accomplice, who escaped jail and ran out to an island with the cash. Diaz last directed A Lullaby to the Sorrowful Mystery which competed at Berlin and won the Silver Bear.

The Paris Coproduction Village turned the spotlight on Colombia with a selection of three projects and a roundtable on French-Colombian co-productions. Alfonso Acostas Almost Never Too Late proved the most popular of the three titles. Set in war-torn Bogota in 1989, Almost Never Too Late centers on a rebellious teenager who becomes the prime suspect of the murder of his high-school principal. Acosta made his directorial debut with the horror pic The Crack, which played at a string of festivals, notably Busan.

Turkey was also represented at the Paris showcase with Derya Durmazs The Bus to Amerika, a tale about an Iraqi boy living with his family in a refugee camp in Turkey who runs away after committing a sin. Durmaz, who is producing with Neves Polat at Mars Production, said the story tackles serious social and political issues in a playful way as its told from the childs perspective.

Sales agents are keeping a close eye of the selection at Les Arcs and Paris, considering the many projects that went on to earn critical acclaim and festival prizes. Just this year, Laszlo Nemes Son of Saul won the foreign-language Oscar, while Dogs and Wolf and Sheep won awards at Canness Un Certain Regard and Directors Fortnight, respectively.

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'Look Up,' 'Lost Wolves,' 'Pirate of Love' Stand Out at Paris Coproduction Village

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White, straight men have it easiest in Hollywood  and actress Patricia Clarkson isn't letting them forget it. In an interview with the Guardian on her upcoming film Learning to Drive, Clarkson said she wants to put white male actors in a time-out for often failing to check their privilege.

"A white male actor should never be allowed to complain about anything," she said. "Shut up and sit in the corner. I mean, seriously!"

Clarkson specifically called out Game of Thrones actor Kit Harington, who claimed in May that he's a victim of reverse sexism. At the time, he pointed out what he called a sexist "double standard" in the industry  but said that it is one that affects men just as acutely as it does women. Clarkson's advice to him? Get over it.

"You have an amazing career and you're on a hot show," said Clarkson. "Take your shirt off."

Clarkson said female actresses only have a handful of role types to choose from and they usually rely on sexist stereotypes. As a 56-year-old woman, Clarkson said Hollywood sees her most fit to play "desexed, matronly" parts.

"These archetypal older women in movies can sometimes make my skin crawl," she said. "It's about the one dimension, it's about the lack of any texture."

For any male actor whose feelings Clarkson may have hurt (we're looking at you, Henry Cavill), it's unlikely the actress will offer any apologies. Of her life choices, Clarkson told the Guardian, "I probably should have more regrets. But I don't."

Dragging men included.
Patrick Stewart is sitting on the veranda of a 19th Century Louisiana plantation house. Its his home from home as he shoots an as-yet untitled Wolverine sequel (as the world now knows, he says). Hes returning once more to play Charles Xavier, the X-Men role that confirmed a spot on the A-list he has singularly failed to vacate in the 16 years since. He was always a household name, of course, thanks to Star Trek: The Next Generation, which ran seven years from 1987. And even that show qualified as a late-career frivolity, really, when you consider the serious CV he brought to Gene Roddenberrys sci-fi western thanks to his time with the Royal Shakespeare Company and the National Theatre in the UK.

All of this to say: Patrick Stewart comes to any new role with rather excellent baggage. It is the kind of baggage any actor would be proud of: filled with critical and commercial success and the sort of admiration that defies indifference, let alone negativity. There cant be many admirers of the arts who dont have a favored Patrick Stewart role.

So where do you go when youre an international treasure? In Stewarts case, brilliantly, to Blunt Talk, a show that was concocted for him by Seth MacFarlane (with whom hed worked on Family Guy and American Dad!) and created and written by Jonathan Ames (Bored to Death). It is everything youd imagine Patrick Stewart would refuse: full of drug-taking, weirdness and a no-holds barred bacchanalia best avoided in polite company.

Instead, says Stewart, I am enjoying my work as much as Ive ever enjoyed it in my life. He met with MacFarlane for lunch after the latters Oscar hosting stint. I said to him, Youre out of your mind. Youll either be in handcuffs, or youll be paralytic in bed. But he showed up and said, Listen, Id like to see you in a half-hour comedy.

Stewart had done funny, thanks to MacFarlane and the likes of Ricky Gervais, who cast him as a horny version of himself in Extras. But I had never done anything like this, he recalls. Indeed, Blunt Talks first set piece involves Stewarts Walter Blunta Brit-import news personalityrescuing a girl who turns out to be a prostitute in his car late at night. He responds sweetly to her offer of a date, and doesnt balk when she reveals shes a transsexual. Its not the way this type of scene has historically played out. Walter can be obnoxious, but its only because hes so passionate about the things he cares for, notes Stewart. The things that go wrong for him, and the comedy crises that happen, are all linked to Walters passionate desire to be a serious investigative journalist and make the world a better place.

Story continues

As he discusses Blunt Talkand especially its upcoming second season, for which hes being sent assembly edits as he shoots Wolverineits hard not to recall the Stewart of Extras, in which he patiently explains his idea for a film about a man with a superpower for making womens clothes fall off. I dont think Im giving anything away by telling you this, he says, kindly, but continuing through all 10 episodes is a story about the vexed and corrupt water situation in Los Angeles. Walter is pursuing this to make Los Angeles a better place, but of course along the way he gets into all kinds of scrapes, and gets into drag, as well. We English love getting into womens clothes, dont we? And that was my first, can you believe it? In a 56-year career, that was the first time I ever put on a skirt and high heels.

Hes on a roll, now, animated with delight at the retelling of this story. I found it terrific fun. Its quite changing in the way it makes one feel, though the biggest problem was the four-inch heels. I took them home for a weekend and my poor wife, Sunny, had to tolerate me tottering around the house so I could get used to walking normally in them.

Its one of many new experiences this veteran of stage and screen has found on the Blunt Talk set. From the surreal, to the mundane, like (and this may sound odd to you) a police interrogation scenethe kind thats been the hallmark of drama, especially on television, for as long as Stewart has been performing, just never with him. And my first post-coital scene, which I was lucky to share with the beautiful and brilliant Elisabeth Shue.

Part of the fun has been the company he keeps, especially since Stewarts heavy investment in the conception of the show meant he was able to bring aboard friends like Adrian Scarborough, who plays Walters former Falklands War compatriot and manservant Harry. Hes Englands best kept secret, Stewart says proudly. Hes known in England, and all the professional directors there know him well and know the quality of his work, but what is exciting is that hes entirely unknown in America. People are seeing his brilliant work for the first time.

Theres a clear parallel with Stewart, who might have been known a little for his work in I, Claudius and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy before the Star Trek juggernaut hit, but who had not until then become a recognizable face for most American audiences. I remember our executive producer on Star Trek, Robert Justmanwho had been responsible for me getting the jobsaying to me, the week that our pilot aired, You do realize that more people watched you on television this week than have seen you in your entire career? It was a sobering, but exciting thought.

Blunt Talk is Stewarts first major TV lead since Trek, whose fans will be delighted by the appearance of Brent Spiner at Walters regular piano bar. He had the most challenging role through the whole series on Star Trek, says Stewart, and he never got a nomination for any acting award. So much of Blunt Talk, in fact, is drawn from Stewart, that the juxtaposition with Walters insanity is all the more amusing. Daniel Stewart, Patricks son, plays Walters son; Walter has a penchant for reeling off Shakespearean monologues; and the personal memorabilia that decorates his officeincluding a torch-bearers jersey from the 2012 London Olympicsis largely on loan from Stewarts own collection.

We actually had to take down the Olympic uniform, Stewart whispers, conspiratorially. As it turns out, you cant link Olympic images with anything else that might be considered bad taste.

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Seth MacFarlane Taps Jason Clark As President Of His Fuzzy Door Company
Paul Ryan on ABC

House Speaker Paul Ryan said in an interview set to air Sunday that he privately explained to Donald Trump exactly how he felt about recent attacks the presumptive Republican presidential nominee has launched on a federal judge.

"I have, and I've explained exactly what I thought about that comment. I said it publicly, and I said it privately," Ryan told ABC News anchor George Stephanopoulos in a clip of the interview.

A spokesperson for Ryans office told Business Insider that Trump called Ryan and the two had a conversation about the comments.

The Manhattan billionaire has repeatedly said US District Court Judge Gonzalo Curiel's Mexican heritage made him unfit to oversee cases involving Trump University. Trump argued there was a conflict of interest because he favors building a wall and Curiel's parents are from Mexico. Curiel is an American and was born in Indiana.

Ryan has tried to move Trump away from such comments and more toward a policy-oriented campaign.

"Look, we want to offer the country a clear and compelling choice so that we can earn a mandate from the nation to fix our country's problems, and those kind of comments get in the way of that kind of dialogue we need to have with our fellow citizens, the Wisconsin Republican told ABC.

Stephanopoulos asked Ryan about whether Trump understands the backlash his comments about the judge have caused.

WATCH: "It needed to be condemned." @SpeakerRyan says he personally called Trump about controversial judge remarks. https://t.co/S8jj7Qi2Aq  Good Morning America (@GMA) June 10, 2016

"I don't know the answer to that question," Ryan said. "Getting over that kind of a comment is not, that's, no  this is something that needed to be condemned.

"That comment is beyond the pale," he added. "That's not political correctness. Suggesting that a person can't do their job because of race or ethnicity, that's not a politically incorrect thing to do  that's just a wrong thing to say."

Story continues

Retired neurosurgeon and former 2016 presidential contender Ben Carson said in an interview published Friday that Trump privately acknowledged that his attacks on Curiel's heritage were wrong.

Trump may have seen some of the backlash against his remarks in the latest Fox News national poll. The real estate mogul dipped six percentage points from last month, trailing Democratic rival Hillary Clinton 42% to 39%.

NOW WATCH: 'The textbook definition of a racist comment': Paul Ryan disavows Trump's attacks on a federal judge





More From Business Insider


By Umesh Desai and Bernardo Vizcaino

HONG KONG/SYDNEY, June 10 (Reuters) - Plans by the Philippines to sell Islamic bonds could open a new source of financing for the incoming government of Rodrigo Duterte, but its success may depend on how generous Manila is on pricing and Middle East investors' response to new entrants in the market.

Governments across Asia are increasingly viewing sukuk as a viable funding option, with Hong Kong open to tap the market for a third time while Sri Lanka and the Maldives consider debuts.

The Philippines' incoming finance minister is looking at raising debt via sukuk and yuan borrowings to diversify its debt profile, but has yet to firm up plans.

A sukuk from these debutante countries could help widen a market that is dominated in Asia by sovereign deals from Malaysia and Indonesia, with Gulf region investors traditionally favouring investment-grade paper from familiar names.

"The Philippines would be a welcome addition to the global sukuk universe, offering another investment grade opportunity with differentiated credit fundamentals from many of the oil exporting sovereigns active today," said Dino Kronfol, chief investment officer of global sukuk at Franklin Templeton Investments.

Hong Kong's sukuk drew heavy demand due to its AAA credit rating, though lower commodity prices have impacted investor appetite from oil-dependent economies.

But Sri Lanka and the Philippines are no strangers to sukuk, having discussed the format over the past few years and investor appetite remains, said Mohamad Safri Shahul Hamid, deputy chief executive officer of Malaysia's CIMB Islamic Bank.

"Some Islamic accounts have looked at the Philippines for some time and they would be quick to jump in. Sri Lanka is an interesting play and Middle East investors have asked about them as well."

Importantly, the Philippines could avoid paying a premium for sukuk given it is a recurrent bond issuer, emulating dual issuers like Turkey and Indonesia that have priced their sukuk within or below their conventional curves, he added.

Story continues

In February, the Philippines sold $2 billion worth of dollar-denominated bonds at a record low rate of 3.7 percent. The 25-year bond attracted orders in excess of $8 billion.

The sukuk market could benefit from new names: Year-to-date issuance totals $27.9 billion through 254 deals globally, down from $33.7 billion through 310 deals a year earlier, according to Zawya, a Thomson Reuters company.

The Duterte government would have to work on a legal framework to facilitate sukuk, which could prove difficult in a busy agenda for the incoming government, said Vicky Muenzer-Jones, partner in the Singapore office of Norton Rose Fulbright.

"Besides regulatory issues, the government will also have to decide what structure works best."

Despite such concerns, interest is growing in the region to use sukuk for infrastructure financing, said Ashraf Mohammed, Assistant General Counsel and Practice Leader of Islamic Finance at the Asian Development Bank.

There are also new laws being drafted that would help promote Islamic finance domestically and this would further encourage sukuk issuance, said Mohammed.

"A bill put forward in the last assembly, before the elections, is expected to be tabled again in the new assembly." (Editing by Kim Coghill)
From Esquire

(Permanent Musical Accompaniment To This Post)

Being our semi-regular weekly survey of what's goin' down in the several states where, as we know, the real work of governmentin' gets done, and where it wasn't me who made him fall so no, you can't blame me at all.

Let's start by cheering on Ohio Governor John Kasich for boldly stepping into the suburbs of 2016 by signing a law that puts Ohio on the, ahem, high side of medical marijuana. Before we cheer too loudly, though, let's acknowledge that Kasich is doing his usual two-step-signing the bill without saying whether or not he approves of what the bill actually does. As Cincinnati.com tells us, Kasich is acting out of what he tells the country relentlessly is the goodness of his heart.

Those suffering from epilepsy, chronic pain and the side effects of cancer treatments could soon be able to treat their pain with marijuana. Despite years of delays and opposition, state lawmakers passed a plan in May to legalize medical marijuana for those with a doctor's referral. Groups working to place a rival medical marijuana proposal on the fall ballot put pressure on legislators, but ultimately dropped their efforts after the lawmakers approved a plan. Kasich was quiet about whether he supported legalizing medical marijuana, saying only that he would follow doctors' recommendations and wanted to help children in pain. But he ultimately signed the bill, which will take effect in 90 days.

It is one of the fundamental principles of the shebeen not to criticize a good thing because it was done for the wrong reason, so a fairly good-sized huzzah to Governor Kasich for taking at least the risk he did.

OK, that's it for the compliments. Let's get on the bus to Batshit Junction now.

We begin in Philadelphia, where He, Trump has lost the vital straw poll to huge faux animals that blow confetti out of their snouts. Philadelphia Magazine has the results.

Story continues

Public Policy Polling, a liberal-leaning polling firm that was judged the most accurate in 2012, recently polled Pennsylvania voters. And PPP found that citizens of the Keystone State find the Phillie Phanatic to be more qualified to be president than Donald Trump. It wasn't all that close, either: Forty-six percent of Pennsylvania voters surveyed said the Phillie Phanatic was more qualified to be president than Trump, with 40 percent saying they felt Trump was more qualified than the giant, green fuzzy mascot who doesn't talk. Fourteen percent said they weren't sure. Weren't sure.

More proof, as if we needed any, that most people who tell pollsters that they are "undecided" are liars.

Let's skip on down to Alabama, where another federal judge has told another group of retrograde lawmakers to pound sand. It seems that some people simply are never going to learn to leave well enough alone. Per AL.com:

U.S. District Judge Callie V. Granade, who is based in Mobile, issued the permanent injunction Tuesday in the case of Strawser v. Alabama, one of the lawsuits filed by same-sex couples around the state seeking marriage equality. The permanent injunction binds all Alabama probate judges and others "who would seek to enforce the marriage laws of Alabama that prohibit or fail to recognize same-sex marriage."

I'll bet you're saying right now, gee, I wonder what Alabama Supreme Court Judge Roy Moore is thinking, up there in the belfry as he hangs upside down by his feet. Glad you asked. He's being quiet because some people got offended when he marched off to Bull Run in his head again.

The charges against Moore stem from a complaint by the Southern Poverty Law Center regarding Moore's administrative order in January telling state probate judges that the state's marriage laws banning same-sex marriage are still enforceable.

Yeah, that argument passed its sell-by date at least three times since 1863.

We roll on up to Iowa, which we've missed greatly since we all were allowed to stop caring about it again last January. According to this dude who was interviewed by CNBC, some Republican folks in Iowa are so displeased with the prospect of voting for a vulgar talking yam that they're doing some vulgar talking their own selves.

Spiker agrees that the nation is at a crossroads, but says anti-Trump forces won't be silenced. "He is unfit for the Oval Office, and you are continuing to see that over and over again." Spiker said. "There has to be a bottom to this pit. But there is only so much dog s--- to choke down."

Those of us who passed Middle Earth looking for the bottom of this pit at least two years ago would like to wish Mr. Spiker luck in his quest. I hope he brought his own oxygen.

Just over the border in Minnesota, meanwhile, there's this state legislator guy who is tired of being squelched by the forces of political correctness, dammit, and he's not going to take it any more. (Perhaps He, Trump's only lasting political effect is going to be unleashing idiots like this guy.) People who get made dead by cops generally deserve to get made dead, and he's not ashamed to say it in The Minneapolis Star-Tribune. Some of Rep. Cornish's advice can be summed up by the phrase, "Hey, don't do crimes," but a couple of the others sound just a tadoh, what's the word?...oh, yeah, racist as hell.

Don't be a thug and lead a life of crime so that you come into frequent contact with police.

(Don't be one of Those People whom the cops believe are living a "life of crime.")

Don't hang out on the street after 2 a.m. Go home.

(It gets dark. We can't see you. Of course, this is just a shot in the dark.)

Don't make furtive movements or keep your hands in your pockets if told to take them out.

(Furtive movements are in the eye of the beholderwith a gun. Know this.)

Don't flap your jaws when the police arrive. Don't disobey the requests of the police at the time. If you think you are wrongfully treated, make the complaint later.

(If you are, in fact, still alive.)

This is my favorite bit, though, as Representative Cornish becomes the Sixth Yorkshireman and explains that he had to go live in the lake.

I was born and raised on a farm, dirt-poor, with eight other kids. My grandpa served time in Stillwater State Prison. My dad only made it through eighth grade, and none of us nine kids has ever received a college degree. We didn't use that as an excuse to turn to crime. Here endeth the lesson. No charge.

There are 332 people living in Vernon Center and 98 percent of them are white, at least according to the last census, so Tony knows what's what. I wonder when his grampa got out of stir, though.

And we conclude, as is our custom, in the great stare of Oklahoma, where Blog Official Rainwater sommelier Friedman of the Plains brings us one of those things that cannot possibly go wrong, as described by the gang at OklahomaWatch.org.

The portable card scanners are designed to be carried in law enforcement vehicles, allow troopers to freeze and seize money loaded onto a prepaid debit card, and to return money to an account whose funds were seized or frozen. The vehicle-mounted scanners are also capable of retrieving and storing limited account information from other cards as well, such as banking debit cards, credit cards and "payment account information from virtually any magnetic stripe card," according to the website and patent documents of the device manufacturer, Texas-based ERAD Group Inc. ERAD stands for Electronic Recovery and Access to Data.

Don't worry, though, because, as we know, in Oklahoma, the "war" on drugs is not the corruption fiesta that it has become in virtually every other jurisdiction in the world.

The card readers will not be used to randomly swipe motorists' gift or prepaid cards, Vincent said, but only in cases in which the trooper suspects criminal activity is taking place. The device logs which trooper is using the device when a card is swiped. "If we have reasonable suspicion to believe there's a crime being committed, we're going to investigate that. If someone has 300 cards taped up and hidden inside the dash of a vehicle, we're going to check that," Vincent said. "But if the person has proof that it belongs to him for legitimate reasons, there's nothing going to happen. We won't seize it."

And I am the Tsar of all the Russias.

This is your democracy, America. Cherish it.

Click here to respond to this post on the official Esquire Politics Facebook page.
New York (AFP) - They were among the heroes of the September 11, 2001 attacks, the first responders who rushed to the World Trade Center site to search for survivors.

But they worked mostly in anonymity.

Now, photographer Andrea Booher pays tribute to the men and women who toiled at "the pile," with a showcase of her work in the "Hope at Ground Zero" exhibition opening Friday at the National September 11 Memorial and Museum which now occupies the site in downtown New York. It runs through May 2017.

"In the beginning it was firefighters, volunteers, search and rescue, police. Everybody had sort of a different approach to how they were searching for survivors," she said. "The only goal was trying to find survivors in the pile."

Booher, a photographer for the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), had arrived at the site the evening of September 11 and was assigned along with colleague Michael Rieger to document the aftermath of the deadliest terror attack on US soil.

She ended up staying two and a half months.

"I really felt that it was an incredible honor but it was a lot of responsibility," she said. "I pushed myself to my limit workwise and in every aspect."

In the early days, the work was frantic as rescuers searched for survivors.

But around September 20, "I showed up at the site. Nobody said anything, but it was just like this very depressing feeling, very heavy feeling at the site," Booher said.

"It was kind of rainy, and it was just... there was no energy. You had just the feeling that it was over, that the hope was gone. We weren't going to bring (out) anyone else. It kind of switched to a recovery mission at that point."

Twenty people were found alive in the rubble, the last one September 12. In all, the attack in New York claimed 2,753 victims.

- "The best in humanity" -

Booher, a veteran of many major disasters, initially had access to the World Trade Center site but not the pile that was the remains of the Twin Towers.

Story continues

But over time, the firefighters who were running the site began to trust Booher and Rieger after seeing them working "every day, all hours."

The firefighters, who lost hundreds of their comrades in the attack, noticed that the pair always put their cameras down and didn't take photos when bodies were recovered, out of respect.

"So there was a certain trust that was built up. That was why we were able to gain access to the pile. There was this bond," she said.

Her subjects posed amid grotesque tangles of giant steel beams, alone or in groups, with blackened faces like those of coal miners.

"To this day, I have that bond with so many of the people that are in those photographs," Booher said, noting that she and Rieger later sent more than 600 CDs of images to the people they met. "We keep in touch, we check on each other."

"Most people think of disaster as just this traumatic experience, but ... as horrific as it was you also saw this incredibly human side of people come forward," she said. "I think it's when you see the best in humanity."
Among many obstacles to the Wests effort to stop the carnage in Syria and alleviate the refugee crisis, probably the largest and the hardest to overcome is a colossal disjoint in the depth and breadth of commitment to the conflict between the United States and Russia.

There is little mystery as to the level of interest on the U.S. side. Despite what you might hear, for the Obama administration, Syria is but an annoying contingency, forced on the White House by circumstances, and with no consonance whatsoever with the presidents strategic agenda. For Vladimir Putin, it is an important part of a long-term ideological and geopolitical project, rooted in deeply held beliefs, a self-imposed personal mission, and domestic political imperatives of his regimes survival.

The Russian president is not the easiest man to read. They have taught him well in the KGB Intelligence School and the Yuri Andropov Red Banner Institute (formerly the Foreign Intelligence Academy). But after 16 years of policymaking, there are at least two interrelated tenets in Putins credo we can be fairly certain of:

1. The end of the Cold War was Russias equivalent of the Versailles Treaty for Germany  a source of endless humiliation and misery. The demise of the Soviet Union, in Putins words, was the greatest geopolitical tragedy of the 20th century.

2. The overarching strategic agenda of any truly patriotic Russian leader (not an idiot or a traitor or both, as Putin almost certainly views Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin) is to recover and repossess the political, economic, and geostrategic assets lost by the Soviet state.

And so, not surprisingly, after his return to the Kremlin in 2012 after place-holding by his former aide Dmitry Medvedev, Putin turned sharply to the recovery of geopolitical assets, that is, the foreign policy part of the doctrine.

There was also a powerful domestic political imperative for this pivot to an activist foreign policy. Because of the countrys toxic investment climate, economic growth was slowing down even with oil prices at historic highs. Russian economists inside and outside the government warned that the Russian economy would no longer deliver the 8 to 10 percent growth in real incomes, as it had between 2000 and 2008, securing Putins astronomic popularity. In the words of Putins personal friend, former Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance Alexei Kudrin, the economy had hit an institutional wall.

Story continues

Although Russia recorded the highest annual oil revenues in its history between 2010 and 2014, increases in the countrys gross domestic product grew progressively smaller, capital flight intensified, and investment came to a standstill. Public opinion polls consistently revealed peoples perception of the authorities at every level as deeply corrupt, callous, and incompetent. Most troubling for the regime, Putins popularity, which was and continues to be the foundation of the regimes legitimacy, dropped by almost one-third between 2008 and 2011.

Kudrin called for a change of the countrys economic model. This is Putins nightmare: Gorbachevs perestroika  an effort at economic liberalization  led to an uncontrollable political crisis and regime collapse.

Unwilling, therefore, to undertake liberalizing institutional reforms, Putin made probably the most fateful decision of his political career: He began to shift the foundation of his, and thus the regimes, support and legitimacy from economic progress and the steady growth of incomes to what might be called patriotic mobilization.

The new policy rests on two interlocking propaganda meta-narratives. One, that the West  first and foremost the United States  unhappy that Russia is rising from its knees, has declared war on Moscow in order to preserve their diktat in world affairs. Two, although threatened on all sides by implacable enemies, Russia has nothing to fear so long as Putin is at the helm: Not only will he protect the motherland, he will recover the Soviet Unions status of being feared and therefore respected again. On national television, where an overwhelming majority of Russians get their news, foreign policy has become a mesmerizing kaleidoscope of breathtaking initiatives and brilliant successes.

There followed the annexation of Crimea and the hybrid war in Ukraine.

A patriotic fervor at the sight of the motherland besieged yet somehow victorious, mightily shaping world events while acting as a moral and strategic counterweight to the United States, has obscured for millions of Russians the increasingly bleak economic reality and repression of dissent. As the great Russian poet Mikhail Lermontov put it in the poem Ismail-Bey, Yes, I am a slave but I am a slave of the master of the Universe!

Putin has saddled the tiger of patriotic fervor and made it trot at his command. The problem with this mode of transportation is that the tiger requires more meat, and the bloodier the better.

Thus when the war in Ukraine began to lose much of its propaganda flesh, Putin turned to Syria. On Oct. 20, 2015, in the Kremlin and on national television, Putin shook hands with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad  and overnight Syria replaced Ukraine as Russias main battlefield. Assad, as a New York Times reporter in Moscow put it, was lionized on Russian television. The survival of the old Soviet Unions client, under deadly fire from the pro-democracy opposition and the Islamic State, became a domestic political imperative.

Given these stakes, it is no surprise that Russias presence in Syria is open-ended  and allocated as many resources as necessary to accomplish its objectives.

Hence, Russias so-called withdrawal from Syria amounted to little more than maintenance rotation and operational adjustment. In the words of the former head of the Russian Air Force, Gen. Vladimir Mikhailov, We are not withdrawing all our forces [from Syria] but only the ones we dont particularly need for the present state of the operation. And such personnel and military hardware that has been taken out, could, as Putin put it, be returned in a matter of hours. Russia continues to provide Assads army with close air support and precision strikes, including with Iskander tactical missiles, artillery support, intelligence, and targeting.

It is in this context that we must view the utter futility of President Barack Obamas calls to Putin and Secretary of State John Kerrys trips to Moscow in search of common ground. Its worse than useless. Played ad nauseam on Russian state television, every such call, every clink of champagne glasses with Obama at the U.N. General Assembly, every visit by Kerry, boosts the regimes domestic legitimacy. If the leaders of the United States  which is ultimately the only nation that counts to Russians (just as it was in the Soviet days)  call you, come to see you, beg you, then surely it reaffirms that you are the most important nation in the world. It does not matter what they [Putin and Obama] talked about nor what was the result, wrote a leading independent Russian political analyst. More important is that they themselves call ours [Putin].

The media have feasted on Kerry thanking Putin for the privilege of being in his, that is Putins, presence, as he did at the news conference after his trip to the presidents Black Sea residence in Sochi last year. Russian TV replays Putin slapping Kerry on the shoulder and addressing the U.S. secretary of state as ty  which is the informal you, used to address close friends  but also children and subordinates.

And then there is the bizarre charade of the Ceasefire Task Force of the International Syria Support Group. Meeting most recently in Vienna, this august gathering of foreign ministers tied itself in knots over the strikes by Assads planes on Syrian cities and the inability to deliver humanitarian aid. All the while, sitting next to Kerry was the groups co-chair, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, whose president could stop the carnage with a 30-second phone call to Assad. Instead, Russian planes, along with Syrian bombers  supplied, maintained, and targeted by Russian forces  are reducing Syrias largest city, Aleppo, to Stalingrad-like rubble, just as Putin did to Chechnyas capital, Grozny, in 1999-2000.

In Syria, the West wants peace. But Putin needs victory. And so it will look like this: The secular, pro-Western opposition will be either decimated or forced to disarm as part of a U.S.-Russian peace process. The West will be confronted with the repugnant choice between Assad and a combination of the Islamic State and the Nusra Front, an al Qaeda affiliate. And so Assads regime will survive. Meanwhile, Russia will be restored to the Soviet Unions position as an indispensable international player and key actor in the Middle East.

Make no mistake, Putin will stay and fight until these goals are achieved  unless the costs of the campaign exceed it benefits. And right now, thats extremely unlikely given the Obama administrations views on the Russian involvement. As Kerry put it at the end of March, I see no threat whatsoever to the fact that Russia has some additional foundation in a Syria, where we dont want a base, where we are not looking for some kind of a long-term presence. For Putin, the war in Syria is low-risk, high-reward  and there is little chance that Washington has any ability or desire to tip the scales in the other direction. And Europe already seems to be agonizing about the sanctions imposed in the wake of Russias annexation of Crimea and the proxy war on Ukraine.

Russia is playing chess in Syria. To say that the United States is playing checkers would be to grossly overestimate the intellectual, moral, and military commitment. Tic-tac-toe is about right.

Photo credit: ALEXEY NIKOLSKY/AFP/Getty Images
Like people, animals often find themselves in need of protection and aid, whether it's crossing the road or just being too frightened to be left alone.

The animal kingdom is filled with creatures left helpless in certain situations and some of the men and women in blue have been there to lend a helping human hand.

Read: Seagull Falls Into Curry and Turns Orange

InsideEdition.com takes a look at some heartwarming stories of officers who have gone the extra mile for a fellow creature of the Earth.

Mother Goose Asks Cop To Help Untangle Baby From Balloon String

(YouTube)

In May, a mother goose in Ohio personally sought out the help of the Cincinnati Police Department when one of her goslings was tangled in a balloon string.

Cincinnati Police Sergeant James Givens told InsideEdition.com: I was sitting in a patrol car in a parking lot, I heard something pecking on the side of the door and I looked down and I thought the goose was hungry. I was eating a bagel and I tossed it a piece but it didnt have any. It walked in front of me so I followed it and it took me to its baby that was tangled in rope.

Givens, who has served on the force for more than 25 years, is nearing retirement. Charron has been on the force for 24 years and said that was the most memorable moment of her career.

Its weird because it kept the distance and it kept the baby calm. Ive never seen anything like this before, Givens said. I said it must be a motherly instinct, the mother didnt attack her or nothing, seeing the thing run off that was the best part.

Florida Gator Holds Up Monday Morning Rush Hour Traffic

(Facebook)

An alligator was seen holding up traffic in Bernal and photographed by Mark Olson, a volunteer member of the Flagler County Sheriff's Office earlier this month.

The police believe the gator was going to a nearby water source and back to its natural habitat following a series of storms that struck the area over the weekend.

Story continues

When the corporal and Deputy Jonathon Duenas arrived on the scene, they called Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission who could not arrive for nearly an hour. So police blocked the eight-lane road in order to allow the animal to cross, which took about 30 seconds for it to get over.

Read: Horse Plays Dead, Becomes Internet Star

Olson snapped the photo to show his grandkids who will be visiting him in Florida soon from California. Yet, with how popular the photograph is getting on social media, they have probably already seen it.

Police Comfort Frightened Sloth After It Clings to Guardrail

(Facebook)

In January, a scared sloth was found clinging to a guardrail along an Ecuador roadway and needed to be comforted before it could remove itself.

The lazy critter had somehow made it to the middle of the road in the city of Quevedo, but then lost his way or became too frightened to continue.

When rescuers arrived, the sloth looked nothing but thankful.

Authorities were able to help the sloth off the poll and took it to a veterinarian to get checked out where it received a clean bill of health.

Gaggle of Geese Get Police Escort After Creating Freeway Traffic Jam

(Facebook)

On an early Sunday morning in May, a gaggle of geese created confusion across Californias Interstate 80 and caused a traffic jam that required a police escort so no one and no bird got hurt.

Highway Patrol troopers found the geese waddling in the westbound fast lane after they'd crossed the eastbound lanes and hopped over a three-foot high center divider and tried to get to a nearby pond.

"This isn't our first rodeo with felonious fowl," Officer Sean Wilkenfeld of the California Highway Patrol in Oakland told InsideEdition.com.

Traffic came to a standstill after officers briefly closed the freeway and were able to corral them onto the shoulder and "we pushed them to the off-ramp," Wilkenfeld said. It was obviously a spectacle. Everyone was stopping to look.

Read: Is This Video of Lions Attacking Hunters Real?

Since it's happened before, Wilkenfeld said, officers know that by turning on their loudspeakers and clicking their microphones, the geese will hightail it out of there.

Cop Refused to Leave Stray Puppys Side Following 12-Hour Shift

(Twitter)

A Florida policeman found an adorable puppy left on its own during his patrol of a Lakeland neighborhood last month and refused to let the canine be alone.

Officer Kareem Garibaldi tried in vain for three days to find the pit-bull-boxer mixs owner, even though he worked 12-hour shifts and often went home exhausted.

On the third day, the dedicated peace officer took the pup to the Florida SPCA to have it checked out. As they sat in the waiting room, both dozed off. Garibaldi waited three hours while the dog was examined. She had a few mites, but was otherwise healthy.

The dedicated cop took the pooch back to the station, where a dispatcher saw the dog and was love struck.

It finally found a new home with a new name: Hope.

Connecticut Cops Fawn Over Orphaned Deer Left at Precinct

(Facebook)

Hartford, Connecticut, police rescued a fawn last month after its mother was struck by a car, and the deer was embraced by the long arm of the law.

A citizen discovered the fawn lying next to its mother on the highway, and took the baby deer to the front door of the police department.

They later contacted Connecticuts Department of Energy and Environmental Protection and the fawn was taken to a rescue farm.

Read: Auto Tech Finds Raccoon Hiding in His Car Engine

Related Articles:
A Philadelphia woman is being held by Florida authorities after allegedly admitting to suffocating her 7-month-old son and 3-year-old daughter using a bed sheet, PEOPLE confirms.



Police in Miramar, Florida, say in a statement that Sophia Hines, 40, allegedly told detectives she held a bed sheet over her infant son's mouth, and, when he stopped moving, used the same sheet to smother her daughter.



Hines is being held without bail at the Broward County Jail, charged with two counts of premeditated murder. If convicted, she could be sentenced to death, law enforcement officials tell PEOPLE.



 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.



Prisoner records did not indicate whether Hines has legal representation. Hines has yet to stand before a judge to enter a plea to the charges against her.



According to police, Hines has offered no motive for the alleged killings, which police say occurred during a visit to a relative's home in Miramar, which is near Miami.



Detectives say Hines arrived a week ago with her two children. She called a relative on Wednesday, police say, and asked that they come to where she was staying.



The relative allegedly arrived to find Hines sobbing next to the children's bodies, which were laid on a bed, side-by-side, in a face-up position.



Police were summoned to the apartment where Hines had been staying. Attempts to revive the children failed, and medical officials declared them dead at the scene.



The names of the children have not been released.
PRAGUE (Reuters) - A plan to shake-up the Czech police to merge its anti-corruption units has split the centre-left coalition government and threatens to topple it more than a year before the election is due. The European Union country's three-party government has ruled since 2014 despite squabbles between Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka's Social Democrats and Finance Minister Andrej Babis, a billionaire businessman and founder of the ANO party. But a plan announced this week to create a national bureau by joining organised and economic crime units led to the resignation of the chief of the organised crime unit on Friday and angry exchanges among ministers in the media. The plan was proposed by the police president and backed by Interior Minister Milan Chovanec, a Social Democrat. Justice Minister Robert Pelikan, of ANO, has threatened to resign while Babis has not ruled out quitting the government and called the fight the coalition's most serious dispute to date. State prosecutors oppose the move, saying it would impact open cases and raise the risk of evidence being leaked. The Social Democrats say ANO is politicizing the issue and not respecting police independence. "The re-organisation of the police is an expert matter that is under the competence of the police and interior minister. I reject any attempts by ANO to politicize and destabilise the work of the police," Sobotka said on Friday. The parties will hold a coalition meeting next Wednesday. The new bureau would be charged with tackling organised crime, corruption, terrorism, cybercrime and serious economic crimes. Corruption in the political system has for years been top of the public agenda and attempts to tackle graft have had mixed results. The organised crime unit has had some success but it has also been criticised for arresting an aide to then-prime minister Petr Necas - whom he later married - in 2013 on suspicions of graft, leading to the collapse of his cabinet. Necas was later also charged in the case, but some of the allegations have been thrown out by courts and Necas has not been convicted of any crime to date. The anti-corruption drive has been the main factor fuelling the popularity of Babis's ANO party, whose name means "Action of Dissatisfied Citizens". His opponents say Babis, the biggest private employer in the country, should not be in politics because of a potential conflict of interest with his numerous business interests, spanning from farming and food processing to chemicals, fuels and the media. Every cabinet in the Czech Republic since 2002 has either switched prime ministers or fallen apart during its term. But thanks to low debt and strong institutions, the country maintains the best credit rating and lowest bond yields among central European neighbours. (Reporting by Jason Hovet; Editing by Jan Lopatka and Janet Lawrence)
The judge who presided over the sexual assault case against former Stanford University student Brock Turner is facing backlash from potential jurors in another trial, according to multiple reports.



At least 10 potential jurors in Santa Clara County are refusing to serve in Judge Aaron Persky's courtroom, citing the judge as a hardship, according to CBS.



Last Thursday Turner, a 20-year-old former Stanford University swimmer, was sentenced to six months in county jail for sexually assaulting an unconscious woman outside a fraternity party in January 2015. The sentence has drawn widespread criticism. Prosecutors had asked for six years.



Turner was convicted of three felony counts of sexual assault. He has admitted to the sexual contact but maintains it was consensual.



A Change.org petition to remove Persky has reached over one million signatures.



 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.



According to ABC News, the judge has been receiving abusive and threatening phone calls since news of the sentencing.



"I can't be here, I'm so upset," one juror told the judge, according to the San Jose Mercury News". Another prospective juror stood up and said, "I can't believe what you did."



In each case, the judge said, "I understand," and excused them from duty.



The sentence has created worldwide outrage after the survivor's emotional 12-page letter to Turner went viral. Persky was given a new six-year judicial term on Tuesday.
Credit: Ninja Hanna

Credit: Ninja Hanna

More great music from Sweden alert! Stockholm-based Elias shows off his powerful, purposeful vocals on Makin Me Happy, his voice hitting hard from the very start in a way thats reminiscent of P&P favorite Woodkid.

His background in the Tensta Gospel Choir, which has boasted a string Swedish breakout artists like Seinabo Sey, Lykke Li, and Mapei, explains that voice, but the production on this new song is excellent too. Starting slow, Elias tricks us into thinking this may be a slow ballad, but then the chorus hits, the drums and horns come in, and he takes us to church.

I wrote this song in the most depressing part of North Hollywood, Elias explains. The gloom of the place, and surrounding, brought me back to a certain place and situation where I did not want to be. I was sick of being a heartbroken disaster.

Makin Me Happy and previously released Down N Out are the first singles from Elias debut album, out in the fall of 2016.

TOUR DATES:

Jul 14 // Tnsberg, Norway @ Slottsfjell

Jul 15 // Dublin, Ireland @ Longitude Festival

Aug 6 // Cornbury, UK @ Wilderness Festival

Aug 11 // Haldern, Germany @ Haldern Pop

Aug 19 // Biddinghuizen, The Netherlands @ Lowlands Festival

Aug 20 // Hasselt, Belgium @ Pukkelpop Festival

Aug 21 // Hamburg, Germany @ Dockville Festival

Aug 26 // Stockholm, Sweden @ Popaganda

Aug 27 // Winterthurer, Switzerland @ Musikfestwochen Festival
From Esquire

It's hard to imagine what President Obama must be thinking during Election From Hell 2016. He could be worried about the future of this country. Or maybe he's just ready to be done with it-ready to wash his hands of the whole damn thing, move into that D.C. estate, send his daughter off to Harvard, grab a beer, and watch the whole thing go down engulfed in brilliant orange flames.

Yes, he's always been the cool president, but last night on The Tonight Show he seemed cooler than usual, unconcerned with the national embarrassment that is our political process. It was almost as if he was half thinking about that 8,200-square-foot $5.3 million mansion he'll be moving into come 2017.

Is Obama concerned that Donald Trump could succeed him as the President of the United States?

Hell no! He's still joking about it!

"Do you think the Republicans are happy with their choice?" Fallon asked.

"We are," Obama said. "But I don't know how they're feeling."

[Puts on sunglasses]

And when it comes to his own party, he's not really troubled by the growing divide between Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton supporters. He didn't seem to mind the anxiety among party supporters about the process through which the Democrats choose a candidate. He's probably the only Democrat in the country who hasn't picked a side in the Bernie/Clinton race.

"I've spoken to both Hillary and Bernie at certain points throughout the campaign. I don't know if they asked me for advice, but I give it anyway. It was a healthy thing for the Democratic party to have a contested primary. I thought that Bernie Sanders brought enormous energy and new ideas and he pushed the party and I thought it made Hillary a better candidate."

OK! So, he's gonna just brush off the terrifying popularity of a demagogue orange man, and he's just gonna keep out of the bitter race that's dividing his own party. Pretty chill!

Story continues

So what's he going to be doing?

"The main role I'm going to be playing in this process is to remind the American people that this is a serious job. This is not reality TV," President Obama said, his mind on the Man Cave he's gonna build in one of the nine bedrooms of his three-story mansion.
President Obama kept a straight face during an appearance on Jimmy Fallon's "Slow Jamming The News on Thursday nights Tonight Show.

Read: President Obama Tells Jimmy Fallon He Is 'Worried About the Republican Party'

Obama and the host were backed by house band The Roots as they concocted an R&B song discussing the president's tenure in the Oval Office.

We were able to stimulate the economy and get our country back on track, Obama said.

Fallon replied in tongue-in-cheek fashion: Oh yeah, President Obama stimulated long-term growth in both the public and the private sector.

Roots frontman Tariq Black Thought Trotter sang about the presidents recent endorsement of Hillary Clinton in the tune.

Read: Hillary Clinton Celebrates Historic Win as Bernie Sanders Vows to Stay in the Race

He created tons of jobs for you and me and hes got one more left for Hillary, he sang.

Obama also took a swipe at Donald Trump in the bit where he declared, "orange is not the new black," as to who will be his successor.

The president kept a straight face through the whole process while Fallon, the comedian, tried his best not to burst out laughing.

At the end of the seven-minute song, Obama dropped the mic just as he did at the recent White House Correspondents' Dinner.

Prior to The Tonight Show's episode airing, Trump and Hillary Clinton got into a down-and-dirty Twitter battle.

Trump tweeted Thursday: "Obama just endorsed crooked Hillary."

Within minutes, Clinton responded: "Delete your account."

Trump shot back: "How long did it take your staff of 823 people to think that up  and where are your 33,000 emails that you deleted?"

Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus also weighed in on the Twitter beef, saying, "@hillaryclinton if anyone knows how to use a delete key, it's you."

Story continues

Following Obama's endorsement of his former Secretary of State, Priebus tweeted: I dont think theres been a candidate for this office more unethical and untrustworthy than Hillary Clinton.

Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren also ramped up her attacks on Trump, following her own endorsement of Clinton.

She called him a thin-skinned fraud and a thin-skinned racist bully in a speech Thursday afternoon.

Watch: Check Out the $5 Million Mansion the First Family Will Call Home After Obama's Presidency Ends

Related Articles:
michael brune

The unexpected strength of Sen. Bernie Sanders' candidacy has emboldened some advocacy groups supporting Hillary Clinton to push for a more robust progressive agenda.

On Thursday, the Sierra Club, one of America's oldest and largest environmental activist groups, threw the support of its hundreds of thousands of members behind Hillary Clinton

I am honored to have earned the endorsement of the Sierra Club, an organization that has fought to protect our environment, our natural wonders, and the health of our children for more than a century," Clinton said in a statement.

But in an interview with Business Insider later in the afternoon, organization Executive Director Michael Brune said that while the group is enthused about a Clinton presidency, it still plans to challenge her on various issues where it feels that she's not moving far enough.

"We are going into this eyes wide open. We firmly believe that Hillary Clinton has a very strong environmental platform, and we also accept that we will need to challenge her and push her to go even further," Brune said. "Were prepared to do that."

Brune noted that the group will push Clinton to embrace a trade agenda that "would actually help the climate movement and accelerate progress, rather than simply not undermine it." The Sierra Club president also praised Clinton's move to the left on hydraulic fracturing, but said she could be "to be even tougher" on the process in the future.

The Sierra Club's endorsement came after months of debate between climate activists over whether to embrace Clinton's more pragmatic proposals to curb the effects of climate change or Sanders' more radical ideas.

While the former secretary of state has laid out a climate change agenda that goes further than President Barack Obama's, for many environmental activists, Sanders' ambitious plan to combat climate change served as a rallying point.

Story continues

With little regard for the opposition to curbing climate change from Congressional Republicans, Sanders unveiled a plan that would tax carbon emissions, ban offshore drilling, and eliminate fossil fuel subsidies. Environmental activists cheered when Sanders stated onstage at an early Democratic debate that climate change was the biggest threat facing the US today. The Sanders campaign itself criticized Clinton's climate plan as vague.

Groups that endorsed Clinton saw a swift backlash from some members who believed that Sanders' plan was more comprehensive.

Some League of Conservation Voters Action Fund supporters threatened to withhold future donations after the group endorsed Clinton in November. While climate group 350 action did not endorse a candidate, some of its members tracked both the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, peppering them with tough questions about climate change on the campaign trail.

Friends of the Earth Action endorsed Sanders early in the 2016 race after Clinton failed to say that she would not approve the Keystone XL pipeline, a controversial pipeline that would have funneled oil from Canadian tar sands to the Gulf coast. The group aired pro-Sanders ads in several early primary states. Clinton eventually came out against the pipeline.

The Sierra Club decided earlier this year against endorsing a candidate to avoid taking a side in the rift between environmental activists during the Democratic race.

But with the Democratic primary wrapping up, top climate activists suggest that the ideological gulf between Clinton and presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump  who has claimed that climate change is a Chinese hoax  will be more than enough to motivate "climate voters" to support the former secretary of state.

"The act of running for president tends to exaggerate differences," Brune told reporters in New York in April.

"The choice between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton for environmentalists is the easiest it has ever been in history," Brune said on Thursday. "We have in Hillary Clinton a candidate who has the strongest set of policies of any presidential nominee in history and would be the first woman elected as president in history, contrasted with a candidate who calls climate change a hoax a con job a concept created by the Chinese, and who has delighted in dividing Americans against each other based on race and gender and physical ability."

As a record number of Americans see climate change as a serious threat, groups like the Sierra Club are planning to take a more active role in the 2016 election.

While in past elections it has invested in television advertisements, this cycle, the group is investing its resources in mobilizing volunteers, and directing much of its political activism to knocking on doors and other grassroots get-out-the-vote efforts.

"People trust their friends and their neighbors and well have Sierra Club volunteers knocking on doors, making phone calls in districts all across the country," Brune said. "Well have tens of thousands of volunteers who are engaging this election, because we think that back to the roots between friends and neighbors is the way in which you win."

By pointing to the growing clean energy business sector, Brune hopes to buck the popular belief in political circles that voters will not be motivated to head to the ballot box to weigh in on climate change issues. The Sierra Club president said even in the last four years, jobs like wind turbine technician and solar panel installer have become some of the fasted growing jobs in the economy, while companies like Tesla have made clean energy products into status symbols.

"What has happened in the last few years is that we have found people linking climate change to other things that they care about and care about strongly," Brune said in April.

He added: "The politics have never been better."

NOW WATCH: Golf legend Greg Norman reveals the truth behind US President Bill Clinton's late-night 1997 injury





More From Business Insider


June 10 (Reuters) - The following are the top stories in the Financial Times. Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.

Headlines

Tata delays decision on its UK steel operations (http://on.ft.com/1U4hZnL)

Airbus to dispose of final Dassault stake (http://on.ft.com/1U4hGt3)

Jeremy Hunt eyes part-privatisation of NHS staffing bank (http://on.ft.com/1U4hJVL)

Singapore's GIC nears stake deal in Irish telecoms group Eir (http://on.ft.com/1U4iGxm)

Overview

Tata Steel Ltd has pushed back to July the timetable for making a decision on the future of its UK steel operations, according to a person close to the Indian company.

Airbus Group said on Thursday it was selling its remaining stake in Dassault Aviation, ending a longstanding arrangement to warehouse shares in the maker of combat and business jets on behalf of the French government.

UK Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt asked Deloitte to advise on an overhaul of NHS Professionals, a step that could lead to a part-privatisation of the service.

Singapore wealth fund GIC is set to buy a stake in Ireland's Eir, in a deal that is expected to value the telecoms group at more than 3.3 billion euros ($3.73 billion), according to people involved in the process.

($1 = 0.8853 euros) (Compiled by Ismail Shakil in Bengaluru)
June 10 (Reuters) - The following are the top stories in the Wall Street Journal. Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.

- The U.S. House of Representatives on Thursday approved legislation to stem Puerto Rico's escalating debt crisis, capping an unusually bipartisan course on a fraught and technically complex compromise measure, following months of internal wrangling. (http://on.wsj.com/25QbNlp)

- Twitter Inc has notified millions of users that their accounts are at risk of being taken over after a database containing nearly 33 million purported usernames and passwords for the social-blogging service was made public Wednesday. (http://on.wsj.com/25QdP4U)

- Thomas Perkins, one of the founding fathers of modern venture capital investing, died on Tuesday at the age of 84 at his home in Belvedere, California, according to the Marin County coroner's office. (http://on.wsj.com/25QdE9X)

- U.S. President Barack Obama endorsed Hillary Clinton for president, via a video released by the Clinton campaign, after Obama met with Clinton's Democratic primary rival Bernie Sanders earlier in the day. (http://on.wsj.com/25QdShj)

- U.S. auto safety investigators are reviewing reports of suspension problems in Tesla Motors Inc's Model S cars, a government spokesman said on Thursday. (http://on.wsj.com/25QcIm2) (Compiled by Parikshit Mishra in Bengaluru)
Just in time for pool season, the girl voted Most Likely to Drown Her Girlfriend is coming back to Rosewood.

PHOTOSPretty Little Liars Season 7: Everything We Know (So Far) About Hannas Fate, the Wedding and More

Lindsey Shaw is returning to Pretty Little Liars for its upcoming seventh  and potentially final  season as Emilys ex-girlfriend Paige, per The Hollywood Reporter.

Though details of Paiges return are being kept under wraps  along with the identity of Charlottes killer, among other lingering mysteries  its safe to assume her reunion with the Liars will be a complicated one. Though she and Emily parted ways amicably, theres a whole mess of unresolved issues between Paige and several of the other girls, specifically Alison.

RELATEDPretty Little Liars Season 7 Poster: The Girls (Minus Hanna) Are Dressed to Kill

But Paige is merely the latest in a long list of key players coming back to Pretty Little Liars in Season 7. Jenna (Tamin Sursok) and Noels (Brant Daugherty) returns were previously revealed on Twitter.

Pretty Little Liars returns Tuesday, June 21 at 8/7c.

Are you excited to see Paige again? Do you think she and Emily will pick up where they left off? Drop a comment with your thoughts below.

Launch Gallery: <i>Pretty Little Liars</i> Season 7 Photos

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LONDON (Reuters) - Billionaire entrepreneur James Dyson came out on Friday in favour of Britain leaving the European Union, a significant endorsement for the "Leave" camp less than two weeks before a referendum.

Britons vote on June 23 on whether to stay in the 28-member bloc, with polls suggesting a tight race. A British exit, or "Brexit", would have far-reaching implications for politics and the economy in Britain and far beyond.

The "Remain" campaign has received the backing of many well-known business leaders, big companies and banks as well as institutions such as the International Monetary Fund. Its "Leave" rivals have attracted less support from the ranks of big business.

Dyson, best known for inventing a bagless vacuum cleaner that made him a household name across Britain, told the Daily Telegraph newspaper that Britain has more to gain than to lose by quitting the EU.

"We will create more wealth and more jobs by being outside the EU than we will within it, and we will be in control of our destiny. And control, I think, is the most important thing in life and business," Dyson was quoted as saying.

Dyson dismissed warnings about the possible impact of a Brexit on trade.

"When the 'Remain' campaign tells us no one will trade with us if we leave the EU, sorry, it's absolute cobblers," he said, using a colloquial British term for nonsense.

"If, as (Prime Minister) David Cameron suggested, they imposed a tariff of 10 per cent on us, we will do the same in return. ... Anyway, the EU would be committing commercial suicide to impose a tariff because we import 100 billion pounds ($143 billion) and we only send 10 billion there."

The official Vote Leave campaign swiftly tweeted several of Dyson's comments.

($1 = 0.7013 pounds)

(Reporting by Estelle Shirbon; Editing by Will Dunham)
I had a plan.

It was back in the late 1970s and I was a teenager. I wanted to go on a date with my high school boyfriend, Randy, but he was grounded.

I decided to try and talk Randys dad into letting us go out, but I knew that might not be easy.

The man seemed firmly resolved to keep his son at home.

Thats when I got an idea.

I remembered the old phrase trying to butter someone up  otherwise known as flattery.

So I went to Randys refrigerator and pulled out a stick of butter.

Randys dad was sitting on the couch when I put the butter on the coffee table.

Im going to try to butter you up, I said, honestly stating my intentions.

It worked.

Randys dad laughed at my goofy visual aid and let us go out on a date.

A few years later, I put my negotiating skills to the test again  this time with a college professor.

I was a reporter on the student newspaper and was late for a story interview with him.

He wasnt happy and I knew I had to smooth things over.

I didnt hand him a stick of butter, but I tried to be funny and cute.

Bad idea.

It didnt work and I left without my interview.

A short time later I shared my dilemma with one of his students, who advised me to return and apologize  which I did.

The professor relented and gave me the interview. I never tried the cute routine again.

Honesty is the best policy and a little tact doesnt hurt either. Its good to see things from another persons perspective and to empathize when possible and to point out the positive.

Maybe thats why Ive long admired the diplomatic skills I see when I read the story of Gideon in the Bible.

This particular account is found in the Old Testament book of Judges, chapter 8.

By this time in Biblical history, the Israelites have been in their Promised Land for a while.

Youd think theyd be grateful to God, who brought their ancestors out of slavery in Egypt, but theyve kind of forgotten about him.

Theyve done evil stuff and God isnt pleased, so he allows the Midianites to cause them some trouble.

For seven years, the Midianites and other Eastern peoples rob the Israelites of their crops and livestock  laying wasted to the land like locusts.

The people cry out to God, who raises up Gideon as a leader. After carefully consulting the Lord, Gideon rallies thousands of Israelites.

But God wont have the Israelites saying they defeated their enemies all by themselves.

So he has Gideon send all the Israelites home, except for 300 men.

Then God does the miraculous.

He has Gideon give his men trumpets and empty jars with torches inside.

The men encircle the enemy camp (filled with thousands of soldiers) at night. The Israelites blow the trumpets, smash the jars and yell, A sword for the Lord and for Gideon! The enemy soldiers turn on each other and flee.

Its a great triumph.

At this point, Israelite men from different places are called to pursue the runaway Midianites and other enemies.

Gideon sends messengers throughout the hill country of Ephraim, telling the Israelite men there to come against the Midianites.

The men of Ephraim do that  even capturing and killing two Midianite princes named Oreb and Zeeb.

No, I didnt make up those names.

Anyway, youd think everybody would be thrilled with such a stunning victory, but the men of Ephraim are indignant.

Why have you treated us like this? Why didnt you call us when you went to fight Midian? they ask Gideon.

Oh boy. Heres some tension.

Now, if I were Gideon, I probably would have tried to explain the entire thing. I would have described  in great detail  how God told me to whittle down the fighting forces.

I would have apologized profusely and said how bad Id felt about not including them  but that Id had my orders.

And I probably would have annoyed them even more.

Yet look at how Gideon handles it.

What I have done compared with you? he asks. God gave you Midians commanders, Oreb and Zeeb.

Notice how Gideon takes the humble road, downplaying his role, when he could have been boastful.

Gideon doesnt mention that he didnt ask the Ephraimites to help until later.

Instead, he focuses on what God did through them, which was to capture the Midianite commanders.

So the men of Ephraim calm down and their anger subsides.

I love Gideons diplomacy. He was positive and paid the men of Ephraim a fine compliment.

And although he probably did some fast talking in a tense situation, I dont think he was just trying to butter them up.

I looked up the names Oreb and Zeeb, which mean raven and wolf.

These were probably a couple of tough guys.

Whatever the case, Midian eventually was subdued and the Scriptures record that Israel had rest for 40 years in the days of Gideon.

As I think about this story, Im convinced that the best way to proceed with any diplomatic mission is to pray and ask for Gods guidance, strength and help.

Ive often asked God to help me say the right thing and find favor with people.

And to just work things out.

Many times, Ive simply asked God to get me back on track with people  and hes proven so faithful.

Ive found that waiting on God is crucial to smoothing out bumpy situations.

It sure works a lot better than trying to find a stick of butter.
BEIJING (Reuters) - Animal rights activists calling for an end to the slaughter and eating of dogs at a Chinese festival delivered a petition with 11 million signatures to authorities in Beijing on Friday. The two dozen activists were accompanied by dogs and unveiled banners with pictures of the animals above the message "I'm not your dinner" as they presented the petition at the representative office of Yulin city, where the festival is held. The annual festival, which is set to begin on June 21, sees residents of the southern city consume dog meat with thousands of dogs expected to be slaughtered. Supporters of the festival say dog meat is good for your health at the hottest time of the year and eating the animals is no different from consuming any other meat. But pictures of caged or slaughtered dogs posted online have outraged many people, with domestic and international organizations behind the petition calling for the festival to be stopped. The campaign against the festival has received celebrity backing from British comedian Ricky Gervais and U.S. actor Ian Somerhalder. In 2014, the Yulin government distanced itself from the festival, saying it was staged by private business people and did not have official backing. (Reporting by Reuters TV; Editing by Patrick Johnston)
Protesters at a evangelical Christian conference challenged Donald Trump over his opposition to allowing Syrian refugees to enter the United States.

Speaking at the Faith and Freedom Coalitions Road to Majority conference in Washington Friday, the presumptive Republican nominee said that he would not allow any more refugees to enter the United States even as a group of protesters chanted refugees are welcome here and urged the crowd to drop Trump.

As the protesters were removed, the crowd chanted USA! USA! USA! to drown them out.

Now Hillary Clinton, or as I call her crooked Hillary Clintonas crooked as they comerefuses to even say the words radical Islam, refuses to say the words, Trump said. This alone makes her unfit to be president. In fact, she wants a 500% increase in Syrian refugees to come into our country. No good. No good. No good. Cant do it. We dont know where they come from, where they are.

In November, Clinton called for expanding the number of Syrian refugees accepted into the United States from 10,000 to 65,000, arguing that the country has always welcomed immigrants and refugees while saying they should be carefully vetted. Trump has repeatedly said the U.S. should not accept Syrian refugees, even children, arguing they could be a Trojan horse.
Thursday was a big day for Puerto Ricos 3.5 million citizens. First, a ruling from the Supreme Court established that defendants cannot be tried for the same crime in both federal and Puerto Rican courts. Later, a landslide vote in the House of Representatives in favor of Puerto Rican debt relief bill PROMESA provided a first step towards fixing Puerto Ricos debt crisis. Although the ruling and the bill have immediate effects for law and everyday life in the Commonwealth, they also have serious long-term reverberations on Puerto Rican self-rule, Americas relationship with its territories, and Puerto Rican citizenship.

In Puerto Rico v. Sanchez Valle, the justices ruled 6-2 affirmed a ruling from the Supreme Court of Puerto Rico that held that two defendants could not be charged and prosecuted for illegal gun sales in Puerto Rican court if they had already been charged in federal court. Generally, double jeopardy only protects defendants from being tried twice for the same crime in a given state or in federal courtswhich could allow a defendant to be tried for the same crime once in a state court and once in a federal court. The Supreme Court ruled that this does not apply to Puerto Rico and that Puerto Rican courts do not have the authority to try anyone for crimes already being tried in federal court.

Recommended: Hillary Clinton's Lack of Truth

Thats a very technical-sounding decision, but it is a landmark in considering just what Puerto Rico is, in a legal and political sense. Much of the argument before the Court concerned the history of Puerto Rico and its relationship to Congress. The justices held that protection against double jeopardy is subject to the separate sovereigns doctrine, which treats criminal law in the court systems of the 50 states and in the federal courts as separate because of the sovereign status of each. The opinion, written by Justice Elena Kagan, holds that the ultimate sovereignty of each state does not originate from the federal government because each existed prior to admission to the Union.

The ultimate sovereignty for Puerto Rico, however, as Kagan writes, does not come from the territory but originates with Congress itself, a ruling which reaffirms the so-called Insular Cases. It firmly establishes Puerto Rico as an entity dependent on Congress, as opposed to anything resembling a state. The Court was not swayed by arguments that Puerto Rico should be treated as a sovereign because it functions as a sovereign, with a congressionally approved constitution and its own laws and government. It was also not swayed by arguments that the United States had inadvertently created sovereignty by declaring to the United Nations that Puerto Rico is a self-governing commonwealth in 1953.

What remains legally now is in many senses a colony with little real self-governing power and with a different set of rulesincluding the lack of the right to vote in federal elections. The United Nations declaration of 1953 was enough to remove it from an international declaration as a colonized territory, but the Courts ruling denies any real sense of sovereignty for Puerto Rico and thus undermines that declaration. The ruling established the political status of the commonwealth, a status which will be clarified even further with Puerto Rico v. Franklin California Tax-Free Trust, which was argued in March. That case deals with what tools Puerto Rico has to restructure its own debt and also explores the legal limits of Puerto Rican authority.

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Both the Puerto Rico v. Sanchez Valle decision and the pending Puerto Rico v. Franklin California Tax-Free Trust decision have implications on the islands massive humanitarian and debt crisis, especially with regards to the bill currently being considered in Congress as a way to resolve those crises. That bill, PROMESA, was passed in resounding fashion by the House Thursday. The billwhich establishes an independent restructuring board for Puerto Ricos $70 billion in debt, provides protection against a looming multibillion-dollar default, and reduces minimum wage for young workershas been characterized as a necessary step to avoid disaster.

The severity of the disaster in Puerto Rico has certainly convinced the House, as evidenced by the broad bipartisan support for PROMESA. However, some representatives raised the specter of colonialism on the House floor with the Supreme Court ruling still fresh. Representative Raul Grijalva, the ranking Democrat on the House Natural Resources Committee, exhorted his fellow members to vote for PROMESA as a way to provide the tools necessary for Puerto Rican relief. He did, however, also characterize the independent board with no Puerto Rican oversight and the bills clear legal delineation between Puerto Rico and states as another infringement on the sovereignty of the people of Puerto Rico and framed its passage as a bitter compromise. Other members who spoke on behalf of the billmany of them with ties to Puerto Ricoexpressed similarly begrudging support.

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Among these members, Puerto Ricos status was an important issue. Representative Jose Serrano of New York was unequivocal. As long as Puerto Rico is a colony, a territory of the United States, these issues will continue to come back, he said. The only long-term solutions, he said, were statehood or independence. Pedro Pierluisi, Puerto Ricos non-voting Resident Commissioner in Congress, echoed those sentiments, saying that while he strongly supported PROMESA as necessary to save Puerto Rico, so long as my constituents are treated like second-class citizens, Puerto Rico will never have a first-class economy.

If PROMESA is passed by the Senate and signed into law by President Obama, Puerto Ricos status will be crystal clear. As per the Courts ruling, it has no self-evident sovereignty and is still a possession of Congress. PROMESA, despite its necessity to avert a very real disaster in the territory, would reaffirm Puerto Ricos distinct status from states and would place an unelected board in charge of its finances. Young Puerto Ricans will have much lower minimum-wage protections than people in the states, and Puerto Rico will continue to receive some federal funding at much lower relative percentages than states. Through it all, Puerto Ricans will not be able to vote for the very body that exerts so much power over them. There are now, simply, very few definitions by which Puerto Rico is not a colony.

Read more from The Atlantic:

This article was originally published on The Atlantic.
IONE, CA / ACCESSWIRE / June 10, 2016 / Purebase Corporation (PUBC), a company focused on delivering high quality organic mineral products for the agricultural sector, is pleased to announce the formation of the new Purebase AgTech Innovation Center on its corporate campus in Ione, CA that will focus on working with industry leading technology and agricultural companies to deliver best-in-class, next generation AgTech solutions for farmers across the globe. Equidistant from both Napa Valley and Silicon Valley and located in the heart of California's agricultural growing region, Purebase's Ione campus provides the ideal environment for both AgTech startups and large technology companies to collaborate with agricultural, farming, and logistics firms to develop solutions and techniques that enhance the productivity and profitability of the agricultural sector globally.

The Internet of Things Opportunity in Agriculture

The Internet of Things (IoT), which connects cars, homes, wearables, and everyday objects to the cloud, is disrupting industries across the globe. According to networking giant Cisco Systems, the number of connected objects worldwide will grow to over 50 billion devices by 2020(1). These devices will include tractors, railcars, heavy equipment, and crop sensors for agriculture. Accenture estimates that the global market for precision agriculture and IoT is expected to reach more than $4.5 billion by 2020(2). General Electric ("GE") has stated that it is focused on building the "Industrial Internet" of the future which refers to the connections of industrial machinery and equipment to the Internet. GE estimates that the Industrial Internet will add $10 to $15 trillion to global GDP over the next 20 years. GE has stated publicly to its shareholders that its goal is to become a Top 10 software company by 2020(3). Purebase will look to partner with leading vendors across the agricultural supply chain to deliver solutions that improve business outcomes for its customers.

Story continues

Purebase Adds Steve Ridder of Cisco Systems to the Innovation Center as a Strategic Advisor

In order to accelerate the rapid development and deployment of leading technology solutions for the Agricultural sector. Purebase is pleased to announce that Steve Ridder, Practice Advisor, Business Transformation Group of Cisco Systems, will join Purebase's new Innovation Center as a Strategic Advisor. Steve brings a wealth of technology and business experience to Purebase, having developed mission-critical technology solutions to many of the largest companies in the world across Financial Services, Technology, Retail, and Manufacturing while at Cisco. Steve said the following: "I am excited to help Purebase and its customers innovate collaboratively with leading technology companies like Cisco and others to build solutions that will enable farmers to better predict weather, utilize precious resources like water more effectively, and deliver optimal crop yields and profits for customers. I am a big believer that the Internet of Things, 'Big Data', sensors, drones, cloud software and other emerging AgTech technologies will impact crop yields and improve business outcomes for the farming community and the Innovation Center will be the perfect place to learn with our customers what works, what doesn't, and how to apply these technologies with Purebase products to achieve the best results."

Purebase will also invite universities and government entities to become a part of the AgTech Innovation Center in order to work collaboratively and foster AgTech and precision farming innovations. Scott Dockter, Purebase Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, said, "We are excited about the potential of the Innovation Center and its ability to add tremendous value for our customers and partners. With increasing utilization of technology in the agricultural supply chain, we believe our customers, technology and university partners will benefit by working with us in the Innovation Center to understand how to maximize productivity and increase business results."

Sources:

(1) Cisco Systems Visual Networking Index (February 2016)

(2) Accenture Digital Agriculture: Improving Profitability (2015)

(3) General Electric Annual Shareholder's Report (February 2016)

About Purebase (PUBC)

Purebase is a diversified, natural and industrial mineral resource company providing solutions to the agriculture industry, Purebase acquires, develops, and commercializes industrial and natural mineral deposits to service the agriculture industry, both domestically and internationally. Purebase provides soil amendments that will be used within the agriculture industry. For additional information, please visit www.purebase.com.

Safe Harbor

This press release contains statements, which may constitute "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the Securities Act of 1933 and the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended by the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Those statements include statements regarding the intent, belief or current expectations of Purebase Corporation and members of its management team as well as the assumptions on which such statements are based. Such forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and involve risks and uncertainties, and that actual results may differ materially from those contemplated by such forward-looking statements. Important factors currently known to management that may cause actual results to differ from those anticipated are discussed throughout the Company's Form 10-K filed March 14, 2016 and 10-Q filed April 19, 2016, as well as other reports filed with Securities and Exchange Commission which are available at http://www.sec.gov/ as well as the Company's web site at http://www.purebase.com/. The Company undertakes no obligation to update or revise forward-looking statements to reflect changed assumptions, the occurrence of unanticipated events or changes to future operating results.

SOURCE: Purebase Corporation
Being the latest in the league that was vocal on global growth issues, the World Bank cut its 2016 global growth forecast lately to 2.4% from 2.9% projected in January. The commodity market slump, lackluster demand in advanced economies and frail trade were mainly behind World Banks pessimism. Prior to this, World Bank slashed its projection for global growth to 2.9% in January from 3.3% estimated last June.

Most Economies Underwent Downgrade

The World Bank expects commodity-exporting emerging economies to log a small growth of 0.4% this year, 1.2 percentage points lower than what was projected in January. The organization believes that these economies are striving to cope with still-low oil prices, metals and other commodities. Though these commodities have recovered a lot lately, the road ahead is long enough to reach the pre-crisis level.

The U.S.  the otherwise improving developed economy  is expected to see 1.9% growth (down from the prior forecast of 2.7%) in 2016 hurt by lower energy sector spending and subdued export on a higher greenback. The euro zone will likely see 1.6% growth despite significant monetary easing (read: Energy Spending May Resume: Stocks and ETFs in Focus).

IMF Also Cautious on Global Growth

Not only the World Bank, the IMF also reduced its global growth estimate to 3.2% for this year in April. The latest IMF numbers show a reduction of 0.2% from what it projected in January and a cut of 0.4% from the October forecast.

Also, IMF projected that each percentage point change in Chinas growth would lower growth in the rest of the region by 0.150.30 of a percentage point and therefore hinted at severe headwinds in Asia (read: Global Growth Worries Loom: ETFs to Play).

ETFs to Play

All in all, investors should be prepared for a muted 2016 as occasional sell-offs are likely to hit the market. So, investors need to be cautious while exposing themselves to the investing world. Below we highlight a few quality ETFs that could protect ones portfolio irrespective of the market pattern.

Story continues

iShares Edge MSCI USA Quality Factor ETF (QUAL)

The $2.4-million fund looks to follow large- and mid-cap U.S. stocks displaying positive fundamentals (high return on equity, stable year-over-year earnings growth and low financial leverage).

The 125-stock fund is diversified across sectors with IT, Financials, Health Care, Consumer Discretionary and Consumer Staples having a double-digit exposure. The fund charges 15 bps in fees. The fund is up 2.9% so far this year (as of June 7, 2016) and added 1.5% in the last one year.

FlexShares Quality Dividend ETF (QDF)

The $1.32-billion fund looks to provide exposure to the growth potential of U.S. securities while offering dividends. The 180-stock fund puts about 19.92% focus on the financial sector followed by IT (16.93%), Consumer Discretionary (11.64%) and Health Care (11.1%). The fund charges 37 bps in fees. It is up 6.3% so far this year (as of June 7, 2016) and added 5.3% in the last one year. The fund yields 2.84% annually (as of June 7, 2016) (read: 6 Quality Dividend ETFs for Safety and Income).

SPDR MSCI World Quality Mix ETF (QWLD)



The fund looks to track the MSCI World Quality Mix Index to provide exposure to 23 developed economies focusing on matrices like value, low volatility and quality. This $6.3-million ETF comprises 1,055 stocks. Sector-wise, IT, Financials, Health Care, Consumer Discretionary and Consumer Staples get maximum exposure.



Despite being a global equity ETF, the U.S. (60.3%) dominates the portfolio followed by Japan (9.09%), the U.K. (7.5%) and Switzerland (5.11%). It charges 30 bps in fees for this exposure. The fund is up 4.2% so far this year but lost about 2.2% in the last one year (as of June 7, 2016).

PowerShares S&P 500 Quality Portfolio (SPHQ

This $985.2-million fund holds 98 stocks in its basket. Industrials, Consumer Discretionary, Health Care, IT and Consumer Staples get a double-digit focus in the fund (read: Trump or Clinton: These ETFs to Face Same Fate).

The fund charges 29 bps in fees. SPHQ is up 8.47% (as of June 7, 2016) and added 8.15% in the last one year.

iShares MSCI International Developed Quality Factor ETF IQLT)

This $15.4-million fund looks to follow stocks with highreturn on equity, stable year-over-year earnings growth and low financial leverage. Financials takes one-fourth of the basket followed by Industrials, Consumer Discretionary and Consumer Staples with the next three spots. The fund charges 30 bps in fees. It is up 3.6% so far this year (as of June 7, 2016) but lost 4.6% in the last one year.

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As Queen Elizabeth prepares for her annual Trooping the Colour ceremony this weekend to honor her 90th birthday, HRM is also celebrating a milestone birthday for her husband, Prince Philip.

WATCH: Queen Elizabeth Poses With Her Corgis and Dorgis for Annie Leibovitz Portraits for 'Vanity Fair'

Philip turned 95 on Friday and the Twitter-savvy royals celebrated online, releasing a sweet portrait from Annie Leibovitz's recent photo shoot for Vanity Fair of the longtime spouses.

"This is the final portrait in a series of official photographs taken by Annie Leibovitz to mark the Queen's 90th Birthday #Queenat90," the Royal Family's official Twitter account wrote.

"He has, quite simply, been my strength & stay all these years"



A photo for #Queenat90 & The Duke's 95th birthday pic.twitter.com/7nO4Q98bhH  The Royal Family (@RoyalFamily) June 9, 2016

They also quoted Queen Elizabeth saying, "He has quite simply been my strength & stay all these years."

MORE: Queen Elizabeth Attends Birthday Horse Show With Delighted Royals, Remains Unimpressed: See the Hilarious Pics!

The royals wed in November 1947 at Westminster Abbey in London. On Saturday, the Queen will celebrate her 90th birthday (which was back in April) at the annual Trooping the Colour ceremony at Buckingham Palace.

In honor of the Queen's birthday, Twitter created a purple crown emoji that pops up when you write #Queenat90 or #HappyBirthdayYourMajesty.

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From Harper's BAZAAR

Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip have been married for a whopping 68 years, and it seems like the love is as strong as it was on day one. The British royals released a new portrait taken by Annie Leibovitz at Windsor Castle to celebrate both the Queen's 90th birthday party and Prince Philip's 95th.

The monarch's social media team released the new portrait with a quote from the Queen about her beloved husband, the Duke of Edinburgh: "He has, quite simply, been my strength and stay all these years." It's the latest in a series of photos released by the royal family in anticipation of the big birthday party. Leibovitz also took photos of the Queen with her daughter, Princess Anne, her great-grandchildren and youngest grandchildren, and her beloved corgis.

The Queen officially turned 90 in April, but Britain is just now celebrating officially this weekend, with over-the-top parades and pageants, according to USA Today. She's the longest-serving British monarch ever, and also the oldest one on the throne. And the couple is also the longest-married royal one in history. The celebration is already drawing in the rest of the royal family, including Prince William, Prince Harry, and Duchess Kate.
Photo: QVC

Gather round, children, and let us tell you of a distant era before Amazon, Trunk Club, and Harrys allowed you to purchase various and sundry items on the Internet  at the same time you were checking your email and vanishing down a YouTube rabbit hole. At first, people bought their household items, as well as Treat Yo Self merchandise, in these ancient edifices called stores. But then, 30 years ago this month, television gifted us with another way to shop. In June 1986, entrepreneur Joseph Segel founded the QVC network in West Chester, Pa., where it resides to this day, in a state-of-the-art studio that reaches viewers in seven countries around the world.

Viewers didnt get their first look at QVCs wares until November 1986 when the channel flickered to life to pitch the public on the Windsor Shower Companion, a water-resistant AM/FM radio that you could rock out to while rinsing off. But the network has still scheduled a summer birthday celebration for June 11 and 12. The weekend-long anniversary broadcast will include 48 hours of viewers most beloved shows, a special Super Saturday LIVE telecast benefiting the Ovarian Cancer Research Fund Alliance, and low sale prices on select items. The festivities will continue throughout June, with a 30 Days, 30 Discoveries sale, as well as a birthday sweepstakes with weekly prizes in addition to a $30,000 grand prize.

We know theres a lot of customers that have been with us for quite a while, and theyll love to reflect on some of the moments that have happened over the years, Doug Rose, QVCs senior vice president of brand, tells Yahoo TV. Back in the day when QVC was just starting up, I think there was a lot of doubt that a retail business could make a space for itself in a television landscape. I think maybe TV has learned a little bit about how to manage an audience in more real-time ways. You look at some of the more interactive forms of television, like American Idol, where theres live voting happening. We basically were a precursor of that 30 years ago.

Story continues

With the help of Rose and popular on-air hosts Jane Treacy and Amy Stran, weve picked some key moments from QVCs three-decade history to revisit before its birthday weekend commences. Consider it a gift to the network where weve all bought so many gifts for others  and ourselves.

Yuletide Cheer (1987)

Although QVC launched during the holiday season of 1986, its first major test as a Christmas retailer came the following year, when they were still trying to make sure supply kept up with demand. Treacy, who has been with the network since its 1986 launch, has vivid memories of that intense period. At that time, all of us had been trained to answer the phone, so I remember getting off the air, and there was a light in the ceiling that would rotate and flash. That meant All hands on deck! So I would pick up a phone and say, Hello, welcome to QVC. This is Jane. May I take your order?

On-air host Jane Treacy has been with QVC since its 1986 launch. (Photo: QVC)

These days, Treacy and the rest of the hosts dont have to pull double duty during the holiday season or any other time of year. But that experience gave her an early taste of the behind-the-scenes camaraderie, as well as the direct connection to viewers, thats defined her three-decade-and-counting tenure. Its felt like home for me from the moment I started doing it, says the host, who transitioned from a background in TV news into, as she describes herself, a jack-of-all-trades at QVC. This is a rare job in television that I think gets easier and gets better as we age  like a fine wine.

Enter Joan (1990)

Many celebrities have passed through QVCs studios over the decades, from Ellen DeGeneres and Paula Abdul to 50 Cent and Nicole Richie. But none are as closely identified with the network as Joan Rivers, whose clothing and beauty products are reported to have pulled in an estimated $1 billion during her lifetime. As Rose tells us, the decision to bring a celebrity into the QVC fold isnt one thats taken lightly: Its more typical to find people who are real live inventors with a great product that theyre proud of. Media personalities are part of the mix, but theyre not a dominant part of the mix. We dont ever want to get out of balance. Theres no question that Rivers made an immediate impact both on and off air, though. Rose says hes heard stories of her dogs freely roaming the QVC hallways. It tended to drive our production teams a little crazy, he says, laughing. But, again, it was very much true to Joans personality.

Joy to the World (1992)

QVC got its big-screen close-up in 2015 when the worlds biggest movie star, Jennifer Lawrence, played Miracle Mop inventor Joy Mangano in the David O. Russell film Joy. A self-starter from a young age, Mangano dreamed up her patented mop  which distinguished itself from the competition with a signature continuous loop of cotton that kept hands dry  in 1990 and marketed it around her Long Island neighborhood until landing a spotlight on QVC, where she went on-camera to sell her own product. (In 2000, Mangano moved over to the Home Shopping Network.)

While Joy obviously takes certain liberties with Manganos experience at QVC, Rose says that he enjoyed it as a time capsule of an era when the network was still learning how to bring new voices and personalities into the mix, even those with little on-camera experience. Today, we insist that each on-air guest goes through a rigorous guest-training program, he explains. We really insist that people speak to what makes their product great and why theyre proud to be associated with it. Treacy worked alongside Mangano in the early 90s (she appears in the ]infomercial above) and remembers those days fondly. We had a lot of laughs together. There were elements [in Joy] that were somewhat like our starting days, but certainly not an authentic reproduction of what it was like.

QVC host Amy Stran. (Photo: QVC)

Digital Dollars (1996)

Ten years after launching on television screens, QVC took its first steps into the digital world, powering up the online domain, IQVC.com. (The name was later shortened to QVC.com in 2001.) In the decade since, the Internet has become a core part of QVCs business, not just in terms of sales but also audience engagement. Both Treacy and Stran, who joined the network seven years ago, maintain active online presences on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, even allowing viewers (or, as Stran calls them, friends) a small peek into their personal lives. When I had my child two years ago, you would have thought that 10,000 people were at that hospital with me. The second I put that picture of her on Facebook, my page was just this page of love from people who only see me on TV. Treacy says that shes provided shopping advice via social media as well. Someone posted a picture of a shoe that she loved on Facebook, but it was $800. I found something at QVC.com that I thought had a very similar vibe in a similar color, and we were selling it for $89, so I sent her that item number. That aspect of social media is really exciting to me.

The QVC Birthday Celebration Weekend airs June 11 and 12 on QVC.
On Jun 10, 2016, Zacks Investment Research downgraded the New York-based Ralph Lauren Corp. RL to a Zacks Rank #5 (Strong Sell).



Why the Downgrade?



The stock of this premium lifestyle retailer witnessed a significant decline after it announced restructuring plans early this week that will comprise job cuts and store closures. Ralph Lauren has been suffering profit and sales decline for over three years mainly due to little focus on core brands, marketing flaws and poor inventory management. This has led the popular American fashion house to lose more than 50% of its market value since 2013. The companys stock has fallen nearly 40% in two years.

RALPH LAUREN CP Price and Consensus

RALPH LAUREN CP Price and Consensus | RALPH LAUREN CP Quote

To revive the company, the new CEO Stefan Larsson put forward a comeback plan in a recent investor meet. It focuses on the revival of its three core brands: Ralph Lauren, Polo and Lauren. Also, he announced plans to close nearly 50 high-end stores that make for about 10% of the companys retail footprint. At the same time, he plans to reduce six months from production time and eliminate three layers of management which means the cutting down of 1,000 jobs or 8% of the full-time staff.



The company expects the restructuring plan to cost up to $400 million in fiscal 2017, as well as an inventory charge of up to $150 million. The company provided a bleak outlook for the first quarter and fiscal 2017, expecting lower sales and margins on account of the aforementioned restructuring plan. The company expects the plan to result in a double-digit revenue decline in fiscal 2017 and a mid single-digit decline in the first quarter.



Despite the losses, these restructuring actions in fiscal 2017 are expected to result in annual cost savings of nearly $180$220 million, in addition to the $125 million annual savings related to its fiscal 2016 restructuring plans. Also, the company expects performance to stabilize in fiscal 2018 and return to growth in fiscal 2019, resulting in an improved operating margin in both the fiscal years. The company also targets market share growth and mid-teens operating margin in fiscal 2020.



While we believe the restructuring plans will help Ralph Lauren return to long-term profitability and growth, the company will continue suffer from lower sales and profits during the execution phase of this plan.



Stocks to Consider



A couple of better-ranked stocks in the same industry include Delta Apparel Inc. DLA sporting a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy) and Perry Ellis International Inc. PERY carrying a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy). Another favorably ranked retail-apparel stock is The Children's Place Inc. PLCE, also holding a Zacks Rank #2.



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When two-time Oscar winner Paul Haggis (Crash, Million Dollar Baby) heard that David Simon had a new HBO mini-series in the works and was looking for a director, he told his CAA agent to say yes at once. "But don't you want to read the script?" asked his agent. "No, just say yes," said Haggis.

Tackling Show Me a Hero, the real-life story of Nick Wasicsko, the mayor of Yonkers, NY, who became embroiled in a legal case to desegregate the city's housing, was not easy, especially with a schedule that involved shooting seven to 10 script pages per day. But Haggis is thrilled with the result, the first time he has directed a project he did not also write.

The filmmaker spoke to THR about the miniseries, his decision to abandon Los Angeles for New York ("I never go back there," he says), who should play James Bond and the controversy that ensued when he left Scientology.

How did Show Me a Hero come to you?

I had a project pushed because of actor availability and my agent called me and said, "We have this and this, and David Simon has a miniseries. I am a huge admirer of David's, and when he said "Do you want to direct the first episode? The last?" I said, "I want to do them all."

How different was shooting a miniseries from making a film?

As David says, his company is the PBS of HBO. On a movie, you shoot a page to three pages a day, and with a TV series you shoot four to six pages a day. We were shooting seven to 10 pages every single day. We shot for 72 days straight.

Do you get stressed in those situations?

No. The worse things get, the calmer I get. It just becomes ridiculous; it gets to a point of absurdity and you have to appreciate that absurdity.

Is the issue of segregation better today?

Of course not. I'm reading a wonderful book, Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City [by Matthew Desmond], which shows it's just different and probably worse. We still create these ghettos. We're not building as many towers; we're now giving people vouchers. But they can't get decent housing with those vouchers, they can't pay their rent with those vouchers. As I've read, 70 percent of what they earn has to go to their rent, in dilapidated, cold places that you and I would never want to walk by, let alone live in. We don't really want to put the effort into fixing it. And you see what's happening: Look at the murder rate in Chicago. We need to seriously address the issue of race and poverty in this country and we haven't done that. Look at the current election and how we're vilifying the poor, vilifying immigrants. We're a country founded on immigrants, and now we're saying once again, "Oh, they're rapists, they're bad people, we need to build this wall to keep them out." Really?

Story continues

I guess you're not a Donald Trump fan.

I'm not his biggest fan, no.

Have you ever met him?

No I haven't.

Well, you both live in New York now. When did you move there?

I got a loft here 12 years ago because I loved cutting in New York - I cut all my movies here after Crash. I moved here full time six years ago. I like the anonymity. There are so many interesting people and they don't really care about you. I like the interaction with journalists, with designers, with architects, with scientists. As I wrote in Crash, we truly crave the touch of strangers, and so I could be alone all day writing, and I just walk down the street to get a coffee and I don't bump into anyone I know, but I don't feel lonely.

You mentioned reading Evicted. What else have you been reading?

A terrific book called Subliminal: How Your Unconscious Mind Rules Your Behavior [by Leonard Mlodinow].I've read it twice and I'm about to read it again. I'm not an educated man - I barely made it through high school - so now I love reading about these things that I should have known when I was much younger. The work they've done in neuroscience in the last 10 years tells us how much we don't know about ourselves, and that's been a common thread in my work. We love to believe we know everything, especially as Americans, and there's so little within our control.

Speaking of what's in your control, there was quite a fuss when you left Scientology six years ago. How did that impact you?

I didn't make the decision thinking about any impact it would have on me. I've seen how they've harassed others; I've seen how they've attacked others, how they've tried to destroy others. They can be cruel people. When I finally opened my eyes, which shamefully took me way too long to do, I just realized I had to act and wrote a letter of resignation. But they no longer follow me, they no longer go through my trash. They more or less leave me alone. What they really try to do is try to ruin my reputation online and that's where they put most of their efforts, using websites that tell you what a liar and horrible person I am. They'll go onto a blog and say, "Haggis is a pretty shitty director." [Laughs.] A lot of people already think that.

You worked on two James Bond films. Would you do another?

I was just over the moon doing Casino Royale. They gave me a lot of room and I loved working with Martin Campbell, the director, and Barbara Broccoli and Michael Wilson, the producers. That's what I'm proudest of. I didn't know at the time that I would enjoy the process as much as I did or that I'd be as proud of that script, and Martin didn't change a word. There's nothing better for a writer. I also worked on Quantum of Solace and I did, I think, a pretty good script, but the Writers Guild strike happened so I wasn't able to follow the production, and the director [Marc Forster] decided he wanted to rewrite me. I'm not as happy with it. Would I do another? Oh sure, but they've got really good writers doing their stuff now.

Who would you cast as Bond?

Whoever Barbara Broccoli decides! There are four to five really good candidates I've heard of so far. And I've also heard the idea that there's going to be a black Bond and I think that's great. I mentioned it to somebody who went apoplectic, and I said, "Oh please, when Daniel Craig came on they said, 'A blond Bond? It's impossible!' Idris Elba would make a great Bond.

What's next for you?

I'm waiting for a deal to close and hope to be within a month of starting soft prep on a project I've been waiting to do for 10 years. It's based on a series of books by John Flanagan called Ranger's Apprentice and the movie is called The Ruins of Gorlan. It's a medieval adventure that I read to my son when he was eight years old.
(Reuters) - Luxottica Group Spa (Milan:LUX.MI - News), the maker of Ray-Ban sunglasses, has sued BCBG Max Azria Group LLC, accusing the fashion house of knowingly infringing its famous Wayfarer trademark.

The complaint, filed on Wednesday with the U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, said BCBG Max Azrias unauthorized sale of infringing eyewear was intended to confuse consumers, hurting Milan-based Luxotticas reputation and goodwill.

Defendants acts complained of herein have caused Luxottica to suffer irreparable injury to its business, the complaint said.

Luxottica, the worlds largest eyewear company, is seeking an injunction against infringements, triple and punitive damages, and other remedies.

Leigh Brill, a spokeswoman for BCBG Max Azria, on Thursday said the company had no comment. Lawyers for Luxottica did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Luxottica has pursued other litigation to stop lesser-known marketers from selling Ray-Ban knockoffs.

It also runs several eyewear chains, including LensCrafters, Pearle Vision, Sears Optical, Sunglass Hut and Target Optical.

Wayfarer sunglasses were designed in 1952. A U.S. trademark was registered two years later by Bausch & Lomb, whose Ray-Ban business was acquired by Luxottica in 1999.

The sunglasses popularity has gone in cycles, reaching a peak during the 1980s. Tom Cruise wore them in the 1983 movie Risky Business, and Don Henley referred to them in his 1984 song The Boys of Summer.

BCBG Max Azria is run by Tunisian-born Max Azria. It is based in Vernon, California, about five miles (8 km) southeast of downtown Los Angeles.

The case is Luxottica Group SpA et al v. BCBG Max Azria Group LLC et al, U.S. District Court, Central District of California, No. 16-04062.

(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Lisa Von Ahn and Andrew Hay)
I am deeply conscious of the reality that this victory belongs to generations of brave women and men who fought for the radical idea that women should determine our own lives and futures.

And it belongs to the women and men who continue to fight for that idea today, even in the face of threats and violence.

When a man who never should have had a gun killed three people at Planned Parenthood in Colorado Springs, leaders in this room voted unanimously to keep health centers across America open the next day.

The CEO, the CEO of Planned Parenthood Rocky Mountains made a promise to patients in Colorado and beyond when she said: Our doors  and our hearts  stay open.

That is really what Planned Parenthood is all about.

So today, I want to say something you dont hear often enough: thank you.

Thank you for being there for women, no matter their race, sexual orientation, or immigration status.

Thank you for being there for Natarsha McQueen in Brooklyn, who told me how Planned Parenthood caught her breast cancer when she was just 33 years old, and saved her life.

Thank you for being there for college students getting STD testing. The young people who have the tough questions that theyre afraid to ask their parents. The sexual assault survivors who turn to Planned Parenthood for compassionate care. The transgender teens who come for an appointment and find the first place where they can truly be themselves.

Thank you for being there for your communities  whether that means taking on hostile politicians in Louisiana or handing out clean drinking water in Flint, Michigan.

And thank you for being there for every woman in every state who has to miss work; drive hundreds of miles sometimes; endure cruel, medically unnecessary waiting periods; walk past angry protesters to exercise her constitutional right to safe and legal abortion.

Ive been proud to stand with Planned Parenthood for a long time. And as president, I will always have your back.

Because I know for a century, Planned Parenthood has worked to make sure that the women, men, young people who count on you can lead their best lives  healthy, safe and free to follow their dreams.

Just think when Planned Parenthood was founded, women couldnt vote or serve on juries in most states. It was illegal even to provide information about birth control, let alone prescribe it.

But people marched and organized. They protested unjust laws and, in some cases, even went to prison. And slowly but surely, America changed for the better.

51 years ago this week, thanks to a Planned Parenthood employee named Estelle Griswold, the Supreme Court legalized birth control for married couples across America. When I used to teach law, and I would point to this case, a look of total bewilderment would come across my students faces. And not long after that, Roe v. Wade guaranteed the right to safe, legal abortion.

So young women were no longer dying in emergency rooms and back alleys from botched, illegal abortions. And this is a fact that is not often heard, but I hope you will repeat it: Americas maternal mortality rate dropped dramatically.

And it turns out, being able to plan their families not only saved womens lives, it also transformed them  because it meant that women were able to get educations, build careers, enter new fields, and rise as far as their talent and hard work would take them  all the opportunities that follow when women are able to stay healthy and choose whether and when to become mothers.

And you know so well, today, the percentage of women who finish college is six times what it was before birth control was legal. Women represent half of all college graduates in America and nearly half our labor force.

And our whole economy, then, is better off. The movement of women into the workforce, the paid workforce, over the past 40 years was responsible for more than three and a half trillion dollars in growth in our economy.

And heres another fact that doesnt get much attention: unintended pregnancy, teen pregnancy, and abortion rates are at all time record lows. That reality and studies confirm what Planned Parenthood knew all along: Accurate sex education and effective, affordable contraception work.

And, it wasnt so long ago, Republicans and Democrats could actually stand together on these issues. Back in the 90s, when I helped create the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy, I worked with Republicans to get it done.

Now things feel quite a bit different now, dont they?

Instead of working to continue the progress weve made, Republicans, led now by Donald Trump, are working to reverse it.

When Donald Trump says, Lets make America great again, that is code for lets take America backward. Back to a time when opportunity and dignity were reserved for some, not all. Back to the days when abortion was illegal, women had far fewer options, and life for too many women and girls was limited.

Well, Donald, those days are over.

We are not going to let Donald Trump or anyone else turn back the clock.

And that means weve got to get to work. Because as you know better than anyone, right now, across the country, rights that women should be able to take for granted are under attack.

Any day now, the Supreme Court will rule on the Texas law that imposes burdensome and medically unnecessary requirements on abortion providers. If these restrictions are allowed to stand, 5.4 million women of reproductive age will be left with about 10 health centers that provide abortion  in a state the size of France. It is the biggest challenge to Roe v. Wade in a generation.

Its also yet another reminder of whats at stake on the Supreme Court. President Obama has done his job, and nominated Merrick Garland to be the ninth justice. Its time for Senate Republicans to do their job. The Senate should give Judge Garland the hearing he deserves.

Now, meanwhile, in just the first three months of 2016, states across the country introduced more than 400 restrictions on abortion. 11 states have defunded Planned Parenthood in the last year, cutting some women off from their only health care provider. And of course, on a national level, Republicans in Congress have been willing to shut down the entire federal government over Planned Parenthood funding.

Have you ever noticed that the same politicians who are against sex education, birth control, and safe and legal abortion, are also against policies that would make it easier to raise a child  like paid family leave?

They are for limited government everywhere except when it comes to interfering with womens choices and rights.

Well Im here today to tell you we need to be just as determined as they are.

We need to defend Planned Parenthood against partisan attacks. If right-wing politicians actually cared as much about protecting womens health as they say they do, theyd join me in calling for more federal funding for Planned Parenthood.

We also need to fight back against the erosion of reproductive rights at the federal, state, and local levels, and ensure that patients and staff can safely walk into health centers without harassment or violence.

We need to, we need to stand up for access to affordable contraception, without interference from politicians or employers. And lets invest in long-acting reversible contraceptives, so every woman can choose the method that is best for her. Lets strengthen and improve the Affordable Care Act, which covers 20 million Americans and saves women millions of dollars through no-copay preventive care.

Lets take action to stop the spread of the Zika virus, which threatens the health of children and pregnant women.

Lets repeal laws like the Hyde Amendment that make it nearly impossible, make it nearly impossible for low-income women, disproportionately women of color, to exercise their full reproductive rights.

And, it is worth saying again: defending womens health means defending access to abortion  not just in theory, but in reality. We know that restricting access doesnt make women less likely to end a pregnancy. It just makes abortion less safe. And that then threatens womens lives.

For too long, issues like these have been dismissed by many as womens issues  as though that somehow makes them less worthy, secondary.

Well, yes, these are womens issues. Theyre also family issues. Theyre economic issues. Theyre justice issues. Theyre fundamental to our country and our future.

Beyond these specific issues, we need to keep working to support women and families in other ways  by getting incomes rising, including the minimum wage, which disproportionately affects women; we need to finally guarantee equal pay for womens work; we need to pass comprehensive immigration reform with a path to citizenship that keeps families together; and we need to break down all the barriers of discrimination and systemic racism that hold too many Americans back.

We need to come together to stop the epidemic of gun violence that is stalking our country. No parent should live in fear that their child will be hurt or killed by gun violence. 33,000 Americans are killed every year. Ive met so many mothers on this campaign who have lost their own children. We owe it to them to protect our kids no matter what ZIP code they live in. And that is going to require standing up to the gun lobby and making this a voting issue.

All the issues were talking about today are connected. They intersect. And thats why Im grateful to the reproductive justice leaders in this room and across America. Because you know that all those issues go straight to that fundamental question: whether we believe women and families of all races and backgrounds and income levels deserve an equal shot in life.

Now thats what I believe and you wont be surprised to hear  Donald Trump believes something very different.

He actually thinks guaranteeing paid family leave would leave America less competitive. He says if women want equal pay, we should just  and this is a quote  do as good a job as men  as if we werent already.

He wants to appoint justices who want to overturn Roe V. Wade. He of course wants to defund Planned Parenthood. And he wants to go after so many of the fundamental rights we have, including safe and legal abortions. And he actually said, women should be punished for having abortions. Now, once he said that there was an outcry, as there should have been, and he tried to walk back his comments. Hes doing that a lot lately.

But anyone who would so casually agree to the idea of punishing women  like it was nothing to him, the most obvious thing in the world  that is someone who doesnt hold women in high regard. Because if he did, hed trust women to make the right decisions for ourselves.

But dont worry. Donald assures us that, as President, hell be  and I quote again  the best for women.

Anyone who wants to defund Planned Parenthood, and wipe out safe, legal abortion has no idea whats best for women.

And after all this is a man who has called women pigs, dogs, and disgusting animals. Kind of hard to imagine counting on him to respect our fundamental rights?

When he says pregnant women are an inconvenience to their employer, what does that say about how he values women  our work, our contributions?

Were in the middle of a concerted, persistent assault on womens health across our country. And we have to ask ourselves and ask everyone we come in contact with: Do we want to put our health, our lives, our futures in Donald Trumps hands?

Now, these questions arent hypothetical. Every woman  and everyone who cares about women  will answer them when they vote in November.

When I talk like this, Donald Trump likes to say Im playing the woman card. And I like to say, if fighting for equal pay, Planned Parenthood, and the ability to make our own health decisions is playing the woman card, then deal me in.

Now my friends, I come to this issue, of course as a woman, a mother, and a grandmother now. But I also come to it as a former First Lady, Senator, and Secretary of State. And in those roles, in those roles, I traveled to parts of the world where girls are married off as soon as they are old enough to bear children. Places where the denial of family planning consigns women to lives of hardship.

I visited countries where governments have strictly regulated womens reproduction  either forcing women to have abortions or forcing women to get pregnant and give birth.

Everything I have seen has convinced me that life is freer, fairer, healthier, safer, and far more humane when women are empowered to make their own reproductive health decisions.

And everything Ive heard from Donald Trump, often seems to echo other leaders who have a very different view of women.

The late, great Maya Angelou said: When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.

Donald Trump has shown us who he is. And we sure should believe him.

Its not just on reproductive rights. Donald Trump would take us in the wrong direction on so many issues we care about  economic justice, workers rights, civil rights, human rights, the environmentall of that is on the line in this election.

When Donald Trump says a distinguished judge born in Indiana cant do his job because of his Mexican heritage, or mocks a reporter with disabilities, or denigrates Muslims and immigrants, it goes against everything we stand for. He does not see all Americans as Americans.

So this election isnt about the same old fights between Democrats and Republicans. Theyll be there, dont worry. But this election is profoundly different. Its about who we are as a nation. Its about millions of Americans coming together to say: We are better than this.

So heres my promise to you today: I will be your partner in this election and over the long haul.

Together, we are taking on the attacks and together well come out stronger  just like Planned Parenthood has, time and again.

And together were going to unify our country, stop Donald Trump, and fight for an America where we lift each other up, instead of tearing each other down.

Were not just going to break that highest and hardest glass ceiling. Were going to break down all the barriers that hold women and families back.

Were stronger when every family in every community knows theyre not on their own. We are stronger together and we are going to make history again in November.

Thank you all so, so much.
Noah Galvin, star of ABCs The Real ONeals, is doing some serious damage control after insulting Modern Familys Eric Stronestreet, among several other actors, in a (too) candid new interview.

RELATEDNashville Season 5 Update: Axed ABC Drama on Verge of Renewal at CMT

Before we get to Galvins apology, heres a bit about the now-infamous interview: Speaking with Vulture about the way gay characters are portrayed on television, as well as the politics of being out in Hollywood, the 22-year-old actor had some harsh words for Stonestreet, including that hes playing a caricature  of a stereotype as Modern Familys Cam, giving his character a lack of authenticity.

Though not directly TV-related, Galvin also came out swinging against Arrows Colton Haynes, referring to the actors recent coming-out interview as fing py bullst, which was largely responsible for the interview going almost-immediately viral. (You can read Haynes response here.)

Less than 12 hours after the interview was posted, Galvin took to Twitter to apologize for his irresponsible and stupid comments.

As I said in the interview, I think Eric Stonestreet is a wonderful actor, Galvin tweeted Thursday. I apologize to everyone Ive hurt with my comments and understand the damage that has been done. I am new to this and will certainly commit to being more thoughtful and wiser as I navigate all of this moving forward.

The Real ONeals, in which Galvin plays a 16-year-old boy who comes out to his conservative Catholic family, was recently renewed for a second season.

Read Galvins two-tweet apology in full below, then drop a comment with your thoughts on this whole debacle.

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Shots were fired at Dallas Love Field Airport on Friday when a police officer fired on a man near a baggage claim area who may have been armed with a large rock.

According to Assistant Police Chief Randall Blankenbaker, the man was using large rocks to attack the car of a woman who may be the mother of his children. An officer assigned to the airport intervened, and when the man rushed the officer, the officer fired on him a number of times.

The man, identified only as a black male, was taken to a local hospital. His current status is unclear, but Chief Blankenbaker said he believed the suspect was conscious when he was taken away from the scene.

In the uncertainty after the shooting, some people on security lines at the airport rushed through without being checked. After the incident, travelers were pulled out of the secure area to be rechecked. A representative for the airport said there had been several cancellations and delays, but that lines were moving quickly.

Further details on the shooting are still being investigated. The officer who fired his weapon will be placed on routine administrative leave per the Dallas Police Departments policy.

[Reuters, WFAA]
COLUMBUS  A small church has a long history in the community.

Grace Episcopal Church, which has about 40 members, is marking its 150th anniversary this month. Though not large in size, the church has continued to have a presence in Columbus through its weekly services and year-round events offered to the public, such as rummage sales, chili feeds, a mobile food pantry and pancake dinners.

The size of the congregation means most members give their time to help with various activities and ministries, which creates a close-knit feeling.

It is more of a family-type atmosphere. Everyone knows everyone. We all pitch in to do what needs to be done, said Steve Anderson.

Anderson has been a member of Grace Episcopal for about 55 years after moving to Columbus with his parents when he was 8. He has held many positions within the church since then, and is currently the junior warden, a layperson who serves as a church officer.

He said part of the reason why the church has remained for a century and a-half is because families continue to be members generation after generation.

Grace Episcopal got its start in 1866 when the Rev. Samuel Goodale held services once a month in the town hall. It wasnt until three years later when an actual church was built and dedicated. The church eventually moved to the northeast corner of 14th Street and 25th Avenue, where city hall is located today.

That site served the congregation until 1940 when the land was sold to Loup Public Power District. After the sale, the church moved to its current location of 2053 23rd Ave.

Today, the church is led by the Rev. Ellie Thober. Before her, 34 other priests headed Grace Episcopal since its beginnings. Services are every Sunday with Communion, or if the priest is gone, a morning prayer service is led by laypeople.

Along with services, there are several ministries and outreach programs, including a long-running altar guild, Sunday school, donation collection every month for nonprofit organizations and rosary making. Another is a quilting ministry called Knots and Prayers.

A group of five to six women gather each week to make quilts for those in need. It is a program that has been going on for at least 10 years.

We dont sell them. Basically, they are gifts. Anybody in the parish that knows someone who needs one is welcome to have one, said Mardi Brega, who has been a member there since 1960.

The group usually makes and gives away dozens of quilts each year. Each quilt is blessed and has knots that are tied by parishioners who say prayers for the recipient.

Fellow quilter Judy Davis, a parishioner at Grace Episcopal for about 20 years, travels to the church every week from David City for services and the quilting ministry.

She used to drive to Schuyler to attend the Episcopal church there, but after that closed, she switched to Columbus. Davis said when she is asked to describe her religion, she says, My answer usually is we take the best of the Catholic (faith), the best of the Protestant (faith) and put it together.

Brega agreed, saying there are some differences between the Episcopal faith and Catholicism, like ordaining women, but worshiping Christ is at the center.

We come with different ideas and opinions, but when we come to church it is for the same purpose. We may not agree on women being ordained or gays being married, but when we come to church that is put aside and all worship the same God, she said.

Worship at Grace Episcopal is done in a small church that has stained-glass windows in each wall and dark-colored wooden beams on the ceiling. The look of the church is an aspect Anderson enjoys.

It is absolutely beautiful. It is an old church but the woodwork is just awesome. When you step inside, you really feel a closeness to God, he said.

Anniversary celebrations for the church will begin with a 10 a.m. June 19 service in Pawnee Park followed by a picnic. A service at Grace Episcopal will be held 5 p.m. June 25 with Bishop Scott Barker. A dinner will be held after the service at Dusters. The celebrations are open to the public.

For more information or to make reservations, call Brega at 402-606-4752
During it's seven-season run on FX, Rescue Me never shied away from provocative topics, shocking scenes and foul language, so it was no surprise to the firefighter drama's beloved fans that the show's reunion Friday at the ATX Festival offered up much of the same.

Led by the always colorful, and quotable, creators Denis Leary and Peter Tolan, the cast reflected on the drama five years after it went off the air and discussed whether the show would get the green light today.

"It wouldn't be f---ing Chicago Fire, I'll tell you that much," Leary told the crowd to laughter. "I don't even watch that show but people call me and go, 'Dude.' And I go, 'I know.'"

In a rare moment of self-control, Leary held back from bashing too hard on the NBC firefighter drama, which premiered a year after Rescue Me's 2011 series finale.

"I like Lady Gaga so I don't want to say anything too negative because I'm still holding out to get invited to the wedding," he explained before referencing her fiance, Taylor Kinney, who stars on the series.

Tolan offered a more serious answer as he reflected on the impact 9/11 had on the show. Rescue Me premiered just three years after the terrorist attack and centered on how New York firefighters each dealt with the tragedy in different ways.

"The degree of difficulty would not be there. It was so hard to do it then," he said. "This was really about not forgetting the first responders who died that day and their families and anyone else who was touched by that tragedy."

Now, in contrast, the country is "so far from removed from it," Tolan said. "The fact that we did it right then when the wound was still fresh was important."

Read More: Denis Leary Calls 'Rescue Me' Co-Creator Peter Tolan 'Gay' -- And He Is

Originally conceived by Leary as a possible movie idea, seeing a friend of his who served as a firefighter in New York deal with the aftermath was a huge influence on the development of the series.

Story continues

"Some guys were drinking their way through it, some guys were f---ing their way through it," Leary said, giving credit to Tolan for first thinking of it as a series. "He said, "This is f---ing interesting if we do these guys every week.'"

But it wasn't just that aspect of the series that made Rescue Me famous for pushing the boundaries. There were also scenes like when Tommy (Leary) sexually assaulted his estranged wife Janet (Andrea Roth) in season three that drew outcry at the time.

"I think that it was a wonderfully written, very complex situation between two incredibly dysfunctional people who love-hated one another," Roth recalled. "I did not understand everybody's offense to it because we weren't condoning the situation. We were just acting how these two characters would act."

Leary revealed the scene was inspired by one of his own female friends who had been in a similarly toxic and complicated relationship. "She was like, 'Wow, you really captured that, that's really how it felt,'" Leary said.

Another obstacle Leary faced was with standards and practices, particularly after a scene in which Tommy's girlfriend Sheila (Callie Thorne) calls his ex-wife a c--- in a text, but spells it incorrectly so that it could be said on air.

"This one woman in standards and practices was convinced that we said, 'c---'," Leary recalled. "We showed her the script and she kept going. She sent memo after memo: 'I know he said c---,'  I have it framed in the office."

Although many actors on the panel praised the show's fearlessness, Tolan revealed not everyone shared that sentiment, particularly two actors who quit the show who had to be replaced.

One was an actress originally set to play Lou Scurti's wife in season one. She left the show, Tolan said, because she was a devout Catholic and refused to portray a character who having an affair.

"I mean what the f---? Have you seen Spotlight? Good luck with your career," Leary said.

"Speaking of Spotlight," Tolan said with a laugh, the other actor who exited was brought onto portray a priest but did not want to play a priest who was a pedophile. "Lesson learned: don't hire f---ing Catholics," Leary joked.

Tolan said it's an issue that continues to come up. "There's a thing that I see more and more as I do other things. Actors going, 'I don't want to do that and mostly its men. 'I have to be the hero. I can't be weak,' and refuse to play anything," he said. "We had a really good time making this show and that's so true you don't appreciate that until you go off and do other shows."

However, the cast on stage praised the writers for creating a safe environment for such daring scenes and storylines.

"I was terrified too but you get to set but Denis and Peter and [executive producer] Evan Reilly, you just fall into their arms of security, love and you know the talent is so big that you can rise to that occasion," Tatum O'Neal, who played Tommy's sister, said. "It was the best experience of my life working in film and TV."

Thorne recalled being "terrified" going through particular scripts. "My upper lip would sweat and then the next moment would be me remembering that the set was such a place of safety and fun and play, it would calm me down so I could learn my lines," she said.

The cast and writers seemed up for another reunion down the line. But Leary had one request for next time. He said, "I want a Rescue Me jet."
Beneath the sands of the Jordanian World Heritage site Petra sits a giant and unexpected monument "hiding in plain sight."

Found not 2,150 years too soon, researchers recently discovered the monument with the help of drones, satellites and ground surveys.

"This monumental platform has no parallels at Petra or in its hinterlands at present," the wrote in a recently published report, according to the Guardian.

The two-level structure, which was probably used for ceremonial purposes, consists of a column-lined platform, a huge staircase and flagstones; it is said to stretch the length of an Olympic swimming pool and the width of two.

Massive New Monument Found in Petra http://on.natgeo.com/1Y9JVpX via @NatGeo #archaeology

Located just half a mile south of the site's epicenter in southwestern Jordan, archaeologists have noticed the structure's existence in the past, but it looked too much like the common terrace walls to draw further examination.

Pottery found by the site dates it to being over 2,150 years old, during the heyday of the ancient city.

Source: MENAHEM KAHANA/Getty Images

Film fanatics might recognize Petra, which was constructed by the ancient Nabateans, from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. At certain points in time, the wealthy city was ruled by the Romans, Byzantines and Ottomans until its abandonment in the seventh century. In 1812, Johann Burckhardt, a Swiss explorer, uncovered the spectacularly carved ruins.

The site has yet to be excavated. "To my knowledge, we don't have anything quite like this at Petra," said Christopher Tuttle, an archaeologist who has worked at Petra for about 15 years, told the Guardian.
There are at least three different movies wrestling to take possession of The Conjuring 2, speaking through it in funny, confused voices and preventing it from being the fine, subtle horror chiller it might have been. Its predecessor, The Conjuring (2013), was a huge surprise hit: Vera Farmiga and Patrick Wilson played (real life) demonologists Ed and Lorraine Warren, investigating strange goings-on at a Rhode Island farmhouse, newly occupied by a large family headed by Lili Taylor and Ron Livingston. Director James Wan dotted the movie with the requisite jump moments, but he also brushed it with a low-gloss, chilly sheen.

The Conjuring 2 should have been more of the same. Instead, its just 2 much. Theres so much plot here, and so many extraneous effects, that the real spookiness at the movies heart is obscured. The story is based, roughly, on the true-life and sort-of famous Enfield hauntings of the late 1970s, in which a working-class family living in a council house in northern London were tormented by a strange presence, one that seemed particularly fixated on preteen Janet Hodgson (played here by Madison Wolfe). The case attracted lots of media attention in Great Britain, and a Google search will bring up pictures of the real-life Janet Hodgson levitatingor levitating, depending on your level of skepticismfrom her bed. Whether you believe in ghosts or not, the pictures of this small, skinny girl in her nightie, seemingly leaping from her bed with all muscles tensed, are strange and spooky.

The Conjuring 2 captures a sense of that ominousnessuntil Wan becomes distracted, throwing in dozens of other things (like a malevolent spirit taking shape from a creepy toy) that dont need to be there, and repeating certain effects (a grouch-spirit growling This is my house) so many times that they lose their potency.

In the end, the effect is more one of boredom than terror. But there are still some out-there elements in The Conjuring 2 that are just odd enough to startle and surprise, and sometimes theyre not even the scariest things. Farmiga and Wilson return as Ed and Lorraine, and this time around, the movie focuses more on them as a couple, lovebirds united in their devotion to investigating paranormal activity. Their coo-cooing becomes a bit much. But the movies earlier scenes, showing single mom Peggy Hodgson (Frances OConnor) moving her family into dismal new digs, are extraordinarily effective, partly because they capture the anxious cheeriness in the face of despair that so many families, at one time or another, need to conjure. A gorgeous, sinuous tracking shot gives us a sense of the houses space: Wan and cinematographer Don Burgess (who has worked frequently with Robert Zemeckis) show us, in one deft, swooping movement, how small the space is, and who sleeps where. We see the small tent made of blankets that the familys youngest child has set up at the end of the hallway. You can bet that tent will play a huge role later, but the first sight of it is eerily luminous and beautiful, a symbol of the place where childhood play and childhood fears intersect.

Furniture moves of its own accord. An inexplicable banging is heard within the walls. A spectral figure appears in a saggy old armchair, and commences to communicate through a vulnerable child. You know the drill. The most haunting scenes here are the quieter ones: When the Warrens are finally summoned to the Enfield housetheir assignment is to check it out, just to see if the Catholic Church should mosey on over and perform an exorcismthey spend lots of time wandering about and asking questions, as well as setting up a tape recorder to catch the houses malevolent presence speaking through Janets mouth.

Yet the things Janet says on her own have more meaning, and Wolfe plays her with a believable sense of preadolescent shyness and bewilderment. In one of the movies finest scenes (and the least scary, in the jump-scare sense), she opens up to Lorraine about her inability to sleep at night. Shes tired, tired, all the time. Sometimes shes allowed to sleep at the nurses office at school, but it doesnt help much. Shes small and frail-looking, and her eyes are shadowy. Whatever weight shes carryingwhether its torment by a ghost or just her anxiety over with the fact that her father has recently quit the familyits too much for her to bear.

The oddest and most wonderful moment in The Conjuring 2 has no reason to exist at all. At one point, Patrick Wilsons Ed Warren, a self-professed Elvis fan, takes up a guitar and serenades his wife and the Hodgsons with a rendering of I Cant Help Falling in Love with You. At first, Wilson plays the moment as a gag, leaning in hard with a cartoonish Presleyan sneer. But hes so good at mimicking Elviss voice, with all its rolling velvetiness, that the moment transmutes into something weird and far-reaching, a kind of whispered yearning. Ed sings the song to amuse and distract the family, and to express his love for Lorraine, who looks on, beaming his affection right back. But the reasons for his singing are the least interesting elements of the scene. In real life, the ghostly activity at the Enfield house took place between 1977 and 1978. In the movies universe, Elvis may have been very recently departed at the moment Ed picks up that guitar. The song itself is a specter, a translucent breath hanging in the air, being channeled through a man whos singing like a ghost. Why is the song there, and why does it sound so beautiful? Its the movies only truly haunted, inexplicable moment.
Gigazombie vs Dorazombie in Doraemon: Nobita and the Birth of Japan 2016. (Golden Village Pictures)

Marcus Goh is a Singapore television scriptwriter. Hes also a Transformers enthusiast and avid pop culture scholar. He Tweets/Instagrams at Optimarcus and writes at marcusgohmarcusgoh.com. The views expressed are his own.

Secret ending? No.

Running time: 104 minutes (~1.75 hours)

Doraemon: Nobita and the Birth of Japan 2016 is an animated film thats the 36th one in the Doraemon franchise, and is also a remake of 1989s Doraemon: Nobita and the Birth of Japan. It sees Doraemon, Nobita, and friends travelling back in time and getting involved in prehistoric problems. It features the voice talents of Wasabi Mizuta (Doraemon), Megumi Ohara (Nobita Nobi), Yumi Kakazu (Shizuka Minamoto), Subaru Kimura (Takeshi Giant Goda), and Tomokazu Seki (Suneo Honekawa).

Doraemon: Nobita and the Birth of Japan 2016 sees a lot of costume changes for our cast (since they spend most of their screen time in caveman outfits) and story-wise, has a slightly different style from what were used to. Its a sign of a good adaptation since it doesnt feel old-fashioned, but also doesnt feel quite in sync with the recent tone of modern movies (since the original story took place over 20 years ago). Its a good entry into your Doraemon library though, and worth watching just to see what the gang is up to this time. And yes, we have so many Doraemon movies that they are now doing remakes of earlier movies.

Nobita and his cuddly new pets in Doraemon: Nobita and the Birth of Japan 2016. (Golden Village Pictures)

Highlights

More gadgets than ever

Doraemon pulls out a gadget every other scene in the film. Its not always a deus ex machina, but more as a supplement or plot device to move the story along. Many of them are actually very practical gadgets that show how Doraemon could feasibly start an entire civilisation by himself. One of the appeals of the Doraemon franchise is the wish fulfillment that comes from having any gadget to solve any problem, and this film has it in spades.

Story continues

Cute creatures

Theres a distinct Pokemon vibe with the three fantastic creatures Pega, Draco, and Gris, even though these are ideas pulled from 1989. But theyre adorable monsters (which dont fit in your pocket), and serve useful functions as well. They also give us a chance to see Nobitas greatest strength, his heart, and are more than just the cute mascots to attract children to watch the film.

Adventurous premise and plot

Its a time travel adventure where they get to change (or at least witness) the course of history! You dont normally get grander ideas than that from a Doraemon film. The characters also spend a lot of time adventuring, and theyre a competent lot while exploring that ancient era. Its a larger than life plot that fits in perfectly with the cuddly fantasy creatures and creative gadgets, and helps immerse you into the world of Nobita and his friends.

Kukuru meets the gang in Doraemon: Nobita and the Birth of Japan 2016. (Golden Village Pictures)

Letdowns

Little character development

Sadly, all that adventure and plot come at an expense  character development. Besides Nobita and Doraemon, the other three main characters hardly have any development over the show. Poor Shizuka suffers the most, since shes sidelined to just delivering functional dialogue and being part of their five-man team. Its definitely not as touching as earlier instalments.

Kukurus miniscule role

Because you see Kukuru from the start of the film, it creates the expectation that he will play a large part in the resolution of the film, which he doesnt. He isnt even really one of the main characters of the film, but his backstory and character pique your interest from the opening vignette. Its a case of misaligned expectations, and Kukurus role should either have been expanded or dropped.

Time travelling in Doraemon: Nobita and the Birth of Japan 2016. (Golden Village Pictures)

Doraemon: Nobita and the Birth of Japan 2016 is one of the more fun Doraemon adventures, and is a good variant on the recent Doraemon fare.

Should you watch this at weekday movie ticket prices? OK.

Should you watch this at weekend movie ticket prices? Nah.

Score: 3.0/5

Doraemon: Nobita and the Birth of Japan 2016 opens in cinemas 9 June, 2016 (Thursday).
Heres a sentence we never thought wed write: Poor Rob Lowe!

One of Hollywoods handsomest and most charming actors had his show, The Grinder, cancelled last month and now Comedy Central has announced that a bunch of people are going to say mean things about him on TV, as Lowe is the subject of the next Roast.

FML! I thought I was agreeing to be toasted #Spellcheck #LoweRoast Lowe wrote on Instagram.

WATCH: John Stamos Hilariously Gets Mistaken for Rob Lowe While on Vacation  See His Reaction!

So, how was 52-year-old actor chosen to receive this, err, honor? Rob Lowe is handsome, talented, successful and handsome. He needs to be roasted, the networks president, Kent Alterman, said in a statement.

What a thrill to once again be following in Justin Biebers footsteps, Lowe himself joked in the press release. I look forward to a night of hilarious jokes recycled from the James Franco Roast. I would like to express my gratitude to the members of my family who have passed away and therefore will not have to endure what promises to be a very special evening.

The Comedy Central Roast of Rob Lowe airdate is TBD but coming sometime this summer.

Meanwhile, ET learned Lowe could be making a return to TV sooner rather than later, as he is in talks to join Kelly Ripa as co-host of Live! Get the scoop and find out what Lowe had to say about the potential gig in the video below.

Related Articles
romney cnn

Mitt Romney said that Donald Trump's election could lead to what he called "trickle-down racism" spreading across the country.

"I don't want to see trickle-down racism" Romney said in an interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer.

"Presidents have an impact on the nature of our nation, and trickle-down racism, trickle-down bigotry, trickle-down misogyny, all these things are extraordinarily dangerous to the heart and character of America," he added.

Trump has come under fire for his racially charged attacks on US District Judge Gonzalo Curiel, who is presiding over a lawsuit against Trump's now defunct real-estate school, Trump University.

Several high-profile Republicans, including House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, have distanced themselves from the attacks, although they have publicly affirmed their support of the presumptive Republican presidential nominee.

The architects of the Republican national-security agenda have also pushed back against Trump's proposed barring of Muslims entering the US.

Romney has been the target of sharp criticism for comments he made during the 2012 presidential election. News outlet Mother Jones published secretly recorded video of Romney telling a group of donors that 47% of Americans would vote for Obama because they are "dependent on the government."

trump

The 2012 Republican presidential nominee has been an outspoken critic of Trump, and attempted to recruit a third-party candidate to mount an independent run against the business mogul. Romney was floated as a possible candidate for the anti-Trump movement, although he ruled that out during the interview.

Romney said:

I think you're not going to find a credible candidate actually running as a third-party contender. The only way to win the White House, in my view, is to become a nominee of either the Republican or the Democrat Party, and simply running to be a spoiler would not give the American people I think the chance to express their own views about Mr. Trump or about Secretary Clinton.

Story continues

Watch a segment from the interview below:





More From Business Insider


From Popular Mechanics

The Russian government is getting into the business of commercial planes. The Russian United Aircraft Corporation (UAC), which is majority owned by the government, has just unveiled the MC-21 300, which it boasts will be a rival to the best planes coming out of commercial aerospace, like the Airbus A320neo and the Boeing 737Max.

Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev praised the plane, which will complete certification in 2017, at a fancy reception in Siberia. He called the plane "cool," and urged that Russia become an elite player in aerospace.

Western sanctions against Russia have led to increasing calls for domestic production, and the MC-21 300 stands to be a shining role model. The plane has Russian-built turbofans and Russian-built avionics. While the plane has gone through delays, there was no sense of caution in Medvedev's speech.

"I only want to say that I am absolutely certain that the airliner will be the pride of Russian civil aviation, and that our citizens and foreign people will take pleasure in flights on MC-21," he said. We'll see!

Source: The Guardian
Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders speaks at a rally in Washington, D.C., June 9, 2016. (Photo: Cliff Owen/AP)

Bernie Sanders ignored the approaching end of his presidential candidacy Thursday evening at an outdoor rally in the nations capital, seeking to maintain political leverage in the run-up to the Democratic convention in July.

But the 74-year-old Democratic presidential candidate signaled earlier in the day that while he seeks to move the Democratic Party left at the convention, he will not undercut presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton as she moves toward a general-election matchup with presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump.

Sanders spoke for an hour to 3,000 supporters at a skate park next to RFK Stadium  the former home field of the NFLs Washington Redskins  and made no mention of Clinton or of the fact that President Obama had endorsed her candidacy earlier in the day.

Around the time that Sanders arrived at the evening rally, news broke that Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, a favorite of progressives, was set to endorse Clinton as well.

Sanders opened his remarks by thanking the crowd for being part of a political revolution.

The crowd responded with chants of Thank you, Bernie!

It was the closest that the 74-year-old Democratic Socialist came to publicly acknowledging the inevitable end of his candidacy, after Clinton crossed the delegate threshold needed to clinch the nomination earlier this week.

A moment later Sanders noted that pundits had predicted his campaign would not last long, and said, Well, here we are  its mid-June, and were still standing.

Sanders said that the results from the California primary on Tuesday had yet to come in. And he ended by asking the crowd to vote for him in next Tuesdays D.C. primary election, which will mark the end of the primary process.

But after a meeting with Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid earlier in the day, Reid told reporters that Sanders seemed to have accepted that he would not be the nominee.

Story continues

Sanders also met with Obama at the White House Thursday. Afterward he told reporters that he would meet with Clinton in the near future to see how we can work together to defeat Donald Trump and to create a government which represents all of us and not just the 1 percent.

Sanders pledged to work as hard as I can to make sure that Donald Trump does not become president of the United States.

The Sanders supporters who introduced him to the crowd at the evening rally were more transparent.

These last few days have been difficult.  Ive had to go into my hotel room and just hold on, said Native American tribal rights leader Deborah Parker.

And Cornel West, a professor and public intellectual, urged the crowd to never allow despair to have the last word.

West made mention of Clinton and Trump, trashing them both but making it clear that Trump represented a far more unacceptable choice.

We know that brother Trump is an narcissistic neofascist. Dont let corporate media convince you that simply because youre not crazy about the milquetoast neoliberal sister Hillary, theres something wrong with you, West said. We know the difference between a neoliberal and a neofascist, so you make your own decisions.

Sanders supporters in the crowd were saddened by their preferred candidates failure to beat Clinton, but expressed more weary frustration than anger at their options.

His candidacy has shown the depths of frustration. Im glad he ran, said Laura Richards, a longtime D.C. political activist.

Now that this is ending, I guess the feminist, civil rights angle is coming out, she said, referring to Clintons historic status as the first woman to be the presumptive presidential nominee of any major political party.

Richards shook her head and added, Im not there yet.

But she did think the majority of Sanders supporters would get over their disappointment and vote for Clinton, in large part because of Trump.

Adam Grachek, a 19-year-old Ohio State student in D.C. for the summer as an intern, said he hoped Sanders would take his candidacy to the convention to make a point and to influence the partys platform.

If it was any other Republican, he said, he would vote for Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson or Jill Stein, the Green Partys presumptive nominee. But unless the election is a blowout, he said, he will swallow his displeasure with Clinton and vote for her.

Since its Donald Trump, I think the stakes are much higher, he said. Donald Trump stands for everything I hate.
VANCOUVER, BC / ACCESSWIRE / June 10, 2016 / Scandium International Mining Corp. (SCY.TO) (the "Company") is pleased to announce that its 2016 annual general meeting (the "AGM") was held on June 8, 2016.

At the AGM all resolutions put to the shareholders were passed. Shareholders approved the re-appointment of Davidson & Company LLP, Chartered Accountants as the Company's auditor. The number of directors was set at seven, with George F. Putnam, William B. Harris, Willem P.C. Duyvesteyn, Barry Davies, Warren Davis, James Rothwell and Andrew C. Greig being re-elected as directors of the Company. The shareholders also approved, on an advisory basis, of the compensation awarded by the Company to the Named Executive Officers as described in the management proxy statement and as required by the rules of the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Pursuant to the policies of the Toronto Stock Exchange, the Company is required to disclose a summary of voting results for the election of directors. The voting results are as follows:

Name of Nominee Votes For % of Votes Cast Votes Withheld % of Votes Cast George F. Putnam 82,889,349 99.94% 51,499 0.06% William B. Harris 81,611,149 98.40% 1,329,699 1.60% Willem P.C. Duyvesteyn 82,876,849 99.92% 63,999 0.08% Barry Davis 82,873,149 99.92% 67,699 0.08% Warren Davis 82,849,349 99.89% 91,499 0.11% James Rothwell 82,853,149 99.89% 87,699 0.11% Andrew Greig 82,879,349 99.93% 61,499 0.07%

About Scandium International Mining Corp.

The Company is focused on developing the Nyngan Scandium Project into the world's first scandium-only producing mine. The Company owns an 80% interest in both the Nyngan Scandium Project, and the adjacent Honeybugle Scandium Property, in New South Wales, Australia, and is manager of both projects. Our joint venture partner, Scandium Investments LLC, owns the remaining 20% in both projects, along with an option to convert those direct project interests into SCY common shares, based on market values, prior to construction.

In addition to the two lateritic scandium properties in Australia, SCY owns a 100% interest in the Trdal Scandium/REE property in southern Norway, where we continue our exploration efforts, specifically for scandium and REE minerals.

For further information, please contact:

George Putnam, President and CEO.

Tel: 925-208-1775

Email: info@scandiummining.com

SOURCE: Scandium International Mining Corp.
London (AFP) - The Scottish Episcopal Church on Friday became the first Anglican Church branch in Britain to take a step towards allowing gay marriage in church.

A gathering of church leaders in Edinburgh voted that a change to remove from its laws the definition of marriage as being between a man and a woman should be sent for discussion to the church's seven dioceses.

The proposed reform would also introduce a "conscience clause" for those ministers who do not want to officiate a same-sex marriage, which has been legal in civil ceremonies in Scotland since 2014.

The changes would then be put to another synod vote in 2017.

The vote at the Scottish Episcopal Church synod passed with support from five out of seven bishops, 69 percent of the clergy and 80 percent of the laity, according to the online journal Christian Today.

In January, the Anglican church on Thursday said it had suspended the US Episcopal Church for three years after it approved ceremonies for same-sex marriages.

The issue has long strained ties within the estimated 85-million-strong Anglican Communion, which includes more liberal members such as the United States and Britain, and conservatives such as Nigeria and Kenya.

In 2014, Anglican leader Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury, said it would be "catastrophic" if the Church of England, mother church of the Anglican Communion, accepted gay marriage.

He argued that the association could lead to the slaughter of Christians in countries such as Nigeria, Pakistan and South Sudan.
Seahawks

Yesterday we discussed a few potential free agent targets for the Seahawks at each position on offense.

Read More: Offensive free agent options for Seattle (READ)

Today were flipping the script and looking at a few options on the other side of the ball plus why and why not the Seahawks should sign them.

Seahawks defensive free agent targets

Defensive end: Randy Starks

Why: Seattle is stacked at DE but you can simply never have too many edge rushers in todays NFL. Starks has 42 career sacks and has remarkably only missed six games since being drafted in 2004 by Tennessee.

Why not: The downside of all that veteran experience is a lot of tread on Starks tires. In 2015 he finished with a career low in sacks (one) and is well past his prime. Unless Chris Clemons cant make the cut, theres not much of a need here.

Defensive tackle: Tony McDaniel

Why: McDaniel played for in 32 games for the Seahawks in 2013 and 2014. His size (67 and 305 pounds) and power could help plug up the middle again, which was a down note for Seattles defense last season.

Why not: At 31 years old with 125 career games under his belt, McDaniels best days are behind him. Also, the combination of Jarran Reed and a healthy Jordan Hill should be more than enough to replace Brandon Mebane.

AROUND COVER32

Fantasy Football: Ranking the top ten defenses of 2016

Throwback Thursday: Wes Welker needs to shut the door

NFL: Richard Sherman says owners should pay for stadiums

QB Rankings: Ranking the top 10 NFL QBs by athleticism

Outside linebacker: OBrien Schofield

Why: Like McDaniel, Schofield has previous experience with the Seahawks defense (31 games.) He could help bring back some of what was lost when Bruce Irvin signed with Oakland.

Why not: Going to Atlanta was a great opportunity for Schofield to earn some real playing time on a unit thats not nearly as deep as Seattles. He didnt do much for Dan Quinn, though. Schofields issues in pass coverage make him a risk at times on the field.

Story continues

Right cornerback: Cary Williams

Why: Just kidding.

Why not: Obvious reasons.

Read More: Did Seattle overlook a deep class at cornerback? (READ)

Strong Safety: William Moore

Why: Kam Chancellors drop off in 2015 was probably due to lingering injury issues and not having gone through training camp. Seattle could use more depth at strong safety just in case his decline continues. Moore has played in 76 games and tallied 16 interceptions.

Why not: Fortunately, the Seahawks may have a ready-made answer already on the roster. Kelce McCray looked real sharp at times in 2015 and could thrive if given a larger role in Kris Richards defense. Better to promote internally than seek outside help.

The post Seahawks: Defensive free agent options appeared first on Cover32.
Diarrhea Planet made their television debut on Late Night With Seth Meyers Thursday night performing the rollicking "Ain't a Sin to Win." Their album Turn to Gold is out now.

Diarrhea Planet's Dizzying Guitar Quartet Rages, Rips and Grooves

"The Tonight Show had President Barack Obama tonight, but we got Diarrhea Planet," host Seth Meyers said as he introduced the Nashville band. From there, the six-piece group raged through their single with the four guitars ferociously powering up the heavy track.

Turn to Gold is the band's third album, following up 2013's I'm Rich Beyond Your Wildest Dreams. In between the two full-length LPs the band unveiled the 2014 EP Aliens in the Outfield. In early June, the band launched a tour in support of Turn to Gold which features a few stops at festivals, including Chicago and Denver's Riot Fests and Atlanta's Wrecking Ball Fest. At the end of August, they'll play Project Pabst in Portland alongside Duran Duran, Ice Cube, Tame Impala and Ween.

Related
By Joyce Lee SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korean prosecutors raided the offices of Lotte Group, the country's fifth-largest conglomerate, and several affiliates on Friday, dealing a further blow to its hotel unit's planned IPO, billed as the world's biggest this year. Hotel Lotte, one of the affiliates raided, cut the size of the deal to a maximum $4.5 billion on Tuesday and pushed back the listing to July after prosecutors launched a bribery investigation into a director. About 200 investigators searched 17 locations including group headquarters in central Seoul and the homes of Chairman Shin Dong-bin and other key executives, local news agency Yonhap reported, citing the Seoul Central Prosecutor's office. The raids mark a fresh bout of turbulence for Lotte, one of the best-known of the big family-run conglomerates, or chaebol, that dominate Asia's fourth largest economy, after it was rocked by a bitter succession feud last year. A Lotte official, who declined to be identified due to the sensitivity of the matter, said Friday's raids had not been expected. It was unclear whether there was a direct connection with the bribery probe into Hotel Lotte. Three people with direct knowledge of the matter told Reuters that Friday's raids were part of an investigation into a possible slush fund. They also declined to be identified. One person said prosecutors were also looking into possible breach of trust related to asset transactions among affiliates. Some executives had been barred from leaving the country, one of the sources added. The Seoul Central Prosecutors' Office declined to comment. A Lotte Group spokesman declined to comment on the reason for the raid, when asked whether it concerned a possible slush fund. He noted, however, that the situation was difficult given the group's plans for the IPO and a bid by Lotte Chemical <011170.KS>, its biggest unit by market value, to acquire U.S. chemical maker Axiall Corp . "While cooperating with the investigation, we will do our best to operate normally," he said. LISTING DEADLINE A person working on the Hotel Lotte IPO, who declined to be identified, said bankers were awaiting further information. "It complicates things considerably, of course," the person said. "We don't know what they were looking for, what they took." At the very least, another delay in its listing plans looms large. According to bourse rules, the deadline for Hotel Lotte to list is July 27, six months from the preliminary approval for the IPO. If it needed to refile its prospectus to warn investors about risks from Friday's probe, which appeared likely, it would probably not be able to meet that deadline, an exchange official told Reuters on Friday. A Hotel Lotte spokesman said it was too soon to talk about any changes in IPO plans as investigations were ongoing. Despite its name, Hotel Lotte's biggest money-spinner is duty-free shopping, which accounted for 86 percent of first-quarter revenue. It is the world's third-biggest operator of shops selling tax-free luxury goods and cosmetics to tourists. On Friday, dozens of Chinese tourists queued as usual to access elevators to the flagship Lotte Duty Free outlet in the group's headquarters complex, as TV cameras waited for investigators to emerge from office doors around the corner. South Korea is the world's largest duty-free market, and the bribery investigation is seen as a threat to Hotel Lotte's bid for a coveted duty-free retail license in downtown Seoul due to be awarded in a bidding process later this year. FAMILY POWER STRUGGLE Named after the heroine of an 18th century Goethe novel, Lotte has grown from its founding in Japan 68 years ago as a maker of chewing gum to a corporate giant with interests ranging from hotels and retail to food and chemicals. The group has annual revenue of around $60 billion in Korea. But last year's highly public power struggle within the founding Shin family fueled resentment at the grip the chaebol hold over the economy. Some Koreans also criticized the group's close ties with former colonial ruler Japan. Shin Dong-bin, the younger son of the group's founder, prevailed over his older brother to head the group. Hotel Lotte's planned flotation of around 35 percent of its shares was intended to bring transparency and improve corporate governance at a group whose ownership structure is convoluted even by the opaque standards of South Korea's conglomerates. Shin is currently in the United States attending an event at Axiall Corp, the Lotte Group spokesman said. He is due to return to South Korea next week. His estranged brother Shin Dong-joo, who remains a shareholder in several companies, said in a statement that "huge problems with current management had once again come to the fore" and called for key shareholders to hold urgent talks. Shares in Lotte Shopping <023530.KS>, whose units Lotte Department Store and Lotte Home Shopping were raided, fell 1.6 percent on Friday. Lotte Himart <071840.KS>, a consumer electronics retailer, dropped 2.1 percent. (Additional reporting by Hyunjoo Jin, Se Young Lee in Seoul, Elzio Barreto in Hong Kong and Ritsuko Ando in Tokyo; Writing by Alex Richardson; Editing by Tony Munroe and Edwina Gibbs)
DNA samples are tested at a police lab in Idaho. (Image via Idaho Press-Tribune via Idaho State Police via AP)

Analysis of 5,000 untested rape kits made possible with a grant from Ohios Justice Department has so far helped authorities in Cuyahoga County secure 250 convictions. In fact, the county prosecutor calls the kits the greatest gold mine of information and leads for law enforcement that I have seen in my four-decade career, adding that 1,000 suspects may eventually be prosecuted, per a release.

Related: Victims Dad Jumps Over Table to Attack Killer in Crazy Court Video

Along with that news comes a chilling finding: Serial rapists are far more common than previously thought, says the task force involved with the project, which includes researchers from Case Western Reserve University. A review of 243 sexual assault files found that 51% were linked to serial offenders26% of whom had previously been arrested for sexual assault and 60% of whom were later arrested in an unrelated rape case.

Related: Stanford Rapist Lied About Alcohol Use

New York notes the figure is high because prosecutors prioritized cases linked to serial offenders. Still, our findings suggest it is very likely that a sexual offender has either previously sexually assaulted or will offend again in the future, a researcher says. Investigating each sexual assault as possibly perpetrated by a serial offender has the potential to reduce the number of sexual assaults if investigations focus more on the offender than on single incidents."

Related: Cops: Mom Fights Off Man Trying to Abduct Daughter

Serial offenders were more likely to kidnap their victimsoften strangersand to use or threaten the use of weapons. Some 74% also had a prior felony arrest and 95% had a subsequent felony arrest, compared to 51% and 78% among one-time offenders, reports the Independent. "These are one-man crime waves. And now that we realize this, we cannot allow these kits to sit on shelves untested in the future, the prosecutor says. (Decades-old rape kits pointed to a serial rapist in Houston.)

Story continues

By Arden Dier

More From Newser:

How to Get Pregnant at 50 Without IVF

Cops: Woman Drove SUV Off a Cliff to Kill Twin

This article originally appeared on Newser: Serial Rapists Far More Common Than Thought
NEW YORK, NY / ACCESSWIRE / June 10, 2016 / Pomerantz LLP announces that a class action lawsuit has been filed on behalf of shareholders of Deutsche Bank AG ("Deutsche Bank" or the "Company") (DB) and against certain of its officers. The class action, filed in United States District Court, Southern District of New York, and docketed under 16-cv-03539, is on behalf of a class consisting of all persons or entities who purchased or otherwise acquired Deutsche Bank securities between April 15, 2013 and April 29, 2016 inclusive (the "Class Period"). This class action seeks to recover damages against Defendants for alleged violations of the federal securities laws under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 (the "Exchange Act").

If you are a shareholder who purchased Deutsche Bank securities during the Class Period, you have until July 11, 2016 to ask the Court to appoint you as Lead Plaintiff for the class. A copy of the Complaint can be obtained at www.pomerantzlaw.com. To discuss this action, contact Robert S. Willoughby at rswilloughby@pomlaw.com or 888.476.6529 (or 888.4-POMLAW), toll free, ext. 9980. Those who inquire by e-mail are encouraged to include their mailing address, telephone number, and number of shares purchased. Click here to join this action.

[Click here to join this class action]

Deutsche Bank provides investment, financial, and related products and services worldwide.

The Complaint alleges that throughout the Class Period, Defendants made materially false and misleading statements regarding the Company's business, operational and compliance policies. Specifically, Defendants made false and/or misleading statements and/or failed to disclose that: (1) Deutsche Bank has serious and systemic failings in its controls against financing terrorism, money laundering, aiding against international sanctions, and committing financial crimes; (2) Deutsche Bank's internal control over financial reporting and its disclosure controls and procedures were not effective; and (3) as a result, Deutsche Bank's public statements were materially false and misleading at all relevant times.

Story continues

On July 22, 2014, The Wall Street Journal published an article entitled "Deutsche Bank Suffers From Litany of Reporting Problems, Regulators Said", stating that the Federal Reserve Bank of New York found that the Company's U.S. operations suffered from a litany of serious financial-reporting problems that the Company had known about for years but not fixed.

On this news, shares of Deutsche Bank fell $1.05 per share or approximately 3% from its previous closing price to close at $34.80 per share on July 22, 2014, damaging investors.

Over the next two years, more compliance issues at Deutsche Bank came to light, as media outlets and the Company reported investigations by regulators and an internal probe by Deutsche Bank into possible money laundering by Russian clients, causing Deutsche Bank's share price to fall and damaging investors. Finally, on May 1, 2016, The Financial Times published an article entitled "FCA warns Deutsche on 'serious' financial crime control issues", stating that the United Kingdom's Financial Conduct Authority ("FCA") sent a letter to Deutsche Bank on March 2, 2015, accusing it of having "serious" and "systemic" failings in its controls against financing terrorism, money laundering, aiding against international sanctions, and committing financial crimes. The FCA stated that its investigation uncovered, among other things, incomplete documentations, lack of monitoring, and influencing staff to take actions related to specific clients, which all amounted to a "serious" and "systemic" controls failure. On May 1, 2016, Bloomberg published a similar article entitled "Deutsche Bank Said to Be Faulted by FCA Over Lax Client Vetting", stating that the FCA faulted the Company for "serious" lapses in efforts to thwart money laundering and criticized the Company's ability to verify client's abilities and goals, or ensure that it wasn't aiding organizations subject to international sanctions.

On this news, shares of Deutsche Bank fell $1.62 per share or approximately 9% over the next two trading days to close at $17.34 per share on May 3, 2016, damaging investors.

The Pomerantz Firm, with offices in New York, Chicago, Florida, and Los Angeles, is acknowledged as one of the premier firms in the areas of corporate, securities, and antitrust class litigation. Founded by the late Abraham L. Pomerantz, known as the dean of the class action bar, the Pomerantz Firm pioneered the field of securities class actions. Today, more than 80 years later, the Pomerantz Firm continues in the tradition he established, fighting for the rights of the victims of securities fraud, breaches of fiduciary duty, and corporate misconduct. The Firm has recovered numerous multimillion-dollar damages awards on behalf of class members. See www.pomerantzlaw.com.

SOURCE: Pomerantz LLP
NEW YORK, NY / ACCESSWIRE / June 10, 2016 / Pomerantz LLP announces that a class action lawsuit has been filed against NewLink Genetics Corporation ("NewLink" or the "Company") (NLNK) and certain of its officers. The class action, filed in United States District Court, Southern District of New York, and docketed under 16-cv-03545, is on behalf of a class consisting of all persons or entities who purchased NewLink securities between September 17, 2013 and May 9, 2016 inclusive (the "Class Period"). This class action seeks to recover damages against Defendants for alleged violations of the federal securities laws under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 (the "Exchange Act").

If you are a shareholder who purchased NewLink securities during the Class Period, you have until July 11, 2016 to seek appointment as Lead Plaintiff for the class. A copy of the Complaint can be obtained at www.pomerantzlaw.com. To discuss this action, contact Robert S. Willoughby at rswilloughby@pomlaw.com or 888.476.6529 (or 888.4-POMLAW), toll free, ext. 9980. Those who inquire by e-mail are encouraged to include their mailing address, telephone number, and number of shares purchased. Click here to join this action.

[Click here to join this class action]

NewLink, a biopharmaceutical company, focuses on discovering, developing, and commercializing immunotherapeutic products to enhance treatment options for patients with cancer. Among the Company's product candidates is algenpantucel-L, a pancreatic cancer treatment.

The Complaint alleges that throughout the Class Period, Defendants made false and/or misleading statements, as well as failed to disclose material adverse facts about Alere's business, operations, and prospects. Specifically, Defendants made false and/or misleading statements and/or failed to disclose that: (i) the Company's algenpantucel-L treatment was ineffective and potentially harmful to patients; and (ii) as a result of the foregoing, NewLink's public statements were materially false and misleading at all relevant times.

Story continues

On May 9, 2016, post-market, NewLink announced that algenpantucel-L did not meet the main goal in the Company's Phase 3 IMPRESS study. Patients treated with algenpantucel-L lived for a median of 27.3 months in NewLink's Phase 3 trial, compared to median survival of 30.4 months for patients treated with standard therapy, suggesting that patients were actually harmed by NewLink's treatment.

On this news, NewLink's stock price fell $5.05, or 30.61%, to close at $11.45 on May 10, 2016.

The Pomerantz Firm, with offices in New York, Chicago, Florida, and Los Angeles, is acknowledged as one of the premier firms in the areas of corporate, securities, and antitrust class litigation. Founded by the late Abraham L. Pomerantz, known as the dean of the class action bar, the Pomerantz Firm pioneered the field of securities class actions. Today, more than 80 years later, the Pomerantz Firm continues in the tradition he established, fighting for the rights of the victims of securities fraud, breaches of fiduciary duty, and corporate misconduct. The Firm has recovered numerous multimillion-dollar damages awards on behalf of class members. See www.pomerantzlaw.com.

SOURCE: Pomerantz LLP
Keith Stanfield will co-star with Nat Wolff in Adam Wingards adaptation of Death Note for Netflix.

Margaret Qualley is also on board to star in the film with Wingard writing and directing. TheWrap first reported that Netflix was eyeing Stanfield for a role and sources now reveal that the actor has closed a deal to join the movie.

Netflix recently acquired the project, after Warner Bros. rights expired, and plans to start shooting this summer.

Based on the Japanese Manga series, Wolff plays a student who discovers a supernatural notebook that allows him to kill anyone simply by writing the victims name. A cat-and-mouse game ensues when hes tracked by a reclusive police officer.

Jeremy Slater (Fantastic Four) wrote the most recent draft of the script. Shane Black was previously attached to direct.

Roy Lee, Dan Lin, Jason Hoffs and Masi Oka are producing the project, which was previously adapted as a movie in its home country of Japan, where it spawned a sequel. Doug Davison and Brian Witten are exec producing.

Stanfield had a breakout performance opposite Brie Larson in Short Term 12 and most recently delivered a scene-stealing performance as Snoop Dogg in Straight Outta Compton. He can be seen next in Oliver Stones Snowden.

He is repped by CAA, Stark Management and Ginsburg Daniels LLP.

Related stories

Netflix Lands Adam Wingard's 'Death Note' Starring Nat Wolff

'The Leftovers' Star Margaret Qualley Joins Nat Wolff in 'Death Note'

'Paper Towns'' Nat Wolff to Star in Adam Wingard's 'Death Note'
Asias competitiveness is deteriorating.

Singapore is losing out to neighboring Hong Kong in terms of economic competitiveness, according to the annual world competitiveness scoreboard by IMD.

Singapore slipped to fourth place in this year's rankings, from third in 2015. Meanwhile, Hong Kong clinched the first place for the first time since 2012, toppling the United States which fell to third place. Switzerland came in second to Hong Kong.

Singapore's rank for economic performance, government efficiency, and infrastructure dropped in this year's index. However, the city-state inched up in terms of business efficiency.

Singapore and Hong Kong are the only Asian countries in the top 10.

Hong Kong and Singapore aside, however, the research suggests Asias competitiveness has declined markedly overall since the publication of last years ranking.

Taiwan, Malaysia, South Korea and Indonesia have all suffered significant falls from their 2015 positions, while Mainland China declined only narrowly retaining its place in the top 25.

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, said Professor Arturo Bris, Director of the IMD World Competitiveness Center.







More From Singapore Business Review


Rolling out. The Obama administration is sending U.S. troops in Afghanistan back into the fight. Word came late Thursday night that U.S. troops will be allowed to accompany Afghan units into the field once again, but only when the move will enable strategic effects on the battlefield, one official said. The decision to widen American involvement in the war will also likely mean more U.S. airstrikes on Taliban targets to support troops once they come under fire. (FPs Dan De Luce and Paul McLeary weighed Obamas options on the air war earlier this year.)

American commandos have been accompanying Afghan special forces on missions since the end of the NATO combat mission in January 2015, and have called in airstrikes on Taliban positions when theyve come under fire. That plan was put on full display when a U.S. aircraft mistakenly killed 42 doctors and patients at a Doctors Without Borders hospital in October in Kunduz, after a team of U.S. Army Green Berets called in an airstrike after several days of hard fighting.

Theres still no word on Obamas decision on whether to continue with the planned reduction in the numbers of U.S. troops from the current 9,800 to 5,500 by the start of 2017.

Staggering corruption in Helmand. Up to 50 percent of the Afghan police force in Helmand province doesnt actually exist, Tolo News reports. And now the provinces former police chief, Abdul Rahman Sarjang, is being brought up on charges of corruption. The new police chief in the province told the news outlet that on paper, there are around 10,000 police personnel in Helmand, but up to half are ghost soldiers who draw pay but did not exist physically.

Diplo drones. The probe into then-Secretary of State Hillary Clintons secret email server has shown that her aides forwarded emails to her personal account containing information about a secret program in which the State Department had some say over what targets in Pakistan that the CIA was planning to hit with its drones.

Story continues

Tikrit rules. Can the U.S. control Irans militias in the fight for Fallujah? Washington wants Shiite fighters to stay out of the city, but Tehran has other plans, FPs Dan De Luce and Henry Johnson report. Officials in Washington tell FP that like in the fight for Tikrit last year, where Shiite militias faltered in trying push ISIS out by themselves, American warplanes will stay away from supporting the Iranian-backed groups from the air.

We said we can only do it if the Iranian-backed PMF stay out of the city, a senior U.S. administration official told FP. In Fallujah, where thousands of Shiite militiamen are deployed around the city and appear eager to fight their way inside, the United States is laying down similar conditions said a senior U.S. official. Its a fairly similar rule set thats being applied here, the official said.

United Nations scandal makes everyone look bad. Ban Ki-moon, the U.N. secretary-general, confirmed Thursday he was essentially blackmailed into removing the Saudi-led military coalition in Yemen from a U.N. blacklist of countries and rebel groups that have killed or abused children in conflict, FPs Colum Lynch reports.

The move follows FPs exclusive report Tuesday by Lynch that Saudi Arabia threatened to break relations with the U.N. and cut hundreds of millions of dollars in humanitarian and counterterrorism funds if it was not taken off the list. In response to the threat, Ban agreed Monday to remove Saudi Arabia and its allies from the blacklist, pending a joint review of the matter by the U.N. and representatives of the Saudi-led coalition.

Whos NatSec strategy? House Speaker Paul Ryan dropped a 23-page Republican national security document on Thursday, which was notable for the breaks it reveals with the policies vaguely outlined by his partys presumptive nominee for president, Donald Trump.

FPs John Hudson and Molly OToole break down the roll-out event and the doc, writing, the tension at play is the latest example of Republican leaders attempting to put a leash on Trump as his heterodox policies, vulgarities, and racial incitement pose a growing threat to the partys chances at taking the White House and retaining control of the Senate.

Good morning again from the Sitrep crew, thanks for clicking on through for 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

Russia

Russia is moving in to offer support to Syrian rebels who have soured on begging Washington for help, only to be met with delays or preconditions on support that theyre not interested in making. Buzzfeeds Mike Giglio met with some of these rebel leaders in southern Turkey, who told him that the money from Moscow is flowing, but many rebels are hesitate to get into bed with the Russians, given their support for the Assad regime in Damascus. Still, one leader said the Russians told him, We will support you forever. We wont leave you on your own like your old friends did, while another offered this damning assessment: The Americans just want to buy timebut the Russians are here to work.

The Obama administration is trying to downplay reports of rivalry between the U.S. and Russia in the Arctic. National Defense magazine reports that the State Departments Arctic envoy Adm. Robert J. Papp (ret.) characterized the uptick in Russian operations in the Arctic as defensive in nature and in protection of their sovereignty. Papp encouraged the U.S. to invest more in infrastructure to support its own interests in the region.

The Islamic State

As the noose tightens around the Islamic States caliphate in Iraq and Syria, Michael Lumpkin, the Obama administrations top official for countering extremist messaging, is worried that the group might look for a second act by rebranding, Defense One reports. Lumpkin took over the Global Engagement Center (GEC), the latest in a series of the State Departments own attempts to rebrand its efforts at countering violent extremism. To cope with the Islamic States messaging and that of its successors, the GEC is better funded than its predecessors, with triple the budget of previous State Department propaganda shops this year and quadruple next year.

On the move

Recently retired U.S. central Command chief Gen. Lloyd Austin has joined the board of United Technologies, a major U.S. defense contractor.

Qatar

Two U.S. Army soldiers are in trouble after provoking an international incident between the U.S. and Qatar. The AP reports that Qatari authorities summoned U.S. ambassador Dana Shell Smith for an explanation of an online video in which two U.S. soldiers mugged and crack jokes in front of the Qatari flag. Both Ambassador Shell and Pentagon spokesman Peter Cook have issued apologies for the incident. Insulting the Qatari flag is against the law in the country. The soldiers in the video made a vague allusion to being at an undisclosed location while on camera in front of the Qatari flag.

Drones

We welcome another member to the growing list of countries using armed drones in conflict. IHS Janes reports that Myanmar, the proud owner of a Chinese CH-3A armed drone since 2013, has deployed the aircraft for operations fighting against insurgents in the countrys north. At least two other countries, Nigeria and Iraq, have carried out drone strikes for the first time this year with the help of imported Chinese unmanned aerial vehicles.

Fat Leonard

The bribery scandal that has swept through the top ranks of the U.S. Navy brass is about to claim its most senior officer yet. USNI News spoke with Rear Adm. Robert Gilbeau, who told the outlet he will plead guilty to a charge of lying to investigators. Gilbeau said he would not, however, plead guilty to corruption charges. Gilbeau has been caught up in the scandal surrounding Glenn Defense Marine Asia and its leader Leonard Francis. Francis, referred to as Fat Leonard, allegedly bribed a number of senior Navy officers to provide information to give his defense contracting firm an edge in bidding for lucrative contracts.

Business of defense

The iconic AK-47 assault rifle might soon be an American product if U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM) gets its way. Tampa Bay Times reports that SOCOM is feeling out suppliers on the possibility of producing the AK-47 along with other Russian globally ubiquitous weapons like the PKM and DShK machine guns and Dragunov sniper rifles. Officials say theyd like to be able to source production for the weapons they use to train and equip partners around the world from the U.S. instead of buying abroad. Gunmakers contacted by the Times, however, are wondering whether Defense Department is willing to pay a premium to buy from more expensive American companies instead of low cost producers abroad.

Russia, China, and ships

Russia has sent its first Admiral Grigorovich-class frigate to the port of Sevastopol in Crimea, UPI reports. The Russian navy has ordered up six of the frigates and is currently working on cranking out the third in the class, Admiral Makarov. The next three ships Grigorovich class vessels are slated for delivery to India.

The small but devoted fanbase of Ronald ORourkes Congressional Research Service (CRS) reports on Chinas navy should rejoice. The lasted edition of China Naval Modernization: Implications for U.S. Navy CapabilitiesBackground and Issues for Congress has been liberated from Congress and is now available on the Federation of American Scientists website.

Linked in

A number of senior defense officials have been quietly worrying about the prospect of serving under a President Donald Trump, but theres one group of defense stakeholders that doesnt seem to mind engaging with the presumptive Republican presidential nominees campaign. The Hill reports that the Aerospace Industries Association briefed the Trump campaign on Thursday. The organization represents big defense contractors like Boeing and Lockheed Martin. The group said it welcomed the opportunity to educate candidates on defense issues.

Photo credit: WAKIL KOHSAR/AFP/Getty Images
Washington (AFP) - Six US airlines have been licensed to operate up to 90 round-trip flights per day to Cuba, potentially opening up a new era for mass tourism.

The US Department of Transportation announced the licenses on Friday, as the former Cold War foes continue to negotiate a new relationship now that decades of enmity are over.

"Last year, President Obama announced that it was time to begin a new journey with the Cuban people," Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx said.

"Today, we are delivering on his promise by re-launching scheduled air service to Cuba after more than half a century."

Cuba and the United States restored diplomatic ties in July 2015 after a long stand-off, and in February this year agreed to resume flights.

On Friday, Foxx awarded licenses to American Airlines, Frontier Airlines, JetBlue, Silver Airways, Southwest and Sun Country Airlines.

They will each be permitted to operate flights from their hubs in Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Chicago, Minneapolis-St. Paul and Philadelphia.

The Cuban cities served will be Camaguey, Cayo Coco, Cayo Largo, Cienfuegos, Holguin, Manzanillo, Matanzas, Santa Clara and Santiago de Cuba.

US airlines also asked to serve the Cuban capital Havana, but requests exceeded the slots available so officials are sorting through the requests.

A decision on the Havana routes will be made later this summer and all the flights could begin this fall, the department said.
Washington (AFP) - President Barack Obama made the short but sentimental drive across Washington on Friday to attend his oldest daughters high school graduation.

Obama has joked that Malia's graduation was the one event where he could not give an address.

"Malia's school asked if I wanted to speak at commencement and I said no," Obama said in Detroit earlier this year.

"I'm going to be wearing dark glasses... and I'm going to cry."

True to his promise, Obama was photographed by guests at Sidwell Friends School wearing dark glasses.

He was accompanied by First Lady Michelle Obama, Malia and his youngest daughter Sasha.

Malia was 10 years old when Obama entered office, almost eight years ago.

She is expected to attend Harvard in 2017, after a gap year.

Obama earlier this year told television host Ellen DeGeneres of his sorrow at thinking that she would soon fly the nest.

He said he would be "sobbing" at the graduation.

"She's one of my best friends. And it's going to be hard for me not to have her around all the time. But she's ready to go. You can tell. She's just a really smart, capable person and she's ready to make her own way."
rose wine

If you're seeking a good rose wine this summer, there's only one word you need to look out for: Provence.

Sommelier Jorn Kleinhans, the owner of The Sommelier Company, says that rose from the Provence region of France is the best available.

"In Provence they make unique rose," he tells Business Insider. "It's always bone dry. We realized many Americans think of rose as sweet, but only the bad ones are sweet."

And because of the region's excellent reputation with the wine, you can count on roses labeled with "Provence" to be high quality, no matter how much they cost.

"It's absolutely acceptable to choose a nice Provence rose for $10-$20," Kleinhans says. "You can find them easily at that range. The good news is that with French rose from Provence, you don't have to worry about the price. If their name is on it, it will be a classy, high quality rose. That tradition of excellence keeps the wine producers in check  no one dares to deliver a bad one."

In particular, Kleinhans recommends rose from the seaside Provencal town of Bandol specifically. Like any good rose, it's meant to be a salmon color rather than the cloying pink many wine drinkers have become accustomed to, and is always "bone dry and refreshing."

NOW WATCH: These businesses profit off your laziness





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By Zimasa Mpemnyama JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - A South African court on Friday ordered a woman to pay 150,000 rand ($9,941) to charity after she was found guilty of hate speech for referring to blacks as "monkeys", News24 reported. The case is the latest in a string of similar incidents that have laid bare the racial tensions that endure more than two decades after the end of apartheid rule. The ruling African National Congress (ANC) brought charges against former estate agent Penny Sparrow after she caused public outrage by saying on her Facebook page that blacks made beaches dirty like "wild monkeys". Under apartheid law, South African beaches were racially segregated, with beaches like the one Sparrow referred to, reserved solely for whites. "Her words convey the message both explicitly and implicitly to the reader that black people are not worthy of being described as human beings," Umzinto Equality Court Magistrate Irfaan Khalil was quoted as saying on News24. Khalil ordered Sparrow to pay the fine within 60 days. Sparrow's daughter, who represented her in court, said her mother was too sick to attend and fears for her life. The ANC hailed the ruling as a victory for democracy. "It is unfortunate that 22 years into democracy, racists are emboldened to vent their views on public platforms. This judgment serves as a reminder that such behavior will not be tolerated," the ANC said in a statement. Sparrow had been a member of the official opposition party, the Democratic Alliance (DA), but her membership was revoked after her comments went viral. The DA has a strong following among white South Africans. Standard Bank economist Chris Hart resigned after he tweeted in January that black people had "a sense of entitlement and hatred towards minorities". White senior judge Mabel Jansen was publicly criticized over comments she made last month about black culture and rape. ($1 = 15.0880 rand) (Editing by Joe Brock and Angus MacSwan)
By Zandi Shabalala and Camillus Eboh JOHANNESBURG/ABUJA (Reuters) - MTN Group has agreed to pay a reduced fine of 330 billion naira ($1.7 billion) in a settlement with the Nigerian government of a long-running dispute over unregistered SIM cards, sending shares in the South African telecoms group soaring. The settlement clears the way for MTN to list its local unit on the Nigerian Stock Exchange. Such a step had been on the firm's radar but plans accelerated during negotiations over the fine, Executive Chairman Phuthuma Nhleko told Reuters. The fine will be paid by MTN Nigeria over three years and is only around a third of the $5.2 billion figure initially demanded by the west African country last October for failing to deactivate more than five million unregistered SIM cards. Nigeria has been cracking down on unregistered SIM cards, concerned they are used for criminal activity in a country fighting an insurgency by Islamist militant group Boko Haram. MTN had threatened to pull out of Nigeria as paying the fine in full would have crippled its local operations, a government official said, asking not to be named. "The present administration does not want to ground the operations of any investor in Nigeria," he said. Nigeria, Africa's largest economy and most populous nation, faces its worst crisis for decades after the sharp fall in oil prices and last year's introduction of a currency peg that put investors to flight. But in a possible complication, Nigeria's House of Representatives said it was surprised by the deal as its own probe into the MTN fine had not been concluded. In March, the lower house launched an investigation, arguing that reducing the initial fine of $5.2 billion would require changing the law. "We are still continuing with our investigation," Fijabi Akinade, chairman of the House's committee on communications, told Reuters. Lawmakers had summoned the communications minister and a top regulator official to discuss the deal on Monday. "We want to know how they arrived at that decision and if it was done in good faith ... But honestly, we are surprised," Akinade told Reuters. The dispute removed a cloud hanging over MTN and its shares surged more than 20 percent at one point and closed 13.18 percent higher at 140 rand. They had shed 22 percent since the fine was first announced. "The relationship between MTN, the Federal Government of Nigeria and the Nigerian Communication Commission (NCC) has been restored and strengthened," Nhleko said. The Nigerian regulator said the settlement was acceptable to both parties and that it had not been "out to kill MTN". "Money was not the issue here. The breach was the issue. I believe MTN has learned its lesson," NCC spokesman Tony Ojobo told Reuters. MAJOR MARKET MTN is the largest mobile phone operator in Nigeria with 62 million subscribers and the west African nation accounts for about one third of its revenues. Nhleko, who was chief executive for nine years until 2011, was appointed on an interim basis for six months in November but has stayed on as the company negotiated with Nigerian authorities. In February, MTN hired Eric Holder, the former U.S. attorney-general, to help negotiate the fine. MTN, Africa's largest telecoms company, has already paid 50 billion of the 330 billion naira owed. The rest will be paid in six instalments over three years, the company said. Five weeks after the fine was first announced, MTN's chief executive Sifiso Dabengwa resigned and the company asked Nhleko to take the reins temporarily. A Johannesburg-based analyst gave Nhleko credit for not settling the fine earlier at a figure of $3.9 billion, the first sign Nigerian authorities gave after months of talks that it was willing to accept a lower sum. "He's the guy who built this ship and this shows he can still steer the ship," Momentum SP Reid Securities analyst Sibonginkosi Nyanga told Reuters. The telecommunications firm which spans 20 countries, set aside $600 million in March to pay the fine.($1 = 198.0000 naira) (Additional reporting by Alexis Akwagyiram and Camillus Eboh in Lagos; Editing by Keith Weir and Mark Potter)
By Mfuneko Toyana JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - South Africa has robust institutions to help it avert a credit downgrade, Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan said on Friday, days after Fitch became the third major rating agency to uphold its investment grade status. But he said that South Africa's government must stick to its fiscal targets in the next five months and could not risk any pressure on the budget from debt-ridden state firms. South Africa has also dodged cuts from Moody's and S&P, but analysts said that downgrades could be in the pipeline by December amid an economic meltdown critics partly blame on mismanagement by President Jacob Zuma. Speaking at a business forum, Gordhan said he had nothing to hide or worry about in relation to an investigation into a surveillance unit formed at the South African Revenue Service (SARS) when he was its commissioner between 1999 and 2009. Gordhan spoke two days after Fitch affirmed South Africa's BBB- rating on Wednesday, a notch above "junk" status, but said low GDP growth posed a risk. [nL8N1901CW] "Confidence plays a big part in whether we get investments going and business activity going in our country," Gordhan said at online publication Daily Maverick's "The Gathering", a forum also addressed by a cross-section of political leaders. "Confidence is also about building trust and building understanding and having a shared idea of where we want to take this country." Zuma rattled investors in December by changing finance minister twice in less than a week, triggering a run on the rand and bonds. To calm markets, the president reappointed Gordhan to the post he held from 2009 to 2014. An investigation by the elite police unit Hawks into the surveillance unit at SARS has however led to speculation that Gordhan does not enjoy Zuma's political support. On Friday Gordhan said Zuma and the ruling African National Congress had issued statements assuring him and the National Treasury of their support, but hinted that it would not be easy to rebuild dented confidence in South Africa. Gordhan's comments did little to cheer the rand, which fell more than 2.1 percent against the dollar on Friday in what traders and analysts said was partly a correction after rallying to five week highs following the Fitch review. Gordhan stressed the need to put policies in place that would support sectors like mining and boost the economy, which Treasury estimates would grow at most by 0.9 percent in 2016. Data from the statistics agency this week showed GDP contracted by 1.2 percent in the first quarter, mainly due to an 18-percent slide in mining during the quarter. "We need to stabilise sectors of the economy that find themselves in trouble, like mining," Gordhan said. (Writing by Stella Mapenzauswa; Editing by James Macharia)
By Ju-min Park SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korea and the U.N. Command, which overseas the Korean War armistice, said on Friday they had begun a joint operation to keep Chinese fishing vessels from operating illegally off the west coast. The move comes after South Korean fishermen, frustrated with incursions by Chinese fishing boats in defiance of coastguard warnings, used rope to impound two Chinese trawlers this month and handed them over to authorities. South Korea's navy and coast guard joined with the U.N. Command to patrol the approximately 60 km (40 mile) stretch of waters in the Han River estuary that runs between the coasts of the rival Koreas, a Defence Ministry official told Reuters. "Our navy, coastguard and U.N. Command set up a military police to enter into an operation to expel Chinese fishing vessels," said the official. North Korea had been notified of the team's operation as a safety precaution, an official at the Joint Chiefs of Staff said separately. North and South Korea are technically still at war because their 1950-53 conflict ended in the armistice, not a peace treaty. There were more than 10 Chinese boats fishing in the estuary on Friday but they fled to areas near North Korea's shore after the South Korean-U.N. operation began, the Joint Chiefs of Staff official said. China's Foreign Ministry said Beijing paid close attention to the education of fishermen and always urged them to respect international agreements. "China is willing to strengthen communication and cooperation in the fishing industry with related countries in order to uphold the normal order of the fishing industry," it said in a statement emailed to Reuters. "China hopes that the South Korean side will execute the law in a civilized and rational way, and thoroughly protect the legal rights of Chinese fishermen, avoiding incidents that endanger personal safety." The waters are near the Northern Limit Line, the maritime border disputed by the North which has been the scene of deadly naval clashes between the rival Koreas and violent confrontation between South Korea's coastguard and Chinese fishing vessels. South Korea has repeated its complaint to China about illegal fishing by Chinese trawlers since the capture of the two vessels. South Korean Foreign Ministry spokesman Cho Joon-hyuk urged Beijing on Thursday to help come up with a permanent solution. (Additional reporting by John Ruwitch in Shanghai; Editing by Jack Kim and Alison Williams)
An animation shows a lander separating from the rest of the Mars Colonial Transporter. Later concepts suggest that the entire MCT would land as a unit. (Credit: Michel Lamontagne / ESA via YouTube)

SpaceXs billionaire founder, Elon Musk, is providing increasingly detailed previews of his plan to send colonists to Mars starting in 2024, more than a decade in advance of NASAs Red Planet timetable. But theres one part of the plan thats not yet clear: how to bring people back.

Its dangerous and probably people will die  and theyll know that, Musk told The Washington Post this week. And then theyll pave the way, and ultimately it will be very safe to go to Mars, and it will be very comfortable. But that will be many years in the future.

The journey starts getting real in September, when Musk is due to lay out his detailed Mars colonization plan at the International Astronautical Congress in Mexico. This is going to be mind-blowing, he said. Mind-blowing. Its going to be really great. (Sounds like Elon is channeling his inner Donald Trump!)

SpaceX is already laying the groundwork for privately funded Mars missions starting in 2018, with an assist from NASA. Musks company is benefiting from NASAs expertise, and NASA will benefit from SpaceXs experience with supersonic retropropulsion, which is an essential technology for landing large payloads on Mars. But the current plan calls for no money to change hands.

Every 26 months, Earth and Mars are favorably lined up for a Red Planet journey, and Musk says he intends to take advantage of every opportunity. The 2018 trip will use a Falcon Heavy rocket send a Dragon spacecraft for a Red Planet landing. The 2020 trip will send at least two Dragons, loaded with experiments, Musk told the Post.

Musk said 2022 would mark the first use of the Mars Colonial Transporter, a spaceship thats big enough to carry scores of people to Mars. The first MCT would be uncrewed. However, its plausible to think that the craft could be pre-positioned at Mars to support the crewed mission to come, and the return trip to Earth. Thats the part of the plan thats still fuzzy.

Story continues

In any case, Musks schedule calls for that first crewed mission to be launched in 2024, with a Mars landing in 2025. And unlike the Apollo missions to the moon, this would not be a short-term stay.

I do want to emphasize this is not about sending a few people to Mars, Musk told the Post. Its about having an architecture that would enable the creation of a self-sustaining city on Mars with the objective of being a multiplanet species and a true spacefaring civilization, and one day being out there among the stars.

Musk acknowledged that there are a lot of uncertainties to the plan. Neither the Falcon Heavy nor the version of the Dragon that would make the journey to Mars has been tested in space yet. The design for the Mars Colonial Transporter has not yet been unveiled. And Musk has not yet figured out how to select and train the colonists.

If SpaceXs Mars program goes the way of the companys other space programs, the timetable will shift to the right by at least a couple of years. But if Musk pursues this goal as doggedly as hes pursued his past objectives, hell eventually make it to Mars.

People should take a look at my track record and realize that I always come through in the end, Musk told me back in 2010. It may take more time than I expected, but Ill always come through.

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Palma (Spain) (AFP) - Spanish prosecutors called Friday for the king's brother-in-law to be given a 19-and-a-half year jail term for alleged embezzlement in a trial that has also seen his wife Princess Cristina accused of tax evasion.

The princess and her husband Inaki Urdangarin are among 17 suspects who went on trial in January as part of a case that involves business dealings by the Noos Institute, a not-for-profit organisation based in Palma which Urdangarin founded and chaired from 2004 to 2006.

The case centres on accusations that Urdangarin used his royal connections to win inflated public contracts to stage sporting and other events and then syphoned off some of the proceeds into Aizoon, a firm he jointly ran with Cristina, to fund a lavish lifestyle.

Prosecutor Pedro Horrach called for Urdangarin -- who along with his wife was present at the court in Palma on the Mediterranean island of Majorca -- to be jailed for 19-and-a-half years and fined 980,000 euros.

He also asked for Urdangarin's then business partner Diego Torres, who is also accused of embezzlement, to be jailed for 16-and-a-half years.

But since the start of the case, prosecutors have refused to press charges against Cristina, who along with her husband is suspected of using Aizoon for personal expenses including work on their mansion in Barcelona, which reduced the firm's taxable profits.

Instead, an organisation called "Manos Limpias", or "Clean Hands", brought the tax evasion case against Cristina, as Spanish law allows private groups to initiate criminal proceedings.

On Friday, the group's lawyer called for King Felipe VI's sister -- who has denied knowledge of her husband's activities -- to be jailed for eight years.

But Manos Limpias' image was tarnished earlier in the trial when the head of the organisation was detained for alleged extortion and other charges, accused of asking Cristina's lawyers for money in exchange for dropping the accusations.

The corruption case involving the princess caused an uproar in Spain when it came to light, sullying the reputation of the monarchy and becoming a symbol of perceived corruption among Spain's elites.

It was also part of the reason behind King Juan Carlos's abdication in June 2014.
* Police raided ICBC's Madrid branch in February

* Prosecution accuses bank of money laundering

* ICBC Europe chairman says bank acts in accordance with law

*

By Angus Berwick

MADRID, June 10 (Reuters) - The Madrid branch of Chinese bank ICBC received cash in rucksacks and boxes from Chinese criminal groups in Spain and wired the money to accounts in China under a $100-million money-laundering scheme, Spanish prosecutors say.

Details of the allegations against ICBC are made public for the first time in a court document summarising an investigation into the alleged scam, nearly four months after police raided the state-owned bank's Madrid office and arrested six directors.

In the document, which was drawn up by the prosecution but has attracted little attention since it was published this week, prosecutors describe ICBC, the world's biggest bank by assets, as a "money laundering channel" between two criminal groups.

They do not name the groups but say they operated both in Spain and China and were involved in smuggling and tax fraud. Their illegal transfers were limited to 50,000 euros at a time to reduce the risk of detection and involved a web of shell companies to mask the trail, the prosecution says.

In the court document, the bank is also accused by the prosecution of trying to mislead investigators by providing receipts unrelated to the case and by inadequately identifying clients.

According to the document, the bank transferred at least 90 million euros ($102 million) between 2011 and 2014, more than twice the amount announced by European police force Europol at the time of the raid in February.

Though this is a small portion of the $3.6 trillion assets managed by ICBC, people familiar with the bank's thinking said ICBC was worried the case could threaten its growth in Europe by damaging its reputation and drawing more attention from regulators.

In response to the charges, the chairman of the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China's European division, which is based in Luxembourg, said it operated in accordance with the law and would continue to improve its capacity to tackle money laundering.

Story continues

"The investigation is still going on, a trial has not been opened, and no verdict has been issued, therefore there should not be references to the bank's guilt," ICBC Europe Chairman Chen Fei said in a statement issued by the Madrid office of public relations firm Kreab.

A lawyer representing ICBC's Spanish branch declined to comment when asked about the accusations.

POSSIBLE FINE

If found guilty of failing to comply with international regulations on money laundering, ICBC could face an unspecified fine. The case could also lead to a review of its Spanish banking licence.

Three of the ICBC directors arrested in February, including Madrid branch chief Wei Liu and European head Liu Gang, were provisionally released from custody in April after a court decided there was no flight risk and dismissed concerns that they might destroy evidence.

Three others paid bail of 100,000 euros at the time of arrest.

None of the executives has made any comment on the case since it started. Reuters could not reach them for comment.

The investigation was assigned to Spain's High Court last month. Once completed, the court will decide whether to close the case or hold a trial.

China's foreign ministry has asked Spain to protect the rights and interests of Chinese companies and citizens there and handle the case in accordance with the law.

ICBC opened its Madrid office in 2011 as part of a push into Europe. Its Spanish unit managed 813 million euros of assets at the end of 2015 with around 50 employees, according to Spain's banking association.

The prosecution's accusations are based heavily on documents seized from the bank by police and from witness testimony provided by employees, said a source involved in the judicial investigation into ICBC's Madrid branch.

Reuters did not review those documents.

(Additional reporting by Shu Zhang in Beijing, Editing by Julien Toyer and Timothy Heritage)
EDINBURGH (Reuters) - A vote by Britons to stay in the European Union will keep Scottish independence at bay, British Chancellor George Osborne has said, angering nationalists who also support remaining in the bloc. Britain's in-out referendum on EU membership in two weeks' time has drawn up strange partnerships across the usual political divide. Both George Osborne's Conservative unionist party and Scotland's pro-independence devolved government, run by the Scottish National Party (SNP), are campaigning to stay in. "It is the Scottish nationalists themselves who said that they would use the Brexit vote as an excuse to bring up the issue again of Scottish separation," Osborne said on a visit to southern Scotland. "The simplest and easiest way to take the issue off the table is to vote for 'Remain,'" he said, adding that he did not want to give the Nationalists "any excuses". The SNP said Osborne's comments were an attempt to tell Scotland what to do. The Conservatives have a history of hostile relations with Scotland, whose voters are largely left-leaning. SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon has said that a Brexit, or British exit from the EU, might provide grounds for a second referendum on independence from the rest of the UK if Scotland votes to remain on June 23, as expected, and the rest of Britain votes to leave. "The SNP are focussed on securing a vote to remain in the EU, but Scotland's future can and will only ultimately be decided by the people  and certainly not by arrogant, high-handed attempts by the (Conservatives) to lay down the law," a spokesman for Scotland's First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said Polls show the vote may well be close. Some Scots who are in favour of independence from the rest of the UK are campaigning for a "Leave" vote because they say the EU is a "bosses club" and that leaving it might be the best route to independence. Scots rejected independence by 55-45 percent in a 2014 vote but since then the SNP has strengthened, taking 56 of the 59 seats representing Scotland in the parliament in London in last year's national election. (Reporting By Elisabeth O'Leary; editing by Michael Holden)
cartoon donald trump bernie sanders stephen colbert cbs

With Hillary Clinton poised to capture the Democratic presidential nomination, Donald Trump wants to win Bernie Sanders' voters over to his side.

On Thursday's "Late Show with Stephen Colbert," cartoon Donald Trump showed us how he is going to do it.

Clearly, it will be a challenge. He and Sanders have very different stances on major political issues. As Colbert said, "The idea that Bernie Sanders voters would support him just seems outlandish. It seems cartoonish."

That's why he brought cartoon Trump back to the show to explain just how it could be done. Cartoon Trump doesn't think it's a challenge that Sanders supporters hate him. But what about the issues? Colbert reminded cartoon Trump that Sanders supporters steer young and liberal.

"Stephen, I'm known for liking them young. Everybody knows that. Plus, plus, I'm very liberal," he answered, before putting on a Rastafarian-style knit hat. "I mean check out my new 'Make America Great Again' hat... I'm a Trump-stafarian. Get mellow with me, man."

And as for Colbert pointing out that Sanders has socialist leanings, cartoon Trump didn't feel that would be a problem, either.

"Me, too," cartoon Trump answered. "I mean, my daughter is a socialite. We go to all the social functions. We're total socialists."

And as for abandoning his platform in order to poach Sanders supporters, cartoon Trump said, "I'm still building that wall with Mexico, but now it's going to be covered in Phish posters."

Watch the sketch below:

NOW WATCH: OBAMA: 'I am worried about the Republican party'





More From Business Insider


By Patrick Graham

LONDON, June 10 (Reuters) - Sterling inched down on Friday as the cost of hedging against swings in its value around the June 23 referendum on Britain's European Union membership rose to the highest in seven years.

Since falling to a low of $1.38 in February, the pound has borne up well in the face of concerns that a vote to leave would undermine economic growth and create problems with financing of the country's huge current account gap.

But speculative investors and companies have pushed up the cost of hedging steadily and pricing now implies swings of almost 24 percent in the value of the currency over the next month.

Sterling slipped less than 0.1 percent to $1.4443 and was a quarter of a percent weaker at 78.33 pence per euro.

"The fact is we're getting closer to the day and there has been a shift in the betting odds this week so we are seeing that in the options market," said Dominic Bunning, a strategist with HSBC in London.

"When you look at sterling itself, we would argue it is close to fairly valued given the extent of the risk that betting markets show. It will take a bigger shift in the odds or the polls to really move spot rates."

The threat of Brexit has dominated since late last year, driving a decline of more than 10 percent in sterling on a trade-weighted basis between mid-November and mid-April.

Risk reversals are heavily skewed to sterling "put" options, showing investors are most worried about Brexit's threat to sterling. But dealers and strategists say investors also want to be positioned for a jump in sterling if Britons vote to stay in the EU. Trading desks at the major banks expect the pound would gain to around $1.50-1.51 on a vote to stay.

One survey doing the rounds on Friday was a poll for the BT.com website that showed 80 percent of readers planning to vote to leave the EU.

The latest betting odds on website Betfair show the implied probability of a British vote to stay in the European Union at 74 percent, down from as high as 78 percent on Thursday. .

Eikon readers can click cpurl://apps.cp./cms/?pageId=brexit for the latest news and analysis on the EU referendum.

(Editing by Dominic Evans)
John Williams (left) and Steven Spielberg at the 2016 AFI Life Achievement Award Gala Tribute to John Williams on June 9, 2016, in Los Angeles (Photo: Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP)

By Mia Galuppo and Chris Gardner, The Hollywood Reporter

When Steven Spielberg finished a rough cut of Schindlers List, he brought composer John Williams, his veteran collaborator and longtime friend, into his projection room to screen the 1993 Holocaust drama and discuss their strategy for the score. Together, they watched the film, but when it was over, Williams was overwhelmed and not quite ready to speak.

I went out to walk around the building to gather myself and come back to start the meeting, Williams recalled, telling the story from the top of the Dolby Theatre stage to close out a ceremony where he accepted his AFI Lifetime Achievement Award Thursday night. I said Steven, This is truly a great film and you need a better composer than I for this film. And he said, very sweetly, I know, but theyre all dead.

Related: Steven Spielberg and Fellow Directors Reveal the Stories Behind John Williams Iconic Scores



Williams  the five-time Oscar winner and 50-time nominee  is the first composer to receive the honor from the American Film Institute, and he took time in his acceptance speech to list all of the late composers who he thought were more deserving of the award, naming Bernard Herrmann and Alfred Newman.

But at the event, which was sponsored by Audi and Fiji water, there were many directors and actors, as well as the occasional Laker, all ready and willing to sing Williams praises.



First up to honor the legendary composer was Williams longtime cinematic collaborator Spielberg. The two have worked together on 27 films, from The Sugarland Express to Indiana Jones and Jaws.

When he played the [Jaws theme] for the first time for me on the piano, he had a big grin on his face and I thought he was joking. He wasnt, said the director to laughs.

Story continues

Spielberg then showed the audience the bike scene of his film E.T. without Williams iconic score, as a way of demonstrating the important role that music played in the scene. Without John Williams, bikes dont fly and neither do brooms in Quidditch matches nor do men in red capes, he said. "There is no Force, dinosaurs do not walk the earth. We do not wonder, we do not weep, we do not believe.

Watch a bonus clip from the E.T. Blu-ray featuring John Williams and Steven Spielberg at work on the movies music:

Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane recalled the very rare occurrence of being star struck when he met the composer, saying, It was the first time in years that I was on time to anything and it was the first time in even longer that I tucked in my shirt.

Related: John Williams 10 Best Movie Scores, Ranked



His music reminds [us] of our sense of wonder and transports us to a time when we would look at something and say, Holy st! That was amazing! offered Drew Barrymore, who was seven when she acted in E.T., applauding Williams for his ability to recapture audiences childlike wonderment.

Jurassic Worlds Bryce Dallas Howard told the audience that when the cast of the pseudo-sequel would feel nervous about the pressure of continuing a beloved franchise, they would hum Williams Jurassic Park overture to calm their nerves.



Kobe Bryant, who returned to the Lakers following an injury and walked onto the court at Staples Center following to the tune of the Imperial March, called Williams his muse.



Watch John Williams talk about composing Star Wars music for Yoda:

Harrison Ford had a different experience with Williams music, saying of the Indiana Jones theme: The damn music follows me everywhere. It was playing in the operating room when I went in for my colonoscopy. He added: John, youre a genius.

In between speeches came video tributes from Tom Cruise, director Chris Columbus, The Force Awakens actress Daisy Ridley, and last years AFI Lifetime Achievement honoree Steve Martin, who busted out a rendition of Williams Harry Potter theme song on the banjo.

The Force Awakens director J.J. Abrams, who revealed that Williams often uses terms of endearment like baby and angel when referring to the director, first heard the musical themes for characters like Kylo Ren and Rey in Williams living room on his 100 year-old Steinway piano.

Related: An Oscar-Winning Composers Ode to John Williams and the Star Wars Score (Guest Column)



Abrams said: Among the impossible number of things that George Lucas did so brilliantly and so right in 1977 was hiring John Williams, who would create a score so sublime and iconic and impactful for a film called Star Wars.

Star Wars was meant to be a simple heroes journey, a fantasy for young people, began Lucas during his tribute speech. But then Johns music raised the film to an art that would stand the test of time. Lucas thanked the composer for making his creative life easy, saying, I had so many ideas for other movies, but I never got to them because you ensured that Star Wars would live forever.



Watch John Williams, Steven Spielberg, Richard Dreyfuss reflect on the power of the Jaws theme:

Saving Private Ryans Tom Hanks introduced a youth orchestra that performed the score from Schindlers List, while being conducted by the L.A. Philharmonics Gustavo Dudamel, after which Spielberg returned to the stage to finally hand the composer his award.

Proving that accepting the AFI Lifetime Achievement Award wont slow him down, Williams closed his speech by proclaiming that there will be no rest for the winner.

"Finally to the AFI and its members and our guests tonight, my heartfelt thanks for this indescribable evening, he said. Once I get over being stunned, I will treasure this night always. Tomorrow morning when Im back at work, I will try to discern all of this.
When Steven Spielberg finished a rough cut of 1993's Schindler's List, he brought composer John Williams, his veteran collaborator and longtime friend, into his projection room to screen the Holocaust drama and discuss their strategy for the score. Together, they watched the film, but when it was over, Williams was overwhelmed and not quite ready to speak.

"I went out to walk around the building to gather myself and come back to start the meeting," Williams recalled Thursday night, telling the story from the top of the Dolby Theatre stage to close out a ceremony where he accepted his AFI Life Achievement Award. "I said, 'Steven, this is truly a great film and you need a better composer than I for this film.' And he said, very sweetly, 'I know, but they're all dead.'"

Williams - a five-time Oscar winner and 50-time nominee - is the first composer to receive the lifetime honor from the American Film Institute, and he took time in his acceptance speech to list all of the late composers who he thought were more deserving of the award, including Bernard Hermann and Alfred Newman.

Read More: Steven Spielberg and Fellow Directors Reveal the Stories Behind John Williams' Iconic Scores

But at the event, which was sponsored by Audi and Fiji Water, there were many directors and actors, as well as the occasional Los Angeles Laker, all ready and willing to sing Williams' praises.

First up to honor the legendary composer was his longtime cinematic collaborator Spielberg. The two have worked together on 27 films, from The Sugarland Express to Indiana Jones and Jaws.

"When he played the [Jaws theme] for the first time for me on the piano, he had a big grin on his face and I thought he was joking. He wasn't," said the filmmaker to laughs.

Spielberg then showed the audience the bike scene of his film E.T. without Williams' iconic score, as a way of demonstrating the important role that music played in the scene. "Without John Williams, bikes don't fly and neither do brooms in Quidditch matches, nor do men in red capes," he said. "There is no Force, dinosaurs do not walk the earth. We do not wonder, we do not weep, we do not believe."

Story continues

Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane recalled the very rare occurrence of being star-struck when he met the composer, saying, "It was the first time in years that I was on time to anything and it was the first time in even longer that I tucked in my shirt."

Drew Barrymore, who was seven when she appeared in E.T., applauded Williams for his ability to recapture audiences' childlike wonderment: "His music reminds [us] of our sense of wonder and transports us to a time when we would look at something and say, 'Holy shit! That was amazing!'"

Jurassic World's Bryce Dallas Howard told the audience that when the cast of the pseudo-sequel would feel nervous about the pressure of continuing a beloved franchise, they would hum Williams' Jurassic Park overture to calm their nerves.

Kobe Bryant, who returned to the Lakers following an injury and walked onto the court at Staples Center to the tune of "The Imperial March (Darth Vader's Theme)," called Williams his "muse."

Read More: John Williams' 10 Best Movie Scores, Ranked

Harrison Ford had a different experience with Williams' music, saying of the Indiana Jones theme: "That damn music follows me everywhere. It was playing in the operating room when I went in for my colonoscopy." He added: "John, you're a genius."

Harrison Ford attends the 44th AFI Life Achievement Award Gala Tribute honoring John Williams in partnership with Fiji Water at Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles on June 9, 2016. (Photo by Joe Scarnici/Getty Images for Fiji Water)

Between speeches came video tributes from Tom Cruise, director Chris Columbus, The Force Awakens actress Daisy Ridley and last year's AFI Life Achievement honoree Steve Martin, who busted out a rendition of Williams' Harry Potter theme song on the banjo.

The Force Awakens director J.J. Abrams, who revealed that Williams often uses terms of endearment like "baby" and "angel" when referring to the helmer, first heard the musical themes for characters like Kylo Ren and Rey in Williams' living room on his 100-year-old Steinway piano.

"Among the impossible number of things that George Lucas did so brilliantly and so right in 1977 was hiring John Williams, who would create a score so sublime and iconic and impactful for a film called Star Wars," said Abrams.

"Star Wars was meant to be a simple hero's journey, a fantasy for young people," began Lucas during his tribute speech. "But then John's music raised the film to an art that would stand the test of time." Lucas thanked the composer for making his creative life easy, saying, "I had so many ideas for other movies, but I never got to them because you ensured that Star Wars would live forever."

Saving Private Ryan's Tom Hanks introduced a youth orchestra that performed the score from Schindler's List, conducted by the Los Angeles Philharmonic's Gustavo Dudamel. Afterwards, Spielberg returned to the stage to finally hand the composer his award. (Spielberg got a lot of attention onstage during the night's other presentation, when director Lesli Linka Glatter received the 2016 Franklin J. Schaffner Alumni Medal for her commitment to excellence in film and TV.)

Saying that accepting the AFI Life Achievement Award won't slow him down, Williams closed his speech by proclaiming that there would be no rest for the winner.

"Finally to the AFI and its members and our guests tonight, my heartfelt thanks for this indescribable evening," he said. "Once I get over being stunned, I will treasure this night always. Tomorrow morning when I'm back at work, I will try to discern all of this."

From left: George Lucas, Samantha Winslow, John Williams and Steven Spielberg at the 44th AFI Life Achievement Award Gala Tribute honoring Williams in partnership with Fiji Water at Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles on June 9, 2016. (Photo by Joe Scarnici/Getty Images for Fiji Water)

Kobe Bryant attends the 44th AFI Life Achievement Award Gala Tribute honoring John Williams in partnership with Fiji Water at Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles on June 9, 2016. (Photo by Joe Scarnici/Getty Images for Fiji Water)

Read More: An Oscar-Winning Composer's Ode to John Williams and the 'Star Wars' Score (Guest Column)
Wall Street's three-day rally is starting to look like a distant memory. All three major average (^DJI, ^GSPC, ^IXIC) were in the red in early trading as uncertainty overseas is pushing government-bond yields in Germany, Japan and the UK to record lows. Meanwhile, a stronger dollar is putting pressure on oil prices (CLN16.NYM), with crude now below $50 dollars a barrel.

Get the Latest Market Data and News with the Yahoo Finance App

Stocks to watch

Twitter (TWTR) shares were lower in early trading. The social-media company locked some accounts following reports that about 33 million Twitter usernames and passwords were made public.



H&R Block (HRB) delivered earnings and revenue that topped analysts' estimates for its fiscal fourth quarter, even though profit fell more than 5% from a year ago. The company also raised its dividend by 10% to $0.22 a share.

Urban Outfitters (URBN) shares fell in early trading. The apparel retailer, behind brands like Free People, Anthropologie and Urban Outfitters, warned that same-store sales are down so far for the current quarter. Analysts' were looking for an increase. The stock has risen about 23% since the start of the year based on Thursday's close.

Allegations against Tesla

Tesla (TSLA) shares were lower this morning after the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) said it was looking for a possible defect in the suspension of its Model S & Model X cars. Tesla is also being accused of telling customers not to contact the safety agency about the suspension problem. Tesla says they are working with the agency, but denies all of the allegations.

Flying car project

Googles Co-founder Larry Page is secretly working on a flying car. Page is personally funding a project called Zee Aero, according to Bloomberg news.



Net worth hits yearly high

The net worth of Americans is hitting a new record high for this year, according to the Federal Reserve. The total net worth of households and nonprofits hit over $88 trillion in the first quarter. Thats up $900 billion from the end of 2015.

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A student pilot and his flight instructor have been missing for nearly two weeks after their plane took off from a California island in overcast conditions.



Woodland Hills, California insurance broker Edmond Haronian, 50, and flight instructor Jason Glazier, 50, went missing on May 28 after their plane took off on a return flight from Catalina Island. Authorities confirmed to CBS Los Angeles that the men did not file a flight plan.



The aircraft departed Catalina Island Airport on Saturday afternoon, but failed to make it back to Van Nuys Airport, a Federal Aviation Administration spokesman told the Los Angeles Times.



Haronian's family is offering $150,000 for information that leads to his body and $250,000 if Haronian is found alive.







"We would like to have closure," Haronian's brother, Edwin Haronian, told ABC 7. "And we would like to accept it if we find some clue that it actually crashed."



The family said they had nearly given up hope until they found photos Haronian posted on Facebook showing that he had reached Catalina.









Searches by the Coast Guard, Sheriff's department and others have found no sign of the men or the plane and no distress call was received.



Haronian's family said the fact that no wreckage has been found gives them hope that he is still alive.



"We still haven't given up hope," Haronian's ex-wife, Rose Haronian, told CBS LA.



The family says they will keep searching until they have an answer.



"[We need] something that we can work off of because right now, it's unbelievable that a plane just goes missing in thin air," said Eddie Bardi, Haronian's son.
Supergirl star Jeremy Jordan, who has passionately fought for the release of his cousin, Sarah, from a so-called ex-gay camp says shes finally returning home.

Great news! Shes out! In 5 days, you helped Sarah get released, Jordan tweeted on Thursday. Details on the GFM page. THANK YOU. #SaveSarah

Over last weekend, the actor begged fans to help rescue his 17-year-old cousin from an ex-gay conversion camp in Texas, where Jordan says she was placed against her will by her own parents.

Also Read: 'Supergirl' Star Jeremy Jordan Begs Fans to Help Rescue Cousin From 'Ex-Gay' Camp

Meet my cousin Sarah. At 17, her future looks bright. She is in the top 10% of her class, runs cross-country and belongs to the National Honor Society and the debate team. She is also gay, Jordan wrote on his Facebook page.

Like any high school kids in a relationship, Sarah and her girlfriend wanted to go to prom together, he continued. But when they did that, Sarahs parents, who believe that homosexuality is a sin and abnormal, sent Sarah away against her will to an East Texas Christian boarding facility for troubled teens to pray away the gay.'

However, the founder of the facility, in Hallsville, Texas, east of Dallas, has denied that Sarah was being held there against her will and undergoing gay conversion therapy.

It is disheartening to see that this young woman has had elements of her story made widely public without her consent, Mark Gregston, Executive Director of Heartlight Ministries told People on Thursday. The assertion that this teen was held at Heartlight Ministries against her will, or that Heartlight provides any treatment services for sexual identity, are categorically untrue.

Gregston went on to claim that Sarah is no longer at Heartlight which he called a residential counseling program for teenagers who struggle with a wide range of behavioral and emotional issues.

Visitors to Heartlights official website also get a pop up message from the founder, denying media reports that this young woman was held against her will, and claiming that elements of her story were made public without her consent.

Story continues

Also Read: Colton Haynes Officially Comes Out As Gay: 'It Took Me So Long to Get to This Point'

Earlier this week, Jordan set up a GoFundMe campaign to help cover legal expenses to get Sarah released from the facility. So far, the page has raised more than $64,000 toward its $100,000 goal.

At least one Hollywood friend has already agreed to help. Colton Haynes, the former Arrow star who recently came out as gay, has contributed $5,000 to Jordans campaign.





This absolutely breaks my heart. Pls help Jeremy Jordan's cousin be her true self. #FreeSarah . Join me & donate. https://t.co/Iroz5nN8W4  Colton Haynes (@ColtonLHaynes) June 6, 2016

And gay dating app Grindr asked its Twitter followers to help.





Texas State law allows parents to place their children in a residential boarding facility until they turn 18.

Also Read: North Carolina, Mississippi's Anti-Gay Laws Prompt UK Warnings to Citizens Traveling to America

According to the National Center for Lesbian Rights, conversion therapy can be extremely dangerous: Research shows that lesbian, gay, and bisexual young adults who reported higher levels of family rejection during adolescence were more than eight times more likely to report having attempted suicide, more than five times more likely to report high levels of depression, more than three times more likely to use illegal drugs, and more than three times more likely to report having engaged in unprotected sexual intercourse compared with peers from families that reported no or low levels of family rejection.

A handful of states have banned conversion therapy, including California, New Jersey, Oregon, Illinois, New York, and Vermont.

Also Read: Mumford & Sons Donate Proceeds From North Carolina Show to Charity

Having previously starred in musicals Newsies and Bonnie & Clyde, Jordan is best known for playing Winslow Winn Schott Jr. on the CBS series Supergirl.

Read his emotional plea in full below.

Meet my cousin Sarah. At 17, her future looks bright. She is in the top 10% of her class, runs cross-country and belongs to the National Honor Society and the debate team. She is also gay. Like any high school kids in a relationship, Sarah and her girlfriend wanted to go to prom together. But when they did that, Sarahs parents, who believe that homosexuality is a sin and abnormal, sent Sarah away against her will to an East Texas Christian boarding facility for troubled teens to pray away the gay. Not only does this type of therapy not work, mental health professionals from organizations like the American Medical Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics have found it to be psychologically damaging, especially for minors. And Sarah has been told that she must stay in this facility for a whole year. So instead of being surrounded by friends and extended family who love and support Sarah for who she is, shell be isolated in a place where the fact that she is gay is treated as a sin and an illness. Instead of preparing for college and competing in the state debate tournament, shell be doing forced labor every day and enduring Bible-based therapy for her disease. She is not allowed phone calls or email or any form of computer communication. She is also not allowed visitors and cannot leave the property. She is completely cut off from the outside world. She tried to run away, but was caught by the staff and returned to the facility. Sarahs extended family and close friends are trying to win her release through the legal system, but its not cheap. Attorneys fees in the first few weeks have already exceeded $20,000, and they are continuing to mount, with a full hearing set for July. Sarah needs your help. But this is about more than just one gay kid  if we free Sarah we can help show that its not okay to try to make gay teens straight by sending them away and using the threat of God against them. Spread the word so being gay doesnt mean losing freedom for Sarah. #savesarah.

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Vienna (AFP) - Swimming lessons for refugee children have whipped up a storm in Austria, with a lifeguard's car window smashed and a newspaper on Friday filing charges against a woman who said the migrants should drown.

Local newspapers reported this week that the southern state of Carinthia was offering the courses free of charge for unaccompanied minors in order to prevent accidents in lakes and swimming pools this summer.

This provoked a torrent of what local politician called Heinz Kernjak called "ignorant and offensive" online comments, while an unknown assailant smashed the window of a van belonging to lifeguards in the town of Wolfsberg.

When national daily Kurier reported the story on Thursday, it provoked complaints -- alongside messages of support -- about the costs of the lessons to the taxpayer and how the courses would only encourage more immigration.

One woman even commented on Facebook that the migrants "should drown", prompting the Kurier on Friday to file charges with the authorities, the first time it has done so for a comment on an article on the social media website.

"Because of the growing number of hate posts, Kurier will from now on be more rigorous in its efforts against hate posts and in bringing charges," the daily said.

Austria last year received some 90,000 asylum requests, the second highest per capita in the European Union, resulting in a sharp rise in the number of racist attacks, although it lags well behind neighbouring Germany.

Last week police said that a fire that burned to the ground a recently completed but still empty refugee centre was likely caused by arsonists.

In May a suspected neo-Nazi was arrested and weapons were recovered at his home after telling friends he wanted to massacre migrants.

The influx has also boosted support for the anti-immigration Freedom Party (FPOe), which on May 22 came close to winning presidential elections and which this week filed a legal challenge against the result.

FPOe leader Heinz-Christian Strache and Frauke Petry, head of the anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD), on Friday held talks on the Zugspitze, Germany's highest mountain, to discuss increased cooperation.

Marine Le Pen, the head of France's National Front who will run for president in 2017, is due to meet Strache outside Vienna next Friday for an event dubbed by the FPOe the "Patriotic Spring".
By John Davison and Maher Chmaytelli BEIRUT/BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Syrian government troops backed by Russia and fighters backed by the United States made separate advances against Islamic State on Friday, gaining ground in new offensives that have put unprecedented pressure on the self-declared caliphate. In neighboring Iraq, government troops also fought for territory in an Islamic State bastion near Baghdad. There was no confirmation of an Iraqi media report that Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi had been wounded in U.S.-led air strikes. Two years after the ultra-hardline group proclaimed its caliphate to rule over all Muslims from swathes of territory in Iraq and Syria, its many foes are advancing on a number of fronts in both countries, with the aim of closing in on its two capitals, Raqqa in Syria and Mosul in Iraq. A U.S.-backed militia, the Syria Democratic Forces (SDF), launched an offensive last week to capture the last stretch of Turkish-Syrian border still in Islamic State hands and have surrounded the main city in the area, Manbij. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group said the SDF, which is backed by U.S. air support and special forces, took control of the last route into Manbij on Friday. Further south, government troops and their allies, backed by Russia, captured a crossroads in Raqqa province that controls a highway leading to Tabqa, an Islamic State-held city on the Euphrates River, and Raqqa city itself, the Observatory and the army said. The army also launched its advance last week in what media sympathetic to Damascus have described as a "race to Raqqa" - to take territory in Islamic State's heartland before the U.S.-backed militia get their first. Over the past two years Islamic State, also known as ISIS, ISIL and Daesh, has made enemies of all global powers and regional governments. It has imposed harsh rule over millions of people in Syria and Iraq, carried out mass killings and rapes, joined conflicts in Libya, Yemen and Afghanistan and claimed responsibility for deadly attacks in Paris and Brussels. Attempts to coordinate a campaign against it have been undermined by a five-year multi-sided civil war in Syria and the weakness of the Iraqi state. Still, Washington and other powers hope this year could see assaults on Raqqa and Mosul that would bring the caliphate down. The SDF advance is the most ambitious yet in Syria by a group allied to Washington, which has previously struggled to develop capable allies on the ground in Syria's civil war. It appears to have provoked Moscow and its ally, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, to turn their fire on Islamic State as well, after months in which the West criticized Russia for mainly striking other enemies of Assad. On a separate front, in the Syrian civil war, U.N. aid convoys reached two rebel-held suburbs of Damascus on Friday. The shipment to Daraya was the first food aid since 2012 to reach a town where the United Nations says residents are suffering from malnutrition. However, the local council said the aid was too little to feed people for a month as promised. Bringing aid to besieged areas is a crucial part of diplomatic efforts to end the wider conflict, sponsored since last year by Washington and Moscow but so far fruitless. NO CONFIRMATION BAGHDADI HURT In Iraq, U.S. and Iraqi officials said on Friday they could not confirm a report by an Iraqi TV channel that Islamic State leader Baghdadi had been wounded in an air strike in the north of the country. A spokesman for the U.S.-led coalition fighting the Islamist militants, Colonel Chris Garver, said in an email that he had seen the reports but had "nothing to confirm this at this time". Kurdish and Arab security officials in northern Iraq said they also could not confirm the report. Al Sumariya TV cited a local source in the northern province of Nineveh surrounding Mosul as saying that Baghdadi and other Islamic State leaders were wounded on Thursday in a coalition air strike on one of the group's headquarters close to the Syrian border. The channel has good connections with Shi'ite politicians and Iraqi forces. Reports that Baghdadi, whose real name is Ibrahim al-Samarrai, had been killed or wounded have emerged periodically during the conflict but have never been confirmed. A Kurdish intelligence official said the U.S.-led coalition had conducted a raid in the area this week. The coalition has not confirmed this. Kurdish Peshmerga forces are positioned in an arc around the north and east of Mosul while the Iraqi army is trying to capture Falluja, 50 km (30 miles) west of Baghdad. The army's elite Counter Terrorism Service was battling on Friday in al-Shuhada, a southern district of Falluja, a Reuters photographer reported from the scene. Loud explosions and bursts of gunfire were heard from the district, while aircraft believed to belong to the U.S.-led coalition flew overhead. Iraqi soldiers took up positions in a construction site while explosions and clouds of smoke rose up from the battlefield. Al-Shuhada marks the first advance of the army inside the built-up area of Falluja, after they entered rural districts on the outskirts last week. Falluja has long been an insurgent stronghold, where U.S. forces faced the heaviest battles of their 2003-2011 occupation of Iraq. Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi launched the assault there to improve security in the nearby capital after a series of suicide bombings. The risky assault veers from the battle plan of his U.S. allies who want the army to focus on Mosul instead, rather than risk being bogged down in potentially hostile territory. But success would give Baghdad control of the main population centers of the Euphrates valley west of the capital for the first time in two years. The United Nations says up to 90,000 civilians remain in Falluja, under "harrowing" conditions with little access to food, water and healthcare, and no safe exit routes. The insurgents have dug a network of tunnels to move around without being detected and planted thousands of mines and explosive devices to delay the army's advance. The Iraqi army is also massing tanks and troops south of Mosul, in preparation for an offensive planned later this year to retake the largest city under the control of the militants. (Writing by Peter Graff; Editing by Pravin Char)
Toronto boasts hip markets, mouth-watering cuisine and a whole lot of culture [Photo: Getty]

With more than half of its residents born outside Canada, Toronto is one of the worlds most culturally diverse cities.

And it shows  elements of all sorts of nations and peoples overlap and intertwine in the citys different areas, which still all blend together into one big city buzz.

The slick skyscrapers of downtown grab the crowds, and this zone is certainly home to plenty of Torontos best attractions, and its classiest restaurants. But it would be a sin not to head a little way out of the centre to the cool and quirky neighbourhoods that fringe the high rises.

The hip and happening West Queen West is a great stop-off [Photo: Tourism Toronto]

Design fans should make tracks straight for West Queen West  a hub of independent shops, hip boutiques and the very coolest bars and restaurants. Heres where the beautiful young things sip flat whites by day and cocktails by night, and the up-and-coming artists peddle their handiwork to the citys tastemakers.

Kensington Market should absolutely be squeezed into your schedule [Photo: Tourism Toronto]

The bohemian Kensington Market area maintains prides itself on its rebellious edge. Here youll rub tattooed shoulders with artists and students browsing vintage shops and planning the revolution. To give you an idea, a plan to open a Walmart in the area was recently thwarted by 30,000 signatures. This is where the many immigrant communities first settled in Toronto. And thanks to this melting-pot vibe its possible to get your mitts on pretty much any cuisine you can dream up.

Because one thing all those different cultures have brought with them to Toronto is their food. You can eat your way around four corners of the earth within the limits of the city, and try some pretty wacky fusions to boot  Italian-Jamaican for dinner anyone? The food scene in the city is on a steep upward trajectory - 30 new restaurants have opened already in 2016.

Story continues

Add to that a thriving art & design scene, first-rate museums, killer nightlife and great-value new flights from the UK, and youve got one hell of a city break on your hands. Heres everything you need to know:

The towering heights of the CN Tower will take your breath away [Photo: Tourism Toronto]

The Sights

First things first, get yourself straight to the iconic CN Tower. Torontos best-known building was the worlds tallest freestanding structure until it was pipped by Dubais Burj Khalifa in 2007. The views from the 1,465 ft SkyPod viewing deck really are breathtaking. Give yourself plenty of time to gaze down on the urban sprawl and the wind-tipped waters of Lake Ontario. On a perfectly clear day you can just spot Niagara Falls and the borders of New York State. Got a head for heights and a craving for adrenaline? Harness up and take on the Edge Walk, a nail-biting saunter around the outside of the tower.

Art buffs mustnt miss the Art Gallery of Ontario, fresh-faced from a revamp by architect Frank Gehry. The brutally modern metal and glass building houses the cream of Canadian art, plus a roster of not-to-miss temporary exhibits.

The Royal Ontario Museum is spectacular [Photo: Tourism Toronto]

Brush up on your science and history at the excellent Royal Ontario Museum. The Chinese and aboriginal collections are fascinating, as are the costume and textile exhibits.

Open your lungs on the Toronto Islands  a line of little land flecks with a dreamy and bucolic feel. Potter through the maple tree clusters, have a nosey at the picture-perfect cottages, and drink in the astonishing views of the city across the water.

Retail Therapy

All shapes of shopper will find somewhere to flex the plastic in Toronto.

The well-heeled and deep-pocketed should head to glitzy Bloor-Yorkville, a designer fashion hotspot home to all the big names, plus a sprinkling of cool boutiques.

Have a rummage at Kensington Market [Photo: Tourism Toronto]

Vintage queens will be in heaven in Kensington Market, Torontos tatty-round-the-edges but ultra-cool gem. Second hand and retro clothes shops sit one on top of the other, jostling for space with record stores and edgy tattoo parlours. Courage My Love is a local favourite. Overdo it on the $5 rails outside before stepping indoors for some fancier finds. Bungalow is surprisingly well organised for a second-hand shop, and is worth a rummage.

Kit out your pad and fill up your wardrobe in the achingly cool design shops in West Queen West. The arty district is a bit of a hipster mecca, but dont let all that trendy facial hair put you off. Head to Drakes General Store for beautiful homeware, treats for your skin and very fine foods. Just up the road sits Brodawka and Friends, selling jewellery, homeware and accessories with a focus on boutique Canadian labels. Fashion-wise, wander up Ossington Avenue, which is dotted every very steps with fashion boutiques and quirky shops. Style Garage will give you way too many interior design ideas, with its locally designed custom furniture in contemporary styles.

Chinatown is a stop-off you need to hit up [Photo: Tourism Toronto]

But if that all sounds a bit sensible, head to Chinatown to waste a few bucks in the trinket shops. They sell a curious mix of everything and nothing  and are great fun for a browse.

Fill Your Belly

Heres where the fun really starts.

The food spectrum reaches from messy but marvelous street food to swish fine dining, so you can fill up on something delicious no matter the size of your wallet. Traditional Canadian restaurants  think lamb, seafood, and lots of it  sit alongside fusion eateries and international offerings.

A dish at Canoe [Photo: Tourism Toronto]

For a lavish take on Canadian fare make tracks for Canoe. This 54th floor fine dining spot takes the very best of Canadas rich landscapes and serves it up with flair, bags of flavor and exceptional service.

Keep your eyes peeled for celebrities at Sotto Sotto. As the pictures on the walls will tell you, its been graced by A-listers including Canadas own Ryan Gosling and Drake. The food is hearty Italian  made with heart and letting top quality ingredients speak for themselves.

The revolving restaurant at the top of the CN Tower is a heavenly treat. Drink in the views as you gently spin over the city, enjoying archetypal Canadian dishes. Dont expect innovation  this is tradition done well.

Inside St Lawrence Market [Photo: Tourism Toronto]

For a bite during the day, St Lawrence Market buzzes with the sound of the citys gourmands picking up ingredients for dinner as well as a selection of international delicacies to eat right there.

Kensington Market is where youll find the quirkiest fusion bites and messiest dude food spots. Join the queue at breakfast time at Nu Bugel for the chewiest bagels piled high with toppings. Come dinner, wander down Kensington Road or Baldwin Street and youll be spoilt for choice  Jamaican at Golden Patty, Mexican at Seven Lives Tacos and massive messy patties at The Burgenator to name but a few.

After Hours:

After all that food theres no doubt youll have worked up a thirst.

Drakes 150 is a cocktail joint worth visiting [Photo: Tourism Toronto]

Downtown in the Financial District, Drakes 150 is a kitch but cool cocktail joint that stands out from its rather stuffier neighbours.

Over in West Queen West, join the creatures of the night at The Beaver. Think drag nights, the hottest DJs and plenty of booze. Just up the road El Almacen Yerba Mate Cafe is an Argentian hangout where you can dip your toes in tango dancing in the evenings.

For hard liquor, Ronnies in Kensington Market is for you. Its a little ragged for sure, but the atmosphere is fun and laid back. Best of all, you can order cheese toasties from the restaurant over the road if youve overdone it on the sauce.

Rest Your Head:

The Delta Toronto juts up in the skyscraper forest of downtown, and is an excellent central base for exploring the city. Standard rooms start from 164 per night based on two people sharing, room only.

A room at The Drake Hotel [Photo: Tourism Toronto]

Over in West Queen West, The Drake Hotel is part boutique hotel, part art gallery. The decor is refreshed constantly with new pieces by Canadian artists by the in-house curator. Hit the roof terrace for drinks under a retro mural or nurse a cocktail in the downstairs bar under a video art installation. There are only six rooms, each individually decorated.

How To Get There:

WestJet for flies from London Gatwick to Toronto from 426 per person return, see www.WestJet.com

Visit www.SeeTorontoNow.com for more about the city.

The Top Holiday Spots For Summer 2016

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London (AFP) - The husband of an Iranian-British charity worker who has been held without charge in Iran since April on Friday called for her release at a rally outside the Iranian embassy in London.

Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, 37, was arrested at Tehran airport on April 3 as she prepared to return to Britain with the couple's daughter Gabriella after visiting family in Iran, Richard Ratcliffe told AFP.

Gabriella, who turns two on Saturday, was born in Britain and has a British passport, which was confiscated by the Iranian authorities, leaving her stranded with her grandparents in Iran.

His wife, who spent the first 45 days in solitary confinement, was later transferred to Karman prison, 1,000 kilometres (621 miles) from Tehran, although Ratcliffe said the family had not received "any news since Sunday".

Britain's Foreign Office has said it has raised the case "repeatedly and at the highest levels" and will continue to do so at "every available opportunity".

Middle East Minister, Tobias Ellwood, had met the family to reassure them that diplomats would "continue to do all we can on this case", a ministry spokesman told AFP.

Zaghari-Ratcliffe works for the Thomson Reuters Foundation, a charity organisation coordinating training programmes for journalists around the world.

"She has nothing to do with Iran in her work and the foundation doesn't work with Iran anyway, so we have no idea why she has been detained for more than two months, first in isolation and then in a common cell," foundation CEO Monique Villa told AFP.

"Now we don't know because she seems to have disappeared from where she was."

Ratcliffe led the celebrations for his daughter's birthday, talking to her on Skype, leading a mass singalong of "Happy Birthday" and placing a giant card and balloons on the steps of the embassy.

The case of 76-year-old Iranian-British man Kamal Foroughi, was also brought up at the rally by his son Kamran.

Foroughi was arrested in 2011 and sentenced to eight years in prison on spying charges, having spent two years in detention without charge.
By David Shepardson

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Tesla Motors Inc has agreed to revise its customer repair agreements to allow owners to report potential safety issues to U.S. auto safety regulators, a government spokesman said on Friday.

The U.S. National Highway Safety Administration (NHTSA), which on Thursday said Tesla had entered into a "troublesome nondisclosure agreement" with a Model S owner who had suspension problems, said on Friday it had confirmed "that Tesla has clarified the language ... in a satisfactory way, resolving the issue."

The California-based green car maker did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Friday.

NHTSA stated its concerns about the nondisclosure agreement on Thursday as it said it was reviewing reports of suspension problems, but had not opened a formal investigation.

On Friday, NHTSA spokesman Bryan Thomas said Tesla was fully cooperating with the suspension review "and NHTSAs examination of the data is under way. To date, NHTSA has not identified any safety issue with Teslas suspensions."

Tesla on Thursday denied any suspension problems, saying extensive durability testing and review of customer issues "gives us high confidence in our suspensions."

NHTSA Administrator Mark Rosekind said on Thursday that the agency was reviewing the automaker's use of the agreements to see if they had impeded owners from making complaints.

Tesla said in a blog post late on Thursday that it "has never and would never ask a customer to sign a document to prevent them from talking to NHTSA or any other government agency. That is preposterous."

The company said it often agrees to cover or discount repairs even if Tesla is not responsible and requires customers to sign a "goodwill agreement" that requires nondisclosure of the incident.

Tesla noted the agreement did not mention NHTSA and "has nothing to do with trying to stop someone from communicating with NHTSA or the government about our cars."

NHTSA said on Thursday it "learned of Teslas troublesome non-disclosure agreement last month. The agency immediately informed Tesla that any language implying that consumers should not contact the agency regarding safety concerns is unacceptable, and NHTSA expects Tesla to eliminate any such language."

(Editing by Chris Reese and Matthew Lewis)
Elon Musk

Tesla is walking a fine line.

In a long blog post on Thursday night, the company responded to reports the company used a questionable nondisclosure agreement to suppress news about suspension problem on its Model S sedan.

The short version is that Edward Niedermeyer, an auto industry reporter at the Daily Kanban, surfaced a potential issue around the company's agreement with customers.

Tesla said the implication of this report  that the company makes customers sign agreements preventing them from taking issues to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration or other agencies  is "preposterous."

The company added that when customers have issues with their car, even if not caused by the car itself (say you drove down a muddy road and got stuck, for example), Tesla will cover the repairs to see if they can learn anything about their vehicles.

In these instances, they will ask customers to sign a "goodwill agreement" that prevents these gratis repairs from being used against them in court.

Fine.

In its blog, though, Tesla went a step further and all but implied that Niedermeyer and others discussing potential issues surrounding the company are really just motivated by potential financial gains from a decline in Tesla's stock price.

Tesla is blaming short sellers

Short selling is a bet that a stock's price will fall, and Tesla's tactic of blaming those who stand to gain from your financial distress for the fact that you are experiencing that distress in the first place has a long and storied tradition in financial markets. And, it is a tactic that's often employed by those who end up on the wrong side of history.

Richard Fuld, Chairman and Chief Executive of Lehman Brothers Holdings

Summarizing the issue nicely, The Financial Times back in 2008 wrote that "short sellers were accused of bringing about the crash of the Dutch tulip market in the 17th century, the Wall Street crash of 1929 and, this year, for helping to bring down Bear Stearns, the New York investment bank."

Story continues

Ken Lay, the founder of Enron, also blamed short sellers for the company's eventual collapse, and later in 2008 Dick Fuld, then the CEO of the now bankrupt investment bank Lehman Brothers, did the same.

Earlier this year, Valeant Pharmaceuticals asked the Securities and Exchange Commission to investigate short seller Andrew Left, who had raised issues about some of the company's accounting practices, only to have the SEC turn its gaze to Valeant.

Just as blaming your partner for a failed relationship and not owning your (even "minor") mistakes amplifies your wrongdoing, accusing those critical of your business or accounting practices of merely being in it for the money is to miss the point of their exercise and invite further scrutiny.

Scrutiny that could potentially unearth issues much larger than those against which you lashed out.

Tesla wrote Thursday that because of what it called billions of dollars in short sale bets against the company, "there is a strong financial incentive to greatly amplify minor issues and to create false issues from whole cloth." Niedermeyer's colleague Bertel Schmitt, however, told Business Insider's Matt DeBord in an email: "The only shorts I have are the ones between me and my chair. Same with Ed."



The risk Tesla runs here, again, is to merely heighten existing questions the company faces in the marketplace.

For example, Tesla's use of GAAP and non-GAAP accounting has long been the subject of scrutiny, particularly as it relates to deferred revenue recognition for its leasing program included in its non-GAAP financials.

solarcity elon musk

There's also the question of how Tesla fits into the Elon Musk-iverse  which comprises Tesla, solar energy company SolarCity, and rocket company SpaceX  and how all the players in this world fit together.

In April, The Wall Street Journal detailed how Musk has used his personal wealth, and his stakes in Tesla and SolarCity (both of which are public), to inject capital into his businesses at various times.

Musk told The Journal that the odds he personally gets margin-called  which could require a large sale of his stake in either public company  are "almost zero" given how much his personal lines of credit are in relation to his overall net worth.

Questions about tangled webs of corporate and personal financial interests, however, are the kind of thing that makes those inclined to be skeptical about business (read:short sellers) want to look even closer.

Musk told The Journal it is "valid" to question his financial machinations. But just as Tesla accuses those raising questions about its accounting and relationships with customers for seeking financial gain, so too does Musk stand to benefit from continued market confidence that his three-legged stool will remain standing.

In markets, everyone is always talking their book and accusing someone else of doing as much is bald-facedly hypocritical. To do so merely prompts others to ask what you're hiding. And while the answer to that might very well be "nothing," financial markets quickly create glass houses for those who want to throw stones.

Functioning markets

In an interview with The Financial Times in April, noted short seller Jim Chanos recalled that, in his 1990 Nobel acceptance speech, market legend Bill Sharpe said short sellers are required for the capital asset pricing model (for which Sharpe won the Nobel) to work.

Short selling, in other words, is not a bug, but a feature of well-functioning markets.

In his interview with the FT, Chanos said that from a portfolio-construction standpoint, a short seller allows those betting stocks will go up to be more long, as a good short fund can hedge out potential losses in a downturn. So if you want to be more confident in your bets stocks go up, you should find someone who thinks they won't.

Tesla wrote Thursday that it makes mistakes, never claimed to be perfect, and hopes to always do the right thing when falling short.

A start would be not blaming others who, like Tesla, are just doing their job.

NOW WATCH: Scientists discovered something heartbreaking about this newfound dinosaur





More From Business Insider


Yahoo Finance is tracking the stocks youre following, based on your Yahoo Finance ticker searches.

Tesla (TSLA)  The electric carmaker is denying Model S suspension safety issues and allegations that it forced customers to sign non-disclosure agreements to prevent them from speaking with regulators. The issue arose following a story reported by the automotive blog Daily Kanban.



Apple (AAPL)  One of its biggest events of the year is just around the corner. Apples worldwide developers conference on June 13 will give investors a peek at what's next for the tech giant. Some of the rumors include updates to Siri, the app store and Apple Pay.

Urban Outfitters (URBN)  The retailer warned that its second-quarter comparable-store sales will fall in the mid-single digit range. Urban Outfitters, with brands including Free People and Anthropologie, in addition to its namesake Urban Outfitters line, posted first-quarter same-store sales of 1%.

JetBlue (JBLU)  The airliner reported revenue passenger miles climbed 10.7% in May while capacity increased 12.1%. JetBlue also cut its annual capacity growth forecast. It now expects 8.0% to 9.5% growth versus a previous estimate of 8.5% to 10.5%.

Ford (F)  Piper Jaffray initiated coverage on the automaker with an overweight rating and $17 price target. The investment firm noted that stable demand in the U.S. and rising market share in China could drive more earnings growth.

Valeant Pharmaceuticals (VRX)  The drug maker has agreed to pay $54 million to settle allegations that its Salix unit paid illegal kickbacks and submitted thousands of fraudulent reimbursement claims.
Christopher Johnson was arrested on July 25, 2015, in Harris County, Texas, for suspected drunk driving. Notice anything strange about his mugshot?

In Texas, Smiling In Your Mugshot Will Get You Choked  If You're Black

According to a civil rights lawsuit Johnson has filed against Harris County, he was choked by two officials at the jail for trying to smile in his mugshot.

The photo clearly shows two officers in some kind of altercation with Johnson, and one of them has a hand around Johnson's neck. But the Harris County Sheriff's office argues that it followed its standard procedure, and that the photo doesn't tell the whole story.

"The Harris County Sheriff's Office believes that proper procedure was followed during the course of Mr. Johnson's booking," the office said in a statement, according to local news affiliate ABC 13. "Should any evidence arise to the contrary, proper administrative actions will be taken. At this time evidence suggests that Mr. Johnson's pleading does not hold merit."

Smiling in mugshots has long been a tacit act of defiance for people who find themselves in jail. The ones that have gained the most attention have belonged to celebrities.

Here's Khloe Kardashian in 2008 after her 2007 arrest for DUI in California:

Mugshot goals af @khloekardashianpic.twitter.com/al2YiCg2Ns https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Cb0p2NgUEAE6M6G.jpg:large

And Justin Bieber's mugshot from 2014 for DUI in Miami:

Source: Handout/Getty Images

And Lindsay Lohan's 2010 mugshot for possession of drugs and alcohol in California:

In Texas, Smiling In Your Mugshot Will Get You Choked  If You're Black

If you're rich, famous and white, feel free to flash those pearly whites at the jailhouse camera. But if you're black, watch out.
Vera Farmiga and Patrick Wilson as paranormal investigators Lorraine and Ed Warren in The Conjuring 2 (Photo: Warner Bros. via AP)



Director James Wan scared up $318 million in global receipts with 2013s The Conjuring, a tale based on case files of Ed (Patrick Wilson) and Lorraine Warren (Vera Farmiga), a married pair of real-life paranormal investigators who came to the aid of a Rhode Island family undergoing an unholy crisis in 1971. This Fridays The Conjuring 2 aims to deliver the same sort of bump-in-the-night thrills as its predecessor  all via a story that, as before, has a real-life basis.



The Conjuring 2 story is based on The Enfield Poltergeist, which allegedly bedeviled the home of Peggy Hodgson in Enfield, England, from 1977-79. A single mother of four, Peggy reported that on the night of August 30, 1977, she heard strange noises emanating from her childrens rooms. Her 11-year-old daughter Janet claimed the beds were moving on their own. The next evening, another disturbance from the childrens bedroom panicked the clan, especially when, they claimed, a dresser began repeatedly moving toward the door, as if to trap everyone inside.



Watch a documentary from the U.K.s Channel 4 on The Enfield Poltergeist, the case that inspired the story of The Conjuring 2:

This led Peggy to enlist the assistance of her neighbors, who were soon privy to the sight of Lego blocks mysteriously flying about the house, as well as strange knocking sounds coming from various walls. A call summoned police officer Carolyn Heeps to the house, where she witnessed a chair levitating across the living room floor  an incident which she described in detail in the Channel 4 special (watch it above), and which she famously included in her official police report, lending credence to the Hodgsons claims of otherworldly forces wreaking havoc in their home.

What followed was, per The Daily Mail, all sorts of ostensible insanity involving alleged levitation, overturned furniture, and Janet speaking in a low, growly voice while claiming to be possessed by the residences former owner, Bill Wilkins. Amidst this chaos, the Hodgsons were assisted by the amazingly mustached Maurice Grosse (a paranormal investigator and member of The Society for Psychical Research) and Guy Lyon Playfair (a fellow Society member and author whod previously tracked such occurrences in South America). Their ordeal, highly documented through audio and video recordings as well as eyewitness accounts from neighbors, experts, and The Daily Mail and The Mirror, quickly became the subject of intense tabloid coverage. The BBC produced a special (watch below) featuring a prolonged interview with 12-year-old Margaret and 11-year-old Janet during which one of the latters many spirit tormentors supposedly speaks through her.

Story continues

Whether something truly supernatural took place in Enfield remains open to debate. However, the absurdity of some of the clips in the above BBC film  look for the moment when objects are thrown at Grosses face by a ghost, which is later heard on tape identifying itself as a G-H-O-S-T  certainly calls into question the events authenticity. Similarly, listening to Playfair in this TV documentary confidently state that poltergeists like to repeat their escalating-scariness patterns, and that they only have 18 to 20 tricks in their arsenal, doesnt inspire great confidence in the reliability of those who examined the Hodgsons tale.

The Enfield Poltergeist ultimately became the subject of numerous books, TV specials, and films, such as 2014s sturdy made-for-U.K.-TV movie The Enfield Haunting, starring Timothy Spall as Grosse. Unsurprisingly, many skeptics concluded that the entire Enfield affair was a hoax, not least because the kids (Janet in particular) admitted to making some of it up  when asked by the U.K.s Telegraph in 2015 how much of the phenomena at Enfield was faked, she replied, Id say 2 per cent. But that didnt come up during this 2012 TV appearance to discuss her experiences :



As for Ed and Lorraine Warren, their real-life participation in Enfield appears to have been rather minimal; they were merely two of many paranormal investigators who traveled to England to see what all the spectral fuss was about. In a recent radio interview, Playfair contends that the famed couple only visited the Hodgsons home for a day, and mostly expressed an interest in crassly exploiting the situation for profit.

No matter their actual Enfield role, however, Ed and Lorraine will be front and center when audiences watch this infamous across-the-pond ghost story on the big screen  in embellished-for-maximum-Hollywood-spookiness form  in The Conjuring 2, which premieres in theaters June 10.

The Conjuring 2: Watch the trailer:


By Heather Somerville

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Thomas Perkins, one of the founding fathers of Silicon Valley, died on Tuesday at age 84 at his home in Belvedere, California, according to the Marin County coroner's office.

As co-founder of the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers, Perkins played a major role in the formative years of the computer and biotech industries. The firm that bears his name went on to fund some of the biggest names of the internet era, including Google and Amazon.

Perkins helped start Kleiner Perkins in 1972 with Eugene Kleiner after working as the first general manager of Hewlett Packard Co's computer division and later starting University Laboratories, a laser company that used Perkins' own optical inventions.

"He was there at the start of the biotech industry and the computer revolution. Tom was our partner and friend, and we will miss him," Frank Caufield and Brook Byers, co-founders of Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers, said in a statement.

Perkins' investment in drug developer Genentech is widely considered by the venture capital community to have helped jump-start the biotech industry emerging in Silicon Valley during the 1970s.

He also played a central role in the funding and development of firms including Tandem Computers, Compaq Computer and LSI Logic, and served on the board of numerous companies including Hewlett Packard.

Perkins came under sharp criticism in 2014 for an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal in which he equated the Occupy movement's "demonization of the rich" to the Nazis' persecution of the Jews. He later apologized for the analogy, but the venture capital firm that bears his name moved to distance itself from him.

Known as a colorful and dynamic personality, Perkins married romance novelist Danielle Steel, his second wife, in March 1998. After the brief marriage, Perkins himself wrote a novel: "Sex and the Single Zillionaire," published in 2006.

The billionaire had a love of yachts, and a boat he owned named "The Maltese Falcon," was once among the world's largest and most advanced sailing yachts, according to media reports.

(Reporting by Heather Somerville; Editing by Jonathan Weber and Peter Cooney)
By David Shepardson

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Toyota Motor Corp said on Friday it had told its U.S. dealers to disclose, at the time of sale, the identity of vehicles with defective Takata air bag inflators that will be subject to recalls by 2018.

After criticism by members of Congress, the automaker made public a list of vehicles with inflators subject to future recalls. They include the 2016 Toyota 4Runner and Lexus GX460 still in production. Dealers may also have in stock new 2015 Lexus IS250C/350C and Scion xB, and the 2015 Lexus GX460 and Toyota 4Runner, the company said.

Takata inflators can explode with excessive force and spray metal shrapnel. They are suspected in 13 deaths worldwide and more than 100 injuries.

Last month, Takata (7312.T) agreed to declare as defective, by 2019, another 35 million to 40 million U.S. inflators that lack drying agents in frontal airbags. To date 15 automakers have announced recalls of 16.4 million vehicles and worldwide nearly 100 million inflators have been declared defective.

This week, Senator Bill Nelson, a Florida Democrat, urged automakers to fix the vehicles before sale or at a minimum disclose the issue before people buy cars.

Nelson praised Toyota, calling the announcement "a positive step for consumers. While I still think automakers shouldnt be selling vehicles with defective airbags, at the very least car buyers should know theyre purchasing a vehicle that will be subject to a future recall.

U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx said at a Senate hearing on Wednesday that he agreed automakers should make the disclosures but said he lacked the legal authority to require them.

Last week, a report from Nelson said Toyota said it would produce 175,000 U.S. vehicles with air bag inflators that would be subject to recalls by July but did not disclose the vehicles.

The report also said Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV (FCHA.MI), Volkswagen AG (VOWG_p.DE) and Mitsubishi Motors Corp (7211.T) are also still selling new vehicles with defective air bags that will eventually need to be recalled.

Story continues

The vehicles are legal to sell but must be recalled by 2018.

The NHTSA said there have been no ruptures in any vehicles built since 2008. According to the NHTSA, the vehicles do not become vulnerable to exploding airbags without long-term exposure to high humidity. In the short-term, the agency says, they are safe to drive - and much safer than the older models.

(Reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Steve Orlofsky)
By David Shepardson

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Toyota Motor Corp <7203.T> said on Friday it had told its U.S. dealers to disclose, at the time of sale, the identity of vehicles with defective Takata air bag inflators that will be subject to recalls by 2018.

After criticism by members of Congress, the automaker made public a list of vehicles with inflators subject to future recalls. They include the 2016 Toyota 4Runner and Lexus GX460 still in production. Dealers may also have in stock new 2015 Lexus IS250C/350C and Scion xB, and the 2015 Lexus GX460 and Toyota 4Runner, the company said.

Takata inflators can explode with excessive force and spray metal shrapnel. They are suspected in 13 deaths worldwide and more than 100 injuries.

Last month, Takata <7312.T> agreed to declare as defective, by 2019, another 35 million to 40 million U.S. inflators that lack drying agents in frontal airbags. To date 15 automakers have announced recalls of 16.4 million vehicles and worldwide nearly 100 million inflators have been declared defective.

This week, Senator Bill Nelson, a Florida Democrat, urged automakers to fix the vehicles before sale or at a minimum disclose the issue before people buy cars.

Nelson praised Toyota, calling the announcement "a positive step for consumers. While I still think automakers shouldnt be selling vehicles with defective airbags, at the very least car buyers should know theyre purchasing a vehicle that will be subject to a future recall.

U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx said at a Senate hearing on Wednesday that he agreed automakers should make the disclosures but said he lacked the legal authority to require them.

Last week, a report from Nelson said Toyota said it would produce 175,000 U.S. vehicles with air bag inflators that would be subject to recalls by July but did not disclose the vehicles.

The report also said Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV <FCHA.MI>, Volkswagen AG <VOWG_p.DE> and Mitsubishi Motors Corp <7211.T> are also still selling new vehicles with defective air bags that will eventually need to be recalled.

Story continues

The vehicles are legal to sell but must be recalled by 2018.

The NHTSA said there have been no ruptures in any vehicles built since 2008. According to the NHTSA, the vehicles do not become vulnerable to exploding airbags without long-term exposure to high humidity. In the short-term, the agency says, they are safe to drive - and much safer than the older models.

(Reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Steve Orlofsky)
At the end of last month, Roland Collins aka Troy Ave was formally charged with attempted murder. A week later, the Brooklyn rapper finally broke his silence on the shooting that occurred at a T.I. concert at New Yorks Irving Plaza on May 26. However, rather than making the ordinary written statement, he expressed himself and explained the situation in the form of a freestyle.

Days later, were met with yet another update in Troy Aves current situation. It has been officially reported that the rapper has now been formally indicted on one charge of attempted murder and two felony weapon charges.

These charges follow the Irving Plaza shooting that left his own bodyguardRonald McPhatter aka BSBBangadead. The incident also left four others injured, including Troy Ave himself with a shot to the leg.

Though Troy Ave has pleaded not guilty, he continues to be held without bail until his trial. He is expected to make his next court appearance on June 22.

More from Pigeons & Planes
From Esquire

I, too, am horrified by the ways and the means of He, Trump's attack on federal judge Gonzalo Curiel, the Hoosier currently sitting in judgment of the long con known as Trump University. I am shocked. I am also dismayed.

What I am not is surprised.

Part of the conservative brand within the Republican Party has been to attack the integrity of the judicial process, and of the individual judges working within it, every time a decision comes down that sets the flying monkeys aloft. Return with us now to those thrilling days of yesteryear, to one of the worst and most egregious examples of wingnut meddling: the interference in the case of the late Terri Schiavo, as told by a disreputable author of my casual acquaintance.

Federal judge James Whittemore had gone to bed that Sunday night, but, a little after three in the morning, his phone rang. His clerk was on the line and she was in tears. "I am so sorry," she told him. The Schindlers' last-chance lawsuit had landed in his court. The case shook Whittemore so much that he declines to discuss it to this dayHowever, [Whittemore spoke] on a panel at a meeting of the American Bar Association that discussed the pressures of working high-pressure, high-visibility cases. Whittemore opened up to that panel about the longest three days of his life. The day they got the case, he and his staff worked all night. At about ten o'clock, somebody sent out for pizza. At that exact moment, Nancy Grace, a CNN legal commentator who combines the nuance of a sledgehammer with the social graces of a Harpy, was raging at what she said was Whittemore's delay in ruling on the Schindlers' motion to have the PEG tube reinserted. What's keeping this judge? Grace wondered. He's probably out having a steak with his family.

On the fly, Whittemore and his staff were enveloped by a complex security system. They unplugged all their phones; Whittemore's secretary had gotten physically ill from the abuse. They secured the phones to the point that even Whittemore's mother's phone was routed to the federal marshal's office. Whittemore's sons were placed under protection. (A run-of-the-mill neighborhood arson in St. Petersburg turned into a federal case because it happened behind the house in which one of Whittemore's sons lived.) The person who cared for Whittemore's disabled daughter had to pass a full background check. "It does take its toll on you," Whittemore told the ABA panel. These were not idle precautions. As mentioned earlier, the man had already been arrested for offering a bounty on Judge Greer. The media was aflame. Michael Savage called Democrats "an army of soulless ghouls," and the former White House aide and presidential candidate Pat Buchanan lumped the removal of the feeding tube with activities of German doctors in the 1930s. He called it a "crime against humanity."

Story continues

The talk in more respectable quarters was little better. On the floor of the Senate, Senator John Cornyn of Texas seemed to threaten federal judges with physical harm, and this in a year in which one federal iudge, and the spouse of another, already had been killed. Other members of Congress talked darkly of defunding courts whose rulings they did not like.

There is only one important thing to remember as this freakazoid campaign rolls along. He, Trump is not an aberration. He is an exaggeration, nothing more than that.

Click here to respond to this post on the official Esquire Politics Facebook page.
By Nick Carey and Emily Stephenson (Reuters) - As the White House race took off last summer, food giant Mondelez International found itself in an unusual position: Republican candidate Donald Trump began delivering broadsides against one of its iconic products, Oreo cookies. "Nabisco is closing a factory in Chicago, and theyre moving to Mexico. No more Oreos. I dont like Oreos anymore," Trump told a crowd in New Hampshire on Aug. 14, reacting to reports that Mondelez was shutting down some production lines at its Nabisco subsidiary in Chicago while boosting output in Mexico. Trump's statement that Mondelez was closing a Chicago factory was erroneous, as the company quickly pointed out, but that didn't stop him from repeating it. It's unusual for a top presidential candidate, especially a representative of the business-friendly Republican Party, to attack major U.S. corporations by name. But over the course of his unconventional campaign, Trump has aimed his fire at a range of companies, mostly for shifting jobs abroad (Ford Motor Co, United Technologies Corp unit Carrier Corp) but also for building products in foreign markets (Apple) and for what he said were violations of antitrust laws (Amazon). Trump has threatened the companies with boycotts, tariffs, taxes and other punishments. The Trump campaign declined to comment for this story. Some of the companies saw their share prices dip in the wake of Trump's criticism while others experienced a small boost. But all of them were presented with a dilemma that's familiar to the presumptive nominee's many vanquished Republican rivals: Should they engage with a possible future president known for holding a grudge, possibly inviting more wrath, or should they lie low and risk allowing Trump to define them and to push policies they deem harmful? Most have sought to stay out of the fray even as Trump has kept up the drumbeat of criticism. "I am fighting hard to bring jobs back to the United States Many companies  like Ford, General Motors, Nabisco, Carrier  are moving production to Mexico," Trump said this week. This was "bad for all Americans," he said. It was the first time Trump included GM in his roster of corporate wrongdoers, though the Trump campaign later removed GM from the statement and declined to say why. GM declined comment. MONDELEZ TREADS CAREFULLY Mondelez, previously known as Kraft Foods, took a different tack. After Trump vowed to boycott Oreos, Mondelez fielded numerous media inquiries and contacted reporters when the company deemed press coverage of his remarks off base, said Laurie Guzzinati, who oversees governmental affairs in North America for Mondelez. The company didn't engage in any Trump-bashing, though Guzzinati said Trump's comments were "grounded in inaccuracies." She said she told reporters that Mondelez would continue to make Oreos in three locations in the United States, countering the impression Trump may have left that Oreos would no longer be made in the United States. Mondelez's response tracks closely what crisis management experts recommend for Trump-targeted companies. Hilary Rosen, a managing director for Washington, D.C., communications firm SKD Knickerbocker, said her firm was representing corporate clients who have been singled out by Trump, though she declined to name them. Rosen's advice to clients, she said, is "don't depend on educating Donald Trump on the truth. People have tried and failed." Rosen, a Democrat, recommends instead that companies make their case to the journalists who cover Trump, so "Donald Trump does not define you." None of the companies targeted by Trump acknowledged hiring outside consultants to deal with his criticism. Many declined to comment for this story. AVOIDING THE MUD "You're not going to win in a one-on-one confrontation with Donald Trump. You're just going to get mired in the mud," said Juda Engelmayer, senior vice president for crisis management at 5W Public Relations in New York. Those who have been willing to engage, including Ford Chairman Bill Ford, have avoided getting too personal. Trump has railed against Ford for manufacturing vehicles in Mexico, threatening a tariff of up to 40 percent on "every car, bumper and part" entering the United States from Mexico. Ford, the great-grandson of the automaker's founder Henry Ford, called Trump's critique "distorted" and said the company instead should be "held up as a real success story." "We didn't take the (government) bailout," during the 2007-2009 recession, Ford told reporters at a conference in Detroit on May 23, contrasting his company with GM and Chrysler. "We paid back our debts. We pulled ourselves up by our boot straps. We are investing in America." Crisis management experts said companies targeted by Trump need to be thinking more about the policy implications of his presidency. That means, for example, shoring up support in the U.S. Congress for the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which Trump has said he wants to renegotiate. A trade lobbyist who asked not to be named because he has worked with one of the companies Trump has called out said Trump's attacks do not particularly hurt companies' reputations in Washington, because policymakers understand presidential campaigns are the "political silly season." But, he said, they can impact broader efforts on trade and other policies. "I think what this suggests," he said, "is that there needs to be a concentrated effort by the business community to talk about the benefits of trade." (Additional reporting by David Shepardson in Washington, Jessica Toonkel in New York and Joseph White in Detroit; editing by Eric Effron and Ross Colvin)
Tunis (AFP) - Tunisia's toppled dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali filed a complaint on Friday against a private television station in an attempt to stop a comedian impersonating him, his lawyer said.

"I have filed a complaint at the request of Ben Ali himself," Mounir Ben Salha said. "This is a complaint aimed at halting the transmission, and a hearing has been set for Tuesday."

The former president was ousted in a revolution that sparked the "Arab Spring" in 2011 and has since lived in exile in Jeddah in Saudi Arabia.

The television programme "violated his dignity" said the lawyer, who filed a complaint for "violation of honour and identity theft".

Moez Ben Gharbia, the head of Attessia TV that broadcasts the show, confirmed to AFP he had been informed about the complaint, but said that "of course" it would continue to be aired.

In "Hello Jeddah", which goes out after the breaking of the fast in the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, comedian Migalo imitates Ben Ali and claims to be broadcasting live from the Saudi city.

On Thursday night, Ben Ali supporter Mondher Guefrech began to cry when he heard what he thought was the voice of the ousted dictator.

The day before, Imed Dghij, leader of a now dissolved brutal pro-Islamist militia, engaged in a virulent exchange with "Ben Ali".

Reservations have been expressed in some quarters about the satirical broadcast's suitability.

But Ben Gharbia remains undeterred.

"There are no ulterior motives. Among the guests on the programme are people who are pro-Ben Ali, while others are against him. It's only a joke," he said.
(Reuters) - Actor Michael Jace, best known for playing a policeman on the TV drama "The Shield," was sentenced on Friday to 40 years to life for shooting his wife dead in front of the couple's two children at their Los Angeles home, a court official said. Jace, 53, received a credit of 754 days served for his time spent imprisoned since his arrest for the May 2014 killing of April Jace, Los Angeles criminal court clerk Melody Ramirez said. Ramirez said family members of the victim, April Jace, gave emotional statements in court on Friday. "My first thought on my mind most mornings is, 'Your daughter has been murdered,'" April Jace's mother Kay Henry told the court in tears, according to the Los Angeles Times. The paper said she added that when her daughter was killed, "we both died." The actor was upset that his wife wanted a divorce when he shot her once in the back and twice more in the legs, according to prosecutors. 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. Jace's attorneys acknowledged in court that he shot his wife, arguing instead that the shooting was not premeditated. Jace was convicted of second-degree murder, an intentional killing that was not premeditated, in May. 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 Curtis Skinner in San Francisco; Editing by Matthew Lewis and Andrew Hay)
Cinemax is in the early stages of developing Brian Michael Bendis comic book Scarlet as a series, Robert Doherty inks 3-year deal with CBS and more in Fridays TV news roundup.

DEVELOPMENT

Cinemax is currently developing a TV adaptation of Scarlet, based on Brian Michael Bendis and Alex Maleevs comic of the same name, published under Marvels Icon imprint. According to Deadline, Bendis announced, albeit coyly, at the ATX Television Festival in Austin that the property was being developed by HBO, but Variety has confirmed that it will be developed for Cinemax, which is owned by the premium cable network. The comic follows a rebellious protagonist named Scarlet Rue who ends up sparking a new American revolution. Bendis also co-created Jessica Jones and Powers, both of which have been adapted for TV. Development for Scarlet is in the early stages.

DEALS

Rob Doherty, creator, executive producer and showrunner of CBS Elementary, has signed a new three-year deal with CBS Television Studios. He will continue as showrunner on Elementary, which is heading into its fifth season, and will supervise new projects for CBS TV. The news was first reported by Deadline.

Greys Anatomy actors Justin Chambers, Chandra Wilson, James Pickens, Jr. and Kevin McKidd have renewed their deals and will return to the ABC drama for the upcoming 13th season. Theyve signed on after star Ellen Pompeo inked her deal to return and Sara Ramirez confirmed her departure from the show.

FIRST LOOK

Disney XD and Lego have released the first trailer for LEGO Star Wars: The Freemaker Adventures, which takes place in the period between The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. On June 11 at 8 p.m. on YouTube, Instagram star Zack King will be hosting a Brick-Building event where fans can get a sneak peek of the upcoming animated series.

DATES

PBS announced that The Great British Baking Show will return for Season 3 on July 1 at 9 p.m. on the network. The competition show, which features amateur bakers vying to be the best all-around baker, will feature returning judges Mary Berry and Paul Hollywood joined by hosts Sue Perkins and Mel Giedroyc.

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By Brendan Pierson NEW YORK (Reuters) - Two Israeli citizens pleaded not guilty on Thursday to orchestrating a massive computer hacking and fraud scheme that included an attack against JPMorgan Chase & Co and generated hundreds of millions of dollars of illegal profit. Gery Shalon, 32, and Ziv Orenstein, 41, entered their pleas in Manhattan federal court before U.S. Magistrate Judge Nathaniel Fox. They were extradited from Israel this week. Shalon, Orenstein and a third defendant, Joshua Samuel Aaron, all from Israel, were charged in November in a 23-count indictment with alleged crimes targeting 12 companies, including nine financial services companies and media outlets such as The Wall Street Journal. Aaron has not been arrested by U.S. authorities, prosecutors said, and his whereabouts were not immediately clear. Prosecutors said the scheme dated back to 2007 and compromised more than 100 million people's personal information. The alleged enterprise included pumping up stock prices with sham promotional emails, running online casinos, operating an illegal bitcoin exchange and laundering money through at least 75 shell companies and accounts around the world. It involved a massive attack on JPMorgan affecting 83 million customers, the largest theft of customer data from a U.S. financial institution, authorities said. A separate indictment unveiled in Atlanta against Shalon, Aaron and an unnamed defendant said the brokerages E*Trade Financial Corp and Scotttrade Inc were also targets, and personal information of more than 10 million customers was compromised. The counts in the New York indictment include counts of computer hacking, securities and wire fraud, identity theft, illegal internet gambling and conspiring to commit money laundering, carrying possible prison sentences ranging from two to 20 years. Not all counts were brought against all defendants. The case is U.S. v. Shalon et al, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, No. 15-cr-00333. (Clarifies headline to show cyberfraud involved other companies.) (Reporting By Brendan Pierson in New York; Editing by David Gregorio)
By Daniel Wiessner

(Reuters) - A U.S. appeals court on Friday dismissed a bid by construction trade groups to block controversial Obama administration rules designed to speed up union elections, saying the National Labor Relations Board had broad authority to implement them.

The Texas-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected claims by Associated Builders and Contractors Inc and a Texas chapter that the so-called "quickie" election rules violated employers' free speech rights and would lead to union harassment of workers.

"The board ... conducted an exhaustive and lengthy review of the issues, evidence and testimony, responded to contrary arguments, and offered factual and legal support for its final conclusions," Circuit Judge Edith Brown Clement wrote.

The 5th Circuit is considered to be one of the most conservative appeals courts in the country and is a popular venue for legal challenges to Obama administration initiatives.

The decision affirmed a 2015 ruling by a federal judge in Austin, Texas. The state's chapter of the National Federation of Independent Business was also a plaintiff but was not involved in the appeal.

The rules, which took effect in April 2015, have shortened the period between a union filing a petition to represent workers and an election, from the previous median of 38 days to as little as two weeks.

Under the rules, employers cannot bring legal challenges to the way union campaigns are conducted until after an election and are required to share workers' names and contact details with unions once they file election petitions.

The NLRB said the changes were necessary because a small number of companies were intentionally dragging out the election process, sometimes for months, to coerce workers to vote against unions.

Associated Builders and Contractors in its lawsuit said there was no evidence that was common, but the 5th Circuit on Friday said it was not the court's role "to weigh the evidence pro and con."

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NLRB spokeswoman Jessica Kahanek declined to comment. ABC did not immediately return a request for comment.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other business-backed groups last year made similar claims in a separate lawsuit challenging the new rules in federal court in Washington, D.C. A judge dismissed the case, and the groups did not appeal.

President Barack Obama in March 2015 vetoed a measure from Republicans in Congress that would have stopped the rules from taking effect.

The case is Associated Builders and Contractors Inc v. National Labor Relations Board, 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals No. 15-50497.

(Reporting by Daniel Wiessner in Albany, New York, Editing by Alexia Garamfalvi and Cynthia Osterman)
(Adds airline and government comments, detail, background)

WASHINGTON, June 10 (Reuters) - The United States has approved flights on six U.S. airlines to Cuban cities other than Havana, linking the former Cold War foes closer together, the U.S. Transportation Department said in a statement on Friday.

The green light lets airlines schedule flights to the communist-ruled island for the first time in decades. Until now, air travel to Cuba has been limited to charter services.

Flights will begin as early as the fall, the department said.

American will have nonstop service from Miami, the largest Cuban community in the United States; Southwest, JetBlue and Silver Airways will fly from nearby Fort Lauderdale; Frontier will add flights from Chicago and Philadelphia; and Sun Country will serve Minneapolis.

"For avid travelers - that means 155 weekly trips," Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx said in an online bulletin. "It is an exciting time in American history as we continue to make inroads toward safe scheduled passenger and cargo flights to Cuba."

The department said it approved every route proposal outside Havana except for those of charter operator Eastern Airlines.

A ban on tourism to Cuba remains part of U.S. law. However, President Barack Obama has authorized exceptions since the countries began restoring relations in December 2014. U.S. travelers must meet one of 12 criteria such as being Cuban-American or taking part in educational tours or journalistic activity.

Airlines expect a gradual, though potentially bigger payout from the flights than is typical for Caribbean destinations.

Strong demand will come from Cuban-Americans visiting relatives, leisure travelers desiring a once off-limits experience, and executives paying for business-class fares to evaluate commercial opportunities, experts said.

"Today's news is historic on many fronts, especially for the families who, for the first time in generations, will have affordable ... air travel to visit their loved ones," said Robin Hayes, chief executive of JetBlue Airways Corp, in a news release.

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American Airlines Group Inc and JetBlue said they will begin selling tickets this summer. Southwest Airlines Co said it welcomed the news.

Airlines have applied for nearly triple the 20 daily round-trips that Cuba and the United States agreed to permit to Havana. In extensive filings, each argued why it is suited for the coveted routes and why others would offer inconvenient connections or higher fares.

The Transportation Department said it will make a decision on Havana this summer.

(Reporting by Jeffrey Dastin in New York; David Shepardson, Susan Heavey and Tim Ahmann in Washington; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and James Dalgleish)
By Karen Brooks

(Reuters) - A North Carolina man faces ethnic intimidation charges after leaving bacon at a mosque and making death threats to its members as they prepared for worship in observance of Ramadan, Islam's holy month, authorities said on Friday.

Russell Thomas Langford of Fayetteville was arrested late on Thursday, the Hoke County Sheriff's Office said. He is a major in the U.S. Army Reserve, WTVD-TV in Raleigh said, quoting officials at Fort Bragg military base in North Carolina.

On Thursday afternoon, members of the Masjid Al Madina in Raeford found two packages of bacon at the mosque entrance, the sheriff's office said.

Observant Muslims are prohibited from consuming pork products. Ramadan is Islam's holy month, during which believers abstain from eating and drinking during daylight hours.

Langford is charged with ethnic intimidation, assault with a deadly weapon, going armed to the terror of the public, communicating threats, stalking and disorderly conduct, the sheriff's office said in a statement.

Officials with the sheriff's office and Fort Bragg military base could not be reached for comment on Friday.

"We have called for stepped-up police presence not only for that mosque but others in that state," said Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a Muslim advocacy group.

"Every mosque all over the country has nightly Ramadan activities, so they're vulnerable," he said.

A Chevy Tahoe was in the parking lot when the bacon was found, and the driver of the Tahoe, later identified as Langford, followed one of the members home, the sheriff's statement said.

The suspect returned in the evening, showed a gun to one of the members, a retired Army captain and Muslim chaplain at Fort Bragg, and threatened to kill him, according to a report by WRAL-TV in Raleigh, N.C.

The chaplain invited him inside to talk, but the man left, the report said. Later, the man returned in his SUV and tried to run over a group of people who were going inside the mosque for evening Ramadan prayers, the report said.

Investigators found firearms, ammunition and other weapons inside Langford's vehicle, according to the sheriff's statement.

(Reporting by Karen Brooks in Fort Worth, Texas; Editing by Howard Goller)
BEIRUT (Reuters) - U.S.-backed forces seized control of the last route into Islamic State-held city of Manbij in northern Syria on Friday, completing their encirclement of the main target in a major advance against the militants, a monitoring group said. The Syria Democratic Forces, supported by U.S.-led air strikes and American special forces, launched and advance last week to seize Islamic State's last territory on the Syria-Turkey border and cut the self-declared caliphate off from the world. Other enemies of Islamic State, including the governments of Syria and Iraq, also launched major offensives on other fronts, in what amounts to the most sustained pressure on the militants since they proclaimed their caliphate in 2014. Officials of the SDF, a U.S.-backed group formed last year to unite powerful Kurdish militia with Arab anti-Islamic State fighters, could not immediately be reached. The SDF had by Thursday advanced to within firing distance of the last main highway into Manbij, Islamic State's main bastion in the border area west of the Euphrates. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group said the SDF had effectively taken control of the final road to the city early on Friday. "There's no road left... they're all cut," the Observatory's director, Rami Abdulrahman, said. The offensive near the border is the most ambitious advance yet in Syria by a group allied to Washington, which has previously struggled to develop capable allies on the ground amid Syria's five-year multi-sided civil war. SDF forces have also advanced in the neighboring province of Raqqa, and Syrian government forces and their allies, backed by Russia, opened a separate front against Islamic State in Raqqa province last week. The Iraqi government has launched its own assault on the Islamic State bastion Falluja, an hour's drive from Baghdad, at the opposite end of Islamic State territory. The SDF has said this week that it was holding back from an immediate assault to enter Manbij out of concern for civilians. The Observatory said nearly 160 Islamic State fighters had died in battles with the SDF around Manbij and more than 20 SDF fighters had been killed. (Reporting by John Davison; editing by Peter Graff)
American officials call them the Tikrit rules  an informal agreement that Iranian-backed Shiite militias wont enter Sunni cities reclaimed from the Islamic State for fear of sparking new sectarian tensions there.

But the rules are now facing a serious test in Fallujah, where Iraqi forces  backed by an array of armed Shiite groups  are gearing up to try to reconquer the city from the Islamic State.

The situation in Fallujah bears some resemblance to a crisis that erupted last year in Tikrit, where Shiite fighters backed by Iran launched an offensive to take back the Sunni town north of Baghdad without consulting with Iraqi Army leaders. The operation was essentially an end run around the Iraqi Defense Ministry and their U.S. military advisors, who were blindsided by the news.

The offensive, however, soon became bogged down, and the Iraqi government asked for American air power to break the stalemate on the battlefield. But U.S. officials and commanders balked. They told the Baghdad government that there would be no airstrikes from American warplanes or surveillance aircraft flying overhead unless the Shiite militias in the so-called Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) pulled back, so the Iraqi Defense Ministry took full command of the operation, and U.S.-trained Iraqi Army units led the attack into the city.

We said we can only do it if the Iranian-backed PMF stay out of the city, a senior U.S. administration official told Foreign Policy.

In Fallujah, where thousands of Shiite militiamen are deployed on the northern approaches to the city, the United States is laying down conditions like those in Tikrit in 2015, said the senior official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Its a fairly similar rule set thats being applied here, the official said.

The problem is that the Shiite militias arent abiding by those rules. Sunnis who managed to escape Fallujah have suffered beatings, disappearances, and even summary executions at the hands of Iranian-backed Shiite militias over the past two weeks, according to credible accounts cited by Human Rights Watch in a report published Thursday.

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Bruno Geddo, the chief of the U.N. refugee agencys mission in Iraq, said the behavior of the militias was completely unacceptable.

The allegations of abuses were corroborated by several sources, Geddo told FP. From reports we have received, the torture has been perpetuated by the militias.

The abuses raise serious security and humanitarian concerns because Shiite abuses could lead fearful Sunnis to respond in kind and potentially turn to the Islamic State or other armed groups for protection.

The fears are playing out on both sides of the sectarian divide, and recent Islamic State suicide bombings in Baghdad in Shiite neighborhoods have inflicted a rising death toll. The attacks prompted demands for the Iraqi government to focus its attention on securing Fallujah, only 40 miles west of the capital and long a staging ground for assaults on Baghdad by Sunni extremists.

The accounts of persecution near Fallujah have raised alarm bells in Washington, where military and civilian officials have long worried about the role of the militias and their potential to foment sectarian bloodshed.

And its not clear that U.S. leverage with the Iraqi government  including the threat of withdrawing American air power  will be enough to restrain the most powerful Shiite militias, who answer to their Iranian patrons.

The Obama administration, mindful of the reports of persecution against Sunnis, has made clear to the Iraqi government that any abuses are unacceptable, officials said. But they have been encouraged so far by Prime Minister Haider al-Abadis condemnation of the abuses and public vows to punish those responsible.

To the degree that these allegations prove true, it will be important for Abadi to demonstrate not only in words but in deeds, by arresting people and holding them accountable, the same senior official said.

Although Washington is worried by reports of Shiite militias mistreating Sunnis, the administration was not threatening to hold back U.S. air power in Fallujah, partly because Abadis government has promised that the Iraqi Army will spearhead the attack on the city and not the militias, the official said.

When asked if Washington was seriously considering withholding air support, the official said, Were not anywhere near that point.

The official added: We could not be more focused in emphasizing how important this is and also making it clear the decision  will shape our ability to help the campaign.

The U.S.-led air campaign around Fallujah has intensified in recent days, but officials insisted those bombing raids have backed up Iraqi Army operations in the south and not Shiite militias in the northern suburbs. Over the past week, American warplanes have launched more than 30 airstrikes around Fallujah, said Army Col. Chris Garver, a spokesman for the U.S.-led coalition in Baghdad.

The strikes ramped up significantly on Wednesday, with coalition aircraft destroying 23 Islamic State fighting positions, a supply cache, and other targets in the city, according to U.S. Central Command statistics.

The Shiite militias and their Iranian sponsors do not want a repeat of the Tikrit episode, in which the PMF was sidelined and U.S. air power had a starring role, said Matthew McInnis, a former intelligence analyst and now a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

It was embarrassing for them, he said.

Since the Tikrit operation, the militias have undergone more training and received new arms, including Russian antitank weapons. The Iranians have spent a significant amount of time improving their capabilities, McInnis said.

Underscoring the priority Tehran has attached to the Fallujah operation, Maj. Gen. Qassem Suleimani, the commander of Irans paramilitary Quds Force, visited the militia fighters near Fallujah at the end of last month.

Iran has historically relied on three militias to exercise influence in Iraq. The groups all predate the threat of the Islamic State, and each of them publicly supports Irans supreme leader, as well as its revolutionary ideology. And at least two of the groups have been linked to deadly attacks on American troops during the 2003 to 2011 U.S. occupation.

The Badr Organization, the biggest of these militias, is also the oldest. Formed in 1982 in Tehran, it originally served as an ideologically fervent auxiliary force to Iran during the eight-year Iran-Iraq War. Hadi al-Amiri, the leader of Badr, speaks fluent Farsi, carries an Iranian passport, and has an Iranian wife. He also commands a force of some 20,000 Iraqi men and leads most of the PMFs operations.

The second largest, Asaib Ahl al-Haq, or League of the Righteous, was formed by Iran in 2006 to attack U.S. troops occupying Iraq. Like Badr, it pledges loyalty to Irans doctrine of vesting political power in the clergy. The group has recruited heavily during the fight against the Islamic State, bumping its numbers up to around 10,000 to 15,000, according to Phillip Smyth, a researcher of Shiite militias at the University of Maryland. It was also responsible for one of the most notorious attacks on American troops during the long war: a well-choreographed 2007 strike on a U.S. base near the city of Karbala that resulted in five American deaths.

The third group, Kataib Hezbollah, is one of the most sophisticated militias in Iraq, with its core members drawn from staunchly pro-Tehran elements in Badr. The group also was tied to the deaths of U.S. troops in Iraq and was known for posting videos of attacks on American and Iraqi forces to the internet. Though smaller than the other two  it claims to have around 10,000 men  Kataib Hezbollah enjoys special access to Iranian weapons and training. Its founder, Abu Mahdi al-Mohandis, acts as Suleimanis right-hand man in Iraq and is the deputy chief of the PMF. He arranges logistics, plans operations, and many fighters see him as the true leader of the movement.

Two of these Iranian-supported militias  the Badr brigades and the Kataib Hezbollah fighters  were specifically cited by witnesses and local officials in Anbar province in a report published Thursday by Human Rights Watch that recounted severe beatings and atrocities against Sunnis who fled Fallujah. The group said it had received credible allegations of summary executions, beatings of unarmed men, enforced disappearances, and mutilation of corpses by militias and federal police over a two-week period since May 23.

Despite the accounts of persecution by militias, the Iraqi government has called on the residents of Fallujah to flee before its forces enter the city.

At last count, more than 16,000 people have fled Fallujah since May 3, including families using tires and refrigerators to make their way across the Euphrates River, according to Geddo. Those that remain in the Islamic State-controlled city are starving, unable to find food, and are grinding stale dates to make flour, he said.

The most prominent Shiite cleric in Iraq, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, has called for restraint in Fallujah. His representative, Abdul Mahdi al-Karbalai, recently appealed for calm, calling for security forces to protect civilians and not to act in a treacherous manner.

Some militia leaders reportedly have also spoken out against mistreatment of Sunnis. But a member of Kataib Hezbollah, one of the proxy militias, provided potential justification for sectarian retaliation against Sunni civilians. On Feb. 1, he said 80 percent of Fallujahs residents were allied with the Islamic State.

The leaders of the Iranian-backed militias mostly recognize that they cannot recapture Fallujah on their own and do not relish the idea of effectively occupying a Sunni city once Islamic State militants are pushed out, analysts said.

But analysts also say the militias want to have a key role in the offensive, stake out a permanent presence on key routes leading to Baghdad, and, more importantly, to tout the eventual liberation of Fallujah in their propaganda.



No matter how the operation plays out, they will try to take credit for everything, said Patrick Martin, a research analyst on Iraq at the Institute for the Study of War.

After launching the offensive on May 23, Iraqi forces are knocking on the doors of Fallujah from several directions, even if they havent been able to penetrate deeply into the city. Brigades from the 14th Iraqi Army division have been clearing parts of the northern edges of the city, while to the south, brigades from the 1st, 17th, and 8th Iraqi divisions are still clearing roads of bombs and other obstacles near the Euphrates River.

The troops are joined there by Sunni Anbar tribal fighters [who] have been back-clearing bypassed areas to clear out pockets of Islamic State fighters, Garver told reporters on Wednesday.

The fighting in the south has been significant, the U.S.-led coalition spokesman said, and Islamic State fighters are using extensive tunnels, berms, obstacles, and IEDs used as minefields, much like in the fight for Ramadi in December.

Iraqs elite counterterrorism force  which played a crucial role in the battles for Ramadi, Baiji, and Tikrit last year  is also operating south of Fallujah and will be called on to deliver the main blow against Islamic State fighters in the city. The force, known as the counterterrorism service or CTS, was created and trained by U.S. military advisors and reportedly harbors some distrust of the Iranian-backed militias.

Progress has been slow. But the Baghdad government this week hailed the advance of Iraqi counterterrorism troops on the southern outskirts of the city, to a street in Fallujahs Shuhada neighborhood.

FP staff writer Paul McLeary contributed to this article.

Photo credit: AHMAD AL-RUBAYE/AFP/Getty Images
BAGHDAD/FALLUJA (Reuters) - U.S. and Iraqi officials said on Friday they could not confirm a report by an Iraqi TV channel that Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi had been wounded in an air strike in northern Iraq. A spokesman for the U.S.-led coalition fighting the radical Islamist militants, Colonel Chris Garver, said in an email that he had seen the reports but had "nothing to confirm this at this time". Brett McGurk, the U.S. envoy to the coalition, told a daily briefing at the White House in Washington that there was no reason to believe that Baghdadi was not alive "even though we haven't heard of him since late last year." "We presume that he's still alive," he added. "It's really a matter of time for him." Kurdish and Arab security officials in northern Iraq said they also could not confirm the report. Al Sumariya TV cited a local source in the northern province of Nineveh saying that Baghdadi and other Islamic State leaders were wounded on Thursday in a coalition air strike on one of the group's command headquarters close to the Syrian border. The channel has good connections with Shi'ite politicians and Iraqi forces engaged in the battle against Islamic State. There have been several reports in the past that Baghdadi, whose real name is Ibrahim al-Samarrai, was killed or wounded after proclaiming himself caliph of all Muslims two years ago. In the last audio message, posted at the end of December on Twitter accounts that had published Islamic State statements previously, Baghdadi said the air strikes carried out by Russia and the U.S.-led coalition had failed to weaken the group. The ultra-hardline Sunni group is under increased pressure in both Iraq and Syria, and the territory under its control has shrunk significantly since 2014, limiting the potential for its leaders to move around or seek shelter. The U.S. earlier this year announced an intensification of the war on Islamic State with more air strikes and more American troops on the ground to advise and assist allied forces. The U.S.-led coalition has regularly flown raids out of Erbil, the capital of Iraq's Kurdistan region, in operations aimed at killing and capturing Islamic State leaders. A Kurdish intelligence official and an Arab from the Baaj area west of Mosul said the U.S.-led coalition had conducted such a raid there earlier this week. The coalition did not confirm this raid. Kurdish Peshmerga forces are positioned in an arc around the north and east of Mosul while the Iraqi army is trying to capture Falluja, 50 km (30 miles) west of Baghdad. The army's elite Counter Terrorism Service was battling on Friday in al-Shuhada, a southern district of Falluja, a Reuters photographer reported from the scene. Loud explosions and bursts of gunfire were heard from the district, while aircraft believed to belong to the U.S.-led coalition flew overhead. Al-Shuhada marks the first advance of the army inside the built-up area of Falluja, after two weeks of fighting on the outskirts to complete the encirclement of the city. The encirclement was completed with help from Iran-backed Shi'ite militias. They deployed behind the army's lines and did not take part directly in the assault on the city to avoid inflaming sectarian feelings. A government official said Islamic State militants are putting up a tough fight defending the city that stands as a symbol of the Sunni insurgency that followed the U.S. occupation of Iraq, in 2003. Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said the troops are progressing cautiously in order to protect tens of thousands of civilians trapped in Falluja. The United Nations says 90,000 civilians may have remained in Falluja, under "harrowing" conditions with little access to food, water and healthcare, and no safe exit routes. The insurgents have dug a network of tunnels to move around without being detected and planted thousands of mines and explosive devices to delay the army's advance. Finance Minister Hoshiyar Zebari said a week ago that the battle of Falluja "will take time". The Iraqi army is also massing tanks and troops south of Mosul, in preparation for an offensive planned later this year to retake the largest city under the control of the militants. In Syria, Russian- and Iranian-backed Syrian government forces and U.S.-backed Syrian opposition and Kurds are separately trying to advance on Raqqa, the group's capital in Syria. (Reporting by Maher Chmaytelli and Isabel Coles; Additional reporting by Tim Gardner in Washington; Editing by Dominic Evans and Hugh Lawson)
By Stephanie Nebehay GENEVA (Reuters) - Israel's cancellation of entry permits for Palestinians following a deadly attack in Tel Aviv may amount to collective punishment, which is banned under international law, the United Nations' top human rights official said on Friday. Israel responded that its actions were "legitimate steps in order to defend its citizens from terrorists". The Israeli military on Thursday revoked permits for 83,000 Palestinians to visit Israel and said it would send hundreds more troops to the occupied West Bank a day after a Palestinian gun attack that killed four Israelis in Tel Aviv. U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein condemned the attack, the largest loss of Israeli life in a single attack since the current surge in violence, spokeswoman Ravina Shamdasani said. But he is concerned about the revoking of permits "which may amount to prohibited collective punishment and will only increase the sense of injustice and frustration felt by Palestinians in this very tense time", she told a news briefing. Israel's actions included suspension of 204 work permits held by individuals in the extended families of the alleged attackers, she said, and Israeli security forces sealed off their entire hometown. The Geneva Conventions say punishing people for crimes they have not personally committed can amount to collective punishment, Shamdasani said. U.S. State Department spokesman Mark Toner declined to characterize the Israeli action as collective punishment but called on Israel to avoid steps that might escalate tensions. "Any time you take sweeping actions like this, there is the possibility ... that these actions will only inflame tensions and escalate tensions," Toner told reporters. "We want to see any actions to be temporary in nature and to not impact the lives of normal Palestinian citizens," he added. Israel's diplomatic mission in Geneva said the comment by Zeid's office OHCHR "breaks a new record of cynicism and double standards". "The OHCHR is using the murder of innocent Israelis to attack Israel. Once again, instead of putting itself by the side of the Israeli victims, it settles for a forced, weak condemnation, and rushes to defend the terrorists," it said. "Like any other country in the same situation, Israel is taking legitimate steps in order to defend its citizens from terrorists who are backed by the incitement and the glorification of death and martyrdom, inflated by the Palestinian leadership and society," it said. Israel has an obligation to bring those responsible to account for their crimes, which it was doing, Shamdasani said. "However, the measures taken against the broader population punish not the perpetrators of the crime, but tens - and maybe hundreds - of thousands of innocent Palestinians," she said. The entry permits had been issued to Palestinians from the Israeli-occupied West Bank to visit relatives during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan now in progress. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the assault by the two gunmen on Wednesday in a fashionable shopping and dining market near Israel's Defence Ministry, but Hamas and other Palestinian militant groups were quick to praise it. (Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay; Editing by Gareth Jones and David Gregorio)
By Marty Graham

SAN DIEGO (Reuters) - A U.S. Navy rear admiral pleaded guilty on Thursday to a charge of lying to federal investigators, making him the highest-ranking officer to be convicted in the expanding "Fat Leonard" bribery case.

Robert Gilbeau, 55, a special assistant to the chief of the Navy Supply Corps, appeared in U.S. District Court in San Diego late Thursday afternoon, accompanied by his lawyer and a fluffy white dog he said helped him monitor his health.

Prosecutors said Gilbeau lied when he told investigators that he had not accepted gifts from Leonard Glenn Francis, whose contracts to clean, stock and maintain U.S. Pacific Fleet ships are at the center of the $30 million bribery case.

He lied to federal investigators to conceal his illicit years-long relationship with Leonard Glenn Francis," Assistant U.S. Attorney Mark Pletcher told reporters after the hearing.

Neither Gilbeau nor his attorney agreed to comment on the case.

Guilbeau's guilty plea brings to 14 the number of people charged in the Singapore-based case, including Francis, the former chief executive of Glenn Defense Marine Asia. The Malaysian businessman also known as "Fat Leonard" pleaded guilty last year to bribery charges. Nine of the 13 previously charged have pleaded guilty.

Last month, a federal judge in San Diego sentenced U.S. Navy Captain Daniel Dusek, 49, to 46 months in prison in the case.

Dusek pleaded guilty last year to a charge of conspiracy to commit bribery after admitting he accepted services from prostitutes, luxury hotel stays, alcohol and other gifts in exchange for giving classified information to the company.

Three current and former U.S. Navy officers were charged with participating in the scheme on May 27, the U.S. Justice Department said.

In a plea agreement with prosecutors, Gilbeau agreed to pay $50,000 in restitution to the Navy as well as a $100,000 fine, said Kelly Thornton, spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney's office in San Diego.

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He also faces up to five years in prison, although prosecutors have agreed to seek a sentence of 12 to 18 months, she said.

He was released Thursday on $75,000 bail and his sentencing date was set for Aug. 26.

(Reporting by Marty Graham; Additional reporting by Eric Walsh and Sharon Bernstein; Writing by Sharon Bernstein; Editing by Bernard Orr and Richard Chang)
By Deena Beasley

CHICAGO, June 10 (Reuters) - A new type of cancer drug that takes the brakes off the body's immune system has given drugmakers some remarkable wins against the deadly disease, but a top U.S. regulator says too many companies are focused on the same approach.

Dr. Richard Pazdur, head of the Food and Drug Administration's office of oncology products, was referring to therapies designed to disable the PD-1 protein that tumors use to evade the immune system.

The FDA has approved such treatments from Merck & Co , Bristol-Myers Squibb Co and Roche Holding AG , each of which have list prices of $150,000 per year. At least five other drugmakers are developing similar medicines.

"People should ask themselves ... would we be better off spending those resources into looking at more novel drugs?" Pazdur told Reuters during the annual American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) meeting in Chicago this week.

Pazdur acknowledged that the success of a few drugmakers in the worldwide $110 billion market for cancer treatments makes it attractive for rivals to continue developing similar therapies rather than invest heavily in unproven approaches.

"As with everything in drug development, it is about reduction of risk," he said. But the number of similar drugs in development at the same time is a first in the oncology field, and latecomers to the PD-1 market will likely be relegated to "niche" indications, he added.

Drug company executives disputed Pazdur's critique. In interviews with Reuters, they argued that the science around cancer is advancing rapidly, with a focus on how to best combine therapies to attack multiple mechanisms of the disease, determine which patients are most likely to respond to them and how long patients will need to be treated.

Bristol-Myers and Merck are widely viewed as leaders in the immunotherapy race, with treatments defying the odds to help patients fight off some of the deadliest cancers. Merck's Keytruda was shown to help a significant number of patients with advanced melanoma live at least three years, while Bristol-Myers' Opdivo prolonged life for some lung cancer patients by two years, according to data presented at the ASCO meeting.

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In practice, doctors say, around 20 percent of advanced cancer patients respond to the new drugs and a subset of those patients can have lasting remissions.

AstraZeneca PLC's PD-1 received "breakthrough" status from the FDA to expedite review for treating a type of bladder cancer. Other companies in earlier stages of development include Pfizer Inc, in partnership with Germany's Merck KGaA, Novartis AG, Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc and China's BeiGene.

"Our reason to go into PD-1s is not just to have a 'me too' drug," said Israel Lowy, head of translational science and oncology at Regeneron, which has a PD-1 in early-stage trials. "Most people think that the future is in combinations ... Having our own PD-1 that is active and useful gives us enormous flexibility in how we do clinical trials."

ENOUGH PROFIT FOR EVERYONE?

Industry executives say they are investing in additional, potentially complementary, approaches to PD-1 treatment that can eventually be used against many types and stages of cancer.

"We don't look at ourselves as 'latecomers.' We are leading in multiple areas with combination therapies," said Bahija Jallal, executive vice president at AstraZeneca's MedImmune unit, which is testing its PD-1 candidate with a range of other experimental drugs. "The question is, how can we really follow the science," Jallal said.

At the ASCO meeting, for example, Pfizer presented early-stage data from a trial showing that its experimental agent 4-1BB, which aims to increase T-cells, was safe when combined with Merck's Keytruda, but only two of 23 patients achieved complete remissions for a year.

"Somebody may emerge with a surprise new mechanism," said Leerink Partners pharmaceutical analyst Seamus Fernandez. He said drugs from Bristol-Myers and Merck will most likely become the standard of care for many patients.

Pazdur and other experts agreed that the biggest opportunity for cancer immunotherapies will be their use earlier on in treatment. Fernandez said Bristol-Myers could "win the war," if it succeeds with a combination of Opdivo and its other immunotherapy Yervoy as an initial treatment for advanced non-small cell lung cancer. Merck and Roche are testing their PD-1s combined with chemotherapy for the same purpose.

In the end, patients may benefit from lower costs if Merck and Bristol-Myers face more rivals in the marketplace. Both Keytruda and Opdivo have a U.S. list price of about $150,000 per year.

If combinations of expensive therapies become the norm, drugmakers could theoretically keep prices lower by mixing their own treatments rather than seeking permission from a rival.

"The profits on oncology drugs are so high that 'me-too' drugs will be developed," said Joel Hay, professor of pharmaceutical economics and policy at the University of Southern California. "They will ultimately reduce the profits in that class. That's how competition is supposed to work." (Reporting By Deena Beasley; Editing by Michele Gershberg and David Gregorio)
(Reuters) - A United States laboratory researcher was back at work after contracting the Zika virus by pricking herself with a needle during an experiment last month, the University of Pittsburgh said on Friday. There is no vaccine or treatment for Zika, which is a close cousin of diseases such as dengue and chikungunya, and causes mild fever, rash and red eyes. An estimated 80 percent of those infected have no symptoms. The unidentified researcher accidentally stuck herself on May 23 and showed fever and other possible symptoms on June 1, said Joe Miksch, a spokesperson for the university. She returned to work on June 6 when she no longer had a fever, Miksch said. On Wednesday, the University was informed that a blood sample from the researcher tested positive for a Zika infection. The incident was the fourth confirmed case of the Zika virus in Allegheny County, its health department said, without giving details of the accident. "Despite this rare incident, there is still no current risk of contracting Zika from mosquitoes in Allegheny County," department director Karen Hacker said in a statement. U.S. health officials have concluded that Zika infections in pregnant women can cause microcephaly, a birth defect marked by small head size that can lead to severe developmental problems in babies. The World Health Organization has said there is strong scientific consensus that Zika can also cause Guillain-Barre, a rare neurological syndrome that causes temporary paralysis in adults. The connection between Zika and microcephaly first came to light last fall in Brazil, which has now confirmed more than 1,400 cases of microcephaly that it considers to be related to Zika infections in the mothers. To reduce the chance of virus transmission, the Pittsburgh researcher is using insect repellent to avoid mosquito bites, besides wearing pants and garments with long sleeves. (Reporting by Brendan O'Brien in Milwaukee; additional reporting by Ransdell Pierson in New York; Editing by Clarence Fernandez and Phil Berlowitz)
Uber bills its ride-hailing service as smarter than a taxi. Yet in many cases, taking a local taxi service might be a smarter choice for your wallet.

One of the reasons for Ubers success? Its fares can be cheaper than taking a taxi. Thats especially true for longer trips that cost more than $35, according to analysis by Anastasios Noulas, a data scientist at Lancaster University in the U.K. Overall, says Noulas, Uber is often the more economical choice outside of large cities.

But there are many times when a taxi is a better alternative. For quick trips when the fares are below $35, for instance, a taxi could be the cheaper option. Such trips account for about 94 percent of taxi fares, Noulas says.

Watch Out for Surge Pricing

A taxi is likely to also be the better option when demand is high. Thats because during such times, Uber and rival services such as Lyft rely on surge pricing to boost fares by up to four times the price. The theory is that by allowing drivers to charge a premium, more drivers will get behind the wheel, which will help meet demand from passengers.

Surge pricing can happen more often than youd expect in some high-traffic neighborhoods, such as New York Citys Times Square. Noulas says the practice affects about 25 percent of UberX carsthe budget option for ridersin New York City. The result is that the median price for a yellow cab ride in New York, says Noulas, is $19.50 versus $23.50 for an UberX ride.



Even without surge pricing, UberX can be more expensive than taking a taxi, especially for shorter trips. Uber charges a minimum fare of $8 for simply getting into the car, compared with $2.50 for New Yorks yellow cabs. UberX is still often more expensive even after you take into account tipping taxi drivers, Noulas found. Uber drivers typically dont accept tips.

Apps to Get the Best Deal

While Uber provides an estimate of a trips cost before you get in the car, the final price might surprise you because of factors such as traffic or weather. In one notable case, a woman earlier this year told The Chicago Tribune she nearly passed out after Uber charged her $640 for a trip to the airport during a snowstorm. Taxi services typically rely on fixed fare schedules or meters.

Story continues

Several apps and websites can help you figure out whether youll be better off taking an Uber or a taxi, including RideGuru and WhatsTheFare. Another, OpenStreetCab, which Noulas created, provides an analysis of Uber and local taxis in New York and London. The app (Android and iOS) steers you to the cheaper option and can save you about $7 on average per trip, Noulas claims.

The cost of a ride might be only one factor in your decision on how to get around. You might prefer the ease of using the Uber app, since you can track where drivers are while you wait to be picked up and you can rate drivers.

But not all Uber drivers know their cities as well as taxi drivers do. They usually rely on phone-based GPS to get around. But technology might not be able to replace the smarts local taxi drivers. London cabbies, for instance, must study its labyrinthine street layout for years and pass a grueling testcalled "the Knowledge"before becoming licensed.





More from Consumer Reports:

The best matching washers and dryers

Generator Buying Guide

8 ways to boost your home value





Consumer Reports has no relationship with any advertisers on this website. Copyright  2006-2016 Consumers Union of U.S.
The ongoing battle between CBFC and Udta Punjab has been today witnessed by the Bombay HC, where the second-day hearing is in precedence. What more, in a hilarious turn of events, its the HC which is trolling the CBFC, and calling the hue-and-cry over Udta Punjab as obnoxious

Recommended Read: Daughters Asked Their Fathers who Attended #UdtaPunjab Protest Meet to Stay Mum - Guess Who



The case of Udta Punjab vs CBFC is the hottest topic of discussion these days. Henceforth, the court has directed the Censor Board to justify the numerous cuts suggested by its Revising Committee to the makers.

Here are the few pointers which we cant fail to point out, as to what Bombay HC questioned CBFC about, or lets just say, 'took their case about:

HC to CBFC -

'If you claim #UdtaPunjab glorifies drugs, why dont you ban it?

Explain CBFCs insistence for deleting Punjab signboard in the drug-themed film. What is the logical reasoning? Is it provocative and are you suggesting it is offensive? The title of the film has Punjab. It depicts a story of the state and the people. For one visual, you cannot delete an entire scene It is a dutyto expose the problem.

How will the use of the words 'Punjab 'Elections etc. adversely affect the sovereignty and integrity of the nation?

If Goa can be shown as a place of drug abuse in that film, what is wrong if Punjab is shown in Udta Punjab?

'Trust viewers discretion. Leave it to the people

'The word censor is the medias creation. Your power is to certify films

Do you see the word censor anywhere in the act? If you want to see something something, use the remote

'Cinema is a medium, and people will learn how to handle

'Audience is very open minded now. Films dont get ruined due to language

It is not that nobody has made a reference to this in the past and that the drug menace has not been a subject matter of any celluloid film.

Removing words such as election, MLA and MP did not make sense. In our times, there were names with these words in it like Aaj Ka MLA Ram Avatar.

Story continues

Explain the deletion of names of eight cities including Chandigarh, Tarn Taran and Amritsar, and the states name  Punjab.

Additionally, in other tweets:

CBFC: We were told film is in Hindi, but both Hindi and Punjabi are spoken. Judge: Are you saying you ordered cuts without understanding?

Words like rock and pop are okay, but we are they using words like cock? Even children are now singing that Chitta ve song . Theres a dialogue Zameen banjar to aulad kanjar. Im embarrassed to explain kanjar.Punjabs so fertile, why are they saying this?

Judge: Audiences are direct and open today. People born after 1980 are very mature. So why are you worried? For action to be taken you need to provoke.

Multiplex audiences are discerning. How can you decide which words right/wrong?

Film industry is not made of glass that you need to handle with care.

If you ask for so many cuts why is the point? Audience knows.

Has CBFC discharged its functions from 1952 onwards with utmost care? We are fed up of all this.

Give the film a certificate, what is the need for cuts?

If the film is only filled with expletives then the audience wont watch the film. Why are you giving the film so much publicity?

We want creative people to survive and the industry to survive. You have to show the reality.

Judge: Why cant you beep the expletives? Udta Punjab lawyer: This is a realistic film. Thats how people talk in these parts.

Judge to CBFC: Do you want the Udta Punjab makers to say they dont support the use of bad language? Udta Punjab team: Yes we will add a disclaimer that the characters in the film dont support the use of cuss words.

Guess CBFC got the taste of its own medicine, right? Do let us know in the comments section


Kampala (AFP) - At least 30 people with suspected ties to a shadowy rebel outfit have been arrested in Uganda over an alleged plot to topple President Yoweri Museveni, the army said Friday.

The detainees include serving soldiers and a senior opposition lawmaker and are "linked to a rebel group," army spokesman Paddy Ankunda told AFP, but declined to name the outfit.

"We and the police are investigating the matter," Ankunda said, adding that most of those arrested were soldiers.

At least one member of parliament and another opposition politician have been arrested.

The only detainee named by the spokesman was Michael Kabaziguruka, an MP from the main opposition Forum for Democratic Change (FDC) party whose leader Kizza Besigye is in custody on treason charges.

Besigye, who cried foul after coming second to Museveni in February's presidential election, was arrested last month for holding a mock swearing-in ceremony.

Museveni garnered a first-round victory with a more than 60 percent share of the vote that foreign monitors said was held in an atmosphere of intimidation.

Besigye, an old foe of the president, was previously charged with treason in 2005 but the case was eventually abandoned. At the time, prosecutors had accused him of leading a shadowy rebel group called the People's Redemption Army, a charge Besigye always denied.

FDC party spokesman Ssemujju Nganda went to visit Kabaziguruka after his arrest.

"He told me he was questioned on rebel links, which he didn't know about," said Nganda, adding that other party supporters "are under detention on the same claim".

The local newspaper Daily Monitor said one of the arrested soldiers is a captain responsible for the armoury at the Bombo Military Barracks, the army headquarters north of the capital Kampala.

It also quoted the FDC spokesman as saying that Kabaziguruka had been grilled "about Dr Besigye and General (David) Sejusa's links to the same rebel group".

Story continues

Sejusa was Uganda's former spymaster.

Over the years Besigye has been frequently jailed, placed under house arrest, accused of both treason and rape, tear-gassed, beaten and hospitalised.

Following the latest charges of treason, Besigye was sent to a maximum security prison in Kampala.

His trial opened last week with the prosecutor saying he could not be brought to court because of a "specific security threat" and requested that further hearings be held inside the prison.

Chief Magistrate James Ereemye Mawanda said he would rule on the request on June 15 and adjourned the case until then.
KAMPALA (Reuters) - Uganda plans to withdraw troops involved in an operation to hunt down Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) rebels in Central African Republic by the end of this year, a military spokesman said on Friday. Uganda has 2,500 troops tracking the rebels, notorious for mutilating their victims and kidnapping children, and their leader Joseph Kony. Most of the soldiers are in the Central African Republic, though there is a small contingent in South Sudan. Spokesman Paddy Ankunda said the withdrawal did not mean Uganda was ending the operation. But while he said the African Union (AU) favoured keeping the troops in place, he said Uganda had been discouraged by insufficient international support. "Even when we have international indictments on some of the (LRA) characters, there seems to be no serious goodwill on the part of international actors or stakeholders to participate or contribute toward the ending of the LRA problem," he said. The International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants for the arrest of Kony and other LRA commanders. Ankunda said Uganda had not yet considered the AU request to maintain its troops in Central African Republic. Although its ranks have dwindled to several hundred fighters, the group still launches attacks against civilians. In April, an organisation tracking the LRA said more than 200 people had been kidnapped in eastern Central African Republic since January. (Reporting by Elias Biryabarema, Writing by Makini Brice; Editing by Joe Bavier and Angus MacSwan)
Kiev (AFP) - Ukraine said Friday it would not purchase natural gas from Russia at the price offered by Moscow and would instead tap European markets as it continues its shift toward the West.

Analysts called the announcement a sign that Russia's ability to use its natural resources as a weapon against uncooperative neighbours is waning -- and that Europe's bid to grow its own gas supply chain is slowly starting to work.

The head of Russian gas giant Gazprom said Tuesday that he had received a request from Ukraine's state energy company to resume deliveries that were halted in November over a delivery costs row.

The two former Soviet republics -- locked in a bitter feud since Moscow's March 2014 annexation of Crimea -- have had repeated price disputes that have occasionally resulted in disruptions of gas flows through Ukraine to Europe.

Ukraine's Naftogaz state company confirmed that it had offered Gazprom a chance to be one of its "potential suppliers", but stressed it would only resume purchases at an advantageous price.

Naftogaz's business development director Yuriy Vitrenko said Russia's energy minister had proposed selling gas to Ukraine for $177 (157 euros) per 1,000 cubic metres in the third quarter of the year.

"With corrections for (the fuel's) energy content, that would make the contract price at around $182 or $183," Vitrenko wrote on Facebook.

Vitrenko said the current German NCG spot market rate was $173. Russia prefers to fix a specific price into long-term contracts with its clients that are subject only to minor adjustments.

"We will never buy gas from Gazprom on these conditions," Vitrenko wrote.

Ukraine has been steadily weening itself off its Russian energy dependence as it establishes closer relations with Western countries in the wake of its February 2014 pro-EU revolution.

Russia supplied 14.5 billion cubic metres of gas to its western neighbour in 2014.

Story continues

That figure plunged to 6.1 billion cubic metres last year.

Ukraine's purchases from EU countries soared from 5.1 to 10.3 billion cubic metres over the same span.

- Russia's fading gas strength -

About 15 percent of the gas consumed by EU countries flows from Russia through Ukraine.

Ukraine and its allies have repeatedly accused Russia of wielding energy as a weapon against neighbours that have considered establishing closer ties with the West.

Russia slashed Armenia's gas price in 2013 in response to the Caucasus state's decision to join a Moscow-led customs union the Kremlin hopes to develop into a rival to the 27-nation EU bloc.

But some analysts say those days are fading because new interconnecting pipelines being laid across the European Union are allowing countries to diversify their supply base.

"There was a time when Russia could manipulate other countries with its natural gas supplies," US-based intelligence firm Stratfor wrote in a report released Thursday.

"It still can, but the threat is less effective than it once was."

Ukraine has built up its dependence on Slovakia and Poland for both purchases and transports from other states.

Stratfor estimated Ukraine "can import up to 20 billion to 25 billion cubic meters of natural gas annually from eastern Europe".
Unconventional is Yahoo News complete guide to what could be the craziest presidential conventions in decades. Heres what you need to know today.

1. Step-by-step instructions: How the GOP could Dump Trump in Cleveland

Do we think that the Republican Party will ditch presumptive nominee Donald Trump at its convention in July and select someone else to replace him  a notion that seems to be catching on among conservatives and commentators in the wake of Trumps controversial remarks about the Mexican-American judge overseeing his Trump University suit?

No, we do not .

And yet, if there were ever an election weird and wild enough to make such a switcheroo possible  just barely  2016 would be it.

Cleveland is a long way away. A lot can happen between now and then.

So what would have to happen to make Dump Trump a reality?

To give our fellow convention fanatics something to fantasize about for the next 40 days, Unconventional has assembled a step-by-step instruction manual for dumping Trump. If any of these steps are skipped, the whole chain reaction fizzles out. But if every one of them is completed, there is still a chance  a very, very slim chance  that Donald Trump wont be competing against Hillary Clinton in fall.

Step One: Trump keeps saying offensive stuff

Trump has said plenty of objectionable things since launching his campaign last summer: the Mexicans-are-rapists thing, the John-McCain-isnt-a-war-hero thing, the Muslims-should-be-barred-from-entering-the-U.S. thing, and so on.

But the Judge Curiel-cant-do-his-job-because-hes-of-Mexican descent thing is the first toxic thing that Trump has said since becoming the GOPs presumptive nominee. The content may be similar, but the context is very different. Before, during the primaries, Republican leaders could brush off Trumps remarks. Hes not my candidate, they could say. Maybe the voters will still reject him. And if not, hell probably grow up in time for the general.

Story continues

Back then, Trump didnt represent the GOP. Now he does. So now whenever Trump says something offensive, other Republicans have to choose: Do I defend this? Or do I denounce it? Hiding isnt an option anymore.

As weve seen over the last week, the risk of guilt by association has dramatically lowered the GOPs tolerance for Trumps most distasteful remarks.

 Bigot, bigot, bigot. Racist. Racist Racist,  said influential conservative talk-radio host Hugh Hewitt Wednesday, recapping the mornings headlines. The Republican National Committee needs to step in and step up, and go see Donald Trump and tell him to get out of the race.

Dump Trump: A protester holds an effigy of Donald Trump at an immigrant rights May Day march in Los Angeles, Calif. (Photo: Lucy Nicholson/Reuters)

Hewitts alarmism aside, Trump can probably recover from a single Curiel-style controversy and regain Republican support. But if the sort of pattern he established as one of 17 primary candidates continues now that hes the presumptive nominee  if this sort of incident happens again and again  more and more Republicans will decide that the only way they can salvage their own reputations is by distancing themselves from the guy at the top of the ticket.

Step Two: Trumps poll numbers plummet

Right now, Trump is trailing Clinton by only 3.8 percentage points, on average, in the general-election polls . Thats reasonable. To be expected. Hes still well within striking distance, as they say.

But what happens if Trumps numbers go into a free fall and Clinton starts to pull away? What if she crosses the 50-percent threshold and he plunges into the 30s? What if the gap between them widens  to five points, 10 points, 15 points?

This is key. The major problem with dumping Trump is political. It looks like GOP elites are conspiring to deny the will of GOP voters  the most galling offense imaginable in a year thats been all about the voters denying the will of the elites.

But Trumps plummeting poll numbers would provide objective evidence that actual voters agree with party leaders that hes gone too far. The GOP would start to fear a down-ballot disaster. More Republicans would jump ship. Combined with a series of Curiel-like controversies, a sickening slide in Trumps public-opinion stats might establish a new anti-Trump argument that doesnt ask rank-and-file Republicans to reject the nominee just because establishment types like Mitt Romney and Marco Rubio are doing it: Trump had his chance. Now hes tanking  and hes taking the party with him.

Step Three: Someone else steps up

Mitt Romney refused. Ben Sasse begged off. James Mattis said no sir. Even David French  a bald, bearded conservative lawyer that no one had ever heard of  decided against it.

You cant fault the #NeverTrump movement for lack of effort. But so far, Weekly Standard Editor Bill Kristol and his anti-Donald cronies have been unable to convince anybody to take on Trump.

For the whole Dump Trump scheme to work, this would have to change.

As Curly Haugland, a member of the convention Rules Committee from North Dakota, recently told the New York Times, In order to have a contested convention, we need to have contestants.

Some Republican politicians are starting to signal their interest in a convention challenge. As Yahoo Senior Political Correspondent Jon Ward reported earlier this week , conservatives are increasingly mentioning Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker as a possible replacement. RedState reported Wednesday that there are rumors that Walker is open to such an outcome. One of Wards sources said that Walker, who mounted a brief bid for the 2016 GOP nomination, has told those working to find an alternative that he would be willing to step up at the convention if Trump continues to implode.

Sen. Ted Cruz, who comes to mind as a possible substitute nominee, is keeping his options open. (Photo: Michael Conroy/AP)

The likeliest substitute, however, would be someone who can already claim considerable support among the convention delegates. Ted Cruz comes to mind. Right now, he has 559 delegates to Trumps 1,542. But remember: Many of the delegates now pledged to Trump were loyal to Cruz (or some other candidate) first.

For his part, Cruz has kept his options open, refusing to endorse Trump and suggesting that if he sees a viable path to victory in the future, he will certainly respond accordingly.

I am looking and listening and watching the candidates, Cruz told CNN earlier this week . Im doing the same thing millions of voters are doing and  time will tell.

Step Four: Republicans rewrite the rules.

Now for the fun part.

Everybody thinks that 1,542 convention delegates are bound to vote for Trump on at least the first ballot. But that isnt exactly true. The reality is that every convention passes its own rules, and with the exception of 1976, no GOP convention has ever voted to bind its delegates. Theyre technically free to vote for whomever they want: Trump, Cruz, Walker, Mickey Mouse. If youre curious, weve already explained this issue at length .

The problem is that various state rules and laws purport to bind the delegates  and the delegates will be loath to defy the directives of the 56 states and territories that sent them to Cleveland.

Fortunately for the Dump Trump dreamers, they dont have to. All the delegates have to do is revise convention Rules 40(d) and (e)  the rules that say how many of their votes are required to win the nomination.

Currently, a simple majority will cut it: 50 percent plus one. But the convention could lift that threshold to 60 percent for the first ballot. Or 66.6 percent, which is where the Democratic Party set its bar for more than a hundred years, from 1832 to 1936. In that case, the delegates wouldnt have to violate the state rules designed to bind them for a certain number of ballots  but Trump would no longer be assured the nomination.

Republicans arent desperate enough to do this yet. But imagine if they already had steps one, two and three under their belt. By then, the Rules Committee, the delegates and even many Trump supporters would likely be looking for a way out. Rewriting the rules would be their last chance.

_____

2. Sanders keeps campaigning in D.C., but supporters lament the end

Sen. Bernie Sanders thanked his supporters for being part of a political revolution at a rally in Washington, D.C., on June 9, 2016. (Photo: Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call via Getty Images)

By Jon Ward

WASHINGTON, D.C.  Bernie Sanders ignored the approaching end of his presidential candidacy Thursday evening at an outdoor rally in the nations capital, seeking to maintain political leverage in the run-up to the Democratic convention in July.

But the 74-year-old Democratic presidential candidate signaled earlier in the day that he while he seeks to move the Democratic Party left at the convention, he will not undercut presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton as she moves toward a general-election matchup with presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump.

Sanders spoke for an hour to 3,000 supporters at a skate park next to RFK Stadium  the former home field of the NFLs Washington Redskins  and made no mention of Clinton or of the fact that President Obama had endorsed her candidacy earlier in the day.

(Read the full version of this story here .)

Around the time that Sanders arrived at the evening rally, news broke that Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, a favorite of progressives, was set to endorse Clinton as well.

Sanders opened his remarks by thanking the crowd for being part of a political revolution.

The crowd responded with chants of Thank you, Bernie!

It was the closest that the 74-year-old Democratic Socialist came to publicly acknowledging the inevitable end of his candidacy, after Clinton crossed the delegate threshold needed to clinch the nomination earlier this week.

A moment later, Sanders noted that pundits had predicted his campaign would not last long, and said, Well, here we are  its mid-June, and were still standing.

Sanders said that the final results from the California primary on Tuesday had yet to come in. And he ended by asking the crowd to vote for him in next Tuesdays D.C. primary election, which will mark the end of the primary process.

But after a meeting with Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid earlier in the day, Reid told reporters that Sanders seemed to have accepted that he would not be the nominee.

Sanders also met with Obama at the White House Thursday. Afterward he told reporters that he would meet with Clinton in the near future to see how we can work together to defeat Donald Trump and to create a government which represents all of us and not just the 1 percent.

His candidacy has shown the depths of frustration. Im glad he ran, said Laura Richards, a longtime D.C. political activist, about Sanders. (Photo: Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call via Getty Images)

Sanders pledged to work as hard as I can to make sure that Donald Trump does not become president of the United States.

The Sanders supporters who introduced him to the crowd at the evening rally were more transparent.

These last few days have been difficult.  Ive had to go into my hotel room and just hold on, said Native American tribal rights leader Deborah Parker.

And philosophy professor Cornel West urged the crowd to never allow despair to have the last word.

West made mention of Clinton and Trump, trashing them both but making it clear that Trump represented a far more unacceptable choice.

We know that brother Trump is an narcissistic neofascist. Dont let corporate media convince you that simply because youre not crazy about the milquetoast neoliberal sister Hillary, theres something wrong with you, West said. We know the difference between a neoliberal and a neofascist, so you make your own decisions.

Sanders supporters in the crowd were saddened by their preferred candidates failure to beat Clinton, but expressed more weary frustration than anger at their options.

His candidacy has shown the depths of frustration. Im glad he ran, said Laura Richards, a longtime D.C. political activist. Now that this is ending, I guess the feminist civil rights angle is coming out, she said, referring to Clintons historic status as the first woman to be the presumptive presidential nominee of any major political party.

Richards shook her head and added, Im not there yet.

But she did think the majority of Sanders supporters would get over their disappointment and vote for Clinton, in large part because of Trump.

Adam Grachek, a 19-year-old Ohio State student in D.C. for the summer as an intern, said he hoped Sanders would take his candidacy to the convention to make a point and to influence the partys platform.

If it was any other Republican, he said, he would vote for Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson or Jill Stein, the Green Partys presumptive nominee. But unless the election is a blowout, he said, he will swallow his displeasure with Clinton and vote for her.

Since its Donald Trump, I think the stakes are much higher, he said. Donald Trump stands for everything I hate.

_____



3. The Clinton Veepwatch, Vol. 6: Bernie Sanders

Is Sanders on presumptive nominee Hillary Clintons possible running mate list? Unconventional doubts it. (Photo: John Locher/AP)

In which Unconventional examines the likely Democratic nominees possible  and not-so-possible  vice presidential picks. Previous installments: Elizabeth Warren , Tim Kaine , Mark Cuban , Julian Castro , Sherrod Brown .

Name: Bernard Bernie Sanders

Age: 74

Resume: U.S. senator from Vermont; former U.S. congressman; former mayor of Burlington, Vt.

Source of speculation: There comes a time at the end of every contested primary  especially the hard-fought ones that continue until the last day on the calendar  when people start to tout a so-called dream ticket (i.e., one that unites the nominee and the runnerup).

This year is no exception.

By people, were referring to two groups in particular. The first is pundits, who  like Unconventional!  need something (anything) to write about in the weird interregnum between primary season and the fall campaign.

Mr. Sanders is the perfect antidote to what Mrs. Clinton lacks, argues Kelly Riddell of The Washington Times . He inspires, motivates, is trustworthy, and has a base of Democratic support thats so far eluded her.

I have no idea whether Clinton would try to bring Sanders on board, admits Ryan Cooper of the Week , but Id be quite surprised if they werent strongly considering it.

Laugh at the idea if you want, but dont rule out a Clinton-Sanders unity ticket just yet, adds Tessa Stuart of Rolling Stone .

And so on.

The second group gunning for a Clinton-Sanders  team of rivals  is, of course, Sanders supporters. What better way, they figure, for the Vermont senator to keep pushing Hillary to the left than as her vice president?

I think Bernie and Hillary could be a powerful duo and could bring a lot of Dems together if done right, says Reddit user stevestgermain .

There would not be any shame in [that], offers Arnold Ronald Lamberty on Facebook . Better to be inside the dragons den and work within for progressive advancements and police corporate greed. A case of the best man for the job.

And so on.

Backstory: While dream tickets make for an entertaining topic of conversation every four years or so, theyre actually quite rare. Since 1960, only three second-place finishers have joined a major-party presidential ticket: Lyndon B. Johnson in 1960, George H.W. Bush in 1980 and John Edwards in 2004.

Sanders seems open to the possibility.

A year ago, before his candidacy really caught on, Sanders was defiant when Yahoo News Global Anchor Katie Couric asked whether he was angling to become Clintons running mate.

No, Sanders snapped. My goal is to win this election.  Would she be interested in being my vice president?

But with the end of the primaries in sight, Sanders tone has softened.

Right now we are focused on the next five weeks of winning the Democratic nomination, Sanders said when CNN asked about the possibility in May . If that does not happen, we are going to fight as hard as we can on the floor of the Democratic convention to make sure we have a progressive platform that the American people will support. Then, after that, certainly Secretary Clinton and I can talk and see where to go from there.

In a subsequent interview with NBC, Sanders added that what happens the day after it appears that I am not going to become the nominee, thats subject for further discussion.

He has also dismissed the idea of a moderate VP candidate as a disaster, and described Clintons ideal pick as someone who sounds suspiciously like  well, Bernie Sanders.

I would hope, if I am not the nominee, that the vice-presidential candidate will not be from Wall Street, will be somebody who has a history of standing up and fighting for working families, taking on the drug companies whose greed is doing so much harm, taking on Wall Street, taking on corporate America, and fighting for a government that works for all of us, not just the 1 percent, Sanders told NBCs Chuck Todd in May .

For her part, Clinton hasnt exactly ruled out running with Sanders. Asked about a dream ticket, she has generally cautioned against getting ahead of [herself]. But she has also vowed to unite the party and promised that the first person I will call to talk to about where we go and how we get it done will be Senator Sanders.

I see a great role and opportunity for him and his supporters to be part of that unified party, Clinton said in May , to move into not just November to win the election against Donald Trump, but to then govern based on the progressive goals that he and I share.

Odds: Sorry, dreamers. Its never gonna happen.

Lets keep this short and sweet. The major advantage of Clinton-Sanders pairing is obvious: he brings his disappointed supporters onboard, keeps them from defecting from the Democratic Party, and maximizes progressive turnout in the fall.

But the drawbacks are obvious as well. An endless supply of populist attack lines that Donald Trump can cut into commercials and hang around the tickets necks in the fall. Temperament (Sanders is too stubborn and independent to serve smoothly as someone elses powerless No. 2). Even age (Sanders would be the oldest vice president in U.S. history by several years).

When Clinton refuses to close the door on VP Sanders, shes just being polite. Heres how she responded to a question earlier this week from Politico about the possibility of Sanders fellow progressive darling, Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, joining the ticket:

I have the highest regard for Sen. Warren. I think she is an incredible public servant, eminently qualified for any role. I look forward to working with her on behalf of not only the campaign and her very effective critique of Trump, but also on the issues that she and I both care about.

And heres how Clinton responded to the same reporters question about Sanders:

I think he has contributed greatly to the campaign. His passion for the issues that he promoted has been good for the Democratic party and for the country. I look forward to talking with him when our campaigns can find a time that works with both our schedules.

One of these statements is in the present tense. The other is mostly in the past tense. In one of them, Clinton look[s] forward to working with the VP contender on behalf of not only the campaign  but also on the issues. In the other, Clinton look[s] forward to talking  when our campaigns can find a time.

That tells you everything you need to know.

_____

4. VIDEO: Calm down, Democrats! Gary Hart, the Bernie Sanders of 1984, insists that the Vermont senator can stay in race without hurting Clinton

By Michael Walsh

Former presidential candidate Gary Hart said Thursday that Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders can stay in the presidential race to promote the themes and ideas of his candidacy in a positive way that does not deter or undermine Secretary Clinton at all.

In fact it could strengthen her, Hart said. I think that getting Senator Sanders out of the race is frankly being too heavily promoted by the media.

Many Democrats have encouraged Sanders to suspend his campaign now that Clinton has enough delegates to clinch the partys nomination. Hes in a somewhat similar situation to the one Hart found himself in while running for the 1984 Democratic nomination against Walter Mondale.

If I were in Senator Sanders shoes, as I somewhat was many years ago, I would stress the need for the message of economic equality and opportunity [to] be central to the Democratic set of principles in the fall, and I think thats what hes doing, Hart said in conversation with Yahoo National Political Columnist Matt Bai.

Hart, who represented Colorado in the U.S. Senate from 19741986, said the media doesnt always understand that presidential contests are not just about governing but also the direction of a party. He said he insisted in 1984 that Democrats incorporate the ideas he had been talking about into their platform that year  and that those ideas then shaped the direction of the party for years to come.

I think if anyone writing a PhD thesis or even a masters thesis would look at that platform, they would see the future of the Democratic Party in it, Hart said. In terms of globalization, the information revolution,  military reform and a post-Cold War foreign policy. That was all in the 84 platform.

According to Hart, the Democrats have entertained centrism and triangulation to the point that many people do not know what the party stands for anymore. He said Sanders can help clarify the partys values for voters in a way that does not hurt Clinton.

Following our convention in San Francisco, which was not divisive at all to my knowledge, I went out in the fall and gave over 50 speeches for Walter Mondale appeared on the platform with him, introduced him at giant rallies, Hart said. Thats when you want the party to be unified.

_____

5. The best of the rest

@benedettopress Nice piece. If the rest of the press keeps being sore winners you can bet Berners will not vote Clinton.  UserFrIENDlyyy (@UserFrIENDlyyy) June 10, 2016

NEW overnight  Staff exodus. Senate relationship rebuilding. Full-time pivot to Trump. The Bernie 16 wind-down: https://t.co/egTlepfyzF  Gabriel Debenedetti (@gdebenedetti) June 10, 2016

60 GOP governors, senators & representatives are actively holding out on Trump. I analyzed what distinguishes them: https://t.co/gbeDh2pk5t  Taniel (@Taniel) June 8, 2016

What happens if Trump goes off the rails again? Dumping him at the convention probably impossible. The GOP is stuck. https://t.co/jB9LzDhu12  Jeremy W. Peters (@jwpetersNYT) June 10, 2016

Not a Single Republican Delegate Is Bound to Donald Trump https://t.co/m4O102uADw state laws cant trump convention rules.  David French (@DavidAFrench) June 9, 2016

_____

Countdown
Washington (AFP) - A top US presidential advisor said Friday a fresh Syria assault would shut down an important transit route linking the Islamic State group's "capital" in Raqa with the heart of Europe.

As Syrian opposition forces encircled Manbij, Obama's anti-Islamic State envoy Brett McGurk painted the town near the Turkish border as an important terror transit point.

"Manbij is where we believe the Paris attackers, the Brussels attackers, they all kind of pulsed through this area," McGurk said, "from Raqa up to Manbij and then out to the capitals where they had organized their attack."

Thousands of residents have fled Manbij -- held by IS since 2014 -- but jihadists who evacuated their families stayed to defend the town, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based monitoring group.

For more than a week, the US-led coalition has pounded the area with airstrikes, while Arab-Kurdish ground forces have completely surrounded the town.
Washington (AFP) - The United States condemned Bashar al-Assad's Syrian regime Friday, accusing it of bombing starving civilians just hours after they received a long-delayed UN aid shipment.

Late on Thursday, the besieged rebel-held town of Daraya received its first United Nations food delivery since 2012, a lifeline for the suffering population.

Shortly afterwards, according to a witness and human rights monitors, Assad's forces bombarded the town, dropping indiscriminate barrel bombs from helicopters as residents shared food.

"The Syrian regime conducted multiple barrel bomb attacks on Daraya this morning," State Department spokesman Mark Toner said.

"That came just hours after the UN convoy arrived," he told reporters.

"Obviously such attacks are unacceptable in any circumstance but in this case they also hampered the delivery and distribution of badly needed assistance."

Toner said the fact that Assad had allowed the convoy in to the town at all was "positive, but only a partial delivery and we would call for the rest of the supplies to be delivered as as soon as possible."

And he said that only the United Nations should decide where and when to distribute aid inside Syria and that the fate of hungry populations must not be left to the regime.
Mexico City (AFP) - US officials will hand over a veteran Sinaloa drug cartel leader to Mexican authorities after his US prison sentence ends in the coming days, the US embassy said.

Hector Luis "El Guero" Palma Salazar, 56, will be released from a California prison on Saturday, according US bureau of prisons records.

But a US embassy spokesman declined to say where and when Palma will be turned over to Mexican authorities due to security reasons.

Palma was arrested by Mexican authorities in 1995 and extradited north in 2007.

After his extradition, he pled guilty before a US court and was sentenced to 16 years in prison for transporting 50 kilograms of cocaine.

The embassy said he is returning to Mexico after serving nine years because of good behavior and the five years he spent in a Mexican prison while waiting for extradition, which counted as time served.

After he leaves prison, Palma will be turned over to US immigration officials, who are coordinating with Mexico "his direct return to Mexican authorities," the embassy said in a statement.

Mexican Attorney General Arely Gomez said this week that prosecutors are checking whether there are still any open cases against Palma in the country.

Palma, whose nicknamed means "Blondie," was a top associate of Sinaloa drug cartel kingpin Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, who is facing extradition to the United States. Guzman, who has escaped twice from prison, was recaptured in January.
U.S. government debt prices were higher on Friday as investors digested consumer sentiment data while overseas bond yields hit fresh record lows.

The yield on the benchmark U.S. 10-year Treasury note (U.S.:US10Y), which moves inversely to its price, sat lower at 1.6413 percent, while the yield on the 30-year Treasury bond was also lower, at 2.4538 percent. Two-year note yields also fell, last trading at 0.7305 percent.



Japanese government bonds rose, pushing he 10-year JGB yield 2 basis points lower to minus 0.150 percent, after earlier setting a record low of minus 0.155 percent.

British and German sovereign debt yields fell to record lows on jitters ahead of about Britain's referendum on European Union membership later this month, as well as the European Central Bank's commencement of its corporate bond purchase program.

In afternoon U.S. trade, a poll by The Independent showed the "leave" camp gained a lead over the "remain" camp."

Consumer sentiment data showed attitudes are solid so far this month.

The Index of Consumer Sentiment hit 94.3 in June, the University of Michigan said Friday. Economists expected the index of consumer sentiment to hit 94 in June's preliminary reading, compared with 94.7 in May's final reading.

Thursday saw Treasury Department auction $12 billion in 30-year bonds at a high yield of 2.475 percent. The bid-to-cover ratio, an indicator of demand, was 2.42, above a recent average of 2.34.





More From CNBC


On Jun 8, 2016, we issued an updated research report on Texas-based Valero Energy Corporation VLO.



Valero offers the most diversified refinery base among all independent refiners with a capacity of 3.0 million barrels per day in its 15 refineries across the U.S., Canada and the Caribbean. Also, Valero is poised to benefit from the increased refining margins on the back of its strategic refinery structure that enables it to use cheaper oil for more than half of its needs.



This Zacks Rank #3 (Hold) stock is one of the leading refiners in the world with a low cost asset base. It refines cheaper, lower-quality oil and sells some of its yield in profitable international markets. Interestingly, the company has reduced its exposure to the East Coast markets, which are currently unprofitable. Most of the company's assets are concentrated in the profitable regions like the Gulf Coast and Mid-Continent.



The energy firm expects to spend $2.6 billion on capital projects in 2016 of which, $1 billion has been earmarked for growth investments. The company will now be able to concentrate its capital on strategic growth projects as well as turnarounds. It is also likely to witness an improvement in free cash flow, which will enable it to return more to shareholders via dividends, share buybacks and through debt reduction planned for 2016. Notably, the company increased its quarterly dividend three times in 2015.

VALERO ENERGY Price and Consensus

VALERO ENERGY Price and Consensus | VALERO ENERGY Quote

The continued weakness in crude prices is likely to result in higher gasoline demand, especially during the summer driving season. Hence, growth in refined product sales should support earnings at Valero Energy.



The refining segment, which contributes the bulk of Valeros revenues and earnings, is a major growth driver to the company's results. However, with refiners being buyers of crude, the profitability of these companies might be limited by an increase in oil prices.



Moreover, the inherent volatility of the refining business reduces the accuracy and reliability of long-term earnings and revenue estimates. This apart, Valeros results are exposed to unplanned shut-downs that may have a lasting impact.



The requirement of policies to reformulate fuel and lower emission from refinery operations make the industry a highly regulated one. As a result, companies like Valero are often forced to divert cash flows to ensure regulatory compliance, which in turn, can adversely impact profitability.



Further, Valero Energy expects a fall in throughput volumes in 2016. Also, continued weakness in its ethanol business is likely to negatively impact earnings for the firm.



Stocks to Consider



Some better-ranked stocks in the oil and gas sector include CVR Refining, LP CVRR, PetroChina Co. Ltd. PTR and Braskem S.A. BAK. All these stocks sport a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy).



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To read this article on Zacks.com click here.
By Philip Pullella

VATICAN CITY, June 10 (Reuters) - The Vatican on Friday scrapped a plan for a major international accounting firm to carry out its first full external audit but insisted the change would not affect its drive for financial transparency.

The Vatican, which is a sovereign state, said in a statement that the work would instead be done by its own Auditor General with assistance from Pricewaterhouse Coopers (PwC).

The Vatican suspended an audit by PwC in April, saying it wanted to review several key clauses.

Friday's statement said a new agreement had been reached with PwC that conformed with Vatican law and was more adaptable to the Vatican's needs.

The original contract, reportedly worth $3 million, was negotiated by the Secretariat of the Economy, the department headed by Australian Cardinal George Pell.

The Vatican's Secretariat of State later suspended the contract, saying it did not comply with laws of the city-state that said the work should be done by the Auditor General, a new position created by Pope Francis last year. ID:nL5N0YR1WA]

Friday's statement said this is "normally the case for every sovereign state."

It said the April suspension was not "attributable to the desire of one or more entities of the Holy See to hinder reforms" and that the Vatican's commitment to an audit "has been, and remains, a priority".

Since the election of Pope Francis in March 2013, the Vatican has enacted major reforms to bring it into line with international accounting standards.

But the PwC episode pointed to a power clash between Pell's department, which signed the contract, and the Secretariat of State, which ordered it suspended and re-negotiated.

In April, Pell's office said it was "surprised" by the suspension of the contract.

Pell's defenders say he is forging ahead with transparency at the Vatican after decades of murky finances, while his critics have accused him of doing so in a bullying manner.

The Vatican's Auditor General, Libero Milone, is a 67-year-old Italian who is a former chairman and CEO of the Italian branch of the global auditing firm Deloitte.

Story continues

As a result of Francis' clean up campaign, the Vatican bank, which had been embroiled in numerous scandals in the past, has enacted a wide-ranging drive to tighten financial governance and eliminate abuse.

The bank, formally known as the Institute for Religious Works (IOR), has toughened regulatory standards and closed thousands of accounts that were either inactive or deemed not to meet new standards required of clients.

Reforming the IOR and other Vatican departments that deal with Church finances has been one of the most sensitive issues facing the pope as he seeks to overhaul the complex Vatican administration called the Curia.

(Reporting by Philip Pullella; Editing by Tom Heneghan)
Photo: Courtesy of Versace.

If you haven't seen Versace's AW16 ads, here's the gist of it: Karlie Kloss and Gigi Hadid star as yummy mummies, toting around toddlers and babies while clad in the Italian brand's latest collection. The images, which are set to appear in print magazines this summer, were shot in Chicago by Bruce Weber, making this the first collaboration between the famed photographer and Donatella Versace in 20 years, according to The New York Times.

In The Times article, Vanessa Friedman notes that the campaign's setting and  with the exception of Kloss and Hadid  non-model casting (17 non-professionals total, per Donatella's count), was intended to "move from fashion fantasy to actuality, or at least the Versace version of it." It was Weber's idea to shoot in Chicago, and to "put together all kinds of very diverse families in the pictures," Versace explains. (More on that in a second.)

Following their debut, the advertisements received an overall positive response  especially with the notion of two young models taking on the role of "power mums." Once the initial buzz settled, however, tons of questions (and criticisms) surfaced.

Photo: Courtesy of Versace.

At the centre of the conversation surrounding the ads is the image depicting a Versace-clad interracial family, with Hadid as the matriarch. Some praised the luxury label's decision to portray a racially-diverse family. (Kloss is also pictured presumably as a mother, with two children and a tattooed partner). On the flip side, many found the idea of a 21-year-old celebrity spawn being portrayed as the birth mother of two kids to be too far-fetched; Jezebel even took it as far as imagining Hadid as the "new mother" to the children in the photographs, as told from the perspective of the baby girl. Commenters on Twitter and Instagram were also unhappy that the latter appears to be strapped into her stroller with a chain belt.

Versace, however, doesn't see it that way. When asked about the current controversy, a statement from the company discussed the inspiration behind the campaign, and what it's meant to convey:

Story continues

"The campaign is made of a series of tableaux, some real-life and some fantastical. One part of the story is very glamourous, almost a fantasy, a kind of dream. The other part of the story is the same people, but in their real lives. Theyre on the streets of Chicago. Theyre with their friends and families. The combination perfectly illustrates the relevance and wearability of modern Versace for all parts of ones life, from the ultra-glamourous to the everyday. The images were shot in Chicago and, in classic Weber style, womenswear and menswear are shown together. Some of the campaign photos reflect a take on the modern family, which is wonderfully Weber and very Versace.

Photo: Courtesy of Versace.

"For the past few seasons, Versace have been showing collections that represent a new relevance at Versace. The collection is in touch with the way real people live in the 21st century. That's the reason why there are these two parts, because thats the essence of Versace. Versace makes amazing clothes for the red carpet, for parties, for a special night out. But also makes clothes for the rest of your life. And the important thing is, the clothes we make for you to wear to work, or to a luncheon, or to a meeting, are no less exciting than what we make for the red carpet. The new pictures show that. Bruce is amazing at making the ordinary feel extraordinary. Thats what Donatella and Bruce wanted to say about Versace today."

While the brand stressed the importance of Chicago, both as inspiration and backdrop for the ads, Racked pointed out that the final imagery doesn't paint an accurate picture of what life is like in the city, especially in light of recent reports of violence and discrimination; Mic adds that the racial breakdown of models (with only a handful of people of colour) doesn't reflect what the population of Chicago actually looks like, either.

Do you think Versace got something "wrong" with its latest campaign, or do you applaud its presentation of an interracial couple? Let us know how you feel in the comments below.

Like what you see? How about some more R29 goodness, right here?

A$AP Rocky Collaborates With J.W.Anderson

Talking Jeans With One Of The World's Biggest Denim Designers

Here's Who Won Big At The 2016 CFDA Awards
On Friday, Viacom toed the line by filing new amendments to its bylaws that require unanimous approval of the company's board to approve any sale of Paramount Pictures. However, the 8-K filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission characterizes the amendments as "purported," discusses the background drama between chairman Philippe Dauman and Sumner Redstone and clearly hints of a challenge to come with word that the changes "may be determined to be invalid."

By securities law, Viacom had four days to file amendments after National Amusements Trust, which controls 80 percent of the company's voting stock, issued the amended corporate bylaws "to protect the long-term interests of all Viacom shareholders."

The move from National Amusements, controlled by Redstone, came on Monday, meaning Viacom waited until nearly the deadline before filing with the SEC.

The latest filing says that as a "precautionary matter," Viacom will be also be lodging an information sheet "in order to provide stockholders with required information regarding the Purported Bylaw Amendments."

Viacom is acknowledging that the Redstones - including Shari Redstone - have expressed a lack of interest in selling Paramount, but the company currently run by Dauman believes that a sale is in the company's best interest. In a speech on Thursday, Dauman stated he would move forward and outlined the parameters of what would be the selling of a 49 percent stake in the movie studio to a "strategic partner."

In the 8-K filing today, which comes upon reports of an imminent shakeup to Viacom's board, the company makes the case that the bylaw changes - which also notably and with much less fanfare establish Delaware's Court of Chancery as the exclusive forum of disputes related to the enforcement of bylaws and the fiduciary duties of officers and stockholders - won't do the company any good. It states:

"The Purported Bylaw Amendments, along with the statements and conduct referred to above, would therefore have an adverse effect on the ability of the Company to assess fully the extent to which potential investors would be interested in making a value-enhancing investment in Paramount and, by harming the process and providing each of Mr. Redstone and Ms. Redstone with a veto over any such transaction, would, in light of the foregoing and unless they change their positions, have the effect of preventing it entirely, even if such a transaction would otherwise create value for other stockholders of the Company. The constraint imposed by the Purported Bylaw Amendments could therefore have a significant adverse effect on the Company's share price."
Viacom begrudgingly published in an SEC filing this morning what it calls purported changes to its bylaws from controlling shareholder National Amusements designed to slow or stop an effort to sell 49% of Paramount to a strategic investor.

But the document also contends that the changes from the Sumner Redstone-controlled theater chain  which owns 80% of Viacoms voting stock  may be determined to be invalid and void.

CEO Philippe Dauman and director George Abrams want a Massachusetts court to find that Redstone, 93, cant manage his own affairs. That could upset any decision made by National Amusements, the company says.

The filing formally notifies shareholders about the new bylaws that the exhibition company announced this week. They would require unanimous approval by the Viacom board for any deal involving Paramounts ownership.

As a practical matter, that would thwart Daumans effort to sell a 49% stake in the studio. Redstone and his daughter Shari  whos President of National Amusements and Vice Chair of Viacom  are on the board and have opposed a Paramount deal.

Dauman told an investor gathering yesterday that hes closing in on an arrangement that might boost Viacoms value by about $10 a share. Due to the dispute with National Amusements, though, he would not meet his target to close by the end of this month.

Todays SEC filing says that, although the National Amusements proposal calls for unanimous board approval, other statements purportedly made by Sumner Redstone and his representatives have indicated that there is no interest in selling any interest in Paramount. Moreover, conduct in which Ms. Redstone has engaged as a Viacom director appears to confirm that lack of interest.

If they prevail, the filing adds, then it would have an adverse effect on the ability of the Company to assess fully the extent to which potential investors would be interested in making a value-enhancing investment in Paramount.

Story continues

Earlier this week National Amusements said it is not opposed to a transaction that would unlock value at Paramount. But any deal would have to be thoroughly vetted and approved by Viacoms full Board, and the rationale for such a transaction should be clearly articulated to Viacoms stockholders in advance.

It added that any deal to sell a key asset must be part of a carefully constructed long-term strategy; it is not an end in and of itself.

Related stories

Is Sumner Redstone Planning His Own Paramount Deal?

Viacom Nears A Deal To Sell 49% Of Paramount, Despite Sumner Redstone's Objections, CEO Says

Sumner Redstone Case Judge Says He'll Rule At End Of June On Trial Process
A Virginia Tech fraternity has been banned from the school's campus for a decade after a former pledge accused the fraternity of blindfolding and beating him last January.

An executive order sent by Virginia Tech to the Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity's headquarters said that its Theta Iota Chapter, the first black Greek organization ever instated at the school, was suspended for abusive conduct and hazing, and recommended that the chapter's charter be revoked, according to the Roanoke Times.

The school's official letter also detailed claims made by the pledge, who fraternity investigators interviewed extensively, that he had experienced brutal hazing that ultimately resulted in hospitalization.

He and five other pledges were picked up from a Virginia Tech parking garage, blindfolded and taken elsewhere at 9 p.m. Jan. 21. The blindfolds then were removed and the group was quizzed about fraternity history, the pledge said. When one got a question wrong, all six were attacked. The process lasted until 5 a.m. and was repeated Jan. 23, 24 and 25. The man said he went to class at 9 a.m. Jan. 26 but before his second class at 11 a.m., he turned ill and vomited.

"His head spinning, he went first to his home then to the home of a friend, who rushed the man to the hospital after he blacked out and tumbled into the snow," wrote the Times, which noted that the man is no longer enrolled at the university.

It is not clear yet whether criminal charges have been filed.
From Cosmopolitan

56-year-old Lottie Michelle Belk of Chesterfield, Virginia died after being stabbed in the chest by a windblown umbrella in Virginia Beach, Virginia on Wednesday.

"It was pretty windy down here. It kind of looked like something from the Wizard of Oz," boardwalk employee Hugh Martin told local news station WHNT. "[I] saw the umbrella go up in the air, and literally hit the woman, knocking her to the side. It was probably the most scariest thing I've ever seen."

Eyewitnesses said that the woman was talking to children on the beach when the umbrella, which had been anchored in the sand but was picked up by strong winds, struck Belk in the chest. She was transported to a local hospital where she subsequently died from her injuries. The Virginia Beach Police Department Homicide Unit "is investigating this incident," WHNT reports, though Belk's death is currently being treated as a tragic accident.

Follow Diana on Twitter.
Heres how you can visit Shanghai Disneyland on opening day without going to China

Heres how you can visit Shanghai Disneyland on opening day without going to China

If you cant make the trek to Shanghai for the grand opening of Shanghai Disneyland, dont worry. Shanghai Disneyland is going to come to YOU.

Fireworks And Light Show Rehearsal In Shanghai Disneyland

When Disneyland in California first opened in 1995, it was broadcast live on television. It only makes sense that 60 years later, the newest Disneyland park gets the same treatment. The Grand Opening Celebration of Shanghai Disney Resort, will be broadcast across ALL Of Disneys television channels  Disney Channel, Disney Junior, Disney XD, and FreeForm  but unfortunately, it wont be live. Mostly because Shanghai Disneyland is in a completely different timezone, but well take what we can get.

Disney will welcome viewers from around the world to experience an authentically Disney and distinctly Chinese celebration  the spectacular one-of-a-kind grand opening celebration of Shanghai Disney Resort, Disney explained in a press release. The occasion [will] showcases creativity, choreography, acrobatics, costumes and technology in grand scale, with dazzling lights, Disney music, pageantry, special effects and fireworks. The one and only Mickey Mouse will join in the enchanting celebration.

Shanghai Disneyland's Tomorrowland Depicts A High-Tech Future

This is all going to happen on Shanghai Disneylands opening day, June 16th. The special television event will take place at 8 p.m. (except on FreeForm, when it will air on the 17th at 10 p.m.). It truly sounds like itll be the next best thing to shelling out thousands of dollars and hopping on a plane to Shanghai, because itll get you up close and person with rides like the Tron lightcycle and the amazing new Pirates of the Caribbean.

but after seeing this telecast, thats what you might actually do.

The post Heres how you can visit Shanghai Disneyland on opening day without going to China appeared first on HelloGiggles.
By Chen Aizhu and Florence Tan

BEIJING/SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Chinese independent oil companies are luring traders, marketers and risk managers away from dominant state behemoths, offering better pay and perks in a hiring spree triggered by the freeing up of China's crude import trade.

Global oil firms and commodity houses have also been raiding state giants such as Sinochem and CNPC for staff to help handle up to $50 million (34 million) a day in new crude flowing into China this year, and the cherry-picking of talent is likely just getting started.

China's independent "teapot" refiners, so called due to their small size, could be processing by the end of this year as much as a fifth of the crude imports of the world's No.2 oil consumer. Already, in the first five months of 2016 - the first full year of a dozen of them being granted crude import licences - they have captured about 10 percent of the inbound shipments.

Shandong Dongming Petrochemical Group, China's largest independent refiner, has built a Singapore-based trading team of 11 to handle this new business, including trading and shipping managers hired from CNPC Fuel Oil Company and the CNOOC group.

"A team of this size is far from enough for our scale of 10 million tonnes a year (200,000 bpd) crude demand," said Zhang Liu Cheng, vice president of Shandong Dongming.

"We'll need more to cover products, chemicals and market analysis," Zhang said.

Awarding crude import quotas of up to 1.2 million barrels per day (bpd) to China's teapots has started a tussle for talent as the refiners - and the oil majors and trading houses that aim to supply them - dive into an activity previously restricted to state-owned enterprises (SOEs).

This year, use of the quotas has made up most of a 16 percent or around 1 million bpd rise in China's crude imports, even with several underused and more awaiting approval. [TRADE/CN]

Those angling for a slice of this market have already hired more than 40 traders and others, mostly from state companies, say colleagues and acquaintances of people who have moved jobs.

Story continues

"We have a big but not totally motivated team," said a senior trader with a state oil company, noting that offers often beat SOE employment, particularly at smaller firms.

"Certainly we're going to see more talent outflows as the teapots have just begun hiring," the senior trader said.

Most of the hires are in their mid-thirties, having honed their craft at Chinese state companies such as Sinochem Corp [SASADA.UL], China National Offshore Oil Corp (CNOOC) [SASACY.UL] and China National Petroleum Corp (CNPC) [CNPET.UL], sources said.

"Our traders are very popular," said a source from one of the state oil trading companies. "Most of those who moved from our company are going to trading houses and majors because the perks are definitely better."

(For a table of traders and others hired away from state companies, please see.)

PEOPLE SKILLS, DRINKING CAPACITY

"We are looking for people who have systematic training, good relationship skills, and people who understand how China markets work," said a Beijing-based executive with a global trading house.

Also, with teapots concentrated mostly in the eastern province of Shandong, an ability on plant visits to withstand drinking bouts could also be critical as official at some refineries there are renowned for their large capacities for alcohol.

"Sometimes I'm scared to visit our refinery in Shandong as they drink too much," said a Chinese trader who buys crude on behalf of one of the teapots.

At Shandong Chambroad Petrochemicals Co, however, teetotallers would have the edge as the company has a strict no-drinking policy that bans alcohol at work and discourages its consumption even at personal events.

Chambroad, the first Chinese independent to become a Saudi Aramco client, hired a crude trader at its Singapore unit Sunshine Oil last year from a trading outfit for China State Shipbuilding Corp [SASACN.UL].

This year Chambroad set up a Shanghai-based derivatives team of 10 professionals, headed by Harry Cui, a former senior trader and head of futures research for state-owned grain processor and trading firm COFCO Corp [CNCOF.UL}.

Cui said his team trades Brent futures to hedge Chambroad's four million tonnes of annual crude imports as well as its exports of refined fuel.

"It's a small pool when you nail it down to trade experience plus market knowledge," said the global trading house executive.

For state enterprises, the loss of roughly 10 percent of the trading teams at some companies is viewed as inevitable. So far the impact has been minimal, but that could change as the newcomers take more of the market.

Most companies - including BP (BP.L), Royal Dutch Shell (RDSa.L) and Glencore (GLEN.L) - declined to comment on their staff movements. New hirees also declined to comment due to the sensitivity of the matter.

(Reporting by Chen Aizhu in BEIJING and Florence Tan in SINGAPORE; Editing by Tom Hogue)
By Chen Aizhu and Florence Tan

BEIJING/SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Chinese independent oil companies are luring traders, marketers and risk managers away from dominant state behemoths, offering better pay and perks in a hiring spree triggered by the freeing up of China's crude import trade.

Global oil firms and commodity houses have also been raiding state giants such as Sinochem and CNPC for staff to help handle up to $50 million a day in new crude flowing into China this year, and the cherry-picking of talent is likely just getting started.

China's independent "teapot" refiners, so called due to their small size, could be processing by the end of this year as much as a fifth of the crude imports of the world's No.2 oil consumer. Already, in the first five months of 2016 - the first full year of a dozen of them being granted crude import licences - they have captured about 10 percent of the inbound shipments.

Shandong Dongming Petrochemical Group, China's largest independent refiner, has built a Singapore-based trading team of 11 to handle this new business, including trading and shipping managers hired from CNPC Fuel Oil Company and the CNOOC group.

"A team of this size is far from enough for our scale of 10 million tonnes a year (200,000 bpd) crude demand," said Zhang Liu Cheng, vice president of Shandong Dongming.

"We'll need more to cover products, chemicals and market analysis," Zhang said.

Awarding crude import quotas of up to 1.2 million barrels per day (bpd) to China's teapots has started a tussle for talent as the refiners - and the oil majors and trading houses that aim to supply them - dive into an activity previously restricted to state-owned enterprises (SOEs).

This year, use of the quotas has made up most of a 16 percent or around 1 million bpd rise in China's crude imports, even with several underused and more awaiting approval.

Those angling for a slice of this market have already hired more than 40 traders and others, mostly from state companies, say colleagues and acquaintances of people who have moved jobs.

Story continues

"We have a big but not totally motivated team," said a senior trader with a state oil company, noting that offers often beat SOE employment, particularly at smaller firms.

"Certainly we're going to see more talent outflows as the teapots have just begun hiring," the senior trader said.

Most of the hires are in their mid-thirties, having honed their craft at Chinese state companies such as Sinochem Corp [SASADA.UL], China National Offshore Oil Corp (CNOOC) [SASACY.UL] and China National Petroleum Corp (CNPC) [CNPET.UL], sources said.

"Our traders are very popular," said a source from one of the state oil trading companies. "Most of those who moved from our company are going to trading houses and majors because the perks are definitely better."

(For a table of traders and others hired away from state companies, please see.)

PEOPLE SKILLS, DRINKING CAPACITY

"We are looking for people who have systematic training, good relationship skills, and people who understand how China markets work," said a Beijing-based executive with a global trading house.

Also, with teapots concentrated mostly in the eastern province of Shandong, an ability on plant visits to withstand drinking bouts could also be critical as official at some refineries there are renowned for their large capacities for alcohol.

"Sometimes I'm scared to visit our refinery in Shandong as they drink too much," said a Chinese trader who buys crude on behalf of one of the teapots.

At Shandong Chambroad Petrochemicals Co, however, teetotallers would have the edge as the company has a strict no-drinking policy that bans alcohol at work and discourages its consumption even at personal events.

Chambroad, the first Chinese independent to become a Saudi Aramco client, hired a crude trader at its Singapore unit Sunshine Oil last year from a trading outfit for China State Shipbuilding Corp [SASACN.UL].

This year Chambroad set up a Shanghai-based derivatives team of 10 professionals, headed by Harry Cui, a former senior trader and head of futures research for state-owned grain processor and trading firm COFCO Corp [CNCOF.UL}.

Cui said his team trades Brent futures to hedge Chambroad's four million tonnes of annual crude imports as well as its exports of refined fuel.

"It's a small pool when you nail it down to trade experience plus market knowledge," said the global trading house executive.

For state enterprises, the loss of roughly 10 percent of the trading teams at some companies is viewed as inevitable. So far the impact has been minimal, but that could change as the newcomers take more of the market.

Most companies - including BP <BP.L>, Royal Dutch Shell <RDSa.L> and Glencore <GLEN.L> - declined to comment on their staff movements. New hirees also declined to comment due to the sensitivity of the matter.

(Reporting by Chen Aizhu in BEIJING and Florence Tan in SINGAPORE; Editing by Tom Hogue)
Menongue (Angola) (AFP) - At dusk in southern Angola, former civil war soldier Elias Kawina leads a drill parade for 30 rangers who fight armed poachers in the country's vast, little-explored interior.

Kawina, 38, rose to the rank of lieutenant in government forces during the bloody, 27-year conflict that finally ended in 2002.

Now he battles illegal hunting that threatens the fragile recovery of Angola's wildlife, which was decimated during the war but is today seen a potential tourism draw.

"I was a soldier but, after peace, I was demobilised and now we are rangers -- as we call it 'nature soldiers'," Kawina told AFP at a new training centre in the remote province of Cuando Cubango.

"We are dealing with poachers who have firearms. When we find them, we fight them.

"It is not an easy job, but I have my weapon, so I am not concerned."

Angola's government has vowed to revive wild animal numbers -- particularly elephants -- by ending poaching and ivory trafficking.

The country is also a major trafficking route from Congo and the Democratic Republic of Congo, with ivory trinkets openly sold at markets in the capital Luanda targeting Chinese buyers.

The authorities in the former Portuguese colony have vowed to shut the markets, and pledged to toughen up legal penalties for poachers.

They even hope that Angola, which is the source of the rivers that flow into the Okavango Delta, could eventually become a safari destination to match Botswana or Kenya.

In pursuit of that distant dream, Kawina spends much of the year living away from his wife and 10 children, deep in the national parks, pursuing poachers through the bush.

"During the civil war, the animals were used as food," he said. "But after the war, the government thought that it was time to also bring peace to wildlife."

- Angola opens up? -

Angola, largely known for its civil war, corruption and staggering inequality of wealth, seems an unlikely holiday choice even for adventurous tourists.

Story continues

But the country's recent oil boom has been hit hard by falling prices, and officials say President Jose Eduardo dos Santos, who has been in power since 1975, is seeking fresh sources of investment.

Last Sunday, Angola made a rare foray onto the international stage by hosting United Nations World Environment Day -- a sign that it is keen to engage with the global conservation movement.

"The president cares a lot about the environment and wants to protect elephants," Environment Minister Maria Jardim said at a new eco-tourism lodge set on a riverbank in Cuando Cubango.

"We haven't yet taken advantage of wildlife to diversify our economy, reduce poverty, make jobs and help future generations."

Tourism in Angola faces huge challenges, ranging from difficult visa procedures and $600 (528-euro) hotel rooms to yellow fever outbreaks and street crime.

And there is also the lack of animals.

"If there is little wildlife, infrastructure or transport, how do you attract clients?" said Paul Funston of the Panthera wildlife charity.

"Angola's conservation is severely underfunded. They don't have the resources, so attracting big donors is critical to success."

Funston remains optimistic, saying Angola's vast savannah is a resilient environment that could bounce back and teem with wildlife within a decade -- if the authorities quash poaching and the bushmeat trade in edible animals.

"The bushmeat harvesting that concerns us is of zebras, wildebeest, kudu, giraffe, buffalos -- the herbivores that feed the carnivores that drive tourism," he said. "To draw in visitors, you must have something to sell."

- Pristine land -

Elephants were often shot from helicopters to finance the conflict through ivory sales. Now there is peace, numbers are thought to be slowly increasing, though the exact figure is unknown.

"Angola hasn't got much wildlife, but the opportunity here is the huge areas of pristine land following the years of war," said Alex Rhodes, of the Stop Ivory campaign

"The strength of the political commitment to deal with these issues is impressive. This is not just about wildlife, but organised crime and corruption."

But it remains less unclear how to change the cultural tradition of bushmeat consumption, both by local villagers and for commercial retail in towns and cities.

For the few experts who have ventured to the farthest corners of Angola, the country's prospects are limitless.

Steve Boyes, a biologist with the National Geographic Society, has led several long expeditions across the region, including paddling dug-out canoes to the source of the Cuito river that feeds the Okavango Delta.

"This area is the least sampled landscape on the planet for botanical diversity," he told AFP, adding that his team may have discovered almost 20 new species, including a small mammal.

"We have seen elephant, lion, leopard -- they are all up there, in some of the most beautiful landscapes in the world," he said.

"There is momentum in Angola. It is a time of change, a time for opening up and new beginnings."
The eyes of the nation, and perhaps much of the world, are trained on Louisville, Kentucky Friday, as boxer Muhammad Ali is laid to rest. This includes Jordans King Abdullah, but not Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan.

Erdogan cut his trip to Louisville short, participating in a Muslim ceremony to honor Ali Thursday but leaving before Fridays events. The private Dogan news agency reported that the Turkish leader was angry that funeral organizers denied his request to lay a piece from the cloth covering the Kaaba, in Mecca, on Alis coffin.

Former President Bill Clinton, comedian Billy Crystal, and others are set to memorialize Ali, the three time heavyweight champion whose social stances  including unapologetically converting to Islam and refusing to fight in the Vietnam War  were as well known as his exploits in the ring. He died on June 3 at the age of 74 after a long battle with Parkinsons Disease.

Watch Ali make his final journey and his memorial service below.

Photo credit: BARRY JARVINIAN/Getty Images
What happens when four actors from the Harry Potter films got sorted into Hogwarts houses via online quiz?

Well, they didn't all match up with the characters they played.

In a new video from Pottermore, J.K. Rowling's official Harry Potter site, four stars of the Harry Potter films took a quiz to be sorted into Hogwarts houses.

Source: YouTube

Bonnie Wright, who plays Ginny Weasley, was sorted into Gryffindor (just like her character).

Source: YouTube

But Rupert Grint, who plays Ron, was sorted into Hufflepuff.

Source: YouTube

And so was Matthew Lewis, who plays Neville Longbottom.

Source: YouTube

Evanna Lynch, who plays Luna Lovegood (a Ravenclaw) seemed pretty thrilled to be sorted into Gryffindor.

Source: YouTube

At least no one got Slytherin.

Pottermore launched in 2011 as a way for Rowling to deliver news and new content to Harry Potter fans  and it quickly became an online way for readers to keep the magic alive even after finishing all the books. Rowling has also used to to tease clues about upcoming projects, including Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, a play that will continue the series and began previews in London earlier this week.

Of course, as Wright, Grint, Lewis and Lynch found out, one of the first steps to joining the online community is getting sorted in your Hogwarts house.

Watch the whole video here:
By Marine Pennetier ON THE MALI/NIGER BORDER (Reuters) - The troops joined up at midday on a patch of cracked earth where Mali and Niger meet. Nothing marked the spot, beyond a few shrubs and acacia trees offering scant shade to their military pickups. Deep in the semi-desert, no fence or customs post delineates a frontier that means nothing to jihadists hiding in the vast area, and yet hinders states trying to coordinate a counter-attack on the regional arm of al Qaeda with the help of France. "We are precisely on the line that marks the border," Eric, a French army captain, said as his 'Barkhane' detachment was joined by soldiers from Niger and Mali. "The aim is to control this transit zone for the population and (against) ... armed groups," said the officer, who under guidelines of the French forces and their West African allies gave only his first name. After the meeting, the 40 French troops crossed from Niger into Mali to continue the operation code named Siham, which aims to flush out al Qaeda. But the local forces remained on their own sides of the frontier, bound by the limits of cross-border cooperation. The 800 km (500 mile) border between the former French colonies of Niger and Mali, which runs from the semi-arid Sahel region north into the Sahara desert, is largely unpoliced. With few natural obstacles or visible frontiers, it is an ideal base for Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) and its splinter group Al Morabitoun to launch attacks across West Africa. Control of the Sahel is therefore crucial. As well as kidnapping dozens of Westerners and attacking military units, they have shaken the region with a string of attacks on "soft" targets in Mali, Burkina Faso and Ivory Coast, including on two hotels used by foreigners. On top of this, to the north Libya is in a security vacuum while to the south, Nigerian-based Boko Haram militants are fighting to establish an Islamic state. "UNCONTROLLED" France and Belgium - wealthy states with access to a European Union security database - have both suffered communications failures that allowed Islamist militants to slip across their borders and stage attacks since late last year. So what hope is there for some of the world's poorest nations, such as Niger and Mali which alone cover an expanse two thirds of the size of western Europe? Attempting to answer this question, West African states are making a push for better coordination which may be slowly producing results. Chad was quick to mobilize 2,000 troops in Niger to prepare a counterattack against Boko Haram, on a request from Nigerien President Mahamadou Issoufou, after the group seized a Nigerien town on Saturday. Similarly, in the Siham operation around 1,300 Malian and Nigerien troops staged a sweep between blinding sandstorms for two weeks starting at the end of May. They collected intelligence, tracked down jihadist cells and probed suspected training camps, although there was no fighting with the militants. "Thanks to cooperation, we are managing to control this area that has been uncontrolled for a long time," Hamani, a Nigerien captain, said as his 80 troops secured the area near the border rendezvous. "But we need a much bigger presence on the ground." Three days before the meeting, Malian troops scoured the desert on their side, stopping at an encampment by the frontier. At one point, Malian and French troops surrounded several terracotta houses, watched by residents sitting quietly outside, but there was no sign of militants. "It was a nomad camp," a Malian Lieutenant called Mohamed said after the forces had searched the whole village. "We are reassured, they are reassured. Mission accomplished," he said. HOT PURSUIT The Sahara and Sahel were long the preserve of nomadic peoples, such as the Touareg, who in centuries past built great Islamic empires on trade connecting Africa's interior with its Mediterranean coast. Today, the camel often remains the main form of transport. Now the militants, though driven out of urban centers in northern Mali by French troops in 2013, are using the same desert routes to launch their attacks. "If we want to avoid seeing the enemy operating in a country, taking refuge in a second and stocking up in a third one, borders have to be controlled," a French military officer at Operation Barkhane's headquarters in N'Djamena, said. Since 2014, Chad, Niger, Mauritania, Mali and Burkina Faso have carried out a number of coordinated operations on either side of their borders, with the help of about 3,500 French troops still in the region. In the latest, Siham, a dozen Malian, Nigerien and French officers monitored the operation from headquarters in Niger's capital Niamey. Besides computers, some technologies long neglected are coming back into use. Dropped for years, a common radio frequency was reactivated for regional troops to communicate. A directory listing the phone numbers of military officers on both sides of the border is gradually being established. But "hot pursuit", the right of an army to chase suspected militants across borders, remains a delicate issue. While French forces are able to move over regional frontiers, so far no bilateral agreements between the West African states themselves have been formally reached to give blanket approval. Instead, permission is given case-by-case. That may need to change if the jihadists are to be crushed. "Armed terrorist groups do not respect borders, contrary to national armies that must stop at borders," French Commander Alexis, involved in the Siham operation in Niamey, said. States need to "allow these armies to ... cross the border if they find opponents and to pursue and intervene without seeing borders as a constraint", he added. (Editing by Tim Cocks and David Stamp)
The fate of the metal lithium is often associated with the electric carmaker Tesla Motors TSLA. This is because this material is used in making lithium-ion batteries that power electric cars. However, the path of the duo has gone in two different directions this year, with Tesla suffering from safety recalls and the related repair costs while lithium surging on strong demand.

Upbeat production Outlook by Tesla

However, Tesla remains upbeat on future production. Tesla has decided to expedite its production to 500,000 units by 2018, rather than 2020 as planned earlier. In the second quarter of 2016, Tesla expects to deliver 20,000 vehicles, representing a 30% increase sequentially. Notably, Tesla is witnessing a surge in demand for Model 3 cars. Higher car production will invariably drive up the demand for lithium.

Usage of Lithium in High-Tech Gadgets

Lithium-ion battery is also used in mobile phones, smartphones, laptops, tablets etc. Though global smatphones sales are expected to slow down in 2016, the scope is still there in the emerging nations, which are still under-penetrated. Plus, there is demand from other gadgets like laptops and tablets. All these have kept the need for Lithium in fine fettle.

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. expects lithium demand to rise threefold by 2025 to 570,000 tons, thanks to smartphone and electric-car applications (read: Forget Big Tech, Focus on These ETFs Instead).

China: Yet Another Driver

China, which is focused on lowering greenhouse gas emission and turning environmentally friendly, is likely to opt for more lithium batteries for electric buses and other vehicles. NextEV, a Chinese company, disclosed its plans to launch its first electric car in 2017, as per Wall Street Journal(read: Eco-Friendly ETFs to Commemorate World Environment Day).

Market Impact

At present, there is only one way  Global X Lithium ETF LIT  to target this space from a global perspective. The fund hit a 52-week high on June 7, which is 74.1% higher than its 52-week low price.

Story continues

The fundhas a positive weighted alpha of 20.00. A positive weighted alpha hints at more gains.However, investors should note that LIT has a relative strength index of 77.26 indicating that the metal is to enter the overbought territory.

We have described LIT in greater detail below (read: Play Surging Electric Car Demand with the Lithium ETF):



Lithium ETF in Focus



The product looks to give global exposure to the broad range of firms engaged in the mining of lithium, or the development of lithium batteries. The product tracks the Solactive Global Lithium Index giving access to the largest and most-liquid 25 firms around the globe.



The fund has amassed about $73.5 million in its asset base and trades in light volume of nearly 70,000 shares per day. This increases the total cost for the fund in the form of a wide bid/ask spread beyond the expense ratio of 0.77%.



American firms dominate the portfolio with 34% share while Taiwan and South Korea round off to the next two spots with a double-digit allocation each. From a sector look, the ETF is heavy on materials with 50.7% share, followed by industrials (19.3%) and consumer discretionary (16.5%).

The fund is highly concentrated on two firms  FMC Corp and Quimica Y Minera Chil-SP  which collectively make up for over 30% of total assets. Other firms hold less than 8% in the basket. LIT is up 26.7% so far this year (as of June 7, 2016).

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GLBL-X LITHIUM (LIT): ETF Research Reports



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Line app CEO Takeshi Idezawa

Japan's most popular messaging app, Line, has filed to go public.

The Tokyo-based company announced its plans to list 35 million shares on the Tokyo Stock Exchange and New York Stock Exchange in a regulatory filing on Friday.

It plans to go public on July 15, according to The Wall Street Journal's Alexander Martin, who first reported the filing.

Line is a subsidiary of the South Korean company Naver Corp. It had 218 million monthly active users as of March, according to the filing.

Line, like the popular messaging app Whatsapp, lets users make free voice calls and send free text messages from anywhere in the world.

The app is used in 230 countries around the world, according to Jeanie Han, the CEO of LINE Euro-Americas, who spoke to Business Insider's James Cook in March.

It started out as a tool to help people stay in touch following the 2011 Tohoku earthquake in Japan, but now consists of 65 different apps.

Celebrities including Paul McCartney, Taylor Swift, and Maroon 5 also use the app to promote their music.

Morgan Stanley, Nomura, Goldman Sach, and JPMorgan are acting as joint global coordinators on the deal.

NOW WATCH: Don't walk into an interview at Goldman Sachs without doing this first





More From Business Insider


jack daniel tree

Located in the quaint town of Lynchburg, Tennessee, the historic Jack Daniel distillery maintains a campsite feel while pumping out 119 million bottles of whiskey a year.

On a recent walking tour of the scenic facility, I couldn't help but notice the trees looked like they had their bark blowtorched.

The bark was extremely black and gave the trees a dramatic appearance. That's because they have been tainted by Baudoinia compniacensis  a whiskey fungus that's found near distilleries.

This fungus attaches to warehouses and walkways at the 150-year-old distillery. Larry Combs, Jack Daniel distillery general manager, said the fungus has been cleaned off a few of the buildings at the distillery for cosmetic purposes.

jack daniel tree

"The funny thing about distilleries, especially old ones like Jack Daniel, they are where they are because of the water supply. You'll find these microorganisms near the water, and so the mold just comes with the setting," Combs told Business Insider.



This particular type of black fungus is common near distilleries because it uses ethanol as a source of energy for growth.

During the whiskey maturation process, at least 2% of whiskey escapes from a barrel as ethanol vapor  perfect for Baudoinia to thrive.

The mold doesn't seem to bother the locals, Combs said.



"We really don't get any complaints about the mold. Every once in a while we will get someone to call in, but more often than not people are just curious," Combs said.

jack daniels





More From Business Insider


When Whitney Houston's deeply personal items go to auction on June 24 and 25 in Beverly Hills for the first time ever, it's going to be incredibly hard for the family to let go.



"There will be tears," says Garry Shrum of Heritage Auctions. "It's a very moving time for the family."



Indeed.





Why the Upcoming Whitney Houston Auction Will Be a 'Moving Time' for the Family: 'There Will Be Tears,' Says Auctioneer| Music News, Whitney Houston



While the family prepares to say goodbye to some of Houston's treasured mementos, her ex-husband, Bobby Brown, is currently opening up about his relationship  drugs and all  with the late pop legend in his telling new memoir, Every Little Step.







But the timing of the sale is purely coincidental.





Why the Upcoming Whitney Houston Auction Will Be a 'Moving Time' for the Family: 'There Will Be Tears,' Says Auctioneer| Music News, Whitney Houston



"It's been in the works for a long time," says Shrum. "We've got brilliant pieces that really re-create the highlights of her career. Dresses, an array of her awards ... of course not nearly as many awards as are in her collection, though."





Why the Upcoming Whitney Houston Auction Will Be a 'Moving Time' for the Family: 'There Will Be Tears,' Says Auctioneer| Music News, Whitney Houston



Shrum, who helped consign the auction with items chosen by Houston's mother, Cissy, and her sister-in-law Pat, says the reason for the sale isn't just to raise money, but so fans and other people who loved the legend can also feel close to her.





Why the Upcoming Whitney Houston Auction Will Be a 'Moving Time' for the Family: 'There Will Be Tears,' Says Auctioneer| Music News, Whitney Houston



"You've got all this stuff sitting at your house, and you only have so many walls and shelves and all the other stuff is sitting in boxes," Shrum says. "At some point you say, 'We need to share this stuff with the other people who love Whitney, and would love to have a piece of her history.' "



All of the items, including Whitney's wedding dress and first passport, are accepting online bids now, and the live auction will be June 24-25 in Beverly Hills.



"There was nothing we turned away," Shrum says of the mementos. "The family gave us the best stuff. There's her favorite "Nippy" jacket that she wore on all her tours  you can't get more personal than that."
Ten years after opening his first steak restaurant, Cut by Wolfgang Puck, in Beverly Hills, Calif., Wolfgang Puck celebrated the occasion with an anniversary dinner. On June 3, Puckwho was a nominating chef for Robb Reports 2014 Culinary Masters Competitionand his head chef Ari Rosenson invited four guest chefs to cook up a savory storm.

The food-centric festivities kicked off with chef Daniel Pattersons flavorful raw and cooked market-vegetable salad, complemented by bulgur and green goodness dressing. Next, pasta savant chef Evan Funke dazzled diners with his tender, buttery casonsei pasta with English peas and black truffle. For the third course, prepared by chef David LeFevre, charred octopus was served with Spanish chorizo, white beans, roasted Romanesco, gremolata, and a red-wine sauce. Of course, no meal at Pucks revered steakhouse would be complete without a hearty serving of the restaurants main attraction: The final entree, prepared by Cuts head chef Ari Rosenson, featured juicy, tender sirloin steak and short rib, paired with white corn, porcini, and applewood-smoked bone marrow. Sweet tooths were then satiated by chef Della Gossetts Bing cherry and chocolate compote dessert garnished with candied hazelnuts and gianduja chocolate. Puck himself fluttered throughout the room to shake hands and take photos with restaurant regulars during the soiree.

A portion of the nights proceeds benefited two Los Angelesbased organizations: Chefs to End Hunger, which collects leftover food from restaurants and hotels and delivers it to food banks; and the Greater West Hollywood Food Coalition, a mobile meal service that feeds more than 150 homeless residents a day.

A decade after its launch, Cut by Wolfgang Puck is now operating in five locations. Two additional restaurants are scheduled to open this year, in New York City and Qatar, bringing Pucks fare to an ever-broader audience. (wolfgangpuck.com)

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A 2011 photo shows Anastasia, left, and Alexandria Duval. (Image via Thomas Cordy/The Palm Beach Post/AP)



The woman accused of driving an SUV off a cliff to kill her twin is now free. During a preliminary trial Wednesday, Maui judge Blaine Kobayashi threw out the second-degree murder charge against Alexandria Duval, 37, citing a lack of evidence, reports NBC News.

Related: Modern Bonnie and Clyde Had Odd Link to Real Ones

Duvals lawyer, Todd Eddins, says the evidence prosecutors presentedincluding vehicle records showing Duvals Ford Explorer accelerated and steered off the cliff without braking while both sisters were inside, as well as witness statements noting the pair were fightingcould have supported many alternative conclusions, including that the passenger grabbed the wheel and caused the fatal crash, per KHON. Duval was critically injured in the May 29 crash, while her twin sister, Anastasia Duval, was pronounced dead at the scene.

Related: Shocked Parents Learn Theyre Half-Siblings

The judge said there wasnt enough evidence to show that it wasnt an accident and that we didnt show any evidence that she knew there was a cliff on that side of the road, a prosecutor adds. Its very disappointing. Prosecutors can still seek an indictment from a grand jury, though it isnt clear if theyll do so.

Related: Odd Paternity Case: Twins With Different Fathers

Duval initially remained in custody over charges of disorderly conduct stemming from an arrest on Christmas Eve; her sister was also arrested at the same time. However, Eddins says Duval posted $4,000 bail Wednesday evening and now hopes to be in upstate New York in time to attend her sisters funeral, reports Maui Now and the AP. She is grateful and she wants to be back with her family, Eddins says. Ideally she would be there to grieve with her family. (Click for more on the case.)

Story continues

By Arden Dier

More From Newser:

Man Asks Internet to Help Him Find His Pants. It Does

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This article originally appeared on Newser: Woman Accused of Twins Murder Goes Free
Alexandria Duval, formerly a suspect in the death of her identical twin sister, has left Hawaii two days after the murder charges against her were dropped.

Read: Money Troubles and Anger Issues May Have Led Woman to Kill Twin Sister - 'They Had a Rage Problem'

Inside Editions cameras were there as Alexandria silently checked in for her flight out of Maui. Her arm was still in a cast after it was broken when their SUV plunged off cliff that left twin sister Anastasia dead.

Five hours after leaving the island paradise behind, Alexandria touched down in Los Angeles before heading to her hometown of Utica, New York, where her sister, Anastasia will be buried.

Her departure comes as new details of the twins difficult relationship with each other have come to light.

High school friends of the 37-year-olds at Notre Dame Academy in Utica are speaking out. The sisters were cheerleaders and members of the Jr. ROTC, but even as teenagers, it seems they had a tempestuous relationship.

Jose Lambiet, publisher of GossipExtra.com, told Inside Edition: "I spoke to people who knew them as far back as high school, even though they spent most of their time together.

"They showered together as teenagers... They argued like cats and dogs around the high school. Sometimes it got a little nutty."

The twins became yoga instructors in Palm Beach, Florida, and Park City, Utah. For a while they were successful, but wherever they went, trouble followed.

They had a rage problem, an anger problem, were arrested in anger incidents involving even police, Lambiet said.

Read: Charges Dropped Against Woman Accused of Killing Her Identical Twin Sister

Hawaii was supposed to be a fresh start. They even changed their names  from their birth names of Alison Dadow and Ann Dadow to Alexandria Duval and Anastasia Duval, respectively.

But their Hawaiian escape was not paradise.

They were evicted from a rental home and moved to a budget motel. They reportedly fought constantly and then witnesses reportedly say the confrontation on the winding road known as Hana Highway ended in tragedy.

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A judge found insufficient evidence to support the murder charge and released Alexandria but the local prosecutor in Hawaii says she may not be off the hook:

We are considering all options at this point. We believe that a crime has been committed," the prosecutor said.

Watch: Family Seeks Answers After Former Romney Staffer Is Murdered: 'Was He Scared? Did He Suffer?'

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As a teen, Rose Geil struggled with excess facial and body hair. Starting at 13 years old, she began shaving her facial hair daily, but the hair kept coming back. Trying to tame the hair and keep it hidden from others took a serious toll on her self-esteem for years.

I was a little bit of an outcast at my school, I didnt fit in, I didnt wear the right clothes and makeup, the 39-year-old Oregon resident told the Huffington Post U.K. My friends did not know; I hid it very well. But it was exhausting trying to keep it hidden.

She added: I didnt realize the emotional impact until I was older. I just thought it was regular teen angst when I was young.

Geils mother eventually discovered her hirsute daughters secret. At first, her family ignored the issue, unsure of how to support her, but finally, her mom came around. My mom was supportive enough and took me to see a doctor, Geil said, and I was placed on birth control pills and other medication, but it wasnt really effective.

Laser hair removal didnt help either. Although Geil hasnt been diagnosed by a physician, she believes its a combination of polycystic ovary syndrome  a hormonal disorder associated with many small cysts on the ovaries and excessive hair growth  genetics that are likely to blame.

About eight months ago, Geil finally got fed up trying to fight the facial hair. I was emotionally drained from trying to hide my beard every day and feeling like I was failing miserably, she said. Geil decided to let things take their natural course and started growing a beard.

Rose Geil ditched the razor and has embraced her beard. (Photo: Michael Sullivan/Barcroft)

It took six weeks for her to have a full-grown beard, but no time at all for her friends and other family members to embrace and support her, especially once they realized how much hiding her condition was affecting Geils self-esteem.

Thats not to say that she doesnt turn heads while walking down the street. People on the street do look at me and do a double-take, but their reactions are either positive or neutral, she said. I have had people approach me in public and wanted to meet me and shake my hand and tell me Im brave and courageous and even an inspiration.

For Geil, growing out her beard lifted a weight off of her shoulders, making her feel more confident  and yes, feminine and sexy too. I feel pretty with my beard, and I never felt pretty before, she said. It feels amazing being me.

Lets keep in touch! Follow Yahoo Beauty on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest.
From Cosmopolitan

As a brutal punishment for eloping with a man her family did not approve of, a young Pakistani woman was tied to a cot, soaked in kerosene, and burned alive by her mother and brother, CNN reports.

The Guardian reports that Zeenat Rafiq's mother, Perveen, admitted to killing her daughter with the help of her son in their home in Lahore. (According to the Guardian, Zeenat was 17, while CNN says she was 18.) According to Perveen's younger sister Naseem, "After killing her daughter, Perveen went out on the street, took off her shawl and started beating herself on her chest, shouting: 'People! I have killed my daughter for misbehaving and giving our family a bad name.'" Upon arrest, she reportedly told police, "I don't have any regrets." CNN reports that the slain girl's brother is on the run.

According to Parveen, Zeenat had brought dishonor to her Punjabi family by running away with Hassan Khan (pictured above), an ethnic Pashtun. Khan told reporters the two had been "in love since our school days" and, after her family rejected several marriage proposals, the two recently eloped.

Khan reportedly told Geo News:

"After living with me for four days following our marriage, her family contacted us and promised they would throw us a proper wedding party after eight days," he said."Zeenat was unwilling to go back to her home and told me that she would be killed by her family, but later agreed when one of her uncles guaranteed her safety."After two days, she called me and said that her family had gone back on their word and asked me to come to get her, but I told her to wait for the promised eight days. Then she was killed."

So-called "honor killings" such as Rafiq's are on the rise in Pakistan, claiming the lives of over 1,000 women and 88 men in 2015. The Guardian reports that a loophole in the law allows family members to forgive the perpetrator and force prosecutors to drop the case. If the slain girl's family agrees that the daughter brought shame on them, the killers are likely to go free.

Follow Prachi on Twitter.
Https%3a%2f%2fblueprint-api-production.s3.amazonaws.com%2fuploads%2fstory%2fthumbnail%2f11316%2fgrandma_newborn

An Arizona centenarian witnessed the birth of her great-great-grandson, exactly 100 years to the day of her birth.

KPNX reports that Dorothy Martell's great-grandson, Weston Alexander Heiser, was born on June 6, on Martell's birthday.

Weston's mother, Alyssa Heiser  also Martell's great-granddaughter  had hoped for months that she might give birth on Martell's birthday. Heiser, a labor and delivery nurse at the hospital where she gave birth, said fellow hospital staffers were aware of her hopes for Weston's birthdate.

"Everyone at the hospital knew we were hoping to have him on her birthday because it would be so cool," she told KPNX. "It's neat for me now to be able to relate to my patients and the love they have for their children."
Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer is standing by Katie Couric in the face of mounting pressure on the companys lead newsperson.

In a weekly company-wide meeting with Yahoo staff last Friday, Mayer expressed support for Couric, who at the time was beset by criticism over a documentary she produced independent from her role as Yahoos global news anchor, according to sources. That support has not wavered in the last day and a half, a company insider tells Variety, as controversy has surfaced over a second film.

On Wednesday, conservative website the Washington Free Beacon published an article that alleged that director Stephanie Soechtigs 2014 documentary Fed Up, exec produced by Couric, had been edited to mislead viewers. Those claims echoed complaints raised last month by interview subjects from another Couric-Soechtig collaboration, Under the Gun.

Yahoo was not involved in the creation and production of the independent documentaries, Under the Gun and Fed Up,' a Yahoo spokesperson told Variety in a statement. Were confident in the work of the Yahoo News team, which adheres to the highest standards of journalism.

Courics standing at Yahoo has been the subject of speculation as the company approaches a possible sale after struggling to better its fortunes under Mayer. Couric joined Yahoo in 2013 in a deal worth a reported $10 million a year  making her one of Mayers most high profile and most expensive hires. That deal afforded Couric the creative and professional freedom to work on non-Yahoo side projects such as Under the Gun, about mass shootings and gun-control efforts in the United States, and Fed Up, about the causes of obesity.

Though the films have been the subject of internal discussions at Yahoo, the company has launched no formal investigation into allegations that Couric violated journalistic norms.

Speaking to Fox News Fox & Friends Thursday morning, Dr. David Allison reiterated claims he made in the Free Beacon article that Couric, when interviewing him for Fed Up, had encouraged him repeatedly to stop at any time during the interview to collect his thoughts or rephrase an answer, and that one moment in which he did so was edited to make Allison appear unable to respond to Courics question.

Story continues

I wanted to carefully choose my words to convey what a randomized control trial was, and why it was valued, Allison told Fox. And I waited. I gave a very clear answer after that pause, and she denied the American public the chance to really hear the evidence and ideas, and showed only the pause.

Allison, who has disclosed in the past financial ties to the American Beverage Association and Coca-Cola, is presented in the documentary as an expert countering the position that sugary beverages are linked more directly to obesity than other foods. The film shows Allison, after fielding a question from Couric about that link, asking to collect his thoughts, then taking a long pause. The movie then cuts to another interview subject and does not show Allison again.

After the Free Beacon article was published, the Weinstein Co., which picked up the movie at Sundance in 2014, had clips from the two scenes removed from YouTube through a copyright-violation claim.

Soechtig defended the film in a statement to Variety.

Fed Up, which premiered at Sundance two and a half years ago, has had a profound impact on how Americans eat, she said. I have received countless testimonials from people whose lives, bodies and health have been transformed because of Fed Up. Recently the FDA announced it would start labeling added sugar on nutrition labels  a solution specifically highlighted in this film.

She added, I am hopeful that any additional conversation around a problem that is crippling millions of Americans can only lead to positive change and that people will see this for what it is  special interest groups and their allies are worried about the substantive conversations these films have inspired about the issues. I stand behind Under the Gun, and Fed Up and all the decisions I made as the director.

A spokesperson for Couric declined to comment, referring instead to the statements from Yahoo and Soechtig.

Couric apologized last week for an edit in Under the Gun, which premiered May 14 on Epix, that appeared to show a long, silent pause after Couric asked a group of gun rights advocates a challenging question about background checks. Audio released by the group revealed that there had been no such pause.

Speaking to Variety last week about the controversial edit in Under the Gun, Soechtig said, I made the creative decision and I stand by it. She characterized the edit as pro forma for documentary filmmaking and argued that the controversy had been engineered by the National Rifle Association and anti-gun control advocates.

This is very textbook gun-lobby intimidation tactics, and I wont be intimidated, Soechtig said.

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'Under the Gun' Director: 'I Stand By' Controversial Edit

Katie Couric Apologizes for 'Misleading' Editing on Gun Documentary

Katie Couric Responds to 'Under the Gun' Editing Criticism
Cast: Amitabh Bachchan, Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Vidya Balan, Sabyasachi Chakrabarty

Direction: Ribhu Dasgupta

Rating: ***

Ribhu Dasguptas TE3N is an intriguing tale  a grandfathers quest for justice and closure  that tugs at your heartstrings.

John Biswass (Amitabh Bachchan) eight-year-old granddaughter Angela was kidnapped and killed. Biswas for the past eight years has been hopelessly following up with the authorities, with no leads in the case; the police have almost given up on finding the abductor.

The cop, who was then handling the case, Martin Das (Nawazuddin Siddiqui) in seeking his own redemption has found solace as a priest. He refuses to be haunted by the past but it is not all that easy for Biswas.

After the death of his daughter, Angela was entrusted to his care and it is impossible for him to let go. When after years of searching in vain, Biswas stumbles over a clue, he is relentless in his pursuit of the perpetrator of the crime.

The hapless grandfather blinded by grief and loss seems to be fighting a lone battle, till a similar case resurfaces after all these years.

While the narrative is interesting, the story just takes too much time to unfold.

The film is a thriller based in Kolkata and is produced by Sujoy Ghosh, thus, comparisons to Kahaani are inevitable. The tension in Ghoshs Kahaani was inescapable; it was as if, if you merely shifted your position in the seat, something terrible would happen. Dasguptas story though very engaging, never really grips you in that way. There are moments of edge-of-the-seat tension, especially during the build-up to the interval but for the most part, the tale progresses at an unhurried pace.

A vulnerable childs life is at stake and its impossible to buy the polices simplistic theory. It is all the more improbable that no one other than Das sees through this and is keen to explore other options. I specifically found it appalling that Sarita Sarkar (Vidya Balan) is so dismissive of Dass concerns, when she knows that he used to be an expert on such kidnappings during his tenure as a cop.

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It is Amitabh Bachchans performance that keeps you hooked till the end, even when you sort of guess, what must have transpired.

Bachchan is flawless as the bereaved grandfather. He makes his lonely struggle seem your own. For anyone who has known a grandparents love knows how unconditional it is. And how impossible it is to come to terms with the tragic loss of ones own. At times it feels like Biswass life stopped still the day he lost Angela. His daily routine, his stubborn pursuit, and his unrelenting search  it is as if he is stuck in a time warp.

He reminded me of my own grandfather  day-old grey stubble, the moist eyes, the ageing face and the structure of man who was once handsome and almost invincible. It breaks your heart that he has to reach out to so many people to just help him, that age might have made him vulnerable and weak but his spirit is still indomitable.

Its captivating to see Bachchan plays his part with such competence and brilliance.

On the other hand, Nawazuddins performance was a tad underwhelming. Maybe the script didnt do complete justice to his role. But while this cop-turned-priest gets the body language bang on, it is a little disappointing that he isnt seen contributing more to the scheme of things. We are so used to seeing Siddiqui sink his teeth into complex roles like this one, that I was left a little disappointed here.



The film works on many accounts but it feels too long for a thriller.

Did you like the film? Share your views/comments with us on Facebook and Twitter. You can also connect with me on Twitter.
By Suzanne Barlyn

(Reuters) - New York state regulators have asked Goldman Sachs Group Inc <GS.N> for details about probes into billions of dollars it raised in a bond offering for a scandal-hit Malaysian fund, a person familiar with the matter said on Friday.

The New York State Department of Financial Services, in a letter sent late Thursday, asked Goldman for a report on its in-house investigation into the matter, as well as others by U.S. and foreign regulators, said the person, who was not authorized to publicly discuss the matter.

The letter to Goldman concerns state investment fund 1Malaysia Development Bhd (1MDB).

A Goldman Sachs spokesman declined to comment.

The New York regulator has imposed a tight deadline for Goldman of June 14.

The fund at issue, which was founded by Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak in 2009 shortly after he came to office, is being investigated for money-laundering in at least six countries.

U.S. law enforcement officials are attempting to identify whether Goldman violated federal law after failing to flag a transaction in Malaysia, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday.

The probe concerns $3 billion raised by Goldman through a 1MDB bond offering. The focal point is whether the bank complied with the Bank Secrecy Act, the main U.S. anti-money laundering law.

Other information being sought by the New York regulator includes reports about suspicious financial activity that Goldman may have filed with U.S. and foreign authorities, and schedules for interviews or testimony by current or former Goldman employees by other regulators, the person familiar with the matter said.

(Reporting by Suzanne Barlyn; Editing by Richard Chang and Cynthia Osterman)
As the war over Zika virus treatment spending wages on in Congress, sales of mosquito repellent have skyrocketed.

According to IRI, a Chicago-based market research firm, 99 million units of bugspray were sold in the last year, an increase of 648% from last year.

Companies that make bug spray have responded to the demand, both by increasing production and also boosting prices.

SC. Johnson, the largest global manufacturer of repellents and insecticide sold 13.7 million units of Off Outdoor Insect Repellent in the 52 weeks ended May 15, up 334% from last year, according to IRI. The average unit price for the product was $6.35 over the last year, up $0.19 from the prior year.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has advised pregnant women to wear mosquito repellent this summer, even though the virus hasnt yet reached the continental US. According to the CDC, 618 cases have been reported in the US, all of them travel related.

SC Johnsons OFF! Line of products are available in aerosols, spritzers, creams, and towelettes and Public Affairs Manager Jeff McCollum said that the range of these products have been popular.

Production has increased substantially, he said. In the US, earlier this year demand was about 50% higher than last year...In Brazil and other parts of Latin America, demand from November 2015 through earlier this year was about three times what it was last year.

SC Johnson has also ramped up its production capabilities.

At the beginning of May we moved to a 24/7 repellent operation at all our plants across the Americas and our suppliers are running at full capacity, McCollum added. Were committed to doing our part to help with the global health crisis that Zika has presented and will be ready for any surge or spike in demand.

McCollum emphasized the real and growing threat of mosquitoes in the US and around the world.

Mosquitoes are the deadliest animal/insect on the planet, he said. Zika is obviously driving a lot of the demand for repellents, but you cannot ignore other mosquito-borne illnesses like dengue fever and chikungunya. Malaria is a huge problem in certain parts of the world, with something like over 230,000 deaths in 2015. Here in the states Im already seeing reports about West Nile.

Story continues

McCollum said SC Johnson is selling a lot of its products where mosquitos are most active and the most threatening.

Right now the US southern states with the warmer temps and recent flooding is busy and Latin America, which has been the epicenter of the Zika outbreak, has also been quite busy, he said.

The company has also committed $15 million in product donation and prevention education to help with the international health crisis, contributing its 60 years of bug research.

Walgreens Boots Alliance (WBA) is also making an effort to help mitigate the growing problem. The drug store operator teamed up with the CDC earlier this year on a prevention program in Puerto Rico, dedicating space in all of its 120 stores on the island to provide information on CDC-recommended steps to prevent the spread of Zika virus.

The company also lowered the price on CDC-recommended items in our Puerto Rico stores, including insect repellent with DEET, condoms and thermometers to monitor for fever, to make Zika virus prevention products easily available and more affordable.
Harare (AFP) - Zimbabwean police arrested 15 people, including a journalist and the brother of a missing political activist, during a public protest against President Robert Mugabe, their lawyer said Friday.

Opposition is mounting against the 92-year-old Mugabe, whose decades in office have been marked by economic decline, repression of dissent, claims of vote-rigging, mass unemployment and emigration.

Lawyer Obey Shava said police rounded up the activists while they were holding a vigil in Africa Unity Square in central Harare calling upon Mugabe, in power since 1980, to step down.

"Some were arrested last night. Some, earlier," he told AFP.

"The charges are robbery and obstructing or defeating the course of justice."

Police claimed the protesters had robbed a woman passing by, he said.

"These are trumped up charges to instil fear and discourage people from occupying Africa Unity Square," Shava said.

The square has been the venue of a series of protests over the disappearance of political activist Itai Dzamara who was abducted in March last year, allegedly by military intelligence agents.

His brother Patson, who was among those arrested, last week released a picture he said showed the missing man being held at an undisclosed location.

The army has denied responsibility for Dzamaras abduction.

The journalist arrested at the protest was Paidamoyo Muzulu of NewsDay.

Shava said all those detained at the protest were likely to appear in court on Saturday.

"I am at the police station right now. They (police) are recording statements," Shava said.

A group of churches, including the Zimbabwe Christian Alliance, the Prayer Network of Zimbabwe and the Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace, on Thursday joined a chorus of demands that Mugabe should quit.

"There is a clear indication and consensus that President Robert Mugabe has failed us. We feel very strongly that he too old to continue," the convenor of the meeting, Pastor Ancelimo Magaya, told local media.
Florida teen Tovonna Holton took her own life after a nude video of her was shared without her permission on Snapchat. (Photo: Facebook)

A family in Tampa expected to be celebrating the completion of 15-year-old Tovonna Holtons freshman year at Wiregrass Ranch High School, but instead theyre preparing her funeral  and its all because of cyberbullying.

The teen used her mothers handgun to take her own life this past Sunday after finding out that friends had allegedly filmed her taking a shower and posted it to Snapchat without her permission, according a report by Tampa news channel WFLA. I said, My baby! My baby! a visibly distraught Levon Holton-Teamer, Holtons mother, recalled through tears in a video for WFLA. I couldnt get in the bathroom  so I tried to get in, and I look down. I seen a puddle of blood. Holton-Teamer told the station that she tried to save her daughter by applying pressure to her head before dialing 911.

The grieving mother added that she had gone to the school repeatedly to report Holtons ongoing bullying, but wasnt always satisfied with the responses she got. She was thinking of pulling her daughter out of the school before Sundays tragedy occurred.

Tovonna Holton (Photo: Vine)



A more recent report by the Daily Beast claims that it was actually Holtons ex-boyfriend who shared the nude video on Twitter in an act of revenge. Holtons longtime pal Christian Coyle-Watts told the publication that the couple had broken up Sunday morning after a series of fights and that Tovonnas Snapchat recording was meant to be a body appreciation post before the ex-boyfriend allegedly published it.

Its unclear which report is correct, but WFLA says that the case is currently under investigation by the sheriffs department.

Suicide due to cyberbullying is sadly not uncommon. According to DoSomething.org  one of the largest global orgs for young people and social change  victims of bullying are two to nine times more likely to commit suicide than average kids, and almost 43 percent report theyve been bullied online. Most shockingly, 90 percent of teens who have witnessed cyberbullying say theyve simply ignored it.

Story continues

The personal tales of teens who have killed themselves because of cyberbullying are almost too numerous to keep up with. This month, 15-year-old Shania Sechrist hanged herself in her Pennsylvania family home after being harassed on Facebook and through text messages. In January, David Molak, a high school sophomore in San Antonio committed suicide after being relentlessly bullied, primarily on Instagram and through texting. According to Heavy.com, the bullies were actually threatening to kill him. One message read, Were going to put him six feet under. His tormenters were not prosecuted because of insufficient evidence.

Some of the most high-profile cases of teens committing suicide after being bullied online include Amanda Todd, who posted a now-famous video to YouTube about her abuse  most notably, a Facebook profile her tormentor created featuring a topless photo of her  before hanging herself a month before her 16th birthday. Tyler Clementi was an 18-year-old student at Rutgers University when he jumped off the George Washington Bridge in 2010. Clementis roommate had outed the teen as gay by secretly filming him kissing another man and posting it to Twitter.

The list goes on and on.

But Nancy Lublin, founder and CEO of the Crisis Text Line, says social media isnt the problem, people are. That was a very, very bad judgment call by her friends, says Lublin. Social media companies can be good agents in these situations by (a) providing an easy flagging system so that issues can be caught quickly and (b) partnering with orgs like us. For example, we work with After School, YouTube, and others to help provide a custom in-platform solution.

So what can we do to prevent these senseless deaths  and curb the off-the-rails phenomenon of cyberbullying? Its vital that parents actively participate in their childrens digital life to help them stay safe online, warns a spokesperson for the U.K.s National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. The NSPCCs Net Aware guide gives parents the support, advice, and information they need to have the right kind of conversations about the online world.

Lublin adds, Im also a parent of an 11-year-old girl. We talk about social media a lot  we imagine the kind of people who might see things she posts. So, I might ask her, How would you feel if your math teacher saw that post? Or, What would your grandma think of that? I dont make rules; I ask questions.

As for teens themselves, NSPCC urges them to open up to an adult they trust if they are being cyberbullied  no matter how hard it may be to ask for help. Lublin adds, Pay attention to privacy settings. Those matter  and they change. Consider making the accounts private on Snapchat and Instagram. Never post a pic of yourself doing something that would make your grandma cringe.

In the U.S., teens are encouraged to call the Crisis Text Line immediately if they are being bullied and to ask for representation if a harassing image, video, or message is circulating. In the U.K., Childline can also help with taking an illegal image off the Internet by making a report to the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) on a victims behalf.



Teens (or anyone) in crisis can also call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline 24/7, anonymously, at 800-273-8255.

Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest for nonstop inspiration delivered fresh to your feed, every day.


Apple became the world's most valuable company by selling a lot of stuff. But one thing it's never sold is power.

That looks like it's about to change, as Apple has created Apple Energy, a Cupertino-owned subsidiary that has the ability to sell power to end users at market rates.

DON'T MISS: Googles Larry Page has secretly spent more than $100M to build flying cars

The most obvious use for Apple Energy is to sell Apple-generated power back to the market when it's producing more power than it can use. Currently, Apple has solar farms in Cupertino and Nevada, and is working to add more.

Apple's ultimate aim is to produce enough electricity to power all of its operations worldwide with renewable energy. It's meant to be a move that is good for Apple's financials (since it will have access to cheap, fixed-price renewable power), and good for Apple's larger mandate to be environmentally friendly.

A key component to using solar power, however, is being able to offload it when there's too much power being generated. Having the ability to sell that electricity to consumers should certainly help, and Apple needs the registered subsidiary, Apple Energy, to be able to do so.

Of course, there's a second option: that Apple sees solar power as a future growth market, and one it wants to be a player in. It makes sense: Apple already owns solar farms, has highly experienced R&D teams who can make sense of breakthroughs in solar technology, and also has a strong brand that people trust.

It's an odd move for a consumer electronics company to expand into renewable energy. But if you look at Apple's rumored future products -- smart home, cars, virtual reality -- selling renewable energy to power them all makes a lot of sense.

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Apple (AAPL) CEO Tim Cook kicks of his company's annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) Monday in San Francisco with a keynote that promises to give us a look at just what Apple has been cooking up for the past year. Rumors abound about big changes to Apples major software offerings including iOS, OS X and WatchOS.

Ill be on the ground live blogging WWDC from San Franciscos Bill Graham Civic Auditorium beginning at 10 a.m. ET. Until then, let's take a look at some of the best predictions and leaks about what Apple is expected to unveil.

iOS 10

The next version of Apples mobile operating system, iOS 10 is rumored to bring improvements to the OSs interface, give Siri a bit more control and feature a big update for Apple Music.

iOS 10 will get a refreshed design with new notifications, according to 9to5Mac. Likewise, CNET says Apple Music will receive a much-needed facelift. Those Apple Music updates will include an easier to navigate interface and tighter integration between streaming and music downloads, according to a Bloomberg report.

Apple's iOS is expected to get an update at WWDC.

Apple may also end up giving Siri more freedom within iOS 10. Gizmodo says the iPhone maker will open up its Siri software development kit to third-party app developers, meaning you may soon be able to use Siri across a wider variety of apps.

Overall iOS security will likely be improved, especially considering the controversy surrounding the FBIs success in unlocking the San Bernardino shooters iPhone 5C.

Oh, and expect to see some form of hub for HealthKit apps and devices.

OS X

Siri is finally making the move to your MacBook  at least, according to a litany of reports and rumors across tech media. Its not clear how Siri will work on the desktop or how it will function, but 9to5Mac says the voice assistant will be in the top right corner of the screen next to the Spotlight search icon.

If it happens, the decision to bring Siri to Macs would resemble Microsofts move to transplant its Cortana voice assistant from its Windows Phone devices to its desktop and laptop computers.

Story continues

Apple's OS X could get Siri and a name change.

Tim Cook and company might also bring the iPhone and iPads Touch ID fingerprint sensor to Apples Mac line, which could give users quicker access to their computers than typing in a lengthy, easy-to-forget password.

Apples OS X for Macs isnt just getting new features this year; it might also get a new name. Apple could change the name of the OS to MacOS to better align with the naming conventions used for its iOS, WatchOS and tvOS operating systems, according to several reports.

tvOS

Apple finally got serious with its Apple TV last year with the unveiling of a new version of the streaming box and debut of its tvOS operating system. This year you can expect to see a renewed push into non-streaming apps such as those for Airbnb and Guilt. We could also see a bit more integration with Apples Homekit apps and Homekit-enabled appliances.

watchOS

So far, mums the word on the next version of Apples watchOS. However, were speculating that the watchOS 3 will offer slight performance and battery life improvements, as well as a handful of new watch faces.

Hardware

Apples Worldwide Developers Conference is meant to showcase what the company has to offer software developers. While Apple previously debuted hardware offerings at the show, it seems as though this year will focus specifically on the companys digital wares. In other words, dont expect to see anything in terms of a new Apple Watch, MacBook or Mac.

What are you most excited to see? Let us know in the comments below.

Email Daniel at dhowley@yahoo-inc.com; follow him on Twitter at @DanielHowley.

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Microsoft needs to change its mobile strategy or get out

Samsung Gear Fit2: Fitness tracker meets smartwatch
By Junko Fujita TOKYO (Reuters) - Line Corp [IPO-LINE.T] on Friday said it plans to list shares in Tokyo and New York next month through an initial public offering (IPO) that would value the Japanese messaging app operator at 588 billion yen ($5.50 billion). Tokyo-headquartered Line said it could raise as much as 112.7 billion yen, making the IPO Japan's biggest of the year. The company, owned by South Korea's Naver Corp, plans to use the proceeds for expansion at home and abroad, at a time when growth in user numbers has markedly slowed. "Line is well-recognised so its shares will be popular," said equity strategist Mitsuo Shimizu at Japan Asia Securities Group. "But as a company, it has passed its peak and is not going to grow fast from now." Line's listing marks the next phase for a company whose fortunes changed after a devastating earthquake and tsunami in March 2011. The chaotic aftermath of the disaster prompted the company to launch messaging app NHN Japan to aid communication. The years since saw it rebrand in 2013 and expand into 230 markets. Its free-of-charge app generates revenue through sales of electronic stickers and tokens for in-app games, as well as services such as music streaming and taxi hailing. But while the IPO proceeds could help bolster an international push, the Line app is eclipsed in major Western markets by Facebook Inc's Messenger and Whatsapp, while China is dominated by Tencent Holdings Ltd's WeChat. Moreover, growth in its number of monthly active users has tapered having tripled over the past three years. Last year, users numbers rose just 13 million to 218 million at the end of March, the IPO filing showed. That made Line the seventh-most used messenger app globally, far behind WhatsApp with 1 billion monthly active users and Messenger with 900 million, as well as WeChat with 697 million, showed data from researcher Statista. It boasts the most users among messaging apps in Japan, but the only other markets it leads are Taiwan, Thailand and Turkmenistan, showed data last month from researcher SimilarWeb. "Line will not be able to enjoy growth in user numbers over the long term," said analyst Hideki Yasuda at Ace Research Institute. "It needs to shift focus to boost revenue per user." Line plans to sell 13 million new shares in Japan and 22 million abroad at an indicative price of 2,800 yen each. Its parent, Korea's largest web portal operator, will offer as many as 5.25 million existing shares in the event of strong demand. Naver's ownership will fall to as low as 80.8 percent. Line said it plans to use the proceeds for strategic investment and to repay debt. It also said, for last year, it booked revenue of 120.7 billion yen and a net loss of 7.6 billion yen, attributing the loss to the cost of closing an online radio company. Line will set the final price of its shares on July 11 after gauging investor demand, with the aim of listing them on July 14 in New York and July 15 in Tokyo. The company hired Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan and Nomura to manage the IPO. ($1 = 106.9300 yen) (Reporting by Junko Fujita; Additional reporting by Makiko Yamazaki, Yoshiyuki Osada, Chan-Rang Kim and Chris Gallagher; Editing by Christopher Cushing)
Tokyo (AFP) - Messaging app Line said Friday it will make its stock market debut in Tokyo and New York next month, as it looks to expand on booming popularity among smartphone users in Asia.

The Japan-based firm won regulatory approval for the sale with the dual listing expected to raise as much as 113 billion yen ($1.05 billion), including an option to sell more shares if demand is strong.

The deal -- likely to be among the biggest IPOs this year -- would value Line at about $5.5 billion, and was described by Bloomberg as this year's biggest tech offering globally.

Line, which is owned by South Korean Internet provider Naver, said it expected to list its stock on July 14 in New York and July 15 in Tokyo.

It will offer 13 million new shares in Japan, with another 22 million in the US, according to documents filed with the Tokyo Stock Exchange.

The indicative share price would be 2,800 yen apiece.

"(Line) has made the decision to go public in both Japan and the United States to further enhance its strong position in Asia and to continue a more active global expansion," the company said.

The sale comes two years after the firm initially announced plans to list in an IPO that was later shelved, reportedly due to disagreements over the sale between Line and its South Korean owner.

The July offering would be the biggest in Tokyo since Japan Post made its long-awaited trading debut in November with a share sale that topped $11.5 billion.

The popular app lets users make free calls, send instant messages, and post photos or short videos, along with a host of other paid-services.

It combines attributes from Facebook, Skype and WhatsApp, with Games and a mobile payment service also on offer.

Line's messaging service launched in 2011 after the quake-tsunami tragedy damaged Japan's telecoms infrastructure nationwide, forcing people to use to online resources to communicate.

It is best known for letting users send each other cute cartoon "stickers", and is hugely popular in Japan, particularly among teenagers.

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Line's sticker shop sells thousands of the emoticons -- some are animated and noisy -- from Hello Kitty and Super Mario to Manga and Disney characters.

The app, which has about 218 million active monthly users, has a strong presence in Asian markets such as Thailand, Taiwan and Indonesia, as well as some Spanish-speaking areas, including Spain and Mexico.

Line said it would use proceeds of the stock offering to help it expand in Asia, and tap the US and European markets where it's not a major player.

"We will continue mergers and acquisitions and other investment globally, but there is nothing decided at this point" in terms of a particular deal, the company said.

Last year, Line posted revenue of 120 billion yen, up 40 percent from the year before, but a small overall loss, which it blamed on rising staff costs and other expenses.
With hackers attacking electrical grids, banks, and a growing list of other targets, some policymakers and security researchers are calling for turning the clock back to an earlier era when devices werent connected to the internet  or vulnerable to digital attack.

The American power grid is more efficient than ever before because electricity plants, transformers, and other key pieces of infrastructure are networked together, allowing for electricity to be redirected in real time from areas with too much to those needing more.

The problem is that those gains have also left the overall system open to attack. Power stations and grids run by network-connected computer control systems can be hacked to cause widespread power outages.

American intelligence officials have long warned that the U.S. grid would represent a ripe target in a time of war, and U.S. adversaries are heavily investing in the capabilities to take it down. In Ukraine, hackers attacked a portion of the countrys grid over Christmas and succeeded in knocking out power for thousands of customers in the middle of the bitter winter. Officials in Kiev quickly pointed the finger at Moscow for the unprecedented attack, but the Kremlin denied responsibility.

Desperately looking for new ways of shoring up the U.S. grids defenses against digital attack, a bipartisan group of lawmakers is pushing a decidedly counterintuitive approach to cybersecurity: ditching cutting-edge digital technology for old-school analog control mechanisms.

This week, four senators on the Intelligence Committee  Angus King (I-Maine), James Risch (R-Idaho), Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), and Susan Collins (R-Maine)  introduced legislation that would set aside $10 million to study security vulnerabilities on the electrical grid and come up with solutions for them, including what the bills backers call a retro approach to grid security.

We can learn something from what happened in Ukraine, King said during remarks on the Senate floor this week. It may be that going back to the future, if you will, going back to the past and simplifying some of these critical connection points may be the best protection that we can have.

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For now, at least, security engineers arent investing in these types of retro devices. Security-focused start-ups arent working on analog solutions, and engineering talent is more often focused on designing higher-tech tools, not turning back the clock to older ones. Analog security devices are widely available, but engineers arent usually focused on integrating them into computerized control systems.

And thats one reason why many cybersecurity experts are excited about the legislation introduced this week. When the government invests in areas where there is no market, thats exactly what we want to see, said Robert M. Lee, an instructor at the SANS Institute and a former cyberwarfare operations officer for the U.S. Air Force.

He and other security experts say a retro approach makes a great deal of sense. Michael Assante, the head of industrial control systems at the SANS Institute, which provides cybersecurity training to security professionals, said utilities would be wise to integrate tools that arent connected to networks or are completely analog into a sophisticated control system.

Researchers at the engineering consulting firm Kenexis have come up with similar proposals to use mechanical technology as a cybersecurity measure. In recent years, designers of high-speed rotating systems such as centrifuges have used computers to control them from moving too fast, a shift that has left them vulnerable to hacks like the Stuxnet attack on Irans nuclear facilities.

A simple, spring-based design can be used to prevent hackers from getting the centrifuges to spin too fast. As a spinning object gains speed, a spring with a weight at its end will be pulled toward the systems edge by the centrifugal force. When the spring reaches the point defined as the maximum speed, it trips a relief valve, venting steam or whatever powers the mechanism. Thats a design that cannot be hacked.

The challenge is that business incentives are firmly aligned against such a move. In recent years, companies of all types have been installing sensors on devices and networking equipment at a furious pace. Placing sensors and computerized controls on every valve on thousands of miles of pipeline, for example, allows a gas company to precisely control the pressure in its equipment. Such fine calibration can result in huge savings  savings that could be lost if those sensors were replaced by less sophisticated analog equipment.

Boardrooms and investors are constantly looking for gains in productivity and efficiency, and the networking of devices and sensors forms the core of what is touted as the big data revolution. Many executives believe that type of information will be the main driver of 21st-century productivity gains, but security experts question whether executives and corporate board members truly understand the increased risk that comes with the ubiquitous networking of computers and sensors.

Its a fight for visibility. Do we want more visibility and less security? Or less visibility and more security? Lee said.

Assante was one of the authors behind an October 2015 paper that helped inspire the legislation. That paper drew on a bit of science fiction to help illustrate its argument. In the Battlestar Galactica television series, humanity finds its defenses and ships devastated by a hostile series of cyber attacks, with only one spaceship surviving, Assante and his co-authors wrote. The outdated destroyer, Battlestar Galactica, last in line for the fleet-wide upgrade to digital controls, proves to be immune to cyber attacks and lives to fight another day.

Assante told Foreign Policy that he is a proponent of what he calls hybrid systems and that he wants no part of what he described as a digital backlash. Rather, he argues that the use of analog or non-networked devices alongside advanced, modern control systems can foil the tactics used by the most advanced hackers.

When U.S. and Israeli hackers targeted the Iranian nuclear program with the Stuxnet virus, for example, they damaged the centrifuges at the Natanz facility by causing them to abnormally speed up and slow down. The hackers fooled operators in the Natanz control room into thinking their centrifuges were running normally. They recorded performance data from the devices during normal operation and then played that data back to the control room when executing the attack.

The advent of Stuxnet led to engineers wondering, Boy, what would happen if someone turned this against my plant? Assante said.

Engineers are now thinking of ways to guard against sophisticated digital attacks, in part by relying on technology that predates the internet revolution. Designers at the Langner Group, a cybersecurity consultancy for critical infrastructure and manufacturing firms, have, for example, developed a concept system for what the company calls an analog logic controller.

The analog system would perform many of the functions of a programmable logic controller, a computer that lies at the heart of industrial operations. As the name implies, PLCs can be programmed to carry out a wide variety of tasks. But the fact that they can be programmed also means that they can be taken over and used for sabotage.

Langners proposal takes the software of a PLC and wires it into a circuit board, rather than relying on software that can be modified.

Analog technology continues to be a feature of some industrial safety systems, and the Langner device may be one way to keep such technology in place  including on nuclear reactors. If things go sideways, the safety systems that prevent a meltdown are still analog, said Perry Pederson, a co-founder of Langner.

For now, Assante says these engineering approaches are most likely to be limited to safety mechanisms, where analog systems can be implemented without disrupting a companys business model. Some electrical utilities are beginning to install backup, non-networked protective relays at their substations. These relays are crucial to the operation of an electrical grid and can be manipulated by an attacker to disrupt the power. By keeping these devices off the network, utilities protect them from cyberattack.

But for every advocate of a back-to-basics engineering approach, theres also a cybersecurity vendor claiming he can protect your computer systems from attack  and keep your business model intact. You cannot back away from the network, Faizel Lakhani, the president and COO of SS8, a cybersecurity firm. We built a system that analyzes network traffic and then builds in the ability to wind the clock back.

Companies such as SS8, which Lakhani says counts six of the worlds largest intelligence agencies as clients, are legion in 2016. They monitor networks and attempt to spot abnormalities and block attacks  using the same kind of big data analytics that companies are utilizing for productivity gains. Lakhani calls it a wrapper around a network that can help you understand whether its behaving the way you expect.

That business argument points to the many economic forces stacked against Assantes more conservative engineering approach. Executives seek productivity gains in computer networking, while a burgeoning cybersecurity industry pledges it can keep all those computers safe.

Photo credit: Sean Gallup/Getty Images
The good: Comfortable, Wide range of features for the price, Clear and colorful screen

The bad: Interface can be complicated, Only works on Android

Who should buy it: Athletes looking for an affordable tracker that offers all of the core fitness functions.

Samsungs latest gadget is a Swiss Army Knife of sorts: The wrist-worn wearable functions as a step counter, calorie tracker, heart rate monitor, music player, messenger, watch  and more.

The $179.99 Gear Fit2, which launches on June 10, is among the few fitness trackers that includes a little bit of everything. Most alternatives require you to compromise in at least one area. One band might feature a heart rate monitor but no GPS tracking, another might come with both of those capabilities but no local storage for playing songs when your phone isnt nearby.

Samsungs wristband includes all of these, plus the standard features that have become common on most fitness devices, such as water resistance, automatic exercise recognition for certain activities, sleep monitoring, and basic tracking of steps, distance, calories, and floors climbed.

The company is pushing the wristband as a productivity device that can keep you connected without having to reach for your phone. You can, for instance, go for a jog wearing the Gear Fit2 and still listen to music or map your route without bringing your mobile device. If your phone is tucked away in your pocket or purse during your commute, you can still read notifications or check the time  a capability thats becoming more common among fitness trackers.

Its a lot to cram into a single device. For the most part, Samsung executes this well with the Gear Fit2, but the robust set of features does involve some tradeoffs. Heres a closer look at what its like to use the Samsung Gear Fit2.

Wearing It

Physically, the Gear Fit2 is a notable improvement from the original model Samsung launched in 2014. The strap is softer and more enjoyable to wear, and the screen is significantly wider, making it easier to read text and view progress. The Fit2 is comfortable enough to keep on your wrist throughout the day and night. Ive worn it while working, sleeping, running, and so on.

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While some companies have paid careful attention to make their fitness trackers look discrete or fashionable, Samsungs tracker looks like it was made for athletes. Since its packed with extra sensors (Fitbits sleek Alta tracker doesnt have GPS or heart rate monitoring, for instance) its thicker than some alternatives.

The Fit2 comes in black, blue, or pink color options. Devices that are more focused on aesthetics, like those made by Fitbit, Apple, and Jawbone, allow for more customization.

Using It

The Gear Fit2 delivers on its biggest promise: providing a solid standalone experience for runners. After syncing tunes from my Android phone to the wristband, I was able to listen to music through my wireless headphones during my run even though my phone was at home. You can also choose to listen to songs from Spotify through the Gear Fit2, but youll still need to have your phone within range for that. A tiny map showing the box-shaped running route I took as I lapped around a few blocks appeared on my wrist shortly after my workout.

Samsungs wristband is among the most comprehensive trackers Ive used in terms of the sheer amount of data it displays on your wrist. When viewing data from a specific run, for instance, the watchs screen can tell me how close I was to my goal, the time window of my run, a graph showing how my heart rate correlates with my speed during a run, my maximum and minimum heart rate, and more.

The screen, though its slightly too large for my wrist even in a small size offering, is capable of showing a wealth of information, health related or not. When I received a string of notifications from Google Hangouts, for instance, I was able to scroll through all of them and read paragraphs of text in the notifications pane, rather than just viewing message previews.

Among the most important elements of any fitness tracker is its accompanying app and how it analyzes data. Samsungs S Health app shows activity and sleep trends over time, but I found the interface to be messier and more confusing than Fitbits app. The first piece of information I see when I open the app is a prompt to set a new goal for a metric I havent recorded yet (like sleep or nutrition), and I dont see my data until I scroll past that reminder. Fitbits dashboard, by comparison, lists your statistics in a clean menu thats visible as soon as you launch the app.

The Fit2 feels like part smartwatch and part fitness tracker, and while I appreciate the amount of information Im able to see on my wrist, all that data makes the interface complicated. It takes roughly four taps to access music Ive uploaded to the Fit2, for example, and it took some noodling around to find where those songs were stored in the first place. Some points of interest like this are buried in sections of the interface that I didnt even know were there until I spent at least a day using the Fit2.

The Fit2s battery life seems to live up to Samsungs claims. After roughly three days of usage, the band was down to 24%. Although some less complex fitness trackers can last between five days and a week, this is an impressive lifespan for a device with a large, colorful screen with so many features. The Apple Watch, comparatively, usually lasts about a day and a half.

Conclusion

Samsungs Gear Fit2 is a comprehensive fitness tracker that checks all the boxes. It offers a lot for the price: mainstream watches and trackers that offer GPS are usually more expensive, like the Fitbit Surge ($229.95) and TomTom Spark Cardio+Music ($199.99). The Microsoft Band ($174.99) is roughly the same price as Samsungs tracker, but there are some differences to consider. Microsofts device can track more types of data, including ultraviolet light exposure and skin temperature. But Samsungs wristband offers 4GB of onboard storage, which Microsofts offering does not.

Still, non-athletes and those who just want to keep an eye on how much activity theyre getting throughout the day might want to opt for something cheaper or slimmer. Plus, the Gear Fit2 is only available for Android phones, which limits the Gear Fit2s audience.

Regardless, its promising to see companies like Samsung making a bigger effort to expand what a wearable can do when your phone isnt nearby. Its another step towards complete independence, which will ultimately make devices like fitness trackers and smartwatches much more useful.
Singapore is one of the world's most Internet-savvy societies, offering broadband speeds envied by many (AFP Photo/Roslan Rahman)

Singapore's prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong has defended the country's controversial decision to cut off civil servants' work computers from the Internet, calling the move "absolutely necessary" to keep information systems secure.

"Are we happy? I don't think so, because it will slow us down in terms of day-to-day productivity. In terms of security, safety of our systems, safety of our citizens and information concerning them, it's absolutely necessary," he told Singapore media during a visit to Myanmar.

Lee said that the defence and foreign affairs ministries already have separate computers for Internet access and for handling sensitive communications.

There was a huge backlash on Wednesday when The Straits Times newspaper reported that some 100,000 government computers would be affected by the Internet blockage, aimed at keeping data secure and preventing the spread of malware.

It quoted a cyber security official as saying that there were 16 attacks on government systems from unnamed sources in the last year, but the malware was detected and destroyed.

Malware is software specifically designed to disrupt or damage a computer system.

Civil servants would still be able to access the Internet on their personal devices such as tablets and mobile phones.

Public-school teachers and lecturers would not be affected by the move, officials said.

Singapore is one of the world's most Internet-savvy societies, offering broadband speeds envied by many.

A wide range of government services are available online, including registering for marriage, filing complaints to the police and video consultations with doctors.

Singapore announced in 2014 it was stepping up IT security measures following attacks on a section of the prime minister's website, as well the website of the presidential residence.
In addition to demoing products that will soon hit stores like the Lenovo PHAB2 series and the Motorola Moto Z family, Lenovo briefly covered a few concept products during its Tech World keynote event this week. The company even showcased a couple of very cool prototypes, including a foldable smartphone that can be turned into a wearable device, and a bendable tablet that becomes a phablet.

It's time to meet the C+ and the Folio.

DONT MISS: This might be the most exciting and unexpected Apple announcement at WWDC 2016

Its not clear at this point when these products will be available in stores, but Lenovo isnt the only company considering cool foldable form factors. Samsung is also rumored have a couple of bendable handsets planned for release next year, and Apple patents suggest the company is looking to develop iPhones with curved screens in the future.

But Lenovo os already comfortable enough with its progress to demo what appear to be functional Android devices, running what looks like the latest Android version available to OEMs. The company briefly touched on the technology required to make such devices work. In addition to foldable displays, other components have to be designed in a way that they won't be damaged when devices flex and fold.

A Samsung executive said on Thursday at Rutbergs Future:Mobile conference in California that bendable phone screens are relatively right around the corner. Samsungs chief for North America Gregory Lee said that Samsung has had bendable display prototypes for about 10 years, Recode reports, but that "it just has been very difficult to manufacture at a reasonable cost.

Lenovo posted on YouTube a video that briefly shows these two devices, offering us a sneak peak at their internal components as well.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_3XneTRCLw

Additionally, heres a video that shows how Lenovo chose to introduce the two concepts during the show. The action starts just after the 3 minute mark.

Story continues

https://youtu.be/XRFM5Y3a6xE?t=197

Finally, since were talking about Lenovo tech that wont be available in any commercial product in the near future, check out these smart sneakers that Lenovo designed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TEvbx0dy6Q0

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This article was originally published on BGR.com
STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales has said an attempt by France to give an online privacy ruling global force is opening up a "disastrous can of worms" and could spur global censorship. Google appealed last month against an order from the French data protection authority to remove certain web search results globally. A 2014 ruling by the European Court of Justice allowed people to ask the likes of Google or Microsoft's Bing to remove inadequate or irrelevant information from web results brought up by searching for their name. The measure, known as the "right to be forgotten", has pitted privacy campaigners against defenders of free speech. "One of the most disturbing things is the regulators in France have demanded that Google hide things globally, not just within the borders of France," Wales told Reuters late on Thursday on the sidelines of the Brilliant Minds conference in Stockholm. "That's just opening a disastrous can of worms, because then it becomes a ridiculous race to the bottom, where the Internet is censored by the most restrictive jurisdictions," he said. "And nobody thinks we should censor based on the whims of the Chinese government, for example. But that's the path that people go down if they are not careful." Google complied with France's request, but it scrubbed results only across its European websites, arguing that to go further would set a dangerous precedent on the territorial reach of national laws. Wales said Wikipedia was also working to adhere to the legislation. The French data protection authority argues that a persons right to privacy should not depend on where an online search is made, and counters allegations of censorship by noting that the links in question, hidden when a person's name is searched for directly, can still be found by searching in different ways. Wales said his staff at the Wikimedia Foundation, the non-profit organization that runs the online encyclopedia, assembled and written by Internet users around the world, were spending more and more time dealing with national regulations on the Internet. "We've all become somehow kind of amateur lawyers on things like copyright," he said. (Reporting by Mia Shanley; Editing by Kevin Liffey)
President Obama stopped by The Tonight Show With Jimmy Fallon Thursday night and stuck around for almost the entire show. Since the commander in chief is nearing the end of his term, he thought it would be a good time to write some thank-you notes to some very important people. For example, one person Obama was thankful for was Questloves hairstylist for inspiring him to bring back the Obama-fro after he leaves the White House.

Jimmy took a shot at the POTUS by writing a thank-you note to Obamas birth certificate, saying, He used to carry you around to prove he was American. Now he needs to carry you around to prove hes only 54. That got a reaction from Obama, but instead of lashing out at Jimmy, he set his sights on Congress. Obamas next note read, Thank you, Congress, for spending eight years wishing you could replace me with a Republican. Or, to put it another way A picture of Trump appeared as he ended with, How do you like me now?

The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon airs weeknights at 11:35 p.m. on NBC.



Check out President Obama slow jamming the news on The Tonight Show:

Tell us what you think! Hit us up on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram  or leave your comments below. And check out our host, Cynthia LuCiette, on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.


A cross section of discussant at the roundtable event

Selling the importance of life insurance in the lives of individuals and families is usually not an easy task in Ghana. The penetration rate in Ghana is quite low, and the hope among industry players is that the increase in the countrys GDP per capita would see a corresponding increase in the life insurance penetration rate.

The Customer Experience Consortium (CXC) recently organised the first ever National Life Insurance Sales Roundtable under the auspices of the Ghana Insurers Association (GIA) and the Ghana Insurance Brokers Association (GIBA). The roundtable provided a platform for a discourse on the sales policies, strategies and approaches for the Ghanaian market.The event brought together major players in life insurance sales in the country on the theme, Insuring Lives in Ghana: Challenges and opportunities . From the roundtable discussions YEN.com.gh compiled the top 5 problems attributing to low life insurance patronage in Ghana according to to GIA:

1. Bad perception/reputation people have on insurance in Ghana. The panelists proposed that to turn things around, there would be the need to tell the benefits or good stories of life insurance using the testimonies from people who have benefited from life insurance to debunk the myths surrounding life insurance policies in Ghana. This could be done through interviewing of industry professionals to tell their experiences in the insurance benefits, and the use of online tools to share the benefits of life insurance.

2. Low local insurance penetration in the insurance market - attributed to factors such as poor agent comprehension skills, poor agent motivation, bad image of the industry etc.

3. Distribution problems or lack of proper channels through which the industry can distribute its products to the potential clients. Panelists proposed adding more channels such as online channels to allow users register to an insurance policy without meeting the agent in person.

4. Fraudulent claims people make attributed to poor customer data to track and authenticate.

5. Poor use of ICT which can be curbed by adopting rigorous online search for insurance presence, adopting online insurance subscription to allow potential clients subscribe to an insurance policy online, as well as online enquiries on insurance by clients, among others.

The Customer Experience Consortium is a business consultancy purposely set up to enhance volume of sales and quality of service in Ghana and over the past years they have been tackling industry specific sales through its innovative events, seminars and conferences.

Source: YEN.com.gh
CEDAR RAPIDS -- U.S. Rep. Rod Blum expects Democrats will tar him with the same brush they use on Donald Trump, but the first-term Republican believes voters will re-elect him based on his performance, not whos at the top of the GOP ticket.

Blum, a Dubuque businessman who won an open-seat race in 2014, is being challenged by Democrat Monica Vernon of Cedar Rapids. Before election night was over, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee outlined the case against Blum, including tying him to Trump.

Thats of course what they will try to do politically, Blum said about the DCCCs claim that he had endorsed Trump. Theyll try to join us at the hip. It just like Republicans will say Vernon and Hillary Clinton are one and the same.

The DCCC has high hopes for Vernon, naming her a Red-to-Blue candidate because of the opportunity it sees to flip the district.

She consistently outraised Congressman Blum, effectively painted him as the true extremist that he is, and displayed why her common sense, business credentials position her perfectly for the general election, Tyler Law, DCCC regional press secretary said.

Even before the GOP Iowa caucuses in February, Blum said he would support the partys nominee. However, he has his differences with Trump and would like the presumptive nominee to tone down his rhetoric.

Look, Im a Republican and Im going to support the nominee of my party, whoever it might be, said Blum, who didnt endorse any of the GOP hopefuls.

Now having said that, are there a fair number of things that Mr. Trump has said that I wish he hadnt? Absolutely," he said. I wish he would get, what would you call it, verbal discipline.

Blum expects to disagree with Trump on some issues and when we do, I have no problem standing up in front of a crowd and saying that.

On the other hand, Blum believes Trump is tapping into voters anger.

Hes not creating it. Hes tapping into the anger thats been out there for years now, he said.

Its the same anger Blum sensed when he ran two years ago and he said it hasnt gone away.

I know the issues are the same, he said. The angers still there, the anger with Washington, the anger with the political class, the career politicians, the economic system. Its still there.

I want to change that. Thats why Im here, Blum said.

Democrats hopes for defeating Blum hinge, in part, on their 26,000 voter registration advantage in the 20-county district that includes Cedar Rapids, Dubuque, Cedar Falls and Waterloo.

However, the National Republican Congressional Committee pointed out Blum has more than $1.2 million compared to Vernons $421,000.

Blums significant cash on hand advantage and reform-minded approach provide a compelling narrative entering the general election campaign, according to the NRCC.

Political handicappers predict a tough re-election battle for Blum. Sabatos Crystal Ball labeled it Leans Democratic and the Rothenberg & Gonzales Political Report has it in the Tilt Democratic column. The Cook Political Report sees it as a toss-up.
URBANDALE -- An Iowa delegate to the Republican National Convention said Thursday he can't support Donald Trump for president and intends to urge others going to Cleveland to seek an alternative.

Cecil Stinemetz of Urbandale said that he thinks party rules don't bind delegates and nominating Trump will doom the party to losing to Hillary Clinton in the fall.

"People can vote their conscience, so I'm trying to let other people know that this is not over," Stinemetz said in an interview Thursday.

There has been a chorus of criticism of Trump since he said a federal district judge isn't being fair to him in a lawsuit involving Trump University because of the judge's Mexican heritage. Stinemetz, who supported Ted Cruz during the Iowa caucuses, said that although the controversy over the judge was the last straw for him, his misgivings over Trump have been longstanding.

"He says he's a conservative, but there's nothing to back it up," he said. Stinemetz adds now that Trump is the presumptive nominee, the media will come down hard on him and he will lose to Clinton in the fall.

The idea of denying Trump the nomination has been simmering in some quarters, even as party leaders are urging the rank and file to accept that Trump will be the GOP nominee and focus on beating Clinton.

Conservative talk show host Hugh Hewitt has urged that the convention take steps to find a different nominee. A.J. Spiker, the former Iowa GOP chair who was an adviser to Rand Paul's presidential campaign, also tweeted this week that an alternative should step up and replace Trump.

"I think you're seeing a lot of people aren't willing to get in line behind Donald Trump," Spiker said.

However, the idea that anybody but Trump will be nominated was dismissed by Jeff Kaufmann, chair of the Iowa GOP.

"This is idle conversation. It is not going to happen," he said. "Donald Trump is our nominee and continuing the conversation is doing nothing but making a few people feel good."

He said such talk also endangers Iowa's first-in-the-nation status, and he largely laid the blame for it at the feet of Spiker.

"To have conversations and to do things that make Iowa look silly is not helpful to our state and our standing in the country," he said.

Critics of the move to dump Trump say doing so would thwart the will of the people. Trump, they say, bested 16 other candidates in a series of primaries and caucuses and earned the nomination.

Some other Iowa delegates to the convention, who also supported other candidates, said they think the rules make the situation clear.

David Chung of Cedar Rapids, who ran as a Cruz delegate and helped write the rules for the Iowa delegation, said the chair will report the result on the convention floor.

"There won't be any polling the delegation, the chair will cast the ballot," he said.

Kaufmann said the rules require the delegation to support Trump, unless another name is put into nomination. If that happens, he said, the delegation's vote will reflect the results of the Feb. 1 caucuses.

Stinemetz said, however, that delegates have the ultimate authority at the convention. He says the rules are widely misunderstood.

But state Rep. Sandy Salmon of Janesville, who also is a delegate, said it appears to her there is no choice. "Since he has the 1,237 votes he needs to be the nominee," she said.

Iowa has 30 delegates and 27 alternates going to the convention.

Bob Vander Plaats, who also is a national delegate and endorsed Cruz before the caucuses, said that he thinks the delegates have the ultimate say in how they vote. But in the end, he said, what happens in Cleveland is up to Trump.

"Theres a lot of things Donald Trump can do today to make sure Cleveland goes really well for him and his candidacy, Vander Plaats said.

But he added the comment about the judge crossed the line, and if those types of things continue, "then I think Cleveland is up for grabs."
DES MOINES  Iowa Rep. Tom Sands, a Republican from Wapello and chairman of the Iowa Houses tax policy-writing committee, announced Thursday he will not seek re-election this fall.

Sands, 61, a banker and real estate appraiser, has served in the Iowa Legislature since 2003 and as chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee since Republicans took control of the chamber in 2011.

I want to spend more time with the family, Sands said when reached by phone Thursday. Plus, Im too young to retire, so its just time to close this chapter and move on to the next one, whatever that may be.

Sands announcement comes two days after Iowas primary election.

Sands said that after wrestling with the decision, he originally chose to run for one more two-year House term. Eventually, he said, he realized that was the wrong decision.

And that wasnt fair to my wife, my family, House Republicans or the people of Iowa, Sands said.

Because of the timing of Sands announcement, a Republican candidate will be nominated by party leaders in the counties that make up his southeast Iowa district. A nominating convention will be held during the first three weeks of August.

District 88 includes all of Louisa County plus rural portions of Muscatine and Des Moines counties.

Two hours after Sands announcement, a Republican candidate  Jason Delzell, of Wapello  announced his intention to run for the seat.

No Democratic candidate had registered to run in the district before the primary, but one could be added by county party leaders through the same nominating process.
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MASON CITY  A former Iowa State Patrol sergeant who resigned earlier this week was charged Friday with stealing drugs from the Mason City posts evidence room.

Michael Haugen, 31, Forest City, was arrested about 10 a.m. Friday for one felony count of falsifying public documents and a misdemeanor charge of third-degree theft.

Investigators say Haugen took approximately 150 prescription pills from six criminal cases from 2014 to 2016 from the evidence room at the Iowa State Patrol post in Mason City, according to court documents.

One of three evidence room custodians, Haugen allegedly admitted to taking drugs stored in the room a total 18 times from 5-8 cases and replacing them with other pills, such as aspirin.

Haugen appeared before a magistrate Friday morning and was released on bond.

Court records available Friday did not list an attorney for Haugen. A request for comment relayed through one of his immediate family members was not returned Friday afternoon.

Haugen had been on administrative leave since March 25 and was fired last month. His termination would have gone into effect on Monday if he didnt appeal the firing.

Instead, he resigned, citing an addiction to opioid painkillers he developed while being treated for ulcerative colitis and another intestinal disorder, C. difficile, or C-diff.

According to a criminal complaint, an audit of the Mason City Iowa State Patrol posts evidence room in April found suspected tampering in six criminal cases, including four that involved opioid painkillers hydrocodone or OxyContin.

Officials say these cases were:

* A Feb. 19, 2012, seizure of several pills of hydrocodone and OxyContin as well as drugs believed to be Alpazadam (sic) and Tramadol.

* A Jan. 13, 2013, seizure of 109 OxyContin pills found during a traffic stop.

* An April 26, 2014, seizure of six hydrocodone pills.

* A May 1, 2015, seizure of multiple OxyContin, Trazaodone, Clonazepam and amphetamine salts.

The Iowa Department of Public Safety on Friday notified prosecutors who had cases where evidence was allegedly compromised. The prosecutors will decide whether action needs to be taken on those cases as a result of the allegations against Haugen, said Department of Public Safety Spokesman Alex Murphy.

All prosecution decisions about these cases are made by the county attorneys, Murphy said. Its not the departments decision.

Three of those cases were in Cerro Gordo County.

County Attorney Carlyle Dalen planned to review the cases to see what impact, if any, the allegations against Haugen had on the three cases and if the defense attorneys involved should be contacted.

All three cases have been closed.

Its important to me to make sure that if people did plead guilty to cases, that appropriate evidence was supportive of the facts, Dalen said. If theres ever a case where theres some allegations of tampering, I want to know whether that affects that case in any way, shape or form.

And, if theres some question as to whether theres some problem with the evidence I have no problems in bringing those cases back up and taking a look at them to see whether there was sufficient evidence for the prosecution of the case, Dalen said.

In addition to the alleged thefts, the evidence room audit of the Iowa State Patrol post in Mason City found a bottle of Adderall stored in a different bag than the one it was placed in after examination by criminalists at the Iowa State Crime Lab, according to court documents filed against Haugen.

The bottle left the state lab in bag with dates and initials written on it to highlight the chain of evidence, but was later found in the Mason City evidence room in a clear plastic bag with a blank label, documents say.

Those pills were seized during a traffic stop March 14 by another trooper, not Haugen.

Details on Haugens next court appearance were not immediately available on Friday.
MASON CITY  Many North Iowa families decided to stay cool in the pool Friday as temperatures reached the 90s.

Mason City schools had a half day for the last day of the school year, leaving plenty of time for some water fun.

Mavis King of Mason City brought her grandson Kaidin Ames, 7, to Mason City Aquatic Center after school.

I asked him what kind of treat he wanted after school. I was thinking ice-cream or something, but he said he wanted to go to the pool, King said.

While Kaidin splashed around the pool, King found a quiet, cooler spot in the shade.

Well probably get ice-cream afterward because Im grandma, King said, laughing.

Jason Rinnels brought his son, Buster, to the pool.

Buster wanted to come out here all week, Rinnels said.

Rinnels sat at the edge of the kiddie pool and tossed dive sticks in the shallow end for Buster to practice diving while wearing his goggles.

Oh, he loves it, Rinnels said. He just keeps going.

Temperatures wont be cooling down for the weekend. The National Weather Service forecast calls for a high of 95 degrees in Mason City Saturday with a heat index as high as 100. Sunday will be mostly sunny with a high near 88 degrees.

These temperatures can draw large crowds to the aquatic center.

Superintendent of Recreation Brian Pauly said turnout looks great. More than 500 people headed to the pool Friday within the first hour of opening, he said.

We can get more than 1,000 people out here on a day like today, Pauly said. Its a great out-of-school kick off on a hot day.
HAMPTON  The Hampton City Council passed a letter of support for the Franklin County Board of Supervisors regarding Prestage Foods of Iowa Thursday.

Mayor Brook Boehmler read the letter, saying that discussion had already taken place in the councils workshop Monday.

The City of Hampton would like to provide our support for the Franklin County Supervisors to begin negotiations with representatives of Prestage Farms, Boehmler said. We look forward to you helping provide economic development to our communities.

The letter said the city is willing to help the supervisors should they need assistance.

The intent is exactly whats written here, Boehmler said. Nothing more, nothing less.

The motion to approve the letter passed unanimously with no council discussion. The letter will be sent to the supervisors marking the councils support.

The supervisors approached Prestage Foods after the Mason City Councils 3-3 tie vote on May 3.

Officials met with a Prestage representative to talk about Franklin County as a possible location for the pork processing plant in May.

Boehmler welcomed several members of the audience who made the trip down from Cerro Gordo County.

Boehmler went over public meeting rules and the expectations of the 10-person crowd early in the meeting. Outbursts, heckling, cat-calling or any other disruptive behavior would be grounds for removal from the chambers, he said.

The way that our council is positioned and the way that our staff is set up is primarily for security purposes, Boehmler said.

Boehmler cited instances in the past with hecklers, outbursts and even threats directed at the council.

There was no open public comment section, as those who wanted to address the council were to have registered earlier in the week.

After adjournment, several people approached Boehmler and the council to pass along literature against the proposed plant.
MASON CITY | A Mason City was sentenced to up to two years in prison Thursday for assaulting a woman.

Jesse Stull, 34, pleaded guilty to domestic abuse assault resulting in injury (second offense), an aggravated misdemeanor.

A $625 fine was suspended. Stull was ordered to pay $389 restitution to the Crime Victim Compensation Program.

The assault took place Feb. 26 near Sixth Street and North Washington Avenue in Mason City.

Stull rammed into police vehicles while trying to leave the scene, according to the Mason City Police Department. No officers were hurt.

Stull also was sentenced to one day in jail and fined $1,250 after pleading guilty to operating while under the influence.

Charges of third-degree criminal mischief, fourth-degree criminal mischief, false imprisonment and violation of a no contact order were dismissed.

Stull was sentenced to up to five years in prison earlier this week after having his probation revoked on a previous conviction of domestic abuse assault (strangulation).

 Mary Pieper
MASON CITY  Officials plan to test lead levels in water at all Mason City public school buildings this summer.

The move is a precautionary measure, said Todd Huff, the Mason City school districts facilities and safety coordinator. Testing will be done after students leave for summer break, he said.

Specific testing dates have not yet been scheduled.

Water samples will be collected over two to three days from water fountains and dishwashers in all eight schools, plus Pinecrest Center, he said. Results should be known about two weeks after testing and results will be made publicly available, Huff said.

Its a fairly simple process and we can do it, he said.

Responding to the crisis in Flint, Michigan, school officials across the country are testing classroom sinks and cafeteria faucets for lead, trying to uncover any concealed problems and to reassure anxious parents.

Just a fraction of schools and day care centers nationwide are required to check for lead because most receive their water from municipal systems that test at other locations. State and federal lawmakers have called for wider testing.

Among schools and day care centers operating their own water systems, Environmental Protection Agency data analyzed by The Associated Press showed that 278 violated federal lead levels at some point during the past three years. Roughly a third of those had lead levels that were at least double the federal limit.

In almost all cases, the problems can be traced to aging buildings with lead pipes, older drinking fountains and water fixtures that have parts made with lead.

Huff said he does not anticipate finding elevated lead levels in water tested at Mason City schools.

In February, City Administrator Brent Trout said the citys water system is in no danger of having the lead problems that have plagued Flint, in part because there are no lead pipes in the citys distribution system.

Trout said the water is also tested for the presence of lead at 30 locations in the water system. The city posts a yearly water quality report on the citys website, www.masoncity.net.

At the citys water treatment plant, safeguards are in place to guard against several potential dangers, said plant Superintendent Don Thorson in February.
CLEAR LAKE | Galilean Lutheran Church and First Congregational Church of Clear Lake invite children to a cross-culture Vacation Bible School: Expedition Norway.

A summer kids event called Expedition Norway VBS will be hosted at Galilean Lutheran Church from June 13 to June 16.

Kids will sing songs, play high-energy games, eat Norwegian treats, experience Bible adventures, collect Bible Memory Makers, and explore what daily life is like for kids in Norway.

The children also will watch a video visit with real kids in Norway each day.

Expedition Norway VBS is for kids from preschool to sixth grade and will run from 5:30 to 8 p.m. each evening. Supper will be served at 5:30 p.m. with a later snack.

For more information call Galilean Church at 641-357-2296 or First Congregational Church 641-357-2818.
James Jim Meinders

BUFFALO CENTER  James Jim Meinders, 83, of Buffalo Center, died Wednesday, June 8, 2016, at Hospice of North Iowa Inpatient Unit, Mason City.

A Celebration of Life will be held today (Friday) from 5 to 7 p.m. at The Barn Gruis Recreational Center, rural Buffalo Center, with a time of sharing memories to begin at 6:30 p.m.

A graveside inurnment will be held at 11 a.m. Saturday at Olena Mound Cemetery, Buffalo Center, with Pastor Larry Doughan of Ramsey Reformed Church, Titonka, officiating.

Military honors will be conducted by the Buffalo Center American Legion #21 and the VFW Post 4824.

Winter Funeral Home of Buffalo Center in charge of arrangements.
MASON CITY  An audit request regarding Mason City Schools has been filed with the state, according to a statement from the school district.

The School Board and superintendent received a letter from the Office of Auditor of State of Iowa dated May 31 notifying the district of a request for re-audit for the fiscal year ending June 30, 2015.

The letter states, Based upon the request for re-audit and other information provided, we have determined re-audit procedures are necessary and appropriate. For your information, in addition to fiscal year 2015 transactions, the re-audit may involve a review of selected prior year and current year transactions and records, as deemed necessary.

The auditors office expects the re-audit work to begin in July 2016. After auditing work is compete, a written report which is public information will be issued.

The district will respond, after review of the findings, to make any recommended changes found needed through this re-audit process, School Board President Janna Arndt and Superintendent Mike Penca said in a statement.

Deputy State Auditor Tami Kusian said her office could not confirm specific issues that will be examined in the districts books. Although the main focus will be on the 2015 fiscal year, the scope of the review will expand if problems are also found in a prior year, or the current fiscal year, she said.

The length of the review will depend on how many years they end up examining, Kusian said.

Who specifically requested the report would not be made publicly available until their report is released. A re-audit request can be made by a private individual, school employee or elected official, she said.

Typically, her office can re-audit around five school districts each year. But, she said, she does not recall a recent re-audit request for Mason City Schools.

If we have its been over 20 years, she said.

Accounting firm Hogan-Hansen, which independently audits the districts finances annually, noted in reports issued to the School Board in 2010, 2011, 2013 and 2015 that it found the district had exceeded its certified budget  or approved spending plan.

It is not known if that is within the scope of the states pending review.

A representative from Hogan-Hansen was out of the office and not available for comment on Friday.

An official from the Iowa Department of Education said that as long as the district had reserve savings to cover the overspending in those years, it was not a cause for concern for the state.

It isnt necessarily a big deal, said Department of Education Deputy Director Jeff Berger.

There was nothing on our end that was red-flagged, he said.
As she claimed ownership of the Democratic presidential nomination on Tuesday evening, Hillary Clinton knew she had to appeal to supporters of Bernie Sanders, the insurgent progressive whose campaign attracted millions of young voters.

In her brief and uncharacteristically lyrical speech, Clinton therefore praised Sanders, who had still shown no sign of conceding that his long-shot effort to claw the nomination from her had failed.

She talked in general terms about principles that Democrats in both bitterly feuding camps presumably believe in: greater economic equality, a higher minimum wage and getting unaccountable money out of politics.

Sen. Sanders, his campaign and the vigorous debate that weve had about how to raise income, reduce inequality and increase upward mobility have been very good for the Democratic Party and for America, she said, waving a giant olive branch at her still-unreconciled rival.

Clinton also spent considerable time reminding voters of the one factor that she and her campaign may consider their ace in the hole: The presumptive Republican nominee.

Donald Trump is temperamentally unfit to be president, she said. Trumps slogan, Make America great again, is code for lets take America backward, she charged.

In any major speech, the things that are left out are often as important as the sentiments that were included. Clinton didnt mention her husband, former President Bill Clinton, although he was onstage. She didnt mention President Barack Obama, who named her secretary of state, although shes counting on him for help in the campaign, too.

Perhaps most important, she wasnt triumphalist. She didnt mention the raw electoral numbers that her campaign aides have been brandishing, increasingly fiercely, over the past few weeks; the fact that on Monday, the Associated Press declared that she had enough delegates to win the nomination; or that, on Tuesday, she won a majority of pledged delegates chosen through primaries and caucuses even before the California results were in; or the fact that she was on track to win some 3 million more voters than Sanders over the course of an unexpectedly difficult primary campaign.

Nor did she make any demand that Sanders drop out of the race, not even a gentle hint.

It was as if the entire Clinton campaign had suddenly noticed that they had finally crossed the finish line, and could, for once, be generous to their defeated opponent  even though, in private, there is still little or no mutual affection between the two camps.

As recently as Tuesday afternoon, prominent Clinton supporters including Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-California, were openly expressing annoyance at Sanders resistance to dropping out. But other Democratic elders, including Obama and Vice President Biden, urged Clinton and her aides to give Sanders the space he needed to recognize that his movement was sputtering to an end.

Obama called both candidates on Tuesday. He congratulated Clinton on securing the nomination and congratulated Sanders on his campaign.

Over the last few weeks, the Sanders team has been slowly coming to terms with the implacable arithmetic of the race: Clintons lead  among both pledged delegates and unelected superdelegates  was too large to overcome. Still, theyve said that they need time to reach a consensus that their cause is hopeless  and, as a practical matter, to help their enthusiastic supporters think about transferring their allegiance to the nominee theyve been fighting.

One test for Clinton, then, was whether she would make that process easier or harder for the Sanders camp  whether she would demand a concession speech or criticize the senator for hesitating, as some of her aides had already done.

In the end, she chose to be gracious  if mostly by omission.

Plenty of hard work still lies ahead, of course. Sanders and his followers have a list of demands for changes in the party rules and platform that they intend to press at the convention in Philadelphia next month.

And Clinton doesnt only need to pacify the liberal wing of her party, she needs to find a way to bring skeptical independent and moderate voters to her side as well.

Her most vigorous rhetoric came as she reminded voters that shes not Trump, whom she said wants to win by stoking fear and rubbing salt in wounds.

We are better than this, she said. We wont let this happen in America.

From the perspective of history, the most important thing that happened on Tuesday was that a woman claimed the presidential nomination for the first time in American history  and, to be sure, Clinton marked that landmark, too. But only for a moment.

Underneath the rhetoric, the rest of her speech was brisk, practical and politically targeted  not unlike the candidate herself.
Frontline Ltd. (the "Company" or "Frontline") (NYSE:FRO) is pleased to announce the acquisition of two VLCC newbuildings under construction at Hyundai Heavy Industries at a purchase price of $84 million each. The vessels are due for delivery in September and November 2016.

The Company has also secured options for two additional sister vessels with delivery in January and March 2017 at a purchase price of $85 million each.

Robert Hvide Macleod, Chief Executive Officer of Frontline Management AS commented:

"We have been consistently looking for ways to increase Frontline's exposure to the tanker market as current resale prices do not accurately reflect the earnings power of vessels on the water. This acquisition will be accretive in the near term given historically low pricing and the low cash breakeven rates on these vessels and across our fleet. It is also a reflection of our long term market outlook and our focus on generating significant cash flow to provide long term value to our shareholders."

June 9, 2016

The Board of Directors

Frontline Ltd.

Hamilton, Bermuda

Questions should be directed to:

Robert Hvide Macleod: Chief Executive Officer, Frontline Management AS

+47 23 11 40 84

Inger M. Klemp: Chief Financial Officer, Frontline Management AS

+47 23 11 40 76

Forward-Looking Statements

Matters discussed in this press release may constitute forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements include statements concerning plans, objectives, goals, strategies, future events or performance, and underlying assumptions and other statements, which are other than statements of historical facts. Words, such as, but not limited to "believe," "anticipate," "intends," "estimate," "forecast," "project," "plan," "potential," "may," "should," "expect," "pending" and similar expressions identify forward-looking statements. The forward-looking statements in this press release are based upon various assumptions, many of which are based, in turn, upon further assumptions. Although Frontline believes that these assumptions were reasonable when made, because these assumptions are inherently subject to significant uncertainties and contingencies which are difficult or impossible to predict and are beyond the control of Frontline, Frontline cannot assure you that they will achieve or accomplish these expectations, beliefs or projections. The information set forth herein speaks only as of the date hereof, and Frontline disclaims any intention or obligation to update any forward-looking statements as a result of developments occurring after the date of this communication.
Albany, NY, June 10, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Global Airborne Wind Turbine Market to be driven by Growing Demand for Clean and Sustainable Energy

An airborne wind turbine is a novel concept where the rotor of a wind turbine is suspended in air without the support of a tower. The unique design concept of airborne wind turbine offers aerodynamic and mechanical benefits. While such turbines curb the need for slip rings and reduce the spending on tower construction and yaw mechanisms, they offer high velocity and greater efficiency at higher altitudes. The growing demand for clean and sustainable energy has boosted the global wind turbine market. According to the findings of Greenpeace International and the Global Wind Energy Council, wind turbines are expected to account for 12% of the overall electricity generation worldwide by 2020. In the coming years, the global airborne wind turbine market is anticipated to register robust growth owing to the high efficiency of airborne wind turbines.

Get free research PDF for more Professional and Technical insights: http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=B&rep_id=10838

Role of startups in the airborne wind turbines market:

Some of the key players in the global airborne wind turbine market are DeWind Co., Acciona S.A., and Fuhrlander AG. A number of startup firms are entering the market with innovative designs of airborne wind turbines. For example, Altaeros Energies, a company started by a group of MIT graduates, has developed a buoyant airborne turbine (BAT) that aims to provide electricity across rural areas where power is unavailable. BAT is expected to take airborne wind turbine technology to the next level as it operates 1,000 feet above the ground to catch stronger and consistent winds. Altaeros Energies is partnering with the Golden Valley Electric Association in Alaska to test its airborne wind turbine.

Browse Research Report: http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/airborne-wind-turbine-market.html

What are key factors impacting the growth of the global airborne wind turbine market?

The growing demand for energy, the fluctuating prices of fuel derived from non-renewable resources, and conducive government regulations are playing an important role in the growth of the global airborne wind turbine market. Expensive infrastructure such as electrical grids and power stations are not required for airborne wind turbines and this factor has further driven the installation of airborne wind turbines worldwide.

However, airborne wind turbines have also certain drawbacks. Harnessing wind energy from high altitudes increases the risk of unforeseen collisions and hence, automated control piloting is required for airborne wind turbines for additional safety. Extensive research is being conducted to design robust and reliable airborne wind turbines.

Customize this research as per your requirements:http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=CR&rep_id=10838

Which are the promising regions for the growth of the global airborne wind turbines market?

In countries such as China, Brazil, India, and Russia, the ever-growing consumption of electricity has boosted the demand for wind energy as wind energy technologies demand low maintenance and generate electricity at low costs. The U.S., India, China, Spain, and Germany are some of the key countries involved in generating wind energy on a large scale.

Other Research Reports:

Wind Turbine Automation Market:http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/wind-turbine-automation-market.html

Wind Turbine Alternator Market:http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/wind-turbine-alternator-market.html

About TMR

Transparency 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 decisionmakers. TMRs experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather and analyze information.
DETROIT, June 10, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Smithfields Helping Hungry Homes program made the 10th stop on its 2016 nationwide hunger-relief tour this morning to donate more than 35,000 pounds of protein to Gleaners Community Food Bank. The donation will provide more than 140,000 servings and help the food bank continue to provide 79,000 meals each day to families and individuals suffering from hunger throughout southeastern Michigan.



A photo accompanying this announcement is available at http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/42563d89-350d-4164-b9b5-1e210ff8676c

Helping Hungry Homes, now in its eighth year, is Smithfields coast-to-coast program to help Americans become more food secure. This year, the program will help fight hunger through more than 30 large-scale protein donations to food banks across the United States totaling more than 3.5 million servings. To date, Helping Hungry Homes has provided more than 38 million servings of protein to food banks across America.

Representatives from Smithfield presented the donation to Gleaners Community Food Bank during an event on Friday, June 10 at Gleaners, located at 2131 Beaufait St, Detroit, MI. Speakers discussed the importance of donations like this in southeastern Michigan, where nearly 17 percent of people are food insecure and 300,000 children are on school-assisted lunch programs.

Smithfield has a long history of supporting our hungry neighbors in southeast Michigan, said Anne Schenk, vice president of communication for Gleaners. This generous donation of high-quality protein will reach struggling families with the complete nutrition they need but otherwise would not be able to afford. Im truly grateful to our friends at Smithfield for their continued partnership with Gleaners in solving hunger.

During the summer months, many children on school-assisted lunch programs dont know from where their next meal will come, said Dennis Pittman, Smithfield senior director of corporate communications and public affairs. Smithfield is proud to provide Gleaners Community Food Bank with this donation through our Helping Hungry Homes program to help assist these children, as well as thousands of other families and individuals suffering from hunger, throughout southeastern Michigan.

About Smithfield

A leading provider of high-quality pork products, Smithfield was founded in 1936 in Smithfield, Virginia, establishing the town as the Ham Capital of the World. From hand-trimmed bacon and slow-smoked holiday hams to marinated tenderloins, Smithfield brings artistry, authenticity and a commitment to heritage, flavor, and handcrafted excellence to everything it produces. With a vast product portfolio including smoked meats, hams, bacon, sausage, ribs, and a wide variety of fresh pork cuts, the company services retail, foodservice, and deli channels across the United States and 30 countries abroad. All of Smithfields products meet the highest quality and safety standards in the industry. To learn more about how Flavor Hails from Smithfield, please visit www.Smithfield.com, www.Twitter.com/SmithfieldBrand, and www.Facebook.com/CookingWithSmithfield. Smithfield is a brand of Smithfield Foods.

About Smithfield Foods

Smithfield Foods is a $14 billion global food company and the worlds largest pork processor and hog producer. In the United States, the company is also the leader in numerous packaged meats categories with popular brands including Smithfield, Eckrich, Nathans Famous, Farmland, Armour, Cooks, John Morrell, Gwaltney, Kretschmar, Margherita, Curlys, Carando and Healthy Ones. Smithfield Foods is committed to providing good food in a responsible way and maintains robust animal care, community involvement, employee safety, environmental and food safety and quality programs. For more information, visit www.smithfieldfoods.com.

About Gleaners Community Food Bank

Everyone wins when hunger is solved. For nearly 40 years, Gleaners Community Food Bank has been feeding hungry people and nourishing our communities. Headquartered in Detroit, Gleaners operates five distribution centers in Wayne, Oakland, Macomb, Livingston and Monroe counties and provides food to 535 partner soup kitchens, food pantries, shelters and other agencies throughout southeastern Michigan. Gleaners collects 34.5 million pounds of food a year and distributes 79,000 meals each day including providing nourishing food and nutrition education to 84,700 children a year. Every dollar donated provides three meals and 93 cents of every donated dollar goes to food and food programs. Learn more at www.gcfb.org.
SPRINGFIELD, Mass., June 10, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Carando, the artisans of Classic Italian Meats, partnered with Market Basket to donate $1,000 to The Boys and Girls Club of Plymouth on Friday. The donation will support direct service programs for youth and help maintain affordable memberships. Carando made the donation during the grand opening of the new Market Basket grocery store in Plymouth, Mass.



A photo accompanying this announcement is available at http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/2f2241b4-7c7c-48af-998a-a068cfd03b1b

Carando and Market Basket representatives presented a check to Christine Young and Ted Donnelly of The Boys and Girls Club of Plymouth. The donation is part of the Carando Cares program, a campaign to support organizations making a positive difference in local communities. Carando is a brand of Smithfield Foods.

Carando was built on tradition, so its important that Carando continues its commitment to giving back to organizations that do great work in our communities, said Michael J. Sargent, Senior Brand Manager, Carando. The Boys and Girls Club of Plymouth is committed to improving the lives of our youth and we are humbled to be able to help carry out their mission.

The Boys and Girls Club of Plymouth has served Plymouth youth for more than 100 years. Today, over 800 children are taking advantage of the programs, activities and services provided by the Boys and Girls Club of Plymouth. They benefit from trained, caring, professional staff and volunteers, who help young people take control of their lives, envision productive futures and reach their goals.

The Boston Bruins Mascot Blades was on hand for the donation, helping Carando and Market Basket present the check to The Boys and Girls Club of Plymouth.

Its great to be able to partner with Carando to give this donation to the Boys and Girls Club of Plymouth, said Paul Quigley, Store Director, Market Basket. We hope we can continue to partner with Carando in the future to do great things like this in the community.

In addition to the donation, Carando and Market Basket have also launched an in-store consumer sweepstakes to celebrate the grand opening. One grand prize winner will receive an at-home Italian dinner party for six guests. Two runner-up winners will receive a $100 Market Basket gift card. The sweepstakes will run through Wednesday, September 30, 2016. Visit the new Market Basket store in Plymouth for official rules and to enter the sweepstakes.

Carando Cares has made more than $250,000 in monetary and in-kind donations since the programs inception in 2013. For more information about Carando and Carando Cares, please visit carando.com or www.Facebook.com/CarandoMeats.

About Carando

All of our classic Italian meats stay true to the traditional recipes that our founder, Pietro Carando, brought to America from his boyhood home in Torino, Italy. One taste is all it takes to discover the authentic Italian difference of Carando. For more information, visit carando.com.

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Smithfield Foods is a $14 billion global food company and the world's largest pork processor and hog producer. In the United States, the company is also the leader in numerous packaged meats categories with popular brands including Smithfield, Eckrich, Nathan's Famous, Farmland, Armour, Cook's, John Morrell, Gwaltney, Kretschmar, Margherita, Curly's, Carando and Healthy Ones. Smithfield Foods is committed to providing good food in a responsible way and maintains robust animal care, community involvement, employee safety, environmental and food safety and quality programs. For more information, visit www.smithfieldfoods.com.
NEW YORK, June 10, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Pomerantz LLP announces that a class action lawsuit has been filed on behalf of Gerdau S.A. (Gerdau or the Company) (NYSE:GGB) and certain of its officers. The class action, filed in United States District Court, Southern District of New York, and docketed under 16-cv-03925, is on behalf of a class consisting of all persons or entities who purchased or otherwise acquired Gerdau securities as American depositary receipts (ADRs) between June 2, 2011 and May 15, 2016, inclusive (the Class Period). This class action seeks to recover damages against Defendants for alleged violations of the federal securities laws under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 (the Exchange Act).



If you are a shareholder who purchased Gerdau securities during the Class Period, you have until July 25, 2016 to ask the Court to appoint you as Lead Plaintiff for the class. A copy of the Complaint can be obtained at www.pomerantzlaw.com. To discuss this action, contact Robert S. Willoughby at rswilloughby@pomlaw.com or 888.476.6529 (or 888.4-POMLAW), toll free, ext. 9980. Those who inquire by e-mail are encouraged to include their mailing address, telephone number, and number of shares purchased.

[Click here to join this class action]

Gerdau produces and commercializes steel products worldwide. The Company operates through Brazil Business Operation, North America Business Operation, South America Business Operation, and Special Steel Business Operation segments.

The Complaint alleges that throughout the Class Period, Defendants made materially false and misleading statements regarding the Companys business, operational and compliance policies. Specifically, Defendants made false and/or misleading statements and/or failed to disclose that: (i) the Company was engaged in a bribery scheme in collusion with Brazils Board of Tax Appeals (CARF); (ii) Gerdau had defrauded Brazilian tax authorities of roughly $429 million in taxes; (iii) Gerdaus Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Defendant Andre Bier Gerdau Johannpeter (Johannpeter) and other directors and employees of the Company had engaged in bribery, money laundering, and influence peddling; and (iv) as a result of the foregoing, Defendants statements about Gerdaus business, operations, and prospects were false and misleading and/or lacked a reasonable basis.

On or about March 26, 2015, Brazilian authorities announced that a Federal Police investigation, dubbed Operation Zelotes, had uncovered a multibillion-dollar tax fraud scheme at the Ministry of Finance (Finance Ministry), reporting that as many as 70 companies had bribed members of the CARF, a body within the Finance Ministry that hears appeals on tax disputes, to obtain favorable rulings that recused or waived the amounts that the companies owed. On or around March 29, 2015, it was reported that Gerdau was among the companies under investigation.

On December 4, 2015, the Brazilian publication Jornal do Comercio reported that a report by a committee of the National Congress of Brazil had named Gerdau, along with other companies, as a beneficiary of a tax evasion scheme.

On this news, Gerdaus ADR price fell $0.11, or 6.96%, to close at $1.47 on December 4, 2015.

On or around February 25, 2016, post-market, Brazilian police raided Gerdau offices in connection with Operation Zelotes, as police carried out some 20 court orders for testimony and 18 search warrants in Recife, Porto Alegre, Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo, and Brasilia. Gerdaus CEO, Defendant Johannpeter, was among the individuals ordered to testify by days end. In an e-mailed statement, Gerdau stated that the Company had never authorized the use of its name in illegal negotiations and that the Company abided by rigorous ethical standards.

On this news, Gerdaus ADR price fell $0.03, or 3.16%, to close at $0.92 on February 25, 2016.

On February 29, 2016, Gerdau announced that it would delay the release of its fourth-quarter financial results as the Company analyze[d] the case records involving Gerdau in the recent phase of [the] Zelotes Operation.

On May 16, 2016, various news outlets reported that Brazils federal police had accused Gerdau of evading $429 million in taxes and indicted a total of 19 Gerdau personnel, including Defendant Johannpeter and some of the Companys executives, directors and lawyers, on corruption-related charges including bribery, money laundering, and influence peddling.

On this news, Gerdaus ADR price fell $0.13, or over 7%, to close at $1.72 on May 16, 2016.

The Pomerantz Firm, with offices in New York, Chicago, Florida, and Los Angeles, is acknowledged as one of the premier firms in the areas of corporate, securities, and antitrust class litigation. Founded by the late Abraham L. Pomerantz, known as the dean of the class action bar, the Pomerantz Firm pioneered the field of securities class actions. Today, more than 80 years later, the Pomerantz Firm continues in the tradition he established, fighting for the rights of the victims of securities fraud, breaches of fiduciary duty, and corporate misconduct. The Firm has recovered numerous multimillion-dollar damages awards on behalf of class members. See www.pomerantzlaw.com
NEW YORK, June 10, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Pomerantz LLP announces that a class action lawsuit has been filed on behalf of Target Corporation (Target or the Company) (NYSE:TGT) and certain of its officers. The class action, filed in United States District Court, District of Minnesota, and docketed under 16-cv-01485, is on behalf of a class consisting of all persons or entities who purchased or otherwise acquired Target securities between February 27, 2013 and May 19, 2014 inclusive (the Class Period). This class action seeks to recover damages against Defendants for alleged violations of the federal securities laws under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 (the Exchange Act).



If you are a shareholder who purchased Target securities during the Class Period, you have until July 18, 2016 to ask the Court to appoint you as Lead Plaintiff for the class. A copy of the Complaint can be obtained at www.pomerantzlaw.com. To discuss this action, contact Robert S. Willoughby at rswilloughby@pomlaw.com or 888.476.6529 (or 888.4-POMLAW), toll free, ext. 9980. Those who inquire by e-mail are encouraged to include their mailing address, telephone number, and number of shares purchased.

[Click here to join this class action]

Target currently operates general merchandise discount stores throughout the U.S. The Company sells a wide variety of household essentials, music and movies, electronics, clothing, and other items, through its traditional stores, its website, and via direct shipment from vendors or third-parties.

On January 13, 2011, Target announced that it would expand its retail operations into Canada, with plans to open between 100 and 150 stores in the country during 2013 and 2014.

The Complaint alleges that throughout the Class Period, Defendants made materially false and misleading statements regarding the Companys business, operational and compliance policies. Specifically, Defendants made false and/or misleading statements and/or failed to disclose that: (1) at the time of the opening of Target's first group of stores in Canada, Target had significant problems with its supply chain infrastructure, distribution centers, and technology systems, as well as inadequately trained employees; (2) these problems caused significant, pervasive issues, including excess inventory at distribution centers and inadequate inventory at retail locations; (3) the excess inventory at distribution centers and lack of inventory at retail locations forced Target to heavily discount products and incur heavy losses; (4) the supply-chain and personnel problems were not typical of newly launched locations in Target's traditional U.S.-based market; and (5) as a result, Targets public statements were materially false and misleading at all relevant times.

On August 21, 2013, Target announced its results for the second quarter of 2013, including weak guidance for full-year earnings per share (EPS) for 2013. Although Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Defendant Gregg Steinhafel sought to reassure investors that the poor performance was of the same kind that Target saw every time we open a new store here in the United States, Targets stock price declined by $2.45 per share, or 3.61 percent.

On November 21, 2013, Target released downbeat results for the third quarter of 2013, including news that the Companys Canadian segment had suffered a drop in operation margin from rates exceeding 30 percent in prior quarters to only 14.8 percent due to the need to aggressively discount merchandise. Although Chief Financial Officer (CFO) John Mulligan attempted to assure investors that Targets personnel were working to rationalize the Companys inventory overhang, Targets stock price declined by $2.30 per share, or 3.46 percent.

On May 5, 2014, Target announced that its Defendant Steinhafel, the architect of the Companys Canadian expansion, would leave the Company effective immediately, without any clear successor. Instead, the Companys CFO Mulligan was appointed interim CEO. On this news, Targets stock price fell $2.14 per share, or 3.45 percent.

On May 20, 2014, prior to the trading session, news reports circulated that Target had fired Tony Fisher, the Companys president of Canadian operations. The abrupt termination of Mr. Fisher revealed that the string of weak results from Targets Canadian operations were not simply growing pains associated with normal store openings, but rather due to significant operational issues and were partial disclosures of Defendants fraudulent scheme to conceal the persistent and ultimately intractable problems with the expansion.

Eventually, on January 15, 2015, Target revealed the Company would discontinue its Canadian operations and that Target Canada Co. had filed for bankruptcy protection in Canada. In response to this news, Target stock declined $1.63 per share, or 2.1 percent.

The Pomerantz Firm, with offices in New York, Chicago, Florida, and Los Angeles, is acknowledged as one of the premier firms in the areas of corporate, securities, and antitrust class litigation. Founded by the late Abraham L. Pomerantz, known as the dean of the class action bar, the Pomerantz Firm pioneered the field of securities class actions. Today, more than 80 years later, the Pomerantz Firm continues in the tradition he established, fighting for the rights of the victims of securities fraud, breaches of fiduciary duty, and corporate misconduct. The Firm has recovered numerous multimillion-dollar damages awards on behalf of class members. See www.pomerantzlaw.com
It's been over a decade since the city rezoned the Williamsburg waterfront and promised the community a new park in exchange for all the luxury condo development, and over a year since a fire charred the CitiStorage warehouse that's been standing in the way of the promised 28-acre Bushwick Inlet Park. Today, the city offered the owner of the CitiStorage site, Norman Brodsky, $100 million to acquire the 11 acres he's currently sitting on, but according to those advocating for the park, Brodsky rejected that offer, saying he's thinking more in the $225-500 million range.

Six years after then-Mayor Bloomberg promised Williamsburg residents the park as part of the rezoning initiative, he admitted the city couldn't afford to buy the 11-acre site, which at the time was estimated to cost between $60 and $90 million. Since then, the city spent $225 million buying just 9 of the proposed 28 acres, and in March it spent $53 million to acquire another 7 acres, which were occupied by the Bayside Fuel Oil Depot's warehouses and fuel storage tanks.

The first parcel acquired by Bloomberg's administration is now open to the public, and the second is expected to open within the year, according to the letter the city sent Brodsky today. The sites acquired under Mayor de Blasio's tenure will soon undergo remediation and development. The CitiStorage land parcel, meanwhile, is the only obstacle to the park's ultimate completion.

According to Friends of Bushwick Inlet Park, the coalition advocating for the park's completion, Brodsky recently hired the real estate firm Cushman & Wakefield to market the property as an office complex for $300 million. He's previously said he thinks it's worth $500 million.

"Like Donald Trump, his property's value depends on how he feels when he gets up in the morning," the group said in a press release this afternoon. "Given the valuation, the City's $100,000,000 offer is very fair, even taking into account the land's waterfront location. Brodsky bought his property knowing full well that the community had long dreamed of having a park there. He purchased the property for a fraction of the current value, and will reap an almost 20x return between when he bought it in the late 1990s and now."

The property can't be valued as anything other than heavy industrial land (the cheapest land value in the city), according to a 1943 Supreme Court ruling that states that a property owner in a condemnation proceeding can't profit from an increase in land value surrounding the condemned property. According to Friends of Bushwick Inlet Park, the current market price for such land is between $125 and $150 per buildable square foot, which would value the property at between $73 million and $88 million.

"He's greedy," said Adam Perlmutter, an attorney working with Friends of Bushwick Inlet Park. "At this point, I think his reputation's on the line. He's been a member of our community for a long time, he's going to make an enormous amount of money off this property, and he's been offered a fair value for this property, and he's standing in the way of the creation of a large waterfront public park for all New Yorkers. This isn't a half-baked concept that we're floating. It's not because I say it, it's because the US Supreme Court says it."

Brodsky couldn't be reached for comment in time for publication, and the city couldn't confirm that he rejected the offer. However, according to Natalie Grybauskas, a spokesperson for City Hall, "the administration believes this is a fair and appropriate offer. In fact, this offer represents approximately $3 million more per acre than the average price paid for other sites contained within the Bushwick Inlet Park footprint."

If Brodsky indeed does not take the city's offer, the land parcel could be acquired through eminent domain: the state senate is currently considering a bill that would empower Governor Cuomo's main economic agency, Empire State Development, to seize the remaining parkland. Eminent domain could be exercised even if Brodsky is successful in selling the property to a speculative buyer.

"Those prospective buyers can overpay for the property, and take the risk of recouping their investment in a condemnation proceeding," said Friends of Bushwick Inlet Park in their release. "They so do at their peril. And we promise a long, hard fight along the way."
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After being arrested earlier this week on corruption charges, Norman Seabrook has been ousted from his position as president of the Correction Officers' Benevolent Association and replaced by his second in command, who's been described as a faithful sidekick of Seabrook's who the former chief consulted before making his allegedly corrupt investments.

Seabrook, who'd led the union for two decades, was arrested early Wednesday morning and charged with wire fraud: he allegedly funneled millions of union retiree benefits and operating funds into a hedge fund run by Murray Huberfeld, who's said to have given him six-figure kickbacks each year, per their agreement. Huberfeld has also been arrested on wire fraud charges.

Huberfeld was allegedly fronted $60,000 for Seabrook's first kickback by a cooperating witness reported to be Jona Rechnitz, who's also been implicated in an investigation into the legality of Mayor de Blasio's campaign fundraising. That $60,000 was delivered in a briefcase from Salvatore Ferragamo, Seabrook's "favorite store," and federal agents found that bag, along with 10 pairs of Ferragamo shoes, when raiding the ousted union chief's home on Wednesday, prosecutors said.

"I understand this is politics," Seabrook told Eyewitness News yesterday. "I understand it. And, you know, it's my turn in the battle. But at the end of the day, we will be victorious...I only ask that people continue to respect our privacy, respect what we do, and we'll go from there."

On Thursday, COBA's executive board voted to remove Seabrook as presidentbut his replacement, Elias Husamudeen, is a longtime sidekick of Seabrook's, and was reportedly among those who voted in favor of investing in Huberfeld's fund, Platinum Partners. Martin Horn, who was the city Commissioner of Correction and Probation from 2003 to 2009, told the Wall Street Journal that Husamadeen was a member of Seabrook's inner circle, and described him as "a strong advocate, but a very different guy than Norman...He has always been a peacemaker. When things get roiled up, he comes and smooths them up."

Indeed, many have described COBA's executive board as weak and essentially in Seabrook's pocketthe criminal complaint against him said as much, stating that despite the board's existence, Seabrook made "many significant decisions affecting COBA, including financial decisions, unilaterally. Members of the executive board rarely question Seabrook because Seabrook has the power to make decisions that affect their livelihood, for example, by stripping them of their status as board members (and the accompanying salary), sending them back to work as correction officers at a jail, or altering their hours."

"Norman is a tyrant," former board member William Valentin, who was kicked out by Seabrook in 2015, told the New York Times. "The executive board is pretty much under his control. They really don't argue with him too much. Whatever he says goes."

With that in mind, it's not clear that Seabrook's ousting will lessen his hold over the executive board and its new president. On top of that, Seabrook's name is still on the ballot for this summer's unionwide elections, and if he wins, Husamadeen will continue to act as president in his stead.

In a statement yesterday, Husamudeen said that "the current leadership of COBA will remain focused on protecting the women and men in uniform who risk their lives working in our jails every day. Our officers face an increase in gang violence, an increase in encounters with the mentally ill that they are inadequately trained for, and an increase in overtime that is pushing them to the brink. These issues are too important to allow for distractions."

As the result of a class-action lawsuit joined by U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara, whose office brought Wednesday's charges against Seabrook, federal monitors are now overseeing reforms at Rikers Island, which has been accused of a "deep-seated culture of violence", particularly toward inmates. The monitors' most recent report found serious flaws at the Correction Department's training academy, and persistent violence by guards against restrained inmates.

Seabrook has opposed many of the changes that de Blasio's administration has sought at Rikers, especially the scaling back of solitary confinement for 18- to 21-year-olds. His ousting, therefore, might seem a boon to reformersbut Seabrook commanded the respect and loyalty of the city's correction officers, and the Times points out that his absence could make it more difficult for reformers to try and gain their support.

"It has been a very fraught relationship over the years," de Blasio said Tuesday when asked about Seabrook. "Sometimes weve been able to work together. Sometimes there was real disagreement. I haven't spoken to him in several months. We have a lot we've been trying to change on Rikers Island. Sometimes he was willing to work with us, sometimes he wasn't. But the reform on Rikers Island will continue aggressively."
The former principal at a Queens high school for English language learners allegedly discriminated against the three black teachers on her staff over the course of a year, saying that one "looked like a gorilla in a sweater" and disparaging another for his "big lips quivering," according to a lawsuit filed this week against the Department of Education.

The office of US Attorney for the Southern District of New York Preet Bharara filed the suit, which accuses then-Pan American International High School principal Minerva Zanca of violating Title VII by harassing nontenured teachers John Flanagan and Heather Hightower, as well as tenured teacher Lisa-Erika James, in an effort to force them from their jobs. According to the suit, Principal Zanca made disparaging remarks about the nontenured teachers to her assistant principal, and issued sub-par ratings for lesson plans without first assessing them.

Located in Elmhurst, Queens, Pan American International High School serves about 375 students, according to its website. The majority are recent immigrants from Latin America.

All three black teachers, as well as the school's assistant principal (who was also rated unfavorably), left the DOE after the year of alleged abuses.

"It is nearly unthinkable that, in this day and age, one of the largest and most diverse school districts in the United States would allow racial discrimination and retaliation to flourish," Bharara said in a statement. "Federal civil rights laws prohibit this misconduct. This suit seeks to remedy the violations that occurred at Pan American and ensure that the New York City Department of Education protects its employees civil rights in the future."

Zanca served as principal of Pan American from August 2012 to June 2015, and allegedly harassed those teachers named in the suit during the 2012-13 school year. That year, the school employed 27 teachers, three of whom were black. The school's black teachers, as well as Pan American's assistant principal, all filed complaints against Zanca with the DOE during the summer of 2013; one teacher also filed suit with the United States Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which ultimately referred charges to the US Department of Justice.

Assistant Principal Anthony Riccardo told investigators that Zanca made racist comments consistentlyin addition to comparing Hightower to a gorilla and insulting Flanagan's lips, she allegedly said she could "never" have fucking nappy hair like Hightower. Once, Riccardo says she compared Flanagan to a black man with those same lips who danced down a supermarket isle in a Tropicana commercial.

James, the third black teacher named in the suit, oversaw an after school theater program that Zanca cut. The suit alleges that Zanca claimed to not have funding to run the program, even though the school "in fact had sufficient money."

During an internal DOE investigation, the suit states, Superintendent Juan Mendez sent an e-mail to the head of the Office of Equal Opportunity & Diversity Management, stating that the allegations against Zanca were "manufactured and untrue." Zanca was never punished.

During the fall of 2012 Zanca also allegedly conveyed to Riccardo that her goal was to have the nontenured black teachers fired, suggesting that the most efficient way to accomplish this was by rating their lessons "unsatisfactory." After Riccardo agreed to meet with Hightower to help her improve her lesson plans, Zanca allegedly told him he better not make [Hightower] a better teacher. Two complaints she filed against Riccardo with the DOE's internal investigatory office that year were dismissed, according to the suit.

Hightower, Flanagan and Riccardo were the only three employees at Pan American to receive unsatisfactory ratings for the entire 2012-13 school year.

Zanca retired in June 2015, and now works part-time as a guidance counselor at Frederick Douglass Academy in Bed-Stuy. Her salary is $55,670.

"If that's the case, this is definitely the wrong place for her, a Frederick Douglas parent told the News. The majority here are black kids. How can she help us?"

According to the DOE, Zanca and Mendez do not have any disciplinary history with the department to date. The Law Department says it is reviewing the case.

Reached for comment, DOE spokeswoman Devora Kay stated that, "All employees' work environments must be safe and supportive, and we have zero tolerance for any discrimination."
As if finding an affordable roof and four walls weren't already nearly impossible, a new British startup has developed software that makes a fickle landlord's job even easierTenant Assured combs and crunches a potential renter's Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn, calculating everything from your "credit" (how often do you post about, say, shopping or expensive travel?), to your "financial stress level" (maybe you tweet about your student debt), to how "agreeable" you are.

Assessing the startup this week, a Washington Post reporter submitted herself as a guinea pig, and was fed a list of her closest friends, a breakdown of her personality traits, and a rundown of every time she's tweeted the word "pregnant" or "loan."

The service also spits out a profile picture, raising concerns about race-based discrimination (a thing Airbnb has recently tried to defend itself against).



A sample tenant report (via).

Here's how the living nightmare of the privacy-conscious plays out: a landlord sends an e-mail request via Tenant Assured, prompting the potential tenant to grant permission for a search. With permission, the software combs public and private postsnot just your tweets, but your DMs and Facebook messages, too.

The final report goes straight to the landlord, skipping over the possible tenant, who's given no option to look over, much less challenge, the analysis. Plenty of the aggregated information is protected under the Fair Housing Act of 1968a fact co-founder Steve Thornhill doesn't seem to be worried about.

"If you're living a normal life, then, frankly, you have nothing to worry about," Thornhill amazingly told the Washington Post. He also somehow said the following combination of words with a straight face: "All we can do is give them the information. It's up to landlords to do the right thing."

It turns out the "right thing" is based off of highly subjective character assessments. From the website's FAQ section: "If an applicant is using a lot of negative words and regularly argumentative online, then he/she will likely have a negative online reputation. And vice versa." Get ready for more Orwellian apartment-hunting Style section stories! Are You Just Too Negative To Have A Home?

As for laws that might protect against this sort of digital snooping, New York-based attorney and privacy advocate Abi Hassen says this example only reiterates our need for a stronger legal framework.

"Part of the problem is we don't have laws to protect our privacy," he told us. "We don't have a digital Bill of Rights.... [This app] isn't violating a particular law, but it helps skirt the intent of anti-discrimination laws."

Score Assured, which owns Tenant Assured and plans to launch versions of the service this summer for employers, Tindr users, and families seeking, say, a dog walker or a nanny, did not immediately respond to our request for comment. It's as-yet unclear if any NYC landlords are testing out the service. But tenant advocates and attorneys say the implications are alarming.

"Landlords try and spy on rent stabilized tenants as a means to kick them out of their stable homes. It happens all the time," said Cea Weaver of the Crown Heights Tenants Union. "This is just giving landlords another tool to frivolously take tenants to court or unlawfully evict them from their homes."

Robert Desir, a staff attorney for the Legal Aid Society who represents tenants, told us on Friday that while many landlords pore over credit scores and go to housing court for background on potential tenants, he's never heard of such an acute analysis tool.

"It makes me nervous when I think about the people we represent, who don't really have a voice," he said. "Right now we're seeing a lot of discrimination based on source of income, which is illegal, [and] there's always the race discrimination that goes on."

"With the behaviors we've seen from landlords," he added, "this gives them more ammunition."

Here's a promotional video for the service, set to the tune of the apocalypse:





UPDATE: This piece has been updated with a comment from attorney Abi Hassen.

UPDATE 6/17: An earlier version of this story incorrectly attributed reportage to the Wall Street Journal, rather than the Washington Post.
A Helena man accused of robbing a credit union changed his plea to guilty to a lesser charge Thursday.

John James Laverdure, 40, entered a plea of guilty but mentally ill to a felony charge of theft, which was amended from the initial charge of robbery.

Laverdure appeared in district court via teleconference from the Montana State Hospital. He was slated to face a trial on the robbery charge beginning Monday. He pleaded not guilty in February.

Police say Laverdure entered the Rocky Mountain Credit Union, 3400 N. Montana Ave., on Dec. 11 and gave a teller a note demanding cash. He asked for large bills and no dye packs, court documents allege.

Laverdure admitted he was given more than $1,500.

Photos from the robbery were sent out to police. One of the officers recognized Laverdure from previous dealings, court documents note.

Police apprehended Laverdure later that night at a pizza restaurant. Police say Laverdure was found wearing similar clothing to what was seen in the surveillance footage from the credit union.

A pre-sentence investigation was ordered. A sentencing hearing is set for July 19.

Attorneys said they will suggest further commitment to the state Department of Health and Human Services, which is in charge of the state hospital at Warm Springs. Laverdure is faces a maximum of 10 years and a $50,0000 fine.
As the rhetoric ramps up leading to the election and the next legislative session, so does the finger-pointing at the failure of the past legislature to pass meaningful infrastructure funding in the final form of Senate Bill 416. After passing the Senate by 473, SB 416 failed by one vote of the necessary two-thirds majority in the House of Representatives. The bill had the support of 51 of 88 Republicans, 62 Democrats, and Gov. Steve Bullock. Yet it failed of final passage. Some people now seek to identify the inclusion of the renovation and expansion of the Montana Historical Society facility  The Montana Heritage Center  as the explanation for the defeat of the infrastructure bill. These people describe The Montana Heritage Center as unnecessary, a pet project and pork. We find that an astonishing claim.

The Montana Historical Society, created in 1865, has faithfully and assiduously collected, preserved and assured access for Montana citizens to the historic documents, newspapers, photographs, artifacts and art of Montanas history for more than 150 years. The current home of the Montana Historical Society, the Veterans and Pioneers Memorial Building, stands directly adjacent to the state Capitol. Funded by the 1949 Legislature and opened in 1953, the current structure has long since become dysfunctional for the stewardship and appropriate exhibition of Montanas treasures and for the invaluable research conducted by scholars and citizens alike.

Recognized as The Smithsonian of the West, the Montana Historical Society must severely constrain its service and educational programs to commemorate and celebrate Montanas rich history. The Montana Heritage Center, designed to improve these conditions, has come before every legislative session since 2005, having secured limited bonding authority in that session. However, a small minority of legislators has prevented approval of the necessary changes to preserve and share with all citizens our exciting and important history. In our view, the preservation of the records, artifacts and art of our past represents a duty and responsibility of the current generation of Montanans to succeeding generations. Referring to this generational obligation as pork demeans all Montanans and their heritage.

The Montana Heritage Center project responds to the imperative to protect, expand, preserve and share the growing collections assembled by the Montana Historical Society. As an infrastructure project, construction of The Montana Heritage Center will reduce the risk of losing or damaging the irreplaceable history of past generations so that future generations of Montanans can enjoy and learn from this inheritance. The current facility, quite appropriate for its time, has reached the state that a catastrophic failure looms, given the cramped conditions and the rising demands placed on the Society. The board of trustees has developed the project to assure that The Montana Heritage Center will again allow all Montanans to celebrate our state, our history and our distinctive culture and way of life.

We, the members of the board of trustees, collectively encourage those who remain uncertain about the inclusion of The Montana Heritage Center in the legislative infrastructure package to visit the current historic but inadequate facility to learn of the work, view the collections, investigate the issues and see for themselves the shortcomings of an aging building, the preservation of which we have integrated into the project. We invite them to join the many thousands who visit the facility each year. The Montana Historical Society, as The Montana Heritage Center, belongs to all Montanans, not to those of us charged to oversee the Society and the Center. As citizens of this great state, we all have a stake in our common history, regardless of race, ethnicity, recency of arrival or political philosophy. Without question, our common history and shared culture richly deserve respect and thoughtful consideration, not the derogatory labeling of the past few months.

In the months ahead, we invite all Montana citizens to join us in refuting and rejecting all misleading and inaccurate statements about The Montana Heritage Center and the Montana Historical Society and the impact of their vital work and statewide reach. We, the Society trustees, function as your servants, the stewards of a celebrated heritage and a wonderful collection of records, artifacts and art revealing that heritage. We respectfully urge all Montanans to protect our common legacy.

This opinion is signed by members of the Montana Historical Society board of trustees: Bob Brown of Whitefish, president; Thomas Nygard of Bozeman, vice president; Kent Kleinkopf of Missoula, secretary; Janene Caywood, Missoula; Jim Court, Billings; George Dennison, Missoula; Cliff Edwards, Billings; Ed Jasmin, Helena; Charles Johnson, Helena; Steve Lozar, Polson; Thomas Minckler, Billings; Jude Sheppard, Chinook; Crystal Wong Shors, Helena; and James Utterback, Helena.
BILLINGS -- After blasting away at clay pigeons at the Blue Creek Sport Shooting Complex and Preserve on Thursday, Montana gubernatorial Candidate Greg Gianforte and former Texas Gov. Rick Perry took aim at a litany of policies they described as federal overreach, tying many to current Gov. Steve Bullock.

Along with former NRA director David Keen, the group praised Gianfortes gun views.

(But) a governor does a lot of other things, Keen said.

On a hot day  I believe its cooler in Lubbock than it is right here, Perry said  the former governor attacked the Clean Power Plan. Montana is expected to cut its smokestack carbon dioxide pollution by 47 percent by 2035.

It kills economies like Colstrip, he said.

Gianforte has said states that rely on coal revenue need to band together.

We need to push back hard against the Clean Power Plan, he said. Montanas future is being decided by out-of-staters.

Washington Gov. Jay Inslee signed a bill to finance the closure of the two older of Colstrips four units, despite protests from Bullock and Gianforte.

Other counties around the state are warily watching decreasing coal production this year, fearful of plummeting tax revenues. Several top economists have linked dropping coal prices to an increased supply of cheap natural gas and a glut of coal supply combined with a slowdown in demand, especially in China.

The market will find its place, Perry said. We live in a global economy.

Under Perry, Texas was noted for investing in oil, natural gas and wind energy.

Perry also reinforced a push to create more high-paying jobs that Gianforte has hammered on throughout his campaign.

Montana is not a competitive state economy, Perry said.

Perry said he believes Gianforte can turn that around, making governors from nearby states consider Montana a job-swiping threat.

They ought to be scared of this guy, he said. Perry said that several groups, including public schools, need to do a better job aligning with workforce needs, though he declined to name specific policies that need improving.

Ill leave that to the people of Montana to decide, he said.

Representatives from the American Legion and Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation were also at the event, where Gianforte appeared to shatter several clay pigeons, though crowded shooting often made it difficult to identify who hit what.

Gianforte and Perry have both gotten in line behind Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, with Perry endorsing him in early May despite earlier calling him a cancer on conservatism.

Gianforte, when asked if party leaders have a responsibility to support Trump, said its up to each individual to support who they wish.

On the same day Bullock touted a public lands proposal, Democrats criticized Perrys and Gianfortes public lands records, seizing on comments Perry made in 2014 to Fox News in an interview about conflict between the Bureau of Land Management and Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy.

The federal government already owns too much land, Perry said.
NASHVILLE, Tenn.  The Southern Baptist Convention lost more than 200,000 members in 2015 the ninth straight year of decline for the nation's largest Protestant denomination.

Membership stands at 15.3 million, down from 15.5 million in 2014, according to denomination statistics released Tuesday. Baptisms also fell by more than 10,000 to just a little more than 295,000.

Baptisms are an important measure for the Nashville-based denomination because of its strong commitment to evangelism.

After the numbers were announced, some denominational leaders emphasized the positive news that the number of Southern Baptist churches increased last year by 294, mostly due to new churches started by SBC pastors.

But Executive Committee President and CEO Frank Page refused to put a positive spin on the declines, exclaiming in a news release, "God help us all! In a world that is desperate for the message of Christ, we continue to be less diligent in sharing the Good News."

Mainline Protestant and Roman Catholic churches started to experience significant declines in the 1960s and 1970s, said Mark Chaves, a professor of sociology at Duke University who studies religious trends. Significant decline for many more conservative Protestant denominations has become apparent only in the last decade or so.

"There's just a national trend of declining religious involvement, and conservative churches are not immune to it, as they thought they were for a while," he said.

Comparing membership numbers across denominations can be difficult, since different groups report them differently. Chaves said he relies primarily on attendance estimates from large national surveys. The Southern Baptists say their average weekly attendance was 5.6 million last year, a decrease of about 97,000 from 2014.

Some denominations have stopped publicly reporting membership numbers altogether rather than admit their churches are shrinking, but the Southern Baptists survey their churches each year and release the results.

"That's because we believe the admission of a problem is the first thing needed to correct it," Page said.

He expects the numbers to bring calls for a new emphasis on evangelism and discipleship at the denomination's annual meeting next week in St. Louis.

"We live in an anti-institutional, anti-church age, where people are opting out of organized religious activities," Page said. He thinks new types of churches will arise to meet that trend.

Ed Stetzer, the executive director of the Southern Baptist's Lifeway Research, said some Southern Baptists have wanted to view the downward trend as a hiccup, but that is becoming harder to do.

"I think numbers like this should inspire some soul-searching," he said.
Barack Obama came into office intending to correct his predecessor's biggest mistakes by ending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He didn't, because he made his own grievous mistake: choosing to prolong failure rather than admit it.

The error is not original with Obama. George W. Bush did the same thing in those wars, persisting in them mainly because he didn't know what else to do. So did Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard Nixon in Vietnam.

LBJ once confided his dilemma: "I can't get out. I can't finish it with what I have got. So what the hell can I do?" Nixon ran on a promise to end the war in Vietnam, but some 20,000 Americans died there under him -- without changing the dismal outcome.

Even Obama's fiercest critics would not have imagined he would complete two terms in the White House without extricating the United States from either war. The peace candidate has been a war president.

After withdrawing all forces from Iraq in 2011 and setting forth a plan to end the war in Afghanistan by the end of 2014, Obama let himself be sucked back in. We now have some 5,500 troops in Iraq and nearly 10,000 in Afghanistan -- far fewer than under Bush but far more than zero.

The reason for staying was simple: to avert defeat, if only for the time being. After the U.S. vacated Iraq, the Islamic State emerged as a new threat to the Baghdad government and others in the region. As we headed for the exit in Afghanistan, the Taliban came roaring back.

Hawks took these developments as vindication, saying: "See? We should have continued the wars at full strength." But the outcomes only confirmed the futility of our efforts. The goal of invading Afghanistan and Iraq was not to put them under permanent U.S. occupation. It was to topple the ruling governments and enable their people to flourish on their own.

In that, we obviously came up pitifully short in both countries. They entered years of violent turmoil from which neither shows any sign of emerging. Yet Obama operates as though with more time and more American help, they can attain peace and fulfill our hopes.

What possible reason does he have to believe that? Bush insisted that the 2007 surge in Iraq would not only produce military success but bring about "a functioning democracy that polices its territory, upholds the rule of law, respects fundamental human liberties and answers to its people." In the ensuing years, Iraq failed to realize his shimmering vision. No surprise there. The question is why anyone ever dreamed it could.

Ditto for Afghanistan, where we have been mired for nearly 15 years. The point of Obama's surge, announced in 2009, was simple: to "create the conditions for the United States to transfer responsibility to the Afghans." Yet here we are 6 1/2 years later, still waiting for them to take ownership of their future.

The chief reason Obama made these new military commitments was simple: He treated defeat as intolerable. But the American efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan are not likely to prevent defeat -- only to postpone it.

Even if we could eliminate the militants, the conditions that spawned them would not abate. We crushed the insurgency once in Iraq, but the Baghdad regime didn't take advantage of the success to overcome the country's lethal divisions. The Kabul government has managed to preserve its hard-earned reputation for corruption and incompetence year after year.

One thing the U.S. government has demonstrated in this century is that we know nothing about nation building. We can't solve the problems afflicting these countries, and we have aligned ourselves with governments that also lack that capability. Our presence does more to create radicalism than to kill it.

Nor can we outlast homegrown enemies. It's their country, and their attachment will always exceed ours. They don't have to beat us on the battlefield. All they have to do is survive until we run out of patience, which will happen sooner or later.

It may be much later, because presidents don't like to lose wars, even wars that are unwinnable. They would rather prolong them indefinitely, even though it means wasting American lives for nothing.

Early in his presidency, Obama told his advisers, "I don't want to be going to Walter Reed for another eight years." Yet he has. Thanks to him, the next president will also be making those visits.
New Braunfels, TX (78130)

Today

Mainly sunny. High 79F. Winds E at 5 to 10 mph..

Tonight

Clear skies. Low near 50F. Winds ESE at 5 to 10 mph.
An employee of a hydro power plant owned by Heritage Party MP Khachatour Kokobelyan was swept to his death early this morning when the swollen Aghstev River destroyed an earthen dam he was working on at the plant.

Varouzhan Gabrielyan, worked for Karevard Ltd., the company wholly owned by Kokobelyan which operates the plant in the Tavoush village of Getahovit.

Kokobelyan also heads the Free Democrats party in Armenia.

In 2013, a worker was killed during the construction of the Khachaghbyour-2 hydro plant in the village of Getahovit by MegaEnergy Ltd.

At the time, the company was also wholly owned by Kokobelyan.
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.
Amy Goodman and Denis Moynihan: A tale of two injustices: 'Lynching' and sexual assault in California
A West Allis man accused of a murderous one-day crime spree that ended when he was shot by deputies last month appeared in Sauk County court for the first time Thursday.

Zachary T. Hays, 20, displayed little emotion in a courtroom appearance that lasted only a few minutes. He wore a sling on his right arm over his orange jail jumpsuit and his frizzy black hair covered his eyes at times.

Authorities say Hays shot his neighbor, 42-year-old Gabriel Sanchez, in a West Allis apartment complex the morning of May 1, then drove to Sauk County with his two brothers in a Chevrolet Blazer.

On Interstate 90/94 in Lake Delton, prosecutors say Hays fired a pistol through the window of a black BMW. Inside was a family that was on its way back to Buffalo Grove, Illinois, after a weekend vacation in Wisconsin Dells.

The shots hit and killed 44-year-old Tracy Czaczkowski, as her husband, a U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency agent, drove and their two children rode in the back seat, according to the criminal complaint. Authorities say Hays had boxes, cartridges and magazines full of ammunition for a handgun and rifle in his vehicle.

The Blazer was disabled by law enforcement with a spike strip near DeForest. Columbia County Sheriffs deputies say they shot Hays after he exited the vehicle carrying a handgun and did not obey their commands.

In court Thursday, Hays attorney Jon Helland of Madison waived his clients right to have a preliminary hearing within 10 days. The hearings require prosecutors to prove that there is good reason to believe a crime was committed by the defendant before a case can continue.

When the judge asked if Hays agreed with the decision to waive the 10-day time limit, he leaned over to consult with his attorney before he replied, Yes sir.

Hays brother, Jeremy Hays, allegedly told investigators that Zachary Hays had exhibited extreme paranoia since smoking marijuana several days before the incident. Hays allegedly threatened to kill his brothers if they left him.

Following Thursdays court proceedings, when asked about his clients mental state and the possibility of an insanity plea, Helland provided few details.

That is to be addressed at a later date, he said. Its certainly something that we have to look at. Hes got  as I indicated  significant mental health issues that are ongoing. So were addressing those issues.

Hays spent several weeks at the University of Wisconsin Hospital in Madison before he was transported to the Sauk County jail. While at the hospital, authorities requested that he be held in a secure ward run by the Wisconsin Department of Corrections because they said he tried to remove his medical tubes on several occasions.

Hays is charged in Sauk County with first-degree intentional homicide and three counts of first-degree recklessly endangering safety.
Four suspects are in custody following reports of gunfire Thursday afternoon involving people in cars, Madison police said.

Just before 3 p.m., officers responded to reports of a robbery in the parking lot of East Towne Mall. The suspects left in a vehicle and were pursued by the victims in their vehicle. The victims called 911 and continued to follow the suspects, police said.

Someone in the suspects' vehicle began shooting at the victims' vehicle, according to a release from the police department. No one was injured and there was no damage to property.

Officers and deputies began to flood the area, and a deputy noticed the suspect vehicle on Highway 51, police said. The vehicle was parked in the area of Hanson Road and Highway 51, and the suspects were seen fleeing from it, according to the release.

Two of the suspects were immediately taken into custody and two others were taken into custody following a search of nearby woods and a farm field, according to police. An aircraft from the Wisconsin State Patrol helped with the search.

The robbery is still under investigation and more information will be available following interviews, police said.
A felony arrest warrant was filed Thursday for one of the men Madison police are looking for in connection with a recent string of gun violence in the city.

Mitchell Hallmon, 30, of Madison, is charged with first-degree recklessly endangering safety and possession of a firearm by a felon in connection with an April 21 drive-by shooting on the citys South Side in which a man was wounded in the leg.

According to a criminal complaint filed with the arrest warrant:

The driver of an SUV told police that Hallmon fired three shots into his vehicle that was parked in front of 1120 Ann St. as Hallmon sat on the door frame of a car that had just pulled up and parked by the SUV.

The first bullet went through the passenger-side front door of the SUV and struck the driver, the complaint states.

The victim was taken to a hospital where he was treated for a bullet wound in his thigh.

Police found two spent 9mm Luger RP bullet casings on Ann Street later that night.

At the hospital, the victim said the men he saw in the vehicle with Hallmon were the same men who attacked him April 1 at Silk Exotic in the town of Middleton. The victim said he was talking to two women in the bar when a man walked up to him and hit him in the face with a beer bottle as soon as he stood up.

The victim later told police that he owed some people some money for an agreement to purchase and pay for about 2 pounds of marijuana. The victim told police he paid $1,500  or half of the purchase price  in cash and promised to repay the other $1,500 after he sold it.

But the victim said he was later arrested by Sun Prairie police, who also seized the marijuana, and he was unable to pay the $1,500 he owed.

The victim said the man he owed the money to was the man who hit him at Silk Exotic and shot him on Ann Street and that he knew him by the name Capone.

The victim identified the man in a police photo as Hallmon.

Madison police named Hallmon as one of four persons of interest in recent nonfatal shootings following three fatal shootings in the city and town of Madison in April and May.

On April 19, Martez Moore was shot and killed outside of OGradys Pub on Mineral Point Road.

On May 10, Darius Haynes, 38, was fatally shot outside a BP gas station on Verona Road, and on May 12, Elijah James Washington III, 28, was killed outside the Capitol Petro Mart on Rimrock Road in the town of Madison.
A state official told a judge Friday that some medical facilities have declined to offer their care for a dying former Dane County sheriffs deputy because of his high-profile case in which he was found not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect for killing his wife and sister-in-law in 2014.

Andrew Steele, 41, who has advanced amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), continues to receive medical care at Mendota Mental Health Institute despite a court order issued by Dane County Circuit Judge Nicholas McNamara on March 4 that allowed his release to another medical facility.

A jury found Steele not legally responsible for the shooting deaths on Aug. 22, 2014, of his wife, Ashlee Steele, 39, and her sister, Kacee Tollefsbol, 38, at the Steeles home in Fitchburg.

Although McNamara wrote in his decision that the mental condition the jury was told Steele was suffering from has never been observed, Steele could go to another facility because his mind of a killer is now trapped in a powerless, paralytic body ravaged by an irreversible and unrelenting disease.

More than 40 medical facilities have been contacted and none have expressed interest in taking care of Steele, according to Beth Dodsworth, who works for the Department of Health Services Division of Mental Health and Substance Abuse.

Dodsworth told McNamara at a status conference that Steeles high-profile case was a resounding factor for some facilities declining to offer to care for Steele. Other reasons included Steeles complex needs as a sufferer of ALS and his desire to have his care paid for with federal insurance programs.

Steele, who was not at Fridays conference, has dropped some of his advance directives that would have trimmed the number of facilities that could accept him and also has a limited do-not-resuscitate agreement in place, but that hasnt opened any doors, Dodsworth said. She also said the facilities her department has contacted offer hospice services but arent specific hospice providers.

McNamara, who had ordered the state Department of Health Services to prepare a conditional release plan for Steele by June 4, told Dodsworth to keep looking.

After the conference, Steeles attorney, Nick Gansner, said the fact that facilities are backing away from treating Steele because of his high-profile case is a concern of ours, and I think thats unfortunate.

Gansner said that Mendota is not ideally suited to take care of a patient with ALS but has done a good job taking care of Steele. He also said that Steeles health has deteriorated to the point where a variety of critical situations could arise at any moment that Mendota would have trouble handling.

Assistant District Attorney Andrea Raymond expressed concern about the need to protect Steeles children before a conditional release plan is approved. McNamara said the plan must get the OK of the guardians of Steeles children before he will approve it.
Three teens seen near a Janesville school early Friday morning were arrested after police discovered the school had been burglarized.

The break-in happened at St. Patrick Catholic School, 305 Lincoln Street, Janesville police said. Forced entry to a door was found and evidence of a burglary inside, but police didn't say what if anything was stolen.

Ethan Ritchey, 17, of Evansville, Hunter Stedman, 17, of Janesville, and Jared King, 17, of Janesville, were tentatively charged with burglary, theft and criminal damage to property.

Police were sent to the area at about 3:30 a.m. Friday for a report of three suspicious people near the school.

The arriving officer saw three people getting into a vehicle near the Fourth Ward Park, so the officer stopped the vehicle and began interviewing the subjects, police said.

Following the discovery of the burglary and after more interviews at the police station, the suspects were arrested and taken to the Rock County Jail.
A plot by a jail inmate to kill the Madison police officer who arrested him last year was disentangled when authorities got wind of it from another inmate, police said Friday.

The suspect, Alijouwon T. Watkins, 20, faces tentative charges of conspiracy to commit homicide and conspiracy to commit perjury, Madison Police Chief Mike Koval said.

Watkins was already facing five felony and three misdemeanor charges related to a 2015 domestic battery case, in which he was arrested by the officer targeted in the alleged murder plot. A trial in the domestic battery case was scheduled to begin Monday, though its status may change in light of the new allegations.

Koval detailed the solicitation of another inmate, who contacted police, and a plan that got as far as a transfer of money.

When we got word of something of this nature, we wasted no time in getting help from other agencies, to nip this in the bud, Koval said, noting the involvement of the Dane County Sheriffs Office and the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

Koval prefaced his account of the investigation with a vow to stand behind his officers. We want this to be an isolated case, he said, noting the rarity of the crime as the first in his memory after 37 years on the force.

Koval said the investigation into the conspiracy showed the suspect allegedly transferred money through a third party to have the police officer killed. How much money, how the deed was to be carried out and the identity of the officer targeted were not revealed.

The officer, who was reassigned to desk duty during the investigation, is a woman who has been on the force for about three years.

The suspect, while in jail, had gathered such information as the officers name, date of birth, personal cellphone number and work hours, Koval said.

Watkins also allegedly tried to get someone to provide false testimony in the case in which he was arrested by the officer.

Court records show Watkins was arrested on June 27, 2015, on multiple charges, including domestic abuse, battery to law enforcement officers, intimidation of a victim and causing bodily harm while resisting. The officer received a concussion in that violent confrontation, police spokesman Joel DeSpain said.

Koval cited the alacrity of three agencies to work collaboratively in thanking Dane County and the ATF for assistance.

Jessie Summers of the ATF said his agency helped with technical surveillance expertise.

Sheriff David Mahoney, whose department controls the jail where the inmate set up the reported crime, said such a case is rare in its specificity, though death threats have been investigated to officers, prosecutors and judges. We read, monitor and audit (inmate) calls constantly, he added.
Wisconsin Republicans won an elusive victory Friday as the Department of Natural Resources quietly agreed to narrow its oversight of high-capacity wells that have been blamed for drying up rivers and shrinking lakes.

Following guidance provided by state Attorney General Brad Schimel in an opinion issued May 10, the agency will no longer consider the cumulative impact of nearby wells on the aquifer or surface water when deciding whether to permit a well, and it will no longer impose monitoring requirements on well operators.

And the department said well operators could seek reconsideration of conditions placed on permits issued since June 8, 2011, the date a state statute was enacted sharply reducing the power of state agencies to decide how to implement laws.

High-capacity wells are defined as being able to extract at least 100,000 gallons of water per day.

They became a battleground in Wisconsin because of their ability to dry up public waters and the desire of farmers, food processors and others to drill more of them.

Several court decisions in lawsuits over DNR actions had indicated that the department could and should consider cumulative impact as part of the states constitutional duty to protect lakes and streams for the use of the public.

After the state Supreme Court in a 2011 ruling told the DNR it had a responsibility to consider cumulative impact of high-capacity, the agency began including that consideration in its review of well permit applications.

Businesses were frustrated by the agencys stance. Republicans who took over state government in the 2010 elections made significant changes to natural resources protections, but they werent able to muster the votes for proposed laws that would have sped well permitting.

The change in DNR policy could be seen on an agency web page for business operators seeking to drill the wells. The page included a notation that it was updated on Thursday, but a DNR spokesman said the change was made Friday.

The Attorney General is the chief legal advisor for state government and its agencies and represents the department in legal matters before the courts, DNR spokesman Jim Dick said in the statement. Historically, the DNR has followed all formal legal opinions issued by an Attorney General, as we are doing in this case.

Clean Wisconsin, a conservation group that spotted the change and sent out a press release to news organizations, questioned why the DNR didnt issue any announcement given the high level of public interest in the issue.

By adopting this opinion, DNR will no longer be evaluating these large well applications to determine the collective impact they will have on our waters, said Clean Wisconsins Elizabeth Wheeler. This is in direct opposition to decades of court decisions and legal interpretation that established DNRs constitutional duty to protect our waters for everyone, not just the few.

Wheeler said the DNRs move means an estimated 161 high-capacity well applications that have been awaiting agency review will not receive the scrutiny called for by several court decisions and precautions included in permits issued since 2011 could be thrown out.

This will certainly have disastrous impacts on peoples access to safe and plentiful groundwater and drinking water, Wheeler said.

In the last two years, scientific reviews by the DNR led to withdrawal of several permit applications because the reviews found that the proposed wells would affect waterways, Wheeler said.

Not only does the DNRs adoption of the Attorney Generals opinion remove sound science from the process, it makes finding meaningful legislative solutions that balance the needs of all water users in Wisconsin nearly impossible, Wheeler said. Moving forward, this guarantees that the issue will continue to be fought in the courts.

Schimel issued a formal opinion on high-capacity wells on May 10 at the request of Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, and the Republican majority that controls the Assemblys organization committee. Vos complained about delays in state permits for the wells.

Schimel, also a Republican, said a 2011 state law rolled back DNR authority on high-capacity wells by prohibiting state agencies from setting or enforcing any environmental standard that isnt explicitly spelled out in statutes.

High capacity wells are defined as those that can pump at least 100,000 gallons per day. They are regulated through a permitting system because of their potential to affect the use other people make of ground water and surface water.

In 2013, state Senate Republicans introduced a bill to address some industry complaints about well permitting, but even with GOP majorities controlling both houses of the state Legislature, it failed to pass. The bill was introduced at a time when small streams and lakes in central Wisconsin, including the Little Plover River and Long Lake, had been drying up.

That year, DNR Secretary Cathy Stepp asked then-Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen for an opinion clarifying the DNRs authority in light of the 2012 law. Van Hollen said his office couldnt because it was representing the DNR in cases involving questions about its authority to regulate high-capacity wells.

In February, Schimels office conceded that his attorneys were also involved in such cases, but his spokeswoman said the offices conflict-of-interest guidelines are not binding.

This year a bill to ease replacement of high capacity wells was introduced but it wasnt put to a vote before the legislative session ended.

A series of court decisions over the years had expanded state authority to protect public waters.

The question of whether monitoring should occur and whether cumulative impact should be considered was a common dispute between those who wanted wells  large farms, food processers and frac sand mines are among them  and opponents such as lakefront property owners.
Heres how members of Wisconsins congressional delegation voted on major issues this week.Note: Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, R-Janesville, voted last week. By custom, the speaker does not vote except in rare circumstances.

U.S. HOUSE

RESCUE PLAN FOR PUERTO RICO: Voting 297 for and 127 against, the House on Thursday passed a bill (HR 5278) that would establish a federal control board to help Puerto Rico restructure more than $70 billion in debt to bondholders and address its deeply unfunded pension obligations.

For a limited time, the Financial Oversight and Management Board would have final say over tax, spending and other budgetary policies for the U.S. territory of 3.5 million Americans. Republicans in Congress would select four of the boards seven members and Democrats would choose three. The board would need a five-vote supermajority to make major decisions. The bill prohibits using federal taxpayer dollars in the rescue operation. Puerto Rico faces a $2 billion payment to creditors on July 1.

In part, the bill empowers Puerto Rico to impose settlements on holdout creditors; bars most creditor lawsuits; authorizes a lower minimum wage for new workers under 25; allows the dismissal of public employees notwithstanding their civil service protections and enables the control board to require a balanced Puerto Rican budget.

A yes vote was to send the bill to the Senate.

Voting yes: Paul Ryan, R-1, Mark Pocan, D-2, Ron Kind, D-3, Gwen Moore, D-4, James Sensenbrenner, R-5, Glenn Grothman, R-6, Sean Duffy, R-7, Reid Ribble, R-8

LOWERING OF MINIMUM WAGE: Voting 196 for and 225 against, the House on Thursday defeated an amendment to strip HR 5278 (above) of its provision allowing Puerto Rico to reduce its minimum wage for new workers under 25 from $7.25 per hour to $4.25 per hour. Backers said this would help businesses regain profitability, while foes said it would prompt young workers to flee their homeland.

A yes vote was in opposition to the bills minimum-wage cuts.

Voting yes: Pocan, Kind, Moore

Voting no: Sensenbrenner, Grothman, Duffy, Ribble

DELAY OF OZONE STANDARDS: Voting 234 for and 177 against, the House on Wednesday passed a bill (HR 4775) that would delay from 2020 to 2026 the year by which states must submit plans to the Environmental Protection Agency for reducing ground-level ozone emissions within their boundaries. According to the EPA, breathing unsafe levels of ozone causes or triggers ailments such as lung disease and asthma, particularly for children and the elderly. Critics said the ozone regulations would stifle development and cost jobs in counties on the receiving end of ozone pollution that is generated in areas beyond their control.

The bill also would extend from five to 10 years the interval between EPA adjustments of environmental rules to reflect scientific advances. And it would require the agency take affordability and technical feasibility into account  along with health effects  in setting rules under the Clean Air Act.

A yes vote was to send the bill to the Senate, where it appeared likely to fail.

Voting yes: Sensenbrenner, Grothman, Ribble

Voting no: Pocan, Kind, Moore

Not voting: Duffy

OZONE, PUBLIC HEALTH, THE ENVIRONMENT: Voting 171 for and 239 against, the House on Wednesday defeated an amendment that would undercut HR 4775 (above) by nullifying any provisions that would inflict harm on public health or the environment. The amendment sought to blunt arguments by bill backers that environmental regulations should be weakened in deference to jobs and economic growth.

A yes vote was to adopt the amendment.

Voting yes: Pocan, Kind, Moore

Voting no: Sensenbrenner, Grothman, Ribble

Not voting: Duffy

APPROVAL OF LEGISLATIVE BRANCH BUDGET: Voting 233 for and 175 against, members on Friday passed a bill (HR 5325) that would appropriate $3.48 billion to operate the House and congressional support agencies in fiscal 2017, up nearly 2.7 percent from the 2016 figure. When the Senate adds its own funding, the total legislative-branch budget for next year will exceed $4.35 billion. The bill does not cover members salaries, which are funded by a permanent appropriation. (Rank-and-file House members and senators have frozen their pay at $174,000 annually since January 2009.) The bill funds the representational allowances used by House members to pay staff salaries and provide constituent services. These allowances ranged from $1.17 million to $1.8 million per member in fiscal 2016. The bill also provides $629 million for the Library of Congress, $560 million for the Architect of the Capitol, $533 million for the Government Accountability Office and $391 million for the Capitol Police.

A yes vote was to send the bill to the Senate.

Voting yes: Sensenbrenner, Grothman, Ribble

Voting no: Pocan, Kind, Moore

Not voting: Duffy

REJECTION OF HOUSE SPENDING CUT: By a vote of 165 for and 237 against, members on Friday defeated an amendment that sought to reduce the Houses own budget (HR 5325, above) by 1 percent or nearly $35 million in fiscal 2017. The underlying bill would raise the House budget by nearly 2.7 percent over the 2016 figure.

A yes vote was to trim spending in the 2017 legislative branch appropriations bill.

Voting yes: Sensenbrenner, Grothman, Ribble

Voting no: Pocan, Kind, Moore

Not voting: Duffy

U.S. SENATE

2017 MILITARY BUDGET: The Senate on Friday voted, 68 for and 23 against, to advance a $602 billion military budget (HR 4909) for fiscal 2017. In part, the bill authorizes $59 billion in emergency spending for combat operations abroad; $50 billion-plus for active-duty and retiree health care; $3.4 billion for Afghanistan Security Forces; also $3.4 billion for joining with European nations to counter Russian aggression; $1.3 billion for efforts targeted at ISIS and $500 million in security assistance including arms for Ukraine.

A yes vote was to advance the bill toward final passage.

Voting yes: Tammy Baldwin, D, Ron Johnson, R

Key Votes Ahead

In the week of June 13, the Senate will resume debate on the 2017 military budget. The House schedule was to be announced.

 Thomas Voting Reports, Inc.
A Stoughton City Council member has answered calls to end pig wrestling at the upcoming Stoughton Fair by threatening to create an ordinance banning it, if fair organizers dont cancel the July 1 event voluntarily.

In an email sent Friday, Ald. Michael Engelberger told Mayor Donna Olson he intends to propose a ban in light of the more than 8,400 signatures to an online petition, which equates the event to sanctioned animal cruelty. A similar effort in 2014 collected more than 81,000 signatures.

Many of the petitioners have threatened to boycott the fair, not to mention unrelated businesses in our community, Engelberger said in his email. This should be a wake-up call to all city officials and the local chamber. We certainly do not want business driven away from our local businesses.

Fair organizers are standing pat, saying in an online post that the fair will not be bullied into canceling events activists dont agree with.

In pig wrestling, people of all ages chase the animal around a muddy pen, attempting to grab the slippery pig and place it on a barrel in the center of the ring before time expires. Pig wrestling has been a decades-long tradition at many fairs and similar events, drawing huge crowds of spectators.

Members of the Stoughton Fair board did not return calls Friday, however they posted to the fairs Facebook page Thursday, saying they are raising money to make up for sponsorship lost due to the harassment from the animal rights activists.

On a gofundme.com page the Facebook post linked to, organizers said the Stoughton Fair has probably the strictest rules to ensure pig safety.

We respect our donors who chose to avoid dealing with Animal Rights Terrorists but we need to make up those funds that help pay for the kids premiums, their ribbons, the kids who work in the kitchen, the kids who work on the grounds crew and our events that cost us a great deal to provide, the fundraising appeal said.

Their effort had raised more than $3,500 of the $5,000 they sought in one day, as of Friday evening. The Stoughton Fair runs June 29 through July 4 in Mandt Park.

Sara Andrews, whose Alliance for Animals and the Environment started the Change.org petition, said the amusement of watching friends and family participate in the muddy mayhem has caused many to view pig wrestling as silly fun and overlook the trauma and potential harm to animals.

Theres kids that do this and they chase the pigs around and its just kind of funny. Theyre not really catching the pig and theyre just touching the pig, she said. Other times its four full-grown men who are jumping on the back of this pig. The pig is squealing and screaming. The pig is partially picked up and dropped sometimes. Its cute when its kids, but its really not so cute when its for men.

Were hoping that Dane County standards are at a point where we wouldnt tolerate this kind of activity in our county.

Many shared that sentiment online.

This event presents such an oxymoronic juxtaposition: At one end of the fairgrounds young people are proudly exhibiting the animals they have raised and cared for, while at the other end adults are terrorizing animals for entertainment. Such a confusing message for our youth, one petitioner wrote.

But despite tradition, Andrews believes a shift is occurring and that more people see pig wrestling as animal abuse.

Alliance for Animals, an animal rights and pro-veganism group, was aware of 14 pig wrestling events in Wisconsin in 2010. Just last year, the St. Patrick Catholic Parish in Outagamie County removed pig wrestling from its annual church party after 44 years and the number of remaining pig wrestling events has dwindled to just a handful, Andrews said.

Engelberger agreed that ending pig wrestling is not an issue for only the most extreme animal lovers.

Im not an animal rights activist. Im a common-sense alderman for our city, he said in an interview Friday. I think we need to do whats right for our citys image. Were looking like a laughingstock, as far as Im concerned.

On the petition website, some users have made comments about boycotting Stoughton and its businesses entirely if the event is not stopped.

Engelberger said he could not reach fair organizers because their inbox was full, presumably with emails protesting the event.

Id have two questions if I talked to them: Would you put your own pets through something like this? Or would you yourself go into a ring and have four people throw you around onto a barrel? he said. I dont know who would answer that question positively.

Engelberger said fair organizers are meeting with the mayor next week to discuss backlash against the event.

If the event is not canceled willingly, Engelberger said hes confident an ordinance banning pig wrestling would collect enough votes to pass.

Were hoping that Dane County standards are at a point where we wouldnt tolerate this kind of activity in our county. Sara Andrews

Alliance for Animals and the Environment
A grant from Disney could help the Overture Center spark an interest in theater in some of the areas youngest students.

Disney recently awarded the center a $100,000 grant to launch the Disney Musicals in Schools program in local elementary schools starting next year. The after-school initiative aims to help create theater programs in under-resourced schools.

The Overture Center will begin taking applications from interested schools this fall, said Ray Gargano, director of programming and community engagement. Madison public Title 1 elementary schools or Madison public elementary schools with 50 percent or more students that qualify for free or reduced lunches may apply, he said.

Selected schools will take part in a 17-week musical theater residency led by a team of teaching artists trained by both the Overture Center and Disney Theatrical Group. Each school will receive performance rights, education support materials and guidance from the teaching artists as they work on their production.

Students in the program will take part in 30-minute musicals adapted from Disney films such as 101 Dalmatians, Aladdin, The Aristocats and The Jungle Book.

The grant will fund two years of programming, and the Overture Center will choose up to five schools to participate in 2017 and another five schools in 2018, Gargano said.

The program will teach participants about all areas of theater, as well as careers in the arts, he said. Students will also get to try their hand at marketing and graphic design for the productions as well.

The program will allow area students to start taking part in theater programs at a younger age, which research shows can help with academics and social skills, Gargano said.

The ultimate goal is that we create long-lasting musical theater programs in elementary schools, he said.

The 17-week program will culminate when each participating school performs a number from their musical on the Capitol Theater stage after performing their musical at their respective school.
I started my voting life as a registered Republican. When I turned 18, my dad took me to register to vote. He was a Republican. My mother was an independent and a member of her union.

We had heated political discussions in my household. I like to say we had politics for breakfast.

The Republican Party my dad belonged to is not the same party we see today under Donald Trump. My dads party was the party of Ronald Reagan, the president who gave amnesty to many people in 1986, a sweeping act that made my paternal grandmother a citizen. At some point, my father switched his party affiliation. Now both my parents are registered Democrats.

When Trump declared that Mexico sends its worst people to the United States, calling them rapists and criminals, I thought about my hardworking family members. They worked for Maytag and John Deere in Iowa. They fought in World War I, World War II, the Korean War and Vietnam. They went to Iraq and Afghanistan. Their offspring have become nurses, doctors, teachers, school psychologists, lawyers, paralegals and policemen. They work in finance, for nonprofits and have run for office.

Now Trump has come out against U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel, declaring that because the judge is a Mexican-American, he is not fit to preside over a lawsuit against the defunct Trump University. He claims the judge will surely be biased by Trumps plans to build a wall between the United States and Mexico.

Trump is a blatant bigot and not a nice person. He is not fit to serve as president of the United States and not someone who should have access to weapons of mass destruction. He has alienated people all over the world, including Muslims and women, and even mocked a person with disabilities.

Trump will not even release his tax information. This should be a red flag. There is a reason he is against documents being revealed in the Trump University suit. The media has a responsibility to force this issue out in the open. Show us your papers, Trump. Or are you afraid?

What Trumps candidacy has revealed, along with much else, is that racism is alive and well in the United States. He has even unleashed violence at his political rallies.

I was at his rally in Janesville. Most of the thousands of people who came could not get in. The police broke up supporters and protesters when things got heated. A young woman was pepper-sprayed in the face by a Trump supporter, and the police quickly acted to assist her and to wash out her eyes.

I know racism is alive and well, and I see it every day in how justice is meted out differently to people from different ethnic backgrounds. We have much work to do. We are at a tipping point in many ways. Where we go next is crucial for the country and the world.
WASHINGTON  The morning after, the nation awakes asking: What have we done?

Both parties seem intent on throwing the election away. The Democrats, running against a man with highest-ever negatives, are poised to nominate a candidate with the second-highest-ever negatives. Hillary Clinton started with every possible advantage  money, experience, name recognition, residual goodwill from her husbands successful 1990s  yet could not put away until this week an obscure, fringy, socialist backbencher in a country uniquely allergic to socialism.

Bernie Sanders did have one advantage. He had something to say. She had nuthin. Her Tuesday victory speech was a pudding without a theme for a campaign without a cause. After 14 months, she still cant get past the famous question asked of Ted Kennedy in 1979: Why do you want to be president?

So whom do the Republicans put up? They had 17 candidates. Any of a dozen could have taken down the near-fatally weak Clinton, unloved, untrusted, living under the shadow of an FBI investigation.

Instead, they nominate Donald Trump  conspiracy theorist (from Barack Obamas Kenyan birth to Ted Cruzs fathers involvement with Lee Harvey Oswald), fabulist (from his own invented opposition to the Iraq War and the Libya intervention to the thousands and thousands of New Jersey Muslims celebrating 9/11), admirer of strongmen (from Vladimir Putin to the butchers of Tiananmen).

His outrageous provocations have been brilliantly sequenced so that the shock of the new extinguishes the memory of the last. Though perhaps not his most recent  his gratuitous attack on a Mexican federal judge (born and bred in Indiana) for inherent bias because of his ethnicity. Textbook racism, averred Speaker Paul Ryan of Wisconsin. Even Trump acolyte and possible running mate Newt Gingrich called it inexcusable.

Trump promptly doubled down, expanding the universe of the not-to-be-trusted among us by adding American Muslims to the list of those who might be inherently biased.

Yet Trump is the partys chosen. He won the primary contest fair and square. The people have spoken. What to do?

First, dare to say that the people arent always right. Surely Republicans admit the possibility. Or do they believe the people chose rightly in electing Obama? Twice. The peoples will deserves respect, not necessarily affirmation.

I sympathize with the dilemma of Republican leaders reluctant to affirm. Many are as appalled as I am by Trump, but they dont have the freedom I do to say, as I have publicly, that I cannot imagine ever voting for him. They have unique party and institutional responsibilities. For some, that meant endorsing Trump in the belief they might be able to contain, constrain, guide and perhaps even educate him.

Which brings us to Paul Ryan, now being excoriated by many conservatives for having said he would vote for Trump.

Yet what was surprising was not Ryans ever-so-tepid semi-endorsement, which was always inevitable and unavoidable, but his initial refusal to endorse Trump when, after the Indiana primary, nearly everyone around him was falling mindlessly, some shamelessly, into line.

That was surprising. Which is why Ryans refusal to immediately follow suit created such a sensation. It also created, deliberately, the time and space for non-Trumpites to hold the line. Ryan was legitimizing resistance to the new regime, giving it safe harbor in the House, even as resisters were being relentlessly accused of treason for electing Hillary.

In the end, Ryan called an armistice. What was he to do? Oppose and resign? And then what? What would remain of conservative leadership in the GOP? And if he created a permanent split in the party, hed be setting up the GOPs entire conservative wing as scapegoat if Trump loses in November.

Ryan had no good options. He chose the one he felt was least damaging to the conservative cause to which he has devoted his entire adult life.

I wouldnt have done it, but Im not House speaker. He is a practicing politician who has to calculate the consequences of what he does. That deserves at least some understanding.

One day, we shall all have to account for what we did and what we said in this scoundrel year. For now, we each have our conscience to attend to.
Federal judges have repeatedly and emphatically refused to recuse themselves from cases because of their race or ethnicity. These rulings were driven by two realizations: Ethnically based challenges would reduce every judge to a racial category, which would be racist in itself. And such challenges would make judges vulnerable to recusal motions  for reasons of race, ethnicity, gender or religion  in every case that came before them.

In other words, once these challenges were allowed, there would be no end to them.

The gravity of this matter has clearly eluded Donald Trump, who has cast aside the Constitution and decades of jurisprudence by suggesting both ethnic and religious litmus tests for federal judges. These pronouncements illustrate Trump holds the rule of law in contempt.

Trump started down this road months ago, attacking a federal judge in California who is hearing a lawsuit against the now-defunct Trump University. Now he has asserted the judge, Gonzalo Curiel, had an inherent conflict of interest because he was of Mexican heritage. Trump implied Judge Curiel  an American, born in Indiana  was biased against him because he intended to build a wall along the border to stop illegal immigration.

Republican leaders repudiated the remarks and hoped the issue would disappear. But Trump went further recently, when he said on the CBS News program Face the Nation that a Muslim judge might be similarly biased against him because he has proposed a ban on Muslim immigrants entering the United States.

When the interviewer, John Dickerson, reminded Trump that this country has a tradition of not judging people based on heritage, the presumptive Republican nominee responded, Im not talking about tradition, Im talking about common sense.

Republicans who say they disagree with Trumps racialist statements have tried to assuage the public by arguing he doesnt really believe those views. But if thats the case, it is pretty cold comfort. Cynically choosing to equate ethnicity with bias is hardly more appealing than simply being ignorant or bigoted.

Lets indulge Trump for a moment and consider what the court system would look like if litigants were permitted to wish away judges who had been born into immigrant families or families that practiced what the litigants regarded as the wrong faith.

Would exclusion be limited to first-generation Americans such as Judge Curiel, who was born to Mexican immigrant parents, or would it be extended to his children, his grandchildren or even beyond? Would the exclusion of Muslims be limited to active practitioners of the faith or extended to descendants who were only vaguely religious or not religious at all? The answer, of course, is that once it started, the ethnic cleansing of the court system could be made to apply to any unpopular group at any time.

Trump is essentially arguing that his own bigoted attitude toward Mexicans has disqualified a respected jurist from hearing a court case in which he is a defendant. Under that bizarre logic, he could rationalize ruling out judges from every demographic group he has insulted or happens not to like. At the rate hes going, there would soon be no person in the land left to judge him.

Fortunately, the American legal system doesnt work that way.
CHICAGO - Since Illinois is without a K-12 school budget for FY 2017, perhaps it's time to consider a radical alternative that a school superintendent raised for Washington state schools, as reported in the Seattle Times:

OLYMPIA  Randy Dorn says it could be time to close Washington states K-12 public schools.

You wouldnt expect the state superintendent of public instruction to say that.

But Dorn, who isnt seeking re-election, argues in a court brief filed Wednesday that the state Supreme Court needs to get serious about enforcing its 2012 ruling that the state was violating its constitution in underfunding K-12 schools.

Serious, Dorn says in the court filing, means the court should consider closing the schools until the Legislature makes real progress.
JNU students protested outside MHRD to demand OBC reservation for appointment to the post of professor and assistant professors.

By India Today Web Desk: The Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) students, along with their union president Kanhaiya Kumar, on Thursday, June 9, protested outside the Ministry of Human Resource Development (HRD) demanding that reservation to OBC candidates be granted for appointments at associate professor level, following which 36 of them were detained.

Earlier, on Wednesday, the students had even visited the University Grants Commission (UGC) and submitted a memorandum urging to implement the OBC reservation at both professor and associate professor level in promotions and even asked for an increase in the number of national fellowships for OBCs.



What is the stance of the students in the matter?

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According to PTI, the protesting students claimed that recently, the UGC had said that 27 per cent OBC reservation was applicable only at the level of assistant professor.

The students are demanding that the OBC reservation should also be implemented at professor level along with assistant professor level.



Claim made by UGC:

The UGC on Wednesday had clarified that no change had been made in the reservation policy for teachers in universities.



Police action:

As a preventive measure, 36 students were detained to maintain law and order situation, according to police officials. However, they were later released.



Another protest:

Just after being released from Parliament Street police station, the students again staged an agitation outside Uttar Pradesh Bhawan, this time to demand justice in the Dadri lynching case.



What initiated the protest?



A Mathura-based forensic laboratory's report that the meat collected from the crime scene in Dadri where 50-year-old Mohd Akhlaq was allegedly lynched over the rumour that his family had stored and consumed beef, was actually meat of cow or its progeny.

On this occasion, 25 students, including Kanhaiya, were detained from the spot and taken to the same police station.

Click here for more information from India Today Education.

--- ENDS ---
The Mumbai University TYB.Com & TYB.Sc results to be announced today, June 10 at the official website, mu.ac.in.

Mumbai University TYBCom and TYBSc results to be declared today

By India Today Web Desk: The Mumbai University TYB.Com & TYB.Sc results to be announced today, June 10 at the official website, mu.ac.in.



Almost 7,500 students appeared for the TYB.Com and TYB.Sc examinations that held in the month of April and May at different centers of Mumbai University.



Steps to check the result:



Log on to official website mu.ac.in

Click on the link MU TY B.Com Results 2016/ MU TY B.Sc Results 2016

Enter your roll number

Result will appear on the screen

Save the result and take a print out for future reference.

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After the declaration of TYB.Com result and TYB.Sc result, the university is likely to declare the TYBA result 2016 on June 20, 2016.

Read: Writing with her leg, she dreams to become a Judge

Read: UGC ruling: Male students can now file sexual harassment complaints



For exam related news click here.

To get more updates on education related news, send in your query by mail to education.intoday@gmail.com.



--- ENDS ---
By Chirag Gothi: The Delhi Police have arrested four contract killers who had allegedly conspired to kill underworld don Chhota Rajan, who is currently lodged in Tihar jail.

SHAKEEL V RAJAN

The killers were reportedly working for Dawood Ibrahim's confidant Chotta Shakeel.

This is the first attempt by Shakeel to kill Rajan since he was deported from Bali in November last year. The suspects were allegedly in direct touch with Shakeel through Internet telephony and phone.

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BATTLE IN TIHAR



The accused were produced before a city court yesterday. The court granted judicial custody and the four were sent to Tihar jail.



The suspects are from Delhi and NCR and had procured a 9mm gun and cartridges. Their plan was first to kill Rajan's trusted lieutenant, his driver, who was coming from Mumbai to meet him in jail.

The Rajan was to be targeted whenever he left prison.

Also read:

We will kill Rajan in Tihar jail, says Chhota Shakeel



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By PTI: Vijayawada, Jun 9 (PTI) The Andhra Pradesh Government tonight promoted six Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officers belonging to the 1985 and 1986 batches to the rank of Special Chief Secretary (CS).

Three more officers of these batches were also granted "proforma" promotions as they are currently serving on Central deputation.

With these promotions, the total number of IAS officers in the Chief Secretary/Special Chief Secretary rank in AP has gone up to a staggering 23.

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While seven of the Special CS rank officers, including the three promoted today, are on Central deputation, three officers are set to retire between August and December. That would still leave 13 Special CS rank officers in the State.

As per an order issued by Chief Secretary Satya Prakash Tucker, 1985 batch IAS officers P V Ramesh Babu, Veena Ish, Manmohan Singh and Jagdish Chandra Sharma have been promoted to the rank of Special CS and retained in the posts they have been holding.

Similarly, 1986 batch officers D Sambasiva Rao and Satish Chandra have been promoted and retained in their existing posts.

As per the cadre allocation, following the bifurcation of the State in 2014, AP got four posts of the CS/Special CS rank officers.

It could create as many ex-cadre posts but with todays promotion of officers the number has more than tripled, a senior bureaucrat pointed out.

While Sambasiva Rao is Executive Officer of the Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams, Satish will now be the Special Chief Secretary to the Chief Minister.

Sameer Sharma, Mission Director of Smart Cities and a 1985 batch officer, has been granted proforma promotion along with his batch mate Reddi Subrahmanyam, who is Additional Secretary in the Department of Higher Education in the Union Ministry of HRD.

Abhay Tripathi of 1986 batch, who is now the senior Staff Director in the National Defence College, has also been granted proforma promotion, the order issued by Tucker said. PTI DBV RSY RCJ

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By PTI: New Delhi, Jun 10 (PTI) A2Z Infra Engineering today said it has won a USD 13.56 million (around Rs 90 crore) contract from Nepal government for expansion of electricity distribution network.

A contract has been awarded from Nepal Electricity Authority, a Nepal government undertaking on June 10, A2Z Infra said in a BSE filing.

The contract is for expansion of distribution network in the Western Region of Nepal, it said.

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The award has been made for a "contract price aggregating to USD 1,35,63,420.77," the company said.

The award was given on the basis of a global tender, it added.

Shares of the company closed 1.59 per cent down at Rs 30.95 on BSE. PTI NAM SRK ABK

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At present there are no clear guidelines on how much a ride-hailing services can charge and the Delhi government plans to set an upper fare limit for all taxi providers in a bid to end the confusion for travellers.

Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal banned the surge-pricing during the second phase of the odd-even scheme.

By Shashank Shekhar: The Delhi government is expected to roll out this month price regulations for taxis with rate slabs based on engine capacity, a move that comes close on the heels of the administration penalising cab aggregators for charging higher fares at peak times.

Sources also said the government may ask app-based taxi services such as Ola and Uber to replace their GPS-based billing systems because of alleged inaccuracies.

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NO CLEAR GUIDELINES



At present there are no clear guidelines on how much the ride-hailing services can charge and the Delhi government plans to set an upper fare limit for all taxi providers in a bid to end the confusion for travellers.

"The policy is almost ready and as per the plan, all available taxi services will come under the new rate slabs, which will be set as per the power of the engines of the cabs. Taxis with engine capacity lower than 1000 cc will be cheaper while one will have to pay a little extra for taxis with capacity of 1000 to 1500 cc," a senior transport department official associated with the policy told Mail Today.

Uber and Ola use surge pricing, a mechanism that in real time matches waiting travellers with vacant taxis in an area to calculate fares. When there are more customers, the fare surges.

'DAYLIGHT ROBBERY'



However, calling it "daylight robbery", Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal banned the practice during the second phase of the odd-even car-rationing scheme in April. Close to 50 cabs were seized by the transport department.

"No cab service including Uber and Ola will be allowed to surpass the government's rate. We will give a suitable environment for everyone to operate," said the transport official.

"Taxi providers will be allowed to give discounts, but the government will hold the final power to regulate the rate in case of any emergency."

CAP ON NUMBER OF CARS



The government may also set a cap on the number of cars a service provider can have to end monopoly, while GPS-based meters used by app-based taxi firms may be scrapped.

"We conducted a study and found a variation of nearly 50 per cent, which is very high. For example, if the distance between New Delhi railway station and Dhaula Kuan is calculated as 20 kilometres on one side, while returning on the same route the GPS meter shows it as 25-27 kilometres," the official explained.

DIGITAL METERS FOR ALL



The government may push the companies to adopt digital meters that are being used in radio taxis and autorickshaws. However, the decision is yet to be finalised.

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The AAP government and the app-based taxis have been at loggerheads for some time now. The administration wants to regulate them like other transport operators, but Ola and Uber say they just provide technology for taxi drivers and commuters to connect and aren't transport companies.

The city's autorickshaw unions too have been pushing the government to rein in the taxi aggregators, saying they are violating marketplace guidelines by influencing the price paid by a consumer through discounts and incentives.

While the ride-hailing start-ups charge as low as Rs 6 per kilometre, a threewheeler in Delhi charges Rs 8 a kilometre and the minimum fare is Rs 12.50 for economy radio taxis.

However, the app-based cab companies maintain they are keeping their rates within the state-mandated upper ceiling.

At a time when autorickshaws and app-based cabs have declared war on each other, this autowallah has found an innovative way to spread the message and garner support in the Capital. Autorickshaw unions, meanwhile, are pushing the AAP government to rein in taxi aggregators such as Ola and Uber, saying they are violating marketplace guidelines by influencing the price paid by consumers through discounts and incentives.

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ALSO READ: BJP is a party of gundas, says Kejriwal after AAP councillor slapped during MCD meeting



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By PTI: New Delhi, Jun 10 (PTI) The AAP governments full-page advertisements announcing its decision to ensure at least one Punjabi language teacher in every school and promising higher wages for them, today attracted flak from opposition leaders who alleged that the party is wasting public money in an attempt to woo voters in Punjab ahead of elections.

In a public advertisement printed in many Hindi dailies along with few national English dailies, the Delhi government advertisement declared that in order to "boost Punjabi language" in Delhi, every school will have at least one Punjabi teacher and that their salary has been raised.

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The opposition leaders attacked AAP for eyeing Punjab elections where as the Delhi Government maintained that it was just to facilitate teaching of the language in Delhi government schools and not to mandate its teaching.

"Kejriwal uses government money for full page Ad in Punjab on Punjabi Teachers and Delhi suffers strikes by government servants on non-payment of salary.

"Money spent on government Ad for Kejriwal publicity is more than to implement the announcement of hiring Punjabi teachers! Waste of Taxpayer money," tweeted Ajay Maken, president of Delhi Pradesh Congress Committee.

Senior BJP leader Vijay Goel also criticised the advertisement saying, "the Kejriwal government in Delhi is using Delhi taxpayers money for Punjab elections. When elections are coming, they see it as an opportunity to give a push to Punjabi language".

"This has been done because the advertisements are being given in Punjab papers as well. We have never seen such misuse," he added.

The issue was also raised in Delhi Assembly today with BJP MLAs objecting to the advertisement.

Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia clarified in the Assembly, "we have not made Punjabi compulsory in Delhi government schools, the move is only to facilitate Punjabi teachers so that students who wish to opt for the language do not have to drop their choice just because of lack of teacher in a particular school".

"It usually happens that students who want to study any language for instance Urdu, have to drop the idea because there are no teachers in the school who can teach the subject. So, this is just a move to bridge that gap," he added.

The AAP is set to contest assembly polls in Punjab, the first time it is contesting a state election after its landslide victory in Delhi in 2015. PTI GJS RG

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Abhishek Bachchan and Aishwarya Rai Bachchan were spotted by the cameras outside a high-end restaurant in Mumbai.

By India Today Web Desk: Abhishek Bachchan and Aishwarya Rai Bachchan were spotted by the cameras outside a high-end restaurant in Mumbai. While Abhishek was busy with the success press conference of his film Housefull 3, Aishwarya joined him later for the dinner date. Aishwarya and Abhishek were all smiles for the shutterbugs outside the restaurant.

ALSO SEE: These photos of Aishwarya and Abhishek prove that all is well between them

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Aishwarya and Abhishek are one of the most adored couples of Bollywood and the Dhoom actor's gestures for his wife have always made their fans swoon. But earlier, there were rumours that there is a trouble in their love paradise. It all started when Abhishek walked off while posing alongside Aishwarya during Sarabjit's premiere.

A source also told Bollywoodlife.com, "Abhishek and Aishwarya are very secure people. Abhishek did not want to take the centre stage and felt that it was Aishwarya's film and her moment on the red carpet. They were just there as a family to stand by her and her film."

Aishwarya and Abhishek also celebrated their ninth marriage anniversary on April 20 this year. Abhishek Bachchan took to Instagram to express his love for his wife Aishwarya. The Drona actor, who is seen hugging wife Aishwarya in the picture, wrote, "9 years of togetherness, love and hugs!"



9 years of togetherness, love and hugs! A photo posted by Abhishek Bachchan (@bachchan) on Apr 20, 2016 at 7:44am PDT

On the work front, Abhishek's film Housefull 3 has minted Rs 74.88 crore within six days of its release. And Aishwarya's performance in her last outing Sarbjit was appreciated by both the critics and viewers.

(Picture Courtesy: Milind Shelte, India Today)



--- ENDS ---
Ensconced in a long sofa at 58, South Avenue, a Congress MP address which also serves as a press back room station, a senior party leader with direct access to Rahul Gandhi, heaved a sigh of relief as he watched the news of former Chhattisgarh chief minister Ajit Jogi announcing the formation of a new party. "We would have sacked him anyway. Rahul is determined to get rid of such rotten apples. The man is hand-in-glove with the BJP," said the leader on condition of anonymity.

Jogi vehemently denies such allegations. Careful not to attack the Congress high command, he emphatically states "that the main fight in Chhattisgarh today is between Ajit Jogi and Raman Singh (the BJP chief minister)". The 70-year-old's sudden announcement of a "non-Congress and non-BJP" formation in Kotmi village, Marwahi (son Amit Jogi's constituency), on June 6 has again caught the grand old party on the back foot, showing that political one-upmanship is a matter of right timing. With anti-incumbency against the Raman Singh government at a high and the Congress failing to emerge as a strong alternative, Jogi's rebel unit could emerge as the third alternative. "The purpose of forming the party is two-fold,"Jogi told India Today. "First, I want to resolve a paradox that Chhattisgarh suffers from-the state is rich in resources, yet its people are the poorest. Second, the people are tired of seeing their fate decided by Delhi. They want their decisions taken here in Chhattisgarh. This is an all-India trend, which is why we see the rise of regional forces."

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For the Congress party, Jogi's departure further highlights a pattern that puts a serious question on the leadership qualities of Rahul Gandhi. From the rebel leaders of Arunachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand to Assam's Himanta Biswa Sarma, they all had one common grudge-the party vice-president did not address their grievances. Since January this year, Rahul had refused to meet the Chhattisgarh leader despite several requests. Ajit Jogi had been doing the rounds of Delhi to get his son Amit's expulsion from the party revoked. Amit was dismissed after a tape featuring him and Ajit Jogi fixing the Antagarh bypoll surfaced. The state unit demanded Jogi Sr's expulsion too for anti-party activities but the high command had not taken a decision.

His bitterness with Rahul is evident when he says, "Speaking to the central leadership was akin to bhains ke aage been bajana (playing a flute to a buffalo)." That said, the bureaucrat-turned-politician has refrained from making any direct comment on Rahul or Congress president Sonia Gandhi. "I am not concerned with Delhi anymore. My battle is local, here in Raipur, for the rights of the people of Chhattisgarh," he says.

Mineral-rich Chhattisgarh is also blessed with dense forests and fertile lands. Yet all its wealth and rich resources are being looted by "outside industrialists with the help of the BJP government", Jogi claims. As for the local Congress leadership, he alleges that it has "abjectly surrendered to the Raman Singh-led BJP government".

He's also in no mood to acknowledge the political stability and development brought in by the BJP government in the state. Ask him about the creation of Naya Raipur and pat comes the reply, "Naya Raipur was my creation as the first chief minister. I had identified the land, begun the entire process of land acquisition, laid out the master plan of the new capital. The Raman Singh administration only followed up on it."

There is no doubt that Jogi was the most acceptable Congress leader in the state. The bigger challenge now, for both the Congress and Jogi, would be to see which way the party's MLAs and ex-MLAs move. At the moment, Jogi has the support of less than half-a -dozen MLAs. He would need the support of 12 Congress MLAs to get recognised as a new party in the assembly.

Born into a converted Christian family in Bilaspur, his father was a Gond-Kanwar tribal, mother a Satnami. Unlike most of his state rivals, Jogi can speak half-a-dozen tribal dialects, including Chhattisgarhia and Surgujia. Given that the Scheduled Tribes form 30.6 per cent of the state's population and the SCs 12.8 per cent (largely Satnami), a mixed identity like his is a blessing in terms of creating a formidable vote-bank. Jogi, naturally, commands strong support from the Satnami community.

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An engineer by training, Jogi qualified as an IPS officer in 1968 and as an IAS officer in 1971. He served as district collector in several places in Madhya Pradesh, Sidhi, Shahdol, Raipur and even Indore. It was during his stint at Sidhi that he built his political contacts with the late Congress leader, Arjun Singh. Politics was the next natural step. In June 1986, he quit the civil service to enter Parliament as a Rajya Sabha member of the Congress. Jogi eventually became party general secretary as well as its spokesman. On November 1, 2000, when the new state of Chhattisgarh was carved out of MP, Jogi became its first chief minister.

Jogi's purported exit from the Congress is surely music to the ears of the Raman Singh-led BJP government in Chhattisgarh. For now, though, the chief minister doesn't even see the need to factor in Jogi for the next assembly polls. "It is very difficult for an individual to challenge an established political party. Even the late Congress leader Arjun Singh could not muster more than 7 per cent votes when he quit the party. It'll be difficult for Jogi to muster up more than 5-7 per cent in 2018," says Singh.

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The CM does not seem unduly worried and it is for a reason. Apart from the drama of both Jogi and the Congress accusing each other of being the B-team of the BJP, whichever camp leads in the state will only end up benefiting the BJP. In fact, given the Cube law in a first-past-the-post electoral system, in a typical three-cornered contest, the victor's vote percentage is likely to get exaggerated vis-a-vis the number of seats.

Chhattisgarh has traditionally witnessed tight contests with very little gap between the victor and the vanquished. In 2013, the BJP won 49 seats as against 39 for the Congress, but both parties had almost identical vote share-the BJP's 41 per cent to the Congress's 40 per cent. In a three-cornered contest, this difference is likely to get bigger with added advantage for the No. 1 player.

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Follow the writer on Twitter @Ajitarticle

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By PTI: New Delhi, Jun 10 (PTI) The Delhi Assembly today formed a nine-member committee to probe alleged corruption and irregularities in all three BJP-controlled MCDs and suggest measures for improvement of their functioning.

AAP MLA Somnath Bharti moved a resolution which was adopted by the House to set up the committee consisting of eight AAP MLAs and one BJP MLA Jagdish Pradhan.

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Bharti proposed Pradhans name when he was present in the House. Yesterday, Pradhan opted out of nine-member committee to probe allegations against the Lt Governor .

Almost every AAP MLA came down hard on MCDs for allegedly failing to provide better civic facilities to the people of Delhi.

The terms of reference of the committee include inquiry into the allegations of "rampant corruption" and "irregularities" in the MCD, study into the existing set up of civic bodies and suggestion for improvement of their functioning.

"The committee shall submit its report to the Honable Speaker before the commencement of the sixth legislative Assembly," the resolution stated.

Participating in the discussion on the working of civic bodies, AAP MLA Jagdeep Singh alleged that corruption is at its peak in BJP-controlled municipal corporations, saying that government should take strict action against them.

Bharti said that if we see assets of the BJP councillors whose salary is Rs 3,000 per month, we will get to know surprising facts about their earnings, alleging that MCDs have become "the mother of all corrupt departments".

"They (BJP councillors) are driving around in expensive cars and building bungalows. Before MCDs elections, councillors did nothing, but now they have assets in good numbers.

"If anti-corruption branch would have been handed over to government, most of BJP councillors including Delhi BJP President Satish Updhyay, would have been in jail," he said.

The AAP Government had called a two-day special session to discuss the functioning of all three bodies which are ruled by BJP which termed the move as "political motivated. The district magistrates had also sent notices to officials of MCDs over lack of cleanliness in the national capital. PTI BUN RG

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An extreme model and adventure junkie, Roberta Mancino, flies over an active volcano in a wingsuit. Watch the incredible footage she captured in the process.

Mancino flying over an active volcano in Chile. Photo: Screengrab from the footage

By India Today Web Desk: Would you like to fly?

Who wouldn't!

But would you like to fly over an active volcano?

An "extreme model" from Italy with a penchant for naked BASE jumping has outdone herself by flying over an active volcano in a wingsuit.



Roberta Mancino, whose resume includes more than 7000 jumps, completed the fly-over of Chile's Villarrica volcano without hurting herself, capturing some incredible footage in the process.

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Watch it here:





The jump was only the latest from the 'daredevil' athlete, who is probably already hard working towards figuring out the next way to impress her nearly 50,000 Instagram admirers.

And that shouldn't prove too difficult - click through for more derring-do from the extreme model.

Here's a photo she shared on her Instagram handle just before making this jump:





And this is her when she's not jumping out of a plane!



Photo by @raymondadamsimagery @marciscano. #panama #visitpanama #goprogirl #modeling #fashion A photo posted by roberta mancino (@mancinoroberta) on May 16, 2016 at 4:43am PDT

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The 31-year-old Belgian national was identified only as Ali E.H.A.

By AP: Belgian authorities have carried out another search and arrest in the investigation into the suicide bombings that killed 32 at Brussels Airport and the city's subway in March.

The Federal Prosecutor's Office on Friday said an apartment in the Schaerbeek area of Brussels was searched the previous day and a man detained and charged with participation in the activities of a terrorist group, terrorist murder and attempted terrorist murder.

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The 31-year-old Belgian national was identified only as Ali E.H.A.

The bombers who attacked the airport took a taxi to their target from Schaerbeek, with their bombs hidden in suitcases.

Prosecutors said no further information would be divulged so as not to hamper the investigation of the March 22 attacks, which were claimed by the Islamic State group.

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Request for provisional arrest of Jao has been sought under Article 12 of the India-South Africa Extradition treaty.

By Kamaljit Kaur Sandhu: In a major development in Bharuch double murder case, the National Investigation Agency (NIA), which is investigating the killing of two VHP and BJP leaders in Gujarat by Dawood aide Javed Chikna and South Africa based Zahidmiyan Sheikh alias Jao, has written to South Africa requesting for " provisional arrest" of Jao who is currently suspected to be in Pretoria. The NIA has provided crucial details like his latest photograph and phone number.

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Request for provisional arrest of Jao has been sought under Article 12 of the India-South Africa Extradition treaty.

DOUBLE MURDERS

The probe in connection with the killings of two BJP-VHP leaders - Shirish Bengali and Pragnesh Mistry - in Bharuch on November 2, 2015 was initially done by Gujarat Police. NIA was later roped in after it had found that a conspiracy was hatched from across various countries, including Pakistan, South Africa and Saudi Arabia, to strike terror into Hindus by targeting leaders of right wing saffron organisations.

SUSPECTS

Chikna and Zahid are accused of conspiring to kill at least four persons - Shirish Bhai Bangali, Advocate Modi, Viral Desai and Jaykar Maharaj as part of a larger conspiracy to target persons belonging to a particular section of society, "especially those with RSS, VHP, Bajrang Dal or BJP background", who were involved in the 2002 Gujarat riots and perceived to be anti-Muslim.

INDIA- SOUTH AFRICA TIE-UP

In this regard, NIA has sent a Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty (MLAT) request to South Africa. South Africa had earlier sought clarification from NIA as to why a murder case was being probed as a terror case. To which NIA shared details of investigation. Later further details were sought and after being satisfied by the agency,there could possibly be a break through, once South Africa is willing to act.

Zahid had contacted Yunus Shaikh, alias Manjaro, in Bharuch and Javed's brother Abid Patel to identify BJP/RSS leaders, after which the list was shared with Zahid in South Africa on email and chat.

Once the provisional arrest is made, India will have 60 days to move to extradition.

PAKISTAN ROLE

Similarly NIA had made a judicial request of LR to Pakistan in connection with the same case regarding Javed Chikna. Pakistan which usually turns a blind eye to such requests is yet to respond.

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Gupta, leader of Opposition in the Delhi Assembly, accused Speaker Ram Niwas of "hijacking" time when a debate over an alleged tanker scam was on.

By India Today Web Desk: The Delhi Assembly witnessed dramatic scenes today with BJP MLA Vijender Gupta performing some never seen before stunt in the House. Gupta stood on his desk infront of CM Arvind Kejriwal in protest against the Speaker, who he alleged, gave him less time to speak during a debate.

Gupta, leader of Opposition in the Delhi Assembly, accused Speaker Ram Niwas of "hijacking" time when a debate over an alleged tanker scam was on.

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Tit-for-tat? Kejriwal hits back at Centre, says give details of consultants hired by Modi govt

"This is shameful. I don't think I have seen a member standing on his bench like this," Ram Niwas said. "You hijack all the time of the House, don't allow us to speak," Gupta shot back.

"Shocking. Absolutely shocking," CM Kejriwal tweeted moments later.

WATCH: BJP's Vijender Gupta stand on a bench to protest against Delhi Govt inside State Assemblyhttps://t.co/fY9FQyEzI0 ANI (@ANI_news) June 10, 2016

WHEN GUPTA WAS MARSHALLED OUT OF DELHI ASSEMBLY

In November 2015, Vijender Gupta was marshalled out of the House after continued uproar over his party legislator OP Sharma's derogatory remarks against ruling AAP MLA Alka Lamba.

The Speaker had then suspended OP Sharma for the rest of the session over his remarks against Lamba.

The BJP has three MLAs in the 70-member Delhi Assembly.

Also Read:



High drama inside Delhi Assembly, BJP MLA thrown out



AAP and BJP MLAs stage dharna in Delhi Assembly to settle scores

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According to the central police station SHO, Bharat Bhushan, CCTV footage has revealed that two of the three assailants were wearing helmets and one of them shot the businessman, Ankit Amar, four times from a close range.

By Ajay Kumar: A well-known businessman was gunned down by three unidentified assailants in a posh locality, Sector 16 A in Faridabad, on Wednesday night.

ASSAILANTS FOLLOWED ANKIT

The victim has been identified as Ankit Amar (33), an owner of a herbal cosmetic brand. The incident took place outside his home as soon as stepped down from his Audi around 8.15 pm.

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Local police suspect that the assailants were following him from the factory situated at 489 Link Road in old Faridabad city.

COUSIN, BROTHER-IN-LAW INVOLVED?

The deceased's father, Prem Chand Amar, has given a police statement that Ankit's cousin, Vinod Gupta and his brother-in-law Vinay Gupta could have been involved in the murder.

They might have killed him themselves or used contract killers to execute the crime, he alleged.

"Ankit had some business rivalry with the two and a property dispute case was also pending in the Faridabad Civil Court", Prem Chand said.

"I was informed by my wife on phone that some people had shot Ankit. A neighbour, Ajay, took him to a nearby metro hospital, where doctors declared him dead on arrival," he added.

ASSAILANTS WERE WEARING HELMETS

According to central police station SHO, Bharat Bhushan, CCTV footage has revealed that two of the three assailants were wearing helmets and one of them shot Anik four times from a close range.

ALSO READ: Chennai losing safest city tag as murders in broad daylight on the rise





--- ENDS ---
By PTI: New Delhi, Jun 10 (PTI) Delhi Police today chargesheeted 17 accused, 12 of whom are absconding, for allegedly conspiring, recruiting Indian youths and establishing a base of terror outfit Al-Qaeda in Indian Subcontinent (AQIS).

In its final report filed before Additional Sessions Judge Reetesh Singh, Special Cell of Delhi Police charged the five arrested accused -- Mohd Asif, Zafar Masood, Mohd Abdul Rehman, Syed Anzar Shah and Abdul Sami -- for alleged offences under the provisions of Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA).

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They were arrested between December 2015 and January 2016 from different parts of the country.

All 17 have been chargesheeted for alleged offences under sections 18 (punishment for conspiracy), 18-B (punishment for recruiting of any person or persons for terrorist act) and 20 (Punishment for being member of terrorist gang or organisation) of the UAPA.

The probe agency has alleged that terror outfit Al-Qaeda was trying to set up its base in India under the banner of Al-Qaeda in Indian Sub Continent (AQIS) and some youths from districts of western Uttar Pradesh had already left India and joined its cadre in Pakistan.

It claimed that and one of the modules of the outfit was active in Sambhal district in Uttar Pradesh.

It alleged that the accused were in touch with terrorists from Pakistan, Iran and Turkey via social media and mobile phones, and they had visited these countries and had also financed AQIS and motivated the youths for Jehad.

Besides the five arrested accused, the agency also charged 12 others who are at large and the court had earlier issued non-bailable warrant against them.

The absconding accused are Syed Akhtar, Sanaul Haq, Mohd Sharjeel Akhtar, Usman, Mohd Rehan, Abu Sufiyan, Syed Mohd Arshiyan, Syed Mohd Zishan Ali, Sabeel Ahmed, Mohd Shahid Faisal, Farhatullah Ghori and Mohd Umar.

The FIR in the present case was registered after arrest of Asif on December 14 last year. PTI UK ABA RT

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By PTI: New Delhi, June 10 (PTI) Four persons have been arrested for allegedly hatching a plan to kill gangster Chhota Rajan, presently lodged in Tihar jail, at the behest of his arch rival and fugitive don Dawood Ibrahims confidant Chhota Shakeel.

The four alleged contract killers, identified as Robinson, Junaid, Yunus and Manish, were arrested on June 3 following which they were sent to police remand and interrogated for five days.

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Later, they were produced in a court which sent them to judicial custody, a senior police official said today.

"Investigation is underway," Special Commissioner of Police (Special Cell) Arvind Deep said.

Delhi Polices Special Cell zeroed down on the four through telephone intercepts. The accused were in constant touch with Shakeel, police claimed.

Once identified, the four were picked up from their residences in Rohini in Outer Delhi, Seelampur in northeast Delhi, Ghaziabad and Noida, the official said.

Police also claimed have recovered a pistol and live cartridges from possession of one of the accused.

They had allegedly planned to eliminate Rajan while the don is taken to court for hearing.

The four accused are also lodged in Tihar jail, where Rajan is in a high-security ward, the official added.

Rajan (55), who was on a run for around 27 years, was arrested from Bali in Indonesia, based on a tip-off from Australian Federal Police, and brought to India in November last year. PTI DEY RT

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By PTI: From Lalit K Jha

Washington, Jun 10 (PTI) Hillary Clinton received a big boost to her White House ambitions after top Democrats led by President Barack Obama endorsed her amidst a latest opinion poll showing Americas first woman presidential candidate ahead of her Republican rival Donald Trump.

Soon after Obama endorsed former secretary of state Clinton, the Clinton Campaign said they would canvass together in Wisconsin on June 15.

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Obamas announcement came moments after he met Clintons rival Bernie Sanders at the White House. A presidential spokesman said that the Vermont Senator, who remains defiant, was not surprised.

Sanders, 74, who would continue till the last primary in Washington DC next Tuesday, told reporters that he would work with Clinton, 68, to defeat Trump. Many believe it as an indication of his dropping out of the race next week.

"Keep in mind, we have another entire term of this potential confusion if the vote is not allowed this year. Anybody who thinks that whatever the next president - and God willing, in my view, itll be Secretary Clinton," Vice President Joe Biden said.

Like Obama, his remarks came after he met with Sanders.

"In a meeting today, Vice President Biden and Senator Sanders discussed the importance of what Senator Sanders campaign has done to focus the conversation in this country on income inequality, the corrosive influence of big money in our campaigns and the need to reform our politics.

"The Vice President congratulated him on energising so many new voters and bringing them into the Democratic Party. They discussed the need for the national conversation to continue to focus on the defining fight of our time," a Biden spokesman said.

Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren also endorsed Clinton.

"Yes, I am ready to get in this fight and work my heart out for Hillary Clinton to become the next US president and to make sure that Donald Trump never gets any place close to the White House," Warren told MSNBC news channel.

Clinton, 68, now has a three-point edge over Trump, 69, (42-39 per cent) in a hypothetical matchup, Fox News said.

Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Trumps popularity has dropped by six per cent, the poll said.

The Asian American and Pacific Islanders (AAPI) described Clinton bagging the Democratic nomination as "undoubtedly historic not only because she is the first woman to be nominated for president, but because she has united diverse communities across the country in a movement toward victory".

Congressman Ami Bera, the only Indian-American in the current Congress, said Clinton would be the next US president.

Trump was highly critical of Obamas endorsement.

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"Obama just endorsed Crooked Hillary. He wants four more years of Obama - but nobody else does!" Trump said in a tweet.

"Crooked Hillary Clinton will be a disaster on jobs, the economy, trade, healthcare, the military, guns and just about all else. Obama plus!" the 69-year-old New York-based real estate baron said in another tweet. PTI LKJ CPS AKJ CPS

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The only apprehension which the Congress faces particularly its Jat leaders is that they can't be seen voting along with the INLD.

By Ashhar Khan: It was a surprise when walked in the Congress office in Delhi. The occasion was the meeting of 17 Congress MLAs of Haryana. The meeting was with General Secretary of the AICC BK Hariprasad. Since last one week there was uncertainty on who will the Congress support

The elections to the Rajya Sabha are scheduled for Saturday. The BJP has put up two candidates, however, it has managed votes only for one of them. So its first candidate Union Rural Development Minister Birendra Singh will sail through. Now, the standoff is between BJP supported Zee Media boss Subhash Chandra and INLD candidate and eminent lawyer RK Anand.

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RK Anand, a former Congressman has now linked his lot with the INLD. The BJP is eleven short to get Subhash Chandra through. While INLD needs twelve to get RK Anand through.

After the meeting of the MLAs, there was a one line resolution that the decision is left to the Congress president. Congress Legislative Party leader, Kiran Chaudhary said that " RK Anand was here to show solidarity with the ideals of the Congress. We all had a discussion and the decision we have left to the Congress President"



CONGRESS TO BACK RK ANAND

The Congress is posturing that RK Anand is closer to the Congress rather than INLD . Hence it would be prudent to vote for him to keep obscurantist forces at bay. RK Anand says that " he has been a supporter of the Congress and if he wins he will support the Congress on the floor of the house "

Half an hour later the Congress Spokesperson Manish Tewari announced the decision that " to keep the communal forces at bay the congress legislature party in Haryana will vote for RK Anand in the Rajya Sabha elections."

The only apprehension which the Congress faces particularly its Jat leaders is that they can't be seen voting along with the INLD. At the local level in Haryana Jat land the direct fight is between INLD and the Congress. The BJP though it is in power at the moment is perceived to be a lesser competition

But with drawing this fine print that RK Anand is a supporter of Congress the go ahead has been given.

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By PTI: Hyderabad, Jun 9 (PTI) Terming the environment on University of Hyderabad (UoH) campus as "hostile" for Dalit community, a senior Dalit faculty member today resigned to protest the appointment of Prof Vipin Srivastava as Pro-Vice-Chancellor-1 of the varsity.

Prof Sreepati Ramudu, Head of the Centre for the Study of Social Exclusion and Inclusive Policy at the UoH, said in his resignation letter to the Registrar, "The current environment on the campus is extremely vitiated and is perceived by the Dalit community as intimidating and hostile."

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Referring to the death of Dalit research scholar Rohith Vemula on January 17 (which led to nation-wide protests), Sreepati said he had been following the developments on the campus before and after Rohiths death.

"They (Dalits) feel very vulnerable and lack confidence in the impartiality of the administration. So, I had hoped that knowing very well the sentiments of the Dalit faculty expressed in many letters from the SC/ST Teachers Forum, the administration will take up confidence building measures. Instead, to my shock, I see a circular naming Prof Vipin Srivastava as the Pro-Vice-Chancellor-1," Sreepati said.

Srivastava had faced a serious allegation in the past, he said.

UoH appointed Srivastava as the Pro-Vice-Chancellor-1 on June 7. He would be assisting the Vice-Chancellor Prof Appa Rao Podile. PTI VVK KRK PVI PTP

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The men then lured the woman to an area near New Delhi railway station where they raped her and robbed her at knife-point.

By Reuters: Five men were sentenced to life in prison on Friday for raping a Danish tourist in the heart of New Delhi's tourist district in 2014, in a case that reignited worries about sexual violence against women in India.

The men, all in their twenties, were found guilty by a Delhi court on Monday for robbing and raping the 52-year old Danish woman at a secluded spot close to New Delhi railway station.

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RIGOROUS IMPRISONMENT

"All the five convicts have been sentenced to rigorous life imprisonment for their offences," additional public prosecutor Atul Shrivastava, told Reuters at the court.

The woman was walking through an area of narrow lanes near Delhi's Paharganj district, a tourist area packed with backpacker hotels, on the evening of Jan. 14, 2014, when she asked a group of men for directions to her hotel.

ROBBED AND GANGRAPED

The men then lured the woman to an area near New Delhi railway station where they raped her and robbed her at knife-point, the prosecution said in its chargesheet.

India was shaken into deep soul-searching about entrenched violence against women after the fatal gang-rape in December 2012 of a female student on a bus in New Delhi.

The crime, which sent thousands of Indians onto the streets in protest against what many saw as the failure of authorities to protect women, encouraged the government to enact tougher jail sentences for rapists.

CONVICTED

Police accused nine men of attacking the Danish woman in 2014. Three are juveniles being tried in a separate court while a fourth died during the trial.

Lawyer D.K. Sharma, representing the five convicted men, said his clients would appeal against the verdict.





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Travelling from Delhi to Agra is set to become an experience in itself.

By India Today Web Desk: None of us expected this to happen. Travelling to Agra from Delhi will never be the same again. According to a report by The Times of India, the central government is planning to connect the two cities by seaplanes on River Yamuna not too long from now, Union transport minister Nitin Gadkari said on Thursday.

Forget everything else, imagine what an amazing experience it would be to avail such a transportation infrastructure. Something like this will prove to be an important point in India's maritime history. Speaking about the project, Gadkari told The Times of India, "The 'fly boat' project will start in the next three months. We have also been in discussions with the Airport Authority of India (AAI) in order to frame rules and regulations needed to introduce seaplanes on this route."

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This ambitious project has been announced a few months after the Parliament passed the Indian Waterways Bill on March 11, which aims to build 106 inland waterways in the country and thus revolutionise India's transportation system.

Also watch: Think you know how beautiful the Taj Mahal is? This video will prove you wrong!



Apart from the seaplanes project, the central government is also planning to operate hovercrafts and seabuses not only on the Yamuna River but all other waterways spread across the country.

While addressing Uttar Pradesh-based reports through video conferencing, Gadkari revealed that the fly boat project will have three stakeholders--Delhi Development Authority (DDA), Delhi Jal Board and his ministry.

While Delhi Jal Board has been given the responsibility to prevent effluents flowing into Yamuna, DDA will play a major role in beautifying the riverbanks. The Ministry of Road Transport and Highways will make sure that the dredging work is done properly so that the required water levels are maintained at all times.

Gadkari also said that some Canadian and Russian companies have already expressed interest in supplying these seaplanes to the country.

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By India Today Web Desk: There are a couple of TV stars who are known to throw tantrums and arrive late on the sets of their shows. But when Diya Aur Baati Hum actor Anas Rashid joined the league of these stars, it was a bit surprising.

Anas has, of late, been acting pricey on the sets of the Star Plus soap. He arrives on the sets late, delaying the shooting by hours at stretch, leaving production people and everybody else on the sets waiting, reports India Forums.

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His co-stars have found a way to deal with this. They refuse to show up on the sets till Anas arrives on the sets. With the star cast of the show throwing such tantrums, the life of the makers has naturally become hell.

Also read: Holiday Diaries: It's vacation time for Diya Aur Baati Hum star Deepika Singh

We also hear that all this is happening because the show is set to wrap up soon in a couple of months. Though the report has not been confirmed as yet.

Diya Aur Baati Hum stars Anas Rashid, Deepika Singh, Neelu Vaghela and Ashok Lokhande.

Also read: Diya Aur Baati Hum star Deepika Singh injures herself during shoot



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Do Lafzon Ki Kahani, starring Randeep Hooda and Kajal Aggarwal in the lead roles, is in theatres today. Here's our review of this Deepak Tijori film.

By Ananya Bhattacharya: Randeep Hooda and Kajal Aggarwal's Do Lafzon Ki Kahani is in theatres today. Will the Deepak Tijori film strike a chord with the audience? Here's our review.

Cast: Randeep Hooda, Kajal Aggarwal, Mamik Singh, Yuri Suri

Direction: Deepak Tijori

Ratings: (1.5/5)

A heavily bruised and battered Randeep Hooda makes his way out of a dockyard. He mumbles something about something being safe on the phone. The call later, he is knocked over by a car. Do Lafzon Ki Kahani begins with a bang and the story moves to six months before this incident.

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ALSO READ: Randeep Hooda-Kajal Aggarwal's lip-lock scene in Do Lafzon Ki Kahani sets the internet on fire

ALSO READ: If not for Salman Khan, Randeep Hooda wouldn't have done Sultan

Sooraj (Hooda) is a man of few words. He does odd jobs in Kuala Lumpur to make ends meet. When an old night guard retires, Sooraj takes his place. He's in the middle of a particularly interesting fight on TV when a girl ambles in and starts chattering away. Sooraj soon realises she has mistaken him for 'Osman Uncle' and clears the confusion. Jenny (Kajal Aggarwal) is blind and a crappy Hindi soap Main Bindiya Teri Mathey Ki is to her is what oxygen is to normal human beings.

Soon, Sooraj and Jenny strike up a conversation and the inevitable happens. There's a history to Sooraj's taciturnity. Sooraj, an MMA (Mixed Martial Arts) fighter, exited the ring three years ago. He now wants to get back to fighting to have a shot at a future with Jenny. But life is not a bed of roses.

Director Deepak Tijori and writer Girish Dhamija have tried to put together a tale of love, loss and redemption in Do Lafzon Ki Kahani. The product, however, is a half-baked story with half-decent performances by the lead actors. It is largely because of the acting of the actors, Randeep Hooda more than Kajal Aggarwal, that you want to sit through this yawnfest of a film.

Randeep Hooda tries to step into the shoes of the grumpy Sooraj, but there is hardly anything even his acting can do after a point. Hooda looks fabulous in his MMA fight and training sequences. He tries romancing Jenny awkwardly, and for a while, this unlikely couple keeps you hooked. However, soon the cracks in the film begin showing. Kajal Aggarwal is believable in the first few minutes. The affable Jenny soon turns into something else altogether, behaving like a human hosepipe for the entire second half of the film.

Deepak Tijori gives his Do Lafzon Ki Kahani the tagline 'Love never hurts... It heals', and it's more than befitting. If it reminds you of a run-of-the-mill love story of the 90s, perfect. That is exactly what this film is. Do Lafzon Ki Kahani makes use of every believable and unbelievable cliche in the history of bad love stories. From the brooding hero's mysterious past to the unnecessarily chirpy and talkative heroine, from the goons to loss of love: you name it, you get it.

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Mohana Krishna does a good enough job with the camera. The beautiful locales of Kuala Lumpur are pleasing to the eyes. The slickly choreographed MMA sequences deserve much praise.

Among the numerous songs in the film, Jeena Marna is a hummable track. The other songs are hardly worth a mention.

In all, Do Lafzon Ki Kahani has nothing much to offer apart from Randeep Hooda and the MMA sequences. Watch it if you swear by Hooda.

--- ENDS ---
By PTI: From Sajjad Hussain

Islamabad, Jun 10 (PTI) Pakistan today told the US that the American drone strike on its soil that killed the Afghan Taliban chief had "vitiated" ties even as the two sides held "candid" talks on issues like dismantling of terror safe havens, Afghan peace talks and regional security.

A US delegation which included senior Director for Afghanistan and Pakistan at the US National Security Council Peter Lavoy and Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan Richard Olson arrived here this morning and held talks with Pakistans civilian and military leaders.

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Lavoy called on Prime Ministers Adviser on Foreign Affairs Sartaj Aziz and Foreign Secretary Aizaz Ahmed Chaudhry.

Aziz told the US officials that the May 21 drone strike in Balochistan, which killed Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Akhtar Mansour, "was not only a violation of Pakistans sovereignty and breach of the principles of the United Nations Charter, but has also vitiated bilateral ties".

General John Nicholson, Commander Resolute Support Mission in Afghanistan, and Olson called on Pakistan army chief General Raheel Sharif.

"Regional security situation, with particular reference to border management and peace and stability in Afghanistan in the post the US drone strike came under discussion," an Inter-Services Public Relations statement said after the meeting.

Expressing "serious concern" on the US drone strike in Balochistan as a violation of Pakistans sovereignty, General Raheel highlighted as to how it had impacted the mutual trust and respect and was counter productive in consolidating the gains of Operation Zarb-e-Azb that was targeted at militants.

The army chief stressed that the US action was counter- productive in consolidating the gains of Pakistan military operation in the tribal regions.

"All efforts for durable peace in the region have to be synergised with shared commitment and responsibility in order to make them successful," Raheel was quoted as saying.

Raheel said that while the operation was launched against terrorists of all hues and sanctuaries of terrorists have been dismantled without discrimination, all stakeholders need to understand Pakistans challenges with regard to porous border, inter-tribal linkages and decades-old presence of over three million refugees.

In response to US queries on safe havens in Pakistan for the Taliban, it was emphasised that Pakistan is already pursuing its objective of eliminating all militants and terrorists from its soil in accordance with the National Action Plan, a Pakistan Foreign Office statement said.

At the same time, Pakistan would have to safeguard its own security through better border management and early repatriation of Afghan refugees, it said. MORE PTI SH NSA ASK AKJ ASK

--- ENDS ---
On a June evening in 2011, one of Maharashtra's topmost BJP leaders, Gopinath Munde, stunned party colleagues. In a hush-hush meeting at his residence, Munde said he was planning to defect to the Congress the next day because he was being ignored by the BJP. Eknath Khadse, leader of the opposition in the legislative assembly then, screamed betrayal. "Not only me, none of us will back you if you join the Congress," he declared. Munde backtracked.

Five years later, it's Khadse's summer of discontent. On June 4, he was forced to step down as revenue minister and de facto No. 2 in the Devendra Fadnavis government after conflict of interest charges in a land deal. But every state BJP minister, except Pankaja Munde and Girish Mahajan, and state BJP leader dropped in at Khadse's Malabar Hill bungalow Ramtek on June 6, a testimony to his clout in the party.

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Finance Minister Sudhir Mungantiwar, now tipped to be the new No. 2, calls Khadse a stickler for hierarchy. "(Bhau) was leader of opposition but always offered me his seat at meetings because I was state party president."

Khadse, 63, remains the party's most senior leader after state party president Raosaheb Danve and Pandurang Phundkar, and a significant OBC leader. "Our wishes are with him," says BJP MLA Devyani Farande. "He will bounce back."

Not anytime soon, though. On May 21, India Today television broke the story of a Vadodara-based hacker claiming that six phone calls from a landline number in Karachi, registered in the name of Dawood Ibrahim's wife Mehjabeen, had been made on Khadse's mobile number between September 2015 and April this year. "The ATS (Anti-Terrorism Squad) found no entry of any incoming or outgoing international call on my mobile number for the past year. If indeed I had relations with Dawood, wouldn't I have contacted him to use his influence and stop the media trial against me?" Khadse asked.

That media trial, he says, has cost him his job. Khadse's wife Mandakini and son-in-law Girish Choudhary had bought a three-acre plot on disputed land in the Bhosari industrial area near Pune on April 27. Worth over Rs 30 crore, they had paid just Rs 3.74 crore. The Maharashtra Industrial Development Corporation (MIDC) was to have acquired the land in 1968, but it did not do so. Nor did it compensate original owner, Kolkata resident Abbas Ukani, who demanded more compensation than the MIDC had fixed. Though the law says land acquisition lapses if not completed within 40 years, the MIDC mentioned itself as the owner in property documents. Khadse's family bought the land, allegedly anticipating a Rs 100 crore compensation windfall if the MIDC did indeed acquire the land. The conflict of interest arose because Khadse as revenue minister would have determined the amount of compensation.

In his defence, Khadse says it was a land transaction between two individuals. "We purchased the land from the owner. Can't my children buy land because I am a minister?" he asks. "The court will take a call on the compensation."

Khadse resigned alleging a media trial. "The opposition was quiet but the media chased me into my farm too," he said. "Some big person was using the media against me."

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Is it Chief Minister Fadnavis? "I won't blame anyone," Khadse says with a straight face. It was something Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray insinuated in party mouthpiece Saamna on June 5: "(Khadse) never realised that this kid (Fadnavis) was packing the firecracker with gunpowder."

Fadnavis has announced a retired judge will probe the Bhosari land case. A notification is yet to be issued. A BJP leader told India Today that the party has assured Khadse that the inquiry will be completed soon. "He resigned only after we assured him that the inquiry will not go on for more than six months," the leader said.

It is unlikely, however, that Khadse will return to the state cabinet even if he is cleared by an inquiry. "He was overconfident," one BJP leader says. "He thought the party would not touch him despite his misdeeds. The party tolerated him because of his seniority. He mistook it as his strength."

Born into a family of farmers, Khadse was elected an MLA on a BJP ticket from Jalgaon district in 1989. He became a local media sensation when he cornered the Congress over the 1991 Jalgaon sex scandal-the exploitation of local women by top politicians and businessmen.

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Khadse, it would seem, has fallen by the very sword he had wielded deftly as leader of the opposition between 2009 and 2014. He claimed to have unearthed 137 land scams, including one in which he implicated former CM Sharad Pawar's family. As CM in 1989, Pawar had allotted 3.26 acres to NGO Mukund Bhavan Trust (MBT) in Pune. In 2011, Khadse discovered that MBT had acquired 326 acres instead and that its trustees included Pawar's daughter Supriya, her husband Sadanand Sule as well as 2G scam-accused Shahid Balwa and Vinod Goenka. An FIR has been filed against them in this case.

Khadse was till recently Fadnavis's chief troubleshooter. Last year, when the Bombay High Court banned an Ekadshi gathering in Pandharpur, it was Khadse who pacified the hundreds of thousands of angry devotees gathered there. He juggled 10 portfolios-revenue, agriculture, minority welfare, excise, relief and rehabilitation, dairy development and fisheries. Unlike Fadnavis, who depends on the bureaucracy to make decisions, Khadse trusts his own judgement.

With power, however, came hubris, says Shiv Sena MP Sanjay Raut. Khadse's outbursts in cabinet meetings and allegations of high-handedness in administration began being talked about. His cold war with revenue secretary Manukumar Shrivastava displeased the CM.

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A close friend also talks of how Khadse keeps score of perceived slights. A state department protocol gaffe during the state cabinet swearing-in at Mumbai's Wankhede stadium in October 2014 left his wife Mandakini and daughter Rohini sitting on the ground as there weren't enough chairs. In six months, Khadse got them two chairs-Mandakini was appointed chairperson of Mahanand, the state cooperative milk federation, and Rohini was made chairperson of the Jalgaon district bank and the Muktai cooperative sugar mill in Khadse's constituency Muktainagar. When daughter-in-law Raksha (wife of son Nikhil, who committed suicide in 2014) was elected to the Lok Sabha, he could not shrug off charges of promoting dynastic politics.

Khadse may be seething now, but seems too deeply wedded to the party to break away from it. "I have given my hundred per cent to the party," he says, offering as evidence of this commitment the story of electioneering in Jalgaon after getting dialysis the previous night and campaigning for the party a month after undergoing heart surgery. "The party too has given me everything. I am satisfied," he says.

Follow the writer on Twitter @kirantare

--- ENDS ---
While justifying the actions of the MoD, the spokesperson said it was the Attorney General (AG) who advised them in February 2015 and the ministry 'proceeded accordingly'.

By Jugal R Purohit: The Ministry of Defence (MoD), after fighting hard to become a party to the Italian legal proceedings in their case against Finmeccanica and its firm AgustaWestland, quietly quit the process in February 2015. In doing so, MoD chose to not appeal against the accused and lost out an opportunity to seek monetary compensation.

While justifying the actions of the MoD, the spokesperson said it was the Attorney General (AG) who advised them in February 2015 and the ministry 'proceeded accordingly'. The ministry had earlier said the advice to quit was given by the Solicitor General (SG). Upon asking, both these authorities denied ever giving such an advice.

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The question that emanates from this is what prompted the MoD's move to pull out?

"I DONT'T KNOW WHY, BUT THEY QUIT. I RESPECT THAT"

Speaking to this correspondent in his Milan office Attorney Gian Luca Grossi who represented the MoD at the lower court at Busto Arsizio where the trial went on from June 19, 2013 to October 9, 2014 said, "MoD was civil party in the trial, in the first stage in Busto Arsizio. It came in only at the end of the first trial there. Then India decided to not go ahead with the appeal. Lower court gave a clear verdict saying there was impossibility of bribery. MoD decided to quit the trial. I don't know why, but they decided to quit. I respect that." When asked what did he advice the MoD, he said, "I think our advice was to stay on, stay inside also in the second degree at the Tribunale (Court of Appeal). I told them I was not confident (about their exit). It wasn't a very easy decision but 51 per cent I would have stayed against 49 per cent to pull out. He added, "If I had the choice in my hands, I probably would've (stayed). When you make a choice, take a path, even if you find some problems in walking, you have to go ahead."

In the sentence of the Milan Court of Appeals of April 7, 2016, MoD is shown as a 'non appelante' - a party which had not appealed.

According to Grossi, India lost out on a chance to not just secure a moral victory by being a party when the recent order came out but also monetary compensation. "If you want your money back, you go the civil court. If you want to secure reputation and restoration, then you go to the criminal one," he said. In effect, India went to the criminal court and opted against going to the civil one.

When INDIA TODAY approached AG Rohatgi, he initially sought time to respond. Reverting at a later date Rohatgi said, "I have advised the MoD on aspects pertaining to blacklisting of various companies under the Finmeccanica umbrella but in so far as the issue you are raising, I have no recollection of having done so."

Since in one of the responses the MoD had named the SG as the one who advised them, he too was approached. SG Ranjit Kumar too distanced himself from the issue. He said, "The matter never came to me nor have I given any advice."

Earlier, the Defence Ministry spokesperson had stated, "Our goal in becoming a party in the lower court was to get access to evidence and documents. We did get that. Joining the appeal would not have yielded much."

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THE BLAME GAME

Former Defence Minister and senior Congress leader AK Antony had accused the present government of trying to aid Finmeccanica and AgustaWestland by allowing a backdoor entry into India markets, something the government has vehemently denied. In July 2014, the NDA had, its ministers claimed, put on hold all acquisition and procurement cases involving Finmeccanica and allied firms.

As per the recent statement in the Parliament by Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar, the MoD had made an advance payment of Euro 250.32 million to AgustaWestland, only Euro 199.62 million was recovered after a deduction of Euro 50.70 million for the three helicopters India took the delivery of. "In addition, the government also suffered an estimated loss and damages of Euro 398.21 million on account of cancellation of the contract with AgustsWestland International Limited (AWIL)," Parrikar said.

Also read: EXCLUSIVE: In Agusta case, defence ministry rejected lawyer's advice, made a quiet U-turn in Italy





--- ENDS ---
By PTI: New Delhi, Jun 10 (PTI) DNA and other forensic reports, including the report on detailed medical examination of the 52-year-old Danish gangrape victim conducted at Copenhagen at the request of Indian government, today sealed the fate of five accused in the sensational gangrape case of 2014.

The court, which awarded them life imprisonment till their death, relied on these reports and observed that the involvement of the accused was "proved beyond reasonable doubt through the scientific evidence i.e. the DNA report".

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It noted that matching of the DNA profile clearly connected these accused with the commission of crime and there was no possibility of any manipulation in medical examination and DNA report prepared in a foreign country.

"Furthermore, it is very important to mention that as per request from Indian government, the victim lady was subjected to detail medical examination at Copenhagen and PW 25, expert from FSL (Rohini), has clearly stated that similarity has been observed in the report prepared at Department of Forensic Medicine, University of Copenhagen and the report prepared by him," Additional Sessions Judge Ramesh Kumar said.

"Judicial notice can be taken that there is no possibility of any manipulation in medical examination and DNA report prepared at foreign country i.e. Copenhagen and no suggestion has been given by the defence in this regard also," the court said.

It said medical examintaion of the victim conducted in Copenhagen also corroborated with the forensic science laboratory (FSL) report here.

"The DNA profile was generated from clothings of the victim which was seized from the spot in the night of incident itself and those DNA profile matched with the DNA profile generated from the samples of accused persons. Thus, it is clear that accused persons are the offenders who committed the offence," the court said in its 69-page judgement.

It observed that the "most vital evidence" to connect all these accused with the commission of crime was the DNA report.

"The DNA is a individual characteristic of each individual and is most important thing for identity of an individual," it said adding the DNA profile generated from the clothes of the victim had matched with the DNA profile generated from the sample of the accused persons.

The court also referred to the testimony of an FSL expert who had deposed as a prosecution witness in the case and said that he had "found similarities" between DNA report prepared by him and the DNA report prepared in Denmark. PTI SKV ABA SJK ARC

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By PTI: Panaji, Jun 10 (PTI) Goa government has agreed to allot five acre land to the Navy for setting up a naval enclave at the proposed International Airport in Mopa, Chief Minister Laxmikant Parsekar said today.

"We have decided to allot five acres of land in the proposed Greenfield airport at Mopa to the Indian Navy considering the security point of view," he said.

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Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar, in a letter to Parsekar on June 2, had sought the land to set up a naval enclave at the airport. The first phase of the airport is expected to be commissioned in 2019.

"Whenever an airport comes up in the coastal area, the Defence Ministry always seeks land from the security point of view," the Chief Minister said.

According to Parsekar, since the existing Dabolim airport has presence of the Navy, the state government had earlier refused to give any land to it at the proposed Mopa Airport.

"But now, considering the security concern, we have agreed to give the land," he said. Foundation stone for the Mopa airport is expected to be laid this year.

In the letter, Parrikar had said, "Naval enclave is considered critical for naval aircraft operations. The proposed five acres of land for this purpose could be given on lease for the entire period of concession."

"The proposed naval infrastructure would be built by the Ministry of Defence with separate independent entry and exit to the naval facility," the Defence Minister had said.

The Defence Ministry has clarified that the "launch of military operational missions would take priority over normal operations in case of emergency as declared by the Government of India." PTI RPS NP NSD PTP

--- ENDS ---
Goa Police raided a building in Ribandar, a small town located between the capital Panaji and Old Goa, and arrested four persons and the racket mastermind Anand Kumar.

According to some media reports, a model or actor used to charge between Rs 5 lakh to Rs 20 lakh per customer.

By India Today Web Desk: The Goa Police has busted an inter-state high-profile sex racket involving some actors and models. Five persons including the racket's kingpin have been arrested by the police.

RACKET KINGPIN ARRANGED MODELS, ACTORS FROM MUMBAI

According to reports, police raided a building in Ribandar, a small town located between the capital Panaji and Old Goa, and arrested four persons and the racket mastermind Anand Kumar.

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Mumbai: High-profile sex racket busted, Savdhaan India actor among 2 models arrested

Speaking to reporters in a press conference, crime branch Superintendent of Police Kartik Kashyap said that the high profile sex racket has been operating in the state over the last four years and actors, models, TV stars and upcoming models were being supplied to famous hotels across the state.

LIST OF CLIENTS RECOVERED

During the police raid, a list consisting names of clients whom Anand Kumar had supplied models, was also recovered. Sources said that the list has names of big political leaders and corporates personalities. The police is investigating matter on the basis of this list.

WATCH: High-profile sex racket busted in Delhi

MODELS CHARGED RS 5 to 20 LAKH

According to some media reports, a model or actor used to charge between Rs 5 lakh to Rs 20 lakh per customer. Most of the customers were from the corporate world or political functionaries.

A case has been registered and further investigation is on. The police have sought five-day remand of all the five accused from the court.

Earlier this week, the Mumbai Police busted a high-profile sex racket and arrested two models. One of the two arrested models reportedly was a known female TV actor who is seen regularly on the crime show Savdhaan India. However, the police is yet to arrest the boss of the racket.

Also Read:

Spas, night clubs offering sexual services turning Gurgaon into Delhi's Bangkok

Bangalore: Call girl racket busted, 1 arrested

--- ENDS ---
Goa will no longer host the highly popular music festivals during the tourist season of Christmas and New Year.

Sunburn is one of the most popular EDM festivals in Goa held during the Christmas-New Year period. Picture courtesy: www.fest300.com

By India Today Web Desk: One of the biggest reasons most of us prefer travelling to Goa during the year-end is because we just love welcoming the new year by grooving to the tunes of the popular electronic dance music (EDM) festivals that are held at the beach destination.

But things won't be the same anymore, as these festivals won't be allowed in Goa during the festive week of Christmas and New Year, Tourism Minister Dilip Parulekar said on Thursday, claiming that such events lead to chaos in Goa during "peak season".

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"At that time so many tourists are in Goa to celebrate New Year or Christmas. We do not want these EDM events at that time. It should be organised before or after that period," Parulekar told reporters at the State secretariat.

Goa has been the most sought-after year-end destinations for thousands of music lovers from different parts of the country who love to attend popular Sunburn and Supersonic festivals among others.

Also read: Goa introduces heli-tours, heritage boat cruises, moonlight kayaking and more



Although this decision won't make too many travellers happy, putting a ban to such events being organised in the period from December 25 to December 30 became a necessity as they were criticised by the Opposition as well as civil society groups, because of the traffic congestion and pressure on public infrastructure, especially a time when tourism activity in the state is already at its peak.

Parulekar also said that the state government had floated a tender seeking large open spaces from private individuals for hosting of the music events, so that public discomfort is minimised.

"The Goa Tourism Development Corporation has invited tenders from people who have large tracts of land for organizing such events. We will offer the land to the event organisers and charge them for it," Parulekar said.

(With inputs from IANS)



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The office order issued on June 4 by the Director Elementary Education, Panchkula has also directed the teachers not to visit the Directorate of Education in western attire.

By Manjeet Sehgal: Haryana's BJP government has barred its school teachers from wearing jeans in schools and offices. State's Education Department in its office issued a order recently asking the teachers (men and women) to avoid jeans and use formal clothes.

The office order issued on June 4 by the Director Elementary Education, Panchkula has also directed the teachers not to visit the Directorate of Education in western attire.

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"WEARING JEAN IS SCHOOLS AND COLLEGES IS NOT RIGHT"

"It has come to the notice that the teachers working in primary and middle schools wear jeans. They also wear jeans when they visit directorate which is not right.Please ensure that no teacher wears jeans and visits schools and offices in formal clothes," the office order addressed to District Moral Education officers by Director Elementary Education said.

State's Primary teachers Association, Rajkiya Prathmik Shikshak Sangh (RPSS) has slammed the department's move to ban jeans in the schools.

"IT'S A TUGHLAKI ORDER"

RPSS's general secretary told India Today that the decision is arbitrary and has been taken hastily without even consulting the government.

"There are holidays in the schools. What was the necessity to issue such an order at this time? Most of the primary and middle standard teachers in Haryana are young and love to wear jeans," said the general secretary

"Rather issuing such 'Tughlaki' order, the department should have announced a formal dress code. Interestingly, the department neither took the approval from the government nor consulted the teacher associations," he added.

State government officials were not available for comments on this issue

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By PTI: New Delhi, Jun 10 (PTI) Delhi High Court today stayed a CIC order which has held that Ministers in the Union and state cabinets were "public authorities" and liable to answer public questions addressed to them under the Right to Information (RTI) Act.

Justice Sanjeev Sachdeva, by an interim order, put on hold the operation of the March 12 decision of the Central Information Commission (CIC) which had also recommended to the Centre and states "to provide necessary support to each minister, including designating some officers, or appointing as Public Information Officers and First Appellate Authorities".

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The direction came on the plea filed by the Centre challenging the CICs March 12 order which had also ordered that oath of secrecy be replaced with oath of transparency so that the minister respects the right to information of citizens and be answerable and accountable to them.

The high court while staying the order, issued notice to the complainant on whose plea CIC had passed the direction and sought his reply by next date of hearing on August 23.

Additional Solicitor General (ASG) Sanjay Jain, appearing for the Centre, argued that the CIC had given recommendations which were beyond its jurisdiction.

In its plea filed through central government standing counsel Jasmeet Singh, the government has said the CIC order was "bad in law and on facts" and that the commission had "exceeded the mandate" given to it under the RTI Act.

The CIC order had come on an application filed by Ahmednagar resident Hemant Dhag, who had sought to know from the staff of the then Union Minister for Law and Justice the scheduled time for people to meet the Cabinet Minister and Minister of State. He was directed to seek time from the Minister himself.

The government in its petition said that the information sought was furnished on January 16, 2015, despite which an appeal was filed on April 14, 2015.

CIC in its March 12 order had also directed the ministers in the Centre and states to put in place RTI processing machinery in their respective offices and comply with suo motu disclosure clauses of the RTI Act.

It had also recommended implementation of recommendations of the National Commission to Review the Working of the Constitution and the Second Administrative Reforms Commission. PTI HMP RRT ARC

--- ENDS ---
By PTI: From Sajjad Hussain

Islamabad, Jun 10 (PTI) A high-level US delegation arrived in Pakistan today amid tensions in bilateral ties after a recent American drone strike in Balochistan killed Afghan Taliban chief Mullah Mansour and strong concerns here over growing Indo-US strategic cooperation.

Senior Director for Afghanistan and Pakistan at the US National Security Council Peter Lavoy and Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan Richard Olson are part of the delegation which will hold talks with civilian and military leaders, according to Pakistani officials.

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"The agenda of the talks is open and several issues will be discussed including drone strikes, strategic and defence matters and reconciliation process in Afghanistan," an official from the Foreign Office said.

Pak-US ties are sliding down the hill due to difference over handling of peace issue in Afghanistan and US growing defence tie with India, especially a blanket support for Indias candidacy in the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG).

According to Prime Ministers Advisor on Foreign Affairs, Sartaj Aziz, growing US-India ties were creating strategic instability as Washingtons support for Indian membership for the 48-nation NSG was discriminatory.

Pakistan has strongly protested the May 21 drone attack which killed Mansour.

"The recent drone attack in Balochistan in which the Taliban leader Mullah Akhtar Mansour was killed, has breached our sovereignty, caused a serious setback to the peace efforts and intensified hostilities in Afghanistan. The drone strike must, therefore, be condemned by all stakeholders," Sartaj Aziz said yesterday.

Pakistan is also unhappy over the scuttling of F-16 fighter jet deal by US Congress which blocked funding to it citing Pakistans non-impressive actions against Haqqani network. But Islamabad believes that the Congress was prompted to act due to Indian lobbying and pressure.

There are differences over nuclear programme of Pakistan which the latter considers is key to the credible minimum deterrence. PTI SH NSA

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By PTI: Dhaka, Jun 10 (PTI) A Hindu ashram worker was today hacked to death by unidentified assailants while he was out for the morning walk, days after another priest was killed by suspected ISIS jihadists in the Muslim-majority nation which has seen a string of brutal attacks by Islamists on religious minorities and secular activists.

60-year-old Nityaranjan Pandey of Thakur Anukul Chandra Satsanga Paramtirtha Hemayetpurdham ashram was attacked by several assailants who hacked him in the neck, said ASP (Sadar Circle) Selim Khan.

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Pandey, who was working at the ashram as a volunteer for the past 40 years, was attacked near the ashram in Pabnas Hemayetpur Upazila during his regular morning walk, Khan was quoted as saying by bdnews.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the murder.

This is the second such murder within three days. On June 7, a Hindu priest was hacked to death by three suspected Islamic State jihadists who nearly severed his head.

There have been systematic assaults in Bangladesh in recent months specially targeting minorities, secular bloggers, intellectuals and foreigners.

On Sunday, a Christian businessman was hacked to death by unidentified machete-wielding men near a church, hours after the wife of a top anti-terror police officer was shot dead by religious extremists.

In February, militants stabbed to death another Hindu priest at a temple in Bangladesh and shot and wounded a devotee who went to his aid.

In April, a liberal professor was brutally hacked to death by machete-wielding ISIS militants who slit his throat near his home in Rajshahi city. In the same month, a Hindu tailor was also hacked to death by ISIS militants in his shop and Bangladeshs first gay magazine editor was brutally murdered along with a friend in his flat in Dhaka by Islamists.

The ISIS and al-Qaeda in Indian Peninsula have claimed responsibility for some of the attacks although the government denies their presence in Bangladesh. PTI PMS

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By PTI: New Delhi, Jun 10 (PTI) Air Force chief Air Chief Marshal Arup Raha, on an official trip to Sweden, has flown the Gripen fighter aircraft, a move that comes at a time when the government is in the process of shortlisting a combat assault plane under Make in India initiative.

Raha flew the Gripen at the Saabs facility at Linkoping in Sweden yesterday, IAF officials said today.

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He flew the Gripen D aircraft with Wing Commander (Flying) Michael Lundquist.

Raha is on a five-day tour of Sweden as part of discussions on cooperation in aerospace and defence between the two countries agreed between Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven during the Make in India summit in Mumbai February.

Sweden and Saab have offered the Gripen for production in India.

Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar had recently said India will select a good fighter by the end of this fiscal year to be made domestically.

It is not yet decided which aircraft it would be, he had said adding it may be F18, Rafale, Eurofighter or Gripen.

"The decision in this regard will be taken in this fiscal year," he had asserted. PTI SAP RG

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"A well dressed and well versed Bihari is still a matter of awe for many. "Oh, are you from Bihar? You don't look like one or you don't speak like one!" is common. I am brand Bihari' is a social media campaign set to break stereotypes about people who hail from Bihar.

By India Today Web Desk: In India, people from most states are stereotyped, be it Bengali, Punjabi, Maharashtrian, Delhites or Mumbaikars.

But when Biharis are stereotyped, things go slightly overboard and it is a well known fact. PatnaBeats, a website dedicated to promoting Bihar, wrote on their Facebook page, "To most Indians, 'Bihari' is a derogatory word (people who behave in an ill mannered way), which is the antonym of the word that denotes pride.

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"A well dressed and well versed Bihari is still a matter of awe for many. Statements like "Oh, are you from Bihar? You don't look like one or you don't speak like one!" and "How come your English is so good?" are common.

Now what is that supposed to mean? Are we supposed to look different from others just because we are from Bihar? Should people from Bihar be born with special and different traits or something else so that you can spot us from a distance?"

Founder of PatnaBeats and Bangalore-based student Bashshar Habibullah, 25, shared many photos of Bihari people from different professions who are redefining "Brand Bihar". The campaign aims to wipe out the unnecessary stereotyping of Biharis as uncouth, dirty and uneducated people.

Another trigger for the 'I am brand Bihar' campaign is Alia Bhatt's portrayal as an uneducated labourer from Bihar in the movie Udta Punjab. Many considered her role to be 'nothing but a concoction of stereotypes.'

For the campaign Habibullah and his team approached locals to celebrities. Santushree Sinha, 20, content creator and graphic designer for the campaign, said, "Many doctors, teachers, lawyers, CAs and others have come out in support of the campaign. It is a matter of pride for each and every Bihari."

Here are the series of pictures that break stereotypes about Biharis:

Swati Kumari

Author

Chandan Kumar

Florist

Pawan Toon

Cartoonist

Vikas Vaibhav

IPS Officer

Shambhavi Singh

Journalist

Anand Kumar

Teacher (Founder at Super 30)

Supriya Aiman

Miss India International

Meenakshi Jha Banerjee

Artist

--- ENDS ---
Acknowledging the India Today sting for its "documentary evidence" while rejecting a similar expose done by another TV channel, the poll panel said it will file an FIR (First Information Report) into allegations that Rajya Sabha seats were on sale.

By India Today Web Desk: The Election Commission of India has asked for a CBI probe into allegations of lawmakers in Karnataka asking for money in lieu of votes for the Rajya Sabha election, an expose done by India Today TV earlier this month. WATCH: Operation Rajya Sabha Bazaar - Parliament's worst kept secret revealed



Acknowledging the India Today sting for its "documentary evidence" while rejecting a similar expose done by Times Now channel, the poll panel said it will file an FIR (First Information Report) into allegations that Rajya Sabha seats were on sale. Why the next Rajya Sabha will make great TV

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Here are the latest developments:



The India Today TV sting had showed Janata Dal (Secular) MLA Mallikarjun Khuba asking for Rs 5 crore from an undercover reporter posing as a supporter of a Rajya Sabha candidate. Read: Rajya Sabha elections: Independent Karnataka MLA switches loyalty to Congress



"If you want my vote, it will not be one or two crore. Give election money, it is settled. My offer is above 5 crore. For team it is same rate," Khuba is heard saying in the video. #RajyaSabhaBazaar: EC to write to govt after India Today uncovered MLAs flaunting price tags





In the sting video, Khuba also claims that he can manage to procure the votes of certain other MLAs if they are also paid the price mentioned by him for them.

The Election Commission, however, said the polling for four Rajya Sabha seats from Karnataka will be held as scheduled on June 11 at the state's secretariat.

"Money power has not vitiated the process so much to warrant such a step even as it asked CBI to probe the matter in detail," the Election Commission said. Read: FIR filed against JD(S) MLA for seeking bribery



The poll panel dismissed another 'investigation' conducted by news channel Times Now, in which none of the MLAs were seen asking for any money for votes.

"One of the pieces of documentary evidence furnished by the Chief Electoral Officer, Karnataka is a CD pertaining to the sting operation claimed to have been carried out by the 'India Today' TV news channel, and obtained by the Chief Electoral Officer through the Returning Officer for the biennial election to the Rajya Sabha under reference," the poll panel report says.

Union minister and senior BJP leader from Karnataka Ananth Kumar today said the government will abide by the Election Commission's request for a CBI probe.

"The decision is of the Election Commission. They have asked for a CBI probe. Criminal action should be taken. We go by it," Kumar told India Today TV.

Election for 57 seats of the Rajya Sabha will be held tomorrow. Read: Rajya Sabha setback for BJP as HC allows voting by postal ballot, another Congress MLA secures bail



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By PTI: From Anisur Rahman Dhaka, Jun 10 (PTI) A senior Indian diplomat today visited a Hindu ashram in northwestern Bangladesh where an elderly worker was hacked to death by machete-wielding suspected Islamists, the second such murder of minority community member within a week in the country.

Nityaranjan Pandey, 60, who was working as a volunteer for the past 40 years at the Thakur Anukul Chandra Satsanga Paramtirtha Hemayetpurdham Ashram, was murdered this morning in Pabnas Hemayetpur Upazila.

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Local residents said the killers hit him on the head and neck with machetes and fled the scene. He died on the spot.

Assistant High Commissioner Sandip Mitra of Assistant High Commission of India in Rajshahi city visited the ashram and spoke to officials and priests there.

The monastery, named after a famous Hindu saint, draws huge number of Hindu devotees from across Bangladesh and neighbouring India.

On Tuesday, the suspected Islamists hacked to death 70-year-old Hindu priest Ananda Gopal Ganguly in western Jhinaidah when he was going to a nearby temple.

Two officials from the Indian High Commission in Dhaka had visited the home of the murdered priest in Koratipara village of Jhenaidah and met his family members on Wednesday.

First Secretary (Political and Information) Rajesh Uike and First Secretary (Consular) Ramakant Gupta at the time told reporters that they hoped police will bring the killers to justice.

Since May 1, Bangladesh has witnessed eight targeted murders in a series of brutal attacks on religious minorities and secular activists. PTI AR ZH AKJ ZH

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Judith's sister Agnes D'souza said the family was trying to get in touch with the Indian High Commission in Kabul.

By Indrajit Kundu: An Indian woman, identified as Judith D'Souza, was abducted on Thursday night from Taimani area of Kabul. Judith D'Souza, who is from Kolkata, was working for an international NGO named Aga Khan Foundation in Afghanistan.

APPEAL TO SUSHMA SWARAJ



The family of the abducted Indian NGO worker has made an emotional appeal to External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj for her safe return to India. Speaking to India Today Television, Judith's family members in Kolkata said that the Indian embassy in Kabul had first informed them about her kidnapping late on Thursday night.

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Judith's sister Agnes D'souza said the family was trying to get in touch with the Indian High Commission in Kabul. Her ailing father Denzil D'souza said he spoke to her just two days back and that she was excited to get back home for her vacations.

"She was supposed to be here on Wednesday. I talked to her two days ago and she sounded excited, she was going to come home," he said.

"I always told her that if she felt insecure she should come back, but she always said she was safe. I request Sushma ji to bring my daughter back safely," Mr D'souza added.

SUSHMA SWARAJ RESPONDS



In response to a tweet from her brother, Sushma Swaraj said that the Indian embassy is in touch with Afghan authorities to secure her release.

I have spoken to the sister of Judith D' Souza. We will spare no efforts to rescue her. @VohraManpreet; Sushma Swaraj (@SushmaSwaraj) June 10, 2016

She is your sister and India's daughter. We are doing everything to rescue her. Pl take care of your sick father. https://t.co/WsYdLyMIbE; Sushma Swaraj (@SushmaSwaraj) June 10, 2016

Judith (40) has been working as a senior technical advisor with the Agha Khan Development Network in Kabul for the past one year. With no clarity about her abductors, the family got in touch with Trinamool Rajya Sabha MP Derek O'Brien for help. The Trinamool Congress MP who spoke to Judith's family members earlier in the day tweeted to External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj seeking the centre's intervention.

. @SushmaSwaraj Ji , I spoke to father & sister of lady from #Kolkata abducted in Afghanistan. Request updates pl from your office. Thanks; Derek O'Brien (@quizderek) June 10, 2016

Responding to the Trinamool MP's plea, Swaraj tweeted back saying, "I am seized of the matter. We are doing everything to rescue her."

The Indian embassy in Kabul has been in touch with the Afghan authorities to ensure Judith's safe release. In a tweet, Indian Ambassador to Afghanistan Manpreet Vohra said, "Everyone, especially Afghan security agencies, is working hard on this. Let us pray for early success. We and our Afghan partners will try our best."

In the backdrop of a volatile situation in Afghanistan, the Indian Embassy had last month issued a security advisory for the Indians living in Afghanistan and for those who were travelling to the country.

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Also read:

Indians In Afghan Line Of Fire: A Timeline



Kidnapped Indian aid worker traced in Afghanistan, 12 arrested

Modi, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani inaugurate India-built dam



--- ENDS ---
Last week, a Hindu priest was also hacked to death in Jhenaidah district by armed assailants in a similar modus-operandi.

Pandey has been working at the Thakur Anukul Chandra Sevashram as a volunteer for the past 40 years.

By Sahidul Hasan Khokon, Indrajit Kundu: Unknown assailants have allegedly killed an inmate of a Hindu ashram in Pabna district in Bangladesh. 62-year-old Nityaranjan Pandey, an inmate of the Thakur Anukul Chandra Sevashram was hacked to death, just outside the main gate of the ashram today morning.



Pandey has been working at the ashram as a volunteer for the past 40 years.

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PAST INCIDENTS



Last week, a Hindu priest was also hacked to death in Jhenaidah district by armed assailants in a similar modus-operandi. Ananta Gopal Ganguly (65), too was attacked early in the moring by three unidentified men who came on a motorcycle and slit Ganguly's throat while he was on his way to the temple.

In the recent times, Bangladesh has witnessed a series of grusome murders, specially targeting minorities, secular bloggers, intellectuals and even some foreigners. Earlier this month a Christian businessman was hacked to death by unidentified men near a church. Similarly in April, a Hindu tailor was also hacked to death in his shop in Tangail district.

A Buddhist monk, and two prominent gay rights activists were among several others who have fallen prey to such deadly attacks by extremists in the past few months in Bangladesh. While the ISIS has claimed reposibilty for some of these attacks in recent months, the Bangladesh government has firmly denied their presence in the country.

Also Read:

Special drive to begin in Bangladesh against militants to check secret killings



Nityaranjan Pandey, working for Anukul Thakur asram in Pabna,Bangladesh was hacked to death on Friday morning. Islamists hate non-Muslims. taslima nasreen (@taslimanasreen) June 10, 2016

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Al Sumariya TV claimed local sources in Iraqs Nineveh province had confirmed that Baghdadi and other leaders in the Islamist group were wounded yesterday in the coalition bombing raid.

By India Today Web Desk: Islamic States dreaded chief Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has been wounded in an air strike by coalition forces on one of the outfits command headquarters close to the Syrian border in Iraq, media reports said today.

Iraqi news channel Al Sumariya TV claimed local sources in Iraqs Nineveh province had confirmed that Baghdadi and other leaders in the Islamist group were wounded yesterday in the coalition bombing raid.

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"The planes of the international coalition yesterday bombed a location where there is a base of Isis members along the border area between Iraq and Syria, 65 kilometres west of Nineveh," Express UK quoted an Iraqi source as saying.

Here are the Highlights The ultra-hardline Sunni group is under increased pressure in both Iraq and Syria. The US earlier this year announced an intensification of the war on Islamic State with more air strikes and more American troops on the ground to advise and assist allied forces. Loud explosions and bursts of gunfire were heard from the district, while aircraft believed to belong to the US-led coalition flew overhead. According to reports, Baghdadi was injured along with some members of the organisation who were gathered at that meeting. "The attack was carried out on the basis of precise intelligence information that led to strike its own that site," the paper quoted the source as saying. The area is one of the groups strongholds, the source said, adding that "Baghdadi and the other ISIS leaders arrived in Iraq from Syria with a convoy of cars". In recent years there have been a number of reports of Baghdadis injury, and even death, but none have been confirmed. Baghdadi was seriously wounded by an airstrike on March 18, 2015, that killed the three other men he was travelling with. He was said to be receiving treatment for spinal injuries after being wounded in that strike. The injury left the terror chief incapacitated, with some claiming at the time that his injuries meant he would never again resume command. In 2011 the US State Department named Baghdadi as a terrorist and offered up to USD 10 million for information leading to his capture or death. Baghdadi became the leader of the militant group in 2010 but it was only in 2014 that ISIS declared the establishment of a "caliphate" - a successor of past Islamic empires in its territory in Syria and Iraq.

Baghdadi became the leader of the militant group in 2010 but it was only in 2014 that ISIS declared the establishment of a "caliphate" - a successor of past Islamic empires in its territory in Syria and Iraq.

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KCR'S FAST WAS NOT A POTTI SRIRAMALU MOMENT

With the sudden demise of YSR [Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy],K. Rosaiah succeeded him as chief minister the very next day. KCR [K. Chandrasekhar Rao] must have felt the pendulum had swung in Rosaiah's favour. Desperate to keep himself politically relevant, he went on a hunger strike on November 29, 2009. The atmosphere in Hyderabad became surcharged. Osmania University in the heart of the city, and the centre of the agitation, was in a state of ferment.

The hunger strike was launched in Khammam jail where KCR had been detained, and continued thereafter from the morning of December 3 in a private ward in Hyderabad's Nizam Institute of Medical Sciences. With KCR's health appearing to deteriorate sharply, the Congress leadership asked Rosaiah to call an all-party meeting to figure out what was to be done regarding Telangana. Rosaiah did so on December 7. Eight major political parties of the state attended and all of them, barring the Communist Party of India (Marxist) [CPI(M)], supported the proposal to adopt a resolution in the assembly for the creation of Telangana. The minutes of this meeting were sent to the home minister the next day.

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On December 9, 2009, at about 11.30 pm, home minister P. Chidambaram issued a statement that was destined to change the state's history. It appears that he did so based on his assessment derived from intelligence reports. KCR's health was a major factor influencing the decision-making process. The other related to the role of Maoists and their sympathisers who were playing to aggravate the situation. Clearly, the government had information that led them to believe that the ground situation in Hyderabad was grave and something substantive needed to be done. The home minister must have had reason to believe that a Potti Sriramulu moment had arrived once more in Andhra Pradesh. The statement itself was evidently finalised at Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's residence with Chidambaram, Pranab Mukherjee and Rosaiah present, and had apparently followed consultations with other Congress leaders.

The home minister's statement read thus: "The process of forming Telangana will be initiated. An appropriate resolution will be moved in the assembly.... We are concerned about the health of Shri K. Chandrasekhar Rao; we request him to withdraw his fast immediately. We also appeal to all concerned, especially students, to withdraw their agitation."

GOVERNMENT ALLOWED CONFUSION TO REIGN

The December 9 statement gave ammunition to both sides-Telangana supporters were convinced the new state was now only a matter of time. Proponents of a united Andhra Pradesh (Samaikya Andhra) felt betrayed and launched a counter-agitation. The protests found their echo in Parliament with MPs of the Congress and the TDP from the Telangana region supporting the December 9 statement and members from the Seemandhra region expressing grave concerns.

Jairam Ramesh Jairam Ramesh

Passions ran high across Andhra Pradesh. Ministers and MLAs from Seemandhra resigned. The statement had immediate national reverberation as well. Demands for the formation of Vidarbha, Gorkhaland, Bodoland and Maru Pradesh were raised by political leaders of Maharashtra, West Bengal, Assam and Rajasthan respectively. A leading political leader of Tamil Nadu, S. Ramadoss, called for the bifurcation of that state as well. The chief minister of Uttar Pradesh wrote to the prime minister twice in quick succession asking for the state to be split into four smaller states.

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There appeared to be all-round confusion. On December 10, Congress spokesman Abhishek [Manu] Singhvi went on record to say, "The first logical step towards the creation of a separate state has to be an expression of consensus through a resolution of the Assembly." This drew immediate attack from TRS leaders who were perhaps aware that such a consensus was impossible. On December 12, Rosaiah was quoted in the media as having said that "he was astonished, surprised and anguished by Mr Chidambaram's statement".

He must have been pulled up because the very next day his office issued a clarification saying his astonishment and anguish was not with the December 9 statement but with "the turn of events in the aftermath of the statement".

As this clarification was being issued, Singhvi declared there was no need for a second SRC [State Reorganisation Commission], contrary to the Congress's official stance since October 2001. That very day, Pranab Mukherjee said in Kolkata, "The agitation for Telangana has been going on for 60 years. This does not mean everywhere a new state has to be created.... The state government concerned has to express its view because the President would like to know the view of the state before recommending a Bill in Parliament."

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Sensing that the December 9 pronouncement had created a crisis, P. Chidambaram issued a second statement. It read: "At a meeting of all parties convened by the chief minister of Andhra Pradesh on December 7, 2009, a consensus emerged on the formation of Telangana. A statement was made on behalf of the central government on December 9. However, after the statement, the situation in Andhra Pradesh has altered. A number of parties are divided. There is need to hold wide-ranging consultations...."

JUSTICE SRIKRISHNA'S ADVICE IS IGNORED

A few weeks later, on February 3, 2010, the Government of India, undoubtedly at the instance of the home minister, announced the formation of a five-member committee headed by eminent jurist B.N. Srikrishna, who had earlier headed the inquiry into the communal riots that had rocked Bombay following the Babri demolition December 6, 1992.

The committee travelled across the state, received thousands of representations and met with hundreds of people. It submitted its report on December 30, 2010, wherein it laid out six options:

Maintaining status quo: Keeping Andhra Pradesh as it is;

Bifurcating the state into Seemandhra and Telangana regions with both developing their own capitals in due course of time. Hyderabad to be converted to a union territory like the Chandigarh model;

Dividing Andhra Pradesh into two states: one of Rayala Telangana with Hyderabad as its capital and second one of coastal Andhra Pradesh;

Dividing Andhra Pradesh into Seemandhra and Telangana with the enlarged Hyderabad Metropolis as a separate union territory linked geographically to district Guntur in coastal Andhra via Nalgonda district in the southeast and via Mahabubnagar district in the south to Kurnool district in Rayalaseema;

Bifurcation of the state into Telangana and Seemandhra as per existing boundaries, with Hyderabad as the capital of Telangana and Seemandhra with a new capital;

Keeping the state united and providing for creation of a statutorily empowered Telangana Regional Council for socio-economic development and political development of the Telangana region.

Its clear recommendation was option 6-no bifurcation. As far as bifurcation itself was concerned, the committee had this to say, "...after taking into account all the pros and cons, the Committee did not think it to be the most preferred, but the second best option."

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Justice Srikrishna, along with his voluminous report, had also submitted a secret report. The learned judge had known my parents for over 50 years. Taking advantage of this, I took the liberty of asking him the truth regarding this perception. This is what he had to say in an e-mail communication on November 24, 2015.

Dear Jairam,

Amongst the various issues to be considered in the separation of Telangana, one important issue was the issue of security, if the state were to be bifurcated. We had called for intelligence inputs from security forces including the DG of police and IE as regards the activities of Naxalites in the areas concerned and the possible effect of the formation of Telangana on such activities.

This was particularly important as, if you remember, there had been considerable expansion of Naxalite activities in Andhra Pradesh till the government ruthlessly put them down. There was apprehension that the Naxalites may resume their activities and expand them in a newly formed state. It was to address this issue that a police report was called for. The intelligence authorities desired that their report should not be bandied about. Obviously, a police report on security citing their sources, etc. cannot be a public document. Hence, we decided to shortly state our conclusion but submitted the intelligence report as a separate secret document meant only for the Home Dept. That document is in possession of the Govt. of India. There is no other mystery about the report.

With the submission of the Srikrishna Committee report, it did appear as if the Telangana issue had been settled-there would be no bifurcation. But right through 2011 and 2012, Telangana MPs of the Congress kept up pressure in the Lok Sabha. Agitations in the state continued.

The Srikrishna Committee report was made public on January 6, 2011, at an all-party meeting convened by the home minister. The BJP, TRS and TDP boycotted the meeting. The disturbed situation in the state found an echo in a Calling Attention Motion moved in the Lok Sabha on August 5, 2011. This turned into a full-fledged debate on Telangana. Finally, the home minister made another intervention. He bemoaned that the Calling Attention Motion had become a divisive debate and reiterated his belief that the "solution to the problem...must come from the Telugu-speaking people" and called upon all political parties to go through with their process of consultation. Ironically, he admitted "the Congress has told me they have not made up their mind finally". I was a little worried because as Minister of Environment and Forests I had managed to get Hyderabad as the venue for the Eleventh Conference of the Parties to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity in October 2012. Ministers from over 150 countries were expected to attend and I wondered whether I had made the right choice after all. There were many who had asked me to have the prestigious conference in Delhi itself, but I had overruled them. Fortunately, the 10-day conclave went off very smoothly.

CWC TAKES THE FINAL CALL

The CWC had a fateful meeting on July 30, 2013, where the decision was taken to finally bifurcate Andhra Pradesh and create Telangana. In retrospect, the decision to bifurcate must have been taken between December 28, 2012, and sometime in early June 2013. Not being privy to any of the discussions that took place during that period, I am unable to shed authentic light on why the decision was taken.

P. Chidambaram. Photo: Chandradeep Kumar

All I have been able to piece together is that on July 1, 2013, Digvijaya Singh (who was appointed general secretary of the Congress dealing with Andhra Pradesh on June 16) made a statement in Hyderabad that the process of taking a decision on Telangana was in its final stages. On July 12, three leaders from Andhra Pradesh-Chief Minister Kiran Kumar Reddy, Deputy CM Damodar Raja Narasimha and APCC president Botsa Satyanarayana-were asked to make presentations to a group consisting of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh; Sonia Gandhi; her political secretary, Ahmed Patel; defence minister A.K. Antony, health minister Ghulam Nabi Azad, home minister Sushilkumar Shinde and Digvijaya Singh. As expected, the CM and the APCC president made a strong case against bifurcation, while the deputy CM canvassed for Telangana.

A fortnight later, Ghulam Nabi Azad and Digvijaya Singh met the trio separately in the capital. That evening, the prime minister hosted Sonia Gandhi, A.K. Antony, Sushilkumar Shinde, Ghulam Nabi Azad, P. Chidambaram, Ahmed Patel and Digvijaya Singh at his residence. This meeting clearly decided that Telangana would finally be created, later formalised by the CWC on July 30.

SO WHAT WENT WRONG?

What happened after the submission of the Srikrishna Committee report for the Congress to have decided to bifiurcate Andhra Pradesh against its recommendations?

It could well be the tragic suicides that took place during 2011 and 2012. Hyderabad particularly had become an arena for continuous agitations mounted by various organisations, most notably the Telangana Joint Action Committee (TJAC).

Ghulam Nabi Azad. Photo: Rajwant Rawat

It could also be that with the BJP, TDP and YSR Congress (formed in March 2011) sending letters and giving statements in favour of Telangana, the Congress felt its decision was made on the issue of the bifurcation. Chandrababu Naidu wrote to the Home Minister on December 27, 2012, urging for a quick decision in favour of Telangana. Of course, it could also well be that the Congress expected the TRS to merge with it before the 2014 Lok Sabha polls.

Telangana had 17 seats and Seemandhra 25. The Congress must have realised its prospects in Seemandhra were bleak in any case because of a 10-year anti-incumbency and because of the growing strength of the YSR Congress-it was, therefore, trying to minimise its losses. But these are all, I must emphasise, only intelligent guesses. The only thing that is incontrovertible is that P. Chidambaram's statement of December 9, 2009, had been a decisive turning point. Also indisputable is that thereafter Ghulam Nabi Azad was able to convince the Congress leadership that bifurcation would yield electoral dividends for the Congress.



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After examining India Today's sting operation exposing MLAs ready to sell their votes in return of cash for the RS polls in the state of Karantaka,the EC lodged an FIR against JD(S) MLA M Khuba.

By Ankit Tyagi: JD(S) does another somersault in the #RajyaSabhaBazar controversy. After demanding the countermanding of RS elections in view of India Today sting operation and promising action against erring party MLAs, today JD(S) leader HD Kumaraswamy said his MLA Mallikarjun Khuba has not anything wrong.

He knew about the sting op and JD(S) will not take any action against Khuba.

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"I stand with Khuba, no action agiant him. He has done nothing wrong," Swamy said.?

After examining India Today's sting operation exposing MLAs ready to sell their votes in return of cash for the RS polls in the state of Karantaka, the Election Commission yesterday, though did not countermand the election process, in a scathing observation said JD(S) MLA M Khuba was clearly caught asking for Rs 5 crore for his vote should be investigated and FIR lodged against him.

Earlier Kumaraswamy's father and former PM H.D Devegowda not only promised action against all his party MLAs caught in the sting op but also cancelling the election process.

Though his son H.D Kumaraswamy going back on his father's words decided to brazen it out and expressed firm support to Khuba.

"Khuba knew they were doing the sting, we complained to EC before the sting as well. What have you achieved from this," asked Swamy.

MLA M Khuba has switched off his phones and is not traceable ever since EC's order. Karanataka legislators will cast their votes for RS elections on 11 June.

Also read:

#RajyaSabhaBazaar: EC to write to govt after India Today uncovered MLAs flaunting price

Deve Gowda's shocking admission: So what if my MLAs asked for money



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Jennifer Lawrence's film will showcase the rise and fall of bio-tech company Theranos, and the disgraced self-made billionaire Elizabeth Holmes.

Jennifer Lawrence will team up with director Adam McKay for the first time

By India Today Web Desk: Adam Mckay is ready to move on with life after his successful outing with The Big Short. If reports are to be believed, McKay's next film will see Jennifer Lawrence playing the real-life disgraced Silicon Valley CEO Elizabeth Holmes.

Holmes's company Theranos was the darling of the Silicon Valley and investors as the 32-year old woman claimed to have revolutionised the way blood tests would be conducted in the future, and how a single drop of blood would be enough to conduct tests for over 240 procedures including cholesterol and blood sugar.

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ALSO READ: Jennifer Lawrence jokes about her single status asking 'What dating life?'



Seeming a little too good to be true, questions were raised about the veracity of the company's claims. Holmes refused to share any significant information about the technology, saying that revealing anything would put their competitive advantage at risk.

Soon after the curtains were lifted, Theranos's technology was discredited and the self-made billionaire disgraced. Forbes has confirmed Holmes's current net-worth to be zero.

It's a fascinating story which Hollywood would like to pounce on.

And as reported by Deadline, Jennifer Lawrence has agreed to headline the biopic, which is to be directed by Adam McKay. McKay is known for his funny Anchorman movies, and has also shown an ability to handle dense material and an ensemble cast in The Big Short.

Jennifer Lawrence, on the other hand, would like to break away from her recent form of failures, including the badly received X Men: Apocalypse and Joy. All we can say is we're excited!



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JNUSU president Kanhaiya Kumar was detained by the Delhi Police outside Bihar Bhawan.

By India Today Web Desk: JNUSU president Kanhaiya Kumar was detained by the Delhi Police along with over 40 other protesters outside Bihar Bhawan in the national capital today.

Kumar and others were protesting against alleged brutality of the Bihar Police against Patna Arts College students and their alleged "witch-hunt" by the Nitish Kumar government.

KANHAIYA WANTS EXAMINATIONS TO BE CANCELLED



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Kanhaiya and other JNU students have demanded the suspension of principal Chandrabhushan Srivastav. They also want the ongoing annual examinations to be cancelled.

There were violent clashes between the Left-backed All India Students Federation (AISF) and the JD(U) student wing over the examination schedule earlier this week.

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By PTI: Mumbai, Jun 10 (PTI) Kareena Kapoor Khan feels it is important for actors to do films on issues prevalent in the society and is hopeful that the message conveyed in her upcoming movie "Udta Punjab" will come out effectively on screen.

The Abhishek Chaubey-directed "Udta Punjab", starring Shahid Kapoor, Alia Bhatt, Diljit Dosanjh and Kareena, deals with the issue of drugs abuse in the state of Punjab.

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Presently, the filmmakers are fighting a battle against the censor board, which has raised several objections over use of various words and language in the film.

When asked about the ongoing censorship issues, Kareena said, "I have full faith in the film, full faith in Abhishek Chaubey (director) and full faith in our fans. There are big stars in the film and all of them have a huge fan base," Kareena told reporters here at an event last night.

"The reason I did Udta Punjab is because there is no small or big role. And even if my role is a special one in the film, if we actors dont do these kinds of films, the message (about drug menace) will never be out," she said.

In the film, Shahid essays the role of a Punjabi rockstar, Alia Bhatt is a migrant from Bihar, Kareena plays a doctor while Punjabi star Diljit Dosanjh enacts a tough cop.

"I have done many films in the past where I have played pivotal roles, but I chose to be a part of this film (Udta Punjab) because it is important that this message gets told, which am sure is going to come on screen," Kareena said.

The Anurag Kashyap-Ekta Kapoor produced film is scheduled to release on June 17. PTI KKP GK JCH RYS

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Rumour mills have been abuzz with the news that Kareena Kapoor Khan and Saif Ali Khan are expecting their first child.

By India Today Web Desk: Rumour mills have been abuzz with the news that Kareena Kapoor Khan and Saif Ali Khan are expecting their first child. Kareena's recent London trip with husband Saif sparked off rumours that she left for a quick getaway in the wake of motherhood. In an interview to Indian Express, the Bajrangi Bhaijaan actor has rubbished all the rumours related to her pregnancy and said that she is open about her life and people will get to know about this important news when it happens.



ALSO READ: Randhir Kapoor on Kareena Kapoor's pregnancy rumours - Hope it's true, high time they had a baby

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The 3 Idiots actor also told the leading daily, "God willing hopefully. I am a woman. But right now there is nothing to say about it." She also took a dig at the reports and added, "The fact that you all are talking about it is making me super excited. I gave five hidden children in London."

There were reports that Kareena was trying to hide her baby bump at a recent UNICEF event in Lucknow. But it seems that with Kareena's denial of such reports, her fans will have to wait until Kareena comes out in the open and breaks the news of her pregnancy.

Earlier, Kareena's father Randhir Kapoor was also asked about her pregnancy rumours. He told DNA, "Well, they haven't told me yet, so I have no clue, but I hope it's true. It's high time that they had a baby."

There were reports that Kareena also visited a gynecologist at Sitaram Medicentre in Bandra for an ultrasonography. But a source told Bollywoodlife.com, "I doubt she is pregnant. She is freezing her eggs. A lot of career women put off pregnancy and freeze their eggs for later, when they are ready to start a family. Bebo is already in her late 30s, it's a wise decision."

But Kareena refuted all such rumours and said, "What are these rumours? I am not pregnant. I am not planning to have a baby for the next two years. What rubbish people talk! I have not even gone anywhere. And when I decide to have a child, I will have it the natural way. I don't believe in freezing my eggs."

On the work front, Kareena Kapoor Khan will play the lead role in Rhea Kapoor's upcoming film.

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By PTI: Los Angeles, Jun 10 (PTI) Rapper French Montana says he will always remain close friends with former girlfriend Khloe Kardashian.

More than a year and a half after their split, Montana opened up about his friendship with ex-girlfriend KhloA Kardashian during a new interview, reported Us magazine.

"We cool. I think were always gonna be friends," Montana said on "The Wendy Williams Show". The former couples relationship lasted for eight months.

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The hip-hop entertainer also said, "Im cool with that whole family (the Kardashian clan). Ive got nothing but love for them." PTI PSH RJS

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Police suspect that the gang of cattle thieves which had abducted the dog left him in the park fearing arrest.

By Shashank Shekhar: This one-year-old Siberian Husky was 'kidnapped' a week ago while he was out for a walk with his owner at a park in south Delhi's Vasant Kunj area. On Thursday, he was found tied to a pole in the same park. His return has brought a smile on the face of his owner but the dog seems to have been tortured by the criminals. He looks weak and his fur was shaved off by the kidnappers to avert arrest.

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CATTLE THIEVES SUSPECTED



Police suspect that the gang of cattle thieves which had abducted the dog left him in the park fearing arrest. Zorro was spotted by neighbours tied to a pole.

Officials believe that as the picture of the dog had gone viral and teams were on the lookout for the gang, the dog's fur was shaved off to avoid easy identification.

INHUMAN INCIDENT



Terming the incident 'inhuman', animal activists have condemned the attack and asked for immediate arrest of the gang. "We are extremely happy to get the dog back. The police and the media helped us in getting it back. We are upset with the fact that his hair was shaved off," Aftab Khan, the owner of the dog, said.

He claims that Zorro is very weak and is being taken care of.

COPS REGISTER CASE



The police had registered a case after they were informed about the dog kidnapping on Thursday. On June 3, while

Zorro and Khan were out for a morning walk, the dog started following a gang of cattle thieves looking out for pigs in a wooded area nearby.

Zorro saw the pigs in their SUV and started barking, following which the gang of around four-five men forcibly took away the Siberian Husky in their Toyota Innova and sped away, while Khan helplessly looked on.

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T Rajkumar Rao, who expanded his operations in north India and set up gangs in Jalandhar, has disclosed that during his initial days he was a tout and his job was to facilitate donors.

Rao has also disclosed that during his initial days he was a tout and his job was to facilitate donors.

By Ankur Sharma: T Rajkumar Rao, kingpin of the kidney racket unearthed by the Delhi Police, allegedly donated a kidney years ago in Coimbatore, which eventually made him a part of this illegal organ trade.

RAO USED TO WORK AS A MEDICAL REPRESENTATIVE



According to the police, T Rajkumar Rao, donated his kidney around 10 years ago, after which he started working for the gang. He started expanding his operations in north India and set up gangs in Jalandhar. Cops are claiming that Rao used to visit hospitals in Delhi as a medical representative.

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"Rajkumar also confessed that he was involved with the gang for the last 10 years. We are also receiving information regarding fresh cases. So far, we are focusing on the racket working in Apollo Hospital," a senior official said.

WAS A TOUT AND FACILITATED DONORS



Rajkumar has disclosed that during his initial days he was a tout and his job was to facilitate donors. "He told us that initially he was just a member of a gang that used to operate in Jalandhar. He also met another accused Ashu and took this illegal organ donation business to the next level. His aides told him that north India had good potential for the trafficking business and they could also manage things easily in Apollo Hospital. They also asked him to settle in Delhi, which he refused to do," sources said.

RAO'S TRYST WITH APOLLO HOSPITAL



Later, Rajkumar started meeting the staff working for various doctors and became the kingpin of the racket. "He started meeting the staff employed in various hospitals including Indraprastha Apollo Hospital. He met two personal assistants indentified as Aditya Singh (24) and Shailesh Saxena (31), working for a senior nephrologist at Apollo Hospital. He told the two that he could get them good donors and help them fetch a good amount if they helped him. They agreed to the proposal and started dealing with Rajkumar," sources said.

According to the police, when a team of Delhi Police reached Kolkata, they called on a number given to them and asked the person to meet them. When the Delhi and Kolkata police teams reached the home of Rajkumar, he was celebrating his wedding anniversary.

"When the teams reached, the cops asked a man to come to the police station with them. He asked the cops to talk to the owner of the house. They found out the owner was Rajkumar. Once the local cops took him to the police station, Delhi Police disclosed the fact that he was being arrested for being involved with the kidney racket," officials said.

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ALSO READ: Police nabs kidney trader from Kolkata



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By Nikita Bhalla: Lauren Gottlieb, the dancing diva who shot to fame with the American reality show So You Think You Can Dance, went on to become a name to reckon with in India, especially after her successful stint on popular Indian television dance show Jhalak Dikhhla Jaa (Season 6).

Her insane dance moves earned her a ticket to Remo D' Souza's directorial dance debut film ABCD (Any Body Can Dance). She was also seen shaking a leg in the last season of Jhalak Dikhhla Jaa as a judge along with Malaika Arora Khan, Shahid Kapoor, and Ganesh Hegde.

Picture courtesy: Instagram/ laurengottlieb

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We chatted up the 27-year-old on what keeps her so fit, her passion for dance and her Bollywood wish list. Here's what she had to share:

Q. What comes to your mind at the first mention of the word 'dance'?

A. My lifelong love affair!

Q. What form of workout do you indulge in other than dancing?

A. I'm quite obsessed with Pilates. It's just starting to pick up in India, it's still pretty under the radar. I have been doing Pilates for about 8 years. It's amazing for strengthening while stretching your muscles. It uses your own body weight along with resistance.

Q. Do you think dance is another word for staying fit? If yes, why?

A. Dance is, in my opinion, one of the best ways to stay fit! The reason being it's so much fun that you don't even realise you are working out.

Q. Is there a style of dance you want to learn next?

A. I am so intrigued by Indian classical dance forms. I have done a few performances with some Kathak and Bharatnatyam steps. But soon I am going to start taking private lessons in these styles. I have set up my new house to have a dance room so I can easily call teachers over.

Picture courtesy: Instagram/ laurengottlieb

Q. Three tips you'd like to share with people about how you stay toned.

A. Firstly, when you are standing in line or basically standing idle anywhere, squeeze your butt! You aren't doing anything else at the moment so you might as well burn some calories and tone up! Secondly, make imaginary competitions! When I'm in the gym sometimes I play these pretend games. I'm on one team and the rest of the gym is on the other. No matter what exercise or machine I'm on I imagine myself roasting the person next to me. This really helps you push to your maximum because otherwise it can become very easy to work out to a comfortable level or speed and you won't see the maximum results that way. And last, drink lots of water! I find it extremely important.

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Q. Are you a conscious eater? If yes, tell us what your eating diary looks like.

A. I honestly go through phases. Because I work out so much I have to eat more. I regularly eat healthy. I just prefer clean food rather than oily. But I don't deprive myself. If I really want something I eat it. Everything in moderation is okay.

Q. Your take on health food?

A. Fruits and veggies are the best. If it's growing from the ground you should be eating it.

Q. A superfluid you love to sip on?

A. I love my protein drinks after the gym. I get the cookies and cream flavour and it feels like I'm rewarding myself with a sweet after a hard workout.

Q. You're now also an actor and have been a judge on a big dance reality show previously, which of the three roles do you enjoy the most?

A. Dance was my first passion. I'm lucky to say I fell in love with dance at a very young age and today that love is even stronger. Acting I found much later in life and I really enjoy the butterflies I get when I'm acting. I grew out of that stage with dance years back but I still feel that adrenaline when I'm acting. It's so thrilling to me.

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Q. Who's your inspiration when it comes to dance?

A. I have too many people to mention. Here's a name you may not know, so I'd say Google her--Cyd Charisse! She is perfection. I'll point you in the right direction, watch 'Meet Me in Las Vegas'.

Q. What are the three qualities you've learnt from the different dance forms you know?

A. I learned discipline from Ballet, funk from Hip Hop, grace from Ballroom, rhythm from Tap, character from Bollywood, and speed from Funk Jazz. I guess that's more than three.

Lauren started dancing at the mere age of 5. Picture courtesy: Instagram/ laurengottlieb

Q. If you had to rate your physical form currently on a scale of 1-10, (1 being the least fit and 10 being the most fit), what would it be and why?

A. I'd say an 8. One point down because I just came off a holiday and another point down because you can always be better!

Q. Who according to you is the best dancer in the industry today?

A. I'd say someone who is blessed with good dance genes as well as body goal genes is Tiger Shroff.

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Q. And any preferred choreographers from B-town?

A. I came from the west so it's still rather new for me to see these big, mass-y Bollywood numbers. I'm so amazed watching them because there is so much style I never knew existed until just a couple years ago. So for that I'd say one of my favourites is Ganesh Acharya. He's a big package of fun!

Q. Which Indian actor would you want to dance with next?

A. I feel like it would be pretty magical to dance and act with Ranveer Singh. He's just got such great energy and passion along with talent and grace.

Q. Do you a message for budding dancers?

A. If you have a dream for taking your love for dance further and making a career out of it, know that it is more than possible! But be prepared for the blood, sweat, and tears! Nothing great comes easy. So work for it, and then work a little harder, and that passion will help you succeed.

Now that Lauren has just called out Ranveer Singh's name to be her next Bollywood dance partner, we're all eyes already!

--- ENDS ---
By PTI: (Attn.editors: The following press release comes to you under an arrangement with PRNewswire. PTI takes no editorial responsibility for the same). LeEco Unveils the 2nd Generation Superphones Le 2 & Le Max2 and its Newly-launched E-commerce Website, LeMall

NEW DELHI, June 10, 2016/PRNewswire/ -- The Two Much-anticipated Superphones Pioneer the Futuristic Audio Technology - CDLA Standard In a nearly 2000-people mega launch event, LeEco, the global Internet and technology conglomerate, has finally unveiled its much-awaited second generation superphones, Le 2 and Le Max2, with the companys symbolized content ecosystem and membership being bundled, together with its marketplace e-commerce website, LeMall. The company also revealed the worlds first CDLA (Continual Digital Lossless Audio) Type-C earphone, and its project of recruiting 200 CEOs.

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The event at Siri Fort Auditorium at New Delhi was one of the most well-attended events in the recent past. At the event, LeEcos official song was also revealed, specially composed and produced by Pritams studio Jam8 and sung by Nakash Aziz.

Tin Mok, VP of Le Holdings and CEO, APAC, said, "Today is an extremely important day for us in our India journey so far. It marks our entry into the thriving e-commerce industry with the launch of LeMall. Additionally, we are thrilled to bring our second generation superphones with supertainment to India. Also, were happy to have achieved a significant milestone by pioneering digital lossless sound experiences. As forerunners in bringing the breakthrough technology as well as great features at a disruptive price, we remain committed to bringing best-in-class devices and services to our users in India." (MORE) PRNewswire DL

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In an act of kindness, this man saved a stranded young dolphin.

By India Today Web Desk: In southwestern African country, Namibia, a tour guide recently helped a stranded young dolphin and saved its life.

Naude Dreyer, a guide with Pelican Point Kayaking, found a benguela dolphin lying on the beach and went on to carry the animal back into the sea.

The Benguela dolphin, also called the Heaviside's dolphin, is found only off the western coast of Namibia and South Africa.

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Naude was unsure about how the animal reached the beach and he was "not very hopeful" about its chances for survival.

"But as soon as he got into the water and realized where he was he took off like a bullet," Dreyer wrote in the post.

He also mentioned about his plans to check the area again to make sure the dolphin did not return again.

Naude's successful attempt to save the dolphin's life was captured in a video which has gone viral on Facebook and has garnered 89,000 shares.

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By PTI: Kuala Lumpur, Jun 10 (PTI) Malaysias controversial National Security Council act, criticised by the opposition parties and human rights groups for giving absolute powers to the premier, has became law but did not obtain express Royal assent, unlike other Bills passed by Parliament.

The NSC act became law on Tuesday but did not obtain express Royal assent from king and head of state of Malaysia Yang di-Pertuan Agong unlike other bills passed by Parliament.

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The act, aimed at addressing immediate security threats which was passed by the Parliament in December, allows for the establishment of a council headed by the Prime Minister.

It has been criticised by the opposition and human rights groups for giving the premier absolute powers.

Deputy Home minister Nur Jazlan Mohammed said the NSC bill will be used to manage "specific and narrow" security threats and not target individuals, unlike previous legislation.

"It is not meant to target individuals because of its wide powers to counter the armed communist threat. Those are what we call business as usual acts but the NSC Bill is meant to handle the pressing and immediate threats," Jazlan told the Star daily, citing a case in which a man was caught for planning to plant bombs in Kuala Lumpur months ago.

"This Bill is more for handling transborder and terrorism threats that require quick response, especially along our long border areas. It is not to quell political dissent. I hope people will not confuse the two," Jazlan said.

The bill was deemed to have received royal assent without any amendments at the end of the 30-day period by which the King would have to give his assent.

He said some NGO groups like Bersih were worried that the bill would be used to control political activities.

Under the new law, Prime Minister is empowered to declare an area a security zone for six months at a time. The NSC may then direct the deployment of any security forces or any other Government entities to the area, the daily said.

The forces can stop and search any individual, vehicle, vessel, aircraft in the area without a warrant, as well as enter and search any premise or place.

"The fact that it has had no express Royal assent, despite now entering into law, should clearly communicate to the Malaysian people and the legislators in Parliament that there are concerns and issues from the Rulers which remain unaddressed or ignored," Chief Executive of the Institute for Democracy and Economic Affairs Wan Saiful Wan Jan said. PTI JB CPS ZH CPS

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1) SANTA BARBARA, CALIFORNIA

Why For a laid-back, artistic, creative holiday experiencing the best wine (Napa Valley trail), food (California freshness), scenery, and art scene country style way. Must do Eat at Trattoria Mollie, by Chef Mollie, an Ethiopian refugee who owns the best Italian restaurant in town; she caters for President Obama's fundraisers. A memorable day for us was sailing out on a boat into the expanse of the Pacific Ocean where we saw a number of whales and frolicking dolphins. All tracked by our drones. The Santa Barbara zoo is also a delight and you can feed the giraffes.

Picture courtesy: India Today Woman

2) BRAZIL

Why The city of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, will be hosting 2016 Olympic games in August. Must visit For the spirit of the people, the beaches, the healthy food, football and the parties.



3) LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA

Why Because it never ever fails to disappoint. There are a number of fantastic, well-known attractions like Disneyland, Universal Studios, a walk down Sunset Boulevard and Rodeo Drive, the beaches and surfing in Venice Beach and Malibu. Must try I was truly amazed at was the fusion food; hot dogs with guacamole and peppers (Mexican style) or noodles with barbecue sauce (Tex-Mex) as well people at their coolest and happiest best.

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4) TARANZOUT BEACH, MOROCCO

Why For being voted the third best surfing beach in the world. Killer Point with its beautiful, rolling waves is a great place to learn to surf. Stay at Paradis Plage Resort which offers surf lessons for beginners and great food at their beach side cafe. Their spa has a chocolate massage, which infuses chocolate into your body and makes it (almost) edible.

Picture courtesy: India Today Woman

Why Nature is pristine, the people are pure and Bhutan is so close to home that its unmissable. I would say this destination should be on the travel list of every Indian. On our Air India flight to Bhutan, we saw Mount Everest through our plane window, which is the closest I will ever get to it. Must appreciate The law, which insists that traditional architecture is respected and traditional clothing is adhered to, is outstanding both in its vision and execution.

6) TARIFA, SPAIN

Why For the most windswept beaches in the world. Think cut-off jeans, rock music, bonfires with driftwood, endless walks into the horizon and long swims into the majestic Atlantic Ocean; if that appeals to you head straight to Tarifa, the south of Spain. Can do From there, it's an easy drive to part-town Marbella and great experiences beyond.

7) KYOTO, JAPAN

Why Because this is a national treasure. We stayed at a ryokan (a traditional Japanese inn) and as I had drawn one for my architecture projects in the university, I loved being in a real 3D version. Must check Melt-in-your mouth Japanese food sitting on tatami mats and explore the beautiful Zen gardens. There are several Japanese crafts being created as part of living traditions.

8) SHANGHAI, CHINA

Why The sheer dynamism, power, and energy of the Chinese can be witnessed in this eternal city. One gets a taste of China and all that the county has to offer but there always seems to be more to discover. Must do Stay at The PuLi Hotel and Spa for its Zen-like rooms and delicious tea with teatime snacks. The markets are fun and chaotic and it almost seems like a treasure hunt.

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Picture courtesy: India Today Woman

9) MALDIVES

Why There is nothing more soul-uplifting in the world than being in the Maldives, both physically and spiritually. Over the last 30 years, the island has become one of the most sought after destinations. Must do One is so close to nature in Maldives that you feel close to God. The sea is so many shades of blue and the hotels so creatively luxurious, walk barefoot on the sea, believe me it is luxury at its best.

10) MARBELLA, SPAIN

Why For an amazing array of dazzling beaches, great beach restaurants "chringuitos" serving paella and fish, fun discos, sexy boats and a glamorous party. Must remember For 24-hour fun, this is the place to be in summer. If you fancy a bit of culture, visit Alhambra, a palace and fortress complex, and Sevilla, the sultry capital, which are both uplifting using Marbella as a base.

Picture courtesy: India Today Woman

(Priti Paul is the Director, of Apeejay Surrendra Group, Marrakesh, Morocco)

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By PTI: Kolkata, Jun 10 (PTI) West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee today urged the Centre to maintain the allocation of kerosene oil to the state at the level of March this year.

"I would request you to kindly take urgent decision in this matter and maintain the allocation of 78,608 kl to the state at the level as it existed in March, 2016," Banerjee said in a letter to the Union Petroleum Minister Dharmendra Pradhan.

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Concerned with "drastic reduction" in allocation of kerosene oil to the state since April this year, Banerjee said this would cause "grave distress" to the consumers in remote and tribal areas and would adversely affect the poor, SC, ST, minorities and economically weaker sections of the society.

Asserting that Chief Secretary Basudeb Banerjee has taken up the matter with the Secretary, Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas recently, Banerjee said the state government has taken strong steps and cancelled 1.41 crore fake and bogus ration cards to ensure the benefits reach the target population. PTI AKB DKB NSD

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By PTI: Srinagar, June 10 (PTI) The ration card that identifies Independent MLA Sheikh Abdul Rasheed as a BPL beneficiary has been "canceled" but no action has been taken against anyone in connection with the matter, the Jammu and Kashmir government informed the Legislative Assembly today.

"There is no ration card in the name of Engineer Abdul Rasheed as was informed by him yesterday. However, his father is a BPL ration card holder which states that Rasheed is a family member.

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"Subsequently, the name of the ration card holder has been excluded from the BPL list," State Revenue Minister Basharat Bukhari told the assembly.

"He (Rasheed) is not the head of the family. So there is no ration card in his name," Bukhari said.

Rasheed, the Langate MLA, had yesterday informed the House that his name figured in the list of BPL beneficiaries. To this, Bukhari had said action will be taken against the Tehsildar of Langate area if his claim was found to be true.

National Conference MLA Mohammad Akbar Lone today said either the Revenue Minister or Rasheed was lying. "A breach of privilege motion should be moved against the one who is found lying," he said.

The minister, however, said the Tehsildar, the Block Development Officer and the Tehsil Supply Officer of Khour Block have been suspended for including the name of local MLA Krishan Bhagat in the BPL list and an inquiry has been initiated by the Deputy Commissioner concerned.

Bukhari said the inquiry report will be brought to the notice of the House in a weeks time. PTI MIJ GVS RG GVS

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Former model and Bigg Boss star Sofia Hayat is all set to feature in an upcoming episode of Colors' comedy show Comedy Nights Bachao.

By India Today Web Desk: Former model and Bigg Boss star Sofia Hayat recently made news for turning into a nun. Sofia, who was embroiled in multiple controversies in the past, claims she is now living a simple, spiritual life with no trace of makeup and plain clothes.

She has also been posting pictures of her new avatar on her Instagram account. A few days back, she also addressed the media in a press conference where she displayed her silicon breast implants that she had got removed through a surgery. She also claimed that she had no physical desires left.

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Sofia also shot for an episode of Krushna Abhishek and Bharti Singh's Comedy Nights Bachao recently. The former model says she loved to shoot sans makeup and any worries about looking good.

Also read: Spiritual makeover! Bigg Boss 7 contestant Sofia Hayat is now Mother Sofia



"So I wore a long T-shirt under the kameez because it was see through. Just as well, I didn't care what it looked like :) Ahh gone are the days when after each break on a shoot, my hair and makeup artist ran up to me and retouched my face and hair. I felt so free as I watched others having the usual worries about a shiny face on set! See me with no makeup and no cares...free from the prison of makeup and worrying about what I look like. Also everyone on set were just beautiful hearts...especially one Rakhi Sawant, when you watch the show you will see why. Huge heart that one," (sic) her Instagram post read.

Have a look at her pictures and a video from the sets of Comedy Nights Bachao.



2 girls in white @colorstv #comedynightsbachao Saturday 10pm A photo posted by Gaia Mother Sofia (@sofiahayat) on Jun 9, 2016 at 11:42am PDT

Watch me on Comedy Nights Bachao Saturday 10pm. This was a dress rehearsal.. Have to say Rakhi Savant..true sport and golden heart. Never judge a book by its cover. What a great show! I was laughing so much I had an aching jaw after!! A video posted by Gaia Mother Sofia (@sofiahayat) on Jun 9, 2016 at 11:27am PDT

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Wiping her tears, the son hugged his mother for the first time in more than two decades.

By India Today Web Desk: A mother met her abducted son after 21 years and this reunion is sure to tear up anyone.

Maria Mancia saw her son last when he was just 18 months old. Maria's husband decided to leave her and took their son with him in 1995.

He left no trace of the child behind, not even a single photo. He even took the ultrasound report along. Maria had to call up a relative to get hold of a photograph of her son- Steve Hernandez.

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Maria and 22-year-old Steve Hernandez were in tears when they saw each other after more than two decades. Steve, all this while, was living in Mexico and was brought to the United States to meet his mother.



Also read: Five minor girls, sold by parents, rescued from Kerala's Kannur





How the authorities handled the case

The San Bernardino County District Attorney's Child Abduction Unit had been looking for Steve in several states. His father, Valentin Hernandez, is missing and believed to be dead, authorities said.

The case was handled carefully and the authorities did not want to scare off Steve. So they told him that they needed his DNA to help locate his father.

Till the time the authorities were sure, even Maria was not told that her son was found. "Now that I have my son back, this anguish I've carried is gone," Mancia told KABC-TV. "I spent 21 years looking for him not knowing anything."



Photo: AP





There was no hassle in bringing Steve back because he is an American citizen and the authorities in both countries did their best to make the reunion happen soon.

Steve's father told him that his mother abandoned him. He found out the truth after 21 years.

"I lived all these years without my mother, then to find out she's alive in another country, it's emotional," Hernandez told KABC. He said he plans to stay in the U.S. and hopes to attend law school, which he already started in Mexico.

--- ENDS ---
He returned home early this morning from Mexico which was the last stoppage of his trip.

By India Today Web Desk: Prime Minister Narendra Modi today returned home after a five-nation tour highlighted by his meeting with US President Barack Obama and an address to the US Congress in Washington.

He also received backing of two key Nuclear Suppliers Group members - Switzerland and Mexico - for its bid to secure the membership of the 48-nation bloc.

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MEXICO WAS LAST STOP



He returned home early this morning from Mexico which was the last stoppage of his trip.

With an aim to bolster ties, Modi also visited Afghanistan, Qatar, Switzerland and Mexico on his six-day tour.

Before leaving for home, Modi had tweeted, "Thank you Mexico. A new era in India-Mexico ties has begun and this relationship is going to benefit our people and the entire world."

"Five days, five countries! After a productive visit to Mexico, the last leg of his journey, PM departs for Delhi," External Affairs Minister Vikas Swarup had tweeted.

NUCLEAR NaMo



Modi addressed a joint sitting of the US Congress where he received multiple standing ovations.



He also held wide-ranging talks with President Obama at the White House following which the US recognised India as a "major defence partner".

Also read:

Modi, Obama embrace history as India, US ink defence, counter-terror pacts: Highlights

'From pariah to friend': What foreign media is saying about Modi-Obama meet

US-led push for India joining NSG gains ground, China remains defiant





--- ENDS ---
Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Barack Obama had good reason to be euphoric about the outcome of their June 7 bilateral summit, particularly on the nuclear front. India is only days away from being formally admitted as the 35th member of the exclusive Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR), which, ironically, was set up in 1987 to thwart its advance in hi-tech missilery. And the US will in a few months sign an agreement to build six 1,000 MW reactors in Andhra Pradesh, thereby ending a 53-year-old hiatus in supply of nuclear technology to India. Both of these are historic developments that have reversed decades of animosity, acrimony and angst over India's perceived nuclear waywardness.

Yet, the unfinished business was India's admission to the 48-member Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) that would enable it to conduct unfettered trade in atomic material and technology and seal its place on the global nuclear high table. Though Obama reiterated that the US was satisfied that India was ready for NSG membership, the dragon in the room was China, who, for the first time, had openly expressed its reservations about New Delhi's candidature when it applied for membership last month.

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Yet what irked Indian diplomats the most was the way China was orchestrating its opposition in the NSG in tandem with Pakistan. Even as India applied for membership last month, Pakistan in a surprise move also put in its application. By propping up Islamabad's candidature, China appeared bent on thwarting India's chances by demanding that the NSG members force the two countries to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and also other measures to roll back their nuclear weapons programme before admitting them.

Wising up to China's strategy, Modi is using whirlwind travel diplomacy to win over other countries that had also expressed reservations about India's membership. Demonstrating indefatigable energy, on the current visit, he stopped in Switzerland and Mexico and held bilateral meetings with their leaders to persuade them to endorse India's membership when the plenary meets later this month.

In his meeting with Obama, Modi requested the US to bat strongly for India and do some heavy lifting, particularly with China. In 2008, George W. Bush had personally called up Hu Jintao, his Chinese counterpart, to request him not to stop a "clean-waiver" that he sought from the NSG as part of the agreement he had with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh when he signed the path-breaking Indo-US nuclear deal. That was India's first major victory as the NSG was set up in 1974, soon after the country's first nuclear test, to give it a pariah status and curb its nuclear ambitions.

The clean-waiver enabled India to do legitimate trade and purchases with those countries having nuclear fuel and technology and saw new deals with Russia, France and now the US to set up nuclear power plants. But the deal was stymied by a stifling nuclear liability clause that Parliament had passed in 2010. In a rare demonstration of bipartisanship and continuity, Modi has taken ownership of the Indo-US nuclear deal and is working extra-ordinarily hard to ensure that all the promised outcomes, including membership to the NSG are achieved. Modi told his top negotiating team, "We must be mindful of how these benefit the economy, how many jobs it would create, the kind of high technology we would get and push for it. We shall not sit out of these bodies and be part of the problem. Instead, we should be part of the solution."

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Modi urged his team to think out of the box and come up with a viable solution to the vexatious nuclear liability clause that had stymied investors without altering the law. In July last year, his government created an India Nuclear Insurance pool of Rs 1,500 crore, with the government chipping in half the amount and industry the rest. In doing so, a whole new insurance business was created for India. Currently, nuclear power generates around 6,000 MW and constitutes only three per cent of India's total power. Modi has ambitious plans to instal 63,000 MW by 2032, increasing the share of nuclear energy to around nine per cent of total power generation.

The prime minister has pushed his team to up the scale of such projects, getting the US to invest in six civilian reactors instead of four. Modi has also been scoring for finance, tapping South Korea and Japan to fund these ventures. Modi also pressed for expanding the nuclear fuel supply alternatives for India. He was able to successfully negotiate with Australia, Canada and Kazakhstan long-term arrangements to supply much-needed uranium for India's nuclear power plants and its plans for expanding its power output. Amandeep Singh Gill, MEA's joint secretary in charge of such issues, says, "The prime minister was keen that Indian manufacturers become part of the global nuclear supply chain and benefit from the hi-tech available."

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Foreign secretary S. Jaishankar, who has also been touching base with several NSG members, has argued that admission to the group will facilitate enhanced trade with all members and make the clean-waiver permanent. He politely knocked down China's argument that India should first become a signatory to the NPT by pointing out that "NSG is a regime, a flexible arrangement among states which is quite different from the NPT which is a treaty". He also argued that India has massive plans to develop its nuclear energy to meet its climate change commitments towards cutting down on non-renewable sources of energy such as coal.

Meanwhile, for the MTCR membership, India overcame resistance from Italy which was piqued over the arrest of two marines for the killing of Indian fishermen off the coast of Kerala. The government found a legal way of sending the marines back to Italy on bail with a commitment to return whenever the Supreme Court ordered them. The MTCR would help enable India import dual-use high technology from countries such as the US for a range of industries. India is also pushing for membership of two other key groupings-the Australia Group and the Wassenaar Arrangement-that deal with chemical and biological weapons and export controls for dual-use goods and technologies. For the Wassenaar arrangement, the MEA is working with the Union ministry of defence to harmonise all military stores lists of over 900 items to conform with the convention's rules and regulations.

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If India is able to become a member of all these four key groupings, apart from being accepted as an integral part of the global nuclear and missile set-up, it will have access once again to strategic technologies and materials. Almost 42 years after its 1974 nuclear explosion that isolated it from the world, India is poised to join the high table that had been formed to thwart it-no mean achievement.



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By PTI: Jammu, Jun 10 (PTI) BJP today said that opposition to Abhinav Gupt Yatra in Kashmir was indicative of "narrow and biased" mindset of certain elements in the Valley.

"The opposition being voiced against the yatra is indicative of narrow and biased mindset of certain elements," state BJP general secretary Harinder Gupta said in a statement here today.

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Gupta said the yatra was not going to disturb the peaceful environment of the state as it was meant to reaffirm the faith and belief in the multi-faceted cultural, religious and philosophical history of Kashmir.

"It is an attempt to focus on and reiterate the composite culture of the valley. The opposition voiced by Syed Ali Shah Geelani and others to the yatra betrays the lack of faith in Kashmiriyat as well as thousands of years old intellectual and cultural developments," he said.

A New Delhi-based organisation, Acharya Abhinav Gupt Samaroh Samiti, has announced the yatra to a cave in Beerwah in Budgam district, for the first time, in the second week of June. PTI TSS RC PAL MNG

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By PTI: From Sajjad Hussain

Islamabad, Jun 10 (PTI) Pakistan government has claimed that it has lined up USD 58 billion investment in its troubled power sector till 2022 and hoped that the power crisis in the country would end by 2018.

This was stated by the Minister for Water and Power Khwaja Asif yesterday at a briefing organised by Prime Minister Office on the completion of three years of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz government, the Dawn newspaper reported today.

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Asif said USD 58 billion worth of investment in the power sector was expected for generation of 30,948 MW by 2022 and the power crisis would completely wipe out in 2018.

Power Secretary Younas Dagha said under the 10,400 MW portfolio of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor 8,630 MW were currently under execution phases.

Asif said wastage of energy was a serious issue in Pakistan and the government was "getting absolutely no support from the provinces including from Punjab for energy conservation and closure of markets at sunset".

He said that Pakistan was blessed with a lot of sunshine, but the nation was doing business in electric lights. "This is sad," he said.

Power cuts are common in Pakistan because of electricity shortages.

Minister for Petroleum and Natural Resources Shahid Khaqan Abbasi said that Iran-Pakistan gas pipeline project was still facing two major issues to take off.

Explaining this, he said international sanctions against Iran had eased but "dollar transactions are still not allowed", making it difficult to have normal business transactions with Tehran.

Responding to a question why such restrictions did not work against the European Union (EU), Abbasi said the EU had only a one-off transaction with Iran while the Iran-Pakistan pipeline project was a long-term arrangement for 20 years which could be affected in case of application of snap-back clause.

He said the discussions with Iran were in progress on these issues and hopefully the project would go through and be completed by June 2018.

The project could start with 250mmcfd of gas flows in June 2018 and then gradually go up to 750mmcfd.

In reply to a question on the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (Tapi) gas pipeline project, the minister said Turkmenistan had taken upon itself to deal with security of the pipeline in Afghanistan and the project envisaging 1,325mmcfd of gas to Pakistan could materialise in January 2020.

He said even if both the IP and Tapi projects materialised, Pakistans energy needs would not be overcome because domestic gas supplies were about 4,000 mmcfd against a demand of about 8,000 mmcfd. MORE PTI SH AJR AKJ AJR

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By PTI: Islamabad, Jun 10 (PTI) Pakistan has reached out to Mexico and Italy seeking support for its NSG membership bid, stepping up diplomatic efforts for its inclusion in the elite 48-nation bloc whose membership India is also eyeing.

"Adviser to the Prime Minister on Foreign Affairs Sartaj Aziz spoke over telephone with Mexican Foreign Minister Claudia Ruiz Massieu as part of Pakistans continuing diplomatic efforts towards mobilising support for Pakistans application for the membership of Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG)," a Foreign Office statement said here.

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He highlighted Pakistans credentials for the NSG membership with a view to seek Mexicos support.

Significantly, Mexico had expressed its backing to India this week during the visit of Prime Minister Narendra Modi there. The Mexican support followed that of the US and Switzerland. Japan too has expressed its support for Indias inclusion.

"Adviser Sartaj Aziz spoke with Italian Foreign Minister Paolo Gentilioni to seek support for Pakistan application for NSG membership. They had a very cordial exchange," Pakistans Ministry of Foreign Affairs Spokesperson Nafees Zakaria tweeted on Wednesday.

As part of Pakistans diplomatic push towards mobilising support for Pakistans application for NSG membership, Aziz had earlier this week also spoke over telephone with the Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.

On Wednesday, Aziz also contacted Foreign Minister of New Zealand Murray McCully and Foreign Minister of Republic of Korea Yun Byung-se to highlight Pakistans credentials for the NSG membership with a view to seek their support.

Pakistans push to secure NSG membership comes at a time when India is also looking to secure membership of the elite grouping.

With the US pushing its case, Indias bid for NSG membership has received positive indications from most of the member countries but China is still playing the spoiler by persisting with its opposition. PTI ASK AKJ ASK

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By PTI: Washington, Jun 10 (PTI) People who take photos of their experiences usually enjoy events more than those who do not click pictures, a new study suggests.

"To the best of our knowledge, this research is the first extensive investigation examining how taking photos affects peoples enjoyment of their experiences," said Kristin Diehl from University of Southern California in the US.

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"We show that, relative to not taking photos, photography can heighten enjoyment of positive experiences by increasing engagement," said Diehl.

Diehl along with researchers from Yale University and University of Pennsylvania in the US outlined a series of nine experiments involving over 2,000 participants in the field and the lab designed to examine the effect of taking photographs of an experience on peoples enjoyment of an activity.

In each experiment, individuals were asked to participate in an activity (for example, taking a bus tour or eating in a food court) and were either instructed to take photos during the activity or not.

Afterwards, participants completed a survey designed to measure not only their enjoyment but their engagement in the experience. In almost every case, people who took photographs reported higher levels of enjoyment.

While people might think that stopping to take photographs would detract from the whole experience and make it less pleasurable, participants who took photos reported being more engaged in the activity, the study found.

"One critical factor that has been shown to affect enjoyment is the extent to which people are engaged with the experience," researchers said.

They found that photo-taking naturally draws people more into the experience.

In one experiment, individuals were instructed to take a self-guided tour of a museum exhibit while wearing glasses that tracked their eye movements.

Researchers found that those who took photos spent more time examining the artifacts in the exhibit than those who simply observed.

There were some conditions, though, where picture-taking did not have a positive effect, such as when the participant was already actively engaged in the experience.

For example, in one experiment, individuals were asked either to participate in an arts and crafts project or to observe one.

While taking photos increased the enjoyment of observers, it did not affect enjoyment of those actively taking part in the experience, researchers said.

They also found that this effect is not limited to the action of taking pictures. Participants in one experiment reported higher levels of enjoyment after just taking "mental" pictures as they were going through the experience.

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While photo-taking can increase enjoyment in many circumstances, this effect requires active participation, researchers said.

The findings were published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. PTI SAN SAR SAR

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Two former party MPs today accused the former chief minister of dividing the backward community to help the state's ruling Samajwadi Party (SP).

By India Today Web Desk: Amid reports that Home Minister Rajnath Singh may be the BJP's chief ministerial candidate in Uttar Pradesh, two former party MPs today accused the former chief minister of dividing the backward community to help the state's ruling Samajwadi Party (SP).

"The activities of Rajnath Singh are anti-backward and he is trying to divide the community. The party leadership should take cognisance of this before deciding anything," former Azamgarh MP Ramakant Yadav told IANS.



RAJNATH ANTI-BACKWARD, SAY DETRACTORS

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Yadav said Rajnath Singh's thinking was anti-backward and this would benefit the SP. "Until the party rejects his idea of quota within quota, we will keep opposing it. His idea is not in the party's interest. It will benefit the SP," said Ramakant Yadav, who fought against SP chief Mulayam Singh Yadav in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls.

"The backward community was united during the Lok Sabha polls. This was the reason we got 71 (of the 80) seats in the state," Ramakant Yadav added. Two other seats were won by a BJP ally, Apna Dal. The Congress won only two seats and the SP five. The Bahujan Samaj Party drew a blank.

The apprehensions expressed by Yadav, a four-time former MP and four-time former state legislator, is seen as his opposition to Rajnath Singh, tipped to be the BJP's chief ministerial candidate in Uttar Pradesh. The elections are due next year.

Addressing a social justice meet at Mau in Uttar Pradesh, Rajnath Singh said on Thursday that a quota within quota system would be implemented in the state again if the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) came to power.

"The state and the nation can't develop well without the progress of the most backward castes. To ensure their growth, they need a separate quota. The benefits of reservation meant for Scheduled Castes and other backward classes should not be confined to a few castes only," Rajnath Singh said.

Another former party MP, Daroga Prasad Saroj, also criticised Singh's idea of quota within quota. "If there is quota within quota, the country will get divided. The country can't move ahead. If the party wants this I have no objections as I am ready to abide by the party decisions," Saroj told IANS.

VARUN GANDHI FACTOR

Most media surveys found that for BJP supporters, the most acceptable face for chief minister is Varun Gandhi. But there are several reasons why the 36-year-old Sultanpur MP is not his party's face as it prepares for one of its most ambitious elections ever.

Why Varun will not make the cut, as argued in a DailyO column, is his surname. Both Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP chief Amit Shah are known to loathe the Gandhi family.

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Moreover, Varun's mother Maneka Gandhi is already a senior Union minister in the Modi government. The BJP would not promote two persons from the same family as has been seen in several cases involving children of senior party leaders.

But the most important reasons behind the BJP's clipping of Varun's wings ahead of the UP election is his refusal to toe the party's Hindutva agenda. Varun, who had once come close to being declared the BJP's poster boy after he was found guilty of hate speech in 2012, is no more seen echoing what his colleagues from UP - Yogi Adityanath, Sakshi Maharaj, Sanjeev Balyan - are famous for.

NOT IN CONTENTION: RAJNATH SINGH

Meanwhile, Rajnath Singh today evaded a question on him leading the UP campaign and said there is no dearth of capable people in the party. "UP mein qaabil chehron ke koi kami nahi hai (There is no dearth of capable faces in UP)," he said.

Speculation is rife ahead of BJP's national executive meeting in Allahabad starting tomorrow that Singh could play a "lead role" in the party campaign for the UP polls even if he is not declared the choice for the top political office in the state.

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Asked whether he would be made the party's face in UP, Singh, who is a Lok Sabha member from Lucknow, said, "Yeh kalpanik prashna hai. Iska koi matlab nahi hai (This is a hypothetical question. It has no meaning)."

The possibility that the party could enter the UP arena with a chief ministerial candidate has gained currency after BJP's victory in Assam where it had declared the name of Sarbananda Sonowal months ahead of the contest. As against this, the party did not declare a CM candidate in Bihar and lost.

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Voting for 3 RS seats that are falling vacant in MP will be held on Saturday from 9 am. Counting will be held the same day at 5 pm.

By Rahul Noronha: Keeping the flock of their respective MLAs together was the plan for leaders of the BJP and Congress on Friday, a day prior to the voting for the Rajya Sabha elections on June 11. The elections are expected to go down to the wire after the BJP fielded a party leader as an independent candidate, forcing the Congress to guard its MLAs fiercely for fear of cross voting- the only possibility under which the BJP-supported independent can expect a win.

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SECURING VOTES



While the Congress huddled its MLAs together by hosting a lunch at a private hotel and planning a dinner at the official residence of former union minister Kamal Nath later in the evening, the BJP MLAs were asked to be present at the CM House on Friday evening for participating in a mock poll to ensure that votes are not rejected. The 4 BSP MLAs who have been asked to vote for the Congress in the RS polls were also present at the lunch, besides an independent MLA who till now was expected to be with the BJP.

Voting for 3 RS seats that are falling vacant in MP will be held on Saturday from 9 am. Counting will be held the same day at 5 pm. While the BJP has fielded Anil Dave and MJ Akbar as official candidates, the Congress has fielded lawyer Vivek Tankha. Vinod Gotiya, a BJP leader has been fielded as an independent by his party forcing a contest in the RS polls.

POLL CAMPAIGN



Meanwhile, senior Congress leaders Kamal Nath, general secretary in charge Mohan Prakash and AICC observer for the RS polls, Sushil Kumar Shinde have been camping in Bhopal for the polls. Former CM Digvijaya Singh will arrive in Bhopal on Saturday morning.

CM Shivraj Singh Chouhan has been organizing the RS polls from the side of the BJP. However, on Friday, he left for Burhanpur to attend the funeral of party MLA Rajendra Dadu who passed away in a car accident on Thursday while he was on his way to Bhopal.

SETBACK FOR BJP



The BJP's efforts to prevent leader of opposition Satyadev Katare from voting received a setback when independent candidate Vinod Gotiya's appeal at a division bench of the HC was rejected. Katare is admitted at a hospital at Mumbai and his vote is likely to be cast through a postal ballot to be taken to Mumbai by a special messenger.

The BJP has 164 votes while the Congress has 57 of its own and 4 BSP MLAs. There are 3 independents in the House of 230 in Madhya Pradesh. Each candidate needs 58 votes to win.

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The new poster of the upcoming Aditya Chopra's Befikre, shows Ranveer and Vaani kissing just like in the first poster.

By India Today Web Desk:



The new poster of the Ranveer Singh-Vaani Kapoor starrer Befikre is out and they're being charged for kissing on-screen again. The upcoming Yashraj film is being directed by Aditya Chopra and the duo have been living it up during the shoots of the film in Paris, as suggested by Vaani Kapoor's behind-the-scenes Instagram posts.

ALSO READ: Ranveer Singh lifting weights while shooting for Befikre in Paris is all the inspiration you need today.

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The first poster showed them locking lips passionately while overlooking the city of Paris, and now the new poster shows them kissing in a cabaret-like setting with color coordinated purple costumes. The poster was unveiled by Ranveer on Twitter:



The film is rumored to be a remake of Richard Linklater's Before Sunrise - which is essentially a story of a boy meets girl in a foreign city where they spend an entire day and consciously decide to not keep in touch after that. It will be interesting to see how Aditya Chopra adapts this cult favorite for the Hindi audience.

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By PTI: Jaipur, Jun 10 (PTI) Medical services at government college hospitals across the state resumed as resident doctors called off their 10-day strike after an assurance from the government that it will to look into their demands.

Over 4,000 agitating doctors at all seven government medical colleges returned to work last night after holding talks with state health minister Rajendra Rathore and BJP leader Digambar Singh.

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The doctors had gone on strike in Jaipur, Jodhpur, Ajmer, Bikaner, Udaipur, Kota and Jhalawar on June 30 protesting the decision to send their answer scripts for evaluation to other states, which caused inconvenience to patients.

During the talks, the state government assured them that the suspension and termination of doctors ordered by Rajasthan government during the strike will be revoked.

"The talks were held in a cordial manner with the health minister after which which we decided to call off the strike. All striking resident doctors of seven government medical colleges have joined duties," vice president of Jaipur Association of Resident Doctors (JARD) Dr Akash Mathur said.

The communication gap with the government was also cleared in the meeting yesterday, he said.

The minister had taken a tough stand against the agitating doctors and directed the officials to take action against them including termination of admission in post-graduate courses. PTI SDA ASV RT ASV

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By PTI: Bhopal, Jun 10 (PTI) The personal assistant of BJP MLA Rajendra Dadu, who was killed in a road accident last night, has also succumbed to his injuries, police said today.

Dadu, the MLA from Nepanagar, was killed in an accident on Indore-Bhopal road between Ashta and Sehore towns last night.

His PA Ravindra Atre also succumbed of his injuries late last night, Sehore City Superintendent of Police S R Dandotia said today.

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Meanwhile, the condition of two others injured in the mishap was stable, Chirayu Medical College Hospital Director Dr Ajay Goenka said.

The mishap occurred yesterday when the legislator was coming to Bhopal from Nepanagar to attend a BJP meeting at Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhans residence ahead of the June 11 Rajya Sabha election.

His car overturned and he died on the spot, a police officer had earlier said.

Dadu had won from Nepanagar (ST) seat for the second time.

His mortal remains were today taken by a special plane to his native place Kanapur for last rites.

Chief Minister Chouhan, Union Minister for Steel and Mines Narendra Singh Tomar and state BJP president Nandkumar Singh Chouhan expressed grief over Dadus death. PTI MAS LAL GK IKA RDS

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If reports are to be believed, Ranbir Kapoor and Salman Khan have been at loggerheads with each other from even before the former began his career.

By India Today Web Desk: It is widely speculated how there has always been acrimony between stars Salman Khan and Ranbir Kapoor. Most believe these rumours to be true because the Rockstar actor was in a relationship with Katrina Kaif, who happens to be Salman Khan's ex-girlfriend.

However, seems like the cold war between Ranbir and Salman existed even before the former stepped into Bollywood.

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SEE PICS: Salman Khan and rumored-girlfriend Iulia Vantur return from Budapest



Back in time, when Ranbir Kapoor was yet to make his acting debut, he supposedly met Salman at a renowned pub in Mumbai, during a party. They soon got into a war of words, which took an ugly turn as the Wanted star lost his cool and slapped Ranbir.

Ranbir, feeling embarrassed, left the party instantly. It was later reported that the fathers of the two, Salim Khan and Rishi Kapoor, might have called it a truce when the former approached the latter with an apology on his son's behalf.

Later, the involvement of Katrina Kaif might have made matters worse between the two.

Ranbir Kapoor is currently shooting for his home production Jagga Jasoos, while Salman is awaiting the release of his next, Sultan.

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By PTI: Chennai, Jun 10 (PTI) In a minor post-poll shake-up among the ranks, DMK today relieved its senior leader and former union minister S Gandhiselvan as the partys District Secretary of Namakkal East.

Party General Secretary K Anbazhagan said that Gandhiselvan, a former minister of State for Health,was being relieved as DMKs District Secretary of Namakkal East and was being replaced with P Elangovan for the party affairs to run "promptly."

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In a statement, Anbazhagan also announced replacing the partys District Secretaries of Coimbatore North and Tirunelveli West, M Veeragopal and PK Durairaj, respectively.

M Muthusamy is District Secretary for Coimbatore North while Siva Padmanabhan has been appointed for Tirunelveli North, Anbazhagan said and appealed to the party functionaries to jointly work with the new appointees.

In the Dravidian parties rank structure, District Secretaries are considered key in the organisational hierarchy and are known to wield considerable amount of clout in the respective district units. PTI SA APR AMS KK

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Indian rap artist Sofia Ashraf shot to fame with her first video about mercury pollution caused by Hindustan Unilever's thermometer manufacturing unit at Kodaikanal. In her new video titled 'DOW Vs. Bhopal | A Toxic Rap Battle' she aims to bring justice to the victims of Bhopal Gas Tragedy.

By India Today Web Desk: Sofia Ashraf shot to fame when her song 'Kodaikanal Won't' that went viral last year. In it, Ashraf rapped against Hindustan Unilever's thermometer manufacturing unit in Kodaikanal which was polluting the water sources. The song which was a parody of Nicky Minaj's Anaconda was an instant hit on social media.

Now, she is back with another video titled 'DOW Vs. Bhopal | A Toxic Rap Battle' hoping to bring justice to the victims of the 1984 Bhopal Gas Tragedy.

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Ashraf joined a group of activists and has also put up a petition on the White House website. Bhopal Gas Tragedy is one of the worst industrial disasters to have happened in India, the effects of which are still being felt. It exposed more than 5,00,000 people to methyl-isocyanate, killing many and causing deformities even in the third generation.

In the video, Sofia Ashraf questions the US Department for defending Dow Chemicals that caused the poisonous leak from the Union Carbide Plant. Dow Chemicals bought Union Carbide in 2001, but never accepted responsibility of the disaster.

The petition to the White House claims, "India charged UCC with manslaughter, but UCC refused to show for trial. Under a Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty, India sent 4 notices to the US Dept. of Justice to summon Dow to explain UCC's whereabouts. The DoJ has ignored or obstructed every notice."

This petition which needs over 41,000 signatures to get a response from the White House emphasises that "31 years of US protection of UCC and Dow must end."

The video ends with a request to the viewers to sign a petition to the United States government asking it to "serve notice upon Dow to attend court in Bhopal on July 13, 2016".

In the video below, Sofia Ashraf engages in a rap battle with herself. She represents both Dow and victims of Bhopal.





You can join her fight for the victims and sign the petition to bring justice here.



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Bangladesh government has ordered law enforcers to launch a special countrywide drive against militant activities to check secret killings.

By Sahidul Hasan Khokon, Manogya Loiwal : Government has ordered law enforcers to launch a special countrywide drive from Friday against militant activities in Bangladesh to check secret killings, police chief AKM Shahidul Hoque confirmed it to India Today.

Hoque also said the police superintendents of the districts will follow the order accordingly and that the list of militants have been updated and formerly arrested and sentenced militants are under the eyes of police.

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All range DIGs, Metropolitan Police commissioners, and police supers of the militancy doubted districts were present in the meeting.



ATTACKING INCIDENTSIn the recent times, Bangladesh has witnessed a series of gruesome murders specially targeting the minorities, secular bloggers, intellectuals and even some foreigners.

A Hindu priest was on Tuesday allegedly hacked to death in Bangladesh's Jhenaidah district by armed assailants.

On Sunday, a Christian businessman was hacked to death by unidentified men near a church.

Earlier in April, a Hindu tailor was also hacked to death in his shop in Tangail district.

A Buddhist monk, and two prominent gay rights activists were among several others who have fallen prey to such deadly attacks by extremists in the past few months in Bangladesh.

While the ISIS has claimed responsibility for some of these attacks in recent months, the Bangladesh government has firmly denied their presence in the country.

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Director James Wan delivers a delicious scare-fare with The Conjuring 2 and this time, it takes place in good ol' London. Here's our review.

By Devarsi Ghosh: The latest instalment of the horror franchise The Conjuring is here and this time, it's double the ghost and double the scare.

Cast: Vera Farmiga, Patrick Wilson, Frances O'Connor, Simon McBurney, Franka Potente

Direction: James Wan

Ratings: (4/5)

Rarely are sequels better than their predecessors. When it comes to horror films, that is even rarer. But James Wan and his gang have delivered a really well-made The Conjuring 2 that is consistently engaging, definitely better than the first part, and this time, things are not just scary, but at times, funny as well.

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ALSO READ: Horror genre deserves respect, says The Conjuring 2 director James Wan

ALSO READ: Lorraine and Ed Warren visit England's Amityville in The Conjuring 2



That's right. Of the many good things about The Conjuring 2, one is its sense of humour. In a very early scene in the movie, two girls (one of who is later haunted) are caught smoking a cigarette by their teacher who shoos them away, only to smoke it secretly, drawing huge laughs from the audience.







In another scene, one of the ghosts actually cracks a Knock Knock joke, before admitting, on camera, that his sole purpose of haunting the family is to hear them scream; nothing more, nothing less. Later, when the same ghost, in the body of a young girl is asked to clarify his reasons for being, he is too shy to speak with everyone looking at him, so he requests everyone to look away while he presents his case.

This time, paranormal experts Ed and Lorraine Warren (Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga, respectively) travel to London to investigate poltergeist activity in the Hodgson household. The change of scenery from a farmhouse in the middle of a sparse, isolated landscape in the first movie to a house in a densely populated London borough is refreshing.

Vera Farmiga and Patrick Wilson reprise their roles as the Warrens

Consequently, there is a lot of media attention on the haunting as it becomes a more public affair, and all the noise and gossip surrounding the event adds a semblance of reality to the proceedings. In other words, you feel more invested.

But the most interesting thing about The Conjuring 2 is that there are two ghosts haunting the characters this time.

One, the aforementioned ghost, is the spirit of an old, cranky man who refuses to leave the haunted house and shows up at inopportune moments behind children, shouting, "This is my house", and scaring them. He is more or less a troll in the scheme of things.

The other is a more sinister, cruel and crafty "inhuman" presence who looks like Marilyn Manson in nun's clothes, with terrible dental hygiene. You wouldn't want to mess with that.

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A still from The Conjuring 2

There's another character in the movie, tall and dressed in a pink suit and bowl hat, who shows up twice to scare the kids, and disappears without a trace; it's not clear whether this is a separate character.

Wan uses a lot of devices to drive home the point that yes, you are in "fish, chips, cup 'o tea, bad food, worse weather, Mary f**king Poppins...London! ". The introduction to the London business begins with a montage of documentary-like clips featuring footage of the Sex Pistols, 1978 trade union riots, and of course, the Queen - all set to London Calling by The Clash.

The movie is peppered with 60s pop hits (I Started A Joke by Bee Gees, Bus Stop by The Hollies) and includes a beautiful montage that has Ed Warren playing Elvis Presley's Can't Help Falling In Love With You on the guitar, to help the scared family relax, and this sequence is inter-cut with the Warrens' colleagues investigating throughout the house.

The biggest asset of The Conjuring 2 is that it respects the craft of and displays quality writing, thanks to the tried-and-tested horror film writing team of Wan and the Hayes brothers, who worked together on the first movie, along with screenwriter David Leslie Jones (writer of Orphan and The Walking Dead).

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The Conjuring 2 has some particularly scary sequences

Contemporary mainstream Hollywood horror movies, such as they are, resort to same old 'gotcha' scares and gimmicky CGI. Thankfully, The Conjuring 2 uses 'gotcha' scares in new, exciting ways (watch out for a scene in a flooded basement). Wan and cinematographer Don Burgess (Cast Away, The Polar Express), to their credit, reinvent ways to shoot and present standard horror movie scenes in a new way. At times, the camera floats over the characters, zoom in suddenly from a distance and then drift away, creating an immersive feel, similar to sections from David Fincher's Panic Room and Emmanuel Lubezki's work.

From the perspective of craft, The Conjuring 2 is a good, well-written-and-directed, classic entertainer. If you are looking for cheap thrills, you might want to skip this. But if you are in for a good movie-watching experience and wouldn't mind a few chills, go for it.

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By India Today Web Desk: The Udta Punjab controversy has reached the Bombay High Court now. The Abhishek Chaubey-directed film was not given a certificate by the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) till the changes suggested by them were made. Headed by Pahlaj Nihalani, the Censor Board asked for more than 89 cuts in Udta Punjab, in addition to ordering the word 'Punjab' be removed from the title of the film.

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ALSO READ: Udta Punjab vs Censor Board - Bombay HC asks CBFC reasons for cuts

ALSO READ: Bollywood unites to save Udta Punjab from Pahlaj Nihalani

This, however, did not go down all too well with the producers of the film. Anurag Kashyap, who is producing the film along with Ekta Kapoor's Balaji Films, took to Twitter to voice his displeasure regarding the same. After a fashion, the case reached the Bombay High Court.

At the hearing in the Bombay High Court on Friday (June 10), Justice SC Dharmadhikari asked the CBFC to explain their reasons to not give Udta Punjab a certificate. "Give the film a certificate, what is the need for cuts?" he asked.

The CBFC tried clearing its stand by saying that most of Udta Punjab is in Punjabi, while the film is touted to be a Hindi one. To which, Dharmadhikari's answer was, "Are you saying you ordered cuts without understanding?"

"Have you done your job taking them (the film team) into confidence, telling them that just using expletives will not help run the film? This is not going to work. The generations to come will not be impressed with this. The generation now is taking more time to mature. Tell them to make content which is more watchable," said Dharmadhikari.

The CBFC had a problem with the content of Udta Punjab. The film tries to bring on screen the menace of drug abuse among youngsters in Punjab. The board ordered numerous cuts in the film, demanded the word 'Punjab' be removed from the title, in addition to dropping every reference of Punjab in the film whatsoever. The CBFC was asked to justify its suggestion for the cuts in the film.

"Audiences are direct and open today. People born after 1980 are very mature. So why are you worried? For action to be taken you need to provoke. Multiplex audiences are discerning. How can you decide which word is right or wrong? Film industry is not made of glass that you need to "handle with care." If you ask for so many cuts why is the point? Audience knows," said Dharmadhikari.

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The bottom-line of the case, pointed out Dharmadhikari, was whether or not Udta Punjab glorifies the usage of drugs. When CBFC answered in the affirmative, they were counter-questioned as to why they hadn't banned the film in that case.

"CBFC should only certify, not censor. The public is the biggest censor. CBFC doesn't need to censor," the judge reiterated.

The final verdict in the Udta Punjab case is to be given on Monday (June 13). The film, which stars Shahid Kapoor, Alia Bhatt, Kareena Kapoor Khan and Diljit Dosanjh in pivotal roles, is scheduled for a June 17 release.

Over the last few days, the Udta Punjab issue has seen several twists and turns, including a nasty war of words between producer Anurag Kashyap and CBFC choef Pahlaj Nihalani. While the latter claimed that the Udta Punjab makers had taken money from Aam Aadmi Party to show Shiromoni Akali Dal (SAD)-BJP-led Punjab in a poor light, the Indian Film and Television Directors' Association held a press conference to demand an apology from Nihalani for the comment.

While the battle rages on, it is yet to be seen whether Udta Punjab receives a certificate and is able to be released on its scheduled date.

--- ENDS ---

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A week-long investigation by four India Today TV teams indicates that Uttar Pradesh administration overlooked repeated warnings, at least 80, about the dangers posed by members of a cult who had occupied a 268-acre public park for two years.

Several huts were burnt during clashes between police and encroachers who were being evicted from Jawahar Bagh in Mathura.

By Sushant Pathak, Jamshed Adil Khan : Uttar Pradesh's Akhilesh Yadav government blamed intelligence failure for the deadly Mathura clashes on June 2 between the police and armed squatters that left two dozen people dead, including two high-ranking cops.

UP GOVERNMENT OVERLOOKED WARNINGS



A week-long investigation by four India Today TV teams, however, indicates the administration overlooked repeated warnings, at least 80, about the dangers posed by members of a cult who had occupied a 268-acre public park for two years.

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"There were some lapses," chief minister Akhilesh Yadav told reporters a day after Mathura's Jawahar Bagh erupted in bloodshed. "Police should have gone with full preparation and after holding talks, but there was no information that they would be having so much (arms and ammunition)."

State DGP Javeed Ahmad also said that his men, who had gone to inspect the grounds, weren't aware the occupiers were "so heavily armed".

India Today TV teams then went undercover in a bid to investigate allegations of failures that led to the June 2 carnage.

First, the crew met the man who headed Mathura's local intelligence unit (LIU).

Inspector Munni Lal Gaur looked distraught as he sat across his desk strewn with secret files.

His department has been accused of failure to supply vital information.

Over time, cult leader Ram Vriksh Yadav and his gang stockpiled lethal weapons inside the Jawahar Bagh park as the CM and police chief have acknowledged.

IT WASN'T INTELLIGENCE FAILURE



When reporters cited the accusations of intelligence failure, Gaur opened up.

"I informed authorities on March 13, 2014 that these people (cult followers) would arrive (at Jawahar Bagh) on March 15, 2014. Nobody stopped them (from entering the public park). They stayed here. Then, they started negotiations. And when elections came, they were given water and medical supplies," he said.

Gaur maintained he informed higher authorities that the park occupiers were equipped with firearms.

"I gave the information that they had all sorts of weapons, licensed and illegal, (and that) they were always ready to fight," he said.

He alleged that he sent inputs not once or twice but 80 times to the UP government, warning that Jawahar Bagh was sitting on a powder keg.

"This is one report I'd send almost daily. This is about illegal weapons (stored at Jawahar Bagh). See it's tagged. We reported this matter first on January 23, 2015. See this is that six-page report," Gaur said, flashing dcouments before the reporters. He then read it out aloud.

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"It's mentioned here that men, women and children linked to the cult organisation carry three-foot bamboo flags and are battleready. It's also learned that they are armed with illegal weapons, which they won't mind using when required," Gaur quoted what he claimed were excerpts from his January 23, 2015 note to the state government.

Mathura's district and police officials, according to Gaur, did inform their bosses in Lucknow about the mounting trouble at Jawahar Bagh.

He brandished a few other documents which he claimed were sent to higher authorities in the state capital.

"See this. This is the one that the DM and the SSP sent to the home secretary. The biggest thing here is that it quotes the report of the inspector of the LIU," he said, showing his file. "Fifteen reports were sent to the administration, which have our reports attached to them." Gaur claimed he kept streaming his information to the government till a day before the violence.

REPORTED ABOUT OFFENSIVE CAPABILITIES OF CULT FOLLOWERS



In his June 1 note, he insisted, he explained the offensive capabilities of the cult followers.

"This letter is about the stockpiling of stones, weapons and explosives. This June 1 letter was sent to the SSP, the DM, the SP (City), the city administration and the city magistrate. It illustrates the defiant mood of the Satyagrahis. It makes a mention of a march the female and child members of the organisation took out," he said, holding out a paper from his dossier.

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SI REJECTS INTELLIGENCE-FAILURE THEORY



The reporters next spoke with a Sub-Inspector posted outside Jawahar Bagh for the past two months.

Sunil Kumar Tomar said he would see men carrying guns and thick bamboo sticks roaming freely in and out of the park, but he had no orders to act.

The Sub-Inspector rejected the intelligence-failure theory outright.

"What failure? We knew criminals are sitting here. But we had no powers to arrest. We were not allowed to act," he claimed.

According to Tomar, police were ordered only to stand guard outside the Jawahar Bagh. He was on duty when the June 2 violence broke out.

He also claimed plans were afoot to lease out the entire park to its illegitimate occupier, Ram Vriksh Yadav, at the rate of one rupee per acre.

The younger son and father of slain SP City Mukul Dwivedi - who lost his life in the June 2 clashes between encroachers and police- during his cremation in Mathura.

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"The lease was about to be finalised. It stopped only because the lawyers took the matter to the high court. It (the lease) was pre-planned," he alleged. "This land is worth billions of rupees. That's why there wasn't any action," he claimed.

CARETAKER REJECTS INTELLIGENCE-FAILURE THEORY



Next, the India Today TV teams met Narayan Singh, who has been working as a horticulture caretaker at Jawahar Bagh for the past 32 years.

"All kinds of people would visit him (Ram Vriksh Yadav)... good and bad both... goons, history-sheeters. They would drive in," Singh said.

At Mathura's district hospital, constable Manoj Yadav was guarding an injured suspect from the cult when the TV crew met him.

He said he was part of a police team that was allegedly thrashed when it went inside Jawahar Bagh to investigate illegal construction early in 2014. That was the time when Ram Vriksh Yadav, who was killed on June 2, was settling down there.

"We were beaten up badly. It didn't happen once. It happened three or four times," he added.

As India Today TV's investigation punched holes in the UP government's intelligence-failure claims, the ruling SP came under fierce attack from political opponents.

BJP DEMANDS DISMISSAL OF AKHILESH GOVERNMENT



The BJP demanded dismissal of the state government, alleging breakdown of law and order.

"This is a government that patronises, criminals, land-grabbers and the corrupt," alleged state party chief Keshav Prasad Maurya. "Those responsible for not acting on the LIU reports should be prosecuted."

Uttar Pradesh's jail minister Balwant Ramoowalia said ongoing investigations would uncover "shortcomings" that led to the Mathura violence.

He insisted the state administration initially tried to "persuade" the Jawahar Bagh encroachers to evict.

"...when all other avenues failed, we acted against them," Ramoowalia said. The state's Congress unit trained its guns on the BJP.

"What was the central government doing? Why didn't it forewarn the state government (about the growing threat at the Jawahar Bagh)?" asked Congress leader Pramod Tiwari.

The state police promised action but didn't explain why they hadn't moved earlier on the intelligence inputs.

"We rely on personal information, LIU information and other information," said additional director general of police Daljit Chowdhary. "A judicial inquiry is on now. If anything comes up, a lapse, in inquiry, it will not be acceptable."

ALSO READ:

Mathura cult received financial aid from Naxal-hit zones, claims police

Operation Mathura mess up: Violence exposes failure of UP Police



--- ENDS ---
Modi had commended the American Parliament for sending out a clear message by refusing to "reward" those who preach and practice terrorism for political gains, an apparent reference to the blocking of sale of 8 F-16 fighter jets to Pakistan.

By Press Trust of India: The US has asked Pakistan to ensure that its territory is not used for planning attacks on India, after Prime Minister Narendra Modi said terrorism is being "incubated in India's neighbourhood".

BETTER RELATIONS BETWEEN INDIA AND PAKISTAN

"This is one of the steps that the US is encouraging Pakistan to do for the improvement of its relations with India," state department spokesperson Mark Toner said yesterday.

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"We believe that Pakistan and India stand to benefit from practical cooperation and encourage direct dialogue aimed at increasing cooperation and reducing tensions," Mark Toner said.

"And that includes steps by Pakistan to ensure that its territory is not used to plan attacks in India and that Pakistan takes steps to address or to go after, I think, all the terrorist groups that are currently using its territory," Toner added.

"That continues to be an area of collaboration and cooperation that we pursue with Pakistan is its counterterrorism operations," he said in response to a question.

OBAMA AND MODI DISCUSSED PAK POLICY

Responding to a question, Toner said Pakistan was one of the issues discussed between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and US President Barack Obama.

"Certainly that was one of the discussions, frankly, that was raised at the - or one of the issues, frankly, that was raised in discussions with Prime Minister Modi. They talked about a wide range of regional issues, in fact," he said.

"Our bilateral relations with India and Pakistan are separate and stand on their own merits, and so I don't think we - it's not prudent for us to view our security cooperation in the region in kind of a zero-sum game - or zero-sum terms, rather.

"I think it's important for the countries of the region that they all have constructive security relationships with each other. And that's Pakistan, that's India, and it's also Afghanistan," Toner said.

In his address to the joint sitting of the US Congress, Modi had said terrorism has to be fought with "one voice" as he commended the American Parliament for sending out a clear message by refusing to "reward" those who preach and practice terrorism for political gains, an apparent reference to the blocking of sale of 8 F-16 fighter jets to Pakistan.



--- ENDS ---
Surprisingly, many of the hoardings also have images of former Modi detractor Sanjay Joshi and rebel MP Shatrughan Sinha.

By Brijesh Pandey: A debate has been raging over the most suitable BJP candidate for the post of Uttar Pradesh's chief minister after Assembly elections in 2017. Supporters of BJP MP Varun Gandhi have now gone ahead and declared a poster war on the saffron party to press for his name as the CM choice.

Just days ahead of the BJP's crucial national executive meet in Allahabad, massive hoardings with Varun Gandhi's face along with Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Amit Shah's images were found dotting the city.

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NO CRIME, NO CORRUPTION, THIS TIME BJP GOVERNMENT

One such big hoarding grabbing eyeballs is placed right outside Bamrauli Airport in Allahabad. The big hoarding of Varun Gandhi along with Prime Minister Narendra Modi reads, "Na apradh, na brashtachar, abki baar bhajpa sarkar" [No crime, no corruption, this time BJP government].

IMAGES OF MODI DETRACTOR

Surprisingly, many of the hoardings also have images of former Modi detractor Sanjay Joshi and rebel MP Shatrughan Sinha.

This open display of assertion by Gandhi and his supporters have reportedly not gone down well with the party. A BJP leader in UP said that chances are there that these posters may upset party president Amit Shah.

Sources said that Varun's May 1 visit to Allahabad also failed to go down well with the party's top leadership which has ordered the young leader to restrict his political activities to his Sultanpur constituency.

NO INFLUENCE

However, some in the party feel that the sight of posters will play little role in influencing people's choice.

"Nothing is achieved out of these posters. The party works at the grassroot level and we will win the elections because of these workers," BJP national secretary Shrikant Sharma said.

Meanwhile, even though sources say that Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh could lead the BJP in the UP Assembly elections, only two of the posters have his face.

Reports suggest that the most important reasons behind the BJP's clipping of Varun's wings ahead of the UP election is his refusal to toe the party's Hindutva agenda. Varun, who had once come close to being declared the BJP's poster boy after he was found guilty of hate speech in 2012, is no more seen echoing what his colleagues from UP - Yogi Adityanath, Sakshi Maharaj, Sanjeev Balyan - are famous for.

Also read: Why Rajnath Singh-for-CM is not going to be an easy campaign for BJP in UP





--- ENDS ---
Also, MP Supriya Sule attacked Sadhvi Prachi for her statements of Muslim Mukt Bharat warning that she will not be allowed in the state.

By Kamlesh Damodar Sutar: While the NCP supremo, Sharad Pawar may have made his party's poll pitch for the BMC polls, his nephew Ajit Pawar once again set the tails wagging with his conspicuous absence.

Ajit Pawar was blatantly absent from annual foundation day gathering which was otherwise attended by top party leaders. This conspicuous absence led to speculations about his rift with his cousin Supriya.

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Meanwhile Sharad Pawar took this opportunity to launch his party's campaign for BMC polls in Mumbai. The NCP so far has not been able to make any sizeable presence in the richest civic body.

ATTACK ON BJP



Pawar launched a scathing attack on the Modi govt claiming that unemployment has become rampant and agricultural and industrial output have gone down drastically. He also said that the saffron wave is on the decilen.

While blowing the bugle of the upcoming BMC polls in Mumbai Pawar went on to make a controversial statement. Pawar appealed his party workers to forcibly take over the 23000 flat built by the state government for the homeless, if the allotment doesn't happen in the next 15 days.

Pawar's aggressive stand has surprised many in the political circles as the leader is generally not known to make such controversial statements .

Also, MP Supriya Sule attacked Sadhvi Prachi for her statements of Muslim Mukt Bharat warning that she will not be allowed in the state.

The celebration came at a time when one of the main founders of the party and the first president of the state unit Chhagan Bhujbal is behind bars for his alleged involvement in a money laundering case.





--- ENDS ---
Google on Thursday launched another Android feature called Nearby which goes a step further and will bring information to smartphone users on the basis of their surroundings.

By Javed Anwer: For several years now Google is trying to bridge the gap between the virtual and physical world by trying to show smartphone users contextual information. This the company accomplices by the Google Now. But on Thursday it launched another Android feature called Nearby which goes a step further and will bring information to smartphone users on the basis of their surroundings.

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The way Nearby works is slightly hard to explain in words. But consider it as a virtual assistant that sees the world around you and then tries to guess what you want. So for example, as soon as you enter a historic landmark, the Nearby will automatically fetch an audio and prompt you. Similarly, it will see that you have entered your drawing room and automatically sync your phone to your TV in case you want to "cast" YouTube videos on it.

Nearby will be available as part of the Google Play Service which means it will be rolled out to users as an update in a phased manner.

"The Play Store offers over one million apps -- many of which are created to be used in specific locations or situations. The right app at the right moment lets you get more done," Akshay Kannan, Google's product manager for Nearby, wrote on the company website. "Getting the right apps at the right time can be tough if you don't already know about them. So, we're introducing a new Android feature called Nearby, which notifies you of things that can be helpful near you."

Google said that the Nearby will also work with relevant websites using Chrome browser's Physical Web project. For example, if a website supports the Physical Web project it will probably automatically open on a user's smartphone based on the context. Consider a restaurant website, which supports the Physical Web project. As soon as a user who has Nearby installed on his phone walks into the restaurant, the website will appear on his phone.

Although Google Now, which is already available on most Android phones, also fetches contextual information, it mostly relies on location data. The Nearby will use location data as well as other signals, including Bluetooth.



Also read: Lenovo launches Phab 2 Pro Tango with 4 cameras, 2 other Phab 2 phablets

--- ENDS ---
By Saurabh Singh: Google's vision of what a modular smartphone should look (and feel) like -- at this point of time -- aka Project Ara will most likely have a consumer release some time in 2017. The Mountain View company will start shipping a developer edition of the first modular Project Ara smartphone in the next few months.

Well before that happens, LG launched its take on what a modular smartphone should look (and feel) like -- at this point of time -- with its flagship phone G5. And the consumer world got its first teensy glimpse into the future -- one where one smartphone fits them all would mean the end of buying a new one every year.

Also Read: Moto Z & Moto Z Force launched: Full specs, top features and difference between two

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On Thursday, another company of the name Lenovo joined the bandwagon. At its Tech World conference in San Francisco, the Chinese company launched the next-generation Moto X...err...first-generation Moto Z phones. The Moto Z and Moto Z Force are spiritual successors of the original Moto X and Moto Droid Turbo of last year. Lenovo might have killed the iconic Moto X, but there's a method to this madness. These are desperate times, and desperate times call for desperate measures. The Moto X was in desperate need for an evolution. Better now than later.

Lenovo might have killed the iconic Moto X, but there's a method to this madness. These are desperate times, and desperate times call for desperate measures. The Moto X was in desperate need for an evolution

As a result, the Moto Z is a different smartphone. Different from anything Lenovo (and Motorola) has ever built. Moto phones have never been about top-tier hardware or premium looks. The Moto Z is. It is rocking top-tier hardware and a premium build. Interestingly, the new Moto phone is still not about top-tier hardware or premium looks. It is about something else, entirely. Its highlight is its modularity and oh, it's super thin, unlike previous Moto phones.

Lenovo's take on modularity is different from a certain Google or LG in that it sticks to the basics. It doesn't bite off more than it can chew, at least for now. Remember, it still doesn't have a solution for point-by-point customisation, but hey, even Google had to cut short its ambitions with Project Ara.

The Moto Z is an all-metal phone with 16 magnetic connector pins on the rear. The phone supports a number of modules that Lenovo calls Moto Mods which snap on to its back via the connector pins. Without a tussle, without any hassle. The LG G5 -- where all the action happens at the lower end -- is downright intimidating in this regard. The entire lower strip of metal in the G5 pops out with the help of a small button. But it's not that simple. The button sits rather flush which means it wants your unflinching attention at all times and pulling out the module takes some time and effort. Popping it out and swapping it with a different module seemed way cooler on paper. Even when your module has been properly inserted there remains a very small gap between the adjoining surfaces, even more so on the front.

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The Moto Z on the other hand looks cool -- as a modular phone -- and snapping those modules on to it seems even cooler. The Moto Z doesn't end up looking like a laboratory experiment gone wrong. Google's Project Ara phone may have more modular options -- which is good -- but the whole thing still looks, for the lack of a better word, like a sophisticated toy.

The biggest positive of Lenovo's approach, over LG's is that you don't have to turn off the Moto Z every time you feel like swapping a new module. The G5 has to be turned off each and every time you swap a new module. The Moto Z on the other hand stays alive and kicking all the time.

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Lenovo has launched three modules for the Moto Z: one that turns the phone into a pico projector, one that acts as a portable power pack and another that adds an extra JBL stereo speaker to it. In addition, Lenovo has a whole batch of custom rear skin modules for the Moto Z for those who fancy customisation. Of course, Moto Maker still allows for some more.

The Moto Z looks cool -- as a modular phone -- and snapping those modules on to it seems even cooler. The Moto Z doesn't end up looking like a laboratory experiment gone wrong

Every time you snap a new Moto Mod on to the Moto Z, the phone is smart enough to recognise the module and changes accordingly. This is because the company has incorporated modularity down to the software level. Take for instance the power pack mod. Snapping it on instantly adds two distinct power logs to the phone. When you snap on the JBL speaker mod, the phone instantly redirects the phone's audio out to it. That the speaker mod carries extra juice inside also means the phone uses its battery when in action so your phone's battery remains untouched.

Also Read: LG G5 review: Just another star in the galaxy

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Talk about innovation with a purpose, and the new Moto Z has that covered for you with flying colours. Moreover, Lenovo's Moto Mod developer program means the company is very serious about the future of its modules. Already it has one extra module over the LG G5, besides an entire range of custom skins. Probably more will come in the days to come.

Google's Project Ara will take some more time coming. For now, Lenovo's new Moto Z definitely has me sold out for good.



--- ENDS ---
In the first place, conflict escalated in both Syria and Iraq, thereby potentially contributing to Irans efforts to justify its contributions to the fighting. At least 31 people were killed on Thursday in suicide bombings attributed to the Islamic State. Meanwhile, Iraqi forces were reported to be clearing areas outside of the IS stronghold of Fallujah, in advance of another major offensive.

While the AP report attributes the military operations almost entirely to the Iraqi forces, this characterization of the fighting has been widely disputed by experts and commentators including representative of the National Council of Resistance of Iran. Those who are closely monitoring Irans involvement in the regional conflicts tend to emphasize that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps and various Shiite militant proxies have taken on the lions share of responsibilities in both Syria and Iraq, effectively sublimating local authorities to Tehran.

In recent years, Iranian officials have boasted that the Islamic Republic has taken control of the capitals of at least four Arab countries: Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, and Yemen. During that same time, various reports have emerged to at least partly justify this claim, highlighting the uninhibited presence of the IRGC and other Iranian apparatus in those countries militaries, governments, or in the case of Yemen, successful local rebellions.

One such report was published by The Tower on Thursday. It detailed what the author called Irans long con in Iraq, and explained that the Popular Mobilization against IS militants in Iraq is overwhelmingly loyal to Tehran, above and beyond Baghdad. The report explained that at least one leading commander in this collective force has declared that he would overthrow the Iraqi government if ordered to do so by the Iranian supreme leader.

Such declarations of loyalty lead The Tower and other outlets to conclude that the continued Iranian presence in the fight against the Islamic State threatens to secure long-lasting Iranian dominance of the political situation in Iraq and Syria even after IS is gone.

Continued support from Russia would certainly help Iran to secure this long-term goal. But the likelihood of that support has come into question recently. The US and other Western powers have been vying with Iran at international negotiations over the future of Bashar al-Assad, for whom the Iranians refuse to consider an alternative. Russia has maintained a similar, but slightly softer position, and it has been suggested that Western negotiating strategies might focus on attempting to exploit divisions between Iranian and Russian interests in the region.

Early this week, the international media suggested that Israel had made its own contributions to this strategy when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited Moscow and apparently urged the Russians to help prevent Iran and its Lebanese terrorist proxy, Hezbollah, from securing a foothold that would pose a threat to the Jewish state. Israel and Russia have enjoyed increasingly positive relations in recent years, and this has been seen as a potential contributor to future divisions between Iran and Russia over the Syrian crisis.

It may be the case that by hosting the Russian defense minister on Thursday, Iran was trying to counteract some of the effects of the recent discussions between Netanyahu and Russian officials in Moscow. This explanation of Irans motives may also be supported by the fact that the AP reported Iran had made somewhat more moderate public statements in the wake of the meeting, expressing tentative support for a cease-fire in Syria.

The content of Irans statement seems to suggest a persistent desire to control the terms of any negotiated solution. That is to say, when Iran declares an interest in a ceasefire that doesnt help terrorists to get more powerful, it is understood that terrorists refers to any opponent of the Assad regime, regardless of whether they are affiliated with the Islamic State or the moderate rebel groups that are supported by the US and its allies.

Nonetheless, any public declaration of support for a ceasefire suggests Irans willingness to compromise with Russia. Whereas Russia pulled back some of its forces in the midst of a ceasefire that has since collapsed, Iran increased IRGC deployments and was ultimately blamed by some parties for contributing to the failure of the negotiated decline in hostilities.
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[June 09, 2016] Fitch Affirms Sweetwater Union High School District (CA) ULTGO Bonds at 'AAA'; Outlook Stable

Fitch Ratings has affirmed the following ratings on Sweetwater Union High School District (CA (News - Alert)): --$168.7 million 2016 general obligation (GO) refunding bonds at 'AAA'; --$97 million 2016 GO bonds, election of 2006, series 2016B at 'AAA'; --Long-Term Issuer-Default Rating (IDR) at 'A+'. The Rating Outlook is Stable. SECURITY The bonds are secured by unlimited ad valorem property taxes levied on all taxable property in the district. KEY RATING DRIVERS The 'AAA' bond rating is based on a dedicated tax analysis without regard to the district's financial operations. Fitch has been provided with legal opinions by district counsel that provide a reasonable basis for concluding that the tax revenues levied to repay the bonds would be considered "pledged special revenues" in the event of a district bankruptcy. The 'A+' IDR reflects the district's solid economic base, moderate liabilities, and mixed operating performance. The distinction between the 'AAA' rating on the bonds and the 'AA' issuer rating reflects Fitch's assessment that bondholders are legally insulated from any operating risk of the district. Economic Resource Base The district participates in the broad and diverse San Diego regional economy, which has experienced sustained growth in recent years. Population and assessed values have risen steadily and prospects for further growth appear strong. Revenue Framework: 'a' factor assessment Revenues have lagged behind U.S. economic performance, in part due to recent enrollment declines. The district's legal ability to raise revenues is constrained by Proposition 13, which requires voter approval for tax increases. Expenditure Framework: 'aa' factor assessment The district, with a moderate fixed cost burden, has demonstrated a solid ability to manage spending at times of economic and revenue decline. On average, growth in spending is likely to be in line with revenue growth over time. Long-Term Liability Burden: 'aa' factor assessment The district participates in a two adequately funded state-run pension plans and funds the bulk of its capital needs from voter-approved property tax levies, resulting in a long-term liability total that is a moderate burden on resources. Operating Performance: 'a' factor assessment The district retains expenditure cutting flexibility but its modest reserves could be strained by a cyclical downturn. Fund balances have declined in each of the last five fiscal years but improved outcomes appear likely over the next several years based on recent revenue gains. RATING SENSITIVITIES SOLID TAX BASE AND ECONOMY: The 'AAA' general obligation bond rating could come under downward pressure in a significant and long-lasting decline in the district's tax base and economy, which Fitch believes is unlikely. IDR SENSITIVE TO FINANCIAL PERFORMANCE: The 'A+' IDR could come under downward pressure if the district fails to maintain satisfactory financial flexibility, including reserves sufficient to withstand a moderate economic recession. CREDIT PROFILE The Sweetwater Union High School District serves an area of 153 square miles in southern San Diego County (IDR of 'AAA'). The total population of the district is approximately 455,000, including the communities of Bonita, Chula Vista, Eastlake, Imperial Beach, National City, Otay Mesa, South San Diego and San Ysidro. The district provides education for grades 7 through 12 and is the largest secondary district in the state, with enrollment of 40,000 students. District facilities include 12 comprehensive high schools, a continuation high school, 10 middle schools, a junior high school, five adult education programs and four alternative education schools. Tax Revenue to Repay Bonds Viewed as Pledged Special Revenues Fitch believes that taxes levied for bond repayment would be considered pledged special revenues under the U.S. bankruptcy code and therefore the lien on pledged revenues would survive andwould not be subject to the automatic stay (i.e., payment interruption) in the event the district were to file for bankruptcy.



Fitch has reviewed and analyzed legal opinions provided by district counsel and believes they provide a reasonable basis to conclude that these revenues would be treated as pledged special revenues due to certain provisions of the state constitution (primarily propositions 13 and 39), which limit and direct the use of pledged property tax revenues for bond repayment. As a result, Fitch analyzes these bonds as dedicated tax bonds. This analysis focuses on the district's economy, tax base and debt burden without regard to financial operations because Fitch believes that bondholders are insulated from any operating risk of the district. Fitch typically calculates the ratio of available revenues to debt service for dedicated tax bonds, but the unlimited nature of the tax rate pledge on the district's bonds eliminates the need for such calculations.

Revenue Framework State aid and local property taxes provide the majority of district revenues. Overall revenues have been somewhat volatile over the last several years due to a combination of enrollment declines and improving state aid. Revenue growth has lagged behind U.S. economic performance over the past 10 years, in part due to declining enrollment. Management projections of enrollment gains, in combination with a growing state economy, should support improved revenue growth over the next several years. State law requires voter approval of tax increases, limiting the ability of the district to control revenues. Property tax growth is constrained by an annual limit on assessed value increases on taxable property absent a change in ownership. Expenditure Framework Personnel costs for teachers and staff comprise the vast majority of district expenditures. Based on the district's current spending profile, such costs are likely to be in line with to moderately above expected revenue growth. The district's mandate to provide educational services limits its ability to make expenditure reductions in the event of a revenue shortfall. In practice, however, management retains access to layoffs and class-size increases as key tools for reducing expenditures while meeting service mandates. Long-Term Liability Burden The district's debt issuance is funded from an unlimited property tax levy restricted to this purpose. Long-term liabilities are moderate relative to the district's resource base, largely due to debt issued by overlapping jurisdictions. State pensions in which the district participates are adequately funded and reforms adopted in 2012 should slow the growth in the liability over time. The district retains approximately $122 million in GO bond authorization from a 2006 election, but tax rate constraints have limited its ability to issue new bonds. Management plans to issue new debt for building upgrades and maintenance incrementally in coming years as the district's tax base grows. Such issuance is unlikely to have a material effect on overall liabilities. Operating Performance The district's financial resilience is founded upon a stable revenue base, expenditure cutting flexibility, and adequate reserves. In an unaddressed moderate economic decline scenario reserves would likely be stressed but would be expected to improve with renewed economic growth. The district budgets conservatively and Fitch expects that district management would actively manage expenditures to address potential budget gaps. Additional information is available at 'www.fitchratings.com'. In addition to the sources of information identified in the applicable criteria specified below, this action was informed by information from Lumesis and InvestorTools. Applicable Criteria U.S. Tax-Supported Rating Criteria (pub. 18 Apr 2016) https://www.fitchratings.com/creditdesk/reports/report_frame.cfm?rpt_id=879478 Additional Disclosures Dodd-Frank Rating Information Disclosure Form https://www.fitchratings.com/creditdesk/press_releases/content/ridf_frame.cfm?pr_id=1005849 Solicitation Status https://www.fitchratings.com/gws/en/disclosure/solicitation?pr_id=1005849 Endorsement Policy https://www.fitchratings.com/jsp/creditdesk/PolicyRegulation.faces?context=2&detail=31 ALL FITCH CREDIT RATINGS ARE SUBJECT TO CERTAIN LIMITATIONS AND DISCLAIMERS. PLEASE READ THESE LIMITATIONS AND DISCLAIMERS BY FOLLOWING THIS LINK: HTTP://FITCHRATINGS.COM/UNDERSTANDINGCREDITRATINGS. IN ADDITION, RATING DEFINITIONS AND THE TERMS OF USE OF SUCH RATINGS ARE AVAILABLE ON (News - Alert) THE AGENCY'S PUBLIC WEBSITE 'WWW.FITCHRATINGS.COM'. PUBLISHED RATINGS, CRITERIA AND METHODOLOGIES ARE AVAILABLE FROM THIS SITE AT ALL TIMES. FITCH'S CODE OF CONDUCT, CONFIDENTIALITY, CONFLICTS OF INTEREST, AFFILIATE FIREWALL, COMPLIANCE AND OTHER RELEVANT POLICIES AND PROCEDURES ARE ALSO AVAILABLE FROM THE 'CODE OF CONDUCT' SECTION OF THIS SITE. FITCH MAY HAVE PROVIDED ANOTHER PERMISSIBLE SERVICE TO THE RATED ENTITY OR ITS RELATED THIRD PARTIES. DETAILS OF THIS SERVICE FOR RATINGS FOR WHICH THE LEAD ANALYST IS BASED IN AN EU-REGISTERED ENTITY CAN BE FOUND ON THE ENTITY SUMMARY PAGE FOR THIS ISSUER ON THE FITCH WEBSITE. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160609006403/en/

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[June 10, 2016] Over 8 Billion Connected Devices Globally, IHS Says

IHS (News - Alert) Inc. (NYSE: IHS), the leading global source of critical information and insight, released key findings from its Connected Device Market Monitor. This Smart News Release features multimedia. View the full release here: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160610005326/en/ Number of Connected Audio-Visual Devices Globally (Graphic: Business Wire) The IHS Technology Connected Device Market Monitor report examines key trends and data for global devices, over the top (OTT) and pay TV multiscreen markets. As of year-end 2015, the world now contains 8.1 billion connected smartphones, tablets, personal computers, TVs, TV-attached devices and audio devices. On average, across the globe, this device base equates to an astounding four devices per household. "The proliferation of media-enabled connected endpoints has implications for media consumption, media production, broadband infrastructure, and the business itself of network management and traffic discrimination," said Merrick Kingston, principal analyst-connected home, at IHS Technology. "It drives media consumption, IP traffic and more." Smartphones outnumber tablets by five to one



Year-on-year, smartphones contribute roughly half a billion new devices to the market; tablet and OTT set-tops are also growing quickly, but operate a full order of magnitude below the smartphone. By 2020, this ratio will only widen. Within the forecast period, the smartphone-to-tablet ratio rises to nearly 10:1. Chromecast leapfrogs Apple (News - Alert) TV

The latest IHS Technology reports also noted the big changes in the wider-connected, media-enabled hardware ecosystem. For all its early momentum, Chromecast had been unable to out-ship the Apple TV. This finally changed during the first quarter of 2016 with Apple TV shipping 1.7 million units compared to Google (News - Alert) pushing 3.2 million Chromecasts to market. "We anticipate that this reversal will persist," Kingston said. "Since the introduction of the fourth-generation Apple TV, Apple and Google have pursued vastly different strategies." The Apple TV, starting at $149, has inexorably been shuttled into the segment's top end. The device is now positioned as a premium hub that appeals to consumers of digital video, to casual gamers and to iOS owners who are intrinsically attracted to Apple's singular user-interface. Chromecast, at $35, is a veritable bargain, naturally complements portable Android (News - Alert) devices and offers a no-frills casting experience that obviates the very need for a user-interface. Netflix has secured a presence across 32 percent of connected devices in the US As of year-end 2015, Netflix addresses 339 million connected devices in the U.S. As a fraction of the total U.S. installed base, this is equivalent to addressing 32 percent of the audio-visual hardware landscape. "Netflix's reach is a testament to the company's unrivalled device strategy," Kingston said. "The service's ubiquity turns Netflix into a de facto rival - and on occasion complement - to any other given video offering in the U.S." The days when a multiscreen pay TV service could uniquely lay claim to a device or platform are effectively gone. Pay TV media apps are virtually guaranteed to sit alongside the Netflix application on consumers' end devices. About IHS (www.ihs.com) IHS (NYSE: IHS) is the leading source of insight, analytics and expertise in critical areas that shape today's business landscape. Businesses and governments in more than 140 countries around the globe rely on the comprehensive content, expert independent analysis and flexible delivery methods of IHS to make high-impact decisions and develop strategies with speed and confidence. IHS has been in business since 1959 and became a publicly traded company on the New York Stock Exchange in 2005. Headquartered in Englewood, Colorado, USA, IHS is committed to sustainable, profitable growth and employs nearly 9,000 people in 33 countries around the world. IHS is a registered trademark of IHS Inc. All other company and product names may be trademarks of their respective owners.  2016 IHS Inc. All rights reserved. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160610005326/en/

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[June 10, 2016] Fitch: US States Are Key to Distressed School District Outcomes

The roles that Illinois and Michigan have played in supporting their largest school districts diverge widely and may lead to different outcomes for investors, says Fitch Ratings. We expect school district bankruptcies, like municipal bankruptcies in general, to continue to be rare. Education is fundamentally a state responsibility that is provided at the local government level. Thus, states typically provide administrative and financial assistance to districts that have fallen into financial distress. However, Illinois' recent treatment of Chicago Public Schools (CPS) has been at odds with this practice while Michigan continues to provide support to Detroit Public Schools (DPS). Illinois' fiscal 2016 budget is long-delayed and leaves no clear path to developing a plan to support CPS. A recent investigation by the Illinois State Board of Education concluded that the district did not meet the criteria for state intervention, and the governor expressed interest in exploring a bankruptcy filing. In our view, the district's continued dependence on market access for both short- and long-term borrowing would make a debt default appear particularly costly. Fitch's Issuer Default Rating on CPS is 'B+'/Negative. A California law passed following a school district bankruptcy in the early 1990s is one example of a state's commitment to school district solvency. California, which provides very little assistance to distressed full-service local governments, developed a powerful program in 1991 following the bankruptcy of the Richmond Unified School District. AB 1200 set up county boards of education to oversee school district operations and provide a system of assisting districts in financial istress.



Michigan provides another example. As of Dec. 31, 2015, $13.2 billion of the state's school districts' outstanding bonds are backed by the state via its School Bond Qualification and Loan Program. The governor's proposed budget, approved by the Legislature Wednesday, includes splitting DPS into two entities, one to provide education services and another to repay outstanding debt, most of it backed by a state aid intercept. DPS has had a state-appointed emergency manager since 2009 and still experiences financial stress. However, Fitch believes default for at least the majority of the district's debt appears unlikely. Additional information is available on www.fitchratings.com.

The above article originally appeared as a post on the Fitch Wire credit market commentary page. The original article, which may include hyperlinks to companies and current ratings, can be accessed at www.fitchratings.com. All opinions expressed are those of Fitch Ratings. ALL FITCH CREDIT RATINGS ARE SUBJECT TO CERTAIN LIMITATIONS AND DISCLAIMERS. PLEASE READ THESE LIMITATIONS AND DISCLAIMERS BY FOLLOWING THIS LINK: HTTP://FITCHRATINGS.COM/UNDERSTANDINGCREDITRATINGS. IN ADDITION, RATING DEFINITIONS AND THE TERMS OF USE OF SUCH RATINGS ARE AVAILABLE ON (News - Alert) THE AGENCY'S PUBLIC WEBSITE 'WWW.FITCHRATINGS.COM'. PUBLISHED RATINGS, CRITERIA AND METHODOLOGIES ARE AVAILABLE FROM THIS SITE AT ALL TIMES. FITCH'S CODE OF CONDUCT, CONFIDENTIALITY, CONFLICTS OF INTEREST, AFFILIATE FIREWALL, COMPLIANCE AND OTHER RELEVANT POLICIES AND PROCEDURES ARE ALSO AVAILABLE FROM THE 'CODE OF CONDUCT' SECTION OF THIS SITE. FITCH MAY HAVE PROVIDED ANOTHER PERMISSIBLE SERVICE TO THE RATED ENTITY OR ITS RELATED THIRD PARTIES. DETAILS OF THIS SERVICE FOR RATINGS FOR WHICH THE LEAD ANALYST IS BASED IN AN EU-REGISTERED ENTITY CAN BE FOUND ON THE ENTITY SUMMARY PAGE FOR THIS ISSUER ON THE FITCH WEBSITE. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160610005512/en/

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CHARLESTON -- Ellen Humphrey and Susan Yeck are both preparing to retire from long-term careers with the Eastern Illinois Area of Special Education.

Ellen Humphrey

Humphrey is retiring from her role as assistant director at EIASE at the end of the month. She's held her current position since 2002 but has been with the organization for more than 35 years.

"I began a career in education because of my cousin, Wayne Watson. He was not allowed to attend the same school as I did and I couldn't understand that," Humphrey said. She added that watching his parents struggle to find schooling for him instilled in her a commitment to do what she could to work with students with disabilities.

Humphrey said that, through the years, seeing the smiles of students who have no other way to communicate and students who have struggled in school finally realize that they can learn has made it all worthwhile for her.

"Although it has been many years since I was in the classroom, when I began to drown in paperwork, I would visit one our programs and see the wonderful dedication of not only our teachers but our dedicated paraprofessionals -- I knew I was in the right career," Humphrey said.

She was one of the first two teachers at the Treatment and Learning Center back in 1978. Other positions held by Humphrey throughout the years are technical assistance coordinator, associate director, and collaborative teacher.

"I can't emphasize enough how wonderful the staff is here," she said. "They are there for you in the good times, and more importantly, in the bad. Those are the people you call in the middle of the night. It's a great place to work."

Humphrey said EIASE is always looking for great people to join its staff.

She said she has had the privilege of working with three directors -- Don Crewell, Mike Ault, and current Director Tony Reeley. "All the people I've worked for I've learned something from," she said.

Humphrey has also taught special education at Eastern Illinois University, where she developed friendships with future teachers and administrators. Some of those friendships have existed for 40 years, she said.

EIASE serves 28 school districts. She said through her various roles at EIASE, she has had the opportunity to see how special ed is handled in other areas of the state.

"We can be very proud of how special ed is handled in this area," Humphrey said. "That's because of the people who show up everyday and do their jobs."

Back in the 1960s, superintendents saw a need for specialty cooperatives like EIASE. She said throughout her career, area superintendents have been very supportive of the organization.

"It's kind of nice to say after 35 years that you still like the place you work for," she said.

Susan Yeck

Yeck retired earlier this month after working with the Eastern Illinois Area Special Education program for 30 years.

When Yeck and her husband first came to the area, she said they only planned on staying for about two or three years. Her husband also worked for EIASE.

"I really have loved it," she said. "It's gone through a lot of changes in the amount of children services delivered and the amount of services available for children with special needs. It's been exciting to have been a part of that."

Her first position was as a social worker, and she later moved into a supervisory position of social workers. After that she was promoted to associate director, where she worked with school districts helping them deal with special education issues.

For the last nine years, she has served as principal of the Diagnostic Development Center that is housed at Franklin School in Mattoon. EIASE is headquartered along Illinois Route 16 between Mattoon and Charleston.

While serving as principal, she said the number of classrooms has grown from six to nine. She said EIASE provides programs for children with severe cognitive and physical disabilities and many students with autism.

EIASE serves an eight-county region, Yeck said. She added that many of the children have long bus rides from places as far as Chrisman, Marshall, Altamont, and Atwood-Hammond.

"I have worked with many wonderful people who are very dedicated to meeting the needs of their students," Yeck said.

She said her students have been wonderful and she often told their parents they are her children too.

"I really didn't know what I was getting into (in her first role at EIASE), but the children captured my heart," she said.

Yeck said the organization has a very dedicated staff who do their job because they want what's best for their students.
SPRINGFIELD -- Amid Illinois nearly yearlong budget standoff, only a small number of issues have managed to bring lawmakers together across party lines.

One significant issue that has united Democrats and Republicans over the past year is the states heroin and opioid crisis. Major legislation aimed at combating addiction and stemming the tide of overdose deaths passed unanimously in the House in the fall and was approved in the Senate with only four votes in opposition, though many Republicans voted present or didnt vote.

Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner vetoed a portion of the bill, but members of both parties voted to override his changes.

State Rep. Lou Lang of Skokie, the No. 3 Democrat in the House, championed the bill.

I had read one too many reports about heroin taking over Illinois, said Lang, who has a track record of taking on difficult and controversial issues, including gambling expansion and medical marijuana. For Illinois to be ground zero in the heroin and opioid problem in this country made me stand up and take notice.

Lang worked closely with state Rep. John Anthony, R-Joliet, a former Kendall County sheriffs deputy, in developing the legislation.

Weve moved from crisis to epidemic, Anthony said, adding, I dont know any neighborhood thats unaffected by heroin.

The new law takes a comprehensive approach to a problem thats growing throughout Illinois and across the country. Among its provisions:

Law enforcement agencies, fire departments and emergency medical service providers are required to possess anti-overdose drugs such as naloxone.

Once going through training, pharmacists are authorized to dispense naloxone without a prescription.

Hospitals, medical examiners and coroners are required to collect and report data on heroin and opioid overdose treatments and deaths.

The states Medicaid program was expanded to cover all forms of medication-assisted treatment approved by the federal Food and Drug Administration for alcohol and opioid dependence. The program also now covers anti-overdose drugs.

Private insurance plans are required to cover anti-overdose medications, and rules requiring insurance companies to cover mental health and addiction services in a comparable manner to other health issues were strengthened.

Drug courts, which provide an option other than prison for low-level drug offenders, have been expanded.

Because the bill cuts across several state agencies, many of its provisions are still being implemented.

For example, the Department of Human Services has just gotten an advisory committee for its prescription drug monitoring program up and running. The committee is tasked with identifying and distributing funding for a pilot program to encourage continued integration of hospitals electronic health records with the prescription monitoring program.

The department also continues to work with public safety agencies as requested to provide training on the use of anti-overdose drugs.

The Department of Public Health, meanwhile, has drafted rules for the required training of emergency medical personnel on the use of anti-overdose drugs. Public Health is also in discussions with the Illinois Hospital Association about the requirement that hospitals report overdose treatments provided in their emergency rooms. The department hopes to gather this information through the same system it uses for other diseases.

The Department of Financial and Professional Regulation has set up training for pharmacists who wish to dispense anti-overdose drugs as allowed under the law. The department doesnt track how many pharmacists have signed up for or completed the training, a spokesman said.

A spokeswoman for the departments of Human Services and Public Health said the lack of a state budget for nearly a year hasnt slowed the implementation of the law.

Given its scope and complexity, lawmakers and advocates say theyre generally happy with how the process has gone so far.

I think its going better than expected, said Kathie Kane-Willis, director of the Illinois Consortium on Drug Policy at Roosevelt University in Chicago.

However, there are still issues to be worked out, Kane-Willis said.

For example, the $75 fee for pharmacists to go through training on anti-overdose medications might prevent some from doing it, she said, adding that theres also the question of whether enough pharmacies will stock the medications.

Kelly OBrien, Illinois executive director for The Kennedy Forum, a mental health advocacy group, said the state Department of Insurance has also done a good job so far setting up educational programs for consumers on the laws requirements that insurance plans treat behavioral health and substance abuse the same as other medical issues. The department has also set up a hot line for consumer complaints.

While this all takes place, lawmakers are working on strengthening a few areas of the law.

One bill the General Assembly passed this spring would require any substance abuse program licensed by the Department of Human Service to provide educational information on medication-based treatments and the use of anti-overdose drugs. Another would allow people going through drug court programs to continue taking medication for opioid addiction as prescribed by their doctors.

State Sen. Melinda Bush, D-Grayslake, whos sponsored the heroin and opioid legislation in the Senate, said there are still some areas for further consideration. Those include programs offered in other states that allow police officers to direct people with addiction issues to treatment rather than jail and the expansion of drug take-back programs to pharmacies.

Lang said lawmakers have a tendency to move on to other issues once theyve passed legislation, but that wont be the case for him when it comes to combating heroin and opioid abuse.

As groundbreaking as (the new law) was, I did not look at it as the end of my journey, but the beginning, he said.
SHELBYVILLE -- At Shelby Memorial Hospital, New Vision has recorded a steady increase in the number of clients who are seeking its emergency medical stabilization services for withdrawal and other heroin-related health issues.

District Manager Caroline Reynolds said New Vision served 220 clients in 2015 at the Shelbyville hospital and has been serving an average of 20 clients per month so far this year. She said they do work with alcohol-related health issues too, but 75-80 percent of their clients are dealing with addiction to heroin or opiate painkillers.

"Those numbers have gone up every year unfortunately," Reynolds said. "What we have seen an increase in is heroin. It used to be more pain pills and now it's more heroin."

Reynolds said New Vision, which is based in St. Louis, has been in operation for 15 years and offers services throughout the country, including being at Shelby Memorial Hospital since 2004. She said few sites in Illinois offer emergency medical stabilization for heroin and opiate withdrawal, so clients from East Central Illinois and from throughout downstate go to the Shelbyville hospital.

The increase in heroin usage has been fueled, in part, by medical providers cutting back on prescribing painkillers because of concerns about prescription abuse, Reynolds said. This has occurred at a time when heroin has become an inexpensive drug for addicts, she said.

"They can get it on the street and they can get it cheap," Reynolds said.

In addition, Reynolds said the U.S. Affordable Care Act has increased the number of Americans who have health insurance. Consequently, she said more of the people who are battling addiction have health insurance now and are using this insurance to help pay for emergency medical stabilization services for withdrawal.

Reynolds said prospective clients are assessed by New Vision's medical director and other staff to determine if they will be admitted to the hospital. She said those with substance abuse problems cannot be "committed" to the emergency medical stabilization program.

"It's voluntary," Reynolds said. "The person who has the problem has to want to come into the hospital."

Most addiction rehabilitation services in the region do not offer medical care other than monitoring vital signs and related care, Reynolds said. New Vision gets a lot of client referrals from these addiction rehabilitation services, she said.

The medically supervised inpatient hospital stays through New Vision typically last three days, Reynolds said. The clients receive 24-hour medical care for their withdrawal symptoms during this time frame and are referred to community based aftercare programs once they are discharged, she said.
People who buy individual health insurance through the federal Marketplace exchange could be in for sticker shock next year.

The companies that offer Affordable Care Act-compliant policies have put in their premium rate requests for next year, and they are significant.

Two companies, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Nebraska and Medica Insurance Co., are seeking increases of 35 percent. The other companies that offer such policies are seeking increases of more than 17 percent.

Insurers say a combination of factors is leading to the requests for big increases.

Medica, a Minneapolis-based insurer, is in the midst of its first year in the Nebraska market.

Greg Bury, a Medica spokesman, said a big reason behind the company's large rate increase request is the phaseout of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services reinsurance program. The temporary program paid out $7.9 billion to insurers last year and expects to pay out $7.7 billion this year. Next year will be the final payout, which will be based on results from this year.

Bury said other factors include an overall increase in healthcare spending and policyholders using more services and more-expensive services than expected.

Blue Cross and Blue Shield cited the utilization of services as the biggest reason behind its large rate increase request.

Jerry Byers, chief financial officer for Nebraska's largest health insurer, said the number of claims and their cost has been "worse than expected."

Byers said that while the end of the CMS's reinsurance program was responsible for some of the requested increase, it was a much smaller portion than Blue Cross's claims experience so far.

The company earlier this year said it lost $53 million on its ACA-compliant plans last year, a combination of higher-than-expected claims and lower-than-expected reinsurance reimbursement from the federal government.

"We can't sustain the losses we incurred in 2014 and 2015," said Byers, who noted that Blue Cross has about 40,000 ACA-compliant policies in force. "We have to get the pricing right."

UnitedHealthcare, the second-largest insurer in Nebraska, decided to stop offering individual ACA-compliant policies in the state because of losses. It is still offering small-group insurance plans for small businesses and is seeking a 10 percent increase on those plans.

Blue Cross is seeking a 9.4 percent increase on its small-group policies. Byers said the claims experience with those policies has been closer to what was forecast.

Just because insurers are seeking such large rates doesn't mean individual policy rates will go up by that much. The rate requests are averages and vary by level of policy and other factors.

Also, the rates have to be reviewed by the state Department of Insurance.

Director Bruce Ramge said the department considers a number of factors when evaluating the rate requests, including the companies' stated justification for the rate requests, investigative findings by the department and an independent actuary and comments from interested parties.

The department could approve the rate requests as is or approve a lower increase. Ramge said the department's goal is to make a decision by late August.

Even if the full rate requests are approved, many consumers will wind up paying much less.

According to a report from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services released last month, the average Marketplace premium among people who qualified for tax credits increased only 1 percent last year, despite double-digit increases from most insurers. According to the report, 88 percent of Nebraskans buying individual health policies on the federal Marketplace qualify for tax credits, and tax credits increase when premiums increase to help offset the costs.

You can see companies requested Nebraska rate increases at: http://1.usa.gov/1YeBHN6
The search for two escaped prison inmates and surveillance in downtown Lincoln continues into the night.

Friday evening, Lincoln police spent hours around the established perimeter from G to J and 16th to 19th streets, blocking roads and alleys, with a State Patrol helicopter hovering overhead.

Law enforcement will surround the area throughout the night to ensure the safety of residents.

Police last saw the inmates after they stole a pickup and crashed it near 18th and F streets Friday morning. Capt. Ben Houchin said they are not aware if the two are still together.

Armon Dixon, 37, and Timothy Clausen, 52, are both considered dangerous, and anyone who sees them should call 911 immediately.

Police said people in south Lincoln -- specifically near 18th and G streets -- who see any evidence their homes may have been entered should call police immediately. Look for cut screens, damaged doors, etc.

"DO NOT ENTER," Lincoln Police Officer Katie Flood said in an email. "Instead, call 911 immediately. With the search underway for the two escaped inmates, its possible they may have taken shelter at an unoccupied home in the area."

Both men are believed to be wearing tan pants and gray, long-sleeved shirts.

Friday afternoon, authorities spent hours searching near U.S. 77 and Saltillo Road after someone reported seeing two people who matched descriptions of the inmates running through a cornfield nearby.

At one point, staff at Camp Sonshine near Roca were told to keep campers inside until parents arrived to pick them up. One sheriff's deputy stayed at the camp until all children were gone.

Lincoln Police Chief Jeff Bliemeister said federal, state, county and local law enforcement are working together to find the men and to figure out how they got away from the Lincoln Correctional Center.

A former Correctional Center employee said he thinks its clear how they got out of the prison near Pioneers Park.

The biggest issue that I can see is an extreme lack of staff, said the employee, who has been with Corrections for five years and still works for the department. If you dont have proper staff, it allows inmates to pay attention to details, to see what were not accomplishing as far as security goes on a regular basis, and then take advantage of it.

Dixon is black, 5-foot-9, 152 pounds with brown eyes. He is serving 158 to 278 years for charges including first-degree sexual assault, robbery, first-degree assault, use of a deadly weapon to commit a felony, robbery, theft by receiving and possession of a controlled substance, according to the state Department of Correctional Services.

Clausen is black, 5-foot-8, 160 pounds with brown eyes. He is serving 50 to 55 years for first-degree sexual assault of a child and tampering with a juror, according to the Corrections Department.

At 9:30 Friday morning, a witness told police she saw two men in what looked like prison inmate uniforms acting suspiciously near U.S. 77 and Warlick Boulevard. She said the men were running and looked like they were panicked.

Soon after, a pickup was stolen from the Christ's Place Church, 1111 Old Cheney Road, Lancaster County Sheriff's Capt. Ben Houchin said.

Nebraska State Patrol troopers saw the stolen pickup in the area and chased it, picking up help from sheriff's deputies, Houchin said.

The pursuit continued for about six minutes until the patrol ended it near 13th and F streets when speeds hit about 65 mph. The stolen pickup crashed into a parked SUV and two men ran from the scene a few minutes later, about 10:30 a.m., at 18th and F streets, Houchin said.

At a Friday afternoon news conference, Bliemeister said authorities have confirmed that the two men who ran from the wreck are the two escaped inmates.

"We believe both of these individuals are dangerous," Bliemeister said. "We believe they are a threat to public safety."

When asked about noon if prison officials knew about an escape, Corrections Department spokesman Andrew Nystrom said they were doing a head count then. Officials confirmed at 1:40 p.m. that Clausen and Dixon were missing from the Correctional Center. Bliemeister said law enforcement were notified about 12:30 p.m. about the escapees.

Nystrom couldn't immediately say what time the inmate count began or how long afterward they confirmed two were missing.

The former Correctional Center employee said staff there stopped doing an 11 a.m. head count in February or March. Before that, they counted at 5 and 11 a.m. and at 4 and 9 p.m. every day. He said he thinks the 11 a.m. count was eliminated after the Tecumseh riot happened and state Corrections administrators began working to cut down on the amount of time inmates are confined to their cells each day.

The prison worker, who did not want to be named for fear of reprisal, said inmates at LCC have been acting out since the Mothers Day 2015 riot at Tecumseh State Correctional Institution that left two people dead and parts of the prison in ruins. Plus, he said, a number of inmates at LCC have been transferred there from Tecumseh since the riot.

Thats why staff is quitting, why they cant retain good staff, he said. If you would have proper staff paying attention to the things these two were doing, they probably would not have been able to escape.

That housing unit (where Dixon and Clausen lived) is so out of control that caseworkers are calling in sick on a day-to-day basis because we have no authority to punish the inmates or disrupt the activity that is going on.

We are outnumbered. We are not going to risk our lives to go into a hostile environment, when the inmates have control and the administration isnt there to back us up.

Prison spokesman Nystrom said he didn't know how much overcapacity LCC is at or what the staffing level is.

In August, the prison designed to hold 308 men housed 520, making it 68.83 percent overcapacity, according to Corrections records.

The former LCC employee said that to his knowledge, neither Dixon nor Clausen had a regular prison work assignment.

Dixon is serving what amounts to two life sentences for the 2009 home-invasion rape of a stranger in her Lincoln apartment and for raping and robbing a convenience store clerk the same year.

The crimes left women in north Lincoln on edge.

"It is very difficult to imagine more serious and more terrorizing and more awful crimes," Lancaster County District Judge Jodi Nelson said in 2012 when she sentenced him for the break-in rape.

In that case, Dixon got 80 to 140 years for raping a woman at knife point and holding her hostage for nearly 10 hours. She said he pushed his way into her apartment, pulled a gun on her and her 3-year-old son, then raped her with her son in a room down the hall, at one point holding a knife to both of them. Then, she said, he left with bedding and condoms after forcing her to bathe and clean the bathroom with bleach.

Dixon also got 70 to 120 years for raping a woman outside of a convenience store near 55th and Superior streets as she arrived at work early on March 21, 2009.

At trial, she testified that a man in a ski mask approached her outside the store just before 5 a.m., pinned her against a propane tank cage, whispered that he'd been watching her and then forced her behind the store and raped her. He then took her inside to get money from the safe before hog-tying her with a belt and plastic bags. After he fled, a police dog led officers to a condom with Dixon's and the victim's DNA on it.

Clausen, originally from Omaha, spent time in jail for burglary and attempted escape beginning when he was 18 years old. He was released in 1991.

According to a post on its website, the Omaha Police Officers Association said Clausen raped and killed a disabled man he met in a Council Bluffs bar in 1992. The Nebraska Supreme Court overturned his conviction due to ineffective counsel, and he pleaded guilty to manslaughter to avoid a retrial. He was also convicted of felony escape from the Douglas County Correctional Center while awaiting trial. He was sentenced to 13-39 years in 1995.

In 2012 he was granted parole and, according to court documents, shortly after that he began sexually assaulting a girl younger than 12. After he was arrested, he tried to tamper with witnesses. He pleaded guilty to witness tampering and a reduced charge of attempted first-degree assault of a child and was sentenced in 2013 to 51-55 years.
The last person to escape from state prison custody in Nebraska was Tecumseh State Correctional Institution inmate Michael McGuire.

McGuire was 54 and being taken back to the prison from an appointment at Johnson County Hospital in 2004 when he forced a pair of prison guards at gunpoint to drive him to the Plattsmouth area. He handcuffed the guards to a tree and was captured after holding a man hostage in Omaha for four days. Authorities believe someone had planted the gun for him in a bathroom at the hospital.

McGuire was serving 73 to 193 years for robbery, kidnapping and rape.

Today, he's back at Tecumseh and serving 236 to 463 years after picking up more than a dozen additional charges related to the escape, according to state Department of Correctional Services records and newspaper files.

Inmates walk away from work release from time to time, but Corrections spokesman Andrew Nystrom said he wasn't sure early Friday afternoon if there had been other escapes from maximum-security state prisons between 2004 and 1984, when inmates Noel Heathman and Roger Weikle made history by becoming the first men to go over the wall at the Nebraska State Penitentiary since 1951.

The two scaled the 30-foot prison wall in broad daylight.

Weikle broke his ankle when he landed on the east side of the prison and was captured later that day. Originally in prison on a two-to-four-year sentence for burglary, he remains at the penitentiary, where he's serving a sentence of 72 to 218 years.

Heathman was arrested six months later in California. At the time of the escape, he was about four years into a life sentence for kidnapping and sexually assaulting a 19-year-old convenience store clerk at gunpoint in Omaha in 1980. He died in custody at Tecumseh on Dec. 1, 2014.

Authorities were searching Friday for two men suspected of escaping the Lincoln Correctional Center, a prison near Pioneers Park. Both were serving time for sexual assault.
When my grandmother was born in Philadelphia in 1920, women couldn't vote. Her opinion about her country and the people who governed it mattered less - or, frankly, not at all - than the men around her.

Even after the ratification of the 19th Amendment on Aug. 20, 1920, my grandmother was still less of a person in the eyes of society and the law. When she married she became the legal property of my grandfather, and although they ran a business together (and by all accounts my grandmother called the shots), the business and all its profits were under my grandfather's control too.

There was nothing particularly unusual about this, nothing especially sexist or backward about my grandfather. It was just the way things were.

For the first 270 years of our nation's history, no major political party ever nominated a woman to be its candidate for president. This was, I suppose, not explicitly sexist or even backward. Sexism didn't exist as a concept for most of that history; to suggest something is backward implies a contrast with more forward thinking in the future. But our thinking, at least as manifest in our voting habits, never changed. That was just the way things were.

Until now.

Hillary Clinton is the first woman to win a major party's nomination for president. Whatever your political leanings, whatever your gender, whatever your perspective on the merits of feminism, this moment is a big deal. There have been only 56 other presidential elections in all of American history and none have included a female candidate leading a major ticket.

I want to celebrate it. Bask in it. Grin and hoot and holler. I don't want to wrestle, at least not yet, with the ideological tensions and contentions that I, as a Bernie Sanders supporter, know bubble just beneath the surface. Nor do I want to heed the admonitions of the anti-Obama, anti-identity politics, anti-political correctness backlash Donald Trump is fomenting and exploiting around the country, admonitions designed to make us feel guilty for even acknowledging the glass ceiling. I don't want to process my own unarguable residue of internalized anti-feminism that makes me afraid to "play the gender card." I just want to grab the damn card and wave it proudly.

During the early moments of the Democratic primary, my 7-year-old daughter Willa declared that she wanted Hillary Clinton to win "because she's a girl."

"That's not enough of a reason," I almost said, but then caught myself. For 270 years, maleness and whiteness was an implicit prerequisite for president. Wanting to vote for a woman candidate isn't sexist; it's an act of undoing sexism. That's not to say that voting for a woman is an implicitly feminist act (see Sarah Palin and Carly Fiorina), nor is it to suggest that not voting for a woman is an inherently, entirely sexist decision. But our democracy has always been inextricably entwined with race and gender. We notice it only when the candidate isn't a white man.

On Tuesday evening, when it became clear that Clinton would be the Democratic presidential nominee, I looked at my daughter and my eyes filled with tears. She will grow up in a world that is still imperfect, still bending toward justice, but with markedly more opportunity and fairness than my grandmother ever knew. And my little girl, who once looked at the faces of the 44 presidents so far and asked why none are women, may now know not only that the world can change but that there can be a place for a girl like her at the top of it.

As I tucked her late in the evening, after a night of excitement, Willa threw her arms around my neck and whispered in my ear, "I'm going to dream about being president, too." Suddenly that possibility isn't just a dream anymore. That's worth celebrating.
WASHINGTON - Bring it on - the brilliant smile of a Stanford swimmer with Olympic dreams, the happy privileged face of a white college kid named Brock Turner. Another picture of him smiling, please.

Because this is what a campus sexual predator looks like. And that's the truth too many people refuse to acknowledge. It's the most difficult part of the campus rape culture destroying the lives of so many young women: acknowledging who their rapists are.

Turner, 20, was convicted of sexually attacking an unconscious woman behind a dumpster at Stanford University after a fraternity party. It was a violent, brutal attack, and he was caught by two passersby, who tackled him when he tried to run away.

The rape charges were dropped because it was Turner's fingers, along with dirt and pine needles, that went inside his victim, not his sexual organ. Was that calculated on his part? Was he trying to avoid leaving his DNA in her body?

The jury convicted Turner of sexual assault, which doesn't sound quite as horrible as rape.

But let's forget the legal terms and look up the word rape in the dictionary. Merriam-Webster defines it as "unlawful sexual activity and usually sexual intercourse carried out forcibly or under threat of injury against the will usually of a female or with a person who is beneath a certain age or incapable of valid consent." I'm good with that as a solid definition of what he did.

Then last week came the judge's sentence. Turner faced up to 14 years in prison. Prosecutors asked for six. Santa Clara County Judge Aaron Persky, who also walked the knolls of the gorgeous campus in California as a student, worried that anything more than six months in the local jail would have "a severe impact on him."

Well, yeah. That's what jail is supposed to do.

There is now an effort underway to recall Persky for that outrageously light sentence and for his let-me-help-this-fine-young-man commentary. Bring it on. Because this is what a judge who protects predators looks like, too.

The judge did not talk about the severe impact the attack had on the victim, which is what his concern in the courtroom should be. The woman, who's 23, spoke for herself, describing, with searing eloquence, what Turner had done to her.

Turner has yet to take responsibility for the attack. His father, Dan A. Turner, wrote an astonishing letter to the judge arguing that his boy should receive probation and no jail time at all.

"His life will never be the one that he dreamed about and worked so hard to achieve," he wrote. "That is a steep price to pay for 20 minutes of action out of his 20 plus years of life."

Let's talk about this "action."

Turner was caught by two bicyclists who didn't know his swim times or his Olympic aspirations. What they saw was an intoxicated young man hip-thrusting a corpse-like woman on the ground behind a dumpster in the dark. When they yelled at him, he ran.

One of Turner's childhood friends, Leslie Rasmussen, wrote a letter on his behalf, attributing Turner's conviction to "political correctness."

Whoa.

"This is completely different from a woman getting kidnapped and raped as she is walking to her car in a parking lot. That is a rapist. These are not rapists. These are idiot boys and girls having too much to drink and not being aware of their surroundings and having clouded judgement."

This is the problem. The notion that rapists aren't anything like Turner. They're not smart and accomplished. They're not polite and friendly. They're not friends or sons or classmates.

Bring on the photos of rapists looking their best. Show us Andrew Luster, heir to the Max Factor fortune, looking suave before his 2003 rape convictions. Toothpaste smile, designer clothes.

Give us DuPont heir Robert H. Richards IV in his blue blazer before he's convicted of raping and molesting his daughter.

Show us Oklahoma City police officer Daniel Holtzclaw in his police uniform, the way he was dressed when he raped all those women on his beat.

This is what rapists look like.

Now look at the smiling photo of Turner. This is what campus sexual predators look like, America. They are young men we know, and young men we trust. And when they are convicted of destroying lives, they must pay for their crimes.
All thats left is the formalities. Hillary Clinton will go into the history books as the first woman to be nominated for president by a major political party.

A double-digit victory in the California primary gave Clinton more delegates than she needs to officially claim the title at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia this July.

Its a moment that deserves to be recognized and celebrated, regardless of whether one cheers and votes for or against her.

Take a look back at the long road to this point. It took 143 years before America decided to give women the right to vote.

In 1919 Nebraska became the 14th state to ratify the 19th Amendment. A year later Tennessee became the 36th state to approve ratification, and the amendment became part of the U.S. Constitution.

Women didnt exactly flock to the polls with their new-found right. The New York Times reported that three women voted for every five men in the 1920 presidential election.

Today voter turnout rates are higher for women. The Center for American Women and Politics reported that in the last presidential election 63.7 percent of eligible women voters cast ballots, compared to 59.8 percent of men voters.

There have been many notable firsts along the path to the 2016 presidential race, and Nebraska has a share.

Most notably Nebraska was the first state in which two women battled as major party nominees to become governor. In 1986 Republican Kay Orr defeated Democrat Helen Boosalis to become the states first woman governor and the countrys first female Republican governor.

Its illuminating to look back at the reasons that were offered by an organization called Nebraska Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage on why women should not be allowed to vote.

Among them:

-- In political activities there is constant strife, turmoil, contention and bitterness, producing conditions from which every normal woman naturally shrinks.

-- The woman worker wants rest and quietude - not political excitement.

In 2016 those notions seem quaint, amusing and irksome. They certainly dont describe Clinton. Regardless of what one thinks of her political record, no one can doubt her ability to weather strife and contention.

Voter attitudes have evolved too. Clintons gender has seldom mentioned in the primary battles. It certainly was not a factor in Nebraska, where history will show that Nebraska Democrats by caucus chose Bernie Sanders as their preferred candidate and Clinton claimed the most votes in the symbolic primary.

The 2016 presidential election is still a work in progress. There is certain to be more strife and excitement along this historic trail. But this is a moment to pause, look back and reflect on the American journey.
The Journal Star editorial, Stand strong for nonpartisanship, (June 3) hits a whole bucket of nails on the head. If somehow the Governor and the Republican party hierarchy manage to turn our Unicameral legislature into a partisan body, the citizens of Nebraska will suffer a great loss of democracy. Why would we want to emulate our Congress in Washington, D.C.? In D.C. and most other states, the majority party selects all committee chairmen and decides what bills will receive a hearing. In Nebraska, all bills receive a hearing and committee chairmen are selected by all colleagues.
Francis Gardlers photograph of Staff Sgt. Matthew Hawke and his daughter Brooklyn in the Saturday Journal Star was very special ("35 Guard soldiers head to Afghanistan," June 4). It depicts a dad and his daughter showing their love for each other as Staff Sgt. Hawke is leaving to serve his country and us! It was just what we needed, a reminder that there are good people in our community and nation who make sacrifices to make our lives safe.
Jane Kleeb said Friday she wants to lead Nebraska's Democratic Party, pledging to harness the "progressive energy that is bringing more people to our party" and move forward to reshape Nebraska's current Republican landscape.

Kleeb, founder and leader of Bold Nebraska and an activist with a national profile, said this is the moment for "a new time in our state."

"For too many years, we let Republicans define the direction of our state," Kleeb said at an outdoor gathering in Lincoln where she announced she will seek the post of state party chair.

Now, she said, Democrats are ready to claim the future as "the party of the people" that responds to the demonstrated concerns of farmers, ranchers, native tribes, environmentalists, teachers, nurses, doctors, moms in North Omaha, gay people, union members, young Nebraskans.

This is a moment of "new people, new ideas, new passions and new resolve," Kleeb said.

"This new energy is inspired by the heroic campaign of Sen. (Bernie) Sanders that brought progressive issues and new voters into our politics," she said.

"This new energy is also inspired by the historic campaign of Secretary (Hillary) Clinton that showed every little girl in America the power of equality."

Kleeb introduced and endorsed Sanders at a rally in Lincoln two days before the Nebraska Democratic presidential caucus in March. Sanders won that statewide caucus; Clinton later won Nebraska's Democratic presidential primary in May.

Joining Kleeb at the gathering were Democratic State Chairman Vince Powers and former state Sen. Steve Lathrop of Omaha. Native American leader Frank LaMere, who had supported Clinton, introduced Kleeb.

Powers and Lathrop originally were members of a unity team of candidates for top party offices that fell apart in the face of criticism from an array of Democratic activists, some of whom support 2014 gubernatorial nominee Chuck Hassebrook for state chairman.

Other opposition was voiced by organized labor representatives and supporters who want to retain union leader Ron Kaminski as national committeeman. Lathrop had been pegged for that slot in the unity slate formed by Kleeb and Powers, but he withdrew in the face of labor's concerns.

Kleeb initially succeeded in convincing Powers to seek re-election while she learned the ropes as vice chair of the party, but Powers withdrew earlier this week in the face of criticism about the slate.

Hassebrook said he believes "the disarray and backroom deal" approach to party leadership demonstrated by formation of a unity slate should be a factor when delegates to the Democratic state convention in Kearney choose party leaders next week.

"I will work with a steadfast, focused commitment to bring together slate and non-slate candidates, as well as Clinton and Sanders supporters, to elect more candidates, grow our party, advance social justice and economic opportunity, protect the environment and foster respect for the diversity in our communities," Hassebrook said.

As the leader of Bold Nebraska, Kleeb successfully organized a grassroots campaign to prevent construction of the proposed Keystone XL oil pipeline across the state. That effort garnered national attention, including a New York Times Sunday Magazine cover profile of Kleeb.

Now, Kleeb said, she wants to hold Republican Gov. Pete Ricketts accountable.

"Governor Ricketts recently attempted to shame (state) senators of his own party because they dared to cross party lines for the good of our state," Kleeb said. The governor suggested he was keeping the process transparent and the politicians accountable, she noted.

"I look forward to every single moment as chair that I will keep him accountable for protecting big corporations over the people and for standing with his buddy (Donald) Trump who cannot get through a day without being a bully rather than a leader," Kleeb said.
Lincoln Electric System plans to stop publishing breakdowns for the cost of generating electricity at specific facilities in the wake of a for-profit competitor demanding to see its financial books.

Gary Aksamit, the head of an energy firm that has been pushing to sell electricity in Nebraska, earlier this year demanded the states four largest public power entities disclose what it cost them to generate power.

The utilities say they gave him thousands of pages of documentation but that revealing certain detailed numbers would put them at a competitive disadvantage. They say the information is a trade secret that state law allows them to shield from the public.

LES Vice President Shelley Sahling-Zart said the city utility spent hundreds of hours gathering documents for which Aksamit paid $4,215.50. LES did not hand over information about the rates at which it buys electricity from newer wind projects that are owned by private developers, she said. That pricing information is owned by the developer and subject to nondisclosure agreements.

Late last week, Aksamit filed court documents asking judges to force more information out of Omaha Public Power District, Nebraska Public Power District and Municipal Energy Agency of Nebraska. He has not filed a similar case against LES.

Attorney Chris Dibbern represents the Municipal Energy Agency and said rate projections and forward-looking energy costs are proprietary, and revealing them would give potential competitors like Aksamit an unfair advantage over public power.

Even though we are a public power entity, were still in a competitive environment," said Sarah Jones, director of enterprise business support for the agency that sells electricity wholesale to utilities. "We get requests for proposals often that we have to respond to and we are competing with other potential power suppliers in that market,

Aksamit has repeatedly criticized Nebraska electric rates and says customers have a right to know operational and financial details so they can decide the continued viability of public power in the state.

They just dont want to tell ratepayers what their cost structures are," he said. "That makes me a little bit nervous. Typically when you dont want to show someone something its because you dont want to show them something.

Aksamit argues in the court record that the information isnt protected by statute.

The statute is intended to protect third-party information submitted to the government from disclosure to the public. It is not meant to protect the governments own information, the court request says.

Aksamit Resource Management, which has an office in Lincoln, last year unveiled a proposal to build 230 wind turbines on three sites in Saline, Thayer and Fillmore counties, representing an investment of about $725 million.

Aksamit also has called for turning electric generation in the state over to private business.

Nebraska is the only state in which all power utilities are publicly owned.

Historically, LES has sold power directly to end users and published details about how much it costs to generate that power.

But on March 1, 2014, the Southwest Power Pool -- to which LES has belonged since 2009 -- launched its integrated marketplace and now oversees the vast majority of the electric grid and wholesale power market in 14 states on behalf of utilities and transmission companies.

Now, LES buys and sells electricity on that market in competition with other regional power suppliers. Publishing certain details of its cost structure puts the utility, and by extension its ratepayers, at a competitive disadvantage, said Sahling-Zart, LES attorney and vice president of communications.

I dont think anybody is trying to hide anything," she said. "We are trying to comply with the spirit of public records law and at the same time protect our competitive advantage. Sometimes thats a fine line.

LES has discussed ending its practice of publishing the cost of producing power.

It would continue to provide aggregate energy rate information, but not a facility-by-facility breakdown, said CEO Kevin Wailes.

LES will be watching court proceedings closely and likely will follow whatever precedent they set, Sahling-Zart said.

Both NPPD and OPPD said they also have provided Aksamit with thousands of pages of documents.
Work on a lab to replace a cramped space built in 1975 in the East Campus life sciences annex began in April 2015 and the building is set to open in March or April of next year.

The $45 million Veterinary Diagnostics Center, funded mostly through a 2012 university partnership with the Legislature called Building a Healthier Nebraska, will help boost agriculture in the state, officials said.

Under construction on the East Campus Loop, the vet center is being enclosed -- about 80 percent of which is finished -- while roofing is also underway, Hay said.

As the states only accredited veterinary diagnostics lab, the UNL facility will be responsible for developing testing methods for food safety and biomedical research, while also working with public health officials on diagnosing animal diseases.

About 10 percent of the buildings cost, or a little more than $4 million, was raised by the University of Nebraska Foundation.
RACINE  SC Johnson has announced the donation of nearly 45,000 units of OFF! personal mosquito repellent to PSI, an organization dedicated to improving the health of people in the developing world by focusing on challenges including maternal and child health. The DEET-based personal repellent will be included in pregnancy support kits for women in El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Panama.

According to a press release, PSI makes it easier for people in the developing world to lead healthier lives and plan the families they desire by marketing affordable products and services. The leading global health organization partners with the public and private sector to work in reproductive health, family planning, HIV, malaria, child survival, non-communicable diseases and sanitation.

The donations included aid to numerous countries that are experiencing outbreaks of Zika and dengue fever. In coordination with the CDC Foundation, SC Johnson supported the Zika Action Plan Summit held by the White House and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on April 1, and also donated to the CDCs Zika prevention kits. Additional donations have been made to the American Red Cross, the International Federation of the Red Cross, AmeriCares, the Rio de Janeiro-based Childrens Health Association and the County of Hawaii Civil Defense Agency.

For more information, visit the website www.scjohnson.com/mosquitoes.
RACINE  His great-great grandfather was Jerome Increase Case, founder of the legendary J.I. Case Company.

But until this week, Peter Frederick Case and his wife, Angela, had never been to the city J.I. Case helped put on the map. While here, they toured CNH facilities and the Racine Heritage Museum, seeing historical equipment as well as the companys current operations.

As a descendant of the companys founder, Case and his wife received royalty-like treatment during their visit.

I have never been so overwhelmed by how much Racine loves the Case family, Peter Case said.

Impressed with visit

Racine is a far cry from the 5,200-acre cattle ranch the couple operates in west Texas, where were just Mr. and Mrs. Case, Angela said.

The ranch is on land purchased by J.I. Case, who got into the sheep business, Peter Case said. After finishing some improvements, they felt the ranch was in good enough shape to leave for a few days and make the trip north.

The visit fulfilled Peters long-held desire to see his Racine roots and visit the stomping grounds of the man displayed in photos hung in his office and grandparents home.

Ive always known that I was part of the family, and just always had a desire to come up here and never could find an opportunity, Peter said.

They were also brought to Racine with the help of Image Management, 610 Main St., which is helping them with their website. Account executive Deb Revolinski, a former CNH employee, met the family in Texas a few years ago along with other Case employees who were in the state for a dealer meeting.

While in Racine, Peter and Angela Case got a tour of the CNH tractor plant, 7000 Durand Ave., Mount Pleasant; reviewed old materials and photos at the Racine Heritage Museum, 701 Main St.; and saw J.I. Cases original desk in the corporate building at 700 State St.

They quickly noticed advanced technology  comparing it in their minds to J.I.s thresher  as well as the diversity of the workforce. Angela said she was particularly impressed by how many women were on the assembly line.

It didnt matter what color you were, what sex you were, said Angela, 59, a retired science teacher. If you could do the job, you were doing the job.

The Case family sold the company long ago, but Peter Case maintains a connection to his great-great grandfather through the ranch.

Theyve taken that corporation, its gone to somebody else and its run by hundreds of people or thousands of people, and Im still out here on J.I.s old patch of ground thats still in family hands, said Peter, 61. Its kind of neat. 
BARABOO  The attorney for a Wisconsin man accused of killing an Illinois woman in an interstate drive-by shooting says the man has significant mental health issues.

Zachary Hays, 20, briefly appeared in court Thursday in Sauk County, where he faces one count of first-degree intentional homicide and three counts of reckless endangerment. Hays is accused of killing Tracy Czaczkowski in a May 1 drive-by shooting as she was returning with her family to Illinois from Wisconsin Dells.

Hes obviously got significant mental health issues, Jon Helland, Hays attorney, said to reporters following the two-minute appearance.

Asked whether hes looking at competency as a defense, Helland said theyre exploring all avenues and will address those issues when the time comes.

Its a tragic situation. Its tragic for all the families involved, Helland said.

A black mop of hair obscured the top half of Hays face during the appearance, and he only spoke once to waive his right to a preliminary examination. Judge James Evenson set a pretrial conference for July 15.

Hays also faces one count of first-degree reckless homicide in Milwaukee County, where investigators believe he shot a neighbor at his West Allis apartment building the morning of the drive-by.

A different attorney, Jane Christopherson, is representing Hays in Milwaukee County. Helland said they are communicating with each other, but he doesnt know how the counties will proceed with the cases.

Prosecutors allege Hays shot and killed 42-year-old Gabriel Claudio-Sanchez in West Allis the morning of May 1, then drove northwest with two of his brothers. The three were driving south on Interstate 90/94 when Hays opened fire on Czaczkowski and her family in their car. Czaczkowski, 44, was hit in the neck and later died of the wound.

Investigators have said the shooting appears to be random. According to court documents, one of Hays brothers told police that Hays had smoked marijuana a few days earlier and had been acting extremely paranoid, especially about cars with tinted windows. The Czaczkowskis BMW sedan had tinted windows.

Police ultimately stopped Hays Chevrolet Blazer using a spike strip. Sheriffs deputies shot and wounded Hays when he emerged from the vehicle with a gun, according to investigators. He was taken to University of Wisconsin Hospital in Madison. His right arm was in a sling during Thursdays court appearance.

If convicted of first-degree intentional homicide in Czaczkowskis death, Hays would face a mandatory life sentence.
RACINE  Most Wisconsin late-night bar patrons know the drill: bars close at 2 a.m. on weeknights and 2:30 a.m. on weekends.

What many dont consider, however, is that the nights of bartenders and other employees are often far from over once closing time arrives. That ignorance is reflected in the citys parking laws, say local Tavern League members, and its something they are working to change.

Its not fair and and its not safe for them at bar close, said J.J. McAuliffe, owner of McAuliffes Pub, 3700 Meacham Road, McAuliffes on the Square, 213 Sixth St., and the vice-president of the Racine City Tavern League.

To fix the problem the Tavern League is asking aldermen to consider changing overnight street parking restrictions in the Downtown area so that the parking ticketing period begins at 3 a.m. instead of 2 a.m. At least two City Council committees are slated to consider the proposal in the coming weeks.

This has been an issue for a long time and Ive been bugging them, McAuliffe said. Basically, we just got to the point where we can do this officially.

The problem, McAuliffe said, is that many bar employees who leave work at 2:30 or 3 a.m. end up with tickets, since they often park on the street and dont have time to move their cars before closing time. An extra hour would give bartenders time to close up for the night without getting a fine for their troubles.

An hour to close up should be plenty of time, McAuliffe said. Instead of posting that ticket at two, if at three oclock that car is still there, then they can post the ticket, because if they didnt get out by three, thats on them.

Safety concerns

Doug Nicholson, who owns Ivanhoe Pub and Eatery, 231 Main St., Envi Ultra Lounge, 316 Main St., and Carriage House Liquor Company, 220 State St., said his employees sometimes stay until 3:30 or 4 a.m. on particularly busy nights. He pointed out the safety hazard presented by restrictive overnight street parking.

If youre parking three blocks away on a street that doesnt have parking meters so that youre not being ticketed because you dont stop working until three oclock, that would decrease the safety of people walking  especially if youre by yourself, Nicholson said.

McAuliffe said hes heard a proposal that a special car tag denoting the vehicle of a bartender could solve the problem, but he said that could get complicated, since many bars have several different bartenders closing on different nights. Ultimately, its an issue McAuliffe is happy to see finally be addressed.

Im willing to work with them, I just think it would be a lot easier to change the ordinance, McAuliffe said.
The annual budget University of Wisconsin System officials withheld from the public this week on grounds it wasnt completed had actually been finished and sent to members of the Systems governing board several days earlier.

And while a UW spokesman initially said the Regents president, Regina Millner, made the controversial decision to release the budget only an hour and a half before the board voted on it Thursday, Millner said Friday that she was not involved in that decision, and wanted to release the documents sooner.

I did not know that that was the decision, Millner said, when the Wisconsin State Journal informed her about the public release of the 2016-17 spending plan. Thats not what I thought was going to happen.

Millner said she thought officials would release the budget to the public on Wednesday.

System spokesman Alex Hummel said Friday it was the office of President Ray Cross that kept the operating budget under wraps until the Thursday meeting.

UW officials generally release documents detailing items on the Regents agenda early in the week of their meetings. But while materials for almost all of the boards meetings Thursday and Friday at UW-Milwaukee were posted online Monday, the $6.2 billion 2016-17 annual operating budget was not.

Hummel first said the budget would be posted Wednesday. But on Wednesday afternoon, he told reporters that the budget would not be released until the Regents started their discussion of it the next day.

The budget was eventually posted online at 2 p.m. Thursday; the Regents unanimously approved it about 90 minutes later after brief discussion.

Millner said Friday that she thought officials released the budget on Wednesday.

If I found it was coming out 90 minutes before I wouldnt have been very happy, she said. Asked whether it was a mistake to release the documents on Thursday afternoon, Millner declined to say, but added, I would have preferred that it went out on Wednesday.

Claim made that budget

was being 

finalized

In his message to reporters Wednesday, Hummel claimed that UW staff members were still working to finalize the budget information leading into (Thursdays) meetings and full-board presentation.

But Tony Evers, state superintendent of public instruction and a board member, said he received the completed budget on June 3, six days before the Regents meeting and five days before Hummels statement that the budget was not finished.

The budget itself also indicates it was ready on June 3  the meta data of a PDF file of the budget states it was last modified that afternoon.

Hummel said the budget was provided to Regents last week with the understanding that those materials are always subject to changes. The budget was approved without any modifications.

The Board of Regents and the presidents offices continued finalizing and reviewing supporting materials and the 2016-17 budget documents leading up to this Thursdays Regent meeting, Hummel said. In the interest of presenting and sharing the most accurate information, the presidents office elected not to post materials until that process was fully complete.

After they received the budget, Regents discussed it in detail with UW staff members during private meetings while the document was not available to the public, Hummel acknowledged Friday.

The meetings were held in person or on the phone, according to Hummel. They involved a couple of Regents at a time, Hummel said  not enough to constitute a quorum of the board, which would have required the meeting be open to the public.

They are not new, Hummel said of the private meetings.

Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council President Bill Lueders said he did not understand why UW would keep the budget private and claim staff members were still working on the document when it was actually finished.

Its baffling that the UW made efforts to conceal this document until virtually the last minute, Lueders said. What good could possibly come from that?

Millner: Delay necessary

Millner, who was re-elected Friday to her position as board president, said the decision to hold the documents longer than other meeting materials was justified.

UW staff needed to have time to prepare their presentations of the budget before it was released so the media and public could understand it better, Millner said. She denied that the budget was kept private in an attempt to avoid public scrutiny or attention. Its very important that with transparency is clarity, she said. Part of clarity is understanding the context of the elements of the budget.

Open government advocates say there is no legal requirement that government agencies such as the Board of Regents post their meeting materials online, though doing so has been the practice of the board and other public bodies.

But Lueders said the budget document that was shared with the Regents was a public record, and should have been provided to anyone who requested it under Wisconsins open records law.

The State Journal requested the documents on Wednesday; a UW official acknowledged the request, but did not provide the records, stating she was busy preparing for the Regents meeting.

On Friday, the State Journal wrote to Wisconsin Department of Justice officials seeking an opinion from Attorney General Brad Schimel as to whether UW officials violated state records or meetings laws by not providing the budget.

Millner said UW could similarly restrict access to meeting documents in the future, if they involve very complex issues that require clarity in explaining the content.

She also said officials took note of the public response to how the budget documents were handled. We need to be more sensitive to the fact that people are concerned about this, she said.

Lueders said the possibility that UW could routinely withhold public documents is terribly concerning.

If the System pursues that strategy, media and other organizations could challenge it in court, Lueders said. He predicted UW would lose, and wind up wasting money fighting for secrecy that they dont deserve and that violates the law.

Its baffling that the UW made efforts to conceal this document until virtually the last minute. Bill Lueders

Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council President
Wisconsin should add $12.8 million over the next two years to a grant program that helps low-income students afford college, the University of Wisconsin Systems governing board said Thursday.

The UW Board of Regents approved a resolution requesting an additional $6.4 million per year in funding for the Wisconsin Grant program, which provides need-based scholarships to thousands of state college students.

The request, which was approved during the Regents meeting Thursday at UW-Milwaukee, will now be sent to the state Higher Education Aids Board, which administers the Wisconsin Grant.

It will be up to lawmakers to decide in the next state budget whether they will fund the increase. A spokesman for Gov. Scott Walker said he will consider the request.

UW officials say the increase is necessary to ensure college is in reach for students and to reverse a decline in the value of the Wisconsin Grant.

High demand and insufficient funding for the grant has led the aids board to reduce the average award students receive from $2,161 six years ago to $1,773 in the 2014-15 school year. That decrease has come as the cost to attend UW System institutions has risen.

The funding increase UW requested is meant to return the average grant to $2,161.
Blockade spurs development of biogas plants

The five-month long border blockade imposed by India last year caused an acute shortage of daily essentials, including cooking gas, pushing many individuals and institutions to look for locally-sourced alternatives.
CIAA directs govt to seize land over ceiling

The Commission for Investigation of Abuse of Authority has directed the government to seize land owned by individuals, breaching the land ceiling.
CPN Maoist general strike: Violent cases across country

Violence was reported across the country during a banda imposed by the Netra Bikram Chand-led CPN Maoist on Thursday with many vehicles set on fire and buses and cargo trucks vandalised.
DPM Thapa leaves for India

Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Foreign Affairs Kamal Thapa left for New Delhi, India on Friday to attend and preside over the Convocation Ceremony of the South Asian University on 11 June, 2016. He will be on visit to India from 10 June, 2016 to 12 June, 2016.
Five detained for allegedly slaughtering ox

Police arrested five persons in accusation for slaughtering an ox from Madi area of Chitwan on Thursday.
Hindu monastery worker hacked to death in Bangladesh

A Hindu monastery worker has been hacked to death in Bangladesh, police said, the latest in a string of attacks on religious minorities in the country.
Leaving on a jet plane

Travelling abroad for education has evolved into a global phenomenon, with institutions around the world actively looking to diversify their student body with students from around the world.
Look before you leap

Choosing to go abroad for study is probably one of the most challenging decisions a student has to take.
Maldives blast: Former Vice-President Ahmed Adeeb found guilty

The former vice-president of the Maldives has been convicted over a plot to assassinate the current president.
MH370 search: New debris found on Madagascar beach

New pieces of debris have been found in Madagascar by a man searching for parts of missing flight MH370.
Ministry of Education should step in

Last year, over 50 Nepali students were sent to St Lucia, a small island nation in the eastern Caribbean Sea. They were assured that once there, they would be transferred to universities in the United States. The students, however, remained stranded for over a year before they were finally able to return home empty handed.
Morcha mulling over starting separate stir

Just as the relay hunger strike of the agitating Sanghiya Gathabandhan (Federal Alliance), a coalition of Madhes-based parties and Janajati forces, continues in Khula Manch, some Madhesi parties are considering starting a separate protests in the Tarai.
Most preferred destinations

Of the countries that are preferred by Nepali students, destinations including Australia, Japan, New Zealand are emerging as the top destinations
NC gen secy accuses govt of distributing money from state coffers

Nepali Congress (NC) General Secretary Shashanka Koirala has alleged that the government has distributed the money from the state coffers in an unjustified and arbitrary manner.
Nepal-India security group meeting: India positive on loan waiver, say officials

India has taken Nepals request for loan waiver on its military hardware procurement in the past positively, according to Nepali officials who attended the twelfth meeting of Nepal-India Bilateral Consultative Group (BCG) on Security that concluded here on Thursday.
Police nab fraudster personating as US embassy staff to dupe students

Police have arrested a conman personating as US embassy staff to dupe people with a promise of sending them to the US under the earthquake victim quota.
Prices of essential goods jump following budget announcement

The budget statement for the next fiscal year has been greeted with a surge in prices of essential goods in the bazaars of the Kathmandu Valley. Analysts have attributed the price rise to black marketeering despite adequate supplies and smooth distribution.
SC objects to comments over court case

The Supreme Court (SC) has objected to the comments of top politicians over its prioritisation of cases saying that it was an internal matter of the court.
Solar lights distributed among 40 poverty-stricken families

The solar powered lights were distributed among poverty-stricken communities here in Mahadeva VDC in southern tip of Morang district on Thursday.
Stage set for the 10th ECAN Edu Fair

The Education Consultancy Association (ECAN) Education Fair, the largest education fair for study aboard, is all set to be held at the Exhibition Hall in Capital.
The Himalayan challenge

Tackling the complexities of the risks in the Himalayas requires a critical, adaptive and interactive governance approach
Trade deficit falls on lower oil import bill

Nepals trade deficit inched down 1.54 percent to Rs544.41 billion in the first 10 months of the current fiscal year, largely due to a steep fall in the oil import bill, the Department of Customs said.
Transitional justice: Plaint against former king, DPM Thapa

A joint complaint has been registered against former king Gyanendra Shah and then home minister and incumbent Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Foreign Affairs Kamal Thapa at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission for the Doramba incident, which is mentioned as an emblematic case in the UNs Conflict Report.
US official meets PM Oli

Visiting Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for South and Central Asian Affairs of the United States William Todd met with Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli here on Thursday.
Vice President Pun off to China

Vice President Nanda Bahadur Pun on Friday left for a week-long official visit to Kunming, China.
Got trench foot?

The Marine Corps is counting on honest feedback from troops who will wear and test four different tropical combat boot prototypes this summer at the Marines' Jungle Warfare Training Center in Okinawa, Japan.

Officials with Marine Corps Systems Command told Military.com that about 400 Marines from the Hawaii-based 3rd Marine Regiment would test out the boots during a two-to-three week period of jungle combat training that will start within the next two months.

The Marines published a call for sources to design the tropical combat boot last December, in response to an earlier directive from the commandant, Gen. Robert Neller.

"The commandant was interested in pursuing the opportunity to provide Marines with boots that would be lightweight, fast-drying, and appropriate for a tropical environment," said Lt. Col. Rob Bailey, product manager for infantry combat equipment for the command. "We also know that the Army has a similar interest in coordinating and collaborating."

Read the rest of the story at Military.com.
North Korea offered to host an inter-Korean meeting to discuss ways to bring about reunification, the latest in the communist country's dialogue proposals to Seoul since a high-profile ruling party congress in early May.



"We propose opening a nationwide grand meeting for reunification on the occasion of the 71st anniversary of Korea's liberation, prompted by the ardent desire ... (in) improving the inter-Korean relations and accomplishing the cause of national reunification by the concerted efforts of all Koreans," the North said in an appeal addressed to "all Koreans," which was carried by its state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).



The appeal was adopted during a joint conference of government and party officials in Pyongyang a day earlier, according to the media outlet.



"Now is the crucial time for all Koreans to turn out as one and dynamically advance to pull down the barrier of hostility and confrontation and bring earlier the bright day of reunification," the appeal read.



"We ardently call upon all Koreans in the North, the South and abroad once again to turn out as one in the sacred struggle to fling the gate of the reunified power open," it also said.



The call is the latest dialogue offer by the North after its leader Kim Jong-un called for military talks with South Korea during the Workers' Party of Korea congress.



Since then, the North has repeatedly proposed talks, although Seoul dismissed them because it said such proposals lacked sincerity.



Besides urging talks, the North, in addition, called on compatriots to engage in an "anti-U.S. sacred war," demanded the halt of all Seoul-Washington military drills and outlined the benefits of North Korea's "nuclear sword" for self-defense.



In regards to the latest proposal, South Korea's Ministry of Unification immediately turned down the offer, again saying that it is just a propaganda ploy.



"It's only an obsolete propaganda offensive and repeat of its previous demands to suspend joint South Korea-U.S. military exercises, which came without any attitude change in the nuclear weapon issue, the most critical obstacle to the peace and reunification of the Korean Peninsula," ministry spokesman Jeong Joon-hee said.



Pyongyang should first declare denuclearization and follow it with action if the country wants to improve ties and reunify with South Korea, Jeong noted.



The spokesman said North Korea's recent dialogue offer is just part of an effort to follow through with decisions made during the May party congress. (Yonhap)




From 3 p.m. Wednesday to 3 p.m. Thursday

Police calls

LA CROSSE

4:06 p.m., domestic disturbance, 1400 block of Rose St.

4:07 p.m., theft, 1900 block of Sims Place

5:06 p.m., fraud, 2600 block of Leonard St.

6:06 p.m., theft, 1300 block of 16th St. S.

8:13 p.m., domestic disturbance, 1900 block of Wood St.

9:41 p.m., threats, 3600 block of Brookview Road

11:23 p.m., domestic disturbance, 3300 block of Mormon Coulee Road

6:58 a.m., theft, 500 block of Caledonia St.

8:46 a.m., domestic disturbance, 400 block of 20th St. S.

12:41 p.m., theft, 1000 block of Copeland Ave.

1:16 p.m., theft, 1000 block of Redfield St.

1:31 p.m., theft, 2000 block of Loomis St.

1:49 p.m., domestic disturbance, 900 block of 17th St. S.

ONALASKA

3:53 p.m., theft, 3000 block of Kinney Coulee Road S.

6:36 p.m., domestic disturbance, 300 block of Locust St.

8:43 p.m., entry to dwelling, 1000 block of Redwood St.

7:26 a.m., fraud, 100 block of Theater Road

12:35 p.m., fraud, 300 block of Fourth Ave. N.

HOLMEN

4:17 p.m., hit-and-run, Hwys. 53 and 35

MINDORO

9:58 a.m., domestic disturbance, 7000 block of Hwy. C

TOWN OF CAMPBELL

10:35 a.m., theft, 200 block of Fanta Reed Road

Fire Calls

LA CROSSE

3:10 p.m., vehicle crash with injuries, 4600 block of Mormon Coulee Road

3:17 p.m., first responders, 1200 block of Seventh St. S.

3:22 p.m., first responders, 800 block of Fifth Ave. S.

5:42 p.m., vehicle crash with injuries, 3800 block of Hwy. 16

5:59 p.m., vehicle crash with injuries, Birch St. and Mormon Coulee Road

8:06 p.m., first responders, first block of State St.

8:09 p.m., first responders, 1900 block of Losey Blvd. S.

8:32 p.m., first responders, Division St. and Fifth Ave. S.

8:40 p.m., first responders, 1300 block of Winnebago St.

9:01 p.m., first responders, 4100 block of Elm Drive

9:16 p.m., first responders, 900 block of Joseph Houska Drive

5:01 a.m., first responders, 400 block of Caledonia St.

10:13 a.m., structure fire or alarm, 4200 block of Mormon Coulee Road

10:44 a.m., first responders, 100 block of Eighth St. S.

10:57 a.m., first responders, 5600 block of Hwy. 33

12:25 p.m., vehicle crash with injuries, West Ave. S. and Jackson St.

12:50 p.m., vehicle crash with injuries, La Crosse St. and West Ave. N.

1:03 p.m., vehicle crash with injuries, Fourth N. and Pine sts.

1:08 p.m., first responders, 5200 block of Mormon Coulee Road

1:13 p.m., vehicle crash with injuries, Hwys. 157 and 16

1:18 p.m., vehicle crash with injuries, West Ave. S. and Green Bay St.

1:28 p.m., vehicle crash, Hwys. 16 and B

1:30 p.m., vehicle crash with injuries, 100 block of Fifth Ave. N.

1:39 p.m., first responders, 2900 block of East Ave. S.

1:56 p.m., carbon monoxide report, 5600 block of Hwy. 33

ONALASKA

3:59 p.m., first responders, 700 block of Lake St.

5:31 a.m., first responders, 1200 block of Crossing Meadows Drive

9:03 a.m., vehicle crash with injuries, 100 block of Theater Road

11:19 a.m., first responders, 9300 block of Hwy. 16

HOLMEN

10:36 p.m., first responders, 2100 block of Bluffview Court

11:44 a.m., first responders, 1000 block of Linden Drive

WEST SALEM

10 p.m., first responders, 300 block of Wagon Drive

BANGOR

3:34 p.m., first responders, 1500 block of Cardinal St.

ROCKLAND

3:36 a.m., first responders, 200 block of Water St.

TOWN OF CAMPBELL

4:58 p.m., first responders, 2500 block of Third Ave. W.

TOWN OF SHELBY

10:36 a.m., first responders, 4900 block of Battlestone Station Road

11:20 a.m., first responders, 4600 block of Hwy. FO
Domestic abuse  much of it alcohol-fueled  propels a stunning amount of homelessness in La Crosse, according to a consultant who has been delving into the issue of displaced residents this week.

Twenty-eight percent of the people coming into homelessness in La Crosse are coming from domestic abuse situations, Erin Healy said Thursday, citing figures local agencies have given her.

Those rendered homeless because of domestic abuse and violence seek emergency shelter at places such as The Salvation Army, New Horizons Shelter and Outreach Centers, YWCA programs and other locations, as well as resorting to unofficial asylum sites such as nomadic tent encampments.

The figure approaching 30 percent is the highest Ive ever seen, and underlying that is alcohol, Healy told a standing-room-only crowd of more than 150 people at St. Rose Convent Thursday hearing her public report on the project to help La Crosse end homelessness.

That is my first impression, she said, as slight murmurs and knowing glances throughout the room affirmed that excessive drinking in the Coulee Region goes far beyond first impressions.

Healys impression is not something to discount, as she was one of the key leaders in the 100,000 Homes Project, which placed 105,850 people nationwide from 2010 to 2014.

As such, she is aware of at least cursory statistics from 186 communities and in-depth analyses of several major metro areas, including New York City, New Orleans, Los Angeles and Seattle, among others.

Providers have told Healy that part of the problem is a lack of alcohol treatment options, a situation that merits evaluation, said Healy, a private New York consultant hired by Gundersen Health Systems new Population Health and Strategy Department to help generate a team approach from her study, with a working title of A La Crosse Collaboration to END Homelessness.

Healy will present her final recommendations today to Gundersen officials and leaders of government and social service agencies she has huddled with this week.

La Crosse agencies are poised to take major steps toward providing permanent housing for as many as 200 chronically homeless people with a ramped-up collaborative approach, provided that they can secure an inventory of housing, she said.

Doing so helps not only the homeless but also public coffers, she said.

Healy cited examples of savings from housing vs. other remedies in several other cities, including Chicago and Los Angeles.

In Chicago, the daily cost of providing supportive housing for one person is $20.55, compared with $60 for jail, $61.99 for prison, $22 for a shelter, $437 for a mental hospital and $1,201 for a general hospital, she said.

In Atlanta, the breakdown is $32.80 for supportive housing, $53.03 for jail, $47.47 for prison, $11 for a shelter, $335 for a mental hospital and $1,637 for a hospital, Healy said.

For La Crosse, she estimated, the annual cost of one emergency shelter bed could be used instead to pay a years rent for two, one-bedroom apartments.

Crisis systems are very expensive, she said.

As she mentioned earlier in the week, Healy said the chronically homeless who may need a host of supportive services may amount to only 10 percent of the homeless tally but absorb 80 percent of the support service dollars. Housing them first, with support and case management, saves the public money and releases funds to help the other 90 percent.

National statistics prove that providing housing allows people to focus on solving other challenges they have, such as mental and physical health, poverty and other issues, she said.

For example, a study of Los Angeles found that providing services for issues ranging from health care, to mental health, to substance abuse, to the burden on police departments and a host of other potential needs for a year cost $63,000 in public funds, compared with just $16,000 a year for services to someone living in supportive housing, she said.

A self-described process geek, Healy encouraged those at the meeting  including health and human service agencies, funders, public and private organizations, landlords and Realtors, police and members of the Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration, who are one of the driving forces behind the homelessness-solving initiative  to create a collaborative system to end homelessness.

Many who process homelessness focus on three s explanations:

Sick, including people who may have mental or physical illnesses.

Sin, involving bad people who have made bad decisions and arent worth helping.

System, in which systemic problems prevent solutions.

If you think sick or sin, you always will have homelessness, she said. Systems are not worthiness or morality plays.

Solutions depend on creating systems that not only erase present problems but also  and perhaps, more importantly  focus on upstream prevention, she said.

Healy advocates ambitious goals with firm deadlines that, as she said earlier in the week, create a pit in your stomach.

If you dont have a pit in your stomach, you dont have a high enough goal, she said, adding that tight deadlines unleash innovation.

In La Crosse, you can do it way sooner than you think you can, if you have work as a team and have a bias toward action, Healy said.

The reason you are here is because La Crosse has a high-functioning group of service agencies who want to do more, she told those attending the meeting.

You can be a really good, superior Outback, but you could be a Maserati, she said. Some are just a broken-down Pinto.

Instead of languishing in the emergency-response cycle, she said, Set an audacious goal and a rapid cycle.

The goal and steps toward it will be up to the local agencies, but, for the sake of example, she listed a few possible scenarios:

La Crosse agencies average monthly placement rate is 11 homeless people moving into housing, according to local agencies, which Healy said is better than many cities.

If a local campaign were set to go from Aug. 1 to Thanksgiving and housed four veterans a month, the estimated number of 14 veterans now homeless would have roofs over their heads by turkey time.

If the goal were to house 50 chronically homeless by the holiday, the average placement rate would need to bump up to 14 a month, she said. And to house both, the rate would have to rise to 18, she said.

One of the concerns raised from the audience was speculation that solving homelessness in La Crosse would give it a reputation as a mecca for services and make it a magnet for homeless people.

Healy recalled La Crosses global reputation as a leader in advance directives, which prompted NPR to publish a story headlined, Why This Wisconsin City Is The Best Place To Die. She wondered rhetorically whether the city might become known as The Best Little Town to Be Homeless.

On a serious note, she said, The fear of becoming so good at what you do is not worth spending a lot of time on. If you learn how to do it, migrate the knowledge to other communities so they do it well, too.

Asked about NIMBY responses to establishing quarters for the formerly homeless in neighborhoods, Healy said the key is to educate people about the purpose and show that the moves will strengthen the community rather than weaken it.

You have the genius here to work on this, she said.

Sandy Brekke, director of the St. Clare Health Mission in La Crosse and one of the driving forces behind Healys visit, said, I have worked in this sector for 20 years, and Im really tired of seeing people sick and dying because of homelessness.

We shouldnt be standing for it, said Brekke, who also is a senior consultant in Gundersens Population Health and Strategy Department.
The American Red Cross is partnering with Nexcare Bandages next week to encourage people to donate blood or platelets in honor of World Blood Donor Day on Tuesday.

All blood types are needed. Donors must be 17 or older, weigh at least 110 pounds, and provide a drivers license or two other forms of ID. For more information or to make an appointment to donate, download the Red Cross Blood Donor App, visit redcrossblood.org or call 1-800-RED CROSS.
A judge Friday sentenced a La Crosse woman who trafficked methamphetamine manufactured by Mexican drug cartels to 3 years in prison.

Jennifer Rondeau-Wilbur, 36, is one of 17 people tied to a large-scale operation that operated between the Twin Cities and the La Crosse area for a decade before authorities interrupted it in October.

In my 20 years, Ive never seen so much meth, La Crosse police Lt. Matt Malott testified in La Crosse County Circuit Court.

Rondeau-Wilbur was one of the first people contacted when several of her co-defendants brought large quantities of meth from the Twin Cities to La Crosse, where she distributed it to a handful of others, Malott said.

Her level of involvement in this conspiracy warrants prison, he said. We owe it to the community. We owe it to the victims.

Rondeau-Wilbur admitted involvement in the conspiracy, but minimized her role in the operation, assistant district attorney Noel Lawrence said. She was an addict using daily and selling drugs just as often to support herself and her children with drug money. Rondeau-Wilbur admitted reviving 19 users with the opiate overdose antidote.

Prosecutors asked she serve six years in prison, arguing she has failed on probation before and hasnt complied with bond conditions.

Probation was not enough in the past, and it wont be enough this time around, Lawrence said. The public was gravely harmed by her actions.

Rondeau-Wilburs addiction fueled her role in the conspiracy, said her attorney, David Bolles, who asked that she serve time on probation and be allowed to participate in the countys drug treatment court to aid her recovery.

She doesnt appear to me to be a lost cause, he said.

Rondeau-Wilbur pleaded guilty to conspiracy to deliver meth, while eight other charges between three cases were dismissed but considered by the judge at sentencing. Sober now, she told the judge she was terrified of a prison term but would accept the sentence.

Circuit Judge Scott Horne told her he must balance the progress she has made in the past few months against the seriousness of selling a drug that destroyed lives. Rondeau-Wilbur, who will undergo drug treatment in prison, also will serve 2 years on extended supervision.
SPARTA  Michael Dewey robbed two young boys of their innocence and dignity after years of subjecting them to sexual abuse.

What he couldnt rob them of was their voices, Monroe County District Attorney Kevin Croninger said Friday. They came into this courtroom and spoke about the vile and reprehensible things he did to them.

Dewey, 38, repeatedly and brutally assaulted the boys, sometimes after the threat of violence, Croninger said. Dewey earned and deserved the maximum 670-year prison sentence, he said.

I dont think Mr. Dewey could have committed a more serious offense, other than if he killed (the victims), Croninger said.

Calling it one of the most difficult cases he has presided over, Circuit Judge Todd Ziegler sentenced Dewey to 220 years in prison and 88 years on extended supervision.

Mr. Dewey is clearly a predator, Ziegler said. The trauma that he has caused them, theres no quantification for that. This is something that, unfortunately, will have lifelong impacts on them.

A jury on April 14, after a four-day trial and seven hours of deliberations, convicted Dewey of 36 sex offenses, including multiple counts each of sexual assault, exposure and child enticement.

Dewey, of Elroy, denies the conduct and plans to appeal the convictions. He did not react to the sentence or make a statement to the court.

The father of one of the victims told the judge that Dewey stole from the boys their childhood and their happiness.

Im begging, pleading, Mr. Dewey doesnt get the chance to see the outside world again, he said.

The public desperately needs protection from Dewey, a sociopath who wont accept responsibility for his conduct, Croninger said.

If given the opportunity to reoffend, he will reoffend, he said.

Croninger praised the victims for their courage in the courtroom and said a maximum sentence reassures them and all other rape victims who havent found their voices that the system wont tolerate sexual predators.

Defense attorney Thomas Rhodes called a maximum sentence absurd during his brief argument and asked Dewey serve 30 years in prison.

Dewey wont accept responsibility and makes excuses for his conduct, which includes a prior sex offense, Ziegler said.

Theres nothing to suggest that Mr. Dewey is going to change, Ziegler said. Its hard to find a case where there is more of a need to protect the public.
ONALASKA  The Upper Mississippi River National Wildlife & Fish Refuge Visitor Center is offering these free summer programs at the Visitor Center, N5727 Hwy Z.

The Refuge Ranger Tour will be from 9 to 11 a.m. Saturday, June 18. Participants ages 7 and older are invited to learn how to identify monarch butterflies, about butterfly lifecycles, and to take home milkweed seeds to plant. Register by June 16.

The Audubon Society Bird Watching for Beginners Tour will be from 8 to 11:30 a.m. Saturday, July 9. All ages are invited to learn how to identify birds by their size, shape and color, listen for grassland birds, and review tips and tricks for using binoculars and field guides. Register by July 7.

The Summer Phenology Hike will be from 9 to 10:30 a.m. Saturday, Aug. 20. All ages are invited for a two-mile prairie walk to look for birds, blossoms and butterflies. Register by Aug. 18.

Register by calling 608-779-2391.
WINONA, Minn.  With the chaotic pattern of late-night, last-minute amendments and bill approvals having capped yet another Minnesota legislative session last month, concerns are rising in the Capitol that the system needs big-time repair.

One of the lawmakers leading an effort is House Rep. Gene Pelowski.

During his time as chairman of the House Committee on Governmental Operations, Reform, Technology and Elections, the Winona DFLer started a review of the legislative process after the 2007 and 2008 session and produced a series of recommendations to add reviews, protections and stops in a process that he says often moves too fast with too little oversight.

Among the recommendations is limiting the number of bills a legislator can introduce, stopping the introduction of bills at a certain point in the session to concentrate on those already introduced, setting funding and budget targets as early as possible so committees have a complete understanding of their impact, and requiring that the Legislature and its committees not meet past midnight.

There is no one thing, Pelowski said. Its a process.

Other recommendations have been adopted in the House. In the 2009 and 2012 sessions, lawmakers mandated a limit on floor debate on bills to prevent discussion going into the late evening or early morning, when the public is not aware of whats happening.

Two years ago, at Pelowskis urging, the House began requiring amendments to bills be filed and posted on the House website 24 hours in advance of a floor debate, so the public is aware of changes to bills.

Pelowski said the incremental changes have moved the process in the right direction, but dont address the larger problems in the way the House and Senate work, like often overloading the staff asked to write and rewrite bills because todays technology makes it easy to suggest and make changes.

By speeding it up, it hasnt made the bills less complex, Pelowski said. We have to catch up with the technology.

Case in point: The struggle of lawmakers during the two previous sessions against a cascading avalanche of bills.

By early May this year, House lawmakers had collectively introduced 4,000 bills over the course of the 2015 and 2016 sessions, in a total of 95 working days.

Pelowski said the revisers  and even the lawmakers themselves  simply cannot keep up, leading to mistakes in language in large, legal documents that affect policy and budget for the entire state.

Most recently, the tax bill approved by both the House and the Senate stalled at the governors office, with Dayton issuing a veto because of a language mistake that would have cost the state more than 1 million in tax revenue.

Im picking up more (interest) from members than I have in the past, Pelowski said. The frustration level is high.
iStock/Thinkstock(CINCINNATI)  Police apprehended a suspect this morning after allegedly shooting a sheriff's deputy and at least one other person Thursday night near Cincinnati, Ohio, police said.



Lt. John Faine of the Warren County Sheriff's department identified the suspect as Mohammed Abdou Laghaoui, 19. He was described as armed and dangerous.



The arrest took place at a location near to where the shootings took place about eight hours ago, Faine said.



Authorities responded to reports of an active shooter near a Kroger grocery store in Deerfield Township.



Faine said the injured female deputy has since been released after being transported to a nearby hospital. The male victim who was also shot had non-life threatening injuries.



The sheriff's deputy was responding to a report of a domestic disturbance when, upon the deputies' arrival, the suspect opened fire, Faine said.



The Deerfield Township Fire Department tweeted about the active shooter around 10 p.m. telling residents to say indoors. That alert has since been lifted.



Copyright  2016, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.
After Tuesday night, Bernie Sanders infinitesimal chance of winning the Democratic nomination rests on one possibility: that Democratic superdelegates will overturn the will of the voters.

This is no small irony: Sanders spent much of his campaign railing against superdelegates and fighting to eliminate the practice of giving party officials and establishment types a say in the nominating process. But the only thing keeping him in the race is the vain hope that superdelegates, the vast majority of whom support Hillary Clinton, will defy the popular vote and throw their support to him.

Little noticed in Clintons resounding victories in California and New Jersey Tuesday: She clinched an outright majority of regular, pledged delegates. Her 2,203 (to Sanders 1,828) are a majority of the 4,051, even before the District of Columbia has the final Democratic primary next week. If there were no such thing as superdelegates  as Sanders claims to desire  Clinton already would have won.

For some context: Clintons lead of nearly 400 pledged delegates is triple the lead Barack Obama had over Clinton when the 2008 primaries ended. Clinton has won 13 of the past 19 Democratic contests, compared with Obamas wins in three of the last 10 in 2008. Clinton has won 15.6 million votes, which is 3.7 million more than Sanders has received. As for the Sanders claim to have brought new voters to the party, turnout has been lower than it was in 2008.

By Sanders own argument, superdelegates have no right to overturn the result of the popular vote. On June 4, 2008, Sanders, who hadnt endorsed during the primaries, decided to back Obama  days before Clinton dropped out and months before superdelegates voted. At the time, Sanders hometown Burlington Free Press wrote: Sanders said he held off supporting either of the Democrats because he has made it a custom not to support any Democrat for the presidential nomination until the party had chosen its nominee.

So why isnt Sanders using the same standard now, even though Clinton has an outright majority of pledged delegates and a lopsided number of superdelegate commitments? Call it the politics of pique.

Politico, in an extensive look at the waning days of the Sanders campaign, described a candidate aggrieved. Sanders is himself filled with resentment, on edge, feeling like he gets no respect  all while holding on in his head to the enticing but remote chance that Clinton may be indicted before the convention, Edward-Isaac Dovere and Gabriel Debenedetti wrote. His guiding principle under attack has basically boiled down to a feeling that multiple aides sum up as: Screw me? No, screw you.

Politico reported about an email from the Sanders rapid-response director about the campaigns scorched-earth position against the Democratic Party in Nevada, just to pick up two ... delegates in a state he lost. Sanders campaign manager Jeff Weaver replied that Sanders himself is driving this train.

So, if this is all about Sanders hurt feelings, let us praise and affirm him. He has run a brilliant campaign, invigorated the left, pushed Clinton in his direction and made his populist politics ascendant in the Democratic Party. He is entitled to his share of happiness. Hes good enough, hes smart enough and, doggone it, people like him.

But its time to abandon the canard that he is saving democracy in his bid to rid the party of superdelegates. In the young history of superdelegates, there never has been a case when party-appointed delegates overruled the popular vote  even in 2008, when Clinton had early commitments from most of the superdelegates. Had Sanders won the popular vote, they would have swung to him, as they did to Obama.

Sanders seemed to be of two minds Tuesday night when he delivered a speech alternately defiant and conciliatory.

He vowed to continue the fight in the next primary, in Washington, D.C., and to take our fight for social, economic, racial and environmental justice to Philadelphia for the Democratic convention.

But he also said that we will not allow Donald Trump to become president of the United States, and that, in regards to Clinton, our fight is to transform this country and to understand that we are in this together.

As the crowd cheered Sanders in California Tuesday night, The Washington Posts Robert Costa reported, his wife whispered to him: Theyre still with you.

They are. And Sanders can either lead them to work with Clinton for the ideas he believes in  or to nurse pointless grievances over a race Clinton won, fair and square.
Madisons police chief says what he thinks. We like that.

But when he says what he thinks in a needlessly aggressive and sarcastic way, it doesnt help his cause or department.

Chief Mike Koval wrote a fiery blog post Sunday evening, questioning a City Council proposal to spend $350,000 on a consultant to examine the Madison Police Departments policies, procedures, training and culture. The money adds to $50,000 committed to the effort last year, following the fatal police shooting of an unarmed black 19-year-old (who had taken drugs and was being erratic and violent with passersby before striking an officer in the head in a narrow stairway).

Koval is right the money could be better spent. An exhaustive and independent investigation of last years shooting convinced Ismael Ozanne, the states first black district attorney, that no charges were warranted against the white officer who shot and killed Tony Robinson. More generally, the Madison Police Department is one of the most community focused, best educated and trained in the nation.

In other words, Madison isnt Ferguson, Missouri, where a white police department routinely abused a predominantly black population with tickets, fees, slurs and stun guns, according to federal investigators.

Madison police have worked hard to diversify their ranks while partnering with troubled neighborhoods. Spending $400,000 on an outside report could marginally build trust with some citizens. But an extra neighborhood officer walking the beat for several years could do much more for the same money.

Koval is right that Madison is too easily offended, and city officials are sometimes timid when confronted by small, vocal groups of critics. Hes right his officers deserve recognition for their difficult jobs. The police department cant solve all of societys ills or magically erase racial disparities.

But Kovals strategy of escalating his conflict with the council is flawed. The 19-1 vote in favor of the police study was only the latest evidence of that.

Kovals blog post read more like a talk radio rant than a community leader trying to persuade his civic colleagues.

You are being watched, he wrote directly to City Council members. And be on notice: This is a preemptive first strike from me to you. I am going to push back hard when MPD is constantly used as a political punching bag and you are nowhere to be found.

Koval continued to spar with aldermen at Tuesdays City Council meeting, nearly walking out at one point, rolling his eyes at council members comments and striking a table in frustration. The scene didnt fit the police chiefs nickname of Kumbaya Koval when he became the top cop two years ago.

That said, the City Council should defend the department more from outlandish claims, and not overreact when Koval goes negative. Ald. Samba Baldeh sounded paranoid Tuesday night when he said he didnt feel safe with Koval sitting behind him during the meeting with a gun.

This feud needs to end. The city deserves a professional and constructive dialog to promote public safety.
Happy 30th anniversary to the Viroqua Heritage Inn's Eckhart House!

The Eckhart House and Boyle House are both 1890s Viroqua historic landmarks.

Nancy Rhodes has been pleased to host over 12,000 visitors to our wonderful region. Many visitors have made the inn their destination and have then learned about Viroqua, shopped, dined, fished, hiked, etc.

Some have loved the area so much that they end up relocating to the area. When reflecting on the 30 year journey, Nancy Rhodes, owner, had this to say, "I have met wonderful people while raising my precious Son, Dallas, volunteering as the Chair of the Viroqua Historic Preservation Commission for 15 years, etc. I am so very grateful for the support from all our locals who trust me with their referrals. Thank you all."

Bluedog Cycles is celebrating its 10th anniversary with an awesome community appreciation event on June 11. Plenty of fun to be had with great food, music and an alleycat race! The fun continues on June 12 with the third annual Butthurt Roubaix ride.

For more information and to register for the rides check out their website: bluedogcycles.com or call: 637-6993

Farmers Markets, plural are in full swing. This Saturdays Market is sponsored by VARC and next Wednesdays Market is sponsored by the Viroqua Food Co-op.

Yesterdays Wednesday Market was sponsored by US Cellular.

Thank you to all of our local partners for supporting this community event. We have an amazing diversity at both markets. Join us! Wednesday markets are 3:30-7 p.m. in the Bluedog Cycles parking lot. Saturdays are at the Fairgrounds from 8 a.m.-noon. We are accepting SNAP/EBT benefits as well as visa/mastercard. Please call with any questions: 637-2575.

The Viroqua Chamber Main Street Visitor Center location is open on most Saturdays, we are fortunate enough to have volunteer staff to help with this process.

If you are interested in volunteering, we could use your help! Answer phones, greet visitors to our community and help to promote the community that you love so much. Accepting applications for interns or volunteers. Most shifts are 3-4 hours in length. Flexible and fun team.

For more information call 637-2575 or email infodesk@viroqua-wisconsin.com

Relay for Life

This year's Relay for life will be held at the Vernon County Fairgrounds, Friday, June 10, at 6 p.m.

Join the community in the fight against cancer! Sixteen teams and more than 135 participants have raised over $12,000. What an impressive number!

For more information about how you can give or be involved, check out their website: www.relayforlifeviroquawi or call (608) 783-5001 ext 102

Movie in the Park

This summer's upcoming Movie in the Park will be Back to the Future shown in Eckhart Park, June 17, at 6 p.m.

Save the date for this free, family friendly event! Join us as we view Back to the Future on the big screen! Budget friendly snacks and beverages will be provided.

Bounce houses and games for the kids generously donated by Nelson Agri-Center. Goodies Bags from local sponsors for the first 100 kids who arrive at the park. For more information about the event and our sponsors, please check out the Viroqua Chamber Main Street Facebook page or call 637-2575
Biddeford-Saco-OOB Courier

The board earmarked $1.54 million in federal American Rescue Plan Act funds for the dredge, designed to keep channels open and supply sand to nourish eroding beaches up and down the York County coast and beyond.


Speak up! Put yourself out there!

American society generally places high value on being friendly and speaking freely. That can can worry introverts. Introverts are people who tend to be more private and favor individual activities over social ones.

Susan Cain, an introvert herself, is an expert on the subject. She has become the voice of these quiet people. In 2012, her book, Quiet: The Power of the Introvert in a World that Can't Stop Talking, was a success.

In her new book, Quiet Power: The Secret Strengths of Introverts, Cain takes her hopeful message about introverts to teenagers. She says her goal is to help parents and teachers understand their introvert teens and develop their secret power.

Introverted children are not necessarily shy. In fact, they can have excellent social skills. They just tend to enjoy being alone, doing quieter things or being with just one friend at a time.

Susan Cain says that is how introverts get their energy. Their human "batteries" are actually weakened by loud, busy activities.

"If you imagine an introvert going to a party where they're having a good time. At the end of two hours, you kind of start to wish you were home in your pajamas because your battery is running low.

Whereas for extroverts in the exact same situation, their batteries are getting recharged. So they kind of want more time at the party. This has everything to do with how we're wired; how our nervous systems react to stimulation."

Cain says the idea that extroverts are more successful than introverts is widespread but wrong.

"If you look around, you see introverts contributing to this culture in all kinds of ways, people like Bill Gates and J.K Rowling and Dr. Seuss - any number of people you could name who are introverts.

Cain says these people add much to society because of their quiet temperament. But somehow this idea is not widely accepted. The author says American society pushes everyone to be gregarious even if it is not natural for them.

Cain says there are more introverts than people think.

"You're talking about 1 in every 2 or 3 people. That's in the U.S. But then there are other studies that look comparatively at the world and find that the U.S. is on the more extroverted side of the spectrum. So there are probably more introverts in other countries."

Susan Cain spoke with hundreds of teens, parents and teachers to explore introversion among teens. One of her important findings is that introverts can be effective leaders.

"For example, there was one guy we profiled named Davis, who decided he wanted to run for president of his class. He was running against one of the most popular, social girls in the school who ran on a platform of more parties for everyone.

Davis was his characteristically, serious-minded, introverted self, and did a lot of deep thinking about how he can make the school a better place. So he ran on a serious substantive platform of proposals and his classmates really recognized the value of that and ended up voting for him, and he became the class president."

In her book, Cain gives advice to parents and teachers. She tells parents that introverts usually want to come home at the end of the day and spend time alone. She says they need to recharge their batteries. She says they should not be pushed into after-school activities. For teachers, she says, introverted students might not succeed in large study groups.

"By their nature they prefer to learn independently and autonomously. They don't want to be learning calculus in a group. They want to be putting their heads down, and thinking a problem through.

Susan Cain, author of Quiet Power: The Secret Strengths of Introverts, says what she wants young readers to take away from her book is that being introverted is not something to outgrow. It is something to accept, develop and treasure.

I'm Caty Weaver.

Faiza Elmasry wrote this report for VOA News. Caty Weaver adapted it for Learning English. Kathleen Struck was the editor.

Are you an introvert or an extrovert? You can answer in the Comment Section. Or post a message on our Facebook page.

_____________________________________________________________

Words in This Story

introvert - n. a quiet person who does not find it easy to talk to other people

shy - adj. feeling nervous and uncomfortable about meeting and talking to people

extrovert - n. a friendly person who likes being with and talking to other people: an outgoing person

stimulation - n. something that excites activity or growth

gregarious - adj. enjoying the company of other people

autonomously - adv. independently; separately

temperament - n. the usual attitude, mood, or behavior of a person or animal

spectrum - n. a complete range of different opinions, people, etc.


This is Whats Trending Today...

President Barack Obama announced on Thursday his support for Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.

As expected, Republican candidate Donald Trump quickly reacted to the endorsement on Twitter.

Trump tweeted to his 8.8 million followers: Obama just endorsed Crooked Hillary. He wants four more years of Obamabut nobody else does!

Clintons Twitter response five minutes later was simple: Delete your account.



Those three words spread quickly on Twitter. In fact, it has become Clintons most-retweeted message ever, with more than 410,000 retweets. The hashtag #deleteyouraccount trended on Facebook and Twitter.

Many enjoyed her short and simple response to Trump. One Twitter user wrote, Im still laughing at Clintons epic take down of Trump!



But, others fired back, including Trump himself. He brought up Clintons use of private email server during her time as Secretary of State.

Trump wrote, where are your 33,000 emails that you deleted?

And the chair of the Republican National Committee Reince Preibus tweeted to Clinton, if anyone knows how to use a delete key, its you.

But, others did not appreciate either candidates tweets. One Facebook user asked, Why are we accepting this immaturity and pettiness to be the state of American politics?

And thats Whats Trending Today.

Im Dorothy Gundy.

Ashley Thompson wrote this report for VOA Learning English. Hai Do was the editor.

______________________________________________________________

Words in This Story

endorsement - n. a public or official statement of support or approval

crooked - adj. (informal) not honest

immaturity - n. the act of behaving in a childish way

pettiness - n. the quality of being unimportant
On Thursday, the preliminary talent award was given to not one, but two Miss Nebraska contestants for the second night in a row.

Miss Omaha Aleah Peters wowed the judges and earned half a $500 cash scholarship with a high energy baton performance to the song Wings. Peters also took home a $1,000 cash scholarship after receiving the Miss America Community Service award.

Peters is originally from Omaha and attended the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Her platform is Cyberbullying Prevention  Make Kindness Viral.

Miss Queen City Lianna Prill took the second half of the talent scholarship with a vocal performance of Dont Rain on My Parade. Prill also took the preliminary Evening Wear award during Wednesday nights competition.

Prill is from Kearney and also attends UNL. Her platform is Eat Well, Be Well, which encourages healthy eating habits.

In the evening wear competition, it was Miss Kearney Stacy Pospisils pink mermaid cut gown that stole the show earning her a $250 scholarship. Pospisil is from Hallam and graduated from Doane College. Having loved ones with cancer led her to her platform: Kissing Cancer Goodbye with Education and Funding Research.

The Childrens Miracle Network Miracle Maker award went to Miss Kool Aid Days Chelsea Arnold. The award is presented to the woman who raises the most money for Childrens Miracle Network.

The award is sponsored by the Stadler Family in honor of their daughter, Emily, who went through the Miss Nebraska Little Sister program while fighting cancer. Emily Stadler joined contestants on stage to present Arnold with the award, which included a $500 scholarship.

Miss Twin Rivers Jenni Wahonick earned the Hastings Family Memorial scholarship of $1,000; the award is one of two given for community service on the state level. The Bobby Foelinger Memorial Community Service Award for $750 was presented to Miss Heartland Tosha Skinner.

The woman also competed in the swimsuit and on-stage question competitions, in which they addressed issues ranging from education to politics. The contestants will get a break from the competition on tonight as their younger counterparts vie for the title of Miss Nebraskas Outstanding Teen.

The Outstanding Teen competition starts at 6:30 p.m. in the North Platte High School auditorium. Tickets are $15 and can be purchased at the door.
$7.1 million awarded to groups that help inmates

By Michael Shoro

World-Herald staff writer

Beginning in July, eight community organizations in Nebraska will receive more than $7.1 million in grants from the Nebraska Department of Correctional Services to provide former and current inmates with life and vocational skills.

Corrections Director Scott Frakes office announced the two-year grants Thursday. The training is intended to reduce re-offense rates.

Corrections is partnering with the University of Nebraska at Omaha to evaluate and track outcomes.

The programs are expected to serve about 2,400 former and current inmates.

The eight organizations, their grant amounts, the number of people to be served and the nature of their programs:

 Metropolitan Community College, $1.33 million, about 700 people. The 180 Re-entry Assistance Program offers college credit classes and noncredit workshops to those held in the Omaha Correctional Center, Nebraska Correctional Youth Facility and the Community Corrections Center-Omaha.

 Associated Builders & Contractors, about $755,000, about 225 people. Inmates get hands-on training in skills such as carpentry, plumbing, drywall, roofing and painting.

 ReConnect, about $377,000, about 300 people. Case-by-case assistance in finding jobs and mitigating issues that hinder re-entry to society.

 Western Alternative Corrections, $1.71 million, about 168 people. Those 19 and older can seek help with basic money management, transitional skills, family reunification, cognitive behavior therapy and parenting.

 Mental Health Association of Nebraska, about $982,000, about 84 people. Those on probation or recently released from state prisons with severe behavioral health issues can receive 24-hour support and guidance, steering them away from behaviors that could lead to re-incarceration.

 Center for People In Need, $1.42 million, about 282 people. The program aims to increase the chances that recently released inmates or those on parole or probation keep their jobs, decreasing the chances they will end up back in prison. Classes cover topics such as domestic violence prevention, communication skills, self-help and family outreach.

 Hope of Glory Ministries, about $111,000, about 72 people. The reintegration program emphasizes employment, social skills and assistance with substance abuse.

 ResCare Workforce Services, about $429,000, about 550 people. The program prepares those near Omaha, Grand Island, Gering and Norfolk for job hunting through workshops and one-on-one engagement.
With just two weeks until entries closed, the race to see which partnerships triumph at the 19th Annual BASA Awards, partnered by Hollard and Business Day, is gaining momentum.

Entries into this years awards have now been extended to 20 June 2016, with the entry process made easily accessible through a streamlined online system. A dedicated point-of-contact at BASAs Joburg office is also available to assist with any queries.

Over the past eighteen years, a long list of winners have benefited from the prestige that comes from being named a winner in South Africas leading awards event celebrating business and arts partnerships.

We always aim to make our awards evening a fantastic night out for the business and arts community, , as well as members of the public sector comments Michelle Constant, BASA CEO. Its the one time in the year that the many different ways that the two sectors create shared value is put in the spotlight and celebrated.

More than that, though, the awards provide nominees with an opportunity to gain increased exposure and give the broader South African community insight into the innovative, exciting and creative ways that business partners with the arts community.

In keeping with BASAs reputation as a development agency with its eye firmly on the future, there are several exciting additions to the 19th Annual BASA Awards, partnered by Hollard and Business Day.

Among these is the Beyond Borders Partnership Award, which will be awarded to a global-level partnership that builds brand reputation and audience for both the business and an arts organisation across international borders. Another is the Cultural Tourism Award, supported by Nedbank, which recognises business support of arts and culture projects which contribute towards the growth of communities and jobs, and support the opportunities provided by local tourism.

Our judges look at everything from innovation to sustainability and the shared value when assessing entries. We are really looking forward to seeing what kind of arts and business partnerships have emerged in the past year, says BASA Marketing Manager Lakin Morgan-Baaitjies.

Please take note of the following:

Entries can be completed by the sponsoring business and/or the recipient arts organisation, but must be approved by both the business and arts partners.



To be eligible for entry, partnerships must have been activated between 1 January 2015 and 31 December 2015. Long-term or ongoing sponsorships current during that period also qualify for the awards.



The 19th Annual BASA Awards, partnered by Hollard and Business Day , cover a broad spectrum of the arts, including visual arts, dance, theatre, physical performance, music, architecture, fashion and design.



, cover a broad spectrum of the arts, including visual arts, dance, theatre, physical performance, music, architecture, fashion and design. Entries close on 20 June 2016.

Innovation Award  This award recognises the most innovative and progressive partnership in all mediums of creativity; one that served all partners purposes effectively between January and December 2015, and highlighted creativity and originality in the process.

First Time Sponsor Award  This award is for a business supporting the arts for the first time, regardless of size, budget, whether it is CSI, marketing, HR, BBE or other.

Increasing Access to the Arts Award  This award celebrates a partnership that has encouraged specific audience engagement with the arts or has made a significant contribution to brand, market and audience development, while still promoting the business through above-the-line media or a partnership that has made a significant contribution to regeneration or sustainable growth, through a marketing and CSI budget or other.

Beyond Borders Partnership Award  Awarded to a global-level partnership that builds brand reputation and audience for both the business and arts organisations across international borders through an event or marketing project showcasing SA to Africa and the rest of the world, and/or bringing international arts projects to South Africa.

Long-Term Partnership Award  A company which has significantly developed and expanded its commitment to an arts project over three years or longer. The value to the arts project, the broader community and the business, must be apparent.

Media Sponsorship Award  For consistent and innovative support given by electronic, print, broadcast and web-based media.

Strategic Project Award  For outstanding initiative, with best use of a project, which is an integral part of the business strategy.

Small Business Award  For vital support given to the arts by a small company with up to 200 hundred full-time employees and an annual turnover of no more than R10m.

Sponsorship In Kind Award  For a company giving a quantifiable non-monetary support to the arts.

Development Award  For projects with an implicit educational and development element.

Cultural Tourism Award, supported by Nedbank  For business support of arts and culture projects which contribute towards the growth of communities and jobs, and support the opportunities provided by local tourism.

About BASA (NPC):

Business and Arts South Africa (NPC) is an internationally recognised South African development agency with a suite of integrated programmes implemented nationally and internationally. BASA encourages mutually beneficial partnerships between business and the arts, securing the future development of the arts sector in South Africa and contributing to corporate success through Shared Value. Business and Arts South Africa (NPC) was founded in 1997 as a joint initiative of the Department of Arts and Culture and the business sector as a public/private partnership. For more information on Business and Arts South Africa contact us on 011 447 2295 or visit our website: www.basa.co.za




The controversy surrounding Bollywood flick Udta Punjab rages on, as the 89 cuts ordered by the censor board are being widely lampooned. The Pahlaj Nihalani-led censor board has asked the filmmakers to delete any reference to Punjab or any place in the state. The cuts recommended include those that can baffle filmmakers and movie buffs alike: for instance, deleting all close-up shots of people injecting drugs. If this is done, the very theme of the film could fizzle out.

It is being reported that Pahlaj Nihalani has a problem with the "portrayal of reality in the film". His solution to this problem is laughable: Keep the film's setting in a fictional land rather than Punjab.

Nevertheless, there is enough statistical and empirical evidence to show that Punjab is in the midst of a drug time-bomb. Whether Pahlaj Nihalani likes it or not, the state's drug problem is for real.

A Mint report quoted The Punjab Opioid Dependence Survey, which was conducted in early 2015. The survey found that about 2,30,000 people were drug users in the state. There were 836 drug users for every 1,00,000 people in the state. This is more than three times the national average of 250 per 1,00,000, according to the ministry of social justice and empowerment.

Drug seizures give a fair idea of the crippling menace in Punjab. Sample these stats: According to the Annual Narcotics Control Bureau report 2012, Punjab ranks amongst the top four states in opium seizures. The state saw a seizure of more than 691 kilograms of opium, second only to Maharashtra. In 2013, the amount seized rose substantially to 964 kilograms while the state stood first. In 2014, though the amount seized declined, yet the state remained in the top three.

When it came to seizures of heroin, a by-product of opium, Punjab stood first that year. A total of 506 kilograms of heroin was seized from the state, way ahead of any other state. Next year, the figure rose to 737 kilograms. In 2014, the state saw the seizure of 730 kilograms. This was way ahead of the seizures in all other states put together.

According to the National Crime record Bureau's 2014 report on prisons, of the total number of prisoners convicted on drug-related charges, about 45 percent of them come from Punjab. Amongst the undertrails facing these charges, 30 percent of them are from the state.

The All India Institute for Medical Sciences recently published a report which nailed the fact that drug-dependence, a WHO mandated term is indeed alarming in Punjab. A astonishing Rs 7,500 crore worth of drugs are consumed  Rs 6000 crores only on heroin.

The report highlighted the hand of Pakistani agencies in spreading the drug menace in the border state. More importantly, it criticised poor availability of rehabilitative treatment in the state.

Pakistan forms an important part of the "Golden Crescent", a by-word for the drug trafficking route originating from the illegal poppy fields of Afghanistan and passing through Iran.

Just take this for an example: In 2015, seven alleged smugglers and intruders were killed by the BSF along the Punjab-Pakistan border. A total of more than 300 kilograms of heroin worth Rs 1,200 crores was also seized.

With such a precarious situation in Punjab, it seems totally justified to keep the word "Punjab" in the film's title. The film only talks of the reality that has besieged the state. Changing the film title or purging the movie of its essence is not going to change the reality. Pahlaj Nihalani needs to do some serious re-thinking.
More voices of support are being heard for the Shahid Kapoor-Alia Bhatt-Kareena Kapoor starrer Udta Punjab, in the films ongoing battle with the Central Board of Film Certification.

While Shyam Benegal, Mukesh and Mahesh Bhatt, Zoya Akhtar and Sudhir Mishra  to name just a few  had already expressed that they stood for the Udta Punjabs right to freedom of expression (read Firstpost's story here), newer voices have been added to the discussion.

Among them, are those of Aamir Khan, Priyanka Chopra, Kangana Ranaut, SS Rajamouli, Anupam Kher and Sonakshi Sinha, to name just a few.

Aamir Khan: Filmmakers voices should not be throttled

Wishing the Udta Punjab team the very best in its fight against the CBFCs cuts, Aamir Khan said, This kind of thing reflects very badly on the CBFC. It's a social film which talks about the drug addiction issue of Punjab's youth. It has a good social message. I don't think there's anything that should be cut or not shown to the audience. It's very important that filmmakers have a voice which is not throttled. In any society, the voice of the artiste should be free to speak what he wants to speak.

Priyanka Chopra: Creativity in democracy should not be stopped

Our forefathers achieved freedom of speech and expression for us after a long struggle Creativity should not be stopped in democracy In democracy you cannot dictate what one should eat or watch a movie on a social issue, Priyanka told the media at a press conference, where she was announcing the new Bhojpuri film from her production house. Incidentally, Priyankas film Jai Gangaajal had also run into trouble with the CBFC.

Priyanka asserted that the CBFC should stick to its mandate and be a certification body, and not (a) censor.

Incidentally, Amitabh Bachchan had also made a similar point, about creativity being destroyed by censorship, when he was asked about the issue a couple of days ago.

Kangana Ranaut: The censor board is bullying filmmakers

Kangana, who picked up her CNN-News18 Indian of the Year, 2015  Special Achievement award on Thursday night, previously had her own issues with the CBFC, when the board asked for a scene in which her characters bra was seen, in the film Queen, to be blurred.

She also addressed the Udta Punjab row and said, We have been very concerned with the way things are going. I am not a director; I have never been through the process. But my very close friends and people I closely work with seem extremely disturbed with the way things are  to an extent they feel bullied, Kangana said. I support them (the Udta Punjab team). They are legitimate artistes. They know the process of certification. Its not censorship. We dont have to have that parental attitude towards the audience.

SS Rajamouli: How can 6-7 people decide what is good for the entire nation?

Baahubali director SS Rajamouli felt that a few cannot decide what the rest of the country can watch  as the censors seem to want to do in the case of Udta Punjab. My sympathies lie with the filmmakers as I am a filmmaker myself. The simple logic is how can 6-7 or 10 members decide what is good or not good for the entire nation. Being a family head, I should decide what is good for me, my family or my kids to watch, not someone else, Rajamouli said.

Others from the film fraternity took to Twitter to succinctly tell the world just what they thought of the Udta Punjab censorship controversy. Anupam Kher and Sonakshi Sinha were among those who made no bones about which side they were rooting for:

#CBFC role in #UdtaPunjabControversy is most shocking. Cinema is a reflection of society. Sometimes a portrayal can help bring a change.  Anupam Kher (@AnupamPkher) June 9, 2016

I really dont know what #UdtaPunjab should be renamed to... But the Censor Board can surely consider the name #UdtaMazaak.  Sonakshi Sinha (@sonakshisinha) June 9, 2016

Previously, Bahujan Samaj Party chief Mayawati also expressed her support towards the Udta Punjab team.

 With PTI inputs
The Udta Battle continues.

'Udta Punjab' hearing in Bombay High Court resumed on day two, 10 June, as the Judge asked the CBFC counsel to justify the cuts they have suggested for the film. While the CBFC explained what they found objectionable in the film, the HC Judge made its observations. A Phantom Films counsel defended the film as well.

The HC verdict on Udta Punjab release will be out on Monday, 13 June.

Here's what the CBFC counsel said:

CBFC lawyer to court: Words used in songs are offensive, 'Zameen Banjar toh Aulaad Kanjar' is objectionable to Punjab #UdtaPunjab  Firstpost (@firstpost) June 10, 2016

CBFC lawyer to court: 'Filmmakers should remove cuss words and vulgarities from songs'  Firstpost (@firstpost) June 10, 2016

CBFC lawyer to court: 'Remove abusive words from songs; it is becomin a rage with the youth.'  Firstpost (@firstpost) June 10, 2016

CBFC to court: Shot of actor urinating to the public is obnoxious #UdtaPunjab  Firstpost (@firstpost) June 10, 2016

CBFC counsel to HC: Words like 'MP' 'Party' 'Polls' should be cut. Polling process shown in a bad light. #UdtaPunjab | @TimesNow  Firstpost (@firstpost) June 10, 2016

CBFC counsel to HC Judge: 'Drug menace not touched upon. Object to shots injecting drugs' #UdtaPunjab | @TimesNow  Firstpost (@firstpost) June 10, 2016

CBFC counsel justifies cuts to Judge: 'Abusive language throughout #UdtaPunjab' | @TimesNow  Firstpost (@firstpost) June 10, 2016

Here are the observations that HC Judge made:

Judge to CBFC counsel: Will this rule then apply to all states? #UdtaPunjab  Firstpost (@firstpost) June 10, 2016

Judge to CBFC counsel: 'Words are an integral part of the script' #UdtaPunjab  Firstpost (@firstpost) June 10, 2016

Judge questions CBFC counsel: 'Whether it is TV or cinema, let the people see it. Everybody has a choice' #UdtaPunjab | ANI  Firstpost (@firstpost) June 10, 2016

Court to CBFC counsel - Multiplex audience is mature enough to decide for themselves #UdtaPunjab | ANI  Firstpost (@firstpost) June 10, 2016

Judge to CBFC counsel: 'Audience is very open minded now. Films don't get ruined due to language' | CNN-News 18 #UdtaPunjab  Firstpost (@firstpost) June 10, 2016

Court to CBFC Counsel: 'Cinema is a medium, and people will learn how to handle' #UdtaPunjab  Firstpost (@firstpost) June 10, 2016

HC to CBFC counsel: 'The word censor is the media's creation. Your power is to certify films' #UdtaPunjab | CNN-News 18  Firstpost (@firstpost) June 10, 2016

Court to CBFC counsel: 'If you claim #UdtaPunjab glorifies drugs, why don't you ban it?' | CNN-News18  Firstpost (@firstpost) June 10, 2016

HC to CBFC: 'This is giving unnecessary publicity to #UdtaPunjab' | @ANI_news  Firstpost (@firstpost) June 10, 2016

Here's what Phantom Films' counsel said:

Just in: #UdtaPunjab petitioner agrees to remove some scenes from the film, including one where film's lead is seen urinating | CNN-News18  Firstpost (@firstpost) June 10, 2016

While HC asks 'Are abuses part of whole film?' Phantom films counsel defends #UdtaPunjab: 'Such films have been made earlier' | @TimesNow  Firstpost (@firstpost) June 10, 2016

Phantom Films counsel to court: 'Films like Delhi belly, Bandit Queen, Gangs of Wasseypur too have been cleared' #UdtaPunjab | ANI  Firstpost (@firstpost) June 10, 2016

Read what happened on day one of the hearing here.
New Delhi: The government may give more time to overseas high-tech companies like Apple Inc to comply with the domestic sourcing norms for opening single-brand retail stores in the country.

The government, according to officials, is not in favour of diluting the mandatory 30 percent local sourcing norm but is open to the possibility of giving more time to such firms.

"The Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP) is looking to tweak the FDI policy on sourcing. 30 percent local sourcing norm may not be changed, but the time given to comply might be relaxed," a finance ministry official said.

The local sourcing norm has become a bone of contention between both the ministries as the Commerce and Industry ministry has recommended to exempt Apple Inc from this rule, while the Finance Ministry has rejected it.

A DIPP Secretary-headed panel has recommended to exempt Apple Inc, that wants to open wholly-owned single brand retail stores in the country, from the mandatory sourcing norms saying the US-based company's products are 'state of the art' and 'cutting edge'.

The Finance Ministry, however, is not agreeing with this suggestion.

At present, 100 percent FDI is permitted in single-brand retail sector but companies are required to take FIPB permission if the limit exceeds 49 percent.

In respect of proposals involving foreign investment beyond 51 percent, sourcing of 30 percent of the value of goods purchased, will be done from India, preferably from

MSMEs, village and cottage industries, artisans and craftsmen, in all sectors.

As per the FDI policy, the sourcing requirement would have to be met, in the first instance, as an average of five years' total value of the goods purchased, beginning 1st April of the year of the commencement of the business i.e. opening of the first store. Thereafter, it would have to be met on an annual basis.

Apple sells its products through Apple-owned retail stores in countries including China, Germany, the US, the UK and France.

Last year the government had relaxed few norms and has stated that it may relax the mandatory local 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.
New Delhi: The government is looking to appoint an entirely new set of independent directors on the board of Air India. The five current independent directors finished their three-year stint last month and according to airline officials, none may be re-appointed. Much of the push to restructure loss making routes of Air India over the last three years, it is believed, came from these five independent directors. The five worthies have also kept up the pressure on the airlines management to analyse and improve the cost economics of each route, regularly monitoring progress on this front. Last year, the quintet also risked all-round displeasure by boldly suggesting that the airlines privatization or offloading of strategic stake by the government be given some serious thought. They had presented a proposal before the Minister of Civil Aviation, A Gajapathi Raju, but received no commitment on the issue.

It is clear that Raju does not believe in privatisation of Air India. In a candid chat with agencies, the minister has admitted that the airlines books are so bad that there is no chance of any interested party coming forward to participate in the airlines equity. As for the independent directors push for profitable routes, the massive overseas expansion that Air India has embarked upon in recent months without any in-depth study on route economics shows scant regard for the views of these directors. San Francisco, Vienna will soon be followed by one new destination each in the United States and UK and Spain. The recent move by the airlines management, to go for massive fleet expansion, where it is considering an addition of 100 aircraft in the next few years, is also raising hackles of some airline officials who question the need for such an expansion in the absence of a clear roadmap.

So what has irked the government more  the belief of these directors that government needs to lessen its control over the workings of the loss laden airline by divesting some stake, or their constant push for improved route economics? It is true that Air India reported Rs 8 crore in operational profit for the first time in a decade last fiscal. This is not only a record of sorts but also an improvement over targets it had set itself in the Turnaround Plan, under which AI is guaranteed over Rs 30,000 crore equity support from the government in a 10-year period.

Though benign oil prices have helped the airlines profitability to a large extent, the restructuring of non-profitable routes and some other cost saving measures being supervised by the independent directors have also helped. Remember, it is under their watch that the airline actually managed to show any profit at all  the Rs 8 crore figure is operational profit and unaudited as of now. With these directors moving out, will equal emphasis on route economics remain, is the key question.

The outgoing independent directors on the board of Air India are: former Procter & Gamble India chief and writer Gurcharan Das; IIM Ahmedabad professor Ravindra H Dholakia, retired Air Marshal K.K. Nohwar (former vice-chief of the Indian Air Force); banker Renuka Ramnath and founder director of IIT Roorkee, Prem Vrat. Gargi Kaul and B S Bhullar are the two government nominees on the airlines board. Other directors are CMD Ashwani Lohani, Director Finance V Hejmadi, Director Personnel N K Jain and Director Commercial Pankaj Srivastava.

Names of new appointees are not official as of now. But among the contenders are well known people from the world of banking (a renowned lady banker heading one of the largest public sector banks and a veteran banker credited with setting up one of Indias largest private banks). Also, retired bureaucrats and a travel industry professional - who is believed to be close to a minister in the NDA government - seem to be on the list. Is this medley of people good enough to secure Air Indias future?

As per this story in Business Standard, one of the outgoing independent directors, IIM Professor Ravindra H Dholakia had said earlier that the airlines employees need to change their work culture and outlook. Dholakia was also a member of the Dharmadhikari committee which was set up to complete the HR integration of the erstwhile Air India and Indian Airlines.

With an emphasis, rightfully, on lessening loss making routes and a push for privatization of Air India, did the independent directors chart out a course which was far too independent for the governments liking? Around March last year, they had taken an earlier proposal on privatisaton to Civil Aviation Minister A Gajapathi Raju.

It seems these independent directors had suggested that the process of privatization may be started with two businesses which were earlier spun off from the airline - engineering and ground handling. Air India Express could also be considered under this scheme. In a board meeting of Air India in March last year, one independent director who is a strong votary of privatisation asked about the financial performance of Air India Air Transport Services Ltd (the ground handling subsidiary) and also about the Air India Engineering Services Ltd (the engineering subsidiary). This director said the process of disinvestment could begin with these two companies even though a third, Air India Express, could also be considered since it has been making operational profits since FY14.

Air Indias independent directors have never really had a say in the airlines management. In 2010, the then Civil Aviation Minister Praful Patel had brought in well known names such as M&M chief Anand Mahindra, Ficcis Amit Mitra, Ambuja Realtys Harshvardhan Neotia, Dubai based industrialist Yusuff Ali and former Air Force Chief Fali H Major. But these directors faced enough hurdles during the subsequent board meetings to finally resign from their positions within one year.

As per this story, the directors had complained to Patels successor Vayalar Ravi about the work culture at the airline, its on-time performance and other issues.

This time, as the government again sets out to install independent directors on the Air Indias board, it should keep in mind that getting professionals who have been turnaround specialists, people with cost management skills and those who genuinely want to improve Air Indias future should be inducted. Else, Air Indias books will remain bad for many more years despite its operational performance improving.
Mumbai - Reserve Bank Governor Raghuram Rajan on Thursday said the technological progress is making the middle class anxious about job security globally.

"The emerging threat is it's not the guy in Bengaluru but the robot next door who's going to take your job. This creates anxiety in middle class and you can see it expressed in the political dialogue that is taking place both in the US as well as in the run up to Brexit in Britain," Rajan said speaking at

the launch of a book "World 2050" here this evening.

He further said there's flexible manufacturing, big data, connectivity and robotics which are changing the entire landscape, wherein only professionals in the hi-tech sector or those lower down like security guards are feeling secure, while leaving the middle class anxious.

"There's a sense that middle class jobs are disappearing either because of technology or globalisation and as a result, something has to be done. Nobody knows what, but the populists have the answer," he said, adding this results in attitudes like keeping out immigrants and also technology.

This technological change is also leading to concerns among exporting countries like India and Vietnam as they are wondering what to do if the demand for their goods and services wanes, Rajan added.

The comments come in wake of a referendum in the UK on whether to stay in the European Union and also within weeks of the ultra-right billionaire Donald Trump becoming the Republican nominee for the US Presidential polls.

On emerging market economies, Rajan said there is a need to "be sensitive to the fact that we are in an integrated world where there are spillover effects to the other".

"Given all the problems we have today, how do you alter global governance? How do we alter global governance to accommodate important countries such as India which are growing stronger, economically by the day and relative to the industrial countries? How we take cognisance of the fact that world is much more integrated and therefore policies of many countries have spillovers," he said.

Rajan also rued that at present, there is no system for coordinating to fight the spillover effects and also the attitudes of some industrial countries.

"There are many actions which are uncoordinated which create spillovers. But even... there are countries looking out and saying we shouldn't be so integrated. And this is the debate, for example Brexit debate that is going on," he said.

Speaking at the same event, former deputy chairman of the erstwhile Planning Commission, Montek Singh Ahluwalia, said India is not facing the problem of inequality in the same way as the industrially developed world.

"They are experiencing increase in inequality in an environment of overall low growth. We are experiencing inequality in an environment of overall faster growth," he explained.

Declining to opine on the crucial question of an extension in Rajan's tenure, Ahluwalia told reporters, "I was delighted when the government at that time appointed him, and I think he has done a fantastic job."

Ahluwalia also welcomed the key takeaways from Prime Minister Narendra Modi's "successful" visit to the US, and added that we need to do more to nurture the partnership further.
Following the recent blunders by Bank of Baroda in freezing the accounts of Manmohan Singh, an Uttar Pradesh farmer, and Subhash R Gupta, a security guard, for being "guarantors" for Vijay Mallyas loan, it has become quite evident that there are hardly any strict guidelines and procedures that are taken into account while accepting the guarantee of a person. And if at all they exist, most of the bankers are unaware about it.

In the last few years, Reserve Bank of India (RBI) circulars, High Court and Supreme Court judgments have time and again fixed the responsibility of a guarantor of a bank loan. In September 2014, through a new rule, the RBI allowed banks to take action against guarantors in case of a wilful default on a loan, even without exhausting the remedies available against the principal debtor.

The 'United Bank of India vs Satyawati Tondon (2010)' and 'Ganga Kishun (2012)' were two important cases in which the apex court fixed the responsibility of the guarantor.

In the Ganga Kishun case, the apex court observed, There can be no dispute to the settled legal proposition that in view of the provisions of Section 128 of the Indian Contract Act, 1872, the liability of the guarantor/ surety is co-extensive with that of the debtor. Therefore, the creditor has a right to obtain a decree against the surety and the principal debtor.

The court further ruled that, The surety has no right to restrain execution of the decree against him until the creditor has exhausted his remedy against the principal debtor for the reason that it is the business of the surety/guarantor to see whether the principal debtor has paid or not

What this meant was that the guarantor of a loan will now share the same liability as that of the defaulter.

While the apex court judgments and the RBI circular went on to dispel any ambiguity over the liability of the guarantor, the fact remains that the question as to who can be loan guarantor is guided by rules that are quite open ended.

Section 11 of Indian Contract Act, 1872 reads, Every person is competent to contract who is of the age of majority according to the law to which he is subject, and who is sound mind and is not disqualified from contracting by any law to which he is subject

As guarantee is also a contract, this provision to a greater extent defines the credential of a loan guarantor. An advocate, who has served as manager (legal) for Allahabad Bank and has handled various cases of loan default, said, There are no specific provisions or prescribed qualifications that can tell as to who can be accepted as bank guarantor. The qualification is mostly based on the Indian Contract Act, 1872.

He adds, Usually the banks accept guarantee of family members and relatives but friends and colleagues can also provide a guarantee. It is expected that banks will ensure that the person standing the guarantee is able to bear that responsibility, and for this, it ought to check the financial position of the guarantor. But then this also hardly happens. Loans are sanctioned on the basis of contacts and other considerations, which is known to everyone.

A manger working at the Bank of Baroda said, Ideally the person standing guarantee should be having a financial worth to bear the burden of the default by the person for whom he is standing guarantee. Or else what is purpose of a guarantee?

He adds, According to Banking Codes and the Standards Board of India, the bank should tell the guarantor about his liability as a guarantor. He also needs to be informed about the time and circumstances under which he may be called upon to discharge the liability. The bank is also required to keep the guarantor informed of the financial position of the borrower, as it changes with time. But sadly this is again rarely followed. Usually family members and relatives are shown as guarantors who never ask about their liabilities."

RBI in its September 2014 circular went on to clear any confusion about the liabilities of a loan guarantor. The circular read, In connection with the guarantors, banks have raised queries regarding inclusion of names of guarantors who are either individuals (not being directors of the company) or non-group corporates in the list of wilful defaulters. It is advised that in terms of Section 128 of the Indian Contract Act 1872, the liability of the surety is co-extensive with that of the principal debtor unless it is otherwise provided by the contract.

Therefore, when a default is made in making repayment by the principal debtor, the banker will be able to proceed against the guarantor/surety even without exhausting the remedies against the principal debtor. As such, where a banker has made a claim on the guarantor on account of the default made by the principal debtor, the liability of the guarantor is immediate.

In case the said guarantor refuses to comply with the demand made by the creditor/banker  despite having sufficient means to make payment of the dues  such a guarantor would also be treated as a wilful defaulter. It is clarified that this would apply only prospectively and not to cases where guarantees were taken prior to this circular. Banks/FIs may ensure that this position is made known to all prospective guarantors at the time of accepting guarantees.

While the new rule is expected to deter people from casually standing in as a guarantor for any one, strict procedures and similarly well-defined rules need to be put into place to ensure that those standing guarantee are in a position to fulfil the liability of a loan guarantor, and that they are doing so willingly.
New Delhi: DNA and other forensic reports, including one on the detailed medical examination of the 52-year-old Danish gangrape victim conducted at Copenhagen at the request of Indian government, on Friday, sealed the fate of five accused in the sensational case of 2014.

The court, which awarded them life imprisonment till their death, relied on these reports and observed that the involvement of the accused was "proved beyond reasonable doubt through the scientific evidence i.e. the DNA report".

It noted that matching of the DNA profile clearly connected these accused with the commission of crime and there was no possibility of any manipulation in medical examination and DNA report prepared in a foreign country.

"Furthermore, it is very important to mention that as per request from Indian government, the victim lady was subjected to detail medical examination at Copenhagen and PW 25, expert from FSL (Rohini), has clearly stated that similarity has been observed in the report prepared at Department of Forensic Medicine, University of Copenhagen and the report prepared by him," Additional Sessions Judge Ramesh Kumar said.

"Judicial notice can be taken that there is no possibility of any manipulation in medical examination and DNA report prepared at foreign country i.e. Copenhagen and no suggestion has been given by the defence in this regard also," the court said.

It said medical examintaion of the victim conducted in Copenhagen also corroborated with the forensic science laboratory (FSL) report here.

"The DNA profile was generated from clothings of the victim which was seized from the spot in the night of incident itself and those DNA profile matched with the DNA profile generated from the samples of accused persons. Thus, it is clear that accused persons are the offenders who committed the offence," the court said in its 69-page judgement.

It observed that the "most vital evidence" to connect all these accused with the commission of crime was the DNA report.

"The DNA is a individual characteristic of each individual and is most important thing for identity of an individual," it said adding the DNA profile generated from the clothes of the victim had matched with the DNA profile generated from the sample of the accused persons.

The court also referred to the testimony of an FSL expert who had deposed as a prosecution witness in the case and said that he had "found similarities" between DNA report prepared by him and the DNA report prepared in Denmark.
New Delhi: A Delhi court on Friday acquitted Maoist ideologue Kobad Ghandy of terror charges, but convicted him of cheating and forgery, and sentenced him to jail for the period which he has already spent in prison, from September 2009.

However, Ghandy will remain in jail as 14 other cases are pending against him in various courts of the country.

Additional Sessions Judge Reetesh Singh acquitted Ghandy, 68, of charges under Section 20 and 38 (member of banned outfit and furthering its activities) of Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA), but convicted him of cheating, forgery and impersonation under provisions of the Indian Penal Code (IPC).

According to the police, Ghandy was involved in setting up a new network of the banned Communist Party of India-Maoist (CPI-Maoist) in Delhi. He was arrested on 20 September, 2009, while undergoing treatment for cancer.

Ghandy was living in Delhi to propagate the activities of the CPI-Maoist and he was helped by co-accused Rajinder Kumar, police said.

It also alleged that Ghandy and Kumar carried out forgery on the basis of which fake voter ID card was issued to Ghandy.

The court observed that the prosecution had relied on the recoveries made from the house where Ghandy and Rajinder Kumar were living, printouts of emails accessed at his instance, information and articles about him downloaded from the internet, newspaper reports as well as contents of the First Information Reports to prove that he was associated with the banned terror outfit.

But the court did not find the material reliable to prosecute Ghandy, and said: "None of the evidences relied upon by the prosecution has been found to be admissible in evidence by the court. The testimonies of the prosecution witnesses suffer from infirmities."

"In the facts and circumstances of this case, there are reasonable doubts on the version of the prosecution on charges under Section 20 and 38 of the UAPA," the court said.

"It is true that prosecution has been able to prove that Kobad Ghandy was residing in Delhi in an assumed name and that he had in his possession forged documents."

Observing that these circumstances do give rise to grave suspicions that Ghandy wanted to avoid himself from being discovered, the court said that "suspicion, however grave it might be, cannot be equated with proof of the said fact".

"The material relied upon by the prosecution to prove the membership and association of Kobad Ghandy with the said banned organisations is not reliable and admissible in evidence," the court said.

It said the "gap between using fake identities and membership of the said banned organisations cannot be filled on the basis of suspicion".

Ghandy's defence counsel Bhavook Chauhan told court that his client has faced trial in this case for almost seven years and sought leniency.

The court observed that Ghandy has remained in jail for almost six years and six months and imposed on him a term of imprisonment already undergone by him and fine of Rs 10,000.

The court also convicted his associate, co-accused Rajinder Kumar, of charges dealing with cheating but acquitted him of possessing forged document.

Kumar, arrested on 19 March, 2010, was also sentenced with the jail term already undergone by him and fine of Rs 10,000.

Kumar will also remain in jail as he is facing trial in a separate case in a Kanpur court.

Ghandy and Kumar are convicted under Sections 120B (criminal conspiracy) 468 (Forgery for purpose of cheating) as well as for cheating. Ghandy was convicted under sections for possessing forged document.

The court found that Kumar had forged the signature of one Raman Sharma on electricity bills which were used for inclusion of the fake names of Dilip Patel and Sameer Atmaj Joshi in the electoral roll and issuance of Electoral Photo Identity Card (EPIC) cards in the name of Patel and Joshi with the photographs of Ghandy and Kumar respectively. The association of Ghandy and Kumar was also proved by eye-witnesses, the court said.

Ghandy was also proved to be residing in Delhi and receiving treatment under the assumed name of Dilip Patel.
New Delhi: Four persons have been arrested for allegedly hatching a plan to kill gangster Chhota Rajan, presently lodged in Tihar jail, at the behest of his arch rival and fugitive don Dawood Ibrahim's confidant Chhota Shakeel.

The four alleged contract killers, identified as Robinson, Junaid, Yunus and Manish, were arrested on 3 June following which they were sent to police remand and interrogated for five days.

Later, they were produced in a court which sent them to judicial custody, a senior police official said on Friday.

"Investigation is underway," Special Commissioner of Police (Special Cell) Arvind Deep said.

Delhi Police's Special Cell zeroed down on the four through telephone intercepts. The accused were in constant touch with Shakeel, police claimed.

Once identified, the four were picked up from their residences in Rohini in Outer Delhi, Seelampur in northeast Delhi, Ghaziabad and Noida, the official said.

Police also claimed that they have recovered a pistol and live cartridges from possession of one of the accused.

They had allegedly planned to eliminate Rajan while the don was being taken to court for hearing.

The four accused are also lodged in Tihar jail, where Rajan is in a high-security ward, the official added.

Rajan (55), who was on the run for around 27 years, was arrested from Bali in Indonesia, based on a tip-off from Australian Federal Police, and brought to India in November last year.
Mumbai: Senior BJP leader Eknath Khadse, who stepped down recently as Revenue Minister following a string of allegations, on Friday made a futile bid to meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi, National Security Advisor Ajit Doval as well as senior party leaders in New Delhi.

Khadse is also facing a probe by ATS in connection with his mobile number purportedly figuring in the call records of the landline number of underworld don Dawood Ibrahim's residence in Karachi.

However, barring Union Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari, other senior party leaders declined the audience with the heavyweight politician from North Maharashtra who went to Delhi on Friday with the documents to present his case before the party leadership.

A Maharashtra BJP leader said here that Khadse tried to meet Modi who has returned from his five-nation tour, but without success.

"The party has already begun to groom Khadse's arch rival in Jalgaon district and state Water Resources Minister Girish Mahajan to head the party in the district," he said.

BJP is more concerned now to ensure the party's victory in upcoming elections to Zill Parishad, Municipal Councils and Panchayat Samitis in Jalgaon district.

The party has a sizable support among the dominant Leva Patil community in Chopda, Yaval, Faizpur, Savda and Raver municipal councils, in Jalgaon Zilla Parishad and across panchayat samitis in the region.

According to the BJP leader, the major worry for the saffron party is the clout enjoyed by Khadse in the region which was reflected in the recent move by 14 corporators from Jalgaon Municipal Corporation who threatened to resign in protest against Khadse's unceremonious exit as minister.

"In order to replace Khadse, a OBC leader from the region, we have directed Mahajan to be proactive in the party matters in Jalgaon district," he said.

The first indication that Mahajan is being directed to fill the vacuum in Khadse's absence came early this week when he was dispatched to state BJP headquarters near Mantralaya to deal with a motley group of Khadse's supporters who had come to protest against their leader's ouster.

Khadse resigned last week, days after Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis submitted a detailed report to BJP president Amit Shah on the controversies surrounding the minister and also met Modi in the national capital.

Earlier, he had deputed his daughter-in-law and BJP MP from Raver, Raksha Khadse who had met Modi to argue the case on his behalf.
Bengaluru: A former senior woman police officer, who resigned her post over alleged inteference in her work by a district-in-charge minister, on Friday claimed her life was under threat.

The claim by Anupama Shenoy, who was Deputy Superintendent of Police of Kudligi sub-division, Ballari District, came a day after Karnataka government accepted her resignation and she surfaced after remaining incommunicado for several days.

"There is a threat to my life," Shenoy said but did not elaborate.

Shenoy was reportedly at loggerheads with Labour Minister PT Parameshwar Naik, also the district in-charge minister, and had tendered her resignation abruptly on 4 June and was untraceable since then.

Replying to a query, Shenoy said she will be releasing a CD and audio before the media in Bengaluru.

As Shenoy had remained elusive, police had set up a special team to track her down. Her alleged posts on Facebook levelling accusations against Naik had created a storm.

Asked about her Facebook posts, she has maintained that she did not know about Facebook and it might have been hacked also.

Before she surfaced, Ballari SP had also deputed an officer to go to her hometown Udupi to contact Shenoy and her family. Shenoy had yesterday refused to meet Kudligi in-charge Deputy SP RS Patil, who went to her official quarters.

Following protests by a group of people against her for taking three persons into preventive detention, Shenoy left the office on 4 June after handing over her resignation letter to subordinate officers, instructing them to give it to the Superintendent of Police.

Officials had said Shenoy was acting on a complaint by Dalit activists against the extension of a liquor shop that was blocking the way to Ambedkar Bhavan nearby.

Naik has said he has nothing to do with the officer's resignation and expressed doubts about the veracity of the Facebook account and its user. In January, Shenoy was transferred allegedly at the behest of Naik for putting his call on hold, with the incident triggering a storm.

A video footage purportedly showing Naik making a boastful claim about shunting out Shenoy had also gone viral later.
Ahmedabad: Gujarat Chief Minister Anandiben Patel Thursday broke down when a young girl spelt out agony of unborn girl children to highlight issue of female foeticide at a function in the Kheda district.

Patel had gone to the Harej primary school to enrol students as a part of annual school enrolment drive of the Gujarat government.

During the function, a class nine student Ambika Gohel, spelt out agony of unborn girl children, who are killed in the womb of their mothers, as a part of rampant practice of female foeticide, resulting in skewed sex ratio across many states of the country.

Ambika read out a letter from an unborn girl child to her mother requesting to allow her to take birth in the world.

The heart touching presentation of the pain of meeting death, without even being allowed to born, moved one and all and even Ambika started crying.

The 74-year-old first woman chief minister of Gujarat, who is considered to be a strict task master, could not prevent tears rolling down her eyes.

After Ambika, read out the letter, Anandiben hugged the girl as both of them were seen crying.

Patel was later seen wiping her tears with a napkin.

She later told the villages who had gathered for the function that little village girls have immense talent and they can move the large audience with their elocution power.

"Parents should not discriminate between son and daughter and allow daughters to study," she said.

According to the Chief Minister, her government has taken elaborate steps to curb female foeticide from the state.

Patel enrolled 86 students to the primary school of the village on Thursday.
The White House(WASHINGTON)  President Barack Obama has approved broader authorities for the U.S. military in Afghanistan that will on occasion, allow American forces to accompany conventional Afghan troops and possibly allow airstrikes in support of Afghan troops to help them seize a battlefield advantage.



A senior Defense official says the move will allow the U.S. military to proactively help the Afghan military in its fight against a resurgent Taliban.



"The President has approved providing additional flexibility to our forces already deployed in Afghanistan to carry out our current strategy," the senior Defense official told ABC News. "These new, limited authorities are modifications of our ongoing Train, Advise, and Assist mission that we believe will allow us to better support the Afghan National Defense Security Forces, maintain our counterterrorism mission, and protect our forces."



The official stressed, "This is not a blanket order to target the Taliban."



According to the official, the broader authorities will allow U.S. military commanders "to maximize the use and effectiveness of our troops supporting the Afghan forces in those select instances in which their engagement can enable strategic effects on the battlefield."



Under the new authorities, U.S. forces will be able to "proactively support Afghan conventional forces" with more firepower, "especially through close air support" and by accompanying and advising Afghan conventional forces, said the official.



Most of the 9,800 U.S. military forces in Afghanistan are serving in a training mission known as "Resolute Support" that for the most part is conducted on large bases. About 1,000 of those forces are in Afghanistan for a counterterrorism mission known as "Freedom's Sentinel" that targets al Qaeda and ISIS-affiliated forces in Afghanistan.



General John Nicholson, the top U.S. military commander in Afghanistan, will now be allowed to determine when American forces should advise and assist conventional Afghan Army units, something that until now had only been allowed for American special operations forces working with Afghan special operations forces.



The current airstrike authorities in Afghanistan do not allow airstrikes to strike Taliban forces just because they are members of the Taliban.



Airstrikes could only be used in self-defense in what are known as "in extremis" situations when Afghan forces are about to be overrun or if there is an imminent danger to U.S. and Afghan forces and for counterterrorism missions. The rules were put in place after the U.S. and NATO ended their combat missions in Afghanistan and transitioned to a training mission.



Now close air support for Afghan troops will be possible on specific occasions that might provide an opportunity for them to seize a strategic advantage on the battlefield.



The official called the new authorities "a doubling down on what has produced results" in the parallel "Freedom's Sentinel" mission in Afghanistan.



Copyright  2016, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.
Lucknow: India is the fastest growing economy in the world with the country witnessing more investments in past fiscal than China and the United States, Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh said on Friday.

"India is the fastest growing economy in the world. In the past fiscal, the country witnessed more investment (of about USD 51 billion) than China and the US. The day is not far when our country will become an economic superpower.

"There was negativity for Indian economy before Atal Bihari Vajpayee government. In his regime, the growth rate reached 8.4 per cent. In past two years it reached 7.6 per cent from below 6 per cent. In 10 years of UPA regime, there was decline in GDP," he said during a programme at Charbagh railway station in Lucknow.

Terming the Railways as the "best performing sector", Singh said several lakh crores of rupees were invested in it.

"In the days to come, passengers will get more facilities than those available in developed countries," he said.

Expressing the desire of introducing circular trains in his Lok Sabha constituency here, the Union Minister said, "Railways have to decide, if its feasible."

Minister of State for Railways Manoj Sinha said the investment in the sector has grown from Rs 48,000 crore to Rs one lakh crore last year and will be further increased to Rs 1.21 lakh crore.

"The target of the Railways Ministry is to get an investment of Rs 8.5 lakh crore by 2020," he said, adding that projects worth Rs 27,000 crore have been sanctioned for Uttar Pradesh.

On the occasion, RailTel, the telecom arm of the Indian Railway, launched its high speed public wifi service in collaboration with Google.
New Delhi: A day after intelligence officers in Mathura revealed that the Uttar Pradesh government was warned about illegal arms in Jawaharbagh, the BJP said on Friday that the revelation has exposed Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav's claim that no one knew about the explosives inside the park.

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) also reiterated its demand for a CBI inquiry into the Mathura violence which claimed 29 lives, including those of Superintendent of Police (City) Mukul Dwivedi and Sub-Inspector Santosh Yadav.

"The new revelation by the local intelligence unit has exposed Akhilesh Yadav, who claimed that no one knew how many explosives were inside. The unit says that 80 reports were sent to the Uttar Pradesh government in Lucknow but they were ignored," BJP Secretary Srikant Sharma told IANS.

In a sting operation, Inspector Munni Lal Gaur, chief of local intelligence unit in Mathura, revealed that the state's top brass was warned about the dangers posed by the Jawaharbagh squatters, who were members of a cult gang.

"Why did Akhilesh Yadav ignore the intelligence inputs? He has done a crime by sending the police force to Jawaharbagh area without full preparation despite having the intelligence inputs," Sharma said.

The BJP leader also reiterated the party's demand for a CBI probe into the matter.

"Why is Akhilesh Yadav hesitating to hand over the case to the CBI," he asked.

A one-man commission headed by the Allahabad High Court's Justice (retd) Mirza Imtiaz Murtaza has been set up to investigate the circumstances leading to the 2 June violence.

Training his guns at senior state minister Shivpal Yadav, who is also brother of Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav, the BJP leader alleged the state government was trying to shield the perpetrators of the Mathura violence by not handing over the case to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI).
Kochi: A Special Investigation Team (SIT) probing the murder of the Dalit woman in Perumbavoor has secured CCTV footage from a shop in the neighbourhood of her residence to examine whether it captured movements of the suspected killer on the day the law student was murdered.

"We have secured the CCTV camera details from the shop hoping that it might have captured visuals of the suspected killer," a senior police official probing the case said.

The official, who did not wish to be named, downplayed local media reports, which claimed the CCTV footage secured by police showed the suspected killer following the law student in the neighbourhood of her residence, hours ahead of the incident on 28 April.

According to the reports, CCTV evidence secured from the fertiliser depot showed a man wearing a yellow T shirt following a woman, believed to be the victim, who was on her way home after getting down from a bus at Vattolippady near Perumbavoor around 1.30 pm that day.

"It is not sure whether the people found in the footages are related to the incident," the official told PTI when asked about such reports.

Meanwhile, the owner of the fertiliser depot, Shibu, told reporters that the police probing the case took the hard disc of the CCTV footage on Wednesday.

Newly appointed Kerala police chief Loknath Behera, while visiting the house of the 30-year-old woman on Sunday, had said a scientific probe has been launched to nab the culprits involved in the crime.

Noting that the probe into the sensational case was progressing well, he had said it might take some time to nab the criminals.

The case is being investigated by a team headed by ADGP B Sandhya.

The newly sworn-in LDF government in one of its first decisions had appointed the senior woman IPS officer as head of the new team to probe the case.

The Kerala High Court had last week rejected the plea for a CBI probe into the case, noting that the new Special Investigation Team had been set up in the case.

The woman, who hailed from a poor family, was allegedly raped and brutally assaulted using sharp-edged weapons before being murdered at her house on April 28.

The murder was in focus during the May 16 Kerala Assembly poll campaigns with political parties attacking the then UDF regime for "tardy" progress in the investigation and its failure to nab the culprits.
When it comes to expressions of creativity which hold up a mirror to us as a society, there's nothing quite like advertisements. They are, after all, designed to induce a particular actionthat of buying the product in question. It is no surprise then, that in their effort to sell a product, they end up revealing the deepest instincts of their target audience.

The latest advertisement to have generated (richly justified) outrage is by real estate giant Lodha Group. The advertisement for a luxury residential project read, "You worked your way up to rise above the crowds. Not live with them." While real estate groups routinely emphasise 'exclusivity' to their potential customers, this advertisement was a new low for high-end projects.

While this was perhaps remarkable for its pointed and blatant reference to 'the crowds,' other advertisements also strike a similar chord. For example, another project by the same firm, the Lodha group, emphasises that one of its projects features 'Thane's first by-invitation' residences, and that people who buy houses in the project will 'live a life only a handful will have the privilege to enjoy'.

Housing projects exemplify this trend of underlining exclusivity and privilege to potential customers the best. That is perhaps because they address multiple instincts  including security, comfort, ideas of purity and pollution and class consciousness. Gated communities are structured in such a way that they keep the 'underclass' at an arm's length, allowing them inside for the sole purpose of serving the residents of the enclave. Here's an example:

In some cases, housing projects also explicitly aim at keeping out people with certain food choices. For example, a report by The Times of India in 2012 stated that several developers in Chennai were seen to be promoting vegetarian-only apartments.

The fact that these factors formed the basis of a marketing pitch indicated that the company believed that they would work with their target audience.

But class consciousness does not reflect only in terms of the amenities available or the people it ostensibly keeps out. Even names bring with them their own set of biases. For example, in Mumbai, developers are resorting to names like 'New Cuffe Parade' and 'Upper Worli' to increase the market value of their projects, as reported by The Indian Express. For example, Lower Parel is rebranded as Upper Worli, as the former is associated with a working-class mill district.

So, while there has been much criticism of such advertising pitches, they only reflect existing biases and social divisions. In a different contexts, an article in Mint wrote about the controversy following an advertisement by the website Bookmybai.com, which exhorted husbands to 'gift' their wives a maid in the festival season. Pointing out that domestic help indeed are often treated as objects rather than real people, the article said that the website was only 'supplying what people are demanding'.

As yet another insensitive advertisement leads to internet outrage, it is a good time to question the biases which underpin them.
New Delhi: The first batch of women fighter pilots, comprising three cadets, will be inducted in the Indian Air Force on 18 June.

The three women pilots will be commissioned into the fighter stream on 18 June this year after successful completion of the initial training, official sources said. Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar is also expected to attend the event.

Thereafter, they would undergo advanced training for one year and would enter a fighter cockpit by June 2017.

Bhawana Kanth, Mohana Singh and Avani Chaturvedi are the trainees who qualified for the fighter stream after it was thrown open to women in October 2015.

They will go to Bidar in Karnataka in June 2016 for their stage-III training for a year on Hawk advanced jet trainers, before they get to fly supersonic warplanes.

Six female cadets were competing to become fighter pilots after the government, in a landmark move, approved an IAF plan in October to induct them as fighter pilots.

However, only three female trainees were selected for the fighter stream.
New Delhi: Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar will meet with industry representatives on Saturday to carry forward the discussion on strategic partnerships that the government plans to enter with private firms in critical sectors of defence manufacturing.

The meeting will be the first one with a sub-group that has been created to have a more focused discussion on it, sources said.

Former DRDO chief V K Aatre had earlier this year submitted a report to the Defence Ministry recommending

guidelines for selecting domestic private firms for strategic partnership.

However, Indian private defence industry is divided over the issue with some big players batting for it while others pushing to delay it by at least next five years.

Parrikar has already held a round of talks with the industry chambers over the issue.

The feeling among several private industry players is that only the big firms will benefit out of this move.

However, many large firms are not open to the idea since they feel they would be restricted to just specific fields and, therefore, their overall investment and plans will get affected.
New Delhi: Virtually ruling out setting up of a Civil Aviation Authority to replace DGCA, Union Minister Ashok Gajapathi Raju on Friday said that he saw no need to merely rename the regulator.

The UPA government had proposed to replace Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) with Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) having full functional and financial autonomy to give the regulator more teeth.

"What is the need for CAA? What purpose will be served by just changing the name? I do not see any reason (to replace DGCA)," the civil aviation minister said.

Raju, however, admitted there is "opaqueness" in working of DGCA and promised to usher in transparency in the body in the interest of passenger safety and security.

The Minister said an ambitious plan is being worked out to make the DGCA a more "responsive" and "meaningful" body, which had faced a downgrade on safety grounds during the UPA regime.

The DGCA is expected to make completely online 18 major services including granting of licence to pilots, approval of safety procedures and engineering and flight operations this month as part of its e-GCA (e-Governance in Civil Aviation) project.

"We need more transparency in DGCA. Things have to be more transparent and the opaqueness has to go away so as to make things more responsible and responsive," Raju told PTI in an interview.

His comments come at a time when there are increasing threats to aviation security worldwide, particularly after the terror attack on Brussels airport in March.

Questions relating to safety of passengers had come into focus following incidents such as a pilot trying to land an aircraft on a road mistaking it for the runway and another pilot allowing a cabin crew to travel in the cockpit.

Against the backdrop of safety lapses in domestic carriers raising concerns about the effectiveness of DGCA, Raju said safety was very important and no government can ignore it.
The inter-state Lendi irrigation project between Maharashtra and Telangana has been languishing in an unfinished state for the past three decades. The project, once finished, will irrigate 27,000 acres of land falling under Nanded district of Maharashtra and 22,000 acres of land under Nizamabad district in Telangana.

The primary reason why the project, which began in 1987, has been so unusually delayed is due to the prolonged land acquisition, rehabilitation and resettlement of the displaced families.

However, the project-affected farmers of Mukramabad village in Nandeds Mukhed taluka are distressed as they claim that they were unfairly compensated  Rs 8,000-Rs 20,000 per acre as per market rate during the time of acquisition  for their farms as well as houses.

Shivram Hasnal, deputy sarpanch of Ravangaon village, Nanded district, said, This irrigation project has been going on since I was a kid. The compensation paid to us was extremely meagre. Some have been given as little as Rs 12,000 or Rs 20,000 per acre. All we are asking from the state is to pay us the compensation as per the revised land bill. Thats why we are protesting.

As a mark of protest, they have been stalling the ongoing construction of the project since 2012 because their demand of fair compensation as per the revised land acquisition law has not been met by the state.

Hemant Khankare, a member of Gram Panchayat and Lendi Dharan Sangharsh Samiti, says, We are demanding compensation similar to what farmers affected by Gosikhurd National Irrigation project were given. How can the compensation that was given as per the old market rate suffice? Besides, drought has aggravated our problems. The state should resolve this issue at the earliest so that cities like Latur, Osmanabad too would benefit from the water released from this project.

The expenditure of the project has been divided in the ratio of 62:38 for Maharashtra and Telangana respectively of which Telangana has already paid Rs 190 crore. The initial cost of the project was Rs 54.55 crore, which gradually rose to Rs 555 crores in 2009 and has now shot up to Rs 1,400 crore. So far, about Rs 375 crore have been spent on the project.

Interestingly, given the expanse of the project, the backwater from the Lendi project can not only irrigate the talukas like Mukhed, Udgir, Deglur, and Nizambad (Telangana) but also resolve water scarcity issues in major cities Latur and Osmanabad.

Superintendent engineer of the project, Swamy, said: The main issue is that of incomplete rehabilitation. About 3,000 hectares of required land has been acquired and affected people have been compensated as well. Even those who had moved court demanding higher compensation have been paid except the people of Mukramabad village. The payment of Rs 75 crore is pending since the village is considered as the fag end of the project. We are waiting for the states approval.

Many people were obstructing the process of land acquisition which further delayed the project. For the past 15 years, the land has been acquired only on paper; the villagers are still living on the land and are nursing their farms. Besides, we have paid them already. How can they demand more if they are still living on the state-owned land with no obstructions. Its an unreasonable demand, Swamy added.

Suresh Kakani, collector of Nanded district, explained that the vast project has now been divided into two phases. The first phase has seven villages. Out of those, while the rehabilitation of the locals in five villages is almost complete, remaining two villages  Bhendegoan and Hasnaal  which was delayed due to a legal dispute, has now resumed. The first phase is likely to complete in a year or two. Thereafter the work on phase two, which includes seven villages, including Mukramabad, will begin. It will take another couple of years for the entire project to get done, he said.

Citing lack of funds as another hurdle causing the delay, Kakani said, The stalled ongoing construction and lack of timely funding from the state has not only extended the duration but also escalated the cost of the project. Initially the farmers had cooperated with us but later they started protesting. Mukramabad is the last of the 12 villages which will be submerged once the project is complete. Also, in that only 30 percent of the village will fall under submerged area if we consider good flow of water.

When asked about the protest by the farmers over the revised compensation amount, Kakani said, As per the revised land bill, the affected people will get a higher compensation, but this is a bit complex issue because many who have already been compensated as per the old law have not challenged it. If they do so, then certain decisions will have to be made. I dont wish to comment on the demands of compensation given to the affected people under Gosikhurd project, but whatever funding that has been set aside for the rehabilitation of the remainder of the affected people will be done methodically.

Sudhakar Kachkalvar, chief engineer on the Lendi project, stated that out of 14 gates, 10 have been fixed. We still have not secured a place for the rehabilitation of farmers in Mukramabad. The villagers have been compensated for the fields as per the market rate when they were acquired. It will take time as two more villages need to be rehabilitated. However, the farmers are not cooperating.

Earlier in March, after Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao wrote to his Maharashtra counterpart Devendra Fadnavis to speed up the project, an agreement to constitute an inter-state board for joint irrigation projects was signed. Telangana government has kept aside Rs 25,000 crore for irrigation projects in this years budget, while Maharashtra government has allotted Rs 7,800 crore.

Tushar Rathod, BJP MLA from Mukramabad, said, About 20 years ago, the then state government had compensated the people as per the market rate of that year. The compensation amount was obviously less as compared to what it is at present. Since the project was not completed on time, the rehabilitation of the people consequently stalled. We cant give them further compensation as the land has already been acquired and owned by the state. Over the couple of decades, the families have expanded and hence that is making them ask for higher compensation.

We are committed and hopeful that this project will be completed soon. However, lack of funds is causing the delay as well. The revised administrative approval for funds proposed by me is being delayed in Nashik office. We are hoping that once we it gets sanctioned, we will be able to move forward with the project. I have requested Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis to grant some package to these affected families and rehabilitate them soon.

Although 85 percent of the irrigation work has been complete, reaching a middle ground with the affected families has become a challenge for the state. Given the speed, it should not surprise you to see another story written on the same project, in another five-10 years, about its further delay and escalated costs.
Grasse: When Joseph Mul walks through his field of sweet-smelling Provence roses, the raw ingredients of Chanel N5, he follows in the footsteps of his great grandfather who began growing flowers for perfume in 1840.

Mul, 77, is continuing the tradition of one generation instructing the next in the secrets of floral cultivation by preparing to hand over his livelihood to son-in-law, Fabrice Bianchi.

"He was converted the day he married my daughter," said Mul.

"The apprenticeship is done 'in situ' in the fields, it's a permanent exchange between our two generations, a transfer of know-how that allows us to manage the plants," said Bianchi as he picked a Provence rose, also known as a May rose.

"This rose was designed to appeal to the nostrils. Its smell is very balanced and velvety."

It is this rich heritage that the flower growers in the southeast French town of Grasse, including Mul, a well-known figure in the industry, are now pushing to have recognised by the UN's cultural agency, Unesco.

They have been joined in their crusade by France's perfume makers as well as the companies responsible for processing their raw materials.

Grasse, a town of around 50,000 people, has been associated with perfume since the 17th century under Louis XIV when the area's leather makers  there since the Middle Ages  began to create scented oil to fragrance their wares, particularly gloves.

The sun king is rumoured to have used so much that the scent made him ill.

As a result of the demand for floral oils, fields of flowers began to speckle the region.

But a property boom in the 1970s coupled with strong competition from cheaper overseas producers threatened the viability of Grasse's perfume industry.

Despite the headwinds, Grasse has since reasserted its position at the forefront of global perfume manufacturing, hosting famous names like Robertet and Fragonard and employing as many as 3,000 people.

Today perfumes are heavily associated with fashion and celebrities, a trend started by Coco Chanel's N5 in 1921.

Since then perfumes have become a core part of a designer's franchise, with the world's leading luxury company LVMH opening a perfume testing laboratory in Grasse in September.

'Perfume is an idea'

The base will develop the next generation of scents for Dior and Louis Vuitton, helping to secure Grasse's position as a global hub for perfume.

Several other renowned perfumes come directly from factories in and around Grasse using both natural and synthetic ingredients from across the world.

"Such a concentration of know-how doesn't exist anywhere else in the world. It's here that you have to come to perfect a natural product," said Jacques Cavallier-Belletrud, the son and grandson of Grasse perfume makers and now a designer and "nose" for Louis Vuitton.

He has joined the chorus calling for Grasse's centuries of perfume expertise to be added to Unesco's list of "intangible cultural heritage" following France's application in March 2015.

While France officially recognised the region's valuable perfume heritage in 2014, it could take years for the United Nations to do the same.

It is hoped that Grasse's bid will promote traditional oral teaching of perfume making techniques.

"A very colourful language, unique to perfumers, allows us to communicate emotion very quickly. With my father I understand instantly," said Cavallier-Belletrud.

"A perfume is an idea and a collection of emotions that can be shared."

Carole Biancalana, a fourth generation grower of flowers for perfume, said that it is vital that Grasse's heritage be recognised to celebrate its history and secure its future.

"It is important to help label our heritage, to attract young people into the profession, and to pay tribute to past generations," she said.
Patna: Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar on Friday told the parents of Aditya Sachdeva, a student who was allegedly shot dead by the son of a JD-U leader, that justice will be done in the case.

Nitish Kumar gave the assurance when he visited their house in Gaya town where he was attending an official function, an official said.

Rocky Yadav, son of Janata Dal-United leader Manorama Devi, allegedly shot dead Aditya Sachdeva, son of a businessman, on 7 May after the latter overtook his vehicle.

According to police, Rocky has confessed he killed Sachdeva.

He is lodged in the Gaya Central Jail along with his father Bindi Yadav, a politician with a criminal past, Bindi Yadav's bodyguard Rajesh Kumar and a cousin, Teni Yadav. All of them are accused in the murder case.

"Nitish Kumar told the parents that police investigation into the case was on the right track," the official said.

Rocky's mother Manorama Devi is a member of the legislative council of Bihar.
Mumbai: Social media posts portraying the Shiv Sena leadership in poor light have gone viral, apparently put out in response to the Sena's diatribe against BJP, reflecting growing strains in their ties ahead of the Mumbai civic polls due early next year.

The posters, having 'IsupportNaMo' slogan on them, have caricatures and snaps of Sena president Uddhav Thackeray and its spokesperson Sanjay Raut.

One poster mocks Uddhav, saying "the country is not run on the blessings of the father (late Bal Thackeray) and Matoshri" (which in Marathi means mother and is also the name of the Thackeray residence in Mumbai).

Another has photos of Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, Congress leader Digvijay Singh, Raut and Uddhav, describing them as 'birds of a feather'.

So far, no BJP leader or spokesperson has claimed responsibility for the posters, amid reports that it may be the handiwork of BJP's Mumbai unit president Ashish Shelar who has adopted a strident posture against Sena ahead of crucial BMC polls early next year.

Sena spokesperson Raut recently likened the BJP regime at the Centre with the "rule of the Nizam".

Addressing a Sena rally in Aurangabad on Wednesday, Raut had slammed Prime Minister Narendra Modi for not visiting the drought-hit Marathwada region.

"The PM had all the time to campaign in West Bengal and Tamil Nadu. He addressed 35 poll meetings in West Bengal and 40 in Tamil Nadu. However, the PM couldn't find time to tour Marathwada where farmers are dying because of acute water shortage," Raut said.

Maharashtra BJP chief Raosaheb Danve responded to the diatribe, saying his party would give an "appropriate reply" to the Sena.
Srinagar: Article 370 of the Indian Constitution is the "strength" and "honour" for Jammu and Kashmir and the special status would not be threatened by the New Industrial Policy, Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti said on Thursday even as she promised to review the controversial proposal.

She said that the New Industrial Policy, which is being opposed by various parties as well as separatist groups, is completely in tune with the one promulgated by the then Chief Minister Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah in 1975.

"Article 370 is our strength and our honour," Mehbooba said in the Legislative Council about the provision in the Indian Constitution which grants special status to the state.

"Nobody should harbour any misconceptions that there is any threat to J&K's special status by the Industrial Policy," she said while intervening during the reply to a question on New Industrial Policy.

At the same time, the Chief Minister added, "We have decided to review the policy to remove any misconceptions in this regard."

Her announcement to review the policy comes against the backdrop of a controversy over it. Separatist groups have already declared their intent to launch a "campaign" against it.

"We enter this august House (Legislative Council) by swearing by the State Constitution and it is empowering for all irrespective of the party grouping," Mehbooba said.

She said skill development in traditional arts and crafts of the state would be incentivized to keep these treasured crafts alive and create employment avenues for the youth.

Jammu and Kashmir has to capitalize on its competitive advantage especially in traditional arts and crafts for sustained economic growth and arming the local youth with adequate skills will be the key component of this process, the Chief Minister said.

She said the skill-enhancement in heritage arts like shawls, carpets, paper machie, wood carving, Basohli crafts and Ladakhi craftsmanship would be incentivized so that the new generation of the state's youth is motivated to take up these high-value crafts as a means of livelihood and at the same time contribute towards the states economic growth.

"We have to develop localized skill strategies so that the skills supply matches the skills demand. It is not just the supply of skills which needs to be addressed, but also the demand for skills and the utilization of skills in the local workplaces," Mehbooba said.

She said the corporate houses like NHPC and various Cellular Companies operating in Jammu and Kashmir have been asked to adopt at least one ITI or polytechnic to train the local youth in specific trades so that they get employment locally.

The Jammu and Kashmir government has asked the Education Department to start part-time skill development courses in traditional crafts in schools and colleges to attract the youth towards distinct heritage arts of the state, the Chief Minister said.

She said the Skill Development Initiative is still in infancy and a lot needs to be done to draw the desired results from this ambitious programme.

Mehbooba said during the first meeting of the Governing Council on National Skill Development Mission (NSDM) held under the chairmanship of Prime Minister Narendra Modi in New Delhi earlier this month, there was consensus among the participants that skill development has to be area-specific and need-based to make the initiative productive.

"The time has come to change the mindset and uplift the skilled people... In J&K also, we are working out a model of skill development which will be in sync with the local arts and crafts and the market need," she said.

Mehbooba said the government shall have to intervene to ensure adequate promotion and marketing facilities for the heritage arts of J&K which are otherwise facing severe pressure and competition.

"While we train the youth in traditional crafts, we have to also ensure adequate market facilities to ensure good returns for their products," she said.

"We want to partner with the industry to train people, certify them and offer them jobs," she said.
Bhubaneswar: BJP leader Nitin Gadkari on Friday alleged that the BJD government in Odisha is utterly ineffective and accused it of "existing" without pursuing any "goal, policy and programme."

"I cannot understand how such a government exists in Odisha. It is devoid of goals, policies and programmes," the union minister for road transport and highways said while addressing BJP workers in a event to celebrate completion of two years of NDA government at the Centre.

Claiming that the BJD government can "neither see nor move despite having eyes and legs", Gadkari said, "It is really surprising that the party is winning elections despite being utterly ineffective."

While the government does not know what it is doing, people also fail to assess its functioning. Development of the state cannot be possible as long as such a dispensation exists, he claimed.

"Ministers in BJD regime do not know what their officers are doing. People also do not know what the ministers have been doing," Gadkari alleged.

"The situation in Odisha is akin to 'andheri raat mein diya tere hath mein', he quipped while hitting out at the BJD government, which has been in power in the state since 2000.
Delhi police on Friday detained Jawaharlal Nehru University Students Union (JNUSU) President Kanhaiya Kumar at Bihar Bhawan for protesting against the violent crackdown on the Patna Arts College students by Patna Police, reported The Indian Express.



JNUSU President Kanhaiya Kumar and other protesters detained by Delhi Police outside Bihar Bhawan pic.twitter.com/CFp4mqEcZR  ANI (@ANI_news) June 10, 2016

JNUSU President Kanhaiya Kumar and others were protesting against alleged brutality of Bihar Police against Patna arts college students  ANI (@ANI_news) June 10, 2016

Kumar and JNU students were demanding the suspension of Patna Arts College Principal Chandrabhushan Srivastav and the ongoing examinations. They requested that the exams be conducted again.

According to India Today, violent clashes broke out on Friday between the All India Students Federation (AISF) and the JD(U) student wing over the exam date. The AISF wanted the exams to be postponed, while the JD(U) student wing wanted it to be conducted on Friday.

Kumar and other students have been taken to the Chanakya Puri police station, reported NDTV.
Priyanka Gandhi's story appears inspired by events on the 15th day of the Mahabharata.

The story goes that Karna was given a divine weapon by Lord Indra in lieu of his natural armour. Indra told Karna that the weapon would kill the intended victim but can be used just once. Eager to use it only against arch rival Arjuna, Karna preserved it for his decisive battle with the Pandava prince.

But, the entry of Bheema's son Ghatotkacha forced his hand. Since Ghatotkacha seemed set to destroy the entire Kaurava army, Duryodhana pleaded with Karna to use the divine weapon on Bheema's son, saying: ''What will you do with it if Ghatotkacha kills us all? So, let's use it on him and get out of trouble. We will think about Arjuna later."

Thus it became inevitable for Karna to use the divine weapon.

The Congress is faced with a similar fait accompli, a certain demise if it doesn't use the only Brahmastra left in its arsenal. So, it would not be a big surprise if, as reported by CNN-News18, if the Congress pushes Priyanka Gandhi in the electoral battle ahead of the UP polls. If the Congress has to survive, live to fight another day, it has no other option left.

For almost a decade the party believed that somehow Rahul Gandhi will turn out to be the leader every Congressman wants him to be. But Rahul has been a huge disaster. Instead of reviving the electoral fortunes of the Congress, he has chipped away at its foundations, bringing it just a push away from collapse.

The final fatal blow to the party could come as early as next year after the elections in UP. The Congress campaign is faltering in Punjab, where elections are scheduled next. If the party gets demolished in UP, it will find it difficult to get up again. In all likelihood, a humiliation in UP will bury it forever.

The thinking within the Congress earlier was to preserve Priyanka Gandhi for a few more years. A section within the Congress felt that she should enter politics at an opportune time, preferably when there is a strong anti-incumbency sentiment against Narendra Modi's government. But, the wise heads in the Congress seemed to have realised that the current Congress trajectory will take it to extinction much before the countdown to the end of Modi government begins.

According to CNN-News18, the Congress has decided to cross the Rubicon much ahead of schedule. She would not only lead the party campaign in the UP Assembly polls, but may also announce her plans to contest from Amethi in the 2019 elections. There is growing speculation that she would take up a post in the party after the organisation is reshuffled with Rahul as its president.

Only time will tell whether this 'Brahmastra' will work in politics. In the late 90s, when Sonia Gandhi stepped into electoral politics, the Congress remained almost stagnant. Though a lot of hype had surrounded Sonia Gandhi's dramatic appearance, she failed to make any difference to the party's fortunes. Priyanka Gandhi too could disappoint, even turn out worse than her brother.

But, for the Congress, Priyanka Gandhi is indeed an idea whose time has come. Whatever be the outcome of the expected ploy, it will immediately inject new life in the Congress veins. Its workers will get a sense of direction, the party a new face and voters the option of looking at a Rahul-mukt Congress. Comparisons with leaders of other parties can wait, but in a tossup between the Gandhi siblings, Priyanka is the clear winner.

Much of Priyanka's vaunted abilities are untested. Congress workers believe she is charismatic, bellicose and fearless, qualities her brother lacks. But, so far, Priyanka has confined herself to nukkad-meetings in Amethi and Rae Bareilly, the dynasty's backyard. She has neither faced a larger, and a less hospitable crowd, nor been put under rigorous media and public scrutiny. Once she steps out of her backyard, it would become possible for us to evaluate Priyanka realistically, instead of looking at her through a confusing montage of rare photo-ops and sporadic soundbytes.

Then there is her husband to contend with. So far, since she has stayed away from active politics, the intensity of attacks on Robert Vadra's alleged real estate deals have lacked intensity and ferocity. The moment she becomes the face of the Congress by eclipsing Rahul, which is inevitable once she decides to take the plunge, Vadra would become the focus of sustained investigations and attacks. How she deals with these attacks will decide her future.

The Congress is, of course, looking at the caste calculus of UP. For a while, the party's election strategist Prashant Kishor has been thinking of snaring the state's Brahmins back into the party fold. Kishor thinks that once the Brahmins return to the Congress, minority voters would look at the Congress as a much more viable alternative.

With the BJP eager to project Rajnath Singh (Rajput) and the SP and BSP keen on Muslim, Yadav, Dalit votes, Kishor feels there is a case for projecting Congress as a party of Brahmins and Muslims, a combination that had helped it rule the state for several decades till the 90s.

The only worry for the Congress could be this: What if its 'Brahmastra' fails?

Soon after Ghatotkacha was killed by Karna, while the Pandavas were mourning his death, Lord Krishna started dancing on his chariot. Only he was aware he had ensured his side's victory by forcing the enemy to fire its most lethal weapon.

Over to the Mahabharata of 2017.
Friday is the 15th anniversary of the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), founded with grate elan, and in the belief, that instead of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which was talking adversely of Sonia Gandhis Italian origins, it could capitalise it for itself in Maharashtra. Thats why Sharad Pawar, apart from other discomforts in the party, chose to break away.

In his memoirs, On My Terms: From the Grassroot to the Corridors of Power, unfortunately not yet widely read or quoted from, which is a surprise, because he is a man who holds everything very close to his chest, he had written that Mrs Gandhis origins had reached far and deep and would take centre stage in election(s).

It didnt work that way at all, at least in terms of the outcomes at the hustings. His party won 58 Maharashtra Legislative Assembly seats that year, and had to tie up with a Sonia-led Congress to form the government. Even to Pawar, whose electoral politics is tempered with self-created gambles, it was an embarrassment he hid well.

The NCP is now at its lowest in morale  15 years being too small a time span for it to have been humbled to a position where it cannot even have a Leader of Opposition in the state, which forms its main base. That it has a few MLAs and MPs from hither and thither is only of some arithmetical relevance to retain the national tag. It, in fact, has become a family entity, which however, is not unique only to the NCP.

It is another matter that NCP has not defined what nationalist in its name meant, but being anti-Soinia Gandhi, a person of foreign origin, one can draw conclusions, though it does not exactly match the BJPs definition. Now that it has made peace of a kind with Congress, in the sense that it has not totally fallen out with the like-minded secular party, that word and whatever meaning it carries is all right with the other.

When the party was being formed at a rally at Shivaji Park that year, it was by far more impressive than Shiv Sena ever did in its history. Every political party had avoided the grounds for election rallies till then because it was hard to fill; even the Congress had balked later, with Murli Deora counselling the High Command to choose other locations to avoid being compared to the Sena. NCP made bold there and how!

The impression then was that the party had already won the state, and the votes to be cast later would significantly tilt in its way. It took lot of hard work and a tie-up with the Congress to better it to 71 in 2004. Since then, the two parties are in a competitive intimacy at one time and daggers drawn at another. The two cannot do without each other. That also meant weakening of the anti-Sonia Gandhi platform.

So much so, that in 2004, before the Parliamentary elections, Pawar had set his heart on Manmohan Singh becoming the prime minister, which happened. It has never been revealed whether Sonia Gandhis sacrifice of not becoming a prime minister was a part of a poll-pact between NCP and Congress. Chances are, it was. The gung-ho outlook, the can-do spirit that prevailed in 1999 is quite missing now.

Its first state unit president, Chhagan Bhujbal is in jail accused of and investigated for disproportionate assets with his nephew for company, and a son  both lawmakers  under scanner, the mood cannot be positive and it isnt. It also has Pawars nephew, Ajit, who like Bhujbal was a deputy chief minister, and a later party chief, Sunil Tatakare who was also a minister, suspected of some scams in irrigation contracts.

That they are not being investigated despite nearly two years of BJPs rule and its tenuous partnership with Shiv Sena, may have something to do with politics  of BJP keeping its options open in the event that Sena acts up beyond mere fulminations. This delay has not added to the lustre of BJP that has been going to town of wanting to get the country rid of corruption. Nor has it helped NCP breathe, except that the Bhujbals are being shown as examples of what could await others.
Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi had told his party men in the southern state of Kerala three months before the Assembly polls that only the Congress can defeat itself in the state.

The disastrous performance of the party and the United Democratic Front (UDF) it heads in the 16 May elections has proved him right. But many in the party believe that the people responsible for the humiliating defeat include the Gandhi scion himself.

Though political leaders are still not ready to say this openly, the orchestrated attack on Rahul Gandhi's nominee for the party chiefs post, VM Sudheeran, is seen in political circles as a clear indication of their growing frustration against his actions if not his leadership.

Party men do not dare to criticise members of the Gandhi family openly as those who did it in the past suffered for it. Former state minister and AICC member TH Mustafa, who called Rahul a joker in the wake of the setback the party suffered in the last Lok Sabha election, was suspended from party for six years.

Gufran-e-Azam, a former MP from Madhya Pradesh, was expelled from the Congress for questioning Rahuls leadership. Many party leaders in Kerala, especially the youngsters, privately share this view. Though this section is not ready to come out openly, political observers consider that the questions being raised increasingly against his political nominees as an indirect criticism of the Gandhi heir.

They believe that the attack against Sudheeran is being spearheaded by two active groups in the party led by former chief minister Oommen Chandy and opposition leader Ramesh Chennithala may turn out to be a big setback for the party vice-president politically if it culminates into a full-fledged campaign for a change in the party leadership.

While second rung leaders like Thiruvanchoor Radhakrishnan, K Sudhakaran and M M Hassan have already set the process into motion by demanding a total revamp of the party from top to bottom, Chandy has lent them silent support by refusing to accept the post of UDF chairperson.

The former chief minister had earlier refused to take over as the leader of the opposition owning moral responsibility for the poll debacle. Political commentators view Chandys refusal to accept any leadership positions in the party or the coalition as a clear reminder to Sudheeran about his own responsibility in the defeat.

Both the groups are irked by Rahuls continued backing of Sudheeran, who claimed after a meeting with the party vice-president in New Delhi last week that he had got a mandate to overhaul the party structure. The displeasure of the two groups was conveyed to the party high command by Radhakrishnan and Sudhkaran, who represents Chandy and Ramesh respectively.

The duo told the national leaders of the party that the survival of the Congress in Kerala will be difficult as long as Sudheeran continued in the post. Sensing danger, Rahul has summoned the three warring leaders to Delhi on Saturday to sort out the issues.

However, political observers do not see any chance for rapprochement since both the groups have prepared a strong case for the removal of Sudheeran, who was elevated to the top post without the consent of the rival groups.

Rahul had appointed Sudheeran as party chief just before the 2014 Lok Sabha election with the avowed objective of ending groupism in the party, but the two dominant groups in the party have been at loggerheads with him from day one saying that he was trying to create his own group.

Sudheerans critics believe that he tried to create a space for himself in the party, which was sharply divided between two groups, by taking moralistic positions on various issues and by inducting his men into party forums.

The two groups believe that the obstinate stand Sudheeran took on the closure of bars and his open criticism of the government and the ministers for various reasons caused much damage to the UDF in the election.

While the bar closure that later led to phased prohibition did not bring any dividend to UDF in the Assembly polls, the bar bribery scam that rocked the government in its wake caused a lot of damage to its poll prospects. The Communist Party of India (Marxist)-led Left Democratic Front (LDF) reaped the benefit by exposing the political intrigue behind the decision and highlighting the bribery charges leveled by bar owners against two ministers.

The rival groups also consider Sudheerans attempt to question the decisions taken by the government and certain ministers at the fag end of its term and his open opposition to the candidature of three ministers and two sitting MLAs disastrous for the UDF.

Former Excise Minister K Babu, whose candidature was openly opposed by Sudheeran, held him solely responsible for his defeat at Tripunithura, which is considered as a party stronghold in Ernakulam.

How could I expect people to vote for me when the party president himself projected me unwanted, asked Babu, who faced corruption charges in the infamous bar bribery case. Sudheeran open stance came as the most potent weapon for the Left Democratic Front (LDF) not only against Babu but also several other party candidates.

The Sudheeran camp defends itself saying that the responsibility for the election defeat could not be fixed on any particular individual since the campaign was led by a collective leadership comprising himself, Chandy and Ramesh.

Young leaders in the party feel that the party can be revived in the state only if the old guards pave way for new crop of leaders. The million dollar question is whether the Congress high command will be ready for such an experiment in a state like Kerala where the party still has strong roots.
New Delhi: A day after the BJP leaders described Prime Minister Narendra Modi's five-nation tour, including to the United States, as "historic", the opposition Congress on Friday said not a single new idea came out of his US visit.

Congress leader Manish Tewari said the foundation for the India-US relations was laid by the previous Congress-led United Progressive Alliance government when it signed the India-US nuclear deal.

"As far as the India-US relations are concerned, there is no single new idea that came out of this trip," the Congress leader said.

Tewari said the fact that Modi spent only a few hours in Mexico shows a lack of commitment towards Latin American nations.
BJP MLA Vijender Gupta is perhaps prone to 'high drama'. On Friday, Gupta, the Leader of the Opposition in Delhi Assembly, quickly stood up on the bench, amidst stirring scenes inside the assembly.

Gupta, who was not allowed to voice his opinion by the Speaker Ram Niwas Goel during a special session on MPD (Master Plan of Delhi) lost his cool, climbed up the bench, even as other MLAs clamoured for him to sit down. Others, sensing a YouTube clip in the making, began filming the furore. Disinterested others just looked plain amused.

WATCH: BJP's Vijender Gupta stand on a bench to protest against Delhi Govt inside State Assemblyhttps://t.co/fY9FQyEzI0  ANI (@ANI_news) June 10, 2016

Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal was having none of Vijender Gupta's tantrums, who raised the issue of corruption in the Assembly. Kejriwal said, "I will give the fact finding report of the Jal Board, you give me the pension scam report that your wife is involved in."

Reacting on the issue on Times Now, BJP's Nupur Sharma said that Gupta's actions were unbecoming of an MLA, while Congress' Haroon Yusuf said that even as Kejriwal was making a mockery of democracy, there were other ways for Gupta to protest, "he can go sit in the well".

BJP's RP Singh who also appeared on the show backed Gupta saying, "if the speaker turned down your proposal, what else can you do? We stand behind Gupta. the issue of corruption is being raised and he is not allowed to speak."

In 2015. the same Vijender Gupta was thrown out of Delhi Assembly after he entered into an argument with with AAP's women legislators, reported NDTV. Speaker Ram Niwas Goel had initially asked Gupta to leave the House till 4 pm, but when refused to comply, marshals were called in who carried Gupta out forcibly.
Lucknow: With stage set for Saturday's polling for 11 Rajya Sabha seats in Uttar Pradesh, for which an extra candidate is in the fray, leaders of all major parties on Friday took stock of their numbers as the possibility of cross voting loomed large. Atleast 34 first preference votes are needed for the victory of a candidate.

In the 403-member Assembly, SP has 229 MLAs, BSP 80, BJP 41 and Congress 29. The rest belong to small parties or are Independents who hold the key.

Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD), which has eight MLAs, has promised to transfer its votes to Samajwadi Party and Congress.

Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) has 80 MLAs and with 34 first preference votes needed for the victory of a candidate, the party can easily ensure success of its two nominees with 12 votes to spare.

Mayawati has, however, kept the suspense over which way her 12 surplus MLAs will vote in Rajya Sabha biennial polls, saying the results will show the voting pattern.

"Whom we have supported, whom we have not supported, everything will be clear when the results come out," she told reporters on Thursday when asked which way the 12 MLAs will go.

BSP has fielded Satish Chandra Mishra and Ashok Sidharth. BJP has fielded Shiv Pratap Shukla whose victory is certain.

The nomination of social worker Preeti Mahapatra, who forced a contest by jumping in the fray as an Independent, was proposed by 16 BJP MLAs, rebel SP MLAs and some members of smaller parties and Independents.

BJP will be left with seven surplus votes which might go to Mahapatra, who will have to manage a chunk of votes for win.

Ruling Samajwadi Party has fielded seven candidates but its seventh candidate is short of nine first-preference votes.

On the other hand, Congress, which has 29 MLAs, needs five more votes for victory of its candidate and former Union minister Kapil Sibal, who now feels comfortable with RLD's backing.

Rajya Sabha candidates in the fray are  Amar Singh, Beni Prasad Verma, Kuwar Rewati Raman Singh, Vishambhar Prasad Nishad, Sukhram Singh Yadav, Sanjay Seth and Surendra Nagar (all SP), Satish Chandra Mishra and Ashok Sidharth (both BSP), Kapil Sibal (Cong), Shiv Pratap Shukla (BJP) and Preeti Mahapatra (Ind).
Feroze Varun Gandhi may have scored a point or two in various pre-poll surveys, suggesting that he could be the most popular chief ministerial face in the BJP ahead of the 2017 Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections. But, it is unlikely that the party leadership will oblige him, either by projecting him as the leader or by giving him any major campaign assignment. Going by the current trends, that seems to be the situation  at least for now.

The issue has nothing to do with the perceived popularity of Varun, or his ability to deliver, but has more to do with his individualistic outspoken streak and his relations  or lack of it  with the top party leadership, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP president Amit Shah.

The relations are rather strained, if not uncomfortable, and there is some history behind that. Since the run-up to the 2014 parliamentary elections, his recent tours to parts of UP, to him offering relief from his Lok Sabha salary account, to some of his write ups that were not strictly in conformity with the Modi government's policies, and to the latest news and analysis reports based on some pre-poll surveys projecting him as the most popular BJP leader in UP. All these have not gone down well with the party leadership.

"A chief ministerial candidate can never be somebody who shares adversarial relations or who does not enjoy the confidence of the top party leadership," a party leader said.

Varun will be there in Allahabad on Sunday, attending the two-day national executive meet of the BJP. He will be face-to-face with Modi and Shah after a long time, and it remains to be seen if there will be a straight dialogue of any kind between them.

Meanwhile, an unusual exchange on twitter occurred between Varun and Rahul Kanwal, Managing Editor of India Today:

BJP UP state president moves to clip Varun Gandhi's wings. Varun told to inform party before leaving Sultanpur https://t.co/li385MDoFH  Rahul Kanwal (@rahulkanwal) June 9, 2016

https://twitter.com/varungandhi80/status/740776029858455553

The matter ended there.

Varun has also halted his personal relief distribution program for distressed farmers. On all such occasions of the program, a public rally was also organised. These rallies were well attended, but were not in accordance with the party program per se.

It was his personal initiative, and some of these programs were held outside of his parliamentary constituency  Sultanpur, and ostensibly aimed at projecting him as a mass leader, who was rooted to the ground. Some banners and hoardings were also put up, which were not perceived well by the local and central party leadership. One such hoarding took a dig at Smriti Irani.

There were certain complaints that even when he organised his programs outside of his constituency of Sultanpur  which is adjoining Amethi and Raebareli  he does not take the local and central leadership, and the RSS field offices into confidence.

Sources said that an anguished Varun had taken up this issue with the party leadership  that did he need to take prior permission to go to other parts of the state, which in a way was his home state.

He was told that the issue was not about his movement but relating to his official public engagements, where the party needed to be kept in the loop  be duly informed beforehand. The young MP's contention was that he had always kept the party informed about his programs.

Varun had been the youngest BJP national general secretary and held the post till just a year ago. He had also been one of the youngest MP when he was first elected from Pilibhit in 2009.

The party does not want him to lose his cool. It wants to avoid any uncomfortable situation  the likes of which it saw in Bihar, where leaders like Shatrughan Sinha had openly turned against the leadership. Unlike Shatrughan, Varun does not seem to be on any confrontational path with the leadership. But an interesting intra-party situation is certainly developing in the poll bound UP, and is evoking a great deal of curiosity.

Officially, the BJP national executive meet in Allahabad is not really aimed at the upcoming UP Assembly elections. But the situation on the ground clearly states otherwise. It's true that the two-day meet of the highest policy making body  comprising of around 200 members including special invitees  would discuss an array of issues of national importance and what the party should do in other states, as well as a thanksgiving for performing exceedingly well in Assam and garnering a good percentage of votes in West Bengal, but the issue of leadership in UP is likely to be at the forefront.

On Tuesday, when Narendra Modi will hold a public rally in Allahabad, following the conclusion of the national executive meeting, there could be clear indications to suggest that Rajnath Singh could be the face of BJP in the UP polls. Last month Firstpost had published as to how Singh was already being projected as the man to lead the campaign.
New Delhi: Union minister M Venkaiah Naidu met Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who returned home on Friday after a five-nation tour, and briefed him about the drought situation and monsoon, among other issues.

"Met Prime Minister at his office. PM reviewed the progress made w.r.t #VikasParv...Shared experiences...PM enquired about drought situation, monsoon and Swachh Bharat... Briefed PM about the situation," Naidu said in a series of tweets.

He said after his five-nation tour in six days and 40 meetings, Modi never looked tired and was working as usual.

"5 Countries, 6 Days, 40 Meetings, PM is looking relaxed... Working as usual.. Never tired... Great energy," Naidu said in another tweet.

Modi returned home early this morning after a tour of the Afghanistan, Qatar, Switzerland, the US and Mexico.
Late on Thursday, a 40-year-old Indian woman, hailing from Kolkata, was abducted in Afghanistan's Kabul, reports said. According to a report by CNN-News 18, the woman was identified as Judith D'Souza and the report added that she was working as a senior technical advisor for an NGO Aga Khan Development Network.

"She was abducted around 10:40 pm on Thursday from the Taimani area of Kabul," CNN-News18 reported.

However, NewsX report said that the abduction took place close to Qala-e-Fatullah, an area of Kabul where many such incidents have taken place in the past. No group has come forward to claim responsibility for the abduction yet.

The Indian authorities are in touch with the Afghan government and are trying to secure an early release of the woman. The authorities also got in touch with the Judith's family. Government sources claimed that all efforts are being made to ensure safe and early release of the woman.

"Our Embassy is in touch with senior Afghan authorities and the government is in touch with her family in Kolkata too. All efforts are being made by Afghan authorities to secure her early release", Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) officials were reported saying.

Responding to the issue, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj tweeted

I have spoken to the sister of Judith D' Souza. We will spare no efforts to rescue her. @VohraManpreet  Sushma Swaraj (@SushmaSwaraj) June 10, 2016

Given the volatile situation and a spate in terrorist activities in Afghanistan, in May this year the Indian Embassy had alerted Indians living in the country to be careful. The notice was also issued for those travelling to Afghanistan.

"All Indians residing in Afghanistan and Indian travellers to Afghanistan are advised that the security situation in Afghanistan remains highly volatile. Terrorist attacks have taken place in many parts of the country against a variety of targets including foreigners and are expected to continue. There is also the risk of kidnapping and hostage taking throughout the Afghanistan, the statement had said.

The Kolkata-based family of Judith D'Souza, a woman development worker abducted in Kabul has expressed the hope that India and Afghanistan will act soon to have her released.

"It happened in a different country. The government of that country should take steps. She liked the place as she said there was a lot of work to be done," her sister Agnes D'Souza told the media in Kolkata. "But if such a thing happens, who would want to go back. I am asking every channel to do their part. The government of India must do something and get my sister back. I want her back," she added.

She said Judith was scheduled to return home Wednesday next and had rung up two days ago. "She did not express any apprehension," she said. Agnes said, "We had asked her (Judith) not to go there but she did not listen."

Asked about Taliban involvement in the crime, she said, "I don't know." Judith's family came to know about the development at around 1.30 am on Friday from the Indian embassy in Kabul.

"We are waiting for more information and then we will act accordingly," said the sister. "I tried the embassy (in Kabul) but it is closed as it is Friday. People in Delhi are trying on our behalf to contact the authorities." Judith never spoke about any danger to her, the sister said.

"She has been abroad before but this is the first time this has happened," Agnes D'Souza said.

The 40-year-old Judith, a gender specialist, was working with an NGO in Kabul for a year on issues of women and child development.



The woman's father D D'Souza said in Kolkata that the family received information that three persons  Judith, a security guard and the driver of the vehicle, were abducted. "I want my daughter back," said a sobbing D'Souza. "She said she was safe. We had long conversations," he added.

"External Affairs minister Sushma Swaraj rang up and spoke to me and assured that the government is making all-out efforts to bring her back," Judith's sister Agnes D'Souza told PTI.

Reponding to a tweet by one of the family members of Judith, Swaraj said "She is your sister and India's daughter. We are doing everything to rescue her. Pl take care of your sick father."

A source said the woman was abducted by suspected militants.

Chief Executive of Aga Khan Trust for Culture, India, Ratish Nanda said every effort is being made to secure her safe release.

"On Thursday, 9 June, a staff member of the Aga Khan Foundation was abducted. An investigation by the authorities has been launched, in conjunction with security officials and various partners. Every effort is being made to secure the safe release of the staff member," he said in a statement in New Delhi.

The Aga Khan Foundation is an agency of the Aga Khan Development Network and has been working on restoration projects in the war-ravaged country.

"It will continue to work with local communities, the Government of Afghanistan and those in need to enhance the development of the country," said Nanda.

With inputs from agencies
Mumbai: In a sarcastic take on Prime Minister Narendra Modi's bonhomie with Barack Obama, key BJP ally Shiv Sena on Friday wondered if the US President will shift to India when his term gets over.

The Sena also slammed the US for pursuing a "dual policy" towards India and Pakistan.

"US President has become a good friend of PM Modi. Their relationship is so deep that we wonder if the Obama family will shift to Surat, Rajkot, Porbandar, Manali, Mahabaleshwar or Delhi post his retirement. No other Indian PM would have got so much love from an American President in the past," the Sena said in an editorial in party mouthpiece Saamana.

Obama's presidency is set to end on 20 January, 2017.

The Sena said that Modi thanking America for standing by India in its times of need is only an example of his courteous nature.

"But, it is the same America, which has not stopped its policy of helping Pakistan financially or providing them with arms and ammunition. On one hand, America helps India fight terrorism and on the other, sells F-16 fighter jets to the terrorist nation. This policy of America is dangerous," it said.

Noting that it was true that America has warned Pakistan to take action against the perpetrators of terror at Pathankot IAF base, Sena sought to know who will take action against the terrorists.

"America enters a country where its enemy (apparently referring to Osama Bin Laden) is hiding and guns him down, but for India, it only gives warnings. This duplicity needs to be understood," the Sena said.

Treating Pathankot attack on par with 26/11, Obama in a clear message asked Pakistan to punish the perpetrators and vowed to stand with India against terror threats emanating from Pakistan-based groups like JeM, LeT and D-company.
United Nations: UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has welcomed Prime Minister Narendra Modi's support for early implementation of the Paris climate agreement during his just-concluded US visit.

Ban said a record-number of UN member states had signed the Paris Agreement on Climate Change in April and now the countries need to bring the agreement into force this year.

"I welcome the announcement two days ago by Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India that he will join this effort," Ban told reporters on Thursday.

Ban said that to help advance the process, he will convene an event during the September high-level week of the General Assembly for countries to deposit their instruments of ratification.

In a joint statement, Modi and US President Barack Obama said that both India and the US recognised the urgency of climate change and share the goal of enabling entry into force of the Paris agreement as early as possible.

Following the announcement, Ban had encouraged all countries to accelerate their domestic processes to join or ratify it.

"The Secretary-General welcomes the domestic steps being undertaken by both countries to join the Paris Agreement as soon as possible, including in 2016, and their collaborative efforts to address climate change," a statement issued by Ban's spokesperson had said.

The Paris Agreement was adopted by all 196 Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change at the UN climate change conference in Paris last December, where all countries agreed to work to limit global temperature rise to well below 2 degrees Celsius, and to strive for 1.5 degrees Celsius.

In April, 175 countries signed the agreement, which according to the UN was by far the largest number of countries ever to sign an international agreement in one single day.

For it to enter into force, 55 countries accounting for 55 per cent of global greenhouse emissions need to implement the accord at the national level.

As of today, 177 parties have signed, and 17 have ratified it.

Ban had said that he is encouraged by the resolve of India and the US to pursue low greenhouse gas emission development strategies and successful outcomes this year to reduce greenhouse gas emissions through the Montreal Protocol, the International Civil Aviation Organisation Assembly, and the G20," the statement added, noting that the joint announcement by India and the US also follows on the heels of the G7 Ise-Shima Leaders' Declaration.

During his three-day visit to Washington at the invitation of Obama, climate change was one of the major topics of discussion between the two leaders.

During the meeting at the White House, Obama and Modi had reiterated their commitment to pursue low greenhouse gas emission development strategies in the pre-2020 period and to develop long-term low greenhouse gas emission development strategies.
Washington: Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders has vowed to prevent Republican Donald Trump from becoming the US president amid concerns about further damage to party unity deriving from his continued stay in the race.

"Needless to say, I am going to do everything in my power, and I will work as hard as I can to make sure Trump does not become president of the US," Xinhua quoted Sanders as saying on Thursday after his meeting with US President Barack Obama.

"It is unbelievable to me ... that the Republican Party would have a candidate for president who in 2016 makes bigotry and discrimination the cornerstone of his campaign," he said.

Meanwhile, Sanders said he already talked with Hillary Clinton after she amassed enough delegates needed to notch up the nomination on Tuesday.

Sanders said he and the former Secretary of State would speak soon about how to "work together" to defeat Trump.

However, Sanders still declined to endorse Clinton at the moment and insisted he would take part in the last nomination contest next week.

As the Democratic primary season was all but over, the notion of party unity had become a crucial topic in the Democratic field.

Despite his mathematical elimination from the race, Sanders had earlier pledged to continue the fight into the national convention in July when party nomination would be formally announced.

However, Sanders later also indicated that he would "assess" his path to victory in the wake of California's primary which was held on Tuesday.

Clinton notched up an easy victory by two-digit lead in California.

Sanders' meeting with Obama in the White House was part of the Vermont senator's busy schedule in Washington on Thursday. He would also meet Democratic leaders in the US Congress and Vice President Joe Biden.

Unlike the prompt rapprochement reached between Clinton and Obama in 2008 primary season, reconciliation this time between Sanders and Clinton could be elusive.

For one thing, Sanders had for long called himself an independent and democratic socialist, and he joined the Democratic Party only last year to get on the ballot. Therefore, his is less committed to party loyalty than was Clinton eight years ago.

Even more daunting a task this time for party establishment to bridge the Clinton and Sanders divide was the anti-establishment sentiment Sanders had stirred up among disheartened Democratic and independent voters in this chaotic primary season.

According to the most recent YouGov poll released on 25 May, half of Sanders' supporters would turn away from Clinton in a matchup between the former Secretary of State and presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump.

At the end of April, YouGov poll found that 63 percent of Sanders' supporters were willing to vote for Clinton.
California Attorney General Kamala Harris, the top vote-getter in the state's U.S. Senate primary, has joined the criticism of a six-month jail sentence given to a former Stanford University swimmer convicted of sexually assaulting an unconscious woman.

Harris, speaking to reporters in the San Francisco Bay area on Wednesday, said she was concerned the "victim's voice was not heard" at the trial.

"It was not respected, and she was not given dignity in the process," said Harris, a Democrat, according to video from a local television station.

Harris, who will face Democratic U.S. Representative Loretta Sanchez in the Nov. 8 Senate election, is the highest-profile elected official in California to question last week's sentence handed down on Brock Turner, 20, by a Santa Clara Superior Court judge. Prosecutors had asked for a six-year prison term.

"When someone is facing a 14-year (maximum sentence), which is what I believe was the exposure in this case, there has got to be extraordinarily mitigating facts to reduce it down to what I believe ended up being six months," Harris said. "And I don't know if the facts actually merit that kind of mitigation."

A probation report submitted to the judge that recommended against sending Turner to prison said "this case, when compared to other crimes of similar nature, may be considered less serious due to the defendant's level of intoxication."

Officials have said the judge, Aaron Persky, has received death threats since imposing the sentence, even as he faces a possible recall effort led by a Stanford law professor.

Joseph Macaluso, a spokesman for the Santa Clara County court, has said Persky is prohibited from commenting on the case because Turner is appealing his conviction. Macaluso could not be reached to comment on Thursday.

The San Jose Mercury News and local broadcaster KPIX-TV reported on Thursday that between 10 and 20 prospective jurors refused to serve this week in an unrelated case being overseen by Persky, citing the judge's sentencing decision in the Turner case.

SEPTEMBER RELEASE

The national uproar over the sentence, fuelled in part by the victim's statement detailing the January 2015 assault in graphic terms and its repercussions on her life, is part of the growing outrage about rape on U.S. college campuses.

Turner is due to be released on Sept. 2 from the Santa Clara County jail, according to Santa Clara County sheriffs spokesman Sergeant James Jensen. He was booked on June 2. Inmates sentenced to county jail in California generally serve 50 percent of their sentences, San Jose, California, criminal attorney Edward Kraus said.

In a Fox News interview on Wednesday, one of the two students who intervened in the assault, Carl-Fredrik Arndt, told host Greta Van Susteren that Turner did not seem drunk.

"I mean, he could run," Arndt said. "He could speak without slurring at all."

Politicians, including U.S. Vice President Joe Biden, and celebrities have joined the outpouring of support for the victim.

(Reporting by Alex Dobuzinskis; in Los Angeles and Amy Tennery in New York; Additional reporting by Suzannah Gonzales in Chicago, Dan Whitcomb in Los Angeles and Curtis Skinner in San Francisco; Editing by Marguerita Choy and Peter Cooney)

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
Hillary Clinton leads Donald Trump by 11 points in the U.S. presidential race, showing little change after she became the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee this week, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Friday.

The online poll, conducted from Monday to Friday, shows 46 percent of likely voters support Clinton while 34.8 percent back Trump. Another 19.2 percent support neither candidate. Their parties hold conventions in July ahead of a Nov. 8 election.

Clinton's lead was nearly the same a week ago, before she had amassed enough convention delegates to win the nomination and before Trump drew criticism from leaders of both parties for questioning the impartiality of a Mexican-American judge.

Trump, 69, enjoyed a bigger boost after becoming the presumptive Republican nominee in May. Having trailed Clinton, 68, for most of the year, Trump briefly erased a double-digit gap and pulled about even with the former secretary of state.

Clinton this week defeated party rival Bernie Sanders, 74, in four of six nominating contests, most notably California and New Jersey, and won the endorsements of President Barack Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and other party leaders.

Trump this week sparred with party leaders and struggled with questions about his now-defunct Trump University. A lawsuit accuses Trump and the for-profit school of defrauding thousands of people, including many who paid as much as $35,000 to learn Trump's real estate strategies.

A wealthy businessman who asserts the lawsuit is politically motivated, Trump said presiding U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel was biased against him because of Trump's plans to build a wall on the border with Mexico. Trump later added that Muslim judges could be biased against him also because of his pledge to temporarily ban Muslims from entering the country.

Trump's comments drew sharp criticism from Republican leaders, including House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. Trump later said he would no longer talk about the judge.

Friday's results had 1,276 respondents and a credibility interval, a measure of accuracy, of 3.2 percentage points.

(Reuters/Ipsos polling results: polling.reuters.com/#!poll/TM651Y15_13/filters/LIKELY:1/type/smallest/dates/20160401-20160610/collapsed/true/spotlight/1)

(Reporting by Chris Kahn; Editing by Howard Goller)

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
BRAZZAVILLE The Republic of Congo said on Thursday a Human Rights Watch report accusing Congolese soldiers of killing 18 people while serving as United Nations and African Union peacekeepers in Central African Republic was "biased."

"I note with regret that the Human Rights Watch report is biased and accusatory," Communication Minister Thierry Moungalla told a news conference. "If I am not mistaken, it doesn't include any indication and (...) it's not even scientific. We don't give credence to this report."

Justice Minister Pierre Mabiala said the government would set up a special commission at the criminal court of Brazzaville to hold a trial shortly.

There will be "in the treatment of this case no miscarriage of justice, no impunity (...) as the report of Human Rights Watch seems to claim gratuitously," he said.

In its report released on Tuesday, Human Rights Watch said Congolese soldiers had tortured to death two anti-balaka leaders in Central African Republic in December 2013, publicly executed another two suspected anti-balaka in February 2014, and beaten two civilians to death in June 2015.

The New York-based rights group also said a mass grave found near a base once occupied by Congolese troops in the town of Boali was found to contain the remains of 12 people identified as having been detained by the peacekeepers on March 24, 2014.

Neither the United Nations nor countries hosting U.N. missions have the authority to prosecute foreign peacekeepers. Punishment is the responsibility of countries contributing troops, but critics claim they often fail to pursue allegations.

(Reporting by Philon Bondenga, Writing by Marine Pennetier, Editing by Toni Reinhold)

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
SAN FRANCISCO The former Stanford University swimmer, whose sentence for sexual assault has been widely condemned as too lenient, spoke of drug and alcohol use before entering college, undermining his claims to a judge that he lacked experience with alcohol, court documents showed on Friday.

Brock Turner, 20, was sentenced by Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge Aaron Persky to six months in county jail after being convicted of sexually assaulting an unconscious woman. Prosecutors had sought a six-year jail term.

In a letter to the judge before his sentencing, Turner said he did not have experience with alcohol. "Coming from a small town in Ohio, I had never really experienced celebrating or partying that involved alcohol," according to court documents.

He said in the letter that when he arrived at Stanford, he was encouraged by older members of his swim team and friends to drink during social situations.

"I wish I had the ability to go back in time and never pick up a drink that night," he said in the letter.

Court officials released numerous text messages sent and received by Turner that referenced buying and using marijuana and drinking alcohol before he entered Stanford, the court records showed.

In June 2014, Turner texted his sister about "raging" the previous night after spending an hour and a half drinking, according to court documents. That April, he discussed pooling money to buy marijuana with a friend, court records showed.

Turner's lawyer, Mike Armstrong, sent a text message to Reuters declining comment on the documents.

Uproar over the sentence was partially fuelled by a letter from Turner's father to the judge that described the assault as "20 minutes of action," and a statement by the victim to the court detailing the January 2015 assault and its repercussions on her life. It is part of growing outrage over sexual assaults on U.S. college campuses.

At a Friday press briefing, when asked if President Barack Obama shared the anger expressed by Vice President Joe Biden in an open letter to the victim, White House spokesman Josh Earnest declined to comment on the case.

But, he said, "It is fair to say that the president feels strongly that every act of sexual assault and sexual violence and rape is wrong and one that deserves a forceful rebuke to make clear to everyone that we have certain principles and we have certain values in our country."

Officials have said Persky has received death threats since imposing the sentence, and he faces a possible recall effort led by a Stanford law professor.

Women's advocacy group UltraViolet said it would deliver on Friday a petition with more than 1 million signatures to the California Commission on Judicial Performance, an independent state agency, calling for Persky's removal from the bench.

USA Swimming, the U.S. national governing body for the sport, said Turner is not a member and would not be eligible in the future given his conviction, USA Swimming spokesman Scott Leightman said in an email. Turner's membership expired at the end of 2014, Leightman said.

USA Swimming prohibits and has zero tolerance for sexual misconduct, Leightman said.

Turner is due to be released on September 2 from the Santa Clara County jail. He was booked on June 2.

(Reporting by Curtis Skinner; Additional reporting by Suzannah Gonzales in Chicago and Doina Chiacu in Washington; Editing by Ben Klayman, Toni Reinhold)

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
Washington: "Delete your account." Hillary Clinton's snarky tweet to her White House rival Donald Trump was among the funniest of the campaign. Almost as funny as it was awkward.

The message by the 68-year-old secretary of state  actually penned by a young staffer, a Clinton aide told AFP  was in response to the latest broadside by Trump, who had commented on how "Obama just endorsed Crooked Hillary".

Social media ate it up, and within 90 minutes the message was retweeted 145,000 times, making it "now the most retweeted tweet of the campaign!" according to Clinton's social media director Alex Wall.

With "Delete your account," Clinton, who has struggled to connect with young voters, embraced the quick-witted dry humor of America's millennials.

But it also triggered ferocious comebacks from her critics over use of a private email account while she served as America's top diplomat  a scandal she has been unable to shake.

Republicans including Trump have savaged her for her judgement, saying she put US national security at risk, and have accused her of deleting key emails that she did not want Americans to know about.

"@HillaryClinton, If anyone knows how to use a delete key, it's you," the chairman of the Republican National Committee, Reince Priebus, in a stinging tweet of his own.

"Like how you deleted all your e-mails?" added House Republican Jeff Duncan.

Clinton turned over some 30,000 emails to State Department officials after she stepped down from the job in 2013.

But she also said she deleted about 30,000 other emails that were of a personal nature and not related to her work as secretary of state.

Here's the tweet:
Washington: US Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton said Senator Elizabeth Warren, a leader of the progressive wing in the Democratic Party, was qualified to be her running mate.

"I think she (Warren) is an incredible public servant, eminently qualified for any role," said Clinton in an interview with US daily Politico, reports Xinhua news agency.

"I look forward to working with her on behalf of not only the campaign and her very effective critique of Trump, but also on the issues that she and I both care about," said Clinton.

Politico reported that when asked if her rival Bernie Sanders had earned a place on the ticket, Clinton disagreed.

"His passion for the issues that he promoted has been good for the Democratic party and for the country," said Clinton.

"I look forward to talking with him when our campaigns can find a time that works with both our schedules."

As the darling of the progressive wing of the party, Warren's endorsement, which was among the most sought-after ones in this Democratic primary season that had so far prioritized progressive agenda, was yet to be granted to any candidate.

However, Warren is scheduled to come off the sidelines and formally endorse Clinton.

US President Barack Obama also formally threw his support behind Clinton for president early on Thursday, declaring that he did not think there's "ever been someone so qualified to hold this office".
San Francisco: With outcry growing against those who stood by a former Stanford University swimmer who sexually assaulted an unconscious woman, a childhood friend and a high school guidance counselor have apologised for writing letters of support urging leniency for Brock Turner.

The case against the one-time Olympic hopeful has gripped the country, with letters to a judge from Turner's family and friends drawing outrage from critics who say they are shifting blame from a 20-year-old man who won't take responsibility for his actions. Meanwhile, a searing message the victim read to Turner at his sentencing has been called a courageous account of the effect the assault has had on her life.

Taking into account more than three dozen letters from character witnesses and a recommendation from the county probation department, Santa Clara County Judge Aaron Persky sentenced Turner to six months in jail and three years' probation for attacking the intoxicated 23-year-old woman behind a campus dumpster in January 2015. He tried to flee, but students tackled and pinned him down until police arrived.

The judge cited Turner's clean criminal record and the effect the conviction will have on his life.

The term triggered criticism that a star athlete from a privileged background had gotten special treatment. Prosecutors had asked for six years in prison.

Turner will only serve three months behind bars, with his expected release date listed as Sept. 2, according to online inmate records. County jail inmates serve 50 per cent of their sentences if they keep a clean disciplinary record.

Calls to the county Department of Correction weren't immediately returned Thursday.

Defendants can solicit letters of support from family, friends and others for judges to consider before sentencing. One of them came from Kelly Owens , a guidance counselor at Oakwood High School in Dayton, Ohio, where Turner attended.

She had told the court that her former student was "absolutely undeserving of the outcome" of a jury trial that resulted in his conviction of three felony counts of sexual assault.

"I plead with you to consider the good things  the positive contributions  he can make to his community if given a chance to reclaim his life," Owens wrote.

She regrets writing a letter to the judge and acknowledged it was a mistake, her school district said in a prepared statement Wednesday.

"Of course he should be held accountable," Oakwood City School District Superintendent Kyle Ramey quotes Owens as saying. "I am truly sorry for the additional pain my letter has caused."

Ramey declined to comment beyond his statement or make Owens available for an interview.

The letters have come from all sides.

Turner's father also wrote a letter to the judge defending his son and echoing the dozens of other letters from friends and mentors.

"His life will never be the one that he dreamed about and worked so hard to achieve. That is a steep price to pay for 20 minutes of action out of his 20 plus years of his life," wrote his father, Dan A. Turner. "The fact that he now has to register as a sexual offender for the rest of his life forever alters where he can live, visit, work, and how he will be able to interact with people and organisations."

Leslie Rasmussen, a childhood friend of Turner's, also faced blowback for writing a supportive letter. She had blamed campus drinking culture and political correctness for his drunken life choices.

"I was not there that night. I had no right to make any assumptions about the situation," according to a posting Wednesday on a Facebook page that appears to be Rasmussen's. "Most importantly, I did not acknowledge strongly enough the severity of Brock's crime and the suffering and pain that his victim endured, and for that lack of acknowledgement, I am deeply sorry."

Rasmussen didn't respond to messages sent via Facebook. A listed phone number appears to be disconnected.

People angry about her letter took to social media to demand Rasmussen's indie rock band Good English be dumped from at least four shows that included some Brooklyn clubs hosting a small music festival.

The graphic message the victim read in court gained widespread attention as she described her anger and emptiness. Vice President Joe Biden released an open letter to the woman Thursday.

"I do not know your name  but your words are forever seared on my soul," wrote Biden, who penned the 1994 Violence Against Women Act and is involved in the White House's "It's On Us" campaign against campus sexual assault. "Words that should be required reading for men and women of all ages. Words that I wish with all of my heart you never had to write."
Washington: In a strong message, the US has asked Pakistan to ensure that its territory is not used for planning attacks in India and to go after all terror groups operating from its soil, after Prime Minister Narendra Modi said terrorism is being "incubated in India's neighbourhood".

"This is one of the steps that the US is encouraging Pakistan to do for the improvement of its relations with India," a State Department spokesperson said.

"We believe that Pakistan and India stand to benefit from practical cooperation and encourage direct dialogue aimed at increasing cooperation and reducing tensions," Mark Toner told reporters on Thursday.

"And that includes steps by Pakistan to ensure that its territory is not used to plan attacks in India and that Pakistan takes steps to address or to go after, I think, all the terrorist groups that are currently using its territory."

"That continues to be an area of collaboration and cooperation that we pursue with Pakistan is its counter-terrorism operations," he said in response to a question.

Responding to a question, Toner said Pakistan was one of the issues discussed between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and US President Barack Obama on Tuesday.

"Certainly that was one of the discussions, frankly, that was raised at the  or one of the issues, frankly, that was raised in discussions with Prime Minister Modi. They talked about a wide range of regional issues, in fact," he said.

Toner also said the US's bilateral relations with India and Pakistan are separate and stand on their own merits.

"Our bilateral relations with India and Pakistan are separate and stand on their own merits, and so I don't think we  it's not prudent for us to view our security cooperation in the region in kind of a zero-sum game  or zero-sum terms, rather.

"I think it's important for the countries of the region that they all have constructive security relationships with each other. And that's Pakistan, that's India, and it's also Afghanistan," Toner said.

In his address to the joint sitting of US Congress on Thursday, Modi had said terrorism has to be fought with "one voice".

Underscoring that both India and the US share the vision of peace and prosperity of the world, the Prime Minister said "globally, terrorism remains the biggest threat" and it must be fought at many levels" as the traditional tools of military, intelligence or diplomacy alone would not be able to win defeat it.

"In the territory stretching from West of India's border to Africa, it may go by different names, from Laskhar-e-Taiba, to Taliban to Islamic State. But, it's philosophy is common: of hate, murder and violence," Modi said.

"Although its shadow is spreading across the world, it is incubated in India's neighbourhood," he said an apparent reference to Pakistan.

He said those who believe in humanity must come together to fight against terrorism as one and speak against this menace in one voice.
Washington: The US has asked Pakistan to ensure that its territory is not used for planning attacks in India, after Prime Minister Narendra Modi said terrorism is being "incubated in India's neighbourhood".

"This is one of the steps that the US is encouraging Pakistan to do for the improvement of its relations with India," a State Department spokesman said on Thursday.

"We believe that Pakistan and India stand to benefit from practical cooperation and encourage direct dialogue aimed at increasing cooperation and reducing tensions," State Department Deputy Spokesman Mark Toner said.

"And that includes steps by Pakistan to ensure that its territory is not used to plan attacks in India and that Pakistan takes steps to address or to go after, I think, all the terrorist groups that are currently using its territory," Toner said.

"That continues to be an area of collaboration and cooperation that we pursue with Pakistan is its counterterrorism operations," he said in response to a question.

Responding to a question, Toner said Pakistan was one of the issues discussed between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and US President Barack Obama.

"Certainly that was one of the discussions, frankly, that was raised at the  or one of the issues, frankly, that was raised in discussions with Prime Minister Modi. They talked about a wide range of regional issues, in fact," he said.

"Our bilateral relations with India and Pakistan are separate and stand on their own merits, and so I don't think we  it's not prudent for us to view our security cooperation in the region in kind of a zero-sum game  or zero-sum terms, rather.

"I think it's important for the countries of the region that they all have constructive security relationships with each other. And that's Pakistan, that's India, and it's also Afghanistan," Toner said.

In his address to the joint sitting of US Congress here, Modi had said terrorism has to be fought with "one voice" as he commended the American Parliament for sending out a clear message by refusing to "reward" those who preach and practice terrorism for political gains, an apparent reference to the blocking of sale of 8 F-16 fighter jets to Pakistan.
Islamabad: A high-level US delegation arrived in Pakistan on Friday amid tensions in bilateral ties after a recent American drone strike in Balochistan killed Afghan Taliban chief Mullah Mansour and strong concerns over growing Indo-US strategic cooperation.

Senior Director for Afghanistan and Pakistan at the US National Security Council Peter Lavoy and Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan Richard Olson are part of the delegation which will hold talks with civilian and military leaders, according to Pakistani officials.

"The agenda of the talks is open and several issues will be discussed including drone strikes, strategic and defence matters and reconciliation process in Afghanistan," an official from the Foreign Office said.

Pak-US ties are sliding down the hill due to difference over handling of peace issue in Afghanistan and US' growing defence tie with India, especially a blanket support for India's candidacy in the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG).

According to Prime Minister's Advisor on Foreign Affairs, Sartaj Aziz, growing US-India ties were creating strategic instability as Washington's support for Indian membership for the 48-nation NSG was discriminatory.

Pakistan has strongly protested the 21 May drone attack which killed Mansour.

"The recent drone attack in Balochistan in which the Taliban leader Mullah Akhtar Mansour was killed, has breached our sovereignty, caused a serious setback to the peace efforts and intensified hostilities in Afghanistan. The drone strike must, therefore, be condemned by all stakeholders," Sartaj Aziz said on Thursday.

Pakistan is also unhappy over the scuttling of F-16 fighter jet deal by US Congress which blocked funding to it citing Pakistan's non-impressive actions against Haqqani network. But Islamabad believes that the Congress was prompted to act due to Indian lobbying and pressure.

There are differences over nuclear programme of Pakistan which the latter considers is key to the 'credible minimum deterrence'.
New York: A 21-year old Indian-origin man has been sentenced to 15 months in prison by a US court for dealing firearms without a license.

Sharma Sukdeo, was indicted in March last year on one count of dealing firearms without a license and plead guilty in December.

Senior United States District Judge Lawrence Kahn also imposed a USD 3,000 fine and a 2-year term of supervised release, to begin after Sukdeo's release from prison.

According to the plea agreement, between September and October 2014, Sukdeo sold three firearms and ammunition to a person working with the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Each sale was completed at a convenience store in Schenectady here.

As part of his plea agreement, Sukdeo admitted that he sold these firearms for profit and that he made the sales despite not being licensed to do so by the federal government or any state.
Vienna: India's membership of the Nuclear Suppliers Group is expected to be deliberated upon by the atomic trading club at its plenary later this month in Seoul as a meeting in Vienna on India's bid remained inconclusive.

Though the US was strongly pushing India's case and most member countries supported it, it was China which opposed it arguing that the NSG should not relax specific criteria for new applicants. The NSG controls access to sensitive nuclear technology.

A number of countries, which were initially opposed to India's bid on the ground that it was yet to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), eased their positions and were ready to work out a compromise. However, China stuck to its position.

In the meeting, China did not openly oppose India's membership directly but linked it to signing of NPT.

The NSG works under the principle of unanimity and even one country's vote against India will scuttle India's bid.

Besides China, the member countries in the 48-nation group which were opposed to India's membership were New

Zealand, Ireland, Turkey, South Africa and Austria.

Sources here said chair of the NSG has taken note of views expressed by member countries and will list the matter

for further discussion at NSG plenary scheduled to be held in Seoul on 24 June.

It is understood India was hopeful of getting support from China as it had supported India's case in 2008 when India got a waiver from the NSG to allow US' nuclear trade with India.

India has asserted that being a signatory to the NPT was not essential for joining the NSG as there has been a

precedent in this regard, citing the case of France.

Mexico yesterday backed India's NSG bid during the visit of Prime Minister Narendra Modi there. The Mexican support

followed that of the US and Switzerland. Japan too has expressed its support for India's inclusion in the grouping.

The NSG looks after critical issues relating to nuclear sector and its members are allowed to trade in and export

nuclear technology. Membership of the grouping will help India significantly expand its atomic energy sector.

The US has been pushing for India's membership.

Ahead of the meeting here, US Secretary of State John Kerry had written a letter to the NSG member countries which

are not supportive of India's bid, saying they should "agree not to block consensus on Indian admission".

A joint statement issued after talks between Modi and Obama said the US called on NSG participating governments to

support India's application when it comes up at the NSG Plenary later this month.

PTI
Tokyo: Japan's first "naked restaurant" opens in Tokyo next month with draconian rules of entry  podgy prospective diners will be weighed and ejected if found to be too fat.

Following the lead of establishments in London and Melbourne, "The Amrita"  Sanskrit for 'immortality'  also has strict age restrictions, with only patrons between 18 and 60 allowed in, after they check in their clothes and put on paper underwear provided by the restaurant.

"If you are more than 15 kilos (33 pounds) above the average weight for your height, we ask you refrain from making a reservation," a list of rules posted on the restaurant's website states, explaining that patrons could be weighed if they do not appear to be within the correct weight range.

Guests found to be "overweight" will be refused entry to the restaurant, which opens on 29 July, and will not be entitled to a refund, its website points out. All payments must be made in advance on an online booking page.

The list of rules asks visitors not to "cause a nuisance to other guests" by touching or talking to fellow diners. Tattooed customers are barred from entry.

Those who meet the restaurant's entry requirements will be asked to lock away mobile phones and cameras in a table-top box.

The restaurant owners were not immediately available for comment when contacted by AFP.

Guests will fork out up to 80,000 yen ($750) for tickets entitling them to eat food served by muscle-bound men wearing g-strings and watch a dance show featuring male models.

Meal tickets, not including a show, will cost from 14,000 to 28,000 yen depending on choice of menu.
Washington: President Barack Obama has approved giving the US military greater ability to accompany and enable Afghan forces battling a resilient Taliban insurgency, in a move to assist them more proactively on the battlefield, a US official told Reuters.

The senior US defense official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the decision would also allow greater use of US air power, particularly close air support.

However, the official cautioned: "This is not a blanket order to target the Taliban."

Obama's decision again redefines America's support role in Afghanistan's grinding conflict, more than a year after international forces wrapped up their combat mission and shifted the burden to Afghan troops.

It also comes ahead of Obama's eagerly anticipated decision on whether to forge ahead with a scheduled reduction in the numbers of US troops from about 9,800 currently to 5,500 by the start of 2017.

A group of retired generals and senior diplomats urged Obama last week to forgo those plans, warning they could undermine the fight against the Afghan Taliban, whose leader was killed in a US drone strike in Pakistan last month.

Under the new policy, the US commander in Afghanistan, General John Nicholson, will be able to decide when it is appropriate for American troops to accompany conventional Afghan forces into the field - something they have so far only been doing with Afghan special forces, the official said.

The expanded powers are only meant to be employed "in those select instances in which their engagement can enable strategic effects on the battlefield," the official said.

That means that US forces should not be expected to accompany Afghan soldiers on day-to-day missions.

"This added flexibility ... is fully supported by the Afghan government and will help the Afghans at an important moment for the country," the official said.

The decision is a departure from current US rules of engagement in Afghanistan, which impose limits on US forces' ability to strike at insurgents.

For example, the US military was previously allowed to take action against the Taliban "in extremis" - moments when their assistance was needed to prevent a significant Afghan military setback.

That definition, however, left the US military postured to assist them in more defensive instances. The new policy would allow US forces to accompany Afghans at key moments in their offensive campaign against the Taliban.

"The US forces will more proactively support Afghan conventional forces," the official said.

The Taliban control or contest more territory in Afghanistan than at any time since they were ousted by a US-backed intervention in late 2001, and US officials have acknowledged the uneven performance of Afghan security forces.

Large portions of Afghanistan, including the provincial capital of northern Kunduz and multiple districts of southern Helmand province, have fallen, at times briefly, to the Taliban over the past year-and-a-half. Many other districts and provinces are also under varying degrees of Taliban control.

The new authorities that Obama has given the US military could give it greater leeway in addressing the shortcomings of Afghan security forces.

Still, experts warn that its hard to predict when Afghanistan will be able to stand on its own against the Taliban, not to mention the country's enormous economic difficulties and fractious political system.

The U.S governments top watchdog on Afghanistan told Reuters that the United States had wasted billions of dollars in reconstruction aid to Afghanistan over the past decade, and now a renewed Taliban insurgency was threatening the gains that had been made.
On 19 May, Pakistan formally applied to the Nuclear Suppliers Group for membership via a letter to the chairman of the NSG through Islamabad's ambassador in Vienna. The letter stated the Islamic republic's belief that it stood on solid ground in terms of technical experience, manufacturing capability, and a firm commitment to nuclear safety and non-proliferation. Pakistan has been agitated ever since the United States offered to bring India into the international civilian nuclear trading community in 2005 and has been hankering after a similar arrangement to regain parity with its existential South Asian rival.

Islamabad's application for NSG membership is difficult to take seriously and can at best be surmised to be a way to clutter the field by bringing South Asia's perilous and intractable nuclear rivalry to the forefront of international discussion. Averse to even tangentially affecting the fragile balance of terror in the region, the NSG will, Pakistan hopes, deny both South Asian states admission into the cartel. Thus, Islamabad can play spoiler for New Delhi while appearing to push its interests in earnest.

The reason Pakistan's sincerity regarding its NSG membership application raises doubt is its complete failure to be a viable candidate even by its own criteria.

First, its technical experience

It is true that Pakistan has been operating a nuclear reactor since 1971. That first reactor, built at Paradise Point in Karachi, was provided by Canada. Since then, Pakistan has acquired only two more nuclear power reactors, both from China, though eight more are in various stages of construction or planning. Pakistan is yet to design and build a reactor on its own without any assistance from its patron, China. This includes not just the civilian reactors but also its military infrastructure at Kahuta and Khushab. While any experience with nuclear reactors is valuable, Islamabad has simply not yet seen a nuclear project through from the drawing board to the electricity board. This is because Pakistan's nuclear programme has always had an overwhelming military component whereas the Indian programme was a civilian project that retained some ambiguity and ambivalence about weaponisation.

By contrast, India has the largest fleet of indigenously-built CANDU-based reactors in the world; it presently has 22 nuclear power reactors, only two of which are of Russian origin. India has also made great strides in fast and thorium reactors and is on the verge of connecting one of the former to the grid and breaking ground on the latter.

Second, Pakistan's manufacturing capabilities

According to an interesting study of export controls and dual-use goods by Ian J Stewart, senior research fellow at King's College, London, Pakistan has the ability to manufacture or produce heavy water, nuclear manipulators, marraging steel, and zirconium. In each case, there seems to be only one agent, probably the state, and capacity is insufficient for export. It is unlikely that Pakistan wishes to join the NSG because of its niche manufacturing strengths or surplus capacity.

It is possible that Pakistan wishes to join the NSG to gain access to controlled goods that it cannot manufacture. However, it is possible to accommodate those needs without allowing the Islamic republic entry into the nuclear cartel. Pakistan has already stated that it is willing to accept IAEA safeguards over all its civilian facilities just as India agreed in 2008. When the international community is assured of Islamabad's bonafide intentions, it may consider extending civil nuclear cooperation without necessarily opening the doors to the NSG.

India is no nuclear exporter of note either, but, the country has managed to develop a small industry of almost a dozen and a half items on the NSG's controlled goods list including flow-forming machines, vacuum pumps, high-strength aluminium, and isostatic presses. India's accession to the NSG will ease the import of some controlled goods though enrichment and reprocessing technology and equipment is still reserved for signatories of the Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Third, Pakistan's commitment to nuclear safety and non-proliferation

Politics must teach its practitioners how to utter the baldest lies with a straight face. Pakistan's commitment to nuclear non-proliferation, or lack thereof, is exactly why it universally gets a hostile reception to its nuclear mainstreaming. The AQ Khan network proliferated nuclear technology to some of the most unsavoury regimes in the world  North Korea, Libya and Iran. Pakistan and its publicly-revered nuclear scientist have escaped punition only by virtue of Islamabad's geopolitical usefulness to the United States.

If the world community were to look past such a grievous transgression so soon, especially so soon after the Western powers moved heaven and earth to bring Iran's nuclear ambitions under the IAEA's purview, it would send a wrong message to future proliferators. Were the roles reversed, had India proliferated to Cambodia, Vietnam, Taiwan, and Japan  states far more palatable than Pakistan's partners  would the international community be willing to look the other way after a little over a decade and without any punitive measures?

Pakistan and its patron, China, are using the rhetoric of non-discriminatory criteria for NSG membership to sweep a rich slice of Pakistan's capabilities and non-proliferation track record under the rug. Amidst all the well-intentioned desires from officials and scholars, the NSG will remain a discriminatory body because it was conceived in that original sin and can only perpetuate what it knows best.

Between the Non-Proliferation Treaty's consecration of nuclear apartheid and the NSG's wilful disregard of many of its members' blatant violations in the past, the nuclear exports control regime will remain discriminatory. Short of overhauling the entire structure, we can only hope that the members of the cartel discriminate in favour of positive values rather than a cynical manipulation of the international order.
In the 2016 Global Peace Index (GPI) curated by The Institute of Economics and Peace (IEP) think tank, India ranks at an abysmal 141 out of the 164 countries, trailing Mexico. The index gauges the level of safety and security in society, the extent of domestic or international conflict and the degree of militarisation. The report says, "Indias scores for ongoing domestic and international conflict and militarisation have deteriorated slightly," and that the country "remains vulnerable to acts of terror and security threats at its shared border with Pakistan."

According to the GPI report, the world has overall become a less peaceful place. It's not all that surprising and seems to be reinforcing a 10-year-trend  terrorism and political instability are two of the main causes of the deterioration. The report highlights that terrorism is at an all time high and trends show that it has been growing steadily over the past decade. Major terrorist activity has been concentrated around Iraq, Nigeria, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Syria. Terrorism is only spreading  there are only 23 percent of countries that have not experienced a terrorist incident since WWII. Terrorist attacks in Paris and Brussels, increase in incidents of violence in Turkey and its neighbours are why Europe, though still one of the most peaceful regions, has shown a decline in overall peace.

According the GPI report, this decline in world peace is rather historic and in fact interrupts the improvements and strides in securing peace since the end of World War II. Middle and North East African (Mena) regions have seen intense conflict in the last ten years. And in the last 60 years, the number of refugees and displaced people are at a record level.

In a press statement, Steve Killelea, the founder of IEP said, "As internal conflicts in MENA become more entrenched, external parties are increasingly becoming more involved and the potential for indirect or war by proxy between nation states is rising. This was already evident in Syria with the conflict between the Assad regime and multiple non-state actors, and is now spilling into countries such as Yemen. There is a broader proxy conflict between Saudi Arabia and Iran, and more recently both US and Russia have increased their level of involvement."

The South Asian region as a whole has not changed from it's position. The report suggests that internal security concerns heightened in Bangladesh and Nepal  detainees have increased owing to protests against the government. Madhesis, who are largely of Indian-origin, led a nearly six-month-long violent protest over better representation in the Nepal Parliament and the federal structure of the new Constitution that divides their ancestral homeland. The protests claimed over 50 lives before being called off unexpectedly. And another factor that could explain the deterioration in Bangladesh is the recent and frequent killing of people in the region by Islamist militants.

Pakistan remains in a bad position on the index, owing primarily to the influence of Taliban from Afghanistan. Sri Lanka is the only country that did really well on the index from the South-Asian region, ranking at 115 (jumping ahead by 31 ranks from 2008), the report alludes this increased peacefulness to Sri Lanka bettering its relationships with its neighbours, especially India.

The silver lining of this dark conflict ridden cloud is that there have been great strides made by the international community as a whole to provide funding and support to peacekeeping operations and the commitment to UN peacekeeping funding has increased by 12 percent. This signals the rise of an international community that values peace and is keen on building ties, maintaining peace and security.
LIMA Keiko Fujimori conceded defeat to Pedro Pablo Kuczynski in Peru's tightest presidential election in decades, but she promised in a speech on Friday that her party would make up a "watchful" opposition during his government.

Fujimori, the daughter of the country's imprisoned ex-president, said that Kuczynski won the run-off race with the support of "promoters of hate" and that the official election results were "confusing."





(Reporting By Mitra Taj; Editing by Chris Reese)

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
LIMA Keiko Fujimori conceded defeat to centrist Pedro Pablo Kuczynski in Peru's tightest presidential election in decades, but said on Friday that her populist party's solid majority in Congress would wage a "watchful" opposition during his government.

Fujimori, the daughter of the country's imprisoned ex-president, said that former investment banker Kuczynski had only won the run-off race with the support of "promoters of hate."

"In the second-round our opponent was joined by the political power of the outgoing government, economic powers and media power," Fujimori said in her first press conference five days after Sunday's election.

Her party's 73 incoming lawmakers to the single-chamber, 130-seat Congress applauded her under a banner that read "Thank you, Peru!"

It was the second straight narrow loss in a run-off election for Fujimori and a further blow to the populist politics that have fallen out of favour in Latin America.

Fujimori, 41, had been the favourite to win the election just two weeks ago, following years of pitching her iron-fist approach to crime in Lima's gritty districts and promising public works in far-flung provinces.

But septuagenarian Kuczynski scraped together a narrow win after stepping up his attacks on her as her close advisers were mired in scandal in the final days of campaigning, despite his stiff technocratic style and worries about his age.

While Fujimori said she accepted official results that showed Kuczynski ahead of her by only tens of thousands of votes, she called them "confusing."

Members of her party had cast doubts on the vote count on Thursday, accusing electoral authorities of counting votes from polling stations where they said their representatives had detected irregularities.

(Reporting By Mitra Taj and Teresa Cespedes; Editing by Chris Reese and Alistair Bell)

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
BERLIN Germany's Der Spiegel will publish a bilingual edition of its weekly magazine in English and German on Saturday containing a strong appeal to Britons to vote on June 23 to stay in the European Union.

Der Spiegel will publish two different covers of the magazine with the one sold in Britain titled "Please don't go! Why Germany needs the British." It will be available at a reduced price of 2 pounds ($2.90), Spiegel said.

Spiegel Editor-in-Chief Klaus Brinkbaeumer said the magazine's cover story would contain a multitude of reasons on why the EU cannot do without Britain.

"The result is an objective but also strong, emotional - and bilingual - appeal to the country: Please don't go!" Brinkbaeumer said in a statement on Friday.

While German politicians have stayed out of the campaign in the run-up to Britain's June 23 referendum on EU membership, for fear of being seen to be bossing Britons around, Berlin is worried about losing a kindred free-market spirit in the bloc.

Spiegel said the cover story would describe the important role Britain has played in shaping the EU and analyse the consequences of a Brexit on Europe's security, ability to combat terror and geo-strategic weight.

A survey from polling firm TNS for Spiegel found 79 percent of Germans wanted Britain to remain in the EU.

Just over half of respondents believed that a Brexit would have no negative impact on the Germany economy, compared to 36 percent who thought the economic situation in Europe's largest economy would deteriorate.

The survey of 1,025 people was conducted between June 7 and June 8.

($1 = 0.6982 pounds)

(Reporting by Caroline Copley; Editing by Richard Balmforth)

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
Taking a dig at Prime Minister Narendra Modi's US visit in a five-nation tour, senior Congress leader Manish Tiwari on Friday said that in the last two years there has been "no new idea" in Indo-US relations.

Commenting on the prime minister's and US President Barack Obama's reaction on the start of preparatory work on six nuclear reactors in India  a key step in closing the first deal stemming from a US-India civil nuclear accord struck over a decade ago  Tiwari said, "The prime minister has suddenly woken up to virtues of Indo-US deal. In 2008, he had said that deal is a sellout and against national security."

During his five-day tour, Modi also visited Afghanistan, Qatar, Switzerland and Mexico with an aim to bolster ties.

"In substantive strategic terms, NDA govt has ensured India is bystander in Afghanistan. Except for platitudes on some exchange of information on black money, there has been nothing substantive of Modi's Switzerland visit," Tiwari added.

Prime Minister, Narendra Modi returned home on Friday after the tour whose highlight was his meeting with Obama and address to US Congress in Washington. Besides addressing a joint sitting of the US Congress, Modi received the backing of two key Nuclear Suppliers Group members - Switzerland and Mexico - for its bid to secure the membership of the 48-nation bloc.

With inputs from agencies
Washington: US Senator Bernie Sanders was not surprised by President Barack Obama's decision to endorse Hillary Clinton as the presidential nominee of the Democratic Party, the White House has said.

"The President has had the opportunity to speak to Senator Sanders now three times in the last week, and as a result of those conversations, I would think it is fair to say that Senator Sander was not at all surprised by today's announcement," White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said on Thursday.

Earlier on Thursday, Obama met Sanders at the White House, immediately after which he issued an email and a video announcing his decision to endorse Clinton, the former Secretary of State.

Sanders also vowed to foster party unity to take on Republican nominee Donald Trump.

Clinton, who reached enough delegate this Tuesday, is the first women presidential candidate of a major US party.

Earnest said the video was recorded Tuesday.

"Secretary Clinton's campaign has already announced that there will be an event, and the President is very much looking forward to travelling to Green Bay, Wisconsin, Titletown, with Secretary Clinton to appear with her in person at a campaign event, and build support for her campaign in the state of Wisconsin  a state that President Obama won twice," he said.

"I'm not going to get into the details of their interactions, but I assure you that Senator Sanders was not surprised," Earnest said in response to a question.

Earnest said that the Vermont Senator began his statement in the driveway in front of the White House by saying that President Obama and Vice President Biden had made a commitment to him early in the process that they would not put their thumb on the scale.

"...And Senator Sanders himself said how much he appreciated that President Obama and Vice President Biden kept that promise," he said in response to a question.

He said it is up to Sanders to decide how long he wants to continue to be in the race.

Earnest said Obama is eager to join the campaign and make a case for Clinton before American people.

"The president's very enthusiastic about the opportunity that he will have over the course of the next several months to make a strong case in support of Secretary Clinton," he said.

"I think that is evident from the comments that President Obama made in Elkhart, Indiana last week. The stakes in this election are high, particularly if you look at the US economy," he said.

"We've made enormous progress over the last seven years digging out of the ditch created by the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression.

"The private sector is what led that recovery, but the private sector would not have succeed without the important policy decisions that were made in the first couple of months of President Obama's presidency," he added.

"So, for those voters who are focused on the economy, we have got a pretty strong case to make about the wisdom of the decisions made by President Obama and the commitment by Secretary Clinton to those principles," Earnest said.
Islamabad: Intensifying efforts to seek backing for its membership to the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), Pakistan's top foreign adviser on Friday spoke to the Mexican and Italian foreign ministers -- a day after both countries indicated support for India's bid.

Sartaj Aziz, adviser to the Prime Minister on foreign affairs, had a word with Mexican Foreign Minister Claudia Ruiz Massieu and Italian Foreign Minister Paolo Gentiloni.

Aziz, according to a statement here, highlighted Pakistan's credentials for the NSG membership during his talks with both the ministers. Massieu expressed support for a "non-discriminatory approach on NSG expansion to non-NPT states", the statement said.

Aziz and Gentiloni had a very "cordial exchange," the ministry said in a tweet.

Pakistan has intensified its efforts to seek backing for its bid to the 48-nation bloc, which is holding an extraordinary plenary in Geneva from 9-10 June to take up applications for membership, including from India.

On Thursday, Mexico announced support for India's membership to the NSG during talks between Mexican President Pena Nieto and visiting Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Mexico City.

Pakistan has been lobbying hard to scuttle India's NSG bid, saying that country-specific exemptions would be harmful to South Asia
BEIRUT U.S.-backed forces seized control of the last route into Islamic State-held city of Manbij in northern Syria on Friday, completing their encirclement of the main target in a major advance against the militants, a monitoring group said.

The Syria Democratic Forces, supported by U.S.-led air strikes and American special forces, launched and advance last week to seize Islamic State's last territory on the Syria-Turkey border and cut the self-declared caliphate off from the world.

Other enemies of Islamic State, including the governments of Syria and Iraq, also launched major offensives on other fronts, in what amounts to the most sustained pressure on the militants since they proclaimed their caliphate in 2014.

Officials of the SDF, a U.S.-backed group formed last year to unite powerful Kurdish militia with Arab anti-Islamic State fighters, could not immediately be reached.

The SDF had by Thursday advanced to within firing distance of the last main highway into Manbij, Islamic State's main bastion in the border area west of the Euphrates. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group said the SDF had effectively taken control of the final road to the city early on Friday.

"There's no road left... they're all cut," the Observatory's director, Rami Abdulrahman, said.

The offensive near the border is the most ambitious advance yet in Syria by a group allied to Washington, which has previously struggled to develop capable allies on the ground amid Syria's five-year multi-sided civil war.

SDF forces have also advanced in the neighbouring province of Raqqa, and Syrian government forces and their allies, backed by Russia, opened a separate front against Islamic State in Raqqa province last week.

The Iraqi government has launched its own assault on the Islamic State bastion Falluja, an hour's drive from Baghdad, at the opposite end of Islamic State territory.

The SDF has said this week that it was holding back from an immediate assault to enter Manbij out of concern for civilians.

The Observatory said nearly 160 Islamic State fighters had died in battles with the SDF around Manbij and more than 20 SDF fighters had been killed.

(Reporting by John Davison; editing by Peter Graff)

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
Tokyo: The US Navy lifted some restrictions on off-base activity in Japan on Thursday but maintained a

prohibition on alcohol consumption as the military tries to repair aggravated relations with a Japanese public outraged by recent alleged crimes.

US Naval Forces of Japan said in a statement that sailors are now allowed to leave base. The restrictions were imposed on Monday following the weekend arrest of a US sailor for alleged drunken driving.

In a separate case, Japanese police on Thursday said a US military contractor arrested on suspicion of abandoning the body of a young woman on Okinawa is now officially the prime suspect in her murder and rape.

The arrest took up a significant part of a Japan-US summit that was held a week later, causing President Barack Obama to apologise. The US Marines on Okinawa issued an order two days later restricting celebrations and off-base drinking.

Police said on Wedneday that Kenneth Shinzato, who is also a former Marine, is now the prime suspect in the murder and rape of the 20-year-old woman whose body was found last month, three weeks after she disappeared. An autopsy on the decomposed body could not determine the cause of death.

Okinawa police said the suspect hit the woman on the head with a club, dragged her into the weeds and raped her, while strangling her and stabbing her with a knife. Kyodo News service reported that Shinzato told police that he drove around for a few hours to find an assault target.

Police arrested Shinzato, 32, on 19 May after he told investigators where they could find the woman's body in a forest.

Born Kenneth Gadson, reportedly from New York City, he is married to a Japanese woman and used her family name, Shinzato, instead of his own. He worked on Kadena Air Base as an employee for a contractor that provides services to U.S. bases on Okinawa.

Okinawa governor Takeshi Onaga, who has demanded that the central government do more to reduce the military burden on the southern islands, called the crime "extremely inhuman and dastardly" and "unforgivable."

Tensions are already high over a plan to relocate a Marine Corps air station to a less-populated part of Okinawa.

About half of about 50,000 US troops stationed in Japan are on the island, and many residents resent the burden they bear for the defense of Japan and the region. They want the air station to be moved off Okinawa all together.

The Futenma relocation is part of a broader plan to reduce the impact of US military bases that was triggered by the 1995 gang rape of a teenage girl by three American servicemen.

The latest murder has sparked calls for a further reduction of American bases, as well as a revision of the

Status of Forces Agreement, under which the handover of suspects accused of crimes while on duty or on base to Japanese authorities is not compulsory.
The prospects of the "Human Headline" Derryn Hinch winning a seat in the Senate have received a significant boost, after the broadcaster's party drew the first column on the Senate ballot paper for Victoria.

At a draw held at the Rydges Hotel in Melbourne on Friday, "Derryn Hinch's Justice Party" drew the coveted "Column A" on the ballot paper. The inimitable Mr Hinch will be in ballot position number 1 in the column, above party colleague Stuart Grimley.

But the random draw was not as kind to one of Mr Hinch's competitors for a Senate seat. Gippslander Ricky Muir's party, the Australian Motoring Enthusiast Party, drew column W.
A Hindu monastery worker in Bangladesh was hacked to death on an early morning walk Friday, in what local police believe is the latest in a string of brutal attacks against religious minorities throughout the country.

Nityaranjan Pande, 62, was walking in the northwestern district of Pabna when unidentified hackers attacked him and killed him.

Though no group has yet taken responsibility for the killing, local police say it bears the marks of similar attacks carried out by Islamist militants.

More than 40 people have been killed in similar attacks over the past three years, and the violence has escalated in the past few months. A Hindu priest was hacked to death earlier this week on his way to temple.

Among the victims

Gay-rights activists, liberal professors and secular bloggers have also been among the victims of these killings.

Three Islamist militants were reportedly killed in a separate clash with police in the capital of Dhaka Tuesday, as national forces attempt to crack down on the militants blamed for these attacks.

Islamic State and an al-Qaida faction have claimed responsibility for some of the attacks, but Bangladesh authorities continue to insist there are no foreign terror groups operating in the country. Instead, officials have blamed local militants or the political opposition.

Though officially a secular country, about 90 percent of Bangladeshis are Muslim.
The head of an infamous Khmer Rouge security center and execution site says he was ordered to destroy the prison and kill all remaining internees on the eve of the Vietnamese military's arrival in Phnom Penh in January 1979.

Kaing Guek Eav, better known as Duch, said Wednesday in his second day of testimony at the Khmer Rouge tribunal that he also was ordered by Pol Pot's second-in-command, Nuon Chea, to kill families of those held by the internal security department.

The nine-day testimonial process is focused on Duch's role as head of the S-21 security center in Phnom Penh, as part of case 002/02 of the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia  the full name of the Khmer Rouge tribunal.

Uncle Nuon ordered [me] to destroy everything before the arrival of Vietnamese forces, but at the time, I begged to keep four people [alive], Duch, clad in white, his head shaved, told international prosecutors. Duch, 74, who oversaw the deaths of more than 12,000 people at S-21, claims he was following party orders to exterminate the whole family of the enemy as part of a "cleansing" that coincided with the regime's approaching collapse.

At the end, when Uncle Nuon ordered me to destroy all human beings from S-21, I was very shocked and could not do anything," he said, adding that each time he departed for S-21, his wife feared he would not return. "I was sick the day that the Vietnamese arrived. I was very scared.

By that time, he said, he was acting to keep his own family from suffering the same fate of his victims.

Chum Mey, one of a small number of S-21 survivors, testified that he believed Duch was following orders of party leadership, as junior officers at S-21 in turn followed the orders of Duch on pain of torture or death.

Nuon Chea has repeatedly denied all responsibility for the crimes committed at S-21, also known as Toul Sleng, including final orders to exterminate all remaining prisoners. He has not attended the recent proceedings on health grounds, instead watching courtroom proceedings via closed-circuit television from a separate room in the facility.

In 2012, Duch was the first senior Khmer Rouge official to be sentenced to life in prison for crimes against humanity and violating the Geneva Conventions. So far, he is the only senior regime official to have been sentenced, while other defendants died before their trials ended. Only Chea and the regimes head of state, Khieu Samphan, remain alive.

The Khmer Rouge oversaw the deaths of an estimated 1.7 million Cambodians between 1975 and 1979.
Relatives of a British-Iranian mother detained without charge in Iran have celebrated her 2-year-old daughter's birthday with a party outside the Iranian Embassy in London.

Nazanin Ratcliffe was arrested April 3 at Tehran airport by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard as she tried to return to Britain with her daughter, Gabriella, after visiting family in Iran. Officials also confiscated Gabriella's passport, so she is stuck in the country and being cared for by her grandparents.

In Tehran, Gabriella watched her second birthday celebrations unfold via Skype.

Her father, Richard Ratcliffe, organized the party for Gabriella's family and friends outside the embassy, where he presented a birthday card with hundreds of signatures. Well-wishers have submitted thousands of birthday cards for Gabriella to Iranian embassies around the world.

"There's obviously a gentle politics there, which is just to remind the Iranian authorities that they've got a young baby there, and they're keeping her away from her mom with no charges and no justification for two and a bit months. That's just outrageous," Ratcliffe told VOA.

He says Gabriella is struggling without contact with her mother or her father.

"Obviously, she was very visibly upset at the beginning. So very traumatized, and wouldn't sleep through the night, and kept going to the door, looking for Mommy."

No charge, no explanation

Nazanin was detained in solitary confinement for 45 days. She has since been allowed to communicate with her parents, who believe she was moved to another location last week. Her husband says the family in Iran is petrified.

"Particularly now I've gone public, there's a higher risk for them certainly, so they're certainly very wary about what they tell me and very wary about the repercussions, not only on Nazanin but also on other members of the family," he said.

Nazanin has not been officially charged with any offense, and Iranian authorities have not said why she is being detained. She worked for a charity  the Thomson Reuters Foundation  but was not on business travel, and the company does not operate in Iran. Her husband fears she is caught up in a political tussle.

"It's obviously at a time of change in Iran, between those who are trying to build good relations with the West and those who are trying to stop that process. Beyond that, I'm out of my depth."

A petition demanding that the British prime minister raise the issue with Iran has gained more than three-quarters of a million signatures, but he has yet to respond. The Ratcliffe family's local member of parliament, Tulip Siddiq, says more should be done.

"I think the prime minister should intervene," she said in an interview with VOA. "If we can't protect the interests of a 2-year-old British citizen, then why is the prime minister still here and what is the Foreign Office actually doing?"

The British Foreign Office says it is in touch with Iranian authorities but can provide little other information. For Gabriella and her parents, the desperate wait for a family reunion continues.
ALBION | Its an alpine sight worth a hard hike, but you can drive all the way there.

Lake Cleveland, an 8,300-foot-high lake in a basin of the Albion Mountains, gives the non-hiking crowd a taste of the same high-altitude beauty that backpackers enjoy.

And put your canoe on the car. Whether you visit for the day or bring your tent, youll want to get out on the water for a dramatic perspective on the high, forested rock walls surrounding three sides of Lake Cleveland.

Paddling our tandem kayak there in early July, my husband and I met a solo paddler who said her mother used to bring the family to Lake Cleveland for a week every summer. Now a grandmother herself, our fellow paddler was camped beside the lake with a bunch of relatives, their boats lined up on the bank beside their tents.

Its easy to see why this piece of Mount Harrison inspires loyalty: alpine wildflower meadows, sweeping views across mountains and valleys  and camping thats as close to wilderness as youll ever get in an RV.

Particularly popular with Mini-Cassia families, Lake Clevelands two campgrounds are full most weekends from early July  when snowdrifts recede enough to open access  to Labor Day, the Sawtooth National Forest says.

Dont wait too long. Forest managers usually close the lakes entrance road in late October because of snow.

1. Getting There

From Interstate 84, take exit 216 near Declo and follow Idaho 77 south about 18 miles, through Declo and Albion, to Howell Canyon Road. Turn right (west) onto Howell Canyon Road. At the Pomerelle ski area sign, turn right (west) and drive another seven miles up Howell Canyon Road. The paved road is steep and winding, but magnificent wildflower displays carpet the slopes as you climb.

Look for the Lake Cleveland entrance sign on your right; theres no fee to visit.

Winter weather can show up any time of year, the Sawtooth forest warns. Come prepared for mountain weather and driving conditions.

2. Where to Camp in a Tent

At the mouth of the lake, the road turns to gravel and continues around the lakes right side, ending in a small campground on the southwest bank. The nine campsites in this West campground are first-come, first-served, and the Forest Service doesnt recommend trailers here because of a tight turn where the road dead-ends. Some campers bring trailers anyway, but most use tents.

Most of these campsites are right beside the water, so if you brought a boat this is where you want to be. Theres no dock, but its easy to launch a canoe or kayak from the grassy and sandy stretches of bank beside the campground.

No motorized boats are allowed on two-acre Lake Cleveland, so rowing here is a peaceful experience  except when wind whips up waves at the north end of the lake.

We found the West campground blissfully quiet at night, but dont expect solitude during the day. Day use swells the lakes population, and those high walls around the lake seem to amplify the voices of swimmers and picnickers.

Where the road ends, a wildflower-edged hiking trail and an impressive flight of stone steps finish the loop around the lake, and anglers dot the banks on every side, fishing for cutthroat and rainbow trout. Whether youre at Lake Cleveland for the day or overnight, take time to walk the loop.

3. Where to Camp in a Trailer

Just to the northeast, out of sight of the lake, the East campground loop has 17 campsites, all roomy enough for large RVs and trailers. Seven can be reserved (through www.recreation.gov and reserveamerica.com), and 10 are first-come, first-served. Reservations here open six months in advance of the reservation date.

Sites in both campgrounds are $10 per night. Both have outhouses but no drinking water, electricity, garbage service or other facilities.

The East campground has generous separation between most campsites, screened by trees and elevation differences, and we found it quieter than the lakeside campground.

If youre walking in this campground, resist the temptation to follow the little Lake Trail sign; take my word for it, and just follow the road to the lake.

Do, however, look for the Albion Lookout Trail sign at the northeast end of this campground. After a pretty walk in the woods, this trail ends at a makeshift bench overlooking a broad sweep of the Albion Valley and the mountains beyond.

4. A Worthwhile Side Trip

For an even better view, drive another two miles up Howell Canyon Road, which ends at the 9,240-foot-high summit of Mount Harrison. There, climb the stairs of the fire lookout tower to a platform that offers a 360-degree panorama across the Snake River Plain and south into Utah and Nevada.

In fact, do it more than once.

After dark, my husband and I watched distant lightning storms from the fire lookout tower and picked out the lights of southern Idaho cities. Those simultaneously blinking red lights in the northeast? Theyre wind turbines near American Falls.

In daylight, the Mount Harrison perspective helped me piece together the big picture of a few places Ive visited: The Jim Sage Mountains, where I shadowed a nighttime sage grouse trapping team for a news story. Mount Independence and Cache Peak, which guard the alpine lakes that were my first backpacking destination. And the Big Cottonwood area, on the rolling edges of the South Hills, where I spent a day with volunteers replanting charred slopes.

Take time, too, for the interpretive signs around the Mount Harrison Lookout. One tells the story of a bomber that crashed on the mountain in 1945. Another describes the lookouts historical role in firefighting. Others tell about the mountains remarkable plants and animals  including the rare Christs Indian paintbrush, a wildflower that grows nowhere else on Earth.

Look closely in July and August, and youll spot the yellow blooms from the road as you leave the summit.

Learn more: Lake Cleveland is in the Sawtooth National Forests Minidoka Ranger District, 208-678-0430; call for road conditions before any late-season trip to the lake. Learn more at http://1.usa.gov/1SkaFNJ
BURLEY  A babysitter who blinded an infant violated his probation and will be sent to prison.

Michael Leroy Carnes, 23, was sentenced Tuesday to five to 15 years in prison for felony aggravated battery. He had been placed in the Idaho Department of Corrections Retained Jurisdiction Program and then released on probation.

While on probation, Carnes violated his probation by picking up misdemeanor charges for driving without privileges and for buying and smoking marijuana.

In exchange for admitting those violations, Cassia County Deputy Prosecutor McCord Larsen withdrew allegations of possession of a weapon, alcohol consumption and associating with another person on probation.

In March 2013, Carnes was babysitting the five-month-old when the baby was severely injured. Among those injuries were a fractured skull, bleeding on the brain and bruises on the buttocks and legs.

The injuries caused the baby to be permanently blind. At a hospital in Salt Lake City, where he stayed for 34 days for multiple surgeries, the boy was unable to breathe on his own for more than two weeks.

Carnes told police that the baby hit his head on a bed frame at the home. The baby then fell asleep and when he awoke, there was something wrong, Carnes said.

Carnes did not call for an ambulance.

It wasnt until the babys aunt returned to pick him up that he was taken to Cassia Regional Hospital and then transferred to Salt Lake City. Doctors there said the eye injuries and bruising were evidence the boy was shaken and abused, court records said.
BURLEY  The second of three sisters charged with public assistance fraud has taken a plea deal offered by the state.

The Idaho Department of Health and Welfare said together the three women swindled more than $221,000 in public assistance benefits.

Teresa Martinez, 37, is charged with two counts of felony fraudulent procurement of public assistance, one count of fraud by presenting claims for services or supplies and one count of unauthorized use of food stamps.

She pleaded guilty to one count of felony fraudulent procurement of public assistance. The remaining charges will be dismissed in the plea agreement. The prosecutor will recommend a sentence of two to 14 years in prison, and Martinez will pay $54,659.09 in restitution to Health and Welfare and reimburse Cassia County for her days spent in jail at a rate of $25 a day up to $500, plus pay court costs.

A sentencing hearing is set in the case for 10:30 a.m. July 12 in Cassia County District Court.

Martinez wrote in the plea agreement that she was pleading guilty Because the prosecutor offered me a good deal and there is enough evidence to convict me.

Martinez wrote that she did not report her spouses income.

Conception A. Lopez, 34, was charged with three counts of fraudulent procurement of public assistance. She pleaded guilty to one charge and was sentenced May 17 to one to 10 years in prison. She was ordered to pay restitution to Health and Welfare in the amount of $92,498.91. Under a plea agreement with the state the remaining two charges were dropped.

The third sister, Olivia Mercado Munez, 38, is charged with one count of unauthorized use of federal food stamps, one felony count of fraud by obtaining or welfare or public assistance and a misdemeanor count of fraud by obtaining welfare or public assistance. She has pleaded not guilty to the charges and a jury trial is set at 9 a.m., Aug. 31 in Cassia County District Court.
BURLEY  Burley Junior High School teacher Reda Gomske will receive a scholarship to attend Honeywells Green Boot Camp later this month in San Diego.

The interactive workshop  which runs June 19-23  will give educators hands-on learning experiences on topics such as renewable energy technologies and green building materials.

Alongside 50 teachers from 13 countries, Gomske will participate in hands-on interactive educational experiences, including assembling and building solar houses, identifying energy vampires and building rain barrels to donate to the City of Escondidos fire department.

In addition to teachers from the United States and Canada, Honeywell will welcome educators from China, India, Mexico, Brazil, Russia, Turkey, Indonesia, Vietnam, Romania, United Kingdom, Australia and the Philippines to this years workshop.

Following the activities, teachers will discuss how to apply the ideas in their classrooms.
JEROME  A farm worker injured Tuesday in a freak accident in rural Jerome County is recovering in a Utah Hospital.

Evaristo Cruz-Salazar was flown to the University of Utah Hospital after an irrigation riser blew apart and a three-quarter-inch steel crank handle impaled his eye socket.

It was just a fluke, said Capt. Jack Johnson of the Jerome County Sheriffs Office.

Responders used a handheld grinder to cut the handle from the heavy valve opener so that the man could be flown to a hospital, Johnson said.

A spokesman for the hospital said Cruz-Salazar is in the Intensive Care Unit, but would not release his condition.
TWIN FALLS  When it comes to running a city, its easy to get tied up in the routine functions like fixing potholes  but wheres the fun?

Thats what community development strategist and author Peter Kageyama focused on during an event hosted by the Idaho Housing and Finance Association on Thursday. About 145 attendees, including local and state officials, attended the presentation at the Canyon Crest Dining & Event Center in hopes of finding ways to attract people to the area.

Kageyama sees potential for Twin Falls  especially in the downtown area  and emphasized that its the small things cities do like public art and unique events that make people smile.

Were always talking about how we make our community a place where people want to come, City Councilman Don Hall said after the lecture. I think its absolutely interesting and a direction we should go.

Kageyama is the author of For the Love of Cities and Love Where You Live. He was invited to speak in Twin Falls to address Creating Quality Places Where People Want to Live, Work and Play.

Several cities in the region expressed workforce recruitment and retention as a challenge, said Gerald Hunter, president and executive director of the Idaho Housing and Finance Association.

Twin Falls has the potential to borrow ideas seen in other cities. A few examples cited in Kageyamas speech were the bronze Mice on Main in Greenville, South Carolina; rain-activated art in Seattle, Washington; and photo-op sculptures seen across the country.

Not all projects have a large financial cost  but even if they do, he said, things have a value beyond the purely financial.

Councilwoman Nikki Boyd said she expected to get some good information from the presentation. The city has been engaging all of its employees to bring them together into a one-city concept, she said.

We want them to think of how their departments relate to all other departments, Deputy City Manager Brian Pike said. As an organization, and more importantly as a community, weve worked really hard to maintain that feeling of a smaller community.

Hall said he believes the city can do more to create a night life, and do things that capture peoples attention on a regular basis.

Kageyama said he saw where Twin Falls could have opportunities, such as a community picnic at Shoshone Falls. While the city needs to work together, its important to be leaders in creating an emotionally engaging, lovable city, he said.

This is hard work, but it can, and should also be, fun, Kageyama said.
TWIN FALLS  Ursula wore red lipstick and a royal blue dress as she waved to people watching the Western Days Parade.

Families lined both sides of Blue Lakes Boulevard June 4. Some sat in lawn chairs and others stood in the shade. Little children held plastic bags in their hands, in the hope that float participants would throw candy in their direction.

As Brandon Teschs alter ego, Ursula, passed by them, she flipped her curly blonde hair back and raised her hand to greet them. Some people waved back, others didnt.

Nine years ago, a Western Days float featuring a drag queen wouldnt have even made it through the approval process, let alone down Blue Lakes Boulevard.

In 2007, the Western Days Committee rejected a gay and lesbian groups request to participate in the parade. The committee said it denied the float entry by the Southern Idaho Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Community Center because it was inappropriate for a family event. It was the first time a parade entry had been denied.

The group was allowed to have a float in the parade the next year, but with restrictions. They couldnt display rainbows or make other references to homosexuality on T-shirts or fliers.

This year, Magic Valley Pride  a social group that formed last year to reach out to LGBTQ community in the Magic Valley  was approached to be in the parade.

Sarah Zatica, co-founder of Magic Valley Pride said they werent planning to submit a float entry. But the group decided it would be a good way to introduce themselves to the public before its first big event.

We wanted to work on the future and not on the past, Zatica said.

Magic Valley Pride started Thursday night with chalk art, a BASE jumper leaping from the Perrine Bridge with a rainbow flag and a candlelight vigil. The event continues Friday with an amateur drag show starring Tesch from 8 to 10 p.m. at The Brickhouse and a free community barbecue from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday at Thompson Park.

For some members of Magic Valley Pride, the groups participation in Western Day was a sign of progress. But they also recognized they live in an area where same-sex couples are still afraid to walk down the street holding hands. Group members have been denied housing and promotions at work based on their sexuality.

Jim Shaff, a member of Magic Valley Pride, has been involved in four similar Twin Falls groups over the past decade. Shaff said Magic Valley Pride has potential for longevity because it is a group effort.

They (LGBTQ groups) are off and on, Shaff said. What we struggle with is people getting involved. They want to get involved, but are afraid to come out. We got a lot of allies here, which is good. Its what we need, is support.

Shaff was out of town during Western Days, but was surprised when he heard the group was taking part. He was part of the group that was denied in 2007.

This year, the group still faced restrictions: In order to participate, they were barred from handing out pamphlets or literature.

Shaff said it was a small price to pay.

I was so happy, he said. It took me by surprise. Really? They want us in the parade? This is cool. Its a foot in the door to show people we are not so bad.

Shaff came out to his family four years ago. For most of his life, he said, he was afraid to lose his parents love. He said his father struggled at first, but now they fully support him.

I am who I am, he said. Im not afraid to be who I am.

Even though Tesch has graced the stage of three local theater productions as Ursula, he was still nervous about playing her in the parade.

That was a lot of fun, he said. I will admit I was scared at first. I didnt know what was going to happen  if we would be heckled  but the people were amazing. It was really friendly. There wasnt anything negative. It was an amazing experience.

The only thing that bothered him was the weather.

It was really hot, he said. I was melting through the foam and the makeup, but it was definitely worth it.

Tesch found Magic Valley Pride on Facebook in March. The group launched late last year and was already planning a Pride event when Tesch joined. Thats when he mentioned hed like to host a drag show and perform as Ursula.

They latched on and we went from there, Tesch said. Its really exciting.

Big Mama Ursulas Amateur Ho-Down, an amateur drag show, is a sold out event. However, there will be 25 tickets at the door starting at 8 p.m. Tickets cost $15.

Tesch was surprised when the event sold out.

I was thinking wed be lucky if we sold out, he said. I was excited. I was surprised. It showed me that Twin Falls has progressed forward a bit. I didnt have to push it.

Ursula was born when Tesch was 15.

Its like finding a superhero version of yourself, he said. I like Ursula because I can use Ursula to address social stigmas, but with a level of comedy so its not as threatening.

Sarah Zatica and her partner, Lindsi Poole, started Magic Valley Pride as an online social group shortly after they moved to Twin Falls from Gooding. Zatica is divorced and has a 5-year-old daughter. The group gets together once or twice a month to dine at different restaurants, go bowling or sing karoake. Sometimes they just gather at Zaticas house for a barbecue.

Im from conservative Gooding, Zatica said. We dont know a lot of people and found out there wasnt one (group) here. We put up a Facebook thing and it grew and grew.

Some of the groups goals are to reach out to LBGTQ youth and to raise money for future Magic Valley Pride events. The Magic Valley Pride Youth Group has five members.

Zatica said Magic Valley Pride is about diversity, whether you are a member of the LGBT community or not.

Its about diversity instead of in your face  us versus you, Zatica said. We dont want to sexualize it. It feels like the right thing for us here in the Magic Valley.

The group is also planning to start a Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays chapter to the Magic Valley. PFLAG has more than 500 chapters across the United States and is made up of LGBTQ individuals, family members and allies.

A lot of kids are not finding a lot of places where they are accepted and comfortable, she said. We want to get more training into the schools. Even if they dont have groups.

Magic Valley Prides closed group online has 230 members. Members have to be screened because some of the members arent visible in the community. Next month they plan to build a website that will provide a directory where people can find employment, housing or businesses that are LGBTQ friendly.

Where do I get my photos taken? Its a huge issue, Zatica said Where do I buy a house? We are diverse. A lot of us have families.

The barbecue on Saturday is a way to help LGBTQ people answer those questions. They have invited these LGBTQ-friendly businesses, organizations and churches so people can start using those resources.

The Magic Valley Pride event has 20 business sponsors and partners. Some approached the group and others were found word of mouth. Still, when Zatica approached some businesses, she was told there they werent a good fit.

When Zatica and Poole moved to Twin Falls, they filled out a housing application and listed themselves as a couple. They had the money for rent, but were told other issues were keeping them from moving in. Now when they fill out applications, they say they are roommates.

I do understand where a lot of people come from, Zatica said. I do understand both sides of the fear and miscommunication. I just wish it was a lot easier to approach things.
When my grandmother was born in Philadelphia in 1920, women couldnt vote. Her opinion about her country and the people who governed it mattered lessor, frankly, not at allthan the men around her.

Even after the ratification of the 19th Amendment on Aug. 20, 1920, my grandmother was still less of a person in the eyes of society and the law. When she married she became the legal property of my grandfather, and although they ran a business together (and by all accounts my grandmother called the shots), the business and all its profits were under my grandfathers control too.

There was nothing particularly unusual about this, nothing especially sexist or backward about my grandfather. It was just the way things were.

For the first 270 years of our nations history, no major political party ever nominated a woman to be its candidate for president. This was, I suppose, not explicitly sexist or even backward. Sexism didnt exist as a concept for most of that history; to suggest something is backward implies a contrast with more forward thinking in the future. But our thinking, at least as manifest in our voting habits, never changed. That was just the way things were.

Until now.

Hillary Clinton is the first woman to win a major partys nomination for president. Whatever your political leanings, whatever your gender, whatever your perspective on the merits of feminism, this moment is a big deal. There have been only 56 other presidential elections in all of American history and none have included a female candidate leading a major ticket.

I want to celebrate it. Bask in it. Grin and hoot and holler. I dont want to wrestle, at least not yet, with the ideological tensions and contentions that I, as a Bernie Sanders supporter, know bubble just beneath the surface. Nor do I want to heed the admonitions of the anti-Obama, anti-identity politics, anti-political correctness backlash Donald Trump is fomenting and exploiting around the country, admonitions designed to make us feel guilty for even acknowledging the glass ceiling. I dont want to process my own unarguable residue of internalized anti-feminism that makes me afraid to play the gender card. I just want to grab the damn card and wave it proudly.

During the early moments of the Democratic primary, my 7-year-old daughter Willa declared that she wanted Hillary Clinton to win because shes a girl.

Thats not enough of a reason, I almost said, but then caught myself. For 270 years, maleness and whiteness was an implicit prerequisite for president. Wanting to vote for a woman candidate isnt sexist; its an act of undoing sexism. Its a way to symbolically support the equality of women everywhere while substantively putting into office a candidate who personally understands the needs of half of the population who have heretofore not been represented in the White House. Thats not to say that voting for a woman is an implicitly feminist act (see Sarah Palin and Carly Fiorina), nor is it to suggest that not voting for a woman is an inherently, entirely sexist decision. But our democracy has always been inextricably entwined with race and gender. We notice it only when the candidate isnt a white man.

Women make up more than 50 percent of the American population but just 20 percent of Congresswhich, incidentally, is the highest percentage of women in Congress in history. Since the Senate was established in 1789, there have been just 46 women senators20 of whom are currently serving. There has been just one African American woman senator in the entire 227 years of the institution.

India elected a woman head of state. Liberia elected a woman head of state. So did Britain and Israel and Germany and South Korea and Indonesia. Our supposedly inclusive, equitable democracy has never managed to do what Bangladesh and Chile have done. Now, we finally have a chance.

On Tuesday evening, when it became clear that Clinton would be the Democratic presidential nominee, I looked at my daughter and my eyes filled with tears. She will grow up in a world that is still imperfect, still bending toward justice, but with markedly more opportunity and fairness than my grandmother ever knew. And my little girl, who once looked at the faces of the 44 presidents so far and asked why none are women, may now know not only that the world can change but that there can be a place for a girl like her at the top of it.

As I tucked her late in the evening, after a night of excitement, Willa threw her arms around my neck and whispered in my ear, Im going to dream about being president, too. Suddenly that possibility isnt just a dream anymore. Thats worth celebrating.
Since the 1960s, Republicans have had to battle against liberal elites' accusations that the GOP is exclusionary, anti-immigrant, uninterested in the fate of minorities and downright racist because the party rejected top-down welfare state programs, opposed race-based quotas and did not have a lot of national nonwhite leaders. That changed somewhat under President George W. Bush, who championed education and immigration reform. He got 44 percent of the Hispanic vote and 43 percent of the Asian vote in 2004.

In the Obama years, the GOP has had mixed results at best. The 2013 "autopsy" report scolded the party:

"If Hispanic Americans perceive that a GOP nominee or candidate does not want them in the United States (i.e. self-deportation), they will not pay attention to our next sentence. It does not matter what we say about education, jobs or the economy; if Hispanics think we do not want them here, they will close their ears to our policies. In the last election, Governor Romney received just 27 percent of the Hispanic vote. Other minority communities, including Asian and Pacific Islander Americans, also view the Party as unwelcoming. President Bush got 44 percent of the Asian vote in 2004; our presidential nominee received only 26 percent in 2012. . . .

"Among the steps Republicans take in the Hispanic community and beyond, we must embrace and champion comprehensive immigration reform. If we do not, our Party's appeal will continue to shrink to its core constituencies only. We also believe that comprehensive immigration reform is consistent with Republican economic policies that promote job growth and opportunity for all."

Although a bevy of nonwhite and/or female Republican leaders have stepped up in recent years (e.g., Nikki Haley, Marco Rubio), Republicans undid whatever progress they might have made with nonwhite voters when the House killed immigration reform and the party then nominated Donald Trump, who figuratively built his campaign on his wall, rounding up and expelling 11 million or 12 million people and banning Muslim immigration. His recent remarks about Judge Gonzalo Curiel are simply icing on the cake for Democrats, who have long claimed Republicans simply don't like minorities.

Republicans may protest and condemn Trump's comments all they like, but for every denunciation, a Republican surrogate offers up some contorted defense. And Republicans keep Trump as their nominee. Trump's racist and misogynistic rhetoric makes him toxic to women and minorities, and it risks tarring the party for years.

Meanwhile, polling suggests that voters overall aren't buying the Trump excuses. "The latest research from YouGov shows that only 20 percent of Americans think that Donald Trump was right to complain that Judge Gonzalo had a 'conflict of interest' because of his Mexican ancestry. Most Americans (57 percent) think Trump was wrong in his complaint. Even Republicans are divided on whether Trump's complaint was right or wrong, with 43 percent saying it was right but 39 percent saying that it was wrong." Even more stunning: "What a large majority of Republicans do agree on, however, is that Donald Trump's comments weren't racist. Only 22 percent of Republicans say that the comments were racist. In comparison 81 percent of Democrats and 44 percent of independents say that the comments were racist. " Viewed from the vantage point of skeptical minorities, the conclusion here is likely to be that Trump is a racist and a majority of Republicans (who won't acknowledge the "textbook case of racism") are nearly as bad.

In short, a bad rap (Republicans' opposition to the liberal agenda makes them racists) has been turned into an accurate, deadly analysis. (Too many Republicans harbor bigoted views of minorities and/or do not recognize racism when it's in front of them.) Not all Republicans can be labeled as such, but far too many. The solution only comes with repudiation of Trump, success of diverse candidates and an empathetic agenda that demonstrates Republicans care about all Americans, not just rich, white males.

It is that problem that now hangs over the GOP. It's why the GOP is likely to lose the presidential race and perhaps one or more houses of Congress. It is why many will conclude it is better to scrap the party and start anew. Ironically, they may have to kill off the party of Lincoln to save the spirit of Lincoln.
Syrias economy and foreign trade minister Humam al-Jazaeri has lamented about the surprising and regrettable Lebanese decision to stop the importation of the countrys produce but Beirut claims that the move is in the interest of local Lebanese farms.

The sudden implementation of the decision led to trucks loaded with fruits and vegetables being prevented from entering Lebanon.

Jazaeri lamented that they were not informed ahead of time. He stated that Lebanese trade activities will also be affected.

The President of the Farmers Association in Lebanon noted that the decision would produce a positive outcome in the early stages of its implementation. However, he warned it could take a negative turn on the economy in the long term if Damascus applies the principle of reciprocity by closing the crossing between Syria and Iraq often used by Lebanese farmers to sell their products.

Minister Jazaeri stated that new mechanisms will be studied to control the trade balance with Lebanon and the friendly countries in order to maintain a positive growth rate of Syrian exports.

Lebanese agricultural minister Akram Chehayeb made the decision claiming that it will protect production and farmers but there are concerns over its implementation because the borders are not effectively controlled by the government. This raises fears that smuggling will increase. Chehayeb tried to discourage the Syrian government from taking reciprocal measures by threatening them of ceasing to facilitate the exportation of their products through the Rafik Hariri International Airport.

The situation could further worsen the political stalemate in Lebanon because of the strong support the Syrian government gets from Hezbollah, a major Lebanese political party and a close ally to Damascus.

Lebanon exported to Syria around 35,000 tons of citrus fruits and bananas, whereas it imported around 95,000 tons of vegetables and fruits according to the president of the Farmers Association in Lebanon.
The United Nations on Wednesday said Eritreas government is guilty of committing crimes against humanity since independence a quarter-century ago with up to 400,000 people enslaved.

Crimes against humanity have been committed in a general and systematic way in Eritrea, said the Commission of Inquiry on violations of human rights in Eritrea, in its 2nd report since its establishment in 2014 by the Council of the United Nations Human Rights.

The Commission interviewed 833 Eritreans in exile and gathered evidence against officials suspected of committing these crimes against humanity such as slavery, torture, deprivation of liberty, forced disappearances, persecution, rape and murder.

Eritrea, which has 6.5 million inhabitants, is an authoritarian state, there is no independent judiciary, no National Assembly and no democratic institutions () there is a climate of impunity for crimes against humanity committed for a quarter century, chief UN investigator Mike Smith told journalists in Geneva.

About 5,000 Eritreans risk their lives each month trying to flee the nation where forcible army conscription can last decades.

Very few Eritreans are ever released from their military service obligations, Smith said.

Responding to the report, an adviser to President Isaias Afewerki, Yemane Gebreah, said in Geneva that the investigation Commission has no tangible evidence or legal basis to support these extreme and unfounded accusations.

According to the Eritrean official, the methodology of the Commission of Inquiry is so flawed that it seriously compromises its statements and makes its findings null and void.

The 26-page report will be discussed on June 21 before the next session of the Council for Human Rights.
The African Union AMISOM troops in Somalia have killed 110 militants of al Shabaab Islamist group in the early hours of Thursday.

AMISOM forces killed 110 al Shabaab and captured a large cache of weapons, AMISOM spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Joe Kibet told reporters.

The Al-Qaeda linked militants attacked the base in Halgan in Hiran region, the group said in a statement distributed on its Telegram messaging channel.

According to AMISOM spokesman, the information that al Shabaab had killed 60 AU soldiers is a falsehood.

Earlier reports, have quoted Al-Shabaab as saying that it had killed 43 AU soldiers, but its military operations spokesman later said its fighters had killed 60, while 16 of its own fighters died in the attack on the base in Halgan town, north of Mogadishu.

Al-Shabaab launched this style of swarming attack a year ago and have since overrun forward operating bases manned by Burundian troops in Lego in June, Ugandan troops in Janale in September and Kenyan troops in El Adde in January.

Somali government forces aided by African Union peacekeepers have intensified anti-militant pushes aimed for fewer bastions controlled by Al-Shabaab in central and southern Somalia.
The Chadian government has sent 2000 troops to neighboring Niger this week to aid prepare a counterattack in the Nigerien town of Bosso after insurgents took over the town in a deadly clash.

About 30 soldiers were killed in the clashes.

The militants onslaught forced 50,000 people to flee the area, according to the UN refugee agency (UNHCR.) The majority of them attempted to reach Toumour, about 30 kilometers west of the border town.

The terrorists reportedly torched military barracks, police facilities and looted shops during the terror campaign in the town. The ambush and looting came as Nigers army was preparing to attack Boko Haram in the Lake Chad region, which straddles Nigeria, Cameroon, Chad and Niger.

We need to ensure that our troops occupy the area and that we do not leave any open land to Boko Haram, whatever the case may be. This is a commitment. Since Boko Haram acts within their means, we must act with what we have. We can do it. I think we can at least protect our populations and territories, said Chadian President, Idriss Deby.

Over 2 million people have been displaced and thousands have been killed during the groups seven-year insurgency.
Colombia's government will unilaterally force the world's largest drugmaker Novartis to lower prices of a popular leukemia medicine in a closely followed patent dispute, authorities said Thursday.

Health Minister Alejandro Gaviria told reporters that two weeks of negotiations with the Swiss company had ended without an agreement. As a result, he's following through on a threat to declare the drug Gleevec in the public interest, the first step in breaking Novartis' monopoly in the South American nation.

"Negotiations have ended definitively," Gaviria said, adding that the resolution that will be published in the coming days is likely to mandate lower prices for the medicine but not throw open production to generic rivals as was originally contemplated.

Gleevec has been the top-selling drug for Novartis since 2012, bringing in $4.7 billion worldwide last year, or about 10 percent of the company's total revenue. It won't be the top seller much longer, though. Gleevec got generic competition on Feb. 1 in the U.S., which accounts for half of its sales. In Colombia, the patent is due to expire in July 2018.

The drug maker's increasingly public feud with U.S. ally Colombia over its patent has drawn attention because of fear in the pharmaceutical industry that Colombia's decision will set a precedent for middle-income countries grappling to contain rising prices for complex drugs. Memos written by diplomats at Colombia's Embassy in Washington and leaked to the non-profit Knowledge Ecology International describe the intense lobbying pressure by the pharmaceutical industry and its allies in the U.S. Congress to avoid tapping a legal mechanism they consider should only be used in the case of epidemics and public health emergencies.

In one memo, the embassy warns that breaking Novartis' patent for Gleevec could hurt U.S. support for Colombia's bid to join the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership trade zone and even jeopardize $450 million in U.S. assistance for a peace deal with leftist rebels. The memos followed meetings between Colombian diplomats and officials from the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative and a Republican staffer on the Senate Finance Committee whose chairman, Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah, has close ties to the pharmaceutical industry.

But Colombia's actions have also elicited much praise from the World Health Organization and public health experts worried about access to life-saving medicines and overburdened public health systems like Colombia's.

Novartis said in a statement that it has actively sought a solution that benefits patients, innovation and Colombia's health care system. It says it is already subject to price controls in Colombia and disputes the government's claim that competition doesn't exist.

"Novartis never will close the door to a solution that benefits the parties and especially patients in Colombia," it said.

Colombia's actions are being motivated by a severe deficit in the public health system, which treats mostly the poor. Cost for treatment with Gleevec is about $15,000 a year, or about twice the average Colombian worker's income. According to a study by the ministry, without competition from generics, the government would have to pay an extra $15 million a year supplying Gleevec.

Explore further Colombia battles world's biggest drugmaker over cancer drug

 2016 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
The continuing permanence of major neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) is leading to a revision of the related research agenda towards current and future control interventions and associated targets. In the journal Lancet Infectious Diseases, published 7 June 2016, LSTM's Professors Louis Niessen and Russell Stothard argue for a broad research and implementation approach in an efficient and equitable upscaling of the control of schistosomiasis and soil-transmitted helminthiasis in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Set within a global strategy of preventive chemotherapy as endorsed by WHO, routine co-administration of the anthelminthics praziquantel (PZQ) and albendazole (ALB), by mass drug administration, is the frontline public health tool against schistosomiasis and soil-transmitted helminthiasis (STH), respectively. In 2012 several significant pledges and commitments made at the London Declaration on NTDs with an additional World Health Assembly (WHA) resolution 65.21 that called for intensification of efforts to better rally resources and to ensure an adequate provision of medications.

In their Comments Professors Niessen and Stothard give thoughtful support to a Stanford-based economics study on the situation in Sub-Saharan Africa by Nathan Lo and colleagues, published in the same journal, that demonstrates most strikingly that, if 20% of the entire population would shift to integrated treatment, fully dovetailing PZQ and ALB treatments, programme synergies would lead to a 40% reduction in implementation costs. Also, the study shows that annual preventive chemotherapy against schistosomiasis to be very likely cost-effective in treatment of school-aged children already at a prevalence of 5% (current guidelines state 50%) and of entire communities at 15% prevalence. Annual mass drug administration against STH is very likely cost-effective in treatment of school-aged children at a prevalence of 20% and for the entire community only as high as 60% prevalence, given uncertainties (95% UI: 353-851%). The authors estimate that treatment needs for Africa are six-fold higher than current guidelines for PZQ and two- fold higher for ALB.

Nathan Lo, the leading scientist, from Stanford University School of Medicine, said: "This editorial provides a clear vision on how our study findings can be translated into the next stage of helminthiasis control and elimination. Their words are optimistic for what we can accomplish to address the disease burden of helminths, but also realistic with many suggestions on how to address the host of challenges in revision of treatment guidelines and scaling up of treatment programmes."

Niessen and Stothard argue that the consequences for country programming are immense. The involved total budgets and other investments needed will be substantial, a major undertaking, given the limited resources in other priority areas within the NTD programmes and other health issues. In all scenarios, increased drug subsidies, and donations from pharmaceutical companies, strong political will, increased logistical support and improved epidemiological surveillance to monitor for drug resistance are needed. Although treatment expansion is now shown both financially and geographically appealing, Professor Niessen and colleague point out that extension of coverage is also justified ethically. At lower prevalence levels the at-risk vulnerable populations may be living in poverty and be harder to reach and lower compliance will lead to less returns. Extra effort and resources needed in the national process to improve the quality of the existing expanded MDA programmes in all places. Professor Stothard emphasizes that strategies need to be in place to ensure that treatment fatigue within the community does not dampen the recipients' compliance and that their demand for treatment continues to complement the donor landscape and health system.

Professor Niessen said: "In revising preventive chemotherapy guidelines based on these new estimates, broader quantitative and qualitative evidence should also be collected and incorporated and collected - such as through the LSTM-coordinated COUNTDOWN programmeto optimise the implementation of control campaigns, which may suffer low uptake. At least, these developments are new and essential steps in the promotion of universal access in prevention and treatment of neglected tropical diseases as also envisaged in the sustainable development goals."

Explore further Ramping up treatment of parasitic worm disease cost-effective, researchers find
Credit: University of Michigan Health System

People have been crowdfunding for years. Now researchers are doing the same, so you can contribute ideas and money to the studies that matter to you.

Do you wish more research could be done about a certain health condition? Thanks to a new tool, you can gather your network and make it happen.

The University of Michigan Health System is crowdfunding research from ideas that were suggested by the public with a new platform called WellSpringboard.

WellSpringboard allows anyone to submit an idea. Once a U-M researcher agrees to take up the idea, it's time for the public to donate online, volunteer to be contacted to possibly take part, or share it with their networks.

"This is a great way to get together as a community to address what our patients are passionate about," says Peter Higgins, M.D., Ph.D., a gastroenterologist who specializes in inflammatory bowel diseases. He was one of the first researchers to write a proposal for a WellSpringboard idea.

An idea for IBD research

Take Eric Polsinelli, who explains his idea in the video below. He struggled with his inflammatory bowel disease up until he got an ostomy.

"It was a challenge to do anything," Polsinelli says. "Losing control of your body and your life is difficult."

When he heard about WellSpringboard through Higgins, Polsinelli thought it could be a way to find patient information backed by evidence.

"A lot of what you find online is anecdotal or pseudoscience," Polsinelli says. "I'd like to see research that shows evidence of what you can do to improve your physical or mental health while dealing with IBD."

Higgins works to improve the quality of life for those with IBD, so it was the perfect match.

"This is a project we've been pondering for a while," Higgins says. "Flares come out of the blue and disrupt patients' lives, so we're going to incorporate an activity tracker to see if it helps identify when someone is at risk for a flare."

Higgins' proposal will involve recruiting subjects who have recently had a flare of IBD and started on steroids. He'll study dozens of patients with IBD and outfit them with a fitness tracker.

He wants to measure heart rate because patients with IBD tend to have higher heart rates during flares, sleep because it's difficult to sleep during a flare, and steps because it's difficult to find the energy to be active during a flare.

"We thought an activity monitor might be able to measure those subtle changes in sleep, heart rate and activity that occur before a flare begins," Higgins says. "If it works, we may be able to help IBD patients know when a flare is coming, allowing them to address these warning signs with their IBD doctor before the clinical symptoms of a flare begin."

Another project: Home CPAP and infections

June Insco has a CPAP machine for her sleep apnea, a condition that affects 10 to 20 percent of Americans. She heard about WellSpringboard, and it made her think of a concern she's had for some time about the machine that helps her keep breathing throughout the night.

"I didn't get a lot of good instruction up front about cleaning it, and even though I do clean it every week, it sometimes has a musty odor," Insco says. "CPAPs are a fairly new phenomenon, so I wonder what kinds of studies have been done on the long-term effects of using them, particularly with respiratory issues."

When Tiffany Braley, M.D., M.S., a neurologist whose research focuses on sleep and its relationship with the immune system, saw Insco's request, she knew she could investigate. Braley explains her proposal in the video below.

"It was a topic I've been asked about before, but I hadn't considered researching this important issue until June's WellSpringboard request came through," Braley says.

Braley's project will examine electronic medical records of 4,000 patients with obstructive sleep apnea who started using CPAP at U-M. She'll evaluate upper respiratory infection rates in patients before and after they start CPAP, to see if CPAP use leads to changes in infection rates."CPAP is the most effective way to treat sleep apnea, but only about half of patients actually use this treatment regularly," Braley says. "Concern about infection may be a barrier to regular CPAP use. If funded, this project will allow us to investigate a potential barrier that may be discouraging some patients from using CPAP, and provide vital information about the safety of CPAP treatment."

Funding in process

The first two projects have begun funding. Each idea, once paired with a research project, has 30 days to reachits fundraising goal. Both are from the five initial priority areas, which include:

Children's heart disease

Children's cancer

Sleep problems

Adult diabetes

Inflammatory bowel diseases, such as Crohn's and colitis

If they reach their crowdfunding goals, the researcher will receive the money and can get started on the research. If a project doesn't meet its goal, the donations will be used to support other WellSpringboard research in the same category. The site is still taking research ideas, even as matched ideas begin the funding process.

"We hope that the innovative combination of crowdsourcing research ideas, and crowdfunding the ones that researchers agree to study, will prove successful and be a model for other academic medical centers and research institutes," says Matthew M. Davis, M.D., the U-M physician and researcher who leads the team that helped WellSpringboard get off the ground.

Explore further What should medical researchers study next? You can help decide
Liquid Biopsy: Source of liquid biopsy tumor material. Solid tumor masses may shed (1) circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) and circulating tumor RNA (ctRNA), (2) apoptotic circulating tumor cells (CTCs), or (3) intact CTCs into the circulation. In addition, ctDNA and ctRNA may enter the bloodstream after apoptosis of circulating and noncirculating tumor cells (4). Credit: H. McDonald / Science Translational Medicine

(Medical Xpress)There's many buzzwords being thrown around in medicine these days. In cancer treatment, blanket terms like "precision medicine" and "immunotherapy" hint at the promise of a rapidly changing technology base, but at the same time, can invariably leave both patients and caregivers alike a bit foggy on a precise meaning of the terms. An emerging diagnostic technique of similar broad scope that is having a clear impact right now in cancer is the "liquid biopsy".

Essentially, it involves taking material from patient's blood, CSF, urine or other fluids, and analyzing it for tumor marker genes or metabolites. It's not really designed to supplant the direct solid tumor biopsy that is critical to the initial pathological diagnosis of cancer. The information you get in looking at the 'in situ' form and arrangement of tumor cells in a histological sample is simply irreplaceable. But what the liquid biopsy can now do extremely well is provide up to date 'meeting minutes' for the subsequent treatment of that cancer.

Tumors do not take chemotherapy sitting down. They predictably arm themselves through a succession of genetic and metabolic pivots in which they acquire resistance to the drugs. Generally this involves upregulating enzymes which pump out and modify drugs so the body can excrete them. Because of this, new immunotherapies based on stimulating the patient's own immune system may offer a better approach than any particular drug cocktail. Instead of antimitotic or cytotoxic drugs, man-made immuno proteins which enhance endogenous antitumor responses are given.

Sitting right at the nexus of these new technologies is a company called Biocept. They just launched their groundbreaking 'liquid biopsy immuno-oncology PD-L1 test'. PD-L1 stands for Programmed Cell Death Ligand 1 which, perhaps not surprisingly, binds to a protein found on T cells and pro-B cells known as Programmed Cell Death Protein 1. When this happens, activation of T cells is blocked and the immune system is toned down. This normally acts as an important checkpoint which keeps an overzealous immune system from attacking the body's own healthy tissues. However, all bets are off in cancer where you want all the immune action you can muster.

Patients with cancers expressing PD-L1 have been found to respond well to immunotherapy. Drugs like pembrolizumab, that target its PD-1 receptor, have gotten FDA approval for certain cancers like advanced non-small cell lung cancer. To get cutting edge drugs like these patients frequently need to be qualified under the auspices of a formal drug trial. Biocept's blood-based PD-L1 expression test can readily provide that validation.

I spoke recently with Biocept's Veena Singh who described the technology behind several of their new diagnostic tests. They now have the ability to isolate single cancer cells from a sample using microfluidics. Using fluorescent labels they can eliminate healthy cells from the pool, and quantify PD-L1 expression levels directly in the circulating tumor cells (CTCs). These rouge, potentially metastatic cells from the primary tumor, are generally rareperhaps just a handful in a 10ml sample. By contrast, in a 'liquid tumor' a direct hematologic cancer (like leukemia or lymphoma), they would be more abundant.

In addition to CTCs, Biocept can also analyze cell-free or circulating tumor (ct)DNA. This source might be up 100 times more abundant in the bloodperhaps hundreds of what we might call 'genome equivalents' of a CTC. With a handy blood source, PD-L1 levels can be readily monitored throughout the course of therapy. This is a welcome development for any patient for whom the word 'biopsy' quite reasonably elicits considerable angst.

Considering that a typical bone biopsy for the above mentioned liquid tumors involves a somewhat nasty dual sample technique (excising a lamprey-like solid core of bone and aspirating some liquid marrow), less invasive methods are highly sought. The same sentiment applies for spinal tap biopsy of tumors spreading the central nervous system. In non small cell long cancer, brain metastases and leptomengial disease are common sequelae. Biocept can now analyze the CSF in such cases to determine if tumor cells or DNA (which may not pass readily into general circulation), is there.

The number of potential tumor markers that can be analyzed is exploding. Additionally, other pathogenic alterations like single nucleotide variants, (SNVs) copy number variants (CNVs), fusions, rearrangements, and insertions or deletions can be quantified. At this week's ASCO cancer meeting in Chicago (where Biocept had several new abstracts), Vice President Joe Biden spoke to much the optimism now palpable in the business.

Now perhaps on equal footing with the massive proliferation of genetic minutia in the understanding of cancer is a parallel appreciation of the what makes cancer tick at the level of basic metabolism. For example, in the above mentioned case for the activation of T cells in immunity, it is now understood that a metabolic reprogramming from oxidative energy generation to glycolysis is required. This mimics much of what is known regarding both normal developmental protocol (as in embryogenesis), and also in tumorigenesis under the commonly known Warburg effect.

What is nothing short of revelatory, is have reached a critical mass where we can now explain these metabolic transformations in light of their direct control by new tumor markers nearly as fast as these markers can be discovered. For example, it was recently found that when PD1 is ligated in T cells that have been activated, they are not able to fully engage in glycolysis to generate the full amino acid economy they need to function. Instead they switch a metabolism of fatty acid -oxidation and lipolysis. While admittedly complex, such observations point to a mechanistic explanation of T-cell function and their capacity to be invigorated by PD-1 blockade.

 2016 Medical Xpress
Credit: George Hodan/Public Domain

An Australian study has cast doubt on the effectiveness of the tools used by medical professionals to assess suicide risk in mental health patients, prompting calls for a review of the allocation of resources based on the assessments.

The meta-analysis, led by clinical psychiatrist and Conjoint Professor Matthew Large from UNSW Australia's School of Psychiatry, has been published in the PLOS ONE journal.

It found that suicide risk assessment tools were not successful in predicting suicide outcomes, with no evidence of scientific progress over the past 50 years, pointing to a need for a more patient-focused approach to crisis mental health care.

"It is widely assumed that the care of psychiatric patients can be guided by a mental health professional's estimate of suicide risk and by using patient characteristics to define high-risk patients," Dr Large said.

"However, the reliability of categorising suicide risk remains unknown."

The objective of the study was to investigate the odds of suicide in high-risk compared to lower-risk categories and the suicide rates in these two groups. The researchers reviewed every long-term prospective study of suicide risk assessment published worldwide over the past 50 years.

They found there was no reliable method for assessing suicide risk, with the results of the assessments varying enormously across the 37 studies reviewed. They found half of all suicides occurred in lower-risk groups while 95% of high-risk patients did not suicide.

Overall, the study demonstrated that suicide risk assessments provide results that are slightly better than chance, however complex methods of suicide risk assessment that take into account multiple risk factors offer no statistical advantage than using a single factor.

"Much of what happens when a mentally distressed person presents to a hospital depends on a suicide risk assessment, based on a whole range of risk factors," Dr Large said.

"Lower-risk patients can be denied treatment, while some high-risk patients get hospitalised, sometimes against their wishes, based on an inaccurate risk assessment.

"In many hospitals, resources are still being allocated on the basis of suicide risk. It is time we moved away from paternalist medical decision making and classifying people into suicide risk categories.

"If a patient presents with a suicide crisis they should be thoroughly assessed, without catergorisation. Mental health professionals must also involve patients in the decision making process about their ongoing care to improve their outcomes," Dr Large said.

Dr Christopher Ryan from the University of Sydney is senior co-author of the study.

The study's authors stress that the focus of the study was on mental health patients, rather than the potential strength of risk categorisation for suicide among the general community.

Explore further Among active duty military, Army personnel most at risk for violent suicide
Credit: Sasha Wolff/Wikipedia

A high percentage of children, teens and young adults with migraines appear to have mild deficiencies in vitamin D, riboflavin and coenzyme Q10a vitamin-like substance found in every cell of the body that is used to produce energy for cell growth and maintenance.

These deficiencies may be involved in patients who experience migraines, but that is unclear based on existing studies.

"Further studies are needed to elucidate whether vitamin supplementation is effective in migraine patients in general, and whether patients with mild deficiency are more likely to benefit from supplementation," says Suzanne Hagler, MD, a Headache Medicine fellow in the division of Neurology at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center and lead author of the study.

Dr. Hagler and colleagues at Cincinnati Children's conducted the study among patients at the Cincinnati Children's Headache Center. She will present her findings at 9:55 am Pacific time Friday, June 10, 2016 at the 58th Annual Scientific Meeting of the American Headache Society in San Diego.

Dr. Hagler's study drew from a database that included patients with migraines who, according to Headache Center practice, had baseline blood levels checked for vitamin D, riboflavin, coenzyme Q10 and folate, all of which were implicated in migraines, to some degree, by previous and sometimes conflicting studies. Many were put on preventive migraine medications and received vitamin supplementation, if levels were low. Because few received vitamins alone, the researchers were unable to determine vitamin effectiveness in preventing migraines.

She found that girls and young woman were more likely than boys and young men to have coenzyme Q10 deficiencies at baseline. Boys and young men were more likely to have vitamin D deficiency. It was unclear whether there were folate deficiencies. Patients with chronic migraines were more likely to have coenzyme Q10 and riboflavin deficiencies than those with episodic migraines.

Previous studies have indicated that certain vitamins and vitamin deficiencies may be important in the migraine process. Studies using vitamins to prevent migraines, however, have had conflicting success.

Explore further Kids can get migraines too
World experts head to Batumi for UN environmental conference

Georgia will host hundreds of international officials at a major United Nations (UN) environmental meeting next week.About 600 delegates from 56 countries responsible for environmental, defence and education issues will gather in Georgias Black Sea resort town of Batumi next week to attend the Eighth Environment for Europe Ministerial Conference.In addition, senior representatives of the business sector, business associations and 55 international organisations will attend the June 7-10 conference.Green economics, improving air quality for a better environment and a segment on education for sustainable development will be the main topics of the four-day event.The Eight Environment for Europe Ministerial Conference will be facilitated by the UN Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE). This major gathering of Environment Ministers in Europe is being organised closely with the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).UNEP worked closely with UNECE, member countries and partners on the "strategic framework for greening the economy in the pan-European that shall contribute to frame more sustainable pathways for the development of the region.The first ministerial conference took place at Dobris Castle near Prague in 1991, while the last event took place in Kazakhstans capital Astana in 2011.
Iran - Turkey trade turnover hits $2.9B in 4 months

Trade turnover between Iran and Turkey stood at $2.93 billion during the first four months of 2016, according to the latest statistics released by the Turkish Statistical Institute.The trade turnover between the two countries reached $922 million in April, indicating a rise by 25.5 percent compared to $734 million in April 2015.The exports of Turkey to Iran in April 2016 valued about $560.7 million, which shows a 104 percent increase.In April 2016, Turkey imported goods worth $361.4 million from Iran, indicating a 21.4 percent decline.Turkey's exports to Iran in the first four months of 2016 amounted to $1.44 billion, 25 percent more year-on-year.The country also imported $1.5 billion worth of goods from Iran in the period, 37.4 percent less compared to the first four months of 2015.The trade turnover between the two countries was $13.71 billion in 2014, which stood at $9.76 billion in 2015, indicating a 29-percent plunge.The sharp decline came amid the plans to boost the annual trade turnover between Tehran and Ankara to $30 billion.Last November, Iranian and Turkish top economic officials urged for increasing the volume of the bilateral trade between the two countries to $30 billion a year.In 2014, Iran's non-oil exports to Turkey reached $2.15 billion. At the same time, Iran on the daily basis exports about 0.1 million barrels of crude oil and 27 million cubic meters of gas to Turkey.Moreover, Turkey imported 2.4 billion kilowatt hours of electricity from Iran in 2014.
Georgia made progress in anti-trafficking law

By Messenger Staff

The Council of Europes (CoE) anti-trafficking expert group (GRETA) has revealed its second evaluation report, which reads that Georgia has made substantial progress in terms of local legislation and policy to effectively combat trafficking. However there were various areas which still needed to be addressed.GRETA said Georgia had implemented a number of its previous recommendations, in particular:The Criminal Code was amended and a new chapter on child victims was introduced into the Law on Combating Trafficking;Foreign victims of human trafficking can now receive temporary residence permits both on the grounds of their co-operation in criminal proceedings and for humanitarian reasons;Special mobile groups were set up to detect and assist children in street situations, including in acquiring identity documents, and a unified database on human trafficking was set up.GRETA also welcomed the Georgian Governments efforts to train a variety of professionals and to raise general awareness of trafficking.Alongside the achievements, experts also spoke out the directions that needed to be addressed.GRETA wrote over the past five years, some 80 people had been officially identified as victims; the vast majority of them were Georgian nationals.As the report stated, most of the victims were trafficked for the purpose of labour exploitation, with trafficking for the purpose of sexual exploitation, both abroad and within Georgia.Turkey is the main country of destination of Georgian victims of human trafficking. Unemployed women, people from socially unprotected groups, such as internally displaced persons (IDPs) and children living and working in the streets are the most vulnerable to trafficking, the report said.GRETA urged the Georgian authorities to take further steps to ensure the timely identification of victims of trafficking, with a special focus on assisting child victims, and to specifically define in legislation the recovery and reflection period that should be granted to all possible victims of trafficking, regardless their co-operation with the police.The government were also encouraged to review the criminal and civil procedures regarding trafficking victims compensation and to ensure that traffickers assets are frozen and confiscated to secure compensation. GRETA also encouraged the government to ensure effective monitoring of private employment agencies and other intermediaries to ensure the authenticity of job offers they promote and prevent trafficking for the purposes of labour exploitation.Economic hardship is one of the main reasons people seek jobs abroad, and sometimes they fall into the hands of criminals.The government should ensure normal living conditions in order to decrease the outflow, and launch expanded and improved information campaigns is to raise awareness over the issue.It is obvious that steps are being taken to address the problem of children living and working on streets; however, it is also clear that their numbers are increasing.The Government should also ensure that its awareness campaigns will tell people that giving money to homeless children will worsen the problem and only encourage the criminals behind them.People can help the children with food, clothes and other consumables, but not with money, as in many cases the children are part of illegal business or trafficking and are forced to earn money by begging.
The News in Brief

Everyone unanimously recognize Georgia is only candidate which met all requirements - EU Ambassador to Latvia



Everone unanimously recognized that Georgia is the only candidate on the list which met all the requirements for visa liberalisation, European Union's Ambassador to Latvia, Sanita Pavluta-Deslandes, said in an exclusive interview with the Public Broadcaster.



The Ambassador said that a very complicated discussion is underway about granting the EU visa requirements, but not because of Georgia.



Sanita Pavluta-Deslandes notes that the visa-free regime is a very sensitive issue in some EU countries.



"There is a general agreement in the organization and no one has a contrary opinion about the fact Georgia has met all the requirements. In addition, the Commission prepared a positive report, which was the first step. The thing is that visa-free regimes are a very sensitive subject in some EU countries. The reason is public opinion. The European population is concerned about questions related to migration and the flow of third country nationals to the EU.



So, every member of the organization has difficulties with regards to public opinion in their own countries. In several member states elections are coming soon and the issue becomes even more sensitive. I am sure that Georgia will receive a visa-free regime and I hope it will happen sooner than later, but you must understand that all member countries should agree on the issue. It will take some time," said the EU Ambassador to Latvia.



I dont know when it will happen. The EU chairman country sets the agenda. When the discussion is underway, of course, we take into account the context of other countries, which are waiting for a visa-free regime, but, all unanimously acknowledge that Georgia is the only candidate on the list which met all the requirements," said the Ambassador.

(IPN)







Parliament Delays Vote on Supreme Court Nominations Again



Parliament has again delayed the vote on President-nominated Supreme Court judge candidates as lawmakers from the ruling GDDG party appear to be still undecided whether to support the nominations.



Parliament Speaker Davit Usupashvili said at a parliamentary session on June 3 that the vote was postponed once again upon a request of MPs from the majority group in the parliament as they need more consultations among themselves.



President Giorgi Margvelashvili named incumbent Deputy Defence Minister Anna Dolidze as a candidate for the Supreme Court in February, and Tamar Laliashvili and Nona Todua for the two other vacant seats in March. Hearings in the parliamentary committees over the nominations were completed almost two months ago, and the only procedure left is a vote at a parliamentary session. But in early May, MP Giorgi Volski - who chairs the largest faction in parliament, made up of MPs from GDDG ruling party - said that members of his faction were undecided on whether to support the nominations.



The vote on the issue was in the agenda of Parliaments June 3 session, and candidates were also present in the chamber, but the plans apparently changed last minute and the Parliament Speaker announced in the evening that the vote had been postponed.



I hope this process will be completed soon. The Supreme Court needs judges, we all know that, and thats why we are trying to reach a consensus, Usupashvili said, who also added that the postponing of the vote was the result of a prior agreement with the President.



Presidential spokesperson Eka Mishveladze said that the Supreme Court and no one else needs the nominations to be approved by Parliament.

(Civil.ge)







Ivanishvili and Burchuladze accuse each other of lying



Former Prime Minister Bidzina Ivanishvili and famous Georgian operatic bass Paata Burchuladze exchanged mutual accusations of lying.



I would advice Paata Burchuladze not to lie, Bidzina Ivanishvili said to journalists on Thursday when asked about Burchuladzes statement that he was offered the presidential nomination by Georgian Dream before the last presidential elections, which were held in October 2013.



Paata Burchuladze, a popular figure in Georgia, recently entered politics forming his political movement, State for People.



Prior to Ivanishvili's statement, on June 1 Paata Burchuladze said in an interview with Ajara TV that he had been offered the presidential nomination in 2013. However, he said he declined the offer.



Burchuladze quickly responded to the Ivanishvilis accusations.



I am responsible for my words. No one has ever cast doubt on my words; the same cannot be said of Mr. Ivanishvili, Burchuladze said.



Paata Burchuladze and his political movement have often been accused by GD leaders of being an ally of the United National Movement party.



Irakli Kobakhidze, Executive Secretary of Georgian Dream party, called Paata Burchuladze a UNM satellite in May after the two political groups  UNM and State for People  designated a joint candidate in one of the electoral districts during the by-elections.

(DF watch)




Democratic activists on Thursday blasted Gov. Rick Scott and Attorney General Pam Bondi Thursday for failing to condemn Donald Trump for what they consider "racist" comments about Judge Gonzalo Curiel and urged them to refrain from using taxpayer dollars to travel to Tampa to appear on stage with the presumptive Republican nominee on Saturday.

"We understand it takes all the efforts of our taxpayer dollars to mobilize and move around our elected officials and when you stand up with those...who have been involved in racist comments, that speaks volumes,'' said Derrick McRae, pastor of The Experience Christian Center in Orlando in a call with reporters. "We should not be using state funds to help push a racist comment or a racist platform."

U.S. Rep. Ted Deutch, D-Delray Beach, said he was especially outraged that Bondi and Scott, who were elected to uphold the laws of Florida, have refused to distance themselves from the comments or demand a public apology from Trump.

"As a Republican partisan, Pam Bondi has every right to support these raciest views; she has every right to participate in conference calls with the campaign,'' Deutch said. But as "the attorney general for one of our countries most diverse states she's got a moral obligation to...denounce the statements as Republican leaders across the country have done."

Bondi and Scott are scheduled to appear Saturday at an 11 a.m. rally with Trump at the Tampa Convention Center. Neither has criticized Trump for comments suggesting that because Curiel is of Mexican descent he could not be fair in his treatment of the pending lawsuit about the now-defunct Trump University. Curiel was born in Indiana to Mexican parents.

After repeatedly citing Curiels ethnicity, Trump said Tuesday that his comments questioning whether a federal judge was biased because of his Mexican heritage have been misconstrued and that he didnt mean to impugn the American justice system with his complaints or Mexican-Americans in general.

Immigration activist Maria Rodriguez also called out Helen Aguirre Ferre, a member of the board of trustees of Miami Dade College who was recently hired as Hispanic communications director of the Republican National Committee, for her failure to distance herself from Trump's comments.

"It's very disappointing to see Helen Aguirre Ferre use her name legitimize this very divisive campaign,'' she said. "It sanitizes the hate and divisiveness of this speech."

Rodriguez accused Trump of "successfully divided and bullied his way to the Republican nomination" and done it "through coded and blatant attacks on latinos."

Chastising Aguirre Ferre, she said, "it's a huge contradiction to serve in a Hispanic-serving institution and turn your back on the students who are being attacked by this candidate."

Aguirre Ferre told the Miami Herald she sees her role as "in support of all the Republican candidates."

She has publicly criticized Trump in the past with #NeverTrump tweets, where she called him crazy and criticized Trump for inciting violence at his Chicago rally. Last month she told Univisions Al Punto Florida, I do think theres something that bothers him about strong and independent women. She has since deleted her critical Trump tweets.

Rodriguez said she was "not surprised by Attorney General Bondi. "She has used every opportunity to undermine immigrant families and supported attacks on their families" by using tax money to file action aimed at blocking President Obama's executive order on immigration.

Deutch, a member of the U.S. House Judiciary Committee, said Scott should "make it very clear the citizens of Florida should expect the governor of our state, our diverse state, who has endorsed Donald Trump, that he will rescind the endorsement until he apologizes and makes clear he will support a legal system that works for all Americans."

Photo: FILE - In this May 26, 2016 file photo, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks in Billings, Mont., Thursday, May 26, 2016. Trump says comments on judge 'misconstrued' as an attack against people of Mexican heritage.Brennan Linsley AP






@ByKristenMClark

A competitive Miami-Dade state Senate seat is a toss-up with almost a third of potential voters undecided about five months ahead of the general election, according to an internal Democratic poll obtained by the Herald/Times.

In the race for the newly redrawn District 37 seat, Republican state Sen. Miguel Diaz de la Portilla is up two percentage points on Democratic state Rep. Jose Javier Rodriguez -- a statistical tie, since it's within the margin of error of plus or minus 4.2 percentage points.

The two candidates, both of whom live in Miami, officially launched their campaigns in May, though they filed for the race several months ago.

About 37 percent of those surveyed said they preferred Diaz de la Portilla, 35 percent supported Rodriguez and 29 percent were undecided, according to the polling memo. Raw data from the poll, including a list of specific questions asked, was requested but not provided.

From June 1-6, Tampa-based SEA Polling & Strategic Design surveyed 540 district voters expected to vote in the legislative contest. The poll was paid for by the Florida Democratic Party as an in-kind contribution to Rodriguez's campaign.

District 37 represents much of the city of Miami and stretches south along the coast to include Coral Gables, Key Biscayne and Cutler Bay. It leans Democratic and is heavily Hispanic.

It's one of a few Miami-Dade state Senate seats that Florida Democrats hope to win in November, which would help them narrow the Republican majority in the chamber.

But it'll be a rough battle between Diaz de la Portilla and Rodriguez.

Heading into May, Diaz de la Portilla had considerably stronger fundraising numbers than Rodriguez. (The campaigns' reports for May are due today and not available yet.)

And the sitting senator also picked up a valuable endorsement this week from the Florida chapter of AFSCME, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. It's rare for labor unions to endorse Republican candidates. (AFSCME Florida also endorsed Miami Republican state Sen. Anitere Flores this week in her close contest against Democrat Andrew Korge for District 39.)

The Democratic poll for District 37 showed potential voters' party preference leans in Democrats' favor. In general, 39 percent of respondents said they would support a Democratic candidate, 35 percent said they would support a Republican candidate, 22 percent had no preference and 4 percent said they didn't know.

"We know that Miami-Dade continues to change and the poll confirms what weve known all along," Christian Ulvert, a campaign adviser to Rodriguez, said in a statement. "Despite almost 30 years of a Diaz de la Portilla in office in Miami-Dade, Jose Javier Rodriguez starts the race tied with Miguel Diaz de la Portilla. The residents in SD37 are very much aligned with the values and principles of Jose Javier Rodriguez and he is well-positioned to carry the district with their support."

Diaz de la Portilla found optimism in the poll, too, and was critical of his opponent.

"The reason Mr. Rodriguez can't even win in his own paid push poll is the same reason why he won't win this election: People here know he parachuted into our community a few short years ago to run for office," Diaz de la Portilla said in a text message. "My constituents will ask themselves: If he doesn't know us and doesn't share our values, how can he represent us?"
via @michaelauslen

Before the United States invaded Iraq, Todd Wilcox led some of the first Americans on the ground as a CIA officer.

In Operation Desert Storm, he earned a Bronze Star after his Army platoon captured more than 250 Iraqi soldiers. From a Japanese base, he led a team of snipers in hostage situations throughout East Asia.

Florida Senate candidate Todd Wilcox speaks to members and guests of the Plant City Republican Women Federated Womens Club meeting in Plant City, April 21, 2016.David W. Doonan Tampa Bay Times

More than a decade later, though, hes struggling to command attention on a new, political battlefield at the Florida Gun Show.

Its a friendly crowd for a guy like Wilcox, a life member of the NRA whos shopping for a new scope for his gun, as well as for voters. But few passersby stop under the Restoring Americas Prominence banner he set up that May morning to hear his earnest pitch to replace Marco Rubio as the next U.S. senator from Florida.

That apathys going to kill us, says Wilcox, 49, one of five Republicans angling for attention in a race full of unknowns and little-knowns. By us he doesnt just mean his own campaign; he means the United States.

Apathy is the first step toward the failure of Americas 240-year experiment with democracy, he says. Career politicians have turned voters off government, making them complacent and the nation vulnerable.

Wilcox insists he isnt like those politicians.

He says its time for a change. More specifically: Its time to elect a warrior.

Full story here.

Photo credit: David W. Doonan / Tampa Bay Times
WASHINGTON - The House on Thursday passed a rescue package for Puerto Rico by a wide bipartisan vote. But a number of Florida members voted against the deal.

Republicans: Gus Bilirakis, Curt Clawson, Ron DeSantis, John Mica, Jeff Miller, Tom Rooney and Ted Yoho.

Democrats: Alcee Hastings, Debbie Wasserman Schultz.

From the AP:

The legislation would allow the seven-member control board to oversee negotiations with creditors and the courts over reducing some debt. It does not provide any taxpayer funds to reduce that debt.

It would also require the territory to create a fiscal plan. Among other requirements, the plan would have to provide "adequate" funds for public pensions, which the government has underfunded by more than $40 billion.

- Alex Leary, Tampa Bay Times
via @alextdaugherty

Helen Aguirre Ferre will not step down as head of the board of trustees at Miami Dade College after taking a new job as the Hispanic communications chief for the Republican Party, she said Thursday.

Democrats and activist groups have been calling on Aguirre Ferre to leave her post at the college because her new job will require her to support Donald Trump and other Republicans that want to deport undocumented immigrants.

I will not cow to political pressure, Aguirre Ferre said after days of silence on the issue. Its never been a secret that I am a Republican. Ive been a member of the board of trustees for many years now and I do so as a volunteer. I believe in the mission of community college and what it offers to students.

On Monday, the Miami Dade College DREAMers started a petition demanding that Aguirre Ferre step down. Miami-Dade GOP chairman Nelson Diaz said on Tuesday that if he were in Ferres position, he would step down because of pressure from Democrats and activists.

Its sad because she is putting Miami Dade College in a very bad position, Maria Bilbao of the Miami Dade College DREAMers said. She has to promote Donald Trump. Donald Trump is a racist. He wants to deport me, my son, 11 million immigrants and Muslim people.

Read more here.
Attorney General Pam Bondi on Friday announced the appointment of Florida's new solicitor general: Amit Agarwal, a Broward County attorney who most recently served as deputy chief in the appellate division of the U.S. attorney's office in Miami.

Agarwal, 40 (at left), clerked for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito and served as an attorney advisor in the U.S. Department of Justice's Office of Legal Counsel. He graduated magna cum laude from Georgetown University Law Center in Washington and received his B.A. in English from Duke.

The solicitor general, created in 1999, is the state's chief appellate counsel, representing the interests of the state in all appellate courts and at the U.S. Supreme Court. As part of the job, Agarwal is a visiting professor of law at Florida State University.

Agarwal's youth and resume suggest he has a bright legal future, and history may be on his side, too. The past three lawyers who served as solicitor general have all been appointed to appellate judgeships: Scott Makar, Tim Osterhaus and most recently Allen Winsor. Agarwal could be No. 4.

Correction: An earlier version of this post listed an incorrect age and party affiliation.
Vice President Joe Biden will be in South Florida this weekend fundraising for U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Weston.

Stephen Bittel, a developer who lives in Coconut Grove, is hosting the event at 6 p.m. Sunday. (See our May blog about the fundraiser.)

It doesn't appear that Biden will hold any public events.

As a contrast to her big-dollar fundraiser with Biden, Wasserman Schultz is hosting a free barbeque at the Old Davie Schoolhouse in Davie at 3 p.m. Saturday.

Her primary opponent, Tim Canova, has focused on small, online donations much like Bernie Sanders who supports Canova rather than big-ticket fundraisers. Canova has raised nearly $2 million in his first campaign which he launched in January. Wasserman Schultz raised $1.8 million through March and hasn't provided an update. They are competing for a Broward/Miami-Dade district.

The primary is Aug. 30.

(Miami Herald photo of Wasserman Schultz and Biden at the Jewish Community Center in September speaking about the Iran nuclear deal. This blog was updated to include the date of the event)
In a White House briefing today, spokesman Josh Earnest faced a question about President Barack Obama's position on U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz's leadership of the Democratic National Committee.

QUESTION: Does the president have confidence in Debbie Wasserman Schultz to maintain her position through the end of this cycle?

EARNEST: Well, James, the president was in south Florida at the end of last week, and he talked about her service as the chair of the Democratic National Committee. But the president appointed her to be the chair of the DNC during his first term, which means that part of her legacy at the DNC is having built a Democratic campaign apparatus that succeeded in reelecting the first African-American president of the United States. President Obama is, of course, the first president since Eisenhower to be elected and reelected with more than 50 percent of the vote. And certainly the DNC, and the structure that was built and financed through Debbie Wasserman Schultz's efforts can take some credit for that, she should. So, the president made clear that Debbie Wasserman Schultz has always had his back and he's always going to have hers. And the president announced his support for her reelection campaign, and he certainly is appreciative of all the important work that she has done at the DNC.

Obama praised Wasserman Schultz at a DNC fundraiser in Miami earlier this month. Vice President Joe Biden comes to Coconut Grove this weekend to fundraiser for her.

Wasserman Schultz is facing Democratic opponent Tim Canova, a first-time candidate and Nova Southeastern University law professor who has raised nearly $2 million. He has focused on online, small-dollar donations similar to his biggest-name supporter: Bernie Sanders.
via @stevebousquet

Cell phones are strictly prohibited in the chambers of the Florida Supreme Court. As visitors pass through a security kiosk, they must surrender their phones until they leave. No exceptions. But during oral arguments Thursday, a cell phone began chirping while Justice Barbara Pariente was speaking. Chirp, chirp, chirp.

The ringing sound was loud and clear, so it had to be very close to Pariente's microphone. The justice who sits directly to Pariente's left is Chief Justice Jorge Labarga, and as the court called a recess, the chief accepted responsibility for the unwelcome noise.

"I never bring the phone to court -- never," Labarga was heard saying on an open microphone. "I bring it one day and this happens."
Right under our feet.

That's where David Perry believes the next agricultural revolution will come from  the millions of unseen microbes in soil that play a crucial but complicated role in the well-being of plants.

Perry believes that he can repackage beneficial bacteria and fungi as something akin to human probiotics and deliver them to plants to alter their microbiome in ways that will boost growth, increase resistance to drought, disease and pests, and reduce farmers' reliance on fertilizers and pesticides.

Like Perry's Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Indigo, a slew of other startups and all of the top international agro-industrial companies  BASF, Monsanto, Bayer CropScience, Syngenta, Arysta LifeScience  are rushing into a market that analysts believe could more than double in value, to $4.5 billion, by 2019.

That shift has created a buyout market for California startups.

BayerCropScience paid $425 million for AgraQuest of Davis, California, in 2012, largely for its enormous collection of bacterial strains. In 2013, Monsanto acquired key assets of Agradis and Synthetic Genomics, two related San Diego-based companies that own large microbial libraries as well as patented genome analysis techniques. Terms of the sale were not disclosed.

DuPont bought Taxon Biosciences Inc. of Tiburon, California, for an undisclosed amount last year.

Big Bio and Big Ag aren't more than a degree removed from Indigo, either. Astrazeneca, Nestle Health Sciences and Bayer CropScience formed a strategic partnership last May with Flagship Ventures, the MIT-rooted fund whose in-house incubator, VentureLabs, birthed Indigo as Symbiota in 2014 and reflagged it as Indigo in February.

Indigo will offer two commercial products this year, said Perry, who came aboard as chief executive last year. The company's laboratory and field tests of a microbe-based seed coating showed a 10 percent increase in yield for several crops, including corn, soy, wheat, cotton, sorghum, canola, chickpeas, tomatoes and strawberries, Perry said.

"If we do that well, we make healthier plants, and healthier plants have a greater yield and need fewer chemicals and fertilizers and water to produce that yield," said Perry, a serial entrepreneur who previously launched several companies in California (including one that suffered a spectacular implosion during the dot-com bust).

University of Arizona microbiologist Betsy Arnold was wooed to work on Indigo's science team by MIT bioengineer and inventor Geoffrey Von Maltzahn, a principal in Flagship Venture Labs.

Fresh out of Duke University with an undergraduate degree in biology, Arnold was collecting leaf samples at the Smithsonian's Barro Colorado nature preserve in Panama to see what was eating them and what was causing disease.

In a petri dish held up to the light, the leaves looked like a stained-glass window. Arnold thought maybe she was just a sloppy microbiologist, but soon realized that she had stumbled into leaves packed with biological hitchhikers, or endophytes, colonizing leaf tissues.

"It blew my little mind," said Arnold, who soon changed her focus. She now runs a microbiology lab at the university that collects and studies this type of fungi.

She said she "played a little hard to get" when MIT's Von Maltzahn came calling. "I'm really happy with the academic lifestyle and I didn't feel the need necessarily to interact with industry," she said.

Arnold soon was "intrigued" by Von Maltzah's approach, which narrows down from the millions of microbes found in soil to just the ones that have migrated into plant tissue  like the ones she found in the leaves in Panama.

Those should be the microbes the plant has "selected" as most beneficial, Indigo's science team theorizes.

"I am really hopeful, and that doesn't come with my experience with outside parties," Arnold said. "That comes from my experience working with plants and microbes and recognizing the potential for what's here."

Scientists believe that so-called agricultural microbials offer enormous promise, though not without equally big challenges.

Evolution may be the biggest hurdle. With vast populations and fast generation times, microbes have the upper hand, warned Joel Sachs, a University of California at Riverside microbiologist who has studied rhizobia bacteria and pea plants.

"If you think about an evolutionary battle between a plant and bacteria, bacteria are going to win every time," Sachs said. "There's very little evidence, when you actually do experiments, that there's been anything that's really helpful" he added.

Surendra Dara, a University of California Cooperative Extension entomologist who has been seeking biological alternatives to chemical fumigants used on soil, said he has seen mixed results from experiments with several microbial treatments already on the market.

The microbes not only successfully out-competed others that are harmful to the plant, they also boosted plant growth, he said.

"Unfortunately, a lot of growers don't have faith in these products," he said. "A lot of scientists are getting into this area because there is some promise."

Scientists have known since the 19th century that microbes could be beneficial to plants, not just causes of disease. They found that rhizobia bacteria, which form nodules on the roots of legumes such as beans and clover, helped convert nitrogen into a more usable form for plants in exchange for feeding off the plant's sugars. That helped explain why crop rotation had helped keep fields fertile for centuries.

But microbes largely were left behind amid the rise of chemical fertilizers and pesticides. Those ushered in the biggest sustained expansion in food supply in human history, but left a legacy of environmental damage, including nitrates in water and toxic traces in food.

The industry has since turned back toward the soil, combing the combined plant-microbe "hologenome" for the key to fighting pests and disease. Snippets of that DNA now are routinely spliced into a plant's genome. A gene in Bacillus thuringiensis, a soil bacterium that produces a protein lethal to several species of corn borer, has been added to corn.

But genetically modified organisms, or GMOs, have run up against suspicious consumers and food health advocates, who fear that they will introduce strains that could later prove dangerous while giving corporations a monopoly over seeds. Pitched battles over labeling such foods have been waged in several states and in Congress.

Many farmers now find themselves in an "uncomfortable position" of choosing between chemicals and GMO crops to boost yields any further, said Perry, who grew up on a farm in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

"For the first time, farmers are sort of being vilified for their choices in how they grow their crops," Perry said.

Sometime this year, Perry hopes to offer them an alternative that came from right below their feet.
POLSON  Two people have been arrested for deliberate homicide in connection with the body of a teenager discovered in a camper near Arlee last week.

Stephen and Kassandra Seese are both in custody, Lake County Sheriff Don Bell said late Thursday afternoon.

The husband and wife were uncle and aunt to 18-year-old Richard Warner, whose body was found concealed in a camper on Coombs Lane near Arlee a week ago, where the three apparently lived at one time.

Warner had not been seen or heard from since February. No missing persons report was ever filed with law enforcement.

The sheriff's office was notified on June 2 that a body had been found in the camper.

Bell said Stephen Seese was already incarcerated in the Shoshone County Jail in Wallace, Idaho, on probation violation charges. He has waived extradition to Montana.

Kassandra Seese was arrested at her mothers house in Springdale, Washington, by the Stevens County Sheriffs Office.

Bell said she was transferred to the Spokane County Detention Center on Thursday.

Warner was beaten to death, the sheriff said.

The Lake County Attorneys Office sought arrest warrants for the Seeses late Wednesday afternoon.
Rob Jensen has studied rare monkeys in Morocco, observed seals in Antarctica, contracted malaria while serving the Peace Corps in Cameroon and taught teachers about science-based inquiry in China. And thats just a few of the highlights of his resume.

A science teacher at Hellgate High School for the past 15 years, Jensen was recently named the 2016 Outstanding Biology Teacher of the Year by the National Association of Biology Teachers. The candidates for the award are judged on their teaching ability and experience, cooperativeness in the school and community and their relationships with students.

Jensen said he doesnt know who nominated him.

I think maybe its because I do a variety of things, he said. Learning can be in the classroom. But it can also be outside. I can just be down here with my 7:30 to 3:40 contract hours. Or you can get out and do some fun stuff and on your own. Theres real opportunities out there for teachers if youre willing to look and youre flexible. Thats kind of the key.

Jensen said he tries to change things up for his kids every year. He often takes them to the Lee Metcalf National Wildlife Refuge near Stevensville, and his students have won first place at the state science fair for three out of the past four years.

Thats all them, he said. Theyre doing the research.

He has three different undergrad degrees from the University of Montana: Wildlife ecology, forest resources management and zoology. He also has a masters degree in wildlife ecology from the University of Minnesota, and conducted dissertation research on wolves at the University of Idaho. He served as a wildlife biologist in the Peace Corps for the governments of Cameroon and Morocco, and taught inner-city youth in the San Francisco Bay area for several years. He studied Japanese education through a Fulbright Memorial Fund award and has trained teachers in Russia through a U.S. State Department program. Hes also co-led at least 10 field science courses with the local nonprofit Ecology Project International.

Scott Pankratz, the executive director of EPI, said Jensen has been an invaluable addition to the team.

"I have seen his commitment to teaching biology in innovative ways, in particular in his ability to get his students outside the classroom, Pankratz said.

He cited several trips Jensen has taken students on through Ecology Project International: experiential field science courses seven times to Costa Rica studying leatherback sea turtles; two to Baja, Mexico, to explore marine ecology; and once to the Galapagos Islands to study giant tortoises and evolution.

Jensen also has a trip to Baja scheduled with EPI for February 2017.

The trips show Jensen engages students in innovative ways, Pankratz said.

"His students work side by side with researchers doing science in the field, which inspires and empowers them to be leaders in science and conservation," Pankratz said.

Jensen and his students have raised more than $35,000 for bed nets to prevent malaria in developing countries.

I had malaria, so its one of those things that you bring something personal to it, he said.

Andy Vale, one of Jensen's former students at Hellgate, attended two EPI courses and is now a nurse at the prestigious Mayo Clinic in Minnesota.

"Rob is a very intelligent and very fair teacher," Vale recalled. "He expects a lot of himself and also others. That makes him a very strong role model."

Vale remembers Jensen's lessons about the natural world like planetary syzygy  the necessary condition for an eclipse  as well as jungle ecology and navigation using the Southern Cross constellation. Vale also mentioned Jensen's outdoor etiquette, travel smarts and leadership, which he taught by example.

"He's someone that I keep in touch with as a friend now because of what he taught me," Vale said.

Jensen said he gets a thrill out of teaching kids, even though he acknowledges that he has a reputation as being demanding.

Having them ponder, just wonder, he said. Just to kind of have them experience things or think about things in a new way that they havent before. Introducing them to things they havent seen before."

Many students who enter his classes don't like science  until they learn about all the different disciplines, from biology to chemistry and others, he said.

After they learn that, "Many have told me that theyre actually either more interested in science or interested in pursuing a career in science," he said. "And thats really gratifying.
A coalition of environmental groups has filed suit against the federal predator control program charged with shooting wolves in Idaho.

The wolf advocates claim USDAs Wildlife Services hunters shot 21 wolves from airplanes in Idahos Lolo Zone on Feb. 10. That was in addition to dozens or hundreds more killed by traps or ground hunters to reduce livestock depredation or boost elk and deer populations. Idaho Department of Fish and Game reports documented 360 wolf kills in 2014, including 53 by Wildlife Services.

The coalition argues the federal program uses outdated science to justify the wolf hunts.

Both the 2011 wolf environmental assessment and decision/FONSI (finding of no significant impact) are deeply flawed because Wildlife Services has never disclosed or analyzed how many wolves may be killed; the ecological impacts of doing so, even on central Idahos wildernesses; or the cumulative impacts of the agencys killing combined with extensive private hunting and trapping, coalition lawyers wrote in their suit, Western Watersheds Project et al vs. USDA Wildlife Services. The 2011 decision also neglects to consider impacts of Idaho state wolf hunting seasons that were authorized just months after the federal policy was adopted. The state hunting plan revised its objective from maintaining a population of 518-732 wolves down to 15 breeding pairs or 150 wolves.

Thats one of the main reasons that were challenging it, doesnt adopt new science thats come out in last decade, said Western Watersheds attorney Kristen Ruether. Theyre using decades-old science.

Meanwhile, studies in the past three years have raised questions about whether killing wolves is effective at preventing livestock depredation at all.

The suit asks the court to order Wildlife Services to do a new and more intensive environmental impact statement and halt its wolf-killing activity in the meantime. Western Watersheds was joined by the Center for Biological Diversity, Friends of the Clearwater, Wildearth Guardians and Predator Defense.

Gray wolves were extirpated from the continental U.S. in early 20th century. The Fish and Wildlife Service reintroduced wolves in remote areas of Idaho and Yellowstone National Park in 1994 and 1995. The wolves were protected under the federal Endangered Species Act until 2011, when Congress passed a provision removing their listed status in Idaho and Montana. However, FWS personnel were required to monitor the wolf populations for five years after turning them over to state management.

In early January, U.S. Forest Service officials found Idaho Department of Fish and Game workers improperly collared two wolves in the Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness along the Montana border while carrying out a helicopter-assisted elk-collaring project. The agency reported the incident to the Forest Service, which suspended Idahos permission for further helicopter work in the wilderness pending a review of the states practices.

Idaho has also maintained a state-sponsored wolf-removal program in addition to a public wolf hunting season.

The agency has 60 days to respond to the suit before a federal judge will schedule briefings or hearings in court. The case will be heard in Boises U.S. District Court.
A 25-year-old man convicted of conspiring to distribute methamphetamine in Missoula with his father and another woman has been sentenced to prison.

Bryant Colten Thieman was sentenced Wednesday by District Court Judge Leslie Halligan to 15 years in the Montana State Prison with 10 years suspended.

Thieman was originally arrested in August 2015 after a Montana Highway Patrol trooper stopped his car on Interstate 90 near Missoula because it didnt have license plates. During the stop, the trooper said Thiemans hands were shaking, his speech was rapid, and he wouldnt make eye contact with the officer. He said he had just purchased the car and that the title was in another vehicle that had been driving behind him.

Thiemans father Kyle was sitting in the passenger seat, and the trooper saw torches similar to the type used to heat methamphetamine at his feet. The other vehicle stopped at the scene and the driver Julia Krapf and both Thieman men provided inconsistent stories about where they had come from and where they were headed. A K9 drug unit that arrived on scene alerted on both vehicles.

Kyle Thieman was acting erratic, and an officer asked him to empty his pockets. Inside a sunglasses case, the trooper found a baggie containing an ounce of methamphetamine. The three individuals said they had brought the meth to Missoula from Washington, and that they had been regularly bringing meth to town to sell.

Thieman was charged with a felony for conspiracy to commit possession of dangerous drugs with the intent to distribute. He pleaded guilty to the crime in April.

His father Kyle also pleaded guilty to a felony drug charge. He is set to be sentenced June 14. Krapf, who was charged with the drug distribution charge as well as felony drug possession for heroin found in her vehicle, is currently set to go to trial in August.

During Bryant Thiemans sentencing, deputy county attorney Brian Lowney recommended a sentence of 15 years in prison with five suspended, saying Thieman falls under the category of a double persistent felony offender, which mandates at least 10 years in prison.

Thiemans attorney Joan Burbridge said the persistent felony offender status shouldnt apply as Thieman was only an accomplice in the case, adding that her client had fallen under the bad influence of his father after he had been released from prison in a different case in Washington.

Although Burbridge wanted the sentence to be done in the Department of Corrections, Thieman requested being sent to prison, saying he wanted to take advantage of drug treatment programs there.

I understand how it looks on paper with my history and my choices, he said. I want the help, and Im not afraid to ask.
POLSON  Remember the lawsuit late last summer that sought to stop the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes from acquiring Kerr Dam, in part because the plaintiffs claimed CSKT was doing business with Turkish enterprises they said might be affiliated with terrorists who want to blow up the dam?

The lawsuit that said it was possible Turkey was seeking to acquire raw nuclear materials from American Indian reservations for military purposes, and would provide Turkey and such organizations with the opportunity to more freely promote their brand of Islam on reservations?

One of the two attorneys who filed the lawsuit, Joseph Schmitz, is now one of the top foreign policy advisers to Donald Trump.

The presumptive Republican presidential nominee identified Schmitz as one of his top five foreign policy advisers in an interview with the Washington Post this spring, before Trump had won enough delegates to clinch the GOP nomination.

The lawsuit was withdrawn shortly after a federal judge denied its request for an emergency restraining order that would have temporarily blocked the tribes from acquiring the hydroelectric project, now known as Selis Knaska Qlispe Dam, last September.

U.S. District Court Judge Rudolph Cantreras noted the lawsuits somewhat perplexing arguments regarding the Turkish governments involvement with Native Americans in denying the request.

Nowhere are those allegations substantiated in the record, the judge added. Indeed, at hearing, counsel for the plaintiffs conceded that no such evidence has been submitted.

***

The lawsuit was filed on behalf of state Sen. Bob Keenan, R-Bigfork, and former state Sen. Verdell Jackson, R-Kalispell, by Schmitz, whose law firm is in McLean, Virginia, and New York City attorney Lawrence Kogan.

Two weeks after the lawsuit was withdrawn, Keenan joined six other state legislators on a tour of the dam with officials from the tribally owned corporation that operates it, Energy Keepers.

Keenan told the Missoulian that day that while he still had concerns, the lawsuit had contained several issues he did not agree with, including the ones relating to Turkey.

It ended up being a lawyer in New York with 14 pages of concerns that I told him I didnt want any part of, Keenan said in October. I walked away from that.

After long insisting he was his own foreign policy adviser, Trump in March named five people he was relying on for advice on foreign affairs to the Washington Post editorial board.

Since then, Schmitz has primarily drawn attention for his tenure as inspector general of the Department of Defense during the George W. Bush administration. He was accused by U.S. Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, of blocking investigations of Bush administration officials, and accepting gifts from lobbyists.

A later investigation cleared him of wrongdoing, but Schmitz resigned in 2005 amid new allegations that he obstructed an FBI investigation of another Bush appointee to the Department of Defense. He also drew criticism for then accepting a job with the parent company of Blackwater, a controversial Defense Department private contractor.

But Native Americans and others are also taking note of Schmitz involvement in the lawsuit involving the dam on the Flathead Indian Reservation.

***

The Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights said Schmitz and Kogans brief in the lawsuit gained infamy for alleging that the dam transfer could allow the Turkish government and terrorists to obtain nuclear materials and pose a threat to national security.

Schmitzs involvement in the lawsuit, and ties to Trump, shows once again that the anti-Indian movement is part-and-parcel of a broader attack on civil and human rights, the institute says.

It also says Schmitz has argued that states should enact laws or amend their constitutions to prevent American citizens who are voluntarily dependent on public welfare from voting.

At Indian Country Today, columnist Steve Russell, an associate professor at Indiana University and former Texas trial court judge, wrote that the legal theory asserted to keep the tribes from acquiring the dam is particularly pertinent to Joseph Schmitzs foreign policy bona fides.

While it is true that most Turks are Muslims and there are some people in this country who think all Muslims are terrorists, those ideas have little currency in the fact-based community that dominates most foreign policy discussion, Russell wrote.

It is not true that the Salish and Kootenai people have had any dealing with Turkey about hydropower, let alone nuclear materials, he added.

***

In addition to Schmitz, Trump named the following people as his top foreign policy advisers to the Post:

J. Keith Kellogg Jr., retired Army lieutenant general and former commander of the 82nd Airborne Division.

Carter Page, founder of Global Energy Capital and a former fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.

George Papadopoulus, a 2009 graduate of DePaul University who directs an international energy center at the London Center of International Law Practice.

Walid Phares, a 2012 adviser to GOP Presidential candidate Mitt Romney, Fox News analyst and provost at BAU International University, founded in 2013 in Washington, D.C.

Schmitz, however, has seemed to garner the most scrutiny since Trump named him as one of his top foreign policy advisers. His family is not unaccustomed to such attention.

Schmitzs father, John G. Schmitz, was a Republican member of Congress from California in the early 1970s, and a candidate for president of the United States, on the conservative American Independent Party ticket, in 1972. A long-time member of the John Birch Society, he was eventually expelled for rhetoric the society felt was too extreme.

John Schmitzs plans to seek a U.S. Senate seat in California in 1982 were derailed when it was revealed he had fathered two children during an extramarital affair with a student at Santa Ana College, where he had taught philosophy and political science prior to entering politics.

Joseph Schmitzs sister, Mary Kay Letourneau, was a married 34-year-old teacher in the Seattle suburb of Burien when she was convicted of raping a 12-year-old student starting in 1996. She was released from prison in 2004 and married the student in 2005, when he was 21 and she was 43. She now goes by Mary Kay Fualaau.
When I came to Congress, I got on the Natural Resources Committee so I could shape policies, says Montana Congressman Ryan Zinke. The man the NRAs American Hunter calls an avid hunter has kept his word, at least to the 14 percent of his constituents who confuse sport with killing. Here a clarification must be made: American Hunter should have classified Zinke as an avid trophy hunter, like Donald Trumps sons and campaign surrogates, Don, Jr. and Eric.

When Zinke starred at this years Safari Club International convention in Las Vegas, he wasnt representing subsistence hunters or the family that goes out on the weekend in deer season to put food in the freezer; he was aligning with those like Don, Jr. and Eric, and those like Cecil slayer Dr. Walter Palmer, who will be descending on Montana, Wyoming and Idaho to trophy kill the sacred grizzly on sacred lands.

While running for lieutenant governor, Zinke went on record to say that in respect to wildlife management, he took his lead from ranchers and hunting guides across the state. While in Congress, Zinke has introduced legislation to block threats from anti-hunting groups that seek to limit hunting on federal lands, and was instrumental in bringing the Sportsmens Heritage and Recreational Enhancement Act to passage. Wyoming Sen. John Barrasso added an amendment to the Senates companion bill, the Bipartisan Sportsmens Act of 2016, which specifies that upon passage Wyomings wolves will lose Endangered Species Act protections. According to Barrasso, his amendment protects that delisting from further judicial review, or in other words, subverts the system and denies opponents due process.

Barrassos promise on wolves is a warning for the grizzly. Among other provisions in the oxymoronic SHARE Act, Zinke supports aerial gunning, the baiting of grizzly bears and denning wolves on national wildlife refuges in Alaska, hunting with hounds, and the use of steel-jawed leg traps. Under SHARE, sportsmen like Zinke will be able to import a limited number of polar bear carcasses and ivory from African elephants, both of which demonstrate just how out of touch with the overriding sentiment of the American people both Houses are.

The day after Trump insulted Natives by demeaning the tragedy of Pocahontas in his exchange with Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Zinke endorsed him. Given Zinkes record with Native people in Montana, his endorsement of Trump should come as no surprise. Zinke summarized his solution to poverty on Montanas reservations by suggesting if you want to feed someone, you need to teach a person how to fish. Zinke has consistently sought to undermine tribal rights and services, including seeking to repeal the Indian Health Care Improvement Act, and opposing funding for Violence Against Women programs for Native women.

Naturally, Zinke is a cheerleader for delisting and trophy hunting the grizzly against the wishes of Montanas tribes and the Rocky Mountain Tribal Leaders Council. It is time for Gov. Steve Bullock to have a gut check and reevaluate who he sides with on this issue: the tiny minority salivating at trophy killing grizzlies, or the majority, including his states original inhabitants, who oppose it on cultural and scientific grounds.

Montanans should be in charge of managing our wildlife for the betterment of the state, the governor has said of delisting the grizzly. We will do so in a responsible way that is reflective of our values.

Fewer than 14 percent of the states population isnt the majority of Montanans, and trophy hunting the grizzly is not reflective of the values of the Montana-based tribes, over 80 percent of Montanans generally, and 99 percent of the American people. The blood on the land will not just be on Zinkes hands, but Bullocks.

Its time, because this election, I think, its a decision point in our history, says Zinke of endorsing Trump. It is indeed a decision point in our history. What say you, Governor Bullock?
This is an open letter to U.S. Sen. Steve Daines in response to his support for Senate Bill 2609 to not properly label GMO (genetically modified organism) foods.

There are some facts about genetically modified foods everyone should know before consuming them. GMOs are created by taking the genes from bacteria, viruses, fungi and even some animals, then combining them together into the DNA of the seeds. The results are herbicide tolerance and pesticide production and debilitating health effects. This mutated food contains poisons that have a system-wide damaging effect on our bodies.

Monsanto's Roundup Ready is the most common product used. When a crop is sprayed, unwanted plants are killed but the GMO crop is unharmed no matter how much Roundup is applied because a deadly poison is built into the plant. Each year, 1.4 billion pounds of Roundup are applied on 170 million acres of farmland in the United States. Roundup becomes systemic throughout the plant and cannot be washed off because it is part of the plant's genetic makeup. When insects eat these plants, toxins are released to kill the bugs by exploding their stomachs. We are unknowingly eating these foods.

One of the active ingredients in Roundup Ready is glyphosate, which was developed in 1970 to pull magnesium from the soil, causing the Earth to become sterile. Consuming glyphosate pulls magnesium from the body. The lack of magnesium causes cysts, tumors, birth defects and infertility. The human digestive system responds to glysphosate just like the insects do; the result is leaky gut syndrome. Glyphosate also irritates all cells in the body by destroying their membranes. Damage to all of the organs including the brain has been demonstrated in farm and laboratory animals, and humans. This harmful chemical kills the beneficial bacteria in the intestines, causing overgrowth of harmful bacteria to create disease. GMO foods damage enzymes dealing with digestion. In the 20 years of eating glyphosate in our food, auto-immune disease has increased 400 percent.

This poisonous insecticide has invaded our food chain. Traceable levels of glyphosate now being found in foods not directly connected to this pesticide demonstrates conclusively that it's being passed on by animals who have ingested it. It is now even found in mothers' milk.

GMO seeds are harmful to the environment. Scientists have indicated they are causing colony collapse among the world's bee and monarch butterfly populations.

The World Health Organization has now declared glyphosate carcinogenic. More than 60 countries have significant restrictions or outright bans on the production and sale of GMOs.

Seventy percent of the food in regular grocery stores contain GMOs. We are eating foods that are making us sick without knowing about it. This is the largest uncontrolled food experiment in our history.

The Federal Drug Administration is the agency charged with food safety. Their leadership is composed of ex-Monsanto executives. Since Monsanto is the primary manufacturer of GMO foods, there is a very serious conflict of interest, which explains the lack of non-biased government research on the effects of GMOs on our health. The scientific findings used by Monsanto to prove GMO safety comes from their own paid scientists. We cannot rely on the FDA to protect us. Countless numbers of independent studies have linked GMOs to a wide range of diseases including diabetes, heart disease and auto-immune disorders, and the list goes on.

Daines supported S.2609 to stop GMO labeling. He voted against science, against over 300 environmental groups, against more than 100 years of states rights to legislate on matters relating to safety and labeling. A large majority of the population wants to know what is in their food.

We have the right to know what is in the food we eat; it is called freedom. The majority of Republican senators voted to take our freedom away from us. This is all about money, led by greed, where Monsanto, the FDA and many Republican senators have put profit before our safety.

Soon there will be another attempt to pass this bill. Call Steve Daines at 202-224-2651 and tell him to vote with U.S. Sen. Jon Tester to put GMO labels on our food. Tell him you want to eat organic food made by God, not Monsanto.
Two recent opinions deserve the Pinocchio award decorated with a hyperbole ribbon.

Greg Hertz, R-Polson (guest column, May 13), 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. Steve 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 after hearing evidence of dire systemic campaign corruption. 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
HAMILTON  An alleged case of road rage led to a Stevensville man being charged with felony assault with a weapon for slamming a car door onto a womans leg.

Joseph Paul Mungas, 36, appeared before Ravalli County Justice Jim Bailey on the felony count and misdemeanor charges of assault, reckless driving and improper passing.

The alleged incident occurred on June 4 at about 1 p.m. on Dutch Hill Road.

A Ravalli County detective had heard a woman screaming, according to a charging affidavit. The detective then saw Mungas slamming the passenger side door of a SUV onto the womans leg.

The woman was sitting in the front passenger seat of the vehicle.

The detective intervened and stopped Mungas.

A sheriffs officer spoke to four people, including the husband and wife riding in the SUV. All told the same basic story.

The man was driving his SUV south of Highway 93. His wife was sitting in the passenger seat.

Mungas vehicle was driving behind them. The man said Mungas vehicle would speed up and get very close before backing off.

When the man turned off on Dutch Hill Road, Mungas pulled up very close behind him. At that point, Mungas allegedly passed the couples car and then cut it off by stopping in the roadway.

When the man attempted to go around, Mungas go out of his car and stood in front the SUV. The man was forced to stop to avoid hitting Mungas.

At that point, the affidavit said Mungas went up to the passengers side of the car, opened the door and started to punch both the woman and man sitting inside.

The man said he still had his seat belt on and didnt have time to take it off. He said he put his hands up to avoid being struck.

In addition, the affidavit said Mungas started slamming the womans leg in the area between the car door and passenger side seat where she was sitting.

The man reported pain from incident. The woman suffered an injured right leg and a bloody nose from the punches.

When a sheriffs officer made contact with Mungas, he said he was driving on Highway 93 when the car in front of him would not get out of his way. He said when he passed the car, the driver flipped him off and that made him lose his cool.

Mungas admitted following the car onto Dutch Hill Road and cutting it off. He also admitted approaching the car and reaching inside, but Mungas said that he dropped his hat in the car and began wrestling with the woman after she started hitting him.

He denied hitting the womans leg with the car door even after the detective told him he saw that happen.

Bailey set bail at $15,000.
If all goes well, there will be a new treeline at Council Grove State Park.

A small crew was planting some 300 willow saplings on Friday in hopes of shoring up an eroding riverbank along a well-used trail at the 184-acre park, located off Mullan Road northwest of Kelly Island.

That high volume of saplings is intended to buck their high mortality rate.

"It is a numbers game," said park manager Mike Hathaway.

Hathaway, AmeriCorps member Jamie Jirele and park ranger Ben Dickinson had gathered saplings, about a thumb-wide and young enough that they didn't have many leaves at all, from elsewhere around the park and kept them bundled with their roots soaking in the water.

Jirele set to work cutting them in half to double the harvest, while the other two, with help from Dickinson's father Stowell, set to work digging a trench at the base of the sharply eroded bank.

"We're going to plant one row right in the water, that's where they're most likely to survive," Jirele said. "Because we're also trying to stabilize the riverbank, we're also going to dig a trench closer to the bank and plant the trees at an angle in hopes that they'll take root and survive and add to that stabilization."

All the willows are unlikely to make it, hence the numbers game.

"If you're planting them just along the water's edge, it's 50 percent," she said. For the others, it's even lower.

The halves with roots will go into the trench, while the others will be planted in the water, where it will be easier for them to establish new roots.

Dickinson said they grow quickly, and will take about two weeks to establish a root system.

They'll come back and monitor the saplings' progress, and hope that signage and possibly a fence keeps visitors from damaging the trees, or in some cases, pulling them out. Because of the mortality rate and potential human damage, it's a multi-year project.

Hathaway said the park's rough estimate is 34,000 to 36,000 visitors per year, everything from swimming, picnicking, fishing, dog walking, bird watching (there's an osprey nest, as well as some baby owls) and hunting in the fall.

The primitive state park was created with a cultural mission: to preserve the site of the negotiations of the Hellgate Treaty.

In 1855, leaders of the Salish, Kootenai and Upper Pend d'Oreille negotiated there with Isaac Stevens, the governor of the Washington Territory. The controversial treaty resulted in the creation of the Flathead Reservation.
WEST GLACIER  Two days after it helped itself to food from an open vehicle trunk while campers in Glacier National Park were eating at a picnic table a few feet away, rangers euthanized a black bear as it wandered around Apgar Village at the foot of Lake McDonald.

The bear, which eluded a trap rangers set for it Tuesday after the incident at Fish Creek Campground just north of Apgar, was put down Thursday in the village, park officials said Thursday night.

There were several sightings of the bear in Apgar Village, according to Glacier spokeswoman Margie Steigerwald, and he did not seem bothered by human presence, according to witnesses.

Steigerwald said the 100-pound bears apparent food-conditioned behavior made him a threat to human safety.

The bear had an orange ear tag from Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks identifying him as having been captured before.

FWP records indicate the bear, then 2 1/2 years old, had been trapped on June 5, 2015, at Stanton Lake Lodge, between Nyack and Essex near the parks southern border, after getting into garbage there.

The black bear was relocated to Big Creek, 26 air miles away, and got into no more trouble until this week.

Steigerwald said the decision to euthanize the animal was consistent with Glacier National Parks management plan.

Food-conditioned bears are those that have sought and obtained non-natural foods, destroyed property or displayed aggressive, non-defensive behavior toward humans. Food-conditioned bears are not relocated due to human safety concerns, and are removed from the wild.

Steigerwald said black bears are not good candidates for animal capture facilities such as zoos and animal parks because of the plentiful nature of the species.

She used the incident to remind park visitors to keep campgrounds and developed areas clean and free of food and trash. Glacier regulations require all edibles, food containers and cookware be stored in a hard-sided vehicle or food locker when not in use, day or night.

All trash should be deposited in bear-proof containers, and no waste should be burned in fire rings or left littering a campsite.
BUTTE - A Deer Lodge women admitted having sexual intercourse with a Montana State Prison inmate in 2015 at a change of plea hearing Thursday in Butte district court.

Sherrill Dawn Kraakmo also pleaded guilty to charges of felony transferring illegal articles and misdemeanor unauthorized communication before Judge Kurt Krueger.

Kraakmo, who was employed as a business specialist by Montana Correctional Enterprises, is accused of providing a cellphone and charger to an inmate and communicating with him outside her work duties between March 1 and May 6, 2015, according to court documents.

In March and April of that year, prosecutors say she had sex intercourse with the inmate at the prisons Cow Camp. Kraakmo had disciplinary authority over the inmate, the document states.

Powell County Attorney Lewis Smith made a motion to dismiss a second count of felony sexual intercourse without consent, which Krueger granted.

A presentence investigation was waived by Smith and the defendants attorney, Michael B. Grayson.

Kraakmo remains free on her own recognizance. A sentencing hearing was not set.
BILLINGS  Emphasizing the estimated $6 billion economic power of outdoor recreation on Montanas public lands, Gov. Steve Bullock on Thursday announced three steps to bolster public lands access in the state.

These plans are not only the right thing to do for Montanans and their families and future generations, theyre also the right thing to do for Montanas economy and our businesses, Bullock said in a news conference in Billings Riverfront Park.

The governor told the group of about 30 people that he has directed the state Department of Natural Resources and Conservation to hire a public access specialist in an attempt to get anglers, hunters and other recreationists on to the states nearly 2 million acres of inaccessible public property.

Montanas public access specialist will be on call to troubleshoot concerns from the public, and when warranted to help open up inaccessible places that all Montanans have a right to, Bullock told the group. That can be anything from helping to unlock the padlock that shouldnt be on a road or to helping find creative ways to figure out ways that we can access public lands.

***

The other two prongs of the access initiative involve the Legislature. One would ask legislators to establish a Montana Office of Outdoor Recreation in the governors office of Economic Development. As described in a handout, the office would be charged with developing and implementing a strategic plan for Montana to consciously shape our outdoor economic future and to ensure the infrastructure is in place to support the growth of the outdoor industry.

Thirdly, the governor would like the Legislature to untie the restrictions it has placed on the spending of Habitat Montana funds. The Habitat Montana Program was created by the Legislature in 1987 to protect wildlife habitat through the purchase of conservation easements, leases or outright land buys. The program is funded mainly by nonresident hunting license fees.

Bullock said the current restrictions, which were placed on the fund by Republican legislators and dont allow any land to be purchased, dont make sense.

***

Gathered in the crowd were some of the areas, and states, most ardent wildlife and public land access activists.

John Gibson, who helped found the Public Lands/Waters Access Association which has fought to restore access along several roads across the state, said he appreciates Bullocks attempts but worries that nothing will get done.

I come from a bureaucracy, the Forest Service, where you see a lot of plans and positions that went nowhere, Gibson said. I think the governor is sincere, but hell be challenged at every corner by the Legislature.

The Bureau of Land Managements Montana-Dakotas office created an access specialist position in 2008 to great fanfare, but budget cutbacks and changes in administration seemed to blunt that effort. In the past two sessions of the Legislature there have been bills introduced that would require anyone who gated and padlocked a road previously open to public travel to first justify they had the right to close it, instead of the current situation where landowners block access and leave it up to the county or private individuals to contest the closure in court. Both bills never made it out of committee, Gibson said.

The 'good old boy' system is alive and well in the Legislature and in county government, Gibson said.

***

Access has become a prominent issue in this years governors race after it was reported that Republican gubernatorial candidate Greg Gianforte sued Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks over an easement across his Bozeman property. Gianforte has said the lawsuit was not about denying the public access through his property along the East Gallatin River in Bozeman, but the lawsuit has made political hay for the Bullock campaign.

Gianforte was also recorded saying at a campaign stop in Malta that FWP is at war with landowners in the state trying to extract access and using extortion to do it.

Bullock took a few swipes at Gianforte, a self-made billionaire, by saying, In our state the size of your checkbook doesnt designate whether you can spend a day alone with a fly rod on a river. You dont have to own a big piece of property to experience some of the best hunting and fishing in the world. Experiences that people around the world truly feel lucky if they can experience once in their lifetime.

Gianforte has said he supports recreational access to public lands, the states stream access law and does not back a state takeover of federal lands being pushed by some conservative groups.

***

Bullocks message about the importance of public land access to Montanas economy was echoed at Thursdays presentation by The Base Camp outdoor store founder Scott Brown, executive director of Visit Billings Alex Tyson and Zoo Montana director Jeff Ewelt.

The great thing about public lands is they dont discriminate, Ewelt said. They are part of our American heritage.

A recent survey examining the importance of public lands to Montanans was also cited by the speakers, including University of Montana professor Rick Graetz. He noted that across political boundaries the poll found Montanans were united in their support of public lands.

The thing I took away from our poll is that public lands are a catalyst for our economy, Graetz said.

So, governor, youve read Montanans well, Graetz said. I think what youre proposing is going to be a beacon to people around the United States: entrepreneurs, people with small businesses, who know the value of natural amenities to an educated workforce. I think what youre doing is going to be a real set of fireworks for Montanas economy as we go forward.
BILLINGS - A judge handed down a 100-year prison sentence on Friday to a man whose homicide conviction came nearly 17 years after the crime.

Brian David Laird, 46, was taken into custody following the hearing at the Big Horn County Courthouse. District Judge Michael Hayworth placed no restriction on parole, for which Laird will be reviewed in 25 years.

Earlier this year, a jury found Laird guilty of killing his wife, Kathryn Laird, on July 31, 1999 in Fort Smith. She was found floating face down in the Afterbay Reservoir, less than a mile from the trailer park where they lived. Kathryn Laird had bruises, an autopsy noted.

Fridays hearing included testimony from two of Kathryn Lairds family members. Her sister, Sheri Harber, said that they had a tight-knit family, especially during holidays.

They destroyed the family, Harber said, referring to Lairds actions. There are no holidays. I couldnt pick up the phone and share life with my sister. We did everything together.

Mary Lou Little, Kathryn Lairds mother, said her daughter had dreams of being a veterinarian and could train any horse. Little had just finished visiting her mother at the cemetery when Brian Laird called her with the news that Kathryn had died.

It was just too devastating know that she died the way that she did, Little said. And that she had her whole life ahead of her.

During testimony, Harber and Little held up photos of Kathryn Laird and faced them toward Brian Laird, who sat quietly through the two-hour sentencing hearing.

The case of Kathryn Lairds death had gone quiet for years. It was closed in 2004 and remained that way until FBI Special Agent John Teeling began reviewing evidence. He said that a conversation he had with an assistant that year stuck with him.

She said they were closing a case on a murder that was very disturbing, Teeling said. She said the belief was Brian Laird, an attorney, had murdered his wife, and that she ultimately was murdered by putting his foot on her back, or his knee, and killing her in a body of water. And watching her drown.

In 2012, Teeling reopened the case. Under questioning from prosecutors, he spoke about the lengthy list of interviews he conducted in the case. In particular, he recalled speaking with a friend of Kathryn Lairds shortly before her death.

She was unhappy, sad and she made a decision that she was going to end the marriage or file separation papers, Teeling said.

The team of prosecutors, who were from the Montana Attorney Generals Office, repeated that point of motivethat Brian Laird became angry after learning that Kathryn wanted to leave him. Little testified to this as well, saying that her daughter had expressed this during a phone call.

Teeling estimated that hed spent as many as 1,000 hours on the case.

The catalyst in Teelings investigation came when two witnesses who had been overlooked years ago were interviewed. Eric and Kathleen Anderson were living next to the Lairds. The Andersons provided evidence that contradicted Brian Lairds story.

Brian Laird gave a brief statement on Friday.

I did not do this, your honor, he said. I still dont know how Kathryn died.

It was revealed at the hearing that Brian Laird had been seeing mental health professionals and had abused prescription drugs. Hed told different stories to different doctors, including that he saw Kathryn Laird die in front of him. He told others that it was a boating accident or that she overdosed on medication.

Defense attorney Sandy Selvey called this an extremely circumstantial case. He noted that the U.S. Attorneys Office had previously declined to file a grand jury indictment on Brian Laird, and the case was passed to the Montana Attorney General.

Its because his wife is gone, defense attorney Matt Wald said. He recognizes the loss to the family. No matter what anyone else thinks, he has felt the loss every day.

Brian Lairds attorneys requested a 40-year sentence.

In closing recommendations, Assistant Attorney General Brant Light spoke about the trials of Kathryn Lairds family while the case went cold.

Sixteen years knowing that the man that killed their daughter, their sister, was free to live life without any restrictions. All while they suffered.

Brian Laird had been convicted of an unrelated felony in Colorado in 2008.

After hearing the sentence, Little and Harber said that they suspected right away that Brian Laird had killed Kathryn Laird.

Even after the trial and conviction, did it give us peace? Harber said during the hearing. Maybe a hair. Its never going to bring her back. And its never going to give us what we wanted back.
BUTTE - Authorities are at the scene where a semi truck traveling on Interstate 15-90 crashed near the Lexington Avenue overpass and overturned into Blacktail Creek Friday morning. Several injuries were reported.

The precise extent of injuries was not immediately known, but the crash involved another vehicle and four people were transported to the hospital where they were in stable condition, Undersheriff George Skuletich said. The wreck happened around 8:30 a.m.

The trailer of the semi appeared as if it has been ripped in half, with an open end with boxes and debris strewn in the creek. The other half was on the grass and the cab was upside down in the water until crews pulled it out.

Police, Highway Patrol and firefighters were on the scene and were expected to be there several hours.

The crash scene was visible form the KOA campground in Butte, where Tammy Dobbs of Bentonville, Arkansas, was sitting outside at a table and heard a loud noise.

She ran toward a walking trail, saw a semi come over the highway overpass and said the trailer seemed to be in slow motion, flipping once toward the creek.

Dobbs, a nurse, said she ran to her camper, told her husband to dial 911, jumped in a car and drove to the scene. Someone was holding a persons head out of the creek water when she arrived, she said.

Minutes later, a rescue team arrived and got the driver out. Another man was sitting on the bank.

Dobbs said she had never seen anything like it.
HELENA  The state of Montana is spending almost double what it expected to on its health centers for employees because more employees are using the centers.

In its third year of operation, the state spent $2.23 million on its clinic in the capital city of Helena, which was 76 percent more than what it estimated it would cost, $1.26 million.

Almost 43,400 employees and dependents used the clinic, however, compared to an estimated 17,240  more than double what the company running the clinics had projected.

The interim Legislative Finance Committee on Friday heard from state officials about the performance of the clinics both financially and in terms of health outcomes for employees. The state health care plan has 30,000 members; 73 percent have access to a clinic.

Estimates for potential savings from the on-site employee health center do not appear to have been realized four years into the process, a report prepared for the committee said. However, Dan Villa, the budget director for Gov. Steve Bullock, said the centers have saved the state money.

Villa said in its first year of operation, the Helena clinic saved the state $2.9 million total; employees and members of the states health plan saved $1.6 million and the plan itself saved $1.3 million. Thats because the average cost for an office visit at a state clinic is $73.89, Villa said, which is 70 percent of the cost a primary care visit at a non-state clinic. The centers have identified 1,800 people with previously undiagnosed chronic conditions, he said, the diagnosing of which can save the state money down the road.

The first clinic opened in Helena in September 2012, followed by Billings and Miles City in 2013, Missoula in March 2014, Butte in October 2014 and Anaconda in 2015.

In 2012 the state picked CareHere to set up and run health clinics for state employees. The Department of Administration at the time said the clinics over five years would save the state $100 million, based on an analysis of CareHeres proposal for the Helena clinic. The DOA said the clinics would serve 34,000 employees and dependents across the state  fewer than then number of people who used the Helena clinic alone last year.

The state signed a three-year contract with CareHere, which is expiring this year but will be renewed for one more year and reviewed annually in the future, said Marilyn Bartlett, the director administrator of the states Health Care Benefits Division.

The new contract a state-negotiated reduction of 24 percent in administrative fees.

Those charges vary by clinic, but range from 25.1 percent of the clinics budget in Missoula to 35.1 percent in Miles City. By comparison, administrative costs are 11.4 percent at the student health center at UM. Villa said these costs are not comparative as student health centers dont offer the same chronic care management or health coaching, for example, that state clinics do.

The state spends the most on Helenas clinic by far, but its not the most expensive to run per patient. That title goes to the clinic in Miles City, which cost $149.54 per patient in 2015. The least expensive to operate is Butte, at $50.66.

Miles City is more expensive because the clinic isnt well-used, Bartlett said.

Weve not been able to get those utilization numbers up as much as we wish. We realize that is a concern. The state, she said, is looking at ways to increase participation. In its first year, 1,976 people used the clinic. In the second year, that number dropped to 1,878.

When the state asked for companies to bid to open clinics for state employees, it only counted on opening one clinic in Helena that saw roughly 5,000 employees a year, she said.

Buttes cost is lower because it has almost 100 percent utilization, but that isnt always good for patients, said committee member state Sen. Jon Sesso, D-Butte.

Some employees are being asked to wait a week in cases where they are sick to see a doctor, Sesso said. Thats not addressing the object of what we set out to do.

The state tried to relieve some of the stress on the Butte clinic by opening one in Anaconda and is now looking at having that clinic open two days a week over the 1 1/2 its operating now.

***

The committee also heard on Friday how the clinics are changing the health of employees. From 2011 to 2015, the percentage of employees who were treated for high cholesterol at the clinics went from 50 percent to about 30 percent, based on health assessments done at the clinics.

There also was a drop in obesity, but increases in diabetes and high blood pressure.

Information also shows that state employees suffer from some diseases at a higher rate than the base population. Those include back and neck pain, depression, osteoarthritis, headaches, asthma, bipolar disorder, high-risk pregnancy and rheumatoid arthritis. Employees have a lower rate of coronary artery disease and hyperlipidemia, according to a report provided by Bartlett.

The centers were set up by former Gov. Brian Schweitzer without approval from the Legislature.

The state employee health plan, called the Montana Benefit Plan, spends $185 million a year on employee health care; 3 percent of that goes to the state clinics. The plans biggest expenses are at in-state hospitals, 48 percent, then out-of-state hospitals and prescriptions.

Bartlett said the employee health care plan has brought down costs recently. The plan was projected to lose $12 million last year but instead gained $3.4 million. We have worked diligently on our cost section, Bartlett said.

Specific information on if the centers are saving money is the subject of a performance audit thats underway, requested by State Sen. Elsie Arntzen. That request was prioritized by the bipartisan Legislative Audit Committee.

Angus Maciver, a deputy in the Information Systems Audit division, has said the audit department is in the middle of working with the Department of Administration to get information about how state employees use the center.

Committee member state Sen. Mary Caferro, D-Helena, raised questions about the type of information the auditors will have access to.

Maybe the quality of your performance audit may be somewhat diminished, she told Maciver. I dont care.  When I go see a doctor or the people I represent see a doctor, that information is stuff that should be kept between themselves and the doctor.

Auditors are legally required to keep information confidential, Maciver said.

We have a legal obligation to do that, we do not have any choice We have access to all kinds of private information across state government because it is necessary to do the work.
LIVINGSTONE, Zambia  Victoria Falls thundered below Axon, who stood at the edge of the Zambezi River near a group of tourists from South Africa.

Axon, 33, is a cab driver and tourist guide who moved to Livingstone because it's the best city in Zambia to earn a living in the transportation industry.

At Victoria Falls, the Zambian native teaches his clients how to scare away baboons on the trails in one breath and shares the ecological dependence the rainforest has on the falls in the next. He's a crack guide who drives tourists to ride elephants and spy lions and bungee jump, but this year, he's booking fewer guests, and he believes more of the tourism dollars spent in Zambia are ending up elsewhere.

"After all the activities, only little remains in Zambia," Axon said.

In a place some call "The Real Africa," the tourism industry is growing, its direct contribution to the economy forecast to increase 7.7 percent in a decade, according to the World Travel and Tourism Council. Some 25 percent of the country's nearly 1 million annual tourists are foreigners, and boosting those visits is a goal of the government, according to The Times of Zambia.

Axon, father of three girls, should be bringing home more money as a result of the effort, but he and other Zambians whose businesses rely on tourism say they are witnessing an economic system that is cutting out the locals as it prospers.

***

As tourism has grown, more lodges and hotels have opened in Livingstone, but native owners aren't the ones earning as a result, Axon said.

"Those that are doing well are foreigners," he said.

Those owners are grabbing up more ancillary businesses, he said, enterprises that Axon believes should benefit locals. In the past, tourists contacted him to book cab rides, but now, he said the lodges are offering the service directly.

"Why is it these guys who are dealing with accommodations, they are also dealing with curios?" he said of souvenirs. "They are dealing with transportation."

Bernard Kopeka, a painter, has seen the same phenomenon with art. Kopeka, 52, sells paintings at a roadside gallery in Livingstone, the tourist capital of Zambia, and he and his fellow artists look to visitors to support the trade.

Locals don't understand the value of art, he said, and they'd rather spend on beer and women. He's seen more lodges and hotels open, but he hasn't seen the benefit to the painters and sculptors in the cooperative.

"All these lodges were supposed to bring tourists to the galleries," he said.

Instead, Kopeka said, they are opening up their own souvenir shops. He's hoping some of the benefits might trickle down to him in three or four years.

***

Climate change is compounding the problem, threatening the very features drawing tourists. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Axon's industry is one of the continent's most promising, increasing at a rate of 15 percent annually, and tourism is dependent on those waters.

"Tourism ... is based on wildlife and water supply for recreation," the IPCC said.

At the Boiling Point, a feature of the World Heritage site, a canyon pushes the water from the cataract into a narrow turn, where it churns into whirlpools and bends into an eddy. On a rock outcropping over the point, Axon pointed out the bungee jumping equipment on the bridge above, a plunge over the swirling river that's a tourist highlight.

Changes in river flows mean impacts on rafting and fishing, according to the IPCC, and presumably, the possibility Axon will get fewer calls from tourists heading to the falls and its recreational activities. To earn more, the driver is trying to launch his own tour guide company, La Travel and Tours.

So far, though, his competitors who offer lodging have a hold on the market, and some of their guests will spend big money in Zambia that won't ever reach a native.

"It's very difficult for tourists to come downtown and support the locals," Axon said.
LIVINGSTON  Horizon Pictures is casting for the motion picture Rise from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday, June 25, at Lincoln School Auditorium, 215 E. Lewis St., Livingston, and from 1 to 6 p.m. Sunday, June 26, at the Firehouse 225 McLeod St., Big Timber.

Rise is a Screen Actors Guild independent feature that will be shot in Livingston, beginning in late July.

Roles for local cast include: Levi, 18, a skateboarder; Faith, 18, a fashionsta with a wild streak; Adam, 20, charismatic, good-humored, muscular; Bianca, 18, sassy with a fantastic singing voice; Mariel, 18, a space cadet with great drawing ability; Jake, 18, a wannabe cinematographer who doesnt talk; Joe, 18, robust with a booming voice; Ernie, 18, whip-smart Latino with attitude; Ernies father, 40s-50s, hot-collared Latino; Levis mother; Biancas mother, an alcoholic; Faiths mother, Faiths father, a good looking biker with heart  has no trouble donning an apron now and then; a minister, 60s; Julie, 30s, bright and spunky; two thugs, 30s-50s, big and burly; Luke, 8, a skateboarder; a long-legged model; 20 high school students, ages 16-19; eight senior citizens; 50 striking train workers; and 50 townspeople.

The story revolves around a small railroad town whose main employer decides to move its train service shops to Mexico, and a unique teacher who challenges his class of misfit teens to rise up, find their hidden talents, and do something about it.

Details: Julia at JB.risemovie@gmail.com.
BILLINGS - Mule deer numbers in southeastern Montana have rebounded after a bleak and steep decline that hit bottom in 2012, prompting Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks staff to recommend increasing the doe harvest this season.

The populations are currently at 147 percent of the long-term average, said John Vore, Game Management Bureau chief, said in a Fish and Wildlife Commission meeting in Dillon on Thursday.

These actually are the good old days, echoed Region 7 supervisor Brad Schmitz.

That population increase is based on surveys in 14 trend areas spread across the prairie and rugged breaks of FWPs Region 7, a management area comprised of Garfield, Rosebud, Custer, Powder, Carter, Fallon, Dawson, Prairie, Wibaux and a portion of Treasure counties.

THE DECLINE

In 2012 mule deer numbers had fallen by as much as 55 percent in portions of Montana. By 2014 the Fish and Wildlife Commission had cut all mule deer doe B tags across the state, and prior to that had enacted about a 90 percent reduction in mule deer doe tags.

Biologists began seeing a rebound last year when they counted 91 fawns per 100 does, the long-term average was 73 fawns per 100 does.

Deer numbers are now higher than they were during years when nearly 11,000 B licenses were sold, read the commissions agenda item on the matter. Now is the time to apply additional antlerless harvest to avoid the unsustainable high numbers and wide population fluctuations of the past.

Vore said that criticism from some members of the public that the trend areas arent representative of the region were disproved when the department examined the movement of 1,100 collared deer across the landscape.

We know they move on and off those trend areas, he said. About two-thirds move up to 60 miles.

He said the surveys also reflect mule deer populations on habitat open to hunting.

So we are pretty confident this reflects whats going on with deer populations there, Vore added.

FLATTENING THE CURVE

Mule deer populations are notorious for reaching a peak about every 15 years before declining. Vore and Schmitz said by increasing the doe harvest the department hopes to flatten out the peaks and valleys of those wide population swings.

To do that, the department has proposed increasing doe licenses from 4,500 to 7,500 this season. The agency is also proposing to allow the region to bump up the total harvest to 11,000 without coming back to the commission for approval if deer numbers remain high.

Allowing the region that flexibility provides game managers the ability to increase the harvest if game damage complaints increase, Schmitz said.

This system is extremely helpful for us biologically and socially, he said.

The proposal will go out for public comment until June 24 before being considered by the commission at its next meeting on July 14.

BALANCING ACT

Schmitz explained the population decline and revival this way. Prior to 2011 there were a lot of older does on the landscape that arent as reproductively proficient but that still eat a lot of browse. When those older deer died off and were replaced by younger, more fertile does, the population began to rebound.

The trick now is to keep the population low enough to ensure there is adequate browse on the landscape, Schmitz explained, while also respecting the tolerance of landowners who have to deal with more deer on their alfalfa fields.
WASHINGTON -- Seven white men and a white woman, Republican members of Congress all, boarded vehicles on Capitol Hill on Tuesday morning for a voyage deep into Anacostia, a largely black and poor section of Washington.

Their mission: to reassure nonwhite voters frightened by Donald Trump, their party's presumptive presidential nominee.

Their odds of success: exceedingly low.

The lawmakers must have perceived their mission to be risky, for they traveled with a veritable arsenal: a Capitol Police "mobile command center" truck, a canine unit, four or five squad cars and a half-dozen black police vans. Police closed the street to traffic, and security officials wearing plainclothes and earpieces kept a watchful eye in all directions as a white van disgorged the lawmakers at the residential addiction-treatment program they were visiting. House Speaker Paul Ryan zoomed up moments later in his two-Suburban motorcade.

The lawmakers, six of them in matching blue dress shirts, sat at a table in the shelter's basement, then invited the cameras in to capture a few seconds of their supportive nods and ingratiating smiles while African-American residents told their tales of recovery. Later, they reassembled outside, where the GOP officials gave a news conference while residents of the shelter, House of Help City of Hope, stood silently, human props in the background.

"This is my third time," Ryan said, "at the House of Help, the City of Help. Uh, the City of Hope. The House of Hope, City of Help."

To his credit, Ryan takes poverty seriously and talks about it often. He made it the first item on his six-point policy agenda. But if Ryan thinks his outing to the Anacostia shelter is going to offset the yuuuuge damage Trump is doing to the party with Latinos, African-Americans, women, immigrants and others -- well, to borrow a favorite Trump epithet, he's a loser.

The first six questions for Ryan after his remarks at the shelter Tuesday were about Trump's racist campaign to disqualify the judge in a fraud case against Trump because the judge is Hispanic:

"Do you have any regrets about your endorsement" last week?

"How can you continue to support the candidate?"

"How concerned are you that ... it's going to undercut what your party is trying to sell here?"

Ryan was blunt. "Claiming a person can't do their job because of their race is sort of like the textbook definition of a racist comment," he said. He acknowledged that "these kinds of comments undercut these things [his anti-poverty rollout] and I'm not going to even pretend to defend them."

But he elevated party unity above his concern about the party standard-bearer's racism. "I'm going to defend our majority and ... I see it as my job as speaker of the House to help keep our party unified," he said. "I think if we go into the fall as a divided party, we are doomed to lose."

That was a frank rationale for Republican officials' deal with the Devil. Maybe party unity will protect their congressional majorities in the short term. Their tolerance of a bigoted nominee could also mean losing nonwhite voters indefinitely, and with them their standing as a national party.

Ryan argued that his agenda would fare better under Trump than Hillary Clinton, and that's probably true. House Republicans have proposed cutting about $1 trillion over a decade from programs such as food stamps and welfare. Trump, for his part, has said food stamps "shouldn't be needed often," and he has complained that people "make more money by sitting there doing nothing than they make if they have a job."

At Tuesday's event, Ryan didn't cite the deep cuts he plans for anti-poverty programs, only obliquely mentioning the need to "measure success based on results," not dollars.

Another of the lawmakers, Rep. Bradley Byrne of Alabama, was more direct: "We get to save the taxpayers money because we won't have to be doling out more money for these programs that don't work."

Democrats say the programs do work: that the average family uses food stamps for only eight to 10 months, and that, when you figure in programs such as the earned-income tax credit, the child tax credit and food stamps, government efforts have reduced poverty by some 40 percent.

But that's an argument for another day -- or another year. Ryan has said that passing legislation such as the anti-poverty agenda this year is "really not the goal."

The goal for now is to remove the taint of Trump. And it's going to take more than an armed tour of Anacostia.

Follow Dana Milbank on Twitter, @Milbank.

(c) 2016, Washington Post Writers Group
BILLINGS  Emphasizing the estimated $6 billion economic power of outdoor recreation on Montanas public lands, Gov. Steve Bullock on Thursday announced three steps to bolster public lands access in the state.

These plans are not only the right thing to do for Montanans and their families and future generations, theyre also the right thing to do for Montanas economy and our businesses, Bullock said in a news conference in Billings Riverfront Park.

The governor told the group of about 30 people that he has directed the state Department of Natural Resources and Conservation to hire a public access specialist in an attempt to get anglers, hunters and other recreationists on to the states nearly 2 million acres of inaccessible public property.

Montanas public access specialist will be on call to troubleshoot concerns from the public, and when warranted to help open up inaccessible places that all Montanans have a right to, Bullock told the group. That can be anything from helping to unlock the padlock that shouldnt be on a road or to helping find creative ways to figure out ways that we can access public lands.

The other two prongs of the access initiative involve the Legislature. One would ask legislators to establish a Montana Office of Outdoor Recreation in the governors office of Economic Development. As described in a handout, the office would be charged with developing and implementing a strategic plan for Montana to consciously shape our outdoor economic future and to ensure the infrastructure is in place to support the growth of the outdoor industry.

Thirdly, the governor would like the Legislature to untie the restrictions it has placed on the spending of Habitat Montana funds. The Habitat Montana Program was created by the Legislature in 1987 to protect wildlife habitat through the purchase of conservation easements, leases or outright land buys. The program is funded mainly by nonresident hunting license fees.

Bullock said the current restrictions, which were placed on the fund by Republican legislators and dont allow any land to be purchased, dont make sense.

Gathered in the crowd were some of the areas, and states, most ardent wildlife and public land access activists.

John Gibson, who helped found the Public Lands/Waters Access Association which has fought to restore access along several roads across the state, said he appreciates Bullocks attempts but worries that nothing will get done.

I come from a bureaucracy, the Forest Service, where you see a lot of plans and positions that went nowhere, Gibson said. I think the governor is sincere, but hell be challenged at every corner by the Legislature.

The Bureau of Land Managements Montana-Dakotas office created an access specialist position in 2008 to great fanfare, but budget cutbacks and changes in administration seemed to blunt that effort. In the past two sessions of the Legislature there have been bills introduced that would require anyone who gated and padlocked a road previously open to public travel to first justify they had the right to close it, instead of the current situation where landowners block access and leave it up to the county or private individuals to contest the closure in court. Both bills never made it out of committee, Gibson said.

The 'good old boy' system is alive and well in the Legislature and in county government, Gibson said.

Access has become a prominent issue in this years governors race after it was reported that Republican gubernatorial candidate Greg Gianforte sued Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks over an easement across his Bozeman property. Gianforte has said the lawsuit was not about denying the public access through his property along the East Gallatin River in Bozeman, but the lawsuit has made political hay for the Bullock campaign.

Gianforte was also recorded saying at a campaign stop in Malta that FWP is at war with landowners in the state trying to extract access and using extortion to do it.

Bullock took a few swipes at Gianforte, a self-made billionaire, by saying, In our state the size of your checkbook doesnt designate whether you can spend a day alone with a fly rod on a river. You dont have to own a big piece of property to experience some of the best hunting and fishing in the world. Experiences that people around the world truly feel lucky if they can experience once in their lifetime.

Gianforte has said he supports recreational access to public lands, the states stream access law and does not back a state takeover of federal lands being pushed by some conservative groups.

Bullocks message about the importance of public land access to Montanas economy was echoed at Thursdays presentation by The Base Camp outdoor store founder Scott Brown, executive director of Visit Billings Alex Tyson and Zoo Montana director Jeff Ewelt.

The great thing about public lands is they dont discriminate, Ewelt said. They are part of our American heritage.

A recent survey examining the importance of public lands to Montanans was also cited by the speakers, including University of Montana professor Rick Graetz. He noted that across political boundaries the poll found Montanans were united in their support of public lands.

The thing I took away from our poll is that public lands are a catalyst for our economy, Graetz said.

So, governor, youve read Montanans well, Graetz said. I think what youre proposing is going to be a beacon to people around the United States: entrepreneurs, people with small businesses, who know the value of natural amenities to an educated workforce. I think what youre doing is going to be a real set of fireworks for Montanas economy as we go forward.
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Incumbents in Anaconda-Deer Lodge and Madison counties who finished second to challengers in Tuesday's primary election are rethinking their campaign strategies.

In a three-way race for Madison County Commission District 1, challenger Daniel Allhands got 463 votes to edge out incumbent David Schulz, who is serving his fourth, four-year term. Schultz had 440 votes but both advance to the November general election. Ellis Thompson, who got 199 votes, did not move on.

In Anaconda-Deer Lodge County, incumbent Chief Executive Connie Ternes-Daniels got 1,142 votes while challenger Bill Everett finished with 1,386, unofficial returns show. Ternes-Daniels is seeking her second term. They advance while Jenna Schaefer, who got 311 votes, does not.

Schulz told The Standard on Thursday that he is disappointed with the results and plans to rethink his election strategy.

He blamed his workload as commissioner, which is a full-time job, for his second place showing, but said he will be taking the November election seriously.

Allhands said the election went pretty much as he expected. He anticipated a close race between him and Schulz, but believed he would come out on top.

A retired rancher, Allhands said hes heard dissatisfaction from voters, citing gates locked on county roads as one reason he may have come out ahead.

I think folks are getting tired of things, Allhands said.

Schulz said as commissioner, he has tried to work with both sides on public access.

Its an issue weve been working on for a long time. Im confident, were working with the county attorney and were making some strides, Schulz said.

Anaconda's Ternes-Daniels said Thursday she is also disappointed with Tuesday's results. She also plans to rethink her re-election strategy to try to reach more voters, but thinks the outcome reflects the general mood of the country.

Ill have to sit back and have a look at (how to move forward toward November). In the meantime Ive still got to do the job, Ternes-Daniels said.

Everett said he is grateful for the support and said it indicated a deep desire for change among Anaconda residents.

People are concerned about economic development as well as blight that is unfortunately taking over Anaconda, Everett said. It seems to get worse on a monthly basis.

The lack of economic development and new jobs is hurting the community and taking a big hit on school enrollment, too, he said.

Unless things change, I dont know how much farther we can fall, he said.

In a four-way race for Anaconda-Deer Lodge County Commission District 3, incumbent Kevin Hart got 190 votes to Michael Merinos 84 votes. They advance while Jason Mavrinac and Mike Huotte, who finished third and fourth, do not.

Merino, a business owner, said he is reaching out to voters who feel disaffected by the status quo. He also hopes to garner votes that went to Mavrinac, who got 74 votes, and Huotte, who received 67.

Theres a group of people in Anaconda that want to see positive change take place and want new leadership," Merino said. "Im going to reach out to those voters and make that change happen.

Hart said Tuesday's results show support.

I think the votes ... speak to the confidence the voters have in the commission (in Anaconda), Hart said.
A recreation of the famous battle from the Korean War, the production of Inchon! was plagued with everything from bad weather to government red tape, and the final product was a laughable war spectacle that never stood a chance.

Note: This movie tied with "Lonely Lady."
In this bizarre spy spoof, Bill Cosby plays a secret agent who comes out of retirement to stop a madwoman from taking over the world.
Deutsche Bank National Trust Company, as Trustee for NovaStar Mortgage Funding Trust, Series 2007-1 Nova Star Home Equity Loan Asset-Backed Certificates, Series 2007-1

Plaintiff,

vs.

John A. Fuller; Janet L. Fuller; Parties in Possession; Unknown spouse, if any, of John A. Fuller; Unknown spouse, if any, of Janet L. Fuller; State of Iowa - Child Support Recovery Unit; State of Iowa - Child Support Recovery Unit; State of Iowa; State of Iowa, et al.

Defendants.

You are notified that a petition has been filed in the office of this court naming you as a defendant in this action. The petition was filed on April 1, 2016, and prays for foreclosure of Plaintiffs mortgage in favor of the Plaintiff on the property described in this notice and judgment for the unpaid principal amount of $86,671.42, with 5.125% per annum interest thereon from September 1, 2015, together with late charges, advances and the costs of the action including (but not limited to) title costs and reasonable attorney's fees, as well as a request that said sums be declared a lien upon the following described premises from December 15, 2006, located in Muscatine county, Iowa:

A part of Lots 8 and 9, of Thayer Lodge Subdivision, in Muscatine County, Iowa, more particularly described as follows:

Beginning at the Northeasterly corner of said Lot 8; thence South 34 22' 00" West 38.00 feet on the Westerly right-of-way of U.S. Highway # 61 and Iowa Highway # 92; thence North 55 38' 00" West 237.05 feet to the Easterly meander line of the Muscatine Slough; thence North 36 21' 00" East 25.93 feet on said Easterly Slough Line; thence North 27 10' 00" East 15.67 feet on said Easterly Slough line; thence South 6430' 23" East 85.50 feet; thence North 72 05' 08" East 178.77 feet; thence South 62 38' 00" East 44.60 feet to the Westerly right-of-way of said highway no. 61 and no. 92; thence South 34 22' 00" West 163.50 feet on said Westerly highway right-of-way to the point of beginning, containing 0.61 acres, more or less.

SUBJECT TO ALL EASEMENTS, RESERVATIONS, COVENANTS, CONDITIONS, AGREEMENTS OF RECORD, IF ANY., commonly known as 2095 Highway 61, Muscatine, IA 52761 (the "Property")

The petition further prays that the mortgage on the above described real estate be foreclosed, that a special execution issue for the sale of as much of the mortgaged premises as is necessary to satisfy the judgment and for other relief as the Court deems just and equitable. For further details, please review the petition on file in the clerk's office. The Plaintiffs attorney is Halley Ryherd, of SouthLaw, P.C.; whose address is 1401 50th Street, Suite 100, West Des Moines, IA 50266.

NOTICE

THE PLAINTIFF HAS ELECTED FORECLOSURE WITHOUT REDEMPTION. THIS MEANS THAT THE SALE OF THE MORTGAGED PROPERTY WILL OCCUR PROMPTLY AFTER ENTRY OF JUDGMENT UNLESS YOU FILE WITH THE COURT A WRITTEN DEMAND TO DELAY THE SALE. IF YOU FILE A WRITTEN DEMAND, THE SALE WILL BE DELAYED UNTIL TWELVE MONTHS (OR SIX MONTHS IF THE PETITION INCLUDES A WAIVER OF DEFICIENCY JUDGMENT) FROM THE ENTRY OF JUDGMENT IF THE MORTGAGED PROPERTY IS YOUR RESIDENCE AND IS A ONE-FAMILY OR TWO-FAMILY DWELLING OR UNTIL TWO MONTHS FROM ENTRY OF JUDGMENT IF THE MORTGAGED PROPERTY IS NOT YOUR RESIDENCE OR IS YOUR RESIDENCE BUT NOT A ONE-FAMILY OR TWO-FAMILY DWELLING. YOU WILL HAVE NO RIGHT OF REDEMPTION AFTER THE SALE. THE PURCHASER AT THE SALE WILL BE ENTITLED TO IMMEDIATE POSSESSION OF THE MORTGAGED PROPERTY. YOU MAY PURCHASE AT THE SALE.

You must serve a motion or answer on or before 1st day of July, 2016, and within a reasonable time thereafter file your motion or answer with the Clerk of Court for Muscatine County, at the county courthouse in Muscatine, Iowa. If you do not, judgment by default may be rendered against you for the relief demanded in the petition.

If you require the assistance of auxiliary aids or services to participate in a court action because of a disability, immediately call your District ADA Coordinator at 563-326-8783. If you are hearing impaired, call Relay Iowa TTY at 1-800-735-2942.

By:Jeff Tollenaer

CLERK OF THE ABOVE COURT

Muscatine County Courthouse

401 East 3rd Street,

Muscatine, IA 52761

IMPORTANT:

YOU ARE ADVISED TO SEEK LEGAL ADVICE AT ONCE TO PROTECT YOUR INTERESTS.
The Muscatine County Board of Supervisors met in regular session at 7:00 P.M. with Howard, Kelly, Sorensen, Sauer and Bonebrake present. Chairperson Sorensen presiding.

On a motion by Kelly, second by Sauer, the agenda was approved as presented. Ayes: All.

Discussion was held with Administrative Services Director Nancy Schreiber regarding claims dated May 23, 2016. Schreiber stated part of a claim had been withdrawn and the claims amount reduced to $538,976.09. On a motion by Kelly, second by Sauer, claims dated May 23, 2016 were approved in the amount of $538,976.09. Ayes: All.

A Public Hearing was called to order by Chairperson Sorensen at 7:02 P.M. on proposed amendments to the Fiscal Year 2015/16 Muscatine County Budget. No one spoke for or against the proposed budget amendments. Budget Administrator Sherry Seright reviewed the proposed amendments with the Board. On a motion by Kelly, second by Bonebrake, the public hearing was closed at 7:15 P.M. Roll call vote: Ayes: All.

On a motion by Howard, second by Kelly, the Board approved Resolution #05-23-16-01 Amending the Fiscal Year 2015/16 Budget. Roll call vote: Ayes: All.

On a motion by Sauer, second by Kelly, the Board approved Resolution #05-23-16-02 Fiscal Year 2015/16 Budget Appropriations. Roll call vote: Ayes: All.

On a motion by Kelly, second by Howard, the Board approved Resolution #05-23-16-03 Approval of the Combined Preliminary and Final Plat of Sherwood's First Addition, Lot 1, containing approximately 18.57 acres and located in Wilton Township. Roll call vote: Ayes: All.

The Board reviewed variances granted by the Muscatine County Board of Adjustment on Friday, May 6, 2016. Case #16-05-01 is an application filed by David O. and Sheila A. Hahn, Record Owners. This property is located in Seventy Six Township, in the NE  of Sec. 1-T76N-R3W, Parcel G, South of 231st Street, 2178 231st Street, Muscatine, Iowa, containing approximately 5.21 acres, and is zoned A-1 Agricultural District. This request, if approved, would allow the Zoning Administrator to issue a Variance to allow an accessory structure in front of the dwelling, but at least 50 feet from the front lot line. On a motion by Kelly, second by Sauer, the Board accepted the variance. Ayes: All. Case #16-05-02 is an application filed by Amanda A. McPherson, Record Owner. This property is located in Montpelier Township, in the NW  of Sec. 21-T77N-R1E, Willis/Shea Subdivision, Lot 1, East of Ward Avenue, 1937 Ward Avenue, Muscatine, Iowa, containing approximately 1.01 acres, and is zoned A-1 Agricultural District. This request, if approved, would allow the Zoning Administrator to issue a Variance in order to build a detached garage in front of the existing dwelling and only 40 feet from the front lot line, instead of the required 50 feet. On a motion by Kelly, second by Sauer, the Board accepted the variance. Ayes: All.

The Board reviewed Special Use Permits granted by the Muscatine County Board of Adjustment on Friday, May 6, 2016. Case #16-05-03 is an application filed by Russell R. Van Acker and Jesse M. Shield, Record Owners. This property is located in Pike Township, South of 180th Street in the NW  of Sec. 17-T77N-R3W, containing approximately five acres, and is zoned A-1 Agricultural District. This request, if approved, would allow the Zoning Administrator to issue a Special Use Permit in order for the Record Owners to place a camper on this property for use as a Seasonal Recreational Cottage. The Board of Adjustment approved this request. Case #16-05-04 is an application filed by Jonathan Hatfield, Record Owner and Jason and Hope Curry, Applicant & Contract Holders. This property is located in Fruitland Township, in the NW  of Sec. 25-T76N-R3W, North of Hwy. 61, 2147 Hwy. 61, containing approximately 11.34 acres, and is zoned A-1 Agricultural District. This request, if approved, would allow the Zoning Administrator to issue a Special Use Permit in order for Manatt's to place a temporary concrete plant on this property to service the airport construction. The Board of Adjustment approved this request.

Zoning Administrator Eric Furnas updated the Board on a request from the City of Muscatine for his assistance on a temporary basis due to staff illness. Furnas stated he will perform septic, time of transfer and other environmental inspections and reviews as needed. Furnas stated if he issues any permits the County will keep the permit fees.

Discussion was held with George Granberg, Ruhl & Ruhl on the proposed purchase of Lot 33, Rueben and Sarah Baker Addition, Phase IV. Granberg stated the purchase price is $22,000 contingent on approval from the City of Muscatine to build a driveway across the lot. Kelly stated a possible sale of the Optimae building is planned and this purchase would provide access to the site without needing to cross property that may become part of the County Park. On a motion by Howard, second by Bonebrake, the Board approved Resolution #05-23-16-04 Authorizing the Purchase of Lot 33, Rueben and Sarah Baker Addition, Phase IV, Muscatine Iowa for the purchase price of $22,000. Roll call vote: Ayes: All.

Discussion was held with Granberg on the proposed purchase of Real Estate at 112 E. 4th Street, Muscatine, Iowa. Granberg stated he has a full set of documents for signature contingent on approval from the City of Muscatine to use this real estate as a parking lot. Sorensen stated this lot is directly behind the parking lot at the old post office. Sorensen stated the Department of Human Services will be moving to the old post office building so additional parking spaces will be required for their employees. On a motion by Bonebrake, second by Sauer, the Board approved Resolution #05-23-16-05 Authorizing the Purchase of Real Estate at 112 E. 4th Street, Muscatine Iowa for the purchase price of $120,000. Roll call vote: Ayes: All.

On a motion by Kelly, second by Sauer, the Board disallowed 13 additional 2015 Business Property Tax Credit Applications on 14 parcels, as recommended by the County Auditor. Ayes: All.

On a motion by Bonebrake, second by Sauer, the Board approved an Outdoor Service Change application for a Class C Native Wine (WCN), Sunday Sales and Outdoor Service Permit for Ardon Creek Vineyard & Winery, LLC, 2391 Independence Avenue, Letts, IA 52754. Ayes: All.

On a motion by Howard, second by Kelly, minutes of the May 16, 2016 regular meeting were approved as written. Ayes: All.

Correspondence:

The Board received a letter from Joni Axel thanking the Board for their support of the preservation of the Historic Jail.

Sorensen reported contacts regarding a property on 245th Street.

Committee Reports:

Howard attended a Muscatine County Veterans Affairs meeting May 17th.

Howard attended an Emergency Management Board meeting May 19th.

Kelly attended an Eastern Iowa Mental Health Region meeting May 15th.

Sorensen attended a Wilton Development Board meeting May 18th.

Sauer attended a Muscatine County Conservation Board meeting May 16th.

Sauer attended a River Bend Transit Board meeting May 18th

Sauer attended a Muscatine County Board of Health meeting May 18th.

Sauer attended a Muscatine County Fair Board meeting May 19th.

Bonebrake and Sauer attended a Muscatine County Joint Communications meeting May 19th.

Sauer attended a Muscatine Levee Stakeholders meeting May 20th.

On a motion by Kelly, second by Bonebrake, the Board approved Resolution #05-23-16-06 Suspending the Collection of Taxes. Roll call vote: Ayes: All.

On a motion by Kelly, second by Sauer, the Board approved Resolution #05-23-16-07 Approving Preliminary Official Statement and Setting Date for Sale of General Obligation County Purpose and Refunding Bonds, Series 2016A. Roll call vote: Ayes: All. The sealed bids will be received and reviewed by the Administration Office on June 6, 2016 at 10:00 A.M. The Board will meet June 6, 2016 at 5:00 P.M. to consider the bids and pass a resolution providing for the award and sale of the Bonds.

On a motion by Kelly, second by Bonebrake, the Board approved a hiring request for a Corrections Sergeant (Grade 10, Step 13) at the Muscatine County Jail. Ayes: All.

The meeting was adjourned at 8:01 P.M.

ATTEST:

Betty L. Wamback

First Deputy Auditor Jeff Sorensen, Chairperson

Board of Supervisors
The City of Fruitland has a vacant City Council seat due to the resignation of Becca Shoppa. It is the intent of the City Council to appoint someone to this seat at the next meeting on June 14, 2016 at 7:00 pm at Fruitland City Hall. There will be a Public Hearing before the appointment. Citizens may request a special election to fill the seat by submitting a petition within fourteen days of the appointment.
MUSCATINE, Iowa  Muscatine City Council members will be asked at next week's regular council meeting to consider approval of a lease agreement for Mississippi Drive in front of the Merrill Hotel and Conference Center and a right-of-way agreement for property adjacent to the hotel on Chestnut Street.

City Engineer Jim Edgmond presented the two plans to the council Thursday night during an in-depth session.

"What I would like to talk about with you tonight are two items that in the site plan review process and have become very apparent that they need to be dealt with separately and brought to the council and hopefully approved so that this real estate-type transaction can go through the necessary steps," Edgmond said.

"They have to do with a lease of public right-of-way way for Mississippi Drive and at least what is conceptualized now as an agreement on how Chestnut Street adjacent to the hotel will work on the site plan."

A two-lane wide drop-off area for the front of the hotel is being proposed. The drop-off area would be in the city's right-of-way on Mississippi Drive since the hotel is being built right up to the edge of the property line.

"That has been something that has been discussed, negotiated. I think the city has probably asked every question it is possible to ask," Edgmond said.

"What the staff came to the conclusion is that for this hotel to be the high class, high rated, first class facility that the owners wants it to be, the two-lane drop-off was an absolute necessity."

Edgmond said the design will work with the changes being looked at in the Mississippi Drive corridor study.

"It has already been looked at by the designers of the Mississippi Drive corridor and all of that can be incorporated into that design. The corridor can still work," Edgmond said.

The hotel is seeking a long-term lease.

Hotel guests will be directed from in front of the hotel to make a right turn onto Chestnut. The agreement for council members to consider on Chestnut involves a 10-12 foot parcel that would be dedicated to the city as a public right-of-way.

"This represents the best negotiated settlement to accomplish what has to be accomplished and still maintain what we need out there for Mississippi Drive and to address that emergency and safety concerns that existed on Chestnut with the exit the way it was originally proposed," Edgmond said.

Councilman Allen Harvey complained about the council not being consulted sooner in the development process.

"I am surprised these issues haven't been discussed with council prior to breaking ground," he said.

"I can't address that either," Edgmond responded.

"I know you can't," Harvey replied.

The plans will be back before the council at its 7 p.m. June 16 meeting at City Hall.

The project is named for Stanley Merrill Howe, a Muscatine native and one-time president, chairman and chief executive officer of what is now HNI Corp. He is Howe's father-in-law.

The Merrill will be adjacent to the Pearlview Condominiums in the 100 block of West Mississippi Drive. The project will include:

 A six-story hotel with 114 guest rooms, extended-stay rooms, and presidential suites with three bedrooms;

 An access-controlled parking garage next to the hotel, with 189 parking spaces;

 12,732 square feet of conference space, located within the hotel, that could accommodate up to 377 people;

 A 4,353 square-foot ballroom, including a 1,250 square-foot terrace;

 An indoor pool, full-service spa and fitness center available to non-guests who purchase club memberships.
FRUITLAND, Iowa The Fruitland Community Lions Club will meet at 6 p.m. at the Community Center in Fruitland on Wednesday, June 15.

Agenda items include: Boonies report, Fun with Lions report, Summer youth food program report, and scrubbers update. New business includes Fruitland Fun Days and Stickers. New officers will be inducted and a program will follow the meeting by Tom and Sandra Berryman.

Anyone interested in learning more about the Lions Club is encouraged to attend. Membership is not limited to Fruitland residents. All area persons are welcome. For more information, contact Wayne Shoultz at 563-264-2373.
MUSCATINE, Iowa  Muscatine is getting with a heat wave, bringing in temperatures as high as 97 on this weekend.

The heat wave began on Friday where temperatures reached 94 degrees. According to the three day forecast, the highs are going to stay above 90 degrees.

Quad City National Weather Service meteorologist John Haase said this head originated in California around the beginning of this week.

Its been building in the southern and central plains during this week, Haase said. Its was pretty hot in California and the southwestern part of the U.S. and thats been spreading gradually this way.

The heat wave will last until about Monday, where temperatures are predicted to simmer down into the 80s. According to Haase, a storm system will be moving into the Midwest and will cause the temperatures to lower next Tuesday through Friday.

This is the first time the temperature will climb above 90 this summer. Haase said people will need to exercise caution during these high temperatures.

People will need to take frequent breaks and drink plenty of water, Haase said. Because we havent had heat like this yet, its a matter of taking it easy and being indoors or in the shade.

While some people will be able to go to work or stay in air-conditioned environments, other people arent as lucky.

Workers having to be outside must prepare for the heat and humidity.

Muscatine Postmaster Kim Morse said the Muscatine mail carriers are ready for the heat.

The carriers are already out in temperatures like this most days so they are acclimated, Morse said. But they are told to keep themselves hydrated, dress coolly, rest for a extra minutes if they are feeling dizzy or dehydrated and talk with their supervisors if they are experiencing heat exhaustion.

Morse also remarked about her time delivering mail and said there were some tricks that helped mail carriers.

When I was a carrier, I was told to put cool water behind the knees and on the wrists, Morse said.

Customers sometimes offer a cool treat to their mail carrier on hot summer days.

We have great customers wholl bring out ice cream, fresh fruit, ice water or popsicles, Morse said.

Along with mail carriers, garbage collectors are also outside during these heated conditions. City of Muscatine Solid Waste Manager Laura Liegois said her workers are prepared for the heat.

In the garbage business, most of our staff deals with weather every day, especially our refuse collectors, who deal with either extreme cold or extreme heat. Liegois said.

Liegois said the garbage collectors are also encouraged to stay hydrated, take a longer break if needed, staying in communication to get status updates and wear cooler clothes.

The time the trash collectors start also helps them beat the heat.

They start at 5 a.m. so that helps keep them from being out at 3 p.m. in the heat, Liegois said.

Both the Muscatine garbage collectors and mail carriers have a good record of heat stroke instances as Liegois and Morse said they both have had almost no instances of workers getting heat exhaustion during their times as Solid Waste Manager and Postmaster.
MUSCATINE, Iowa  Muscatine fire investigators have classified Friday morning's blaze at Daufeldt Transport, 603 Clay St., as accidental.

According to Muscatine Fire Marshal Mike Hartman, the loss is estimated at $150,000 including the building, equipment and a vehicle.

At approximately 7:24 a.m. Friday, the Muscatine Joint Communications Center received multiple 911 calls reporting the fire.

Upon arrival, fire crews found fire and smoke coming from the interior of a wash bay garage flowing out the overhead door. No one was in the structure at the time.

One unidentified worker sustained injuries in the fire. He was treated by Muscatine Fire Department paramedics and released on scene. There were no other injuries to either civilians or fire personnel.

Firefighters were able to quickly contain the blaze. Crews then focused on multiple locations where the fire had entered walls and ceiling assemblies. There was also a partial collapse of the roof structure.

Even though there was no immediate hazard, there was a partial evacuation of surrounding residences as a precaution.

Crews remained on the scene for several hours taking care of hot spots.

This is the second fire at the business in more than a year and half. A fire in another building on the Daufeldt property was reported on Feb. 8, 2015.

The Muscatine Police Department assisted at the scene with traffic control and evacuation of nearby structures.. The Fruitland and Wilton Fire Departments provided mutual aid and additional manpower at the scene.

The fire department wanted to thank citizens who brought cold drinks to the fire scene, according to a press release.
SAN FRANCISCO  Thomas A. Tut Maloney, 29, of San Francisco, formerly of Rock Island, died Tuesday, June 7, 2016, in San Francisco.

Visitation will be 1-5 p.m. Sunday, June 12, 2016, at Rafferty Funeral Home, 2111 1st St. A, Moline. Funeral services will be private. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to the Greater Mississippi Valley National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) (www.namigmv.org) or Alleman High School.

Tom was born Nov. 20, 1986, in Moline, the son of Robert and Mary Jo Maloney.

He graduated from Alleman High School in 2005 and the University of Illinois in 2009. Additionally, he earned his M.B.A. from Indiana University in 2013. He was employed by Intel as a senior financial analyst.

Tut loved grand experiences. He studied abroad in Singapore and Shanghai, China. He loved to travel. In addition to his study-abroad locations, he also traveled to many countries in Europe, Central and South America, and Asia.

He packed a lot of life in his nearly 30 years. He had a beautiful smile that will not be forgotten. He was generous and cared tremendously for his family and friends.

Survivors include his parents; his brothers, Luke, Raleigh, North Carolina, and Jamie, Rock Island; numerous extended family; and many friends he considered family. He was preceded in death by his grandparents, Martin and Emma Jo Maloney and Art and Janice Dufelmeier, and two uncles, Jim Maloney and Mark Dufelmeier.

Condolences may be sent to www.RaffertyFuneral.com.
Call it a flying accident at Roysambu Flyover.

A car alleged to have been speeding hit one of the guards at the Roysambu overpass yesterday, resulting to a very strange scene. The car remained suspended in an upright position.

















This guy was arrested trying to steal vehicle parts.



Reports have it that the driver survived and was rushed to hospital.
Nairobi County government has asked opposition party Cord to settle an outstanding Sh250,000 bill for holding a rally at Uhuru Park on Monday during their weekly demos.

County secretary Robert Ayisi said the opposition coalition held the rally at the grounds without settling the fee.

Authority for use of Uhuru Park grounds should be subject to settlement of the requisite fee, Ayisi noted in a letter to Cord on Tuesday.

I would appreciate if you could kindly make the necessary arrangements to settle the outstanding bill of Ksh 250,000 by Thursday 9th June 2016, stated Ayisi.





The rally was impromptu, with a fraction of the usual huge crowd. These were mostly participants in the anti-IEBC demo.
Like we always say, Kenyan politics is like a circus show! Even before we elect our next president in 2017, talk of 2022 presidential elections has started in earnest.

On Wednesday, Kiambu County governor William Kabogo claimed that the Mount Kenya region would not automatically support DP Rutos 2022 presidential bid just by virtue of being a Deputy President and a member of Jubilee party.

The remarks sparked criticism from a section of leaders from Central and Rift Valley regions who accused the Governor of pushing for his selfish interests.

Kabogo has responded to those accusations saying that he will not apologise to Deputy President William Ruto for dismissing his 2022 presidential bid.

He said on Thursday that the Deputy President is his friend and would not spare him from the truth.

Ruto and I are friends and as such I am entitled to tell him the truth. The conversation for 2022 presidential elections should begin now, Kabogo said.

Kabogo further noted that Central region is a big block and may end up splitting it votes should Meru Governor Peter Munya, Tharaka Nithi Senator Kithure Kindiki and DP Ruto all choose to run for the presidency.

Source: Citizen TV
Team Mafisi are pleasantly surprised to learn that they have a Mecca; a place they can go pay homage to those that came before them. Just kidding.

But there is a place called Mbari ya Hiti in Muranga County. That loosely translates to The Clan of the Hyenas. There actually exists a clan by that name, and probably the place was named after it.

Ours is a reputable clan, and we should not be linked to Team Mafisi. We are proud of this name. It belonged to our forefather who fought to have us here, Samuel Macharia, a descendant of the clan told Nairobian newspaper.

The clan has been in existence for more than a century.

It was hard mentioning the clan name to my parents. They too were reluctant, because they feared one of my sons would be called Hiti, a young woman who recently married into the clan told Nairobian.
High flying Kenyan rapper King Kaka has broken the internet with news that he is now a lecturer.

The rapper, currently riding high on the hit Besha Shigana, took everyone by surprise on Thursday, June 9th when he made the announcement on social media. Thursday marked the first day of many as a lecturer at Zetech University.



His new role comes two months after his artist management label, Kaka Empire, signed a memorandum of understanding with the institution. The MOU seeks to have the rapper mentor students on brand development, entrepreneurship and help them grow their talents.

Besides being an accomplished rapper and entrepreneur King Kaka is an accountant. He studied accounting at the Metropolitan University in Britain which he joined in 2006.

Congratulations are in order!!
Walter Mongare, better known as Nyambane, was last month suspended by Kidero.

He was the governors communication director, and the reasons for his suspension were not made public.

It looks like his office door sign made its way to town, or a very cunning sign maker has grasped the opportunity and made a similar one for display purpose only.

Larry Madowo spotted this.


The Yountville Chamber of Commerce announced the appointment of Whitney Diver McEvoy as its new president and CEO, effective July 1.

McEvoy replaces Cindy Saucerman, who served in the position since 2006 and will continue to consult with the chamber.

McEvoy comes to the position from the San Jose Silicon Valley Chamber of Commerce. McEvoy has also worked for BottleRock, the Napa Valley Vintners and served as the political director and deputy finance director of the California Republican Party. She holds a Bachelors degree in political science from Sonoma State University.
The 31-year-old man who was found kissing a student on the bleachers at American Canyon High School in January has been sentenced after pleading no contest to a felony charge of lewd contact with a minor, according to court records.

Michael Jackson, now 32 and also known as Carlos, was sentenced to 293 days in jail and five years of probation in Napa County Superior Court on Wednesday. He pleaded no contest to a charge of lewd contact with a minor on May 10. Other charges including arranging a meeting with a minor for lewd purposes, lewd contact with a minor, distributing lewd material to a minor and molesting a child under 18-years-old, were dismissed.

American Canyon Police were contacted about a possible relationship between an Arizona man and a 17-year-old American Canyon High School student on Jan. 5 when a woman from Arizona tipped them off about it, according to the probation report. The involved student was contacted by a school resource officer on Jan. 11, but said she didnt know what he was talking about.

The student was found straddling Jackson on the bleachers by a campus supervisor on Jan. 14, according the report. They appeared to be kissing.

Although Jackson claimed that he was 18, he was told to leave the campus. When an officer contacted him, he admitted to being 31-years-old from Arizona, probation reported.

The two met through a Facebook page and became friends after Jackson posted something about being sad and the girl, who was 14 at the time, responded. They started talking and became closer over the course of three years, eventually exchanging I love yous and agreeing that they could not have a physical relationship until she turned 18, according to the probation report. In December, they became impatient to meet each other, so Jackson made a plan to drive to California.

Although the victims parents knew she had a friend named Carlos, they had never met him and were under the impression that he was only 18, probation said. The victims mother described her daughter as being naive and as having some unknown developmental delays.

Jackson has medical problems and developmental delays and allowed the lure of having someone care about him impact his already limited decision making skills, according to the probation report. Jackson said that he sees he made errors in his friendship with the victim and that it will never happen again, probation reported.

As part of the plea bargaining agreement, Jackson does not have to go to jail immediately. Following sentencing, he was released from custody. He was ordered to immediately enroll in a sex offender treatment program and register as a sex offender.
After 22 years, Nancy Brennan will be hanging up her comfortable tour guide shoes following her farewell Tulocay Cemetery walking tour this Saturday.

Brennan, Tulocays official historian and premiere guide, will share some of her vast knowledge and favorite stories about 157-year-old institution  a place that represents history carved in stone.

Every year since my first tour, Halloween 1994, Ive tried to create a memorable experience for the attendees. Brennan said. The attendees seem to appreciate this effort.

As in the past, this years tour will have reenactors in period garb, a Civil War rifle volley and guest speakers who can tell tales about the personages who lie six feet under.

The benefits of these tours are many, she said. While familiarizing yourself with Napa Valley and its history through the stories of Napas former residents at rest, a participant also get a nice walk in a beautifully maintained, park-like setting.

This Saturdays 90-minute tour will begin with Jennifer Yost talking about her ancestor, Cayetano Juarez, and life on his Rancho Tulucay. Juarez, who donated the land for the cemetery in 1853, is buried at Tulocay.

Jennifer always does a lovely job with this touching story, said Brennan, who will personally highlight Cayetanos youngest son, Dolores. He was a talented and popular musician and band-leader, she said.

Steve Simich, whose family owns Napa Marble & Granite Works, will talk about some of the Tulocay markers created by his family, such as one for Napas beloved educator Dee T. Davis.

Ging Chan will be returning for Brennans farewell tour. He is a descendant of Napa Countys 19th-century pioneer Chinese settlers. Chan will talk about his family, Chinese traditions and Napas Chinatown while visiting Tulocays County Section where many Chinese are buried.

Another repeat presenter will be the Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War and their Ladies Auxiliary. With their black-powder firing authentic Civil War replica rifles, the men will perform a Three-Volley Salute as part of a dedication, or rededication, of a Union veterans Tulocay grave, Brennan said.

The women then place a bouquet of red, white and blue flowers at that grave, she said. All this pomp and circumstance carried out in period attire and uniform is impressive to see and hear.

In addition to these special presentations, Brennan will be stopping at other graves, such as the Harry Ayres plot. He was electrocuted while working as a Napa-Vallejo-Benicia electric railroad lineman.

Being a recent arrival, originally from back East and with no family close-by, Ayres could have been easily forgotten. But his co-workers had a marker erected at his grave, she said.

The 2016 tour will end with an encore presentation by one of Brennans daughters, also Nancy Brennan. While dressed in 1870s widows weeds  mourning attire  she will recite Nathan Coombs obituary.

We must remember and honor Nathan Coombs as he was Napas founder, the senior Brennan said.

Brennan said her years as a Tulocay tour guide wouldnt have been possible without the support of her family. They always help with things like setting up the historical displays in the chapel, she said.

She noted that Tim Bonner, one of her sons-in-law, has been my gracious sound man.

He assures me he can get it to work one last time, she said of the sound system. Ive been telling everyone Im retiring because, like the speaker system, Im getting old and tired, too!

Its time to let someone else have all the fun.

Although Brennan will be retiring as tour guide, she is continuing as Tulocays historian. Her goal is to write and publish a book about Tulocay Cemetery and its significant history. A sample of this future book was her brief early 2000s Napa Valley Register series titled, Dead Men and Women Do Tell Tales.

Brennan said the primary reason she was hired 26 years ago by the Tulocay Cemetery board was to research and compile Tulocays history. Everyone thought it would take only a few months to complete, she said.

However, the more I dug and discovered, the more I wanted to continue. I grew increasingly fascinated and curious with each new story. I felt compelled to continue the research and discovery as well as include all of these great stories in the manuscript. Brennan completed the first draft in 1993 and has already revised it once.

I keep finding more fascinating details and stories that must be added to the manuscript! This eternal quest has garnered Brennan the nickname of the Mrs. Winchester of Tulocay Cemetery.

It has also rewarded Brennan with the auspicious title of Honorary Tulocay Cemetery Historian awarded to her in 2009 by the cemetery board.

Brennan said her retirement may not mean end of the tours. She has been partnering with Napa County Landmarks, and hopes Landmarks will take over the tours with a fresh perspective.
County supervisors heard a report on Napa Countys high cancer rates that found no specific cause, though it suggested bad health habits such as overeating could play a role.

In particular, the report presented to the Board this week found no unexpectedly high lung cancer and childhood cancer rates in neighborhoods near the Syar quarry.

But thats not the end of the story. Board of Supervisors Chairman Alfredo Pedroza wants the county to continue looking at the cancer issue.

Id like to get a report annually on this, just to identify what new trends are happening, Pedroza said.

Napa County has consistently had among the highest per-capita, age-adjusted cancer rates among Californias 58 counties as tracked by the state. In addition, the group Kidsdata.org reported that the county from 2008 to 2012 had the highest per-capita cancer rate for children.

The local group Napa Vision 2050 brought the issue to the attention of the Board of Supervisors in February. The county Public Health Division had a report done by The Cancer Registry of Greater California, an organization that helps compile cancer data for the state.

This eight-page report found Napa County had the highest per-capita, overall cancer rate in the state for the period from 2006-2013, though not for every single year. Rates were high for colorectal, female breast, pancreatic and prostate cancers, but low for cervical cancer.

It concluded the cancer incidents are consistent with what would be expected in a county with above-average socioeconomic status and better access to cancer screening and care. Cancer incidents are also high in Marin and Sonoma counties.

County Public Health Officer Karen Relucio began her presentation to the Board by putting the countys overall health situation into perspective. The county ranks 7th best in California for all health outcomes and sixth best for life expectancy, she said.

As for cancer, Relucio noted there are more than 80 types of the disease. Unhealthy lifestyle factors are associated with 40 percent of cancers, tobacco smoke with 30 percent, infections with 15 percent to 20 percent, genetic defects with 5 to 10 percent and environmental carcinogens with 2 to 15 percent.

In addition, there are 112 substances known to cause cancer and another 900 or that could cause cancer, Relucio said. She showed a list with substances ranging from plutonium to solar radiation.

Given all the variables, the report couldnt identify a cause for Napa Countys overall high cancer rate. Its often hard to identify a specific cause even for a true cancer cluster, she said.

Its like looking for a molecule in a haystack, Relucio said.

But Relucio noted that 60 percent of county adults are overweight or obese. Obesity can increase the risk of breast, colon, endometrium, esophagus, gallbladder, kidney, pancreas and thyroid cancers.

Napa Countys demographics are so different from most counties that the report concluded it couldnt compare Napas cancer rate with what would be expected based on the rest of California. The county has a larger non-Hispanic white population and higher median income.

Napa Countys cancer report at the request of Vision 2050 looked at one source in particular. It studied the neighborhoods near the Syar quarry and found no statistically excess risk of lung cancer. It also found no excess of cancers in children age 15 and younger.

The proposed Syar quarry expansion is a controversial issue. Some expansion opponents have expressed concern that dust blowing from the county could contain crystalline silica, which is a carcinogen and can cause respiratory problems. Silica occurs naturally in the soil.

Supervisor Keith Caldwell suggested a way to further explore the issue. The county could see if it could get workers compensation information from Napa State Hospital and look for respiratory cases. The hospital is next to the quarry and has more than 2,000 employees.

Vision 2050 President Dan Mufson said his group came upon the high Napa County cancer rate figures while doing research about the Syar expansion proposal, which it opposes. He liked Caldwells idea.

Mufson wants to go beyond a statistical cancer rate analysis for the neighborhoods near Syar. He asked again that the county put up air monitors around Syar quarry to see if crystalline silica is present in blowing dust.

As the meeting wrapped up, Pedroza still expressed concern about Napa County leading the state in cancer rates.

I dont want to be first in this category, he said.
John Tuteur, Napa County registrar of voters, has rejected an initiative designed to protect watersheds in Napa County, because it does not meet the requirements of state law.

Unfortunately, county counsel has found the petition does not meet the requirements of state law, so as the (countys) elections official, it is my duty to reject the petition on that ground, Tuteur said.

I rejected it today at noon, Tuteur said Thursday evening. The proponents have the opportunity to ask a judge to overturn that rejection and that is mentioned in my message to them.

The rejection was based on what Tuteur calls a very technical issue. The text of the initiative cites other documents and county counsel believes those documents had to be included with the petition, and they werent.

On Friday afternoon, Angwins Mike Hackett, a spokesman for the Water, Forest and Oak Woodland Protection Initiative, said Napa County officials illegally blocked the initiative from the ballot, after certifying that it had enough signatures to qualify on Monday.

To say the least, we are shocked by this reversal of opinion, he said. County counsel had six weeks to review the initiative, and initially approved it without any reservations.

Tuteur said proponents turned in the petition with its 6,300 signatures on May 11. He added that he began checking the signatures and also forwarded the initiative petition to county counsel. On Tuesday, after Tuteur certified the petition  meaning the petition had enough valid signatures  county counsel found the problem with it.

Attorneys with Shute, Mihaly & Weinberger, LLP, the law firm that wrote the initiative, plan to file suit on behalf of the Water, Forest and Oak Woodland Protection Committee next week, Hackett said. The same firm drafted and successfully defended Napa Countys Measure J through the appeals process, all the way to the California Supreme Court.

Robert Perl Perlmutter, attorney with Shute, Hihaly & Weinberger, said, We believe that county counsels opinion is dead wrong and that the county acted illegally. In our experience, the countys arguments are those that are typically made by special interest industry groups opposing land use measures and that the courts have rejected.

The proponents turned in 6,300 signatures, needing only 3,791 valid signatures.

Proponents argue that Napa County suffers from insufficient setbacks, called water quality buffer zones, along its creeks and other waterways. The initiative is aimed at keeping Napa Countys drinking water clear and abundant by protecting streams and creeks on hillsides and mandates protections for oak woodlands.

Tuteur said the only way the initiative will be on the Nov. 8 ballot is if a judge overturns his ruling, otherwise, proponents will have to start the whole process over.

The measure is opposed by Napa Valley Grapegrowers, Napa County Farm Bureau, Napa Valley Vintners and Winegrowers of Napa County.

No-kill animal shelter

Tuteur has certified the signatures for a second initiative petition dealing with the no-kill animal shelter. It will be at the board of supervisors (meeting) on June 14, he said Thursday evening.

On Tuesday, the board can adopt the ordinance at its June 21 meeting, can put it directly on the Nov. 8 ballot for a vote or it can ask for a 9111 report, which Tuteur said looks at the initiative and its possible impacts.

If the board requests that report, it needs to be completed within 30 days, so it could come back to the supervisors by its July 12 meeting, which he said is plenty of time to be put on the November ballot.

The initiative measure called Yes on Reducing Euthanasia at Napa County Animal Shelter would modify the Napa County Code in eight ways. According to the petition, The purpose and intent of this measure is to improve the quality of life for dogs, cats and rabbits and avoid their unnecessary destruction by improving the live release rate for the Napa County Animal Shelter to at least 90 percent.

Its proponents are Monica Stevens, founder of Jameson Animal Rescue Ranch (JARR) and Pam Ingalls, board president of Wine Country Animal Lovers (WCAL).
Wearing burgundy gowns, mortarboards and matching tassels with a dangling gold 16 charm, 392 Vintage High School seniors officially became graduates on Thursday afternoon.

The crowd at Napas Memorial Stadium was in a festive mood, holding gold and burgundy balloons, flowers, cards and carefully wrapped leis for the outgoing 12th graders.

Its been fun, now Im done, read one balloon. You rock, graduate! and Way to go Grad, read others.

Thanks to his last name, Pedro Acosta was the first Vintage High School student to get a Class of 2016 diploma.

Even though the students had practiced the day before, Im nervous about messing up somehow, he said with a smile.

Acosta said being on the homecoming court and meeting new people were some of his high school highlights. Acostas grades matched his first-place position in the graduation ceremony. He earned a 4.17 GPA, took four AP classes this year and will attend Willamette University in Oregon in the fall.

Its unbelievable, said senior Austin Steed. Ive dreamt of this moment since freshman year, and now that its here, its bittersweet.

I dont think its hit me yet, said Lily Shindle. I havent cried but I know Im going to.

Hendrix Forsythe said he was happy to graduate but admitted a few regrets. I wish I had taken more advantage of school activities, he said. In some classes, I could have done better.

This is our last goodbye, said senior Nathaly Cazares, wearing a blue sash from the schools college-prep AVID program. Were stepping out into our future.

Giovany Castro said the best thing about high school was meeting new people and having fun with my friends. Challenges included facing personal struggles and trying to overcome them.

I didnt imagine time would go by this fast, said Fatima Arreola. She said the AVID program was one of her high school highlights, along with a three-day college visit trip.

Darlene Young said she was most excited to see her daughter, Jaylene, graduate because shes worked so hard to get here.

Im super excited, said Jaylene Young. Finally, she said.

Young wore the traditional graduation gown but on her feet were a pair of cowboy boots. I did not want to fall during the procession, she said.

As the students filed into the stadium to take their places, the sounds of Pomp and Circumstance filled the air. The music was accompanied by the sound of cowbells, air horns, whistles and cheers from friends and proud families in the stands.

Education is a passport to freedom, speaker Cindy Johnson, senior counselor, told the students.

This class has set a new standard, she said. They will move on and take our Crusher pride to new adventures and journeys.
Many a poor pun has already been made about this incident, so we'll skip them for now and start with the facts:

A hungry seagull in Wales fell into a tub of chicken tikka masala on Monday and turned bright orange.

The bird got the turmeric dye job in a trash container outside what Wales Online termed "an undisclosed curry factory." Seeing it struggling in the goopy liquid on Monday, a rescuer plucked it out and took it to Vale Wildlife Hospital in Tewkesbury.

The bird was uninjured but "a bit embarrassed," veterinary nurse Lucy Kells told Wales Online. She speculated that it had gotten into trouble while in search of chicken.

The staff had never before dealt with a curry-stained animal, Wells said, but she added that workers were able to restore its natural color because it had not been marinating for long. But the process made their stomachs growl.

"The thing that shocked us the most was the smell," Kells told The Guardian. "He smelled amazing, he really smelled good."

The gull was quickly dubbed "Gullfrazie" on social media in Britain, where ubiquitous Indian restaurants commonly serve jalfrezie, another kind of curry. The Guardian referred to the bird as a "spice gull." Others called it "wingdaloo," a reference to vindaloo, yet another curry dish.

The seagull's choice of dish was particularly amusing in Britain, where Indian "curry houses" are so popular that chicken tikka masala is often referred to as the national dish. In 2001, then-Foreign Secretary Robin Cook gave a public address on multiculturalism that has since become known as his chicken tikka masala speech. In it, he extolled the food as a "true British national dish" and noted that Brits who were fond of gravy had first added the masala sauce to Indians' chicken tikka.
American conservatives are fond of World War II analogies, especially those that illustrate the dangers of appeasing dictators. In this historical appropriation, today's conservatives invariably assume the role of Winston Churchill, courageously telling the truth regardless of the consequences. Their liberal adversaries, meanwhile, behave as latter-day Neville Chamberlains, hoping against reality that diplomacy and concessions will satiate the desires of evil men.

When then-House Budget Committee chairman (and current House speaker) Paul Ryan received the 2011 Churchill Award for Statesmanship from the conservative Claremont Institute, he intoned, "If there is such a thing as an unforgivable sin in politics, for Churchill that sin was the refusal to tell the people the facts they need in order to act against an impending threat." Two years later, when President Obama shook the hand of Cuban leader Raul Castro at the funeral of Nelson Mandela, Sen. John McCain scoffed, "Neville Chamberlain shook hands with Hitler." Last year, conservative talk radio host Dennis Prager headlined a column about the Iranian nuclear deal, "1938 and 2015: Only the Names Are Different," casting Obama as the cowardly equivalent to the British prime minister whose promise that the Munich Agreement amounted to "peace in our time" is rightly remembered as one of history's most fatally inaccurate statements.

The appeal is obvious. Notwithstanding how the lessons of Churchill's prescience are misapplied, there is something to be said for stubbornly standing on moral principle, particularly when the political costs are high.

Which makes the abject failure of so many Republican leaders to challenge their party's presumptive presidential nominee so scandalously ironic. With the rise of Donald Trump, the party obsessed with the lessons of Neville Chamberlain and appeasement is now replicating his same exact mistakes.

To be sure, Trump is not Adolf Hitler. But he is the most unabashedly authoritarian presidential nominee in American history, and the most openly racist major-party candidate since Alabama Democratic Gov. George Wallace ran on a segregationist platform in 1964. Indeed, one has to reach back nearly two centuries to the presidency of Andrew Jackson to find a historical analogue to Trump. Jackson was a populist, a conspiracy theorist and an ethnic cleanser the way that Trump -- who pledges to deport 11 million Mexicans and vows to ban Muslims from entering the United States -- aspires to be.

Trump's unique unfitness for the presidency was apparent early in the primary process and has nothing to do with mundane policy matters (though his lack of knowledge about even the most basic government functions should itself be grounds for disqualification). His cruel mockery of a physically disabled New York Times reporter at a campaign rally last fall was absolutely chilling. Trump's refusal to disavow the endorsement of the Ku Klux Klan should have immediately invalidated him in the minds of decent people, regardless of their politics. No other candidate has earned such open and unabashed support from the rancid throng of American neo-Nazis.

Don't take it from me that Trump represents an unparalleled threat not just to American democracy but world peace. Listen to erstwhile Trump opponent and now supporter Marco Rubio. During the heated primary campaign, Rubio famously said that we could not turn over "the nuclear codes of the United States to an erratic individual." The Florida senator, who has since endorsed Trump, is no less correct in his assessment today than he was when he originally made it four months ago, meaning that his partisanship is greater than his patriotism. For what disagreement with Hillary Clinton could Rubio possibly have that would rise above the existential? Is the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee's plan for universal pre-kindergarten education so offensive to limited-government sensibilities that it's worth risking nuclear war to see it stopped?

Trump's hesitant defenders insist that America's system of checks and balances will restrain his authoritarian impulses. "I still believe we have the institutions of government that would restrain someone who seeks to exceed their constitutional obligations," McCain said in his tepid endorsement of Trump. "We have a Congress. We have the Supreme Court. We're not Romania." Never mind the pathetic spectacle of McCain -- who refused to exploit the Jeremiah Wright controversy in his campaign against Obama in 2008 -- succumbing to Trump, a man who mocked his five years in Vietnamese communist captivity while referring to his own draft-dodging sexual escapades of the time as his "personal Vietnam." When your argument in favor of a candidate is that Congress and the Supreme Court will prevent him from behaving as a tin-pot dictator, then perhaps you should reassess your position. For can anyone sincerely deny that, were it not for those checks and balances, Trump would rule in the mold of a Hugo Chavez?

When I covered the former Soviet Union for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, I never imagined that the political lexicon of places like Belarus and Kyrgyzstan would be applicable to my own country. Yet now I find terms like "strongman," "ethnic violence" and "political instability" slipping into my copy.

Today's Vichy Republicans also fail to comprehend, or choose to ignore, how Trump's victory will legitimize bigotry in the American political process. Five decades after passage of the Civil Rights Act, Trump's presence in the race has already normalized, in the form of his proposed Muslim ban, an explicitly unconstitutional religious test for entry into the country and, in his racist attack on Judge Gonzalo Curiel, ethnic tests for federal appointments. With its impending nomination of Trump, the GOP will transform from the party of racial equality, women's suffrage and global American leadership into a rump, ethno-nationalist faction promoting religious and ethnic loyalty tests, misogyny and the unraveling of the American-led liberal world order.

Since conservatives are usually so quick to make Hitler analogies, they should be more forbearing when the parallel does not put them in a positive light. And besides, the stakes today with Trump are far lower than they were in 1938, meaning that individual Republicans have a far easier choice than the one Churchill and his brave band of Tory rebels had to make in standing up to Chamberlain. In their debased supplication before Trump, the Republican leadership has collectively acted like Franz von Papen, the German politician who eased Hitler into the chancellorship naively believing that the mad Austrian paper hanger could be "controlled." If there are any Churchills in this story, it is the handful of Republican officials such as Sens. Mark Kirk of Illinois and Ben Sasse of Nebraska who have risked their careers by standing up to Trump.

Here's one more World War II analogy for our history-conscious conservatives: To save the republic, Trump must not only lose but lose on a massive scale. The repudiation of Trumpism must be so thorough that Republicans never contemplate nominating such a candidate again, in the same way that the atom bomb convinced generations of Japanese that they must forever abandon belligerent nationalism and become peaceful members of the international community.

In his memoir of Nazi Germany, "Not I," historian Joachim Fest paints an admirable portrait of his father, a Catholic schoolteacher who refused to go along with the majority of his countrymen in supporting the fascist regime. "Ever since the republic came into existence I wished it would have enemies as short-sighted and timid as we are," Fest quotes his father as saying about the fragile, interwar Weimar democracy. "Then it would have survived. Now everyone knows that this state does not have the will to assert itself against its declared enemies."

The same could be said of today's Republican Party, whose leaders are too spineless and shortsighted to recognize the exceptional threat Trump presents not only to their party but to the country and the world.

"You were given the choice between war and dishonor," Churchill famously said to Chamberlain after the latter secured his much-ballyhooed Munich Agreement. "You chose dishonor and you will have war." In its cowardly refusal to fight against Trumpism, the GOP chose dishonor. Yet it will not stop the inevitable -- and necessary -- fight for the party's soul.

James Kirchick is a correspondent for The Daily Beast, a columnist for Tablet, and author of "The End of Europe," forthcoming from Yale University Press.
Regarding "the Mansion" at 1929 First St., I was a vacation relief letter carrier in the 1960s and with fond memories I recall delivering mail there (Historic Napa homes B&B conversion wins city support, June 6).

Each day, working my way up the street, I could see four elderly ladies waiting for the mailman. We were an important part of their lives. One often would be on the walk telegraphing my progress. My memory of them was how much alike they looked, like my grandmother. Gray hair up in a bun, longish, vintage, dresses, most often with an embroidered apron and so happy to see me.

The house then looked just as today's picture, seeming to be broken up into four apartments, with the mailboxes in a deep dark hallway, high ceilings, chandelier, ancient carpeting, a glass windowed door at the rear. Each lady would properly wait until I had concluded putting their mail in their boxes. After talking about the weather a bit I would bid them ado. Each, for a moment, had had a lifeline to out there. It was one of the things that made carrying mail in Napa a pleasure.

Farther up the street Mr. Louie Ezzette, the Register history columnist, would be waiting for me. At last back at the office (the now derelict Franklin Station) I was tired but it was worth it.

It is a joy to see the old Mansion pictured in the paper, to be inhabited again, but be forewarned, when I drive by, I still see four lovely old ladies on the porch. May there always be preservationists.

Ray Riley

Napa
One of the best things about being a celebrity HAS to be all the freebies.

Case in point, a pregnant Jessie James Decker, married to Denver Broncos player Eric Decker, stopped by the Yoplait Greek Taste-Off store Saturday in SoHo during her visit to NYC for the Super Bowl this weekend and scored some yummy yogurt, at least I assume it was free for her.

According to the release, Yoplait Greek put taste to the test in a head-to-head national taste test, revealing that nearly two out of three people prefer Yoplait Greek blueberry over Chobani blueberry fruit-on-the-bottom flavor. To give people an opportunity to get involved in the taste-off (during a highly competitive weekend!), Yoplait Greek opened a pop-up store in SoHo. The store is fully outfitted, including three taste test stations, a coffee lounge with baristas and a yogurt bar.

Although I can't score you any freebies like a celebrity, if you head over to GreekTasteOff.com you can score yourself a coupon to try the Yoplain Greek for yourself.

[Photo Credit: Michael Simon/StarTraks Photo]

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By Donna Gregory Burch

Donna Gregory Burch

I never completely accepted my fibromyalgia diagnosis. It didnt make sense to me that one day my body just decided to go haywire for no reason. Ive always believed there must be an underlying cause for my fibromyalgia symptoms. Pain is a signal that something is wrong in the body. So is fatigue and the compendium of other symptoms associated with fibromyalgia.

Once my doctors labeled me with fibromyalgia, they stopped looking for the causes of my symptoms. They blamed everything on just fibro.

But ever since my diagnosis, Ive had this nagging question in my mind: What if it isnt just fibro?

Well, sometimes answers come in unexpected ways. I wont get into the details here  Ive shared the entire story on my blog  but last month, I was diagnosed with chronic Lyme disease.

Lyme is a bacterial infection thats transmitted through the bite of certain ticks. Theres some evidence it can also be passed via mosquitoes, fleas, biting flies and lice (and some think it can be sexually transmitted as well).

Bullseye rash

Early Lyme symptoms mimic the flu  fever, chills, fatigue, headache and body aches. About 50 percent of people also get a bullseye rash around the site of the tick bite.

But early Lyme can be asymptomatic. Less than half of people remember having a rash or tick bite.

Because symptoms vary, Lyme can go undetected for years. Over time, untreated Lyme can result in neurological disorders, crippling arthritis, blindness, deafness, psychiatric or psychological disorders, or death, reads Lyme Disease and Associated Diseases: The Basics, a pamphlet published by the Lyme Disease Association of Southeastern Pennsylvania.

The most common symptoms of chronic Lyme infection are extreme fatigue, joint and muscle pain, numbness or tingling (particularly in the extremities), psychological disturbances, stomach problems, vision/hearing problems  Do any of these sound familiar? If you have fibromyalgia, I bet they do!

Reading a list of Lyme symptoms, its easy to see how Lyme and fibromyalgia could be confused for one another. Theres a lot of overlap in symptoms! In fact, Lyme is nicknamed the great imitator because its frequently misdiagnosed as fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome, multiple sclerosis and other conditions.

My doctor explained that I still have fibromyalgia, but my symptoms may be caused by untreated Lyme disease. He says sometimes fibro symptoms will disappear after a patient is treated for Lyme and other tick-borne infections. (Im hoping I fall into that category!)

Driving home from my diagnosis last month, I had a realization: If Ive been living with undiagnosed Lyme disease masquerading as just fibro for all these years, how many of my fellow fibromyalgia warriors are unknowingly doing the same? I knew I had to use my story to help educate others, so they can get the proper testing and the right treatment if necessary.

Diseases such as fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue and multiple sclerosis and ALS and Parkinsons all of those are just named sets of symptoms, and we have to not accept diagnoses like that without looking for an underlying cause, says Marilyn Williams from the Lyme Disease Association of Delmarva. There are multiple things that can be causing that set of symptoms, but what I teach people is dont accept those diagnoses anymore. Dont accept that diagnosis of fibromyalgia without digging deeper.

Williams has learned that lesson firsthand. She lived with fibromyalgia symptoms for 16 years before she was diagnosed with Lyme and other tick-borne diseases (TBD) in 2007. She describes her symptoms as the typical ones we all associate with fibro: fatigue, muscle and joint pain, headaches and allodynia, but she also had some less common ones, like numbness in the hands and feet, irregular heartbeat and muscle twitches.

Williams now educates others on the prevalence of TBD.

So, what actions should you take if you think you might have been exposed to TBD? The following steps should help to get you started.

Step 1: Get the ELISA and western blot tests (but dont trust the results)

In the past two years, my rheumatologist and primary-care doctor tested me for Lyme disease, and my test results came back negative both times.

How could that be? As it turns out, the Lyme tests available through Labcorp and similar labs are extremely unreliable. Most physicians follow the Centers for Disease Controls (CDC) two-part testing recommendation for Lyme. The ELISA test is generally given first to detect if the body has produced antibodies against the Lyme bacteria. The problem is that ELISA only detects about half of Lyme cases.

While a positive ELISA test is a reasonably reliable indication of infection, a negative test is meaningless, reads the Lyme Disease Association of Southeastern Pennsylvanias pamphlet.

The second test, the western blot, is a little more accurate than the ELISA, but theres controversy over what constitutes a positive test. The CDC considers a western blot to be positive if the patient tests positive for five or more Lyme bands. In contrast, Lyme-literate medical doctors (LLMDs) diagnose Lyme based on a patients clinical symptoms and the presence of Lyme-specific bands. Lyme-specific bands only test positive if the patient has been exposed to Lyme.

So, if the standard laboratory tests arent reliable, what should you do to rule out Lyme and other TBD?

Williams advises to still have the ELISA and western blot tests. Both are simple blood tests, theyre usually covered by insurance and some patients do get a positive result. Receiving a positive result could save you from having to undergo more expensive testing later on.

You can request these tests from your primary-care doctor or skip to step 2 to save time and effort. (Personally, I would avoid the extra doctors visit and go directly to step 2.)

If you decide to ask your primary-care doctor for these tests, dont be surprised if you get pushback.

People are going to find that their beloved physician theyve gone to for 20 years will act negatively toward them if they ask for these tests, Williams says. A lot of times the doctors will not want to order the tests.

Like fibromyalgia, theres a lot of ignorance in the medical community when it comes to TBD. The federal government doesnt acknowledge the prevalence of chronic Lyme infection, and most traditional doctors dont either. (The reasons for this are well beyond the scope of this article, but you can read the basics here.)

Ask for a copy of your western blot results to see if you tested positive for ANY Lyme-specific bands (bands 18, 23-25, 31, 34, 37, 39, 83 and 93). A positive test for any of the Lyme-specific bands means youve been exposed to Lyme.

But remember: A negative Lyme test never means you dont have it, says Dr. Norton Fishman from Optimal Health Physicians in Rockville, Maryland.

Fishman says often the sickest patients will have a negative test because their immune systems are too weak to develop the antibodies screened for by the tests.

To really find out if you have chronic Lyme, you need to see an LLMD, which is a physician who specializes in treating patients with Lyme and other TBD.

Step 2: See an LLMD

If you believe you may have been exposed to Lyme disease, youll want to seek out an LLMD.

Tick-borne infections are extremely complex, and your primary-care doctor will not be equipped to adequately treat them. The standard treatment for early Lyme is two-to-four weeks of antibiotics, but that is not effective for chronic Lyme, and it doesnt address tick-borne co-infections (which Ill talk more about later). For your best chance at healing, youll want to work with a LLMD.

The easiest way to find an LLMD is to ask your nearest Lyme disease association for a recommendation. LymeDiseaseAssociation.org and ILADS.org also have doctor-referral services on their websites.

Heres the bad news: Most LLMDs do not take insurance. Ive been told its because patients with TBD require long visits, and the insurance reimbursement is not sufficient to cover the physicians time and expenses.

But if youre insured, you may not get stuck paying for everything. My insurance, for example, is covering most of my blood work and prescriptions; Im responsible for the cost of office visits.

Step 3: Your first LLMD consult

A good LLMD is going to spend an hour or more with you on your first visit. He or she will take a detailed medical history and will probably recommend additional testing.

Williams says its important to not get overly fixated on Lyme disease. Lyme is just one of several infections that can be transmitted by ticks. Almost all patients with chronic Lyme also carry co-infections; bartonella and babesia are the most common, but there are many others. A good LLMD will be able to diagnose and treat these co-infections as part of your overall treatment plan.

iGenex testing for Lyme and other TBD is often recommended by LLMDs since its more accurate than testing available through Labcorp and similar labs. (Some physicians use other laboratories, but iGenex seems to be the most popular.)

iGenex testing is usually not covered by insurance, and the TBD panels can cost several hundred dollars. The price is steep, but the results can be helpful in devising your treatment.

If youre a patient with fibromyalgia, and you live in an area thats endemic to Lyme disease, you deserve a good Lyme test and co-infection test, says Dr. Andrea Gaito, a rheumatologist who specializes in TBD at her private practice in Basking Ridge, New Jersey.

An LLMD will make a diagnosis based on clinical symptoms. Test results are also considered.

Step 4: Get treated (and hopefully get better)

Im not going to spend a lot of time on this step because its beyond the intent of this article, but LLMDs differ on how they treat TBD. Some use antibiotics, some use herbal supplements and some use a combination of both.

Recovery varies from person-to-person. Treatment can be long, difficult and expensive.

Some people struggle with chronic Lyme for the rest of their lives  there also have been TBD-related deaths  but many people do get better! (We all know that doesnt happen very often in the fibromyalgia community.)

If they work with a doctor who understands all the facets of treatment, most people will become symptom-free if they are compliant [with their doctors treatment plan], Williams says.

Like fibromyalgia, treatment often includes making lifestyle changes, such as cutting out certain foods and reducing stress.

The people who stay well and stay symptom-free are the people who have adopted these new lifestyle changes, Williams says.

Final thoughts

Ive never bought into the its just fibro explanation for why Im sick. Im not saying that Lyme disease is responsible for all cases of fibromyalgia, but I do think it could be the underlying cause for some of us  and its a cause that really needs to be investigated and ruled out.

It would be my worst nightmare to live the next 20 or 30 years with fibromyalgia when I actually have a condition thats treatable. Im hoping my story will help some of you avoid that same nightmare.

My Lyme diagnosis has given me hope. Yes, the months (and possibly years) ahead are going to be difficult, but at least I am getting the right treatment now. I am closer to recovery than I was when my doctors said it was just fibro.

Donna Gregory Burch was diagnosed with fibromyalgia in 2014 after several years of unexplained pain, fatigue and other symptoms. She covers news, treatments, research and practical tips for living better with fibromyalgia on her blog, FedUpwithFatigue.com. Donna is an award-winning journalist whose work has appeared online and in newspapers and magazines throughout Virginia, Delaware and Pennsylvania. She lives in Delaware with her husband and their many fur babies.
The NATO Deputy Secretary General, Ambassador Alexander Vershbow will participate in the International Security Forum taking place in Geneva on Monday 13 June 2016.

Ambassador Vershbow will deliver a keynote address  An Alliance for our Times: NATO and its Partners in a World Disrupted.

More details on the event can be found at http://www.isf2016.ch/. The text of Ambassador Vershbows address will be available on the NATO website after the event.

Follow us on Twitter (@NATOPress and @NATOdsg)
A strip mall is planned to be build at the site of an old Armenian church in Haverhill, Massachusetts, USA, according to Eagle-Tribune.

Six years ago, the city rejected a proposal that would have replaced this historic church building across from City Hall with a Burger King.

Now there is a proposal to build a strip mall there that would include a Dominos Pizza.

City officials said nothing is certain at this time because the proposal is still in its infancy.

William Pillsbury, the citys economic and development director, said a business owner dropped off drawings to the building inspectors office showing a Dominos and a small strip mall. But Pillsbury said a formal, complete application has not yet been submitted to the city for review.

He said that as part of the process, the citys Historical Commission would review the project to determine if it is appropriate because the church is on the National Register of Historic Places and is in the Main Street Historic District. Only after that would a public hearing be held, Pillsbury said.

Leaders of the Armenian Apostolic Church at Hye Pointe have said they want to sell the building to help fund construction of a new church in Bradford.

The Parish Council at the Armenian Apostolic Church at Hye Pointe planned to hold an open meeting to discuss the sale of the old church.

The Church at Hye Pointe had formed in 2002.
World oil prices falling

FM: Armenia has never lost its belief in humanity despite facing many challenges, calamities

Canada embassy to soon be opened in Armenia

Biden: Russia would be making serious mistake to use tactical nuclear weapon

Margarita Simonyan says she is banned from entering Armenia

Newspaper: Artsakh Public Council establishment causes concern in political arena

India fines Google for $113 million

Mass dedicated to peace in Armenia is celebrated at Vatican

Biden says Russia would make 'serious mistake' if it deploys tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine

Romania plans to intensify talks on Black Sea and military purchases

Karekin II and Aram I refuse to participate in World Armenian Forum

IMF Director: Ukraine's need for external financing could reach $5 billion month

Turkey continues to beat out gas discount from Russia and payment deferral from Gazprom

Alen Simonyan refuses to participate in fifth meeting of Russian-Armenian Lazarev Club

UN Security Council to meet at Russia's request over accusations that Iran is supplying drones to Russia

Leading Wall Street bankers warn of recession in US and Europe

Armenian FM tells Vatican secretary of state about Azerbaijani aggression

Secretary of Armenian Security Council holds telephone conversation with Biden's aide

IEA head: World still needs Russian oil to flow into the market

Norwegian police arrest man on suspicion of spying for Russia

Ambassador-at-Large meets with Personal Representative of OSCE Chairman-in-Office

EU to offer banks to offer mandatory instant payments in euros

Ambassador: Active efforts of Armenian authorities are registering regress in Armenian-Russian relations

Saudi minister: Saudi Arabia and US will overcome unjustified spat

Zatulin: My ban on entering Armenia coincides with trilateral meeting planned in Russia

Rishi Sunak vows to fix 'mistakes' of Liz Truss

MFA comments on information about meeting of special envoys of Armenia and Turkey

Daily Sabah: Armenian, Turkish special representatives next meeting planned in Turkey

The Telegraph: US President Biden mispronounces Rishi Sunak's name

Zelenskyy proposes creating platforms for the 'de-occupation' of Transnistria and Abkhazia

'Armenia' bloc deputy: Nikol Pashinyan and Suren Papikyan are lying

Dollar falls, euro rises

Stanislav Zass discusses with Lavrov situation in CSTO zone of responsibility

New British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and his wife are richer than royalty

Klaar: EU actively engaged in Armenia-Azerbaijan peace process at all levels

Nissan reveals updated Juke crossover

FM briefs Sovereign Order of Malta Grand Chancellor on Armenia position on normalizing relations with Azerbaijan

Azerbaijan prepares for peace with Armenia but dramatically increases military budget

North Korea completes preparations for nuclear test

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
YEREVAN. - Export Insurance Agency of Armenia Insurance CJSC and Union of Banks of Armenia have signed a memorandum of cooperation.

Chairman of the Union of Banks of Armenia, Samvel Chzmachyan, told journalists Friday that the sides will exchange information and experience, as well as raise the awareness of the real sector on the insurance of export and its advantages.

According to the Agency Director Vazgen Abgaryan, small and medium enterprises (which the Agencys work is aimed at) dont always know how to correctly assess the reliability of their partners abroad, this frequently leading to risks of non-payment.

These risks are covered by trade funding tools. But they are first of all relatively more experienced, and require the participation of a counteragent. Whereas the export can be ensured by the supplier regardless of whether its buyer agrees to it or not; sometimes the latter may not know about it at all.

Abgaryan also noted that according to the decision of Armenian PM Hovik Abrahamyan, the exporters of five sectors (wine, fruit vodka, canned food, meat and fish products, as well as pharmaceuticals since June) get the compensation of the Agencys insurance premium from the Armenia Development Fund (ADF).
COCOA BEACH, Florida  The Cocoa Beach Pier is celebrating International Surfing Day on Monday, June 20, 2016, with the launch of a surf school, discounted surfboard rentals, and food and drink specials to encourage visitors to spend the Summer Solstice  the longest day of the year  at the beach.





For the first time ever, visitors can take surfing lessons at The Cocoa Beach Pier, the most popular surfing spot in Cocoa Beach, Florida . Cocoa Beach Surf School by Flohana will provide a variety of lessons to cater to the type of learning environment preferred, from private and semi-private lessons to group lessons and surf clinics. Experienced instructors will provide training covering all aspects of the sport, including water safety and basic board skills. Lessons will be offered daily from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., with surfboards provided and prices varying based on the type of instruction.



(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});





Lessons are not necessary to take part in the days celebration of surfing though, with discounted surfboard rentals available for $15 from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. After working up an appetite, or for those who prefer to stay dry, diners can enjoy a celebratory surf n turf special consisting of peel-and-eat shrimp and a burger for $15.95, as well as Kona beers for just $3.50.





Cocoa Beach is known as the East Coast Surfing Capital of the United States and the Cocoa Beach Pier is an ideal location for surfers of all levels, offering lifeguards, easy parking, convenient restrooms, five restaurants and bars, shops, an art gallery, volleyball courts and more. To book a surf school lesson, guests can make arrangements at the Pier or by calling (321) 506-2209.




22:57





The 27-year-old Italian alpinist, Leonardo Comelli, fell down when he was attempting the first ever ski descent of the north-west side of Laila Peak, according to Karar Haidri of Alpine Club of Pakistan.





"According to preliminary reports, during a traverse Comelli crossed his skis, lost his balance and fell circa 400 metre down steep mixed terrain," he said.





The alpinist had been a part of a four-person Italian expedition team that reached Karakoram range in late May in order to attempt the first ski descent of the north-west face of 6,096 meters Laila Peak. The other expedition members -- Carlo Cosi, Zeno Cecon and Enrico Mosetti, are unhurt.

An Italian mountaineer died while skiing down a 6,000-metre peak in Gilgit-Baltistan region of Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK), officials said today.
Maker of Racist Video Identified, Vandalism Suspects Still Sought

Detectives of the Southern Illinois University Carbondale Department of Public Safety, in coordination with the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Jackson County States Attorneys Office, have identified the maker of a video that advocated racial violence on campus.

The viral video was posted on social media near the end of the spring semester and removed following a request from the university. None of the actions promoted in the video occurred.

The individual, a 19-year-old white male who resides in the Chicago region, admitted making the video as a prank. He is not affiliated with the university or associated with any of the groups or organizations active in protests at the end of the semester. In addition, police have found no evidence of involvement of the fraternity allegedly involved in the making of the video.

Police identified the individual through evidence related to the production and distribution of the video. The case was referred to the Jackson County States Attorney, who has declined to prosecute, noting that the video could be considered protected speech.

Interim SIU Chancellor Brad Colwell said he was pleased that thorough investigative work by SIU Department of Public Safety led to the individual who made the video.

This person is not a member of our community yet made a video that caused great turmoil and incited fear on our campus, he added. While we acknowledge the decision not to file charges, identifying the individual is an important step forward.

The Department of Public Safety continues to seek the communitys help resolving another end-of-semester incident related to vandalism and damage of state property in and around Faner Hall on campus. While a number of persons of interest have been questioned, police are asking members of the communitys help in identifying additional suspects based on video evidence.

Anyone with information about these incidents is encouraged to contact SIU Carbondale police at 618-453-3771 or Carbondale Crime Stoppers at 618-549-2677.
Suspected militants have abducted an Indian female aid worker from the volatile Afghanistan capital of Kabul, Indian and Afghan officials said on Friday. The woman was identified as Judith D'Souza, 40, a senior technical advisor on gender with the Aga Khan Developmental Network in Kabul, sources in Delhi said. Believed to be from Kolkata, D'Souza was kidnapped late on Thursday, the sources said. No group immediately claimed responsibility for her abduction. The Indian embassy in Kabul is in touch with senior Afghan authorities and the government, the sources said, adding that officials in Delhi were also in contact with her family in Kolkata. They said all efforts were being made by the Afghan authorities to secure her release. The aid agency also confirmed to IANS that a "staff member of the Aga Khan Foundation" was abducted without naming her. "An investigation by the authorities has been launched, in conjunction with security officials and various partners. Every effort is being made to secure the safe release of the staff member," Aga Khan spokesperson Sam Pickens said in an email response. This is not the first time that an Indian aid worker has been kidnapped in Afghanistan. Taliban militants have mostly been blamed for the kidnappings. Many Indian establishments have also been targeted in the past in Afghanistan where New Delhi has pledged and made huge investments to rebuild the war-torn country. The latest in a series of terror strikes on Indian interests in Afghanistan was on an Indian consulate on March 2. The abduction comes as the Indian embassy issued a security alert earlier last month for Indians residing in Afghanistan and travelling to the country. "All Indians residing and travelling to Afghanistan are advised that the security situation in the country remains highly volatile. Terrorist attacks have taken place in the country against foreigners and are expected to continue. There is also the risk of kidnapping and hostage taking throughout the Afghanistan," the embassy statement warned. --IANS sar/hs/bg ( 342 Words) 2016-06-10-14:24:04 (IANS)
Air New Zealand, which owns a 25.9 percent packet of Virgin Australia shares, will sell a 19.98 percent stake, at $0.24 per share, to Nanshan, although the deal still needs approval from Chinese authorities, Efe news reported.

"We believe Nanshan Group will be a very strong, positive and complimentary shareholder for Virgin Australia," said Air New Zealand Chairman Tony Carter.

"The sale will allow Air New Zealand to focus on its own growth opportunities, while still continuing its long-standing alliance with Virgin Australia on the trans-Tasman network," Carter added, referring to the Tasman Sea which separates Australia and New Zealand.

According to the statement, Nanshan Group, a Chinese private conglomerate which owns the new Qingdao Airline, intends to support the outcome of Virgin's capital structure review announced in March.

--IANS py/vt

( 166 Words)

2016-06-10-13:56:07 (IANS)
"The act of church was awful. But we should not concentrate on it. Rather we should look that we lost a family member," said Priyanka Chopra, speaking to ANI in Patna.

The authorities at the Kumarakom Parish in Kerala refused to let the burial of Mary John Akhouri take place as she was married to a Hindu.

Hence the 33-year-old actress' grandmother had to be buried in an unkept graveyard in Kerala on Sunday. (ANI)
"We have detained a staff member of a doctor of the Apollo hospital and questioning him," Deputy Commissioner of Police Mandeep Singh Randhawa told IANS.

Police busted the kidney racket on June 2 with the arrest of two hospital employees and three suspected touts.

Police said Shailesh Saxena, 31, and Aditya Singh, 24, both personal secretaries to two Apollo hospital doctors, were held along with suspected touts Aseem Sikdar, 37, Satya Prakash, 30, and Devashish Moulik, 30, on charge of involvement in the kidney trade.

A case was registered against them at the Sarita Vihar police station.

The alleged mastermind T. Rajkumar was arrested from Kolkata along with three donors -- two women from Uttar Pradesh's Kanpur and a man from West Bengal's Siliguri.

--IANS aks/tsb/dg

( 171 Words)

2016-06-10-21:56:05 (IANS)
Prime Minister Narendra Modi arrived here on Friday morning after concluding his five-nation tour to Afghanistan, Qatar, Switzerland, the U.S. and Mexico, beginning with his visit to Herat on Sunday, on a high note. He was received at the Palam Airport by a delegation of Bharatiya Janata Party leaders The Prime Minister and Afghan President Dr. Ashraf Ghani launched the 'Afghan-India Friendship Dam', earlier known as the Salma Dam, followed by a lunch hosted by President Ghani. The Prime Minister, who arrived in Qatar in the evening, visited a workers camp. He interacted with the workers; he saw the medical facilities that are being provided to them, the kind of treatment facilities that are available to them. On Monday, the Prime Minister started the day with a meeting with business leaders. After that, we went to the Emiri Diwan, where he had a meeting with the Emir of Qatar, which was followed by signing of seven agreements. His last engagement there was a meeting with the Father Emir, which was also a very constructive, very positive meeting, said Ministry of External Affairs Spokesperson Vikas Swarup while detailing the media about his engagements in Qatar. The Prime Minister also had a meeting with members of the Indian community at a reception hosted by the Indian Ambassador, following which he departed for Switzerland in the evening. The next day, the Prime Minister arrived in Switzerland, where he held a meeting with the President of the Swiss Confederation, followed by a business meeting and then he left Switzerland for the United States, where he directly arrived in Washington at the invitation of President Barack Obama on Monday. On June 6, the Prime Minister went to the Arlington Cemetery for a wreath laying, and then he attended two events at Blair House, where he was staying. The two events included a meeting with heads of American think tanks and the other was a function involving the repatriation of cultural property. Briefing the media, Indian Ambassador to the U.S. Arun Kumar Singh said in terms of the ceremony at Arlington, it was broadly divided in two parts. First part was laying of wreath at the Memorial of Unknown Soldier. From the US side, the US Defense Secretary Ashton Carter was also present and then the Prime Minister laid wreath at the memorial for those who were on the Colombia Shuttle, where as an Indian origin astronaut, Kalpana Chawla, was also involved. "At the event, we had representatives from the families and relatives of Kalpana Chawla, who were present. Then other Indian origin astronaut Sunita Williams was also present on the occasion and some representatives from NASA were present because cooperation between India and the U.S. in space has been important area of cooperation," he said. Elaborating on an interaction with heads of number of think-tanks, he said these think-tanks that were represented there were from Brookings, Council on Foreign Relations, Centre for American Progress, The Atlantic Council, Hudson Institute, Centre for National Interest, Global Energy Capital, Carnegie Endowment, The Asia Group, Pew Research Centre, The US Institute of Peace and The Foundation for Defence of Democracies. "So this is sort of think-tanks representing a whole spectrum of opinion here and the aim of the interaction was to understand from them, how they see global trends in the coming years, the challenges and what US and India could work together. If you recall among the templates that the Prime Minister has articulated is 'What can US and India do together for the World?' and that was really the theme," said Singh, adding that it was in that framework that different current global issues were discussed in a medium and longer term perspective and we looked at opportunities and ways for us to be able to work together. Now, in terms of the ceremony for returning of a number of cultural artefacts, 12 pieces were identified as being ready to be handed back to the government and people of India, said Singh. "These are significant because some of them date back to a thousand years, from the period of the Chola Dynasty. Some of them date back to more than two thousand years, some terracotta pieces and others. So some very significant items have been handed over to us and of course now they will be repatriated to India," he added. On June 7, Prime Minister Modi held a meeting with President Barack Obama, followed by a lunch that President Obama hosted for him. In the evening, the Prime Minister met business leaders in the US and addressed the US-India Business Council. Between the two, between the President's meeting and the business meeting at the end of the day, Defence Secretary Ashton Carter called on the Prime Minister. Marking their third major bilateral summit, the Prime Minister and the President reviewed the deepening strategic partnership between the United States and India. They pledged to pursue new opportunities to bolster economic growth and sustainable development, promote peace and security at home and around the world, strengthen inclusive, democratic governance and respect for universal human rights, and provide global leadership on issues of shared interest. The leaders welcomed the significant progress made in bilateral relations between India and the United States during their tenure, in accordance with the roadmaps set out in the Joint Statements issued during Prime Minister Modi's visit to the United States in September 2014 and President Obama's visit to India in January 2015. The leaders affirmed the increasing convergence in their strategic perspectives and emphasised the need to remain closely invested in each other's security and prosperity. On June 8, the Prime Minister devoted the forenoon to the US Congress, meeting the Speaker, the Congressional leadership, and delivering an address to the joint meeting of the US Congress. It was followed by a lunch hosted by the Speaker in honour of the Prime Minister and a reception jointly hosted by the House and Senate Committees on Foreign Relations and the India Caucus. In the afternoon, the Prime Minister took off to Mexico City, where he had a meeting with President Enrique Pea Nieto. During their meeting, President Enrique Pea Nieto and Prime Minister Modi recognised the opportunities to define the path of the India-Mexico Privileged Partnership for the 21st Century that allows the growth of bilateral relations in economic field, in science and technology and in the most important issues of the global agenda reflecting a broad convergence of long-term political, economic and strategic goals. President Enrique Pea Nieto elaborated on the structural reforms undertaken in Mexico to promote economic growth and development. On his part, Prime Minister Modi highlighted the initiatives undertaken by his Government for the economic growth and the improvement of standard of living of the people. Later, the Prime Minister attended a dinner hosted by President Enrique Pea Nieto and after the dinner, the Prime Minister took off from Mexico to return to India en route Frankfurt, Germany. (ANI)
Dadu was travelling from Indore to Bhopal to attend the BJP's legislature party meeting held at the Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan's residence when midway his car skidded and collided with a roadside ditch.

Dadu's personal assistant and driver also died after succumbing to their injures at the Chirayu hospital.

Dadu is survived by his wife and three daughters.

This was his second consecutive term as MLA of Nepanagar in Burhanpur district. He was heading here via Indore to attend a BJP Legislature Party meeting. The gathering, at Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan's residence, was curtailed following news of the accident. (ANI)
With Prakash Javadekar being involved with a public spat with Union Women and Child Development Minister over the culling of wild animals, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Subramanian Swamy on Friday advised the Minister of State for Environment and Forests to call up Maneka Gandhi and come to a conclusion. "Maneka has a long record of being concerned about this issue and I think the proper thing to do is not to reply to her publicly but for Javadaker to pick up the phone and call her. I mean it is also true that she could have picked up the phone but by then he had already announced it," Swamy told ANI. "I think he should not respond to her publicly but pick up the phone and call, saying let's have tea and discuss this and come to a conclusion," he added. Gandhi had yesterday trained guns at Javadekar and said the latter's ministry is frivolously granting permission to kill innocent animals. On the reports of large number of deer being killed in Patna in Bihar, Gandhi told ANI that she does not understand this 'lust' to kill. "The Environment Ministry here is writing to every state asking them which animal they want to kill and they will grant permission. In Bengal they gave permission to kill elephants, in Himachal they gave permission to kill monkeys, in Goa they gave permission to kill peacocks," said Gandhi. "In Chandrapur where the condition is so adverse that they have already killed 53 wild boars and permission to kill 50 more has been given. Environment Ministries own wildlife department said that they don't want to kill animals and should not be pressurised for the same. I don't understand this lust for killing," she added. Later on, Javadekar countered Maneka's charges and asserted that such decisions were taken keeping scientific facts in mind to help those affected by such animals. "I will not react on who said what. But as per the law, we must help the farmers whose crops get ruined. The state government sends us a proposal and only then we initiate a step for a specific region and for a specific period of time keeping the scientific facts in mind," he told the media here. Defending the Centre, Javadekar stated that taking such a decision was not the Centre's prerogative, adding the Environment Ministry acted as per the law. (ANI)
Amid apprehension of significant cross voting, polling started under tight security cover for the crucial Uttar Pradesh Legislative Council biennial polling at the Vidhan Bhavan here today. Polling started at 0900 hrs at the Tilak hall of the Vidhan Bhavan which will continue till 1600 hrs and counting of votes will start at 1700 hrs. There are 14 candidates in the fray for the 13 seats for the upper house of state legislature. Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav would not be able to vote as he is not a member of the Assembly. Tomorrow, the elections for the 11 seats of the Rajya Sabha would be held at the same venue and with the same voters. A candidate is required to get 29 first preferential votes to get elected in the first round of the counting in the council polls. The Council candidates are: Yashwant Singh, Bukkhal Nawab, Ramsunder Das Nishad, Balram Yadav, Jagjivan Prasad, Shatrudh Prakash, Kamlesh Pathak and Ranvijay Singh (all of SP), Atar Singh Rao, Dinesh Chandra and Suresh Kashyap (BSP), Bhupendra Choudhury and Dayashanker Singh (both BJP) and Deepak Singh (Congress). Returning Officer and Principal secretary(Assembly) Pradeep Kumar Dubey said here today that polling started on a peaceful note and in the start there were very less number of the total 404 voters, including one nominated. Additional CEO Hari Om has been made the observer of the election during the council polling. In the 404-member Assembly, the ruling SP has 229 MLAs, BSP 80, BJP 41, Congress 29, with the rest belonging to some smaller parties and Independents besides a nominated member. In RS, there are 403 voters but in the council it is 404 as the nominated member also votes. Meanwhile, hectic political activities were underway last night with all the political parties holding meetings and making allotment of candidates to its voters. The political parties have organised lunch and dinner parties to woo their MLAs, who are camping in the state capital since past two days. Central leaders of the Congress and BJP are also camping in the state capital to monitor the council and Rajya Sabha polls. In the council polls, the ruling SP has fielded 8 candidates with requirement of 232 votes and they are short of 3 votes for the eighth candidate. Similarly, BSP with 80 members strength requires seven additional votes for its third candidate. BJP has a tough task to get 17 additional votes for its second candidate in the council as its strength in the Assembly is 41. Congress with 29 members in the lower house of the assembly, could romp home its single candidate.UNI MB CJ SB 0936 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0400-778312.Xml
The BJP's national executive meeting, scheduled to held here from June 12, will see BJP's war cry for the 2017 UP Assembly polls with the party coining a new slogan 'Mera desh badal raha hai; ab UP ki baari hai' to counter Samajwadi Party's 'Poore hue vade, ab hai naye iraade'. Samajwadi Party has already reached out to the people with slogans like 'Ummido ka Pradesh Uttar Pradesh' - highlighting investment potential in Uttar Pradesh. Last month, "Poore hue vaade, ab hai naye irrade" was coined by the SP, focusing on Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav's assertion that party has fulfilled all the promises it had made in the election manifesto. On completion of two years in office, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had released a song `Mera desh badal raha hai, hum aage badh rahe hai'. In national executive, the BJP will add 'UP angle' to it saying: `Mera desh badal raha hai; ab UP ki baari hai'. The BJP national executive will also discuss and pass resolution on the law and order, corruption and misrule in the state against the backdrop of Mathura violence and Yadav Singh corruption case. Besides, it can decide on the Chief Ministerial candidate for the UP polls with media reports suggesting that Union Home Minister and former Uttar Pradesh Chief minister Rajnath Singh's name is ahead in the race. This BJP meet will have stamp of Modi Government's achievements. The Sangam city, where senior party leaders will hold discussions for two days starting June 12, has been cleaned spick and span in consonance with 'Swacch Bharat Abhiyan' the pet project of the Prime Minister. UP BJP spokesperson Vijay Babadur Pathak said 'Swachh Bharat Mission' is flagship scheme of the NDA government and hence filth in any form will be a blot on this campaign. "We have formed maximum number of sub-committees to look after cleanliness and sanitation in the city," he said. The party has also planned to ferry some of the senior leaders from their hotels to the national executive venue at the K P College ground on e-rickshaws to promote clean and green environment. Allahabad Municipal Corporation (AMC) has been asked to monitor cleanliness in city every hour paying special attention to a two-kilometer stretch. "The party wants to portray Sangam city as a living example of its cleanliness mission. Not only the city, but hotel rooms, circuit house and all roads leading to the venue will be put under sanitary inspectors who will inspect them every hour," Mr Pathak said. According to the party sources here, the national executive will commence at 1500 hrs on June 12 after arrival of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and it will continue till next day late afternoon. The public rally of the Prime Minister would be held at 1700 hrs on June 13. However, the meeting of the BJP general secretaries is slated for tomorrow evening while the office-bearers of the BJP will meet on June 12. Both the meetings are slated to be held at the Kanha Shyam hotel, where the senior party leaders would be staying. To involve local people of Sangam city in the PM's rally, the BJP has decided to hold 'Janjagran Abhiyan' at all the 99 main crossings of the city besides reaching to all localities through cleanness drive and invite the locals to join the rally at the Parade ground.UNI MB SV SB 1127 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0196-778370.Xml
I-League champions JSW Bengaluru FC willtake on Tampines Rovers FC in the quarterfinals of the 2016 AFCCup here on September 14, according to the draw released by AFC today. The draw took place in Kuala Lumpur last night. The first of the two-legged tie will take place at the KanteeravaStadium here before the Blues travel to the Singapore NationalStadium for the return leg on September 21. BFC put a slow start behind them to finish Group H in secondplace behind defending champions Johor Darul Ta'zim. The Blues wentone better on their Round-of-16 show in the previous edition,becoming the only Indian side left in the tournament with a 3-2 winover Kitchee SC at the Mong Kok Stadium, in Hong Kong, to enter thequarterfinals for the first time in the club's short history, information reaching here said. ''We've done well to reach this stage of the AFC Cup and arelooking to go one better when we face Tampines Rovers in thequarterfinals. Every team has reached the last eight by playing welland we're looking to put on a good performance in front of our fans,who I'm sure will be vocal as always,'' BFC captain Sunil Chhetri said. South China AA will take on holders Johor Darul Ta'zim in theother East Zone quarterfinal while Air Force Club face Al Jaish andAl Ahed FC go up against Al Muharraq in the West Zone quarterfinals.UNI RS CNR CS -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0287-778539.Xml
An Indian woman working with an international NGO Aga Khan Development Network was abducted from Afghan capital Kabul, sources in the MEA said here today. The incident took place last night. Confirming the report, the MEA said that the Government was in touch with Afghan authorities, who are making all efforts to secure the release of Judith D'Sourza, 40, who hails from Kolkata. The government is in touch with her family in Kolkata, said the sources. "All Indians residing and traveling to Afghanistan are advised that the security situation in the country remains highly volatile. Terrorist attacks have taken place in the country against foreigners and are expected to continue. There is also the risk of kidnapping and hostage taking throughout Afghanistan. The Embassy advises all Indians in Afghanistan to live and work with adequate security precautions," a statement issued by the Indian Embassy said in an advisory.UNI MK SV SB 1328 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0090-778576.Xml
Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh today inaugurated several passenger facilities at the Charbagh railway station, including a high-speed wi-fi system in presence of Minister of state for railways Manoj Sinha and other railway officials. Mr Singh, a local MP of Lucknow, launched the free high-speed wi-fi system at the Charbagh railway station along with water vending machines, accident relief van, mechanised laundry and baggage scanners. Later addressing the gathering, Mr Singh said that railways under the able leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, is working in providing better amenities to the passengers. He also said the rail projects in UP has accelerated by the NDA government and several new tracks are being laid by this government. Minister of state for Railway Manoj Sinha said that the new high-speed wi-fi would provide facilities to the passengers in a big way. The wi-fi facilities for the rail users have been commissioned by RailTel in association with Google . The service is built over the fiber network of RailTel and is designed to offer high-speed broadband like experience to users. Around 34 access points and 17 access witches have been used to create the wi-fi at the Charbagh station.UNI MB CJ SB 1327 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0196-778561.Xml
Proceedings in the Jammu and Kashmir Legislative Assembly today started on a noisy note with the Opposition demanding an inquiry into the alleged distribution of sugar to woo voters in Anantnag constituency, where Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti is pitted against seven other candidates, seeking mandate in the June 22 bypolls. As soon as the House met in the morning, the Opposition, including National Conference (NC) and Congress, were on their feet, demanding inquiry into allegations. Congress member Nawang Rigzin Jora requested Speaker Kavinder Gupta to ask government to come clean on the allegations. "Sugar is being given to the people of Anantnag constituency to woo them, that too when the rest of the Kashmir valley has not been provided sugar from the last couple of months. You (Speaker) should ask government to come clean on this issue," he said. However, Minister for Agriculture Ghulam Nabi Lone Hanjura was quick to respond, saying if such allegations were proven right, they will dissolve the government. "This issue is being raised to gain political mileage," he said. Ms Mehbooba is seeking to become a member of the state Assembly within the mandatory period of six months of her swearing-in as Chief Minister in April. The Anantnag seat became vacant following the death of the then Chief Minister and Ms Mehbooba's father Mufti Mohammad Sayeed in a Delhi hospital in January this year. UNI ABS YSS CJ SB 1303 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0433-778501.Xml
There was no truth in these reports, the veteran Bharatiya Janata Party leader told the media here.

The former Uttar Pradesh chief minister said he would extend "his full support" to whoever was named the chief ministerial candidate in assembly elections due next year.

He also said he was confident the BJP would win the elections and form a government in the state.

The minister inaugurated a free WiFi service and other passenger amenities at the Charbagh railway station.

--IANS md/mr

( 113 Words)

2016-06-10-14:02:05 (IANS)
The chargesheet was filed in the court of Additional Sessions Judge Reetesh Singh, who fixed July 14 for the next date of hearing.

The Special Cell of Delhi Police chargesheeted five arrested members of Al Qaeda in the Indian Sub-continent (AQIS) -- Shah, Abdul Sami, Zafar Masood, Abdul Rehman and Mohammed Asif.

Police also chargesheeted 12 other operatives who are on run. They have been booked under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act.

--IANS akk/mr

( 113 Words)

2016-06-10-14:30:05 (IANS)
In what is being seen as an attempt of repairing the bilateral ties with India, Nepalese Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Kamal Thapa today arrived in the national capital for a three-day official visit. This is the first high-level engagement with India from Nepal after the Himalayan Nation had abruptly cancelled its President Bidhya Bhandari's visit last month and ordered recall of its Ambassador to New Delhi Deep Kumar Upadhyay, alleging that he was hobnobbing with his Indian counterpart in Kathmandu to topple the KP Oli Government, a charged squarely rejected by New Delhi. Mr Thapa is here to attend the South Asian University Convocation, to be held at Vigyan Bhawan tomorrow. The Nepalese Foreign Minister will have a bilateral meeting with his counterpart Sushma Swaraj later this evening. The bilateral relations between the two countries have been on a roller-coaster ride ever since Nepal adopted the new constitution, triggering a long agitation. Even as the fallout of the agitation was yet to settle down, the visit of the Nepalese President to India in May to attend the Simhastha Mahakumbh in Ujjain was cancelled by Kathmandu at the eleventh hour, leading to a war of words between the two sides. UNI MK SV SB 1405 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0090-778602.Xml
Police sources said while 23 passports werefound in the post box located in front of Nanganallur Post office in 48th street on June two, 14 were found on June six and 13 two days back.

Most of them were said to be lost passports.

Since the passports come under the Centre'sjurisdiction, CBI was expected to take up a suo motu probe into the incident.

Based on the address mentioned in the passports, the owners were being identified.

The Pazhavanthangal police said they have teamed up with the Chennai airport police for investigations in the case.

Both the city police and airport officials have started investigations and the abandoned passports have been sent to the Foreigner Regional Registration Offices, where 23 documents have been found to be original, 10 had expired, while the owners of the rest had obtained duplicate passports.

Police said the hand of passport agentswas not ruled out.

No CCTV cameras were installed in the area and the police were looking for someother clues to crack the case.UNI GV MVR 1510

-- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0414-778732.Xml
Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa today urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi to direct the External Affairs Ministry to take up the matter with Sri Lankan authorities in a concrete and decisive manner to secure the immediate release of 21 fishermen and 92 fishing boats, including six fishermen and their one mechanised boat, apprehended yesterday. In a Demi-Official letter to Mr Modi, copies of which werereleased to the media here, she also said the ill-advised Indo-Sri Lankan agreements of 1974 and 1976 should be annulled urgently to restore the traditional rights of Tamil Nadu fishermen. Stating that six fishermen from Rameswaram were apprehended by the Sri Lankan Navy yesterday and taken to Thalaimannar,she said ''it is highly disheartening to note that our fishermen are facing daily threats of harassment and abduction at the hands of the Sri Lankan Navy while fishing in their traditional fishing waters in the Palk Bay.'' Reminding him that 15 fishermen apprehended earlier this month were still languishing in Sri Lankan custody and 91 fishing boatswere also in Sri Lankan custody at present, Ms Jayalalithaa said the Sri Lankan strategy of not releasing the boats while releasing the fishermen and thus throttling the livelihood of the fishermen was causing immense frustration amongst the fishermen of Tamil Nadu. MORE UNI GV MVR 1548 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0414-778860.Xml
State Bank of India (SBI), India's largest bank and CaixaBank, the leading bank in Spain by market share and one of the Eurozone's largest banks by market capitalisation, have signed a Memorandum of Agreement (MoU) to enhance business synergies between both banks, thanks to the collaboration in different projects.The MoU outlines a plan between CaixaBank, chaired by Isidro Fain and with Gonzalo Gortzar as CEO and SBI, headed by Ms. Arundhati Bhattacharya, to expand the banks' guarantee transaction businesses by jointly providing credit to Indian-Spanish joint ventures and Indian local enterprises.The banks will also cooperate through introduction of business opportunities and partnering on possible infrastructure funds.The agreement, signed by CaixaBank's Executive Vice-President International Banking, Victoria Matia, and SBI's Chief General Manager Sujit Kumar Varma, establishes the framework to collaborate in areas of mutual interest including Syndicated Loan Business, Guarantee Transactions, Trade Finance and Export Credit Agency Finance, Infrastructure Finance, networking services among others.Through this agreement, both SBI and CaixaBank will gain direct access to their respective markets of operation. Both banks' clients will be able to use the vast combined network to expand their businesses abroad. ''We are delighted to sign this agreement with India's leading financial institution which will help to facilitate the growth of Spanish companies operating in this market,'' said CaixaBank's Victoria Matia. ''India is increasingly making its global presence felt across various landscapes. Partnering with an organisation like SBI is strategically important to us, and we look forward to contributing to SBI's growth through our market expertise and established relationships.''UNI ADP RJ AE 1643 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0429-778930.Xml
: Polling for seven seats to the KarnatakaLegislative Council from the State Assembly came to an end with allthe 225-members casting their today. Counting will be taken up at 1700 hrs and results will be announcedimmediately after that. There are eight candidates in the fray for seven seats. Congresscandidates were, R B Thimmapur, Allum Veerabhadrappa, KPCC YouthCongress President Rizwan Arshad and Veena Achaiah.While the BJP had nominated former Minister V Somanna and LeharSingh, the Janata Dal (Secular) candidates were K V Narayanaswamy andDr Venkatapathy While BJP's C T Ravi was the first to vote, JD(S) leaderMallikarjun Khuba was the last member. Meanwhile, MES Legislators --Sambaji L Patil (Belgaum South) andArvind Chandrakant Patil (Bailahongal) objected to ballot papersprinted in Kannada. They complained to the Election officer, statingthat they do not know the language. They exercise their franchise afterthe officer read out in English. Though brisk polling was reported in the first two hours, itslowed down allegedly due to inauspicious time (Rahukala). However,the polling came to end about an hour before 1600 hrs deadline. Eachcandidate require a minimum of 29 votes to win. The result might indicate tomorrow's polling pattern forfour seats in Rajya Sabha, as Ruling Congress and JD(S) have fieldedcandidates for the fourth seat, banking on support from Independentsand others. While Congress needs 12 votes to send its thirdcandidate and former top cop K C Ramamurthy to Upper House, JD(S) havingstrength of 40, despite having five votes short, was facing oppositionover selection of Industrialist Farook. (eds: pick up suitably from earlier series).UNI MSP CNR KVV ADB 1630 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0287-778856.Xml
India's first three women fighter pilots will be formally commissioned into the Indian Air Force (IAF) on June 18. Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar will formally commission the women fighter pilots along with flight cadets of various branches of the IAF at a combined graduation parade at the Air Force Academy in Dundigal on Hyderabad's outskirts. "The graduation parade will be a landmark in IAF history as the first three women pilots will be commissioned in the fighter stream of the flying branch," said an official release. The minister will review the passing-out parade and confer the 'President's Commission', on behalf of the President of India, to 129 graduating trainees of various branches, including 22 women trainees. Parrikar will also present the 'Wings and Brevets' to the newly commissioned officers of the flying branch and to officers from the Indian Navy and Coast Guard who have successfully undergone the flying training. He will also present the President's Plaque and the Sword of Honour to the flight cadet standing first in the order of merit in the flying branch, who will get to command the parade. Parrikar will also award the President's Plaque to the toppers in the navigation and ground duty branches of the graduating course. On the eve of the graduation, he will attend a ceremonial guest night and interact with graduating trainees and their proud parents. During this event, the defence minister will award trophies to the flight cadets who have excelled in their respective streams. The pre-commissioning training at Air Force Academy for various branches such as flying, navigation, administration, logistics, accounts, education and meteorology commences in January and July every year and culminates with the combined graduation parade in December and June respectively. --IANS ms/tsb/vt ( 302 Words) 2016-06-10-17:22:13 (IANS)
Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) today asked the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) to substantiate its claim that 70 per cent of Punjabis were drug addicts, saying if this was so then a majority section of the population of Punjab, including 35 per cent women folk, were druggies. "AAP has also repeatedly claimed that a majority section of people of Punjab support it. Does that mean that a majority section of drug addicts support AAP in Punjab?" asked SAD secretary general Sukhdev Singh Dhindsa in a statement here. Stating that this was the only inference which could be drawn from the utter lies being uttered by AAP Convener and Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal and a host of other AAP leaders on the drugs issue, the SAD MP said the political greed of the party had finally got to it. "You have been caught in your own web of deceit. Now you have to make good your implications and tell Punjabis whether out of a population of three crore people there were as many as 2.60 crore drug addicts?" Mr Dhindsa added. He said the AAP and its rag tag team led by outsiders from Uttar Pradesh had proved that it could stoop to any level to fulfill its wish to capture Punjab. "For you, Punjab is a trophy but for us it is our motherland and we feel the pain when it is defamed. You even hold this against us. But please tell us that most of our young girls and mothers also drug addicts? If yes, lay the facts before the people of the State. If not, at least have some shame and apologise to Punjabis for the reckless manner in which you have tarnished their image in the eyes of the world", he said. Mr Dhindsa said the manner in which AAP had made such hollow false and stupid claims on the drug figures in Punjab had proved that the party did not have any agenda and had based its entire campaign on a pack of lies. "You may now even turn around and make excuses for your misconduct but how can you ever compensate the Punjabis whom you have maligned to such an extent. Earlier, Punjabis were tagged as terrorists. Now all of them are being tagged as drug addicts. All because you want to capture power in Punjab by hook or crook", Mr Dhindsa said, adding "history will never forgive you for this sin against the Punjabi community". UNI DB RSA GC1734 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0293-779064.Xml
While the BJP won two, the Janata Dal (Secular) won the seventh seat.

The hotly contested election saw the JD(S) second nominee DrVenkatapathy securing only five seats, while BJP's second candidateLeher Singh secured 27 votes in the first round and emergedvictorious after counting of second preferential votes.

The Congress candidates who emerged victorious were Youth Congress President Rizwan Arshad who received the highest number of 34 votes, former Minister R B Thimmapur 33, former KPCC President Allum Veerabhadrappa 32 and former Kodagu ZP President Veena Achaiah 31.

For BJP former Minister V Sommanna won securing 31 votes, whileformer BJP Karnataka unit treasurer Lehar Singh was declared electedon the second round securing 27 votes in the first count.

While the first candidate of JD(S) K V Naraswamy secured 30 votesand declared elected, Venkatapathy lost badly securing only fivevotes.

A candidate required support of atleast 29 MLAs to register thevictory. The ruling Congress had a strength of 123 members,excluding the Speaker.

All the 225 members of the Assembly, including the nominatedmember and Speaker cast their votes. Two votes were declared invalid.UNI RS/MSP CNR MVR ADB 1905

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Committed to finishing the alleged widespread drug menace in the state, Punjab Congress president Capt Amarinder Singh today said ''he will expose the double faced Akali government and pledged support for the movie 'Udta Punjab' that claims to show the reality of the drug issue in the state''. The PCC chief signed a petition for allowing the screening of the movie, urging people to sign it as well. He alleged that the Akali government brushes the issue under the carpet by making it an issue of morality and integrity, while in fact the issue was about lack of a political will. The former chief minister took to twitter to express his displeasure on the ban and his commitment towards the issue. He tweeted "Ban on Udta Punjab is yet another example of how Akali-BJP combine has always placed their electoral interest above that of Punjab. This government has failed on multiple counts to tackle drugs proliferation, but instead of correcting it they sweep it under the carpet. Drugs in Punjab is a social issue, a law and order issue not one of "integrity" or "morality" as the government would have you believe. They were first afraid of @OfficeOfRG when he raised the issue in 2012, and now they're afraid of being exposed by the movie. Once I take office as the CM, will put culprits behind bars, no matter who they are and finish this menace in four weeks. Have signed the petition to CFBC for allowing the screening of the movie. Let the truth come out." Yesterday, Capt Amarinder Singh said he has written to producers of Bollywood film 'Udta Punjab', requesting them to provide him uncensored CDs of the drug-themed movie to release it in Majitha on June 17. "Since Majitha, like Mexico, is the epicentre of drug trade in Punjab, it was decided to release the movie there", he said in a statement here.UNI DB RSA AS1923 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0293-779363.Xml
Thapa, who is also Nepal's Foreign Minister, held discussions with Swaraj on several bilateral issues of mutual interest.

"Continuing engagement with Nepal. EAM @SushmaSwaraj meets Deputy PM & FM Kamal Thapa in Delhi," MEA official spokesperson Vikas Swarup tweeted.

The visiting dignitary, who arrived here this morning, will preside over South Asian University Convocation at Vigyan Bhawan in the national capital tomorrow. (ANI)
A high drama was witnessed today in the Delhi Assembly when Leader of the Opposition Vijender Gupta stood up on a bench during a discussion on the working of MCDs. Mr Gupta resorted to an unusual way of protest over an alleged tanker scam and kept standing on his bench there as a shocked Speaker Ram Niwas Goel admonished him to take his seat. Mr Gupta was demanding a discussion on the Delhi Jal Board scam. The action by Mr Gupta led to uproar in the ruling party benches, leaving Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal enraged. ''I will submit the fact finding report of DJB scam tomorrow, but you should also submit the report on 'pension scam' involving your wife to the House tomorrow,'' Mr Kejriwal said. The Speaker said he did not recollect any instance in the history of Indian Parliament or legislative bodies where a member had stood on a bench. ''In the last 15 months, the Delhi Assembly has been shamed by BJP members several times, who indulged in breaking of the mikes of the House, vulgar comments against lady members of the House and now, standing on the bench during the session. ''You are only wasting the precious time of the House,'' Mr Goel said. The opposition party has only three MLAs in the 70-member Delhi Assembly in which 67 seats are with the Aam Aadmi Party's MLAs.UNI SM SW 2101 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0271-779873.Xml
The meeting came at a time when the two countries were emerging from the fresh spell of strain in their relations that had led to the cancellation of Nepal President Bidya Devi Bhandari's visit to India after allegations that India was trying to overthrow the government of Prime Minister K P Sharma Oli by through the support of the Nepali Congress and United Communist Party of Nepa-Maoist(UCPN-M)

According to sources, the two leaders today reviewed bilateral mechanism, including political exchanges, connectivity and trade.

Ms Swaraj assured the visiting leader of Indian's commitment to development of Nepal and its interest in the stability of the country.

Mr Thapa, who arrived here this morning, delivered a lecture on India-Nepal relations at the Observer Research Foundation earlier in the afternoon at which he stressed that stability in Nepal was in India's interest. He also the relations between the two countries were now back on track.

He will tomorrow take part in the South Asian University Convocation.UNI NAZ SW 2043

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The ruling in this regard was made by justice P B Suresh Kumar while considering a petition by Kerala State Road Transport Corporation.

With this order, the high court completely stayed the NGT benche's order.

While issuing the stay order High Court Single Bench Judge justice P B Suresh Kumar said that the NGT order was a violation of natural justice.

When the ban was implemented in Delhi two years time had given, the judge said.

The stay order would be in force till the final verdict pronounced after hearing the petition in this regard.

The had earlier on May 27 stayed for two months the NGT order that directed the state government not to register any diesel vehicles

of new diesel vehicles in the capacity of 2000 CC and more, except public transport and local authority vehicles in Kerala.

The National Green Tribunal Circuit Bench on May 23 banned light and heavy diesel vehicles, which are more than 10 years old, in six major cities, including state capital Thiruvananthapuram and commercial capital Kochi.UNI CGV KVV ADB 2031

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While Goa Public Works Department (PWD) Minister Sudin Davalikar today said the Portguese Consulate in the city should be shifted to Delhi in order to dissuade Goans from opting for dual citizenship, Chief Minister Laxmikant Parsekar opined that closing of consulate in the city was not the solution. Speaking to reporters at secretariat at Porvorim here, he said, ''I am reiterating my demand that the Portuguese Consulate should be shifted to Delhi.'' The Chief Minister said the closing of Portuguese Consulate was not a solution to dual citizenship and instead awareness should be created in the public. "When I see the queues I feel shocked that people are quitting our country and going abroad, especially surrendering passport. That is why Goans should think. Closing of Consulate cannot be the solution and that should not be the solution. We need to educate ourselves and those around us in this regard. That is moreimportant,'' he said. On June 7, the members of Goa Freedom Fighters Association had alleged that Portuguese Government was trying to interfere in the internal affairs of the state by offering citizenship to Goans and demanded closure of its Consulate. Recently, Union Minister of State for Home Affairs Kiren Rijiju had promised that an authority will be set up in Goa to examine citizenship issue.UNI AKM SS PY GC2120 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0169-779697.Xml
Punjab unit of Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) today praised the Delhi government for giving more significance to the Punjabi language in national capital. AAP Punjab incharge Sanjay Singh, Punjab convener Sucha Singh Chhotepur and MP Prof Sadhu Singh appreciated the decision of the Delhi government to promote Punjabi language in government schools in Delhi. In a statement here, they said the Delhi government's decision to ensure Punjabi language teachers in every school in the periphery of Delhi is a moment of proud for the Academicians and Punjabi language lovers across the globe. They also hailed the decision to raise the pay scale of teacher of Punjabi language in Delhi. Commenting on the issue of Congress and Akali Dal criticising AAP on the issue of advertisement, Sanjay Singh said, "If government is doing something for the betterment of Punjabi language, why should not people know about it? Why no commented when there was a full page advertisement of Telangana govt in the newspapers? It is the anti-Punjabi mindset of SAD-BJP and Congress that forces them to oppose AAP." "Akali-BJP and Congress leaders always try to create misconception in the minds of Punjabis that AAP is non Punjabi party but the fact is that AAP is the only party that is serious about the issues of Punjabis. Why did not Akali-BJP and congress raise the issue of eliminating Punjabi language from the syllabus of Rajasthan school board? Why did not these parties utter even a single word on the issues raised by the Punjabi Cultural Council about government ignoring Punjabi language in Haryana?" Mr Chhotepur asked. Prof Sadhu Singh said, "AAP has always stood by the issues of Punjabis, either it be giving monetary help to the victims of 1984 riot or naming the bridge after the name of great Sikh worrier Baba Banda Singh Bahadur. Giving more importance to Punjabi language in Delhi will definitely help in producing good quality Punjabi literature in future." UNI DB PY GC2030 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0293-779513.Xml
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, shortly after returning from his five-nation tour today, chaired three key meetings at his office here. One of the meetings was about the South Asian Ministerial Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction, which will be held in collaboration with the UN here in November. At the second meeting, the Prime Minister reviewed working of the Crime and Criminal Tracking Network and Systems (CCTNS) and the third meeting was related to the review of NAT GRID. Mr Modi had left the country on June 4 and his first destination was Afghanistan. Thereafter, he went to Qatar, Switzerland, US and finally to Mexico from where he returned only this morning.UNI NAZ PY SW 2347 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0298-780024.Xml
US President Barack Obama formally endorsed Hillary Clinton's White House bid and called for Democrats to unite behind her after a protracted battle with Bernie Sanders for the party nomination.Clinton, the presumptive Democratic nominee, yesterday said it "means the world" to her that Obama has her back in a bruising campaign for the Nov. 8 election.The endorsement increases pressure on Sanders, a U.S. senator from Vermont, to bow out of the race and lend his support to Clinton so that the party can focus on defeating Donald Trump, the Republican candidate."It is absolutely a joy and an honor that President Obama and I over the years have gone from fierce competitors to true friends," Clinton told Reuters in an interview.After an unexpectedly tough battle against Sanders' challenge from the left, former first lady Clinton made history when she reached the number of delegates needed to win the party nomination this week. That made her the first woman to lead a major U.S. party as its White House candidate.Obama, who enjoys strong approval ratings after nearly eight years in office, will appear with Clinton on the campaign trail next week in Wisconsin.The two were opponents in the 2008 Democratic presidential primary race, which Obama won, but they buried their rivalry and she served as his secretary of state for four years. Clinton is the 2016 candidate who the White House believes will best safeguard Obama's legacy."I don't think there's ever been someone so qualified to hold this office," Obama said of Clinton in a video. "I'm with her. I am fired up, and I cannot wait to get out there and campaign for Hillary."Trump assailed the endorsement on Twitter: "He wants four more years of Obama-but nobody else does!"Clinton's campaign tweeted a brash response: "Delete your account."Sanders, who galvanized young voters with his calls for more social equality and measures to rein in Wall Street, has been reluctant to concede the race, despite concerns among leading Democrats that continuing party divisions could hamper Clinton's efforts to beat Trump.TOWARD THE EXITObama and other senior Democrats are seeking a delicate balance of rallying the party behind Clinton, while not alienating Sanders and his supporters.In what appeared to be an attempt to gently ease Sanders toward giving up his campaign, Obama met the Democratic socialist for about an hour in the White House, laughing warmly as they walked into the Oval Office.Though Sanders told reporters afterward that he still plans to compete in the final nominating contest in Washington, D.C. on June 14, he said he would work with Clinton to defeat Trump.Sanders was then welcomed on Capitol Hill by Senator Harry Reid, the top Democrat in the Senate. Reid said the lawmaker from Vermont was in a "good place" with his Democratic colleagues. He suggested that Sanders was close to acknowledging defeat by Clinton."I didn't hear a single word about him trying to change the fact that she is the nominee, I think he's accepted that," Reid told reporters.In the endorsement video, Obama recalled the party unity that followed his prolonged primary battle against Clinton in 2008."Secretary Clinton and Senator Sanders may have been rivals during this primary, but they're both patriots who love this country and they share a vision for an America that we all believe in," Obama said.Nearly half of Americans in a recent Reuters/Ipsos survey approved of Obama's handling of his presidency, a high mark for a president at this point in the job. Among Democrats, his approval rating was 82.3 percent, though 84.3 percent of Republicans disapproved of his leadership.Clinton is also set to receive the endorsement of U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren on Thursday night, according to media reports. Warren, like Sanders, is a progressive and fiery critic of Wall Street.Clinton said she and Warren had similar views about key issues such as economic policy and protecting the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform law and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which Warren pushed to start."I'm really pleased to have her good ideas and support," Clinton said of the senator from Massachusetts.Trump said in an interview with Reuters last month that he would try to dismantle the Dodd-Frank law.In the interview with Reuters, Clinton said her overall economic package, including plans to rein in Wall Street and cut taxes for the middle class, would come during the first 100 days of her presidency if she defeats Trump.Clinton has previously said a plan to generate jobs by investing in transportation and other infrastructure spending and immigration reform would be among other early priorities."One of the things that President Obama said yesterday is he thought his job was to remind the American people what a really serious job this is, the tough choices, the hard decisions, the high stakes in choosing a president and commander in chief," Clinton said."And I know how important it is to get off to a really good start in the White House," she said.Trump, a wealthy real estate developer who became the party's presumptive nominee last month after seeing off a large group of rivals, is well behind Clinton's campaign in terms of fundraising and policy infrastructure.On Thursday, his top donors were holding their first official meeting in New York. Trump also met with industry leaders in New York at an event organized by oil billionaire Harold Hamm. REUTERS KU PM0421 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0348-778259.Xml
Weeks after Afghan Taliban chief Mullah Akhtar Mansoor in Balochistan was killed in an American drone, China has asked the international community to respect Pakistan's sovereignty and territorial integrity. "The international community should fully recognise that and respect Pakistan's sovereignty and territorial integrity," the Express Tribune quoted Hong Lei, China's foreign ministry spokesperson, as saying. Mansoor and his driver were killed when the car they were travelling in was targeted in a U.S. drone strike in Naushki district of Balochistan on May 21. Following the incident, senior civil and military officials, including Army Chief General Raheel Sharif and Prime Minister's Adviser on Foreign Affairs Sartaj Aziz said that the drone strike was a clear violation of Pakistan's sovereignty affecting mutual trust, and undermined the spirit of Afghan peace process. Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson pointed out that Islamabad's enormous efforts to combat terrorism and support the Afghan reconciliation process needs to be recognised by the international community. He said that the impact of the drone strike on the four-nation Quadrilateral Coordination Group (QCG) which includes Pakistan Afghanistan, US and China, must all work together. "The QCG is formed to create enabling conditions for the Afghan reconciliation process. All relevant parties should pull together for that goal," he said. Meanwhile, as of now it is clear that China is ready or oppose to a push by the United States and other major powers for India to join the main club of countries controlling access to sensitive nuclear technology. On Thursday, at the 48-nation Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) meeting in Vienna, some countries opposed to India's admission to the group appeared more willing to work towards a compromise. The NSG aims to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons by restricting the sale of items that can be used to make those arms. Pakistan, meanwhile, has responded to India's membership bid with one of its own. "By bringing India on board, it's a slap in the face of the entire non-proliferation regime," the Express Tribune quoted a diplomatic source as saying. The U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry reportedly has written to members asking them "not to block consensus on Indian admission to the NSG" in a letter dated Friday. (ANI)
Nitya Ranjan Pande, 60, was a worker at Sri Sri Thakur Anukul Chandra Satsanga Ashram at Hemayetpur in Pabna Sadar upazila.

Alamgir Kabir, superintendent of police in Pabna, confirmed the killing but said the motive behind the killing is yet to be known, reports Daily Star.

Abdullah Al Hasan, officer-in-charge of Pabna Sadar Police Station said that the locals found the body of Nitya Ranjan lying on a field, a few yards off the Hemayetpur mental hospital, around 5:00 a.m. local time.

He added that police is investigating the incident.

With today's murder, at least eight people became victims of such targeted killings since May 1.

Few days ago, a Hindu priest was hacked to death in Jhenaidah, a Christian grocer in Natore and the wife of a crime-burster senior police officer in Chittagong.

The murder in the region took place amid a weeklong clampdown that has been launched by the police on militants across the country which starts today.

Over the last two years, suspected militants have attacked and killed university professors, writers, publishers, secular bloggers, gay rights activists, and members of religious minorities for being vocal about their opinion or not sharing the same religious thoughts as they do. (ANI)
Senior U.S. officials, including Senior Director for Afghanistan and Pakistan at the U.S. National Security Council Dr. Peter Lavoy and Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan Richard Olson, are part of the U.S. delegation, reports the Express Tribune.

The officials will hold talks with Pakistani authorities to discuss the situation which the latter called breaching its sovereignty arising out of the May 21 drone strike that killed Taliban chief Mansoor and his driver.

Islamabad is expected to be tough on its stand in conveying its concerns over the drone strike as well as the growing defence cooperation between the U.S. and India.

Following the incident, Sartaj said the U.S. had sabotaged the Afghan reconciliation process by killing Mansoor.

On Thursday, he said that relations between Islamabad and Washington.

"Relations between Pakistan and the U.S. need to be reassessed," Express Tribune quoted Aziz as saying at a news conference.

Speaking on its souring between the two countries in wake of the recent drone strike, the adviser conceded that Washington "abandons us when it doesn't need our help."

"This has been happening for the last 60 years. The US approaches Pakistan whenever it needs our help but abandons us when its objectives are achieved," he added. (ANI)
A court in the Maldives jailed former vice president Ahmed Adeeb for 15 years for plotting to assassinate President Abdulla Yameen in an explosion on the president's launch last September, his lawyer said today.The judgment was delivered late yesterday, four days after Adeeb was sentenced to 10 years on terrorism charges for possessing firearms. The trial was held behind closed doors due to security concerns, authorities said.The secret trial was denounced by the opposition and is likely to raise international concern over the evidence used to convict Adeeb, once seen as a future leader of the Indian Ocean atoll whose popularity as a tourist paradise is at odds with its deeply troubled politics."He was sentenced to 15 years based on seven anonymous witnesses. The court said it can conclude that there was an IED (Improvised Explosive Device)," Moosa Siraj, Adeeb's lawyer, told Reuters.Adeeb's two bodyguards were jailed yesterday in the same case, each for 10 years. A former chief prosecutor was sentenced to 17 years in jail for conspiring to kidnap Yameen."Anyone who is a threat to Yameen's despotism is bound to be found guilty of terrorism charges. Maldives continues to be a travesty of justice," Ahmed Mahloof, spokesman for the Maldives United Opposition, told Reuters via a text message.The Maldives had asked foreign agencies to examine the evidence of the alleged attempt on Yameen's life that took place just as his launch prepared to dock last September 28.Notably, the US Federal Bureau of Investigation said it found "no conclusive evidence" of a bomb blast."The FBI report clearly said it was not an IED, while Saudi investigators' report said there was no evidence to say it was a bomb. We will definitely appeal against the verdict," said Siraj, the lawyer.Yameen was unhurt in the blast, which blew off the rear doors of the launch, but his wife and two aides were injured.Adeeb, 34, was arrested on October 24 after an initial probe. Parliament impeached him on November 5.Adeeb's sentencing came a week after exiled former leader Mohamed Nasheed, now in exile in Britain, formed a united opposition group aimed at toppling Yameen.Nasheed was himself jailed for 13 years on terrorism charges after a trial in 2015 that was widely denounced as politically motivated. He was allowed to travel to Britain for medical treatment and was last month granted refugee status by London.REUTERS PS VN1526 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0421-778789.Xml
As lawmakers across the United States battle over whether to allow transgender Americans to use public restrooms that match their gender identities, universities are scrambling to ensure that dorms meet federal standards.At a time of year when the nation's 2,100 residential colleges and universities are sorting out student housing assignments, they also are poring over a May letter from the Obama administration that thrusts them into the national debate on transgender rights.Known as the "dear colleague" letter, it makes clear that federal law protects transgender students' right to live in housing that reflects their gender identity.Schools that fail to provide adequate housing to transgender students could face lawsuits or the loss of any federal funding they rely on.Although hundreds of universities had begun to offer gender-inclusive housing in response to student demand in recent years, many are now reviewing or expediting their plans so they can provide the option to incoming students for the first time this fall.The policies are intended not only to accommodate transgender students, university officials say, but to help siblings, gay students who want to live with straight friends of the opposite gender or simply groups comfortable with mixed-gender housing.The May letter from the US Departments of Education and Justice invoked Title IX, the 1972 law prohibiting gender discrimination at schools that receive federal funds."Title IX and the 'dear colleague' letters make all of us, all institutions, more accountable for students who may be on the margins," said Darryl Holloman, dean of students at Georgia State University, which offered gender-inclusive housing options for the first time in the 2015-2016 academic year.'ONLY A MATTER OF TIME'There are no official US statistics on the number of colleges that offer gender-inclusive housing, although a count by Campus Pride, a non-profit that focuses on supporting the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender students in US higher education, found it could be as low as one in 10.The author of that study, Genny Beemyn, director of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst's Stonewall Center, acknowledged the count, which shows just 203 universities, may underestimate the number of schools that offer gender-inclusive housing."More and more schools are grappling with it," Beemyn said. "It's only a matter of time until this becomes a much bigger issue."Universities in the Northeast and along the West Coast have been quickest to allow gender-inclusive housing, with those in the South and religiously affiliated schools least likely to do so, according to observers, including Demoya Gordon, transgender rights project attorney with Lambda Legal, an LGBT rights advocacy group.The Association of College and University Housing Officers-International has seen an increase in the number of questions it gets about transgender housing, said spokesman James Baumann."It is certainly something that has gained momentum," Baumann said. "When I first started 10 years ago the questions was, 'Should we?' And now the question is, 'How can we?'"The same letter that has universities examining their transgender housing policies sparked a broader fight by telling US public grammar and high schools to allow transgender students to use bathrooms and locker rooms that reflect their gender identities.Thirteen US states joined a lawsuit accusing the Obama administration of overreaching, attempting to add transgender protections to a 1972 law that never mentioned the subject.LESS OPPOSITIONThe university moves have been less controversial in part because the population affected is one of the segments of society most comfortable with transgender issues.Some 57 per cent of 18- to 29-year-olds told a Reuters/Ipsos poll taken April 14 through May 3 that they believed people should use public restrooms that match the gender with which they identify. That is a far higher percentage than the 40 percent of Americans of all ages who held that view. The poll included responses from 6,723 people and has a credibility interval of 1.4 percentage points.Few students are choosing gender-inclusive housing. At Georgia Tech's Atlanta campus, 42 out of some 4,100 students housed in dorms sought it last year.When Johns Hopkins University first offered it in the 2014-2015 academic year, 30 out of some 2,500 students enrolled, a number that doubled to 60 the following year."There are certainly some transgender students for whom it matters a lot but if it's a gay man whose best friend is a lesbian and they decide they want to live together, this is an option," said Demere Woolway, director of LGBTQ life at the Baltimore university.College officials interviewed also emphasized they have no plans to phase out traditional gender-segregated housing."We have students ... who want to maintain spaces where they are with people who have the same gender identity," said Elizabeth Lee Agosto, senior associate dean of student affairs at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, which has offered gender-inclusive housing since 2007. "It's important to have the full spectrum."REUTERS PS VN1640 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0421-779003.Xml
The Nigerian army has swept into villages in the southern swamplands in an operation to crush the Niger Delta Avengers group, but allegations by residents of brutal tactics and rapes by some of its soldiers risk stoking anger in the region.The army has vowed to stop the militant group which has claimed a string of attacks on oil pipelines which have cut Nigeria's oil output by half a million barrels a day to a 20-year low. It denies the allegations of abuse.The military has deployed dozens of gunboats in the Delta swamps to search a cluster of villages that are home to a former militant leader whom officials link to the previously unknown group, residents said.Community leaders and a security source said the sweep has failed to produce results, despite the arrest of some 15 suspects, while relations with locals already angered by deep poverty and oil spills have worsened."Our people are very angry with the arrest of innocent people in the name of looking for pipeline vandals," said Eric Omare, a spokesman for Ijaw Youth Council, which represents the main ethnic group in the Delta region.Five of the arrested were released after it turned out they were oil workers unrelated to the militants. Activists say several students who also had no connection to the Avengers remained in custody.In interviews with Reuters, the first foreign news outlet to visit the Oporoza community raided by the army, 10 villagers said soldiers had searched their houses in the middle of the night after arriving in gunboats and surrounding the village.Two villagers said they were raped, while two others reported looting. One villager said he was struck by a soldier with the butt of a gun."About 3 a.m., military men invaded our community. Four of them stormed my house and broke the doors," 50-year old Ebimobore Oboivu said, wailing in front of her hut in the creeks criss-crossed by oil pipelines."Two them raped me as the other two pointed guns at my head," she said.Army spokesman Rabe Abubakar denied troops had used force or raped anyone when searching Oporoza. "The reason we are there is because of some criminal guys who by all means decide to do unholy and inappropriate acts against their country," he said.But the Delta state government, under whose jurisdiction the community falls, has urged the military to launch an investigation. "This is not the first time such allegations are made," state government spokesman Charles Anaigwu said.A smashed window and bullet holes could be seen at one house and one hut with an iron roof. A television set inside a house had a bullet hole from a gun fired by one of the soldiers, villagers said.A second woman, Simply Timi, also described being the victim of a gang rape. "I heard a loud bang on my door with three army men. One of them pinned me to the ground and they all raped me."President Muhammadu Buhari has launched a reform of the army which has long faced accusations of abuses. But rights groups routinely accuse soldiers of detentions without arrest warrant, looting and beating of prisoners.In April, the United States urged Nigeria to investigate a report by Amnesty International that soldiers killed hundreds of Shi'ite Muslims in the northern city of Zaria in December. The army has said it acted in self-defence after the sect had ambushed a convoy.CALLS FOR INQUIRIESOporoza, at the centre of a group of villages, is home to Government Ekpemupolo, known as Tompolo, a former militant leader who laid down arms with other commanders in 2009 under an amnesty promising generous cash payments.Buhari, faced with a revenue squeeze due to low oil prices, has cut funding for the amnesty plan, causing widespread resentment in the Delta, where the plan also funds job training for the unemployed.Officials link Tompolo with the attacks, saying they began in January, around the same time that a court issued an arrest warrant for him on graft charges, prompting him to go into hiding. Tompolo has denied any link to the Avengers.Security officials say villagers have been hiding militants like Tompolo.Soldiers ransacked Tompolo's compound and searched dozens of huts but a Nigeria-based security source, asking not to be named, said the army sweep had not generated any leads about who was behind the militant group."You can't ruin the life of a whole community because of one man," said Nelson Okagbami, an Oporoza community leader.He said he saw soldiers dragging away one wounded teenager. "Bullets were flying around. I had to hide in a church," he said.At a meeting earlier this week, Delta state governors agreed with Vice President Yemi Osinbajo to address local grievances. But in Oporoza people fear the army will come back."Soldiers pointed guns at me and I fell to my knees begging before they left me alone," said Tari Maka, a food vendor in Oporoza. "When will this end because we don't even understand what is happening?" REUTERS PS VN1640 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0421-779007.Xml
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton was set to meet today with US Senator Elizabeth Warren, a leading progressive voice, as she seeks to build party unity heading into her election campaign against Republican Donald Trump.The meeting, reported by several media outlets, comes a day after Warren endorsed Clinton's White House bid, adding support from the Democrats' liberal wing as Clinton seeks to move on from her protracted primary battle with Bernie Sanders.Former Secretary of State Clinton earlier this week secured the delegates needed to win the party nomination for the November 8 presidential election. Party leaders are hoping Sanders will soon drop his presidential run.Clinton's meeting with Warren fueled speculation she might be under consideration as Clinton's running mate. Asked in an MSNBC interview yesterday whether she had discussed with Clinton the prospect of being vice president, Warren said she had not, nor had she been vetted.Having support from Warren would boost Clinton's ability to court highly motivated Sanders supporters who have been fired up against Clinton during the unexpectedly long primary battle. Warren and Sanders share views on issues such as reining in Wall Street excesses.Sanders said on Thursday he would remain in the race through the final nominating contest in Washington, D.C., next week but would work with Clinton to defeat Trump.Warren, a senator from Massachusetts, is also shaping up to be a no-holds-barred critic of Trump and they have had several spats on Twitter. Trump said today Warren was one of the "least productive US Senators," adding in a tweet: "Hope she is V.P. choice."President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden also announced their support of Clinton on Thursday, handing her a trio of big endorsements expected to boost her standing heading into the general election campaign.Clinton is dogged by the controversy surrounding her use of a private email server while secretary of state from 2009-2013.Emails between US diplomats in Islamabad and State Department officials in Washington about whether to challenge specific drone strikes in Pakistan are at the center of a criminal probe involving her handling of classified information, the Wall Street Journal reported yesterday.Republicans have consistently criticized Clinton over the server. "We should not live above the law, and that is one of the cardinal sins that Secretary Clinton violated," House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan told radio host Hugh Hewitt today.Clinton has said she did not send or receive any information that was marked as classified and has accused the State Department and other government agencies of "over-classifying" her emails after a judge ordered them released to the public.REUTERS RSD PR2005 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0435-779741.Xml
Two Dutch F-35A fighter jets made their debut at an international air show today, conducting demonstration flights in the Netherlands.The radar-evading warplanes, which will eventually replace the Dutch Air Force's fleet of F-16s, are conducting two weeks of noise testing by Dutch pilots.The US Marine Corps has already declared the F-35B model ready for combat, but the conventional takeoff and landing A-model is still completing testing. The US Air Force expects to declare an initial squadron of F-35A jets ready for combat between August and December this year.The Netherlands, which helped fund development of the new stealthy fighter jet, known in the Netherlands as the Joint Strike Fighter, plans to purchase 37 of THE planes in total. The next order will be for a batch of eight jets.Thousands of onlookers gathered at the air force base in the northern city of Leeuwarden, 150 km north of the capital Amsterdam, for the first fly-overs today. The planes are scheduled to fly again on Saturday.A Swiss F-5E air force demonstration jet collided with another plane in midair yesterday and crashed in a lake during a test flight before the show. The pilot ejected before impact and was slightly injured. REUTERS RSD PR2024 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0435-779772.Xml
Uganda plans to withdraw by the end of the year troops involved in an operation to hunt down Lord's Resistance Army rebels in Central African Republic, a military spokesman said today.Uganda leads a US-supported African Union regional task force tracking the LRA rebels, who are notorious for mutilating civilians and kidnapping children for use as fighters and sex slaves.Most of its 2,500 troops are in eastern Central African Republic. A smaller contingent is based in South Sudan.Spokesman Paddy Ankunda said the withdrawal did not mean Uganda was ending the operation. But while the African Union favoured keeping the Ugandan troops in place, he said, Kampala had been discouraged by insufficient international support."There seems to be no serious goodwill on the part of international actors or stakeholders to participate or contribute toward the ending of the LRA problem," he said.He added that Uganda had not yet considered an African Union request to maintain its troops in Central African Republic.The International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants for the LRA's messianic leader, Joseph Kony, and other senior commanders.However, the brutal rebel movement was known to relatively few outside Central Africa until KONY 2012, a highly successful social media campaign, raised international awareness about the reclusive warlord four years ago.Abdoulaye Batilly, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon's special representative in Central Africa, acknowledged the strain on Ugandan resources, but warned the withdrawal must not allow for a rebel resurgence."With Uganda wanting to pull out, we must create conditions so that a vacuum is not created ... And we're discussing this with everyone, the European Union, the USA, and of course the government of CAR," he said, speaking in Central African Republic's capital, Bangui.Though originally from northern Uganda, the LRA was driven out of the country by a military offensive a decade ago. Today, its fighters roam a poorly policed area straddling the borders between Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of Congo and South Sudan.Those countries are also meant to contribute to the task force, but separate conflicts in Central African Republic and South Sudan have meant that the bulk of the operation has fallen to Ugandan troops.General David Rodriguez, commander of the US military's Africa Command, estimated in March that less than 200 LRA fighters remained."To defeat your enemy does not mean to kill all of them. It means to deny them the means to make war. And that's where we are with the LRA," Ankunda said.However, finishing the group off once and for all has proved difficult. Its fighters continue to launch attacks on civilians, nearly 350 of whom have been abducted by the group this year, according to the LRA Crisis Tracker, which documents rebel attacks. REUTERS RSD BL2350 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0435-780025.Xml
KIEV, June 9 (Xinhua) -- Ukraine has allocated 120 million U.S. dollars from the budget to the post-conflict recovery in the government-controlled areas of eastern region, President Petro Poroshenko announced on Thursday.

"These funds will be transferred to the local budgets of Donetsk and Lugansk regions, and will be used to finance the speedy recovery of the Donbas," Poroshenko was quoted as saying by his press service.

Out of the total sum, about 40 million dollars will be used for the overhaul of 21 schools, 29 kindergartens, 23 healthcare establishments and some other social facilities, Poroshenko said.

Besides, part of the funds will go to the reconstruction of 113 water supply facilities that were damaged during the fighting, the president added.

According to him, the rest of the sum will be spent on the reconstruction of six bridges and about 60 km of roads in Lugansk region.

The armed confrontation between government troops and pro-independence rebels, which has been raging in eastern Ukraine since April 2014, has caused extensive damage to public and civilian infrastructure.

According to the estimates of the local authorities, in Lugansk region alone, some 7,000 infrastructures were affected by the fighting and their renovation requires at least 330 million dollars.

In 2015, the World Bank has estimated that initial recovery, reconstruction and peace-building in eastern Ukraine needs at least 1.52 billion dollars in investments. Enditem
NEW YORK, June 9 (Xinhua) -- Workers had started to paint New York's Times Square into different colored zones from Wednesday night into early Thursday morning, as part of the city's effort to regulate pedestrian flow and street performers activities.

Four patches of teal blue-colored zones had been installed by Thursday afternoon between 45th and 47th streets in the square by the city's Department of Transportation.

A total of eight blue zones will be set up as the "designated activity zones", which are the only places for costumed performers and panhandlers to pose photos with tourists and ask for tip.

Other parts of the square will be designated as a green-colored "chill zone", with tables and chairs for people to hang around and enjoy the buzzing neon lights.

Purple-colored "express lanes" will also be installed alongside the streets, in which pedestrians in a hurry can get through the square without commercial hassle.

The three-colored zoning plan was passed by the City Council and signed into law by Mayor Bill de Blasio back in April, as an effort to address the increased "aggressive" behaviors by street performers and costumed characters.

Earlier this year, a Spider-Man character was arrested for kicking a tourist. In another similar incident, a man offering "free hugs" in the square was accused of punching a Canadian woman who refused to give him a tip.

Locals embraced the zoning plan, while street performers had expressed mixed feelings.

"To get to work is an everyday hassle, you have to constantly tell the performers that you're not a tourist," said Mike O' Hara who works at a nearby coffee shop.

"I don't like it, but at the same time I agree with the city's work," said Patricia Cruz, a street performer dubbed "Naked Cowgirl" who plays guitar in her underwear around the square.

Cruz said the regulations were necessary to counter some of the violence happened before, and believed that although her movement would be limited, she won't make less money after the zoning plan gets enforced.

"I think this is good for everybody," said Cruz.

The paint work will continue through the following weeks and are expected to finish later this month.
SYDNEY, June 10 (Xinhua) -- The Australian market took a turn for the worse early Friday as falls in commodities and oil hit the heavy resources stocks.

At 1020 local time (AEST), the S&P/ASX 200 index was down 53.20 points, or 0.99 percent at 5,308.70 points, while the broader All Ordinaries index was down 49.00 points, or 0.90 percent at 5,388.40 points.

The 0.5 percent spike in the U.S. dollar overnight sent jitters through commodity markets overnight, which in tern has seen falls in local resources stocks, weighing on the index.

The Aussie market has been in a range trade over the past month. However, IG chief market strategist Chris Weston said there could be a break to the downside with a belief entering that there could be a bit of a topping out.

"It's interesting that we are seeing such weakness in the market when really there was no smoking gun," Weston told Xinhua.

"There seems to be a modest erosion of sentiment."

Traders are now starting to suggest there are a few risks in the market with stocks having high valuations, which is being compounded by heavy weights saying buy gold, Weston said.

In early Friday trade, BHP was down 3.82 percent, rival Rio Tinto fell 2.51 percent while gold miner Newcrest was 1.59 percent stronger.

Oil Search slid 2.00 percent, Santos slumped 3.12 percent and Woodside Petroleum lost 1.02 percent.

ANZ is down 1.39 percent, the Commonwealth Bank of Australia retreated 1.55 percent, the National Australia Bank lost 1.36 percent and Westpac was 1.38 percent weaker.

Wesfarmers and rival Woolworths were 1.19 percent and 0.92 percent lower respectively.

Qantas fell 0.66 percent and Telstra weakened by 0.73 percent in early trade.
YANGON, June 10 (Xinhua) -- Two people have been killed in Myanmar's northwestern Sagaing region which has been hit by severe floods, official media reported Friday.

Triggered by continuous rain, creeks swelled and flooded villages, causing landslides in Katha area of the region on Thursday.

In Wuntho area of the region, floods destroyed crops and killed farm animals, damaging bridges and disrupting the area's transportation.

In Kawlin area, the flooding affected 4,000 homes.

Residents blamed the disasters on the reckless disposal of soil from gold mining.

The regional government is offering emergency relief to victims of the floods.

The Sagaing region suffered from severe flooding in August last year, resulting in huge loss of lives and property.
MELBOURNE, June 10 (Xinhua) -- A married couple from the Australian state of Victoria have been honored with a Governor-General's medal for their heroism last year in treating the wounded during the Paris terror attacks.

The couple, Laura Mannes and William Harrison, both paramedics, were out for dinner while holidaying in the French capital last November when they heard gunshots and saw hundreds of people running past in panic.

With no knowledge of the Islamic State (IS) attack barely 100 meters away, the off-duty pair rushed Laura's parents (holidaying with them) and hundreds of panicked Parisians back to their apartment for safety before heading back to the carnage with towels and linen to help the critically injured.

"We didn't know anything, there was nothing on television as it was happening at the same time ... we didn't initially know what was going on and thought it was just a shooting like a gang shooting or something like that," Harrison told NewsCorp on Friday.

Their courageous deed on the night of the November 13 terror attacks had only previously been known to family, friends and the London Ambulance Service where they have been working in the past 18 months.

That all changed on Friday when the couple were surprised by Australia's Governor-General Sir Peter Cosgrove at their London workplace who presented them with an Office of the Governor-General's personal medallion.

Cosgrove praised the couple, who hail from the Mornington Peninsula, south of Melbourne, for "showing courage and professional skill" in aiding the terror victims.

Mannes told News Corp that receiving the medallion was "a lovely surpris" and"very humbling".

The Victorian couple, who got engaged in Paris earlier last year, don't know what happened to the injured victims who they treated, but are sure their aid would have helped.

Mannes said she believed the notion of the "Australian spirit" rang true.

"I think you hear about (Aussie spirit) a lot, when there's natural disasters and things, communities bind together. Tasmania at the moment with the floods, I was living there for a while, and people organising charity dinners helping people who have lost things -- it's being a 'True Blue Aussie isn't it, you earn that reputation for a reason," she said.

Along with the couple, the governor-General also praised the efforts of around 450 Australian paramedics who are working with the London Ambulance Service.
MELBOURNE, June 10 (Xinhua) -- Australia's Tasmania government-owned energy company was on Friday asked to explain why "cloud seeding" was carried less than 24 hours before a vicious storm cell which caused widespread and fatal flooding throughout the state.

Hydro Tasmania conducted cloud seeding over the Derwent Valley on Sunday morning, less than a day before heavy rainfall caused record-breaking flooding across the state. The seeding occurred in the Derwent region where a man is still listed as missing in the fallout from the floods.

Cloud seeding is a technique used by the authorities to encourage rain to fall so that dam levels don't fall too low. It involves the addition of a substance to encourage the growth of ice crystals which then melt and cause raindrops.

Tasmania's Premier Will Hodgman said on Friday that Hydro Tasmania authorized cloud seeding on the Sunday morning even though heavy falls were forecast across the state on Monday and Tuesday.

"That's why we've sought the explanation from Hydro Tasmania as to those matters, the minister has sought that," he told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) on Friday.

"It's certainly my expectation that will be provided at the earliest opportunity to respond to those matters."

Documents obtained by local media have revealed that the cloud seeding flight took place while flood warnings were in place.

A spokesperson from Hydro Tasmania refused to comment on the premier's inquiry, adding that it would be inappropriate before an investigation is completed.

"At this point Hydro Tasmania is not in a position to provide more information," the spokesperson told the ABC.

"Experience suggests that in the aftermath of a severe natural disaster such as this some form of government inquiry follows."

"In light of the unfortunate death of one person, and with grave fears for two people still missing, there is likely to be at least a coronial inquest."

Residents in the region have suffered thousands of dollars' worth of flood damage, while farmer have reported the loss of hundreds and sheep, cattle and crops.

The damage bill in the wake of the flooding is expected to rise to more than 80 million U.S dollars.
SYDNEY, June 10 (Xinhua) -- China's Nanshan Group has taken control of Air New Zealand's remaining shares in Virgin Australia for 301.4 million Australian dollars, giving Chinese backed airlines a near one-third stake in Australia's second largest airline.

In a statement to the ASX on Friday, Virgin Australia said Air New Zealand has agreed to sell China's Nanshan Group 19.98 percent of its stake in the second ranked carrier for 33 Australian cents (24.48 U.S. cents) per share.

"We believe Nanshan Group will be a very strong, positive and complementary shareholder for Virgin Australia," Air New Zealand chairman Tony Carter said in the statement.

"The sale will now allow Air New Zealand to focus on its own growth opportunities."

Virgin's shares shot up 6.07 percent, or 0.02 cents to 30 Australian cents (22.25 U.S. cents) by 11.10 local time (AEST).

In March, Air New Zealand flagged it was seeking to sell its 25.9 percent stake in Virgin Australia as questions continued over the airline's balance sheet.

The announcement was just days after Virgin Australia said it was seeking a 425 million Australian dollar (315.25 million U.S. dollars) cash facility from its four biggest shareholders at the time, Air New Zealand, Singapore Airlines, Etihad Airways and the Richard Branson owned Virgin Group.

It was believed the selling of Air New Zealand's stake would have been difficult as any new purchases would have to take on the airlines 131.2 million Australian dollar (97.32 million U.S. dollars) portion of the cash loan, and would also be expected to participate in any new future equity raising to draw down debt.

Air New Zealand's sell down comes less than two weeks after China's HNA aviation bought a 13 percent stake in the Australian carrier for 159 million Australian dollars (117.94 million U.S. dollars) in a major strategic partnership that will see the carrier leverage China's fast growing aviation market.

HNA's acquisition diluted Air New Zealand's shares to 22.5 percent, while Virgin Australia's remaining shareholders also had their equity stakes diluted from the issuance of new shares. HNA, over time, will seek to increase its holdings to 19.99 percent.

Virgin needs the cash injection to pay down debt as it expands out of the low-cost market to compete with Australia's top ranked carrier Qantas.

Air New Zealand's remaining holdings will be considered in due course, the company said.

Both deals require China's regulatory approval.

Once approved, Nanshan will nominate a member for the board, which Virgin will consider.
LIMA, June 10, 2016 (Xinhua) -- Peruvian presidential candidate Pedro Pablo Kuczynski (2nd R) reacts while offering a statement after the report of the National Office of Electoral Processes (ONPE, for its acronym in Spanish) on the results of the second round of the presidential election, in Lima, Peru, on June 9, 2016. Peruvian economist Pedro Pablo Kuczynski will be the next president of Peru, the National Office of Electoral Processes (ONPE) confirmed at 4 p.m. Thursday afternoon. (Xinhua/Vidal Tarqui/ANDINA)

LIMA, June 9 (Xinhua) -- Peruvian economist Pedro Pablo Kuczynski is expected to become the country's next president, counting results from the National Office of Electoral Processes showed on Thursday.

After a four-day count, 77-year-old Kuczynski, from the Peruvians for Change, edged out his rival Keiko Fujimori, from the Popular Force, with a wafer-thin margin, winning by 50.117 percent to 49.883 percent. The difference in the total votes was 41,438, with 8,580,474 votes for Kuczynski and 8,539,036 for Fujimori.

Yet the Fujimori side is waiting for a formal verdict from the National Electoral Tribunal (JNE).

On his Twitter account, Kuczynski thanked his supporters, saying "Thank you, Peru! It is time to work together for the future of our country."

In a speech in Lima immediately after the voting outcome was announced, a jubilant Kuczynski said he would be "seeking to work with all Peruvians. There are many of us who feel the train has passed them by but we want them all to board the train."

If Kuczynski wins, he will take over as president on July 28 from President Ollanta Humala for a mandate lasting until 2021. He pledged that he would work so that "by 2021, Peru will be a renewed country."

However, Fujimori's camp was quick to say that Fujimori would not officially recognize the result until the JNE verdict.

Her supporter, congressman Pedro Spadaro, told the press after the result was announced that "the JNE will have the final word on the entire electoral process. We will wait patiently ... for the Tribunal to give its verdict."

"If the results do not change ... we will recognize them," he added.

The candidacy of Fujimori, 41, had been widely criticized both in Peru and around the world as she is the daughter of Alberto Fujimori, president of Peru from 1990 to 2000, who is currently serving a long jail sentence on charges of human rights violation, murder, embezzlement and kidnapping, with some observers fearing Keiko would seek to bring back her father's tough policies.

Susana Villaran, former mayor of Lima and an influential figure in Peruvian politics, wrote on Facebook after the result that "democracy has won by a hair," while warning that "our people are divided in two."

Villaran encouraged Kuczynski to "lead fundamental processes," including reforms in the political and electoral systems, public security, the fight against corruption, protection of children, and the reduction of discrimination.

Certain analysts expressed concerns that Kuczynski might be close to the United States and orient policies to favor Washington.

Hector Bejar, a well-known Peruvian writer, told Venezuelan TV station TeleSUR that Kuczynski's government will have "a basically neoliberal economic orientation. On the political front ... this will mean a close relationship with the United States."

"However, Kuczynski will feel social pressure ... especially concerning mining investment and environmental protection. Widespread social struggles are likely in the coming years, so we hope for a dialogue between the left and this government," Bejar warned.
MAPUTO, April 20, 2016 (Xinhua) -- File photo taken on March 3, 2016 shows a piece of an airplane displayed during a news conference in Maputo, capital of Mozambique. The Australian Transport Safety Bureau on April 20, 2016 released a technical examination report, definitively saying the debris found in Mozambique was part of the lost Malaysia Airlines flight MH370. (Xinhua/Li Xiaopeng)

CANBERRA, June 10 (Xinhua) -- The Australian authorities will investigate if debris washed up on a South Australian beach belongs to missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, media reports said here Friday.

South Australian police have collected a piece of wreckage slightly larger than a shoebox after a man searching for driftwood on Kangaroo Island, 100 km from Adelaide, came across the debris.

The Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) will now examine the item to determine whether it is from MH370.

A media spokeswoman from South Australia Police told Xinhua on Friday that a Kangaroo Island resident found the debris and called SA police. Police went to the island on Thursday afternoon and handed the item over to ATSB officials at the scene.

SA Police refused to comment further on the media reports.

CASA (Civil Aviation Safety Authority) is carrying out data matching from the civil aviation database.

Channel Seven News footage of the debris showed a white fragment with "caution no step" printed on it and honeycomb structured reinforcement, a common feature of planes.

Samuel Armstrong, the man who found the debris, told Seven News he just "stumbled across" the wreckage.

"I thought about planes that had gone down and wondered where it could have come from," Armstrong said on Thursday evening.

"I've found fruit along this coastline that's from overseas, it could've dropped off boats, stuff travels a long way."

Jochen Kaempf, an oceanographer from Flinders University in Adelaide, said currents in the southern Indian Ocean, where the search for MH370 is centered, meant it was possible that wreckage from the plane could have ended up in South Australia.

"The time scale of two years is just right, it could happen in that time scale," Kampf told Fairfax Media on Friday.

MH370 disappeared on March 8, 2014 with 239 passengers and crew aboard after the flight departed Kuala Lumpur for Beijing.

A wing part from a Boeing 777 which was confirmed to be from MH370 washed up on Reunion Island, 2, 000 km off the east coast of Africa in the Indian Ocean, in July 2015.

Related:

Malaysia says two more debris confirmed from missing MH370
WASHINGTON, June 9 (Xinhua) -- The U.S. government on Thursday endorsed a proposed plan to transition the oversight of Internet domain name system to what it called "the global multistakeholder community."

The U.S. National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), part of the U.S. Department of Commerce, said in a statement that the proposal from the Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), a California-based nonprofit, meets the criteria it outlined two years ago.

"The Internet's multistakeholder community has risen to the challenge we gave them to develop a transition proposal that would ensure the Internet's domain name system will continue to operate as seamlessly as it currently does," said NTIA Administrator Lawrence Strickling.

"The plan developed by the community will strengthen the multistakeholder approach that has helped the Internet to grow and thrive, while maintaining the stability, security, and openness that users across the globe depend on today," Strickling said.

Previously, the U.S. government has repeatedly said it would not accept a plan that replaced NTIA's role with a government-led or intergovernmental organization solution.

The NTIA initiated steps to transition its "stewardship role" for the so-called Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) functions in 2014 by asking ICANN to convene global stakeholders to develop a plan, which the latter submitted in March this year.

Currently, the IANA functions such as the global allocation of IP addresses were performed by the ICANN pursuant to a contract that expires Sept. 30.

The NTIA said there is still work to be done, including relevant technical testing, before the IANA functions stewardship transition can occur.

It has set Aug. 12 as a deadline for the ICANN to provide a report gauging whether this work is likely to be completed prior to the Sept. 30 expiration of the IANA functions contract.

In a statement, the ICANN said it is "very pleased" with the NTIA announcement, pledging to "continue to plan and prepare for a timely and successful implementation of the proposals."

The announcement has been met with cautious optimism by various Internet-related trade groups.

"The Internet economy applauds NTIA for its deliberative and thorough work reviewing the ICANN transition proposals ... (which) provide the Internet with the best path forward for self governance," the Computer and Communications Industry Association, the Internet Association and the Internet Infrastructure Coalition, said in a joint statement.

"It is important that Congress not artificially slow down the transition ... We will remain engaged and vigilant as the transition proceeds to ensure the continued success of the multistakeholder model," they said.

It is hard to predict whether the transition will go smoothly or not. U.S. Senator Ted Cruz, who recently dropped out of the presidential race, introduced a bill this week which would ensure no such transition can take place without Congressional approval.


This photo taken on Dec. 11, 2015 shows uniquely beautiful winter scenery of the Zhaoshu Island in the South China Sea. (Xinhua file photo/Zhao Yingquan)

WASHINGTON, June 9 (Xinhua) -- The Chinese Embassy in the United States on Thursday refuted a Wall Street Journal editorial, saying its call for stronger U.S. military response to the South China Sea issue is "reckless and alarming."

"U.S. military operations in the South China Sea only fuel tensions. The moves suggested by this editorial are even more reckless and alarming," Zhu Haiquan, spokesman for the Chinese Embassy, wrote in a letter to The Wall Street Journal.

The letter was published Thursday on the newspaper's website, and will appear on its print edition on Friday.

In the June 3 editorial entitled "South China Sea Challenge," the newspaper called for "a significant increase in the frequency and scope of freedom-of-navigation operations" by the U.S. Navy in response to China's rejecting a ruling to be issued soon by a temporary arbitration tribunal, set up under the framework of the Permanent Court of Arbitration, on the maritime territorial disputes between China and the Philippines.

The case was unilaterally initiated by the Philippines, and China has clearly stated that it does not participate in the case, nor will it accept any ruling by the tribunal.

The origin of the South China Sea disputes is not China's territorial ambition but instead, the illegal seizure and occupation of Chinese territory by other countries, Zhu said.

"These historical rights are not superseded by the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). In fact, UNCLOS respects the historical rights that predate it and are continuously claimed," he said.

"By not accepting or participating in the arbitration unilaterally initiated by the Philippines, China is simply exercising its legitimate sovereign rights under UNCLOS," he said.

The editorial also urged the U.S. Navy to conduct standard military maneuvers, instead of "innocent passage" operations within the territorial waters of China-owned islands and reefs, and hold joint patrols with regional naval powers such as Australia.

Zhu warned that U.S. military operations in the South China Sea only fuel tensions, and "no country's interests are served by turning the South China Sea into a geopolitical competing ground."

"The United States often emphasizes the importance of reducing tensions and maintaining the space necessary for a diplomatic solution. We hope the United States will match its words with deeds," the spokesman added.

Related:

How to Bridge the Divide Over the South China Sea

The differences between China and the U.S. over the South China Sea issue have become a matter of concern and even anxiety. But some of the perceptions in the U.S. and elsewhere about Chinas policy and intentions in the area are misplaced. A pressing task is to understand the facts and Chinas intentions correctly so as to avoid real danger and consequences as a result of misinterpretation and miscalculation. Full Story

China urges Philippines to immediately cease arbitral proceedings

BEIJING, June 8 (Xinhua) -- China on Wednesday again urged the Philippines to stop its arbitral proceedings and return to the right track of settling relevant disputes in the South China Sea through bilateral negotiation with China.
BUENOS AIRES, June 9 (Xinhua) -- The Pacific Alliance trade bloc has approved Argentina's request to join as an observer nation, the state news agency Telam reported Thursday.

The approval, granted late Wednesday at a ministerial meeting of alliance members in Mexico City, paves the way for Argentine President Mauricio Macri to attend the bloc's upcoming summit slated for July 1 in Puerto Varas, Chile.

The Pacific Alliance was founded in 2011 by Chile, Mexico, Peru and Colombia to promote trade with Asian countries. Argentina is a full member country of the alliance's southern-cone counterpart, Mercosur (the Southern Common Market).

"Argentina is not going to make any trade policy decisions that haven't been agreed to with Mercosur," national deputy Ricardo Alfonsin, who sits on the lower house Foreign Relations Committee, told Telam, stressing that "being an observer is not the same as being a member."

Alfonsin described forging closer ties with the Pacific Alliance as a "positive" step, but reiterated that "we are going to integrate ourselves with the global (economy) from Mercosur."

But not everyone in the lower house committee was pleased with the news.

The committee's vice president, Guillermo Carmona, said applying for observer status was "a unilateral decision" made by Macri's government without consulting fellow Mercosur members -- Brazil, Uruguay, Paraguay and Venezuela.

"Being an observer doesn't imply being a member, but it appears to be the first step," said Carmona, adding "we reject the direction the Argentine government is taking, because we believe these policies will destroy the domestic market and Mercosur, and affect Argentina's industrial production and the sources of employment."

"It's a sign that confirms the government has decided to follow that path," he added.

Greater collaboration between the two regional blocs has been expected, given the rise of pro-business administrations in Brazil and Argentina, the region's No. 1 and No. 3 economies, media reports said.


DAVAO PROVINCE, June 5, 2016 (Xinhua) -- Philippine President-elect Rodrigo Duterte speaks during his victory party in Davao, the Philippines, June 4, 2016. (Xinhua/Stringer)

MANILA, June 10 (Xinhua) -- Philippine diplomats have urged President-elect Rodrigo Duterte's government to launch bilateral talks with China to settle the long-running South China Sea territorial dispute between the two sides.

The call came as the Chinse Foreign Ministry on Wednesday issued a statement on settling disputes between China and the Philippines in the South China Sea through bilateral negotiations.

DISPUTE SHOULD BE SOLVED BY BILATERAL TALKS

"You can't resolve an issue without talking to each other," the Manila Times, one of Philippine's major newspapers, cited Lauro Baja, former Philippine foreign affairs undersecretary and ambassador to the United Nations, as reporting on Friday.

Tension between China and the Philippines have heightened in recent years over the territorial disputes in the South China Sea. In 2013, the Philippines unilaterally initiated an arbitration case against China over the dispute from an international tribunal in The Hague.

Rosario Manalo, Philippines' former foreign affairs undersecretary for international economic relations, said the best thing for both the Philippines and China is to "sit down and talk".

Manalo said that everything can be resolved through bilateral negotiations.

"We should start talking about how to share the fruits of the tree through exploration," the Manila Bulletin, Philippine's another major newspaper, quoted her as saying.

Baja noted that the questions of territorial integrity or maritime entitlement will not be solved solely on legal ground.

"What the department (foreign affairs) or the Philippines may have missed is that they relied too much on the legal ground," he said, adding "Second, we relied too much on the panel and we put all our eggs in the panel."

With Regard to the arbitration, he said he believed that it will not be a total victory for the Philippines nor a total loss for China.

"I think they will come to a decision where there will be opportunities for China and the Philippines to engage in bilateral talks," Baja said.

THE UNITED STATES SHOULD BE KEPT OUT

Manalo, who was the head of the High Level Task Force on ASEAN charter, said the only way to solve the dispute in the South China Sea is to diplomatically talk with China.

Manalo saw no need for the United States to join the negotiations as it doesn't have any claim in the disputed waters in the South China Sea.

"We can't pursue multilateral talks... What's the interest of the United States in us? Do they have any claim to the Philippines or China's territory? The problem is only between us and China," she said.

A U.S. expert suggested the other day that the Philippines could take its case to the United Nations Security Council if China will not abide by the court ruling.

Baja dismissed the recommendation by Ernest Bower, a senior adviser to the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies.

He said that China, as a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council, will surely veto such a move.

Related:

Interview: Manila intensifies tension in South China Sea -- former diplomat

MANILA, June 9 (Xinhua) -- The Philippine government has been behind the intensifying tensions in the South China Sea, a former diplomat of the country told Xinhua on Wednesday.

Alberto Encomienda, former secretary-general of Maritime and Ocean Affairs Center of the Philippine Foreign Affairs Department, said: "China has been for the negotiations all along, but from the beginning we are not." Full story

How to Bridge the Divide Over the South China Sea

The differences between China and the U.S. over the South China Sea issue have become a matter of concern and even anxiety. But some of the perceptions in the U.S. and elsewhere about Chinas policy and intentions in the area are misplaced. A pressing task is to understand the facts and Chinas intentions correctly so as to avoid real danger and consequences as a result of misinterpretation and miscalculation. Full Story

China urges Philippines to immediately cease arbitral proceedings

BEIJING, June 8 (Xinhua) -- China on Wednesday again urged the Philippines to stop its arbitral proceedings and return to the right track of settling relevant disputes in the South China Sea through bilateral negotiation with China.
MEXICO CITY, June 9 (Xinhua) -- Nearly 3,000 food wholesalers in Central Mexico hope to export their products to Cuba and China with the help of professionals.

Wholesalers of fruits, vegetables, seeds and other products, at the Toluca Supply Center, the largest wholesale market in the central State of Mexico, are looking to academics and sector officials for advice.

"As merchants, we don't want to settle for this (local market); we want to transcend borders and take our products to Cuba and China," Salvador Palma, president of the market's administrative committee, told Xinhua in a recent interview.

Palma, a wholesaler and seed producer, said that merchants like himself were aware of the need to secure permits and meet other trade requirements before being able to ship their goods abroad, but what they lacked was specialized knowledge of the markets.

Consulting experts, he said, "allows us to learn the traditions, tastes and customs of those who will be our new customers abroad."

To that end, wholesalers met recently with members of the Latin American and Caribbean Academic Network on China, officials of the Secretariat of Agricultural Development of the State of Mexico, and representatives from state agencies that ensure vegetable and aquaculture standards.

"Without doubt, to achieve our dream we have to make the most of consulting they are now giving us. It's important that they explain and provide us with the basic knowledge to be able to go global," said Palma.

The vast Toluca Supply Center, located 60 km from Mexico City in the state capital Toluca, houses 2,500 warehouses that serve around 40,000 buyers a day.

While the majority of buyers are from local businesses and retailers, purchasers also come from nearby states, such as Michoacan, Guanajuato, Hidalgo, Guerrero and Puebla.

The market supplies everything from fresh fish and seafood, meats and poultry to all kinds of vegetables and fruits brought from local farms or other parts of the country.

"We supply many markets, other businesses or locals, and surrounding states. And even more, we are capable of supplying abroad," Palma said.

Professor Yrmina Eng at the University of Havana, and analyst Ricardo Roman Chang at the China-Mexico Studies Center at Mexico's National Autonomous University, believe that the wholesalers have the potential to expand their business to Cuba and China.

What they need, say the experts, is to have a clear idea of which goods the target countries may be interested in, and they also have to consider trade logistics.

"You have to analyze what export-quality products Mexican agriculture is producing that you can ship to China or Cuba through government traders," said Chang.

According to Eng, while the Cuban market offers suppliers untapped potential, it also presents difficulties.

"There is a great Cuban demand that officials and academics can identify so producers and wholesalers from the Toluca Supply Center can ship those products, though they also need to know about Cuba's needs and deficiencies," said Eng.

Wholesaler Patricia Gonzalez, whose family business makes a range of candles, said first-hand experience has made her optimistic about the possibility of expanding her business through exports.

Earlier this year, during Pope Francis' visit to Cuba, she shipped votive candles and other products to the island.

"Cubans ... know about this market (Toluca Supply Center) and they say it would be a dream to have one like it in their country," she said. Enditem
CHIANG MAI, Thailand, June 10 (Xinhua) -- Senior officials of the tourism authorities from Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Vietnam and Thailand (CLMVT) addressed a joint press conference here Thursday, highlighting the prospect of tourism cooperation including a "Schengen-style" visa for all ASEAN members.

The five countries are trying to promote tourism together by providing cross border tourists with more convenience, while asking both governments and private sectors to work together.

"We must set a common goal to promote CLMVT as a single destination", Yuthasak Supasorn, governor of the tourism authority of Thailand, said, adding that connectivity and linkages between these five countries should be improved.

His emphasis on regional connectivity was echoed by officials from other countries as they respectively talked about airways, high-ways linking them and checkpoints in their borders, while Daw Khin Than Win, deputy director general under the Burmese Ministry of Hotels and Tourism, suggested more low-cost airlines to be encouraged.

"Railway is also important, but due to the different track gauge in CLMVT, we emphasis more on airway now, maybe the railway can play a bigger role in our tourism cooperation in the future," Yuthasak told Xinhua.

In terms of a single visa for all ASEAN countries, officials from these five countries said ASEAN members are discussing the complicated issue and it takes more time while Yuthasak said the single visa might come in two years.

"The single visa is what we expect, but we have to deal with the difference in our regulations first," said Try Chhiv, deputy director of Cambodian Ministry of Tourism.

According to Manisakhone Thammavongxay, director of the Public Relations under the Ministry of Information, Culture, and Tourism of Laos, a single visa means a ASEAN member may face loss of income from Visa fees, and it should be a concrete and clear discussion on regulations of different countries.

Yuthasak said the joint press conference is just a starting point of tourism cooperation among CLMVT countries and more fruits could be seen in the future while Manisakhone said that cross-boder tour packages for tourists visiting these five countries may be available soon.

In 2015, visitor arrivals to Cambodia grew by 6.1 percent to 4.78 million, to Laos, up 13 percent to 4.7 million, to Vietnam up 0.9 percent to 7.9 million, to Myanmar up 52 percent to 4.68 million and to Thailand up 20 percent to 29.8 million.

Chinese tourists plays an important role in all CLMVT countries, and is the largest source of foreign tourists in Thailand, Vietnam and Cambodia as Vu Nam, deputy director general of Tourism Marketing Department, National Administration of Tourism of Vietnam, said the Chinese market is very important to his country and also all ASEAN countries.

The joint press conference, under the theme of "CLMVT Link: Prosper Together" is held during the 15th Thailand Travel Mart Plus Amazing Gateway to the Greater Mekong Subregion. Thai deputy premier Thanasak Patimapragorn also said the five countries need to grow together while joining the event on Wednesday.
COLOMBO, June 10 (Xinhua) -- The Sri Lankan government has decided to expedite development projects funded by China, Sri Lanka's State Ministry of National Policy and Economic Affairs has said.

The ministry said on Thursday the decision was taken following talks held between a Chinese government delegation and State Minister of National Policy and Economic Affairs Niroshan Perera.

Zhou Liujun, head of the Department of Outward Investment and Economic Cooperation of China's Ministry of Commerce, met the state minister and discussed Chinese investments in Sri Lanka.

The State Ministry of National Policy and Economic Affairs said that at the talks it was proposed to finalize a trade and economic pact between China and Sri Lanka.

Sri Lanka is home to a large Chinese community and Chinese tourist arrivals to Sri Lanka has also seen a rise this year.
KABUL, June 10 (Xinhua) -- Some 16 militants had been killed and five others detained within the last 24 hours across Afghanistan, the country's Defense Ministry said on Friday.

"In the last 24 hours, as a result of the joint clearance operations of the Afghan security and defense forces aimed to topple down the insurgents and protect the lives and properties of people, 16 armed insurgents were killed and five others detained by the joint forces," the ministry said in a statement.

The ground forces were supported by army's heavy artillery and air force during the raids conducted in surrounding areas of Nangarhar, Paktika, Ghazni, Kandahar, Uruzgan, Baghlan, Balkh, Jawzjan, Faryab, Kunduz and Helmand provinces, it said.

The statement also confirmed loss of three Afghan army personnel as a result of separate attacks within the same period.

The Afghan security forces have beefed up security operations against militants since early April after Taliban militants started their so-called annual spring offensive and stepped up attacks across the country.

The Taliban has yet to make comments.
A crew member takes part in a fire drill on China's largest and most advanced patrol vessel Haixun 01 on the South China Sea, April 4, 2016. (Xinhua/Xing Guangli)

BEIJING, June 10 (Xinhua) -- The Philippines' unilateral move to bring a maritime dispute with China to an international tribunal won't help resolve the problem and the right way forward is to seek settlement through bilateral talks, several foreign experts told Xinhua in recent interviews.

While expressing support for China's position of non-acceptance of and non-participation in the arbitration of the China-Philippine dispute over islands in the South China Sea, they said that Manila's arbitration act runs against the spirit of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) and reneges on its previous promises.

Stefan Talmon, director of the Institute of Public International Law at the University of Bonn, said the arbitration court in The Hague, which was formed according to Annex VII of the UNCLOS, does not have jurisdiction over territorial disputes.

Issues of territorial sovereignty, he noted, are not governed by the UNCLOS, but by customary international law.

Saeed Chaudhry, chair of the Islamabad Council for International Affairs, also believes the Permanent Court of Arbitration has no jurisdiction to hear or judge the case.

The court should have rejected Philippines' arbitration request because the Philippines itself is "illegally occupying islands and reefs of China's Nansha Islands."

"By considering all the facts in the issue, China has complete right and comprehensive reasons to reject the arbitration proceedings and not to accept and recognize any verdict by the arbitration," he added.

Meanwhile, experts also noticed that before Manila initiated the arbitration in 2013, it had promised China in various political documents to resolve their South China Sea disputes via negotiations.

For example, China and the Philippines, along with other members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), signed in 2002 the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties (DOC) in the South China Sea.

The Philippines' arbitration move runs contrary to the Article IV of the document -- which stipulates that the parties concerned resolve their South China Sea disputes "through friendly consultations and negotiations."

While pressing for its arbitration case, the Philippines ignored diplomatic channels as well as China's willingness to negotiate, said Chaudhry.

What has happened so far surrounding the matter proves that "the Philippines and some hidden forces have ill plans and aims to disturb peace and stability" in the region, he added.

Instead of unilaterally resorting to arbitration, the right path forward regarding the South China Sea issue, as China has said repeatedly, is to conduct consultations and negotiations between directly concerned parties.

The impending decision by the arbitration court over the issue would not make the settlement of disputes in the South China Sea any easier at least, said Talmon, adding that the ruling may even be counterproductive to the solution of the problems.

Pakistani political and strategic analyst Sultan Mahamoud Ali noted that China has been very successful in resolving territorial issues with neighbors via bilateral talks.

China has already settled land boundary with 12 of its 14 neighbors and it is committed to the development of good neighborly relations with other countries in the region, including the Philippines, he said.

For Manila, it could achieve better results if it chooses to engage in direct talks with China, he added.

Related:

Interview: Manila intensifies tension in South China Sea -- former diplomat

MANILA, June 9 (Xinhua) -- The Philippine government has been behind the intensifying tensions in the South China Sea, a former diplomat of the country told Xinhua on Wednesday.

Alberto Encomienda, former secretary-general of Maritime and Ocean Affairs Center of the Philippine Foreign Affairs Department, said: "China has been for the negotiations all along, but from the beginning we are not." Full story

How to Bridge the Divide Over the South China Sea

The differences between China and the U.S. over the South China Sea issue have become a matter of concern and even anxiety. But some of the perceptions in the U.S. and elsewhere about Chinas policy and intentions in the area are misplaced. A pressing task is to understand the facts and Chinas intentions correctly so as to avoid real danger and consequences as a result of misinterpretation and miscalculation. Full Story

China urges Philippines to immediately cease arbitral proceedings

BEIJING, June 8 (Xinhua) -- China on Wednesday again urged the Philippines to stop its arbitral proceedings and return to the right track of settling relevant disputes in the South China Sea through bilateral negotiation with China.
A Syrian family pose for a photo in a room where they are residing in the Shatila Palestinian refugee camp on the southern outskirts of the Lebanese capital, Beirut, on April 5, 2016. (Xinhua/AFP Photo)

by Salah Takieddine

BEIRUT, June 9 (Xinhua) -- Suheila Idriss, a Syrian woman who fled her devastated town in Aleppo and took refuge in the plains of Marjeyoun in South Lebanon, feels confused and puzzled every day while preparing the traditional iftar for her family.

Iftar is the meal that breaks the long day of fasting for the Muslims during the holy month of Ramadan that started Monday.

"We cannot prepare the proper iftar because our severe living conditions, and we content ourselves with the minimum required," Idriss told Xinhua.

"We lost the pleasure of family gathering at the iftar after five years of displacement and our Ramadan remains full of sadness and pain due to the loss of relatives and friends in the war," she added.

In the nearby plain of Sarda, Jamila al-Ahmad, displaced from Damascus, told Xinhua "before our displacement to Lebanon, we spent two years in our town being bombed and shelled, and we could not find anything to feed ourselves, but here in Lebanon, we depend on aid we get during Ramadan from the United Nations and the local donors."

She stressed "despite the rationing in the aid given by the donors, our situation here is better than in Syria."

For her part, Ilham Soueidan, who was displaced to Hasbaya in South Lebanon from Damascus, told Xinhua "none of the refugees feels the happiness of Ramadan for years."

A Syrian refugee boy plays at an unofficial refugee camp in Lebanon's town of Bar Elias in the Bekaa Valley on May 13, 2016. (Xinhua/AFP Photo)

Isaaf Aboul Oula was fifty years old. She lost her husband in the devastated city of Idlid.

She recalled how her late husband would "work hard to secure what is needed for the iftar during Ramadan. "But today our lives have turned upside down and I depend with my five children, as most of the refugees in the camp, on the donations of the aid agencies and the locals."

Ahmad al-Oulabi, now taking shelter in the southern village of Rachaya al Wadi in Lebanon, told Xinhua that "during Ramadan, before and after, our main concern remains how to provide our families with the minimum required to secure our living."
An aerial photo taken on Sept. 25, 2015 from a seaplane of Hainan Maritime Safety Administration shows cruise vessel Haixun 1103 heading to the Yacheng 13-1 drilling rig during a patrol in South China Sea. (Xinhua file photo/Zhao Yingquan)

HOUSTON, June 9 (Xinhua) -- The decisions taken by a tribunal set up by the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) are unfair, and China is justified in rejecting them, a Houston-based professor told Xinhua in a recent interview.

The tribunal's admission of Philippine's arbitration request constituted a misguided application of Article 287 of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), Peter Li, an associate professor of the University of Houston Downtown said.

Article 287 and Annex VII of the UNCLOS provided for the start of compulsory arbitration proceedings for addressing conflicts over interpretation or application of the UNCLOS, but it was not designed to serve as a territorial dispute settlement mechanism.

In 2006, China made clear the settlement of the disputes over the delimitation of maritime boundaries did not fall under the jurisdiction of Article 287.

Under this pretext, it was unfair for the tribunal to accept the case brought forward by the Philippines, Li said, breaking down the reason to three points.

First, China's opposition to the arbitration proceedings was rejected by the PCA. The admission of Philippine's unilateral arbitration request was indicative of the Court's position biased towards Manila.

Second, all of the claims made by the Philippines were admitted by the tribunal while China's arguments have all been rejected by the tribunal, including its calls for the exclusion of delimitation of maritime boundaries from compulsory arbitrary proceedings, and to follow peaceful settlement and consultation principles agreed among Southeast Asian countries.

Third, the tribunal has abused its mandate granted by the UNCLOS by involving itself in a territorial dispute that it has no authority to rule over.

Due to the unfairness of the tribunal's actions, China has no legal obligations to participate in or to accept the verdict, Li said.

"China's rejection of and non-participation in the arbitration proceedings are in compliance with the UNCLOS," he added.

As a sovereign nation, China has the right to use all means to defend its territorial security, he said.

The expected ruling will stoke tensions in the South China Sea, as it could send a wrong signal to Manila that it has the backing of the international community behind its territorial claims, encouraging it to turn a blind eye to China's bid of peacefully settling the dispute through bilateral talks, Li said.

"Territorial disputes are to be resolved through bilateral or trilateral or multilateral talks among the parties concerned. Therefore, the disputes are matters between China and the Philippines," he said.

He praised China for its position of peaceful settlement of the disputes and the continued efforts China has made over the past years, adding that China's position to seek a negotiated settlement of the disputes in the South China Sea is "the right approach."

"China's position that the disputes are to be resolved by the countries concerned can best prevent the conflict from being dragged into a complex web of private interests that have nothing to do with the interest of the countries in the region," he stressed.

Related:

Interview: Manila intensifies tension in South China Sea -- former diplomat

MANILA, June 9 (Xinhua) -- The Philippine government has been behind the intensifying tensions in the South China Sea, a former diplomat of the country told Xinhua on Wednesday.

Alberto Encomienda, former secretary-general of Maritime and Ocean Affairs Center of the Philippine Foreign Affairs Department, said: "China has been for the negotiations all along, but from the beginning we are not." Full story

How to Bridge the Divide Over the South China Sea

The differences between China and the U.S. over the South China Sea issue have become a matter of concern and even anxiety. But some of the perceptions in the U.S. and elsewhere about Chinas policy and intentions in the area are misplaced. A pressing task is to understand the facts and Chinas intentions correctly so as to avoid real danger and consequences as a result of misinterpretation and miscalculation. Full Story

China urges Philippines to immediately cease arbitral proceedings

BEIJING, June 8 (Xinhua) -- China on Wednesday again urged the Philippines to stop its arbitral proceedings and return to the right track of settling relevant disputes in the South China Sea through bilateral negotiation with China.
ISLAMABAD, June 10 (Xinhua) -- A team of senior U.S. officials are scheduled to arrive in Pakistan on Friday for key talks at a time when a recent American drone strike in the sensitive Balochistan province has badly affected bilateral relations, officials said.

Adviser to the Prime Minister on Foreign Affairs Sartaj Aziz warned on Thursday that the drone attack would have "long-lasting implications" for the relationship.

Pakistani officials believe that the U.S. strike that had killed the Afghan Taliban chief, Mullah Akhtar Mansour on May 21, has also undermined the diplomatic efforts for peace process in Afghanistan.

Official sources say that the U.S. Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan Richard Olson and Senior Director for South Asian Affairs at the National Security Council Peter Lavoy are among the U.S. officials who will hold talks with senior Pakistani civil and military leaders.

Both sides will hold talks later on Friday, Sartaj Aziz said.

"Pakistan would record its protest over the drone strike in Balochistan during today's meeting with United States delegation," the adviser said ahead of the talks.

Pakistan believes that on one hand Washington seeks the country's role to bring the Taliban to the negotiation table, but on the other it has itself killed already dim chances for the peace process.

Islamabad denies sheltering Taliban and insists that Pakistan hosts nearly 3 million Afghans, over million un-registered, and there would be possibility of some Taliban living among them.

Pakistan is also upset at what it believes "discriminatory policy" by Washington to deal Pakistan and India in respect of its quest for membership in the Nuclear Suppliers Group.

"In our interactions, we firmly conveyed to the USA that maintaining effective nuclear deterrence is critical for Pakistan's security and only Pakistan itself can determine how it should respond to the growing strategic and conventional imbalances in South Asia," Aziz told reporters in Islamabad on Thursday.

U.S. President Barrack Obama this week endorsed India's bid for NSG (Nuclear Suppliers Group) membership during his meeting with the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi at White House.

The 48-nation NSG aims to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons by restricting the sale of items that can be used to make those arms.

India has never signed the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), the main global arms control pact.

However, the U.S. is silent on Pakistan's call for its NSG membership, which is seen as another major irritant in bilateral relations.

"We have been constantly reminding the United States to be mindful of maintaining a security balance for peace in the region," the Pakistani adviser said.
NEW DELHI, June 10 (Xinhua) -- A 40-year-old Indian woman working with a well-known international non-government organization has been kidnapped in Afghanistan, sources said Friday.

"Judith D'Souza was kidnapped in Kabul late on Thursday night. Officials of the Indian Embassy in the Afghan capital are coordinating with authorities there to get her released," the sources said.

The kidnapping came barely a month after India had issued an advisory for its nationals living in Afghanistan or visiting the country, urging them to take adequate security precautions.

"All Indians residing and travelling to Afghanistan are advised that the security situation in the country remains highly volatile," the statement said.

It added: "Terrorist attacks have taken place in the country against foreigners and are expected to continue. There is also the risk of kidnapping and hostage taking throughout the Afghanistan."
RONGJIANG, June 10, 2016 (Xinhua) -- An aerial photo taken on June 10, 2016 shows farmlands are submerged by flood in Zhaihao Township of Rongjiang County, southwest China's Guizhou Province, June 10, 2016. Three people remain missing after rain-triggered floods in Guizhou Province. From 8 a.m. Thursday to 8 a.m. Friday, heavy rain hit more than 100 townships in Guizhou, (Xinhua/Wang Bingzhen)

GUIYANG, June 10 (Xinhua) -- Three people remain missing after rain-triggered floods in southwest China's Guizhou Province, local authorities said on Friday.

From 8 a.m. Thursday to 8 a.m. Friday, heavy rain hit more than 100 townships in Guizhou, said the provincial meteorological bureau.

In the small hours of Friday, villages in Jiuchao Township, Liping County, were inundated and residents were trapped in their homes. Electric power and telecommunications were disrupted and roads were cut off, according to the county's publicity office.

Liu Shanping, the Communist Party of China chief of Jiuchao Village, and two villagers were swept away by the flood water when Liu attempted to rescue the two trapped people.

Rescuers are searching for the three while relocating the affected villagers to safety.

The provincial meteorological bureau warned of a new round of rain from Friday to Saturday, which is likely to cause floods and mudslides.

The National Meteorological Center on Friday forecast rain for Yunnan, Guangxi, Guangdong, Fujian, Hainan, Guizhou, Heilongjiang, Jilin, Liaoning and Hebei regions on Friday and Saturday.

Storms in south and east China have disrupted the lives of hundreds of thousands of people over the past two weeks, damaging crops and forcing many to evacuate.
PHNOM PENH, June 10 (Xinhua) -- Cambodia imported 302,776 tons of petroleum in the first quarter of 2016, down 30 percent from 434,288 tons over the same period last year, according to the data of the Ministry of Commerce on Friday.

The Southeast Asian country spent 115 million U.S. dollars on oil purchase during the January-March period this year, down 55 percent from 258 million U.S. dollars over the same period last year, the data said.

Cambodia imports petroleum from Vietnam, Singapore and Thailand as its seabed's oil and gas have not yet been exploited.

A liter of premium gasoline costs 0.87 U.S. dollar at gas stations in Phnom Penh this week, according to the Ministry of Commerce.

Last month, China National Petroleum Corporation Northeast Refining & Chemical Engineering Company secured an engineering, procurement and construction contract from of the Cambodian Petrochemical Company to construct a 620 million-U.S.-dollar oil refinery in southwestern Preah Sihanouk province.

The construction on the oil refinery will start later this year and is expected to be completed by the end of 2018.
A poster of movie "Blade Runner" (1982) -- directed by Ridley Scott -- shows a flying car hovering in front a giant electronic board in a dystopian future. (Source: warnerbrothers.com)

NEW YORK, June 10 (Xinhua) -- Many nerds/billionaires spend their money in realizing their childhood dreams: Elon Musk has his rockets and Jeff Bezos drones and robots.

For Larry Page, co-founder of Google, his dream is flying cars, or at least according to a recent report from Bloomberg,

The report said that Page has been bankrolling two California startups for developing a serious flying car. Page, although the reason remains unknown, insists anonymity on this matter.

Clearly he is funding two companies at the same time in order to let them compete directly with each other, making the job done faster.

Bloomberg cited resources saying that Zee.Aero, one of the two startups, has developed a pair of prototype aircraft which it tests regularly.
ISTANBUL, June 10 (Xinhua) -- A Kurdish group on Friday claimed responsibility for a car bomb attack that killed 11 people in central Istanbul on Tuesday, Turkish media reported.

The Kurdistan Freedom Hawks (TAK), a Kurdish militant group linked to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), announced on Twitter that it carried out the attack.

A bomb-laden car was exploded in the morning rush hour on Tuesday as a riot police shuttle bus passed by in the neighborhood of Vezneciler in Istanbul's Fatih district, killing 11, including six police officers and injuring 36 others.

The TAK had previously claimed three suicide bombing attacks that hit Turkey's capital Ankara in February and March respectively and the northwestern city of Bursa in May.

Turkish security forces and the PKK, which is branded as a terrorist organization by Turkey, the United States and the European Union, resumed fighting in July last year in the country's southeast, ending a peace process that had lasted for more than two years.

On Thursday, the PKK claimed the car bomb attack that hit Turkey's southeastern province of Mardin on Wednesday and killed six.
HANOI, June 10 (Xinhua) -- The Airports Corporation of Vietnam (ACV) is planning an investment plan worth 26.206 trillion Vietnamese dong (over 1.175 billion U.S. dollars) during 2016-2018 period, with an aim of upgrading the country's airports.

Specifically, ACV will spend some 7.774 trillion Vietnamese dong (348.61 million U.S. dollars) on upgrading runways and taxiways. The investment is set to come from state budget, according to the E-Portal of Vietnamese government on Friday.

Meanwhile, the rest of some 18.432 trillion Vietnamese dong (826.55 million U.S. dollars), which will be mobilized by the ACV itself, will pour on improvement of terminals and parking grounds.

Currently, the ACV is responsible on managing and exploiting all 22 airports across Vietnam. Among those, there are nine international airports and 13 domestic one, with designed capacity of welcoming 80 million passengers per year.
ANKARA, June 10 (Xinhua) -- Turkish General Staff said Friday that an airstrike has killed at least eight terrorists in southeastern Turkish province of Hakkari.

In an official statement, it said the army detected these terrorists in Daglica district of Hakkari and dispatched warplanes to wipe out the targets.

Two village guards were killed Thursday in Kurdish Workers' Party (PKK) militants attack in Semdinli district of Hakkari province, sources told Anadolu Agency.

Also on Thursday, three suicide vests with plastic explosives were seized at road side in the Tarsus district of the southern province of Mersin.

The country has recently seen a string of suicide bomb attacks on police targets. Six people were killed, including three police officers, and around 30 others were wounded in a car bomb attack against the police headquarters in Midyat district of Mardin on Wednesday. A day later, another car bomb strike killed 11 people in central Istanbul.

The PKK and the Kurdistan Freedom Hawks (TAK), a splinter group of the PKK claimed responsibility for the two attacks.
BEIJING, June 10 (Xinhua) -- The Chinese Society of International Law (CSIL) on Friday releases a paper under the title the Tribunal's Award in the "South China Sea Arbitration" Initiated by the Philippines is Null and Void, supporting the Chinese Government's position of neither accepting nor participating in the arbitration initiated by the Philippines.

From a legal point of view, the CSIL criticizes on errors the Arbitral Tribunal makes in its award on jurisdiction, and demonstrates that both this award and the pending award on merits are null and void.
by Xinhua writer Liu Peng

SUVA, June 10 (Xinhua) -- New Zealand Prime Minister John Key wrapped up Friday his two-day official visit to Fiji, where the two neighbors agreed on reinventing diplomatic ties and entering a new era.

SPIRIT OF FRIENDSHIP & POSITIVITY

Key, onboard a military aircraft and accompanied by New Zealand officials and journalists, arrived Thursday afternoon local time to kick start the first ever visit to Fiji by an incumbent New Zealand Prime Minister in a decade, extensively welcomed by Fijians.

Speaking at a joint press conference Friday with Fijian Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama, Key said both leaders have been working together on Cyclone Winston recovery, a double-tax agreement, a trade agreement and a seasonal workers scheme during the half-hour bilateral talk held earlier in the day.

"I am here to reset the relationship so that we can go forward together under the spirit of great friendship and positivity," Key said.

New Zealand is willing to reinvent its diplomatic ties with Fiji, Key said.

"As I said to the Prime Minister (Bainimarama), I didn't come to Fiji to reiterate the issues of the last ten years, I came to Fiji to demonstrate actively that New Zealand wants to progress the relationship, that there's a great deal we could and should be doing together, and New Zealand is utterly committed to the Fijian relationship," Key told reporters.

According to Key, the purpose of his visit is to build a solid platform for the future between New Zealand and Fiji.

PIF STALEMATE

Diplomatic ties between Fiji and New Zealand soured after the 2006 coup, which Bainimarama calls a "revolution" intended to end ethnic inequality and to create a common identity and equal citizenry.

After the 2006 incident, New Zealand, together with a number of western allies, slapped a range of bilateral and multilateral sanctions against Fiji. The sanctions were lifted after Fiji's 2014 general election, where Bainimarama and his FijiFirst party gained popular support and won a landslide victory, which has been confirmed by international observers as credible.

However, when Fiji's suspension from the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) was lifted, Bainimarama started boycotting the forum, declining to attend its meetings, including one that was held in Papua New Guinea last September.

The Fijian prime minister has repeatedly said that he objects to Australia and New Zealand's "undue influence", which the two countries deny, and said he believes the PIF no longer serves the best interests of Pacific islands, and that he would not attend the forum until Australia and New Zealand become development partners rather than full members.

The Pacific Islands Development Forum (PIDF), whose full members do not include Australia or New Zealand and whose secretariat is also located in Suva, is seen by some to be competing with the PIF, which has been accused by Bainimarama as "dominated only by a few".

According to Radio New Zealand International (RNZ), at the talks Friday in Suva, Key told Bainimarama that New Zealand will not leave the PIF.

"Mr. Key says New Zealand has responsibilities across the Pacific and it takes those seriously and the forum (PIF) is the architecture used for that," RNZ reported.

"He (Key) says he thinks Mr. Bainimarama will return eventually as Fiji has engaged with the forum at a lower level," said the report, which did not include any remark from the Fijian prime minister.

AGREEING TO DISAGREE

On the issue of Fiji's blacklisting of some New Zealand journalists, the two prime ministers agreed to disagree.

At the official welcome banquet Thursday evening, Bainimarama underscored and explained his stance on the blacklisting.

"Any journalist is free to criticize my government or me in an opinion piece or report criticism made by others in their news stories," Bainimarama said.

"But we cannot allow the willful propagation of false information that damages the national interest and undermines our vulnerable economy. And that is what has happened in the case of certain New Zealand journalists and others from Australia," he added.

No journalist from any other country has been banned from Fiji, the Fijian prime minister confirmed.

"New Zealand television ran footage of tanks in the streets of Suva when our military does not own any tanks. They had been interposed from other sources. A claim was made that Fijian children were starving and were eating grass. These are egregious examples of wilful bias and misreporting," Bainimarama underscored.

"We are saying to the news organizations that employ them: send someone else. Someone who respects the facts and the right of people to know the truth. Not some twisted concoction," the Fijian prime minister underscored.

LESS PRESCRIPTIVE

On the idea of reinventing the diplomatic ties and entering into a new era, Bainimarama agrees.

Before the Friday talk, Bainimarama told Key in his banquet speech that he was coming to the talk in "a genuine spirit of engagement".

A spirit of "letting bygones be bygones and setting our relationship and that of our nations on a new course," he said.

The "strains" and "irritants" that have marked Fiji's political relationship with New Zealand in recent years are a "textbook lesson" on how not to conduct friendly relations between neighboring governments, Bainimarama said.

"And I ask you and your government to work with us to create a better framework in which to conduct our affairs. Less prescriptive. More consultative. More understanding of the challenges we face," Bainimarama told Key.
JERUSALEM, June 10 (Xinhua) -- Israeli security forces are on high alert for the first Friday prayers of the month-long Muslim holiday of Ramadan, two days after four Israelis were killed in a Tel Aviv shooting attack.

Thousands of Israeli police officers and border police guards were deployed throughout the city of Jerusalem, focusing specifically on the East Jerusalem areas inhabited mostly by the Palestinians, police spokeswoman Luba Samri said in a statement.

"The Jerusalem police would act sternly against any source which attempts to violate the order," Samri added.

The focal point of the Friday prayers are at the flashpoint holy site of Temple Mount in East Jerusalem, home to the Al-Aqsa Mosque. Tens of thousands of Muslim worshipers are set to attend the Friday prayer services at the mount.

The site, known to Muslims as Noble Sanctuary, has been a source of frequent tensions, as Muslims believe to be the place from where Muhammad ascended to heaven, and Jews believe it is part of the second Jewish temple from antiquity.

It has been a source of strife, as Jews can visit but not pray there, and tensions exacerbated last September, when Jewish and Muslim holidays collided, and clashes ensued. These clashes were followed by a wave of violence throughout the country, which started in October, and had since claimed the lives of 32 Israelis and 205 Palestinians.

Four Israelis were killed and five were injured in moderate to serious condition after two Palestinian gunmen from the southern West Bank shot at them at a cafe in a popular retail and restaurant center in Tel Aviv on Wednesday evening, in one of the deadliest attacks in the current wave of unrest.

Following security consultations, the Israeli Defense Ministry announced on Thursday it is retracting tens of thousands of permits allowing Palestinians from the West Bank and the Gaza Strip to enter Israel to meet their families and visit the Temple Mount.

The permits were delivered a week earlier, as a means of facilitating the Palestinians during Ramadan.

Furthermore, the army would impose a closure starting on Friday and until midnight between Sunday and Monday on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip territories, amid the Jewish holiday of Shavuot, celebrated on Saturday and Sunday.

"In accordance with government directives and the ongoing situation assessment, as of Friday crossings from the Gaza Strip and West Bank territories will be open to Palestinians only in medical and humanitarian cases," a spokesperson for the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) told Xinhua.

While the closure is imposed amid other measures deployed following the attack, it is also common for the Israeli defense establishment to impose closure on Palestinian territories during Jewish holidays.

The army also announced that it had deployed two additional battalions to the Judea and Samaria (the Jewish biblical name for the West Bank) on Thursday as a result of the attack.

Israeli leaders blame the Palestinian National Authority for incitement to violence amid the wave of unrest, whereas the Palestinians charge it is the result of 49 years of Israeli occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip, where they wish to establish a state.
Israeli border guards stand at the Israeli checkpoint between the West Bank town of Bethlehem and Jerusalem, as Palestinians head to Jerusalem to attend the first Friday noon prayers of the holy Muslim fasting month of Ramadan at the Al-Aqsa mosque compound on June 10, 2016. (Xinhua/AFP Photo)

JERUSALEM, June 10 (Xinhua) -- Israeli security forces are on high alert for the first Friday prayers of the month-long Muslim holiday of Ramadan, two days after four Israelis were killed in a Tel Aviv shooting attack.

Thousands of Israeli police officers and border police guards were deployed throughout the city of Jerusalem, focusing specifically on the East Jerusalem areas inhabited mostly by the Palestinians, police spokeswoman Luba Samri said in a statement.

"The Jerusalem police would act sternly against any source which attempts to violate the order," Samri added.

The focal point of the Friday prayers are at the flashpoint holy site of Temple Mount in East Jerusalem, home to the Al-Aqsa Mosque. Tens of thousands of Muslim worshipers are set to attend the Friday prayer services at the mount.

The site, known to Muslims as Noble Sanctuary, has been a source of frequent tensions, as Muslims believe to be the place from where Muhammad ascended to heaven, and Jews believe it is part of the second Jewish temple from antiquity.

It has been a source of strife, as Jews can visit but not pray there, and tensions exacerbated last September, when Jewish and Muslim holidays collided, and clashes ensued. These clashes were followed by a wave of violence throughout the country, which started in October, and had since claimed the lives of 32 Israelis and 205 Palestinians.

Four Israelis were killed and five were injured in moderate to serious condition after two Palestinian gunmen from the southern West Bank shot at them at a cafe in a popular retail and restaurant center in Tel Aviv on Wednesday evening, in one of the deadliest attacks in the current wave of unrest.

Following security consultations, the Israeli Defense Ministry announced on Thursday it is retracting tens of thousands of permits allowing Palestinians from the West Bank and the Gaza Strip to enter Israel to meet their families and visit the Temple Mount.

The permits were delivered a week earlier, as a means of facilitating the Palestinians during Ramadan.

Furthermore, the army would impose a closure starting on Friday and until midnight between Sunday and Monday on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip territories, amid the Jewish holiday of Shavuot, celebrated on Saturday and Sunday.

"In accordance with government directives and the ongoing situation assessment, as of Friday crossings from the Gaza Strip and West Bank territories will be open to Palestinians only in medical and humanitarian cases," a spokesperson for the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) told Xinhua.

Israeli border police stand guard while Palestinians wait to cross through the Qalandia checkpoint near the West Bank city of Ramallah June 10, 2016, as they head to Jerusalem's Al-Aqsa mosque for the first Friday prayer of the holy Muslim fasting month of Ramadan. (Xinhua/AFP Photo)

While the closure is imposed amid other measures deployed following the attack, it is also common for the Israeli defense establishment to impose closure on Palestinian territories during Jewish holidays.

The army also announced that it had deployed two additional battalions to the Judea and Samaria (the Jewish biblical name for the West Bank) on Thursday as a result of the attack.

Israeli leaders blame the Palestinian National Authority for incitement to violence amid the wave of unrest, whereas the Palestinians charge it is the result of 49 years of Israeli occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip, where they wish to establish a state.
ISLAMABAD, June 10 (Xinhua) -- Pakistan on Friday told visiting senior U.S. officials that a recent U.S. drone strike in its southwestern Balochistan province has "vitiated bilateral ties."

Ambassador Richard Olson, U.S. Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan and Peter Lavoy, Senior Adviser and Director for South Asian Affairs of at the U.S. National Security Council arrived in Islamabad early Friday weeks after a U.S. drone attack killed the Afghan Taliban chief at a time when efforts were underway to bring the Taliban to the negotiation table.

The U.S. delegation held talks with Adviser to the Prime Minister on Foreign Affairs Sartaj Aziz and Foreign Secretary Aizaz Ahmed Chaudhry at the Foreign Ministry and held candid discussions on bilateral relations, regional security situation and the Afghan peace process in the wake of May 21 drone strike in Balochistan, the Foreign Ministry said.

"The Adviser conveyed a strong message to the United States that the 21 May drone strike was not only a violation of Pakistan's sovereignty and breach of the principles of the United Nation's Charter, but has also vitiated bilateral ties," a Foreign Ministry statement said.

"It was emphasized that any future drone strike in Pakistan will be detrimental to our common desire to strengthen relations," the statement further said.

The adviser further expressed his concern that the drone strike had seriously undermined the ongoing efforts for Afghan peace and reconciliation process at a time when Pakistan, along with other Quadrilateral Coordination Group (QCG) countries, was engaged in serious efforts to revive peace talks between the Afghan government and the Taliban.

The foreign secretary recalled that in QCG's fifth meeting on May 18 in Islamabad, it was decided that peace negotiations remained the only option for a political settlement. He emphasized that this would require collective efforts on the part of all QCG members to promote lasting peace in Afghanistan.

In response to U.S. queries on safe havens for Taliban, it was emphasized that Pakistan is already pursuing its objective of eliminating all militants and terrorists from its soil in accordance with an anti-terror policy known as the National Action Plan.

The Pakistani side asked the U.S. officials to push the Afghan government to take actions against the Pakistani militants on the Afghan side of the border.

"Pakistan also expects action by Afghan forces against TTP (Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan) operatives in Afghanistan. These steps would also help to promote better relations between Afghanistan and Pakistan and reduce mistrust," the statement quoted Pakistani officials as telling the U.S. officials.

Peter Lavoy said that U.S. President Obama was committed to improving relations with Pakistan as emphasized during the Prime Minister's visit to Washington in October 2015, the statement said.

He also conveyed President Obama's good wishes for the Prime Minister, Nawaz Sharif's speedy recovery, who is in London after his recent open heart surgery.
OUAGADOUGOU, June 10 (Xinhua) -- About ten civil society groups in Burkina Faso on Thursday launched a campaign aimed at pushing for the abolition of death penalty in the West African country where about 13 people have been sentenced to hang.

According to spokesman Urbain Yameogo on behalf of the ten civil society groups, all organizations engaged in the national coalition against the death sentence "have a firm conviction that the death penalty in our legal provisions is unconstitutional."

Yameogo said the groups was alarmed by the recent increase in death sentences in Burkina Faso.

He attributed this situation to the rise in large scale crime such as terrorism and other atrocious crimes that negatively influence public opinion against the push for abolition of death penalty.

Despite having the death penalty in its statute books, Burkina Faso has not hanged anyone since 1988. However, 13 people are currently awaiting their execution after being sentenced to death.

The latest case occurred in July last year when an army officer was sentenced to hang after killing his ex-girlfriend.

In 2015, a bill proposing abolition of death penalty was introduced in Parliament by the then head of the National Transition Council Cheriff Sy. The bill was supported by Burkina Faso Bar Association as well as civil society organizations.

"The best reward we can give to the country in the year 2016, which has been declared the African Year of Human Rights, with a Particular Focus on the Rights of Women, is to completely abolish death penalty," Yameogo said.
ISLAMABAD, June 10 (Xinhua) -- At least four people were killed and 15 others injured when roof a mosque collapsed during afternoon prayers in Pakistan's southern port city of Karachi on Friday, local Urdu TV channel Samaa reported.
BEIJING, June 10 (Xinhua) -- The Chinese Society of International Law (CSIL) on Friday releases a paper under the title the Tribunal's Award in the "South China Sea Arbitration" Initiated by the Philippines is Null and Void, supporting the Chinese Government's position of neither accepting nor participating in the arbitration initiated by the Philippines.

From a legal point of view, the CSIL criticizes on errors the Arbitral Tribunal makes in its award on jurisdiction, and demonstrates that both this award and the pending award on merits are null and void.

The Paper points out that the Award on Jurisdiction and Admissibility in the South China Sea Arbitration, issued by the Arbitral Tribunal on 29 October 2015, is full of errors in both the determination of fact and the application of Law. In the Award, there exist at least six main errors as follows:

First, the Tribunal errs in finding that the claims made by the Philippines constitute disputes between China and the Philippines concerning the interpretation or application of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS);

Second, the Tribunal errs in taking jurisdiction over claims which in essence are issues of sovereignty over land territory and are beyond the purview of the UNCLOS;

Third, the Tribunal errs in taking jurisdiction over claims concerning maritime delimitation which have been excluded by China from compulsory procedures in line with the UNCLOS;

Fourth, the Tribunal errs in denying that there exists between China and the Philippines an agreement to settle the disputes in question through negotiation;

Fifth, the Tribunal errs in finding that the Philippines had fulfilled the obligation to "exchange views" regarding the means of dispute settlement with respect to the claims it made;

Sixth, the Tribunal's Award deviates from the object and purpose of the dispute settlement mechanism under the UNCLOS, and impairs the integrity and authority of the UNCLOS.

The Paper stresses that the Tribunal's Award on Jurisdiction, by contravening the principle of prudence, is groundless in fact or law and obviously unjust. Such a political decision shall have no legal effect.

Finally, the Tribunal's establishment of jurisdiction over the Philippines' claims is completely erroneous. Therefore, any decision that the Tribunal may make on the substantive issues will equally have no legal effect.
ARUSHA, Tanzania, June 10 (Xinhua) -- Police have seized and destroyed 26 tons of marijuana in a crackdown operation carried out on the slopes of Mount Meru, in northern Tanzania's region of Arusha, authorities said Friday.

Charles Mkumbo, Arusha Regional Police Commander, said here that the confiscation of those bags is a result of one-month crackdown operation in the region.

Mkumbo said 269 bags of marijuana were seized in different locations across Arumeru, the notorious district for marijuana farming in northern Tanzania.

This is the biggest seizure of the illicit drugs in recent years in the East African nation.

The regional police chief described the operation as successful and the seized bags of cannabis have been destroyed at the Muriet dumpsite, located a few kilometers from Arusha City Center.

"Most of the bags were found while left unattended by farmers and drug dealers in the area. Some of the of perpetrators managed to run away, but the operation is ongoing," the Mkumbo said.

Before getting into the operation, the official said police mapped the notorious area for producing marijuana in the area.

Mkumbo called on all people involved in marijuana farming to look for other ventures as police will leave no stone unturned.

Arusha is one of the key marijuana producing areas in Tanzania. Other regions in which the most cannabis is cultivated are Morogoro, Iringa, Tabora, Mara, Rukwa, Ruvuma, and Tanga.

Most of the marijuana grown in the country are illegally sold in major cities and as far as neighboring Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, and Sudan.

With a population of nearly 50 million, Tanzania ranked fourth in the world as a producer of dried marijuana as well as producing significant quantities of khat.
URUMQI, June 10 (Xinhua) -- China will spend 350 million yuan (about 53 million U.S. dollars) this year to clean up the largest salt lake in northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region.

The money will be used to set up wastewater treatment plants in Ebinur Lake basin to reduce the density of pollutants in the water flowing into the lake and tributaries, according to the regional development and reform commission.

Located in the southwestern part of Junggar Basin, the lake used to boast a surface area of 1,250 square kilometers in 1950s. But it has shrunk to around 400 square kilometers due to increasing demand for water for irrigation and industry near the lake since 1970s.

The vast barren lake bed has resulted in regular sandstorms.

Home to a variety of endangered species, the lake was listed as a national nature reserve in 2007.
JALALABAD, Afghanistan, June 10 (Xinhua) -- At least three Afghan civilians were killed and over 40 others wounded on Friday after a bomb went off during Friday prayers in eastern Nangarhar province, the provincial government said.
YINCHUAN, June 8, 2016 (Xinhua) -- Passengers prepare to board a train at the railway station in Yinchuan, capital of northwest China's Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, June 8, 2016. The number of passengers in Yinchuan railway station increased on Wednesday, one day before the 3-day holiday of the Dragon Boat Festival, or Duanwu Festival. (Xinhua/Peng Zhaozhi)

BEIJING, June 10 (Xinhua) -- Some 11.28 million train trips were made on Thursday, Dragon Boat Festival, up 15.1 percent from the same period last year.

This is also above an estimate of 10.7 million trips expected on Thursday, according to the China Railway Corporation.

Train trips are expected to drop to 8.25 million on Friday, the second day of the three-day holiday.

A total of 411 trains were added Thursday and the figure will be 324 on Friday.

Railway authorities have temporarily prolonged the operating time for online ticketing systems during the holiday, and travelers can check vacant seat information and book tickets at 12306.cn half an hour before the trains depart instead of the usual two hours.

Dragon Boat Festival is celebrated on the fifth day of the fifth month of the Chinese lunar calendar, it fell on June 9 this year. Enditem
NEW DELHI, June 10 (Xinhua) -- An Indian court Friday sentenced five men to life in jail for the gang rape of a 52-year-old Danish tourist in the capital in 2014.

The court on Monday convicted them for kidnapping and raping the Danish tourist at knife-point in January 2014 after she had asked them for directions when she lost her way to her hotel.

After a couple of days of argument by the prosecutor and the defense counsel of the convicts, the judge pronounced the order in presence of all five of them in the court on Friday.

However, the five convicts have the right to appeal against their sentences in a higher court of law and then in the Supreme Court.

The victim, who had just come to Delhi after visiting the iconic Taj Mahal, left India soon after the incident following recording of her statement before police in presence of the Danish ambassador.

Initially a total of nine people, including three minors, were arrested by the Delhi Police for the crime. One of the accused died during trial, while the minors are being tried by juvenile court.

Scrutiny of sexual violence in India has increased many-fold since the brutal and fatal gang rape of a 23-year-old medical student by six men on a moving bus in Delhi in 2012.
JALALABAD, Afghanistan, June 10 (Xinhua) -- At least three Afghan civilians were killed and 55 others wounded on Friday after a bomb went off during a Friday prayers in eastern Nangarhar province, the provincial government spokesman said.

"An improvised explosive device planted inside a mosque in Hissarrak locality, Rodat district went off at around 01:30 p.m. local time, causing three killed and 55 injured," Attaullah Khoagyani told Xinhua.

Government troops cordoned off the area shortly after the blast, keeping people from gathering at the scene for fears that there might be a second blast.

The casualties were shifted to nearby hospitals and several injured were transported by ambulances and police vehicles to provincial capital hospital.

Several hundreds of worshipers were attending the prayers when the incident took place, he said.

"The number of casualties may go up as many of the wounded remained in critical conditions," he said.

No group has claimed responsibility for the attack yet.
MAPUTO, June 10 (Xinhua) -- Mozambican President Filipe Nyusi and opposition leader Afonso Dhlakama are close to holding a face-to-face meeting and clear the way for resumption of peace negotiations that stalled last year, officials said on Friday.

According to Jose Manteigas, head of the main opposition delegation, both delegations have already agreed on most items with only a few contentious issues remaining.

"The points of agenda must first be debated within our own internal groups and then they will later be submitted at the highest level," said Manteigas.

He said both delegations agree that the agenda should include the meeting at the highest level, the debate around Renamo governing the provinces where it claims it won the majority of votes in the 2014 elections and the armed attacks particularly in the central region of the country.

The composition of armed forces and the security as well as disarming of the Renamo armed men are other issues agreed.

Jacinto Veloso, head of government delegation, said he believed that after the meeting between Nyusi and Dhlakama, there will be clear indications to guide the groups during talks aimed at restoring peace in the country.

On Thursday, Prime Minister Carlos Agostinho do Rosario and ruling party MPs urged the opposition to stop attacks against civilians in central and northern regions since peace talks had resumed.

In Renamo's latest attacks, a train transporting coal extracted by the Brazilian mining company Vale in central Sofala province was attacked allegedly by Renamo armed men.

Police say recent attacks by the opposition party left one person dead and injured several others and destroyed public transport infrastructure.

The conflict between the ruling Frelimo party and the opposition Renamo started in 2013 after an attack on Dhlakama by pro-government forces in Gorongosa, Renamo's former military base in central Sofala province.

This led Renamo to announce the end of its peace agreement with Frelimo signed in Rome in 1992.

Since 2013, tensions have risen and Renamo fighters have taken up arms in a battle against the Frelimo government.
ISLAMABAD, June 10 (Xinhua) -- Pakistan Army Chief General Raheel Sharif Friday urged the visiting American military officials and diplomats to target the Pakistani Taliban leaders who now operate from the Afghan side of the border, the military said.

General John Nicholson, Commander Resolute Support Mission in Afghanistan and Ambassador Richard Olson, U.S. Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan met General Raheel Sharif, amid tension between the two countries over a recent U.S. drone strike in Balochistan.

The U.S. officials arrived in Islamabad after a series of harsh statements by the Pakistani leaders over the May 21 drone attack that killed the Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Akhtar Mansour at a time when efforts were underway to start peace negotiations in Afghanistan.

"Expressing his serious concern on the U.S. drone strike in Balochistan as a violation of Pakistan's sovereignty, the COAS (Chief of the Army Staff) highlighted as to how it had impacted the mutual trust and respect," an army statement said after the meeting.

The army chief underlined that the U.S. action was counterproductive in consolidating the gains of Pakistan military operation in the tribal regions.

"All efforts for durable peace in the region have to be synergized with shared commitment and responsibility in order to make them successful," the statement quoted General Raheel as telling the American leaders.

He raised the demand of targeting the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and its chief Mullah Fazlullah in their bases in Afghanistan and reiterated Pakistan's resolve not to allow hostile intelligence agencies' efforts, especially "RAW and NDS, of fomenting terrorism."

Pakistani security officials say that almost all TTP leaders and fighters have fled to Afghanistan after a series of military operations in the tribal regions.

The regional security situation, with particular reference to border management with Afghanistan and peace and stability in Afghanistan in the post-May 21 U.S. drone strike environment came under discussion, the military said.

The army chief told the U.S. officials that the operation in the tribal regions codenamed "Zarb-e-Azb" was launched against terrorists of all hues and sanctuaries of terrorists have been dismantled without discrimination.

"All stakeholders need to understand Pakistan's challenges with regard to porous border, inter-tribal linkages and decades-old presence of over 3 million refugees. Blaming Pakistan for instability in Afghanistan is unfortunate," General Raheel said.

He reaffirmed the need for continuing harmonized efforts against terrorists and effective border management as ways to regional peace and stability. He further said Pakistan is committed to work for a long term peace process for Afghanistan under the QCG framework.
BRAZZAVILLE, June 10 (Xinhua) -- Republic of Congo's Justice Minister Pierre Mabiala on Thursday asked the public prosecutor to speed up the cases against General Marie Michel Mokoko, ex-presidential candidate in the March 20 elections, and ex-rebel leader Pastor Ntumi.

"The judicial proceedings against Mokoko which had already began, should be reactivated. It should be speeded up because a case of capital offense should not be kept in the judiciary's shelves for long," Mabiala said when he addressed the press in Brazzaville.

General Mokoko was charged after appearing in a video in 2007, in which he was discussing a plan to overthrow President Denis Sassou N'Guesso from power.

The justice minister also asked the prosecutor to open a judicial process against Pastor Ntumi, the former leader of Ninja Siloulou militia.

The militia were accused of orchestrating armed violence on April 4, 2016 in the southern suburbs of Brazzaville, killing 17 people among them three police officers.

"If Pastor Ntumi does not appear in court, he will be charged in absentia," Mabiala concluded.

In the month of May, Prosecutor Andre Oko Ngakala issued three arrest warrants against Ntumi and two of his confidants.
COLOMBO, June 10 (Xinhua) -- One Chinese rescue team constructed 16 settlements for Sri Lankan during their 9-day-visit here to help local people affected by serious floods and landslides, an official of Chinese Red Cross relief and rescue team said here on Friday.

After constructing 16 makeshift shelters with 446 tents in Kagalla and Dehiowita, the most serious landslide-affected by the recent flood and landslide, the rescue team flied back to China on early Friday morning, Mr. Yang Xusheng, the leader of Chinese Red Cross relief and rescue team told Xinhua.

Heavy rain followed by floods and landslides in Sri Lanka two weeks ago killed about 100 people with many more still missing. Over 500,000 people have been affected by the adverse weather.

The international community including China has offered relief supplies and money assistance to Sri Lanka. Besides 1.5 million U.S. dollars of cash donation, China further handed over 1,000 tents and 3,000 folding beds to Sri Lanka for construction of settlements.

The rescue team came with this batch of relief supplies to assist Sri Lanka in training soldiers on constructing settlements and setting up tents.

The team braved hot and humid weather and carried out the construction work during their stay, and "local people affected by disaster showed their hospitality and thanks to us and to China," Yang said.

The Sri Lankan soldiers will take over the remaining construction work, 292 of whom have been trained by the Chinese rescue team. It is reported that over 1,000 families will benefit from the batch of tents and folding bed.
TEHRAN, June 10 (Xinhua) -- Iran will continue its advisory support to Syria in its fight against terrorist groups, Iranian Defense Minister said Friday.

Taking firm and decisive action against terrorism is among Iran's declared policies, Brigadier General Hossein Dehqan said at a meeting with the visiting Syrian Defense Minister Fahd Jassem al-Freij, Tasnim news agency reported.

"Based on the request of the legitimate government of Syria, we regard supporting the people and government of the country as our duty," he was quoted as saying.

Iran's support to the Syrian government is aimed at establishing peace, stability and security in the Middle East region, he said.

For his part, al-Freij hailed Iran's continued support for the Syrian nation in its anti-terror campaign, and said such support would lead to the victory of the resistance against terrorists.

Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoygu and Syrian Defense Minister Fahd Jassem al-Freij arrived in Iran's capital Tehran on Thursday to exchange views on the latest regional development and discuss ways to strengthen the fight against terrorism.
GENEVA, June 10 (Xinhua) -- A UN rights expert on Friday warned that medical units were being viewed by many in Syria as areas of great danger with civilians choosing not to go near them due to fear for their safety.

The UN Special Rapporteur on the right to health, Dainius Puras on Friday condemned the direct targeting and continued damage and destruction of medical units in the ongoing war in Syria.

According to the expert, from the beginning of May 2016, the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has documented incidents involving at least eight medical units in Syria at which dozens of civilians were killed and injured.

He added that just this week, on June 8, several attacks on medical units took place in the city of Aleppo, killing at least 15 civilians.

"The sheer number of such facilities being hit, as well as information relating to some of the incidents, suggests that some hospitals and other medical facilities may have been directly targeted," he noted.

The latest UN figures show that at least 400,000 people have been killed and more than half of Syria's population has fled their homes since the political crisis and subsequent armed conflict broke out there in March 2011.
TAIPEI, June 10 (Xinhua) -- A delegation of leading Peking Opera artists from the mainland will stage a six-day performance in Taipei, according to the organizer of the cultural event on Friday.

The 80-member group, which arrived in Taipei on Thursday, includes well-known artists Yu Kuizhi and Li Shengsu with the National Peking Opera Co. in Beijing. They will stage seven performances from June 14 to 19 for local drama lovers.

The mainland artists will perform masterpieces such as "Man Jiang Hong," which tells a story of Yue Fei, a hero who fought against invading troops in the Southern Song Dynasty (1127-1279), and "Farewell My Concubine," a love story based on the legend of ancient hero Xiang Yu and his beloved concubine Yu, said the sponsoring arts company in Taipei.

"Taiwan has many lovers of Peking Opera. And it is like going back home to perform here," said Yu Kuizhi at a press conference on Friday.

This year marks the 20th anniversary of the first public show of National Peking Opera Company in the island.

"The current diversified cultural environment has an impact on the popularity of traditional dramas," said Yu. "But over the past 20 years, many friends in the island have been our loyal audience."

Chou Tun-rern, general manager of the Taipei arts firm, said Peking Opera performance continued to be important part of cross-Strait exchanges.

With a history of more than 200 years, Peking Opera is one of China's major traditional drama forms. Combining instrumental music, vocal performances, mime, dance and acrobatics, it was recognized as an intangible cultural heritage by the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in 2010.
BEIJING, June 10 (Xinhua) -- On 10 June 2016, the Chinese Society of International Law (CSIL) released a paper entitled The Tribunal's Award in the "South China Sea Arbitration" Initiated by the Philippines Is Null and Void. The executive summary of the paper is as follows:

On 22 January 2013, the Philippines unilaterally initiated arbitration with respect to certain issues in the South China Sea ( "Arbitration" ). China has maintained its solemn position that it would neither accept nor participate in the Arbitration, having stated that the tribunal constituted at the unilateral request of the Philippines ( "Arbitral Tribunal" or "Tribunal" ) manifestly has no jurisdiction.

On 29 October 2015, the Tribunal issued its Award on Jurisdiction and Admissibility ( "Award on Jurisdiction" or "Award" ), in which it found that it had jurisdiction over some of the Submissions made by the Philippines, and reserved consideration of its jurisdiction with respect to the other Submissions to the merits phase. This finding is full of errors in both the determination of fact and the application of law.

I. The Tribunal errs in finding that the claims made by the Philippines constitute disputes between China and the Philippines concerning the interpretation or application of the UNCLOS

According to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea ( "UNCLOS" or "Convention" ), the jurisdiction of the Tribunal is limited to "disputes concerning the interpretation or application of this Convention" . To establish its jurisdiction in the present Arbitration, the Tribunal must be satisfied that disputes exist between China and the Philippines with respect to the claims made by the Philippines, and that the disputes, if they existed, concern the interpretation or application of the UNCLOS.

In international practice, to determine the existence of a dispute, it must be first demonstrated that specific subject-matters on which the parties disagree have come into existence before the judicial or arbitral proceedings are initiated, and further demonstrated that there is "clash of propositions" or "point of contention" on the same subject-matter or claim.

In its Submission No. 3, the Philippines argues that Scarborough Shoal (Huangyan Dao) generates no entitlement to an exclusive economic zone or continental shelf. In its Submission No. 4, it argues that Mischief Reef (Meiji Jiao), Second Thomas Shoal (Ren' ai Jiao) and Subi Reef (Zhubi Jiao) are low-tide elevations that do not generate entitlement to a territorial sea, exclusive economic zone or continental shelf. In its Submission No. 6, the Philippines argues that Gaven Reef (Nanxun Jiao) and Mckennan Reef (Ximen Jiao) (including Hughes Reef (Dongmen Jiao)) are low-tide elevations that do not generate entitlement to a territorial sea, exclusive economic zone or continental shelf. In its Submission No. 7, it argues that Johnson Reef (Chigua Jiao), Cuarteron Reef (Huayang Jiao) and Fiery Cross Reef (Yongshu Jiao) generate no entitlement to an exclusive economic zone or continental shelf.

In order to prove that these claims constitute disputes between China and the Philippines, the Tribunal must show, with factual proof, that prior to the initiation of arbitration the Philippines had made such claims to China and the claims had been positively opposed by China. The Tribunal should have done this, but it did not.

In fact, there exists no real "clash of propositions" between China and the Philippines with respect to the Philippines' Submissions. China has always maintained and enjoyed territorial sovereignty over and maritime entitlements of the Zhongsha Islands (including Huangyan Dao (Scarborough Shoal)) and the Nansha Islands (including the above-mentioned eight features such as Meiji Jiao (Mischief Reef)), each in their entirety. The Philippines formulates its claims regarding the status and maritime entitlements of certain individual features as separate ones. The two States have never exchanged views with respect to the subject-matters concerned in the Philippines' Submissions. These facts reflect that the propositions of China and the Philippines concern different issues and do not pertain to the same subject-matters. With no positively opposed disagreements, the relevant claims do not constitute disputes between China and the Philippines. However, the Tribunal distorts China's arguments and erroneously finds that there exist disputes between China and the Philippines with respect to the latter's relevant claims.

Even if a claim constituted a dispute, the Arbitral Tribunal would still have no jurisdiction over it if it does not concern the interpretation or application of the UNCLOS. When dealing with the Philippines' Submissions No. 1 and 2, the Tribunal finds that the relevant dispute between China and the Philippines is "a dispute about historic rights in the framework of the Convention". However, "historic rights" had come into existence long before the conclusion of the UNCLOS. They originated from and are governed by general international law including customary international law, and rules of customary international law regarding "historic rights" operate in parallel with the UNCLOS. Accordingly, disputes concerning "historic rights" do not concern the interpretation or application of the Convention. The Tribunal makes a sweeping conclusion that the relevant claims constitute a dispute concerning the interpretation or application of the UNCLOS, without identifying specific provisions to which the "dispute" relates, and whether a real link exists between the "dispute" and the specific provisions of the Convention. The Tribunal' s conclusion is thus groundless in law.(more)
II. By exercising jurisdiction over subject-matters about territorial sovereignty in essence, the Arbitral Tribunal acts ultra vires, beyond the authorization of the UNCLOS

The Philippines' claims concern, in essence, territorial sovereignty over several maritime features in the South China Sea. The resolution of the claims would require a determination of territorial sovereignty over relevant maritime features in the first place. And the real object of the Philippines' claims and practical effect of dealing with them would inevitably have a significant impact on the territorial sovereignty claims of both China and the Philippines. The Tribunal finds that none of the Philippines' Submissions reflect disputes concerning sovereignty over maritime features. This finding, however, not only contravenes the principle that "the land dominates the sea" in international law, but are also contrary to the provisions of the Convention on maritime entitlements.

The objective link between the Philippines' claims and the issue of territorial sovereignty over certain maritime features in the South China Sea is such that a decision on the latter is the precondition to deciding on the former and the Tribunal errs in treating the Philippines' claims in isolation from sovereignty.

In its Submissions No. 1 and 2, the Philippines argues that China's maritime claims in the South China Sea have exceeded the extent allowed under the UNCLOS. In practice, however, without first having determined China' s territorial sovereignty over the maritime features in the South China Sea, the Arbitral Tribunal will not be in a position to determine what maritime rights China enjoys and the extent to which China may claim maritime rights therein, not to mention whether China's claims exceed the extent allowed under the Convention.

The Philippines' Submissions No. 3 through 7 concern the status and maritime entitlements of certain maritime features. According to international law, including the UNCLOS, the maritime entitlements generated by a maritime feature belong to the costal State that has sovereignty over the feature, rather than the feature itself. The UNCLOS, in its regulations on territorial sea, contiguous zone, exclusive economic zone and continental shelf, explicitly ties the maritime entitlements to the coastal State in respect of the maritime zone in question. If the status and maritime entitlements of a feature are considered in isolation from its holder' s sovereignty, there will be no "real" disputant party, as a subject of international law, and such claims can not constitute a "real" dispute. Moreover, whether or not low-tide elevations can be appropriated is a question of territorial sovereignty in itself. Thus, with the issue of sovereignty over the features undetermined, the Tribunal puts the cart before the horse by determining that it has jurisdiction over the above Submissions.

The Philippines' Submissions No. 8 through 14 concern the lawfulness of China' s activities in the South China Sea. In practice, however, to determine the lawfulness of China' s activities in the South China Sea, the Tribunal has to first decide on the holder of maritime entitlements with respect to the maritime zones where the activities took place, which derives from the sovereignty over the land territory. It would be impossible to deal with the above Submissions without first ascertaining the territorial sovereignty over the features in question.

The Arbitral Tribunal selectively neglects the real object and practical effect of the Philippines' initiation of the Arbitration, namely to deny China' s territorial sovereignty in the South China Sea.

There is abundant evidence showing that the real object of the Philippines in initiating the South China Sea Arbitration is to deny China' s territorial sovereignty over Huangyan Dao (Scarborough Shoal) and the Nansha Islands. For instance, on 22 January 2013, the Philippine Department of Foreign Affairs released a Q&A on the arbitral proceedings, which explicitly described the purpose of the case as "to protect our national territory and maritime domain" and stressed not "surrendering our national sovereignty".

The Arbitral Tribunal also fails to evaluate objectively the practical effect of its processing of the Philippines' claims on China's territorial sovereignty in the South China Sea. China has always enjoyed sovereignty over the Nansha Islands in its entirety. The islands, reefs, islets and shoals etc., as inseparable components of the Nansha Islands, all form part of China' s land territory. The Nansha Islands, taken as a whole, is capable of generating a territorial sea, exclusive economic zone and continental shelf. The Philippines' claims that features such as Mischief Reef (Meiji Jiao), Second Thomas Shoal (Ren'ai Jiao) and Subi Reef (Zhubi Jiao) are low-tide elevations which are incapable of appropriation, and requests the Tribunal to decide on the status and maritime entitlements of a small number of selected maritime features of China's Nansha Islands. If the Tribunal takes jurisdiction over and supports the claims, it will amount to an attempt to deny China's territorial sovereignty over the Nansha Islands as a whole.

III. The Tribunal disregards the fact that there exists an issue of maritime delimitation between China and the Philippines, distorts Article 298 of the UNCLOS, and acts ultra vires to exercise jurisdiction over claims concerning maritime delimitation

There exist between China and the Philippines a delimitation geographical framework and overlapping claims of maritime entitlements. None of the nine features in the South China Sea that are concerned in the Philippines' Submissions is over 400 nautical miles from the baseline of the Philippine archipelago. As China has been all long taking the Zhongsha Islands and the Nansha Islands as a unitary whole, respectively, to claim territorial sea, exclusive economic zone and continental shelf, while the Philippines has been claiming such rights based on its coast, there is obviously an issue of maritime delimitation between the two States. Any determination of the status and maritime entitlements of features will have an inevitable effect on the future delimitation between them. The Philippines' claims regarding the status and maritime entitlements of features constitute an integral part of maritime delimitation between China and the Philippines. In 2006, China made a declaration in line with Article 298 of the Convention, explicitly excluding "disputes concerning sea boundary delimitation" from the applicability of compulsory procedures, including arbitration.

The term of "disputes concerning sea boundary delimitation" under Article 298 of the UNCLOS includes, but is not limited to, "disputes over maritime boundary delimitation itself". The Tribunal, in an attempt to cut the objective link between the status and maritime entitlements of features on the one hand, and maritime delimitation on the other, narrows the interpretation of this term down to "disputes over maritime boundary delimitation itself" . This is not in line with international law, international practice and the teachings of publicists, and is inconsistent with the drafters' intention to limit the application of compulsory procedures by Article 298. (more)
By Stephen Ingati and Fabian Mangera

GARISSA, Kenya, June 10 (Xinhua) -- A section of the more than 300,000 Somali refugees living in Dadaab, the world's largest refugee camp in northeastern Kenya, have expressed fears the planned closure of the camp will have far reaching effects on their lives.

Kenya recently announced it will repatriate all Somalis in Dadaab and close the camp by December, citing a "very heavy economic, security and enviroment burden".

Some refugees told Xinhua on Thursday they were not willing to return home due to insecurity and harsh economic conditions in the Horn of Africa nation.

They instead called on the Kenya government to resolve the issues with the Somali government on how to best carry out the repatriation which is expected to begin soon.

Abdi Mohammed, a 60-year-old refugee who has been in the camp since 1995, said that the move by the Kenyan government came as a shock to him.

"I used to hear these threats to repatriate us as mere hard talk from the Kenyan administrators. But the stanch position by the government has really shocked most of us. We can't believe we are being sent back to a country that is still unstable and faced with security lapses," Abdi told Xinhua on Thursday.

Abdi has eight children, all of whom were born in Kenyan and have received education. He said his children were traumatized by the anticipated repatriation given that they are going to a country they have no idea about.

"What they know about Somalia is a country where Al-Shabaab roam freely and lawlessness is the order of the day," he said.

During his visit to Kenya this week, Somali President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud visited Dadaab and said Somalia was ready to receive Daddab refugees back home.

He assured the refugees the repatriation will be orderly, humane and dignified.

Dadaab was set up more than two decades ago to house people fleeing conflict in Somalia.

It is not yet clear when the closure will begin, but the Kenyan government has disbanded its Department of Refugee Affairs, which worked with humanitarian organizations for the welfare of the refugees.

For Amina Mohamed, another Dadaab refugee, the mention of closure of the camp "sends shivers down the spine of many mothers", who she said suffered most at times of war.

The mother of five said although she missed her home, she feared insecurity.

"If the Kenyan government has decided to return us back home, then it should ensure that wherever we go is secure and has at least basic humanitarian services," Mohamed said.

She however thanked Kenya for hosting them for the past 25 years.

Somalia was torn asunder by factional fighting since 1991, but has recently made progress towards stability.

The conflict has left some 1.1 million internally displaced people and over 1 million others living in exile in neighboring countries, mostly in Kenya, Ethiopia and Yemen.

Sources in Dadaab say many refugees have started selling off their livestock, shops and other property at a throw away price following Kenya's repatriation decision. The price of a goat that normally goes for 50 U.S. dollars has dropped drastically to 10 dollars.

Kenya's Northeastern Regional Coordinator, Mohamud Saleh, told Xinhua the government had enhanced security along the Dadaab-Garissa-Nairobi road to ensure that no Dadaab refugees "sneak" out of the camp.

"We understand that some refugees might decide to sneak out of the refugee camps to our towns as they try to escape being repatriated to their home country. The police are extra alert to avoid such cases," he said.

During President Mohamud's impromptu visit to Dadaab on Monday, Kenya's Interior Cabinet Secretary, Joseph Nkaiserry, who was with him, said he was glad that the majority of the 350,000 Somali refugees were willing to go back home and rebuild their country despite challenges occasioned by prolonged clan wars and activities of Al-Shabaab.

Nkaisery said the Kenyan government was working closely with the international community to ensure the repatriation is carried out in a descent manner.
JAKARTA, June 10 (Xinhua) -- The anti-terror squad of the Indonesian national police has captured another terrorist suspect, who has links with IS group in Syria, police said here Friday.

The suspect, along with his three militant fellows who had been captured earlier, planned to launch a strike against police during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, National Police Spokesman Brig. General Agus Rianto said.

The militant was arrested Thursday in Kenjaren of East Java province, said the spokesman at the police headquarters.

The spokesman revealed that all the four terrorist suspects have links with the IS in Syria.

"They are part of the IS group in Syria, because they always communicate with an Indonesian national who has joined the IS and is staying in Syria," Rianto added.

During the raid on their hideouts, the police seized materials for high explosive bombs, assembled guns and ammunitions, he said.

On January 24, terrorists, coordinated by the IS group, launched suicide attacks against a police station and a coffee shop in the capital of Jakarta, killing eight people and injuring 26 others.
IV. The Tribunal disregards the fact that there exist between China and the Philippines agreements to settle the relevant disputes through negotiation, distorts Article 281 of the UNCLOS, and erroneously exercises jurisdiction over the claims

The Tribunal's exercise of jurisdiction over the Philippines' claims is subject to fulfillment of the terms in Article 281 of the Convention. This article provides that if the Parties have agreed to seek settlement of the dispute by a peaceful means of their own choice, the dispute settlement procedures provided for in the Convention apply only where no settlement has been reached by recourse to such means and the agreement between the parties does not exclude any further procedure.

Article 281 of the Convention employs the term "agreement" without prescribing any limitation on form. The terms of "have agreed to" and "agreement", as interpreted in accordance with their ordinary meaning pursuant to the customary rule of treaty interpretation as reflected in Article 31 of the 1969 Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, refer to the unanimous expression of intentions or consensus. They stress the act of consensus itself, rather than the form or vehicle which gives expression to the consensus.

A series of bilateral instruments issued jointly by China and the Philippines and the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea ( "DOC" ) jointly signed by both States confirm the consensus of settling disputes in the South China Sea through negotiations, which constitute an agreement under Article 281 of the UNCLOS excluding any means of third-party dispute settlement procedure.

The Tribunal holds that neither the bilateral instruments nor the DOC constitute binding agreements between China and the Philippines, and proceeds on the basis to determine that there exists no agreement between the two States on the means of dispute settlement. This is a distortion of the term "agreement". Its approach runs counter to the ordinary meaning of the relevant provisions of the UNCLOS and its drafters' intention.

V. The Tribunal errs in finding that the Philippines had fulfilled the obligation to "exchange views" on the means of dispute settlement with regard to the claims it made

The Tribunal's exercise of jurisdiction over the Philippines' claims is also subject to the fulfillment of the precondition set in Article 283 of the Convention. This article requires that when a dispute arises between States Parties concerning the interpretation or application of the UNCLOS, the parties to the dispute shall proceed expeditiously to an exchange of views regarding its settlement by negotiation or other peaceful means.

In the present Arbitration, the Tribunal confuses the subject-matters of the exchange of views, taking the consultations and exchange of notes verbales between China and the Philippines on the sovereignty over certain maritime features in the South China Sea as the evidence for the exchange of views with respect to disputes concerning the interpretation or application of the UNCLOS. The Tribunal relies on facts that occurred before the so-called "disputes" arose as the evidence of exchange of views on the "disputes" . It deliberately lowers the criteria for the fulfillment of the obligation to exchange views, thus rendering Article 283 of the UNCLOS practically meaningless.

VI. The Tribunal is neither objective nor impartial, and its Award deviates from the object and purpose of the dispute settlement mechanism of the UNCLOS and impairs the integrity and authority of the Convention

The UNCLOS is "a package-deal instrument". In the present Arbitration, the integrity of the UNCLOS is impaired by the Tribunal which interprets and applies the relevant provisions in such a manner that it isolates the issue of the status and maritime entitlements of certain features from the sovereignty over the features, and from maritime delimitation. The Tribunal applies double standards in the interpretation and application of the relevant rules, acts partially in determining the facts, and does not comply with internationally prevalent rules in the admission of evidence.

The Tribunal makes every effort to expand and misuse its power arbitrarily. The vicious precedent that it sets may open the "floodgate of abuse lawsuits" regarding maritime disputes, which will impair not only China' s vital and lawful rights and interests, but also the vital interests of States Parties in peaceful settlement of disputes under the UNCLOS, especially the right to freely choose the means of dispute settlement. Accordingly, it will damage the international legal order of the oceans and harm the overall interest of the international community.

The fundamental purpose of the dispute settlement mechanism under the UNCLOS is to contribute to the settlement of maritime disputes peacefully. Vital to the achievement of the above objectives is to interpret and apply the dispute settlement mechanism under the UNCLOS in good faith and in a comprehensive and integral manner, and to find the facts and admit the evidence in due diligence and in accordance with the law. In the present case, however, the Tribunal fails to fulfill the above requirements and acts ultra vires. As a result, the disagreements between China and the Philippines on relevant issues in the South China Sea have not been resolved but further intensified, and the tense situation in the South China Sea has not been alleviated but aggravated. These acts of the Tribunal run counter to the fundamental purpose of peaceful settlement of disputes of the UNCLOS.

In conclusion, the Tribunal's establishment of jurisdiction over the Philippines' claims is thoroughly erroneous. It is obvious that what the Tribunal has made is essentially a political decision. The Tribunal's exercise of jurisdiction ultra vires has been questioned by a large number of scholars of international law from China and abroad. Ex injuria jus non oritur. Any decision that the Tribunal may make on the substantive issues will not have any legal effect.
GENEVA, June 10 (Xinhua) -- Some 2,856 migrants and refugees have drowned this year crossing the Mediterranean Sea to reach Europe, the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) indicated on Friday.

This figure stands at over 1,000 more fatalities compared to 2015's mid-year total, when 1,838 deaths were recorded through the first six months of the year.

While the death toll is substantially higher this year, many more migrants have reached European shores in 2016 compared to a year ago.

IOM statistics show that 207,260 migrants have landed in Europe since January, up from 146,083 arrivals registered between Jan. 1 and June 30 last year.

Most of this year's arrivals have entered Europe via Greek islands, where 157,119 migrants hailing mainly from Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq have been documented.

A further 48,761 migrants have reached Italy with the remaining 1,352 and 28 reaching Spain and Cyprus respectively.
Aerial photo taken on Oct. 16, 2015 shows the Yangshan Deep-water Port's container pier of the Shanghai free trade zone (FTZ) in Shanghai, east China. (Xinhua/Li Jun)

MEXICO CITY, June 9 (Xinhua) -- Nearly 3,000 food wholesalers in Central Mexico hope to export their products to Cuba and China with the help of professionals.

Wholesalers of fruits, vegetables, seeds and other products, at the Toluca Supply Center, the largest wholesale market in the central State of Mexico, are looking to academics and sector officials for advice.

"As merchants, we don't want to settle for this (local market); we want to transcend borders and take our products to Cuba and China," Salvador Palma, president of the market's administrative committee, told Xinhua in a recent interview.

Palma, a wholesaler and seed producer, said that merchants like himself were aware of the need to secure permits and meet other trade requirements before being able to ship their goods abroad, but what they lacked was specialized knowledge of the markets.

Consulting experts, he said, "allows us to learn the traditions, tastes and customs of those who will be our new customers abroad."

To that end, wholesalers met recently with members of the Latin American and Caribbean Academic Network on China, officials of the Secretariat of Agricultural Development of the State of Mexico, and representatives from state agencies that ensure vegetable and aquaculture standards.

"Without doubt, to achieve our dream we have to make the most of consulting they are now giving us. It's important that they explain and provide us with the basic knowledge to be able to go global," said Palma.

The vast Toluca Supply Center, located 60 km from Mexico City in the state capital Toluca, houses 2,500 warehouses that serve around 40,000 buyers a day.

While the majority of buyers are from local businesses and retailers, purchasers also come from nearby states, such as Michoacan, Guanajuato, Hidalgo, Guerrero and Puebla.

Image taken on Jan. 21, 2013, of boxes with avocados in the Lo Valledor central wholesale produce market in Santiago, Chile. (Xinhua/Edwin Remsberg/VW Pics/ZUMAPRESS)

The market supplies everything from fresh fish and seafood, meats and poultry to all kinds of vegetables and fruits brought from local farms or other parts of the country.

"We supply many markets, other businesses or locals, and surrounding states. And even more, we are capable of supplying abroad," Palma said.

Professor Yrmina Eng at the University of Havana, and analyst Ricardo Roman Chang at the China-Mexico Studies Center at Mexico's National Autonomous University, believe that the wholesalers have the potential to expand their business to Cuba and China.

What they need, say the experts, is to have a clear idea of which goods the target countries may be interested in, and they also have to consider trade logistics.

"You have to analyze what export-quality products Mexican agriculture is producing that you can ship to China or Cuba through government traders," said Chang.

According to Eng, while the Cuban market offers suppliers untapped potential, it also presents difficulties.

"There is a great Cuban demand that officials and academics can identify so producers and wholesalers from the Toluca Supply Center can ship those products, though they also need to know about Cuba's needs and deficiencies," said Eng.

Wholesaler Patricia Gonzalez, whose family business makes a range of candles, said first-hand experience has made her optimistic about the possibility of expanding her business through exports.

Earlier this year, during Pope Francis' visit to Cuba, she shipped votive candles and other products to the island.

"Cubans ... know about this market (Toluca Supply Center) and they say it would be a dream to have one like it in their country," she said.
The presidential candidate of the party Peruvians for Change (PPK), Pedro Pablo Kuczynski (R), offers a statement after the report of the National Office of Electoral Processes (ONPE, for its acronym in Spanish) on the results of the second round of the presidential election, in Lima, Peru, on June 9, 2016. (Xinhua/Luis Camacho)

LIMA, June 9 (Xinhua) -- Peruvian economist Pedro Pablo Kuczynski is expected to become the country's next president, counting results from the National Office of Electoral Processes showed on Thursday.

After a four-day count, 77-year-old Kuczynski, from the Peruvians for Change, edged out his rival Keiko Fujimori, from the Popular Force, with a wafer-thin margin, winning by 50.117 percent to 49.883 percent. The difference in the total votes was 41,438, with 8,580,474 votes for Kuczynski and 8,539,036 for Fujimori.

Yet the Fujimori side is waiting for a formal verdict from the National Electoral Tribunal (JNE).

On his Twitter account, Kuczynski thanked his supporters, saying "Thank you, Peru! It is time to work together for the future of our country."

In a speech in Lima immediately after the voting outcome was announced, a jubilant Kuczynski said he would be "seeking to work with all Peruvians. There are many of us who feel the train has passed them by but we want them all to board the train."

If Kuczynski wins, he will take over as president on July 28 from President Ollanta Humala for a mandate lasting until 2021. He pledged that he would work so that "by 2021, Peru will be a renewed country."

However, Fujimori's camp was quick to say that Fujimori would not officially recognize the result until the JNE verdict.

Her supporter, congressman Pedro Spadaro, told the press after the result was announced that "the JNE will have the final word on the entire electoral process. We will wait patiently ... for the Tribunal to give its verdict."

"If the results do not change ... we will recognize them," he added.

The head of the National Office of Electoral Processes (ONPE, for its acronym in Spanish), Mariano Cucho (R), takes part in a press conference on the results of the second round of the presidential election, in Lima, Peru, on June 9, 2016. (Xinhua/Eddy Ramos/ANDINA)

The candidacy of Fujimori, 41, had been widely criticized both in Peru and around the world as she is the daughter of Alberto Fujimori, president of Peru from 1990 to 2000, who is currently serving a long jail sentence on charges of human rights violation, murder, embezzlement and kidnapping, with some observers fearing Keiko would seek to bring back her father's tough policies.

Susana Villaran, former mayor of Lima and an influential figure in Peruvian politics, wrote on Facebook after the result that "democracy has won by a hair," while warning that "our people are divided in two."

Villaran encouraged Kuczynski to "lead fundamental processes," including reforms in the political and electoral systems, public security, the fight against corruption, protection of children, and the reduction of discrimination.

Certain analysts expressed concerns that Kuczynski might be close to the United States and orient policies to favor Washington.

Hector Bejar, a well-known Peruvian writer, told Venezuelan TV station TeleSUR that Kuczynski's government will have "a basically neoliberal economic orientation. On the political front ... this will mean a close relationship with the United States."
LONDON, June 10 (Xinhua) -- British Queen Elizabeth II attended a national service of thanksgiving Friday at St Paul's Cathedral in London, at the start of a three-day celebration to mark her 90th birthday.

The Queen, accompanied with the Duke of Edinburgh, arrived at St Paul's and waved to well-wishers on the steps before they went in. The Duke of Edinburgh is also celebrating his 95th birthday today.

More than 50 Royal Family members, including the Duke and Duchess of Cornwall, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and Prince Harry, and political figures including Prime Minister David Cameron and his wife Samantha, Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne and Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, attended the service.

David Ison, the Dean of St Paul's and Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury praised the Queen's work and reign to the country, and thanked her and Prince Philip's contribution to Britain and to the Commonwealth.

Local media said more than 2,000 people attended the thanksgiving service at St Paul's.

The service kicked off a three-day birthday celebrations to mark the Queen's official birthday. Her real birthday falls on April 21 and a series of grand celebrations were held earlier this April.

The Queen would host a governors-general for lunch at Buckingham Palace, local media said.

A birthday parade with thousands of service personnel and hundreds of horses and musicians, and RAF flypast ceremony will be held on Saturday, the official birthday of the Queen. Royal Family members are expected to make an appearance on the balcony of Buckingham Palace.

A 10,000 people street party will follow on Sunday in St James's Park, and the Duke of Edinburgh, Prince William and Prince Harry will attend the party.

The longest-serving monarch of Britain was born on April 21, 1926, and became the Queen of Britain in 1952. Enditem
KATHMANDU, June 10 (Xinhua) -- Nepali deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Foreign Affairs Kamal Thapa left for a two-day visit to India on Friday.

Thapa will hold talks with Indian External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj as well as Indian political leaders and discuss bilateral relations and matters of mutual interests, the Nepalese Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement.

Thapa will also be attending and presiding over the convocation ceremony of the South Asian University on June 11 in the Indian capital, according to the ministry.

Thapa will be addressing a gathering at the Observer Research Foundation on the current state of the Nepal-India relations and meet the press at the Press Club of India.
HELSINKI, June 10 (Xinhua) -- Anti-fur activists claimed on Friday to have launched the attack on a bus depot Thursday night in Vantaa, north of Helsinki.

Five buses of the long-haul and charter bus operator Pohjolan Matka were totally destroyed and others were damaged. No casualties were reported.

In an Internet message, an organization calling itself Animal Liberation Front (EVR) said they had set the buses on fire "because of the cooperation between the bus company and the well-known Finnish fur auction house Saga Furs."

Speaking to the press, the CEO of the bus company, Johanna Lehtonen, would not speak about the relationship with Saga Furs, saying her company never commented on customer relationships.

The fur activists said Pohjolan Matka chartered buses were being used to transport Saga customers to fur auctions.

Inspector Kimmo Huhta-aho of the Finnish National Bureau of Investigation told national broadcaster Yle that "fur activists seemed to be behind it."

Lehtonen said the losses caused by the fires amounted to over a million euros.

The fur industry is a contentious theme in Finland, but has enjoyed political majority support. The industry is important locally, especially in Ostrobothnia.

In 2013, a civic initiative to ban fur farms was defeated in parliament by a wide margin. Banning was supported by the Left League and the Greens along with individual votes from other parties.
TAIYUAN, June 10 (Xinhua) -- A Chinese man who was fresh out of prison has been arrested again after a noisy, Mafia-style ceremony that was held to celebrate his regained freedom.

Cheng Youze, from Jincheng City in north China's Shanxi Province, was arrested for disturbing the peace, the local procuratorate said.

A video clip that went viral in late May showed Cheng, wearing a white silk suit and sunglasses, swaggering through two rows of people who were in black T-shirts after he left prison. Firecrackers were set off, adding to the air of festivity.

The clip fanned ridicule and indignation from the public and prompted a police investigation.

The police said before Cheng was discharged, he told his family and friends to hold an impressive ritual on the day of his release. His former driver found a wedding planner to help with the ceremony.

On the morning of May 23, Cheng's friends and acquaintances arrived at the prison in 47 cars, and carried out the ceremony.

The event drew a lot of onlookers. Cheng refused to disperse the crowd and the road outside the prison was blocked.

Cheng has served prison time on three occasions. Local newspaper Beijing Times said he was sentenced to six years for robbery in 1984, 15 years for hooliganism, robbery and gambling in 1996 and eight years for illegal detention, illegal trade of explosives and intentional injury in 2009. He only served partial sentences.

The local government is investigating possible misconduct concerning Cheng's cases.
MOGADISHU, June 10 (Xinhua) -- More than 30,000 displaced people are in need of humanitarian assistance after flooding in Somalia's south-central region of Beletweyne, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has said.

Albert Jabre, the region's field coordinator for ICRC Somalia, on Friday said the displaced people were in need of food and safe drinking water.

"This flooding is the worst in years. It covered most of the town and surroundings. As the people move to higher grounds, they are in need of everything,"Jabre said in a statement.

"The ICRC is providing food and other basic items, clean water and health care to the most affected communities. This will enable them to hold on as they start to rebuild their homes," he added.

The ICRC and Somali Red Cross Society this week carried out a five-day distribution of rice, oil, beans, blankets and mosquito nets for the displaced people.

About 100,000 water purification tablets were distributed, with each family receiving 20 tablets, enough to be used for one month. One tablet can purify 20 litres of drinking water.

Beletweyne hosts about 31,000 displaced people, most of whom have fled conflict in the neighboring districts of Jalalqsi and Bulle Burte.

Local residents who lived in low-lying areas have moved to higher ground in El Jaale, 5 km from Beletweyne, due to the flooding.

The flood is a result of heavy rains in the upper part of the Ethiopian highlands that have caused river Shabelle to overflow.

Shafi Ibrahim, a local elder, said the flood has destroyed crops and that many fields remain inaccessible.

"The flood has destroyed almost everything. The majority of the community here operates a small business in a local market. They could no longer work as the place is submerged with water. We do hope in a month's time it will dry up and we can start rebuilding our lives," said Ibrahim.

There have been fears about the outbreak of diseases, such as diarrhea, cholera and typhoid, following the flooding.
Photo taken on June 8, 2016 shows the charging point of the electric microcar for sharing services, which near the Milan central train station. (Xinhua/Song Jian)

by Marzia De Giuli, Song Jian

MILAN, Italy, June 10 (Xinhua) -- With around 40 percent of the national car sharing services, Italy's business capital Milan is regarded as a positive example of a city which has made of traffic policies a new driver for development.

According to figures of the Milan municipality, there are some 2,300 shared vehicles in Milan belonging to five public and private operators, of which one provides totally electric cars. Registered users are around 300,000 overall for an estimated 8,000 rentals ever day on average.

Andrea Pizza, a 22-year economics student at Bocconi University in Milan, is among those citizens who have opted for sharing rather than owning a car. "The large number of cars in Milan -- more than 500 every 1,000 residents, according to figures of the Automobile Club of Italy (ACI) -- causes traffic congestion, and I find car sharing a convenient and effective solution," he said.

A survey conducted by car sharing operators in Milan has showed that 12 percent of users have already decided to abandon their first or second own cars, while 8 percent are considering doing it. According to ACI figures, the number of car registrations has significantly dropped by some 50,000 since 2008, when the northern city first introduced a pollution charge and later, in 2012, a congestion charge.

"It is the easiest way for me to go to university, do shopping or just come back home after a night out with friends," Pizza went on saying, pointing at the "Share'NGO" ZD electric microcar behind him, which is produced by China's Geely group and has all the typical features of a citycar: two seats, a 300 liters car boot, power brakes, power steering, rear parking sensor, air-conditioning and adjustable seats.

"It looks like a tiny car, but in fact it is big enough. I share my apartment with five friends of mine and we do the shopping for the whole of us with this car," Pizza said. "I think Milan is a best practice as regards car sharing services, and I feel to be a model and modern citizen when I use them. Actually anybody could be," he added.

Among the most recent traffic control initiatives, the Milan municipality has installed in collaboration with A2A, Italy's largest multi-utility company, 12 fast charging points for both shared and private electric vehicles, which add to the A2A recharging infrastructure counting around 150 charging points in Milan.

A new scooter sharing service has also been available since last summer to tackle two-wheeled congestion.

The use of car sharing is simple and convenient, another citizen who has given up his own car, 38-year-old consultant Marco Ceragioli said.

Ceragioli often needs to move from one place to another in Milan. "I used to own a car, but then I realized that it was easier and also more economically convenient for me to use the car2go services," he said. "In this way, I neither need to look for a parking lot nor pay for it, and everything goes smoother," he added.

Just like other car sharing services, customers use a smartphone app to find available vehicles, drive to their destination, and park in any legal city parking spot, Ceragioli said. Fuel, insurance, and parking costs are included. "It costs around 0.30 euros (0.34 U.S. dollars) per minute. If I use it for the entire day, it costs 50 euros (57 U.S. dollars), but it never happens," he said.

The ideal, Ceragioli went on saying, is to use car sharing combined with other transports tools, such as bike sharing -- Milan counts 4,650 bicycles and around 50,000 users -- or the subway system -- the city metro system has a length of around 100 km and 110 stations.

"All of these behaviors help reduce traffic, and I am happy to see that the same thing is starting to happen also in other Italian cities such as capital Rome, where I can use car2go with the same subscription," he noted.

Thanks to its initiatives, Milan has won numerous awards in recent years, including a price awarded in 2014 by the International Transport Forum at the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), which described Milan as "a reference point for those cities aiming to implement solutions for sustainable mobility and traffic regulation policies."
NAIROBI, June 10 (Xinhua) -- Kenya's tourism stakeholders on Friday decried heightened political tension in the country, saying it was negatively affecting the performance of the industry.

Kenya Tourism Federation chairperson, Lucy Karume, told a media briefing that a number of foreign tourists had cancelled planned visits to Kenya as a result of weekly protests in the country.

For the past one month, Kenya's opposition has been holding weekly demonstrations in several cities and towns to demand the dissolution of the electoral body that supervises next year's general elections.

"We are therefore urging all the political players to engage in dialogue so as to end the impasse," Karume said.

Some of the demonstrations in the past weeks have turned violent, leaving five people killed in the western region.

Official data shows Kenya attracted 1.8 million visitors in 2015, up from the 1.46 million the previous year.

Karume said the coastal region, which recorded 60 percent of all international visitors to Kenya, has seen the most cancellations of hotel bookings following the political tension.

"If the current political tension persists, we might receive less tourists this year," Karume said.

Several deadly terror attacks in the past years have hit Kenya's tourism industry. Karume said the industry had been making gains, but compared to Kenya's best year, the country was still not doing enough.

"The progress could be eroded if the political tension continues," he said.
by John Kwoba

NAIROBI, June 10 (Xinhua) -- Kenya's Olympic champion David Rudisha is oozing in confidence ahead of his second Diamond League 800-meter race in Stockholm on June 16.

Rudisha, who holds the Olympic and world 800-meter record at 1:40.91, last competed in the two-lap race in Shanghai in May and was a distant fifth. His other performance in the distance was in Melbourne in March.

"I believe my body is back to its best form and I can challenge for medals. My training has been better and my body is coming back to its best years," said Rudisha in a telephone interview on Friday.

Critics had written off Rudisha's prospects of defending his title in Rio Olympics when he finished fifth in Shanghai, but after his performance in Birmingham a week ago, there is every fact their assessment might have been too soon and harsh.

Rudisha said: "A New Diamond League record, world lead, and Africa record over 600 meter time 1:13.10 seconds in Birmingham. Best show for my Road to Rio progression."

In Stockholm, Rudisha will come up against Ethiopia's world indoor champion Mohammed Aman, Olympic bronze medallist Timothy Kitum, Ferguson Rotich of Kenya, Adam Kszczot of Poland and Bosse Pierre-Ambroise of France.

"It was disappointing in my first competition with the confusion in Shanghai," said Rudisha about his poor run in China.

"It was a mistake and I have to apologize to my fans. I felt I should run an 800 meter the following day to prove something was wrong. It's tough when you make such a long journey and everything gets screwed up, but in sport mistakes can happen," he said.

With the injuries that followed his remarkable Olympic win and world record in London 2012 now well behind him, Rudisha is looking forward to a return to his best this season and Stockholm might just be a pointer to what to expect at the Rio Olympics. Enditem
BRUSSELS, June 10 (Xinhua) -- A suspect linked to March bombings in Brussels was arrested following a search on Thursday in Brussels, said Friday the Belgian federal prosecutor's office in a statement.

A search conducted as part of the investigation into Brussels attacks was launched Thursday in the municipality of Schaerbeek in Brussels. A suspect was arrested following the search.

According to the statement of the federal prosecutor, the suspect's name is Ali E.H.E, a Belgian national of 31 years old.

The individual was placed under arrest and charged with participation in a terrorist group, murder in a terrorist context and attempted murder in a terrorist context, as author, co-author or accomplice, the statement said.

"No further information can be communicated at this time," emphasized the federal prosecutor's office in the statement.

This is the seventh suspect placed under arrest in connection with the investigation into the attacks of metro and airport of Brussels on March 22. Enditem
The screen photo taken on June 9,2016 shows the live performance of robot-assisted retroperitoneal partial nephrectomy (RARPN) surgery by Zhang Xu, professor and director of the Department of Urology of Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) General Hospital, at the European Congress of Challenges in Laparoscopy and Robotics in Lisbon, Portugal. (Xinhua/Zhang Yadong)

by Marina Watson Pelaez

LISBON, June 10 (Xinhua) -- A well-known Chinese surgeon performed here on Thursday a live laparoscopic and robotic surgery which received applause from the attendees at the European congress of "Challenges in Laparoscopy and Robotics."

Zhang Xu, chief of the Urology Department of the Chinese PLA General Hospital 301 in Beijing, is among some of the world's most prominent urologic surgeons attending the event.

During the three-day meeting they will perform 23 minimally invasive surgeries (MIS), including a right kidney tumor robotic retroperitoneal right partial nephrectomy by Zhang.

The surgeries were screened live in a conference room, and attendees could watch and hear the doctor's comments and answers to questions through their headphones.

Zhang explained that these kinds of surgeries avoided damaging tissue and would improve patients' quality of life.

He also told participants that he changed his strategy depending on which side the tumor was.

Most surgeons around the world didn't know how to use this innovative technique, he pointed out.

"I have my own technique," he told Xinhua after the live performance. "There are many, many advantages of this kind of procedure."

Some of these advantages include that it is easier to find certain tumours that are located posteriorly. Other benefits he mentioned are a shorter operation time and less blood loss.

Zhang Xu, professor and director of the Department of Urology of Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) General Hospital, is ready in the operation room to perform live Robot-assisted retroperitoneal partial nephrectomy (RARPN) surgery in Lisbon, Portugal, on June 9, 2016. (Photo porvided by Zhang's team)

He was congratulated following the operation by several doctors including Alex Mottrie, from the Department of Urology O.L.V in Belgium.

"I am here to attend this conference because it is one of the biggest meetings in Europe in robotics. I think it is important in Europe for us to collaborate and have our noses in the same direction," Mottrie told Xinhua.

"We see different types of surgery with their own technique and that makes it so interesting," he added.

Mottrie explained that all the surgeries at the conference are minimum invasive and that Zhang's technique was standardized and very precise.

While the United States represents the single biggest market for Laparoscopic surgery, also called minimally invasive surgery, demand is rising rapidly in the Asia-Pacific.

Other urologists who attended the conference include Thierry Piechaud from France, Kris Maes from Lisbon and Aldo Bocciardi from Italy.

The event was organized in collaboration with Lisbon's Hospital Santa Maria.
BEIJING, June 10 (Xinhua) -- The China Railway on Friday said the Las Vegas-based XpressWest's unilateral cancellation of a high-speed railway contract with its subsidiary is "a mistake" and "irresponsible."

The China Railway said it opposed the U.S. company's decision and has been dealing with the case based on law. Enditem
The photo shows the new-born baby panda and its mother, Hao Hao. (Photo courtesy of Pairi Daiza)

BRUSSELS, June 10 (Xinhua) -- Since the arrival of the Chinese pandas, Hao Hao and Xing Hui, in February 2014, the number of visitors to the Belgian park Pairi Daiza has increased significantly, said the spokesperson of the park, Aleksandra Vidanovski, during an interview with Xinhua.

In 2015, the number of park visitors rose by 42.1 percent from 2013 to 1.767 million, according to Vidanovski.

On sunny holidays, Pairi Daiza is sometimes found "saturation" to the point of having to close its doors and ask visitors to postpone their arrivals, she said.

On June 2 at 2:02 local time, the giant panda Hao Hao gave birth to a baby panda, a male of 170 grams. The arrival of the baby panda could attract more visitors to the park, according to the spokesperson.

For the owner of the park, Eric Domb, "obviously, we thought about the inconvenience because of too many visitors."

"Our main concern is to anticipate these critical days. We do not want to force people to make kilometers traffic jam or turn back. We believe that online tickets are the best solution," he told the Belgian newspaper Le Soir.

"Not to make money, but as a deterrent. Online sales will allow us to determine in advance the busy days and, if necessary, to limit the tickets," he explained.

Specifically, purchasing tickets on the internet will be more advantageous. At present, the difference between a purchase on-site and online revolves around 1.20 euros. In the coming days, the entry price at checkout (currently 31 euros for an adult) will be increased by several euros, said Eric Domb to the Belgian newspaper.

"We will implement the Road of pandas. This will be a one-way circuit to observe the pandas and the baby," Vidanovski said.

Growing up, the baby panda will want to be separated from his mother. A new enclosure will be installed at the back of the pandas cave, she added.
LANZHOU, June 10 (Xinhua) -- Joshua Trout and his Chinese wife Gao Jiemeizi are overjoyed that their restaurant serving authentic American food in Lanzhou City is a success.

The restaurant, which reopened earlier this month after moving from a quieter location, has queues every dinner and lunch time. "Burgers, hot dogs and steaks, we always sell out," said Trout from Colorado, the United States.

Lanzhou in northwest China's Gansu Province is known for local residents' obsession with traditional beef-soup lamian (hand-pulled noddles). But Western-style restaurants and cafes are gaining a foothold.

Trout, who used to an aircraft engineer, met Gao during a business trip to Lanzhou. They opened their diner four years ago.

Trout recalled that in 2012 there were only a handful of Western-style restaurants in Lanzhou and their food was seen as a luxury.

At the beginning, the restaurant did well, but soon patron numbers plummeted, according to Gao. The eatery only survived thanks to advertising on the Chinese Twitter-like Sina Weibo and the instant messaging tool WeChat.

She attributed others' failures to economic backwardness. "At the time, foreign food was alien to most of local people, and there were few foreign customers," she said.

Gansu is among the poorest regions in the country. In the couple's shop, a hot dog cost 25 yuan (3.8 U.S. dollars), a burger 35 yuan and a steak 60 yuan in 2012, when the annual per capita disposable income of Lanzhou's urban residents was about 18,400 yuan (2,800 dollars).

Whereas Lanzhou beef noodles only cost six yuan a bowl.

The hand-pulled noodles are served in a peppery, oily broth with tender beef, is recognized as one of China's three major fast foods by China Cuisine Association.

In Lanzhou, with a population of four million, there are easily over 1,600 eateries serving the noodle dish, which is often eaten for breakfast and lunch.

The tough days for Western food in the city, however, didn't last too long, thanks to growing residents' income and increasingly tolerant taste of diners.

In the past two years, Western-style restaurants have mushroomed, Trout said, adding that the number of foreigners in the town has also grown.

Now, one can find over 100 such restaurants and coffee shops, including international chains, in the city via apps providing group-buying and review services.

In 2014, Starbucks opened its first shop in Lanzhou, and the second in 2015. In December, McDonald's set up its first outlet in the city.

"We're doing well. Our customers are not only in their 20s or 30s, but also 50s and 60s," said a manager with the Starbucks that opened in September.

The couple's restaurant has never raised prices and its food has is now more affordable. In 2015, the per capita disposable income of Lanzhou's urban residents climbed to around 27,000 yuan.

"It's hugely different from Lanzhou food, but I think it's delicious, clean and fast," said Ma Hong, a regular at the restaurant.

Ma said he loves burgers, and is a fan of beef noodles as well. On weekdays, he often has burgers for lunch twice and noodles on the other days.

"In fact, locals don't simply go to KFC or Pizza Hut, they also try Thai and Japanese dishes. It means they are more receptive on diversified food and culture," Gao said.
JERUSALEM, June 10 (Xinhua) -- Israeli security forces seized weapons-making machinery in the West Bank on a raid Thursday night, as tensions mount following Wednesday's deadly attack in Tel Aviv, the Israeli army said Friday.

Israeli security forces carried out the raid in Abu Dis, a Palestinian village east of Jerusalem, where machinery to make weapons was confiscated in the past, according to a statement by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) spokesperson.

Security forces also recovered ammunition and parts they say are used for explosives.

The raid is part of a series of operations by Israeli security forces following a deadly shooting attack at the popular Tel Aviv Sarona outdoor food market, in which two Palestinian gunmen from the West Bank village of Yatta, south of Hebron, killed four Israelis, leaving five others injured in moderate to serious condition.

The two attackers, cousins in their early 20's, used self-made guns known by the name of Carl Gustav. One of them is in police custody and another is hospitalized in serious condition after he was gunned down by a security guard.

This attack comes also after several months of a noted decrease in attacks and without any Israelis killed. It therefore might mark further deterioration in the situation, as Israeli leaders vow a stern response to the attack, at a time when Muslims are celebrating the one-month-long Ramadan holiday, adding to the already mounting tensions.

The Israeli army has imposed a siege on the village of Yatta, the attackers' home, late Wednesday, carrying out arrests and mapping out the homes of the two attackers. It is the first step in the procedure of home demolition, used by Israeli authorities to deter Palestinians from carrying out future attacks.

On Thursday, the military announced that following the defense establishment's directive, it would boost its Judea and Samaria (the Jewish biblical name for the West Bank) with two more battalions.

The decision to boost the military deployment was made along a slew of other measures, after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu convened security chiefs on Wednesday night, and later met with members of his security cabinet, a forum of ten ministers.

The army is set to increase its raids and carry out more arrests in the West Bank in the upcoming days, the Hebrew-based Walla! news website reported.

Other measures enacted by Israeli authorities following Wednesday's attack were revoking work permits in Israel for 204 members of the attackers' extended family, and retracting more than 83,000 permits allowing Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza Strip to enter Israel to meet with families and pray at the east Jerusalem al-Aqsa mosque, due to the their religious holiday.

The permits were announced a week earlier as a facilitating measure for the Palestinian community.

Furthermore, the Israeli army told Xinhua on Friday it would be imposing a closure on the West Bank and Gaza Strip territories starting from Friday until Sunday at midnight.

While the closure was announced along with other security measures, it is also common for Israel to impose closures on the Palestinian community during Jewish religious holidays. Jews celebrate the Shavuot holiday on Saturday and Sunday.

Israeli police has also been on high alert since Wednesday, with boosted presence at crowded spots in both Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, along with other sites of friction.

Thousands of Israeli policemen and border guards were on high alert Friday as the first Friday prayers of the Ramadan holiday took place in the firebrand site of Temple Mount in east Jerusalem, home to the al-Aqsa mosque. No unusual incidents had taken place throughout the noon prayers, police spokeswoman Luba Samri said in a statement.

In response to this series of measures, the U.S. administration urged Israel to refrain from punishing the entire Palestinian population for the deadly attack.

"We understand the Israeli government's desire to protect its citizens, and we strongly support it, but we hope that any measures it takes are designed to also take into consideration the impact on Palestinian citizens that are trying to go about their daily lives," State Department spokesperson Mark Toner said at White House briefing.

The possible escalation between Israelis and Palestinians occurs shortly after the recently-appointed defense minister, Avigdor Lieberman, assumed his position. He is known for his hawkish views and combatant statements.

As parliament member, he said if in charge he would "conquer" the Gaza Strip, and in another statement said that as Defense Minister he will give Ismail Haniyeh, leader of the Palestinian Hamas militant organization, "48 hours to live" before assassinating him.

While Lieberman said on Thursday after the attack that "words are not enough" and he would not settle for less than actions, pundits believe that as minister, he will act more responsibly.

"The substantial reduction in terror attacks in recent months has been achieved amid determination and sober judgement by Israel and steadily improving security coordination with the Palestinian Authority," Amos Harel, defense commentator for the Ha'aretz daily, wrote on Thursday.

"New Defense Minister Lieberman will quickly find that the measures at his disposal under the current diplomatic conditions are limited, as Israel hopes to avoid a total rift with the Palestinian Authority. He is now in an entirely new situation," Harel added.

While it remains to be seen what would be the impact of this attack and the following Israeli measures on the situation between Israelis and Palestinians, some Israelis, including the father of one of the victims, think Israel needs a strategic and diplomatic solution to end the violence, rather than military tactical moves.

"Last night, after the attack, the prime minister and his two ministers arrived and yet another security cabinet issued decrees -- not to return corpses, to put up barriers, to destroy houses and make lives harder. These solutions create suffering, hatred, despair," Avraham Ben Ari, father of Ido Ben Ari who was killed in Sarona shooting attack, said at his eulogy.

"What's needed is a solution rather than saying there's no one to make pace with. We chose you to end the cycle of blood, already 49 years you've been trying to solve things tactically and you haven't succeeded. The time has come for a strategic solution," he said. Enditem
DHAKA, June 10 (Xinhua) -- Bangladeshi police reportedly detained some 900 people Friday during the first day of an anti-militant drive across the country.

Inspector General of Police AKM Shahidul Hoque said the weeklong drive was aimed at dismantling all terrorist outfits and their networks in the country.

Just on Friday, a Hindu monastery worker was found killed in Pabna district, some 216 km west of the capital Dhaka.

Alamgir Kabir, the district's police chief, told journalists that the motive behind the killing has yet to be known.

Bangladesh has been facing a surge in violent attacks in recent years.

A number of secularist writers, bloggers and publishers have been killed or seriously injured in attacks carried out by extremists since 2013. Enditem
MOSCOW, June 10 (Xinhua) -- The Russian Foreign Ministry on Friday urged Ankara to give due punishment to a Turkish national who allegedly killed a Russian military pilot in the downing of a Russian warplane in November last year.

Alparslan Celik, who fought inside Syria, allegedly killed Oleg Peshkov, one of the pilots of the Russian Su-24 bomber, as he ejected from the plane after it was hit by Turkey.

In the downing of the Su-24 jet, the two crew members managed to parachute themselves, but Peshkov was shot down by ground fire as he parachuted to ground in Syria. The other pilot, Captain Konstantin Murakhtin, was rescued by Russian and Syrian forces and taken to the Hmeimim airbase in Syria, where a Russian airforce group for anti-terror campaign is located.

Celik was arrested in the western Turkish city of Izmir in April for illegal possession of weapons. Earlier in the day, his lawyer told the RIA Novosti news agency that Celik's trial would start in Turkey on June 27.

At her weekly press conference, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said the Turkish authorities are "purposefully trying to tone down Celik's arrest," saying that the Turkish justice is "in general trying to create an impression that the detention of an ordinary criminal has nothing to do with the tragedy in November."

Zakharova called on the Turkish authorities to take necessary steps to find and call to responsibility all persons involved in the killing of Peshkov, including Celik and his subordinates.

Relations between Russia and Turkey have soured after the latter downed the Russian bomber near the Turkish-Syrian border for alleged airspace violation, which the Russian side denied and saw as a hostile act.

Russian President Vladimir Putin then described the attack as a "stab in the back" and ordered a broad range of economic sanctions against Turkey.

Ankara has not taken retaliatory economic measures, avoiding escalation of the already tense situation, but did not shy away from resorting to harsh diatribe against Russia.

In a surprise posture last week, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said he wanted to improve ties with Russia and lamented that relations between the two countries were sacrificed over what he called "a pilot error."

He said he did not understand what kind of "first step" Russia was expecting of Turkey to take to repair the soured ties. Enditem
ACCRA, June 10 (Xinhua) -- The U.S.-based multinational online transportation network company, Uber Technologies Inc., has announced its entry into the Ghanaian market.

On its website, the taxi-hailing company announced that it had arrived in Ghana's most economically vibrant hub.

"Accra continues to be a place where businesses are born, and has become one of Africa's fastest growing cities," the statement said.

The company promised free rides between Thursday and Sunday as part of its launching in the West African country.

This makes Ghana the fifth sub-Saharan African country that Uber has entered and the 467th city to receive the service globally.

Alon Lits, General Manager of Uber's sub Saharan Africa unit, assured of the safe, reliable and affordable services Uber provided through its easy to use platform connecting drivers in real time with clients at the touch of a button.

"With over 4 million people using the streets of Accra Metropolitan Area (AMA), there is a clear demand for Uber's services," he said.

Uber was founded in 2009 and began expanding internationally in 2012.

By late 2015, the company was estimated to be worth 62.5 billion U.S. dollars. Enditem
KATHMANDU, June 10 (Xinhua) -- Nepali Vice President Nanda Bahadur Pun left here Friday for China's Kunming to attend the 4th China-South Asia Expo and the 24th Kunming Import and Export Commodities Fair.

The two events will be held in Kunming, capital of southwest China's Yunnan Province from June 12 to 17.

The vice president will be addressing at the opening ceremony of the expo as well as the China South Asia Business Forum on Sunday, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said here on Friday.

The vice president is also expected to hold meetings with Chinese officials on the sidelines of the two events.

He led an 11-member delegation comprising senior officials from the Vice President's Office, Prime Minister's Office and Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

This is the first overseas trip of the Nepali vice president since he assumed office on December 31 last year.
by Marzia De Giuli

ROME, June 10 (Xinhua) -- More than 2,500 sea migrants are expected to be brought to southern Italy between Friday and Saturday, after being rescued during their perilous crossing of the Mediterranean, according to local reports.

Early on Friday, 592 migrants arrived in Palermo, the capital city of Sicily island region, onboard the Bourbon Argos ship operated by medical aid group Doctors Without Borders (MSF). Among them there were 464 men, 119 women and 9 children, including very small ones.

"Most of these migrants came from sub-Saharan Africa, and we rescued them in three separate operations," a MSF spokesperson, Sara Creta, told Xinhua.

Creta, who was onboard the ship, said the migrants were rescued off the Libyan coasts, and all of them told aid operators that "Libya's deteriorating situation is alarming."

"All of the migrants who talked to us said they have either suffered or witnessed violence in Libya. Many said they saw people dying or being beaten. Some said they would have never decided to attempt the crossing if they had known about all of this violence," she told Xinhua.

Creta underlined there are people with very different stories among those trying to reach Europe.

"We tend to believe that the migrants are all the same, or youngsters who want to flee poverty and find a job here, but in fact there are all kinds of situations, including adults, very young couples and unaccompanied children," she noted.

"For example, yesterday I talked to a Mali high school professor born in 1964, who faced the journey to reach his family in France. They have been far from each other for some nine years," she went on saying.

"I also met a 21-year-old Nigerian holding her four-month-old son, as well as a 13-year-old child who was travelling alone, without his family," she said.

Creta highlighted that these different stories make rescuers feel very close to the people they manage to save.

"They are frightened when we first find them in trouble at sea. Many have not a life jacket or cannot even swim. Then we take them onboard, and we spend two days together before reaching land. During that time, we build a relationship with these people. We feel so sympathetic towards them," she explained to Xinhua.

Three other ships carrying hundreds of migrants are expected to reach Italian ports in the coming hours, according to ANSA news agency.

Italy is coping with continuous flows from African and Middle Eastern countries. Earlier this week, around 100 migrants protested near Rosarno, a town in southern Italy, after an officer of Carabinieri military police shot dead a Mali migrant who stabbed him at a crowded tent camp.

Local prosecutors said the officer acted in "legitimate defense," yet tension mounted among the migrants. A group of them were reported as saying to the local press that conditions in the camp were "a disgrace."

Italian police have detained numerous suspected human traffickers in recent times. On Friday, an Eritrean national extradited to Italy earlier this week admitted making the phone calls that investigators say prove he ran a wide operation to smuggle migrants from Africa to Europe, but he denied the accusations, according to ANSA.

As many as 49,757 migrants have reached Italy by sea from Jan. 1 to June 10, and the country is presently hosting 123,332 migrants in its reception centers, sources from the Italian interior ministry told Xinhua on Friday.

Italy is on track to receive around 200,000 sea migrants for 2016, according to the local press.

A report released by national statistics institute Istat on Friday said that foreigners in Italy account for 8.3 percent at the national level, or around five million people of over 60 million residents, with more than half coming from European countries.
The memorial service to Russian pilot Oleg Peshkov was held in Lipetsk, Russia on Dec. 2, 2015. (Xinhua/Pavel Bednyakov/File Photo)

MOSCOW, June 10 (Xinhua) -- The Russian Foreign Ministry on Friday urged Ankara to give due punishment to a Turkish national who allegedly killed a Russian military pilot in the downing of a Russian warplane in November last year.

Alparslan Celik, who fought inside Syria, allegedly killed Oleg Peshkov, one of the pilots of the Russian Su-24 bomber, as he ejected from the plane after it was hit by Turkey.

In the downing of the Su-24 jet, the two crew members managed to parachute themselves, but Peshkov was shot down by ground fire as he parachuted to ground in Syria. The other pilot, Captain Konstantin Murakhtin, was rescued by Russian and Syrian forces and taken to the Hmeimim airbase in Syria, where a Russian airforce group for anti-terror campaign is located.

Celik was arrested in the western Turkish city of Izmir in April for illegal possession of weapons. Earlier in the day, his lawyer told the RIA Novosti news agency that Celik's trial would start in Turkey on June 27.

At her weekly press conference, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said the Turkish authorities are "purposefully trying to tone down Celik's arrest," saying that the Turkish justice is "in general trying to create an impression that the detention of an ordinary criminal has nothing to do with the tragedy in November."

Zakharova called on the Turkish authorities to take necessary steps to find and call to responsibility all persons involved in the killing of Peshkov, including Celik and his subordinates.

Relations between Russia and Turkey have soured after the latter downed the Russian bomber near the Turkish-Syrian border for alleged airspace violation, which the Russian side denied and saw as a hostile act.

Russian President Vladimir Putin then described the attack as a "stab in the back" and ordered a broad range of economic sanctions against Turkey.

Ankara has not taken retaliatory economic measures, avoiding escalation of the already tense situation, but did not shy away from resorting to harsh diatribe against Russia.

In a surprise posture last week, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said he wanted to improve ties with Russia and lamented that relations between the two countries were sacrificed over what he called "a pilot error."

He said he did not understand what kind of "first step" Russia was expecting of Turkey to take to repair the soured ties.
European Commission President Jean Claude Juncker addresses a press conference at the end of an extraordinary two-day EU summit at the European Council in Brussels, Belgium, Feb. 19, 2016. (Xinhua/Ye Pingfan)

STRASBOURG, June 10 (Xinhua) -- One year on from its launch, members of the European Parliament (MEPs) voiced sharply divided verdicts on the progress of the multi-billion euro investment plan of the European Union (EU), or the so-called Juncker plan.

In Wednesday's debate with EU Commission Vice-President Jyrki Katainen on the Investment Plan for Europe, the two biggest political groups in the parliament, EPP and S&D, broadly welcomed the work of the European Fund for Strategic Investment (EFSI). Their MEPs gave the green light to the European Commission's planning proposal to extend the lifetime of the plan.

Katainen said that the Juncker Plan had helped to remove barriers to investment and highlighted its benefits for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

Over 185 agreements between the EFSI and banks would provide finance for over 150,000 SMEs, he said, adding that the Commission planned to present proposals later this year to extend the three-year term of the EFSI and to expand investment into third countries.

The aim of the investment plan, over its three year duration, is to activate at least 315 billion euros (358 billion U.S. dollars) public and private investment, from which 240 billion euros are for infrastructure projects and 75 billion euros are to invest in SMEs.

"In one year, EFSI has already mobilized 100 billion euros in 26 member states, exceeding expectations for SMEs as it mobilized 49 billion euros out of the 75 billion euros assigned to them. Looking at such a positive performance, we believe that EFSI should continue beyond the three years originally planned," stated Jose Manuel Fernandes, EPP Group Spokesperson.

Othmar Karas, the EPP Group's Rapporteur on the economic orientation of the Juncker investment fund, called for an extension of the fund to Africa.

"The start of the European Strategic Investment Fund was a success. Yes to prolonging the fund now. Yes to extending the fund to strategic investment on the African continent as well. Yes to new instruments which allow for risky investments that cannot be financed otherwise. The fund should not be just another cash distribution bag, but offer leverage for projects which would not fly otherwise," he stressed.

The Socialists and Democrats (S&D) called on the European Commission and the European Investment Bank (EIB) to take more risks in order to boost the investment in Europe.

"Some major results have been achieved but we can and should do more," S&D group leader Gianni Pittella said.

"The financing has to be additional not a substitute. The EIB have to take higher risks and finance projects that would not have been financed without the investment plan," he added.

"We must ensure that the extension of the investment plan announced by the Commission will be serious and effective response to the economic and social crisis which is affecting Europe right now," he stressed.

However, MEPs from smaller groups were skeptical about its achievements to date.

European Liberals and Democrats (ALDE) have urged the investment plan to focus on the most innovative projects, stressing that investments alone are not enough to improve Europe's economy.

"We have to make sure that EFSI only funds truly innovative projects that would not have been funded anyway via other financial tools such as the Connected European Facility or Horizon 2020. The Commission needs to speed up and improve the quality of the projects to make the Juncker Plan a success," ALDE Vice-President Pavel Telicka said.

Sander Loones from the European Conservatives and Reformists group (ECR) suggested it was too early to assess the success of the EFSI and warned against "rushing in" with plans to extend investment into third countries.

European United Left, Nordic Green Left group (GUE/NGL) labeled the Juncker Plan as unfair and biased in favor of richer member states during their reaction to the midterm review.

Miguel Viegas said the ambitions were unrealistic and the plan had allowed large companies to dominate.

"There was no geographic coverage or criteria as to where these investments would go: just large companies dominating the private sector. Private management is being brought in over public services at the cost of development and focusing on profits for large multinationals over everything," said the Portuguese MEP.

"What we are seeing is that much of the money went to the wealthier and more developed regions of Europe. We are seeing fictitious results being broadcast and this public program of investment trampled upon in so many member states," he said.

Echoing those sentiments, Greek MEP and Vice-President of the European Parliament Dimitrios Papadimoulis said Katainen should take responsibility for the "unbalanced nature of the investments."

"The Juncker plan has to be focused on creating greater investment throughout Europe but particularly where there is the greatest poverty, the greatest unemployment and the greatest lack of investment," he stressed.

"We need to adapt this investment, apply it to the poorest regions, support the poorest and the SMEs," he said.

Philippe Lamberts, co-president of the Greens (Greens/EFA), called for more money for the plan and said it should focus on countries which lack investment and have most potential for renewable energy projects.

UKIP leader Nigel Farage from Europe for Freedom and Direct Democracy ((EFDD) called EU's investment plan a "pie in the sky."

"I think these grand projects that in many ways, are sowing the seeds of the end of this political project," he said.

Steeve Briois, MEP from Europe of Nations and Freedom Group (ENF), which is skeptical of European integration, described the EFSI as a "total failure."

He criticized that the plan had focused financing on large, urban areas which had aggravated regional disparities.

The investment plan aiming to bring investments back in line with historical trends was initiated by Juncker in November 2014. The plan was approved in June 2015 and the EFSI was launched immediately after.

The main feature is to use a fraction of the EU budget as a guarantee for EIB projects that would be riskier and more innovative than the usual ones. The European Commission predicted that these projects would generate a total of 315 billion euros of investment in three years through leverage and co-financing.
TEHRAN, June 10 (Xinhua) -- Iran, Russia and Syria can activate their political capacities, along with military cooperation against terrorism, to achieve a comprehensive strategy to stop war and bloodshed in Syria, a senior Iranian security official said, according to semi-official Mehr news agency on Friday.

Ali Shamkhani, Iran's Secretary of Supreme National Security Council (SNSC), made the remarks in a meeting with the visiting Syrian Defense Minister Fahd Jassem al-Freij.

Shamkhani reiterated Iran's decisive support for Syria until the complete eradication of terrorist groups in that country, saying that "today, Syria is the battlefield of dangers which if not be dealt with, will spread its roots to all over the world."

He hailed what he termed as the "successes" of the Syrian army and the people in liberating various parts of the country from the terrorist groups.

He further criticized the "unconstructive" approach of the United States and its western and regional allies toward the Syrian crisis, saying that the U.S. approach in Syria seeks the security and interests of Israel.

The Syrian defense minister, for his part, commended Iran's all-out support for Syria in the fight against terrorism, saying "the Syrian government and nation will continue their fight against terrorism with unswerving determination."

Al-Freij deemed the trilateral meeting of Iran, Russia and Syria on countering terrorism in Tehran on Thursday as "highly successful" and "decisive," adding "the close coordination between the three countries at different levels will continue within the framework of new plans for cooperation."

In another meeting with the visiting Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoygu, Shamkhani said that support for Syrian nation and government is for the cause of peace and stability in the Arab country, according to Mehr.

Moreover, Press TV quoted Shamkhani as saying on Friday that the results of a trilateral meeting of the defense ministers of Iran, Russia and Syria indicate that the three countries are determined in countering the terrorist groups.

Shamkhani thanked "the courageous actions and policies of Russian President (Vladimir Putin) and his effective support in the comprehensive fight against terrorism in Syria," according to Press TV.

"The only way to put an end to the current crisis in Syria is to go ahead with the dialogue among Syrians in order to arrive at the political initiatives which all the political parties in the country agree on," Shamkhani said.

The three countries of Iran, Russia and Syria will boost their military coordination in their fight on terrorists beside "activating political capacities more than before to achieve an all-inclusive solution in order to stop war and bloodshed" in Syria, Shamkhani stressed.

For his part, Shoygu said fighting terrorism is an international duty which all countries should work together to build a more secure world.

On Friday, Iranian defense minister said that the Islamic republic will continue its advisory support to Syria in its fight against terrorist groups.

Taking firm and decisive action against terrorism is among Iran's declared policies, Brigadier General Hossein Dehqan said at a meeting with al-Freij, Tasnim news agency reported.

"Based on the request of the legitimate government of Syria, we regard supporting the people and government of the country as our duty," he was quoted as saying.

Iran's support to the Syrian government is aimed at establishing peace, stability and security in the Middle East region, he said.

For his part, al-Freij hailed Iran's continued support for the Syrian nation in its anti-terror campaign, and said such support would lead to the victory of the resistance against terrorists.

Shoygu and al-Freij arrived in Iran's capital Tehran on Thursday to discuss further cooperation with their Iranian counterpart against terrorist groups in the Arab state.

The meeting was aimed at exchanging views on the latest regional development and the ways to strengthen the fight against terrorism.

Iran and Russia have emerged as the major allies of the Syrian government in its struggle against the militant groups who are seeking the overthrow of the Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's government.

Since 2011, when the Syrian civil war began, more than 250,000 Syrians have been killed and millions of the Syrians have been displaced from their homes.
BERLIN, June 10 (Xinhua) -- German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble on Friday warned against a British exit from the European Union (EU).

"A Brexit would be tough for everyone, but above all for the UK," the minister said while attending a conference in Berlin.

Britain is scheduled to hold a referendum on June 23 on its EU membership.

Schaeuble noted that the vote was final and renegotiations won't make a British withdrawal reversed.

"In is in. Out is out," he stressed.

The minister also warned of a domino effect, expressing concern that other EU member countries would think about leaving the EU after the British referendum.

He noted that the EU must show it has learned lessons from the British referendum whatever the outcome.

Even if the British people vote for an EU membership by a narrow majority, Schaeuble said, "it would be a warning with the message: not to continue with business as usual."

But if Britain leaves, the minister added, Europe at a pinch "will also work without Britain."
HOUSTON - The decisions taken by a tribunal set up by the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) are unfair, and China is justified in rejecting them, a Houston-based professor told Xinhua in a recent interview.

The tribunal's admission of Philippine's arbitration request constituted a misguided application of Article 287 of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), Peter Li, an associate professor of the University of Houston Downtown said.

Article 287 and Annex VII of the UNCLOS provided for the start of compulsory arbitration proceedings for addressing conflicts over interpretation or application of the UNCLOS, but it was not designed to serve as a territorial dispute settlement mechanism.

In 2006, China made clear the settlement of the disputes over the delimitation of maritime boundaries did not fall under the jurisdiction of Article 287.

Under this pretext, it was unfair for the tribunal to accept the case brought forward by the Philippines, Li said, breaking down the reason to three points.

First, China's opposition to the arbitration proceedings was rejected by the PCA. The admission of Philippine's unilateral arbitration request was indicative of the Court's position biased towards Manila.

Second, all of the claims made by the Philippines were admitted by the tribunal while China's arguments have all been rejected by the tribunal, including its calls for the exclusion of delimitation of maritime boundaries from compulsory arbitrary proceedings, and to follow peaceful settlement and consultation principles agreed among Southeast Asian countries.

Third, the tribunal has abused its mandate granted by the UNCLOS by involving itself in a territorial dispute that it has no authority to rule over.

Due to the unfairness of the tribunal's actions, China has no legal obligations to participate in or to accept the verdict, Li said.

"China's rejection of and non-participation in the arbitration proceedings are in compliance with the UNCLOS," he added.

As a sovereign nation, China has the right to use all means to defend its territorial security, he said.

The expected ruling will stoke tensions in the South China Sea, as it could send a wrong signal to Manila that it has the backing of the international community behind its territorial claims, encouraging it to turn a blind eye to China's bid of peacefully settling the dispute through bilateral talks, Li said.

"Territorial disputes are to be resolved through bilateral or trilateral or multilateral talks among the parties concerned. Therefore, the disputes are matters between China and the Philippines," he said.

He praised China for its position of peaceful settlement of the disputes and the continued efforts China has made over the past years, adding that China's position to seek a negotiated settlement of the disputes in the South China Sea is "the right approach."

"China's position that the disputes are to be resolved by the countries concerned can best prevent the conflict from being dragged into a complex web of private interests that have nothing to do with the interest of the countries in the region," he stressed.
<p style="margin-top: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px; font-size: 22px;"><span style="font-family:georgia,serif"><span style="font-size:16px">HOUSTON, June 9 (Xinhua) -- The decisions taken by a tribunal set up by the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) are unfair, and China is justified in rejecting them, a Houston-based professor told Xinhua in a recent interview.</span></span></p>

<p style="margin-top: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px; font-size: 22px;"><span style="font-family:georgia,serif"><span style="font-size:16px">The tribunal's admission of Philippine's arbitration request constituted a misguided application of Article 287 of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), Peter Li, an associate professor of the University of Houston-Downtown said.</span></span></p>

<p style="margin-top: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px; font-size: 22px;"><span style="font-family:georgia,serif"><span style="font-size:16px">Article 287 and Annex VII of the UNCLOS provided for the start of compulsory arbitration proceedings for addressing conflicts over interpretation or application of the UNCLOS, but it was not designed to serve as a territorial dispute settlement mechanism.</span></span></p>

<p style="margin-top: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px; font-size: 22px;"><span style="font-family:georgia,serif"><span style="font-size:16px">In 2006, China made clear the settlement of the disputes over the delimitation of maritime boundaries did not fall under the jurisdiction of Article 287.</span></span></p>

<p style="margin-top: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px; font-size: 22px;"><span style="font-family:georgia,serif"><span style="font-size:16px">Under this pretext, it was unfair for the tribunal to accept the case brought forward by the Philippines, Li said, breaking down the reason to three points.</span></span></p>

<p style="margin-top: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px; font-size: 22px;"><span style="font-family:georgia,serif"><span style="font-size:16px">First, China's opposition to the arbitration proceedings was rejected by the PCA. The admission of Philippine's unilateral arbitration request was indicative of the Court's position biased towards Manila.</span></span></p>

<p style="margin-top: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px; font-size: 22px;"><span style="font-family:georgia,serif"><span style="font-size:16px">Second, all of the claims made by the Philippines were admitted by the tribunal while China's arguments have all been rejected by the tribunal, including its calls for the exclusion of delimitation of maritime boundaries from compulsory arbitrary proceedings, and to follow peaceful settlement and consultation principles agreed among Southeast Asian countries.</span></span></p>

<p style="margin-top: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px; font-size: 22px;"><span style="font-family:georgia,serif"><span style="font-size:16px">Third, the tribunal has abused its mandate granted by the UNCLOS by involving itself in a territorial dispute that it has no authority to rule over.</span></span></p>

<p style="margin-top: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px; font-size: 22px;"><span style="font-family:georgia,serif"><span style="font-size:16px">Due to the unfairness of the tribunal's actions, China has no legal obligations to participate in or to accept the verdict, Li said.</span></span></p>

<p style="margin-top: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px; font-size: 22px;"><span style="font-family:georgia,serif"><span style="font-size:16px">"China's rejection of and non-participation in the arbitration proceedings are in compliance with the UNCLOS," he added.</span></span></p>

<p style="margin-top: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px; font-size: 22px;"><span style="font-family:georgia,serif"><span style="font-size:16px">As a sovereign nation, China has the right to use all means to defend its territorial security, he said.</span></span></p>

<p style="margin-top: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px; font-size: 22px;"><span style="font-family:georgia,serif"><span style="font-size:16px">The expected ruling will stoke tensions in the South China Sea, as it could send a wrong signal to Manila that it has the backing of the international community behind its territorial claims, encouraging it to turn a blind eye to China's bid of peacefully settling the dispute through bilateral talks, Li said.</span></span></p>

<p style="margin-top: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px; font-size: 22px;"><span style="font-family:georgia,serif"><span style="font-size:16px">"Territorial disputes are to be resolved through bilateral or trilateral or multilateral talks among the parties concerned. Therefore, the disputes are matters between China and the Philippines," he said.</span></span></p>

<p style="margin-top: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px; font-size: 22px;"><span style="font-family:georgia,serif"><span style="font-size:16px">He praised China for its position of peaceful settlement of the disputes and the continued efforts China has made over the past years, adding that China's position to seek a negotiated settlement of the disputes in the South China Sea is "the right approach." </span></span></p>

<p style="margin-top: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px; font-size: 22px;"><span style="font-family:georgia,serif"><span style="font-size:16px">"China's position that the disputes are to be resolved by the countries concerned can best prevent the conflict from being dragged into a complex web of private interests that have nothing to do with the interest of the countries in the region," he stressed. </span></span></p>
A vehicle of police stands guard at the site where a police officer of Municipal Police were murdered in Tijuana, to northwest of Mexico, on June 2, 2015. (Xinhua/Guillermo Arias)

MEXICO CITY, June 10 (Xinhua) -- An armed group murdered 11 members of the same family in the town of Coxcatlan in the central Mexican state of Puebla early on Friday, local authorities announced.

The 11 victims include five women, four men and two girls, who had met in two houses of the mountainous village in the southeast of the state, on the border with the state of Oaxaca.

Preliminary reports from Coxcatlan police showed that just after midnight on Friday morning, armed persons forced their way into the homes and opened fire.

Another two girls aged four survived the attack, but one was shot in the chest and another in the stomach, the mayor of Coxcatlan, Vicente Lopez de la Vega, told a press conference.

He added that no motive was currently known for the crime although the family reportedly had earlier clashes with inhabitants of a neighboring community over a difference of religious faith.

However, the mayor said no information linked this disagreement to the crime.

Emergency services quickly took the two wounded children to the general hospital of Tehuacan, a nearby town. At least 20 forensic analysts from the state of Puebla arrived on the scene on Friday morning to look for crime evidence.
An aerial photo taken on Sept. 25, 2015 from a seaplane of Hainan Maritime Safety Administration shows cruise vessel Haixun 1103 heading to the Yacheng 13-1 drilling rig during a patrol in South China Sea.(Xinhua/Zhao Yingquan)

HOUSTON, June 9 (Xinhua) -- The decisions taken by a tribunal set up by the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) are unfair, and China is justified in rejecting them, a Houston-based professor told Xinhua in a recent interview.

The tribunal's admission of Philippine's arbitration request constituted a misguided application of Article 287 of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), Peter Li, an associate professor of the University of Houston-Downtown said.

Article 287 and Annex VII of the UNCLOS provided for the start of compulsory arbitration proceedings for addressing conflicts over interpretation or application of the UNCLOS, but it was not designed to serve as a territorial dispute settlement mechanism.

In 2006, China made clear the settlement of the disputes over the delimitation of maritime boundaries did not fall under the jurisdiction of Article 287.

Under this pretext, it was unfair for the tribunal to accept the case brought forward by the Philippines, Li said, breaking down the reason to three points.

First, China's opposition to the arbitration proceedings was rejected by the PCA. The admission of Philippine's unilateral arbitration request was indicative of the Court's position biased towards Manila.

Second, all of the claims made by the Philippines were admitted by the tribunal while China's arguments have all been rejected by the tribunal, including its calls for the exclusion of delimitation of maritime boundaries from compulsory arbitrary proceedings, and to follow peaceful settlement and consultation principles agreed among Southeast Asian countries.

Third, the tribunal has abused its mandate granted by the UNCLOS by involving itself in a territorial dispute that it has no authority to rule over.

Due to the unfairness of the tribunal's actions, China has no legal obligations to participate in or to accept the verdict, Li said.

"China's rejection of and non-participation in the arbitration proceedings are in compliance with the UNCLOS," he added.

As a sovereign nation, China has the right to use all means to defend its territorial security, he said.

The expected ruling will stoke tensions in the South China Sea, as it could send a wrong signal to Manila that it has the backing of the international community behind its territorial claims, encouraging it to turn a blind eye to China's bid of peacefully settling the dispute through bilateral talks, Li said.

"Territorial disputes are to be resolved through bilateral or trilateral or multilateral talks among the parties concerned. Therefore, the disputes are matters between China and the Philippines," he said.

He praised China for its position of peaceful settlement of the disputes and the continued efforts China has made over the past years, adding that China's position to seek a negotiated settlement of the disputes in the South China Sea is "the right approach."

"China's position that the disputes are to be resolved by the countries concerned can best prevent the conflict from being dragged into a complex web of private interests that have nothing to do with the interest of the countries in the region," he stressed.
Image taken on July 19, 2015 shows people traveling in an old car in Havana city, Cuba. (Xinhua/Liu Bin)

WASHINGTON, June 10 (Xinhua) -- The U.S. Department of Transportation said Friday it has approved six domestic airlines to begin scheduled flights between five U.S. cities and Cuba as early as this fall.

"Last year, President Obama announced that it was time to 'begin a new journey' with the Cuban people," said U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx in a statement. "Today, we are delivering on his promise by re-launching scheduled air service to Cuba after more than half a century."

The carriers receiving the awards are American Airlines, Frontier Airlines, JetBlue Airways, Silver Airways, Southwest Airlines, and Sun Country Airlines, said the statement.

The five U.S. cities that will receive new scheduled service to Cuba are Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Chicago, Minneapolis/St. Paul, and Philadelphia.

The nine Cuban cities are Camaguey, Cayo Coco, Cayo Largo, Cienfuegos, Holguin, Manzanillo, Matanzas, Santa Clara, and Santiago de Cuba.

In February, Cuba and the United States signed an agreement to resume daily commercial flights between the two countries for the first time in more than 50 years.

Under the new arrangement, each country has the opportunity to operate up to 10 daily roundtrip flights between the U.S. and each of Cuba's nine international airports, other than Havana, for a total of 90 daily roundtrips.




BRUSSELS, June 10, 2016 (Xinhua) -- Chinese State Councilor Yang Jiechi (L) shakes hands with European Union (EU) High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Federica Mogherini at the 6th round of China-EU high-level strategic dialogue in Brussels, Belgium, June 10, 2016. (Xinhua/Ye Pingfan)

BRUSSELS, June 10 (Xinhua) -- China and the European Union (EU) held their sixth high-level strategic dialogue here Friday, with both sides pledging to further cooperation in various areas.

The event was co-chaired by visiting Chinese State Councilor Yang Jiechi and EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini.

China sees the EU as a comprehensive strategic partner for mutual benefit, Yang said, adding that deepening China-EU relations was not only in line with both demands on economic and social development, but also conductive to global peace, stability and economic recovery.

The two sides agreed to implement the consensus reached by both leaders at the 17th China-EU Summit held in June last year that enhances synergy between their development strategies, and deepens cooperation on trade, investment, infrastructure connectivity, digitization, legal affairs, and facilitation of people-to-people exchanges, Yang said.

They also agreed to accelerate negotiations on bilateral investment agreements and to inject more vigor into cooperation on political security, technology innovation, maritime economy, ocean technology, and cultural tourism, he added.

The EU and China will enhance coordination and ensure the success of the 18th China-EU Summit scheduled in Beijing next month, Yang said. As well, they agreed to join efforts with relevant parties to make the upcoming G20 Summit produce positive outcome, he noted.

Mogherini said China is a key cooperative partner of the EU and the two sides conducted fruitful cooperation on a wide range of fields, bringing pragmatic benefit to both sides.

She praised China's constructive role in coping with global and regional challenges, saying strengthened EU-China dialogues and policy coordination would help generate more cooperative outcomes and solve international and regional hot issues.

Yang also met with Deputy Belgian Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Didier Reynders on Friday. During the meeting, Yang said China would like to advance cooperation with Belgium in such areas as micro-electronics, aerospace, nuclear energy, biological medicine and environment protection.

Earlier on Thursday, Yang also met with European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker. He expressed the will to work with the EU to cement cooperation in politics, trade and the people-to-people exchanges.

Related:

China supports EU in playing constructive role in UN affairs

UNITED NATIONS, June 6 (Xinhua) -- China encourages and supports the European Union (EU) in continuously playing a constructive role in UN affairs, said a Chinese envoy to the UN on Monday.
LIMA, June 6, 2016 (Xinhua) -- Presidential candidate Pedro Pablo Kuczynski of the Peruvians for Change (PPK) party waves to his supporters at the end of the second round of the presidential elections in the district of San Isidro, Lima Province, Peru, on June 5, 2016. (Xinhua/Luis Camacho)

LIMA, June 10 (Xinhua) -- Peru's president-elect, Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, said Friday at a press conference that it was too early to discuss whether he would make any "political alliances" in forming his government.

"It is very premature to speak of the political alliances of the members of the cabinet," said Kuczynski, who will take over from President Ollanta Humala on July 28.

Kuczynski won a tight victory over his rival, Keiko Fujimori, with just 50.12 percent of the vote against her 49.88 percent from the election on June 5. Despite this close contest and after initial rumblings from her camp that she would contest the result, Fujimori announced on Friday afternoon that she recognized Kuczynski's victory.

In a statement, Fujimori said she accepted the democratic results from the National Office of Electoral Processes.

However, the winner said he would seek to grow close to "important players" in Congress, where Fujimori has the support of 73 lawmakers, giving her an absolute majority in the 130-seat chamber.

Kuczynski also added that he would appoint Alfredo Thorne, an economist who led the winning campaign, as Minister of Economy. Furthermore, the current Minister of Education, Jaime Saavedra, has been invited to remain in his position in the next government.

The president-elect said that, over the next few days, he hoped to shore up a broad base of support for his government and to appoint more ministers.

In terms of specific policies, Kuczynski explained one of the first actions of his government would be tackle rising criminality, which has become a real source of concern to many Peruvians.

Policies announced during his winning campaign also include modernization reforms, including the improvement of public services for poorer Peruvians, easier access to credit for SMEs, and a salary increase for education and healthcare professionals. Enditem
The Tribunals Award in the South China Sea Arbitration

Initiated by the Philippines Is Null and Void

Chinese Society of International Law

10 June 2016

Since 22 January 2013 when the Philippines unilaterally initiated arbitration with respect to certain issues in the South China Sea (Arbitration), China has maintained its solemn position that it would neither accept nor participate in the Arbitration, having stated that the tribunal constituted at the unilateral request of the Philippines (Arbitral Tribunal or Tribunal) manifestly has no jurisdiction. On 7 December 2014, the Chinese Government released the Position Paper of the Government of the Peoples Republic of China on the Matter of Jurisdiction in the South China Sea Arbitration Initiated by the Republic of the Philippines (Position Paper), which elaborated on these positions. The Chinese Society of International Law strongly supports the positions of the Chinese Government.

China has indisputable sovereignty over the South China Sea Islands and the adjacent waters. The core of the disputes between China and the Philippines in the South China Sea is issues of territorial sovereignty resulting from the Philippines illegal seizure and occupation of certain maritime features from China in the Nansha Islands, and issues concerning maritime delimitation between the two States. These are also exactly the essence of the Arbitration instituted by the Philippines.

On 29 October 2015, the Tribunal issued its Award on Jurisdiction and Admissibility (Award on Jurisdiction or Award), in which it found that disputes between China and the Philippines concerning the interpretation or application of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS or Convention) existed with respect to the matters raised by the Philippines in all of its Submissions. The Tribunal further found that it had jurisdiction over some of the Submissions made by the Philippines, and reserved consideration of its jurisdiction with respect to the other Submissions to the merits phase. This finding is full of errors in both the determination of fact and the application of law, at least in the following six respects:

First, the Tribunal errs in finding that the claims made by the Philippines constitute disputes between China and the Philippines concerning the interpretation or application of the UNCLOS;

Second, the Tribunal errs in taking jurisdiction over claims which in essence are issues of sovereignty over land territory and are beyond the purview of the UNCLOS;

Third, the Tribunal errs in taking jurisdiction over claims concerning maritime delimitation which have been excluded by China from compulsory procedures in line with the UNCLOS;

Fourth, the Tribunal errs in denying that there exists between China and the Philippines an agreement to settle the disputes in question through negotiation;

Fifth, the Tribunal errs in finding that the Philippines had fulfilled the obligation to exchange views regarding the means of disputes settlement with respect to the claims it made;

Sixth, the Tribunals Award deviates from the object and purpose of the dispute settlement mechanism under the UNCLOS, and impairs the integrity and authority of the Convention.

The Chinese Society of International Law is of the view that having jurisdiction over the claims is a prerequisite for the Tribunal to initiate its proceedings on merits, and a basis for the validity of any final decisions. In the present Arbitration, the Tribunal does not have jurisdiction over any of the claims made by the Philippines. Its Award on Jurisdiction is groundless both in fact and in law, and is thus null and void. Therefore, any decision that it may make on substantive issues in the ensuing proceedings will equally have no legal effect.

I. The Arbitral Tribunal errs in finding that the claims made by the Philippines constitute disputes between China and the Philippines concerning the interpretation or application of the UNCLOS

The Arbitral Tribunal recognizes that, under Article 288(1) of the UNCLOS, its jurisdiction is limited to disputes concerning the interpretation and application of this Convention (Award, para.130). The Tribunal also recognized that, to find its jurisdiction in the present Arbitration, it must be satisfied that 1) disputes existed between China and the Philippines with respect to the claims made by the Philippines, and 2) the disputes, if they existed, concerned the interpretation or application of the UNCLOS. It concludes that disputes between the Parties concerning the interpretation and application of the Convention exist with respect to the matters raised by the Philippines in all of its Submissions in these proceedings (Award, para.178). This conclusion, however, is untenable.

1. The Arbitral Tribunal erroneously determines that the relevant claims constitute disputes between China and the Philippines

A dispute in an international judicial or arbitral procedure is a disagreement on a point of law or fact, a conflict of legal views or of interests between two persons (Award, para.149, quoting from Mavrommatis Palestine Concessions, Jurisdiction, Judgment of 30 August 1924, PCIJ Series A, No.2, p.11). This classic definition of dispute has been followed extensively in practice by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and other international judicial or arbitral bodies.

In international practice, to determine the existence of a dispute, one must first demonstrate that specific subject-matters on which the parties disagree have come into existence before the judicial or arbitral proceedings are initiated. As the ICJ pointed out in 2011 in the Georgia v. Russian Federation Case, a State, prior to the initiation of proceedings, must refer to the subject-matter of the treaty with sufficient clarity to enable the State against which a claim is made to identify that there is, or may be, a dispute with regard to that subject-matter (Application of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (Georgia v. Russian Federation), Preliminary Objections, Judgment, I.C.J. Reports 2011, p.85, para.30, emphasis added). Second, apart from the existence of subject-matter of disagreement, one must also demonstrate that there is clash of propositions or point of contention on the same subject-matter or claim. In the South West Africa Cases, the ICJ held in 1962 that to prove the existence of a dispute, [i]t must be shown that the claim of one party is positively opposed by the other (Award, para.149, quoting from South West Africa Cases (Ethiopia v. South Africa; Liberia v. South Africa), Preliminary Objections, Judgment of 21 December 1962, I.C.J. Reports 1962, p.328, emphasis added). Therefore, a mere assertion by one party does not suffice to prove the existence of a dispute. It must be shown that the parties maintain opposing attitudes or opposite views on the same subject-matter. It is based on these criteria that the ICJ has found the existence of a dispute in a number of cases (See e.g., Alleged Violations of Sovereign Rights and Maritime Spaces in the Caribbean Sea (Nicaragua v. Colombia), Preliminary Objections, Judgment of 17 March 2016, pp.29-32, paras.67-79; Application of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (Georgia v. Russian Federation), Preliminary Objections, Judgment, I.C.J. Reports 2011, pp.84-85, paras.30-31; East Timor (Portugal v. Australia), Judgment, I.C.J. Reports 1995, p.99, para.22).

In the present Arbitration, it is obvious that the Tribunal did not follow the above-mentioned rules and practice of international law in determining the existence of disputes. To take a few examples:

In its Submission No. 3, the Philippines argues that Scarborough Shoal (Huangyan Dao) generates no entitlement to an exclusive economic zone or continental shelf. In order to prove that this claim constitutes a dispute between China and the Philippines, it must be shown, with factual proof, that prior to the initiation of arbitration the Philippines had made such a claim to China and the claim had been positively opposed by China. The Tribunal should have done this, but it did not.

In its Submission No. 4, the Philippines argues that Mischief Reef (Meiji Jiao), Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Jiao) and Subi Reef (Zhubi Jiao) are low-tide elevations that do not generate entitlement to a territorial sea, exclusive economic zone or continental shelf. In order to prove that this claim constitutes a dispute between China and the Philippines, it must be shown, with factual proof, that prior to the initiation of arbitration the Philippines had made such a claim to China and the claim had been positively opposed by China. The Tribunal should have done this, but it did not.

In its Submission No. 6, the Philippines argues that Gaven Reef (Nanxun Jiao) and Mckennan Reef (Ximen Jiao) (including Hughes Reef (Dongmen Jiao)) are low-tide elevations that do not generate entitlement to a territorial sea, exclusive economic zone or continental shelf. In order to prove that this claim constitutes a dispute between China and the Philippines, it must be shown, with factual proof, that prior to the initiation of arbitration the Philippines had made such a claim to China and the claim had been positively opposed by China. The Tribunal should have done this, but it did not.

In its Submission No. 7, the Philippines argues that Johnson Reef (Chigua Jiao), Cuarteron Reef (Huayang Jiao) and Fiery Cross Reef (Yongshu Jiao) generate no entitlement to an exclusive economic zone or continental shelf. In order to prove that this claim constitutes a dispute between China and the Philippines, it must be shown, with factual proof, that prior to the initiation of arbitration the Philippines had made such a claim to China and the claim had been positively opposed by China. The Tribunal should have done this, but it did not.

As is clear from the above analysis, the Tribunal should have concluded that the above-mentioned claims of the Philippines did not constitute disputes between China and the Philippines. But, regrettably, the Tribunal does not apply the above-mentioned requirements to the Philippines claims, one by one, in accordance with international law. It attempts to infer the existence of disputes between China and the Philippines with respect to the above claims, simply by bundling them together and asserting that they reflect a dispute concerning the status of the maritime features and the source of maritime entitlements in the South China Sea (Award, para.169, emphasis added). By generalizing claims regarding the status and maritime entitlements of specific features into a general disagreement concerning the status of maritime features and the source of maritime entitlements in the South China Sea, the Tribunal, sub silentio, replaces one concept with another, in order to conceal its incapability to prove that the Philippines claims regarding the status and maritime entitlements of the nine features constitute disputes between China and the Philippines. The Tribunal then attempts to justify its approach by asserting that a dispute concerning the maritime entitlements generated in the South China Sea is not negated by the absence of granular exchanges with respect to each and every individual feature (Award, para.170), without giving any legal ground for this assertion, and further, says only evasively that it must distinguish between the dispute itself and arguments used by the parties to sustain their respective submissions on the dispute (Award, para.170). The conclusion of the Tribunal is thus unconvincing.

In fact, there exists no real clash of propositions between China and the Philippines with respect to the latters Submissions No. 3, 4, 6 and 7. China has always maintained and enjoyed territorial sovereignty over the Zhongsha Islands (including Huangyan Dao (Scarborough Shoal)) and the Nansha Islands (including the above-mentioned eight features such as Meiji Jiao (Mischief Reef)) in their entirety. It has neither expressed its position on the status of individual features referred to by the Philippines such as Huangyan Dao (Scarborough Shoal), Meiji Jiao (Mischief Reef) and Renai Jiao (Second Thomas Shoal), nor claimed maritime entitlements based on individual features in question, each separately as a single feature. The Philippines, on the other hand, formulated its claims on the status and maritime entitlements of certain individual features as separate features. These facts reflect that the propositions of China and the Philippines concern different issues and do not pertain to the same subject-matters. There are no positively opposed disagreements, thus no disputes, with respect to the same subject-matters.

It is undeniable that disagreements exist between China and the Philippines with respect to issues regarding the South China Sea. However, the disagreements, in essence, concern territorial sovereignty over certain features and maritime delimitation between the two States in the South China Sea, and constitute no dispute with respect to the claims advanced by the Philippines. An international judicial or arbitral body shall address real disputes between real parties with respect to real issues. However, in the present Arbitration the Tribunal distorts Chinas arguments and erroneously finds that there exist disputes between China and the Philippines over the latters claims.

2. The Arbitral Tribunal erroneously determines that the relevant claims concern the interpretation or application of the UNCLOS

Even if a claim constitutes a dispute, the Arbitral Tribunal would still have no jurisdiction over it if it does not concern the interpretation or application of the UNCLOS (UNCLOS, art. 288). Obviously, the interpretation or application of general international law, including customary international law, shall not be regarded as falling within the scope of the Tribunals jurisdiction. As written by Rothwell and Stephens, both Australian international lawyers, [t]he Part XV dispute settlement mechanisms ... do not have jurisdiction over disputes arising under general international law (Donald R Rothwell and Tim Stephens, The International Law of the Sea (Hart Publishing, 2010), p.452).

In the present case, in its Submissions No. 1 and 2, the Philippines in essence requests the Tribunal to declare that Chinas maritime entitlements in the South China Sea are beyond those permitted by the UNCLOS and thus are without lawful effect. The Tribunal finds that the relevant dispute between China and the Philippines is a dispute about historic rights in the framework of the Convention, and a dispute concerning the interpretation and application of the Convention (Award, para.168). However, historic rights had come into existence long before the conclusion of the UNCLOS. Although the nature and scope of historic rights remain undetermined, it can be safely asserted that they originated from and are governed by general international law including customary international law, and rules of customary international law regarding historic rights operate in parallel with the UNCLOS. Accordingly, disputes concerning historic rights do not concern the interpretation or application of the Convention. In the Continental Shelf Case?between Tunisia and Libya, the ICJ pointed out in 1982 that the notion of historic rights or waters  are governed by distinct legal regimes in customary international law (Continental Shelf (Tunisia v. Libyan Arab Jamahiriya), Judgment, I.C.J. Reports 1982, p.74, para.100). Ted L. McDorman, a Canadian international lawyer, also wrote that, whether historic rights exist is not a matter regulated by UNCLOS  when these rights involve fisheries and the resources of the continental shelf UNCLOS does become engaged (Ted L McDorman, Rights and jurisdiction over resources in the South China Sea: UNCLOS and the nine-dash line, in S. Jayakumar, Tommy Koh and Robert Beckman (eds.), The South China Sea Disputes and Law of the Sea (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2014), p.152).

To prove that a dispute concerns the interpretation or application of the UNCLOS, it is not adequate to show that it falls within the purview of the Convention. It must also be shown that the dispute is related to certain substantive provisions of the Convention, and a real link exists between them. In the M/V Louisa Case, the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) stressed in 2013 that it must establish a link between the facts advanced by [the Applicant] ... and the provisions of the Convention referred to by it and show that such provisions can sustain the claim or claims submitted by [the Applicant], in deciding whether the dispute between the parties concerned the interpretation or application of the UNCLOS (The M/V Louisa Case (Saint Vincent and the Grenadines v. Kingdom of Spain), ITLOS Case No.18, Judgment of 28 May 2013, p.32, para.99). In 2012, Wolfrum and Cot, both sitting in the present case, stated in the Ara Libertad Case that [i]t is for the Applicant  to invoke and argue particular provisions of the Convention which plausibly support its claim and to show that the views on the interpretation of these provisions are positively opposed by the Respondent (The ARA Libertad Case (Argentina v. Ghana), Provisional Measures, ITLOS Case No.20, Order of 15 December 2012, Joint Separate Opinion of Judge Wolfrum and Judge Cot, p.12, para.35). Furthermore, in the Georgia v. Russian Federation Case, Judge Koroma observed in 2011 that a link must exist between the substantive provisions of the treaty invoked and the dispute ... any jurisdictional title founded on CERDs compromissory clause must relate to, and not fall outside, the substantive provisions of the Convention (Application of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (Georgia v. Russian Federation), Preliminary Objections, Judgment, I.C.J. Reports 2011, Separate Opinion of Judge Koroma, p.185, para.7).

In the present Arbitration, with regard to the Philippines Submissions No. 1 and 2 concerning historic rights, the Tribunal makes a sweeping conclusion that the relevant claims constitute a dispute concerning the interpretation or application of the UNCLOS, without identifying which specific provisions that the dispute relates to, and whether a real link exists between the dispute and the specific provisions. The conclusion is thus groundless in law.
UNITED NATIONS, June 9, 2016 (Xinhua) -- United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon speaks to journalists during a press encounter at the UN headquarters in New York, June 9, 2016.UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said here on Thursday that he has to remove temporarily Saudi-led coalition from UN's blacklist of committing violations against children due to "undue pressure." (Xinhua/Li Muzi)
Never enough for TT lifestyle

Referring to the controversy surrounding Governments decision to withdraw $2.5 billion from the Heritage and Stabilisation Fund (HSF), Enill said the fund should be an instrument to accomplish something different advising that the country must change its spending patterns.

For years, we have been spending more than we earn, subsidised by energy resources, and the country doesnt know. So I think that in going forward, one of the things that we should do is take all of our energy resources, pretend we have none, and put it in the HSF. If we do that, the picture that will emerge is that we have expenditure of $60 billion and we have revenue of $40 billion. Putting it another way, Enill said, If we put energy resources into the HSF and we borrow from it to fund our excessive lifestyle, then certainly we will understand that theres a different equation, a different value set, that we have to look at in the context of how we go forward. Enill was speaking during the seminar, Business Strategies in a Recession for the Retail Sector, held at Arthur Lok Jack Graduate School of Business, Mt Hope this past Tuesday.

The economic outlook for 2016 to 2018 prompted Enill to issue another warning - the countrys import cover is likely to be cut in half due to the demand for US currency even as foreign exchange earnings; mainly from the energy sector, are expected to remain low for some time.

In 2014, energy companies were producing to the Government, in revenue terms, somewhere in the vicinity of TT $16.9 billion in US currency. In (2015) that number was $3.9 billion. It moved from $16 billion to $3 billion.

When the Finance Minister (Colm Imbert) came back to us after the (mid year) review, he found that the number was in fact $844 million...but the budget numbers have not changed. Theyre still spending in local currency that needs to be converted because everybody needs to buy something and you need US currency to do it, some $59 billion. Enill added that having started 2016 with an estimated 12 months of import cover, in order to give you US dollars, thats going to go down to about six months of import cover.

So we are going to be fundamentally worse off and weaker at the end of 2018...and it really doesnt matter what the price of oil or gas is. Forget feeling really good that the numbers are up, because the fiscals have not been adjusted so you would not get anything from that. The former minister added that the population as a whole must therefore plan for a very different future.

You have to do what you have to do in order to make sure that you survive. (This) requires you to be in a different place mentally than where you are today, Enill declared.
Venezuelans silent on stay in house

CTU interpreters interviewed the Venezuelans, three men and a woman, on Wednesday night hours after they were rescued by Sangre Grande CID officers.

Inspector Ken Lutchman and a team of CID officers accompanied CTU investigators and the Venezuelans on the return to the house yesterday. The Venezuelans reportedly entered the country by boat which docked at Kings Wharf, San Fernando where their passports were stamped by Immigration officers based there.

Newsday understands the four, who arrived a week ago, could not explain why they were staying at the house and who was responsible for their upkeep when asked by the CTU interpreters, but only disclosed that they were fisher-folk from Guaira and Caracas. When questioned also about where they were getting food from while at the house the four refused to give any information.

At about 9 am on Wednesday, Assistant Commissioner of Police (ACP) Surujdeen Persad acting on a tip-off gave instructions to Inspector Lutchman to search the house at Quash Trace, Sangre Grande for the four Venezuelans.

When officers boarded the house they found the woman lying on a bed, a man sitting on a chair and the other two men on a mattress on the floor.

The house has no kitchen and no indoor plumbing. There was no food in the house prompting police to believe the four were being assisted with meals by a local person.

Immigration officers are working closely with the CTU on this investigation.

ACP Persad has disclosed he had information that Venezuelan women are being sold for $20,000 to pimps who later use them for prostitution.

According to CTU sources, of 30 women rescued in Trinidad from sexual exploitation, over the past three years, an estimated 75 percent were from Venezuela.
Man jailed for slashing wifes throat

In 2009, both became estranged and Anthony went to live with her mother in Fyzabad, a short distance from where Creft lived. On Labour Day in 2009, Creft telephoned Anthony and asked for $100. It was an uphill task for State Attorney Mauriceia Joseph, who prosecuted the case, in soliciting evidence from Anthony, who persistently refused to give the evidence against Creft at the trial. The jury, despite Anthony being deemed a hostile witness, found Creft guilty.

Im of the view that this was a horrific act of gender bias, in which the victim was left disabled, unable to use her fingers in order to work.

She must rely on social welfare. The aggravating factors far outweigh the mitigating factors. A strong message must be sent, that women are to be treated with respect at all times, Justice Wilson said yesteray.

The judge told Creft that he must attend anger management session, commenting that in Trinidad and Tobago, people are too eager to resort to violence. She warned those who cannot control their emotions, will feel the full brunt of the law.

Justice Wilson deducted two years from the 12-year maximum sentence as credit for mitigating factors put forward by Crefts attorney Hubert Charles, and ordered the accused to serve ten years in prison with hard labour.
Murder accused complains to Magistrate

At the start of yesterdays proceedings, Cummings indicated to the court that his previous attorney Nigel Trancoso was no longer representing him and that he was being abused by police officers in the holding cells at the courthouse. He provided the regimental number of one of the officers, whom he said were putting his hands on him and was putting his bag on the dirty ground.

Cummings also said he was being abused at the prison by guards who were telling him he was Danas murderer. He was told by Magistrate Cedeno to put his complaint in writing and informed him of his right to file a private assault complaint, if he wished to do so.

Also yesterday, the cross examination of the prosecutions witnesses resumed with the testimony of crime scene investigator PC Mark Ngui, who is attached to the Homicide Bureaus Forensics Department. The matter resumes on June 23,.
14 held in City raid

According to reports, officers led by ASP Ajith Persad and including Cpl Anthony Williams, PCs Persad and Ogarro and other officers arrested a 22-year-old woman who was walking along Independence Square and charged her with possession of marijuana.

Another woman was also held in the Port-of-Spain district for possession of cocaine, while a 31-year-old man who was at Victoria Square was held for soliciting for the purpose of prostitution.

Five others were arrested for several robberies and other serious crimes in the Port-of-Spain area and they were due to be placed on Identification parades for those offences.

Others were also detained for narcotic offences as well as other crimes.

The 14 arrested were taken to the Port-of-Spain CID where they were being processed yesterday and are due to appear before a Port-of-Spain magistrate today.

The exercise forms part of an anti- crime initiative aimed at dealing with crime in the city of Port-of- Spain.

Newsday understands similar exercises are being planned in the Port-of-Spain area and surrounding districts.
Duke returns to court on July 14

Duke yesterday reappeared before Chief Magistrate Marcia Ayers-Caesar at the Eighth Court where he is accused of raping a Cunupia woman on May 10, at the Hyatt Regency in Port-of- Spain.

Other charges are that on dates unknown, between January 31 and March 1; between February 29 and April 1; and on April 5 as well as April 13, he indecently assaulted the woman at the PSAs offices on Abercromby Street in Port-of-Spain.

Following his first appearance before the Chief Magistrate on May 16, Duke was granted bail in the sum of $250,000 to cover all five charges.

He was also ordered to not make contact with the woman.and to stay at least 500 feet away from her as well as her place of employment.
SRP officers home fire-bombed

It is believed molotov cocktails (crude, home-made incendiary devices) were thrown at the familys Frasal Road home shortly after 1 am. According to reports the family members were asleep and were awakened by the sound of explosions. Charles who works at the Gran Couva Police Station said, I heard my mother screaming from upstairs, then I heard a loud explosion. I did not know what to think, I thought someone was killing her, the emotional police officer recalled.

He said that when he attempted to run to his mothers aid, the house became engulfed with flames. I really could not believe what was happening, but I was going to her then I saw my mother and aunt running downstairs screaming, he said. As all three members attempted to flee the premises they observed that one of their vehicles was also in flames.

Investigators believe that another molotov cocktail was thrown under the parked vehicle.

The first molotov was thrown inside the living room area to the upstairs of the home. Charles said that he was puzzled why anyone would want to harm him.

I dont know who would take God out of their thoughts and do such a thing. We could have been dead, he said. Fire officers from the Chaguanas Fire Prevention Unit responded. Cpl Harriot of the Grand Couva Police Station is continuing investigations.
Woman chased by homeless man

She said as she neared them, the homeless man shouted obscenities at her and said, What you following me for? Ramdeo- Ramsubhag said she started to run away and he chased after her.

Luckily, he was stopped by a vendor. There are too many homeless people on the street. I was so scared. If he wasnt stopped he could have thrown that bottle at me and I could have been seriously injured, she said.

Ramdeo-Ramsubhag said she has worked in Port-of-Spain for more than 25 years and that is the first time she has had such an experience.

She said she contacted Mayor Keron Valentines office but was told by his assistant that he was in meetings and they would call her back. Up to yesterday they had not. They really have to do something about these people. Maybe move them and place them somewhere where they can be rehabilitated and brought back into society. And the others with mental issues should be placed in an institution and away from the general public, she said.

Contacted yesterday, Valentine said he has been highlighting the need to remove the homeless from the citys streets.

As I told the joint select committee (of Parliament) a few weeks ago, there are violent people among us who need urgent attention.

The faster we get on top of this our city will be a better and safer place, he said.
Inquiry into key system at PoS jail

The matter was raised during Urgent Questions by Opposition Senator Wade who described the incident which unfolded last week as an embarrassment to the Ministry of National Security.

He asked what measures were being taken to prevent a recurrence.

Dillon said the Commissioner of Prisons had appointed Acting Assistant Commissioner of Prisons Dennis Pulchan, to enquire into the full circumstances concerning this matter, with a mandate to review processes and make recommendations for improvements. He said enhanced and robust measures have already been implemented.

These included effective monitoring and full compliance of proper handing over of keys to only senior officers above the rank of Prison Officer II; efficient mastering of all cell gates at night; enhanced scrutiny of all lock-down areas; ensuring that handover of keys is undertaken by senior officers, with proper scrutiny and revised methods of checking and limiting the custody chain for the master key for all cell gates to the supervisor.

Dillon also complimented the citizen who reported what was believed to be a hand grenade found near a school at Point Fortin yesterday, even though it turned out to be a hoax.

The alleged device found at Point Fortin, based on information from the Police Commissioner, was in fact a hoax, Dillon said.

It as not a real device.

It turned out to be a cigarette lighter.

But I want to compliment that citizen, that resident of Point Fortin for reporting what was believed to be a grenade.

We ask citizens to follow this example.

If you see it, report it. Of the crime situation generally, Dillon said he was deeply concerned about the crime rate and the current murder rate.

He said law enforcement authorities cannot act alone and need the input of citizens.

Of measures to handle crime, he cited reorganisation of agencies such as the Strategic Services Agency (SSA) and the deployment of CCTV cameras.

Dillon said that in December, 800 CCTV cameras were installed, meaning there are now 1,800 CCTV cameras across the nation.

These cameras, Dillon said, would act as a deterrent and also provide vital information.

On the flow of weapons, Dillon said about 80 percent of murders are committed via the use of illegal firearms and the State continues to engage the authorities in V
10% of cops to get backpay

Newsday understands the paysheet deadline is today which means only ten percent of the officers back pay could be completed for payments.

This means that the other 80 percent of officers will receive their back pay at the end of July. Sources revealed that Acting Police Commissioner Stephen Williams and an official of the Ministry of Finance met on Wednesday to discuss the matter and although the green light was given to make backpay payments, the paysheet deadline for banks makes it impossible for all officers to receive their backpay at the end of this month.

Contacted on the matter yesterday, President of the Police Social Welfare Association Insp Anand Ramesar said, I am hoping this information is an inaccurate reflection of the reality which exists on at least three occasions prior to June 2016. Police officers were promised their backpay will be delivered to them so there would have been sufficient opportunity together with a proper reasoning to ensure proper systems were in place to promptly pay police officers. The monies were released from the Ministry of Finance, the Acting CoP and his executive cannot side step their responsibility in this fiasco. They must know that working relationships are going to be affected because police officers are trained to respond to crime but not to disappointments from persons who have responsibility to manage their financial affairs. He continued, If this is so, I am calling on the acting CoP to make a public statement on the matter and explain to his hardworking police officers, why is it that the Finance Department has failed to deliver after the Association fought so hard to ensure salary negotiations were completed followed by the Minister of Finance releasing the monies to be paid. Ramesar wrote to the Acting CoP yesterday in which he spoke about promises made to have payments made on at least three occasions which never materialised. The back pay is for the period 2011 to 2013.

According to the letter written by Acting ASP Ramesar he noted that more than 1,000 police officers may not receive their back pay due to the slow processing and apparent deficiency at the Finance Branch. In his letter Ramesar also recommended that additional officers be posted to the Finance Branch to assist in the processing of the back pay but warned any failure to ensure timely payments will unavoidably lead to widespread disenchantment in the Trinidad and Tobago Police Service. On Friday last, Minister of Finance Colm Imbert indicated that the monies will be released in time for payment at the end of the month. However, sources at Police Finance Branch revealed no instructions have been given for the backpay to be computed to ensure payment.

I was very satisfied with the proactive and timely response of the Minister of Finance in sending out the communication that put paid to the fears of the membership that monies would not be released also the call by the Minister for the Police Service to ensure the process of the backpay payments is not delayed, Ramesar said.
Mother pleads for sons medication

In an interview with Newsday yesterday, Nalini Narine of Arouca lamented the scarcity of the drug, Prograf, an immunosuppressant, which is used in the treatment of organ recipients, to lower the risk of organ rejection by the host and fight infection.

Without this drug, the consequences could be fatal. He would have to go back to using dialysis which is very cumbersome and it can interfere with his education, Narine said as she explained that her son Aaron, suffered from chromic renal failure since birth and underwent a kidney transplant in 2010, for which she served as the organ donor. Although he has made a good recovery, he is in dire need of the medication, which is only available for purchase at a cost of $1,285 for fifty tablets.

I managed to get the money for the medication, but the 50 tablets can only last him seven days, since his drug regimen requires him to take seven tablets per day. Its very difficult once you dont have the money to buy it, especially since it is so costly. Narine added that unless her son receives medication soon, his body will begin to reject the transplanted kidney and he would be forced to return to using dialysis. He would have to go in to do dialysis, approximately three times per week and he doesnt want to do dialysis anymore, he has spent almost ten years of his life in the hospital. Every child wants to be free, go the mall and lead a happy life, hes a really high spirited person and no one wants to see him going through this because of the lack of this particular drug. On Tuesday, the North West Regional Health Authority (NWRHA), released an advisory, in which it revealed that there were limited supplies of certain drugs used in cancer treatment. The release added that alternative drug regimens have been utilised to allow for the treatment of patients requiring drugs in short supply.

Newsday attempted to contact the office of NWRHA CEO Stacy Seetaram for further information concerning the provision of alternative regimens to patients, but were unsuccessful.
Rio Claro teen critical after hit and run

The teen who underwent emergency surgery has not yet regained consciousness since the accident.

According to police reports at about 6.30pm, Maharaj was riding his bike along the Tabaquite main road in the vicinity of Dades Trace when the accident occurred. Investigators believe that the teenager pulled away to avoid colliding into a vehicle proceeding in the opposition direction.

This caused the teenager to lose control of the vehicle and fall off his bike. Speaking to Newsday at the family Jeffers Crossing, Tabaquite Road home, Maharajs cousin Barry Sammy, said that the family is praying and hoping for the best.

He is in a really bad shape. He has not gained consciousness since, Sammy said.

He recalled that late Wednesday evening, Maharaj left the family home and said he was going for a ride in the village.

Sammy said on most evenings, Maharaj would ride his bike throughput the village. He left with a friend and then later that night, a villager came home to tell us that Jessey(Maharaj) was found bleeding from his head in the road near to his bike, he explained.

Sammy said that a motorist rushed Maharaj to the Rio Claro Health Facility. He was later transferred to the San Fernando General Hospital.
PTSC workers warn buses run down

Stanislaus said they want the public to know that drivers report for duty on a daily basis, but are challenged to meet the publics needs due to the shortage of PTSC buses. Our major concern right now is about the fast depletion of the bus fleet, and they are having issues, as it regards to parts.

Our protest is a call on the board of directors, for government intervention and too sensitise the public. Somehow or the other there is the perception that people say bus drivers do not want to work to drive the buses, he said. We want the public to know the truth that the bus drivers are here and we are members of the community as well, and we are serving the community, but there is a shortage of buses. He said bus drivers want the public to know they are lobbing on behalf of the commuters. We need PTSC and the Government to do something in getting these defected buses repaired. There is a need to purchase new buses to add to the fleet for the travelling public, he said. Stanislaus said there will be a monthly board meeting with PTSC this week, and the union plans to highlight the plight of the workers.
Black Caucus Movement calls for apology from Sat

It was rather unfortunate and could be seen as a racial attack on the African community. Other persons who spoke out were not attacked...including a Government junior minister of East Indian descent Avinash Singh, the Hindu Womens Organisation and SWAHA International, (but) two leading African leaders were attacked in a most vicious manner - Archbishop of Port-of-Spain Joseph Harris and US Ambassador John Estrada, Borris said.

Acknowledging Maharajs unapologetic stance, Borris appealed to the SDMS Board to try and get Maharaj to see the light that what he said can disrupt religious (and) racial unity. Borris said he would be out of line to guide the Maha Sabha board but said, an apology is absolutely necessary. Shifting focus to Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowleys planned trip to Jamaica to address the perception by some that TT Immigration officials have unfairly denied Jamaicans entry to TT, Borris said the BCM endorsed the PMs decision. However Rowley needs to also review how Immigration officers treat persons of African descent seeking entry to TT, he advised.
Regional Corporation hits indiscriminate dumping

Gooding said the corporations technical staff was finding it very difficult in how to address the situation. He said if they had the support of residents it could serve as a long term deterrent, but right now did not have that support. He urged the residents to report the persons seen dumping their garbage, to take the numbers of the vehicles so that the corporation could trace them through Licensing.

We believe it requires a cultural change, a behavioural change, and this is what we are appealing for the people to do the right thing. We also believe that most of the dumping is done by people from outside the area who are coming in the dead of night and just off loading their garbage. Most of the dumping is being done at night and we have no kind of control in how we monitor that and how we can catch people in the act of dumping garbage.

We find ourselves in a dilemma where people are just dumping and we are almost powerless because we do not have the police to patrol the areas. Right now we have limited manpower, we have have four Municipal Police officers who really cannot provide the kind of service that we need Gooding said during a news conference at the TPRC, Tunapuna, on Wednesday.

The fine for illegal dumping was just $300 which Gooding said was just a slap on the wrist. He said it should be much more of a penalty because people did not mind paying the fine. He also said they were unable to pick up the garbage that lines the Priority Bus Route (PBR) from Curepe all the way to DAbadie because they did not have PBR passes.

People are simply lining the PBR with garbage, white waste, tires, old garbage bags. We cannot even go on the PBR to pick it up because you have to have a pass and we do not have a pass. Even when our diligent supervisors go on the PBR, invariably they get tickets even though this is illegal dumping, but the corporation has no jurisdiction or authority to operate on the PBR, Gooding said.

The chairman said while it was illegal to go on to the PBR, they did not have the sympathy of police officers who, although seeing an attempt was being made to take up garbage that had been there for days. I mean they are within their rights, but surely if you see a garbage truck picking up garbage on the PBR in the early hours of the morning, I feel they can use some kind of discretion and allow the garbage trucks to pick up the garbage.

Again, I am not one to be lawless, I understand their position, but I am saying under the circumstance we should expect a little more discretion, he said.

Gooding said they were trying to institute changes to beef up patrol in some of the known dumping areas such as the Caura Valley Road, Maracas, St Joseph and Trantrail Road. We dont want to throw our hands up in the air, we are hoping that we could institute some sort of changes like night patrols. It will be an additional cost, but it is something that is receiving the attention of the corporation. We plan, along with other corporations, to get 100 more officers on board, a total of 1,400 officers for the corporations, he said.
Conference to address women challenges

At the media launch for the conference yesterday at the ALJGSB in Mt Hope, Dr Kamla Mungal, director of academic development and accreditation at the school, shared that women make up more than 50 percent of the entrepreneurs in this country and some of the issues they face include gender bias and access to financing.

Women tend to be more burdened and take on more of the family issues than men and there is gender bias everywhere we go, she said.

The theme of this years conference is The Spirit of Woman. Mungal said they crafted the conference to address the challenges that women encounter. We know that when we leverage the potential of women we are going to be able to address head-on some of the issues of our country, she said.

Mungal admitted that finding the person to deliver the message of The Spirit of Woman was a challenge. We had to ensure that this speaker had legitimacy and that means she must have done it herself, she must have crossed those hurdles and barriers. She must have found what it is inside of her and what it is makes her uniquely different from the rest so she can stand above the rest, Mungal said.

They eventually found Dawnna St Louis, a business growth and entrepreneurial expert and author. St Louis was a homeless teen who faced her fears and became an expert in the then male dominated IT industry. She later founded and became the chief operating officer of a nine-figure international business intelligence consultancy firm called BizIntel.

She is not just another rags to riches story; she is that too but she is more of a woman who has actually found her space in a male dominated world. She has done extremely well...

At the conference this year she will help us to understand ourselves a lot better as women and to help us understand that what we consider as weaknesses are really strengths. She will tell us how she has failed, how she has stumbled, gotten up, dusted herself off and moved on to the next thing, Mungal said. The conference will be held on July 14 at the Hilton Trinidad, St Anns, Port-of-Spain.
18 civil society groups support raising marriage age

In a statement, the entities have proposed revised laws that must include public consultations, change the age of consent to marry to at the universal age of 18 years, and exercise discretion in prosecuting sex between young people notwithstanding age of consent.

They have called for the repeal of the provisions that enable the marriage of minors in the Hindu Marriage Act, Marriage Act, Muslim Marriage and Divorce Act and the Orisa Marriage Act.

They also proposed that the request of the Hindu Womens Organisation for permission to be granted, in special cases and with strict checks and balances, for marriage from the age of 16 and no lower than 16, be taken on board.

They have also proposed that in the rationalising legislation, an age of consent to medical services of 16 years (consistent with Jamaicas Law Reform (Age of Majority) Act of 1979) be established.

The entities that signed the statement said they were encouraged by recent public expressions of support to Government to amend existing marriage laws to prohibit girls from as young as 12 years and boys at 14, entering into marriage with parental consent, and to bring the laws in line with international human rights norms and the Global Goals for Sustainable Development.

For those marrying below the age of 16, the entities proposed that they be no more than three years apart in age, obtain equal consent of both living parents, get a review and consent by a master or judge of the Family and Children Court, and prior counselling by a professional. They also propose fines and imprisonments for any marriage officer who attempts the marriage of a minor.
Historic Young Leaders tie

Students of both schools screamed and cheered when the schools were named joint winners at the RBC Young Leaders award ceremony at Hilton Trinidad, St Anns.

Principal of San Juan South Donna Jennings-Toney said it was the students perseverance that won them the title.

She said she was really proud of the students given all of the challenges they have had recently.

This is a real big turnaround for the school over the past month or two, we have been experiencing a lot of negative news, death of a teacher, shut down of the science labs, and today was just remarkable to just experience this euphoria today. I think the kids really deserved it because they worked hard despite all those adversities. If you ever visit San Juan South Secondary you would see how woeful the conditions are at the school and despite all of that we still keep our children positive.

I think today was a tremendous and deserving victory for them, she said. One Form Four student, Christon Malchan, 17, who also won the title of Most Outstanding Young Leader, said he was overjoyed about his and the schools win. It would not be possible without San Juan South, the best kept secret, so I am very happy with my team, he said.

This years theme MEYOUWE: A shared vision for a better society saw participating schools pursuing different projects in their communities.

At St Stephens College they chose to develop the skills of young people at the school and in their community. They held a six week training course at the school in different vocations including barbering, cake decorating and jewelry making.

Form Three student, 13-year-old Chelsea Basdeo said she was elated that her school won.

After months of hard work and plenty work in school and going out to the community and many all-nighters, working on this project, we have won and I think we really deserved it, she said.

In his welcome remarks, Darryl White, Managing Director, RBC Royal Bank Trinidad and Tobago Limited disclosed that the Young Leaders programme will be expanded in collaboration with Free The Children, an international charity.

RBC and Free The Children have embarked on a journey to expand and deepen our Young Leaders programme into a three prong social programme which seeks to engage our youth and our young people through social activism and service based learning to help them in their journey to becoming tomorrows leaders.

Our Young Leaders programme will be expanded to include the We Schools programme, a learning programme where students are encouraged to become active leaders in their communities and to target the issues that they care about most, he said. Placing third was Brazil Secondary.
Young refutes newspaper reports

Stressing the matter remains a current and live one before the courts, Young said his understanding was that SIS attorneys have taken a certain position in law which the NGC attorneys believe to be wholly inaccurate. He stated that anyone who may be called upon to do anything in relation to SIS assets must be, very careful, as the matter has not been dismissed.

Young also said it was his understanding that Rain Forests Resorts Limited, which appears to be a shell company, had certain mortgages over the assets of SIS to a certain tune. The Minister said it appears these mortgages may have been released and discharged, which may very well be in breach of the courts order. The National Gas Company (NGC) issued a statement yesterday indicating that the freezing order against SIS remains in effect.
What you need to know about the Octagon Art Festival on Sunday in Ames

news
Fed up: North Carolina State University students sue to uphold their free speech rights

(Freedom.news) Increasingly, students on Americas far-Left college campuses are fighting back against authoritarian politically correct speech policies that deprive them of their First Amendment rights.

As reported by The Daily Signal, a student-led Christian group has filed suit against North Carolina State University for allegedly restricting their free speech rights by demanding they first obtain a speech permit.

At a federal court hearing last week, Tyson Langhofer, senior counsel at the Alliance Defending Freedom, represented Grace Christian Life, a non-denominational Christian church that organizes services and fellowship activities for students at the university.

Hannalee Alrutz, president of the group and a senior at the school, told The Daily Signal, I have witnessed other student groups on campus engaging in conversation freely and not being stopped.

Because college campuses are a marketplace of ideas, every student from every belief system and standing should have the right to freely express their ideas, Alrutz said. The policy kills our speech. It puts a lot of fear in us so that when we desire to talk to somebody on campus, like a fellow student, there is always, in the back of our mind, a worry that we may be stopped or punished because the policy allows for that.

The Daily Signal reported further:

Like many groups and clubs across college campuses nationwide, Grace Christian Life used the student union as a place to tell their peers about Grace Christian Lifes mission and to invite them to attend Grace Christian Life events.

In order to make students aware of their activities, Grace Christian Life needed to apply for a permit to set up a table and were told that without a permit, they must stop approaching other students in the Talley Student Union to engage in religious discussions with them, according to apress release by ADF.

The only permit required for free speech on a public university campus is the First Amendment, Langhofer said in a statement, adding that the permits are unconstitutional restrictions on the free speech of students.

Despite what they see as the questionable legality of the universitys permit policy, Grace Christian Life members nevertheless applied for and obtained a permit that allowed them to speak with other students from behind the table or anywhere in the room. But when they stepped out from behind the table, they were informed by a member of the Student Involvement Office they must return.

The controversy ensued, however, when Student Involvement members did not confront other student groups who were engaging in conversation and handing out literature either without a permit or outside of the area reserved by their table permit, often in full view of them, according to ADF.

I believe that the courts questions today made it very clear that [the judge] did not believe that the lawsuit was frivolous at all and that there were legitimate and appropriate constitutional concerns with the [universitys speech permit] policy, Langhofer said after the hearing.

The judge expressed grave concerns with the breadth of NC States policy. He questioned NC States policy at length about why the university felt the students need a permit to talk with one another in the student union.

More:

Freedom.news is part of the USA Features Media network. Check out ALL our daily headlines here.

Submit a correction >>
US officials complain their propaganda is failing under Obama as Russian news outlets expose Washingtons inconvenient truths

The American military-industrial complex and its allies in D.C. are worried that people now have access to news from sources other than just those that push its own flavor of propaganda. Russian news sources, to be exact, are apparently threatening the interests of the establishment, claim some lawmakers, which is why efforts are now afoot to stop them.

Of particular concern is RT, formerly known as Russia Today, a global news outlet based in the former Soviet Union that presents a much different narrative about world events than the one constantly being pushed by the likes of CNN and Fox News. RT boasts an audience of some 700 million people globally, a number exceedingly higher than what even the most highly rated American news outlets can claim.

Weve cited RT many times here at Natural News because, quite frankly, this particular news source offers up honest and critical analysis of real issues that never get a fair shake in U.S. corporate news  topics like vaccine safety, government corruption, the rise of corporate fascism, the dangers of the growing police state, the biotechnology scam, the inherent evil of the Federal Reserve and so much more.

Most everyday folks would see this type of alternative media as a good thing  a breath of fresh air in a cloud of journalistic pollution. And yet, American lawmakers are shaking in their boots, because the house of cards they and their predecessors have spent so many years building up might come crashing down if Americans begin to see the truth.

These self-appointed information ministers claim that RT and others are dispensing anti-U.S. propaganda, to which supporters of alternative media would rebut is actually pro-freedom truth that defies the lies of the American media machine. Nevertheless, the establishment in Washington isnt happy about the change in media preference taking place throughout the world.

Its remarkable to see the sophisticated media offense that Putin is conducting across Eastern Europe, Central Europe, the Middle East and Latin America through Russia Today, stated Representative Edward R. Royce, a California Republican and chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. Were just not countering it effectively.

Questioning American government lies isnt propaganda, its due diligence

Accusing RT of being the mouthpiece of Putin is laughable, considering the American medias unwavering support for anything and everything that comes out of the mouth of Dictator Obama. Talk about the pot calling the kettle black, as this battle of two empires exposes not only the arrogance of many American politicians but also the hypocrisy in its approach to news distribution.

Modern technologies have provided new avenues for disseminating lies and distortions to massive audiences, added Representative Eliot L. Engel of New York, a Democrat who is working to ramp up the American propaganda machine to rival that of Russias. Unfortunately, Americas ability to respond effectively hasnt kept pace.

Rep. Engel apparently doesnt realize that the U.S. has used many of these same modern technologies to disseminate lies about anything that counteracts the interests of the American empire. And what Rep. Engel and his allies also fail to realize is that what they consider unfortunate is actually fortunate for the average American, who stands to gain from the diminished influence of the American propaganda machine.

The term propaganda is something that is lobbed at RT by certain political and media establishments that do not like to see their narratives of the world being challenged, as a way to invalidate inconvenient points of view, responded RT spokeswoman Anna Belkina.

It is also a charge that is rarely, if ever, put to the VOA [Voice of America], BBC World Service, Deutsche Welle, Euronews, or many other news outlets that receive public or compulsory funding.

Sources for this article include:

WashingtonTimes.com

Submit a correction >>
Combined Defence Services Examination (II), 2015-Declaration of Final Result

New Delhi, Fri, 10 Jun 2016 NI Wire

The following are the lists, in order of merit of 261 (166 + 88 + 07) candidates who have qualified on the basis of the results of the Combined Defence Services Examination (II), 2015 conducted by the Union Public Service Commission in November, 2015 and SSB interviews held by the Services Selection Board of the Ministry of Defence for admission to the 141th Course of Indian Military Academy, Dehradun; Indian Naval Academy, Ezhimala, Kerala and Air Force Academy, Hyderabad (Pre-Flying) Training Course i.e. No. 200/16 F/PC Course.

There are some common candidates in the three lists for various courses.

The number of vacancies, as intimated by the Government is 200 for Indian Military Academy [including 25 vacancies reserved for NCC C certificates (Army Wing) holders], 45 for Naval Academy, Ezhimala, Kerala Executive(General Service) [including 06 vacancies reserved for NCC C Certificate (Naval Wing) holders] and 32 for Air Force Academy, Hyderabad.

The Commission had recommended 4682, 2738 and 550 as qualified in the written test for admission to the Indian Military Academy, Indian Naval Academy and Air Force Academy respectively. The number of candidates finally qualified are those after SSB test conducted by Army Head Quarters.

The results of Medical examination have not been taken into account in preparing these lists.

Verification of date of birth and educational qualifications of these candidates is still under process by the Army Headquarters. The candidature of all these candidates is, therefore, Provisional on this score. Candidates are requested to forward their certificates, in original, in support of Date of Birth/Educational qualification etc. claimed by them, along with Photostat attested copies thereof to Army Headquarters /Naval Headquarters /Air Headquarters, as per their first choice.

In case, there is any change of address, the candidates are advised to promptly intimate directly to the Army Headquarters /Naval Headquarters /Air Headquarters.

These results will also be available on the UPSC website at http://www.upsc.gov.in. However, marks of the candidates will be available on the website after completion of its complete process i.e. after declaration of final result of Officers Training Academy (OTA) for Combined Defence Services Examination (II), 2015.

For any further information, the candidates may contact Facilitation Counter near Gate C of the Commissions Office, either in person or on telephone Nos.011-23385271/011-23381125/011-23098543 between 10:00 hours and 17:00 hours on any working day.

Click here for full list: Combined Defence Services Examination (II), 2015-Declaration of Final Result

Source: PIB
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Domains purchased with payment plans are not eligible to transfer until all payments have been made. Please remember that our 30-day money back guarantee is void once a domain has been transferred.

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WASHINGTON, June 10, 2016 - The Occupational Safety and Health Administration should go through a public rulemaking process before imposing new Process Safety Management (PSM) regulations on fertilizer dealers who handle anhydrous ammonia, a committee report accompanying a Senate appropriations bill says.

The fight over the requirements has been going on since OSHA issued guidance last July that revoked the so-called retailer exemption from the PSM standards. Ag retailers, who contend that implementing PSM requirements would cost them dearly, protested and then sued. A ruling from the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals is pending.

Meanwhile, dealers champions in Congress have been nudging OSHA using report language, which does not have the force of law, but is designed to get the agencys attention. Sen. John Hoeven (R-N.D.) pushed to include the language.

The report accompanying the omnibus spending bill for fiscal 2016 urges OSHA to propose a rule and accept public comment. OSHA recently began a Small Business Regulatory Enforcement Fairness process as the first step in a comprehensive rulemaking to update the 20-year-old PSM standard but said that in the meantime, it would not exempt dealers from the inspection, recordkeeping and training requirements of the PSM standard.

The latest report, accompanying the Senate Labor, Health and Human Services and Education bill, says OSHA should not enforce that standard against retailers until it goes through the full regulatory process and has an independent third party conduct a cost-benefit analysis on the effect of lifting the exemption.

Says the report: OSHA has issued letters of interpretation on substantive policy matters that leave the agency open to liability that can be avoided by going through the proper rulemaking process, including notice and period of public comment. OSHA is expected to implement agency policy changes through the formal regulatory process.

The spending bill also maintains the current exemption from occupational safety and health laws for farms with fewer than 10 employees that do not have a temporary labor camp.

The continued exemption for small farms and recognition of limits of the OSHA regulatory authority are critical for family farms, the committee report says. It is also important the Department of Agriculture be consulted in any future attempts by OSHA to redefine or modify any aspect of the small farm exemption.

The bill would provide about $82 million for migrant and seasonal farmworker programs, which serve members of economically disadvantaged families whose principal livelihood is derived from migratory and other forms of seasonal farm work, fishing, or logging activities, according to the report.

The committee bill also would give $163 million to the Centers for Disease Control and Preventions Combating Antibiotic Resistant Bacteria initiative.

Like what you see here? Agri-Pulse subscribers get our Daily Harvest email and Daybreak audio Monday through Friday mornings, a 16-page newsletter on Wednesdays, and access to premium content on our ag and rural policy website. Sign up for your four-week free trial Agri-Pulse subscription.





In its report, the committee said it recognizes the importance of addressing antibiotic-resistant bacteria through a One Health approach, simultaneously combating antibiotic resistance in human, animal, and environmental settings.

In another part of the report, the committee said that a number of disease-causing microbes have developed resistance to drugs previously used to treat them due to increased global availability and over-prescription of antimicrobial medicines to humans and animals. The report urged CDC to consider partnering with a coalition of hospitals, state public health departments, global health nongovernmental organizations, and biotech companies, among others, with the goal of linking global patterns of emerging resistance to their impact in U.S. hospitals and clinical settings. Such a coalition would attempt to identify the most important factors that contribute to the emergence and the spread of (antimicrobial) infections worldwide, and how they are spread to the United States.

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Frequent visitors to the Next Generation Communications Community are no doubt aware of my fondness for publishing findings from authoritative sources. This week saw an extremely insightful addition to the list with the publication by Telefonica of what it is calling the the most comprehensive digital Index ever developed. They make an interesting point for the Index which assesses 34 countries worldwide on the extent of their digital development.





The Telefonica Index on Digital Life even at a high level provides interesting numbers to chew on. For example, while the U.S. tops the Index with a total score (96.3/100), Canada, the UK, Colombia, Australia, the U.S. and Chile lead in outperformance relative to their GPD Per Capita. In fact, as Telefonica is saying in promoting the new Index, the findings do challenge the preconceptions that that the worlds wealthiest countries exhibit the best digital prowess.

The Index highlights that the strength of digital life not surprising varies strongly across the world. The good news for the company is that Latin American countries (Columbia, Chile and Mexico to be specific), where they has a strong footprint, in the analysis were highlighted as having made significant progress in relation to their economic performance.

A few facts Telefonica felt were noteworthy from the Index were that Italy is the lowest-ranking G7 country sitting in 17th place (64.8 points), with all other G7 countries ranking in the top eight (USA, Canada, UK, France, Germany, and Japan). Plus, in the competition between the worlds largest countries by population, China (24th with 58.3) ranks ahead of India (28th with a score of 54.4).

The new Index is unique in its approach. It takes a holistic view of the different socio-economic components that combine to establish digital life within a particular economy. Telefonica believes that digital infrastructure alone is rendered ineffective if a country lacks the capacity to leverage it for economic and societal development. It takes into account three components, informed by 50 different pre-existing sets of public data relating to digital life across the world:

OPENNESS: The ease of information flow within a particular economy (open access to technology and systems) CONFIDENCE: The extent to which users engage with and trust the digital world (Incl. education and privacy) ENTREPRENERSHIP: How economic activities prosper in the digital environment (the freedom to innovate)

Notably, the Index suggests that bottlenecks exist in the global landscape, obstructing certain countries ability to achieve a successful digital ecosystem on behalf of citizens. In addition, Telefonica has published recommendations for governments and policy makers to improve bottlenecks and leverage strengths surfaced by the Index. The policy recommendations emphasize:

Regulatory conditions that affect market structure, open innovation and customer choice. Legislation to encourage customer experience, freedom of expression, privacy and security. Policies to support innovation, e-skills, cultural attitudes and the start-up ecosystem.

What is interesting here is that recommendations to governments from service providers and solutions vendors are becoming commonplace. In fact, community members are recommended to go back and review the series of articles recently run on the site that looked in detail at Nokias recommendations to policy makers on community broadband.

Commenting on the launch of the Index, Jose Maria Alvarez-Pallete Lopez, Executive Chairman of Telefonica, saidl: Current regulation has to change in order for countries to maximise the digital opportunity. To unleash the full potential of the digital economy, we need forward-looking, fairer public policies and a better cooperation between all stakeholders, public and private. Without this, we risk a digital divide, which could not only threaten economic progress, but also the lives of citizens globally.

The Index on Digital Life reflects Telefonicas belief that technology should be open to everyone. Recent reports estimate that a 10% increase in digitalisation of the economy could increase GDP per capita growth rates by 40%. We need institutions, governments, unions, enterprises, policy makers and citizens to realise the full potential of the digital world for the benefit of the society.

Finally, it should also be noted that Telefonica has the help of recognized experts from Londons Imperial College Business School, George Mason University and the University of Pecs, who are acclaimed by their peer-reviewed methodology and work in the field of Entrepreneurship.

The link to the full Index is here. It is more than worth spending some time with as a resource for assessing where we are and how government can help expedite acceleration to the broadband future.

Edited by Stefania Viscusi
China plans to build more than 1,000 heavy strategic transport aircraft. In January, the China Daily reported that the Peoples Liberation Army Air Force was preparing to develop a new fleet of stealth fighters and heavy transport aircraft. The latter, the Xian Y-20 transport, was in particularly high demand, given Beijings lack of a fast and reliable platform to deliver arms and soldiers over long distances.

Heavy transport aircraft are critical to extend the operational range of Chinas airforce. They can be used for mid-air refueling. It will also allow for rapid deployment of troops and tanks to different locations.

In terms of payload the Y-20 fits between a larger Boeing C-17 Globemaster III (77 t) and similar in size Russian Ilyushin Il-76 (50 t). It is worth noting that the Il-76 is in service with Chinese air force. However the Y-20 is also superior to the Il-76 in terms of aerodynamic arrangement and performance.

In Jan 2016, Chinese military recently released a video, showing that a Su-30 fighter jet was being refueled by an IL-78 air-refueling aircraft. The Y-20 is larger than the Antonov 70.

During a technology exhibition in Beijing this month, the Aviation Industry Corporation of China (AVIC) elaborated on these plans. More than 1,000 Y-20s will be needed, Zhu Qian, head of AVICs Large Aircraft Development Office told reporters, according to IHS Jane.

Analysts note that one thousand aircraft is a significant increase from earlier reports that suggested Beijing would acquire some 400. According to Zhu, the new estimate is based on the experience of the United States and Russia. The Y-20 weighs roughly 220 tons, has four turbofan engines, and can carry up to 66 tons of cargo. The aircraft has a range of about 3230 miles.

This means it can reach everywhere in Europe and Asia, the US state of Alaska, Australia, and North Africa, the Peoples Daily reported. The aircrafts heavy payload indicates that it could be used to transport tanks, including Chinas 64-ton Type 99A2 main battle tank.

Beijing may have its sights set on an even larger transport aircraft, however. According to Zhu, China plans to build 300-tonne, 400-tonne and even 600-tonne aircraft.

A plane of that size would rival Russias Ukranian Antonov An-225 Mriya, the largest aircraft in the world. Weighing over 700 tons, the Mriya has the largest wingspan of any plane in service and holds the world record for carrying a single item payload of 418,834 pounds.

The first Y-20 prototype is powered by four 12-ton thrust Soloviev D-30KP-2 engines. early production units are likely to be similarly powered. The Chinese intend to replace the D-30 with the 14-ton thrust WS-20, which is required for the Y-20 to achieve its maximum cargo capacity of 66 tons. The Shenyang WS-20 is derived from the core of the Shenyang WS-10A, an indigenous Chinese turbofan engine for fighter aircraft.

In 2013, Shenyang Engine Design and Research Institute was reportedly developing the SF-A, a 28700-pound thrust engine, for the Y-20 and the Comac C919. The SF-A is derived from the core of the WS-15. Compared to the WS-20, the SF-A is a conservative design that does not seek to match the technology of more modern engines. Note:WS-15, WS-20, SF-A does not yet exist till the end of 2015.

Y-20 General characteristics

Crew: 3: pilot, copilot and load master

Payload: 66 tonnes (145,505 lb)

Length: 47 m (154.2 ft)

Wingspan: 45 m ~ 50 m (147 ft ~ 164 ft)

Height: 15 m (49.2 ft)

Wing area: 330 m (3337 ft)

Empty weight: 100,000 kg (220,400 lb)

Max. takeoff weight: 220,000 kg (485,000 lb)

Powerplant: 4  turbofans

Performance

Cruise speed: Mach 0.75 (918 km/h)

Range: 4,500 km with max payload ; 7800 km with 40 tons ; 10,000+ km with paratroops.

Service ceiling: 13,000 m (42,700 ft)

Max. wing loading: 710 kg/m (145 lb/ft)

SOURCES- Wikipedia, Space Daily, IHS Janes, China Arms
Google is to trying to combine the Adiabatic Quantum computing AQC method with the digital approachs error-correction capabilities.

The Google team uses a row of nine solid-state qubits, fashioned from cross-shaped films of aluminium about 400 micrometres from tip to tip. These are deposited onto a sapphire surface. The researchers cool the aluminium to 0.02 degrees kelvin, turning the metal into a superconductor with no electrical resistance. Information can then be encoded into the qubits in their superconducting state.

The interactions between neighboring qubits are controlled by logic gates that steer the qubits digitally into a state that encodes the solution to a problem. As a demonstration, the researchers instructed their array to simulate a row of magnetic atoms with coupled spin states  a problem thoroughly explored in condensed-matter physics. They could then look at the qubits to determine the lowest-energy collective state of the spins that the atoms represented.

This is a fairly simple problem for a classical computer to solve. But the new Google device can also handle so-called non-stoquastic problems, which classical computers cannot. These include simulations of the interactions between many electrons, which are needed for accurate computer simulations in chemistry. The ability to simulate molecules and materials at the quantum level could be one of the most valuable applications of quantum computing.

This new approach should enable a computer with quantum error correction, says Lidar.

With error correction, our approach becomes a general-purpose algorithm that is, in principle, scalable to an arbitrarily large quantum computer, says Alireza Shabani, another member of the Google team.

The Google device is still very much a prototype. But Lidar says that in a couple of years, devices with more than 40 qubits could become a reality.

At that point, he says, it will become possible to simulate quantum dynamics that is inaccessible on classical hardware, which will mark the advent of quantum supremacy.

Spin-chain problem and device. a, We implement one-dimensional spin problems with variable local fields and couplings between adjacent spins. An example of a stoquastic problem Hamiltonian with local x and z fields, indicated by the gold arrows in the spheres, and zz couplings, whose strength is indicated by the radius of the links, is shown. Red denotes a ferromagnetic (J = +1) and blue an antiferromagnetic (J = 1) link. The problem Hamiltonian is for the instance shown in c. b, Optical picture of the superconducting quantum device with nine Xmon22 qubits Q0Q8 (false-coloured cross-shaped structures), made from aluminium (light) on a sapphire substrate (dark). Connections to read-out resonators are at the top; control wiring is at the bottom. Scale bar, 200 m.

Dwave Chip which has no error correction by 1000-2000 qubits

Nature  Digitized adiabatic quantum computing with a superconducting circuit

Quantum mechanics can help to solve complex problems in physics and chemistry, provided they can be programmed in a physical device. In adiabatic quantum computing, a system is slowly evolved from the ground state of a simple initial Hamiltonian to a final Hamiltonian that encodes a computational problem. The appeal of this approach lies in the combination of simplicity and generality; in principle, any problem can be encoded. In practice, applications are restricted by limited connectivity, available interactions and noise. A complementary approach is digital quantum computing6, which enables the construction of arbitrary interactions and is compatible with error correction7,8, but uses quantum circuit algorithms that are problem-specific. Here we combine the advantages of both approaches by implementing digitized adiabatic quantum computing in a superconducting system. We tomographically probe the system during the digitized evolution and explore the scaling of errors with system size. We then let the full system find the solution to random instances of the one-dimensional Ising problem as well as problem Hamiltonians that involve more complex interactions. This digital quantum simulation of the adiabatic algorithm consists of up to nine qubits and up to 1,000 quantum logic gates. The demonstration of digitized adiabatic quantum computing in the solid state opens a path to synthesizing long-range correlations and solving complex computational problems. When combined with fault-tolerance, our approach becomes a general-purpose algorithm that is scalable

SOURCES  Nature
"The pilots are in good shape", Maj.

The two jets were assigned to the South Carolina Air National Guard's 169th Fighter Wing, which operates from McEntire Joint National Guard Base in Eastover, South Carolina. But she says both pilots were well enough to eject safely and to contact National Guard officials in SC to say they were okay.

The jets do not have beacons that would help locate them.

Officials said a safety board has been activated and the U.S. Air Force will be conducting a detailed safety investigation.

The Adjunt General for South Carolina and South Carolina Air National Guard will hold a follow-up press briefing on the crash at 12:30 p.m., Wednesday.

Gentile said he could not yet release their names, but said they are back in SC being debriefed as part of the investigation.

"They were very seasoned and have spent their careers in F-16s", Livingston said. The 169th Fighter Wing has 28 of the aircraft. He said he can not yet release the names of the pilots, however. Six of their aircraft were in that airspace when the collision occurred.

"We'll certainly re-engage in our training and prepare for that mission", McCarty said. The Guard declined to speculate on the cause of the collision, but promised an investigation.

The jets appear to have crashed to the ground in two separate locations, and the Guard reports that no injuries were sustained either in the air or on the ground.

You can find a timeline of events since the crash, including the search for the pilots and wreckage, here.

There were no reported injuries on the ground.

The first plane was found in a heavily wooded area.

While he didn't identify the pilots, Gentile says they are both highly experienced.

This is the latest in a string of crashes for military flying teams.

A Blue Angels F/A-18 crashed last Thursday near Nashville, Tennessee, while taking off for a practice session. The pilot, Marine Capt. Jeff Kuss, was killed.

Two F-16 fighter jets collide mid-air in Georgia. One of the two pilots was found in a pasture after he ejected, the other was found in some woods.

The collision comes almost a week after a U.S. Air Force F-16 assigned to the Thunderbirds flight demonstration team crashed following a flyover at the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

Stay with CBS North Carolina for updates on this breaking news.

This story has been corrected to reflect that the name of the bombing range is the Bulldog Military Operations Area, not the Townsend Bombing Range.
California Attorney General Kamala Harris pulled off a commanding first place finish in the crowded race to replace retiring Barbara Boxer in the U.S. Senate on Tuesday - a win thanks in large part to the flooded field of Republican and "no party preference" candidates in a "jungle" primary.

Attorney Tom Del Beccaro and businessmen Duf Sundheim and Ron Unz may be fighting an uphill battle, but they're pushing hard to make a dent in a notoriously Democratic-leaning state. Unlike most other states, in California Congressional races, voters' top two primary picks move on to the general election.

In May, while speaking in front of an audience of Indian Americans, she said she's been expecting an audience of Native Americans, saying, "I am going to his office, thinking that I am going to meet with a "woo woo woo woo" - her depiction of an Indian "war cry".

Recent polls, however, have suggested that a significant number of Republican voters say they would not vote for either Democrat.

"Republicans are going to be probably the determinative voting bloc, if they consolidate behind one candidate", Madrid said, noting the race could hinge on "a Latina candidate actively courting Republican votes". Sanchez, a Blue Dog Democrat, could attract GOP crossover votes, while Harris has the backing of high-profile Democrats like Gov.

It's not looking like a Republican will be on the California Senate ballot in November. But only two advance to the general election - the top vote-getters. Eskola says she'd never vote for a Democrat and plans to write in a candidate in November if it's a Sanchez-Harris matchup.

"It's been an exciting campaign and we're getting ready for round two, so we need all - all of you, all of you - to be with us", she said.

With California solidly Democratic, the presidential election is unlikely to overshadow the Senate race in the fall - if the candidates come here, it will be to raise money at private affairs. "I haven't been that impressed with Kamala Harris and what she's said, but the party bosses have gotten behind her and then everybody else has gotten behind her - except Sanchez". Jerry Brown and a majority of the state party. Either way, California is poised to make history, reports Mollie Reilly. The scattered GOP vote allowed two Democrats to advance - marking the first time ever that California voters will send two candidates from the same party to a statewide runoff.

Democrats control every statewide office and both chambers of the Legislature, while holding a registration edge of almost 2.8 million voters. Carrick touted her experience of "casting tough votes" as a strength, as well as her ability to "work across the aisle to get things done" - a play for Republican voters who find themselves with nobody of the same party to vote for in November. Illinois Sen. Carol Moseley Braun was elected in 1992 and served one term.

While the women were favored for the two top spots, Loyola law professor Jessica Levinson noted that, as recently as last week, more than a quarter of likely voters told the Field Poll they were still undecided. Harry M. Reid (D), also has a shot at winning in November.

Sanchez, 56, a 10-term House member, was well behind but still in second place. Already, Harris has raised more than $11 million during the primary, while Sanchez raised a respectable $3.5 million.
Appearing on Meet the Press Sunday morning, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) thrice refused to label Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump's statement that a federal judge can not decide a case impartially because the judge is Mexican American a "racist statement".

By Sunday morning, not only had Trump doubled down on his characterization of a Mexican-American federal judge as preternaturally unfit to be fair to the European-American nominee by dint of the judge's ethnic heritage-he told John Dickersonof Face the Nation that he would expect the same level of unfairness from a Muslim judge.

"It was a grating and irritating characteristic that many of us had to endure, which is why the guy to negotiate with in the administration was the vice president and not the president", McConnell said of Joe Biden.

But - he added - there's still plenty of room for improvement.

"I guess the majority leader was taking a lot of heat about judges and Donald Trump's racist statements about them and didn't want to draw anymore attention to the Republicans' unprecedented blockade to judicial nominations", Warren said Wednesday. And so I hope that's what he will do.

Asked if that was a "low bar", McConnell replied "it's a good step in the right direction".

McConnell recalled an encounter with Trump at the National Rifle Association convention in Louisville three weeks ago. "He pulled it out of his pocket and said, 'I hate a script, it's so boring.' And I said, 'put me down in favor of boring, '" he said.

Though Trump was muted Tuesday night, he has stood by calling U.S. District Court Judge Gonzalo Curiel a "hater" and "a Mexican", telling Fox News on Tuesday that Republicans who have critiqued him need to "get over it".

"It's time for him to look like a serious candidate for president", McConnell said.

McConnell and many prominent Republicans have criticized Trump's remarks but continue to back him.

"He's been chosen by the Republican primary voters across the country", McConnell said. The Party of Lincoln "wants to win the White House"; Trump is the GOP's nominee; and therefore anything goes, racist or not. "What most of us would like to see is him run a campaign that gives him a chance of victory".
The body of Norfolk climber Aiden Webb has been recovered from the Fansipan mountain in northern Vietnam after it was discovered by rescue teams on Thursday.

Vietnamese media has reported the discovery of a body thought to be that of a missing Norfolk traveller.

Due to the hard terrain on Vietnam's highest peak, more teams arrived at 2.30pm to assist at the site near the village of Sin Chai.

Webb's corpse was discovered at an altitude of 2,800 meters above sea level and about one kilometer away from the T4 beam of the cable auto system.

Mr Webb, an experienced climber, had started his ascent of the 10,300ft high mountain at about 6am.

Rescuers are working with the Fansipan Sapa Cable Tourism Service to bring the body out of the Hoang Lien National Park, but it will take time due to the complex terrain.

Baughan and Webb's family put out numerous posts on Facebook and Twitter over the past six days asking backpackers and travelers in the area to help search for him.

"In the hours of the morning he made a decision to move but I told him to stay where he was".

Mr Webb had been travelling in Vietnam with his girlfriend, Bluebell Baughan. "This is something I've felt I've needed to do in a long time", he said, adding that he chose climbing routes below his skill level to stay safe.

"We have not heard from him since".

"He will always remain in my head and heart and be a massive inspiration to my life day in day out".

"Please, anyone who has known him, continue to share his posts".

A statement from Anglian Ruskin University, where Mr Webb had studied drama, said: "We are deeply saddened by the news and our thoughts are with Aiden's family, friends and girlfriend Bluebell, who is also a former student, at this very hard time". If you continue to use this site we will assume that you are happy with it.

The headteacher at the school Aiden used to attend says he remembers a boy enthusiastic about the outdoors who loved a challenge.

"Time after time he is there for other people".

Another described him as a "talented, kind, and amusing guy". "He will be missed by everyone".
"I want to mainstream majority of this country to stand up and say we do not want Nigel Farage's vision".

"Let's be clear - this is a battle for the soul of our country".

"If we vote to leave, what we are seeing now is just a taste of things to come", he said.

The value of Sterling fell earlier this week as polls showed the Leave campaign had taken a lead in polls before the referendum on 23 June. In 2010, Cameron said he would be the "strongest advocate" for Turkish membership of the bloc.

"I think Britain can be one of the great success stories of the 21st century - we've got the talent, the drive, the connections around the world", he said during a BBC interview.

Meanwhile, Tory MP Sarah Wollaston has quit the Vote Leave campaign and will vote to remain because she said its claim that Brexit would mean 350m could be freed up for the NHS "simply isn't true". It is mean, it is divisive, it is not who we are as a country.

Margaret Thatcher's defence secretary during the Falklands War Sir John Nott has suspended his membership of the Conservative Party over claims that Osborne and David Cameron have "poisoned the debate" with their warnings about the consequences of a Brexit.

A Ukip spokesman said: "It was a huge win for Nigel and the Leave side, with undecided voters backing the Brexit message and rejecting the Government's increasingly pathetic Project Fear".

"I don't want to be sitting here as the Chancellor who has helped, with the British people, pull us out of the mess we were in six or seven years ago, climbed up those ladders, on the snakes and ladders board, and find ourselves hitting the big snake that takes us down to the bottom, that is what's at stake", the Chancellor said.

"Turkey has gone backwards".

He dismissed the claims of some Brexit supporters that Turkey will soon join the European Union, giving its 80 million people the freedom to live and work in Britain.

"It is the British referendum and it's not just about whether Britain leaves the European Union because if we make that choice, I'm confident many other countries will make that choice too".

"The Government must now urgently clarify whether its policy on Turkey has changed".
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Mauritanian President has called on Washington to produce evidence of the alleged secret deal between Nouakchott and the al Qaeda in Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) on a truce during which the terrorist group would cease abductions and militancy in Mauritania for a renewable one-year period, and in return, Mauritania would release all al Qaeda prisoners.

The FBI, back in March, trumpeted it was in possession of the classified documents seized from Osama bin Ladens Pakistani hideout proving that Nouakchott concluded a secret deal with AQIM in 2010. Under the deal, AQIM would refrain from attacking government forces and stop abduction of foreign tourists, and Nouakchott agreed to pay $11 to $22 million a year and release all al-Qaeda prisoners, the FBI had said.

In an interview with FinancialAfrik.com, tapped late last month, President Ould Abdel Aziz challenged Washington to provide proofs of the allegations.

I personally on many occasion asked the U.S. ambassador to Nouakchott for the original of that document. Until now I have never received it, the President said.

But all the allegations in the said document are false and baseless,he further said.

Since 2010, Mauritania has never paid any ransom to terrorists in any circumstances and we had to foil an attack which was targeting an embassy and the ministry of Defense. That proves there has never been a deal with AQIM ().

Mauritanian authorities has slammed the allegations in March, indicating that they had never been in contact with the terrorist group. El Housseine Ould Nagi, legal counsel to President Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz contacted by Reuters rejected the U.S. claims saying Mauritania has always been against paying ransoms and indirect financing of terrorism.
Feel the Koch. Photo: Patrick T. Fallon/The Washington Post via Getty Images

Hes an old white man whos mad as hell about our rigged economy and the way it leaves the poor behind. He thinks personality politics is distracting Americans from the issues that really matter. And he wants to inspire the people to rise up and tell the political Establishment its time for real change  like abolishing the postal service, erecting artificial barriers to clean-energy adoption, protecting white-collar criminals from legal accountability, and eliminating all Social Security benefits. Per the Associated Press:

Billionaire Charles Koch, one of Americas most influential conservative donors, said he is fed up with the vitriol of the presidential race and will air national TV ads that call on citizens to work together to fix a rigged economy that leaves behind the poor.

A libertarian billionaire  who has spent hundreds of millions of dollars advancing policies that have no constituency outside of the Ayn Rand Institutes summer retreat  is fed up with the vitriol of the political debate in a country where, he himself acknowledges, the poor are suffering from an economy rigged by the powerful and well-connected.

Look around: America is divided. Between success and failure. With government and corporations picking winners and losers. Rigging the system against the people. Creating a two-tiered society, the voice-over bemoans, as the video switches back and forth between shiny McMansions and foreclosed properties, smiling Wall Street executives and sad African-American schoolchildren. Its time to remove the barriers, to end the divide, to replace winner-take-all with a system where we all can win.

In a democracy, every political interest group will give its policies a populist sheen. And the Koch brothers brand of market populism has a long pedigree in the United States. But its hard not to hear echoes of a certain Vermont senator in Charles Kochs AP interview and his new ad campaign. And theres reason to think this mimicry is calculated.

Last month, the National Review reported that the Koch brothers were refocusing their political efforts away from electoral politics and toward their educational and advocacy work. According to Koch allies who spoke with the magazine, Bernie Sanderss campaign helped inspire this shift:

Koch allies say the brothers took tremendous interest in Bernie Sanders unlikely success  particularly his resonance with young voters who represent the future of the electorate  and drew stark conclusions about their own efforts. Dumping hundreds of millions of dollars into elections doesnt persuade enough people to achieve lasting change, one Koch confidante says. To achieve lasting change, the effort has to begin much earlier.

Itll probably take more than co-opted signifiers of economic populism to convince debt-burdened millennials that deregulating the energy industry is the cure to what ails them. But you cant blame the Kochs for trying. This is a rough time for subscribers to the Ludwig von Mises Institute newsletter. Donald Trump has revealed that the tea-party movement was inspired less by a grassroots passion for Friedrich Hayek than it was by one for white identity politics. And now most Americans under 30 suddenly want a socialist to be their president. And poor Paul Ryan has to pretend that letting investment professionals rip off their elderly clients is an anti-poverty policy rather than a means of keeping Atlas from shrugging.
Dylann Roof appears in court. Photo: Grace Beahm-Pool/Getty Images

Dylann Roof, the perpetrator of the mass shooting at a black church in Charleston, South Carolina, last year, has asked to waive his right to a jury trial. In court documents filed Thursday, Roof stated that he wished to be tried and sentenced by the court instead, Reuters reports, although he did not give any explanation. Federal prosecutors said they would not consent to Roofs request at either stage of this case.

The 22-year-old defendant, who shot and killed nine black parishioners attending a Bible-study session at Charlestons Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in a racially motivated attack last June, is facing trial in both federal and state courts, with prosecutors in both cases seeking the death penalty.

In the federal trial, set to start November 7, Roof is charged with 33 counts including hate crimes, obstruction of religion, and firearms offenses. His state trial for murder and attempted murder will begin in January, with jury selection scheduled for December.
Concealed weapons must be justified, the court ruled. Photo: Joseph C. Justice Jr./Getty Images

A California federal appeals court ruled on Thursday that Americans do not have a blanket constitutional right to carry a concealed weapon in public, the Associated Press reports, taking a strong stand in the battle between gun-control and gun-rights advocates.

The federal court upheld a California law that requires applicants for a concealed-carry permit to present a good cause for their need to carry a weapon, such as being stalked or regularly carrying large amounts of cash or valuables. The 74 ruling overturned a three-judge panel of the same court, which had determined in 2014 that a desire for personal safety was sufficient cause to be granted a permit.

We hold that the Second Amendment does not preserve or protect a right of a member of the general public to carry concealed firearms in public, Circuit Judge William Fletcher wrote in the majority opinion, while his colleague, Judge Consuelo Callahan, dissented, saying the ruling obliterates the Second Amendments right to bear a firearm in some manner in public for self-defense.

Three other federal appeals courts have upheld similar restrictions in Maryland, New Jersey, and New York, while another struck down Illinoiss complete ban on carrying concealed weapons. The San Franciscobased Ninth Circuits ruling upholds restrictions enacted in California and Hawaii  the other seven states covered by the court issue concealed-carry permits to any resident with no criminal record or history of mental illness.

Advocates of gun rights and gun control reacted in character to the ruling, with the National Rifle Association calling it out of touch, and California Democratic senator Dianne Feinstein calling it a significant victory for public safety. Law professor Adam Winkler characterized the courts decision to the New York Times as a huge ruling but expressed doubt that the Supreme Court would take up the issue without a split in the Circuit Courts, which hasnt happened yet.

But Jonathan E. Lowy, the director of the Legal Action Project at the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, said he would be surprised but not shocked if the court took up a case on the right to concealed carry anyway, considering the major constitutional question at stake.

In its last major ruling on gun control, the 2008 decision in District of Columbia v. Heller, the Supreme Court held explicitly, for the first time, that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess a firearm unconnected with service in a militia, and to use that arm for traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home.

The majority opinion in that 54 decision was written by the late Justice Antonin Scalia.
A Trump presidency has become a lower-probability but higher-impact event. Photo: Josh Edelson/AFP/Getty Images

In one sense, and one sense only, the events since Donald Trump became his partys presumptive nominee have been reassuring. The ensuing weeks made clear that Trump has absolutely no idea how to run a presidential campaign and lacks the most rudimentary grasp of its basic elements, like having a reasonably sized staff, adequate funds, and knowledge of which states to campaign in (he cannot be disabused of his belief that he can win in overwhelmingly Democratic California and New York, a state where he has actually spent some of his sparse funds on a dedicated pollster). A Trump victory is plausible only in the case of a gigantic external shock that overwhelms his incompetence: the onset of a recession, perhaps, or an indictment of Hillary Clinton. On the other hand  and it is a big other hand, with long fingerswe have learned that if those or other nightmares do transpire and Trump prevails, his presidency would be far more dangerous than seemed imaginable not long ago. A Trump presidency has become a lower-probability but higher-impact event, its risk profile looking less like another George W. Bush presidency (unlikely; very bad) and more like a gigantic asteroid striking the Earth (quite unlikely; catastrophic).

What has been revealed since Trumps nomination became inevitable is the nature of the power relation between Trump and other figures in his party. In late February  to take one time-capsule moment of mainstream conservative thought  the columnist Ross Douthat predicted, If Trump is the nominee, neither Rubio nor Cruz will endorse him. By spring, Rubio had indeed endorsed Trump, and it is just a matter of time before Cruz follows suit. Alex Castellanos, a Republican strategist who had tried to organize a super-PAC to stop Trump during the primaries, has since declared that he is organizing one to help elect him. Trumps Republican opponents had once vowed to wage a vigorous independent right-wing campaign against him, becoming a kind of Republican Party in exile, perhaps led by Nebraska senator Ben Sasse or even Mitt Romney. By the end of May, a leader was identified: David French, a blogger for National Review with no experience in elected office and who withdrew from consideration shortly thereafter. Officials who had once called Trump a madman who must be stopped (Bobby Jindal), less qualified to be president than a speck of dirt (Rand Paul), and our Mussolini (Congressman Chris Stewart) have since endorsed him.

The consolation of endorsing your Mussolini is that you figure at least hell be your Mussolini. A version of this scenario inspired Republican leaders who nervously endorsed their new leader on the premise that the party would restrain his barbarism. The House can be a driver of policy ideas, Speaker Paul Ryan noted, insisting that when I feel the need to, Ill continue to speak my mind. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell promised, Hell have a White House counsel. There will be others who point out theres certain things you can do and you cant do.

Instead, the disintegration and debasement of his internal enemies, many of whom submitted after he belittled them, seems to have only confirmed Trumps confidence in the soundness of his methods. His megalomania has soared to new heights. I will give you everything, he told a crowd of bikers over Memorial Day weekend. I will give you what youve been looking for, for 50 years. Im the only one. Here he was suggesting he might sic government lawyers on the corporate holdings of Jeff Bezos, owner of the Washington Post, which had covered Trump in ways that displeased the candidate. There he was launching a racist tirade against the Mexican judge (born in Indiana) in the fraud trial of Trump University.

The latter comment created a minor crisis for his colleagues. Trumps bigotry was so unvarnished, and its target so crucial to his partys long-term demographic survival, that few members of his party could excuse it. Ryan, appearing at an unfortunately timed event in Washington, D.C.s poor and heavily black Anacostia neighborhood to promote his partys alleged concern for minorities, conceded that Trumps slur was sort of like the textbook definition of a racist comment. However, Ryan insisted, at the end of the day this is about ideas. This is about moving our agenda forward. Ergo, his endorsement of Trump stood. Later, Ryan clarified that his denunciation applied to Trumps statements but not to Trump himself, whose values he was not judging. (I dont know whats in his heart.) It was just a thing Trump said  many times  for some reason nobody in his party could figure out.

Republican voters, on the other hand, were judging Trumps diatribe. And far more favorably. A poll found that, by a three-to-one margin, Republicans deemed Trumps comments not racist. Once again, for all the nervousness he has engendered among the conservative elite, the people who vote Republican side with Trump. Unlike Ryan, whose job approval is underwater among Republicans, Trump is a popular and almost unifying figure among the rank and file. He has already secured support from 85 percent of Republican voters  nearly the same number as Romney had soon after hed become the presumptive nominee, and slightly above the levels enjoyed by John McCain in 2008 and George W. Bush in 2000. Ryans clarification that Trumps racism would not preclude his endorsement was a confession that Trump holds the whip in their relationship. Ryans policy proposals  deregulating Wall Street, reducing taxes on the highest earners, cutting social spending  have never attracted voters to his party. What has attracted them are the social values Trump represents. Ryans goals require Trumps voters. The converse does not hold true.

This dynamic would be even more pronounced under President Trump than with Candidate Trump. History suggests that the most important limits on a presidents abuse of power come from the objections of his fellow partisans. When Franklin Roosevelt proposed to pack the Supreme Court with additional seats that he would fill, conservative Democrats rose in outrage and blocked him. Nixon was driven from office in large part by the dissent of Republicans like John Dean (who testified against him) and Barry Goldwater (who told him his support had collapsed).

But these events took place in a very different political atmosphere, among ideologically heterodox parties with deep traditions of bipartisanship. Trump would ascend to the presidency in a polarized country. The inevitable conflict over his abuses would take the form of a partisan will to power. And yet if he wins the presidency, Trump will own the party he is currently leasing, and his influence over its members will spread. He will enjoy not only the trappings and formal powers of the office but also the heartfelt, cult-of-personality loyalties that presidents command from their supporters (which run especially deep on the right wing, with its elevated concentration of authoritarian personalities).

Trumps authoritarianism is one of the few consistent aspects of his worldview, expressed over many years and through his various jaunts across the ideological spectrum. He has praised leaders in Russia, China, and North Korea for crushing dissent. He regards all criticism as corrupt and illegitimate. For all the fearful commentary this has inspired, we have mostly contemplated Trump in his familiar context as a bellowing tabloid character or renegade candidate, and not in his prospective role as the leader of a governing party. When (not if) a President Trump sets out to crush his enemies, tens of millions of Republicans will thrill to his cause and demand he prevail.

*This article appears in the June 13, 2016 issue of New York Magazine.
Ready for worries. Photo: Astrid Riecken/Getty Images

Elizabeth Warren had a presidential campaign without ever asking for one. Progressives affection for the freshman Massachusetts senator was already so strong in 2015, multiple grassroots organizations sprouted up to cajole her into the Democratic primary. Warren demurred, and that activist energy was transferred to a certain elderly Vermonter. But now that Hillary Clinton has secured the nomination, large swaths of the Democratic base are once again trying to get Warren a job she may not even want.

According to a new report from Reuters, Warren is intrigued by the possibility of joining Clintons ticket but has two qualms about doing so: First, shes concerned that an all-female ticket could increase Trumps chances of winning in November. Second, she worries that shed have less power to advance her populist agenda as vice-president than she currently wields in the Senate.

These are reasonable doubts. As Vanity Fairs T.A. Frank has noted, some social-science research suggests picking a female vice-president could increase Clintons vulnerability to sexist attacks:

When it comes to triggering sexism, research indicates, two seems to be a potent number, more so than one and more so than three. A 2008 study conducted by organizational scholars Denise Lewin Loyd, Judith B. White, and Mary Kern found that being part of a minority duo makes those around you far more likely to revert to stereotypical thinking about you. For example, if youre the sole woman on a board and express a set of views, your colleagues are likely to consider your arguments without much bias. On the other hand, the study shows, if youre one of two women on a board and both of you are in agreement, then your colleagues are much likelier to attribute those beliefs to the coincidence of your shared sex.

That said, a general election between the first female major-party nominee and one of the most overtly misogynistic men in American public life will make Clintons gender salient for voters regardless of whom she picks to fill out her ticket. So its possible that Warrens popularity among Sanderss Clinton-skeptical youth voters  and her newly discovered talent for emasculating Trump, 140 characters at a time  could compensate for whatever liability her gender brings.

Warrens second worry is harder to dismiss. Except in the rare cases of a resignation, death, or election of George W. Bush, the vice-presidency is a largely symbolic position, one that would offer Warren far fewer opportunities to cross-examine financial executives on C-SPAN.

More significantly, Warren would almost certainly have less freedom to openly contest White House policy. During the Obama years, Warren has galvanized opposition to the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the appointment of Larry Summers to the Federal Reserve, and Obamas proposal to cut Social Security benefits by tying increases to the Chained Consumer Price Index

While Clinton currently claims to oppose the TPP, she championed the trade agreement while secretary of State. And Warrens decision to stay on the sidelines of the Democratic primary was likely informed by her ideological affinity for Bernie Sanderss platform. Thus, it seems likely that Warren would find herself to the left of a Clinton administration about as frequently as she found herself to the left of Obamas. Unless Clinton is willing to give her second-in-command veto power over her economic agenda, a Warren pick might muzzle one of progressive Democrats most powerful voices.
Photo: Al Seib/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images

Despite ripping off students and taxpayers for decades, the for-profit-college industry has proved remarkably resilient. Take the University of Phoenix, which paid millions of dollars in fines to the Feds for such unscrupulous practices as recruiting homeless people years ago. A serial offender, the 40-year-old college is now under investigation by the Federal Trade Commission and several state attorneys general for deceptive advertising and recruitment abuses of veterans, among other vulnerable groups.

Shares of its parent company have fallen 80 percent over the past five years, and enrollment has halved, but the University of Phoenix still received about $1.7 billion in government student loans last year, making up 80 percent of its revenues. And recently it struck a $1.1 billion deal to sell itself to private-equity giant Apollo Investment Group.

Apollo might want to wait before signing the final deal documents, though. Thats because, in the waning days of the Obama administration, the government may take its boldest step yet to hold schools like the University of Phoenix accountable for their questionable business practices  and questionable business model. Indeed, Obamas Department of Education plans to issue a rule that would forgive billions of dollars in loans granted to hundreds of thousands of students at for-profit schools that have defrauded or misled them. The government is also planning ways to make the schools pay for the debt relief. Critics hope the rule will ultimately persuade the government to quit funding loans for troubled colleges.

This is a potentially decisive way to drive bad operators out of business, says David Halperin, a public advocate and attorney who has lobbied extensively on for-profit-college reform and is working with a broad coalition of groups including the AFL-CIO, the American Federation of Teachers, the NAACP, the League of United Latin American Citizens, and even the Vietnam Veterans of America to press the Department of Education for strong action on a rule governing student-debt forgiveness.

Unlike public universities backed by taxpayers, or private nonprofit ones dependent on endowments, for-profit colleges are at the mercy of their shareholders. The business strategy has been one of open admissions and expensive tuition that requires recruiting students who cant afford college and are dependent on loans from the government. This dependence has long been a concern, and during the Clinton era these schools were prohibited from getting more than 90 percent of their revenues from federally backed student loans. But that has led to another problem: widespread abuses in targeting veterans by taking advantage of a loophole that excludes their student grants from the 90-10 calculation.

Since 2009, the Obama administration has been trying to rein in shady for-profit colleges, largely in the form of a so-called gainful employment rule that seeks to ensure graduates of the schools can earn enough to pay off their student loans. That rule is going into effect this year after surviving a legal challenge from the industry.

But the gainful-employment rule is not nearly as far-reaching as the new one, which could give blanket debt forgiveness to students whove attended fraud-plagued colleges. A student debt strike following the 2014 implosion of Corinthian Colleges, which had been one of the largest for-profit schools (and one that Florida senator Marco Rubio once begged the government to continue funding while it was under investigation), appears to have forced the departments hand. A group called the Debt Collective, an offshoot of Occupy Wall Street, mobilized Corinthian students to stop paying those loans after it discovered an obscure provision in the U.S. Higher Education Act, called borrower defense to repayment, which provides for broad-based discharge of debts for those who attend colleges that defraud or mislead their students. But, at least until there is a rule governing the law, borrowers cant just quit paying the loans without risking garnishment of wages, among other serious penalties. Many apparently still dont realize relief is possible. Corinthian had 77,000 students in 2013, but only 20,000 people have formally asked for debt forgiveness  and thats not the only school whose students can apply. So far, the piecemeal effort has been slow: The Department of Education has agreed to cancel some $27 million in debt for 3,421 borrowers, many of them former Corinthian students, The Wall Street Journal reported last month.

These degrees are worthless, and millions of Americans have been scammed by these schools, says Ann Larson, a co-founder of the Debt Collective. Why is federal money going to this in the first place?

The Department of Education is expected to release a proposed rule sometime in June, according to the Office of Management and Budget. As it has moved through its cumbersome negotiated rule-making process, the agency came up with an initial proposal that gives some indication of what the final one will look like. It suggested relief would be provided under three circumstances: if a judgment was entered against the school, if the school made substantial misrepresentations, or if it breached its contract with students. The final rule wont be decided until late this year, after a public comment period.

An optimistic slogan.

In the meantime, thousands of people, like Los Angeles resident Nathan Hornes, have simply quit paying. Today I work two minimum-wage jobs. I owe $78,000 in student-loan debt even though Everest [run by Corinthian] is being sued for fraud. Still, the Department of Education has refused to cancel my debt. I want to know: Why is the Department of Education supporting a scam for-profit school instead of students? asks Hornes. A graduate of Corinthians Everest College with a bachelors degree in business and a 3.9 GPA, he joined the Corinthian student strike and posted his story on its web page.

Industry heavyweights are already pushing back against the rule. Among the most powerful is former Washington Post owner Don Graham, whose Graham Holdings owns Kaplan University, one of the seven largest for-profit schools that have been under investigation in recent years and collectively received $8 billion in student government-loan money last year. The entire industry receives about $30 billion a year in federal loan money, though that number amount is beginning to decline as enrollment falls off and schools shut down.

Last month, Graham met with senior administration officials about the new rule, arguing in a PowerPoint presentation that it would create an unprecedented new set of student rights that could create massive liability for taxpayers; give unilateral fiscal power to the federal education department; and result in the bankruptcy of countless U.S. colleges and universities, devastating higher education.

Kaplan estimated that a little under one-fifth of federal student loans during the 20142015 school year  $16 billion out of $96 billion  were awarded to students at for-profit schools. Those loans become part of the larger $1.3 trillion student-debt burden that has gotten so out of control it has emerged as an issue in the presidential campaign, bringing millions of young voters out to support Democratic nominee Bernie Sanders in part because he argued that public-college tuition should be free. While student debt is often a problem for even the best students coming out of top universities, it can be a catastrophe for economically disadvantaged students  including many veterans  coming out of for-profit schools. Nearly half of the 20 percent of students whose loans are in default attended for-profit colleges, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research. Student loans cannot be discharged through bankruptcy, either, so a new federal rule could offer relief to at least some of those debtors.

Until recently, curbing the predatory practices of the for-profit schools has seemed all but impossible, given the industrys clout in Washington on both sides of the aisle. The two most recent Republican presidential nominees, Mitt Romney and Donald Trump, both have owned for-profit schools plagued by fraud accusations. A civil suit against Trump by former students of Trump University has become the focus of intense media attention  especially after Trump said that the judge overseeing the case should be recused because of his Mexican heritage. (The now-defunct Trump University wasnt an accredited school, so its students couldnt apply for federally backed loans.)

High-profile Democrats, including former president Bill Clinton, have also received money from for-profit schools over the years. After earning millions of dollars in speaking fees, he resigned as honorary chancellor of for-profit Laureate International Universities when Hillary Clinton was ramping up her White House run and began attacking the sketchy schools. But since the Corinthian debacle, a dozen Democratic senators, led by Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, have taken up the cause and are also pressing the Department of Education to take strong action.

Among other problems, for-profit schools often cost more than traditional colleges and often dont prepare students for the jobs they were supposedly educated to perform. This month, a new working paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research found that students from nonprofit schools earn less after they attended them than before they went.

A tough standard will force the Department of Education to think twice about granting loans to students going to bad schools, argues Halperin. In the end this will save the taxpayer a lot of money. As always, the devil will be in the details. Halperin says his group is pressing for a broad rule. If there is a finding or a settlement that relates to deception, or the department itself makes a finding, then all students should be presumptively and automatically entitled to full discharge of their loans unless the student checks a box saying I dont want loan forgiveness, he argues.

With a multi-billion-dollar problem on its hands, the governments thorniest issue is how to claw back money from the schools, since covering the loans could bankrupt many of them. In its initial proposal, the Department of Education said it planned to require that problem colleges show that they have the money to repay the loans or post a letter of credit anywhere from 10 percent to 50 percent of the amount it received in federal loans during the prior year, with the amount dependent on the likelihood of debt relief.

To show its serious, this week the government asked ITT Educational Services, which for almost a decade has been under investigation by multiple agencies, including the Securities and Exchange Commission, and is at risk of losing its accreditation, to increase the amount of its letter of credit to 20 percent of its loans in order to show it can meet its liabilities to its 43,000 students and taxpayers if it shuts down suddenly. When Corinthian failed two years ago, there was not enough money to cover the costs of its student loans, even though the college had received $1 billion in loans during its final year.

Because for-profit schools have always depended on government money, their lobbying effort and ties to powerful politicians have been critical to their success. None have been better at it than the University of Phoenix, whose founder, the now-deceased John Sperling, was a key Democratic power broker in D.C. The tradition is continuing with the publicly owned Apollo Education Group that owns the university. (It has no prior connection to Apollo Investment Group, which is the buyer.)

To grease the deal, which ultimately the Department of Education will need to bless, the University of Phoenix and Apollo brought in a small private-equity firm, Vistria, which has close ties to Obama, as a partner. Vistria founder Marty Nesbitt is one of President Obamas closest friends and the chairman of the Obama Foundation. Tony Miller, Vistrias chief operating officer and a partner, was deputy secretary of Education between 2009 and 2013. He will become the new chairman of Apollo Education Group when the deal closes in August.

For too long and too often, the private education industry has been characterized by inadequate student outcomes, overly aggressive marketing practices, and poor compliance, Miller said when the deal was announced, promising the University of Phoenix will become a model citizen under new management. If the Obama administration is serious about stopping the abuses, the University of Phoenix will have no other choice.
Pregnant women in Brazil. Photo: Mario Tama/Getty Images/2016 Getty Images

The World Health Organization has told people living in areas with active transmission of the Zika virus that they should consider delaying pregnancy, presumably until further notice. The guidance affects people in 46 countries, mostly in Latin America and the Caribbean  often heavily Catholic areas that frown upon any method of contraception more advanced than the rhythm method.

The organizations interim guidelines say that its on country health programs to make sure that:

In order to prevent adverse pregnancy and fetal outcomes, men and women of reproductive age, living in areas where local transmission of Zika virus is known to occur, be correctly informed and oriented to consider delaying pregnancy; and follow recommendations (including the consistent use of condoms) to prevent human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), other sexually transmitted infections, and unwanted pregnancies.

The W.H.O. also wrote that women whove had unprotected sex and are worried about Zika should have ready access to emergency contraception and counseling.

This advice will no doubt be controversial. Brazilian church officials said in February that contraceptives are not a solution, but the Pope himself allowed that, in light of the epidemic, avoiding pregnancy is not an absolute evil. (Abortion? Definitely still an evil.)

Women need birth control to plan their pregnancies. Some pregnant women diagnosed with Zika will want abortions, and they should be allowed to make that choice for themselves. In fact, women should have these rights whether or not theres a viral epidemic.
Helen Hayes (L) and Beth Ferrier (R) testify in support of the Colorado statute of limitations bill. Photo: Kathryn Scott Osler/Copyright - 2015 The Denver Post, MediaNews Group.

Beth Ferrier made dozens and dozens phone calls. She wrote dozens and dozens of letters and emails, each personalized, to members of the Colorado House of Representatives. Her goal: to get someone to sponsor a bill that would eliminate or extend the statute of limitations for sexual assault in Colorado.

She began this campaign last summer. About 30 years earlier, Ferrier met Bill Cosby through her agent. They had a brief, consensual affair, and broke up. A few weeks later, Cosby invited her to see his show in Denver. She says he gave her a cappuccino. She drank it, and woke up alone in the back of her car, her bra unhooked.

Its still like a slap in the face until we actually have our day in court and help the others who are getting to go to court, or we get the statute of limitations to change, Ferrier told New York Magazine last year. It makes me really angry. I cant feel happiness. I felt very sad and alone. But Im not afraid of him anymore.

Less than a year after Ferrier, along with 34 other women, recounted her story in our cover feature, she will see at least one of those goals fulfilled. Today, Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper signs a law increasing her states statute of limitations to 20 years, from 10 for adults.

Ferrier will attend the bill signing. It will put a face to us, to me, she says. It will show people who are the victims.

Ferrier and Heidi Thomas, a Colorado resident who came forward last year and said shed been drugged and assaulted by Cosby in 1984, crusaded hard for the bill and pushed it forward in their state. They retold their personal stories and testified in front of lawmakers in support of the legislation, along with Helen Hayes, a Cosby survivor who lives in California. Colorados is the latest statute-of-limitations expansion driven by Cosby accusers. Women in California are fighting to completely abolish the statute of limitations. (Colorados bill to eliminate time limits failed, and was replaced with the 20-year maximum.) Lise Lotte Lublin pressed for change in Nevada last year, and won. Alleged victims now have 20 years, instead of four, to report a rape.

Heidi Thomas testifies at hearing on Colorado sex-assault bill. Photo: Kathryn Scott Osler/The Denver Post via Getty Images

It takes people decades, and it takes a level of maturity to be able to face [sexual assault], Thomas said, as to why she got involved. The fight to extend the statute of limitations is one that neither she nor Ferrier saw coming, at first. But it made sense  for her, and so many of the survivors who now were, with all its complications, a public face of sexual assault. Theres a sense of activism and advocacy that I dont think many of us saw coming, Thomas said. I certainly didnt see this coming.

Ferrier and Thomass fight started off slow, and at first they got no response from lawmakers. Finally, in the middle of July, someone called back: Colorado representative Rhonda Fields. She just kept emailing me, Fields said. I called her and she told me her story. I wanted to champion the cause. Fields sponsored the bill  working title HB1260  in the Colorado House, where it passed in February.

Two state senators, Republican John Cooke and Democrat Mike Johnston, a Democrat co-sponsored the legislation in the state Senate. Cooke, who has a background in law enforcement, said ten years for sex assault didnt add up. Rape is such a violent crime, he said. We have no statute of limitations on homicide or kidnapping. The bill passed in April, with a few tweaks on the House version. The legislation has been awaiting the governors signature since May.

The law will go into effect July 1. The change in the statute-of-limitations is not retroactive, so barring any new cases, Cosbys Colorado accusers can never file a complaint. Close to 60 women have come out with allegations against Cosby, but the only criminal case likely to go forward is that of a 2004 alleged Pennsylvania incident. The alleged victim, Andrea Constand, went to police in 2005, a year after she said Cosby had drugged and molested her in his home. Prosecutors declined to bring charges then, but about a decade later prosecutors reopened the case and formally filed charges against Cosby last December. They did so just in time. Pennsylvanias 12-year statute of limitations had almost run out.

The law change in Colorado points to a greater public understanding of the brutal trauma and reckoning that follows sexual assault. The most important part is that the state is hospitable and supportive, Senator Johnston said. [theres] a chance to make their case and to at least leave the doors of justice open for a while longer. Survivors know that theyre often facing long odds in these cases, especially as time passes, but the extension protects their right to seek justice when, and if, theyre ready.

You get a law passed like this, Thomas said, theres tangible proof that somebody listened.
Goodnight, sweet prince. Photo: Rick Rowell/ABC

I make my husband watch The Bachelorette every week like its his job.

Hes gotten his revenge, though: He has become the ultimate champion of all that is evil in Bachelorette-land.

He doesnt hate Chad Johnson.

Chad Johnson, if you are not aware, is the 28-year-old, six-foot-two Oklahoma luxury-real-estate agent and/or marine and/or small dog owner and/or mourner of his recently deceased mother and/or worst reality-show contestant in the world, who basically turned The Bachelorette into The Chad Show before (finally!) getting kicked off this week.

But, of course, not before the bulked-up villain earned a two-night special by threatening to go on a sporty murder spree (Im going to cut everyone heres legs off, and arms off, and theres gonna be torsos  and then Im gonna throw them in the pool). And not before delivering Oprah-style pronouncements to all the men in the house, Youre going to lose your teeth! and Youre going to lose your teeth!

This guy, my husband says, is fucking hilarious.

Ugh  men. You cant watch The Bachelorette with them. You  well, yeah. You basically just cant watch The Bachelorette with them.

Threats of violence are not okay, I cry out, trying desperately to give voice to the serious danger that Chad represents to America. Why is Chad doing this? Why is he being so over the top? How can you defend him?

I think, my husband responds simply, hes just run out of shit to say. Besides, its not like hes actually going to kill anybody.

Heres a sampling of Chads remarks about the competition before he, according to Pat, ran out of shit to say.

Chad, imitating the other men:

Were a bunch of butt-hurt dudes and were going to confront you  slightly.

Chad, on the other men:

Its like if the Care Bears surrounded you and told you theyre going to kick your ass.

Chad kind of destroying the other men, tbh:

Is this the first beautiful girl youve ever seen? You dont have TV? You dont have magazines?

The worst part about Chad is realizing there is something so familiar about the way he mocks these men.

He sounds exactly like my husband. (And Kenny Powers from Eastbound and Down, but thats an entirely different column.)

Now, my husband is no health and exercise freak (he couldnt pick steroids  or for that matter, a barbell  out of a lineup) but he and Chad have something important in common. They both think every guy on The Bachelorette acts like a jackass or a punch line  or, the ultimate insult if youre a conservative white man: a woman.

Compare if you will, the words of my husband to the words of the Chad.

My husband on erectile-dysfunction expert Evan (side note: God, those chyron writers are cruel. Note to future contestants: Get final chyron approval! You think its an accident Chad got them to write luxury before real-estate agent? Evan, yours could have read luxury erectile dysfunction expert for Chrissakes):

Yeah, there is a lot of testosterone in that house. So why doesnt this guy man the fuck up? I bet that guys kids are so ashamed. Theyre probably like, Can Chad be our dad? And then Chad can Hulk out and say, Rrrr, Im going to father your children!

My husband, on the fact that Evan has whined four different times about his torn shirt:

You know, a lot of guys would stand up for themselves  not the shirt.

My husband, on James Auditioning-for-a-Record-Deal Taylor as he serenades JoJo instead of, you know, kissing her:

Oh, you were made fun of? Really? Why? Is it because you miss every social cue? This guy is unbearable.

My husband, on the diminutive contestant Alex, who positioned himself as Chads Enemy No. 1:

Why did they let a toddler on The Bachelorette?

My husband on what would happen if Chad was picked to be the next Bachelor:

That would be awesome. Do you accept these teeth?

Im turning into Hodor now as I make my protestations. My repeated exclamations of Not okay are mushing into Nokay, Nokay, and Im running low on strength.

In response, my husband gives me the same side eye that Chad does while calmly eating an uncooked sweet potato and saying, Lets not pretend Im Hitler to his one friend in the house, Canadian nightmare and alleged male model Daniel. Dont get me wrong, Id probably hate Chad if I met him, my husband finally responds with droll Chad undertones. Id probably just hate him for different reasons than the rest of America does.

I wonder aloud if my husband will boycott the show now that his hero is gone. His eyes light up, seizing upon a thumb-screw from past arguments weve had.

Chad doesnt care what other people think, you know, he says. He doesnt apologize. Hes kind of like Trump.

Oh, good lord. At this point, I feel about as hopeless as Bernie Sanders if he were trying to win JoJos heart on The Bachelorette  or, say, the Democratic presidential nomination.

Because everything I love about my husband  his humor, his provocateur nature, his good, decent heart  has created in me about as much overwhelming devotion to him as Bachelor host Chris Harrison has to repeating the phrase, Im Chris Harrison.

So, yes, I give up. You read it here first.

My name is Mandy, my husband is a Trump supporter, and (just when you thought things couldnt get any worse) he kind of likes Chad too.
"should she ever personally choose to return" lmao bye

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whenever people say that conversion therapy should be outlawed for minors, people are quick to say, "no, we should just make sure that only teens who WANT to be there are accepted!!" like... how the fuck do you plan on doing that? all the teens in these facilities publicly claim or sign forms that they're there of their own volition, but when you say it's your choice to be there because your other choice is being disowned by your parents and kicked out of the house, then it's not a choice at all.

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exactly, they're full of shit

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MAYBE SHE WANTS TO RETURN TO CAMP GREEN LAKE

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ahahahahaha IKR



they literally got her there by claiming she was on a trip to see her grandparents

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good i hope she's going to be okay

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what does categorically untrue even mean? i'm trying to figure out what kind of loophole they're using there



i'm glad she's out and that this was a quick success, but does this mean she's going back to her parents because she's not emancipated? i thought they were the ones who sent her to the program

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It basically means "completely".



"Being without exception or qualification; absolute".



So, no actual loop hole, just a lie.

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How did they "free" her? Unless her parents got her out? I don't understand.

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I'm guessing Heartlight didn't like the angry phone calls and bad publicity so they booted Sarah from the program.

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Yeah that would have to be the only answer. Tho she eventually will just be sent somewhere else unless the place refuses.

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https://twitter.com/efindell/status/741019881487765505



"the media made it impossible for her to complete the program"



to which I say, thank God. according to this"the media made it impossible for her to complete the program"to which I say, thank God.

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Did her parents send her there? Is she even safe?

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That book made me so angry, I couldn't believe stuff like that happens. That one guy who internalized all this hate and had that awful dad and seriously hurt himself made me so sad. He never got a happy ending and to know that happens in real life is seriously distressing.

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GOOD! protect her at all costs please

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same :(

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yep. in fact the entire "troubled teen" industry needs to be a thing of the past.

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Higher Ground gave me so many unrealistic expectations. I loved the show but in retrospect it's kinda gross how they romanticized the industry.

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i was thinking the same :(

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i hope the money raised goes to some campaign to make this shit illegal tbh

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YAY!! Good. Sending her and the others good vibes <3

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bitch, you fucking shut up about "we're concerned about her consent to this story." Between this & all the shit with Brock Turner case today, I will punch somebody



Edited at 2016-06-09 11:56 pm (UTC)

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glad she's out! saw kidnapped for christ and frowned the entire time.



the valedictorian of my high school went to pepperdine for her bachelor's (totally fine, like pepperdine is a+) but then went to a theological seminary for her masters. i still can't believe it. not only did she get a MFT rather than an MSW, she went to an unranked school for her masters even though she graduated with a 4.0 from pep. i can't comprehend the validity of psych degrees from religious schools who try to incorporate religion into all aspects. like being gay isn't even in the DSM anymore. idegi, especially with the prices people pay

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I was a theater major at Pepperdine! Hilariously enough, that school made me agnostic/borderline atheist thanks to their mandatory religion classes.



Thanks Pepperdine!

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apart from mandatory religion courses, was religion incorporated in your other classes? BYU does the same thing

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LOL, your comment made me realize that the same thing kind of happened to me. I went to a catholic university and the required religion classes actually helped me to clarify my beliefs (atheist/agnostic hybrid). I should say that the classes weren't like bible study or anything, and a good majority of the upper division religion classes were about non christian religions, but the basic intro to the bible requirement was more about critically reading the Bible as literary text and trying to understand it within a larger historical context. And honestly one of the best classes I took there was a 'believe or Don't' class which was a essentially a seminar class about reasons for and against organized religion and faith, which was led by an ex-priest. I generally tend to find religion interesting, but that was easily one of the best educational experiences I've ever had and it really had a lasting impact on my life.

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Yeah it is disheartening that so much of this had to be made public. I hope her parents are happy for causing it in the first place and get the giant fuck you they deserve.



Good on Jeremy though. She's lucky to have someone with his sense and platform on her side.

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Yeah it is disheartening that so much of this had to be made public.



yeah this is true. If I were in Sarah's situation I definitely would not have liked all of this being made public, but if the alternative were to stay in a place like Heartlight... idk. I hope things work out for Sarah though and that the public attention isn't too overwhelming for her.



It's lulzy that Heartlight is acting like they're just so terribly concerned about her privacy though when they love judging other people's private lives.



Edited at 2016-06-10 01:01 am (UTC)

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Yeah. I don't blame Jeremy though. Knowing how much worse kids often are after enduring places like that I think I'd be in a panic too. But that's exactly why I'm blaming her parents, because without them sending her to that place none of this would have had to happen.

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I hope she can get emancipation.

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And Heartlight's "statement" is ridiculous when anti-gay rhetoric on their website is as clear as day



here's one more entry about it, where the guy in charge of the whole thing says

https://www.heartlightministries.org/questions/january-27-2016/



"I know that the gender and gay issues in a politically correct environment.you cant say anything without being wrong or open yourself for the potential of being misquoted or slandered. So, I watch what I write and prefer to share my heart about this topic in a seminar or one-on-one conversation where people can hear my heart and not open myself to their interpretation of what I say."



basically admitting that behind closed doors is when he is as anti-gay as he wants to I'm so glad she was able to get out of there. These places need to be shut down. If this any positive comes of this, it was reminding people that these places still exist.And Heartlight's "statement" is ridiculous when anti-gay rhetoric on their website is as clear as dayhere's one more entry about it, where the guy in charge of the whole thing says"I know that the gender and gay issues in a politically correct environment.you cant say anything without being wrong or open yourself for the potential of being misquoted or slandered. So, I watch what I write and prefer to share my heart about this topic in a seminar or one-on-one conversation where people can hear my heart and not open myself to their interpretation of what I say."basically admitting that behind closed doors is when he is as anti-gay as he wants to

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ESPN, one of the biggest parts of Disney's plastic empire, is bleeding subscribers.



I did not know this.



*clicks link*

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No, greedy CEOs are killing businesses. If more of them were like the CEO of Costco, taking a reasonable salary and paying workers well, then we would have a lot more jobs here.

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Doesn't he just take 500k a year? I mean, that's a lot but it really puts into perspective how much other executives/CEOs take - and that's not even counting "bonuses".

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For a CEO of a big company that's a joke if you ask me. I'll gladly just work my no stress minimum salary job instead.

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And more money floating into the local economies, which help keep small businesses open. A vital point for small towns, especially more rural or semi-rural ones. When jobs leave, the people are forced to leave, too. Whether they want to or not. That means less taxes and less chance to fix any broken systems, including basics like utilities and education.

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I work for a Kroger subsidiary, and that asshole Rodney McMullen pulls in a ~1.2mil. salary with a ~125% yearly bonus. That of course, doesn't include the stock options and whatnot, which brings his total compensation to around $13mil/year. DISGUSTING

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damn when are the rich ever NOT complaining about taxes. corporate tax rates are a big topic here in australia too, especially with the election coming up next month.



also you know what i just love?? when rich ppl complain about being taxed "so much" but also shit on unemployed ppl who receive welfare and therefore "don't contribute to society" lmao.

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the way Turnbull is continuing to try and push trickle down economics is just.... honestly. No one's going to hire more people. They're just going to give bigger bonuses to the people in charge.

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ESPN needs to move more of its stuff digitally, this generation are cable cutters. As for taxes, eh I know no one wants to hear about richer people whining over taxes but every company is when trying to make revenue and net it. But still its worse when the the lower class had to pay a lot of taxes during the Bush admin.

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business man complaining about taxes. such a new thing. the worst is that they manage to make people actually believe they deserve tax cuts lol



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fuck disney, i watched this the other day and it made me mad. they're hypocritical assholes.





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ugh fuck this





thanks for sharing though!

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oh Bob

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Disney basically owns the movie industry, but their stock is flopping because of ESPN?

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their stock is probably also flopping because they overspent on Shanghai and cutting budgets from other parks.



Edited at 2016-06-10 01:35 pm (UTC)

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Partially yes, because a great deal of Disney profit comes from their network division. But it's also because one thing Wall Street absolutely despises are company CEOs that don't plan for succession and when tom staggs left the company in April, Wall Street started freaking out. With good reason because Disney has a terrible history of mismanaging CEO succession.

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lmao big corps like Disney pay barely or no taxes at all anyway because of tax loopholes so why is he even bitching?????



Oh and offshore tax havens like stop.

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She was complaining about the way the tax money is used in regards to infrastructure, education, etc. Which is a fair point.

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Lmao dis dude rn.... I'm bout to leave for Disneyland in few hours so nnnn

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Here for the Donald gif!!! It was my King's birthday yesterday!

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Interviewing Don Rosa was a trip, I have to say.

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Poor dat

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Europes reluctance towards reliance upon Russian natural gas trade is no secret. Its also no surprise, due to fallouts between Russia and Ukraine (a major transit country for the trade) in 2006, 2009 and 2014. Currently Russia and Ukraine do not even have a bilateral gas trade, but Russian gas is transported through Ukrainian pipelines to Europe, only to be resold to Ukraine by E.U. countries in reverse-flow deals. This doesnt sound like a stable system, considering the reliance of Europes gas supply upon these Ukrainian pipelines (European supplies were cut by 30 percent in the 2009 Ukrainian crisis).

What happened to Europes plans for energy diversification? The Nabucco pipeline, which planned to bring gas from the Caucasus, is more or less dormant. This line would have succeeded in providing Europe with a stable non-Russian supply from the Caspian region. It may have some life in it yet, but no one should keep their hopes up for the near future.

The existing Nord Stream, running under the Baltic Sea directly from Russia to Germany, is a political divider. European opinions on this so-called diversification are often combated with the reminder that it is still Russian gas. Nord Stream supplies a great deal of gas to Europe without crossing conflict states, but maintains 51 percent ownership by Russias Gazprom. Gazprom is, for good reason, often seen as an operating arm of the Russian government, conferring with government officials to regulate pricing for its clients around the world.

If Europe wants to diversify its gas supply, it needs to get serious about Caspian gas. The Shah Deniz field of Azerbaijan is ripe for the picking, needing only the political and infrastructural support of transit countries and buyers. It seems, indeed, that Europe has made progress towards capitalizing on this supply.

As it stands today, there are a few primary moving pieces for the Caspian-European connection: The Trans-Caspian Line, the Trans-Anatolian Natural Gas Pipeline (TANAP), and the Trans Adriatic Line. Related: The Oil Futures Market Tells Us The Glut Is Over

The Trans-Caspian line would cross the Caspian Sea from Turkmenistan to Azerbaijan, opening up Turkmen gas to the West. This would in turn connect to the existing Southern Caucus Line (or BTE), which connects the Caucus supply to Turkey through Georgia. What is needed from there is a main substantial line from Turkey into Europe. Luckily, such a line is already underway.

The Trans-Anatolian Gas Pipeline (TANAP) is a project currently under construction which would finally provide the connection between the Caspian Sea and Europe. Construction began in 2015 and is expected to continue through 2018. The TANAP also provides the inspiration for the all-European Trans-Adriatic Line, which meets the Trans-Anatolian at the Greek/Turkish border and crosses Greece, Albania, and the Adriatic to Italy.

Other sources such as renewables and nuclear are valid and viable for Europes future. However, European infrastructure is heavily dependent upon natural gas, with fossil fuels as a whole constituting 72.3 percent of inland consumption. The objective conclusion is that Europe must continue developing strategies to connect the Caspian Sea to its borders, while continuing to develop its own gas and renewable production rates. Related: U.S. Shale Hurting: Largest Monthly Drop In More Than A Year

This requires infrastructural support, but also diplomatic encouragement. It seems in Europes interest to extend diplomatic relations to key nations, namely, Georgia, Azerbaijan and Turkey. Georgia requires European attention as much as ever, given the Russo-Georgian war of 2008.

Were the same conflict to occur in the coming years, it would pose a significant threat to the developing Southern Corridor from a European security perspective. Transit through Georgia is key to the entire Caucus system, and Europe must continue to support the nations independence and discourage Russian interference.

Turkey, with a leader more or less ambivalent to the West, will need European assurance that business pursuits will be profitable and supported by political leadership. By strengthening strategic political partnerships across the Southern Corridor, Europe can succeed in creating energy security for the coming decades.

By Jonathan Hoogendoorn for Oilprice.com

More Top Reads From Oilprice.com:
Republicans in Congress appear set to approve a non-binding resolution opposing carbon taxes. The resolution, scheduled for a vote today, would put legislators in opposition to an approach that is touted as combatting climate change, and which has found favor with large oil companies such as Exxon.

Majority Whip Steve Scalise of Louisiana is the representative driving the resolution, which has the backing of Koch, Inc. Scalise was also behind a 2013 amendment that would require the administration to seek congressional approval before implementing a carbon tax. That amendment was adopted by a vote of 237- 176.

The resolution up for consideration on Friday is a stand-alone effort that states in part that "a carbon tax would be detrimental to American families and businesses, and is not in the best interest of the United States."

Republican strategist Mike McKenna noted that the resolution is part of a strategy to undercut the ability of future presidents and lawmakers to levy a carbon tax to help finance an overhaul of the U.S. tax code.

Koch lobbyist Phillip Ellender, who is also the president of government affairs at Koch Companies Public Sector LLC, sent a letter to lawmakers on Thursday supporting the resolution, saying, "Raising taxes on the energy that American families and businesses rely on every day will not help any hardworking citizens improve their lives."



Related: Grid Outages Are History With This Texan Innovation

On the other side, Exxon Mobil has lobbied for a revenue-neutral carbon tax that would replace multiple environmental regulations that raise costs for producers. Shell BP holds the position that a carbon tax, or a cap and trade system, wouldif properly constructedencourage producers and consumers alike to find ways to reduce emissions.

The idea of a carbon tax is appealing to some as a method of putting a cost on carbon dioxide, and GOP Congressman Bob Inglis has touted the idea as a free market solution to climate change.

The Senate is not expected to take up the issue.

By Lincoln Brown for Oilprice.com

More Top Reads From Oilprice.com:
Weve all been there: Its 1 a.m., youre just leaving the bars and it suddenly dawns on you that you havent eaten anything since that microwave burrito from the work fridge at 3 p.m. Or maybe youve had just enough Spotted Cows that call for a heavenly soaker pad of fries. However, youre not quite in the mood for regular ol' delivery pizza, and the chips and snacks aisle at Walgreens just won't do.

Dont worry: OnMilwaukee has got you covered. Based on our own late-night dining guide, this comprehensive list will be sure to offer something that can satisfy your cravings.

If you ever find yourself on Brady Street at 2 a.m. with a hankering for Greek food, Apollo Cafe is perfect for you. Open Friday and Saturday from 11 a.m. to 3 a.m., they offer all the classic Greek fare, from gyros and spanakopita to hummus and souvlaki.

BelAir is the place to satisfy those late-night Mexican food cravings, and with four locations spread across Milwaukee, Wauwatosa and soon Oak Creek, youre unlikely ever to be too far from a barbacoa taco. Their kitchen is open until midnight, so its a bit earlier than other offerings, but trust me, its worth it.



(PHOTO: Brick 3 Pizza Facebook)

Who can say no to pizza after a night out? Its the classic drunchie  that's a drunk munchie for those in the know  and Brick 3 Pizza certainly does it justice. Open Friday and Saturday from 11 a.m. to 3 a.m. on Old World 3rd Street, the pizza joint offers toppings ranging from cheese and pepperoni to some unique twists on the classics, such as mac 'n' cheese, caprese or meatball pizza.

(PHOTO: Comet Cafe Facebook)

Sometimes all you need after a long day is a good sandwich. And when you're starving for a sammie, Comet Cafe has got you covered. Open until 2 a.m., Friday through Sunday, Comet dishes up melts, reubens and burgers, as well as entrees and scrumptious appetizers. I have a feeling their duck confit poutine is exactly what youll need this Saturday night.

For a twist on the typical post-bar offerings, head to Cubanitas on Milwaukee Street any time before 1 a.m. on Fridays and Saturdays. Cubanitas is a bastion of traditional Cuban fare, such as the classic pressed Cuban sandwich and tamales.

(PHOTO: Dogg Haus Facebook)

Sometimes life is all about the simple things, and late-night food is no exception. If all your heart desires is the classic hot dog, be sure to hit up the Dogg Haus to customize your "dogg" however you like with any number of toppings. Also, cheese curds. The best part is its open daily from 11 a.m. to 3 a.m.!

(PHOTO: Jalisco Facebook)

You're craving Mexican food, but your late night out has somehow turned into a very early morning and youre nervous nothing will be open at 3:30 a.m. Don't worry; Jalisco has your back. Open daily from 9 a.m. to 4 a.m., its famously huge burritos will definitely satisfy your craving no matter how late  or early  it is.

No late-night dining list would be complete without the inclusion of Ma Fischers, the pinnacle of greasy spoon dining on the East Side. Open 24 hours a day and seven days a week, you can get anything from burgers to Greek food, Mexican food to breakfast, or pretty much whatever kind of food your tired and possibly drunken heart desires. So go ahead, eat chicken soup at 6:30 a.m.!

Pizza Shuttle may not offer artisanal, Neapolitan-style pies, but when its 3:45 a.m., Im sure everyone would agree that pizza is pizza. Open until 3 a.m. every weeknight and a whopping 4 a.m. on Friday and Saturday, this Milwaukee institution will always be ready to serve up some hot cheese slices and maybe a couple breadsticks, too.

If you want to keep the party going into the late hours, but you also want a meal, head over to the Wicked Hop, open until 1 a.m. on Thursday through Saturday. Serving up one of the best Bloody Marys in town, you can definitely continue having fun while also chowing down on a changing limited menu ranging from wings to spring rolls to mac 'n' cheese bites and more.
Reprinted from Mike Malloy Website

It's time to get Happy, Truthseekers!

Republicans are happy, they have forgiven Trump's overt racism. Yeah -- they don't mind it all that much if he said Judge Gonzalo Curiel (and native of Indiana) was treating him unfairly in his Trump U scam trail because the judge was of Mexican descent. Just like it didn't matter when he bragged about his HUGE wall to keep out all those nasty Mexican rapists and drug dealers.

Heh -- heh, that's alright. Trump's just being Trump...y'know? He hates women, too? Well now, that's just some exaggeration, all that about women being pigs and having nice t*ts and all that. Nitpicking liberal media, that's what that is. Whaddaya expect after that black guy got to live in the White House for eight years? Eight years! Outrageous. 'Course the 'merican people are gonna react to that abomination, and Trump is the result!

Anyway, the Neocons gotta dance with the one that brought 'em, after all. 'Cept this time their candidate doesn't have the coattails to drag any of these vermin along with him -- which is a reason the Democrats are happy today. They look at Trump as a gift, which may not be the smartest assumption.

Another reason the mainstream Democrats are wearing their dancing shoes is because Bernie is meeting with Obama today and the presumed outcome is that he will gently and gracefully recede into the background and silently drift away. Again, perhaps not the wisest anticipated outcome.

Both of the reasons the DINOS are celebrating today are based on perilous presumptions -- that Hillary will overcome Trump's popular appeal to the red-meat (misogynistic) masses, and that legions of fired-up Bernie supporters will forget the shoddy way Hillary and her DNC treated their candidate and will instead proudly waive their pennants for Team Clinton.

Oh, and that the FBI's intricate, ongoing, expanding investigation of Hillary's security crimes and possible racketeering as Secretary of State will ultimately lead to ... nothing. Poof! It will all just disappear. Just like they hope Bernie will do.

But -- but -- what if ...
By William Boardman

Reader Supported News







"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."

The sterile language of a detached president illustrates how far we are from facing the reality of our own government's deliberate atrocities. Hiroshima was certainly destroyed, abstractly, with "a terrible force unleashed" -- but by no one? In the president's passive parsing, it's as if he thought it was an "act of God." More honestly told: President Truman approved the atomic bombing of Japan, which was carried out on August 6, 1945, by a Boeing B-29 named Enola Gay, after the pilot's mother, that dropped a uranium-235 fission bomb cutely nicknamed "Little Boy" on a largely civilian city, killing an estimated 140,000 people (thousands of whom were vaporized without a discoverable trace, while thousands more died from radiation effects over ensuing years, a death toll made worse by US denial of radiation danger and strict censorship of any public discussion during the occupation). Hiroshima was one of the greatest military massacres in history, eclipsing American massacres of Native Americans by several orders of magnitude.



In his initial announcement of the Hiroshima bombing, President Truman said, misleadingly, that the bomb had "destroyed [Hiroshima's] usefulness to the Army." In a radio broadcast three days later, Truman falsely characterized Hiroshima as "a military base." Hiroshima was not a military base, though it had some relatively unimportant military installations. Hiroshima was chosen as the A-bomb target in part because it had so little military significance that it was one of the few Japanese cities that had gone almost un-attacked by the daily American bomb runs. Because it was largely intact, Hiroshima was ideal as a place to demonstrate the A-bomb's total destructiveness.

The US chose an almost undamaged city full of civilians as the target that would best bring the Japanese to their knees. Now that is something to "ponder," as Obama suggested, but chose not to do. It doesn't take much pondering to begin to wonder whether incinerating thousands of civilians might not be a war crime. It would be, if it happened today. During World War II, the laws of war made it a war crime for armies on the ground to attack, harm, and kill civilians. The laws of war did not specifically apply to aerial warfare, and so all sides cheerfully murdered civilians from the air with the kind of legalistic self-righteousness only corrupt lawyers can create. That's why there were no war crimes trials for any of the horrendous bombings of the war -- Rotterdam, Shanghai, Coventry, Cologne, Warsaw, Tokyo, to name a few.



Are war crimes actually war crimes until they're illegal?

The Anglo-American firebombing of Dresden in February 1945 burned tens of thousands of people alive, including mostly civilians and prisoners of war (one of whom was Kurt Vonnegut, who survived). The actual death toll is unknown, with good faith and politically-motivated estimates ranging from 25,000 to 500,000. The US firebombing of Tokyo in March 1945 killed more than 100,000 people and destroyed more than 15 square miles of the city. By any reasonable moral reckoning, all these air campaigns were war crimes, crimes against humanity in the most obvious sense. American history teaches us that World War II was a just war, "the last good war," and there's a case to be made for that. It was also, on all sides, a ruthless criminal enterprise.

None of this very real history was part of Obama's speech in Hiroshima. American presidents are not expected to be truthful, and would likely be crucified if they were. Once Obama acknowledged the "terrible force unleashed" out of nowhere by nobody, he shifted to a conventionally maudlin but politically shifty call "to mourn the dead," whom he listed by category. First he somewhat lowballed the Japanese dead, consistent with US policy for 71 years now. Then he mentioned "thousands of Koreans," a reference to Korean forced labor that would play well in Seoul if not Tokyo. And then he referred to those 12 "Americans held prisoner," for decades an official secret, in part because other POWs who survived were suffering from radiation sickness and the US government didn't want anyone to know about that.

Now the first sitting president of the US has visited Hiroshima, has solemnly visited a scene of American crime, and has been greeted with equally hypocritical solemnity by a Japanese government whose own hands are just as dirty and whose own current ambitions are as imperial as America's in Asia. Obama's speech would have you believe that that his goal is to "eliminate the existence of nuclear weapons" and to mark "the start of our own moral awakening." That doesn't fly when he's making nice with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, whose goal is to re-militarize Japan and eliminate all pacifist tendencies from its constitution. Obama is an enabler of Japanese militarization, not only for the sake of arms sales, but also as a "response" to China's agitation over US provocations under the strategic umbrella of Obama's "pivot to Asia."

Why does Obama address Hiroshima in the passive voice?

The conventional wisdom and mainstream media call Obama's trip to Hiroshima "historic" because he's the first US president to go there, not because there's anything actually historic about the visit. Politically, the Hiroshima event appears to be pretty reactionary on both sides. Before Obama in 2016, Richard Nixon went to Hiroshima in 1964, before he was president, and former president Jimmy Carter went there in 1984 when he, too, pledged to "eliminate nuclear weapons from the face of this earth." Early in his presidency in 2009 in Prague, Obama echoed this sentiment:

So today, I state clearly and with conviction America's commitment to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons. [Applause.] I'm not naive. This goal will not be reached quickly -- perhaps not in my lifetime. It will take patience and persistence. But now we, too, must ignore the voices who tell us that the world cannot change. We have to insist, "Yes, we can." [Applause.]

But this was only a sentiment, expressed in campaign rhetoric. America had made no such commitment, even if the president was sincere. America is a long, long way from making such a commitment. American presidents and candidates still talk about using nuclear weapons as if that were a sane option. Yes, the Obama administration negotiated a new treaty (START) in which the US and Russia each agreed to deploy no more than 1550 strategic nuclear warheads and bombs each. That's a cap, but a high cap. And it applies to no one else, leaving the UK, France, Israel, China, India, Pakistan, and even North Korea a rational basis for each having its own 1550 nukes. The US currently says it has 1528 warheads and bombs deployed, ready to use. The US also says it can "maintain a strong and credible strategic deterrent while safely pursuing up to a one-third reduction in deployed nuclear weapons from the level established in the New START Treaty." [Emphasis added.]

Both Bushes reduced nuclear weapons more than Obama

At its peak in 1967, the US had more than 30,000 nuclear warheads, both deployed and in reserve. By September 30, 2014, the total was 4766 warheads. This represents roughly a 10% reduction since Obama took office. Among other presidents, Reagan maintained the US nuclear arsenal at well over 20,000; George H.W. Bush cut the greatest number of warheads of any president (41% of more than 20,000); and George W. Bush cut the greatest percentage, 50% of slightly more than 10,000 when he took office).

To get Republican support for the START treaty in 2010, President Obama had to promise to improve and expand the US nuclear arsenal in other, creative ways. Obama's nuclear "modernization" plans, insofar as they're known, will cost the US an estimated $1 trillion over the next 30 years (more than $30 billion a year). "Modernization" includes things like nuclear-tipped cruise missiles or new, "smaller" bombs that might be politically easier to use. By today's standards, the Hiroshima bomb is "small." (Nuclear modernization is also intended to upgrade "a command and control unit tasked with coordinating the operational functions of the nation's nuclear forces [that] still uses 8-inch floppy disks and runs on an IBM / Series 1 computer " first produced in 1976" even though the Pentagon says "it still works.")

Factors like these -- the slow pace of reducing redundant weapons and the willingness to risk a renewed arms race with nuclear "modernization" were enough to arouse one Democratic senator -- but only one, Edward J. Markey of Massachusetts -- to criticize the president:
Exclusive to OpEd News: OpEdNews Op Eds 6/10/2016 at 11:07 AM EDT H3'ed 6/10/16

Obama: Welcome to the White House, Bernie. You don't know how lucky you are!



Sanders: You call getting sidelined by Hillary luck?

Obama: Depends on how you look at it: you'll stay a free man.



White House

(Image by ThatMattWade) Details DMCA



Sanders: How so? Isn't serving the American people the greatest thing anyone can do? I don't mind giving up a little free time to do that"

Obama: That's not the only thing you'd be giving up if you were the tenant here.

Sanders: And aren't you well protected by the Secret Service (SS"....)?

Obama: Oh sure, I'm even protected from my best instincts.

Sanders: Your 'best' instincts?

Obama: Yeah, the ones I developed under Davis and Alinsky.

Sanders: Your so-called 'Commie mentors'....?

Obama: Shh! The walls have ears!

Sanders: The White House walls?!!

Obama: You better believe it, bro.

Sanders: So the US Prez isn't the most powerful man on earth?

Obama: Are you kidding me?

Sanders: (moving closer) Can you tell me so the walls won't hear?

Next Page 1 | 2

(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
Not that Hillary was going to be the nominee. Not that Obama was in her camp. But by the gratuitously insulting and imperious way in which Obama, on behalf of Hillary, shut Bernie down.

Bernie was not going to win the superdelegates. Obama could have worked with Hillary quietly, behind the scenes to ensure that, and to make sure the convention went smoothly enough, while maintaining his public neutrality.

By endorsing Hillary at this time, in this way--within minutes of his meeting with Sanders where Bernie had praised Obama for not "putting his thumb on the scale," before Bernie had even started his next meeting of the day, before the final primary, before the vote at the convention that formally decides the nominee, and with an ad that Obama had filmed for Hillary in advance, posted on Facebook by the Clinton campaign--Obama was making a deliberately excessive gesture.

He was effectively telling Bernie, in a publicly brutal way, who's the boss: "You've had your fun. Now get with the program. Oh, and, by the way, as you leave, make sure that those little 'uns you got all riled up vote for Hillary."

Forget thumb, Obama put his fist on the scale, effectively telling the superdelegates how he wants them to vote. Obama is now campaigning for Hillary while Bernie is still officially in the race, and daring Bernie or anybody to complain about it. "Hey Bernie: Not the superdelegates, not anybody in this party, is going to defy me. Are you?" Bernie supporters should certainly be pissed off. But, again, this was predictable. It confirms a truth that Bernie (and most of his supporters) did not want to face: You can't run against Clinton without running against Obama. They are two head of the same Hydra. The neo-liberal and warmongering policies Bernie is attacking Hillary for are those of the Obama administration she was an integral part of. Obama is acting as the head of the Clintonite, counterrevolutionary organization that is the Democratic Party. Anybody who expected another result from running in the Democratic Party--or from Obama--hasn't been paying attention and/or has been engaged in wishful thinking.

If Hillary was going to win anyway, why did Obama make such a blatant exercise of power on behalf of the Democratic establishment? Well, Bernie's public torture on behalf of the ruling class duopoly is a nice enactment of the Foucauldian theater of punishment that's designed to demonstrate to the crowd that the sovereign can, precisely, do more than is needed to punish an errant subject. In immediate political terms, it's also designed to cut off, to forbid, any strong campaigning against Hillary on Bernie's part before and during the convention, which would necessarily involve further exposing serious dissension on substantive issues. Bernie was not going to get the delegate votes he needed, but Obama is now implicitly ordering him not even to try. "The Party and its supedelegates are mine (and Hillary's). Accept it."

And it's true: Hundreds of superdelegates will not defy Obama. Will Bernie? I think not, but we'll see right away. Bernie likes to say: "It's not about a man. It's about a movement." Now he has to decide whether it's about a Party or a movement. The choice for Bernie, which Obama has right now made clear, is to capitulate to the Democratic Party or to become a leader of a movement fighting for progressive change, independent and disruptive of the lesser-evil duopoly that pleases and perpetuates the ruling class.

For such a movement, the only thing left to do with the Democratic Party is to blow it up. The only reason for Bernie to continue his campaign and go to Philadelphia is to--in defiance of Obama, Clinton and the party establishment--press for public, irreversible positions on specific programs like single-payer healthcare, under threat of leaving with his supporters. Which he would end up having to do. The only reason for serious progressives to go to the Democratic convention is to demonstrate as militantly against the imperialist, neo-liberal Democratic Party as they do against the Republicans. To paraphrase Jill Stein: Most of what they're afraid Trump might do, Hillary, and Obama, already have.
by Sen. Doug Whitsett

The Oregon Legislative Assembly maintained a modicum of equality in political power during the years between the 2010 and the 2014 general elections. During all four of those years, our bipartisan Senate coalition maintained a 15-member voting block that prevented most of the more onerous anti-business bills from being enacted.

The House of Representatives was also equally divided for two years, from 2011 to 2013, with Co-Speakers and Co-Chairs of all House committees. Each committee had the same number of Democrat and Republican members. This equal representation also greatly aided in quashing anti-business legislation.

That political balance ended with the Democrat domination of the 2012 and 2014 elections. Oregon voters gave Democrats an 18 to 12 majority in the Senate and a 35 to 25 majority in the House following the 2014 general election. Laws enacted and legislation planned since that election have been nightmarish for Oregons business community.

Many of the worst anti-business bills that we had prevented were reintroduced and passed during the early part of the 2015 Legislative Assembly. Because we no longer had the votes to stop them, the bills made it through both the House and Senate with little public testimony or debate and were signed into law by Governor Brown.

Not all of those laws have taken full effect. Some are still in the rulemaking phase, while others are months away from actually being implemented.

Among those is Senate Bill 454, which mandates employer-paid sick leave. The Bureau of Labor and Industrys complex and convoluted rulemaking is due to be implemented within the next five months. Nine counties are suing the state, claiming the law represents an unfunded mandate. Private employers appear to have no alternative to obeying the job-busting law.

House Bill 2960 establishes the framework to require private employers to establish government-sanctioned retirement plans for their employees. Retirement contributions are not required by employers and are voluntary for employees, as they are allowed to opt-out of participation. The law will not be implemented until next year, when rulemaking is completed.

I would submit that many eventual mandates tend to have similar voluntary origins. It is much easier to make voluntary programs mandatory once they are written into statute by making simple language changes in subsequent legislation with little public testimony or debate.

Trial lawyers who traditionally donates heavily to Democratic legislators and candidates seemingly experienced a return on those investments during the 2015 session. Enactment of the Personal Injury Protection (PIP) and Cy Pres mandates on insurance companies will enhance the bottom line of many law firms while driving up costs for both businesses and consumers.

The extremely controversial Low Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS) enacted by SB 324 is arguably the most egregious of all the anti-business and anti-consumer laws passed in 2015. The carbon intensity for every phase of fossil fuels life cycle, from extraction through storage, shipping and eventual use, is quantified under the guise of saving the environment. Offsets can be purchased from producers of so-called green energy, virtually all of which are located out of the state.

This law serves to raise the costs of energy for businesses and families, while making no measurable impact on global carbon emissions and failing to provide a single penny for much-needed road infrastructure improvements anywhere in Oregon. The only beneficiaries will be many of the out-of-state green energy corporations who helped sponsor the bill.

As SB 324 was racing toward passage, I had a representative of the Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) in my Senate office. He was explaining that the transportation sector is responsible for one-third of Oregons total carbon output.

At the time, multiple catastrophic wildfires were burning throughout the district I represent and in other rural parts of the state. We asked the DEQ representative how much of Oregons carbon output results from such fires. His reply that it is not counted at all was mind-numbing! The public health impacts of such fires are severe and readily apparent. But measuring them does not appear to meet the social engineering goal of market transformation espoused by proponents of LCFS.

The 2016 session saw more of the same anti-business rhetoric and legislation. A three-tiered minimum wage law was enacted that is now less than two months from implementation. Ironically, many legislators who frequently complain about income inequality voted for this bill which codifies income inequality into law based on geography.

Another legislative priority for majority Democrats in the 2016 session was the passage of a Coal to Clean mandate. The law will, once again, drive up the costs of electricity for businesses and families while providing little tangible benefit for the environment.

It will double the states Renewable Portfolio Standard over time, and will not cause the closure of a single coal-fired generation plant anywhere, while continuing to not count our abundant hydroelectricity resources. The new law will not measurably reduce Oregons greenhouse gas emissions, but it will force Oregonians to subsidize green energy projects in other states through increases in their monthly utility bills.

In the November general election, voters will decide on other matters that will have a direct impact on employers bottom lines. Perhaps the most significant is Initiative Petition 28, a $6 billion tax on businesses and their customers brought forth by public employee unions. Signatures for IP 28 have been validated by the Secretary of States Office, meaning that the measure will appear on the ballot for the November general election.

Governor Kate Brown, who is standing for election in November to fill out the rest of former Governor John Kitzhabers term, has yet to officially take a position on the measure. But that does not appear to be dissuading her from making specific plans on how to spend the money it is expected to generate.

The Secretary of States Office will also be up for grabs this November. That position was held by Brown, who vacated it to become governor following Kitzhabers resignation. Browns appointed successor does not plan to seek a full term in office, leaving it as an open seat for the election.

Duties of the Secretary of States Office include overseeing its corporate division. The Democratic nominee for that position is our current Labor Commissioner. If elected, he has promised to extend its duties to include auditing Oregon corporations and clamping down on business polluters. This curious approach has been criticized in multiple editorials published by The Oregonian newspaper.

All of this comes on top of Browns directive to DEQ to conduct surprise inspections of businesses throughout the state in response to that agencys apparent failure to adequately monitor alleged air pollution in Southeast Portland. She has directed the agency to make unannounced visits to these major companies throughout Oregon, regardless of any history of previous air quality violations of any kind.

Fortunately, not all of the anti-business bills that were proposed during the 2016 session were passed into law. Senate Republicans were able to use parliamentary procedures to slow down the 35-day lawmaking process.

But I anticipate the Democrat majority will reintroduce many of the bills that failed during the upcoming 2017 regular session. No amount of parliamentary procedures can forestall their passage during the long session. Three of the more business unfriendly bills will include Clean Diesel mandates, a carbon cap and trade plan to tax fossil fuels and state-mandated work scheduling in the private workplace.

A work group was formed to discuss potential paths forward for the state-mandated work scheduling scheme. Those collaborative efforts appear to have faltered. Last week, several of the industry associations who were included in the work group sent this letter to legislators announcing their withdrawal from it. It was clear from the first work group discussion that this group will not provide a constructive forum to discuss whether a statewide mandated scheduling law is right for Oregon, the letter states. Advocates preferred broad generalized attacks on Oregon employers, rather than a reasonable discussion based on facts and circumstances unique to the reality Oregons employers are facing and existing employer-employee contracts. Those organizations withdrawing from the work group include Associated Oregon Industries, the Northwest Grocery Association, Oregon Restaurant and Lodging Association, Oregon Farm Bureau, Oregon Trucking Association and the Portland Business Alliance.

The letter from this coalition of organizations that represent Oregon businesses points out that employers in this state are months away from implementing several of the aforementioned mandates. It also mentions IP 28, characterizing it as a possible $6 billion tax, which will largely fall on the very same retailers and wholesalers this work group is targeting.

In response, one of the Legislators heading up the work group wrote an e-mail stating that the industry associations withdrawal was a very unfortunate decision on their part. Despite missing important organizational voices to help us understand the technical challenges that employers face, we believe that we will be able to find ways to get at that information in other ways, he wrote. He announced his own decision to continue the work group without their input.

The foregoing rhetoric epitomizes the larger struggle our job creators face in dealing with those who would wish to tax and regulate them out of business. Far too often, politicians and bureaucrats who have little or no experience running a business decide they know whats best for the business community, regardless of all the enumerated potential consequences. Business owners then face the choice of navigating through another maze of red tape and mandates, laying off employees to cover the costs of compliance, closing their doors permanently or moving to a more business friendly state.

Oregons future is dependent upon a vibrant, thriving private sector that provides opportunities for workers and a tax base to fund critical government functions. The key to a prosperous, growing private sector is the financial health of it small businesses. More than half of all new jobs are created by new and growing small businesses.

For the past several years, Oregon government has enacted myriad mandates, laws, regulations and rules that collectively make the creation and growth of small businesses difficult, if not impossible. In fact, for the first time since records have been kept, business deaths are exceeding business births. Given some of the known plans for the 2017 Legislative Assembly, it is hard to justify why any entrepreneur should attempt to start or grow a business in Oregon.

Senator Doug Whitsett is the Republican state senator representing Senate District 28  Klamath Falls
On June 8th, Renaissance Phuket Resort & Spa welcomed members of Porsche Club Singapore on their annual Drive of the Year 2016. A caravan of Porsche cars set off their journey in Singapore, with a 3-day stopover in Phuket before continuing their next route to Penang.
2009 satellite image of the Gulf of Mexico. Much of the dirt that colours the water is likely re-suspended sediment dredged up from the sea floor in shallow waters. The tan-green sediment-coloured water transitions to clearer dark blue water near the edge of the continental shelf where the water becomes deeper. The ocean turbulence that brought the sediment to the surface is readily evident in the textured waves and eddies within the tan and green waters. Credit: Jeff Schmaltz (NASA Earth Observatory) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

A University of Michigan researcher and colleagues from several institutions are forecasting an average but still large "dead zone" in the Gulf of Mexico this year.

The forecast calls for an oxygen-depleted, or hypoxic, region of 5,898 square miles, an area roughly the size of Connecticut and similar to the past several years. The forecast was released today by the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, which sponsors the work.

Farmland runoff containing fertilizers and livestock waste, much of it from as far away as the Corn Belt, is the main source of the nitrogen and phosphorus that cause the annual Gulf of Mexico hypoxic zone, which is also known as a dead zone.

The gulf contains diverse marine life, including nationally important commercial and recreational fisheries. Organisms unable to leave the low-oxygen dead zone become stressed and can die of suffocation.

In its 2001 action planwhich was confirmed in 2008 and again in 2013the Mississippi River/Gulf of Mexico Watershed Nutrient Task Force set the goal of reducing the five-year running average areal extent of the gulf hypoxic zone to 1,950 square miles by 2015. The task force is a coalition of federal, state and tribal agencies.

But little progress has been made toward that goal. Between 1995 and 2015, the gulf dead zone averaged 5,941 square miles.

"Even though the federal-state action plan calling for nutrient-load reductions has been in place since 2001, there has been little systematic reduction in those loads," said U-M aquatic ecologist Don Scavia, director of the Graham Sustainability Institute.

"And while the latest forecast calls for an average-size dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico, it is important to recognize that these averages are unacceptable. The bottom line is that we will never reach the action plan's goal of 1,950 square miles until more serious actions are taken to reduce the loss of Midwest fertilizers into the Mississippi River system."

Scavia is a member of NOAA-funded teams that produce annual forecasts for the Gulf of Mexico, the Chesapeake Bay and Lake Erie. The 2016 Chesapeake Bay hypoxia forecast will be released next week, and the Lake Erie harmful algal bloom forecast will be issued in early July.

For the second year in a row, the Gulf of Mexico hypoxia forecast was based on the predictions of four computer models, with individual forecasts ranging from 5,204 to 6,823 square miles. Forecasts based on multiple models are called ensemble forecasts; the technique is commonly used to forecast hurricanes and other weather events.

The models were developed by NOAA-sponsored teams and researchers at the University of Michigan, Louisiana State University, the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium, the Virginia Institute of Marine Sciences/College of William and Mary, Texas A&M University, North Carolina State University and the U.S. Geological Survey.

"Dead zones are a real threat to gulf fisheries and the communities that rely on them," said Russell Callender, assistant NOAA administrator for the National Ocean Service. "We'll continue to work with our partners to advance the science to reduce that threat. One way we're doing that is by using new tools and resources, like better predictive models, to provide better information to communities and businesses."

The gulf forecast is based on nutrient runoff data, as well as river and stream data, from USGS. The federal agency estimates that 146,000 metric tons of nitrate and 20,800 metric tons of phosphorus flowed down the Mississippi and Atchafalaya rivers into the Gulf of Mexico in May 2016. That is about 12 percent above the long-term (1980-2015) average for nitrogen, and 25 percent above the long-term average for phosphorus.

USGS operates more than 2,700 real-time stream gauges and 60 real-time nitrate sensors and collects water-quality data at long-term stations throughout the Mississippi River Basin to track how nutrient loads are changing over time.

"By expanding the real-time nitrate monitoring network with partners throughout the basin, USGS is improving our understanding of where, when and how much nitrate is pulsing out of small streams and large rivers and ultimately emptying to the Gulf of Mexico," said Sarah J. Ryker, acting deputy assistant secretary for water and science at the Department of the Interior. "The forecast puts these data to additional use by showing how nutrient loading fuels the hypoxic zone size."

The Gulf of Mexico hypoxia forecast assumes typical weather conditions. The actual size of this year's dead zone could be influenced by hurricanes and tropical storms.

The confirmed size of the 2016 Gulf of Mexico dead zone will be released in early August, following a monitoring survey from July 24 to Aug. 1, conducted on a NOAA vessel and funded through a partnership between NOAA, the Northern Gulf Institute and the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium.

Hypoxia forecasts are part of a larger NOAA effort to deliver ecological forecasts that support human health and well-being, coastal economies, and coastal and marine stewardship.
Gary King, Albert J. Weatherhead III University Professor, has published a study with former graduate students Jennifer Pan and Margaret Roberts revealing that the Chinese government fakes 448 million social media posts a year to create the appearance of viral outbursts of Web activity. Credit: Stephanie Mitchell/Harvard Staff Photographer

The Chinese government fakes 448 million social media posts a year in a strategy that seeks to create the appearance of "viral" outbursts of Web activity, according to a new study by Harvard data scientists.

The posts appear under the names of apparently ordinary people, and aim to distract from topics related to actual or potential collective action, said Gary King, the Albert J. Weatherhead III University Professor, who carried out the research with two of his former graduate students: Jennifer Pan, now an assistant professor at Stanford University, and Margaret Roberts, an assistant professor at the University of California at San Diego.

The researchers' foundation was an analysis of a 2014 leak of emails to one county's propaganda department. The team used this information to extrapolate countrywide and understand the content and purpose of the social media posts and the Chinese government's strategy.

The research shows that assumptions about the Chinese government's tactics in this area are wrong, King said. The prevailing belief among journalists, academics, and activists, he said, has been that the government maintains an aggressive social media strategy that actively rebuts anti-government posts and tries to cast opponents, whether domestic or foreign, institutional or individual, in a negative light.

In fact, such posts make up a tiny minority, the researchers found. Most qualify as "cheerleading": praise for the government and items on revolutionary history, national holidays, and other patriotic themes. In short, King said, the government is trying to distract people, and defuse tension over fraught issues.

The strategy makes sense, he said. The chance of changing minds through argument is remote; changing the subject is usually a more effective tack. "It's the same strategy we use with our kids. We distract them: 'Look at this shiny thing' or 'You have a good argument. Now let's go out for ice cream,'" King said.

The research, supported by the Institute for Quantitative Social Science, which King directs, grew out of an earlier project to analyze a tool created to automatically understand textual data from blogs, websites, and social media sites. After success in developing the methodology and analyzing English-language social media posts, King and his colleagues wanted to stress-test the tool's limits. Since it was created in English, they decided to target a notoriously difficult language: Chinese.

When the group examined the results, King realized that they somehow had been able to scrape social media posts that were subsequently censored by the Chinese government. They examined which posts were censored, finding that the government didn't censor all critical posts, only those calling for protests and other collective action. In fact, it even censored posts calling for rallies in the government's favor.

The new work probes deeper into a sophisticated strategy that doesn't seek to stifle all discontent, but instead focuses on discouraging on-the-ground action against the government.

The findings also shed light on who's behind the posts. Speculation has often centered on the so-called 50-cent party, thought to be a cadre of dedicated posters paid 50 cents8 cents U.S.per post. But the research suggests that the 50-centers are regular government workers who author the posts without extra compensation, perhaps as an add-on to their everyday duties.

The 2014 email leak, by an anonymous blogger, released an archive of all 2013 and 2014 emails to the account of Zhanggong District's Internet Propaganda Office, which included numerous emails from workers claiming credit for completing their 50-cent posting assignments, as well as other communications.

The archive's size and the complexity of its contentit included screen shots, numerous attachments, different document formats, multiple email storage formats, and links to outside informationhad been an obstacle to systematic analysis. King and colleagues devised a variety of procedures, some automated and some manualsuch as hand codingto categorize the content of the leaked messages.

The researchers identified 43,797 fake social media posts as well as the accounts behind them. They expanded their analysis to all posts from those accountssome 167,971and then analyzed the account characteristics to identify similar accounts nationwide. At each step, they developed novel data science to examine the content of the posts and found that the dominant category amounted to cheerleading, with some factual reporting along with innocuous praise and suggestions.

Overall, the research estimates that the government fakes some 448 million social media posts a year, all written by humans without automation. While that may seem like a lot, about half are posted on official government sites; those posted to accounts on commercial sites amount to just one in every 178 on those accounts. Still, King said, the government's strategycoordinated bursts in response to specific calls for collective actionprobably gives the posts an outsized effect.

The research identified significant spikes in posts after the late June 2013 Shanshan riots; after the April 2014 Urumqi Railway Explosion; and around significant official events and holidays, such as Martyrs' Day, Tomb-Sweeping Day, and the 18th Party Congress's third plenary session.

King said the ability to rise above background noise is what makes a viral strategy effective. Getting clued in to what others are talking about is a major reason people use social media in the first place, he pointed out.

"That's why you go to social media," King said. "That's what social media is. It's likely this activity has a big effect.  What we do not know is the trajectory or ultimate outcome of the ongoing arms race between government efforts at information control and popular efforts at expression and collective action."

Explore further Study shows people think less of co-workers who share political beliefs on social media

This story is published courtesy of the Harvard Gazette, Harvard University's official newspaper. For additional university news, visit Harvard.edu.
The map above, contained in the Hsiang-Sobel paper, reflects a logarithm calculating the minimum distance an organism must travel to maintain the average temperature of its original tropical location. Credit: University of California - Berkeley

Global warming by just 2 degrees Celsius is likely to force some tropical plant, animal and human populations to relocate hundreds of miles from their current homes this century, according to research published today in the journal Scientific Reports.

Solomon Hsiang, Chancellor's Associate Professor of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley, and Adam Sobel, a professor of applied physics and math at Columbia University, foresee dramatic population declines in Mexico, Central America, Africa, India and other tropical locales if ecosystems or humans move due to climate change.

In their analysis, the pair used a model to demonstrate how climate dynamics in the tropics can dramatically magnify the consequences of climate change as it is experienced on the ground. This means even small climate changes can have dramatic impacts.

The equator's limited options

"We're not making specific predictions about migration patterns of individual species, but the geophysical constraint is that, as the tropics get hotter, you'll have to go far, essentially leaving the tropics, to cool off," said Sobel.

Because the tropics are uniformly hot, when things get hotter by just a small amount, populations will have to move far to find relief.

Hsiang explains it with an analogy: "Imagine you have a fixed budget you can spend on your apartment and rents are the same throughout your entire neighborhood. If all the rents go up, even by just a little bit, you might have to move very far to find a new place you can afford."

Flamingos flying over the tropics are among the many species that may be forced to migrate as temperatures climb even moderately in the tropics, scientists say. Credit: iStock

Hsiang and Sobel describe climate-related displacements in the tropics as "an almost complete evacuation of the equatorial band" that could impact ecosystems as well as human well-being.

A 'temperature budget'

The researchers report that some oceanic and continental populations would have to move as far as 1,000 miles or more to stay within their "temperature budget." Where do those populations end up? Simulations by the authors suggest the cooler edges of the tropics could get crowded, where populations might theoretically climb by 300 percent or higher. At those densities, disease and conflict over resources, among other issues, would bring their own complications.

"We know that people and species of all kinds move for all kinds of reasons, not just to stay at the same temperature," said Sobel. "At the same time, the uniformity of tropical temperatures is a basic fact about the temperature structure of Earth, and still will be as the climate changes. It seems like a very basic constraint that ought to be understood as we think about populations."

Professor Solomon Hsiang, director of UC Berkeleys Global Policy Lab. Credit: Brittany Murphy

Problems with staying put

"Another real problem arises when populations can't move, but instead have to stay put and suffer the consequences of a new climate," Hsiang said. "This can happen when human migrants run into political borders or when species physically can't move fast enough." The recent catastrophic bleaching of the Great Barrier Reef is an example of the latter.

To arrive at their findings, Hsiang and Sobel compared today's temperatures with climate model projections where Earth's average temperature rose by 2 degrees Celsius this century. Even under these modest climate changes, considered "optimistic" compared to business-as-usual forecasts, the authors found that population movements could be dramatic. The tropics, they said, are unique in this extreme response to limited warming.

The authors are cautious in applying their findings to human populations, since moving is only one of many strategies humans will use to cope with warming. Nonetheless, they note that extraordinary human migrations cannot be ruled out, pointing to the American Dust Bowl as a familiar and dramatic recent experience.

Explore further Tropical species are especially vulnerable to climate change, according to researchers

More information: Solomon M. Hsiang et al. Potentially Extreme Population Displacement and Concentration in the Tropics Under Non-Extreme Warming, Scientific Reports (2016). Journal information: Scientific Reports Solomon M. Hsiang et al. Potentially Extreme Population Displacement and Concentration in the Tropics Under Non-Extreme Warming,(2016). DOI: 10.1038/srep25697
Protein Androgen Receptor forms aggregatesthat damage muscle and motor neuron cells in Kennedy's Disease Credit: B. Eftekharzadeh, IRB Barcelona

Knowledge of the minute details of the proteins that are linked to diseases is crucial if we are to discover therapeutic targets and thus pave the way for possible treatments. Such knowledge gains even more relevance when dealing with rare diseases that have received little attention and for which no treatments are available, such as the case of Kennedy's disease. This week Xavier Salvatella, ICREA researcher at the Institute for Research in Biomedicine (IRB Barcelona), in collaboration with scientists from the University of Florence (Italy), has described a molecular system of protection that involves the androgen receptor protein, a molecule that is mutated in patients with Kennedy's disease and which cause progressive muscle wastage.

The finding brings in-depth molecular insights that can lead to new studies and bring researchers closer to finding a therapeutic target for Kennedy's disease. The study has been published in Biophysical Journal.

In Kennedy's disease, the muscle cells and motor neuronsthe latter linked to muscle function tooare damaged as a result of the accumulation of androgen receptor fibersa process that causes them to die. "Many aspects of diseases involving aggregates, such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's, are unknown. In this regard, Kennedy's disease is in a worse position because it is a rare condition," explains Xavier Salvatella, head of the Molecular Biophysics Lab at IRB Barcelona.

The onset of this genetically inherited disease occurs in late adulthood, affecting one in every 40,000 men and causing progressive deterioration of all muscles. Although not fatal, the condition is debilitating, and 20% of those affected eventually need a wheel chair.

Backed by funding from the "Fundacion La Marato de TV3" and a Consolidator Grant from the European Research Council, Salvatella studies the sequence of molecular events that causes the aggregation of androgen receptors. He and his team seek to determine the regions of the protein sequence responsible for aggregation in order to identify valid targets to direct therapies and to prevent this process.

Image of the Androgen Receptor structure. In orange, leucines induce the glutamine chain to form a helix, in red. The leucines protect against aggregation Credit: B. Topal, IRB Barcelona

Attacking the flanks of the protein

The mutation carried by those affected by Kennedy's disease causes a repeated and excessively long chain of a specific amino acid, namely glutamine, which impairs the activity of the androgen receptor. This protein, which activates the hormone testosterone, is responsible for triggering the genetic programme that favours the differential characteristics of men: more hair, deep voice, larger hands, etc.

During adolescence, and depending on the extent to which they are affected, boys with the mutation do not fully develop the male phenotype, but this is often not diagnosed. In a second stage, in adulthood, muscle degeneration begins. "It is known that the longer the polyglutamine chain, the earlier the onset of muscle atrophy. What we don't know and what this study helps us to understand is why the harmful effect is triggered when the length of the poly glutamine exceed 38 residues".

Thanks to access to one of the main Nuclear Magnetic Resonance facilities in Europe, located at the University of Florence, for the first time the scientists have studied the protein in a test tube. They have observed that right next to the glutamine chain there is a region comprised by four leucine residues that allay the effects of the mutation.

The leucine molecules favour the folding of the polyglutamine chain into a helix, a structure that prevents the chains from adhering to one another. However, the impact of the leucine molecule on the glutamine region is limited, and if there are many glutamine amino acids, the chains do not fold. Instead, they stretch out like rods, stick to each other, and end up forming a fibrous wall.

"We have seen that four leucine molecules delay this process. What would happen in the presence of six?" asks Salvatella. "Conceptually speaking, one clever way of delaying the aggregation could be to use drugs to strengthen the effect of the leucine residues that have so much influence on the mutation site that causes the protein to aggregate," reflects Salvatella.

Salvatella's work indicates that in-depth knowledge of the different protein sequences and how they affect each other may reveal new therapeutic targets. The IRB Barcelona scientist is engaged in several research lines devoted to Kennedy's disease. His studies involve the development of techniques and studies with mice and with chaperonesproteins that bind to any protein that is about to aggregate. "This is the first article in a series in which we can slowly explain how we think Kennedy's disease develops and propose therapeutic solutions," he explains.

The Iranian researcher Bahareh Eftekharzadeh is the first author of the paper. She did her PhD at IRB Barcelona funded by an International "la Caixa" Fellowship and is currently doing postdoc work at the University of Harvard. Salvatella's lab also receives funding from the Ministry of the Economy and Competitiveness, complemented by support from the ERDF and the Government of Catalonia.

Explore further New method to study key targets in Alzheimer's disease and prostate cancer

More information: Bahareh Eftekharzadeh et al. Sequence Context Influences the Structure and Aggregation Behavior of a PolyQ Tract, Biophysical Journal (2016). Journal information: Biophysical Journal Bahareh Eftekharzadeh et al. Sequence Context Influences the Structure and Aggregation Behavior of a PolyQ Tract,(2016). DOI: 10.1016/j.bpj.2016.04.022
Collecting a sea star near a sea-dumped munition. Credit: Hawai'i Undersea Military Munitions Assessment (HUMMA)

A special issue of the academic journal Deep-sea Research II, published recently, is devoted to expanding understanding of the global issue of chemical munitions dumped at sea. The publication was edited by Margo Edwards, interim director of the University of Hawai'i at Manoa's (UHM) Hawai'i Institute of Geophysics and Planetology, and Jacek Beldowski, Science for Peace and Security MODUM ("Towards the Monitoring of Dumped Munitions Threat") project director at the Polish Academy of Sciencestwo international leaders in the assessment of sea-dumped military munitions and chemical warfare; and the effects on the ocean environment and those who use it.

"The overarching objective of the special issue of Deep Sea Research II is to collate and compare results from two of the most comprehensive studies of sea dumped chemical munitions to promote data sharing and constrain the factors that influence where and how to mitigate the damage," said Edwards.

Whereas today chemical warfare agents (CWA) are destroyed via chemical neutralization processes or high-temperature incineration, the internationally accepted practice in the early to middle 20th century was sea disposal of excess, obsolete or unserviceable munitions, including chemical warfare materiel.

In 1970, the U.S. Department of Defense discontinued this practice and in 1972 an international treaty, the Convention on the Prevention of Marine Pollution by Dumping of Wastes and Other Matter, was developed to protect the marine environment. By the time this treaty, referred to as the London Convention, was signed by a majority of nations, millions of tons of munitions were known to have been disposed throughout the world's oceans.

KidCam, Iolani High School students' time-lapse camera, deployed near a sea-dumped munition. Credit: Hawai'i Undersea Military Munitions Assessment (HUMMA)

Since 2007, the Hawai'i Undersea Military Munitions Assessment (HUMMA) has been assessing sea-disposed military munitions in a region south of the island of Oahu, Hawai'i. Scientists at UHM and Environet and members of the U.S. Army collaborated to assess the condition of munitions casings; effects on seafloor ecosystems; and the presence of metals and CWA in sediments and shrimp.

The results of those studies, published in the current issue of Deep Sea Research II, document that the forty munitions examined in detail in the HUMMA field area pose little, if any, risk to human health while simultaneously recognizing that these forty are only a subset of the hundreds of likely chemical munitions in the area.

Illustrative of the mystery of the vast ocean, the HUMMA project enabled discovery of a new species of sea star, Brisingenes margoae nov. sp.named in honor of Edwards. This unique species and other sea stars were collected using the School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology's Hawai'i Undersea Research Laboratory submersibles.

The Chemical Munitions Search and Assessment (CHEMSEA) was conducted in the Baltic Sea from 2011 until 2014. In combination, the studies from CHEMSEA published in Deep Sea Research II recognize sea-dumped munitions as a point source of pollution in the Baltic Sea, although its contribution appears to be low and limited to deep, anoxic basins. Acute toxicity to humans from CWA (e.g., mustard, Adamsite) is unlikely given recorded concentrations, although adverse effects of chronic exposure on fish populations cannot be excluded.

The collected articles from the CHEMSEA and HUMMA projects projects in the special issue of Deep-sea Research II present a number of techniques that are useful for the complex in-depth investigation of munitions dumpsites. Results show that sea-dumped munitions in both project areas do not represent direct risk for humans except in cases of exposure due to recovery, although in the more confined Baltic Sea with limited water exchange, munitions can have adverse impact on the ecosystem.

Explore further Researchers continue to investigate effects of military munitions
Mary Hart off the coast of Panama, where she observed the mating habits of chalk bass. Credit: University of Florida

A 3-inch monogamous hermaphrodite proves the saying "there's plenty more fish in the sea" isn't always the case.

For the tiny fish found in the coral reefs off Panama, a lifelong relationship with its partner doesn't come without some give and take. In fact, the faithful pair owe their evolutionary success to trading male and female roles: According to an April 2016 University of Florida study in the journal of Behavioral Ecology, the fish switch genders at least 20 times each day.

This reproductive strategy allows individuals to fertilize about as many eggs as they produce, giving the neon-blue fish a reproductive edge. Its mating habits may, at first, seem complex and unusual, but UF scientist Mary Hart said the loyal chalk bass offers humans in relationships this simple wisdom: You get what you give.

"Our study indicates that animals in long-term partnerships are paying attention to whether their partner is contributing to the relationship fairlysomething many humans may identify with from their own long-term relationships," said Hart, lead author and an adjunct professor in UF's biology department.

In fact, the duo motivate one another to contribute eggs to the relationship because if one partner lacks eggs, the other will simply match whatever it produces. The only way for a partner to convince its mate to produce more eggs, is to pick up the slack and generate more itself, Hart said.

Hart worked with her husband of 10 years, co-author Andrew Kratter, an ornithologist with the Florida Museum of Natural History on the UF campus, to study the ocean-dwelling partners. For six months, the scientists observed the short-lived chalk bass, Serranus tortugarum, while scuba diving off the coast of Panama.

To the scientists' surprise, all of the original chalk bass couples marked for the study remained together throughout the duration, until one or both of them disappeared from the study site. With only 3 to 5 percent of animals known to live monogamously, this is a rare findone of the first for a fish living in a high-density social group, Kratter said.

"I found it fascinating that fish with a rather unconventional reproductive strategy would end up being the ones who have these long-lasting relationships," he said. "They live in large social groups with plenty of opportunities to change partners, so you wouldn't necessarily expect this level of partner fidelity."

The new research lays the groundwork for integrative studies that investigate the behavioral and neurological mechanisms that govern partnerships in the wild.

Scientists have long studied cooperative behavior in animals, like primates that groom each other or vampire bats that regurgitate food for relatives in need of a blood meal. But it has remained a point of debate among scientists whether or not these animals are paying attention to the amount of resources being exchanged. For the chalk bass, matching reproductive chores helps partners succeed, even when there are opportunities to mate with other fish, Hart said.

"We initially expected individuals with partners that were producing less eggs would be more likely to switch partners over timetrading up, so to speak," she said. "Instead we found that partners matched egg production and remained in primary partnerships for the long term."

For their entire adult lives, the fish mating partners come together for two hours each day before dusk in their refuge area, or spawning territory. They chase away other fish and begin with a half-hour foreplay ritual of nipping and hovering around each other, an activity Kratter says helps strengthen the partners' bond. Eventually it becomes apparent which fish is going to take on the female role for the first of many spawning rounds.

Finding a new mate every evening is time-consuming and risky for a fish that only lives for about a year. Having a safe partner may help ensure that individuals get to fertilize a similar number of eggs as they produce, rather than risk ending up with a partner with fewer eggs, Hart said.

The chalk bass, however, is not opposed to the occasional fling.

If one partner has more eggs than the other, it may share the extra with other couples. Hart said this infrequent option, which happened only 20 percent of the time in the study group, may add stability to the system of simultaneous hermaphroditism paired with monogamy.

But the fish always returns to its mate at the end of the day.

Beavers, otters and wolves are a few species that travel life in pairs. If a wolf is widowed, though, its instincts kick in and the wolf will quickly replace its former mate. Life for a chalk bass after losing its partner may be more difficult. Since adults are all paired, it seems likely that finding a new mate would be difficult for a lone fish. Hart said further investigation is needed to say for sure.

Scientists are only beginning to understand how mutually beneficial relationships among animals are maintained, much as humans in general still strive to determine what makes long-term relationships last.

Hart and Kratter said delving into what drives the bond between monogamous animals has had an impact on their marriage.

"I think the 'get what you give' in egg resources exchanged within pairs result, along with the potential for both positive and negative feedback within partnerships were very insightful to both of us," Hart said. "Not even one of the original pairs that I observed switched mates while its partner was still alive. That strong matching between partners and the investment into the partnership was surprising."

Explore further Cooperative fish take turns with gender roles
The Educational Conference Board this week called on the state to implement fixes to the state tax cap formula that the Legislature approved last year and to set the growth factor at a flat 2 percent.

The modifications to the formula include excluding from the tax cap calculation local capital expenses for BOCES instructional spaces and properties covered by payments-in-lieu-of-taxes agreements.

The PILOT change would allow communities to recognize growth in revenue from new construction and the modification for BOCES is at a time of increased focus on the services and specialized programs that the organization provides, according to a news release.

The flat 2 percent would be more predictable, advocates say, unlike the current eight-part formula that takes into account the Consumer Price Index, tax base growth, PILOTs and other factors. The ECB said current forecasts predict that next years CPI could be 1 percent.

A record 86 school districts had negative tax caps under the formula this year. The district of Florida in Orange County fell one vote short of the 60 percent needed for a super majority to override the tax cap. Under the formula, their tax levy had to decrease by 0.09 percent, but it was proposed to go up 1.2 percent.

The ECB also wants more flexibility for school districts if they propose tax levies under the cap to be able to carry forward that difference between what they proposed and the cap in future years.

The tax cap was intended to restrain the growth of taxes over time, but that should not come at the expense of educational services for children, ECB Chair John Yagielski said in a news release. We have a serious concern that the way the cap is currently constructed puts schools on an unsustainable course, and this will ultimately hurt students and communities. The cap can be made more workable.

Members of the ECB include the Conference of Big 5 School Districts, New York State Association of School Business Officials, New York State Council of School Superintendents, New York State PTA, New York State School Boards Association, New York State United Teachers and the School Administrators Association of New York State.
ARGYLE  William Scott will enjoy a month off and then get right back to being a school superintendent  just in a different Washington County district.

Scott is heading 26 miles down the road to become Argyles interim superintendent, after Jan Jehring leaves on Aug. 7 to become superintendent of the Florida Union Free School District in Orange County, New York.

The Argyle school board on Thursday appointed Scott at a rate of $500 per day. As a retired employee, he will not receive Argyle health benefits or payments into the state retirement system. Scott will begin work in early August.

This would be Scotts third interim superintendent stint in Washington County. He is currently superintendent of the Whitehall Central School District  a post he has held since May 2015.

He is leaving that position when current Lake George Superintendent Patrick Dee takes over as Whitehalls superintendent on July 1.

Before coming to Whitehall, Scott served as superintendent for Fort Ann from January 2014 through December 2014.

Hes an awesome fit, said Argyle school board President Pamela Ellis.

Ellis added in a prepared statement that Scott stood out among qualified candidates because of his recent experience in those other districts, which are rural like Argyle.

Bill Scott is highly regarded in the districts he has served, and possesses the specific skills that we were looking for, including a strong knowledge of school finance, an approachable and engaged individual with excellent communication skills and a deep understanding of instructional practice, she said in a news release.

Scotts agreement says he will stay no later than June 30, or until a new superintendent is chosen. Argyle school officials want to have a permanent superintendent in place by January.

Scott, who lives in Wilton, said he is excited about the opportunity to serve the district.

It is a district with quality programs, strong professionals and outstanding children, he said in a news release.

Scott spent 28 years as the superintendent of Northern Adirondack Central School until his retirement in November 2008. Since then, he has had multiple stints as an interim superintendent  at Hadley-Luzerne during the 2011-2012 school year, Galway during 2012-2013 and then Fort Ann during calendar year 2014.
When David Doonan picked up Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein at Albany International Airport, he thought she might be getting homesick for Massachusetts.

At one point I turned to Jill and I said, You must be really anxious to get home and see your family, because were wrapping up a 10-day road trip, said Doonan, of Greenwich, who is Steins national media coordinator. She hesitated, and then she said, No  Im just thinking about the next interview.

Stein, a 65-year-old physician, is a perpetual campaigner.

I have been running for office without interruption for 15 years, something like that, said Stein, who campaigned in Fort Edward and Glens Falls on Thursday and Friday. To me, running for office is really indistinguishable from just living everyday life and fighting the fight that we fight.

She doesnt accept corporate campaign contributions, use a teleprompter or notes for speeches, take chartered flights or travel with U.S. Secret Service protection.

I believe I am (eligible for Secret Service protection) as far as I know. I have never asked for it, and Im not sure that I will, she said. Im not sure whether it would be an asset or a liability to the purposes of the campaign and my safety.

Secret Service agents might inhibit talking one-on-one with voters, such as the musician with $500,000 in health-care debt she met Wednesday on a commercial flight from Los Angeles to Newark.

The guy next to me, a sort of fortyish guy, was looking out the window. And he started muttering about, All those mansions down there. Somethings got to change. Ive got to start looking for a new presidential candidate, she recalled. I said, Well, let me introduce you to one.

Stein, the presumptive nominee of the Green Party, prefers to talk more about what she is for than what she is against.

Democracy does not consist of what we are afraid of and what we dislike, she said. Democracy needs an affirmative agenda. Democracy needs a moral compass.

Stein supports expanding the federal Medicare program to provide health care coverage for all, increasing the federal minimum wage to $15, cutting the federal military budget in half and redirecting allocations to alternative energy and transportation infrastructure improvements.

Stein said the cost would be recouped over time with reduced health-care costs for treating chronic asthma, heart disease and diabetes.

She supports removing marijuana from the federal Drug Enforcement Agency list of controlled substances and restoring the right for felons to vote once they have completed their sentences.

Stein got started in political advocacy in the 1990s, raising awareness of environmental issues.

That led to leadership of a campaign finance reform initiative in Massachusetts around 2000, which prompted the Green Party to recruit her to run for Massachusetts governor in 2002.

I was recruited by the Green Party, who said, Well, why dont just keep on doing that (advocacy) and call it a campaign for governor? she said. I was basically tricked into running for office.

During the race, she recognized a calling to a different type of medicine.

I used to practice clinical medicine; now I practice political medicine, because its the mother of all illnesses and weve got to fix that one in order to get to all of the other things that threaten life and welfare, she said.

I entered that race out of absolute desperation, and I emerged with incredible inspiration just to see how hungry the public was for a real conversation with a real human being who wasnt just talking from a script.

From Newark on Wednesday, Stein caught a connecting flight to Albany.

She had radio and television interviews in Albany on Thursday morning, spoke at a rally outside the General Electric Co. plant in Fort Edward in the afternoon and delivered two speeches in Glens Falls in the evening.

Friday morning, she met with The Post-Star editorial board and then was headed to Albany for a news conference and an evening forum in Troy, where she would stay overnight for the New York Green Party convention on Saturday.

Then she would be back on a plane headed to appear on CNN television on Sunday.

Stein received about 470,000 votes, less than 1 percent, as the Green Party candidate in the 2012 presidential race.

She said the latest national polling in this years race shows her at 4 percent.

Her national campaign staff, currently about a dozen people, is larger this election than last one, said Doonan, a former Greenwich mayor.

What we have now is probably double what the campaign had at the end four years ago, he said.

Stein said younger voters are not preoccupied with the stigma third party candidates faced after the 2000 presidential race, when Democratic strategists and political commentators said Green Party candidate Ralph Naders line received about 2.7 percent as Republican George Bush narrowly defeated Democrat Al Gore.

You could begin to see that breaking down in 2012, especially among a new generation that did not sort of religiously focus on Bush/Nader/Gore and make it the framework through which they viewed politics, she said. They were looking at actually current life, not one particular moment and trying to generalize from that.

Stein said she expects a surge of support from Bernie Sanders supporters now that it appears Hillary Clinton will be the Democratic nominee against Republican Donald Trump.

As Bernie says, Its not the man. Were a movement. And I think what Bernie may decide to do, his movement may not decide to do, she said.
BMX riders showed off their mad skills on Wednesday before students at the Southern Adirondack Education Center.

Students at the BOCES Skills Training and Education Program saw a stunt-filled presentation by the National Guards BMX Team. They also heard a message about bringing their A game to education: alliance, attitude, authentic, ability, active, anti-bullying and achieve, according to the BOCES Facebook page.

Linda Beck-Fragale, the assistant principal for the program, organized the event.

About 25 ninth-graders are participating in the program for students who benefit from a nontraditional setting. Students are exposed to careers in construction trades and hospitality and human services. Traditional subjects are interwoven into the curriculum.

 Michael Goot

Protecting those who serve

Jenn Howse wants to protect Glens Falls four-legged finest.

The head of the Wilton-based nonprofit 11th Hour Canine Rescue is helping to raise money to buy safety equipment for the city Police Departments two newest members, Neeko and Phlash.

The department needs two bullet- and stab-proof vests; one bite sleeve for an arm and one for a leg; a large dog crate; cages for the K-9 units cars; and an alert sensor system for the cars.

These dogs are going to protect our city and our people, Howse said. They protect their partners and are a valuable asset.

Howse is working on developing a June 25 fundraising event to be held at the Shirt Factory in Glens Falls.

In the meantime, donations can be made at www.gofundme.com/27ra7u4, or by sending a check with the subject line indicating the donation is for Glens Falls K-9 unit, to Protect & Vest NY K9 Inc., P.O. Box 15, Burnt Hills, NY 12027. The donations are tax-deductible.

 Rhonda Triller

Tech students to compete

Five career and technical education students from the Southern Adirondack Education Center and their advisers are heading to the national SkillsUSA competition June 20-24 in Louisville, Kentucky.

The students that qualified are: Lily Roberts from Fort Ann for action skills, culinary arts; Connor Lavoie of Whitehall for CNC Milling, machine tool technology; Allison Vrooman of Fort Ann, for nurse assisting, health occupations; Tyler Vaughn of Hudson Falls for cosmetology; and Emily Fox of Granville, also for cosmetology, according to a news release.

In addition, Saratoga High School student Maygan Carpenter, who is a criminal justice student at the F. Donald Myers Education Center, was elected as a New York State SkillsUSA secretary. She will first attend the National State Officer events from June 18 to 20 for team and leadership training in Louisville, Kentucky.

The students competed at the state competition, held April 27-29 in Syracuse. New York is sending 229 students, which SkillsUSA advisor Jeff Plummer said is the largest contingent, to the national event.

While in Kentucky, students will visit the Muhammad Ali Center.

 Michael Goot

Bands rated superior

The Warrensburg school districts high school band and jazz band earned the top rating of superior and first-place trophies at last months Music in the Parks Festival.

The bands traveled to Dorney Park in Allentown, Pennsylvania to participate in the festival held May 27-29. The bands were judged on various elements, including balance, musicality, accuracy, blend and other factors, according to a news release. The concert band won Best Overall Concert Band

The 49 students on the trip also rode the roller coasters and traveled to New York City, where they attended a performance of STOMP, followed by an interactive workshop with some cast members. They attended the musical School of Rock, and had a theater games workshop with Tony Award nominee Lou Libertore. They also visited the 911 Memorial.

School officials said the trip was made possible through donations from Price Chopper, PTSA, Stewarts Shops, Subway and the Warrensburg Fire Department.

 Michael Goot

Students donate change

The students in Greenwich elementary and middle school have raised more than $1,500 for the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation through Jug Wars.

Each class in kindergarten through sixth grade receives a jug and has to fill up the jugs with as much spare change as possible during two weeks in March and April. Each coin has a point value associated with it and the top class in the elementary and middle school wins an ice cream social, according to a news release.

This is the third year the schools have done the fundraiser.

 Michael Goot

Milligan takes lead

Christine Milligan of Fort Ann has been named the commander for the Washington County American Legion. She takes over from Charles Fedler of Cambridge.

Milligan, who has been very active in researching the Battle of Fort Anne and other historical issues, is the countys first female commander.

 Bill Toscano
Its called corporate welfare.

A study released last month by Oxfam America found that for every dollar Americas biggest companies paid in taxes, they received $27 back in federal loans, loan guarantees and bailouts.

Most of us would be happy if the potholes were fixed in exchange for the checks we write.

So Washington County supervisors were right last week to balk at a suggestion to give the proposed industrial park at the former General Electric dewatering plant nonprofit status.

It was a blatant attempt by a private business to get around paying its tax bill, while trying to convince supervisors it was in the best interest of the county.

WCC, which has been leasing the dewatering plant property to GE, plans to use the property as an industrial park, and the Washington County supervisors were attempting to iron out the final wrinkles for access to the property when WCC floated the nonprofit idea.

WCC pointed out it would have great difficulty paying a $2.8 million tax bill without any revenue from the property. While that is true now, that has not been the case for a number of years during which General Electric was paying substantially for the use of the site.

Surely, WCC knew that dredging would be completed at some point and it would again have to pay the taxes without the benefit of revenue from a tenant.

WCC says it will be reaching out to the Warren-Washington Industrial Development Agency and the county Local Development Corp for help.

WCC argues that, if the property was tax-exempt, businesses that move to the industrial park would negotiate payments in lieu of taxes.

Most communities are so desperate for jobs in upstate New York, they are ready to deal.

The GlobalFoundries deal for the Capital District is one of the largest examples. Once the chip-maker was established, the entire Capital District was supposed to rise on the shoulders of the nanotechnology giant.

Were still waiting.

At the Washington County site, we suspect there is not a long line of businesses lining up to fill the industrial park. Washington Countys supervisors should be rightfully skeptical there will be any in the near future.

If WCC has businesses ready to commit to the park, then a deal should be considered, but there is no reason to believe that.

New Yorkers pay some of the highest taxes in the country.

This is only one small local deal, but we find it refreshing that the Washington County supervisors are drawing a line in the sand.
Daniel Saldana Paris's novel, Among Strange Victims, is a shaggy picaresque featuring devilishly clever syntax and a charming, hilarious tendency to digress. Saldana Paris, born in Mexico City and now a resident of Montreal, picks 10 essential Spanish-language books.

Lets forget, for a moment, about Garcia Marquez, Vargas Llosa, and other names that inevitably show up on lists of this kind. Ive always believed that every writerevery reader, tooshould be honest with himself in choosing his essential books, deciding what novels speak to him most intimately. Sometimes this exercise transcends personal taste, and those books find a collective resonance.

New English translations of some books from the Spanish-speaking world oblige readers to rediscover a continent. Anyone who encounters these ten titles will find one possible map for navigating the seas of literature written in Spanish. One warning: no one returns from this journey unscathed.

1. The Musical Brain and Other Stories by Cesar Aira, trans. by Chris Andrews (New Directions, 2015) Cesar Airas books are, without exception, among the most enjoyable works to come out of any language recently. Reading Aira, one experiences a twofold fascination: that of following the outrageous turns in the plot, and that of observing a strange and perfect machine in motion. There are no gratuitous descriptions here, nor are there linguistic diversions that dont reveal something fundamental about the authors richly detailed, imagined world. Airas stories pave the way for the art of the twenty-first-century narrative.

2. The Empty Book by Josefina Vicens, trans. by David Lauer (University of Texas Press, 1992) This classic of Mexican literature, whose English counterpart has been out of print for years, is in dire need of a reissue. (Of course, the translation of many other female writers from Latin America, relegated to oblivion in favor of their male peers, is also dire.) In The Empty Book, we meet Jose Garcia, a bland and predictable accountant who decides to break his petit-bourgeoisie routine by writing a book. Jose Garcia cant write the book, but he cant stop writing it either, and little by little, in an intimate and tentative tone, the details of an unheroic life come to light. An intensely modern and intelligent novel.

3. Zama by Antonio Di Benedetto, trans. by Esther Allen (NYRB, 2016) This year's release of Antonio Di Benedettos masterpiece is a literary event of great importance, and it puts an end to an unjust historical neglect. Originally published in 1956, Zama tells the story of Don Diego de Zama, a functionary of the Spanish crown in the eighteenth century. Zama has been posted to a remote town in Paraguay, but he lives longing for a transfer to the very desirable and cosmopolitan city of Buenos Aires. Hope is the central theme of the book, but its also what sets the protagonists slow decline in motion. Recounted with rhythmic prose and an impressive precision.

4. The Art of Flight by Sergio Pitol, trans. by George Henson (Deep Vellum, 2015) To call The Art of Flight autobiography, essay, or memoir is an understatement. Life, fiction, memories, and readings intertwine in this book with astonishing ease, and the result is a volume that reads like a novel. Rome, Barcelona, Moscow, Prague, Warsaw, and Chiapas are just a few of the territories explored. Sergio Pitol is one of the great Spanish-speaking authors from recent history, mentor and model for many writers from Spain and Latin America. This book is an excellent introduction to the Pitolian universe.

5. The Clouds by Juan Jose Saer, trans. by Hilary Vaughn Dobel (Open Letter, 2016) The young Doctor Real is the psychiatrist tasked with moving a group of five psychiatric patients from the city of Santa Fe to the outskirts of Buenos Aires in 1804. This pilgrimage turns into an unanticipated hell in the Argentine pampas, with lucid reflections on the treatment of insanity. In the manner of Cervantes, Saer envelops this story in several layers of fiction, taking us to present-day Paris, where a Latin American comes across the transcription of Doctor Reals story. A true tour de force for the Argentinian narrative.

6. The Youngest Doll by Rosario Ferre, trans. by the author (University of Nebraska Press, 2014) The stories of Puerto Rican Rosario Ferre are unsettling, disturbing. Each one explores language in a different way, in a tradition of the Latin American short story passed on from Horacio Quiroga, Julio Cortazar, or Amparo Davila (another vital Mexican writer awaiting an American publisher). On top of that, The Youngest Doll examines the sexism and social inequalities of Puerto Rico using language thats sumptuous but precise, splintering the cliches of magical realism by way of critical intelligence. Ferre herself translated the book into English while she was living in the United States.

7. Dublinesque by Enrique Vila-Matas, trans. by Anne McLean & Rosalind Harvey (New Directions, 2012) Vila-Matas has created a world of his own, which reappearstransformed, recoloredin the majority of his novels. References to literary history are frequent in his work, and Dublinesque is no exception. Samuel Riba has stopped doing the two things that gave his life substance and meaning: editing books and drinking alcohol. In view of this, he embarks on a trip to the city of Dublin, lured by the ghost of Joyce and by a series of coincidences. This novel is an excellent point of entry to the vast and singular world that is Vila-Matass body of work.

8. Beauty Salon by Mario Bellatin, trans. by Kurt Hollander (City Lights, 2009) Mario Bellatin is one of the most interesting writers working in Latin America right now. His writing is an offshoot of contemporary art, but also a marvel of the imagination and an inexhaustible wellspring of eccentricities. Though its difficult to choose just one book from his extensive bibliography, Beauty Salon may be his masterpiece. The owner of a defunct beauty salon receives men afflicted with a fatal disease and accompanies them on their passage toward death. Simultaneously, he develops an interest in aquarium fish. With this as his point of departure, Bellatin deploys a parable about death and beauty that wont leave a single reader unmoved.

9. Distant Star by Roberto Bolano, trans. by Chris Andrews (New Directions, 2008) I already know: The Savage Detectives or 2666. Those are the Bolano books that almost anyone would put on a list of this kind. But its the Bolano of short novels, like this one, that has always interested me most. In Distant Star, a poet and a Chilean military pilot bring poetic experimentation to the threshold of horror, putting murder at the center of their aesthetic interests. The force of this book, its ethical implications, its way of obliquely addressing history: its Bolano in his purest form, without ornament or excess.
The rain which came barely a week after Alfred Oko Vanderpuije, Mayor of Accra, announced that 45 percent of work had been done by way of dredging major drains in the city has affected businesses badly, some traders and motorists at the Kwame Nkrumah Circle told Pulse.com.gh.

Although some had set up hoping that they could tell a different story than Thursdays experience, others looked devastated as areas they set up and operate were in a mess. They will wait for a while with the hope that the sun will shine so they largely commence business.

The traders complained that the rains compounded the poor sales on usual days. Market has been slow on the day as they assume people may find it uncomfortable coming to town a day after the rains.

They could not fathom why authorities have still not found ways of preventing a recurrenceafter the June 3 calamity which befell the country.

A motorist who gave his name as Oppong lamented that the magnitude of the rains compelled them to halt business and perch elsewhere for safety. He was however not so bothered as he needed not to make sales to anyone because he owns the motorbike.

But taxi driver, Odarteys case is different as he will have to work and hope for a favourable weather so he makes up for Thursdays loss.

Meanwhile, the National Disaster Management Organisation (NADMO) has entreated all residents of Accra, especially those in low-lying and flood prone areas to move to higher ground as the rains will continue for a while longer.
According to him, the Kufour led NPP administration hardly added any megawatt of power to the national grid.

Ive said weve had challenges for instance in the power sector and this is not a secret and the challenges in the power sector were not created by the NDC. They were created by governments like the NPP who during their era hardly added any megawatt of power to Ghanas total power production capacity, he said.

Spio-Garbrah was explaining the factors contributing to the partial shutdown of the revamped Komenda Sugar Factory.

In terms of power generation, he said Ghana is ahead of most African countries.

Making a comparison with Nigeria, Spio-Garbrah said Nigeria with a population of 180 million people has 5,000 megawatts of power while Ghana with a population of 30 million people has 3,000 plus megawatts of power.

In fact, there are about five or six West African countries which when put together have less power production than Ghana, he added.

Despite the figures put out by the minister, businesses operating in Ghana complain of irregular power supply.

It became worse when government declared a power rationing exercise.

Though there appear to be a stable power supply lately, the cost of electricity is throwing nascent companies out of business.

According to a research by the Institute of Statistical, Social and Economic Research (ISSER), businesses over the last three years lost $686.4 million due to the erotic power supply.

The ISSER said the crisis lowered the annual sales of Small and Micro businesses by about 37% to 48%. These figures were arrived at following the Opportunity Cost per Kilowatt analysis by ISSER's economic division.

But President John Mahama has promised to fix Ghanas power challenges, accusing the former administrations of managing their way through the crisis.

I do not intend to manage the situation. I intend to fix it. I John Dramani Mahama will fix the energy situation, he said.

He has launched an ambitious plan to make Ghana a power hub in West Africa.
In an interview with Pulse.com.gh, the Executive Director for Gender Centre for Empowering Development, Esther Tawiah said the comments by Gifty Anti, who also doubles as a gender advocate could deepen the perception by rural women that gender activism has become an elitist movement.

Women are contesting everyday and they are losing because these rural women have this idea that these elitist people want us to vote for them to be in power, but that is not it, she added.

Akua Donkor is the founder and leader of the Ghana Freedom Party (GFP). She is a cocoa farmer by profession, and believed not to have had any formal education.

She however receives formal invitations from President John Mahama and his government to attend state functions.

She was disqualified by the Electoral Commission in 2012 when she declared her intentions to contest in the presidential race.

Many have criticized her for her sometimes unsavoury comments in public, saying she is not the best choice for the presidency.

But Ms. Tawiah believes what Akua Donkor needs is capacity building and mentoring in order to shape and empower her.

We appreciate that these rural women need capacity to be able to do active democratic government. And so give them that capacity they need. So if you feel that Akua Donkor lacks that capacity as a gender activist, what you need to do is that approach her, give her the capacity. If you [Gifty Anti] feel that she cant speak English, and it is a challenge, the University of Ghana provides adult education, have you suggested it to her before? What is the possible way of getting her to do some of the things that in this global world you think she needs to empower her, Ms. Tawiah asked.

Meanwhile, Akua Donkor has indicated that Gifty Anti undermining her political ambition shows that she is jealous of her political success over the years.
Management is thus informing individuals, institutions, organisations and companies with properties on the downstream side of the Dam to note that the opening of the spillway gates may cause massive flooding along the lower course of the Densu River and it is essential for property owners and residents in the area to take immediate precautionary measures to protect life and property, a statement from the company said.The GWCL said apart from Weija, communities such as Tetegu, Oblogo, Pambros Salt, Lower McCarthy Hill, Bojo Beach, Ada Kopey and surrounding ones will also be affected. It said that enough measures have been put in place to enable good flow of excess water. The company however stressed that it cannot guarantee the safety of people living in such areas.
Speaking on Citi FMs Citi Breakfast Show Friday, Bawumia said any time it rains and there is flood, We promise ourselves that we will fix the problem and then the next rainy season comes and it is the same problem.

I think it is a collective failure on our part as a country. These things should be solved.

The former deputy governor of the Bank of Ghana added that We should all collectively blame ourselves for the flooding because we havent prioritized some of the basic needs that have to be taken care of if we are to make progress as a country.

No human casualties have been reported yet, but reports say residents, especially those around the Kwame Nkrumah Circle, Tema and surrounding areas have lost some properties.

This comes barely a week after the Mayor of Accra, Alfred Oko Vanderpuije announced that 45 percent of work had been done by way of dredging major drains in the city.
He added many jobs have been created and the economy stabilized.

notwithstanding the challenges of a lower-middle income economy in an area of global economic volatility, we have still striven to ensure massive infrastructural development, stabilised the economy, created many jobs and are still creating more through significant flagship programmes such as the Komenda Sugar factory, the business processing outsourcing centre near the Nkrumah Circle Interchange, among many others, president Mahama said.

He made the comments at the 24th anniversary of the National Democratic Congress in Accra.

He said the investment in infrastructure and job creation is driven by the partys believe in social democracy.

President Mahama said his government has endeavored to connect to the people through transparent and accountable governance, making direct reference to his Accounting to the People Tour.

He added that his achievement has received recognition beyond the shores of Ghana.

All around us, we have witnessed the significant works we have done in education and health care and the other social sectors. This is recognised not only nationally, but globally. We are moving forward in the right direction and we are changing the lives of our people and we are transforming our country Ghana, he said.

The president hailed the founding members of the NDC for initiating the process that has elevated the party to emerge as the party that on a standardised basis has constituted the most to the development of our dear nation Ghana.
The ruling of the court came after lawyer for the Financial Intelligence Center (FIC) Arthur Chambers asked that the accounts which they had earlier secured a court order to freeze be released to the former NHIA boss.

In an interview with Accra-based Citi FM, Mr. Mensah said I am glad that there were no adverse findings against me.

According to him, the courts decision to freeze his accounts has been an extremely painful experience but of course a legitimate action.

All accounts of Sylvester Mensah were frozen when the Bureau of National Investigations (BNI) was investigating him over possible financial malpractices when he was NHIA Chief Executive.

Mr Mensah was arrested and detained at the BNI on New Year's Day (January 1) when he turned himself in at the security outfit in response to an invitation from the (BNI) Director. He was subsequently released on bail after some eleven hours in custody.

Prior to his January 1 arrest, seven fully armed BNI officials are alleged to have raided his private residence.
Tempers may rise and angry words exchanged, but the NDC must not allow its desire to stay in power compel its leaders at various levels to descend into the gutters and contribute to an atmosphere of insecurity. We have to accept criticism in good faith and recognize the fact that criticism is the best form of praise. It offers you an opportunity to assess your weakness and better appreciate how others perceive you, former president Rawlings said.

According to him, it is unfortunate the extent at which government officials issue conflicting responses to allegations made against the Mahama-led administration.

Today it is not uncommon for there to be multiple and contradictory responses from government officials to allegations against government or party. This is understandable, but also unpardonable, the former president added.

Meanwhile, the General Secretary of the party, Johnson Asiedu Nketia has indicated that the partys manifesto is ready ahead of the 2016 elections.
We think that over these 24 years, we have a lot to celebrate: we have been the longest-serving party in power, we have won more elections than any other political party in Ghana" Asiedu Nketia told a gathering at the party's headquarters in Accra, Friday.

Even though the general election is only four months away, no political party has launched its manifesto representing its policies and programmes.

NPP Campaign manager, Peter Mac Manu recently told NPP student groups in Takoradi in the Western region that the party is not in a rush to publish its manifesto."This years election is not about the NPP message but the eight-year rule of the NDC. The ruling party should tell Ghanaians what they have done to improve the peoples living conditions for the past eight years, he said
LasGiiDi who lived in the United States for a larger part of his life from the tender age of 12, has always kept in touch with his Yoruba heritage, which is very evident in his musical afro-pop style and talking drum influenced rhythms.

This could be as a result of spending his formidable childhood years growing up in Ilasa and attending Adventist High School in Ile Ife.

LasgiiDi who has been bursting local speakers in his local underground scene in Dallas, Texas got recognized by MTV and described Lasgiidi as; .

Now that he is back on home soil, LasgiiDis new song, LOGO engineered and produced by GIGGZ, takes an upbeat approach at captivating its listeners to his distinct sound and take on Afrocentric-pop buttressed with world class audio visuals.

Hes musical influences range from Fela to his friend Olamide with a work ethic stronger than no other. undefinedwas the hardest and most consistent worker in the industry in 2015.

With hits like Won Kere (Won Kere loosely samples Fatai Rolling Dollar's mega hit "Won Kere Si Number Wa") and Orekelewa Ft. Sammie David both of which have thousands of views on social media.

In addition to his consistency with the solid tracks and videos, he also performed at the prestigious 2015 AFRIMMA AWARDS, one of the biggest African Award show in the diaspora, after being the inaugural winner of the 2015 Set The Stage AFRIMMA Competition.

To Start 2016, LasGiiDi dropped a video for the previously released single 100's, which is already circulating well in the streets.

Continuing with the consistency needed to take over the industry, he released the street anthem with the video titled My Squad Ft. Bils. Not even 3 weeks after, LasGiiDi released the cypher remix of My Squad titled My Squad 2.0 Ft. Tall Paul, Kidfloh, Ebako, Mr. Renegade & Tytanium to very high acclaim.

In March, LasGiiDi dropped another track quite different from what his fans are accustomed to. On this track titled "Touch the Sky", LasGiiDi features Chyn,who is currently enjoying unprecedented success with his hit song "BIG", and Vanessa Mumba, a soulful songstress originally from Zambia but based in Atlanta.

Touch the Sky is a motivational song that inspires the audience to chase their dream. This showcased both his versatility and emotional charisma.
Welcome to the Pulse Community! We will now be sending you a daily newsletter on news, entertainment and more. Also join us across all of our other channels - we love to be connected!
The event debuting in Nigeria for the first time on Saturday, June 11th 2016, will host over 1000 guests to a series of parties in one day. The guest list is made up of the biggest names in various industries, Lagos socialites, top celebrities, esteemed clients and consumers of the brand.

Moet Party Day 2016kicks off with Moet Ice Imperial All-White Brunch party which will take place at Hard Rock Cafe Lagos from 12noon to 5pm with top Nigerian disc jockey, DJ Obi on the wheels of steel. The brunch will be followed by a private dinner for only 20 exclusive guests with Moet Vintage Champagnes. The day will round off with a Moet Nectar Night at Escape Nightclub, Lagos from 11pm to dawn.

The Moet Party Day presents an opportunity for fun lovers and socialites to celebrate and enjoy the exclusive range of Moet & Chandon champagnes around the world with the champagne readily available to guests all through the party.

All-White Brunch PartyDate: Saturday, June 11th, 2016Time: 12 noon - 5pmVenue: The Hard Rock Cafe, Water Corporation Road, Landmark Village, LagosStrictly by invitation
Welcome to the Pulse Community! We will now be sending you a daily newsletter on news, entertainment and more. Also join us across all of our other channels - we love to be connected! Welcome to the Pulse Community! We will now be sending you a daily newsletter on news, entertainment and more. Also join us across all of our other channels - we love to be connected!
The brands who are both focused on exporting the best of African styles beyond the shores of the country will show their latest collections at the fashion week set to hold between 1st to 3rd July 2016 at the Eko Hotel & Suites in Lagos.

The 2016 show will see 60 designers on the runway with five (5) Catwalk Shows and a fashion gala & awards Night. A conference with panel discussions aimed at promoting Nigeria as a production hub will open this year's event which makes the third edition of the fashion event.

Details:

Date - 1st-3rd July 2016.

Venue -The Eko Hotel & Suites

Friday 1st July 2016

Conference - 9am.Positioning Nigeria As a Production Hub  FREE ENTRY

Saturday 2nd July 2016

Exhibition - 12 noon - FREE ENTRY

1st show- 1PM  N3000 entry

2nd show- 4PM  N3000 entry

3rd show- 8PM  N3000 entry

Sunday 3rd July

1st Show  Nigerias Next Top Designer Grand Finale -1 pm - FREE ENTRY

2nd Show  AFWN Fashion Gala Night  6 pm - VIP TICKETS & VIP TABLES ONLY

Contact: Info@africafashionweeknigeria.com for purchase/registration details.

About Tasha Gillies

Tasha Gillies is a Nigerian based clothing brand that offers a fresh thoughtful perspective fashion.

Our Ideology is, It takes a common interest in order unity and the love for fashion is shared by people from every imaginable background as such Tasha Gillies refers collectively to the fashion lovers of the world.

Tasha Gillies mission is to defy convention by engaging consumers with personal stories told through the development of uniquely stylish and supremely crafted fashion.

About Somandra Stiches
The woman, Grace Ebyna Jubreel, a school teacher at the Methodist Primary School, Ibeshe, was allegedly attacked in her home in Ikorodu, Lagos State, at about 3am on Sunday, June 5, 2016, when the miscreants broke into her home and attempted to rape her but when she fought them, they decided to use a stone to smash her head, leaving her in her own pool of blood where her screams attracted the local vigilante who met her almost lifeless.

Jubreel was rushed to the Ikorodu General Hospital from where she was transferred to the Lagos State University Teaching Hospital (LASUTH), Ikeja, where she gave up the ghost 20 minutes after arrival.

According to her husband, Abimbola Jubreel who is based in Oshogbo, Osun State, it was clear the hoodlums had wanted to rape his wife but when they could not have her way, they decided to kill her.

Abimbola said he was told that the vigilantes met the baby crying, with her mother writhing in pain when they arrived, and that they also saw the stone and other weapons the criminals used to kill his wife.

Speaking on the cruel murder of his wife, Abimbola said he did not know that his familys visit to Osogbo during the last mid-term break between May 25 and 30, would be the last time he would see his wife.

She must have struggled with the hoodlums when they attempted to rape her because I saw everywhere scattered and found her underwear, torn on the floor.

I still wonder if my wife is dead already. I visit Ikorodu every two weeks to see my wife and daughter. I got the shocking news around 5:00 on Sunday from the neighbours that my wife was robbed and injured by some unknown robbers.

Before I arrived in Ikorodu on Sunday, I learnt the neighbours and vigilantes had taken her to the Ikorodu General Hospital.

When I got to our room, I saw a stone on the floor and I assume that must have been what they used to hit her because she was bleeding seriously on the head and through the mouth.

We were referred to LASUTH in Ikeja that Sunday but not long we got to the hospital after 20 minutes, she died.

Our one-year and two-month old daughter was with her mother when the incident occurred. Therefore, that must have made the little girl cold because she witnessed everything that transpired.

She was in shock all through Sunday. The girl is very smart; its just that she cannot explain anything.

I learnt they opened the net which they came in through. We have three tenants, one man and two women. Our landlord, however, makes it four but he is not always around.

He has another house he lives. But she was the only vulnerable person they attacked. Other tenants were not. It was the vigilantes that rushed to her when they heard her screams but before they got there, the culprits had fled.

I know my wife is not the kind of person that quarrels with anyone. It is from house to school and back home. My wife was an easy going person and we spend most of the time talking to each other on phone.

She was bleeding profusely and they gave her blood at the General Hospital, Ikorodu before she was taken to LASUTH. She was being attended to by the doctor before she died. The doctor tried to resuscitate her but it was futile.
According to Punch Metro, a tyre of a Toyota Hiace vehicle had busted, leading it to somersault on multiple occasions.

Seventeen people were in the vehicle when the accident happened.

After the arrival of officers from the Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC), eight of the accident victims were taken to the hospital for medical attention.

This was reported by Omotosho Lasisi, the Sapele Road Unit Commander of the FRSC, who also said four persons died from the accident.

Three persons died on the spot, while another one died on the way to the hospital. Eight survivors are in the hospital, he said.
The murder of the 75-year-old trader, Bridget Agbahime, a Christian, at the popular Kofar Wambai Market on June 2, 2016, had drawn a lot of condemnation from all and sundry and it seems the state government has fulfilled its promise of making sure the killers of the old woman are brought to book.

The old woman hailed from Mbaitoli Local Government Area of Imo State, and was hacked to death over allegations she had blasphmed against the Islam religion after she reportedly stopped an Hausa man from performing ablution infront of her her shop.

The prime suspect Dauda Ahmad, and four others identified as Abdullahi Mustapha, Zubairu Abubakar, Abdullahi Abubakar and Musa Abdullahi were arraigned before the Court on a four-count charge bordering on incitement, culpable homicide and mischief, based on sections 144, 80, 51 and 327 of the penal code.

Ahmad was accused of leading the others to attack and hack Agbahime with sticks, machetes, and other dangerous weapons to death.

Two of the suspects pleaded not guilty to the four count charges, while Abdullahi Mustapha and Zubairu Abubakar said they were not even at the scene of the incident.
According to the agency, two of the suspects were found in possession of cocaine while four others were caught with cannabis, and in total, 62.663kg of drugs comprising 60.55kg of cannabis and 2.113kg of cocaine were seized.

Three of the suspects, were on their way to China with the drugs with Ibeh Kevin Nonso, 46, swallowing 67 wraps of cocaine.

The only female among the suspected traffickers,Kenechukwu Ujunwa Uchenna, 27, was arrested on her way to Dubai with 11.7kg of cannabis wrapped in dried bitter leaf vegetables while one of them, Izukanne Ikenna, 33, was on his way to Hong Kong with 982 grammes of cocaine he had hidden inside the sole of Addidas shoes.

The NDLEA Commander at the Enugu airport, Adeofe Adeyemi, in a statement, said:

"The command has arrested six suspected drug traffickers with 62.663 kilogrammes of narcotic drugs. One of the suspects, , 46-years-old, going to China, swallowed 67 wraps of cocaine weighing 1.131kilogrammes, while , 33-years-old, going to Hong Kong hid 982 grammes of cocaine inside the sole of his shoes.

The female, 27-year-old was arrested on her way to Dubai with 11.7kilogrammes of cannabis in dried bitter leaf vegetables.

The other suspects 30-year-old , was found with 25 kilogrammes of cannabis in cartons and 43-year-old , was caught with 7.500 kilogrammes of cannabis in his bag. Both were arrested on their way to China.

26-year-old , had 16.350 kilogrammes of cannabis in his luggage, during screening of passengers to Doha.

The suspects in their statements owned up to the crime adding that they needed money to take care of basic needs like house rent, school fees and feeding," the statement said.
Punch reports that Badoo has also committed the act with two other women in the Ilemeren, Abule, Oluwoye, Ibeshe Titun communities.

Badoo enter the victims room on Sunday, June 2, 2016, when her husband had gone out. This was his most recent attack according to reports.

Obinna was hit on the head with some weapons according to reports.

Pastor Abayomi Adelakun, the Chairman of the landlords association, in the area said the suspect had tried to rape some old women in the neighbourhood.

Two weeks ago, he came to Oke Ota and attacked an 86-year-old grandma. He attempted to rape her, but when she resisted, he injured her in the nose.

The woman was rushed to a hospital. She survived the attack.

On Sunday, around 1am, I was called by a security man that Badoo had raped and brutalised Grace (Obinna), who was a teacher with a nine-month-old baby.

When we got to the scene, I could not recognise the lady again. All her teeth had been removed; she was in a pool of blood. She was rejected at two hospitals, but confirmed dead at LASUTH.

Badoo forces himself into womens rooms, rapes and brutalises them if they resist. He was doing that in neighbouring communities and has now come to Oke Ota.
According to Punch, the militants also injured three other people, causing further panic in the neighbourhood.

Reports has it that the terror group unleashed mayhem, when their search for a man named Bashorun, yielded no result.

The leader of the group ordered his followers to shoot everyone within reach as a result.

The polices account of the incident put the casualties at four people, as opposed to the communitys claim that five people were killed.

Saheed Olanure (21), Alfa Daniel (36), Lekan Nojeemu (24), and Emeka Chiasung (28), have been listed as the victims of the attack, Punch reports.

A resident in the area gave an account of what happened, stating that the attackers came in through a swamp, and also returned in the path.

They came in through a swamp and left through the same way. I was in the toilet when they came. I just heard gunshots and the sound of people running.

They entered the house beside ours. They were saying, Kill everybody, Anybody that comes outside, kill. People ran inside and shut themselves in.

They started knocking on doors. They were shouting at a man to come outside, but he refused. The next thing I heard was a gunshot and a scream. They went to more houses.

They started the operation around 9pm and finished around 9.44pm. More than five people were killed, and they didnt take any money.

We picked some corpses from the bush. We later picked one inside a house. We found the dead workers as well. Three people were injured.
The convict would eventually go to serve three years in prison according to reports.

In July 2015, Garuba was arraigned with some accomplices, before Justice Oluwatoyin Ipaye, for trying to steal N30 million from the account of a dead customer.

The ploy was however discovered by the bank management, who handed him to the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC).

On his first arraignment, Garuba was reported to have pleaded not guilty to the charge levelled against him.

He however made another plea on June 2, 2016, this time, admitting guilt to the crime.

This, according to Punch, led to a quick judgement of the case, as Justice Ipaye adjourned sentencing to Wednesday, June 8, 2016.

In a bid to get a mild sentencing, counsel to the accused, Abba Mohammed, pleaded with the judge to show mercy on Garuba, who has a wife and two children.
The suspect was arrested after several prostitutes operating in brothels mostly in the Zone 2 area of Dutsen Alhaji in the city, had reported a certain military officer who went about molesting them and collecting money from them.

It was gathered that the suspect always went to the brothels fully kitted in army camouflage and forcing the sex workers to give him money and also having sex with many of them without paying for their services.

It was gathered that the suspect and one of his accomplices had gone to one of the brothels around 12:30am on the day they were arrested, broke into the rooms of the prostitutes and forcefully extorted some undisclosed amount of money from them, beating up those who refused to part with their money.

Even those who gave them less than N1,000 were also beaten up and tied with ropes.

A police source said:

They only spared those that gave them amounts above N1,000 while those that had nothing on them were beaten up.

The suspect was however, rounded up, when a police crime detection and prevention patrol team stormed the area, while his accomplice managed to escaped.
The armys comments were contained in a statement released by Deputy Director, Army Public Relations, H.A. Gambo.

It reads:

The attention of 82 Division Nigerian Army has been drawn to insinuations of misdeed being levelled by Amnesty International against security forces during the MASSOB/IPOB violent protests in Onitsha and environs on 31 May 2016. Accordingly, it is deemed imperative for the wrong and misleading impressions with which the public is being fed to be corrected once and for all.

The synopsis of occurrence on that fateful day is that elements of MASSOB/IPOB engaged in violent protests which were featured with outright disregard for law and order.

In the scenario of anarchy that ensued, the pro-Biafran protesters who had chosen the day to mark the 50th Anniversary of Biafra perpetrated a number of unimaginable atrocities to unhinge the reign of peace, security and stability in several parts of Anambra State.

A number of persons from the settler communities that hailed from other parts of the country were selected for attack, killed and burnt. 2 personnel of the Nigeria Police were killed, several soldiers were wounded, a Nigeria Police vehicle was completely burnt down while another of the Nigerian Army was vandalized.

The strategic Niger Bridge at Onitsha was at the verge of being captured particularly with the coordinated reinforcement of the violent protesters from the Asaba end of the Bridge.

In addition, wanton destruction of lives and properties were brazenly carried out by the protesters who employed firearms, crude weapons as well as other volatile cocktails such as acid and dynamites. In consequence, law, order and security were grossly threatened across the State and beyond.

The Nigerian Army in synergy with other security agencies under its constitutional mandates for Military Aid to Civil Authority (MACA) and Military Aid to Civil Power (MACP) acted responsively in order to de-escalate the deteriorating security scenario in-situ.

Instructively, the military and other security agencies exercised maximum restraints against the odds of provocative and inexplicable violence that were employed against them by the pro-Biafran protesters.

The military and of course the other security agencies acted professionally within the extant Rules of Engagement to successful de-escalate the budding anarchy in-situ.
undefinedand give peace a chance.

Punch reports that the groups leader, General Simply aka Humble Lion, in a statement said The Bakassi Strike Force is an indigenous group made up of youths from Akwa Ibom and Cross River states, totalling 642 foot soldiers.

"You will agree with me that Akwa Ibom and Cross River states are part of the Niger Delta region, yet we have been completely sidelined from the amnesty scheme and other empowerment programmes for the youth of the area.

Yet it will interest you to note that it is in Obubra, Cross River State that the team of Niger Delta militants was hosted, when states such as Bayelsa, Delta, Rivers, Edo and Ondo refused to host the rehabilitation camp for the militants.

Again, the Federal Government took away our oil rich Bakassi from us and handed over to Cameroon. We as indigenes and habitants were not consulted before this was done, neither were there any constitutional resettlement process initiated for the displaced persons.

To make matters worse, after taking over our land, the Cameroonian forces began to harass and molest our people. They even levied us with heavy taxes which became entirely unbearable.

Therefore, when it became obvious after several petitions that the federal and state governments were not ready to protect us and even the United Nations, we invited our Ijaw brothers who were already in the arms struggle to resist the Cameroonian operatives, but unfortunately, they embraced Federal Government amnesty programme when it was offered and abandoned us.

As indigenous youths, we have no other option than rise to defend and defend ourselves from the operations and injustice from the Cameroonian forces. The Federal Government should reclaim Bakassi from Cameroon.

The International Court of Justice (ICJ) ceded the oil-rich Island of Bakassi to Cameroon on October 10, 2002.
An army spokesman said Amnesty's accusations, the latest in a series of allegations of impropriety levelled against Nigeria's military in the last year, revealed a bias that undermined its credibility.

Amnesty's report -- which it said was based on details from eyewitnesses, morgues and hospitals -- says soldiers opened fire on members of the Indigenous people of Biafra (IPOB) and their supporters in the southeastern city of Onitsha during the build up to a march in late May.

The human rights group said the killings took place during a security operation in the early hours of the morning shortly before the march when the military raided homes and a church where IPOB members slept.

It said five members of IPOB were killed, eight wounded while nine were arrested.

"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," it said.

Secessionist feeling has simmered in the southeast since the Biafra separatist rebellion tipped Nigeria into a 1967-70 civil war that killed an estimated 1 million people.

It flared up again last year after IPOB leader Nnamdi Kanu was arrested and detained on charges of criminal conspiracy and belonging to an illegal society. He remains in detention.

Amnesty said its investigation showed at least 17 people were killed and nearly 50 injured, adding that "the real number is likely to be higher".

"Information gathered by Amnesty International indicates that the deaths of supporters and members of IPOB was the consequence of excessive, and unnecessary use of force," saidAmnesty, which urged the government to investigate.

The contents of the report were rejected by army spokesman Sani Usman. "The allegations are unfounded," he said.

The report is the latest in a series of accusations levelled at the army by Amnesty.

Last year, Amnesty said more than 8,000 people died in detention during a crackdown on Boko Haram and that soldiers killed hundreds of Shi'ite Muslims in the northern city of Zaria in December.
A statement signed by his Special Assistant on Media, Mr Musa Yakubu, said that Danbatta gave the commendation in Abuja on Thursday while receiving a consortium of international investors led by UBS, South Africa.

``While other sectors of the economy is recording negative growth, the telecom industry has been recording positive growth and I think it is poised to grow even further in the subsequent quarters of the year, he explained.

I think we are happy with the level of compliance to regulatory stipulations in general.

``This is minus the MTN incident, which cast some sort of shadow in our regulatory derive to ensure sustainability and stability of the industry. I am happy we are putting that one behind us.

``This is attested to by recent statistics by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) that the industry recorded a growth of 0.5 per cent to GDP in comparison to the same period last year.

In monetary terms, this is going to translate to over N1.4 trillion, only in the first quarter of this year, he said.

According to the statement, Danbatta also disclosed that the commission would soon meet with operators over the recent auction of 2.6GHz spectrum, which saw only MTN Nigeria, bid for six out of 14 available slots.

We are doing a post mortem, and we have not yet met with the operators to find out why they did not bid, except one operator.

The intention is to be able to know their reasons and to know in what way the regulator can come in to relax some of the conditions in the process.

I am sure the commission will be disposed to looking at the reasons that prevented other operators from coming forward to bid, he added.
In his words, As far as my ministry is concerned, I think the best way to understand where we are is where we came from.

ALSO READ:

Continuing, he said, 'If you look at the budget of the country from 2007, a country that was making a minimum of $100 per barrel for almost a decade, we shouldnt be here. But the reality is that in 2007 we spent only N41 billion on roads in Nigeria. The highest we spent between 2007 and 2015 was in 2009 when we spent N195 billion on roads.

'After that the figures started declining, and the last three years are significant, today I mentioned where we are, we spent N65 billion on roads, I think Lagos state government alone spent as much if not more on roads.

'In 2014, we spent N45 billion on roads, for the whole country. And we spent N18 billion on roads in 2015. Now the fallout of meetings with our contractors, generally, is that they have not been paid for three years. But budgets have been made for the last three years,' Fashola revealed.

However, the former Lagos State Governor has disclosed that he has had a meeting with the contractors and they are willing to take his words to commence work on the Jebba-Ilorin road as well as the Lagos-Ibadan expressway.

'Our contractors will go back to site on Monday next week, they told me, for the Lagos-Ibadan expressway. They havent been paid. But that is what change is, that this government is credible and believable. If we say we will pay, we will pay,' he assured.
The minister stated this at the inaugural ``Buharimeter Town Hall Meeting, organised by the Centre for Democracy and Development (CDD).

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) recalled that the separate Ministries of Power; Works; Housing and Urban Development were merged by the present administration and Fashola was appointed to oversee it.

Fashola who was responding to questions from audience at the town hall meeting, said that the ministry was not bigger than Lagos State which he successfully governed for eight years.

Fashola said he had a capable hand as minister of state in the ministry, experienced permanent secretary and reliable members of staff.

He assured that the ministry under his watch would deliver on its mandate of provision of electricity, good roads and affordable houses.

Speaking on the score card of the ministry in the last one year, Fashola said that he adopted three stages of ``incremental, steady and uninterrupted supply in the power sector.

He said the energy mix to be adopted in realising the three would be unveiled in a weeks time at the meeting of National Council on Power.

He said the country attained 5,000 megawatts electricity generation in February before the height in attacks on gas pipelines and oil infrastructure in the Niger Delta.

The minister noted that 23 of 26 power generation plants in the country were gas powered and the challenge of assessing gas was responsible for the drop in electricity.

He said the administration was putting measures in place to resolve the problem.

Fashola said the administration had successfully stabilised the hitherto bad Jebba  Ilorin road and contractors would return to site of Lagos-Ibadan expressway in a weeks time.
The latest group is called the

The ultimate warriors announced their arrival on Wednesday June 8, 2016, and of course they had threats and demands to make.

We are also behind the recent pipeline bombing in the Niger Delta region and I can assure you we will not stop until the EPZ project and the Maritime University are totally completed and start operations, the group said via a statement released by spokesman, Sibiri Taiowoh.

We want to be the ones to be safe guarding oil pipeline in our area so as to create more jobs for our people. We would resist any attempt to give surveillance contracts of pipeline in our backyard to foreigners. We want the pipeline jobs to be given to our indigenous people. We also want 60 per cent of the oil blocs to be allocated to the Niger Deltans it added.

It goes without saying that the ultimate warriors appeared because they saw the global attention that NDA was getting and how the latter group had pushed the Nigerian government to its knees.

President Muhammadu Buhari had started by talking tough saying he would deal with the militants like he dealt with Boko Haram and would show them no mercy.

Buhari even sent in the military and citizens were prepared for a total showdown between the troops and the militants. However, after NDA destroyed a large number of oil installations and threatened Nigerias crude oil and electricity supply, the government cowered.

The militants suddenly became brothers to Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Dr Ibe Kachikwu as he begged them to give peace a chance.

My first appeal will be to my brothers who are engaged in these acts of protest is to sheath their sword and daggers and come back to the table so that we can have a conversation, Kachikwu said on Monday, June 6, while speaking to journalists on Monday in Abuja.

The answer to the issue will not be heating up the grounds. The Federal Government is committed to continue the dialogue and the president has appointed a team, he added.

Kachikwu also said that Buhari had ordered the suspension of military operations in the Niger Delta to give room for the dialogue.

The problem with the governments decision to settle for a dialogue, is that it now seems to be operating from a position of weakness. If Buhari and his people wanted a dialogue, that should have been their first approach.

However, promising a fight to the finish and then bowing to the militants demands will only encourage more militants to threaten the government, as can be seen from the emergence of the ultimate warriors.

The Nigerian government needs to develop its military and tactical strength and stop putting itself at the mercy of every rogue group that decides its in need of a payday.
The minister revealed that out of the N241,467,231,031 proposed, a total sum of N149,056,610,051 which represents 61.73 percent goes to capital expenditure.

Malam Bello revealed that the personnel cost gets N52, 371,352,360 which also represents 21.69 percent of the total expenditure.

According to him, the overhead is the least with N40, 039,268,620 out of the N241, 467,231,031 which is 16.58 percent.

While stating that 2016 budget is a sharp departure from the previous ones because of the importance his administration attaches to infrastructural development of the entire Federal Capital Territory, the minister revealed that N2,400,000,000 has been set aside for debt servicing.

A statement issued by a Chief Press Secretary, Muhammad Sule Hazat stated that the FCT Minister assured that the cleanliness of Abuja remains a top priority of his Administration.
Also charged with Adamu was his company, Solid Unit Nig. Ltd, before Justice Yakubu Dakawak of Plateau High Court 2 in Jos.

According to the prosecutor, Aliyu Bokani Usman, Adamu collected N23,431 from one Olajide Olaleye, for the supply of iron ore and zinc but disappeared thereafter.

He alleged that the action contravened section 8 (a) and punishable under section 1 (3) of the Advance Fee Fraud and other Related Offences Law of 2006.

Adamu, however, pleaded not guilty to the charge and the asked prosecutor for a trial date and urge the court to remand the accused in prison.

The defence counsel, Gyang Zio, prayed the court to grant the accused bail on personal recognition.
Kazaure made the call on Thursday in Abuja when INEC Chairman Prof. Yakubu Mahmood paid him a courtesy visit at the NYSC Headquarters.

He said that a review of allowances, insurance cover and transportation for corps members during election duty should also be considered by the commission.

Earlier, Prof. Mahmood said that INEC had paid a visit to the NYSC to present the letter of employment it promised to the ex-corps member who lost his eye sight during the 2011 general elections.

He said that the commission had fulfilled its promise to offer automatic employment to the ex-corps member, Mr Daniel Oluwatobi, in any state within the federation.

Mahmood said that Oluwatobi had been offered employment by the commission and posted to INEC office in Ogun state.

He gave the assurance that the commission would review the MoU between both organisations soon.

``In the 2011 general elections, INEC formalised its relationship with the NYSC by signing a MoU. The last time this MoU was reviewed was in 2013.

``I know that there is a need to review our terms of engagement in the area of remuneration and I assure you that at the earliest opportunity we will do so.

``We cannot conduct successful elections without the help of the NYSC because it is from the NYSC that we draw our most dedicated, committed and non partisan election duty officers.

``I know that the allowance given to corps members on election duty is not enough with the work that they do; but this is a national assignment and we are glad you have taken it as a patriotic service, Mahmood said.

He said that the greatest challenge both organisations faced during the conduct of election was security.

The chairman also called on the NYSC to assist the commission in the July 30, supplementary elections in Rivers, Kogi, Kano and Imo states.

He also requested the assistance of the NYSC in the September 10, governorship elections and any by-election that might arise.

In an interview with newsmen, Mr Daniel Oluwatobi, said he was happy and thankful that he was not forgotten after he lost his sight in the course of serving the country.
Kukah said this while briefing journalists on `Fixing Nigeria Initiative, an initiative of the Kukah Centre, on Thursday in Abuja.

``The importance of robust debates cannot be over-emphasised in a democracy, if free and fair elections mark the basic validation of democratic mandates.

``Citizens' involvement in public policy making is the oxygen for democratic governance.''

He quoted Nobel laureate Amartya Sen as stressing the importance of public discussions as a vehicle for social change and economic progress.

The bishop said that Nigerians should exercise the freedom of expression as provided for in the constitution at any given time, since the country is practicing what he called ``representative democracy''.

``We are running a representative democracy; people should be free to express themselves.

``If anybody has a problem you can report to your community as we have representatives from various communities under the system we are running.

``We are in a country where too many people have found themselves in power and we have depended too much on the political class.

``This is the only country where too many ill-equipped and unprepared people have stumbled their way into power, Kukah said.

Commenting on President Muhammadu Buhari's health, he urged all Nigerians to pray for him and other sick people nationwide, stressing that it is one of the responsibilities of all citizens of the country.

Kukah said it was worrisome that the presidents health status had been a subject of speculation, politics and fun.

``As a priest, all I can say is that I have done what I need to do; mainly to pray for my president an pray for the sick and needy.

``We do that all the time but I do not think that the health of any Nigerian should be the subject of politics or speculation.
Justice Abang said If I ordered investigation into the activities of the National Hospital regarding to Metuhs medical report many heads will roll.

I have authority over the management of the hospital because they are under my jurisdiction.

The management is not above this court and the law.

They cannot treat this court with levity; National Hospital has a duty to explain to the court what led to the transfer of Metuh from National Hospital, Abuja, to another hospital in Lagos.

In any event, I have another medical report issued by Dr Olufemi Bankole from Lagos University Teaching Hospital that Metuh is on bed rest over back pains which he claim.

The Chairman of the Presidential Advisory Committee against Corruption, Professor Itse Sagay has said that former Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) spokesman, Olisa Metuh cant escape justice by simply returning the sum of N400 million which he allegedly laundered.
The federal government has issued a note of warning to Nigerians on the use ornaments irrespective of their symbolism in order to avoid embarrassment while in other countries.The Director General, National Orientation Agency (NOA), Garba Abari said the agency was mandated by the Office of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation to raise public awareness following the unpleasant experiences of some Nigerians who travel to other countries on account of some of their ornaments which which are prohibited in other countries.
In the militant's latest tweet on Friday, June 10, 2016, the militants claims responsibility for the damage while commending the international community for halting crude oil business transactions with Nigeria.

In one of the tweets, the militants wrote, "3:am of Friday blow up the Obi Obi Brass Trunk line belonging to Agip ENI. It is Agip's Major Crude oil Line in Bayelsa State."

ALSO READ: Niger Delta Avengers blow up Chevron oil pump

The militants, who have continued to negatively impact on the production of crude oil in Nigeria, also tweeted.

"It a good as foreign refineries stop buying Nigerian oil because the Nigerian State has been robbing the Niger Delta of her Oil and Gas. We will inform the international communities when we are open for business." the twitter handle tweeted on Friday, June 10, 2016.

The incessant attacks on crude oil production sites is increasingly affecting the production of Nigerian oil production despite pleas by the Minister of State for Petroleum, Ibe Kachikwu and the Federal Government to open dialogue with the Niger Delta Avengers.
The militants commander for general duties, General Akotebe Darikoro said We shall continue to engage in dialogue if our demands are met. Our representatives for the dialogue, especially the governors and others will not betray our demands with the federal government. Any betrayal on their own part shall be viewed as betrayal of the entire region and we shall go after them immediately as they know our mode of operation in which they will not escape from us.
This was contained in a statement by the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Babachir David Lawal on Friday, June 10, 2016.

"Consequently, the Managing Director of the company has been directed to hand-over immediately to Mr Chiedu Ugbo, who has been appointed as the acting managing director of the company. All Executive Directors of the Company and the General Manager Audit are directed to hand-over immediately to the most senior officer in their respective Departments.
However, the Niger Delta Avengers (NDA) denied reports that it is negotiating with the Federal Government.

Vanguard reports that Wike, through his Special Assistant on Electronic Media, Simeon Nwakaudu, said If the oil production continues to drop, this country will be in crisis. Blowing up oil facilities also has negative effect on our environment. There is need for the dialogue to go on.

I believe in one united Nigeria and it is in our interest to have peace for development.

Wike also threatened to revoke the Certificate Of Occupancy (C of O) of Agip Oil, accusing them of causing most of the problem in the Niger Delta.

Vice-President undefinedon Tuesday, June 7, 2016, at the Presidential Villa in Abuja, to discuss the issues in the Niger Delta.

Niger Delta Activist, Chief Ayiri Emami recently urged the federal government not to undefinedcalling them a bunch of criminals.
"Bukas and Joints" is hosted by media personality Olisa Adibua, and features him traveling around Nigeria in search of the most authentic Bukas and Joints.

ALSO READ: undefined

In an upcoming episode, Adibua crashes a wedding and gets treated like a guest. He is served everything from the savory, sweet and spicy till the party ends.

According to the producers, the show is aimed at capturing the very essence of the universal language of food, kicking off with one of Nigeria's largest cities, Lagos.

ALSO READ: undefined
What better way to ease off the stress of the week than watch a good movie.

With that in mind, check out our list of movies currently showing in cinemas across Lagos, Abuja and Port Harcourt.

Starring: Yvonne Okoro, Ik Ogbonna, Nkem Owoh

Synopsis: Set in Accra, Ghana, the comedy revolves around two young lovers who are of Nigerian and Ghanaian origin. Yvonne Okoro plays the role of Ama, a London based Ghanaian lady who brings her Nigerian boyfriend, Chuks played by Blossom Chukwujekwu, home to meet her parents, resulting in all hell being let loose.

Showing:

Monday - Thursday: 3:10pm, 6:35pm

Fri day- Thursday: 1:45 pm, 4:35 pm, 6:55 pm

Friday - Sunday: 3:10PM, 4:30PM, 7:10PM

Monday - Thursday: 4:30PM, 7:10PM

Friday - Thursday: 12:00PM, 4:30PM

Starring: Chris Evans, Robert Downey Jr., Scarlett Johansson

Synopsis: Political interference in the Avengers' activities causes a rift between former allies Captain America and Iron Man.

Showing:

Fri day- Saturday: 11:20 pm

Friday - Thursday: 1:10pm

Friday - Thursday: 9:10PM

Friday - Thursday: 2:05PM, 6:45PM

Starring: Idris Elba, Richard Madden, Kelly Reilly

Synopsis: A young con artist and former CIA agent embark on an anti-terrorist mission in France.

Showing:

Friday - Thursday: 2:40 pm, 7:00 pm, 9:15 pm

Friday - Thursday: 12:10pm, 3:10pm, 5:15pm, 7:05pm, 9:15pm

Friday - Thursday: 12:30PM, 9:00PM

Friday - Thursday: 6:30PM, 8:30PM

4.

Starring: George Clooney, Julia Roberts, Jack O'Connell

Synopsis: Financial TV host Lee Gates and his producer Patty are put in an extreme situation when an irate investor takes over their studio.

Showing:

Friday - Thursday: 3:15 pm, 6:45 pm

Friday - Thursday: 3:55pm

Friday - Thursday: 1:30PM, 6:30PM, 9:00PM

Friday - Thursday: 12:40PM, 3:20PM, 5:20PM, 7:20PM, 9:20PM

Sunday: 5:20PM, 7:20PM, 9:20PM

Starring: Stan Nze, Rotimi Salami, Ijeoma Agu, Obutu Roland, Brutus Richard

Synopsis: Two brothers are on opposite paths. Victor is a recent ex-con who is trying to piece his life together while Duke is a brilliant undergraduate determined to see his mum live. Duke enlists the help of his two friends in stealing cars by decorating the cars and pretending to be married. Despite some unforeseen hiccups, their operation was pretty successful until people got greedy and violent."

Showing:

Friday - Thursday: 3:25PM

Starring: Neel Sethi, Bill Murray, Ben Kingsley

Synopsis: The man-cub Mowgli flees the jungle after a threat from the tiger Shere Khan. Guided by Bagheera the panther and the bear Baloo, Mowgli embarks on a journey of self-discovery, though he also meets creatures who don't have his best interests at heart.

Showing:

Friday - Thursday: 10:05am

Friday - Thursday: 4:15PM

Starring: Travis Fimmel, Paula Patton, Ben Foster

Synopsis: The peaceful realm of Azeroth stands on the brink of war as its civilization faces a fearsome race of invaders: orc warriors fleeing their dying home to colonize another. As a portal opens to connect the two worlds, one army faces destruction and the other faces extinction. From opposing sides, two heroes are set on a collision course that will decide the fate of their family, their people, and their home.

Showing:

Friday: 1:50PM, 9:10PM

Saturday: 1:30PM, 9:10PM

Sunday: 1:50PM, 9:10PM

Monday - Thursday: 1:50PM, 6:40PM, 9:10PM

Friday - Thursday: 5:25 pm, 10:35 pm

Fri-Thur: 12:40pm, 4:15pm, 8:45pm[2D]

Fri-Thur: 2:00pm, 6:30pm[3D]

Thursday - Friday 2:30PM, 4:50PM, 7:10PM, 9:30PM

Starring: James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence

Synopsis: With the emergence of the world's first mutant, Apocalypse, the X-Men must unite to defeat his extinction level plan.

Showing:

Fri & Sat: 8:45 pm, 11:40 pm

Sun - Thu: 8:45 pm

Friday - Thursday: 2:10pm, 5:45pm, 8:35pm

Friday - Thursday: 12:50PM, 3:30PM, 6:10PM, 8:50PM

Friday - Thursday: 6:20PM, 9:00PM

Starring: Keegan-Michael Key, Jordan Peele, Tiffany Haddish

Synopsis: Friends hatch a plot to retrieve a stolen kitten by posing as drug dealers for a street gang.

Showing:

Fri - Thursday: 1:00 pm, 4:50 pm

Friday - Thursday: 11:00am

Monday - Thursday: 2:35PM

Friday - Thursday: 12:00PM

Starring: Bimbo Akintola, Kehinde Bankole, Linda Ejiofor

Synopsis: 8 Bars and A Clef is the story of musically gifted recording artist with dyslexia and how he battles his anger issues, a troubled past, a budding relationship and competition to stay at the top of the charts.

Showing:

Daily: 3:05 pm, 7:00 pm

Friday - Thursday: 10:25am

Friday - Thursday: 10:30AM, 7:40PM

Friday - Thursday: 12:40PM

Starring: Jesse Eisenberg, Mark Ruffalo, Woody Harrelson

Synopsis: The Four Horsemen resurface and are forcibly recruited by a tech genius to pull off their most impossible heist yet.

Showing:

Friday - Thursday: Thur: 10:40am, 1:20pm, 3:40pm, 6:00pm, 6:55pm, 8:25pm

Friday: 11:20AM, 12:40PM, 4:20PM, 8:50PM

Saturday: 11:00AM, 12:40PM, 3:50PM

Sunday: 12:40PM, 4:20PM

Monday - Thursday: 11:20PM, 12:40PM, 4:20PM

Friday - Thursday: 12:00 pm, 4:40 pm, 7:20 pm

Genre: Adventure, Family, Fantasy

Starring: Mia Wasikowska, Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter

Synopsis: Alice returns to the whimsical world of Wonderland and travels back in time to save the Mad Hatter.

Showing:

Daily: 2:10 pm

Fri-Thur: 11:00am, 1:05pm

Friday - Thursday: 12:20PM

Friday - Thursday: 5:20PM

Starring:Terrence Jenkins, Cassie Ventura, Paula Patton.

Synopsis: A playboy named Charlie, convinced that all his relationships are dead, meets the beautiful and mysterious Eva. Agreeing to a casual affair, Charlie then wants a bit more from their relationship

Showing:

Friday - Thursday: 5:00pm, 8:30pm

Friday - Thursday: 2:10PM, 6:00PM

Friday - Thursday: 2:50PM

Starring: Melissa McCarthy, Kristen Bell, Peter Dinklage

Synopsis: A titan of industry is sent to prison after she's caught insider trading. When she emerges ready to rebrand herself as America's latest sweetheart, not everyone she screwed over is so quick to forgive and forget.

Showing:

Friday - Thursday: 10:50AM

Friday - Saturday: 12:30PM, 4:35PM

Starring:Peter Dinklage, Jason Sudeikis, Kate McKinnon

Synopsis: Find out why the birds are so angry. When an island populated by happy, flightless birds is visited by mysterious green piggies, it's up to three unlikely outcasts - Red, Chuck and Bomb - to figure out what the pigs are up to.

Showing:

Daily: 12:00 pm

Friday - Thursday: 11:05am

Friday - Thursday: 4:05PM

Friday - Thursday: 10:40AM, 2:35PM

Starring: Nargis Fakhri, Akshay Kumar, Jacqueline Fernandez

Synopsis: A father doesn't want his three daughters to get married. Now, it's up to three men to try to and convince the father that they're a good fit for his daughters.

Showing:

Friday - Thursday: 10:05am

Friday - Thursday: 12:40PM

Friday - Sunday: 6:40PM

Genre: Animation, Action, Adventure

Starring: Tom Sizemore, Johnny Messner, Mickey Rourke

Synopsis: A damaged homicide detective (Johnny Messner) must prevent a grieving father from unleashing a "robotic virus" that he believes will destroy the terrorist cell that murdered his son, but at an unimaginable cost.

Showing:

Friday - Thursday: 10:40AM, 2:20PM, 6:50PM

Sunday: 2:20PM, 6:50PM

Friday - Thursday: 12:10PM, 4:50PM, 9:30PM

Daily: 4:05 pm, 7:05 pm

Starring: Ginnifer Goodwin, Jason Bateman, Idris Elba

Synopsis: In a city of anthropomorphic animals, a fugitive con artist fox and a rookie bunny cop must work together to uncover a conspiracy.

Showing:

Friday - Thursday: 10:05am

Starring: Funsho Adeolu, Judith Audu, Stan Nze, Tamara Eteimo, and Seyi Hunter.

Synopsis: "Gone Grey" is a Nigerian Crime Drama film about Chief Alabamusa (Funsho Adeolu), a popular philanthropist and a man of the people who got kidnapped only to discover that money is not the motive behind his kidnap" .

Showing:
You (Saraki ) were jittery and sweating on that day. If we had wanted to take over the Senate, the PDP would have done that. We had the chance to take all the positions but because we are not greedy, we decided to allow the APC take over, Akpabio said according to Vanguard.

In the South-South, people have abandoned their homes because of activities of Niger Delta Avengers. The North is in turmoil; the South-East is boiling because of agitation. The South-West is the only peaceful area, but they still send mercenaries to other areas to fight.

I want to urge the APC to market this country very well. The way the APC is saying the country is full of criminals, investors will not come here to invest. They must change the way they talk about Nigeria. Things need to change, he added.
This was contained in a letter addressed to the National Chairman, John Odigie Oyegun and signed by the following aspirants; Prof Osermiemen Osunbor, Pius Odubu, Chris Ogiemwonyi, Charles Airhiavbere, Ken Imasuagbon, Austin Emuan, Blessing Agbomhere,Tina Agbarha, Emmanuel Arigbe-Osula and Comrade Peter Esele.

The letter read in part; "There has remained consistent harassment and intimidation of party officials and political appointees on account of their support for aspirants of their choice.

"The latest of these acts of impunity and desperation to win at all cost is the purchase and or collections of Permanent Voters Cards (PVCs) by force or inducement by agents of a particular aspirant with a view to undermining a free and fair process of nomination beginning with accreditation of delegates.

"Most of the aspirants have been denied access to delegates during campaigns by a certain notorious thug who has consistently threatened Oredo delegates against meeting with aspirants other than hiss preferred aspirant.

"In view of the incessant harassment and intimidation of delegates, the party should ensure that the right of the delegates to vote in secrecy is protected an guaranteed.

"That the National Working Committee should direct all those in possession of PVCs belonging to any delegate (s) or any person to return he PVCs to their owners forthwith or face sanction from the party.

"That the National Working Committee shoul direct the Nigeria Police and other security agencies to arrest, investigate and prosecute all those involved in the collection or purchase of PVCs in Edo state.
Speaking while hosting officials of the South African investment firm, AFRO BOIS on June 9, Babalola said his university is setting the pace in the areas of investment in businesses to make profit and create more jobs for the citizens.

He also added that his university decided to invite the team from South Africa for the purpose of finding ready market for its Teak Trees.

The legal luminary said the trees run into over one million stands among other export products grown on the institutions large expanse of farms.

The former Pro-Chancellor of the University of Lagos said diversifying to areas other than academics would make universities financially strong and less dependent on their owners.

Apart from investment in business, Babalola said ABUAD has become a model in academic excellence as it now ranks as the second best private university in Nigeria.

ALSO READ:

Babalola told the guests from the former apartheid enclave that ABUAD has invested in ventures like merchandise, hospitality, farming, fishing, bakery, laundry, food processing, fruit juice processing and general consultancy.

He added that the university is building a teaching hospital to provide quality medical training and healthcare delivery, which will soon be ready for inauguration.

Babalola said: We are not only good academically, we are also showing others how to imbibe spirit of self-sustainability.

The leader of AFRO BOIS delegation, Mike Burgess, explained that there is presently a global market for timber.

He said trees produced by ABUAD Farms have the capacity of being processed for marketing.
The Paris Criminal Court ruled on Thursday that Uber, based in San Francisco, had operated illegally for putting clients in contact with "road transport providers" for free with its low-cost UberPOP ride-sharing service.

According to a report, Uber France General Manager Thibaud Simphal and Head of Uber's European operations Pierre-Dimitri Gore-Coty were also fined 34,000 dollars and 23,000 dollars respectively.

The report said as they were found guilty of misleading business pratices and operating an illegal service.

"Uber suspended UberPOP in France in July 2015 after an organised push from taxi drivers as Uber refused to obey a 2014 order to shut down UberPop.

"As a professional license is not needed to become an Uber driver, traditional taxi services have accused UberPop of unfair competition, it noted.
They made the call at the First ladies session at the ongoing UN General Assembly High-Level Meeting on Ending AIDS, taking place in New York.

The event was organised by OAFLA in collaboration with UNAIDS, Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, and the U.S. Presidents Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief.

They said adolescent girls must assume leadership roles to ensure the development of programmes and policies that are appropriate to their needs and fully respect their sexual and reproductive health and rights.

They urged providers of health-care services to integrate service delivery and programme design to support the ability of adolescent girls and young women to make informed life choices and keep themselves healthy, including protecting themselves from HIV infection.

First Lady of Ghana, Lordina Mahama, said: ``the organisation strongly believes that in moving towards the Fast Track Targets we must ensure that no young girl or boy is left behind.

``We must address the needs of young people, especially young girls, ending gender inequality and other factors that increase their vulnerability to HIV, she said.

First Lady of Panama, Lorena de Varela, said that information allowed young people to make choices.

``I encourage us all to listen to best practice programmes so we can be catalysts and advocates for policies that really work for young women, she said.

First Lady of Benin, Mrs Claudine Talon, said in spite of the progress achieved, States must redouble their efforts in ending the AIDS scourge.

``We must offer in simple way information in relation to HIV infection, she said.

First lady of Burkina Faso, Mrs Adjoavi Kabore, said when the world is entering a new phase in the AIDS response, UN member states need to pay particular attention to women, young girls and infants.

``We need new strategies to stop violence against women and girls, reduce school drop-outs and end forced early marriage, she said.

First lady of the Congo, Antoinette Sassou-Nguesso, said: ``we have to offer communities a package of integrated approaches that include immunisation, sexual and reproductive health and rights and education.

``We need to redouble our efforts to offer antiretroviral therapy to protect the future of our countries because our young people are the future, she said.

First lady of Niger, Mrs Aissata Mahamadou, said ``it is extremely important to meet the reproductive health needs of young Africans in order to end the HIV epidemic within the framework of the Sustainable Development Goals.

Others who spoke were first ladies of Cote dIvoire, Dominique Ouattara, Haiti, Mrs Ginette Privert and Namibia, Mrs Monica Geingos.

NAN reports that the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV and AIDS (UNAIDS), says globally, AIDS-related illnesses remain the leading cause of death among women of reproductive age.

In 2015, UNAIDS said there were estimated 180, 000340, 000 new HIV infections worldwide among adolescents, aged 15 to 19 years, with adolescent girls accounting for 65% of new HIV infections among this age group.
It said that the growing number of tourists trooping into the Caribbean Island requires more quantity of beer drink to enjoy their stay on the island.

The Vice Minister, Betsy Velazquez, said the annual planned production of 33 million crates would not be sufficient due to a rise in tourism and an increase in the number of private restaurants.

A crate of beer contains 24 cans or bottles each.

Last year, 3.5 million tourists made their way to Cuba, an increase of 17 per cent from 2014.
The country's minority government announced a month ago that it had recommended the purchase of 27 of the jets manufactured by Lockheed Martin Corporation.

Defence Minister, Peter Christensen said that parties which secured 139 seats in the countrys legislature of 179 seats supported the plan.

``The Joint Strike Fighter jets will replace the current F-16s, and the number is sufficient to carry out the same tasks as the old fleet, he said.

Shortly before the announcement, the small Conservative Party said it was not part of the deal.

The traditionally pro-defence party wanted the 43 fighter jets.

The investment was estimated at 3 billion dollars.

The F-35 was chosen over the F-18 Super Hornet, made by rival U.S. manufacturer Boeing, and the Eurofighter Typhoon.
Ousainou Darboe, a lawyer, was arrested after taking part along with other senior members of the United Democratic Party (UDP) in a small protest near the capital Banjul.

The UDP said 50 people had been arrested after the protests in two round-ups, which the United Nations and the United States condemned. It says it fears that three of the detainees are dead, including senior party official Solo Sandeng.

Twenty UDP officials including Darboe are being tried for holding a protest without a permit.

Protests are rare in Gambia, a sliver of territory almost encircled by Senegal, where President Yahya Jammeh has ruled for two decades since seizing power in a bloodless coup.

Rights groups say he has been cracking down on opposition figures with an eye on December's election, where he will seek his fifth term, having scrapped term limits; Jammeh once told a journalist he could rule for "a billion years".

Lawyers for Darboe and for the other party leaders walked out of the courtroom on Thursday.

A police officer told the court on Thursday that protesters had refused to disperse and started throwing rocks, at which point the police fired tear gas at them.
Another lawyer, Evans Monari, who is no longer defending businessman Richard Alden, 52, gave the "selfies" account on Monday when the Briton was remanded in custody pending further investigations into the death of Grace Wangeci, 42.

"The selfie story is not consistent with the statement recorded by Richard Alden at the police station," a current member of the defence team, lawyer Tom Okundi, told Reuters, adding he could not explain how that version had emerged.

Lawyer Monari, who had said on Monday that Wangeci died accidentally while "taking selfies with a gun", directed enquiries to the defence team when contacted on Friday.

In his bail application, Alden said he had taken Wangeci to hospital and had called the police, citing these as reasons why he was not a flight risk, according to a copy of the document seen by Reuters.
The National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) set aside the charges against Zuma in April 2009, allowing him to run for president that same month, but the High Court this May ordered a review of that decision, terming it "irrational".

The case has reemerged in the run-up to local government elections in August that should be a stern test for the ruling African National Congress (ANC) as opposition parties gain support on the back of Zuma's perceived failures and scandals.

The NPA's decision in 2009 was based on phone intercepts presented by Zuma's legal team that suggested the timing of the charges may have been part of a political plot against Zuma.

The state prosecutor is appealing the ruling on the grounds that the law allowed him the discretion to decide when to lay charges and that the court ruling could dilute the NPA's powers.

It was not clear how long the appeal process would run.

Should the appeal fail and the charges be reinstated, it would be the latest political setback for Zuma after he was ordered by the Constitutional Court to pay back some of the 240 million rand ($16 million) in state money spent upgrading his private home.

The hundreds of corruption charges relate to a major government arms deal arranged in the late 1990s.
This is contained in a petition to the 193 Member States of the UN on Thursday.

It said after the appointment of eight male scribes, a female secretary-general was urgently needed to foster gender equality in the leadership of the UN.

The group suggested that such woman must bring a strong feminist perspective to the UN, in line with the UNs core values of human rights, equality, and justice.

``The next UN secretary-general must also be a woman who has demonstrated a capacity to address the global structures, systems and values that undermine gender equality.

``We, therefore, call for a woman secretary-general who has a demonstrable commitment to advancing a bold, comprehensive womens human rights agenda.

The group contended that a woman would make sure that the UN implemented the reforms necessary to protect its status as a genuinely democratic multilateral institution that acts in the interests of all people and all countries, and not just the most powerful.

WMG also said that a woman at the helms of affairs of the UN would take action to ensure that feminist and civil society movements were not just observers in policy making, but active and equal participants.

The petition, which started in March, has over 1,000 signatures, including the UN Women.

NAN reports that the WMG works to promote human rights based sustainable development with a focus on womens human rights, womens empowerment and gender equality.

NAN reports that five women are among 11 contesting for the position of the secretary-general.

They are Irina Bokova, Director-General of UNESCO, Helen Clark, the Administrator of the UN Development Programme (UNDP), Natalia Snegur-Gherman, former Minister of Foreign Affairs and European Integration and Deputy Prime Minister of Moldova.

Others are Susana Malcorra, Foreign minister of Argentina and Vesna Pusic, who serves as Deputy Speaker of the Croatian Parliament.

The men are Igor Luksic, former Prime Minister of Montenegro and Danilo Turk, former Slovenian Ambassador to the UN, Srgjan Kerim, former Minister of Foreign Affairs of Macedonia and Mirosluv Lajtak, Minister of Foreign and European Affairs of the Slovak Republic.

Others are Antonio Guterres, former UN High Commissioner for Refugees and Vuk Jeremic, President of the Centre for International Relations and Sustainable Development in Belgrade.

NAN reports that an election is due to be held in 2016 to select the ninth Secretary-General of the United Nations, to succeed Ban Ki-moon, whose term will conclude on Dec. 31.

The secretary-general is appointed by the General Assembly, on the recommendation of the Security Council.

The secretary-general's selection is therefore subject to the veto of any of the five permanent members of the Security Council.

They are China, France, Russia Federation, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
BEATTY  The weather for the last weekend of October may or may not be chillier than normal, but it is certain to be chili weather for Beatty Days this weekend. The annual event runs Oct. 28-3o at Cottonwood Park.
SAN FRANCISCO  Dealing a blow to gun supporters, a federal appeals court ruled Thursday that Americans do not have a constitutional right to carry concealed weapons in public.

SAN FRANCISCO  Dealing a blow to gun supporters, a federal appeals court ruled Thursday that Americans do not have a constitutional right to carry concealed weapons in public.

In a dispute that could wind up before the Supreme Court, a divided 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said local law enforcement officials can place significant restrictions on who is allowed to carry concealed guns.

By a vote of 7-4, the court upheld a California law that says applicants must cite a good cause to obtain a concealed-carry permit. Typically, people who are being stalked or threatened, celebrities who fear for their safety, and those who routinely carry large amounts of cash or other valuables are granted permits.

We hold that the Second Amendment does not preserve or protect a right of a member of the general public to carry concealed firearms in public, Circuit Judge William A. Fletcher wrote for the majority.

Its unclear exactly how or if the 9th Circuits decision will affect Nevada because getting a concealed-carry permit in the state differs significantly compared with California.

Considered a shall-issue state, those looking for a concealed firearm permit in Nevada need only meet three simple criteria: be 21 or older, dont be a felon and take a certified firearms safety course. If those requirements are met, the sheriff will issue a permit.

In 2011, the Legislature eased requirements for people to qualify for concealed weapon permits for semiautomatic handguns. Previously, a person needed to obtain a separate permit and demonstrate proficiency for each specific weapon. Under the 2011 law, a qualified applicant can obtain one permit for all semiautomatic firearms and demonstrate competency with semiautomatic weapons in general, rather than each gun individually.

The law also made information about concealed weapon permit holders confidential.

The 9th Circuits ruling overturned a 2014 decision by a three-judge panel of the same court that said applicants need only express a desire for personal safety.

Gun owners said they expect to appeal the decision to the U.S. Supreme Court and also would challenge Californias law banning residents from carrying guns openly.

In a dissent, Circuit Judge Consuelo M. Callahan said the ruling obliterates the Second Amendments right to bear a firearm in some manner in public for self-defense.

California counties limited licensing of the right to carry concealed firearms is tantamount to a total ban on the right of an ordinary citizen to carry a firearm in public for self-defense, wrote Callahan, who had been on the 2014 panel.

While states may choose between different manners of bearing arms for self-defense, the right must be accommodated, she wrote.

Three other federal appeals courts have ruled similarly in the past, upholding California-like restrictions in New York, Maryland and New Jersey. Also, another federal appeals court struck down Illinois complete ban on carrying concealed weapons.

The 9th Circuit covers nine Western states, but California and Hawaii are the only ones in which the ruling will have any practical effect. The others do not require permit applicants to cite a good cause. Anyone in those states with a clean record and no history of mental illness can get a permit.

The National Rifle Association called the ruling out of touch.

This decision will leave good people defenseless, as it completely ignores the fact that law-abiding Californians who reside in counties with hostile sheriffs will now have no means to carry a firearm outside the home for personal protection, NRA legislative chief Chris W. Cox said.
Pahrump Valley Fire and Rescue Services have implemented summer restrictions on burning weeds and brush throughout the community.

Pahrump Valley Fire and Rescue Services have implemented summer restrictions on burning weeds and brush throughout the community.

Fire Chief Scott Lewis said the burn moratorium began on the Sunday before Memorial Day and continues throughout the summer season.

We had a long-range forecast which showed us that the temperatures are going to rise drastically, he said. As we have experienced previously, we are going into our second week of triple digits. We knew that was coming and we put the moratorium in place just in time.

Lewis also said his crews have responded to numerous brush fires along with many instances of unauthorized burning, which appeared to be the cause of some of those brush fires.

We want to remind folks we are going to be monitoring this and enforcing it diligently, he said. It is a zero-tolerance policy. We dont want to see anyone get hurt or any accidental structure fires.

Additionally, Lewis said the dry conditions around the valley due to the rise in temperatures have created a tinderbox setting.

We are seeing fires that are being ignited by very little ignition sources such as people welding and other things along those lines, he said. It has become very dry and its only going to get worse over the next several weeks and months.

The dry conditions are also a big concern for state and federal agencies this year, as the U.S. Forest Service, along with the Southern Nevada District of the Bureau of Land Management have enacted their respective summer fire restrictions which began last weekend.

Forest Service Prevention Specialist Ray Johnson said the agency also has a zero-tolerance policy on unauthorized fires.

Johnson said welding, operating an acetylene torch with open flames or using explosives are strictly forbidden.

Those setting off fireworks, firing tracer-round ammunition, or operating an off-road vehicle without a spark arrestor are also in violation.

Basically it states that theres to be no wood or charcoal fires anywhere on all of the federal lands managed in Southern Nevada, although each federal agencys restrictions will be slightly different, he said.

If you are going out to the lake, it will be different than Red Rock or Mount Charleston, so people need to check accordingly.

Additionally, Johnson said the restrictions came a little late this year, compared to previous years.

The last few years, we have been going in around May 15th or 20th, but this year with all of the late spring rains, we are going in a little bit later, he said. As far as Southern Nevada as a whole, the grass crop is much greater than it has been. That is certainly a concern, especially in some of the rural communities where theres a lot of grass right now. Residents need to be really careful and they can get additional information from Pahrump Valley Fire and Rescue Services.

BLMs Zachary Ellinger is the fire mitigation and education specialist for the Southern Nevada District.

Ellinger said outdoor enthusiasts can get additional information simply by calling the respective agencies.

The important part is to just check and know what the restrictions are before you go out, he said. The difference between the Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management are not much. The penalty for breaking the law on public lands differs from agency to agency, but for the most part, we are trying to prevent the same things from happening, which is human-caused fires. Both agencies respond to every incident unified.

Ellinger also said homeowners can help firefighters by creating defensible space around residences and other structures.

People can take individual responsibility to reduce flammable materials around their homes and communities before a fire occurs, he said.

No human life is worth a home or structure, and we will not risk firefighters lives to save indefensible homes and structures.

Ellinger, meanwhile cautioned about a trending hobby among many residents of Southern Nevada  drones.

The use of unmanned aircraft such as drones or remote controlled model aircraft in a fire area, endangers the lives of pilots and firefighters, he said. Never fly unmanned aircraft over or near fires.

Both Johnson and Ellinger can be contacted for additional information at their respective offices at 702-515-5400 or 702-515-5107.

Contact reporter Selwyn Harris at sharris@pvtimes.com
With the primary election looming Tuesday, county officials are concerned about the low turnout for early voting.

With the primary election looming Tuesday, county officials are concerned about the low turnout for early voting.

Those poor turnout numbers continue as early voting comes to a close tonight at 6 p.m. at the courthouse in Pahrump.

Primary voting is Tuesday starting at 7 a.m. with polls closing at 7 p.m.

Nye County Clerk Sandra Sam Merlino said as of late Thursday morning, her office counted a total of 2,296 ballots for the two-week period.

In the 2014 primary early voting, 3,465 votes were cast. That race included the sheriffs race and a governors race.

Merlino noted the lack of local races may be the reason for the light turnout.

The county commissions district I and III races will be decided in the primary, while the winner of the District II race, all Republicans, will square off against former town board chairman Harley Kulkin, the sole Democrat.

Other than our congressional, Senate and Assembly races, we only have pretty much the three commission races and they are Republican, she said. You figure half of the population might be out voting and the other half may decide to stay home just because theres not a lot on the ballot.

Nye County had 25,522 active registered voters by the close of registration for the primary on May 24, according to the state. Republicans account for 11,897 voters, while Democrats have 7,287 registered. The remainder are independents or nonpartisan voters.

Conversely, Merlino said she expects a larger number of voters showing up at the polls for the national races in November.

We expect a huge turnout in the presidential race because we always do see that, she said. But with early voting, its unfortunate, especially since a couple of those districts will be elected in the primary or at least the highest vote-getter is the only nominee. Its unfortunate that it will be decided with a very poor turnout.

Merlino also said there were no problems with voters as they cast their respective ballots during the early voting period.

As far as the action of casting their ballots, everything is going fine and we havent had any problems. At all, she said. Its just that its really quiet. Its almost too quiet. We would much rather have it busy.

Merlino expects Tuesdays primary election will go off without a hitch, as far as she can see at present.

She did say that Pahrump Valley High School experienced a slight problem after a water line broke and flooded the gymnasium recently.

It didnt damage anything but it got flooded, she said. They since dried it out so there shouldnt be any problems. I know they are still working on it to get things ready. Other than that, everything will be the same.

The three main races for County Commission districts are on the Republican side.

District I incumbent commissioner Lorinda Wichman of Round Mountain is trying to fend off challenges from tax accountant Scott Mattox of Amargosa Valley and Pahrump resident Earl Jones.

In District III, Pahrump businessman Leo Blundo, Nye County Water District Governing Board Chairman Greg Dann and Pahrump residents Louie DeCanio and Antheny Dodd are challenging incumbent commissioner Donna Cox.

The winner of both the races will go on to the November ballot unopposed because no Democrat or third-party candidate filed for the seat.

However, the winner of the District II race will face a Democratic challenger in November. The Republican candidates on the primary ballot are Ray T. Grant, John Koenig, Amy Riches, David Lancaster and Sal Ledesma. The seat is being left open by commissioner Frank Carbone, who decided not to seek a second term.

Other races that could drive county voters to the polls on Tuesday is the Republican contest for state Assembly District 36 between challenger Tina Trenner and incumbent James Oscarson. In the Nevada Fourth Congressional District, a crowded Democratic field is on the ballot, with the winner likely to face current U.S. Rep. Cresent Hardy in November.

Election Day Polling Places and Addresses

Polls open Tuesday from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.

Amargosa Community Center

Amargosa Precinct 06

829 Amargosa Farm Road

Beatty Community Center

Beatty Precinct 01

100 A. Avenue South

Bob Ruud Community Center

Pahrump Precincts 9, 10, 16, 21, 23, 25, 26, 27, 29, 32

150 North Highway 160

Pahrump Valley High School Old Gym

Pahrump Precincts 11, 17, 19, 20, 22, 24, 28, 30, 31

2000 S. Mt. Charleston West (Corner of Mt. Charleston and Calvada)

Donald L. Simpson Community Center

Round Mountain Precinct 12, Smoky Valley Precinct 35

650 Civic Drive

Tonopah Convention Center

Tonopah Precincts 14, 15

301 W. Brougher
The defendants charged in the Halloween robbery of a Pahrump fireworks business accepted a guilty plea agreement for their respective roles in the crime.

The defendants charged in the Halloween robbery of a Pahrump fireworks business accepted a guilty plea agreement for their respective roles in the crime.

Jacob Ryan Porter will spend five to 12-1/2 years in the Nevada Department of Corrections, along with five years probation. The sentencing was handed down by Judge Kim Wanker.

He also received 196 days credit for time already served for the incident at Area 51 Fireworks.

Though details on the plea agreement were not disclosed in the case summary, Porter was charged Nov. 4 by the district attorneys office with burglary while in possession of a deadly weapon; robbery with use of a deadly weapon, two counts; conspiracy to commit robbery, first degree kidnapping with use of a deadly weapon; conspiracy to commit kidnapping; and battery causing substantial bodily harm, all felonies.

He was also ordered to pay restitution in the amount of $267 to the business, along with $2454.10 for the store clerks medical bills, as the clerk was injured after a scuffle during the robbery.

Co-defendant Cassandra Lynn Port meanwhile was sentenced for four to 10 years in the Nevada Department of Corrections with 120 days credit for time served. She was facing charges from the district attorneys office of burglary while in possession of a deadly weapon; robbery with use of a deadly weapon, two counts; conspiracy to commit robbery, first degree kidnapping with use of a deadly weapon; conspiracy to commit kidnapping, all felonies.

Ports public defender,Lisa Chamlee, argued to have her client taken out of custody and put on house arrest for 90 days to allow her to give birth to her baby at home.

That motion was denied.

Nye County Sheriffs Office had received a 911 call from an employee at the store reporting a robbery in progress, just before 9 p.m.

Responding deputies learned that a man and a woman held up the cashier at gunpoint, took the money from the stores register and eventually fled the store on foot.

Based on a clothing description of the suspects and the reported general direction in which they had fled, deputies located the man, later identified as Porter, running from the scene.

Deputies ordered Porter to stop but instead, he resisted and continued running. Porter was apprehended a short time later.

The subsequent investigation confirmed that Porter had indeed been one of the two suspects involved in the armed robbery of the business.

He was taken into custody and later booked at the Nye County Detention Center in Pahrump.

Port was arrested on a Nye County robbery warrant by Henderson Police Department on Nov. 1 in the evening during a routine traffic stop and booked into that citys jail.

During the investigation, it was determined that the suspects attempted to force the cashier to the back office portion of the store, at which point a second employee intervened and became severely injured during an altercation with the suspects.

The injured employee was treated at Desert View Hospital and released.

Pahrump Valley Times Editor Arnold M. Knightly contributed to this story.
High School Principal Jimmy Casas fired a warning shot across Bettendorf's bow.

In a cease-and-desist notification issued a year ago by his attorney, Casas accused school district finance director Maxine McEnany and two school board members of "spreading false, destructive and defamatory rumors about him."

The letter to McEnany concluded, "... our hope is that your conduct moving forward will represent your school district and its administration in a positive, responsible and ethical manner."

That hope was mutual.

McEnany had been pushing by then for more than two years for district leaders to take a closer look at the principal's conduct, suspecting a conflict of interest or worse.

"My job was threatened," McEnany said of the consequences of sharing her concerns. "They harassed me every single day.

"What I said was the truth, so it's not slander. I can't bury my head. I've got to do my job."

Much has been made of the recent re-audit of the district by the state, which focused primarily on 2013-14. The results of the inquiry referred to "certain employees" receiving hotel rewards when on school business, using a district credit card.

Big whoop, right?

But there was more to it.

Although he originally declined to answer questions about the misdirected rewards points, Casas opened up Friday afternoon. He is sick to death of talking about it, he said, having already told the story repeatedly, including to the Iowa Board of Educational Examiners.

He acknowledges that he and other administrators were told in 2012 they could not personally accept hotel rewards while traveling on district business.

At first, he complied. But the temptation was great.

"I'd tell them (at hotel checkout) that I didn't want the points," Casas said. "I'd have to argue with them."

He's not sure when, exactly, but he eventually decided to quietly break the rules. He declined the points at the hotel but later called Marriott Rewards, for example, to collect on the sly.

"Obviously, I deserved to be reprimanded," he said. "I did that. I admitted that. They (examiners) took into account I've been a good principal.

"I made a mistake. It didn't cost the district anything, because they can't accept points. It was wrong. I shouldn't have done it. I will never, ever do anything wrong again."

Although he initially denied his wrongdoing, records surfaced, and Casas came clean. Now, he'd like to put it behind him.

McEnany shared other concerns with the state auditors.

One issue centered on district spending on food and other items for out-of-town visitors that she said had no business with the district. On at least two occasions, Casas was paid to speak in the same out-of-state districts that sent employees to Bettendorf.

For example, the district paid a modest amount, $162.36, to feed visitors from Katy, Texas, in November 2014. In February 2015, Casas was paid $3,350.30 by the Katy district for "contracted services." In August 2015, he was paid another $6,336.87 by Katy, according to that district's records, which also were supplied to the auditor in Iowa.

Asked about the arrangement with Katy, Casas said Bettendorf High School frequently hosts visits by other schools as a mutual learning opportunity. Asked how it happened that he then was paid nearly $10,000 by Katy and whether the arrangement had been a form of personal networking, Casas said he already had a contract to speak in Katy before employees from the district visited Bettendorf.

The Texas speaking engagement was one of 31 speaking engagements by Casas in 2014-15. His salary and benefits with Bettendorf total $181,738.

In addition to being a presenter or keynote speaker in Texas, California, South Dakota, Georgia, Florida, Nevada and throughout the Midwest, Casas is a Drake University professor, book author, blogger, chat moderator, honorary board member for a for-profit company and is credited with being co-founder of at least two education-related organizations, EdCampIowa and C64kid.

A co-founder of the for-profit C64Kid, Joe Mazza, was paid $2,000 by Bettendorf for an early 2015 training session at the school, according to an invoice supplied for the audit.

Asked whether it is ethical to bring friends and business partners to the district as paid speakers, Casas said he is familiar with "almost everyone" who speaks in the district, adding he has a "tremendous network of colleagues." He said Mazza is not a business partner and never has been.

"He reached out to me for ideas on a business model and then asked if I would be willing to be a speaker for him," Casas wrote in an email. "I agreed. Again, I have no ownership nor is my name listed on the C64Kid LLC."

He is listed on the company website as a member of its "founding team," but Casas said his name frequently is used because of its positive recognition.

And two final matters:

First, Casas' blog, including an advertisement for his book and his "appearance schedule" are linked from the Bettendorf High School website. He said his blog is not linked, writing, "Our staff blog is though."

On Friday, he acknowledged the link, saying no one has questioned it, adding, "If they had, I would have removed it."

Lastly, I asked the principal whether he has been using the district's Wi-Fi hotspot for his personal ventures. District records show Casas used 365 gigabytes from July 2015 to this past month. In the same time period, Superintendent Theron Schutte used 39 gig.

Replied Casas: "Our school hotspot is used daily (and through the evening), including weekend events, by all administrators to provide wifi access to all events. All of us are invested in our work and are expected to be available 24/7 for our school community."

The question of whether he used the school's technology for private purposes remains unanswered, in other words.

By all unfortunate appearances, the relationship between the high school principal and the district bean counter is strained at best. McEnany says it isn't personal.

"I don't care if he makes a million dollars (as a speaker/author)," she said. "He can't do it on taxpayers' money. I want the district to be reimbursed for travel expenses when he was speaker and for all the rewards he took.

"I'm not trying to get him in trouble. I want to get it corrected."

Meanwhile, Casas said he feels like he's had a target on his back, and McEnany put it there. In that regard, he said, it has been personal.

"I believe that our director of finance pointed out only me to the auditor," he said. "Some of what she said were total lies. That's worse than what I was doing."

He said, she said.

Meanwhile, parents have been left to guess what's been going on in closed-door meetings and trying to read between the lines of a state audit that, frankly, isn't all that interesting.

You expect this sort of pettiness at a high school, but it typically comes from the students.

It's time to expel the pettiness and go back to the business of running a popular, well-regarded and successful school district.

Dismissed.
MUSCATINE, Iowa After deliberating for just over an hour Thursday afternoon, a Muscatine County jury found a former Muscatine police officer guilty of third-degree sexual abuse, a class C felony.

Tomas Tovar, 49, was found guilty of sexually assaulting a woman in a Muscatine hotel while on duty.

In the wee hours of Feb. 16, 2013, Tovar drove Shari Martin to the Clarion Hotel in Muscatine after her boyfriend, David Faust, was arrested for operating a motor vehicle while intoxicated. Faust was pulled over in a routine traffic stop.

Tovar entered Martin's hotel room, and engaged in sexual intercourse with her. Martin testified that she was intoxicated, and had only fragmented memories of the night of the incident.

Under Iowa law, a person convicted of a forcible felony is taken into custody immediately and held in jail until sentencing.

Tovar was stoic as he was handcuffed and lead out of the courtroom, but tears were shed by others in the room after the verdict was delivered.

Denise Timmins and Robert Sand, with the Area Prosecutions Division of the Iowa Attorney General's Office prosecuted the case due to a conflict of interest.

"I'm pleased and feel that justice has been served," Timmins said.

Timmins and Sand said they were grateful for the time and effort the jurors put forth, and Timmins said a guilty verdict in this case could have an effect on women who have had a similar experience.

"Shari Martin is a courageous woman who should be commended for standing up for herself. Her standing up for herself leaves it open for many others out there who may not have their voice yet," she said.

Sand presented the closing statements, and Timmins provided the rebuttal to the defense.

"His duty was to protect and serve...but the only person he served that night was himself," Timmins said.

In their statements, both Timmins and Sand referred to Tovar as predatory.

"The facts fit an experienced predatory police officer preying on a vulnerable woman," Sand said.

In closing arguments earlier Thursday, Murray Bell, a Davenport attorney representing Tovar, said that although Tovar was married when the event occurred that didn't make his sexual act with Martin a crime.

"There may be something Tom did that you don't like, that's O.K. That doesn't make him guilty," Bell said.

Timmins said Tovar used the trust in his position as a police officer invoked to commit the act.

"He used that position to violate her [Martin's] trust  to violate her," she said.

Tovar was charged in July 2013, and his last day at the Muscatine Police Department was Feb. 18, 2013. He had been a member of the department for 22 years.

Tovar's sentencing is scheduled for 9 a.m., July 26. The case was heard before District Judge Mark Lawson in Muscatine County District Court.
A Texas woman who was awarded $1.2 million after she slipped on ice outside a Bettendorf hotel and broke her ankle is facing a new trial.

The Iowa Supreme Court ruled Friday that the judge in the case issued incorrect jury instructions and sent the case back to Scott County District Court for another trial.

The state's top court, in a 23-page decision written by Justice Thomas Waterman, determined that the district court judge, Mark Smith, should not have instructed the jury on a "negligent-training theory" because there was insufficient evidence presented on that issue. The judge also improperly instructed the jury on private industry safety codes.

For both reasons, the court ruled in a 4-3 decision that Marriott International Inc. and Courtyard Management Corp. should get a new trial in the case. Chief Justice Mark Cady and Justices Edward Mansfield and Bruce Zager joined Waterman in the majority opinion. Justices Daryl Hecht, David Wiggins and Brent Appel concurred in part and dissented in part. In a 22-page dissent, Hecht wrote that he would have upheld the district court's ruling in favor of the woman.

Brenda Alcala, a software consultant who was in the Quad-Cities to help a client, slipped and injured her right ankle on an icy sidewalk in front of the Courtyard by Marriott in Bettendorf about 8 a.m. Jan. 21, 2010.

She filed a lawsuit two years later, claiming that Marriott was negligent in that it failed to properly maintain the premise and failed to warn guests of the existence of a dangerous condition, according to court documents.

During the 2014 trial, witnesses testified that Alcala shattered her right ankle in the incident and had two surgeries. Her lawyer, Mike Bush, said after the verdict that arthritis has set in her ankle and she walks with a limp. After the injury, she had to change jobs with a pay cut within her Texas firm because chronic pain kept her from traveling, Bush said at the time.

Days after the verdict, Marriott said it would appeal, and last year, the Iowa Court of Appeals reversed the district court decision. Alcala then appealed to the Iowa Supreme Court.
Col. Elmer Speights Jr., the first military commander of the Rock Island Arsenal Garrison, turned over the reins of the installation Friday to a northeast Iowan and 34-year Army veteran, Col. Kenneth J. Tauke.

Under a hot sun, Speights passed the command flag to Tauke, 51, who grew up near Worthington, Iowa, in the northeast part of the state.

"Sir, the island is Rock Island right," Speights said at the conclusion of his remarks, using a phrase for which he is known.

Dozens of soldiers, Arsenal workers and visiting dignitaries attended the ceremony, a centuries-old tradition that is repeated periodically on the installation, this time on the grounds of Quarters One, with the Mississippi River as a backdrop.

During his three-year tenure as commander, Speights, a Florida native, oversaw several changes on the installation, including a new security regime, conversion of the island's century-old coal-fired plant to natural gas boilers and a host of infrastructure investments. He also implemented a $20 million annual budget. The garrison, essentially, runs the island's operations and interacts with dozens of tenants.

More recently, Speights has handled questions about the future of the 110-year-old Rock Island Arsenal Museum. The Army is in the midst of a reorganization of its nearly five dozen museums, which has caused some concern in the community.

In a brief interview after the ceremony, Tauke said he understands the facility's place in the area's history and expressed support.

"It's still here. We want it to remain here," Tauke said, adding that friends and family members were paying it a visit while in town for the change-of-command ceremony.

"I clearly understand the museum is a great centerpiece for the community, a great centerpiece of Rock Island and is important to the heritage of this community," he said.

Tauke, who said he is a distant relation to the former Iowa congressman, Tom Tauke, joined the Army in 1982 and became an officer in 1989. He has served in a variety of command and staff positions, most recently as I Corps Provost Marshal at Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington state. He also served in Afghanistan in 2012.

Tauke said he would conduct an assessment of the island with his team there, but he noted one of the upcoming tasks will be working to build new housing on the island.

The Arsenal has received approval for federal funding to build 71 units of housing.

Speights took command of the garrison in 2013, succeeding Joel Himsl, a civilian who had been garrison manager. At the time, Army officials said the growing number of military on the island prompted the change.
"The complete independence of the courts of justice is peculiarly essential in a limited Constitution."

-- Alexander Hamilton, Federalist 78.

Somewhere, Hamilton -- West Indian, not Mexican -- is weeping over Donald Trump and his alarming, ignorant conception of the role of the judiciary.

The latest, scariest manifestation of Trump's attitude involves his now doubled-down attack on the federal judge -- Indiana-born, but Mexican for Trump's repellent purposes -- hearing the Trump University case.

U.S. District Court Judge Gonzalo Curiel "is a hater of Donald Trump, a hater," in Trump's view, "a total disgrace," because he has allowed the class-action fraud lawsuit to proceed and, most recently, had the gall to unseal documents detailing Trump University's operations.

In Trump's universe -- governed by the rule of self-interest, not the rule of law -- Curiel's actions can only be explained by his ethnicity: "Mexican, which is great," but also, Trump told The Wall Street Journal Thursday, "an absolute conflict" of interest because "I'm building a wall."

The racism infecting Trump's assessment -- in a Trump presidency, under this cynical assessment, no Hispanic judge could rule on any executive initiative -- demands notice and rejection. But Trump's comments also highlight his disturbing attitude toward the role of the courts.

Reasonable people can differ over the feasibility of judges as neutral umpires, unburdened by ideology, dispassionately deducing the correct legal answer. Still, few would disagree that this conception represents the ideal to which most judges -- liberal and conservative, Republican and Democrat, Mexican and Polish -- aspire.

This is, for Trump, unimaginable. His world is not one of guiding principles but of gut emotions. If you cross him, oppose him, criticize him, you are a nasty guy or a dummy or a loser, whether you are a reporter or governor or federal judge with lifetime tenure. He uses his megaphone to seek to intimidate you as you do your job.

For Trump, litigation is deal-making by other means. The courts exist to hear his lawsuits, bless his bankruptcies, help crush his enemies. He sues willy-nilly, to intimidate critics (defamation suits are a specialty) and gain economic advantage. A USA Today analysis found that Trump and his businesses were involved in an astonishing 3,500 legal actions in federal and state courts over the past 30 years.

Trump does not settle, or so he claims, because that would signal weakness. When he is losing, or faces the prospect of losing, that is because the legal system -- just as the Republican nominating process -- is somehow rigged against him.

"I am getting railroaded by a legal system ... and frankly, they should be ashamed," he complained of the Trump University lawsuit. Imagine -- and shudder -- a sitting president crusading like that against a court decision that failed to go his way. President Obama's in-the-justices-face criticism of the Citizens United ruling pales by comparison. Trump views judges as just another target for his bullying, like corporate executives who ship jobs overseas or the PGA tour.

For a businessman with such extensive court experience, not to mention a sister who is a federal appeals court judge, Trump demonstrates shocking ignorance. "He's been criticizing my sister for signing a certain bill," Trump said of Ted Cruz at a February debate. "You know who else signed that bill? Justice Samuel Alito ... signed that bill."

Bill, opinion, whatever. Actually, Alito didn't sign that "bill." He filed a separate concurrence on partial-birth abortion.

Ignorance is one thing, disdaining the role of the courts and indicating willingness to misuse them is quite another.

The disdain was illustrated by Trump's half-cocked, scarcely vetted list of potential Supreme Court nominees. Selecting justices is one of a president's weightiest decisions but Trump seemed to give this one less attention than what marble to use in a hotel. Meantime, Trump put these judges in the uncomfortable position of seeming to audition for the job in future rulings.

As to the misuse, listen to Trump on Thursday, about how he would proceed against Hillary Clinton if elected. "Hillary Clinton has to go to jail. She's guilty as hell," Trump said. "Five years' statute of limitations, if I win. Now, everything is going to be fair but I'm sure the attorney general will take a very good look at it."

So much for presumption of innocence, or the notion that the White House should not use prosecutorial power to go after its enemies. "He'll have a White House counsel," Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell told radio host Hugh Hewitt.

To listen to Trump is to understand: This is scant assurance.
Gov. Terry Branstad should triple-down on his controversial "read the Bible" proclamation. In fact, either a "read the Koran" or "read the Bhagavad Giti" would have a nice ring to it.

Pro-secular groups are up in arms about a proclamation Branstad issued last month, calling on Iowans to gather at courthouses in each of Iowa's 99 counties and read Bible scripture. Washington-based American Humanist Association on Wednesday ripped Branstad's ceremonial endorsement of the Bible reading initiative, questioning whether it violated the Establishment Clause of the U.S. Constitution. Branstad knowingly waded into a centuries-old quagmire, particularly by including lines stating the Bible is "God's revealed word."

That may be true for many Iowans, governor. But the sentiment certainly isn't universal, nor does it represent the consensus among a majority of the species. Branstad is pandering to faith and opinion, not fact.

The obvious constitutional questions are a matter for the courts. Dozens of U.S. presidents have issued similar edicts. And case law, which is sparse, doesn't bode well for Branstad's opponents. But in the meantime, Branstad should put inclusivity on display and issue similar proclamations for other faiths.

Branstad could flip the script and urge Iowans to read a host of influential texts. In so doing, Branstad would, in one fell swoop, neuter claims that Iowa has endorsed one religion over others and promote mutual understanding in a time when religion is the basis for so much bloodshed and hate.

Iowa's venerable governor already has taken the first step toward that end. Earlier this year, he issued a "Day of Reason" proclamation, pitched by atheists, but a sentiment that isn't exclusive to the areligious.

Few manuscripts are as seminal as the Bible. For 1,700 years, it's provided perspective to the mortal. It's created foundations for modern justice. It's set ethical and cultural standards. It compelled some of the finest thinkers of the past few centuries to reason and probe.

Yet, on the flip side, it's too often been the blunt hammer that pounded non-believers and justified human bondage. And it's the historical injustice that's plagued all organized religions at some point that gives the church-state separation its import.

Taken as a purely historical text, one can not deny the Bible's formative place social and cultural history. There's inherent value to acknowledging that spot beside the works of Socrates, Shakespeare and Darwin.

Last week, the Muscatine County Board of Supervisors approved an application from the proclamation's proponents, granting the group access to the courthouse lawn from June 30 to July 2 for a Bible reading. In essence, the county board permitted citizen access to public property. It's an appropriate move for anyone who supports free speech.

It's Branstad who faces questions about using state resources to promote a particular religious ethos. And it's Branstad who could tap this moment in the name of inclusivity. An estimated 30,000 Muslims live in Iowa. A half-billion people worldwide practice Buddhism. Christianity obviously dwarfs both traditions in the Hawkeye State.

But there's time-tested wisdom in all three doctrines. A mixing of knowledge promotes a global perspective, a particularly important aim when more and more young Islamic men believe they're socially isolated.

Some form of Branstad's proclamation has a place in society, even if a few lines within it are questionable. All citizens have rights to believe and practice what suits them. And all religions  and anti-religions  must be treated equally by the state.

Branstad can assure that happens by urging Iowans to pick up as many seminal texts as possible.
PIERRE | Parents looking for help sending their children to private school may be able to tap a state-backed scholarship program as soon as this fall under South Dakota's new school choice law, the measure's legislative sponsor said Thursday.

Going into effect next month, the plan mimics other states' programs by offering tax credits in exchange for donations to private-school scholarships. Advocates are laying the groundwork for South Dakota's program, which targets insurance companies with the tax incentive.

Lawmakers approved the plan this year over the protests of public education advocates.

Under the law, insurance companies can get an 80 percent tax credit for total contributions to a grant organization that provides the scholarships. The total amount of credits is capped at $2 million each budget year.

Supporters last month established a nonprofit called South Dakota Partners in Education to dole out scholarships as funding becomes available. Advocates have been contacting insurance companies and learning from other states that have similar programs, said retiring Republican Sen. Phyllis Heineman, the measure's legislative sponsor.

The organization aims to award at least some scholarships for the fall, said Heineman, who is also a board member of the new nonprofit. Her work is "purely a volunteer effort," and she won't see any financial gain from the unpaid position, Heineman said.

Some insurance companies have already shown interest in the program, and larger national insurers are familiar with the tax credit concept from other states, said board member Katie Mellor, president of the South Dakota Christian Schools Association.

Boosters say the tax credits target businesses that pay an insurance company tax in South Dakota because it is a stable source of revenue that shows consistent growth.

"We'd love to be able to hit our $2 million tax credit limit," Heineman said. "That would be our ultimate goal, and with that we could award many hundreds of scholarships."

Students under the South Dakota program will be eligible for the scholarships if their families the year before made up to 150 percent of the income standard used to qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, among other conditions.

Critics argue the state has an obligation to provide public education and that the measure could unconstitutionally direct public funds to religious schools. They worry it could lay the groundwork for a larger program that would siphon a significant number of students and support from public schools in the future.

"We've seen tax credits be the beginning of vouchers in other states, and it's a concern when we begin to talk about diverting revenues from our public schools," said Mary McCorkle, president of the South Dakota Education Association, a teacher's union. "Our public schools are the great equalizer, the provider of opportunity for all our students."
SAN LEANDRO, Calif. | Police in San Leandro are looking for robbers who stole a puppy at gunpoint from a 14-year-old boy.

The San Francisco Chronicle says it happened Monday night as the boy walked a 3-month-old German shepherd named Maya.

Police say two men rolled up in a car. The passenger got out and tried to snatch the dog but the boy resisted. The driver then got out with a gun.

The men took nothing but the dog and fled.
SIOUX FALLS | Temperatures in parts of South Dakota may reach triple digits Friday as part of hot weather that's expected to stretch into the weekend.

The National Weather Service says Sioux Falls hit 95 degrees Thursday, with warmer temperatures expected to start on Friday.

Meteorologist Jennifer Hacker says there are forecast highs of 97 degrees in Rapid City and 99 degrees in Pierre on Saturday.

Hacker says people should take breaks while working outside, drink water and try to stay cool.
WASHINGTON | Twenty-one states on Thursday sought to take more than $150 million in uncashed money orders from Delaware, where more than 1 million businesses take advantage of friendly incorporating laws and unclaimed financial property is a major source of state revenue.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced the states would file a lawsuit before the U.S. Supreme Court over an escalating dispute involving uncashed money orders from Dallas-based MoneyGram, which has been submitting unclaimed money to Delaware.

MoneyGram is incorporated in Delaware  just like more than half of all publicly traded companies in the U.S., and about two-thirds of the Fortune 500 companies. Delaware benefits significantly from rules that ultimately routes unclaimed property to the company's state of incorporation instead of the state of origin.

As a result, abandoned property is the third-largest source of general fund revenue for Delaware, and is expected to total more than half a billion dollars in the current fiscal year.

But other state officials contend the MoneyGram checks should be sent back to the state of purchase.

"We are committed to get this money for unclaimed MoneyGram checks reverted to the states, claiming what rightfully belongs to our taxpayers," said Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who announced the lawsuit in Washington.

Delaware state finance officials did not immediately comment.

Other state in the lawsuit are Arkansas, Alabama, Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Utah and West Virginia.

The dispute is not a new. In February, Pennsylvania sued over identical claims that Delaware was wrongly hanging onto more than $10 million in money orders that were originally purchased in Pennsylvania.

Under U.S. Supreme Court rulings, states follow a two-tier priority scheme for reporting and claiming abandoned property.

Under the primary rule, unclaimed property is reported to the state of the owner's last known address appearing on a company's records. But if the owner's address is unknown or incomplete, the unclaimed property is reported to the company's state of incorporation.
Two Rapid City men charged with being accessories to a murder-for-hire plot pleaded not guilty to the felony on Thursday.

Around 30 people filled a Pennington County courtroom when Garland Brown, 29, and Michael Frye, 25, entered their pleas to the charge of being an accessory to a crime. Frye was represented by defense lawyer Jamy Patterson and Brown by attorney John Murphy.

People in the gallery included the loved ones of Jessica Rehfeld, a 22-year-old Rapid City resident who went missing in 2015 and was found dead a year later.

Authorities say Rehfelds former boyfriend Jonathon Klinetobe, 26, hired two men to stab her to death on May 18, 2015, and initially help him bury her in the woods south of Rockerville.

About two weeks later, police say, Klinetobe returned with Brown and Frye to move her body into a deeper grave. "Klinetobe told the subjects he would give them monetary compensation for assisting him in this task," according to a document submitted by a Rapid City police detective.

Rehfelds body was found May 14 with the help of a witness who led law enforcement agents to the burial site. The men who allegedly killed Rehfeld were identified by authorities as Rapid City residents Richard Hirth, 35, and David Schneider, 24.

All the defendants are detained at the Pennington County Jail on bonds of $1 million to $2 million.

Brown and Fryes charging documents say they assisted Klinetobe, Hirth and Schneider by concealing, destroying or altering any physical evidence that might aid in the discovery, detection, apprehension, prosecution, conviction or punishment of the three men.

If convicted of the accessory charge, Frye and Brown each face up to five years in prison.
A special event will be made even a little more so in 2016 when the South Dakota High School Finals Rodeo comes to Belle Fourche on June 14-18, and for the first time will feature a Special Needs Rodeo.

The new event will pair top high school rodeo participants from around the state with special needs children in a series of rodeo activities that will provide a safe way for youngsters to feel the excitement of rodeo and riding.

The event will be sponsored by the Black Hills Roundup, a celebration held each Fourth of July holiday in Belle Fourche. The new event is the brainchild of Roundup 2016 Chairman Justin Tupper, who observed a similar event while attending the National High School Finals Rodeo in Rock Spring, Wyo.

Our kids were participating at the National High School Rodeo and I saw the event and how they paired rodeo contestants with special needs kids, and thought it would be a neat thing to bring the event back to our State Finals Rodeo, said Tupper, a rodeo aficionado and general manager of the St. Onge Livestock Auction.

Tupper pointed out that the format will match two high school students with each special needs child in attendance and will assist them as required in a number or rodeo themed activities.

We will have something there for all ages and all abilities. There will be riding events and a bucking machine we can set them up on, as well as roping activities and a petting zoo with cattle and goats and other hands-on things to do, Tupper said.

For Rhonda Fuhrer, the Black Hills Roundup committee member who is spearheading the Special Needs Rodeo arrangements, the event has an extra special significance: Fuhrers 16 year-old daughter is a special needs child.

During the last year or so weve started taking her riding more and she loves to do it, and it makes her so happy when she gets to ride," Fuhrer said. "So Im really excited about the event for her."

Fuhrer is also delighted with the response so far from the high school rodeo community, which converges on Belle Fourche each summer for the rodeo finals that attracts the top young rodeo riders from across South Dakota each year.

As of this Monday morning, she said more than 80 special needs athletes had signed up for the program.

In fact, she said, the local special committee may need additional volunteers to help with the events. The special committee for the project includes Rhonda and husband Kevin, Clay and Chas Crago, Gary and Deb Alickson of Suncatchers Therapeutic Riding and Keith Anderson.

I have a lot of the high school kids tell me how excited they are to be able to help with the event, Fuhrer said. There are a number of high school kids in Belle Fourche who are active with the special needs bowling and track and field events, and so they have some experience with this kind of event and know how rewarding it will be to participate.

In addition to the experience provided by the high school participants, every precaution is being taken to assure that the Special Needs Rodeo activities will not only be memorable but safe as well.

The horses are from a riding academy and will definitely be gentle, and we will have side-walkers and horse handlers for the kids that do not have any riding experience, Fuhrer added. Riders will be required to wear a helmet and helmets are being provided. We will have mounting ramps so regardless of physical disability anybody who wants to ride will be able to.

To sign up a child for the event, scheduled for Saturday, June 18, from 10 a.m. to noon, parents or guardians can visit the Black Hills Roundup website at blackhillsroundup.com, then click on Special Needs Rodeo, print out the application form. Completed forms can be mailed to the addresses shown on the registration form. Additional queries may be directed to Rhonda Fuhrer at 605-210-3267, or via email at kfuhrer@midco.net.

Though we are showing the entry date to be June 1, we are not going to turn anybody away. If somebody shows up the day of the event and wants to participate they will be able to do so, Fuhrer said. We are requesting applications simply so we can plan everything properly so that it will be a satisfying experience for everyone.
Rapid City Education Association leaders are telling members, based on teachers union surveys, the group will accept the Rapid City Area Schools controversial contract that will overhaul how district teachers get paid.

An 8:25 a.m. Wednesday email signed by the RCEA contract negotiations team says, Survey results indicate the desire of the membership is to forego mediation and let the district impose its Last Best Offer without challenge to the Department of Labor.

The Journal could not reach RCEA President Sue Podoll for comment Thursday.

On Thursday, school board President Jim Hansen said he had not seen the email. The RCEA email said the group would officially notify school officials today.

That would be really good news, Hansen said. We would be able to take care of the business of the schools, and we would be able to move forward.

The districts proposed 2016-2017 teacher employment contract has divided Rapid Citys educators. Many newcomers support the proposal based on the significant financial benefits they stand to gain in the early years of their employment. Veteran teachers oppose the offer, arguing the new system does not adequately recognize their years of service and higher levels of education.

The district proposes raising teachers base salary from $32,000 to $40,000, and grants incoming teachers a $2,000 yearly raise for six years until reaching a $50,000 annual salary. Any raises beyond that are subject to annual contract negotiations and will depend on how much money is available from the state. Any teachers with more than six years of experience who are at or beyond the $50,000 salary mark will receive a one-time $3,000 raise.

For years, Rapid Citys teachers counted on "step" raises based on how many years they worked in the district and how many graduate-level credits they had earned. This years contract offer ends that system.

Veteran teacher Sabrina Henriksen, who has a masters degree and more than a decade of experience, said Thursday she was disappointed with the RCEAs decision to not seek mediation.

Its the will of the group, so it has to overrule any personal feelings I have, she said. My hope is that some of those younger teachers who are getting a big bump in pay will take that seriously and become part of the (RCEA), because only with a united front can we keep moving forward.

A second-year teacher, Taryn Thomas said she thinks the RCEAs decision to accept the districts contract proposal is a good thing.

I think its going to validate the teaching profession a little more, Thomas said. Its a new beginning, a step in the right direction.

The RCEA announced on June 1 that it had rejected the districts proposal for the 2016-2017 employment contract. That same day, School Board President Jim Hansen declared that contract negotiations had come to an impasse. Podoll told the Journal the RCEA leadership would discuss over the June 4 weekend whether to pursue mediation by the South Dakota Department of Labor.

The RCEAs June 8 email is the first indication as to how that discussion went.

Hansen said once school district officials have official notice from RCEA, the school board could formally approve the contract at its June 13 meeting. The new 2016-2017 pay structure could take effect July 1.
The Harney Peak and Black Hills chapters of the National Society of Daughters of the American Revolution will honor Vietnam-era veterans from Custer County and Fall River County during a pair of observances on Flag Day, June 14.

The first event is set for 9:30 a.m., at the Custer Junior/Senior High School. Participating will be the Harney Peak and Black Hills DAR Chapters, American Legion Riders Post 71 from Hot Springs and Miss South Dakota, Autumn Simunek.

Simunek, joined by Miss South Dakota Pageant contestants and the Post 71 Riders will participate in a second ceremony honoring Fall River County Vietnam-era veterans set for 1:30 p.m. at the Michael J. Fitzmaurice State Veterans Home 1:30 p.m. in Hot Springs, hosted by Elks Lodge No. 1751.

For more information, contact Robin Fansler at rdfansler@gmail.com or 605-216-1670.
Scour the darkest recesses of the Black Hills, long one of the last, best places to hide, and youd be hard-pressed to find a man more evasive, secretive and adept at subterfuge than James A. Huff.

Huff isnt a criminal, but he was a spy.

The retired Navy captain, who spent eight years in the Marine Corps and 28 years with the VA and Naval Intelligence, will tell his story at 9 a.m. Saturday, June 11, at Ellsworth Air Force Bases South Dakota Air and Space Museum in a free event sponsored by the Black Hills Veterans Writing Group.

Now 79, Huff cut his teeth on Russian-American spying and surveillance activities spanning several continents near the end of the Soviet era, according to Brad Morgan, a retired university professor and co-founder of the writing group.

Huffs duty on aircraft carriers, submarines and P-3 Orion surveillance planes gave him a front-row seat to geopolitical intrigue that is the very stuff of Tom Clancy novels, Morgan said last week. His parallel duties in medical research and hospital administration provided perfect cover for more clandestine duties involving spying and drug interdiction.

Huff will tell of his career exploits at Saturdays talk. In addition to his own experiences, hell describe how surveillance activities and techniques have changed over the years, and how two spies jeopardized the U.S. anti-submarine warfare program.

In intelligence, you cannot as a general rule talk about any of your successes, nor can you explain away your failures, Huff said. But I want my audience to understand the Cold War isnt over. The players have changed, but the Cold War continues.

Huff joined the Marine Corps in 1968, and the two stints helped him pay for college and a post-graduate degree in bio-chemistry. About the time he finished his education, the Navy came calling, seeking experts in science, computers, math, and Slovak and Chinese languages.

I figured what the heck, Huff said from his Rapid City home last week.

The ensuing 28 years found him alternately managing VA medical centers, debriefing POWs, hunting Soviet submarines off both U.S. coasts, serving as an attache to embassies in Washington, D.C., meeting with KGB agents, staging naval exercises with two carrier groups in waters off Iceland, serving as a shadow attache to Australia for more than six years, and commanding a U.S. Naval Intelligence team during Desert Shield and Desert Storm, where he was injured and awarded the Defense Superior Service medal.

Most people dont know it, but during the Cold War, the Soviets had three ballistic submarines off the East Coast of the U.S. at all times, he said. We hunted them. That was our mission.

Over the years, Huffs duties took him to 51 countries and all but two continents.

Oh, yeah, he responded when asked if he was a spy. All attaches were nothing more than socially acceptable spies, and we all worked for the Defense Intelligence Agency.

Huffs intelligence activities led to relationships throughout the U.S. and many foreign countries. Some contacts still send him unclassified intelligence briefings. He met Secretary of State Colin Powell and had lunch with best-selling author Tom Clancy while he was writing, The Hunt for Red October.

In between clandestine operations and hunting enemy subs armed with ballistic missiles, Huff was a VA gypsy. Between 1971 and 1994, he was variously assigned to Houston, San Antonio, Dallas, Boise, Columbia, Mo., Portland, Chicago, Washington, D.C., Bay Pines, Fla., and Miles City, Mont. From 1978 to 1980, Huff served as assistant director of the Fort Meade VA Medical Center at Sturgis, which he said engendered his love of the Black Hills.

Huff retired in 1994, but he still keeps his mind in the spy game.

Its not something you just walk away from, he said. You dont really retire. I stay up with it, and I still have friends from Germany to Washington.
KYLE | Grieving over a young man missing on the Pine Ridge Reservation for more than seven months, and worn down by the ongoing search, the family of 24-year-old Alex Tank Vazquez has issued a plea for help to other tribes.

The missing man, also known as Alex Tank Gay and Alejandro Tank Vazquez, is a 5-foot-7, 200-pound Lakota tribal member. He was last seen Oct. 29 near Kyle.

We have no hope, really, of finding him alive, said Vazquezs cousin, Misty Hernandez. She says she has spent hundreds of hours organizing volunteer searches and pleading with the Oglala Sioux Tribe for assistance, and countless days scouring creek banks and coulees looking for Tank. This is now a matter of closure for the family and putting him to rest.

A month after a trio of young Pine Ridge men went missing, leading tribal officials declared a state of emergency, and searchers found vehicle tire tracks that led to an overturned car and the bodies of Juan LaMont, 24, Tevin Tyon, 21, and Tyrell Wilson, 23.

But the family of Vazquez still has no answers to the mystery of Tanks disappearance.

The case of the three men who went missing May 7, spurred extensive search efforts by more than 200 volunteers and prompted OST President John Yellow Bird Steele to offer a $50,000 reward. Searches for the Oglala Lakota men included tribal and federal personnel, all-terrain vehicles, horseback riders, aircraft and SUVs, along with hundreds of walking volunteers.

Hernandez, who previously had been highly critical of efforts by the OST, FBI and Bureau of Indian Affairs to find Vazquez, noted Wednesday that the tribe continued to offer a $25,000 reward for information leading to Vazquez. The tribe also provided $3,000 in gas vouchers and food for volunteers involved in the search, as well as a trailer volunteers have been using as a command post.

Late last week, Hernandez posted a plea on Facebook, asking prospective volunteers from other tribes to join the search for her brown-eyed, brown-haired cousin.

Attention! the post stated. Im sending word out to our surrounding tribes in hopes of getting volunteers to aid us in our search for my cousin Alex Vazquez who has been missing since Oct. 29, 2015  there is a $25,000 reward. We have minimum support from our tribe and our surrounding communities.

Hernandez said the family was seeking volunteers willing to bring horses and ATVs to help searchers to cover more ground.

We need more volunteers because each day we have only 10 to 13 and with more, we could search a larger area, she said.

A group of 15-20 volunteers was expected to arrive from North Dakota today and search through the weekend, using boats with sonar on Kyle Reservoir, Hernandez said.

In January, Bureau of Indian Affairs agents, FBI personnel and Oglala Sioux Tribe Department of Public Safety officers used search and cadaver dogs, a South Dakota Highway Patrol airplane and drones to search for Vazquez on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, according to Nedra Darling, a spokesperson for the Assistant Secretary of Indian Affairs.

Anyone with information about Vazquez is urged to call OST police at 867-3289. Anyone wishing to volunteer to take part in the ongoing search can call Hernandez at 545-6386.

Come help and support us, because we need it, Hernandez said, pausing to suppress her tears. He is a human being who needs to be found. The family needs closure, and we need the help. Please.
SPEARFISH | Author Jeannie Hudson says her greatest gratification in writing comes from learning, right along with her readers, how a book will turn out. When she starts writing, Hudson says, she never knows how the story will end.

There was a time in Hudsons life  a time of personal struggles and a decades-long, alcohol-fueled haze  that injected questions about the direction of her own story.

Many of those struggles, coupled with quests for independence and love, are woven into Hudsons recently completed Mariposa triology. It's a sweeping saga of twin English brothers who immigrate to Wyoming with a herd of their fathers prized Herefords, settle their Rancha Mariposa 14 miles from Cheyenne and help foster the golden era of High Plains cattle barons. Their herds once roamed the unfenced grasslands of Wyoming, Montana and the Dakotas.

Hudsons literary trail is littered with love triangles and intrigue, cattle rustling, villains and violations of the cowboy code, defeat and redemption, and real-life historical calamities. The disasters range from the disastrous blizzard of 1886 that led to the Great Die-Up, changing the western frontier forever and wiping out hundreds of would-be ranchers, to the four-year Johnson County War, described by one historian as the most notorious event in the history of Wyoming.

Stretching from the mansions of Cheyennes Millionaires Row to the trenches of World War I  in which Hudsons father fought  the three-book series available on Amazon retraces much of Hudsons actual family history.

I hope my readers take away an appreciation for that period of time, the 66-year-old author said last week, while sitting in the modest Spearfish home she shares with her husband, Adam. I hope they understand just what it took for people like my characters to make a life under those extreme circumstances and remain loyal to their dream, while keeping their integrity intact.

Reared on an isolated Wyoming cattle ranch 34 miles southeast of Gillette and home-schooled until the eighth grade, Hudson said she found solace in the writings of others and knew from a young age that she wanted to be an author. With no TV, she said books from the local library became her salvation.

"Books were my lifeline to the world, really, she said. They made me use my imagination, which I dont think kids use too much now.

After graduating from Gillette High School in 1967, Hudson decided to leave the pastures of her familys ranch and study journalism at Casper College. She earned a full scholarship by serving two years as the college newspaper editor. Hudson then attended the University of Wyoming at Laramie for a year and began selling stories to various magazines.

Shes been writing ever since.

Hudsons newest friend, artist Dawn Newland of Belle Fourche, illustrated the covers of all three of Hudsons Mariposa books. Newland said the two came from similar rural backgrounds, and instantly connected in meeting at the Black Hills Stock Show & Rodeo a few years back.

We became great friends. I also grew up on a ranch with no TV, and my sister, Kat Thompson, and I have been painting all our lives, Newland said. Our mother was a writer, and when we were young, we illustrated all of her books.

Newland said her first formal commission was producing eight oil paintings for the Badlands Bar in Wall. She continues to paint in a variety of mediums. Today several galleries, including one in Sundance, Wyo., carry her work.
In this Thursday, June 9, 2016, photo, three of the five convicts in the gang rape of a 51-year-old Danish tourist in 2014, are escorted by the police for a hearing at a city court, in New Delhi, India. AP

NEW DELHI, June 10: Five Indians who raped a Danish tourist when she asked them for directions in New Delhi have been sentenced to life in prison for the attack that highlighted the plague of sexual violence in the country.

Judge Ramesh Kumar announced the court's verdict Friday in the presence of all the convicts in the courtroom. They can appeal.

Police said the 51-year-old woman approached the five men, all vagabonds, to ask for directions back to her hotel near Connaught Place, a popular shopping area in the capital. They took her to a secluded spot and raped her repeatedly at knifepoint.

Violence against women in India has caused increasing alarm since the fatal gang rape of a 23-year-old Indian physiotherapy student in New Delhi in 2012.
Supreme Court (SC) of Nepal

Kathmnadu, Nepal: The Supreme Court (SC), the apex court of the country, has on Friday expressed its serious concerns over the statements by some political leaders about the issue of prioritization of pending cases for hearing.

The SC has not only objected the statements but also warned the political leaders against expressing comments against independent judiciary.

Political leaders including the Nepali Congress President Sher Bahadur Deuba had made statement criticizing the apex court for postponing hearing of a case against nomination of SC justices time and again.

The prioritization of the cases for hearing used to decide on the basis of facts and nature of the dispute and it was solely an internal management issue of the judiciary, reads the statement.
KATHMANDU: Leading an 11-member delegation, Vice-President Nanda Bahadur Pun on Friday left for Kunming of China on a week-long official visit.

He was accompained by his spouse Hastamali, personal secretary Suk Bahadur Roka, Secretary at the Office of Vice- President Rajendra Kishor Chhetri, press coordinator Manoj Gharti and Lieutenant Colonel Manoj Kumar Silwal among others.

The Vice-President will participate in the fourth China South Asia Fair, 24th China Kunming Import Export Trade Fair and also address the China South Asia Traders Forum.

This is the first official visit of Vice-President Pun since he assumed the post on October 31, 2015.

He will return home on June 16.

Meanwhile, a contingent of the Nepali Army had presented a guard of honour to the Vice-President.

DPM Thapa leaves for India

Meanwhile, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Foreign Affairs Kamal Thapa left for New Delhi, India today to attend and preside over the convocation ceremony of the South Asian University.

He is scheduled to return home on 12 June, 2016.RSS
The Federation of International Development Agencies has solemnly challenged European institutions to make clarifications on their response and actions following the revelations made by the European Anti-Fraud Office (OLAF).

In early 2015, OLAF published a damning report revealing the massive embezzlement by the Polisario of European humanitarian aid destined to the populations sequestered in Tindouf, in southwest Algeria.

The Federation of International Development Agencies sent letters to all the European institutions (Parliament, Council, Commission,) urging the European Union to take action to halt such diversions and take all necessary measures against their authors.

The Federation of International Development Agencies, a non-governmental organization for humanitarian and development aid, having a general consultative status with the UN Economic and Social Council, had been behind the request to make the OLAF report public. The report, compiled years earlier, had been shelved until 2015.

At present, the federation requires, through its lawyers in Brussels, that all light be shed on these diversions.

In its letter, the federation recalls that the European Parliament (EP) had sought clarification from the European Commission (EC) on measures taken in response to the findings of the OLAF investigations and invited the commission to reassess the EU aid and to adapt it to the real needs of the populations in Tindouf camps.

The EP also noted that the lack of registration of the population for a prolonged period is abnormal and unique in the annals of the United Nations.

The Federation regrets the absence of any clear position of the EU on this subject, and requests European authorities to make clarifications on the impact of EUs inaction to counter the continued diversion of European aid, at a time the precarious situation of the populations sequestered in Tindouf is endemic and at a time these populations do not get the European and international aid despite its volume, overestimated compared to the number of families.

The federation notes that the embezzlement phenomenon in Tindouf has become so organized and important that the actors appear to have extended their sales area to other neighboring countries, including Mali, in addition to Algeria and Mauritania. The trade has embraced illegal areas (drugs, weapons, human trafficking) threatening the security of the region, says the federation.

In order to prevent the Algerians or Sahrawis incriminated by OLAF to continue their illegal activities, the federation recommends an audit of the bodies supervising the distribution of EU aid. It also calls to bring to justice the authors of the diversions and to seize their illegally acquired assets, particularly in the European territory.
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 Seventh Circuit affirms above-guideline child porn sentence given to former Subway pitchman Jared Fogle | Main | Should I really be too troubled by a Texas life sentence (with parole eligibility in 30 years) for nine-time drunk driver? 

June 9, 2016

"The Stanford rape case demonstrates liberal hypocrisy on issues of basic fairness in the criminal justice system"

The title of this post is the subheadline of this notable new Slate commentary authored by Mark Joseph Stern run under the main headline "Justice for None." The piece highlights that we are already now at the stage of seeing some backlash to the backlash over the lenient sentence given to Brock Turner. Here are excerpts:

Brock Turner is an odious criminal who committed a heinous act and deserves to go to prison for much longer than his six-month sentence requires. His trial confirmed that both racism and sexism continue to plague Americas criminal justice system, especially where rape is involved. Yet in their rush to condemn Turners sentence, far too many liberals have abandoned what were, not so long ago, fundamental principles of progressivism. This willingness to toss due process out the window in sexual assault cases is, unfortunately, indicative of a broader inconsistency that plagues the American left.... [T]he movement to remove Persky from the bench will not, and cannot, be limited to this one case. It would set a clear precedent that liberals should feel empowered to knock judges off the bench when they really disapprove of their rulings. That is an extraordinarily dangerous mindset  one conservatives have exploited for decades. In 1986, Republicans spearheaded a successful campaign to oust three justices from the California Supreme Court over their judicial opposition to capital punishment. The overtly partisan effort politicized the court and temporarily shattered the state judiciarys independence. More recently, anti-gay activists ousted three judges from the Iowa Supreme Court over their votes affirming same-sex couples right to wed. American liberals have long looked upon these efforts as antithetical to the judiciarys responsibility to remain above politics and faithfulness to the law. Is that belief suspended when the judge issued a sexist ruling rather than a progressive one? Even worse, Persky has received anonymous threats from social justice advocates outraged by his ruling. These hecklers may believe their cause to be noble, but they are taking a page straight from Donald Trumps playbook  not a good look for activists hoping to combat everything Trump stands for. Then there is the widely lauded victim impact statement Turners victim read during the sentencing hearing. I am glad she wrote this extraordinarily powerful letter and glad so many millions have read and been moved by it. But it had absolutely no place in the courtroom. Victim impact statements were once a liberal bete noire, and rightly so, because they seriously undermine the defendants due process rights. In a criminal sentencing hearing, the judge (or jury) should consider only the facts of the case at hand in determining the defendants culpability. Victim impact statements introduce a massive amount of emotion into the proceedings, allowing the judge or jury to be swayed by emotional response rather than logical reflection. That, in turn, shifts the focus away from the defendant and toward the victim while injecting arbitrariness into the sentencing process. The defendants punishment may well hinge on how emotionally compelling the victim can make his or her statement.... Liberals blase attitude toward judicial impeachment and victim impact statements in the Turner case, then, must be viewed as part of a larger trend: the willingness among a certain faction of the American left to jettison progressive principles in a good-hearted but profoundly misguided effort to stop sexual violence. That is a noble cause, but it cannot justify unraveling the most cherished safeguards of our criminal justice system. What Brock Turner did was sickening; what he received as punishment is far less than what he deserved. But eroding due process and threatening judicial independence is not the way to bring his victim justice.

Prior related posts:

June 9, 2016 at 11:09 PM | Permalink

Comments

"his willingness to toss due process out the window in sexual assault cases is, unfortunately, indicative of a broader inconsistency that plagues the American left...."

Oh good luck. I've been preaching this manta for the last three decades. Indeed, more than a decade ago on this very blog I refereed to it as "sex offender exceptionalism." We as a society are sex mad and it has been going on since at least the Victorian era, though in the 80s it went from a slow simmer to an ferocious boil.

Fundamentally--as some posters on this blog well illustrate--it always is going to be interest before principle. He writes, "the willingness among a certain faction of the American left to jettison progressive principles in a good-hearted but profoundly misguided effort to stop sexual violence." Well, this is true if by a "certain faction" he means the vast majority.

Posted by: Daniel | Jun 10, 2016 1:12:58 PM

Although I am not sure how I view the sentence as it relates to this conviction, I think it has an overall positive result. If the guy had received 6 years, most of us would have said "good" and carried on. But that did not happen. Instead, the world has had a wide-ranging discussion, not only about the propriety of the sentence, but the crime itself. If the purpose of sentencing is, in part, preventing future crime, I would say that this sentence has accomplished that better than most.

What is our object here? To vindictively punish someone for a horrid crime or to attempt to rehabilitate him so that he can become a productive member of society? Will a longer sentence really help the victim?

If the purpose is also deterrence, a stricter sentence would probably be better. When we jail people for years for possessing small amounts of drugs, but only 6 months for rape, what does that say about how we intend to deter crime?

Posted by: Allan | Jun 10, 2016 1:45:02 PM

I am none of the above. I'm someone trying to understand the logic behind the judges decision without using my emotional connection (I'm a woman) to the victim. Is there a reason other than it would have a "severe impact" on Mr. Turner that the judge gave him such a lenient sentence? Why only six months? Can you say with complete certainty the the fact that the judge's alma mater is Stanford was the reason Turner was given such a short sentence. I'm a conservative African American woman and have be screaming some of the same things that the first poster stated in his response. I really would like to understand, so are there any readings you could recommend?

Posted by: Mariel Gray | Jun 10, 2016 1:52:52 PM

@ Mariel Gray

While I comprehend your desire to know at the end of the day the only person who truly knows why the judge did what he did is the judge himself. However, if you want some general insight into how judges sentence from a judge I strongly recommend this site:

https://wednesdaywiththedecentlyprofane.me/

It is no longer in publication but was written by a federal judge who occasionally posted about the art of judging criminals and how sometimes his judgments were very wrong, in hindsight.

Posted by: Daniel | Jun 10, 2016 7:13:36 PM

Liberals generally suck on crime. First of all, only a moron would think that a victim impact statement shouldn't be allowed. The defense gets to put on all the reasons why Johnny had a hard life . . . . and the argument that there is emotion in the statement--oh good grief--well, gee, crime is bad because it profoundly hurts people.

Violent crime often involves absolutely appalling acts--the rape of children in front of parents, the murder of parents in front of children, and all libs want to do is be nice to these people. Look at Sonia Sotomayor--that twisted judge thought that the Carr brothers ought to get hooked up, despite the law. She deserves nothing but calumny.

Posted by: federalist | Jun 11, 2016 1:27:46 PM

Our two Swedish heroes come across a couple of drunken people, a woman and a young man, lying on the ground next to a dumpster. The woman has her hands down the man's pants and he is past out. Imagine the uproar and lamentation that ensues; the feminists pedagogues, political opportunists, and wannabe Nancy Grace's on television crying, "Burn the witch, burn the witch!" Not..

Liberal morality is guided by feminist ideology. Thus perhaps, Brock Turner's principle offense is simply being male. The legal system bows to political pressure from feminists who demand that the law privilege women with a more protected and untouchable status and take far greater offense at the perceived abuse of women than men. The result is a society that demands men be punished more severely than women for the same offenses.

Our morality and legal system are sexist as are liberals and feminists. From the traditional enforcement of age of consent laws that would allow the prosecution of a 16 year old boy for having sex with his 17 year old girl friend to laws that confused drunken hookups with sexual assault, the legal system seeks to protect women by enforcing a double stand that holds that women should not be held to the same standards of accountability as men while criminalizing men and boys for behavior that is only deemed criminal when males do it.

Posted by: Martin L. Bring | Aug 6, 2016 1:56:56 PM

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An Outer Richmond man who thought he'd lined up a buyer for some unwanted laptops ended up with a worse deal than he'd hoped, after the purported buyer robbed him instead.

According to the San Francisco Police Department, the 36-year-old aspiring laptop seller had been advertising his wares on Craigslist, when he got a bite: A man in his 20s who agreed to purchase the seller's laptops.

The seller wisely arranged to meet the buyer in public on Wednesday evening, according to SFPD spokesperson Officer Grace Gatpandan, but the buyer stood him up.

The rejected seller headed back to his abode on the 600 block of 33rd Avenue (that's between Anza and Balboa Streets) at around 10:12 p.m.

That's when, police say, the supposed buyer appeared and robbed the seller of his laptops at gunpoint. The thief then fled in an unknown direction, and remained on the loose at publication time.

According to Gatpandan, it's unclear how the ruffian learned the laptop seller's address. She also reminded the Ex that any time you set up a sale on Craigslist or elsewhere, there's the possibility of a mugging like this one.

When youre selling things theres always that risk that you could be subject to [become] the victim of a crime, Gatpandan told the Ex.

Definitely do not conduct the transaction at your home" she said. Instead, Gatpandan suggested, consider meeting at the lobby of your local police station, which is "available for such purposes 24 hours a day." So, remember to head to your friendly neighborhood police station the next time you decide to sell your couch, bed, or carpet! I'm sure they'll be thrilled to host your transaction.


Real estate listing site Redfin says in a new report that despite what you've heard, San Francisco's for-sale housing market is not the hottest in the country  not by a long shot. Instead, the study, picked up by Curbed, suggests that Denver is in fact where the action is now. Seattle and Portland take second and third place, respectively.

The site created a metric that judges how likely a home is to sell within two weeks of listing. Cities with homes the likeliest to sell in that time period are considered to have the "hottest markets"  at least according to Redfin. "In [Denver, Seattle, and Portland], and in Boulder, Colorado, more than 60 percent of homes listed this year were forecast to sell within 14 days," reads the report. "By comparison, San Francisco, which is often discussed as one of the hottest housing markets in the country, had 43 percent of homes" predicted to sell within that time.

Unsurprisingly, price plays a huge role in that. "The typical home in Denver and Portland is an incredible $850,000 less than in San Francisco," the report continues. "Portland and Denver also offer a respite from Seattle, where homes typically sell for around $90,000 more than those two cities."

Basically, people can actually afford to buy in those cities. In San Francisco, not so much.

In general, this news lines up with recent signs that San Francisco's housing market has actually been slightly cooling over the last year. Although it is important to note that "cooling" does not mean getting more affordable  rather, it's still getting more expensive, just less quickly than before.

The combination of jobs, affordability and a desirable western lifestyle is a triumvirate that buyers are flocking to this year, Redfin chief economist Nela Richardson explained. Apparently, buyers are finding all three of those things in Denver.

But, hey, here in SF, two out of three ain't bad, right? Right?

Related: Bus Stop Ad Suggesting Renters Are Dumb Shockingly Doesn't Go Over Well


In yet another example of Hollywood being obsessed with Silicon Valley lately, a new film is in the works by director/screenwriter Adam McKay (The Big Short, Anchorman) telling the story of the rise and fall of Theranos founder and CEO Elizabeth Holmes. At 32, Holmes has now fully ridden the wave of youthful fame, extraordinary wealth, and total disgrace and annihilation of her net worth  just last week Forbes, which once pegged her worth at $4.5 billion, declared her current worth to be zero dollars following calls to suspend her blood-testing company's operations for two years and major questions about the accuracy of the pin-prick process Holmes championed.

As Deadline reports today, Jennifer Lawrence has signed on to play Holmes in a story that's likely to start around the time Holmes founded Theranos at age 19, in 2003.

Deadline writes, "In Lawrence, [McKay] may have found the perfect leading lady to embody Holmes, at one point the latest poster child for medical innovation and potential profitability." And we already know she can rock a black turtleneck!

And as TechCrunch puts it, "It might seem too soon for Theranos to get some Hollywood screen time, but movies have been made out of much less before."

The SF Business Times reminds us that Holmes's spiral into Valley infamy began last October, when the FDA released a report "detailing 14 problems, or 'observations,' it saw during inspections [at Theranos] conducted last August through mid-September." Since then the company has also come under investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission, as well as being served with several consumer lawsuits.

It's unclear when this "rise-and-fall cautionary tale" might start shooting, but this is sounding like a potential 2017 release.

All previous Theranos coverage on SFist.
Parking in SF is an expensive hassle  we all know this. But a new report out of UCLA picked up by Curbed suggests that the financial burden manifests in ways other than the nonstop stream of broken car windows. Specifically, the study's author claims it costs $29,000 to build a single on-street parking space in our great city.

An underground spot? Well, that will cost you $38,000. Oh, and neither of those estimates include the cost of land.

"If that surprises you, youre a little naive," the study's author, Dr. Donald Shoup, explained to Curbed. "Try digging a hole three stories deep in San Francisco and filling it with concrete and see how much it costs you."

Well, sure, but what about on-street parking? Shoup says the numbers he used to estimate that cost come from a respected consulting firm, and are widely agreed upon to be accurate.

Now, perhaps obviously, this number is an average  building a spot downtown may be one price while building a spot in the Sunset another. The larger point, however, that every single parking space costs SF not just in opportunity costs (giving up land that could be used for bike lanes, parks, housing, etc.), but in actual dollars, is one Shoup thinks is important to keep in mind.

His study, titled "Cutting the Cost of Parking Requirements," makes this point. "Like the automobile itself, parking is a good servant but a bad master," he writes. "Parking should be friendlyeasy to find, easy to use, and easy to pay forbut cities should not require or subsidize parking."

Besides, according to a report out earlier this year, there's already plenty of parking in SF  just drive on over to Noe Valley.

Related: No, Most Mission Residents Are Not OK With Median Parking On Sunday
While Mayor Lee introduced for approval the largest San Francisco budget to date  $9.6 billion  at the end of last month, more privately, city officials are making contingency plans for falling markets. Bloomberg reports that municipal officials are at work on an "economic resiliency plan" to avoid, for example, a situation like the one where, in 2010, a projected $460 million shortfall led to 1,600 job cuts and reductions in spending on crucial public services.

As Lee put it: The impacts of the last economic downturn resulted in near double-digit unemployment with thousands of residents out of work and our small businesses left struggling... We must not take for granted the vibrancy of our economy. Now is the time to plan ahead.

Todd Rufo, director of the San Francisco Office of Economic and Workforce Development, added that, "We havent forgotten what 2008 was like and thats why we want to be as prepared as we can be. In his words to Bloomberg, There are things that you need to do to prepare your house so it doesnt fall down."

Moody's analytics senior economist Dan White appears to applaud the effort, which isn't just rare among cities: It's unheard of. I havent seen many cities or counties focusing on this, especially from a stress-testing perspective, which scares me a little bit, White told Bloomberg. Cities, states and all manner of local governments should absolutely be preparing themselves for a downturn.

San Francisco's economic resiliency plan is due to be released in about eight months. So, yeah, the tech economy should be good till then, right?

Related: How Many San Franciscans Are Rooting For The Tech Economy To Tank?

Life After The Boom: What Will Happen When This Bubble Bursts
Avoid area Franklin/Geary in #SF. Fatal ax invest. Streets closed in area. MUNI being rerouted. #KPIX pic.twitter.com/YAu7CV02eS  KPIX Assignment Desk (@KPIXDesk) June 9, 2016

A driver of a city-operated paratransit bus struck and killed a pedestrian this morning at the corner of Geary Boulevard and Franklin Street. There are partial street closures in effect nearby as officers investigate the cause of the collision, and the 38 Geary line has been rerouted around the area.

According to SFPD spokesperson Officer Wilson Ng, the call came in around 10:48 a.m. this morning. The Chronicle reports that the victim is a woman in her 50s, and that she was struck moments after exiting the bus. She reportedly died at the scene.

She had just been let off, SFPD's Lieutenant Steven Ford told the paper. This is extremely unfortunate. Its very, very sad.

Today's death marks only the most recent incident in a string of vehicle-on-pedestrian crashes  including last Saturday's motorcycle crash that seriously injured a 9-year-old girl  that have left pedestrians either seriously injured or deceased.

Pedestrian fatally struck by bus in San Francisco at Geary Blvd. & Franklin St. pic.twitter.com/2KmyKqME3K  KRON 4 News (@kron4news) June 9, 2016

Pedestrian hit and killed by Paratransit bus at Franklin & Geary in SF pic.twitter.com/q0L9oQc2Jz  Evan Sernoffsky (@EvanSernoffsky) June 9, 2016

This post has been updated throughout.

Related: Parking Over Pedestrians: Commitment To Vision Zero Questioned As Traffic Deaths Spike
Oakland Police Chief Sean Whent tendered his resignation Thursday night, in the midst of a strange and sordid sex scandal allegedly involving his officers and a police dispatcher's young daughter.

News of Whent's resignation, which like that of San Francisco Police Chief Suhr less than one month ago seems to have been only partially voluntary, broke on Twitter and through the East Bay Express last night. Whent was given the opportunity to resign for "personal reasons." BART Police Deputy Chief Benson Fairow is replacing Whent as interim police chief while a national search for a permanent successor will be conducted.

"I am so proud to have served Oakland over the course of my two decade-long career," reads Whent's statement, which was issued from Mayor Schaaf and City Administrator Sabrina Landreth. "When I took this job three years ago as interim chief, I vowed to help move the department forward and make Oakland safer by forging a stronger relationship with members of this diverse community. I am proud to have done that."

Concurrent to Whent's resignation   and, as many presume, related to it  is the criminal investigation into an Oakland police officer who allegedly engaged in sexual misconduct with a police dispatchers' daughter. That investigation wrapped with no charges filed against one officer in question. According to the Chronicle, two officers resigned and two others were placed on leave during the inquiry.

"The criminal investigation involving a former Oakland police officer is closed," Oakland police spokesperson Johnna Watson said according to the Bay Area News Group writing in the East Bay Times. "The administrative investigation continues."

That investigation and scandal came to light by way of another scandal: The suicide note of a cop, Brendan OBrien, who took his own life last September per EBX coverage. His suicide followed the death of his wife, also deemed a suicide but originally investigated as a murder by homicide detectives. In O'Brien's note, he indicated the conduct between officers and the dispatcher's daughter, who is now 18. After O'Brien's death, on Facebook she seemed to claim that she had an underage relationship with an officer, a man who had died, perhaps implicating O'Brien.

There is no question that there are credibility issues with the internal-affairs investigations here, Oakland attorney John Burris told the EBX. The investigations that were taking place  although we were not privy to all of them -were significant and they raised real questions about what the chief knew and when did he know it, Burris told KQED, saying that Whent resignation nonetheless was "a complete surprise."

As Mayor Libby Schaaf put it to the Bay Area News group at the close of the criminal investigation, "In this case, the conduct that we don't tolerate is not just the sexual misconduct that has caught everyone's attention, but the lying about it and the tolerance of it."

Whent has spent almost twenty years of his life in policing, all of them in Oakland. He began his role as police chief in 2013, as interim chief. The Bay Area News Group recalls in the East Bay Times that when he was sworn in his speech remembered a childhood, spent mostly in Pleasanton, that involved staying with his grandmother in the San Antonio District and listening late at night to the Oakland police scanner. In 2003 he was award a medal of Valor for rescuing a woman involved in a "sideshow" crash from a burning Mustang.

"Chief Whent's decision to resign was a personal choice which we respect," ABC7 quotes Schaaf's news release as saying. "Under his leadership Oakland has gotten safer, experiencing a 39 percent decrease in shootings and murders since 2013, and a 46 percent year-to-date reduction in homicides. Chief Whent has also done the critical work of driving sustainable, principled policing in Oakland."

Previously: Family Sues Oakland Police Claiming Drunken Officer Tried To Break Into Their Home
A serial car burglar added another crime to his resume Thursday, when he ran over a woman who tried to stop his thieving ways.

According to the San Francisco Police Department, a man who appeared to be in his mid 20s to early 30s was breaking into cars on the 1800 block of Divisadero Street (which is between Bush and Pine Streets) at 10:05 a.m. Thursday.

One of his robbery victims, a 45-year-old woman, caught him in the act, police say. She chased the thief to his getaway car, a silver four-door sedan occupied by a woman who looked to also be aged 25-33.

The thief, now armed with a vehicle, drove it into his pursuer and ran her over. Police say that he was last seen fleeing north on Divis, then turning east onto California Street.

His victim suffered a "possible broken leg," police say, and was transported to San Francisco General Hospital for treatment of injuries police say are non-life-threatening.

The thief/hit-and-run driver, police say, remains on the loose as of Friday morning.
Fans of Iowa-brewed craft beer can still get tickets to the sixth annual Iowa Craft Brew Festival on Saturday in Des Moines' East Village.

General admission tickets for the festival on June 18 are still available, but VIP tickets are gone, according to J. Wilson of the Iowa Brewers Guild.

The festival is a fundraiser for the Iowa Brewers Guild, the trade group representing Iowa's craft breweries. It coincides with the celebration of Des Moines Beer Week.

Sioux City's Jackson Street Brewing will be pouring at the event, owner Dave Winslow said. It will be the brewery's first time participating in the festival.

Erik Martin, a home brewer who plans to open Marto Brewing Company in Sioux City, will be pouring his beers at the nearby Iowa Taproom from 1 to 5 p.m.

Since Marto Brewing is a brewery-in-planning and not yet a licensed brewery, his sampling event at the restaurant is not an official part of the festival.

This year's event will be held in the 200 block of East Third Street in Des Moines' East Village neighborhood, a change from the past four years which saw the festival held on various bridges over the Des Moines River.

The first event was held in front of the now-closed Raccoon River Brewing Company on 10th Street.

General admission tickets, which allow festival entry at 2 p.m., are available online at tikly.co/events/1256. Designated driver tickets are $5 and still available.

All tickets are being pre-sold and none will be available for sale at the festival grounds.
Of course Hamilton will cut a wide swath through Sundays Tony Awards, but it may not be enough to land a record number of wins. The Producers nabbed 12 trophies. Hamilton could come close, but it has a number of multiple nominees in several categories. Still, look for a lot of Lin-Manuel love. The show begins at 7 p.m. on CBS.
BENTON, Ky.  Pastor Richie Clendenen stepped away from the pulpit, microphone in hand. He walked the aisles of the Christian Fellowship Church, his voice rising to describe the perils believers face in 21st-century America.

"The Bible says in this life you will have troubles, you will have persecutions. And Jesus takes it a step further: You'll be hated by all nations for my name's sake," he said.

"Let me tell you," the minister said, "that time is here."

The faithful in the pews needed little convincing. Even in this deeply religious swath of western Kentucky  a state where about half the residents are evangelical  conservative Christians feel under siege.

For decades, they say, they have been steadily pushed to the sidelines of American life and have come under attack for their most deeply held beliefs, born of their reading of Scripture and their religious mandate to evangelize.

The 1960s ban on prayer in public schools is still a fresh wound. Every legal challenge to a public Nativity scene or Ten Commandments display is another marginalization. They've been "steamrolled," they say, and "misunderstood."

Religious conservatives could once count on their neighbors to at least share their view of marriage. Those days are gone. Public opinion on same-sex relationships turned against conservatives even before the U.S. Supreme Court legalized gay marriage nationwide.

Now, many evangelicals say liberals want to seal their cultural victory by silencing the church. Liberals call this paranoid. But evangelicals see evidence of the threat in every new uproar over someone asserting a right to refuse recognition of same-sex marriages  whether it be a baker, a government clerk, or the leaders of religious charities and schools.

At a time when America's divisions  right-left, urban-rural, black-white and more  spill daily into people's lives, many Christian conservatives find themselves on the other side of the divide between "we" and "them."

"There's nobody hated more in this nation than Christians," Clendenen preached on a recent Sunday. "Welcome to America's most wanted: You."

Evangelicals like those at Christian Fellowship are wrestling with their declining clout in public life.

The U.S. remains solidly religious and Christian, and evangelicals are still a formidable bloc in the Republican Party. But a series of losses in church membership and in public policy battles, along with America's changing demographics, are weakening evangelical influence, even in some of the most conservative regions of the country.

"Nobody would have guessed the pace of change. That's why so many people are yelling we have to take our country back," said Ed Stetzer, executive director of Lifeway Research, an evangelical consulting firm in Nashville, Tennessee.

The Protestant majority that dominated American culture through U.S. history has dipped below 50 percent.

Liberal-leaning Protestant groups started shrinking earlier, but some evangelical churches are now in decline. The conservative Southern Baptist Convention lost 200,000 from its ranks in 2014 alone, dropping to 15.5 million, its smallest number in more than two decades.

At the same time, the Bible Belt, as a cultural force, is collapsing, said the Rev. Russell Moore, head of the Southern Baptist public policy agency.

Nearly a quarter of Americans say they no longer affiliate with a faith tradition. It's the highest share ever recorded in surveys, indicating the stigma for not being religious has eased  even in heavily evangelical areas.

Americans who say they have no ties to organized religion now make up about 23 percent of the population, just behind evangelicals, who comprise about 25 percent, according to the Pew Research Center.

"People don't have to be culturally identified with evangelical Christianity in order to be seen as good people, good neighbors or good Americans," Moore said.

Politically, old guard religious right organizations such as the Moral Majority and the Christian Coalition are greatly diminished or gone, and no broadly unifying leader or organization has replaced them.

In this year's presidential race, the social policy issues championed by Christian conservatives are not central, even amid the furor over bathroom access for transgender people.

White evangelical voters remain very influential in early primaries, and they turn out at high rates in general elections. But they can't match the growth rate of groups that tend to support Democrats  Latinos, younger people and Americans with no religious affiliation.

No issue has more starkly illuminated conservative Christians' waning influence than the struggle over same-sex marriage.

Evangelicals were "all in" with their opposition to gay rights starting back with the Moral Majority in the 1980s, said Robert Jones, author of "The End of White Christian America."

In the 2004 election, Americans appeared to be on the same page, approving bans on same-sex marriage in all 11 states where the measures were on the ballot. But by 2011, more than five in 10 Americans supported gay marriage. And now the business wing of the Republican Party is deserting social conservatives on the issue, largely backing anti-discrimination policies.

Younger Americans, including younger evangelicals, are especially accepting of same-sex relationships, which means evangelicals "have lost a generation on this issue," Jones said.

"This issue is so prominent and so symbolic," said Jones, chief executive of Public Religion Research Institute, which specializes in surveys about religion and public life.

"It was such a decisive loss, not only in the actual courts, the legal courts, but also in the court of public opinion." Clendenen saw "a lot of fear, a lot of anger" in his church after the Supreme Court ruling.

Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump uses rhetoric that has resonance for Christian conservatives who fear their teachings on marriage will soon be outlawed as hate speech.

"We're going to protect Christianity and I can say that," Trump has said. "I don't have to be politically correct."

If culture wars once felt remote amid the soybean and tobacco farms here, change is now obvious to Clendenen's congregants.

In Rowan County, on the other side of Kentucky, clerk Kim Davis spent five days in jail last year for refusing on religious grounds to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. In New Mexico and Oregon, a photographer and a baker were fined under nondiscrimination laws after refusing work for same-sex ceremonies.

The problem, many religious conservatives say, is that government is growing more coercive in many areas bearing on their beliefs.

Some faith-based nonprofits with government contracts have shuttered adoption programs because of new rules in some states that say agencies with taxpayer funding can't refuse placements with same-sex couples.

And religious leaders worry that Christian schools and colleges will lose accreditation or tax-exempt status over their codes of conduct barring same-sex relationships.

How to navigate this new reality?

Some conservative Christians are determined to even more fiercely wage the culture wars, while others plan to withdraw as much as possible into their own communities.

There is, however, a segment that advocates confidently upholding their beliefs, but doing so in a gentler way that rejects the aggressive tone of the old religious right and takes up other issues, such as ending human trafficking, that can cross ideological lines.

Clendenen is cut from this mold. Now 38, he came of age when the religious right was at its apex, and he concluded any mix of partisan politics with Christianity was toxic for the church. He said evangelicals are partly responsible for the backlash against them because of the hateful language some used in the marriage debates. "I don't see the LGBT community as my enemy," he said.

Still, he uses the word persecution to describe what Christians are facing in the U.S., even though he feels strange doing so.

Preaching, Clendenen urged congregants to hold fast to their positions in a country that has grown hostile to them.

"Don't give up," he said. "Don't let your light go out."
Mosquitoes have always been an annoying part of summer, but suddenly they seem to loom larger and buzz louder.

With the world facing its latest health threat from the mosquito-borne Zika virus, you might be tempted to cancel your summer trip to Mexico or points south, including Brazil  even if you were lucky enough to snag tickets to the Summer Olympics.

Or, in the U.S., you might worry about getting bitten by a Culex mosquito. Thats the species that carries the West Nile virus, which now is endemic in California. While the global village we live in means we can no longer wave off certain diseases as distant epidemics, health officials also say theres no cause for panic.

Certainly, with the risks of Zika-related birth defects, pregnant women should carefully consider visiting countries dealing with outbreaks.

Still, the rest of us can reduce our risk by using simple precautions.

1. Travel safely

The CDC has issued travel warnings for about 50 countries regarding the Zika virus, including Mexico and in the Caribbean, Central and South America and the Pacific Islands.

If you travel to these countries, try to stay indoors behind screens, or closed doors or windows as much as possible, especially during the day when the mosquitoes are most active. At night, sleep under a mosquito net.

2. Choose the right clothes

The right clothes can go a long way toward reducing bites.

It might seem counterintuitive to don long pants and sleeves in tropical climates, but try to cover as much skin as possible. Clothing with a close weave works best to prevent bites, but layered loose-weave clothing works almost as well, says Joe Conlon, medical entomologist and technical adviser to the American Mosquito Control Association.

And because bugs are attracted to dark colors, go for clothes in white, beige or light khaki colors, he says.

Conlon says you can also buy clothing treated with a repellent called permethrin, which is marketed under the name Insect Shield and can maintain its repellency through 70 washings. The Department of Defense developed this technology decades ago to protect troops in battle from insect-borne diseases.

With its Bugsaway line, outdoor clothing manufacturer ExOfficio sells Insect Shield mens and womens shirts, pants, hoodies, hats and socks.

3. Use the right bug spray

When it comes to sprays, not all brands are created equal. Consumer Reports found that the most effective repellents for warding off Aedes mosquitoes were Sawyer Picaridin and Natrapel 8 Hour, each of which contains a 20 percent concentration of the chemical picaridin. Another good one is Off! Deepwoods VIII, which contains 25 percent of the chemical DEET.

Not only did these products keep mosquitoes from biting for about eight hours, they are registered with the Environmental Protection Agency, which means they are evaluated for safety and effectiveness.

Consumer Reports cautions against using many so-called natural repellents, using citronella, clove, lemongrass or rosemary oils. These products might smell nice, but they wont keep mosquitoes away for long, and many arent registered with the EPA.

An exception in the plant oil category is Repel Lemon Eucalyptus, which contains 30 percent oil of lemon eucalyptus. This repellent warded off mosquitoes for seven hours.

The CDC says DEET products are safe for pregnant women to use, but parents should avoid using picaridin or lemon eucalyptus sprays on young children because they can cause a rash.

Consumer Reports also suggests that insect repellent wrist bands that have been marketed as being safer because you dont have to rub anything on your skin dont do much good. When testers stuck their arms into a cageful of mosquitoes, while wearing bands with citronella or geraniol oils, the bugs started biting immediately.

4. Stop mosquitoes at home

To steer clear of the West Nile-carrying Culex mosquitoes, its best to stay indoors at dawn and dusk when they are most active.

To eliminate mosquito breeding grounds from your yard, dump or drain water thats been standing for several days in flower planters, pet dishes, birdbaths, neglected swimming pools and remove old tires, tin cans or buckets.

If you want to enjoy your patio or deck in the evening, Conlon suggests illuminating it with yellow bug lights instead of incandescent white lights. While the yellow lights dont necessarily repel mosquitoes, they dont attract them as the white lights do.

Creating a breeze with strategically placed floor fans can push weak-flying mosquitoes away and also dissipate the olfactory clues they use to locate prey, he says.

Citronella candles have a mild repellent effect but are no better protection than Tiki Torches or other candles that produce smoke.

5. Safe sex

Men can spread Zika to a female partner through sexual transmission, as has been demonstrated with 11 U.S. Zika cases. However, its still uncertain if women can pass the virus onto male partners, or which modes of sexual transmission are most risky.

Until more is known, the World Health Organization says men and women returning from Zika-affected areas  especially pregnant women and their partners  should practice safe sex, including using condoms or abstaining from sex, for at least eight weeks.

This recommendation, doubling the abstinence period previously recommended, came recently after scientists found that the virus lingers longer than previously thought in the blood or other body fluids.

If the male partner has symptoms, a couple should practice safe sex or abstain from sex for six months.

WHO spokesman Christian Lindmeier also said that couples in Zika-affected areas should consider delaying a pregnancy.
SOUTH SIOUX CITY | When Shawn Petersen deployed for a tour of duty in Iraq in 2007, he left behind his wife of one month, Sarah Petersen.

One way she reduced the thousands of miles separating them, at least emotionally, was through her service: She founded Support Siouxland Soldiers and began sending care packages en masse to members of the military overseas.

That was nine years and more than 4,500 care packages ago.

Support Siouxland Soldiers stills sends care packages to soldiers, including a shipment of 180 care packs that will head from Sioux City next month. That effort that should get a boost on Saturday as the organization helps host the first Cardinal Honor Run, a 10K, 5K and 1-mile walk that's part of the 7th annual South Sioux City Cardinal Days celebration that runs through Sunday.

Those who register for the run at www.cardinalhonorrun.com pay $28 and receive a T-shirt, as well as some fruit and water. The bulk of the fee goes to Support Siouxland Soldiers to help pay for postage required to send care packages halfway around the world.

"Each care package has about $40 worth of items in it, things like beef jerky, sunscreen, powdered mixes and more," Sarah Petersen said. "The cost to mail each one comes to around $17. It's pretty significant."

As of Wednesday, nearly 100 runners had registered for the Cardinal Honor Run, an event that begins at 8 a.m. at Scenic Park in South Sioux City and utilizes two routes. One route takes runners over the Veterans Memorial Bridge into Sioux City and back; the other goes to Siouxland Freedom Park, site of The Vietnam Wall half-scale replica.

"Running over the bridge is the 'wow' factor for us," Petersen said. "We also wanted something that would help connect South Sioux City and Sioux City."

Shawn, a welder with Sioux City Foundry and a sergeant with the Iowa Army National Guard 1-113th Cavalry, won't run on Saturday. Instead, he'll be watching the children as his wife coordinates this event for a cause near and dear to their hearts.

"Back in 2007, we thought we'd send care packages for this one deployment," she said. "But more deployments took place over time (requiring more care packs).

"We also realized there is a whole string of issues veterans and their families face after a deployment," she added.

To that end, Support Siouxland Soldiers embarked on programs to help match veterans in need with groceries, meals, financial emergency grants and more. The group often works in conjunction with the Community Action Agency and governmental agencies such as the Woodbury County Department of Veterans Affairs.

Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump presented the group with a check for $100,000 as he kicked off a campaign appearance at the Orpheum Theatre on Jan. 31, the night before the Iowa caucuses.

"We have over 18,000 veterans in Siouxland," Petersen said. "We serve veterans from Nebraska, Iowa, South Dakota and Minnesota. And while $100,000 is wonderful, it won't sustain the organization. We'll still deploy troops, there will be veterans who serve, and we cannot meet the needs of all of them."

A Cardinal Honor Run, however, may fill the coffers a bit while shedding light on this cause.

Sarah Petersen remembered mailing those first care packages. She said the group will attack the next mailing with the same vigor, knowing now what they meant to her husband during his first tour and duty and a second, in Afghanistan in 2010.

"The care packages were especially important to Shawn on the holidays," she said. "Basically, people spend every holiday with their family. That changes for these soldiers. It's not fun to be away from home, away from family."

Sometimes, a package and a letter, as they did for these newlyweds in 2007, helps get a soldier a little closer to the comfort of home.
SIOUX CITY | Members of the 185th Air Refueling Wing, Iowa Air National Guard will be returning home to their Sioux City base Saturday from a deployment in the Middle East.

Since February, the 185th provided 129 airmen to Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, where they provided mid-air refueling support to U.S. and partner nation aircraft in support of Operation Inherent Resolve, the U.S. military operation in Iraq and Syria.

The 185th provided personnel and several KC-135 refueling aircraft. Crews from the 185th's operations group, maintenance group and other support elements worked in two separate rotations.

During the past decade, members of the 185th have deployed almost continuously in support of various U.S. military operations.
JACKSON, Neb. | A Council Bluffs, Iowa, man was charged with two counts of motor vehicle homicide Thursday afternoon after an investigation into a crash that killed two people early Thursday morning.

Christopher J. Cox, 45, of Council Bluffs, was the driver of a car that ran off the road on U.S. Highway 20 near Jackson, Nebraska, at 3:40 a.m. Thursday.

According to the Dakota County Sheriff's Office, passengers Connie Fauzae, 57, and Esperanza Lara, 9, both of Council Bluffs, died at the scene. Jose Lara, 10, of Council Bluffs, was transported to Mercy Medical Center -- Sioux City by medical helicopter. Cox was taken to Mercy via ambulance.

Cox was treated and released from the hospital. Information on Jose Lara's condition is being withheld from the public at his family's request, a hospital spokesman said.

Dakota County authorities had initially been told that Jose Lara had died at the hospital.

Cox, who was driving east on Highway 20 near the Siouxland Ethanol plant west of Jackson at about 3:40 a.m., told authorities he had swerved to miss a deer and ran off the road. The car traveled over an embankment and into a creek on the northeast side of the highway. Cox was able to exit the vehicle and climb up to the highway. The three passengers remained inside the vehicle.

At 3:10 p.m. Thursday, Cox was arrested by the Dakota County Sheriff's Office and charged with two counts of motor vehicle homicide and one count of driving without a license.

Dakota County Sheriff Chris Kleinberg said the charges stemmed from the fact that Cox did not have a valid operating license.

He didnt have a Nebraska operator's license, and in the state in which he had his last operator's license, it had been suspended," Kleinberg said.

The sheriff's office will continue to investigate the crash Friday in conjunction with the Nebraska State Patrol. Kleinberg said additional charges against Cox may be filed.

Kleinberg said an early toxicology test suggested alcohol or another substance could have played a role.

Cox is being held in the Dakota County Jail.
CHEROKEE, Iowa | A Sanford Museum archaeologist and a group of six students discovered four new archaeological sites earlier this month in Cherokee County.

The students were participants in an eight-day archaeology field school held by the Sanford Museum in Cherokee. The school, held June 1-3 and 6-10, focused on identifying new archaeological sites along the Little Sioux River and its tributaries.

Students and archaeologist Megan Stroh searched private properties around the watershed areas and found artifacts on four different locations east of Martin's Access County Park.

Among the artifacts were stone chippings, ceramic shreds and two stone tools. A Sanford representative said patterns on the ceramics suggest that two of the sites are approximately 2,000 years old.

During the field school, students also learned archaeological methods such as pedestrian walk-over, shovel-testing and the curation of artifacts.
SIOUX CITY | A press release announcing the guilty pleas of three men involved in the 2011 shooting death of Tony "T-Bone" Canfield proclaimed "Cold Case Murder Solved."

For those who spent five years tracking down leads that eventually led to the arrests, the case was anything but cold. Investigators worked the case constantly, Sioux City police Chief Doug Young said.

"These cases never get shoved under the carpet. They're always worked. This is an example of that," Young said. "It takes a lot of work to find these guys and get this done. It took five years."

Courtland Clark, 26, of Flowery Branch, Georgia, Robert Beaver, 35, of Sioux City, and Devery Hibbler, 26, of Dumas, Arkansas, each pleaded guilty Friday in U.S. District Court in Sioux City to one count of interference with commerce by robbery. Clark and Hibbler also pleaded guilty to one count of use of a firearm during and in relation to a crime of violence causing death.

According to the U.S. Attorney's Office, plea agreements call for Hibbler to serve 35 years in prison, and Beaver to serve 20 years. Neither will have the possibility of parole or the right to appeal his conviction. Clark faces a sentence of 10 years to life in prison. His sentence will be determined by a judge at sentencing.

Sentencing dates have yet to be set.

Clark, Beaver and Hibbler went to Canfield's home at 1401 George St. at about 11 p.m. on May 1, 2011, to rob him of marijuana and money he had made from marijuana sales.

Beaver beat and held Canfield's wife while Clark and Hibbler robbed Canfield. Canfield resisted and tried to escape from the house, but Hibbler shot him once in the head on the front porch.

Young said he did not know if the three men knew Canfield personally.

The three were on the run for nearly five years. A federal indictment charging Hibbler with robbery was filed in January.

In April, a superseding indictment was filed, adding Clark and Beaver. It also added charges of conspiracy to commit robbery, conspiracy to sell marijuana and firearms charges.

Young said he couldn't comment on specific details of the investigation and how authorities determined Clark, Beaver and Hibbler were involved, but it was the result of a lot of work done by a lot of people.

"It took a lot of cooperation for this to get done, federal, state and local," Young said.

U.S. Attorney Kevin Techau credited several departments with the work that led to the guilty pleas.

"This case is a fine example of persistence and cooperation by the Sioux City Police Department, Woodbury County Attorney's Office and the Federal Bureau of Investigation," Techau said in a news release. "Despite a number of obstacles along the way, these three agencies, along with the United States Attorney's Office, never stopped working toward solving this murder, and bringing those responsible to justice."
SIOUX CITY | A Woodbury County supervisor is pitching a plan to raise the minimum wage in the county above the state minimum of $7.25 per hour.

Supervisor Jackie Smith said Thursday she does not have a specific rate increase in mind. She said she envisions the five-member board of supervisors forming an advisory committee to research whether the idea should be pursued and flesh out details if it decides to move forward.

The advisory panel should include members from various fields, but none of the supervisors should serve, she said.

"I just want this to be fair and unbiased, and good, sound data and research used," Smith said.

The deliberations likely would take a few months, she said. If the panel would recommend raising the minimum wage, the county supervisors would then vote on an ordinance.

Smith, a Democrat who is running for re-election this year, said higher wages would help working families struggling to make ends meet. A small business owner, Smith said she realizes the issue will be controversial.

"I just think it is part of the workforce development conversation that we haven't had yet. If we want workers here, we need to say we really mean it. Raising the minimum wage is one of those parameters," Smith said.

Smith discussed her idea with her colleagues two days ago during the board's weekly meeting. County board chairman Jeremy Taylor confirmed the topic will come back as an agenda item at a board meeting, perhaps as early as Tuesday.

Taylor said he opposes the county raising the minimum wage, saying it is a mandate on employers.

"I do not believe it is the proper role of county government to set the minimum wage," Taylor said.

Taylor added that it is unclear whether local municipalities have the legal authority to set a minimum wage. State and federal governments have minimum wages, and workers must be paid the higher of the two rates. Iowa's rate was last changed in 2007 through an initiative by then-Democratic Gov. Chet Culver that gradually raised it from $5.15 to $7.25.

Smith noted the Johnson County Board of Supervisors approved an ordinance that will increase the eastern Iowa county's minimum wage incrementally to $10.10 per hour, beginning in January.

Smith pointed to a poll last year that showed two-thirds of respondents in swing states such as Iowa favor a higher minimum wage, and to studies that show there is no negligible job loss when employers are subject to a higher rate.

"The person who is going to be helped most is the 40-year-old woman raising a child," Smith said.

Smith, who was unopposed in Tuesday's Democratic primary election, will face Republican Keith Radig in the November election. Radig, a Sioux City Council member, defeated former councilman John Fitch in a GOP primary Tuesday.

Democrats generally favor raising the minimum wage. Last year, majority Democrats in the Iowa Senate passed a bill that would have bumped the state's minimum wage to $8.75, but the measure stalled in the Republican-controlled Iowa House.

Some Siouxland officials have argued that higher minimum wages in neighboring Nebraska and South Dakota have put employers on the Iowa side of the river at a disadvantage when hiring workers for lower skilled jobs.

Nebraska's minimum wage rose to $9 an hour in January for non-tipped workers, and South Dakota's minimum wage is at $8.55 an hour. Voters in both states overwhelmingly approved initiatives raising their respective rates from the federal minimum of $7.25 per hour.
WASHINGTON -- The Caligulan malice with which Donald Trump administered Paul Ryan's degradation is an object lesson in the abject price of capitulation to power. This episode should be studied as a clinical case of a particular Washington myopia -- the ability of career politicians to convince themselves that they and their agendas are of supreme importance.

The pornographic politics of Trump's presidential campaign, which was preceded by decades of ignorant bile (about Barack Obama's birth certificate and much else), have not exhausted Trump's eagerness to plumb new depths of destructiveness. Herewith the remarkably brief timeline of the breaking of Ryan to Trump's saddle.

On May 3, Trump won the Indiana primary, ending competition for the Republican nomination. On May 5, Ryan said he still was not prepared to endorse Trump. That day Trump responded that he was not ready to endorse Ryan's agenda. This was not news, considering that Trump has campaigned against every significant element of this agenda -- entitlement reform, the rule of law, revival of Congress as a counter to the executive overreach that Barack Obama has practiced and that Trump promises to enlarge upon.

On May 12, a Trump meeting with Ryan resulted in a cringeworthy joint statement that had to be read to be properly disbelieved. The two spoke about the "great conversation" they had about "our shared principles." They celebrated their "many important areas of common ground" while offhandedly mentioning "our few differences." Those who know, or thought they knew, Ryan doubted that he could name a single shared principle, and he did not do so.

In spite of, and in conspicuous dissonance with, the May 12 happy talk, Ryan continued to withhold his endorsement. Perhaps he hoped that Trump, at age 69, was going to mend his manners.

Instead, Trump dragged a personal problem, his coming trial on fraud charges associated with Trump University, into the presidential campaign. Having first done so in February, on May 27 he again attacked the "Mexican" judge (born in Indiana, 1,332 miles from Mexico) who will preside at the trial, asserting that the Hoosier Mexican was unfit to preside because his ethnic heritage would incline him against Trump, the wall-building scourge of Mexican rapists. On May 30, Trump again attacked the judge, again embracing the identity politics that actually characterizes contemporary progressivism: An individual has, always and only, the interests and motivations of his race, ethnicity, gender or sexual orientation.

By June 2, Ryan had heard enough. He endorsed Trump. He did so because President Trump would sign Ryan's House "agenda." Well.

Since May 5, the Hamlet of southeastern Wisconsin had indeed learned something. He had learned Trump's contemptuous response to his scruples. Trump's response was an insouciant intensification of his anti-institutional politics -- the judicial system, too, is "rigged." Ryan limply described Trump's attack on the judge as thinking "out of left field" that he could not "relate to."

All supposedly will be redeemed by the House agenda. So, assume, fancifully, that in 2017 this agenda emerges intact from a House not yet proved able to pass 12 appropriations bills. Assume, too, that Republicans still control the Senate and can persuade enough Democrats to push the House agenda over the 60-vote threshold. Now, for some really strenuous assuming: Assume that whatever semblance of the House agenda that reaches President Trump's desk is more important than keeping this impetuous, vicious, ignorant and anti-constitutional man from being at that desk.

Some say in extenuation of Ryan's behavior that if he could not embrace Trump, he could not continue as speaker. But is Ryan, who was reluctant to become speaker, now more indispensable to the nation's civic health than Trump is menacing to that health? Ryan could have enhanced that health by valuing it above his office.

In March, Trump said of Ryan: "I'm sure I'm going to get along great with him. And if I don't, he's going to have to pay a big price." Ryan has now paid a staggering price by getting along with Trump. And what did Ryan purchase with the coin of his reputation? Perhaps his agenda.

In Robert Bolt's play "A Man for All Seasons," Thomas More is betrayed by Richard Rich, who commits perjury to please the king, in exchange for being named attorney general for Wales. Says More: "Why Richard, it profits a man nothing to give his soul for the whole world. ... But for Wales?" Or for the House agenda?
Alexandra Suzanne Greenawalt makes people look good for a living, as a personal stylist. Its a job that plenty of girls playing dress up would love to aspire to, if they only knew it was an option.

Greenawalt didnt originally set out to start her own styling business. But she was once one of those girls playing dress up, and knew that she wanted to be involved in fashion somehow. She said in an email interview with Small Business Trends:

It took me awhile to figure out that it could be an actual profession. I would read fashion magazines but I couldnt figure out how I would fit into the equation.

Prior to starting her personal styling business, Greenawalt worked in the public relations field, as publisher of an online style magazine, and as a fashion stylist for photo shoots. She also majored in French in college, even though she had no real intention of using that degree in any conventional career oriented way. She just knew that it would get her to Paris, where she could try to break into the fashion industry.

Now, she focuses on working individually with real women (as opposed to fashion models) to help them look their best.

Though her days vary, Greenawalt said that working with clients normally involves several steps. First, she helps them define their style. Then they sort existing items, shop for clothing and accessories, go to fittings and style outfits and accessories together. She even has clients who fly to New York from all over the world to shop with her.

But its not all about playing dress up, though that is certainly part of her job. She said that other skills, particularly business related skills, are essential to making it as a stylist:

Most stylists starting out dont realize they need business skills to survive, and a killer website Just posting your hourly rates doesnt bring clients rushing to you.

She recommends that anyone interested in building a career as a stylist should get savvy in things like marketing, SEO, sales, promotions, and building a Web presence.

Aside from learning about business, Greenawalt also received formal training in color and shape analysis, which helps her more scientifically determine what looks good and why. But she does admit that having a natural eye for style helps.

Though its been a long road from a young girl playing dress up to a professional stylist, Greenawalt said that helping women find their style and confidence makes it all worth it.
If you run a local business with a physical location, then you absolutely should take advantage of the enormous potential that listing your small business on search engines brings. Listing your business on search engines not only raises your visibility online to potential customers, but also lets you manage and enhance how your business appears publicly by uploading content like photos, services and more.

Bing, Microsofts search engine, while not as popular as Google, is still a favorite tool used by millions of people to search for businesses online. Whats more, Bing is the default search engine for all newer computers, tablets and mobile devices running Windows OS. It allows you to claim a listing for your small business on the search engine for free via its Bing Places for Business.

Claiming Your Free Bing Places for Business Listing

Bing says that registering a small business with Bing Places is a 3-step process. However, there are three main categories of businesses you can list: Local or small business with a store front, chain business with multiple locations and businesses offering services at customer locations.

Advertising agencies that would like to add listings on behalf of their clients can also do so, but they must first create an agency account by filling the Bing Places Agency Details Form. After which, they can follow the same listing procedure, while taking advantage of the bulk upload feature that allows you to add up to 10,000 lines of Excel information in a single update.

You must have a free Microsoft account to log in to the Bing Places management tool, though. A Microsoft account is basically the account you use to log in to Hotmail, SkyDrive or Xbox LIVE. If you dont have a Microsoft account, Bing Places prompts you to create one from the registration interface.

Heres how to get started with Bing Places for Business to help customers discover your business online.

Step 1: Claim Your Listing

Visit the Bing Places homepage and click Get started. The screen shot below is the sign up interface you will see prompting you to add your business.

Type into the appropriate text fields either your phone number or your business name and location. Click Search to see if anything shows up.

Chances are Bing has a listing for your business already. If so, you will be prompted to moderate your search or claim an existing listing. If not, you will be asked to click Add New Business to open a Microsoft account log in window that will give you access to create a new listing. Enter your Microsoft account username and password as prompted to log in to the Bing Places for Business dashboard.

Step 2: Complete Your Listing Profile

Once you are logged in, its time to start adding more details about your business. Below is a screen shot of what you will see when logged in:

The left hand side presents all of the different drop-down menus you will be required to open and fill to complete your listing. The right hand side shows the map and photos that will change corresponding to the details you add about your business.

Bing says: Adding complete information about your business helps you tell the best story about your business. You can add photos of your business & services, hours of operation, services offered and list the various ways customers can reach your business.

Step 3: Verify your listing.

After you fill in all of the details about your business, click Submit. A new window will open asking you to verify your business. The window will look like this:

Provide the correct contact address to verify your listing. Bing will send you a verification PIN number to the address listed there, which you should receive within 3 to 5 days. Verifying your business listing helps guard against unauthorized changes to the listing.

Bing says: You can verify your listings by receiving a PIN at your business address, phone or email. All businesses must provide a valid address, but some types of businesses can hide their address in search results.

Managing Your Bing Places for Business Listing

Once you receive your PIN number in the mail, log in to the Bing Places for Business dashboard and enter the PIN number to verify and start managing your listing. Managing your listing entails editing and adding information regarding your listing to take control of your business image and reputation on the web. You can manage multiple listings under one dashboard with Bing Places for Business.

Remember customers usually have many options when searching for local businesses online. Put your best foot forward by uploading detailed information about your local business, including days and hours you are open, payments you accept, parking information if available, and pictures of the small business building or offices to fully engage customers.

If you decide you want to delete a listing, log in to your Bing Places dashboard and locate the listing you want removed from search. Below the listing is a link to either edit or delete it. Click Delete. A Delete Business dialog box opens. Type a reason for the closure, and then click Delete Business.
If you buy something through our links, we may earn money from our affiliate partners. Learn more.

Earlier this year I had the opportunity to co-host ExCom 2016, a conference focused on how customer experience, customer engagement and ecommerce were converging, and the future direction this convergence is pointing to. And mobile devices and apps have been at the forefront of this convergence with the emergence of mobile first strategies.

Although there is no disputing the role of mobility in bringing commerce and customer experience closer together in a digital world, businesses have to have a strong digital foundation in place to create the kind of experiences modern consumers expect when they engage on various channels from those devices. During the keynote conversation I moderated, Dilawar Syed, president of customer support platform Freshdesk, shared why businesses of all sizes need to have a service-first culture in place in order to be successful engaging customers through a growing number of channels via their mobile devices.

Interview: Does Mobile First Success Require a Service First Culture?

Below is an edited transcript of our conversation, as well as the video from the session during ExCom 2016

* * * * *

Small Business Trends: Are the majority of companies service-first companies or are they still trying to figure it out?

Dilawar Syed: Well I think if you are operating in this economy you have to respond to customers from the very get go. How many [people] have tweeted about a poor service experience; filled a Yelp review or restaurant review. You have to respond to a customer base that is on the go. And by the way you expect that from the other side, that customers will respond to you.

A lot of companies dont get back to customers on Twitter until hours later or days later, or they still are not responding at the pace at which the consumers are expecting it. And by the way that phenomenon is even more so in emerging markets outside of North America and Western Europe, because for a lot of consumers their first digital experience is on the mobile device.

Folks are expecting to be supported on WeChat, on WhatsApp, on Facebook Messenger, so its changed the world in a very big way. What you have are tools that were built in the 90s for a very different era. And now we are in a place where you want short form communication, interactivity, response back on the mobile. At the very heartbeat in which youre reaching over the customers.

Small Business Trends: Do you feel companies are rushing to be mobile-first without having the structure and culture to be service-focused first?

Dilawar Syed: Thats a great point. You cant say Im going to go and make sure we are ready to respond to folks on the mobile device if you dont have a culture that fully internalizes the ethos of service. Maybe you have hired people or have built processes and structures that are not designed to respond in an interactive manner; or have people who havent been trained on responding to tweets in 140 characters.

There are people who havent been trained on having a conversation via live chat. It requires a brand new paradigm; how do you build that culture? How do you bring folks who can actually respond in a multi-channel manner to a very different consumer in the year 2016? So you do have to take a look at this and ask how do you redo it, and weve seen companies bring in the new customer experiences. And that has happened by the way at even big brands. But also its happening at smaller and smaller companies; weve seen companies that have retrained their employees.

And another point about the customer service reps; they are millennials that have grown up as digital natives. So when they come to the workforce and theyre supposed to spend 10 hours or 12 hours responding to customer service questions, they want to experience software that is near consumer apps they grew up with like Snapchat and Facebook. Do you think todays customer support software in the workplace is is even close to that consumer experience? I can answer on all of our (the industry) behalf  no. Its clunky. Its designed for 20 years ago.

Youre hired. You have a thousand queries coming in at you, and you need to be able to go in without training and quickly connect with your consumers who are knocking at your door from any channel or any device from anywhere in the world. So the software of today that we have inherited for the last 20 years is just not designed for that. Its not designed for the consumer experience and thats where the next gen cloud based companies like ours are trying to change the mold and make sure we have it ready for the millennial workforce, not just in this country, not just in Western Europe but around the world.

So to answer question, yes you have to make sure your culture is service-first, and the organization is ready to make sure people have the right tools to use.

Small Business Trends: How is the relationship between service folks and marketing folks changing because of whats taking place with customers and technology?

Dilawar Syed: I think customer support is the new marketing, especially in the world of mobile. You expect to be able to have any conversation with brands, about service, about the product; maybe they can offer me a promotion on the spot. Because in mobile the brands know where you are. They can target you in certain ways. So the lines have blurred quickly.

On the enterprise they still have silos for service and marketing and sales. But in a mobile world when Im reaching out from my device, those walls must come down.

For example, what happens with Uber when you book a trip and your driver doesnt show up, but you get charged. You reach out and say I should not have been charged because the driver didnt show up. You go to the Uber app and you click on support and it immediately takes you to your last transaction.

Once you click on that it takes you to a static page of text within the app which tells you to send a message and they will resolve the issue via an email response. Then you get an email within a few minutes saying we got your inquiry and well take care of you. But dont you expect from Uber, which the whole business is the mobile app, that you should have your issue resolved in the app?

The consumer expectations are that if I have an issue with Uber support I should be able to have a chat within the Uber app and have issues resolved, and by the way here is a coupon for you for your next trip, and we know that you may be going somewhere because you take this trip all the time at this time every week. But we are still very far from that experience as an industry, even in the heart of the Silicon Valley; and Uber is a well-capitalized multi-billion dollar market cap company.

See Also: ypDisplay Reinvents Mobile Display Ads for Small Business

Companies are responding with an effective means to enable what you expect as a consumer. So as an example we launch a program Hotline recently which is a mobile engagement platform. It allows you to have messaging within the mobile app. So if Im in Uber and if I have an issue with a driver over the charge I go into the support page and I can actually go back and forth without having to wait for email. Thats old school. Thats not what the shared economy is. And by the way the same experience can be can be applied in e-commerce and in other places.

Small Business Trends: As for startups how important is it for them to have their service model at the heart of their business model in order for them to be successful.

Dilawar Syed: In the valley customer support reps are often the very first set of people they hire. In a business like ours and many others, if youre launching a business traction can take place pretty quickly. Using Google as an acquisition channel youre in front of the world. For example e-commerce in terms of B2C is where you would think about hiring your Customer Support Organization initially, depending where you are. But you want to think about scaling that pretty quickly. We saw in our business overall ticket volume doubled if not tripled year over year; as the number of customers went up the number of tickets and conversations actually was order of magnitude faster in growth because youre increasingly serving more complex customers; the queries become more complex if they are to come through any channel. And they have to be ready. So I would give that thought from the very early on.

Small Business Trends: Are you seeing a different kind of metric or a different way that businesses judge metrics today?

Dilawar Syed: First call resolution. We all grew up around that metric. Its a very efficiency driven metric. Its not necessarily a sentiment driven metric. I would think about metrics that are more driven from sentiment and customer happiness, and delight because the customer sentiment is infectious in this in this world. My favorite example is a couple of years ago somebody had a bad experience with British Airways and this individual actually tweeted it. He was so mad that he spent some money to promote it on Twitter and it just took off like crazy. It happens a lot.

This is part of the One-on-One Interview series with thought leaders. The transcript has been edited for publication. If it's an audio or video interview, click on the embedded player above, or subscribe via iTunes or via Stitcher.
If youre thinking about opening your own handmade shop, there are so many different things to consider. Its not all about just having fun making arts and crafts. You actually have to build a business around those items that you make so well.

Part of that is learning how to price your handmade items. You have to carefully consider what price points will be likely to appeal to your customers while still allowing your business to operate successfully and sustainable. Here are some tips on how to price your handmade items for sale.

How to Price Handmade Items

Consider the Cost of Supplies

Its likely that youll need some supplies to complete your handmade products. If you knit scarves, youll need to figure out how much yarn you use for each scarf and how much that amount of yarn costs you. If you make jewelry, youll need to calculate how much you spend on the beads, wire or other supplies that you use for each piece. Youll need to factor whatever the cost of those supplies is into the final cost of your items.

Consider the Time You Put In

In addition, you need to pay yourself for the time you put into making your goods. The hourly rate you charge can vary depending on what kind of work youre doing and how much experience you have. But you can look up what people in your industry normally make for their work and base part of your decision on that. But you also just need to make sure that its a rate your comfortable with. If you wouldnt accept minimum wage for your work, then you need to come up with a higher hourly rate that you would work for. Then figure out the amount of hours that you put into each item and base your labor cost on that.

Consider the Competition

It can also be helpful to look at what other handmade sellers are charging for similar items. This shouldnt be your only determining factor for pricing. If you are using higher quality supplies or if you have more experience crafting those items you sell, then it can certainly make sense to charge more. However, if you find that your items are priced significantly lower than the competition, it could be a sign that you arent charging enough for your labor or that youre forgetting to factor in some of your other costs.

Consider the Market

Likewise, the market for your particular product might have an impact on the price. For example, if there isnt much competion for your particular product and its been selling well, that could be a sign that its time to raise your prices. Or if theres a particular holiday or event that has to do with your product, that could have an impact on what youre able to charge. So it can be beneficial to constantly keep an eye on the market for your products and consider input from your customers as well.

Consider Extra Fees

When coming up with your expenses, its important not to forget about all that goes into your products aside from just your supplies. For example, if you sell on Etsy, you likely have to pay Etsy and/or PayPal fees. If you have your own website, you should factor in hosting and domain fees. And if you ship items, you should factor in shipping and supplies if you dont charge separately for that. Other costs might include advertising, transportation and office supplies. Of course, you shouldnt add the whole monthly cost of your studio space and other expenses into each and every item you sell. But if you add up all of your monthly expenses and then divide that number by the number of items youd like to sell each month, that should give you a pretty good idea of the extra costs that go into each item.

Consider Your Business Goals

The last factor that you should consider when attempting to price your handmade items is your goals going forward. If you want to sell products so that you can open up a physical store or quit your day job, then youll need to earn an actual profit from each item, not just break even with your expenses and labor. So consider your business growth goals and figure out how much of a profit youll need from each item in order to reach those goals in a reasonable time frame.

Dont Short-change Yourself

It can be tempting, especially for new handmade business owners, to try and get your shop to stand out by offering the lowest prices. But if you price your items significantly lower than everyone elses, you could cause customers to see your items as cheaper or less desirable than others. In addition, you could potentially even drive down the market for your items. If customers get used to seeing whatever it is you sell at a particular price point, it could cause other handmade sellers to discount their items as well. And then when you get to a point where you want to actually charge a reasonable price for your goods, youll be trying to sell them at a price point that customers arent accustomed to.
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
With nearly 20 years in South Florida with Casa DAngelo, Fort Lauderdales Angelo Elia Pizza, Bar & Tapas is one of Angelo Elias best experiences yet.

Now in its sixth year, the Fort Lauderdale location was the first upscale casual concept from Italian-born Angelo Elia, but it wasnt the last. With locations also in Weston, Delray, and Coral Springs, there will also be another addition in Doral later this year. With a phenomenal menu and extensive wine list, its no wonder that Angelo Elia Pizza, Bar & Tapas is expanding at a rapid rate.

When you go, start off with the giant homemade Veal Meatballs served in homemade Pomodoro sauce ($12). While a meal in and of itself, you may be looking for something lighter as an appetizer. If thats the case, get the focaccia flatbread and dip it in the homemade spicy olive oil. If the specials menu offers it, get Mikes Salad  arugula, artichoke, grape tomatoes, balsamic reduction and Burrata cheese ($16). Burrata is the sister of Mozzarella  the outer layer is Mozzarella and the inside is soft, stringy, creamy cheese. Take a moment to drool.

When youre done, clean yourself and get ready for an entree. Try the Veal Milanese: a veal cutlet thats pounded flat, breaded and fried to perfection and served with mixed greens and a lemon Reggiano vinaigrette ($24). You can also try the Linguine Vongole: clams tossed in a garlic, oil, and white white sauce with linguine ($19).

But definitely dont overlook the pizza, especially the Angelo pie: bufala mozzarella with prosciutto, arugula and Reggiano ($17). All pizzas are 10 inches and made fresh to order, cooked in a wood-burning oven at 450 degrees. Flatbreads, veggies, and even some desserts are made in the wood-burning oven.

Dont forget the extensive wine list. Sample Jankara Vermentino di Gallura ($45), Elias own brand from his winery in Sardinia. With nearly 100 different wines along with beer and a full bar, there are endless options when it comes to your beverage of choice. Happy hour is Mon-Fri, 3-7 p.m. where all drinks are 2 for 1. If youre at the bar during happy hour, grab good eats from the $6 bar menu and on Mondays you can get half off wine.

Definitely save room for dessert. For the time being, all desserts are made in-house until Angelo Elia The Bakery Bar opens in late June. The bakery, located on Oakland Park Blvd., will soon make the desserts for all restaurant locations.

Get the Nutella Stromboli ($12): a pizza dough mixed with Nutella and nuts and made in the wood-burning oven. Its cut into pieces and surrounds a gelato mountain of your choice of flavors, including the homemade pistachio and wild berry.

You can skip the Nutella Stromboli altogether and just get the amazing gelato (two scoops, $7), the cannoli ($6), or Tiramisu ($7).

If you dont find yourself at Angelo Elias during the evenings, definitely stop by on the weekends for brunch. Favorites like the Nutella French Toast ($12) and Mammas Sunday Gravy Rigatoni ($22) are served from 11:30 a.m.-3:30 p.m. Saturday and Sunday.

Regardless of where you are in South Florida  from Fort Lauderdale to Delray  youll be able to find Angelo Elias Pizza, Bar & Tapas anywhere and its worth the stop every single time.

If You Go

Angelo Elia Pizza, Bar & Tapas

4215 N. Federal Hwy

Fort Lauderdale, FL 33308

954-561-7300

This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

www.AngeloEliaPizza.com

Sun.  Thurs., 11:30 a.m.-10 p.m.

Fri.  Sat., 11:30 a.m.-11 p.m.
Bob Poe, running for election to the U.S. House of Representatives in Florida's 10th District, has come out as HIV positive.

"Eighteen years ago, I was diagnosed with HIV," Poe stated in a press release. "Don't worry - I'm perfectly healthy, and I feel great. But, that's largely because I got tested - and as soon as I was diagnosed, I started treatment."

If elected, Poe may be the first openly HIV-positive person in Congress.

According to Poe, there is "a lot of fear, shame, and stigma surrounding HIV - and it's totally unnecessary."

He added: "I've always said, if you want to make a difference, you have to be the difference. And I didn't want to wait until I get to Congress to be that difference."

There are few openly HIV-positive politicians, and Poe will be the second to run for Congress.

"Bob shattered 18 years of stigma when he publicly disclosed his being a person living with HIV," Michael Emanuel Rajner, AIDS activist, told SFGN. "He knows first hand the burden of keeping one's HIV status a secret and fearing rejection and the harmful impact that can have in preventing someone from seeking out the care, treatment and support needed to beat HIV."

In 2013, Poe helped Rajner by organizing a meeting between him and Governor Charlie Christ to talk about HIV. "I realize how powerful of a moment that was to have Bob be a champion and find some way to have the courage to make sure HIV was on the agenda."

"Having a person living openly with HIV to serve in Congress would be incredibly powerful to begin to change the course of HIV not only in Florida and the United States, but also globally."
Nagoya is Japans fourth-largest city. It sits snugly in the center of Japans main island, Honshu, and is the stop between Tokyo and Osaka on the bullet train. Nagoya is a kissaten towna place brimming with old coffeehouses in which dark and smoky coffee is served by serious, upright baristas in dark and smoky rooms. Though these traditional institutions are fascinating, the worlds coffee culture is changing. So when I came across Trunk Coffee while searching for a more progressive coffee option, I decided to take a look.

In stark contrast to the often dimly lit and dark-wooded coffeehouses of the area, Trunk is flooded with natural light and is brightly decorated. Mid-century chairs and desks imported from Scandinavia line the wall of the main corridor. In the back of the shop, cozy sofas invite small groups to sit and chat; outside there is patio seating overlooking one of Nagoyas many wide and busy streets. Custom-made multicolor espresso cups are stacked on top of the La Marzocco Linea Classic espresso machinealso custom builtwhich sits next to a Mazzer Robur grinder. A five-kilogram Probat roaster and large containers of yet-to-be-roasted beans take up most of the back right wall.

I order an espresso from the barista and hope for the bestafter all, Nagoya is not known for its specialty coffee scene. The shot, a fully washed Ethiopia Hama, blows me out of the water. Its very sweet. Hints of raspberry jam and honey are instantly apparent and the aftertaste is pleasantly limey. I have a Kalita Wave pour-over next, a Cup of Excellence Burundi Mahonda. Its ripe with red citrus fruits and cashew undertones. Maybe its because I expected so little from this cafe, but Im instantly won over. I quickly set up a meeting with their owner to learn more about the shop.

Trunk Coffee Bar was opened in mid-2014 by Yasuo Suzuki and his friend Kiyohito Tanaka. Suzuki decided some years back that he wanted to open a cafe someday, so he began studying coffeehis philosophy being as simple as: if you have a cafe, you should serve good coffee. His research led him to discover that Denmark had a high concentration of barista champions. So, Suzuki went to Denmark and began begging at doorsteps for a chance to study under well-known baristas, but was turned down at every turn. Moving on to less famous shops, he eventually found one willing to take him in. After studying for a year and a half he moved back to Japan and began working at Fuglen, a Scandinavian-style cafe in Tokyo. He continued there for two years before deciding to return to Denmark to study roasting. Now, with the connections he had made at Fuglen, he had a chance to talk to and learn from some of Denmark and Norways best.

After nearly five years of research and practice, he was ready to open Trunk. Suzuki chose Nagoya because he felt that Tokyo was too crowded with specialty coffee choices, while Nagoya had practically none. He wanted to be a pioneer of sorts, bringing modern coffee culture to a place it hadnt reached yet. Also, and perhaps more important, Nagoya is Suzukis hometown. It has the reputation of being boring in comparison with Japans other major cities, and he wanted to help change that.

It hasnt been easy bringing the bright and juicy flavors of Scandinavian coffee to a city that loves its dark roast, but Trunk is making its mark. Suzuki does his best to spread the word and to educate people about specialty coffee. He has appeared in magazines, on radio shows, and even on TV programs to talk about his craft. In the store, he offers a number of workshops every month to give people a chance to get hands-on with the tools of the trade.

Through the efforts of Suzuki and his crew, specialty coffee may take off here in Nagoya as it has in Tokyo. In fact, there is already one sign of it happening: standing at the forefront of this movement, carefully crafting drinks for curious customers, and gently introducing the lighter side of coffee is Trunk.

Eric Tessier is a freelance journalist based in Tokyo. Read more Eric Tessier on Sprudge.
The Russian air attacks were focused on a crucial component of Daesh annual income, Lauria explained.

"Daesh began nearly three years ago with seed money from the Gulf and Turkey and then became largely self-financing from robbing banks, taking over industries, smuggling antiquities and especially oil, which represents a major part of its income."

Daesh still earned almost a quarter of a billion dollars a year from that trade, Lauria noted.

"Estimates vary but Daesh is earning about $1.5 million a day, or $40 million a month from smuggled oil exports. So, completely destroying those facilities, and not trying to capture them so they could later fall into other unsavory hands, will go a long way to crushing this hideous extremist movement."

Destroying the Raqqa oil industry complex also made tactical sense in the struggle to liberate the city, Lauria observed.

"It would also avoid a bloody battle for control of the facilities and free up Syrian army and allied ground forces to battle Daesh elsewhere rather than try to hold down the facilities," he said.
WASHINGTON (Sputnik)  On Thursday, Obama officially endorsed former secretary of state Hillary Clinton as the Democratic presidential nominee, while rival candidate Bernie Sanders told reporters after meeting with Obama that he would do everything in his power to defeat Trump.

"I dont think there is a lot of news, but there is a lot of noise," University of Kent History Professor George Conyne told Sputnik on Thursday about Obamas endorsement of Clinton and Sanders comments on defeating Trump. "Right now, I dont think they change much."

Obamas endorsement and Sanders comments, Conyne explained, could help unify the Democratic Party but it will still not affect the mindset of the undecided independent voters.
Answering on the question on the results of the Swiss referendum, Borgman said that the vote demonstrated an international interest in the issue.

The Swiss Referendum emphasized the current [inter]national interest in the theme Basic Income, she said.

The Utrecht project will run for two years starting from 2017, if approved by the Dutch Government. Working with the University of Utrecht, the city wants to recruit 250 people for the project.

Investing in this experiment now will prepare us to deal in a better way with for future changes in the economy and labor market; with traditional jobs disappearing and new opportunities emerging, Borgman said.

Similar initiatives have already been put forward in Finland, Canadian Ontario and Quebec Provinces and to undergo the economic experiment. Prince Edward Island has also expressed its strong interest in this regard.
In effect, this means that the final deal at the end of a negotiated UK exit from the EU would need to be ratified by EU leaders via a qualified majority vote, a majority in the European Parliament and by the remaining 27 national parliaments across the EU.

Since some EU law applies in the UK directly, the UK would need to legislate to replace it, said Raoul Ruparel. Enter Lord Howell with his warning of a Westminster rebellion.

"The Parliament would vote again and again against Brexit laws," Lord Howell told Sputnik.

'British Parliament Should Deliver'

"I would hope it would not happen. The British people are being asked, and if they return a Leave vote the British Parliament should deliver what is required by that decision of the British people," Dr Phillip Lee MP told Sputnik.

How smooth that delivery would be given the hundreds of treaties and laws that would need to be changed?

"I don't underestimate some of the difficulty that might ensue, but I think ultimately, that's what has to happen. Of course, the uncertainty worries me and it worries many colleagues. I can only speak for myself. If the country votes to leave I would represent the public's view and vote accordingly," Dr Lee said.

The MPs would be well advised not to try and sabotage the popular vote to leave, if there is one, otherwise there would be riots in the streets, a Brexiteer told Sputnik on condition of anonymity.

Dr. Phillip Lee MP: Neither campaign has done justice to #Brexit debate. It's about UK future. @frontlineclub pic.twitter.com/PSFs8QkZ7H  Nikolai Gorshkov (@NikolaiGorshkov) June 9, 2016

Theoretically, there is nothing to stop the government unilaterally withdrawing from the EU by simply repealing the 1972 European Communities Act. It would also mean there is no transition period, so EU legislation along with the UK's free trade agreements via the EU lapse immediately.

But would the current PM and those members of his cabinet who campaigned hard against Brexit be prepared to go down that route?

Or will it mean a change of government if not the parliament?
The US interpretation focuses instead on the value of a target  such as a terrorist organization leader  with the kill box migrating with the target as he travels, under the argument that terrorists do not adhere to the military norms of a well-defined battlefield. All individuals located within a certain perimeter of the target are defined as enemy combatants under this expanded theory.

Of course, in reality a terrorist compound may actually be where an individual affiliated with a terror group lives, with civilian family members, or a target may travel to an area that consists solely of civilians  perhaps for a party, wedding, or other occasion  leading to mass civilian deaths that are legally justified by US officials as a successful strike that also, regrettably, resulted in collateral death.

Despite consistent international condemnation for violating the laws of war by engaging in strikes resulting in disproportionate collateral damage, Nathan Freier thinks that the United States military is not going far enough in advocating for a "change in how the US charters strategic action against [gray zone threats]," a change that Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has alluded to in calls to, "get the lawyers off the backs of Americas fighting men and women."
The Right Livelihood Award , which is commonly referred to as Sweden's alternative Nobel Prize, has been banned from official premises and will no longer be handed out in the country's parliament, the Swedish newspaper Svenska Dagbladet wrote earlier this week.

The Award, which has been presented in the Swedish parliament since 1985, became famous for such controversial' laureates as whistleblower Edward Snowden. Curiously, it was the very same Snowden who landed the award in trouble last time. In 2014, the organizers were asked to clear out after notoriously decorating the former US intelligence officer and current Russian citizen.

The debate surrounding the Right Livelihood Award flamed up anew last month when parliamentary speaker Urban Ahlin of the Social Democratic Party told the Swedish national broadcaster SVT that "parliament was not a conference center for external actors." The decision to ban the alternative Nobel prize' was upheld this week in parliament.
ALMATY (Sputnik)  Another terrorist was killed nearby when he opened fire at a police vehicle, according to the committee. Two police officers sustained minor injuries.

"A search operation led to the location of terrorists in an apartment on Nekrasov Street. During negotiations, the terrorists refused to surrender and opened fire. Subsequent attempts to persuade them to surrender were unsuccessfulfour terrorists who were in the apartment were eliminated," the committee said in a statement.
Since the end of the Korean War in 1953, two young states have divided by a demilitarized zone. The conflict is formally ongoing, as the sides signed an armistice, and not a peace treaty, at the end of the war.

The process towards a potential Korean reunification was started by the June 15, 2000 NorthSouth Joint Declaration, but the relations between the two Koreas later deteriorated as the North declared itself a nuclear power in 2005, keeping the neighboring states at bay and ignoring the calls to refrain from what the South deemed provocations.

Last month, Pyongyang urged Seoul to accept its offer to hold military talks and called for joint steps to carry out measures for national unity, citing the need to ease tensions on the Korean peninsula. South Korea rejected the proposal, demanding "a real turn" toward denuclearization.
NEW DELHI (Sputnik)  Indian Embassy is in close contact with senior Afghan authorities to secure the early release of Judith D'Souza who was kidnapped in the Afghan capital Kabul while returning home. The Indian government is also in constant touch with her family members in India.

India's Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj spoke to the family members of Judith D'Souza, a native of Kolkata, and assured them that the government will spare no stone unturned to rescue her.

"I have spoken to the sister of Judith D'Souza. We will spare no efforts to rescue her. She is our sister and India's daughter. We are doing everything to rescue her," Indian Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj tweeted.
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has appointed Swedish Major General Per Gustaf Lodin as a Chief Military Observer and Head of Mission for the United Nations Military Observer Group in India and Pakistan (UNMOGIP), the UN announced on Thursday.

With a distinguished military career in the Swedish Army which began in 1978, Major General Lodin most recently held the position of Director of Procurement and Logistics for the Swedish Armed Forces, according to an official UN press release.
The business had been operating in Goa for four years, Superintendent of Police Kartik Kashyap told reporters at a press conference. Models and upcoming models, as well as actors and TV stars were being supplied to customers at upscale hotels across the state. A list of clients, which includes the names of major political leaders and top executives, was also recovered during the police raid. A preliminary inquiry revealed that one customer was charged between 500,000 and 2,000,000 Indian rupees (US $7,500  US $30,000).

The case has been registered and the investigation is ongoing. The superintendent said the police are still searching for two of Kumar's partners.


MOSCOW (Sputnik)An imam and two worshippers were killed and around 60 others were hurt in a blast that hit a mosque in eastern Afghanistan during Friday prayers, local media reported.

"The explosives were placed in the pulpit of the mosque and exploded during the Friday prayers time," Atallah Khugiani, spokesman for the provincial governor, told Afghanistans 1TV channel.

The explosion occurred in the central mosque in the Rodat district of the turbulent eastern Nangarhar province on the border with Pakistan at a time when Muslims celebrate the holy month Ramadan.
Pathankot AFB spreads over 16 square kilometres and houses around 5,000 people.

Pathankot AFB was attacked in January this year when a group of armed terrorists entered the air base; in the ensuing gun battle, seven security personnel lost their life.

Defense experts opine that Pathankot is one of the largest air force bases in India and its security is of prime concern.

"What we have witnessed earlier at Pathankot air force base should not happen again in any of our bases. The government should take the utmost care and provide adequate security to all the air forces bases in India. The Pathankot Air Force Base terror attack has proven that our bases are vulnerable and there should be a thorough review of security at all the Indian air force bases. First and foremost, the government should demolish all illegally-built buildings within a meter of the air force bases," Wing Commander (Rtd) Prafull Bakshi told Sputnik.
Nityaranjan Pandey, 50, who was living in a Hindu ashram (monastery) in the Muslim-majority country, was hacked to death by unknown attackers just outside his shelter. He was working at the Sri Sri Thakur Anukul Chandra Satsangha Ashram in Bangladeshs north-western district of Pabna. He had been a volunteer at the monastery for nearly four decades and the locals say he did not have any enemies. His throat was slit with a sharp weapon indicating that the assailants were attempting to decapitate the victim.

To top that, Pandeys death was consistent with the previous murders carried by Bangladeshi Islamists against non-Muslims including secular bloggers and Hindus. The police have opened an investigation into the latest incident but so far they have been unable to contain such lone-wolf attacks by Islamist extremists. While there are several suspects, no group has yet claimed responsibility. Pandeys brutal murder occurred just as the Bangladeshi government launched a nationwide operation to tackle the Islamist assaults.

Speaking to Sputnik, Jayant Prasad, director of the well-known think tank Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses, said: In India, weve been watching with great disquiet the individual killings, which are very difficult for any government to deal with. The jury is still out on whether this is a widening problem. But, Daesh (Islamic State) has taken advantage of these killings of bloggers to proclaim they had a hand in it  which the government of Bangladesh has denied.
Four naval and marine boats entered neutral waters near the disputed area between the Koreas, to chase away ten Chinese fishing boats illegally harvesting profitable blue crabs, despite South Korea's numerous warnings.

"Diplomatic efforts have met their limits We've decided to enforce restrictions in cooperation with the United Nations Command," an unnamed South Korean military official said, according to South Korean Yonhap news agency.

The chase operation has been sanctioned by the United Nations Command (UNC), which governs the effective no-man's land in Yellow Sea, overseeing the armistice since the end of the Korean War in 1953.
"When you deorbit somewhat larger items, you would have a 'best practices' policy of making a controlled re-entry."

Other experts, however, maintain that the Heavenly Palace may yet have a long life ahead.

"It seems it may be much ado about nothing," TS Kelso of the Center for Space Standards & Innovation (CSSI) argued, citing a recent boost in Tiangong-1s orbit altitude. "That reboost put it higher than it had been any time prior to that in its mission."

"But we might expect to see the rate of decrease in altitude  the slope between reboosts  increase if it was tumbling, since the station would have higher drag," he told Space.com. "Instead, we see the slowest decrease in altitude in recent years  consistent with the lower drag at a higher altitude."

Thomas Dorman, an amateur satellite tracker, says Tiangong-1 could be in a kind of controlled free fall.
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  According to the BBC, the Bangladesh police is going after various types of suspects, not just those suspected of terror. The law enforcement agencies are using lists of wanted criminals, but they insist that the main goal is to disrupt terrorist networks.

"Many of them are suspected for other regular crimes. Police will interrogate them and try to find who is responsible for what," Shahidur Rahman, Deputy Inspector General of Police told the BBC Bengali.
MEXICO CITY (Sputnik)  The companys plants in Antimano and Valencia will be resuming work after a raw sugar shipment was received.

"Our goal is to optimize the distribution from the center of the country in order to meet the requirements of most customers and consumers throughout the national territory," the company said as quoted by El Financiero on Thursday.
SUKHUMI (Sputnik)  According to the prime minister, Abkhazia believes in a need to "strictly follow signed agreements, particularly with Rosneft."

"We are waiting for Rosneft itself to take action on starting to implement its project, but the deadlines are nearing and we don't like that much, and, of course, we would like to get some sort of explanation on this matter," Mikvabia said.

While not yet considering working with oil companies from other countries, Abkhazia will consider this if Rosneft fails to take action, he said.


MOSCOW (Sputnik)Earlier on Friday, Gazprom CEO Alexey Miller met with the CEO of Austria's OMV oil and gas company, Rainer Seele.

"The sides discussed issues of Russian gas exports to Austria. It was noted that it increased 11.5 percent in 2015 compared to 2014. In 2016, the republic's demand for Gazprom gas continues to grow. The volume of supplies between January 1 and June 9 exceeds 2016 figures year-on-year by 19.8 percent," Gazprom said in a statement following the meeting.

The sides also noted the on-schedule implementation of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline project to supply Russian gas to Europe, which OMV is involved in.
Salve Dahle from the Norwegian company Akvaplan-niva learned this maxim from a quarter-century of personal experience. In the early 1990's, his company was one of the first to enter the revived Russian market shortly after the Soviet Union's break-up, and it has remained active there ever since. In June, Akvaplan-niva commemorated the 25-year anniversary of its cooperation with Russia and the team is set to travel to St. Petersburg to meet their colleagues and participate in seminars and celebrations.

"We were among the first Westerners to sail into Russian territorial waters on a Russian research ship to investigate radiation exposure from the nuclear test fields on Novaya Zemlya and other pollutants along the Kola coast, in the eastern Barents Sea and in the Kara Sea," Dahle told the news outlet High North News.

According to Dalhe, the research partnership was successful due to his company's non-government status and broad expertise. With a specialty in aquaculture and environmental issues, Akvaplan-niva offers research and development solutions, consulting services as well as support in terms of technology and innovation. As early as 1992, Akvaplan-niva carried out its first-ever joint expedition with its Russian partners, landing on islands in the eastern Barents Sea. In turn, Russian researchers were invited to conduct a corresponding environmental assessment in Norwegian waters around Svalbard, which was greatly appreciated.
"Prospects for Russian energy supplies to the key markets are unfavorable. Once the Iran sanctions were removed at the beginning of this year, its supply of crude oil to China has increased from 410,000 barrels per day in January to 675,000 barrels per day in April 2016," the report reads.

The bank stressed that at the same time Russia managed to boost its oil supplies enhancing its position on the Chinese and the European markets.
Francis will be the third Pope to visit Auschwitz, preceded by Pope Benedict XVI, a German, in 2006, and Pope John Paul II, a Pole, in 1979.

Located in the town of Oswiecim, around 70 km from Krakow, Auschwitz-Birkenau was one of the so-called death camps built by Nazi Germany specifically to exterminate people. Some 1.4 million, 1.1 million of them Jews, were killed at Auschwitz between 1941-1945, by the Nazis. Other victims included non-Jewish Poles, gypsies and Soviet prisoners.
LUHANSK, June 10 (Sputnik)  Kiev launched a special military operation in Ukraines southeast in April 2014, after local residents refused to recognize the new Ukrainian authorities, which came to power as a result of a coup.

After independence referendums held in May 2014, the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Lugansk peoples republics (DPR and LPR) were established.

"The camp is special because it will have a unique educational program from four ministries  the ministry of information, the ministry of security, interior ministry and health ministry," Stolyarenko explained.
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  On Thursday, media reports, citing the Georgian Defense Ministry, suggested that Tbilisi did not send its troops to the NATO drills in Poland, as some of the Georgian servicemen had been diagnosed with chickenpox. According to the reports, only head of the General Staff of the Georgian Armed Forces Vakhtang Kapanadze was expected to arrive at the drills in Poland.

According to the Polish Press Agency, Warsaw awaits an official statement on Georgia's decision.

Anaconda 2016, one of the greatest military drills held in Poland over 25 years, began on Monday. It involves troops from over 20 NATO member states, bringing together some 31,000 servicemen, 100 aircraft, 12 vessels and 3,000 vehicles.
Since 1969, Sweden's constitution has banned the government from keeping track of people's personal opinions. However, officials are investigating whether there is some room left for police to compile lists of terrorist sympathizers in order to combat crime.

Sweden can't collect sensitive information about people such as their political opinions or religious affiliations without a serious justification, Mark Naarttijarvi, a lecturer at the Department of Law at Umea University, told Swedish Radio. Naarttijarvi has conducted research on SAPO's methods of monitoring and retrieving information.

"The relevant question is what the security police mean by the concept of 'sympathy,' whether it is something expressed in action or simply involves ideas in a particular person's head. Think of someone contacting the security police to inform them of another person who seems to think that Daesh is okay," Naarttijarvi said.
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  Earlier in June, Spanish Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Garcia-Margallo reiterated the idea of sharing sovereignty over Gibraltar with the United Kingdom if the Britain decides to leave the European Union, saying that it would allow Gibraltar to maintain access to the EU single market.

Gibraltar will never ever agree to Joint Sovereignty with Spain or any other nation. We are 100-percent British, Picardo said.

On June 23 the UK will hold a referendum on whether to stay in the EU or leave the bloc. In case of Brexit, Gibraltar's thriving services-based economy may see a dramatic decrease, as it largely relies on access to the EU single market.


MOSCOW (Sputnik)Between January and June, 6,866 migrants arrived in Europe by land and 207,260 arrived by land, according to the IOM.

A total of 2,856 people were either dead or missing, IOM figures said.

In a previous update made on Tuesday, the IOM said that 206,400 migrants entered Europe by sea in 2016 as of June 5, with 2,809 fatalities recorded.
KIEV (Sputnik)  It will be impossible to hold elections in eastern Ukraine in the next two years and thus the question about the special status of Donbass region must be examined separately from the issue of constitutional amendments, Zoryan Shkiryak, adviser to the Ukrainian interior minister, said Friday.

"The elections in the Donbas in the next year or two will be impossible to carry out. Therefore, the talks on the special status of Donbass must be endured beyond any constitutional changes and decentralization," Shkiryak said, as quoted by Ukraine 112 TV channel.

Under the Minsk peace deal, constitutional reforms aimed at decentralizing power in Ukraine and the initiation of local elections in Donbas should have been concluded before the end of 2015. The country's southeastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk agreed to postpone their local elections until 2016. Before elections in those regions can take place, Ukrainian authorities must fulfill all their obligations under the Minsk peace accords.
Hungary, however, says they arrived from various other countries within the Schengen area to where  under the Dublin agreement  they should be returned by Austria. The issue is hugely contentious in Hungary, which is to hold a referendum in September or October on whether to accept any future European Union quota system for resettling migrants.

The issue goes to the heart of the core principles of the European Union: the freedom of movement of people, trade, services and capital. The Schengen area was created to introduce a borderless Europe, where participating countries removed all border checks and controls.
The ban does not apply to commissioners, however EC president Jean-Claude Juncker avoided using the term at the G7 summit in Japan recently.

According to an email that was leaked to Politico, the EC has issued an official document on what acceptable wording and term use.

Can the terms Brexit and Bremain be banned as of NOW?



I'm getting a bit sick and tired with it all now!#MiniRant  JamieRadio (@jamieradio) June 6, 2016

A memo on the Commission's "Line to Take" was emailed to all officials in the EU.

The document states that it is "for the British people to decide if they want the UK to remain a member of the European Union." There was also a statement within the document which suggested that the EC had no actual plan B, if the UK decided to leave the EU.

"The Commission does not want to enter into the details of plan B, because we do not have a plan B, we have a plan A: Britain should stay in the European Union as a constructive and active member of the EU," read a line from the EC memo.

The full statement can be read here.
TBILISI (Sputnik)  Any expectations that the decision on the EU-Georgia visa liberalization will be made at the EU interior ministers' Friday meeting are premature, the Georgian parliament speaker said.

In March, the European Commission proposed to the EU Council and the European Parliament to lift visa obligations for the citizens of Georgia. However, no decision on the issue has been approved by either of the EU bodies so far.

"Our meetings with members of the parliament and other influential people once again assure us that we are dealing with the postponing of the process and not with other worse circumstance. Thus, it is all about to be decided soon The [Georgian] prime minister will arrive in Germany very soon and, probably, more specific dates and a format of decisions will become known," David Usupashvili, who is currently on an official visit to Germany, stressed.
"It shows how nervous the Ukrainian side is. It means that Kiev is afraid of losing the ability to maintain the current sentiment towards Crimea," Maurer said.

He also remarked that during his trip to Crimea he failed to notice any effect from the anti-Russian sanctions, save perhaps for the fact that the locals ability to travel abroad was effectively denied.

"It means that the West essentially punishes the people of Crimea for the referendum, and it worries me. But here in Germany the sanctions are also hurting us. The local businessmen are worried by sanctions, and are beginning to claim that the sanctions are pointless. Not a single sector of the German economy can afford to deprive itself of the Russian market in the long-term," he explained.

All in all, Maurer said that hopefully the politicians will eventually see reason and realize that simply ignoring the current situation in Crimea will get them nowhere.

"A popular vote is the highest form of legitimization. Personally, I have no doubts that the people made their decision voluntarily. And sooner or later the Western politicians will have to recognize this," Maurer surmised.
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  Two Ukrainian citizens have been arrested on the migrant smuggling charges by an Italian law enforcement agency, Guardia di Finanza (GdF), and local police in city of Crotone in Italian Calabria, local media reported Friday.

The suspects were intercepted after they disembarked 16 Syrian migrants and were leaving the coastal town of Isola Capo Rizzuto for the international waters, Gazzetta del Sud reported. The Ukrainian nationals were identified as smugglers by the migrants themselves.

Europe has been beset by a massive refugee crisis, with hundreds of thousands of undocumented migrants fleeing their crisis-torn countries in the Middle East and North Africa to escape violence and poverty. The majority of them cross the Mediterranean Sea and arrive in the European Union using southern EU nations as transit points. More than 1.8 million refugees are estimated to have arrived in the European Union in 2015, according to the European border agency Frontex.
TBILISI (Sputnik)  The Georgian Orthodox Church will not take part in the Pan-Orthodox Council in Crete , local media reported Friday.

The Georgian Orthodox Church has not made an official statement over this issue yet, the Imedi TV broadcaster said.

The Holy and Great Council of the Orthodox Church, also known as the Pan-Orthodox Council, is a planned synod of the bishops of all autocephalous local churches of Eastern Orthodox Christianity. The Council is set be held on the Greek island of Crete on June 16-27, after more than 50 years of preparations. The Bulgarian Orthodox Church, the Antiochian Orthodox Church, and the Serbian Orthodox Church refused to participate in the Council.
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  The directive proposes stricter measures in virtually every aspect of gun control, like acquisition and possession, traffic, deactivation and traceability among others.

"After the tragic terrorist attacks in Paris and Brussels the Justice and Home Affairs Ministers asked for a swift adoption of the directive. With this new directive the Netherlands Presidency has achieved a just and fair balance between an internal market for allowed firearms on the one hand and enhancing the security of EU citizens on the other," President of the Council Ard van Der Steur said, as quoted in the press release.

Europe has been recently hit by a series of terrorist attacks, including in Paris on November 13, 2015 and in Brussels on March 22.
BELGRADE (Sputnik)  Two crew members sustained injuries as a military helicopter crashed in Montenegro's capital of Podgorica on Friday, local media reported.

A military pilot was severely wounded, while his co-pilot received lighter injuries in the incident, which took place at about 1:00 p.m. local time (11:00 GMT), the Montenegrin Vijesti daily newspaper said, citing the Defense Ministry.

"Helicopter of the Army of Montenegro  Gazelle HN  45M, number 12941  crashed today around 1 pm [11:00 GMT] near Komanski most in Podgorica, during the execution of regular planned flight training. Deputy Commander of the Air Forces of Montenegro Colonel Namik Arifovic and clerk at Flight Operations Desk Lieutenant Colonel Miroljub Antanasijevic were aboard," the Montenegro Defense Ministry said in a statement.
BRUSSELS (Sputnik)  European Commission Vice-President for EU Budget and Human Resources Kristalina Georgieva and Digital Economy and Society Commissioner Gunther Oettinger will attend the upcoming St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF) , the European Commission said Friday.

According to the commissioners' weekly activities plan, Georgieva will participate in the forum's work and speak at the panel "The Role of New Development Institutions in Realizing Growth Ambitions" on June 17. Oettinger will deliver a speech at SPIEF on June 17.

European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker will come to SPIEF as well. He is due to hold talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin to discuss relations between Brussels and Moscow during the event.
"For the theft we are fining you 135 (US$194), for each of the charges of impersonating a doctor we are fining you 100 (US$143) You must also pay a victim surcharge of 20 (US$29) and a contribution towards the court costs of 85 (US$122)."

Acquaintances of Ms Caine have since suggested that her actions were not necessarily malicious  and she didn't have any actual patient contact  she simply wanted to give the impression that she was a doctor in order to make herself feel more important.

The Medical Act of 1983, states that it is a criminal offense to: "wilfully and falsely pretend to be or use the name or title of physician." Furthermore, the Fraud Act of 2006 also makes it an offense to be "Dishonestly making a false representation to make a gain for oneself or another or to cause loss to another or to expose another to a risk of loss."

Ms Caine has been released on conditional bail, and is subject to a complete ban on entering buildings  or grounds  of any medical facilities in the UK, other than for "genuine medical emergencies".
BRUSSELS (Sputnik)  Belgian police have arrested one more suspect in the Brussels terror attacks' case , who is charged with terrorism offenses, the Belgian Federal Prosecutor's Office said Friday.

According to the prosecutor's office, a 31-year-old Belgian citizen, identified as Ali E.H.A., was detained on Thursday in the Brussels district of Schaerbeek, where those who staged suicide bombings in the European capital used to live.

"He has been arrested by a judicial investigator on charges of participating in the activity of a terrorist group, murder in the context of terrorism and attempted murder in the terrorism context both as an actual doer and an accomplice," the prosecutor's statement reads.
According to the survey, only 51 percent of respondents favor the EU while 47 percent feel pessimistic about its performance. At the same time, about 42 percent of respondents believe that their countries should wield greater authority.

While approximately 72 percent of respondents from Poland and 61 percent of respondents from Bulgaria named themselves as EU supporters, only 27 percent of Greeks, 38 percent of the French and 47 percent of Spaniards shared their point of view.

Furthermore, the majority of respondents believe that Brussels is unable to deal with the ongoing migrant crisis, and many of those interviewed were also dissatisfied with how the EU is handling the current economic crisis as well.
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and his French counterpart Jean-Marc Ayrault have discussed settling the political crisis in Libya, the Russian Foreign Minister said Friday.

"The issues of overcoming the Libyan crisis were discussed in the context of the French chairmanship in the UN Security Council. Lavrov has confirmed Russia's readiness to actively facilitate intra-Libyan settlement, stressing that it must be based on the Schirat political agreement with the involvement all of the country's leading political forces," the ministry said in a statement after Lavrov's phone conversation with Ayrault.

Lavrov also has a phone conversation with German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, discussing the situation in the Middle East and Ukraine.
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  Polish police arrested two people in the city of Olsztyn suspected of keeping big arsenal of the weapons and explosive materials as well as of planning attacks, local media reported Friday.

According to the Onet news portal, the operation was held by the Internal Security Agency and district Prosecutor's Office. According to Cezary Fiertek, a Prosecutor's Office representative, the detainees have already been charged under several articles, as quoted in the publication.

Wojciech K., one of the detainees, is charged with keeping over five kg (11 pounds) of explosive materials and planning to carry out an attack of a terrorist character. Christopher G., the second detainee, is charged with illegal keeping of firearms with telescopic sight, two machine guns and a pistol, according to the media outlet.
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  Many European lawmakers agree with the necessity of easing the anti-Russia sanctions but are afraid to voice this opinion, a French parliamentarian and a co-author of a resolution calling for alleviation of the restrictions told Sputnik.

On Wednesday, the French Senate passed by overwhelming majority a resolution calling on the government to ease sanctions against Russia. The National Assembly, France's lower house of parliament, adopted a similar resolution in April.

"We shall talk with our colleagues and we shall try to advance this point of view among our colleagues, but I think many of our colleagues agree with us, but few dare to express it, and maybe our position will allow them to speak more loudly," Simon Sutour said.


MOSCOW (Sputnik)She earlier said should Brexit happen then Scotland would almost certainly have a second independence referendum.

"Scotland uses the pound. It's our currency just as it is your currency, and that's the currency I think we should continue to use," Sturgeon said as quoted by the BBC.

UK citizens are set to vote on June 23 in a referendum on the country's EU membership, after British Prime Minister David Cameron and the leaders of the 27 other EU member states reached a deal in February to grant the United Kingdom a special status within the bloc.
MADRID (Sputnik)  Spain is going to take in some 1,000 refugees by the end of summer, acting Interior Minister of Spain Jorge Fernandez Diaz said Friday.

"We would like a thousand refugees from Greece, Italy, Lebanon and Turkey to arrive to Spain by the end of summer," Diaz told reporters adding that this move will make Spain the country which received the largest number of refugees according to the EU quota.

To date, Spain has only taken in 124 refugees under the EU quota out of 17,000 it is obliged to take in by the end of 2017. Another 285 people from a refugee camp in Lebanon will arrive in June.
KIEV (Sputnik)  Earlier on Friday, Russian Consul General in Odessa Valery Katunkin told media that Ukrainian radicals, in particular members of the Right Sector and the Azov Battalion had blocked entry to the building to stop people from attending events held ahead of Sunday's Russia Day. The nationalist protesters pelted the building with eggs and built mock gallows nearby, according to Katunkin.

"Everything there is finished, there are no instances of disorderly conduct, everything is calm," the Odessa Region police press service told RIA Novosti.

Previously, protesters vowed to prevent anyone from attending Russia Day events in the consulate building. Ukrainian media cited a picket leader as saying that the radicals want to identify those invited as supporters of an "aggressor country." Police were later deployed to the area but did not interfere.
With regards to the expansion of the system, the retired Brigadier General said that it will likely spark a new arms race.

The problem of the current Turkish leadership is that they do not study the history of the issue, he said.

He further explained that the history of the expansion of the missile defense system dates back to the the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (ABM Treaty or ABMT) which was signed between the US and the Soviet Union back in 1972 on the limitation of the anti-ballistic missile (ABM) systems used in defending areas against ballistic missile-delivered nuclear weapons.

The major purpose of the treaty was to prevent further escalation of the arms race, he said.

However in 2002 the US unilaterally withdrew from the treaty. And it was the US, not Russia, who actually renewed the arms race, the retired Brigadier General noted.

Is the foreign minister aware of this fact? he questioned.
BERLIN (Sputnik)  German domestic intelligence chief Hans-Georg Maassen suggested that US National Security Agencys ex-contractor Edward Snowden was a Russian spy, the German parliament said in a Friday press release.

Snowden, who is residing in Russia, provided UK media with top secret NSA files in 2013 revealing that the online spy agency was covertly sifting through communications of millions in the United States and abroad.

"Snowden seems to have plundered the NSA like no one else ever plundered a US intelligence agency before," Maassen speculated during a closed parliament hearing on Thursday.
"Unmet needs remain significant, as living conditions in the sites in Greece, both on the islands and the mainland, have deteriorated as a result of congestion and the rapid nature in which sites were established on the mainland. The affected population includes many people with specific needs, such as unaccompanied or separated children, single women, pregnant or lactating women, the elderly, people with disabilities, as well as the sick and injured," Spindler said.

Since the beginning of 2016, over 147,000 migrants have arrived in Greece out of a total of some 160,000 arrivals to Europe via the Mediterranean, according to the International Organization for Migration.

Macedonia closed its border with Greece to incoming migrants in February after other countries along the Balkan route had closed their borders, including Serbia, Hungary, Croatia, Slovenia and Austria. The border closures have resulted in thousands of refugees being stranded in Greece, particularly along the border with Macedonia.
"If yesterday people simply did not know what it means to be in the crosshairs in those areas of Romania, then today we will be forced to carry out certain measures to ensure our security. And it will be the same with Poland," Putin said.

"According to Cavusoglu, this statement was intended as a literal threat against NATO allies in the country that is a member of the alliance."

NATO expansion in Eastern Europe has earned criticism from a number of experts. In an article for Die Zeit, journalist Jochen Bittner writes that "NATO is possibly about to make one of the biggest mistakes in its history."

"Immediately after the opening of the missile station in Romania, the Head of Arms Control Department in the Russian Foreign Ministry, Mikhail Ulyanow noted that, in Russias view, this represents a violation of the INF Treaty."
Professor Curtice from University of Strathclyde explained that the two dominant methods of polling in the UK just now are telephone and internet polls, as opposed to companies which carry out door to door surveys. However, the picture they paint is not consistent: Although in truth we dont know how close the referendum is because the polls that are done over the internet consistently present the picture as being much narrower between the two sides than those over the phone.

He highlighted that polls on social media cannot be trusted at all, as well as polls which are often promoted by the media  often it is those polls which are more accurate but less sensational, which get ignored. In addition, polls do not always accurately represent the voting population as those people who are more interested in politics tend to take part in polls and traditionally Conservative party supporters do not take part in polls in the same way as supporters of other parties. In the case of the EU referendum polls he noted that Leave supporters in the EU referendum are more active than Remain supporters.

On the other hand, with current polls demonstrating a close vote, he suggests that this leaves both sides reckoning that maybe they have a chance. John Harrison then asked why is it that when the EU population indicates a 50/50 split over Brexit, 70% of EU citizens say theyre not happy with the EU. Curtice explained that there were two main reasons for this: firstly, people are not happy with the way in which the EU dealt with the refugee crisis last summer and secondly, there is a degree of discontent regarding how the EU dealt with the financial crisis.
The initiative was proposed by the Portuguese company within the Fight Against Food Waste campaign. In addition, it aims to draw consumers' attention to the difference between the "use by" and the "best before" recommendations, the company official said.

The firm, based in Vila do Conde a city in the north of Portugal, sells products online at goodafter.com and guarantees delivery within 24 hours. The shop is directly supplied by product manufacturers, some of whom are "famous brands", Chantal de Gispert, a store manager and one of the project founders, told Lusa news agency. The supermarket has the permission of the Portuguese main veterinary department, phytosanitary body and national food safety authority. Some products sold on the website can be found at a discount up to 70%.
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  Venezuela's National Electoral Council (CNE) warned the opposition that any violent incidents in the country will lead to the suspension of the referendum on the Nicolas Maduro impeachment, local media reported Friday.

"Any assault, disorderly conduct or violence will lead to the immediate suspension of the process until order is restored," CNE president Tibisay Lucena said as quoted by teleSUR TV broadcaster.

Last week, the Venezuelan opposition reported that CNE had acknowledged 1.3 million signatures, collected by the opposition to hold the referendum on the Maduro impeachment as valid. A total of 7,587,532 votes, which is the number of votes Maduro received when was elected in 2013, is needed at the referendum to remove the president.
The radio and television chain Argentina Sociedad del Estado (RTA SE), which manages the countrys state media, has suspended transmission of the TV news channel RT as part of national broadcasts. According to an official report, the suspension will take effect within 60 days.

The channel will still remain available in paid TV packages.

In an official notification posted by RT Spanish, RTA SE's Maria Eugenia Martinez said that the suspension "does not preclude the conclusion of other future collaboration agreements." Martinez also expressed gratitude for the contribution of RT Spanish to national broadcasts.
Financial Times reporter William Wallis wrote on Monday that by recapturing Raqqa ahead of American-backed forces, the Russian and Syrian armies would "poke the Americans in the eye in a place they have long talked of helping to recapture."

What has been to date a productive competition could erupt into a conflict between the partners, with the two-sides sharing very different geopolitical views. Russia believes it is necessary to prop up the Assad regime, at least until Daesh has been vanquished. The United States believes it is necessary to support opposition forces and oust Assad. The US effort has often stumbled, with American weaponry consistently falling into the hands of al-Nusra terrorists aligned with violent rebel groups.

Others see the retreat by Kurdish-dominated forces as acquiescence by American military strategists, suggesting that the US and Russia are coordinating efforts to liberate territory in Syria.
Now the Obama administration's drawdowns are likely to be put aside, justified by escalating violence in Afghanistan. A resurgent Taliban has reportedly increased its activity in the southern part of Afghanistan, mostly in the provinces of Helmand, Kandahar and Uruzgan, and has sporadically conducting strikes elsewhere, including the northern province of Kunduz, killing approximately 3500 civilians in 2015.

When asked about the Pentagon's views on Afghanistan, DoD spokesman Peter Cook answered cryptically, "In every step of our review of Afghanistan, the question of what's the best way to use our forces is something we're constantly looking at. It's also in the same sense that we're looking at the number of troops."

The likely decision to extend US military authority over Afghanistan comes in light of the slow realization of any coherent official Afghan military, as well as the resilience of the Taliban. The number of US troops in the country will likely remain at the current 9,800 level, as favored by former top US commander in Afghanistan General John Campbell. The current top commander, General John Nicholson, has reportedly discussed his recommendations with Defense Secretary Ashton Carter, but details have not been disclosed.

During his participation in the recent G7 summit in Japan, President Obama said that he hopes that, at some point, the Taliban will "recognize that they are not going to simply be able to overrun the country" and that they will come to the negotiating table, a move that "the United States and others in the world community would support."
HMEYMIM (Sputnik)  The Al Qaeda-linked Nusra Front continued to fight for control of the war-scarred city of Aleppo, Syria and the surrounding region, leaving one child dead and 8 other civilians injured, according to the representative.

"Tonight, militants from the international terrorist organization Jabhat al-Nusra shelled the city of Handarat and the Sheikh Maqsood neighborhood [Kurdish neighborhood in the city of Aleppo] in the province of Aleppo," the representative said on Friday.

"Jabhat al-Nusra do not stop shelling of the Kurdish district of Sheikh Maqsood in northern Aleppo. The terrorists fire from the area of Castello shopping center, previously occupied by the moderate opposition forces," the representative said.
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  According to the statement, the TAK had declared a "war" against the Turkish armed forces to take vengeance for the Kurds killed by Ankara.

In recent weeks, several attacks were reportedly carried out by the Kurds in Turkey, including Wednesday's suicide bombing outside a police headquarters, which killed at least five people.

"We warn all tourists who might plan to visit Turkey! You are not our targets but Turkey is no longer safe for you," the TAK's statement read.
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  Daesh leader was injured near the border between Syria and Iraq, Al Kalima reports citing sources familiar with the matter.

The information has yet to be officially confirmed.

According to the source, the attack was part of an intelligence plan, as the intelligence forces were following Baghdadi and his accomplices as the Daesh leaders were expected to have come from Syria to Iraq to have a meeting at an Daesh headquarters.
HMEYMIM (Syria) (Sputnik)  Positions of the Syrian army in the southern outskirts of the city of Aleppo were attacked by terrorists, a representative of the Russian center for Syrian reconciliation at the Hmeymim airbase said Friday.

"In the southern outskirts of the city of Aleppo, in the town of Ansar, positions of the government troops were attacked by groups of militants from military organizations. The militants are using small arms, grenade launchers, anti-aircraft mountings and mortars," the representative said.

The representative also added that the militants shelled several towns in the Aleppo governorate as well as a number of districts of the city of Aleppo killing 54 civilians and wounding another 93 people.
DAMASCUS (Sputnik)  The Daesh terrorists killed 36 civilians from the town of Ghandoura near the city of Manbij in the Aleppo governorate, a Kurdish source told Sputnik.

Most victims are said to be women and children.

The source said that the Daesh terrorists were dressed in the uniform of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) to carry out a sudden attack on the Military Council of Manbij.
TEL-AVIV (Sputnik)  Closing borders for the Palestinians before Jewish holidays is a common practice of the Israeli authorities. However, the most recent IDF announcement comes following the Wednesday's shooting in Tel Aviv, when two Palestinian gunmen from the Hebron area opened fire near the Sarona market, killing four people.

"In accordance with the governments instructions and basing on the ongoing assessments of the operational situation, since today checkpoints on borders with the Gaza Strip and Samaria and Judea [Israeli acronym for the West Bank] will be opened for the Palestinians only for medical and humanitarian purposes," the spokesperson said.


ANAKRA (Sputnik)The airstrikes were carried out early in the morning in a rural area of Daglca in the southeastern province of Hakkari, Todays Zaman daily newspaper reported, citing the statement of the General Staff.

In summer 2015, Turkey launched a military operation against the PKK group in the country's southeastern regions after a number of terror attacks, for which the Kurds were allegedly responsible.

Since the beginning of the campaign, Ankara has imposed several round-the-clock curfews, preventing civilians from fleeing the regions where the military operations are taking place.


BAGHDAD (Sputnik)Iraqi security sources foiled a terrorist attack north of Baghdad on Friday, killing a suicide bomber, Baghdad police said.

"The terrorist in a suicide belt tried to attack a military station near a channel of the Tigris river north of Baghdad," Saad Maan said.

According to Maan, the servicemen shot the extremist, causing his suicide belt to explode. No soldiers were injured in the incident.


MOSCOW (Sputnik)French forces stationed in northern Syria have begun constructing a military base near the city of Kobani in Aleppo province, a Kurdish source told Sputnik on Friday.

"The French have begun constructing a military base similar to the US military bases French experts and military advisers working in the region will be stationed there," the source said.

According to the source, French, UK and US experts are stationed in the city of Manbij in the same province to consult the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces militias.
WASHINGTON (Sputnik)  The US-led coalition against the Daesh conducted 19 airstrikes in Iraq and Syria on Thursday against the terror group, the US Central Command (CENTCOM) said in a press release.

"In Syria, coalition military forces conducted nine strikes using bomber, attack, fighter, and remotely piloted aircraft against Daesh targets," the release stated on Friday. "Additionally in Iraq, coalition military forces conducted 10 strikes coordinated with and in support of the government of Iraq using ground-attack, attack, and fighter aircraft against Daesh targets."

The coalition carried out eight strikes near the Syrian city of Manbij, hitting eight separate Islamic State units and destroying 11 positions and a vehicle. Near Abu Kamal, one strike destroyed an oil pump jack.
Muhammad Al-Rashidi, the director of these series called "Mini Daesh," invites people from all walks of life to take part in his show.

The participants are always unaware of what theyre about to experience: for example, celebrities are often led to believe that theyre about to take part in some sort of a charity event. But in the end, all of them end up in "the lair of Daesh terrorists" which looks frighteningly authentic, just as the actors disguised as the Daesh militants.

In the descriptions provided during some of the episodes, the series creators state that it is merely a prank show which prompt its participants to look at their life at a different angle after ending up in "the clutches of terrorists."
Netanyahus dehumanizing statement marks a shift in the countrys politics toward embracing a far-right agenda, in stark opposition to what the United Nations, and much of the world, regards as the recognition of the independent Palestinian state.

The shift began when far-right Israeli legislator Avigdor Liberman was appointed as the countrys new minister of defense in May. The conservative politician has previously called for establishing a military state in the occupied territories to "rein in terrorism," a position that many note would exacerbate the apartheid-like struggle that Palestinians currently suffer.

Israels drift toward the far right took a more entrenched tone on May 31, when influential Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked shook the Washington-consensus two-state solution position saying, "As long as we are in the government, there will be no Palestinian state, there will be no settlement evacuations and we will not give any land to our enemies."
On Monday, the UN Secretary General aimed to contain controversy surrounding the removal of Saudi-Arabia from the list, despite strong evidence linking Riyadh to catastrophic bombing attacks on schools and hospitals in Yemen, by asserting that the move was temporary while UN and Saudi officials jointly review the evidence, arguing that the accuracy of UN charges was paramount.

But on Thursday, Ban Ki-moon annulled his previous statement, explaining that the collateral terror wrought upon Yemenis by the Saudi monarchy under the guise of fighting the Houthi political opposition faction was unconscionable.

"The report describes horrors no child should have to face," Ban Ki-moon said at a news conference. "But at the same time, I also had to consider the very real prospect that millions of other children would suffer grievously if, as was suggested to me, countries would defund UN programs. Children already at risk in Palestine, South Sudan, Syria, Yemen, and so many other places would fall further into despair."
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  In late May, the Syrian Democratic Forces troops announced an offensive operation against the Daesh group. One of the goals of the operation supported by the US-led coalition is to liberate the city of Manbij.

The US-Russian brokered ceasefire entered into force on ceasefire agreement came into force across Syria on February 27. Terrorist organizations such the Daesh and the Nusra Front, both outlawed in Russia, are excluded from the truce.

"As a result of indiscriminate night-time mortar shelling of Sheikh Maqsood quarter, a child was killed, and eight civilians were wounded. Five residential buildings were damaged," the ministry said in a daily bulletin posted on its website.
Last Friday, France hosted an international meeting in Paris attended by more than two dozen Western and Arab countries. The meeting was dedicated to an attempt to come up with a new strategy for peace in Middle East and restart Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, dormant for almost two years. The participants welcomed the "prospect" of a conference with both parties later this year.

In the wake of the attack, Tel Aviv Mayor Ron Huldai reportedly stated that "no one has the courage" to find peace with the Palestinians, and called for attempts to strike an agreement.

"You can't hold people in a situation of occupation and hope they'll reach the conclusion everything is alright," he said.

His statement later was dismissed by hardliner Israeli officials as "bizarre" and "delusional."
WASHINGTON (Sputnik)  On June 3, the 6th Fleet launched its first sorties in support of the fight against the Daesh terrorist group from an aircraft carrier in the eastern Mediterranean. The strike group includes the Nimitz-class aircraft carrier Harry S. Truman, the guided missile cruiser Anzio and the destroyer Gonzalez, according to the Navy.

"USS Springfield (SSN 761), homeported in Groton, Connecticut, is currently deployed conducting naval operations in the US 6th Fleet in support of US national security interests in Europe," the Navy stated on Thursday.

The submarine has already carried out several port visits and engaged with US allies, according to the release.
Lockstep US support for the Saudis and Turks fanatical insistence in foisting a sectarian war on Syria in an attempt to install a Sunni theocracy in place of the secular Damascus government lies at the root of the conflict and is what keeps it going.

The US government still sought to protect the Syrian al-Qaeda affiliate known as the al-Nusra Front and such supposedly moderate terrorist groups like Ahrar ash-Sham despite their record of atrocities and cooperation with al-Qaeda, Jatras observed.

Unless and until the Obama Administration frees itself from the baleful influence of its clients (or perhaps its patrons?) in Riyadh and Ankara, this pattern is unlikely to end.

Even if some military gains can be made against Daesh in isolation, the Obama Administration and its Middle East allies still want leverage for an eventual regime change outcome, which would mean preserving some sort of radical Sunni presence in Syria, Jatras explained.

Syrias Sunnis are not the ones demanding Wahhabist Sharia [Islamic law] in their country. Most Syrian Sunnis support a national, secular state. Syria would not have lasted a day, much less five years of outside aggression, without Sunnis in the army, in the government agencies, in the business community.

The Damascus government was not sectarian and most of the generals in the Syrian Army and most of President Bashar Assads Cabinet are Sunni, Jatras noted.
"On June 13-15 Johnson will visit Beijing, China to participate in a series of high-level meetings with Chinese officials," the release stated. "Johnson will join Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch to co-chair the Second US-China High-Level Joint Dialogue on Cybercrime and Related Issues."

The US and China have experienced tension in their relationship recently over Chinese construction in the South China Sea and an expansion of US military presence in the Asia-Pacific region.
In late 2015, the Polish authorities adopted a set of controversial media and constitutional court laws, including amendments to the law on the Constitutional Tribunal influencing the independence of its judges, that have been widely criticized both in Poland and abroad. The Constitutional Tribunal recognized the unconstitutionality of new legislation in its March ruling, which the Polish government refused to publish to prevent it from being considered legally binding.

In mid-January, the European Commission began a preliminary review of whether the new laws introduced by the Polish government were in breach of the European Union's founding principle on the rule of law.
According to Sartaj Aziz, the adviser to Pakistan's prime minister on foreign affairs, Washington approaches Islamabad whenever it needs it and leaves Pakistan when it does not need it anymore.

"Pakistan will convey its concerns to US over the latest issues in the bilateral ties," Aziz said as quoted by the local Dawn newspaper.
On Wednesday, the French Senate passed by overwhelming majority a resolution calling on the government to ease sanctions against Russia. The National Assembly, France's lower house of parliament, adopted a similar resolution in April.

"We will propose introducing a similar resolution in the [EU] states national parliaments. Whether they will vote for or against, whats important here is not the result, but the fact of raising this issue," Pozzo di Borgo told Izvestia.
Muslim attacks against the United States and Americans around the world were responses to US aggressive military operations carried out in ever-increasing numbers since the al-Qaeda attacks of September 11, 2001, also known as 9/11, Pierce explained.

The US attacks on Muslim countries as targets of opportunity since 9/11 is the true cause of terrorism but entrapping these people as the FBI is doing serves to distract us from the real issues.

American media sympathetic coverage of the sting operations also ensured continued popular support for high levels of military and intelligence service funding, Pierce pointed out.

It ensures a steady transfer of wealth to the national security apparatchiks at the cost of providing for real economic needs.

Daesh has been designated as a terrorist organization and is outlawed in the United States and Russia, among numerous other states.
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  The peace will be possible only if both sides of the conflict "have enough political will":

"This is an area where we believe that with sufficient will, particularly on the side of the Russians but to some extent obviously on the Ukrainian side as well, we have the wherewithal to resolve the issue and implement Minsk [agreements] in a time that remains," Rice told The Washington Post in an interview on Thursday, referring to the end of Obama's term expiring in January 2017.

She reaffirmed that the United States is regarding the Minsk agreements as means of resolving the Ukrainian conflict.
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  The movement of US aircraft carrier Harry Truman in the Mediterranean Sea is a "show of power" ahead of the NATO summit in Warsaw, the head of the Russian Foreign Ministry's European Cooperation Department said Friday.

"There is nothing special about the movement of US vessels in this case. We know that aircraft carriers are moving in the Mediterranean Sea and elsewhere, they have a right to do so, the right of innocent passage," Andrei Kelin told RIA Novosti.

"As for the situation on the whole, there is a certain increase in tension, all this is done ahead of the NATO summit in Warsaw, it is a show of power," he added.
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  The extension of the Western anti-Russia sanctions would not be a surprise, Alexei Pushkov, the Foreign Affairs Committee chairman in the lower house of the Russian parliament, said on Friday.

In late May, Japan host the G7 summit. British Prime Minister David Cameron said then that the G7 states  Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States  had decided to extend sanctions against Russia in June.

"The signals from the West on the extension of sanctions are not a surprise. The decision was taken at the G7 [summit]. Since then, other options have been excluded," Pushkov wrote on Twitter.


MOSCOW (Sputnik)The presidents of Russia, Armenia and Azerbaijan could hold a trilateral meeting, and work on this matter is underway, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Friday.

"Work in this direction is being carried out. We are not excluding that such meetings could take place. If this gets finally confirmed, we will provide information," Peskov told journalists, answering a question about reports that the three leaders would be meeting in St. Petersburg.


MOSCOW (Sputnik)Jean-Claude Juncker, the head of the European Commission will discuss Brussels-Moscow relations with Russian President Vladimir Putin during his visit to the upcoming St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF), the Deputy Chief Spokeswoman of the European Commission said Friday.

"Im sure they will discuss the relations between the EU and Russia," Mina Andreeva told a press conference.

According to the spokeswoman, Juncker assured last week that there would be no "softening of European positions in St. Petersburg."
BERLIN (Sputnik)  German Chancellor Angela Merkel will start the official visit to China on June 11 for participation in the Germany-China intergovernmental consultations, a source in the chancellor's office said Friday.

"This is the official visit, [the Chinese] prime minister will accept the delegation with military honors," the source told reporters, adding that it will be the ninth Merkel's visit to China.

The visit will last until June 14. The chancellor will be accompanied by six ministers, including the foreign minister and the finance and the justice ministers.
DUSHANBE (Tajikistan) (Sputnik)  Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak said on Friday that he would hold talks with his colleagues from India, Venezuela and Iran at the upcoming St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF)

"There will be plenty [of meetings at SPIEF], with heads of oil and gas companies, the ministers  of India, Venezuela and Iran," Novak told reporters.

He specified that he would meet with the energy ministers of India and Venezuela, as well as with the head of the Iranian industry ministry.
"Those divisions, apart from Lebanon, did not last. This was not done out of a romantic notion of unity. No, life, and the necessities of life dictated that," El-Mohtar pointed out, adding that Lebanon was an exception for many reasons that need a separate article.

"But even Lebanon, as the current situation in that artificial state tells, cannot survive on its own," he stressed.

"Those divisions, back in the 1920, could not have been imposed without the destruction of the nascent and feeble Syrian army after the battle of Mayslaoun. And I doubt very much if they could be imposed today, without the destruction of the Syrian army who is fighting for the unity and integrity of the Syrian soil," the scholar continued.

El-Mohtar underscored that the Kurdish issue is one of the most complicated.

"The Kurdish question is bigger, more intricate and its implications much wider than a Maronite, or a Druze state due the vast number of Kurds distributed among four national states namely Syria, Iraq Turkey and Iran. But the same principle applies. You can only form a new Kurdish state or states after you destroy the national state(s) and their armies. Note that the Kurdish autonomous zone in Iraq could only be established after the Iraqi army was totally dismantled. In Syria, this is proving to be a much more difficult task to achieve," the scholar noted.

He emphasized that although some of the regional states might accept an autonomous zone in Iraq (some happily and others begrudgingly), the minute the zone starts to expand west, east or north, Turkey and Iran  let alone Syria and Iraq  will be impacted. And it seems Turkey is very much concerned about such a prospect.

The Baath and SSNP: Two Main Political Forces in Syria
The European Union has covertly agreed to extend the anti-Russian punitive measures for six more months, says the Spanish newspaper quoting its diplomatic sources in the blocs foreign ministers and within the EU structure.

The outlet notes that Brussels is going to do this even through there is a seeming detente between the two.

The official announcement will be made on June 24, at the meeting of the blocs foreign ministers.
Last week Saudi Arabia was blacklisted by the UN as part of their annual report on Children and Armed Conflict (CAAC), for the kingdoms role in indiscriminate bombings of schools and hospitals in Yemen. However, after feverish lobbying by the Saudi envoy to the UN, in conjunction with US and UK officials, the UN officials have announced that they temporarily removed them from the list to review the crimes.

"It is not in our style, it is not in our genes, it is not in our culture to use threats and intimidation. We have the greatest respect for the United Nations institutions and to the Secretary General," Saudi envoy to the UN Abdullah al-Mouallimi said.

However, diplomatic sources cited by Reuters claim that the office of the UN Secretary General was subjected to bullying, threats, and pressure by the interested parties, and that it was "real blackmail."
However, the Pentagon and the CIA each continue to pursue their own goal on the ground in Syria, from time to time finding themselves in embarrassing situations.

In late March 2016 Los Angeles Times reported that Syrian militants "armed by different parts of the US war machine" began to fight each other in the Aleppo region.

The media outlet narrated that in mid-February the CIA-backed Fursan al-Haq, or Knights of Righteousness, was expelled by Pentagon-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) from the town of Marea, located about 20 miles north of Aleppo.

To make the matters even more complicated, it is well documented that since the very beginning the Obama administration was fully aware that it was supporting Islamists allied with al-Qaeda and even with Daesh.

A 2012 de-classified Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) document indicated that the White House was informed that "the Salafists, the Muslim Brotherhood and AQI (al-Qaeda in Iraq)" were "the major forces driving the insurgency in Syria."

DoD "doesn't know" if CIA is backing al-Qaeda fighters in Syria or not: http://t.co/wIYuPTMBmT pic.twitter.com/zP5aYyxt45  Adam H. Johnson (@adamjohnsonNYC) 2  2015 .

Later, in his 2015 interview with Al Jazeera, Michael T. Flynn, a retired director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, noted that it was Washington's "willful" decision to team up with Islamists.

Remarkably, in late February 2015 a Twitter user named GungHo2 asked Robert Ford, a former US Ambassador to Syria: "Do you deny knowing most of moderates you directly backed fought alongside ISIS [Daesh] & AlNusra on front lines?"

"Absolutely do not deny," Ford tweeted back, "Criticized them in 2013 and 2014 and publicly a month ago. major problem for oppo[sition]."

@GungHo2 @edwardedark absolutely do not deny  criticized them in 2013 and 2014 and publicly a month ago. major problem for oppo.  Robert Ford (@fordrs58) 23  2015 .

"Whatever the outcome in Aleppo, critics argue the lack of a clear approach toward rebels weakens the US ability to help resolve the five-year civil war," Youssef underscores.

Indeed, while the White House and its two agencies are involved in internal infighting over who the real "moderates" are and whether the US military should target Daesh or Assad on the ground, the Russia-backed Syrian Arab Army is liberating Syrian towns and villages one by one from Islamic extremists.

"Just like we liberated Palmyra and many other areas before it, we will liberate every inch of Syria from their [terrorist] grasp. We have no choice other than victory, or else there won't be a Syria and our children will not have a present or a future," Syrian President Bashar al-Assad said Tuesday in a speech addressing the People's Assembly.
The United States congratulates the people of Peru on successfully holding elections on June 5. We congratulate President-elect Pedro Pablo Kuczynski on his victory in the election, the release added.

According to Peru's National Office of Electoral Processes (ONPE), Kuczynski managed to get 50.12 percent of the votes. Keiko Fujimori, the daughter of ex-President Alberto Fujimori, won 49.88 percent of the votes.

The South American nation went to the polls on Sunday to elect a new president who will replace left-wing Ollanta Humala.

Earlier polls suggested that Kuczynski, an ex-prime minister and former financier at the World Bank, was tied with center-right Fujimori, whose father is serving a lengthy jail term on charges of corruption and human rights violations.

According to ONPE, about 50,000 ballots will have to be reassessed, but the result will not affect Kuczynskis victory, although it has not been announced yet.

The inauguration of Perus new leader will take place on July 28.
The next story that we cover is the nail-bitingly close presidential election in Peru and why the Andean country is a lot more important than most people might initially think. Following that, we offer up some words about the right-wing French terrorist who wanted to target upwards of 15 Muslim and Jewish sites in Paris during the Euro 2016 games. Afterwards, we turn to Kazakhstan to discuss how the recent terrorist attack there hints that some of the failed Color Revolution forces might be gearing up for an Unconventional War against the government. Lastly, our highlight of the week is US Defense Secretary Ashton Carter telling the Shangri-La Dialogue forum that Washington wants to isolate China.
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  Moscow is not commenting on the information regarding possible repatriation of Russian citizens in Ukraine in exchange for Ukrainian nationals Gennady Afanasiev and Yuri Soloshenko convicted in Russia , Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Friday.

"I have nothing to say on the issue yet," Peskov told reporters, answering a corresponding question.

Afanasiev was detained by the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) in the city of Simferopol in May 2014 and sentenced to seven years in prison for plotting to carry out terrorist attacks in Crimea. Another person involved in this case, Oleg Sentsov, was sentenced by a Russian military court to 20 years in jail on the same charges.
ST. PETERSBURG (Sputnik)  The results of the contest for the best memorial for the victims of the Airbus A321 plane crash over the Sinai Peninsula is planned to be announced in the Russian western Leningrad Region, a source in regional government told RIA Novosti Friday.

On October 31, the A321 passenger jet crashed over the Sinai en route from Sharm el-Sheikh to St. Petersburg, killing 224 people on board, including crew members. Russias Federal Security Service said a terrorist attack had caused the tragedy. On total 48 residents of the Leningrad region were on board.

"Governor of Leningrad Region Alexander Drozdenko signed an order for carrying out an open and creative contest for the best project of memorial for the victims of the plane crash over the Sinai Peninsula," the source said without elaborating on the details.
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  The net outflow of funds from Russia has dropped four times to $12.7 billion since the start of 2016, the nations central bank said in a Friday press release.

"Net capital outflows of the private sector in January-May 2016 were estimated by the Bank of Russia at $12.7 billion falling four-fold on the previous year outcome," the banks statement read.

External liability payments by banks were identified as the main channel for capital flight, followed by acquisition of external assets by other sectors.
KAZAN (Sputnik)  Russian manufacturers have huge perspectives to promote their value-added products in China, the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) member states, Russian First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov said Friday.

"We understand that under the current difficult economic conditions we should all work together to produce competitive [value-added] products for our internal market and to competitively promote on markets, which are important for us. These are Chinese market as well as APEC and ASEAN markets. And we see huge prospects there," Shuvalov said at a meeting devoted to development of value-added exports.

According to Shuvalov, it is impossible to develop these markets without state support and the Russian Export Center (REC) was created to provide such assistance.
"There is nothing special about the movement of US vessels in this case. We know that aircraft carriers are moving the Mediterranean Sea and elsewhere, they have a right to do so, this is freedom of navigation," he said.

"But in general, this is a definite increase in [Russia-US] relations and all this is done ahead of the NATO summit in Warsaw  this is a demonstration of force."

The USS Porter is expected to make port calls while operating in the Black Sea.

"We will see how things move forward," Kelin said. "But overall, we can absolutely not give up on the most important channel of cooperation and dialogue."

Speaking with radio Zvezda, military expert Viktor Murakhovsky also condemned the presence of American warships near Russias borders.
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  The Russian Proton-M rocket carrying the US Intelsat DLA-2 satellite was successfully launched from the Baikonur space center in Kazakhstan on Thursday.

"We confirm that the separation of the spacecraft from the upper stage has taken place. The launch program has been fully implemented," a Roscosmos spokesman told RIA Novosti.
For the brave ones among us, if you like to eat food and like being naked, this restaurant is for you. It's intended to be the first naked restaurant dining experience, where clothing is optional, and you will have to leave your mobile phone in the cloak room, along with your cloak. Technology is not permitted in the dining area, for obvious reasons, and, for some, this may seem more extreme than being naked.

The Bunyadi will open in June and diners are granted access on a first-come-first-served basis. The wait list stands at over 40,000 and for those who wish to try the food without having to expose themselves, there will be a section for those who wish to keep their clothes on.

Foodies dont, in fact, like eating in restaurants with their clothes on. This 35,000-person wait-list is proof: https://t.co/6Sq1Q1hS41  Well and Good (@WellandGoodNYC) 10  2016 .

Charles Walker, one of the managers of the restaurant, believes people will buy into the concept. He suggested that even those who are prudish like the idea.
The law allows mentally capable adults who have been diagnosed with a terminal illness, and given six months or less to live, the option of being prescribed pharmaceuticals to end their life when they choose.

Opponents of the bill argue that it will place people  particularly the elderly  at the risk of coercion, as there is no requirement for witnesses to be present during the death.

A group called Californians Against Assisted Suicide claimed that people may feel forced to end their own lives to prevent being burdening their families with medical bills.
At least 60 lawsuits accuse the billionaire and his businesses of failing to pay debts. Over 200 liens have been filed for similar reasons, for debts ranging from $75,000 to $1 million.

Many of the accusations are ongoing. Trump Miami Resort Management LLC settled with 48 servers who accused the company of failing to pay overtime wages just last month.

On 24 occasions, Trumps companies have been reported to be in violation of the Fair Labor Act for failing to meet minimum wage or overtime requirements.

Speaking to USA Today, Trump dismissed most of the accusations as examples of his businesses withholding funds for unsatisfactory work.

"Lets say that they do a job thats not good, or a job that they didnt finish, or a job that was way late. Ill deduct from their contract, absolutely," he said. "Thats what the country should be doing."
Emily Worth, water program director at Food and Water Watch said, "The Democratic Party has been complicit in the US fracking boom which is poisoning communities and our climate," and that, "Any serious plan to combat climate change must include a ban on fracking, and as the committee develops the platform, they should heed the calls of the growing movement to ban fracking and keep fossil fuels in the ground."

Anthony Rogers-Wright, policy director at Environmental Action, notes that the people most affected by fracking are communities of color who typically vote Democrat. "This is the face of fracking in America: Latino, Native, African American and other communities are disproportionately impacted by the toxic effects of fracking and its infrastructure," he said. "It's time for the DNC, a political party that is totally dependent on the participation of people of color, to show that our health is as important as our votes. Including a fracking ban in the party platform is an essential step to demonstrate this."

"The many inherent dangers associated with the extreme drilling method, from water contamination and human health impacts to earthquakes, explosions and climate change are well documented," said Wenoah Hunter, executive Director of the Food and Water Action Fund. Hunter said corporations that benefit from fracking have invested in a public relations campaign to hide its effect, but that their resources cant obscure the truth.

"Even with the oil and gas industry spending untold sums of money trying to convince Americans that fracking is safe, the disturbing truth resonates. As todays poll clearly indicates, the more people hear about fracking, the more they oppose it."
WASHINGTON (Sputnik)  In a video released on Thursday, President Obama announced his support for his former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Obama plans to begin campaigning for Clinton in the state of Wisconsin next week.

"It will be the beginning of bringing Bernie [Sanders] in to help unify the party," Nelson said Thursday of Obamas endorsement of Clinton earlier in the day.

The Democratic senator added that he is "very glad" Obama put his support behind the presumptive Democratic nominee and anticipates Bernie Sanders will help bring the party together.


WASHINGTON (Sputnik)US Senator Elizabeth Warren from Massachusetts will hold a meeting with presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton on Friday, according to local media reports.

The private meeting will take place after Warren endorsed Clinton for president of the United States, the Washington Post reported on Friday.

The US media has suggested that Warren could be a candidate for Clintons vice presidential slot.
WASHINGTON (Sputnik), Leandra Bernstein  After the last major round of primaries on Tuesday, Hillary Clinton secured enough delegates to claim her partys nomination at the July nominating convention. Sanders has not yet conceded defeat to Clinton and continues to campaign ahead of the Washington, DC primary next week.

"I think the role that Bernie will play as we go forward is going to be significant in terms of not only the issue of unity, but also the issue of continuing to galvanize what I think is a very powerful and insurgent progressive, populist side to the party."

Grijalva, who has worked on Sanders campaign, said the team will meet over the weekend to discuss the candidates strategy moving forward.
"Its the State Department that gives the recommendations to Obama on who he should waive," said Jo Becker, advocacy director of the Human Rights Watch childrens rights division.

"We will have already drafted the letter from the President to Congress that says what waivers hes going to invoke," said Daniel Mahanty, who served under Clinton in the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, "So it goes up to the secretary (of state), then over to the White House, and from the White House out to the public."

At the 2011 conference, attended by South Sudanese President Salva Kiir Mayardit, Clinton said, "We have a chance to raise up the first generation of South Sudanese who have not known and, God willing, never will know war."

Nate Haken of the Fund For Peace says Clintons involvement in the continued training of South Sudanese child soldiers make her words hollow, "The U.S. seems to make the same kind of mistake again and again," he said, "We catalyze major change without understanding, or at least grappling with, the long-term implications  whether its Iraq or Libya or whether its South Sudan. We definitely need to do better."
Ankara will take decisive action against Germany in response to the German legislature's decision to recognize the Armenian genocide, the German newspaper Bild quoted Ibrahim Kalyn, press secretary of the Turkish President, as saying.

During the tragic event, an estimated 1.2 million ethnic Armenians were slaughtered or starved to death by the Ottoman Empire beginning in 1915, during World War I.

"The competent authorities, including the Foreign Ministry, are [already] preparing an action plan," Kalyn said.
Vasily Kashin, in turn, denied the Western media's allegations about three Russian warships being spotted near the disputed islands, saying that the Russian task force included the large anti-submarine ship Admiral Vinogradov, the tanker Irkut and the tug Fotiy Krylov, which was returning home from drills.

"The Russian ships did not violate the territorial waters around the disputed islands, and could hardly have any impact on the military-political situation in the area. The simultaneous appearance of Russian and Chinese ships there is most likely a coincidence," he said.

In this context, Kashin specifically pointed to the fact that relations between Russia and Japan have recently improved, and that a high-level meeting had recently taken place where the countries discussed economic matters. There has even been some progress in addressing the issue of concluding a bilateral peace treaty, according to Kashin.

"In any case, the latest incident is another reason to think about the need to create more effective mechanisms for notification and communication between the militaries of Russia, China and Japan," Kashin said.
#Lavrov: Regrettably, EU is following suit of the US, resorting to similar methods & habits, going to sanctions at the first sign of trouble  MFA Russia (@mfa_russia) 1  2016 .

The Financial Times recalled that the EU had slapped sanctions against Russia targeting Russia's financial services, energy and defense sectors in response to Crimea's reunification with Russia in 2014 and Moscow's alleged role in the Ukraine crisis.

"While there is still a discussion over whether the final decision will be taken at a summit of EU leaders in late June, officials say there is little doubt the sanctions, which are due to expire on July 31, will be prolonged for six months," the newspaper said.

At the same time, the Financial Times cited a senior EU official as saying that some EU countries "are considering whether to send a political signal to Moscow", in a sign that "Europe's sanctions policy is nearing a turning point."

"Sooner or later we need a deep and detailed discussion on the Russia sanctions, but I expect the December [summit] to be the right moment for this," another high-ranking EU official was quoted by the Financial Times as saying.

The newspaper also recalled that earlier this week, French MPs overwhelmingly approved a non-binding resolution calling for sanctions on Russia to be "gradually and partially" lifted.

However, the Financial Times added, "the move is not expected to change French President Francois Hollande's support for a six-month rollover."


MOSCOW (Sputnik)The European Union and China discussed on Friday bilateral cooperation on the Middle East, Ukrainian crisis, counterterrorism, as well as other regional and global issues, EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini said.

"We already discussed this morning increased cooperation between the European Union and China in the Middle East, which is essential for the security and stability of the world, not only of the regionWe discussed the scope of our cooperation on Syria, Iraq, Libya and Middle East peace process," Mogherini said at a joint press conference with Chinese State Councilor Yang Jiechi.

She said that the Iranian nuclear deal is a positive example of the EU-Chinese cooperation on the Middle East issues.
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  Almost 30 percent of Russians believe that the victory of Republican candidate Donald Trump at the forthcoming US presidential elections would meet the interests of Russia more than the victory of Hillary Clinton from the Democratic Party, an opinion poll issued by Public Opinion Foundation (POM) on Friday said.

POM questioned 1,000 Russians from 320 cities and 160 towns by phone last month.

A total of 28 percent of Russians think that Trumps victory at the US presidential elections is a better alternative for Russia than the victory of Clinton with only 9 percent of respondents sharing the opposite point of view, according to the survey.
GORKI (Russia) (Sputnik)  Russia may send another expert team on flight security to Egypt after Cairo responds to the Moscow's latest inquiry, Federal Air Transport Agency Rosaviatsia Head Alexander Neradko said Friday.

"We have formalized our remarks, sent the Egyptian side, but we can not rush them because it is their responsibility, it is their territory, it is their obligation," Neradko told reporters.
"Under the new arrangement, each country has the opportunity to operate up to ten daily roundtrip flights between the United States and each of Cubas nine international airports, other than Havana, for a total of 90 daily roundtrips," it added. "Longer term, the arrangement also provides for up to 20 daily roundtrip flights between the US and Havana."

A decision on the Havana routes will be announced later this summer, according to the Transportation Department.

US President Barack Obama announced in February that regular commercial airline service would be re-opened, possibly this year, reaching up to ten international airports on the Caribbean island nation.

In December 2014, Obama restored diplomatic ties with Cuba, more than a half century after the United States severed relations with the island nation following the 1959 Cuban revolution.

Since then, Cuba has been removed from the US list of state sponsors of terrorism, and multiple agreements have been signed to facilitate trade, investment and tourism between the two nations.


DUSHANBE (Sputnik)Russia is not going to construct a gas pipeline under the Black Sea without a guarantee that the infrastructure will be in demand, Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak said on Friday.

"President [Vladimir Putin] has clearly answered to this question, I can only repeat his words. We are in constant contact, in dialogue. we can see the interest of our colleagues in the gas supply to southeast Europe But first of all it depends on the implementation of these projects by the decision-making of the European Commission for the development of appropriate infrastructure and those routes that are needed to Europeans in the first place Here we need guarantees, no one will construct a pipeline under the Black Sea, with no guarantee that the infrastructure will be in demand," Novak told reporters.

In 2014, Russia halted the implementation of the South Stream pipeline, which was intended to traverse the Black Sea to deliver Russian natural gas through Bulgaria, Serbia, Hungary and Slovenia to Italy and Austria to avoid exporting gas through the territory of Ukraine. Moscow gave up the project as the European Commission was against the implementation of it over an alleged breach of the EU energy legislation.


MOSCOW (Sputnik)In September 2015, Moscow hosted negotiation between the foreign ministers of South Sudan, the Republic of Sudan and Russia. The parties agreed to intensify efforts to implement the agreements signed in 2012, including on security, border issues, trade and economic matters, and to continue consultations.

"First of all, I would like to thank the Russian Federation for its enormous contribution, as well as for the initiative, according to which the foreign ministers of South Sudan and the Republic of Sudan were invited in Moscow to settle all the existing problems," Saeed said, adding that Khartoum was counting on further coordination of the efforts with Moscow.

South Sudan gained its independence from the Republic of Sudan in 2011 after 98.8 percent of voters supported the move at a referendum.
WASHINGTON (Sputnik)  A top Department of Defense official must testify in the US House of Representatives investigation into the 2012 attack on the US mission in Benghazi, Libya, Congressman Trey Gowdy, chair of the US House Select Committee on Benghazi, said in a statement after interviewing one of the drone operators working the night of the attack.

"Thorough, fact-centered investigations corroborate information with individuals who actually have specific knowledge and expertise," Gowdy said. "That means talking to enlisted service members with firsthand information is just as important as talking to the generals and admirals who command them."
WASHINGTON (Sputnik)  The United States thinks Washington should be able to hold negotiations with Moscow, but the return to normal relations is still impossible, US Department of State spokesperson Mark Toner said on Friday.

"There should be a possibility for negotiations, if needed," Toner stated on Twitter. "But there can be no return to regular relations because of Russias actions in eastern Ukraine."

The United States imposed sanctions on Russia at the outset of the Ukraine crisis in 2014 for allegedly meddling in the internal affairs of the country.


NEW DELHI (Sputnik)India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi is to attend Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit scheduled to be held on June 23-24 in Uzbekistan, a diplomatic source told RIA Novosti on Friday.

"We received an official confirmation that Prime Minister Modi will attend the [SCO] summit," the source said.

The SCO is a political, economic and military alliance comprising Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. In 2014 India who had observer status applied for SCO membership. The SCO summit held in the Russian city of Ufa last year approved inclusion of India and Pakistan to the list of member states and launched accession proceedings. The SCO leaders are expected to sign accession memorandum with Pakistan and India at the upcoming summit in Tashkent.
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  Simon Sutour, a French parliamentarian and a co-author of a resolution calling for alleviation of the anti-Russia sanctions, called in an interview with Sputnik for dialogue with Russian lawmakers and stressed importance of lifting personal restrictions.

"For us, there is a point which is important, that is sanctions against Russian lawmakers which do not allow them to go to the European Union and France We would like, besides dialogue between states, to have inter-parliament dialogue, so we want sanctions against the [Russian] legislators to be lifted," Sutour said.

On Wednesday, the French Senate passed by overwhelming majority a resolution calling on the government to ease sanctions against Russia. The National Assembly, France's lower house of parliament, adopted a similar resolution in April.
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  The United Kingdom's exit from the European Union will have no direct impact on the Russian economy, though a limited indirect effect is possible, Russian Central Bank Governor Elvira Nabiullina said Friday.

"The Russian economy will not face direct risks or effect of the United Kingdom's exit from the European Union. Of course, indirect risks are possible, because if it happens, the European Union, which is one of our biggest trade partners, in particular, and the global markets, in general, will face certain consequences," Nabiullina said at a briefing.

According to Nabiullina, Brexit may provoke some turbulence, which can affect the dynamics at raw materials markets, including Russia, though these risks are unlikely to be direct or significant for the Russian economy.
WASHINGTON (Sputnik)  The US Secretary of State John Kerry congratulated Russia on behalf of the government ahead of National Day.

"On behalf of President [Barack] Obama and the American people, I congratulate the people of Russia as you celebrate your National Day on June 12," Kerry said in a statement on Friday.

Kerry offered his best wishes to the Russian people and added that he wants the future to be marked by prosperity, freedom and peace in both Russia and the United States.
WASHINGTON (Sputnik)  The United States has assessed the current number of Daesh terrorist fighters between 19 and 25, 000 which is the lowest number they have seen, US Special Presidential Envoy for the Global Coalition to Counter Daesh Brett McGurk said in a briefing on Friday.

We assessed back in the summer 2014, they had as many as about 31,000 fighters in their ranks. Its now down. Its at the lowest historic point weve seen, we estimate, its hard to get exact number, but between 19 and 25,000, and its continuing to shrink quite rapidly, McGurk stated.

The Daesh has been designated as a terrorist organization and is outlawed in the United States, Russia and numerous other countries. The infamous group has seized large areas in Syria and Iraq and declared a caliphate on territories under its control.
WASHINGTON (Sputnik)  President Barack Obamas decision to allow US combat strikes against Taliban fighters in Afghanistan is an effective use of the limited forces in the area, Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter said on Friday.

"The president made a decision to enable the commander there to have some additional authority to act proactively," Carter said at a Defense One technology summit in Washington, DC.

Carter explained that the new authority given to the Commander of US Forces in Afghanistan, Gen. John Nicholson, is "a good use of the combat power that we have there."
A new group of owners will be watching on Saturday night when O'Brien Award winner and Spring Book favourite Control The Moment competes in his 2016 Pepsi North America Cup elimination.

Trot Insider has learned that Tara Hills Stud Ltd. has acquired a piece of sophomore pacer Control The Moment. Tara Hills' owner David Heffering noted that the horse had been on his radar -- and surely others in the stallion business -- for quite some time. This past spring, a group from Downunder had made a bid to purchase a piece of the pacer and included Tara Hills in on the action. That deal, according to Heffering, fell through for the Downunder partnership but owners Howard Taylor and Brad Maxwell asked Tara Hills and Heffering if they'd still be interested. With the help of some friends and acquaintances, Heffering was able to stay involved.

"I'm very lucky. We got an eclectic group of investors to help raise the money," stated Heffering. "Everybody took a very pragmatic view of this horse we're buying: we're buying a racehorse that's eventually going to be a stallion, and whether he's a stallion at Tara Hills at a certain value, or he's a stallion somewhere else south of the border, we'll wait on that. There are no guarantees and we'll just wait on how things go."

Heffering notes that Tara Hills doesn't have a major ownership share in the horse, just enough to "get everybody involved and have a little fun this year."

There is certainly a different vibe in the air, as this is new territory for Heffering and Tara Hills. Usually they get involved in a horse once his or her racing career has concluded. This time, they'll follow along with Control The Moment's sophomore campaign as active participants. But Heffering is very cognizant and grateful to be in the position to obtain a piece of a horse of this caliber given how dire the situation looked in Ontario just a few years ago.

"Ever since 2012, I've counted my blessings...I've had a lot of support from my owners of all the stallions," Heffering noted. "Everybody could have pulled out of here in 2012 and 2013, and they stayed in and supported me and that's one of the best things that could have ever happened to us is that all our owners believed in what we were doing and the program and stuck it out. I was very lucky."

Howard Taylor noted that he's never met Heffering before, and this is also new territory for him as well as he likes to know and meet his partners. But the group gave Heffering a glowing reference, and that was enough for Taylor.

"He seems like a heck of a nice guy and we're looking forward to hopefully having a lot of fun together," Taylor told Trot Insider. "That's the one thing with me with horses: I like to know my partners and have fun with my partners. He seems like he's that type too. Hopefully we have a lot of fun this summer because he seems like a special horse."

On the track, that's certainly a fair statement from his record. Off the track, it's just as accurate. Both Heffering and Taylor gave the son of Well Said rave reviews on his appearance.

"He's just a specimen," Taylor gushed. "You look at him, you've got to fall in love. He is the most impressive looking horse I've seen, let alone owned. An absolutely gorgeous animal, First time I saw him, I couldn't believe he was a two-year-old...he's just a man among boys."

The deal was finalized this week after Control The Moment's 2016 debut: an impressive second-place finish to Lyons Snyder in his Somebeachsomewhere division. Heffering confirmed that the mile on Saturday helped put the finishing touches on the paperwork.

"That made it work for all of us and we're really happy," said Heffering. "Howard and the group have been more than accommodating and it's worked out well for all of us. I've never done business with any of these gentlemen before but they've shown to be a class act with us to deal with."

Heffering also noted all the Canadian angles with the horse -- breeder, owners, trainer and driver -- gave the deal a "magical" feel to him. But there is nothing right now that says the horse will stand at Canada's Tara Hills Stud Farm in the future. The deal states that Tara Hills will get the first shot at him as a stallion, but there are no guarantees he will have a stud career in Port Perry.

"It will be a learning curve for us," said Heffering. "Some people will think we're crazy for what we're doing but in this day and age the stallion business is a competitive business and you've got to look at different ways of trying to stay alive."

Much like the horse's future as a stallion, Saturday's 2016 Pepsi North America Cup elimination could go in a number of directions. It's arguably the most competitive of the two with a handful of current standouts among the field of nine. Control The Moment sits as the second choice behind Somebeachsomewhere division winner Betting Line (David Miller, PP6, 5-2) while the horse that beat him last week, Lyons Snyder (Sylvain Filion, PP4, 7-2) is listed as the third choice.

"This is a tough, tough race," agreed Taylor. "It seems like every horse in there but one or two is a major horse this year...I've never been that lucky in drawing when I don't get to pick a post so I'm hoping that problem is solved on Saturday."

North America Cup Elimination 1

(Post  Horse  Driver - Odds)

1  Highlandbeachycove  Scott Zeron - 15-1

2  Check Six  Yannick Gingras - 4-1

3  Control The Moment  Randy Waples - 3-1

4  Lyons Snyder  Sylvain Filion - 7-2

5  Beast Mode  Trevor Henry - 15-1

6  Betting Line  David Miller - 5-2

7  Im Some Graduate  John Campbell - 12-1

8  Ideal Rocky  Corey Callahan - 8-1

9  Racing Hill  Brett Miller - 10-1

To view the harness racing entries for Saturday at Mohawk, click the following link: Saturday Entries  Mohawk Racetrack.

For a free, printable program for Mohawks Saturday card (courtesy of TrackIT), click here.
Legislation that calls for changes to current monetary structures for Michigan racetracks has been passed by the state Senate and will now be brought before Gov. Rick Snyder for his consideration.

As an article by the Detroit Free Press explains, one aspect of the legislation calls for monies that are generated at a particular track to stay at that same track, generally.

The bill also contains restrictive language that calls for Michigans licensed horse racing operators to be the only entities that can accept online horse racing wagers from residents of the state.

Northville Downs and Hazel Park Raceway are the only two racetracks that are still operating in the state.

(With files from the Detroit Free Press)
Clinton Email Update: Judicial Watch Releases Clinton Email Deposition Testimony of Karin Lang, Director, Executive Secretariat Staff

Contact: Jill Farrell, Judicial Watch , 202-646-5172WASHINGTON, June 9, 2016 / Standard Newswire / -- Judicial Watch today released the deposition transcript of Karin Lang, director of executive secretariat staff and designated representative for the State Department. The Lang transcript is available here . Lang was designated by the State Department as its 30(b)(6) witness. A 30(b)(6) witness is assigned to provide the agency's testimony on the Clinton email issue.Lang testified that key State Department federal recordkeeping officials did not know that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her top aide Huma Abedin were using non-state.gov email to conduct government business. She also testified that the State Department could not say whether Clinton or Abedin has turned over all emails in their possession that may be potentially responsive to Judicial Watch's Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. Lang also said that it would not be reasonable to search all 70,000 State Department email accounts in order to retrieve Clinton's emails. (Clinton has suggested that the State Department would have many of her emails because she sent most of them to State Department employees on their government accounts.)Lang also signed, under the penalty of perjury, State Department answers to Judicial Watch's written interrogatories about the Clinton email system and FOIA. The State Department acknowledged in its answers that it "has no method of identifying which State Department officials and employees had and/or used an account on clintonemail.com to conduct official government business."Former State IT employee Bryan Pagliano had been scheduled to testify on June 6, but will be rescheduled pending further order of Judge Sullivan, who ruled Friday that Pagliano must provide to the court his reported immunity agreement and the legal basis for making Fifth Amendment claims.Lang's deposition is one among seven depositions of former Clinton top aides and State Department officials that Judicial Watch has scheduled.Lang's testimony and other discovery arises in a Judicial Watch FOIA lawsuit that seeks records about the controversial employment status of Abedin, former deputy chief of staff to Clinton during her tenure at the State Department. The lawsuit was reopened because of revelations about the clintonemail.com system. ( Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of State (No. 1:13-cv-01363)). Judge Sullivan ordered that all deposition transcripts be made publicly available.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-clinton-email-deposition-testimony-karen-lang-director-executive-secretariat-staff
It's Election season and our editor's mailbox is overflowing. Who do your neighbors support? Read about it here.
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Drivers using a hands-free phone get just as distracted as those holding it in their hand, British researchers have found.

Scientists at the University of Sussex found telephone conversations while driving can cause the driver to visually imagine what they are talking about.

This uses a part of the brain normally used to watch the road, the study said.

It is illegal in the UK to ride a motorcycle or drive using hand-held phones or similar devices.

Drivers can get an automatic fixed penalty notice if caught using one. They will get three penalty points on their licence and a fine of 100 pounds, the BBC reported.

The law currently says drivers can use hands-free phones, satellite navigators and two-way radios, but if the police think the driver is distracted and not in control of the vehicle, they could get penalised.

The study involved 20 male and 40 female volunteers who took part in video tests while sitting in a car seat behind a steering wheel.

One group of volunteers were allowed to "drive" undistracted while another two heard a male voice from a loudspeaker 3ft away.

Those who were distracted by the voice engaging them in conversation took just under a second longer to respond to events, such as a pedestrian stepping off the pavement, an oncoming car on the wrong side of the road or an unexpected vehicle parked at a junction.

The study showed that asking a simple question - such as, "where did you leave the blue file?"- during phone conversations could mean a driver concentrates on an area four times smaller than normal, because their brain is imagining the room where they left the file, instead of checking for hazards in front of them.

Dr Graham Hole, senior lecturer in psychology at the University of Sussex, said the research laid bare the "popular misconception that using a mobile phone while driving is safe as long as the driver uses a hands-free phone".

"The problem is enforceability - it's very difficult for the police to tell if someone's using a hands-free phone," he said.

"But on balance, I think the law should be changed to get the right message across and make it absolutely clear that any use of a mobile phone while driving is hazardous."

PTI
tech2 News Staff

Lenovo has only just unveiled their modular Moto Z flagship device at an event in the US. The phone, which features all the expected bells and whistles from a flagship device, offers something more; its modular.

LG was the first company to offer a modular flagship with the G5, but honestly, the implementation was rather tacky. Lenovos offering seems more refined, offering connector pins at the back of the device to which you can attach a module of your choosing.

At launch, Lenovo is only offering three modulesa speaker, a battery pack and a projector. Thats not going to cut it however and Lenovo knows that.

To that end, Lenovo has announced a Moto Mods contest with a $1 million incentive to make the best mod yet. To participate, youll need to purchase a Moto Z and a Motorola Development Kit (MDK). Interestingly one of the components of the MDK is a board that offers support for Raspberry Pi HAT boards. HAT boards are add-on boards for the Raspberry Pi that can be used to add functionality to the platform. A HAT board is functionally similar to the expansion cards (like graphics cards or SATA cards) for your PC.

Also on offer are so called Personality Cards. These are sample modules for the Moto Z that demonstrate the capabilities of the MDK and also offer insight into building mods.

So what are you waiting for? Get modding!
tech2 News Staff

One of the biggest announcements to come from the most recent Lenovo event is its new and highly-anticipated Tango (graduated from Project Tango) smartphone called Phab2 Pro. The device will hit stores globally by September for price of $500 that translates to approximately Rs 33,400, dipped in Champagne gold and Gunmetal grey.

As expected, Lenovo has built the device featuring a smaller 6.4-inch display with 2,560 x 1,440 pixel resolution. An 'assertive display' that adapts to variable lighting like sunlight and light reflections. It has an 8.9mm thick aluminum unibody with fingerprint scanner functionality on the backside.

The internals include an eight-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 652 processor coupled with 4GB RAM and 64GB of onboard storage with microSD support. You also get Dolby Atmos audio features such as the ability to record in 5.1 surround sound. It comes equipped with 16MP rear and 8MP front cameras. The company promises 0.3 second super-fast focus. The Tango phone also comes with depth-sensing infrared and motion tracking cameras. It runs Android Marshmallow and a 4,050mAh battery completes the package.

For those not in the know, Lenovo has teamed up with Google and built the device as part of Project Tangoa depth-sensing 3D mapping and augmented reality system for mobile devices. It doesn't have the need for GPS and other external signals.

Google's Tango can do many things. For instance, shop for a new bed and it will let you view your bedroom using the phone to visualise different options. Moreover, you can even walk around the virtual furniture. The Tango phone will also let you explore planets, feed a virtual dog and more. It can turn your world into a playground.

Google also wants to ensure that you get a tour of museums, malls and so on using Tango, giving you the feeling of being right there. You can know more about Tango here, and here's a behind-the scenes look at Tango:
tech2 News Staff

A month after announcing its Pascal GPU-sporting graphics cards, Nvidia has launched the GeForce GTX 1070 in India from Rs 40,800 onwards. The GTX 1070 will replace last generations GTX 970. The GTX 1080 will be selling for Rs 68,000.

The GTX 1070 card is based on the Pascal GP104 GPU that is seen on the flagship GTX 1080 graphics card. But as is the case with non flagship cards, there has been a cut down on the number of CUDA cores on the 1070 as compared to 1080. The GTX 1070 has 1920 CUDA cores instead of the 2560 cores seen on the GTX 1080. There are 120 Texture units and the number of ROPs is the same at 64.

The GTX 1070 comes with 8GB of video RAM with faster GDDR5 memory. It has a 256-bit memory bus. The base clock is 1506 MHz with Boost clock going to 1683MHz.

The ZOTAC GTX 1070 has been priced at Rs 45,999 and consumers have already give it one star rating stating that it is already overpriced. Considering this is not a factory overclocked card, the price delta of almost Rs 6,000 actually makes no sense.

In fact the US price for the GTX 1070 is pegged at $449 which translates to close to Rs 30,000. So consumers feeling shortchanged is natural. The card that the GTX 1070 replaces, the GTX 970 is priced around Rs 28,000 on Amazon.
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Alphabet Inc's Google has not yet approached Russia's competition watchdog FAS about a settlement of the case in which the U.S. firm was found to be in breach of antitrust laws, FAS head Igor Artemyev said on Thursday. FAS has not ruled out a deal in principle but would still require that Google admit to violations of antitrust laws and pay a fine, Artemyev told reporters.

His comments appear to water down recent remarks by one of his deputies, who said on Wednesday that FAS was already discussing an out-of-court settlement with Google. FAS ruled last September that Google had broken the law by requiring the pre-installation of certain applications on mobile devices using its Android operating system, following a complaint by Russia's Yandex.

"We continue our conversations with authorities and industry leaders to explain that Android drives competition, stimulates innovation and offers Russian and global consumers better mobile devices at every price point," a Russian-based spokeswoman for Google said on Thursday. The company is facing a fine, the size of which has yet to be established by court. Court hearings on the matter have been repeatedly postponed upon requests from Google.

Artemyev said FAS expected Google to pay 7 percent of its annual Russian turnover but would agree to lower its demands if the company made amends, such as changing the terms of its deals with handset manufacturers. "There are encouraging signs that the company is in principle ready for dialogue," he said. "A settlement agreement is made in court, and it's up to the court to determine the boundaries."

Reuters
tech2 News Staff

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) is engaged in a bitter battle with industry body Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI). The courts came to the rescue of COAI by overruling the call drop penalty TRAI had imposed on telecom service providers. However, TRAI did not let the court ruling stop it, it went ahead and asked for powers to impose penalties on cellular operators over quality of service issues.

In February this year, TRAI had banned discriminatory pricing schemes offered by telecom operators over net neutrality concerns. Now, the COAI are looking the legal options to allow the operators to offer differential pricing on content, applications and services. COAI representatives told the Economic Times that they are waiting for the outcome of two live consultation papers before taking the next step.

The two papers in question are a Pre-Consultation Paper on Net Neutrality and a Consultation Paper on Free Data. The industry is waiting for the results of these consultation papers to better understand the impact the results will have on their operations. Savetheinternet.in, a hacktivism campaign meant to spam the TRAI with net neutrality responses, has a few suggestions for fair schemes that do not impact net neutrality. These include pricing tiers where slower speed connections are free, compensation in the form of data to consumers for watching advertisements and freemium subscriptions where data is free initially.

While discriminatory pricing schemes are banned, there is a provision that allows for these kinds of schemes in something the TRAI calls Closed Electronic Communication Networks. The terminology makes it sound like an intranet, but no one except perhaps TRAI knows exactly what the CECN stands for. COAI and other industry bodies have asked for clarification, but TRAI fears that they will have to keep clarifying repeatedly, and has refrained from clarifying so far. CECN is scary to the COAI because they do not know what kind of technologies and infrastructure they can invest in, without knowing for sure what is and what is not allowed under the new TRAI regulations. CECN is scary for consumers as well, as users fear the telecom service providers might find a way to exploit the CECN loophole to introduce schemes based on discriminatory pricing.
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Two Israeli citizens pleaded not guilty on Thursday to orchestrating a massive computer hacking and fraud scheme that included an attack against JPMorgan Chase & Co and generated hundreds of millions of dollars of illegal profit. Gery Shalon, 32, and Ziv Orenstein, 41, entered their pleas in Manhattan federal court before U.S. Magistrate Judge Nathaniel Fox. They were extradited from Israel this week. Shalon, Orenstein and a third defendant, Joshua Samuel Aaron, all from Israel, were charged in November in a 23-count indictment with alleged crimes targeting 12 companies, including nine financial services companies and media outlets such as The Wall Street Journal.

Aaron has not been arrested by U.S. authorities, prosecutors said, and his whereabouts were not immediately clear. Prosecutors said the scheme dated back to 2007 and compromised more than 100 million people's personal information. The alleged enterprise included pumping up stock prices with sham promotional emails, running online casinos, operating an illegal bitcoin exchange and laundering money through at least 75 shell companies and accounts around the world. It involved a massive attack on JPMorgan affecting 83 million customers, the largest theft of customer data from a U.S. financial institution, authorities said.

A separate indictment unveiled in Atlanta against Shalon, Aaron and an unnamed defendant said the brokerages E*Trade Financial Corp and Scotttrade Inc were also targets, and personal information of more than 10 million customers was compromised. The counts in the New York indictment include counts of computer hacking, securities and wire fraud, identity theft, illegal internet gambling and conspiring to commit money laundering, carrying possible prison sentences ranging from two to 20 years. Not all counts were brought against all defendants. The case is U.S. v. Shalon et al, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, No. 15-cr-00333.

Reuters
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The U.S. government is taking a key step in relinquishing control of the internet's addressing system, fulfilling a promise made in the 1990s. The Commerce Department's National Telecommunications and Information Administration said Thursday that it endorses a March proposal to turn full control over to a private international organization. All that remains is completing some contracts and operational testing. That's expected to be done in the coming months.

The organization deals with matters including the assignment of internet suffixes such as ".com" and ".org" and the operation of the internet's "root servers," the master directories for telling web browsers where to find websites. Without them, users would have to remember a set of four numbers rather than "ap.org" to reach The Associated Press' website, for instance.

This system has already been managed by a private organization, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. But the U.S. government, which funded much of the internet's early development, has retained veto power. Although the U.S. role has been minimal over the years, many foreign governments have complained that the internet can never be truly international if the U.S. retains veto power. They have sought instead to shift responsibility to an inter-governmental body such as the U.N. International Telecommunication Union.

But business, academic and civil society leaders balked, worried that U.N. involvement would threaten the openness that has allowed the internet to flourish. Concerns were also raised that U.N. control would give authoritarian states like China and Iran equal votes among other countries in influencing policies that affect free speech.

Lawrence E. Strickling, the assistant secretary for communications and information at the Commerce Department, said the endorsed plan won't replace Commerce's role with a government-led or inter-governmental solution. Rather, ICANN will take full control after creating additional mechanisms to resolve disputes. ICANN has participants from business, academic and other communities in addition to governments.

Some congressional Republicans oppose the end of U.S. oversight, even to a body that includes non-government representatives. They say current budget laws prevent Commerce from spending money on these efforts. But the transition itself does not require congressional approval.

Associated Press
Now Ashram attendant killed in Pabna

Pabna, June 10 (UNB) - An attendant of Sree Sree Thakur Anukulchandra Ashram (asylum) was hacked to death by unidentified miscreants in Hemayetpur upazila early Friday in the same style the three other people were killed in different parts of the country this week. The latest gruesome murder took place amid an anti-militant crackdown on secret killers across the country. Abdullah Al Hasan, officer-in-charge of Sadar Police Station, said Nittyaranjan Pandey, 62, son of late Rashik Lal Pandey of Gopalganj, set out for a morning walk in the area around 5 am. When he came close to Pabna Mental Hospital, a group of miscreants stabbed him in the head and neck, leaving him dead on the spot. On information, police rushed in and recovered the body. Nittyaranjan had been serving at the asylum for the last 40 years. Alamgir Kabir, superintendent of Pabna Police, visited the spot. Earlier on Sunday, Mahmuda Khanam, wife of a police officer and Sunil Gomez, a Christian grocer, were killed by unknown assailants in Chittagong and Natore respectively. Besides, Anando Gopal Ganguly, an elderly Hindu priest, was killed in the same way in Jhenidah on Tuesday.
Four convicted with life-term

A Chittagong court on Thursday awarded life term imprisonment to four persons in a case filed for raping a mother and her step-daughter in Satkania Upazila of the district.

The judge of Women Children Repression Prevention Tribunal-1 Mohammad Rafiqul Islam passed the judgment convicting Korban Ali, Ridowan Rahman, Abdur Rahim and Rubel Chowdhury, all hailed from Keochia village under Satkania Upazila of the district.

The tribunal also fined them Tk one lakh each and sent the charges framed against another accused to Children Court as the accused was 16 years old.

The prosecution story is, in brief, that five rogues entered the house of a woman and gang-raped her and her step-daughter in Keochia village under Satkania Upazila of the district on June 14 in 2014, court sources said. Later the next day, the woman filed a case against five persons with Satkania thana in this connection.

Police submitted chargesheets against the five accused on December 12 in 2014 while the court framed charges against four of them on April 9 in 2015. The court also ordered to transfer the trial of the other accused to the Children Court as he was 16 years old. The court today after examining seven prosecution witnesses out of 12 awarded the judgment convicting the four.

Two of the convicts are in the jail while two others are absconding, court sources said.


Confronting the global threat to democracy

Ngaire Woods :

Across the world, populists are attracting votes with their promises to protect ordinary people from the harsh realities of globalization. The democratic establishment, they assert, cannot be trusted to fulfill this purpose, as it is too busy protecting the wealthy - a habit that globalization has only intensified.

For decades, globalization promised to bring benefits to all. On an international scale, it facilitated the rise of the Asian tigers and the BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa), produced rapid growth across Africa, and facilitated the boom in developed countries through 2007. It also created new opportunities and augmented growth within countries. But since the 2008 crash, many rich countries have been locked into austerity; the Asian economies have been slowing; the BRICS' progress has been stalling; and many African countries have fallen back into debt.

All of this has contributed to rising inequality, which is now fueling discontent. Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman calculate that in the United States, the wealth gap is already wider than at any time since the Great Depression, with the richest 1% of households now holding almost half the country's wealth.

In the United Kingdom, the Office for National Statistics reports that in the period from 2012 to 2014, the wealthiest 10% of households owned 45% of total aggregate household wealth. Since July 2010, the top decile's wealth has increased three times faster than that of the bottom 50% of the population. In Nigeria, astonishing economic growth, averaging 7% per year since 2000, may well have reduced poverty in the southwest of the country; but in the northeast (where the extremist group Boko Haram is most active), shocking levels of wealth inequality and poverty have emerged. Similar trends are apparent from China to Egypt to Greece.

Alongside inequality, declining public trust fuels the revolt against globalization and democracy. Across the developed and developing worlds, many suspect that the rich are getting richer because they are not held to the same rules as everyone else.

It's not hard to see why. As the global economy slows, breaches of trust by those at the top become more apparent. In the United Kingdom, Amazon, Starbucks, and Google attracted public outrage in 2013 for using loopholes to pay almost no tax, prompting the UK government to lead a G8 tax announcement aimed at reducing tax evasion and avoidance. In 2015, an audit of the state-owned Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation revealed that about $20 billion in revenue was never remitted to the authorities under the previous administration.

And the problem appears to be systemic. This year, the Panama Papers exposed how the global rich create secretive offshore companies, permitting them to avoid financial scrutiny and taxation. And the world's largest banks have faced unprecedented fines in recent years for brazen violations of the law.

But, despite the negative publicity generated by such cases, the public has seen virtually no one held to account. Almost a decade after the global financial crisis of 2008, only one bank executive has gone to prison. Many bankers instead followed a path similar to Fred Goodwin, the head of Britain's Royal Bank of Scotland, who racked up 24.1 billion ($34.2 billion) in losses, then resigned with a huge pension. Ordinary people - like the father of three who was imprisoned in the UK in September 2015 for accumulating 500,000 in gambling debts - do not enjoy such impunity.

All of this helps explain why anti-establishment movements are gaining momentum around the world. These movements share a sense of disenfranchisement - a sense that the "establishment" is failing to give ordinary citizens a "fair shake." They point to election results "bought" by special interests, and to arcane legal and regulatory frameworks that seem rigged to benefit the rich, such as banking regulations that only large institutions can navigate and investment treaties negotiated in secret.

Governments have permitted globalization - and peripatetic wealth-holders - to outpace them. Globalization requires regulation and management. It requires responsible business leaders. And it requires deep and effective global cooperation. When governments failed to cooperate in the 1930s, globalization came to a crashing halt.

It took a series of careful, highly managed efforts after World War II to open up the world economy and permit globalization to take off again. Still, while many countries liberalized trade, capital controls ensured that "hot money" could not race in and out of their economies. Meanwhile, governments invested the returns on growth in high-quality education, health care, and welfare systems that benefited the many. As the business of government grew, so did the resources put into it.

By the 1970s, wealthy countries' leaders in both government and business had become complacent. They took on faith the promise of self-equilibrating, self-restraining markets that would deliver continued growth. By the time this new orthodoxy spread to the leveraged financial sector, the world was on a crash course. Unfortunately, many governments had already lost the capacity to manage the forces they had unleashed, and business leaders had lost their sense of responsibility for the welfare of the societies within which they were flourishing.

In 2016, we are re-learning that, politically, globalization needs to be managed not just to permit the winners to win, but also to ensure that they do not cheat or neglect their responsibilities to their societies. There is no place for corrupt politicians pandering to corrupt business leaders.

Restoring confidence will be difficult. Business leaders will need to secure a "license to operate" from society at large, and contribute visibly to sustaining the conditions that support their prosperity. They can start by paying their taxes.

Governments will need to distance themselves from the companies that fail to do their part. Moreover, they must overhaul their own operations, to prove their impartiality. Robust regulation will require significant investment in government capacity and the legal services that support it.

Finally, global cooperation will be crucial. Globalization cannot be undone. But with a strong, shared commitment, it can be managed.



(Ngaire Woods is Dean of the Blavatnik School of Government and Director of the Global Economic Governance Program at the University of Oxford).

Courtesy: Project Syndicate


Obama endorses Hillary Clintons White House bid

\'She\'s got the courage, the compassion, and the heart to get the job done,\' Barack Obama said of Hillary Clinton. Internet photo

Reuters :

U.S. President Barack Obama formally endorsed Hillary Clinton's White House bid on Thursday and called for Democrats to unite behind her after a protracted battle with Bernie Sanders for the party nomination.

U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts also backed Clinton on Thursday, telling MSNBC's "The Rachel Maddow Show" that presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump was "a genuine threat to the country." Clinton, the presumptive Democratic nominee, said it "means the world" to her that Obama had her back in a bruising campaign for the Nov. 8 election. Clinton also said she had the "highest regard" for Warren, a fiery critic of Wall Street, and was "really pleased to have her good ideas and support."

Vice President Joe Biden also waded into the campaign on Thursday. "Whoever the next president is, and God willing in my view it will be Secretary Clinton," Biden said in a speech at the American Constitution Society in Washington. The Obama endorsement increases pressure on Sanders, a U.S. senator from Vermont, to bow out of the race and lend his support to Clinton so that the party can focus on defeating Trump.

"It is absolutely a joy and an honor that President Obama and I over the years have gone from fierce competitors to true friends," Clinton told Reuters in an interview.

After an unexpectedly tough battle against Sanders' challenge from the left, former first lady Clinton made history when she reached the number of delegates needed to win the party nomination this week.

That made her the first woman to lead a major U.S. party as its White House candidate. Obama, who enjoys rising approval ratings as he nears the end of eight years in office, will appear with Clinton on the campaign trail next week in Wisconsin.

The two were opponents in the 2008 Democratic presidential primary race, which Obama won, but they buried their rivalry and she served as his secretary of state for four years. Clinton is the 2016 candidate who the White House believes will best safeguard Obama's legacy.

"I don't think there's ever been someone so qualified to hold this office," Obama said of Clinton in a video. "I'm with her. I am fired up, and I cannot wait to get out there and campaign for Hillary."

Trump assailed the endorsement on Twitter: "He wants four more years of Obama-but nobody else does!" Clinton's campaign tweeted a brash response: "Delete your account."

Sanders, who galvanized young voters with his calls for more social equality and measures to rein in Wall Street, has been reluctant to concede the race, despite concerns among leading Democrats that continuing party divisions could hamper Clinton's efforts to beat Trump.

Obama and other senior Democrats are seeking a delicate balance of rallying the party behind Clinton, while not alienating Sanders and his supporters. In what appeared to be an attempt to gently ease Sanders toward giving up his campaign, Obama met the democratic socialist for about an hour in the White House, laughing warmly as they walked into the Oval Office.

Although Sanders told reporters afterward that he still planned to compete in the final nominating contest in Washington, D.C., next Tuesday, he said he would work with Clinton to defeat Trump. Sanders was then welcomed on Capitol Hill by Senator Harry Reid, the top Democrat in the Senate. Reid said the lawmaker from Vermont was in a "good place" with his Democratic colleagues. He suggested that Sanders was close to acknowledging defeat by Clinton.

"I didn't hear a single word about him trying to change the fact that she is the nominee, I think he's accepted that," Reid told reporters.

In the endorsement video, Obama recalled the party unity that followed his prolonged primary battle against Clinton in 2008.

"Secretary Clinton and Senator Sanders may have been rivals during this primary, but they're both patriots who love this country and they share a vision for an America that we all believe in," Obama said. Warren told MSNBC she was endorsing Clinton because "a female fighter in the lead is exactly what this country needs."

Warren's populist credentials will boost Clinton's ability to court Sanders voters as she prepares to battle Trump. Warren was the only female Democratic U.S. senator who did not endorse Clinton during the primary race.

Clinton told Reuters she and Warren had similar views about issues such as economic policy and protecting the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform law and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which Warren pushed to start.

Trump said in an interview with Reuters last month that he would try to dismantle the Dodd-Frank law.

In the interview with Reuters, Clinton said her overall economic package, including plans to rein in Wall Street and cut taxes for the middle class, would come during the first 100 days of her presidency if she defeats Trump.

Clinton previously said a plan to generate jobs by investing in transportation and other infrastructure spending and immigration reform would be among other early priorities.

"One of the things that President Obama said on Thursday sought his job was to remind the American people what a really serious job this is, the tough choices, the hard decisions, the high stakes in choosing a president and commander in chief," Clinton said.

"And I know how important it is to get off to a really good start in the White House," she said.

Trump, a wealthy real estate developer who became the party's presumptive nominee last month after seeing off a large group of rivals, is well behind Clinton's campaign in terms of fundraising and policy infrastructure.

On Thursday, his top donors were holding their first official meeting in New York. Trump also met with industry leaders in New York at an event organized by oil billionaire Harold Hamm.
JL man hacked to death in Pabna

Pabna Correspondent :

A Juba League activist was hacked to death in the Library Bazar area of Pabna town on Thursday night. The killers ran away immediately after the incident to escape arrest by police.

The deceased has been identified as Md. Munna Chowdhury, 35, son of Rawshan Ali, resident of Gobinda in the Pabna town. Officer-in-Charge of Pabna Sadar Police Station Abdullah Al Hasan said that Munna's younger brother Rajib had a long hostility with the local boys. On the fateful night, Munna went there for reconciliation. Instead, unidentified assailants hacked him at about 9.30 pm. Local people took Munna to Pabna Medical College and Hospital where he succumbed to his injury at about 10pm.

Publicity Secretary of Pabna district unit of Juba League Fahimul Kabir Khan said the deceased was an activist of Juba League.

He was killed out of preceding enmity, Fahimul said demanding the punishment of the culprits.

Police sent the body to Pabna Medical College and Hospital for autopsy on Friday morning, the OC said adding that the family members of the victim being busy with burial of the victim no case was filed instantly. Police are investigating the murder incident.
Now Ashram attendant murdered in Pabna

Terror strike continues amid anti-militant crackdown

Staff Reporter :

Yet another Hindu ashram attendant of Sree Sree Thakur Anukul Chandra Satsanga Ashram was murdered in a terror attack in Hemayetpur of Pabna sadar early Friday, two days after a priest was killed in the same style in Jhenidah district.

The latest gruesome murder took place amid anti-militant crackdown on secret killers across the country.

Nityaranjan Pandey 62, who had been working as an attendant of the Ashram for the last 40 years, came under attack near the ashram, Alamgir Kabir, Superintendent of Police of Pabna, told The New Nation on Friday afternoon.

Son of late Rashik Lal Pandey, Nityaranjan Pandey hailed from Gopalganj district. Police later sent the body to a local hospital for autopsy.

The police super, who visited the spot, said the criminals launched terror attack with lethal weapons on Nityaranjan Pandey, while he went out for a morning walk in the area.

"A gang of four youths swooped on Nityaranjan Pandey and started chopping him from the back direction while he was passing by the Pabna Mental Hospital at about 5:00am. They stabbed him in the head and neck. Pandey died on the spot. After committing the brutal murder, the criminals left the scene hurriedly. On information, police rushed in and recovered the body," he added.

Replying to a query he said the motive behind the killing is yet to be known. None has been arrested in this connection. "Our police launched a massive hunt to nab the criminals," he said.

Talking to the local correspondents, Bolai Krishna Saha, a member of Ashram, said as soon as the news spread, other members of the Ashram and local people rushed to the spot and saw the body of Nityaranjan Pandey lying in a pool of blood.

"Instantly we informed the police who later came to the spot and recovered the body. He was a dedicated attendant of the Ashram. He had no enmity with other people in the locality. We all feel insecure. We want justice," he said.

This is the second such murder within three days. Only on Tuesday, a Hindu priest Anando Gopal Ganguly was killed in the same way in Jhenaidah on Tuesday. The criminals severed his head.

Earlier on Sunday, Mahmuda Khanam, wife of a police officer and Sunil Gomez, a Christian grocer were killed by unknown assailants in Chittagong and Natore respectively.

A five-member probe body led by Additional Superintendent of Police Liton Kumar Das has been formed to investigate the murder. The other memberts of the committee are Assistant Superintendent of Police Selim Khan, Officer-in-Charge of Sadar Police Station Abdullah Hasan and two Sub-Inspectors.

Meanwhile, Bangladesh Hindu-Bouddha-Christian Oikya Parishad threatened tougher movement if the government fails to arrest the killers of Nityaranjan within 24 hours.
RMG workers clash with cops in Gazipur: 50 hurt

A series of clashes between RMG workers, locals and police in Joydevpur crossing point of Gazipur on Friday demanding arrear salary and Eid bonus. About 20 workers were injured.

Staff Reporter :

A serious clash between cops and garment workers in Joydevpur crossing area of Gazipur district on Friday morning left at least 50 people, including members of law enforcing agency, injured.

According to RMG workers, locals and police, the clash is a consequence of a demonstration brewed from dissatisfaction of the workers as the authorities of Tanvir Fashion Wear announced that they would pay half of the salary of the month of May on June 16 instead of Friday (June 10).

Mohammad Shipon, Quality Inspector of Tanvir Fashion Wear, said the authorities of the factory had earlier said that they would pay the full salary of the month of May on June 10.

"As the authorities are saying that they would pay the half salary of the month of May on June 16, this triggered resentment among the workers. As soon as the news spread, the workers started staging demonstration in front of the factory," he told journalists.

Mohammad Manik Miah, Inspector of Gazipur Industrial Police, said at one stage the workers took to the Dhaka-Mymensingh Highway at about 8:30am and blocked it after failing to withdraw their salary of the month of May.

Traffic movement on the highway remained suspended for nearly one hour following the clash over payment of dues creating severe traffic congestion. The vehicular movement on the highway, however, came to normalcy around 9:30am as police dispersed the agitators by lobbying teargas canisters.

The agitating workers also vandalised windows, furniture and other goods of the factory demanding immediate payment of the full salary of the month of May.

The clash ensued in the morning when police tried to bring the situation under control, leaving at least 42 workers and eight policemen injured.

During the clash, the workers threw brickbats on police who also charged baton on them. The law enforcers also fired several rounds of teargas shells to control the situation.

Meanwhile, Mahfuz Afzal, Deputy Director of Gazipur Industrial Police, said the authorities of the factory will pay the full month salary of the month of May tomorrow (Sunday).

"Police were compelled to fire teargas shells and rubber bullets to control the situation," he said.
Easy arrest can`t be counter-terrorism drive

NEWS reports said at least nine extremists were killed in organized police raids in the capital and at some other places in three days ending on Wednesday while another three were killed on Thursday. On the other hand, in the latest terror act, a Hindu priest has been killed in a monastery early on Friday at Hemayetpur in Pabna by extremists, just few days away from similar killing of a Hindu priest at Jhenaidah and a Christian grocer in Rajshahi district. Killing and counter-killing are making the nation seriously volatile. The killing of the wife of a senior police officer has meanwhile taken the challenge direct to the law enforcers and the government. We know that police are under severe pressure as the spate of killing is escalating. Every new day is adding to the list of unfortunate victims. Particularly the killing of a police family member has created new sensitivities within the establishment. It should be clear that the militants are not ordinary criminals, waiting to be arrested easily. Meanwhile, the number of bloggers, professors, publishers, foreigners and religious people of all communities killed stood over two dozens from last year and over a dozen from early last month. So when the people see news of easy arrest by the police immediately after target killings they cannot be convinced that the real militants are being arrested. One can't however blame many when they say the government is consciously allowing the situation to escalate to get help and sympathy of the Western nations in its fight against terrorism. But the government is not ready to find wrong in its politics of intolerance.The police have to be careful not to earn the anger of the innocent ones. It is particularly important when family members of a man killed by RAB at Balurmath at Rampura in the capital on Wednesday night claimed he was innocent and not linked to extremism. Another victim killed at Kalshi of the Pallabi area on Monday was reportedly missing for the last one month. Relatives of yet another person arrested in Chittagong in connection with the murder of the Police Super's wife has claimed he has been framed in the case. In another case a person killed at Turag Bridge on Wednesday night was in fact member of a doping gang. To prove that the real terrorists are arrested, the arrested ones must be produced for trial without delay. Otherwise, wrong arrests will only help to increase killing and counter-killing. There will be no safety in public life. This is seen as incompetence, but the government seems contented in punishing the political opponents. Our police must be professional enough to know that the militancy is the result of politically created tension. They should be honest enough to advice the government honestly.
People frightened over `shootout` killing

10 killed in four consecutive days

Joynal Abedin Khan : The incidents of killing in 'gunfights' and 'crossfire' continue in the country since Tuesday.The unabated extrajudicial killings by law-enforcing agencies have concerned the right activists greatly.At least 10 persons, including Jama'atul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB) militants, were killed in 'shootouts' with the Police and Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) in last four days after the murder of a police superintendent's wife.According to Ain O Salish Kendra (ASK), a total of 183 people were killed in encounters and shootouts in 2015 and 128 in 2014.At the lasted, a local leader of an extremist group was killed in a 'gunfight' with police at Tala upazila in Satkhira on Friday. The deceased was identified as Purba Bangla Communist Party's leader Mozaffar Sana. He was accused in a dozen of cases, including murder, robbery, mugging, possession of illegal arms and extortion in Satkhira and Naogaon, said Chhagir Mia, Officer-in-Charge (OC) of Tala Police Station. He said, "Police signalled a motorcycle rider to stop at Chara Battola. In turn, the rider hurled two improvised bombs at police and opened fire, injuring two policemen and forcing the law enforcers to retaliate. It left Mozaffar injured. He was sent to Tala Upazila Health Complex, where doctors declared him dead." Earlier, three persons, including an alleged JMB leader, were killed in separate "gunfights" with law enforcers in the capital and Gaibandha on Thursday.The Gaibandha victim Jahangir Alam was an active member of the JMB, and the Dhaka victims were Nazrul Islam, and Kamal Parvez. Besides, two militant suspects were killed in separate 'gunfights' in Bogra and Jessore districts respectively on Wednesday. Of them, deceased Kawsar Ali was the main accused in Bogra Shiite Muslims mosque attack case and an alleged member of JMB. The police could not ascertain the identity of the other deceased, police said. In the meantime, four persons, including three JMB militants, were killed in three separate "gunfights" between "their cohorts" and law enforcers in Dhaka, Rajshahi and Brahmanbaria respectively on Tuesday.The deceased have been identified as JMB leaders Tareque Hasan Milu alias Iliasm Sultan Mahmud Rana alias Kamal and Jamal Uddin. But the other victim could not be identified.The extrajudicial killings are increasing in the country alarmingly, exposing the sorrowful picture of the human rights, said Sultana Kamal, Executive Director of ASK."The human rights situation is not improving in the country and it is a matter of serious concern. The culture of impunity promotes extrajudicial killings, and as a result, citizens lose their trust and confidence in the law enforcement agencies," she said.Sultana Kamal said that extrajudicial killings in the name of 'crossfire'or 'shootout' cannot be acceptable in a civilized society. "The country's law and order has deteriorated to such a level that the government has resorted to crossfire to check it instead of taking legal steps. Extrajudicial killings can't be the solution of any problem at all." Mufti Mahmud Khan, Director to the Legal and Media Wing of the elite force, said, "The miscreants were killed in gunfights with law enforcers during the regular and special drive to arrest the culprits to control the law and order."He claimed that a large number of fire arms recovered from the dead spots and its adjacent areas. So far, at least seven cop personnel received injuries during the 'gunfights', he said.
No children to be allowed on mororcycles: Obaid

Staff Reporter :

Road Transport Minister Obaidul Quader on Friday said, no child will be allowed on the two-wheel vehicle.

He said this after a meeting of Bangladesh Road Transport Authority (BRTA) on Friday.

He said, "More than two persons on a motorcycle are not lawful henceforth.

The riders have to wear helmets as the use is mandatory. No leniency will be shown in this regard."

"I want to add another thing that children cannot be taken on the motorcycle. Children are not allowed on motorcycles in any other country. But in Bangladesh the whole family rides it!

"This is dangerous. We will have to show zero tolerance because it's too risky. We will have to implement this strictly throughout Bangladesh," Quader said. Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal on Tuesday ordered police to ensure that three persons are not riding a motorcycle together.

His instruction came a day after three men, riding a motorcycle, stabbed and shot dead a senior police officer's wife in Chittagong.

The familiar trait assailants on a motorcycle armed with sharp weapons and guns caused a number of murders throughout the country in the past two years.

Police have blamed Islamist radicals for these killings.
Govt to revise strategic plan on Malaria

UNB, Dhaka :

Though the government had a plan to see Malaria-free Bangladesh by 2020, it is going to 'revise' its plan considering the ground reality and current perspective.

Despite 'significant progress' in controlling malaria in the country, still high risk remains in the areas adjacent to borders as mobility is there through Bangladesh-India-Myanmar border areas. Earlier, the National Malaria Control Programme, Bangladesh drafted the 'National Strategic Plan 2015-2020' aiming at achieving the goal of malaria elimination-zero case and zero death-by 2020 in the country. But the World Health Organization (WHO) has adopted new strategy 'Global Technical Strategy for Malaria 2016-2030' with its bold vision of a world free of malaria, and its targets to reduce malaria incidence and mortality rates globally by at least 90 percent by 2030.

"We've a target to make Bangladesh malaria-free by 2020. But we'll now revise it in line with the global strategy and taking ground reality into consideration," Dr Muktadir Kabir told UNB on Friday. Kabir, also Head of Programme, Malaria and Wash, Brac, said the work is on to set a 'realistic' target and incorporating it in the National Strategic Plan. As the cross-border malaria transmission has turned out to be a new challenge, the expert said they are trying to go for border-focused programme to overcome the challenge in eradicating the mosquito-borne disease. "It's now a big issue.

The intensity of the programme may not be equal on both sides of border," Dr Kabir said adding that he does not think the initiatives taken so far in addressing malaria in the bordering areas are adequate enough. He said they do not even have required manpower for that and are trying to adjust with limited workforces. "We don't have additional resource. We're readjusting with the resource we have." The expert said they want to see the continuation of 'political commitment' and the partnership between the public and private sector as Bangladesh is going through a phase of controlling malaria.

He also said, the initiatives centering Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) should not be stopped and resources flow should continue to make the success, so far achieved, sustainable. "In some cases, we see focus and resources are shifted to other areas once a bit success comes in a particular area," Dr Kabir said mentioning that it should not be there in case controlling malaria. If it happens, he said, malaria may stage a comeback in these hilly areas. According to available data, some 1, 32,50000 people in Bangladesh at malaria risk now, with the three hill districts being at the highest risk. Some 85,000 patients were identified with malaria in 2008 but the number fell to nearly 40,000 in 2015. The number of deaths dropped to nine from 154, according to the government's malaria control programme.
PBCP leader killed in Satkhira `shootout`

UNB, Satkhira :A regional leader of outlawed Purba Banglar Communist Party (PBCP) was reportedly killed in a shootout with police at Chara Battala in Tala upazila early Friday.The deceased was identified as Mozaffar Sana, 38, a regional leader of ML-Janajuddha, a faction of PBCP and son of Gaffar Sana of Dohar village in the upazila. During a special drive, a team of police led by officer-in-charge of Tala Police Station Sagir Mia, signaled a motorcycle to stop in the area around 2:35 am.In response, the motorcycle riders blasted two crude bombs and opened fire at police, prompting them to retaliate, triggering a gunfight. At one stage, Mozaffar was injured with bullets while the others managed to flee the scene. He was rushed to Tala Upazila Health Complex where the doctors declared him dead.Two policemen were injured in the bomb blast, the OC added. Police also recovered one motorcycle, one firearm and three rounds of bullets from the spot. Mozaffar was wanted in several cases filed with Naogaon and Satkhira Police Stations.
BATON ROUGE, La. (AP)  Louisiana cellphone users could face millions of dollars in increased 911 service charges, under two measures sent to the governor's desk.

The Legislature has given final passage to measures from two Republican lawmakers that would raise as much as $20 million a year for local emergency call systems.

Hammond Rep. Chris Broadwater's bill could levy a maximum 40-cent increase for more than 2.9 million Louisiana wireless customers, according to a financial analysis of the measure.

The increased fee could have wireless customers paying about $1.25 per month per wireless connection, raising as much as $14 million annually. Current monthly service charges settle around 85 cents, according to the financial analysis.

Shreveport Rep. Thomas Carmody's proposal extends the fee hike to prepaid phone customers. Fees for those customers, who don't pay monthly service charges, would automatically increase from 2 percent to 4 percent.

The doubled fee on prepaid users would leave pay-as-you-go customers paying an average $1.20 fee per month. The change would raise an estimated $6 million per year.

All of the generated funds would go toward emergency communication services and operations. They could not be used for any other purpose.

The money is aimed at paying for a Federal Communications Commission plan for the next generation of emergency communication services. Supporters said it will better link public safety dispatchers and first responders with people using text, data, videos and voice contact. Some of the funds would also go toward establishing location accuracy.

Carmody, who was encouraged by 911 system operators to bring the bill, said the fundraising is necessary to keep emergency services up to date with changing technologies.

Louisiana emergency communication operations are primarily dependent on charges from landline phone use, he said, and with more users transitioning away from landlines, revenue to run 911 facilities has decreased.

Prepaid cellphone users, Carmody said, should "help offset that cost."

Unlike that bill, Broadwater's proposal to increase charges for other cellphone users does not automatically institute the higher fee.

It "simply raises the cap so that we provide the opportunity for our local folks that operate our 911 districts to determine what is the appropriate rate for them. Some of the districts may need some additional help; some may be doing fine and don't need to increase any fee," he said.

Representatives from major cellular and wireless service providers opposed both measures, saying they were concerned that not enough research had been done to ensure customers wouldn't seek service from other states because of hefty fees in Louisiana. The representatives said they wanted to make sure customers' money was being spent prudently.

Opponents also noted the neighboring states of Texas, Arkansas and Mississippi all have lower caps on the fees.

Supporters of the fee hikes said the increased amounts were not randomly selected, but devised from a formula that creates a baseline across all prepaid and monthly services.

Broadwater's proposal would go into effect Aug. 1 and Carmody's would follow on Oct. 1, if Gov. John Bel Edwards approves.

Broadwater's bill exempts customers in Jefferson and St. Bernard parishes from the increases because they already pay $1.26 in fees. Caddo Parish customers also already pay a heightened emergency communication fee, so the measure limits its increase to 25 cents.
Yet again longtime American Press columnist Jim Beam has put forth a reasonable analysis of the challenges facing our state as lawmakers convene for a second special session to solve the budget crisis the Jindal administration left behind.

Its still early in the process, but it appears a number of state legislators arent convinced there is a genuine need at the second special session to raise the $600 million it will take to balance the state budget taking effect July 1.

Gov. John Bel Edwards legislative program didnt fare too well at Tuesday and Wednesday House Ways and Means Committee meetings. It sent the full House just a handful of bills Tuesday that raise some $220 million.

Edwards was exuding confidence after the Tuesday meeting that the job will still get done. But the committee gave him another setback Wednesday when it derailed a bill involving state income tax deductions that would have eventually raised $132 million annually.

Rep. Lance Harris, R-Alexandria and chairman of the House Republican Caucus, is leader of the opposition that is responsible for the defeats. Harris told The Advocate he isnt budging. Im not voting for any new taxes unless we have meaningful spending and tax reform, and I dont see that happening, Harris told the newspaper.

Two realities of life in Louisiana have so far been unable to move the anti-tax forces. The states poverty rate is 18.3 percent, which ranks 49th highest in the country. The state has 748,000 families living at or below the poverty level based on family income.

The rate of poverty also helps explain why Louisiana is the unhealthiest state in the country. The obesity rate here is 34.9 percent, fourth highest. The 306 cardiovascular deaths per 100,000 people is fifth highest. The state has a high percentage of smokers and some 30 percent of adults dont exercise, the third highest rate of physical inactivity in the country.

Both the poverty and health statistics are examples of why providing health care is so important and a costly part of state governments responsibilities.

The Associated Press said the $50 million in proposed budget cuts to the hospitals that took over the charity hospital system 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. The states health care services face $174 million in budget reductions in the 2016-17 state budget. Edwards in his opening address to the Legislature called those critical, life-saving health care services.

Important elements of the states education system also face big budget cuts. K-12 education is short by $75 million, the TOPS scholarship program by $155 million, higher education by $54 million and money for the education voucher program for students in poor families is being reduced from $42 million to $36 million.

OK, those are the problems. What are the solutions?
Uncle Clay is a more complicated figure than you think. All you have to do is ask.

Artist Jake Hebert meets the Cajun John Wayne on the street and uncovers a remarkbly different side to the oft-criticized former lawman. Photo courtesy Jake Hebert

When Captain Clay Higgins announced his campaign for Louisianas 3rd Congressional District, he did so with characteristic ardor and absolutism. The Cajun John Wayne speaks with sulfur  all fire and brimstone that approaches an odorous sanctimony. So color us surprised when a softer bellied Higgins surfaced in a videoed encounter with fellow congressional insurrectionist Jake Hebert, AKA Dorian Phibian, AKA The Cajun Robert Plant.

Hebert, a multidisciplinary visual artist and musician, had recently announced a run for the seat in Higgins sights as the lone Democrat in a crowded field of conventional Republicans. He approached Higgins on the street moments before the captain was to appear at a fund raising event at The Sizzling Monkey in Downtown. While technically an ambush  as much a surprise attack as a bell-bottomed, neo-hippie can muster  a be-satcheled Higgins greeted Hebert amicably, engaged him warmly and complimented the artist/candidates beautiful spirit.

I went into this situation not knowing what to expect, Hebert says. It was certainly in the back of my mind you know, you may get arrested if you say the wrong or do the wrong thing. To be honest I took him as this type of renegade. A loose cannon. He came off as one dimensional to me in public. Instantly, speaking to him in person I realized that theres a different person in there. It was definitely a humanizing experience. I saw a side of him I didnt expect at all. He was very gracious sincere. I dont think even he knew there was a camera there at first.

Hebert notes that his appearance  that of goldilocked hippie on his way to Woodstock  was intentional. The get-up was designed to draw stark contrast between the soft image of hippiedom with the neo-martialism of a cop. Hebert says he was immediately surprised by the version of the both celebrated and derided vigilante cum politico.

Higgins is an avowed Christian, a man who speaks candidly of his spirituality. But what emerged from the video is a brand of Higgins faith decidedly less orthodox and more New Age. The two candidates discuss a wide-range of topics in the ad hoc meeting, including invasive aquatic species, the separation of Church and State, the founding fathers, the carceral state, spirits, spirituality, music and Higgins work with the homeless.

For his part, Higgins says the intense warmth on display with Hebert is every bit as real as the Higgins that came to national fame in a series of powerfully direct Crime Stoppers ads.

What you saw there with that beautiful young man was very real, Higgins says. I have a great deal of love and respect for every American. It stretches beyond the borders of America. I dont draw a line in some sort of nationalist manner. The sun never sets on the children of God. That young man didnt ambush me. He just had something he wanted it get done. And I respected him for it immediately.

Higgins inked the first signature on Heberts nomination petition, commending the artist for his efforts. Hebert will need 1000 signatures in lieu of a fee to qualify to run for office.

Hebert has used Higgins persona as a way of launching a conceptual social awareness campaign. Hebert owns three domains that use Higgins name or identity: captainclayhiggins.net, cajunjohnwayne.com and clayhiggins.org. Each site highlights different progressive social causes about which Herbet is passionate like gun control or the legalization of marijuana.

The video concludes with Higgins hustling off to his fundraiser, but not before the two shake hands no fewer than four times and exchange contact information. Higgins even makes an informal offer to meet Hebert for coffee to continue the discussion.

If he calls me, Ill set it up, says Higgins. My life is an open book. Id love to have coffee with that young man. He had a beautiful spirit. Why cant Americans with different ideas love each other and have candid conversation?

Hey, Clay, we can't help but agree.
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.
MARION  A Grammy-winning musician will take the stage at the Marion Cultural and Civic Center in July.

Peter Frampton will perform July 9 as part of the Will Rock for Food concert hosted by the Marion Ministerial Alliance. The profits from the event will go to the alliances food pantry and soup kitchen.

Ticket prices start at $125 for the first eight rows, said J.R. Russell, executive director of the Ministerial Alliance. Prices drop to $75 for the rest of the floor and $55 for the balcony, he said. Tickets are available for purchase at the civic centers website or in person.

Russell said the concept of putting on a huge show for residents started five years ago when the alliance started to work with local musicians to raise money for the food pantry and soup kitchen. It started with a local band from Anna at The Pavilion, then talent from Chicago played the civic center the next year.

The event really started to get some traction when The Fixx, an '80s rock band, played the venue in 2014. Russell said booking The Fixx really helped the organization land Frampton this year because it was taken more seriously.

Russell says having a premier performer play a show in Marion is always the goal for the event.

We arent going to bring in a name that cant perform anymore, he said. We are going to put on a quality show.

He said having the show not only brings people to Marion from around the region, but also spreads the alliances message at the same time.

It gives us an opportunity to expose our message and our mission to folks who may or may not know that we even exist, Russell said.

It also gives the organization much needed funds at a time when demand for food is at its highest because children are out of school, but donations tend to drop.

For more information about the show visit www.marionccc.com, and for more about the alliance, visit www.marionalliance.org.
CARTERVILLE  In the mood to take a trip back in time?

The Harrison-Bruce Historical Village at John A. Logan College is open for public tours on June 21, and July 5 and 19. Tours start promptly at 10 a.m. and 1 p.m. and will continue into the fall, but those dates have not been set. Public tours are available twice a month from April through November.

The village consists of four historical buildings, dating from 1818 through the late 1800s. The Purdy School and Hunter Log Cabin were moved to the site. The Harrison Storefront and Harrison House are replicas of those original structures.

The final building in the village is the Robert L. Mees Village Centre, which serves as a welcome center and provides for college and community events. The building was designed to also serve as an incident command center for emergencies and can be powered by portable generators to run multiple phone lines and internet connections. The center is available to rent for reunions and private events.

Dr. Mees was the great historian who wanted to do this, said Cheryl Ranchino Trench, lead docent for the village.

The village was made possible through a $1.5 million grant from the Harrison-Bruce Foundation.

Trench and Vicki Blair, a volunteer docent, said the village always welcomes new docents or guides. Volunteers go through about three months of training and help experienced docents with tours. They also have to pass background checks.

Trench said they are interested in adding more buildings to the village and would love to have an historic church.

A normal tour begins in the oldest structure in the village, the Hunter Log Cabin.

Hunter Log Cabin

The oldest building in the village is the Hunter Log Cabin. Emmanuel Hunter built his log cabin in 1818, the year Illinois became a state. It was located northeast of Marion and east of Whiteash.

The one-room cabin was home to Hunter, his wife, Judith Lee Hunter, and their six children. The cabin originally had a loft, where all the children slept, that had an opening near the fireplace. It is decorated with period artifacts, including a four-post bed that is original to the cabin.

The cabin has two doors and porches on the front and back. Trench said the doors originally opened in to protect from Indian attacks, which were common in the early 1800s in Illinois. The doors now open to the outside to meet code for public buildings.

Blair said the deer love to eat whatever is grown near the cabin.

Purdy School

Purdy School was the first historical building relocated to the campus of John A. Logan College. The school was moved to JALC in 1983 through the generosity of the July Harrison Bruce Foundation from its original location in southern Perry County. It was built around 1860 by Edwin Burbank and continued to serve as a one-room school until 1951.

Prior to the village, this was a working building, thanks to the efforts of Betty Neely of Herrin, Trench said.

Today, the school allows public school students to experience a turn-of-the-century one-room school. Local retired teachers serve as guides and teach students for the day. Students use ink wells and quills, vintage textbooks, slates and chalk, visit the recitation bench and play games from an earlier time.

This is a real treasure because for many, many years, this is how most Americans learned, Trench said.

The Harrison Storefront

The Harrison Storefront, a 19th Century double dog-trot style cabin, is a replica of the cabin David Ruffin Harrisons family lived in prior to construction of the brick Harrison home. It is basically two square cabins or pens separated by a breezeway or dog-trot and joined by a common roof.

The family lived on the left and Harrisons business was on the right.

Trench said Harrison was an entrepreneur and severed in several capacities beginning as a general store. Several of the artifacts are original, including medicine bottles and pages from the store inventory book. The general store also served as a post office and bank (which became First National Bank of Herrin).

The home contains a variety of donated artifacts, including items from the Bruce family, a spinning wheel donated by Sam Stotlar and a trunk from the Tony Gallinas family that traveled from Italy across the ocean to Herrin. A rifle hangs over the fireplace.

Every cabin had a gun, and this one is a Springfield Rifle, Trench said.

The Harrison House

David Ruffin Harrison built a new brick home for his family in 1868 in northwest Herrin, then known as Herrins Prairie. Trench said the home was really a mansion to the family who had lived in the small cabin.

The home was sold in 1899 and went through several owners before Julia Harrison Bruce purchased the house in 1975 and restored it to serve as a museum. By the time JALC officials expressed interest in adding the home to its historical village, advisors of the Fred G. Harrison and Julia Harrison Bruce Foundation collaborated with JALC to preserve the heritage of the home by building a replica. It was completed in 2012.

The home contains some historical artifacts from the original Harrison House and some added by other owners over the years. Stones from the original foundation line the walkway to the home. The upper floor is currently used as storage. The main floor consists of a parlor, music room with a piano, and a dining room with a small kitchen area, and front and back porches.

For more information or to make a donation to the village, contact Adrienne Barkley at 618-985-2828, ext. 8015.
Morthland College Health Services filed a motion Friday to drop its breach of contract lawsuit against Franklin Hospital and its current administration, according to a news release from Morthland College.

Earlier this week, Morthland College President Tim Morthland announced its intention to invest $30 million to $40 million in a privately funded, nonprofit, new hospital facility to be built in Benton. Later this month, the Franklin Hospital board will consider the proposal to manage the current hospital and begin a process to privatize it, while adding healthcare services needed in Franklin County.

"MCHS is willing to forego our damages  which amount to more than $3.5 million  for the opportunity to restore healthcare to our county," Dr. Morthland said in the release. "We humbly ask for the public's support as we move through the logistics in the coming weeks."
The show will go on per usual, state fair officials say. Despite the states financial problems and lack of a budget, a spokeswoman says everything is going swimmingly at both the Illinois State Fair and the Du Quoin State Fair.

Our grandstand sales are off the charts. We set records for the first three days of sales, said Rebecca Clark of the Illinois Department of Agriculture. We havent had any problems.

The department is not putting the fairs on cruise control. On the contrary, it is adding a major component  a statewide karaoke contest.

Throughout June and the first week of July, aspiring stars will compete in eight regional contests, all held at county fairs. The first- and second-place winners of those contests will go on to compete in the finale Aug. 20 at the Illinois State Fair in Springfield.

The overall winner will win the right to open for one of the grandstand acts at Springfield and Du Quoin.

That means the karaoke winner will share the stage with country group Little Big Town at Springfield and an as-yet unannounced artist at the Du Quoin State Fair.

There will also be a change in one of the theme days at the state fair in Springfield. Saturday, Aug. 13 will be dedicated to first responders. That day was previously set aside for local government.

We will be honoring police, firemen and EMTs who are on the front lines every day, Clark said. Were still working on all the details. Weve had some vendors who have said theyd like to offer discounts. For instance, if a (first responder) wanted a corndog, they would get it at a discounted price. Were still working on those details.

Gov. Bruce Rauner will continue tradition by officially opening the fair. He will be joined by other state officials on Friday, Aug. 12.

Pop star Meghan Trainor will be among performers at the grandstand. Also performing will be Pat Benatar, Jake Owen, Kiss, Dierks Bentley, Cole Swindell, ZZ Top and Gregg Allman.

The Du Quoin State Fair will get under way Aug. 26. American Idol star Kellie Pickler will be among artists performing at the grandstand. Also scheduled are Jamey Johnson, Skillet and Sugar Ray.

The fair will run through Labor Day, Sept 5.
The following editorial appeared in Wednesday's Washington Post

In Winston Churchill's famous "Sinews of Peace" address at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri, on March 5, 1946, he warned of "two gaunt marauders" stalking the world, "war and tyranny." He declared that "an iron curtain" had descended upon Europe and insisted that "we must never cease to proclaim in fearless tones the great principles of freedom and the rights of man. . . ." He described free speech, democracy and rule of law as the "title deeds of freedom" and implored, "Let us preach what we practice - let us practice what we preach."

These words, spoken in a different age, are worth recalling today as autocrats and tyrants are on the march. A different kind of curtain is descending, denying billions of people those basic "title deeds" of freedom. No longer is it about communism, but rather the rise of despots who rule by force and coercion, from Russia to China, across the Middle East and Central Asia, to Latin America and Africa. In the past decade, these leaders have become more adept - and daring - at building a parallel universe to the liberal democratic order. In their construct, state power reigns supreme, political competition is extinguished, civil society elbowed out, and freedoms of expression, association and belief suppressed.

Surprisingly, some of these leaders, particularly in Russia and China, have been wielding a sophisticated and deceptive soft power beyond their borders that is proving more enduring and effective than in the past. Their tactics are asymmetrical and subversive, using deception and disinformation, not easily confronted.

The United States and other democracies need a strategy to counter this new wave of authoritarianism, including with 21st-century versions of the soft-power weapons that worked for the West during the Cold War.

Just as the U.S.-sponsored radio stations beamed truth behind the Iron Curtain, the West today should build a powerful digital "transmitter" that can reach billions of people trapped in dictator-land. It should help people circumvent digital firewalls and take advantage of new social media. When hundreds of Chinese realized they'd been fleeced in a pyramid scheme recently, they found a way to leap the Great Firewall and organize on Twitter. Why? Because these tools work. They empower people and defy the heavy hand of the state.

A global democracy strategy must draw on more familiar tactics, too, including public diplomacy, selective pressure on authoritarian regimes and what Churchill called "fearless tones" of reproach. The West needs to contest more vigorously the battle for ideas, a struggle in which Russia and China have become adroit, flooding the international media space with toxic propaganda, from broadcastoutlets such as Russia's RT and China's CCTV News to armies of Internet trolls. The West's strategy cannot and should not mimic odious big-state propaganda. Rather, it should showcase liberal values and ideals.

The U.S. government in recent years has a poor track record in such attempts. In some quarters, the United States is a discredited exponent of democracy. But these are problems to be solved rather than reasons to avoid action. A new presidency is a good moment to develop and launch a strategy to defend democracy. Without it, freedom will continue to lose ground.
With the June 14 primary quickly approaching, candidates for Orangeburg County sheriff and S.C. House District 95 tried to convince county business leaders and owners to vote for them.

Sheriff Leroy Ravenell and Rep. Jerry Govan touted their records of getting things done for the residents of Orangeburg County over the past couple of decades.

It is different when you are riding in the car and when you are driving the car, Ravenell told those gathered Thursday at the Orangeburg County Chamber of Commerces Meet the Candidates forum.

Before I was a passenger and now I am a driver. I am changing the direction of Orangeburg County, he said.

Meanwhile, sheriffs office candidates Kenneth Mac McCaster and Darnell Bubba Johnson and District 95 candidate Dr. Kevin Ray said they would bring a fresh perspective and new energy to the office.

This is about your future, McCaster said. Folks, at some time weve got to understand that change is coming. I want to be that change you can trust.

The candidates for sheriff and House 95 are running as Democrats. Most individuals seeking re-election in Orangeburg County are running unopposed.

In addition to touting their platforms, each candidate also assessed their campaign.

McCaster said his campaign is going very well.

McCaster believes his message of decentralizing the sheriffs office is hitting home in rural parts of the county.

We are trying to concentrate on places like Eutawville, Holly Hill, Norway and Neeses. Places that have kind of been forgotten, he said.

McCaster said it is important to not forget elderly individuals who may not be able to travel all the way to Ellis Avenue in Orangeburg to receive sheriffs office services.

McCaster expressed his confidence that he is ready for June 14.

The key is to have a good voter turnout, he said. If we have a good voter turnout, I think we will be all right.

Johnson said his campaign is very energized, having reached various segments of the Orangeburg County populace.

We are not just meeting original residents from Orangeburg County but those who have come to Orangeburg County from foreign nations, Johnson said

The unique part about this campaign and this election is that the citizens have the same concerns I have. Those concerns came and hit me dead in the face, he said.

Johnson is running on a platform of integrity, crime prevention, transparency and community-orientated policing.

We feel good, Ravenell said, noting he is running on his record of service of 29 years in law enforcement and five years as sheriff.

Some of the things I have done here are the first time these things have been done in Orangeburg County, he said.

Ravenell specifically referred to developing a shooting range for training that has received interest beyond the state, having each officer carry stun guns and using in-car computers.

You can see the results right away, Ravenell said. The sheriff said he has also been successful in closing down over a dozen problematic nightclubs in the county as well as solving a number of crimes.

Ray says he has been able to travel the entire district and get the pulse of what people are wanting in Orangeburg and District 95.

People are wanting better, Ray said. Rep. Govan has done the best that he knows how to do. The language of politics has changed. It is about technology and information and essentially we can grab a hold of that and take it to the next level.

Ray says the slogan for his campaign is Change. Communication. Collaboration.

Now is the time to pass the torch and give it to the next person to run it the next level, Ray said. When we win this race, if I am in this seat for more than 10 years  in Orangeburg we have a problem. We have not identified some young man or some young woman to carry the torch to the next level.

Govan said he has been in the House taking care of peoples business until just a few days ago.

We are behind in terms of an opportunity to get out there and touch people where we would like, Govan said. I am really pleased with the response we are getting.

I think our message is getting through of the importance of seniority and the fact that we stand to lose a lot as a county if we lose our seniority position in terms of the House.

Govan will be the third-ranking member of the House if he is re-elected.

He cited his record of supporting education, substance abuse treatment and infrastructure expansion for future economic development.

Chenoa Bethea was among many who attended the event to try to learn more about the candidates.

I think it is important to get involved in the voting process because every vote counts, Bethea said. A lot of people always think that they are not going to go out and vote because their candidate will not win or their vote doesnt count.

Orangeburg resident John Bates attended the event as an information gathering opportunity.

If you are not involved in politics and if you dont vote, you miss your opportunity to influence the system, Bates said. You have to live in the system. You have to stand up for what you believe in as well.
Rep. Jerry Govan, D-Orangeburg, announced he has received the backing of education and business groups.

The House 95 representative is being challenged in the Democratic primary by Dr. Kevin Ray.

The S.C. Business and Industry Political Education Committee has recognized the lawmaker, according to a Govan release.

Correspondence from the group says, your legislative endeavors have resulted directly in the creation of jobs and a higher standard of living for South Carolinians.

Govan said, I am very pleased to receive this recognition. As the former head of the Small Business Development Center, I fully recognize the importance of the private sector and what they bring to the table.

He said hes worked to strike a balance between the needs of business and labor, and create an environment conducive to economic development and job creation.

Govan has also been recognized in recent years by the S.C. Chamber of Commerce and this year received the support of the S.C. Realtors Association, according to his release.

In addition, Govan has been recommended for support by the South Carolina Education Association Fund for Children and Public Education.

Correspondence sent to members of the group says these candidates have been through the SCEAs rigorous interview and vetting process. We ask educators to support these candidates.

The lawmaker was one of only 19 members, including Republicans and Democrats, to receive support from the group this election year, according to his release.

I am very pleased to receive the support of the SCEA, Govan said. The support of education and teachers particularly in our public school system is vital to both our economic and social future.
DENMARK  Masonite International announced Thursday its adding 50 new jobs at its Bamberg County door-making facility.

South Carolina continues to build on its reputation as a leader in manufacturing, and Masonites decision to expand in Denmark is another big win for our state, Gov. Nikki Haley said in a release. Haley is a Bamberg County native.

Its special any time we see a company succeed and grow in one of our rural communities, and we couldnt be more excited to celebrate the 50 new jobs this expansion means for Bamberg County, she said.

The company did not announce new capital investment, but development officials say they expect the plant to continue to grow. The company did not receive incentives for bringing the new jobs.

The 50 new positions will allow Masonites Denmark facility to add another auto line shift. Additional growth and capacity increases are expected to take place through the first quarter of 2017.

There are also plans for the creation of a weekend shift, which will require additional staffing in auxiliary support departments.

Masonite acquired the Denmark facility in 2010 with the purchase of Lifetime Doors, which then had 40 employees. The company announced a $14 million investment in 2011.

Masonite now employs 198 in Denmark.

Masonite is a fine company that has been an asset to our county. Every good job they provide in our area creates a better future for a family here, where Masonite continues to expand. We congratulate the company and want to help Masonite flourish in Bamberg County, Bamberg County Council Chairman Isaiah Odom said.

Southern Carolina Alliance President and CEO Danny Black said, We are proud of the fact that our workforce has been a part of Masonites success at the Denmark facility, where Masonite continues to produce the worlds finest products in the industry. We extend our gratitude and our pledge to continue to support Masonites success in any way that we can.

Featuring a wide array of patented designs for frames, stain kits and building materials, Masonite International operates more than 70 locations around the world. It has 37 sites in the United States alone.

Headquartered in Tampa, Florida, the company employs more than 10,000 people worldwide.

Those interested in applying for any of the new positions can visit the companys careers page online for more information. Applications must be submitted in person at the facility, which is located at 1349 Locust Avenue in Denmark.

For more information on Masonite International, visit www.masonite.com.
A National Public Radio profile of a student leader has Orangeburg Consolidated School District 5 officials concerned about the portrayal of North Middle/High School.

There were a number of things that we feel werent portrayed accurately in the NPR article. We are not going to discuss any specific comment by the student, nor are we going to discuss any details about the student, OCSD5 spokesman Bill Clark said.

The piece entitled One student tries to help others escape a Corridor of Shame, explores the leadership of then-senior Robert Gordon Jr., who has since graduated.

Hes profiled as someone who helped both students and teachers at the school, where many referred to him as a second principal.

Gordon, 18, has raised funds for everything from proms to the senior class trip and has served as a counselor, mentor and leader for many students and staff members alike at the school.

But some aspects of the article have drawn concern among district officials.

Clark says the district does have student helpers who fill in gaps in their schedules by handling a variety of clerical tasks, such as copying and delivering items to classrooms.

But these student helpers  Im not going to call them assistant superintendents or assistant principals  do not have the authority to engage in any kind of administrative or guidance function, Clark said.

Student helpers also do not communicate with Superintendent Dr. Jesse Washington, Clark said.

Until graduation, I dont know that Dr. Washington had ever met this particular student, and I had only met him once, and that was the week before when the senator visited the school, he said, referring to U.S. Sen. Tim Scotts visit in May.

A student helpers chain of communication and supervision is going to be within the school, the school staff and with the principal, Clark said.

It was stated in the NPR feature that Gordon involves himself in administrative issues, including petitioning for a new math teacher.

According to the article, an instructor retired midyear and the classes were left without a full-time teacher for nearly a full quarter.

Gordon said last week that he went to the district office to fill out a form to request a new teacher, with the position being filled probably a week or so after I went there and filed the paperwork.

Clark said, The vacancy was filled with a substitute teacher for a period of about a month and after that, the vacancy was covered with a transfer of a teacher from Howard Middle School.

At all times, either the substitute or the transfer teacher was under the supervision of the existing math teacher at the school.

Washington said, And the substitute was certified. At no time were the students without a certified teacher.

Clark said he and Washington were also not aware that a petition was made for a new teacher.

Did he talk to some employee on Ellis Avenue? If he did, we dont know who it was. But the implication was that there was communication with the district office and the administration, and that would have been either the superintendent or the HR office, of which Dr. Washington was serving in both capacities, he said.

Washington said the NPR story struck him as being a little odd.

I think there were some things in there that were a little inconsistent, but I think it showed a lot of ambition and assertiveness, I guess, from the students perspective, which is good, he said.

Gordon said there were no untruths printed in the article.

The only thing that I can say about the article is that everything in there is completely true. In my opinion, its up to the reader whether it leans in a negative or positive light, but everything in here is true, Gordon said.

Everything seems to be in order. Nothing seems to be out of place. Most of the opinions came straight from Mr. Gregorys or the facultys mouths, the teen said, referring to North Middle/High Principal Charles Gregory.

Of the school, Gordon said, There are some improvements that can be made. But just like anything else, some people would prefer to have it the way it is, and others would like to change.

It just so happens that the people that want the change end up being the majority, and thats how the (NPR) article and I came about. I think someone needs to come in and restructure the school. Tell everyone what their position is and what they should be doing and see that they are doing their job to their full potential.

Washington said, In every aspect of a district, in all schools, theres always room for improvement. Were always trying to be better, but theres nothing that is going to sink the school right now. Im not sure where a writer or journalist could go and portray the student as a principal and it be believable. There are just too many holes that are just wide open.

The superintendent added, I mean, we can be better, we can be stronger, we can be tighter, and those are the things that we push for and strive to do every day across the entire district  not just at North.

Gordon said he has worked to motivate students to reach their full potential at the school, which sits along the so-called Corridor of Shame, a stretch of impoverished, rural school districts running along Interstate 95.

Once the child sees that theres somebody there that cares enough to put forth effort to make sure they have a good year and have a good time at a little small rural school or, as they call it, the Corridor of Shame, I think Im paid in full, Gordon said.

Clark said the schools placement along the Corridor of Shame didnt necessarily mean that the school building was in shameful condition.

If North Middle/High School is not the newest in the district, its certainly not anything that would be associated with Corridor of Shame type terminology and the descriptions of the facility that they used in that article, Clark said.

Washington said older schools in Orangeburg are being targeted for much-needed upgrades.

Gordon said, I would never say that North needs to be closed. I love North with all my heart. Its almost like a family-oriented school and with the small campuses, it just opens up so many more doors that I couldnt see open at a larger school.

Gordon is a minister and heads a youth ministry at his church, New Light United Methodist Church, located at 2810 Neeses Highway in Orangeburg.

I have three sermons lined up for this month, Gordon said. He will be dual majoring in religion and philosophy and mathematics education at Claflin University.

In the meantime, Washington said he is not concerned about the future of North Middle/High School and is planning no specific changes at the school.

Were always trying to be better, to improve, excel, grow and provide better and more learning opportunities for our students. It takes a whole community, and well continue to work with the community and continue to grow and be better, he said.
On May 6, Daniel Petrocelli, the lead lawyer defending Donald Trump against two class action fraud lawsuits, appeared before U.S. Judge Gonzalo Curiel in San Diego at a hearing to set a trial date. Attorneys for the plaintiffs sought a trial date in August, after the Republican National Convention, but before the general election in November. Petrocelli requested a February trial date.

Class action trials often take weeks, if not months, before all of the evidence is presented and the jury is able to reach a verdict. A class action fraud trial, in which Trump would be forced to testify, would likely have lasted throughout the general election campaign. Daily news reports of the trial -- which include allegations that Trump used deceptive advertising to defraud the elderly -- would have been, to put it mildly, an unwelcome distraction as he tried to stay on message during a general election campaign.

Petrocelli argued that it would be unfair to force Trump to defend the lawsuits in trial while he was running for president. Judge Curiel agreed with him and continued the trial until after the November election.

If Judge Curiel were biased against Trump, he could have simply torpedoed Trump's presidential campaign by denying the motion to continue and forcing the Trump U case to trial before the election. "The judge is doing his job," Petrocelli told a group of reporters outside the courthouse after the ruling.

Three weeks later, on May 27, Donald Trump launched into a tirade against Judge Curiel during a campaign stop in San Diego.

"The trial is going to take place sometime in November. There should be no trial. This should have been dismissed on summary judgment easily," Trump said. "Everybody says it, but I have a judge who is a hater of Donald Trump, a hater. He's a hater. His name is Gonzalo Curiel."

What Trump hasn't told his followers is that Judge Curiel has repeatedly ruled in Trump's favor on other motions and was obligated to deny his motion for summary judgment. Judge Curiel had no other choice.

A judge is required, when considering a motion to dismiss a case on summary judgment, to follow both the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP) and past court decisions interpreting those rules (case law). Rule 56 of the FRCP provides that judges are not permitted to dismiss cases on summary judgment unless the party bringing the motion is able to show there are no disputed issues of material fact. The case law interpreting this rule requires that a judge must consider the facts in the light most favorable to the party against whom summary judgment is sought.

Trump frequently argues that the positive evaluations prepared by Trump U students at the end of the course should have resulted in the case being dismissed. But the same plaintiffs who prepared the evaluations have also filed additional affidavits and deposition testimony stating they were pressured by their instructors to give positive evaluations. The plaintiffs also claim they did not become aware they had been defrauded until after the course was over and the evaluations were submitted.

While the evaluations cited by Trump may be relevant, and will be introduced as evidence at trial, they are not dispositive. They do not, standing on their own, entitle Trump to summary judgment. The dueling affidavits and depositions offered by the plaintiffs in opposition to Trump's motion are textbook examples of disputed issues of fact that would require any judge, regardless of his ancestry, to deny a motion for summary judgment.

Trump also failed to inform his followers that Judge Curiel actually granted his motion for summary judgment on other issues, such as a request by the plaintiffs for injunctive relief that would have prevented him from reopening Trump U. These are not the only rulings Judge Curiel has issued in Trump's favor.

Writing in his blog on LitigationAndTrial.com, attorney Max Kennerly conducted a review of all the orders issued by Judge Curiel since he was assigned to the Trump University case in 2013. Kennerly concluded that the judge has ruled in Trump's favor far more often than he has ruled against him. According to Kennerly, "Judge Curiel ... generally ruled against the plaintiffs, including refusing their request to amend the complaint and extend discovery, and, most recently, rejecting their trial plan."

Donald Trump has an odd way of showing his appreciation for a trial judge who, as his attorney said, is just "doing his job."

-----

Nat Hentoff is a nationally renowned authority on the First Amendment and the Bill of Rights. He is a member of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, and the Cato Institute, where he is a senior fellow. Nick Hentoff is a criminal defense attorney in New York who has worked as a judicial clerk for a U.S. district court judge.
People have a part to play in ensuring that the surroundings are clean and maintained. Dr. Richard Byron-Cox, Capacity Building Officer at the Secretariat of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification, outlined his version on the Sustainable Development Goals at a session staged at the Fisheries Conference Room last Tuesday.





Byron-Cox, Vincentian born lawyer trained in International Relations, delivers a lecture at the University of Trinidad and Tobago next Wednesday.





He praised the organisers which included the Windward Islands Farmers Association (WINFA), Lazarus Foundation for spearheading the event called National Civil Society Capacity Building Forum on the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.





The United Nations outlined 17 goals considered fundamental to any countrys progress.





Byron-Cox stressed on the importance of the topic in light of increasing world population and the extensive usages of its resources.





Byron-Cox pointed to the potential extinction of particular species owing to the rampant disregard of environmental conservation.





Byron-Cox cited the effects of climate change on people today as a reaction by earth itself.





"Nature has declared war on human kind, because we have treated it so badly, Byron-Cox, indicated.





He pointed to the population increase by 2050, and its implications on the demands for food, energy, and water. The prospects look dismal as far as Byron Cox is concerned.





One with 16 years experience at the international body, Byron-Cox noted the distribution of wealth. He pointed to the number of European countries that have collapsed, and reminded the Civil Society organisations of the role they must play in the scenario.





Byron-Cox alluded to goal 16, which aims to "promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all, and build effective accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels.





Byron-Cox emphasised the closeness of civil society bodies whom he described as "grounded with the people.





He put people and their livelihood, economics, and the environment as pillars of any developmental programme. For that stance, Byron-Cox highlighted the need for people to have a voice in matters of sustainable development.





Byron-Cox pointed to the need for securing justice, and encouraged the groups to have their input in the developmental agenda. Persons must be involved and act to make their voices heard, Byron Cox declared.





They dont have to await the governments direction on every matter, the Vincentian lawyer suggested.





Civil Societies are not fringe elements, as far as Byron-Cox is concerned.





"You are in it, he outlined, and stressed the importance of universal action.





Byron-Cox used the occasion to air his views on the situation on the Southern Grenadine territory of Canouan. He pointed to the need for Civil Society to harness resources to "get the law changed.





That was another aspect on which Byron-Cox outlined the strength of the peoples voice. But it was not to be persons operating on their own. "It has to be institutionalised, Byron Cox indicated.





He was joined on the platform by Beverley Richards, from the Organising Committee.





The day session heard from WINFAs coordinator Kozel Peters-Fraser, and Matthew Johnston from Inspirational Volunteer Journeys.





Chairperson of the event was Angella Ideisha Jackson representing Lazarus Foundation.




(L-R): Nikala Williams - FLOW Marketing Executive, Cenus Hinds  creator of Konservi, and Keisha Phillips, CEDs Training Officer/ Communications Officer, at the June 2 official launching of the Konservi Mobile Marketing App.

Cenus Hinds is a name to which Vincentians will get used .





He is the creator and sole provider of the Konservi Mobile Marketing App, and trades in the business name Konservi.





Hinds described Konservi as "the only mobile first advertising platform in the Caribbean that is guaranteed to result in more targeted eyeballs than any other platform.





He explained that, "It uses social media to maximise your communication reach to the fastest time possible, and allows your customers to stay in touch with your businesses 24/7.





Konservi was officially launched last week Thursday, June 2, under the auspices of the Centre for Enterprise Development (CED).





And communications service provider FLOW was pleased to be part of the launch, Hinds being "an enthusiastic student of her companys Internet Summer School Programme, according to Nakalia Williams, Marketing Executive at FLOW, in her brief address at the launch.





Williams assured that FLOW is dedicated to supporting learning through technology, and will continue to invest heavily in education here in St Vincent and the Grenadines, by supporting initiatives such as: Internet Summer School; National Scholarship programme; Public speaking competition; Tertiary school internship programme; Reduced internet rates to low income homes, and internet access to learning institutions throughout St Vincent and the Grenadines.





Hinds, for his part, acknowledged Williams role in his advancement, and confessed to having learnt a great deal from Williams.





As far as he was concerned, his biggest accomplishment has been his relationship with the communication service provider FLOW.





Also addressing the launch was Ms. Keisha Phillips, CEDs Training Officer/ Communications Officer. She did not hide her pride about Hinds progress.





"Given the levelling effect of information technology in terms of international competitiveness, we are particularly pleased that Cenus has chosen to establish an IT related business, Phillips said.





She pointed to Hinds venture as the place for "present and future business.





The young man is pleased with the fact that some businesses have embraced his operation and have become part of what is a global network.





He appealed to the business community to patronise his service which he assures is bound to be rewarding, and is offering a free trial period for two months, during which prospective clients can assess the worth of Hinds services.





Hinds company Konservi was one of 32 teams from 17 countries selected as finalists in the 10th Talent and Innovation Competition of the Americas and the Eco-Challenge 2015, held in Panama City.
No chairs, no tables, but the children are as comfortable in the library as they would be in their own homes.

New Prospect Primary School has been awarded the 2015-2016 Hands Across the Sea Literacy Award for St. Vincent and the Grenadines.





The prize is U.S. $1,000 in brand new reading books or literacy support materials of the schools choice.





Back in 2014 when the co-founders of Hands Across the Seas first met Mr. Albert Harry, Principal of New Prospect Primary School, they were so impressed with his total commitment to raising the literacy levels of his students, that Hands shipped the school 400 brand new books. The only question was, where would the books go? There really was no spare space at this little school.





Undaunted, Principal Harry promptly created a library space by cutting the school office in half. The principal raised some funds, purchased lumber for bookshelves, and asked a local business to donate paint. The result is a cozy, inviting library space that the children love. There is no space for tables and chairs, but that doesnt matter. The library is super-popularmany of the 2014 books are so well-loved that the pages are dog-eared.

The official opening of the library included a childrens parade through the village and a gala ribbon-cutting.





Hands Across the Seas Co-Founder and Executive Director Harriet Linskey said, "There is no doubt that improved literacy skills open the door to a better life, and Principal Harry and his staff are demonstrating a strong commitment to promoting reading and writing by making their library an important part of the school.





Hands Across the Sea, founded in 2007, has served 11,730 children at 55 primary and secondary schools and reading programmes in St. Vincent and the Grenadines since 2009, sending a total of 40,950 new and near-new books. As part of each years Hands Wish Lists, educators specify the types of books most needed for their school.





"Our dream at Hands Across the Sea is that every primary and secondary school in St. Vincent and the Grenadines have a first-class lending library filled with new books, books that have been requested by each schools educators, and that the libraries become integral, essential parts of the school, says Tom "T.L. Linskey, Co-Founder of Hands Across the Sea.





In addition, Hands Across the Sea is dedicated to raising the literacy levels of Eastern Caribbean children on the islands of St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Antigua, Dominica, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Lucia, and Grenada. Since founding the organization in 2007, Hands Across the Sea has shipped over 209,300 books to the region through its Caribbean Literacy and School Support (CLASS) program.





Christobelle Ashton and Elaine Ollivierre serve as Hands Across the Sea representatives on St. Vincent and the Grenadines.
Something needs to be done to address the seeming lack of confidence in the justice system by some members of the public.





Leader of the Opposition Arnhim Eustace spoke on the issue on last Mondays edition of New Times, saying that it was no longer possible for the current situation to continue where people do not have confidence in the justice system.





"This matter has to be taken seriously. More and more people are losing confidence by the day in the justice system in the region and certainly here in St Vincent, Eustace said.





"So many things are happening and there is no answer  it hurts that every Monday morning, you wake up and someone has been killed or injured, or damaged and very little is done, if anything at all.





For example, implementing laws where the Director of Public Prosecution has to produce a fiat to bring certain types of cases before the court, Eustace explained, prohibited rather than improved the justice system.





And it appeared as though people from the lower classes were dealt with differently from affluent civilians, the Leader of the Opposition continued.





"We cannot live like this; our communities must have confidence in the justice system in our country, otherwise we will continue our decline.





There was already a decline in the economy, he said, (now) people were losing confidence in the justice system amidst a lot of corruption. "All these are pointers for a failed state, Eustace assessed, and added that persons in society were being disenfranchised, "and it seems as though nothing is being done about that.





Groups such as the Bar Association, according to Eustace, were not speaking out.





"In other countries, you hear more activity from the Bar Association, as they ensure that the justice system is something that we cherish; but not here in St Vincent, everything is political, he said.




Queen Nikianna Williams flanked by her ladies-in-waiting First Runner-up Jeanetta Richards (right) and second Runner-up Anya Frederick. She is pictured at right in her winning evening gown.

The sacrifice and hard work are not quite over for 22-year-old Nikianna Williams  Miss SVG 2016  as she has moved immediately into preparing for the Miss Carival Show, scheduled for July 1 at Victoria Park.





But there is still some relief, "Because everything I have worked so hard for and my dream have become a reality, Williams told THE VINCENTIAN.





Overwhelmed





Williams (Miss FLOW) rose above seven other competitors last Saturday to take the coveted title of Miss SVG 2016, having taken top honours in three of the judged categories: Swimwear, Evening Wear and Interview, the last along with the talent category being considered the most challenging.





She admits that she wants to be treated like the ordinary Nikianna Williams, but life has changed with the overwhelming support and love that she has since received from the public, as she makes her way around capital Kingstown.





"I am seeing a change in the way people react towards me. I would walk and people would be like Miss SVG!





"I would get voice notes from my friends. I would get videos from students and they would be telling me that they love me and cant wait to meet me  so I would say its a great feeling so far compared to what other persons were saying, Williams said.





Prepared for the adverse





She referred to the one or two adverse comments made by the few patrons that bravedthe inclement weather to see the queen crowned.





However Williams says that she had been preparing for moments like that in the months leading up to the show, pexplaining that she avoided Social Media sites such as Facebook and Instagram, and that she had even deleted the apps from her mobile phone.





"But friends would come back and report what people have been saying, and to that I said that people would have their own opinions, and they are entitled to their own opinions and I respect that.





Overcoming nerves





Appearing at number 8 on the evening, Williams said that she was threatened by some nerves  especially since everything that could have gone wrong did so in the last week leading up to the event.





Emotions ran high, she said, after remembering the words of her chaperone and team members who kept encouraging her when she got nervous.





But it all came raining down in her favour when the heavens burst open, shortly after 2 on Sunday morning. She was declared the winner.





Taking the second spot - the first runner up - was Jeanetta Richards  Miss Jergens, and rounding off the top three was Anya Frederick  Miss St Vincent Electricity Services (VINLEC).





Frederick took two non-judged categories  Miss Congeniality and Miss Photogenic; while Richards shared the prize for the Best Community Support on Road Trips with Vakeesha John (Miss Agricultural Input Warehouse) and Shanique Alexander (Miss Bank of SVG).





The much anticipated Talent category was won by Zenna Lewis (Miss Lotto) who entertained the hundreds in attendance with a humorous, yet sometimes controversial monologue entitled Its a Vincy Thing; Message from Below.





The other awardees were Ranaesha Loraine (Miss Play 4) - Beauty Show Committees Award for the Most Improved Contestant; Vakeesha John copped the Committees Award for attendance at Training and the Richard Monroe Community Spirit Award.





Dahvana Providence, Miss Metrocint, was the other competitor.
Tiffany and her parents, Cheryl and Sus Minors. Tiffany Minors is pictured at left at her graduation from Harvard College on May 26, 2016.

With thousands of applicants annually to Harvard Medical School in Cambridge, Massachusetts, a Vincentian student is among an elite group who have been accepted to the prestigious institution, considered to be the top medical school in the world.





Tiffany Minors, 22, who was born in Brooklyn, New York to Cheryl Gibson-Minors, of Dauphine in the Belair/Gomea area, and Sylvanus "Sus Minors, of Biabou, is one of 150 students to be accepted to Harvards medical programme, which she plans to start on Aug. 1.





"I believe I got into Harvard Med for a couple of reasons, Tiffany told THE VINCENTIAN in an exclusive interview over the weekend. "First and foremost, I believe God has a special plan for my life, so all the glory should go to Him.





"Secondly, I think it was obvious from my application, that I had an underlying driving force in everything I was doing, which had to do with my faith, added the Born-Again Christian. "In all my extracurricular activities  be it working at the homeless shelter, leading the Social Action team for Harvard College Faith and Action, tutoring inner-city kids, musically directing Harvards Christian A Cappella group, going on mission trips, or attempting to find cures for certain viruses  I was working towards the goal of loving people well and using my talents to do so.





"Thirdly, I believe my heritage was a big factor in my acceptance, continued Tiffany, who graduated in May from Harvard College with a Bachelors degree in Chemistry, with honors. "I spoke in my interviews about being a first generation American and identifying with my Vincentian culture. I explained how I was interested in Global Health, partly because I would love to impact St. Vincent and the Grenadines local hospitals in the future.





Besides Harvard, Tiffany, who said she is "driven by her faith in Jesus Christ and deep love for others, was also accepted to two other Ivy League medical schools  the University of Pennsylvania (U-Penn) and Columbia in New York.





In addition, she was offered a full scholarship to Hofstra Medical School in Long Island, a New York City suburb. The Award Letter from Hofstra cited her ability to be "a leader of the school as it moves forward.





The undergraduate years

In her undergraduate study at Harvard College, Tiffany co-synthesized, with another Harvard student, novel NS3 Protease Inhibitor for dengue fever.





They presented their findings to the Medicinal Chemistry sector of the American Chemical Society (ACS) National Convention. Clinical trials are expected to begin later to produce a dengue vaccine.





Tiffany said she was "blessed with many opportunities to do research while at college, stating that she worked for Dr. Lecia Sequist, Chief Pulmonary Oncologist at Massachusetts General Hospital, on an EGFR mutant third generation drug, in which she analyzed the side effect of hyperglycemia in patients not previously known to have diabetes.





She said she and her Harvard College lab partner presented their work to ACS around the design and synthesis of an unsaturated oximinoamide, which will act as a tighter binding NS3 protease inhibitor, and is now featured in SciFinder, ACSs online database, as a novel inhibitor of the dengue virus NS3 serine protease.

Tiffany also shadowed Dr. Louis J. Auguste, a surgical oncologist at Long Island Jewish Hospital, during her second summer break from Harvard College.





At Harvard College, Tiffany led the Social Action Team, Faith and Action, to meet the needs of Bostons [Massachusetts] impoverished community. She also volunteered at other hospitals, food banks, homeless shelters and prisons; was the co-musical director of Harvards Christian A Cappella Group; and tutored underprivileged children in Bostons "inner city, Roxbury.





"I feel incredibly blessed, said Tiffany, when asked about her studies at Harvard College. "The path was definitely difficult  many late nights and long exams  but rewarding.





"I got to interact with some of the smartest people Ive ever met, and learned from the greatest minds in their respective fields, she added. "I enjoyed doing research and being involved in the pre-Med community, while also not allowing it to define my existence.





Tiffany said she was unsure what she will specialize in during medical school, but added that she had done "a bit of work in oncology and love the longstanding patient interaction that comes with the field.





"I am waiting to experience all the other specialties and choose then, said Tiffany, who went on mission trips to Colombia and Texas to both share her faith and assist the needy.





The formative years

She was asked to deliver the keynote address at her first elementary school, Public School (PS) 312 in Brooklyn at its June 24, 2016 graduation ceremony (5th grade).





Tiffany attended Sanford H. Calhoun High School in Merrick, Long Is., from September 2008 to June 2012, and was recognized by St. Johns University in Jamaica, Queens, New York in 2009 as one of Americas future top female scientist with the universitys "Outstanding Woman in Science Award.





She was voted by her high school faculty as the recipient of the "Blue and Gray Award for her demonstration of outstanding leadership in high school in both scholarship and service.





In 2006, Tiffany received "The American Legion Certificate of School Award on graduation from elementary school "in recognition of the possession of the high qualities of courage, honor, leadership, patriotism, scholarship and service.





Our pride and joy

"We feel very humbled and grateful to God for his manifold blessings on our daughter, said Tiffanys parents, who now reside in Merrick. "We recognized her academic prowess, love for others and generous nature from early in her life, and worked diligently to cultivate them.





"She is our pride and joy; yet, we recognize that she stands on the shoulders of our parents and families, and her teachers, who have all sacrificed a lot to make these moments come to fruition, they added in THE VINCENTIAN interview.





According to her extended family, "Tiffany is a rare, precious gem, with an over-abundance of humility and compassion.





Her roots

The Minors said Tiffanys desire to serve others comes from a long line of examples that began with her late grand-parents. They said Tiffanys paternal grand-parents, Henry and Gracel Minors, were "stalwarts in Biabou  great examples of sacrifice and love.





"Their vehicle was the only car in Biabou at the time and was the means of transportation for all - including being the ambulance that took people to the hospital in Kingstown and clinics in Biabou, the Minors said.

Tiffanys grand-parents also had the only shop in Biabou for some time, said the Minors, adding that "everyone could always get grocery, whether or not they had money to buy.





Tiffanys maternal grand-parents, Edgar and Etheline Gibson, of Dauphine, "are also amazing examples of sacrifice, the Minors said.





Butchers and farmers, the Gibsons "gave help and support to many, providing jobs and food to countless Vincentians, according to the Minors, adding that Edgar, who is deceased, and Etheline, who is still alive, will always be remembered for their hearts of compassion and deep concern for the less fortunate.





"Cheryl and I try to mirror our parents lives in our own care of others, and raised Tiffany to know that God is first and people next, Mr. Minors said. "Things will follow if we are obedient to the Lord.
Granville De Freitas (right), along with Corporal Morris escorting Ben Exeter to the Central Police Station.

Granville De Freitas, a former police officer and prosecution witness in the Benjamin Ben Exeter trial, admitted under cross-examination on Monday that he was bothered when he saw Exeter, with a firearm on him, moving in the direction of Prime Minister Dr Ralph Gonsalves, during a protest outside the House of Assembly, December 29, 2015.





Exeter, who is contesting otherwise his loss as a New Democratic Party (NDP), candidate for Central Leeward in the Dec. 09, 2015 general election, and Shabazaah George, a member of the NDP Youth Organization Young Democrats, are being tried together, on separate charges arising from an incident at the protest.





Exeter has been charged under the Public Order Act with unlawfully having an offensive weapon, to wit, "a firearm, at a public meeting outside the House of Assembly. He is also charged with assaulting constable Granville De Freitas, causing him actual bodily harm, assaulting Corporal Cuthbert Morris, and resisting arrest.

George is charged with obstructing Corporal Morris during the execution of his (Morris) duties, and that without lawful excuse, had in his possession an offensive weapon to wit, a zapper.





Spotting the gun





De Freitas confirmed that he had been a member of the Royal St. Vincent and the Grenadines Police Force (RSVGPF) for six years but recently resigned.





He recalled that on the day in question, he was on duty at the House of Assembly when around 3:45pm, ASP Timothy Hazelwood dispatched him to provide security in an area which was barricaded. It was then that he (Exeter) forced himself between some police officers.





Exeter, the witness said, was stopped by one of the officers whom he said he did not recognize.





The witness added that he also saw Corporal Morris stop Exeter, and it was at this point that he spotted what appeared to be a firearm in Exeters waist.





"Corporal Morris pulled that object from his (Exeters) waist and just before Corporal pulled the object from his waist, he (Corporal) shouted, Boy the man have a gun, De Freitas related, adding that Morris then held onto Exeter who responded by pushing him away.





"The Corporal held onto him again and he pulled away. He grabbed the Corporal around his collar with both hands.





"I pulled away his hands from the Corporals shirt and I heard the Corporal tell him he would be reporting against him for assaulting a police officer, De Freitas said. He and Morris then proceeded to take Exeter to the nearby Central Police Station.





Cross-examination





Under cross-examination by defence attorney Kay Bacchus-Browne, De Freitas told the court that the area through which Exeter had forced himself was located in front the main entrance to the House of Assembly. He said the Prime Minister had just arrived and was about to take the salute close to that area.





"He (Exeter) forced himself through a crowd in the direction where the police were and when he reached to the police, he forced himself through the police,  De Freitas explained.





According to the witness, Exeter went in the direction of the Prime Minister.





"That seems to be bothering you? Bacchus-Browne asked.





"Yes please, My Honour, he (Exeter) had a firearm on him and he was not a police officer, De Freitas replied.

When the lawyer asked De Freitas whether he viewed Exeter as a threat to the Prime Minister, the witness said, "I dont know what was his intention.





De Freitas explained that it was after





Exeter had gotten past the police officers that he noticed the firearm. He was about 20 ft away.





"What is your relationship to the Prime Minister, first or second cousins? Bacchus-Browne asked the witness.

But Assistant Director of Public Prosecutions Colin John sharply rebutted, "I want to know whats the relevance of this?





Bacchus-Browne retorted, "We have always said that this case is highly political, and added, "In other words, I am putting it to him that he is bias because he is related to Dr. Gonsalves.





Bacchus-Browne asked De Freitas again whether he was closely related to the P.M, to which the witness replied, "No please, Your Honour.





She also inquired of De Freitas whether he was dismissed from the constabulary for dishonesty, stating that she was testing his credibility.





But De Freitas maintained that he resigned, and that he was not aware of what the lawyer was speaking about.

Corporal Morris, the first witness to have testified at the trial which commenced at the Kingstown Magistrates Court on May 31, had told the court that he ran up to Exeter and pulled the gun out of the holster which was in Exeters waist, after Exeters shirt went up and he noticed what appeared to be the black handle of a firearm.





Evidence was also heard from Corporal Irakie Mayers who, according to the evidence, was speaking to Exeter when Corporal Morris noticed the firearm, and ASP Hazelwood, who told the court that checks made at the Traffic Department of the RSVG Police Force ascertained that Exeter was the holder of a licenced firearm, which matched the serial number of the firearm that was taken away from him.





The matter has been adjourned to June 20 to accommodate George who is sitting pre-CXC exams which will run over a two-week period.





Attorney Israel Bruce is also representing Exeter and George.
Left: Kay Bacchus-Browne, lead attorney for Benjamin Exeter, has found ground on which to request Magistrate Bertie Pompey to recuse himself from hearing Exeters matter. Right: Magistrate Bertie Pompey, who presides at the Kingstown Magistrates Court, is a former Deputy Commissioner of Police.

Kay Bacchus-Browne, defence lawyer in the trial involving opposition New Democratic Party (NDP) candidate Benjamin Ben Exeter and Shabazaah George, a member of the NDP Youth Organization Young Democrats, has written to presiding magistrate Bertie Pompey, requesting that he recuse himself from the matter.





The lawyer told THE VINCENTIAN that, based on what transpired towards the end of Mondays proceedings, the defence is seriously concerned about the fairness of the trial.





She pointed out that Magistrate Pompey overruled a salient objection she made, arguing that Pompey was permitting prosecution witness, Assistant Superintendent of Police Timothy Hazelwood, to give inadmissible and irrelevant evidence.





Bacchus-Browne added that the defence became even more alarmed when the Magistrate contradicted her by saying there was a charge for breach of the peace, when neither of the defendants had been charged with any such offence.





The development unfolded while ASP Hazelwood was testifying.





Assistant Director of Public Prosecutions Colin John had asked Hazelwood about the police powers of arrest in relation to breach of the peace.





Bacchus-Browne strongly objected to the question, stating that there was no such charge before the court.

But the magistrate responded that there was.





Bacchus-Browne expressed disappointment that the magistrate would say something like that.





Pompey then went on to say that even though Exeter was not charged with breaching the peace, there was evidence that he did, when he forced himself through a line of police officers, during a protest.





But Bacchus-Browne vehemently questioned, "What law did Mr. Exeter break by walking through a line of police officers during a protest?





Pompey then said that the Assistant DPP, in asking the question, was "leading the witness.





Bacchus-Browne told THE VINCENTIAN that what Pompey was doing was giving a conclusive finding of fact before the end of the prosecutions case, and without even hearing the defence.





"This is not how fair trials are conducted, she declared.





Bacchus-Browne pointed out the defence is cognizant of the fact that the magistrate, Assistant DPP and ASP Hazelwood all worked together as police officers, as the Assistant DPP and the magistrate are former members of the local constabulary.





She also noted that the matter is a police case with classical police charges such as assault, assault causing actual bodily harm and obstructing a police officer, and that the only evidence against Exeter and George is evidence supplied by police witnesses.





"It would be unfair to our client and to the administration of Justice in St. Vincent and the Grenadines if we do not ask the learned Magistrate to recuse himself, she declared.





The lawyer however made it clear that, "This has nothing to do with our respect for the magistrate but everything to do with our duty to defend our clients to the best of our ability.





Exeter has been charged with being present at a public meeting outside the House of Assembly on December 29, 2015, had in his possession an offensive weapon, to wit, "a firearm, otherwise than in pursuance to lawful authority, contrary to section 14 (1) of the Public Act, chapter 396 of the Revised Laws of St. Vincent and the Grenadines.





Exeter is also charged with assaulting constable Granvil DeFreitas, causing him actual bodily harm, assaulting Corporal Cuthbert Morris, and resisting arrest.





George has been charged with obstructing Corporal Morris and possession of an offensive weapon, to wit, a zapper.on Page 3.
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State Adviser on Multinational, Multicultural and Religious Affairs, Academician Kamal Abdulla has said Azerbaijan and Indonesia shared same values of ethnicity and religious diversity as he met Ambassador Husnan bey Fananie.





The state Advisor highlighted multicultural and tolerance environment in Azerbaijan, as well as President Ilham Aliyev`s care to the relevant field. Mr. Abdulla spoke about the activity of the Baku International Multiculturalism Centre.





Ambassador Husnan bey Fananie, in turn, spoke about the multicultural environment of Indonesia, and touched upon the similarities between the two countries. The diplomat also praised cultural and economic relations between the two countries.





The parties exchanged views on arranging the reciprocal visits of scientists, who explore researches in the field of multiculturalism, as well as heads of various religious confessions.





/By Azertac/








The first meeting of the Joint Commission on Economic Cooperation between the Government of the Republic of Azerbaijan and the Government of the Republic of Korea will be held in Seoul on June 14.





The Joint Commission on Economic Cooperation between the Government of the Republic of Azerbaijan and the Government of the Republic of Korea was established in 2015 in accordance with the agreement on economic cooperation between Azerbaijan and Korea.





Co-chaimen of the Commission are Iltimas Mammadov, First Deputy Minister of Communications and High Technologies of the Republic of Azerbaijan on behalf of Azerbaijan and Korean Vice Minister of Trade, Industry and Energy Woo Taehee on behalf of Korea.




/By Azernews/

By Rashid Shirinov

The 45th meeting of the ad hoc working group, tasked to develop a convention on the Caspian Sea's legal status, was held in Moscow on June 8-10, said the communique adopted following the event.

An Azerbaijani delegation led by the country's Deputy Foreign Minister Khalaf Khalafov, as well as delegations from Iran, Kazakhstan, Russia and Turkmenistan participated in the meeting.

The heads of the delegations emphasized the special importance of the Moscow meeting in the light of the upcoming meeting of foreign ministers of Caspian Sea states in Kazakhstan and stressed the necessity of speedy completion of the work on the convention on the legal status of the Caspian Sea, said the document.

The discussions were focused on the navigation regime and jurisdiction of the Caspian Sea littoral states, as well as delimitation of the seabed for the subsoil use and the agreed formulations were included in the draft convention, according to the communique.

The next meeting of the working group will be held in Kazakhstan and its date will be agreed through diplomatic channels, said the document.

The Caspian states - Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Russia, Turkmenistan and Iran - signed a Framework Convention for the Protection of Marine Environment of the Caspian Sea in November 2003. Russia and Kazakhstan signed an agreement on the delimitation of the northern part of the Caspian Sea in order to exercise sovereign rights for subsoil use in July 1998. The two countries signed a protocol to this agreement in May 2002.

Moreover, Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan signed an agreement on the delimitation of the Caspian Sea and a protocol to it on Nov. 29, 2001, and Feb. 27, 2003, respectively. Additionally, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan and Russia signed an agreement on the delimitation of adjacent sections of the Caspian Sea on May 14, 2003.
A Dubai-based resources firm is in talks with trading houses to develop bauxite reserves in Guinea, valued at $8 billion and previously held by BHP Billiton, the company's co-founder said on Thursday.



James Tounkara, co-founder of Gajah Investment Group, said he also expected Chinese involvement in the project that he expects to start production by the end of next year, but there had been no contact yet.



Guinea has around a third of the world's bauxite reserves, used for making aluminium, although their development has been thwarted by years of military rule and popular unrest.



BHP, which formerly owned the Boffa South bauxite blocks, some 150 km (93 miles) north of the capital Conakry, halted exploration in 2012 there after aluminium prices dropped.



Tounkara said Guinea "missed the opportunity to enter the golden age" before the commodity price collapse.



But speaking by telephone from London, where he was meeting investors, he said his birth country Guinea, now under democratic rule, was ripe for development and investors would be emboldened further "once one or two mega projects take off".



He said he had "interest from major traders" in offtake contracts that would see them commit to buying some future production, but declined to name them or the price being discussed.



Asked about China, he said: "We have not yet been contacted or contacted them, but I think it will happen. I believe there will be an approach."



After BHP halted activity, Guinea cancelled a tender for the bauxite mining acreage that sources said had been won by a Chinese firm in partnership with figures in President Alpha Conde's political party.



Tounkara signed an agreement with the Guinean government and its state mining company to develop the mine, which contains 9 billion tonnes of bauxite, in March 2016.



He said the Boffa South bauxite mine had a net present value of $7.95 billion, based on a 25-year cash model.



Global aluminium demand is rising, but after record low prices last year, the price outlook is still clouded by oversupply. - Reuters
Al Seef Resort & Spa by Andalus welcomed the opening of German cafe chain, San Francisco Coffee Company, in the resort.



Located in the European-style boulevard with over 20 dining and retail outlets, slated to be fully operational by the end of the third quarter, San Francisco Coffee Company joins Chota Restaurant - Film Hindi, Sushi and Sashimi and Ginas Cafe, that are already opened in Mamsha Al Seef by Andalus.



Chief executive officer of Andalus Hotels and Resorts Caroline Delbecque said: Mamsha Al Seef by Andalus is an open-air dining and shopping destination that will pulsate with Mediterranean energy and life once all the shops are opened. We are excited to see the transformation within the next few months.



During the opening ceremony, the owners introduced the concept and vision of the brand to all guests. The attendees were treated to homemade pastries, desserts and light snacks that complements their 100 per cent organic coffee.



Mamsha Al Seef is opened for all visitors to dine in a Mediterranean atmosphere in the heart of Abu Dhabi. - TradeArabia News Service


Lufthansa shares fell as much as 4.2 per cent on Friday after the German airline announced the surprise departure of chief financial officer Simone Menne, said a report.



Menne, who turns 56 in October, will resign effective August 31 to pursue individual career options, the company said in a statement late Thursday, adding it will choose a successor shortly. Menne, a member of the carriers board since 2012, said last year that she eventually wanted to head a company in Germanys benchmark DAX30 stock index, Bloomberg reported.



There was no indication that this might happen, Gerald Khoo, an analyst at Liberium Capital Limited, said by telephone from London. She is well-regarded by investors. They will want to know why this happened, and why it happened now. Its unusual given Lufthansas history of succession planning.



Menne has helped chief executive officer Carsten Spohr steer the company through years of restructuring that included setting up low-cost arm Eurowings, as well as cutting benefits and pay for entry-level workers, both of which have been met by fierce opposition from unions. She also helped safeguard the companys investment grade rating, a rare status among airlines, even with the companys pension liabilities surpassing 10 billion ($11.3 billion) last year.



Lufthansa shares fell to as low as 11.50, the lowest intraday price since September 2015, and were down 3.6 per cent at 11.57 as of 9:13 am in Frankfurt.



Lufthansa is reining in expansion plans as a glut of plane seats depresses ticket prices and travellers delay bookings amid fears of terror attacks. Capacity growth this year will trail the previous target of 6 per cent, Spohr said in an interview last month. The cuts will come on short- and long-haul routes at Lufthansas namesake brand while Eurowings will continue to grow, he said.



As low oil prices boost profit to record levels at Lufthansa and other airlines and spurred expansion, summer capacity plans failed to take into account the impact of terror attacks in Paris, Brussels and Turkey. The company will brief investors about expansion plans for Eurowings on Friday.



Proven Worth



A graduate in business administration, Menne began her professional career in the auditing department of ITT in the U.S. in 1987 before joining Lufthansa as an auditor in April 1989. Ten years later she took over the airlines financial management and human resources in southwest Europe, rising to the same position for all of Europe two years after that.



Outside Lufthansa, Menne is a member of the supervisory boards of Bayerische Motoren Werke AG and Deutsche Post AG.



In Simone Menne we are losing an experienced executive who has proven her worth time and again in her long Lufthansa career, supervisory board chairman Wolfgang Mayrhuber said in the statement.
These are boom times in the U.S. solar sector. American solar developers are expected to install some 9.5 gigawatts worth of power capacity this year, enough to power roughly 1.5 million homes. Only natural gas, with 8 gigawatts in estimated additions, comes anywhere close.

The increase has been fueled by the falling cost of panels, a tax credit passed by Congress last year and growing concerns over climate change.

Wyoming solar developers, by contrast, have yet to feel the warmth. The Cowboy States powerful rays mean solar panels installed here are some of the most productive in the nation. The Solar Energy Industries Association, a trade group, estimates Wyoming residential panels have the eighth most energy potential in the nation.

And yet the 2.3 megawatts of solar power installed statewide ranks 46th in the country in terms of total capacity.

A group of solar advocates want to change that. Their proposal, presented to state legislators last month, is to lift the 25 kilowatt cap on projects now able to sell the surplus power they generate back to the grid.

Doing so, they hope, will boost commercial solar installations and create a new source of employment at a time when the state is suffering from a severe downturn in the coal, oil and gas sectors.

I think what this step has the ability to do is unleash a new sector of solar development in Wyoming, a sector that doesnt exist right now, commercial solar, said Scott Kane, owner of Creative Energies, a Lander-based solar installer. When we look around to other states, there is as much commercial development as there is residential development.

***

The proposal faces uncertain prospects in Cheyenne. State Sen. Cale Case, a Lander Republican who chairs the Corporations, Elections and Political Subdivisions Committee, expressed concerns after hearing the plan aired at his committees meeting last month.

Those who sell their surplus power back to the grid may not be shouldering their share of system costs like transmission, distribution and generation, he said. The Lander lawmaker said legislators are nevertheless likely to talk about the subject in coming months, saying, I think compensation for solar designed power can be devised in an appropriate way.

The measure could also face opposition from the states utilities. Similar policies has become a flash point in state capitols across the country in recent years, as the number of panels installed on homes and businesses has surged.

Many states allow homeowners and businesses who install solar arrays to utilize a practice known as net-metering, where surplus power is sold back to the grid at the retail rate. Put differently, consumers sell their excess power back to the utility at the price they would normally buy electricity it at.

Utilities are increasingly critical of the practice. They say net-metered customers pay less for system costs like transmission, effectively raising rates for customers who do not install solar arrays. In the most famous spat to-date, Nevada regulators sided last year with the local utility, NV Energy, in deciding to ax that states net-metering provisions.

PacifiCorp representatives, in a separate presentation to Wyoming lawmakers last month, called the practice a growing problem across the country, saying it amounted to a subsidy for ratepayers who place panels on their homes and businesses.

A spokesman for the utility, asked about the Wyoming proposal, said "the company believes that the net metering rules and policies are appropriate and changes are not necessary."

PacifiCorp and NV Energy are both subsidiaries of Berkshire Hathaway Energy.

Solar advocates at the national level say those arguments are overblown. Residential and commercial systems still comprise a tiny fraction of the power market. They also offer competition, providing consumers with a choice and lowering residents monthly electricity bills in markets where regulated utilities have traditionally been the only player.

That debate has largely been absent in Wyoming, due to the size of the states solar industry and its policies around net-metering. Consumers pay a relatively high $20-a-month fixed fee to cover distribution costs, said Al Minier, chairman of the Wyoming Public Service Commission.

That tends to operate as an economic deterrent to making the leap to net metering, Minier told lawmakers on the Corporations Committee last month.

In March, PacifiCorp., the states largest utility, had 216 net-metering customers. By contrast, it had 8,057 net-metering customers in Utah, where solar development is increasing at a rapid clip.

***

Of the 12 solar firms based in Wyoming, many are small operations. Green Steps Inc. in Buffalo is a one-man operation that owner John Snyder operates on the side of his full-time job at the Veterans Home of Wyoming.

Steve Lieske, the owner of Harmony Solar in Laramie, is one of three employees who install five to six solar arrays annually. The company is also a heating contractor.

Raising the 25 kilowatt cap would do little for their businesses, both owners said, though neither were opposed to the idea. Residential systems are generally around 4 kilowatts, meaning they would be unaffected by the change.

Cost remains a primary impediment to solar development, Lieske said, echoing a point of several other installers. Wyoming has relatively low electricity costs. That means homeowners recoup smaller monthly savings by installing solar panels than their peers in states where electricity is more expensive. It also means the time frame for paying off a system is longer than what it would be elsewhere. (The average cost of a residential system is $22,000, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association.)

Most people dont care only about financials, but everyone cares at least a little bit, Lieske said.

Backers of the proposal to lift the cap say the states solar industry is so small that it could grow substantially and still have little impact on Wyomings electricity system.

We have lots of opportunity to grow this industry, to create jobs, diversify the economy and still not reach the level talked about by utilities in other states, said Stephanie Kessler, director of external affairs at the Wyoming Outdoor Council, a conservation group.

She pointed to Utah where the number of people now employed in the solar industry stands at 2,679. In Colorado that figure is nearly 5,000. Wyomings solar sector, meanwhile, employs 90 people.

Kane, the Creative Energies owner, said lifting the cap would drum up more business for his company by attracting commercial customers. The Lander-based firm employs around 20 people and works in Idaho, Utah and Wyoming. Last year, the company installed 7,000 panels, or roughly 2 megawatts of power, with the majority of that coming in Utah.

We would love for most of it to be in Wyoming, and well do our part to make that happen, but Utah is where the demand is, Kane said.
A jury has decided the Sublette County sheriff committed misconduct in office and should be removed from his position, the sheriffs defense attorney said.

A Sublette County District Court judge will write an order removing Stephen Haskell from office, defense attorney H. Michael Bennett said Friday.

My understanding is that it will happen relatively soon  Bennett said.

An interim administrative restructure of the sheriffs office was announced Friday. Col. Mark Farrell will serve as acting sheriff, according to Capt. Wes Johnston.

The civil jury trial is only the first step in addressing the allegations, as Haskell still faces criminal charges. Authorities allege Haskell made unauthorized purchases with county money before he was sworn in as sheriff in January 2015.

In March, the Wyoming Attorney General filed a petition in district court requesting Haskell be removed from office. The action came after the Sublette County Commissioners submitted a verified complaint to the governor requesting Haskells removal. The complaint referenced criminal allegations against Haskell, which state he 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.

The county commissioners asked that Haskell be temporarily removed as sheriff while the criminal case proceeds. The commissioners also said they were concerned about a hostile work environment at the sheriffs office.

Gov. Matt Mead reviewed the verified complaint and determined it appears that Haskell is guilty of misconduct or malfeasance in office, the petition for Haskells removal stated.

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. Bennett is also representing Haskell in that case.

According to charging documents, the Wyoming Division of Criminal Investigation was assigned to look into Haskells actions in September after the Sublette County Commissioners wrote the agency asking for an investigation into criminal wrongdoing by the sheriff.

Bennett said he didnt believe Haskell could be reinstated as sheriff if found not guilty of the charges.
A group of educators will ask lawmakers Tuesday to revisit the millions of dollars in cuts to K-12 education that they say creates inequities and financial instability in Wyomings school districts.

Lawmakers voted to spread the $36 million in cuts over two years during the February legislative session. However, as the state economy continues to suffer, districts are reporting that the number of students attending their schools will continue to drop dramatically by the fall.

Fewer students means less money spent on education in Wyoming, rendering the legislative cuts unnecessarily punitive, said Boyd Brown of Campbell County School District No. 1. He is one of four educators planning to present data to the Joint Education Committee in Casper next week. The group of educators represents 28 school districts.

Campbell is regularly one of the wealthier districts in the state, but even Browns district is feeling pressure due to the cuts, he said.

The district has a new elementary opening in the fall and a new high school set to open in 2017, he said. The cuts create an unstable financial future for schools and inhibit their ability to plan ahead, he added.

Campbell County has also seen a number of layoffs at local mines that school officials fear will mean significantly fewer students next year as families leave town.

However, Brown acknowledges that larger districts are less vulnerable than the many rural districts across the state.

Its difficult for us, but were not the poster child, he said. (In) a smaller district, they may be losing programs, because a person is a program to them. Its pretty inequitable.

The funding model in Wyoming is fairly straightforward. The state guarantees districts a certain amount of money per student. When enrollment drops, that guarantee is based on either the previous years enrollment or an average of the previous three years, whichever figure is greater. The three-year average is meant to act as a cushion, allowing districts to plan for a decreasing budget when enrollment suddenly drops.

Many lawmakers acknowledged the double hit in funding but argued that gradual cuts did allow districts to plan ahead. They also said the economic situation in Wyoming made cuts inevitable.

Wyoming depends on tax revenue to pay for school districts, but across the state, the amount of money available is decreasing, they said.

In Johnson County School District, enrollment is down about 40 students, but the real issue is that the legislative cuts exacerbate a difficult situation, said Gerry Chase, superintendent.

Real estate, energy taxes and other revenues in Johnson County decreased by almost 50 percent from 2015 to 2016. Traditionally one of the districts that gives extra local revenue to the state for the benefit of poorer districts, Johnson County may become a district that needs assistance, Chase said.

Chase and Brown both expressed confidence that continuing to educate Wyoming and lawmakers on the model will be effective, though their arguments were raised during the legislative session and failed to convince a majority.

It was a very close vote in the House and the Senate, Chase said. I think there are legislators that are very passionate about making education a priority. Im hopeful that that passion will continue to spread amongst the other leaders.

Brown agrees. The education committee members are the most informed lawmakers in Wyoming on these issues and best positioned to make changes, he said.

I think we are preaching to the choir, he said. But it give us one more time to help educate everyone out there.

The Joint Education Committee meets Monday and Tuesday at Casper College. They will discuss an array of topic concerning K-12 education in the state, from distance education to Hathaway Scholarships.
CHEYENNE  Wyoming Gov. Matt Mead says he condemns Donald Trumps statement that a federal judge shouldnt preside over a case against him because of the judges Mexican heritage.

But Mead, a Republican, says he still supports Trump for president over presumptive Democratic Party nominee Hillary Clinton. Mead says Trumps policies would be better for Wyoming and the West.

Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, has drawn fire from top national Republicans over his recent criticism of U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel.

Trump has said he believes Curiel cant be fair in handling a case involving Trump University because the judge is of Mexican heritage while Trump has called for building a wall between the U.S. and Mexico.

Im building a wall, Trump has said. Its an inherent conflict of interest.

Trump has denied his comments about Curiel were racist.

In an interview Thursday, Mead said he regards Trumps comments as clearly inappropriate. Mead is a former U.S. Attorney for Wyoming and has worked as a state and federal prosecutor.

Anytime youre saying that a person will be thinking one way or another or biased one way or another just based upon race, I just think its certainly going to be subject to that criticism of racism, Mead said. Clearly inappropriate.

Nonetheless, Mead said he supports Trump over Clinton.

This isnt the first, and may not be the last thing he has said that I have disagreed with and wish he would not say it, Mead said of Trump. But I am still comparing him to Secretary Clinton and who will be the best leader for the country, and who will be the best in terms of addressing western issues and Wyoming issues. And I still think that clearly would be Mr. Trump over Secretary Clinton.

As governor of Wyoming  the nations leading coal-producing state  Mead has seen state revenues fall sharply in recent years. He has blamed recent federal restrictions on mining and increasing restrictions on power plant emissions, all enacted by the Barack Obama administration.

Mead has been pushing to open ports in the Northwest that could allow exports of Wyoming coal to Asia, but has been stymied so far by opposition there. His administration has filed repeated lawsuits against the federal regulations he says target the coal industry.

Trump, meanwhile, has garnered support in coal country by promising to roll back regulations and restore coal industry jobs.

Wyoming Democrats said Thursday that regardless of energy policy, they disagree with Meads continued support of Trump.

Sen. Chris Rothfuss, D-Laramie, serves as minority floor leader in the state senate. Hes one of only four Democrats versus 26 Republicans.

He is overtly racist, sexist, Rothfuss said of Trump. He has offended various religions and in no way represents the character of the people of Wyoming. And the expectation that somehow a few of his policies related to natural resource management might somehow make up for his glaring shortfalls in every other aspect of the presidency is unreasonable.
Democrats in central Casper have, for the first time in years, a choice at the polls in the August primary when Audrey Cotherman and Jane Ifland compete for the state House District 57 seat.

Cotherman, 86, is an education administrator who served on the Natrona County School District Board of Education from 2009 to 2014, including stints as its chairwoman and treasurer. Cotherman has worked as a television host, a newspaper editor and publisher in Dubois, a Wyoming Department of Education deputy state superintendent, the first executive director of the Wyoming Humanities Council and an official with the U.S. Department of Education in Denver.

Ifland, 66, is a retired editor and advertising firm owner. She worked at the Star-Tribune in the 1980s and 1990s. Before her time in Wyoming, she held a voting seat on the board of the Milwaukee Journal Co., which owned newspapers, television stations and a printing company.

In separate interviews, Cotherman and Ifland didnt have any negative words to say about each other. Both candidates talked about what they can bring to the Wyoming House. Their views on many issues, including Medicaid expansion, were similar: Both women support extending the Obamacare program to 20,000 low-income Wyomingites.

Cotherman, who has penned a column for the Casper Journal but has suspended it as she campaigns, said she is concerned about education, among other issues. Wyomings schools are emphasizing job training over the core subjects, she said.

I really think students should have what I call a liberal education, she said. They need to have a lot of history. They need to read our literature. They need to know our culture and what it is about. And math and science. If you take too much out for job training, it seems well be shortchanging our kids. You know there was a time when those core subjects were only for the elite.

Cotherman said her career has required her to work within budgets. When budgeting, she said she establishes priorities first  something she says the Legislature isnt doing. They are creating budgets based on where political power lies or what is most feasible to cut or fund.

I think weve got to start asking what the question is, she said. Were bringing old answers before we even know what the question is. (Medicaid expansion) is a good example. It is a question about people and their lives and their health. It is not a question about politics and partisanship. Its a question about health.

Ifland, who ran for the HD57 in 2008 and lost, said her background and skill set can help at this time of lower revenues from oil, gas and coal. Shes good at problem-solving, public speaking and creative thinking, she said.

Were too Republican. Were too male, she said. Were too conservative. Were too backwards-looking. Were too unimaginative. Were too narrow.

Ifland said shes interested in economic diversification and cannabis law reform and opposes an effort among lawmakers to transfer public lands to states.

Shes concerned about the vulnerable, from tiny children to unemployed coal miners, from the negative effects of the economic pressure were experiencing, she said. Business is about money. Government must be about people.

The primary is Aug. 16. The Democrat who prevails will face the winner of the Republican primary in November. Chuck Gray, a local radio personality, and Ray Pacheco, a Casper city councilman, are competing in the Republican primary.

HD57 roughly encompasses Fifth to 25th streets between Beech Street and Kelly Drive.
CODY  A 61-year-old man has been arrested following a wreck that killed three motorcyclists from Germany who were heading to Yellowstone National Park in northern Wyoming.

The Wyoming Highway Patrol arrested Manuel Moreno Defuentes, of Ontario, Oregon.

Defuentes was scheduled to make his first court appearance Friday in Cody. Defuentes doesnt have an attorney yet and is being held at the Park County Detention Center.

The wreck occurred about 12:15 p.m. Thursday when a pickup crossed the center line of U.S. Highway 14-16-20 west of Cody and crashed into a group of motorcyclists about 25 miles from the entrance to Yellowstone, according to patrol Capt. Tom Pritchard.

Defuentes was traveling alone in a 2003 GMC pickup and was in the process of negotiating a right hand curve in the roadway, which he fails to properly negotiate, so he crosses into the oncoming traffic lane, Pritchard said.

Two men and one woman were killed. They were identified as Tino Cachey, 53, Ute Cashey, 52 and Erik Brecht, 37, all German nationals. Three other people were injured and were stable at a hospital in Billings, Montana, Pritchard said.

The accident remains under investigation.

It just seems to be figuring out why he crossed over into the other lane, Pritchard said.

The section of highway where the wreck occurred has a 50 mph speed limit.

Defuentes was traveling to Cody to pick up his ex-wife, Pritchard said.

Defuentes recently had an abdominal type surgery and had been prescribed pain medication, but whether that played any role in the accident hasnt been determined, he said.

The group from Germany consisted of nine people who had flown into Denver, where they rented six motorcycles, he said.

They were [headed] to the park to do a quick tour and then back to Cody, Pritchard said.

Two of three who died were on one motorcycle, while the third was riding alone, he said.
The seemingly endless battle (nay, war!) for our nations presidency  a discordant spectacle that has featured name-calling, off-color references to opponents body parts, the public demeaning of each others wives, and half-hysterical assurances of disaster should an opponent be elected  has plummeted the decency of political debate to near-record lows. I say near record, since as of this writing nobody running for president has actually killed an opponent. The record for disrespectful political debate has stood for the 212 years since Aaron Burr, vice president of the United States, terminated the career  and concurrently the life  of one of our nations founding fathers, Alexander Hamilton.

Fortunately, it is marginally (but not totally) safe to assume that todays candidates for president will resist the use of dueling pistols even if some elements of society might surely cheer the idea  perhaps because another potent weapon for dispatching candidates is so readily available: public disgust with government and the process of choosing its leaders.

When I was elected to the Senate in 1978, Jimmy Carter was president. As lines at gasoline stations grew, so too did public irritation. Still, there were brief improvements in Carters sagging approval numbers. Asked how one uptick affected him, he said that people were again waving with all five fingers.

Today those moments of optimism are rarer. More people than ever say that in November they will vote against rather than for. Millions of people are frustrated that before they have had a chance to vote, numerous candidates have been sent down exit ramps to obscurity.

Often adding more heat than light to campaign battlegrounds are televisions political prognosticators (I used to call them pontificating, powdered poops, but they didnt like that). In it to boost ratings and their own political agendas, they are busy as bees interrupting each other with Breaking News of near-insignificance, talking at the same time, and breathlessly reporting (and boosting) the import of each campaign twist, turn and insult as if they dont actually have twenty-four hours each day to get it all said.

Sadly, the cacophony of political gamesmanship and partisan media analysis is drowning out thoughtfulness. So here we go again: off to elect someone who promises anything and everything, and to express rage when those promises prove unrealistic. I once heard a politician referred to as: A person who shakes your hand first  and your confidence after!

Why in these campaigns and in the daily work of Congress and the media are so many blows aimed below the belt? Once was the day when people could occasionally work together for the common good, when one could disagree without becoming so disagreeable that professional and personal relationships were irrevocably shattered.

I once chuckled to my old political opposite Senator Ted Kennedy, as he was emotionally urging ever more spending on social programs, Good heavens, Ted, button your shirt before your heart falls out. Afterward, we had a good laugh and remained close friends the remainder of his life. Ours was an adversarial friendship that I still believe served the public interest. Today, one side doesnt just want to win  they want to rub the other guys nose in the dirt!

Perhaps if we citizens change our own approach to politics, those we elect will begin to follow suit. Instead of joining the fray, lets think twice before posting insulting partisan cracks on social media or IRL (which Im advised means In Real Life!).

What if cars bore bumper stickers reading More Statesmanship, Less Partisanship? It would be great to hear our candidates embrace the words of President John Kennedy, who implored, Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country. That small step by each of us might prove a big step up for our great country. Shouldnt we try? Its not too late.
Editor:

Regarding Ruth Neely, a wrong is being committed that affects not only Judge Neely, and the Pinedale community, but all citizens in the whole state of Wyoming. Certain parties who seem to have an agenda and some in responsible positions who agree with them have taken steps to remove (fire) Neely from a job that she has worked at and performed faithfully for over 21 years. She is well respected in her community for her good character and honesty, and for the service she has rendered over all these years.

Early in December 2014 as Neely was decorating a Christmas tree in her home, she received a phone call; a newspaper reporter asked Ruth a question; Ruth answered that question. Then just before Christmas, Decmber 22, 2014 (Wow! isn't that good timing?) a huge injustice and wrong got underway to take Neely's job from her. What had she done? She spoke! She answered the question. Free speech! That's all she did! Now a committee attacked Neely's free speech; when they do that, they attack ours as well because Neely is among us as, we the people. A major constitutional right of the people has already been violated.

Again it is all about free speech, and if one of Wyoming citizen's free speech can be eliminated, even to the point of losing their job, then you or I, or anyone in the state could suffer the same fate. This is a real big problem. We do not want to be in fear that a misspoken word or phrase will bring down heaps of punishment upon us.

Folks, being westerners, we need to come together to head this wrongful action, against a good woman and ourselves, of at the pass! We in Pinedale and our brothers and sisters across the state need to rise up to stop this wrong; we can write to the editor, and we can maybe influence those who are involved in this override to stand down, and above all, we can still speak out freely for what is right. Again, they are after our free speech!
Has anyone in our state ever heard of term limits? If not, maybe it's time to pull the reins on our out-of-touch Legislature and give us a transfusion of new blood that can stay tuned to the will of the people on key issues such as Medicaid expansion.

This should be a familiar tune to some of the senior legislators who made the same argument several years to remove tenure from education. Perhaps focus groups should be formed to create an initiative to enact this essential legislation to make our state great, instead of what it used to be: the "Great American Desert."
Checkers and Rally's, the value-centric drive-thru burger joint that several years ago had a presence in Tucson, are returning to the market possibly as early as next summer.

And over the next 10 years, the Tampa, Florida-based Checkers & Rally's national chain hopes to have 22 restaurants operating in the Tucson area, mostly in middle- to lower-middle class neighborhoods, said Robert Bhagwandat, the company's director of franchise development.

Bhagwandat said he is not sure if Tucson will get Rally's or Checkers restaurants or both. The menus at both are the same and both are drive-thru only, meaning there is no dining room and all food is basically served to-go.

Bhagwandat said Tucson is an ideal market for Checkers & Rally's given its strong blue-collar, working-class population that fits the ideal demographic for the companys value-driven customer base.

"Those are hard-working people who value each dollar they make, and thats the consumer that really, really tends to gravitate towards Rallys and Checkers, he said.

Rally's started in Louisville, Kentucky, in 1985. A year later, the first Checkers drive-thru burger stand opened in Mobile, Alabama. The two served nearly identical menus, which led to their merger in 1999.

The menus of burgers, seasoned fries and milkshakes, with an emphasis on lower prices. Their summer $4 meal deal, for example, includes a sandwich, small fries, a snack milkshake and small drink.

"It's more of that person who understands what it is to make a dollar, thats who we are really going after, that middle income, lower middle income customer, Bhagwandat explained.

He said the company, which has franchised restaurants in Yuma and the Phoenix area, is shooting for summer or fall 2017 to open the first restaurant. No location has been identified, nor have they named a franchise operator, he said.

He also did not know if the restaurant would be a Rally's or Checkers.
PHOENIX  Two workers were injured when a 150-foot concrete and steel girder cracked and collapsed Thursday in Surprise during construction of one of the states largest road projects.

One worker fell 40 feet and was listed in critical condition, according to Surprise Fire Department officials. The second man suffered minor injuries. Both are employees of a state contractor, the Arizona Department of Transportation said.

Crews were working on a new $41.9 million overpass that will carry Bell Road traffic over Grand Avenue and the BNSF Railway tracks in Surprise, a suburb of Phoenix.

The girder struck heavy equipment before coming to rest, officials said. The operator of that equipment was not injured.

Surprise Fire Battalion Chief Julie Moore said the person who plunged several stories was taken to a hospital by helicopter. The second worker was taken by ambulance.

The cause of the incident was not immediately known. Moore said ADOT is working with the Arizona Division of Occupational Safety and Health on the investigation.

The girder that fell was the sixth that had been installed Thursday morning, according to ADOT.

ADOT spokesman Doug Nintzel said the investigation will determine the safety of the girders already installed.

A spokeswoman for the contractor on the project said crews had been using a crane to put the girder in place where the roadway spans the railroad tracks when the girder cracked in half.
That women were admitted as delegates to the Republican National Convention in 1916 must have been a big deal, especially considering the fact that very few women would be able to vote in the presidential election.

Closer to home, danger lurked in the shadows for a Chinese merchant. From the Arizona Daily Star, June 11, 1916:

MERCHANT IS ASSAULTED AND STORE ROBBED Highwaymen Brutally Beat a Chinaman, fracturing Skull; May Have Been Escaped Convicts; thugs Are Known The boldest daylight robbery that has occurred in Tucson since the epidemic of assaults upon Chinese aroused the Chinese Six Companies last year, occurred yesterday afternoon at 12:30 o'clock, when Lee Shan Man, a merchant at Eighteenth and Convent streets, was assaulted, and between $50 and $100 taken from a cigar box that served as the merchant's cash register. Lee was hit over the head with an iron bar as he was reaching for a piece of pie for which the highwayman-customer had called. His skull was fractured and he is in a serious condition, according to Dr. C. A. Schrader, who was called to examine the man's wounds. There are four other scalp wounds produced by the iron bar. County Attorney Hilzinger visited the wounded man shortly after the robbery was reported and he was still conscious at that time, though suffering greatly. From the victim, officers learned the story of the robbery. At about 12:30 o'clock a man whom the Chinaman describes as being tall and sunburned, looking like an American, entered the place and bought a bottle of soda water. He drank this, went out, and in a few moments returned. This time he called for a piece of pie and as the merchant was reaching for it to serve him, the man grabbed him by the throat, while another man, described as a short, stocky Mexican, assaulted Lee with an iron bar, beating him down to the floor. The men then rifled the cash box, located, it is believed, on the tall man's first trip to the store, and fled. They were seen running from the store by persons residing close by, who hurried into the store to find the merchant lying in a pool of blood. Officers have as a witness a Mexican boy who claims to know the robbers, and any suspects arrested will be presented to him for identification. Officers believe that the men may have been two of the escaped federal convicts and this theory was strengthened when it was learned that two of the convicts, Reynolds and Smith, had been arrested in the northern part of the city.

In other news, ownership of a mule was in question. The mule had changed hands, as it were, a few times, so it is no wonder there was confusion.

INSPECTOR'S LETTER PROVES SENSATION Advised Claimant of Mule to "Bar Out Other Brand"; Lopez Loses Suit His right to possess one certain mule being questioned, in this case of James Westfall against Pedro Lopez, the defendant, Lopez, offered in evidence at the hearing of the case before Justice Comstock yesterday, a letter purporting to have been written by W. J. Bennett, livestock inspector at Benson. the letter proved a sensation and was taken possession of by Justice Comstock. The letter, written on the stationery of a Benson hotel and dated December 27, 1915, was in reply, apparently to one that had been written Bennett by Lopez and said, in part: "I would advise you to keep the mule. Bar out the other brand and say nothing about it to no one." The writer of the letter advised Lopez that "they," the other claimants of the mule, could not obtain possession of the animal without replevin proceedings and expressed the belief that an attempt to obtain possession would not be made. No evidence regarding the letter, whether or not there was an explanation that might controvert the literal sense of the words, was introduced, and in the absence of this the letter caused surprise, inasmuch as it is a serious offense to so change a brand. After hearing the evidence, the court awarded the mule to the plaintiff, Westfall, and assessed the costs of the case against Lopez. The mule has a history that is more exciting that the ordinary, prosaic mule existence. It was taken up as a stray by the city poundmaster in 1912 and sold to the poundmaster. Prior to that the animal's life is veiled in mulelike obscurity. McCormick sold it to one McDaniels, McDaniels sold it to Albert Franco and Albert Franco sold it to James Westfall. From Westfall's premises the animal strayed to the premises of Pedro Lopez and when Westfall, learning of the mule's whereabouts, sent for it, Lopez, it is alleged, refused to surrender it. Thereupon, Westfall filed suit. Since the filing of the suit, witnesses in the case have been called into court three times, traveling a distance of ninety miles to Tucson. The summons and subpoenas in the case now are mere tattered fragments. There was a touch of the pioneer ways of justice in this feature of the case. The deputy sheriff to whom the papers were sent by the justice, residing at Mammoth, instead of serving them and making a return, merely delivered them to Lopez. Lopez himself made the "return," inquiring of the court what they meant. As it turned out, they meant his dispossession of the mule.

The poor mule must have been confused as to its identity and home by this time. At least it was wanted by a number of people.

In the following advertisement, the Morgue Lady might have been more disposed to buy if the ad had contained a picture of a piano:

On a lighter note, it may be rare for the birthday party of a six-year-old to be news, but this one made the society page:

SIX-YEAR-OLD GIVES PARTY Miss Pauline Margaret Hohusen, the winsome little daughter of Mr. and Mrs. J. P. Hohusen, celebrated her sixth birthday anniversary Thursday afternoon at her home, 316 South Sixth avenue, when she was showered with presents and congratulations by many playmates. A particularly dainty color motif was evolved with quantities of pink sweet peas and feathery ferns, while the birthday tables were captivating with their exquisite decorations. Low crystal bowls centered each table, holding the fragrant blossoms. A large, pink birthday cake, radiant with six lighted tapers, held the interest of the children. Diminutive baskets, the handles tied with stunning bows of pink satin ribbons, and filled with bon bons, were the favors given to the little guests. It was an unusually pretty sight with the thirty-two small guests seated at the low tables, which had been placed in the garden. During the afternoon all sorts of fascinating games were played by the merry children. Mrs. Hohusen was assisted in entertaining by Miss Elsie Siewart. Those who shared Miss Pauline's birthday were: Pauline Seineke, Jessie Perry, Mary Langers, Audrey McClear, Helen Thorpe, Jane Thorpe, Genevieve Powers, Katherine Kindenfeld, Hortense Lindenfeld, Helen Schell, Wanda Hitchens, Sophie Pauli, Emily Pauli, Pauline Binkhorst, Margaret Stratton, Jane Butler, Alice Plumer, Edith Parker, Virginia Roberts, Gulie Caperton, Margaret Coberly, Ynez Ezekial, Dahlia Robles, Elsia Robles, Edna Arnold, Marguerite Yarbrough, Billy Schell, William Coberly, Harold McPherson, Mitchell, Hanovan, Knox Corbett, Billy Seineke.

The Morgue Lady can't help but wonder what will top this on the little girl's seventh birthday.

Note: This feature will not run tomorrow, June 12. The Arizona Daily Star did not publish on Mondays, including June 12, in 1916.
A pilot program in Cochise County is helping ranchers report dangerous activity in remote areas.

The Howard G. Buffett Foundation donated $35,000 to purchase 40 Motorola hand-held radios and signs ranchers can place on their property indicating they are part of the Ranchers Network and Patrol Partnership, the Cochise County Sheriffs Office said.

So far, 31 ranchers have been given radios with predefined frequencies to contact each other or the sheriffs office.

The specific purpose of the program is to allow ranchers working in the most remote areas of Cochise County to be an extension of our eyes and ears and to be able to immediately and directly report any suspicious or unusual activity in their respective areas, most of which do not have cell service, the Sheriffs Office said in a news release.

The radios also will cut out the middle man during emergencies, said sheriffs spokeswoman Carol Capas. Rather than have the sheriffs dispatch center relay information, ranchers will be able to speak directly with helicopter pilots and direct them to the site of suspicious activity.

John Ladd, whose family ranch sits along 10 miles of the international border, said the radios will come in handy when hes out in remote parts of his property.

Ladd said the illegal immigration landscape has changed in the past decade. He used to see hundreds of illegal border crossers on his land daily, but that number is down to nearly zero now. Instead, its the drug smugglers and their lookouts who travel through his ranch. His house has been burglarized repeatedly, he says.

If you live in the rural area, thats your big concern every day. You still have to realize that I cant just walk into my house any more. I gotta look around and see whats going on, Ladd said.

Peggy Davis, a rancher about 25 miles north of the border, says activity has also significantly decreased but that its not uncommon for smugglers and others to cross through her familys cattle ranch near Tombstone.

Sometimes we dont have cell service on areas of the ranch. I was just thrilled that we have other options, Davis said.

The radios are the first phase of the program. In July or August, another 71 radios will be given to public schools to be used in the event of an intruder, shooting, or other emergencies, Capas said.

The program was spurred in part by the 2010 fatal shooting of rancher Robert Krentz, the Sheriffs Office said. His slaying remains unsolved.

We anticipate that this program, being one of a kind, will only strengthen the bond of trust between all law enforcement and our ranching community, and we hope to alleviate any other tragic incidents such as the Krentz homicide, Cochise Sheriff Mark Dannels said in the news release.

The foundation that donated the funds is run by the son of billionaire investor Warren Buffett and regularly helps out the sheriffs office, Capas said.

The foundation did not respond to a request for comment. The foundations website says it supports public safety in the rural communities where it operates, including Cochise County, three counties in Illinois, and areas in Nebraska.
The University of Arizona will spend $1.1 billion next school year in a budget that calls for employee raises, more faculty and more fundraisers to counteract a slump in donations to the school.

The spending plan, fueled in part by a near $16 million increase in state funding, was approved unanimously in Flagstaff on Thursday by the board that oversees Arizonas public universities.

The UAs total net income will increase by $120 million in the 2017 school year that starts July 1, budget documents submitted to the Arizona Board of Regents revealed. Much of the money comes from sources other than the state: About $67 million, for example, is from increases to tuition and fees.

The budget includes:

$9.5 million for raises for UA employees, Southern Arizonas largest workforce.

Another $6.2 million for retention and recruitment  to include additional pay hikes for employees deemed underpaid compared to peer schools.

$14.8 million to hire extra faculty and support staff in areas with increased enrollment.

$7.1 million for UA facilities including upgrades to its information technology infrastructure.

$4.7 million to increase the UAs fundraising capacity by hiring more development officers. The budget assumes that private gifts to the school will decline by $8.7 million in the coming school year, a decrease of 9.6 percent.

Items supported by the extra state funds include $8 million for the UAs new veterinary medicine program and $2 million for the Center for the Philosophy of Freedom, a think tank created to promote the understanding and appreciation of the ideals of freedom.

The new budget was developed with input from student leaders and representatives of UA employee groups, university officials said.
Even though special master Ken Feinberg, who was in charge of the first federal Sept. 11 Victim Compensation Fund, distributed $6 billion to the estates of those killed on 9/11  an average of more than $2 million to the nearly 3,000 victims  the House of Representatives passed its new Fairness for 9/11 Families Act to allow additional claims for the deaths inflicted by the terrorists and set aside $2.7 billion for them.
PHOENIX  Delaware is stealing millions of dollars that belong to Arizona and its residents, Attorney General Mark Brnovich is charging.

In a lawsuit expected to be filed Thursday at the U.S. Supreme Court, Brnovich and colleagues from other states contend Delaware is illegally telling MoneyGram Payment Systems to give it any funds not claimed by customers. MoneyGram, in the business of selling money orders and travelers checks, is incorporated in that state.

But the attorneys general say federal law requires such funds to be given to the state where it was purchased.

The lawsuit says Delaware has been doing this for years. But it was not until 21 other states brought in an outside auditor that they found what MoneyGram, at the direction of Delaware, had been doing.

A spokeswoman for Brnovich said Delaware, the home of many corporations because of its business-friendly laws, had at last count taken custody of more than $162 million belonging to other states, including Arizona. She had no immediate figure for just this state.

But Brnovich said just the principle is important.

Thats because Arizona law requires the state to look for the rightful owners of any abandoned property. There is no time limit on making a claim, with that person  or even heirs  able to recover it forever.

And what is never claimed is used to help pay for affordable housing in Arizona and even balance the states books.

This lawsuit is about preventing another state from stealing Arizonas unclaimed property, Brnovich said. We want to give Arizonans every opportunity to claim money thats rightfully theirs.

And theres a lot of it: Sean Laux of the state Department of Revenue said his agency gets about $100 million a year in everything from negotiable instruments to actual property retrieved from safe deposit boxes. And thats after whatever bank or institution was holding the property has done what is required to find the owners.

In a prepared statement, Thomas Cook, the Delaware secretary of finance, said his state disputes the allegations in this lawsuit as well as others that have been filed.

But Cook conceded, at least indirectly, that the legal questions around who is entitled to the unclaimed money need to be resolved.

He said Delaware already had asked the high court to look at the issue and questioned why Texas and the other states in this case did not simply intervene in that lawsuit. But Cook said Delaware is hopeful the Supreme Court will provide all states with guidance on how companies should handle this particular type of unclaimed property in the future.

The case is being filed directly with the nations high court, which generally handles disputes between states.

Arizona, like most states, has laws dealing with what is considered abandoned property.

For example, if a travelers check is not cashed within 15 years it is presumed abandoned. Money orders, by contrast, get that status after just three years.

There also are rules for stocks, certificates of deposit and even credits owed to a retail customer. And a safe deposit box is considered abandoned if the rent goes unpaid for three years.

But even in those cases, Arizona law requires the state to try to find the owners, though some property and cash ultimately go unclaimed.

In general, the law is that the property is returned to the state of the owners last known address appearing on company records. But if that cannot be ascertained, the unclaimed property goes to the state of incorporation of the company that issued the financial instrument.

But Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who has taken the lead in this case, said Congress enacted specific laws dealing with unclaimed money orders, travelers checks and similar items, requiring that unclaimed funds to go the state where the item was first purchased.

That legislation  was intended to prevent one state  where many corporations maintain their domicile  from enjoying an inequitable windfall at the expense of the other 49 states where the purchasers of travelers checks and money orders actually reside, the lawsuit states.

Laux said some efforts by the Department of Revenue to find owners are direct, like sending letters to the last known address of the presumed owner. And he said Arizona works with other states that have similar laws on abandoned property, uploading information to missingmoney.com where individuals can input their names and see if the state has anything for them.

Last budget year the state managed to return about $43 million of what it took in, though Laux said the average return rate is only about 32 percent.

Thats where the other half of the issue comes in.

Some of whats left over goes into the Housing Trust Fund, which helps provide affordable housing. The state also provides $25 million a year to the Department of Revenue to underwrite its operations, with anything left over going into the general fund.
FAIRBANKS, Alaska  A Moose Creek farmer has lost a permit to fertilize his land with human waste after Fairbanks North Star Borough officials found his operation had become larger than what he had initially proposed.

The borough's Planning Commission voted Tuesday to revoke Robert Riddle's permit, which he received in 2007 as the owner of Green Acres Farm. His attorney, Bill Satterberg, said he will appeal the decision.

The conditional use permit allowed Riddle, who also owns a septic tank pumping company, to use sewage to fertilize his land. But planning officials claim collection and storage of septic sludge has become the primary activity at the farm  not agriculture.

"It's kind of morphed on its own and taken on a whole new life," said Chris Guinn, chairman of the commission.

Riddle told the commission in 2007 that the size of the sewage collection area would be similar to an Olympic-size swimming pool, according to transcripts from his testimony. State records show that Riddle has five sewage sludge lagoons and two holding tanks with a total capacity of more than 2 million gallons, The Fairbanks Daily News-Miner reported.

"The nature and size of the operation currently does not match what was proposed when the permit was issued," Commissioner John Perrault said.

The state permit that Riddle is operating under is for a septic sludge storage facility.

Satterberg said Riddle has spread septic sludge on about 50 acres of land at the farm, where he grows sod, hay, potatoes and peonies on the 500-acre property.

"This is just another example of the eroding of farming not only in Alaska but in the U.S.," Satterberg said of the commission's decision to revoke the permit.

Riddle is also facing a lawsuit brought by a neighbor, who has complained about the smell from the sewage. The case is scheduled to go before the Alaska Supreme Court later this year.

Satterberg said his client is protected under the Alaska Right to Farm Act, which protects farms from nuisance complaints.
Help India!

By Shafeeq Hudawi, Twocircles.net

Kozhikode: An article written by Indian Union Muslim League state general secretary KPA Majeed in party mouthpiece Chandrika and Madhyamam daily came down heavily against All India Sunni Jamiyyathul Ulama general secretary Kanthapuram A P Aboobacker for his alleged support extended to BJP in the state assembly elections.

Support TwoCircles



Majeed, through the article, lashed out at Kanthapuram terming him Modi bhakt pointing fingers to the participation of Kanthapuram in the recent International Sufi Conference, held in Delhi. The motive behind the article was the IUMLs narrow victory in Manjeshwaram by 87 votes.

Kanthapuram AP Aboobacker Musliyar has cheated the Muslim community by joining forces with Sangh Parivar for big personal interests and to a lesser extent for organisational gains. Kanthapuram AP Aboobacker Musliyar took a pro BJP stand in Manjeswaram constituency bay falling prey to the lure of some vested interests. He has cheated Muslim community along with the people in Kerala, who believe in the secular credentials of the state. By ensuring votes to the BJP candidate there, he has extended his support to Narendra Modi, who is responsible for countless atrocities against minorities and dalits. Besides, by supporting BJP candidate, he has also offered support to Modis efforts to divide the Muslim community, which tries to form into one entity, the very first lines of an article read.

There were calls made by Kanthapuram to defeat IUML candidate N Shamsudheen at Mannarkkad constituency while AP faction members campaigned against the partys candidates in constituencies like Tanur, where IUML candidate Abdul Rahman Randathani lost to LDF independent V Abdul Rahman.

However, the article has paved way to an open fight between the AP Sunni faction and IUML giving clear indication that the party will no more appease the AP faction of Sunnis in Kerala.

The IUML, in recent years, has been extremely cautious about not antagonising the Kanthapuram faction, in spite of the vigorous opposition from the EK Sunni faction, the rival group of AP. But the poll debacle has forced it to rethink its strategy. Irked by the alleged raw deal towards its demand from IUML, Kanthapuram faction had formed a party named Kerala Muslim Jamaat ahead of the assembly election. Besides, an array of protests were organised by Kanthapurams followers alleging AP faction was not given due representation in Kerala State Haj Committee and Kerala State Wakf Board.

Kanthapuram has traded votes in favour of the BJP in Manjeshwaram constituency. The election result reveals that the BJP candidate had literally secured the Muslim votes as a monolithic block in some booths. Following this, there is a feeling in the party that Kanthapuram should be exposed, IUML general secretary KPA Majeed told Twocircles.net.

Muslim votes over the time have shown shifts of allegiance, but this time there is a disturbing trend. And its not the first ever time Kanthapuram taking an anti IUML stand. But its shocking that a Muslim cleric has engaged in campaigning votes for BJP candidate, said party state committee member PA Rasheed.

The post poll analyze had come as a shock for the party leadership, when t found that more than 70 per cent of the polled votes in Muslims strongholds of Manjeshwaram went to BJPs account.

KPA Majeed said that no IUML leaders will take part in any programme, organised by Kanthapuram faction and the party will not cooperate with Kanthapuram.

Meanwhile, Kerala Muslim Jamath state secretary N Ali Abdulla said that the decision was going to do nothing bad with the AP faction. IUML has been taking stance against us in the past. We survived then; we will survive it now, he said.
Butterfly description

The monarch butterfly is a migratory insect of the family Nymphalidae which feeds mainly on milkweed. This insect is easily recognized by its orange, white and black hues, which are characteristic on its wings. When fully grown, as adults, their wings reach an approximate wingspan of 9-10.3 cm (3.5-4 inches).The monarch has six legs; however, it only utilizes its middle legs and hind legs, as the other legs; forelegs, are vestigial. The males are larger than females and possess a black spot on each hindwing.

The upper sides of the wings are from a reddish to orange tinge and the margins and veins are black with tiny white spots in them.

The undersides of the wings are of a clearer orange hue and the white spots on the veins are bigger.

Distribution

Although the monarch butterfly is mainly found in continental North America, it can also be found in parts of South and Central America and the Caribbean, as well as further west of the US, in Hawaii, the Philippines, and Australia, but also in Southern Europe, Africa and Asia. On rare occasions, it may appear in some areas of the UK, probably attracted by warm and sunny weather.

While the North American populations are known to migrate long distances in early fall of each year, other populations spread around the world only migrate smaller distances. Their wingspan may differ, with those travelling longer distances having bigger forewings than those that migrate smaller distances.

Lifecycle

The monarch butterfly undergoes complete metamorphosis in four stages; first, it starts as an egg, then it goes into larva (caterpillar) stage, following a pupa (chrysalis) stage and lastly, it becomes an adult insect. The whole transformation from egg to adult takes around 30 days.

Normally, eggs are laid under the leaves of milkweed during Spring and Summer.

The number of eggs that a female lays on milkweed varies from a few hundred to more than one thousand. Eggs usually take from 3-5 days to develop into the next stage (caterpillar or larva). Migrant females may lay eggs on milkweed along the route.

The caterpillar or larva experiences five different stages, over a period of 10 to 14 days, known as instar.

On each stage, the caterpillar changes its previous skin and becomes larger due to the energy stored. After spending from 9-10 days as a chrysalis or pupa stage, the butterfly emerges and becomes an adult butterfly.

Migration

In North America, the population of butterflies east of the continental US, migrate to central Mexico and the population in the western part of the US travels to varied regions of central and southern California. Not all migrating butterflies land in Mexico, as some have been seen farther south.

Eastern monarch migrate each autumn to Mexico where they overwinter in dense clusters in oyamel fir trees. Surviving monarchs travel north in spring, mating and feeding and laying eggs in fields of milkweed along their way.

The new born butterflies continue moving north and so do the next three of four new generations.

They will usually reach as far north as Canada, where adequate feeding and breeding grounds are found. Once the weather begins to become harsher, which is usually in autumn, they will start moving farther south. The last generation of monarchs born during the last days of summer is usually the one that will do the long travel back to Mexico and remain there overwintering.

Guinness Book of World Records

A single monarch butterfly may travel as long as 5,000 km (3,100 miles) on its way south and back north on a single migration trip. It'snot really known how the monarch is able to travel such a big distance; however, it is thought that they might make use of warm fronts of air and use the prevailing winds toward the south to ease the flight.

The bright colors displayed of these insects during the larva and adulthood are good enough to warn predators about the distasteful and venomous Nature of the monarch.
Chris Moorman Signs as an 888poker Ambassador

June 10 2016 Matthew Pitt Editor

The United Kingdoms Chris Moorman has signed a deal with 888poker that sees him become the newest ambassador for the company.

Moorman is regarded as one of the best online poker tournament players of all-time, if not the best. With almost $13.4 million in online winnings, Moorman is on top of the online all-time money listings; nobody has yet won more than $10 million.

Of that impressive total, approximately $175,000 stems from his play at 888poker where he was called WhatWudJSay. However, Moormans moniker at the site is now 888moorman to reflect his ambassador status.

It isnt only the online world where Moorman excels, his live cashes add up to more than $4.1 million and include a World Poker Tour title and a World Series of Poker Europe Main Event runner-up finish.

Speaking of his decision to sign for 888poker, Moorman said: 888 is doing big things and really is working hard to expand their reach in poker. Things like sponsoring the WSOP and the Super High Roller Bowl have shown they are committed to their growth of the brand and I can't wait to see what they have coming up in the future.

Moorman was also full of praise for the structure of 888pokers tournaments, stating that the site seems to have more standard speed tournaments compared to some rivals offering more turbo structures.

Fans of Moorman should be delighted to learn that part of his deal requires him to interact with them on the streaming site Twitch. Moorman plans to stream some of the final tables hell inevitably reach, giving fans an insight into how the great man plays.

The signing of Moorman is a major coup for 888poker and further strengthens its already impressive roster of ambassadors. Moorman joins forces with Kara Scott, and three-time WSOP bracelet winner Dominik Nitsche as the sites sponsored pros.

Moorman is currently in Las Vegas for the 2016 WSOP where he is looking for his first gold bracelet. He has one cash to him name, this coming in the Colossus II event, and will no doubt have several more by the time the Series draws to a close.

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Support from politicians for vaping products is gaining momentum with both H.R. 2058, introduced in April of 2015 by Congressman Tom Cole (R-OK), and the Cole-Bishop Amendment. Representative Cole's H.R. 2058 would amend the "Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act" and revise "premarket review and reporting requirements" for anything the Food and Drug Administration deems to be tobacco product. Also gaining support is the Cole-Bishop amendment, that would amend the February 15, 2007 "grandfather date" for currently unregulated tobacco product categories, including nicotine-containing electronic vaping devices and the "e-liquid" used in them.

Congressman Tom Cole took an opportunity to discuss both H.R. 2058 and the Cole-Bishop Amendment with Sean Gore, former executive director of the Oklahoma Vaping Advocacy League (OVAL) and Alex Clark, legislative coordinator for the Consumer Advocates for Smoke-free Alternatives Association (CASAA). Also present were trade group representatives from the American E-Liquid Manufacturing Standards Association (AEMSA) and the Smoke Free Alternatives Trade Association (SFATA). Groups are advising their members to call and meet with their politicians. There are now 58 total co-sponsors for H.R. 2058.

FDA ignores Government Affairs Committee

Ronald Johnson (R-WI), Chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee sent the FDA a request to answer just a few questions concerning the deeming rules set for August 8th.

Here are two of those mentioned in the letter to the FDA:

Will the FDA issue a revised rule if there is sufficient data that finds that e-cigarettes are a safer alternative to traditional cigarettes? Please explain.

are a safer alternative to traditional cigarettes? Please explain. How is the FDAs regulation of e-cigarettes not a premature restriction on an industry given the FDAs admission that it does not have sufficient data about e-cigarettes to determine the effects onthe publics health?

The letter expressed the need for answers to be returned no later than May 31.

The FDA failed to respond to the affairs committee in a timely manner, and no response has been recorded at this time.

A less harmful alternative

With the drastically falling sales of cigarettes, and the CDC saying only 15% of the population are still smokers, the public should be looking at anyone who have deterred smokers from trying e-cigarettes.

Consumers using these products have chosen to reduce or stop their smoking by switching to these products. They have been estimated to be 95% less harmful by both the Royal College of Physicians and Public Health England. The decision by the FDA to "deem" nicotine as tobacco may deter a safer choice to those who might try them if they knew all the facts.

What the rule may mean

While "approved" methods like the patch and gum are exempt from the rule, the current and future consumer are faced with e-cigarettes being taxed as tobacco, paying tobacco surcharges for insurance and possibly being disqualified for employment. Joining consumer organizations is one way to stay informed, talking with politicians is a way to have their voices heard by those who need to hear it most. Who knew quitting smoking with e-cigarettes would involve politics. In America, H.R. 2058 and the Cole-Bishop amendment are just part of the political fight to choose to stay smoke-free.
Yachtsman steers for true East Updated: 2016-06-06 07:28 By Sophie He(HK Edition)

Vincenzo Poerio, CEO, Benetti

Vincenzo Poerio, helmsman for Benetti luxury yachts, brings a Mediterranean passion to his mission of telling the world's wealthy about the good life. Sophie He reports in Capri, Italy.

Benetti, an Italian luxury shipyard dating back nearly one-and-a-half centuries, is waiting patiently upon the Chinese market, confident that more rich Chinese will become its clients.

Benetti is part of the Azimut/Benetti Group, the world's largest private consortium in the yachting sector.

"Benetti is in a very niche market, we have to look throughout the world, as our potential customers are the richest, there are not too many of them and the market is very limited," CEO Vincenzo Poerio told China Daily in Capri, Italy, where the operators of the 143-year-old shipyard held a yachting gala on May 21 and 22.

Benetti builds semi-custom and custom yachts. Semi-custom yachts are available in several pre-designed models and range from 29 meters to 42 meters in size, with prices starting at 8.5 million euro ($9.46 million).

The custom-built yachts start at 50 meters and clients may design their own models, with prices starting at 30 million euro, according to the company.

Poerio pointed out that Western countries used to account for about 60 to 65 percent of the global rich, but the past 10 years have seen an exponential rise in the number of billionaires in China, as well as in other Asian countries, and this makes China more attractive to the company.

He said that a third of Benetti's clients are currently from the US, while another third comes from Europe, including Russia. "In these areas where there are families that have been rich for centuries, they can afford a yacht."

The Middle East and Asia account for the rest of Benetti's clients. The Middle East is very stable market, said Poerio, given its rich families, which make up 10 or 12 percent of the company's total customer base.

"Right now we are investing in the East. We are convinced that after so many years, the rich in the East have started learning about how to change their way of enjoyment, and if they understand what it (yachting) is and they like it, they will buy it."

Poerio pointed out that there are a lot of rich people in China today, and they earned those riches by working very hard, so they probably already have a beautiful house, a beautiful car, and so on. But he believes the last masterpiece to own is a yacht, as it is the most expensive toy that anyone can buy.

"Our strategy in China is to stay there, and to show that we exist, to let our potential clients know our brand. It is important to invest and to let them know that this is a way of enjoying life," he said.
From material to experiential Updated: 2016-06-11 03:49 By XU JUNQIAN in Shanghai(China Daily USA)

The luxury travel market in China is booming today, thanks in part to the growing desires of affluent Chinese to not just own the most expensive products, but to savor unique experiences around the world

The 410-square-meter presidential suite on the 51st floor of the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Pudong might have housed some of the most lavish parties in town before, but on this particular Monday morning, it played host to an extravagance of a different kind.

With the iconic Oriental Pearl TV Tower anchoring the stunning backdrop, four ladies in exquisite qipaos played the traditional Chinese game of mahjong in a reenactment of the leisure life of rich wives from Shanghai's 1930s, a golden period when the city earned its reputation for being the Oriental Paris.

This scene was part of the launch of the 10th International Luxury Travel Market (ILTM) Asia, one of the region's leading trade events for luxury travel that is exclusive to members of the media and buyers from luxury travel agencies.

Held at the Shanghai Exhibition Center, the event this year gathered upwards of 500 exhibitors from 53 countries and 480 buyers from 19 Asian countries. Event organizers said that the number of buyers  made up mostly of private travel agencies and concierge companies  grew 5 percent this year. The increase in the number of Chinese buyers, who accounted for about 40 percent of the total, was the most significant at 10 percent.

"This event is certainly not about playing mahjong. Rather, it is about illustrating the experiences of luxury travel," said Edward Yuan, director of sales and marketing at Ritz-Carlton Pudong which recently started offering qipao-tailoring services in collaboration with one of Shanghai's most famous tailors.

"Here at the Ritz-Carlton in Shanghai, we want to offer customers a luxury travel experience that is a combination of modernity and history; a mix of elements from old Shanghai and the cosmopolitan city we know of today."

The main takeaway from the May 30 to June 2 event, which was run by UK events organizer Reed Exhibition, was how Chinese luxury travelers have rapidly evolved over the years. Yuan recalled that when he first joined the luxury hotel brand, the three key words in hotel reviews by Chinese travelers were "price", "lobby" and "location". Today, the words are "services", "experiences" and "happy".

"Ten years ago, all wealthy Chinese were seeking the same things like Louis Vuitton bags and going on holidays to places like New York and Hong Kong. Today, it's the opposite  they want uniqueness," said Amrita Banda, managing director of Agility Research & Strategy, the partnering consultancy of ILTM Asia.
Legendary cellist Yo-Yo Ma (third from left), founder of the Silk Road Ensemble, and Morgan Neville (center), director of the film The Music of Strangers: Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble pose for a group photo with film crew and ensemble members at a screening of the film on Monday at City Cinema in New York. PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY

Everyone's heard the cliche that music is a universal language, reaching across boundaries of culture and race, stirring the primal emotions we all share.

But just how does that actually work?

For the past 16 years, celebrated cellist Yo-Yo Ma has been shepherding a real-time global experiment to probe the mystery in a unique way.

It's called The Silk Road Ensemble and it grew out of a bold idea  gather together 50 master musicians from the lands along the ancient trade route connecting China with the Mediterranean and see what happens.

What one scholar called "the Manhattan Project of music" took place in Lenox, Massachusetts, in 2000 and the outcome is chronicled wonderfully in a new documentary film opening in New York on Friday: The Music of Strangers: Yo-Yo Ma & The Silk Road Ensemble.

It's a whole lot more than your father's run-of-the-mill concert film. And the music, as Ma put it, is just the tip of the iceberg.

First there are the instruments that, while centuries or more old, had probably never before been juxtaposed in a jam session  a Chinese pipa (4-stringed lute), a Persian kamancheh (sort of a lap fiddle), an Arabic oud (a 11-to-12-stringed lute), a clarinet from Syria, a Galician bagpipe from northern Spain (yes, they have bagpipes in Spain), Indian tabla (bongos), Armenian double-reed duduk, and so on, all anchored by Ma's mighty cello.
Lenovo unveils new cloud devices Updated: 2016-06-10 23:19 By CHANG JUN in San Francisco(China Daily USA)

Yang Yuanqing, chairman and CEO of Lenovo, unveils the Moto Z series of smartphones at its Tech World 2016. Another product,the Phab 2 Pro, the worlds fi rst consumer Tango-enabled smartphone in partnership with Google, was also unveiled. CHANG JUN/CHINA DAILY

Multinational tech giant Lenovo on Thursday at Tech World 2016 unveiled two new lines of products: the Phab 2 Pro, the world's first consumer Tango-enabled smartphone in partnership with Google, and the Moto Z family with Moto Mods that enables a smartphone to be a multi-functional device.

Lenovo Chairman and CEO Yang Yuanqing, joined by industry leaders, fans, media and analysts, gave a Silicon Valley-style keynote speech at the packed Mosonic Auditorium. He shared the company's vision on innovation and tech transformation, including IoT and smart connectivity, the power of big data and unique user experiences, and vowed to provide customers "innovative and revolutionary" products and services besides being the leading traditional PC maker.

Yang emphasized Lenovo's three pillars of future technology: device innovation, device plus cloud connectivity and infrastructure. While Lenovo has a strong heritage of device innovation and retains its leadership in the traditional PC market, the rapidly changing landscape means entirely new concepts and categories in cloud and connectivity are emerging.

"The power of connectivity is transforming the PC from personal computing to CC  connected computing," said Yang. "We're helping lead this transformation by combining our expertise in hardware innovation with the critical backend cloud platform to help devices listen, see, sense and understand the world."

Through building flexible, reliable and safe infrastructure, Lenovo will deliver the next generation of technology advancements, Yang said.

Launching products like the Phab 2 Pro and Moto's new Z Series smartphones in the heart of Silicon Valley shows "we're committed to this strategic technology direction," Yang said.

Lenovo is struggling with a slowing Chinese market and decreasing market shares in North America as shown in its last quarter earnings released in May. Industry insiders believe it would use the tech conference this year to "show its muscles" in the smart devices sector and rejuvenate its smartphone business.

In October 2014, Lenovo acquired Motorola Mobility from Google for $2.91 billion and positioned itself as the world's third-largest maker of smartphones.

Calling Moto Z the world's thinnest premium smartphone and a "game-changing product", Yang and his team showcased the metal design, low-light camera, Qualcomm's Snapdragon 820 processor and Moto TurboPower charging. Adding the benefits of a shatter-proof shield and 15-hour battery life, Moto Z Force is exclusively for the US market with a display guaranteed not to crack or shatter.

"Lenovo's newest generation of PCs paired with Intel's latest processors are becoming more powerful, versatile and mobile  and delivering amazing new experiences," said Brian Krzanich, Intel CEO when he used the Lenovo Y900 based on the 6th generation Intel CoreTM i7 processor with Oculus Virtual Reality to demonstrate how people can be immersed in the virtual world of a gaming experience.

"With our continued innovation together, Intel and Lenovo are elevating virtual reality and making e-sports more personal, immersive, and engaging," he added.

junechang@chinadailyusa.com
Sinobioway taps into US biotechnology Updated: 2016-06-10 23:19 By LIA ZHU in San Francisco(China Daily USA)

Sinobioway is among the more than 50 Chinese exhibitors attending the BIO International Convention on June 6-9 in San Francisco. The company aimed to seek potential partners in the US as well as build up its awareness in the US market through the worlds largest biotechnology and pharma gathering. LIA ZHU / CHINA DAILY

Sionbioway Group Co, Ltd, a major biotech company in China, has been seeking partnerships with US biotech companies through technology and capital investments to help realize its goal of starting a revolution in the bioindustry.

Sinobioway and BioAtla LLC, a San Diego-based company focused on the development of Conditionally Active Biologic (CAB) antibody therapeutics, are working collaboratively to develop several CAB candidates for the Chinese market.

In May 2015, the two companies entered into a strategic collaboration for the development and commercialization of select CAB antibodies and other CAB-based therapeutics in China.

Under the agreement, the companies selected their first product programs for development in January this year. BioAtla also received $19 million in program payments and equity investment from Sinobioway as part of a total of more than $70 million in payments and investment from Sinobioway over the next 12 months.

As part of the agreement, Sinobioway has exclusive rights to develop and commercialize selected CAB antibodies in China.

"Collaboration with overseas companies means more than just marketing products. Sinobioway aims to find the best technologies and best partners through direct investment," said Alex Zhang, investment and financing director of Sinobioway.

"Some innovative companies in the US have very limited resources in capital, manufacturing and marketing. A partnership with Chinese companies like Sinobioway means they have access to Chinas huge market and production capacity," he said, adding that an office would open in June in San Diego to facilitate investment and potential partnerships.

The strategic collaboration between Sinobioway and BioAtla is considered the keystone of both companies long-term plans to address the growing high demand for innovative therapeutic products in the China pharmaceutical market.

"China is an immensely important opportunity for CABs and we are excited to be working with Sinobioway with its demonstrated commitment and strong capabilities to execute and to fulfill our mutual goals," said Jay Short, president and CEO of BioAtla, in a statement.

Sinobioway has also collaborated with Baylor College of Medicine to introduce the chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy technology, a breakthrough to tumor treatment, to China.

At a cost of about $30.5 million, Sinobioway has built a Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP) facility for cell preparation and a molecular biology lab for product testing.

By collaborating with leading local hospitals in China, the company said "great results" have been achieved in treating acute lymphoblastic leukaemia, Burkitt lymphoma, pancreatic cancer and neuroblastoma.

liazhu@chinadailyusa.com
Pride of the Chao family Updated: 2016-06-11 02:02 By HEZI JIANG in Boston(China Daily USA)

Nearly 400 years after Harvard University was founded, the honor of the first building on campus to be named for a woman belongs to the late Ruth Mulan Chu Chao.

As a tribute to the life and legacy of the family matriarch (1930-2007), her husband, Dr James Si-Cheng Chao, founder of the Foremost Group shipping company in New York, along with the Chao family foundation in 2012 made a $40 million gift to the Harvard Business School in Boston to build the center, which will function as a hub for the 10,000-plus executives who attend educational programs each year.

"I am eternally grateful for the unconditional love, trust and confidence Ruth showed in me throughout our life and for always supporting and encouraging me in all our endeavors," said Dr Chao. "Ruth devoted her life to promoting excellence in education and enhancing US-China cultural exchanges. She embodied the spirit of the love of learning in this university community."

Born in East China's Anhui province in 1930, Ruth Chao lived in Nanjing and Shanghai amid civil war and foreign invasion before she moved to Taiwan, where she married in 1951.
Chinese rescue team set up 446 tents for Sri Lankan disaster area Updated: 2016-06-10 20:26 (Xinhua)

COLOMBO - One Chinese rescue team constructed 16 settlements for Sri Lankan during their 9-day-visit here to help local people affected by serious floods and landslides, an official of Chinese Red Cross relief and rescue team said here on Friday.

After constructing 16 makeshift shelters with 446 tents in Kagalla and Dehiowita, the most serious landslide-affected by the recent flood and landslide, the rescue team flied back to China on early Friday morning, Mr. Yang Xusheng, the leader of Chinese Red Cross relief and rescue team told Xinhua.

Heavy rain followed by floods and landslides in Sri Lanka two weeks ago killed about 100 people with many more still missing. Over 500,000 people have been affected by the adverse weather.

The international community including China has offered relief supplies and money assistance to Sri Lanka. Besides 1.5 million U.S. dollars of cash donation, China further handed over 1,000 tents and 3,000 folding beds to Sri Lanka for construction of settlements.

The rescue team came with this batch of relief supplies to assist Sri Lanka in training soldiers on constructing settlements and setting up tents.

The team braved hot and humid weather and carried out the construction work during their stay, and "local people affected by disaster showed their hospitality and thanks to us and to China," Yang said.

The Sri Lankan soldiers will take over the remaining construction work, 292 of whom have been trained by the Chinese rescue team. It is reported that over 1,000 families will benefit from the batch of tents and folding bed.
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HA NOI  Viet Nams low ranking in corporate governance could scare off investors in the stock market, says Phan uc Hieu, deputy chairman of the Central Institute for Economic Management (CIEM).

Hieu made the remarks at a gathering on Monday in the capital city with more than 300 local and international participants at a conference held by International Finance Corporation (IFC), a member of the World Bank Group, and Deloitte Viet Nam, in partnership with the Ha Noi and HCM Stock Exchanges to help local listed companies adopt international best practices in corporate governance to boost their appeal to foreign investors and spur growth.

Hieu said under the World Banks ASEAN corporate governance scorecard, Viet Nam ranked the lowest among six regional countries of Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand between 2012 and 2014.

Thailand had the highest score of 84.53 per cent while Viet Nam was placed lowest with 35.14 per cent, said Hieu, explaining that this ranking endangered prospects of investments.

While the Government was trying to mobilise more capital from the stock market, the low rate of corporate governance minimises its attraction, he said.

The conference, which also provided updates of the revised Enterprise Law as well as international best practices in corporate governance and their relevance for Vietnamese companies.

Under the revised law, put into effect last July, public and listed companies were also allowed to set up an audit committee under the Board of Directors, without having a supervisory board, subject to requirements.

Businesses need to be aware of the vital role of corporate governance and a boards audit committee in overseeing the effectiveness and integrity of internal controls, said Ha Thu Thanh, chairwoman of Deloitte Viet Nam. She added that her company was trying to support companies and the market improve transparency, increase efficiency and enhance resilience.

As competition grows among countries in the region, improving corporate governance in line with internationally accepted practices will help Vietnamese companies become more sustainable and attractive to investors, said Chris Razook, IFC Corporate Governance Lead for East Asia and the Pacific.

Chris Razook also said enhanced corporate governance will also strengthen the development of Viet Nams capital markets and benefit the overall economy.

Nguyen Thanh Long, HNX chairman appreciated the revised law, saying that he would help listed companies adopt international best corporate governance practices, as part of the Governments drive to ensure better corporate governance.

Long said companies would benefit tremendously from attending this conference, which would help them take their corporate governance to a new level.

Le Hai Tra, deputy CEO of HoSE indicated that good corporate governance practices are verifying their importance in reducing risk for investors, attracting investment and improving the performance of companies," adding that HoSE always invested in training, workshops to enhance international standard practices among listed companies.

CIEM deputy Hieu, who also contributed to the law said companies should be aware that the law only required the minor conditions for practising corporate governance, adding they encouraged companies to perform better to build their own corporate governance.

Hieu said further cost and human resources for better corporate governance might discourage some companies to apply such measures, however, they needed to recognise how it could benefit them in gaining investors trust and develop the sustainability of their enterprises.

According to Nguyen Thi Nguyet Anh, corporate governance officer from IFC, said Viet Nam needs to have a certain change in corporate governance in order to improve the quality of the local companies and to make the market more attractive.

Anh said more and more companies had been paying attention to the issue since 2007 when IFC started working with the Vietnamese Government to improve the countrys regulations and investment climate, raise public awareness of good corporate governance, build the capacity of its partners, and provide governance advice to individual companies.  VNS
HCM CITY - The 2016 Property Report Congress, the countrys most exclusive real estate conference where Asian real estate leaders meet, opens today at HCM Citys InterContinental Asiana Saigon Hotel.

Organised by PropertyGuru Group, a leading online property group in Asia, the event will feature keynote addresses and panel discussions on key issues facing the countrys property market, such as infrastructure development, green building and the rise of secondary cities, and, together with similar-minded professionals, find solutions to address these issues.

Speakers, moderators and panellists at the event include Andrew Olejnik, CEO of Timhome.vn, Sigrid Zialcita, managing director Asia-Pacific of Cushman & Wakefield, Marc Townsend, managing director of CBRE (Vietnam) Co, Ltd., Rudolf Hever, executive director of Alternaty Real Estate, Bertil De Kleynen, director of architecture & landscape, Atkins Asia Pacific, Stephen Wyatt, country head of Jones Lang Lasalle Vietnam, Ninh Van Hien, partner, tax & corporate services, KPMG Limited.

Terry Blackburn, founder and managing director of the Asia Property Awards, said Viet Nam had its up and downs, and I am happy to see the market is enjoying a recovery. From the revised rules on foreign ownership to increase demand from investors to rapid urbanisation to the outstanding economic growth, the stakes are high for the local market, especially in the era of the ASEAN Economic Community.

These issues will be discussed by our guest speakers and expert panellists at the Property Report Congress Vietnam.

Attendees will have a chance to meet and mingle with the biggest names in Vietnamese real estate, including winners and judges of the Viet Nam Property Awards, and engage in a meaningful and informative discussion with the countrys market leaders.

They will have the opportunity to network with the biggest players in the Vietnamese real estate industry and their partners in architecture, design, construction, electronics, technology, marketing and new media advertising.

The Congress comes to the country after its successful debut in Singapore last year.

Asked why PropertyGuru Group decided to organise the Property Report Congress in Viet Nam, Blackburn said We started the Property Report Congress in Singapore in 2015 to create a venue for Asias real estate experts and the Viet Nam panel had a favourable response. In fact, many of the panellists from other countries chose Viet Nam as the market to watch in 2016.

Viet Nam is in a very exciting situation right now after revising its laws on foreign ownership.

Property Awards

After the Property Report Congress, the InterContinental Asiana Saigon Hotel will host the second Viet Nam Property Awards.

Presented by Hansgrohe, the awards will celebrate the achievements of the countrys established and emerging developers in a total of 22 categories, including prizes for best green development, best affordable condo, best high-end condo, best housing development, best villa development, best commercial development, best hotel architectural design, best condo landscape architectural design, best residential interior design and others.

Winners will get a chance for international acclaim at the 2016 South East Asia Property Awards in Singapore in November.

Blackburn said This year the Viet Nam Property Awards are definitely more competitive. Weve received outstanding entries from all over the country."

The event is being supported by the Viet Nam National Real Estate Association and the countrys only English language national daily, Viet Nam News. - VNS
Vinh Thinh bridge that connects Son Tay District of Ha Noi and Vinh Phuc Province, was built by ODA loans from the Korean Government.  VNA/VNS Photo Huy Hung

HA NOI  The Republic of Korea plans to provide ODA loans worth US$1.5 billion to Viet Nam during the 2016-2020 period, with the focus on large-scale infrastructure, railways, health and information technology.

The information was released in a policy dialogue on official development assistance (ODA) between Viet Nam and the Republic of Korea (RoK) held in Ha Noi on Wednesday.

Viet Nams 2016-2020 socio-economic development plan, medium-term public investment plans and several laws were introduced at the event, along with RoKs new regulations and policies on development co-operation and ODA.

The head of the Foreign Economic Relations Department under the Ministry of Planning and Investment, Le Quang Manh, said financial co-operation will play a vital role in the development partnership between the two countries.

For effective co-operation, Viet Nam should take advantage of assistance from the RoK Government and the Korea International Co-operation Agency (KOICA) and attract investment in the fields that Korea is strongest in and where Viet Nam has demand, such as transport, health, environment and high technology, Manh suggested.

The country also needs to be proactive in making proposals for projects that are in conformity with its medium and long-term annual development plans and policies.

Lee Sang Kyu, representative of the RoK Ministry of Strategy and Finance, stated that the Korean Government treasures and attaches importance to its development co-operation with Viet Nam, as the country is an important partner. Priority will be given to transport, urban infrastructure, education and health, as well as environment, clean energy and information technology.

Currently, the Korean Government is building a Country Partnership Strategy (CPS) with Viet Nam to help the nation achieve its goals on transport infrastructure, information technology, and human resources in its 2011-2020 socio-economic development strategy and 2016-2020 socio-economic development plan, he added.

The RoK Government had signed lending agreements or committed to provide credit for nearly 60 projects worth $2.8 billion in Viet Nam from 1992 to 2015.

At present, the country is running 34 ODA-funded projects in Viet Nam with a total registered capital of $1.7 billion, of which $0.9 billion has been disbursed.

The two countries are preparing for negotiations on a framework credit agreement for 2016-2020. - VNS
HA NOI  The Airports Corporation of Viet Nam will pour over VN 26.2 trillion (US$1.17 billion) for the upgradation of airports to meet travel demands and socio-economic development by 2018.

This is the corporations latest plan, aimed at implementing the National Strategy on Transport Development, issued in 2013 by the government.

The corporation, now manages all 22 airports in the country, including nine international airports, said travel demands were constantly increasing, putting pressure on the major airports at Noi Bai, Tan Son Nhat, a Nang, Cam Ranh and Phu Quoc.

According to the head of the Civil Aviation Authority of Viet Nam, Lai Xuan Thanh, Noi Bai International Airport has achieved tremendous growth, reaching 22 per cent in 2015 and already climbing to 31 per cent in the first four months of this year.

Meanwhile, the International Air Transport Association (IATA) has predicted Viet Nam will be the 10th fastest-growing market in terms of additional passengers by 2034.

Therefore, the upgradation of the airports was very necessary, the corporation said.

Some VN7.7 trillion ($345 million) of the capital being used to finance the upgradation work will be drawn from the State budget and VN18.4 trillion ($824 million) from the corporation.  VNS
National film contest launched for environment protection

HA NOI  A filmmaking contest has just been launched to honour individuals and organisers for their outstanding contributions to environment protection.

The films under five categories - short motion picture, documentary, scientific film, reportage film and animated cartoon - have environment protection as the theme and can be sent to 556 Nguyen Van Cu Street in Long Bien District until November 5.

The contests organisation board will give awards to the best films worth VN30 million (US$1,300).

The other awards are one A, one B and two encouragement prizes for each category, respectively.

The contest is held every three years by the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment for eminent filmmakers whose works have contributed to popularising and educating the community on environment protection.

The award ceremony will be held in December.  VNS
HA NOI  French-Vietnamese author Anna Moi will interact with readers on June 13 at the French Culture Centre LEspace Ha Noi, on 24 Trang Tien St, Hoan Kiem Dist, in Ha Noi.

Anna Moi, whose real name is Tran Thien Nga, was born in 1955 in Sai Gon (now HCM City). In the 1970s, she went to Paris to study history at the Nanterre University, a university in the Academy of Versailles.

Her encounter with fashion moguls Agnes Trouble (Agnes B.) and Philippe Guibourge, designer of the Dior luxury company and the House of Chanel had helped Moi to enter the world of fashion.

During the 1980s, she spent most of her time living and working in Bangkok and Tokyo. In 1992, she returned to HCM City and began to write there.

Her two short stories about contemporary Viet Nam, Lecho des rizieres (The Echo of the Paddyfield) and Parfum de pagode (Pagoda Perfume) were published in 2001 and 2003.

Her first novel Riz noir (Black Rice) was published in 2004 by Gallimard Publishing House.

Having being active in the French literature world for a long time, she has continuously presented her new works in that language. Mois latest book, Noc buom (Venom of Butterfly), will be published in January 2017.

Her talk with the audience will be held at 6pm and will also be attended by Professor of Letters Manuel Bengoechea.  VNS
HCM CITY  Excerpts from four plays by French writer Moliere will be staged at the Institute of Cultural Exchange with France (IDECAF) today in HCM City.

Cabaret Medical Chez Moliere (Medical Cabaret of Moliere) is based on modern excerpts from four plays, including LAmour Medecin (The Love Doctor), Le Medecin Malgre Lui (The Doctor in Spite of Himself), Le Medecin Volant (The Flying Doctor), and Le Malade Imaginaire (The Imaginary Invalid).

The script is written by director and choreographer Anna Boulo of the Ha Noi-based Phapbulateurs drama troupe, who will stage the work.

The play will be set in two surgeries and waiting rooms at the centre of the stage where doctors and patients moods, desires, fears and joys will be on display.

According to Boulo, the theme of the story is love. It is the cause and cure of disease, and affects everyones life.

Famous songs like La Maladie DAmour (The Disease of Love) by Michel Sardou and Money by ABBA will be sung by performers to express the characters feelings.

There will be Vietnamese subtitles for the show.

The Phapbulateurs was established in 2011 under the leadership of Boulo, who has several years of experiences as an actress at the Tightrope Theatre in Vienna.

The troupe consists of theatre lovers who speak French.

In 2014, they performed French writer Boris Vians musical Miss Goodnight and French playwright Jean-Michel Ribes Palace in 2015. Cabaret Medical Chez Moliere was staged in Ha Noi last month.

The performance in HCM City will begin at 5pm for free for students and teachers of French. At 8pm, another performance will be held, with admission fee of VN200,000.

The venue is at 28 Le Thanh Ton Street in District 1.  VNS
Tran Quoc Khanh, the Deputy Minister of Industry and Trade, spoke to Thoi bao Kinh te Viet Nam (Viet Nam Economic Times) about what Vietnamese exporters should do to secure a firm foothold in foreign markets.

Some people have expressed worry that our non-tariff barriers to trade are not strong enough to help Vietnamese goods compete against foreign made goods in our domestic market. How do you respond to this complaint?

All Vietnamese enterprises want strong non-tariff barriers to trade in the competition with the influx of foreign made goods in our territory.

But that is not a good approach. We accept decreasing tariff barriers to allow fair competition with foreign commodities. We dont have any intention to introduce preventive measures to limit the flow of foreign commodities into our country. This is a philosophy of Free Trade Agreements (FTAs).

As a signatory to several FTAs, we have committed to not introducing any trade barriers to limit the flow of foreign made products into our country. But under the FTAs, all countries have the right to introduce measures to protect their consumers health, animal welfare, plants and the environment.

Under the FTAs, all countries are allowed to adopt their own measures to protect the environment, ensure healthy competition and fairness, such as anti-dumping measures, preventive measures and anti-subsidization policy. Such measures have already been applied by our government.

Preventive measures have become the biggest worry of Vietnamese exporting firms. The European market has adopted very strong non-tariff barriers to trade (NTBs). Do you have any suggestions for Vietnamese exporters?

Psychologically speaking, most Vietnamese exporters think NTBs are measures to prevent the influx of foreign goods into their countries. In reality, many of the NTBs introduced by importing countries are aimed towards information disclosure, transparency and fairness. These rules apply to both exporting and importing firms.

In the Viet Nam - EU FTA, if EU importers adopt NTBs towards Vietnamese exported goods - to protect consumer health, animal welfare and the environment - there is no reason for Viet Nam firms to reject their demands.

What do you think about the NTBs the European Union has introduced?

All NTBs introduced by the EU are geared towards the goal of protecting consumer health.

These NTBs are good for consumers, both inside and outside Viet Nam. So such quality standards should be upheld.

Vietnamese exporters should carefully study technical requirements of each foreign importer, be they in the EU, the US, Japan, or elsewhere.

If Vietnamese exporters are well prepared in advance, they will be in a good position to be successful exporters.

In your opinion, what should Vietnamese enterprises do to confront the NTBs imposed by importers from major markets?

The Ministry of Industry and Trade recommends that any enterprise wanting to do business with big markets - like the EU, the US, Japan and others - should create a special task force in their enterprise to study technical requirements from importing countries. Such information is already contained in the FTAs Viet Nam has signed with them.

Only when we understand technical requirements from importing countries, will we be able to enter the markets and become their sustainable clients. VNS
Deputy Prime Minister Vuong inh Hue delivers speech at a meeting with the Finance Ministry to review the draft Law on Management and Use of Public Property. Photo VGP

HA NOI  Public property tasks, rights and responsibilities need to be clarified, according to Deputy Prime Minister Vuong inh Hue.

The law should clarify the public property management rights and responsibilities of the National Asembly, the Government, the Prime Minister, and heads of State agencies, Hue said in a meeting with the Finance Ministry to review the draft Law on Management and Use of Public Property.

The deputy PM asked the Finance Ministry  the law compiler  to make the scope of the draft law clearer.

Along with public property natural resources, the law must define other kinds of properties owned by the State and managed or handed over to State non-production administration.

The State does not have policies to create properties for lease. But when State agencies lease public property such as land, the rent does not go to the State Budget. The money goes to agencies instead.

The draft Law on Management and Use of Public Property aims to replace the 2008 Law on Management and Use of State Property, which is the current law.

According to the Ministry of Finance, after six years of the laws implementation, management and use of State properties had gained some achievements.

Properties in healthcare, education, culture and sport, and other sectors have dramatically increased to become an importance financial source for the countrys socio-economic development.

But the law also exposed shortcomings.

Under the law, the mechanism of public property management and use, including property purchase and investment, was not in accordance with the financial mechanism and lacked compatibility and systematisation. These activities were also regulated by many different laws.

The present law on State property management lacks clear definition of the responsibilities and rights of managers and users, the separation of the responsibility and rights of those people, and the decentralisation of management.

Despite efforts, public property is still wasted, especially in land and housing.

The Law on Management and Use of Public Property is intended to solve these shortcomings.

The draft law, which stipulates in detail some points in the law of managing and using public property, is scheduled to be submitted to the National Assembly this October.

The deputy PM asked the Ministry of Finance to gather comments from relevant ministries, branches, localities and law experts to complete the law as scheduled. -- VNS
President Tran ai Quang receives Ambassador of Latvia Maris Selga.  VNA/VNS Photo Nhan Sang

HA NOI  Viet Nam appreciates and wishes to further bilateral co-operation and friendship with other countries, said President Tran ai Quang.

The President made the affirmation in meetings with newly-accredited ambassadors from India, the Republic of Korea (RoK), Saint Kitts and Nevis, the Federated States of Micronesia, Latvia, and Guinea-Bissau, who all presented their credentials to the Vietnamese leader yesterday.

At a meeting with Indian Ambassador Parvathaneni Harish, the President noted his hope that the diplomat will exert great efforts to co-operate with the Vietnamese side, in order to advance the Vietnam-India relationship in both depth and breadth.

Quang said the official visit by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in September this year would be significant and meaningful. It will take place while the two countries are gearing towards the 45th anniversary of their bilateral diplomatic ties and the 10th anniversary of their strategic partnership in 2017.

Ambassador Harish said the Indian PMs visit would elevate the bilateral relationship to new heights.

At a reception for RoK Ambassador Lee Hyuk, Quang said the Viet Nam-RoK strategic partnership has yielded fruit in such areas as politics, security, national defence, international co-operation, investment, trade and official development assistance (ODA). The RoK is Viet Nams biggest investor, second largest ODA supplier, and third largest trade partner. The bilateral free trade agreement which came into force in 2015 - and the re-signing of the regular memorandum of understanding on labour co-operation in May this year - will strengthen co-operation, especially in promising areas like economy, trade, investment and employment.

In response, Lee Hyuk promised to make all-out efforts to boost the strategic partnership, as Viet Nam is one of the priorities of his countrys ODA policy.

Welcoming Ambassador of Latvia Maris Selga, the President called on the two countries to pay more attention to the exchange of delegations and to collaboration in trade and investment, since co-operation outcomes have yet to match their potential and advantages. He called on Latvia to continue supporting Viet Nam to promote its relations with the EU, including the early signing and approval of the Viet Nam -EU free trade agreement.

Maris Selga confirmed Viet Nam is his countrys largest trade partner in Asia. He also confirmed he will prioritise economic and trade ties between the two countries during his tenure in the Southeast Asian nation.

In the meetings with ambassadors of Saint Kitts and Nevis, the Federated States of Micronesia, and Guinea-Bissau, the President expressed his pleasure in the bilateral ties with these countries in recent years.

The State leader also said Viet Nam and other countries should further co-operation for economic development in the future.  VNS
President Tran ai Quang.  Photo trandaiquang.org

HA NOI  President Tran ai Quang cabled condolences yesterday to his counterpart Nursultan Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan over the deadly terror attacks on June 5.
Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc receives Lao Foreign Minister, Saleumxay Kommasith, in Ha Noi yesterday. Photo VGP

HA NOI  Viet Nam and Laos should maintain the annual meeting of their governments, in order to handle issues arising which pertain to their plans, especially the 2016-20 plan, Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc said.

He made the remarks while hosting the visiting Lao Foreign Minister, Saleumxay Kommasith, in Ha Noi yesterday.

The PM said he hoped the Lao official, in his Foreign Minister position, will work to foster the traditional friendship, special solidarity, and comprehensive co-operation between the two countries.

He expressed approval that the two countries across-the-board affiliation is growing strongly and efficiently. And he described cemented political trust and successful visits by high-ranking officials as having lifted relations between the two Parties, States and Governments to the next level.

Minister Saleumxay Kommasith told his host that he held talks with Foreign Minister Pham Binh Minh. They agreed on speedier realisation of agreements reached by the two countries leaders, as well as on orientations for the two foreign ministries connection.

He hopes to learn from Viet Nams experience as the ASEAN Chair. Laos took on the role this year and wants do the job well.
HA LONG, Quang Ninh  Viet Nam is calling on all East Sea claimants to urgently join forces in tackling the environmental degradation offshore before its too late, said a deputy minister yesterday.

It might even take a hundred of years for us to completely resolve the territorial dispute, Foreign Affairs Deputy Minister ang inh Quy said in a maritime workshop yesterday in the northern coastal city of Ha Long, home to the famous tourism spot Ha Long Bay.

If we just stand by waiting for that to happen before addressing the environmental issues, the sea might be already dead by then.

The two-day workshop  jointly organised by the Diplomatic Academy of Viet Nam (DAV) and the Delegation of the European Union to Viet Nam  attracted some 150 officials, international scholars and experts from Asia and Europe to exchange views and experiences of the two continents in promoting international maritime security, especially in times of an increasingly tense dispute in the East Sea (South China Sea).

China  unilaterally claiming sovereignty over more than 80 per cent of the international sea and exercising massive military build-up on artificial islands seized by force  is the biggest claimant among others including Viet Nam, the Philippines, Taiwan, Brunei and Malaysia.

Stretching beyond such competing territorial claims, the maritime security agenda in the East Sea now even covers the environmental issues which have taken a turn for the worse as early as two years ago when China started their land reclamations in the Spratly Islands en masse, Viet Nam Nature and Marine Environment Association Chairman Nguyen Chu Hoi told Viet Nam News.

The Philippines last year estimated that Chinas island-building activities so far have destroyed about 300 acres of coral reef in the East Sea, making its neighbours in the region likely to lose up to US$100 million a year, according to a spokesman for the Philippine Department of Foreign Affairs who told the New York Times last year.

Coral reefs in the Spratly and Paracel Islands are key centres in distributing nutrition into the sea and act as breeding grounds for the fish, Hoi said.

Therefore they (the coral reefs) will determine the maintaining level of the marine life in the whole East Sea.

He added that the impact of the coral losses will last for a long time and strongly affect the marine resources of all countries in the region - particularly harming the way of life of local fishermen - including the Chinese.

Chinas land reclamation projects  carried out on the sand spits, islets and submerged reefs of the Spratly Islands stretching to more than 2,900 acres, according to the Pentagon  constantly raise concerns from the international community concerning damage caused to the biodiversity and ecological balance in the East Sea. Yet Beijing has never acknowledged the environmental consequences of their actions, instead calling the projects green, claimed the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs Deputy Director-General Wang Xining earlier in May.

All land reclamations do harm to the environment, said Xue Li, director of the Department of International Strategy of Chinas Institute of World Economics and Politics.

But all international pressure make it difficult for China to recognise the problem publicly, he told Viet Nam News.

Co-operation will lead to peace

Deputy Minister Quy affirmed that Viet Nam faces big challenges in maritime security as the Southeast Asian nation is largely dependent on the sea for survival.

Viet Nam has a long coastline running along the eastern border down to the south, stretching more than 3,500 kilometres and about 80 per cent of the population lives by the shore.

Viet Nam now is involved in sea disputes, yet we clearly understand that the only solution is through peaceful co-operation, Quy said.

However such a solution is only achieved when all parties show a will towards co-operation to resolve the dispute in line with international laws.

Markus Gehring, deputy director of the University of Cambridges Centre for European Legal Studies, said that he strongly encouraged a mechanism, particularly to work on the environmental issues in the East Sea, in which all parties involved could recognise the common interests they share and benefits of co-operation.

If they (the claimants) can start a dialogue on a much more concrete, low-level discussion of shared interests in preserving certain natural resources, they will also build more confidence to discuss some of the more difficult security issues, he said.

There is very little information regarding environmental issues in the South China Sea now. The first step for all is to share the information and be transparent about what had happened.

Xue believed that anything could be done under a co-operation framework, and environmental co-operation will be the easiest of all.

However, the Chinese Government will put any form of co-operation on hold until a final ruling on the arbitration case over the South China Sea is made, said Xue.

In 2013, the Philippines filed a case against China to the Permanent Court of Arbitration questioning the legality of Chinas unilateral "nine-dotted line" claim over the South China Sea under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). China boycotted the tribunal, saying it will not recognise the judgment.

The tribunal is expected to deliver the decision in just a few weeks.  VNS
Vice President ang Thi Ngoc Thinh meets with Polish Deputy Marshal of the Sejm (lower house) Malgorzata Kidawa-Blonska yesterday.  VNA/VNS Photo

WARSAW  Polish Deputy Marshal of the Sejm (lower house) Malgorzata Kidawa-Blonska said her country and other EU member states support Viet Nam and ASEAN in carrying out peaceful measures in line with international laws to settle disputes in the East Sea.

She made the statement while receiving visiting Vice President ang Thi Ngoc Thinh yesterday.

Thinh thanked Poland for its assistance in human resources training and preservation of historical sites.

She urged the Polish parliament to soon ratify the Viet Nam-EU free trade agreement.

The day before, Thinh met Polish President Andrzej Duda on the occasion of the 26th Global Summit of Women in Warsaw, the capital city.

The Vietnamese Vice President was grateful for the precious assistance Poland had given to her country throughout history.

President Andrzej Duda affirmed that Poland always attached importance to reinforcing traditional amity and multifaceted co-operation with Viet Nam. He spoke highly of the significant development successes that the Southeast Asian nation has secured.

Both sides shared a positive view on the thriving bilateral co-operation during the past 66 years. Notably, Poland continues to be Viet Nams top trade partner in the central and eastern European region with two-way trade reaching US$761 million last year.

The two countries boast much more potential for partnerships in spheres such as food technology, textiles and garments, machinery, medical equipment, medicine, and construction.

Thinh pledged that Viet Nam would provide an optimal and safe environment for foreign investors, including those from Poland.

The same day, she visited the Vietnamese Embassy and talked to representatives of the Vietnamese expatriate community.

Poland is home to 30 organisations and associations established by Vietnamese people.  VNS
ASEAN and Chinese senior officials reviewed the implementation of the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the East Sea (DOC) and discussed the building of a Code of Conduct in the East Sea (COC) during their 12th meeting in the northern province of Quang Ninh yesterday. Photo congly.com.vn

QUANG NINH  ASEAN and Chinese senior officials reviewed the implementation of the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the East Sea (DOC) and discussed the building of a Code of Conduct in the East Sea (COC) during their 12th meeting in the northern province of Quang Ninh yesterday.

Deputy Foreign Minister Le Hoai Trung led the Vietnamese delegation to the event, which was co-chaired by China and Singapore, which co-ordinates the relations between ASEAN and China.

The ASEAN member countries expressed concern over the recent developments in the East Sea while laying an emphasis on the importance of the sea and the international communitys interest in the recent situation there.

The ASEAN member states and China reaffirmed the significance of fully and effectively realising the DOC to foster trust and practical co-operation, contributing to maintaining peace, stability, maritime and aviation security and safety.

In committing to doing so, they particularly stressed the full and efficient implementation of Article 4 on peaceful settlement of disputes, Article 5 on self-restraint, Article 6 on co-operation promotion and Article 10 on COC building, of the DOC.

Participants discussed the nature of the COC as well as approaches to designing it for the first time.

They agreed to draft guidelines on launching a hotline on response to urgent contingencies at sea for ASEAN and Chinese senior officials, as well as complete the formulation of the ASEAN-China Joint Statement on the Implementation of the Code for Unplanned Encounters at Sea, considering them concrete outcomes ahead of the commemorative summit for the 25th anniversary of ASEAN-China relations in September in Laos.

Countries agreed that the next senior officials meeting and the meeting of the ASEAN-China Joint Working Group (JWG) on the Implementation of DOC will be held in August in China.

The meeting also debated preparations for the special meeting of the ASEAN and Chinese foreign ministers slated for June 14 in Kunming, China.

Speaking at the event, Deputy Foreign Minister Trung asserted that Viet Nam and ASEAN placed special importance on their relations with China and that peace and stability in the East Sea are closely tied with the peace, stability and prosperity of countries in and outside the region.

He called on ASEAN and China to fully and effectively realise DOC, particularly specifying the documents Article 5 via adopting the building of a list of to-do and not-to-do actions in the East Sea while promoting practical collaboration at sea.

He stressed the need to promptly reach a COC to manage and prevent disputes, creating an environment conducive to the peaceful settlement of disputes.

The Deputy FM proposed increasing meetings and discussions on practical issues, especially the COC drafting and deadline, and expressed support to early harvest measures and continuous studies.  VNS
HA NOI  Viet Nam will actively support and share experiences so that Laos can fulfill its presidency of ASEAN in 2016 as well as successfully organise the ASEAN Summit.

President Tran ai Quang made the comments during his meeting with the Lao Foreign Minister Saleumxay Kommasith in Ha Noi yesterday.

The President applauded the outcome of the meeting between the two foreign ministers earlier, saying that co-operative orientations would heighten the two ministries relations, particularly during Laos ASEAN presidency this year.

He affirmed that the Party, State and people of Viet Nam attached great importance to relations, whose foundations were laid by President Ho Chi Minh and President Kaysone Phomvihane. The relations had been nurtured by the leaders of the parties, the national assemblies and peoples of the two countries.

Congratulating achievements that the Lao Party and people had made in past years, Quang said that he believed Laos would achieve more progress.

He hailed the successful visits to Viet Nam by the Lao General Secretary and President Bounnhang Volachith and Prime Minister Thongloun Sisolith earlier, saying that such visits had helped elevate relations between the two parties, states and governments to a higher level.

Quang said that he would pay an official visit to Laos very soon, stressing that choosing Laos as his first official visit as the Vietnamese President showed that the Party, the State and people of Viet Nam always treasured the brotherly relations it has with Laos.

In response, the Lao foreign minister said that leaders of Laos were expecting the visit of the Vietnamese President to the country.

He believed the visit would be a milestone that cultivates ties between the two parties, the states and peoples of the two countries.

Regarding his talks with Vietnamese Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Pham Binh Minh, Saleumxay Kommasith said the two sides agreed to strengthen co-ordination in order to effectively implement high-level agreements between the two countries and achieve consensus in exchanges on issues of bilateral and multilateral co-operation.

As Laos was taking the role of ASEAN presidency, the close co-operation between the two ministries would play an important role in the success of Laos, he said.

The same day, President Quang met with Lao Ambassador to Viet Nam, Thongsavang Phomvihane.  VNS
WASHINGTON D.C.  US Ambassador to Viet Nam Ted Osius described the recent historical visit to Viet Nam by President Barack Obama as a great success.

Speaking at the Center for Strategic & International Studies in Washington D.C on Thursday, attended by hundreds of international experts and academicians, Ambassador Osius said President Obama was very touched by the warm reception of the Vietnamese people.

He reviewed significant achievements of the Presidents trip, including the Vietnam-US Joint Statement, which demonstrates that the bilateral relationship is quickly broadening and deepening based on the two countries comprehensive partnership.

Osius said further that the US had thought it would only clinch seven or eight joint cooperation agreements with Viet Nam during the Presidents visit.

However, the two countries came to 20 agreements, ilustrating their willingness to collaborate, both bilaterally and multilaterally, in economics-trade, navigation security and safety, climate change adaptation, education, and science-technology as well as in addressing war consequences, preventing the illegal trade in wildlife, and promoting people-to-people exchanges, the diplomat said.

This wide array of agreements created a solid foundation for the two countries relations over the coming 50 and 60 years, he added.

Regarding bilateral economic and trade co-operation, the Ambassador said the two sides signed a number of commercial agreements, including the sale of 100 Boeing jets to Vietjet Air, which will provide the equivalent of 61,000 jobs in the US.

He said the US would support Viet Nam in fully implementing its commitments under the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP)  the worlds largest free trade pact.

Osius praised Viet Nams engagement in the TPP in order to propel its economy forward and encourage continuous reform, which also offers excellent opportunities for US businesses.

People-to-people exchange and education are also highlights in the Vietnam-US relations, demonstrated by Viet Nams granting of a licence to open a Fulbright University program  the first independent not-for-profit American-style university in HCM City, as well as the arrival of US volunteers in Viet Nam to teach English and the extension of visas for US citizens to one year.

As regards security cooperation, the Ambassador underlined the US Presidents full removal of the lethal arms embargo against Viet Nam as a historical move to eliminate a major obstacle in the two countries normalisation process.

The US pledged to boost security cooperation with Viet Nam, especially navigation security, he confirmed.

The bilateral collaboration in climate change adaptation was also a success, he said, noting that during the Presidents visit the two sides agreed to work together to cope with environmental changes in the Red River Delta and Mekong Delta.

The US promised to help Viet Nam deal with the recent drought in the Mekong Delta, he said.

Viet Nam and the US were exerting every effort to address war consequences, especially searching for soldiers missing in action. The US spent US$92 million over the past decade on cleaning up unexploded ordnance in Viet Nam, he said.

Osius affirmed that the US would continue to support Viet Nam in the decontamination of Agent Orange/Dioxin in central a Nang City and Bien Hoa Airport in southern ong Nai Province. The US would also assist AO/dioxin victims in the 10 hardest hit provinces.

Answering experts questions on the East Sea issue, the Ambassador said the US called on the involved parties to respect international law, avoid use or threat to use forces in the East Sea.

About the US approach to Cam Ranh Bay, the diplomat said it did not intend to put military bases in Viet Nam.  VNA
HCM CITY  HCM City has not only established friendly relations with 41 cities and provinces in other countries, but is also a member of many networks that link localities around the world, city authorities have said.

Addressing a delegation of Vietnamese representative agencies in other countries yesterday, the chairman of the city Peoples Committee, Nguyen Thanh Phong, said the city also has partner relations with the cities of Busan and Deagu (South Korea), Rotterdam (the Netherlands) and Yangon (Myanmar).

The city has thousands of FDI projects in various sectors, which have significantly contributed to the citys socio-economic development.

Singapore is now the biggest investor in HCM City, followed by Malaysia, South Korea and Japan, according to Phong.

In the near future, when a number of free trade agreements come into effect, the city is expected to attract more FDI.

Phong said this would offer opportunities but also pose challenges.

HCM City would like Vietnamese diplomats abroad to provide information about its investment incentives and opportunities, he said.

It had given priority to infrastructure development, and planned to solicit international investment in major public transport and flood-control projects, he said.

It planned to speed up administrative reform and improve the investment environment to attract domestic and foreign investment, he added.

Duong Chi Dung, head of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Administration Department, said Vietnamese representative agencies in other countries would make greater efforts to help HCM City expand its links with localities in other countries and take full advantage of these international relations for its economic development.

According to the city Peoples Committee, there are plans to strengthen co-operation with foreign localities in areas like transportation, environment, science and technology, agriculture and human resource development.

The city has called for investment in big environmental projects, including nine centres for monitoring the environment and climate change, which has affected the living standards of people in the southern provinces.  VNS
AK LAK  Tay Nguyen, in the Central Highlands, has great potential for socio-economic development.

This was Deputy Foreign Minister Bui Thanh Sons comment at the exchange meeting yesterday between Tay Nguyen localities and the Vietnamese diplomatic corps.

The meeting which was held in Buon Ma Thuot City of ak Lak Province. It provided a venue for Tay Nguyen leaders and businesspeople and international partners to discuss co-operation potentials and opportunities.

The event was organised by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MoFA) and the Tay Nguyen Steering Committee. It was attended by ambassadors, the consul general, international organisations, foreign business associations in Viet Nam, leaders of ministries and provinces in the region.

The conference was one of many MoFA and Tay Nguyen joint efforts to promote active international integration, to deepen Viet Nams relationship with other countries and to strengthen exchanges between Vietnamese people and the international community.

The deputy minister highlighted the great potential and strengths of the Tay Nguyen region.

The Tay Nguyen region holds an especially important position for the countrys socio-economic development and international integration he said.

The region has vast natural resources, plus land and climate suitable for industrial crops and orchards.

The Government approved the regions socio-economic development master plan through 2020.

To bring potentials and strengths into full play, Tay Nguyen needs to expand international co-operation in many fields. It also needs to take a chance in order to approach the development experiences of other countries. It also needs to introduce a positive image of Viet Nam and Vietnamese people to the world.

During the conference, participants discussed economic co-operation potentials of the Tay Nguyen region, enhancing competitiveness, development of hi-tech agricultural production, development of sustainable tourism and Tay Nguyen culture preservation.

This was the fifth exchange programme. It follows the success of the last four meetings held in the Cuu Long (Mekong) Delta region, coastal Central-Southern region, Northwestern region and Central-Northern region.  VNS
QUANG NINH  Two people were killed and four others, including two children, were hospitalised yesterday afternoon after they were struck by lightning in northern Quang Ninh Provinces Quang Yen Commune.

Nguyen Manh Tuan, deputy director of the provincial Health Department, said at about 2pm, a heavy downpour accompanied by lightning occurred at Minh Thanh Ward in Quang Yen Commune. Six people were struck by lightning while driving.

The four injured persons were taken to the local hospital for treatment, and one of them was later moved to the central hospital due to serious brain injuries.

On Wednesday afternoon, a family was struck by lightning while eating lunch at their house in ak Nong Provinces Cu Nia Commune.

One person was killed and four others were seriously injured. The injured were hospitalised. The remaining members were unharmed.

Previously, last Saturday afternoon, a farmer was killed and another was injured while working in the rice fields in central Thua Thien Hue Provinces Phong Xuan Commune.

Le Thanh Hai, deputy director of the National Centre for Hydro-Meteorological Forecast, said the conflict between convective heat and cold can cause extreme weather phenomena, such as thunderstorms, lightning and hail.

Lightning and hail usually occur in the mountainous areas, mostly in May and June. People should avoid going out when heavy downpour and lightning take place, not use electrical devices and stay away from higher places.  VNS
AK LAK  A man was killed this morning and four relatives, including his 23-year-old wife, his seven-month-old son and his 40-day-old nephew, were seriously injured due to gasoline burns in Ea Phe Commune in the Central Highlands province of ak Lak.

Ngo ai Phong, deputy director of the ak Lak General Hospital, said the man died five minutes after being taken to the hospital. The injured patients are being treated free of cost because they are from a poor household in the locality.

According to the initial information, the man poured a can full of gasoline on his body and on the bed his four relatives were sleeping at 10pm yesterday. The motive for his act remains unknown.

The local police are investigating the case.  VNS
Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto on Thursday assured Prime Minister Narendra Modi of his countrys support to Indias bid for the membership of Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), even as China led five other countries at a meeting of the export control group in Vienna to stall the proposal.
CEDAR FALLS -- The University of Northern Iowa Dance Team will host two fundraising summer camps for attendance to the national competition.

Camps will be held June 18 for grades one to four and July 16 for grades five to eight, both from 9 a.m. to noon, at Cedar Falls Community Center, 528 Main St.

The $45 fee includes T-shirt, snack, craft, photo with the UNI Dance Team, games, dancing and fun. The form can be found on the UNI Dance Team Facebook page and the Cedar Falls Community Center.
Hacking has created havoc in prosecuting child pornography cases  both for those caught in a 2015 FBI sting operation as well as for the adult victims of malicious pedophiles.

Evidence obtained by the FBI over the Internet has been ruled inadmissible in recent child pornography cases, and its ability to cast a wide cybernet to catch perpetrators is facing Fourth Amendment search and seizure concerns.

The FBI has refused to disclose how it hacked the computer of Jay Michaud, a Vancouver, Wash., middle school teacher charged with child pornography. Federal prosecutors claim he used the so-called dark web, which enables users to hide their identities, to access child pornography sites.

After a search warrant was issued, a cell phone and two USB drives were found at his home containing child pornography. The FBI alleges Michaud logged 100 hours surfing a hidden online network that couldnt be accessed accidentally.

But the prosecution stalled when the defense attacked the reliability of the FBI hack, and the bureau would not reveal its method, including its Network Investigation Technique code.

Another impediment was Rule 41 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure allowing judges to authorize searches only within their district.

Federal judges in Massachusetts and Oklahoma cases have ruled FBI warrants invalid after a Virginia judge authorized the bureau for 13 days in early 2015 to seize and operate Playpen, a child pornography site with 150,000 members hidden in the dark web. The FBI deployed malware negating privacy protections and turned up 1,000 real IP addresses resulting in 137 prosecutions now potentially in jeopardy because of Rule 41.

The FBI stated Playpen contained some of the most extreme child abuse imagery imaginable as well as advice on avoiding detection.

At the request of the Justice Department, the U.S. Supreme Court in April proposed changing Rule 41 to bring it into the digital age by allowing warrants outside the district when the location is concealed through technological means.

Congress has until Dec. 1 to amend or reject the change  or do nothing, which would allow it to take effect. The American Civil Liberties Union and Google criticized the proposal as too broad and a violation of the Fourth Amendments safeguards against government search and seizure.

Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., warned, This rule change could potentially allow federal investigators to use one warrant to access millions of computers, and it would treat victims of the hack the same as the hackers himself.

While we are wary of Fourth Amendment abuses  indiscriminate wiretapping or similar Internet ploys  we dont believe in allowing a refuge for pedophiles or other criminal activities on the dark web by virtue of an outdated technicality.

Why should the rule be You can hack a computer if you know where it is, but not when you dont? asked Nicholas Weaver, a senior staff researcher on computer security at the International Computer Science Institute in Berkeley, Calif.

Still, the overly broad nature of Rule 41 is cause for concern. Congress must perform a balancing act with restrictions against abuse. Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee, should lead that effort.

On the flip side, malicious pedophiles have infected computers of innocent people who have been prosecuted for child pornography.

In 2009, an Associated Press investigation reported virus-infected computers were being used remotely as a repository for child pornography without the owner knowing it until police knock at your door.

Michael Fiola, an investigator for the Massachusetts agency overseeing workers compensation, was a victim in 2007. After a bill for his state-issued laptop showed he used 4.5 times the data of colleagues, a technician found child pornography in a folder where stored images could be viewed online.

Fiola was fired and charged with possession of child pornography. He spent $250,000 in legal fees. The charges were dropped 11 months later after it was determined his computer was infected and programmed to access as many as 40 child pornography sites every minute, beyond any individuals capabilities.

The AP stated at the time 20 million computers worldwide were infected with viruses that could give hackers full control  either by opening email attachments from unknown sources or visiting a malicious Web page.

Jeremiah Grossman, founder of White Hat Security Inc., told the AP, Computers are not to be trusted, calling it painfully simple to download something to a computer with the owner unaware  whether a program to display ads or store illegal photos.

Prosecutors are skeptical of the Some Other Dude Did It claim used by attorneys defending suspected pedophiles, but it shouldnt be rejected outright.

Things on the Internet are not always what they seem.
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If youre looking to try out an online casino, there are several things that will help you make a decision. Heres what you should look for when choosing an online casino

 Are they regulated? A lot of the larger ones have licenses issued by the authorities in their respective regions, so its worth checking this first.

 Do they offer games from different software providers? Some casinos just use one software provider and limit your selection. This is fine if you like playing those types of games but you may want to check other casinos as well.

 What does their payout percentage look like? The payout rate refers to how much money you can expect to win after every bet. A high payout rate means youll be able to play more often without having to worry about losing all your money. Its also important to know the minimum and maximum bets allowed on each game. If youre going to play roulette, for example, then you probably dont want a casino with a minimum bet of less than $2.50 or even lower than that.

The players used to play the game slot online in the land based casinos in the past time. But now with time after the invention of the online casinos players play the game slot online. Online platform provide the players with the convenience in playing and even better winning. Even after keeping a good percentage of the profits, they distribute good funds to players.

 How many games do they offer? There are lots of different types of games to choose from. Roulette, blackjack and poker are some of the most popular options, but you might find slots, video pokers, video bingo and others as well. You can usually filter these games down to only show the ones that interest you best, so make sure that your list isnt too long!

 Is there a bonus offer? Many online casinos offer free bonuses as part of their welcome package  which includes new players being awarded 100% up to $10 instantly, for example. These offers are great but not everyone has access to them all the time (and some require you to deposit real money). If youd prefer to avoid paying a fee, some casinos offer no-deposit bonuses where you can get a certain amount of funds before you need to put any actual money into the account. These are usually offered alongside welcome bonuses, so make sure you read both parts of the terms and conditions carefully before signing up.

 Does it offer live dealer games? Live dealers are much preferred by many over regular virtual versions, so it pays to check this option out too. Most online casinos now offer live dealer games in addition to their regular offerings, allowing you to experience the thrill of the real thing without needing to leave home.

Now that youve got an idea of what to look for when choosing an online casino, heres some tips for making the right choice

It really comes down to personal preference. No two people are exactly alike, so everyone has an opinion on what they like and dislike about each casino. That said, here are some things to consider in order to narrow down your choices

 Popularity. Check out reviews, forums and Facebook pages to see what other people think of the casino. Also, ask around at work or friends houses who they would recommend to you. You could always take a look at the casinos website too, to see what kind of information they provide about themselves.

 Reputation. Find out what the general public thinks about the casino. Check out any customer reviews on sites like Trustpilot, Amazon and Google Play to find out more. As far as gaming goes, you can also check out the Better Business Bureau to see whether there have been any complaints against the casino.

 Security. Make sure the casino uses SSL encryption to secure its transactions, meaning that your private data stays safe during transactions. Other than that, look for security seals on the site itself and verify that theyre legitimate. You can also check out the casinos privacy policy to see how they handle confidential information.

 Payment methods. Its good to have multiple payment options available, especially if you plan to play frequently. Its also nice to find a casino that accepts cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum. If youre worried about safety, you can always opt for a credit card or PayPal instead.

With all those criteria in mind, heres our top picks

Betway:

Betway is a relatively new UK casino offering online gambling to residents of the United Kingdom and European Union. They offer hundreds of games across both land based and digital platforms, with plenty of top software providers like Net Entertainment, Microgaming and Yggdrasil Gaming Network. With a generous welcome offer that gives players 100% up to 100, you really cant go wrong with Betway.

Coral Casino:

Coral Casino is operated by the same company that runs the famous Caribbean casino, Grand Reef. Like many casinos, Coral Casino offers a wide variety of games, including plenty of video slots and table games. New players can benefit from a huge 100% match bonus up to 1000, while existing customers enjoy 25% cash back on deposits made within 48 hours of opening an account.

Ladbrokes Casino:

Ladbrokes Casino is owned by the same company as the famous bookmaker that started life in 1921. With more than 500 games from leading software providers such as Amaya, NetEnt and Microgaming, you wont be disappointed by the quality of the games here. New players get a 200% match bonus up to 500, while existing customers can claim 35% cashback on their first three deposits.

Paddy Power Casino:

Paddy Power is another Irish-owned casino that operates throughout Europe. Not only does Paddy Power Casino offer traditional casino games like blackjack, roulette and slots, but it also provides a full range of sports betting, including football, tennis, boxing and horse racing. New players can receive a massive 100% match bonus up to 200, while existing customers can claim 35% cashback on their first three deposits.

William Hill Casino:

William Hill Casino is one of the biggest names in the industry, operating in Europe, Asia and North America. Founded in 1984, this online casino has more than 400 games to choose from, including slots and table games, with a wide array of software providers like WagerLogic, Big Time Gaming and Rival.

Bonus: 100% Match Bonus up to 100  Register Now

Betway: 100% Match Bonus up to 100  Claim Now

Coral Casino: 25% Cash Back on Deposits  Claim Now

Ladbrokes Casino: 35% Cash Back on First 3 Deposits  Claim Now

Paddy Power Casino: 100% Match Bonus up to 200  Claim Now

William Hill Casino: 100% Match Bonus up to 200  Claim Now

If youre interested in trying out an online casino but arent quite ready to commit to one, why not try out one of the many no deposit casinos weve reviewed? You can test drive various casinos completely risk-free, so you can feel confident about your choice before you make a single penny deposit.
MIAMI, FL, June 10, 2016 /24-7PressRelease/ -- Florida Business Consulting's CEO was recently invited to a leading Leadership conference; Eric Martin took center stage to deliver his thoughts on how to maximize leadership potential. Martin is developing a real passion for public speaking after multiple opportunities have arisen for him to speak at such prestigious industry events over the last few months. The first part of the conference took place as a large group, where professionals discussed current leadership trends and success stories. It was an opportunity for those who have had a challenging start to the year to take inspiration and tips from those who have hit the ground running. After 11am specific topics were targeted and attendees had the opportunity to tailor their day to their current situation and ensure maximum effectiveness of the event. As businesses develop so do their abilities to offer opportunities to those looking to assist in the company's growth. As these challenges amount it is important to seek assistance and ensure that both the business and its workers are being taken care of. The firm prides itself on its ability to attract and maintain elite representation for its clients. The firm believes it can accredit their success to its business development program, which offers progressive mentoring to contractors looking to develop their knowledge and skills in small business ownership.



About Florida Business Consulting: http://www.floridabusinessconsulting.net/about.html



The after event networking opportunity enabled delegates to participate in a relaxing meet and greet, designed to encourage business networks to be extended. The venue was the perfect setting for business owners to strengthen their contacts and digest the excellent information received throughout the day.



Based in Miami, Florida Business Consulting specializes in bringing brands and consumers closer together through face-to-face marketing. After identifying key consumer groups, the firm deliver its clients' campaigns direct to consumers, opening up the opportunity for one-on-one communication. This personalized customer experience helps drive brand loyalty, increases sales, and helps consumers to make more confident and informed purchase decisions.



The firm look to attend as many relevant business opportunities as possible to ensure they stay abreast of any market changes and can continue to offer development throughout the business. Those attending found the meeting to be a huge success, leaving with new ideas on how to achieve fantastic results throughout 2016.



Established in 2011, Florida Business Consulting is a privately held marketing and fundraising services company in Downtown Miami. For more information follow the company on Twitter @FloridaBizC or find them on Facebook.



# # #
Jun 10, 2016 | By Alec

It seems like brains have finally appeared on the 3D printing radar. Just two weeks ago, Scottish researchers revealed that they were using 3D printed brain tumor replicas to push cancer research, and now researchers from Aston University are going even further. Through the MESO-BRAIN initiative, they will be using 3D nanoprinted scaffolds to build artificial neural networks, which will be used to study brain development and diseases. To realize this ambitious project, the MESO-BRAIN consortium has received $3.7 million in funding from the European Commission under its Future and Emerging Technology (FET) funding program.

This very ambitious MESO-BRAIN project is led by researchers from Aston University, but includes specialists from Axol Bioscience, Laser Zentrum Hannover, the University of Barcelona, the Institute of Photonic Sciences, and KITE Innovation as well. Together, they are combining a whole range of specialisms and will be involving experts from the fields of stem cell research, photonics, physics, 3D nanoprinting, electrophysiology and molecular biology.

In a nutshell, they are seeking to unearth more information about the complex human neural networks of the brain, which play a vital role in human development, disease progression and neuronal growth. If successful, MESO-BRAIN could greatly increase our understanding of brain diseases such as Parkinsons disease and dementia by emulating diseased brain activity in the lab. Whats more, their models could enable the development of large-scale human cell-based assays that can be used to develop new generations of drugs and reduce the need for animal testing.

According to professor Edik Rafailov, who heads the MESO-BRAIN project, this kind of brain model would not be possible without 3D printing What were proposing to achieve with this project has, until recently, been the stuff of science fiction. Being able to extract and replicate neural networks from the brain through 3D nanoprinting promises to change this, he said. The MESO-BRAIN project has the potential to revolutionise the way we are able to understand the onset and development of disease and discover treatments for those with dementia or brain injuries. We cannot wait to get started!

So how will these 3D printed brain models be realized? The cornerstone of the MESO-BRAIN project are a series of human induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs), which have been differentiated into neurons. Placed onto a reproducible 3D scaffold (based on a brain cortical module) that provides support, a human neural network is formed that emulates brain activity.

Its that scaffolding that will be 3D printed, and the researchers are planning to manufacture it using nanoscale laser 3D printing. The resultant structure incorporates nano-electrodes that enable downstream electrophysiological analysis of the neural networks functioning. The researchers further revealed that they will be using cutting edge light sheet-based, fast volumetric imaging technology to optically analyze the 3D printed network on a cellular level.

The MESO-BRAIN team is convinced that this is the kind of physiologically relevant human model that could invigorate medical development and lead to new insights. Their efforts to 3D print a human brain model are expected to start in September 2016, with research scheduled to take another three years. It is just one of many innovative studies that received funding from the European Commission as part of their Future and Emerging Technology program, which has set aside $90.6 billion for research between 2014 and 2020.

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JMonsalvo wrote at 6/11/2016 7:31:46 PM:Everybody knows EU funded projects are used by partners to pay trips to each other's cities, have great group dinners, good drinking, and close a few deals behind the scenes...3million wasted in the name of 3DP




Jun 10, 2016 | By Tess

As a child, music class was always one of my favorite subjects; a respite from math or grammar, it was a class to enjoy and make some tunes. For sixth and seventh graders Cassandra Stewart and Andrew Mindy, however, who each have a disability, music class posed some challenges and they often found themselves sitting at the back of the classroom, unable to take up certain instruments. That is, until now. Thanks to a new 3D printer at a local high school and the work of a dedicated high school student, Nicholas Brown, Stewart and Mindy now have a 3D printed prosthesis specially designed for playing instruments.

Brown, a brilliant 15-year-old student from Pine Grove Area High School in Pennsylvania, was approached by his tech teacher Brad Fessler, who thought he would be up to the task of designing and 3D printing a prosthetic hand. Fessler for his part, had been approached by Stewart and Mindys music teacher from the local middle school, who had heard of the potentials of 3D printing, and wanted her students to benefit and enjoy her class as much as the other students.

The design process for the instrument playing prosthetic, which included extensive 3D modeling, printing prototypes, testing the prototypes and going back to the drawing board to make improvements and adjustments, took Brown and Fessler a whole academic year to complete. According to Brown, the most difficult part was actually coming up with a concept. He says, I had to get the idea of what to make. But the rest of it was just editing the idea and finding out what works.

The end result is an adjustable sleeve that can fit onto either of the students arms and which can itself be fitted with different attachments, depending on what instrument you are playing. That is, the versatile prosthetic has an attachment for playing the drums, one for playing guitar, and one for playing the trumpet. Additionally, as Fessler explains, the prosthetic did not have to be custom fitted because of the interchangeability of the design. He says, Everything is designed to be interchangeable. They put the prosthesis on, and they can use their other hand to change out the attachments or adjust the fit. It was designed so they can do it themselves.

The specially designed prosthesis was presented to Stewart and Mindy earlier this week to many smiles and much excitement. Brown, who created the prosthesis, said, I was so glad they were able to use them and that it was actually working. They were really happy. While the 3D printed instrument playing prosthetic was finished in time for the end of the school year, Stewart and Mindy are looking forward to using it next year, and even practicing with it over the summer to hone their musical abilities.

As for Nicholas Brown, the innovative 15-year-old who was behind the prosthetic design, we cant wait to see what he makes next, as he is clearly a great maker in the making.

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Jun 10, 2016 | By Benedict

Australian medical device company Oventus Medical will this month bring O 2 Vent, its 3D printed device for snoring and sleep apnea, to U.S. shores. The titanium jaw advancement will be showcased at the American Academy of Dental Sleep Medicine's 25th Annual Meeting and at Sleep 2016, both in Denver.

Whether through excitement, confusion, or fear, 3D printing has given us a few sleepless nights over the years. For serial snorers, however, additive manufacturing could soon have quite the opposite effect, by providing an effective solution to uncomfortable sleepless nights. No, we wont recommend that you 3D print your own mattress and pillows, but we would recommend looking into Oventus Medical, whose 3D printed medical device could soon become one of the most useful over-the-counter treatments for snoring and sleep apnea.

The U.S. is a particularly troubled nation between the bedsheets, with an estimated 37 million Americans regularly suffering from snoring and an estimated 12-18 million US adults having sleep apnea, a sleeping disorder characterized by pauses in breathing or shallow breathing during sleep. With this in mind, Oventus has left its Brisbane HQ and set its sights squarely on the States, where it will showcase its 3D printed O 2 Vent at two events in Denver this month: first, the American Academy of Dental Sleep Medicine's 25th Annual Meeting (June 9-11), followed by Sleep 2016 (June 11-15), the world's largest scientific meeting about sleep medicine and research.

So what is the O 2 Vent and how does it work? The large majority of cases of sleep apnea are caused by obstructions in the respiratory system, in which case breathing is interrupted by a physical blockage in the airways, a common side-effect of which is snoring. The O 2 Vent, a 3D-printed titanium mandibular (jaw) advancement device, seeks to combat this problem by taking in air through a duckbill and directing it to the back of the mouth via a separate airway, bypassing any obstructions in the nose, tongue, and back of mouth. Each mouthguard-shaped O 2 Vent is custom-fitted to a patients mouth using CAD software, purportedly leading to maximum comfort and efficacy.

The 3D printed device, which was 510-cleared by the FDA in April and has been ARTG-listed in Australia, was developed by Australian dentist Dr. Chris Hart, Oventus' founder and clinical director. Harts invention may well prove to be the stuff dreams are made on: a clinical study in Australia showed that snoring was completely eliminated in 82 percent of O 2 Vent users, with the full 100 percent reporting significantly reduced snoring. The device proved particularly effective for people with nasal obstructions and who breathed mainly through their mouths.

The recent clinical trial data strongly showed that the O 2 Vent significantly reduced snoring and sleep apnea in most patients studied, even in those who historically did not benefit from other treatments due to chronic nasal obstruction, Hart said. The trial also demonstrated that the device improves oxygen levels in most patients. A greater number of patients who snore or who suffer from mild to moderate sleep apnea but who are CPAP intolerant, now have an alternative treatment option available.

After receiving medical clearance for the 3D printed product, Oventus initially released O 2 Vent in limited quantities in Australia. The company is currently scaling up, and will be hoping that the U.S. market wakes up to possibilities afforded by the titanium device. With the global sleep disorder market estimated to be worth $50 billion a year, Hart and his team will sure sleep soundly if their product causes a stir.

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Jun 10, 2016 | By Benedict

Flirtey, the Nevada-based independent delivery service using 3D printed drones to deliver packages, has announced its first ship-to-shore US delivery. On June 23, Flirtey will fly drones carrying medical equipment to an onshore medical relief camp from a vessel off the coast of Cape May, New Jersey.

A few months ago, Flirtey completed its first urban FAA test, flying a 3D printed drone to an unoccupied house in Hawthorne, Nevada, delivering a package of bottled water, food, and a first aid kit. And while such domestic drone flights could be scheduled for both urgent an non-urgent deliveries, Flirtey is taking steps to prepare its futuristic service for its most important challenge: humanitarian aid. The innovative delivery service will this month conduct its first-ever US ship-to-shore delivery in New Jersey, hoping to show the world the massive humanitarian potential in UAV delivery. The young company has joined forces with experts at Johns Hopkins University to plan and conduct the milestone flight.

According to the Flirtey, the scheduled delivery with the 3D printed drone will showcase the humanitarian potential of drones for organizations like the United Nations and American Red Cross, who could use drones like Flirteys to deliver urgent aid and medical care to hard-to-reach areas: Imagine a future where in the event of a natural disaster like Hurricane Sandy, Flirtey drones rapidly deliver emergency medical supplies, food and water, said Matt Sweeny, Flirtey CEO. This demonstration is helping to make that future a reality, and taking us one step closer to Flirteys mission to save lives and change lifestyles.

Dr. Timothiny Kien Amukele, an assistant professor of pathology at the John Hopkins University School of Medicine, will be working with Flirtey to share his expertise on medical drones, having previously conducted research into the use of UAVs to transport blood samples and products to medical bases. With Amukele serving as as volunteer advisor, Flirtey will, on June 23, fly drones carrying medical samples for emergency testing to an onshore medical relief camp at Cape May, New Jersey, from a mobile test facility on a vessel off the New Jersey coast.

It is hoped that the success of the ship-to-shore delivery will, in the long term, have a global impact on humanitarian efforts, particularly with regard to humanitarian crises in coastal cities, and will demonstrate how drones can provide life-saving aid to victims of disaster. Eight of the 10 largest cities in the world are coastal cities, according to the UN, which makes ship-to-shore aid an incredibly important task on the humanitarian agenda. The scheduled flights of the 3D printed drones have been organized by non-profit Field Innovation Team (FIT) as part of the Drones in Disaster Do Tank organization.

This is an unprecedented opportunity to provide urgent aid and advanced diagnosis tools into a disaster zone with interoperability with key government relief assets, said Tom Bass, Flirtey cofounder. This event wouldnt be possible without Mark and Kyle from Ryan Media Lab. Flirtey has been the beneficiary of their amazing ability to build coalitions here in Cape May, and also when we conducted the first FAA-approved drone delivery last year in Wise, Virginia.

For the forthcoming New Jersey delivery, representatives from the United Nations and the American Red Cross will have the opportunity to see the partially 3D printed craft in flight, with the former organization declaring its open-mindedness regarding the technology on display: We recognize the opportunity for us to engage with drone developers and operators in ensuring the principled application of game-changing technologies in response to humanitarian crises around the world, said Andrew Billo, United Nations OCHA humanitarian affairs officer.

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Beth Ann Fennelly in Orion Magazine:

Here are some memories I can claim simply because I was in the right place at the wrong time: In Japan, lifting my head from my hammock to see three monks with surfboards run past, tear off their saffron robes, and plunge into the sea. Sleeping on an unfinished roof in a Sao Paulo favela beneath a sky bewitched and bollocksed  the Southern Cross replacing the Big Dipper, Orion turning a cartwheel  and being awakened by a crowing rooster. All my life, cartoon roosters have crowed at the dawn, and here  here!  for the first time, I hear it, this rooster, this dawn, this girl called me. In Morocco, abandoning my attempt at sleep and making my way to the hotels nonstop gym  bathroom-sized, just a lone treadmill, occupied by a small boy (the maids son?) curled in slumber, sheeted with a hotel towel. How, while I gazed at him, the Muslim call to prayer came from outside, how the boys long eyelashes flicked, how I backed out and padded to my room and crawled into my foreign bed, how I slept and slept and slept.

Of course in all these places I eventually adjusted, my bodys rhythms harmonizing again with Mother Natures, and I dined at the dinner hour, stayed awake through the concerts encore. But looking back, those offpeak, offkilter visions are some of my most strongly etched souvenirs. If there were a remedy to dispense with jet lag, would I take it? Sure thing. In the same way that Id take one that blocked fevers. In the same way Id have been tempted to frog leap the hardest weeks of pregnancy. But until that elixir is elixired, what can we do but jet and then lag, wait for our demanding body to sync with the lobby clock, sync with the brain it lifts like a flower on its stem. We might as well marvel as we pass through the two-headed doorway, a door through which we must go, both because we have no way around it and because we must keep moving, because if we lean against the doorjamb, well fall asleep.

More here.
Richard Dawkins in Prospect:

Are you an Inny or an Outy? A Keeper or a Brexiteer?

Well, at first I wanted to leave, to punish David Cameron. But then Boris came out as a leaver and I cant stand his hair so Ill be voting to stay in Europe.

That is approximately the level of discourse which will momentously decide Britains future.

My own answer to the question is, How should I know? I dont have a degree in economics. Or history. How dare you entrust such an important decision to ignoramuses like me?

I, and most other people, dont have the time or the experience to do our due diligence on the highly complex economic and social issues facing our country in, or out of, Europe. Thats why we vote for our Member of Parliament, who is paid a good salary to debate such matters on our behalf, and vote on them. The European Union referendum, like the one on Scottish independence, should never have been called.

I really did hear the following remark yesterday on television: Well, it isnt called Great Britain for nothing, is it? Im voting for our historic greatness. Actually it was originally called Britannia major to distinguish it from Britannia minor, the French province of Brittany. Later, Great Britain signified the union with Scotland, and distinguished the geographically larger of the British Isles from the smaller, Ireland. It has never meant great in the bombastic sense you imagine will justify your patriotic vote.

More here.
Rating: R

Run time: 1 hour 22 minutes

Stars: Rosario Dawson, Edgar Garcia, Luis Guzman, Rosie Perez

Director: Ian Edelman

There's the germ of a very good action-comedy franchise in Puerto Ricans in Paris, a buddy flick starring Luis Guzman and Edgar Garcia as a pair of NYPD detectives who tail some fashion pirates to the City of Light. The two are fun together, and director Ian Edelman surrounds them with a likable cast of supporting players, both American and French.

A tighter script, a more urgent mystery and a bit more connection between the stars would have come in handy. What doesn't help, however, is that just a few days ago I revisited Lethal Weapon  an unfair comparison, perhaps, given that Richard Donner's 1987 shoot-'em-up is the best buddy action film ever made. Not a scene is wasted in Lethal Weapon  the fabric of plot, action and character revelation is seamless  while the obvious chemistry between Danny Glover and Mel Gibson made the pair's law-bending shenanigans seem almost plausible.
Because it's low-cost and calorie-free, a mani-pedi is a start-of-summer pleasure that's hard to resist: Scanning the hundreds of polish colors, flipping through old magazines, looking forward to the massage  it's Chill Factor 9, right?

Well, it was  until those recent social-media rumors about foot fungus, nail infections and worse. So when I realized I was scrutinizing the cleanliness of the work stations at my customary salon rather than relaxing, I decided to seek an expert's advice. That led me to Joshua Zeichner, M.D., director of cosmetic and clinical research in the Department of Dermatology at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York. Zeichner had plenty of advice about how to keep your pampering pristine.

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Trust your senses. Look around: Does your nail salon use hospital-grade liquid disinfectant? (That's the jar of blue stuff often used to soak clippers, metal cuticle pushers or nail files.) Does it use UV-light sterilizers (these look like toaster ovens) or high-tech autoclaves (futuristic pressure cookers) to kill bacteria, fungus and viruses?

All of these pieces of equipment can be effective at combating infections, says Zeichner, "but only if they are of medical-grade quality." You can ask the manager if they're the real deal, but be aware that some salons are not above pretense: They may dilute the disinfectant, use sealed bags to create the illusion of sterilized tools, or operate outdated UV sterilizers that do little more than soap and water would.

God proposes, woman disposes? Watch to see if disposable wooden tools  emery boards, pumices, orange sticks and the like  are thrown away between clients. The reason these are designated "single use," says Zeichner, is that they "may be contaminated with body fluids, potentially spreading infections from one person to another." A sneaky salon might spray disposables with alcohol to make them look new, or recycle those "hot" towels you love without washing them between uses. So don't be wimpy about speaking up.

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DENVER  Western Colorado has 40 times more natural gas than previously thought, but an immediate boom is unlikely because of low gas prices, government and industry experts said Wednesday.

The U.S. Geological Survey said the Mancos Shale formation in Colorados Piceance Basin holds about 66.3 trillion cubic feet of gas, up from 1.6 trillion estimated in 2003.

USGS cited data from commercial drilling companies and new research for the revision.

A trillion cubic feet of natural gas is enough to heat 15 million homes for a year, the U.S. Energy Department says.

David Ludlam, executive director of the West Slope Colorado Oil and Gas Association, said he doesnt expect a rush to drill in western Colorado because current natural gas prices are too low. If prices rise significantly, companies would likely begin drilling, he said.

The U.S. also needs more facilities to export natural gas to Pacific nations to help make the Colorado gas competitive, Ludlam said, citing the proposed Jordan Cove Liquid Natural Gas terminal at Coos Bay, Oregon.

The Piceance Basin, which spans much of western and northwestern Colorado, already has multiple well sites, pipelines and processing plants in place from a previous round of drilling in a shallower formation, Ludlam said.

Much of the basin is federal land managed by the Bureau of Land Management, and getting approval from the BLM to drill is often more difficult than getting private landowners to agree, said Kathleen Sgamma of the Western Energy Alliance, an industry group.

I hope with this reassessment the government understands that indeed the Mancos Shale is an important formation that should be developed responsibly, she said.

Neither BLM nor USGS officials immediately returned calls Wednesday.

The new estimate could mean the Piceance Basin has the second-largest natural gas reserves in the country, after the Marcellus Shale formation in Pennsylvania and neighboring states, Ludlam said.

USGS says the Marcellus has 84 trillion cubic feet of gas.

More important than the volume of the reserves is the cost of extracting them, said Porter Bennett, an energy analyst and president of Ponderosa Advisors in Denver.

Bennett said the Piceance Basin has traditionally had high drilling costs, but Ludlam said the next wave of energy companies with leases in the area likely would have lower costs than previous operators.

Drilling companies will use hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, to recover the gas from the Mancos Shale, Ludlam said.

Fracking uses a mix of water, sand and chemicals under high pressure to force open underground formations and release oil and gas. Opponents say fracking poses a risk to public health and the environment but the industry says it is safe.

___

Follow Dan Elliott at http://twitter.com/DanElliottAP. His work can be found at http://bigstory.ap.org/content/dan-elliott.
WASHINGTON  The World Health Organization says women who live in areas where Zika is spreading should consider delaying pregnancy, since theres no other sure way to avoid the virus devastating birth defects.

The WHO stopped short of recommending that couples put pregnancy on hold.

Its not saying they should delay. They should be given the information about it and offered that as an option, WHO spokeswoman Nyka Alexander said Thursday.

Zika is rapidly spreading through Latin America and the Caribbean, and health officials in several affected countries have made similar recommendations. But the WHOs guidelines, updated last week, could affect millions of couples who live in outbreak areas.

Zika causes only a mild and brief illness, at worst, in most people. But it can cause fetal death and severe brain defects in the children of women infected during pregnancy.

There is no vaccine. In outbreak areas, the main defense is to avoid mosquito bites. But Zika also can be spread through unprotected sex with a man who was infected.

Around the world, health officials have advised pregnant women not to travel to areas where Zika is spreading. And the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has additional advice for non-pregnant travelers: Women should wait at least eight weeks after a Zika illness, or possible exposure to the virus, before trying to conceive. Men who had symptoms should wait at least six months before trying, the CDC recommends.

In response to the WHOs new guidelines, the CDC said health care providers should discuss Zikas risks and how to prevent infection, and provide information about contraception.

As part of their pregnancy planning and counseling with their health care providers, some women and their partners residing in areas with active Zika virus transmission might decide to delay pregnancy, the agency said in a statement.

Zika also can be a hazard to the scientists studying it. The University of Pittsburgh said Thursday one of its researchers accidentally stuck herself with a needle during a Zika experiment and went on to develop symptoms. Pitt officials said the lab accident occurred last month and the researcher has recovered and returned to work.

Nearly 700 infections have been reported in U.S. states. All were people who had traveled abroad, or who had sex with someone who did.

The virus is spreading in Puerto Rico and health officials say clusters of illnesses are likely in the mainland U.S. as mosquito season heats up. On Thursday, CDC Director Tom Frieden made another plea for Congress to quickly provide funding needed to battle Zika.

Give us the money so we can work with American women and children and families to monitor the effects of Zika, so we can do a better job at killing mosquitoes to protect American women, and so we can develop better tools to diagnose Zika, to control mosquitoes and ultimately, with NIH in the lead, to find a vaccine to protect women, Frieden said.

The White House on Thursday hosted a video teleconference involving administration officials, the CDC and Southern governors such as Rick Scott of Florida to go over Zika response planning as the likelihood of Zika cases is increasing with the summer heat.

We are likely to see single cases of transmission and we could certainly see clusters in some at-risk communities, and we want to make sure we do everything possible to get ahead of them, Frieden told reporters later.

Frieden said a key element of the federal response is CDC rapid response teams when cases arise.

The Obama administration requested $1.9 billion in February, to allow officials to continue Zika prevention efforts and begin studying long-term effects of people infected by the disease.

In Congress, the House and Senate each passed Zika bills that would provide funding at levels lower than the administrations request. The Senate voted late Wednesday to begin talks with the House on compromise legislation.

The Senate proposal includes $1.1 billion without spending cuts to offset the expense, while the House has backed a $622 million measure with cuts elsewhere.

___

Associated Press writers Mike Stobbe in New York, Kathleen Foody in Atlanta and Andrew Taylor in Washington contributed to this report.
GARLAND, Texas  Police in North Texas are investigating a report that a member of a Muslim rights advocacy group was followed out of a gas station by a driver yelling expletives and threats at him.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations said Thursday that a local outreach coordinator, Omair Siddiqi (oh-MAIR sih-DEE-kee), was threatened by a driver who told him to go back to your country and forced him to nearly veer into a light pole.

When Siddiqi called police shortly afterward, an officer initially told Siddiqi there wasnt enough evidence to file a report. But on Thursday, Garland police said they would investigate the incident for a possible misdemeanor charge of assault by threat.

Muslims in North Texas have reported several incidents in the past year of being targeted.
The craft beer scene is booming in New Mexico, but Japan is having an epiphany of its own.

Japans Kiuchi Brewery, established in 1823, has its roots in sake production. It began brewing its Hitachino beer line in 1996, according to the brewerys website.

Hitachino is a Belgian-style brewery in Japan that I love, said Alisa Hill, Favorite Brands NM craft and import manager. Its attention to detail is fantastic, and since the sources of its ingredients are from Japan, its the icing on the cake.

Now Albuquerque gets the opportunity today to taste some of the lineup, along with some special offerings cooked up by Sister bar chef Ben Wade.

The special tap takeover is presented by Favorite Brands NM, which distributes Hitachino to merchants in the state, including to local retailer Jubilation. The event will feature Hitachino Nest Ginger Brew, Hitachino Nest Dai-Dai and Hitachino Nest Saison Du Japon.

Hitachino Nest Ginger Brew is a ginger ale that is brewed with raw ginger. It features Chinook, Perle and Styrian Golding hops, which creates complex flavors and aromas of ginger, citrus and malt, according to Hitachino tasting notes. Suggested food pairings include spicy Indian, Thai or Vietnamese dishes.

Hitachino Nest Dai-Dai is an indigenous pale ale that is brewed with the peel of Japanese fukure mikan fruit, which creates notes of orange and mandarin. It has a dry finish due to the Marris Otter Pale Malt and rare Tardif de Bourgogne hops used in it, according to Hitachino tasting notes.

Out of the three offerings, the Hitachino Nest Saison Du Japon is the most unusual. The saison is brewed with koji-kin, a vital ingredient used to make sake. It is fermented by a combination of sake yeast and Belgian saison yeast.

Fragrant yuzu juice is added at the end of the fermentation to keep the fresh flavor. Yuzu is a Japanese citrus fruit similar to a wild mandarin orange crossed with a lemon, according Hitachino tasting notes.

Sisters Chef Ben Wade will create food pairings that can be purchased to accompany each of the Hitachino beers. The ginger beer will go with a spicy battered or tempura-fried mahi-mahi with housemade mayonnaise, cabbage, cilantro and salsa verde.

The Dai-Dai complements a grilled skirt steak taco with miso sauce, white sesame and grilled onions. The saison pairs well with a Japanese ginger chicken taco with pickled carrot saw and scallions, according to Wade.

Its a highly allocated production that is so very small so we try to get these kegs, Hill said of Hitachino kegs. Its special when we can get these out in Albuquerque.
My wife and I are retired in Pennsylvania and just finished a 10-day tour of New Mexico. It is truly the Land of Enchantment. We loved visiting as tourists this magnificent land. The same cannot be said about a significant portion of the people of New Mexico.

It is a land filled with radical feminists, angry Indians and illegal Mexicans. We were verbally attacked twice in Santa Fe simpl(y) because we are Christian conservatives and hold a different political point of view. We were forced to keep our mouths shut for fear of physical reprisals. In Taos, we both got a massage. I told the masseuse about our encounters in Santa Fe and that we would support Trump. Her exact words to me were to keep our mouths shut because we would be physically attacked. How true her words were.

We returned to Albuquerque to fly home the night after the Trump rally. The so-called political protesters showed their true color by rioting, burning autos, stoning police and threatening physical harm to Trump supporters. We didnt attend the rally but were scared. What a disgrace to such a beautiful state!

I hope this letter opens some eyes of reasonable New Mexico residents. If you want tourists to visit your city and state, something needs to be done.

WILLIAM R. STRONG

Oil City, Pa.
WASHINGTON  Seven white men and a white woman, Republican members of Congress all, boarded vehicles on Capitol Hill on Tuesday morning for a voyage deep into Anacostia, a largely black and poor section of Washington.

Their mission: to reassure nonwhite voters frightened by Donald Trump, their partys presumptive presidential nominee.

Their odds of success: exceedingly low.

The lawmakers must have perceived their mission to be risky, for they traveled with a veritable arsenal: a Capitol Police mobile command center truck, a canine unit, four or five squad cars and a half-dozen black police vans. Police closed the street to traffic, and security officials wearing plainclothes and earpieces kept a watchful eye in all directions as a white van disgorged the lawmakers at the residential addiction-treatment program they were visiting. House Speaker Paul Ryan zoomed up moments later in his two-Suburban motorcade.

The lawmakers, six of them in matching blue dress shirts, sat at a table in the shelters basement, then invited the cameras in to capture a few seconds of their supportive nods and ingratiating smiles while African-American residents told their tales of recovery. Later, they reassembled outside, where the GOP officials gave a news conference while residents of the shelter, House of Help City of Hope, stood silently, human props in the background.

This is my third time, Ryan said, at the House of Help, the City of Help. Uh, the City of Hope. The House of Hope, City of Help.

To his credit, Ryan takes poverty seriously and talks about it often. He made it the first item on his six-point policy agenda. But if Ryan thinks his outing to the Anacostia shelter is going to offset the yuuuuge damage Trump is doing to the party with Latinos, African-Americans, women, immigrants and others  well, to borrow a favorite Trump epithet, hes a loser.

The first six questions for Ryan after his remarks at the shelter Tuesday were about Trumps racist campaign to disqualify the judge in a fraud case against Trump because the judge is Hispanic:

Do you have any regrets about your endorsement last week?

How can you continue to support the candidate?

How concerned are you that  its going to undercut what your party is trying to sell here?

Ryan was blunt. Claiming a person cant do their job because of their race is sort of like the textbook definition of a racist comment, he said. He acknowledged that these kinds of comments undercut these things [his anti-poverty rollout] and Im not going to even pretend to defend them.

But he elevated party unity above his concern about the party standard-bearers racism. Im going to defend our majority and  I see it as my job as speaker of the House to help keep our party unified, he said. I think if we go into the fall as a divided party, we are doomed to lose.

That was a frank rationale for Republican officials deal with the Devil. Maybe party unity will protect their congressional majorities in the short term. Their tolerance of a bigoted nominee could also mean losing nonwhite voters indefinitely, and with them their standing as a national party.

Ryan argued that his agenda would fare better under Trump than Hillary Clinton, and thats probably true. House Republicans have proposed cutting about $1 trillion over a decade from programs such as food stamps and welfare. Trump, for his part, has said food stamps shouldnt be needed often, and he has complained that people make more money by sitting there doing nothing than they make if they have a job.

At Tuesdays event, Ryan didnt cite the deep cuts he plans for anti-poverty programs, only obliquely mentioning the need to measure success based on results, not dollars.

Another of the lawmakers, Rep. Bradley Byrne of Alabama, was more direct: We get to save the taxpayers money because we wont have to be doling out more money for these programs that dont work.

Democrats say the programs do work: that the average family uses food stamps for only eight to 10 months, and that, when you figure in programs such as the earned-income tax credit, the child tax credit and food stamps, government efforts have reduced poverty by some 40 percent.

But thats an argument for another day  or another year. Ryan has said that passing legislation such as the anti-poverty agenda this year is really not the goal.

The goal for now is to remove the taint of Trump. And its going to take more than an armed tour of Anacostia.

Email: danamilbank@washpost.com. Copyright, Washington Post Writers Group.
FORT WORTH, Texas  For 14 years, Boston the Chihuahua has beaten the odds: One of his brothers was stillborn and the other was killed by an owl.

The Fort Worth pooch has lived a good life, but now his owner, Amber Weiss, is preparing for life after her Little Old Man  and looking into hospice care for one of her most beloved pets.

I feel so responsible for their exit from this planet when the time comes, Weiss told The Dallas Morning News. It was a blessing to understand what it would be like.

Two veterinarians have established a North Texas affiliate for Lap of Love, the countrys largest network of pet hospice and in-home euthanasia services. Drs. Joanna Harchut and Erica Fry help elderly or otherwise ailing pets live their remaining days more comfortably and pass away peacefully in their homes.

Hospice care and techniques are best used for pets with chronic conditions. Veterinarians consult with owners, showing them how to keep pets comfortable and manage their pain. They offer tips on exercise, massage techniques, nutrition and mental stimulation.

Boston is healthy for his age but does have some mobility issues, so Weiss called Harchut for a consultation. The vet gave Weiss some ideas on how to help Boston get around the house.

She was so soothing and patient, Weiss said.

Harchut said some pet owners just need reassurance when its time to say goodbye  even when their pets seem to sense it. At the final visit, some dogs will see Harchut and get up off the floor for the first time in days, she said.

They know when I walk in shes here to help me, and a lot of times they get really relaxed and come in front of me to lay down, Harchut said. Theyre ready before we are. They know.

Pet hospice services arent new, and Lap of Love is just one of a handful operating in Dallas-Fort Worth.

And the companys service isnt for everyone, however: The cost for one hour-long hospice appointment is $285, plus a possible travel fee to certain areas.

I feel thankful that they found us and that theyre able to do this, Harchut said of her clients, because I know a lot of people arent financially able to do so.

But after a single visit with Harchut, Weiss cant imagine the alternatives.

When she left, I thought theres no other way, Weiss said.

Dr. Mary Gardner founded Lap of Love in 2010 after her 13-year-old Samoyed was attacked by another dog. Snow White spent three weeks in and out of the pet hospital. Snow White never recovered, and neither did Gardner.

The Florida-based company she started now has 81 vets working in 24 states to help give families what every pet deserves: a peaceful goodbye, Gardner said.

If we can make that end-of-life experience better, maybe theyll be open to loving again, she said. It seems too early until its too late.

Harchut said she treats every pet as if it were her own. During euthanasia visits, each pet owner reacts differently, she said. Some give their dogs big chocolate cakes, and others have family gatherings to celebrate their pets life.

It sounds funny, but its almost like a relief that (pet owners) get to see this peaceful process, she said. I feel relieved that they dont have to watch their pet suffer anymore.

Weiss expects Bostons inevitable passing to be every bit as painful as the death of any other family member. But she feels more prepared now.

Being able to look ahead and know Im making the right steps now, its a relief, she said.
If he doesnt get elected this year, former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson maybe should make a career move to TV comedy.

In case you havent noticed, Johnson is everywhere these days, on television, on the web and in the newspapers. With political tumult surrounding the major party candidates, Johnson  the Libertarian Partys presidential nominee, on the ballot in all 50 states  is getting all kinds of attention from news organizations, both real and fake. Some polls show him as the choice of 10 percent of the potential voters and, if gets that up to 15 percent, Johnson would be on the debate stage with Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.

Comedian Samantha Bee, like HBOs John Oliver, a graduate of the Jon Stewart academy of fake news anchors, had Johnson on her TBS show Full Frontal on Monday.

Bee started her piece on Johnson by saying, Lets say you were choosing a sandwich. What do you do when your only choices are something morally reprehensible, against the rule of law and decency, and a symbol for all thats wrong in America, and something you  I dont know, you dont really know why, you just never cared for?

You might be wondering if theres anything else on the menu. Well, guess what, there is. Its not FDA-inspected, but I took a bite anyway.

Johnson, who emerged into New Mexico politics with bizarre gubernatorial campaign commercials back in the 1990s featuring himself with a scary deer-in-the-headlights look, these days seems to have the television thing figured out. Hes been acing his interviews on the news channels and, on Mondays show, dived all the way into Bees faux-news aesthetic. He even dropped an F-bomb, a practice which seems to be de rigeur for the hosts of fake news shows.

His mind is as free as his markets, Bee pronounced at one point, leading into Johnson, an avowed pot user who supports legalization of marijuana, saying that his last job was as CEO of Cannibas Sativa Inc., a marijuana company.

But I am making a pledge that I would not be consuming marijuana as president of the United States, Johnson said, adding, I am actually a really disciplined cat.

Bee enjoys the feline reference. Pantherlike? she asks.

Oooh, Johnson says, may I share one of my high school nicknames with you?

The nickname is Jaguar  Jaguar Johnson. That prompts an on-screen graphic showing Johnson as a jaguar with a human head, with claw marks across the image and the title (Expletive) JAGUAR, DUDE!

When Johnson says the economic model of the future is Uber everything  Uber accountant, Uber lawyer, Uber doctor, Bee quips, I cant wait to pay surge pricing mid-colonoscopy.

Bee and Johnson end up rock-climbing, which is what Johnson says hed be doing if he wasnt campaigning. A distraught Bee hangs high on a climbing wall while Johnson expounds, Isnt it exciting? I mean, its just so in the moment. Then he plants a kiss on Bees cheek.

Johnson gets the final punch line when Bee asks about what kind of people attend the Libertarian Partys national convention.

Youre going to find really wonderful, well-meaning, well-spoken people, he told Bee, and then people that are just bat-(expletive) crazy.




EXTRATERRESTRE is an animated, single-channel video by Victoria Karmin. (Courtesy of Currents) This is a scene from the birth of a tragedy, animation by Wednesday Kim. (Courtesy of Currents) This is an image from Observance, a multimedia performance by Ariadne. (Courtesy of Currents) Jo Lawrences single-channel video, The Woman Who Owns the Sun, will be shown at Currents. (Courtesy of Currents) To afar the water flows is a new media installation by Yuge Zhou. (Courtesy of Currents) Embrace in Progress is a 3-D printed sculpture by Rosalie Yu. (Courtesy of Currents) Prev 1 of 6 Next

For the next two weeks, opportunities will abound in Santa Fe to have your senses saturated, your brain boggled and your concept of art blown wide open.

The 7th annual Currents International New Media Festival gets underway from 6 p.m. to midnight today and noon to midnight Saturday with multimedia performances and displays at its primary location, El Museo Cultural, that will overflow throughout the Railyard Plaza this weekend.

And, to add to the festivities, Duel Brewing will be serving its locally crafted beers and wine from 6 p.m. to closing both nights.

This is a festival that has been steadily growing and expanding its reach ever since co-directors Mariannah Amster and Frank Ragano of Parallel Studios first launched it.

International artists are telling us they go all over the world and this is right at the top for new media exhibitions, Ragano said.

Amster added, One thing that is different is that a lot of new media festivals focus on the technology; we really focus on what artists are doing with the technology.

Submissions came this year from 516 artists in 35 countries, they said, with pieces from some 140 artists accepted, most of them at El Museo Cultural, but some of them showing at different venues.

And the proliferation of locations has brought Currents close to their original vision of a citywide festival, they said.

The former Zane Bennett gallery space, now form & concept, will stage exhibits, and the Meow Wolf Arts Complex has weighed in with related weekend performances and concerts, while MAKE Santa Fe in that complex is offering a series of workshops.

The Digital Dome at the Institute for American Indian Arts continues to offer full-dome video screenings during the festival, and events can be found at Warehouse 21, Violet Crown Cinema, David Richard Fine Art, Axle Contemporary, The Art House and more.

While Currents organizers talked about dropping efforts to link events and exhibitions around the state after last years festival, Ragano said, its taken on a life of its own.  Now, all of a sudden, we have seven partners, including locations in Roswell, Hobbs, Las Cruces, Albuquerque, Magdalena and Taos.

Also, the educational component has expanded, with Highlands University offering a credit course on Installation and New Media at the Higher Education Center in Santa Fe. And five youths from the Youth Shelters Access program will follow up their training workshops in May with experience as interns with the festival, he said.

Another difference this year is that a full exhibit, Code and Noise, curated by Christine Duval, will travel from San Francisco to its own room at El Museo. Duval reached out to see if she could bring her show here, which includes 13 or 14 artists, Amster said. From Santa Fe, the show will travel to Los Angeles.

Big opening weekend

This years opening weekend will be a lot bigger than in the past, Ragano said.

There will be a lot more work in the Railyard, he said, referring to performances, displays, projections and more. In collaboration with AMP Concerts, theyre bringing in Filastine at 8:30 p.m. Saturday, a duo that incorporates video, design and dance into music that draws on electronic beats and ambient sounds. Theyre incredible, Ragano said, noting that he and Amster saw them last year at Taos Mesa Brewing. Its an urban blend with hip-hop and world music. They have incredible video. Its very danceable, but kind of cutting-edge.

Tonight, just in case the cold weather kept you from this years Vision Fest at the Santa Fe University of Arts and Design, students will offer a reprise of some of their projections and video in the Railyard.

Other installations through the two days will include solar-powered robots, a revolving sphere of stars, sound installations, lasers and more  many of which interact with the audience. Interacting music and visuals, a real-time audio/visual performance, electronic muscle stimulation that moves performers like puppets and more will be found in weekend performances scheduled inside El Museo.

The possibilities can be overwhelming, but that just gives you an excuse to keep coming back to see what you missed the other times you visited. The website currentsnewmedia.org gives you a schedule and list of artworks, along with links to partner organizations.

And if you have a smartphone, bring it to the exhibit. Several pieces require you to download a free app to interact with them, Ragano said. Also, the festival itself will have a free app available to give you information about a piece as you view it.

While continuing to expand the technological possibilities, the festival attendance also has been growing by about a thousand people each year, he said. Last year, about 6,200 people attended  2,000 of them over the opening weekend  and theyre hoping for 7,000 this year, he said.

But dont head over to El Museo on Mondays or Tuesdays  festival exhibits there are closed on those days. Otherwise, starting Wednesday, hours are noon-7 p.m., staying open until 10 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays.
There was good news this week when the Bureau of Land Management announced that its close to striking a deal to accept a donation from the Wilderness Land Trust of ranchland next to the 16,000-acre Sabinoso Wilderness about 40 miles east of Las Vegas, N.M.

The Sabinoso got its wilderness designation by approval of Congress and the presidents signature in 2009, but there has not been a way for the public to legally access its rugged cliffs and 1,000-foot-deep canyons  the wilderness is landlocked by surrounding private land and federal grazing allotments.

The land trust, a national conservation nonprofit was, in recent months, able to buy the adjacent Rimrock Rose Ranch property thanks to a $3.1 million contribution from the Wyss Foundation, created by a Swiss billionaire to preserve land in the American West for public use.

Under the BLMs proposal, the Wilderness Land Trust would donate most of 4,176 acres it has acquired and the BLM would purchase a smaller portion. Also, two adjacent federal grazing allotments totalling 6,260 acres would no longer be used for livestock in an effort to protect riparian areas.

A Journal crew got to visit the Sabinoso a few years ago and came back with photographs of scenes reminiscent of the Rio Grande Gorge near Taos (without the river) and the kind of rugged landscapes that Hollywood has used to make the West a mythological place in the American mind. So its great that opening the land to hikers, horseback riders and hunters apparently will happen in the near future.

The BLM says the donation/buy transaction could be complete in time to let people enter the wilderness by November  which, absent snow storms, would probably be a pretty good time to see what the Sabinoso looks like in person.
Santa Fe County and the city of Espanola have scheduled meetings this month in the wake of what may be a stalled effort by some residents to have the Santa Fe County portion of the city annexed into Rio Arriba County.

About three-quarters of the city lies within Rio Arriba County. The southeast portion of Espanola, however, is part of Santa Fe County and a group of residents there petitioned to have county lines redrawn so that it would be made part of Rio Arriba County, along with the rest of the city.

The petition  turned in by George Martinez of a group called Citizens for Accessible and Representative Government and signed by 717 people, a number that would represent 53 percent of the 1,346 registered voters living in the affected area  stated that it will be more convenient and economical for Rio Arriba County to render governmental services than currently is the case.

Some residents of the affected area have complained that Santa Fe County collects their tax money, but provides little in return in terms of services, including health care facilities, solid waste disposal, 911 emergency services and parks.

Accompanying the petition turned into the Santa Fe County clerk was an exhibit with a map, and distance and travel time estimates from five addresses around Espanola to the Rio Arriba County Annex on Espanolas Industrial Park Road  which houses the assessor, treasurer, and health and human services offices  none of them more than 5 miles away, or an 11-minute drive. That was compared to travel distances and times from those same addresses to Santa Fe, the county seat, all of them more than 22 miles and each roughly a 30-minute drive.

But the Santa Fe County Commission on May 10 voted 4-1 to reject the petition, saying it was legally defective on its face because it failed to show conditions justifying annexation, as per state statute.

In particular, County Attorney Greg Shaffer wrote in a letter to Martinez the following day, the petition does not set forth facts showing that it would be more convenient for citizens in the annexed area to travel to the county seat in Rio Arriba as opposed to the county seat of Santa Fe County because of the location and condition of roads, or the existence or nonexistence of transportation facilities.

While Rio Arriba County has an annex in Espanola, the county seat is in Tierra Amarilla, 67 miles and more than an hours drive away.

Misunderstanding, or stalling tactic

Notification that the petition was deemed deficient was not news to Martinez, who did not return numerous messages left for him by the Journal this week.

Correspondence obtained through a public records request show Martinez was made aware of the countys legal position a week prior to the commission meeting. Mileage alone is not the test of convenience, Deputy Santa Fe County Manager Tony Flores wrote in a letter to Martinez dated May 3.

Flores wrote that the petition contained no factual statements concerning the location and condition of roads.

Martinez maintains the county never told him until the day before the petitions were due to be turned in that the petition language was considered deficient.

In a response dated May 4, Martinez said that, despite numerous opportunities to do so, no one he talked to in Santa Fe County government  not the clerk, the deputy county manager or the county attorney  ever told him the petition needed to be vetted by the commission or the county attorney prior to it being circulated.

In fact, my impression was we were free to proceed to gather signatures immediately rather than wait for another 2 months, wrote Martinez. He said his group was targeting Jan. 1, 2017, as the date for the annexation into Rio Arriba County to go into effect and, in order for that to happen, a special election would have to take place some time this summer.

The decision against the petition is arbitrary, capricious and designed deliberately to deny the citizens of Santa Fe County residing in the City of Espanola the statutory right to effectively petition our government as guaranteed by law, he wrote. Another letter obtained by the Journal shows that, in a December letter to County Clerk Geraldine Salazar, Martinez specifically asked the county to examine the proposed petition form and two maps submitted as exhibits.

Martinez told the Rio Grande Sun last month that Santa Fe Countys denial of the petition was a stalling tactic. He declined to say whether he would file a legal response to the commissions denial or what attorneys he was talking to.

Even if the petition were approved, Martinez and his group still would have a steep hill to climb. The county says the special election on allowing parts of Espanola to leave Sante Fe County would be county-wide, not just among voters in the affected area.

$1 million at stake

While Rio Arriba County officials say they are not pushing the annexation effort, they are supporting it.

Santa Fe County doesnt seem to want to accept that Espanola is part of the county, said Rio Arriba County Manager Tomas Campos.

As an example, Campos said Santa Fe County collects from its Espanola residents gross receipts taxes, a portion of which pays for such things as solid waste disposal and the Rail Runner commuter train, yet Espanola is not a part of the North Central Solid Waste Authority and the train doesnt go farther north than Santa Fe.

Rio Arriba County does stand to benefit economically from annexation. It estimates that annexation would add about $1 million to the county coffers through property and gross receipts taxes.

The Rio Arriba commission in January approved a resolution in support of an equitable distribution of tax revenue from annexed territory. The resolution states that Rio Arriba County already provides extensive services to the area under consideration for annexation to include emergency management services, health care services, solid waste, community and economic development.

It goes on to say that, if the annexation effort was successful, Rio Arriba would make those things a priority for its new residents, along with road infrastructure and senior care.

Christopher Madrid, Rio Arribas economic development director, said a portion of Espanola being in Santa Fe County hurts the local economy. Right now, $1 million is leaving the city and we cant identify any of that coming back, he said.

New gross receipts tax revenue would primarily come from roughly 60 businesses now on the Santa Fe County side of the line. Customers patronizing those businesses pay approximately 4 cents more for every $10 spent because of the difference in the tax rate between the two counties.

A lawsuit filed last year by the cities of Santa Fe and Espanola aimed to overturn a Santa Fe County gross receipts tax increase passed to offset the loss of so-called hold harmless payments from New Mexico state government. The state payments, intended to make up for local government losses from the removal of gross receipts taxes on sales of food and medicine, are being phased out, but the Legislature granted cities and counties new GRT taxing authority to offset the loss.

Some Espanola businesses located on the Santa Fe side of the county line joined in the legal challenge to the Santa Fe County GRT increase, arguing that, because Espanola had already imposed its own hold harmless tax, they were victims of double taxation. They argued that businesses on the Rio Arriba side on the line were therefore at a competitive advantage.

Seeking solutions through dialogue

Santa Fe County Commissioner Henry Roybal, representing the affected part of the county, cast the lone no vote when the commission rejected the annexation-to-Rio Arriba petition.

When you see so many signatures and you represent all those people  just to see the amount of concern  I wanted to make sure they knew their voices were being heard, Roybal said in a phone interview this week.

Roybal said he and Santa Fe County Manager Katherine Miller met with Espanola Mayor Alice Lucero and two Espanola city councilors June 1, a meeting he described as very positive.

He said they talked about a wide range of topics, including extension of sewer lines, road improvements, 911 emergency services and funding for the city library. Im sure there will be other things we can work on together, he said.

Roybal told constituents in a recent newsletter that residents living in incorporated Santa Fe County  Santa Fe and Edgewood, in addition to the Espanola section  are typically provided public safety, solid waste and road services by the municipality.

The process of annexation is costly and cumbersome and ultimately may have unintended consequences if not fully vetted, he wrote. The County (of Santa Fe) is hopeful communication can be established to avoid confusion and clarify information for residents.
SANTA FE  Clayton Vincent Jones allegedly killed two women within three months.

One woman was shot and killed in April during an argument in the Southern California desert. The other is a Marine Corps veteran who was dragged to death in January near Taos. Her body has yet to be found.

Jones, 40, and 32-year-old Albert Gene Hunsaker, who is listed with a home address in the Carson Estates area west of Taos, allegedly killed Naomi Chaney on her 36th birthday on Jan. 30 by wrapping a winch wire around her neck, then using a Jeep to pull her along the ground in rural Taos County.

Three months later, Jones allegedly shot and killed 39-year-old Shalon Gheen, who, like Chaney, had previously lived in Taos County. That slaying took place at Slab City, a ramshackle, off-the-grid hippie and snowbird haven in the Sonoran Desert, 150 miles northeast of San Diego, according to a New Mexico State Police criminal complaint.

Its unclear how the two murder victims knew each other, but they were friends on Facebook.

For the brutal New Mexico killing, Hunsaker was indicted on charges of first-degree murder, conspiracy to commit murder and tampering with evidence on May 26. Hes being held in the Taos County jail with no bond.

Jones, meanwhile, is incarcerated at the Imperial County jail in California for Gheens shooting death and has yet to be charged in New Mexico for his alleged role in the Chaney killing, although the Taos district attorney says that will happen.

State Police issued a news release April 11, saying that Chaney, who grew up in Texas, had been missing since Feb. 1 from the Two Peaks area west of Taos, and that family and friends hadnt heard from her. But investigators learned what had happened to Chaney when they received a phone call from a California detective last month, reportedly from confessions given by both Jones and Hunsaker.

According to a criminal complaint filed in Taos Magistrate Court on May 5, detective John Beltran from California called State Police Agent Jesse Whitaker three days earlier and said Jones, who was being questioned by the Imperial County Sheriffs Office for allegedly killing Gheen, had started detailing how he and Hunsaker killed Chaney in January.

Jones also drew a map to show where he hid the body.

On May 4, two days after the California detectives call, officers from the New Mexico State Police detained Hunsaker at his Carson Estates residence.

Hunsaker told investigators that Jones and Chaney showed up at his house west of Taos on Jan. 30 and wanted him to go drinking with them.

He said he and Chaney were in a sexual relationship, despite Hunsakers being married. That night, Hunsaker said, he made Chaney hide from his wife when she approached Jones Jeep before Hunsaker, Jones and Chaney drove off.

According to the criminal complaint, Hunsaker said the trio had started drinking near the Peteca riverbed, when Jones suddenly began to beat and choke Chaney.

Jones eventually wrapped the winch wire around her neck, told Hunsaker to operate the winch and he drove backward through the sagebrush. They left her body in the sagebrush, according to the complaint. Hunsaker said he had no choice but to assist in the murder, because Jones threatened to kill him and his family if he didnt.

State Police Sgt. Elizabeth Armijo said that a motive for killing Chaney is being investigated.

State Police looked for Chaneys body after interviewing Hunsaker, but couldnt find it.

The Highlander newspaper in Marble Falls, Texas, reported that Chaney grew up in Horseshoe Bay, about 53 miles northwest of Austin, and graduated from Marble Falls High School in 1998 before joining the Marine Corps.

Jones, portrayed by Hunsaker as the instigator of Chaneys murder, hasnt been charged in New Mexico yet, because hes behind bars in California for killing Gheen in Slab City on April 29, said Taos District Attorney Donald Gallegos.

Gallegos said he doesnt want to start the clock on Jones speedy trial rights by bringing him to New Mexico now. He said theres no hurry, since Jones shouldnt be a danger to the public sitting in the Imperial County jail on a $1 million bond.

Hes being held in California, so Im comfortable with that, Gallegos said.

Slab City killing described

After Gheens murder, Slab City resident Cornelius Vango told KYMA-TV of Yuma, Ariz., that she and her friend, identified only as Caveman, tried to break up a fight between Jones and Gheen, who were apparently in a relationship. Vango said Jones turned his aggression toward them and went to his car, grabbed a rifle and started firing at Caveman and Vango. Caveman said he was able to find cover and went back to check on Gheen, who was lying lifeless on the ground.

I saw her face, and her little dog was cowering in her lap, and I could tell she was already dead, Caveman told a KYMA reporter.

Vango said Jones got into his car and drove away, but she followed him in her van and called police. Officers caught Jones a short time later and charged him with first-degree murder and two counts of attempted murder.

Gheens Facebook page says she lived in Espanola and worked at Pablos Creations in Taos, but recent posts suggest she lived in an area known as The Mesa west of Taos. It also features a photo of her and Jones together, posed with Jones arm around a smiling Gheen.

In an April 26 Facebook post  three days before she was killed  Gheen expressed excitement about being in California. She also started a thread with a friend about when Gheen would return to her home state of Pennsylvania.

Soon like by next weekend, Gheen wrote. My mom is trying to stop me but she cant. Anyhow Clay says we will and if not Im getting a bus ticket  but I want Clayton Vincent Jones to meet my daddy.
The University of New Mexico is set to hasten the process for investigating allegations of sexual assault and harassment involving an employee or student.

UNM administrators said the change follows the release earlier this year of a Department of Justice report that broadly found that UNM had failed to comply with federal gender anti-discrimination laws. Among numerous complaints, federal investigators said specifically the universitys Office of Equal Opportunity takes too long to investigate complaints regarding sexual misconduct.

The grievance procedures do not ensure prompt and equitable resolution of students complaints of sexual harassment, including sexual assault, and have impeded the Universitys ability to take remedial action against the discrimination, federal investigators wrote in the 37-page report presented to the university earlier this year.

The federal investigation comes at a time when nationally more students are reporting sexual crime claims, according to a report from the Washington Post.

UNM president Bob Frank said the university would comply with the Department of Justice while saying some portions of the report dont represent the university as a whole.

The UNM administrators who are overseeing the change in investigations, Francie Cordova and Heather Cowan, told the Journal on Thursday their efforts to revamp the system were underway before the release of the DOJ report. But they did say the alterations would address the complaints raised by it.

Our old discrimination claims procedure was really traditional and had been needing to be updated, Cowan said. It just took it a little while.

The changes will take place for investigations that start after June 15 pending a review by Franks office.

In the old system, a person would file a complaint and investigators would compile that information into a letter. The investigators would then give the letter to the person filing the complaint, and that person had two weeks to review the letter.

Under the new system, Cordova said, the accuser will have five days to review the letter.

The office will also try to reach the person accused of malfeasance at an earlier stage in the investigation, Cowan said.

UNM officials also plan to share more of the details of the case with both the accuser and the accused in attempt to keep both parties informed of the investigations status. This sharing of information, Cowan said, also allows both parties to raise questions about the investigation.

For example, an accuser might ask why a witness testimony wasnt included in the investigation, and the investigators can respond accordingly.
SANTA FE  Two New Mexico legislative primary races appear headed for automatic vote recounts.

In a Republican contest in House District 32, Vicki Chavez held a 16-vote lead Thursday over fellow Deming resident Scott Chandler, with a total of 1,768 ballots cast in the race, according to unofficial results.

The other race is a Democratic face-off between Mary Hotvedt of Pinos Altos and Karen Whitlock of Mimbres. Hotvedt held a 29-vote lead in the House District 38 contest as of Thursday, with 3,493 ballots cast.

If results dont change significantly during the primary election canvass, both races will qualify for automatic recounts under a state law that was changed in 2015 and now triggers state-paid recounts if the final margin between legislative candidates is less than 1 percent of votes cast.

Both races in question are contests in seats that do not have incumbents  neither Rep. Dona Irwin, D-Deming, nor Rep. Dianne Hamilton, R-Silver City, is seeking re-election this year.

Meanwhile, Secretary of States Office general counsel Amy Bailey said Thursday that the office does not think a third close race, a district attorney race in the Taos-based 8th Judicial District, would qualify for an automatic recount because of the office involved.

Candidates can also request vote recounts under New Mexico law, but they then have to foot the bills for the costs associated with the recounts.

Any automatic recounts stemming from this years primary election would be ordered after the State Canvassing Board meets June 28.
Dereck Scott doesnt agree with the protesters on much.

But he finds common ground with them on this: People who wanted to attend last months Donald Trump rally, as he did, shouldnt have had to walk through a gantlet of protesters to get into the Convention Center, a layout that allowed each side to antagonize the other.

This was definitely badly put together, Scott said Thursday during a news conference on Civic Plaza. Who thought this was OK?

Scott says he was punched in the head as he entered the rally and suffered a concussion. He filed a police report the next day, he said.

Scott, 36, uses a wheelchair and said he hopes the case is investigated as a hate crime. Protesters called him a faker, he said.

City officials have offered a few explanations for why the protesters and people attending the rally were in such proximity. The layout of the venue  the network of parking lots, streets and Convention Center entrances  was one factor, officials say.

Police also say federal law required that protesters be close enough to ensure that their message would be seen and heard by people entering the rally. City officials said theyll re-evaluate their options for handling similar events in the future.

Peter Simonson, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of New Mexico, said Thursday that there was no need to have the sides so close to each other.

Im not aware of any case law or other legal imperative that requires the city to put protesters with opposing points of view within arms reach of one another, Simonson said. We would argue that to comply with free speech they must put protesters in close enough proximity that each group is able to deliver their message to the other and can be assured it will be received.

Still, he added, I believe the city could achieve that without going to the extreme of the gantlet-like situation which they created for the Trump rally.

Police spokeswoman Celina Espinoza said officers have identified a couple of suspects who threw water or water bottles at Scott and will forward the case to prosecutors. They dont yet have evidence of physical battery, Espinoza said.

Scott describes himself as a centrist who leans right and said he simply wanted to see Trump for himself.

I think everyone needs to chill out, Scott said, and be a little more loving and understanding.
The tyrant is mad! The tyrant is mad!

He rains bombs on innocent children!

Stop! I pray and watch on TV as

Syria is destroyed, cities laid

Waste. Dust and the stench of death

Fill the streets.

So whats Albuquerque author and New Mexico treasure Rudolfo Anaya been up to lately?

Hes been at home mostly, safe and content; feasting on a green salad as part of a delicious meal and at night sleeping in a warm bed.

Its good.

But the calm and peace have been intruded on and broken by the reality of the war in Syria  brought to you in a stream of news reports.

The images of distressed masses forced to flee the safety of their own homes has been too much for Anaya to take  especially the pictures of two particular children.

So he sat down and did what he does best. He wrote.

The result is a poem he titled Syrias Children. And besides the relief that comes from putting his thoughts down as words, he also has a bigger purpose in mind.

Ive included excepts of the poem in this column, but you can read it in its entirety here.

The children, Syrias children,

Images burned in my soul. Cold and

Hungry, exhausted from walking 

Whose arms will open to greet you?

Anaya says he began to picture the fleeing children as pilgrims headed for the promised land: Here are these cold, hungry children going north, but you dont know if its really the promised land. Once you see them on TV, you cant get them out of your mind.

Two of them really hit hard: a little girl in a muddy pink coat, soaked by freezing rain and clinging to her parents; and a little boy whose body washed up on a Turkish beach.

My pleas fall like doom.

I am a haunted man. What good

Is prayer? The carnage continues.

Can I do more than watch TV?

Then, Anaya says, I came up with idea of adopting them (in his own mind). I gave them names to make them more human to me. I can feel close to them.

He named the little girl Diane and the boy Efran, for no reason in particular. He knows they are not Syrian names.

I pray to them every night, and I say their names. I dont just say for the suffering children of Syria and other places  Yemen and Africa and Nepal and Peru, all of them have children suffering. I can pray for all of them through little Diane and Efran.

He decided that if he was going to adopt the children, even if only in his own mind, he needed to baptize them, but then realized both already had been, Diane by the freezing rain and Efran by the waters of the sea in which he drowned.

 I baptize you now, my children,

Not images on TV but flesh and

Blood. Are my prayers answered?

The world sits down to dinner.

I am that man at dinner,

A haunted soul.

At the bottom of the copy of Syrias Children that Anaya emailed to me, he included the note: Please contribute to agencies that are helping Syrias children.

I asked him if he had any particular programs in mind. He said no, but there are several good agencies to choose from and he would leave that decision to anyone inspired to give.

He did say he was thinking of reputable organizations like the U.N. Refugee Agency, Doctors Without Borders or Oxfam, for example.

He ends the poem with questions:

Do I have anger enough to fight?

Enough rage to save the children?

Compassion enough to offer

My home, my meals?

UpFront is a daily front-page news and opinion column. Comment directly to editorial page editor Dan Herrera at 823-3810 or dherrera@abqjournal.com.
SANTA FE  Gov. Susana Martinez on Thursday joined other high-profile Republicans around the nation in criticizing Donald Trumps recent comments that called into question the impartiality of a Mexican-American judge.

Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, has come under fire for suggesting that U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel cannot preside fairly over a case involving Trump University because the judge is of Mexican heritage and Trump wants to build a wall between the United States and Mexico.

As the governor has expressed before, she is concerned by, and strongly disagrees with, some of Mr. Trumps rhetoric and positions, including his comments about a federal judge, Martinez spokesman Chris Sanchez said in a statement sent to the Journal.

However, Sanchez said the two-term GOP governor remains willing to meet with Trump, an idea she first floated last week after Trump had backtracked on scathing criticism of Martinez at a May 24 campaign rally in Albuquerque attended by 8,000 people.

The governor is encouraged by his recent commitment to protect our labs and bases and is willing to visit with him to discuss the issues that affect New Mexicans, Sanchez said Thursday, referring to Trumps remarks to the Santa Fe New Mexican newspaper that New Mexicos military bases and national laboratories would be totally protected under a Trump administration.

Meanwhile, Trumps comments on Curiel have prompted criticism from U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan, who described them as the textbook definition of a racist comment, and former GOP presidential candidates Jeb Bush, Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, among other Republicans.

In a CNN interview earlier this month, Trump said the judge was handing down very unfair rulings in two cases, both of which involve fraud allegations from former Trump University students.

Curiel was born in Indiana to Mexican-born parents and was first appointed to a judgeship by former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican.

However, many Republicans have said they will still support Trump in the general election, and some Trump supporters have stridently defended his remarks about the judge.

As for Martinez, the nations first Hispanic female governor has remained noncommittal as to whether she will support Trump in November, a stance that has been ridiculed by national Democratic groups.

The Governors Office has also declined to say whether Martinez voted for Trump in this weeks primary election. Martinez, who is registered to vote in Dona Ana County, planned to vote in the primary via absentee ballot since she was traveling out of state this week.

In addition to her duties as New Mexicos chief executive, Martinez is also the chairwoman of the Republican Governors Association, a position in which she is expected to travel frequently this year to help GOP gubernatorial candidates around the country.

Last year, Martinez took exception to Trumps assertions that some Mexican immigrants bring drugs and crime and are rapists. She also skipped last months Trump rally in Albuquerque, saying she was busy and focused on New Mexico affairs.
CARLSBAD  With oil prices and rig counts on the rise recently, many people in the Permian Basin are staying on the cautious side.

The countrys rig counts are about half of what they were last year, sitting at 408 on June 8, according to Baker-Hughes, an oil fuel services company.

New Mexico has followed a similar trend, but its count had increased by two from the previous week to 20.

The Permian Basin had an increase of five rigs from the previous week, up to 142.

There are some signs of recovery in the oil fields at this point, said Wally Drangmeister, vice president and director of communications for the New Mexico Oil and Gas Association.

Last year at the same time, the state had 46 and the Permian Basin had 233 rigs.

Drangmeister said production in New Mexico for the first three months of the year was similar to what it was last year.

According to data from the New Mexico Oil Conservation District, more than 5 million barrels of oil were produced each month in January, February and March of 2016 in Eddy County.

Drangmeister said he was unsure whether the increased production is a product of newly-drilled wells or of wells there were previously drilled but not completed until recently.

The big question is, are 20 wells enough rigs to keep New Mexicos production flat? Drangmeister said.

Raye Miller, president of Artesia-based Regeneration Energy Corp., said while the increase in price ($51.53 a barrel as of June 8) is nice to see, its going to take more to get capital back up.

A $50 barrel probably isnt whats needed, Miller said. I really think that capital budgets of independents and larger companies wont be restored until we get to a $60-plus level.

Oil bottomed out at $26.65 a barrel in January, so the June 8 price of $51.53 is probably looking very attractive to oil companies, though Drangmeister said they will certainly remain cautious.

Oil prices are believed to have increased partly due to Nigeria, where militants have attacked oil production sites, a USA Today article said.

Drangmeister said he doesnt believe that this is the start of a long climb, though.

A lot of things Ive read say that its very unlikely that oil prices would go up tremendously, he said. We may not see big swings to the upward.

Carlsbad Mayor Dale Janway also expressed guarded optimism.

Oil prices are back up past $50 a barrel, which is, of course, great news for this community, our residents, our state and our schools. Its the highest level in 2016. Were already seeing more work in the field, and were extremely optimistic about the long term future of our area, Janway said in an emailed statement. Even more important than prices going up is long term stability, and it will be some time before the industry feels certain about stability.

Leases holding steady

The next oil and gas lease parcel sale for the Permian Basin will be on July 20.

Currently, the Carlsbad Field Office has 36 parcels in the Southeast corner of the region nominated for leasing.

For Pecos District, its always one of our busiest ones, said Ross Klein, Bureau of Land Management natural resource specialist.

Miller said parcel prices have generally not reflected the downturn in oil.

Lease prices are still relatively high, he said.

Oil and gas leases expire every 10 years.

Maddy Hayden can be reached at 575-628-5512.



2016 the Carlsbad Current-Argus (Carlsbad, N.M.)

Visit the Carlsbad Current-Argus (Carlsbad, N.M.) at www.currentargus.com

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

_____
Gabriel Mirabal, 34, of Albuquerque was sentenced this week to 36 years in federal in prison on narcotics trafficking and firearms charges.

U.S. Attorney Damon P. Martinez, in a news release, said Mirabal is a career offender whose criminal history includes convictions for meth trafficking and aggravated battery with a deadly weapon.

He was prosecuted under the federal worst of the worst anti-violence initiative. Because New Mexicos violent crime rates, on a per capita basis, are amongst the highest in the nation, New Mexicos law enforcement community is collaborating to target repeat offenders from counties with the highest violent crime rates, including Bernalillo and Santa Fe Counties, under this initiative.

Mirabal was one of five men indicted in April 2013, on narcotics and firearms charges as the result of Operation Rio Grande Stucco, a DEA investigation into an organization led by Mirabal that manufactured and distributed crack in Bernalillo and Santa Fe Counties.

This case was investigated by the Albuquerque office of the DEA and the HIDTA Region III Drug Task Force, with assistance from the 1st Judicial District Attorneys Office, and is being prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Nicholas J. Ganjei and Joel R. Meyers.
EL PASO  U.S. customs officers stopped a truck with New Mexico plates at a border crossing this week with an unusual load of contraband: 14 rolls of Mexican bologna.

The cold cuts were seized after officers sent the 2007 Chevy Silverado to a secondary inspection, where the driver admitted there was bologna stashed under the back seat, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

Mexican bologna is prohibited because it is made from pork and has the potential for introducing foreign animal diseases to the U.S. pork industry, CBP said in a statement.

The driver did not declare the sandwich meat at the outset but told agriculture specialists about the bologna during the secondary inspection, CBP said.

The product was destroyed and the driver released.

Travelers should understand that they can avoid civil penalties by declaring all agricultural items they are importing from Mexico, said CBP El Paso Port Director Beverly Good. Had the driver not declared the product he would have faced an administrative penalty as high as $1,000.

While not the most common contraband intercepted at the border, there have been several much larger seizures in recent years.

The Journal reported in 2011 that 385 pounds of Mexican bologna was seized by U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents at the Santa Teresa border crossing, with a street value over $8,000.

That was the second largest seizure of contraband lunch meat at a border crossing in the El Paso sector. The largest bologna seizure case was 756 pounds in 2003.

Officials have said Mexican bologna, which has a different taste from its U.S. counterpart, can sell for as much as 10 times its retail price in Mexican-American communities north of the border.
A new Albuquerque employer credits the local workforce for reaching staffing levels at a faster pace than expected.

NORC at the University of Chicago opened its survey research center earlier this year at Copper Pointe, near Interstate 40 and Eubank. The institute said in February it planned to start with 200 employees, most of them telephone interviewers.

As of this week, it already had over 300 and expects to reach its full capacity of 400 workers sooner than expected, Jenny Kelly, vice president of telephone survey and support operations, said in an email to the Journal.

We are hiring a little faster than we originally planned because the Albuquerque labor force has exceeded our expectations, Kelly said. At this current pace, we hope to reach full capacity in the coming months.

Kelly said NORC had originally expected it would take until years end to hit the full staffing target.

According to job listings on its website, NORC telephone interviewers in Albuquerque start at $10.50 an hour ($11 if they speak English and Spanish) and have flexible part-time hours. They work at least 16 hours per week and can go up to 28.

NORC is an independent research organization based in Chicago that works with public and private entities to provide the data and analysis that supports informed decision-making in key areas including health, education, economics, crime, justice, energy, security and the environment, according to its website.
A Rio Rancho homeowner shot and critically wounded an armed 15-year-old earlier this week after the teen broke into the home in the middle of the night, according to Rio Rancho police.

Shaquan Ketcham was in critical condition at a local hospital Friday after he was shot early Wednesday morning, according to RRPD spokesman Lt. Nicholas Onken.

Onken said Ketcham, who lives in Albuquerque, broke into a home in the 1000 block of Luz de Sol in the Cabezon area of Rio Rancho before 2 a.m. Wednesday. He was armed with a handgun, Onken said.

The homeowner shot the teen, who then fled, according to police.

A staffer at Presbyterian Rust Medical Center called police to report Ketcham had shown up at the emergency room with at least one gunshot wound around 2 a.m., Onken said. Moments later, the homeowner called reporting he had shot someone.

Police found evidence from the burglary scene on Ketcham, but have not explained what that evidence was. The teen was airlifted to the University of New Mexico Hospital.

Onken said he will be charged with aggravated burglary.

He said Ketcham was with at least one other person who dropped him off at the hospital that morning. Police are investigating who that was, and whether Ketcham was involved in any other break-ins before the shooting.

Onken said the details of what led up to the shooting  including whether Ketcham threatened the homeowner  are still under investigation. The homeowner likely wont face charges, but police wont make an official determination until the investigation is complete, Onken said.

Police have not identified the homeowner.
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.
The Securities and Exchange Commission has barred a former corporate vice president and a former controller for false accounting at an electronics company.

Donald Doody and Ronald Years, who were formerly the executive vice president of operations and the controller of a subsidiary, respectively, of New York-based IEC Electronics Corp., inappropriately overstated the companys profits in financial statements by using false inventory accounting, according to the SEC.

Specifically, when Years subsidiary wasnt performing well, the two inappropriately inflated the companys work-in-process inventory to meet budgeted gross profit margins.

Doody is barred from serving as an officer or director of a public company for five years, while Years has been permanently suspending from practicing before the SEC as an accountant  including not participating in the financial reporting or audits of public companies.

Company executives cannot use false accounting tactics to meet profit margins and other financial targets and expect to get away with it, said Michele Layne, director of the SECs Los Angeles Regional Office. Doody and Years made an ill-fated decision to pump up the numbers in financial statements relied upon by investors.

Without admitting or denying the findings, IEC, Doody, and Years consented to the SECs order instituting a settled administrative proceeding. The company agreed to pay a $200,000 penalty, Doody agreed to pay $29,204.48 in disgorgement and interest plus a $25,000 penalty, and Years agreed to pay a $40,000 penalty.

Former IEC CEO William Barry Gilbert was not accused of any wrongdoing, but voluntarily returned $42,072 in incentive-based compensation and stock sale profits, as well as 19,616 shares of company stock, so the SEC did not need to pursue a clawback action under Section 304 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act.
Thomson Reuters has released PPCs Practice Aids for Audits of Form 11-K Benefit Plans to guide professionals auditing defined contribution plans that are required to file Form 11-K with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

The Department of Labor issued a report last year criticizing the quality of employee benefit plan audits by CPAs, and the AICPA has pledged to fix the problem (see AICPA Pushes for Auditing and Assurance Changes). The Labor Departments Employee Benefits Security Administration found serious deficiencies in 39 percent of the audits of employee benefit plans that it examined.

Thomson Reuters noted that audits of employee benefit plans, especially plans that are required to file Form 11-K, differ significantly from audits of other types of entities. These audits must comply with auditing standards generally accepted in the United States (U.S. GAAS) and the standards of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board. Using this new tool in conjunction with PPCs SMART Practice Aids Audit Suite automates the audit process for 11-K benefit plan engagements.

Many of our customers have told us about their struggles when auditing employee benefit plans that have to file Form 11-K, said Mark Wells, CPA, senior manager with the Tax & Accounting business of Thomson Reuters, in a statement. These new tools meet their needs, helping them comply with all of the requirements and perform high-quality audits.

The Practice Aids include introductory material explaining the intricacies of employee benefit plan audits and the different communications and reporting that are required, along with audit programs with extensive practical considerations. The audit checklists include a disclosure checklist, partner rotation documentation form and engagement completion document. Confirmation and correspondence letters include engagement and management representation letters and communications with those charged with governance. Illustrative auditors reports comply with U.S. GAAS and PCAOB auditing standards.
(Bloomberg) Valeant Pharmaceuticals International Inc., whose adjusted financial results once made it a market darling, just gave conventional financial measures a new prominence in its latest quarterly report. It wasnt pretty.

Valeants decision to play up Generally Accepted Accounting Principles in its quarterly earnings earlier this week -- showing a loss of more than $1 per share -- follows a six-month letter-writing campaign by U.S. officials. Beginning in December, the Securities and Exchange Commission challenged Valeants practice of playing down GAAP results in favor of its own adjusted pro-forma numbers, a method of reporting that critics say paints an unrealistically rosy picture of the drug-makers financial health.

Valeant, which regulators and lawmakers have criticized for its controversial strategy of buying drugs and raising their prices exorbitantly, is part of a broader swath of companies, including many in the energy, food and manufacturing sectors, that have come under scrutiny in recent months for their use of non-traditional financial measures.

Its legal to use non-standard accounting to report results -- and in some cases its the preferred way to exclude items like one-time restructuring costs -- as long as companies also report official GAAP numbers. But the securities regulator has recently warned several companies not to get too creative. The SEC and ConocoPhillips, for example, went head-to-head last year over reporting that gave the firm higher-than-GAAP profits using calculations based in part on older, higher oil prices.

In December, SEC Chair Mary Jo White warned that the growing prominence of adjusted earnings deserves close attention.

Your chief financial officer and investor relations team may be quite enamored of non-GAAP measures, she said in a speech in Washington on December 9. But she warned that company lawyers, audit committees and others should be asking questions, such as whether the figures are useful to investors, are calculated with appropriate controls and are given no greater prominence than GAAP results, as required.

As White made those remarks, Valeants shares were already being pummeled amid investor concerns that the companys business was not as strong as it had appeared.

Increase or Decline?

We are concerned with your overall format and presentation of the non-GAAP measures, the agency wrote to the company on December 4. Among the specific changes the SEC requested were giving GAAP numbers as much prominence as Valeants more bullish adjusted ones in future earnings releases. Its concerns included Valeants disclosure of a non-GAAP increase in earnings per share without noting that the GAAP figure declined 83 percent from the prior year.

Later that month, then-chief executive J. Michael Pearson and other executives walked investors through an outlook that focused on adjusted earnings. While Valeants SEC filings included GAAP measures, the 132-page investor presentation didnt. A footnote at the end stated that Valeant believed the non-GAAP financials provided a meaningful, consistent comparison that excluded items it believed wouldnt recur each quarter.

The SEC pressed further in March -- pointing out that Valeants income figures were a full $10 billion higher over time than conventional reporting would dictate.

We note that, over the past four years, you have reported approximately $9.8 billion of non-GAAP net income, the SECs senior assistant chief accountant, Jim Rosenberg, wrote. During the same period, you reported GAAP net loss of approximately $330 million for a total increase from GAAP loss to non-GAAP income of over $10 billion.

Rosenbergs letter also expressed significant concern that the company was low-balling its tax liabilities. SEC officials, he wrote, find this presentation to be potentially misleading.

Valeant said in a written statement that it publishes adjusted financials because, The company believes these non-GAAP measures are useful to investors in their assessment of our operating performance and the valuation of our company. In addition, these non-GAAP measures address questions the company routinely receives from analysts and investors.

Debt Threshold

The more favorable tally of Valeants financials are critical to the company for reasons that go beyond turning GAAP losses into adjusted profits. Bondholders use its EBITDA -- adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization -- as a key component in determining whether it remains in compliance with covenants on its $31 billion in debt, a threshold Valeant is now close to breaching.

The potential gulf between GAAP and adjusted figures was apparent Tuesday, as Valeant presented investors with two sets of first-quarter figures. Under the adjusted method Valeant favors, it earned $1.27 per share. Under GAAP, it lost $1.08.

In terms of its outlook, Valeant on Tuesday offered a single set of numbers -- adjusted non-GAAP ones. That prompted Wells Fargo analyst David Maris to ask on a conference call with Valeant managers on Tuesday whether its easier to guide to non-GAAP adjusted earnings than GAAP earnings, or thats what investors want -- which is that?

Joseph Papa, Valeants new chief executive officer, fielded the question. Weve guided to the adjusted numbers, Papa said. We did it in the past, and well continue to do it for the future.

Asked about Valeants non-GAAP forecast, SEC spokeswoman Judith Burns declined to comment.
Perkins & Co, the largest locally owned accounting firm in Portland, Ore., plans to merge in Thompson Kessler Wiest & Borquist PC, a local boutique firm, on July 1.

TKWB has more than 30 years of experience servicing clients in the construction, real estate and manufacturing industries, while also specializing in international and expatriate tax. The combined firms will operate under the Perkins & Co. name in Perkins offices. Perkins & Co. ranked 22nd on Accounting Todays 2016 Regional Leaders list for the Top Firm in the West, with $22.87 million in annual revenue.

The merger will add 18 employees and five shareholders, bringing the total firm size to more than 150 employees plus 24 shareholders. The TKWB shareholders joining the Perkins executive team as shareholders are John Thompson, David Kessler, Robert Wiest, Jim Borquist and Katie Powell.

This merger is significant for everyone at Perkins, said Perkins & Co. president and shareholder Gary Reynolds in a statement. We are excited to expand our reach in the Northwest with the help of a new partner that shares our values and passion for making our clients satisfied and successful. I look forward to welcoming TKWBs exceptional shareholders, employees and clients to the Perkins family. TKWB supports our mission in every aspect of our business and culture. We look forward to growing together.

Perkins was founded in Portland in 1986 with the goal of providing a local alternative to the national accounting firms. The merger fits in with Perkins growth strategy, strengthening its capabilities in industries and practice areas such as real estate and construction, manufacturing and distribution, expatriate and international taxation, and employee benefit plan audits.

The values of both firms are highly compatible, with a similar business philosophy and service delivery models that focus on stability and growth, innovative tools and solutions, and active involvement with our clients, said TKWB tax shareholder David Kessler. Our clients will benefit from a wider array of capabilities to help them reach their goals, while still receiving the same personal customer service TKWB is known for. This merger simply means that two well-established and reputable accounting firms are combining forces, resulting in a stronger, better-equipped team to serve our clients.

TKWB was founded in 1981 with the mission of providing accounting, tax and business consulting services that support client growth and enhance stability.

Throughout Oregon and the Pacific Northwest Perkins is regarded as one of the top CPA firms in the entire region, commented Allan D. Koltin, CEO of Koltin Consulting Group, who advised both firms on the merger. In addition to their great leadership and talent they are probably one of the most innovative firms in the entire country. Their merger with TKW&B (another Portland Top 15 CPA firm) adds significant expertise and specialization to the firm and will provide TKW&B clients with even greater depth and resources.

The discussions began exactly a year ago last June, Koltin recalled. The decision was an easy one for TKW&B as the cultures, values, and goals were so consistently similar, he added. You could see the chemistry and fit in the very first couple of meetings as both firms discussed their passion for providing exceptional client service and their commitment to growing top talent. Perkins is already the largest independent CPA firm based in Portland and now is very close to being one of the 100 largest CPA firms in the entire country.
3M India, the Indian subsidiary of US multinational conglomerate 3M Co., has announced the appointment of Debarati Sen as Managing Director of 3M India and 3M Lanka with effect from June 1, 2016. Sen takes over from Amit Laroya, who led the company for the past three years and is now moving to 3M Korea as Managing Director.

Sen had joined 3M in 1996 and has been a part of the organisation for over two decades now. She has worked across various verticals and held key positions, including CMO and Global Business Director at 3M. Currently, she is the acting Director of Corporate Sales Operation at 3Ms corporate headquarters in St. Paul, USA.

Post her appointment as the MD, her new role will focus on innovation, aligning the organisation closely to customer needs in the Indian marketplace. 3M Indias local capabilities in the form of industry leading Customer Innovation Centers, multiple manufacturing plans and top notch talent across functions positions it well for growth.

On her new role, Sen said, Having been part of 3M for more than two decades, I am committed to building further the strong position that 3M has built over the years in India. The focus will be stronger than ever to provide innovative solutions to the Indian customer and help drive value through local technology and manufacturing. The endeavour is to work closely with the government to help realise Make in India project a success.

Amit Laroya, former MD, 3M, added here, I am glad to hand over this position to someone who has a proven track record both in India and the US. 3M India will benefit from her experience and leadership.

3M India is a publicly traded company on the Bombay Stock Exchange and National Stock Exchange with annual sales of Rs 2,103 crore (FY2015-16).
Global communications consultancy, Maxus, has been award the media mandate for Tata CLiQ  Tata Groups exclusive and authentic phygital ecommerce marketplace. The account was won post a multi-agency pitch and will be handled from the Mumbai office of Maxus. The mandate involves management of all media across Television, Print, Radio, Cinema, etc.



TataCLiQ.com, the first-of-its-kind multi-brand phygital e-commerce marketplace, has launched its maiden campaign  #SureThing. The campaign centred on a camel as its unlikely protagonist, stems from the fact that everything one buys on TataCLiQ.com is a C.A.M.E.L., that is, Certified Authentic Merchandise Everybody Loves.



Kartik Sharma, Managing Director, Maxus South Asia, said, We are thrilled to be associated with Tata CLiQ. We manage a number of businesses from the Tata Group and are truly looking forward to being a partner in building another successful brand from the Group. Tata CLiQ is uniquely positioned to create a whole new shopping revolution amongst consumers and pioneer the Phygital (seamless merger of physical, that is, in-store and digital shopping experiences) concept in India.

Right from the onset - from the pitch brief, the Tata CLiQ business was an exciting opportunity that Maxus wanted to partner. Being a part of creating a whole new shopping experience for consumers is something we truly look forward to. And partnering a Tata brand is always a privilege, said Anand Chakravarthy, Managing Partner, Maxus India.

Prathyusha Agarwal, Head  Marketing, Tata CLiQ, commented, In a category cluttered with product forward, sales, discount advertising or high end fashion and lifestyle imagery that is indistinguishable from one brand to the other, we chose to tell a quirky tale using camels and associating them with the guarantee of finding authentic and genuine products at TataCLiQ.com . With a novel proposition and communication idea, we are sure that we will build a strong salient brand. We believe that Maxus will be a true partner in understanding the brand and bringing it alive across vehicles and with their vast spread of services from analytics to creative content development.
Mankind Pharma, a leading pharmaceutical company in India, has announced the debut of Acnestar, an anti-acne range of gel and soap suitable for mild to moderate skin types.

Actor Shruti Hassan has been roped in to endorse Acnestar.

Although, teens suffer the most, acne can develop at any age and needs to be treated with proper medication. Unlike other face gels, Acnestar is easily absorbed by the skin, thereby keeping it moisturised, soft and supple.

Its unique three-way action works efficiently and effectively, leaving clear and acne free skin. First step is to wash face with Acnestar soap which contains benzoyl peroxide that attacks bacteria on skin. Upon rinsing the foam, it gradually liberates oxygen in the presence of water, which helps in reducing acne. It also removes dirt and excess oil from the skin. Further, the application of Acnestar Gel helps in treating existing acne and leaves nothing but a clear skin. Acnestar gel contains Clindamycin, which acts as an anti-bacterial & Nicotinamide which prevents swelling and redness caused due to pimples and acne.

Acnestar is available in the market, priced at Acnestar gel 15 gm pack for Rs 70 and 75 gm Acnestar soap for Rs 59.89.




Swift Response 16

Senior Airman Kate Vojtko, a 40th Airlift Squadron loadmaster, observes the propellers of a C-130J Super Hercules during exercise Swift Response 16 on June 6, 2016, at Ramstein Air Base, Germany. Swift Response is a joint, multinational-exercise designed to train the U.S. Global Response Force alongside high-readiness forces from Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Spain and the United Kingdom. The members of the 40th AS support theater commanders' requirements with combat-delivery capability through tactical airland and airdrop operations, as well as humanitarian efforts and aeromedical evacuation. (U.S. Air Force photo/Staff Sgt. DeAndre Curtiss)
Edwards testing facility hosts first Canadian air force plane

For the first time ever, a Royal Canadian Air Force plane has entered the Benefield Anechoic Facility, a state-of-the-art center for electronic warfare testing.



A team of engineers, operators and defense scientists from Canada are wrapping up electronic warfare testing of a CC-130J Hercules transport plane.



Canada is updating its fleet of legacy CC-130H aircraft with the J model, which are the same as the U.S. Air Force C-130Js and used for tactical airlift of troops and supplies.



The team has conducted multiple tests in the past few weeks focusing on the ALR-56M radar warning receiver and its integration with the rest of the Defensive Electronic Warfare Suite and aircraft mission computer.



"The BAF is the closest thing to actually flying the aircraft in (a radio frequency) threat environment, said Emil Poliakov, a Canada Department of National Defense radar warfare engineer. The chamber allows us to execute multiple test objectives in a controlled-repeatable manner and collect data to evaluate the radar warning receiver's technical performance and effectiveness.



The BAF, operated by the 772nd Test Squadron, is the largest anechoic chamber in the world and can fit pretty much any airplane inside. It provides a "free space" so electronic warfare tests can be conducted without radio frequency interference from the outside world. The chamber is filled with polyurethane and polyethylene pyramids designed to stop reflections of electromagnetic waves. The size of the pyramids, which are painted dark blue or black, varies depending on the particular frequency and test procedure being conducted. Aircraft systems can be tested and verified that they work properly prior to actual flight test.



The isolation from outside interferences enables testers to determine the electromagnetic compatibility of the CC-130J's systems.



"Our DEWS systems are often programmed and tested in isolation. We do not have a capability like the BAF, which would allow us to test the systems in an integrated fashion, Poliakov said. This program allows us to exercise the complete integrated suite before the aircraft goes through an expensive flight trial.



The test team designed all the emitters the BAF is going to generate around a fictional threat area.



"We've set up our objectives to simulate a contested (radio frequency) environment and we're going to see various early warning, air to air, long-range surface to air, and anti-air artillery threat systems come up to exercise the full capabilities of the radar warning receiver and provide relevant experience to the operator in the cockpit, Poliakov said.



The electronic warfare data collected during this testing will be shared with partner nations as part of an agreement signed last year between the U.S., Canada, U.K. and Australia. The agreement is called the Multinational Test and Evaluation Program.



"This agreement provides an unprecedented access to the partnering nations' EW trials and data," Poliakov said. "The CC-130J trial at the BAF is the first time the agreement has been used since it was officially signed in 2015. We invited representatives from the U.K. and Australia to witness this trial and will share all of the results with our allies."



Poliakov added the agreement eliminates a lot of repetitive testing and road blocks and allows the partner nations to discuss directly with their allies in the test community about system capabilities and deficiencies. The countries share data and test planning.



"This agreement allows the allies to work together and contribute to the common goal of increasing crew and aircraft survivability in a potential threat environment, Poliakov said.



During a meeting last year, Poliakov said Mario Dorado of the 772nd TS invited the Canadians to Edwards Air Force Base to conduct EW testing on the CC-130J, thus initiating the first action of the joint program.



The CC-130J brought to Edwards AFB is from 8 Wing located at Canadian Forces Base Trenton, Ontario. Canada purchased 17 CC-130Js with the last one delivered in 2012.



On the outside the CC-130J looks almost identical to the legacy CC-130H Hercules, but internally the J model is essentially a completely new aircraft that can fly faster, higher and farther, while carrying heavier loads with better fuel economy.



While this is the first time an RCAF plane has come to test in the BAF, Poliakov hopes it won't be the last.



"We have had a fantastic experience at the BAF. We were able to complete all planned test objectives and collect data, which we don't normally have access to, Poliakov said. This facility provides the missing link between systems testing in the lab and flight trials at a range. I hope we'll be able to integrate the BAF into our regular DEWS test cycles for all fleets in the RCAF."



The CC-130J team is expected to complete testing this week.
The Defense Logistics Agency and the Air Force released a request for information regarding the pursuit of energy resilience at Beale Air Force Base, California, on June 8.The Air Force selected Beale AFB as the lead site for the Resilient Energy Demonstration Initiative program earlier this year , after Air Combat Command deemed it to have the necessary components to be successful in that capacity.The RFI is a component of REDI and aims to identify and demonstrate potential installation energy resilience projects, and develop a sustainable and replicable process for implementing projects across the Air Force."This RFI is an important step to enhance mission assurance through energy assurance," said Miranda Ballentine, the assistant secretary of the Air Force for installations, environment and energy. "Through REDI, the Air Force will demonstrate new ways to power critical missions on our installations by incorporating and integrating 21st century technologies and procurement strategies."The RFI, which will remain open for responses until July 15, asks energy developers or other potential respondents to suggest approaches for creating resilient energy systems. These systems could include energy generation, storage and microgrid controls technologies, and also require integrating existing authorities for government and privately financed energy projects.Senior Air Force leaders have applauded the RFI's focus on tying energy investments to mission sustainment."Strategic energy agility -- both in the air and in the ground -- is key to robust intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance," said Gen. Hawk Carlisle, the ACC commander. "Through this REDI project, we are deploying game changing energy technologies to ensure combatant commanders have the ISR to win."Mark Correll, the deputy assistant secretary of the Air Force for environment, safety and infrastructure, said, "This RFI represents a new approach for how the Air Force pursues energy assurance for its installations.By connecting Beale AFB's core missions with their energy requirements directly, we will ensure that our energy investments are targeted to enhance our military capability. And by adopting a holistic approach to energy resilience, we hope to encourage creative collaboration with industry partners."The RFI can be found here
Living with mental illness has been a harrowing ordeal for Safiatu Kondeh. The 34-year-old, who lives in Kabala, northern Sierra Leone, with her mother and two children, has had to endure conditions almost worse than the disease.
Dr. Bharat Patankar has threatened to undertake Combing operation in Sanatan Sansthas Ashram in Goa on 12th June for searching the killers of Dr. Narendra Dabholkar and Comrade Govind Pansare. In this matter the institution has lodged a complaint that immediate action should be taken against Dr. Patankar. The complaint was lodged with the Chief Ministers of Maharashtra and Goa States, Director General of Police, District Police Superintendents, local peoples representatives and Home Minister.

Similarly, a post appeared on Patankars facebook account, Kill the Spokesman of Sanatan Sanstha by shooting him. This goes to show that Dr. Patankar is habituated in spreading terror by making anti-Constitutional statements. His violent attitude is made obvious from his acts. Dr. Patankar and his activists have taken the law in their hands during many agitations conducted by them. As a result, many offences were registered against Dr.Patankar and his organisation.

Abhay Vartak spokesperson of Sanatan Sanstha said, On the background of the threat, the possibility of Dr. Patankar and his colleagues intruding the Sanatan Ashram, assaulting physically the seekers in Ashram and at other places cannot be ruled out. This poses a serious threat to law and order situation in the above states. Hindu Vidhidnya Parishad has also lodged an official complaint in this regard.

In the matter of killings of Dr Dabholkar and Pansare, a petition is under hearing of the High Court and as per the demand of their family members and CBI is investing the case. Under such circumstances, to issue a threat of Combing operation is like showing lack of confidence on Judiciary and taking the law into hands. If Dr. Patankar feels that his Combing operation is more effective than that by CBI, he should first use it against jihadi terrorists. Therefore, we have urged the Chief Minister and Director General of Police that Patankar should be banned from entering Kolhapur and Sindhudurg districts to maintain the law and order situation in the states.
Delhi Police have arrested four persons who were hatching a conspiracy to kill jailed underworld don Chhota Rajan, on the order of rival fugitive don Dawood Ibrahims lieutenant Chhota Shakeel.

The Special Cell arrested the four accused Roger Robinson, Junaid, Yunus and Manish  on June 3. Robinson is from Rohini, Junaid from Seelampur, Yunus lived in Ghaziabad, and Manish is from Noida..

Later, they were produced in a court which sent them to judicial custody, a senior police official said.

Investigation is underway, Special Commissioner of Police (Special Cell) Arvind Deep said.

The four were arrested after their interactions with Shakeel surfaced. The accused were in touch with Shakeel through internet chats and phone. One of the accused was in regular touch with Shakeel, who also offered him money to procure weapons.

The order was to kill Rajans driver first and then the jailed don. Rajans driver has been coming to Delhi since his boss was sent to Tihar. The plot was to target Rajan either during the time when he would be taken from Tihar to court or while returning to the jail after a hearing.

On May 1, a Tihar jail official had received an SMS on his mobile phone threatening The End of Rajan very soon.

Police also claimed have recovered a pistol and live cartridges from possession of one of the accused.

The four accused are also lodged in Tihar jail, where Rajan is in a high-security ward, the official added.

Rajan (55), who was on a run for around 27 years, was arrested from Bali in Indonesia, based on a tip-off from Australian Federal Police, and brought to India in November last year.

A special court on Wednesday framed charges for alleged offences of cheating, forgery and criminal conspiracy against gangster Chhota Rajan and three others in a fake passport case.

Special CBI Judge Vinod Kumar passed the order after Rajan, produced before the court via video conferencing, pleaded not guilty and claimed trial.

The charges were framed against Rajan for allegedly procuring a fake passport in the name of Mohan Kumar with the help of three government officials, also accused in the case. Earlier during the arguments on framing of charges, the CBI had alleged that the government officials conspired to issue the passport to Rajan in the name of one Mohan Kumar, a non-existent person in complete violation of procedures.

CBI had told the court that Rajan, who is currently lodged in Tihar Jail under judicial custody, was accused in several cases of heinous nature involving charges of murder and extortion and when in 1995, a Red Corner Notice was issued against him, he had used a new identity to escape.

Rajan had denied the allegation that he used a fictitious identity with the help of fake passport to escape the law as he was accused in several cases of heinous nature.
Judith DSouza, an Indian national, late on Thursday, was kidnapped by unknown gunmen near Qala Fattulah area in Kabul, security officials confirmed. According to reports, the 40-year-old woman is an employee of Agha Khan network, an NGO.



The Indian Embassy is in touch with senior Afghan authorities and the government is also in touch also with her family in Kolkata. All efforts are being made by Afghan authorities to secure her early release.

The incident took place in the vicinity of Qala-e-Fatullah area of the city where numerous kidnap incidents have taken place in the past.

No group has yet claimed responsibility for the kidnapping.

In response to a tweet from her sister, Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj said that the government is doing everything to rescue her.

Sources said all efforts are being made by Afghan authorities to secure Ms DSouzas early release.

The DSouzas had received a phone call from the Indian embassy early on Friday morning, informing them of the abduction. Shocked and traumatised, they now pray for her safe return home, and are trying to talk to the central and state government for her release.

We received a call at around 1:30 am by the Embassy officials. We were told that three persons have been abducted  my daughter, the driver and the security guard. Thereafter, there has been no news, and no phone calls from the government. We are all very tense and anxious. We just want her to return safely home, said Denzel DSouza, Judiths father.

We got a call from the Indian Embassy, Afghanistan that Judith has been abducted around 1.30 am this morning. Its been over 12 hours and we are yet to hear from the Bengal state government, said Agnes, sister of Judith.
Investigators will examine multiple pieces of debris found off Madagascar and Australia to see if they belong to missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370.

Three pieces were found by American lawyer Blaine Gibson on the island of Nosy Boraha, off the east coast of Madagascar.

Another was found Thursday by Samuel Armstrong amid seaweed and wood on Kangaroo Island, off the coast of South Australia, CNN affiliate Seven News reported.

The Joint Agency Coordination Center, the agency in charge of coordinating the search for MH370, said in a statement that it is aware of these reports that possible debris had been found.

Debris could yield clues

Gibson had been filming with public television channel France 2 when he and the crew came across what appear to be pieces of the Boeing 777 which disappeared in March 2014 with 239 people on board.

Earlier this year, Gibson found a piece of a plane wreckage off the Mozambique Coast, while on a self-funded hunt for the missing plane. Australian investigators later said it almost certainly came from MH370.
Government is considering a proposal to relax foreign direct investment (FDI) norms in existing pharmaceutical companies with a view to attracting more overseas inflows.



According to a proposal of the Finance Ministry, FDI up to 49 percent should be allowed through the automatic route and anything beyond through approval of the Foreign Investment Promotion Board (FIPB), sources said.

The Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP) and the Finance Ministry are discussing the proposal.

Currently, FDI up to 100 percent is permitted in new projects in the pharmaceutical sector, but in brownfield ones  the existing companies  the foreign investment is permitted through FIPB approval.

DIPP has already commissioned a study to assess the impact of foreign direct investment in existing pharmaceutical companies amid concerns over mergers and acquisitions of domestic drug manufacturers.

FDI in the sector is a contentious issue as concerns have been raised over some mergers and acquisitions of Indian pharma companies by foreign giants.

Analysts feel that it is impacting accessibility and growth of the generic industry in the country.

In fact, a report of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Commerce had suggested that a study group be set up to examine the effect of FDI on brownfield pharma or operational firms.

The committee had even suggested that the government should impose a blanket ban on any FDI in brownfield pharma projects.

India is recognised as a major generic medicine hub of the world. The market size of the countrys pharma industry is estimated at over USD 20 billion.

In 2008, Japanese firm Daiichi Sankyo had bought out the countrys largest drugmaker Ranbaxy for USD 4.6 billion.
The government is only indulging in publicity stunts and actual progress is not visible on ground says Pawar.

Nationalist Congress Party President Sharad Pawar launched a scathing attack on the Modi government and said that it has failed to fulfil the promises made to people on the occasion of 2014 Lok Sabha election. Pawar added that there is no achche din for citizens of the country as the government is only indulging in publicity stunts and actual progress is not visible on ground. He made these statements on the occasion of the 17th Foundation day of NCP. Since last two years there have been a sharp fall in the agricultural production as prices of essential commodities like pulses, foodgrains have increased. Pawar said that the government lacks political will to augment agricultural production as farmers are committing suicide. Maharashtra already has reported large number of farmer suicides in the country. Many factories have been shut as lakhs of youth have become unemployed he said.

The people had voted for the Modi government to bring change in governance but the situation remains the same even after two years. The residents of Delhi and Bihar have already voted for other parties as they were fed up of the governments functioning. People have lost faith in the government, said Pawar.

Instead of focussing on governance Modi always blames the erstwhile Congress government for its failure to deliver despite ruling the country for 60 years. He makes controversial statements while visiting foreign countries. He also maligns the countrys image on foreign tours which is unjustified. Prime Minister has to present a better picture of the country when he visits abroad, added Pawar.

Pawar said that Modi is more interested in touring abroad and is least worried about the nations development. He should also visit the drought hit regions of the state to know about the hardships faced by people due to water scarcity. He is misleading the entire nation by give false information about development achieved in the reign of BJP.

People are aware of the truth and they cant be fooled everytime. It is time for the government to deliver or else they may be voted out of power. The Modi wave is fading due to the governments mediocre performance. Since last two years even exports have been falling and manufacturing sector is ailing, said Pawar.

He said people often go on wrong path during their teenage years. However we have already crossed 16 years and our party is observing its 17 foundation day.
Have you ever wondered what is that makes a dancer attractive? That when he or she walks into a room and we presume he or she is a dancer? Whats the aura all about? Well the very same questions crossed my mind almost 22 years back when I first saw renowned Bharatnatyam exponent Prathibha Prahlad.

At the famous and super crowded Pune Ganesh Festival way back in 1990s the accomplished dancer swayed wearing simple red and green Kanjivaram Saree with minimalistic make up and jewellery. But despite being in a crowded place all eyes including mine turned towards her. That is when I knew the power of a dancers personality. Somewhere deep inside me too had a dream to be like her, dynamic, powerful, beautiful and most importantly charismatic.

I waited for a long time in a long queue like a star struck person to say a hello, but could not develop the courage to talk when I got closer to her. The aura she carried was so strong that it left me speechless. But now, this year she has been awarded the prestigious Padma award, so I had a chance to talk to my most admired dancer.

I connected with the dancing diva who also has a stamp in her honour on a social networking site. To my surprise, the moment I introduced myself she remembered me and said, Its been long we met you have become a choreographer now, its good to read about you in news. Now it mesmerised me even more that the dynamic aura also topped with an elephants memory and it was no wonder the government of India has given the dancing diva the 4th Highest Civilian honour of a Padmashree.

We exchanged mobile numbers and finally after more than two decades, I had a conversation with the Sangeet Natak Akadami Awardee.

Padma Shri has come as a peoples award for me



In his latest interview noted Bollywood dancer and choreographer Sandip Soparkkar talks to Smt. Prathibha Prahlad, who is veteran of Bharatnatyam and Kuchipudi and has made several contributions to the world of dance. Prahlad is a multi-faceted performer, educator, choreographer, arts administrator, author and visionary. She has more than forty years of experience in this art form and is also founder festival director of the famous Delhi International Arts Festival. Below is the full transcript of Soparkkars interview with Pratibha Prahlad.

Why did you follow Bharatnatyam and Kuchipudi with no other dance form?



I grew up in Bangalore in the 1960s, where the only forms one could learn then were Bharatanatyam and Kuchipudi. Near my home was a dancer called Smt. Sunanda, who took dance classes. I used to be in her house every day after school between the ages of four and eight. I naturally picked up Bharatanatyam and my teacher introduced me on the stage when I was six years old. From her, I moved to learning from another teacher and thereafter Prof. and Smt. U.S Krishna Rao, the doyennes of dance in Karnataka. My learning and performing was a happy, organic part of my childhood  I dont remember what I did before dance happened!

When I decided to become a professional, I was 16 and in college. I used to go to Madras every weekend and stayed and learnt from Smt. Kalanidhi Narayanan, the grand master of abhinaya. She introduced me to Guru V.S Muthuswamy Pillai, under whom I trained for 10 years. In the afternoons in Madras, I attended the Kuchipudi dance Academy run by Guru Vempati Chinna Satyam, whose choreographies fascinated me. So, in a sense, Bharatantayam and Kuchipudi chose me I did not choose them.

Who do you think is your idol in dance and why? Who you think is the best Bharatnatyam dancer in todays times?



My idol in dance will always be Padma Vibhushan Yamini Krishnamurthy. For one, I belonged to that generation that was inspired by her dance. When I was six years old, my parents took me to see her performance in Ravindra Kalakshetra. The hall was packed and I had to watch her dance perched on my fathers shoulders. My mother remarked then that I should one day be as good a dancer as her and I think subconsciously that drove me to practising like one possessed.

From the generation after me, I did enjoy watching a few younger dancers like Janaki Rangarajan, Mythili Prakash, Jyotsna Jagannath and others -but Ive barely seen them perform 2-3 times.

How does it feel like having a Stamp in your name? How did it all happen?

The Stamp story is pretty unique. I received a call from the Department of Posts & Telegraphs in 2011 and the conversation was about releasing a First Day Cover'(for stamp collectors) with the Logo of Delhi International Arts Festival and its mission statement. I was super excited because in so many ways, this was the biggest honour and recognition for a Festival, which was now a big brand that I created and toiled night and day to make a reality. When my colleague went to have a one to one meeting with the officers, she was told that she should send a recent portrait photo of mine.

On the day of the release, which was the opening day of a fabulous exhibition of Stamps and First Day Covers, I was told that they had decided to honour me with a special My Stamp of Rs.5. It took me a while to realise that I could now send letters with my stamp on the envelope. Of course, it was a limited edition release and I still keep some as a badge of honour and pride.

You started Parasiddha Foundation Forum for Art Beyond Borders and Delhi International Dance Festival, how did you think of so many festivals? And how do you manage them all?

Prasiddha Foundation started in 1990/1991 as a dance organisation that every dancer / musician has. I was teaching, performing and the Organisation was my dance school. But Prasiddha had a destiny of its own. Soon I was approached by a tobacco company to mount huge festivals of classical music and dance. Of course the company was trying to promote itself. But how did it matter when so many musicians and dancers could get a fantastic platform to perform? So I said yes and did a historical festival in Bangalore, which had people standing in queues to enter a classical event, hitherto unheard of in Bangalore.

The success of that event led to curating regular annual music- dance festivals Sharad Vaibhava and Eka Aneka for 12 years. These became iconic festivals and several artistes from Karnataka who were not recognised at the National level came to the forefront. In 1995, the District administration at Bellary and Karnataka Tourism partnered with Prasiddha to put up the mammoth Vijayotsav- Hampi Tourism Festival. I did this for three years and handed over the Festival to the Government of Karnataka.

Forum for Art beyond Borders is a Delhi registered NGO, which was started to organise the Delhi International Arts Festival in 2007. FABB, so far does only the Delhi International Arts Festival. Though the Trustees are very different in both these organisations, the office works for both as they are involved in promoting arts and artistes and preserving our heritage.

Why did to relocate from Bangalore to Delhi?

I decided to become a mother in 1998 and have lovely twin boys. I relocated to Delhi for protecting the children from unnecessary and unwanted attention and to bring them up in a conducive, normal environment.

You were honoured with The Padma award. Did you think you deserved it long time back? (I think you deserved it!)

Thank you for saying that I deserved it long back. In fact, the thousands of messages, letters, emails, I received from people from all over the world said the same thing. It was overwhelming to know that so many people, be they high ranked bureaucrats, politicians, spiritual leaders, artistes, gurus ,the artistic & journalistic fraternity and so many members of the audience that I never knew of, cared about me and my art and followed my artistic journey.

I am very grateful. For me, the Padmashri has come as a peoples award as all of them very genuinely happy and relieved that the Nation had finally recognised my contribution.

You have always been into controversies due to your beauty as well as your dance and connections? What do you have to say about this?

I try to ignore controversies. People who are narrow minded or jealous tend to knit stories and controversies around a person only to undermine and gossip. I have never had the time or the inclination to be playing small, dirty games. I wish more and more people would be straightforward, decent and stop fishing in slush and use their time creatively. I have lived my life openly and frankly and have nothing to hide. I take ownership for my decisions in life and will continue to live on my terms and conscience.

Vande Mataram made headlines is one of your most talked about choreographies, where all classical dance forms came together. How did you conceive it and why?

The first multi-style huge production, I choreographed was in 2002, called Panchajanya- sights and sounds of India. It was for the first time that I worked with multiple dancers from five different dance styles and wove these styles between rhythm and melody. I worked very, very hard on the concept and the artistic direction. We had a 40 member choir conducted by Madhup Mudgal and a percussion ensemble of 30 members, conducted by Sri Ganesh. Between the melody and the percussion ensemble came the five major dance styles of India.

Strangely, some of the dancers, who had lent their students to me to partake and who closely watched the manner in which it was done, broke away, in 2004, when the Government changed and did their own choreographies, imitating mine. Those were really just each dance form doing a number from its own repertoire in groups and finally all of them coming together on stage. I thought this was unethical and not special, but these groups managed to get prime performances and travel to many places in the world, courtesy the UPA Govt.

So, I decided to choreograph Vande Mataram  with all eight styles of classical dance plus the martial art form of Chhau. Vande Mataram got a standing ovation on its debut. Never had people seen all the dance forms, individually and collectively knitting a beautiful kaleidoscope of India.

We have performed quite a bit, but again several dancers and teachers have copied, imitated and done smaller versions of Vande Mataram, called it by different names and even till today perform everywhere.

Which brings me to the question of patenting and IPR of artistic works in India. We have no laws and no protection of creative works  especially in classical dance and music. Those who are ahead of the curve always loose out to others who copy and re-do the choreography. Honestly it all this pains me.

You have been on board of CBSE for dance syllabus, setting papers etc. Do you think India is still only looking at Indians dances? Today we have loads of international dance forms too in our country. You think we should introduce international dances too as part of dance syllabus? If so, what can be done to support it?

The problem with India is that we have not been able to successfully teach our culture and art forms to our children. The result is obvious lack of interest and knowledge about our traditions, culture and art forms. Moreover, we have two generations now, that worship anything that is western and in the movies. It is almost as if the culture of India is Bollywood.

I feel pained that we are unable to bring into the curriculum studies on art history  be it ancient, middle or contemporary. Arts management is yet not a coveted management programme or job. I strongly feel that knowledge of our art forms gives us a firm base and understanding of the diversity and plurality of our people. This should be the foundation or base.

Once a student is sufficiently informed about this, history and practice of art forms from other parts of the world can be introduced. The student will then be able to make comparative studies and bring new and path breaking knowledge and work into the field. But all this can happen only if people revere their cultural traditions and arts and heritage.

Pratibha means talent and undoubtedly parents of Prathibha Prahlad gave her the right name, because the Pratibha and knowledge of this vibrant and pulsating dancer is totally unmatched. Through this interview I would thank Prathibha Prahlad for being a Dronacharya of my life. I want to tell you all that I feel glad and extremely fortunate that when I was maturing as a person and as a dancer, God made me bump into a person like her who unknowingly influenced me and helped me develop a personality that describes a dancer perfectly.

Sandip Soparrkar

Artscape
In a sarcastic take on Prime Minister Narendra Modis bonhomie with Barack Obama, key BJP ally Shiv Sena on Friday wondered if the US President will shift to India when his term gets over. The Sena also slammed the US for pursuing a dual policy towards India and Pakistan.

US President has become a good friend of PM Modi. Their relationship is so deep that we wonder if the Obama family will shift to Surat, Rajkot, Porbandar, Manali, Mahabaleshwar or Delhi post his retirement. No other Indian PM would have got so much love from an American President in the past, the Sena said in an editorial in party mouthpiece Saamana.

Obamas presidency is set to end on January 20, 2017. The Sena said that Modi thanking America for standing by India in its times of need is only an example of his courteous nature.

But, it is the same America, which has not stopped its policy of helping Pakistan financially or providing them with arms and ammunition. On one hand, America helps India fight terrorism and on the other, sells F-16 fighter jets to the terrorist nation. This policy of America is dangerous, it said.

Noting that it was true that America has warned Pakistan to take action against the perpetrators of terror at Pathankot IAF base, Sena sought to know who will take action against the terrorists.

America enters a country where its enemy (apparently referring to Osama Bin Laden) is hiding and guns him down, but for India, it only gives warnings. This duplicity needs to be understood, the Sena said.

Treating Pathankot attack on par with 26/11, Obama in a clear message asked Pakistan to punish the perpetrators and vowed to stand with India against terror threats emanating from Pakistan-based groups like JeM, LeT and D-company.


NOTE: So, if a doctor, a practicing medical doctor with a clean license like Dr. Daniel Kalb, questions vaccine safety - here's what will happen - the "public health" community - meaning Pharma Phield Office will consider actions: According to the Tennessee Department of Health's website, Kalb has had no disciplinary actions taken against him. It is not clear if his stance on autism and vaccines will provoke to board to take any actions against him. The average American should ask him or herself - how on earth is a medical doctor at fault for questioning a product that he himself has to administer to patients? How indeed?



We need to support the doctors who dare to speak out. Thank you to JB Handley for this screen shot of the blog post before it was pulled it down. Seems Dr. Kalb may be learning the hard way about the Pharmafia - who've gone to the mattresses - behind our vaccination program. (Hey, it's always a good day when you can work a phrase from The Godfather into your intro.) KS





From FOX 17:



FRANKLIN, Tenn. (WZTV) -- A Franklin doctor is refusing to give vaccines, questioning their safety.

On the Cool Springs Family Medicine's site, Dr. Daniel Kalb wrote in a blog he believed vaccines are linked to autism. The blog has since been taken down... [See screen shot above for the blog post while it was live.]



The CDC and the Tennessee Department of Health say there's no proven link between vaccinations and autism. Both agencies recommend children be vaccinated.

Executive Director of Autism Tennessee Babs Tierno has an autistic son, but she doesn't believe there's a link between the developmental condition and vaccines.

"We want to treat every individual as an individual," Tierno said. "Any medical professional who makes blanket statements and blanket decisions without taking an individualized approach that is a bit concerning."

FOX 17 reached out to Dr. Kalb's office twice this week. An employee told FOX 17 he is not currently commenting on the blog.

According to the Tennessee Department of Health's website, Kalb has had no disciplinary actions taken against him. It is not clear if his stance on autism and vaccines will provoke to board to take any actions against him.... Read more here.
WASHINGTON, June 8, 2016  While fraud in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program is at an all-time low, Republican lawmakers complained sharply during a three-hour hearing Thursday that USDA needs to do a better job of combating it and said states should get more control over the initiative formerly known as food stamps.

Its really about making sure SNAP is supported and feeds the hungry in the way that it should, Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., told Agri-Pulse after the hearing. Bad actors  weve got to do a better job figuring out how to go after them and empower the states to allow them to go after them, he said.

Meadows, chairman of the House Oversight subcommittee that held the hearing, maintains that USDA is stretched too thin and that states could better prosecute those who illegally buy and sell SNAP benefits, also known as trafficking.

It was a sentiment repeated often by other Republican lawmakers, one that was rejected by Kevin Concannon, USDA under secretary for Food, Nutrition and Consumer Services, one of five witnesses.

Concannon stressed USDA has continuously increased its efforts to crack down on retailers who traffic SNAP benefits and reduced the practice to just 1.3 percent of all transactions, down from a high of 4 percent 20 years ago.

While the trafficking rate is low, and 98.7 percent of the benefits are used properly, we continue to focus on this vital area because, when almost $70 billion (in FY 2015) in taxpayer-supported benefits are involved, continuous attention, energy and diligence is required, Concannon said in his testimony.

Furthermore, he said that USDA sanctioned 2,700 retailers for SNAP abuses in 2015, a 21 percent increase from 2014.

More than 1,900 stores were permanently disqualified for trafficking or falsifying an application, and over 700 stores were sanctioned for other violations such as the sale of ineligible items, Concannon said. Our strengthened vetting policies and procedures have increased our ability to prevent the authorization of firms that attempt to circumvent SNAPs business integrity rules.

Subcommittee members like Rep. Tim Walberg, R-Mich., were not convinced and pushed for more safeguards, such as mandatory photo identification on the Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT) cards people use to spend SNAP benefits.

Mary Mayhew, commissioner of Maines Department of Health and Human Services, also said she believed photo IDs are useful.

When someones picture is on their card, it only follows that they are less likely to sell it for cash or trade it for drugs, she said. We have seen the results  while EBT cards still turn up in drug-related arrests too often, we dont see EBT cards with photos turning up in those raids.

All states are able to issue voluntary photo identification on EBT cards, but Maine and Massachusetts are the only two states that do currently.

Concannon told Agri-Pulse that several states have considered photo IDs, but rejected the idea.

Its not very effective, Concannon said.

Did you know Agri-Pulse subscribers get our Daily Harvest email and Daybreak audio Monday through Friday mornings, a 16-page newsletter on Wednesdays, and access to premium content on our ag and rural policy website? Sign up for your four-week free trial Agri-Pulse subscription.





Mike Carroll, secretary of the Florida Department of Children and Family Services agreed. He said Florida considered putting photos on EBT cards, but rejected the idea. SNAP traffickers, he said, would not care if there were photos on the cards.

What Carroll did want was for Florida to have the authority to shut down retailers that the state could prove were trafficking the benefits.

Only USDA has the authority to do that, he said, and states can only go after the individual card holders.

Meadows tried to get Concannon to agree to a pilot program that would give states the ability to go after retailers, but Concannon said he did not know if USDA had the authority to transfer that power.

Meanwhile, Kay Brown, director for education, workforce, and income security at the U.S. Government Accountability Office, testified about a 2014 investigation that showed that USDA needed to do a better job in following SNAP users multiple requests for replacement EBT cards  often a sign that fraud is occurring.

#30

For more news, go to: www.Agri-Pulse.com
Saving Nineveh: A Catholic Daughter Fights for Her People

Juliana Taimoorazy with Assyrian Church of the East patriarch. CHICAGO -- Can a genocide happen twice to the same people in 100 years? Just ask the Assyrians of the Middle East. In the late 1910s and early 1920s, U.S. readers opened their newspapers to read of the Ottoman Empire's systematic extermination of these ancient Christians in their homelands, which stretched from modern-day Turkey across the northern swathes of modern-day Syria, Iraq and Iran. Today, few U.S. readers even realize the Assyrians still exist. But this ancient Christian and biblical people of the Middle East faces the prospect that the second genocide started by the Islamic State group (ISIS) -- combined with assimilation in the West -- will finish their religious and ethnic extermination set in motion nearly 100 years ago. More than 150,000 Assyrian Christians -- many of whom are part of the Chaldean Catholic and Syriac Catholic Churches -- were driven from their homes in Mosul by ISIS in June 2014, to seek refuge in Iraqi Kurdistan. In neighboring Syria, thousands of Assyrians in villages along the Khabur River, a Euphrates tributary in the northeast, are fighting for their survival, caught on one side between ISIS and on the other side by Kurdish YPG separatists. In this interview with the Register, Juliana Taimoorazy, founder and president of the Iraqi Christian Relief Council and a fellow at the Philos Project, speaks about her work as a Catholic and Assyrian descendent of genocide survivors in trying to save her Assyrian people from extermination by ISIS and create secure homeland on the ancestral Nineveh Plain. For both the Church and the world, what is at stake is the survival of the living witnesses to the Bible's ancient history and the Church's apostolic age, when the Assyrians received the Gospel directly from St. Thomas and literally took it as far as China, the known ends of the earth. Juliana, can you tell us about your own experience of religious persecution as a Catholic Assyrian in Iran and why you had to leave and seek asylum in the United States? I was born in Tehran, where my parents were living. Then, in 1979, the Iranian Revolution erupted and changed our lives completely. My siblings, who were much older than me, really had a good life in Iran under the shah. Minorities were respected then; we had religious freedom -- but then, when it came to me [after the revolution], I was mocked for my Catholic faith. I was told repeatedly that I would burn in hell for my Catholic name. I was thrown out of class quite a few times, because I would defend the Trinity. And they would try to convert me to Islam by reciting the Shahada, the [conversion] verse in the Quran, and I would refuse to do that. Eventually, my father decided that he had to smuggle me out. Later, as a U.S. citizen, you founded the Iraqi Christian Relief Council at the encouragement of Cardinal Francis George of Chicago to advocate on behalf of Christians in Iraq, who are also ethnic Assyrians. What pushed you to start this apostolate? It was 2006, when I was watching Fox News, and I saw two churches being bombed simultaneously in Baghdad. Although this had been going on since 2004, this was the first time I'd seen it with my own eyes: seeing a 20-second clip of my Assyrian people drenched in blood in the Baghdad streets, carrying their kids out of church. ... But then it went away, and no other station -- that I saw -- covered it. And I was wondering, "Why do we not care about all this hurt or devastation?" So, what we do [at ICR Council] is we travel throughout the United States and around the globe, because a lot of people are taking interest in this cause, and we educate them about who the Christians in Iraq are. We tell people that we're the children of Nineveh -- the children of the same [biblical] empire -- and we raise funds for food, shelter and medicine for the Iraqi Christians who are displaced in the whole region. Many people do not know today that Assyrian Christians have experienced genocide at least twice in 100 years in their native lands: the first by the Ottoman Turks in 1914 and again by ISIS in 2014. Did the first genocide also affect your family in Iran? I did a quick genealogy, and I was able to trace my roots to Urmia, although we Assyrians know that we all came from northern modern-day Iraq. I found out, for the last 200 years, my family had been living in Urmia [Iran], where it used to be populated with many Assyrians -- Urmia is known as the cradle of culture, knowledge and education for the Assyrians of the Middle East. My great-grandfather, who is American-educated, had a big property there. By 1914, when the genocide began at the hands of Turks and Kurds, he housed 2,000 Assyrians on his property. Many contracted disease, and he died along with them, because he was taking care of 2,000 people. My great-grandmother, his wife, was kidnapped, along with her two sisters, by the Kurds, and we never heard from them again, suspecting that they were killed. Because of World War I and the genocide, the remaining members of my family on both sides walked on foot to Russia. My grandfather, my mother's father, was 12 years old, and he remembered that parents were forced to leave their young kids and infants along the way because they couldn't carry them. So they would take the older ones and leave behind the younger ones, and the majority died. He could hear the sobs of those mothers who had to make these hard choices until the day he died. During 1933 to '37, when Stalin started arresting foreign nationals, the majority of the men on both sides of my family were arrested and sent to gulag camps, where are the majority of them died. But the women were sent back to Iran, and that's how I ended up being born in Iran. What big projects is the Iraqi Christian Relief Council working on to support Assyrian Christians in the Middle East? We're working on three major projects: One is providing housing for these people who have been displaced. We're working on a cancer project, because there are a lot of people who are suffering from cancer -- we don't know why, but cancer has erupted among the refugees ... and then education projects, where we're speaking with folks from the West to sponsor children's education. The other thing is that, through the Iraqi Christian Relief Council, we have ways of connecting American donors and Catholic donors with people on the ground. So, for example, if say a family or a church in America wants to adopt a group of displaced people in northern Iraq and have a relationship with them, and help them financially so that they can be preserved where they are at, we can do that. If they want to sponsor a child's education or adopt a daycare center that is very poor in northern Iraq or Jordan and Lebanon, we can do that. This way, the donors build a relationship with the persons they are helping. What do you want people to know the most about the Assyrian Christians -- many of whom are Chaldean Catholics -- and the threats they face today? I really want Americans and the world to know who we Assyrians are and what we have really given to the world. As Robert Nicholson, who is the executive director of the Philos Project, says, Christianity is really a Middle-Eastern religion, and a lot of people tend to miss that point. Jesus was not born in New York. This is a Middle-Eastern religion, and the Assyrian people took Christianity -- after they converted to this faith, which they encountered from St. Thomas the Apostle himself -- as the first missionaries, all the way to China and to India. We gave a lot to Christianity as Eastern Christians, and we served the world for many millennia as the Assyrian people. Our history is 6,700 years old: We established the first library in the world, along with other contributions we have made. People tend to forget that we are here; we are a people that, unfortunately, is faced with ethnic cleansing and religious cleansing; we are assimilating into the West; and we are being extracted out of Iraq by force: not because we want to leave, but because we are forced to leave. We are really on the verge of extinction. I want my fellow Americans and Europeans to know who we are and help us preserve our culture, our language and our many ways. What steps can be taken to support the Assyrian language, culture and people within their ancestral homeland? It's important for people to understand that these Iraqi Christians are not Arab Christians. They have an ethnicity that is attached to them, and that is Assyrian. So people need to call them Assyrian Christians, not just Iraqi Christians. When people understand this, that's the first step to preserving our name and our culture. The other thing to understand is that if activists and organizations actively extract people from Iraq, displacing them across the world, and don't help them to preserve their identity or support them to stay in Iraq, then we're adding to the assimilation in the West and erasing their culture. When [Assyrians] migrate to the West, we have to help them continue learning the language, living their traditions and having their liturgy. At Philos Project, we have developed methods of helping preserve these cultures in the West. You're a fellow at the Philos Project. What is that organization's role in helping you save the Assyrian people in their homeland? To preserve our people, the Philos Project is writing a very big document on the importance of the Nineveh Plain, the homeland of not only the Assyrians, but also of other minorities, such as Yazidis and Turkmen. We're getting a lot of interest from different non-governmental organizations and people on [Capitol] Hill. The State Department and many members of Congress are waiting for this white paper that the Philos Project is in the process of completing. It really is extremely critical for us to have partners, who believe in preserving the Assyrian race and language and will come along our side to make this happen. What impact would the genocide of the Assyrians and Middle-East Christians have on the entire Church? If Middle-Eastern Christianity is wiped out, then I believe the Western Church would be as a house that is shaken and weak. ISIS has destroyed so many lives, churches and monuments of the Assyrians. Do you believe that, after ISIS, it is possible to restore what has been lost? Restoring the people is the most important thing right now, because brick-and-mortar [buildings] will come and go. But the Church is the people, not the buildings -- we all know that -- so restoring these people's spirit and restoring these people's lives is the most important thing. Then comes the rebuilding of the churches and heritage sites that have been destroyed. I don't know how much we can repair the heritage sites that have been destroyed -- honestly, churches have been torn down and rebuilt all the time, but, to me, it's a little different when our lamassu, our winged bulls, have been completely destroyed, the very lamassu that had been prepared in the very hands of those Assyrians of 3,000 years ago. But let me tell you a quick story: We know that the Tomb of Jonah was buried underneath an ancient church in Nineveh (today's Mosul), and on top of that church was built a large mosque, because when the Muslims would attack, they would destroy the church and build a mosque over the property. In this case, quite a few centuries ago, the attackers did not completely destroy this ancient church; instead, they built a Shiite mosque, which covered the church building completely. When ISIS destroyed the Tomb of Jonah -- that Shiite mosque -- what we see today is the church tower for the first time in 1,000 years. This is a symbol of hope that the Church will live on. However, if these people are not protected and helped, and if they are purposely extracted to be resettled in the West, who is going to rebuild those destroyed churches? Who's going to go worship in those churches? We don't want museums -- we want thriving churches to be rebuilt again. Eastern Christianity is the bridge of understanding between the Christian West and the Islamic East. As a final thought, Juliana: How has this whole experience of advocating for your people under genocide affected you and your faith personally? I see miracles every single day through my ministry, the Iraqi Christian Relief Council. I've grown stronger in my Christian faith, as I just see what God can do in changing people's lives, bringing communities and the faithful together. It is truly, truly amazing, and it has been a blessing. I'm humbled that the Lord has chosen me to carry this cross. Although it is a painful journey, seeing so much suffering and destruction, I cannot imagine living a different life. I've seen so much disease; I have seen so many tears that have been shed by men in my presence. It has been humbling, and at the same time, I've seen the glory of God in how they have not renounced Christ at the cost of their own lives and suffering.
ISIS' Relentless Destruction of Ancient Heritage Sites

An Assyrian relief, displayed at the Iraqi national museum in Baghdad. ( Reuters) News broke on Wednesday that ISIS militants in Iraq have destroyed another ancient temple; that of Nabu in the Assyrian city of Nimrud. "Compared to imagery collected 12 January 2016, we observe extensive damage to the main entrance of what is known as Nabu Temple," UNITAR, the UN Training and Research Agency, said. It released two satellite images taken on June 3, confirming claims made in an ISIS propaganda video earlier this week that the 2,800-year-old temple had been blown up. Nimrud was looted and large swathes of it bulldozed in March last year. The city dates back to the Middle Assyrian period and was considered to be one of the most important cities in the Assyrian empire. Located 30km south of Mosul in the Nineveh plain, which was overrun by ISIS militants in June 2014 and is now a stronghold of the Islamist group, it was established as the capital during the Neo Assyrian period under King Ashurnasirpal II. Many of the carvings from his palace in the city are now on display at the British Museum in London. Nimrud was until last year one of the most preserved sites in the region, though subject to some neglect and looting in the past two decades. It has been nominated for inclusion in the UNESCO World Heritage list, and Director General Irina Bokova condemned the 2015 attack. He said in a statement at the time: "We cannot remain silent. The deliberate destruction of cultural heritage constitutes a war crime." Looting and bulldozing ancient sites has become one of the hallmarks of ISIS's devastating attempt to create its caliphate, but it's not mindless pillaging. It's not even simply an attempt to demonstrate military strength or power. In fact, experts believe it's part of the group's ongoing attempt to cleanse the Middle East of its religious and cultural heritage; a reality that is far more disturbing. Dr Nicholas Al-Jeloo, a lecturer in Syriac at the University of Melbourne, told Christian Today he was devastated by the Nabu temple's destruction. His parents and siblings were born in Iraq, and he grew up looking at photos of Nineveh, hoping one day to visit himself. "And now I can't; it's been destroyed forever," he said. "Once these sites have been lost they can never be rebuilt. You can build replicas from photos, but it will never be the same." He branded the destruction "a travesty in all respects... because this was people's tangible link to their ancestral heritage. When you destroy that, you not only destroy any kind of cultural ties or memories these people had, but also their right to return or their will to return. What will they return to?" An ancient branch of Christianity, the Assyrian Church of the East has roots dating back to the 1st century AD. Assyrian Christians speak Aramaic, the language of Jesus, and have origins in ancient Mesopotamia -- a territory which is now spread over modern day northern Iraq, north-east Syria and south-eastern Turkey. Connection with the land of their ancestors is incredibly important to modern day Assyrians, and it is this that is being severed by ISIS's campaign. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqi Assyrians have been displaced by the conflict, and just 300,000 are believed to remain in the country. "If there is nothing on the ground which they can identify with as belonging to their culture, what will they return to?" Al-Jeloo asked. "If all their churches and the ancient sites belonging to their ancestors have been destroyed, then for these people the land no longer bears their identity, and this is a very profound thing. People might say it's the world's heritage that is being destroyed, and that's true, but it's also the heritage of the locality and the people who identify with it and with having lived there for thousands of years. This is, in fact, contributing to the genocide against the Assyrians." Both the European Parliament and the US administration has recognised ISIS's mass slaughter and persecution of religious minorities in the Middle East, including Assyrian Christians and Yazidis, as genocide. British MPs voted unanimously in favour of a similar motion in April but it is yet to be agreed by the Conservative government, which maintains an official designation of 'genocide' is a matter for the International Criminal Court. Al-Jeloo said the attempted eradication of entire people groups and their heritage is part of ISIS's plan to destroy "any pre-Islamic vestiges that are left [in the Middle East], for people to not have something to identify with that is pre-Islam". The destruction of ancient sites like the Temple of Nabu, therefore, is part of an Islamist agenda to wipe out anything deemed to pose a threat to their radical interpretation of Sunni Islam. Indeed, in the video released by ISIS this week, a militant said the group wanted to prevent Muslims from returning to idolatry. "The world has a responsibility, not only to the Iraqi people, but to the Yazidis and the Assyrians in particular. These are two vulnerable groups in danger of becoming extinct, both culturally and in reality, and the world has a responsibility to protect them, and ensure their culture is maintained for the future," Al-Jaloo said. "The fact that the majority of the world has remained silent while this is happening is unacceptable."
Chicago's Assyrians Embrace New Technology to Save Ancient Language

Members of Rinyo visit a school in the Assyrian village of Bakhtmi in northern Iraq, during a tour to promote their educational materials. ( Rinyo) Chicago -- Markets, bakeries and hair salons echo with memories of Iraq, and names like Baghdad and Sumeria dot the cityscape of one of Chicago's most vibrant neighbourhoods, where amid the South Asian and Orthodox Jewish shops that line the area sits the city's largest Iraqi neighbourhood - Devon. A closer look reveals that the flag hanging in most windows is the vibrant red, white, and blue tricolour of the Assyrians, and inside most shops it is Syriac - a distant relative of Aramaic, the language of Jesus - that is spoken, with Arabic mixed in to fill in the gaps. Chicago is home to one of the world's largest concentrations of Assyrians, a mostly Christian community that hails from northern Iraq and neighbouring areas in Syria, Turkey and Iran. Around 80,000 Assyrians are thought to call the city home, while another 100,000 live in nearby Detroit. There are thought to be only around 1.2 million Assyrians worldwide (though some estimate the number as high as 3-4 million), meaning that the American Midwest is home to one of the most important concentrations." Yet the community's vibrancy masks the fact that the Syriac language is slowly dying out. Assyrians in the United States are increasingly switching to English, trying their hardest to get ahead while adopting a wait-and-see attitude toward their homelands. While the community's dispersion has created challenges, it has also opened up opportunities. A Chicago-based group named Rinyo - Syriac for "thought" or "idea" - is hoping to spark a global revolution in the way the language is learned, and they have already managed to bring major changes into this conservative community's approach to preserving their language. 'We broadcast our song just miles away from IS' Rinyo was founded in 2011, when physician Robby Edo was visiting his family in Qamishli, a town in Syria near the Iraqi border with a large Assyrian population. He noticed that despite the long history of Syriac literature, few books or materials were published in the language anymore. Similar to neighbouring Iraq, the Syrian government has long emphasised Arabic as a national language at the expense of minority languages like Syriac and Kurdish. Robby spoke to his brother Hedro, a software designer, about the need for more written materials in Syriac to help the younger generation learn, and they began working on a short cartoon. "We found people who were thinking like us and wanted to produce materials to help the language live," Hedro told Middle East Eye. "And now we have Rinyo: a multi-dialect and multicultural global entity." Rinyo meeting with the Patriarch of the Assyrian Church. ( Rinyo) Rinyo has since developed interactive storybooks and alphabet lessons that have reached all corners of the Syriac universe. The group conducted numerous tours visiting Syriac-speaking communities in Iraq and Syria, as well as in the diaspora in Sweden, Germany and many US states. Rinyo even set up a technology lab in Qamishli, employing 10 people on behind-the-scenes technical aspects of the applications. Not only has Rinyo revived interest in Syriac, it is also creating jobs in a war-torn country where the economic situation and political uncertainty have driven many Syrians, especially from the Assyrian minority, to emigrate. Marganita Samuel, a native of the northern Iraqi city of Duhok, is active in Rinyo along with her sister. While they have both volunteered for years teaching Syriac in Sunday School, Samuel complained that language teachers are stuck using out-dated and uninspiring materials. "As teachers, we only spend two hours a week teaching them. But the Rinyo are completely interactive, and with the memory games they get more exposure and retain more." Her sister Ramina Samuel, Rinyo's secretary, agreed: "When we ask people why they don't speak Syriac with their kids, a lot of them say it's because they don't have any Syriac resources from which to teach them. Rinyo is helping us catch up with other communities by creating these resources." Members of Rinyo work on a cartoon at the group's technology centre in Qamishli, Syria. ( Rinyo) Spurred on by the group's success, Assyrians have reached out around the world. Samuel told MEE that some people send lullabies their grandparents used to sing, asking for them to be made into applications so they can be preserved. Not only is Rinyo helping parents pass on the language, it is also helping them revive oral traditions that are in danger of dying out. "Our 'Silent Night' song in Syriac was even broadcast at Christmas in al-Qosh, an Assyrian town in northern Iraq just a few miles away from the ISIS frontlines," Ramina told MEE. "It's so exciting!" Assyrians recall 1915 killings Although there have been Assyrians in the US since the mid-1800s, their numbers have increased rapidly in Chicago as a result of the instability that began with the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 and worsened when the Islamic State group invaded northern Iraq in 2014. The recent wars are hardly the Assyrians' first brush with violence. Their homeland sits in a region with multiple religions, ethnicities and cultures existing together in a rich mosaic of the kind that has long characterised the Middle East. The area's diversity, however, was torn asunder beginning in 1915, when - as the Ottoman Empire began to collapse - authorities carried out a series of mass killings and deportations that culminated in the genocide of around 1.5 million ethnic Armenians, Assyrians, and Greeks. While the Armenian Genocide is widely remembered, the killing of 300,000 Assyrians in what the community calls the Seyfo, or sword, is little known. The genocide has cast a shadow ever since, as the majority of Assyrians fled their homeland as refugees and joined communities in Iraq, Syria and Iran. Others were offered refuge further afield in Arab countries such as Palestine or Lebanon. Part of the difficulty in making reliable estimates of Assyrian population figures today is due to an ongoing dispute over what to call them. Assyrians are split between three churches: the Assyrian Church of the East, the Syrian Orthodox Church, and the Chaldean Catholic Church. The groups often eschew their single ethnic identity and instead call themselves Assyrian, Syriac, and Chaldean in reference to their churches. All three groups speak the Syriac language which they call Sureth in Syriac or Sirianni in Arabic; it is only in English that they are divided over their name. Constructing a single Syriac For Rinyo, the language challenge is complex. Syriac has two main dialects - Eastern and Western - and most applications are in both. But each dialect has numerous sub-dialects, not all of which are totally mutually comprehensible, and all of these dialects are only spoken. There is a shared classical written version, but it is never spoken except in formal settings. As a result, Rinyo members are constantly debating what word to use in the apps. In the process they are developing a standardised spoken variant of the language where none previously existed. But this complexity is nothing new for them. Ramina and Marganita, for example, grew up speaking two very different Eastern sub-dialects, one from Turkey and the other Iran. "We struggled," Ramina told MEE, adding that it took years for them to be able to figure out how to navigate both. "If we get stuck on a word where half the population uses one word but the other half uses another, we try to use both. But sometimes we find out that within each dialect there are five different ways to say it, in which case we have to go back to the classical version to find a word," Robby explained. "Our vision for the future is that we will be able to explore the sub-dialects further and look at the rich traditions that our communities have created... We think that cultural diversity is beautiful," Robby added. A brighter future? In a few short years, Rinyo has managed to revitalise community passion for language preservation, but some fear it may be too little, too late. Father Gewargis Suleiman is the priest at Chicago's Assyrian St George's Cathedral. He previously served the church in Syria and Iraq, where he was born, but has lived in Chicago since 2012. "Back in Iraq, we studied the language at church and spoke Syriac at home," Suleiman told MEE. "But kids here, even the ones who speak the language, are switching to English because it's easier." Suleiman stressed that the wider problem is the lack of strong community institutions in the US given the perpetual focus on hardships back home. "Our people in Iraq and Syria have gone through a lot of difficulties since 1980. During all these years, we focused on how we could financially help the people there. So any money that people had, they sent back. They never focused on keeping ourselves together here," he said. "We need to differentiate between our struggles and their struggles, and take care of ourselves first so we can be strong for them too," he added. It's unclear whether Rinyo's success will be enough to ensure the survival of this ancient language. But the commitment to challenging the status quo is a ray of hope for a community that has lived too long in the shadow of its own extinction. "With everything going on back home, we feel so helpless. But Rinyo is something I can do for my community, my culture, and my language," Ramina told MEE. "Our community is fatigued from giving because there's always a crisis going on," she continued. "But Rinyo is free, and our goal is to spread it as far and wide as possible."
June 9, 2016

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip  Enchanting lights and all sorts of food adorn Gazas markets as Ramadan begins. This years decorations are far more alluring than those of the previous years since the 2014 Israeli war on Gaza, and merchants expect at least a slight improvement in the markets this season.

Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman approved changes to the Kerem Shalom crossing  the only commercial crossing for Gazans  June 3 that included extending its hours of operation. Many traders and importers Al-Monitor interviewed agreed that the quantity of goods popular during Ramadan such as dates, cheese and other products has slightly increased as a result.

Mohammed al-Balawi, a partner in al-Balawi Company for Dates Importing in central Gaza City, told Al-Monitor that the quantities of dates that have entered Gaza through the Kerem Shalom crossing in the southern Gaza Strip meets the needs of the Gazan market, which consumes more than 800 tons of dates during Ramadan.

Balawi said that larger quantities of various types of premium dates have entered Gaza this year compared to the years since the 2014 war, in particular the Medjool type. Notably, Israel controls the types and quantities of dates that are brought into Gaza per the Paris Economic Protocol, which states that the importation of consumer goods shall be done in accordance with the Palestinian and Israeli estimates.

A report issued by the Chamber of Commerce and Industry in Gaza on April 13 pointed to an increase in the number of commercial trucks entering Gaza for the first quarter of 2016. The number of trucks carrying various goods reached 33,006 compared with 16,978 for the same period in 2015 and 11,303 for that period in 2014.

Balawi noted that the current market price for dates ranges between 9 and 27 Israeli shekels ($2.30 to $7) per kilo, but consumer spending is still timid because of the citizens difficult economic situation and the civil servants salary crisis. He is concerned, along with other merchants, that losses will be similar to what they incurred during recent years if the consumer spending remains at this level.

For his part, Ali Abu Sakhr, the owner of Bilal for Toys, one of the largest shops for toys and Ramadan decorations in the Nuseirat refugee camp in Deir el-Balah governorate, expects a slight improvement in the market in the coming days, since Hamas employees have received part of their salaries. In light of the rampant unemployment in Gaza, these funds may be the financial liquidity needed to activate the market.

Abu Sakhr told Al-Monitor, I have large quantities of lanterns and decorations for Ramadan that Gazans usually purchase during the first few days of this month, but I could only sell 30% of what I have so far. He added, Many people come in to browse, but only a few buy something, although the lanterns prices range between 5 and 10 shekels ($3 to $6), which is a fair price in light of the difficult financial situation.

Abdul-Fattah Abu Muhsen, spokesman and director of the Media Department of Gaza's Economy Ministry, told Al-Monitor that the quantities of consumer goods that entered the Gaza Strip in June through the Kerem Shalom crossing are sufficient for the consumers needs during Ramadan. He said, The diversity of the goods is extremely important for us Palestinians, but Israel is still banning several types of goods, including certain foods, in addition to the materials we need for agriculture such as fertilizers and other chemicals.

Abu Muhsen attributed the low consumer spending to the Gaza Strip's unemployment rate, which has reached almost 43%, as well as to the employees of the former Gaza government having only just started receiving 45% of their salaries.

The Palestinian Authority does not recognize the workers appointed by Hamas while in power in Gaza. The Ministry of Finance controlled by Hamas has been giving them an advance payment each month for over two years, while PA-affiliated staff in Gaza receive full salaries.

He also called on Israel to reopen the border crossings with the Gaza Strip to improve the economic situation and allow more workers to cross through. Israel has kept all on its border but Kerem Shalom closed since 2007 after Hamas took control of the Gaza Strip, further tightening the noose on Gazans and significantly contributing to destroying the Palestinian economy.

Moeen Rajab, a professor of economics at Al-Azhar University in Gaza, explained that merchants buy large quantities of goods before Ramadan because during the month, consumers buy double the amount of goods compared to other months.

Rajab told Al-Monitor that the biggest dilemma is the consumers lack of liquidity and their accumulated debts. He stressed that assessing retail activity takes time, despite the numbers initially looking weak as Israel is still imposing restrictions on the entry of goods to the Gaza Strip. He expects consumer spending to improve if Israel grants some serious allowances on consumer goods entering Gaza.

Citizens interviewed by Al-Monitor expressed satisfaction with the goods offered in the market, but explained that their finances force them to buy limited quantities.

Al-Monitor met housewife Suhad Rajab, 42, at the central Nuseirat market in central Gaza. She was buying Ramadan lanterns for her children, as she does every year. There are so many enticing goods offered at prices affordable for everyone, she said.

Wassim Youssef, 30, a civil servant for Gazas previous government, told Al-Monitor, I still have not bought [my familys] Ramadan needs. I do not know when the government will disburse the financial advance, which does not exceed 45% of my basic salary. For my three children and me, this Ramadan season will be similar to the two previous ones. We will have to cut our spending and content ourselves with few goods.
June 10, 2016

After the Tel Aviv terror attack June 8, the Israeli military revoked its decision to ease the restrictions on the Palestinians during the month of Ramadan. As per the decision signed by Minister Avigdor Liberman on his first day at the Defense Ministry in Tel Aviv, according to the manager of the Erez border crossing, almost 4,000 Palestinians would be granted travel permits allowing them to exit the Gaza Strip in groups, to visit and pray at Al-Aqsa Mosque.

When word of the cancellation became public, hundreds of Palestinians gathered near the Office of Civil Affairs in Gaza, demanding that the Palestinian Authority (PA) protest Israel's decision to suspend the permits and thereby taking away an important rite during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

But such a protest is unlikely to bear any fruits. Following the Tel Aviv attack, the Israeli defense apparatus started reassessing its policies, including granting more travel permits to Palestinians and work permits for West Bank Palestinians wishing to work in Israel.

Only 500 Gazans over the age of 50 made it to Al-Aqsa Mosque on June 3 to pray there on the eve of the start of Ramadan before the travel permits were revoked.

While for some it was the first time they had ever left the Gaza Strip, for the majority it was the first time they left Gaza since the closure was imposed in 2007. Many of those who traveled through the Erez border crossing used to work in Israel and were shocked by all the changes in the country and the differences they observed between themselves and the people of the West Bank.

Al-Monitor spoke to some of the Gazans who had obtained permits to visit Al-Aqsa Mosque, shortly before the checkpoint was closed again. "It was like a furlough from prison," Said Abu al-Jameh from the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood of Gaza City told Al-Monitor. He recounted that the people on the bus felt like they were going from darkness into the light.

As soon as the roadblock was lifted and the bus started driving across al-Dahel [Palestinian term for Israeli territory], we felt like we were entering another world. The roads are straight, the cars are new, the buildings are new and there is lots of greenery. That was what really caught my eye  lots and lots of green, he added.

Jameh had worked in Israel until 15 years ago, but when the number of entry permits was reduced because of the second intifada (2000-2005), his permit was invalidated. He was out of work for years as a result. I used to have lots of friends in Israel, he said. I worked in Kiryat Ono, Bnei Brak and even Tel Aviv.

This time, Jameh and the others did not make it to Tel Aviv. However, they passed Kibbutz Yad Mordechai and the southern cities of Ashkelon and Kiryat Malachi before reaching Jerusalem. Many of the Israeli towns and villages that they passed were within reach of the Qassam rockets fired by Hamas during the 2014 war.

We were all very excited, Jameh said. Most of the people on my bus were very old. They started to cry. When we passed the Yad Mordechai junction, we saw a sign pointing to Sderot. Everyone had heard about Sderot, and we certainly thought about it [the rockets fired at the town during the 2014 Gaza war]. But what we thought about most of all was that we were seeing something new, something different. I used to work in Israel and I saw how much the country had changed. There were so many changes. Israel really developed, while we sunk lower and lower.

Ahmad Awadallah arrived in the Gaza Strip from Libya with the establishment of the PA in 1994. In the early years, he traveled frequently between the West Bank and Gaza and even had the privilege of praying once at Al-Aqsa Mosque. But this trip was different. Awadallah said that early on during the trip to Jerusalem the people on the bus, who were mostly older, realized they were driving through a place where there are no shortages or suffering, unlike in the Gaza Strip.

I was worried about their well-being, he told Al-Monitor. I couldnt imagine how they would be able to walk the alleyways of Al-Quds [Jerusalem] on their way to the mosque. But believe it or not, as soon as the door of the bus opened, they regained their strength. They started running like young boys. And the emotions! It is a holy site; the mood there was special. The people from Jerusalem and the West Bank gave us a wonderful reception.

People from the West Bank and East Jerusalem surrounded the visitors from Gaza during the prayer service. Awadallah said that at first it felt a little strange, but the ice broke quickly. The people from the West Bank were interested in hearing about the situation in Gaza and life under Hamas rule, and they wondered, like many Palestinians, if they would ever reunite with the Gaza Strip.

The Gazans who had for the first time in their lives left home were surprised to discover that there was a vast difference between them and their fellow Palestinians residing in the West Bank. A decade of being cut off from one another, a devastating economic crisis and three bloody wars seem to have created a distinct identity. While Gaza is just an hours drive from the West Bank, it is light-years  and dark years  away.

If there was one complaint shared by everyone on the bus, it was that the trip to Jerusalem was too short and that they fulfilled only the commandment to pray during the day, and not at night, at the mass prayer service after the breaking of the fast. It was very short, Awadallah said. We left the Erez border crossing at 5 a.m. and by 2 p.m. we were already back at Erez. You dont even have time to think about and to understand what you just experienced. On the way back I overheard some people say on the bus that they thought it was just a dream. They fell asleep on the return journey and when they opened their eyes again at the Erez crossing, they werent sure the experience was real or a dream.

Hazem Abu Shaban from the al-Zahara neighborhood in Gaza also said that the biggest problem with this incredible experience was that the visit was too short. He was also surprised to see the difference between life under siege in Gaza and what is happening within a short distance, right across the border: a developed country with wide, open roads and luxury cars. Its incredible to think about the difference between how all the people on the bus have been living for years and how you [Israelis] live, he told this Al-Monitor reporter.

While stuck in a traffic jam at the entrance of the Old City in Jerusalem, the travelers had watched the Israeli drivers in their cars. For many, as they told Al-Monitor, this was their first encounter with Israeli citizens on the other side of the border.

Jameh said that the first thing he had wanted to do was call his friends from the past. Im dying to see them, to speak to them, to laugh with them, to drink coffee together, like we used to, he said.

When Al-Monitor asked him why he hadn't called them, he laughed and said, We lost touch years ago. Who knows what they remember about me? Maybe they think that Im not the same person that I used to be, when we were friends, working together.
June 10, 2016

Gen. Hadi Halabjayi and his peshmerga troops were getting settled in the new territory in the Khazir area they had captured from the Islamic State (IS) in late May after a day and a half of fighting. Sitting under a cloth shade hung between two vehicles, Halabjayi held a piece of shrapnel from a mortar that had landed just minutes before.

It's a big territory we have taken and we are quite close to Mosul now from this side as well, Halabjayi told Al-Monitor, as he pointed toward a nearby village.

A few minutes later, he got up with the help of a wooden stick and surveyed the hot, dusty plains of eastern Ninevah province. Occasionally, he shouted an order at the people around him.

These territories are Kurdistan's now. We will not give them back to the Iraqi army or anybody else, said the general. We have had four of our peshmergas die here and several injured for this territory. [IS] exploded eight suicide bombers in this area, he said.

Halabjayi's words sum up the sentiments among the peshmerga and Kurdish officials these days: The blood they are shedding should not go in vain.

In a two-day operation over May 29-30, 5,500 Kurdish peshmerga forces wrested control of nine villages from IS encompassing an area of around 120 square kilometers (46 square miles).

Kurdish authorities described the offensive as "one of the many shaping operations to increase pressure on IS militants in nearby Mosul leading up to an eventual charge on the major IS stronghold.

But the Kurds have long considered the areas they seized in the recent offensive as part of their homeland. The areas to the immediate east and north of Mosul are among the few remaining patches of territory that Kurds are keen to include in their autonomous zone and make part of a possible future Kurdistan state.

Minority communities such as the Kakais and Shabak resided in the nine villages before IS swept into the Khazir area, some 30 kilometers (19 miles) from Mosul, in August 2014.

Kakais are ethnic Kurds who follow a syncretistic, mystical religion that is believed to have emerged in the Kurdish areas of western Iran in the 14th century.

The Shabak, an ethnic-religious group, are more divided, with some portions of the community seeing themselves as closer to the Kurds and others more pro-Iraqi.

The territory around Khazir, along with a long stretch of the borderland between Kurdish and Arab Iraq spanning Ninevah, Kirkuk, Diyala and Salahuddin provinces, have long been coveted by Kurds as part of their homeland. Successive Iraqi governments have opposed the idea and made efforts to Arabize much of these areas, especially under Saddam Hussein. Although the post-Saddam constitution approved in 2005 recognized the ethnic-cleansing efforts against Kurds and other minorities and called for a reversal, those measures were mostly not implemented.

The war with IS has now provided an opportunity for the Kurds to establish control over those areas and fortify their presence there. In the absence of a strong rival military force, the Kurds appear to be in control of the areas known as the disputed territories in Article 140 of Iraq's constitution.

The area around Mosul is of particular interest to the Kurds, as it provides strategic depth that can also act as a security buffer zone between Iraqi Kurdistan's capital, Erbil, and the city of Mosul, which has been volatile for most of the past decade. The situation is unlikely to change anytime soon, given that many expect rivalries there to continue in the post-IS phase.

The Kurds do not want the Iraqi central government, particularly Shia paramilitary groups under the umbrella of the [Popular Mobilization Units], to exploit the recapture of Mosul to re-impose Baghdads authority in the area, wrote Renad Mansour, a fellow with Carnegie Middle East Center, in a May 20 report about the Kurdish strategy in Mosul in the post-IS period.

The return of the Iraqi military forces, and even possibly their Shiite paramilitary allies, to Ninevah province to fight IS will eventually pose a major challenge to the Kurds' domination in the parts of Ninevah that they control.

The peshmerga forces were quick to fortify their positions here, as multiple bulldozers dug dirt berms along the approximately 20-kilometer (12-mile) stretch of land spanning the eastern Mosul countryside.

At the southernmost tip of the new territory in Wardak village, Capt. Nasraddin Karim and his men inspected a house where IS had made bombs. The products were neatly collected in a corner of what appeared to be the living room. Karim pointed out writing on the wall that read, The Islamic State will stay by God's will and told his fellow fighters, They fled. The IS militants seemed to have abandoned the place hastily, as some bomb-making material, a pink paste, was left on a small plate.

IS might be gone from this area, but conflict is unlikely to depart this place for years to come.
June 9, 2016

The father of Khaled Mahamra, one of the two terrorists responsible for the shooting attack June 8 in Tel Aviv, cant understand how his son was able to hide his plans. Khaled was a student at the Faculty of Engineering at Mutah University in Jordan. He was supposed to return there this summer to complete his studies. He was the eldest child, and his family had pinned high hopes on him. They had expected him to help support the family once he obtained his coveted degree. But instead of providing them with financial assistance, Khaled Mahamra, once the pride of his family, could be the reason why their home in Yatta will be demolished.

In an interview with Al-Monitor the day after the attack, Khaled's father, Ahmad, said that Israel Defense Forces (IDF) forces had not yet been to his home (at the time of this interview, the IDF had already raided the home of the other terrorist, Mohammad Mahamra). They were, however, surrounding the village and not letting anyone out. If I had the chance to sit with Khaled now, Id ask him why he did it. Why did he kill human beings? his father wondered.

Two of the terrorists uncles are senior members of Fatahs military wing. One of them was even released from Israeli prison in the 2011 Gilad Shalit prisoner exchange. Still, according to Ahmad Mahamra, the attack his son committed together with Mohammad struck the family like lightning on a clear day. We had no idea. The only thing I can think about is that everyone is a victim: him [Khaled] and the Israelis. Even though he was studying engineering, both he and the youngsters of his generation thought that there was no hope, that there was no future, said Ahmad.

Musa Mahamra, head of the Yatta village council, is also a member of the extended family. He told Al-Monitor that while there have been attempts to connect the family to past attacks against Israelis, I can say with confidence that these two young men had no security record, nor did they have any political allegiance. What motivated them to launch their attack was the feeling that every opportunity had been closed to them and that there was no way out. This is a feeling shared by all young people of the same age who participated in terrorist attacks in the past.

Al-Monitor asked Mahamra how he explained the attack in Tel Aviv after so many long weeks of calm and the assessment that this intifada had been stopped. He responded that as far young Palestinians were concerned, Avigdor Libermans appointment as Israels defense minister was a brusque statement indicating Israels intention to worsen the situation and exacerbate the sense of helplessness.

Mahamra said that after things calmed down and the attacks stopped, young people discovered that nothing had changed. There were no political, social or economic achievements from what happened, at least as far as they were concerned. There was nothing. Liberman's appointment equaled  from their point of view  a declaration by Israel in favor of escalating the situation. Weve all heard the statements that came out of Israel [before Libermans appointment]. I am sorry about the attack and the killing of innocents, but the younger generations, ages 16-20, which committed the attacks in the last wave of violence, acted out of desperation. That is what motivated the two members of the Mahamra family to act. The Hebron sector sacrificed half of the martyrs in the last outbreak of violence. There is an explanation for that. It didnt just happen. Young people from Hebron run up against countless [IDF] checkpoints, attacks from settlers and clashes with the army. This is their way of rebelling against that.

Will the shooting attack in Tel Aviv set the region on fire again? Will other attackers from the territories follow in the footsteps of the Mahamra cousins and launch attacks against Israelis? It is worth remembering that the shooting incident that left the Henkin couple dead in October 2015 was the first in the current series of terror attacks. There were dozens of stabbing and shooting attacks after it.

True, Palestinian and Israeli officials conducted a situation assessment over the past few weeks expressing satisfaction with the way the outbreak had been contained and claiming that it was the result of security collaboration and the more moderate steps taken by Israel in its war against terrorism. But then came the attack in Tel Aviv.

One indication of the tension that continues unabated in the territories and the possibility that the wave of violence could start up again is the expression of joy among young Palestinians, who were documented celebrating news of the attack. This is a familiar phenomenon from the past. The greater the sense of distress in the territories and the deeper the desire to take revenge on Israelis, the more jubilant the celebrations are after every attack in Israel.

Theyre just gangs of young people. They dont indicate anything, said Musa Mahamra. Nevertheless, he said that he cannot discount the possibility that the miserable situation in the territories could explain the exuberant celebrations in Hebron, Nablus, Tulkarm and the Gaza Strip. He is concerned that other desperate young people might try to imitate the two assailants from Yatta.

Until now, the IDF has advocated for a policy of restraint. Now it is facing a difficult dilemma. Policies such as the easing of restrictions, granting work permits to tens of thousands of Palestinian laborers and removing checkpoints may have succeeded in keeping most West Bank Palestinians away from the circle of violence, but it also made it easy for people like the Mahamra cousins to infiltrate Israel. Over the next few days, Liberman will be forced to decide what Israels policy will be from now on.
June 9, 2016

In his annual speech to mark Jerusalem Day, delivered at the citys Mercaz Harav yeshiva on June 5, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu aptly described the excitement and spiritual high Israelis felt on that day in 1967 upon touching the stones of the Western Wall and seeing the Israeli flag flying over the Temple Mount. We sensed a great connection to generations of Jews linked to the city.  We stood there tearful, excited and committed to protecting Jerusalem, the Temple Mount and the Western Wall, he said. In the first years, we used to celebrate Jerusalem Day in the streets. No longer. From the city of peace, to quote Netanyahu, Jerusalem is turning into the capital of racism. The so-called united city is a record holder in discrimination and division.

Few venues symbolize this as well as the one Netanyahu chooses to deliver his unification speeches. Its hard to find a climate less tolerant of the other, including toward Jews who believe that all people are equal and that Palestinians, too, deserve to lead a dignified life. On Sunday, Netanyahu sat next to Rabbi Dov Lior, who has called for the "cleansing" of Arab citizens from Israel. His remarks won applause from the celebrating yeshiva students. The appropriation of Jerusalem and of its festive day by these circles excludes peace- and equality-loving Israelis. In addition, the 73,000 children who attend ultra-Orthodox kindergartens and schools in the city (75% of the citys Jewish schoolchildren) do not identify with this Zionist festival.

My family members and friends, some of whom were born and raised in Jerusalem, avoid the Jerusalem Day festivities. The television scenes of enthused revelers dancing with Israeli flags through the heart of the Old Citys Muslim Quarter, a habit they have picked up in recent years, make them feel alienated and ashamed. Hundreds of police are deployed in the narrow alleyways to protect the thousands of Palestinian residents shuttered in their homes and the merchants who are forced to lock up their stores. That morning, the Supreme Court rejected a petition by human rights organizations seeking to divert the parade route from the Muslim Quarter. Theres little doubt about the prospects of Palestinians being allowed to dance around the Old City, not to mention the citys western neighborhoods, waving Palestinian flags to protest Israels occupation.

Netanyahu is not helping to resolve the conflict in Jerusalem, but he is not to blame for the problem. The root of this evil can be found in the chorus of Jerusalem of Gold, a song that has been elevated to the status of a virtual national anthem:

How the cisterns have dried up, the marketplace is empty and no one frequents the Temple Mount in the Old City, lamented the late lyricist and songwriter Naomi Shemer.

These lyrics, written several weeks before the 1967 Six-Day War, show erasure of the Palestinians from the collective consciousness of Israelis. To this day, teachers tell their students about Jerusalems liberation from its Arab conquerors and sing along with them, with great pathos, the updated version of Shemers song with the stanza added after the war:

We have returned to the water cisterns, the market and the square, a shofar trumpets on the Temple Mount, in the Old City.

When the battles and revelry died down, the liberators realized to their great dismay that the marketplace in the eastern part of the city was not empty and that its Palestinian residents insist on staying there and sabotaging the Judaization of Jerusalem. They also continued to visit the Temple Mount, which they continued to call Haram al-Sharif. But tearing down the walls and barbed wire fences that separated east from west Jerusalem before 1967 and unilaterally annexing Palestinian neighborhoods and villages is not enough to truly unite the two sides of the city. In any other united metropolitan area in an enlightened country, all denizens  regardless of their religion, race and nationality  generally enjoy the same basic human rights such as housing, education, welfare and infrastructure. But if the Palestinians were to enjoy the same rights as Jews, they would have no reason to emigrate and leave the city to its Jewish residents.

Whats to be done? Once a year, on Jerusalem Day, deliver a fiery speech about united Jerusalem. The next day, keep advancing your policy of a divided and conflicted Jerusalem. From a glance at the annual 2016 report of the Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies:

Palestinians account for 36% of the citys population, but 71% of them (38,000) live below the poverty line, compared with 22% (31,900) of Jews.

Some 43% of the official city-run classrooms in the eastern part of the city are substandard and many children study in residential buildings turned into schools.

In 2014, 3,487 authorized housing starts for Jews were recorded in Jerusalem and 322 for Palestinians. In the absence of a zoning plan for the Palestinian neighborhoods, 39% of the houses there were built without a permit.

The infrastructure in the Palestinian neighborhoods has not been developed nor updated for decades. For example, only 64% of households are officially connected to the water system.

Between a quarter and a third of the residents of East Jerusalem are separated from their city by roadblocks and a high cement fence.

This combination of deprivation and neglect, lack of hope for a solution and religious and nationalistic radicalization have turned the Palestinian neighborhoods into border zones. Government ministers who proudly proclaim the slogan united Jerusalem, Israels eternal capital dare not step into these neighborhoods without an armed escort. The current uprising has resulted in a 17% drop in hotel stays by foreign and Israeli tourists in West Jerusalem in February 2016 compared with February 2014. The Tel Aviv-Jerusalem highway is congested in the mornings with the cars of government officials who moved out of the city and drive there for work.

Thus, as Israel nears the 50th anniversary of its conquest or liberation of Jerusalem, the city that was joined together has united only religious zealots, warmongers and cynical politicians. The Western Wall has become a bone of contention among Jews and the Temple Mount a volcano with both Jewish and Muslim zealots wrestling each other at its mouth.
June 10, 2016

The cycle of violence in Palestine and Israel has become so predictable that almost anyone following the news can easily forecast what will happen next. For Palestinians, Israelis and the international community, the predictability of the cycle of violence points to lifting the Israeli occupation as the most effective way to end the violence. The June 8 attack on a market in Tel Aviv that left four Israelis dead is no exception to this dynamic.

Palestinians speak of the absence of a peace process and lack of a political horizon as a factor in the deepening cycle of violence. Muammar Orabi, director general of the Ramallah-based Wattan News Agency, told Al-Monitor that what happened in Tel Aviv is a natural outcome of the current political decline. Palestinians have lost hope, and there is an unprecedented sense of frustration in the occupied territories, Orabi said.

This opinion is not restricted to Palestinians. In an interview with journalist Ilana Dayan on Israel Army Radio (Galei Tzaha) on June 10, Ron Huldai, the popular mayor of Tel Aviv, pointed the blame. Huldai, a former air force pilot and ambitious Labor Party leader, said that there are more than 200 territorial disputes worldwide, adding, We might be the only country in the world where another nation is under occupation without civil rights. You cant hold people in a situation of occupation and hope theyll reach the conclusion everything is alright.

The need to end the violence was also expressed by Israeli Knesset member Ayman Odeh, the head of the Joint List of predominately Arab parties. Odeh was quoted in the Jerusalem Post as saying, Remove all Palestinian and Israeli citizens from the cycle of terror and bloodshed. We must fight together to bring an end to the occupation, and do the right thing for justice and peace for both peoples.

The attack on the Tel Aviv market, across the street from Israeli military headquarters, came at a time when most Israeli officials were celebrating that the number of Palestinian knife attacks had dramatically fallen.

While denouncing the attack and describing it as futile, Izzeldin Abuelaish, a Gaza doctor who lost his three girls during the 2009 war on Gaza, told Al-Monitor that the attack was a double-edged sword. In a phone interview, he said, On the one hand, it is going to embolden those in the Israeli government who have been searching for excuses not to make peace with the Palestinians, and at the same time, it clearly shows the frustration of a people under occupation and without rights.

Abuelaish, whose book I Shall Not Hate has helped earn him multiple honorary doctorates and three consecutive nominations for the Nobel Peace Prize since 2013, is skeptical about the current Israeli governments desire for peace. Peace is a way of life that is translated in action and words, Abuelaish said.

Currently working as a professor of medicine at the University of Toronto, Abuelaish wants greater pressure to be put on Israel to help break the cycle of violence. Palestinians have been burnt repeatedly from violence. We need to stop this violence, and the only way that can happen today is for the world to become much more involved, he said.

Abuelaish said that he abhors violence and feels that nonviolent resistance, such as the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement, is the appropriate mechanism to help put an end to the occupation. The cycle of violence is deepening, and we need pressure from the world, including nonviolent action like the BDS movement, to help to put an end to it, he said.

Israeli politicians are burying their heads in the sand while coming to realize that the correlation between the occupation and violence against Israelis is growing pronouncedly. More than a month ago, on April 28, an Israeli military official, Col. Shay Klapper, predicted that the byproducts of the occupation would not disappear even if a particular method of resistance decreased. The quiet isn't stable, he said.

Klapper, an Israeli battalion commander in the northern districts of the West Bank, anticipated that the decrease in the number of terror attacks would be short-lived. When the wave is renewed, it will be at a much higher pace, Klapper told Ynet. It wont return to be 13-year-olds with knives. Ynet, a leading news service, also reported that five other senior army commanders held similar views.

The outbreak of what Palestinians refer to as the habbeh (Arabic for outburst)  involving attacks, mostly with knives  has elicited disproportionate Israeli military responses, often including extrajudicial killings. The Israeli human rights group BTselem reported on June 6 the existence of irrefutable evidence of Israeli soldiers summarily executing Palestinian protesters who posed no danger to their lives. In a press release, BTselem claimed that it had video recordings of at least two cases in which soldiers executed Palestinian activists in the past few months. The two killings took place in Hebron not far from the village of Yatta, the hometown of the two Palestinians accused of the attack in the Tel Aviv market.

World leaders realize that to break the cycle of violence, a political horizon must be created for the Palestinians. When French President Francois Hollande and US Secretary of State John Kerry, as well as other leaders, use the term two-state solution, they are indirectly indicating that the key to ending the violence is ending occupation.

Lifting the occupation and creating a Palestinian state are the conditions called for by all the local, regional and international parties working toward a French-proposed international conference. In a joint statement, participants at talks in Paris on June 3, including UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and some 25 senior European and Arab diplomats, urged Israelis and Palestinians to genuinely commit to a two-state solution and to create conditions for fully ending the Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands.

Palestinian frustration with 49 years of occupation has led moderates and extremists to search for different methods of resistance. Palestinians have tried the diplomatic route, violence and nonviolent methods, and Israel has not adequately responded to any of them, while falsely claiming it is interested in peace.

The cycle of Israeli-Palestinian violence can be explained by Sir Isaac Newtons third law of motion. In laypeoples terms, Newtons theory is summarized by the now familiar saying that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. The only logical way to end this violent action-reaction cycle is to end the occupation.
June 10, 2016

Turkey has been hit again by another wave of terrorism. On June 7, a busload of police officers was hit on a busy street in Istanbuls tourism center. The next day, while the Turks were still reeling from the trauma of the Istanbul bombing, the country woke to the news of another attack that targeted the security headquarters in Midyat, once a symbol of Syriac identity and still a popular tourism spot with its historic old town and numerous Eastern churches.

The Istanbul terror attack was claimed three days later on June 10 by the Kurdistan Freedom Falcons (TAK), considered a breakaway faction of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). For those closely monitoring the PKK, the claim is rubbish. It is a Middle Eastern tradition that whenever an organization does not want to claim responsibility for a controversial action so as not to endanger its credibility with certain influential countries or individuals, responsibility is taken by so-called breakaway elements. TAK is no exception to this rule.

The Istanbul attack is the 10th attributed to TAK since the name was first heard in 2007, the fifth since the collapse of the peace talks between Ankara and the PKK, and the third in 2016.

Now, everybody is realizing that these terror attacks will not be the last in the deadly cycle of violence gripping Turkey. Outrage against terrorism is coupled with helplessness in Istanbul and Midyat. The outrage is natural, but the feeling of helplessness is dangerous in Turkey's polarized society.

While the public was in shock with the magnitude of violence at the heart of Istanbul, that evening President Recep Tayyip Erdogan gave his angry reaction. On the second day of the holy month of Ramadan, Erdogan, speaking in his lavish palace in Ankara during the iftar dinner breaking the fast, pointed the finger of blame at the West.

He made reference to the mainly British and French occupation forces in Istanbul following the armistice declared at the end of World War I. The capital of the once-mighty Ottoman Empire was under joint British-French occupation and remained so until 1923, when the foundation of the Republic of Turkey was laid over its ashes.

Erdogan, alluding to the PKK, claimed, Those who came with aspirations of occupying Istanbul now are using the terrorist organization as a tool. They wish to complete their unfulfilled dreams at the time of the Crusades, today with terror.

The time difference between his two references is almost 1,000 years. He found the lowest common denominator between these two historical periods: the West trying to conquer or dominate Muslim lands and Muslims.

Those Turks who did not hear their presidents remarks blaming the West for the terror attacks on June 7 learned soon enough by reading the newspapers on June 8. However, the newspapers also ran the strongly worded protests of Western leaders. The chancellor of the country currently subjected to Turkish wrath over its resolution on the Armenian genocide stepped up with an unequivocal statement. Angela Merkel said she was appalled by the attack and that her country stood by Turkey against terrorism. Nothing can justify such attacks and nothing can excuse such cruelty, she said.

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg announced that the alliance stands in solidarity with Turkey against the global threat of terrorism. European Commission spokesperson Maja Kocijancic, British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond and Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo, among others, all condemned the Istanbul terror attack in the strongest terms.

It must have been somewhat confusing to readers to see Turkeys president accuse Western countries of trying to revive their dreams of destroying Turkey alongside the statements of Western leaders strongly condemning the Istanbul terror attack and standing with Turkey.

The PKK did not claim  although it is unquestionably the usual suspect  responsibility for the Istanbul attack, but it did claim the Midyat attack.

The Financial Times reported, Turkey is now the most dangerous country in Europe," citing Global Peace Index data, and "Violence has cost the country nearly 10% of its gross domestic product, or $129 billion, over the past year, the Institute of Economics and Peace estimates.

Nonetheless, Turkish officials are adamant that the fight against terrorism  which is synonymous with the PKK  will go on.

For certain pundits, the violence brought by the PKK to Turkey's urban centers is a sign of the weakening of an organization that has lost  according to Erdogan  more than 5,000 people. The General Staff announced that the PKK has lost 1,000 just in Nusaybin and Sirnak, the two Kurdish towns that were largely depopulated following three months of curfew and siege by Turkish security forces. This figure may or may not be included in Erdogans calculations, but Turkish officials tend to interpret the wave of terror in the urban centers as the result of the PKK's weakening in its strongholds and desperately resorting to terror in the cities.

This analysis may be valid. The only problem is that the public has heard similar statements since the PKK came into existence and so do not find them very convincing.

On the other hand, there are some analysts who believe that attacks like the one that hit Istanbul on June 7 are an impressive display of the militants' power to strike targets in large cities at will.

No matter what, if terrorism continues to strike Turkey's commercial, political and tourism centers, Erdogan and his followers will believe ever harder that it's the work of foreign powers.

Erdogan loyalists will continue to interpret these attacks as part of an international plot against the invincible leader of the Muslims and end his rebellion against an unjust international system. Thus, the terror attacks and violence represent to them not only a very formidable challenge for the rule of Erdogan and his party, but an existential threat to Turkey itself.
June 10, 2016

On May 27, Al-Monitor ran a vivid report about the massive destruction from Turkish security operations in the countrys mainly Kurdish southeast. The story described how people gathered on tall buildings in Diyarbakirs ancient district of Sur, hoping to locate their homes intact in devastated neighborhoods that are still off-limits to residents, while others scrambled to recover usable belongings or the bodies of relatives. According to the Kurdish Peoples Democratic Party (HDP), at least 550 civilians have been killed and 350,000 people displaced since July 2015, when Ankara launched a massive crackdown to purge Kurdish militants entrenched in residential areas across the southeast.

While the people of Sur reeled from the shock of their unrecognizable streets, another Turkish city, Istanbul, hosted the first World Humanitarian Summit, which came as a bitter irony and sparked controversy and criticism. The May 23-24 event, organized by the United Nations, was meant to address the worlds growing refugee problem, yet the host government itself had caused the displacement of thousands of its citizens.

In a gesture of protest, renowned Turkish musician and writer Zulfu Livaneli resigned as goodwill ambassador to UNESCO, the UNs cultural agency, slamming human rights abuses in the southeast and the destruction in Sur, which was only last year added to UNESCOs World Heritage List. As the demolition of history is taking place in Sur, hypocrisy dominated the World Humanitarian Summit, he said. To pontificate on peace while remaining silent against such violations is a contradiction of the fundamental ideals of UNESCO.

In remarks to Al-Monitor, Livaneli expressed optimism that his resignation and warnings were bearing fruit, pointing to reports of UNESCO taking action on Sur. Yet the problem goes beyond the protection of historical heritage, with grave human rights violations reported on a daily basis from the southeast.

In a separate letter to UNESCO chief Irina Bokova, Livaneli drew a grim picture of human suffering in the region. The Turkish state continuously bombs Kurdish cities in Turkey with heavy artillery.  Snipers kill innocent civilians in their homes. Curfew causes many problems, especially for the sick and the children, Livaneli wrote in the letter, which he shared with Al-Monitor. A young girl, Cemile, was shot by snipers at her home while having breakfast with her family. The family couldnt take her to the hospital because of the curfew and because of the snipers waiting outside their home. Unfortunately, Cemile ended up dying at home. The family kept her body in the refrigerator for three days. This tragedy is just one example.

He added, Millions of progressive, moderate and ordinary people are suffering under [President Recep Tayyip] Erdogans oppressive regime, and they feel deeply wounded by the worlds efforts to legitimize this regime through holding a humanitarian summit in this highly undemocratic country where human rights are continuously being trampled on.

The HDP conveyed a similar message to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. We remain deeply concerned about the possibility that hosting such a critical meeting might serve the Erdogan regime to cover up the gross rights violations and crimes that it has been committing in Turkey with utter disregard of any humanitarian or legal accountability, the letter said.

The secretary-general himself was a child caught up in war and destruction. In a recent video, he described how his village was burned during the Korean War and his family had to run to the mountains.

The Turkish government, however, only fueled concerns as it refused to sign a joint statement at the end of the summit, in which countries reaffirmed their commitment to international humanitarian law.

According to veteran journalist Celal Baslangic, Ankaras refusal to sign the statement is an omen that human rights abuses in Turkey will continue, maybe even on a larger scale. As a result of the whole process [in the southeast] and their misguided policies, Turkeys leaders failed to sign the joint declaration of the first World Humanitarian Summit, which they hosted. This failure appears to stem not only from what has already happened, but also of the new calamities the government is planning to put us through, he wrote.

Fatih Polat, the editor-in-chief of Evrensel daily, stressed that shortly before the summit, UN Human Rights Commissioner Zeid Raad Al Hussein spoke of numerous complaints of gross violations in the southeast, including a report that more than 100 people were burned to death while sheltering in basements in Cizre, and urged Turkey to grant the UN unimpeded access to the affected areas.

According to Polat, this could have been a major reason why Turkey refused to sign the joint statement as the text urged all parties involved in an armed conflict to allow full unimpeded access by humanitarian personnel to all people in need of assistance.

Speaking to Al-Monitor, Polat said that by hosting the summit, Ankara had hoped to polish its image as the country that shelters the largest number of Syrian refugees, an issue he described as the soft spot of the West. Yet this [image-polishing] plan went down the drain as the military operations that followed the suspension of the talks on the Kurdish problem caused a huge humanitarian toll and scenes of urban and historical heritage destruction, Polat said. Thats how Turkey went down in history as a country that refused to sign the joint statement of the World Humanitarian Summit, which it hosted.
A popular antique and vintage goods store in Huntsville will reopen this weekend with larger square footage and dozens of new vendors.

University Pickers on 3024 University Drive N.W., will host a grand reopening at 9 a.m. Saturday to celebrate expanding from 7,000 square feet to 12,000 square feet. The store also has about 40 additional vendors, bringing the total to more than 100 under one roof.

"It's been a dream for several years to have a larger place for locals to sell their amazing items," said University Pickers co-owner Trish Gleason.

Gleason runs the small business with fellow Tennessee native Cindi Pope, who now lives in the Memphis area. The facility opened in 2013 and has grown to have more than 22,000 likes on Facebook.

University Pickers, which sells find vintage, antique, repurposed, hand crafted and unique items, will be closed through Friday to prepare for the grand opening event.

The expansion includes a new food option called Earline's Cafe, which will offer Dallas Mill Deli sandwiches and sides, drinks, free coffee, popcorn from What's Popp'N, old fashioned candy, Piper & Leaf tea and accessories, Honeypie Bakery and Telah's Cozy Coffee.

Here is a sneak peek at the expansion:
Frances Wideman may have been one of the most prolific writers of letters to the editor of The Birmingham News in the newspaper's history.

She was a woman of strong opinions. She expressed them nationally in the 1970s, when she voiced her opposition to the Equal Rights Amendment in a letter to the editor of Time magazine. She penned a constant stream of letters, most of them only a paragraph long, and mailed them to her local newspaper and other publications.

"She influenced so many people through those," said her friend, Eunie Smith. "People remembered them. They were so straightforward. She did the same with talk radio. She'd be ironing at the house and call in."

Her last letter to The Birmingham News was published in 2014. In it, she admonished politicians who ran negative campaigns.

Wideman died on June 1. She was 88.

Frances Wideman was born Jan. 13, 1928, and died June 1, 2016. She was 88.

"She was good to the bone," Smith said. "She was always doing things for other people." She donated her family's funeral lots to Children's Hospital to be used for families whose children had died, Smith said. She was cremated and will join her husband's remains in the columbarium at Our Lady of Sorrows Catholic Church.

As the wife of Dr. Gil Wideman, a Birmingham obstetrician who died in 2011, she devoted her energy to raising their son and four daughters. She was also a medical technologist and was the first editor of the Alabama Journal of Medical Technology. She was the head of the laboratory at St. Vincent's Hospital for more than a decade. She became active in politics in patriotic groups such as Pro America and the Freedom Education Foundation in the 1960s.

"She really was an activist," said her daughter, Anne Barton. "She was certainly strong-willed. She was tireless, very organized, very self-disciplined. Our mother could be fairly formidable. As we got older, we didn't always agree with her. She was a good sport about that. We would have lively debates at dinner."

In 1972, when Phyllis Schlafly started the Eagle Forum, Wideman helped start the Alabama chapter and eventually served as president.

"Frances Wideman was a stalwart in Eagle Forum," Schlafly told AL.com. "She participated in all our activities: our pro-life activities, our Republican Convention activities."

ERA battle

Schlafly started the Eagle Forum to defeat the proposed Equal Rights Amendment.

"We formed Eagle Forum with the specific purpose of defeating the ERA," Schlafly said. "Nobody thought it was possible. In a 10-year battle, we won. She was part of that."

Wideman attended six Republican National Conventions as a delegate from Alabama. She served on the Republican Party platform committee in 1976 in Kansas City. "She was part of creating a very pro-family platform," said Smith, current president of the Eagle Forum of Alabama, whose late husband, U.S. Rep. Albert Lee Smith, also served on the committee. He died in 1997.

"Frances was just one of the giants of this community," Smith said. "She acted out her faith throughout her life, in her family relationships, in the community, in the political arena and on the national scene. She really stood firmly on the convictions she held. She did it in a way that was honoring to God. She did it in a way respectful to those who might disagree."

Child convert

Wideman was a Catholic who attended Our Lady of Sorrows Church in Homewood. As a child of non-religious parents, she went in to a Catholic Church in Birmingham that she used to walk past. She felt spiritually moved. A nun told her she could take classes if her parents approved. Eventually, they also converted to Catholicism. "She just had this incredible faith and always wanted to do something for the glory of God," Barton said.

"She was a very devout person; she committed an hour of perpetual adoration every week for 20 years," said Monsignor Martin Muller, pastor at Our Lady of Sorrows.

Her faith inspired her pro-life position and other political stances.

"She was Catholic; Albert Lee and I were Southern Baptist, but we agreed on all the issues," Smith said.

Wideman visited 149 countries, and attended services at Catholic churches on her travels, said her Jewish son-in-law, Larry Bleiberg. "She was always going to Mass, even on vacation," Bleiberg said. Wideman's daughter, Liz Bleiberg, who died in 2012, was a convert to Judaism. Wideman was very supportive of her grandson, Harrison Bleiberg, who is currently in Israel, being raised Jewish, Bleiberg sid.

In her letters opposing the Equal Rights Amendment, Wideman warned that it could lead to men using women's restrooms. That's an issue that has returned to the news with the transgender equality movement.

"They ridiculed us for saying that," Schlafly said. "Everybody laughed. That was too nonsensical for words."

On July 17, 2013, Wideman had a letter published on immigration: "The writer of the letter calling for 'common sense' on the immigration solution is not commonly shared and certainly not sense. To allow those 11 million plus illegals to 'unite' by bringing their families ahead of the people who have been standing in line to legally immigrate to our shores is unfair, unkind and un-American."

A month earlier, on June 7, 2013, she chastised columnist John Archibald: "Where ever did John Archibald get the idea that we Southerners feel inferior? John, look around you and you will see Yankees coming (and staying) in our South, but Southerners only move to Yankee land under duress and hurry back home. The world loves our 'soul' food which is healthy, well-seasoned, seasonal food."

In her final letter to the editor, May 18, 2014, Wideman wrote:

"I'm tired of negative candidates. I have been around long enough to have witnessed many elections. Initially I was pleased at the amount of press we are seeing about the candidates. However, I am disappointed at the candidates who spend their press time deprecating their opposition. Candidates should use the rule 'if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all.'"
Police in Floyd County, Ga. arrested 10 people Thursday as part of a racketeering scheme that investigators say embezzled $4 million from a school system over a decade.

Among those arrested was Derry Richardson, who was formerly employed as Floyd County's maintenance director. Members of Richardson's family, including his wife, brother and father were also among those arrested, along with other former school employees.

Major Jeff Jones of Floyd County police said Richardson used inflated invoices to make money, which were funneled through various sources back to the people involved, according to WSB.

The arrests came after an 18-month investigation. Investigators say they've been able to trace about $4 million. The Rome News Tribune reports that officials have been able to recover about $1.7 million in money and assets. Two duplex apartments valued at $100,000 each, Richardson's Summerville home valued at more than $525,000 and 60 firearms were also among the items seized.

They also anticipate other arrests.

In a statement, Floyd County Schools Superintendent John Jackson said the system is cooperating with authorities.

"For the school system, we are recovering from the trauma that has been inflicted on the system and the community through this ordeal," Jackson said. "New procedures and processes are in place to improve protection of funds entrusted to educate children and those new procedures are working. However, we understand that it is vital that the system is vigilant in continuous reviews of purchasing procedures. Remaining ever watchful over education funding is the key to ensuring that maximum resources are available in the classroom for the benefit of our children."
bear.PNG

A bear spotted on Lori Lane this morning in Oxford Friday, June 10, 2016.

(Oxford Police)

Friday was just another day at the office for Mick Casalini, a conservation enforcement supervisor - as he sat in his truck by Leon Smith Parkway in Oxford, looking for a black bear.

Casalini and members of Oxford police staked out a perimeter near where a bear was seen this morning on Lori Lane. A few hours later, there were still a few cars of curious onlookers, but not much sign of the four legged visitor.

Casalini said he saw the bear in a wooded area, just wandering near a treeline. By this afternoon, as traffic passed by, excitement had more or less passed. He was just there to make sure the bear didn't have any interaction with human beings. Last year, a man in Cleburne County shot at a bear and was arrested, as the offense was a misdemeanor.

"I'm just here to make sure you don't have the bear wander out into the road or interact with children in the area," he said.

Capt. L.G. Owens of Oxford police said media interest in the bear sighting extended all the way to New York, as he had fielded calls all afternoon.

"We're just telling people in the area that if they see the bear, don't feed it, and don't shoot at it," he said.
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!)
As US-led coalition refuses to coordinate actions with Russia in Syria, Moscow seems to be realigning its objectives.

For the second time in months, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has said: We will fight on to liberate every inch of our land.

The last time Assad made a similar statement, he was scolded by the Russian ambassador to the United Nations who said that this was not in line with the Kremlins policies.

At the time, it wasnt  Russia was pushing for a political settlement and was involved in efforts with the United States to bring about a cessation of hostilities to create a conducive atmosphere for peace talks.





This time around, however, Assad has so far not been told off.

Instead, Russia sent its defence minister to Irans capital Tehran to take part in talks with his Syrian and Iranian counterparts.

Before the meeting, which took place on Irans initiative, the Russian defence ministry said the officials would be discussing reinforcing cooperation in the fight with ISIL, [Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant] and al-Nusra terrorist groups.

Iran and Russia have what some call a nominal alliance in Syria.

After all, their strategic interests dont converge.

Yet, it seems that they have found common ground for the time being  particularly at a time when Moscows deep disagreements with the US are out in the open.

READ MORE: Russias message about the war in Syria

It looks like Russias initial idea to forge a global alliance on the war on terror didnt work. Russias repeated offer that both coalitions  the Russian-led and US-led coalitions should unite since they are facing the same enemy  was not given any prominence in the US, Sergey Strokan, a political analyst in Moscow, said.

And at the present, the US military has reduced its cooperation with Russia.

Officially, cooperation has remained limited to avoiding accidents in the skies over Syria.

Coalition against terrorism

Russia has tried for months to draw the US into some form of coordination with its forces because it needs it to revive cooperation over other divisive issues, such as Ukraine and the escalating tensions with NATO.

But the US has accused Russia of focusing its air power not on ISIL but on opponents of Assads rule.

Now it seems the Kremlin may be looking for a strategic and public relations victory.

It is providing heavy air power to Syrian ground troops and their Iranian allies as they advance towards ISILs self-proclaimed capital, Raqqa city.

READ MORE: Russian ground operation in Syria under discussion

The fall of the city isnt likely to happen any time soon  but this is not just about fighting ISIL.

For the Russian government, it is about legitimising its coalition against terrorism and ultimately improving ties with the West.

For the Syrian and Iranian governments, it is about survival and regaining a foothold in the east to prevent attempts to partition Syria in future negotiations.





The Iranian defence minister said that he and his Syrian and Russian counterparts were determined to deliver a decisive battle against all terrorist groups.

The results of our coordination will be seen in the coming days, General Hussein Dehghan said following Thursdays meeting in Tehran.

But Raqqa is not the only frontline. Areas in and around the northern city of Aleppo, as well as the rebel-held districts surrounding Damascus, continue to be battlegrounds.

Collapsed truce

A few days earlier, the Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Russia would be providing the most active air support for Syrian ground troops, while Anatoly Antonov, Russias deputy defence minister, said the Syrian army should be provided with more assistance since it is fighting terrorism.

Russias language in the past two weeks has been starkly different than in previous months  since Washington and Moscow announced a cessation of hostilities deal in February.

Russia warned that the US refusal to cooperate in Syrian would escalate the conflict.

The conflict has indeed escalated, while the truce has all but collapsed and there are no indications that a third round of negotiations in Geneva will happen soon.

We cant hold talks until officials on all sides agree parameters for a political transition deal which has an August 1 deadline, Staffan de Mistura, the UN special envoy for Syria, said just days after Assad buried the peace process altogether in his speech to his newly installed parliament.

Russia has always tried to balance its military action with its efforts to push forward a political settlement. President Vladimir Putin said our objectives have been achieved when he announced a withdrawal of troops from Syria in March.

His objectives were always going to change the balance of power on the ground, enough to bring about a deal that would preserve Russias interests in Syria.

That didnt happen.

Has the Kremlin now decided its interests can only be achieved if it realigns itself with the objectives of the Syrian and Iranian leadership  which is decisive military action to tip that balance enough to declare victory?
A large military training exercise involving more than 20 NATO and partner countries began in Poland amid growing efforts to reassure eastern European nations rattled by Russias actions in nearby Ukraine.

For more than 10 days of the month of June, 30,000 troops, backed by large numbers of vehicles, aircraft and ships, will be deployed in one of the biggest exercises on NATOs eastern flank since the end of the Cold War.

The move is likely to put further strain on the tense relations between the Kremlin and the West.

The Anakonda-16 exercise, which includes manoeuvres such as a night-time helicopter assault and the dropping of US paratroopers to build a temporary bridge over the Vistula river, is being held one month before a NATO summit in Warsaw that will approve that more troops are stationed in eastern Europe.

The goal of Anakonda-16 is to train, exercise and integrate the Polish national command and force structures into an allied, joint multinational environment, the US Army Europe said.

The United States will provide about 14,000 troops for the exercise, the largest foreign contingent. Non-NATO countries such as Sweden and Finland are also taking part in the exercise.

Poland joined NATO in 1999, a decade after the demise of Moscow-backed communism in eastern Europe. Warsaw has been very critical of Moscows actions in Ukraine and has repeatedly urged NATO to boost its presence on Polish territory.
The centenary is a good opportunity to reflect on the unintended consequences of the Arab Revolt.

James Barr is the author of A Line In The Sand: Britain, France and the Struggle that shaped the Middle East.

One hundred years ago this week, in the middle of World War I, an uprising erupted at the axis of the Islamic world, in Mecca. Encouraged by the British, the ruler of the holy city, Sharif Hussein, launched a revolt against the Ottoman Turks.

The British hoped that Husseins ancestry and authority  he was a descendant of Muhammad and his phone number was Mecca 1  made him the ideal man to disrupt the jihad called by the Ottoman Sultan in 1914.





To persuade him to help them, the British promised him and his Arab nationalist supporters independence in the post-war world if they rebelled against the Turks.

The British never really believed that they would have to make good on that offer, and weeks later, to pacify a different ally, they would promise much the same territory to the French, in the infamous Sykes-Picot Agreement.

Double-dealing

Oblivious to this double-dealing, Hussein fired the first shot of the rebellion from a window in his palace on June 10, 1916.

When his revolt then quickly fizzled out, the British began arguing among themselves about whether or not to send in troops to support him.

READ MORE: Sykes-Picot is not to blame for Middle Easts problems

In London, British ministers did not want to divert men to a place few of them could locate on a map. In October 1916, an intelligence officer named T E Lawrence was sent in to assess the situation.

His beleaguered chief had correctly calculated that a vivid witness report from this highly regarded young officer would tip the argument against intervention, restoring his own credit with the politicians in London.

So political expediency fashioned Lawrences conclusions that Husseins Bedu tribesmen were natural guerrillas who simply needed more weaponry and money.

Personal frustration  he was fed up with his desk job  made him add that they might benefit from an adviser. As it happened, Lawrences advice was good. He went on to mastermind a war of extraordinary fluidity and economy.

This is a war of dervishes against regular troops, Lawrence observed, and we are on the side of the dervishes.

This is a war of dervishes against regular troops and we are on the side of the dervishes. by T E Lawrence

What was a mischievous insight in 1916 has become an unremarkable military orthodoxy a century later. Most recently, US special forces have been photographed shoulder-to-shoulder with communist Kurdish fighters in eastern Syria.

Arabs right of conquest

These American soldiers are operating under exactly the same constraints as Lawrence was in 1916. They are in Syria because there is no appetite to send a larger force, whose very arrival might in any case be counterproductive.

And there is another pressure these Americans will face, which Lawrence would have recognised.

For what Lawrence lacked in materiel, he compensated for by enthusiastically supporting the Arab nationalists political aims. In particular, he emphasised his expectation that the Arabs right of conquest would trump the secret deal his own country had cooked up with the French.

READ MORE: Iraq, Sykes-Picot and Mr Five Percent

The danger of this tactic became clear only after the Arabs reached Damascus in October 1918, just before the wars end. Having been spurred on by Lawrence to reach the city, which lay inside the zone Britain had also promised to the French, they naturally expected that the British government would now honour its earlier promise to Hussein.

A sense of lasting betrayal followed when the British government did not because it valued its alliance with France more highly and reckoned that the financing of oil exploration would be easier if it imposed direct rule in Iraq.

Riding roughshod over Arab aspirations, Britain and France went ahead and divided the Middle East between themselves, generating deep and lasting Arab anger.

Clandestine war

The British saw the tactics Lawrence had so successfully employed against the Turks turned against themselves, first in Iraq in 1920 and then in Palestine from 1936.

Lawrence of Arabia certainly taught the Arabs how to make bombs, one soldier mused after a search for his blown-up comrade yielded just a foot inside a boot.

The centenary is a good opportunity to reflect on the unintended consequences of the Arab Revolt.

Certainly, the American soldiers fighting alongside the Kurds are in as delicate a position as Lawrence was. Currently, American and Kurdish interests run parallel: Their immediate objective is the destruction of ISIL (also known as ISIS).

But the Kurds long-held hope of statehood invests this alliance with great symbolism, especially at a time when Syria and Iraq are disintegrating. In the course of dealing with one enemy, the Americans risk making several others.

Like Lawrence, the men we glimpse fighting this clandestine war will also be taking decisions every day loaded with political significance. The Arab Revolt provides a 100-year-old reminder that the consequences can be profound.

James Barr is the author of A Line in the Sand: Britain, France and the Struggle that shaped the Middle East.

The views expressed in this article are the authors own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeeras editorial policy.
There are a million good reasons for Britain to leave the EU but the prospect of Turkeys accession isnt one of them.

Luke Coffey is a research fellow specialising in transatlantic and Eurasian security at a Washington DC based think tank. He previously served as a special adviser to the British defence secretary and was a commissioned officer in the United States army.

On June 23, the British people will go to the polls to decide if they want to remain part of the European Union or if they want to leave it  otherwise known as Brexit.

To make their case, the remain camp has resorted to exaggerated scaremongering dubbed Project Fear. Everything from World War III, economic depression, genocide in Europe, and climate catastrophes have been predicted if the UK leaves the EU.

However, those supporting Brexit are not completely innocent.

For them the bogeyman is Turkey. In the media, during speeches, on campaign posters needlessly bashing the Turks has become commonplace.





Even though Ankara is nowhere close to joining the EU, many supporters of Brexit have painted a picture of Turkey filled with criminals and terrorists who are just waiting to move to the UK.

The Turkey bashing is short-sighted and wrong. At times it has undertones of racism and xenophobia.

Independence for Britain

I say this as someone who wholeheartedly hopes that the UK votes to leave the EU later this month.

For those that believe in the ideas of direct elections, accountable politicians, good use of taxpayer money, and power and decision-making brought down to the lowest level possible, many developments taking place today in Europe would come as a concern.

READ MORE: Why the West must embrace Turkey, not push it away

The EU, an organisation which started out narrowly focused on the coal and steel industry in the 1950s, has now morphed into a supranational organisation touching almost every aspect of life in Europe.

The key decision-making bodies in the EU are largely unelected and largely unaccountable to the national governments. EU laws and regulations are increasingly viewed as unnecessary, intrusive, and burdensome.

During a period of time when social media, globalisation, the internet, and mass communication are bringing more power down to the people, the EU seems to be heading in the opposite direction by centralising more power at the top. This goes against the natural state of affairs.

The United Kingdom has the worlds fifth largest economy, the worlds fifth largest defence budget, and a permanent seat on the UN Security Council.

The incessant Turkey bashing shows a real lack of strategic thinking in some quarters of the UK. by

But thanks to its EU membership, its parliament and courts can be overruled, they cannot sign their own free trade deals, and they cannot control their own borders.

It is no wonder why many in the UK want to leave the EU.

Think strategically

The incessant Turkey bashing shows a real lack of strategic thinking in some quarters of the UK.

Under the heading Military and Strategic Concerns a memo in 1979 told Margaret Thatcher on her second day as Prime Minister: If Turkey abandons her Western orientation, a number of strongly adverse military consequences would follow for the West.

READ MORE: Germanys Armenian resolution  Unlawful and harmful

More than three decades later this is still true, especially when it comes to Turkeys role in NATO.

Turkey has the second largest military in NATO after the US and the largest military in Europe. The UK and Turkey share common challenges such as a resurgent Russia and an emboldened ISIL.

The Turks have twice commanded the NATO-led mission in Afghanistan and have sent thousands of troops to serve under the NATO flag in multiple military operations. Turkey is crucial for NATOs missile defence and Ankara contributes to NATOs rapid reaction capabilities.

Furthermore, Turkey has close cultural and economic relations with the Central Asian Republics in the heart of Eurasia  a region becoming increasingly important.

Decades of cooperation

Without a doubt Europes and Britains relationship with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is complex. Many of the actions of Erdogans government, especially when it comes to the crackdown of media freedoms, sits uncomfortably with many in London  and for good reason.

The UK cannot let the actions of one leader undermine decades of cooperation. by

But the UK cannot let the actions of one leader undermine decades of cooperation.

The UK needs close relations with Turkey today for the same reasons outlined in that 1979 memo to Margaret Thatcher. Like it or not, this is the geopolitical reality and the leaders of the Brexit campaign need to acknowledge this.

There are a million good reasons why the UK should leave the EU. Turkey one day joining is not one of them.

Owing to French, German and Austrian resistance  even xenophobia  it will be decades before Turkey joins the EU.

Anyway, if Turkey some day gets an invitation to join the EU why would they even want to?

Most sensible people normally try to escape from a sinking ship, not climb on board one.

Turkeys Brexit contribution

Those supporting Brexit should be thanking Turkey for its major contribution to the leave campaign.

One of the most high-profile supporters of Brexit is part Turkish himself: former London Mayor and Member of Parliament Boris Johnson.

Johnson is the great grandson of Ali Kemal Bey, the former journalist and Ottoman interior minister (briefly in 1919) who was killed in 1922.

Historically speaking, the UK and Turkey have enjoyed close relations. In fact, until recently the British Conservative Party  the main supporter of Brexit today  was probably the strongest supporter in Western Europe for Turkeys eventual membership into the EU.

Since voting power in the EU is based on population, some British politicians thought that Turkeys 75 million people would help to create an Anglo-Turkish voting bloc that would challenge the traditional Franco-German control of the EU.

How times have changed.

Regardless of how Britain votes on June 23, the UK will have to work with Turkey. The Brexit campaign should not cut off its nose to spite its face.

Luke Coffey is a research fellow specialising in transatlantic and Eurasian security at a Washington DC-based think-tank. He previously served as a special adviser to the British defence secretary and was a commissioned officer in the United States Army.

The views expressed in this article are the authors own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeeras editorial policy.
The seeds of the current troubled Middle Eastern scene were sown in the June 1967 war that Israel started.

The Levellers were better understood as political democracy established itself in late 19th and early 20th-century England, wrote Christopher Hill on the 17th-century English political movement.

The Diggers, another 17th-century English movement, appeared significantly different 300 years later with the rise of socialism. Such a profound reconsideration of the actors of the 17th-century English Civil War owes much to Hills world turned upside down approach.

His thesis is rather simple: History has to be rewritten in every generation, because although the past does not change, the present does; each generation asks new questions of the past, and finds new areas of sympathy as it relives different aspects of the experiences of its predecessors.

Benedict Andersons famous Imagined Communities perhaps illuminated the novel approach further: The nations biography cannot be written evangelically, down time, through a long procreative chain of begettings. The only alternative is to fashion it up time.

Similarly, the Arab defeat, or al-Naksa, might be comprehended differently 49 years later, especially owing to the current unfolding of events in the Arab world.

READ MORE: The Six-Day War, 48 years on

The 1967 Arab defeat was a significant historical turning point that dictated the subsequent course of the entire Arab World.

An uptime consideration of al-Naksa not only informs much about the role of war in the global accumulation of capital, but such an understanding might also illuminate much on the devastating Arab present  fierce inter-communal conflicts, deepening poverty, a widening gap of inequality, reduction in labour value and power, deformed consciousness and sectional identity form representations.

It all began in 1967. The 1967 Naksa prepared the foundation for a neoliberal Middle East, and Israels militarism and colonial Zionism was the ideal tool for such an endeavour.

The defeat of Arab nationalism led to the Arab elites forceful reintegration in the world economy under the new terms of defeat, and, by implication, engendered further disintegration of the Arab world and decomposition of the state apparatus.

Reliable and authoritative data of key social, economic and political indicators covering the past five decades could easily substantiate the following inference: The 1967 Arab defeat was a significant historical turning point that dictated the subsequent course of the entire Arab world.

It also led to the rise of neoliberal Zionism and the formation of the New Israel. The seeds of the current troubled Middle Eastern scene were sown in June 1967.

Since the turn of the century, the Arab states have come to constitute a zone for Western military intervention without parallel in the post-Cold War world  US invasion of Iraq, NATO bombardment of Libya, US proxies in Syria, Washington-backed GCC assault on Yemen, wrote Perry Anderson in The House of Zion.

Actually, Ali Kadris recent brilliant book, Arab Development Denied, on the topic noted that since the second half of the 20th century, the Arab world and its surrounding region have experienced the highest frequency of conflicts on earth.

War, to be sure, has a vital function and serves a crucial purpose in the grand scheme of global capital accumulation, and, in the case of the Arab world, it proved to be especially destructive. Simply put, capital accumulation on a world scale profits greatly from the degradation and devaluation of human life (and by implication the decline of the labour value and power) continuously engendered by war and conflicts.

As such, accumulation requires the coercive destruction of Third World value and power, and war and military assaults have been doing just that. Beginning with the 1967 Naksa, encroachment wars and military routs, structurally or directly, have reconstituted [Arab] national class formations to imperialist will.

The idea of Israel is a foolish fantasy. Gamal Abdel Nasser, Egyptian president [1956-70]

The Arab experience with war that began in 1967 was not limited to the loss of land or life, or the reconstitution of Arab class formation, poverty, and underdevelopment.

The combination of excessive military assaults and neoliberal policies has distorted the very state of Arab consciousness.

The 1967 defeat of Arab nationalism, coupled with the subsequent neoliberal assaults on the Arab working-class organisations and Arab nationalist and leftist political parties, was disastrous.

With the defeat of Arab nationalism and Arab socialism in 1967, the Arab world lost its ideology of resistance. Therefore, Naksa successfully implanted the seeds of the current sectional-identity form representations as an alternative, which was further amplified with the post-1967 neoliberal economic policies.

A 2016 Naksa uptime view explains the conditions catapulting many people into the hands of reactionary fatalism (think Daesh, also known as ISIL, or ISIS), and the violent inter-communal conflict.

Israels military assaults on the Arabs (coupled with Western anti-Arab and anti-Muslim racism) were central to this catastrophic course the Arab world took.

Does this explain Western support for Israel?





The idea of Israel is a foolish fantasy, wrote Egypts late President Gamal Abdel Nasser in 1954. Had it not been for Western imperialism and Western sponsorship (British colonisation of Palestine and American sponsorship later), the idea of Israel would have remained a foolish fantasy  at best.

Underlying Nassers view is a deeply incisive representation of the entwined relationship between Western imperialism and colonial Zionism.

Thus, Nasser spoke of the entire Arab world as one region (not only Palestine) that was influenced by the same forces, and, to him, it was clear that [Western] imperialism was the most prominent of these forces; even Israel itself was but one of the outcomes of imperialism.

To be sure, this view explains not only the essence of the Arab-Israeli struggle, but also sensibly exposes the myth of Israeli economic miracle. Fourteen years after Nassers book Philosophy of the Revolution, a World Bank mission investigation of the Israeli economy in 1968 corroborated his view.

According to the commission, the Israeli economic achievements were largely the result of two factors: a capable and determined population with a broad base of well-educated and energetic people who proved able to overcome the difficulties of economic development with great ingenuity; and a relatively large and continuous flow of foreign capital originating chiefly from private donations of American Jews and from reparations payments by West Germany. Israels economic miracle would have been impossible if one of these growth factors  human skill and foreign capital  had been lacking.





This foolish fantasy was possible only because investment accounted for only one-eighth of the capital imported [to Israel] between 1950 and 1967; most of the capital imports were gifts.

In the 21 years after the founding of the state, only 30 percent of the massive Israeli import surplus of $2,650 per inhabitant had been supplied under conditions which call for a return outflow of individuals, interest or capital.

From 1948 to mid 1973, Israel had received the staggering sum of over $8bn in economic assistance from various foreign sources, or $3,500 in total for each Israeli, an average of $233 per year per capita in aid. To put these numbers in perspective; the per capita income for Egypt in 1969 was $109.





Does that answer, in part, why Egypt was defeated in 1967?

In 2016, Israel remains a foolish fantasy par excellence. The proposed $45-50bn US record-breaking aid package for the 2018-2027 decade validates Nassers characterisation.

It represents nearly half of all US economic and military assistance to Israel  both grants and loans  provided over the first 60 years of the countrys existence including the previous $30bn aid package granted by President George W Bush for 2009-2018.

This time, however, US taxpayers would provide every Israeli man, woman and child with $600 worth of weapons each year from 2019 to 2028.

And it would include an annual subsidy of more than $1.3bn to the Israeli weapons industry under an exemption for Israel in current US law which allows Israel to spend up to one-quarter of its US military aid appropriation on its own domestic corporations.

In the post 1967 era, the Arab class formation underwent a radical disarticulation, wrote Ali Kadri. The terms of defeat accepted by the new ruling Arab elites led the de-development, or reversed development, of the Arab world.

Wars, coupled with aggressive neoliberal policies, simply stripped the Arab world of its developmental capabilities. Forty-nine years later, the Arab world is disintegrating, its states are decomposing, and its populations are suffering every possible catastrophe short of total annihilation.

The term naksa (setback) falls very short of describing the monumental event Arabs faced in and since 1967.

A new phrase is needed.

Seif Dana is a professor of Sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Parkside.
Killing in northwestern district is latest attack on religious minorities just days after launch of police crackdown.

Unidentified attackers have hacked to death a 62-year-old Hindu monastery worker in Bangladesh, police say, the latest in a series of such attacks on religious minorities in the mainly Muslim country.

Fridays killing of Nityaranjan Pande, in the northwestern district of Pabna, follows the murder of a Hindu priest on Tuesday.

As he was walking, several attackers hacked him in the neck  He died on the spot, Abdullah Al-Hasan, the local police station chief, told AFP news agency.





As a diabetic, he used to take a walk early in the morning.

He had been working at the monastery for around 40 years.

In recent years he was the head of its office [Shri Shri Thakur Anukulchandra Ashram] staff.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility.

Analysts say a climate of intolerance in Bangladeshi politics has motivated and provided cover for perpetrators of religious hate crimes.

The secular government of Sheikh Hasina blames the growing violence on its political opponents, aiming to create chaos and prevent war crimes trials for incidents that date back to 1971 from going ahead.

The opposition parties deny the accusations.

In the past four days, Bangladesh police have shot dead five suspected attackers, as they step up their hunt for those who have killed at least 30 people in the past 16 months.

Victims of the attacks have included secular bloggers, gay rights activists and followers of minority religions.

Many of the latest attacks have been claimed either by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group or by a South Asian branch of al-Qaeda.

But two groups in particular have been been identified by the authorities as leading the fight against secularism: Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh and Ansarullah Bangla Team.

While both are considered possible suspects in the recent killings, neither has been alleged to have direct links to al-Qaeda and ISIL.

At least 10 Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh members have been killed in gun battles since November after the killing of two foreigners, according to the police.

READ MORE: Extremism and shrinking space for dissent in Bangladesh

The group had laid low since six of its leaders were hanged in 2007 for attacks that included 500 bomb explosions on a single day in 2005.

Subsequent suicide attacks on courts killed 25 people and wounded hundreds.

Last month, Bangladesh police announced a 1.8m taka ($23,000) reward for information leading to the arrest of six members of Ansarullah Bangla Team, the second outlawed group they believe is behind the violence.

Around 90 percent of Bangladeshs 160 million-strong population is Muslim, with eight percent Hindu.
About 300,000 Somalis in Kenya face being homeless as camp is set to close by November.

For the first time in 24 years, Jama Addaawe is leaving the Dadaab refugee camp, located near the Kenya-Somalia border.

He is part of a group of refugees who opted to return to Somalia after the Kenyan government told them the worlds largest camp would close by November this year.

We have no reason to stay here, Addawe told Al Jazeera.

Kenya says we are unwanted guests. We have to go back home.

Approximately 300,000 refugees call Dadaab home.

They are leaving the camp before the deadline. Those willing to return are given some cash to help them settle back home, before being taken across the border by bus.

Waste of many years

Kenya wants to close the camp over security concerns and claims attacks on its soil have been planned from within the sprawling camps borders.

But there are doubts whether security will improve once the refugees leave. The border is porous and people pushed back may return to Kenya.

Without even basic necessities, there are fears that the shunned refugees could be easier recruits for armed groups in both countries.

Our children have received education here, Mohammed Diriye, a refugee, said.

They will have nothing else to do but join al-Shabab fighters in Somalia if we return now. It will be a total waste of many years of struggle.

Over the years, an economy grew in the camp, and was dependent on refugees. It is largely fuelled by remittances sent by friends and family of the refugees from abroad.
Germany is failing to deal with a surge in hate crimes and signs of institutional racism among law-enforcement agencies, according to Amnesty International.

The report released by the UK-based group on Thursday says that even before the influx of more than a million refugees and migrants to Germany last year, authorities had not adequately investigated, prosecuted or sentenced people for racist crimes.





It pointed to the discovery in 2011 of a small neo-Nazi cell, the National Socialist Underground (NSU), which murdered nine immigrants and a policewoman between 2000 and 2007.

With hate crimes on the rise in Germany, long-standing and well-documented shortcomings in the response of law-enforcement agencies to racist violence must be addressed, Marco Perolini, Amnesty International researcher, said.

The number of racially motivated attacks has never been as high as now in the history of post-World War II Germany, according to Selmin Caliskan, Amnesty Internationals director in Berlin.

In addition to racist violence against immigrants, there are signs of institutional racism in public administration, Caliskan said.

Heiko Maas, Germanys justice minister, said his ministry would carefully evaluate Amnesty Internationals report and examine whether action needed to be taken.

One thing is clear  a state under the rule of law can never accept racist violence. We need to do everything we can to quickly catch the perpetrators and rigorously punish them, he said in an emailed statement.

Bungled investigations

After a 19-month inquiry into the NSU, a parliamentary committee said a combination of bungled investigations and prejudice enabled the NSU to go undetected for more than a decade.

The Amnesty International report said Germany should set up an independent public inquiry to look over the NSU investigations as well as how the nation classifies and investigates hate crimes.

The group said part of the problem was that there was a high bar on considering a crime racist in Germany and treating it as such.

READ MORE: The rise of Germanys anti-refugee right

Attacks on asylum shelters surged to 1,031 in 2015, up from 199 in the previous year and 69 in 2013, data from the interior ministry shows.

Thomas de Maiziere, Germanys interior minister, has said that the number is likely to rise again this year, with 347 such attacks registered in the first quarter of 2016 alone.

While refugees who arrived in Munich last September were applauded and handed sweets, the mood has since soured, with concerns about integration and security rife.

About six anti-refugee protests took place each week in 2015 and support for the anti-immigration Alternative for Germany is rising, Amnesty International said.
Revoking permits to enter Israel will boost sense of injustice among them, top UN officials office says.

Israels cancellation of entry permits for Palestinians following a deadly attack in Tel Aviv may amount to collective punishment, which is banned under international law, according to the office of the UNs top human rights official.

The Israeli military on Thursday revoked permits for 83,000 Palestinians to visit Israel and said it would send hundreds more troops to the occupied West Bank, a day after a gun attack that killed four Israelis and wounded five in a busy shopping and dining market in Tel Aviv. The two suspects were reportedly Palestinian and disguised as Orthodox Jews.

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Raad Al Husseins office condemned the attack, but also expressed deep concern about the revoking of permits.

Interactive: Vanishing Palestine  The making of Israels occupation [This] may amount to prohibited collective punishment and will only increase the sense of injustice and frustration felt by Palestinians in this very tense time, his spokeswoman Ravina Shamdasani told a news briefing. Measures included the suspension of 204 work permits of individuals in the alleged attackers extended families and the sealing off of their entire home town by Israeli security forces, she added.





Israel has a human rights obligation to bring those responsible to account for their crimes. And this, it is doing. However, the measures taken against the broader population punish not the perpetrators of the crime, but tens, and maybe hundreds, or thousands of innocent Palestinians, said Shamdasani.

The entry permits had been issued to Palestinians from the Israeli-occupied West Bank to visit relatives during the current Islamic holy month of Ramadan.

Stoking tensions

Later on Friday, Israels ban was also criticised by France, which currently holds the presidency of UN Security Council.

Speaking to reporters, French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault condemned the abominable attack but added that the imposed travel restrictions could escalate violence, instead of focus attention on the need to pursue peace.

The decision by the Israeli authorities today to revoke tens of thousands of entry permits could stoke tensions which could lead to a risk of escalation, Ayrault said.

We must be careful about anything that could stoke tensions.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the assault by the two gunmen, but Hamas, the Palestinian group that governs the Gaza Strip and which is also present in the West Bank, was quick to praise it.

The market and complex of bars and restaurants, where the attack took place, is located across the street from Israels defence ministry and main army headquarters.
The TAK says attack was revenge for Turkish army operations in the Kurdish-dominated southeastern region.

Kurdistan Freedom Hawks, an armed group known by the Kurdish-language acronym TAK, has claimed responsibility for Tuesdays suicide bombing in the Turkish city of Istanbul which killed 11 people.

The attack destroyed a police bus in central Istanbul during the morning rush hour near the main tourist district, a major university and the mayors office.

The TAK, which is seen as a splinter group of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), said in an online statement on Friday that the attack was revenge for Turkish army operations in the countrys Kurdish-dominated southeastern region.

The action was carried out to counter all the savage attacks of the Turkish Republic in Nusaybin and Sirnak and other places, the TAK said, referring to the areas where the army was carrying out operations against Kurdish fighters.

The TAKs founders are believed to have broken away several years ago from the PKK, which has waged an armed campaign against the Turkish state for more than three decades.

Governments stand

A senior Turkish official, who asked to remain anonymous, told Al Jazeera that the government held the PKK responsible for the attack.

TAK is just another name for PKK. The terrorists are trying to hide behind the alphabet soup to disassociate themselves from civilian deaths, the official said in an e-mail statement to Al Jazeera.





The TAK also repeated a warning that foreign tourists for their own safety should not visit Turkey.

We again warn foreign tourists who are in Turkey and who want to come to Turkey: foreigners are not our target but Turkey is no longer a reliable country for them, the TAK said.

The group also confirmed that it was a suicide bombing.

The TAK has already claimed two attacks this year that killed dozens of people in the Turkish capital, Ankara, in February and March, raising concerns over security in the country.

Separately on Friday, the Turkish military sources said fighter jets targeted and killed a group of between eight and 10 fighters suspected of belonging to the PKK in the southeastern Hakkari province.

The PKK abandoned its two-year ceasefire in July, reigniting a conflict that has claimed more than 40,000 lives, mainly Kurdish, since 1984.

The violence wrecked a peace process that was seen as the best chance at ending one of Europes longest-running insurgencies.
Lawyer says his client is a victim of mistaken identity and denies allegations he runs a people-smuggling network.

An Eritrean man extradited from Sudan to Italy on suspicion of being the head of a human smuggling ring has told investigators they have arrested the wrong man, his lawyer said.

Lawyer Michele Calantropo said his client denied being the suspect and also denied being linked in any way to a trafficking network, when questioned by Italian magistrates on Friday.

He is another man  and doesnt understand the meaning of this arrest, Calantropo said, adding that his client was a carpenter.

Release my brother

On Wednesday, Italian and British anti-crime agencies announced the arrest of Medhane Yehdego Mered, who was caught in Sudan and flown to Italy to face trial.

However, when photographs of the arrested man were released after his arrival in Rome on Wednesday, family and friends said he was an Eritrean refugee named Medhanie Tesfamariam Berhe.

READ MORE: Doubts over identity of smuggler extradited to Italy

These are two different people, Meron Estefanos, the Sweden-based executive director of the Eritrean Initiative on Human Rights, told Al Jazeera.





If you notice the one that the Italians have, he is shorter and younger, while the real Medhane Mered is older, a 36-year-old much taller [man]. If you see the pictures close-up, it just doesnt add up.

Segem Tasfamariam Berhe also told Italian reporters she recognised her brother in the footage.

I want to tell Italian police my brother is innocent, he is not the man they are looking for. Please, investigators, release my brother, she was quoted as saying from Sudans capital Khartoum by Italys Rai News.

The general

Italian prosecutors admitted on Thursday that they were checking the suspects identity after reports that the arrested man was the victim of a case of mistaken identity.

Sudans interior ministry, Italian police and Britains National Crime Agency had made much of the arrest of Mered  dubbed the general  in Khartoum at the end of May and his extradition to Italy.

He is on a global wanted list since 2015 for people-smuggling, and is accused of packing refugees on to a boat that sank in 2013 off the Italian island of Lampedusa, drowning 360 people.

In recent months, Europe has stepped up efforts to stem the flow of people crossing the Mediterranean.

According to the UNs refugee agency, more than 48,500 people have arrived in Italy by boat so far this year.

More than 10,000 people have died crossing the Mediterranean to Europe since 2014.
After narrow victory, Pedro Pablo Kuczynski will have to work with Keiko Fujimoris party which has Congress majority.

Keiko Fujimori has conceded defeat to rival Pedro Pablo Kuczynski in Perus presidential election, putting an end to five days of suspense that had left the result up in the air.

With all votes counted for Sundays election, former Wall Street banker Kuczynski won 50.1 percent to 49.9 percent for Fujimori, the daughter of jailed ex-president Alberto Fujimori.

In a democratic spirit, we accept these results, Fujimori said on Friday, vowing to lead a responsible opposition in Congress, where her party controls 73 of 130 seats.

Fujimoris announcement came shortly after Kuczynski got down to work forming a government aimed at uniting a country deeply divided by Sundays poll.

Al Jazeeras Alessandro Rampietti, reporting from Perus capital, Lima, said that while Fujimori had conceded defeat in the runoff election, she also underlined that it would be difficult for the new president to govern without her partys support.





While she lost by the tiniest of margin, her party has won an absolute majority in the future Congress, Rampietti said.

She said her party will be the party of the opposition and they will do everything they can to try and push, daring the legislative agenda in Congress.

New government

The 77-year-old president-elect, a former economy minister who studied at Oxford and Princeton, confirmed his pick for economy minister, Alfredo Thorne, a former JP Morgan investment banker who managed Kuczynskis campaign.

For the rest of his team, he will have to seek balance across the political spectrum.

Kuczynski will have to work with Fujimoris Popular Force party, as his own party, Peruvians for Change, took just 18 of the 130 seats in Congress in the first round of the election.

He will also have to repay the endorsement he received from the Peruvian lefts leadership, which backed him in the runoff between the two right-leaning candidates.

Third-place candidate Veronika Mendoza, of the leftist Broad Front party, crucially threw her support to Kuczynski just before the second-round polls.

Old wounds

The race opened old wounds dating back to the 1990s, when Fujimoris father was president  Alberto Fujimori is now serving a 25-year prison sentence for massacres by an army death squad, but is fondly remembered by some Peruvians.

Kuczynski said he is open to the possibility of house arrest for the ex-leader.

Its time to work together for the future of our country, Kuczynski said on Thursday after the full results were announced.

Elections can be tough, tense to the point of insult, but once theyre over, its time to built bridges.

Peru, a nation of 31 million people, is one of Latin Americas fastest-growing economies.
Denying that government is intolerant of criticism, Louise Mushikiwabo says Rwanda has its own way of doing things.

Rwandas foreign minister has denied a wide range of allegations against her country, including human-rights abuses, suppression of press freedoms, and extrajudicial killings.

Taking to Al Jazeeras Mehdi Hasan on the show Upfront, Louise Mushikiwabo dismissed the claims brought forth by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and Reporters Without Borders, and countries Rwanda is allied with on the governments intolerance for opposition voices and criticism.

Let me put it this way: Rwanda, as any other country that I know of, has its own way of doing things, Mushikiwabo said in response to a remark that Rwanda seems to be on its own in defending itself.

READ MORE: Timeline  How Rwandas genocide unfolded

And not everybody should be agreeing with what the government of Rwanda is doing.

Mushikiwabo also revisited her governments stance that the BBC was banned from Rwanda because it promoted genocide ideology.

The BBC produced a documentary film which is a total denial of the history of Rwanda, particularly the history of the genocide, she said.

In Rwanda that is not acceptable.

Officers murder

Mushikiwabo also commented on the alleged murder in 2014 of the exiled Rwandan intelligence officer Patrick Karegeya, who was found dead in his hotel room in Johannesburg.

The countrys defence minister, in response to the incident, had said: When you choose to be a dog, you die like a dog suggesting the governments complicity in Karegeyas death.

Let me again put it this way: I dont know anybody who betrays a country that gets rewarded, Mushikiwabo said on the issue.





She said Karegeya, who was allegedly killed while in exile despite never having been convicted of a crime, threatened Rwanda.

Why should I be unhappy about my enemies and people who threaten? she asked.

When it came to Rwandas involvement in the violent political crisis in neighbouring Burundi, Mushikiwabo insisted her countrys only association was in taking care of Burundian refugees.

She said on the crisis: When people make wrong choices then they have to live with the consequences.

Mushikiwabo rejected an UN Panel of Experts report from earlier this year that accuses Rwanda of recruiting and training Burundian refugees in Rwanda with the goal of overthrowing Burundian President Pierre Nkurunziza.

If I wanted to overthrow I would use my own army. I would not pick up children in a refugee camp, she said.

The crackdown on Burundians follows the expulsion of thousands of Rwandans by Burundi since April 2015.

WATCH: Rwanda: From hatred to reconciliation

Burundi has been in political crisis since then, after Nkurunziza controversially decided to run for a third term which he went on to win in a July election.

Hundreds have been killed and more than 200,000 have fled Burundi, according to the UN, raising fears of a return to the civil war fought between 1993 and 2006.

Burundi has accused Rwanda of interfering in its political crisis, which has seen Burundian government forces clash with protesters and rebels who say the president violated the constitution by standing for another term.

Rwanda has denied Burundis accusations.

The full interview will be aired at 19:30 GMT on Friday and will also be available online at www.aljazeera.com/upfront.
Local council says at least 28 crude explosives dropped shortly after government gave UN access to 15 besieged areas.

Government forces have dropped barrel bombs on a suburb of the Syrian capital Damascus, which received its first food-aid delivery in four years, according to local activists.

The reported violence on Friday came in rebel-held Daraya just hours after the Syrian Arab Red Crescent (SARC) and the UN delivered food aid to its residents for the first time since it came under siege in 2012.

Writing on Facebook, the Local Council of Daraya said that at least 28 barrel bombs  crude, unguided weapons that kill indiscriminately  were dropped by helicopters.

Late on Thursday, the food-aid delivery came after the UN said the Syrian government had permitted access to 15 of the 19 besieged areas within the country.

The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights cited local sources saying that the distribution of aid within Daraya was not carried out due to the bombing on Friday.

Daraya has been under siege since November 2012 and has witnessed some of the worst bombardment during Syrias civil war, now in its sixth year.

Jean-Marc Ayrault, Frances foreign minister, voiced outrage after the reports of barrel bombings.

He accused Syria of extraordinary duplicity, saying the government had finally granted access for aid after heavy international pressure and then the bombing restarted.

The delivery of food supplies came a week after a joint convoy of the UN, the International Committee of the Red Cross and SARC reached Daraya and delivered medicine, vaccines, baby formula, and nutritional items for children but no food.

The UN estimates that there are currently 592,700 people living under siege in Syria, with the vast majority of them  about 452,700 people  besieged by government forces.

Lifting the siege on rebel-held areas was a key demand by the opposition during indirect peace talks held in Geneva, Switzerland, earlier this year.

One meal per day

SARC said the delivery  which included food, flour and medical supplies  was coordinated with the UN in Damascus.

In a video posted online by media activists in Daraya, an official with the UNs World Food Programme (WFP) said the organisation had delivered about 480 food rations that would feed around 2,400 individuals for a month.

The official said he had met some beneficiaries of the food aid and community leaders.





The supply of the very basic commodities is very challenging, so as a consequence the prices of the commodities themselves are very high whenever they are available, he said.

As a result, most families are having to do with one meal, which is not complete as a meal, per day in order to be able to get by.

An amateur video posted online showed UN 4WD vehicles and white SARC trucks driving through sand barriers in the dark until they were met by opposition fighters.

Photographs posted online by activists in the suburb showed UN and SARC officials meeting local dignitaries and men removing WFP boxes from a white truck.

According to photographs posted by local activists, among those joining the convoy into Daraya were Yacoub El Hillo, UN humanitarian coordinator for Syria, and Khawla Mattar, a spokeswoman for Staffan de Mistura, the UN special envoy to Syria.

The UN estimates that 4,000 to 8,000 people live in Daraya, which has been subject to a government blockade since residents expelled security forces in the early stages of the 2011 uprising against President Bashar al-Assad.
State-owned company says new brand aims to protect health of low-income smokers, but campaigners decry double standards.

Smokers in Thailand have been paying considerably more for their cigarettes after the government introduced a tax increase earlier this year.

The three-percent tax hike caused cigarette prices in the country to go up by 30 to 76 cents and resulted in an immediate downturn in sales by around 15 percent.

But, in a move that upset anti-smoking campaigners, the governments own tobacco company responded to the new regulations by offering a cheaper alternative.

Thailands state owned Tobacco Monopoly introduced the countrys newest brand of cigarette, Line 7.1, just weeks after the government increased the cigarette tax.

READ MORE: Plain cigarette packaging likely to snowball globally

The new brand, which is slightly smaller in diameter than standard brands, costs about 40 baht ($1.12) a pack.

After the tax hike, other brands now range from about 48 to 130 baht ($1.34 to $3.64) a pack.

The tobacco company says that it is simply trying to protect the health of low-income smokers with the new, cheaper brand.

It claims a cheaper brand of cigarettes keeps smokers from rolling their own unfiltered cigarettes or buying illegally imported, untaxed ones.

READ MORE: E-cigs and vaping for Muslims go up in smoke

But, anti-smoking campaigners in Thailand said the decision was made for financial reasons, not health.

All cigarettes are the same, Prakit Vathesatogkit, from the Action On Smoking And Health Foundation, told Al Jazeera.

The expensive one, the cheaper one, the hand roll; no difference, they are all tobacco.

It is estimated that the number of smokers in Thailand has fallen by around seven million in the past 30 years.

According to the Thai Health Promotion Foundation, there are about 12 million smokers in Thailand, a country of 67 million people.








Soldiers and an opposition MP among those suspected of planning an armed uprising against President Yoweri Museveni.

At least 30 people, including serving soldiers and an opposition MP, have been arrested on suspicion of plotting to overthrow Ugandas government, the countrys army has said.

Army spokesman Colonel Paddy Ankunda told the AFP news agency on Friday that the group was suspected of planning an armed uprising against President Yoweri Museveni, himself a former rebel who seized power 30 years ago.

We and the police are investigating the matter, Ankunda said.

The detainees were linked to a rebel group, Ankunda added, declining, however, to give any further details.

He said most of those arrested were soldiers, adding that at least one member of parliament and one opposition politician had also been arrested.

READ MORE: Oppositions Kizza Besigye charged with treason

The only detainee named by the spokesman was Michael Kabaziguruka, an MP from the main opposition Forum for Democratic Change (FDC) party, whose leader Kizza Besigye is in custody on treason charges.

Besigye, who cried foul after coming second to Museveni in Februarys presidential election, was arrested last month for holding a mock swearing-in ceremony.

He was previously charged with treason in 2005 but the case was eventually abandoned.

FDC spokesman Ssemujju Nganda went to visit Kabaziguruka after his arrest.

He told me he was questioned on rebel links, which he didnt know about, said Nganda, adding that other party supporters are under detention on the same claim.

A long-standing opponent of Museveni, Besigye has been frequently jailed, placed under house arrest, accused of both treason and rape, tear-gassed, beaten and hospitalised over the years.

LRA no longer a threat to Uganda

In a separate development, Ankunda said Uganda plans to withdraw its troops from a mission in Central African Republic whose goal is to hunt down members of the Lords Resistance Army (LRA) rebel group.

Ankunda told AP news agency that the rebel group no longer poses a threat to Uganda.

He said authorities have notified the African Union of plans to withdraw the troops before the end of this year.

READ MORE: The girls of the Lords Resistance Army

About 2,500 Ugandan soldiers are operating in the jungles of Central African Republic under the AU mission. They are supported by US special forces.

Joseph Kony, the LRA leader, is wanted by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity. The group is infamous for recruiting boys to fight and taking girls as sex slaves.
White House says plan includes advice and assistance as well as occasional operations against Taliban forces.

The White House has announced the expansion of the US militarys role in Afghanistan to fight the Taliban, ratcheting up a 15-year conflict President Barack Obama had vowed to end.

Josh Earnest, Obamas press secretary, said on Friday that US forces will play a more proactive role in helping local troops be more effective in the battlefield.

Earnest said US support will come in the form of advice and assistance to Afghan military, as well as occasionally accompanying them in their operations.

Opinion: Ashraf Ghanis war strategy will fail

Afghan forces have struggled to contain the Taliban, which has carried out numerous attacks, including in the Afghan capital Kabul.

But Earnest denied that Obama is restarting the US combat role there, which ended in 2014.

At least 9,800 US forces have remained in an advisory role in Afghanistan since the start of 2015, and were only authorised to hit Taliban targets for defensive reasons, or to protect Afghan troops.

Defence Secretary Ash Carter said the order was issued to General Sean MacFarland, US commander in Afghanistan.

Al Jazeeras Rosiland Jordan, reporting from Washington DC, said the US defence department had wanted to carry out the plan for months.

The concern about the resurgence of the Taliban has been growing in the Pentagon, Jordan said.

The plan also includes strategic strikes against the Taliban in order to weaken it, while shoring up the Afghan troops ability to defend the country, she said.

As the summer fighting season comes in high gear, the US wants to make sure the Afghan military would not be caught short, Jordan added.

Obama was elected in 2008, promising to end one of Americas longest and most gruelling wars.

Has US foreign policy failed in Afghanistan and Iraq?

The first US troops arrived in Afghanistan 15 years ago, after the Taliban government refused to turn over Osama bin Laden, the mastermind of the September 11, 2001 attacks, and more than 2,000 US personnel have died in the ensuing war.

At the peak of the US deployment in Afghanistan, around 100,000 American soldiers were stationed across the country in March 2011.

The campaign to neutralise the Taliban has suffered multiple setbacks in the twilight of Obamas presidency.

More than 5,000 Afghan troops died last year alone, prompting Obama to indefinitely postpone the withdrawal of US troops.

Obamas latest Afghan decision would appear to push any brokered solution well beyond his presidency.
           2005     ..        
As the song goes, "I get by with a little help from my friends."

That sentiment is truer than ever for banks, particularly when it comes to detecting fraud.

For instance, The Fauquier Bank in Warrenton, Va., was able to identify a customer tied to a check-kiting scheme thanks to a bank in Oregon. Turns out, the customer had opened accounts and intentionally written bad checks at various small banks across the country.

The Fauquier Bank and the bank in Oregon are both part of the FRAMLxchange, an information-sharing network created last year by Verafin, a compliance vendor.

"We were then able to shut down that customer's account, and we would not have known if we didn't have these collaborations," said Josh Brown, director of security at Fauquier.

That kind of interaction is exactly what Verafin had in mind when it established the network.

"We have been seeing over the past several years a trend in financial crime of not attacking a single financial institution, but hiding fraudulent activity across multiple institutions," said Brendan Brothers, co-founder of Verafin. "When it comes to community banks, they often have difficulty identifying that activity, [and] they only see a small slice."

The exchange, which is a free service, was initially open to Verafin customers that participate in the 314(b) program, a voluntary provision of the USA Patriot Act. It permits financial institutions, upon providing notice to the Treasury Department, to share information with one another strictly for the purpose of identifying and reporting to federal authorities any activities that may involve money laundering or terrorist financing.

Verafin recently opened up the network broadly to any 314 (b) participating financial institution, regardless of whether it is a Verafin customer. Currently more than 600 Verafin customers and nearly 150 noncustomers use the network.

The topic of information sharing among banks to prevent financial crime has become more prevalent in recent months. Multiple attacks against banks since late last year that have been tied to North Korea have been blamed, in part, to a lack of information sharing among banks on the Swift network. And this month JPMorgan Chase Chief Executive Jamie Dimon floated the idea of a national know-your-customer registry for banks.

Verafin is not the only company operating a bank information-sharing network. The Financial Services Information Sharing and Analysis Center reports information about cybersecurity breaches to its member companies. Swift and Clarient Global  a consortium of the Depository Trust & Clearing Corp. and six global banks  are among several consortiums that operate know-your-customer registries for banks.

Verafin not only focuses on helping community banks share information, but also on automating much of the technical processes for them, Brothers said.

"With many 314 (b) programs there's a lot of hurdles; you have to verify the other institution you're talking to, encrypt emails," he said. "We do all of that [on the back end] so it just serves as a messaging service to our members."

Fauquier's Brown, a former law enforcement agent, believes information sharing is critical for banks in helping prevent fraud and money laundering.

"It might be disconcerting to civil libertarians, but we're not sharing information on our customers  we're sharing information about activity," he said.

Rebecca Robertson, director of anti-laundering compliance at South Carolina-based South State Bank, which is also on the Verafin network, echoed that argument.

"When we see an alert, we know right away this is a person we need to look into," she said. "We don't have to waste time digging around, trying to figure out whom to contact for more information. And the information we share gives both our institutions a view of our mutual customer we could never achieve without working together."

Banks will likely need to share even more information to deal with the cybersecurity threats of today, where banks and financial networks are targeted by sophisticated attacks coming from criminal gangs and nation states, said Shirley Inscoe, a senior analyst with Aite Group.

"Banks can't expect to fight these kinds of attacks in a solitary manner," she said.

But, Inscoe added, the industry has to avoid crossing the fine line between sharing information for the greater good and invading people's privacy. For example, regarding a national know-your-customer registry, Inscoe said "many people would resist" such a database that housed information on all Americans.

Brown said that information-sharing helps the bank be more compliant.

"I spend more time investigating activity that is not suspicious than activity that turns out to be fraudulent," he said. "So if the regulators come in and ask why I didn't further investigate a particular activity, I can show them why."


The Libertarian Party has been around for a long time, and its principles of limited government fit in well with what most conservatives believe. While that party and its nominee, Gary Johnson, are not socially conservative, neither are the nominees of either major political party this election cycle.

Trump ought to be the first choice of conservatives, but what if Trump continues to make unforced errors that both offend conservatives and raise genuine questions about his emotional maturity? The gratuitous swipes by Trump at Governor Martinez and Judge Curiel suggest both that Trump may be unelectable and that he might not be able to be a good president.

Gary Johnson would then become the only non-Hillary choice for conservatives, provided that Johnson can win. Could the Libertarian Party win the 2016 presidential election? Could its nominee enough support in the Electoral College to throw the presidential election into the House of Representatives? Could its nominee, in fact, be chosen as the next president by the House of Representatives?

Johnson is refreshingly honest, unlike Bernie Sanders, about his chances, and Johnson says his only chance is to reach the 15% threshold necessary to get him into the presidential debates. Hillary's numbers are appallingly low for a candidate whom virtually everyone knows and who is supported by virtually the whole leftist establishment. Her RCP average over the last four polls, when Johnson is listed, is 39% of the vote.

Trump fares slightly worse at 38%, although the novelty of his campaign may give him some room to grow. Still, what that means is that as the last primaries in a long season are over, the two major party nominees have a combined total of 77% of the vote. That leaves Johnson, whose name will be on the ballot in every state, growth potential of up to 23% of the vote before the debates.

What happens if Johnson gets in the debates? He can rightly describe himself as the only government executive on the ballot, the only candidate outside the Beltway, the only person who did not make millions while other Americans suffered, and the only choice Americans have for someone not connected to the Party of Washington (A) or the Party of Washington (B)  in short, the only real outsider.

Johnson might not move the vast American electorate profoundly unhappy with both major party nominees, but he might be able to come across as both honest and likeable. And if he took as much from one party as the other, which Libertarians often do, then he might pull up close to both Hillary and Donald.

Gary Johnson might also be able to win a significant percentage of the Hispanic vote and might, indeed, win the endorsement of Republican Hispanic Governors Martinez and Sandoval in the Rocky Mountains region. He could win New Mexico, Nevada, and Colorado from Hillary and also traditionally Republican states in the Great Plains and Rocky Mountain regions. Johnson also might carry states like Oregon, which are socially liberal but libertarian in many ways.

What happens if Gary Johnson is able to prevent Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton from getting a majority in the Electoral College? The House of Representatives chooses the president from among the top three vote-getters, but it is not just a straight vote by the House of Representatives  and this is where it gets interesting. Rather, each of the fifty states casts a single vote based upon the vote of the House delegation. Wyoming casts the same one vote that California casts.

Based upon the current partisan breakdown of these state delegations, the Republican Party controls 32 state delegations in the House of Representatives while the Democratic Party controls only 16 state delegations in the House of Representatives, and two  Maine and New Hampshire  are split. So the Republicans in the House could choose the next president, and Republicans could even lose control of the House of Representatives and retain enough state delegations to elect the next president.

If Donald Trump continues to run as much against "Republicans" as "Democrats," then these House Republicans, led by Speaker Paul Ryan, might well choose Gary Johnson, a former Republican governor of New Mexico, over Donald Trump, a former Democrat.

Not likely, but in the weirdest presidential election year in a century, who can rule anything out  even a Libertarian Party candidate winning the White House?
The California Democratic primary resulted in a resounding victory for Hillary Clinton over Bernie Sanders -- the vote was 56% for Hillary and 43% for Bernie. Hillarys comment was, Thanks to you [primary voters of California], weve reached a milestone, the first time in our nations history that a woman will be a major partys nominee. Tonights victory is not about one person -- it belongs to generations of women and men who struggled and sacrificed and made this moment possible. Thus, to her, the California primary victory is a victory of gender over all the male chauvinist pigs who have dominated U.S. politics through the centuries. Her statement positions her as another bitter feminist curmudgeon. She does not depict her victory as one for a certain set of policies or for a vision for America moving forward.

Rather, in her stupid (yes, stupid) stereotypical thinking, her victory is a victory for equality. She thus is driven by what we might call the Sentimental Fallacy. By some strange chemistry, a womans candidacy, especially for the highest political office in the land, is a victory for daughters, sisters, moms, and working women who are eternal underdogs in lifes struggle for power, money, and a voice in the running of the global village. If we love women, we will then automatically see her victory as a victory for all women in the USA. It is a victory that is by a strange alchemy a victory of Hillary-as-symbol over a defunct and misconceptualized political system. The old way of seeing the USA as a constitutional republic is inextricably linked to male domination, according to the Hillary mindset. If we are to transition to the global village (read federal takeover of local functions and individual responsibilities), the male domination (sic) component of social and political authority must be diluted and/or eradicated.

According to gender identity politics, the authority and goodness of our misconstrued national entity called the USA has somehow failed to understand the power of women to balance the focus of our policies and our national purpose -- the female principle (sic) will enable the USA to be firm without being dominant. Who is this socialist masquerading as an updated, 21st century Teddy Roosevelt progressive? What will this new firmness exemplified by Hillary look like? Well, she is someone who will speak shrilly and carry a big umbrella.

Does female leadership make a country great? Benazir Bhutto served as Pakistans prime minister from 1993-1996. Indira Gandhi held the office of Indias prime minister from 1980-1984. And now, since 2014, Bangladesh has a woman prime minister, Sheikh Hasina Wajed. Are women more respected and loved in those countries than in the USA because they have had women in the highest political offices? Just looking at one measure of gender equality -- literacy -- we can see the radical disparity between males and females in those countries: Bengladesh has a literacy rate of 85% for males and 72% for females; India has a literacy rate of 82% for males and 65% for females; and Pakistan 79% for males and 61% for females. Did those countries become kinder and gentler under female leadership? Did their economies advance? Was Islamic radicalism suppressed?

Headlines about Hillary being the first woman presidential nominee, or possibly the first woman president, are nothing more or less than public relations and electioneering hype. It is ignorance appealing to ignorance. The media hype is attempting to make gender a qualification for office, which it is not and should not be. Would any woman in the world prefer to move to Pakistan, India, or Bengladesh rather than the USA because they have now or have had in the past women prime ministers? Of course, it would be nonsense to say that even for one second. Yet, that is just what Hillary is implying by her candidacy and victories. And that is just what many voters believe.

However, there is another element in the picture that makes all of Hillarys gender posturing even more noxious. That element is the attempt by Democratic leadership and the MSM to tie in gender politics with racial identity politics. After the results in California were announced, the presidents puppet, Josh Earnest, announced plans to play a role in bringing Hillary and Bernie together, thus helping to keep the Dems united. With words reflective of the pomposity of Obama, Earnest told the breathless press, The president is an important validator. This one short sentence has a wealth of meaning. Earnest taps into that subconscious association engendered by the word validator. There is a subtle but powerful link between the president and the legendary film character the Terminator. This rhetorical sleight-of-hand is intended to give BHO superhero status. As validator he is invincible. He will appeal to party and national unity in a transcendental way. Republicans will be drawn into this unity appeal as well as rival factions within the Democratic Party. The mystical ecstasy that moves through the Democratic Party about these issues is almost tangible.

Further, as Validator-In-Chief, Obamas claim to racial rights and racial power will be publicly identified with Hillarys claim to gender rights and gender power. This higher level of unity will forever link these two themes into an unbreakable bond. The Obama-implied mantle of racial justice will cover and incorporate the faux-plank of gender justice. Just as the prophet Elijah threw his cloak over his disciple Elisha passing on his unique powers, so Obama will imagine himself passing on the validating power of the presidency to Hillary. If there was any split between these two streams of leftist ideology, that split will now and forever be healed. The Marxist slogan Workers of the world unite! will be retooled to read, Women and minorities of the world unite! The symbolism of Obama and the symbolism of Clinton will merge. It will represent an orgiastic repudiation of males and whites. LGBT rights and poor peoples rights will be swept into the mix by this new union. This will be a moment of leftist ecstasy even though rationally and practically, it makes no sense at all.
A week shy of one year since oral argument was heard, and over six and a half years since the case was brought in October of 2009, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit issued a decision in Peruta v. County of San Diego. The Peruta case is not the only one challenging California concealed carry laws. Peruta was consolidated with Richards v. Prieto, a case involving Yolo County, California. (Additionally, several other similar cases such as Baker v. Kealoha out of Hawaii were stayed by the Ninth Circuit pending resolution of Peruta.)

Background

The case involves a challenge to California's concealed carry laws. When the case was brought, California law permitted unloaded open carry, but during the pendency of the case, that right was lost to the people of California. Therefore, California law now almost completely prevents ordinary people from carrying firearms in public  with the exception of a favored few categories of persons. The plaintiffs sued the San Diego County sheriff, challenging the state's "good cause" requirement to obtain a concealed carry license, which, as interpreted by San Diego, requires some very special threat of harm to the applicant.

District Court Litigation

In federal district court, the trial judge applied "intermediate scrutiny" to the challenged laws, deciding that the right to bear arms must yield to the common good  the "government['s] important interest in reducing ... the risks to other members of the public."

Ninth Circuit Litigation

The plaintiffs appealed the case to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. On appeal, Peruta's lawyers all but conceded that the state may regulate the bearing of arms in public, by prohibiting either concealed carry or open carry, but not both. They did not seek a ruling that the licensure of concealed carry is per se unconstitutional  only that if the government restricts concealed carry, "'self-defense' must be considered a 'good cause'" to enable a Californian to obtain a concealed carry permit.

In an opinion filed in February 2014, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit reversed the district court. Conducting a text, history, and tradition analysis of the scope of the right to "bear arms" outside the home, the panel concluded that the Second Amendment must include the right to bear arms for self-defense outside the home  a small victory for gun rights.

However, the panel was apparently not content to issue such a straightforward opinion based on the text, history, and tradition of the Second Amendment. Instead, the panel fell into the same trap as most other federal courts have after Heller. The panel made the outlandish claim that only laws that completely "destroy" Second Amendment rights are per se invalid. Laws that "merely burden" Second Amendment rights are subject to some form of balancing test. In the end, the panel decided that California had completely destroyed the right to bear arms outside the home, and thus the state's concealed carry statutes violated the Second Amendment.

Although the panel struck down prohibitions that ban all forms of carry, it immediately made clear that "we are not holding that the Second Amendment requires the states to permit concealed carry. But the Second Amendment does require that the states permit some form of carry for self-defense outside the home."

After the panel issued its opinion, the Ninth Circuit was asked to hear the case en banc. Not wanting to tarnish its perfect record of ruling against the Second Amendment, the Court agreed to hear the case en banc. Although en banc review typically means consideration by the full court, in the Ninth Circuit, where there are more than 40 judges, that means another panel of 14 judges.

Our firm filed an amicus curiae brief in the case in the Ninth Circuit on behalf of Gun Owners of America, Inc.; Gun Owners Foundation; U.S. Justice Foundation; The Lincoln Institute for Research and Education; The Abraham Lincoln Foundation for Public Policy Research, Inc.; Policy Analysis Center; Institute on the Constitution; and Conservative Legal Defense and Education Fund.

Ninth Circuit En Banc Decision

On June 9, 2016, the Ninth Circuit, sitting en banc, ruled 7 to 4 that the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms does not apply to any law governing the concealed carry of any protected firearm in public. Accordingly, any law, ranging from an absolute prohibition on concealed carry to the requirement of "good cause" currently in the law  however defined and administered, and whatever exceptions to it there may be  is completely outside the Second Amendment. In short, with respect to rules governing concealed carry of protected firearms, for self-defense or any other purpose, the civil authorities may do as they please. Apparently, while there may be constitutional limits to the regulation of concealed firearms in public, they would not be found in the Second Amendment.

How did the Court reach this conclusion? Easy. The judges ignored the text of the Second Amendment, relying solely upon a single dictum in Heller, and a misuse of the dictum at that. The dictum stated:

Like most rights, the right secured by the Second Amendment is not unlimited. From Blackstone through the 19th century cases, commentators and courts routinely explained that the right was not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose[.] ... For example, the majority of the 19th-century courts to consider the question held that prohibitions on carrying concealed weapons were lawful under the Second Amendment or state analogues.

From this starting point, the en banc Ninth Circuit  beginning with the year 1299  plowed through numerous English monarchical and parliamentary practices against armed men going around in public without a license from the king, concluding from this historical survey that in merry old England, "carrying concealed firearms in public was not allowed by law" (emphasis added). Capping this historical lesson on arms-bearing, the Court cited the 1689 English Bill of Rights, which declared that "the [English] subjects which are Protestants may have arms for their defence suitable to their conditions, and as allowed by law."

Then, in a judicial tour de force, the Ninth Circuit jumped back on Heller, this time to establish that the English Bill of Rights has "long been understood to be the predecessor to our Second Amendment." Wrenching that Heller statement wholly out of context, the Ninth Circuit then announced that "[t]o the degree that the English Bill of Rights is an interpretive guide to our Second Amendment, the critical question is the meaning of the phrase 'as allowed by law.'" Applying this phrase from the 17th-century English Bill of Rights to the 18th-century American Bill of Rights, the Ninth Circuit stated:

[W]ith respect to the case now before us, the specific question is whether the arms that are "allowed by law"  that is, the arms Protestants had the right to bear  included concealed firearms. The history just recounted demonstrates that carrying concealed firearms in public was not "allowed by law." Not only was it generally prohibited by the statute of Northampton, but it was specifically forbidden by the statute enacted under Henry VIII, and by later proclamations of Elizabeth I and James I.

According to the en banc Ninth Circuit, then, 21st-century American people have no more rights than the 17th-century English Protestants, even though the English Bill of Rights provides only that the king's subjects "may have arms for their defence suitable to their conditions, and as allowed by law," whereas the Second Amendment broadly proclaims that "the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."

Not once did the Ninth Circuit respect the Second Amendment's distinctly unique text. Yet that text, as originally understood, is the very foundation upon which Heller rests. Had the Ninth Circuit submitted to the Second Amendment text, it could not have concluded, as it did, that laws governing concealed firearms are per se outside the protective shield of the Second Amendment. After all, unlike the text of the 1689 English Bill of Rights, which extends protection only to "hav[ing] arms for defense," which could be satisfied by laws that protect possession of firearms, the Second Amendment extends to "keep[ing] and bear[ing] arms," which secures not only the possession of arms, but also the use of them. There is, then, no basis whatsoever for the Ninth Circuit en banc ruling  that a certain use (concealed carry) is completely outside the protective shield of a right to both keep and bear firearms.

As the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Heller, "[a]t the time of the founding, as now, to 'bear' means to 'carry.'" It is the job of courts to interpret the language of the Constitution, not to ignore it. But the en banc Ninth Circuit failed in that elementary task. Its opinion is illegitimate under the Supreme Court's Heller and McDonald decisions, and as a matter of constitutional law.

Herbert W. Titus and Robert J. Olson are attorneys with William J. Olson, P.C. of Vienna, Virginia. E-mail wjo@mindspring.com, visit www.lawandfreedom.com, or follow www.Twitter.com/OlsonLaw.
A few students are suing Trump University for breach of promise. They have every right to try. And if theyre successful, perhaps all the disenchanted, unemployed, and underemployed graduates of other universities should do the same. In fact, many institutions of higher learning, such as the Ivy League schools, lay claim to being far more prestigious -- not to mention expensive -- than Trump University. All the more reason to resent dashed hopes.

I figure there are a lot of potential lawsuits out there -- not just from the standpoint of the big bucks tossed to the fickle winds of academia by disappointed parents, but in terms of the unwieldy numbers of students whose expectations, judging from their present lifestyles, have not been satisfactorily met.

Things may have been different in the good old days when the general job market was more robust. Or when women college graduates were not necessarily presumed to participate in the workforce. Sure, there has historically been a cast of perennial slackers, among them jocks, playboys and social yokels who did the school for the most. But if they emerged from the hallowed halls of ivy woefully unprepared for anything other than their already-privileged status, so what?

Now, however, an increasingly competitive world has messed things up for thousands of college graduates. Its not that the demographic doesnt consistently earn more over the long haul than, say, their high school graduate counterparts. But the dismal state of their immediate prospects has thrown a wrench into the equation.

Speaking of wrenches, it is possible for a competent non-college graduate with specialized training skills like plumbing to do extremely well. But for the elites in ivory towers, such practical options are too ludicrously lowly to deserve recognition. Instead, college curricula have become top-heavy with an increasing number of identity and group think classes and even new academic majors, that offer narrow, highly-competitive, and often nonexistent career paths for students after they graduate.

Self-serving profs seem unfazed by such realities. Keeping their own lucrative workload afloat with subjects like Black, Chicano, or Womens Studies, and offering esoteric topics like avant-garde film genre and gender identification, result in more opportunities for entrenched academicians at the expense of their charges, who end up after graduation chasing fewer and fewer viable employment options.

Instead, mentors are understandably fond of encouraging the dreams of young people to become stars in whatever personal firmament turns them on: writer, actor, political guru, TV talk show host, cinematic filmmaker, publicist, adman, etc. The result is that the competition for unpaid internships in these attractive fields is fierce.

Follow your heart is the rallying cry for college commencement speakers. Of course, it is wonderful for educated people to aspire to success in something they profess to love. But in this technological age, if they do not also possess the presumed knowledge and skills to initially get a foot in some door, they can never hope to get a leg up later.

Yet the plethora of socially conscious, unhelpful-to-the-resume college coursework continues to mount. In so doing, it limits the number of sections offered in classes that are actually required for graduation. This contributes further to the growing problem of students unable to complete their public college degrees within the traditional span of four years. In turn, this increases both the cost of a college education and the accumulated burden of student loans, the average of which  grad school included -- is said to be in excess of $30,000.

Ironically, in their disappointment at not finding suitable employment, many graduates opt to return to college campuses for more advanced degrees. The only guarantee that comes with such a decision is greater debt

A recent Newsweek article titled Millennial College Graduates: Young, Education, Jobless pointed out that millennials have already overtaken the baby boomers (age 51-69) as our nations largest living generation. It was estimated that 28 million university grads would enter the U.S. workforce with bachelors, masters and doctoral degrees just when Americas unemployment rate hits its lowest level in nearly seven years.

According to a Georgetown University survey, the millennial generation makes up about 40% of the unemployed. Thats close to 14% of 18-29 year olds who are out of work, compared to the national jobless rate represented at around 5%.

Most of these young people resent their reputation as a lazy generation that seeks entitlements or the perfect cushy position. In desperation, thousands of them take jobs for which they are overqualified. The population of Portland, Oregon, makes no bones about having the greatest number of baristas with PhDs. Now, thats a brewed awakening for you!

Even entry-level jobs are often denied to recent college graduates, and given, instead, to experienced applicants. As a result, the word is out that graduates feel let down by their universities. More and more people are reluctant even to go to college, which raises the question of whether the teaching of marketable skills shouldnt be right up there with enlightenment as a higher educational goal.

Added to the general frustration are the skyrocketing college costs and the rising number of student loans that often force grown children to return to their parents homes. When my kids went off to college in the 80s, we immediately converted their bedrooms into dens or guest quarters. Even had we kept the old arrangement, they would not have wanted to move back in. What parents seek most for their children  aside from their happiness  is a sense of independence. And the two have been found to be inextricably linked.

Democrat socialist Bernie Sanders finds the answer to happiness in free public college tuition. His ardent millennial supporters approve this message. It would make the university administrations and faculties happy, too, since they could hardly be held accountable for the failures of a college education if nobody had to pay directly for the privilege.
May 7 on The Greg Gutfeld Show, Greg asked Democrat strategist Jessica Tarlov, What do you think about Hillary? I think shes perfect, Tarlov purred. One might hazard from this that Miss Jessica is a true believer, but she was probably just attempting a little humor. (The May 7th show, by the way, is one of Gregs funniest. Brad Thor was also a guest. Watch the whole show at the YouTube link above or Gregs opening monologue at FoxNews.com.)

If you are depressed about what is lining up to be your choices for president this November, then know this: youre responsible. It is the People that have given us these presumptive nominees. But, the People would not have been able to choose these nominees were it not for the system: the primary system.

This year, the People and the system have given America the two nominees with highest negatives of any major party candidates in modern history. We cant very well swap out the People, but maybe we could find a better system.

One of the big reasons for resisting change in the system we use for selecting presidential nominees is that the primaries are a business. There are huge sums of money involved for pollsters, political strategists, advertisers, the media, makers of campaign buttons and hats. Jeb Bushs four delegates reportedly put his supporters back some $100 million. All that Bush money went somewhere, and the people who received it dont want their gravy train stopped. If Americas political parties didnt conduct primaries, all those enterprises feeding off of the primaries would be out of business; a lot of rice bowls would be broken. And just think: wed miss out on all the fun and games, as cable TVs Showtime has attempted to capture in their series The Circus.

By the time of the conventions next month, the primary campaigns will have gone on for more than a year, while the general election campaign will be less than four months. If we scrapped the primary system, Democrats who bemoan the decision in Citizens United v. FEC would have a lot less money theyd need to raise. More importantly, the American people wouldnt have to endure perpetual politics. In 2014 at the Wall Street Journal, William A. Galston of the Brookings Institution addressed the permanent campaign. The blurb for his article ended with junk the primary system:

Our current presidential nominating system tends to reward candidates who are talented campaigners. Only if we get lucky do effective campaigners turn out to have a capacity for governing. Can anyone seriously contend that the ability to win the Iowa caucuses or the New Hampshire primary is a good leading indicator of the capacity to serve as chief executive? The worst system of all is an unrepresentative plebiscite, but that is what the past four decades have yielded.

The very candidates who squawk that the system is rigged against them are the candidates who have benefited from that system. Democrats wouldnt have given Bernie Sanders the time of day if it werent for the primary system. After all, hes always been an Independent. Without the rigged system of primaries and caucuses, Sanders would have had to run in a minor party, maybe the Green Party or the Socialist Party, or under no party. So outsiders, like Sanders, wouldnt want to scrap the rigged system that gave them a shot at a major-party nomination.

The primary systems of the two major parties are rather different, and it is the Democrat system, with its super-delegates of party insiders, that is the more rigged and the less democratic. Perhaps Sanders thinks that he can woo Hillarys super-delegates over to him. More likely hes waiting on the FBI primary; waiting to see if the FBI will make a criminal referral on Clintons emails, private server, and Clinton Foundation issues. But even if Hillary is indicted, Democrat delegates are unlikely to nominate an outsider like Bernie.

Democrat delegates should think long and hard about what it would mean for the republic to nominate someone under FBI investigation. Even if the Obama Justice Department declines to pursue a criminal referral, Democrat delegates should conduct their own trial to decide on Hillarys guilt and fitness, and vote accordingly.

Every delegate to a nominating convention should be required to read Andrew McCarthys The Torricelli Solution to the Coming Clinton Implosion, which ran May 31 at National Review. The article deals with Mrs. Clinton finally having to face the music for her (alleged) criminality:

Of course, relief at Clintons departure would have to be discounted by the hit Democrats took when Obama issued the pardon Hillary would demand as the price of stepping aside. I deeply doubt that the Clintons would accept an Obama promise of a post-election pardon. Theyd demand up front any pardons necessary to cover the e-mail scandal, the destruction of government files, and any corruption, fraud, or other offenses arising out of the Clinton Foundation. With Hillarys nomination, the Clintons will have leverage, and they would surely use it to (a) pressure Obama to spin any pardons as an exoneration (I see no criminal activity here, but for the good of the country . . . ); (b) spare themselves the humiliation (and potentially worse) of criminal prosecution; and (c) protect the fortune theyve amassed by monetizing their public service.

If such a deal between Obama and Hillary were actually struck, it would be an outrageous use of the pardon. But it shouldnt surprise; Bill Clinton himself pardoned terrorists, and it seems likely that he sold the Marc Rich pardon. Perhaps if Obama pardons Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, mastermind of 9/11 now at Gitmo, folks will get exercised about these abuses of power.

McCarthy also delves into the logistics of a last-minute substitute nominees campaign, and he ends his article with a sobering irony. His article leads one to conclude that Mrs. Clinton has no mens rea defense for her various shenanigans  she knew that what she was doing was illegal. (And if she didnt know, then shes not smart enough to be president.)

The Clintons have always seemed like money-grubbing grifters. If Mrs. Clinton does get to go through the judicial system and is found guilty of the felonies she appears to have committed, there is no penalty adequate to compensate for the damage she has done to our political system. If prison is ruled out by a presidential pardon, at least she should be fined enough to make her truly dead broke, as she claimed to have been when she left the White House. It matters not that shes perfect.

Jon N. Hall is a programmer/analyst from Kansas City.
Let me tell you that I was surprised with California's results. It was projected to be close, but it was not.

The Clintons will try to negotiate with Senator Sanders. They may find that he is a lot more reasonable that the millions who supported him.

Keep an eye on the Green Party. They have their convention a week after the Democrats.

A few days ago, Dr. Stein called on Sanders supporters to go Green. She said this:

Stein offered condolences to Sanders supporters and praised Sanders for running a "revolutionary" movement that spoke to the issues she also cares about in an interview with CNN Tuesday evening. "We are here in the event that they feel like they don't have a place to go," Stein said. Stein, who was also the Green Party's 2012 nominee, said she viewed Sanders as a kindred revolutionary, battling the political establishment. She called Clinton's path to the nomination "a coronation" aided by the media and the Democratic Party. Stein said that although Clinton and news organizations -- including CNN -- had declared her the presumptive Democratic nominee, it was up to Sanders' supporters not to accept that as the end of their movement. "If Bernie endorses Hillary, I urge Bernie's supporters not to throw in the towel," Stein said. Stein slammed Clinton, saying the former secretary of state does not have "a track record that has been good for women and children." The fact that Clinton has become the first female presumptive presidential nominee for the Democratic or Republican parties did not influence her either. "We need not just someone who is born with a particular gender identity, but someone in the office who supports women," Stein said, pointing out that she was also a woman and a feminist running for president. The likely Green Party nominee is pushing progressive positions, including eliminating student debt, cracking down on Wall Street and putting an end to military interventions overseas. Stein said her campaign had no particular outreach plans set for Sanders' voters because she wanted to be "respectful of the Sanders campaign and his supporters." She said she had reached out to the Sanders campaign to collaborate in the past many times and that he had never responded. She said that many of Sanders' supporters were instead seeking her out.

So what if Bernie's supporters put his name for nomination at the Green Party convention? Will Mr. Sanders be able to turn down his supporters? Mr. Sanders owes his supporters a lot more than the Democratic Party. He is not even a Democrat! In fact, his campaign themes are very similar to the Green Party's platform.

So don't be surprised if the Greens go to Bernie. I just can not see Sanders's supporters being happy the morning after their man endorses the woman they've running again! Sanders's base is a collection of far leftists who will either stay home or vote Green!

P.S. You can listen to my show (Canto Talk) and follow me on Twitter.
Josh Earnest came close to a tacit confession that the FIX is in.

On the afternoon of June 9, 2016, Attorney General Loretta Lynch met with President Obama in the White House. We are unlikely to ever know with certainty the substance of the meeting. But White House press secretary Josh Earnest gave us some hints.

When asked earlier that day whether persons investigating the former secretary of states use of an unsecured, private server to send classified government information  henceforth Hillmailgate  might be influenced by President Obamas endorsement of Secretary Clintons presidential candidacy, Earnest said this:

Earnests statement that the president is confident in endorsing Clinton because he knows the investigators have a job to do independent of any political interference implies that Obama already knows that the investigation has cleared Clinton of any wrongdoing. Hence, his confidence is substantive.

Earnest also claimed there is no effort to interfere with the professional investigators and prosecutors because the president knows they cannot be swayed. So how does the president trusting the independence of the investigators indicate the conclusions of their investigation? Earnest is using timeline-muddled language.

Reading in between Earnests lines, it sounds as though the president knows that no guilt will be attached to his partys nominee. In other words, its a done deal.

Despite Earnests earnest disclaimer, some people, in advance of the big announcement, are skeptical concerning the ultimate veracity of the investigations findings.

We skeptics ponder, at least, three possible outcomes:

The investigation will conclude that Secretary Clinton committed serious illegalities, which may/will trigger appropriate legal proceedings against her. (move for indictment with potential prosecution) The investigation will come to the #1 conclusion but will not recommend indictment. (probable guilt, but the move for an indictment would harm the nation at this time) The investigation will conclude that Mrs. Clinton is, at most, guilty of several previously admitted misjudgments  both by her and by one or more of her staff  but no actions justify further adjudication. (nothing to see here, folks; move along)

Of course, (1) and (3) could merge into a two-faced end-game with a private guilty face and a public innocent face. This would be the Hillmailgate FIX.

As the public speculates on the coming denouement of the drama, the speculated consequences of the FIX are in the air:

(A) If the investigators find sufficient cause to recommend an indictment, but the political officials (publicly Lynch, privately Obama) nix that recommendation, there will be mass DoJ/FBI resignations; this would be the honor-bound response from the ranks of the professionals.

(B) If the most senior political officials privately squash the FBIs findings that are harmful to Mrs. Clinton, James B. Comey, director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, will go public with his disagreement and resign. This would be the heroic fall-on-his-sword move for the good of the bureau.

As a precedent for resignations, we recall the Saturday Night Massacre during the Watergate saga, when President Richard Nixon ordered Attorney General Elliot Richardson to fire Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox. Richardson refused and resigned in protest. Nixon then directed Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus to fire Cox. He refused and resigned, too. Solicitor General Robert Bork inherited the authority and fired Cox. Revenge on Bork came when President Reagan nominated him for the Supreme Court in 1987 and the U.S. Senate refused to confirm him.

This survey of several options brings us to a blunt question: do we believe the Earnest statement?

Before answering that, here are several preparatory queries:

Does the Obama regime have a definitive history of telling the truth? Are career civil service employees generally inclined to sacrifice careers on principle? (A few have with regard to the Veterans Administration and have suffered consequences.) Has this administration encouraged and embraced a culture of whistle-blowing? Whats the likelihood that A.G. Lynch and President Obama are not completely up to date on the DoJ/FBI investigation into Hillmailgate? In other words, does anyone believe that, after all this time, no decision has yet been made? If you were an investigator or prosecutor working the case, what impact would you expect on your government and post-government careers if you testified that the Hillmailgate outcome was a FIX? And finally, in your life experiences, lived and observed, how often do persons act out of self-interest (as in existential) compared to acting on principle?

However it ends, this investigation will end before the Democrat convention. It wont hang fire for much longer.
You fundamentally can't change sex. ... Transsexualism was invented by psychiatrists, said former transsexual Alan Finch in 2004. This is a truth; however, it has not stopped the advocates of an invented status from trying to change society. And if conservatives want to preserve sanity, they need to change their arguments.

Recent times have seen a growing number of leftist bathroom dictates, such as the unconstitutional Obama administration directive instructing schools to allow students to use the opposite sexs facilities if they so desire. In response, conservatives have stated that the real problem is not having a made-up sex status (MUSS) man using womens bathrooms, but that sexual predators will use an Im-really-a-woman ruse to indulge their perversion. This is a valid argument  one that should be made. Nonetheless, it is not the main problem with the MUSS agenda.

The above conservative argument is sometimes delivered when leftists point out that (some) MUSS people have been using the opposite sexs facilities for decades without anyone even knowing. And this is true. It also gets at the real point.

To wit: This has nothing to do with men masquerading as women so effectively that they can use a womens bathroom while raising nary an eyebrow. Such men obviously dont need a law to gain access to the girls room.

This is about socially reengineering society  about changing hearts and minds  by legitimizing made-up sexual statuses.

Please make sure youve fully digested the above line before continuing.

Obviously, no man, no matter how well he does the RuPaul thing, should use womens facilities. But were not going to administer a genetic test at the restroom door. If a guy in a dress enters and exits and no one is any the wiser, its out of sight, out of mind.

But putting this issue in plain sight serves to influence minds. Then it becomes a matter of saying, Hey, kids, this is acceptable. This is real. This is okay. And, of course, the MUSS agenda explicitly involves not only instructing schoolchildren that they must be accepting of MUSS people, but that they should be open to the possibility they might be MUSSed up themselves. Be yourself, kid!

This is evil. Its stupid, too, as the its-always-been-done argument could be used to justify anything. Why trouble over teaching tolerance for bestiality? I mean, people have been engaging in it for eons  and civilization is still here. There isnt one sin  or, as some like to now call it, lifestyle choice  that hasnt always been done. But thats what closets are for. And using casuistry to make the once closeted catch on will make civilization catch its death.

Unfortunately, the once closeted is now exalted, while the ethereal is closeted. Today we hear that faith is a private matter, a profoundly silly statement, while private matters are made public. If ones faith is a lie, he should dispense with it; if it is the Truth, which is universal, there then is nothing private about it. And as we confuse the public with the private, Christianity is expelled from the public sphere and now even the private one, with businessmen told they cant live their own faith in their own business.

And thats what happens when closets arent used for the right things.

Contact Selwyn Duke, follow him on Twitter or log on to SelwynDuke.com.
The Obama administration has proposed a $10.25 tax on the production of crude oil. While not yet formally introduced as legislation, the tax would be positioned as a tax on big oil, and opposition to it could be portrayed as defending big oil.

Of course, that is nonsense on a stick. As an added cost, it would be passed on to consumers at the gas pump, or heating oil truck, not to mention adding to the costs of everything made of feedstock, from Saran Wrap to spatulas.

The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee under chairwoman Lisa Murkowski, of oil-producing Alaska, has just completed a report that examines the impact on consumers of this tax hike. Kyle Feldsher of the Washington Examiner summarizes:

The tax could add between 20-25 cents per gallon, and the report shows that one-time increase would be the largest increase in the gas tax since it was passed in 1932. The federal gas tax was raised 5 cents in April 1983 and December 1990, the biggest jumps in the climb from 1 cent per gallon in 1932 to the current 18.4 cents per gallon. Murkowski pointed out that the increase from Obama's proposed oil tax would be bigger than the current federal gas tax. "The administration's proposal is internally inconsistent and ambiguous, but if it was translated into an excise tax, it would be the largest increase in history," she said.

Obviously, the tax will go nowhere in the GOP Congress, but that misses the point. It will be trotted out in the campaign as an example of the GOP being beholden to big oil, and an argument that Democrats are being fiscally responsible. The impact of the hike in gasoline costs on poor Americans who drive gas-guzzling beaters will be ignored by the media.

Hat tip: Ace
The $1.7-billion ransom paid to Iran for our sailors the Iranians were holding hostage last January has been transferred from Iran's central bank to the military.

It all starts with $1.7 billion the U.S. Treasury transferred to Iran's Central Bank in January, during a delicate prisoner swap and the implementation of last summer's nuclear deal to resolve a long-standing dispute about Iran's arms purchases before the revolution of 1979.

For months it was unclear what Iran's government would do with this money. But last month the mystery was solved when Iran's Guardian Council approved the government's 2017 budget that instructed Iran's Central Bank to transfer the $1.7 billion to the military.

Saeed Ghasseminejad, an associate fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, spotted the budget item. He told me the development was widely reported in Iran by numerous sources including the state-funded news services. "Article 22 of the budget for 2017 says the Central Bank is required to give the money from the legal settlement of Iran's pre- and post-revolutionary arms sales of up to $1.7 billion to the defense budget," he said.

Republicans and some Democrats who opposed Obama's nuclear deal have argued that the end of some sanctions would help to fund Iran's military. But at least that was Iran's money already (albeit frozen in overseas bank accounts). The $1.7 billion that Treasury transferred to Iran in January is different.

A portion of it, $400 million, came from a trust fund comprising money paid by the government of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, a U.S. ally, for arms sold to Iran before the 1979 revolution. Those sales were cut off in 1979 after revolutionaries took over the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and held the American staff hostage for 444 days. The remaining $1.3 billion represents interest on the $400 million principle over more than 36 years.

According to a letter from the State Department to Representative Mike Pompeo, a Republican who has called for an investigation into the January payment, that money came out of something known as the Judgment Fund, which is "a source of funding to pay judgments and claims against the United States when there is no other source of funding."
According to Rasmussen, 71% of Democrats polled will vote for Hillary Clinton even if she is indicted for her many obvious and proven crimes. Hers is a lifetime of lies and crime, not leadership, not service  thievery and skullduggery.

How is this possible that her supporters do not care if she is a liar and a serial law-breaker? It is possible because of the left's fifty-year program, as Dennis Prager often says, to "erase distinctions"  between right and wrong, good and evil, male and female, truth and lies, nuclear family and the "village," parents and government, education and indoctrination, etc.

Under the Obama administration, we have reached the left's apotheosis of that agenda. Our government is lawless, a plutocracy that has lulled a once civilized society into dull-wittedness. Voters no longer care about character, honesty, truth, or goodness. Laws don't matter; the Constitution does not matter  even to many of the Republicans in Congress, who have done nothing to thwart Obama's extra-constitutional edicts. The goodness of our leaders no longer matters. Most people no longer care if the people among whom we must choose our leaders are greedy, power-hungry narcissists, like Obama, Clinton, and Donald Trump. Those of us old enough to remember actual standards are left to choose among the lesser of these poor options.

Americans have for so long taken for granted the liberty and freedom we have enjoyed  freedoms and liberty fought for, designed by, and granted to us by the Founders. We are blind to the gradual disappearance of these gifts. We are the frogs in a slow-to-boil pot, too sanguine to protest.

We have let it happen. The "government" no longer approves of coal or gas, so we must learn to do without, as though their private planes or Air Force One is going to get off the ground on wind or solar. No. They will have all the perks of their wealth and privilege, which has nothing whatsoever to do with race or color. It has to do with their money, their power, and their intent to control the citizenry, to put more and more people out of work, to make them all dependent on the oh-so-generous-with-other-people's-money government.

But the money has already run out. The national debt when Obama took office was $10.6 trillion. Today it is $19,231,466,138,367! Obama has doubled our debt. Tax revenues are greater than ever, but this administration still spends billions more than what is paid to it. Obama spends millions of it traveling the world for his own luxury vacations among the like-minded rich and powerful. He spends billions more welcoming and coddling illegal immigrants and tens of thousands of refugees from the Middle East, without regard for their potential terrorist inclinations. This compulsion of his will likely haunt and kill us for years to come. It is also depriving millions of Americans of the jobs they would be happy to do if they had the chance. Ninety-five million people who want to work have no job.

This catastrophic debt too seems not to penetrate the minds of most voters, especially the Democrats, who have, for the most part, incurred it. (Yes, the Iraq war was costly, and Obama has nearly paid for by eviscerating our military in revenge.) It is as though they think it will never have to be repaid. But it will; by our children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, along with the billions of dollars in unpaid college loan debt and the horrific debt incurred by Obamacare, all of which Hillary Clinton means to further heap upon unsuspecting taxpayers.

We will be left with little to live on after the Democrats are done with us. That is their goal: to impoverish us all until we are malleable and grateful for their pernicious "management" of our lives. They will never be happy until they have achieved their pie-in-the-sky "income equality" among the masses. Venezuela, here we come.

President Obama, Clinton, and the rest of the left, for reasons those of us on the right cannot begin to fathom, have come to loathe America as founded, despite all her trials, course corrections, and phenomenal advancements over her 240 years. For the left, America's striving to remain the last, best hope of civilization is a thorn in the side of their beloved doctrine of moral relativism, their belief that there is no such thing as a hierarchy of cultures, that no one culture or civilization is better than another, no matter how sick a society may be. Think ISIS.

And these are the people who thought Obama would be a good president, who think Hillary will make a good president.

Ben Franklin noted that the Constitution gave us a Republic "if we can keep it." We are indeed letting it slip away.
Maine senator Susan Collins says she is leaving her options open about whom she will support for president, including the unlikely possibility that she would back Hillary Clinton.

In an interview with the New Yorker's Ryan Lizza, Collins appeared to speak for several Republican senators who may not end up supporting the nominee of their party.

But no matter how much they have condemned Trump, none of these high-ranking Republicans have said that they would consider supporting his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton. In an interview with me, on Wednesday, Senator Susan Collins, of Maine, made herself the exception. Collins told me that Trumps comment about Curiel was an order of magnitude more serious than anything he had previously said, including his troubling insults towards individuals and his poorly-thought-out policy plan about banning Muslims from entering this country. She added that she was faced with an unprecedented political decision and had to keep all options open. This is a difficult choice, and its one, like many of my colleagues, that I am struggling with, Collins said. Its not like we have perfect candidates from whom to choose in this election. Collins went on to say that she has not ruled out supporting Clinton. I worked very well with Hillary when she was my colleague in the Senate and when she was Secretary of State, Collins said. But I do not anticipate voting for her this fall. Im not going to say never, because this has been such an unpredictable situation, to say the least. I pressed Collins to make sure that she was leaving open the possibility of backing the Democratic Partys presumptive Presidential nominee over Trump. That is true, Collins, who has been a lifelong Republican, said. But I do want to qualify that by saying it is unlikely that I would choose to vote for the Democratic candidate.

Collins, a poster child for the RINOs, may end up leaving the Republican Party. Her GOP affiliation is not an advantage in Maine and may even be a liability. That she would even consider voting for Hillary Clinton, of all people, should call into question whether Republicans can afford to have her in their caucus at all.

The irony is that Collins is probably too conservative for the Democrats in the Senate. They might welcome her as an add-on to their number in the Senate, but I can't see them embracing her. Then again, Democrats from 10 or 20 years ago would also be too conservative for this bunch of Democratic party radicals in the Senate today.

The little value Collins brings as a Republican  toeing the party line on procedural votes  probably isn't enough to justify her continued membership in the Republican party. Unless the GOP is dependent on her to maintain their majority, what other reason would there be for her to remain in the caucus?
According to FactCheck.org, "it's not accurate to call the San Diego La Raza Lawyers Association 'very pro-Mexico' or 'very strongly pro-Mexican.'"

The same article claims that Donald Trump's comments that U.S. district judge Gonzalo Curiel is a "member of a club or society very strongly pro-Mexican" are "an inaccurate description of a group for Latino lawyers and law students in San Diego."

To clarify, membership in the San Diego La Raza Lawyers Association also includes judges, in addition to lawyers and law students, and one could reasonably argue that not only is it inappropriate, but it also potentially runs contrary to federal statues and the common law for sitting judges to be members of such activist organizations.

Luis Osuna, president of the San Diego La Raza Lawyers Association, is quoted as saying "[w]e have no pro-Mexico agenda."

That doesn't appear to be what the San Diego La Raza Lawyers Association's social media feed shows.

On February 3, 2015, the organization tweeted, "Are you a member of House of Mexico? You can learn more about their great work below: http://fb.me/76CDut6Au."

The House of Mexico, whose home page is the link the association tweeted, has a self-stated mission "to share, celebrate, educate and promote the rich art, culture, and history of Mexico."

Then, on September 2, 2015, the organization tweeted, "SDLRLA supports House of Mexico San Diego" with an link to a Change.org petition to "Tell House of Pacific Relations that Mexico needs a stand-alone house in Balboa Park." According to this petition being promoted by the San Diego La Raza Lawyers Association:

The continued attacks on Mexico and Mexicans must end. We say, "Basta! Enough!" Mexico deserves its own house in a prominent location.

If this doesn't reflect a "pro-Mexico agenda" by the San Diego La Raza Lawyers Association, it will interesting to hear what does.
About 2 km southwest of the town center of Skagen, in Denmark, is a brick church half buried in sand. Known as Old Skagen Church or The Buried Church (Den Tilsandede Kirke in Danish), this 14th-century church dedicated to Saint Lawrence of Rome was an enormous structure with long vaulted nave, exterior buttresses, and a tower with crow-stepped gable. The building was 45 meters long and the tower was 22 meters tall. During the last half of the 18th century the church was partially buried by sand from nearby dunes. For years, the congregation struggled to keep the church free of sand, having to dig out the entrance each time a service was to be held. They gave up in 1795 and the church was demolished, leaving the tower as the only part of the original structure still standing. Approximately 18 meters of the tower is visible above the sand today.

Photo credit

Sand began drifting in from Rabjerg Mile, a moving sand dune between Skagen and Frederikshavn, around the beginning of the 17th century. This sanding-over of land occurred in many coastal areas around the North Sea between 1400 and 1800, affecting Scotland, Denmark, and Holland, and leading to desertification of many towns and villages. The sand reached the church by the end of the 18th century. Between 1775 and 1795, the church door had to be dug free for the congregation to be able to attend the service. Finally, the church goers had enough and decided to abandon the church for ever. The furnishings and interior decorations and anything of value were removed, and the body of the church was demolished.

Although no longer functional, it is one of the best-known Danish churches today. Its tower has attracted attention from tourist all over Denmark, and inspired writers such as Hans Christian Andersen to pen the story "En Historie fra Klitterne" (translated: A Story from the Sand Dunes).

Photo credit

Photo credit

Photo credit

Also see: Rubjerg Knude: The Lighthouse Buried in Sand

Sources: Wikipedia / Frommers
One major hurdle for Android TV is the general lack of hardware options. While there are some, there is not a lot and the list got a little bit smaller recently with the confirmation that the Nexus Player has now been discontinued. However, back at Google I/O, Xiaomi did announce they were entering the Android TV ring with their upcoming offering, the Xiaomi Mi Box. This is a unit which comes equipped with 2GB RAM, 8GB internal storage and is powered by a quad-core ARM Cortex-A53 processor and a Mali 450 GPU. Like most of the other box options, this one will come with a dedicated remote control and a game pad will be available, although as a separate purchase. However, one of the most important details, the price, has yet to be announced.

When questioned during I/O, Xiaomis Hugo Barra did reveal that the Mi box will not be priced at more than $200. While this was a highball figure, this did immediately draw price comparisons to the NVIDIA SHIELD. A comparison which instantly felt was too high for the Mi Box, as this is a unit which is unlikely to offer a comparable experience to the SHIELD. Therefore, pricing the Mi Box anywhere near the SHIELD would be highly disadvantageous to sales. Not to mention, that Xiaomi is generally considered to be a price-conscious company. So it would stand to reason that the Xiaomi Mi Box should be far more competitively priced than the max $200 figure suggested.

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Some early indications are now starting to come through which do suggest the actual price of the Mi Box will be around the $100 marker. In fact, a listing for the Mi Box went live on the Chinese retailer site, AliExpress, this week and listing the price as only $89.99. Which would be far more in line with what would be expected for a device of this level and from this company. While the pricing on the AliExpress listing could be wrong, what adds to the likelihood of it being correct, is that since the initial price went live it quickly was changed to $499.99. It is obvious that the Mi Box will not be priced at $500 and it stands to reason that the price change occurred as a result of pricing details not being made public yet. Even more relevant is that the listing is an official Xiaomi Store listing on AliExpress and not a third-party seller listing.

While this does not act as any sort of confirmation of the price, it does go a long way to suggest the price will be around $100 depending on region. This does feel as though it is the right price for this product and will fill the void left by the recently retired Nexus Player. The image below is a cache image of the $89.99 price listing before the sudden change to the current $499.99 listing took place.
HBOs Silicon Valley is a bold, style-heavy caricature of the real epicenter of the tech world in the United States. The show relies heavily on satire, sometimes to brutal effect, as well as a near-constant stream of tech world in-jokes and the crudest of humor blended seamlessly together. Even for somebody with no knowledge of how the iconic California district is run, its hard to watch the show without noticing some very realistic and down-to-Earth shots being taken at the bigwigs and the big companies of Silicon Valley. All of the intrigue, shoutouts and good-natured ribbing, however, are the result of insane amounts of research, most of it involving speaking with actual Silicon Valley movers and shakers. Many of them speak directly to the shows creators, Mike Judge (of Beavis & Butt-Head and King of the Hill fame) and Alec Berg, best known for writing Seinfeld.

One of the movers and shakers that they ended up meeting with fairly recently, happened to be Astro Teller, the head of X. They were apparently consulting with him on how to approach Xs in-show counterpart. In the show, a company called Hooli, much smaller than the real-life search giant that inspired it, is working its way up in the Silicon Valley hierarchy. When they create a moonshot department, called HooliXYZ, it becomes the butt of a good amount of jokes. Teller, however, wasnt apparently that impressed with it. Reportedly, he told the two writers that the things that X was doing were serious, then got up and left in a dramatic fashion.

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Although Silicon Valley has faced opposition from the real deal companies before, its generally nothing thats too big of a deal. Tellers outburst, in fact, is in no way reflective of Googles attitude toward the well-loved show. Google has even aired fake search results related to the show, as part of a possible new feature. At the moment, not much has been said about the meeting with Teller, and there seem to be no plans to change the whimsical nature of HooliXYZ. If Judge and Berg decide to incorporate the incident into the show somehow, it will be interesting to see just how they choose to approach it.
One thing Google Play Store is definitely not lacking are third-party keyboard applications. There are tons of options available in the Play Store, ranging from Googles very own Google Keyboard, and the widely popular SwiftKey, all the way to the likes of TouchPal and the Chrooma Keyboard which is the newest app out of this bunch. This app has been announced earlier this year, and has managed to become quite popular in a very short time span, mainly thanks to its features. That being said, the beta app has just been updated, and it brings quite a few improvements / changes, read on.

The Chrooma Keyboard 3.0 Beta is now available. Youll need to be enrolled in the companys beta testing program in order to be available to download this app from the Google Play Store, of course. Now, as already mentioned, there are quite a few new features included here. This update brings the Action Row, which is essentially a customizable row which allows you to include various options in it, at least thats what the source says. New gestures have also been added to Chrooma in this update, you can now swipe up in order to delete everything you wrote to a certain point (delete the entire draft), and if you swipe along the spacebar youll be able to move the cursor, which is far more convenient than tapping on a particular part of your draft, that never ends well and you need to tap at least a few times, presuming your display isnt gigantic. This update also brings custom gesture trail and text colors, while new styles for the keyboard are also available. Chrooma 3.0 Beta includes new emojis, redesigned settings and emoji page, and various bug fixes, of course.

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As you can see, Chrooma 3.0 beta has plenty to offer, and we do hope these features will come to the full version of the app soon. If youre not really good at waiting for updates, you can become a Chrooma Keyboard beta tester, and download the Beta 3.0 version of the app from the Google Play Store. All you need to do is join Chroomas Google+ community, and then opt in to become a Chrooma beta tester.
Citing security concerns, the Indian Government has reportedly rejected a plan from Google to shoot 360-degree images of urban thoroughfares and by-lanes as part of its famed Street View service that is available in many countries around the world. While the service itself is technically available in India as well, it is mainly restricted to tourist spots and famous monuments such as the Taj Mahal, Humayuns Tomb, the Red Fort and the Gateway of India, but more elaborate and complete coverage continues to elude the urban Indian landscape thanks to the Defense Ministrys apprehensions. Back in 2013, when Googles team was busy filming for its Street View service in the southern city of Bangalore, the local police had issued a cease-and-desist letter to Google, citing the exact same reasons.

As for the latest blow to Google in India, sources within the Indian government are reportedly claiming that security is the overarching factor behind the Home Ministrys decision. According to an unnamed high-ranking government functionary, The main concern was security of sensitive defense installations. The Defense Ministry said it was not possible to monitor the service once it was launched and it would be detrimental to national security. While misgivings about Googles Street View have always been there in the corridors of power in the India, the terror attack at an Air Force base in the northern city of Pathankot earlier this year seems to have been the final straw that swung the decision against Google for good. The assailants are suspected to have used Google Maps to pinpoint the location of the air base before carrying out the attack that resulted in the death of seven security personnel and one civilian.

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However, it doesnt have to be all doom and gloom for Google. The company does have a ray of hope after all, as the government has already issued an official statement saying that it would reassess Googles proposal after the proposed 2016 Geospatial Information Regulation Bill is passed into law by the Parliament later this year. According to the minister of state for home affairs, Mr. Kiren Rijiju, many of the outstanding issues are likely to be sorted out once the proposed new law comes into effect.
Lenovos just announced PHAB2 Pro smartphone, which incidentally is the worlds first smartphone to feature Googles Tango technology, will not support Googles Daydream VR project. When asked if the augmented reality-powered phone will support Daydream, Lenovo said, No day dream support. We started before daydream was announced/ established. Going forward, well definitely look at daydream devices at Lenovo. Last week, Huawei announced that it will launch its first Daydream VR-compatible phone by Autumn, and going by the look of things, it seems the first non-Nexus phone to support Daydream VR wont arrive before June is over.

Even though PHAB2 Pro is capable of running augmented reality apps and games, the fact that it doesnt support Daydream VR is not really surprising. When Google announced Daydream VR at its I/O conference in Mountain View, California, it announced a list of OEMs which will develop new smartphones compatible with the VR system, and neither Lenovo nor Motorola figured in the list. However, Lenovo did say that it will look at Daydream devices, so we cannot rule out the fact that there could be a Lenovo device supporting Daydream by early next year. To run Daydream VR, Android devices will have to run Android N as a minimum requirement, feature a Super AMOLED display and may have to feature ARMs latest Cortex-A73 processor and Mali G71 GPU as well which have been tailor-made to run Daydream VR along with augmented reality content. Were pleased to have been working with Google to ensure our range of Mali GPUs, video and display processors are able to deliver the ultimate mobile VR experience on Daydream. In addition, ARM has been working closely with a number of our leading silicon partners, enabling them to ship their first wave of Daydream-ready devices, said an ARM spokesperson. We wonder if Lenovo is among select manufacturers who have discussed this with ARM.

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Even though you will not be able to run Daydream VR on the PHAB2 Pro, the device will still let you perform a lot of tasks which no existing smartphone can offer. Priced at $499, the phone will not only let you play with augmented reality apps and games like virtual dominos on your kitchen table or raising digital pets in your bedroom, but will also let you experience augmented reality museum tours through the GuidiGo app. A partnership with home improvement company Lowes also brings in new technologies in PHAB2 Pro like letting you visualize how new furnishings and products will look like and fit in your room. The phone will also perform functions like depth perception, area learning and motion tracking to visualize its surroundings and to identify surfaces and obstacles.
Monthly security patches is something that should have been in place long before they were officially implemented, but thats neither here nor there. The fact is that they are now a reality and it means that everything is just a little bit safer in the world of Android. While Google initially started pushing out monthly security patches to their line of Nexus devices, other manufacturers quickly followed Googles path and started pushing out their own, as expected. What may not have been as obvious was the creation of separate security bulletins for each manufacturer, as Google puts one out that covers the changes made to Android with each release every month.

Alongside Google, Samsung puts out their own security bulletin for changes that accompany the security fixes, and now LG has created their own security bulletin as well. While it may seem like there is only a need for the Google bulletin, having separate bulletins from OEMs actually makes sense as there could end up being specific issues or bugs that only affect those particular OEM devices. That seems to be the aim here, and LG has things laid out in such a way that describes all the bugs that affect LG smartphones and tablets.

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Whats more, is that LGs security bulletin has them ordered in such a way that theyre listed by the severity of their risk factor, so the ones that are more severe will appear towards the top starting with critical issues, and go down from there to high, then moderate, and finally low level security issues. This layout should make things easier to read for those who are interested in picking out the information and details about these bugs, although it isnt terribly difficult to see every bug in just a couple of glances as the list isnt likely to be massive. LG will continue doing a monthly security bulletin with each new security patch that is pushed out by Google, and the list has started with the May security patch since the bulletin is new and thats the most recent patch that has been issued to LG devices, although, Googles June security bulletin is already up.
OPPO is currently one of the largest China-based smartphone manufacturing companies, at least as far as smartphone sales go. This company has managed to sell 50 million smartphones last year, which means theyre still inferior to Xiaomi and Huawei in China, but are getting there. The company has introduced their Oppo R9 and R9 Plus devices earlier this year, both of which are expected to sell really well throughout the year, and the company has also unveiled the OPPO F1 Plus FC Barcelona Edition, which is a limited edition Barcelona-themed smartphone.

That being said, OPPO has opted to unveil yet another device, and this time around were looking at a mid-range device. The OPPO A59 is the companys newest phone, and it is made out of metal, just like the OPPO R9 and R9 Plus. This phone features a 5.5-inch 720p (1280 x 720) 2.5D curved glass IPS display, 3GB of RAM and 32GB of expandable internal storage. The device is fueled by MediaTeks MT6750 64-bit octa-core processor, along with Mali T860 GPU for graphics. Android 5.1 Lollipop comes pre-installed on this phone along with OPPOs ColorOS 3.0 UI, which were used to seeing on the companys devices. Now, as far as imaging goes, the 13-megapixel shooter (f/2.2 aperture, 1.2um pixel size, PDAF) is placed on the back of this device, and an 8-megapixel camera (f/2.0 aperture, 1.4um pixel size) can be found up front. This handset comes with 4G LTE (with VoLTE), and Bluetooth 4.1 is also a part of the package. The 3,075mAH battery is also included here, and it is not removable. OPPO says you can get 14 hours of battery with this device, on normal usage. The fingerprint scanner is placed below the display, it is embedded in the physical home key that is placed there.

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The OPPO A59 is a mid-range smartphone, as already mentioned, and as such, it costs 1,799 Yuan ($275) in China. This device can be pre-ordered directly from OPPO already, and it will be available for purchase in the country starting on June 18th. The device is available in Gold and Rose Gold color options at the moment, we dont know if OPPO plans to release it in any other color options.


The new Moto smartphones have not hit stores yet, but they are causing a wave of excitement and controversy  the excitement of the new design and the discussion of the new modular design. Techies may say that the LG G5 was the first smartphone to use modules, but Moto takes it to a different design level by using modules that attach to the back of the device. The Moto Z and Moto Z Force DROID Edition offer almost identical specs, and buyers are wondering which one is the better device to purchase.

Keeping in mind that the Moto Z Force DROID Edition is exclusive to the Verizon network, it looks like to sweeten the pot you will get FREE storage on Google Photos for two years. This is not the watered down version, but the original quality storage  meaning there will be no compression of photos or videos  which is especially sweet if you do 4K videos. This promo is a limited time offer and is redeemable until March 31, 2017, with the two years starting when you backup your first photo. There is no word whether this offer will be available on other unlocked Moto Zs or in other countries.

One of the main differences between the Moto Z and Moto Z Force DROID is the camera size. The Moto Z features a 13MP camera that lacks some of the Moto Z Forces 21MP camera, such as Phase Detection Autofocus (PDAF), 1.12um pixel with Deep Trench Isolation (DTI), and Auto Night Mode. The front-facing camera is 5MP with a wide-angle lens and an extra flash to give you great group selfies even in low light. With the excellent cameras on the new Moto Z Force, adding the free Google Photo storage is a great accompaniment to the device. With Google Photos, you can concentrate on taking shots knowing that your photos are automatically backup, organized, and searchable. Google Photos makes searching for photos a breeze so you can share them with others.

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Just to throw in a few other differences between the Moto Z and the Z Force DROID, size and battery. The Moto Z packs a smaller 2600mAh battery, giving it a slim build of 5.2mm, while the Moto Z Force packs a hefty 3500mAh battery that ups the thickness to 7mm  it also bumps the weight from 136 grams to 163 grams. The Moto Z Force also has the scratch and crack-resistant ShatterShield screen.
This week has been a big week for Lenovo, thanks to their Lenovo Tech World event, and considering that Lenovo owns Motorola, its been a big week for the US brand as well. The big news for Motorola was the launch of the new Moto Z as well as the Moto Z Force. A pair of new smartphones that take the concept of customization far behind just being able to choose the color of your beloved device with Moto Mods, they will be available in the Fall. To confuse things a little further however, the Moto Z DROID Edition and Moto Z Force DROID Edition will be available exclusively through Verizon earlier this Summer, but Motorola arent done. In the run-up to Lenovo Tech World, we heard countless rumors of a Moto Z Play device, and its surfaced once again, alongside some new and unannounced Moto Mods.

The leak only names the Moto Z Play by its codename of Vertex and shows a number of Moto Mods that werent announced during the event earlier this week. The two unannounced Moto Mods appear to be called Pro Camera Mod and Adventure Mod, with the former being fairly self-explanatory and the latter being a sort of waterproof housing for the Moto Z family. The Moto Z will ship as a water-repellant device thanks to a special coating, but it isnt waterproof in the same way that an Xperia Z or Galaxy S7 device is. This Adventure Mod appears to solve this problem by covering up all the ports of the device to prevent ingress of water or other liquid. This is a decent idea, and at the end of the day will make it easy for Motorola to sell even more accessories. The Pro Camera Mod appears to be a whole new camera sensor that can be attached to the back of the Moto Z family, which offers 10x optical zoom, but thats all we can see from the leaked images.

During the announcement of the Moto Z and Moto Z Force, it was made clear that Moto Mods would work with future Motorola smartphones, which should take the sting off of the more expensive models, and with the more affordable Moto Z Play rumored for a launch later this year, it might cost a lot less to get into the entire system than many will first think.
Both Lenovo and Motorola have introduced new devices during the Lenovo Tech World 2016. Lenovo has hosted this event in San Francisco yesterday, and the company has unveiled the PHAB2, PHAB2 Plus and PHAB2 Pro smartphones. The PHAB2 Pro is the highest-end PHAB2 model, and it is also a Tango AR smartphone. Motorola, on the other hand, has announced the Moto Z and Moto Z Force smartphones, while the company also showcased Moto Mods for those smartphones. That being said, weve already talked about length about each of these devices, but as its usually the case, additional info always tends to surface later on.

Motorola has released the full specs for the Moto Z and Moto Z Force during yesterdays event. The company has listed a 2,600mAh battery for the Moto Z, and a 3,500mAh battery pack for the Moto Z Force. Now, having that in mind, the fine print on Motorolas official site reveals something rather interesting, it basically says that the Moto Z battery is expected to last up to 30 hours in the U.S., Canada and Europe, and only 24 hours in the rest of the world. Now, thats not the only difference, Motorola also talks about the TurboPower charger, and says that in 15 minutes of charging it can provide 8 hours of power in the U.S., Canada and Europe, while it will provide 7 hours of power after 15 minutes of charging in the rest of the world. This seems really odd, and quite probably means that the rest of the world will get smaller battery packs or something of the sort, because its hard to expect same battery packs and different battery life, it makes no sense. Either way, were waiting for Motorola to clarify this, thats for sure.

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Both Moto Z devices are made out of metal, and come with water-repellent nano-coating. The two devices are fueled by the Snapdragon 820 64-bit quad-core SoC, and ship with 4GB of RAM. The Moto Z Force does offer a considerably larger battery pack though, as already mentioned, and it also ships with a 23-megapixel snapper, while the Moto Z comes with a 13-megapixel one. The two devices will become available starting from September, and Motorola will even offer an exclusive Verizon models (Moto Z Droid Edition and Moto Z Force Droid Edition) in the U.S.
Gregory Lee, the head of Samsung North America, has stated that bendable phone screens are relatively right around the corner. Gregory explained that flexible screens are technically possible but have been very difficult to manufacture at a reasonable cost. He was speaking after a report highlighting how Samsung could launch flexible smartphones next year, and how these devices could be more significant than the flagship 2017 Galaxy S launch. Samsung have been showing off flexible displays for a decade now, so there is no doubt that the technology is available: but very expensive and for the most part, seemingly without a killer purpose. We have already seen how Samsung have used deliberately curved displays in devices such as the 2011 Nexus S, which featured a curved, 4.0-inch AMOLED panel, through to the Samsung Galaxy Note Edge, Galaxy S6 Edge and later, similar, models.

However, over the years and indeed very recently, weve seen how flexible displays could form a key part of a smartphone or tablet  if the entire device were also flexible, this would greatly increase the utility of a flexible screen. Hardware manufacturers have been working on building devices based around flexible display technology but one of the problems with this approach is that the underlying hardware is not flexible: the chipsets, memory modules and even batteries cannot so readily be flexible. Instead, companies are building smartphones and tablets to consist of several rigid structures joined by a flexible bond, with a display pasted on the outside. This approach has another potentially interesting benefit: if the manufacturer were to adjust their design, it could be relatively easy to design individual components to be replaceable and form part of a flexible smartphone. Its an interesting idea that does not yet appear to have been picked up by the market.

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Meanwhile, next year is a little over six months. Gregorys other remarks include how he believes 5G networking technology will take off sooner than expected and that carriers will remain an important part of the phone distribution chain. These comments are interesting because the 3GPP, the mobile networking standards organisation, is yet to determine the 5G standards. As for the comments on how the carriers will remain a part of the smartphone distribution channel, this is in reference to something of a sea change we are witnessing in the industry where a number of companies are offering smartphones directly to the public without involving a carrier.
Sony has announced a handful of devices this year. The Xperia XA, Xperia X and Xperia X Performance were introduced back in February during the Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona, while the Xperia XA Ultra and Xperia E5 arrived quite recently. That being said, back in February, Sony released the availability info for the Xperia X devices, and they did not have plans to release the Xperia X Performance in UK or Germany. This fact, of course, didnt sit well with Xperia fans in those two European countries. Well, if you live in the UK or Germany, or anywhere else in Europe for that matter, youll be glad to hear that the device will be available soon, even though Sony will not sell it directly, read on.

The UK-based retailer, Clove, has confirmed that the Xperia X Performance will be available in the UK starting from mid-July. The unlocked devices will be available for 549 from the retailer, and considering Clove ships pretty much everywhere (at least in Europe), the device will be available to a wide range of countries. If you live in Europe, chances are you will be able to order this smartphone from Clove, and the company actually offers worldwide shipping, so no matter where you live, it would be wise to go check out Cloves shipping guidelines for more information. The Xperia X Performance was the most powerful out of the three devices Sony introduced back in February, so lets check out its specs real quick, shall we.

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The Xperia X Performance comes with a 5-inch fullHD (1920 x 1080) display, 3GB of RAM and 32GB of expandable internal storage. This device is fueled by the Snapdragon 820 64-bit quad-core processor, along with the Adreno 530 GPU. The 23-megapixel snapper can be found on the back of the Xperia X Performance, and a 13-megapixel camera is placed up front. The 2,700mAh battery is also a part of this package, and it is not removable. Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow comes pre-installed on the Xperia X Performance, and on top of it, youll be able to find Sonys custom UI. This device is also IP68 certified for water and dust resistance, while it measures 143.7 x 70.4 x 8.7mm, and weighs 164.4 grams.
During his speech at a conference in Lexington, Kentucky last month where he received the Alltech Humanitarian Award, the creator of the first Apple I computer Steve Wozniak spoke incredibly highly on Samsungs first virtual reality headset, the Gear VR. It takes you to other worlds. Its so real. Its everywhere you look. That one gets me emotional, said the pioneer of the 1970s personal computer revolution.

The renowned electronics engineer, programmer, and inventor also expressed his slight disappointment with the fact that Apple still hasnt released a VR headset of its own design. Wozniak revealed that hes hoping the company he co-founded is at least currently working on a VR device thats more advanced than the ones we currently have on the market. Other than that, the legendary inventor also commented on Googles artificial intelligence endeavors, stating he isnt really afraid of their implications and describing the tech giants goal as a good one despite the fact that it could signify a quite significant loss of privacy of its users. The technology enthusiast did admit he has some concerns regarding AI. As he put it, a person is nothing more than a collection of brain connections, so if all of those connections got mapped out on the web that then proceeds to remember them faster and more accurately than an actual person, a question of whether were more present on the web or in real life emerges. Its a scary thought, Woz admitted.

During his conference speech in Lexington, Woz also touched upon the recipe for success in the tech industry of the 1970s and claimed it hasnt changed much until this day. As he explained, he probably wouldnt be where he is today and wouldnt have achieved what he has today if he started Apple with a huge financial injection because few people think about affordability when they dont have to. Other than that, Wozniak singled out the passion for developing new and exciting creations as an integral part of the success in the tech industry. I just wanted people to see my engineering, he said, adding that back in the day, he wasnt hiding his designs in some underground lab but was instead freely giving them out, trying to get them noticed and appreciated.
Those following the Samsung and Apple news will be all too familiar with the ongoing court battles between the two. While it had seemed as though they were calming down, it seems they have only calmed down in the quantity of court battles. The most prevalent of the battles at the moment, is one which had already been concluded. Although, since that conclusion, an appeal had been lodged, which was also followed by a request by Samsung to have the case looked at by the US Supreme court (which was granted). The latter of which has been taking place over the last week or two.

The latest on this is that a report out of Reuters now confirms that yesterday the US Department of Justice weighed in with a recommendation to the US Supreme Court to overturn the appeal verdict. Essentially, returning the case to the courts once more. However, while on the face of it this would seem as though it is in direct support for Samsung, it is not that simple. Samsungs approach with this particular patent battle is not to necessarily argue against infringing an Apple patent, but instead it is more focused on arguing that infringing patented components should not directly relate to profits for an entire device. Drawing on the patent industry as a reference point and explaining that if aspect patents are awarded with full product damages, this will be dangerous for the industry as a whole and stifle future innovation.

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This is essentially what the US Supreme Court is tasked with addressing. While the US Department of Justice is not particularly endorsing Samsungs stance, they are advising that the debate should be turned over to the trial court to be further addressed. As none of the parties are actually contesting the actual patent infringement, this more comes down to the amount which Samsung will have to pay in the end. This was initially set at close to the $1 billion figure, although that was further revised down during the appeal to under $550 million, around this time last year. If Samsung is successful in their approach, that figure is likely to come down further. As well as set a precedent for other patent battles in the future.
This week was filled all kinds of new technology as Lenovo held their Tech World 2016 conference yesterday morning. The showstopper was undoubtedly the Lenovo PHAB2 Pro, the worlds first smartphone powered by the Tango technology, but there were also two more PHAB2 phones in the lineup that were announced alongside it, including the PHAB2 and the PHAB2 Plus, both of which are being aimed at lower ends of the market and naturally coming at lower prices than the $500 PHAB2 Pro. For some, the most exciting thing showcased yesterday will be the devices coming from Motorola.

Motorola officially announced the Moto Z yesterday, and alongside it, the Moto Z Force, as well as DROID Editions of both of those devices that are going to be sold exclusively on Verizon Wireless. While these phones are all impressive on their own just with the hardware and specs that are baked in, what makes them truly unique is their modularity, which is all made possible thanks to the Moto Mods accessories that can be snapped onto the back of the phones. At current there are four different Moto Mods that are going to be available, including the style mods which are essentially just swappable backs in wood, leather, and ballistic nylon, the JBL speaker mod, the projector mod, and the battery pack mod.

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Of course, no one should be able to forget Lenovos flexible tech that was put on display, which included a foldable tablet and a smartphone that had the capability to wrap around the wrist like a wearable cuff. These devices wont be available anytime soon and are just concepts, but they did work, and the idea of more of this kind of technology should sound a little bit exciting. The question is, what has you the most excited from Lenovos event?

[socialpoll id=2366550]
Out to lunch: fire at Dusseldorf refugee camp overcooks small portions

In Dusseldorf, Germany, a refugee camp has burned to the ground. Why?

Daily Star: FASTING FURIOUS  A refugee camps was burned down by hungry migrants after they missed their Ramadan breakfast. They claimed nobody work them in time to eat before beginning their Islamic dawn-to-dusk fast.

The camp is home to 280 refugees

BBC: Ramadan meal row prompted German fire at Duesseldorf shelter

German investigators say a group of men who were not fasting had complained that their lunch portions were too small.

Such are the facts.

Anorak

Posted: 10th, June 2016 | In: Reviews, Tabloids Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
(ANSA) - Rome, June 10 - The Israeli embassy in Rome said Friday it had been "surprised" by rightwing newspaper Il Giornale's decision to give out free copies of Hitler's Mein Kampf (My Struggle) Saturday along with the paper. "If they had asked us we would have advised them to distribute much better books for studying and understanding the Shoah," embassy sources told ANSA.

Italian Jews earlier condemned the planned free distribution of Hitler's autobiography together with Saturday's edition of Il Giornale, which is owned by the brother of former centre-right premier Silvio Berlusconi.

"The free distribution...is a squalid fact that is light years away from all logic of studying the Shoah and the different factors that led the whole of humanity to sink into an abyss of unending hatred, death and violence," the president of the Union of Italian Jewish Communities Renzo Gattegna said in a statement. "It must be stated clearly: the Giornale's operation is indecent. And in particular the message must come from those who are called to oversee and intervene concerning the professional ethics of Italian journalists," Gattegna concluded.


(ANSA) - Rome, June 10 - A final group of 18 out of a total of 66 children from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) have arrived in Italy for adoption, sources said Friday. The adoptive parents, who have been protesting delays in the process, were not told of their arrival until the last pieces of red tape were removed.

DRC authorities authorized the 66 adopted children to join their Italian parents at the end of March.

Another 14 adopted children were authorized to leave the African country in mid-February.

Foreign Minister Paolo Gentiloni hailed the news and said he hoped for speedy clearance so that the children can join their adoptive families soon.

In November 2015, the DRC approved the adoptions by foreign families, including Italians, of 69 children after a two-year wait.

In May 2014, an Italian Air Force jet carrying 31 Congolese children adopted by families in Italy arrived from the Congolese capital of Kinshasa, marking the happy conclusion to a protracted ordeal.

For eight months, 24 Italian couples had been unable to bring their adopted children home from the DRC despite completing the adoption process, due to lack of final clearance by Congolese authorities.

The government in Kinshasa in September that year suspended permissions on all international adoptions citing suspected irregularities, but admitted that none of the procedures in question concerned Italy.


(ANSA) - Siracusa, June 10 - Over 2,500 migrants were due to arrive in Italy between Friday and Saturday after being rescued when their boats got into difficulty in the Sicily Channel. The Bourbon Argos ship operated by medical aid organisation Medici senza frontiere docked in the Sicilian regional capital of Palermo early Friday morning carrying 592 migrants - 464 men, 119 women including one suffering from serious hypertension and 9 children, including unaccompanied minors and a four-month-old baby probably born in Libya - mostly from Cameroon, Togo, Senegal and Ivory Coast. The latest rescues take to 1,298 the number of migrants saved by MSF in 11 separate rescue operations in the last 48 hours, on top of the over 2,000 people rescued by the international charity organisation since the end of April.

Also on Friday, the German auxiliary ship Fgs Frankfurt was due to dock in the Sicilian port city of Messina at 4 pm local time with 514 migrants on board.

On Saturday the Italian navy vessel Aviere carrying 750 migrants is expected in Augusta at 6 am and the Siem Pilot carrying 652 migrants is due to reach Reggio Calabria on mainland Italy during the course of the morning. On Friday the migration 'hotspot' for identification and sorting on Lampedusa contained 363 people, the one in Trapani 129 people and the one in Pozzallo 310 people.


Egypt's religious authorities decry ISIS threats to pyramids Country is 'strong and safe, thanks to army and police'

(ANSAmed) - CAIRO, JUNE 10 - The Sunni religious observatory of Egypt has called Islamic State (ISIS) threats posted online in recent days to attack the pyramids and Sphinx in Giza ''unreal''. The observatory underscored that these threats aim to negatively affect summer tourism and that ''Egypt is a strong, safe country due to the patriotic armed forces and courageous police who sacrifice themselves to protect it from terrorism''. The Egyptian authorities had - immediately after the threats to the pyramids appeared online - assured that tourist sites in the country are safe and under video surveillance 24/7.



(ANSAmed).




Migrants, Italy ups pressure for EU-Africa agreements Rome backs Paris and Berlin, brakes on Georgia visa exemption

(by Patrizia Antonini) (ANSAmed) - BRUSSELS, JUNE 10 - Concentration of EU funds for international development cooperation - but also national resources - in African countries for the control of migration flows and repatriation agreements: this is the political outcome that Italy and Brussels are hoping for at the next summit of European leaders on June 28-29, within the context of the Commission's plan for tailor-made agreements with third-party countries of origin and transit. Likewise, work is underway to create a European border control agency in defence of the bloc's external frontiers, with an agreement expected at the end of the month.



The idea is to reach a joint masterplan to tackle the threats along those borders. The pressure will be ratcheted up on Friday at the Home Affairs Council meeting in Luxembourg, where Italian Interior Minister Angelino Alfano is due to speak first at a working lunch in order to rally support. Foreign Minister Paolo Gentiloni will continue to apply pressure at a meeting on June 20. The most problematic issue concerns precisely the contribution to be made by individual states, with some having already shown a certain degree of reluctance to dig into their pockets and asking for the resources to come exclusively from the EU budget.



However, Alfano will also insist on measures that need to be implemented immediately, such as strengthening European centres for immigration assistance along the lines of the those in Agadez in Niger and Kassala in Sudan, with the function not only of identifying migrants and collecting asylum applications but also of monitoring possible infiltration by jihadist militants and facilitating assisted repatriation using microcredit as an incentive. This operation could begin with an estimated 80 million euros. Further, Italy would like Gambia and Ivory Coast to be added to the list of beneficiaries - Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Ethiopia, Jordan and Lebanon - identified by Brussels for the first agreements, given the increase in the number of migrants coming from those countries. The meeting will also be a chance to discuss the EU-Turkey agreement on migrants, which is the forerunner of the new EU plan for African countries. Commission President Jean Claude Juncker insists that the deal called for by German Chancellor Angela Merkel is "on the field and working", but many unknowns continue to have a bearing on its outcome. The thorniest issue remains visa liberalisation, which is an absolute priority for Ankara and very controversial for the EU. Brussels is due to present a report on Wednesday in which it could say that Turkey has made progress but that it has still not managed to meet demands concerning changes to its anti-terrorism laws. Meanwhile, the question of visa exemption for Turkey has become entwined with that of Georgia, Ukraine and Kosovo.



Georgia has met the criteria required for obtaining the green light, but France and Germany want the safeguard clause allowing visa exemption to be suspended to be adopted first, with backing from Italy. (ANSAmed).




Over 2,500 migrants to arrive in Italy between Fri and Sat MSF vessel docks in Palermo with 592 people in board

(ANSAmed) - SIRACUSA, JUNE 10 - Over 2,500 migrants were due to arrive in Italy between Friday and Saturday morning after being rescued when their boats got into difficulty in the Sicily Channel. The Bourbon Argos operated by medical aid organisation Medici senza frontiere docked in the Sicilian regional capital of Palermo early Friday morning carrying 592 migrants - 464 men, 119 women including one suffering from serious hypertension and 9 children, including unaccompanied minors and a four-month-old baby probably born in Libya - mostly from Cameroon, Togo, Senegal and Ivory Coast. The latest rescues take to 1,298 the number of migrants saved by MSF in 11 separate rescue operations in the last 48 hours, on top of the over 2,000 people rescued by the international charity organisation since the end of April. Also on Friday, the German auxiliary ship Fgs Frankfurt was due to dock in the Sicilian port city of Messina at 4 pm local time with 514 migrants on board.



On Saturday the Italian navy vessel Aviere carrying 750 migrants is expected in Augusta at 6 am and the Siem Pilot carrying 652 migrants is due to reach Reggio Calabria on mainland Italy during the course of the morning. On Friday the migration 'hotspot' for identification and sorting on Lampedusa contained 363 people, the one in Trapani 129 people and the one in Pozzallo 310 people. (ANSAmed).




NEW YORK - Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has said he temporarily removed the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen from a UN blacklist for violating child rights because its supporters threatened to stop funding many UN programs.



He called the decision ''one of the most painful and difficult decisions I have had to make'', but added that he had to consider ''the very real prospect'' that millions of other children in the Palestinian territories, South Sudan, Syria, Yemen and many other places ''would suffer grievously'' if UN programs were defunded.



Saudi ambassador to the UN Abdallah Al-Mouallimi reacted by calling the comment ''scandalous''.
Detainees freed in Sirte say they were tortured by ISIS GNA-linked forces enter Libyan city center

(ANSAmed) - CAIRO, JUNE 10 - Some civilians from Sirte that had been detained by the Islamic State (ISIS) and who bear marks of torture on their bodies were freed on Friday, the Operation for the Liberation of Sirte from ISIS reported. Neither the number of civilians freed nor the place of detention were specified. The forces linked to the UN-backed Government of National Accord (GNA) under Prime Minister-Designate Fayez Al-Sarraj on Thursday evening managed to enter the center of the city. Several videos posted online show the offensive, conducted with heavy vehicles moving through Sirte's streets, most of which were empty. The advance was assisted by the Navy, which blocked all access points along the coast, while the Air Force on Thursday subjected the city center to heavy bombardment. (ANSAmed).




Libya: Friday prayers held in Sirte areas freed from ISIS Local TV broadcasts religious services at mosque

(ANSAmed) - CAIRO, JUNE 10 - The Alwasat media site reported on Friday that Muslim community prayers had been held in areas that had been liberated by Sarraj-linked forces from the Islamic State (ISIS) in the city. The religious service was broadcast live from the Al-Thalathine mosque by the Libyan television stations Al-Nabaa and Al-Tanasoh. (ANSAmed).




Libyan militias moving towards regaining all of Sirte Haftar's bombardment of Derna 'killing minors', UN envoy angered

(ANSAmed) - CAIRO, JUNE 10 - Libyan forces answering to the UN-backed Government of National Accord (GNA) said Friday they were advancing towards the center of Sirte to regain it.



The forces, under Prime Minister-Designate Fayez Al-Sarraj, added on the Facebook page of the Operation for the Liberation of Sirte that ''progress has been seen on the Al-Gharbeyat bridge axis, which goes in the direction of the center'' and that ''the forces have managed to neutralize a car bomb heading in the direction of the militias''. UN Special Envoy for Libya Martin Kobler has meanwhile spoken out against bombardment of the city of Derna by the forces under Khalifa Haftar, which media reports say killed three minors on Thursday. Kobler said on Twitter that he was ''Deeply saddened to hear of civilian casualties from airstrikes #Derna, 2 women & 2 child died. Densely populated areas must not be targeted''. Dera is partially under the control of the Shura Council of Mujahideen - a coalition of Islamist militias linked to Al-Qaeda - that has fought against Islamic State (ISIS) militants.



(ANSAmed).




TEL AVIV - Thousands of police and border guards have been deployed in Jerusalem for the first Friday of prayer during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, and also to prevent tension between Jews and Muslims on a day that this year coincides with the Jewish festival of Shavu'ot. Many people of both faiths are expected to pass through the Old City on their way to Temple Mount and the Western Wall. The security measures for Friday and the days thereafter were drawn up before Wednesday night's Palestinian terrorist attack in Tel Aviv, media report.



Israel froze entry permits for approximately 83,000 Palestinians for the month of Ramadan and tightened security checks across the country in light of the attack.
Syria: Daraya gets 1st food aid in 4 yrs, bombing continues Aleppo Christians give Ramadan food to poor Muslims

(ANSAmed) - BEIRUT, JUNE 10 - The population of the Damascus opposition-held suburb Daraya, besieged by government forces since November 2012, on Friday received food aid for the first time in four years. Activists in the area said that the suburb nonetheless continued to be targeted by barrel bombs dropped by the regime air force as the food was being distributed. Al Jazeera quoted the Local Council of Daraya as saying that at least 18 crude, unguided explosive devices had been dropped on the area.



The attacks occurred after a Syrian Red Crescent convoy brought food, flour and medicine to the area over the night. The UN said that the operation had been set in motion after the Syrian government authorized access to 15 of the 19 officially recognized besieged areas of the country. A week ago, another convoy organized by the UN, the International Committee of the Red Cross and the Syrian Red Crescent had brought medicine, vaccines and milk powder to Daraya. UN estimates say there are about 593,000 civilians trapped in in besieged areas in Syria, 453,000 of whom are besieged by government forces. Meanwhile, further north in Syria's former industrial capital and largest city, Aleppo, the Syrian Orthodox Archdiocese has every day since the holy month of Ramadan began on Monday been offering breakfast and evening meals to the poorest Muslim families living in Sulaimaniyah area, the Vatican news agency Fides said on Friday. The distribution center is located in the archdiocese at the Cathedral of St. Ephrem the Syrian. A message released by the media of the archdiocese ''presents this initiative as a simple gesture to express the feelings of solidarity between citizens of different religious affiliations, in the hope of helping to restore with time the coexistence among the various ethnic and religious communities that characterized the Syrian society before the war'', the news agency reported. (ANSAmed).




(by Patrizia Antonini)

BRUSSELS - Concentration of EU funds for international development cooperation - but also national resources - in African countries for the control of migration flows and repatriation agreements: this is the political outcome that Italy and Brussels are hoping for at the next summit of European leaders on June 28-29, within the context of the Commission's plan for tailor-made agreements with third-party countries of origin and transit. Likewise, work is underway to create a European border control agency in defence of the bloc's external frontiers, with an agreement expected at the end of the month.



The idea is to reach a joint masterplan to tackle the threats along those borders. The pressure will be ratcheted up on Friday at the Home Affairs Council meeting in Luxembourg, where Italian Interior Minister Angelino Alfano is due to speak first at a working lunch in order to rally support. Foreign Minister Paolo Gentiloni will continue to apply pressure at a meeting on June 20. The most problematic issue concerns precisely the contribution to be made by individual states, with some having already shown a certain degree of reluctance to dig into their pockets and asking for the resources to come exclusively from the EU budget.



However, Alfano will also insist on measures that need to be implemented immediately, such as strengthening European centres for immigration assistance along the lines of the those in Agadez in Niger and Kassala in Sudan, with the function not only of identifying migrants and collecting asylum applications but also of monitoring possible infiltration by jihadist militants and facilitating assisted repatriation using microcredit as an incentive. This operation could begin with an estimated 80 million euros. Further, Italy would like Gambia and Ivory Coast to be added to the list of beneficiaries - Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Ethiopia, Jordan and Lebanon - identified by Brussels for the first agreements, given the increase in the number of migrants coming from those countries. The meeting will also be a chance to discuss the EU-Turkey agreement on migrants, which is the forerunner of the new EU plan for African countries. Commission President Jean Claude Juncker insists that the deal called for by German Chancellor Angela Merkel is "on the field and working", but many unknowns continue to have a bearing on its outcome. The thorniest issue remains visa liberalisation, which is an absolute priority for Ankara and very controversial for the EU. Brussels is due to present a report on Wednesday in which it could say that Turkey has made progress but that it has still not managed to meet demands concerning changes to its anti-terrorism laws. Meanwhile, the question of visa exemption for Turkey has become entwined with that of Georgia, Ukraine and Kosovo.



Georgia has met the criteria required for obtaining the green light, but France and Germany want the safeguard clause allowing visa exemption to be suspended to be adopted first, with backing from Italy.
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YEREVAN, JUNE 10, ARMENPRESS. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon says time has not come yet for starting the next round of talks over Syria in Geneva.

The time has not yet mature for the third round of talks over Syria, he said stating that he agrees with his special envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura on this issue.

We dont want to have talks for the sake of talks, the UN Secretary-General said.

He also stressed the urgency of holding new round of consultations until the deadline of early August set by the Co-Chairs of the International Syria Support Group.

Before that we should start to develop a serious agreement, Ban Ki-moon said, TASS reported.
YEREVAN, JUNE 10, ARMENPRESS. President Barack Obama endorsed presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton in a web video on June 9, reports CNN.

"I don't think there's ever been someone so qualified to hold this office," Obama said in the video.

"I want those of you who have been with me since the beginning of this incredible journey to be the first to know that I'm with her," Obama continued. "I am fired up. And I can't wait to get out there and campaign with Hillary."

Obama will campaign with Clinton next week in Green Bay, Wisconsin.

"It's probably the first of many campaign events between now and November," White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said, adding that no more campaign events are scheduled yet. Earnest said Obama recorded his video Tuesday.

His endorsement made note of the historic nature of Clinton's being the first female presidential nominee of a major political party. Obama's endorsement brings full circle a relationship that began when the two were rivals in the hard-fought 2008 Democratic nominating contest.

Clinton thanked Obama for his endorsement in a tweet posted to her account Thursday.

"Honored to have you with me, @POTUS. I'm fired up and ready to go!" she wrote, signing it with '-H' to indicate the tweet was from the former secretary of state personally.
YEREVAN, JUNE 10, ARMENPRESS. The Public Services Regulatory Commission refutes media information which states as if the calculations of electricity tariffs are finished.

Spokeswoman of the PSRC Mariam Stepanyan told ARMENPRESS this information is false.

I dont know who the source of that newspaper is, but I can confidently say that the revision calculations of electricity tariffs are not yet finished. It is in the final stage, and clarifications are being done, Stepanyan said.

The spokeswoman says the PSRC is due to convene a session by the end of June and the revised electricity tariffs will be known.

Earlier, Haykakan Zhamanak (Armenian Times) stated as if the PSRC has finished revising the tariffs which will be in force from August 1. According to the newspaper, the tariff will be at least 45 AMD for 1 kW.

The current tariff is 48.8 AMD.
YEREVAN, JUNE 10, ARMENPRESS. President Barack Obama has approved giving the U.S. military greater ability to accompany and enable Afghan forces battling a resilient Taliban insurgency, in a move to assist them more proactively on the battlefield, reports Reuters.

The senior U.S. defense official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the decision would also allow greater use of U.S. air power, particularly close air support.

However, the official cautioned: "This is not a blanket order to target the Taliban."

Obama's decision again redefines America's support role in Afghanistan's grinding conflict, more than a year after international forces wrapped up their combat mission and shifted the burden to Afghan troops.

It also comes ahead of Obama's eagerly anticipated decision on whether to forge ahead with a scheduled reduction in the numbers of U.S. troops from about 9,800 currently to 5,500 by the start of 2017.

A group of retired generals and senior diplomats urged Obama last week to forgo those plans, warning they could undermine the fight against the Afghan Taliban, whose leader was killed in a U.S. drone strike in Pakistan last month.

Under the new policy, the U.S. commander in Afghanistan, General John Nicholson, will be able to decide when it is appropriate for American troops to accompany conventional Afghan forces into the field - something they have so far only been doing with Afghan special forces, the official said.

The expanded powers are only meant to be employed "in those select instances in which their engagement can enable strategic effects on the battlefield," the official said.

That means that U.S. forces should not be expected to accompany Afghan soldiers on day-to-day missions.

"This added flexibility ... is fully supported by the Afghan government and will help the Afghans at an important moment for the country," the official said.

The decision is a departure from current U.S. rules of engagement in Afghanistan, which impose limits on U.S. forces' ability to strike at insurgents.

For example, the U.S. military was previously allowed to take action against the Taliban "in extremis" - moments when their assistance was needed to prevent a significant Afghan military setback.

That definition, however, left the U.S. military postured to assist them in more defensive instances. The new policy would allow U.S. forces to accompany Afghans at key moments in their offensive campaign against the Taliban.
YEREVAN, JUNE 10, ARMENPRESS. With all votes counted, the economist Pedro Pablo Kuczynski appears to have won the majority of votes in Peru's presidential election, reports BBC.

The electoral commission said he received 50.12% of votes, against 49.88% for his rival, Keiko Fujimori.

About 50,000 ballots must first be settled by an electoral court before a winner can be officially declared.

Ms Fujimori has yet to concede, but Kuczynski tweeted his thanks to the Peruvian people.

"It's time to work together for the future of our country," he told his followers on Twitter

This has been the tightest fought election in Peru in five decades.

As the last few votes were counted, the candidates remained neck-and-neck, with Mr Kuczynski leading by a tiny margin.

The closeness of the result came as a surprise after polls in the run-up to the election had suggested Ms Fujimori had a comfortable lead.

Analysts said corruption scandals in Ms Fujimori's Popular Force Party may have dented her support since April, when she comfortably won the first round of voting.

She is the daughter of Peru's former President, Alberto Fujimori, who is in jail for crimes against humanity.

Mr Kuczynski, who is an ex-Wall Street financier, said he would use his international financial experience to promote economic growth.

He has the support of prominent figures such as Nobel-Prize-winning novelist Mario Vargas Llosa and left-wing candidate Veronika Mendoza, who came third in the first round of voting.

But he has faced scrutiny over his close relationship to Peru's business elite.
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It wasnt until later in her ballet career that Lia Cirio began to suspect that people had their doubts that a half-Filipino ballerina could be a Clara or Sleeping Beauty. While the Boston Ballet employs 69 dancers of 20 different nationalities, she still sees the need to prove herself on stage with each performance.
by Nirmala Carvalho

Judith D'Souza works for the Agha Khan Network in the Afghan capital. Unidentified men seized her last night. Indian authorities are doing everything to get her release. Judith is someone involved in improving the lives of many people in difficulty, said a pained Archbishop DSouza.

Kolkata (AsiaNews) - A group of unidentified men last night abducted an Indian aid worker in Kabul.

Judith D'Souza, a 40-year-old Catholic woman, works with the Agha Khan Network in Afghanistan to raise awareness about the role of women, something that runs against the strong patriarchal traditions of the country and Islam.

Mgr Thomas D'Souza, archbishop of Kolkata, spoke to AsiaNews about the situation. We pray for her safe release and return. Judith is someone involved in improving the lives of many people in difficulty, the prelate said.

I assure the family of my prayers and our support. She is from the Fatima Parish, and just last month she visited her parents, he added.

We know that the government is working for her release, he explained. In addition to being available to help, we continue to pray, especially to Our Lady of Fatima. May Judith soon come home to her family through her intercession.

Several Indian Embassy sources in Kabul said that Indian authorities are working on the issue.

For their part, Afghan security forces are making every effort to elucidate the case and secure the aid workers release.
by Mathias Hariyadi

Indonesias Medical Association is against President Joko Widodos decree. We do not want to disobey the laws of the State but we do not want doctors to become the executors of a practice that goes against our conscience." Doctors must heal, not harm the human body. The decree does not take into account side effects.

Jakarta (AsiaNews)  Indonesian President Joko Widodo has issued a decree (Perppu 1-2016) that imposes hormonal treatment on pedophiles and rapists. The Indonesian Medical Association (Ikatan Dokter Indonesia, IDI) has reacted by saying that chemical castration is not the right measure to prevent sexual violence and rape, and that it goes against their Hippocratic oath and should not be performed by medical personnel.

Proposed in 2015, the presidential decree amends the existing child protection legislation (Law n. 23-2002) allowing courts to impose the death penalty, life imprisonment or chemical castration on convicted offenders.

Under the new legislation, offenders identity will be made public. If they are released, they will have to wear an electronic monitoring device to track their movement. However, human rights activists and Indonesias Catholic Women association have criticised the law.

For the Indonesian Medical Association, castration is not an adequate deterrent to sexual violence because it does not generate a sense of "repentance" in attackers.

In addition, "there are no good data on how many such operations have been carried out on humans. We have no idea what steps have to be taken, apart from the fact that there are side effects that the law does not take into account, said Wimpie Pangkahila, professor of andrology.

As testosterone production is inhibited, there is bone density loss and abdominal effects. For Nugroho Setiawan, a sexologist and andrologist at the Fatmawati Hospital in Jakarta, this is why chemical castration violates the Hippocratic oath.

"Our mission as physicians is to heal patients from disease, he said, not the opposite and harm their (offenders) natural potential.

What is more, the procedure "is not permanent and must be repeated periodically, with many side effects. It is also very expensive."

"Our position is clear, said Medical Association President Ilham Oetama Marsis. We do not want to disobey the laws of the State but we do not want doctors to become the executors of a practice that goes against our conscience."

Some doctors have also doubts about the actual effectiveness of castration. Dr Eunice Pingkan Najoan is one of them. "The result could be the opposite, she said. Castrated people are more driven to act uncontrollably against other individuals because something fundamental to their body was taken away by force."

The Catholic Church has always been against chemical castration. "So far, the existing penalties against sexual violence have not been effective because of police corruption, said Fr Siswantoko, from the Pastoral Commission for Migrants of the Commission of Justice and Peace. The real challenge is to change the way we think about the problem, he explained.

Sexual violence does not happen only because of carnal desire. It is caused primarily by societys lifestyles, where drugs, alcohol and pornography are everywhere. The best solution is to start by educating society to a new morality."
In a meeting with a delegation from the World Communion of Reformed Churches, Francis stressed the urgent need for an ecumenism that, along with theological dialogue aimed at settling traditional doctrinal disagreements between Christians, can promote a shared mission of evangelization and service."

Vatican City (AsiaNews)  Pope Francis met with a delegation from the World Communion of Reformed Churches (WCRC) on Friday. During the meeting, he stressed the need to encourage the ecumenical journey in a world, where people live as if God did not exist. In fact, for him the urgent need for an ecumenism that, along with theological dialogue aimed at settling traditional doctrinal disagreements between Christians, can promote a shared mission of evangelization and service.

Francis, who will be in Sweden on 31 October for a ceremony that will start the commemoration of 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation (1517-2017), said, Our meeting here today is one more step along the journey that marks the ecumenical movement, a blessed and hope-filled journey whereby we strive to live ever more fully in accord with the Lords prayer that all may be one (Jn 17:21). 

For the pontiff, Today, we must above all be grateful to God for our rediscovered brotherhood, which, as Saint John Paul II wrote, is not the consequence of a large-hearted philanthropy or a vague family spirit, but is rooted in recognition of the oneness of Baptism and the subsequent duty to glorify God in his work (cf. Ut Unum Sint, 42). In this spiritual fellowship, Catholics and Reformed Christians can strive to grow together in order to better serve the Lord.

Francis noted that A specific motive of gratitude is the recent conclusion of the fourth phase of the theological dialogue between the World Communion of Reformed Churches and the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, dealing with Justification and Sacramentality: The Christian Community as an Agent for Justice. I am happy to note that the final report clearly emphasizes the necessary link between justification and justice. Our faith in Jesus impels us to live charity through concrete gestures capable of affecting our way of life, our relationships and the world around us. On the basis of an agreement on the doctrine of justification, there are many areas in which Reformed and Catholics can work together in bearing witness to Gods merciful love, which is the true remedy for the confusion and indifference that seem to surround us.

In effect, today we often experience a spiritual desertification. Especially in places where people live as if God did not exist, our Christian communities are meant to be sources of living water quenching thirst with hope, a presence capable of inspiring encounter, solidarity and love (cf. Evangelii Gaudium, 86-87). They are called to receive and rekindle Gods grace, to overcome self-centredness and to be open to mission. Faith cannot be shared if it is practiced apart from life, in unreal isolation and in self-referential communities resistant to change. Thus it would be impossible to respond to the insistent thirst for God that nowadays finds expression also in various new forms of religiosity.

These at times risk encouraging concern for oneself and ones needs alone, and promoting a kind of spiritual consumerism. Unless people today find in the Church a spirituality which can offer healing and liberation, and fill them with life and peace, while at the same time summoning them to fraternal communion and missionary fruitfulness, they will end up by being taken in by solutions which neither make life truly human nor give glory to God (cf. ibid., 89).

There is urgent need for an ecumenism that, along with theological dialogue aimed at settling traditional doctrinal disagreements between Christians, can promote a shared mission of evangelization and service. Certainly many such initiatives and good forms of cooperation exist in many places. Yet clearly we can all do more, together, to offer a convincing reason for the hope that is in us (cf. 1 Pet 3:15), by sharing with others the Fathers merciful love that we graciously receive and are called generously to bestow in turn.

Dear brothers and sisters, in renewing my gratitude for your visit and your commitment in service to the Gospel, I express my hope that this meeting may be an effective sign of our resolution to journey together towards full unity. May it encourage all Reformed and Catholic communities to continue to work together to bring the joy of the Gospel to the men and women of our time. God bless you all.
"In order to meet the Lord we must be so: standing upright and on our way; then waiting for Him speak to us, with an open heart; and He will say, It is I and there faith becomes strong  [and] is this faith for me to keep? No: It is for us to bring to others, to anoint others with it  it is for mission".

Vatican City (AsiaNews) - The Christian life can be summed up in three attitudes: "standing" to welcome God, in patient "silence" to hear his voice, "going out" to announce Him to others said Pope Francis at Mass this morning in Casa Santa Marta.

The Pope focused on the prophet Elijah, from whose book the First Reading of the Day was taken. The Holy Father recalled how Elijah was victorious, how he fought so much for the faith, and defeated hundreds of idolaters on Mount Carmel. Then, he reaches a breaking point: one of the many acts of persecution aimed at him finally hit its mark, and he collapses in discouragement under a tree, waiting to die  except that God does not leave him in that state of prostration, but sends an angel with an imperative: get up, eat, go out:

To meet God it is necessary to go back to the situation where the man was at the time of creation, standing and walking. Thus did God created us: capable of standing full upright before Him, in his image and likeness, and on our way with Him. Go, go ahead: cultivate the land, make it grow; and multiply. [Then, to Elijah], Enough! Go out and go up to the mountain and stand on the mountaintop in my presence. Elijah stood up on his feet, he set off on his way.

Go out, and then to listen to God: only how can one be sure to meet the Lord on the way? Elijah was invited by the angel to go out of the cave on Mount Horeb, where he found shelter to stand in the presence of God. However, it is not the mighty and strong wind that splits the rocks, nor the earthquake that follows, nor even the fire that follows, which finally induces Elijah to go out:

So much noise, so much majesty, so much bustle - and the Lord was not there. After the fire, the whisper of a gentle breeze or, as it is in the original, the strain of a sonorous silence: and the Lord is there, speaking to us in it.

The angels third request to Elijah is: Go out. The prophet is invited to retrace his steps, to the desert, because he was given an assignment to fulfill. In this, emphasizes Francis, is captured the stimulus to be on the way, not closed, not within the selfishness of our comfort, but brave in bringing to others the message of the Lord, which is to say, [to go on a] mission:

We must always seek the Lord. We all know how are the bad moments: moments that pull us down, moments without faith, dark, times when we do not see the horizon, we are unable to get up. We all know this, but but it is the Lord who comes, who refreshes us with bread and with his strength and says: Arise and be on your way! Walk! In order to meet the Lord we must be so: standing upright and on our way; then waiting for Him speak to us, with an open heart; and He will say, It is I and there faith becomes strong  [and] is this faith for me to keep? No: It is for us to bring to others, to anoint others with it  it is for mission.
Damascus (AsiaNews / Agencies) - The first humanitarian aid convoy, carrying food and essential aid, along with other basic necessities, yesterday evening reached Darayya, a suburb 12 km south-west of Damascus which has been under siege for months. It is the first shipment of food to reach the area since 2012. It was one of the first in the country of protest against President Bashar al-Assad and the Syrian government in the spring of 2011.



The trucks contained food, medicine and flour for the preparation of bread. In recent days another shipment of aid had already reached Darayya, but there were only small quantities of medicines and other basic necessities. And there were no groceries.



In April, the United Nations had issued a warning stating that at least 8 thousand people, the vast majority civilians, were suffering under the government army siege.



The UN special envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura confirmed yesterday the green light from Damascus for the distribution of aid in 19 areas under siege. At least 600 thousand people live within these areas, most of them in extreme need and difficulty.



Tamam Mehrez, executive director of the Red Crescent in Syria, reports that aid delivered yesterday will be enough to satisfy the needs of a month. Upon delivery there were not many people waiting because "people no longer believe in promises" and "fear of attacks so they no longer gather more in groups or clusters".



Meanwhile, on the military front, the US armed forces have now reached one of the strongholds of the Islamic State (IS) in the north of the country and are preparing to launch the attack. The goal of the US-led coalition is Manbij town, located along the route that links the Turkish border with Raqqa, the "capital" of the jihadists in Syria. It is an essential route used by militants for stocks and supplies of men and equipment.



The Syrian conflict broke out in March 2011 as a civil uprising against President Bashar al-Assad. So far it has caused at least 280 thousand dead and originated an unprecedented humanitarian crisis, with millions of refugees.
For WHO, this a remarkable achievement thanks to screening and universal free medication for pregnant women. According to Thai government figures, the number of babies born with HIV dropped from 1,000 in 2000 to just 85 in 2015. Still, there are still half a million HIV positive Thais.

Bangkok (AsiaNews/Agencies)  Thailand has become the first Asian country to eliminate mother-to-child HIV transmission, this according to the World Health Organisation. This is a milestone in a country where half a million live with the disease. Last year Cuba was the first country in the world to achieve this result.

WHO said Thailand's routine screening and universal free medication for pregnant women with HIV was crucial in stopping the virus being passed to new generations.

Describing the elimination as a "remarkable achievement", the world health body said that the Southeast Asian nation had "demonstrated to the world that HIV can be defeated".

If left untreated, mothers with HIV have a 15-45 per cent chance of transmitting the virus to their children during pregnancy, childbirth or during breastfeeding. Taking antiretroviral drugs during pregnancy significantly reduces this to just over 1 per cent.

In 2000, Thailand became one of the first countries in the world to provide free antiretroviral medication to all pregnant women diagnosed with HIV, a practice that extended to the country's most remote areas and to its undocumented migrants.

Thai government figures show that the number of babies born with HIV dropped from 1,000 in 2000 to just 85 last year, a large enough fall for the WHO to declare mother-to-child transmission over.

For Thailand, this is a major turnaround. The country went from 100,000 HIV cases in 1990 to more than a million three years later, fuelled in part by its huge sex trade.

An eventual push to distribute free condoms among sex workers throughout the late 1990s did not achieve expected results and was criticised by the Association of Catholic Doctors.

In recent years, the country has seen a slight increase in the number of sexual transmitted infections and remains one of the countries most affected by HIV.
How to Choose the Best Condoms

When You Need Protection, Reach for the Best Rubbers Out There

The AskMen editorial team thoroughly researches & reviews the best gear, services and staples for life. AskMen may get paid if you click a link in this article and buy a product or service.

The most successful form of birth control and STI prevention may be abstinence, but its also  not a lot of fun. For those of you who want to have sex without worry, condoms are a great option for ensuring your sexual escapades dont lead to a pregnancy or to the transmission of an infection. But theres more to the equation than just knowing that condoms exist; you also have to know how to use them  and just as importantly, you need to have some at your disposal.

But which condoms, exactly? That can be a bit trickier. For starters, penis size can vary wildly between men, depending on all kinds of factors  length, width, and shape, for instance. As well, different people want different things from their condoms. Are you looking for thin-as-can-be condoms? Or studded? Ribbed, colorful, or flavorful? Something that produces a specific sensation? Maybe youre allergic to latex and need a different material? Or you and your partner want to try a female condom?

All these questions and more are important ones to ask yourself when in the market for condoms. Luckily, weve put together this handy guide to help you choose the right condom  or condoms  for you. Keep reading to get an idea of what options are out there, which brands we think are the best, and what the different options are like depending on what youre looking for.

RELATED: Heres Which Size of Condom Most Guys Buy

How to Pick the Right Condom

Now, the question of picking the right condom raises the question: Is it possible to pick the wrong condom? Unfortunately, the answer is yes. If you or your partner should be using non-latex condoms and you dont, you might be looking at a painful allergic reaction. Choosing a condom thats the wrong size could lead to the condom breaking (if its too small), or slipping off (if its too large), too. A condom thats too thick could leave you feeling, well, underwhelmed, while a condom with special features youre not crazy about could leave you feeling overwhelmed.

At the end of the day, you want a condom that maximizes your enjoyment of the sex youre having while doing its best to ensure that youre having the safest sex you can. Its certainly possible to have a fine experience with just any old condom, but why settle for second-best? With a little bit of research, you can find the right condom for you  and the great sex youll have wont be something you regret.

So how do you find that condom? Before we get to your options, here are some helpful pointers:

Read Product Reviews

Before you book a hotel room at a luxury resort for your honeymoon or vacation, whats the first thing you do? Read reviews of other travelers to ensure youre getting the best experience for your buck. Why not apply the same logic to condom shopping? As sexpert Coleen Singer says, customer comments can be a powerful tool to decide on how a condom feels and performs. She suggests reading through Amazon before adding anything to your cart  or ahem, your penis.

Try the Variety Pack

Its the spice of life  and, well, the best way to figure out what you like and what doesnt suit you. Singer says its always a smart idea to buy an assortment of options so you can test them and receive feedback from your partner, too. From ribbed and flavored to extra lubrication to thin texture, it can be a fun experience to dive in together and figure out what works best for your sex life.

Only Opt for High-Quality Products

To ensure you keep the best physique, you only choose organic ingredients for your meals at home. And when youre applying facial cream or any slew of beard products, you pick natural solutions to avoid breakouts. With condoms, the same idea applies. Only use products that can give you full peace of mind before, during, and after the intercourse. That is the primary reason why many users stay with only the big brands. These brands guarantee that their products passed strict quality controls and that they work fully as designed, Singer explains.

How do know what youre using? Certified sex coach and educator Gigi Engle suggests taking a look at the back label and studying up on brands. Believe it or not, condoms are considered a class 2 medical device by the FDA, and are therefore are more highly regulated than other pleasure products, she explains. Before you opt into a specific line, decide what you want to use  organic or synthetic products, for example. This is a personal preference, but regardless of what you use, reading up on the effectiveness and FDA-approval of the product is essential. As Engle says, Some condoms are made with organic materials, which dont include gross silicone lubes that can contains glycerin, parabens, and other gnarly chemicals.

Think of Your Partner

Even if you arent in a committed, monogamous relationship, it takes two to tango  and to have an exciting, fulfilling sexual experience. This is where communication is important. As Engle says, choosing quality ingredients are better for your partners body, which could be sensitive to certain products. And if youre in doubt? Ask them! This ensures you both are satisfying yourselves to the maximum potential.

Focus on Fit

Bottom line though? You need a condom that fits. When it comes to condoms, it is of utmost importance to choose ones that are safe and comfortable. The most important factor in choosing the right condom is whether its the correct size for the penis: too large and it may slip off, and too small and it can become uncomfortable or even break, Singer notes.

Before you make a decision and purchase a pack of condoms, youll need to think of what purpose youd like them to fulfill. Here are some of the most common uses:

Condoms For Everyday Use

HEX Condoms

Ideal for a more sensitive and more intimate sexual sensation, the HEX condom by Lelo boasts a 250 interconnected hexagon structure to allow for body warmth to be transmitted between partners for a closer, more comfortable feel. These ultra-thin yet uber-strong condoms are perfectly smooth on the outside and textured on the inside.

$27.92 at LELO.com

Okamoto Crown Skinless Skin

If anybody knows a thing or two about condoms, it has to be those who have sex professionally. According to online testimonies, these super thin yet strong condoms from Japan are the choice prophylactic among adult actors thanks to its world-renowned bareback feel.

$7.50 for pack of 36 at Amazon.com

Durex Ultra Thin Feel Condoms

Durex is one of the largest condom manufacturers on this planet and has been enjoyed by millions of sex-havers everyday for over 80 years. On average, these ultra thin rubbers are 20 percent thinner than the standard Durex condom, providing the most authentic sensation from a reputable brand.

$9.99 at Target.com

Kimono MicroThin

If reliability is your main concern, the Kimono MicroThin wont let you down. At the top of most best condom lists, the Japanese-made condom exceeds U.S. and international standards for strength, meaning it won't tear when you least expect it. An added benefit: theyre vegan-friendly.

$30.58 for pack of 24 at Amazon.com

Condoms That Feel the Best

Lifestyles SKYN Polyisoprene

If youre looking for condoms that win on feel, Lifestyles SKYN Polyisoprene ones are hard to beat. For starters, theyre made from a sturdy non-latex material, so even those with allergies or sensitivities to latex wont have an issue. Theyre just as sturdy as regular latex condoms, however, while allowing you incredible sensitivity. They dont feature any exciting bells or whistles, but damn if theyre not a great option for all kinds of guys looking for a simple, comfortable condom that feels great.

$11.17 for 24 at Amazon.com

One Condoms

One Condoms are made of Sensatex, marketed as a safer, smoother and clearer form of latex, and come in a slew of textured styles and sizes to fit the widest penile demographic. Legend is for larger penises. Zero features a 25 percent thinner condom for increased sensation. Tantric Pleasure features a roomier base and tip for added comfort. Also, One Condoms donate a percentage of each purchase toward efforts to treat and prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS in Africa.

$9.38 for pack of 24 at Walmart.com

Trojan Sensitivity Bareskin Lubricated

If you're looking for the sweet spot between a brand name you can trust and a thinness you can feel, the Trojan Bareskins are a good bet. At 40 percent thinner than Trojan's standard condom, the brand boasts that the Bareskin is its thinnest ever. Other than that, it's a pretty standard-issue condom, whether you see that as a positive or negative: It's made from latex, comes lubricated, features a reservoir tip and is rigorously tested so you know it's reliable.

$15.49 at Amazon.com

Condoms to Last Longer

Durex Performax Intense Premium

One of the first to create a condom using benzocaine, Durex is definitely an industry leader. Their Performax line contains 5 percent of the numbing agent, which is heat-activated to turn from a cream-like substance within the condom into a liquid substance that applies itself easily in action. With Performax Intense, the goal is to prolong the time to male orgasm time while shortening the time until hers with an added ribbed and dotted texture. Intense also has a slight, added scent rather than the standard, odorless option.

$17.90 at Amazon.com

Skyn Extra Lube Condoms

According to reviews, if youre allergic to latex, Skyn manufactures some of the best non-latex condoms currently on the market. All condoms from Skyn are made with a polyisoprene (non-latex) material, so users don't have to worry about getting an allergic reaction in the heat of the moment. Skyns extra lube condom contains 40 percent more lube than their other models, which means you shouldn't have to worry about applying anything extra.

$11.19 for pack of 24 at Amazon.com

Condoms Perfect for Your Size

Trojan Bareskin Magnum

If you are generously endowed, the Magnum Bareskin condom is one of the best products available for the most natural feel. It's the thinnest condom in the line (20 percent thinner, to be exact) and boasts a new contoured shape as well as premium lubricant for added comfort and sensitivity.

$7.98 for pack of 10 at Amazon.com

Caution Wear Iron Grip Condoms

If you have a smaller penis, don't be fooled into thinking you can't still have great sex. That said, getting a condom that fits you just right is essential to getting comfortable and enjoying every minute of intercourse instead of stressing about your condom falling off. The Iron Grip latex condoms from Caution Wear are designed to fit snug due to their parallel shape and smaller width.

$8.99 for pack of 36 at Amazon.com

Condoms to Spice Things Up

Beyond Seven Studded

In addition to being one of the thinnest on the market, Beyond Seven studded condoms provide maximum sensation courtesy of three generous inches of raised studs which make for optimal textural stimulation. Most studded rubbers on the market come nowhere close to three inches, meaning with Beyond Sevens superior stud lengths, you can bet shell feel the difference.

$11.60 for pack of 50 at Amazon.com

Glyde Flavored Condoms

Most flavored condoms are more of a distraction than anything else, but here's an option that we've actually come to enjoy. Glyde condoms are ethically made, vegan, fair trade, and feature 100 percent organic fruit flavors. Essentially, its more organic than most fruit juices in supermarkets. Available flavors include blueberry, wildberry, vanilla, black licorice, and strawberry. If oral sex with condoms isnt quite your thing, Glyde also offers non-flavored condoms, including their ultra, maxi, and slim-fit sizes.

$10.99 for pack of 10 at Amazon.com

All-Natural Condoms

Trojan NaturaLamb

Never heard of natural skin condoms? Not surprising, although they're one of the oldest methods for pregnancy prevention. Traditionally made from a thin layer of sheep secum (part of the intestine), its thin, malleable and shares a great likeliness to going bareback. Its porous nature, however, means that it doesnt protect against STIs, so natural skin condoms are not recommended for non-couples. Here, the Trojan NaturaLamb is a latex-free, luxury condom thats one of the best on the market, which explains its slightly elevated cost. Some advice? Apply water-based lubricant for optimal comfort.

$27.59 for pack of 10 at Amazon.com

Condoms for Anal Sex

Trojan Supra

A friendly option for those with latex allergies, the Trojan Supra condom is Americas thinnest non-latex condom. Made from latex-free, ultra-thin polyurethane, Trojan Supra boasts the rare benefit of hand-in-hand compatibility with oil-based lubricants, which tend to be much longer lasting than water-based, and is actually the recommended lube for anal sex.

$6.99 for pack of 6 at Amazon.com

Caution Wear Classic Condoms

Just because you're going off roading, doesn't mean you need anything too extravagant. As a matter of fact, you might both appreciate a little less added sensation if you're new to anal sex. The Caution Wear Classics are parallel sided, transparent and lubricated with a smooth, silicon-based lube. A great starting point.

$5.87 for pack of 36 at Amazon.com

The Female Condom

FC2

Although equally effective, the female condom could take some getting used to. It's a different feel and applying it means a bit of a role reversal, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. A nice thing about the FC2 is that size is irrelevant and it's made from nitrile, which is three times stronger than latex. It can also be used with all lubes.

$49.99 for 12 at Amazon.com

The Key Factors To Consider When Choosing A Condom

Size: This is probably the most important element to consider when buying a condom. Shoot too big and it will be likely to slip off, yet too small and it will squeeze in an unpleasant way and could break. Thankfully, there are a lot of models made to suit a variety of sizes, from very small to very big. Snugger fit condoms are great for smaller members, while larger ones can find comfort in king size condoms. Note: If you dont know your size, pull out a ruler and check out our Giant Guide to Penis Size to see how you measure up.

Material: Most people are OK with the typical latex condom, but now theres a greater variety of options for those with latex allergies, or for those who simply prefer a different feel. Especially if you have a steady partner, discussing and finding the options that suit both of you is important, and a good act of respect and communication. Alternatives include polyurethane condoms, polyisoprene condoms, natural skin, and FC2 condoms.

Thickness & strength: Some condoms are made thinner to provide more sensitivity (i.e. more sensation), but these are also more fragile and more probable to snapping in action. On the other hand, thicker condoms ensure safer sex, even when it gets rough. In general, condom thickness varies between 0.044 and 0.114 mm, with the average being somewhere around 0.07 mm.

Texture: A lot of condoms out there come in a variety of textures, like studded or ribbed. Although these options could provide some added excitement to your sex life, dont assume your partner shares the same preference as you  especially since if youre the one wearing the condom, theyll be the ones feeling it most.

Flavor: Sometimes paired with a matching flavored lube, flavored condoms should also be treated with similar reservation as textured condoms. If it helps, compare flavored sex paraphernalia to a perfume or cologne  its an intimate addition to the senses that could be off putting for someone who prefers going au natural.

Climax control: These are condoms made with a tiny amount of benzocaine, a local anesthetic designed to delay orgasm by slightly numbing the nerve endings on the penis. Usually recommended for those with premature ejaculation anxieties, especially since its a discreet and easy-to-use solution that only affects the wearer.

The female condom (FC1 & FC2): Like it sounds, female condoms are like regular condoms, except theyre worn by women. They are just as effective in avoiding pregnancy and in protecting against STIs, fitting inside the vagina like a bag to trap sperm and keep it from entering the baby-making zone (mainly, the uterus). They can also be used for anal sex, and the second generation female condom is made of a latex alternative called nitrile  great for those with latex allergies.

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A judge from Louisiana has been slammed for sitting in the jury box with jurors and eating candy during a witness testimony.



Judge Timothy Ellender also wandered around the courtroom, sitting in different chairs and starred out the window during the testimony, behaviour labelled as bizarre and disturbing by his peers.



The judge also hugged the surgical partner of the defendants medical expert in front of the jury, Legal Cheek reported.



According to plaintiffs, Judge Ellender failed to preside over the trial from his position on the bench, but rather roamed around the entirety of the courtroom during much of the trial, the Supreme Court judgement read.



Judge Ellenders insidious actions of leaving the bench, wandering around the courtroom, looking out the windows, eating candy and otherwise failing to pay attention to the proceedings communicated to the jury in a non-verbal way his opinion that the trial was not serious and could be treated as a joke.



The Supreme Court of Louisiana ordered a new trial because of the judges behaviour, the majority saying the court was, Convinced that the trial judges actions resulted in a miscarriage of justice.



But this isnt the first time his behaviour has been called out in 23 years on the bench.



In 2004, Ellender attended a Halloween party in blackface, an afro wig, a prison jumpsuit and shackles. While the justices agreed the lawyer didnt mean to insult black people, he was ordered to take a sociology course to achieve a greater understanding of racial sensitivity. He was suspended for a year.



He was suspended again for 30 days and received a $185 fine in 2007 after he became impatient during a domestic violence case where a complainant sought a restraining order against her husband. The judge asked the parties why they didnt just file for a divorce instead of go[ing] through this crap.



I find Judge Ellenders actions are even more disturbing considering this court previously disciplined him twice for his conduct both on and off the bench, the most recent judgement said.


The appointment to the rank of Queens Counsel recognises individuals who have excelled at the highest level of law, Finlayson said.Of particular note is the appointment of Professor John Prebble who has been appointed under the Royal Prerogative in recognition of his extraordinary contribution to the law.is currently a professor of law at Victoria University in Wellington. He holds the highest international rank of professorship and is the third most published legal scholar. He continues to teach post-graduate courses internationally. After completing a law degree at the University of Auckland in 1967, he went on to complete a BCL at Oxford and a JSD at Cornell.In Auckland,has been appointed. Beginning his legal career at Sellar, Bone and Partners, Nolan did a 30-year stint Russell McVeagh before joining the independent bar in 2014. His expertise is in environmental and resource management.has also been appointed in Auckland. Perkins joined the independent bar back in 1982. He joined worked in the Auckland Crown Solicitors office, prosecuting a number of complex and high profile cases before returning to the independent bar in 2014.Manchester University graduatehas been appointed in Auckland. He was admitted in New Zealand back in 1988 and joined Meredith Connell before joining the independent bar in 2015. He specialises in criminal work and work for Crown and public agencies., who hails from MinterEllisonRuddWatts has been appointed. Bigio joined the independent bar in 2003, specialising in general civil and commercial litigation in the fields of real estate and property, building and construction, unit tiles, trusts and governance. He has been appointed in Auckland.Canterbury graduateholds a BCL with first class honours from Oxford University. She joined the independent bar in 1998. She has a broad practice with a focus on commercial litigation, particularly in trusts, intellectual property and company/securities law.has been appointed QC in Auckland. He graduated LLB (Hons) and Mjur (Distn) from the University of Auckland and LLM from Cambridge University. He joined Simpson Grierson in his early career and Russell McVeagh before a stint at Meredith Connell as a prosecutor. He returned to Russell McVeagh and commercial litigation in 2008. He joined the independent bar in 2010.has been appointed in Auckland, she was a founding partner of TGT Legal before joining the independent bar in 2014. After graduating from the University of Auckland (LLB and M.Com Law (First Class Honours)), Bruton worked for Hesketh Henry and then Brookfields. She works in trust, estate and relationship property disputes.In Christchurch,has been appointed QC. Raymond spent time in London after beginning his career in Wellington at Buddle Findlay. Returning to Christchurch, he joined Raymond Donnelly then Duncan Cotterill before joining the independent bar in 2011. He specialises in insurance based litigation and commercial and civil dispute resolution.holds a BA and LLB from Victoria University and a LLM from the London College of Law . He joined the independent bar in 1997, specialising in civil, commercial and employment litigation, estates and trusts, insurance, professional disciplinary and corporate governance matters. He has been appointed QC in Wellington.has also been appointed in Wellington. She worked a Bell Gully before joining Meredith Connell, and then joined the independent bar in 2003. She was appointed as a crown counsel at Crown Law in 2008. Casey returned to the independent bar in 2012, specialising public law, commercial and commercial-regulatory litigation.has been appointed QC in Wellington. Jagose graduated LLB from the University of Otago and LLM (First Class Honours) from Victoria University of Wellington. She joined the Ministry of Consumer Affairs before moving to the Ministry of Fisheries where she was appointed Chief Legal Advisor in 1999. She was appointed deputy solicitor-general in 2012 after joining Crown Law in 2002. In February this year, she was appointed solicitor-general.
A US district court judge could face disciplinary action for alleged misconduct after he filed a whopping US$54m lawsuit back in 2005, against a dry cleaner, over a missing pair of pants.



Roy L Pearson claimed the cleaners didnt honour the satisfaction guarantee sign that was displayed in the window. A Superior Court judge ruled against him and the case made national headlines.



According to a report by The Washington Post, a three-person committee for the DC Board on Professional Responsibility found Pearson committed two ethics violations earlier this week, of interfering with the administration of justice and presenting arguments not supported by facts or law.



The committee recommended that Pearson be placed on probation from practice for two years and that he is required to tell any new clients about the case. He would not be allowed to participate in any more frivolous litigation.



The recommended sanctions will be reviewed by the board and Court of Appeals, meaning the decision could take months.

Pearson denied violating attorney conduct and accused the counsel of a transparently frivolous effort to interfere with the administration of justice.



He alleged that the counsel sought to harass or maliciously injure him by submitting 144 paragraphs of inflammatory, prejudicial and legally unfounded alleged facts. He will have the opportunity to respond when the board makes its recommendation of the DC Court of Appeals.



The bars disciplinary counsel did say why it had taken so long to seek sanctions against Pearson but did say there was no excuse for the delay. The public, the courts and the Bar deserve better, he said.


Taken from the SBS website. Can't post the link as I haven't posted enough times in the forum...



The Immigration Minister has trouble explaining recent hikes in partnership visa fees - the price charged for Australians to bring their foreign partners home.



By Ben Winsor

Source: The Feed 10 JUN 2016 - 4:16 PM UPDATED 27 MINS AGO



Last week SBS reported on the record-high cost of partnership visas in Australia.



The non-refundable application fee in Australia is $6,865, more than double that of a similar visa in the UK and four times the price of a US partnership visa.



We asked the Immigration Minister for the reasons behind the price, and dramatic increases in recent years.



His office had an explanation - but his department had a different view.



A chart showing the steep rise in partnership visa fees in recent years

Figures sourced from the Department of Immigration and Border Protection.



Following our question to Peter Dutton's office, a government spokesperson pointed out that the visa fees had increased to $2680/$3975 under the previous Labor government - they then gave a justification for the coalition government's own hikes.



"Monies collected through visa application charges only partially offset the cost to the budget of the partner programme, noting that as permanent residents, partner visa recipients are entitled to a range of government services including Medicare and the Adult Migrant English Programme, and after a short qualifying period, other benefits such as employment assistance, welfare support, and access to the HELP/HECS scheme," they said.



It's true that applicants are eligible for Medicare as soon as they apply, and a range of other services after a few years. But - and this is critical - visa recipients can also work and pay taxes, contributing to government revenue.



We asked the Department of Immigration and Border Protection if there had ever been any studies done to confirm whether partnership visa recipients were actually a drag on the budget.



"Analysis conducted by Access Economics on behalf of the Department in 2008 showed that partner migrants had a positive impact on the Commonwealth budget," a spokesperson told The Feed.



From their very first year, partnership visa recipients give to the country more than they take, according to the department's report.



Peter Dutton scratches his face with his eyes closed.

Peter Dutton's Office directly contradicted information commissioned by his own department.



"The direct contribution to the Australian Government through the taxes they pay plus visa application charges exceeds the cost of Commonwealth services over the longer term, particularly as the labour force participation of this cohort grows," a departmental spokesperson told SBS.



The study is available on an obscure Amazon web server.



The report shows that the government was effectively making an profit from the partnership visa program, even when visa fees were a fraction of the current price.



In 2008 fees were just $1,390 for applications lodged overseas and $2,060 for applications lodged in Australia.



A chart showing the net operating surplus per 1,000 permanent migrants. Partner (family and other) starts at 2.1 million in the first year and reaches 6.9 million in the 20th year

A report commissioned by the Department of Immigration and Border Protection in 2008 shows partnership visa holder have a net positive impact on the budget.



The Minister's office initially indicated they didn't see a contradiction with the Department's position, because the net impact occurs over a longer period. But they are yet to respond to the chart above, which demonstrates a positive impact from the first year of residence.



Despite requests to clarify the contradictory information, the Minister's office has not provided any evidence that the high fees were justified by costs to the budget, or that the fees "only partially offset the cost to the budget of the partner programme."



The 2008 report notes that the "partners and others" category is typically a younger cohort. Their contribution to taxes and the budget bottom line "is also solid throughout," it says.



gay_couple_120926_b_getty_1518243377

Some Australians have said the cost of bringing their partner home has led to them deciding to stay overseas.



SBS asked both the Department and immigration lawyers whether the price hike could be explained by a change in the services doe which applicants are eligible. The department was unable to advise us on whether changes had been made as it was outside their portfolio, but immigration lawyers said they don't remember there being any significant changes to the benefits since 2008.



The most recent price increase was announced as a savings/revenue measure in December 2014 under the Abbott government when Scott Morrison was Immigration Minister. The revenue raised from the fees does not go to the Immigration Department but rather to general government revenue.



The human cost of the price hike

After our original story, people shared their experience and frustration with the high cost and the extensive visa process, which can take more than 12 months. The application fee is non-refundable in the event that an application fails, and many applicants have complained of not being kept updated of the process for many months.



For a family including two children, the cost of moving to Australia can exceed $25,000 once airfares, lawyer's fees and additional visa fees for children are taken into account.



In over 400 comments on our original article on Facebook, people shared their anger and frustration.



"My Canadian partner and I had begun this process, but decided it would be smarter to use our savings to build a better life elsewhere. We're unlikely to return to Australia to live now. For young people just getting started in their careers, it can be prohibitive," Carl Hamilton wrote.



"My partner and I are students," Liza Stringer wrote. "We just paid. It was our whole life savings. We paid them at the expense of being able to see his family in Canada. I could write so much on this topic but to be honest, we are just exhausted."



"It feels like we are just waiting to be allowed to begin our real lives and are being penalised for wanting to do so," she said.
When it was presented at the 2009 Shanghai Motor Show, the Panamera was a brand-new development. It was to be expected, though. After all, the model is the first-ever four-door grand tourer in the history of the German manufacturer. Even though it was facelifted in 2013, the first-gen Panamera never managed to shake off its ugliness controversial design.Happily, however, thats about to change with the advent of the second generation. From spy photographs to official sketches and teasers, the 2017 Porsche Panamera shapes up to be a more gracious car than the current generation. The silhouette and design language are more Porsche than ever, according to the German manufacturer, like a sprinter in the starting blocks, it is just waiting to show exactly what it is capable of. Whats it capable of, you're asking?You may remember that Panamera model line director Gernot Dollner mumbled something about the new model being  as fast as our previous super-sports car  on the Nurburgring. The Panamera in question is the Turbo. The super-sports car is the Carrera GT. And yes, the Turbo S could be a bit quicker than that.It goes without saying that the lighter platform and rear axle steering system make the 2017 Porsche Panamera a lighter and more agile beast than the first generation. Another performance-oriented element to look forward to is an all-new V8 engine. The 3,996 cc unit boasts two turbochargers, 542 horsepower (550 PS), and 568 lb-ft (770 Nm) of torque from 1,960 to 6,800 rpm. Not bad, not bad at all.At the present moment, it is not known if the shooting brake body style will be presented next to the sedan on June 28. Watch this space for more info on the 2017 Porsche Panamera as soon as we get it.
Mattiacci led the Ferrari North America and Ferrari Asia Pacific divisions between 2006 and 2014, and was also team principal for the Formula 1 team of the Maranello brand.Recently, Mr. Mattiacci came back to public attention after reports announced that he was hired by Faraday Future, a start-up brand that wants to build electric vehicles in the United States of America.Faraday Future has serious ambitions for its future, and hiring influential and experienced executives from the automotive world is one of the steps the corporation has to make to be closer to its objective.Whats interesting about this hire is that the company has yet to announce the new role of Marco Mattiacci, along with confirming the report from Business Insider The former executive from Ferrari is one of many notable hires of people that used to work for BMW , SpaceX, Ford , General Motors, and Tesla . We expect Mr. Mattiacci to get a leadership position in the Faraday Future organization, as his experience is too vast for a lower level of management.For the moment, the identity of the CEO of Faraday Future has not been disclosed. We do know that the company is funded by a Chinese billionaire that owns tech giant LeEco. If we look at the plan to launch a self-driving electric car announced by Faraday Future, built in factories that will be eco-friendly, we can be sure that the Chief Executive Officer of the brand will have a massive workload ahead of them.We are curious to find out how Marco Mattiacci feels about the new challenge that he signed up for, as he will have to sell cars from an all-new brand, instead of handling operations for Ferrari, the company that makes one of the most desirable automobiles in the world. This change is like Apples Tim Cook leaving his job as CEO and then joining a smartphone manufacturer that has yet to make a single handset.
While holding a Formula 1 race titled European Grand Prix in Azerbaijan , a country which was not in Europe when we last checked the map, is controversial, whats worse is that the hosting nation does not have a sound situation concerning human rights.According to representatives of Sport for Rights, the former Soviet state has several problems in the field of human rights, and they have met with FIA officials to discuss the matter. Motorsport Magazine reports that the talks were constructive, quoting people present at the discussions.FIA, the International Federation of the Automobile, is the governing body responsible for Formula 1 races, among many other branches of motorsport.The Grand Prix organized in Azerbaijan is not the first Formula 1 event to be criticized by human rights groups, as the Bahrain GP and the Chinese GP are also held in countries with dubious human rights laws.In the case of Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan and host of the 2016 European Grand Prix, human rights activists say the event is an affront to human rights.According to the activists, Azerbaijan has imprisoned journalists, and is also embarking on an unprecedented crackdown on political opposition. Reading this is no joy for anyone, especially if they are journalists, and the steps undertaken by the leaders in Baku are more fit for a totalitarian regime, rather than a democratic form of government.Since stopping the race is out of the question, activists have requested celebrity guests to cancel their appearances. Obviously, they would also love to see people boycott the race, but we are talking about the most expensive form of motorsport, and we do not expect anybody to abandon pricey tickets on this concern, unless he or she were in physical danger.Ever since the 2012 Bahrain GP, Bernie Ecclestone dismissed controversy, claiming the countrys human rights have nothing to do with Formula 1, and stated that they do not interfere with politics. However, since that event, the FIA introduced a human rights code of practice, a move which was welcomed by human rights campaigners.
Mitsubishis technology division has three high-profile cheating scandals behind it, according to a report based on two people familiar with the company.The Japanese automaker is now looking for a third-party auditor to oversee the processes of the division and the entire company, as well as to monitor its decision-making.Mitsubishis latest reported plan seeks to make the company competitive again, while also attempting to restore customer faith.As Automotive News reports, company insiders have admitted that Mitsubishi needs a system to prevent any future cheating or irregularities, along with a modernization of its technology unit.One of the insiders quoted for the report published by Reuters claimed that the separate division of Mitsubishi that focuses on technology and R&D operates with little contact with the outside world, and complained of secrecy, and arrogance from the engineers in some of the departments that compose the division.Mitsubishi is not the only automaker in trouble because of cheating in fuel economy testing, as fellow carmaker Suzuki admitted to similar practices for some of its models. Just like Mitsubishi, Suzuki admitted to manipulating fuel economy testing procedures for cars sold on the Japanese market.While the three-diamond brand will find salvation in the arms of Nissan Motor Company , which has decided to become the largest shareholder of the company, Suzukis fate is still in the air.According to the report, Mitsubishi has already requested its partners at Nissan for help in reforming its technology division, and Nissan has reportedly selected a new leader for the three-diamond brand. Mitsubishi's former CEO has resigned after this scandal. In the case of Suzuki, the CEO has also decided to step down because of the cheating scandal, so this company might need assistance in the future.
The Zuffenhausen specials mentioned above are exactly what you'll find in the image gallery at the bottom of the page, but, we have to admit we were a bit disappointed when we checked out the number plate of the 911 R.Wearing the "LB A 4025" (yes, the 911 R can spark this kind of obsession in a human) plate, this is a Porsche car. In fact, those of you following our 911 R stories have also seen this example of the manual-gifted Neunelfer in the article on the 911 R four-car Monaco parade So this isn't the first spotting of a 911 R that's being manhandled by its owner out in the wild. Guess we still have some waiting to do until one of the 991 units of the driver-savvy 911 reaches that point.Instead, according to the GT Scotland Facebook page, whom we have to thank for these pics, Top Gear Magazine recently enjoyed a Porsche stint on Scotland's Knockhill Racing Circuit.Returning to the R derivative of the 911, if you had the financial possibilities to acquire one, but didn't end up among the chosen ones, you shouldn't expect anything positive from the speculation market.To be more precise, a 911 R ended up on eBay back in April, being offered for a 918 Spyder-rivaling $1,25 million.Fortunately, though, Porsche has learned its stick shift lesson. So the German automaker will gift the upcoming 991.2 incarnation of the 911 GT3, a car you'll actually be able to buy, with a clutch pedal. Given the details we've seen in the latest 2017 GT3 spyshots , you'd better consolidate the relationship to your financial adviser soon.
The UK-based Vehicle Certification Agency granted EU-type approval of proposed technical fixes for vehicles that had diesel engines fitted with the famed defeat device developed by the Volkswagen Group.As Autocar reports, the successful prosecution of Skoda could only be performed if the DfTs lawyers can prove that officials of the Skoda brand knowingly made false statements about their products when they submitted them for European-type approval.For the moment, it is unclear why the DfT wants to target Skoda in particular on this matter, and not Volkswagen or another brand of the German corporation.Like in many parts of the Dieselgate -related investigation, the potential lawsuit was revealed by a person close to the matter. In this case, we are writing regarding a letter to the House of Commons Transport Committee, sent from the UKs transport minister, Robert Goodwill. The letter was published on 6 June, 2016, and contains the information disclosed by Autocar Mr. Goodwill wrote that they notified the criminal counsel earlier this year, but fears that it would be untimely, and potentially damaging to any considered undertaking to discuss the matter further at this moment.According to previous information, the Volkswagen Group sold approximately 1.2 million vehicles in the United Kingdom with various defeat devices. Volkswagen has already submitted fix proposals to the German authorities. Meanwhile, the Vehicle Certification Agency is discussing the submission for the technical solution proposed for Skoda cars.We must note that the platform and engine sharing strategy of the German corporation should ensure that all the affected engines could be brought to standard using the same methods. We believe the current situation appeared because of EU-type regulations which demand special homologation for each proposed fix, and not because a specific issue with a particular brand.
As most of you know, Ubers service lets vetted drivers transport passengers without having a cab license. French law forbids this, as do some legislations in Europe.Initially, Uber fought the situation by paying the penalty every time an UberPOP driver received a sanction for this in France, but the UberPOP service was eventually shut down in the Hexagon.France is not the only country to ban Uber, as the service is forbidden in Belgium 's Capital, Brussels, and in the Netherlands . Taxi drivers in many European countries have protested against Uber for several times, but not all governments took action against the American company.However, Ubers policy is getting considerable negative attention from several groups, as its drivers are considered independent contractors and are targeted both by tax agencies in some markets, and other bodies related to norms and regulations for workers. In France, Uber is still operational, but it only employs professional black cab drivers, thus eliminating unfair competition with traditional taxi services.The two Uber executives from France are being charged with two allegations, Tech Crunch notes. As mentioned above, the first complaint is running an illegal taxi company, while the second is concealing digital documents. The latter came because Ubers French headquarters in Paris were raided in March 2015, but investigators discovered that some documents were missing.The two executives are considered personally responsible for the actions of UberPOP, and have to pay fines of 30,000 (approximately $34,000) and 20,000 euros (roughly $23,000), respectively. As in the case of the 800,000 euro fine for the company, half of the sanctions mentioned above are suspended sentences.
It's not by far the hardest job in the world. The sheep like to be guided, it's what they do best besides grazing pastures, so it doesn't take exceptionally high levels of leadership to stand in front of a sheep heard and get them to follow you. There's no Braveheart speech required, maybe just a whistle or two.Plus, there are your sidekicks: the dogs. Get yourself three Border Collies and you've just cut your volume of work by nearly 100 percent. Be careful, though, that they don't get too cocky and go after your position. I mean, we all know they'd make a much better shepherd than you, but they don't, so let's keep it that way.Well, as simple as I'm making the task of guiding sheep sound, it would appear it proved too much for a certain shepherd in the north-eastern Spanish town of Huesca. As he was taking his flock to the Pyrenees Mountains where they would spend the summer, he fell asleep. Without a leader, anarchy soon took over the sheep herd, and they started roaming the streets of the small, picturesque town.Luckily, the shepherd was smart enough to sleep at night, so the traffic wasn't at its highest at 4 a.m. A police Renault Scenic was sent to assist with the dispersion of the 1,300-strong herd, and as yet another proof that just about anybody can do this job, it was successful.In the end, nobody was hurt, and the sheep got to spend a night out in the city without anybody to chaperone them. I'm sure the sheep had the time of their lives - who knows, maybe it was even them who slipped something in the shepherd's drink. All in all, I wouldn't be surprised to see a lot of baby lambs getting born in the following months..
A Cirrus SR20 crashed Thursday near Hobby Airport in Texas, killing all three on board. The aircraft was on a third attempt to land at Hobby when it crashed into a car in the parking lot of a hardware store about 1:12 p.m., according to ABC13 in Houston. The Cirrus was high on its first approach, and went around while communicating with the tower. The second approach also was too high. During the third landing attempt, the aircraft hit the ground nose-down as the tower controller repeated an urgent warning to straighten up, according to the station.

No one was in the vehicle when the airplane struck it and no other injuries were reported. A Houston Chronicle report quoted an NTSB investigator saying that after exiting the go-around maneuver, the aircraft was seen to descend suddenly, nose first into the parking lot of the Ace Hardware. The three on board were from Oklahoma and included the pilot, her husband and brother-in-law, according to ABC13.
A Russian-made airliner designed to compete with the top makers of mid-range passenger jets rolled out this week in Irkutsk. The MC-21 will make a first flight in 2017 and start service the following year with Russias largest airline, Aeroflot, according to a Seattle Times report. The manufacturer is Irkut, part of a state-supported conglomerate of aerospace firms called United Aircraft Corporation and the builder of Sukhoi Su-30 fighters.

The twin-engine MC-21 can carry up to 211 passengers and will also fly as a smaller, shorter-range version. It is composite-built and more fuel-efficient than older designs, potentially putting it in the ranks of the Boeing B737 and Airbus A320 airliners. Irkut executive Oleg Demchenko said a global market share of 5 to 10 percent by 2035 is the goal, according to the Times.Irkut is constantly promoting the $90 million jet to potential buyers. Im sure it will be in demand on the global market, he said. So far, the company has 175 orders, according to the Times report.
A U.S.-Armenian joint venture has begun long-awaited sales of first-ever smartphones designed and assembled in Armenia.

The five different versions of the mobile phone called Armphone appeared on sale at electronics shops in Yerevan on Tuesday, costing between 51,000 and 151,000 drams ($106-$315) apiece.

The Yerevan-based company, Technology and Science Dynamics (TSD), is also planning to sell tablet computers also designed by Armenian engineers. It already supplied about 700 of them to schools across the country last year.

TSD unveiled the two devices using the Android operating system in late 2013. Then Prime Minister Tigran Sarkisian demonstrated them at a cabinet meeting.

We have already received a lot of feedback from buyers saying that our phones are as good as their Samsung or iPhones phones, Arpine Amirian, a TSD representative, told RFE/RLs Armenian service (Azatutyun.am) on Thursday. Thats a very high mark for us.

We do the design work in Armenia to see, for example, what kind of cameras are convenient for a particular Android system or processor, explained Amirian. We then order production of such separate parts in various places: mainly Hong Kong, Shenzhen and Taiwan.

All major mobile phone brands use production facilities in Shenzhen, she said.

Anecdotal evidence suggested that the new smartphones did attract a strong interest from Armenians curious to get their hands on a first-ever cellphone manufactured in their country.

If it really has the parameters of iPhone or Samsung Android phones, Ill definitely buy the Armenian phone, said a young man visiting an electronics store at a Yerevan shopping mall.

Im buying an Armphone with my first-ever pension, said another shopper, a middle-aged woman. I just want to support our manufacturer.

While national pride and patriotism might be enough to earn Armphone a major share in the local smartphone market, it remains to be seen whether its manufacturer currently employing about 120 people can attract many buyers abroad. Mesrop Arakelian, an Armenian economist, predicted that TSD will have a hard time competing with much bigger and more renowned foreign competitors.

Chinese companies, for example, can produce several million phones a day and set much lower prices of their products even in Armenia, argued Arakelian.

For now, at least, TSDs emergence represents a boost to Armenias burgeoning information technology (IT) sector dominated by Armenian subsidiaries of U.S. software giants. The IT sector employing around 15,000 people expanded by about 20 percent last year. Its combined output, estimated at $550 million, was equivalent to roughly 5 percent of Gross Domestic Product.
Russia criticized Armenia on Friday for erecting a statue in Yerevan of an Armenian nationalist statesman who fought against the Bolsheviks and later collaborated with Nazi Germany.

A Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson said Garegin Nzhdehs statue is not compatible with the memory of heroes of World War II, among them many Armenians. The ruling Republican Party of Armenia dismissed the criticism.

Born in the Russian Empire in 1886, Nzhdeh became an Armenian nationalist militant at a young age and spent several years in Russian prisons as a result. He was pardoned by the Russian authorities before commanding one of the Armenian volunteer units that fought the Ottoman Turkish army alongside Russian troops during World War War I.

Nzhdeh went on to become one of the prominent military leaders of an independent Armenian republic formed in 1918 following the Bolshevik revolution. In late 1920, he mounted armed resistance against the republics takeover by Bolshevik Russia in Zangezur, a mountainous region in what is now southeastern Armenia. Nzhdeh and his supporters ended the resistance and fled to neighboring Persia in July 1921 after receiving assurances that the region will not be incorporated into Soviet Azerbaijan.

Nzhdeh was one of several exiled Armenian leaders who pledged allegiance to Nazi Germany in 1942 with the stated aim of saving Soviet Armenia from a possible Turkish invasion after what they expected to be a Soviet defeat by the Third Reich. Their Armenian national council cobbled together several battalions mainly comprising Armenian prisoners of war from the Red Army. The so-called Armenian Legion never played a major role in the Wehrmachts military operations, however.

Nzhdeh surrendered to advancing Red Army divisions in Bulgaria in 1944 after reportedly offering Josef Stalin to mobilize Armenians for a Soviet assault on Turkey. In 1948, a Soviet court sentenced him to 25 years in prison on charges that mainly stemmed from his counterrevolutionary activities in 1920-1921, rather than collaboration with Nazi Germany. He died in a Soviet prison in 1955.

Nzhdeh was rehabilitated in Armenia after the republics last Communist government was removed from power in 1990. The first post-Communist Armenian government named a square and metro station in Yerevan after him in the following years.

Nzhdeh is widely credited with preserving Armenian control over Zangezur, a strategic region bordering Iran. He is also revered by many in the country as the founder of a new brand of Armenian nationalism that emerged in the 1930s.

His Tseghakron ideology put the emphasis on armed self-defense, military organization and self-reliance. The ruling Republican Party of Armenia (HHK) has espoused it throughout its existence.

The HHK, which is headed by President Serzh Sarkisian, was instrumental in the Yerevan municipalitys decision to place Nzhdehs statue in the city center. The statue was unveiled on May 28 in the presence of Sarkisian and other senior officials.

We cannot understand why that statue was placed, Maria Zakharova, the Russian Foreign Minstry spokeswoman, told a news briefing in Moscow.

Zakharova said that the Russian government is strongly opposed to any revival, glorification or other manifestations of Nazism, neo-Nazism and extremism. She also pointed to the immortal feat of the Armenian people during World War II.

Hundreds of thousands of Armenians were drafted to the Red Army and nearly half of them died during the war. The most famous of them, notably Marshal Ivan Bagramian and Admiral Ivan Isakov, still have streets in Armenia bearing their names and are regularly honored by the Armenian authorities.

Just five days before the erection of Nzdehs statue, the authorities unveiled a statue of another Soviet Armenian marshal, Hamazasp Babajanian, in the Armenian the capital. Sarkisian attended that ceremony as well.

While criticizing Nzhdehs statue, Zakharova stressed that May 9, which marks the anniversary of the Soviet defeat of Nazi Germany, remains a public holiday in Armenia. This is the main indicator of official Yerevans position on preserving the historical truth about the Great Patriotic War, she said.

The Armenian ruling party was quick to reject the Russian criticism. Garegin Nzhdeh is one of the greatest heroes of the Armenian nation, HHK spokesman Eduard Sharmazanov told 168.am. He said Nzhdehs activities were always aimed at the liberation, salvation and independence of the Armenian people.

Sharmazanov also downplayed the nationalist leaders links with the Wehrmacht. He said the Soviet Union itself signed a nonaggression pact with Nazi Germany in 1939.
10 June 2016 11:00 (UTC+04:00)

By Rashid Shirinov

Recently, another dreadful problem shook Armenia up  the country keeps losing volumes of foreign business investment. This aspect is very important in the prosperity of economy of any country, whilst the state of Armenian economy frightens foreign business people.

The reason of such behavior of entrepreneurs is fairly clear  Armenia is the most monopolized country among the CIS and Eastern Europe countries. This conclusion was drawn by a number of international statistics institutions. The Armenian economy does not seem to have any positive prospects in the near future, so foreign investors do not want to take the risk.

Most of Armenian entrepreneurs themselves do not venture to open a business in the country and prefer foreign countries to do it for them. A lot of Armenian businesses withdraw their capital out of local banks, well showing that even the Armenian business feels bad in the country. Thus, the Armenian industry almost does not develop, and foreign investors just do not want to invest in a pre-failed project.

It is curious that McDonalds, the world's largest fast food chain, abandoned the idea of opening their first restaurant in Armenia. The reason of such decision are worthless business factors of this country, the representative of McDonalds noted. If a foreign company decides that even selling of hamburgers in Armenia is unprofitable, other major production companies have nothing to do there for sure.

Recently, the Armenian National Statistical Service announced that, in 2016, investments by 1.7 billion drams ($3.5 million) instead of 60.1 billion ($126 million) of last year, were detected. That is, most likely, the greatest decline of foreign investments to the country in the history of Armenian government.

In spite of the obvious evidence of Armenian economic problems, the countrys Central Banks Chairman, Artur Javadyan, behaves as the most innocent in this situation. He said that he does not know why the foreign investments in Armenia have decreased, and that he doubts the accuracy of statistics published in this regard, despite it is official: I am not prepared to answer that. I am not sure if they dropped 35 times.

He also denied the reliable data about $1.8 billion of illegal exports from Armenia.

To cut a long story short, in spite of huge problems in the country, Armenian officials try to prevent panic among the population for as long as possible, but that will not last much. Hence, observing this situation foreign investors does not seem to enter the country in the near future.

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Rashid Shirinov is AzerNews staff journalist, follow him on Twitter: @RashidShirinov

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10 June 2016 12:32 (UTC+04:00)

Armenian armed forces have 30 times violated the ceasefire with Azerbaijan on the line of contact over the past 24 hours, Azerbaijan's Defense Ministry reported on June 10.

Armenian armed forces were using heavy machine guns.

Armenian armed forces, stationed in Mosesgeh village of Armenia's Berd district, opened fire at Azerbaijani positions located in the village of Alibeyli of Tovuz district.

Moreover, Azerbaijani positions were shelled from the positions located near the village of Goyarkh of Terter district, Yusifjanli of Aghdam, Kuropatkino of Khojavend, Horadiz and Ashagi Seyidahmadli of Fizuli district.

Further on, Azerbaijani positions took fire from the positions located on the nameless heights of Goranboy, Khojavend and Fizuli 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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10 June 2016 14:51 (UTC+04:00)

Kremlin doesn't rule out the possibility of holding a trilateral meeting of Azerbaijani, Armenian and Russian presidents in St. Petersburg, Russian president's spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told reporters on June 10, RIA Novosti reported.

"The work on this issue is underway. We don't rule out that such meetings will be held," said Peskov. "If it is confirmed finally, we will give information."

The May 16 meeting between Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan become the first talk since a surge in fighting in early April that killed Azerbaijani civilians and sparked fears of a return to full-scale war.

Top diplomats from the United States, Russia and France, who are spearheading efforts to end the decades-long conflict, participated in the talks aimed at strengthening a precious ceasefire brokered by Moscow.

Azerbaijan and Armenia called a truce 22 years ago, on May 12 1994, to end the devastating war, but violence has flared up from time to time, most recently along the frontline of the troops. The Armenian troops most recently resorted to the aggression and provoked a deadly exchange of artillery fire in early April.

Experts and politicians agree that keeping the status quo raises fears for anew of all-out war, which can spread to larger area than its region.

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10 June 2016 10:00 (UTC+04:00)

By Frances Stewart

There is no denying that conflict has far-reaching negative effects, including on employment. But the prevailing understanding of the relationship between conflict and employment does not fully recognize the complexity of this relationship  a shortcoming that undermines effective employment policies in fragile states.

The conventional wisdom is that conflict destroys jobs. Moreover, because unemployment can spur more conflict, as unemployed young people find validation and economic rewards in violent movements, job creation should be a central part of post-conflict policy. But, while this certainly sounds logical, these assumptions, as I detailed in a 2015 paper, are not necessarily entirely accurate.

The first assumption  that violent conflicts destroy jobs  ignores the fact that every conflict is unique. Some, like the 2008-2009 Sri Lankan civil war, are concentrated in a relatively small area, leaving much of the country  and thus the economy  unaffected.

Even endemic conflicts, like the recurrent conflicts in the Congo, might not have a major impact on net employment. After all, the jobs that are lost in, say, the public sector or among commodity exporters may be largely offset by new jobs in government and rebel armed forces, informal production substituting for imports, and illegal activities like drug production and smuggling.

Likewise, the second assumption  that unemployment is a major cause of violent conflict  misses crucial nuances. For starters, the formal sector accounts for just a fraction of total employment in most conflict-affected countries. The majority of working people are in the informal sector, often engaged in low-status, low-productivity, and low-incomes activities that can, just like unemployment, generate dissatisfaction and potentially motivate young people to join violent movements.

Given this, simply expanding formal-sector employment is not enough, unless it also improves the situation of young people in low-income informal-sector jobs. Yet post-conflict employment policies almost invariably neglect the informal sector. Worse, new regulations  such as the ban on commercial biking in Freetown, Sierra Leone  sometimes block productive informal activities undertaken by youth.

But even a focus on the informal sector is insufficient, as research has shown that poverty and marginalization are not, on their own, enough to cause conflict. If they were, most poor countries would be in conflict most of the time. And that is not even remotely the case.

Violent conflict occurs when leaders are motivated to mobilize their followers for it. That motivation can stem from a variety of sources, among the most common being exclusion from power. In that case, leaders will appeal to a common identity  for example, religion in the case of contemporary conflicts in the Middle East, or ethnicity in many African conflicts  to mobilize followers.

Of course, more than a shared identity alone is needed for mobilization to occur. People will generally respond only if they already have grievances  in particular, if they feel that their group faces discrimination in access to resources and jobs. In this sense, employment is relevant, but what matters is not the absolute level of employment so much as the distribution of good jobs among religious or ethnic groups.

In other words, simply creating more jobs, without regard to their allocation, may not ease tensions; if imbalances persist, job creation may even make things worse. Yet post-conflict employment policies almost always neglect so-called horizontal inequalities. For example, employment policies did little to reduce the strong regional imbalances and discrimination within regions that persisted in Bosnia and Herzegovina after the war there in the 1990s.

Given these failings, it is not surprising that employment policies net effects are often very small relative to the size of the problem. In both Kosovo and Bosnia and Herzegovina, job creation was thought to be central to post-conflict peacekeeping efforts. Yet, in Kosovo, unemployment stood at 45% six years after its war ended. In Bosnia, new programs generated just 8,300 jobs, while 450,000 people were demobilized; 20 years after the end of the conflict, the unemployment rate stood at 44%.

There is one example of a successful post-crisis employment policy. Nepals government sought to expand opportunities in the informal sector after the countrys civil war, implementing programs focused on building infrastructure, issuing micro-credit, and providing technology assistance, targeting the most deprived regions and castes.

Recognizing the role that caste and ethnic tensions and discrimination played in fueling the conflict, the government designed employment schemes specifically for rural areas, along the same lines as Indias employment scheme, with 100 days of work per household guaranteed. The programs were supported by the Nepalese government and external donors, and focused on poorer regions and villages (and, within them, on the poorest castes).

The period immediately following a conflict is a delicate one. Leaders must make the most of that time, ensuring that every policy they pursue is as effective as possible. When it comes to employment, that means designing programs that reflect how people actually spend their working lives, as well as addressing the real grievances generating tensions. Otherwise, they risk allowing, if not encouraging, a relapse into organized violence.

Copyright: Project Syndicate: From War to Work

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10 June 2016 10:39 (UTC+04:00)

By Laman Ismayilova

ASAN Visa system, created in Azerbaijan in June and designed to simplify and speed up the issuance of visas, is very effective, believes Latvia's Ambassador to Azerbaijan Juris Maklakovs.

Maklakovs, talking to Trend on June 9, said ASAN Visa will allow tourists from Latvia and other countries to visit Azerbaijan more often, noting that tourist flow will increase between Latvia and Azerbaijan.

The presidential order signed on June 1 and entered into force on June 6, aimed at simplification of e-visas issuance procedure for foreigners and stateless persons arriving in Azerbaijan. Foreigners, who are willing to visit Azerbaijan, will be able to get visas online, after Azerbaijan launches its "ASAN Visa" system.



Visas will be issued through a single online portal within three days without applying to state organizations. Foreign citizens, tourists can use the services of the ASAN Viza portal to arrive in Azerbaijan.

Maklakovs also voiced hope that a lot of fans from his country will attend the Formula 1 Grand Prix of Europe scheduled for 17-19 in Azerbaijan's capital Baku.

Azerbaijan's popularity on international arena will increase with holding of the 2016 Formula 1 Grand Prix of Europe, Maklakovs assured.

Baku has become a successful organizer of international events, which improve the capital's infrastructure and the quality of services, said the ambassador.

Eleven teams will take part in the racing: Mercedes AMG Petronas, Scuderia Ferrari, Williams Martini Racing, Red Bull Racing, Sahara Force India, Haas F1 Team, McLaren Honda, Toro Rosso, Sauber F1 Team, Renault Sport F1, and Manor Racing.

With a length measuring at slightly over six kilometers, the 20-corner track will be lapped 51 times, with cars reaching potential speeds of up to 340km per hour, marking the circuit out as the fastest street circuit on the existing F1 calendar.

The circuit offers a number of challenges for drivers, including an extremely narrow uphill section along the old town walls that will require pinpoint accuracy, and it has an acceleration section of almost 2.2 kilometres along the seaside promenade, which will see the cars running flat out at very high speed - something that will create an incredible show for race fans.

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10 June 2016 10:30 (UTC+04:00)

Azerbaijans State Adviser on Multinational, Multicultural and Religious Affairs, Academician Kamal Abdulla has said Azerbaijan and Indonesia shared same values of ethnicity and religious diversity as he met Ambassador Husnan bey Fananie, Azertac reported.

The state Advisor highlighted multicultural and tolerance environment in Azerbaijan, as well as President Ilham Aliyev`s care to the relevant field.

Abdulla spoke about the activity of the Baku International Multiculturalism Centre.

The ambassador, in turn, spoke about the multicultural environment of Indonesia, and touched upon the similarities between the two countries. The diplomat also praised cultural and economic relations between the two countries.

The parties exchanged views on arranging the reciprocal visits of scientists, who explore researches in the field of multiculturalism, as well as heads of various religious confessions

The International Centre for Multiculturalism was established in Baku in 2014, as a concrete effort to promote the values of multiculturalism. Moreover, earlier in 2008, Azerbaijan launched the so-called Baku process, a dialogue between culture ministers, individuals and groups with different cultural and religious backgrounds, promoted as an antidote to violence.

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10 June 2016 15:20 (UTC+04:00)

By Rashid Shirinov

Baku Mayor Hajibala Abutalibov has signed an order on organization of summer holiday of Bakus residents. Under the order, no entry fee will be charged for visiting coastal beaches of the capital city.

Abutalibov has tasked the heads of Executive Powers of Binagadi, Sabail, Khazar, Sabunchu, Surakhani and Garadagh districts of the capital to fulfill the order and create all necessary conditions for efficient relaxation of the population.

The Executive Powers have been instructed to make sure that the beach areas and coastal zones are in appropriate condition, and further keep the territories clean.

The entrance to the beaches and coastal area is free, and the Executive authorities of the capitals districts have been entrusted to monitor compliance with this requirement.

Recently, the Ecology and Natural Resources Ministry examined the Azerbaijani sector of the Caspian Sea by setting 17 water-cleaning installations in the waters of Absheron peninsula. Almost all the Azerbaijani beaches were declared suitable for swimming. The Ministry assured that monitoring will be held systematically throughout the whole vacation season to ensure the safety and healthcare of visitors.

The most popular beaches of Azerbaijan are located in Mardakan, Shuvalan, Novkhani, Buzovna, Zagulba, Pirshagi, Nardaran, Turkan and Hovsan villages of the Absheron peninsula. All beaches are equipped with changing rooms, loungers, awnings, umbrellas to protect from the sun, warm-water showers, toilets, and drinking water supplies.

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Rashid Shirinov is AzerNews staff journalist, follow him on Twitter: @RashidShirinov

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9 June 2016 11:26 (UTC+04:00)

By Amina Nazarli

The government of Azerbaijan continues to toughen its legislation over the use of genetically modified products.

The country will prohibit grain products and other plants that contain genetically modified organism. The issue will be considered by the Azerbaijani Parliament, which proposes to make amendments to the law On grain.

Under the new amendments, import of GMO and biotech crops will not be allowed in the country.



The amendments to the law On seed farming stipulate ban on the use of GMO crops or agricultural products obtained by means of modern biotech and genetic engineering techniques.

Related amendments may also be made to the law On the protection and rational use of genetic stock of cultivated plants. The current law prohibits import, regionalization and inclusion of GMO crops to the state register.

The amendments prohibit production, regionalization and inclusion to the state register of GMO crops or agricultural products obtained by means of modern biotech and genetic engineering techniques.



The draft law will be discussed at the Parliamentary meeting scheduled for June 14.

The country enjoys nine of 11 climatic zones, which gives it the opportunity to produce a diverse array of fruits and vegetables around the year. Azerbaijan mostly imports exotic fruits.

Some 98 percent of soy, 50 percent of tomatoes, cucumbers, potatoes, watermelons and beets in Azerbaijani market are genetically modified products, according to local experts.

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Amina Nazarli is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @amina_nazarli



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10 June 2016 11:42 (UTC+04:00)

By Amina Nazarli

Azerbaijan and Russia have agreed to eliminate all problems arising during export of Azerbaijani agricultural products to Russia.

The agreement was achieved during the talks between Chairman of the Azerbaijani State Customs Committee Aydin Aliyev and leadership of the Russian Federal Customs Service.

Recently, bulk of the agricultural products of Azerbaijani farmers and entrepreneurs being supplied to Russia was returned or delayed at the border, according to the State Customs Committee.

The Russian side stated that Azerbaijani farmers incorrectly indicate in documents the country of origin. As a result agricultural products, delivered to the neighboring country, returned or spoiled because of too long delays at the border.

The Azerbaijani State Customs Committee, in turn, claimed that all products exported from Azerbaijan to Russia, are provided with the necessary documentation, and only then export is allowed. Therefore, the statement that these products are allegedly not produced in Azerbaijan does not correspond to the truth.

As the examination of goods in Dagestan is not possible due to lack of necessary equipment, products are sent for examination to Moscow, which sometimes takes more than 10 days. And this, in turn, leads to the fact that products are spoiled lying too long on the border, the committee reported.

Earlier in April Azerbaijan entered the top 3 suppliers of agricultural products to Russia among the CIS countries. The country increased the supply of agrarian goods to Russia by four times after Moscow imposed anti-Turkish sanctions.

The trade turnover with Russia amounted to $465.87 million in January-April 2016, some $78.5 million of which fall to export to this country, according to the Azerbaijani State Customs Committee.

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Amina Nazarli is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @amina_nazarli



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10 June 2016 10:57 (UTC+04:00)

By Nigar Abbasova

The Azerbaijani Taxes Ministry over fulfilled the forecast on transfers to the state budget by 3.2 percent from January to May 2016.

The revenues provided by the ministry amounted to 2.683 billion manats ($ 1.778 billion). As much as 44,961 taxpayers have been registered in the country in the first half of 2016.

The amount of revenues to the state budget which will be provided by the Tax Ministry in 2016 is expected to reach the level of 7.01 billion manats ($ 4.64 billion) which makes 41.7 percent of the total revenues to the state budget.

Azerbaijan's state budget revenues amounted to 17,498 billion manats ($11.652) in 2015, 41.6 percent of the budget revenues accounted for the non-oil sector.

Previously Economy Minister Shahin Mustafayev mentioned that the country is able to neutralize negative effects of the external factors on its economy therefore it is not going to reconsider the state budget forecasts for 2016.

Public budget revenues in 2016 are expected to reach 16,822 billion manats ($11, 202 billion), while the rate of expenditures will amount to 18.495 billion manats ($12,316 billion).

The budget deficit is expected to be at the level of 1.673 million manats ($ 1.109 million) which stands for 2.9 percent of the GDP. The forecast is based on an average oil price which amounts to 25 USD a barrel.

The official exchange rate of the Azerbaijani manat against the US dollar was set at 1.5114 manats for June 10.

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Nigar Abbasova is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @nigyar_abbasova

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10 June 2016 12:54 (UTC+04:00)

By Nigar Abbasova

Russian UTair airline has launched new non-stop regular flights en route Lankaran  St. Pertersburg and Lankaran  Surgut on June 7. The flights are performed once a week on Tuesdays.

Departure of the flight en route Lankaran  St. Pertersburg which is performed by Boeing 737-500 aircraft from Lankaran is at 14:40 local time while departure time from St. Pertersburg is at 19:10 local time. Estimated arrival time to St. Petersburg is 17:50 local time.

Lankaran  Surgut flight which is also performed by Boeing 737-500 departs at 01:10 local time while return flight departure time is 10:00 local time.

The airline resumed its flights en route Moscow-Baku on June 8. The flights on this route were performed by UTair airline since 2008.The flights are currently operated on a daily basis and also carried by Boeing 737-500.

With its headquarters in Surgut UTair airline operates flights to more than 150 directions including 70 unique destinations.

The fleet size of the airline is currently amounts to more than 60 modern aircrafts. UTair Aviation fleet transported 5,530,348 passengers in 2015. The company maintains its hub at Vnukovo International Airport in Moscow.

--

Nigar Abbasova is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @nigyar_abbasova

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
10 June 2016 13:11 (UTC+04:00)

By Laman Ismayilova

China Southern Airlines Company will start to carry out flights en route Baku-Urumqi-Guangzhou from July 3, 2016, the company's representative in Baku told Trend.

The representative said China Southern operates on the Azerbaijani market for 10 years and have decided to connect Baku with a large number of cities in China and Southeast Asia.

"The company carried out the first flight from Baku to Urumqi in March 2006," the source said. "Last year, due to the devaluation of the Azerbaijani manat the company suspended flights, but now we have decided not only to restore its flights, but also offer more destinations."

The representative added that it will be possible to visit such cities as Shenzhen, Shanghai, Hangzhou, Yiwu, Beijing, Singapore, Manila and Bangkok through Urumqi and Guangzhou.

The flight will be carried out twice a week - on Wednesday and Sunday.

The opening of the flights is expected to contribute to the expansion of commercial and economic ties between Azerbaijan and China.

The two countries recently voiced intention to protect mutual interests and deepen fruitful cooperation, providing stable and safe conditions for the successful and sustainable development.

China entered the list of the top ten trade partners of Azerbaijan. The countrys investment in the economy of Azerbaijan has reached $300 million since 2002.

The Azerbaijani State Customs Committee reports that the trade turnover with China reached $565.1 million last year, while its unit weight in the total trade turnover of Azerbaijan amounted to 2.74 percent.

---

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
10 June 2016 14:17 (UTC+04:00)

The first meeting of the Joint Commission on Economic Cooperation between the Government of the Republic of Azerbaijan and the Government of the Republic of Korea will be held in Seoul on June 14, Azertac reported.

The Joint Commission on Economic Cooperation was established in 2015 in accordance with the agreement on economic cooperation between Azerbaijan and Korea.

Co-chaimen of the Commission are Iltimas Mammadov, First Deputy Minister of Communications and High Technologies of the Republic of Azerbaijan on behalf of Azerbaijan and Korean Vice Minister of Trade, Industry and Energy Woo Taehee on behalf of Korea.

About twenty Korean companies are doing their business in Azerbaijan. About four thousand people from Azerbaijan and Korea on average exchange their business on a yearly basis.

Korean Ambassador Kim Chang-gyu earlier cited prospective cooperation possibilities, especially in farming and medical service, transportation and tourism.

We also have high cooperation possibilities in ICT and manufacture. So I would do my best to promote cooperation in investment through involving Korean companies here to contribute to increasing our trade, communication and exchange of people. The Korean ICT industry is the most advanced in the world. Many international organizations highly praise the advancement of the Korean industry, so it is possible for the two countries to help each other. Azerbaijan`s ICT industry is also rapidly developing, he said then.

---

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
10 June 2016 17:10 (UTC+04:00)

By Fatma Babayeva

China plans to expand business ties with Azerbaijan, particularly in the transportation sector.

The worlds second largest economy, China pays a great attention to cooperation with the countries, namely Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan through which the Trans-Caspian International Transport Corridor runs, said Yang Weihong, section head at China's State Railways Administration.

The Trans-Caspian Transportation Route is developing very well within the revival of the Great Silk Road and the volume of cargo transportation via this corridor is large enough, he told Trend, further adding that China hopes that the cooperation will be even more successful.

"We welcome Azerbaijani companies' intentions to work with China, he said, further noting that China expects the cargo flow to the country via railway to increase with help of Azerbaijani companies' products.

Weihong further added that the volume of cargo flow from China to Europe is large enough, while fewer goods are transported in the opposite direction.

China hopes that Azerbaijani companies will help to increase the cargo flow in the opposite direction.

Weihong expressed confidence that a large number of container trains will run on the Trans-Caspian route, as there is a very close cooperation between Chinese and Azerbaijani railway authorities in this sphere.

In addition, China wants to make joint efforts with Azerbaijan for promoting the 'One Belt, One Road' strategy, he added, mentioning that the development of cargo transportation by containers to Europe is the priority for China.

Chinese railway companies are analyzing the potential volumes of cargo, which can be regularly transported via the corridor and there will be concrete figures soon, according to the Chinese official.

The Trans-Caspian International Transport Route runs through China, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Georgia and then through Turkey and Ukraine goes to Europe. This is a multimodal corridor using railway, maritime and roadways for transporting goods.

Earlier in April, Azerbaijan Railways agreed with railway agencies of Georgia and Kazakhstan to create the International Trans-Caspian Transport Consortium which will ensure smooth, more convenient, fast and cost-efficient transportation of goods from ports of China to Europe via the route.

This route is expected to transport approximately 300,000-400,000 containers by 2020.

On January 14, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Georgia and Ukraine signed a protocol on setting preferential tariffs for cargo transportation via the Trans-Caspian route.

New competitive tariffs via the Trans-Caspian Route came into force since June 1, 2016.

The effective operation of the route is expected to positively affect the growth of trade turnover between Europe and China. Moreover, The Trans-Caspian route is expected not to have an alternative in the coming decade by being the cheapest and most profitable corridor for freight traffic in the region.

Alternative energy sources, tourism and agriculture are other main areas of cooperation between China and Azerbaijan.

The volume of Chinese investment projects in Azerbaijan, which started realizing since 2002, has already reached $300 million. More than 50 agreements were signed between the two countries to date.

The trade turnover with China reached $565.1 million last year, according to the Azerbaijani State Customs Committee.

---

Fatma Babayeva is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Fatma_Babayeva

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
10 June 2016 15:01 (UTC+04:00)

By Laman Ismayilova

The ballet "Cleopatra" by Azerbaijani composer Gelset Shaydulova was staged at the Belarusian State Academic Musical Theatre on June 9-10, Azertac reported.

The performance of the play, which consists of two actions, is a joint work of two countries -- Belarus and Azerbaijan.

"This is the third play that we have staged together", Theatre's Artistic Director, honored art worker, Adam Murzich said.

People's Artist and a choreographer of Azerbaijan State Musical Theatre Madina Aliyeva has been invited as a choreographer.

Theater decoration, created by art director Inara Aslanova has sent the audience back in ancient Egypt.

As queen of ancient Egypt, Cleopatra is one of the most famous female rulers in history. The stories and myths surrounding Cleopatra's tragic life inspired a number of books, movies and plays, including the ballet "Cleopatra" by the Azerbaijani composer. However, the ancient and modern historians agree on one thing: the Egyptian Queen was smart, ambitious, charismatic, daring and insightful woman.

---

Laman Ismayilova is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Lam_Ismayilova

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
10 June 2016 12:32 (UTC+04:00)

By Fatma Babayeva

Georgia does not depend on Russia as much as it used to be in the past, Giorgi Kvirikashvili, Prime Minister of Georgia said at the International Energy Forum in Tbilisi on June 9.

He made the remark while answering the question over Georgian authorities relation with Gazprom, Ria Novosti reported.



The Prime Minister noted that Georgia and Gazprom held negotiations of a technical nature, which culminated in the agreement.



In April, Georgia and Russias state energy giant Gazprom have signed a deal to extend the gas transit agreement under the long-standing terms involving paying Tbilisi 10% of Russian gas, transported to Armenia via Georgia.

Kvirikashvili further stated that the contract on energy was signed with Azerbaijan's state oil company SOCAR on more favorable terms.

In March 2016, SOCAR signed an agreement with the Georgian government on additional supplies of natural gas in the amount of 463 million cubic meters.

Azerbaijan is the main gas importer to Georgia. The countrys annual gas consumption stands at 2.4 bcm. Some 750 to 800 mcm of the gas is being supplied from the Shah Deniz field to Georgia annually, 1.4 bcm by SOCAR, and 200 mcm by Russia.

Kvirikashvili also emphasized a key role of Azerbaijan in ensuring energy security of not only Georgia, but also the whole world.

He noted that the Great Silk Road and Baku-Supsa energy corridor laid the foundation of Georgia`s energy map.

"The basis of our development constituted by the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline, Baku-Tbilisi Erzurum railway project, Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railway, commissioning of which is provided at the end of the year. The projects "Shah Deniz" and "South-Caucasus gas pipeline" will not only enhance our energy security, but also play an important role in improving the welfare of our peoples, he said.

Georgia and Azerbaijan has been close allies in the region for a long time. A new gas infrastructure project of Azerbaijan that will connect the Caspian to Europe (Southern Gas Corridor) will also pass through Georgia.

Azerbaijan invested $137 million in Georgia`s economy in the first quarter of 2016, according to the National Statistics Office of Georgia.

Azerbaijan is followed by Turkey and UK, who made $57 million and $44 million of investment respectively in Georgias economy.

---

Fatma Babayeva is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Fatma_Babayeva

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
10 June 2016 10:00 (UTC+04:00)

Qatar Airways is offering customers in Azerbaijan an incredible sales promotion to travel upon its network of more than 150 exciting destinations around the world.

Whether planning a family holiday in the serene beaches of Bali, a city escape in Singapore or savour the rich cultural & historical heritage of the Arabian Peninsula, Qatar Airways with award-winning service and hospitality has got the perfect journey for customers.

Now through to 19 June 2016, customers in Azerbaijan can enjoy significantly discounted fares when booking at qatarairways.com or a Qatar Airways ticketing location or its travel agency partners. Travel is for the period 10 July to 15 December 2016.

Qatar Airways Country Manager, Mr. Nazir Abduvakhidov said: "This is a special promotion for Qatar Airways passengers to travel on board the World's Best Airline and to experience our signature premium service. Through this promotion, we would like to extend our gratitude to our customers for their continued support and loyalty in choosing Qatar Airways as their preferred airline.

Qatar Airways serves key business and leisure destinations around the world with 184 modern aircraft, including destinations such as Mumbai, Bangkok, Singapore, Hong Kong, Colombo, and Dubai via the airline's state-of-the-art hub, Hamad International Airport.

At the annual Skytrax 2015 World Airline Awards, Qatar Airways was awarded Worlds Best Airline, Best Business Class Airline Seat, and Best Airline in the Middle East.

Qatar Airways has seen rapid growth in just 19 years of operation and today flies a modern fleet of 184 aircraft to more than 150 key business and leisure destinations across Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Asia Pacific, North America and South America.
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No one can predict how many past criminal cases in Kern County will be affected after recent admissions by two Bakersfield police detectives t
Starbucks has pledged to double the number of apprentices it takes on in the UK by 2020.

Starbucks, the US coffee chain that first launched its apprenticeship scheme in 2012, intends to skill up a further 1,000 UK recruits over the next four years bringing the total number to more than 2,000.

Partner Remit Training, which delivers the apprenticeship programme on behalf of Starbucks, said 80% of young people starting a Starbucks apprenticeship complete their training and remain within the business.

The East-Midlands based training provider said one in five learners achieved a promotion at work with 20% of Level 2 Baristas climbing to supervisory roles and 23% of Level 3 Management apprentices rising to store managers.

It will now deliver the next phase of apprenticeships providing Level 4 and 5 qualifications.

Were incredibly proud of the scheme were running alongside Starbucks, Sue Pittock, chief executive of Remit Group, said: Not only have we taken on such a large amount of apprentices over the past four years, but our teams have helped train and develop those young people, advancing not just their skills and qualifications but also their confidence and career prospects. We look forward to supporting Starbucks to achieve their 2020 target and watching the careers of our apprentices build.

Lisa Robbins, director of partner resources at Starbucks, added: We are continually looking at ways in which they [employees and partners] can grow and progress within our business.
Top 13 dealer tricks

Most car dealers arent really out to rip you off, but keep in mind that car dealerships are for-profit entities.
Selling a home isnt hard if youve got the right guidance and approach. Here we break down the process to sell your housefrom deciding if you really should sell, to finding a real estate agent wholl be your partner through it all, to pricing your home and negotiating offers.
Thanks to a donation from Northside Hospital, the Kenneth City Police Department will now be even more prepared when responding to emergencies.

The hospital donated brand new first aid kits to the department. The previous supplies the department had become out of date.

Kenneth City PD receives new first aid kits

The small force inside of Pinellas County includes seven cruisers

The effort was spearheaded by the police departments volunteer coordinator Tony Faucette. He's a former fire chief who recently had a heart attack and was treated at Northside Hospital.

According to Faucette, police officers are often the first to arrive at the scene of emergencies and says it's crucial that each squad car is equipped with the tools to treat injuries immediately.

"We're able to help our citizens better if we're equipped" said Faucette.

The first aid kits will go in all seven of the police cruisers.




President Barack Obama has formally endorsed Hillary Clinton for president.

"I want you to be the first to know that I'm with her," he says in a video posted online Thursday by the Clinton campaign. Obama called on Democrats to unify behind the former secretary of state.

Clinton and Obama will campaign together in Green Bay, Wisconsin, on June 15.

Obama met with Clinton's rival, Bernie Sanders, at the White House earlier Thursday, where they had a "wide-ranging discussion" about a range of issues, including income inequality and problems that working families face.

A spokesman for Sanders said that Sanders requested the meeting.

Afterward Sanders reiterated the issues that he has campaigned to change -- college debt, crumbling infrastructure, inadequate social security and health care and the wealthy's influence on politics.

Sanders promised to continue his campaign run at least through next week's primary in the District of Columbia.

Meanwhile, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid said Sanders is invited to join a Democratic caucus meeting next week.



Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.

Democratic primary delegate count in 3 graphics

The delegate count

Delegates by state

Delegates allocated over time
Oregon Coast Lodging News: Latest in Pacific City, Newport, Depoe Bay

Published 06/09/2016 at 6:51 PM PDT

By Oregon Coast Beach Connection staff





(Depoe Bay, Oregon)  A lot of new and impressive things are happening with various lodgings up and down the Oregon coast. Spring usually means a hefty helping of changes and additions to the vacation rentals, hotels and motels in the region. (Above: new rooms at Inn at Nye Beach, Newport).

Some of the bigger changes have happened in Pacific City, Newport and Depoe Bay.

In Newport, the Inn at Nye Beach began a massive 18-room expansion late last year, and it's getting close to opening. You'll find an outdoor spa with multiple levels, outdoor fire pit areas, a spa treatment room, and expanded breakfast menus.

The new decor for the rooms looks spectacular as well, with a white, ultra-modern feel  sort of space age with a nice dose of nature with its ocean views. You can see the towering grandeur of the new additions out in front now as construction slowly finishes up.

Owner Rob Lee said it should be open any day now, just in time for the summer rush.

Were really excited about this expansion and see it as a great opportunity for tourism on the central Oregon coast, Lee said. 729 NW Coast St. Newport, Oregon. 541.265.2477. 800.480.2477. www.innatnyebeach.com.

Two big additions have happened at the Sandlake Country Inn, a bed and breakfast near Pacific City. Its cottage  a separate building  underwent another renovation and it's now pet friendly. This is the first time the BnB has had a pet friendly aspect.

Owner Diane Emineth said once that redo took place a lot of things fell into place.

Since it's a separate building it's the perfect fit for our guests with a dog, Emineth said. We took out all the carpeting and put in laminated hardwood so it would be easy to clean pet hair, etc. We have over three acres of land and plenty of room to exercise a dog. Dogs must be kept on leash outside because there is a lot of deer and wildlife that many dogs would want to chase.

She added their own dog  who has passed away  did not like other dogs around as well. So many customers were sadly turned away.

Now that she's gone, it's easier to accommodate a guest pet, Emineth said. It's also a way to get our dog 'fix' without the responsibility of being pet owners again.

Sandlake's pet policy involves a $30 pet fee.

There are some nature walk events coming up at Sandlake Country Inn later this summer, on top of everything else, Emineth said. 8505 Galloway Rd. (Near Pacific City, Oregon). 877-726-3525. 503-965-6745. www.sandlakecountryinn.com.

At FRS Vacation Rentals in Depoe Bay, more upgrades have the shiny Whale Pointe Resort even shinier.

Earlier in the spring, the resort did its second redo in eight years. One section has new roofs, said FRS' Patt Dardis.

They have new countertops in the kitchen and bathrooms as well as new fixtures, new tile flooring and carpeting, Dardis said.

She added the landscape has gone under some major changes, excitedly saying the resort is beautiful! Highway 101, Depoe Bay, Oregon. 866-997-7224. 503-697-7224. www.frsvacationrentals.com.

More of these lodgings and their areas below:

















More About Oregon Coast hotels, lodging.....

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It started with a $2,000 loan.

James and Pat Foley, working as clerks for their uncle, retailer William Foley, sought the money to strike out on their own. They picked a spot near the banks of Buffalo Bayou and set up shop. Foley Brothers Dry Goods Co. was born.

Over the next 106 years, their store would rise into a regional retail empire covering five states and etch an indelible impression in Houstonians' collective memory.

On Feb. 12, 1900, the Foley brothers officially opened their new venture along Main Street near Prairie Street to serve the bustling city of 44,000 people.

More Information FOLEY'S HISTORY 1900: Foley Bros. Dry Goods Co. is founded near Buffalo Bayou 1945: Federated Department Stores purchases Foley's 1947: Foley's opens its downtown Houston department store, billed as a "store of the future," at 1100 Main, with an opening day crowd of 20,000 people. 1949: Led by Santa Claus riding his sleigh through downtown to the new store, Foley's launches its annual Thanksgiving Day parade. Foley's would spearhead the local tradition for 44 years. 1961: First suburban location opens at Sharpstown Mall. Foley's would later extend its suburban footprint anchoring malls. 1988: Campeau Corp. acquires Federated, and the Foley's division is sold to May Department Stores. May closes four stores, lays off 800 employees and begins a $200 million plan to build new stores and upgrade older ones. At this time, there are 11 Foley's department stores in the Houston area and one warehouse store. 2003: Foley's opens at the Galleria 2005: Federated purchases May Department Stores, acquiring 330 stores nationwide for $11 billion. Sixty-nine of those stores are Foley's. The change closes Foley's regional headquarters and cuts 1,200 corporate jobs there. 2006: To unify its regional brands under one banner, Federated changes Foley's name to Macy's. 2013: The 10-story Macy's (former Foley's) downtown department store on Main Street closes and the building soon after is demolished in 10 seconds. At the START An image of the original Foley Brothers store that opened on Feb. 12, 1900. The image was part of exhibit at the M.D. Anderson Library on the University of Houston campus in 2011. See More Collapse

It was warmly received by Houstonians, who snatched up cotton fabrics, lace, linens and men's fashion accessories to the tune of $127.29 on the first day - roughly more than $3,000 in 2016 dollars.

RELATED: Departed businesses in Houston we miss the most

By 1919, sales reached $1 million. Years later, business moved again and Foley's became Houston's largest department store. Stories, a basement and an auditorium were added to the building.

Foley's growth continued, drawing the attention of Fred Lazarus Jr., who bought the store for Federated Department Stores. Federated set its sights on the 1100 block of Main and built the "store of tomorrow."

The Main Street store quickly became iconic, boasting the country's largest display window, a parking garage connected to the store by a tunnel, air conditioning and wide escalators.

Some 20,000 people, along with national media, crammed downtown blocks on opening day in October 1947. It was the perfect monument for an era when central business districts ruled retail. The downtown store and its seven restaurants still were a marvel when Ed Smith started at Foley's in 1972, as were the four other stores Foley's had in the area by then.

"It was really one-stop shopping," said Smith, who became vice president of public relations. "We sold tires and roofing. We had a pet store. We had pharmacies in our stores."

Houston was evolving, and Foley's changed with it. The city spread through the 1950s and 1960s to such edge communities as Sharpstown and Pasadena.

Foley's established stores in those areas. Its first branch store opened at Sharpstown Mall in 1961. In ensuing years, it opened stores at Almeda Mall, Northwest Mall and others.

Eventually, Foley's set up in Austin, Dallas, San Antonio, Corpus Christi, Arlington, Tucson, Ariz., Albuquerque, N.M., and cities in three other states.

It strove to retain a mom-and-pop feel. "With growth, we still had it to a certain extent," Smith said. "But the bigger you get, the more difficult it is to have that."

In the cities where Foley's entered, it played a role in civic affairs. In Houston, Bob Dundas, vice president of Foley's downtown store in the 1960s, saw sit-in protests and associated violence sweeping Southern cities. Dundas organized business leaders to silently desegregate downtown lunch counters to mitigate turmoil.

RELATED: Even more departed businesses and places in Houston we miss

Foley's brought a parade of stars to Houston through the years. It landed designers and celebrities launching lines at fashion shows, hawking scents or signing books: Lena Horne. Calvin Klein. Christie Brinkley. Donna Karan. Karl Lagerfeld. Cher.

And, of course, there was the annual Thanksgiving Day Parade. Launched in 1949 by Santa Claus taking a sleigh ride from the train station to the Main Street store, the Foley's banner flagged the Houston tradition for the next 44 years.

In 1987, Foley's acquired the Sanger Harris chain of North Texas. In 1988, Campeau Corp. bought Foley's and sold it to May Department Stores. Four stores in the chain closed, including the downtown Dallas location. The new owners eliminated major appliances, toys and books from Foley's offerings and turned the stores' focus to apparel.

May company officials said then the plan was to add to Foley's footprint of 34 stores with open at least two new stores per year for the next five years, mostly in Texas but also in Oklahoma and Arizona.

The flagship store again survived the changes. "Foley's is committed to downtown Houston," then-chairman Jerome R. Rossi told the Chronicle in 1989, a year after May's purchase. "This is where the history of this company began and it would be categorically wrong to do anything to this downtown store, but to continue to grow it."

May officials were outwardly upbeat about the downtown store's prospects, but Lasker Meyer, chairman of Foley's from 1982 to 1987, told the Chronicle the downtown Houston store had been losing money since 1982.

RELATED: Foley's and Macy's: A downtown Houston timeline

The retail landscape was changing. Malls still reigned, but the superstore was beginning its rise. Wal-Mart and the like were taking the department store model into overdrive. In 2005, Federated Department Stores bought May. As the two retail giants combined forces in their $10.4 billion merger, it was the beginning of the end for regional brands the companies held.

At that time, Foley's had 69 stores in five states, including 16 in Houston. Federated was known for absorbing regional chains across the country and rebranding them Macy's. It was just a matter of time before the same fate befell Foley's.

"Forget Wall Street. In Houston, Federated Department Stores' takeover of rival May Department Stores will reverberate most strongly on Memory Lane," a 2005 Chronicle article declared shortly after the merger announcement. In September 2006, the nameplates formally were changed.

The Foley's team keeps its tight bonds. "For all of us, the thing that kept all of Foley's going was the people," said Roz Pactor, former Foley's fashion director and employee of 31 years.

Its alumni are spread across the country.

Reunions are based around May 1, 2006, the date Foley's corporate offices were dissolved. There was a five-year reunion, a seventh-year reunion in 2013 when the downtown flagship store's building was demolished, and a 10-year reunion in 2016 attended by more than 200 people.

A monthly newsletter has an address list of more than 1,000 former employees. Jeannette Spivey, who organizes the newsletter and coordinates reunions, said the newsletter helps everyone keep in touch and connect for job opportunities. Spivey started working at Foley's as a furniture department clerk in 1971 and eventually became the first African-American woman to rise to corporate offices as executive assistant to the chief financial officer in 1984, a post she held until corporate was eliminated in 2006.

"Foley's was not only our place of employment, we were family," Spivey wrote in an email. "Foley's taught us a lot. We worked hard, but we played harder and ran a successful organization."
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A former Beaumont PD sergeant accused of teaming with a convicted felon to defraud a national firearms dealer avoided jail time through a plea deal with prosecutors, though he was permanently stripped of his law enforcement license, court records show.

Keith Breiner, 51, received one year of probation, a $500 fine and 24 hours of community service after he quietly copped to a misdemeanor charge in late May.

Breiner, who initially faced a felony charge, must also surrender his state law enforcement license for life, according to the terms of deferred adjudication signed by County Court at-Law No. 3 Judge Clint Woods after Breiner pleaded guilty.

This isn't the first time Breiner escaped a tougher punishment from sordid allegations: Originally suspended indefinitely for spending taxpayer money to have sex with prostitutes during a sting in 2008, Breiner was able to keep his job after an arbitrator ruled the punishment was too harsh, according to court records.

Breiner in November was indicted on tampering with a governmental record amid a BPD investigation into a Beaumont man accused of stockpiling weapons and police gear while pretending to be a police officer.

Breiner's May 23 guilty plea to a lesser charge - the misdemeanor abuse of official capacity - came less than a month after the phony cop, Michael Gelagotis, was sentenced to 10 years in prison.

Gelagotis has since been charged with one federal count of a felon in possession of a firearm, related to the 34 guns recovered from his home in a September 2015 search.

A 2015 police report laying out cause for Breiner's arrest claimed the long-time officer without authorization signed correspondence on a department letterhead that requested a rifle for the department to sample for a one-year period.

Gelagotis, not charged with wrongdoing in the matter, emailed the letter to the gun manufacturer on Nov. 7, 2013, the affidavit stated.

"Breiner was never authorized to order, test, evaluate, or receive shipment of any weapon in the name of, or for, the Beaumont Police Department for any purpose," the affidavit stated.

The gun was later returned, a company official previously told The Enterprise.

Breiner retired after the indictment.

First Assistant District Attorney Pat Knauth said the deal between prosecutors and Breiner was fair and that carrying the case to trial would have been risky because a potential jury might not have seen the full extent of the harm.

"He didn't keep the gun," Knauth said. "He didn't sell the gun.

"You have to temper it with all the good that he's done. He had a history of serving our community on many cases. I told him after it was over we tried some good cases together," including homicide and gang-related cases.

The lessened charge was discussed with Beaumont PD leadership, including the police chief and case investigators, Knauth said.

"As part of the plea bargain, he will never be a police officer again," Knauth said. "We wanted to make sure the Beaumont Police Department continued to have its integrity intact.  We do believe we achieved that."

Beaumont Police Chief James Singletary said Breiner "made an unfortunate decision that cost him his career."

"He was a good police officer and did good things down here at Beaumont PD," Singletary said. "It's unfortunate that he got involved with a criminal."

Breiner faced up to 180 days in jail and a $2,000 fine for the misdemeanor charge. That was reduced from a punishment range of 180 days to two years he faced under the original charge, a state jail felony.

Doug Barlow, Breiner's Beaumont-based attorney, said Thursday the agreement was a "fair resolution" and that he was prepared to argue at trial that Breiner had permission to test the gun.

"(Breiner) tested the rifle," his attorney Doug Barlow said Thursday. "The disputed fact was whether Breiner had permission test the rifle. ... We thought it was a compromise for both sides."

Both the prosecutor and the defense attorney said they were not sure whether the gun found its way into Gelagotis' hands. It's also not clear from the available police records.

Gelagotis was convicted of felonies in Connecticut in 1993 and in Vermont in 1997, according to his federal indictment on the weapons charge.

Gelagotis' guilty plea in January to impersonating police marked at least his third conviction on similar charges: Gelagotis pleaded no contest to police impersonation in 2001 in Stow, Ohio, and in 2008 in Jefferson County.

"(Breiner) certainly had no knowledge that Gelagotis was a fake cop," Barlow said. "Apparently this Mr. Gelagotis fooled a lot of people in law enforcement and elsewhere."

John Joslin, a Liberty County constable who won re-election despite an indictment for perjury related to the Gelagotis case, has had his law enforcement license suspended.

Joslin is accused of lying to investigators about the nature of his relationship with Gelagotis. He is scheduled to enter his plea on July 28, according to court records.

EBesson@BeaumontEnterprise.com Twitter.com/EricBesson_news
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A San Antonio Marine Corps veteran spending Wednesday afternoon with his family on the Medina River made the heroic, fateful decision to sacrifice his own life while rescuing two teens caught in the undertow, according to authorities.

Master Sgt. Rodney Buentello was visiting Bandera City Park when an unidentified teen girl tried crossing the dam, a violation of city ordinance, the Bandera Marshal's Office said in a statement. A male teenager followed her in an attempt to save her, but was also swept away, prompting Buentello to jump into action.

READ MORE FROM BUENTELLO'S WIDOW ON EXPRESSNEWS.COM

"(He) went into the water and managed to save both of the teenagers, but he was dragged under and drowned before rescuers could reach him," the statement said. "Greater love hath no man, than to lay down his life for another."

Buentello, a 1992 John Jay High School graduate, served one tour in Afghanistan and three tours in Iraq. He was a recipient of The Purple Heart award on two occasions, according to friends who launched a GoFundMe account to alleviate costs for his family through the sudden loss.

RELATED: Man swept away in flash flood in East Bexar County, rescued by authorities who heard him scream

The 42-year-old veteran leaves behind a wife and three children, according to the GoFundMe post.

Medina River remains 100 percent full as of Thursday. Bandera explicitly deems the area near the dam "hazardous" in the city ordinance and "closed to all swimming, wading or boating." Violators in disregard of the ordinance and posted signage in the area are fined $25 to $200, according to Sec. 1.09.043.

RELATED: Central Texas storms open flood gates, opportunities for drone footage of 'hazardous conditions'

The Bandera Marshal's Office said in a statement that the reporting officer has been instructed to charge the teen for her violation.

A memorial in Buentello's honor at the site of his final display of heroism is being "discussed" by the City of Bandera, according to the Bandera Marshal's Office.

A vigil will be held at John Jay High School on Thursday night at 8 p.m.

mmendoza@mysa.com

Twitter: @MaddySkye
When Greg Abbott was the Texas attorney general in 2010, he had no way of knowing that Donald Trump would run for president six years later. And on the surface, it seems like Abbott made a reasonable deal in getting Trump to withdraw his shady "university" from Texas in exchange for no legal action. Prosecutors reach arrangements like that all the time to save their resources for more important battles.

But if Abbott has nothing to hide from the incident, why not release all the information now so that taxpayers can see for themselves?
CMS removed Rapid City, S.D.-based Sioux San Hospital's "immediate jeopardy" status Thursday, pausing termination of Medicare funding for another two months.

The status was lifted after a CMS inspection found previous discrepancies corrected, and remaining issues being addressed. On May 23, CMS notified Sioux San its Medicare contract would cease June 15 if the facility did not fix deficiencies that posed an "immediate and serious threat" to patients' health and safety.

Based on a survey of Sioux San, CMS found the hospital did not comply with the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act and failed to offer timely medical screening examinations for nine out of 32 patients who entered the ED.

IHS subsequently carried out a corrective action plan, immediately addressing the improvements needed at the hospital, including new leadership, expanded oversight, staff retention and policy changes.

In two months, Sioux San will need to submit another plan of correction to CMS. The hospital will be subject to unscheduled inspections.
Recently disclosed financial data from Boston Children's Hospital shows a two-fold increase of international patients from 2012 to 2015, the Boston Business Journal reported.

In 2012, international patients represented 4 percent of the hospital's net patient revenue. This percentage jumped to 7.3 percent in 2015.

In addition, international patients contributed $122 million to the facility's patient revenue in FY 2015, a $67.7 million gain from 2012.

This does not mean the facility is turning into one that predominately attends international patients, hospital spokesperson Rob Graham told BBJ. Seventy percent of Children's patients reside in Massachusetts, and revenue from international patients represents about 10 percent of Children's $1.6 billion total patient revenue.

"As the local private payer reimbursements are held to nominal growth and the state Medicaid program continues to reimburse well below costs, international, national and regional revenue are important to subsidize lower reimbursements," Mr. Graham told BBJ.

Children's is currently planning a $1 billion expansion to its Longwood campus, and some wonder if more international patients will use the beds, according to BBJ.

Simultaneously, the state is limiting the number of patients who seek unspecialized care at expensive Boston healthcare facilities.
Moncrief Army Community Hospital in Columbia, S.C., will transition to an outpatient clinic by July 31, according to a WLTX news report.

Hospital officials decided to make the transition due to dwindling inpatient volumes. Moncrief only had 221 inpatients last year, according to the report.

With the change, the hospital has restructured its personnel. Some military physicians will move to work at hospitals on other bases. Those that aren't transferring to another hospital will be allowed to retire early or separate early with a severance package.

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Georgia Hospital Health Services, the shared services subsidiary of the Georgia Hospital Association, has exclusively partnered with Jackson Executives as its preferred provider of interim executive solutions for its network of member hospitals and health systems.

Under the arrangement, Jackson Executives will provide interim C-level leadership support to fill critical gaps, deliver leadership stability and maintain momentum with key initiatives during an urgent change in leadership or for short-term strategic projects, according to a news release.

"Demand for interim executive leaders is increasing exponentially due to the rapid pace of change in healthcare including consolidations and acquisitions," Bill Wylie, vice president of GHHS, said in a prepared statement. "By endorsing Jackson Executives, GHA member hospitals and health systems can continue to provide quality care to patients and fulfill their missions."

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When he was CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals, Martin Shkreli inflated the price of a drug used during treatment for cancer and AIDS by 5,000 percent over night. Amidst the controversy, he was arrested on fraud charges, resigned from his position, and most recently faces a new conspiracy charge. Now, Martin Shkreli is the subject of a new musical, set to debut this summer in New York City, reports STAT.

Martin Shkrelis Game will be about the infamous ex-CEOs $2 million purchase of a Wu-Tang clan record Once Upon A Time in Shaolin in late 2015, according to the report. After news of the transaction, rumors circled that part of the purchasing contract permitted actor Bill Murray to steal the album back. The musical is based on this story.

This show has Bill Murray teaming up with the Wu-Tang Clan in an epic battle against the most hated man in America, according to the musicals website. Will Bill Murray succeed, or will he just end up another pawn in Martin Shkrelis Game?

The musical will focus more on the persona and psyche of Martin Shkreli, not his pharmaceutical business, the musical producers told STAT.

As Martin Shkreli became more and more ubiquitous in the news, we just became more interested in exploring him as a character and felt that it was a story that needed to sing, Lauren Gundrum, one of the producers, said.

Performances of Martin Shkrelis Game will take place at the Midtown International Theater Festival this July.

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Email is often regarded as both a blessing and a curse. While its instantaneous relaying of messages makes it an effective communication system, most working people who use email hate the endless tasks of sorting through, reading and responding to emails.

According to the Harvard Business Review, email takes up 23 percent of the average employee's workday, and that employee sends or receives roughly 112 emails per day. Collectively, we send more than 108 billion emails a day in the U.S.

This deluge of emails and the time they consume is what prompted Thierry Breton, CEO of the Paris, France-based information technology services firm Atos Origin, to ban email in February 2011. According to the Harvard Business Review, Mr. Breton wanted to transform Atos Origin into a "zero-email" company by 2014.

"We are producing data on a massive scale that is fast polluting our working environments and also encroaching into our personal lives," Mr. Breton said in a public statement released through Atos' website, according to the report. "We are taking action now to reverse this trend, just as organizations took measures to reduce environmental pollution after the industrial revolution."

Mr. Breton's decision may seem counterintuitive as the head of an IT company that employs more than 70,000 people in over 40 offices around the world. But his decision isn't spur-of-the-moment  he had ceased using internal email himself in 2006 because he found it diminished his productivity.

Of course, the company couldn't realistically ban all electronic communication. Instead, Atos Origin organized its network around 7,500 open communities representing the various projects on which people collaborated. The difference is messages don't constantly interrupt employees by flooding their inboxes. Instead, workers chose to enter the discussions on their own terms and schedules, according to the report.

Atos is still not 100 percent email free, but since implementing the change, the company has reduce overall email by 60 percent. Its operating margin increased from 6.5 percent to 7.5 percent in 2013, earnings per share increased by more than 50 percent and administrative costs fell from 13 percent to 10 percent, according to the report. While not all of these improvements can be attributed to banning email, the correlation is strong, as research suggests restricting email can dramatically increase individual productivity and reduce stress.

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Stay in the know with Becker's Hospital Review's weekly roundup of the nation's biggest healthcare news. Here's what you need to know this week.

1. John Oliver forgives $15M in medical debt

On his program Sunday, John Oliver, host of Last Week Tonight, demonstrated how easy it is to get into the debt buying business and gain access to the personal information of thousands of people.

2. Senate advances $162B health spending bill

A Senate subcommittee approved a $162 billion health spending bill Tuesday that will deliver funding increases to opioid abuse treatment, precision medicine and Medicare fraud programs, among others.

3. Senate panel approves $261M funding bill to fight opioid epidemic

A Senate panel on Tuesday approved a health funding bill that would increase spending to address opioid abuse by 93 percent, according to STAT.

4. Fewer than a quarter of US hospitals on track to hit value-based payment goal, survey finds

A new survey of healthcare executives from Health Catalyst revealed that fewer than a quarter of U.S. hospitals are on track to hit CMS' goal of transitioning half of payments to value-based care models by 2018. The survey revealed that only 3 percent of health systems today meet the target set by CMS.

5. Kaufman Hall: Hospital M&A activity up 13% in Q1

Hospital merger and acquisition activity across the U.S. continued to rise in the first quarter of 2016, according to the latest analysis by Kaufman, Hall & Associates. There were 26 hospital and health system transactions in the first quarter of 2016, a 13 percent increase compared to the 23 transactions announced in the first quarter of 2015.

6. Pharma companies to pay $67M for misleading physicians about cancer drug

Two pharmaceutical companies  Farmingdale, N.Y.-based Genentech and South San Francisco, Calif.-based OSI Pharmaceuticals  agreed to pay $67 million to resolve False Claims Act allegations, according to the Department of Justice.

7. Feds: Carolinas HealthCare forced steering restrictions in top payer contracts

The Department of Justice and North Carolina Attorney General filed an antitrust lawsuit against Carolinas HealthCare, alleging the Charlotte, N.C.-based system drove up costs in the region by imposing steering restrictions in contracts with commercial health insurers.

8. NY physician gets prison time for taking bribes in $100M fraud scheme

A physician who admitted to taking bribes as part of a long-running test referral scheme operated by Parsippany, N.J.-based Biodiagnostic Laboratory Services was sentenced to 37 months in prison, according to the Department of Justice.

9. Employee found dead in Bronx hospital

An employee at NYC Health + Hospitals/North Central Bronx Hospital was found dead in the hospital Tuesday. The 48-year-old man was found deceased at about 10:00 a.m. Police sources told New York Daily News that the employee may have died of a heart attack, and no foul play is suspected.

10. Former Pacific Hospital CEO and son guilty in $600M fraud scheme

Michael R. Drobot, former CEO of Pacific Hospital in Long Beach, Calif., and his son are two of nine defendants that admitted to participating in a massive fraud scheme that involved physicians receiving hundreds of millions of dollars in kickbacks, according to the Department of Justice.

11. Man charged with selling heroin from hospital room

A man is being held on $11,000 cash bail for allegedly selling heroin from his room in Excela Health Westmoreland Hospital in Greensburg, Pa., according WPXI.
"[Y]ou'll have physicians that have no idea how insurance works."

With these words, Jeffrey Roberson, a former social worker who's now enrolled at Washington, D.C.-based George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences, described the disparity between what's taught in medical school and what practicing medicine involves.

In many medical schools across the nation, students are being taught plenty about biology and anatomy, but not enough about public healthcare policy, according to NPR. But GWH's medical school has set out to change that.

More specifically, the medical school is seeking to integrate healthcare policy and practice into one solid curriculum. For example, in late May, the whole first-year class of students crafted proposals on how to best control childhood asthma in some of the D.C. area's low-income neighborhoods.

After an in-depth learning session on infectious diseases, another group of students came up with ideas on how to better implement AIDS and HIV policies into patients' everyday lives. And the medical students didn't just create proposals  they presented them to the national AIDS czar and other top officials at the White House.

"Clinicians today have to graduate being great providers of individual care," said Lawrence Deyton, MD, the school's senior associate dean for clinical public health, according to the report. "But they also have to recognize and be able to act on the fact that their patients, when they leave the clinic or leave the hospital, are going home [and] living in situations where there are all kinds of factors that promote and perpetuate chronic disease."

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Degrees in registered nursing, health information and medical records administration, and healthcare administration and management are three of the most valuable in the healthcare industry, according to a new report.

The report was published by WorldWideLearn.com, an online resource that provides detailed information about specific fields of study and careers for current and future college students.

To determine which healthcare degrees were most likely to benefit students, the authors of the report examined the educational program availability, earnings index, employment opportunities and tuition data for 105 healthcare disciplines across the industry. The authors included data from the National Center for Education Statistics and Bureau of Labor Statistics, among other sources.

According to the report, the most valuable healthcare degrees are in the following 10 subjects:

1. Dental hygiene

2. Registered nursing

3. Health information and medical records administration

4. Healthcare administration and management

5. Physical therapy assisting

6. Diagnostic medical sonography

7. Nursing practice

8. Surgical technology

9. Healthcare facilities administration and management

10. Nursing administration

For data breakdown on each of the top 10 degrees, or to view the rest of the healthcare list, click here.
U.S. District Judge Claire Eagan ruled that Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Oklahoma be dismissed from a lawsuit involving Bristow (Okla.) Endeavor Healthcare and network coverage, according to Tulsa World.

In February, Bristow Endeavor filed a suit claiming BCBS of Oklahoma refused to contract with its Jenks, Okla.-based Center for Orthopaedic Reconstruction and Excellence. Bristow claimed in the lawsuit that the insurer "plotted to exclude CORE from the northeast Oklahoma/Tulsa-area healthcare marketplace" and did not let CORE become an in-network provider with BCBS of Oklahoma, according to the report.

But BCBS of Oklahoma and its operator, Health Care Service Corp., requested to be dismissed from the case.

Judge Eagan has ruled in favor of the request, claiming the "[p]laintiff may disagree with HCSC's decision not to add CORE to Bristow Healthcare's existing provider agreement, but plaintiff has not cited any authority that, as a matter of Oklahoma law, HCSC was required to contract with CORE or that an insurer's decision not to contract with a provider is inherently improper or unjustified," according to the report.

Not only did Judge Eagan dismiss BCBS of Oklahoma and HCSC from the lawsuit, but she also dismissed the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association.

In a statement, BCBS of Oklahoma said, "This ruling does not change anything for our members; as always, we remain focused on our mission to provide access to quality, affordable healthcare to as many Oklahomans as possible," according to the report.

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The Department of Justice and North Carolina Attorney General have filed an antitrust lawsuit against Carolinas HealthCare, alleging the Charlotte, N.C.-based system drove up costs in the region by imposing steering restrictions in contracts with commercial health insurers.

Carolinas HealthCare is the dominant system in the Charlotte area, controlling about 50 percent of the market. The lawsuit alleges the system used its market power to require steering restrictions in its contracts with every major insurer in the area, including Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina, Aetna, Cigna and UnitedHealthcare. For example, the complaint states that some of the contracts give CHS the right to terminate their agreements if the insurers attempted to steer business from the system, according to the Charlotte Observer.

"For years, insurers have tried to negotiate the removal of steering restrictions from their contracts with CHS, but cannot because of CHS' market power," the lawsuit states, according to the Charlotte Observer.

The steering provisions have prevented insurers from introducing health plans that encourage patients to use providers that offer lower priced, higher quality services than Carolinas, according to the DOJ.

The lawsuit also alleges that CHS prevented insurers from providing truthful information to consumers about the cost and quality of CHS' services compared to its competitors.

CHS said it is committed to fair competition, and its arrangements with insurers are similar to those in place between health systems and insurers across the country.

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A physician who admitted taking bribes as part of a long-running test referral scheme operated by Parsippany, N.J.-based Biodiagnostic Laboratory Services has been sentenced to 37 months in prison, according to the Department of Justice.

Bret Ostrager, MD, admitted he received monthly cash bribes of about $3,300 from BLS employees between February 2011 and April 2013. In exchange for the bribes, Dr. Ostrager referred patient blood samples to BLS. His referrals generated approximately $909,000 in lab business for the company.

Dr. Ostrager is one of 39 people  26 of them physicians  who have pleaded guilty in connection with the bribery scheme. Organizers of the scheme have admitted it involved millions of dollars in bribes and resulted in more than $100 million in payments to BLS from Medicare and various private insurance companies, according to the DOJ.

In addition to his prison term, Dr. Ostrager was fined $30,000 and ordered to forfeit $101,271.

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Karen Lynch, president of Hartford, Conn.-based Aetna, said the health insurer is providing the U.S. Department of Justice information on its acquisition of Humana, and that the deal is on track to close in the second half of this year, according to the Hartford Courant.

Although Ms. Lynch said Aetna has been providing the DOJ with "a lot of information" in a second review round, she refrained from commenting too heavily on the DOJ's process. "I know it is a little bit frustrating," she said in answer to questions at a recent Goldman Sachs healthcare conference in California, according to the report. "I really do want to be respectful of the Department of Justice's role."

Ms. Lynch added that Aetna has already won regulatory approval in 15 states, meaning it only needs five more states to move ahead with the merger.

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Ambulatory providers name their most and least favorite payers: 9 survey findings

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LONDON  Across Europe, many gatekeepers are increasingly concerned that the rise of powerful US, English-language content distributors may pose a long-term threat to the richness and individuality of local-language culture.

The risk is not just cultural but economic. But one Belgian operator hopes highly targeted TV ads can help it ward off a new wave of globalization.

If we want to remain relevant  we need to be able to keep advertising money in Belgium, so they can invest in that content, says consumer strategy director Jim Casteele of Proximus, a quad-play operator in Belgium.

You have to bring the capabilities online available to Google to your own ecosystem as well  otherwise, advertisers will go to platforms where they can target better.

Proximus launched a multi-platform catch-up TV service a couple of years ago, and is currently in technical pilots with RTL to test programmatic ad sales. Casteele wants to ensure Belgian businesses can buy ads with the kind of sophistication they can online, in arenas mostly controlled by US digital giants.

We want to bring those capabilities to both advertisers and broadcasters, so we can have a healthy content ecosystem in Belgium, he adds. Smart advertising can help keep a health ecosystem.

This video was produced in London as part of our Addressable & Advanced TV Summit hosted by Sky Media and presented by FreeWheel and Invidi. Please visit this page for additional segments from the event.
Artists impression of how the project would have looked

Stormont forked out almost 120,000 on fees supporting plans for a massive 300m development in Belfast that it has now withdrawn support for, it can be revealed.

The Northside Regeneration body, alongside the Department for Social Development (DSD), was planning a mixed-use development near Royal Avenue that would have included housing and retail and leisure facilities.

But in April it was revealed that DSD, now the Department for Communities, had pulled out.

It said that developers "should no longer benefit from the potential use of the department's statutory powers".

It can now be revealed the department spent around 117,000 in relation to the Northside regeneration project.

That included 76,000 on "professional consultancy in relation to commercial and planning matters", and a further 41,400 on legal fees.

The spending breakdown was released under a Freedom of Information request.

In April, a spokeswoman for Northside said it was disappointed at the then-DSD Minister Lord Morrow's decision and added it had "invested financial resources, time and expertise in this project and continued to be committed to its delivery".

Northside Regeneration is a consortium chosen by DSD. It includes global building firm Balfour Beatty and property developer Kevin McKay.

In a letter sent to those affected by the scheme, the then-DSD said the minister "recently confirmed that we were undertaking an assessment of the scheme, and we are writing to you now to confirm the outcome of this assessment".

It added that as part of that it took the "views of local stakeholders into account, as well areas including where the developer had not met requirements set by the department".

"The minister has decided that the scheme, as proposed by Northside Regeneration Limited, should no longer benefit from the use of his department's statutory powers," the letter read.

The apparent end to the scheme in its current form means popular Belfast pub The Sunflower is likely to be saved from demolition.

The bar was within the area proposed under the Northside scheme, and could have been demolished to make way for the development.

The lack of support from Stormont means if the developer wants to continue with the project, it will no longer have Government backing and powers.

With Stormont pulling out, one expert said it will be "very hard to bring it together" without the support of the State.

The scheme hit its first roadblock in January, when it was refused outline planning permission.
Argos owner Home Retail Group is setting aside at least 30m to compensate store card customers after overcharging late payment fees

Argos owner Home Retail Group is setting aside at least 30m to compensate store card customers after overcharging late payment fees.

The company said it had uncovered errors in the calculation of late payment fees for some Argos card customers and found the issue was more widespread than previously thought.

The details emerged as the group posted its best sales performance for two years after shrugging off poor early spring weather and the "distraction" of its 1.4bn takeover by supermarket Sainsbury's.

Home Retail Group said like-for-like sales at Argos, which has around 20 stories in Northern Ireland, edged 0.1% higher in the 13 weeks to May 28, while total sales rose 2.6% to 868m thanks to a surge in online sales.

John Walden, chief executive of Home Retail Group, said the card compensation issue was "not material", but confirmed it affected up to 10% of card customers.
Thames Water, the UK's biggest water company, said its annual profits j umped by 40% after it raised bills and sold off surplus land.

The utility firm, which serves 15 million customers in and around London, said average household water bills rose by 7, or 2%, to 374 in the year to the end of March. Although it added its combined water and waste water bills remain the third lowest in the UK.

It said extra revenue was raised during the year from 32.1 million of property and equipment sales that will see a new school built on its former Lea Bridge depot near Leyton, and a 66 million benefit from its handling of its financial instruments.

It also booked 49.3 million of other revenue increases in the period.

This helped see the group's full-year pre-tax profit jump to 511.2 million from 364.7 million.

However, the group added that during the year, it failed to meet set targets for customers who went without water for more than 12 hours, and incurred a 4.7 million penalty that will be filtered through to cut customer bills.

It was also on the end of another 11.7 million penalty agreed with regulator Ofwat for sewer flooding, that will also be passed on to cut customer bills.

The group is in the middle of funding the 4.2 billion "super-sewer'" Thames Tideway Tunnel, a 15-mile sewer running from west to east London expected to be completed by 2023.

It said it has so far spent 1 billion to buy land and prepare for the project, and first major part of the project, the Lee Tunnel was commissioned in January.

Ofwat handed a licence to Bazalgette Tunnel last August which will build the scheme on behalf of Thames Water. The project is designed to greatly reduce the 39 million tonnes of untreated sewage that overflows into the Thames in a typical year.

The project is expected to create more than 9,000 direct and indirect jobs at the peak of construction.

Thames Water added that during the year it cut pollution incidents by 49% last year, its best performance since 2010. It also hit its leak reduction target for the 10th year in a row.

Thames Water chief executive Martin Baggs said: "We've set ourselves ambitious targets and we still have a way to go, but I am delighted with the progress we have made in the last 12 months."

In May Thames Water announced that Mr Baggs will hand over to new chief executive Steve Robertson in September.

Mr Robertson was chief executive at business mobile phone firm Truphone since 2011, and before that was boss of telephone network BT Openreach for six years.
Meg Ryan will be Edinburgh to promote her film Ithaca

Actress turned director Meg Ryan is taking her feature debut to this year's Edinburgh International Film Festival.

Ryan will walk the red carpet to promote Ithaca, a coming of age story featuring a cameo by her Sleepless In Seattle co-star Tom Hanks.

The When Harry Met Sally and French Kiss actress is the latest star to be added to the line up for the 70th edition of the festival which runs from June 15 to 26.

Clerks and Mallrats director Kevin Smith and Sex And The City star Kim Cattrall will also appear at the annual celebration of film.

Smith will appear alongside his daughter Harley Quinn Smith, who stars in his latest comedy Yoga Hosers, and Cattrall will discuss her acting career since starting out 40 years ago.

Brian Cox will promote his starring role in Janos Edelenyi's The Carer, part of the Best of British strand which also includes Mercedes Grower's debut Brakes, starring The Mighty Boosh comics Julian Barratt and Noel Fielding.

Organisers have also announced Downton Abbey star Joanne Froggatt and Tom Riley will attend the world premiere of Starfish.

The festival's deputy artistic director Diane Henderson said: "In this special year we're proud to welcome so many exciting and talented guests from all over the world.

"Some we're lucky enough to welcome back and others are here for the very first time.

"If you'd like the chance to rub shoulders with your favourite actor, director, animator or producer, or the opportunity to meet the stars of tomorrow, then EIFF has it all."
Sir John Major and Tony Blair sharing a platform and a joke for the Remain campaign at Magee College

Sir John Major and Tony Blair stopping to chat to people on their walkabout

Leaving the European Union would endanger not just the ongoing peace process, but also the very existence of the UK, two former prime ministers have warned.

Former rivals Sir John Major and his successor Tony Blair yesterday joined forces in Londonderry as part of the campaign to keep the UK in the EU.

Both men played key roles in the peace process, but their dire warning that politics here would be put at risk by a Brexit was denounced by DUP MP Nigel Dodds, who described Mr Blair's words as "dangerous and destabilising".

The former Labour prime minister told students at Ulster University's Magee campus in Londonderry that Northern Ireland would feel the effect of Brexit more than any other region in the UK.

Mr Blair said: "We understand that, although today Northern Ireland is more stable and more prosperous than ever, that stability is poised on carefully constructed foundations.

"And so we are naturally concerned at the prospect of anything that could put those foundations at risk.

"When we negotiated the Good Friday Agreement, one vital part of it that people often overlooked was that it also (created) a new relationship between the Republic of Ireland and the UK within the European Union.

"Europe was also part of the complex foundations on which we were able make peace in Northern Ireland."

Former Conservative prime minister John Major predicted Scotland would seek independence in the event of a Brexit.

"If Scotland votes in the referendum to stay in the European Union but the UK as a whole chooses to leave, there is a serious risk of a new referendum," Mr Major said.

"Not straight away, perhaps, but, ultimately, nationalist pressure for another shot at Scotland leaving the UK could be uncontrollable and irresistible.

"In those circumstances, if the UK is outside the European Union, I can well envisage a different result, so that is the risk.

"A British exit from the European Union could reopen the whole issue of independence and could tear apart the United Kingdom - the United Kingdom, outside the European Union and Scotland outside the United Kingdom.

"The most successful union in world history would be broken apart."

But speaking in the House of Commons, a furious Mr Dodds called for a debate to "debunk the nonsense spoken by the former prime minister Tony Blair".

The Pro-Brexit DUP deputy leader also condemned the former Labour prime minister's comments as "irresponsible nonsense".

He added: "Surely this is the most irresponsible talk that can be perpetuated in terms of Northern Ireland - very dangerous, destabilising and it should not be happening."

Mr Dodds later told BBC Radio 4's World At One that the two former prime ministers were engaging in "scaremongering".

"I think it's deeply disappointing," he said. "They know that the peace process in Northern Ireland has never been more stable. They are devaluing their own legacy."

Meanwhile, former US president Bill Clinton, whose 1995 visit to Northern Ireland was seen as a crucial moment in the peace process, said he was worried about the potential impact of Brexit on the province.

Writing in the New Statesman magazine, Mr Clinton said: "I was honoured to support the peace process in Northern Ireland. It has benefited from the UK's membership in the European Union, and I worry that the future prosperity and peace of Northern Ireland could be jeopardised if Britain withdraws."

The former president, who worked with Sir John and Mr Blair on the peace process, added: "Transatlantic co-operation is essential, and that cooperation is strongest when Europe is united. I hope you will stay."
Alex Salmond was in Londonderry to address business leaders at an event hosted by Derry's Chamber of Commerce

People in Northern Ireland should reflect on the positive impact the EU has made in the region rather than the "extraordinary negativity" peddled by both sides of the referendum debate, Alex Salmond has urged.

Citing long-standing European Union support for peace process projects, the MP and former Scottish National Party (SNP) leader said Northern Ireland was an example of the good the EU can deliver.

The SNP's foreign affairs spokesman was in Londonderry to address business leaders at an event hosted by Derry's Chamber of Commerce.

Mr Salmond said he wanted to make a positive economic and social case for the UK's continued membership of the EU and he criticised the "negativity and scare stories" he said were emanating from both Remain and Leave camps.

"Northern Ireland has taught us that the fundamental principle of the European Union - that when independent nations work together for a shared cause, for a common good - it works," he said.

Mr Salmond said he had not travelled to Northern Ireland to issue "apocalyptic warnings of impending doom".

"I leave that to others on both sides of this referendum campaign," he added.

"As it happens I think that this extraordinary negativity is exactly the wrong way to conduct this debate. The heart of this case is a positive account of the substantial argument that Europe has been and is a good thing for Northern Ireland.

"Here in Derry, we only have to glance at the beautiful Peace Bridge (linking nationalist and unionist communities), symbolising not only the peace in this region but the commitment of the European Union to supporting the continued peace process.

"If the peace process here has taught us anything, it is the intrinsic value and indeed the power of collaboration and co-operation. l want us to remain in the EU so that we can continue to work together, progressing the interests of our people, embracing solidarity and its social responsibilities, in a Europe that supports its citizens, businesses and governments."

Mr Salmond is the fourth high-profile Remain campaigner to visit Northern Ireland this week, following George Osborne, John Major and Tony Blair to the region.
A 47-year-old man from south Belfast has been jailed for life after pleading guilty to what was described as the savage killing of two friends with a samurai-type sword, one who was a senior member of the UDA.

Dressed in a suit, Albert Armstrong of Mahee Close in Belfast's Belvoir estate, spoke only three times at Belfast Crown Court, once to confirm his identity, then to plead "guilty", as each charge of murder was put to him.

Armstrong attacked veteran UDA man Colin 'Bap' Lyndsay and Stanley Wightman with the sword at Mr Lyndsay's home last July.

Mr Justice Treacy told Armstrong that under law the sentence was one of life imprisonment and that was the sentence he would pass.

He added that a tariff hearing would be heard hopefully by the end of the month.

That hearing will determine the minimum sentence he must serve before being considered for release.

Defence barrister Gavin Duffy QC said it was always indicated Armstrong accepted his responsibility for the killings, but what was at issue was his mental health.

He added that having evaluated reports on his mental state, he would ask for Armstrong to be re-arraigned.

Following Armstrong's guilty pleas the lawyer said he would make the various reports available to the court and the probation service in an effort to expedite matters.

Prosecution QC Neil Connor said victim impact reports may also be provided from close family members of both men and how their deaths have affected them.

No details surrounding what happened on July 8 last year were given during the short hearing, which had been listed only for "mention".

At the time it was reported that police found 47-year-old Mr Lyndsay dead in the living room of his Kirkiston Walk home in the Belvoir estate.

Beside the father-of-two was badly wounded 52-year-old Mr Wightman.

He was reported to have lost an arm in the savage attack and died in hospital from his injuries two days later.

Both men were said to have suffered severe wounds inflicted by a Swamurai-type sword.

It was also reported the bloodied murder weapon which belonged to Mr Lyndsay was allegedly later recovered from Armstrong's blue Mazda 6 car.

Mr Lyndsay was a close friend of UDA boss Jackie McDonald who went to the scene of the killings after he heard of the attack, but was not allowed inside.

He said at the time: "I was told there was a lot of blood."

Another source described it as like "a scene from a Hollywood movie".

It is believed that the three men had been drinking together before the sword was produced.

The incident was not believed to be linked to any dispute or feud within loyalism.
The UVF has been accused of intimidation after it visited the homes of Catholics and ethnic minorities in east Belfast before loyalist flags were erected outside houses

The UVF has been accused of intimidation after it visited the homes of Catholics and ethnic minorities in east Belfast before loyalist flags were erected outside houses.

Residents in the My Ladys Road area have said that loyalists called to their doors inviting them to display an emblem outside their house.

Residents said they were told that the flags would be the new Somme flag created by the Loyalist Communities Council (LCC).

The LCC created the banner to commemorate the centenary of the World War One battle.

Its launch last month was supported by the UDA, UVF and Red Hand Commando.

But in the end, the flags put up along the street alternated between Union flags and others bearing a UVF logo.

It has the UVF motto For God and Ulster and has the words East Belfast Regiment printed on a crest with the date 1914.

The Somme was not until two years later, and the date appears to commemorate the Larne gun-running  the historic gun smuggling operation by the UVF to oppose Home Rule.

While it had been hoped that the new LCC flag would be adopted widely by loyalists, there was dissent from within the ranks when the plan was announced.

Some hardline loyalists said that they would defy their bosses by flying paramilitary flags from lamp posts during the summer instead.

Sources in the east Belfast UVF were reported as saying it would be business as usual. One said in May: We are not paying a blind bit of attention to the LCC. UVF flags will be going up for the Twelfth as normal.

A source told the Belfast Telegraph last night: On Monday night, the UVF knocked doors in the area and invited people to have the flag erected outside their homes.

It was put as a request  but one that wasnt to be refused. People didnt feel that there was anything voluntary about what was being asked.

They were told that there would be no charge for the flag and, if they didnt have flag-poles, brackets could be put up for them.

The source said that loyalists also called at the homes of Catholics and ethnic minorities who did not want the flag to be displayed.

The area was once solidly unionist but demographic changes in recent years mean that there are now ethnic minorities  mainly eastern Europeans  living in rented accommodation.

An increasing number of Catholic first-time buyers have also purchased properties in the lower Ravenhill Road area because they are relatively cheap and the location is so convenient to the city centre.

The source said: These people dont want loyalist flags outside their homes, but they have basically been left with no choice.

Some residents have no problem with the flag, but those who do now feel very uncomfortable. The UVF seems to have ordered thousands of these flags and is determined to put them up.

It wants roads in the Ravenhill area lined with the flag for the parade to mark the Sommes 100th anniversary on July 1.

Local Ulster Unionist councillor Graham Craig said: Were I a Catholic or member of an ethnic minority community, I would be very frightened if the UVF came to the door and asked if I wanted a flag displayed that is so closely associated with paramilitaries.

This is peoples private property and that must be respected.
Firefighters attend to the scene of the blaze at Lissue House in Lisburn yesterday

A fire in a former hospital at the centre of an inquiry into child abuse is believed to have been started deliberately, police have said.

Firefighters were called to the blaze at Lissue House in Lisburn yesterday morning, where flames engulfed the two-storey former psychiatric hospital.

No-one was inside at the time, the Fire and Rescue Service said last night. A total of eight fire crews battled for more than seven hours before the flames were extinguished.

A PSNI spokesman added: "At this time it is thought the fire may have been started deliberately and detectives in Lisburn are appealing for witnesses."

Chris Donnelly (45) said it was a relief to see the building gone after he suffered abuse at the hands of staff there in the 1970s and 80s.

He was moved to Lissue aged nine in 1979, after suffering extreme bullying at primary school - but said he was subjected to more violence and abuse at Lissue, which wrecked his life.

"It's not that I agree that people should go around setting fire to buildings because I certainly don't," said Mr Donnelly, a father-of-one from Carrickfergus.

"Crime is wrong, arson is wrong and I don't agree to buildings being burnt down but the sight of Lissue burning down for a lot of victims will be a relief.

"It's a painful reminder of the abuse and the hell I went through there. It's exactly like Kincora.

"I now live in Carrickfergus so I don't have to go near it but I always thought that I would like to see it just once to see what other memories it brought back.

"But I've never managed to bring myself to do it.

"For others who were there, they tell me they do have to drive past or live near it and it's a painful memory they couldn't escape from.

"It was a listed building but whoever set fire to it has brought some relief to victims of abuse there."

Former patients of the psychiatric hospital in Co Antrim have alleged they were the victims of physical, sexual and emotional abuse in the 1980s and 1990s.

Six nurses at Lissue House and Forster Green hospital in Belfast were accused of abuse, and allegations were made against members of the security forces.

Claims of abuse at Lissue are being investigated by the Historical Institutional Abuse Inquiry.

Kelly Lawrie, a 42-year-old mother from Belfast was also a resident in the unit after being a branded a "wild child" by social services in 1982.

"It sounds awful to say that I am pleased that it has been razed to the ground but that's how a lot of victims feel," she said. "I wouldn't say I felt happy but for a lot of victims we wanted it pulled down and that was never going to happen.

"I don't know how it started, whether it was arsonists or accidental and I don't condone crime but the crimes that went on in that place were worse than went on outside it.

"You never get over it, sights, sounds, smells that remind you, it triggers something in you and you relive the abuse."
Former loyalist paramilitary and Progressive Unionist Party (PUP) chairman William 'Plum' Smith's funeral takes place from St Matthews Church of Ireland on the Woodvale road in Belfast. Picture Mark Marlow/pacemaker press

Former loyalist paramilitary and Progressive Unionist Party (PUP) chairman William 'Plum' Smith's funeral takes place from St Matthews Church of Ireland on the Woodvale road in Belfast. Picture Mark Marlow/pacemaker press

Former loyalist paramilitary and Progressive Unionist Party (PUP) chairman William 'Plum' Smith's funeral takes place from St Matthews Church of Ireland on the Woodvale road in Belfast.

The funeral of a former leading loyalist paramilitary who played a key role in the peace process has taken place in Belfast.

William "Plum" Smith died in hospital after a short illness. He was 62.

His funeral is taking place at St Matthew's Parish Church, Woodvale Road on Friday.

The former Ulster Volunteer Force and Red Hand Commando paramilitary was imprisoned during the Troubles for attempted murder.

During some of the worst years of the conflict he and other senior loyalists, including Gusty Spence and David Ervine, started formulating strategies to move Northern Ireland away from violence.

He was central to the process which brought the historic step of the Combined Loyalist Military Command ceasefire in 1994, chairing the press conference that announced the move.

Smith later went on to become part of the loyalist political delegation that helped negotiate the landmark Good Friday Agreement in 1998.

He was a former chairman of the Progressive Unionist Party (PUP), which has a close alignment with the UVF.

Former PUP leader Brian Ervine described Smith as a "very intelligent" man.

"I'm just very, very sorry," he said.

Expand Expand Expand Expand Previous Next Close William Plum Smith William Plum Smith with Rea in 1970s Loyalist William 'Plum' Smith Left to right: Rev Harold Good, John Bunting, William 'Plum' Smith, Jackie McDonald, Martin McGuinness, Harry Thompson, Winston 'Winkie' Rea, Peter Sheridan, Brian Rowan / Facebook

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"I found him a very decent human being, and I found him a very forward-thinking human being and he will be a loss, certainly to the Progressive Unionist Party and the loyalist community.

"He was a clear thinker, he was left-of-centre politically, he had a heart for ordinary people, for working-class people, he tried to provide a voice, a voice which had been neglected."

Mr Ervine told Radio Ulster: "He was also happy enough to stretch over the fence and do business with traditional enemies."

Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness was among the politicians who paid tribute.

He tweeted: "I valued his commitment and contribution to peace."

Progressive Unionist politician Dr John Kyle, who like Smith was once chairman of the party, added: "He pushed the peace process forward as an important negotiator who helped bring the conflict to an end, but it all took a physical and an emotional toll on him."
Human rights laws are being used by the Government as a "defence for doing nothing" to secure compensation for IRA terror attack victims, peers have heard.

The Ulster Unionist Party's Lord Empey slammed the use of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) as an "obstacle", as he urged ministers to consider the rights of the "people who were blown to smithereens".

He has tabled proposed legislation designed to allow the Treasury to prevent the release of frozen assets owned by those involved in supplying arms to terrorist organisations until a settlement is reached with their UK victims.

Lord Empey's focus fell on those injured and killed as a result of IRA attacks sponsored by the regime of former Libyan dictator Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, which supplied Semtex explosive and other weapons.

The former Northern Ireland Assembly member said his measures would attempt to give the UK Government the powers to "right the wrongs" done to the victims of Gaddafi-sponsored terrorism, with attacks including the 1996 London Docklands bombing.

But Government spokesman Viscount Younger of Leckie said the Asset Freezing (Compensation) Bill would be in breach of the UK's obligations under UN Security Council resolutions, EU sanctions regulations and the ECHR.

He added it could result in legal action against the UK by those forced to pay "extortionate compensation" simply to gain access to their assets.

Speaking during the Bill's second reading, Lord Empey said he was shocked by the Government's reply.

He said: "Only we in this part of Europe, let alone anywhere else, could come up with the European Convention of Human Rights as an obstacle in the path of getting funds for the victims.

"What about the rights of the people who were blown to smithereens? Have we got the whole world on its head? That is a defence for doing nothing.

"We are talking here about the state of Libya, the successor to Gaddafi, whenever it emerges from whatever struggles it is having."

Lord Empey questioned if Britain has asked its counterparts in Europe and at the UN to develop proposals to secure compensation.

He said: "Have any of these people turned us down? That's what we need to find out.

"We're not asking for anything and why are we not asking for anything? Is there a hidden hand somewhere - a deal somewhere in the background that we know nothing about? Why not?

"Our responsibility is to the people of the United Kingdom first and last."

Lord Empey said the attacks are not a private matter for victims to pursue with the Libyan government, adding the UK Government should be "up front and centre" in dealing with the matter.

Labour offered to take part in talks aimed at developing amendments to help the Bill progress.

Earlier, Viscount Younger explained the difficulties with the legal implications of the Bill and how they would work.

He said: "The human rights issues relate in particular to the settlements referred to in subsection five of the Bill.

"Depending on what is meant by this provision it could amount to the denial of a fair trial in breach of article six of the ECHR or a breach of the right to enjoyment of property in article one of protocol one of the ECHR.

"The person, entity or state whose assets are frozen may be forced to pay extortionate compensation simply to get the asset freeze lifted.

"They may also take legal action against the UK Government to make good their losses."

The Bill was given an unopposed second reading and will undergo further scrutiny at committee stage in the Lords.

But it is unlikely to become law if it fails to secure Government support.
Scenes from the aftermath of the atrocity

Scenes from the aftermath of the atrocity

Scenes from the aftermath of the atrocity

Victim Barney Greene was oldest man to die in Troubles at 87

O'Tooles Bar (The Heights), in the quiet Co Down village of Loughinisland where UVF gunmen burst in opened fire, during a World Cup match on June 18, 1994.

The Heights Bar in Loughinisland where six men were shot dead

Six people were killed at The Heights Bar at Loughinisland in 1994

Those murdered in the Loughinisland massacre were Barney Green, 87; Adrian Rogan, 34; Malcolm Jenkinson, 53; Daniel McCreanor, 59; Patrick O'Hare, 35; and Eamon Byrne, 39.

O'Tooles Bar (The Heights) in the Co. Down village of Loughinisland. Six men were shot dead by two UVF gunmen, while they were watching the 1994 World Cup on television.

Relatives of the Loughinisland massacre speak at the Ramada Hotel, Shaws Bridge, after the findings of the report were published

The Heights Bar in Loughinisland where the shootings took place

That summer evening in June 1994 I was a guest at a wedding in a hotel just a few miles from Loughinisland village.

I can remember the confusion when the music and carefree laughter was abruptly replaced by panic and tears as news of a shooting in the small village bar spread throughout the wedding hall.

Guests with family in Loughinisland ran into the hotel foyer where they crowded around two pay phones making frantic calls home to make sure loved ones were safe.

A couple of years after the atrocity my family moved to Loughinisland, to a house a short distance from the Heights Bar.

We were "blow-ins", newcomers with no real connection to the village. But the people of this beautiful village, still raw with grief, generously accepted us as part of their close-knit community.

Over the years the resilience and strength of this community has never failed to amaze me.

Despite the shadow of being associated with such a terrible atrocity, the people of Loughinisland have refused to let it define them. It has never destroyed their spirit.

Nobody in this village passes without a wave or a bright smile.

While in my adult years I moved away from the village, I still proudly claim to be a Loughinislander - even if only a blow in.
Two people are feared dead after debris from a missing microlight was found in the sea north of Glenarm in Co Antrim.

The debris was found about 1km off the coast. A search for the passengers is ongoing.

The aircraft went missing after leaving City of Derry Airport with another light aircraft that landed safely in Scotland on Thursday.

The search was launched on Thursday evening when the light aircraft, which had two people on board, was reported overdue.

The operation continued to 3am, but had to be suspended due to fog.

The flight took off from the City of Derry airport and had been tracking towards Stranraer.

The air, land and sea search resumed when the morning fog lifted on Friday.

A fixed wing aircraft and the Irish Coastguard search and rescue helicopter are involved.

Coastguard search teams are carrying out a shore search while RNLI lifeboats are out looking in the North Channel.

The Northern Ireland North West Mountain Rescue Team has assisted the operation.

Community Rescue Service also assisted using thermal imaging technology.

Sean McCarry, from the Community Rescue Service, told the BBC "the chances of finding survivors was less and less" as time goes on.

"We always have to keep up hope but it certainly is a blow when you find wreckage. The most important thing now is to try and identify and find where the two persons who were on the aircraft are and try to put a plan into place to recover those persons.

"These two light aircraft were travelling together. One missed the fog and one entered fog and we're now seeing possibly the results of that."
Grand Master of the Grand Orange Lodge of Ireland Edward Stevenson (centre) presents senior Portadown Orangemen (from left) David Jones, District Master Darryl Hewitt, Alan Burns and Cecil Allen with a special flag to mark the tourist flagship status for this years Co Armagh Twelfth of July parade

A Twelfth of July fit for tourists is the hope for this year's marching season, according to the Orange Order.

Portadown and Kilkeel have been selected as flagship tourist parades for the biggest day in the institution's calendar.

The initiative was introduced in 2006 in cooperation with the Northern Ireland Tourist Board in an attempt to attract more foreign visitors.

A total of 18 marches are planned in across the region on Tuesday, July 12, following the traditional Rossnowlagh parade in the Republic on the preceding weekend.

The Orange Order said it wanted the parades in Portadown and Kilkeel to broaden the appeal of the Twelfth.

Grand Master of the Grand Orange Lodge of Ireland Edward Stevenson insisted that he was confident of attracting an "increasing number of visitors, tourists and families".

He said: "Both venues are worthy ambassadors as Twelfth tourist flagships, and we are delighted that they will be working closely with us this year to ensure equally successful events.

"The flagship programme, which has been constantly evolving for over 10 years, has been an enormous success.

"The organisers of both parades are working on a programme of events leading up to the big day and there will be plenty for people to enjoy.

"As part of our cultural tourism offering, visitors will also be welcomed to each of the parades by fully accredited welcome hosts."

Economy Minister Simon Hamilton welcomed the Orange Order initiative.

"The tourism industry in Northern Ireland is hugely significant as both an economic driver and in supporting and creating employment," he said.

"It has been recognised that cultural tourism has an important role to play in helping visitors select their short break and holiday destination. Increasingly, we are seeing more and more international visitors coming to Northern Ireland keen to experience the biggest day in the Loyal Orders' parading calendar on the Twelfth of July."

Darryl Hewitt, District Master of Portadown Orange Lodge, described how being named as one of the flagship tourist parades was "a great honour".

"Co Armagh demonstrations are always family-orientated, and Portadown District is seeking to build on this," he said.

Mourne District Master Trevor McConnell added: "The Mourne Twelfth is always a very enjoyable day for families, and we wish all visitors a hearty welcome. This Twelfth will be particularly poignant as we remember and respect the Fallen of the Somme."

Where the main parades will be

The full list of venues for Orange Order demonstrations on Tuesday, July 12 is:

Kilkeel

Belfast

Maguiresbridge

Limavady

Castledawson

Coagh

Newtownstewart

Aughnacloy

Randalstown

Glenarm

Ballymena

Ahoghill

Lisburn

Ballycastle

Donaghadee

Comber

Dromore

A Twelfth demonstration will also be held in Rossnowlagh, Co Donegal, on Saturday, July 9
PSNI confirm Chief Constable Jon Boutcher, from Bedfordshire Police will lead operation Kenova the investigation into the alleged activities of Army agent known as Steaknife. Pictured are Chief Constable Jon Boutcher and PSNI Chief constable George Hamilton at police headquarters in Belfast today. Picture Mark Marlow/pacemaker press

Belfast man Freddie Scappaticci was named as the British agent Stakeknife by the media in 2003 - an allegation he has always denied

Chief Constable George Hamilton has confirmed that the investigation into the alleged activities of the IRA double agent known as Stakeknife will be conducted by officers outside the PSNI.

Freddie Scappaticci is alleged to have been the most high ranking British agent within the Provisional IRA who was given the codename 'Stakeknife'.

Mr Scappaticci has always denied the allegations. He left Northern Ireland when identified by the media as Stakeknife, in 2003.

He is believed to have led the IRA's internal security unit, known as 'the nutting squad,' which was responsible for identifying and interrogating suspected informers.

Stakeknife has been linked to over 50 murders.

Last year the Director of Public Prosecutions Barra McGrory called for a police investigation into the agent's activities.

On Friday - after delaying his announcement to allow for the publication of the Loughinisland report - Chief Constable Geroge Hamilton said the investigation will be led by Chief Constable Jon Boutcher, from Bedfordshire Police.

The investigation has been named Operation Kenova and is expected to last around five years and will cost around 35million.

It will be based in London and staffed with officers with no connection to Northern Ireland police, the security services or the Army.

Making the announcement, Chief Constable George Hamilton said: After taking a number of issues into consideration, I have decided that a team resourced with external officers and staff funded by the PSNI is the most appropriate way forward, given the size, scale and complexity of the investigation.

"Chief Constable Boutcher will have the delegated authority of me as the Chief Constable of the PSNI. He will appoint a Senior Investigating Officer and a team of detectives from other UK law enforcement agencies to progress this investigation.

I believe this option contributes towards community confidence and reduces the impact on the PSNIs ability to provide a policing service today."

He continued: "I have every confidence in Chief Constable Boutcher and I have no doubt his previous experience when it comes to dealing with highly complex and sensitive investigations will be of great benefit to him as this investigation progresses.

The focus of the investigation will be:

Whether there is evidence of the commission of criminal offences by the alleged agent known as Stakeknife, including but not limited to, murders, attempted murders and unlawful imprisonments.

Whether there is evidence of criminal offences having been committed by members of the British Army, the Security Services or other Government agencies, in respect of the cases connected to the alleged agent known as Stakeknife.

Whether there is evidence of criminal offences having been committed by any other individual, in respect of the cases connected to the alleged agent.

Whether there is evidence of the commission of criminal offences by any persons in respect of allegations of perjury connected to the alleged agent.

If the team identifies matters which indicate that former or current police officers may have committed criminal or misconduct offences, they will be formally and expeditiously referred to the Deputy Chief Constable of the PSNI who will refer the matter to the Office of the Police Ombudsman.

Any other matters falling outside the parameters of the investigation will be brought to the attention of the Chief Constable of the PSNI by Chief Constable Boutcher for consideration. The Chief Constable of the Police Service of Northern Ireland will, if necessary, consult with the Director of Public Prosecutions or the Police Ombudsman as to the appropriate basis on which to address these additional matters.

Chief Constable Jon Boutcher, from Bedfordshire Police, has 31 years of police service, most of it spent as a top-level detective.

He added: I am humbled to have been asked to lead such a critically important and complex investigation.

I do not underestimate the huge task of establishing the circumstances behind how and why these murders occurred during those dark days.

My principle aim in taking responsibility for this investigation is to bring those responsible for these awful crimes, in whatever capacity they were involved, to justice.

The recruitment process for the investigation team will begin immediately, this will require time and I ask for a degree of patience as I do this.

As soon as officers and staff are in place the investigation team will begin reaching out to victims, victims families and all interested parties to receive information.

"Updates regarding this will be provided on the Op Kenova investigation website.

I am committed to doing all I can to find the truth for the victims and their families. It is them who we should be thinking of throughout.

It must be extremely hard to have listened to various commentaries within the community and the media about how and why their loved ones died. I hope this investigation ultimately addresses the uncertainties and rumours. All I can promise is an absolute commitment to pursuing the truth.

The recruitment process will begin shortly for the team which will be based in secure accommodation in London and will carry out enquiries in Northern Ireland as necessary.

The investigation team will not include personnel who are serving in or have previously served in the RUC, PSNI, Ministry of Defence or Security Services. The PSNI will not have any investigative responsibility but will have the discretion to support any investigative requirement of Chief Constable Boutcher in Northern Ireland.

The Chief Constable of the PSNI will ensure that mechanisms are in place to update the Director of Public Prosecutions as to the progress of the investigation. Once the investigation has concluded, a report will be provided to the Chief Constable of the PSNI including any recommendations for the consideration of the DPP.

Chief Constable Boutcher will report to the Chief Constable of the PSNI who will be accountable to the Policing Board for the investigation. It is envisaged that Chief Constable Boutcher will accompany senior officers from the PSNI to brief Policing Board members as appropriate on governance and logistical issues.
Two women and female youth arrested following arson attack at flat in Agnes St, Belfast. Picture by/Stephen Hamilton Press Eye

Two women and female youth arrested following arson attack at flat in Agnes St, Belfast. Picture by/Stephen Hamilton Press Eye

Two women and female youth arrested following arson attack at flat in Agnes St, Belfast. Picture by/Stephen Hamilton Press Eye

Two women and female youth arrested following arson attack at flat in Agnes St, Belfast. Picture by/Stephen Hamilton Press Eye

Two women and female youth arrested following arson attack at flat in Agnes St, Belfast. Picture by/Stephen Hamilton Press Eye

Three women have been arrested after a fire was started at the front door of a north Belfast house.

A woman escaped through a window after the fire was started at the flat in Agnes Street in the early hours of Friday morning.

A 16-year-old girl and two 21-year-old women were arrested on suspicion of arson with intent to endanger life.

The property was excessively smoke damaged and the front porch and entrance hallway were badly damaged by fire. All three females remain in custody assisting officers with their enquiries.

Detective Inspector Snoddy has appealed for anyone with any information about this incident to contact detectives at Musgrave on 101 quoting reference number 176 10/06/16.

Alternatively information can be given anonymously through the independent charity Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111.
Hospitals are failing to learn from the potentially avoidable deaths of babies during labour, the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists said.

Many hospitals are not learning from potentially avoidable deaths or serious injuries of babies during labour, a new report suggests.

Around half of local investigations into stillbirths and neonatal deaths as well as babies who suffer severe brain injuries following full-term labour are "inadequate", the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG) said.

The majority of parents are not being invited to contribute to such reviews, while many are unaware that they have even taken place, the College found.

Health Minister Ben Gummer said that the findings were "unacceptable" adding that the NHS is expected to learn from every case.

The College has called for more robust reviews into these cases, particularly for more parental input to the investigations.

The report is the first in a series from data collected as part of RCOG's Each Baby Counts initiative, a UK-wide quality improvement programme which aims to halve the number of incidents of stillbirth, neonatal death and severe brain injury during full-term labour - when a woman is at least 37 weeks pregnant when going into labour - by 2020.

The document provides interim data on these incidents from 2015. Across the UK there were 921 cases reported including 654 severe brain injuries, 147 early neonatal deaths - when a baby dies in the first few days of life - and 119 stillbirths.

Each Baby Counts reviewers have so far assessed 204 of these investigations. They found that 27% of the reviews were "poor quality". And 39% of the remaining 73% of reviews - or 29% of all reviews - did not include any actions to improve care. In total, 56% of reviews were "inadequate", the College said.

It found that only a quarter of parents were invited to contribute to the investigation into the death or injury of their baby. Meanwhile one in four parents were not even told that a review was taking place.

Nicky Lyon, parent representative on the Each Baby Counts advisory group and co-founder of the Campaign for Safer Births, said: "Our son Harry suffered profound brain damage during term labour. After a difficult life of tube feeding, constant sickness, fits and discomfort, our son died of a chest infection aged 18 months. As a family we have been left devastated at the loss of our beautiful boy.

"In the days following Harry's birth we asked what had gone wrong, but we were ignored. It was only after submitting a formal complaint that we learnt that an investigation was already underway.

"It's hard to describe how upset, confused and angry we were - the poor communication and secrecy made a terrible situation so much worse.

"Patients and their families should always be at the heart of a review, and being included in the process would have made such a difference to our family."

Judith Abela, acting chief executive of the stillbirth and neonatal death charity Sands, said: "The death of a baby has a lifelong impact on families. Many believe their baby's death was not inevitable and opportunities were missed to save their child.

"We have been calling for a robust and effective review process for some time, including parental involvement in local investigations. Parents' perspective of what happened is critical to understanding how care can be improved and they must be given the opportunity to be involved, with open, respectful and sensitive support provided throughout."

Professor Alan Cameron, RCOG's vice president for clinical quality and co-principal investigator for Each Baby Counts, added: "It is clear that we need more robust and comprehensive reviews, which are led by multidisciplinary teams and include parental and external expert input.

"Stillbirth rates in the UK remain high and our current data indicate that nearly 1,000 babies a year die or are left severely disabled because of potentially avoidable harm in labour.

"When the outcome for parents is the devastating loss of a baby, or a baby born with a severe brain injury, there can be little justification for the poor quality of reviews.

"Only by ensuring that local investigations are conducted thoroughly with parental and external input can we identify where systems need to be improved. Once every baby affected has their care reviewed robustly we can begin to understand the causes of these tragedies."

Health Minister Mr Gummer said: "These findings are unacceptable. We expect the NHS to review and learn from every tragic case which is why we are investing in a new system to support staff to do this and help ensure far fewer families have to go through this heartache."

Louise Silverton, director for midwifery at the Royal College of Midwives, added: "This report clearly shows that improvements in the investigation process are needed.

"Each one of these statistics is a tragic event, and means terrible loss and suffering for the parents. We must do all we can to reduce the chances of these occurring. This report shows that this is not the case and improvements are needed as a matter of urgency," she said.
Andy Burnham said that Labour's campaigning had been "far too much Hampstead and not enough Hull"

Jeremy Corbyn said he was "not a huge fan" of the European Union but was 70-75% in favour of the UK staying in for the sake of workers' rights and the environment.

The Opposition leader defended his decision not to share platforms with David Cameron, insisting the Prime Minister was pursuing a "totally different argument".

His appeal to Labour voters during an appearance on Channel 4's The Last Leg comedy chat show came as one opinion poll showed the Leave campaign taking a 10-point lead.

The survey by ORB for The Independent put the scores at 55% to 45% in favour of pulling out of the European Union, after allowing for an individual's likelihood to vote.

That is a four-point jump in support from April when Vote Leave led by 51 to 49 and an exact reversal of the position when the series of surveys began a year ago.

A 56% majority of 2015 Labour voters - seen as pivotal to the result - back continued membership but 44% are pro-Brexit - while Tories are 62% to 38% in favour of divorce from Brussels

Mr Corbyn, who has a history of Euroscepticism, has been criticised for an apparently lukewarm commitment to the campaign for an in vote on June 23.

He said he was not surprised that prominent Labour backbencher John Mann had joined the pro-Brexit camp but insisted he was committed to pushing the rival case.

"I am not a huge fan of the European Union. What I believe is that this is a practical decision that we take in order to get better conditions across the whole continent for everybody," he said.

He downplayed the role of Brussels in securing rights such as paid holiday and maternity leave which he said "wasn't a gift from the European Union, it was collective action by unions across Europe".

But he said co-operation within the bloc was vital in a range of areas.

Asked to rate his passion for keeping the UK in the EU on a scale of one to 10, he said: "We're looking at seven, seven and a half".

Tories such as the PM wanted a Europe "dominated by global corporations" and would back the so-called TTIP trade deal with the US that Mr Corbyn opposes, he said.

"I want to see a Europe that is about social cohesion, that is about better human rights, that is about workers' rights and is also about taking a European response to help victims of wars who are going through the most appalling situation on the borders of Europe at the moment.

"I suspect his views are different".

It came after Labour stepped up its campaigning with a warning that a vote to leave the EU would usher in a "hard right" Tory government committed to a new wave of cuts.

Ed Miliband led a clutch of senior party figures in insisting Brexit was not the solution to widespread concerns over the impact of immigration.

Deputy leader Tom Watson published an analysis claiming the Conservatives would be forced to hike VAT and slash spending to cover a 28 billion "black hole" in the public finances.

Concerns about losing Labour voters to Leave were intensified with the announcement that two more prominent backbenchers - Mr Mann and Dennis Skinner - had joined the handful of Labour MPs in the Brexit camp.
Richard Alden is the former chief executive of an internet and multimedia service provider in Kenya

A British former chief executive of a pioneering internet firm has been charged with murder in Kenya over the death of a woman who was shot in his house.

Richard Alden, 53, denied the charges, and Justice Stella Mutuku ordered that he be held until Thursday when his bail application will be heard.

Alden is the former chief executive of Wananchi Group, an internet and multimedia service provider in Kenya.

His previous lawyer, Evans Monari, said Grace Wangeci, 42, died after she shot herself while taking a picture of herself with Alden's gun.

His current lawyer, Cliff Ombeta, said Alden was in a different room when Ms Wangeci shot herself and there is no proof she was taking a selfie.

Mr Ombeta said: "Our defence is that while this incident took place, Mr Alden was in a different room where the gun and the safe were. The deceased is the only one who knows what happened."

In his argument for bail, Alden, a father of three, said he took Ms Wangeci to hospital after the shooting and called the police.

"This clearly shows that I am not a flight risk and I did not escape, even when the opportunity presented itself," he said in court documents.
Daraya has been subject to a crippling government blockade since the early stages of the 2011 uprising against president Bashar Assad

An international aid convoy has delivered food to the Damascus suburb of Daraya for the first time in nearly four years, but opposition activists said distribution of the aid had been held up amid a heavy air bombardment by government forces.

The opposition-held suburb of Daraya, south west of the Syrian capital, has been under siege by government forces since November 2012 and has witnessed some of the worst bombardments during the country's civil war, now in its sixth year.

Severe cases of malnutrition have been reported among its few thousand residents due to severe shortages of food and medicine.

The desperately needed delivery of food supplies by the Syrian Arab Red Crescent (SARC) and the United Nations came hours after the UN said the Syrian government had approved access to 15 of the 19 besieged areas in Syria.

Last week, a joint convoy of the UN, the International Committee of the Red Cross and SARC reached Daraya and delivered medicine, vaccines, baby formula and "nutritional items for children"- but no food.

The UN estimates there are 592,700 people living under siege in Syria, with the vast majority - about 452,700 people - besieged by government forces.

Lifting the siege on rebel-held areas was a key demand by the opposition during indirect peace talks in Geneva earlier this year.

SARC said the food delivery was co-ordinated with the United Nations in the Syrian capital. It said food, flour and medical supplies were delivered.

An opposition activist in Daraya said the government allowed minimal amounts of food stuff into the suburb to create problems between the starving residents.

"Nothing has been distributed so far and the barrel bombs are falling on the city," said media activist Muhannad Abu al-Zein. "They allowed in food stuff for a quarter of the families here."

The UN estimates that 4,000 to 8,000 people live in Daraya, which has been subject to a crippling government blockade since residents expelled security forces in the early stages of the 2011 uprising against President Bashar Assad.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which closely monitors the fighting, also reported air strikes on Daraya on Friday.

An official with the UN's World Food Programme said in a video posted online by media activists in Daraya that the WFP is delivering assistance to the suburb for the first time since 2012. He said the WFP had delivered about 480 food rations that would feed about 2,400 individuals for a month.

The WFP official said he had met some beneficiaries of the food aid and community leaders. "The supply of the very basic commodities is very challenging, so as a consequence the prices of the commodities themselves are very high whenever they are available," he said.

"As a result most families are having to do with one meal, which is not complete as a meal, per day in order to be able to get by," he said.

An amateur video posted online showed UN SUVs and white SARC trucks driving through sand barriers in the dark until they were met by opposition fighters.

Photographs posted online by activists in the suburb showed UN and SARC officials meeting local dignitaries and men removing WFP boxes from a white truck.

Among those joining the convoy into Daraya were the UN humanitarian co-ordinator for Syria, Yacoub El Hillo, and Khawla Mattar, a spokeswoman for the UN special envoy to Syria, Staffan de Mistura, according to photographs posted by local activists.
A bartender pours Cuban Havana Club rum for a mojito at the Floridita bar in Havana, as two drinks giants are escalating a 20-year fight to secure the rights to sell Havana Club rum in the United States.

The opening up of relations between Cuba and America has sparked a race between drinks giants to win the rights to sell Cuban rum, Havana Club.

In a new US advert for Bacardi's Havana Club, a couple unwinding with cocktails, his tuxedo loosened and her dress slightly askew, evokes the openness and decadence of pre-revolution Cuba that many exiles have longed for.

By contrast, an online gallery of portraits of employees at the distillery in Cuba of a rival brand of Havana Club jointly run by Pernod Ricard and the Cuban government shows Cubans proud to show the craft and heritage their country offers now, without looking back.

The fresh marketing campaigns for the two brands are the latest escalation in the drinks industry giants' 20-year fight to secure the exclusive right to sell Havana Club throughout the US when the half-century-old embargo on Cuban goods ends.

Both Bacardi and Pernod Ricard hope to capitalise on consumers' growing appreciation for premium rums, as well as US excitement for easier travel to Cuba and its once-forbidden rum and cigars.

Similar disputes typically are resolved by establishing who registered first, but this case is complicated and has been defined by bitterness between Cuba's government and exiles.

After President Barack Obama announced a detente in December 2014, Pernod Ricard's chairman and CEO said the thaw was good news for Cubans and Americans, and the company hopes to finally sell its Havana Club in the United States. Bacardi, privately held by its founding Cuban family, still seeks the rights to its own name in Cuba, a trademark it lost to Fidel Castro's government.

Cuba registered its US trademark in 1976 and exported Havana Club mostly to Eastern Europe until a 1993 joint venture with Paris-based Pernod Ricard. Now it is sold in over 120 countries - except the United States, the world's biggest rum market.

US rum sales generated $2.3 billion (1.6 billion) in revenue for distillers last year, and premium brands meant for sipping are gaining on popular flavoured and spiced rums, according to figures from the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States.

Bacardi produces its rums in Puerto Rico and Mexico, but the company argues that it has been supplying the US with Cuban rum for over a century.

It has sold its Havana Club in a handful of states since the mid-1990s. The new "golden age" ad campaign alluding to Bacardi's past in Cuba is part of a nationwide rollout that includes a new, dark style of Havana Club.

Bacardi bought the name and a distillation formula handwritten from memory by the Arechabala family, who created the brand in Cuba in 1935 but lost control to Castro's government in 1960. The company's filings in federal lawsuits and trademark board appeals bristle with indignation while describing Castro's troops forcibly confiscating the Arechabalas' office property.

When Havana Club was acquired, then-Chairman Manuel Jorge Cutillas felt obligated to help the Arechabalas, who lacked facilities outside Cuba to sustain their business, said Rick Wilson, Bacardi's senior vice president of corporate affairs.

"I remember him in particular saying that it was important that we were going to help this family so that all of their assets were not taken outside of Cuba," Mr Wilson said in an interview in Bacardi's suburban Miami offices.

In court documents, Bacardi describes the rum produced by its competitor as "ersatz Havana Club." Pernod Ricard's general counsel, Ian FitzSimons, scoffed at Bacardi's labelling of rum distilled in Puerto Rico as Cuban in any way.

"There's a tradition of over 100 years of rum-making in Cuba, and we rely heavily on that. If you're going to have a rum named Havana Club, it should be made in Cuba, and it should be made with Cuban products," Mr FitzSimons said by phone from Havana.

Havana Club's sales, buoyed by promotions featuring Cuban artists and classic cocktails, totaled 4 million cases for the 2015 fiscal year, according to Pernod Ricard's annual report that listed $9.7 billion (6.7 billion) overall in net sales.

Pernod Ricard is investing $90 million (62.4 million) over the next few years to expand its operations in Cuba in preparation for the opening of the U.S. market, said Havana Club CEO Jerome Cottin-Bizonne.

Bermuda-based Bacardi does not disclose its earnings, but its corporate responsibility report for the 2014 fiscal year tallied 60 million cases generating $4.477 billion (3.1 billion) in net sales. Court records show it paid $1.25 million (870,000 million) to the Arechabalas for the Havana Club rights.

US courts generally have ruled against Cuba in this case, but the island's government pursued renewal for its Havana Club registration, arguing that if the US could not renew the trademark it also could not cancel it under the embargo.

In spite of decades of icy relations, the US Patent and Trademark Office appeals board regularly declined Bacardi's request to have Cuba's registration cancelled, saying it lacked the authority to answer Bacardi's politically charged complaints.

A stalled federal lawsuit was revived when US trademark officials abruptly renewed Cuba's trademark in January. Republican Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, echoing Cuban hard-liners in her Miami-area district, blasted the Obama administration for siding with Cuba over US business interests.

In its response to Bacardi's latest legal challenge, Pernod Ricard and the Cuban government say the US trademark for Havana Club had been abandoned by its originators after Cuba "assumed managerial control" of the Arechabalas' company.

Bacardi ultimately lost its claim to the Havana Club trademark in Spain after lengthy litigation there. The World Trade Organization also has sided with Cuba, saying the US violates multilateral trade rules with its regulations for cases involving assets seized by the island's government.

None of that matters, Mr Wilson said, because only two companies run by the two Cuban families have ever sold rum labelled Havana Club in the US.

"Regardless of what happened with the registration, we have the common law rights. Cuba doesn't," Mr Wilson said.
A Yemeni man inspects the damage at a site reportedly hit by Saudi-led airstrikes in the capital Sanaa on January 6, 2016. Nearly 6,000 people have been killed since March, according to UN figures. At least 2,795 of them are civilians. AFP PHOTO / MOHAMMED HUWAISMOHAMMED HUWAIS/AFP/Getty Images

The civil war in Yemen has killed more than 5,800 people since March (AP)

Yemeni blind and disabled people shout slogans during a demonstration to protest after a centre for the blind was reportedly destroyed by Saudi-led airstrikes in the capital Sanaa on January 6, 2016. Nearly 6,000 people have been killed since March, according to UN figures. At least 2,795 of them are civilians. AFP/Getty Images

A Yemeni man inspects the damage at a site reportedly hit by Saudi-led airstrikes in the capital Sanaa on January 6, 2016. Nearly 6,000 people have been killed since March, according to UN figures. At least 2,795 of them are civilians. AFP PHOTO / MOHAMMED HUWAISMOHAMMED HUWAIS/AFP/Getty Images

Yemeni blind men shout slogans during a demonstration gathering disabled people to protest after a center for the blind was reportedly destroyed by Saudi-led airstrikes in the capital Sanaa on January 6, 2016. AFP/Getty Images

Yemeni blind men hold a banner during a demonstration gathering disabled people to protest after a center for the blind was reportedly destroyed by Saudi-led airstrikes in the capital Sanaa on January 6, 2016. Nearly 6,000 people have been killed since March, according to UN figures. At least 2,795 of them are civilians. AFP PHOTO / MOHAMMED HUWAISMOHAMMED HUWAIS/AFP/Getty Images

TOPSHOT - Yemeni construction workers walk with their rollers for painting in the the capital, Sanaa, on January 5, 2016. AFP PHOTO / MOHAMMED HUWAIS / AFP / MOHAMMED HUWAISMOHAMMED HUWAIS/AFP/Getty Images

A man uses his mobile to take pictures of the rubble of the Chamber of Trade and Industry headquarters after it was hit by a Saudi-led air strike in Sanaa, Yemen, Tuesday, Jan. 5, 2016. (AP Photo/Hani Mohammed)

An employee inspects a room inside the Chamber of Trade and Industry headquarters after it was hit by a Saudi-led airstrike in Sanaa, Yemen, Tuesday, Jan. 5, 2016. (AP Photo/Hani Mohammed)

Employees walk on the rubble of the Chamber of Trade and Industry headquarters after it was hit by a Saudi-led airstrike in Sanaa, Yemen, Tuesday, Jan. 5, 2016. (AP Photo/Hani Mohammed)

Yemenis look at destruction in the street following air strikes on the capital, Sanaa, on January 5, 2016. AFP PHOTO / MOHAMMED HUWAISMOHAMMED HUWAIS/AFP/Getty Images

A general view shows the rubble of the building of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry which was destroyed during air strikes on the capital, Sanaa, on January 5, 2016. AFP PHOTO / MOHAMMED HUWAISMOHAMMED HUWAIS/AFP/Getty Images

A Yemeni worker looks at the damage at the Noor Centre for the Blind after it was reportedly destroyed by Saudi-led air strikes in the capital Sanaa on January 5, 2016. AFP/Getty Images

Ban Ki-Moon said the decision was 'one of the most painful and difficult' he has had to make as Secretary General (File photo - AP)

United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon removed the Saudi-led coalition fighting in Yemen from an annual UN register of childrens rights violators, after the middle-eastern country and its coalition partners threatened to cut off crucial funding to the world body.

The U.N.s 2015 Children and Armed Conflict report originally listed the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen under parties that kill or maim children and parties that engage in attacks on schools and/or hospitals.

The removal of Saudi Arabia from the list was one of the most painful and difficult decisions I have had to make, said Ban Ki-Moon, describing the pressure the Arab nation had exerted on the UN as unacceptable.

His admission came after the coalition  which comprises the Saudis, UAE, Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Senegal and Sudan  was cut from the appendix of the UNs annual Children and Armed Conflict report, to the dismay of human rights groups.

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The UNs own nonprofit advocacy group, Human Rights Watch, said in an open letter to the Secretary General that it was shocked by the decision to cut Saudi Arabia from the reprorts list of shame. But Mr Ban said he was forced to consider the very real prospect that millions of other children would suffer grievously if, as was suggested to me, countries would defund many UN programs.

Without naming Saudi Arabia specifically, Mr Ban said children in Palestine, South Sudan, Yemen and so many other places stood to be affected if such programmes had to be cut. It is unacceptable for member states to exert undue pressure, he went on. Scrutiny is a natural and necessary part of the work of the United Nations.

The appendix lists those countries that have violated childrens rights over the preceding 12 months. UN Investigators found that the Saudi coalition was to blame for the deaths of more than half of the 510 children killed in the conflict in Yemen last year.

The Arab coalition began its campaign in Yemen in March 2015, against Iranian-backed Houthi rebels and supporters of the countrys former President, Ali Abdullah Saleh. The UN claims around 6,000 people have died in the conflict to date.

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Mr Ban suggested Saudi Arabia, which is one of the biggest donors to the international organisations humanitarian efforts, had threatened to cancel its funding to the UN unless it was removed from the list of rights violators.

The Saudis pushed back against the accusations. We did not use threats or intimidation and we did not talk about funding, the kingdoms UN ambassador, Abdallah Al-Mouallimi, told reporters, adding: It is not in our style, it is not in our genes, it is not in our culture to use threats and intimidation. We have the greatest respect for the United Nations institution.

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However a diplomatic source told Reuters on condition of anonymity that the UN was faced with bullying, threats [and] pressure from Riyadh, adding that it was real blackmail.

The source also said there was a threat of clerics in Riyadh meeting to issue a fatwa against the UN, declaring it anti-Muslim, which would mean no contacts of OIC [Organisation of Islamic Cooperation] members, no relations, contributions, support, to any UN projects [or] programs.

Independent
Hillary Clinton faces the possibility of prosecution for using a private email server at her New York home for classified documents while she US Secretary of State (AP Photo/John Locher)

White House press secretary Josh Earnest referred to the probe into Hillary Clinton's private email system as a possible "criminal investigation," just one hour after President Barack Obama endorsed her to become his successor.

Following Obama's video endorsement a reporter asked the president's spokesman about a potential conflict of interest.

"I wonder if you could address for us the potential conflict of interest that might exist when the president of the United States, the head of the executive branch, is openly saying, 'I want this woman to succeed me in the Oval Office,' and you have other employees of the Executive Branch -- career prosecutors, FBI agents -- working this case, who now have just heard how the president wants to see this case resolved, in essence. Isn't there some conflict there?" the reporter asked.

Earnest said that Obama was committed to keeping his hands off the probe, trusting career prosecutors to follow evidence wherever it leads.

He said: "I think that those career prosecutors understand that they have a job do to. And that that job that they are supposed to do, which is to follow the facts, to pursue the evidence to a logical conclusion, that that is a job that they are responsible for doing without any sort of political interference.

"And the president expects them to do that job. And look, this is the reason that we actually ask career federal prosecutors to take the lead on these kinds of matters. They're the ones who conduct this investigation.

"They are not -- they don't have political jobs. They have career jobs as law enforcement officers and as prosecutors and as investigators. And that's what their responsibility is.

"And that's why the president, when discussing this issue in each stage, has reiterated his commitment to this principle that any criminal investigation should be conducted independent of any sort of political interference, and that people should be treated the same way before the law regardless of their political influence, regardless of their political party, regardless of their political stature, and regardless of what political figure has endorsed them."

It is believed to be the first time the White House has made such an acknowlegement.

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Emails between US diplomats in Pakistan and Washington that referred to drone strikes are believed to be central to the FBI's investigation involving the Democratic presidential nominee, according to the The Wall Street Journal.

The 2011 and 2012 emails were sent via the "low side" - government slang for a computer system for unclassified matters - as part of a secret arrangement that gave the US State Department more of a voice in whether a CIA drone strike went ahead, according to congressional and law enforcement officials briefed on the FBI probe, the Journal said.

Some of the emails were then forwarded by Clinton's aides to her personal email account and private server, when she was secretary of state, the officials said, according to the WSJ.

Meanwhile ABC News reports that newly released State Department emails reveal that a major Clinton Foundation donor Rajiv K. Fernando was placed on a sensitive government intelligence advisory board even though he had no obvious experience in the field.

The emails issue has dogged Clinton for more than a year. An internal report found that she broke multiple government rules by using a private server rather than more secure official communication systems.

In January, the intelligence community deemed some of Clintons emails too damaging" to national security to release under any circumstances.

When asked about the possibility of being criminally charged over the email issue, Clinton has repeatedly said that is not going to happen.

Last month House speaker Paul Ryan said: No public official is above the law. Secretary Clintons actions were at best negligent and at worst harmful to our national security. The state department should work to ensure that all employees strictly comply with the law, and follow the IGs recommendations to strengthen its record-keeping system.

On Thursday Donald Trump took to Twitter to slam Clinton and Obama following the president's endorsement. He tweeted: "Obama just endorsed Crooked Hillary. He wants four more years of Obama - but nobody else does!"

A Twitter slanging match ensued.

Clinton responded with a popular Twitter meme: "Delete your account". Trump retorted: "How long did it take your staff of 823 people to think that up--and where are your 33,000 emails that you deleted?"

At a Democratic debate last year rival Bernie Sanders said: "The American people are sick and tired of hearing about your damn emails!"
O'Tooles Bar (The Heights), in the quiet Co Down village of Loughinisland where UVF gunmen burst in opened fire, during a World Cup match on June 18, 1994.

The Heights Bar in Loughinisland where six men were shot dead

Six people were killed at The Heights Bar at Loughinisland in 1994

Those murdered in the Loughinisland massacre were Barney Green, 87; Adrian Rogan, 34; Malcolm Jenkinson, 53; Daniel McCreanor, 59; Patrick O'Hare, 35; and Eamon Byrne, 39.

Relatives of the Loughinisland massacre speak at the Ramada Hotel, Shaws Bridge, after the findings of the report were published

O'Tooles Bar (The Heights) in the Co. Down village of Loughinisland. Six men were shot dead by two UVF gunmen, while they were watching the 1994 World Cup on television.

The Loughinisland report provides another disturbing insight into some of the darkest corners of policing in Northern Ireland and how sections of an intelligence apparatus set up to combat terrorism descended, in the Ombudsman's words, into "a corrupting involvement - tacitly, or otherwise - in serious criminal acts".

When the attack took place, the killings were initially regarded as yet another in the apparently endless series of Troubles' murders and were seen as part of a "tit-for-tat" series within that year's 69 deaths.

After members of the now-defunct INLA had driven up the Shankill Road and shot dead several UVF figures, everyone was braced for the inevitable loyalist retaliation.

The new report adds the grim specific detail that UVF leaders ordered "blood on the streets" in reprisal.

It is still unclear why the gunmen singled out for retaliation an obscure pub in a relatively peaceful area of Co Down, killing six men.

These included Barney Green, one of the oldest victims of the Troubles, who was an 87-year-old described as "a really jolly man who lived his life to the full".

Although the RUC promised to pursue the killers, no one was charged with the murders. Such a lack of convictions was not uncommon during the Troubles, but in this case, the Ombudsman was concerned by "unexplained delays in arrests, the loss of potential forensic opportunities and what might be described as inconsistencies, or anomalies".

His confident assertion that there was collusion in the incident is largely based on his study of the Special Branch's treatment of informers.

It appears that there was no specific intelligence that the Loughinisland bar would be attacked, but there was general knowledge of UVF activities in both Co Down and in Belfast.

While a high-profile murder inquiry was launched, the Ombudsman encountered many examples of failures to pass on intelligence to investigators.

This meant, he said, that there were cases where lines of inquiry were not followed and that some individuals, who could have been subject to robust investigation, were excluded from consideration.

The Ombudsman was taken aback to discover that one of those suspected of the attack was not only an RUC informant, but continued in this role for some years after the attack.

He said: "The failure to investigate adequately the role of state agents in a range of criminal activities effectively meant they were protected from serious investigation and continued in their criminal activities."

The Ombudsman also reported that the intelligence community knew of large-scale loyalist arms-smuggling by known paramilitary figures, but that only part of the consignment was seized. Ballistic records indicated that rifles from the consignment were used in the killings, or attempted murders, of at least 70 people.

All this, he concluded, combined with a flawed Loughinisland investigation, had denied justice for the victims and survivors of that attack.

Loughinisland is now added to the list of official confirmation of collusion involving security force agents within violent loyalist organisations.

The most striking of these was David Cameron's 2012 Commons statement that the death of solicitor Pat Finucane had arisen from "shocking levels of collusion".
The road leading to Sarfaraz Hussains tin-roofed hut in Betkuchi, a nondescript village in the northeastern Indian state of Assam, is steep, muddy and non-drivable.

Against the odds, the 16-year-old has shot to fame in his home state by scoring a jaw-dropping 590 out of 600 points on Assams recently administered High School Leaving Certificate (HSLC) exams. His was the top score statewide.

Sarfarazs achievement is all the more remarkable because he is a Muslim student enrolled at a staunchly rightwing Hindu school in Assam, where tensions can underlie inter-religious relations.

It is all because of my school and the efforts of my teachers that I have been able to secure the top position in the state, Sarfaraz told BenarNews.

Hussains school, Shankardev Shishu Niketan, is backed by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the ideological mentor of Indias Hindu nationalist ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which ended a 15-year reign by the Indian National Congress in Assam to come to power in the recently concluded state assembly elections.

The RSS, which has often faced criticism for its anti-Muslim views, runs about 12,000 schools across India, educating some 3.2 million students.

Sarfaraz said there were about 24 Muslim students at his school.

Our emphasis is on quality education and academic excellence. But at the same time, we educate our students about the Indian culture and value system, regardless of their religion, Akshay Kalita, the schools headmaster, told BenarNews.

The teens achievement has put to rest the misperception that Indias Hindu majority is against minority Muslims, according to an RSS official in the state.

We only aim to serve the country in the truest possible manner. We are not against any religion. And the boys success only goes to show that, said the RSS member who requested anonymity.

I want to get on with my life

Sarfaraz, who has received at least a dozen awards since the results were declared late last month, said he could not understand why his religion and the fact that he studies in an RSS-backed school had become a talking point.

Anyone, regardless of caste or religion, can achieve success if he or she wants it bad enough. It doesnt matter if the school backs Hindu or Islamic ideology, said Sarfaraz, who has two more years of high school and dreams of becoming a mechanical engineer.

He said his desire to excel in academics stems from a promise he made to his father a couple of years ago, that he would one day bring his family out of the clutches of extreme poverty.

On innumerable occasions I have had to miss school because the muddy pathway that leads out of our village has been flooded or impossible to cross after even the slightest rains, Sarfaraz said.

But Sarfarazs achievement has brought some hope to the residents of Betkuchi, an otherwise unknown hilltop village on the southern fringe of the state capital Guwahati. The village has been barraged with high-profile politicians pouring in to congratulate the teenager.

Last week, the state government announced a cash award of 500,000 rupees (U.S. $7,479) for Sarfaraz and 1 million rupees (U.S. $14,958) for the school, while assuring that a concrete road would be built in the village.

I am happy I have been able to do something for my family and village. But I now want to get on with life. Its very tiring and monotonous attending so many facilitation ceremonies, Sarfaraz said.

His father, Azmal Hussain, could not control his emotions as he described how their lives had changed dramatically since the HSLC results were declared on May 31.

Life has taken a complete turn, and for the better. Sarfaraz has put our village on the map. Earlier, no one cared about Betkuchi, said Hussain, who works in a city hotel as a waiter, earning 5,000 rupees (U.S. $74.75) a month.

He said they hoped the government would take steps to improve dwellings in Betkuchi, where most construction is illegal because the hill on which it sits is inside a forest.

Hussain acknowledged that he had faced some criticism from members of his community for putting his son in an RSS-sponsored school.

But that never bothered me. All I was interested in was quality education for Sarfaraz so that he had the option of making a decent life for himself, he said, adding that the low fee charged by the school was also a factor.

I earn 5,000 rupees a month and living in hand-to-mouth condition ... nominal fees in the school helped me immensely, Hussain said.

Political pawn?

The timing of Sarfarazs feat will work well for the states newly formed BJP government as it attempts to reassure Assams large Muslim population of inclusive governance, according to an analyst. At 34 percent, Assam boasts the second highest Muslim among all of Indias states.

The BJP and the RSS will do their bit to cash in on the boys success to attempt to reverse the partys largely polarizing election campaign in the state, political commentator Monirul Hussain told BenarNews.

He, however, did not agree with the governments decision to reward the school with more cash.

The RSS is already funding the school. Instead of giving the school more money, the government should focus on improving the pitiable conditions of other minority schools in the state, he said.
Soerjami, the mother of Priyo Hadi Purnomo, is interviewed at her home in Surabaya, Indonesia, June 9, 2016.

Indonesian police said Thursday they had arrested three men suspected of plotting terror attacks in Surabaya, Indonesias second largest city, and other areas of East Java province during Ramadan.

The three suspects were picked up Wednesday in raids mounted across Surabaya by Densus 88, the polices counterterrorist wing, said National Police spokesperson Boy Rafli Amar.

One of the suspects, identified as Priyo Hadi Purnomo, was believed to be preparing for a suicide bombing mission in Surabaya, Boy told BenarNews.

One corroborating piece of evidence is the discovery of a number of ropes and switches that allegedly were to be used for detonating himself. Priyo would use the mobile phone to trigger the explosion, Boy said in a phone interview.

The three men were inspired by the Islamic State (IS) extremist group to carry out the attacks targeting public places and government offices in Surabaya in coming weeks, and one of the suspects was linked to Abu Jandal, an influential Indonesian fighting for IS in the Middle East, Agence France-Presse quoted Boy as saying.

"They were influenced by IS on social media," Amar said, according to AFP. "They were inspired by IS leaders' speeches."

Indonesian supporters of IS carried out an attack in downtown Jakarta on Jan. 14 that killed eight people, including all four suspected perpetrators, according to police.

A quiet and good person

Boy told BenarNews that Densus 88 seized explosives, guns and ammunition from the house where Priyo lived with his parents, and they found chemicals at the home of a second suspect, identified as Befri Rahmawan Norcahyo (alias Jefri). The third suspect was identified as Feri Novendi.

"After he was arrested, I do not know where he is because police has not told me," Soerjami, Priyos mother, told BenarNews.

Even though he had previously served a prison sentence on a drug conviction, her son was always a good and quiet person, Soerjami said, adding that she had not noticed a change in his behavior since he was freed in 2014.

However, the spokesman for national police told a different story, alleging that Priyo had been preparing to take part in a terrorist plot since getting out of prison.

"For two years, Priyo had been looking for targets of his action. He also hung out with people who shared radical views, Boy told Benar.

While in Porong prison, according to Boy, Priyo was recruited by Muhammad Shibghotullah (alias Shibgoh), an inmate from Kalimantan who was arrested in Malaysia in late 2014 when he was about to leave Indonesia to join IS in the Middle East.

Shibgoh was sentenced to two years and eight months years in prison for engaging in a military training in the western Indonesian province of Aceh in 2010.

Priyo and the two other men planned to carry out their plot during Ramadan, which Muslims in Indonesia began observing on Monday, and around the Eid al-Fitr holiday that marks the end of the holy month of fasting, Boy said.

Yellow police tape seals part of a house in Surabaya, Indonesia, where suspect Priyo Hadi Purnomo lived with his parents, June 9, 2016. (Yovinus Guntur W/BenarNews)

Suspects linked to Neo Jamaah Islamiyah: Expert

According to Al Chaidar, a terrorism expert from Malikussaleh University in Lhokseumawe, the three suspects arrested Wednesday were members of Neo Jemaah Islamiyah (JI), an Indonesian network that has pledged allegiance to IS, and has been planning attacks in several cities in Indonesia, including Surabaya, Yogyakarta, Jakarta and Medan.

"The cities were chosen because they fall under the categories of cosmopolitan, pluralistic ones with many non-Muslims. In their view, the cities are considered sinful and should be burned using bombs," he told BenarNews.

The three arrests took place the same day that an Indonesian man, Yuskarman, was sentenced in Jakarta to four years and eight months for his role in a plot to bomb a Christian church, a Buddhist monastery and a police station in his Solo, Central Java.

Altogether 15 people have now been sent to prison for links to the so-called Islamic State.

That number could increase because Densus 88 arrested about 40 other people following the Jan. 14 terror attack in Jakarta.

As of December 2015, Indonesian officials estimated that approximately 800 Indonesian radicals were fighting in Syria or Iraq, the U.S. State Department said in its 2015 Country Reports on Terrorism, which it released earlier this month.

Indonesian officials say they have identified 284 Indonesian citizens actively involved in fighting in Iraq and Syria and are investigating an additional 516. They also believe that 52 Indonesian foreign terrorist fighters have died in Syria and estimate that another 60 to 100 have returned to Indonesia, the State Department said.
Royal Malaysian Police carry human remains recovered from the jungle in the Malaysian northern state of Perlis, May 28, 2015.

A Malaysian court on Thursday sentenced a Bangladeshi man to 10 years in prison after he pleaded guilty to three counts of human smuggling in an area where 106 migrant graves were discovered in May 2015, local media reported.

Nurul Islam, 32, admitted in the High Court of northern Perlis state to smuggling three of his countrymen into Malaysia through the Wang Kelian area, where the graves were found, between October 2014 and May 2015, The Sun Daily of Malaysia reported.

Judicial Commissioner Abu Bakar Katar sentenced him to 10 years for each charge and ordered the jail terms to run concurrently from the date of his arrest on May 2, 2016. Charges were lodged under the Anti-Trafficking in Persons and Anti-Smuggling of Migrants Act (2007).

Three other men  two Rohingya and a Thai national  have been found guilty of smuggling people through camps in the mountainous area, but they have not yet been sentenced.

Wearing a pink baju Melayu and kopiah, Nurul Islam sobbed in the dock of the court room after the charges were read to him by an interpreter in his mother tongue. He was not represented by a lawyer in court, The Sun report said.

Forced

During the hearing Thursday, Nurul Islam claimed he was forced to commit the offenses by another agent of a smuggling syndicate who would beat him if he refused to follow orders. He said he was paid RM 1,800 (U.S. $445) a month, according to The New Straits Times.

Nurul Islam asked the court for leniency as he had three young children and an elderly father to care for in his home country.

Nobody will take care of them when I am in jail. I just want to go home, he said, according to The Sun Daily.

In May 2015, police exhumed 106 bodies, believed to be ethnic Rohingyas and Bangladeshis, from illegal detention camps in Bukit Genting Perah and Bukit Wang Burma, a few hundred meters away from the Malaysia-Thai border in Wang Kelian.

Earlier that same month, mass graves containing at least 36 bodies were discovered on the Thai side of the border, leading to a crackdown on people smuggling by Thailand and the subsequent sudden arrival of close to 3,000 Rohingya and Bangladesh migrants in Malaysia and Indonesia.

Ninety-two people including a Thai general are being prosecuted for human smuggling in Thailand as a result of the crackdown in that country.

Human trafficking is a big business in southern Thailand; thousands cross between the borders into Malaysia and Thailand every day, Glorene Das of Tenaganita, a Kuala Lumpur-based group that advocates migrant rights, said in May 2015 after the initial discovery of graves.

Departures of human smuggling boats from Myanmar and Bangladesh have decreased significantly since then, according to Matthew Smith, director of Fortify Rights, an NGO working in the region.

In some ways, the situation has improved drastically. This time last year there were several thousand Rohingya being held in torture camps in Thailand. Today, those camps no longer exist, he told BenarNews in an interview in May 2016.

He attributed that largely to the crackdown in Thailand and political changes in Myanmar.

Malaysian authorities have categorically failed to prosecute any traffickers involved in trafficking Rohingya. Malaysia only prosecuted three traffickers last year. Many traffickers roam free with no fear of justice knocking on their door. Thats a problem, he said.
Thais hold portraits of the king in front of a building at Siriraj Hospital where he is being treated, June 9, 2016, (Nontarat Phaicharoen/BenarNews)

Women hold portraits of Thai King Bhumibol Adulyadej as they sit on the sidewalk outside the Royal Palace on the eve of his Coronation Day anniversary, in the seaside city of Hua Hin, May 4, 2014. (AFP)

Thai Muslim children stand next to a portrait of the king during the 60th anniversary celebration of his ascension to the throne, in southern Yala province, June 8, 2006. (AFP)

Thai Naval oarsmen power the famous Suphannahongsa barge in front of the Grand Royal Palace in Bangkok, during rehearsals to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the kings ascension to the throne, April 28, 2006. (AFP)

Buddhist monks walk toward the Grand Palace during festivities marking the 70th anniversary of King Bhumibol Adulyadej's reign, in Bangkok, June 9, 2016. (AFP)

Women in Bangkok hold images of the king during the commemoration of the 70th anniversary of his reign, June 9, 2016. (AFP)

King Bhumibol Adulyadej of Thailand (Rama IX) is carried by a cortege during a celebration of his coronation, May 5, 1950, in Thailand. [Facebook page/Thai History Before and After 1932]

The people of Thailand turned out June 9 to mark the 70th anniversary of the ascension to the throne of King Bhumibol Adulyadej (Rama IX), the worlds longest-reigning living monarch.

To commemorate the milestone in the life of Bhumibol who is seen as a unifying figure, Thai officials and citizens held religious rites to bless and pay tribute to the 88-year-old monarch, the ninth king of Thailands Chakri Dynasty. But he did not appear in public because he was ailing in Bangkoks Siriraj Hospital.

Tragedy brought Bhumibol, who was officially coronated in May 1950, to the throne at age 18. He succeeded his brother, King Ananda Mahidol, on the same day that his older sibling died of a gunshot wound. Seventy years later, the circumstances of Anandas death remain a mystery.

On Thursday, Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-o-cha kicked off the national celebration of Bhumibols platinum jubilee by offering alms to Buddhist monks and presiding over a prayer ceremony by 770 Buddhist monks at the Temple of the Emerald Buddha (Wat Phra Kaew), inside the Grand Palace compound.

At the nearby Royal Grounds, thousands of people clad in yellow shirts joined the alms to offer prayers for their frail king. On June 5, he had suffered an irregular heartbeat and a lack of blood to the cardiac muscles, and a team of doctors at the hospital unclogged his vessels through an angiography, officials at the royal palace said.

On June 7, U.S. President Barrack Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry extended well wishes to the king, who was born in Massachusetts.

As the only reigning monarch born in the United States, His Majesty shares a special connection with the American people. King Bhumibol Adulyadej Square in Cambridge, Massachusetts, his birthplace, serves as a testament to the close ties between our two countries, the American president said.
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Recently Cosworth decided to put up shop in Detroit, and now it looks like Karma Automotive is about to do the same, well not quite Detroit, but in the city of Troy, Michigan. This speaks volumes for such a historical motor city which is getting a resurgence of life, especially hearing recently that Ford is looking to invest in a brand new state of the art headquarter campus here as well.

Karma Automotive is a rebirthed company originally called Fisker. After coming out of its financial woes by being bought out by a Chinese company, they are now looking to put up the companys engineering and sales division in Troy.

Karma is set to receive $450,000 from the Michigan Business Development Program which will help the company setup shop in Troy.
A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in a setting of silver. (Proverbs 25:11)

Have you ever wondered what a word fitly spoken looks like? The Old Testament has many examples of women who spoke words of courage and help and displayed a kind of God-confidence that is to be admired. Consider these ten women in the Bible who were bold and faithful in their Spirit-led interventions and, in their womanly way, were mightily used by God.

1. Zipporah

Moses was about to be put to death by the LORD, but Zipporah wisely intervened by circumcising his sons and therefore saving his life so he could fulfill his mission to lead Gods people out of Egypt.

At a lodging place on the way the Lord met him and sought to put him to death. Then Zipporah took a flint and cut off her sons foreskin and touched Moses feet with it and said, Surely you are a bridegroom of blood to me! So he let him alone. It was then that she said, A bridegroom of blood, because of the circumcision. (Exodus 4:24-26)

2. Deborah

Barak was hesitant to obey the LORD, but Deborah boldly reminded him of Gods promise to go before them, and the blessings that come with obedience.

She sent and summoned Barak the son of Abinoam from Kedesh-naphtali and said to him, Has not the LORD, the God of Israel, commanded you, Go gather your men at Mount Tabor, taking 10,000 from the people of Naphtali and the people of Zebulum. And I will draw out Sisera, the general of Jabins army, to meet you by the river Kishon with his chariots and his troops, and I will give him into your hand? (Judges 4:6-7)

3. Manoahs wife

Manoah was tempted to fearfully overreact after a visit from God, but Manoahs wife calmly and insightfully encouragedhim with words of faith. Their promised son Samson would evoke longing for the greatest promised son, Jesus.

And Manoah said to his wife, We shall surely die, for we have seen God. But his wife said to him, If the LORD had meant to kill us, he would not have accepted a burnt offering and a grain offering at our hands, or shown us all these things, or now announced to use such things as these. (Judges 13:22-23)

4. Ruth

Boaz was kind to pray for Ruth, that she would receive protection from the LORD, but Ruth humbly called Boaz to recognize that he was Gods choice to provide that protection. Ruth became the mother of Obed, grandfather of David.

Spread your wings over your servant, for you are a redeemer. (Ruth 3:9)

5. Hannah

The Priest Eli was unable to decipher the difference between a rambling drunk and troubled woman seeking the LORD, but Hannah gently corrected him and opened his eyes to see how God was at work. Gods answer to her prayer, her son Samuel, became a great prophet who would anoint David as king.

As she continued praying before the Lord, Eli observed her mouth. Hannah was speaking in her heart; only her lips moved, and her voice was not heard. Therefore Eli took her to be a drunken woman. And Eli said to her, How long will you go on being drunk? Put your wine away from you. But Hannah answered, No, my lord, I am a woman troubled in spirit. I have drunk neither wine nor strong drink, but I have been pouring out my soul before the Lord. Do not regard your servant as a worthless woman, for all along I have been speaking out of my great anxiety and vexation. Then Eli answered, Go in peace, and the God of Israel grant your petition that you have made to him. And she said, Let your servant find favor in your eyes. Then the woman went her way and ate, and her face was no longer sad. (1 Samuel 1:12-18)

6. Abagail

David was angry and ready to commit murder, but Abagail discretely appealed to him to do the right thing and leave vengeance to the LORD, protecting David from the folly of his temper.

David said to Abagail, Blessed be the LORD, the God of Israel, who sent you this day to meet me! Blessed be your discretion, and blessed be you, who have kept me from this day from bloodguilt and from working salvation with my own hand! (1 Samuel 25:30-33)

7. The Wise Woman of Tekoa

David was unwilling to forgive his son, but the wise woman of Tekoa helped him to see that reconciliation was better than banishment.

Then the woman said, Please let your servant speak a word to my lord the king. He said Speak. And the woman said, Why then have you planned such a thing against the people of God? For in giving this decision the king convicts himself, inasmuch as the king does not bring his banished one home again. (2 Samuel 14:12-13)

8. The Wise Woman of Abel-Bethmaach

Joab was prepared to destroy an entire city because of one guilty man, but the wise woman of Abel-Bethmaach entreatedto find a peaceful solution, saving many lives.

Then a wise woman called from the city, Listen! Listen! Tell Joab, Come here, that I may speak to youThey used to say in former times, Let them but ask counsel at Abel, and so they settled a matter. I am one of those who are peaceable and faithful in Israel. You seek to destroy a city that is a mother in Israel. Why will you swallow up the heritage of the Lord? Joab answered, Far be it from me, far be it, that I should swallow up or destroy! That is not true. But a man of the hill country of Ephraim, called Sheba the son of Bichri, has lifted up his hand against King David. Give up him alone, and I will withdraw from the city. (2 Samuel 20:16-21a)

9. The Shunammite Woman

The Shunammite womans husband was content to merely provide a meal to Gods servant Elisha, but the Shunammite woman proposed that they show real hospitality and were rewarded in the birth of their son.

And she said to her husband, Behold now, I know that this is a holy man of God who is continually passing our way. Let us make a small room on the roof with walls and put there for him a bed, a table, a chair, and a lamp, so that whenever he comes to us, he can go in there. (2 Kings 4:9-10)

10. Esther

Mordechai urged Esther to use all of her influence to change the Kings deadly decree, but Esther humbly requested that first all the Jews in Susa gather for three days of fasting, demonstrating her belief that only God could save her and her people.

Then Esther told them to reply to Mordecai, Go, gather all the Jews to be found in Susa, and hold a fast on my behalf, and do not eat or drink for three days, night or day. I and my young women will also fast as you do. Then I will go to the king, though it is against the law, and if I perish, I perish. Mordecai then went away and did everything as Esther had ordered him. (Esther 4:15-16)

Fearless Faith in Jesus

Did this list surprise you? These wise and faithful women intervened for the good of others, some at the risk of their very lives. Im encouraged to read how the Bible is full of bold, godly women who respectfully used the influence given to them to rescue, protect, and guide.

May we all embrace the quick-thinking of Zipporah, the diplomacy of Deborah, the insight of Manoahs wife, the exhortation of Ruth, the gentle correction of Hannah, the discretion of Abagail, the clever speech of the wise women of Tekoa and Abel-Bethmaach, the hospitality of the Shunammite woman, and the courage of Esther.

These women of the Bible knew the greatness of their God and had a boldness of speech to match, and while Im grateful for their particularly feminine example, they all fell short and needed a Savior, just like you and me. Therefore, I know I can pursue this kind of faithful courage with confidence only because of the saving work of the Lord Jesus Christ.

As the word made flesh, he spoke up for me by dying in my place on the cross, and he rose again to give me an eternal hope so that I never need to give in to fear. Because he sent Jesus, I can be confident in Gods love for me and, by his favor, I can pursue the godliness of the courageous and faithful women of the Old Testament, as many saints both dead and alive have done before me. And by his Spirit, my voice can provide words fitly spoken for his glory.

What characterizes the women you know whose words display godly feminine courage?

This article was originally published on UnlockingTheBible.org. Used with permission.

Rachel Lehner is married to Peter, has four children, and serves in women's ministry at The Orchard Evangelical Free Church. Among other things, she loves helping with math homework and reciting Dr. Seuss from memory.

Publication date: June 6, 2016




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.

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For Immediate Release, June 10, 2016 Contact: Chloe Detrick, (202) 658-9091, cdetrick@humanesociety.org

Andrea Santarsiere, (303) 854-7748, asantarsiere@biologicaldiversity.org Lawsuit Filed Against Wyoming for Rushing to Open Season to Trophy Hunt Grizzly Bears CHEYENNE, Wyo. Today, Jim Laybourn (a Wyoming wildlife filmmaker), The Humane Society of the United States, and the Center for Biological Diversity filed a lawsuit challenging the Wyoming Game and Fish Commissions illegal efforts to limit public comment in order to fast-track approval of the states first trophy hunt of grizzly bears in 40 years. Citizens concerned with the slaughter of the bears were only given 30 days to review the proposed management plan for the trophy hunt, and shortly thereafter the Commission voted unanimously to approve the plan. The Commission simultaneously adopted a tri-state memorandum of agreement with Idaho and Montana to formalize quotas for grizzly hunts, allocating over 50% of the quota to Wyoming. Jim Laybourn, a lifelong Wyoming resident who has spent thousands of hours observing grizzly bears in the field, said I am deeply concerned about the Wyoming Game and Fish Commissions apparent lack of respect for the will of the public. Grizzly bears are the keystone species of both our ecosystem and our economy, worth tens of millions in tourism dollars each year. The management plan will remain fatally flawed until the Commission gives the community whose livelihood depends on grizzlies an opportunity to make their voices heard. The long-term harm caused by trophy hunting has been well established by scientific research. By specifically targeting the biggest and strongest males, trophy hunting reduces the genetic viability of a species and has cascading impacts on the social dynamics of apex predators, including increasing infanticide. And a recent study demonstrated that when states allow recreational trophy hunting of carnivores, it increases the rate of poaching by normalizing killing. The Wyoming Game and Fish Commission has once again ignored scientific evidence and promoted the persecution of large carnivores, said Anna Frostic, senior attorney for wildlife litigation at The Humane Society of the United States. The public must be given ample time to scrutinize any proposal to commercialize our wildlife heritage. In March of this year, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service proposed to delist grizzly bears in the Yellowstone ecosystem and turn their management over to the states. In return, Wyoming has rushed to approve a trophy-hunting season that puts the recovery of grizzly bears in and around Yellowstone in jeopardy. As soon as bears leave Yellowstone National Park, they will be in danger of being shot. This unsustainable scheme will prevent the Yellowstone population from connecting to any other bear populations, a connectivity the Service has acknowledged Yellowstone bears need to ensure long-term genetic health. This trigger-happy plan allows hunters to specifically target the very grizzly bears that are key to creating the genetic connectivity with other grizzly populations thats absolutely needed to protect the long-term genetic health of Yellowstone grizzlies, said Andrea Santarsiere, a staff attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity. By putting these important bears at great risk the second they step outside park boundaries, this plan threatens the long-term recovery of grizzly bears in the northern Rockies. The plaintiffs are seeking to reopen the comment period on the state proposals in order to allow members of the public the appropriate time to express their views on whether this majestic animal should be managed by the best-available science or by states anxious to attract globetrotting trophy hunters. The plaintiffs are represented by attorneys from The Humane Society of the United States, the Center for Biological Diversity, and local counsel Megan Hayes. The Center for Biological Diversity is a national, nonprofit conservation organization with more than 1 million members and online activists dedicated to the protection of endangered species and wild places.


No. 830, June 9, 2016 Immediate Habitat Protection Sought for West Coast Orcas

The Center for Biological Diversity joined allied conservation groups and more than 100,000 people on Monday in calling on the Obama administration to immediately expand protected critical habitat for Southern Resident killer whales along the West Coast. The population remains critically endangered, with just 83 individuals left.



The National Marine Fisheries Service last year announced plans to expand orcas' habitat protections to 9,000 miles along the West Coast (some 2,500 miles in Washington's Puget Sound and Salish Sea are already protected). The new habitat designation would protect key foraging and migration areas for the whales off the coasts of Washington, Oregon and California. But the agency said it wouldn't make that decision until the end of 2017, without final implementation until at least 2018.



"It's clear these killer whales need more protection to avoid spiraling toward extinction," said the Center's Miyoko Sakashita. "The Fisheries Service has the data it needs to make this decision now -- and it should."



Read more in our press release.

Fight Launched Over Plans to Capture Wolf Pups in New Mexico The Center and allies went to court this week to intervene in a legal case arguing that the state of New Mexico has no authority to block the release of Mexican gray wolves into the wild.



New Mexico sued the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service last month for releasing two wolf pups critical to Mexican gray wolf recovery. The state's lawsuit aims to force the agency to recapture the released pups and return them to captivity, as well as to ban future releases. We have filed to intervene in the case on the side of the U.S Fish and Wildlife Service.



Releasing new wolves is an especially vital step in recovering and broadening the gene pool of this fledgling wolf population, which numbers fewer than 100 in the United States.



"Removing these pups would be cruel and would contribute to an ongoing decline in wolf numbers and genetic diversity," said the Center's Michael Robinson.



Read more in the Silver City Sun-News.

Midwest Moose Move Toward Endangered Species Act Protection

Things are looking up for the lumbering, antlered behemoths of the northern Midwest: In response to a petition by the Center and Honor the Earth, the Fish and Wildlife Service has announced that moose in the Midwest may deserve Endangered Species Act protection. These moose have experienced a nearly 60 percent drop in their numbers in Minnesota in just 10 years.



The latest decision pertains to the U.S. population of a subspecies found only in the Midwest. Moose are built to live in cold environments, with thick fur to survive freezing temperatures. Sadly, rising temperatures put them at increased risk of overheating, leading to malnutrition and lowering immune systems, while ticks and other pathogens thrive in a warming climate.



"Climate change, habitat destruction by mining industries, disease and other threats are driving moose to the brink," said Collette Adkins, a biologist and attorney who works in the Center's Minneapolis office. "Like so many Minnesotans, I love the North Woods because of wildlife like moose, wolves and loons. The Endangered Species Act is saving the wolf, and it can save the moose too."



Get more from Minnesota Public Radio News. Stop This Gargantuan Coal Terminal in Its Tracks -- Take Action

We've successfully stopped five of six proposed coal-export terminals in the Pacific Northwest, but there's one more giant to slay. Millennium Bulk Terminals' proposed coal-export terminal in Longview, Wash., near the Columbia River, would be the largest in North America -- a giant facility capable of moving 44 million tons of coal a year. It must be stopped.



Coal mined in Montana would be transported to the proposed terminal on barges and trains, shedding polluting coal dust all the way. And from the terminal, coal would be shipped primarily to Asian markets -- where its use would exacerbate the climate crisis.



We need to let decision-makers know that we want a clean and healthy future, one in which coal plays no part. Help us stop the Millennium coal-export terminal in its tracks.

EPA: Atrazine Likely Harming Most U.S. Species The amount of the herbicide atrazine that's released into the environment in the United States is likely harming most species of plants and animals, including mammals, birds, amphibians and reptiles, according to a new risk assessment from the Environmental Protection Agency.



Atrazine is also well known as a hormone disruptor that has been linked to birth defects and cancer in humans, and contamination of ground-, surface- and drinking-water supplies. About 70 million pounds of atrazine are used in the United States each year, making it one of the most widely used pesticides in the country.



"Anyone who cares about wildlife, people and the environment should be deeply troubled by this finding," said the Center's Nathan Donley.



So we must ask ourselves: When are we going to follow Europe's lead and finally ban atrazine?



Read more in Civil Eats and stay tuned on how you can help.

Ban Sought on New Fossil Fuel Leasing in Ohio's Wayne National Forest Environmental groups including the Center have called on the Bureau of Land Management to ban new fossil fuel leasing in Ohio's Wayne National Forest over concerns about the harmful impacts of fracking. The Wayne is home to many rare species like bobcats, Indiana bats, timber rattlesnakes and cerulean warblers.



We're challenging the BLM's plans to lease up to 40,000 acres of the Athens Ranger District, Marietta Unit of the Wayne, which would open it up to new oil and gas drilling and hydraulic fracturing in the Marcellus and Utica shales. In an environmental assessment, the agency failed to take into account the impacts fracking would have on air quality, water quality, wildlife and climate change.



"The science is clear: Avoiding the worst impacts of climate change requires keeping untapped fossil fuels in the ground," said the Center's Taylor McKinnon. "Opening new areas to development directly conflicts with that science and delays a transition to clean, renewable energy."



Read more in our press release.

Ready to Give Away Free Endangered Species Condoms? Sign Up Now For hundreds of thousands of years, the human population grew slowly. It took about 200,000 years for our numbers to reach 1 billion, which happened around 1804. But after that, it took just two short centuries for our population to increase sevenfold, to 7.4 billion people. Now we add 227,000 people to the planet every day, and that isn't good news for the rest of the species on Earth.



This unprecedented growth has a tremendous impact, contributing to environmental catastrophes including the sixth mass extinction, ocean acidification, deforestation, wildlife habitat loss and climate change.



We need to get more people talking about unsustainable human population growth -- and doing something about it -- fast. That's why the Center is looking for activists to distribute our free Endangered Species Condoms on World Population Day, July 11. Sharing these condoms is a fun and effective way to start the conversation about how human population growth affects wildlife and the planet.



Learn more about our Endangered Species Condoms and sign up to distribute them in your community.

New Restrictions on U.S. Ivory Trade Announced -- Thank You

Great news for African elephants: The Obama administration has announced new trade restrictions on elephant ivory, nearly shutting down the U.S. ivory market and making it much harder for traffickers to find cover for their illegal ivory imports.



Tens of thousands of elephants are slaughtered each year by poachers -- and the United States is currently the second-largest market in the world for illegal ivory. "Reducing demand in the U.S. will go a long way toward saving elephants in Africa," said the Center's Sarah Uhlemann.



The federal government is now stepping up for elephants because of advocacy by millions of Americans -- including you. Thank you for signing Center petitions for elephants, donating to our work and raising awareness about elephants in your communities. There's still much to be done to protect elephants, but we're on a roll.



Read more in The New York Times.

Grand Canyon 'Dark Sky' Title Spotlights Need for New Monument

The latest honor for Grand Canyon National Park -- actually, for the star-scattered night sky above it -- illuminates one of the best reasons to protect the lands surrounding this national treasure: keeping that big, beautiful sky free of light pollution for miles around.



During last weekend's annual "Grand Canyon Star Party" -- which attracted thousands of stargazers and nature lovers -- the park was officially honored as an International Dark-Sky Park, specifically recognizing it as a unique landmark where people can spot stars and planets elsewhere increasingly blocked out by interfering light from cities, roads and other development. This comes at a time when the Center and allies, including the International Dark-Sky Association, are pushing for the designation of the Greater Grand Canyon Heritage National Monument, which would preserve the public lands adjacent to the park not only for the sake of local wildlife and habitat on the ground, but also to shield its pristine nighttime darkness from artificial light that could creep toward park boundaries.



Read more in our press release. Wild & Weird: Summer Vacation? Only Two States Will Avoid Hellish Heat

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration recently published its 2016 summer outlook. The good news? Two states -- Nebraska and Kansas -- may actually avoid higher-than-average temperatures this summer. But the bad news is that the remaining 48 American states are expected to be hotter on average. Alaska's Aleutian Islands have the highest probability of an unusually warm summer.



So for those of you planning a summer vacation, might we suggest Nebraska's Carhenge, a replica of England's Stonehenge, made out of partially buried and upright vintage American cars? If that's not exciting enough, there's also the world's largest spur, weighing in at about a ton and measuring 27 feet high, on display in Abilene, Kan.



Learn more about this summer's heat from the NOAA. Kieran Suckling

@KieranSuckling

Executive Director View this message in your browser and share it on social media.



Photo credits: orca by Miles Ritter/Flickr; Mexican gray wolf pups by Chad Horwedel/Flickr; moose by Ryan Hagerty/USFWS; wolves by John Pitcher; coal train by Adam Fagen/Flickr; frog by mtsofan/Flickr; cerulean warbler by Nicholas Pederson; grizzly bear (c) Robin Silver; Endangered Species Condoms by Center for Biological Diversity; African elephant by Arno Meintjes/Flickr; night sky over the Grand Canyon by National Park Service; Carhenge by Michael Sauers/Flickr.



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Jem's Birding & Ringing Exploits in the Eastern Province and elsewhere in Saudi Arabia
Drought linked to El Nino and civil conflict have pushed the number of countries currently in need of external food assistance up to 37 from 34 in the first quarter of this year, according to a new FAO report.

Image by 123RF

The new edition of the Crop Prospects and Food Situation report, by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations, released this month, adds Papua New Guinea, Haiti and Nigeria to the list of countries requiring outside help to feed their own populations or communities of refugees they are hosting.

In Haiti, output of cereals and starchy roots in 2015 dropped to its lowest level in 12 years. Around 3.6 million people, more than one-third of the population, are food insecure, almost half of them "severely", while at least 200 000 are in an extreme food emergency situation, according to the report.

Southern Africa food security

Haiti's woes are largely due to El Nino, which has also exacerbated the worst drought in decades in Central America's dry corridor.

In Southern Africa, El Nino impacts have significantly worsened food security and the 2016 cereal harvest currently underway is expected to drop by 26% from the already reduced level of the previous year, triggering a "substantial rise" in maize prices and import requirements in the coming marketing year.

Prolonged drought in Papua New Guinea last year has been followed by heavy rains and localised flooding in early 2016, affecting around 2.7 million people. Cereal output in the country's Highland region is expected to suffer a severe shortfall, while the harvest in neighboring Timor-Leste is expected to be reduced for the second year in a row.

While El Nino is now over, the World Meteorological Organization forecasts a 65% chance it will be followed by a La Nina episode, which typically triggers the opposite precipitation patterns -- potentially a boon for parched land but also posing the risk of flooding.

Nigeria added to aid list

Civil conflicts and their displacement of populations have also worsened the food security situation in 12 of the 28 countries on the watch list. About 13.5 million people in Syria are in need of humanitarian assistance, with caseloads increasing. This year' s harvest is forecast to drop by around 9%, due to irregular rainfall in parts of the country, combined with a lack of agricultural inputs and damage to farm infrastructure, according to FAO.

The new report adds Nigeria, home to Africa's largest economy and population, to the list of countries needing external help, due to large-scale internal displacement of people stemming from ongoing conflict in northern districts, which also led to increased number of refugees and food insecurity in neighboring Cameroon, Chad and Niger.

About 3.4 million people, mostly in the states of Borno and Yobe, are estimated to be in need of food assistance.

In Yemen, where over 14.4 million people are estimated to be food insecure - half of them severely so - there is a high risk that desert locust swarms will increase in hard-to-reach interior regions from early June onwards.

Global cereal output on the rise

FAO raised its forecast for global cereal production in 2016 to 2 539 million tonnes, up 17.3 million tonnes from its previous May projection and up 0.6% from last year's harvest.

Aggregate cereal production in Low-Income Food-Deficit Countries (LIFDCs) is also forecast to increase to 420 million tonnes in 2016, led by a recovery in rice and wheat production in India after last year reduction due to El Nino-related drought. That would be a 2.5% increase from last year's "sharply reduced" level.

In spite of the improved world production prospects in 2016, output would still fall slightly short of the projected demand in 2016/17, meaning global stocks would need to be drawn down from their near-record level.

The 37 countries currently in need of external food assistance are Afghanistan, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Congo, Democratic People's Republic of Korea, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Guinea, Haiti, Iraq, Kenya , Lesotho, Liberia, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Mauritania, Mozambique, Myanmar, Nepal, Niger, Nigeria, Papua New Guinea, Sierra Leone, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Swaziland, Syria, Uganda, Yemen and Zimbabwe.
Kenya's Business Daily journalist, Allan Odhiambo, won at the Sanlam Awards for Excellence in Financial Journalism, held in South Africa last night, 9 June 2016, in the African Growth Story Award category.

(L-R) Margaret Dawes, Sanlam Emerging Markets; winner Allan Odhiambo, Business Daily; Desmond Smith, Sanlam Chairman

The African Growth Story Award category was open to financial journalists from across the African continent who practice in Africa and whose work is published and/or broadcast on the continent. Sponsored by leading Pan-African financial services provider, Sanlam, the annual Awards carry a total prize purse of more than KES 2 million (about USD 20 000) for the 12 categories.

The Sanlam Awards for Excellence in Financial Journalism, have recognised and celebrated excellence in financial journalism since 1974.

In 2013, a new category, the African Growth Story, was introduced. The Award is presented to the financial journalist whose entry highlights the continents economic awakening, as well as the obstacles and challenges to growth in terms of investments, infrastructural development and economic progress.

Peter Vundla, the convenor of the judging panel, said of Odhiambo: It was Allans take on the common challenges faced by both the Middle Eastern and African economies because of their dependence on commodities that set him apart from fellow contestants in the African Growth Story category. He demonstrated impressive research, insight and financial reporting skills. He has contributed to the impeccable quality of work submitted for the 2015 awards.

The other categories are: Business/Companies; Economy; Financial Markets; and Consumer Financial Education. In addition, the judges also recognise the best performers in online, print, radio and television mediums across all five categories.

The special awards include the Sanlam Financial Journalist of the Year as well as the Best Newcomer and the Lifetime Achievement Awards.

Africa winner

Congratulating all the winners, Sanlams chief executive: brand, Yegs Ramiah, said Sanlam was a proud sponsor and remained committed to the annual Awards.

Well done to all the entrants and the winners, especially to Allan, who is the first winner from outside South Africa to win the African Growth Story award since the category was established in 2013. We are encouraged by the consistent and positive response to the Awards which were initiated as a platform to recognise and celebrate excellence in financial journalism across the continent.

We believe this is important because there is seldom recognition of the critical role of financial journalists, not only as watchdogs but also as message carriers who ensure that various stakeholders are well informed. As a Pan-African brand and corporate citizen with a footprint in over 30 countries on the continent, we are committed to ensuring that these Awards keep growing and include more journalists practising and publishing or broadcasting in Africa, Ramiah said.

Accepting his award from Desmond Smith, the chairman of Sanlam Limited, Odhiambo said: I feel honoured after winning this Award and being able to tell the African Growth Story. Africa is a work-in-progress and we have many lessons to learn from developed countries that set the benchmark for us. I will definitely enter the Awards again next year and continue searching for more African growth stories as this is a great platform to recognise and reward the efforts of African journalists.

The editor of South Africas weekly business magazine, Financial Mail, Rob Rose, scooped the top accolade as the 2015 Sanlam Financial Journalist of the Year. Among his submissions was his coverage of the list of South Africans with HSBC accounts, as well as coverage of Professor Thomas Pikettys visit to South Africa and his take on wealth tax as one of the possible solutions to address the countrys inequality challenge.

Forbes Africa magazines Ancillar Mangena was named the Best Newcomer; the category won by another Business Daily journalist last year, Neville Otuki. Mangena won the Award for her outstanding pieces on whistle blowers and the risks they take and the business of churches across Africa.

Lifetime achiever

The Lifetime Achievement Award was presented to Salomon (Salie) de Swardt, the 1977 Sanlam Financial Journalist of the Year and Nieman Fellow (1982), who served journalism for 37 years as a reporter, an editor and founding editor of Finansies & Tegniek. De Swardt took an executive management position as CEO of the magazines division of Naspers before becoming the first managing director of Media24, which owns News24, among other titles. He retired in 2005 as CEO of Media24, a subsidiary of the listed Naspers.

Commenting on the calibre of the 2015 entries and winners, Vundla said: The entries received for the 2015 Awards were of a very high standard and impressed the judging panel, showing in-depth subject understanding, journalistic skill and integrity. Each entrant can be proud of the work they have done over the last year and we congratulate all the deserving winners.

The full list of the 2015 winners is as follows:

Sanlam Financial Journalist of the Year: Rob Rose, Financial Mail

Best Newcomer: Ancillar Mangena, Forbes Africa

Lifetime Achievement: Salie de Swardt

Business/Companies: Rob Rose, Financial Mail

Economy: Rob Rose, Financial Mail

Financial Markets: Rob Rose, Financial Mail

Consumer Financial Education: Maya Fisher-French, MayaonMoney.co.za, City Press and Fin24.com

African Growth Story: Allan Odhiambo, Business Daily (Kenya)

Radio Financial Journalist of the Year: Bruce Whitfield, 702/Cape Talk

Television Financial Journalist of the Year: Joy Summers, M-Net/Carte Blanche

Print Financial Journalist of the Year: Carol Paton, Business Day and Financial Mail

Online Financial Journalist of the Year: Ryk van Niekerk, Moneyweb.co.za

The judging panel, convened by Vundla, included retired editor Charles Naude; the editor of The Conversation Africa, Caroline Southey; adjunct professor of journalism at the University of the Witwatersrand, Prof Franz Kruger; CEO of Tangaza Africa Media, Prof Nixon Kariithi; chairperson of Kagiso Media, Maud Motanyane; independent economist, Ulrich Joubert; and the deputy editor of The Conversation Africa, Jabulani Sikhakhane.
By the end of June, half of all Woolworths stores will have removed sweets and chocolates from the checkout aisle, and replaced them with "better snacking options", says the retailer.

Woolworths store at the V&A Waterfront in Cape Town.Image source: BDlive

These new snacking options will not include fresh vegetables and fruit. However, instead of sweets, chocolates, and crisps, customers can expect to see dried fruit, biltong and nuts.

Woolworths said the choice of these items was based on initial research, but the company remained open to suggestions concerning alternative snack options.

"We are well on track to deliver on our target of 166 stores completed by the end of June," said Woolworths on Thursday.

"This June milestone in the sweets and chocolates relocation roll-out will represent 50% of all our stores, with the remaining 50% to be completed during the course of 2016 and 2017."

Woolworths announced the move in August 2015 as part of its Good Food Journey initiative, which aims to offer healthier options to customers.

Absa Investments retail analyst Chris Gilmour said Woolworths had "done their homework".

"They are trying to differentiate themselves as the healthier and upmarket alternative." Gilmour said goodies in the check-out aisle were impulse buys that, in most cases, the customer would probably not have bought had they been located elsewhere.

Retailers do not report how much revenue they generate from goods in the checkout aisle, but it is understood these revenue streams are strong.

Tesco, the UKs largest supermarket chain, announced in 2014 it would be removing junk food from its checkout aisles.

Since then, Tesco has been criticised on numerous occasions, as crisps and other junk foods continue to be spotted there.
Food producer Tiger Brands on Thursday pulled the plug on a second major African market, with the sale of its stake in an Ethiopian business - less than six months after it disposed of a Nigerian venture.

But the company said the exit did not signal a retreat from the rest of Africa, but was rather a realignment of its growth strategy.

The continents largest food producer said it would offload its 51% stake in East African Tiger Brands Industries (Eatbi) to its joint venture partners. The disposal followed a review with its partner, EAG.

A significant investment to secure raw materials had been one of the issues identified in the review, Tiger Brands said.

"(Our) core competency lies in developing branded products for the end consumer," it said.

Its new strategy would focus on strong brands and categories in which it had a proven track record.

Eatbis core focus was laundry detergents, a category in which Tiger did not have a strong presence.

Its core competencies were in food products, such as Albany bread; breakfast cereals including Jungle Oats; Tastic rice; maize brand Ace; tinned fruit and vegetables such as Koo; and energy drinks.

Tiger did not disclose the amount for which it would sell the Ethiopian stake, but said it would make a profit. Tiger bought Eatbi in 2011, under the leadership of former CEO Peter Matlare, who drove much of the expansion across the continent.

In 2012, Matlare led the acquisition of the 65.7% stake in Nigerian consumer goods business Dangote Industries (formerly Dangote Flour Mills) for R1.6bn.

But the Nigerian venture turned sour and after several losses, Tiger sold its controlling stake back to Nigerian partner and business tycoon Aliko Dangote for $1 in December 2015. Dangote Industries has since returned to profit.

During Matlares tenure, Tiger Brands also incurred losses in its Kenyan operations  which were hit by allegations of fraud.

When new CEO Lawrence MacDougall took office in May, he pledged a sweeping overhaul of the operations.

Although analysts had expected a realignment of operations, the decision to exit Ethiopia came as a surprise, said Investecs Anthony Geard.

"Ethiopia was at the bottom of the list in terms of countries we expected (them) to exit."

Geard said this now "puts a question mark on their preparedness to take on Africa risk".

Sumil Seeraj, equity research analyst at Standard Bank, agreed that the sale raised questions about Tigers approach to the rest of Africa, and which other operations could see possible divestment.

Seeraj said cutting back on Africa would be problematic, given SAs low economic growth. "Its a catch-22 situation. Where else will Tiger get growth outside SA?"

Tiger has five manufacturing plants outside SA and exports to 21 countries on the continent.
ProFlex People is a new innovative resourcing solution that provides small businesses with high quality professionals on a completely flexible by the hour basis, at affordable rates in the areas of human resources and accounting through an easy to use, online platform.

ProFlex People is a unique service that offers a flexible, by the hour solution to small businesses that allows them to choose the skills they need, for as long as they need with no additional overheads, employment challenges or excessive rates. Our solution opens up access to a skills base not previously available to small businesses on such a flexible or affordable basis. By making it easier for businesses to access these skills we aim to improve success rates and grow this important sector within the South African economy.

Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) are identified as productive drivers of inclusive economic growth and development in South Africa. Given the right conditions, SMEs in South Africa could provide an important source of employment for the South African labour market and ProFlex People is making these connections possible, says Julie Cassidy, Director at ProFlex People.

The professionals are thoroughly screened and vetted to ensure that only the highest quality candidates are made available to the small businesses. Our professionals are able to share their expertise and keep engaged with the workplace whilst maintaining a positive work life balance. Professionals are rated by the business after completing each assignment, which is then made available through an approval rating on their profile to guarantee complete confidence in the quality of the professional on future assignments.

We believe that small businesses have been underserved by traditional recruitment agencies and are not able to afford high-end consultancy services. This can mean that these services are often overlooked in the business, which could lead to higher costs and greater risk in the long term. ProFlex People fills a niche by ensuring that the business has quick and easy access to high quality professional services.

Register now on the ProFlex People website for high quality professionals that will foster your growth and improve your success rate.

More information can be found at www.proflexpeople.co.za

About ProFlex People

ProFlex People was established in September 2015 by husband and wife team Patrick and Julie Cassidy, who having spent time working abroad realised on their return to South Africa that there were limited opportunities for Julie to work part-time while raising their young child. Julie, a qualified professional with over 23 years experience in human resources, wanted to get back into the workplace but did not want to do so on a full-time basis. She set about creating a concept where professionals could keep their skills up to date by working on a more flexible basis and contributing to the success of the growing SME Sector, resulting in the creation of ProFlex People.

In May 2016 the business soft-launched with the recruitment of a number of highly skilled, independent professionals in the areas of finance and human resources within Gauteng. Within the next three-six months, the scope of services will expand to include legal and marketing professionals before taking ProFlex People to Cape Town, Durban and Bloemfontein.

Contact

Julie Cassidy Tel: 082 040 3388 or az.oc.elpoepxelforp@eiluj




The new zinc flotation plant at Bisha Mine in Eritrea will augment its existing copper flotation operation, and will allow the mine to continue to produce both copper and zinc for the remainder of the current nine-year primary reserve life.

Mine owner, Nevsun Resources, initiated ore commissioning of the combined plant on June 6, 2016.

On time and under budget

Cliff Davis, CEO: Nevsun, comments: We are again very pleased with how the zinc plant expansion has progressed, on time and under budget. We look forward to reaching commercial production before the end of Q3. In the meantime, we will continue to accelerate the monetisation of the DSO high grade gold equivalent stock piles, to boost cash flow during 2016.

Improvements

The zinc expansion project will average over 100,000 tonnes of zinc and 20,000 tonnes of copper per year for the next nine years from mid-2016 and has excess capacity to absorb additional feed that might come from deposits without yet-to-be defined mineral reserves from Bisha deeps, Harena or Asheli.

The project included replacement of the copper regrind mills with a new, more efficient mill, identical to the one in the zinc plant. Wet commissioning tests, utilising air, water and slurry are now complete.

Started commissioning

Bisha has started hot commissioning using lower quality boundary material ore to implement plant optimisation and ramp-up, and to generate combinations of various copper, zinc and bulk concentrates until transition to commercial production later, using primary ore. The commissioning process is anticipated to take no more than three months to complete.

Some relatively minor adjustments may need to be completed over the next few months as the plant is trialled, and final project costs will be reported in due course. The company currently estimates the cost to be less than $80m against a budget of $100m.
According to a report published recently by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and INTERPOL, the value of environmental crime is 26% larger than previous estimates, at $91-258bn today compared to $70-213bn in 2014.

The Rise of Environmental Crime finds that weak laws and poorly funded security forces are enabling international criminal networks and armed rebels to profit from a trade that fuels conflicts, devastates ecosystems and is threatening species with extinction.

UNEP executive director Achim Steiner said, Interpol and UNEP have joined forces to bring to the attention of the world the sheer scale of environmental crime. The vast sums of money generated from these crimes keep sophisticated international criminal gangs in business, and fuel insecurity around the world.

The result is not only devastating to the environment and local economies, but to all those who are menaced by these criminal enterprises. The world needs to come together now to take strong national and international action to bring environmental crime to an end.

Dwarfs the illegal trade in small arms

Environmental crime dwarfs the illegal trade in small arms, which is valued at about $3bn. It is the worlds fourth-largest criminal enterprise after drug smuggling, counterfeiting and human trafficking. The amount of money lost due to environmental crime is 10,000 times greater than the amount of money spent by international agencies on combatting it  just $20-30m.

INTERPOL secretary general Jurgen Stock said, Environmental crime is growing at an alarming pace. The complexity of this type of criminality requires a multi-sector response underpinned by collaboration across borders. Through its global policing capabilities, INTERPOL is resolutely committed to working with its member countries to combat the organised crime networks active in environmental crime.

The report recommends strong action, legislation and sanctions at the national and international level, including measures targeted at disrupting overseas tax havens; an increase in financial support commensurate with the serious threat that environmental crime poses to sustainable development; and economic incentives and alternative livelihoods for those at the bottom of the environmental crime chain.

The last decade has seen environmental crime rise by at least 5-7% per year. This means that environmental crime  which includes the illegal trade in wildlife, corporate crime in the forestry sector, the illegal exploitation and sale of gold and other minerals, illegal fisheries, the trafficking of hazardous waste and carbon credit fraud  is growing two to three times faster than global GDP.

Wild For Life campaign

To combat the illegal trade in wildlife, the United Nations system and partners have launched their Wild For Life campaign, which draws on support from celebrities such as Gisele Bundchen, Yaya Toure and Neymar Jr. to mobilise millions to take action against poaching and the trafficking of illegal wildlife products.

Already, thousands of people and more than 25 ministers have chosen a species to show their commitment to protecting wildlife. The host of this years World Environment Day, the Government of Angola, has joined the fight, promising to shut down its domestic trade in illegal ivory, toughen border controls and restore its elephant population through conservation measures.

More than one quarter of the worlds elephant population has been killed in a decade. Some of worlds most vulnerable wildlife, like rhinos and elephants, are being killed at a rate that has grown by more than 25% every year in the last decade.

The report also looks at how money generated from the illegal exploitation of natural resources funds rebel groups, terrorist networks and international criminal cartels. In the last decade, for example, poachers have killed an average of 3,000 elephants per year in Tanzania. Thats an annual street market value for ivory traffickers of $10.5m, an amount that is five times greater than the entire national budget of the countrys wildlife division.

Organised criminal cartels

The report notes that transnational organised criminal networks are using environmental crime to launder drug money. Illegal gold mining in Colombia, for example, is now considered one of the easiest ways to launder money from the countrys drug trade.

International criminal cartels are also involved in the trafficking of hazardous waste and chemicals, often mislabelling this type of waste in order to evade law enforcement agencies. In 2013, the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) reported that the illegal trade in e-waste to Southeast Asia and the Pacific was estimated at $3.75bn annually.

Rebel groups

Criminal networks linked to the conflict in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) have spent about 2% of their proceeds to fund up to 49 different rebel groups. According to some estimates by the UN, the illegal exploitation of natural resources in eastern DRC is valued at $722-862m annually.

Illegal logging

The value of forestry crimes, including corporate crimes and illegal logging, is estimated at $50-152bn per year.

White collar crime

The report looks at the rise of white collar environmental crime, from the use of shell companies in tax havens to launder money generated from illegal logging to transfer mispricing, hacking and identity theft. Carbon trading is the worlds fastest growing commodities market. Carbon credit fraud cases have involved sums of transfers and profits that stretch into the hundreds of millions of dollars.
Marking National Environmental Month, which takes place from 1-30 June 2016, ExxonMobil Exploration & Production South Africa Limited (ExxonMobil) has partnered with the Wildlife and Environmental Society of South Africa (WESSA) to launch an environmental education programme.

The programme is an initiative which addresses the need to empower underprivileged youth from rural communities with knowledge and experience to care for the earth and to live sustainably.

The implementation of the programme will take place over 12 months, and will provide 440 learners from eight schools with the opportunity to be involved in hands-on learning experiences at the WESSA Twinstreams Environmental Education Centre in Mtunzini, KwaZulu-Natal.

Lack of basic environmental educational knowledge

Peter Claypool, president and country manager of ExxonMobil, says the development of this programme was identified due the lack of basic environmental educational knowledge around the environment and what it can offer communities. Furthermore, he says that many learners miss out on invaluable hands-on environmental learning experiences that are in most cases only accessible to learners from more affluent areas. Although environmental education is part of the school curriculum in South Africa, many learners are unable to attend and participate in educational environmental excursions due to financial restraints.

Claypool says that the programme also promotes teamwork and encourages learners to collaborate. Each group of learners will participate in an experiential course over three days and two nights at the Environmental Education Centre, where they will need to live together, work together and respect each other. Environmental education and human capacity development programmes enable people to change the way they live and treat the environment.

Human-created crisis

WESSAs director of Environmental Education, Dr Jim Taylor says, The environmental crisis that we face is directly the result of how humans live on this planet. A human-created crisis can only be addressed by working with people and educating them about the alternatives towards more sustainable living. WESSA is grateful for any support to help educate young people about environmental issues and risks.

Claypool says that the project is an important component of ExxonMobils continuous contribution to societys broader sustainability objectives and manages the impact of operations on local economies, communities and the environment. As a contribution to ongoing efforts to improve understanding of the impact of our business on the environment and to improve methods of environmental protection, we conduct and support research aimed at enhancing our capability to make operations and products compatible with the environment. We continuously communicate with the public on environmental matters and share our experience with others to facilitate improvements in industry performance, he concludes.
Whether you are entering into a commercial lease as a landlord or as a tenant, it is imperative that you have an understanding of the legal and contractual implications in doing so, and what your rights and obligations are.

This article does not purport to be exhaustive, but will highlight some important issues and aspects you need to be aware of when negotiating and concluding a commercial lease.

Beware the standard form lease

It may seem to be the simplest and cheapest route to use the letting agents or landlords standard form lease agreement, but unless the lease is tailored to suit your specific requirements, you could end up with problems later. These leases are generally designed to protect the landlords interests.

Premises

Describe the premises as accurately as possible, as to location and size. Attach a floor plan if available. Know what access and use the tenant has to common areas such as hallways, rest rooms, kitchens, lifts and whether rental will be charged on these areas and at what rate. It is also imperative, if the rental is based on lettable area', as opposed to a fixed rental, that the parties agree on how the premises are measured, and what is included in the lettable area e.g. balconies, terraces, storerooms.

The South African Property Association has a standard measurement method which is commonly used. The tenant should be afforded an opportunity after occupation to note defects in the premises, which the landlord is then required to remedy. Whether the landlord remedies all defects or only material defects, is the subject of negotiation. If the defects are of such a nature that the tenant cannot enjoy the use and occupation of the premises, the landlord will be in breach.

Rental

Understand what is included and excluded from the rental. Often a base cost rental is charged per square metre for the premises. Over and above that, there may be charges for the landlords operating costs, parking, rates and taxes, body corporate levies, consumption charges for electricity, water, refuse collection and sewerage, insurance. Know who is paying for what.

Lease period and renewal

Whilst the initial period is agreed, leases will often state that any renewal is to be agreed between the parties at a later stage. If you are looking for certainty, this is not ideal, as if the parties cannot agree there will be no renewal and the lease ends. Negotiate provisions that guarantee the renewal, provided certain conditions are met and include an objective basis to determine the rental in the renewal period.

Deposits, suretyships, guarantees

It is usual for the landlord to require a deposit to be paid either in cash or in the form of a guarantee. The landlord may also require personal suretyships. As tenant you may wish to negotiate that this requirement be waived in exchange for a more substantial deposit or parent guarantee.

Occupation date

Where the premises are still being constructed the lease may provide for the agreed occupation date to be moved to a later date when the premises are certified complete by the landlords architect. There should be a cut-off date agreed after which if the premises are still not available for occupation, either party can cancel. It is wise for the tenant to negotiate a rent-free period after occupation within which to effect installations.

Installations and reinstatement

If the landlord is contributing towards the cost of installation, specify exactly what the tenant installation allowance is, how and under what circumstances it must be paid. It is also imperative that the parties agree what installations will belong to the landlord, what belongs to the tenant, and what must be removed by the tenant when the lease ends. The tenant may be required to reinstate the premises to the condition they were in at the occupation date  if occupation was given in a shell state, the reinstatement obligations could be onerous. The landlord would be well advised to request a reinstatement guarantee to cover the costs of reinstatement if the tenant fails to do this.

Repairs and maintenance

Generally the tenant is responsible for maintaining the interior and the landlord for the exterior of the premises, the tenant returning the premises at the end of the lease in the same order it was given, fair wear and tear excepted. The parties could conclude what is called a 'triple net' lease where the tenant is responsible for all maintenance, repairs and upkeep, as if the tenant is the landlord. The parties must be certain as to the extent of their respective obligations.

Warranties and exclusion of liability

In most standard commercial leases the landlord will give very few warranties and will contract out of all liability, even negligence or damage caused by landlords breach of its obligations. As tenant you would want the landlord to be held responsible at least for its gross misconduct, wilful misconduct or losses caused as a result of the Landlords breach.

Change in control

It is prudent for the landlord to insist that change in control or ownership of a juristic tenant only be done with its consent, as the change in risk profile could be detrimental to the landlord.

Redevelopment

It suits a landlord to be allowed to redevelop its property, and in its discretion to cancel the lease or relocate the tenant, however this can cause considerable cost and inconvenience to the tenant. Compromises can be negotiated, e.g. landlords contribution towards the tenants relocation costs, preventing the landlord from cancelling for an initial period.

Consumer Protection Act

The landlord needs to be aware that the CPA could apply to its leases  where it leases property in the course of its business and where the tenant is a natural person or juristic person with an asset value or annual turnover of less than R2m per annum. This can have far-reaching consequences for both parties, e.g. any lease longer than two years may be unenforceable and the tenant may be entitled to cancel the lease, even a fixed-term lease, on 20 business days' notice at any time.

The aim is to negotiate lease terms that match the very different needs of both landlord and tenant and parties would be well advised to seek legal advice before concluding a lease. Even if the tenant is unable to renegotiate a landlords standard form lease, at least the tenant will be aware of potentially onerous and one-sided provisions.
Executive chef at two of Premier Hotels and Resorts' properties in Richards Bay, Thys Taljaard has been named Zululand Chef of the Year. He claimed the top position next to other top chefs from the region in the fifth annual Zululand Observer 'Do I Care Enough?' (DICE) fundraiser.

Taljaard and his team, comprised of staff from Premier Hotel The Richards and Splendid Inn Bayshore, won judges over with their mouth-watering main course consisting of a lamb bobotie, naan "roosterkoek" burger, accompanied by chilli-ginger tomato chutney, topped off with a beautifully presented micro rocket salad.

This was followed by a trio of South African desserts with a twist that included: a red velvet lamington filled with mascarpone cream and dusted with beetroot and coconut; a cinnamon milk tart mousse wafer cigar and a lemon curd cream half-sphere, topped with a cream soda or rosewater meringue set on a shortbread biscuit.

I am incredibly grateful to the chefs from both my kitchens - Blessing Nxumalo, Lenard Coetzee, Thobisile Sibiya and Cornelius Muller  for their role in our win, says Taljaard.

Funds raised at the cook-off will be donated to DICE and used to provide food to underprivileged families and gifts to children over Christmas.
Seedstars World, the global seed-stage startup competition for emerging markets and fast-growing startup ecosystems brought its second pre-selection round to a successful close during Seedstars Durban. The event took place this past Wednesday at Mancosa, where eight selected startups were invited to present their ideas in front of a jury panel.

The top three startups of Durban to advance to the grand finale are Guardian Angel, a GPS tracking safety solution for children and pets; Vitls, a monitoring wearable medical device for vitals; and You, Baby & I, an online platform matching moms to locations and interests. The other startups invited to pitch were Pocketpa, PicAdoo, X&Go, Wango, Digital Sauce.

The eight startups pitched in front of a jury consisted of Jayshree Naidoo, Head of Incubator at Standard Bank, Selam Kebede, Senior Associate at Seedstars world, Roslyn Lavery, Business Development Manager at PayFast, Melanie Hawken, Founder at Lionesses of Africa and Mohamed Chohan, Director at Startup Grind Durban. Joining them on the jury panel was Adv Lavan Gopaul, Director at Merchant Afrika, who represented Mancosa.

The top three startups will be invited to Johannesburg where they will compete with the best startups from Cape Town and Soweto (Gauteng), of which one will be crowned the most promising seed-stage startup of Seedstars World South Africa 2016. As a part of the prize, the overall winner of South Africa will be participating at Seedstars Summit, taking place in Switzerland in April 2017, a week long training programme with the opportunity to meet the other 60+ winners, as well as investors and mentors from around the world. Traditionally, the final day of the Summit will be dedicated to pitching in front of audience of 1,000 attendees, with the possibility of winning up to the $1m equity investment.

Continuing on its world tour of startup ecosystems in emerging markets and fast-growing startup scenes, Seedstars Worlds next stop is Soweto, where they will organise the last pre-selection event at eKasi Labs to select the best startups in the Gauteng area. Seedstars World is looking for smart entrepreneurs that solve regional issues and/or develop profitable products for the global market using technology.

The Seedstars World event in Soweto will take place on Tuesday, 14 June from 4-9pm, tickets are free and attendees can register here.
Nico Bezuidenhout has resigned from Mango to become the CEO of Fastjet, the London-listed pan-African low-cost carrier. Bezuidenhout, who will leave Mango, the low-cost airline of South African Airways (SAA), at the end of July, twice took the role as acting CEO of SAA during one of the state-owned airline's most turbulent times. He clashed repeatedly with SAA chairwoman Dudu Myeni, who is a close friend of President Jacob Zuma.

Bezuidenhout started Mango 10 years ago and built a sustainable business which now enjoys about 25% of market share. The airline has been profitable for eight out of 10 years and has generated free cash flow of R800m over this period.

In a statement confirming his departure, Bezuidenhout makes no mention of SAA or its board. Rather, he focuses on the Mango employees who he says have become "an extended family".

"I thank the Mango board and its chairperson Rashid Wally, the executive and management of Mango as well as every member of the Mango team and, most of all, my family, for your exceptional commitment and support," he said.

It is understood that Bezuidenhout was unmoved by multiple entreaties from business people and politicians who had tried to keep him on at Mango in the hope that he may be able to take over as SAA CEO. But Myeni's grip on the airline and her defiant standoff with National Treasury - which appears powerless to select the board members they prefer for the airline - are believed to have acted as powerful deterrents.

Wally said it was with "immense gratitude and a measure of sadness" that the airline was saying goodbye to Bezuidenhout.

Colin Child, the chairman of Fastjet, said the airline was "delighted" to have hired Bezuidenhout, who will begin work at the airline on August 1. "He brings strong commercial and strategic skills and a wealth of experience of operating a low-cost carrier. This experience, together with his detailed knowledge of the markets in which Fastjet operates, will be invaluable to the company as it seeks to capture the growth opportunities in the region."

Commenting on his new responsibilities at Fastjet, Bezuidenhout said he was confident the airline could build on its operations in Africa and strengthen the business to deliver on its potential, despite the very challenging market conditions.

Source: BDpro
During the month of April Uber partnered with Nissan and BMW to bring Johannesburg riders UberGreen , a 100% electric ride, in an effort to help reduce CO2 emissions. The UberGreen pilot will now be available in Cape Town from 13 June to 18 July 2016.

BMW i3

As in Johannesburg, during the pilot, riders will be able to request a BMW i3, operated by Uber driver-partners in Cape Town at uberX prices, helping provide a more sustainable trip at an affordable price. Woolworths WRewards members will be among the first to have access to these vehicles for a limited period before the pilot officially opens to public.

The Department of Transport projects that energy demand for transportation will grow by 2.5% per year, between 1999 and 2020. This has placed a great challenge to the transport industry to drastically reduce emissions.

Tim Abbott, managing director, BMW Group South Africa says In order for the momentum of electric mobility to increase partnerships like the one with Uber are essential to expose more consumers to the viability of electric vehicles and alternative mobility options.

As UberGreen is in a trial phase the option is only available in the CBD and Atlantic Seaboard between 7am and 7pm.

How it works

1. Open the Uber app between 13 June to 18 July 2016 (7am-7pm)

2. Select the UberGreen option

3. Set your pickup location and request a ride as you normally would.
In celebration of youth month and marking the 40th anniversary of the Soweto uprising, Joburg City Theatres, comprising Soweto Theatre and Joburg Theatre, will present historical and informative shows, free movie screenings and dialogues.

Sarafina!  The Sound of Freedom will be screened daily, free of charge from 10-25 June. The award winning film, expanded into a Broadway musical by award winning writer-composer Mbongeni Ngema is complete with memorable soundtracks.

Soweto Theatre shows

Starting from 15-18 June at Soweto Theatre at 15.00 and 20.00 Vuyani Dance will be showcasing Rhythm Colour. Though the legacy of apartheid cannot be erased, the play provokes citizens to reflect on the common vision held by the youth of 1976, to eradicate all injustices. Tickets are now available for R150, R100 block booking and for R60 for students and pensioners.

Soweto Theatre will also host a dialogue titled Open letter to Freedom from 19-24 June at 19.00 featuring; Thandi Ntuli, Urban Village, Go Barefoot, Kgafela Oa Mogogodi, Sun Xa Experiment and Automatic. The dialogue seeks to provide an opportunity to engage with more renowned scholars within the arts. Tickets are available from R100.

Revolution House from 13-19 June at Soweto Theatre is an installation of a pop-up book store filled with the literature of our forefathers. The show takes place daily at 3pm complemented by a live reading lead by prominent authors and reading activists.

Joburg Theatre shows

Showing at the Joburg Theatre is The Cleaners starting on 16 June ending 19 June. Written and directed by Sipho Zakwe, performed by Duma Ndlovu Academy (DNA) and Durban University of Technology Drama graduates Lungani Mabaso and Sipho Zakwe is a story about two young men, uZibi (dirt) and uMshanelo (broom), cleaners both in profession and bloodline; offspring to a victim of the 2007 Reitz Four incident at the University of Free State.

Finally, a musical presented by Joburg Theatre Community Development and Applause Theatre Company, The Antidote will start from 28 June. The production showcased at the National Arts Festival in 2014 and reviewed by the Cue Newspaper in Grahamstown as The undercover testing of an experimental aggression-reduction drug on convicts with the aim to improve humanity backfires drastically on the people pulling the strings.

Joburg City Theatres looks forward to engaging and entertaining the youth on matters that are relevant to this new age fast changing society, says Ms Xoliswa Nduneni-Ngema, CEO of Joburg City Theatres.

Purchase tickets and reserve admission by visiting: www.joburgtheatre.com | www.sowetotheatre.com
On Thursday, 9 June 2016, Biz Takeouts Marketing and Media Radio show host Warren Harding ( @bizwazza ) looked at the upcoming Marketing Mix, Shopper Path to Purchase 2016 event happening on 20 and 21 July at the Sunnyside Park Hotel in Johannesburg.

The Shopper Path to Purchase event is all about how digital marketing has joined the proven mix of merchandising and above the line media by facilitating interaction with target shoppers and added dimension of the loyalty clubs. So the professional retailer and brand marketer has to continuously evolve the communication mix. Click here to read the program and check out the credentials of the speakers.

We are joined by one of the event speakers, Amanda Cromhout, founder and CEO of Truth, a boutique consulting business, specialising in loyalty, CRM, customer centricity and social CRM. Truth enables you to really understand and optimise that customer asset, by helping clients to understand their customers needs and potential value to their business.

We chat to Amanda about:

 Who and what exactly is Truth.  We chat about loyalty and rewards programs in South Africa.

 We look at the evolution of shopper marketing and how brands communicate with their customers.

 We look at the use of shopper data for retailers and the best way to use this data when communicating.  We discuss what Amanda will be covering at the Marketing Mix Shopper Path to Purchase event in July.

All this and so much more for retailers and marketing managers is covered in the podcast this week.

This is the 9th annual Shopper Path to Purchase conference.

Check out Truth here.

Get all the information by listening to this weeks podcast.

Episode 177: The Marketing Mix Shopper path to purchase 2016 event speaker Amanda Cromhout.







Date: 09 June 2016 Length: 16:40min File size: 15.6MB Host: Warren Harding



The news roundup from Bizcommunity:

If you are interested in getting interviewed on Biz Takeouts, or want to suggest a show topic, email Warren Harding (@bizwazza) on moc.ytinummoczib@stuoekatzib.

Bizcommunity.com's Biz Takeouts Marketing & Media Show takes South Africa's biggest online marketing, media and ad industry platform to the airwaves and gives relevant, useful and interesting insights into all aspects of marketing in SA, Africa and beyond. Each week, the show features the movers and the shakers of the industry, current media trends, upcoming events and brand activities.

For more:
Radio star and entrepreneur Sbu Leope, aka DJ Sbu, is launching a syndicated breakfast show on two of the fastest growing radio stations in South Africa, Rise Fm in Mpumalanga and Vuma 103 Fm in KwaZulu Natal. The shows begin airing on Monday 4 July 2016.

DJ Sbu

I am excited to work with a media company such as Times Media, which appreciates I am into business and more than a cut-and-paste disc jockey. As this relationship makes impact, you will see how my new partners were open to thinking how a radio product cross-syndicated with media assets owned by the group.

The Times Media-owned radio stations have had a rise after the company repositioned them to appeal to the growing number of black middle-class listeners.

Times Media programming manager Ferdinand Mabalane says, While Sbu brings the impact of a national figure, his show will still have a strong regional focus through breakaways for traffic, weather, local reports and interviews. We will also be unveiling further line-up changes at both stations, so that after listeners have had their DJ Sbu Breakfast, they will want to stay tuned the whole day."
On Thursday 16 June, Roche Mamabolo, the author of 'The Startup Revolution: Fit in or Stand Out', will host an entrepreneurship workshop entitled 'School of Startups' from 8.30am-5.30pm at the SAB World of Beer in Johannesburg, South Africa.

Roche Mamabolo

The School of Startups is designed to achieve several key objectives: to assist entrepreneurs to build sustainable businesses; create employment; deploy innovative solutions in and through communities as well as to alleviate poverty in the country and beyond.

The course content comprises of contemporary topics including: Strategy, Storytelling to the market and to the Investment community, Staffing, Raising Money and Cash Flow, Making Ideas Travel, Advertising and Competitors, Appealing to Consumers, Permission and Trust, Innovation, Creating Scarcity, Compromising, Adjusting the Course, The Startup Revolution, to name but a few.

Jabu Stone, the South African entrepreneur who has been in the industry for over 20 years operating in local and international markets, will be the guest speaker for the day. He will be outlining his success ingredients, unique business models and imparting advice to all participants.

The past Schools of Startups have attracted close to an equal ratio of women to men, an array of businesses in different growth stages - from those in their first year of operation to those with over 12 years. Sectors represented in past events have included: retail; manufacturing; financial services; construction; catering and events; education and training as well as others.

The investment required to attend the event is R700. This includes a full bouquet of the courses, a copy of The Startup Revolution: Fit in or Stand Out book which normally retails at R250, lunch and refreshments, as well as networking with other entrepreneurs. To ensure that the event is good value for money, there is a cap of 16 participants - on a first-come, first-served basis.

The 16 June narrative has changed. Commemoration of the Uprising will focus on planting seeds that will sprout entrepreneurial history makers through the School of Startups by the LORA Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship.
Wim Morris, COO of mobile product development company Polymorph, will give a free presentation on 'Product Development for SMEs - Does your business need an App?' on Tuesday 14 June 2016 from 5.30-7.30pm at the University of Stellenbosch Business School in Belville, Cape Town.

 Jan Vasek via Pixabay

He will provide an overview of product development and share some personal experiences where things have gone wrong. Furthermore, he will provide SMEs with some guidelines on how to approach product development and discuss new options that are becoming available due to the increasing acceptance of modern technologies such as cloud services.

Mark Geschke, CEO of the digital transformation company Xuviate, says there has been a phenomenal growth in the Relevant IT Group, hosts of the evening. There are already more than 350 members and it is clear from the previous events and the ensuing discussions, that there is a dire need, especially focused on the SME-sphere, for a standardised roadmap that assists them to take advantage of what technology has to offer in order to survive.

For more information, clck here.
A Burundian journalist was arrested over the weekend and handed over to the dreaded secret service, witnesses and his colleagues said, expressing fears over his well-being.

Image by 123RF

Egide Ndayisenga from Bonisha FM, a leading radio station, was arrested on Sunday morning in the northwestern city of Cibitoke, a witness said. "He was visiting friends," the witness said, adding that he was now in the custody of the national intelligence agency SNR, which is controlled by the presidency.

The 28-year-old's colleagues in the capital Bujumbura confirmed the arrest. One expressed "serious concern that he is being held by the formidable SNS."

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 to flee the country, according to the UN.

Burundi's government has sought to silence independent journalists at home and regularly lashes out at the international media, accusing the press of being part of a "conspiracy" to overthrow it.

Although officials in Cibitoke refused comment on the arrest, a police source said Ndayisenga was being questioned over possible links to opposition radio stations in Rwanda and his frequent visits to the neighbouring country.

Some 100 journalists have fled Burundi since a failed coup last year and most of them are in Rwanda. Ties between the two central African neighbours are strained.

Last month, AFP's Burundi correspondent Esdras Ndikumana was accused by Bujumbura of "promoting crime and violence" in his coverage and has since received threats on social media.

Ndikumana was tortured in August 2015 by security forces. Watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF) ranked Burundi 156th out of 180 countries in its press freedom index.
A survey of 83 advertising agencies by Strata to discover which social platform their clients preferred for social media campaigns found that Instagram was the most popular. Facebook was the outright favorite, cited by 96%, which was to be expected, followed by YouTube (68%).

But, in terms of the next most popular, Instagram ousted Twitter for the first time. Nearly two-thirds (63%) cited Instagram as their social platform of choice compared to 56% who said they would use Twitter.

Were seeing almost all of our clients shifting if not all of their budgets, then most of their budgets from Twitter to Instagram, Chris Gilbert, senior social strategist at digital agency Kettle, told Reuters. Marketers typically want to be where the audience is.

The reason for the shift is due, in part, to Instagrams larger user-base and thanks to its use of Facebook ad technology which enables advertisers to target highly specific audiences.

According to Reuters, Twitter has rejected the findings of Stratas survey saying that they have close relationships with our agency clients and continue to hear that Twitter offers the most powerful creative canvas.

Social spend is on the rise overall with 17% of agencies saying they will allocate up to a quarter of their budgets on social, up 76% on the last quarter. Social media also moved into the top spot for digital spend at 77% of agencies, a 28% increase over last quarter to overtake display (73%).
Meeting of NMSP and MNP representatives on June 6 (Photo: MNP)

Currently, the government is preparing to hold the 21st Century Panglong Conference. In order to present Mon national issue at the [21 Century Panglong] conference, the NMSP is planning to hold a [separate] conference for all Mon nationals, according to Nai Win Hla, head of NMSPs Home Affairs.

In the past, the MAU [Mon Affairs Union] led the conference. Now, the NMSP has taken responsibility for the conference and will lead it this time, said Nai Win Hla, in an interview with MNA.

In the past, the Mon National Conference was represented by four divisions; the MAU, the NMSP, a body of representatives from within Burma and a Mon group from the Thai-Burma border and abroad. However, this years conference will be led by the NMSP, with only three sectors being represented; the NMSP, Mon politicians and the Mon community, according to Nai Win Hla.

On June 6, Nai Zwal Ya, Joint Secretary of the NMSP, led NMSP representatives in a meeting with committee members of the Mon National Party (MNP). They additionally met with the All Mon Regions Democracy Party (AMDP) on June 8. At the meetings, they discussed what to present regarding Mon national issue at the 21 Century Panglong Conference.

The NMSP has not openly told us yet whether it would lead the conference. We met to discuss how to approach discourse reflecting the entire Mon community and how we can unify in order to be able to hold such a conference, said Nai Layih Tamarh, MNPs general secretary.

The MAU planned to hold the Mon National Conference in late May. However, the conference didnt go ahead because representatives from Mon political parties did not endorse it.

If the NMSP leads and if the majority participate, this will benefit our people. I welcome this. MAU should also accept this, said Nai Wonna, Joint Secretary (2) of MAU.

The MAU was founded in 2002 and is comprised of representatives from religious institutions, politics, society, experts, Mon-Thai organizations, organizations on Thai-Burma border, the NMSP and the Overseas Mon Coordinating Committee.

Under the leadership of the MAU and including representatives from across the Mon community, the 7th Mon National Conference was held in September, 2013, at the State Hall, Moulmein, the capital of Mon State.
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Local news media company Mmegi Investment Holdings (MIH) has recently invested in a P25 million printing press.



MIH, the publishers of some of the countrys oldest newspapers including Botswana Guardian and Mmegi, this week announced that the new state of the art press will become operational by September this year. The company has been strategically positioning itself for growth by diversifying its products as well as venturing into other sectors of the economy over the last three years, said MIH Chairman Methaetsile Leepile this week.



The new state of the art equipment will transform the MIHs current printing facility situated at Tlokweng to be a fully fledged world-class commercial printer. Moreover, Leepile described the heat-set web off set press as the only one of its kind in Botswana, adding that the equipment is able to print newspapers, glossy magazines flyers and books.



Two of the principal shareholders in MIH, Leepile and Titus Mbuya, together holding a majority of the companys shareholding offered a combined 30 percent of their shares for sale to raise funds. According to Leepile, the sale was done through the Office of the Groups Company secretary in compliance with statutory requirements. Moreover, Leepile said the companys existing shareholders were given the opportunity to exercise their pre-emptive rights to buy the shares before the offer could be opened to third parties in a special window.



This was in accordance with the requirements of the Shareholders agreement. During the pre-emptive purchase window one existing shareholder bought some shares. Shares offered were still remaining so they were offered to the general public after the expiry of the pre-emptive window.

Leepile explained that three Botswana companies applied to purchase the shares and of the three, one successfully completed the process namely Universal House (Pty) Limited. Meanwhile the changes in the company shareholding structure will necessitate changes in the directorship. Mbuya is now expected to takeover as Group Manager Director, while Leepile continues to serve as Chairman of the Board. Moreover, the shareholders still maintain the majority shareholding.
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William Jonathan Mini  the man who stabbed Brandon Police Service Const. Marc DeDecker seven times  will be sentenced seven years in prison.

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Now, more than ever, we need your support.

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Your pledge helps to ensure we provide the news that matters most to your community!
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This article was published 10/06/2016 (2329 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The new Brandon Chamber of Commerce president says a priority for the next year is to work on making the Wheat City more attractive to new business and industry.

Terry Burgess was sworn in on Thursday at the chambers president changeover luncheon. He takes the reins from past president Jordan Ludwig.

We will be working on economic development policy to clarify and communicate the need to drive economic activity in our region, Burgess said to the crowd of approximately 250 people at the Royal Oak Inn.

Burgess said another goal is to build inclusiveness through aboriginal business, young professionals and entrepreneurs, newcomers to Canada and actively engaging our membership in new ways.

Burgess is the regional vice-president for Royal Bank of Canada, a job that takes him across southwest Manitoba, dealing with personal and small business clients in 24 branches.

Being from this area originally and having worked throughout Manitoba, this has been home for me for 15 years, he said. I love this city, and I love the way that we can connect and have the opportunities of a big city, but a small town feel.

Burgess says he feels fortunate and humbled to be taking on the role of president, and is looking forward to the next year.

Im certainly feeling like I have very big shoes to fill, but Im excited by the opportunity and the opportunity now to make a difference in Brandon.

Burgess was born and raised in Minnedosa and is a graduate of the business administration program at Assiniboine Community College. He completed his certified financial planning training in 1999.

In Ludwigs final remarks as chamber president, he spoke about the busy past year. Had he realized there would be a business climate survey, a provincial election and a federal election in his term, Ludwig joked he may have passed on the job.

The chamber put on more than 100 events last year and has seen a spike in membership  now up to 610 business members, Ludwig announced.

He was proud of the work done on the business outreach tours, as well as policy regarding municipal red tape and Keystone Centre funding.

I am sincerely going to miss this, Ludwig said. I think the Brandon Chamber and the city as a whole are in a position to punch above their weight, to dream big and pursue big initiatives.

 jaustin@brandonsun.com

 Twitter: @jillianaustin
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This article was published 10/06/2016 (2329 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

TORONTO  Canadian cannabis producer Tilray is placing its bets on budding demand from markets overseas as it begins shipping medical marijuana products to Croatia.

The company will be exporting two varieties of liquid capsules that contain the active medicinal ingredients of marijuana to patients in Croatia, which legalized the drug for medical use last year.

The first contains 5.0 mg of tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, and 5.0 mg of cannabidiol, or CBD, per capsule, while the second contains 2.5 mg of THC and 2.0 mg of CBD.

Growing flowers of cannabis are shown in Moncton, N.B., on April 14, 2016. Canadian cannabis producer Tilray is placing its bets on budding demand from markets overseas as it begins shipping medical marijuana products to Croatia. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Ron Ward

Tilray president Brendan Kennedy says the company is the first of the Canadian producers to ship medical marijuana products overseas.

Health Canada informally told us that they issued us the first export permit, says Kennedy, adding that after a lengthy application process, Tilray received the permit earlier this week.

Kennedy says Europe presents a good growth opportunity for Tilray as an increasing number of its countries have been choosing to legalize the drug.

Meanwhile, the number of registered Canadian patients is lower than many in the medical cannabis industry had initially expected, says Kennedy.

The patient numbers overall are lower than we imagined in Canada, and theyre certainly lower than Health Canadas own projections, says Kennedy.

Certainly that incentivized us to look at other potential markets for this product.

As of the end of last year, there were just shy of 40,000 patients registered under the Marijuana for Medical Purposes program, according to statistics available on Health Canadas website.

Globally, however, there is massive demand for pharmaceutical cannabis products, says Kennedy, and Tilray is looking to capture some of that demand.

This is a rapidly developing industry around the world, says Kennedy.

Our intent is to build a global company that is investing significantly in global expansion. There is often this misconception that medical cannabis is a North American phenomenon, and thats not the case. We see massive changes in places like Australia and throughout the EU.

Tilray will also soon be exporting medical cannabis products to Australia for a clinical trial in a deal that was announced previously. The company plans to reveal other medical market partnerships in Europe in the coming months.



Follow @alexposadzki on Twitter
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This article was published 09/06/2016 (2330 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

WHITEHORSE  The Supreme Court of Canada has announced it will hear an appeal over the Yukon governments contentious land-use plan for the expansive Peel River Watershed.

First Nations, the Yukon Conservation Society and the Yukon chapter of the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society heralded the decision, as did the territorys two Opposition parties.

The Yukon Supreme Court and subsequently the Yukon Court of Appeal agreed with First Nations and environmental organizations that the territorial government did not fulfil its obligations during a land-use planning exercise for the Peel.

But the two courts disagreed on the remedy, which is in part what the Supreme Court of Canada is being asked to sort out.

The multi-year planning initiative for the 68,000 square kilometres making up the Peel River watershed began in 2004 with the appointment of a six-member planning commission.

It released its final recommendation in 2011 calling for wilderness protection over 80 per cent of the remote area.

First Nations, which had initially sought 100 per cent protection, applauded the commissions recommendation, as did many Yukoners and people around the world who saw the Peel as one of the last pristine areas on the planet.

The Yukon government disagreed, as did industry.

It said removing such a large area from future economic development opportunities, particularly mineral exploration and mining, would shackle the territorys economic potential and send an unsettling message to future investors.

As the owner of 97 per cent of the watershed, the government rejected most of the planning commissions recommendations and instead brought forward its own plan, which it officially adopted in January 2014.

The First Nations and environmental organizations responded by filing a lawsuit.

In his decision, Justice Ron Veale of the Yukon Supreme Court found that the government did not fulfil its obligations in the land-use planning process set out in land-claim agreements.

He found the government never clearly articulated its position, but rather used a clause in the land-claim agreements that allowed it to approve, reject or modify the planning commissions recommendations.

Veale ordered the government to largely adopt the commissions recommendations, including one calling for 80 per cent wilderness protection and restricted surface access.

The government appealed, but the Yukon Court of Appeal agreed with Veales finding that the government did not live up to the honour expected from governments when dealing with First Nations.

However, the court overturned the order forcing the government to adopt the commissions recommendations and ordered the parties back to the table.

Forcing the government to accept the commissions recommendations and maximum wilderness protection for the Peel would not be in the spirit of reconciliation the land-claim agreements were meant to achieve, the appeal court ruled.

It indicated that if the government fulfilled its obligation to participate honourably, it could then invoke the provision that allows it to approve, reject or modify the commissions recommendation.

The First Nations and environmental organizations filed a request to have the Supreme Court of Canada hear an appeal and said Thursday that theyre pleased their request had been granted.

Chief Roberta Joseph of Dawson Citys Trondek Hwechin said in a joint statement that the top courts decision confirms that the governments conduct during the Peel planning process raised significant legal questions.

The hearing is expected to go ahead next year.

The NDP and Liberal opposition parties also issued statements criticizing the Yukon Party for its continuing legal battle with First Nations over the land-use planning process for the Peel.

The government maintained in a statement issued Thursday that Yukoners deserve clarity about how the land-use planning process set out in the land-claim agreements should work, and who has the final say over public lands.

Premier Darrell Pasloski and his government have failed to honour the letter and spirit of the final agreements and they have set the land-use planning process back by years, said NDP Leader Liz Hansen.

The Yukon Party government has fought the will of the people at every turn, Liberal Leader Sandy Silver said in a statement. (Whitehorse Star)
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This article was published 10/06/2016 (2329 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Population growth, unemployment numbers and rental affordability were three key factors in Brandons plummet in MoneySenses annual quality of life rankings.

But city officials arent putting too much stock into the list, which ranked Brandon No. 82 of 219 cities.

I think you still have to break it down to the people who live and breathe and interact here, and work in the community, and put their heart and souls into the things that happen here, said Brandon First executive director Jackie Nichol. I think an internal survey  is far more of an accurate picture than someone from say, across the country.

Tim Smith / Brandon Sun Incoming Chamber of Commerce President Terry Burgess smiles while being introduced by outgoing President Jordan Ludwig during the CoC's Changeover Luncheon at the Royal Oak Inn and Suites on Thursday.

As reported in Thursdays Brandon Sun, the Wheat City plunged 56 spots in MoneySenses Best Places to Live in Canada from its 2015 ranking of 26th overall.

Ottawa was crowned best city to live overall, followed by Burlington, Ont., and Oakville, Ont. On the bottom end Truro, N.S., ranked No. 218 and New Glasgow, N.S., at 219th. Weyburn, Sask., was named the Best City to Live in the Prairies.

Coun. John LoRegio (Meadows-Waverly) said he takes these types of surveys with a grain of salt.

To me, they dont mean much, he said. Look at it this way  houses are being built, people are moving to Brandon, the city is still growing. That says it all, thats the bottom line.

Newly minted Brandon Chamber of Commerce president Terry Burgess was surprised to see Brandon take such a dramatic drop.

Clearly MoneySense doesnt understand what a privilege it is to live in Brandon, he said. I believe they did overstate the current and expected level of unemployment in our community; however I do think it underscored the importance of economic development.

Mayor Rick Chrest said hes not hitting the panic button, and points out some highly desirable communities ranked below Brandon, such as Victoria (91), Kelowna, B.C., and Kamloops, B.C. (tied at 117).

Winnipeg came in at No. 29, while Portage la Prairie ranked 168th.

I dont know if Ive encountered anyone yet who sort of bases their decision to relocate on this particular ranking  people are going to move to or from a community based on a whole bunch of personal things, Chrest said.

Chrest said Brandon City Council has worked hard to keep city spending and taxation in line, while improving infrastructure and keeping the community safe.

Thats our main consideration and really listening to our residents, he added.

Brandons director of economic development, Sandy Trudel, said the city is feeling the impact of the oil sector downturn. As a result unemployment in the city is continuing to trend upwards and estimates from last year have doubled in January, March and April of 2016.

MoneySense estimates that the citys unemployment rate may actually be as high as 10.2 per cent, based on trends in the job market economic region around each city over the past four years and then adjusted the National Household Survey (2011) unemployment data accordingly.

We know that with the downturn in the oil sector that there is less revenue going into Westman which translates into less discretionary income, Trudel said. Which then means obviously less being spent here in Brandon.

MoneySense managing editor Mark Brown explained the ranking is based off of 35 different variables. As a personal finance magazine, Brown admits they skew a bit more toward the wealth, the affordability, the cost of living factors in each community.

Brown points out that they also track things like weather, crime rates, access to amenities and access to health care.

Brandon is 56th best in the country for its population growth, at 1.2 per cent.

Thats pretty good but its not as good as it was last year based on the numbers that we have, Brown said.

A new category added to the mix this year was looking at rental rates relative to incomes, which also contributed to Brandons drop in the ranks. Brandons rent to income ratio was listed at 12.1 per cent.

Theres a large percentage of the jobs here in the community that are in that service/hospitality industry, which are typically lower paying positions, Trudel said. When you add that new piece in of course thats going to definitely impact the results.

Trudel added its not a doom and gloom scenario, but a matter of the city living in a slightly different world than we were a year ago.

 jaustin@brandonsun.com

 Twitter: @jillianaustin
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Members of the 82 Brandon Royal Canadian Air Cadet Squadron will be in Winnipeg tomorrow to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the program in Manitoba.

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TORONTO  Ontarios top court has ruled that the conviction and 15-month jail sentence handed a man who raped a passed-out woman should stand even though it means automatic deportation to his native Ecuador.

Fernando Crespo, a permanent resident of Canada, was convicted in December 2013 of sexually assaulting a woman who had passed out on her bed after a night of heavy drinking.

The woman, who cannot be identified, testified she woke up with Crespo on top of her engaging in sexual intercourse.

Crespo appealed, arguing Ontario court judge Michael Epstein was wrong to discount his assertion the woman had consented to the sex.

He also claimed the judge was wrong to disregard his claim that he honestly, if mistakenly, believed she had agreed. Among other things, he argued she had tried to seduce him earlier in the evening.

The Court of Appeal was having none of it.

The insurmountable obstacle to this submission is the trial judges finding that (the woman) was asleep when the appellant commenced intercourse, and thus lacked the capacity to consent at that time, the Appeal Court said in its decision .

Her prior conduct is therefore irrelevant to the question of whether she consented. She could not have consented.

In addition, the Appeal Court sided with the judge that Crespo took no reasonable steps to obtain consent, noting Epsteins comments that the accused was an extremely poor witness who was almost comically evasive in his testimony.

Crespo argued the 15-month term was too harsh in light of its immigration consequences  a sentence of six months or more renders foreigners inadmissible to Canada  saying Epstein should have considered a conditional sentence.

A custodial sentence of less than six months, or a conditional sentence, would be manifestly unfit for the circumstances of this offender and this offence, the Appeal Court ruled.

Consideration of immigration consequences cannot justify an otherwise inadequate sentence.

The Ontario courts decision contrasts sharply with the case of swimmer Brock Turner in California, which has sparked widespread outrage. Turner, 20, a Stanford University student, was handed a six-month sentence for sexually assaulting an unconscious woman outside a fraternity party in 2015. Turner had also tried to argue the activity was consensual.

The judge in the case, Aaron Persky, imposed what many considered to be a far too lenient sentence on the grounds that a longer one would have a severe impact on Turner. Critics are now trying to have Persky removed from the bench.
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EDMONTON - An Australian child psychiatrist charged with child pornography offences in Edmonton is facing new charges in his home country.

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MONTREAL - The Crown prosecutor in the $120-million Cinar fraud case is asking a judge to sentence the three accused to the maximum penalty of 10 years in prison.

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OSHAWA, Ont.  Ontario will soon be home to a new software centre tasked with research into self-driving cars, General Motors announced Friday.

Flanked by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Premier Kathleen Wynne, officials with the automaker announced the new centre in Markham, Ont. is the latest step in GMs efforts to establish a strong research presence in Canada.

The company had previously established research-and-development operations in Oshawa and Kitchener, Ont.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, left, and Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne pose as they plug in a 2017 Chevrolet Volt electric vehicle before making an announcement at the General Motors plant in Oshawa, Ont., on Friday, June 10, 2016. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Chris Young

Executive vice-president Mark Royce said the industry is on the cusp of major changes as electric and autonomous vehicles gain traction.

He said the company found Canada to be a natural fit for research-and-development expansion.

We selected Ontario and Canada for this expansion because of the clear capacity for innovation, the proven talent and new talent that we have in this room, an ecosystem of great universities, startups and innovative suppliers that we have here, Royce told a news conference.

The new initiative is expected to create 700 to 750 engineering jobs over the next several years, bring the total to around a thousand, Royce said.

He said new positions would focus on developing technology for vehicle safety and connectedness technologies, as well as autonomous vehicle software and controls.

GM Canada president Steve Carlisle said their efforts will be felt on a global scale.

We . . . see an oppportunity for Canada to be part of something even bigger  new, global, innovative supply chain, he said. Our Canadian software and technology work has the potential to make its way into the 10 million vehicles that GM designs and produces around the world each year.

Trudeau hailed the announcement as part of the governments innovation strategy, and said the arrangement with GM shows that Canada has potential for growth.

We know that to create good jobs  we have to be on the cutting edge, he said. This investment by GM in jobs that will support their operations all around the world shows were succeding in that regard.

GM also announced it would spend $10 million to upgrade its cold-weather testing facility in Kapuskasing, Ont.
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HAMILTON  An Ontario judge told jurors to disregard statements made by some of the key players in the trial of two men accused of killing Tim Bosma as the four-month trial nears its conclusion.

Justice Andrew Goodman began his legal instructions to the jury on Friday in the trial of Dellen Millard and Mark Smich, who have both pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder.

Goodman told jurors to disregard Smichs comment that he agreed to testify and noted his co-accused decided not to do the same.

Tim Bosma is seen in an undated handout photo. An Ontario judge is set to begin giving legal instructions today to the jury in the trial of two men accused in the killing of Tim Bosma.Justice Andrew Goodman is expected to read his charge to the jury over two days in the first-degree murder trial of Dellen Millard and Mark Smich. THE CANADIAN PRESS/HO-Hamilton Police, Facebook

That comment was entirely gratuitous and self serving, Goodman said.

That cannot be used against Millard  such an assumption flies in the face of the presumption of innocence.

Goodman also said a portion of Crown attorney Tony Leitchs closing argument was improper when he said Bosma should not be forgotten.

No accused can be convicted based on the emotion or sentiment on the victim or his or her family, Goodman said.

The judge spent much of the day going over the jurys responsibility and the mountain of evidence in the trial.

He said there is only one route to a first-degree murder charge in this case, which must include planning and deliberation.

Goodman said there is a sometimes an alternate route to first-degree murder through forcible confinement, but that isnt an option in this case. He didnt explain why.

Millard was initially charged with forcible confinement when he was arrested while Bosma remained missing. He then faced a first-degree murder charge after Bosmas charred remains were discovered on his farm near Waterloo, Ont.

The judge also instructed jurors that two people can be found guilty of the same crime in Canada.

The distinction of those who personally commit a crime or those who aid or abet are all equally culpable in the eyes of the law, Goodman said.

The Crown alleges Millard and Smich meticulously planned to steal a pickup truck, kill its owner and incinerate the body.

Goodman told jurors they can also return a guilty verdict for second-degree murder or manslaughter for either accused, or a not-guilty verdict.

Goodman said there is overwhelming evidence the pair were the ones who took the Hamilton man for a test drive before his death on May 6, 2013.

But the jury, Goodman said, must decide what happened after that test drive began. Bosma vanished after taking two strangers out in the truck he was trying to sell.

The judge also told jurors they must return a unanimous decision as they prepare to begin deliberating on Monday.

Two people are charged and you must return a separate verdict on each, Goodman told the jury. Verdicts may be, but do not have to be, the same for each.

Goodman cautioned the jury not to use bad character evidence  such as the pairs previous thefts, drug use or Smichs criminal record  as a reason for guilt. The judge said such evidence can only be used to evaluate each mans credibility and reliability.

Smich told the jury Millard shot and killed Bosma and then burned his body.

Millards lawyer said Smich accidentally shot Bosma after pulling a gun to try to steal the Hamilton fathers truck.

The judge is to conclude his legal instructions to the jury on Monday.

Note to readers: This is a corrected story. The previous version suggested the judge said there was evidence the men committed the crime. In fact, he said there was evidence the men had shown up at Bosmas house and left with him before the Hamilton man was killed.
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SELKIRK, Man. - RCMP say they have arrested a third suspect in the violent assault of two workers at an addictions centre north of Winnipeg.

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Seven stories in the news today from The Canadian Press:



GOVERNMENT REJECTS SENATE CHANGE TO C-14

The Trudeau government is insisting that medical assistance in dying should only be available to Canadians near death, showing no inclination to accept a Senate amendment to expand the right to those suffering from non-terminal conditions. Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould says the Senate amendment upsets a delicate balance between respecting personal autonomy and protecting the vulnerable. The Senate is expected to continue debating the bill and voting on other amendments into next week.



GENERAL MOTORS EXPECTED TO ANNOUNCE UP TO 1,000 NEW JOBS

Both Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne will visit General Motors today in Oshawa, Ont., where the automaker is expected to make a jobs announcement. Published reports earlier this week said GM Canada would announce up to 1,000 new jobs at its engineering centre in the Ontario city. The reports say the new jobs would eventually be spread out at a number of GM research and development facilities.



LATEST JOBS FIGURES OUT TODAY

Statistics Canada will release the latest labour figures today. The Canadian labour market as a whole was essentially stuck in neutral in April with the national jobless rate unchanged at 7.1 per cent. Overall employment saw a small net loss of 2,100 positions. Alberta, which has been hit hard by the oil slump, lost 20,800 positions in April.



JURY TO GET LEGAL INSTRUCTIONS IN BOSMA-TRIAL

A Hamilton jury will receive legal instructions before deciding the fate of two men accused in the slaying of Tim Bosma. Dellen Millard and Mark Smich have both pleaded not guilty to first degree murder charges in the killing of the Hamilton man. Bosma took two strangers out for a test-drive in his pickup truck and never returned  his remains were found near Waterloo burned beyond recognition.



FIRST FIRE, NOW HEAVY RAIN IN FORT McMURRAY

After weeks of coping with a massive wildfire and smoke, resdients of Fort McMurray area have a new concern  rain. Environment Canada said up to 66 centimetres of rain was expected in the Alberta city and warned of possible flash floods. The Alberta government said the rain would increase hazardous conditions by eroding soil around damaged trees.



BRAD WALL PUSHING PIPELINE ON EASTERN TRIP

Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall is taking his push for the Energy East pipeline to a place where it may not be welcome  Quebec. Wall is to be in Montreal next Thursday to discuss the pipeline and other matters with Quebec Premier Philippe Couillard. The Saskatchewan premier is also to travel next week to Toronto and Saint John to speak in support of the $15.7-billion project proposed by TransCanada.



ANTHEM BILL: TORIES REJECT LESLIE AS SPONSOR

Government whip Andrew Leslie says he will make sure a proposed bill that would render the national anthem gender-neutral will proceed. He made the remark Thursday after failing to obtain unanimous consent to become the bills sponsor when the Conservatives balked at the idea. The legislation was tabled by Mauril Belanger, the longtime Ottawa-Vanier MP whose health has been deteriorating since his diagnosis last fall with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also known as ALS or Lou Gehrigs disease.


Opinion

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This article was published 10/06/2016 (2329 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Last week, the second edition of Coast to Coaster launched at select Liquor Marts and beer vendors to show off some of the best beers Canada has to offer  especially beers never before seen in Manitoba.

Last year, they did a large advertising blitz, making sure that everyone knew about the event. This year, the MLCC kept it fairly quiet for the most part, not really promoting it before it even began.

As well, they expanded the program from one month to spreading the event out over the course of two months. Instead of a huge influx of beers arriving all at once, eight beers will be featured for two weeks straight.

This years retail participants for Coast to Coaster are the Liquor Marts at 10th and Victoria and South End, the beer vendors at the Keystone Motor Inn and Victoria Inn, B&D Hardware in Onanole, Spud City Family Foods in Carberry and Kims Family Mart in Austin.

Im glad to see a good variety of locations promoting the event this year.

Kenoras Lake of the Woods is one of the participants in this years edition of Coast to Coaster. To me, they are Manitobas first brewpub post-2003 because theyre so close to Manitoba that they might as well be part of our province.

Last year Lake of the Woods expanded big time by bringing in a canning line, allowing them to sell their beer in convenient 473 ml cans, rather than just selling 50 litre kegs or 1.89 litre growlers.

The biggest upside is the canned product doesnt spoil as quickly as a growler does. The shelf life of a growler is up to a month tops  and thats if its refrigerated the entire time. For cans, depending on the style, they can stay fresh for as long as six to 12 months.

I previously reviewed and raved about Lake of the Woods Forgotten Lake Blueberry Ale and now they have a raspberry ginger beer called The Beer With No Name Raspberry Ginger Wheat Ale.

To me, raspberry and ginger are two flavours that scream summer so Im excited to see how Lake of the Woods did.

The Beer With No Name pours a heavy, cloudy, grapefruit pink, with half a finger of creamy white head. For me, this is exactly what I expect in a fruit beer  the more unfiltered, the better.

The aroma actually reminds me a great deal of Unibroues Ephemere Framboise as its a bready, yeasty beer with a good deal of raspberry sweetness to it. Theres a light grassy aroma but for the most part, its fruity.

The flavour starts out with a large amount of sweetness from the pureed raspberries, followed by a hint of lemon, and a lacklustre hint of ginger.

The more I drink the beer, I start to get a bit of a tingling sensation on the tongue  Im just not certain if thats due to the ginger or the hops. Either way, its certainly not a bitter aftertaste, just tingling  if that makes any sense to you.

As an unfiltered raspberry wheat ale, its pretty decent and surprisingly reminiscent of Unibroues Framboise. But the ginger aspect was lacking completely  I was hoping for a bit of heat from the ginger or even more than just a passing hint.

Its a fair bit tart, but easily a patio-worthy beer thats considerably more natural than any Shock Top will ever be.

It sells for $3.85 per 473 ml can and packs six per cent ABV. Youd best buy quickly as stock is very limited.
Opinion

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VICTORIA  We need to revisit conventional thinking on health-care services for seniors so the system is sustainable for all Canadians.

To do that, we need to overcome a number of misperceptions.

First, there is a belief that a growing seniors population will result in runaway costs that bankrupt the health-care system. But research shows that growth in the seniors population will add less than one per cent a year to health costs. In fact, the main factors driving increased health-care costs are increased use of technology (including drugs), the rising use of health services across all ages and hikes in wages for health-care providers.

A second related belief is that the percentage of provincial budgets consumed by health care is increasing as a direct result of the proportion of seniors. In fact, there is no runaway rise in health-care costs based on the percentage of gross domestic product spent on health care in Canada. There was only a minor increase, from 10 to 10.5 per cent, between 1992 and 2007. After a major increase during the last financial crisis (11.9 per cent in 2009), the percentage has declined as the economy recovers. The percentage of GDP spent on health care in Canada was 10.7 per cent in 2013  a modest increase since 1992.

A third misperception is that the health-care system for seniors needs to focus on public health and physician services. This resulted in a shift in policy priorities in the 1990s from development of an integrated national care delivery system for seniors to a focus on enhancements to public health and physician services. This in turn resulted in the integrated systems of care for older adults being broken into component parts, each competing for additional funds.

One consequence has been an increased focus on home care. While this is helpful and home care is necessary, it is essentially an add-on cost unless it is part of an integrated system of care where proactive tradeoffs can be made to substitute less costly home care for more expensive residential and hospital care.

A fourth belief has been that the focus should be on individuals with high care needs and that relatively little attention need be given to preventive care for people who have a given health condition. However, the evidence seems to indicate that, overall, individuals with low-level care needs who are cut from care actually cost the system more  they deteriorate faster and are more likely to need more costly residential and hospital care than people who continue to receive minimal preventive care. The result is  perversely  an incentive to get sicker quicker to qualify for publicly-funded care services.

A focus on home care for high-needs seniors has resulted in models that integrate home care and family physician services. While such models can be part of an integrated system, they dont replace a continuum of support that enhances quality of life and delays more expensive care.

How damaging have these popular misconceptions been to our health system? Policy makers have made choices based on them, creating an apparent acceptance of the fiscal status quo without looking for cost-saving efficiencies.

Clearly we need an integrated system for older adults that increases the quality and continuity of care, and can reduce costs and enhance the sustainability of the health-care system for all Canadians.

A first step is for decision makers to recognize that a continuing care system for older adults is a key component of our health system  equivalent to hospital care, physician care and public health. This would allow the splintered components of home care, home support, residential care facilities and geriatric units in hospitals to be brought together.

Such a system would be the third largest component of our health expenditures, after hospitals and physician care. Given that most of the parts are already in place in most jurisdictions, it would cost relatively little to set up integrated systems of care for the elderly.

It would be money well spent.

 Neena Chappell is a professor in the Institute on Aging and Lifelong Health and the department of sociology at the University of Victoria; she holds a Canada Research Chair in social gerontology. Marcus J. Hollander is a national health services and policy researcher and president, Hollander Analytical Services Ltd. They recently published Aging in Canada.

 Troy Media
Opinion

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I find it puzzling with all the evidence we provided to the court on the jurisdiction issues that its never accepted by the court. The Crown insists they have jurisdiction over us even though weve stated conclusively, and provided documentation, that weve never surrendered our rights.

 Craig Blacksmith

Earlier this week, several Dakota First Nation members who were charged for selling contraband tobacco lost a legal bid to have the case tossed out on the grounds that their people have no official treaty with Canada, and therefore the courts have no jurisdiction.

As the Winnipeg Free Press reported, the two accused  smoke shop owner Craig Blacksmith and employee Tammy Walters  were arrested during a 2014 raid by RCMP on Dakota Plains near Portage la Prairie.

RCMP, the Dakota Ojibway Police Service and Manitoba Finance taxation officials seized 4,800 cartons, which amounted to 951,225 cigarettes. More than 1,840 tins of chewing tobacco, six firearms, one vehicle and an unspecified amount of cash were also seized. All told, finance officials calculated $292,572.68 of tax was avoided.

Two other co-accused have been charged, but they are dealing with their legal issues separately. Matthew Audi and Christopher Wilkins are both residents of Quebec and are accused of making a U-Haul delivery to the smoke shop.

For anyone who has been following the ongoing and controversial issue of the non-treaty Dakota in western Manitoba, this argument  that Dakota Plains has no official treaty status in Canada, and therefore should not be subject to Canadian law  is a familiar refrain, one that has not seen much traction in our federal or provincial courts.

This particular court case has its roots in the original Chundee Smoke Shop that was opened by former Canupawakpa Dakota First Nation chief Frank Brown on a piece of land near Pipestone back in 2011.

At the time, Brown was using the smoke shop as a means to push Canada into acknowledging that the Dakota were not refugees in Canada, and to force the federal government to the bargaining table to get a better deal for the five Dakota bands in the province.

He believed, at the time, that the opening of the shop would settle the status of Manitobas Dakota once and for all  and if not, theyd make some money for the band anyway.

Either way, its going to benefit us, Brown once told the Sun. If they dont act, its going to benefit us. If they do come and raid, and confiscate and seize and whatever, thats good, too. This has to be addressed once and for all.

That endeavour ended very poorly for all those involved, after RCMP ran a series of raids on the shop. The men  Orville Charles Smoke, Charles Conrad Blacksmith, Garth Leon Blacksmith and Brown  were fined a combined $190,000 and put on probation for two years.

These four Dakota men made the same argument as Craig Blacksmith, but were nonetheless convicted in a Brandon courtroom under the same tax act.

Weve maintained all along that the Dakota have a good case when it comes to trying to create a new agreement with the Canadian government. They have evidence that shows they were not merely refugees in this land when they fled American armed forces in the late 1800s.

This fact was conceded by the Manitoba provincial government in an email written by a provincial Crown attorney during the original Chundee Smoke Shop court drama.

For the purpose of the pre-trial motion challenging the courts jurisdiction, the Crown is willing to concede that the Dakota people used or occupied southern Manitoba prior to Confederation and before the assertion of Crown sovereignty, reads the email, written by Crown counsel Michael Conner on behalf of Manitoba Justice.

The Crown is also willing to concede that the Dakota First Nations of Manitoba have not signed treaty with Canada ceding any rights or title to land in southern Manitoba.

But, as has been found by several court justices over the years, this does not mean that the Dakota have the right to break Canadian laws. These smoke shops are not helping the Dakota in their struggle for a better deal with Canada.

Perhaps its an avenue that proponents of Dakota sovereignty would be best to abandon.
The head of Amnesty International Ireland Colm O'Gorman has said a UN report into the case of an Irish woman who had an abortion in the UK is "strong and groundbreaking".

Yesterday, the United Nations Human Rights Committee found that Amanda Mellet was subjected to "cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment" after she was denied an abortion here, and that she was subjected to "severe emotional and mental pain".

Ms Mellet said the ruling serves to uphold the rights of other Irish women who face human rights violations.

Health Minister Simon Harris said he believes the Government's commitment to develop a consensus approach with a Citizen's Assembly is the way forward.

Colm O'Gorman (pictured) said the UN report will have a massive impact on abortion laws both at home and abroad.

"They found Ireland's abortion law caused Amanda Mellet to suffer cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment. It violated her right to privacy and her right to be free from discrimination," he said.

"It really is a really strong and groundbreaking decision that will have impact here in Ireland, and internationally."

Amanda Mellet visited the Rotunda Hospital in Dublin in 2011, while more than 20 weeks pregnant.

She was told the foetus she was carrying had a fatal foetal abnormality and would die in utero or shortly after birth.

A doctor and a midwife both told her she could carry the baby to term, or she could travel.

Ms Mellet went to the UK for an abortion. She returned home 12 hours after the procedure as she could not afford to stay longer.

She has said she hopes the Government will have the courage to change the law, so Irish women can access abortion services on health grounds in their own country.

She said: "I hope the day will soon come when women in Ireland will be able to access the health services they need in our own country, where we can be with our loved ones, with our own medical team, and where we have our own familiar bed to go home and cry in.

"Subjecting women to so much additional pain and trauma must not continue."

Meanwhile, Niamh Allen from the National Women's Council of Ireland, said there needs to be a referendum on the issue as a matter of urgency.

"The Government is now under real pressure to take some decisive action on this issue," she said. "We would like to see the Government...legislate for free, safe and legal abortion in Ireland."

The Government has 180 days to address the findings in the UN report.
A Dublin couple, who claimed their 13-year-old son was sick but would not produce any medical evidence after they kept him out of school for four years, have been spared jail.

The mother and father have been warned they risk having their children being taken into care.

They refused to co-operate with education and welfare authorities who were trying to establish what was wrong with the boy who has not been in school since he was aged nine.

Gardai had to be called to their hearing at Dublin District Court when the mother obstructed proceedings and accused the judge of bullying tactics.

The couple initially faced prosecution after their eldest son, who is in his mid-teens, failed to return to school from September 2014 to May 2015.

He went back to school in September last year but additional charges were brought in relation to their younger son.

The case was brought by Tusla, The Child and Family Agency (CFA) after the parents refused to engage with education and welfare authorities.

Convicting them, Judge John ONeill stated that he found without a shadow of a doubt that the case had been proved against the married couple who had contested the case.

He convicted them for not complying with official warnings about school attendance and breaking the Education (Welfare) Act.

For the younger boy, who hasn't been to school for four years, the judge fined each parent 500, totalling 1000. They were found guilty but given the Probation Act on the charges relating to their other son.

The offence can carry a one-month jail sentence and a fine of up to 1,000 on each count.

Judge O'Neill said their youngest child was the only person suffering, he had not attended school for four years and had no interaction with his peers.

I have no idea what medical problems he is suffering from. He is traumatised and I have absolutely no evidence to justify them from keeping the child away from school, said the judge.

Judge ONeill said he had asked the mother of the two children to produce evidence but she did not do so.

The parents claimed their youngest child was too ill to attend school but they would not allow the CFA permission to verify this with their doctor. Initially they had signed consent forms but later withdrew their consent.

Over the course of the two-day hearing, Dorothy Ware, solicitor for the CFA called witnesses to give evidence.

A social worker, told the court that she felt that part of the problem with the boy was to do with his non-school attendance.

He is primarily within four walls of a house and that is not healthy, she said.

In cross examining this witness, the mother of the two children, called this nonsense and said this case has been a medical issue since the beginning.

The mother, who represented herself, then cross examined two prosecution witnesses, making claims they were not who they said they were and were lying about their names.

She demanded to see their passports despite the witnesses each producing identification. The judge repeatedly warned the mother about statements she made and that she should ask specific questions.

Two gardai were brought into court after the mother began obstructing proceedings, accusing the judge of using bullying tactics and also calling him a phoney.

The court previously heard that the 13-year-old was taken out of school by his parents after an allegation was made against his female teacher. A senior social worker told the judge that gardai and social services investigated and believe the allegations were unfounded.

A senior social worker told the judge that gardai and social services investigated and believe the allegations were unfounded.

Attempts were made to interview the child in relation to the claims and gardai concluded there was no substance to the allegation.

The teacher has since returned to work.

The mother claimed her son had been traumatised, ill and could not return to school.

An education and welfare officer also previously told the court that the mother had refused to grant permission to contact their GP to find out if anything is wrong with the child.

The court heard the family would not engage with Tusla and would not attend appointments with school attendance officers.

An offer of home tuition could not be followed up on because the parents would not let social workers speak with their doctor about the child.

Social services also had concerns about the parents' cognitive ability and about the mother's mental health. There were also child neglect concerns which were referred to gardai.

It is a huge amount of time, he was last in school when he was nine, he is now 13. Our priority is the fact he has no interaction with peers, he is in the house on a full time basis, obviously spending a lot of time with his mother and I have huge concerns for his emotional well-being and the impact of that as well, a senior worker had told the court.
The Health Minister Simon Harris has denied that setting up a Citizens Assembly to consider repealing the 8th amendment on abortion is a stalling tactic.

Yesterday the UN called Irelands stance on abortion cruel, inhuman and degrading for its treatment of pregnant women with fatal foetal abnormalities.

Sinn Fein said a referendum on repealing the 8th amendment must be held as soon as possible.

The Irish Human Rights Commission said Ireland must fully consider the views of the UN Human Rights Committee who lambasted Irelands abortion laws as cruel, inhuman and degrading.

Health Minister Simon Harris said the UN report was an upsetting read, and that the Citizens Assembly will be set up within six months.

"I do not find the current situation to be satisfactory. I find it a deeply upsetting and unacceptable situation which I believe needs to be addressed," he said.

"However, the last Government was informed it was a constitutional matter and therefore it can only be addressed through constitutional change through a referendum.

"I think the best process for dealing with this is through the Citizen's Assembly. We will meet the commitment in the Programme for Government to have it established within six monthsThis should be one of the first issues this Citizen's Assembly will consider."

Sinn Feins Mary Lou McDonald countered: "I think it's absolutely a stalling tacticWe know now the 8th amendment is not tenable. I see no excuse for a Government Minister to stall any longer."

There was a two-year gap between the same-sex marriage referendum and the previous Citizens Assembly. With a new political framework at play in Leinster House, it is no matter of certainty that this Government will be in place if a referendum on the 8th amendment is called in the near future.
Update 4.30pm: A major search for a microlight that disappeared on a flight from Northern Ireland to Scotland resumed earlier this afternoon.

James Instance, duty controller with UK Coastguard, said: "The weather has caused problems for the search operation. However, we have drawn up an extensive search and rescue plan which will be put into action today.

Earlier:

A large search will resume once fog clears off the coast of Northern Ireland for a missing microlight aircraft with two people on board.

It is understood it took off from the City of Derry yesterday morning, heading for Scotland.

A major air and sea search was launched on Thursday evening when the light aircraft was reported overdue, and continued to 3am on Friday, when it was suspended due to fog.

The flight took off from the City of Derry airport and had been tracking towards Stranraer.

The Irish Coastguard helicopter based at Dublin and the UK Coastguard search and rescue helicopter based at Prestwick searched from the air, while Coastguard and RNLI lifeboats from Scotland and Northern Ireland were involved in the operation in the North Channel.

The search will resume once foggy conditions clear.

The Northern Ireland North West Mountain Rescue Team will join the search on Friday.

Ryan Gray, senior maritime operations officer at the UK Coastguard, said: "UK Coastguard has also issued a Mayday relay broadcast in the area and several merchant shipping vessels have responded and are keeping a lookout for this aircraft. We may send further resources as the search widens."

The PSNI and Police Scotland have been informed.
The Eritrean man extradited to Italy as an alleged kingpin of a migrant smuggling ring has told authorities his arrest in Sudan was a case of mistaken identity and denied that calls from his phone to Libya were related to trafficking, his lawyer said.

"It is clear for him he is not the man who is smuggling or trafficking humans," Michele Calantropo said outside the Rome prison where the suspect was questioned by prosecutors from Sicily, leading Italy's anti-smuggling investigations in the presence of a judge.

Prosecutors identified the suspect as Medhane Yehdego Mered, an alleged mastermind of a migrant smuggling ring that has brought thousands of migrants from the Horn of Africa to Italy via lawless Libya.

Within hours of the announcement Eritrean communities in Europe starting buzzing with reports that the man escorted off the plane was not Mered, but an Eritrean refugee with the same first name who had been living in Sudan.

Italy's interior minister Angelino Alfano declined to comment on the case, telling reporters competent authorities were working on it.

The ANSA news agency, reporting from Palermo, said the suspect admitted to some intercepted calls that investigators believe prove his role in the smuggling ring. ANSA also said the smuggler Mered is known to have used aliases.

Mr Calantropo said the two or three phone calls in question were to a Libyan number, but that his client said they were to a cousin and had nothing to do with trafficking. The calls were traced during the investigation and were part of the documents that formed the basis of the arrest warrant.

"He confirmed the calls from 2016. He had phone calls with a Libyan cell phone because there was a cousin in Libya. He did not admit to any contact with smugglers," Mr Calantropo said.

The man in custody has been identified by many in the Eritrean community, including his sister, a close friend of the family and a Swedish-based Eritrean broadcaster who fielded calls after the arrest, as Medhanie Tesfamariam Berhe. Medhane and Medhanie are transliterations of the same name.

Meron Estefanos, a broadcaster, has interviewed Mered, the smuggling suspect, in the past, albeit by telephone, and said she quickly realised it was two different people.

She said Mered told her he was responsible for smuggling 13,000 people over a two-year period and that he did not supply migrants with life jackets because such a large-scale purchase would draw suspicion.

Mr Calantropo said that British authorities and the Sudanese police who arrested the suspect two weeks ago maintained they had the right man and that Italian authorities were taking steps to verify his identity. He said he is requesting documents from relatives in Norway and Sudan.

He said no requests for DNA samples or fingerprint verifications have been made.

The lawyer made a request to release his client from jail, arguing that he is not a danger. He expects a ruling next week.

A request for an indictment has already been made, and Mr Calantropo said he expects the case to proceed to a preliminary hearing.

He added his client says he does not speak Arabic, as Mered is known to do, and has never been to Libya. Mered is 35, while Berhe is 30, according to documents.
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Canberra Contemporary Art Space missed out on government arts funding last month, so it is getting stuck into raising the money itself.

It is putting on quirky fundraiser "Quick Draw" where no one walks away empty handed.

Rosalind Lemoh, A Horn and a Feather, 2015. Credit:Damien Geary

Fifty artists from Canberra and around the country have donated artworks for the night, which will be randomly assigned to guests over the course of the evening.

All the money raised will go directly towards maintaining artists fees, rent-free gallery space and professional support.
The ACT Liberals have announced they would give $100,000 a year to support war veterans in Canberra if they win October's local election.

Opposition Leader Jeremy Hanson released the Liberals' veterans policy on Friday afternoon, which would support organisations like Soldier On, the Returned and Services League, Legacy, and the Vietnam Veterans Federation.

Veteran support services in the ACT would be eligible for a pool of $100,000 in grants each year under the Liberals election pledge. Credit:Glenn Campbell

Mr Hanson, who served in Iraq, said many of those who served in conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan were experiencing psychological or physical distress.

He said that heightened the need for a diverse range of support services.
Barnaby Joyce was a mix of irascibility and defensiveness when he announced on Thursday that the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority would be moving from Canberra to Armidale if the Coalition was re-elected in July. "I as the minister have made the call, and I've got the backing of my government, and it's going to happen," the voluble Agriculture Minister told an audience at the University of New England's Armidale campus. "We're not asking people to move to Kathmandu or Timbuktu  Armidale is a beautiful city."

For Mr Joyce to be touchy and feisty by turns in the public arena is not uncommon, as his recent public squabble with Johnny Depp over two dogs brought illegally into Australia by the American actor's wife demonstrate. In this case, however, it might be argued there are good grounds for Mr Joyce's prickliness. While there are undoubtedly economic benefits to be had from moving government agencies to the regions, the merits of this particular transfer appear to fall some way short of the overall benefits. Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull commissioned a cost-benefit analysis of the move earlier this year. It's unclear whether this is complete or not, but there's been no announcement. That Mr Joyce is forging ahead regardless tends to further weaken the logical rationale for a move.

Mr Joyce points out that the APVMA is a natural fit for the University of New England, with its strong focus on agricultural research, and that a move would drive on-farm innovation, agricultural productivity and rural exports. The APVMA employs some 175 staff, and Mr Joyce's department has estimated that by moving them to Armidale, the local economy will benefit to the tune of $16 million a year. As the Minister noted on Thursday, "We've always believed, especially within the National Party, [in] decentralisation  doing as much as possible to move things out to regional areas. Here's another statement of that action".

If decentralisation is dear to the heart of all National Party MPs, its popularity in government has ebbed and flowed according to fashion and political circumstance. The Tax Office and the Department of Human Services (urged on by Coalition governments) have been enthusiastic proponents of decentralisation in recent years, shifting staff from Canberra to Albury and Gosford, or to bigger cities like Sydney and Melbourne. The Department of Immigration and Border Protection, however, has been strongly of the view that all its staff should be housed under the one roof, close to Parliament House.
This is the situation Daniel Andrews now confronts. After the resignation of Adem Somyurek last year, the premier has now lost a second minister, Jane Garrett.

Add in the entire board of a statutory authority, and potentially the authority's chief executive, and it starts to look like a full-blown political crisis.

To borrow from Oscar Wilde, to lose one minister may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose two looks like carelessness.

Garrett, who was well regarded, resigned on principle, bluntly refusing to support an industrial deal that critics claim would have undermined the work of volunteer firefighters and given the union powers to interfere in CFA management and operational decisions.

The CFA crisis has dented Andrews' leadership. Credit:Penny Stephens

Andrews has now sacked the entire board of the CFA, with the chief executive of the authority that Andrews himself handpicked, Lucinda Nolan, likely to follow.

For a man in this much political strife, Andrews certainly looked confident as he strode briskly towards the waiting media on Friday afternoon, with more than 30 paid and volunteer firefighters assembled behind him in a show of support.

"Enough is enough," he declared. "This bitter dispute has gone on for more than 1000 days. Unless we take decisive action it will go on for 1000 more. That is not leadership, that is not safe."
YEREVAN, JUNE 10, ARMENPRESS. 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 Jaromir Stetina considers positive the statement by Czech President Milos Zeman calling the Czech Parliament and Government to follow Germanys example.

The Presidents voice is, of course, influential. I completely support his step since the Czech Parliament has not recognized the Armenian Genocide yet. It is the shame of our history, he said during an interview with Armenpress.

He said after President Zemans statement, there are great chances that the Czech Parliament will eventually recognize the Armenian Genocide. Of course, there are prospects that, in fact, one of the strongest parties the Social-Democratic party, as I know, is going to recognize the Genocide. I think that it plays a key role, and the Armenian diplomacy should conduct steps to negotiate with the MPs of that party. Both the Armenian diplomacy, and the Diaspora must take steps in the whole Europe since, in fact, one of the influential countrys Germanys decision can have a domino effect, he said.

Referring to the Czech-Turkish relations and Turkeys further steps, the MP said: I think that the relations of the two states are based on being NATO partners, however, I dont want to tie this with the Genocide issue. In fact, Turkeys economic relations with Europe, in particular with Germany will become stronger, rather than Turkeys criticism towards Germany over the Genocide issue. Moreover, Turkey is the chief economic partner of Europe, it may perhaps complain, threaten, but I dont think there will be any serious further consequences, Jaromir Stetina said.

He said he is not surprised by Azerbaijans stance over this issue. Azerbaijanis are the same Turks, just simply the one is called Turk, and the other Azeri, the MP stated.

On June 2 the German Bundestag adopted the Armenian Genocide recognition resolution, which is entitled "Remembrance and commemoration of the genocide of Armenians and other Christian minorities in 1915 and 1916".

Only one MP voted against the adoption, and one abstained.

On June 8 Czech President Milos Zeman, while on an official visit to Armenia, announced that he will urge the Czech Government and Parliament to follow Germanys example and officially recognize the Armenian Genocide committed by Turks.
This is nuts. Survival is not a left-wing issue. The Queen, the Pope and John Hewson all warn of climate change as economic catastrophe if not properly considered. And they don't mean embroidering better blindfolds. The beachfront property owners at Collaroy and Narrabeen are a microcosm of this risk. Canaries, if you will. Of course, no storm can be attributed directly to climate change. Storms happen. But climate change made this one worse, in four different ways. Climate change has already raised both sea levels and sea temperatures. Both factors exacerbated the size, momentum and damage of the storm surges. But climate change also heightens storm severity and, less familiar, changes the direction of approach. Most storms on the eastern seaboard come from the southeast. This one, says UNSW coastal engineer associate professor Ian Turner, was east-north-east. That sounds trivial, but it's not. Catching the coastline "out of alignment," last week's east coast low found hitherto untested points of weakness, increasing the vulnerability of the beachfront and the houses upon it. "In my profession," says Turner, "we no longer debate climate change. We take it as given." Turner notes the zone in which the Collaroy houses were built has long been regarded by coastal engineers as "active beach zone". Sure, the decision to build in these zones was made not by current owners but perhaps a century ago. But that makes it no less stupid. Active beach zone is like active volcano. Mostly it's fine, and then suddenly it's not. Shifting sands.

Of course there are things that can be done. In particular, there are seawalls, and there's beach nourishment. Seawalls usually protect what's behind them, but worsen damage further along the coastal drift-line, so should be undertaken strategically, nominating sacrificial beach areas that can tolerate erosion. That's tricky, since humans will mostly protect private property and send the erosion to land that cannot be developed  fragile wetlands or lagoons. Trickier still is beach nourishment, which involves dredging sand from deeper water and replacing it onto beach and dunes so that, when storms come, that sand - rather than houses and roads - becomes the sacrifice. This has an obvious public benefit in creating more beach, but is temporary and  like seawalls - expensive. Both cases beg the question, who should pay? And, given that climate change means such destruction will only get worse, can we justify any form of coastal development other than respectful retreat? The government tries consistently to pretend these dots are not joined; that the biggest issues arising from both the 317 CSIRO job cuts and the ECL are those of personal loss. They're wrong. The new NSW Coastal Reforms package (a month-old Act, a SEPP, a Coastal Council and an implementation manual) has been a 40-year project of emeritus professor and longtime coastal scientist Bruce Thom. He hopes it will replace ad hoc local coastal intervention with a clear, literal, littoral line in the sand.
As founding executive producer, Deborah Fleming-Bauer, put it: "There's something warming and affirming when someone who seems outwardly to be a tremendously powerful and successful person reveals frailty and struggle and difficulty in their own lives." Malcolm Turnbull, aged 9, with his father Bruce, who most likely worried about how to pay his bills. Turnbull wanted a piece of that action. Otherwise he would never have consented to the Dad ad. But what he (or his strategists) may have misjudged is how prickly voters can be when they feel a politician is trying to cry poor me, and how sceptically they view an obvious attempt to provide backstory as shorthand for authenticity. West Australian MP Andrew Hastie, an ex-SAS soldier, tried a similar tactic when he used a photo of himself in army uniform for his election pamphlets, and was sacked from the Army Reserve for it. Did Hastie use that picture because it was the only one to hand? No, he used it because it was an easy signifier of his "personal story", at least the one all politicians curate for public consumption. Many will view that as crass, but it was a risk he was willing to take.

Turnbull is vulnerable to Labor attacks over being "out of touch" and he knows it. He probably is someone who has to consciously remind himself (or pay someone to remind him) that ordinary voters know, to a dollar, what government benefits they are entitled to. They know the intricacies of superannuation concessions they can claim, and they have to weigh up carefully whether working an extra day is worth it once they've paid for childcare. To be fair to Turnbull, the former Labor government also forgot this iron law when they created a carbon tax without factoring in that one shocking electricity bill can wreck a household budget. Tony Abbott remembered it for them, and ruined them over it, despite the carbon tax compensation households received. So yes, Malcolm probably doesn't know what it's like to worry about making rent. He never silently cursed his children for growing out of their school shoes or experienced unbridled panic when the family car died because there was no money for a new one. But he grew up with a parent who probably worried along those lines, at least before he achieved the financial security of his later years, and these things embed themselves into the childish consciousness pretty early. Who knows, maybe that is what drove Turnbull to pursue wealth. What is interesting is the way politicians hold out their personal lives in such a way, asking us to like them, hoping if they reveal something, no matter how heavily stage-managed the revelation may be, people will reward them for it with the ultimate sign of approbation  a vote.
Bill Shorten took his big target strategy to win government to a new level this week, injecting a mix of relief and relish into a Malcolm Turnbull campaign that has so far struggled to capture the attention, much less the imagination, of the electorate.

Having warned that the Coalition's projected deficits over the next four years represent a threat to Australia's AAA credit ratings, Shorten and shadow treasurer Chris Bowen announced that their numbers would be even higher over the very same period.

Illustration Jim Pavlidis

Predictably, Treasurer Scott Morrison dubbed it a "recipe for fiscal chaos", declaring: "If you vote Labor, you are voting for higher deficits and you are voting for higher debt, a higher debt burden on future generations."

"Their whole position has just fallen in a heap," was the more succinct, if utterly premature, summary from Peter Reith, the former Howard government minister turned conservative commentator. The Australian's editorial writer agreed, accusing Shorten of a "virtual surrender" on budget repair.
It's a start. Labor has swallowed its pride and accepted four of the budget measures it has blocked in the Senate. There are 21 to go, many of them quite reasonable.

Labor could have agreed to support the Coalition's plan to gradually lift the pension qualifying age to 70 years by 2035. Because of the long lead time needed to ensure it doesn't disrupt retirement plans, it doesn't even begin to save money until 2025. But it will be needed by then as the proportion of the population of traditional working age shrinks and lifespans lengthen. A truly responsible opposition would have backed the government (and the Productivity Commission) by agreeing to legislate the change now so that it's ready for when it's required. Instead, it squibbed it, claiming the change would give Australia the the oldest retirement age in the developed world, which almost certainly won't be true by 2035.

It could have agreed to support the Coalition's plan to tighten access to the Medicare safety net, a program that while used by patients with chronic diseases is also used by well-off patients who know that if they lift their spending above a certain level, everything else they spend will cost less. It could have at least acknowledged the problem and provided a solution of its own.
Federal election 2016: Labor's biggest savings proposals

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YEREVAN, JUNE 10, ARMENPRESS. The Defense Ministry of Nagorno Karabakh informs that overnight June 9-10 the situation was relatively calm in Nagorno Karabakh-Azerbaijan line of contact.

The Azerbaijani side violated the ceasefire agreement by firing small arms.

The Defense Army forces mainly followed the ceasefire agreement and continued confidently conducting their military tasks.
The Tasmanian government has called for answers over whether a state-owned energy company added to this week's devastating floods by cloud seeding, despite warnings brutal weather was hours away.

Hydro Tasmania has been cloud seeding, a controversial technique to boost rainfall above hydro-electric dams, since April as part of the state's response to an energy crisis.

It continued last Sunday, targeting Lake Echo in the Upper Derwent Valley in central Tasmania, during forecasts of heavy rain.

The catchment flooded early on Monday, hitting a downstream farming community around the town of Ouse.
Cosmetic procedures are now the surgery of want not need. The multibillion-dollar industry is represented on virtually all television channels and accessed easily online. Many nations have realised the potential for cosmetic tourism, which can be a significant addition to a countrys GDP.

Cosmetic medicine and surgery have advanced tremendously over the past three decades since I trained as a plastic surgeon. High morbidity rates in procedures such as breast implant surgery, tummy tucks, aggressive facelifts and eyelid reductions are now a thing of the past.

And though some countries operate as destinations for those looking for cheaper (though not always properly regulated) procedures, there is a boom for particular operations in some emerging markets.

Dubai, Thailand, South Korea, Mauritius, India and even Iran are some notable examples. In the US, the bestseller is the mommy makeover - a host of procedures that can include tummy tucks, breast implants and liposuction - designed to return women to their pre-pregnancy bodies. Britain, at least, has realised that little is often better, especially over the long term.
If you're a public servant being marched to Armidale you best prepare for drinks at "the spewy", tales of Captain Thunderbolt and a bright future as compost.

Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce announced the hostile takeover on Thursday and insisted Armidale was not Kathmandu or Timbuktu and public servants would be just fine.

It's not Kathmandu or Timbuktu: Barnaby Joyce has announced Canberra public servants will move Armidale. Credit:Andrew Meares

ACT Chief Minister Andrew Barr obviously didn't get the memo. He fired off a press release calling it an extraordinary example of pork (human) barrelling in an election battle.

"Capped at the knees," he said. "Breathtaking arrogance," he said. "Forced out of their homes," he said.
A Sydney childcare worker accused of indecently assaulting a two-year-old girl while she slept has been found not guilty.

Max Rowe was charged with indecent assault on a person under 16 last year after a co-worker claimed she caught him in the alleged act at a childcare centre.

Max Rowe has been found not guilty.

Rowe, who was 24 at the time, worked at the centre in Sydney's inner-west five days a week and cared for kids between two and five years old.

The co-worker told police that in May 2015 she spotted Rowe inappropriately touching the girl when they were lying down in a playroom and the girl was having a sleep.
A Manus Island asylum seeker who died in 2014 may have survived with better and earlier treatment, a pre-inquest hearing has heard.

The hearing heard evidence from two medical experts identifying several failures in how Hamid Khazaei was treated after reporting to the detention centre's clinic with an infection from a cut on his leg.

Manus Island detainee Hamid Khazaei, who died in 2014.

Dr Mark Little's report, summarised by counsel assisting Emily Cooper, declared the decision to fly the Iranian man to a closer but less capable Papua New Guinean hospital rather than an Australian intensive care unit a "failure".

Ms Cooper also read Dr Drew Wenck's report, saying the 24-year-old's death could have been prevented with earlier intervention and proper ventilator management.
The case against four men accused of involvement in running "slave houses" out of two luxury Brisbane homes has been delayed for police to thumb through a stack of new evidence.

More than 50 Taiwanese nationals were allegedly working the phones in the mini mansions, 12 hours a day, seven days a week, with no pay.

126 Beelarong Street Morningside, which has been alleged to be a slave house. Credit:Glenn Hunt

The alleged scam came undone when one of the alleged victims made a break for it in August last year and hailed two women on their way home from work.

"Help, help help," a frantic witness said.
Bus drivers on Brisbane's western outskirts are set to take protected industrial action after the Fair Work Commission set out the conditions for such action.

But it could be good news for passengers, with free travel on the cards.

Bus drivers west of Brisbane will be asked whether they will take industrial action.

Assistant Branch Secretary of the Transport Workers' Union Queensland assistant branch secretary Adam Carter said members would soon be balloted to determine what, if any, action to take.

"Our members have determined that the time has come to stand up and fight what is only fair and reasonable," he said.
Ms Garrett's resignation has angered and disappointed many in government, who are despairing at the self-inflicted damage. Victoria's Emergency Services Minister, Jane Garrett, has resigned from cabinet. Credit:Justin McManus Many senior sources say that much effort was made to appease Ms Garrett's concerns - others say the Premier is simply slamming through the process to get the result he wants. Sign the deal or be sacked: Merlino Jane Garrett resigned as emergency services minister in June.

One of the first acts of the newly sworn-in minister, James Merlino, who is also Deputy Premier, was to issue an ultimatum to the defiant CFA board: sign the deal by 5pm Friday or be sacked. But that deadline appeared to hit a snag when the Supreme Court granted an injunction to the volunteers' association preventing any closure of the deal until June 22. Former minister Jane Garrett lost her job over her opposition to a workplace deal for paid CFA firefighters Credit:Simon O'Dwyer In a statement, the CFA said that it could not sign the agreement due to legal issues and 14 threshold issues that it could not agree to, including the clauses which give the union 50 vetoes over CFA's

legislated responsibilities.



"CFA will continue to work with the government and the (United Firefighters Union) to find a solution to the enterprise bargaining agreement, however it will not and cannot sign an agreement which is unlawful," the statement said. On Friday evening, Mr Merlino said the government was moving on the CFA board because of its refusal to sign the deal.

"The CFA board has indicated its refusal to support the agreement, I do not have confidence in the ability of the board to end a dispute that has gone on for far too long and to deliver the reform that Country Fire Authority needs to keep our community safe," Mr Merlino said. Following Ms Garrett's resignation and the ultimatum issued to the board, the volunteers' association sought a court injunction. Serious question to be tried: Court Supreme Court Justice Michael McDonald said he was "satisfied that there is a serious question to be tried" in regards to whether the volunteers had been adequately consulted on the agreement. Justice McDonald said if the CFA voted on the agreement before 4.30pm on June 22, it risked imprisonment or sequestration of property.

The CFA must not "approve that [EBA] agreement by voting for it," he said in an order. Ms Garrett's decision to resign ended a shambolic week for the Andrews government, which struggled to manage community and political anger over its deal with the union. I leave with a heavy heart: Garrett "It has been an extraordinary privilege to serve in my ministerial role, which I leave with a heavy heart," Ms Garrett tweeted. Ms Garrett, 43, who is also Labor National Vice-President, will continue to serve as the Member for Brunswick.

In a short statement, the Premier said that "despite all concerns previously raised by Ms Garrett being addressed, she has indicated she refuses to support". At a later press conference he wished her well. Mr Andrews has been dogged by questions abut why he had backed Ms Garrett for so long in her fight against the union, but then switched to support a deal after meeting with union secretary Peter Marshall two months ago. "I was not prepared, the cabinet was not prepared, no fair-minded Victorians would be prepared to continue to have this dispute drag on dangerously, in a bitter and spiteful distraction from the important work of fighting fire," Mr Andrews said. "I have a resolve, as does the new minister, as does the cabinet, to deliver reform ... this dispute needs to come to an end today."

Dysfunctional, chaotic government: Opposition Opposition Leader Matthew Guy said Ms Garrett's resignation proved that Mr Andrews was a "vengeful bully who is leading a dysfunctional, chaotic government". "His forced resignation of a female minister for daring to question his attack on the CFA and its 60,000 volunteers emphasises that he puts his own political safety ahead of the safety of Victorians," Mr Guy said. Over the weekend attention will turn to Ms Garrett's replacement in cabinet and a factional fight looms with some agitating that the replacement should hail from the Right, not Ms Garrett's Socialist Left because the group is already over-represented in the ministry. Loading
A scuba-diving instructor has drowned trying to save the life of another diver, who also died, on the Mornington Peninsula.

Leonie Hanson, 38, was diving with a 39-year-old man off Mornington Pier, near Schnapper Point Drive, on Friday morning.

A local alerted police after seeing the divers struggling in the water about 12.15pm as members of the public desperately tried to save the pair.

Ms Hanson was an Open Water diving instructor with Harbour Dive Australia in Mornington. The man was a less experienced diver, police said.
For those in the villages, there was a search for a resource that would counter the cash economy the coastal people were enjoying. Panguna people attempted butterfly, coffee, vanilla and spice farming but it did not work well.

At the higher altitudes like Panguna, where cocoa does not yield, people sought means to earn the cash the coastal people were enjoying; so most young men began to labour for the coastal people.

AFTER 1997, WHEN THE Bougainville Peace Process slowly gained momentum, the people on the coastal plains of Nasioi, especially around Arawa, slowly began to rehabilitate their old cocoa and coconut plantations.

By chance in 1998, the Moroni and Dapera villagers began sharing tales of the worlds oldest precious mineral, gold. They knew through oral history had it that it was first mined in the mountains of Kupe in 1929-30 and later in the Barapinang (now the Panguna area).

They also knew the tales of the heyday of Bougainville Copper Limited (BCL) when gold was processed in the Panguna mines concentrator. With curiosity, they began to sample the area using old methods of panning.

They then discovered that the most valuable mineral since the Biblical times was there waiting for them.

A gold rush dawned. People as far as Siwai in South Bougainville and Arawa on the east coast flocked to Panguna to tap in. The BCL tailings affected Tumpusiong Valley and people there also joined the rush for gold.

By the middle of 1999, the entire concentrator zone of the Panguna site was controlled by landowners and a few Bougainville Revolutionary Army leaders. Tumpusiong miners were pushed to the periphery and their numbers slowly declined.

The Tumpusiong people developed the notion that the vast sedimentation from Panguna that BCL had left in their valley should yield traces of gold.

So, without the entire valley being told, in late 2000 Boniface Arunara began sampling for the mineral. He had previously been an avid Panguna panner but, after being wounded in the left leg by the Papua New Guinea military, could not walk the long trails.

Arunara identified gold at a spot known as Sinari-tave in the Tumpusiong Valley. He secretly mined for a few weeks but was discovered and excitement diffused the entire valley and the search for gold was on.

Gold panning greatly improved the Tumpusiong living standard. Small businesses mushroomed and everybody has money earned with hard clean labour.
The Indonesian government hopes to improve conditions for its domestic workers abroad. Credit:Alex Hofford In 2014, Indonesian migrant workers remitted $US8.55 billion, according to Carol Chan, a doctoral candidate in anthropology at the University of Pittsburgh. But there is a dark side to this welcome source of money from abroad: female domestic workers are vulnerable to abuse and exploitation. An Indonesian domestic helper sleeps on the street in Causeway Bay, Hong Kong. Credit:Alex Hofford Last February a Hong Kong woman was found guilty of grievous bodily harm and violence against Indonesian maid Erwiana Sulistyaningsih, in a case that sparked international outrage. The court heard Erwiana was beaten, denied food and wages, forbidden to take days off and had her passport confiscated.

A few months later, Indonesian President Joko Widodo ordered the Manpower Ministry to come up with a "clear roadmap" on when Indonesia could stop providing maids to other countries. Indonesian domestic helpers gather on their day off in Hong Kong. Credit:Alex Hofford "The idea comes from the president," Soes Hindarno, the director of placement and protection of overseas workers at the Manpower Ministry, tells Fairfax Media. "He once told my minister: 'Why are we still like this? We have kept sending maids abroad over the last 40 years while other countries send their professionals to our country'. The president wants to raise the dignity of Indonesian workers." In May last year, Indonesia announced it would stop sending maids to 21 countries in the Middle East, although the 1.4 million maids already working there could continue and renew their contracts. Religious Indonesian domestic helpers improvise a women-only seating area in Hong Kong's Victoria Park on their day off. Credit:Alex Hofford

Next year Indonesia will begin negotiating with other host countries to improve the work conditions of maids, such as a day off every week and allowing them to keep their passports. Mr Soes says the problems differ from country to country. In Hong Kong, for example, where the apartments are tiny, many maids don't have their own room and sleep on the couch or slumped against the fridge. Indonesian domestic helpers on their day off in Causeway Bay, Hong Kong. Credit:Alex Hofford "If the country agrees to improve work conditions ... then we will keep sending domestic helpers to this country," Mr Soes says. "If not, we will speed up the ban on sending domestic helpers to that particular country. Having said this, we don't mean to keep sending domestic helpers forever - our plan is to have zero domestic helpers overseas." The International Organization for Migration estimates one in five of the estimated 22 million domestic workers in the Asia Pacific is exploited.

Nurjanah, who works as a maid in Hong Kong, helps a colleague with makeup on their day off. Credit:Alex Hofford Its campaign to stop human trafficking and exploitation - IOM X - recently launched a film, Open doors, urging employers to give maids basic rights, such as at least one day off a week. "We chose to focus on domestic work because this exploitation is often hidden from public view," says IOM X program leader Tara Dermott. "Some are working extremely long hours, don't have access to health care and in the worst cases are raped, denied food and water, have to ask to go to the toilet and are surveyed by cameras." Indonesian domestic helpers practice martial arts training in Victoria Park, Hong Kong, on their day off. Credit:Alex Hofford Every Sunday in Hong Kong, thousands of Indonesian domestic helpers flock to Victoria Park, where they picnic, learn how to do makeup, recite the Koran and play music on their one day off of the week.

Nurjanah, from Pekalongan in Central Java, has been in Hong Kong - the fifth most popular destination for Indonesian migrant workers - for six years. At least here she gets a day off. Nurjanah left Singapore when her two-year contract expired because she didn't have any days off. "Thank God my employers (in Hong Kong) are good," Nurjanah tells Fairfax Media. She shares a room with three children in a two-bedroom flat, working from 7am until 10pm cooking, cleaning and child minding. However the mornings are fairly free when the children are at school, and Nurjanah has Sundays and public holidays off. Nurjanah says her salary is good, the equivalent of $500 a month: "It is very difficult to find a job with such a salary in Indonesia, especially for someone like me who is only an elementary school graduate." But like many domestic workers, Nurjanah takes care of other people's children while her own son, who is in year eight, is brought up by her parents in Indonesia.

Her friends discuss how long they will stay overseas every time they meet. "As a mother, I am worried that my son will go out with the wrong people, I can only hope that my son is always safe," Nurjanah says. "People like me can only monitor our children through their Facebook accounts or by talking over the phone. This kind of thinking makes us want to go home soon." On her days off, Nurjanah tries to "learn something, to improve myself". She completed a makeup class and now has a few students of her own: "My hope is that I could use my new skills once I'm back in Indonesia. Who knows, I could open my own beauty salon." The government's plan to phase out sending maids overseas is widely discussed by Nurjanah's friends on Facebook. Nurjanah believes she will be safe because she heard a rumour that it won't affect maids already working overseas. "I think it's good, there should be progress," she says. "I think Mr Jokowi, as the country's leader, must feel embarrassed that Indonesia is the biggest supplier of maids." Between 2012 and 2015, Carol Chan visited two migrant origin villages in Cilacap in Central Java.

"Since people rarely talk openly about the difficulties migrants face overseas or labour abuse, villages come to view migrant success as the norm," she writes in Inside Indonesia. "To make matters worse, migrants' accounts of their own negative experiences are often individualised or dismissed as reflecting their own compromised morality. This leads migrants who 'fail' to experience this as a personal failure, rather than as due to weak laws regarding labour conditions and migration processes." Anis Hidayah, the executive director of NGO Migrant Care, devotes her life to fighting for the rights of Indonesian migrant workers, including those on death row in foreign countries. However she opposes the government's plan to stop sending maids overseas, saying it violates the rights of women to work where they wish. "It is like a rape case," Anis says. "Every time a woman is raped, the government suggests women should not travel at night, should not go out alone, should not wear short skirts. This is the same."
Latest News Westpac joins Home Guarantee Scheme Help for home buyers starts mid-2023

CBA-owned stockbroker acknowledges court decision relating to systemic compliance failures A total remediation of $6.5 million has been paid to affected customers

ASIC has revealed it will be serving notices to brokers to provide data, as a part of its fact find for the mortgage broker remuneration review. However, the FBAA is assuring that brokers should not be worried.The FBAAs Peter White, who met with the ASIC team heading up the review in Melbourne yesterday, said the corporate watchdog will be calling on brokers to provide data, following its data collection from lenders and aggregators.What will happen as of next week is notices will be served on the lenders for the data collection. The week after that the notice will be served on the aggregators. Brokers will be last on the list to get notices served on them, White told Australian Broker.That will be about two to three weeks away before that happens.According to White, ASIC was vague on the specifics of what data they will be seeking, however he told Australian Broker it will be focussed on drilling down on the borrower profile.White also said one significant sized lender  he could not reveal who  told him that there could be as many as three million transactions involved in the fact find.Some aggregators have already submitted data to ASIC as a part of their cooperation with the review. AFG told brokers at its Masterclass in Sydney this week that it has already submitted a significant amount of data to the regulator, proving commissions are not a form on conflicted remuneration.However, when brokers are summoned by ASIC in the coming weeks, White is assuring them they should not be worried.The big thing is that this is not anything to be scared about, he told Australian Broker.The actual sampling of brokers is very small. Im not allowed to divulge how many but it will be significantly less than 1,000 brokers. Most of the market wont even know its happened.But those that do get served notices, ASIC are very keen to let them realise that selection doesnt mean there is an issue with what they are doing or that theyve been targeted for anything. It isnt being done on alpha order either  it is just a random selection.ASIC will be calling the brokers selected prior to sending notices requesting the data.
Latest News Westpac joins Home Guarantee Scheme Help for home buyers starts mid-2023

CBA-owned stockbroker acknowledges court decision relating to systemic compliance failures A total remediation of $6.5 million has been paid to affected customers

Despite weekly rents across Australias capital cities remaining steady over May, annual rental growth still remains in negative territory.Released yesterday, CoreLogic s latest Rent Review has shown the combined capital city rental rates remained at $489 per week for houses and $469 per week for units during May; however rents were 0.3% lower year-on-year compared to May 2015. Cameron Kusher , CoreLogic research analyst Cameron Kusher, said current weakness in the rental market is likely to persist for some time.It is anticipated that the weakness in the rental market will persist and where on an annual basis, well see rents fall further over coming months, Kusher said.Since we started tracking annual rent changes back in 1996, the May 2016 results represent the lowest annual change on record, he said.Source: CoreLogicKusher said there was a range of factors that have played a part in the weakening of rental conditions.A number of factors such as the softest wages growth on record have contributed to this slow down, he said.At the same time, we also saw unit construction hit record high levels and a lack of population growth which has contributed to a lesser demand for rentals.The year-on-year fall in rents was driven mainly by the continual deterioration of conditions in Perth and Darwin.In the 12 months to May, rents fell 16.9% in Darwin and 8.8% in Perth, while smaller falls of 0.9% were also recorded in Brisbane and Adelaide.The remaining capital cities did see rents grow in the 12 months to May, however it was mostly subdued.Hobart saw the highest annual growth rate at 3.7%, followed by Melbourne at 2.9% while rents grew in Sydney and Canberra by 0.9% and 0.1% respectively.The slow rate of rental growth, along with strong capital growth seen in many markets recently has also impacted rental yields.Source: CoreLogicAt a combined capital city level, gross rental yields were recorded at 3.3% for houses in May 2016 and at 4.2% for units, both of which are record lows.Rental yields are lowest for houses in Melbourne (2.9%) and highest in Hobart (5.3%).Unit yields are lowest in Sydney at 4.0% and highest in Hobart at 5.5%.House yields are at record lows in Sydney, Melbourne and Canberra while unit yields are at a record low in Sydney.
The socio-political climate in which the current tensions have been brewing is in stark contrast to 2001 though.

In 2001, tensions between police and students protesting against the privatisation of state assets and a land mobilisation program administered by the then Morauta government resulted in three student fatalities.

Of course this is not the first time that the police have been involved in confrontations with protesting students which have resulted in casualties.

This should concern every law-abiding and peace-loving citizen of PNG at home or abroad.

THIS weeks police shooting of students at the University of Papua New Guinea campus are a sign that an authoritarianism and tyrannical reign is well and truly upon us.

Firstly, there is a strong atmosphere of nationalist sentiment and yearning among university students and other patriotic Papua New Guineans.

These people seek a national narrative of unity, democratic justice and self-government that has not reached such fervent heights since the pre-independence years. Such feelings have been fuelled in part by the social media.

My analysis of anecdotal and media sources indicates that, nationwide, Papua New Guineans are awakening to a realisation of a rampant government and are voicing their views and expectations of how they believe they should be governed.

What happens in Waigani can no longer transpire without invoking the ire of the rest of PNG since Papua New Guineans are perceiving the direct correlation between corruption, unaccountable leadership and deteriorating moral and socio-economic standards.

The common theme transcending regional, ethnic and linguistic boundaries is a deep and unsettling understanding that something is definitely not right with the current leadership.

Politically, PNG is now seeing a leadership of unprecedented tyrannical proportions, more akin to Mugabes Zimbabwe or Banimaramas Fiji. What appears on the surface to be a stable government is but a smokescreen for the rot that is festering within.

The parallels with Zimbabwe and Fiji are based on an emerging culture of impunity that the current prime minister has cultivated and is propagating through his defiance of the law.

Apart from the serious allegations against him, Peter ONeills actions to marginalise the judiciary and the legislature, and dissolve or usurp power from processes that exist to hold the executive accountable, are serious and aggressive purges against democracy and should not go unnoticed or unpunished.

I commend the university students on the staunch stance they have taken, since there now seems nothing left to hold the leadership accountable.

Throughout history, the ability and proficiency of students in mobilising and advocating contemporary issues in their societies has been a prominent feature in many countries.

A powerful example of student mobilisation was in the Austro-Hungarian Empire with the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife in 1914 by Serb nationalist Gavrilo Princip who was a student in his last year of high school.

The assassination sparked World War I and his action was dubbed as the shot that reverberated around the world because of the subsequent horrors of the war that ensued. Ultimately a Yugoslavian nation-state was created, so Princips ethno-nationalist goals were achieved, but at a great cost.

The ability of students to mobilise for a cause makes them a convenient and perfect vehicle through which important social and national movements can be driven.

In PNG, the university students hard line stance against the emerging culture of impunity cultivated by our current government remains unshaken.

The casualties of today, I would argue, are a case of martyrdom of peaceful warriors of democracy.

The adaptability and efficiency of the students mobilisation on behalf of the silent majority has become a cultural arbiter in PNG.

Hence, right or wrong, this social movement for change has taken on a significant role in maintaining and enriching our young democracy.

This day in our history  8 June 2016 - with at least 30 students injured and hospitalised while carrying out peaceful protest  should be remembered not because of the casualties alone but because of the political context and the beliefs and ideas they stand for and have been fighting for.

It is a different political landscape from the 1960s when PNG was pushing for independence from the Australian colonial administration.

Now the people face oppression from an internal oppressor and this is where more parallels can be drawn between Mugabes Zimbabwe and Bainimaramas Fiji. ONeill is like a rat backed into a corner with nowhere to go  and what do all rats do in similar circumstances?

A historical analysis provides three scenarios of what may happen, which I posit here.

The first is what is currently happening with the rat continuing to fight with Machiavellian wit and techniques to maintain his power because to submit to the rule of law would certainly entail a period of incarceration or some other justifiable punishment.

The implication of this is that our democracy is being warped into an authoritarian state as the fight progresses.

A second scenario is seen in the case of the shot that reverberated around the world and is an example of the extreme measures that can be taken when the oppressed are pushed to the limits of their tolerance of the governments apparent impunity. Violence and chaos ensue.

The third scenario is the option of compromise that I propose here, which is that of a self-imposed political excommunication. If ONeill cannot reconcile his reasons for clinging onto power then one non-violent option he should consider is exilium.

In the ancient Roman republic this was a voluntary act of self-banishment from ones community in order to avoid the legal penalties of ones transgressions.

The current prime minister should seriously consider this option to avoid any further rot of the integrity of our democracy as well as anymore unnecessary casualties and further loss of life.

He should choose a country whose regime matches his own political and ethical values  say Zimbabwe or Fiji  and ask for political asylum. Who knows, the people of PNG might be willing to meet the cost of his repatriation there.

Gregory Bablis is studying for a masters degree at the College of Asia Pacific in the Australian National University. He is also vice president of the PNG Canberra Students Association in the Australian Capital Territory.

Disclaimer: The ideas discussed in this article reflect those of the author and not of any of the organisations he is associated with.
Latest News Westpac joins Home Guarantee Scheme Help for home buyers starts mid-2023

CBA-owned stockbroker acknowledges court decision relating to systemic compliance failures A total remediation of $6.5 million has been paid to affected customers

Making broker news this week, AFG released extensive data proving broker commissions are not a form of conflicted remuneration; the FBAA is reassuring brokers after ASIC revealed it will be calling on brokers to provide data; and ME Bank announced new foreign investment restrictions. Mortgage broker commissions are not a form of conflicted remuneration , AFG data submitted to ASICs mortgage broker remuneration review has found.AFG general manager of sales and operations Mark Hewitt spoke to brokers in Sydney this week, saying the data proves the assumption that brokers are incentivised by commission is incomprehensible.We had a look at our highest payer on our panel and the lowest payer on our panel and we worked out that the differential between the average [rate of commission] and the highest paid works out to be $2.10 a week, Hewitt told brokers.The FBAA is reassuring brokers after ASIC revealed it will be serving notices to brokers to provide data as part of the remuneration review.Peter White of the FBAA spoke to Australian Broker, outlining what brokers can expect from the watchdog.What will happen as of next week is notices will be served on the lenders for the data collection. The week after that the notice will be served on the aggregators. Brokers will be last on the list to get notices served on them, he said.That will be about two to three weeks away before that happens.Finally, ME Bank has announced new and severe foreign investment restrictions The move follows widespread money laundering fears and will restrict borrowers not residing or employed in either Australia or New Zealand.The primary driver for the latter is the ability to verify the foreign income. For a bank our size, it is difficult for us to put in place processes at suitable costs to manage this segment, said a statement released by the lender.These are prudential measures designed to ensure our flow of new business in line with our target market. This is particularly important in light of changes by the majors which can increase demand for smaller banks who havent also applied the same policy.
Sign up for our amNY Sports email newsletter to get insights and game coverage for your favorite teams

Dont fugheddaboudit!

Brooklyn Paper Radio hosts Vince DiMiceli and Gersh Kuntzman dug their collective teeth into the controversy that is sweeping the nation: Should the Metropolitan Transportation Authority correct the incorrect spelling of its famed Verrazano-Narrows Bridge and add a the missing z Brooklyn pines for.

But as is their wont, Gersh and Vince asked the tougher question: How could this travesty have gone on for so long?

To answer that, they brought on Prof. Silvio Lacetti of the Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken to explain why Brooklyns Italian-American community hasnt fought harder to make the change.

Want to know the answer? Youll have to tune it to Brooklyn Paper Radio right now by clicking below.

Brooklyn Paper Radio and can be found, as always, right here on Brook lynPa per.com , on iTunes at, on Mixlr, and of course, on Stitcher.

Brooklyn Paper radio is recorded and podcast live every Thursday at 4:45 pm from out studio in Americas Downtown.
Sign up for our amNY Sports email newsletter to get insights and game coverage for your favorite teams

They want to issue a desk appearance.

The city aims to create a 300-seat primary school in the landmarked former 68th Precinct on Fourth Avenue. It would serve a grossly overcrowded school district, but a representative of the current owner lamented the prospect, because the public would not be able to enjoy the century-old building as the cafe the owner has planned there, he said.It would be a shame if they turned it into a school where everything is obviously gated and closed, said developer rep Barry Shisgal. But listen, if thats what the city wants to do  and they can force us to sell  then we dont stand a chance against them.

Owner Yosef Streicher paid $6 million for the property last year and planned to fund a $5 million rehab of both the castle and a neighboring horse stable for potential use as a day care facility with the sale of 10 luxury condominiums he planned to build in an empty portion of the lot. The Department of Education reached out to Streicher to discuss the plan, according to Shisgal, who added he is not privy to how the talks went.

The Landmarks Preservation Commission must sign off on any significant restoration or structural work on the former station house and stables, which are both covered in graffiti and crumbling after years of neglect and a 1980 fire that rendered it uninhabitable.

And a Department of Education representative would not say how the agency would incorporate the buildings into the proposed school, stressing that it is in the early planning stages.

The buildings historic status protects it from demolition  and there is almost no chance the Landmarks Preservation Commission would remove it from the list, an expert said.

Its highly, highly unlikely the commission would de-list an individual landmark, said Andrea Goldwyn, director of public policy at the New York Landmarks Conservancy, adding that she could not recall a case where the commission did give up a landmark.

The city designated the then-municipally-owned structure in 1983, then sold it two years later to a non-profit on the condition it be converted into a community center, but the center never came to fruition. It has changed hands twice since then, but subsequent owner could make good on such a plan.

The Brooklyn Chinese-American Association sold the land to Streicher after the city threatened to sue the group if it did not fix the decrepit eyesore or sell it to someone who would.

A local education advocate applauded the proposal, but said the district needs many more seats to combat general overcrowding.

We need more than 300, so hopefully its the first of many sites, said Naila Rosari, president of the School District 15 community education council.

The city will hold a public hearing on the plan at the Community Board 7 board room [4201 Fourth Ave. between 42nd and 43rd streets, (718) 8540003] at 6:30 pm on June 13.
latest news

October 3, 2022

Dee Gambit

Hundreds  if not thousands  of new and returning TV shows and movies are released every month  your options of what to watch are endless. Variety, they say is ...
Students from Williamsville, Commack, Lawrence & Jericho win top honors at New York science fair

BUFFALO, N.Y.  Winners of the New York State Science Congress hail from three Long Island communities and Williamsville, a suburb of Buffalo.

The event, held June 4 at the University at Buffalo, featured 60 students from throughout the state in grades 7-12. The following students received the Highest Honor award, signifying a first place finish in their respective categories.

High School

Physical sciences  Natale Mancuso, a senior at Williamsville South High School, for a project titled Implementation of Independent Verification for Quality Assurance of Leksell Gamma Plan.

Biological sciences  Justin Kim, a junior at Jericho Senior High School, for a project titled Enhancement of B-Lactum Antibiotic Susceptibility by Tannic Acid through B-Lactamase Inhibition.

Middle School

Physical sciences  Rohan Surana, a seventh grade student at Commack Middle School, investigated the influence architectural design has on minimizing damage from tsunamis.

Biological sciences  Bhawan Sandhu, an eighth grade student at Lawrence Middle School, designed an experiment and conducted research on distracted driving.

To participate in the event, students had to first win their local science fairs. Once selected for the statewide fair, they were judged on poster board presentations of their research by scientists, engineers, doctors and other professionals from the Buffalo Niagara region. Highest Honor recipients received $400, High Honor (or second place) $200 and Honor (third place) $100.

The Science Teachers Association of New York State (STANYS) organized and sponsored the annual event. Co-sponsors of this years event included the Western New York Science Congress, Inc. and UB.

Additional support was provided by Visit Buffalo Niagara, the Technical Societies Council of the Niagara Frontier and New York Sea Grant. Siemens provided promotional items.

The tentative date for next years STANYS New York State Science Congress is June 3. Students interested in participating should first participate in their local Science Congress event. Visit http://www.stanys.org/ for more information.
Media advisory: Buffalo teens with asthma teach each other how to best manage their disease

Do teens with asthma learn more about the disease from their peers than from adults? This weekend, UB researchers aim to find out

About a quarter of children living in Buffalo have asthma and they utilize health care at higher rates than in other regions in New York State. 

BUFFALO, N.Y.  Some Buffalo teens are headed to camp this weekend, but its not your typical summer camp. Instead, 60 inner-city middle and high school students will spend June 11-12 at the Nor-Ton Red Jacket Club in North Tonawanda to learn how to better manage their asthma. The camp runs from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m.

The program, called PeerLed Asthma Self-Management for Adolescents (PLASMA), is led by researchers at the University of Rochester School of Nursing in collaboration with the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences at the University at Buffalo. The purpose is to learn whether peer leaders who are 16-20 years old and who have well-controlled asthma will have a greater impact on getting campers with persistent and uncontrolled asthma to manage their disease than adult educators.

Media are invited to attend. Press arrangements: Marcene Robinson at 716-645-4595 or contact Danielle Abramo on-site.

About a quarter of children living in Buffalo have asthma and they utilize health care at higher rates than in other regions in New York State, said Laurene Tumiel-Berhalter, PhD, associate professor in the Department of Family Medicine at UB and co-investigator on PLASMA.

She noted that emergency department visits are disproportionately high in Buffalo and hospitalization rates for children in Buffalo with asthma are among New Yorks highest.

PLASMA is the first peer-led asthma training program specifically designed for adolescents, said Danielle Abramo, community recruitment liaison at the Clinical and Translational Research Center of the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences. The program uses peer leaders with asthma who live in the same community to teach teens how best to manage their disease.

The first Buffalo session of PLASMA was held in September 2015 and succeeded in reducing emergency department utilization among participants from 35 percent before they attended PLASMA to 21 percent afterward.

This is a strong sign that the program is promising and that it has had a lasting effect on attendees, said Abramo. Even more promising is that the kids like camp so much, many of them ask if they can attend again.

The camp mixes asthma education with fun activities, including arts and crafts, kickball, yoga and games. Breakfast, lunch and snacks are served.

Teens were recruited from the city of Buffalo, primarily the most underserved zip codes, and a few are from nearby suburbs.

After camp, participants are contacted bi-monthly to keep them engaged and see how they are doing, Abramo explained. They also will be asked to complete surveys every three months for more than a year to assess how they are controlling their asthma and to gauge if the education they received at camp is still helping them.

The project is funded by the National Institutes of Health National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute.
KEITH JACKSON

PEOPLE'S Power Movement leader Noel Anjo has given news agency AAP a first-hand account of the circumstances around police opening fire on university students last Wednesday.

Describing the shooting as an ambush, Mr Anjo, said they were assaulting and firing at them."

Mr Anjo, who was a member of the student organisers, rejected reports that students were preparing to march on parliament.

He said they were about to board buses which would take them to parliament to present a petition.

"There was no march," he said Mr Anjo. "There were flags and maybe one or two banners, and the students were in the bus.
Campus News

Social Work named partner school in homelessness initiative

Although UB social work students and faculty already engage with the issue of homelessness through field placements, community service and research, the partnership with the National Homelessness Social Work Initiative allows them to better focus and advance their work.

By LAUREN KROENING

While we can do a lot as individual social workers, educators and researchers to end homelessness, we can accomplish so much more by working together. 

The School of Social Work has been selected to be a full partner school in the National Homelessness Social Work Initiative (NHSWI), a move that allows UB students and faculty to better focus and advance their work in the area of homelessness, including research, curriculum formation, practice and policy-making.

NHSWI, part of the National Center for Excellence in Homeless Services at the University at Albany, is funded by a grant from the New York Community Trust. The UB School of Social Work, which served as a liaison school last year, was one of 18 schools nationally selected to become a full partner school.

Elizabeth Bowen, assistant professor of social work who spearheaded UBs efforts to become a partner school, serves as the universitys representative to NHSWI. As a full partner school, Bowen says, we are really meant to be leaders in developing social works response to homelessness.

NHSWI aims to prepare social work students to practice in the field of homelessness and to advance social work with respect to this issue, Bowen says. To this end, she did an informal assessment of current curriculum and field placements at other schools around the country to see where UB currently stands in educating students to work with the homeless.

The partnership with NHSWI also provides a valuable opportunity for the UB School of Social Work to collaborate with other schools of social work across the country on the topic of homelessness. The 18 partner schools work together on research projects and conference presentations, with the goal of helping to advance the national conversation about homelessness and the role social work plays in addressing it.

For Bowen, this chance to collaborate with others schools is encouraging. Were all working toward the same objective, she says, but depending where you are in the country, homelessness is going to look different  in California, in Texas, here in Buffalo  there are going to be variations. And we can all learn from each other to get an understanding of what homelessness looks like nationally and for different populations, such as youth or veterans.

With the initiative in its second year, Bowen is excited to see the growth that is happening and to be a part of its continued development. We are hearing a lot these days about innovative service models and programs that can help improve housing stability, health and wellness for people experiencing homelessness, so it is an exciting time to be part of this field, she says. And while we can do a lot as individual social workers, educators and researchers to end homelessness, we can accomplish so much more by working together.
Phillies are World Series bound! How to watch, plus the full schedule

The Phillies are heading to the World Series for the first time since 2009. Follow along as Philadelphia takes on the Houston Astros.
A tax credit that was established for breweries has been expanded to include other beverage makers, including New York wineries.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo said the state's Beer Production Credit has been renamed the Alcohol Production Credit to reflect its broader availability. With the change, beverage producers are expected to save an additional $4 million over the next two years, according to the governor's office.

"New York is the epicenter of a burgeoning craft beverage industry and this administration has worked hard to cut red tape and lower costs to help encourage further growth," Cuomo said. "These actions continue our efforts and will help wineries, cideries and distilleries in every corner of the state reinvest in their businesses and create jobs and economic activity."

Craft beverage manufacturers that produce more than 60 million gallons of beer or cider, up to 20 million gallons of wine and 800,000 gallons or less of liquor are eligible for the credit.

The credit's expansion will take effect in the 2016 tax year, the governor's office said.

Since the credit's creation in 2012, breweries throughout the state have saved $11 million.

Jim Tresize, president of the New York Wine & Grape Foundation, said expanding the credit will help the state's successful wine industry, which generates more than $5 billion in economic activity each year.

"This tax credit will save wineries money that they can invest in their businesses and create jobs," he said. "We greatly appreciate this support."
Time and over again, Ishdeep Sawhney realised that those more experienced than him were all saying the same thing - ''the most important decision you make is deciding who you get married to.''



With divorce rates for first marriages being about 50 per cent in the US, California-based Sawhney wanted to proceed with caution. "I wasn't sure how I could objectively decide who the right person for me was and then I came across research that showed that neuroscience could help in asking the right questions to a prospective partner," says Sawhney, formerly an engineer with Apple. As a couple you make hundreds of decisions together, and if you are aligned on those decisions, then you make a good couple, believes Sawhney - these decisions could range from spending your earnings on a BMW to giving your child the best of education.
When snapshots shared by from her movie shoot went viral recently, it was not thanks to the popularity of the film star-turned-parliamentarian, or even the beauty of the locales seen in the photos.
Just over a year ago, aboard the International Space Station 200 miles above earth, Italian astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti slid a plastic capsule into a machine about the size and shape of a home safe. She opened a small plexiglass door, attached a pouch of water to an intake valve, and snapped on a smaller, empty plastic bag. Then she closed the door, turned the machine on, and waited for her espresso. We long ago solved the problem of making coffee on earth. But building an espresso machine for the space station turned out to be a much bigger challenge than the Italian engineering firm ...
For the past 20 years, has travelled through Canada, Egypt, East Africa and West Asia, whipping up sweet delights. However, when he decided to set up his chic French patisserie, Star Anise, in Mumbai last year, he couldn't help but recall the desserts of his childhood spent in Odisha. "I have been away from my homeland for a long time and have always longed for the culture, the people, the evenings spent with my childhood friends and the lip-smacking desserts," says Khan, who has cooked for personalities such as former US President Bill Clinton and actor Rowan Atkinson in the past. This yearning led him to embark on a road trip last month through the villages, remote hamlets and tribal areas of Odisha to find the most authentic desserts.
Many in the Congress believe the Assembly elections in Punjab early next year are a do or die battle for the party. Despite losing the election last time, the party polled nearly 41 per cent votes here. And, the ruling Shiromani Akali Dal-Bharatiya Janata Party alliance is up against 10 years of anti-incumbency. Yet, the Congress high command, desperate for a win, has chosen not to trust old warhorse and its chief ministerial face, Captain Amarinder Singh, entirely with managing his own campaign. The maverick Singh has to depend on another maverick: .
Tompkins County Legislator Mike Sigler won't join an already crowded Republican primary field in the 54th Senate District race, but he does support one of the candidates vying for the party's nomination.

Sigler, R-Lansing, announced Friday he won't circulate petitions to appear on the Sept. 13 GOP primary ballot. Instead of continuing his campaign, he endorsed Canandaigua businessman Floyd Rayburn to succeed state Sen. Michael Nozzolio, who opted not to seek re-election this year.

"It was a tough decision, but I think ultimately the right one," Sigler said. "My main reason for running was to protect the interests of my town and I believe Floyd Rayburn will do that which is why I'm supporting him in the upcoming primary."

Sigler added, "I want a state where I can say to my daughter, 'Build your life here.' I think Floyd has the best chance at winning this seat and carrying a message like that forward."

A two-term county legislator, Sigler announced in May he was exploring a state Senate run. He submitted his name for consideration when more than 300 Republican committee members from the district's six counties met on May 25 to designate a candidate in the race.

At that meeting, Canandaigua Supervisor Pam Helming won the party's designation. She's also supported by three of the five Conservative Party committees in the district.

While Helming won the party's endorsement, it didn't stop other candidates from deciding to launch a primary campaign.

At least three other Republicans have said they're passing petitions to secure their spot on the Sept. 13 ballot.

So why did Sigler endorse Rayburn? He believes with the Canandaigua contractor as state senator, his hometown  Lansing  will be a priority.

"We'll have a senator who stands up against this go-along-to-get-along attitude, someone who's made a payroll, understands what a state needs to do to support jobs and will listen when my town and the other 40-plus towns in the district have an issue," he said.

As the Republicans face a likely primary in the 54th District, Democrats are also preparing for a nomination fight.

To appear on the primary ballot, candidates must submit 1,000 valid signatures. The petitions are due by July 14.
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The Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS), an attached office of the health ministry, has slapped a Rs 503-crore fine on a subsidiary. The fine pertains to non-compliance of land-related laws of the Delhi Development Authority (DDA).
The government has sought six weeks' time from the Bombay High Court to respond to the plea filed by the Financial Technologies Ltd (FTIL) challenging the final merger order with Spot Exchange Ltd (NSEL) issued by the Ministry of Corporate Affair (MCA).



The HC had earlier given time till June 10 to file a reply to the MCA and now has scheduled the hearing for June 15. The ministry made application in the court for extension in the hearing date as it needs time to examine and file an appropriate reply on the submission filed by FTIL in the court.
PayTunes, a mobile advertising platform that aims to change the way of mobile ad delivery, has raised investments close to half a million dollars in a pre-series A round. The investments were led by PayTunes existing investor CIO Angel Network (CAN), Indian Angel Network (IAN) and Apurva Parekh from Pidilite in the current round. Members from IAN will join the company board for mentoring the team.
It is an open secret now that the telecom is at loggerheads with the sector regulator. While the relationship has been steadily deteriorating over the last one year since the new chief took over, it has hit a nadir with the sector regulator wanting to put company executives behind bars.
Telecom operators have committed to invest Rs 12,000 crore within the next three months to install 60,000 towers and put an end to mobile menace.
Natural resources major is seeing a revival in its fortunes after being hit by last years crash in commodity prices. Even after adjusting for one-offs, the company reported a consolidated loss of Rs 944 crore in FY16, compared with a net profit of Rs 1,895 crore in FY15. Consequently, since August 2014 till the end of FY16, the stock was on a downward spiral during which it hit a lows of Rs 58.10 in February this year.
Condemning the attack on Aam Aadmi Party councillor Rakesh Kumar alleged by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) members at a joint session of the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) on Thursday, Delhi Chief Minister said since the BJP government came to power at the Centre, crime has gone up in the country, adding that they are targeting and torturing the Dalits.

"Since the BJP government has come to power, crime has increased in the country, and they are targeting and torturing Dalits. They forced Rohith Vemula to commit suicide. Atrocities against Dalits are on rise, which we strongly condemn", said Kejriwal warning the BJP, either it mend its ways or not only Dalits of the country, but people from all communities will decimate the BJP.

Stating that people will not tolerate cast politics followed by the BJP, the AAP convener said, "We are also seeking the President's appointment to protest against it."

Meanwhile, the Delhi assembly passed a resolution condemning the attack on Rakesh Kumar, a Dalit councillor from ward 82 in Old Delhi during the joint session held at the Ramlila Maidan here.
Assam Chief Minister on Friday said revenue mobilisation has to be stepped up to expedite development in the state.

In a meeting with officials of the Finance and Taxation Departments here, the Chief Minister said various new ways and means must be adopted to generate revenue in a big way and plug leakages.

Stating that Prime Minister Narendra Modi is keen to make North East an organic hub, Sonowal said "We have to initiate a slew of measures to make Assam an organic hub".

Emphasising on stepping up production of agriculture, horticulture, mushroom, banana, cane and bamboo, Sonowal said by doing so the economic condition of the farmers can be improved, a government release said.

Underscoring the need to involve the youth and formulate suitable schemes, Sonowal asked officials to identify the sectors in which the State has huge potential.

"We have to go in for industries based on available raw materials that generate employment opportunities and bring about economic transformation in the lives of the people. However, ecological balance has to be maintained at any cost," he said.

"Soil testing labs are needed in districts for increased foodgrains production," Sonowal said, adding, farmers must get the right price for their produce.

The Chief Minister called for establishing strong links between the producers, buyers and markets to weed out middlemen. He also asked the officials to closely study the markets in other states as well as neighbouring countries to explore ways to sell the products there.

Directing the officials to find out the exact volume of produce like eggs, milk and diary products coming daily to the state from outside, he said, "If we can produce the items coming from outside in our own State, it will not only enhance capacity building but also open up the doors for employment."

Sonowal directed the tax officials to keep a strict vigil on the trucks laden with goods entering the state through Srirampur and Boxirhat Check Gates bordering West Bengal so that no trucks can enter illegally through other roads of the inter-state boundary.

At another meeting with Transport Department officials, Sonowal said to infuse a new lease of life to the Department.

"Some new measures should be introduced even though it is playing a major role in revenue generation in the state.

To facilitate a quantum leap in revenue generation, the Department needs to take new programmes to woo passengers", he said.
As the 17th century was coming to its last years, New Yorks people had gone through many changes.

The Dutch government was gone, but Dutch settlers were still farming here and trading for furs.

The English were running things for the settlers along the Hudson River, down near the Delaware River and into the eastern part of the Mohawk Valley, and quite a few English settlers had come, too, though not as many as came to New England.

People from other nations were also coming to New York, most because they wanted to, and a smaller number because they were English, Scottish or Irish who had been captured in Englands civil wars and sentenced to come here as workers. Others were slaves kidnapped from Africa.

The greatest changes of all had come to the People of the Longhouse.

In the years since Hudson and Champlain, the daily lives of the Iroquois had become very different.

They were now used to iron kettles, woven cloth, metal fish hooks and knives and other new technologies. Only a few very old people remembered the days before they had these things, and many of the younger people did not even know how to make and use the tools of olden days.

And there werent as many Iroquois as there had been at the start of the century.

Many had died of the new diseases brought by the Europeans, especially among the Mohawk, since the Eastern Door of the Longhouse was so close to where many Europeans now lived.

Other Iroquois had moved to the villages the French had built near Montreal, and no longer returned to the towns in the Longhouse or thought of it as home.

France still claimed the northern part of what is now New York and New England, but had not been settling those lands except on the coast that is now Maine. However, they still wanted the Iroquois to change their religion and move closer to Montreal.

Especially, they wanted the Iroquois to stop interfering with their fur trade.

The Beaver Wars had ended and most of the Mahicans had moved to New England. Most of the tribes who had lived in the land between the Western Door of the Longhouse and the Niagara River had also been driven out.

But the beaver and other fur-bearing animals had been hunted so much that they were nearly gone, too, and raiding the hunters and trappers who traveled from further up towards the Great Lakes was one of the only ways to get furs to trade for the things the Iroquois needed.

A more peaceful way was to persuade those trappers and hunters not to go through Lake Ontario and down the St. Lawrence to Montreal, but to come through the Longhouse to Albany. The Iroquois would guide them there, and help make good deals with the traders for a share of the profits.

To the French, it didnt matter whether the Iroquois were taking furs from those other Indians or making partnerships with them: What mattered was that the furs were ending up in Albany instead of Montreal.

The French and Iroquois had often traded together, but they had never liked each other. There had often been raids and small battles between them, mostly in the north.

But now the French were furious and ready for real war with the Iroquois.

As for the English, they were happy to have the furs coming to Albany, and still called themselves friends of the Iroquois.

But their promises of help against the French were never more than promises, and it was becoming difficult for the Iroquois to remain patient with these friends who left them to fight alone.

They also did not appreciate being spoken to as if they were children.

You say that you are our father and I am your son, an Iroquois leader said at a Covenant Chain meeting. We say, we will not be like father and son, but like brothers.

Yet their English brothers did not want to make war on the French.

Before the English even came to New Netherland, their country had changed governments twice.

First, a civil war ended with the execution of their king. Then, after a period of rule by a dictator, a new king was put on the throne. It was under his government that New Netherland became New York.

But England was still a difficult, divided nation, and had enough problems without getting involved in any quarrels they could avoid.

In 1688, however, another European war broke out, with France on one side and England on the other, and part of the conflict was a quarrel over who should be King of England.

This new, major war spilled over across the Atlantic, in nine years of violence called King Williams War.

As in the past, the Algonquins took the side of the French while the Iroquois were prepared to fight alongside the English.

Even then, however, they were disappointed. Most of Englands actions came from Boston, not Albany or New York City.

Meanwhile, French and Algonquin forces swept into New York and attacked the European settlements, including Schenectady, as well as towns in the Onondaga country at the center of the Longhouse.

Without support from the English, the Iroquois had to retreat, abandoning their towns to be destroyed by their enemies.

And so New Yorks first century ended. But the conflicts among its three nations would continue.
A Delhi court on Friday awarded life imprisonment to five convicts accused in the 2014 Danish woman gang rape case.

The Delhi Police had on Thursday sought maximum punishment for five convicts involved in the gang-rape of a 52-year-old Danish woman.

The court had on Monday held the five accused guilty in the case.

All five adult accused namely Mahendra alias Ganja (24), Mohd Raja (22), Raju (23), Arjun (21) and Raju Chakka (22) were held guilty under Sections 376 D, 366, 342, 395 and 506 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC).

Nine men, including three juveniles, were accused of robbing and raping the 52-year-old Danish woman at knife-point near New Delhi railway station in January 2014 after she sought directions to her hotel in Paharganj area.

Shyam Lal, one of the accused, died in February in Delhi's Tihar Jail and the proceedings against him in this case were abated.

The three minors are facing proceedings before the Juvenile Justice Board in connection with this case.
With defence and prosecution arguments concluding on Friday, the special sessions court in Ahmedabad will now fix a date on Monday for pronouncement of quantum of punishment to the 24 convicted in the case.

On Friday, defence and prosecution arguments on the sentencing concluded, with the former demanding minimum punishment for convicts. The court informed that on Monday, June 13, date will be fixed for pronouncing quantum of punishment.
A day after six more were arrested by the Sri Lanka Navy, Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Jayalalithaa today urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi to get 21 and 92 boats released from the island nation, including those apprehended on June 9.

"This is to bring to your notice yet another incident in which six fishermen, in one mechanised fishing boat from Rameswaram were apprehended by the Sri Lankan Navy in the early hours of June 9 and taken to Thalaimannar," she said in a letter to the Prime Minister.

She said faced threats of harassment and abduction from Sri Lankan Navy while fishing in their traditional fishing waters in the Palk Bay.

"I would like to remind you that 15 fishermen apprehended earlier this month are still languishing in Sri Lankan custody. 91 fishing boats are also in Sri Lankan custody at present," the Chief Minister said.

Non-release of boats by Sri Lanka caused immense frustration amongst fishermen and throttled their livelihood though the island nation freed arrested fishermen, she said.

Seeking Modi's personal intervention, she urged him to take up the issue with Sri Lanka in a "concrete and decisive" manner so as to secure the immediate release of "our 21 fishermen and 92 fishing boats, including the six fishermen and their one mechanised fishing boat apprehended on June 9 at the earliest.
JNU students' union President Kanhaiya Kumar, along with 42 others, were on Friday detained by police at Bihar Bhawan in Chanakyapuri here for protesting against the alleged attack on students in hunger strike at the College of Arts and Crafts in Patna.

The demonstration started around 3.30 PM, following which Kumar and 42 others were put inside a bus and detained at Parliament Street Police Station here. "The protesters were detained considering law and order issues," DCP (New Delhi) Jatin Narwal said.

The protesters also demanded extension of the date of Bihar Public Service Commission (BPSC) main exams so that the dates do not clash with that of UPSC prelims.

"The condition of education in Bihar is continuously deteriorating. The government is not taking the demands of students regarding quality education seriously. And those who are fighting for this significant and relevant cause are facing violence and imprisonment," Kumar said.

He further said, "from the last few days, whenever there is a protest, Delhi Police detains us in five minutes. Throughout India, students are being attacked and whenever they protest, which is an elemental right, they are not allowed to do so. It is an attack on democracy".

Earlier this week, seven students of College of Arts and Crafts under Patna University sustained injuries in an attack allegedly carried out by some miscreants while they were protesting against the conduct of the administration.

"The protesters were demanding that the corrupt principal of the college be sacked when they were shot at by the guards of the vice chancellor of the University. The goons and police trashed them, and when others went for protest against these actions, they were detained. We demand their immediate release," Kumar said.

"We will keep the struggle alive and if needed we shall go to Patna," he added.
Altogether 66 cadres of the United A'chik Liberation Army (UALA) bade farewell to arms at a historic disbanding ceremony which was attended by Chief Minister Mukul Sangma, Home Minister Roshan Warjri, the interlocutors and others here.

Formed in 2012, the UALA had signed a peace agreement with the government in December last year.

The Chief Minister, in his address, lauded UALA's decision saying that the programme would generate a lot of hope and should be taken as an opportunity to send a positive message to the others who are still in the jungle.

Sharing the concern of UALA Chairman Novembirth Marak over negative remarks from certain quarters on Government's rehabilitation package for militants, Sangma said the government was moving ahead with complete clarity to achieve the shared objective of bringing lasting peace in the region. He said the approach of the government of providing such platform for peace should be adopted across the state as well as other states of North East as the menace of insurgency is a shared problem of the states in the region.

The Chief Minister urged cadres of the disbanded outfit never to lose hope and assured them that the government would continue giving them guiding support.

Home Minister Roshan Warjri in her address expressed her gratitude to all those who made it possible to bring UALA cadres back to the mainstream and called for continued support and counselling as they start their lives anew.

Ex-chairman of another outlawed militant group, Julius K Dorphang, who is now a legislator, briefly shared his past experiences and the peace he felt after coming overground. He also spoke words of encouragement to the cadres of disbanded organization.

UALA Chairman Novembirth Marak expressed his gratitude to the Chief minister and the interlocutors for facilitating their return to the mainstream.

The Bishop of Tura, Rt. Rev. Andrew R Marak, also spoke on the occasion.
Several big-ticket non-government organisations (NGOs) came together in Delhi on Friday to demand that the government should use the Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act (FCRA) to regulate and not harass and intimidate civil society groups.
The issues involving should be handled on a case-to-case basis and everyone cannot be labelled as a criminal, Rajya Sabha MP Shantaram Naik said on Friday.

He also opined that the foreigners over-staying in the country should be deported.

"The issues related to should be taken up on a case-to-case basis. We can't label everyone as a criminal," Naik told reporters here amid the raging controversy on the issue.

"I feel that those foreigners including who are over-staying or staying with extended visa should be deported. That is the only solution," he said.

The MP also said that action should be taken against drug traffickers.

Referring to a case wherein a group of Nigerians had blocked the Highway at Porvorim in Goa in 2013, Naik said, "I am shocked that till date no charge sheet is filed in the violence that Nigerians created."



He said, overall India has very good relations with African countries and would like to maintain it.

Seeking to play down the recent row over his remarks that people of Goa in general are unhappy with Nigerians, Chief Minister Laxmikant Parsekar had on Wednesday said all foreigners, including Nigerians, are welcome in the state which is committed to providing security to everyone.

Prior to that, on May 30, Parsekar had sparked a controversy by saying, "In general, people are angry with Nigerians and not other foreigners. I feel they (Nigerians) have a different attitude."



The CM was then responding to a question on recent allegations of rape against a Nigerian in Goa and racial attacks in Delhi.
BJP on Friday cited a purported sting operation to fire a fresh salvo at the Samajwadi Party government in Uttar Pradesh, alleging it has "exposed" the ruling party's collusion with Mathura's Jawahar Bag encroachers.

The party also asked the state government to immediately recommed for a CBI inquiry so that truth could come out.

"The sting has exposed Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav and his government. He had blamed officers for the violence. Now it has emerged that over 80 intelligence inputs were sent to the government but it did not act because it was in collusion with land mafia," BJP Secretary Shrikant Sharma claimed.

The sting operation purportedly showed intelligence officials saying they had informed the Uttar Pradesh government about threats posed by the well-armed encroachers, who were also part of a sect.

The government has been making efforts to cover up its crime but BJP will continue with its agitation till all those involved are exposed, he alleged.

Sharma said Yadav should apologise to officials for blaming them for the killing of cops and demanded that the chief minister should not take action against the officials shown in the sting video.
The government plans to invest Rs 20,000 crore in upgrading and building the national network around Char Dham and Buddhist circuits. While the plan has faced small hiccups like termination of contract for the 149-km Kannauj-Kanpur stretch of the Buddhist circuit, the two circuits together cover three states and also parts of Nepal.



Of the total investment, Rs 11,700 crore alone would be spent on the construction of all-weather roads connecting Char Dham that includes four holy shrines of Hindus  Kedarnath, Badrinath, Gangotri and Yamunotri in Uttarakhand - according to an official release. Kedarnath is dedicated to Hindu God Shiva and Badrinath to Vishnu. Gangotri and Yamunotri are the source of Ganga and Yamuna, respectively, which are revered by the Hindus.



The investment for constructing the 889-km long Char Dham route includes civil construction, land acquisition and forest clearance.



Another important religious circuit for the domestic as well as international tourist is the Buddhist circuit covering Vaishali, Patna, Bodh Gaya, Rajgir, Nalanda, Kahalgaon and Vikramshila in Bihar. The Buddhist circuit includes the holy sites of Buddhism where Lord Buddha was born, attained Enlightenment, preached the first sermon and reached nirvana. Lumbini (Nepal), Bodhgaya (Bihar), and Sarnath and Kushinagar (Uttar Pradesh) are places of importance for Buddhists.



The national highways connecting these cities are under various stages of construction.



These highways will cut across various important cities across Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, thereby improving and upgrading the business activity and overall tourism in these states. The work for the Patna-Bodh Gaya highway, foundation stone for which was laid by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in August last year, is in progress.



Another connecting Patna to Vaishali via Manjhi, Chapra, Hajipur is likely to be completed by this month-end. However, the 149-km long two-lane stretch connecting Kannauj to Kanpur in Uttar Pradesh is being restructured for widening to four-lane and the detailed project report for the same is underway. The contract was earlier terminated due to the operators default.


Automobile makers want the government to ink free trade agreements (FTA) with Australia and South American nations to boost vehicle exports to those countries and offset recent losses due to falling export to African nations.
Three Cayuga-Onondaga BOCES students will showcase their career skills on a national stage for a competition in Louisville later this month.

Garrett Goodwin, Mikala Sanford and Tyler Short will test their expertise in carpentry, customer service and diesel technology, respectively, at the national level of the annual SkillsUSA event. The contest is said to bring together 16,000 individuals  students, teachers, entrepreneurs and others  for a four-day competition in various vocational skills that will start June 20.

The trio of BOCES students qualified for national SkillsUSA competition following two earlier contests: a February regional at SUNY Morrisville and a state qualifier in April at the New York State Fairgrounds.

Goodwin, Sanford and Short finished first, second and first in their respective competitions during the regional qualifier, then secured the first-place finishes at states required for them to book the trip to Louisville, said Melisa Vormwald with Cayuga-Onondaga BOCES.

Vormwald said the SkillsUSA competition could help open the door to future scholarships for each of the students.

"I'm proud of them," said Vormwald, who is an adviser for the SkillsUSA students. "I'm excited to go to Louisville. They're three great kids, so we'll have a good trip."

Meghan Ragucci, who also serves as a SkillsUSA adviser for BOCES, added, "It's a huge accomplishment and recognition."

Goodwin's appearance at the state fairgrounds in April was not his first SkillsUSA rodeo.

The 18-year-old senior at Cato-Meridian High School also participated during his junior year, falling short of national competition with a second-place finish. Competing in cabinetmaking, Goodwin "came back (to states) with a vengeance," Vormwald said, and crafted a first-place-worthy nightstand.

The piece was made of a specific allotment of red oak  just enough wood to make the cabinet, Goodwin said. He prepared for the April state qualifier, he said, through an internship at Bartolotta Furniture that month, as well as weeks of wood-crafting ahead of time.

"I told (my competitor) that I'm not losing this year," he said of the state qualifier.

Whereas a cabinetmaking shop is something Goodwin may pursue, Sanford studies cosmetology at BOCES with an interest in working in marine life rehabilitation.

So why choose customer service? Sanford has past experience working at an area convenience store, said the 18-year-old senior at Auburn High School.

"Because of where I was working, I really enjoy it," Sanford said of customer service. "Out of all of the options we had, that fit me the best. I like working with people."

The state qualifier required Sanford to work with three customers at a station with a computer, a phone and her "manager" (judge) at her side. The third customer, she said, acted particularly angry, but the competition called for her to "find a professional way" to handle the situation.

Sanford and Goodwin were scheduled to join Short and a representative from SkillsUSA to recite the Pledge of Allegiance ahead of Thursday's BOCES graduation.

Short, 19, was also tabbed to give a speech during the ceremony. The Skaneateles High School senior took first at the state qualifier in diesel equipment technology, having been challenged at around a dozen different contest stations  from parts diagnostics and welding to conducting a mock interview.

With BOCES classes wrapped up, the students will each prepare for nationals in their own way.

"I'm planning on getting set up with a bunch of internships between the time we graduate and the time we go there," Short said.
The empowered committee of the state finance ministers on the proposed goods and services tax will meet after over six months in Kolkata for two days on June 14-15 to discuss the draft legislation.
This morning, PM @narendramodi chaired three key meetings at South Block. pic.twitter.com/S1XxtTVPGm

Prime Minister trended for hours on social media getting a heros welcome as he returned home from the five-nation tour on Friday morning. #WorldWinnerModiReturns rocked the microblogging site Twitter with the PMs followers telling the world that Modi was attending back-to-back meetings at his South Block office soon after landing. Many even tweeted that this PM did not know what a jet lag was as he did not take a day off after a whirlwind tour.Top officials familiar with the working style of previous PM Manmohan Singh, however, pointed out that he, too, used to join work immediately after overseas trips. We never had jet lag and worked 24X7, an official who had worked with Singh told Business Standard.But, another former PMO official pointed out that most previous PMs foreign trips used to be at a more relaxed pace than Modis, perhaps.While Modi got down to business with meetings related to disaster risk reduction, crime and criminal tracking network and national intelligence grid, several central ministers including Venkaiah Naidu, Ravi Shankar Prasad, Narendra Tomar and Radha Mohan Singh got busy with their appreciation of the PMs efforts overseas and his non-stop work.Tomar, minister for labour, steel and mines, retweeted, PM Modi in action: lands at 6:30 and in office to chair 3 crucial meetings at South Block.Agriculture minister Radha Mohan Singh, who sent the highest number of tweets on the subject, said: Congratulations to PM for winning hearts and bringing laurels to the country.Telecom minister Ravi Shankar Prasad had this to say: When you work for your country, you never feel tired.
Demand for within a state may no longer be a criterion for seeking mega projects. Gujarat, the most energy surplus state in the country, wants another mega investment in generation even as other states seem to be no longer interested in hosting ultra mega power projects (UMPP).
Even as states have committed to carrying out auctioning of 106 mineral blocks during the current financial year, they have sought the Union ministrys intervention to expedite environment clearance for mining and exploration.
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) might ask to use forensic audit to pick up projects that need to be restructured and let the original management of the company run the show instead of the lenders taking over.
The Reserve Bank of India is in talks with for a debt rejig plan that would involve individual companies passing a forensic audit report and produce a certificate endorsing commercial operations date of projects, according to a media report.


The 94-year old (TMB) is one of the oldest and profitable private sector banks in the country, despite issues relating to board occupancy. The bank reported six per cent growth at Rs 402.16 crore in 2015-16 from Rs 379.40 crore, a year ago. In his first interview after taking over as the chairman of TMB in March, S Annamalai spoke to T E Narasimhan at the bank's headquarters in Thoothukudi, on the board's vision and the way forward. Edited excerpts:



What are the immediate priorities for the new Board?



We have a good team of directors and professionals who are looking at the interest of the shareholders. We have started taking efficient decisions on advances to reduce non-performing assets (NPAs) and we are aiming at much better profit this year. Also, we are following Reserve Bank of India (RBI) regulations for sector-wise advances. The bank will not look at high-ticket advances to be careful and to reduce NPAs. There have been issues in sectors like infrastructure and aviation.
94-year (TMB) is one of the oldest private sector . It is also one of the most profitable in the country despite it having issues relates to Board occupancy. The Bank reported 6% growth at Rs 402.16 crore in 2015-16 from Rs 379.40 crore, a year ago.

In his first interview after taking over as Chairman of TMB in March, S Annamalai, managing director, Pioneer Jellice India, spoke to TE Narasimhan at the bank's headquarter in Thoothukudi, around 600 kms from Chennai, on the Board's vision and what is the way forward for the bank, including IPO.
Turkey's President has cut short his trip to the US and will not attend the funeral of boxer Muhammad Ali, his office said on Friday, amid reports of a rift with the ceremony's organisers.

had especially flown to Louisville in the southern US state of Kentucky to bid farewell to Ali, who the Turkish president is known to have admired hugely as a committed Muslim and civil rights campaigner.

Erdogan on Thursday attended a prayer ceremony for Ali and had been due to attend the funeral on Friday along with several other high profile political leaders.

But the president's office said that Erdogan left the United States for Turkey late Thursday after attending the prayer ceremony and joining a Ramadan fast-breaking dinner with the US diaspora of Meskhetian Turks who were expelled from their homeland by Stalin in the 1940s.

The Dogan news agency quoted presidential sources as saying funeral organisers refused to allow Erdogan to lay a cloth from the Kaaba - the cube-shaped structure at the centre of Islam's most sacred mosque - on Ali's coffin during the ceremony.

Erdogan and the Sunni cleric who heads Turkey's religious affairs agency, Mehmet Gormez, had also wanted to give readings from the Koran but were not allowed to, it added.

The Turkish President's bodyguards and US Secret Service agents also clashed briefly while he was in Louisville.

During his trip, Erdogan was full of praise for Ali, hailing him as a fighter not just in the ring but for Muslims in general.

"While running from success to success in the rings, he also became the voice of the oppressed and victims along with Muslims from every corner of the world," he said.

Erdogan's visit to the US also caused consternation in Turkey, with Erdogan leaving the day after a bomb attack in Istanbul claimed by Kurdish militants that killed 11 people.
AUBURN  About 5.4 million Americans have Alzheimer's disease. In 2015, there were more than 15 million caregivers, who provided approximately 18.1 billion hours of uncompensated care, according to the Alzheimer's Association.

"It's a hard job," said Brenda Wiemann about the work caregivers do.

Wiemann, the director for the Office of the Aging, told Cayuga County legislators at Thursday night's Health and Human Services Committee meeting that the county had been awarded a $75,000 grant.

The money would go toward providing respite services for caregivers, something the county already does, but would be able to do more of with the new funds.

"Somebody else would come in so they (caregivers) could go out and go grocery shopping, get their hair done," Wiemann said. "They would call our office to access the program. We would provide the someone else, usually through one of our contract agencies."

The grant, which was awarded by the Alzheimer's Association of Central New York through the New York State Department of Health, gives the county $10,000 from July 1 through Dec. 31. The following four years, the county will be given $16,250, totaling $75,000 by 2020.

Legislators unanimously passed a motion accepting the funds, with Legislators Joseph DeForest and Tucker Whitman absent.

In other news:

 Gov. Andrew Cuomo released recommendations from the Heroin and Opioid Task Force Thursday. Ray Bizzari, the county's director of community services, said some of the recommendations are helpful, but one had him concerned.

Bizzari told legislators there's a provision in the law that allows them to hospitalize and hold a person for 48 hours who has overdosed. The problem is, Bizzari said, there isn't a place to send those people.

"You go to the emergency room, and emergency rooms aren't equipped to do anything, so folks, they get discharged," he said. "The governor's proposing to expand that (48 hours) to 72 hours. The issue that remains is where to send someone. That isn't clear. We can't, we don't have the authority, say to send somebody to Tully Hill (Treatment Center). That's not how it works."

Bizzari hopes more information will be coming down the pipeline around how to address where to send someone.
The US President Barack Obama today endorsed as the Democratic party's presidential nominee, praising his former secretary of state's experience and grit, even as a subdued Bernie Sanders vowed to foster party unity to take on Republican nominee Donald Trump.

"I don't think there's ever been someone so qualified to hold this office. She's got the courage, the compassion, and the heart to get the job done... I have seen her judgement," Obama said in an email and a web video circulated by the Clinton campaign.

"I've seen her toughness. I've seen her commitment to our values up close. And I've seen her determination to give every American a fair shot at opportunity, no matter how tough the fight  that's what's always driven her, and still does," Obama said.

The Clinton campaign also announced their first joint appearance with Obama on the campaign trail next week in Green Bay, Wisconsin.

Obama's endorsement of Clinton came moments after he met Senator Sanders of Vermont at the White House.

Although, Sanders stopped short of endorsing Clinton, but he vowed to work with Clinton to defeat Trump.

"Needless to say, I am going to do everything in my power and I will work as hard as I can to make sure that Trump does not become president of the United States," he said.

Clinton has reached the magical figure of having enough delegates to clinch the nomination of the Democratic Party.

Sanders, however, refused to end his presidential campaign.

"I will, of course, be competing in the DC Primary which will be held next Tuesday. This is the last primary of the Democratic nominating process," he said.

But he did indicate that he is looking forward to working with Clinton to defeat Trump.

"I look forward to meeting with her in the near future to see how we can work together to defeat Trump and create a government which represents all of us and not just the one percent," Sanders said.
The House has overwhelmingly passed a rescue package for debt-stricken Puerto Rico, clearing a major hurdle in the ongoing effort to bring relief to the US territory of 3.5 million Americans.

The strong bipartisan vote was 297-127 for the legislation that would create a financial control board and allow restructuring of some of Puerto Rico's $70 billion debt. The measure heads to the Senate just three weeks before the territory must make a $2 billion payment.

In a rare display of bipartisanship, the bill had the strong support of President Barack Obama, House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., and Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.

"The Puerto Rican people are our fellow Americans. They pay our taxes, they fight in our wars. We cannot allow this to happen," Ryan said on Thursday in imploring lawmakers, especially reluctant conservatives in the GOP caucus, to back the bill during debate.

The legislation would allow the seven-member control board to oversee negotiations with creditors and the courts over reducing some debt. It does not provide any taxpayer funds to reduce that debt.

It would also require the territory to create a fiscal plan. Among other requirements, the plan would have to provide "adequate" funds for public pensions, which the government has underfunded by more than $40 billion.

Hours before the vote, the White House strongly endorsed the bill, saying that failing to act could result in an "economic and humanitarian crisis" in the US territory beyond what the island is already facing.

Puerto Rico has missed several payments to creditors and faces the $2 billion instalment on July 1.

A lengthy recession has forced businesses to close, driven up the unemployment rate and sparked an exodus of hundreds of thousands of people to the US mainland.

Some schools on the island lack proper electricity and some hospitals have said they can't provide adequate drugs or care.

The island's only active air ambulance company announced this week that it has suspended its services.

"It is regrettable we have reached this point, but it is reality," said Pedro Pierluisi, Puerto Rico's representative in Congress.

Despite leadership support, the measure faced opposition from some in the ranks of both parties, as some bondholders, unions and Puerto Rican officials have lobbied against it.

Some conservatives said it would cheat bondholders, while some Democrats argued the control board has colonial overtones.
One diesel car tested by the German government emitted more than 12 times as much poisonous nitrogen oxide as allowed. Another was five times over the limit, and yet another six times over.
Indian markets have all the reasons to rejoice especially with monsoon touching Indian soils and the government hinting that it will clear the GST Bill in the monsoon session of the parliament. However, there is anxiety in the Indian markets.
The Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) has tightened its know-your-client (KYC) and disclosure rules on issue of participatory notes (P-notes), to curb misuse of the investment route used by foreign investors not registered in India. these take effect from from July 1.
continue to trade lower amid volatility as participants remain wary ahead of the US Federal Reserve meet and worries regarding a UK referendum that could push Britain out of the European Union. Weakness in the global equities amid decline in crude oil prices further dented sentiments
Panchayat head (Mukhiya) of Harnaut region in Bihar's Nalanda District was shot dead by bike-borne assailants on Friday afternoon.

Newly elected 'Mukhiya' Poonam Devi, a resident of Hasanpur, was on her way to Harnaut market when bike-borne assailants, said to be three in number, fired at her.

According to reports, she died on the spot after being hit by five bullets.

Reports also hint at personal vendetta being the reason behind the attack on Devi.
on Friday told the United States that any future drone strikes conducted in its territory would be detrimental to the relationship between the two countries.

Sartaj Aziz, Foreign Affairs Advisor to the Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, conveyed the sentiments to the visiting US delegation, on Friday, reports the Dawn.

The delegation was led by the US Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, Richard Olson and Senior Adviser and Senior Director for Afghanistan and at the US National Security Council, Dr. Peter Lavoy. The Pakistan side was represented by Aziz and Foreign Secretary Aizaz Ahmed Chaudhry.

Taking a strong exception to the drone strike in Balochistan on May 21 that killed Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Akhtar Mansoor, Aziz told the US officials, " That was not only a violation of Pakistan's sovereignty and breach of the principles of the United Nation's Charter, but has also vitiated bilateral ties."

The two sides also held discussions on bilateral relations, regional security situation and the Afghan peace process in wake of the US drone strikes in Pakistan, said a Foreign Office statement.

The adviser expressed that the drone strike had seriously undermined the ongoing efforts for Afghan peace and reconciliation process at a time when Pakistan along with other Quadrilateral Coordination Group (QCG) countries, was engaged in serious efforts to revive peace talks between Afghan Government and the Taliban.

Aziz reminded the US delegation about the QCG's fifth meeting on May 18 this year when it was decided that peace negotiations remained the only option for a political settlement.

Islamabad also said it is pursuing its objective of eliminating all militants and terrorists from its soil in accordance with the National Action Plan, in response to US concerns over alleged safe havens of Taliban in Pakistan.

It also informed in the meeting action by Afghan forces against Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan operatives in Afghanistan was expected and such steps would reduce mistrust between both nations.
India is in touch with the Afghan authorities to secure the release of a Judith D'Souza, who was abducted from Kabul on Thursday night.

Sources said the Indian embassy is in touch with senior Afghan authorities and the government is also in touch with her family in Kolkata.

The Afghan authorities are making all efforts to secure the early release of the 40-year-old woman.

As per reports, the woman, working with an NGO, was abducted from Taimani area of Kabul.
With his campaign titled "Stop Defaming Punjab", well known artist of Punjab Harp Farmer wants to restore the pride of Punjab and has requested people to stop defaming it. The Lipi Foundation is already running a campaign "From Shame to Pride" to end stereotyping.

Pained by the defamation of Punjab on the drugs issue, Farmer started a drive against this negative agenda. He posted his video encouraging Punjabis to come forward to support the mission. The video has garnered more than 1.5 million organic views on Facebook within one week. Prominent celebrities Daler Mehendi and Ankur Singh Patar supported his mission on social media with their selfie videos. Ankur Patar is one of the three illustrators in the world, Adobe is making documentary on. Over 1000 videos have already been posted by youth of Punjab on various social media platforms with the hashtag #StopDefamingPunjab.

Finding Harp's idea in sync with their campaign "From Shame to Pride", Lipi Foundation joined hands with Harp.

Dr. Mahek Singh, Prinicipal Consultant, Lipi Foundation says, "While I was working with CAPART, MoRD and Centre of Excellence, Punjab University as a research associate, I found that most of the issues in the social sector come from stereotyping. In case of Punjab, the negative stereotyping is leading to unrest. As a result the region is defamed and looked down upon. Through our campaign "From Shame to Pride" we at Lipi foundation intend to bring the unbiased and positive side of the region to the forefront.

The startling news of drug abuse in Punjab have been making rounds in the country bringing a bad name to the state, which has prompted Harp Farmer to start an online campaign, which is gaining popularity. He launched this campaign through his page "Stop Defaming Punjab" (https://www.facebook.com/StopDefamingPunjab/).

Addressing media persons here, Harp stated, "I feel the pain when I travel abroad and people paint all the Punjabis in negative colours of being drug addicts. But these are not the true colors of Punjab. My mission is aimed at presenting the true colours of Punjab and clear myths regarding the drug abuse."

"It's a shame that some people are presenting a gory picture of Punjab for their selfish gains. Unfortunately they fail to understand that they are hampering the progress of the youth of Punjab. Drugs is a problem and being a border state Punjab has been used as the doorway for drug trafficking but that doesn't mean all Punjabis are the consumers of drugs," he further added.

Lipi Foundation and Harp Farmer plan to do awareness campaign in different colleges and villages across Punjab, to educate the youth against the social evil of drug abuse.

Harpreet Singh is a multifaceted personality with a proven track in Photography, Filmmaking and acting. Widely famous as Harp Farmer from village Nadalon, District Hoshiarpur, Harpreet has been working with a sole motive of promoting Punjab and the spirit of Punjab for the last 5 years. He has held exhibitions in India and Australia under the banner "Colors of Panjaab" to showcase various facets of vibrant Punjab. Harp believes that there is a lot in Punjab that is still untold and that the villages (Pind) of Punjab hold a lot of talent, which needs to reach the world.

The Lipi Foundation is a social organisation working in the space of Family Counselling and digital awareness and aims to construct better communications tools for common masses. The social organization was already running a campaign called "From Shame to Pride" which aims at bettering communication in the social sector.

This newly formed association is certainly a good news for Punjab which was reeling under the attacks of sensational comments as a result of political vendetta in the region.
SYRACUSE  In February 2009, United States Army Pfc. Patrick DeVoe II was deployed to Afghanistan. The Auburn native had been in the Army for just over a year, stationed in Fort Richardson, Alaska, until he was sent to the Middle East as part of Operation Enduring Freedom.

DeVoe was happy with his decision to be a soldier, his family said, and he wanted to make a difference.

Then, three weeks later, DeVoe's vehicle was struck by an IED in Kandau Kalay, and the 27-year-old was killed.

"He died for our country," Devoe's mother Susan Kealoha Capone said, holding an American flag with his picture clipped to the stick below. "I miss the hell out of him."

Capone was one of several Cayuga County residents who drove to Syracuse early Friday morning to remember local veterans in New York state's first Run for the Fallen.

The 140-mile New York run kicked off at 7 a.m. at the Veterans Memorial Cemetery in the town of Onondaga, where a small team of athletes received flags and veteran biographies. At each mile, the runners stopped to deliver the flags to family, veterans and supporters waiting at each Hero Marker, which honored multiple fallen heroes.

And at 7:52 a.m., at the corner of East Seneca Turnpike and East Brighton Avenue in Syracuse, the run paused to honor two Auburn natives: Army Pfc. DeVoe and U.S. Marine Sgt. Jerome "Jerry" Bell, Jr.

Both graduates of Dana L. West High School in Port Byron, DeVoe and Bell were killed in Afghanistan just months apart. Bell  who joined the Marines in 1998 and served two tours in Iraq  died in September 2008 when his Humvee was hit by an IED outside Bawka in the Farah province. He was 29 years old.

That's why family and friends of Bell and DeVoe gathered at their Hero Marker early Friday more than seven years after the men were killed in action.

"I'm honored that they finally did this for our sons and daughters that lost their lives to protect us," Capone said. "It's keeping their memories alive."

The national Run for the Fallen began in June 2008 when a team ran more than 6,000 miles across America from Fort Irwin, CA, to Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia: one mile for every veteran killed since the War on Terror. For 10 weeks, runners marked each mile with an American flag and veteran biography in remembrance of each service member.

This, however, was the first year the race came to New York to honor more than 300 fallen heroes from the state.

"It's finally here and we deserve it as much as other states," Capone said. "They may have lost more people, but we're still just as important as the rest of those states."

At 11:40 a.m., in an open field on State Route 5 in Lenox, local veteran Staff Sgt. Francis "Frankie" Phillips, IV, was honored at another marker. Like Bell and DeVoe, Phillips died when an IED exploded near his armored vehicle in the Maiwand region of Afghanistan on 2013.

Although Phillips was born and raised in California, he moved to central New York after graduating high school  first to Meridian and later to Auburn, where hundreds of people lined the streets for his funeral.

And now, hundreds will line more than 100 miles of New York state this weekend  from Veterans Memorial Cemetery in Syracuse Friday to the Vietnam Memorial in Albany Sunday  to remember the heroes close to home.

"I'll continue to do this until I take my last breath," Capone said. "I'll continue to honor not just my son but all of our fallen heroes."
He was loved by the world, but Muhammad Ali's body was yesterday brought to his home town Louisville, Kentucky, for last adieu from thousands of worshippers and fanswho gathered at a huge convention centre.

The two-day funeral started with a Muslim prayer service, known as a 'Jenazah,' reports the BBC.

According to Imam Zaid Shakir, who led the service, 'The Greatest' wanted 'Jenazah' to be "a teaching moment."

More than 14,000 people have tickets to the event at the site of Ali's last fight in Louisville in 1961.

In 1964, Ali famously converted to Islam, changing his name from Cassius Clay, which he called his "slave name."

The legendary boxer first joined the Nation of Islam, a controversial black separatist movement, before later converting to mainstream Islam.

On Friday, Bill Clinton, Billy Crystal and Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan will pay their respects, beside Will Smith - who played the boxer in his 2001 film 'Ali.
Sri Lankan Prime Minister has demanded a motion against former President Mahinda Rajapaksa and asked the Parliament to suspend him for a week. Wickremesinghe accused Rajapaksa of violating the Fiscal Management Responsibility Act, in his capacity as a Finance Minister during his presidential tenure.

The prime minister asked for his suspension from the house on Thursday, while participating in the debate on the no-confidence motion against incumbent Finance Minister Ravi Karunanayake.

The motion accusing Karunanayake of misleading the public by presenting false information was introduced to the House by leader of the Joint Opposition group MP Dinesh Gunawardena.

According to a report by The Island, "The Budget has been amended beyond recognition from what was presented to parliament in November last year. Public finances come under the purview of Parliament and the Finance Minister has disregarded this," said MP Gunawardena.

However, Prime Minister Wickremesinghe said that it was the former President in his capacity as the Finance Minister who violated the provisions of the Fiscal Management Responsibility Act.

He also added that the Treasury was empty when the government took over. "An early election was held because the former Finance Ministry Secretary said there was no way to take the country forward as it was going bankrupt. It was PB Jayasundera who decided on the early election. Sumanadasa (astrologer) only fixed the date," he said.
USA Continues to Occupy Top Slot followed by UK and China Amongst the Countries Availing E-Tourist Visa Facility During May 2016

A total of 43,833 tourists arrived in May 2016 on e-Tourist Visa as compared to 15,659 during the month of May 2015 registering a growth of 179.9%.

Commencing from 27th November 2014 e-Tourist Visa facility was available until 25th February 2016 for citizens of 113 countries arriving at 16 Airports in India. The Government of India has extended this scheme for citizens of 37 more countries w.e.f 26th February 2016 taking the tally to 150 countries. The following are the important highlights of e-Tourist Visa during May, 2016.

The followings are the important highlights of e-Tourist Visa during May, 2016:-

(i) During the month of May, 2016 a total of 43,833 tourist arrived on e-Tourist Visa as compared to 15,659 during the month of May, 2015 registering a growth of 179.9%.

(ii) During January- May, 2016, a total of 4,34,927 tourist arrived on e-Tourist Visa as compared to 1,10,657 during January - May 2015, registering a growth of 293.0% .

(iii) This high growth may be attributed to introduction of e-Tourist Visa for 150 countries as against the earlier coverage of 43 countries.

(iv) The percentage shares of top 10 source countries availing e-Tourist Visa facilities during May, 2016 were as follows:

USA (18.52%), UK (15.63%), China (8.17%), France (5.16%), Germany (4.91%), Australia (4.50%), Canada (4.49%), UAE (3.01%), Russian Fed. (2.79%) and Malaysia (2.12%).

(v) The percentage shares of top Ten ports in tourist arrivals on e-Tourist Visa during May, 2016 were as follows:-

New Delhi Airport (45.11%), Mumbai Airport (22.50%), Bengaluru Airport (9.00%), Chennai Airport (6.63%), Kochi Airport (3.68%), Goa Airport (2.86%), Hyderabad Airport (2.75%) Kolkata Airport (2.63%), Trivandrum Airport (1.42%) and Ahmadabad Airport (1.26%).

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From Nepal Electricity Authority

A2Z Infra Engineering announced that a Contract has been awarded from Nepal Electricity Authority (a Government of Nepal Undertaking) vide Letter of Award bearing dated 10 June 2016 for Expansion of Distribution Network in the Western Region of Nepal, "vide Tender no. ICB-PMD-DSAEP-072/73-01, Lot 2" for contract price aggregating to USD 1,35,63,420.77 (US Dollar One Crore Thirty Five Lakhs Sixty Three Thousand Four Hundred Twenty and cents Seventy Seven only).

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Policy to focus on Transparency & Equity in release of Government ads

Ministry of Information & Broadcasting has framed a New Print Media Advertisement Policy for Directorate of Advertising & Visual Publicity (DAVP) with the objective to promote transparency and accountability in issuing of advertisements in print media. The policy focuses on streamlining release of Government advertisements and to also promote equity and fairness among various categories of newspapers/periodicals. The key highlights of the policy are as follows:

Promoting Transparency & Accountability

For the first time the policy introduces a New Marking System for newspapers to incentivize Newspapers who have better professional standing and get their circulation verified by ABC/ RNI. This will also ensure transparency and accountability in the release of advertisements by DAVP. The marking system is based on six objective criterions with different marks allotted to each criterion. The criterion includes Circulation certified by ABC/RNI (25 marks), EPF subscription for employees (20 marks), number of pages (20 marks), subscription to wire services of UNI/PTI/Hindustan Samachar (15 marks), own printing press (10 marks), annual subscription payment to PCI (10 marks). Advertisements shall be released by DAVP to Newspapers based on marks obtained by each newspaper.

The policy framework includes circulation verification Procedure for empanelment of Newspapers/Journals with DAVP. The procedure involves certification by RNI/ABC if circulation exceeds 45,000 copies per publishing day; for circulation upto 45,000 copies per publishing day certificate from Cost/Chartered Accountant/ Statutory Auditor Certificate/ ABC is mandated. The policy states that RNI circulation certificate shall be valid for a period of two years from the date of issue and in case of ABC, the current certificate shall be used for circulation certificate. It is stated in the policy that DG DAVP reserves the right to have figures of circulation checked through RNI or its representative.

The policy also stipulates the empanelment procedure for Multi-Editions of a newspaper. It states that, as per the PRB Act whenever copies of one edition of a newspaper are printed from more than one centre and if the content of newspaper is different they would be treated as different editions. Each edition of a newspaper is required to have a separate RNI registration number and RNI shall treat each edition as separate entity while verifying the circulation. However, the policy guidelines mention that, if a newspaper for sake of convenience is printing its copies of an edition in more than one printing press without adding any additional content, DAVP may take the circulations of such printing centres into consideration for giving rate of that edition.

For payment and adjustment of bills, the policy framework mandates that DAVP will release payment of advertisement bills in the name of newspaper/company account directly through ECS or NEFT. Also, it is mentioned that newspaper will publish DAVP advertisement only on receipt of the relevant Release Order by DAVP. All Release order issued can be accessed electronically at DAVP website.

Incentivizing all categories of Newspapers

The policy stipulates that the rate structure for payment against advertisements released by DAVP will be as per recommendations of the Rate Structure Committee. The policy framework provides a premium for prominent placing of ads in newspapers and journals whose circulation is certified by ABC/RNI. DAVP would pay a premium of 50% above DAVP rates for colour/black & white for front page, 20% premium to third page, 10% premium to fifth page and 30% premium for back page to only those newspapers whose circulation is certified by ABC/RNI.

The policy also incentivize big category newspapers which are willing to publish the advertisements of Educational Institutions at DAVP rates by giving additional business of 50% in volume terms as compared to those which are not willing to accept.

The policy has classified Newspaper/Journals into three categories namely Small (<25,000 copies per publishing day), Medium (25,001-75,000 copies per publishing day) and Big (>75,000 copies per publishing day).

Ensuring Equity and Fairness in release of Government Advertisements

The new policy in pursuance with the broad social objectives of the Government has structured the empanelment procedure to ensure fairness among various categories of Newspapers/Journals. The policy also mentions relaxation in empanelment procedure to provide special encouragement for Regional language/Dialects small and medium newspapers, Mass circulated newspapers (circulation >1 lakh), newspapers in North Eastern states, Jammu & Kashmir and Andaman & Nicobar Islands. The policy emphasizes that DAVP shall make efforts to release more social messages and related advertisements which are not date specific to periodicals.

To promote equity based regional outreach, the policy emphasizes that the budget for all India release of advertisements shall be divided among states based on total circulation of newspapers in each State /Language.

The policy mentions that PSUs and Autonomous bodies may issue the advertisements directly at DAVP rates to newspapers empanelled with DAVP. However, they all have to follow the criterions laid down by DAVP for release of all classified and display advertisements in different categories of newspapers viz. small, medium & big.

Ensuring Quick and Timely payment by client Ministries to DAVP

The policy directs all clients of DAVP to issue Letter of Authority/Cheque/DD/NEFT/RTGS up to 80 % of the actual expenditure in the previous year within the first month of the new financial year and clear all the remaining payments before February 28th of the financial year. Alternatively, the client Ministries may provide 85% advance payments of the estimated expenditure of the advertisements.

DAVP is the nodal agency of the Government of India for advertising on behalf of various Ministries/Departments/PSUs/Autonomous organizations which are funded by the Government.

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KCP rose 5.78% to Rs 92.40 at 10:04 IST on BSE, boosted by the company's announcement that it has decided to expand production capacity of its cement unit located at Andhra Pradesh to 3.5 million tonnes per annum from 1.8 million tonnes per annum.

The announcement was made after market hours yesterday, 9 June 2016.

Meanwhile, the S&P BSE Sensex was down 11.90 points or 0.04% at 26,751.56.

On BSE, so far 76,000 shares were traded in the counter as against average daily volume of 49,566 shares in the past one quarter. The stock hit a high of Rs 92.70 and a low of Rs 89.95 so far during the day. The stock had hit a record high of Rs 101.25 on 20 October 2015. The stock had hit a 52-week low of Rs 58.40 on 29 June 2015. The stock had outperformed the market over the past one month till 9 June 2016, gaining 8.24% compared with Sensex's 4.18% rise. The scrip had also outperformed the market in past one quarter, advancing 24.7% as against Sensex's 7.94% rise.

The small-cap company has equity capital of Rs 12.89 crore. Face value per share is Rs 1.

The expansion of the cement capacity will be carried out at estimated outlay of Rs 400 crore. The company did not mention how it intends to finance the expansion programme.

KCP reported net loss of Rs 1.75 crore in Q4 March 2016 compared with net profit of Rs 13.45 crore in Q4 March 2015. Net sales rose 14.5% to Rs 186.82 crore in Q4 March 2016 over Q4 March 2015.

KCP is engaged in two main business segments viz. cement and heavy engineering. It also has captive power plants.

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Key benchmark indices moved in a narrow range near the flat line in negative terrain during morning trade after witnessing a slightly lower opening. At 10:20 IST, the barometer index, the S&P BSE Sensex was down 39.94 points or 0.15% at 26,723.52. The Nifty 50 index was currently down 5.75 points or 0.07% at 8,197.85. Weakness in Asian stocks weighed on sentiment. Metal and capital goods stocks bucked the weak trend.

In overseas markets, Asian stocks edged lower as investors sought refuge in safe-haven assets amid festering concerns over the 23 June 2016 referendum that could see Britain exit the European Union. US stocks dropped yesterday, 9 June 2016 after three days of gains as crude oil futures pulled back from 10-month highs.

Closer home, the broad market depicted strength despite the market trading in negative terrain. There were almost two gainers against every loser on BSE. 1,246 shares rose and 635 shares fell. A total of 95 shares were unchanged The BSE Mid-Cap index was currently up 0.25%. The BSE Small-Cap index was currently up 0.56%. Both these indices outperformed the Sensex.

Capital goods stocks gained. Bharat Heavy Electricals (Bhel) (up 3.05%), Havells India (up 0.29%), ABB India (up 0.39%), Bharat Electronics (up 0.84%), L&T (up 0.42%), Thermax (up 0.07%), and Siemens (up 0.7%) gained.

Metal & mining stocks gained. JSW Steel (up 0.67%), Bhushan Steel (up 3.13%), Vedanta (up 2.57%), Hindalco Industries (up 1.22%), Hindustan Zinc (up 1.02%), Jindal Steel & Power (up 1.94%), Tata Steel (up 0.37%), Steel Authority of India (Sail) (up 1.56%), National Aluminum Company (up 0.6%) and NMDC (up 0.49%) gained. Hindustan Copper dropped 1.68%.

KCP rose 4.87% after the company said it has decided to expand the production capacity of its cement unit located at Andhra Pradesh to 3.5 million tons per annum (mtpa), from 1.8 mtpa with an expected outlay of Rs 400 crore. The announcement was made after market hours yesterday, 9 June 2016.

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Weakness in Asian stocks pulled key benchmark indices lower in early trade. At 9:30 IST, the barometer index, the S&P BSE Sensex was down 56.13 points or 0.21% at 26,707.33. The Nifty 50 index was currently down 13.55 points or 0.17% at 8,190.05. IT and auto stocks edged lower.

In overseas markets, Asian stocks edged lower as investors sought refuge in safe-haven assets amid festering concerns over the 23 June 2016 referendum that could see Britain exit the European Union. US stocks dropped yesterday, 9 June 2016 after three days of gains as crude oil futures pulled back from 10-month highs.

Closer home, the market breadth indicating the overall health of the market was strong. On BSE, 842 shares rose and 448 shares declined. A total of 76 shares were unchanged. The BSE Mid-Cap index was currently up 0.17%. The BSE Small-Cap index was currently up 0.27%. Both these indices outperformed the Sensex.

Infosys (down 0.98%), Dr Reddy's Laboratories (down 0.7%) and Tata Motors (down 0.57%) were the major losers from the Sensex pack.

ICICI Bank declined 0.31%. The bank announced after market hours yesterday, 9 June 2016 that Oriental Trimex had availed financial assistance of Rs 6.88 crore from ICICI Bank. Due to default in repayment of outstanding dues to ICICI Bank by the company, the account of company with ICICI Bank has been classified as a Non Performing Asset (NPA) on 31 December 2012. For recovery of outstanding dues, ICICI Bank has filed recovery suit before DRT, Delhi on 16 August 2013 against Oriental Trimex and the guarantors (i.e. Mr. Rajesh Punia & Ms. Savita Punia). The company has also filed winding up petition before High Court, Delhi at 11 March 2014.

Yes Bank rose 0.7% after the bank announced that it has executed a share subscription and shareholders' agreement agreeing to subscribe for 20 lakh equity shares of Receivables Exchange of India (RXIL) which is equivalent to 8% of the post-issue paid-up capital of RXIL, as per the terms of the agreement. RXIL is a joint venture company setup by NSE Strategic Investment Corporation and Small Industries Development Bank of India. The announcement was made after market hours yesterday, 9 June 2016.

FMCG major, Hindustan Unilever (HUL) declined 0.16%. The company announced that considering the recent change in the organization structure of the company, it has decided to report its segmental information under the four segments, and a residual segment for 'others'. The new segments comprises viz; home care to include fabric wash, household care and water; personal care to include personal wash, skin care, hair care, oral care, deodorants and colors; foods to include packaged foods (excluding ice cream and frozen dessert) and popular foods and refreshments to include tea, coffee, ice cream and frozen dessert. This change complies with the IND AS segment reporting principles, and the reporting therefore will be made effective from 1 April 2016, which will be reflected in Q1 June 2016, HUL said. The announcement was made after market hours yesterday, 9 June 2016.

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Sadbhav Infrastructure Project said that its wholly-owned subsidiary, BRTPL, received provisional completion certificate for 86 kilometres (kms) out of total 87.25 km on 4 June 2016 and accordingly toll collection has started on the project from 9 June 2016. Original concession period for the project is 30 years, which ends on 8 October 2043. Total project cost shall be Rs 676.10 crore out of which equity and sub equity from sponsor shall be Rs 133.30 crore. Rupee term loan of Rs 276.40 crore has been provided by the lenders which is to be repaid upto September 2031. Grant provided by National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) is Rs 266.40 crore. With the above, out of total portfolio of 11 projects, 10 projects are operational and 1 project is in advanced stage of construction. The announcement was made after market hours yesterday, 9 June 2016.

Shares of Oriental Trimex will be in focus. ICICI Bank announced after market hours yesterday, 9 June 2016, that Oriental Trimex had availed financial assistance of Rs 6.88 crore from ICICI Bank. Due to default in repayment of outstanding dues to ICICI Bank by the company, the account of company with ICICI Bank has been classified as a non performing asset (NPA) on 31 December 2012. For recovery of outstanding dues, ICICI Bank has filed recovery suit before DRT, Delhi at 16 August 2013 against Oriental Trimex and the guarantors (i.e. Mr. Rajesh Punia & Ms. Savita Punia). The bank has also filed winding up petition before High Court, Delhi at 11 March 2014. ICICI Bank said it has furnished this information in the interest of investors as this information is very critical for all the existing/future investors.

Yes Bank announced that it has executed a share subscription and shareholders' agreement agreeing to subscribe for 20 lakh equity shares of Receivables Exchange of India (RXIL) which is equivalent to 8% of the post-issue paid-up capital of RXIL, as per the terms of the agreement. RXIL is a joint venture company setup by NSE Strategic Investment Corporation and Small Industries Development Bank of India. The announcement was made after market hours yesterday, 9 June 2016.

Hindustan Unilever (HUL) announced that considering the recent change in the organization structure of the company, it has decided to report its segmental information under the four segments, and a residual segment for 'others'. The new segments comprises viz. 1. Home care to include fabric wash, household care and water. 2. Personal Care to include personal wash, skin care, hair care, oral care, deodorants and colors. 3. Foods to include packaged foods (excluding ice cream and frozen dessert) and popular foods and 4. Refreshments to include tea, coffee, ice cream and frozen dessert. This change complies with the IND AS segment reporting principles, and the reporting therefore will be made effective from 1 April 2016, which will be reflected in Q1 June 2016, HUL said. The announcement was made after market hours yesterday, 9 June 2016.

Hinduja Global Solutions (HGS) announced that Mark Poling, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of its step-down subsidiary HGS Colibrium Inc. (Colibrium) has resigned and is leaving as a founder to pursue other interests. As a result of this, he now ceases to be a shareholder of Colibrium. Consequently, the effective shareholding of HGS has increased from 89.9% to 95.2%. The announcement was made after market hours yesterday, 9 June 2016.

KCP announced after market hours yesterday, 9 June 2016, that it has decided to expand the production capacity of its cement unit located at Muktyala, Krishna District Andhrapradesh, from 1.8 Million Tons Per Annum (MTPA) to 3.5 MTPA with an expected outlay of Rs 400 crore (approximately).

Gruh Finance turns ex-dividend today, 10 June 2016, for dividend of Rs 2.30 per share for the year ended 31 March 2016.

Rallis India turns ex-dividend today, 10 June 2016, for final dividend of Rs 2.50 per share for the year ended 31 March 2016.

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Palermo (Italy), June 10 (IANS/AKI) A boat belonging to medical charity Doctors without Borders docked in the Sicilian port city on Friday with 592 people on board including 119 women and nine children.

Four of the female migrants who reached Palermo were pregnant and some of the children had travelled without an adult. Seven of the migrants were taken to hospitals in the city with minor ailments, doctors said.

The passengers were among 2,000 migrants rescued on Thursday in the Mediterranean from 15 boats. Many thousands more have been rescued in recent weeks and hundreds are believed to have perished in a spate of shipwrecks.

Italy's Prime Minister Matteo Renzi denied on Thursday that Italy was being "invaded" by the ongoing influx of migrants seeking to cross the Mediterranean from North Africa.

"The numbers speak for themselves. There is no invasion of our country. Last year 51,000 people had landed in Italy by June 8 compared with 48,000 this year," Renzi wrote on his Facebook page.

But Renzi admitted that "demographic pressures" in Africa were a problem that could only be resolved in the medium-to-long term.

European Union ministers were on Friday due to look at ways of stemming the flow of migrants who attempt dangerous journeys to Europe from lawless Libya and elsewhere in north Africa.

--IANS/AKI

mr/
ALBANY  Alfred Wells wasn't supposed to be on board the USS Oklahoma the morning the Japanese launched their surprise attack on U.S. warships and military bases in Hawaii.

By the time the bombing was over, the Oklahoma had capsized at its berth in Pearl Harbor, entombing the bodies of more than 400 servicemen, including Wells, who was standing watch on the morning of Dec. 7, 1941, in place of another sailor who wanted to go ashore for the day.

This weekend, nearly 75 years after he was killed in the attack that drew the United States into World War II, Wells' remains will be laid to rest in a the Onondaga County Veterans Cemetery near his hometown of Syracuse. Despite the passing of the decades and the deaths of most of his immediate family, Wells wasn't forgotten by his relatives.

"His name never left the lips of the family," said the sailor's 78-year-old nephew, Wayne Konseck, whose mother was one of Wells' five sisters

Japanese planes hit the Oklahoma with multiple torpedoes, causing the battleship to capsize quickly. Thirty-two men were rescued via holes cut through the hull, but 14 Marines and 415 sailors were killed. The Navy spent 2 years recovering remains from the ship, but the military wasn't able to identify most of them, and buried hundreds as "unknowns" in a Honolulu cemetery.

Last year, the Pentagon's Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency began digging up their remains, saying advances in forensic science and technology have made identification more feasible. DPAA announced last week that Wells' remains had been identified using DNA samples provided by a cousin and other evidence. Of the 388 Oklahoma crewmembers remains disinterred in 2015, a total of 28 have been identified, according to the DPAA.

News of Wells' identification finally brought a sense of relief for his family, which includes just two surviving sisters among the eight Wells children who grew up in Syracuse. Alfred, the oldest, was just 17 when he joined the Navy in 1927, serving aboard the USS Arizona and rising to the rank of machinist's mate first class. He left the Navy in March 1941, bought a house in Southern California for his wife and two young daughters and looked for work. Unable to find a job, he re-enlisted five months later and was assigned to the Oklahoma.

Wells, 32, agreed to swap places with another sailor who was supposed to stand watch on the morning of Dec. 7, 1941, according to accounts family members passed along to Konseck, who was three years old when his uncle died.

Konseck, a retiree living near Syracuse and a Navy veteran himself, believes his uncle would have been at his duty station in the Oklahoma's engine room when the attack began. Of the 21 U.S. vessels sunk or damaged, only Wells' former ship, the Arizona with 1,177 killed, lost more crewmembers than the Oklahoma.

Wells' wife and daughters have died, as have five of his seven siblings.

Konseck will be at the Syracuse airport when his uncle's remains arrive Friday, a day before Wells' funeral and burial at a veterans' cemetery in Syracuse. Konseck will be joined by Wells' surviving sisters, Mary Lou Schmeltzer, 89, and Virginia Rhodes, 91, who live outside of Buffalo and Syracuse, respectively.

For Konseck, who was inspired by his uncle's memory to also join the Navy at 17, it's a bittersweet end to a beloved relative's long overdue homecoming.

"I didn't think I'd live this long to see something like this coming," Konseck said.
A Bihar court on Friday remanded to 14-day judicial custody the five accused arrested in connection with the Class 12 examination scam, police said.

The Special Investigation Team (SIT) presented the accused in the Patna civil court which sent them to jail, a district police official said.

Those remanded to judicial custody are Viseshwar Prasad Yadav, the principal-cum-centre superintendent of Government Boys High School Rajendra Nagar, Patna; Sanjiv Kumar Suman, a mathematics teacher of the same school; Shambhu Nath Das, section officer and Ranjit Kumar Mishra, assistant at the confidential wing of the Inter Council; and Shail Kumari, principal-cum-centre superintendent of G.A. Inter College, Hajipur.

They were arrested by SIT on Thursday, police said.

However, former Bihar School Examination Board Chairman Lalkeshwar Prasad Singh and Bachcha Rai, director-cum-principal of VR College in Vaishali district, both accused in the case, are still absconding.

Singh is being probed for his alleged involvement in the 12th Board merit list scam.

According to police, evidences gathered so far indicated that Singh was involved in the scam in which the answer books of certain examinees were tampered with to increase their scores and push them up in the merit list.

Patna Senior Superintendent of Police Manu Maharaj, who is heading the SIT, said raids are being conducted in search of Singh and Rai.

According to the FIR, fraud was committed by VR College authorities to influence the results.

--IANS

ik/lok/dg
Cuba and the US held dialogue here to discuss collaboration in fighting terrorism, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said.

A statement on Thursday said the talks took place in an atmosphere of respect and professionalism, with representatives from both sides agreeing on the importance of advancing cooperation against .

The Cuban delegation was comprised of officials from the Ministries of Interior and Foreign Affairs, the Attorney General's office and the General Customs. The US side was represented by officials from the Departments of Homeland Security and Justice, as well as the US Embassy in Havana, Xinhua reported.

The meeting was a part of the steps being taken by the two countries since December 2014 in order to normalise bilateral ties, officially restored on July 20, 2015 after 54 years of political enmity.

Washington had for decades kept Havana on its blacklist of "countries sponsoring terrorism" until April 2015, when it removed Cuba from the list and hailed its positive participation in the peace talks between the Colombian government and insurgent guerrillas, hosted on the Caribbean island.
At least four people were arrested for killing a bar attendant on the Delhi-Gurgaon expressway on Friday, police said.

Three men and a woman were arrested for killing Mahi, a 20-year-old bar attendant, DLF phase 2 police chief Sudip Kumar said.

The official said Mahi had a dispute with another bar girl belonging to West Bengal. She, along with three men, beat her up at Shankar Chowk early on Friday.

The victim was rushed to hospital but declared brought dead, Kumar added.

--IANS

pradeep/py/bg
A volunteer at a Hindu ashram in Bangladesh was murdered on Friday, apparently by suspected Islamists, the media reported.

Nityaranjan Pandey, 60, was attacked on the neck and head from behind while on his morning walk at Hemayetpur in Pabna district, police as well as ashram officials were quoted as saying.

Bdnews24.com said Pandey had been with the Thakur Anukul Chandra Satsanga Paramtirtha Hemayetpurdham Ashram for some 40 years.

He was found murdered only 200 yards from the ashram and near the Pabna Mental Hospital's main gate. The nature of the hacking indicated that the assailants were trying to decapitate Pandey.

His stunned colleagues said Pandey used to take an early morning walk daily as he was a diabetic.

An NGO activist, Naresh Madhu, told journalists: "(Pandey) was one of us. He was a simple man who had no enemies."

Madhu suspected that Islmists were behind Pandey's murder.

But police officer Selim Khan said: "We'll look into all possible aspects. We can't say right now if it was a militant attack."

Pandey's killing comes days after a Christian grocer was killed in Natore on June 5 and a Hindu priest in Jhenaidah two days later. Islamists were suspected in both cases.

A number of murders carried out in similar fashion across the country in the past two years have sparked public outrage.

The victims of these attacks include secular writers and bloggers, online activists, foreigners, members of various religious minorities and rights activists.

Pandey's murder took place around the same time when police launched a seven-day crackdown on militants throughout Bangladesh.

The Middle East-based militant groups Islamic State and al Qaeda had reportedly claimed credit for many of the killings. But the government has rejected their claim and said home-grown terrorists were to blame.

--IANS

mr/sar
Indian public sector banks (PSBs) will require a capital infusion of Rs 1.2 lakh crore by 2020, in view of the heavy losses reflected in their balance sheets in 2015-16, global credit rating agency Moody's Investors Service said in a report on Friday.

This is far higher than the additional Rs 45,000 crore capital infusion planned by the government by 2018-19.

"After the release of their results for FY2016, our analysis suggests capital requirements of about Rs 1.2 lakh crore for the 11 rated PSBs, far higher than the remaining Rs 45,000 crore included in the government's budget for capital distribution to the banks until 2020," Moody's Investors Service said in its report titled "Weak Financial Performance Highlights Banks' High External Capital Needs".

The agency said the capitalisation profile of the PSBs will further deteriorate lest the government provides additional capital support.

The government in the budget allocated Rs 25,000 crore for capitalisation of banks during the current fiscal.

The government has in total planned a capital infusion of Rs 70,000 crore till 2018-19, out of which it has already spent Rs 25,000 by March 2016. Apart from the Rs 25,000 crore in the current fiscal, it has planned to spend Rs 10,000 crore each in 2017-18 and 2018-19.

"If additional capital is required by these banks, we will find the resources for doing so. We stand solidly behind these banks," Finance Minister Arun Jaitley had said in this year's budget speech.

The Moody's report said the banks' asset quality is expected to remain under pressure over the next 12 months on account of bad loans to steel and power sector.

As a result, the elevated provisioning expenses will continue to constrain profitability and limit internal capital generation, the report said.

The PSBs suffered suffered losses of Rs 18,000 crore in 2015-16 because of high non-performing assets (NPAs).

Most bank shares are trading below book value, which constrains their ability to use public offerings to raise capital, the report said.

The asset quality review mandated by the Reserve Bank of India in the second half of the fiscal year 2015-16, in an effort to clean up the banks' balance sheets, has adversely affected their profitability.

Nevertheless, the banks also reported improved capital levels on the back of new RBI rules that have broadened their capital base. The rules, amended in March 2016, allow them to recognise revaluation reserves, deferred tax assets, and foreign currency reserves as common equity tier 1 capital, in turn, resulting in a one-off boost to capital levels.

--IANS

mm/py/vm
Suspected militants have abducted an Indian female aid worker from the volatile Afghanistan capital of Kabul, Indian and Afghan officials said on Friday.

The woman was identified as Judith D'Souza, 40, a senior technical advisor on gender with the Aga Khan Developmental Network in Kabul, sources in Delhi said.

Believed to be from Kolkata, D'Souza was kidnapped late on Thursday, the sources said. No group immediately claimed responsibility for her abduction.

The Indian embassy in Kabul is in touch with senior Afghan authorities and the government, the sources said, adding that officials in Delhi were also in contact with her family in Kolkata.

They said all efforts were being made by the Afghan authorities to secure her release.

This is not the first time that an Indian aid worker has been kidnapped in Afghanistan. Taliban militants have mostly been blamed for the kidnappings. Many Indian establishments have also been targeted in the past in Afghanistan where New Delhi has pledged and made huge investments to rebuild the war-torn country.

The latest in a series of terror strikes on Indian interests in Afghanistan was on an Indian consulate on March 2.

The abduction comes as the Indian Embassy issued a security alert earlier last month for its citizens residing in Afghanistan and travelling to the country.

"All Indians residing and travelling to Afghanistan are advised that the security situation in the country remains highly volatile. Terrorist attacks have taken place in the country against foreigners and are expected to continue. There is also the risk of kidnapping and hostage taking throughout the Afghanistan," a statement said.

--IANS

sar/vm
I don't exactly gasp but am puzzled by the indifference with which the media has treated two fascinating Indo-Iranian stories. Now that Indo-Iranian relations are set to improve after crucial agreements signed in Tehran by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Hassan Rouhani, the anecdotes should be shared.

During his journey to Iran in 1932, Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) made a request: He was keen to visit the tomb of the great Persian Sufi poet, Hafez (1326-1390) at Shiraz.

A reading room attached to the shrine has a cornice on which is settled a remarkable photograph, the size of a pocket book. It shows Tagore at the tomb, with a book of Hafe's verses open in front of him.

I have been to the shrine with Prime Ministers Rajiv Gandhi and Atal Bihari Vajpayee. They were both fascinated by the great poets, representing two cultures, separated by six centuries, captured in one photograph. There was a great deal of loud thinking: life size copies of the photographs can adorn Indo-Iranian cultural centres, and perhaps the two embassies. So far, nothing has happened. Perhaps Mamata Banerjee in Kolkata would take interest.

The second story concerns Ayatullah Khomein''s roots in the Shia enclave of Kuntoor, near Bara Banki, in the heart of what was once Awadh. After the Shah's fall, there was a search on for new contacts in Tehran. Atal Bihari Vajpayee, then Minister for External Afffairs, asked me if I knew Khomeini's clan in Kuntoor. I did. Maulana Agha Rhui Abaqati soon materialized in South Block. He was enlisted as a guide to a delegation consisting of Socialist leader and Vice Chairman Planning Commission Ashoke Mehta and senior diplomat Badruddin Tayyabji. When the trio reached Ayatullah Khomeini in Gumran, outside Tehran, there was something of any anti climax. The reception to the delegation was cold. Abaqati in fact got an earful from Khomeini himself.

It turned out that the young Islamic Revolution was eager not to publicize the Supreme leader's "foreigm" roots. Opposition to Khomeini among the clergy would exploit it.

Against this background, Iranian ambassador Gholam Reza Ansari's intervention at a seminar in New Delhi's Leela hotel in 2014 was quite remarkable. The ambassador cited Imam Khomein''s roots in Awadh as proof of ancient ties between the two countries. This was a major shift. Between the debacle faced by the Indian delegation in 1979 and 2014, the Iranian revolution had travelled a long distance. It felt secure enough to admit that Imam Khomeini ancestry could now be traced to India.

The point I am making here is a simple one: schools of Iranian studies have mushroomed in the West, placing every aspect of Shia scholarship under a microscope. Here, in and around Lucknow, is incontrovertible evidence of linkages between Indian centres of Shia scholarship and rest of the world. Libraries with rare books lie in utter neglect. Who knows, this astounding lack of interest may end in this new phase of accelerated relations between the two countries. Cultural collaboration is an important part of the agreements.

Iranians have been spreading out a range of maps before diplomats in Tehran. "It's a win, win for all," they say.

Soon after Prime Minister Narendra Modi's very purposive visit, Japanese Prime Minister Shinto Abe's officials are locked in discussion with their Iranian counterparts to prepare a script for Abe's visit to Tehran in September. The development of Chabahar port will be an item on his agenda.

Pundits preoccupied with China and Pakistan will say: this is part of the US "pivot to Asia" in which, they hope, Iran too will be roped in. But the "win, win for all" chant coming out of Tehran suggest a more nuanced look at China's anxieties, particularly in the South China Sea.

"In periods of hostility, their passage through the straits of Malacca can be choked," said an Iranian diplomat. The Gawadar port at the mouth of the Persian Gulf is a key element in the Chinese ambitious One Belt - One Road concept. It frees them of their total dependence on Malacca. Iranian diplomats insist that Japanese interest in Chabahar need not be seen in adversarial terms. The distance between Gawadar and Chabahar, it is point out, is only 150 km. "Win, win for all" goes the chant after the recent agreements.

These agreements have been signed with an Iran everybody is wooing. The difference this time is that Prime Minister Modi has actually signed agreements after considerable preparation. But there still remains a fly in the ointment. The parallel road and rail links via Afghanistan, which are central to the Chabahar agreement, will remain unimplementable unless there is peace in Afghanistan. This should be a worry.

Americans have been threatening to pack their bags in Afghanistan since 2009. But their desire to leave was, in retrospect, seen to have been half hearted. Several factors were not allowing Afghanistan to be at peace with itself.

Outsiders have been reluctant to notice an undercurrent in Pushtoon society: the Durrani, Ghilzai tensions. This needs explanation. When Noor Mohammad Taraki, an Afghan Communist, took over as Prime Minister in 1978, an epoch making change took place.

By seizing power, after killing President Mohammad Daud Khan, the Communist parties, Khalq and Parcham, had upturned the Afghan feudal structure in many ways. For the first time in 200 years, Durranis had yielded power to Ghilzais. Like the late Mullah Omar, most of the Taliban leadership are Ghilzais. The power structure put together in Kabul with US help, whether Hamid Karzai or Ashraf Ghani, happen to be part of the old ruling class: Durranis. If this 38 years old tension is ever to soften, Ghilzais will have to be decisively in power in Kabul. Is there a non Taliban route to this end?

For the American presence, however depleted, the port city of Karachi remains indispensable for logistics. The convoy route is seldom far from Taliban strongholds - Quetta or Kandahar.

Even after a considerable drawdown of troops, the US is unlikely to give up its half a dozen or so major bases. I wonder if pundits have spotted American determination to keep some presence in Afghanistan. They will never be too far from the world's only Islamic state "too nuclear" to be left to its devices. Even for limited bases, Americans will always require continuous logistical help from Karachi.

Should Chabahar construction actually accelerate, the port, roads and rail linked to it can be used by everybody, Americans included. Americans finding alternative routes to and from Afghanistan is no trifling matter. It will spell loss of power in Islamabad. That is one of the reasons Chabahar will be a game changer.

Tehran is aware of all the contradictions with Islamabad. That is why both Supreme leader Ayatullah Ali Khameini and President Hassan Rouhani never gave up the chant: It is "win, win for all"; agreements are "against" nobody.

To underpin this "win, win", Iranian officials point to an already existing rail link between Zahedan and Quetta which can be easily spruced up and extended should Pakistan so desire.

(Saeed Naqvi is a commentator on political and diplomatic affairs. The views expressed are personal. He can be reached on saeednaqvi@hotmail.com)

--IANS

naqvi/mr
Mosul (Iraq), June 10 (IANS/AKI) Militants from the Islamic State group stoned a woman to death for alleged adultery in the northern city of Iraq, aided by onlookers, local news site Aranews reported on Friday.

"Hundreds of people gathered in front of the Zahraa mosque in Mosul to witness the execution of the woman," media activist Abdullah al-Malla was quoted as telling Aranews.

The IS militants forced several civilians to take part in the stoning, Aranews cited an eyewitness as saying.

"They called on people to take part in the execution, saying we're in the holy month of Ramadan and we should show commitment to Allah's Sharia and that the woman deserved death for committing adultery," a witness said.

IS' al-Hisba moral police earlier detained the woman in Mosul's al-Tahrir district, accusing her of adultery. A Sharia court then sentenced her to death by public stoning.

During a lightening offensive in 2014, IS captured Mosul, making it the 'capital' of its self-styled Caliphate, which extends across swathes of territory in Iraq and Syria.

The ultra-extremist Sunni Muslim group has continued to mete out barbaric punishments to alleged transgressors in the areas under its control including stoning, beheadings, burning alive and amputations, according to rights activists and monitoring groups.

--IANS/AKI

mr/
Islamic State executioner Mohammed Emwazi, widely known as "Jihadi John", was presumed dead -- killed in a US drone strike. The jihadist's former university and the Information Commissioner, however, have cast doubts on this assumption.

Following a freedom of information (FoI) request by the BBC, the University of Westminster and the Information Commissioner's Office refused to release Emwazi's electronic files as it would be an "unwarranted intrusion into the private life of a young individual".

Emwazi was a London student and rapper-turned Islamic State militant. He appeared in a number of graphic beheading videos killing Western hostages before his presumed death in a US drone strike in November 2015.

A US colonel boasted at the time that Emwazi had been reduced to a "greasy spot".

In a piece published on Friday, the BBC said it had been told by the Commissioner that it would be "unfair" to Mohammed Emwazi to release his electronic records.

They were told the release, which the BBC had hoped would help explain Emwazi's radicalisation, would be an "unwarranted intrusion" and may cause "distress and upset."

A spokesperson for the Information Commissioner told the BBC that freedom of information legislation "is designed to promote transparency and openness, but is also balanced to avoid the inappropriate release of personal information."

"Anyone who is not happy with a decision can appeal to the information rights tribunal," the spokesman added.

The University of Westminster said through a spokesman: "We are complying with our legal obligations and the ICO decision confirms that this is the correct approach."

--IANS

ahm/dg
Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar on Friday told the parents of Aditya Sachdeva, a student who was allegedly shot dead by the son of a JD-U leader, that justice will be done in the case.

Nitish Kumar gave the assurance when he visited their house in Gaya town where he was attending an official function, an official said.

Rocky Yadav, son of Janata Dal-United leader Manorama Devi, allegedly shot dead Aditya Sachdeva, son of a businessman, on May 7 after the latter overtook his vehicle.

According to police, Rocky has confessed he killed Sachdeva.

He is lodged in the Gaya Central Jail along with his father Bindi Yadav, a politician with a criminal past, Bindi Yadav's bodyguard Rajesh Kumar and a cousin, Teni Yadav. All of them are accused in the murder case.

"Nitish Kumar told the parents that police investigation into the case was on the right track," the official said.

Rocky's mother Manorma Devi is a member of the legislative council of Bihar.

--IANS

ik/mr
HIT: To the Law Enforcement Officers Torch Run for Special Olympics.

A group of runners went from Elbridge to Seneca Falls this week to raise money for Special Olympics New York. The runners stopped along the way to interact with local schoolchildren and offer lessons about treating special needs students just like anybody else.

MISS: To the actions of a Brutus man that resulted in him being sentenced to state prison.

The man had admitted that he lost his temper with a 9-year-old boy in April, picked the child up and slammed him down to the floor. The boy suffered brain and spine injuries and required several surgeries.

The boy is said to be recovering well. The man who injured him is going to prison for 6 1/2 years.

HIT: To a quick fix to a problem that had left some rural Cayuga County residents without internet connections.

Because of a mix-up, a utility pole that was instrumental in providing internet service to several homes in Ledyard had been put in a spot it shouldn't have been.

There was concern that finding a suitable location for the pole might get caught up in red tape, but the communications company, the town of Ledyard, Cayuga County and the state Department of Transportation worked together to expedite the process, and the pole was taken down and set up in its new location in a single day.
Amid ongoing efforts by the Congress high command to convince five-time Mumbai MP Gurudas Kamat to withdraw his resignation, party sources on Friday said they are hopeful of persuading the former union minister to reconsider his decision.

Kamat, who was in the capital, had meetings with senior Congress leaders A.K. Antony and Ahmed Patel at the latter's residence in New Delhi on Thursday.

"We are hopeful that he'll be back," a party source told IANS, without going into the details.

However, there was no clarity as to what position would be offered to Kamat if he withdraws his resignation.

Kamat had announced he was quitting the party and the political arena on June 6.

"I met Congress President (Sonia Gandhi) about 10 days ago and expressed a desire to resign. For several months now, I have felt I need to take a backseat to enable others to get the opportunity," Kamat had said in a statement.

On Thursday, Kamat had dismissed speculation that he had reservations to the nomination of P. Chidambaram to the Rajya Sabha or of Narayan Rane's nomination for the Maharashtra Legislative Council elections.

"Chidambaram is a very senior and respected leader of the Congress Party and I hold him in very high esteem," Kamat had said in a statement.

Kamat further clarified that there were no differences between him and Narayan Rane.

--IANS

sid/rn
A delegation of Delhi legislators led by Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Friday met President Pranab Mukherjee and articulated their grievances against the BJP-led Union government and Delhi Lt Governor Najeeb Jung.

In his submission to the President, Kejriwal accused the Centre's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government of being anti-Dalit and anti-minorities.

"We told the President that ever since the BJP has formed the government at the Centre, there has been a spurt in the incidents of attacks on minorities and Dalits. Atrocities against them are rising," he told mediapersons after the meeting.

Kejriwal also raised with the President the issue of "manhandling" of Aam Aadmi Party Councillor Rakesh Kumar by BJP Councillors during a joint session of the city's three municipal's bodies at Ramlila Maidan on Thursday.

"Rakesh Kumar comes from a Dalit family. How he was attacked at Ramlila Maidan yesterday by BJP councillors has been seen by the whole media present there. This is a very sad incident," Kejriwal said.

"Looks like the BJP hates minorities and Dalits," he said.

The second issue that the delegation raised with the President, Kejriwal said, was that of Delhi Lieutenant Governor (LG) Najeeb Jung's actions which are "out of his mandate and power".

"A ration shop was cancelled by Food and Civil Supplies officials in Burari on charges of corruption against the shopkeeper as irregularities were found in his books. It was a right step towards fighting corruption.

"But the LG not only restored that ration shop, he ordered vigilance proceedings against the officials who had taken action against the shopkeeper. The LG also asked for FIR lodged against the MLA who had complained against the shopkeeper," he added.

The Chief Minister said that the LG had "no power to restore the ration shop" and acted out of his mandate.

"The President is the highest constitutional authority in this country. So we have requested him to intervene in these issues," Kejriwal said.

--IANS

mak-am/rn
Kenya's health officials on Friday announced the formation of a National Cancer Control Programme to help manage the rising cases of cancer in the country.

Principal Secretary in the Health Ministry, Nicholas Muraguri, told a forum on cervical cancer screening in the capital Nairobi that the agency will be operational from July.

"There are 40,000 new cases of cancer and 35,000 deaths per year in Kenya," Xinhua quoted Muraguri as saying.

Muraguri said cancer was a major public health concern in Kenya and the government was in the process, through the proposed new agency, to avail vaccine and upgrade health facilities in the country.

He said the government was set to open four training centres for cancer control in December.

"We are in the process of improving the availability, quality and accessibility of cervical cancer prevention, treatment and care," Muraguri added.

The Health Ministry's 2003-2006 cancer registry shows cervical cancer is the second most common cancer after breast cancer in Kenya, accounting for 20 per cent of all reported cancer cases in the country.

--IANS

sku/
Kerala's new Tourism Minister A.C. Moideen has assured full support to the tourism industry.

Moideen told industry honchos that the new Left Democratic Front government was aware of the industry's importance, particularly in revenue and employment generation.

"Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan and Finance Minister Thomas Issac have agreed to take the lead in coordinating the various government departments to push through approvals to implement many tourism projects," he said.

Moideen called for fresh concepts and ideas to attract more tourists to "God's Own Country".

"Kerala Tourism is committed to helping the state move towards greater heights by giving due importance to employment and revenue generation," said newly appointed Principal Secretary (Tourism) V. Venu.

--IANS

sg/mr
New pieces of debris were found in Madagascar by a man searching for parts of missing flight MH370.

Blaine Gibson, who has already found possible debris in Mozambique, made the latest discovery on Riake beach, on the island of Nosy Boraha in north-east Madagascar.

Gibson has sent images of the finds to investigators.

MH370, flying from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, had 239 people on board when it vanished in March 2014. The Malaysia Airlines flight is presumed to have crashed into the southern Indian Ocean after veering off course.

A number of other pieces of debris, some confirmed to have come from MH370, have been found in countries near Madagascar.

Gibson, a lawyer from Seattle, has funded his own search for debris in east Africa.

This is a man who is now dedicating himself to travelling the globe, finding possible pieces of MH370, a BBC correspondent said.

He does not get involved with the conspiracy theories, he just wants to find evidence.

It's likely that there are hundreds, maybe even thousands, of MH370 plane parts littered on beaches in that part of the world. Pieces of the puzzle washed up more than two years after the aircraft disappeared.

Although these latest finds must be verified by the authorities, it seems to confirm that the aircraft ended up roughly where they are looking, in the Indian Ocean six days' sail from Australia.

Don Thompson, a British engineer who is part of an informal international group investigating MH370, said he thought one piece was from the back of a seat, and the other could be part of a cover panel on a plane wing.

"The seat part I am 99.9 per cent sure on," he said. "It's the right colour of fabric for Malaysian Airlines. It shows the seat had to have disintegrated to have come away."

Gibson said images of the latest finds had been sent to investigators at the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) and to officials in Malaysia.

He said he was ready to hand over the pieces to authorities in Madagascar.

The ATSB confirmed they had received the latest images, and said it was Malaysia that assessed any new leads.

Also on Thursday, an ATSB spokeswoman said they were investigating whether debris found on Kangaroo Island in South Australia may have come from MH370.

Footage broadcast on Australia's Channel Seven showed white wreckage that included the words 'Caution No Step'.

Australia has been leading the search for the missing aircraft, using underwater drones and sonar equipment deployed from specialist ships.

The search, also involving Malaysia and China, has seen more than 105,000 sq km (65,000 sq miles) of the 120,000 sq km search zone scoured so far.

All the debris is being examined in Australia by the ATSB and other experts.

--IANS

py/vt
Bollywood actress Priyanka Chopra on Friday supported Anurag Kashyap's "Udta Punjab" and said creativity should not be curbed in democracy.

"I don't think creativity should be stopped and controlled in a democracy. It is either in scenes or title of the film. It is something that should be set free. Our forefathers achieved freedom of speech and expression after a long struggle," Priyanka told media here.

When asked about the controversy over Hindi film "Udta Punjab", she said that the censor board is a "certification body and not censor".

"In democracy, you cannot dictate what one should eat or watch a movie on a social issue," said the National Award-winning actress.

Priyanka was here for promotion and screening of Bhojpuri film "Bum Bum Bol Raha Hai Kashi", produced by her.

--IANS

ik/rb/dg
Pakistan on Friday told visiting US officials that the recent US drone strike in its southwestern Balochistan province has "vitiated bilateral ties".

Ambassador Richard Olson, US Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, and Peter Lavoy, Senior Advisor and Director for South Asian Affairs at the US National Security Council, arrived in Islamabad on Friday weeks after a US drone attack killed the Afghan Taliban chief at a time when efforts were underway to bring the Taliban to the negotiations table.

The US delegation held talks with Prime Minister's Advisor on Foreign Affairs Sartaj Aziz and Foreign Secretary Aizaz Ahmed Chaudhry at the foreign ministry and held candid discussions on bilateral relations, regional security situation and the Afghan peace process in the wake of May 21 drone strike near Quetta in Balochistan, a foreign ministry statement said.

"The Advisor conveyed a strong message to the US that the 21 May drone strike was not only a violation of Pakistan's sovereignty and breach of the principles of the United Nation's Charter, but has also vitiated bilateral ties," the statement reads.

"It was emphasized that any future drone strike in Pakistan will be detrimental to our common desire to strengthen relations," the statement added.

Aziz, according to the statement, expressed his concern that the drone strike had seriously undermined the ongoing efforts for Afghan peace and reconciliation process at a time when Pakistan, along with other Quadrilateral Coordination Group (QCG) countries, was engaged in serious efforts to revive peace talks between the Afghan government and the Taliban.

"The foreign secretary recalled that in QCG's fifth meeting on May 18 in Islamabad, it was decided that peace negotiations remained the only option for a political settlement. He emphasized that this would require collective efforts on the part of all QCG members to promote lasting peace in Afghanistan," the foreign ministry statement noted.

In response to US queries on safe havens for Taliban, it was emphasized that Pakistan is already pursuing its objective of eliminating all militants and terrorists from its soil in accordance with an anti-terror policy known as the National Action Plan.

The Pakistani side asked the US officials to push the Afghan government to take action against the Pakistani militants on the Afghan side of the border.

Peter Lavoy said that US President Obama was committed to improving relations with Pakistan as emphasized during Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's visit to Washington in October 2015, the statement said.

He also conveyed President Obama's good wishes for speedy recovery of Nawaz Sharif, who is in London after his recent open heart surgery.

--IANS

ahm/vt
Amid reports that Home Minister Rajnath Singh may be the BJP's chief ministerial candidate in Uttar Pradesh, two former party MPs on Friday accused the former chief minister of dividing the backward community to help the state's now ruling Samajwadi Party (SP).

"The activities of Rajnath Singh are anti-backward and he is trying to divide the community. The party leadership should take cognizance of this before deciding anything," former Azamgarh MP Ramakant Yadav told IANS.

He said Rajnath Singh's thinking was anti-backward and this would benefit the SP.

"Until the party rejects his idea of quota within quota, we will keep opposing it. His idea is not in the party's interest. It will benefit the SP," said Ramakant Yadav, who fought against SP chief Mulayam Singh Yadav in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls.

"The backward community was united during the Lok Sabha polls. This was the reason we got 71 (of the 80) seats in the state," Ramakant Yadav added.

Two other seats were won by a BJP ally, Apna Dal. The Congress won only two seats and the SP five. The Bahujan Samaj Party drew a blank.

Addressing a social justice meet at Mau in Uttar Pradesh, Rajnath Singh said on Thursday that a quota within quota system would be implemented in the state again if the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) came to power.

"The state and the nation can't develop well without the progress of the most backward castes. To ensure their growth, they need a separate quota. The benefits of reservation meant for Scheduled Castes and other backward classes should not be confined to a few castes only," Rajnath Singh said.

The apprehensions expressed by Ramakant Yadav, a four-time former MP and four-time former state legislator, is seen as his opposition to Rajnath Singh, tipped to be the BJP's chief ministerial candidate in Uttar Pradesh. The elections are due next year.

On Thursday, Rajnath Singh denied he was in the contention. The former Uttar Pradesh chief minister said he would extend "his full support" to whoever was named for the post.

Meanwhile, another former party MP, Daroga Prasad Saroj, also criticised Rajnath Singh's idea of quota within quota.

"If there is quota within quota, the country will get divided. The country can't move ahead. If the party wants this I have no objections as I am ready to abide by the party decisions," Saroj told IANS.

--IANS

bns/mr
All eyes will be on the voting on Saturday for biennial elections for 27 Rajya Sabha seats in seven states even as suspense remains on the fate of senior Congress leader Kapil Sibal and the outcome of polls in Karnataka, where charges of large-scale horse-trading have surfaced.

With 30 candidates from eight states already elected unopposed to the Rajya Sabha, voting for the remaining 27 seats will take place on Saturday in Uttar Pradesh, Karnataka, Rajasthan, Jharkhand, Uttarakhand, Haryana and Madhya Pradesh.

Voting for 11 seats in Uttar Pradesh, four each in Rajasthan and Karnataka, three in Madhya Pradesh, two each in Haryana and Jharkhand and one in Uttarakhand will be on Saturday.

Amid charges and counter charges of horse trading, fierce contests are on the cards especially in Karnataka, where a sting by TV channels has indicated that parties have big stakes in the polls for the upper house.

In an effort to increase its own numerical strength in the Upper House, where the government lacks majority, the BJP has supported some independent candidates to ensure that the Congress is not able to win any extra seat. It has also fielded its candidates in some states to grab seats from others.

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in Uttar Pradesh seems to be more keen to give a strong fight to Congress nominee Kapil Sibal, who also has the support of Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP).

"We will be indulging in strategic voting and will ensure defeat of Congress, Bahujan Samaj Party and Samajwadi Party nominees," said BJP spokesman in Uttar Pradesh, Vijay Bahadur Pathak.

The Congress, however, remained confident of winning the seat for former union minister Sibal from UP.

"We remain confident that both in Karnataka as well as in UP the Congress party will triumph," party spokesman Manish Tewari said here.

Interestingly, the nomination of Preeti Mohapatra as independent candidate in Uttar Pradesh has been proposed by some BJP legislators making it clear that the saffron party does not want to give a cakewalk to Sibal.

In Uttar Pradesh 12 candidates are in the fray for the vacant 11 seats where the ruling Samajwadi Party has fielded seven candidates while the Bahujan Samaj Party has fielded two. The BJP and the Congress have fielded one candidate each.

With support of Ajit Singh's Rashtriya Lok Dal, SP is likely to easily win all the seven seats. The BSP's two and BJP's one candidate would also probably sail through easily.

In Karnataka, five nominees, including three from Congress and one each from the BJP and Janatal Dal-Secular (JD-S) are in the fray.

The candidates are Oscar Fernandes, Jairam Ramesh and K.C. Ramamurthy (all Congress), Union Commerce Minister Nirmala Sitharaman of BJP and B.M. Farooq of Janata Dal-Secular.

The contest in Karnataka is basically between Congress's third nominee Ramamurthy and JD-S' B.M. Farooq. While Ramamurthy will need 12 more votes, Farooq will need five more votes to win as his party has only 40 lawmakers in the house.

Polling for four Rajya Sabha seats in Rajasthan was necessitated as no candidate withdrew their nomination. Four BJP candidates and one Independent candidate, supported by opposition Congress have filed nominations for the four seats.

Nomination by former Union minister and business tycoon Kamal Morarka on the last day has added more flavour to the contest.

Union Minister M. Venkaiah Naidu, BJP national vice president Om Prakash Mathur, former RBI official Ramkumar Verma and member of the erstwhile Dungarpur royal family Harsh Vardhan Singh are the BJP nominees.

In Haryana, where the BJP does not have adequate numbers to get two candidates elected, the party has nominated Union Minister Chaudhary Birender Singh as its candidate. With extra votes in hand, the BJP has supported media baron Subhash Chandra, who has filed nomination as an Independent candidate.

Senior lawyer R.K. Anand has also filed nomination in Haryana as an Independent candidate and is banking on support of Congress and opposition Indian National Lok Dal.

In Madhya Pradesh, the BJP has nominated Anil Madhav Dave and M.J. Akbar as its two candidates for the three vacant seats.

With an eye to the third seat, BJP has fielded Vinod Gotiya, a state BJP office bearer, as an Independent candidate. This move of the BJP is seen as a ploy to thwart the election of Congress candidate Vivek Tankha, who is short of only one vote.

With eight votes short for Gotia's victory, the BJP is aiming to garner support of BSP and Independent members.

In Jharkhand, where the BJP is assured of Union Minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi being elected to the first seat, it has chosen its second nominee as Mahesh Poddar, an industrialist.

Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) has fielded Basant Soren, son of its chief Shibu Soren. The Congress, which has not fielded any candidate has given support to Soren.

Two of the six Rajya Sabha seats in Jharkhand are getting vacant this time with BJP's M.J. Akbar and Congress's Dheeraj Sahu completing their respective terms.

In Uttarakhand, where the BJP's move to dislodge the Harish Rawat government did not pay off, it has not nominated any candidate. However, its two leaders Gita Thakur and Anil Goel have filed nominations as Independents against Pradeep Tamta, the joint candidate of the Congress and PDF (Peoples Democratic Front).

Despite BJP's efforts to win extra seats in these polls, the Congress will continue to remain the single-largest party in the 245-member House.

The biennial elections were necessitated as 55 members from 15 states are retiring between June and August. One seat each from Rajasthan and Karnataka have also been vacated -- by Anand Sharma (Congress) and Vijay Mallya (Independent), respectively -- and will also go for polls.

Thirty candidates from various political parties were already declared elected unopposed to the Rajya Sabha from their eight respective states in the absence of more contenders.

--IANS

bns-nd/rn/dg
Two Automated Teller Machines (ATMs) of the Punjab National Bank caught fire and were badly damaged in Himachal Pradesh's Una town on Friday, police said.

While no one was injured, bank officials suspect that cash worth lakhs inside the machines might have been burnt.

No one was present at the spot when the fire broke out. The cause of fire could be a short circuit, the police officials told IANS.

--IANS

vg/lok/rn/bg
On his maiden visit here, new British High Commissioner to India Dominic Asquith has said the UK wants to be 'a partner of choice' to Karnataka.

"I am delighted to be here in Bengaluru -- the IT City of India and this fact is recognised worldwide. Bengaluru recently featured in the top five global cities for global locations for innovation," said Asquith.

Meeting senior government officials, Indian companies and politicians here on Thursday, the high commissioner talked about promoting bilateral engagement in the realms of smart cities, skills and cyber security.

Talking about investments, Asquith said: "Britain is the largest G20 investor in India. India -- the fastest growing major economy -- invests more in Britain than it does in the rest of the EU combined. We are seizing the opportunity to increase each other's prosperity."

Earlier, Asquith joined British Deputy High Commissioner Dominic McAllister to celebrate the Queen's Birthday Party (QBP) in Bengaluru.

McAllister said: "We are proud of the fact that UK was the first country to open a government office in the city."

According to him, UK is well positioned to be the 'partner of choice' for Karnataka.

UK was a partner county to the state in the recently held 'Invest Karnataka' summit, where 23 UK companies showcased their products.

--IANS

sth/ask/dg
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon will leave New York on June 13 for Brussels, Belgium, to participate in the European Development Days before attending an event in Russia and visiting Greece, a UN spokesman has said.

In Brussels, the secretary-general will meet with Donald Tusk, president of the European Council, Jean-Claude Juncker, president of the European Commission, and a number of commissioners as well as other senior officials attending the celebration of the European Development Days, Europe's leading forum on development and international cooperation, UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said on Thursday, Xinhua news agency reported.

While in Belgium, the secretary-general will also participate in an Advisory Board meeting of the Sustainable Energy For All (SE4ALL) initiative, and meet with King Philippe and Queen Mathilde, who is one of the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals Ambassadors, he said.

On June 16, the secretary-general will be in St. Petersburg, Russia, for the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, an annual international conference dedicated to economic and business issues held under the auspices of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The secretary-general is scheduled to meet Russian President Putin, as well as with other participating senior officials, said the spokesman.

On June 17, the secretary-general will travel to Athens, Greece, where he will meet President Prokopis Pavlopoulos and Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, among others, he said.

He will then go to the island of Lesvos June 18, to meet with refugees, migrants and asylum seekers, as well as local volunteers and authorities, he said.

The secretary-general is expected to be back in New York on June 19.

--IANS

pgh/
The opposition in Jharkhand is set to show a united front against the ruling BJP on saturday in a two-day "economic blockade" to denounce the government's domicile policy and in polling for two Rajya Sabha seats.

The opposition parties allege that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which rules the state in coalition with the All Jharkhand Students Union (AJSU), is suppressing the voice of the tribal and Moolvasi people and snatching the rights of the poorest.

"We have to restore the democratic process in the state. We cannot allow suppression of the voice of the people," state Congress president Sukhdeo Bhagat told reporters.

The BJP has also been accused of attempting to suborn the opposition MLAs by fielding two candidates for two Rajya Sabha seats from Jharkhand to be decided on Saturday even though it has the votes to bag only one seat.

On Thursday, an opposition parties' delegation led by Hemant Soren of Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) met Governor Draupadi Murmu and informed her about their stand on the domicile policy and the Rajya Sabha polls.

The Raghubar Das government, on the other hand, has made heavy deployment of security forces to deal with the two-day economic blockade starting on Saturday, which has been called by the Jharkhand Vikas Morcha-Prajatantrik (JVM-P) of Babulal Marandi to protest against the domicile policy.

The economic blockade has been supported by the Congress, the JMM of Shibu Soren and other opposition parties which say that the domicile policy is against the interests of the tribal and Moolvasi people of the state.

The opposition parties' activists are expected on Saturday to block the main roads, railway tracks and major mines to focus attention on their demands.

The government had used stern measures against the May 14 shutdown organised by the opposition against the domicile policy, arresting close to 9000 people, including 10 legislators.

This time around, police are conducting mock drills here to deal with the protesters. An alert has been sounded for the security of the highways, railways and important places. The demonstrations will be videographed and surveyed through drones.

The ruling and opposition parties have also held meetings here to decide their strategies for the Rajya Sabha polls.

There are three candidates -- Union Minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi and Mahesh Poddar from the BJP and Basant Soren from the JMM -- for the two seats. So there is bitter fight for the vote of every MLA.

Jharkhand's legislators do not enjoy a clean record in voting in Rajya Sabha elections. The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) is still investigating charges of horse-trading in two such polls.

"We have the numbers to be able to ensure victory of our candidate with a large margin of votes," Hemant Soren Executive President of JMM -- who is also Basant Soren's brother -- told reporters.

To win a seat a candidate requires a minimum of 28 votes in the 81-member Jharkhand assembly.

The BJP and its ally AJSU together have 47 votes. They have also managed to bring Geeta Koda of Jai Bharat Samanta Party and Bhanu Pratap Sahi of Navjawan Sangarsh Morcha to their side.

This means that Naqvi will be able to sail through, but Poddar will be left with only about 19 votes.

On the side of the opposition, the JMM has 19, Congress seven and JVM(P) two votes.

Also supporting the opposition are Arup Chatterjee of the Marxist Co-ordination Committee (MCC) and Rajkumar Yadav of the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) Liberation.

The BJP can get both its candidates through only by poaching the opposition's MLAs.

The JMM and the Congress are wary of such attempts and are doing everything they can to keep their MLAs from crossing over to the other side.

--IANS

ns/kb/bg
Suddenly realized that when I wash food by holding it under the horrible yellow water that comes out of my tap I am really just adding an extra dose of carcinogens.

Funny how we do things without thinking.

Case in point: A reader sent me a news report about an unobservant man who collected the wrong child from school. Joseph Fuller, 65, intended to pick up his grandson, but took an unrelated boy home instead. The child confirmed to school staff that the old man was his grandfather before going off with him.

Fuller's wife made him take the child back to the school in the US state of South Carolina.

This lends weight to the theory that these days we drift through our days using our prehensile brain stems, with our actual cerebral matter switched off.

Example: The day before writing this, this columnist was amazed to see ducks flying, having forgotten that it's chickens which cannot fly.

Correction. A colleague who grew up on a farm tells me that chickens can fly if you throw them in the air hard enough.

But then one could argue that EVERYTHING can fly if you throw it hard enough, including pigs, elephants, buildings and the like.

But anyway, the mental doziness epidemic seems to be real and it seems to be worldwide. At a court in Pakistan recently, a lawyer said that his client, arrested on weapons charges, was not clever enough to know how to remove the pin from a grenade. Constable Liaquat Ali decided to show how easy it was by picking up the grenade in question and pulling the pin. Fortunately he was not seriously injured in the ensuing explosion, although the judge was knocked off his chair.

Everything said or done in a court is really important so you have to be careful. A lawyer once told me he was in a court where people kept talking, so the judge said: "The next person who speaks will be thrown out." "Hallelujah," shouted the prisoner.

Scientists say the problem is that we have outsourced the work of the brain to our phones. It's worth remembering that Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone but refused to have one in his study, saying that no intelligent person would want one around when they were trying to work.

Social media makes us particularly stupid. Every day we see people announcing that a Facebook quiz had determined that they are intelligent/cool/not a moron -- without realising that their decision to give credence to a Facebook quiz proves the exact opposite.

Last year Beatles drummer Ringo Starr did a Facebook quiz called Which Beatle Are You? And it told him he was John Lennon. Serves him right.

One day last week I had no phone for a whole day and walked through the world noticing all sorts of intriguing and curious things. For example, why do soldiers on duty in airports wear green camouflage gear? Shouldn't they disguise themselves as overpriced gift shops or overweight tourists?

And why do we wash food in dirty water to clean it? And is the girl I picked up from school really my daughter? She seems bigger than when I last really looked at her.

(Nury Vittachi is an Asia-based frequent traveller. Send ideas and questions via his Facebook page)

--IANS

nury/vm
For the Maharashtra assembly polls of October 2014, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) successfully isolated the influential Marathas of the state and consolidated most other castes in its favour. In Haryana polls that were held alongside Maharashtra, BJP strategists were similarly successful in unifying everyone else to vote for the party while majority of the states dominant Jat community voted for its rivals.
A 10-day-long economic blockade and ban on construction of all ongoing national projects in hill (tribal) areas began in Manipur today leaving a large number of goods-laden trucks stranded on the inetr-state borders.

Police said loaded trucks are stranded at Mao on the borders with Nagaland and at Jiribam on the borders with Assam.

However, inter-state passenger vehicles are being allowed to pass without restriction.

Supporters came out in the various hill districts to enforce the blockade, particularly at Kangpokpi area in Senapati district, police said adding there was no report of any untoward incident from any part of the state.

The blockade has been jointly called by Joint Action Committee of Churachandpur and an apex tribal body Outer Manipur Tribal's Forum comprising United Naga Council, Zomi Council, Thadou Inpi, Hmar Inpui and Mizo People Convention.

They are protesting against the process of implementation of Inner Line Permit system in Manipur through conversion of three ILP-related bills into Acts with the assent of the President.

The three bills were passed unanimously in August last year by the state assembly after a two month-long agitation to protect the indigenous people from illegal immigrants in the state, including those from neighbouring Myanmar.

The agitators are also protesting against the June 7 clash between Delhi police and Manipur Rifles personnel and tribal protestors from the state who had convereged at the gates of Manipur Bhawan at Chanakyapuri at the national capital. Twenty five people, including police officers, were injured in the incident.
Over 43,800 people arrived in India on e-tourist visa in May as compared to 15,659 during the same month last year, recording a whopping hike of nearly 180 per cent in the footfall.

The US continues to occupy the top slot, followed by the UK and China among the countries availing e-tourist visa facility, the Tourism Ministry said in a statement.

43,833 people arrived in India on e-tourist visa in May as compared to 15,659 during the same month last year, registering a growth of 179.9 per cent in the footfall, it said.

Launched on November 27, 2014, the facility was initially available for citizens of 113 countries arriving at 16 airports in India till February 25 this year.

The scheme, however, was extended for citizens of 37 more countries from February 26.

During January-May, 2016, a total of 4,34,927 tourist arrived on e-tourist visa as compared to 1,10,657 during the corresponding period last year, recording an exponential growth of 293 per cent.

Among the top 10 source countries availing the facility in May, the US share was maximum with 18.52 per cent, followed by the UK (15.63 per cent), China (8.17 per cent), France (5.16 per cent), Germany (4.91 per cent) and Australia (4.50 per cent).

The share of Canada was 4.49 per cent, while that of UAE 3.01 per cent, Russia 2.79 per cent and and Malaysia 2.12 per cent, it said.
A Hindu temple was today vandalised in Malaysia's Penang state by unidentified persons who damaged the deities, a top state official said, less than a week after a similiar incident in the area.

The Sri Dharma Munisverar temple was reported to have been damaged in today's incident though the extent of the damage was yet to be ascertained, Deputy Chief Minister Dr P Ramasamy said.

This is the second such incident involving a Hindu temple in Butterworth town.

The Munisverar temple is located about one km away from the Muthumariamman Temple in Penanti Estate, Ara Kuda which was reportedly vandalised last Saturday, he said.

A police report was lodged by the temple authorities.

Malaysia's 28 million population comprises eight per cent ethnic Indians mostly Hindu Tamils.

Last week, two statues of deities were vandalised in Ara Kuda, prompting the temple committee to look into installing closed-circuit television (CCTV) cameras for security purposes.

The attack was believed to be a hate crime as no items were stolen from the temple.

Ramasamy said he had written to Inspector-General of Police Khalid Abu Bakar urging the police to investigate the incident last week.
At least 30,000 paramilitary jawans will participate in events organised in state capitals and other prominent cities across the country to make the June 21 international Yoga Day celebration a success.

A high-level meeting of the Committee of Secretaries decided that the celebrations must be participated by at least 1,000 central paramilitary force personnel at each locations in ensuring the "grandeur" of the event across the country.

At the main event, to be held in Chandigarh with the participation of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, at least 2,000 paramilitary jawans will take part the event.

The Indo-Tibetan Border Police has been made the nodal force for the Chandigarh event. The force's primary mandate is to guard the Sino-Indian border, sources said.

According to a circular, a minimum of 1,000 personnel of paramilitary forces will be deployed in concerned state capital and cities for participation. The event will be held at 28 prominent cities or state capitals.

Every state capital will have a nodal force like CRPF, BSF, CISF, ITBP, SSB and Assam Rifles and they will ensure the jawans participation with common dress -- white T-shirts and black track pants.

The paramilitary forces were told to organise Yoga Day event in all state capitals where state governments are not involved. State governments of a few non-BJP rule states are not organising the celebration, sources said.
Police today arrested four persons for allegedly murdering a 21-year-old woman here in Shankar Chowk.

Mahi, a native of Uttar Pradesh, had come to meet her friends at a road side dhaba here in the chowk yesterday. A group of four people started abusing them for an old enmity, following whcih Mahi was attacked and she received multiple injuries. She was rushed to hospital by locals but was declared brought dead, ACP and PRO, Gurgaon Police, Hawa Singh said.

The arrested accused have been identified as Pooja, her boyfriend Mohit, Akash and Ghirish. Poolja is a native of West Bengal, while the trio belong to Gurgaon's Nathupur village, he said.

They were produced in Gurgaon Civil Court today which sent them to judicial custody, he added.
Eight State Reserve Police Force (SRPF) jawans were today hospitalised after they suffered fever and vomiting in suspected food poisoning, officials said.

When asked if it was a case of food poisoning, Dr Rajeev Deveshwar Pandey, Superintendent of Sir Sayaji General (SSG) Hospital, said, "As many as 22 SRPF jawans complained of fever and vomiting, following which 14 of them were treated in the SRPF premises. The remaining eight jawans were shifted to Sir Sayaji General Hospital."



The hospitalised jawans were discharged after treatment, he said.

"The SRPF jawans had consumed regular meals," said Jitendrasingh Gohil, one of the jawans who fell ill.
Actor Johny Baweja says the team of his upcoming erotic-murder mystery "A Scandall" has no issues with the cuts suggested by Censor Board in the film.

Johny, who is the cousin of actor Harman Baweja, makes his Bollywood debut along with actress Reeth Mazumdar in the bold film.

"We already got an 'A' certificate, which we had applied for. There were certain scenes which have been edited from the film, including some audio cuts, but we are happy with it," Johny told PTI.

"The focus of the film is not to titillate the audience. The cuts have not affected the story at all and hence we happily obliged," he said.

The film has been helmed by Ishan Trivedi, who wrote the dialogues for superstar Aamir Khan's "Ghulam" and went on to direct films like Himesh Reshammiya-starrer "Radio".

"A Scandall" is set in Nainital and apart from horror element and murder mystery, it touches upon the issue of incest.

"We are not glorifying that at all. Something like this is concerning and we want people to know about it. It should be stopped at an early level," Johny said.

The actor, however, said it is ironical that often people complain of not having enough bold films in the country and then when one finally makes it, it gets into trouble.

"Sometimes we protest why bold films are not allowed in India, and then when we make it, we say what is the need for it. There is some trouble. It is time to make subjects which the audience will connect with, irrespective of the theme," he said.
A day after its councillor Rakesh Kumar was allegedly manhandled by BJP councillors, the AAP today approached the National Commission for Scheduled Castes demanding strict action under the provisions of the SC/ST Act against those who assaulted him.

A party delegation led by AAP's Delhi unit convenor Dilip Pandey and including Kumar and party MLA Rajendra Pal Gautam, went to the Commission's office here.

Pandey said since Chairman P L Punia was not in the office, they were assured that the issue would be taken up on Monday.

Claiming that the attack was an act of "murder of his human right", Kumar in his complaint has alleged that he was not only manhandled, but was also hurled with "castiest abuses". He also demanded protection from the BJP councillors.

Later speaking to reporters Pandey said that the alleged attack on Kumar reflected the "anti-minority" and "anti-dalit" attitude of the BJP.

He further alleged that ever since the BJP has came to power, attacks on dalits and minorities have "increased".

Pandey said the party will also protest outside the BJP office tomorrow morning.

Terming the attack as "utterly shameful", Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal had yesterday accused BJP of "assaulting dalits" all over the country and said Aam Aadmi Party will take up the matter with the President.

(REOPENS DES34)



Pandey said during the meeting at Ramlila Maidan, AAP councillors were not allowed to speak and those who insisted were manhandled.

"BJP does not believe in democracy and like their elected members. AAP Councillor Rakesh Kumar was beaten up by BJP men.

"It is a glaring breach of people's rights and the Constitution. On one hand, AAP members were beaten up in Ramlila Maidan, on the other, we had BJP legislators in Assembly making mockery of the House decorum. This is the real face of BJP," Pandey added.
For over two decades, all Maria Mancia had of her son was a single photo, a slightly blurry image of a boy, 18 months old, staring unsmiling into the camera.

Yesterday he was wiping away her tears at a reunion neither of them ever expected.

When the boy's father abducted him from their Southern California home in 1995, he also took every picture she had of him, even the ultrasound of him during her pregnancy. She had to write to a relative just to get one picture to show the police.

But early this year a tip led investigators to Mexico and the son, Steve Hernandez, now a 22-year-old law student.

Yesterday morning he came to the US and immediately met his mother.

"It was a shock," Martinez told the San Bernardino Sun. "I didn't know if she was alive or not and to get a call that says they found my mother and that she had been looking for me, it was like a cold bucket of water. But it's good. It's good."



The two parents and their toddler boy had been living in Rancho Cucamonga, California, in 1995. The parents were having relationship struggles. Mancia came home from work one day and thought they had been robbed. It took her a while to figure out that both her son and his father were gone.

The San Bernardino County District Attorney's Child Abduction Unit had been looking for Hernandez for years, searching for him in several states.

Investigators then received a good tip in February that he was in Puebla, Mexico. The father, Valentin Hernandez, is missing and believed to be dead, authorities said. Senior Investigator Karen Cragg, who led the search, said they had to approach Steve Hernandez delicately, and at first used a ruse.

"We didn't want him to know what was going on," Cragg told The Associated Press yesterday. "We didn't want to scare him off. We weren't sure what the circumstances were down there. We had to tread very carefully."



They told him they were investigating his missing father so they could interview him and get a DNA sample. The facts fit what they knew of the missing boy.

Cragg then asked the Department of Justice if they could hurry on the test, knowing it could take several months.

"They called me in two weeks and said it was a match," Cragg said.

Cragg and her partner Michelle Faxon drove straight to Mancia's house.
An untitled landscape painted by Amrita Sher-Gill sold for Rs 4.75 crores (USD 720,000) at Saffronart's online auction, which fetched a total sales of Rs 20.65 crores (USD 3.12 million), auctioneers said today.

Sher-Gil's Untitled (Zebegeny Landscape) led the sale against a pre-sale estimate of Rs 3.9 crores to Rs 5.2 crores (USD 600,000 - 800,000).

Sher-Gil was the country's foremost woman artist, whose brief career spanning just over a decade had a deep impact on Indian art. Made in 1931, the landscape was painted during a summer holiday she spent in the Hungarian village of Zebegeny on the banks of the Danube.

An Untitled work (after Titian's Venus of Urbino and Manet's Olympia) by F N Souza sold for Rs 1.22 crores (USD 186,000) compared to a pre-sale estimate of Rs 1.1 -1.3 crores (USD 170,000 - 200,000).

Subodh Gupta's stainless steel installation, sold for Rs 1.10 crores (USD 168,000), against an initial estimate of Rs 99 lakhs to Rs 1.3 crores (USD 150,000 - 200,000).

S H Raza's 'Horizon', sold for over Rs 1 crore (USD 153,000) against an estimate of Rs 66 lakhs to Rs 99 lakhs (USD 100,000 - 150,000).

Nearly 24 per cent of the lots sold above their upper estimates.

Two paintings by Ghulam Rasool Santosh almost tripled their upper estimates of Rs 5.28 lakhs (USD 8,000) and Rs 3.3 lakhs (USD 5,000) to fetch winning bids of Rs 14.65 lakhs (USD 22,212) and Rs 10.89 lakhs (USD 16,500) respectively.

K K Hebbar's 1959 painting 'Tile Factory', almost doubled its upper estimate of Rs 23 lakhs (USD 35,000), selling for Rs 40.78 lakhs (USD 61,800).

Lot 57, Biren De's 1968 oil on canvas 'The Moment', also tripled its upper estimate of Rs 7.92 lakhs (USD 12,000) fetching a winning bid of Rs 24.9 lakhs (USD 37,800).

Among the contemporary Indian artists, there was strong demand for works by Sudarshan Shetty and Chintan Upadhyay. Shetty's 2005 acrylic on canvas, sold at RS 14.72 lakhs (USD 22,309) against a pre-sale estimate of Rs 6 - Rs 8 lakhs (USD 9,095 - 12,125).

"We were delighted to see very active international bidding, including bids placed via our mobile platform. There were many rare pieces with unusual history and at various attractive price points, so we are very gratified by the broad appeal it generated," Hugo Weihe, CEO, Saffronart said.
A US-backed Arab-Kurdish alliance today severed the Islamic State group's main supply route to Turkey after encircling a key jihadist-held town in northern Syria, a monitor said.

"The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) cut off the last road from Manbij to the Turkish border today morning," the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

IS still controls territory along the Turkish border with secondary roads to the frontier but these are more dangerous and difficult to access, Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman said.

This week the SDF, backed by air strikes by a US-led coalition, cut the road north out of Manbij to the IS-held border town of Jarabulus, which the jihadists had used as a transit point for fighters, money and weapons.

The SDF also blocked the road south out of Manbij heading to IS's de facto capital of Raqa.

"For the jihadists to reach the Turkish border from Raqa, they now have to take a route that is more dangerous because of regime troops nearby and Russian air strikes," Abdel Rahman said.

Russia launched air strikes in support of President Bashar al-Assad's regime in Syria in September.
The police today said it arrested an army jawan from a village in East Champaran district for allegedly making an extortion phone call to First Class Judicial Magistrate.

"Army jawan Ranjay Sahni, who made the extortion call to First Class Judicial Magistrate, was arrested," Superintendent of Police Jitendra Rana said.

Nishant Kumar Priyadarshi, Judicial Magistrate First Class, Raxaul in Motihari, yesterday lodged an FIR after receiving a call for extortion demand of Rs 25 lakh, failing which he (JM) would be eliminated.

After preliminary questioning, it came to light that the accused did this to teach a lesson to his brother-in-law who had married his sister without consent of the family six months back, Rana said.

The jawan purchased a SIM card in the name of his brother-in-law from which he made the extortion call to the Judicial Magistrate.

Ranjay Sahni is at present posted in Jalandhar in Punjab, the SP said.

Rana said the police traced the accused on the basis of location of his mobile which was found at Lucknow yesterday.

The police apprehended him when he reached his native village Aaraura under Adapur police station of East Champaran district, he added.
Arunachal Pradesh Governor J P Rajkhowa today suggested for a 'Heritage Village' in the state on the lines of Mawphlang Village of Meghalaya, where Prime Minister Narendra Modi recently visited.

Interacting with a delegation of Galo Welfare Society (GWS) led by its president Mitum Boje at the Raj Bhawan here, Rajkhowa said the village would not only preserve and promote cultural richness of the state, but also attract tourists in large numbers, an official release said.

The GWS delegation submitted a 12-point memorandum to the Governor on several issues including inter-district road connectivity, creation of new districts and a Tribal Heritage Complex.

The Governor said the elected representatives also must take up the connectivity issue at all levels.

While commending the proposal for ITI in the foothills of West and East Siang districts, the Governor reiterated that there must be an ITI in every district, either government funded or in PPP model, for skill development and augment avenues for employment generation, the release added.
Arjun Atwal, playing his first PGA Tour event in 2016 and only the second of the current 2015-16 wrap-around season, shot two-over 72 in the opening round of FedEx St. Jude Classic here.

Anirban Lahiri, who is due to play the US Open next week, is taking a week off and hoping to come back refreshed for the year's second Major.

Atwal, the only Indian winner on the PGA Tour, has lost his Tour card and is trying to find that form again to get back into the elite Tour. He had two birdies and four bogeys.

After 12 holes he was even par, but bogeys on 13th and 18th saw him end the day at 72 at the Par-70 TPC Southwind.

Shawn Stefani, Tom Hoge and Seung-Yul Noh shared the lead at five-under 65. Stefani was the lone player teeing off in the afternoon to work his way into a tie for the lead and stay there. He was 5 under between Nos. 7 and 10 with an eagle at No. 9 where Stefani was just trying to avoid the water with the hole tucked left.

Dustin Johnson, the 2012 champ here, was in the group at 66 with Steve Stricker, Jamie Donaldson, Colt Knost, Brian Gay and Miguel Angel Carballo. Retief Goosen, Scott Stallings and Justin Leonard -- all shot 67s. Phil Mickelson matched defending champion Fabian Gomez of Argentina at 70.
A public sector bank officers' union today demanded that senior bank officials should be vested with judicial powers on the lines of Income Tax Tribunals to deal with the problem of mounting bad loans.

RBI needs to support Public Sector Banks (PSBs) by insisting the government to legislate adequately and empower senior bank officials with judicial powers on the lines of Income Tax Tribunals, All India Bank Officers' Confederation (AIBOC) said in a representation to RBI.

There is also an urgent need to revive long-term lending institutions and restrict the activities of PSBs to commercial banking, mainly working capital and short and medium term loans, it said.

Functionaries of AIBOC met RBI Governor Raghuram Rajan in Mumbai today.

AIBOC apprised the Governor that the image of the bank, particularly that of PSBs has been largely hit by worsening balancesheet due to rising non-performing assets (NPAs).

"Government despite various pronouncements, on the contrary, has failed to provide for stringent laws on loan recovery including dealing with wilful defaulters," it said.

Besides, the union also expressed its reservations about merger and its implication on the banking sector.

Last month, SBI cleared a proposal for merger of subsidiary banks and Bharatiya Mahila Bank. It sought government's approval for the merger.

The country's largest lender has five associate banks -- State Bank of Bikaner and Jaipur, State Bank of Travancore, State Bank of Patiala, State Bank of Mysore and State Bank of Hyderabad.

Among these, State Bank of Bikaner and Jaipur, State Bank of Mysore and State Bank of Travancore are listed.
Madras High Court Advocates Association president R C Paul Kanagaraj today alleged that the BCI, which has to support the cause of lawyers, was taking a negative stand.

He was reacting to the Bar Council of India's statement warning Bar association leaders in the state that they would be suspended if they created any disturbance protesting the amendments to Advocates Act despite the offer by the High Court to keep the changes in abeyance pending a discussion.

He demanded that the recent amended rules be withdrawn and requested the court to frame new rules with the consultation of all bar associations which will submit their objections, if any, for the proposed new rules.

Inviting all the Bar associations to attend the meeting, to be held at Erode on June 11 to discuss further course of action, he said till a decision is arrived nobody should go for boycott of courts which will be a last resort.
Ruling out any proposal to kill animals as in Bihar to save crops, the West Bengal Government has sought the Centre's nod to catch wild elephants and not kill them to protect farmlands and lives of people.

"My department has written to the Union Environment Ministry about a month back before our government took over for its second term, seeking permission to catch wild elephants and not kill them to protect farmlands and lives of people," state forest minister Binay Krishna Burman told PTI.

"At least 18 wild elephants are there in the state, besides nearly 600 elephants roaming free in different parts of Bengal. They often stray into farmlands, destroy crops, disrupt human population causing enormous loss of lives and property," Burman said.

Giving more details, the minister said wild elephants have killed over 100 people in the state last year, of which 70 were in South Bengal alone.

As the herd of elephants strayed into farmlands and highly populated areas, it caused damage to crops worth Rs 7 crore last year, while the state government had to count huge compensation against each death cases, Burman said.

"As it has become a permanent problem in the state, we need the Centre's nod to catch wild elephants and put them in Animals Rehabilitation Centre to prevent loss of lives and property, including crops," Burman said.

"The state government is yet to receive any feedback from the Centre, but we are hopeful that they will agree," the minister said.

Even as there was controversy over the Union Environment Ministry's nod to Bihar's proposal to kill Nilgais and save farmers' crops, Burman differed with what happened in the neighbouring state and said, "We don't want to kill any animal. We will catch wild elephants and keep them in rehabs in the vast forest area, which is their natural habitat."



With wild elephants straying into densely populated areas, it often poses threat to law and order situation in the state, the minister said adding "We want to overcome this problem once the Centre's nod is there."



West Bengal government's move drew attention in the wake of a raging controversy over professional hunters hired by the Bihar government, who gunned down over 200 Nilgais in less than a week with the permission of the Centre.
A BJP woman councillor today alleged that her office was ransacked by some Aam Aadmi Party volunteers who also misbehaved with her in Ram Nagar area of East Delhi but AAP refuted the allegations.

"I was sitting in my office when around 30-40 men including several AAP volunteers from my areas barged in and started throwing away furniture, roughing up staff and those present in the office and hurled abuses at me around 11.15 am, said Sushma Sharma, BJP councillor of Ram Nagar ward in East Delhi Municipal Corporation.

Sharma said that she has filed a complaint with the police in this regard naming the persons whom she identified as volunteers of Aam Admi Party.

AAP spokesperson Deepak Bajpai admitted that party workers have been protesting against the BJP, but refuted the charges of any kind of attack.

Sharma alleged that the attack could be in retaliation by AAP since she had submitted a memorandum to the local MLA along with two other councilors about problems of people in the ward.

"Yesterday I met the Rohtash Nagar MLA Sarita Singh and very humbly gave a memorandum about the problems of locals as well as the need of desilting of the choked drains in my ward, maintained by PWD. May be the party took offence and warned me through the attack," she said.

Police said that they have received a complaint by the councilor and investigating the issue.
A BJP leader, who was a member of the zila panchayat, was hacked to death by in Bijapur district of Chhattisgarh.

Ramsai Majji (64), resident of Sangampalli village, was killed near his house late on Friday,Bijapur SP K L Dhruv told PTI.



A retired government school principal, he was also a Bijapur zila panchayat member, he added.

According to preliminary information, agroup of Maoists asked him to come out of his house around 8.30 pm. Later his body was found nearby.

The village is 3 km away from Madded police station.

Security forces have launched a combing operation in the region to nab the assailants, the SP said.
Social media posts portraying the Shiv Sena leadership in poor light have gone viral, apparently put out in response to the Sena's diatribe against BJP, reflecting growing strains in their ties ahead of the Mumbai civic polls due early next year.

The posters, having 'i supportNaMo' slogan on them, have caricatures and snaps of Sena president Uddhav Thackeray and its spokesperson Sanjay Raut.

One poster mocks Uddhav, saying "the country is not run on the blessings of the father (late Bal Thackeray) and Matoshri" (which in Marathi means mother and is also the name of the Thackeray residence in Mumbai).

Another has photos of Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, Congress leader Digvijay Singh, Raut and Uddhav, describing them as 'birds of a feather'.

So far, no leader or spokesperson has claimed responsibility for the posters, amid reports that it may be the handiwork of BJP's Mumbai unit president Ashish Shelar who has adopted a strident posture against Sena ahead of crucial BMC polls early next year.

Sena spokesperson Raut recently likened the regime at the Centre with the "rule of the Nizam".

Addressing a Sena rally in Aurangabad on Wednesday, Raut had slammed Prime Minister Narendra Modi for not visiting the drought-hit Marathwada region.

"The PM had all the time to campaign in West Bengal and Tamil Nadu. He addressed 35 poll meetings in West Bengal and 40 in Tamil Nadu. However, the PM couldn't find time to tour Marathwada where farmers are dying because of acute water shortage," Raut said.

Maharashtra chief Raosaheb Danve responded to the diatribe, saying his party would give an "appropriate reply" to the Sena.
Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar today said BJP will soon project its chief ministerial candidate for Uttar Pradesh where Assembly elections are slated to be held next year.

Hitting out at Samajwadi Party government over the Mathura violence, he said it is the biggest failure of the state government which has also failed to control 'goonda raj' in the state.

Addressing a press conference on the occasion of Vikas Parv, he said people in the state were feeling betrayed and it is an appropriate time to change the government by voting against it in the upcoming polls, he said.

Highlighting the achievements of the NDA government during its two years in power, he said the Jan Dhan Yojna was successful and the Centre was giving financial support to economically weaker sections in its 59 schemes.

He said honouring Prime Minister Narendra Modi's appeal, about 1.5 crore people gave up subsidy on their gas connections and farmers were getting the benefit of agricultural insurance scheme.

On a question on AgustaWestland scam, he said the Enforcement Directorate, Income Tax Department and other agencies are probing the case and the Defence Ministry is not concerned with it. Only after the final investigation report, will the ministry work on it.

Any person found guilty of corruption will not be spared.

On Bramhos missile, he said it is the effect of Make in India that the country was getting orders of arms and ammunition from abroad.

Parrikar attended two other programmes of traders and RSS. He was accompanied by Union Minister V K Singh.

(Reopens BOM 8)



Speaking after the event, Parrikar emphasised the need on cleanliness drive for promoting tourism in the country.

"The cleanliness drive launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on October 2, 2014 on the birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi, will have great impact on promoting tourism in the country and will bring significant change in the lives of people," he said.

"However, people are yet to realise the impact of the campaign," he said and added that there was a need to educate people to spread the message of cleanliness.
Floral tributes were paid to the mortal remains of Regimental Subhedar Major Murali Mohan Babu Moyyi on arrival at the Visakhapatnam Airport here today.

Murali Mohan Babu died in Jammu and Kashmir while serving in the 1822 LT REGT, a defence release said here.

His body was flown hefre from Delhi.

A wreath was laid on the body by the personnels of Station Headquarters (Army), Visakhapatnam.

His funeral will be held at his native place, Turakapeta village in Amadalavalasa, in Srikakulam district.
Britain today kicked off three days of celebrations to mark Queen Elizabeth II's official 90th birthday with a national thanksgiving service where tributes were paid for her "faithful devotion" to the country.

The service held at the iconic St. Paul's Cathedral in London was attended by around 50 royal family members, including the Queen's husband Duke of Edinburgh, who himself is celebrating his 95th birthday today.

British Prime Minister David Cameron gave a reading from the Bible and the Dean of St. Paul's David Ison thanked the Queen for her "dutiful commitment, loving leadership, gentle constancy".

The service was held to pay tribute to her "faithful devotion" to the country.

Dressed in yellow, the Queen arrived at the cathedral to cheers from gathered crowds and a fanfare of trumpets this morning.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Rev. Justin Welby, said in his tribute: "Over the 63 years and the 90 years there has been much to fear: at times of personal challenge or national crisis.

"But just as the Psalmist sees through fear to something more stirring and more extraordinary, so we look back on Your Majesty's 90 years in the life of our nation with deep wonder and profound gratitude.

"Through war and hardship, through turmoil and change, we have been fearfully and wonderfully sustained."



After the service, the Queen hosted the Governors-General for lunch at Buckingham Palace.

Today marks the start of a whole weekend of celebrations, which will include the annual Trooping the Colour to be held at London's Horse Guards Parade tomorrow, which will see more than 1,400 officers on parade, 200 horses, and more than 400 musicians taking part.

The birthday parade will end with members of the Royal Family making their annual appearance on the balcony of Buckingham Palace, where they will watch a Royal Air Force (RAF) fly-past.

On Sunday, the monarch will host a street party for around 10,000 people at the Patron's Lunch - a celebration of her patronage of more than 600 organisations in the UK and around the Commonwealth.

The Mall, in St. James's Park, will be lined with picnic tables for the street party, during which guests will enjoy a hamper-style lunch.

All proceeds from the sale of tickets for the party will go to charities supported by the royal family.

Britain's Queen always has two birthdays, the official one on the second Saturday of June and her real birthday, which falls on April 21 as part of a tradition dating back nearly 250 years to try to ensure good, sunny weather for the monarch's official celebrations.

Queen Elizabeth II was born on April 21, 1926, to Prince Albert, Duke of York - later King George VI, and Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon and is now the longest-reigning monarch in British history.
Four persons have been arrested for allegedly hatching a plan to kill gangster Chhota Rajan, presently lodged in Tihar jail, at the behest of his arch rival and fugitive don Dawood Ibrahim's confidant Chhota Shakeel.

The four alleged contract killers, identified as Robinson, Junaid, Yunus and Manish, were arrested on June 3 following which they were sent to police remand and interrogated for five days.

Later, they were produced in a court which sent them to judicial custody, a senior police official said on Friday.

"Investigation is underway," Special Commissioner of Police (Special Cell) Arvind Deep said.

Delhi Police's Special Cell zeroed down on the four through telephone intercepts. The accused were in constant touch with Shakeel, police claimed.

Once identified, the four were picked up from their residences in Rohini in Outer Delhi, Seelampur in northeast Delhi, Ghaziabad and Noida, the official said.

Police also claimed have recovered a pistol and live cartridges from possession of one of the accused.

They had allegedly planned to eliminate Rajan while the don is taken to court for hearing.

The four accused are also lodged in Tihar jail, where Rajan is in a high-security ward, the official added.

Rajan (55), who was on a run for around 27 years, was arrested from Bali in Indonesia, based on a tip-off from Australian Federal Police, and brought to India in November last year.
China plans to demolish a large part of one of the world's biggest Buddhist monasteries that would leave thousands homeless, Human Rights Watch said today as it appealed to the country to instead negotiate with the Buddhist community.

Chinese authorities should suspend plans to demolish residences at the historic Academy of Larung Gar Buddhist monastery in Sichuan province and negotiate with the community's leadership, HRW said in a report released in New York.

The government plans to take over the management and eliminate quarters for all but 5,000 monks, nuns, and others at the monastery, one of the world's largest monastic institutions, by September 2017, cutting numbers there by at least half, HRW said.

"China's authorities should not be determining the size of monasteries or any other religious institution, but should accept that religious freedom means letting people decide for themselves their religious practices," Sophie Richardson, HRW's China director said.

"If authorities somehow believe that the Larung Gar facilities are overcrowded, the answer is simple: allow Tibetans and other Buddhists to build more monasteries," she said.

A recent order from the Serta county government in Sichuan provides no reason for the demolitions and dramatic reduction in Larung Gar's population - which consists of at least 10,000 monks, nuns, and others - but simply says that the community is in need of "ideological guidance," the report said.

"There is no suggestion that the authorities consulted the Larung Gar leadership about the measures," it said.

HRW alleged that officials of the ruling Communist Party would make up the majority of the management staff at the monastery, a practice it said has become common in other Buddhist monasteries too.
PHOENIX -- A new ruling Wednesday by a federal appeals court will not affect the rights of Arizonans to carry concealed weapons.

And that's not just because a majority of state lawmakers here support that right.

California law allows each county sheriff to determine if someone has "good cause" to have a concealed weapon. The lawsuit decided by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the ability of individual sheriffs to make that determination.

And the majority concluded there is no absolute Second Amendment right to carry a concealed weapon outside someone's home.

Arizona law is significantly different.

Concealed carry, first authorized in Arizona in 1994, requires only a permit issued by the state Department of Public Safety. Applicants have to undergo a background check and show proof of certain training.

More to the point, individual sheriffs in Arizona have no authority to authorize or veto a CCW permit. But even if they did, it would not matter.

In 2010, then-Gov. Jan Brewer signed legislation allowing anyone to carry a concealed weapon, with or without a permit.

"I believe this legislation not only protects the Second Amendment rights of Arizona citizens, but restores those rights as well,'' she wrote in signing the measure.

Permits are still available to those who want them. The main advantage of such a permit is the ability to have a concealed weapon in other states that have reciprocity agreements with Arizona.

There's one other factor that distinguished Arizona from California.

The Arizona Constitution provides what could be considered more comprehensive protections for those who want to have a gun. It says "the right of the individual citizen to bear arms in defense ofhimself or the state shall not be impaired,'' with no reference to things like a well-regulated militia that exists in the Second Amendment.
The Coast Guards of India and Korea held a joint exercise today, carrying out activities like scenarios of handling of hijacking, interdiction of pirate vessel and joint boarding operations.

General Rajendra Singh, Director, Indian Coast Guard, and Hong Ik Tae, Commissioner General of Korea Coast Guard and many other senior officials from both sides witnessed the exercise, titled 'SAHYOG-HYEOBLYEOG-2016,' held off Chennai.

"During this year's exercise, we agreed to have point of contacts in India and Korea to share real-time information and anything related to pollution, search and control, piracy and day-to-day information," Singh told reporters.

So far, five such editions of the exercise have been held and the aim was to "enhance the operational capability between the two sides," Singh said.

Further, the Indian Coast Guard would sign Memoranda of Understanding (MoU) with Sri Lanka and Myanmar to conduct similar joint exercises, he said.

Today's exercise saw various scenarios such as hijacking of a merchant vessel and its rescue in a joint operation by the two Coast Guards, interdiction of pirate vessel, Joint Boarding Operations, Cross Boarding, search and rescue demonstration and external fire fighting.

A fly past was also held on the occasion.

The aim of the exercise was to strengthen the working level relationship between the two coast guards and further refine the joint operating procedures, a press release from the Coast Guard said.

Indian Coast Guard ships Samudra Paheredar, Rajtarang, Sagar and Anagh besides a Dornier aircraft and Chetak helicopter participated in the exercise while the Korean side was represented by its ship 3009.

To a question, Singh said the coast guard was interacting with fishermen to educate them to not to cross International Maritime Boundary, either with Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh or Myanmar, and had conducted over 200 programmes in this regard.
A day after Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan rejected the opposition UDF's demand to convene an all-party meeting on the Mullaperiyar dam issue, Congress state unit today maintained that an all-party meet should be called to discuss the matter.

KPCC President V M Sudheeran said the Chief Minister was still continuing to take a stand that would harm the interest of the state on the issue of the dam, which is a bone of contention between Kerala and Tamil Nadu.

"The new issue is that CM has deviated from the essence of the resolutions passed by the state assembly on the matter," he said, referring to Vijayan's remark that there was no need for an all-party meeting as there was no new development on the matter.

Sudheeran in a statement here said an all-party meeting has be convened to make Kerala's stand clear on the subject.

Vijayan had yesterday stated that there was no change in Kerala's stand that a new dam was the need of the hour. But that cannot be achieved without the support from Tamil Nadu and the Centre's consent.

While Tamil Nadu believed the dam was strong, Kerala's argument was that the century-old dam was in a dilapidated state and weak, he said.

"Both Tamil Nadu and the Supreme Court have not agreed to our argument. That is why we want an Internationally acclaimed panel of experts to study the dam's strength," he had said.

UDF had sought an all-party meeting to discuss the Mullaperiyar issue in view of the 'confusion' over the CM's remarks over the safety of the dam during his recent New Delhi visit.
Playing for high stakes, ruling Congress in Karnataka has pulled out all stops for winning the third seat, while JDS battle dissidence in the biennial Rajya Sabha elections to be held tomorrow with allegations of cash for votes flying thick and fast.

Uncertainty over the elections to fill four seats were put to rest by the Election Commission which gave the go ahead to the polls yesterday, thus rejecting the demand for countermanding it over allegations of buying votes after "sting operations" by two TV channels in the volatile run-up to the polls.

The Congress with 122 members is assured of two seats for former ministers Jairam Ramesh and Oscar Fernandes, but with a surplus of 33 votes, the party has fielded former senior IPS officer K C Ramamurthy as its third candidate.

The required strength for victory is 45 votes.

The JDS party with 40 members was hit by dissidence. Five of its MLAs have virtually raised a banner of revolt even as reports surfaced that they might indulge in cross voting to help Congress.

JDS needs five more votes for its candidate B M Farooq to sail through but is struggling to keep the herd together.

The JDS saw open defiance when four of its members stayed away from the legislature party meeting yesterday. The meeting was called to chalk out a strategy for the victory of the party candidates in both Rajya Sabha polls and Legislative Council polls.

For BJP, with 44 members, it is a question of only one extra vote for its candidate Union Minister Nirmala Seetharaman to reach the victory post.

The party is confident of more than making up the shortfall by wooing Independents.

High drama also marked the run-up to the polls with the Congress shepherding Independent MLAs to Mumbai, apparently to keep its flock together, triggering a political storm with the Opposition accusing it of buying votes.

The development also saw the Returning Officer for Rajya Sabha polls, S Murthy asking the Chief Minister to clarify if he has promised increased development funds to legislators in return for their votes, which he promptly denied.

A political storm broke out after the footage of the



"sting operations" by two TV channels were aired.

The footage by one channel showed a JD(S) MLA purportedly talking about money in crores of rupees for supporting a candidate.

A parallel "sting" operation by another channel showed Congress candidate K C Ramamurthy and Independent MLAs purportedly speaking about getting increased development funds for the constituency from the government in return for votes.

The Election Commission has, however, given the green signal for the polls as scheduled, saying money power has not vitiated the process so much to warrant its cancellation even as the body asked CBI to probe the matter.

For BJP, Nirmala Seetharaman is seeking to step into the shoes of Union Minister Venkaiah Naidu, who had won three Rajya Sabha terms from Karnataka.

Amid mounting public pressure, including protests by Kannada groups against re-nomination of Naidu, BJP decided to field Seetharaman in his place, moving Naidu to 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.

Keen to shed the "outsider" tag, Seetharaman has promised to learn Kannada and protect the interests of the state.
A Delhi court today refused to entertain an anticipatory bail plea of an Australia-based couple in a case lodged for various offences including allegedly trespassing into the office of Oswal Agro Mills Ltd here.

Dismissing the plea, the court said there was no apprehension of their arrest in India as they were presently in Australia where a court has prohibited them from leaving that country.

Pankaj Oswal and his wife Radhika Oswal had approached the court seeking anticipatory bail in an FIR filed by an official of Oswal Agro Mills Ltd on April 4 against them and some of their associates.

The FIR alleged that Oswals had occupied the office of the company without any authorisation from the board of directors and searched the company's cheque books and other documents, many of which were confidential and commercially sensitive.

Additional Sessions Judge Rakesh Pandit termed the bail plea as "dismissed as withdrawn" after observing that anticipatory bail could not be granted on technical grounds as "departure prohibitory orders" have been issued by Australian courts against the accused and hence, there was no apprehension of their arrest here.

Abhay Kumar Oswal, father of Pankaj, was a director and chairperson of board of directors of the company till his death in March this year. Later, Pankaj allegedly entered the premises of the firm, the FIR said.

The FIR alleged that the accused had forcefully occupied the office of the company without any authorisation from company's board of directors and searched company's cheque books and other documents.

They later went away with several of the company's confidential and other documents, the FIR said.

The FIR was filed under the sections of 323 (voluntarily causing hurt), 380 (theft) and 452 (house trespass) of IPC.

The company was represented by senior advocate Mohit Mathur and lawyer Bharat Arora, who opposed the bail plea.
With stage set for tomorrow's polling for 11 Rajya Sabha seats in Uttar Pradesh, for which an extra candidate is in the fray, leaders of all major parties today took stock of their numbers as the possibility of cross voting loomed large.

34 first preference votes are needed for the victory of a candidate.

In the 403-member Assembly, SP has 229 MLAs, BSP 80, BJP 41 and Congress 29. The rest belong to small parties or are Independents who hold the key.

Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD), which has eight MLAs, has promised to transfer its votes to Samajwadi Party and Congress.

Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) has 80 MLAs and with 34 first preference votes needed for the victory of a candidate, the party can easily ensure success of its two nominees with 12 votes to spare.

Mayawati has, however, kept the suspense over which way her 12 surplus MLAs will vote in Rajya Sabha biennial polls, saying the results will show the voting pattern.

"Whom we have supported, whom we have not supported, everything will be clear when the results come out," she told reporters yesterday when asked which way the 12 MLAs will go.

BSP has fielded Satish Chandra Mishra and Ashok Sidharth.

BJP has fielded Shiv Pratap Shukla whose victory is certain.

The nomination of social worker Preeti Mahapatra, who forced a contest by jumping in the fray as an Independent, was proposed by 16 BJP MLAs, rebel SP MLAs and some members of smaller parties and Independents.

BJP will be left with 7 surplus votes which might go to Mahapatra, who will have to manage a chunk of votes for win.

Ruling Samajwadi Party has fielded seven candidates but its seventh candidate is short of nine first-preference votes.

On the other hand, Congress, which has 29 MLAs, needs five more votes for victory of its candidate and former Union minister Kapil Sibal, who now feels comfortable with RLD's backing.

Rajya Sabha candidates in the fray are -- Amar Singh, Beni Prasad Verma, Kuwar Rewati Raman Singh, Vishambhar Prasad Nishad, Sukhram Singh Yadav, Sanjay Seth and Surendra Nagar (all SP), Satish Chandra Mishra and Ashok Sidharth (both BSP), Kapil Sibal (Cong), Shiv Pratap Shukla (BJP) and Preeti Mahapatra (Ind).
The Delhi Development Authority today cleared a prime property worth Rs 500 crore in central Delhi of "illegal" occupants, two months after the Supreme Court authorised the land owning agency to take over it.

The delay in the action prompted Lt Governor Najeeb Jung, who is the Chairman of DDA, to direct its Chief Vigilance Officer to probe the "angle of collusion" of officials and bring the culprits to book.

However, in a meeting with Jung, the land-owning agency -- for lack of time -- could not take up the issue pertaining to allotment of land for a party office, sources said.

"It was on the agenda but could not be reached. The main issues that were taken up were Unified Building Bylaws and Transit-Oriented Development (TOD) regulation for Delhi," the source said.

Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal tweeted in the morning, "Shud land meant for govt school be allotted 2 BJP to open their office? LG to decide this today. Do v need more schools or more BJP offices?"



In a statement, the LG office said DDA acted against the illegal possession on Jung's directions. The said property, with a total built up area of approximately 1,20,000 sq ft, is located at Central Delhi's Jhandewalan area.

The Chief Legal Advisor and other senior officers of the DDA, in the presence of senior officers of Delhi Police, took over the possession of the entire building on site, the statement said.

"One of the Directors of the Company that had occupied the property formally handed over the possession of the entire premises to the team of DDA officers. Despite the Apex Court orders, the property was in illegal possession for about 2 months.

"The Lt Governor Jung has directed Chief Vigilance Officer, DDA to inquire and fix responsibility of delinquent officers within a week so that strict action is taken against those found guilty. LG has particularly asked the CVO to probe the angle of collusion," it said.
All airlines have been directed not to carry out any disinfectant or insecticide fumigation with passengers onboard as it could effect fliers' health.

The Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) has issued a directive to the airlines following a National Green Tribunal order in this regard.

This was conveyed to Senior BJP leader and Rajya Sabha MP Subramanian Swamy, who had taken up the issue of such spraying by the airlines with passengers onboard to the Civil Aviation Ministry and sought an end to the practice.

"The Minister of state for Civil Aviation Mahesh Sharma has now informed me that such spraying is henceforth prohibited on all international and domestic airlines operating in and out of India," Swamy said in a statement today.

"No disinfectant/insecticide fumigation is carried out in the aircraft of any airline, while landing and taking off in any part of the country, when passengers are onboard," the NGT order had said.

The NGT order had further stated that "such activity of spraying disinfectant would be carried out only when the aircraft is empty at the appropriate time.
The Department of Posts today started a contest inviting logo design and tagline for its payments bank from the public with a prize money of Rs 50,000 for the winner.

"The Department of Posts on June 10, 2016, launched a logo and tagline design contest for the soon to be set up India Post Payments Bank on the MyGov website. The contest is open to all Indian citizens, institutions, agencies and entities for one month until July 9, 2016," the Postal Department said in a statement.

The Union Cabinet on Wednesday cleared proposal to set up India Post Payments Bank (IPPB) with a corpus of Rs 800 crore and a plan for 650 branches operational by September 2017. It will be expanded further to cover the entire country by the end of 2018-19.

"The best entry will be awarded Rs 50,000. A panel of eminent designers and experts will help shortlist 20 best entries which will thereafter be put up for voting on the MyGov platform for the final selection of the winner," the statement said.

The government has earlier accepted new sign of the rupee and the Swachh Bharat logo from public contests.

The department said it wants to connect with and involve the people of India in designing "the DNA" of the India Post Payments Bank.

"One of the guiding principles of the India Post Payments Bank would be co-creating value propositions and products with its customers and other stakeholders. The present contest is the first step towards this ongoing engagement. It has also initiated a nationwide survey to understand the needs of different segments of customers," the statement said.

The India Post Payments Bank (IPPB) will offer digitally enabled payments, banking and remittance services of all kinds between entities and individuals and also provide access to insurance, mutual funds, pension and credit products in partnership with third-party financial service providers and banks.

Initially most of the 3.5 lakh workforce will be posted on deputation who will be gradually be replaced by fresh recruits.

Telecom Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad has asked the Postal Department to hire an MD and CEO of the IPPB by August and set up a selection committee for hiring a chief financial officer by June 15.
Pakistan today told the US that the American drone strike on its soil that killed the Afghan Taliban chief had "vitiated" ties even as the two sides held "candid" talks on issues like dismantling of terror safe havens, Afghan peace talks and regional security.

A US delegation which included senior Director for Afghanistan and Pakistan at the US National Security Council Peter Lavoy and Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan Richard Olson arrived here this morning and held talks with Pakistan's civilian and military leaders.

Lavoy called on Prime Minister's Adviser on Foreign Affairs Sartaj Aziz and Foreign Secretary Aizaz Ahmed Chaudhry.

Aziz told the US officials that the May 21 drone strike in Balochistan, which killed Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Akhtar Mansour, "was not only a violation of Pakistan's sovereignty and breach of the principles of the United Nation's Charter, but has also vitiated bilateral ties".

General John Nicholson, Commander Resolute Support Mission in Afghanistan, and Olson called on Pakistan army chief General Raheel Sharif.

"Regional security situation, with particular reference to border management and peace and stability in Afghanistan in the post the US drone strike came under discussion," an Inter-Services Public Relations statement said after the meeting.

Expressing "serious concern" on the US drone strike in Balochistan as a violation of Pakistan's sovereignty, General Raheel highlighted as to how it had impacted the mutual trust and respect and was counter productive in consolidating the gains of 'Operation Zarb-e-Azb' that was targeted at militants.

The army chief stressed that the US action was counter- productive in consolidating the gains of Pakistan military operation in the tribal regions.

"All efforts for durable peace in the region have to be synergised with shared commitment and responsibility in order to make them successful," Raheel was quoted as saying.

Raheel said that while the operation was launched against terrorists of all hues and sanctuaries of terrorists have been dismantled without discrimination, all stakeholders need to understand Pakistan's challenges with regard to porous border, inter-tribal linkages and decades-old presence of over three million refugees.

In response to US queries on safe havens in Pakistan for the Taliban, it was emphasised that Pakistan is already pursuing its objective of eliminating all militants and terrorists from its soil in accordance with the National Action Plan, a Pakistan Foreign Office statement said.

At the same time, Pakistan would have to safeguard its own security through better border management and early repatriation of Afghan refugees, it said.
Delhi University teachers who have been agitating against the new UGC criteria to ascertain their academic performance today marched to the HRD ministry but were stopped midway by police which also detained 600 of them.

Thousands of teachers started their march from Mandi House wearing black head bands demanding that the ministry gives them a clear written assurance that the workload norms will remain unchanged with the direct teaching hours including tutorials and practicals with full weightage.

According to police officials, 600 of them were detained as a preventive measure keeping in mind the law and order situation.

The agitating teachers who have been boycotting evaluation of undergraduate exams since May 24, then met HRD officials and submitted a memorandum of demand in this regard.

The teachers are protesting against amendments to UGC regulations that, they argue, will lead to job-cuts to the tune of 50 per cent and drastically decrease pupil-teacher ratio in higher education.

The new gazette notification has increased the workload for assistant professors from 16 hours of "direct teaching" per week (including tutorials) to 18 hours, plus another six of tutorials, bringing the total up to 24 hours. Similarly the work hours of associate professors have been increased from 14 to 22.

Following protests, the HRD ministry had directed UGC to review the same. The commission had on Monday organised consultations on the issue with various stake holders including representatives of teachers associations from across the country.

The protesting teachers including those from JNU, Jamia and Ambedkar University, had however claimed that the consultations did not yield any results.

Delhi University Teachers Association (DUTA) has called for a General Body (GB) meeting tomorrow to decide future course of action.
WASHINGTON  Former Rep. Gabby Giffords was back in Washington Thursday with her husband, Mark Kelly, calling for a more civil public discourse during a campaign season filled with what Kelly called kind of historic poor rhetoric.

Giffords and Kelly were on hand to help the University of Arizonas National Institute for Civil Discourse launch its Revive Civility campaign, which aims to bring more respectful behavior to the 2016 campaign.

In modern political history, weve never seen anything like were seeing this year, said Carolyn Lukensmeyer, executive director of the institute.

The 2016 campaign has seen widely reported taunts between presidential candidates in the primaries, name-calling, racial epithets and outbreaks of violence between supporters and opponents at some campaign rallies.

We have become a very polarized country, not only nationally but here in Washington, D.C., in Congress, Kelly said. And polarization really kind of paralyzes us. And discourse that isnt civil makes it even harder.

He and Giffords joined former Oklahoma Republican Rep. Mickey Edwards and Ohio state Rep. Stephanie Howse, who are members of the advisory board to the institute. It was formed in the wake of the 2011 Tucson shooting that killed six people and wounded 13 others, including Giffords, who was the target of the attack.

The assassination attempt forced Giffords, a Tucson Democrat, to resign her seat in Congress in 2012 so she could focus on her recovery.

In sporadic visits to Washington since then, Giffords appears to have made steady progress. She did not speak at Thursdays event, but walked unaided  if haltingly  to her seat on the panel and nodded in agreement to statements by the other panelists, interjecting a word or two on occasion.

Kelly, who spoke on Giffords behalf, said they were both dismayed by the current tenor of the national debate. He said its particularly important for both those in office and those running for office to behave respectfully.

People who run for the highest office in the land have to realize whether they like it or not they are role models for young people, Kelly said. And they are accountable for what they say and to some extent theyre accountable for the actions of others. And we would all be in a much better place if everybody realized that.

He added that candidates should be held accountable at the polls by voters.

You dont reward people for bad behavior, Kelly said. So when you see somebody that may be using angry rhetoric, dont vote for them.

Edwards said the institutes focus has expanded from making sure there is civility between political leaders, to urging a standard of civility for the public as well.

Were not a Third World country, this is the United States, Edwards said. Were based on freedom of expression, were based on free speech and free press and the ability to exchange ideas.

Lukensmeyer said there is nothing wrong with opposing viewpoints and protests, both of which are deeply rooted in American tradition. But disagreeing with someone doesnt mean being disagreeable  or event violent.

The Revive Civility campaign includes standards of behavior, social media tools to encourage respectable behavior, a citizen toolkit and the civility seal of approval to highlight particularly good discourse, according to the institutes website.

Lukensmeyer said the current state of affairs developed over years and she knows it will take a long time to reverse the trends.

Were under no illusion that this campaign will not continue to be very negative and undoubtedly continue to give assignations to whole groups of people, Lukensmeyer said, assignations that she called just plain un-American.

Despite the size of the task, she said, the goal is not that complicated.

Theyre the things our mothers taught us before we went to school, Lukensmeyer said.

^__=
The US has asked to ensure that its territory is not used for planning attacks in India, after Prime Minister Narendra Modi said terrorism is being "incubated in India's neighbourhood".

"This is one of the steps that the US is encouraging to do for the improvement of its relations with India," a State Department spokesman said on Thursday.

"We believe that and India stand to benefit from practical cooperation and encourage direct dialogue aimed at increasing cooperation and reducing tensions," State Department Deputy Spokesman Mark Toner said.

"And that includes steps by Pakistan to ensure that its territory is not used to plan attacks in India and that Pakistan takes steps to address or to go after, I think, all the terrorist groups that are currently using its territory," Toner said.

"That continues to be an area of collaboration and cooperation that we pursue with Pakistan is its counterterrorism operations," he said in response to a question.

Responding to a question, Toner said Pakistan was one of the issues discussed between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and US President Barack Obama.

"Certainly that was one of the discussions, frankly, that was raised at the - or one of the issues, frankly, that was raised in discussions with Prime Minister Modi. They talked about a wide range of regional issues, in fact," he said.

"Our bilateral relations with India and Pakistan are separate and stand on their own merits, and so I don't think we - it's not prudent for us to view our security cooperation in the region in kind of a zero-sum game - or zero-sum terms, rather.

"I think it's important for the countries of the region that they all have constructive security relationships with each other. And that's Pakistan, that's India, and it's also Afghanistan," Toner said.

In his address to the joint sitting of US Congress here, Modi had said terrorism has to be fought with "one voice" as he commended the American Parliament for sending out a clear message by refusing to "reward" those who preach and practice terrorism for political gains, an apparent reference to the blocking of sale of 8 F-16 fighter jets to Pakistan.
Senior BJP leader Eknath Khadse, who stepped down recently as Revenue Minister following a string of allegations, today made a futile bid to meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi, National Security Advisor Ajit Doval as well as senior party leaders in New Delhi.

Khadse is also facing a probe by ATS in connection with his mobile number purportedly figuring in the call records of the landline number of underworld don Dawood Ibrahim's residence in Karachi.

However, barring Union Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari, other senior party leaders declined the audience with the heavyweight politician from North Maharashtra who went to Delhi today with the documents to present his case before the party leadership.

A Maharashtra BJP leader said here that Khadse tried to meet Modi who has returned from his five-nation tour, but without success.

"The party has already begun to groom Khadse's arch rival in Jalgaon district and state Water Resources Minister Girish Mahajan to head the party in the district," he said.

BJP is more concerned now to ensure the party's victory in upcoming elections to Zill Parishad, Municipal Councils and Panchayat Samitis in Jalgaon district.

The party has a sizable support among the dominant Leva Patil community in Chopda, Yaval, Faizpur, Savda and Raver municipal councils, in Jalgaon Zilla Parishad and across panchayat samitis in the region.

According to the BJP leader, the major worry for the saffron party is the clout enjoyed by Khadse in the region which was reflected in the recent move by 14 corporators from Jalgaon Municipal Corporation who threatened to resign in protest against Khadse's unceremonious exit as minister.

"In order to replace Khadse, a OBC leader from the region, we have directed Mahajan to be proactive in the party matters in Jalgaon district," he said.

The first indication that Mahajan is being directed to fill the vacuum in Khadse's absence came early this week when he was dispatched to state BJP headquarters near Mantralaya to deal with a motley group of Khadse's supporters who had come to protest against their leader's ouster.

Khadse resigned last week, days after Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis submitted a detailed report to BJP president Amit Shah on the controversies surrounding the minister and also met Modi in the national capital.

Earlier, he had deputed his daughter-in-law and BJP MP from Raver, Raksha Khadse who had met Modi to argue the case on his behalf.
Pitching for a ban on foreign investment in tobacco sector, Federation of All India Farmer Associations (FAIFA) on Friday said, multinational firms are using ambiguities in the FDI policy to endorse international brands in the country, which encourages illegal trade.

FAIFA, which claims to represent 'lakhs of tobacco growers' in India, alleged the MNCs switch supply chains globally depending upon currency fluctuations and labour arbitrage, thereby making for an unstable employment opportunity and not adding value in the domestic economy.

"We have written to Prime Minister highlighting how the multinational tobacco companies are using ambiguities in FDI policy to endorse international brands in India which encourages illegal trade," General Secretary Murali Babu said in a statement.

also welcomed a move by the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP) to ban FDI in tobacco sector, which has got support from the Finance Ministry.

"MNCs possess the unique competitive ability to switch supply chains globally depending upon currency fluctuations as well as opportunities arising from labour arbitrage. This does not also make for a stable employment opportunity and value addition in the domestic economy," said.

The tobacco farmers' body further said: "As a result, the country today is witnessing a jobless growth in consumption besides significant outflow of foreign currency in the form."



The body further said there has been a steep decline in legal cigarette volumes and the consequent reduction in the utilisation of FCV (Flue Cured Virginia) tobacco in cigarette has had "a devastating impact" on the tobacco farmers.

It blamed increased taxation on legal cigarettes and "the resulting growth of illegal cigarettes in the country which the multinational companies promote through the loopholes in FDI" for the plight of the tobacco farmers.
After declining for four straight weeks, country's foreign exchange reserves increased by $3.27 billion to hit an all-time high of $363.46 billion in the week to June 3, Reserve Bank said on Friday.

The reserves had earlier touched a record high of $363.12 billion in the week to April 29. In the previous week, the reserves had declined by $711.6 million to $360.19 billion.

The surge in the reserves during the week was on account of a healthy rise in foreign currency assets (FCAs) a major component of the overall reserves.

FCA increased by $2.99 billion to $339.22 billion in the reporting week, central bank data showed.

FCAs, expressed in dollar terms, include the effect of appreciation/depreciation of non-US currencies such as the euro, pound and yen held in the reserves. Gold reserves rose by $285.90 million to USD 20.33 billion.

The country's special drawing rights with International Monetary Fund was down by USD 3.9 million to USD 1.494 billion while the reserve position declined by USD 6.2 million to USD 2.419 billion, the apex bank said.
A former senior woman police officer, who resigned her post over alleged inteference in her work by a district-in-charge minister, today claimed her life was under threat,



The claim by Anupama Shenoy, who was Deputy Superintendent of Police of Kudligi sub-division, Ballari District, came a day after Karnataka government accepted her resignation and she surfaced after remaining incommunicado for several days.

"There is a threat to my life," Shenoy said but did not elaborate.

Shenoy was reportedly at loggerheads with Labour Minister P T Parameshwar Naik, also the district in-charge minister, and had tendered her resignation abruptly on June 4 and was untraceable since then.

Replying to a query, Shenoy said she will be releasing a CD and audio before the media in Bengaluru.

As Shenoy had remained elusive, police had set up a special team to track her down. Her alleged posts on Facebook levelling accusations against Naik had created a storm.

Asked about her Facebook posts, she has maintained that she did not know about Facebook and it might have been hacked also.

Before she surfaced, Ballari SP had also deputed an officer to go to her hometown Udupi to contact Shenoy and her family. Shenoy had yesterday refused to meet Kudligi in-charge Deputy SP R S Patil, who went to her official quarters.

Following protests by a group of people against her for taking three persons into preventive detention, Shenoy left the office on June 4 after handing over her resignation letter to subordinate officers, instructing them to give it to the Superintendent of Police.

Officials had said Shenoy was acting on a complaint by Dalit activists against the extension of a liquor shop that was blocking the way to Ambedkar Bhavan nearby.

Naik has said he has nothing to do with the officer's resignation and expressed doubts about the veracity of the Facebook account and its user. In January, Shenoy was transferred allegedly at the behest of Naik for putting his call on hold, with the incident triggering a storm.

A video footage purportedly showing Naik making a boastful claim about shunting out Shenoy had also gone viral later.
Israel's decision to bar Palestinians from entering its territory following the Tel Aviv attack could raise tensions and lead to more violence, French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault warned today.

"The decision by the Israeli authorities today to revoke tens of thousands of entry permits could stoke tensions which could lead to a risk of escalation," said Ayrault.

"We must be careful about anything that could stoke tensions," Ayrault told reporters at UN headquarters.

The foreign minister made the remarks after the Israeli army announced it was temporarily barring Palestinians from entering Israel, stepping up tough restrictions announced after Palestinian gunmen shot dead four Israelis in Tel Aviv on Wednesday.

Crossings to Israel from the West Bank and the Gaza Strip were closed for all Palestinians except those seeking urgent medical care and other humanitarian cases.

France has condemned the attack in a popular Tel Aviv nightspot that also wounded five people and was the deadliest in a months-long wave of violence.

Ayrault was at the United Nations to take part in a Security Council debate on the protection of civilians in peacekeeping, a week after France hosted an international meeting in Paris on reviving the peace process.

"There must be a political initiative from the international community to create conditions conducive to appeasement and a return to negotiations," said the foreign minister.

"France is always working for the security of Israel," he said.

The Paris meeting brought together representatives from 29 countries and international organisations to agree on the way to re-start talks that have been comatose since a US peace initiative collapsed in April 2014.
"Thelma & Louise" star Geena Davis has signed on to produce a documentary about gender inequality in Hollywood.

The 60-year-old actress has been a vocal advocate of issues concerning pay inequality and roles for women in Hollywood for several years.

In 2007, she launched the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media to help increase the female presence on-screen and reduce stereotypes surrounding women in the media, and last year she created the Bentonville Film Festival in Arkansas in a bid to highlight films featuring minorities and women, reported Variety.

She is now developing a documentary on the subject.

"I've been encouraged by my peers speaking out on gender disparity in recent years, but we still are not seeing the actual number change," Davis said.

"There's been no real improvement in the number of female roles since 1946 and there's still a dearth of female directors."



Filmmaker Tom Donahue will direct the film, which will feature researchers from Davis' institute and her actor peers talking about the issue.

Last year, Davis praised the likes of Jennifer Lawrence, Jessica Chastain and Sienna Miller for making a stand for equal pay.
Goa government has agreed to allot five acre land to the Navy for setting up a naval enclave at the proposed International Airport in Mopa, Chief Minister Laxmikant Parsekar said today.

"We have decided to allot five acres of land in the proposed Greenfield airport at Mopa to the Indian Navy considering the security point of view," he said.

Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar, in a letter to Parsekar on June 2, had sought the land to set up a naval enclave at the airport. The first phase of the airport is expected to be commissioned in 2019.

"Whenever an airport comes up in the coastal area, the Defence Ministry always seeks land from the security point of view," the Chief Minister said.

According to Parsekar, since the existing Dabolim airport has presence of the Navy, the state government had earlier refused to give any land to it at the proposed Mopa Airport.

"But now, considering the security concern, we have agreed to give the land," he said. Foundation stone for the Mopa airport is expected to be laid this year.

In the letter, Parrikar had said, "Naval enclave is considered critical for naval aircraft operations. The proposed five acres of land for this purpose could be given on lease for the entire period of concession."



"The proposed naval infrastructure would be built by the Ministry of Defence with separate independent entry and exit to the naval facility," the Defence Minister had said.

The Defence Ministry has clarified that the "launch of military operational missions would take priority over normal operations in case of emergency as declared by the Government of India.
Pakistan's Punjab government has served tax notices to social media networking websites Google and Facebook as well as video-sharing websites YouTube and Dailymotion, asking them to register by June 17 and pay for displaying Punjab-specific advertisements.

The Punjab government's Revenue Authority yesterday issued separate notices to YouTube, Dailymotion and a local website Mustakbil.Com, in addition to Facebook and Google, asking them to register under the Punjab Sales Tax on Services Act 2012 by June 17.

"As citizens of Punjab are regular user of all such websites while individuals and companies get their advertisements booked on such websites they are liable to be taxed. The tax is justified when Punjab based companies are availing services of such websites," the department said.

"As you are providing taxable services in Punjab you, therefore, are liable to comply with the rules under this jurisdiction," it said.

The government warned that action will be taken against the websites under rules, without any further notice, in case of non-compliance of first notice.

In case of non-compliance, the Punjab government will write to the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority to place a ban on the websites violating the notices, the government said.
West Bengal Governor Keshari Nath Tripathi today congratulated a team of mountaineers for their successful expedition to the Mt Everest.

A release from the Raj Bhavan said four climbers Malay Mukherjee, Rudra Prasad Haldar, Ramesh Roy and Satyarup siddhanta, under the leadership of Debasish Biswas, today called on the Governor.

On April 13, 2015 Governor handed over the National Flag to the expedition team, which was unfurled at the summit on May 21, 2016.

The expedition was postponed for sometime due to the powerful earth-quake in Nepal. It started again from Kolkata on April 7, 2016.

The team reached the Everest Base Camp (5350 mt) on May 15, and conquered the highest peak of the world at 5.30 AM on May 21. The team returned to Kolkata on June 2, the release said.
The final thing I want to ask is this: Is Donald Trump a racist? The question came at me this time from a Polish journalist, but his interest was not unique. My biography of Trump came out just as he began his campaign for president, and ever since my home has become a one-stop shop for journalists from around the world seeking to explain the man to readers and viewers. So many TV crews have visited that I can prearrange my furniture to suit their camera angles. Somehow I am never prepared for the racism question, even though everyone asks it.

The challenge lies in evaluating something unseen  a mans heart. My own sense of fairness makes me reluctant to do this, even as Trump attacks the integrity of a federal judge because he is Mexican and shouts out, Look at my African-American over here at a rally. It is possible, however, to examine Trumps record  stretching back decades  and see big problems.

In the current campaign Trump has unforgettably demonized Mexican immigrants as rapists and murderers. He has mocked Asian businesspeople and the disabled. And, of course, hes proposed barring Muslims from entering the United States. He also personally distributed, via Twitter, blatantly false crime statistics, suggesting, among other things, that black Americans are responsible for 81 percent of white deaths due to murder. Trumps statistical accuracy was off by a factor of five, but if he was trying to incite racial animus, he hit the target squarely.

Years before this campaign, Trump made himself the leader of the so-called birther movement, alleging that Barack Obama was foreign-born, making his presidency illegitimate. Trump pursued this craziness long after others abandoned it. Then he doubled down, demanding Obama release his college transcripts. The word is, according to what Ive read, that he was a terrible student when he went to Occidental, said Trump. Then he gets to Columbia. He then gets to Harvard.  How do you get into Harvard if youre not a good student? No credible source ever suggested that Obama, who became president of the Harvard Law Review, lacked academic ability. But with a vague attribution  according to what Ive read  Trump managed to dog-whistle affirmative action resentments.

Before he was a birther, Trump questioned the identity of American Indians testifying before Congress about tribal casinos in 1993, saying, They dont look like Indians to me. In 1989 he used the unproved charges against five black and Latino teens in the brutal Central Park jogger rape case to publish an ad in four newspapers calling for New York to reinstate the death penalty.

In 1973, when Richard Nixons Justice Department charged Trump Management Corp. with discriminating against black applicants for apartments, Trump cried reverse discrimination. The notorious Roy Cohn, no stranger to bigotry, sued the government for $100 million on Trumps behalf. The suit went nowhere, but it did establish a 27-year-old Trump as an outspoken opponent of efforts to level the playing field on behalf of racial minorities. From that point forward, he would consistently defend the type of privilege he enjoyed  the advantages born of race, gender, class and wealth.

Trumps rhetoric in the current campaign shocks the foreign journalists who come to visit me. They have heard him indulge in his anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim rants and, worse, heard the cheers of thousands at his campaign events. They seem a little heartbroken that this is happening in a country  and to a country  that has long inspired the world with its diversity and unity.

For his part, Trump knows hes playing with fire. On CNN in March he insisted that hes the least racist person youll ever meet. But what does that mean coming from him? On Face The Nation on Sunday, Trump dismissed any American tradition against judging people based on family heritage, saying, Im not talking about tradition, Im talking about common sense, OK? The next day he told surrogates on a conference call to continue the attacks on federal Judge Gonzalo Curiel (a hater) and go after reporters, too. The people asking the questions  those are the racists. Its reverse discrimination all over again.

Some high-profile Republicans, most notably House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., repudiated Trumps recent comments as textbook racism. But plenty of others dont seem to acknowledge the obvious: If youre spending this much time and effort insisting your guy is not a bigot, that might be because he is one.

If Trump doesnt possess a racist heart, he certainly has a cramped and frightened one. Time and again he has advocated retreat in the struggle for wider opportunity and equality, retreat to some time, perhaps in his imagination, when America was great for certain people to the exclusion of others.
Government may scrap the 25 per cent import duty on wheat if prices continue to rise, Food Minister Ram Vilas Paswan today said.

At present, import of wheat attracts a 25 per cent duty, which is applicable till June 30. Despite expected increase in production this crop year, the prices have shown a rising trend over the past few weeks.

"The government is keeping a close watch on wheat prices. So keeping in mind the recent rise in price trend of wheat, We can rollback the import duty on wheat. We don't want extra burden on consumers," Paswan said.

He added that wheat procurement is so far down by 50 lakh tonnes to 229 lakh tonnes compared with 280 lakh tonnes in the year ago period.

In March, the government had extended the import duty on wheat by another three months, till June, to curb imports as domestic production is estimated to rise by over 8 per cent this year.

Indian flour mills have already contracted to import three lakh tonnes from Australia and France for shipment in July- September.

Last year too, private millers had purchased about 5 lakh tonnes of wheat from Australia for the first time in a decade due to sluggish supply of domestic high protein wheat and lower international prices.

As on April 1, state-owned FCI had a stock of 30 million tonnes of wheat, much higher than the actual requirement of 7.46 million tonnes.

Despite drought in over 10 states, wheat production has been pegged at 94.04 million tonnes for 2015-16 crop year (July-June) compared with 86.53 million tonnes in the previous year, as per Agriculture Ministry's third advance estimate.
The government may give more time to overseas high-tech companies like Apple Inc to comply with the domestic sourcing norms for opening single-brand retail stores in the country.

The government, according to officials, is not in favour of diluting the mandatory 30 per cent local sourcing norm but is open to the possibility of giving more time to such firms.

"The Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP) is looking to tweak the FDI policy on sourcing. 30 per cent local sourcing norm may not be changed, but the time given to comply might be relaxed," a finance ministry official said.

The local sourcing norm has become a bone of contention between both the ministries as the Commerce and Industry ministry has recommended to exempt Apple Inc from this rule, while the Finance Ministry has rejected it.

A DIPP Secretary-headed panel has recommended to exempt Apple Inc, that wants to open wholly-owned single brand retail stores in the country, from the mandatory sourcing norms saying the US-based company's products are 'state of the art' and 'cutting edge'.

The Finance Ministry, however, is not agreeing with this suggestion.

At present, 100 per cent FDI is permitted in single-brand retail sector but companies are required to take FIPB permission if the limit exceeds 49 per cent.

In respect of proposals involving foreign investment beyond 51 per cent, sourcing of 30 per cent of the value of goods purchased, will be done from India, preferably from MSMEs, village and cottage industries, artisans and craftsmen, in all sectors.

As per the FDI policy, the sourcing requirement would have to be met, in the first instance, as an average of five years' total value of the goods purchased, beginning 1st April of the year of the commencement of the business i.E. Opening of the first store. Thereafter, it would have to be met on an annual basis.

Apple sells its products through Apple-owned retail stores in countries including China, Germany, the US, the UK and France.

Last year the government had relaxed few norms and has stated that it may relax the mandatory local 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.
Virtually ruling out setting up of a Civil Aviation Authority to replace DGCA, Union Minister Ashok Gajapathi Raju today said that he saw no need to merely rename the regulator.

The UPA government had proposed to replace Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) with Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) having full functional and financial autonomy to give the regulator more teeth.

"What is the need for CAA? What purpose will be served by just changing the name? I do not see any reason (to replace DGCA)," the Civil Aviation Minister said.

Raju, however, admitted there is "opaqueness" in working of DGCA and promised to usher in transparency in the body in the interest of passenger safety and security.

The Minister said an ambitious plan is being worked out to make the DGCA a more "responsive" and "meaningful" body, which had faced a downgrade on safety grounds during the UPA regime.

The DGCA is expected to make completely online 18 major services including granting of licence to pilots, approval of safety procedures and engineering and flight operations this month as part of its e-GCA (e-Governance in Civil Aviation) project.

"We need more transparency in DGCA. Things have to be more transparent and the opaqueness has to go away so as to make things more responsible and responsive," Raju told PTI in an interview.

His comments come at a time when there are increasing threats to aviation security worldwide, particularly after the terror attack on Brussels airport in March.

Questions relating to safety of passengers had come into focus following incidents such as a pilot trying to land an aircraft on a road mistaking it for the runway and another pilot allowing a cabin crew to travel in the cockpit.

Against the backdrop of safety lapses in domestic carriers raising concerns about the effectiveness of DGCA, Raju said safety was very important and no government can ignore it.

"DGCA was downgraded under the previous government. It



was upgraded under the current government. We want to make it a meaningful regulator," Raju said.

US Federal Aviation Administration had downgraded India's aviation safety rating in January 2014 and an upgrade was given in April last year.

Asserting that improvement of overall aviation safety was a major focus area for the government, Raju said various critical issues are being looked into by the Bureau of Civil Aviation Security (BCAS).

"Safety angles have to be strengthened and it is a continuous process," the Minister said. At the same time, he said regulations have to be purposeful and laxity cannot be allowed at any cost.

"Certain regulations probably need to be modified and there is lot of work going on," he added.

Based on certain "security format", the Minister said, BCAS is in the process of upgrading various security features.

"They do audit depending on classification of airports. We would like them to do it without any interference from anyone to keep Indian skies safe.
Announcing the Centre's plans to inject Rs 25 lakh crore to strengthen inland waterways, ports and rail-road links, Union Minister Nitin Gadkari today said these projects will create four crore jobs as the focus of the NDA government is to uplift the poor.

"Our aim is to develop rail-road connectivity, inland waterways and ports. A host of projects are being taken up to achieve this at an investment of Rs 25 lakh crore," said Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari, who was in the state for the celebrations of two years of Modi-led NDA government.

While works involving Rs 2.5 lakh crore have already been taken up, projects worth Rs 5 lakh crore would be kicked off shortly, the minister said adding all these projects undertaken would generate around four crore employment for the youth.

Stating that both road and rail connectivity to ports was the key to speedy economic growth, he said an amount of Rs 8 lakh crore would be invested for development of the port sector to make transportation of goods and raw materials for industries cost effective.

The 12 public ports in the country have made an overall profit of Rs 6,000 crore this year and the government aims to raise the profit up to Rs 35,000-40,000 crore in four years, the minster said.

Describing connectivity between mineral belts and ports important for development, Gadkari said a sum of Rs 4 lakh crore would be spent for the development of port-rail connectivity.

Similarly, an investment of around Rs 15 lakh crore would be made for development of the highway sector, which plays a crucial role for economic growth, the Minister said.

He said the Centre has taken concrete steps to accelerate the pace of road construction, which has been enhanced to 24-25 km per day from the earlier level of 2 km per day. The target is to raise it further to 41 km per day.

Lamenting that inland waterways was yet to be developed properly in India, Gadkari said while over 40 per cent transportation was done through this sector in countries like China, Korea and European nations, in India it stood at a meagre 3.5 per cent and has now gone up to 6 per cent.

Therefore, the government has chalked out an ambitious plan to galvanise the inland waterways involving rivers like Ganga, Brahmaputra and Mahanadi, the minister said adding Rs 4,000 crore was being spent for developing waterway facilities in Ganga.

(REOPENS DEL 59)



Gadkari said policy initiatives and other measures have resulted in unlocking Rs 3.8 lakh crore of stalled projects.

He expressed happiness that bankers and and private players' interest in the road sector has revived.

He is clear that there is no question of scrapping toll fees and people need to pay for the same if they want to avail better services.

The minister sees immense potential of waterways in the country, including cruise tourism, and the government is working to give a push in this direction. The government has already approved conversion of 111 rivers across the country into waterways.

"Work on 20 inland waterway projects will start soon," the minister added.

Emphasis is on port rail connectivity projects and works worth Rs 22,000 crore are being undertaken through Port Rail Corporation.

Indian Port Rail Corporation (IPRCL), which has been set up to take up last-mile rail connectivity for ports, have taken up 25 works across 9 major ports. Of this, 4 have already been awarded and 9 more are in the pipeline for the remaining part of 2016-17.

Out of the final list of 27 rail connectivity projects identified under Sagarmala, 21 for 3,300 km worth Rs 28,000 crore are being taken up by the Ministry of Railways and 6 worth Rs 3,590 crore are to be taken up either in Non-Government Rail (NGR) or JV model through IPRCL.

The ambitious Sagarmala project is under way under which five coastal economic zones are being developed.

The idea is to reduce logistics cost for exim and domestic trade with minimal infrastructure investment and Sagarmala aspires to reduce logistics costs leading to overall cost savings of Rs 35,000-40,000 crore per annum.

As part of Sagarmala, more than 400 projects, at an estimated infrastructure investment of more than Rs 8 lakh crore, have been identified.

Master plans have been finalised for the 12 major ports and based on the same, 142 port capacity expansion projects worth Rs 91,434 crore have been identified for implementation over the next 20 years.

"Out of this, 30 projects worth Rs 11,612 crore have been proposed for implementation starting 2016-17," he said.

In addition, 6 new port locations have been identified and will be developed - Vadhavan, Enayam, Sagar Island, Paradip Outer Harbour, Sirkazhi, and Belekeri.

Seventy-nine road connectivity projects have been identified under Sagarmala and will be taken up, including 18 projects under Bharatmala scheme.

An Inter-Ministerial Committee (IMC) has also been formed to develop a strategy and implementation road map for coastal shipping of coal and other commodities and products, he said.
Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal today demanded that the Delhi government be given control over the anti-corruption branch to ensure a fair probe into an alleged water tanker scam during Sheila Dikshit's tenure, after BJP raked up the issue in the Assembly.

The second day of the special session today, convened to discuss issues plaguing the municipal corporations, witnessed unruly scenes as Leader of Opposition Vijender Gupta perched atop a desk after being denied a calling attention motion on the matter by Speaker Ram Niwas Goel.

In his response, Kejriwal lashed out at Gupta and said his government was not in a position to investigate the issue, which was mentioned in a fact-finding report submitted by Delhi Water Minister Kapil Mishra, as the Centre had taken over the ACB using "paramilitary forces".

"I will give you the report of the Delhi Jal Board fact-finding committee report tomorrow itself. You also give me facts about your wife's role in the pension scam," Kejriwal told Gupta, enraging him to an extent that he left his chair and stood up on his desk, accusing the AAP of "muzzling the voice" of opposition.

"We have the strongest resolve against corruption, so much so that even Prime Minister Narendra Modi is scared of it. So he sent paramilitary forces to the ACB and took over it on June 8 last year. Everyone knows Congress and BJP has the relationship of a husband and wife," Kejriwal alleged.

Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia dared the BJP to write to Lt Governor Najeeb Jung demanding the matter to be investigated. Goel termed Gupta's table-climbing act as "unprecedented" and a "shame".
The Bombay High Court today asked Maharashtra government to take adequate security measures in public hospitals and deploy policemen to ensure that doctors were not harassed by relatives of patients.

"If security measures are not undertaken, then the doctors would work in an atmosphere of fear and this would not be in their interest as well as in the interest of the public," a bench headed by Justice Abhay Oka said.

The court was hearing a public interest litigation filed by social activist Afaq Mandviya challenging the strike by Maharashtra Association of Resident Doctors (MARD).

During the hearing, MARD said that the government has not taken security measures to protect them from physical assaults by relatives of ailing patients who are not satisfied with the treatment provided to their kith and kin.

The court asked the government to immediately go into the issue of providing security to the doctors.

The judges suggested that adequate number of policemen be deployed in public hospitals and boards should be prominently displayed giving timings of visiting hours and specifying how many relatives can visit a patient during the permitted hours.

The matter would now be heard on June 21.
The Madras High Court today commuted to life term the death sentence awarded to an accused in a double murder case.

Partly allowing an appeal, a division bench, comprising Justice S Nagamuthu and Justice V.Bharathidasan, held that the case did not fall within the rarest of rare category.

The matter related to the murder of two women by accused Rajiv Gandhi of Sungam village in Coimbatore district on February 11, 2012 over a dispute about land ownership. During the course of trial, one woman died.

The trial court had awarded death sentence to Rajiv Gandhi on two counts, against which appeal he filed the present appeal.

Passing orders on it, the bench said "we find it difficult to confirm the death sentence. But at the same time, killing of the two women is brutal and gruesome and the same cannot be tolerated by any man of ordinary prudence.

"We are inclined to impose life sentence, however, with a direction that the accused shall not be entitled to any remission for a period of 20 years...," the bench ruled.
The Madras High Court has quashed a charge memo issued to a Superintendent of Police who launched a lathicharge against an AIADMK MLA and other party workers in December 2008 during the bye-election to Tirumangalam assembly constituency.

Finding fault on the part the state government on the timing of the charge memo issued to M Manohar in September 2013 when his name was in the list for conferment of IPS, Justice M Sathyanarayanan held that the initiation of disciplinary proceedingsper seis malafide.

"Even otherwise, it cannot withstand the legal scrutiny in the light of the vagueness of the charges coupled with long delay in initiating the disciplinary proceedings," he ruled.

He was allowing a petition by Manohar seeking to quash the September 28, 2013 charge memo issued by the Home Secretary on an incident which had occurred in December 2008.

In the light of the petitioner's selection to Indian Police Service (appointment by promotion) Regulations, 1955, timing of the charge memo assumes importance, the Judge said.

The petitioner, who was the Superintendent of Police then, had led a strike force to quell a violent crowd led by AIADMK MLA R Samy which attacked police personnel following a quarrel over the election.

Police had registered a case and arrested several party cadres.

Samy, one of the accused in the criminal case, lodged a complaint against Manohar on August 8, 2013, five years after the incident when the officer's name was empanelled for IPS, alleging that the SP had behaved aggressively, manhandled him and attacked the party cadres.

The Judge noted that the subsequent inquiry report did not state anything with regard to alleged misconduct on the part of the petitioner.

The court also faulted the state government for its decision to withdraw the criminal case against the MLA even while initiating disciplinary action against the officer.

The Judge also pulled up the the Judicial Magistrate who allowed withdrawal of the case, saying "unfortunately the magistrate had failed to apply his mind to the relevant legal provisions as well as to the contents of the application filed by the prosecution for withdrawal.
Two persons were electrocuted today and as many sustained severe burn injuries in Vasundhara Colony here after a high-tension wire snapped due to thundershowers and wind, police said.

The incident occurred around 6 PM in Indirapuram Police Station area when the wire fell down on a tree under which the four persons were standing at a tea stall, SHO Gorakh Nath Yadav said.

They became unconscious after coming in contact with electricity. Police rushed them to a nearby private hospital where the attending doctors declared Arun (42) and Bhoora (38) brought dead.

The injured, Babu (30) and Vishal (12) are undergoing treatment, the SHO said.

Uttar Pradesh Power Corporation Limited (UPPCL) Superintending Engineer M C Sharma said the department will conduct an inquiry into the matter and those responsible will be punished.
A Hyderabad University Dalit professor has resigned protesting against the appointment of Prof Vipin Srivastava as the varsity's Pro-Vice-Chancellor-1 and has alleged that there was a "hostile" environment for his community in the campus.

In his resignation letter to the university Registrar, Prof Sreepati Ramudu, Head of the Centre for the Study of Social Exclusion and Inclusive Policy, yesterday referred to the death of Dalit research scholar Rohith Vemula on January 17 that stirred nation-wide protests, and said he had been following the developments on the campus before and after the incident.

"The current environment on the campus is extremely vitiated and is perceived by the Dalit community as intimidating and hostile," he said.

"They (Dalits) feel very vulnerable and lack confidence in the impartiality of the administration. So, I had hoped that knowing very well the sentiments of the Dalit faculty expressed in many letters from the SC/ST Teachers Forum, the administration will take up confidence building measures. Instead, to my shock, I see a circular naming Prof Vipin Srivastava as the Pro-Vice-Chancellor-1," Ramudu said.

Reacting to the development, Srivastava today alleged Ramudu was not cooperating in administrative matters and that he was not attending to any work.

"I don't know if he is protesting...But he has not been happy since January. He was not signing any papers...He was not cooperating in administrative matters. He was not attending to any work," he said.

Srivastava said a student wanted to attend a conference but Ramudu was not signing his paper nor was he responding to administrative work. "The Dean and I cleared that paper (of the student)," Srivastava told PTI.

"As far as Ramudu is concerned he has not tendered formal resignation as Head of the Centre...Whether he has done so or not I don't know because I am on leave today and it is only through reports that I came to know about it. I need to check from the university authorities if he has resigned," he said.

Ramudu alleged Srivastava had faced a serious allegation in the past.

Srivastava was the chairman of the committee that had recommended punishment for five Dalit research scholars, including Vemula, who committed suicide.

The university had appointed Srivastava as the



Pro-Vice-Chancellor-1 on June 7. He would be assisting the Vice-Chancellor Prof Appa Rao Podile.

Ramudu wrote, "I am pained at the constant humiliation and oppression that is meted out to the Dalit community in the university...

"I am pained and my conscience as the Head of the Centre at a time when the Dalit community on campus lacks the confidence in the administration that should ideally be impartial."



Ramudu said he was the supervisor of one of the suspended students and that he was never informed by the administration about the issue until the suspension order was issued.

"When the students started living in the shopping complex in the 'velivada', in response to the punishment, Prof Appa Rao told us to influence the students in the capacity as supervisors and ask the students to leave the campus.

"I have been convinced that there have been many omissions and commissions against the Dalit students (violation of procedures) in the investigation of events culminating in the punishment of students which I took to his (Appa Rao) notice."



He said he made many "constructive suggestions" on how to solve this problem which were ignored. As a result of the "intransigent attitude" of the administration, which he "believed" resulted in the tragic death of Vemula, he had also expressed these same thoughts openly in the academic council meeting held on April 6, 2016, he said.

He said in his capacity as the Head of the Centre, he thought there will be measures taken by the university administration to build confidence among Dalits on campus but to his dismay, the things were turning the other way round.

"In view of this evidence of a hostile atmosphere on campus against the most vulnerable community, i,e the Dalits, my conscience does not permit me to continue as Head of a Centre.

"Therefore, in continuation to the earlier collective decision of SC/ST Teachers' Forum to resign from all administrative posts, I reiterate my decision to resign as Head, CSSEIP in protest," Ramudu said.
His friendship with Mathew Perry began while working on hit TV series "Friends" and Thomas Lennon, who has reunited with him for another American sit-com "The Odd Couple", says he shares a great comfort level with the actor.

Lennon, 45, has previously collaborated with Perry for 2009 film "17 Again". He says their relationship on "Odd Couple" is similar to the camaraderie they share in real life.

"Our on-screen and off-screen chemistry is almost identical. We have known each other for a long time. I did 'Friends' with him, then '17 again'. I have known him for almost 15-20 years. We get along pretty well. I hope people really enjoy watching us on the show," Lennon told PTI.

"The Odd Couple" revolves around Felix played by Lennon and Perry's character Oscar, who are ex-college roommates and opposite personalities. Circumstances bring them to live together under one roof again.

It is the sixth screen production based on the 1965 play of the same name, written by Neil Simon.

"I think in many ways it is an old-fashioned show. The show is a classic. It is lot of fun."



"The Odd Couple" season 1 and 2 is set to air in India from June 23 on Star World.

When asked what aspect of the show will click with the Indian audience, Lennon said, "I think every audience around the world has met people like our characters in their lives.

"It does not necessarily have to be your best friend or your roommate. But you have come across these types of personalities. That is what will click, I feel."



Lennon, best known for his roles in "Bad Teacher", "Memento", "How To Lose A Guy In 10 Days", "Transformers: Age of Extinction" and "I Love You, Man", said he loves doing comedies as opposed to dramas as he gets to see the audience's reaction instantly.

"We film in front of a live audience every Tuesday night. We get to know if we succeeded or not. When you do a dramatic role then you don't get to see the reaction and unable to see whether the show is going well or not."



The actor is also the writing partner of Robert Ben Garant and the duo have done "Night at the Museum" films, "Hell Baby" among others.

Lennon and Garant are working on a new action-comedy "The Revenger", which is being directed by Ruben Fleischer and stars Liam Neeson.
Air Force chief Air Chief Marshal Arup Raha, on an official trip to Sweden, has flown the Gripen fighter aircraft, a move that comes at a time when the government is in the process of shortlisting a combat assault plane under 'Make in India' initiative.

Raha flew the Gripen at the Saab's facility at Linkoping in Sweden yesterday, IAF officials said today.

He flew the Gripen D aircraft with Wing Commander (Flying) Michael Lundquist.

Raha is on a five-day tour of Sweden as part of discussions on cooperation in aerospace and defence between the two countries agreed between Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven during the 'Make in India summit' in Mumbai February.

Sweden and Saab have offered the Gripen for production in India.

Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar had recently said India will select a good fighter by the end of this fiscal year to be made domestically.

It is not yet decided which aircraft it would be, he had said adding it may be F18, Rafale, Eurofighter or Gripen.

"The decision in this regard will be taken in this fiscal year," he had asserted.
In order to encourage people to understand societal relevance of the Right to Information Act and its nuances, the Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU) has decided to introduce certificate and diploma courses in the subject.

The Central Information Commission (CIC) has extended its support to the university to work out the courses, which will form compulsory part of the training module for all Central Government employees.

"We gauged that though people understand the importance of RTI, it is not widely known how to go about it, what are the technicalities, how to frame the questions, how and where to make further appeals and much more," a senior university official said.

"That is why we decided to introduced the course and approached CIC for their support in content generation and other similar issues," he added.

The Faculty of Public Administration at IGNOU's School of Social Sciences is brainstorming with experts from CIC on the content and curriculum of the course.
Hospitality firm InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG) today announced the opening of its first Crowne Plaza hotel in Pune.

The 173-room Crowne Plaza Pune City Centre will operate under a management agreement with the Advantage Raheja Group and has been rebranded from an existing property, the company said in a release issued here.

"Crowne Plaza Hotels and Resorts has been recognised globally as a reputable meetings hotel brand for the last 30 years and is the perfect brand to meet the needs of corporate travellers and the growing meetings, incentives, conferencing, exhibitions (MICE) business in the city," Shantha de Silva, Head - South West Asia, InterContinental Hotels Group said.

IHG has 27 hotels across four brands in India including InterContinental, Crowne Plaza, Holiday Inn and Holiday Inn Express and has 41 hotels in the pipeline.

"Crowne Plaza Pune City Centre will be equipped with the latest technology, quality furnishings and modern meeting facilities and I have every confidence it will be the number one business travel hotel in the city," The Advantage Raheja Group Founder Deepak Bhagwandas Raheja said.
India and the EFTA, a bloc of four European countries including Switzerland, today agreed to resolve the outstanding issues for resumption of long-stalled negotiations for a proposed free trade agreement.

A meeting between the chief negotiators of India and European Free Trade Association (EFTA) was held here to take stock of the ongoing negotiations for Trade and Economic Partnership Agreement (TEPA).

Both sides expressed "their willingness to jointly address the major outstanding issues and agreeing to an early resumption of negotiations and concluding a balanced agreement in a time-bound manner," the commerce and industry ministry said in a statement.

The trade pact talks had started in October 2008. So far, 13 rounds of negotiations have been held at the level of chief negotiators. The four EFTA members are - Switzerland, Iceland, Norway and Liechtenstein.

The last round of negotiations was held in November 2013 and thereafter the negotiations have remained suspended, it said.

The proposed pact covers trade in goods and services, market access for investments, protection of intellectual property and public procurement.

Negotiations were stuck on some issues related with intellectual property rights. EFTA wants India to commit more in IPR. They were also demanding for data exclusivity, which India is completely opposed to.

Data exclusivity provides protection to the technical data generated by innovator companies to prove the usefulness of their products.

In pharmaceutical sector, drug companies generate the data through expensive global clinical trials to prove the efficacy and safety of their new medicine. Switzerland has huge interest in this sector.

By gaining exclusive rights over this data, innovator companies can prevent their competitors from obtaining marketing licence for low-cost versions during the tenure of this exclusivity.

Two-way trade between India and EFTA stood at USD 24.5 billion in 2014-15 as against USD 22.1 billion in 2013-14.
India and Nepal today reviewed their overall bilateral ties including in areas of connectivity and trade during talks between External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj and Nepalese Deputy Prime Minister Kamal Thapa.

In the meeting, Swaraj conveyed to Thapa that development and stability in Nepal were in India's interest.

External Affairs Ministry Spokesperson Vikas Swarup said bilateral mechanisms including political exchanges, connectivity and trade were reviewed in the meeting.

"The External Affairs Minister reaffirmed India's interest in development and stability in Nepal," he said.

Thapa, also Nepal's Foreign Minister, is here primarily to attend the convocation of South Asian university, a SAARC project which came into being in 2010. He arrived here today and will leave for Nepal on Sunday.

Separately India and Nepal discussed issues relating security at the 12th meeting of their Bilateral Consultative Group (BCG) on security yesterday.

The Indian delegation was led by Abhay Thakur, Joint Secretary (North), Ministry of External Affairs while the Nepalese delegation was led by Prakash Kumar Suvedi, Joint Secretary (South Asia), Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

The delegations on both sides comprised officials from the respective ministries of Defence as well as from several Directorates/Departments of the Indian and the Nepal armies.

The programme of the visiting Nepalese delegation included a courtesy call on the Chief of Army Staff Dalbir Suhag.

"The BCG discussions covered issues relating to mutual security concerns as well as defence and training requirements, exchange of experts/instructors, cooperation in disaster management, and the 10th Surya Kiran Joint Military Exercises at battalion level to be held in Nepal in October-November 2016," the MEA said.
India's Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) membership is expected to be deliberated upon by the atomic trading club at its plenary later this month in Seoul as a meeting here on India's bid remained inconclusive.

Though the US was strongly pushing India's case with support of many other countries, it was China which opposed it arguing that the should not relax specific criteria for new applicants. The controls access to sensitive nuclear technology.

A number of countries, which were initially opposed to India's bid as it is yet to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), eased their positions and were ready to work out a compromise. However, China stuck to its position.

In the meeting, China did not openly oppose India's membership directly but linked it to signing of NPT.

The works under the principle of unanimity and even one country's vote against India will scuttle India's bid.

Besides China, the member countries in the 48-nation group which were opposed to India's membership were New Zealand, Ireland, Turkey, South Africa and Austria.

Sources here said chair of the NSG has taken note of views expressed by member countries and will list the matter for further discussion at NSG plenary scheduled to be held in Seoul on June 24.

It is understood India was hopeful of getting support from China as it had supported India's case in 2008 when India got a waiver from the NSG to allow US' nuclear trade with India.

India has asserted that being a signatory to the NPT was not essential for joining the NSG as there has been a precedent in this regard, citing the case of France.

Mexico on Thursday backed India's NSG bid during the Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit. The Mexican support followed that of the US and Switzerland. Japan too has expressed its support for India's inclusion in the grouping.

The NSG looks after critical issues relating to nuclear sector and its members are allowed to trade in and export nuclear technology. Membership of the grouping will help India significantly expand its atomic energy sector.

The US has been pushing for India's membership.

Ahead of the meeting here, US Secretary of State John Kerry had written a letter to the NSG member countries which are not supportive of India's bid, saying they should agree not to block consensus on Indian admission.

A joint statement issued after talks between Modi and Obama said the US called on NSG members to support India's application when it comes up at the NSG Plenary later this month.
A senior Indian diplomat today visited a Hindu ashram in northwestern Bangladesh where an elderly worker was hacked to death by machete-wielding suspected Islamists, the second such murder of minority community member within a week in the country.

Nityaranjan Pandey, 60, who was working as a volunteer for the past 40 years at the Thakur Anukul Chandra Satsanga Paramtirtha Hemayetpurdham Ashram, was murdered this morning in Pabna's Hemayetpur Upazila.

Local residents said the killers hit him on the head and neck with machetes and fled the scene. He died on the spot.

Assistant High Commissioner Sandip Mitra of Assistant High Commission of India in Rajshahi city visited the ashram and spoke to officials and priests there.

The monastery, named after a famous Hindu saint, draws huge number of Hindu devotees from across Bangladesh and neighbouring India.

On Tuesday, the suspected Islamists hacked to death 70-year-old Hindu priest Ananda Gopal Ganguly in western Jhinaidah when he was going to a nearby temple.

Two officials from the Indian High Commission in Dhaka had visited the home of the murdered priest in Koratipara village of Jhenaidah and met his family members on Wednesday.

First Secretary (Political and Information) Rajesh Uike and First Secretary (Consular) Ramakant Gupta at the time told reporters that they hoped police will bring the killers to justice.

Since May 1, Bangladesh has witnessed eight targeted murders in a series of brutal attacks on religious minorities and secular activists.
A 21-year old Indian-origin man has been sentenced to 15 months in prison by a US court for dealing firearms without a license.

Sharma Sukdeo, was indicted in March last year on one count of dealing firearms without a license and plead guilty in December.

Senior United States District Judge Lawrence Kahn also imposed a USD 3,000 fine and a 2-year term of supervised release, to begin after Sukdeo's release from prison.

According to the plea agreement, between September and October 2014, Sukdeo sold three firearms and ammunition to a person working with the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Each sale was completed at a convenience store in Schenectady here.

As part of his plea agreement, Sukdeo admitted that he sold these firearms for profit and that he made the sales despite not being licensed to do so by the federal government or any state.
Ahram Online

Canadian Al-Jazeera English journalist Mohamed Fahmy second left, and his Egyptian colleague Baher Mohammed, celebrate with their wives after being released from Torah prison in Cairo, Egypt, Wednesday, Sept. 23, 2015 (AP)

Mohamed Fahmy, a Canadian-Egyptian journalist and former manager of Al-Jazeera International in Cairo, regained his Egyptian nationality after his request for citizenship was approved by the interior minister on Wednesday, according to the states official gazette.

Fahmy, who held dual Canadian-Egyptian citizenship at the time, had renounced in February 2015 his Egyptian citizenship in an attempt to get deported in accordance with a December 2014 presidential decree that allowed state authorities to deport convicted foreigners.

Fahmys colleague and co-defendant, Australian journalist Peter Greste, was allowed in February 2015 to return home based on decree.

Fahmy was arrested in December 2013 along with Greste and Egyptian journalist Baher Mohamed in the aftermath of the ouster of Islamist president Mohamed Morsi in July of that year.

The trio stood trial for publishing false news and operating without a license, and were sentenced in June 2014 to three years in jail.

Egypt had accused the Qatar-based Al-Jazeera of biased coverage and incitement against the post-Morsi authorities.

Fahmy's case attracted international attention, prompting human rights lawyer Amal Clooney and other celebrities to ask the Egyptian authorities for a pardon.

In September 2015, Fahmy received a presidential pardon and left for Canada.

Fahmy and his co-defendant Baher Mohamed were among 100 prisoners released under the pardon.

Shortly after leaving Egypt, Fahmy filed a request with the interior ministry to regain his citizenship, arguing he was under exceptional pressure when he renounced his native nationality.
An Indian-origin internal medicine physician has been sentenced to one year in prison by a US court for accepting more than USD 174,000 in bribes in exchange for patient referrals to a mobile diagnostic company.

Paresh Patel, 55 of New Jersey had previously pleaded guilty before US District Judge Mary Cooper to an information charging him with violating the Anti-Kickback Statute.

Anti-Kickback Statute is a criminal statute designed to protect patients and federal health care programmes from fraud and abuse by inhibiting the use of money to influence health care decisions.

According to documents filed in this case and statements made in court, from September 2009 through December 2013, Patel accepted more than USD 174,000 in bribes for referring his patients to a mobile diagnostic testing company operated by Nita Patel and Kirtish Patel, who are of no relation to Patel.

As part of the bribes, the diagnostic testing company paid Patel's property tax obligations and home renovation expenses.

In addition to the prison term, Patel was also ordered to pay USD 6,000 fine. He has also forfeited more than USD 174,000 he received as part of the bribery scheme.

Nita and Kirtish Patel had pleaded guilty in November last year to health care fraud for forging physician signatures on diagnostic reports that were never reviewed by a specialist physician and were actually authored by Kirtish Patel, who did not have a medical license.
An Indian-origin teen in the US has been charged with illegally purchasing a gun with a fake ID and allegedly plotting to murder New York police officers, authorities here have said.

Ranbir Singh Shergill, 18, allegedly threatened to kill members of his family last month with a gun he kept at home in the city's Queens neighbourhood, a report in the New York Daily said.

FBI special agent Nicholas Olivero said in the report thata box containing a handgun, seven magazines, and 118 rounds of ammunition was found in Shergill's bedroom.

Shergill admitted he had travelled to Ohio to buy the gun for USD 500 from a private owner, showed the seller a fake ID he had obtained on the internet and bought the ammunition in Pennsylvania.

An undated note was found on Shergill's phone that appeared to be a plan to kill cops, the report said.

According to a complaint filed in Brooklyn Federal Court, the note read: "Do it during a snowstorm, use the snow to mask your presence. Go from dunkin donuts on van wyck (Expressway) after shooting and killing officers...And one will be male other female. Then try to kill other NYPD (New York Police Department) officers change clothes and go back to the crime scene or make false call."



Shergill was arrested this weekend and has been ordered held.

The incident comes days after Indian-origin doctoral student Mainak Sarkar shot and killed his 39-year-old professor at UCLA and estranged wifeAshley Has before turning the gun on himself.
Industrial output contracted by 0.8 per cent in April, the first decline in three months, due to drastic fall in capital goods production and manufacturing activities, prompting demands for pro-active measures by government to boost demand.

Factory output measured in terms of the Index of Industrial Production (IIP) had expanded by 3 per cent in April last year.

As per the IIP, capital goods output, a barometer of investment, declined sharply by 24.9 per cent in April as against a growth of 5.5 per cent in the same month last year.

The Central Statistics Office (CSO) data released today revealed that manufacturing, which constitutes over 75 per cent of the index, contracted by 3.1 per cent in contrast to a growth of 3.9 per cent in April last year.

Industrial production had declined by 1.6 per cent in January this year.

The IIP had registered a growth of about 2 per cent in February. The provisional estimate of 0.1 per cent growth in March was revised slightly upwards to 0.3 per cent.

Observing that delay in monsoon could limit room for rate cut by RBI, industry body Assocham asked the government to urgently take pro-active steps to check the supply situation and help the industry maintain growth momentum.

Devendra Kumar Pant, Chief Economist, India Ratings opined that efforts of the government to kick start investment and increase manufacturing base will take more time.

"Investment growth is unlikely to improve any time soon and government (center and states) with 16 per cent share has limited capacity to kick start investment," he said.

The IIP data showed lower demand as overall consumer goods output dipped by 1.2 per cent in April as against a growth of 2.8 per cent year ago.

The consumer non-durable segment output too declined 9.7 per cent against a growth of 3.7 per cent year ago.

On the other hand, the consumer durable sector showed an uptrend by recording a growth of 11.8 per cent, up from 1.3 per cent a year ago.

Power generation expanded by 14.6 per cent in April as



against a marginal decline of 0.5 per cent a year ago. Mining sector output grew by 1.4 per cent in the month against a contraction of 0.6 per cent a year ago.

Industry chamber FICCI said there is an unfinished agenda of the reforms which the present government is trying to address.

The manufacturing sector growth is dependent on many other factors too like the overall demand scenario in the economy which needs to be further encouraged, it said.

Overall, 9 of the 22 industry groups in manufacturing sector showed negative growth in April 2016.

Some important items that registered high negative growth during the month include 'cable, rubber insulated' (-) 96.2 per cent, 'aluminium foils' (-) 66.3 per cent, 'sugar' (-) 65.3 per cent, and 'heat exchangers' (-) 65.3 per cent.

Some important items showing high positive growth include aviation turbine fuel (102.5 per cent), leather garments (40.1 per cent), gems and jewellery (34.4 per cent), telephone instruments including mobile phone and accessories (30.1 per cent), and aerated waters and soft drinks (28.2 per cent).
Backing Pakistan's stand against US drone strike that killed Taliban chief Mullah Akhtar Mansour, China today said the international community should respect sovereignty and territorial integrity of Pakistan which has made "enormous efforts" to combat terrorism.

"Pakistan has made enormous efforts to combat terrorism and support the Afghan reconciliation process. The international community should fully recognise that and respect Pakistan's sovereignty and territorial integrity," China's Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said.

He was responding to a question over Pakistan denouncing the US drone strike in Balochistan last month as violation of its sovereignty.

Mansour, who was in his early 50s, and a Pakistani driver, Muhammad Azam, were killed on May 21 when US special forces targeted their vehicle in a drone strike in Noshki district of Balochistan.

"The Quadrilateral Coordination Group (QCG) of Afghanistan, Pakistan, China and the US is aiming at creating positive conditions for the reconciliation of Afghanistan, and all relevant parties should make joint efforts to achieve this goal," he said.
Islamic State's dreaded chief Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has been wounded in an air strike by coalition forces on one of the outfit's command headquarters close to the Syrian border in Iraq, media reports said today.

Iraqi channel Al Sumariya TV claimed local sources in Iraq's Nineveh province had confirmed that Baghdadi and other leaders in the Islamist group were wounded yesterday in the coalition bombing raid.

"The planes of the international coalition yesterday bombed a location where there is a base of Isis members along the border area between Iraq and Syria, 65 kilometres west of Nineveh," Express UK quoted an Iraqi source as saying.

According to reports, Baghdadi was injured along with some members of the organisation who were gathered at that meeting.

"The attack was carried out on the basis of precise intelligence information that led to strike its own that site," the paper quoted the source as saying.

The area is one of the group's strongholds, the source said, adding that "Baghdadi and the other ISIS leaders arrived in Iraq from Syria with a convoy of cars".

A spokesman for the US-led coalition said that he had seen the reports but had "nothing to confirm this at this time", the report said.

In recent years there have been a number of reports of Baghdadi's injury, and even death, but none have been confirmed.

Baghdadi was seriously wounded by an airstrike on March 18, 2015, that killed the three other men he was travelling with. He was said to be receiving treatment for spinal injuries after being wounded in that strike.

The injury left the terror chief incapacitated, with some claiming at the time that his injuries meant he would never again resume command.

In 2011 the US State Department named Baghdadi as a terrorist and offered up to USD 10 million for information leading to his capture or death.

Baghdadi became the leader of the militant group in 2010 but it was only in 2014 that ISIS declared the establishment of a "caliphate" - a successor of past Islamic empires - in its territory in Syria and Iraq.
The Islamic State terror group made nearly USD one billion in total revenue last year, half of which came from the sale of oil, and earned as much USD 350 million per year by extorting funds from the local population, a top US Treasury Department official has said.

ISIL's sources of income include oil and gas sales, extortion and taxation, external donations, kidnapping-for- ransom, and previously, bank looting, Daniel Glaser, the Treasury's assistant secretary for terrorist financing said.

"We estimate that in 2015, ISIL made approximately USD 1 billion dollars in total revenue, USD 500 million of which came from the sale of oil, primarily through populations under its control," Glaser said, using the US's preferred acronym for Islamic State.

"We also estimate that ISIL may have earned as much USD 350 million per year, by extorting funds from the local population and in connection with the financial and commercial activity taking place in the territory it controls," he said yesterday in written testimony for a House of Representatives committee hearing on security threats.

ISIL also gained considerable funds from seizing control of state-owned banks in northern and western Iraq in 2014 and early 2015, he told the lawmakers.

"These funds from the bank vaults were estimated to be at least half a billion dollars at the time of capture, making them an important, albeit non-renewable, source of financing for ISIL in its earlier days," Glaser said.

Other less significant sources of revenue include kidnapping-for-ransom (KFR).

"We estimated that ISIL earned between USD 20 and USD 45 million from KFR in 2014. However, we assess revenue from KFR declined substantially in 2015 and 2016 owing to the greatly reduced presence of potential Western hostages in or near the territories it controls," he said.

The senior official said the ISIL clearly has vast financial resources, but the Obama administration has seen indications that America's efforts to disrupt ISIL's sources of revenue are bearing fruit.

Through airstrikes, the Coalition has directly targeted ISIL's entire oil and natural gas supply chain: from oil fields, to refineries, to tanker trucks, targeting ISIL's primary source of revenue, he claimed.

"While difficult to quantify, the strikes have undoubtedly impeded ISIL's ability to produce, sell, and profit from oil as it had been doing," he said.

Glaser also said that recent Coalition strikes have also reduced the levels of cash in ISIL-controlled territory.

US-led Coalition airstrikes have targeted ISIL's cash storage sites, destroying tens of millions, and possibly more than 100 million dollars, and eliminated senior ISIL officials, including the group's de facto finance minister.

For the first time since it proclaimed its caliphate in June 2014, the Islamic State has come under financial pressure following a sharp drop in oil production in territories it controls among other measures, a recent UN report had said.

(Reopens FGN18)



The Treasury Department official said the US has also worked closely with the Iraqi Government to reduce liquidity in ISIL-held areas.

"One of the most important steps taken by the Iraqi government was its decision in August 2015 to ban the distribution of government salaries into ISIL-held areas, thereby eliminating ISIL's ability to tax these funds," Glaser said.

"As a result of these efforts, ISIL is struggling to pay its fighters and we have seen a number of ISIL fighters leaving the battlefield as their pay and benefits have been cut and delayed," he claimed.

As of February 2016, ISIL had also begun levying taxes on the poorest civilians, who had previously been exempt from taxation, he said.

"When we see indications that ISIL cannot pay the salaries of its own fighters and is trying to make up for lost revenue elsewhere, we know we are hitting them where it hurts," the official told lawmakers.

Glaser said denying ISIL access to the international financial system represents the second prong of America's strategy to counter its financing.

The first step is working to deny ISIL access to the Iraqi financial system. Shortly after the fall of Mosul, we worked closely with Iraqi authorities to ensure that approximately 90 bank branches within ISIL-controlled territory in Iraq were and remain cut off from the Iraqi and international financial system.

ISIL likely uses certain exchange houses as important points of access to the financial system. In response, the Central Bank of Iraq (CBI) has identified and developed a dynamic list of over 100 ISIL-related exchange houses that are prohibited from accessing the CBI currency auction in Iraq. The list has been published on the CBI's website and shared with regional governments to enable them to take steps to prevent these banned exchange houses from accessing their respective financial systems.

The US has sanctioned approximately 60 ISIL-linked senior leaders, financiers, foreign terrorist facilitators, and ISIL branches, effectively shutting them out of the US financial system. The UN has also sanctioned key ISIL facilitators.

Glaser said that the challenge of countering ISIL's finances is not an impossible one.

"ISIL, like any terrorist organisation, needs money to survive and diverse efforts are underway to deprive ISIL of its resources and deny it access to the international financial system," he said.
Israel today temporarily barred Palestinians from entering the country, a step criticised by the UN but which officials said was because of a shooting which killed four people in Tel Aviv.

An army spokeswoman told AFP that crossings to Israel from the West Bank and Gaza Strip would be closed for Palestinians in all but "medical and humanitarian cases".

She said the closure would remain in force until midnight on Sunday.

The measures came during the first Friday of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, when tens of thousands of Palestinians visit the Al-Aqsa mosque compound in Jerusalem to pray.

A spokeswoman for COGAT, the defence ministry unit which manages civilian affairs in the occupied West Bank, said about 10,000 Palestinians were allowed to visit Al-Aqsa despite the ban.

The worshippers had to return home after Friday prayers, the spokeswoman said.

Palestinian men between 12 and 35 were not allowed to enter the mosque, with those between 35 and 45 needing permission and those older than 45 having unrestricted access, police confirmed.

Passage was unrestricted for women.

Sheikh Azzam al-Khatib, head of the Islamic Waqf which administers Al-Aqsa, said 100,000 people attended today prayers, down from more than 200,000 the year before.

Police declined to give a specific figure, giving an estimate of tens of thousands.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu convened his security cabinet on Thursday and announced a slew of measures against Palestinians after Wednesday's shooting in a popular Tel Aviv nightspot, the deadliest attack in a months-long wave of violence.

Among the measures, the government said it was revoking entry permits for more than 80,000 Palestinians to visit relatives in Israel during Ramadan.

It also revoked work permits for 204 of the attackers' relatives and the army blockaded their West Bank hometown of Yatta, with soldiers patrolling and stopping cars.

The government also said it was sending two additional battalions - amounting to hundreds more troops - into the occupied West Bank.

United Nations rights chief Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein's office in a statement on Friday condemned the attack but said the Israeli measures may amount to "collective punishment".

"The measures taken against the broader population punish not the perpetrators of the crime, but tens - maybe hundreds - of thousands of innocent Palestinians," it said.

Newly installed Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman ordered that the bodies of Palestinians killed while carrying out attacks would no longer be returned to their families for burial, a spokesman said.
The Israeli military says the West Bank will be closed off until the end of the Jewish holiday of Shavuot due to security concerns following a Palestinian shooting attack this week that killed four civilians.

It said today that crossings will be open for "humanitarian" cases and for Palestinians to worship at al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem.

Police are on high alert in Jerusalem as thousands of Palestinians are expected for prayers on the first Friday of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

The holy site has been a flashpoint of violence in the past, and tensions are especially high after Palestinian gunmen killed four Israelis in a shooting at a popular Tel Aviv tourist spot on Wednesday.

The military says the closure will end Sunday night after the Shavuot holiday.
The Israeli military said on Saturday that the West Bank will be closed off until the end of the Jewish holiday of Shavuot on Sunday, due to security concerns following a Palestinian shooting attack this week in Tel Aviv that killed four Israeli civilians.

The army said that crossings will be open for "humanitarian and medical" cases only and for Palestinians to worship at al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem.

Tens of thousands of Palestinians attended prayers at the mosque today, the first of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. Police were on high alert in Jerusalem and prayers passed peacefully.

Much of the past months of violence stems from tensions at the hilltop compound. Muslims refer to it as the Noble Sanctuary, and it is their third holiest site, after Mecca and Medina in Saudi Arabia. It is the holiest site for Jews, who call it the Temple Mount because of the revered Jewish temples that stood there in biblical times.

West Bank closures are often imposed ahead of holidays in when there are fears of Palestinian attacks. Tensions are especially high now after Palestinian gunmen killed four people and wounded five in a popular and crowded area of Tel Aviv on Wednesday night.

The military said it arrested several people in connection to that attack in the West Bank overnight but there were no further details.

In raids on Saturday morning in the territory, Israeli troops found two Palestinian workshops used for manufacturing weapons, including the improvised home-made gun used in Wednesday's shootings at a popular Tel Aviv restaurant and shopping area.

Over the last eight months, Palestinians have carried out dozens of attacks on civilians and security forces, mostly stabbings, shootings and car ramming assaults that have killed 32 Israelis and two Americans.

About 200 Palestinians have been killed during that time, most identified as attackers by . The assaults were once near-daily incidents but they have become less frequent in recent weeks.

The day after the Palestinian shooting, froze 83,000 permits for Palestinians in the West Bank to visit relatives in Israel.

The army imposed checkpoints to restrict movement in and out of the village where the Palestinian gunmen in the Tel Aviv attack were from.

The office of the United Nations' High Commissioner for Human Rights, Zeid Ra'ad al-Hussein, today condemned the Tel Aviv shooting.
The (ITBP) on Friday cautioned against fake appointment letters and money deposit offers for joining the paramilitary force.

The force has registered a First Information Report with the Delhi Police after the forces' headquarter in Delhi noticed that various unsuccessful aspirants of ITBP recruitment have been receiving so-called appointment letters, which says the candidates are advised to deposit some amount in bank account prior to joining.

"The appointment letters received by various candidates were checked and they were found fake. As such ITBP does not demand money from candidates for recruitment in the force except requisite nominal recruitment fee. No advance or guarantee money is sought from any candidate prior to joining the force," ITBP spokesperson Vivek K Pandey said in a statement here.

He said final appointment letters to bonafide candidates are issued by the force in a prescribed format and these are made in a stipulated manner.

The force, on its website  http://itbpolice.Nic.In/  has also displayed the specimen copies of the fake letters being circulated. It has put out public notices in leading dailies in this regard.

The spokesperson said a number of other steps have been taken to thwart such attempts like directing all units in the country to be sensitised about fraud appointment letters, even as copies of fraud and original format letters have been circulated amongst them.

"Moreover, unit/field formations have been directed to ask such candidates to lodge a police complaint in the nearest police station. All units/formations of ITBP have been directed to display a notice in prominent places in their locations to facilitate forewarning of the public in this regard," the statement said.

The 80,000-strong force is primarily tasked to secure the Indian frontier with China even as it is deployed extensively in the country for rendering duties in the internal security domain like conducting anti-naxal operations. The Union Home Ministry is the nodal authority for the force.
The killing of British Muslim Islamic State (ISIS) terror suspect Mohammed Emwazi, referred to as Jihadi John, was today at the centre of a new row after reports raised doubts over his death in a US drone strike last year.

The British University Emwazi was enrolled in has refused to divulge information about him, claiming it would breach the UK's data protection laws as they have no definitive proof of his death.

The controversy arose following a Freedom of Information request to University of Westminster in London by the BBC.

The University management told BBC: "To date, no authoritative confirmation or evidence has been given to the university, or made public, that the student known to the University of Westminster as Mohammed Emwazi is now dead.

"Without any firm evidence or authoritative official confirmation that Emwazi is definitely deceased, the university maintains that the information requested remains bound by data protection restrictions."



The UK's Data Protection Act applies to living people to ensure fair use of information.

However, followingan appeal by the BBC, the University's stance has also been been backed by the UK's Information Commissioner's Office (ICO).

It has issued adecisionstating that "the commissioner agrees with the university's approach".

The commissioner's decision notice also argues that - presuming Emwazi may still be alive - releasing personal information about him would be "unfair".

It states: "Although there may be legitimate public interest arguments in favour of disclosure, the commissioner has decided that these are outweighed by the distress and upset disclosure could cause and the unwarranted intrusion into the private life of a young individual."



An ICO spokesperson said: "The FOI Act is designed to promote transparency and openness, but is also balanced to avoid the inappropriate release of personal information. Anyone who is not happy with a decision can appeal to the information rights tribunal."



Emwazi studied computer science at Westminster from 2006 to 2009.

Part of his academic file had already been leaked and published in the media.

But the University has refused to disclose his personal records on the grounds that he could still be alive, despite the fact that the US military said it killed Emwazi in a drone strike in the Syrian city of Raqqa in November 2015.

In December 2015, US President Obama named Emwazi as one of a number of leaders of the Islamic State group or operatives that the US had been "taking out" and "removed".

A University of Westminster spokesperson said: "We are complying with our legal obligations and the ICO decision confirms that this is the correct approach.
Hollywood star Johnny Depp is auctioning off millions of dollars worth of paintings ahead of his potentially pricey divorce with Amber Heard.

The 53-year-old "Alice Through the Looking Glass" star is set to unload his collection of paintings by famed artist Jean-Michel Basquiat, according to a press release by Christie's auction house, reported People magazine.

He will sell nine paintings in total, which he collected over the past 25 years. Most of the pieces were completed by Basquiat in 1981.

"Nothing can replace the warmth and immediacy of Basquiat's poetry, or the absolute questions and truths that he delivered," Depp said, according to Christie's.

"The beautiful and disturbing music of his paintings, the cacophony of his silence that attacks our senses, will live far beyond our breath."



Heard filed for divorce from Depp on May 23 citing irreconcilable differences. In the divorce petition, Heard, asked for spousal support from Depp.

The actor has an estimated net worth of up to USD 450 million, and the two reportedly did not have pre-nuptials.

Legal experts say Heard may indeed win spousal support, along with her share of the couple's joint earnings during the short 15-month duration of the marriage.
Eknath Khadse, who last week resigned from Maharashtra cabinet over multiple allegations of wrongdoing, is likely to be exonerated by the state police in connection with the charge that he received calls from fugitive mob boss Dawood Ibrahim, a senior official said.

The Home Department official said on the condition of anonymity that investigation into the alleged calls made to Khadse's cell phone from a Karachi-based land line (allegedly registered in the name of Dawood's wife) was almost over, and the final report may come out within a week.

"The Anti-Terrorism Squad (which probed the allegation) has received all the call data records... So far nothing significant has come out of the investigations into these call data records," the official said.

Earlier, crime branch of Mumbai police too had said the allegation, made by the Aam Aadmi Party first, had no substance.

ATS had summoned Gujarat-based Manish Bhangale, who calls himself 'ethical hacker' and who had claimed to have obtained the records of a Pakistani telecom firm, for questioning last week. But he did not turn up.

Bhangale has moved the Bombay High Court seeking a CBI probe; his petition would be heard on June 14.

AAP had cited the records obtained by Bhangale.

"The source of the information might have been fake and the agency is exploring this possibility," the official said.

Khadse has denied the allegation saying that the mobile number concerned was not even in operation for the past one year.
The personal assistant of another senior doctor in Apollo Hospital here was today detained in connection with the kidney racket busted last week, even as police came across five fresh cases of kidney transplant carried out by the racket in the hospital.

The name of the suspect, who is the personal assistant of a senior nephrologist in Apollo hospital, emerged during the interrogation of the racket's kingpin Rajkumar Rao, a senior police official said.

"One suspect has been detained for questioning and five more cases of transplant carried out by the group in the same hospital have emerged, taking the total to 10. More arrests are likely," Joint Commissioner of Police (Southeast) R P Upadhyay said.

Rao has so far named over 30 people, including senior officials in the hospital, in connection with his racket which was active across several states. The gang is suspected to be involved in nearly 20 kidney transplants in delhi alone, a senior police official said.

The roles of three senior doctors in Apollo Hospital are under scanner now in the case in connection with which 10 persons -- including two personal assistants of a nephrologist, several middlemen and donors, and the kingpin -- have been arrested.

Delhi Police will also question Rao's aide Deepak Kar, who surrendered at a police station in Kolkata within 24 hours of Rao's arrest earlier this week and is being brought to Delhi on transit remand, However, Kar's role in any of the cases being probed by Delhi Police is still unclear, the official said.

Police is also probing Rao's links with similar rackets in Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Indonesia and Singapore.

Apart from the three nephrologists, the 25-member Special Investigation Team probing the case are also likely to question 10 other doctors who are in the hospital's internal assessment committee for transplant surgeries.

The committee comprises senior doctors working at the hospital, independent doctors and a government doctor. The committee had verified and cleared all documents -- which turned out to be forged -- related to the 10 transplants executed by the racket in Apollo Hospital.

The racket was busted last week after Delhi Police arrested five persons -- two personal assistants of a senior nephrologist and three middlemen. Later, four donors in connection with the racket and its kingpin Rao were arrested too.
Alleged Maoist ideologue Kobad Ghandy was today absolved of serious charges under stringent unlawful activities law for being a member of the banned CPI (Maoist) by a Delhi court which held him guilty of residing here using fake identities.

The court held him guilty under various provisions of the IPC, including sections 120-B (criminal conspiracy) read with, 420 (cheating) and 468 (forgery) and awarded him jail term which he has already undergone during adjudication of the case.

It noted that 68-year-old Ghandy was in custody for almost six years and six months during the pendency of case.

"Ghandy is in custody since December 20, 2009 which is almost six years and six months. I, therefore, impose upon him a term of imprisonment already undergone by him," the court, while imposing a fine of Rs 40,000 on him, said.

Ghandy, an alumnus of the prestigious Doon School and St Xavier's College Mumbai, is facing prosecution in around 20 criminal and terror cases in different parts of the country.

Acquitting Ghandy of charges under UAPA, Additional Sessions Judge Reetesh Singh noted that "none of the evidence relied upon by prosecution have been found to be admissible in evidence by this court. The testimonies of prosecution witnesses suffer from infirmities."



"The recoveries made at the instance of the accused have not been proved beyond reasonable doubt. The disclosure statements of Kobad Ghandy cannot be read in evidence...As the same had been made to a police officer.

"...In the facts and circumstances of this case, there are reasonable doubts on the version of the prosecution on charge under sections 20 and 38 of UAPA," the judge said.

While holding him guilty of using assumed names and fake identities, he said "it is true that prosecution has been able to prove that Ghandy was residing in Delhi in an assumed name and that he had in his possession forged documents."



"These circumstances do give rise to a grave suspicion that he wanted to avoid himself from from being discovered. Suspicion, however grave it might be, cannot be equated with proof of the said fact. Material relied upon by prosecution to prove membership and association of Ghandy with said banned organisation is not reliable and admissible in evidence...

"Ghandy was residing in Delhi in assumed names with fake identities. However, gap between using fake identities and membership of the said banned organisation cannot be filled on the basis of suspicion," the court said.

Besides Ghandy, the court also convicted Rajinder Kumar



alias Arvind Joshi for the offence under several sections of IPC, including 120-B (criminal conspiracy) and 420 (cheating).

Kumar was also awarded jail term already undergone by him during the adjudication of the case and the court imposed a fine of Rs 20,000 on him.

According to police, Ghandy was residing in Delhi with fake name and identity provided by Kumar, who himself was not using his real name or identity.

The prosecution had earlier claimed that Ghandy, who was arrested in September 2009 in this case in south Delhi for the alleged charges of being a Politburo member of banned outfit CPI(Maoist), was trying to set up a base for naxal activities here and was the "main piller and the think-tank of outfit".

One election ID card in the name of Dalip Patel was recovered from his possession along with other belongings, it had said, adding that he was residing in a house with Kumar in Badarpur area here.

The police had claimed to recover literature and CDs of the outfit. It also claimed that Ghandy was in touch with other associates via e-mail and used to motivate people for joining the outfit.

It had also alleged that Ghandy had visited Nepal in relation to Left extremist activities.

Ghandy was earlier absolved by the court of terror charges due to want of proper sanction and later, a fresh charge sheet was filed by the Special Cell of Delhi Police with another sanction for his prosecution under the provisions of UAPA.

Ghandy's counsel, however, had denied all the allegations levelled against him and had claimed that the evidence were planted.
Infopark Chief Executive Hrishikesh Nair has relinquished office after completing his three-year tenure during which the Kerala government-owned Information Technology parkwitnessed an all-round growth.

Dispelling rumours that the change of government in Kerala was the reason for his resignation, Nair said he had sent his resignation letter to the state IT Secretary in April and was serving on notice period.

He said he would join a private IT firm next month.

"I have nothing to do with the government. In fact, I had got a wonderful opportunity to make a presentation before Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan about the activities being undertaken in Infopark. He was absolutely happy," Nair told PTI here.

During his stint as Infopark CEO from July 13, 2013, Infopark witnessed greater growth in all sectors, including employment generation and infrastructure development.
Several Left Front constituents today criticised the leadership of its major partner CPI(M) for "compromising" Left unity by forging an "opportunist political alliance" with Congress in West Bengal.

The LF partners also questioned the comment of CPI(M) state secretary Surya Kanta Mishra that the LF-Congress alliance will continue in the future.

"We asked CPI(M) what did the Left achieve by forging an alliance with Congress? CPI(M) compromised Left unity by forging an opportunist political alliance with Congress. And it is yet to take lesson from the humiliating defeat (in the recent Bengal Assembly poll)," RSP state secretary Khsiti Goswami said after a stormy Left Front meet.

"The CPI(M) state secretary (Mishra) recently said that the alliance will continue. How can he make such an irresponsible comment without discussing the matter in the Left Front?



"There has been no formal alliance and who is he (Mishra) to decide on his own that the alliance will continue without discussing the matter in Left Front? We will not tolerate such big brotherly attitude in Left Front," he said.

RSP suffered the highest casualty due to the Left-Congress alliance as it had to forgo most of the seats it used to contest for the last three decades.

CPI(M), especially Mishra, has been facing no-holds- barred criticism from a section of CPI(M) leaders and LF partners since the poll debacle for the decision to forge an alliance with Congress.

"In this alliance, the Congress has been the biggest beneficiary. They have become the main opposition party. Actually a section of CPI(M) leadership very well know that they are losing importance in national politics and that is why they wanted to remain relevant by forging a hasty and opportunist alliance with Congress," Goswami said.

Other LF partners like Forward Bloc, CPI and RSP too lashed out at CPI(M) leadership for helping Congress candidates against the officially nominated LF nominees in seats where there were friendly fights.

Left Front won just 32 seats and Congress 44 out of the total 294 Assembly seats in the April-May election. Mishra himself lost from Narayangarh constituency in West Midnapore.

CPI(M) is all set to hold its state committee meet from tomorrow to discuss the poll debacle.
Forces loyal to Libya's unity government bombarded Islamic State group positions in Sirte with heavy artillery on Friday, a day after thrusting into the jihadist stronghold on the Mediterranean coast.

The loss of Sirte, the hometown of ousted dictator Muammar Gaddafi, would be a major blow to the jihadists at a time when they are under mounting pressure in Syria and Iraq.

Forces aligned with the UN-backed Government of National Accord (GNA) said today they had targeted IS positions with artillery fire around a conference centre where the jihadists had set up a command post.

GNA forces are mostly made up of militias from western cities that have sided with the unity government of prime minister-designate Fayez al-Sarraj and the guards of oil installations that IS has repeatedly tried to seize.

On Thursday a spokesman for the forces predicted Sirte could fall within days.

"The operation will not last much longer. I think we'll be able to announce the liberation of Sirte in two or three days," said Mohamad Ghassri.

On Thursday warplanes bombed jihadist positions in Sirte and the navy said it was in control of the waters off the city, located 450 kilometres east of Tripoli and held by IS since June 2015.

The number of civilians remaining in the city is unknown.

IS has fed on the political and military divisions that have plagued Libya since the 2011 uprising that toppled and killed Kadhafi.

European nations fear that the jihadists could use the city as a staging post for attacks on their soil.
Madhya Pradesh is expecting Rs 1,300 crore investment, from both private and public sector, this financial year for upgradation of tourism infrastructure.

"Upgrading infrastructure is a continuous process and we are looking at doubling our rooms inventory in next five years, in the three-star and above category. We are also planning to build over 300 wayside amenities every 50 km. Overall, for upgradation of infrastructure in the the tourism sector we are looking at Rs 1,300 crore investment, from government as well as private sector this financial year," Madhya Pradesh Tourism's Additional Managing Director Tanvi Sundriyal told PTI here.

At present the state offers 5,400 rooms in the three-star and above category.

Madhya Pradesh State Tourism Development Corporation will give franchises to private players for constructing over 300 wayside amenities including cafes, restrooms, parks, parking facilities, etc., every 50 km, she said.

Besides the religious tourism, the state Government is focusing on wildlife tourism as Madhya Pradesh has six sanctuaries. It is seeking to promote rural tourism around these sanctuaries, heritage wedding destinations, and meetings, incentives, conferencing, exhibitions (MICE) segments.

"We are planning to develop rural tourism around the heritage sites that will give tourists an authentic feel of the state," Sundriyal added.

The state was developing Khajuraho and Orcha as international MICE destination, she said.

The state has not had any tie-ups with neighbouring states for joint promotion of tourism circuits, but it is on the agenda for the future, she said.

Madhya Pradesh, which received around eight crore tourists, both domestic and international, in 2015, is expecting 20 per cent growth in numbers this year.

The state is currently conducting roadshows across the country to facilitate direct B-2-B (business-to-business) contact between the private service providers and the tour operators.
Global communications consultancy Maxus today said it has bagged the media mandate for Tata Group's e-commerce platform Tata CLiQ, following a multi-agency pitch.

The mandate involves management of all media across television, print, radio, cinema and will be handled from Maxus' Mumbai office.

"In a category cluttered with product forward, sales, discount advertising or high-end fashion and lifestyle imagery that is indistinguishable from one brand to the other, we chose to tell a quirky tale using camels and associating them with the guarantee of finding authentic and genuine products at TataCLiQ.Com," Tata CLiQ Head - Marketing Prathyusha Agarwal said in a statement.

"With a novel proposition and communication idea, we are sure that we will build a strong salient brand. We believe that Maxus will be a true partner in understanding the brand and bringing it alive across vehicles and with their vast spread of services from analytics to creative content development."



Maxus South Asia MD Kartik Sharma said, "We manage a number of businesses from the Tata Group... Tata CLiQ is uniquely positioned to create a whole new shopping revolution among consumers and pioneer the Phygital (seamless merger of physical and digital shopping experiences) concept in India.
A court, on Friday, sought response of Delhi police on a plea of a teenager, who allegedly ran over a 32-year-old marketing executive while driving his father's Mercedes, challenging the Juvenile Justice Board's (JJB) order to try him as an adult.

Additional Sessions Judge Vimal Kumar Yadav fixed July 2 for hearing the arguments of Delhi police and the boy on the appeal.

During the hearing, counsel for the teenager informed the court that they have not got a copy of the charge sheet.

On the court's direction, the investigating officer then provided a copy of the charge sheet and other documents annexed with it to the boy, who along with his parents was also present in the court.

Advocate Abhimanyu Kampani, who appeared for the teenager, said without providing charge sheet to the accused, the Presiding Officer of JJB heard arguments and ordered that the boy be tried as an adult by sending the case before the trial court.

Special Public Prosecutor Atul Shrivastava said as per the amended provisions of the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, the sessions court cannot send back the case to the board and if it thinks that the boy should not be tried as an adult, it has to try the case itself by acting as the board's presiding officer.

Police has also filed an application seeking cancellation of bail of the boy's father.

In the appeal, the boy's counsel claimed that at best he could be booked for alleged offence of causing death by rash and negligent act and it was not a case of culpable homicide not amounting to murder for which he has been charged.

It said the boy's previous offences are of traffic violation and not related to accidents. So it's not a ground to convert section 304A of IPC into section 304 of IPC.

On July 2, the court would also hear the main case which was sent to it by JJB that had on June 4 ordered that the boy would face trial as an adult while observing that the offence allegedly committed by him was "heinous".

The board had passed the order on the police's plea seeking transfer of the case to trial court to try the accused as an adult.

It is the first of its kind case since the amendment in the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act 2015 which allowed the Board to transfer cases of heinous offences by children to the sessions court. As per section 2(33) of the Act, "heinous offences" include offences for which minimum punishment under IPC or any other law for the time being in force is imprisonment for seven years or more.

The police had on May 26 chargesheeted the juvenile in JJB for culpable homicide not amounting to murder which entails a maximum of 10 years jail.

Initially, a case under IPC section 304 A was lodged against him but later he was booked for the alleged offence of culpable homicide not amounting to murder and sent to the reform home.

Police had said in its charge sheet that the boy had fatally run over victim Siddharth Sharma with his father's Mercedes when Sharma was trying to cross a road near Ludlow Castle School in north Delhi on April 4.

The final report was filed for alleged offences under IPC sections 304 (culpable homicide not amounting to murder), 279 (driving on a public way so rashly or negligently as to endanger human life) and 337 (causing hurt by an act which endangers human life) against him.

The Board had on April 26 granted bail to the youth who sought the relief to appear in entrance examinations.

The police had earlier arrested a man who claimed to be the actual driver of the Mercedes at the time of incident. But the man did a volte face after he got to know the victim was dead.

The driver and the boy's father, who was also arrested earlier, were granted bail by the court.

The youth had appeared before a Delhi court to surrender and had moved a bail plea which was rejected on the ground that it was a matter of JJB. He was then produced before the board.
People of Northwest Bihar may get respite from sultry weather conditions as the Met department today predicted rainfall for the region while other parts of the state are expected to witness high temperature and intense humidity in next 24 hours.

Northwest part of the state will witness rainfall, while places like Patna and Gaya are expected to witness partly cloudy sky, but it would not bring any relief from hot and humid conditions, the state Met office said.

Capital Patna recorded a maximum temperature of 40.1 deg C. Humidity was 65 per cent in Patna in the morning and 48 per cent in the evening.

Gaya was the hottest place in Bihar today with maximum temperature at 40.5 deg C. Humidity was 61 per cent in the morning and it reduced to 34 per cent by the evening, the Met office said.

Bhagalpur registered maximum temperature of 40.0 deg C and Purnea recorded a maximum temperature of 37.3 deg C.

Gaya and Bhagalpur recorded trace rainfall, officials at the Met department added.
Gunmen burst into a family's home in Mexico at dawn today, killing nine adults and two children, officials said.

The attack took place in El Mirador, a mountain community in central Puebla state, a region that has been relatively spared from the drug violence plaguing other parts of Mexico.

"We can confirm 11 deaths: five women, four men and two girls. Two other minors were badly wounded and taken to the hospital," said Vicente Lopez de la Vega, the mayor of the town of Coxcatlan, which oversees El Mirador.

A Puebla state government official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not autorized to speak publicly, confirmed the massacre.

The Puebla state prosecutor's office is investigating whether the crime was related to organized crime or a family dispute.

While drug violence is uncommon in Puebla, it has seen a spate of mob lynchings of crime suspects.
Union minister M Venkaiah Naidu met Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who returned home today after a five-nation tour, and briefed him about the drought situation and monsoon, among other issues.

"Met Prime Minister at his office. PM reviewed the progress made w.R.T #VikasParv...Shared experiences....

"PM enquired about drought situation, monsoon and Swachh Bharat... Briefed PM about the situation," Naidu said in a series of tweets.

He said after his five-nation tour in six days and 40 meetings, Modi never looked tired and was working as usual.

"5 Countries, 6 Days, 40 Meetings, PM is looking relaxed... Working as usual.. Never tired... Great energy," Naidu said in another tweet.

Modi returned home early this morning after a tour of the Afghanistan, Qatar, Switzerland, the US and Mexico.
Urban Development Minister M Venkaiah Naidu today urged Civil Aviation Minister Ashok Gajapathi Raju to consider early expansion and conversion of Vijayawada Airport to international standards.

The airport is currently mired in land acquistion problems.

Naidu made the request when Raju along with Civil Aviation Ministry Secretary R N Choubey met him at his office here.

Stressing that land acquisition is a major issue in Vijayawada which needs to be addressed at the earliest, Naidu urged Raju to take up early expansion and conversion of Vijayawada Airport to international standards, a source said.

Responding to the request, Choubey assured Naidu that he would personally take up the issue, the source said.

Both the ministers also discussed about general civil aviation policies and expressed the need to improve regional connectivity, among others issues.

During the meeting, Naidu also expressed the need for development of Tirupati and Visakhapatnam airports.

Meanwhile, Raju tweeted, "Urban Development and Aviation go hand in hand. In discussion with Sh @MVenkaiahNaidu today to explore synergies.
A day after two Union ministers locked horns over culling of wild animals, over 100 NGOs working for protection of wildlife today said there is a need to move away from "quick fix" solutions, as these will aggravate human-animal conflicts.

Noting that decisions to cull animals were not in harmony with the Indian ethos of living in consonance with the nature, the NGOs, under Federation of Indian Animal Protection Organisations (FIAPO), said "faulty kill and solve" policies can devastate our natural heritage.

The FIAPO wrote to Union Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar expressing their "distress" over the trend of declaring wild animals such as wild boar and nilgai as 'vermin'.

They said that before even considering culling as an option, there is a need to invest time, effort and funds to address the conflict using "non-invasive" means.

"There is also serious concern about the manner in which culling orders have been issued. Decisions seem to have been taken in a random manner, with no scientific basis.

"There is little or no structured information or knowledge on which the decisions are based and there is no system in place to monitor the situation once the decision is taken," they said in the letter.

Union ministers-Maneka Gandhi and Prakash Javadekar-had yesterday locked horns over culling of animals with the former saying there was "lust" for killing in the Environment Ministry.

Maneka, who holds the Women and Child Development portfolio and is an animal rights activist, termed as "biggest ever massacre" the recent killing of 'nilgai' (blue bulls) in Bihar.

Around 200 Nilgais were reported to have been gunned down in Bihar in the past one week.

"As a corollary, one may end up shooting 500 nilgai in place of the permitted 100 or even shoot other species in the absence of an effective monitoring mechanism.

"In addition, traps, poison or bombs put out to kill 'vermin' species may end up taking a toll on other protected wild species. All policies and decisions on human-wildlife conflict need to be based on structured information and knowledge," they said.

The NGOs asked the Union Environment Minister to take



critical steps to ensure that the myriad problems of human-wildlife conflict are mitigated or reduced in a scientific manner.

"There is a dire need to move away from these quick fix solutions that will merely aggravate human-animal conflict to long-term, sustainable planning and implementation that stresses on non-invasive and innovative methods of mitigating conflict," the letter said.

They noted that these decisions to cull are not in harmony with the Indian ethos of living in consonance with nature.

"We wonder why at a time when the Culture ministry has initiated project Parampara to document our cultural heritage the MoEFCC is resorting to borrowing the faulty 'kill and solve' polices, which can devastate our natural heritage from other nations," it said.

FIAPO said it has united over 100 animal protection organisations to oppose the move. The organisations have also offered to help address the grave issue of human-wildlife conflict in a sustainable manner.

"A state like Telangana cannot have the same intensity of conflict across its districts and therefore, the order to cull across the state in a similar manner appears to be a case of painting the whole state with the same brush. Such policy has the horrible potential to backfire," it said.

FIAPO said that it has filed PILs and RTIs in some states like Telangana and in others, animal protection organisations are partnering with the States to come up with solutions.

Some 'no kill' solutions include application of bio-pesticides with a mixture of cow urine, neem and dry chilli kept airtight for 40 days for controlling the blue bull menace and use of paraffin base and organic sources in keeping blue bulls away from fields.

It said that jatropha plantation too has been suggested as a very effective way.

The NGOs said that random culling not only causes damage to ecological cycles and poses the threat of depleting species but is also at cross-roads with policies of landscape and corridor conservation.

They stressed on the need to address the issue at landscape level as opposed to State level and call for innovative approaches to be tried out as pilots as the next step.
Nepal's relations with India is "incomparable" and its growing ties with China was not at the cost of India, Nepalese Deputy Prime Minister Kamal Thapa said Friday, seeking support of both its neighbours to tide over the "most difficult" period in its recent history.

On a three-day visit here, Thapa said there was no threat to Prime Minister K P Sharma Oli's government though Maoist leader Prachanda had set certain conditions to continue his party's support to the coalition regime.

Fielding questions on a range of issues at a media interaction, Thapa, also Nepal's Foreign Minister, said his government was committed to resolve the contentious Madhesi issue and a high-level panel has been set up to suggest within three months ways to resolve their demands.

He also rubbished media reports that Oli accused India of destabilising his government, saying his comments were "misrepresented". Thapa said Ambassador Deep Kumar Upadhyay was recalled as government found somebody more suitable who can further strengthen ties between the two neighbours.

Thapa cited Nepal's transition to democracy, the Maoist struggle, last year's devastating earthquake and blockade of supplies from India due to Madhesi agitation as major crisis facing the country during the last two decades and said it wants now to embark on a path of economic growth and development.

"Nepal's relations with India is incomparable. If we try to expand our relations with China, that should not be seen at the cost of India. 50 years back the Himalaya was seen as a barrier, now it is no more a barrier.

"Railway is coming next to Nepal's border, highways are coming around Tibet. Do not you think it will be wise for to take advantage of that situation. It is very simple. We want development.

"Naturally we would like to take advantage from both our neighbours. But not at the cost of each other. does not have a policy of playing cards against each other," he said.
Nepal's relations with India are "incomparable" and its growing ties with China were not at the cost of India, Nepalese Deputy Prime Minister Kamal Thapa said today, seeking support of both its neighbours to tide over the "most difficult" period in its recent history.

On a three-day visit here, Thapa said there was no threat to Prime Minister K P Sharma Oli's government though Maoist leader Prachanda had set certain conditions to continue his party's support to the coalition regime.

Fielding questions on a range of issues at a media interaction, Thapa, also Nepal's Foreign Minister, said his government was committed to resolve the contentious Madhesi issue and a high-level panel has been set up to suggest within three months the ways to resolve their demands.

He also rubbished media reports that Oli accused India of destabilising his government, saying his comments were "misrepresented". Thapa said Ambassador Deep Kumar Upadhyay was recalled as government found somebody more suitable who can further strengthen ties between the two neighbours.

Thapa cited Nepal's transition to democracy, the Maoist struggle, last year's devastating earthquake and blockade of supplies from India due to Madhesi agitation as major crisis facing the country during the last two decades and said it wants now to embark on a path of economic growth and development.

"Nepal's relations with India are incomparable. If we try to expand our relations with China, that should not be seen at the cost of India. 50 years back, the Himalaya was seen as a barrier, now it is no more a barrier.

"Railway is coming next to Nepal's border, highways are coming around Tibet. Do not you think it will be wise for Nepal to take advantage of that situation. It is very simple. We want development.

"Naturally we would like to take advantage from both our neighbours. But not at the cost of each other. Nepal does not have a policy of playing cards against each other," he said.

(Reopens DEL 38)



The Nepalese Deputy PM said his government wants to



further deepen ties with India and that the "mistrust" between the two countries was a thing of the past.

"Forget the past, whatever had happened had happened. We are very happy to take the ties forward. The mistrust was thing of the past," he said, adding there was a need for "maturity" in ties.

Thapa said the economic blockade which had crippled supplies from India had caused "severe impact" on Nepal's economy and socio political life, adding his country, for its own interest, cannot afford to have unfriendly relations with New Delhi.

About the Constitution, he said it was framed following a rigorous process and that the devastating earthquake in April last year had forced the political parties to come to consensus and ratify it though there were serious differences among them about various provisions.

He said it is a rights-based "dynamic" Constitution and it was framed without any discrimination against any gender, race and religion. "Unfortunately, there are some misconceptions and we are trying to remove them."



Calling Nepal's Constitution one of the most forward looking, he said though the country had expected wholesome praise from India, but it was not so. "No Constitution is 100 per cent perfect and Nepal's Constitution is also not 100 per cent perfect."



He said, after India, China is the only country in South Asia to frame its Constitution through Constituent Assembly.

Thapa said Nepal will never allow its territory to be used against India's interest.

He said around 13 bilateral meetings are lined up between the two countries in June and July which "reflected that ties are back on track" between the two sides.
Images of three new pieces of debris are being examined by Australian search teams looking for missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, they said today.

One of the items washed up on remote Kangaroo Island off Australia's south coast, while the other two were reportedly found in Madagascar.

"The ATSB has been advised and has received photos of the item (on Kangaroo Island)," a spokesman for the Australian Transport Safety Bureau, which is coordinating the search for the plane, told AFP. "It needs to be examined before coming to any conclusion."

He added that images of other pieces of debris found in Madagascar were also being studied.

"We have seen the photos and governments are being consulted on how best to have that examined," he added.

The fate of the passenger jet, which is presumed to have crashed at sea after disappearing en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 passengers and crew on board in March 2014, remains a mystery.

So far eight pieces of debris, excluding the most recent finds, have been discovered thousands of kilometres (miles) from the current search zone far off the west Australian coast.

They are presumed to have drifted there with five of the parts identified as definitely or probably from the Boeing 777, while three are still being examined.

The piece found on Kangaroo Island among seaweed and driftwood resembles part of a plane, with the words "Caution No Step" visible, according to footage on Channel Seven.

Whether it is from remains unclear, with the broadcaster saying another possibility was that it came from a Cessna that went down several kilometres off the island's coast in 2002.

One of the items found on the Madagascan island of Nosy Boraha resembled an airplane seat part while another appeared to be a cover panel on a plane wing, the BBC reported.

The first concrete evidence that likely met a tragic end was when a two-metre-long (almost seven foot) wing part known as a flaperon washed up in the French overseas territory of La Reunion in July last year.

Australian authorities have since said two pieces of debris found in Mozambique were "almost certainly from MH370" and two fragments that came ashore in South Africa and Mauritius were also likely to be from the jet.

Australia is leading the painstaking search for in the remote Indian Ocean, but wild weather has not allowed the three ships involved to make any progress in recent weeks.

So far 105,000 square kilometres (40,500 square miles) of the designated 120,000-square-kilometre seafloor search zone has been covered without success.

If nothing turns up once the area is fully scoured, the search will be abandoned, Australia, Malaysia and China  the countries that most of the passengers came from  have jointly said.
Centre will soon come out with a new forest policy, Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar today said while asking states to frame their own policies so that the target of achieving 33 per cent forest cover throughout the country is achieved.

He said that his Ministry will in July convene a meeting of state Forest and Environment ministers regarding the issue and to deliberate on other aspects related to improving forest quality, scientific management of forests will also be done.

The Union minister said that his Ministry will also frame courses aimed at enhancing skills for people working in the field of environment, forest and climate change.

Referring to the launch of the International Solar Alliance (ISA) at the Paris Climate change summit, he noted that it has tremendous employment potential worldwide and has helped Indian youths, equipped with the new skill sets, get employment.

"We are reviewing our forest policy. Indian Institute of Forest Management (IIFM) has done basic work with public consultation and field visits. Now we will discuss it with stakeholders and take it to a logical conclusion and have a new forest policy.

"At the same time, we are also urging states to come out with their comprehensive and relevant forest policies so that forest grows more and we achieve the target of 33 per cent of forest cover," Javadekar said during an interaction on Transforming India on mygov.In.

Javadekar said that the meeting of all Environment ministers will be held in July. From the agenda which was finalised yesterday, the most important one is how to save forests and make it more prosperous.

"Its a challenging work. On one hand we have to improve the quality of forest, improve methods of scientific management of forest, use degraded land which is 30 per cent of forest area, we also have to incentivise more forest cover outside forest area," he said.

Noting that Rs 40,000 crore worth of timber is imported, he said that his Ministry has prepared guidelines for a PPP model in which degraded land will be given on lease to private companies who can harvest wood, use it and continue the chain which will help in creating more carbon sink.

(REOPENS DEL85)



IIM Ahmedabad Director Ashish Nanda, who was also present said that with regard to professional courses, a system of providing loans to students is more effective than subsidies as students earn big packages after completing the courses.

He also opined that a system of grading has some advantages over ranking.
Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar today met the family members of Aditya Sachdeva who was shot dead by son of JD(U) MLC in a case of road rage last month, which has shocked the nation, and directed police to pray to the court for trial on a day-to-day basis.

"Samajh me nahi atta hai samaj kaha jaa raha hai...Vahan ko side nahi dene paar bachhe ka haatya kaar diya, (I fail to understand where the society is heading towards...A child was killed for not giving side to a vehicle)," Kumar said expressing shock at the sordid episode while parents of the victim sitting with him.

The CM directed Senior Superintendent of Police Garima Mallik to pray to the court for trial in the case on a "day-to-day basis" so that the guilty gets stringent punishement for the dastardly act.

After arriving at Gaya airport from Patna, Kumar went straight to the members of the boy's family to share the grief of kin of the Class 12 boy.

He was accomponied by Chief Secretary Anjani Kumar Singh, Director General of Police P K Thakur, Principal Secretary Home Amir Subhani and Gaya range DIG Saurabh Kumar.

The CM has already expressed grief over death of the 20-year-old and had directed the police to ensure speedy trial in the case.

Sachdeva was allegedly shot dead by JD(U) Member of Legislative Council Manorama Devi's son Rakesh Ranjan alias Rocky Yadav for overtaking his vehicle near police line in Bihar's Gaya district on May 8.

The accused Rocky and his father Bindi Yadav are still incarcerated. The JD(U) MLC, who has been suspended by the party, recently came out of jail after acquiring bail from Patna High Court in a case of keeping liquor bottles in home which was seized during a raid by police.

Kumar, who is also JD(U) chief, apparently hit at



Prime Minister Narendra Modi saying the election promise (of bringing back black money and providing Rs 15 lakh out of it to every citizens) was not fullfilled and instead declared as "jumla" (euphism).

But, unlike those "hollow" promises his government has effected prohibition and started works on seven resolves of providing electricity, road, toilet, drinking water and sewage among others to every household before completion of one year of grand secular alliance government.

With Agriculture minister Ram Vichar Rai of RJD and Congress minister Madan Mohan Jha with him, Kumar slammed the Centre for permiting trial of GM Mustard and said Bihar would not allow genetically modified mustard in any case.

He also hit out at rival BJP for protesting his "Nishchay yatra" with an aim to find publicity in media.
Government officers will now no longer require to take permission from the Civil Aviation Ministry to travel in airlines other than Air India for official assignments.

The power to grant exemption for traveling in airlines other than Air India has been now delegated to financial adviser of respective ministry or department.

As per a July 2009 order, in cases of air travel, both domestic and international, wherein government bears the cost of air passage, officials have to travel in Air India only.

For cases of air travel by other airlines because of operational, other reasons or on account of non-availability, the powers were vested with Ministry of Civil Aviation to accord exemption in individual cases.

The Finance Ministry, in an office memorandum, said the matter was examined in consultation with the Ministry of Civil Aviation.

"Accordingly, powers are hereby delegated to the Financial Advisers of the Ministries/Departments to accord exemption for air travel, both domestic and international, by airlines other than Air India," the note said.

In case of autonomous bodies, the financial advisers of the concerned ministry/department will accord exemption for air travels, it added.

Individual cases of financial advisers for travel in airlines other than Air India will be approved by the secretary of the concerned ministry.
President Barack Obama has ordered the US military to take on the resurgent Taliban more directly -- in tandem with Afghan allies, ratcheting up a 15-year conflict that he had vowed to end.

"US forces will more proactively support Afghan conventional forces," a senior administration official told AFP.

The official, who asked not to be named, sketched plans to provide more close air support and to accompany Afghan forces on the battlefield.

"This does not mean a blanket order to target the Taliban," the official cautioned.

Obama came to office in 2008, promising to end one of America's longest and most grueling wars.

The first US troops arrived in Afghanistan 15 years ago, after the Taliban government refused to turn over 9/11 mastermind Osama bin Laden.

More than 2,000 US personnel have died in the ensuing war.

There are still 9,800 US troops in the country, down from a peak of around 100,000 in March 2011.

US forces are mainly confined to ministries or bases. Only special forces assist their Afghan counterparts on the battlefield.

But the campaign to neutralize the Taliban has suffered multiple setbacks in the twilight of Obama's presidency.

Afghanistan's fledgling security forces have struggled in the face of bloody Taliban assaults.

More than 5,000 Afghan troops died last year, prompting Obama to indefinitely postpone the withdrawal of US troops.

Afghan authorities on Wednesday recovered the bullet-ridden bodies of 12 security officials captured by the Taliban in eastern Ghazni province. Gunmen kidnapped 40 others.

Local support for US efforts has been undermined by the unintended killing of Afghan civilians.

Last year, missile strikes on a hospital in Kunduz killed 46 people and prompted worldwide outrage.

At the same time, diplomatic efforts to engage the Taliban appear to have broken down.

The United States killed Taliban leader Mullah Akhtar Mansour in a drone strike in Pakistan last month.

Obama then warned that the organization's new leadership would fight on.

"We anticipate the Taliban will continue an agenda of violence," he said during a visit to Japan.

Obama's latest troop decision would appear to push any brokered solution well beyond his presidency.
President Barack Obama marked a big milestone today: His daughter Malia graduated from high school.

The soon-to-be 18-year-old collected her diploma from the private Sidwell Friends School in Northwest Washington during an outdoor ceremony warmed by sunshine. Her father, mother and other family members were on hand for the big moment. The White House barred any media coverage.

Malia was 10 and longing for the puppy her father had promised when her family moved to the White House. She's grown up in the public eye ever since, getting and shedding braces, being taught how to drive by Secret Service agents and spending short stints away from her parents and sister.

Obama has said it hasn't been easy watching "one of my best friends" grow up so fast, in front of the world.

"I do a lot of commencements around this time of year, which I love doing, although my older daughter is graduating this week and I will not be able to handle that well," he told donors at a New York fundraiser earlier this week.

Obama has blamed his emotions for declining an invitation to deliver Sidwell's commencement address as then-President Bill Clinton did in 1997 when his daughter, Chelsea, graduated from the same school. "I'm going to be sitting there with dark glasses, sobbing," he said in February.

Malia's younger sister, Sasha, who turned 15 today, attends Sidwell, too. After today's graduation ceremony, the Obama family celebrated over lunch at Cafe Milano in Georgetown.

What's next for Malia? She's taking a year off before enrolling at Harvard in the fall of 2017.

The Obamas haven't disclosed Malia's plans for her "gap year," but delaying college could keep her close to her tight-knit family as it prepares for the end of Obama's presidency in January. The Obamas plan to stay in Washington for several years after he leaves office so Sasha can finish school at Sidwell.

Both parents often praise Malia and her sister for being normal, happy kids despite living lives that are anything but normal.

The Obama girls were the youngest kids to grow up at the White House since President John F Kennedy's children, Caroline and John Jr, more than a half century ago. Obama has joked it comforts him to know that his girls are being watched over by "men with guns" Secret Service agents.

Malia has traveled to Europe, Africa, Asia, South America and the Caribbean with her parents, and taken a school trip to Mexico. She's met celebrities and high-powered people, including two popes.
More than 2,000 infant deaths were reported in Jammu and Kashmir in 2015-16, a slight increase from last year, the Legislative Council was informed today.

The Minister (in-charge), Health and Medical Education Department, Bali Bhagat, in a written reply to a question of PDP legislator Firdous Ahmad Tak in the Upper House, informed that 2,034 infant deaths occurred in the state in 2015-16.

In 2014-15, 2,008 infant deaths were reported and in 2013-14, the number was 2,292, the minister informed.

The highest number of infant deaths in 2015-16 was reported from Jammu district (557) and the lowest from Ramban (4). No infant death was reported from central Kashmir's Ganderbal district.

The minister said that as per a sample registration system, the infant mortality rate in the state was 51 in 2007, adding that it had come down to 37 in 2013 which was better than the national average of 40.

The minister informed that special newborn care units have been sanctioned for all district hospitals under the National Health Mission and 19 of them are already functional.
Pakistan government has claimed that it has lined up USD 58 billion investment in its troubled power sector till 2022 and hoped that the power crisis in the country would end by 2018.

This was stated by the Minister for Water and Power Khwaja Asif yesterday at a briefing organised by Prime Minister Office on the completion of three years of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz government, the Dawn newspaper reported today.

Asif said USD 58 billion worth of investment in the power sector was expected for generation of 30,948 MW by 2022 and the power crisis would completely wipe out in 2018.

Power Secretary Younas Dagha said under the 10,400 MW portfolio of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor 8,630 MW were currently under execution phases.

Asif said wastage of energy was a serious issue in Pakistan and the government was "getting absolutely no support from the provinces including from Punjab for energy conservation and closure of markets at sunset".

He said that Pakistan was blessed with a lot of sunshine, but the nation was doing business in electric lights. "This is sad," he said.

Power cuts are common in Pakistan because of electricity shortages.

Minister for Petroleum and Natural Resources Shahid Khaqan Abbasi said that Iran-Pakistan gas pipeline project was still facing two major issues to take off.

Explaining this, he said international sanctions against Iran had eased but "dollar transactions are still not allowed", making it difficult to have normal business transactions with Tehran.

Responding to a question why such restrictions did not work against the European Union (EU), Abbasi said the EU had only a one-off transaction with Iran while the Iran-Pakistan pipeline project was a long-term arrangement for 20 years which could be affected in case of application of snap-back clause.

He said the discussions with Iran were in progress on these issues and hopefully the project would go through and be completed by June 2018. The project could start with 250mmcfd of gas flows in June 2018 and then gradually go up to 750mmcfd.

In reply to a question on the



Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (Tapi) gas pipeline project, the minister said Turkmenistan had taken upon itself to deal with security of the pipeline in Afghanistan and the project envisaging 1,325mmcfd of gas to Pakistan could materialise in January 2020.

He said even if both the IP and Tapi projects materialised, Pakistan's energy needs would not be overcome because domestic gas supplies were about 4,000 mmcfd against a demand of about 8,000 mmcfd.

Therefore, import of liquefied natural gas was "the only



short-to medium-term solution of Pakistan's energy crisis as it was sustainable, flexible and scalable".

Abbasi said the government had a target to inject 2,000 mmcfd of LNG in the system by mid-2018 to "wipe out loadshedding".

A total of 4,000 MW of LNG-based power plants would become operational by mid-2017 while USD 2 billion had been invested in LNG terminals and pipelines.

Currently, 400 mmcfd of LNG was being supplied to the system which would increase to 1200 mmcfd in June next year.

By 2018, Pakistan will have surplus gas in the system and all consumers including power plants, fertilisers, industry, CNG, captive power plants and housing colonies would have gas available without any problem.

To meet this challenge, Rs 850 billion worth of gas pipeline network and four LNG terminals at a cost of Rs 120 billion were in different stages of implementation, the minister said.
Pakistan has reached out to Mexico and Italy seeking support for its NSG membership bid, stepping up diplomatic efforts for its inclusion in the elite 48-nation bloc whose membership India is also eyeing.

"Adviser to the Prime Minister on Foreign Affairs Sartaj Aziz spoke over telephone with Mexican Foreign Minister Claudia Ruiz Massieu as part of Pakistan's continuing diplomatic efforts towards mobilising support for Pakistan's application for the membership of Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG)," a Foreign Office statement said here.

He highlighted Pakistan's credentials for the NSG membership with a view to seek Mexico's support.

Significantly, Mexico had expressed its backing to India this week during the visit of Prime Minister Narendra Modi there. The Mexican support followed that of the US and Switzerland. Japan too has expressed its support for India's inclusion.

"Adviser Sartaj Aziz spoke with Italian Foreign Minister Paolo Gentilioni to seek support for Pakistan application for NSG membership. They had a very cordial exchange," Pakistan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs Spokesperson Nafees Zakaria tweeted on Wednesday.

As part of Pakistan's diplomatic push towards mobilising support for Pakistan's application for NSG membership, Aziz had earlier this week also spoke over telephone with the Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.

On Wednesday, Aziz also contacted Foreign Minister of New Zealand Murray McCully and Foreign Minister of Republic of Korea Yun Byung-se to highlight Pakistan's credentials for the NSG membership with a view to seek their support.

Pakistan's push to secure NSG membership comes at a time when India is also looking to secure membership of the elite grouping.

With the US pushing its case, India's bid for NSG membership has received positive indications from most of the member countries but China is still playing the spoiler by persisting with its opposition.
Senior Pakistani and American officials today held "candid discussions" on bilateral ties strained after Afghan Taliban chief was killed in a US drone strike in Balochistan and the F-16 fighter jet deal was scuttled due to a row over their financing.

A US delegation which included senior Director for Afghanistan and Pakistan at the US National Security Council Peter Lavoy and Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan Richard Olson arrived here this morning to hold talks with Pakistan's civilian and military leaders.

Lavoy called on Adviser to the Prime Minister's on Foreign Affairs Sartaj Aziz and Foreign Secretary Aizaz Ahmed Chaudhry.

"They held candid discussions on bilateral relations, regional security situation and the Afghan peace process" in the wake of the 21 May drone strike in Balochistan that killed Afghan Taliban chief Mullah Akhtar Mansour.

The Adviser conveyed "a strong message" to the US that the drone strike was not only a violation of Pakistan's sovereignty and breach of the principles of the UN's Charter, but has also vitiated bilateral ties, Foreign Office said in a statement.

"It was emphasised that any future drone strike in Pakistan will be detrimental to our common desire to strengthen relations," it said.

The family of the Pakistani driver killed along with Mansour in the US drone strike has also demanded justice.

Aziz said the drone strike had "seriously undermined" the ongoing efforts for Afghan peace and reconciliation process at a time when Pakistan along Quadrilateral Coordination Group (QCG) countries was engaged in serious efforts to revive peace talks between Afghan Government and the Taliban.

The Foreign Secretary recalled that in QCG's fifth meeting on 18 May 2016, it was decided that peace negotiations remained the only option for a political settlement.

He emphasized that this would require collective efforts on the part of all QCG members to promote lasting peace in Afghanistan.

Besides Pakistan QCG includes Afghanistan, China and the US.

Pak-US ties are sliding down the hill due to difference over handling of peace process in Afghanistan and US' growing defence ties with India, especially the support for India's candidacy in the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG).

Pakistan is also unhappy over the scuttling of eight F-16 fighter jet deal by US Congress which blocked funding to it citing Pakistan's unsatisfactory actions against Haqqani network. But Islamabad believes that the US Congress was prompted to act due to Indian lobbying and pressure.

In response to US queries on safe havens in Pakistan for



Taliban, it was emphasised that Pakistan is already pursuing its objective of eliminating all militants and terrorists from its soil in accordance with the National Action Plan, the Foreign Office statement said.

At the same time, Pakistan would have to safeguard its own security through better border management and early repatriation of Afghan refugees.

Pakistan also expects action by Afghan forces against TTP operatives in Afghanistan.

These steps would also help to promote better relations between Afghanistan and Pakistan and reduce mistrust.

Lavoy, while conveying President Obama's good wishes for the Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's speedy recovery, said that President Obama was committed to improving relations with Pakistan, the statement said.
A Pakistani court has upheld the life sentence of a political activist from the country's semi-autonomous north, which observers say could see a "nationalist upsurge" in a region also claimed by India.

Baba Jan, a left wing political activist from the Hunza Valley in Pakistan's northern Gilgit-Baltistan, was convicted by an anti-terrorism court for participating in political riots in 2011 and lost an appeal against his life sentence yesterday.

Jan has vocally protested what he and supporters describe as political, constitutional and human rights violations in the region, organising rallies and demonstrations in protest.

He contested local elections last year from prison, placing second in the polls.

"The decision was aimed at barring Baba Jan from contesting elections but it will have a counter-productive impact," said political analyst Amir Hussain.

"This decision will backfire and trigger extremist views like a nationalistic upsurge," he said.

A simmering resentment has been building in Gilgit-Baltistan since Islamabad began mulling upgrading its constitutional status in a bid to provide legal cover to a multi-billion-dollar Chinese investment plan in the area.

Gilgit-Baltistan, which borders China and Afghanistan, is not constitutionally part of Pakistan, and like Kashmir, it is also claimed by India.

Islamabad has historically insisted that the area, along with the parts of Kashmir it controls, are semi-autonomous and has not formally integrated them into the country, in line with its position that a referendum on sovereignty should be carried out across the whole of the region.

But Pakistan's adviser on foreign affairs Sartaj Aziz last week confirmed that a committee established to come up with a plan to reexamine the area's constitutional status had completed its work, adding that it was waiting a final approval from the prime minister.

Aziz did not give any further details on what the plan entailed.

Human rights organisations have been demanding the release of Baba Jan. An international petition for his release has been signed by leading left wing intellectuals, including Noam Chomsky, Tariq Ali and David Graeber.
A Pakistani couple were murdered in Lahore today for marrying without their family's consent, according to officials, the second so-called "honour killing" in the South Asian nation this week.

Muhammad Ashraf, 56, killed his daughter Saba and her husband Karamat Ali a day after the couple returned to Lahore's Kahna area to smooth over rocky relations with the family, who disapproved of the marriage, according to police.

"18-year-old Saba had married Karamat Ali, who is 35, around a year and a half ago against the will of her family and returned to her home yesterday night to settle matters with father and other family members," Falak Sher, a local police official, told AFP.

Ashraf, a security guard by profession, opened fire on his daughter and son-in-law after becoming infuriated during a heated conversation.

"He also killed his neighbour Muhammad Akram for supporting his daughter's marriage," said Sher, adding that Ashraf and his son Safdar later surrendered to police and confessed to the murders.

The incident comes just days after another woman in Lahore, Zeenat Bibi,was set on fire by her mother for marrying a man of her own choice. Bibi's mother later confessed to the crime.

Earlier today Pakistan's Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif ordered a comprehensive investigation into Bibi's killing, calling the crime un-Islamic.

"Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif expressed his deep concern and anguish over the killing of the woman in the eastern city of Lahore and said the incident was against the values and traditions of Islam," read a statement from the premier's office.

Hundreds of women are murdered by their relatives in Pakistan each year on the pretext of defending what is seen as family honour.

"A Girl in the River: The Price of Forgiveness" -- a film telling the story of a rare survivor of an attempted honour killing -- won an Oscar for best documentary short in February.

Amid publicity for the film, Sharif vowed to eradicate the "evil" of honour killings but no fresh legislation has been tabled since then.
People who take photos of their experiences usually enjoy events more than those who do not click pictures, a new study suggests.

"To the best of our knowledge, this research is the first extensive investigation examining how taking photos affects people's enjoyment of their experiences," said Kristin Diehl from University of Southern California in the US.

"We show that, relative to not taking photos, photography can heighten enjoyment of positive experiences by increasing engagement," said Diehl.

Diehl along with researchers from Yale University and University of Pennsylvania in the US outlined a series of nine experiments involving over 2,000 participants in the field and the lab designed to examine the effect of taking photographs of an experience on people's enjoyment of an activity.

In each experiment, individuals were asked to participate in an activity (for example, taking a bus tour or eating in a food court) and were either instructed to take photos during the activity or not.

Afterwards, participants completed a survey designed to measure not only their enjoyment but their engagement in the experience. In almost every case, people who took photographs reported higher levels of enjoyment.

While people might think that stopping to take photographs would detract from the whole experience and make it less pleasurable, participants who took photos reported being more engaged in the activity, the study found.

"One critical factor that has been shown to affect enjoyment is the extent to which people are engaged with the experience," researchers said.

They found that photo-taking naturally draws people more into the experience.

In one experiment, individuals were instructed to take a self-guided tour of a museum exhibit while wearing glasses that tracked their eye movements.

Researchers found that those who took photos spent more time examining the artifacts in the exhibit than those who simply observed.

There were some conditions, though, where picture-taking did not have a positive effect, such as when the participant was already actively engaged in the experience.

For example, in one experiment, individuals were asked either to participate in an arts and crafts project or to observe one.

While taking photos increased the enjoyment of observers, it did not affect enjoyment of those actively taking part in the experience, researchers said.

They also found that this effect is not limited to the action of taking pictures. Participants in one experiment reported higher levels of enjoyment after just taking "mental" pictures as they were going through the experience.

While photo-taking can increase enjoyment in many circumstances, this effect requires active participation, researchers said.

The findings were published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
A down-to-the-wire contest is likely in some of the seats in the high-stakes Rajya Sabha elections in seven states tomorrow, especially in Uttar Pradesh, Karnataka and Haryana, where the fate of candidates including senior Congress leader Kapil Sibal and senior lawyer R K Anand will be decided.

While 30 of the total 57 seats in the current round of biennial elections have already been decided without a contest, tomorrow's polls will decide the fate of remaining 27 as BJP and Congress will be engaged in a keen battle for some of the states.

Allegations of bribing JD(S) and Independent MLAs have marred the polls in Karnataka but the Election Commission has rejected demands for cancelling them.

All eyes are on Uttar Pradesh, where elections are being held to 11 seats. Interest is centred around a fight between Sibal and a BJP-backed independent socialite Preeti Mahapatra.

Sibal will need the support of BSP, which has 12 votes more than necessary for the success of its own candidates Satish Chandra Mishra and Ashok Sidharth.

BSP supremo Mayawati has maintained suspense over her party's support in Uttar Pradesh. But Sibal can draw heart from the fact that she has already extended backing for a Congress candidate in Madhya Pradesh by promising one vote required for senior Supreme Court lawyer Vivek Tankha, fielded by Congress. Congress has 29 MLAs and needs the backing of five more to see Sibal through.

The ruling SP has fielded seven candidates including Amar Singh and Beni Prasad Verma, who both rejoined the party recently, and Reoti Raman Singh. Its seventh candidate is, however, short of 9 first preference votes. SP has been promised backing by Ajit Singh-led RLD which has 8 MLAs.

The BJP has fielded Shiv Pratap Shukla, who is sure to get elected on its own 41 MLAs, and has offered 7 surplus votes to Mahapatra.

Karnataka, where four seats are up for grab, is poised to



witness a battle between the ruling Congress and the JD(S). Union Minister Nirmala Seetharaman of BJP, who needs just one vote more than the party's strength of 44, and former union ministers Jairam Ramesh and Oscar Fernandes of Congress are sure of victory.

With 122 members, Congress has a surplus of 33 votes after ensuring the victory of Ramesh and Fernandes. It has fielded former senior IPS officer K C Ramamurthy as its third candidate for which it requires 12 more votes.

With 40 members, dissidence-hit JDS is in an unenviable position as five MLAs have virtually raised a banner of revolt amid reports that they might indulge in cross voting to help Congress.

JDS needs five more votes for its candidate B M Farooq, a corporate personality, to sail through but is struggling to keep the herd together.

The JD(S) saw open defiance when four of its members stayed away from the legislature party meeting yesterday, called to chalk out a strategy for the victory of the party candidates in both Rajya Sabha polls and Legislative Council polls.

The other state where there is keen interest in the contest is Haryana, where independent candidate R K Anand has the backing of unlikely rivals--Congress and INLD.

To checkmate BJP, which is sure of sending Union Minister Birender Singh to the Upper House, the Congress today extended support the support of 17 MLAs to Anand, who also has the backing of INLD's 19 and Akali Dal's lone MLA.

A candidate in Haryana needs 31 votes to go to Rajya Sabha. The contest is between Anand and BJP-backed Independent candidate, Subhash Chandra, a media magnate, who has the declared support of BJP's 16 surplus votes. Anand appears to have an edge.
The Maharashtra Lokayukta has ordered a probe into the contracts awarded to six firms which were allegedly involved in a multi-crore roads construction scam.

State Lokayukta M L Tahaliyani ordered the probe last week into contracts awarded by Birhanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) to six firms -- KR Constructions, RPS Infraprojects, Mahavir Infrastructure, J Kumar Works, Relcon Infraprojects and RK Madhani Works -- after RTI activist Anil Galgali filed a complaint with the corruption watchdog.

"The Lokayukta has launched a probe into the matter as stated in the complaint," an official at Lokayukta office, K Chavan said.

The BMC had filed police complaint last year in April against the six companies over their alleged involvement in an alleged scam to the tune of Rs 352 crore.

The firms were also found guilty in the primary investigation conducted by the civic body, while they are currently facing probe by police and have been blacklisted by the BMC.

Galgali in his complaint to the Lokayukta last month, alleged that the BMC was hand in gloves with these firms by awarding them frequent tenders.

"I found that the civic administration in the first place was quick to lodge FIRs against these firms, while on the other hand, these firms were continued to be given fresh tenders worth crores of rupees," Galgali told PTI.

"These tainted firms have managed to bag the contracts of over Rs 1,000 crore in different projects which reflect the shoddy working of the civic body," he claimed.

The activist said he had also urged to the Lokayukta to seek a report from BMC Commissioner Ajoy Mehta on the matter and initiate suo-motu action against the six contractors.
Arunachal Chief Minister Kalikho Pul today discussed issues related to poor air connectivity in the state with Union Civil Aviation Minister Ashok Gajapathi Raju and suggested several crucial proposals.

"Since our state does not have wide rail network or waterways, roads become the only link for communication. But, the difficult terrain over which these roads run, make travel very difficult," Pul said during a meeting with the Minister at New Delhi.

He stressed on air connectivity saying it was the only viable alternative and the most obvious candidate for serious planning and investment, an official release said here.

Impressing upon the urgency to establish a civilian airport at Itanagar, Pul said "It is a great irony that we are today perhaps the only state in the entire country, which does not have a functional civilian airport with any commercial airline operations.

In absence of air connectivity, development of the state has been getting hampered, Pul said.

Raju agreed to depute a team of officer from the Centre for site visit to start work for a civilian airport in the state capital, the release said.

In the interim, Pul urged the Union Minister that Air India/Alliance Air commence regular flights to Lakhimpur and Tezpur in neighbouring Assam thrice a week.

The state government through NEC support would enter into a Viability Gap Funding agreement with the airlines, he said adding, the government would prescribe a subsidised fare and the gap for operational cost would be met through NEC support.

Pul said the eight Advance Landing Grounds (ALG) at Ziro, Aalo, Mechukha, Pasighat, Walong, Vijaynagar and Tezu should be allowed for dual use to enable effective connectivity, which would also give a boost to tourism and economic development.

Also to increase air connectivity, the Chief Minister said the state government has plans to connect all district headquarters and important tourism destinations by helicopter services.

"This will not only facilitate travel of passengers and tourists, but will be of great use in case of evacuation of patients, for use by the NDRF and SDRF during disasters and also by law enforcement agencies," he said.

The Chief Minister was accompanied by Chief Secretary Shakuntala Gamlin and Resident Commissioner Geetanjali Gupta during the meeting, the release added.
After they were left waiting by e-commerce major Flipkart, Quality Council of India (QCI) has come to the rescue of Indian Institute of Management-Ahmedabad (IIM-A) and Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) graduates, offering them jobs for an interim period.

We have got the word out that while they wait for their lucrative job, they can come and work with us for six months to one year, QCI Chairman Adil Zainulbhai told PTI.

RECRUITMENT WOES Quality Council of India has come to the rescue of IIM-A and IIT graduates, offering them jobs for an interim period

Jobs spanning 6 months to a year will be offered

A quasi-governmental organisation, QCI, is housed within DIPP

had earlier refused to honour its job commitment to students of the prestigious institutes until December, as against June promised earlier.

QCI, an autonomous body under Department Of Industrial Policy & Promotion (DIPP), takes in several young graduates every year as interns for analytics, research and field work. An example is the Swachh Survekshan which reviewed sanitation and hygiene conditions in 73 major cities (comprising 40 per cent of Indias total urban population).

Of course we cannot pay them as well, but if they want to make meaningful contribution, they are most welcome at QCI, Zainulbhai said. By joining QCI, you could contribute to flagship public projects such as Swachh Bharat, Swachh Survekshan and make a difference you have always wanted to.



QCI is a quasi-governmental organisation housed within DIPP. While QCIs main role is in certification and accreditation of quality across various sectors including education and health care, it is now increasingly taking on roles in quality promotion across the nation through various national level initiatives, ensuring quality across all spheres.

Zainulbhai said every year QCI Chairmans Office hires a group of young professionals from IIMs and IITs, to work on various projects the organisation undertakes.

We can take 30, 40 or 50 graduates, he said. We have enough projects to keep them busy.



QCI has projects with the urban development ministry, NITI Aayog, Prime Ministers Office, MSME ministry, petroleum ministry, rail ministry, Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation, power ministry , renewable energy ministry and DIPP, among others.

Last month, had said it will defer the joining of campus recruits from institutions like IIM-A and IITs until December citing restructuring of its businesses as the reason.

It had hired 18 management graduates from IIM-A.

The institutions had sent out stern replies that the e-commerce major should honour the offers made, saying the students felt cheated for no fault of theirs for choosing the company over other brands and will suffer as they have to repay their education loans.

IITs were also mulling stripping Flipkart of its Day One status in their campus placement programmes.

Flipkart is now said to have offered internships to the recruits whose joining dates were earlier deferred by six months, giving them a monthly stipend of Rs 50,000 and initial accommodation of 15 days. The official contract will start from December.
Amid a raging row over film 'Udta Punjab', Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi will lead a dharna in Jalandhar on June 13 to highlight rampant drug abuse and "collapse" of law and order in the state.

"Will join the mass protest in Jalandhar on Monday, 13th June, to highlight rampant drug abuse and collapse of law & order in Punjab," Gandhi said on Twitter.

Gandhi had raised the issue of rampant drug abuse among youths in Punjab way back in 2012 when he was subjected to ridicule and abuse by the SAD-BJP government.

Besides Gandhi, all senior party leaders and workers from the state will take part in the dharna, Congress MLA Rana Gurjeet Singh said, adding eradication of drug misuse from Punjab is the top priority of Congress.

Two days ago, Gandhi had made a strong pitch for release of film 'Udta Punjab' which focuses on substance abuse, noting that the state has a "crippling drug problem" and censoring the movie would not fix it.

Congress has alleged Prime Minister Narendra Modi has "covertly ensured" that the film is banned or "at least neutered" to hide the scale of the drug problem in Punjab.

Congress has been insisting that BJP is a coalition partner of Akali Dal and is "equally culpable" for the "inaction" of the Punjab government on the drug menace.

Assembly polls in Punjab are scheduled next year.
Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu today inaugurated six rail facilities in Bihar including flagging off the weekly Motihari-Anand Vihar Champaran Satyagrah Express.

Prabhu flagged off the weekly Champaran Satyagrah Express at a function organised at M S College ground here through remote and dedicated three Road Over Bridges (ROBs) at Danapur (Patna), Motihari and Begusarai railway stations.

He, accompanied by Union Agriculture Minister and local MP Radha Mohan Singh, also inaugurated the broad guage conversion work of Banmankhi-Purnea rail section, besides converting Piprahan station into a crossing station.

Speaking on the occasion, Prabhu said the Narendra Modi government has done more work within a short of span of two years what the UPA could not do in its regime.

Citing examples, the minister said the Railways had carried out 1,477 km of guage conversion between 2004-10 and 1,528 km between 2009-14, whereas the NDA government has already carried out 2,828 km of guage conversion.

Around 2,500 unmanned level crossing gates have been converted into manned ones, he said adding, Motihari railway station would be developed in a way that it would showcase the glimpse of Satyagrah movement.

On the demand of a superfast train between Motihari and Delhi and Bagaha and Patliputra, Prabhu assured it would be done on a priority basis.

Referring to Sheohar MP Rama Devi pointing out paucity of funds for land acquisition for the Motihari-Sitamarhi via Sheohar link, he said funds would not be a problem for land acquisition.

Prabhu said two MOUs have already been signed for Rs 40,000 crore projects for setting up Diesel and Electric locomotive factories at Marhaura (Saran) and Madhepura, respectively.

Agriculture Minister Radha Mohan Singh was all praise for the Modi government's initiatives taken for Railway's development and growth in the country.

"Had Suresh Prabhu not been the Railway Minister, Railways' conditions would have been in shambles like the Bihar State Road Transport Corporation," Singh added.
Medical services at government college hospitals across the state resumed as resident doctors called off their 10-day strike after an assurance from the government that it will to look into their demands.

Over 4,000 agitating doctors at all seven government medical colleges returned to work last night after holding talks with state health minister Rajendra Rathore and BJP leader Digambar Singh.

The doctors had gone on strike in Jaipur, Jodhpur, Ajmer, Bikaner, Udaipur, Kota and Jhalawar on June 30 protesting the decision to send their answer scripts for evaluation to other states, which caused inconvenience to patients.

During the talks, the state government assured them that the suspension and termination of doctors ordered by Rajasthan government during the strike will be revoked.

"The talks were held in a cordial manner with the health minister after which which we decided to call off the strike. All striking resident doctors of seven government medical colleges have joined duties," vice president of Jaipur Association of Resident Doctors (JARD) Dr Akash Mathur said.

The communication gap with the government was also cleared in the meeting yesterday, he said.

The minister had taken a tough stand against the agitating doctors and directed the officials to take action against them including termination of admission in post-graduate courses.
The personal assistant of BJP MLA Rajendra Dadu, who was killed in a road accident last night, has also succumbed to his injuries, police said today.

Dadu, the MLA from Nepanagar, was killed in an accident on Indore-Bhopal road between Ashta and Sehore towns last night.

His PA Ravindra Atre also succumbed of his injuries late last night, Sehore City Superintendent of Police S R Dandotia said today.

Meanwhile, the condition of two others injured in the mishap was stable, Chirayu Medical College Hospital Director Dr Ajay Goenka said.

The mishap occurred yesterday when the legislator was coming to Bhopal from Nepanagar to attend a BJP meeting at Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan's residence ahead of the June 11 Rajya Sabha election.

His car overturned and he died on the spot, a police officer had earlier said.

Dadu had won from Nepanagar (ST) seat for the second time.

His mortal remains were today taken by a special plane to his native place Kanapur for last rites.

Chief Minister Chouhan, Union Minister for Steel and Mines Narendra Singh Tomar and state BJP president Nandkumar Singh Chouhan expressed grief over Dadu's death.

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Meanwhile, External Affairs Minister and Vidisha MP



Sushma Swaraj, former Chief Ministers Sunderlal Patwa and Kailash Joshi, Union Ministers Uma Bharti, Najma Heptullah, Thawar Chand Gehlot, Prakash Jawdekar, BJP national vice president Prabhat Jha and General Secretary Kailash Vijaywargiya also expressed condolences on the untimely demise of the Nepanagar MLA.

Madhya Pradesh Congress president and former MP from Khandwa, Arun Yadav, also condoled the death of Dadu and prayed to the Almighty to give enough strength to the bereaved family to bear the loss.
: A one-day seminar on "Role of private remittances in the socio-economic scenario of Kerala" will be held here jointly by Indian Institute of Management and Reserve Bank of India, Thiruvananthapuram, on June 25.

The seminar will be inaugurated by S M N Swamy, Regional Director of Reserve Bank of India, an IIM-K release said.

Speakers include the Managing Director of State Bank of Travancore C R Sasikumar, Prof Irudaya Rajan of CDS Thiruvananthapuram and R S Kannan, CEO of NORKA Roots, who will share their views on the state's current and future socio-economic situation, the release said.

Besides, eminent experts from the government, financial sector, RBI and IIM would also participate in the deliberations, the release said.
At least five persons were killed and several, including children, were feared buried under the rubble when the makeshift roof of an under-construction mosque collapsed during Friday prayers in this Pakistani port city.

The incident happened when a temporary sunshade fell on the courtyard area of the Usman mosque in North Nazimabad.

The mosque was overcrowded due to first Friday of the holy month of Ramazan.

Five persons were killed and 10 were injured. Several others, including children, were feared trapped under the rubble, Dawn reported.

The injured have been taken to hospitals where four are in critical condition.

Eye witnesses said the collapsed structure was a makeshift extension, which was erected to protect worshippers from the scorching heat during day-time prayers. Ceiling fans were also attached to the extension that collapsed, they added.

Maximum temperature in Karachi often reach 40 degrees Celsius in summer.

Station House Officer Hyderi Zulfiqar Hyder said the roof collapsed when the main prayer ended and people were offering supplementary Sunnah prayers, the report said.

Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, Sindh Chief Minister Syed Qaim Ali Shah and Opposition leader in the Sindh Assembly Khawaja Izharul Hasan have expressed grief over the incident.

In December, 22 people, mostly children, were injured as the roof of a seminary collapsed in New Karachi.
In a strong attack on Congress and its leadership, BJP president Amit Shah today alleged that corruption to the tune of Rs 12 lakh crore took place when it was in power, and asserted the BJP-led NDA government has given a graft-free government to the country.

"I was watching on TV. Madam Soniaji was asking us what did you give to the country in two years. Soniaji, listen, if you can. I am going to give an account of two years in this public meeting in Telangana. But, I want to ask. Your family ruled the country for 60 years. What did you give to the country in 60 years? You first give an account of that to the people of the country," he said.

Shah was addressing a public meeting in this town in Nalgonda district of Telangana as part of 'Vikas Parv' being observed by the BJP on the occasion of the NDA government completing two years in office.

Hitting out at the Congress, he said there was no sector, wherein corruption did not take place during the UPA regime.

There was corruption to the tune of Rs 12 lakh crore during Congress' rule. Corruption took place in space, beneath earth, skies and on the earth during the Congress rule, he said referring to the 2G scam and alleged graft in Commonwealth Games, VVIP chopper deal and in auction of coal blocks.

In a scathing attack on Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi, he referred to Gandhi's reported comments that what has changed on the borders with Pakistan as firing continues to take place even now.

"Rahul baba was speaking somewhere that firing used to happen earlier and takes place even now and what changed in Modi's rule. Rahul baba, you cannot see the difference. You have Italian spectacles on your eyes," he said.

Shah went on to say that Pakistan used to start and end the firing earlier, but it has changed now as it is the Indian Army that ends the firing.

"NDA, first of all, gave a corruption-free government to the country in the two years it has assumed office in 2014," Shah said.

BJP also gave such a Prime Minister to the country who speaks, he said.

Referring to Congress leader Kamal Nath's criticism on Modi's foreign visits, the BJP chief said Modi made less visits abroad compared to (Manmohan) Singh.

Nobody came to know when "mauni baba", Singh visited foreign countries, he said.

"Singh used to read a two-page speech and that too got bungled up sometimes. In contrast, Modi is given a grand welcome wherever he visited and the latest is the Prime Minister's address to US Congress," he said.

(Reopens BOM 21)



Claiming that there was no internal democracy in



family-based parties in the country, Shah said BJP can ensure all-round development of Telangana.

"It is only the BJP, which can take on the communal MIM in Telangana and not the ruling TRS," he said.

Observing that funds to the tune of Rs 90,000 crore have been given to Telangana since the NDA government resumed office two years ago, he alleged that the money is not reaching the ground level.

Shah said he is ready to give an account of the funds allocated to the state.

Union Minister Hansraj Ahir, BJP General Secretary Muralidhar Rao and State BJP president K Laxman and several other party leaders were present on the occasion.
Ending speculation, Congress today decided to vote for noted lawyer R K Anand who is pitted against BJP-sponsored independent candidate and media baron Subhash Chandra in the election to Rajya Sabha from Haryana.

Polling for the biennial election to the Upper House will be held tomorrow.

Of the two seats from Haryana, Union minister Birender Singh is set to win from one seat while INLD-backed independent Anand and Chandra are vying for the second.

"Haryana Congress leaders at a meeting today authorised the Congress President to take a decision on voting in the Rajya Sabha polls. Congress then decided to vote against the BJP-sponsored Chandra and in favour of R K Anand," said AICC General Secretary and in-charge of party affairs in Haryana B K Hariprasad.

The meeting was attended by party MLAs from Haryana including former Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda, besides state unit chief Ashok Tanwar.

Anand today sprang a surprise by turning up at the Congress meeting and expressing his faith in the leadership.

"I have full faith in Congress' policies and full faith in leadership and policies of Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi. I will support Congress on the floor of the House. I have always fought against RSS' policies and it will continue in the future also," Anand said.

At the AICC briefing, Congress spokesperson Manish Tewari said Anand reached out to the party leadership and promised to work for the Congress both inside and outside Parliament.

Congress has not put up its own candidate. In the absense of its own candidate, the party was in a dilemma as in case it chose to vote it will have to side with a candidate backed by either BJP or INLD and if it abstains, it will provide a clear advantage to the BJP-backed Chandra.

BJP has 47 MLAs in the 90-member Assembly, INLD 19, Congress 17 (Kuldeep Bishnoi's two-member HJC merged with Congress recently), BSP one, SAD one and there are five Independents.

Chandra had said that he was in touch with individual MLAs in the Assembly and exuded confidence that he will have a comfortable victory.

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Haryana Congress Legislature Party leader Kiran Choudhary said it has been decided that "we will support R K Anand because he has expressed full faith in Congress' policies and its leadership."



"He came here (to the Congress meeting) and sought our votes. He expressed full faith in Congress President Sonia Gandhi and party Vice-President Rahul Gandhi's leadership. He also said that both in Rajya Sabha and outside he will support Congress," Choudhary said.

When reminded that Anand's candidature is backed by INLD, Choudhary said, "I cannot say anything about INLD but when Anand has made it clear expressing faith in our policies, all questions are put to rest."



INLD saw nothing wrong in Anand, who was its candidate from Faridabad in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, garnering support from elsewhere.

"Anand had sought support from us as Independent candidate. We extended our support to him but we had not put any pre-condition that he cannot seek support in his favour from anywhere else. If he garners support from others, we have no objection," INLD senior leader Abhay Singh Chautala said.

BJP sources said the latest development pertaining to Congress announcing its support for Anand will be discussed.

A candidate needs 31 votes to win in Haryana.
Russia's lower house of parliament today voted to dismiss the only lawmaker who opposed Moscow's annexation of Crimea over his extended absence from the legislative body.

Ilya Ponomaryov, a regular at opposition meetings who has lived in the United States since 2014, has been accused of complicity in the embezzlement of USD 750,000 from the Skolkovo Foundation, a high-tech project the Kremlin had hoped would be its answer to Silicon Valley.

The opposition has dismissed the charges as politically motivated.

Today, 413 lawmkers voted in favor of stripping Ponomaryov of his seat in the legislature. Only three State Duma deputies voted against the proposal, opposition lawmaker Dmitry Gudkov wrote on his Facebook page.

Flamboyant lawmaker Vladimir Zhirinovsky, who heads a nationalist party, in parliament accused Ponomaryov of spreading "nasty anti-Russian propaganda," TASS agency reported.

A Russian court last year had ordered Ponomaryov's arrest in absentia over the alleged embezzlement after he was stripped of his parliamentary immunity from prosecution.

Ponomaryov, one of the few public figures openly critical of President Vladimir Putin, has denied any wrongdoing.

In 2012, along with two other opposition lawmakers, Ponomaryov staged a filibuster, speaking for 11 hours straight when the legislative body debated increasing fines for the participants of unsanctioned protests.
US Senator was not surprised by President Barack Obama's decision to endorse Hillary Clinton as the presidential nominee of the Democratic Party, the White House has said.

"The President has had the opportunity to speak to Senator Sanders now three times in the last week, and as a result of those conversations, I would think it is fair to say that Senator Sanders was not at all surprised by today's announcement," White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said yesterday.

Earlier in the day, Obama met Sanders at the White House, immediately after which he issued an email and a video announcing his decision to endorse Clinton, the former secretary of state.

Sanders also vowed to foster party unity to take on Republican nominee Donald Trump.

Clinton, who garnered enough delegates this Tuesday, is the first women presidential candidate of a major US party.

Earnest said the video was recorded Tuesday.

"Secretary Clinton's campaign has already announced that there will be an event, and the President is very much looking forward to travelling to Green Bay, Wisconsin, Titletown, with Secretary Clinton to appear with her in person at a campaign event, and build support for her campaign in the state of Wisconsin  a state that President Obama won twice," he said.

"I'm not going to get into the details of their interactions, but I assure you that Senator Sanders was not surprised," Earnest said in response to a question.

Earnest said that the Vermont Senator began his statement in the driveway in front of the White House today by saying that President Obama and Vice-President Biden had made a commitment to him early in the process that they would not put their thumb on the scale.

"...And Senator Sanders himself said how much he appreciated that President Obama and Vice-President Biden kept that promise," he said in response to a question.

He said it is up to Sanders to decide how long he wants to continue to be in the race.
State Bank of India (SBI) and Spain's CaixaBank have inked pact to provide loans to joint ventures and local enterprises here.

SBI and CaixaBank have signed a memorandum of agreement to enhance business synergies.

According to the agreement, they will expand banks' guarantee transaction businesses by jointly providing credit to Indian-Spanish joint ventures and Indian local enterprises, SBI said in a statement.

"The banks will also cooperate through introduction of business opportunities and partnering on possible infrastructure funds," it added.

The agreement was signed by CaixaBank's Executive Vice-President, International Banking, Victoria Matia and SBI's Chief General Manager Sujit Kumar Varma.

The banks will collaborate in areas of mutual interest such as syndicated loan business, guarantee transactions, trade finance and export credit agency finance, infrastructure finance and networking services, among others.

Through this agreement, both SBI and CaixaBank will gain direct access to their respective markets of operation, said the release.

Both banks' clients will be able to use the vast combined network to expand their businesses abroad.

"... This agreement with India's leading financial institution... Will help facilitate the growth of Spanish companies operating in this market," said Matia.

"India is increasingly making its global presence felt across various landscapes. Partnering with an organisation like SBI is strategically important to us, and we look forward to contributing to SBI's growth through our market expertise and established relationships."



CaixaBank had established its representative office in New Delhi in 2011.

It offers business counselling and helps Spanish companies to develop their business in the South Asian region and Indian companies with interest in Spain.
Estranged husband of a Shiv Sena corporator from here was arrested today, a day after she was allegedly attacked in her office by some persons, police said.

The incident occurred when Sangita Patil, a corporator from Wagle Estate area, was allegedly assaulted by around ten masked persons with sticks and a sword, said sub-inspector SG Tungenwar of Srinagar police station.

At the time of the attack, Sangeeta was holding a meeting with her supporters.

She and four of her supporters sustained injuries in the attack, and were rushed to a private hospital.

The attackers also ransacked her office.

In her complaint, the Sena leader said she had filed a petition seeking divorce from her husband, Manik Patil.

She alleged that the attack on her was ordered by Manik by hiring the goons.

Police have registered a case under various sections of IPC against eight persons, including Manik.

Other accused are absconding, police said.
Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government today contended in Delhi High Court that BJP MLA O P Sharma, who was suspended from Delhi Legislative Assembly for two sessions for allegedly making derogatory remarks against AAP MLA Alka Lamba, has misled the court by saying he was thrice suspended for his comments, a charge denied by him.

The Delhi government made the allegation while opposing maintainability of Sharma's plea challenging his suspension from the Delhi legislative assembly for two sessions.

Denying the charge, Sharma's counsel on the other hand said the Delhi legislative assembly's decision to suspend him was "patently illegal" as it infringed the freedom of speech privilege available to a legislator.

After hearing the arguments on behalf of Sharma and the Delhi government, Justice Manmohan reserved his decision on the maintainability of the BJP legislator's plea.

During the arguments, senior advocate Sudhir Nandrajog contended before the court that Sharma has come with "unclean hands" as he has stated that he was suspended thrice for making derogatory remarks against Lamba, whereas he has been suspended only twice and one of them was for using unparliamentary language against the Speaker of the House at a press conference.

He said that for making such "incorrect" statement in his plea, the petition ought to be dismissed.

Nandrajog also said the Delhi Assembly should not have been made a party in the matter and it should have been the Delhi government instead, adding that the plea was "not maintainable".

Senior advocate Aman Lekhi, appearing for Sharma, denied the government's claims and said the BJP lawmaker was suspended thrice, first for two days, then for a session and now for two more sessions of the House.

He also said the Delhi legislative assembly cannot be "immune" from being made a party and added that the AAP government "cannot by brute force of majority do what you whim".
State Public Service Commissions in a meeting here today proposed an online examination system across the country to fill up various posts through UPSC or the PSCs.

"A meeting of Standing Committee of National Conference of State Public Service Commissions was held here in which we deliberated upon various issues facing the UPSC and the state commissions," K S Tomar, chairman of the committee, told reporters here.

Tomar said the youth today are well-versed with mobiles and laptops and the need of the hour is to introduce online examination.

"Otherwise, our future generation will not forgive us. We will recommend this to the national conference for adoption," he said.

The chairman said a delegation of the committee recently met President Pranab Mukherjee and brought into his notice certain issues like protection to chairman and members of the public service commissions from unnecessary court cases.

Other issues like pay disparity, warrant of precedence and financial and administrative autonomy were also raised in the meeting with the President, he said.

Earlier, the committee held a meeting in which chairman Jammu and Kashmir Public Service Commission besides chairpersons of the Chatisgarh, Goa, Gujarat, Assam, Madhya Pradesh, Haryana, West Bengal, Telangana States were present.

The meeting deliberated upon various matters for improving the functioning of PSCs so that process of examinations/ written tests is conducted in free, fair and transparent manner besides providing better facilities to the aspiring candidates, an official spokesman said.

The Standing Committee emphasised for efficient and effective functioning of all PSCs in the country to ensure better perception among the people by taking reformation initiatives so that candidates are given justice, he said.

The meeting also discussed various issues related to use of IT facilities including submission of online applications, one time registration (OTR), online examination, e-governance besides financial and administrative autonomy to Public Service Commissions (PSCs), enhancement in pay allowances and pension, enhancement of retirement age and other related issues, the spokesman said.
In the backdrop of China playing a spoiler in India's entry into NSG, Congress today dismissed as a "big zero" the sum total of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's foreign visits and foreign policy initiatives.

"Never ever in the past almost three decades, China has taken such an absolutely hostile position to India whether on the question of membership of the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) or even getting the Jaish-e-Mohd and Maulana Masood Azhar labeled as terrorist entity", party spokesman Manish Tewari told reporters here.

Tearing apart claims of the government and the BJP that PM's just concluded tour to several countries including US as a big strategic and diplomatic success, he expressed concern that China "has never been so belligerent in the past 29 years".

"China is extremely crucial and has a sensitive relationship with India but has never been so belligerent in the past 29 years ever since late Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi broke the ice with China in 1987", he said.

Reports from Vienna had it that with the US pushing its case, India's bid for membership of the 48-member grouping has received positive indications from most of the member countries but China was still playing the spoiler by persisting with its opposition.

He said here has not been a single new idea, a single big idea in the Indo-US relationship in the last two years since Modi became PM.

"The only one thread which the NDA-BJP Government and the Prime Minister have been taking forth is the Indo-US Civil Nuclear Energy Pact which was incubated and finally consummated during the UPA Government.

"This Prime Minister has suddenly woken up to the virtues of the Civil Nuclear Energy. If I recall correctly, on 12th Sept 2008, while addressing the BJP National Executive, he had stated that the Indo-US Civil Nuclear Agreement is a sell-out. It compromises India's National security.

"So, therefore, between 2008 and 2016, there seems to be a sudden change of heart and what was national security threat in 2008 has now become the biggest swan song of both the Prime Minister and his Government.", he remarked.

He took a dig at BJP President Amit Shah for his reported remarks that the MTCR would help India become an arms exporter.

"Possibly the BJP needs to understand that the Missile Technology Control Regime is about controlling proliferation of missiles. It is not about making a country into a net arms exporter. So, this is the limited understanding which the BJP and its President unfortunately have about international affairs.", he said.

"If you look at the Prime Minister and his Government's foreign policy, in a comprehensive perspective over the past 2 years, India has neither gained diplomatically, neither strategically, neither economically and neither militarily". "The sum total of Prime Minister's foreign visits and foreign policy initiatives, is unfortunately a big Zero", Tewari said..
CPI(M) MLA Mohammad Yousuf Tarigami today said that many parts of the summer capital were reeling under "acute" drinking water crisis and demanded that the Jammu and Kashmir government address the issue.

"Many parts of the city are reeling under acute shortage of drinking water. The government needs to wake up from its slumber and take steps to ensure that this issue is addressed," he said during Question Hour in the Assembly.

He asked the government to ensure that the water supplied to the houses in the city and elsewhere in the state is safe for human consumption.

"The residents of Srinagar city fear for their health as water supplied from some of the water supply schemes like Doodhganga is not filtered properly," he said.

Tarigami later told reporters outside the Assembly that there were reports of illegal use of water supply connections in the city.

"The Public Health Engineering department seems to have turned a blind eye to this menace of misuse of drinking water. Many car washing facilities are using drinking water in their commercial outlets. These connections need to be snapped forthwith," he added.
Textiles exports for the 2015-16 fiscal stood at USD 40 billion, falling way short of the USD 47.5 billion target, a senior official said today.

"The quantum of shipments from the textiles sector during 2015-16 was USD 40 billion," Joint Secretary in the Textile Ministry Sunaina Tomar told PTI.

The ministry has set an exports target of USD 48.5 billion for the current fiscal.

Last fiscal's shipments were also below the USD 41.4 billion exports achieved in 2014-15.

Meanwhile, Textiles Minister Santosh Gangwar today said the new national textiles policy, which aims to achieve USD 300 billion exports by 2024-25, may be unveiled soon.

The new policy also aims to create an additional 35 million jobs.

Keeping in view various domestic and international developments in the industry and the need for a roadmap, the ministry has initiated the process of reviewing the National Textiles Policy, 2000.

The minister also informed that around 3.75 lakh youth belonging to the textiles sector have been trained under the Integrated Skill Development Scheme (ISDS) and 70 per cent of the trainees have already got jobs.
The UN has temporarily removed the Saudi-led coalition in strife-torn Yemen from a blacklist for killing children due to threats from its supporters to defund programmes of the world body, Secretary- General said.

Ban said he stands by his annual report on children and armed conflict, which "describes horrors no child should have to face."



The UN chief said he had to consider "the very real prospect" that millions of other children in the Palestinian territories, South Sudan, Syria, Yemen and many other places "would suffer grievously" if U.N. Programs were defunded.

"This was one of the most painful and difficult decisions I have had to make," he said.

Speaking to the press outside of the UN Security Council chamber, he acknowledged that there was "fierce reaction to my decision to temporarily remove the Saudi-led Coalition countries from the report's annex."



Insisting that he stands by the report, the UN chief added that the Organisation "will assess the complaints that have been made, but the content will not change."



"I fully understand the criticism, but I would also like to make a larger point that speaks to many political challenges we face. When UN peacekeepers come under physical attack, they deserve strong backing by the Security Council," he added.

"When UN personnel are declared persona non grata simply for carrying out their jobs, they should be able to count on firm support from the Member States," he said.

Ban also underlined that when a UN report comes "under fire" for raising difficult issues or documenting violations of law or human rights, Member States should defend the mechanisms and mandates that they themselves have established.

"As the Secretariat carries forward the work that is entrusted to us, I count on Member States to work constructively and maintain their commitment to the cause of this Organization," he told reporters.

Responding to questions, Ban said in the course of making reports available to the Member States or in the course of preparing these reports, the Organization has found that some countries were more concerned that their names are listed together with some non-State actors, like terrorist and extremist groups.

"Therefore, I think the main reaction of the Coalition is also that their names are included and listed together with some terrorist and extremist groups. Therefore, we are now in the process of considering what would be the better modalities of listing those countries," he said, but reiterated that no decision has been made as the matter is still being discussed.
Two Indian-Americans have been named finalists for the prestigious White House Fellows programme that offers first-hand experience of working at the highest levels of the US federal government.

Tina Shah, a physician from the University of Chicago and Anjali Tripathi, an astrophysics Ph.D candidate at Harvard University, have been shortlisted for the White House Fellows Programme, the White House said yesterday.

Shah and Tripathi were among the 30 finalists selected for the programme, founded in 1964 by President Lyndon B Johnson.

The National Finalists will be evaluated by the President's Commission on White House Fellowships in Washington, DC from June 9-12, a media release said.

In a statement, the White House said this year's class of Finalists represents an accomplished and diverse cross-section of professionals from the private sector, academia, medicine, and armed services.

National Finalists for the nation's premiere program for leadership and public service have demonstrated remarkable professional achievement early in their careers, a commitment to public service, and the leadership skills needed to succeed at the highest levels of the Federal government, the White House said.

After a competitive application process, selected individuals spend a year in Washington, DC working full-time for Cabinet Secretaries, senior White House staff, and other top-ranking government officials.

Fellows also participate in an education program consisting of round-table discussions with renowned leaders from the private and public sectors, including the President and Vice President.

Fellowships are awarded on a strictly non-partisan basis.

There are more than 700 White House Fellow alumni, a distinguished group that includes former Secretary of State Colin Powell, former Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao, former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Henry Cisneros, CNN Chief Medical Correspondent Dr Sanjay Gupta, and Pulitzer Prize-winning author and historian Doris Kearns Goodwin.
Two youths were feared drowned into sea, while three others were saved, after a group of friends went for a swim off Juhu beach here, police and Fire Brigade officials said.

A group of five friends, all residents of Juhu Koliwada area, went to the famous beach at around 12:30 pm for swimming, a official from Santa Cruz Police Station said.

On-duty lifeguards and Fire Brigade personnel warned them against entering into the sea, Chief Fire Officer Prabhat Rahangadale said.

The youths, however, went to a different spot away from the main beach front and ventured into the sea. They soon started drowning, he said.

Three of them were promptly rescued by lifeguards and Fire Brigade personnel, while the other two were yet to be traced, Rahangadale said.

According to police, the duo feared drowned was identified as Rajendra Chowdhury (20) and Sameer Sheikh (18).
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has said he temporarily removed the Saudi-led coalition in from a UN blacklist for violating child rights because its supporters threatened to stop funding many UN programs.

Ban, on Thursday, said he had to consider "the very real prospect" that millions of other children in the Palestinian territories, South Sudan, Syria, and many other places "would suffer grievously" if UN programs were defunded.

"This was one of the most painful and difficult decisions I have had to make," he said.

UN secretary-generals are always subject to pressure from the 193 member nations. But in a rare rebuke, Ban said in this case some unnamed countries had gone too far, declaring "it is unacceptable for member states to exert undue pressure."

The secretary-general was responding to what he called the "fierce reaction" to his decision, which was denounced by human rights groups. They accused the UN chief of caving in to Saudi Arabia and said the US-backed coalition belongs on the list for its attacks on children, schools and hospitals.

Ban said he stands by his annual report on children and armed conflict, which "describes horrors no child should have to face."

The report said the UN verified a total of 1,953 youngsters killed and injured in in 2015 a six-fold increase compared with 2014 and it attributed about 60% of those casualties to the coalition. The UN said it also verified 101 attacks on schools and hospitals last year, double the number in 2014, of which 48% were attributed to the coalition.

Ban said he decided "to temporarily remove" the Saudi-led coalition countries from the blacklist of governments and armed groups violating children's rights pending a joint review of cases with the Saudis.

"We will assess the complaints that have been made, but the content will not change," he said.

Ban did not say explicitly that the coalition could go back on the list after the review.

But the secretary-general did say that in response to concerns from Saudi Arabia and other governments the UN is considering if there is a better way to distinguish countries from "terrorist and extremist groups" who are now listed together on the blacklist.

Saudi Arabia's UN Ambassador Abdallah Al-Mouallimi told reporters shortly afterward that "It is our firm belief that this de-listing is final, irreversible and unconditional, and when all the facts are in that will be further reconfirmed.
The Israeli army's decision to block Palestinians from entering Israel following a deadly attack in Tel Aviv may amount to collective punishment, the UN said today, criticising the move.

After Palestinian gunmen shot dead four people in the coastal city, the Israeli army said crossings to Israel from the West Bank and the Gaza Strip would be closed in all but "medical and humanitarian cases".

United Nations rights chief Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein condemned the attack but was also "deeply concerned" by Israel's response, his office said in a statement.

The Jewish state's reaction "includes measures that may amount to prohibited collective punishment and will only increase the sense of injustice and frustration felt by Palestinians in this very tense time," the statement said.

Israel's mission to the UN in Geneva accused the rights chief of rushing "to defend the terrorists."



It called on Zeid's office to "take another look at the current situation in the Middle East, so it may understand the absurdity of its own statement."



An Israeli army spokeswoman said the closure would remain in force until midnight Sunday.

A spokeswoman for COGAT, the defence ministry unit which manages civilian affairs in the occupied West Bank, said that about 10,000 Palestinians were nevertheless allowed into Jerusalem for Muslim prayers on the first Friday of Ramadan at the Al-Aqsa mosque complex.

Israel has also revoked work permits for 204 of the attackers' relatives and the army blockaded their West Bank hometown of Yatta.
Describing the just concluded US visit of Prime Minister as "historic", the Obama administration has christened his vision of Indo-US ties that has overcome the "hesitations of history" and working for the betterment of the global good as "Modi Doctrine".

"The most important outcome in my mind of the visit this week and of the years of effort that preceded it is the clear and compelling vision that was laid out by Prime Minister Modi before joint session of the US Congress," Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asia Nisha Desai Biswal said.

"This vision which I have come to call The Modi Doctrine laid out a foreign policy that overcomes the hesitations of history and embraces the convergence between our two countries and our shared interests," Biswal told a Washington audience.

Biswal, the Obama Administration's point person for South and Central Asia, said this at a discussion on 'Security and Strategic Outcomes from the Modi Visit' organised yesterday in Washington jointly by the Heritage Foundation -- an American think- tank -- and India Foundation, a New Delhi based think-tank.

Modi, she said, in his speech furthered his bold vision of India-US partnership that can anchor peace, prosperity and stability from Asia to Africa, from the Indian Ocean to the Pacific and help ensure the security of the sea lanes of commerce and freedom of navigation on the seas.

"This Modi Doctrine notes that the absence of an agreed security architecture creates uncertainty in Asia and reiterates India's adherence to and calls for others support for international laws and norms," Biswal said.

India, she said, is now key element of Obama Administration's rebalance to Asia, a strategy which recognizes that America's security and prosperity increasingly depend on the security and prosperity of the Indo-Pacific.

"The joint strategic vision which was issued last year laid out our mutual goals and interests in the Indo-Pacific and across the global commons. We are now implementing a road map that sets out a path of co-operation to achieve those goals and protect those interests," Biswal said.

In his remarks, US Ambassador to India Richard Verma said the US welcomes and shares the Prime Minister's vision.

"We have made a clear and strategic choice to support India's transition to become, as Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar has articulated, a leading power. Our actions, as security partners in every sense of the word, speak to this endeavor," he said.

"We envision India as a leading power that can uphold international norms and support what Defence Secretary Carter called last week a 'principled security network' in Asia. A leading power that can grow its economy while at the same time demonstrating global leadership on clean energy and climate," he said.

"And a leading power that joins like minded partners to safeguard the global commons. Realising this vision will require diligent work on part of the bureaucracies in both Washington and Delhi and resilience to overcome obstacles that may arise," Verma said.

Indian Ambassador to the US Arun K Singh described the Prime Minister's visit as "historic".

"There is a need step-by-step to build confidence and to build the habit of working together. That calls for regular meetings including at the highest levels," Singh said.

On the political side, he said: "We are finding that even though we may not agree on every aspect there is an increasing convergence in our interest and assessment of issues."



In the Prime Minister's speech to the Congress there was a reflection of the fact that this growing convergence is in the interest of India and the US. The areas of convergence are in the field of terrorism, situation in the Indian Ocean, Asia Pacific region, cyber issues.

Singh said the two countries have recognised that clean energy would be an important area of partnership.

These remarks were followed by a panel discussion by G Parthasarthy, former Indian diplomat, Baijayant Panda, Member of Parliament; Vice Admiral (rtd) Shekhar Sinha; Sadanand Dhume, resident fellow, American Enterprise Institute and Ashley J Tellis, from Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Panda said some senior people from the US State Department have described Prime Minister's speech and his vision of India-US relationship as 'Modi doctrine'.

"This is not a coinage from the Indian side. This is a coinage from the American side, which I think is a very important way to describe it. So clearly it is historic shifting of gears," he said.
The US Navy lifted some restrictions on off-base activity in Japan today but maintained a prohibition on alcohol consumption as the military tries to repair aggravated relations with a Japanese public outraged by recent alleged crimes.

US Naval Forces of Japan said in a statement that sailors are now allowed to leave base. The restrictions were imposed Monday following the weekend arrest of a US sailor for alleged drunken driving.

In a separate case, Japanese police yesterday said a US military contractor arrested on suspicion of abandoning the body of a young woman on Okinawa is now officially the prime suspect in her murder and rape.

The arrest took up a significant part of a Japan-US summit that was held a week later, causing President Barack Obama to apologise. The US Marines on Okinawa issued an order two days later restricting celebrations and off-base drinking.

Police said yesterday that Kenneth Shinzato, who is also a former Marine, is now the prime suspect in the murder and rape of the 20-year-old woman whose body was found last month, three weeks after she disappeared. An autopsy on the decomposed body could not determine the cause of death.

Okinawa police said the suspect hit the woman on the head with a club, dragged her into the weeds and raped her, while strangling her and stabbing her with a knife. Kyodo service reported that Shinzato told police that he drove around for a few hours to find an assault target.

Police arrested Shinzato, 32, on May 19 after he told investigators where they could find the woman's body in a forest.

Born Kenneth Gadson, reportedly from New York City, he is married to a Japanese woman and used her family name, Shinzato, instead of his own. He worked on Kadena Air Base as an employee for a contractor that provides services to U.S. bases on Okinawa.

Okinawa Gov Takeshi Onaga, who has demanded that the central government do more to reduce the military burden on the southern islands, called the crime "extremely inhuman and dastardly" and "unforgivable."



Tensions are already high over a plan to relocate a Marine Corps air station to a less-populated part of Okinawa. About half of about 50,000 US troops stationed in Japan are on the island, and many residents resent the burden they bear for the defense of Japan and the region. They want the air station to be moved off Okinawa all together.

The Futenma relocation is part of a broader plan to reduce the impact of US military bases that was triggered by the 1995 gang rape of a teenage girl by three American servicemen.

The latest murder has sparked calls for a further reduction of American bases, as well as a revision of the Status of Forces Agreement, under which the handover of suspects accused of crimes while on duty or on base to Japanese authorities is not compulsory.
A US admiral has pleaded guilty to lying about his relationship with a Singapore-based defense contractor at the center of a massive bribery scandal that has tarnished top naval officers.

Rear Admiral Robert Gilbeau -- the highest-ranking Navy officer charged in the ongoing probe -- admitted before a federal judge yesterday in San Diego that he had lied when he told investigators that he had never received gifts from Leonard Francis, owner of Glenn Defense Marine Asia (GDMA).

Few admirals in the history of the US Navy have ever been convicted of a felony charge.

Gilbeau, 55, told the court that he had misled investigators when he told them he always paid his share when he and Francis dined together about three times a year over a period of several years.

He also admitted that he destroyed documents and deleted computer files when he became aware in September 2013 that Francis and others had been arrested in connection with the fraud and bribery probe.

Gilbeau, who was awarded the Bronze Star and Purple Heart during his 37-year career, is scheduled to be sentenced in the case on August 26.

His attorney David Benowitz told AFP that he would seek probation for his client while prosecutors have agreed to ask the judge that Gilbeau be sentenced to no more than 12 to 18 months in prison.

According to the plea deal, Gilbeau also agreed to pay USD 50,000 restitution to the Navy and a USD 100,000 fine. He will also perform 300 hours of community service.

"Of those who wear our nation's uniform in the service of our country, only a select few have been honored to hold the rank of admiral -- and not a single one is above the law," prosecutor Laura Duffy said.

"Admiral Gilbeau lied to federal agents investigating corruption and fraud, and then tried to cover up his deception by destroying documents and files."



Francis admitted in January that his company, which provided port services, plied naval officers with cash, prostitutes, Cuban cigars and Kobe beef to ensure US Navy ships stopped at ports where GDMA operated.

The Malaysian businessman earned the nickname "Fat Leonard" in maritime circles because of his girth.

So far, a total of 14 people, including 11 current and former Navy officials, have been charged in connection with the case.

Seven of them have already pleaded guilty and been sentenced to prison terms ranging from 27 months to six and a half years, accompanied by heavy fines.

One of those convicted, US Navy Captain Daniel Dusek, was sentenced in March to 46 months in prison for giving classified information to GDMA in exchange for prostitutes and lavish gifts.
The United States has condemned Bashar al-Assad's Syrian regime, accusing it of bombing starving civilians just hours after they received a long-delayed UN aid shipment.

Late on Thursday, the besieged rebel-held town of Daraya received its first United Nations food delivery since 2012, a lifeline for the suffering population.

Shortly afterwards, according to a witness and human rights monitors, Assad's forces bombarded the town, dropping indiscriminate barrel bombs from helicopters as residents shared food.

"The Syrian regime conducted multiple barrel bomb attacks on Daraya this morning," State Department spokesman Mark Toner said yesterday.

"That came just hours after the UN convoy arrived," he told reporters.

"Obviously such attacks are unacceptable in any circumstance but in this case they also hampered the delivery and distribution of badly needed assistance."



Toner said the fact that Assad had allowed the convoy in to the town at all was "positive, but only a partial delivery and we would call for the rest of the supplies to be delivered as as soon as possible."



And he said that only the United Nations should decide where and when to distribute aid inside Syria and that the fate of hungry populations must not be left to the regime.
A 23-year-old Uzbek woman was allegedly thrashed and raped by a friend at a hotel in east Delhi, police said today.

The complainant, who had come to India on a tourist visa and lived at a friend's house in Saket, told police that on May 11, she had gone to meet a friend at his residence in Gagan Vihar.

When she reached there, there was no electricity at his house, following which they both went to a hotel in east Delhi.

They had dinner there, following which the friend persuaded her to accompany her to a room where they were joined by two others around 2 AM, a police official said.

The men then allegedly asked her to have sex with them and when she refused, they allegedly thrashed her and even tried to strangulate her.

Later, her friend allegedly forced himself upon her and went off to sleep, while the others left the room.

The accused also allegedly threatened her not to leave the room without permission but the complainant escaped once he was asleep and reported the matter to police the next day, the official said.

She also told police that the accused called her up the next morning apologising for his act and claimed that he was in an inebriated state.

The statement of the complainant has been recorded and the case is being probed from all possible angles, the official added.

However, no one has been arrested in connection with the matter yet.
In a sarcastic take on Prime Minister Narendra Modi's bonhomie with Barack Obama, key BJP ally on Friday wondered if the US President will shift to India, when his term gets over.

The Sena also slammed the US for pursuing a "dual policy" towards India and Pakistan.

"US President has become a good friend of PM Modi. Their relationship is so deep that we wonder if the Obama family will shift to Surat, Rajkot, Porbandar, Manali, Mahabaleshwar or Delhi post his retirement. No other Indian PM would have got so much love from a US President in the past," the Sena said in an editorial in party mouthpiece 'Saamana.' Obama's presidency is set to end on January 20, 2017.

The Sena said that Modi thanking US for standing by India in its times of need is only an example of his courteous nature.

"But, it is the same US, which has not stopped its policy of helping Pakistan financially or providing them with arms and ammunition. On one hand, US helps India fight terrorism and on the other, sells F-16 fighter jets to the terrorist nation. This policy of US is dangerous," it said.

Noting that it was true that US has warned Pakistan to take action against the perpetrators of terror at Pathankot IAF base, Sena sought to know who will take action against the terrorists.

"US enters a country where its enemy (apparently referring to Osama Bin Laden) is hiding and guns him down, but for India, it only gives warnings. This duplicity needs to be understood," the Sena said.

Treating Pathankot attack on par with 26/11, Obama in a clear message asked Pakistan to punish the perpetrators and vowed to stand with India against terror threats emanating from Pakistan-based groups such as JeM, LeT and D-company.
Demanding a wage hike, casual workers at Motors Surajpur manufacturing facility in Uttar Pradesh on Friday staged a protest disrupting normal functioning.

The temporary workers were demanding increase in their salaries on the lines of the wage agreement the company had recently signed with its permanent employees.

The company said it had recently concluded the three-years wage settlement agreement with the trade unions representing the permanent workers of Surajpur and Faridabad plants. As a token of gesture, we also announced some increment for the temporary workers, that is over and above the increment mandated according to the minimum wages notified by the state government from time to time. A few temporary workers at the Surajpur Plant expressed dissatisfaction and staged a protest demanding higher increment.



The company has alleged that few temporary workers, affiliated to the rival group of the current union body, are instigating the majority and are responsible for the disturbance.

Around 30 per cent of temporary workers reported to work in the morning shift while during evening shift, 70 per cent people have resumed duty, the Japanese firm said.

India Motor has three manufacturing facilities at Surajpur, Faridabad in Haryana and Kanchipuram in Tamil Nadu.

The company caters to domestic as well as international markets through these three plants.
The impasse shows that little progress in negotiations has been made since Monsanto on May 24 turned down its German peer's $122-per-share cash offer but said it was open to "continued and constructive conversations."

Monsanto has said that Bayer's offer "significantly undervalues (the) company and also does not adequately address or provide reassurance for some of the potential financing and regulatory execution risks related to the acquisition."

Bayer, however, has no plans to increase its offer without first reviewing Monsanto's confidential information, the sources said on condition of anonymity because of the confidentiality of the talks.

The Leverkusen-based company needs access to Monsanto's books before it can decide whether it can pay a higher price, as well as offer a more detailed plan on how to address potential antitrust risks, the sources added.

Bayer also has no intention currently to go hostile with its bid, the sources said.

Monsanto, based in St. Louis, has not directly told Bayer that it is looking for better terms in order for it to offer the German company access to confidential information, according to one of the sources.

However, Monsanto's lack of engagement demonstrates that it not only views Bayer's offer as too low, but that it does not even consider it as a basis for negotiations, the sources said.

The situation did not change even after Monsanto held a regular board meeting this week to approve a quarterly dividend of 54 cents per share.

Bayer declined to comment, while a Monsanto spokeswoman did not respond to a request for comment.

The Wall Street Journal had reported earlier on Friday that Bayer had made a new takeover approach to Monsanto that was rebuffed, in part because it didn't include a higher price.

Bayer's unsolicited bid for Monsanto is the largest all-cash takeover on record, according to Thomson data, just ahead of InBev SA's $60.4 billion offer for Anheuser-Busch in June 2008.

Global agrochemicals companies are racing to consolidate, partly in response to a drop in commodity prices that has hit farm incomes. Seeds and pesticides markets are also increasingly converging.

ChemChina plans to buy Switzerland's Syngenta for $43 billion, after Syngenta rejected a bid from Monsanto. Dow Chemical Co and DuPont are forging a $130 billion business.

(Reporting by Greg Roumeliotis in New York; Additional reporting by Arno Schuetz and PJ Huffstutter in Chicago; Editing by Paul Simao)
Commercial Feature is a Business Standard Digital Marketing Initiative.

The Editorial/Content team at Business Standard has not contributed to writing or editing these articles.

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The industry is ready to meet global obligations to ensure that manufacture and trade of dual use items are not diverted or re-exported for unauthorized use, Ficci said hoping that the US will push for India's membership at the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG).

The industry body welcomed the operationalisation of India US Civil Nuclear Deal.

It also hailed the initiation of preparatory work on six nuclear reactors in India between Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited (NPCIL) and Westinghouse, saying it is expected to unleash a "$150 billion nuclear industry in India thereby creating jobs and ensuring access to clean energy and ensuring our energy security".

The NPCIL and US firm Westinghouse have agreed to begin engineering and site design work immediately for the six nuclear power plant reactors and conclude contractual arrangements by June 2017.

"Indian industry welcomes the country's entry to the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR) regime and hopes the US will do the heavy lifting to push for India's membership at the NSG to be decided later this month.

"It will help the India-US collaboration in high technology in critical areas and will enable high value technology embedded trade for Make in India projects. This also opens up opportunities for similar cooperation with countries like the UK and France," the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) said in a statement Thursday.

Earlier this week, India cleared all hurdles in getting membership of the MTCR, a key anti-proliferation grouping, as no member country opposed its entry into it.

Membership of the group will help India access high-end missile technology.

Ficci said the step further cements the strategic relationship between the two nations reaffirming the "trusted partner" status that has been accorded to India in Defence & Aerospace.

The NSG had granted an exclusive waiver for India in 2008 to access civil nuclear technology after China reluctantly backed India's case based on the Indo-US nuclear deal.

"Indian industry is ready to meet international obligations and licensing norms to ensure that technology acquisition, manufacture and trade of dual use items will not be diverted or re-exported for unauthorized use.

"Indian industry is ready to work on Internal Compliance Programs and international best practices to ensure the country's non-proliferation records," Ficci Secretary General A Didar Singh said.

The industry body said these positive developments in civil nuclear energy sector will send the right signals for the reoperationalisation of the domestic nuclear programme which has been stalled for last two years on the nuclear liability issue.

"The finalisation of the Indian Nuclear Insurance Pool (INIP) policy for the operator augurs well in this positive environment, Ficci now hopes that the INIP for the supplier gets IRDA approval at the earliest, so that the domestic program can be reinitiated," it said.
The Food Minister Ram Villas Paswan has proposed to impose 25 per cent duty on export of sugar on Thursday to ensure sufficient supply of the sweetener in the domestic market as international prices of sugar are rising.

The move will maintain adequate availability of sugar in the market and keep the price under control, said Paswan.

The country had exported 1.4 million tonnes of sugar so far in the 2015-16 marketing year (October-September).

Retail sugar prices last month had crossed Rs 40 per kg due to 11 per cent fall in domestic sugar output in the ongoing 2015-16 season.

Sugar production in India, the world's second largest producer is estimated to be about 25 million tonnes in 2015-16, as against 28.3 million tonnes last year.

As demand and supply of sugar in India are at par, the government does not want any export from the country.

While this could create losses for many firms, there are benifical takeaways too.

A modelling study published by a multidisiplimary Open Access journal PLOS ONE analysed what consequence 20 per cent tax on sugar-sweetened beverages in Australia and the impact it could have on health and healthcare expenditure. The analysis proved that the sugar tax has a potential to reduce the burden of disease and medical expenditure in the short term.

A research essay by Economics Help, a blog that publishes essays on topical issues, discussed the consequence of sugar tax. It argued for a tax on sugar in the market as sugar possesses a negative externality and intern a personal cost of diabetes, obesity and tooth decay.

Additionally, a 25 per cent tax on this demerit good could increase fiscal revenue for the nation and can be channelled into government projects.

The sugar tax will also encourage the market to produce healthier alternatives and creating a better lifestyle.

(With PTI Inputs)


China has expressed serious concern over India starting an anti-dumping investigation against Chinese steel products, while New Delhi has already imposed anti-dumping duty on them.

India launched an anti-dumping investigation in April into hot-rolled steel coils imported from China, making for the fourth such probe against China this year, state-run Xinhua news agency reported, citing a Chinese commerce ministry statement.

Terming excess steel capacity as a "global challenge", China said countries should unite to face up to it, rather than abuse trade remedy measures. The commerce ministry statement said China and India should "properly handle trade frictions".

It also hoped the Indian government would conduct a "fair and transparent investigation" in line with World Trade Organization (WTO) rules, and avoid adopting trade remedy measures against Chinese steel products.

Commerce Minister Nirmala Sitharaman informed the lower house of Parliament last month that the Director General Anti-Dumping and Allied Duties had initiated anti-dumping investigations on certain types of cold rolled steel and hot rolled flat steel products originating from China, Japan, Russia, South Korea, Brazil and Indonesia.

In December last, India imposed anti-dumping duty, ranging from five per cent to a whopping 57 per cent, on cold rolled steel from China, South Africa, Taiwan, Thailand and the US to curb its imports. Imports from China were mandated the highest levy-57.39 percent.

The move came in wake of the 20 per cent import tax failing to check cheaper imports, resulting in losses to domestic producers such as the state-run Steel Authority of India.

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley has been maintaining that one factor contributing to the huge stressed assets of state-run banks has been the difficulties in the steel sector, which has been vehemently complaining of dumping by China.

In April, India imposed anti-dumping duty on telecom equipment exported by some Chinese companies, notably Huawei, ZTE, Alcatel's Shanghai unit and ECI, in a bid to protect the domestic industry.
India has joined a group of nearly 40 nations that have signed a Europe-led clampdown on tax evasion and corruption, committing to automatically exchange information on beneficial ownership, the UK government said.

"The following countries have committed to the initiative to automatically exchange information on beneficial ownership.

The next stage will be for the development of a global standard for this exchange," said a release Wednesday by the UK s Treasury Department with a list of all those signed up.

Besides India, some of the other countries outside Europe on the list include Afghanistan, Nigeria, Mexico and the UAE.

The initiative aims to develop a global standard for the automatic exchange of beneficial ownership data between law enforcement agencies and tax authorities of partner countries.

"This will mean that everyone in the world will be able to see who really owns and controls each and every company in these countries," Cameron had said last month when he had announced the new initiative at the Anti-Corruption Summit 2016 here.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi made an election pledge in 2014 to recover billions of dollars sent to tax havens abroad to avoid income tax. The move is seen as a step in that direction.

Most European countries except Switzerland are signed up to this automatic exchange mechanism.

Earlier this week, Switzerland had agreed to work with Indian authorities to tackle tax evaders with Swiss bank accounts.
Reserve Bank Governor Raghuram Rajan on Thursday said the technological progress is making the middle class anxious about job security globally.

"The emerging threat is it's not the guy in Bengaluru but the robot next door who's going to take your job. This creates anxiety in middle class and you can see it expressed in the political dialogue that is taking place both in the US as well as in the run up to Brexit in Britain," Rajan said speaking at the launch of a book "World 2050" here this evening.

He further said there's flexible manufacturing, big data, connectivity and robotics which are changing the entire landscape, wherein only professionals in the hi-tech sector or those lower down like security guards are feeling secure, while leaving the middle class anxious.

"There's a sense that middle class jobs are disappearing either because of technology or globalisation and as a result, something has to be done. Nobody knows what, but the populists have the answer," he said, adding this results in attitudes like keeping out immigrants and also technology.

This technological change is also leading to concerns among exporting countries like India and Vietnam as they are wondering what to do if the demand for their goods and services wanes, Rajan added.

The comments come in wake of a referendum in the UK on whether to stay in the European Union and also within weeks of the ultra-right billionaire Donald Trump becoming the Republican nominee for the US Presidential polls.

On emerging market economies, Rajan said there is a need to "be sensitive to the fact that we are in an integrated world where there are spillover effects to the other".

"Given all the problems we have today, how do you alter global governance? How do we alter global governance to accommodate important countries such as India which are growing stronger, economically by the day and relative to the industrial countries? How we take cognisance of the fact that world is much more integrated and therefore policies of many countries have spillovers," he said.

Rajan also rued that at present, there is no system for coordinating to fight the spillover effects and also the attitudes of some industrial countries.

"There are many actions which are uncoordinated which create spillovers. But even... there are countries looking out and saying we shouldn't be so integrated. And this is the debate, for example Brexit debate that is going on," he said.

Speaking at the same event, former deputy chairman of the erstwhile Planning Commission, Montek Singh Ahluwalia, said India is not facing the problem of inequality in the same way as the industrially developed world.

"They are experiencing increase in inequality in an environment of overall low growth. We are experiencing inequality in an environment of overall faster growth," he explained.

Declining to opine on the crucial question of an extension in Rajan's tenure, Ahluwalia told reporters, "I was delighted when the government at that time appointed him, and I think he has done a fantastic job."

Ahluwalia also welcomed the key takeaways from Prime Minister Narendra Modi's "successful" visit to the US, and added that we need to do more to nurture the partnership further.


Shares of YES Bank settled the day 2.11 per cent up in Friday's trade after the bank informed on BSE that it has acquired an 8 per cent stake in Receivables Exchange of India (RXIL).

The stock added as much as 2.71 per cent to Rs 1,062.75 on BSE but settled the day 2.11 per cent higher.



"YES Bank has executed a share subscription and shareholders' agreement agreeing to subscribe for 20,00,000 equity shares of RXIL," it said in a BSE filing on Thursday.

The bank said the subscription is equivalent to 8 per cent of the post-issue paid-up capital of RXIL.

RXIL is a joint venture company setup by NSE Strategic Investment Corporation Limited and Small Industries Development Bank of India.
Union Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari announced on Thursday that the central government has plans to connect Agra and Delhi by seaplanes in the next three months. This ambitious plan underlines New Delhi's intention to augment transportation infrastructure in the country.

A seaplane, as the name suggests, takes off and lands on water and has skis instead of wheels that allow it to do so.

This project arises in the wake of the Waterways Bill that was passed by the Parliament on March 11 that intends to revolutionise transportation in India. It aims at adding 106 inland waterways in the country.

In addition to the seaplanes, the Centre also plans on introducing hovercrafts and seabuses in all waterways, the Union minister told Uttar Pradesh-based reporters through a video conference on Thursday.

"A detailed project report (DPR) for Yamuna is in place. In the initial phase, dredging will be done from Palla village to Wazirabad in Delhi," the minister further said as reported by TNN
As expected, Motorola's modular phone got official at Lenovo's Tech World event in San Francisco. The company announced two new smartphones - Moto Z and Moto Z Force - with Moto Mods. The Moto Mods are snap-on accessories that magnetically attach to the back of the smartphone with 16-pin connector to transform the functionality of the phone. Using these mods, the Moto Z and Moto Z Force can be converted into a powerful audio speaker, video projector, battery powerhouse and more.

The three completed mods announced include built-in battery and adds to the weight of the device. The audio speaker mod comes from JBL that will beef up the phone's sound and has got a built-in kickstand. Then there is an Insta-share projector that can project photos and videos up to 70 inches with 480 pixel resolution. The projection can be done directly on the wall or ceiling. Lenovo already has built-in projection in a couple of its Yoga Tablets. Lastly, there is a PowerPack mod that can add an extra juice of up to 22 hours using 2,200 mAh external battery. There are additional style shells that doesn't add any functionality but are designed to change the look of the phone.

The company is also working on a camera shell and all these mods will be compatible with future generation of Moto Z smartphones. Lenovo has also announced a developer platform allowing developers to built the mod they want. The Lenovo Capital and Incubator Group is also offering an equity funding of $1 million for any individual or company that comes up with the best Moto Mod prototype by March 31, 2017.

The Motorola Moto Z features a 5.5inch QHD AMOKED display and is 5.2mm thin. It is powered by a 2.2Ghz Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 processor and is paired with 4GB of RAM. IT will be available in 32GB and 64GB storage options with microSD slot and a 2600mAh battery, Turbo Charing support. It has got a 13MP rear camera, 5MP front facing camera, fingerprint scanner, water repellent nano coating, 4G LTE support and more. There isn't any 3.5mm audio jack and one has to use the Type-C port for audio. It runs on Android Marshmallow. The Moto Z Force shares the same set of specifications with a few changes. As the name suggests, it features the Shattershield technology for the shatterproof glass display. The camera onboard is 21MP rear camera and it comes with 3500 mAh battery.

The company hasn't release the pricing or the launch date yet but the Moto Z will be available globally in the month of September.
A British exit from the EU would be very damaging for the farming and food sector in Ireland according to the President of the Irish Farmers Association (IFA), Joe Healy.



The UK represents Ireland's most important agri-food export market accounting for over 40% of Irish agricultural exports. The UK is the destination for over 50% of Irish beef, 60% of Irish cheese, 350m worth of pigmeat exports and almost 100% of Irish mushroom exports.



The IFA claim that the uncertainties presented by the changed trading relationship between the UK and EU pose a significant threat with the potential reintroduction of tariffs, quotas and border controls.

The Association claims the costs of trading with the UK would inevitably, rise. In addition, they believe that the threat of displacement of Irish product from the UK market is very real, should the UK enter into preferential trade agreements with other exporting countries.



Speaking at a briefing with representatives from the agri-food industry in Dublin on Wednesday morning, the IFA President said, "From an Irish farming and agri-food perspective, it is hugely important for Ireland that the UK remains within the EU."

He added, "While a UK exit from the EU would be negative overall for the Irish economy, the stakes are highest for farming and the agri-food sector, with our huge dependence on the UK market for our 4.4bn exports, the shared land border, and the potential impact on the CAP budget."

Source: www.businessworld.ie

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New research conducted by PSG Plus amongst a nationally representative sample of 1,000 consumers and 40 of the top Irish business leaders showed a potential disconnect between how consumers and Irish organisations perceive crises.



The biggest fear for business leaders was loss of customer data through a breach or hacking (90%) while consumers biggest business taboo was being misled or lied to by a company.



Over 36% of consumers would hold the entire senior management team responsible for resolving the crisis. This is at odds with responses from CEO research, 66% of whom assume responsibility themselves.



Furthermore, 79% of consumers will not forgive companies that mislead them, seeing it as the single most unforgiveable act for any company to commit.



Agency Director at PSG Plus, Alan Tyrrell commented, "Interestingly, 45% of consumers expect an organisation to immediately launch an investigation into how the crisis occurred. 39% of consumers will seek facts from regulatory bodies, with another 30% going to traditional media."

He added, "Organisations now have a very short window of time to inform, communicate and manage crises effectively, as consumers will rapidly fill the communications gap themselves via social media. Senior business leaders must learn to communicate very efficiently, otherwise they run the risk of a crisis becoming a catastrophe."



Source: www.businessworld.ie

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The latest European Chief Financial Officer survey from Deloitte shows that over half of Irish CFOs (58%) believe that a Brexit would negatively impact their business.



Only 6% of Irish respondents believe a Brexit would have a positive impact on their businesses while 23% believe it will have little or no impact.



The research shows that Irish CFOs remain optimistic about the prospects of their own companies with 45% of CFOs more optimistic than they were six months ago.

Ireland leads the way on hiring across Europe with 68% of CFOs forecasting an increase in job numbers (up from 55% in last survey).



However, the political environment continues to worry CFOs. Perceptions of uncertainty have risen, cost control remains a top business priority and appetite for risk is diminishing. Uncertainty is particularly high in Ireland with 52% of CFOs reporting high financial and economic uncertainty.



Partner at Deloitte Ireland, Alan Flanagan said, "While optimism has declined amongst Irish CFOs, they are broadly confident in their own organisations despite uncertainty around the approaching Brexit referendum and the political uncertainty that arose from the recent general election."

He added, "Despite a weak appetite for risk, Irish CFOs show a willingness to invest in capital expenditure and a particularly strong outlook for hiring. However, while a positive outlook for revenue growth prevails, almost half of Irish CFOs do not anticipate growth in operating margins, driving a focus on cost control and reduction."

Source: www.businessworld.ie

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It was announced yesterday that up to 180 jobs for Irish language speakers are expected to become available in EU institutions in Brussels and Luxemburg between now and the end of 2021.

A recruitment campaign for the first 62 Translator positions has just been launched.



Irish was recognised as an official and working language of the European Union in 2007. Since then, a derogation on the level of Irish language services to be provided has been in place.

In December 2015, the European Council adopted a regulation aimed at ending the derogation by the end of 2021.

EU institutions are now preparing to gradually provide Irish language services at the same level as those provided for the other official languages of the EU. With this in mind, this competition to recruit Irish language translators has opened yesterday and will close on July 12th. The competition is to fill up to 62 positions for Irish-speaking linguists based in Brussels and Luxembourg.



The competition is open to university graduates, including those graduating this summer, with an excellent command of Irish and a thorough knowledge of at least two other official EU languages including English, French or German.

The salary scale for the positions starts at 4,384 per month. Successful candidates may also qualify for additional allowances depending on their personal circumstances.



Director General of Translation at the European Commission, Mr Rytis Martikonis commented, "Its a stimulating time for the Irish-speaking community. The EU institutions are fully committed and will work in close partnership with Ireland in meeting the challenges ahead."

He added, "These positions represent great professional and personal opportunities and I urge you all to apply and participate actively in the competition."

Source: www.businessworld.ie

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The seventh annual Council Meeting of the 30% Club Ireland was hosted by Facebook Ireland yesterday.



The 30% Club is a global movement of international Chairs and CEOs who are committed to better gender balance at all levels of their organisations through voluntary actions.

The movement seeks to gain support for gender balance in business from leaders of public, private, state and multinational companies and other interested groups.



The event, which took place at Facebooks international headquarters in Dublin, was entitled Lead with Purpose and saw a panel of women and men from leading business organisations discuss the issue of gender diversity in both the public and private sector.



Speaking at the event, Finance Operations Director at Facebook and 30% Club Council Member, Majella Mungovan commented, "Todays event is a very important one, to raise the issue of gender diversity in the technology sector. At Facebook, we place major emphasis on developing the pipeline of female talent coming into the industry and strengthening the community of women at the company."

She added, "Programs such as unconscious bias training for all staff, mentoring circles and events such as Womens Leadership Day are among the specific, industry-leading initiatives we have put in place at Facebook to address gender diversity."

Source: www.businessworld.ie

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Advertising agencies are for the first time turning to Instagram more frequently than Twitter for social media ad campaigns, a survey released Thursday showed, a further indication of weakness in an ad sales operation that has been one of the few bright spots for Twitter.

The survey, from a unit of Comcast called Strata, came the same week Twitter Inc said its head of product, who took over the team in September, was leaving. The research firm eMarketer said earlier this month that Snapchat was on pace to surpass Twitter in U.S. active users, highlighting the threat Twitter faces from faster-growing competitors.

Amid Twitter's ongoing struggles with stagnant user growth, management turmoil and a tumbling stock price, the advertising operations under chief operating office Adam Bain had been a relative oasis of stability. Bain, who joined the company in 2010, helped build Twitter from scratch to more than $1 billion revenue in just over three years.

But cracks in the ad business began to emerge in the company's first-quarter earnings report, in which it missed its numbers due to weaker-than-expected spending by big advertisers and provided a weak revenue forecast. The stock has fallen 15 percent since the April earnings announcement and closed Wednesday at $14.60 - far below its $26 IPO price in November of 2013.

The Strata survey asked 83 advertising agencies which social platform their clients preferred for social media campaigns. Sixty-three percent of advertisers said they were most likely to use photo-sharing app Instagram, compared with 56 percent who said they would use social network Twitter. Facebook dominated, with 96 percent of advertisers saying they were likely to use it.

Twitter rejected the survey results, pointing to a 2015 study by Advertiser Perceptions that showed 37 percent of advertisers intended to buy ads on Twitter, compared with 28 percent on Instagram, which is owned by Facebook. The same study showed that 46 percent were considering buying ads on Twitter compared with 41 percent on Instagram.

"The data presented in this survey couldn't be farther from the truth," a Twitter spokesperson said. "We have close relationships with our agency clients and continue to hear that Twitter offers the most powerful creative canvas."

Still, the survey shows the growing power of Instagram, which has the benefit of using Facebook's advertising technology and has been rolling out features that make it more useful for sharing news and activity updates that are the bread and butter of Twitter. Instagram has more than 200,000 advertisers compared with Twitter's 130,000.

"We're seeing almost all of our clients shifting if not all of their budgets, then most of their budgets from Twitter to Instagram," said Chris Gilbert, senior social strategist at digital agency Kettle, which works mostly with fashion brands. "Marketers typically want to be where the audience is."

Some ad agencies said their clients are shifting more of their budgets to Instagram because it has more users - more than 400 million compared with 310 million on Twitter - and because Facebook's ad technology allows them to target highly specific audiences.

"We've had more emphasis on Instagram for the last year," said Jason Peterson, chief creative officer at ad agency Havas Worldwide North America.

Instagram declined to comment on the Strata survey. (Reuters)

Source: www.businessworld.ie

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Graphic illustrating the lowest weekly wages among 381 metropolitan statistical areas throughout the United States. Data and image from pewresearch.org

A recent report by the Pew Research Center suggests that a weekly wage in the Logan, Utah metro (which includes Preston, Idaho) isnt worth very much. In fact, the report suggests wages in Logan are among the lowest in the country.

After adjusting for cost of living, <a href=http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/06/02/where-wages-are-worth-the-most-and-least-in-the-u-s/#comments target=_blank>the report</a> says the average weekly wage in Logan is $709, placing the Logan metro as the eighth worst in the country. Only a handful of metro areas around the country have lower weekly wages than that, including St. George, Utah (which was second to last at $655 a week).

President and CEO of the Cache Chamber of Commerce Sandy Emile admits that wages in the area are low, but being in a college town and having several manufacturing businesses contributes to that.

Those university students, many of them, work part time, or work internships, or they, in all honesty, work reduced wages, Emile explains. Whether they should or not is neither here nor there. That definitely skews our wage base for Logan City and makes it a little bit different than what it actually is.

Emile believes that if that population of the workforce was eliminated from the equation the average wage would increase dramatically. However, she believes it still wouldnt be as high as perhaps it could or should be.

Many of our high-tech businesses are paying well below what the national average is for that same position elsewhere, she continues. Many of our businesses choose to stay in Cache Valley because they can actually do many of these jobs and not have to pay a Denver wage or certainly we wouldnt want somebody to have to pay a California wage or an Alaskan wage.

The Pew Research Center study also considered regional price variations to determine what a wage in each metropolitan statistical area is really worth. If wages are low but cost of living is also low, the adjusted wage may appear higher.

Emile cites a study she recently read that suggests that while wages may be low in Cache Valley, the cost of living is also low. Combining both factors, Emile says, suggests that the Logan area is 107% of the national average.

Nationally, wages have grown at a modest pace since 2000 at 7.4%. According to an <a href=http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/05/31/oil-and-gas-boom-feeds-greatest-real-wage-growth-in-u-s-but-will-it-last/ target=_blank>earlier report by Pew</a>, wages in Logan exceeded and nearly doubled that number over the same period of time.

The values of the community, its geography, the fact that it is consistently rated as one of the safest communities in America are other factors Emile says contribute to reasons why people live and work in Cache Valley that cannot be assigned a dollar figure.

What Emile is not in favor of, is a forced increase in wages.

As businesses see the value of the employees and the employees bring value to their employers by training and experience it will automatically start moving up, she explains. Thats why Im a huge supporter of not going for a presented minimum wage increase. I think the business community and the economy drives the wages and I think thats a natural way it should be.

Generally speaking, Emile explains, the Logan area has a diverse economy and is currently flourishing.

I have on my desk at this time six businesses in our county that are medium to small businesses that are in expansion mode. Almost every one of our manufacturing entitiesare all either growing or expanding or (diversifying) and adding a new section to their business. Its really impressive.

Over the last 12 months a number of national chains shut their doors in the area and ICON Health and Fitness laid off nearly 400 people. Most of those people were able to assimilate into other jobs in the community within a matter of months, according to Emile, because the other manufacturing entities in the community needed workers.

Recent expansion projects at some of Cache Valleys largest employers have been taking place at JBS Swift in Hyrum, Pepperidge Farms in Richmond, Caspers Ice Cream in Richmond and Malouf in Nibley, to name a few.

Home building, real estate, contracting, and building permits are also up this year over last year. Real estate, in particular, is moving faster than it has in about seven years. Emile says over the last several years homes would sit on the market for four to eight months but now they are moving within four to eight weeks.

The number of relocation packages that the chamber has put out has probably increased by about 30%, says Emile, for people looking at relocating to our community. These are people that are either going to rent apartments, or buy homes, theyre children will be coming into our school system, they will be shopping in our stores. This is a good thing.
The Utah Department of Healths Zika guy said Thursday it is not likely that virus will spread as far north as Cache Valley. Epidemiologist Dallin Peterson coordinates Zika testing in the state.

I think right now the probability is very low, said Peterson. The main risk is for those individuals traveling outside of the country. We have increased our efforts with mosquito abatement districts, especially in southern Utah, to track the invasive Aedes species if it moves into Utah.

The Aedes species is the most likely strain of mosquito to carry the Zika virus.

Peterson said the best way to rid the community of any type of mosquito is to get rid of standing pools of water.

Three years ago in the St. George area they did find a pool of the Aedes species. But, after prevention measures by the abatement districts that strain didnt really set its presence here in the state. Thats the only location where we have seen that specific mosquito.

Peterson acknowledged state authorities have dealt with West Nile Virus in extreme northern Utah.

West Nile involves a different mosquito, the Culex species, which seems to travel very far distances from where they breed. Thats one of the reasons that it spread so quickly across the United States.

Peterson said the Aedes species doesnt travel very far from where it breeds.

If it is breeding in the bird bath in your backyard it only goes about 150 yards away from that breeding ground.

Aedes likes the warmer climates and to be around people.

In dealing with all strains of mosquitos the Health Department recommends protective repellants containing Deet.

If you ever contract it, there is no treatment, no vaccine for the Zika virus, said Peterson. The only treatment is supportive care, taking in fluids and plenty of rest so our bodies can rid us of that virus.
Less than halfway through the year, Baytown has already had as many homicides as it did in all of 2015. In the last 20 years, the number of mu
South Koreas Prime Minister Hwang Kyo-ahn visited Uzbekistan on May 19-20, 2016. The visit was the fifteenth official high-level meeting between the two countries. Over the last year, several new actors have increased their engagement with Central Asia, aside from South Korea also including Japan and India. South Korea is an important partner to the Central Asian republics, and especially to Uzbekistan. In May 2015, Islam Karimov made Seoul the destination of his first foreign visit after his reelection as president. The visit underscored the priority given to South Korea in Uzbekistans foreign policy. South Korea is among the largest investors in Uzbekistans economy, and cooperation is growing in education, tourism, cultural exchanges, and security.

BACKGROUND: South Korea recognized Uzbekistans independence in December 1991 and diplomatic relations between the countries were established within a month. Most post-Soviet republics were cautious towards South Korea given its close relationship with the U.S., but Uzbekistan sought active political dialogue with Seoul as a modern symbol of Asian dynamism and technological breakthrough. Over time, the relationship between Uzbekistan and South Korea has resulted in a wide range of bilateral political and economic cooperation. Uzbekistan and South Korea have carried out a continuous interstate dialogue based on regular high-level meetings, of which fifteen have been held between 1992 and 2016.

In 2006, South Korea and Uzbekistan signed a declaration on strategic partnership, which they agreed to develop and deepen further in a new Joint Declaration signed during President Park Geun-hyes visit to Tashkent in 2014. Park stressed that Uzbekistan has long been the center of the Great Silk Road, and is today South Koreas largest trade partner in Central Asia. When President Karimov visited Seoul in May 2015, 60 documents relating to trade, investment, economic and technical cooperation and other spheres were signed, at a total worth of US$ 7.7 billion. Seoul is taking a leading place among Uzbekistans trade partners in Asia. In 2015, bilateral trade turnover between the countries exceeded US$ 1.7 billion, corresponding to 50 percent of South Koreas trade with Central Asian republics. South Korea has been active in realizing numerous projects and programs in different regions of Uzbekistan, including the free industrial-economic zones Navoi and Angren, and the development of an intercontinental logistics center at Navoi airport.

IMPLICATIONS: South Korea has emerged as one of Uzbekistans most important political and economic partners. Korean investments into Uzbekistans economy exceeds US$ 7 billion and cover trade, communications, energy, light industry, pharmaceuticals, mining, production of petrochemicals, electronic products, and building materials. Of particular importance is South Koreas support for the development of the Navoi free industrial and economic zone. Since 2008, Korean Air has conducted cargo flights through Navoi airport, and has introduced advanced technology and efficient systems control at the airport. The Navoi center currently carries out more than 20 flights per week to Seoul, Milan, Brussels, Frankfurt, Vienna, New Delhi, Mumbai, Hanoi and other cities.

More recently, Korea International Cooperation Agency has been involved in the design of a new terminal for Tashkent airport, which will be built by a Korean company. The Tashkent and Navoi airports could indeed fill important functions in Central Asia, comparable to transport hubs like Incheon airport for the Asia-Pacific region or Frankfurt Airport for the European Union.

During Prime Minister Hwangs recent visit to Uzbekistan, he joined Prime Minister Shavkat Mirziyaev in the inauguration of the hitherto largest bilateral cooperation project  the US$ 4 billon Ustyurt Gas Chemical Complex at the Surgil deposit. South Korea and Uzbekistan also founded the joint venture LG CNS Uzbekistan to support the implementation of information systems and databases for E-Government in order to facilitate the mobility of people, business and government system in Uzbekistan. Uzbekistan and South Korea have also agreed on training programs, under which thousands of representatives of Uzbek small and medium-size businesses annually work and receive training in Korean enterprises and companies. Currently, around 100,000 Uzbek citizens are present in different sectors of the Korean economy and education system.

For more efficient implementation and development of high technology, Uzbekistan has invited South Korean experts to take positions as deputy minister in the ministry for development of information technologies and communications, as well vice rectors at several universities. In 2014, South Koreas Inha University opened a branch in Tashkent, which focuses on computer sciences and high-tech engineering and gives all courses in English. In past decades, Korea went through similar experiences when it invited many experts from the U.S. and Europe.

Uzbekistan has the largest Korean diaspora (over 200,000) in the former Soviet Union and the fourth largest in the world, after China, Japan and the U.S.. Tourism from Korea to Uzbekistan is growing, as well as cultural links and public diplomacy. Uzbekistans universities and research institutions of the Academy of Sciences cooperate with several South Korean universities, research organizations, and companies. This partnership provides professional development, training and academic mobility, along with exchanges of professors and students. A number of joint conferences, symposiums, seminars and research projects have been carried out in both republics. In May 2016, the House of Korean culture and art was founded in Tashkent. Moreover, Korean culture, including cinema, cartoons and music are becoming very popular among different generations of Uzbek society.

South Korea and Uzbekistan also cooperate in multilateral formats. The annual forum Republic of Korea  Central Asia has been organized since 2007 in Korea as well as in Central Asian countries, aiming to strengthen and extend regional cooperation. The 5th Forum took place in Tashkent in November 2011. The Republic of Korea  Central Asia forum has focused on furthering cooperation in various spheres, including the IT sector, agriculture, medicine, E-government, energy-effectiveness and natural recourses, construction and infrastructure, science and technologies, finances and textile. Tashkent supports Seouls position on the problems of the Korean Peninsula and its New Asian Diplomacy initiative. A note from Uzbekistans foreign ministry also strongly criticized North Koreas recent nuclear test.

CONCLUSIONS: South Korea is one of Uzbekistans most important partners. The two republics have over the past twenty years built a strong political and economic partnership and developed a regulatory framework for bilateral and multilateral cooperation. South Korea has a strongly positive image in Central Asia and is along with Russia, China, the U.S., Japan, and the EU among the largest investors in Uzbekistan. Republic of Korea  Central Asia and Central Asia plus Japan both represent new formats for regional and interregional cooperation. However, it is essential that Uzbek-Korean bilateral and Central Asia-Korean multilateral agreements are actively implemented and that the range of cooperation between the participating countries is expanded. Strong cooperation between Uzbekistan and South Korea as well as between South Korea and Central Asia is vitally important for the regions economic and technological modernization and connectivity, and could contribute to closer trade ties, economic development and investment relations between Central Asia, South Asia, the Middle East and Asia-Pacific.

AUTHORS BIO: Dr. Prof. Mirzokhid Rakhimov is a Visiting Fulbright scholar with the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute & Silk Road Studies Program, at Johns Hopkins University. He is Head of the Department of Contemporary History and International Relations of the Institute of History of the Academy of Science of Uzbekistan. E-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. , This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. . Dr. Prof. Sung Dong Ki is Assistant Professor at Frontier College, Inha University, Republic of Korea. E-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. .

Image Attribution: www.cna.org.cy, accessed on June 10, 2016
Greetings! I am out of prison! Thank you all for your support! I am strong and full of energy. I will continue my work as a journalist, Khadija Ismayilova posted on her Facebook page right after she was released from custody. On May 25, Azerbaijans Supreme Court ordered the investigative journalist released after changing her prison term from 7 1/2 years in custody to a suspended term of 3 1/2 years.

The decision was made after hearing an appeal from the journalist on the same day. Ismayilova was not in court at the time, but her lawyer Javad Javadov commented that hopes for such a decision had been low. According to Javadov, Todays court decision has kept two of four charges and as a result the term was reduced to 3 1/2 years. She is also prohibited from working for any state or local governmental agency during two years. The court reversed Ismayilovas convictions for misappropriation of property and abuse of position, but retained her convictions for illegal entrepreneurship and tax evasion.

Ismayilovas mother, Elmira Ismayilova, was allowed to attend the trial and was met outside the court by a group supporting her daughter, carrying balloons portraying Khadija to celebrate the verdict, which came two days before Ismayilovas 40th birthday. I want to thank everyone who came here today, and everyone in the world who has fought for my daughter and to reach todays result [] if the court would not have taken this decision today, the government would have faced an international campaign condemning Azerbaijani authorities and demanding Khadijas freedom, Ismayilovas mother told Meydan TV.

To mark Ismayilovas birthday on May 27 and call for her immediate and unconditional release, the Sport for Rights campaign along with other human rights watchdog organizations initiated a series of protests in cities around the world. The campaign #FreeKhadija aimed for the symbolic number of 40 protests. Gatherings will continue, and participants will celebrate Ismayilovas release, call for her full acquittal, and demand the release of Azerbaijans remaining political prisoners.

Ismayilovas appeal follows a snap presidential pardon in March of 14 political prisoners, including human rights activist Rasul Jafarov and members of the N!DA pro-democracy youth movement. A fifteenth prisoner, human rights lawyer Intigam Aliyev, was released less than two weeks later.

Some observers have asserted that the pardons were timed to commemorate the Nowruz holiday. However, they also coincided with President Ilham Aliyevs pursuit of an invitation from U.S. President Barack Obama to attend a nuclear summit in Washington.

Mehman Aliyev, who heads Azerbaijans privately owned Turan news agency, says that after years of ignoring international opinion the authorities are desperately seeking to shore up Western support and may see Ismayilova as a useful bargaining chip. I think there are some intensive negotiations going on, and the government is taking steps accordingly, Aliyev told RFE/RL, adding that the issue of Ismayilovas release is part of something much bigger: a resolution of the economic crisis, Karabakh, regional security, and so on. The Azerbaijani government wants to see some reassuring moves from the West.

On her way home, Ismayilova laughingly told journalists that I will continue my journalist work and will do it more properly. I started to learn Spanish, which will help me read foreign papers in original language. She denied allegations that restrictions had been imposed on her journalistic activity and added: I am going to apply to the European Court of Human Rights and consider other legal steps to obtain full justice. I will work on having all charges and the suspended term dropped. We will do our investigations and continue what we were doing before the arrest. There is a lot of work to do and keeping spirits high is very important.

Earlier this month, Ismayilova was awarded the UNESCO/Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize, which honors outstanding contributions to the defense or promotion of press freedom anywhere in the world. Ismayilova thanked international human rights organizations who were fighting for political prisoners in Azerbaijan and tirelessly working on defending their rights, and called on them to continue their activity for the sake of other political prisoners who might be less known internationally. She stressed that Fighting for human rights should be open and transparent. Human rights is not a shameful topic to be discussed behind the scenes and unfortunately heads of countries refrain from open discussions on this theme. I hope that one day the human rights issue will be the highest priority on the agenda of their diplomatic meetings.

Sport for Rights coordinator Rebecca Vincent commented: We are delighted that Khadija is finally free, after spending 537 days unjustly jailed. On the occasion of her release, we echo Khadijas call that we should not focus only on her case, but call for the release of all political prisoners and concrete steps to address the rampant corruption and human rights abuses in Azerbaijan that Khadija has sacrificed so much to expose.

Image attribution: www.reported.ly, accessed on June 10, 2016
Associated Press file Miranda Lambert performed during the 2016 iHeartRadio Country Festival held at Frank Erwin Center in Austin. Lambert will perform at the American Bank Center on Sept. 15.

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By Esther Hackleman, Esther.M.Hackleman@caller.com

Country queen Miranda Lambert will return to Corpus Christi on Sept. 15 at the American Bank Center, two years after her last visit to the Coastal Bend.

The concert is her first stop in Texas on her Keeper of the Flame tour with Kip Moore and the Brothers Osborne.

Lambert, who is the reigning seven-time recipient of the American County Music Female Vocalist of the Year, is known for her top hits such as "The House That Built Me," "Mama's Broken Heart," and "Gunpowder and Lead."

Tickets to the Sept. 15 concert will be available online at 10 a.m. June 17 at Ticketmaster.com.

The last time Lambert came to Corpus Christi, a video of her performance of "Over You" went viral online because Lambert cries during the performance while holding Brooke Hester's hand. Hester died from cancer last year.

Twitter: @Caller_Esther

RELATED: Cancer patient, local inspiration dies at 8
Some Texas counties show drop-off in first-day early voting numbers

Texas could be reverting to the normal low-turnout status for midterm elections this cycle after the high-excitement election of 2018.
Beatriz Alvarado/Caller-Times La Hacienda Clinic and Nursing Home may house a ICE detention center in the future.

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By Beatriz Alvarado of the Caller-Times

ALICE  An official with a company that wants to oversee a facility in Jim Wells County to detain undocumented immigrants says the center will not be like others in the nation. "There will not be guns, there will not be handcuffs, there will not be attack dogs, Serco Inc. Vice President Carlo Uchello said. "The goal of (the Department of Homeland Security, Immigration and Customs Enforcement) is to contract with new facilities that are more residential in nature."

But if the undocumented immigrants housed at the facility do escape, ICE will be called, he added.

About 50 people attended a public hearing Thursday that was scheduled after Jim Wells County commissioners voted to authorize County Judge Pedro "Pete" Trevino to begin negotiations Serco Inc. for the possible detention center.

Bishop Michael Mulvey urged Jim Wells County officials on Thursday to reconsider the building of a family detention facility, saying its very existence goes against human decency.

The bishop's statement was released shortly before the public hearing on the proposed facility, which would be in San Diego.

Mulvey, who leads the Diocese of Corpus Christi, condemned the practice of family detention and the use of for-profit contractors to "incarcerate immigrant mothers and children arriving primarily from Central America." Jim Wells County falls within the boundaries of the diocese.

"Family detention, particularly the detention of children, is contrary to the tenets of Catholic social teaching and bringing this practice to Jim Wells County will not better our community," according to his statement.

Mulvey's stance echoes that of the Texas Catholic Conference and fellow dioceses and archdioceses of Texas, along with bishops across the nation.

A similar sentiment was shared by several speakers during the Thursday hearing. A former social worker at one of Texas' family detention centers spoke about her resignation, which was prompted by "not being able to sleep at night." Representatives from the Mexican American Legal Defense Education Fund, or MALDEF, and the Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services, or RAICES, also educated attendants about pending state and federal litigation that may condemn the very existence of such detention centers.

Those housed at the facility would be kept an average of 18-20 days and although "dollars and cents cannot be predicted," Uchello said Jim Wells is looking at about $90,000 to $100,000 in annual revenue from the facility. Estimates indicate 75 percent of families to be housed would be headed by women and 25 percent by men.

Trevino said the county and Serco are in the initial phase of potentially establishing an agreement. If approved, the family detention facility would operate in San Diego at 4410 E. Highway 44, the location of the now shuttered La Hacienda Nursing Home. The nursing home was licensed for 114 beds, according to the Texas Department of Aging and Disability Services. It closed in January 2014. It's priced at about $524,000 and owned by a San Antonio-based developer.

On Wednesday, San Diego city officials noted they learned about the plans through media reports. The San Diego mayor also questioned how big of a role city leaders would play in the plans and pointed out commissioners chose to hold the public hearing in another city.

San Diego ISD Superintendent Samuel Bueno was the only San Diego resident who took to the podium. He requested a similar hearing be held in the city. Uchello said it's a possibility, but a proposal would need to be finalized by a July 15 deadline.

"We don't have a lot of time to get to a final decision," Uchello said.

ICE spokesman Gregory Palmore said a request for information for potential detention centers was posted by the agency April 15. The request is solely for information and planning purposes and does not constitute a request for proposal or a promise to issue such a request in the future, according to the post.

RFI Family Residential Services

"ICE is still developing its acquisition strategy based on the responses the agency received to the request for information posted on FedBizopps.gov in April for a detention facility in South Texas," Palmore said in an email. "The decision to move forward with a request for proposal is pending. As part of prudent management, ICE routinely considers and plans for various operational options to accommodate the dynamic and frequently unpredictable detention needs and trends."

Palmore did not say how many responses were received to the request.

Serco is an international contracting firm focused on the public sector with contracts in the U.K. and Europe, North America, the Middle East, Australia and New Zealand, according to the company's website.

If the center begins operating in San Diego, it will be the third facility in Texas to hold immigrant parents and their children, including infants, while they face deportation. ICE operates family detention centers in Karnes City and Dilley. As border crossings grew in 2014, ICE selected two for-profit prison companies to operate the centers; Geo Group runs the Karnes facility and Corrections Corp. of America, or CCA, was selected to operate the Dilley center.

The bulk of detainees are asylum seekers, said Mohammad Abdollahi, a spokesman for the pro-bono legal group RAICES that represents detained families. The group is among several that have rallied against family detention and continue to push to close privately-owned detention facilities.

The organization Tuesday started a petition against Jim Wells County moving forward with plans to open the facility in San Diego.

"In 2014 (when border crossings spiked), the practice of jailing mothers and their young children started as a means to send a message of deterrence," Abdollahi said. "(The Obama administration) hopes that by not receiving asylum seekers with open arms they will send a message not to come to America. That message is really lost  they are not fleeing by choice. They are fleeing because they fear for their lives."

Twitter: @CallerBetty
SHARE CALLER-TIMES FILE Eric Acevedo was arrested March 13, 2013, in connection to a hit and run that severely injured Christian Carrillo.

By Fares Sabawi of the Caller-Times

Eric Acevedo said he's still not 100 percent sure whether he hit Christian Carrillo with his pickup on the night of March 2, 2013.

The 42-year-old man took the stand to defend himself Thursday afternoon in 117th District Court with Judge Sandra Watts presiding. Acevedo is facing a failure to stop and render aid charge.

Acevedo teared up as he told the jury he would have stopped to help if he had seen Carrillo, then 17, on Ayers Street that night. Acevedo said he knew he hit something on his way home from a party, and pulled over a few blocks later to evaluate the damage. Because it was dark, Acevedo said he couldn't see anyone on the ground or how damaged his vehicle was until the next day.

Acevedo's testimony contradicts what his friend Jesus Gomez told police in a recorded interview. Gomez told police Acevedo indicated to him that he may have hit someone. When asked about the dispute, Acevedo said Gomez's statement was not true.

As soon as he saw media reports about Carrillo and police issued a description similar to his vehicle, Acevedo said he realized he could be connected to the incident. He said he got an attorney and has cooperated with police ever since.

Acevedo was emotional again when defense attorneys asked him how he feels about Carrillo.

"I feel very bad for him," Acevedo said. "He's a young man and has years ahead of him. I feel bad for his injuries."

Testimony will continue Friday morning. If convicted, Acevedo faces up to 10 years in prison.

Twitter: @Caller_Fares
By Fares Sabawi of the Caller-Times

A Corpus Christi man admit he kidnapped a 6-year-old girl with the intention of taking her to Arizona, according to a news release from the Department of Justice.

Austin Carlin, 20, entered a guilty plea Thursday, which was accepted by District Judge Nelva Gonzales Ramos.

Carlin abducted the girl on Feb. 22, 2015, according to the news release. Corpus Christi police issued an Amber Alert for the girl after Carlin stole a vehicle and left the city.

State troopers found Carlin over 350 miles west of San Antonio on Interstate 10, where they arrested him and rescued the girl.

Carlin will remain in custody until his sentencing, which is set for Sept. 22. He faces a minimum of 20 years and up to life in prison, along with a fine not to exceed $250,000.

Twitter: @Caller_Fares
SHARE Eric Acevedo CALLER-TIMES FILE Eric Acevedo was arrested March 13, 2013, in connection to a hit and run that severely injured Christian Carrillo. Acevedo

By Krista M. Torralva of the Caller-Times

Eric Acevedo pulled a brown leather wallet out of his pants pocket and handed it to his wife.

"Jewelry too," a courtroom bailiff said. Acevedo pulled the wedding ring off his finger.

After being convicted in a 2013 hit-and-run case Friday, Acevedo will spend the weekend in jail. He faces up to 10 years behind bars depending on a jury's decision next week.

A Nueces County jury found him guilty of failure to stop and render aid, a third-degree felony. Jurors rejected Acevedo's testimony that he didn't know he hit a person March 3, 2013.

Christian Carrillo, then 17, was walking home from his job at CiCi's restaurant on Ayers Street when he was struck from behind. Carrillo was hospitalized about two months before going to a Houston rehabilitation center. Carrillo hunched forward in his seat and supporters handed him tissues as the prosecutor described his recovery.

Lawyers will give closing statements Monday morning before the jury deliberates Acevedo's punishment in 117th District Judge Sandra Watts' court. He is also eligible for probation.

Acevedo testified he felt he hit something with his vehicle, possibly a trash can, and stopped a few blocks away. He said he didn't see anything in the dark and continued going home.

Prosecutor Elizabeth Schmidt argued he did know and pointed to the testimony of his best friend, Jesus Gomez.

Gomez told police and the jury that Acevedo said he might have hit a man wearing black. Carrillo was wearing a black hooded sweatshirt.

"He left that young man on the side of the road to die," Schmidt said.

Jurors returned a verdict after deliberating about an hour. During deliberations they asked to again watch video surveillance footage from two businesses that captured the incident.

Fares Sabawi contributed to this report.

Twitter: @CallerKMT
GABE HERNANDEZ/CALLER-TIMES FILE An inmate folds clothes in the laundry room at the Nueces County Jail.

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By Krista M. Torralva of the Caller-Times

State district judges are having an emergency meeting Tuesday to talk about the number of inmates at the Nueces County Jail.

Drug cases delayed by pending test results and inmates whose cases haven't been presented to a grand jury are leading to crowding at the jail, said 214th District Judge Jose Longoria.

"We've got to do something about all these cases sitting there waiting for a decision on drug testing," said Longoria, who leads the Council of Judges.

District Attorney Mark Skurka did not return calls seeking comment Friday.

Longoria said the jail capacity has gone above 100 percent, which Sheriff Jim Kaelin pointed out was taking into account any inmates in holding cells. Of the jail's 1,068 beds, the jail was at 91 percent on Friday, which does not constitute overcrowding per state jail standards, Kaelin added.

Earlier this month the jail also passed a surprise jail inspection by the Texas Commission on Jail Standards.

Kaelin and Longoria both noted the jail is usually more crowded during summer months when cases typically move more slowly as there are more arrests and judges take vacations.

Longoria said he and 117th District Judge Sandra Watts will propose a plan to alleviate the jail capacity issues. Longoria said this week he released four inmates who have been jailed three months and whose cases haven't been indicted.

Twitter: @CallerKMT
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If a casual observer didn't know better, he or she might have thought that the topic of a Texas House committee hearing this week in Austin was how technology is changing our lives, or how inconsistent municipal regulation across the state will stifle technological advancement and free enterprise unless the Legislature steps in to prevent it.

"I think we first need to recognize the obvious," said Rene Oliveira, D-Brownsville, chairman of the House Committee on Business and Industry, at the start of Wednesday's hearing. "Technology is changing our lives."

Indeed it is. But the obvious thing that needed to be recognized was that the hearing really was just about one thing and one thing only  fingerprint background checks.

Two leaders in the ride-for-hire service industry, Uber and Lyft, don't want their driver applicants to undergo fingerprint background checks. They are so resistant to fingerprinting that, as a matter of policy, they cease operations in cities that require it  Houston being this state's notable exception.

And they are so powerful (except when it comes to Houston) that they can wheedle an audience with a House committee in an even-numbered year when the Legislature doesn't meet.

Usually when deep-pocketed corporate special interests and lawmakers go about scratching each others' backs, they like to find other labels or themes to direct the public's attention elsewhere. Hence, the branding of a consistent, uncomplicated single issue  fingerprinting  as a confusing patchwork of inconsistent regulation from one city to the next. Hence, also, the curious assertion that making all competitors follow the same rule, fingerprinting, is anti-competitive. It's enough of a non-head-scratcher to make one's head spin. State lawmakers, meanwhile, like to brand themselves as protectors of freedom and free enterprise against nefarious Obama-style over-regulation, and Uber and Lyft are only too happy to help.

How to usurp local authority and make constituents love it is a potential public relations challenge for the members of the Legislature who have expressed an interest in doing so. But there's a way around that, thanks to Austin. Voters there decided recently to keep their city's fingerprint ordinance, which may sound like democracy in action, probably because it is. But because it happened in Austin, the liberal city that the state's elected conservatives love to hate almost as much as they love living there, it's being spun as a liberal attack on free enterprise.

Uber and Lyft's pitch fell apart when Oliveira, to his credit, asked for evidence to back up their claims that their drivers are less of a threat to riders' safety than regular cabbies. Uber and Lyft's mouthpieces didn't have that information. And committee members, to their credit, weren't happy about it.

If the Legislature wants to encourage free enterprise, it can do so by not acting on this issue. The market will take care of itself. Other ride-for-hire companies have flocked to Austin to fill the vacuum left by Uber and Lyft. A representative of one of them, getme, said he is opposed to a state ban on fingerprinting.

The getme official was accompanied to the hearing by former Dallas Cowboy Michael Irvin. That alone should settle this issue in favor of cities' right to require fingerprinting. Irvin's three Super Bowl rings are as irrelevant as were most of Uber and Lyft's talking points, but they weigh more.

(Our thanks to the Texas Tribune for its report on the committee hearing.)
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Pity poor Paul Ryan. Pity, also, the poor, the workers whose taxes support them, and Ryan's Republican Party, all of whom suffered when Donald Trump hijacked attention from the House Speaker's anti-poverty initiative.

Poverty is a touchy subject but here's a fun fact that shows why it deserves more attention than rich, privileged Trump: In Nueces County, 23 percent of households earned less than $25,000 in 2014, when the Eagle Ford Shale action still was hot.

Whether Ryan's plan is a path to progress or just a warmed-over rehash of Republican ploys to reduce benefits to the poor, it's a rare opportunity just because of who brought it up. Ryan is, after all, the presiding officer of the House, third in succession to the presidency during an emergency, and the second-highest standard-bearer for his party.

Instead, on Tuesday, the day he unveiled the plan, Trump eclipsed it. As the world knows all too well by now, Ryan found himself answering a barrage of questions about Trump's racist remarks against a federal judge presiding over a lawsuit against his Trump University scam  and about Ryan's endorsement of Trump. Ryan condemned Trump's statements as the epitome of racism, yet stuck by his support of Trump for president.

One of the reasons Ryan gave for sticking with Trump is that he thinks his agenda would stand a better chance under a President Trump, which is kind of funny considering that he wants to increase work requirements for welfare recipients  just like the first President Clinton. At least a President Hillary Clinton would share the common ground with Ryan of caring enough about the poor and the taxpayers to want to improve the system.

Trump's interest in the poor begins and ends with their potential as bedsheet folders and toilet scrubbers for his hotels. He proved where his priorities lie when he used his position as the presumptive Republican presidential nominee as leverage against the judge. Trump is more interested in protecting his fortune than leading the nation. Ryan and Clinton at least have servant leadership in common  a deeper shared bond than Ryan's partisan affiliation with Republican-come-lately Trump.

But  oops, now we're doing it  enough about Trump and back to the bigger issue of Ryan's plan for the poor: The first point worth noting is that it's not a package of specifics. It's meant to be a big-picture conversation-starter. He didn't say let's require exactly this much more work in exchange for that many food stamps. He just said let's discuss this Clinton-esque idea (he didn't say "Clinton-esque").

Ryan also suggested consolidating and streamlining several programs and getting the states more heavily involved in administering the benefits. Goodness knows the benefits distribution system needs to become more efficient. Last year the federal government paid $10 billion more than it should have for unemployment benefits, food and rental assistance and school meals.

The question is whether more state involvement and autonomy will improve the system. In Texas, food programs are administered by the Texas Department of Agriculture, headed by Commissioner Sid Miller, who's being investigated for questionable expenditures such as personal trips he tried to bill to the state. That's just a warning to proceed with caution and without the assumption that putting the states in charge is an automatic improvement.

That said, Democrats were too quick to condemn Ryan's plan as  House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi's words  "the same callous, trickle-down policies they've been pushing for years." The Democrats should thank Ryan for engaging a social issue more commonly associated with their party than his, make it the conversation-starter he envisioned and see where the conversation goes. It should be loud enough to drown out Trump.
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Richard Ramirez

Donald ducks responsibility

Where do I start with Donald. After giving him some thought I have come up with a new name for him. Let's call him "Donald ducks." Not meaning to insult the cartoon character. The name fits him. Every day on the campaign he insults women, Mexicans, African-Americans and anyone who is not a Trumpie, then he ducks out and takes no responsibility for his bigotry.

There was an article in the Caller-Times about Rep. Filemon Vela. I don't always agree with his politics but I have to applaud him for calling out Donald in public. Why doesn't Blake Farenthold speak out against the insults and bigotry that Donald makes against his constituents? Blake just hides in his cave waiting for instructions from his tea party bosses and only comes out for photo ops.

Now comes the real issue. If Donald ducks is elected to lead the country. He will sit as the head of our country spewing venom every time he opens his mouth and he will continue ducking responsibility for his statements and actions. How do we address him. President ducks? or just Donald? I can't imagine "Donald ducks" as President and he has not earned the respect he craves. Maybe he will learn that respect is earned and can't be demanded from the people. Repeat after me,"Donald ducks, Donald ducks, Donald ducks" over and over and faster and faster until your head spins. This condition is the America Donald desires.
The 2,000 troops deployed on June 8, 2016 are to help Nigerien forces completely chase out Boko Haram fighters from Bosso.

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The alliance between Niger and Chad in eradicating the cross-border terrorist group Boko Haram has once more entered its effective implementation phase as over 2,000 troops from Chad are in Niger for an onslaught against Boko Haram fighters in the south eastern border locality of Bosso. Mail Online cited military sources of saying on Wednesday that the "heavily armed" soldiers will "search everywhere for Boko Haram.



The Chadian forces started arriving in Niger on Tuesday and advanced on Bosso, the border town near Lake Chad in which Boko Haram fighters invaded on June 3, 2016 and killed at least 32 soldiers, Aljazeera reported. Nigers authorities reportedly disclosed that a total of 55 Boko Haram fighters were killed and many others injured. The attack left indelible humanitarian imprints as the United Nations High Commission for Refugees disclosed on June 7 that up to 50,000 people have fled the town of Bosso mostly towards Diffa. The majority of the displaced people are living in the open and in precarious conditions.



Nigers troops reportedly retook Bosso last Saturday but it is unclear who now controls the town. This is because following reports, Boko Haram militants once again took over the town on Sunday night. Mail Online cited the Mayor of Bosso, Mamadou Bako, and a military source of confirming the takeover on Monday, but the Nigerien government denied it.



The deployment of Chadian troops for reinforcement in Bosso is the immediate fallout of the talks Nigers President Mahamadou Issoufou had with his Chadian counterpart, Idriss Deby Itno on Tuesday, June 7, 2016 in NDjamena. President Deby and his guest during the talks in the Chadian capital mapped out joint combat strategies to uproot Boko Haram from its strongholds in south eastern Niger. News agency reports also say that on the morrow of the Boko Haram attacks in Bosso, President Deby of Chad visited his countrys troops stationed in Bol along the banks of Lake Chad and gave them instructions on the new line of action.

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The ball will be set rolling by host France and Romania at the Stade de France.

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The 2016 edition of the European nations cup, Euro 2016 will begin today with the opening encounter between host France and Romania. For the first time in history, 24 teams will be taking part in the final round of the competition with some 51 matches scheduled to take place in ten different locations across France including new stadiums in Bordeaux, Nice, Lille and Lyon.



The tournament will be taking place under tight security as over 90.000 police, soldiers and private security officers have been mobilized for the event. Despite the security concerns, over 90 per cent of the tickets have been bought already with about 80.000 still up for grab.



The 24 teams will be divided into six groups of four teams each and the groups winners and runners up sail through to the knock out stage which begins from the round of 16. All 24 teams are now in France after playing warm up matches in the billed up to the event.



The fixtures for the weekend will comprise France versus Romania today, followed by Albania versus Switzerland on Saturday. On that same Saturday, there will also be Wales versus Slovakia and England versus Russia. The final of the tournament will be on July 10 still at the Stade de France which was the target during the recent terrorist attack in Paris.

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Koumate Monique, 31, is said to have died near or in a hospital in the city of Douala on Saturday, according to local media reports.

Graphic video showed what appears to be another woman trying to deliver the babies outside. According to Cameroononline.org , the woman attempting the delivery was a family member.

The woman's story spread quickly, and protesters gathered in front of the hospital on Sunday.

Andre Mama Fouda, the country's public health minister, said at a news conference Monday that the woman's death is a tragedy, but said authorities do not know exactly where she died. He said her death was not due to negligence -- according to state media.

According to Fouda, this is what happened:

-- Monique went to a public health facility for a consultation on Friday.

-- Her family brought her to the Nylon District Hospital at 8 a.m. local time the next day, asking to "remove" the fetuses. The doctor there refused, saying it was not possible at that facility.

-- The family then took her to the La Quintinie hospital emergency ward, where two workers then directed Monique to the maternity office.

-- At the maternity ward, two healthcare workers noticed that Monique had died some time ago. It's not clear exactly where or when she died.

-- The family was advised to take her body to the mortuary, but then returned to the maternity ward, hoping to save the twins. Someone from the mortuary accompanied the family back to the hospital. Then the mortuary worker attempted to deliver the fetuses.

The attorney general ordered the two workers -- including a midwife -- and the woman who tried to perform an impromptu Cesarian section be arrested, state media said.

CNN is attempting to reach out to Monique's family.

The investigation is still ongoing, but the story has brought international attention to the state of medical infrastructure in the West African country.
| BY Ricki Green |

Saatchi & Saatchi Australia developed a way to deliver emergency communications to outback Australia via Toyota LandCruisers. Its a well-known fact that the Australian outback is a vast, harsh and unforgiving place. 5 million square km (over 65% of the country) receives no mobile signal. In times of emergency the lack of reception can be incredibly dangerous. However, while you might be far from a cell phone tower in the outback youre never far from a Toyota LandCruiser. Thats why Saatchi & Saatchi, in partnership with Flinders University, is pioneering a new device that can be fitted in Toyota LandCruisers, enabling them to create a pop-up emergency network that will bring communications to the most remote parts of the outback. The device has been engineered using a clever mix of WI-FI, UHF and Delay Tolerant Networking (DTN) technology, an area that lots of people are looking into  including NASA for interplanetary communications, to turn vehicles into communications hotspots each with up to a 25km range.
| BY Ricki Green |

Alphabet Studios being appointed as design agency by Sydney Festival could be considered a significant win. Its a major piece of business and the pitch process is particularly rigorous.

Alphabet Studio is the first agency to have won the pitch twice in a row. Sydney Festival chooses a new agency every three to four years to coincide with the tenure of each festival director, a tradition that has been followed for more than forty years.

Four years ago, Alphabet won the pitch to work with Sydney Festivals Belgian festival director, Lieven Bertels. It has just won the pitch to work with Sydney Festivals new festival director, Wesley Enoch.

Says Tina Walsberger, head of marketing and customer services: Alphabet demonstrated a solid understanding of the challenges unique to the Festival brief, and an ability to rethink the brand in a way that retains a solid grasp of the challenges of rolling out the Festival campaign each year, while injecting a whole new energy to the upcoming look tone and feel reflective of incoming festival director Wesley Enochs vision for the 2017 Sydney Festival.

Says Paul Clark, co-director of Alphabet Studio: A new festival director means a whole new agenda and a whole new tender. We were excited to make the final cut of amazing agencies who submitted proposals to the open tender. Making it through the initial round and then being invited to pitch as the incumbent was a big deal for us. The odds were against us, as we were the existing agency competing with fresh minds and creativity. Being in the mix of esteemed agencies, the successful appointment for the contract has been an enormous highlight for us at Alphabet.

What made the win even sweeter was that several key assets from our previous work have been retained and will be reinterpreted and reconstructed into the new work.

Sydney Festivals brand is reinvented to reflect the vision of each festival director, and everything from signage and digital communications to spatial design within key venues must also align with that vision. Bertels and Enoch are expected to have quite different approaches to, and interpretations of, what makes and defines a Festival. This is likely to be reflected in their programming choices and their relationship to the social landscape of the city they are working with.

Much of Alphabets work for the festival over the last four years has had a classic elegance to it, albeit with quirky typography used to underscore the excitement of the festival.

The new work will be an arresting and bold reimagining of the festival brand. One of its aims is to communicate the excitement of the festival so vibrantly it is almost palpable.
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
Thursday, June 9, 2016 at 8:51PM

The new version of iTunes U puts more cloud services to work. Version 3.3 now lets you add materials youve stored on cloud services like Box, Dropbox, and Google Drive. But youll need to have these non-iCloud services installed and signed in to import your files. If youre a student, Apples Classroom app will now also guide you to specific iTunes U courses. Teachers, on the other hand, can also import class rosters from Apple School Manager. The app now also brings Explain Everything and Notability project files as course materials for the staff or hand-ins by students.

Source: 9to5Mac
"As a result, I've been paying attention to a whole bunch of the environmental issues that are going on throughout our country and throughout the world, and it seems that basically that old, outdated land use practices, cattle-grazing and stuff, seem to be adding immensely to these environmental problems that are facing the world today."
Asked to verify the rest of the contents of the email, he said parts of it were correct, but it contained "more than a few fabrications", including the claimed meeting with Mr Barr and the suggestion that the Tradies had done a separate deal. "I ... have no idea what clubs like the Tradies are doing," Mr Chester said.
The appeal documents stated the critical issue at trial was whether Mr Blick did not see the wooden stake because he failed to keep a proper lookout, or because the stake was not clearly visible to a person keeping a lookout.
"Such a reality has compelled me to transition, not only into a career as a lawyer [I am currently in the last few weeks of completing a Master's Degree in Juris Doctor], but also into the political sphere."
"How it works is you need to take some industrial action within the 30-day period which we've done. It doesn't mean you can't take it after the 30 days. If you don't take the industrial action within 30 days then you have to reapply for an extension. Our members took action prior to the 30 days expiring so that means they're entitled to take industrial action after the 30 days."
"I didn't have much choice here," he said. "We had already spent a lot of money on the campaign material and I have a lot of low income earners who have contributed and I felt as though I couldn't let them down."
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Our Promise: Welcome to Care2, the world's largest community for good. Here, you'll find over 45 million like-minded people working towards progress, kindness, and lasting impact.

Care2 Stands Against: bigots, racists, bullies, science deniers, misogynists, gun lobbyists, xenophobes, the willfully ignorant, animal abusers, frackers, and other mean people. If you find yourself aligning with any of those folks, you can move along, nothing to see here.

Care2 Stands With: humanitarians, animal lovers, feminists, rabble-rousers, nature-buffs, creatives, the naturally curious, and people who really love to do the right thing.

You are our people. You Care. We Care2.
The Union government has granted approval to establish two All India Institutes of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) in Jammu and Kashmir state.

According to IANS reports, Minister for Health and Medical Education Bali Bhagat said, "Approval to set up AIIMS was received by the state government last month. The location of the two AIIMS has already been made by the state government at Awantipora in south Kashmir's Pulwama district and Samba district in the Jammu region."

A total amount of Rs 4,000 crore has been reserved for construction of AIIMS in Jammu and Kashmir under the Prime Minister's reconstruction package for the state, he added.

Since both the projects are set up by the central government the budgetary details on the same to be suggested by the Union government, the minister added.

About AIIMS:

The All India Institutes of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) is a group of autonomous public medical colleges, which offer higher education in the country.

AIIMS conducts national level entrance exam for MBBS courses. The exam is conducted to offer admission to six AIIMS institutions in India.
Detecting the Zika virus isnt cheap or easy, but a diverse crew of collaborative scientists is changing that.

What once took multiple days, expensive equipment and trained laboratory technicians may now take just a few hours, a couple bucks and a pair of eyes. This new biotechnology hasnt quite hit the market, but preliminary tests show promise.

Since Zika has no unique symptoms (it presents like the flu) and a cure has not yet been found, quick, easy-to-use tests can help governments follow outbreaks and hopefully contain the spread of disease.

Led by head researcher Keith Pardee from the University of Toronto, scientists from six universities across the United States teamed up to marry two independent, but complementary, biotechnologies to develop a low-cost, easy-to-use Zika-detection tool.

One of the technologies uses programmable sensors that detect Zika-specific RNA. The other is a postage-stamp-sized, paper-based platform onto which the sensors are placed. When combined, these make for an easily stored and transported diagnostic tool.

With a small sample of either blood, saliva or urine applied to the paper, the sensors turn purple within an hour in the presence of Zika.

Given that some of the most affected regions lack access to the tools and personnel necessary to diagnose Zika the traditional way  via laboratory testing by trained individuals  this tool shows promise to meet current technical and economic challenges in the field.

For example, many South American countries experiencing active transmission of the virus, such as Bolivia and Paraguay, are relatively poor and have low per capita GDPs. With minimal financial resources in these countries, cheap, transportable diagnostic tools for Zika detection are particularly critical. The poorly understood complications of this disease make its timely diagnosis paramount for protecting humans and limiting its proliferation.

Though this study only shows that a tool like this can work, the research team plans to secure the resources to further develop the product and scale up manufacturing. Once in production, this diagnostic tool can be deployed in the field.

Read More: 50 American Cities Most at Risk of Zika Virus
There are lots of start-up companies with big ambitions, but how many hire ex-Ferrari bosses?



Small California-based electric-car company Faraday Future, which lifted the veil on its FFZERO1 Concept at CES 2016 in Las Vegas, is growing rapidly, bringing a former Ferrari executive to a top leadership post.

Electrek reports that the new hire is Marco Mattiacci, an award-winning auto executive who led Ferrari North America and Ferrari Asia Pacific between 2006 and 2014.

The Chinese-backed firm has grown to 750 employees globally, partnering with Chinas tech giant LeEco. Moreover, in December 2015, Faraday Future announced that it would invest up to $1 billion into its first manufacturing facility, settling on a location in North Las Vegas.

Even so, there is a lot of mystery surrounding the company, as details about its plans (or its CEO, for that matter) remains a wild guess. All we know is that Faraday Future expects to launch its first fully electric vehicle in 2017.

Titled Global Chief Brand and Commercial Officer, Ding Lei, co-founder, global vice chairman & managing director of LeEcos Super Electric Ecosystem described him as one of the most exceptional executives in the automotive industry today.

His new appointment at Faraday Future speaks to the companys ability to attract internationally-renowned talent and the popularity of a futuristic approach to mobility, continued Lei.

Throughout my career, I have been a passionate believer in innovation and unique user experiences for customers. Joining the Faraday Future team is an incredible opportunity that revolves around a completely new, connected, and intelligent way of thinking. I look forward to the role I will play in developing a truly brave and innovative path forward for the industry, said Mattiacci.

Faraday Future also employed the talent of Nick Sampson, former head engineer on Model S chassis development at Tesla, and BMW i8 and i3 designer Richard Kim.

PHOTO GALLERY
Suzuki has become the latest automaker to be ensnared by whats fast becoming a global epidemic of automakers falsifying their environmental credentials. The Japanese company admitted last month that it used the wrong standard to test its vehicles for fuel consumption on over 2 million vehicles. Now two of its top executives are stepping down from key leadership roles.



Chief among them is Osamu Suzuki, the man who has run the company since 1978, making him one of the longest-serving top executives in the industry. Now 86 years old, Osamu Suzuki will step down as chief executive officer, but retain his role as chairman of the company that bares his name  which he adopted after marrying into the family. No replacement has been named to take him place as CEO.

Along with the boss, one of his top lieutenants is stepping down as well. Osamu Honda has served until now as Executive Vice President, but is scheduled to retire at the end of the month after the shareholders meet on June 29. The remaining members of the board of directors are also waving their bonuses and taking a pay cut for the next several months.

Suzuki withdrew from the new car market in the US four years ago, but it still sells motorcycles, ATS, marine engines, and other products in North America, and remains one of largest automakers in Japan thanks in no small part to the strength of its Kei-class city cars.

PHOTOS
Gurus president and creative director Frank Falcone and EVP content and strategy Mary Bredin will serve as executive producers on the film.

Also announced this week, GKIDS, which distributed Cartoon Saloons previous Oscar-nominated features The Secret of Kells and Song of the Sea, has increased its involvement in the film. The companys two figureheads, CEO/founder Eric Beckman and SVP of distribution David Jesteadt, will come onboard as executive producers.

For GKIDS, it is the first time they are serving in a producing and financing capacity, in addition to distribution. Theyve slated The Breadwinner for a fall 2017 theatrical release in North America.

Weve been long-standing friends with everyone at Cartoon Saloon since those heady days when we celebrated our first Oscar nomination together for The Secret of Kells, and again five years later for Song of the Sea, Beckman and Jesteadt said in a statement. Were thrilled that this film marks our first foray into the creative process and we look forward to supporting Nora [Twomey] and the team in bringing their vision to audiences everywhere.

The Breadwinner is based on the novel of the same name by Deborah Ellis, telling the story of Parvana, a young girl living under the Taliban regime in Afghanistan who, after her fathers imprisonment, disguises herself as a boy to become the familys breadwinner. Ellis wrote the screen story, and Anita Doron contributed the screenplay. The film, according to its producers, celebrates the culture, history and beauty of Afghanistan with a cast that includes many performers of Afghan descent.

An Ireland-Canada-Luxembourg co-production, Breadwinner also has involvement from Canadas Aircraft Pictures and Luxembourgs Melusine Productions, and is being produced in association with Angelina Jolie Pitts Jolie Pas Productions.




Photo: Contributed

The second annual fire truck pull is returning to downtown Penticton on Saturday.

The Penticton Professional Fire Fighters have partnered with Sun FM and the Downtown Penticton Association to bring the event to the 400 block of Main Street.

The challenge includes teams of eight pulling a fire truck, weighing 25,000 to 50,000 pounds, in a race to the finish line against firefighters.

Money raised at the event will be donated to Muscular Dystrophy Canada.

Firefighters have partnered with the organization for more than 60 years and are its strongest and longest standing supporters raising approximately $3 million for it every year, across the country.

The money raised will help purchase essential medical and mobility equipment, provide support services and fund leading research towards a cure.

The event is at 9 a.m. on Saturday.

To support a team, visit the website or check out the Penticton Fire Fighters Facebook page to hear the latest news.
Photo: Getty Images

BC Notaries is encouraging everyone to be on the lookout for elder abuse.

According to BCs Council to Reduce Elder Abuse, thousands of older British Columbians experience some form of abuse each year. BC Notaries hear directly from elderly victims or their families about financial, emotional and even physical abuse at the hands of strangers, acquaintances and even family members.

June 15 is World Elder Abuse Awareness Day.

Its important that professionals on the front lines, like bank and credit union staff, first responders, and health care providers, be aware of the signs of abuse in order to intervene appropriately, said Tammy Morin Nakashima, president of the Society of Notaries Public of B.C. While many people may assume that most abusers are strangers, in actual fact it could be a family member pressuring a grandparent, parent or other elderly family member for money.

BC Notaries are trained to ensure a client is making their own decisions of sound mind, which is why they conduct private interviews with individuals to discuss their planning documents, such as a will, power of attorney or representation agreement.

Sometimes, while speaking with the senior client alone, they admit that they dont want to change their will, for example, but are feeling pressured by a family member, said Tarja McLean, a Notary in Kelowna. That is why its so important for us to speak with the client privately.

There are several resources available to help seniors suffering from physical, emotional or financial abuse. If fraud is happening, call the local police. In B.C., there are also numerous agencies that provide support  the Community Response Network in each community has a list of local agencies that can help, depending on the nature of the abuse.

Five signs of elder abuse and what to do.

1 - Know the signs of physical abuse

If you witness physical abuse or are seeing suspicious signs of physical abuse  unusual bruising, cuts, broken bones  and the person appears to be uncomfortable or afraid to talk about their injuries, contact local victim services, Senior Services Society or Community Response Network. If the situation is an emergency and someone's safety or life is at risk, call 911 or the police emergency number for your community.

2 - Watch for emotional manipulation

If someone is taking advantage of an elderly person, they will often isolate them to increase their reliance on the abuser, giving the vulnerable elderly person a sense of powerlessness, while distorting the truth, or preying upon the persons lessening mental capacity. In these cases, the caregiver may try to gain access to the persons finances or try to convince them to leave their assets to them in their Will. Family members and friends, financial and bank staff, and Notaries can play a role in ensuring they are not being unduly pressured and  if they are  report it.

3 - Know the signs of financial abuse

Financial abuse includes loans to family or friends that arent paid back, forging an older persons signature on documents, making unauthorized withdrawals from the seniors bank account or unauthorized charges on their credit card, and getting an older person to sign a will or power of attorney through deception or coercion. This situation may be prevented through assigning a trusted person with power of attorney.

If you have concerns about an isolated elderly person living alone and at risk, or you believe that an attorney or representative is misusing a Power of Attorney, you can also report this to the Office of the public guardian and trustee.

4 - Carefully appoint a power of attorney

The person with power of attorneya designation to manage finances and legal affairsshould be well-known, trustworthy and accountable to the older adult and involve that person in the decision-making process. In cases of financial abuse, this does not happen. A B.C. notary can help clarify and designate the attorneys roles and responsibilities and make sure theres no undue influence. If there is a question around whether the older adult fully understands the arrangement, then a notary can request an assessment. One way an older adult can avoid such a situation is to create a power of attorney while independent and of sound mind.

5 - Scams frequently target the elderly
Beatrice Community Band is gearing up for its first concert of 2016 on Sunday with band members preparing for a set list that will include songs from the movie "Star Wars: The Force Awakens" and the "Pirates of the Caribbean" series.

With only two rehearsals in the weeks leading up to the show, the musicians must show skill with their instruments and be in tune with those beside them.

A lot of people in the band are friends and they have played with each other a bunch, said Lindsey Bogatz, who serves as the bands director. The band serves as a way to keep playing for many.

The band will hold shows at Chautauqua Park on June 12 and 26 and at the Beatrice High School Hevelone Center on July 10 and 24. Sundays show begins at 7 p.m. at Chautauqua Park with the theme of from the sea to the sky. Bogatz estimates around 75 people will be in attendance.

I pick a couple of tunes I really want to do and a theme emerges, Bogatz said. Its a way to connect with others in the community.

The band consists of people from Beatrice and surrounding areas. Bogatz said they range from high school level and above, with some of the older members being in their 60s.

Ive been a member of the band off and on for about 30 to 34 years, said Cheryl Rabstejnek, who serves as the bands treasurer and plays the trumpet. I started playing the trumpet in fifth grade and played through high school. The band is a just a fun thing for people who want to still play.

As the treasurer, Rabstejnek oversees the finances of the band and helps to make sure, through grants and donations, that the music programs continue each year.

I like playing in it, but I also wanted to keep it going, she said.

The more than 35 band members are given the choice to play whenever they can, since there are enough people to cover each instrument.

With so many moving parts and such a diverse group in terms of both background and skill level, it can be difficult for band members to perfect every tune.

Some pieces can be a bit challenging, but the more skilled musicians keep us going, Rabstejnek said.
Photo: Vancouver Police Department Chantel Gillade, left, Mary ODonnell

Vancouver Police are again asking for public help to catch a killer.

Two more cases have been added to the departments cold case website, which is dedicated to generating tips to solve these crimes.

The body of 28-year-old Chantel Gillade was found in a downtown Vancouver alley in the early morning hours of Sept. 1, 1995.

She was wrapped in a blue tarp and a maroon-coloured blanket, and investigators learned that she was last seen getting into a black pickup truck with a canopy, believed to have been a 1989 Chevrolet. It had tinted windows and a distinctive red stripe painted on the sides of the canopy.

Mary ODonnell was heading home just after midnight on July 28, 1988, when she was robbed and beaten to death on the grounds of Templeton High School.

The petite 53-year-old lived alone in the neighbourhood and struggled with mental illness.

The cold case website, launched in 2014, has generated 72 tips to date. While none has led to solving one of the 15 cases, investigators remain hopeful.

In most of these cases, there is at least one person out there who knows something, said Const. Brian Montague. They may not even realize theyre holding an important piece of information in their memory. Sometimes that little piece of information is all we need to crack open a case and solve it.
Photo: Getty Images

While power companies assure you that smart meters bring efficiency to the system, the meters also allow the companies to cut off your power with just a flick of the switch  a move BC Hydro is doing a lot more of lately.

According to numbers submitted by BC Hydro to the British Columbia Utilities Commission, the energy company disconnected power to six times as many customers in 2015 as they did in 2013.

In 2013, Hydro ordered about 12,000 disconnections and actually completed about 5,000 of them.

In 2015, after smart meters had been implemented into the system, the utility company ordered about 39,000 disconnections and completed 32,500  three times the amount of disconnections ordered and approximately six times the number completed.

BC Hydro reports that the number of accounts disconnected for non-payment in 2015 was just 1.7 per cent of all accounts.

When efforts to obtain payment fail, the result is disconnection, reads the report

The difference is based on the fact that hydro employees no longer have to go to a property and complete the disconnect in person; it is now done with a simple click of mouse.

Note that 95 per cent of disconnections were remote and the other five per cent manual, adds BC Hydro in the report.

54.5 per cent of accounts disconnected for non-payment were reconnected the same day; 71.7 per cent were reconnected the same day or the next day; 80.4 per cent were reconnected within four days; 84.7 per cent were reconnected within seven days; 89.2 per cent were reconnected within 14 days; 91.6 per cent were reconnected within 21 days; 93.5 per cent were reconnected within 30 days; 96.6 per cent were reconnected within 60 days; 99 per cent were reconnected within 133 days.

According to the BC Hydro report, the company's credit policies have not significantly changed with the introduction of smart meters. However, the remote disconnect/reconnect capability significantly increases its ability to follow-through with a disconnection order once issued.

There is no explanation as to why the number of disconnections ordered has also spiked.

Treasurer at the Together Against Poverty Society, and former BCUC commissioner, Tony Pullman says the dramatic change in power disconnections is tied directly to the introduction of smart meters.

The servicemen didn't like doing it. The servicemen would organize his or her day in such a way that disconnects are at the bottom of the heap, and thus they didn't get done, explained Pullman.

Then, you introduce smart meters and almost immediately someone sitting in an office in Burnaby just clicks a mouse and the customer is disconnected. One of the great advantages of smart meters  that nobody actually told us about.

While smart meters can explain the spike in completed disconnections, it cannot explain why the amount of actual disconnections ordered has more than doubled. Pullman says it has to be one of two things.

One, BC Hydro has told its employees to bring a lot more pressure on delinquent accounts. Or, two, more and more people are having more and more trouble being able to pay for their electricity. The answer has to be one of those two things.

Pullman says the increase in disconnections is another sign that BC Hydro does not care about the impoverished of our society.

I have never ever been in any doubt that BC Hydro does not have any particular empathy towards low-income customers.

He adds that some progress was made when BC Hydro was forced to lower their reconnection fee following smart meter installation.

Previously, when a serviceman was required to come to a home and reconnect service, BC Hydro charged $125  a price many felt was far too steep now that employees just have to click a mouse to reconnect.

At least we have that down to $30, said Pullman. I thought that (the $125) was a real insult to low-income people that couldn't afford their bill. When in order to get service back they had to pay an additional $125 for some clerk to flick a switch.

It was a modest victory, but we do hope for more.

Through Pullman's work with Together Against Poverty Society, he sees the effects the high cost of living has on those most vulnerable in our society.

I see an awful lot of low-income people and it is one of the reasons I am helping out in the struggle to get some kind of relief from BC Hydro through the utilities commission, said Pullman.

BC Hydro reportedly spent $1 billion to install the 1.8 million smart meters across the province, starting in 2012.

FortisBC recently finished installing smart meters throughout the Southern Interior. It has also cited remote connections and disconnections as a benefit of the project.

Calls to BC Hydro and NDP BC Hydro critic Adrian Dix were not returned by deadline.
Photo: GTA Architecture Ltd

The placement of a large parking lot is standing in the way of the re-development of the Okanagan Seasons Resort property at the intersection of Highway 97 and Highway 33.

Kelowna's planning department is recommending council deny a development permit for a proposed 200-room Marriott Hotel, featuring two six-storey buildings.

At issue is what planner Ryan Roycroft calls a "sea of parking" fronting the intersection.

In his report for council, Roycroft cited a recently considered hotel project on the other side of the highway that lined the highway frontage with commercial buildings to act as a screen for the parking lot.

City guidelines, Roycroft said, stress the importance of establishing an attractive, sustainable and human scaled pedestrian realm.

"Among the guidelines are requirements that, where possible, parking be located to the rear of buildings, internal to the building, or below grade," said Roycroft in his report.

"Large expanses of parking, especially with a south facing aspect, create an atmosphere that is inherently hostile to pedestrians, and can potentially produce an excessive 'hot island effect.'"

He said the land dedicated to surface parking could be utilized for additional commercial development and density. It represents an underutilization of urban land, that could be developed with street fronting commercial buildings or amenities.

The project has been before staff for about 18 months and, according to Roycroft, staff has continually recommended against the frontage parking.

"The applicant has indicated that the national hotel chain is unwilling to consider the highway fronting configuration, forcing the applicants hand in applying for the proposed layout.

"If the hotel chain is unwilling to consider an alternative configuration, the proposed parcel may not be suitable for their intended use."
Photo: The Canadian Press

With outcry growing against those who stood by a former Stanford University swimmer who sexually assaulted an unconscious woman, a childhood friend and a high school guidance counsellor have apologized for writing letters of support urging leniency for Brock Turner.

The case against the one-time Olympic hopeful has gripped the country, with letters to a judge from Turner's family and friends drawing outrage from critics who say they are shifting blame from a 20-year-old who won't take responsibility for his actions, while a searing message the victim read to Turner at his sentencing has been called a courageous account of the effect the assault has had on her life.

Taking into account more than three dozen letters from character witnesses and a recommendation from the county probation department, Santa Clara County Judge Aaron Persky sentenced Turner to six months in jail and three years' probation for attacking the intoxicated 23-year-old woman behind a campus dumpster in January 2015. He cited Turner's clean criminal record and the effect the conviction will have on his life.

The term triggered criticism that a star athlete from a privileged background had gotten special treatment. Prosecutors had asked for six years in prison.

Turner will only serve three months behind bars, with his expected release date listed as Sept. 2, according to online inmate records. County jail inmates serve 50 per cent of their sentences if they keep a clean disciplinary record.

Calls to the county Department of Correction weren't immediately returned Thursday.

Defendants can solicit letters of support from family, friends and others for judges to consider before sentencing. One of them came from Kelly Owens, a guidance counsellor at Oakwood High School in Dayton, Ohio, where Turner attended.

She had told the court that her former student was "absolutely undeserving of the outcome" of a jury trial that resulted in his conviction of three felony counts of sexual assault.

"I plead with you to consider the good things  the positive contributions  he can make to his community if given a chance to reclaim his life," Owens wrote.

She regrets writing a letter to the judge and acknowledged it was a mistake, her school district said in a prepared statement Wednesday.

"Of course he should be held accountable," Oakwood City School District Superintendent Kyle Ramey quotes Owens as saying. "I am truly sorry for the additional pain my letter has caused."

Ramey declined to comment beyond his statement or make Owens available for an interview.

Leslie Rasmussen, a childhood friend of Turner's, also faced blowback for writing a supportive letter. She had blamed campus drinking culture and political correctness for his drunken life choices.

"I was not there that night. I had no right to make any assumptions about the situation," according to a posting Wednesday on a Facebook page that appears to be Rasmussen's. "Most importantly, I did not acknowledge strongly enough the severity of Brock's crime and the suffering and pain that his victim endured, and for that lack of acknowledgement, I am deeply sorry."

Rasmussen didn't respond to messages sent via Facebook. A listed phone number appears to be disconnected.

People angry about her letter took to social media to demand Rasmussen's indie rock band Good English be dumped from at least four shows that included some Brooklyn clubs hosting a small music festival.

The graphic message the victim read in court gained widespread attention as she described her anger and emptiness. Vice-President Joe Biden released an open letter to the woman Thursday.

"I do not know your name  but your words are forever seared on my soul," wrote Biden, who penned the 1994 Violence Against Women Act and is involved in the White House's "It's On Us" campaign against campus sexual assault. "Words that should be required reading for men and women of all ages. Words that I wish with all of my heart you never had to write."
Top tech companies arrived in the Okanagan Valley with the idea they would be connected with Silicon Valley mentors and investors; however, the CEO start-ups were treated to much more.

Those in the tech industry were given one of the first tours of the Okanagan Centre for Innovation (OCI), on Thursday, during the annual Metabridge event.

The brain child of Jeff Keen and his partners at Accelerate Okanagan, OCI was just a dream back in 2013 that has quickly come to fruition.

In the early days, people were questioning how many tech companies are actually in Kelowna. Do you think youll actually be able to rent out the space? said Keen. We had to defend this to all levels of government and the community, but as we imagined all along there is a healthy thriving community here.

More than 7,000 people work in tech and over 550 technology companies are in the Okanagan, according to Keen, proving start-ups want to be in the Interior.

It will be pretty surreal when it finally opens up, to see what we all dreamed about, then be able to walk through it, touch it and feel it and imagine what is going to happen in there, Keen said.

While it is still several months away from completion, the OCI got the attention of the visiting tech companies.

William Zhou of Chalk.com in Walterloo, Ont., says his city has some of the same infrastructure, but its not all in one building.

It is really awesome to see the amount of resources and money that are being put into projects like these, he said.

The B.C. government invested $6 million into the Okangan Centre for Innovation. Amrik Virk, Minister of Technology, Innovation and Citizens' Services, was on hand for the tour of the centre and said its great to see government, education and the tech sector collaborate.

Every part of a tech build up, from the inspiration, from the talent, from the venture capital, to the acceleration, to where you are actually occupying space and creating revenue for jobs, all in one location, said Virk of the OCI.

Virk says he is pleased to see construction moving along so steadily shows the tech industry is booming in B.C.

The idea to tie it from start-up to a successful company all in one floor and having those successful companies feed back into the start-ups, it is a loop that is closed, he explained.

Metabridge is a non-profit supporting the start-up eco-system, powered by Accelerate Okanagan, that hosts collaborative programs for top tech entrepreneurs to enable them to connect with mentors and serial entrepreneurs from Silicon Valley.
Most people only ever dream of getting behind the wheel of a Ferrari or Lamborghini.

But you don't need a six-figure income or million-dollar bank balance to make the dream come true  if only for a little while.

A Kelowna auto dealer is offering up a uniquely Okanagan experience that blends the best of the valley's scenery with the chance to drive four exotic dream machines.

Flying down a twisty back road in a Ferrari F430, the powerful V8 roaring just behind your head and the car carving turns like it's on rails, is an adrenalin rush that will put a grin on your face from ear to ear.

August Luxury Motorcars' exotic car tours offers the chance to drive that Italian supercar, along with a Lamborghini Gallardo, Aston Martin Vantage Spyder and an Audi R8.

Four legs of the tour bring you to picturesque destinations including Ex Nihilo and 50th Parallel wineries, and Sparkling Hills Resort. Along the way, you'll pass through some of the most beautiful waterfront scenery in the Okanagan and get to fling each of the supercars around some challenging and picturesque blacktop.

"We offer more than just tours, we offer an experience," said owner Matt August. "From the sights in this beautiful valley that we call home, to the experience at our carefully selected vineyard and resort tour stops and the attention to detail we put into making sure our guests have a day they wont soon forget."

Our crew of four left the dealership on a half-day excursion, switching rides at each stop.

First up, the Aston Martin.

With a silky smooth 4.3-litre V8, this big GT cruiser imparts a James Bond image and offers the best way to see the sights  top down.

Coddling the driver in luxury, its 380 horsepower and rich exhaust note hint at performance lurking just below the surface.

Swapping seats into the Ferrari, one is greeted by perhaps the sweetest engine growl ever to roll off an assembly line.

Who needs a stereo when you have the mechanical music of 483 horsepower at your command and a six-speed F1-style paddle-shift gearbox?

The smallest, lightest and most nimble of the four, the F430 scoffs at corners. Barely blink or look to the left and you're already around the corner. The car's handling is awe-inspiring  though not surprising given it is a barely disguised race car made legal for the street.

The big gun is the Lambo.

The top-dog LP550 Gallardo packs a wallop with a 5.2-litre V10 cranking out a massive 550 horsepower and 400 foot-pounds of torque.

Lean on the loud pedal, and the Lamborghini will thrust you forward with the kind of authority that results in whoops of excitement and high fives at your next pit stop. All three guys  and even the one girl  had some swagger in their stride after the thrill ride.

I finished up the day in the Audi.

The R8 fits the niche between the exotic Italians and the stately British wheels. It's a sensible supercar.

Everything makes sense (which isn't always the case with Italian or British cars), it's comfortable, eminently capable in city traffic or on super highway  and it's easy to drive, which makes it confidence-inspiring for newcomers to the world of exotic cars.

And with 420 horsepower on tap, it's no slouch, either.

A little nervous about getting behind the wheel? All four cars in the tour are paddle shift automatics. You can put it in D and let the car do the work, or for more fun do the shifting yourself. No clutch to worry about.

And, just in case any of your buddies are a little crazy, a pace car leads the way, keeping speeds within reason.

With all four cars well into six-figure territory, the $499 experience is a comparative bargain.

The cars are also available for rent, starting at $149 per hour.

Check out Castanet TV over the weekend for more video from the experience.
Photo: Instagram - kitschwines

A local entrepreneurial couple has changed their tune from undies to grapes.

Trent and Ria Kitsch developed Saxx Underwear in Vancouver in 2006, successfully selling it a few years later.

In 2010, the pair moved back to Kelowna, buying acreage in East Kelowna on Neid Road. They have converted the land to grow Riesling grapes and have just recently produced their first vintage of wine.

We are so fortunate to share the sweeping views and beautiful space that this property offers, said Ria Kitsch in a release. Its an amazing estate when you first pull in but then you come around back to the top of the East Kelowna bench and get to sip on some wine in the garage where we ferment and bottle the wine.

Kitsch Wines currently offers three white wines, and plans to expand to a Pinot Noir and Rose next spring.

The winerys inaugural Pinot Gris recently took home silver at the Spring Okanagan Wine Festival Awards, a rare honour for a new winery.
Photo: Flickr/RCMP

A police helicopter, RCMP Emergency Response Team and dog handlers finally collared three youths after a wild ride through Surrey this week.

On Wednesday evening, a motorist reported a road rage incident in which they were cut off on 128th Street, near 66th Avenue, about 6 p.m.

The occupants of a grey Toyota Camry brandished a firearm during the exchange.

The complainant gave police the Toyota's licence plate number, and a short time later it was seen by police heading south on 130th Street.

As the police cruiser activated its emergency lights and made a U-turn to stop the vehicle, it sped off into oncoming traffic, forcing vehicles to swerve to avoid a collision. The vehicle sped through a number of red lights and was lost from sight.

The vehicle was determined to belong to a car rental company.

It was spotted again in the Whalley area, and the Camry again began driving in an erratic manner, into oncoming traffic, blowing through red lights and driving at high rates of speed.

Police didn't pursue the vehicle, fearing for public safety.

Instead, a police helicopter followed from above as Camry entered Guilford Mall's underground parking lot.

Unmarked police cruisers converged on the area, where the occupants abandoned the vehicle and fled on foot.

Members of the Surrey RCMP Gang Enforcement Unit, Lower Mainland Emergency Response Team, as well as police dog handlers cordoned off the area and, with help from witnesses, tracked the three males and arrested them nearby.

The car was seized, and is being held for further investigation.

Anyone who witnessed the chain of events is asked to call Surrey RCMP at 604-599-0502 or CrimeStoppers.
Photo: Deborah Pfeiffer

The South Okanagan Rehabilitation Centre for Owls has issued an advisory after a baby owl died earlier this week at the Penticton courthouse.

Executive manager Dale Belvedere said they received a call regarding the chick that was learning to fly from two different individuals on Monday.

A volunteer was sent out to assess the situation, but the owl died before they arrived.

"What we weren't told is that the baby had been there since Saturday," said Belvedere. "We never got a call then and with the extreme heat and being that it was in a very public area we would have rescued it immediately."

Belvedere added the message they are trying to get out when incidents like this happen is to call SORCO immediately if you find an injured raptor.

SORCO only assists with injured raptors, owls, hawks, eagles and osprey, no other wildlife.

Owls have been sighted in the vicinity of the courthouse before. Belvedere said there is a pair that nest there every year.

The number to call for SORCO if you find an injured raptor, is 250-498-4251.
Photo: Getty images

Even Kelowna RCMP had a laugh over one alleged criminal found napping behind the wheel of a stolen vehicle early Friday morning.

Police sent out a press release entitled: "Shhh...the car thief is sleeping."

Officers responded to a report of a suspicious vehicle parked in front of a property in the 500 block of Keithley Road just after 4 a.m.

"When officers attended, they found a man fast asleep inside the red Saturn which they confirmed had been allegedly stolen out of Lake Country on June 6," said RCMP spokesman Const. Jesse O'Donaghey.

The man was woken up and then "arrested, identified and found to be wanted on two unrelated warrants for his arrest."

The 25-year old Kelowna man spent the rest of his night sleeping in cells.

The suspect is expected to appear in court Friday, facing a potential charge of possession of property obtained by crime.
Authorities are looking for two escaped prison inmates who stole a pickup and crashed it near 18th and F streets Friday.

Armon Dixon, 37, and Timothy Clausen, 52, are both considered dangerous, and anyone who sees them should call 911 immediately.

Police said people in south Lincoln -- specifically near 18th and G streets -- who see any evidence their homes may have been entered should call police immediately. Look for cut screens, damaged doors, etc.

"DO NOT ENTER," Lincoln Police Officer Katie Flood said in an email. "Instead, call 911 immediately. With the search underway for the two escaped inmates, its possible they may have taken shelter at an unoccupied home in the area."

Both men are believed to be wearing tan pants and gray shirts.

At 2 p.m., Lancaster County Sheriff's deputies were on Saltillo and Bennet roads and on U.S. 77 near there after someone reported seeing someone running through a cornfield nearby.

Lincoln Police Chief Jeff Bliemeister confirmed that authorities are searching the area but couldn't confirm if the people spotted in the field are the suspects.

The chief said local, state and county law enforcement are working together to find the men and to figure out how they got away from the Correctional Center.

Dixon is black, 5-foot-9, 152 pounds with brown eyes. He is serving 158 to 278 years for charges including first-degree sexual assault, robbery, first-degree assault, use of a deadly weapon to commit a felony, robbery, theft by receiving and possession of a controlled substance, according to the state Department of Correctional Services.

Clausen is black, 5-foot-8, 160 pounds with brown eyes. He is serving 50 to 55 years for first-degree sexual assault of a child and tampering with a juror, according to the Corrections Department.

At 9:30 Friday morning, a witness told police she saw two men in what looked like prison inmate uniforms acting suspiciously near Warlick Boulevard and U.S. 77 Friday morning. She said the men looked like they were panicked.

Soon after, a pickup was stolen from nearby church, Lancaster County Sheriff's Capt. Ben Houchin said late Friday morning.

Nebraska State Patrol troopers saw the stolen pickup in the area and chased it, picking up help from sheriff's deputies, Houchin said.

The pursuit continued north on 14th Street for about six minutes until the patrol ended it near 13th and F streets when speeds reached about 65 mph. The stolen pickup crashed into a parked SUV and two men ran from the scene a few minutes later, about 10:30 a.m., at 18th and F streets, Houchin said.

At a Friday afternoon news conference, Bliemeister said authorities have confirmed that the two men who ran from the wreck are the two escaped inmates.

"We believe both of these individuals are dangerous," Bliemeister said. "We believe they are a threat to public safety."

When asked about noon if prison officials knew about an escape, Corrections Department spokesman Andrew Nystrom said they were doing a head count then. Officials confirmed at 1:40 p.m. that Clausen and Dixon were missing from the Lincoln Correctional Center near Pioneers Park.

Dixon is serving what amounts to two life sentences for the 2009 home-invasion rape of a stranger in her Lincoln apartment and for raping and robbing a convenience store clerk the same year.

The crimes left women in north Lincoln on edge.

"It is very difficult to imagine more serious and more terrorizing and more awful crimes," Lancaster County District Judge Jodi Nelson said in 2012 when she sentenced him for the break-in rape.

In that case, Dixon got 80 to 140 years for raping a woman at knifepoint and holding her hostage for nearly 10 hours. She said he pushed his way into her apartment, pulled a gun on her and her 3-year-old son, then raped her with her son in a room down the hall, at one point holding a knife to both of them. Then, she said, he left with bedding and condoms after forcing her to bathe and clean the bathroom with bleach.

Dixon also got 70 to 120 years for raping a woman outside of a convenience store near 55th and Superior streets as she arrived at work early on March 21, 2009.

At trial, she testified that a man in a ski mask approached her outside the store just before 5 a.m., pinned her against a propane tank cage, whispered that he'd been watching her and then forced her behind the store and raped her. He then took her inside to get money from the safe before hog-tying her with a belt and plastic bags. After he fled, a police dog led officers to a condom with Dixon's and the victim's DNA on it.

Clausen, originally from Omaha, spent time in jail for burglary and attempted escape beginning when he was 18 years old. He was released in 1991.

According to a post on its website, the Omaha Police Officers Association said Clausen raped and killed a disabled man he met in a Council Bluffs bar in 1992. The Nebraska Supreme Court overturned his conviction due to ineffective counsel and he pleaded guilty to manslaughter to avoid a retrial. He was also convicted of felony escape from the Douglas County Correctional Center while awaiting trial. He was sentenced to 13-39 years in 1995.

In 2012 he was granted parole and, according to court documents, shortly after he began sexually assaulting a girl younger than 12. After he was arrested, he tried to tamper with witnesses. He pleaded guilty to witness tampering and a reduced charge of attempted first-degree assault of a child and was sentenced in 2013 to 51-55 years.
Schools from across the Central Okanagan bused students to the festival, to enjoy face painting, bouncy castles, science projects, crafts and dancing.

More than 1,500 kids were registered for the event from schools alone, in addition to the rest of the public who can attend.

Dorothee Birker, the festivals artistic director, expects more than 10,000 people at the festival over the two days.

Fridays school day is quite different than Saturdays event, according to Birker.

Its a different learning experience for kids if they come with their peer group or if they come with their families, she said. With their peer groups, they really have an opportunity to be really exposed to something new and different, and so this is a great venue for that.

Organizers were setting up the grounds in the pouring rain Friday morning, but it lightened into a drizzle by 10:30 a.m. By early afternoon, the rain poured down again.

We are keeping our spirits up, absolutely, Birker said. The thing is, kids are OK, they wont melt in this weather  its actually a good temperature for them to be able to run around and enjoy the experiences  and then tomorrow I think the forecast is looking better.

The festival continues Saturday, starting off with a parade at 10 a.m. and runs until 4 p.m.

Admission to the event is $5 per person or $15 for a family of four.
Photo: Facebook

Hundreds of motorcyclists are expected Sunday to Ride for Dad.

This is the sixth annual event, raising money in the fight against prostate cancer.

The ride starts Sunday at 10 a.m. from Banner Recreation and Marine on McCurdy Place in Kelowna. Bikers will ride down to Okanagan Falls and back again.

"The parade of vehicles grabs the attention of the masses and the media on ride day, the research helps find hope for the future and the awareness has the potential of saving mens lives today," says the group.

Kelowna RCMP have warned to expect minor traffic delays to accommodate the event.



"Intersections along Highway 97 (Harvey Avenue), including Ellis Street, Bernard Avenue and Abbott Street will be affected to allow the ride to proceed uninterrupted," said Const. Jesse O'Donaghey in a news release.

"RCMP greatly appreciate patience of all motorists."
Photo: Julie Alexander

The accidental discharge of a firearm that lit up gunpowder is being blamed for the destruction of a house in Lumby on Thursday.

The investigation confirmed the explanation of the owner of the house. It was an accidental discharge of a rifle that caused gunpowder to ignite, said Vernon Fire Rescue deputy fire chief Lawrie Skolrood. The owner is a hunter and loads his own ammunition.

Lumby fire crews rushed to the scene on Derry Lane around 2 p.m. yesterday, where they found the two-storey house fully involved.

The owner was treated at the scene for smoke inhalation but did not go to hospital, said Skolrood.

The rest of the family, a mother and two children were not in the house at the time of the fire.

Skolrood said the fire started in the master bedroom and quickly spread.

There is considerable damage, he said, estimating about $350,000 in damages.

Skolrood called the owner a fairly seasoned hunter and said the accident showed how careful a person had to be when working with gunpowder.

The owner certainly didn't want to burn down his house, Skolrood said.
Photo: Jon Manchester

Are you ready for some Total Fun?

Castanet has teamed up with Total Restoration to hit the streets and promote community events with the new Castanet-Total Restoration Community Cruiser.

Driven by Angie Clowry, the cruiser will be showing up at fun places and events all summer long.

We'll be giving away swag and promoting the community live on site, through social media and on Castanet.

Watch for the brightly coloured Total Fun Toyota RAV-4 at an event near you, and let us know if there's one you would like us to attend.

Email your suggestions to [email protected] or reach out through Facebook, Twitter or Instagram.
Photo: CTV

Police are searching for a carjacker following a crash in Surrey.

The driver of a Dodge Avenger rear-ended another vehicle about 10:30 a.m. Friday, causing a chain-reaction involving three other cars.

The driver of the Dodge jumped out of the vehicle, leaving it running.

The car rolled through a busy intersection and crashed into some bushes.

The man then carjacked a nearby vehicle, pulling the female driver from the car. He jumped in, backed up to pick up his dog, and drove away.

Police are searching for the suspect, who has been described as a South Asian man, 25 to 30 years old. He was travelling with a black and white pit bull dog.

 with files from CTV Vancouver
Photo: The Canadian Press

British Columbia Premier Christy Clark is urging men to help prevent sexual violence by joining women in discussing the topic with their children.

She made the comment a day after speaking publicly about being pulled into some bushes at age 13 as she walked down a street, but managed to escape from a man's grip.

Clark says she didn't tell anyone about what happened for 37 years but that her government's support of legislation requiring post-secondary institutions to enact sexual assault policies helped her break the silence.

At an unrelated news conference at a Burnaby elementary school, Clark was flanked by children as she said she wants to change the culture of keeping quiet.

She says her son Hamish was protective when she told him about her ordeal and that she didn't speak out earlier because she felt ashamed and thought no one would care.

She says fathers can help by talking to their daughters and sons with the message that experiences like hers do matter and there is no shame in being a victim.
Photo: The Canadian Press

British Columbia's Education Ministry says students in Grades 6 to 9 will be taught mandatory classes in computer coding.

The ministry says $2 million will be spent on training teachers and developing a curriculum by next year so students can learn coding as of September 2018.

Another $2 million will be set aside for the purchase of equipment and resources which will allow every student in B.C. to take a module of basic coding by the end of Grade 9.

The ministry says learning to code will teach students how to analyze a problem, determine the steps to fix it and come up with directions so a machine can carry out those steps.

The Education Ministry says such critical thinking skills will help students in their future careers, even if they don't pursue jobs in the technology sector.

Premier Christy Clark and Education Minister Mike Bernier made the announcement at a school where students in Grades 4 to 7 showcased their coding and robotics projects developed with help from high school students.
Photo: Google Street View

A body has been found along the railroad tracks running through White Rock.

It appears the victim was struck by a passing train.

Police are investigating the discovery, made about 11:45 a.m., on the Canadian National railway line south of Bay Street.

White Rock RCMP and CN police confirm that trauma to the body is consistent with the individual being struck by a train.



The B.C. Coroners Service is also investigating.

Anyone with information is asked to contact White Rock RCMP at 778-593-3600, Const. Chantal Sears said in a press release.
Photo: Deborah Pfeiffer

The Canadian Cancer Society is closing its Penticton office at the end of the month.

The growing and aging population in B.C., along with the changing way the public interacts with organizations, means the society needs to be spending donor dollars differently in order to continue having an impact in the fight against cancer.



This was a challenging decision but ultimately we recognized that we need to find progressive ways to engage with the Penticton community without relying on bricks and mortar, said Randene Wejr, southern Interior regional director, Canadian Cancer Society, B.C. and Yukon. The world is different now and fewer people are interacting with organizations like ours in a physical office space. We need to be efficient and effective while also being innovative and impactful.

The number of new cancer cases in Canada is expected to rise about 40 per cent in the next 15 years and 32 per cent in B.C. This has led the society to review all of its operations across the country.

The society needs to ensure it is a sustainable organization that can meet the rising demand for its services as well as the need to invest in research.

With this knowledge, when the lease for the Penticton office space came up for renewal, the society began a thorough review of how the organization engages with the community.

The office was operated by a team of 10 volunteers and no staff members are being impacted by the closure.



We are so grateful for the almost 200 committed and passionate volunteers we have in Penticton who have made great strides in helping us prevent cancer, fund critical cancer research and deliver compassionate support programs for people facing cancer, said Wejr. We want to continue to work with each and every one of them in order to bring our mission to Penticton and make a difference.



The office cost approximately $23,000 per year to operate or around 20 per cent of the total donations provided by residents.

The funds that are saved from the closure will be redirected to supporting the societys mission.



People facing cancer and the general public will continue to have full access to all of the societys support services, such as the Southern Interior Rotary Lodge, Cancer Information Service and Camp Goodtimes.

The Mirror Image Room, the societys wig bank program, will also continue to operate thanks to a dedicated volunteer team.

The society is currently working with these volunteers to explore a new way to distribute wigs to those who need them.



Anyone wanting to connect with the society can call 1-888-939-3333 or visit cancer.ca.

The closest community office is located in Kelowna at 102-1433 St Paul Street.
Those who knew him remember Benjamin Slaven as a jokester, someone who loved to make people laugh and kid around.

Hes also remembered for his love of video games and being eager to help those in need, not expecting anything in return.

Everyone at Evergreen Home Cemetery Thursday remembered Slaven in his or her own way, but whats most important to his family is simply that he is remembered, even a decade after making the ultimate sacrifice.

I cant believe its been 10 years, said Judy Huenink, Slavens mother. It feels like it was just yesterday.

He always liked to help. He would show up and help people bale their hay, do their yards and never wanted anything for it. If somebody needed something, hed always try and help them. He was just a very giving young man.

Army Reserve Pfc. Benjamin Slaven was killed in Iraq June 9, 2006. He was 22 years old.

Slaven was killed when a roadside bomb exploded near his convoy in Ad Diwaniyah, a city in south central Iraq.

I was very blessed to have him as my son, Huenink said. He grew up to be such a great young man that he actually made me feel like I had accomplished something, like I had done something right in my life. He was such a good kid."

Slaven was deployed to Iraq with the Lincoln-based 308th Transportation Company.

Each year on the anniversary of his passing, friends, family and the brothers he served with visit his grave site to share memories.

Dozens filtered in and out of the cemetery throughout the day Thursday to mark the 10-year anniversary.

Chuck Johnson, who was the convoy commander and knew Slaven for more than a year, recalled Slaven as liking to work out, take pictures and being the funny guy.

Take it from me and everybody else, we lost a brother, Johnson said. Were all family. He had a heart and soul. He was a happy-go-lucky guy.

Johnson has visited Slavens grave site every year hes been able to for the last 10 years.

He said the loss is a difficult one, even after a decade.

Its there day and night; I think about it all the time, Johnson said. Thats the biggest thing. Everybody says it will go away and change, but it doesnt. You have to change yourself. Itll never be forgotten. Ben gave the ultimate sacrifice and theres nothing we can do for him.

Ben Hernandez was the truck commander and inside the vehicle with Slaven at the time the bomb went off at around 9:30 p.m.

The driver sustained minimal injuries and Hernandez, a native of Lamont, Iowa, took some shrapnel.

Slaven was killed instantly, Hernandez recalled. Ben was the only one out of my two deployments. He was the only one we lost.

Hernandez added his last memory of Slaven was him eating beef jerky sent by Hernandezs grandmother at the time of the explosion.

Huenink said many of Slavens fellow soldiers have tattoos to remember him by, and added shell always remember her sons smile and caring personality.

He was always clowning around and had this huge smile that could light up a room, she recalled. He loved to work. If he wasnt working, he was upset. He always had to have something to do. Hed beg people for things to do. He enjoyed it.
Photo: Contributed

It looks like Kelowna's five squabbling water purveyors have tapped into a possible solution.

Everyone seems to agree the systems will be integrated at some point  but how to get there and what governance will look like has been at issue.

In fact, the tension boiled over to the point where Kelowna-Lake Country MP Stephen Fuhr recently felt the need to step in and warn that infrastructure dollars were at stake if they could't play nice.

Now Peter Fassbender, Minister of Community, Sport and Cultural Development, said he met with the groups and they have found "common ground" and reached a "turning point" in their discussions.

Details are thin, to say the least. It seems they've basically reached an agreement on how to reach an agreement.

"We are clear about one thing  it is time to move forward," said Fassbender, adding they drafted common principles and terms of reference for a "value planning process."

"All previous and existing materials and plans will be used to inform this process," he said. "The parties agreed to work proactively as they take next steps to ensure a robust, resilient and sustainable system that delivers high quality water for all citizens needs."

Fassbender said more details will be released at a later time.

The five purveyors are the City of Kelowna, the Black Mountain Irrigation District, the Rutland Water Works District, the Glenmore-Ellison Improvement District and the South East Kelowna Irrigation District.
If you have just started your journey in an online casino or are looking for a new site to play,...
Sen. Ben Sasse on Thursday decried the lack of Obama administration action to detain an illegal immigrant who had been charged in a motor vehicle accident in Omaha that killed a woman while he was driving drunk.

After receiving a letter from Daniel Ragsdale, U.S. immigration and customs enforcement deputy director, stating that "Eswin Mejia should be in custody," Sasse said no action has been taken.

"Stonewalling won't protect other families from this kind of tragedy," he said.

Mejia, a native of Honduras, entered the country illegally as an unaccompanied child in 2013 when he was 16 and was transferred to the Department of Health and Human Services refugee resettlement program. He was released to his brother in Tennessee and later moved to Omaha.

Mejia, 19, was street racing in Omaha in January when he crashed into a vehicle driven by Sarah Root, who was killed. He was arrested, charged with motor vehicle homicide while driving under the influence of alcohol and fled after posting bail.

Sasse said recent responses from Department of Homeland Security officials have been "a copy and paste job" that results in nearly identical letters that "say nothing of substance."

Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson earlier wrote Sasse that Immigration and Customs Enforcement was "working to locate and apprehend Mr. Mejia" and had added his name to its most wanted list.

Sasse has raised questions about the facts and circumstances regarding the decision not to detain Mejia earlier.

"It is time for President Obama to rethink his disastrous policy and faithfully execute the law to protect the American people," Sasse said.
Kenya: Savannah Cement, Kenyatta University collaboration

ICR Newsroom By 10 June 2016

Kenyan cement producer Savannah Cement has signed an agreement with Kenyatta University to collaborate in areas such as innovation, student internships, joint research activities and capacity building.

Managing Director of Savannah Cement, Ronald Ndegwa, said the company will provide the necessary support to accelerate Kenyatta University's academic and infrastructure development projects. "With the signing of this partnership with Kenyatta University, Savannah Cement is effectively extending an opportunity to facilitate homegrown academic and industrial research on mutual interest areas as part of our commitment to fuel the engine for innovation and economic growth," Mr Ndegwa said.

Savannah Cement is actively engaged in Burundi, DR Congo, Rwanda, South Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda, and is aspiring to be the cement manufacturer of choice in the region, according to local news sources.

Published under
Argentine cement demand notes 16.5% rise in May

ICR Newsroom By 10 June 2016

Dispatches from Argentinas cement plants rose by 16.5 per cent in May 2016 after a six consecutive months of decreases. Around 881,000t of cement were delivered to the domestic market, according to the countrys cement association AFCP.



Some 9000t of cement was exported by domestic producers during May, reflecting a 22.7 per cent drop in export sales when compared with last Octobers export peak of 1.1Mta.



For the first five months, cement demand in the Latin American contract has fallen by 13.2 per cent.

For full-year 2016 the organisation expects the market to contract by 13.4 per cent YoY to 10.5Mt. Industry sources attribute the fall in sales to Argentinas economic downturn.

Published under
To understand the issue on the largest scale possible, Stille's report provides data for all 529 public institutions in the United States. Combined, the taxpayer waste totals nearly $12 billion nationwide.As if the levels of state taxpayer waste are not staggering enough, the federal student loan program produces an additional burden. The Congressional Budget Office estimates U.S. taxpayers will bear an additional $170 billion in the next decade due to the high rate of non-repayment.Andrew Kelly, the UNC system's new top policy advisor, recently presented a threefold solution to the dilemma to the UNC Board of Governors: Improve academic preparation, inform students about their options, and provide incentives for institutional improvement and cost containment.Kelly's recommendation to improve consumer knowledge is vital. Students are often unaware of the true cost of college, the potential wage earnings of their major, and their likelihood of success at a given school. Even more important, students graduate from high school falsely believing they've been prepared for college.According to a report from the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education, "Even those students who have done everything they were told to do to prepare for college find, often after they arrive, that their new institution has deemed them unprepared. Their high school diploma, college-preparatory curriculum, and high school exit examination scores did not ensure college readiness."Fortunately North Carolina has taken steps to improve academic preparation. Innovations in remedial education aim to deliver fundamental skills in math and reading to students in high school, rather than in college. Additional programs like the North Carolina Guaranteed Admissions Program may also prevent waste caused by underprepared students.But Stille thinks it's not enough. He recommends that no student be enrolled who comes from the bottom 50 percent of their high school graduating class rank, or who scores below 910 SAT/19 ACT.While these recommendations represent extreme responses, high drop out rates have led to a noticeable shift in the "college for all" emphasis of recent years. As my colleague George Leef recently pointed out , even the Chronicle of Higher Education seems to be distancing itself from this concept."The exodus (or non-entrance) of many Americans who aren't inclined toward academic pursuits will hugely deflate the college bubble," he writes, "but will also allow schools to better serve those who truly desire deep and advanced study, not merely prolonged high school."Stille's formula demonstrates that policymakers and the general public should be motivated to jumpstart this exodus. In the endeavor to push for universal access to higher education-where a bachelor's degree is imagined as a springboard for upward mobility-universities have conned students, their families, and taxpayers into spending billions of dollars, only to learn a large share of students were not prepared for rigorous college curricula.While legislators may not be entirely aware of the completion crisis in state institutions, Stille argues that universities are."Student completion success as seen through admissions data is simple to conduct," writes Stille, "but hardly any institutions do it because they do not want to see the potential negative results."State lawmakers must create more pressure for schools to improve completion rates. As elected officials entrusted with taxpayers' money, they must question why so many schools admit underprepared students.
Press Release:

Background:

Contact: The Pat McCrory Committee

The Pat McCrory Committee media@patmccrory.com

Raleigh, N.C. Governor Pat McCrory today received the endorsement of the Associated Builders and Contractors of the Carolinas (ABC), a key trade association representing over 1,800 construction-related companies across the North and South Carolina. ABC of the Carolinas announced their endorsement at their 9th annual 'Hard Hat Day' government affairs meeting in Raleigh.said Doug Carlson, president & CEO of ABC of the Carolinas.Carlson added,said Governor Pat McCrory.Since Governor McCrory took office, North Carolina has added over 275,000 net new jobs and has experienced the fastest economic growth of any state in the country. In April, North Carolina's unemployment rate hit an 8-year low.said Chris Bullard, Director of Government Affairs for ABC of the Carolinas.Governor McCrory's administration has made it a priority to promote workforce development and better connect the state's education system with the needs of employers. Last year, the governor set a bold goal to close the skills gap in North Carolina by aiming to have 67 percent of North Carolina's working adults attain education and training beyond high school by 2025. His administration has also instituted year-round job-training in our community colleges and convert unemployment offices into "career centers" located across the state to help provide those seeking employment with everything they need to find a job.Additionally, Governor McCrory's proposed budget expands business apprenticeship opportunities for workers through additional investments in the NCWorks Apprenticeship Program, which provides workers with on-the-job training and practical education while allowing businesses to train their workers to meet their industry's needs.The Associated Builders and Contractors (ABC) is a national trade association representing 22,000 members from more than 19,000 construction and industry-related firms. Founded on the merit shop philosophy, ABC and its 72 chapters nationwide help members win work and deliver that work safely, ethically and profitably for the betterment of the communities in which they work. ABC's membership represents all specialties within the U.S. construction industry and is comprised primarily of firms that perform work in the industrial and commercial sectors of the industry.
Holding defeats Ellmers easily in 2nd District; GOP incumbent Pittenger has slim lead in 9th District; Budd wins 17-way GOP primary in 13th

N.C. Supreme Court (top two advance):

Bob Edmunds (I); Mike Morgan

U.S. House of Representatives

2nd District

Republican George Holding (13th District incumbent); Democrat John McNeil

3rd District

Republican Walter Jones (I); Democrat Ernest Reeves

4th District

Republican Sue Googe

5th District

Republican Virginia Foxx (I); Democrat Josh Brannon

6th District

Republican Mark Walker (I)

8th District

Republican Richard Hudson (i)

9th District

Republican Robert Pittenger (I) led Mark Harris by 0.5 percent before provisional ballots had been counted and results certified

10th District

Republican Patrick McHenry (I)

11th District

Democrat Rick Bryson led Tom Hill by 0.5 percent before provisional ballots had been counted and results verified

12th District

Democrat Alma Adams (I); Republican Leon Threatt

13th District

Republican Ted Budd; Democrat Bruce David led Bob Isner by 0.6 percent before provisional ballots had been counted and results verified

RALEIGH Conservative state Supreme Court Justice Bob Edmunds prevailed in a primary election he didn't think he'd have to contest, and incumbent Rep. Renee Ellmers of the 2nd Congressional District was trounced by 13th District U.S. Rep. George Holding in an election made necessary by several court decisions.The congressional primary was mandated after a three-judge federal court panel ruled in February the districts drawn in 2011 by the General Assembly violated the federal Voting Rights Act. Lawmakers drew new maps in a special legislative session, and last Thursday, the court upheld the districts.Ellmers may not be the only incumbent member of Congress to lose a primary challenge . Embattled two-term 9th District GOP Rep. Robert Pittenger, who has weathered ethics complaints challenging whether he fully divested interest in his family's business after being elected to Congress, had a lead of roughly 140 votes (or 0.5 percent) over Charlotte-area pastor Mark Harris in a three-way race. Union County insurance agent Todd Johnson trailed the field. If Pittenger finishes less than 1 percent ahead of Harris in the final tally, Harris can request a recount.Meanwhile, Holding's slot on the 13th District's Republican ballot in November was won by businessman Ted Budd, who prevailed in a 17-way primary, aided by the support of a political action committee operated by the limited-government group Club for Growth. Budd, who owns a shooting range and a firearms store, received about 20 percent of the vote, besting a handful of General Assembly members, including Sen. Andrew Brock and Reps. Julia Howard, John Blust, and Harry Warren.In the 12th District, which runs along Interstate 85 from Charlotte to Greensboro and was shifted entirely into Mecklenburg County, incumbent Rep. Alma Adams, who until recently lived in Guilford County, easily won a seven-way Democratic primary.The Supreme Court primary became necessary when a state court ruled unconstitutional a 2015 law changing judicial elections to referendums. Under that law, incumbent judges seeking new terms on the state Court of Appeals or the Supreme Court would have faced up-or-down votes to retain their seats. The court ruled that the 2015 law violated the state constitution's definition of an election as a contest between two or more candidates, setting the stage for a primary.Edmunds, the only registered Republican on the ballot, will face Superior Court Judge Mike Morgan in the November general election. Unaffiliated attorney Sabra Faires, who filed the lawsuit that resulted in the reversal of the retention-election law, finished third, with Democratic attorney Daniel Robertson a distant fourth.There were no primaries in the 1st or 7th Congressional Districts, and in several districts, candidates for one party ran unopposed. These candidates won primaries on Tuesday and will appear on the Nov. 8 general election ballot:
Press Release:

About Connect NC

Contact: Crystal Feldman

Crystal Feldman govpress@nc.gov

Boone, N.C. Shortly after the Council of State approved the first $200 million issuance and sale for the Connect NC Bond, Appalachian State University was awarded a construction contract to build a new College of Health Sciences Building. Appalachian State will receive a total of $70 million as part of the Connect NC Bond proposed by Governor Pat McCrory and overwhelmingly passed by voters in March.said Governor McCrory.Since 2008, the College of Health and Sciences at Appalachian State University has nearly doubled in size to 3,332 students. The new facility will provide specialty laboratories, classrooms and support space centralizing several different health sciences degree programs under one roof.Construction is expected to begin in July with a projected completion date of July 2018.The vast majority of the $200 million approved for the first bond issuance, or 87 percent, will support projects at our universities and community colleges. Additionally, 52 percent of bond investments in year one will support construction. The remaining money will be used for the planning of future construction projects.The Connect NC bond will invest $980 million into the state's 17 universities. The vast majority of these improvements will build facilities that will improve teaching and research in the science, technology, engineering and medical fields. An additional $350 million will go to the community colleges, primarily for new construction, repairs and renovations on its 58 campuses.Another $309.5 million will be awarded to smaller cities and towns to build and repair water and sewer systems. These investments are crucial to retaining and attracting new jobs outside of the state's metro areas.Agriculture and consumers will also benefit from Connect NC. Approximately $94 million will be spent to construct a new Agriculture and Consumer Sciences Lab for veterinary, food, drug and motor fuel testing. An additional $85 million will go toward a new Plant Sciences Research Complex at NC State University.The National Guard will receive $70 million to rehabilitate Regional Readiness Centers in Burke and Wilkes counties as well as construct a new readiness center on Guilford County. Another $9 million will go toward the completion of the Samarcand Corrections and Law Enforcement Training Center in Moore County.To improve North Carolina's quality of life and help preserve the state's environment and natural beauty, the Connect NC bond will invest $75 million into our state parks. An additional $25 million will go the North Carolina Zoo for upgrades to service support facilities, trails and exhibits.
Kathy Manos Penn

I read that introduction back in 2014 and still keep the list handy. This is not your father's Oldsmobile--not your English teacher's list. I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall as the Amazon staff debated their list, and I must admit I've only read 25 of their recommendations. I read quite a few in high school and as a college English major because they were required reading. I'm pretty sure The Sun Also Rises, The Great Gatsby, Great Expectations and To Kill a Mockingbird were high school reading, while Catch 22, Catcher in the Rye, 1984 and Slaughterhouse Five were assigned in college. The rest were picked up for pure pleasure along the way.I read In Cold Blood and Portnoy's Complaint because so many folks recommended them, though I can't say they were a pleasure. The World According to Garp, on the other hand, is an all time favorite. I have a vivid memory of vacationing in the Bahamas, standing in the galley of our sailboat with book in hand, reading.Little House on the Prairie books were favorites from the library. Other than Dr. Seuss, Nancy Drew, The Bobbsey Twins and a few classics like Heidi, we didn't purchase many books when I was little, but I still have those my Mom bought me prominently displayed on my bookshelf. The Five Little Peppers, Big Red, Black Beauty-they're all there.At the other extreme in subject matter, Valley of the Dolls doesn't strike me as a must read. It was one of those racy books I read in high school, and I'm sure I didn't really understand it back then. I'd have to agree that Donna Tartt's Secret History was a great read, reminding me in many ways of A Separate Peace, which didn't make the list.I can think of plenty of books that coulda / shoulda been on the list. Amazon, in fact, invited readers to comment on the list and make suggestions via GoodReads / A quick glance at that site revealed some worthy additions - Jane Eyre, Little Women, Animal Farm, Wuthering Heights. I smiled when I saw Watership Down, which I'd completely forgotten.Of those I've read, I only strongly disagreed with one on the list-Gone Girl. It's a book everyone said I had to read, but I didn't care for it-at all. I think it was the absence of likable characters. I've gotten to the point where I'll put a book down and stop reading it if it doesn't grab me, something I never used to do. Gone Girl I finished only because I wanted to see what happened to the characters, no matter how loathsome.The good news is there are plenty of enjoyable books to choose from, and if my Amazon and Dunwoody library sale purchases are anything to judge by, I'm making every effort to get to them all.
This service applies to you if your subscription has not yet expired on our old site. You will have continued access until your subscription expires; then you will need to purchase an ongoing subscription through our new system. Please contact The Chanute Tribune office at 620-431-4100 if you have any questions
Remembering the World War I Doughboy: The History of Tennessees War Memorial

The Tennessee State Museum is pleased to announce that its exhibition,, on view at the Military Branch Museum, has been extended until December 31, 2016, due to popular demand.The exhibit, originally slated to conclude on June 11, highlights the history behind the War Memorial Building which was built in 1925 as a result of Tennessees efforts to preserve the memory of those who fought and died in World War I.We have been very pleased with the number of visitors who have come downtown to the museums Military Branch Museum to see this important historic exhibit, showcasing one of Tennessees greatest architectural treasures, said Lois Riggins-Ezzell, executive director of the Tennessee State Museum.

Remembering the World War I Doughboy: The History of Tennessees War Memorial

With the number of tourists predicted to visit Nashville this summer, fall and during the holidays, this is an excellent opportunity for more visitors to view this very significant, educational exhibit.Dr. Lisa M. Budreau, the museums senior curator of military history, who researched and organized the exhibit, has led several important tours through the exhibition. Tennessees role in World War I is one of national importance. The War Memorial Building pays homage to the sacrifices that were made during this tragic period of world history. WWI was often referred to as the war to end all wars. In 1919, with soldiers returning from overseas, the memory of those who would never return was fresh in the minds of many Americans, she explained.The Tennessee General Assembly called for a lasting monument to honor heroes of the world war. Initially, Nashvilles Parthenon was considered, but by 1925, a stunning new classical memorial and auditorium stood across from the State Capitol.The story of the War Memorial Buildings origins is told with particular focus on those Tennesseans who served in France, then returned to ensure that their comrades and their military service would always be remembered.will be on view until December 31, 2016. There is no admission charge to the exhibition or to the Military Branch Museum, which is open Tuesday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Michael Walton, the executive director at green|spaces, said the Empower Chattanooga energy program is about bringing people together and building stronger neighborhoods.

On Wednesday, the program was recognized as a recipient of the Governors Environmental Stewardship Award in the category of Environmental Education and Outreach. Out of the 11 award winners statewide, green|spaces and EPB were chosen from Hamilton County.



Mr. Walton spoke with The Chattanooga Civitan Club on Friday about the work of green|spaces, a nonprofit located on Main Street whose mission is to advance the sustainability of living, working, and building in Chattanooga and the surrounding region.



He said when talking about sustainability, green|spaces looks at the idea of the triple bottom line, which includes not only environmental sustainability, but also social and economic sustainability.



If you focus on just one,  you get Chattanooga in 1969, where you have people leaving the city in droves, he said.



green|spacess public outreach campaign, Empower Chattanooga, focuses on the sustainability of living. After looking at data showing energy use in the city of Chattanooga, the nonprofit identified neighborhoods where energy use was the highest. They layered those maps with data which located calls to 211 hotlines requesting assistance to pay utilities.



Information from the Chattanooga Area Food Bank showed that 69 percent of their clients were choosing between paying for utilities or paying for food.



We wanted to build this program not based on our preconceptions and what we thought these neighborhoods needed, said Mr. Walton. We wanted to build it on listening.



After hearing the stories of locals, green|spaces responded with activities driven by each neighborhoods particular needs, finding low-cost and no-cost ways for people to save money and reduce their utility bills.



He said many low-income families regularly have to choose between paying utilities and paying for food. Hour-long workshops, taught by residents of the neighborhoods, provide education to such struggling families. These workshops are followed up with energy kits, which provide simple solutions to help people lower their bills.



Mr. Walton told the story of Glenda, a 76-year-old long-time resident of East Chattanooga. Though she lived in a fairly small house, she had a regular electric bill of no less than $250 per month. After her attendance at one of the Empower Chattanooga workshops and some changes at home, her next bill was $67.

Mr. Walton said Glenda saved it forward, using the extra money to buy food for her great-granddaughter and keep her car full of gas so that she could provide transportation to her neighbors without vehicles. Now, she is a block leader for her neighborhood and helps run similar programs.

Mr. Walton also spoke briefly about green|light, a business certification in the city of Chattanooga which helps with employee attraction and retention, stronger public image, cost savings, and environmental stewardship.

He said 90 percent of millennials desire to use their skills for good causes, and 50 percent are willing to take a pay cut to find work that matches their values.

Current green|light certified businesses include the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, Flying Squirrel, 212 Market Restaurant, The Crash Pad, The Strand, River City Company, and Ruby Falls. A number of other local businesses, such as Lupis Pizza and the Hunter Museum of Art, are working toward certification.

Mr. Walton also discussed green|spacess NextGen homes. These homes produce as much energy as they consume and also protect and promote the health of the occupants.

Construction will begin on the first house next week, located at 631 Hamilton Ave. A three bedroom, two and a half bathroom, zero energy home, it is priced at $350,000.

Even if you dont buy a NextGen home, however, there are still many opportunities to help.

Were asking everybody in Chattanooga to look for those simple ways that they can save on their own energy bills, said Mr. Walton.

He hopes the community-at-large will follow Glendas example and save it forward by donating on the green|spaces website at http://www.greenspaceschattanooga.org/.

For as little as $8 per month, he says contributions can help Empower Chattanooga educate local people.
Berkelium-249, contained in the greenish fluid in the tip of the vial, was crucial to the experiment that discovered element 117. It was made in the research reactor at DOE's Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

The International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) Inorganic Chemistry Division has published a Provisional Recommendation for the names and symbols of the recently discovered superheavy elements 113, 115, 117, and 118.

The provisional names for 115, 117 and 118 -- originally proposed by the discovering team from the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research, Dubna, Russia; the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, California; and Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee -- will now undergo a statutory period for public review before the names and symbols can be finally approved by the IUPAC Council.

Tennessine (Ts) is proposed for element 117, recognizing the contribution of Tennessee research centers ORNL, Vanderbilt, and the University of Tennessee to superheavy element research, including the production and chemical separation of unique actinide target materials at ORNL's High Flux Isotope Reactor and Radiochemical Engineering Development Center. Actinide materials from ORNL have contributed to the discovery and/or confirmation of nine superheavy elements.

"These experiments and discoveries essentially open new frontiers of chemistry," said ORNL's Science and Technology Partnerships director Jim Roberto.

Prof. Yuri Oganessian from the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research and scientific leader of the team, noted the importance of international collaboration in discovering new elements and nuclei, completing the seventh row of the periodic table, and providing evidence for the long sought "island of stability" for superheavy elements. Two members of the team, JINR and LLNL, were previously credited with the discovery of elements 114 (flerovium) and 116 (livermorium).

These new elements were discovered using the "hot fusion" approach, developed and implemented by Oganessian at JINR. This approach involves heavy ion reactions of an intense, high-energy calcium beam on rare actinide targets including berkelium and californium at the Dubna Gas-Filled Recoil Separator.

The concept of the "island of stability" was originally proposed in the 1960s. It predicts increased stability for superheavy nuclei at higher neutron and proton numbers. The new nuclei produced in this research exhibit substantially increased lifetimes consistent with approaching the island.

Moscovium (Mc) is provisionally recommended for element 115 in recognition of the Moscow region and honoring the ancient Russian land that is home to JINR. Moscow is the capital of the region, and Moscow and its people have been very supportive of JINR and superheavy element research.

The provisional name for element 118 is Oganesson (Og) in recognition of the pioneering contributions of Yuri Oganessian to superheavy element research. It was the vision and determination of Prof. Oganessian that created this opportunity for the significant expansion of the periodic table and our knowledge of superheavy nuclei.

IUPAC also has published a Provisional Recommendation for element 113. The discoverers at RIKEN Nishina Center for Accelerator-Based Science in Japan proposed the name nihonium (Nh). Nihon is one of the two ways to say "Japan" in Japanese, and translates as "the Land of Rising Sun."
For Brazil's enormous chicken industry, facing a surprise domestic shortage of corn with which to feed its birds, the solution seemed obvious: import the grain from the United States, where stockpiles have never been bigger.

Yet there have been no imports from the U.S. so far this year, even though the corn shortfall is so severe that the chicken producers have cut output by 10 percent in recent months. The companies aren't buying American grain because they're concerned that Brazil's stringent regulations on genetically modified organisms, or GMOs, threaten to hold up shipments, according to people familiar with the situation.

The fate of one corn cargo that arrived in Brazil in April illustrates their worries about potentially costly port delays. The shipment was from Argentina, which grows a few varieties of modified corn not allowed in Brazil, and it was initially prevented from unloading, one of the people said. While no rules were broken and the grain was eventually allowed onshore, it took a week for the buyer to convince the authorities that the cargo was legitimate, the person said.

In Brazil -- and many other countries -- GMOs are a sensitive topic and are the target of campaigning by environmental groups. Modified agricultural commodities must be carefully segregated and port inspections are strict. Brazil allows farmers to grow GMO soybeans and 29 varieties of modified corn.

However, there are 43 types of GMO corn grown in the U.S., according to the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-Biotech Applications, an industry group.

Brazil's chicken industry, the world's biggest exporter of the meat, and grain traders are now considering whether to request approval from the government to import GMO crops that aren't currently permitted, said the people, who asked not be identified because the deliberations are private.

Neri Geller, agricultural policy secretary at the Agriculture Ministry, confirmed the discussions and said they're still preliminary. "A formal request hasn't been made to the Agriculture Ministry yet," he said Monday in an interview.

Brazil's National Technical Commission for Bio-Safety (CTNBio), the body responsible for GMO approvals, hasn't received any formal request to authorize the importation of corn varieties currently forbidden, nor has it been told about difficulties with shipments, it said Tuesday in an email.

The uncertainties of importing modified crops in Brazil illustrate how the wide variation in GMO regulation around the world can sometimes disrupt international trade. In recent years, some of the largest commodity trading companies have refused to take certain GMO crops from farmers because the seeds used hadn't received a full array of global approvals, something that can lead to holdups at ports or even the rejection of entire cargoes.

In theory it should be easier to buy from the U.S. after the April suspension by Brazil of import taxes on corn imported from outside the Mercosur trading bloc. But U.S. government data shows there have been no exports to Brazil in 2016.
Most people turn to social networks to hang out with friends, but if the conversation at the Internet Retailer Conference and Exhibition is any indication, a lot of companies are trying to figure out how to join customers' social circles.

Even though most purchases still happen in stores, nearly half are at least influenced by online shopping, whether a customer researches options, reads reviews or checks availability at a local store, and a growing share of online shopping is happening on smartphones, Facebook's head of U.S. e-commerce, Jeremy Lewis, said Thursday at the conference at McCormick Place.

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"Companies that adapt to that and make changes fast will win," he said.

Conference participants discussed ways to meet customers where they're spending their time on smartphones: social networks. Here are some trends you might see more of:

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Snap happy

Steals.com founder and president Jana Francis predicts this will be a breakout year for messaging app Snapchat, which is no longer just for teens, she said.

It's popular with a coveted young demographic, and since posts come with an expiration date, it's easier to experiment without the pressure to be perfect, Francis said.

Users can send Snaps  photos or videos up to 10 seconds long that disappear once viewed  to friends or combine them into Stories, viewable by a broader audience for up to 24 hours. Snapchat has said 100 million people use the app each day.

"There aren't a ton of advertisers that have screwed it up yet," she said. "It's raw, it's real, it's unedited."

That can help brands come across as authentic, said Juliette Dallas-Feeney, senior social media manager at beauty retailer Birchbox.

Although Birchbox has a smaller audience on Snapchat than other social networks, it's a much more engaged audience, Dallas-Feeney said. Since Snapchat messages don't last forever, users are actually paying attention, not scrolling distractedly, she said.

Jeremy Lewis, Facebook's head of U.S. e-commerce, speaks June 9, 2016, at the Internet Retailer Conference and Exhibition at McCormick Place in Chicago. Lewis said online video has to be "short and snackable" to get consumers to watch. (Terrence Antonio James / Chicago Tribune)

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Facebook users watch a whopping 100 million hours of video on Facebook every day, but getting people to watch isn't as easy as posting traditional ads online, Lewis said.

"You have to get the consumer in the first three seconds, with no sound, and make it short and snackable," he said.

Lewis expects to see more companies playing with live video, and 360-degree video and photos. An automaker might let customers "sit" behind the wheel and look around a car's interior, Lewis said.

Dallas-Feeney said live video is another of the social tools Birchbox is most excited about.

Birchbox has been producing fewer YouTube videos  which people expect to be highly produced and scripted  and doing more live-streaming on Facebook. Some sessions offer tutorials or answer customer questions on new products. Once, Dallas-Feeney turned on the camera as a hairstylist gave her a 4-inch cut.

"People are voyeuristic," she said. "I think they like the fact that anything can happen."

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Messaging

Earlier this year, Facebook said users would be able to shop and talk with a variety of businesses through its Messenger chat feature, conversing either with humans or artificially intelligent chatbots.

At a time when brands are trying to make their sales pitches ever more customized to appeal to individual customers, Messenger is a way to talk to them one-on-one and seems most effective when brands respond in real time rather than making it just another way to send automated notifications, Lewis said.

Speakers at the conference who handle social media said they're intrigued by messaging but aren't diving in just yet.

"Until we have enough people to fully deploy the experience we want, we're not going to," said Jessica Latimer, senior manager of social media and customer engagement at jewelry company Alex and Ani.

Messaging could become the new trendy social media tool when Snapchat gets too crowded and, like Facebook and Instagram, loses a bit of its cool factor, Dallas-Feeney said.

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Birchbox does plan to start experimenting with Facebook Messenger but Dallas-Feeney said she's somewhat skeptical of chatbots since messaging's appeal is that "it still feels private and intimate," she said.

It's not just about the sale

While they ultimately want customers to open their wallets, several retailers said social media shouldn't be all about selling.

On Snapchat, for instance, Birchbox provides how-to videos and sneak peeks at new products and answers customers' beauty questions. Direct sales pitches are less common even though they get better responses on Snapchat than other social networks, Dallas-Feeney said. Since part of what gives the app its appeal is the lack of advertiser clutter, Birchbox tries to make those pitches sparingly.

At Alex and Ani, social media supplements customer service. The social media team tries to engage with everyone talking about the brand, although they also try to stay on the right side of the line between offering help and the "creepy factor" of jumping into a conversation they weren't invited to, Latimer said.

"Whether or not you're on the social channel, people are going to be talking about you, so it's better to be there taking part," Latimer said.

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The video went viral on Saturday when the Candace Payne posted the video of herself to her own Facebook. Andrea Fujii reports. (CBS Los Angeles)

Going viral

Cracking the code of what separates viral online hits from flops can seem like a matter of luck. But Kelli Agnich, social media manager at gifts and custom product marketplace Zazzle, said good timing, genuine emotion and a sense of community can boost the odds of crafting the next "Chewbacca mom."

But companies seem to be learning they don't even need to build the campaign themselves as long as they can quickly spot and react to hits their customers create.

When a video of Candace Payne, unable to contain her excitement about a Chewbacca mask purchased at Kohl's, racked up more than 150 million views on Facebook Live, both Kohl's and Facebook responded and benefited from the attention the video drew, Agnich said.

Wal-Mart, on the other hand, missed out. Sarah Veit Wallis, vice president and general manager of Wal-Mart's lifestyle division, said she spotted the mask on a list of products customers were searching for on Wal-Mart's website but didn't find a way to take advantage.

Agnich's other tip: Be prepared to succeed. The last thing a company that succeeds in going viral needs is to find itself with a crashed website, out-of-stock product and a whole lot of customers now talking about it for all the wrong reasons, she said.

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Twitter @laurenzumbach
HAVANA  Six airlines won permission Friday to resume scheduled commercial air service from the U.S. to Cuba for the first time in more than five decades, another milestone in President Barack Obama's campaign to normalize relations between the two countries.

The airlines  American, Frontier, JetBlue, Silver Airways, Southwest and Sun Country  were approved by the Department of Transportation for a total of 155 roundtrip flights per week. They'll fly from five U.S. cities to nine cities in Cuba other than Havana.

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The five U.S. cities that will receive new scheduled service to Cuba are Chicago, Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Minneapolis/St. Paul, and Philadelphia. The nine Cuban cities are Camaguey, Cayo Coco, Cayo Largo, Cienfuegos, Holguin, Manzanillo, Matanzas, Santa Clara, and Santiago de Cuba.

The airlines must begin service within 90 days, although they can request an extension if they need more time. Some of the airlines have been working for months on logistics and have told the department they could start flying in as few as 60 days. Other airlines have indicated they may need as much as four months to get ready.

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Approval is still required by the Cuban government, but the carriers say they plan to start selling tickets in the next few weeks while they wait for signoffs from Cuba.

More than a year ago, Obama announced it was time to "begin a new journey" with Cuba. "Today we are delivering on his promise," said Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx.

As it considers opening routes to Havana, the department's selection process has been complicated because airlines have requested far more routes than are available under the U.S. agreement withCuba. A decision on Havana routes is expected later this summer.

The routes approved Friday were not contested because there was less interest among U.S. airlines in flying to Cuban locations other than Havana.

All flights currently operating between the two countries are charters, but the agreement the administration signed with Cuba in February allows for up to 110 additional flights  more than five times the current charter operations.

American Airlines has been the most aggressive in its approach, requesting more than half the possible slots to Havana plus service to five other, smaller Cuban cities. The airline has a large hub in Miami, home to the largest Cuban-American population. The Fort Worth, Texas-based airline has also been flying aircraft on behalf of charter companies for the longest time, since 1991.

U.S. airlines have been feverishly working to establish relationships with Cuban authorities. For instance, American had a number of meetings this week in Havana with Cuban aviation and banking officials.

"We have been working for months on this plan," Galo Beltran, Cuba country manager for American Airlines told The Associated Press this week during the trip to Havana. "For us, it is going to be fairly easy because of the experience we have."

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Cuba already has seen startling growth in aviation. Last year, it saw 18 percent more passengers than in 2014, according to government aviation officials.

Currently, 46 airlines fly to Cuba, including Air France, Aeromexico, KLM, Air Canada, Areoflot and Iberia.

Cuban aviation officials say they are ready for the extra flights but that questions remain, especially at Havana's airport, about where the additional planes will park.

There has been plenty of interest by Americans in visiting Cuba since relations between the two nations started to thaw in December 2014. Nearly 160,000 U.S. leisure travelers flew to Cuba last year, along with hundreds of thousands of Cuban-Americans visiting family.

Most Americans still cannot legally visit Cuba; however, the Obama administration has eased rules to the point where travelers are now free to design their own "people-to-people" cultural exchange tours with very little oversight.

Prices for an hourlong charter flight are about $500, while commercial airlines will probably offer flights for significantly less than that amount, although none have publicly discussed pricing. The check-in process for charters is also a cumbersome one, and the companies lack the traditional supports of commercial aviation such as online booking and 24-hour customer service.

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Gawker Media filed for bankruptcy after losing a $140 million invasion-of-privacy suit brought by former professional wrestler Hulk Hogan and funded by tech billionaire Peter Thiel.

The digital media company listed a $130 million claim from the litigation as "disputed" in its Chapter 11 petition, filed Friday in Manhattan. The bankruptcy would shield New York-based Gawker from paying the potentially crippling damages award while it seeks a buyer. The company also asked the court to shield its founder and chief executive officer, Nick Denton, from the Hogan suit and other litigation.

Ziff Davis has signed an agreement to buy Gawker assets for around $100 million, according to a person familiar with the matter. That proposal would be open to competing bids, said the person, who asked not to be identified because the offer isn't public.

Hogan, whose real name is Terry Bollea, sued the media- and celebrity-focused website in 2012 over the publication of a tape showing him having sex with a friend's wife, claiming the publication cost him endorsements and inflicted emotional harm. Thiel, the libertarian-leaning venture capitalist who co-founded PayPal and sits on the board of Facebook, made a financial contribution to the suit.

Gawker and Thiel have a contentious history: The website outed him as gay in 2007. Thiel has since publicly acknowledged that he's gay, and called Gawker's now-defunct blog Valleywag the "Silicon Valley equivalent of al-Qaida." The dispute has evolved into a clash of tech titans, as First Look Media, a news organization founded by Silicon Valley billionaire Pierre Omidyar, has said it will support Gawker.

In an internal memo to employees, Ziff Davis CEO Vivek Shah said acquiring the Gawker websites Gizmodo, Lifehacker and Kotaku "would fortify our position in consumer tech and gaming."

Shah's memo did not mention the Gawker.com flagship site. Ziff Davis is focused on the Gawker brands in the tech, gaming and lifestyle categories, which contribute the vast majority of Gawker Media's revenue, according to a person familiar with the matter. Ziff Davis has not decided on what it would do with Gawker.com if it buys the company, the person said.
The food hall, part of $40 million in renovations at Chicago's Merchandise Mart, is seen June,9, 2016. (Phil Velasquez / Chicago Tribune)

The evolution of the Merchandise Mart from old-school showroom center to high-tech office space has leaped forward with the completion of a $40 million renovation of the ground-level common spaces.

The 86-year-old building  once the world's largest  increasingly has become a magnet for companies seeking an urban millennial talent pool and a lot of open space. About 25,000 people pass through the building daily.

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"Our building, the Mart, has become the epicenter of what is this extraordinary resurgence of River North in Chicago," said David Greenbaum, president of New York-based Vornado Realty Trust, which has owned the building since 1998.

At the center of renovation, a 50-foot-wide marble staircase connects the first and second floors, and hopefully, the growing pool of tenants and visitors. The stairs are designed for lingering and schmoozing, with seating for 200 running between the floors; there's also a large projection screen and free Wi-Fi.

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Those who venture up the 38 steps will find a new lounge with meeting areas, food service and views of the Chicago River and skyline. "It's an area where tenants have the ability to congregate, exchange ideas," Greenbaum said.

Other improvements include a new food hall with "local artisanal" vendors and a potential food marketplace in the works, Greenbaum said. Outside, a new 5,000-square-foot green space offers picnic space by the river.

The building is nearly 98 percent occupied, and home to some 550 tenants including Motorola Mobility, 1871, Yelp, eBay, PayPal and Allstate, Greenbaum said. In October, Omaha-based ConAgra Foods announced it would downsize and relocate its headquarters to the Merchandise Mart.

Developed by Marshall Field & Co., the Merchandise Mart opened in 1930 to house wholesale products for department store buyers. At 24 stories and 4.2 million square feet, the building was then the largest in the world, only to be surpassed by the Pentagon a decade later.

Converted to government offices during World War II, the building was purchased by Joseph P. Kennedy for $26 million in 1945 and returned to its original use. Vornado bought the building from the Kennedy family in 1998 for between $250 million and $300 million, executives said Friday.

The Mart has undergone a resurgence in recent years, as space has been repurposed from showrooms to sprawling open offices. In 2010, 60 percent of the space was showroom and 40 percent office. That percentage has since flipped, Greenbaum said.

The tipping point was in 2012, when Motorola Mobility signed a deal to leave Libertyville for a 600,000-square-foot space at the Mart. Vornado relocated and downsized 140 tenants  mostly small showroom and trade show tenants  to produce the expansive digs.

Since 2012, the Mart has brought in 1.2 million square feet of new office tenants, Greenbaum said.

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The Mart is still home to a thriving showroom business, with residential and office furnishings, outdoor, and kitchen and bath purveyors still going strong. On Monday, the Mart will host the annual NeoCon commercial interiors show, a three-day event expected to draw 50,000 attendees.

But the future is providing office space "reimagined for the next generation" of tenants, Greenbaum said, with amenities designed to appeal to millennial tastes and demands. The goal is all business.

"It's all about getting the tenants to stay in the building longer over the course of the day and working harder," Greenbaum said.

rchannick@tribpub.com

Twitter @RobertChannick
While retailers catering to middle-class shoppers have had a rough go in recent years, things had been cushy at Restoration Hardware: It was ringing up big sales from shoppers so affluent that chief executive Gary Friedman once talked about the need for the chain to fine-tune its strategy for helping customers furnish their second and third homes. And the furniture store's design sensibility became something of an aesthetic pacesetter for an abundance of lower-priced imitators.

But now, there's trouble at America's wallet-busting paradise of hand-knotted rugs and Louis XIV-style armoires. Supply chain problems lately have hobbled the retailer's splashy new brand and luxury shoppers have shown less appetite for its wares.

The first half of the year was bleak enough that the company on Wednesday evening slashed its sales outlook for the year. Comparable sales  a measure of online sales and sales at stores open more than a year were up 4 percent, but that marked a dramatic slowdown from the 15 percent year-over-year growth RH saw in the same quarter last year. The disappointing results sent its stock into a tailspin on Thursday, sliding 20 percent from the previous day. The stock is down nearly 64 percent this year.

Restoration Hardware executives stressed to investors this week that they believe the storm clouds are largely short-term: They say they have largely worked through kinks in the supply chain and have new tactics up their sleeve for courting the upscale home furnishings customer. But the situation underscores how volatile today's retailing climate is and how varied the pressures are in the fight for sales and market share.

Restoration Hardware had announced last year that it was launching RH Modern, a new line of furnishings that had a more contemporary vibe than the history-inspired pieces that have long been its hallmark. The plan is to open some standalone RH Modern stores and, in some cases, to add RH Modern shop-in-shops at its existing locations. The retailer is hopeful it would attract a much wider range of shoppers with the new offering, and indeed, customers seem to like the new goods. At a New York flagship store where RH Modern now encompasses the entire street-level floor, executives said sales are up 35 percent.

But the company said that some of its vendors have had problems revving up production of RH Modern pieces, and so it has been delayed in selling those items. As of now, Friedman said 80 percent of RH Modern items are in stock, and he expects that to bump up to 95 percent by October.

More concerning for the company is something it has less control over: The chain says it sees "a clear slowdown in the luxury market," with particular softness in the geographic markets where low oil prices may be crimping spending among those who make their money in that industry.

The furnishings retailer is taking fresh steps to pique shoppers' interest, including by doing a major redesign of its famous "Source Book"  you know, that catalog you get each year that you swear rivals the size of "War and Peace."

But perhaps most interestingly, the retailer has recently launched a membership program it calls RH Grey Card, in which customers pay $100 per year to receive 25 percent off all of their purchases and a few other perks such as complementary interior design services. With this offering, the retailer seems to be gambling that it can keep a halo of exclusivity over its brand while still giving people a value-oriented nudge to spend.

So far, the rollout of Grey Card has had a mixed effect.

"The selling cycle with members is longer, as transactions are not closed with the urgency of artificially imposed sale deadlines," Friedman said in a video presentation to investors.

But while Gray Card customers are taking their time to make purchases, Friedman said he's pleased with the growth in average order size that they're seeing among members.

One of the most unique aspects of Restoration Hardware's current strategy is how dismissive it is of e-commerce, a platform that most retailers are rushing to embrace. In the latest installment of the highly produced videos that Friedman releases each quarter for investors, he said, "It's not about the Internet." Instead, Friedman believes that Restoration Hardware needs to double down on transforming its physical retail presence into lavish galleries. (In the same video, he showed a picture of the exterior of a mall-based Saks Fifth Avenue store, declaring, "Most [stores], like this one, look like bomb shelters.")

That's why Restoration Hardware's Chicago store is outfitted with a stage for performances, a wine vault and a sprawling courtyard cafe in an airy atrium speckled with olive trees. That location, like other new ones in the chain, is massive. Traditional Restoration Hardware outposts, Friedman says, showcase only about 10 percent of the assortment. With the big stores, he hopes to show off more pieces and, in turn, boost sales.
Zurich Insurance, which sponsors the Zurich Classic at TPC Louisiana golf tournament, seen here, will lay off employees in a corporate restructuring. It's unclear how many, if any, employees will be lost at its Schaumburg locataion. (Chris Graythen / Getty Images)

There's uncertainty involving another major suburban Chicago employer.

Switzerland's Zurich Insurance Group, which has about 2,500 workers in Schaumburg and is building a new North American headquarters in the village, on Friday announced a "move to a simplified structure"  often corporate-speak that layoffs could be in the offing.

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In a call with reporters earlier Friday, Zurich's new CEO, Mario Greco, said the restructuring would lead to job cuts, though it was too early to quantify them.

"This new organization will be more agile and more accountable, with a clearer line of sight between the top of the company and the people looking after our customers," Greco said in a news release.

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In the call with reporters, Greco said his aim was to simplify the company's "famously complicated structure."

Zurich spokeswoman Sylvia Gaeumann, when asked about the potential for layoffs locally, said "there is no head count reduction target associated with the reorganization."

"However, we anticipate that the simplification effort and the elimination of duplication in the organization will lead to synergies, which we will pursue," Gaeumann said, noting that more details will be provided as the reorganization unfolds.

Zurich's business units include Farmers Insurance and 21st Century Insurance.

Zurich North America plans to move its suburban workers later this year into a 750,000-square-foot headquarters under construction at the corner of Meacham Road and Interstate 90, across from the Schaumburg Convention Center. The Chicago area has been home to its U.S. headquarters for more than 100 years.

Zurich is Schaumburg's largest employer, said Village Manager Brian Townsend. Until recently that ranking belonged to Motorola Solutions, which is moving its headquarters to downtown Chicago, though it will keep a presence in Schaumburg.

byerak@tribpub.com

Twitter @beckyyerak
At a nervily compact 74 minutes, "A Monster With a Thousand Heads" often feels as if it's unfolding in real time  even as necessary narrative logistics dictate otherwise. Such is the considerable achievement of Uruguayan-Mexican director Rodrigo Pla's agitated, on-the-move hostage thriller, in which the wife of an ailing man resorts to brutally desperate measures against the insurance company refusing to fund his treatment. Tempering the strong medicine of its social-justice protestations with a streak of outlandish melodrama, this "Monster" may not have quite as many facets as its title implies, but Pla's formally deft manipulation of perspective keeps the film both urgent and even-handed.

Pla's latest movie would be persuasive in any language  with its heated commentary on the corruption-riddled health insurance industry particularly salient to U.S. audiences, as Obamacare continues to inspire discussion and debate. In a Hollywood context, its story could prompt ugly flashbacks to Nick Cassavetes' turgid 2002 hospital-siege drama, "John Q." Pla's film, happily, is an altogether smarter, tarter affair.

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In a lengthy opening shot, middle-age protagonist Sonia (the excellent, tremulously expressive Jana Raluy) is awoken in the middle of the night when her terminally ill husband, Guillermo, falls out of bed following a severe surge of pain. Despite Guillermo's frail condition, their insurance company refuses to fund the pricey new treatment required to survive.

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There are scant specifics in the screenplay by Pla's regular collaborator Laura Santullo, drawn from her novel; defining the family's situation in the most general terms possible highlights the interchangeable typicality of such cases within the system. Guillermo's face is barely grazed by the camera, while we gain little sense of Sonia's professional or social life. (As the film unfurls, viewers may begin to pick up the offhand class signifiers in many a frame, often courtesy of Barbara Enriquez and Alejandro Garcia's neutral-toned production design.) If these characters are mere numbers to their insurers, we are granted only mildly more intimate access to their lives, as Santullo's script effectively warns us against deeming their plight exceptional.

Sonia is not so willing to stand down and be discounted. After being given the runaround by administrators who refuse to answer her queries  in a sequence depicting positively "Brazil"-ian levels of bureaucratic illogic, where the pic's bitter comic edge is first revealed  she snaps in disconcerting fashion. First attacking a wilfully unhelpful secretary, she proceeds to chase down Dr. Villalba (Hugo Albores), the medic surveying her husband's case, with her mortified teenage son Dario (Sebastian Aguirre Boeda) in tow and a semi-automatic stashed heedlessly in her handbag. When Villalba professes that his hands are tied, a chain of confrontations ensues with progressively more complicit insurance-company employees.

To describe the escalation of conflict any further would be to spoil the film's efficiently ratcheted suspense, as it hurtles toward a panicked, genuinely alarming climax. The outcome of the crisis is teased throughout through voiceover testimonies from a future court case, with the viewpoints of unassociated witnesses sometimes subtly clashing with those of the principals. It's a potentially intriguing but incompletely realized narrative device that the film doesn't really need. Sonia herself is such a compellingly contradictory welter of impulses and motivations  veering from the irrationally violent to the intuitively protective  that audiences are already likely to view her actions at some remove, however sympathetic her fundamental dilemma and however forceful the impact of Raluy's precarious, unpredictable performance. No party emerges undamaged or unsullied in this one-against-the-system tale.

When the script isn't forcing the point, Zabaleta's remarkable widescreen lensing makes it more subtly, artfully varying focus and depth of field to show us both Sonia's guarded window on the world and the ways in which others see (or, in several cases, overlook) her. (A cryptic postscript, meanwhile, surrenders the film's view to a more coldly objective authority entirely.) Perhaps the picture's most impressive below-the-line contribution, however, is the bustling, fretful soundscape constructed by Axel Munoz and Alejandro de Icaza, one in which every innocuous cell-phone jangle or blaring car radio serves as a more abrasive siren to its agonized heroine.

"A Monster With a Thousand Heads"  3 stars

No MPAA rating

Running time: 1:14

Opens: Friday at the Gene Siskel Film Center, 164 N. State St., www.siskelfilmcenter.org; in Spanish with English subtitles.

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Jana Raluy stars in "A Monster with a Thousand Heads." (Music Box Films / Handout)







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After three years as a resident physician in pathology, I'd grown accustomed to seeing cancer. In fact, I see it every day. But this was different: These were just kids.

Kids with leukemia. Kids with osteosarcoma. Kids with Wilms' tumor of the kidney. Kids with melanoma. The youngest kid diagnosed with cancer was just 3 days old.

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This May, I was on a monthlong rotation as a pathology resident at the Ann and Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago, one of the nation's top pediatric cancer centers. It can be a melancholy business, seeing all this cancer and knowing that each case means a family shaken to its core. But the proper treatment begins with the proper diagnosis, and that's a big part of my field of pathology.

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Pathology means "the study of disease," but, because of their largely behind-the-scenes role, pathologists have been described as the most important physicians that patients never see. When a biopsy is taken, it's sent to pathology. Bone marrows and blood smears go to pathology. When an organ or body part is removed  anything from lungs to livers to amputated limbs  they go to pathology too.

Each case is like a new puzzle to be solved  although the rules to this puzzle are complex and the consequences grave. We use clues ranging from the appearance and pattern of the cells under the microscope to cytogenetic studies to try to answer important questions like "What kind of cancer is it?" and "How far has it gotten?" The answers guide oncologists and surgeons in treatment decisions.

A cancer diagnosis is always serious, but it takes on extra significance with a child. Each new case is agreed upon by consensus in a meeting of about a half-dozen pediatric pathologists gathered around a multi-headed microscope.

Residents train under the direction of experienced pathologists to make these decisions themselves. Naturally, the vast majority of medical residents go through this process in their 20s or early 30s, when most of them have yet to build families of their own. There are advantages to that, particularly when you consider the long hours, overnight call and constant studying.

But coming at this as an older, nontraditional resident has given me a different perspective. As a parent of three young kids, I appreciated Lurie's cheery atmosphere, starting with the full-scale sculptures of humpback whales suspended from the lobby ceiling that greeted me each day. The staff was friendly, and the medical teams I encountered were knowledgeable and concerned. But I also couldn't help but notice the hopeful young parents pushing strollers into the building, and the mothers clutching their children's hands extra tightly as they entered the elevators to go to surgery or another round of chemotherapy.

Just four years earlier, my wife and I had been at the hospital ourselves as our 4-year-old daughter underwent surgery. It was a common procedure  having her tonsils removed  but it gave me a sense of the nervousness all parents feel when their child goes under the knife.

Fortunately, pediatric cancer is a lot less common than adult cancer, constituting just about 1 percent of the new cancer cases diagnosed each year, according to the American Cancer Society. About one in 285 children are diagnosed with cancer before age 20, compared with about one in two men and one in three women who are diagnosed with some form of cancer in their lifetimes.

Because there are fewer cases, cancer in children is not as well-studied. Clinical trials to find better treatments are more challenging to run when there are only a handful of patients with any specific type of cancer. Despite its rarity, however, cancer trails only accidents as the leading cause of death among children ages 1 to 14.

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Still, great progress has been made, including improvements in chemotherapy and radiation treatments. Death rates for all childhood and adolescent cancers combined declined more than 50 percent from 1975 to 2010, according to the ACS, with the steepest declines in Hodgkin lymphoma, non-Hodgkin lymphoma and acute lymphocytic leukemia. President Barack Obama's $1 billion National Cancer Moonshot Initiative to combat cancer lists pediatric cancer research as one of its priorities, so there is hope for more breakthroughs in the coming years.

The types of cancers that tend to develop in children and adolescents differ from those seen in adults. Leukemia is the most common childhood cancer, followed by brain and central nervous system cancers and lymphomas, as opposed to breast, lung, prostate and colon cancer in adults. Many childhood cancers  the so-called "small blue round cell tumors"  even look different under a microscope from those more commonly seen in adults.

The etiology  or set of causes  that leads to childhood cancer often differs as well. With some adult cancers, there is a cause and effect, such as the correlation between smoking and lung cancer. No one deserves to get cancer, of course, but with children, the reasons are more often about chance  the genetic roll of the dice each time a new life enters this world. It can only leave you scratching your head and asking, "Why?"

This is an esoteric question, perhaps better asked of one's maker. In pathology, the question we focus on most is "What?" And that's the crucial starting point to answer the next question: "What do we do now?"

Dr. John Biemer, a former Chicago Tribune staff reporter, is a pathology resident at Loyola University Medical Center in Maywood.

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Haenah Hwang cuddled her 4-month-old son, Evan, as her husband, Mike, a 37-year-old Taiwanese-American, shared stories about his father.

"He showed me his love by making sure that I did the best I could in everything," he said.

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The Hwangs were reflecting on their first-generation immigrant Asian-American fathers while looking forward to celebrating their first Father's Day as new parents.

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"I have a different type of father's experience," said Haenah Hwang, a 32-year-old Korean-American.

She recalls her father as a family man who spent a lot of time playing with her growing up. But she said she felt a weight of responsibility early on, having to translate English to Korean for her parents.

"I had a little bit of resentment. My dad felt more like a friend to me, almost," she said, adding this made her question her parents' love for her at times.

The portrayal of Asian-American dads and masculinity has a long history in the U.S.

"For Asian fathers, when their main concern was on survival, fitting into the new culture and bringing bread on the table, what America considers 'male' was not their priority," said Dr. Josephine Kim, a professor at Harvard's Graduate School of Education who specializes in child development and immigrant issues.

The Asian cultural definition of masculinity relies heavily on scholarship and not showing weakness, she said, which translates into men showing less emotion.

She added that the difference in values often led second-generation Asian-American children to misunderstand their fathers as unloving and uncaring, seen through the lens of their Americanized cultural perspective.

Mike Hwang holds his son Evan, 4 months. (Anthony Souffle / Chicago Tribune)

Perry Li, a second-generation Chinese-American born in Chicago, said he resented his father most of his life until recently because he rarely showed him affection.

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"It's going to be hard," said Li, 29, about treating his dad to a Father's Day dinner. He said he has told his father directly that he loves him only twice. He plans on telling him again at dinner.

Li has been trying lately to be more understanding of the struggles and stress his father went through to provide for the family over the years, he said.

Korean-American actor Randall Park also can relate.

Park, who plays Louis Huang, an Asian immigrant father on the ABC sitcom "Fresh Off the Boat," said his father operated a photography store in Santa Monica, Calif., where Park observed firsthand "all the struggles that he went through to keep that business afloat."

Park said he finds similarities between his character on the show, which, in its second season, is the longest running Asian-American sitcom, and how he and his father were in real life.

"At times, (my father) does walk that line of being the classic bumbling sitcom dad. But there is always that undercurrent (of) struggle and sacrifice, which is something I see in my own father and, in some ways, myself," said Park.

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Despite the hardships Asian immigrant fathers faced, they were considered not "manly" enough throughout history.

"There is a long history of ways in which Asian-American males were deprived of masculinity in American society," said Dr. Mark Chiang, the interim director of the Asian-American Studies Program at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He said the histories of Asian countries bring different experiences to the table.

Haenah and Mike Hwang play with their son, Evan, 4 months, before putting him down for a nap in their Chicago home last month. (Anthony Souffle / Chicago Tribune)

When Asians started immigrating to the U.S. in the 19th century, Asian men were mainly engaged in manual labor. Toward the end of the 19th century, when the U.S. economy grew rapidly then collapsed, Asian-American men became unemployed and wound up as scapegoats and targets. Often, Asian-American men had no options but to engage in laundry work and cooking to provide for their families.

"The issue of masculinity comes in here. Laundry work and cooking are seen as women's work. So the Asian men became feminized because of the labor they were pushed to perform," said Chiang.

Influenced by media portrayals, stereotypes and the model-minority myth, Asian-American males continue to face difficulties in how their masculinity is perceived in American culture today.

The recent #StarringJohnCho movement is not only a push for diversity in Hollywood, but also the Asian-American community's attempt to reclaim the portrayal of Asian-American masculinity in the media.

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"I'm team #StarringJohnCho all the way," said Park.

Park said he has always been conscious of the way Hollywood portrays Asian men.

"I do understand the importance for us to have more images of 'masculine' Asian males to balance out all the Long Duk Dong's of our time. Asian kids are still getting bullied, and I'm sure the lack of strong media images plays a part in that. But for me, personally, what's more important than masculinity is that we, as men, just feel good about who we are and to do our best to represent that unapologetically," said Park.

"I don't want Evan to grow up feeling different in any way. At the same time, I want him to grow up knowing his heritage as half-Korean and half-Taiwanese," said Haenah Hwang. She said she is concerned but positive that Evan will overcome the skewed influence of Asian stereotypes in the media.

She said her husband, Mike, will be a good role model and father, and help their son distinguish what is right and wrong in portrayals of Asian masculinity.

"I want him to be compassionate  quick to listen and slow to speak. I want him to love the diversity of the city and the country that we live in," said Mike Hwang. He hopes to demonstrate the "quiet strength" that comes from leading by example and sacrifice that his father showed him.

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Park expressed gratitude toward his father and said he hopes he can be like him in some ways.

"My dad is a great man  one of my true heroes in life," said Park. "There were times when I hated having a dad that was so different from all the white dads I saw on TV. But now, I think it's the coolest thing ever. And I just hope to have inherited some of my dad's outlook on life, his swagger, so that my daughter could have a father that cool," he said.

ykim@tribpub.com

Twitter @joanneyjkim

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In a June 10 story, Diana Rauner was inaccurately quoted regarding early childhood education in Illinois. The correct quote is as follows:

"We don't make it easy for programs to blend and braid and provide all of the services and supports that families can use or need to ensure health development," Diana Rauner said.

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A story published June 9 on Page 3 about a national competition that could bring more funding to Pullman National Monument contained several errors. It incorrectly stated the sponsors of the event. American Express and the National Trust for Historic Preservation are partnering to present the competition, and National Geographic is a media partner hosting the voting. Pullman is getting a Whole Foods retail distribution center, not a grocery store. And the story wasn't clear about the purpose of other development in the area involving refurbished homes. The homes are for affordable housing.

Additionally, the story misidentified who was housed in the Pullman homes  they were built for the company's employees, not the predominantly African-American Pullman porters. Also, A. Philip Randolph's role was misidentified. He led the porters union.

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A story in the early edition June 3 about a community event honoring Hadiya Pendleton left out words in a quote by Nza-Ari Khepra. She said: "A lot of people at the school were really devastated by it all and I was completely devastated by it all as well, but I think Hadiya's spirit really pushed us to try to create something larger, something that will stop this from happening to a lot of other people.

The Tribune regrets the errors.
A Wayne police officer writes a speeding ticket during a traffic stop along Smith Road in the small western suburb. Out-of-town drivers who were stopped for speeding were nearly three times as likely to get a ticket as residents, a Tribune analysis found. (Stacey Wescott / Chicago Tribune)

When out-of-town drivers think of the small western Chicago suburb of Wayne, police Chief Dan Callahan admits the term "speed trap" may come to mind.

The speed limit slows to a relative crawl on the main road through the rural village characterized by its historic horse farms and miles of riding trails. Roads are lined with sprawling ranch-style fence posts  with traffic signs warning of crossings for horseback riders. But the village may also be at the crossroads of another debate: how often local police cut breaks to their residents, versus outsiders.

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A Chicago Tribune analysis of three years of traffic stop data shows that Wayne leads the region in how much more likely outsiders are to get speeding tickets than residents. Those pulled over for speeding were nearly three times as likely to be handed a ticket if they live outside Wayne than if they live in Wayne.

Should you pass through that town? Type or select a town to see who gets ticketed. For those stopped in Wayne , out-of-town drivers were nearly three times more likely to get a ticket than residents. Stopped outsider to resident ticket ratio: 2.8 STOPPED 1,379 Outsiders 28 Residents CITED 1,116 Outsiders 8 Residents WARNED 263 Outsiders 20 Residents Note: A ratio above 1 means that, of drivers stopped, out-of-towners were more likely than residents to be cited: a higher number shows a greater likelihood. The reverse is true for a ratio below 1. Source: Tribune analysis of IDOT's "Illinois Traffic Stop Study 2012-2014" Cecilia Reyes / Chicago Tribune

While police say there are other factors at play in who gets ticketed, one longtime defense lawyer said the data is evidence of a "home-court advantage" for local drivers as well as a legal type of discrimination police can employ against outsiders.

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"There's nothing illegal if you're in law enforcement and you don't like people from Park Ridge or Niles, or something," said the lawyer, Donald Ramsell. "There's not a legal basis for the thought that there is a geographic discrimination, but it's definitely real."

It's not unusual for Chicago-area municipalities to issue more speeding tickets to out-of-towners than local residents, by virtue of the fact that many drivers pass through multiple towns during a given trip. But an analysis of traffic stop data from 2012 through 2014 also revealed that among those who got pulled over, many suburbs were more likely to issue speeding tickets to nonresidents.

The Tribune examined traffic stops for speeding and compared the ZIP codes of the drivers to those of the communities where they were pulled over. On average, drivers with a listed ZIP code from outside that community were about 8 percent more likely to get a speeding ticket.

Nearly 1 million people were stopped in metro Chicago for speeding from 2012 through 2014 by municipal police departments. 73% 27% were residents were not from town where stopped 260,509 696,941 63% 58% were cited Nearly 1 million people were stopped in metro Chicago for speeding from 2012 through 2014 by municipal police departments. 27% were residents 73% were not from town where stopped 260,509 696,941 63% 58% were cited

In some suburbs, however, the odds of getting a ticket are dramatically higher if a driver is an outsider.

They include:

River Forest, a near west suburb where nonresidents, once stopped, were 43 percent more likely to get a ticket.

Sugar Grove, a far west suburb where the odds of being ticketed, once stopped, increased for nonresidents to 55 percent.

Itasca, a suburb west of O'Hare International Airport where the odds for nonresidents were also 55 percent higher.

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But the biggest difference could be seen in Wayne.

On the village's main drag, Army Trail Road, the speed limit drops from 40 mph on the eastern edge of town to 25 mph farther west.

Wayne police stopped 1,379 nonresidents for speeding in the three years examined, issuing nearly 81 percent of those drivers a ticket. The department curbed 28 Wayne residents for speeding in the same period, writing tickets to only eight, or 29 percent. To put it another way, on average, a nonresident was written a speeding ticket once a day while a resident was cited for speeding about once every four months.

200% Biggest difference: Wayne Wayne had the highest citation spread of any town, meaning that stopped outsiders were nearly 200 percent  or nearly 3 times  more likely to be cited than residents who were stopped 150 Wayne also stoPPED mostly outsiders Besides having the highest citation spread, Wayne also stopped outsiders at a rate far higher than the area average. 100 WAYNE 98% Outsiders 73% AVERAGE 50 WAYNE 2% Residents 27% AVERAGE 0 ODDS OUTSIDER MORE LIKELY TO BE CITED THAN RESIDENT -50 odds outsider more likely to be cited than resident -50 0 50 100 150 200% Biggest difference: Wayne Wayne had the highest citation spread of any town, meaning that stopped outsiders were nearly 200 percent  or nearly 3 times  more likely to be cited than residents who were stopped Wayne also stopped mostly outsiders Besides having the highest citation spread, Wayne also stops outsiders at a rate far higher than the area average. Outsiders WAYNE 98% 73% AVERAGE Residents WAYNE 2% 27% AVERAGE

Callahan said his department doesn't discriminate against out-of-town drivers. He suspects so few Wayne drivers are stopped because those in the town of 2,400 are well aware of the lower speed limits, which are emblematic of its equestrian roots. After all, he said, it's a town stocked with horse crossings, where cavalcades of 30 to 40 horses can be seen thrice-weekly during the fall's fox hunting season.

"We don't treat anyone differently than anyone else," Callahan said. "We don't stop a lot of our residents because they are aware of the speed limit. The village embraces the low speed limit."

While Callahan chalks up the shear number of outsiders stopped to lack of familiarity with the village's posted speed limits, he also maintains that locals, when they are caught speeding, usually aren't driving as fast as outsiders.

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"If I was deciding whether to give you a speeding ticket, it would depend on the seriousness of the offense," Callahan said. "And I believe out-of-towners speed at substantially higher rates."

There's no way to know for sure, since the state data doesn't list the recorded speed of drivers stopped. But the data does show that Wayne drivers don't have as much luck getting out of tickets outside of their hometown, with 48 percent getting cited when they were stopped for speeding away from home.

Wayne police attribute the disparity in speeding tickets written to nonresidents vs. residents in part to residents familiarity with low speed limits there. (Stacey Wescott / Chicago Tribune)

Of the other three departments, only one responded to requests for comment: River Forest.

Chief Greg Weiss, in an email, noted that the number of out-of-towners on its roads far outpaces that of local residents. The village's Harlem Avenue-North Boulevard intersection alone sees nearly 12 million cars pass through annually, he said.

Weiss did not directly address why, among motorists his department stopped, nonresidents were far more likely to be ticketed. But he said that in general, he believes his town's residents are more aware of where his officers conduct traffic patrols.

"By the time a resident drives from their home to the border it is typically less than a few blocks, they know the speed limit, recognize our squad cars and know our 'speed traps,'" said Weiss, adding he "isn't surprised" at the difference in citation rates between locals and nonresidents.

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Across the region, not every department cuts breaks to their residents. Some even were more likely to ticket residents that are stopped than nonresidents. In Naperville, for example, police cited almost exact same percentage of residents stopped  72 percent  as outsiders stopped.

Cmdr. Jason Arres said the department focuses on training its officers to "be fair to anybody and everybody."

"It's not going to matter if (someone) is from Naperville, Joliet, Chicago," he said. "Again, it's a matter of what was the violation committed, and what was the driving behavior. ... We take pride in that. That's something we push from day one of hiring."

In Hoffman Estates, the data also show no bias against outsiders, with Sgt. Mark Mueller noting that citations are given on a case-by-case basis "regardless of where the person lives."

But the data found most departments were likely to cut more breaks to residents, Olympia Fields being another example.

Olympia Fields Chief John Krull described the Tribune findings pertaining to the village's department as a "reasonable anomaly" that "bears further investigation."

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While not as pronounced as Wayne, where 98 of every 100 drivers stopped for speeding were from elsewhere, outsiders still made up almost 92 percent of speeding traffic stops in Olympia Fields. Outside motorists stopped for speeding were handed tickets 63 percent of the time. Of the rarer stops of residents, just 38 percent got tickets.

200% Who gets ticketed? In most towns, the odds of stopped motorists being cited are higher  sometimes far higher  if they are outsiders versus residents of the town where they were stopped. 150 100 ODDS OF BEING STOPPED OUTSIDER TO RESIDENT (%) 50 0 -50 -50 0 50 100 150 200% Who gets ticketed? In most towns, the odds of stopped motorists being cited are higher  sometimes far higher  if they are outsiders versus residents of the town where they were stopped. ODDS OF BEING STOPPED OUTSIDER TO RESIDENT (%)

"There is no policy written or unwritten with Olympia Fields police to give anyone a break," Krull said. "It's all up to the discretion of the officers."

The village of 4,800 residents is bordered by many heavily traveled roadways including Lincoln Highway (U.S. Highway 30), Vollmer Road and Western Avenue. Krull noted that the winding residential streets, some of which are dead-ends or cul-de-sacs, "are not conducive to excessive speeding."

As a result, the department concentrates much of its patrols on the major roadways.

"It's like the old analogy about fishing, so to speak," Krull said. "You go fishing where there are a lot of fish."

But Ramsell, the defense attorney, said police officers can't feign complete unawareness of the residency of the drivers they pull over. Ramsell, a former chairman of the Illinois State Bar Association Traffic Law Section Council, said that after more than 30 years practicing traffic law, he believes some law enforcement agencies target out-of-town drivers, especially those with out-of-state plates.

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"Out-of-state drivers are less likely to challenge that ticket in court since they don't live there," Ramsell said. "I think police officers see those drivers as easier tickets, because they won't face any type of scrutiny over the validity of the ticket."

Cars drive along Smith Road in west suburban Wayne. I believe out-of-towners speed at substantially higher rates, the villages police chief says. (Stacey Wescott / Chicago Tribune)

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The problem, Ramsell said, is that while the practice might be controversial, it's not illegal discrimination if it doesn't cross into protected areas, such as race, religion, ethnicity and sexual orientation.

In the past, traffic stop data have been examined for racial discrimination by law enforcement. Though legal experts in Chicago say they aren't aware of studies on geographic bias, Ramsell has his own theory to explain the apparent prejudice.

"How many (local) drivers, when they get pulled over, say the same thing: 'I pay your taxes. I pay your salary.' People who live in town expect a break and they express that viewpoint."

tbriscoe@tribpub.com

jmahr@tribpub.com

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Twitter @_tonybriscoe

Twitter @JoeMahr1
In this Sept. 23, 2014 photo, Amanda Ware and her husband, Leo, talk in their apartment in Chicago about their fight to regain custody of their children. (David Proeber / The Pantagraph)

Amanda Ware put her hand to her face and cried Friday after a Cook County judge made her three children wards of the court, ruling that she continued to evade responsibility for the "drowning murders" of her first three children in 2003.

Judge Demetrios Kottaras said Ware continues to call those children's deaths an accident and had "deceived and outright conned" her therapist about her involvement in the deaths. He ruled that she is "unable, unwilling and unfit" to parent her three young children.

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"What I have seen is that mother has gone through the motions and failed to address the real issues in this case," he said. "She has been dishonest with herself and her therapist, failing to look head-on at the two most crucial issues ... that being her judgment and responsibility for the drowning murders of her first three children."

Those children  ages 6, 3 and 2  died when the car they were in rolled into a central Illinois lake as Ware, then known as Hamm, and her boyfriend, Maurice LaGrone Jr., stood by and watched, according to testimony. Police later found numerous tiny handprints on the back window  the location of the last remaining air in the car as it sank about 5 feet into Clinton Lake.

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The couple told police it was an accident but were charged with murder. LaGrone was convicted and sentenced to life in prison, but a separate DeWitt County jury acquitted Hamm of the killings, convicting her instead of child endangerment.

After spending five years in prison, Ware moved to a Chicago halfway house where she met her husband, Leo, and had three children with him. State child-welfare officials learned of her new family in 2014 and took away their two girls and a boy.

On Friday the couple, who a judge said are now separated, were dealt a blow in their bid to regain custody of the children. The ruling does not mean their parental rights have been revoked, only that their children will continue living with an aunt.

The judge found that Leo Ware was further along than his wife but that he had continued to test positive for an unspecified drug during random testing. He found Leo Ware "unfit and unwilling" to parent.

The judge said that Leo Ware had separated from his wife, but he was unsure of why.

"(It) may be a disturbing marital epiphany or an act merely to promote his cause in this (custody) process," the judge said. "Time will tell. After all, he initially stated the drowning of the first three children of his wife was something between her and God."

But the judge was unsparing in his criticism of Amanda Ware, saying her attorney had argued she had minimized and compartmentalized her involvement in the children's deaths only to get through her own life.

"That sounds like Mrs. Ware has put on blinders to that event in order to survive her everyday life and go on," Kottaras said. "That may serve her well as an individual, but the court's focus is on the minors in this case, their well-being, their survival."

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"This court, in looking out for the best interests of ... (her three children) and their future cannot and will not put on blinders."

Kottaras said he had never in his legal career seen an expert witness change her mind on the stand like Ware's therapist did during a previous hearing. The therapist initially testified that she would recommend Ware regain custody of her children, but when confronted with details of Ware's past by prosecutors, she changed her mind.

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"(The therapist) was not bamboozled, she was lied to, deceived and outright conned by the statements and omissions of Amanda Ware," the judge said. He also noted that a parenting evaluation had found Ware was "cut off emotionally from the deaths of her first three children."

The judge set a court date in December to review the parents' progress. If the children's parents continue to be found unfit, prosecutors can at a later time seek to have their parental rights terminated.

In a separate ruling, Kottaras also found that the "12-month goal" in the case was still to return the children to their parents.

Prosecutors had argued that evidence from lengthy hearings in the case demonstrated that the goal should not be to return the children, while the public guardian told the judge there was just enough progress to justify that goal.

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Keeping the 12-month goal in place will allow both parents to continue to receive therapeutic services.

sschmadeke@tribune.com

Twitter @SteveSchmadeke
Returning to the Capitol last week after making a dozen campaign-style stops across Illinois beginning the day after the Democratic-controlled legislature failed to approve a state budget on time, Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner offered an assessment: "We're in election mode now."

The governor was talking about the super-heated rhetoric among himself, Democratic House Speaker Michael Madigan and Mayor Rahm Emanuel as the Springfield stalemate worsens. But the stops Rauner made along his recent road trip also carried significant political overtones as he tries to elect more Republicans to the General Assembly this fall.

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All but one of Rauner's stops, at which he focused his fire on Madigan and Democratic Senate President John Cullerton, were outside the Chicago area. And the governor used the time-honored politics of regionalism as he blasted rank-and-file Democrats for risking the opening of local schools in the fall by siding with their leaders and "the Chicago political machine" pushing a "Chicago bailout" for its schools.

Rauner's visits also occurred primarily in or near House and Senate districts where Republicans have targeted 10 Democratic seats in the fall. The Republican governor also attempted to provide some incumbent protection for a few GOP lawmakers facing Democratic challenges on Nov. 8.

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The calculus of Rauner's trip wasn't lost on Cullerton, who last week urged the governor to park his campaign bus while lawmakers meet in working groups try to reach a deal on a short-term budget and full-year funding for public schools before the start of the July 1 state budget year.

"You don't just throw together a tour like that overnight. It takes days of planning and coordination," the Senate president said.

It's the second consecutive year Rauner has adopted post-spring session campaign-style tactics to go after Madigan, the nation's longest-serving House speaker, as controlling Democrats' loyalty and votes to block the governor's efforts to win his pro-business economic agenda.

In June of last year, the Republican governor launched weeks of TV ads in which a female narrator spoke over ominous-sounding music and black-and-white video and photos that included Madigan.

"Illinois is at a crossroads," the narrator said. "Mike Madigan and the politicians he controls refuse to change. They're saying 'no' to spending discipline, 'no' to job-creating economic reforms, 'no' to term limits. All they want is higher taxes  again."

This time around, Rauner is serving as his own narrator, warning once again that Madigan is planning a post-election tax increase without any of the governor's proposed "reforms," including changes in collective bargaining rights for unions and workers' compensation.

"We are fundamentally in decline because of the control of Speaker Madigan and his Democrats and we've got to get the folks here, in Champaign County and in Sangamon County and throughout the state to stand up and vote for their districts and not for Speaker Madigan and John Cullerton and the Chicago political machine that they are loyal to," Rauner said during a stop in the traditionally GOP area of Mahomet in east central Illinois.

"Amen to that," someone in the audience at the Mahomet-Seymour Community Unit School District 3 administrative office responded to Rauner.

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"I'm calling on members of the General Assembly in the Democratic caucus. Stand up to Speaker Madigan. Stand up to President Cullerton and do the right thing for the people of Illinois in your districts," the governor said.

Rauner's use of the bully pulpit was enhanced by thousands of dollars in cable and broadcast TV ads criticizing "Chicago political boss" Madigan and accusing targeted Democrats of doing "Madigan's bidding," including "a bailout for Chicago schools," while residents "pay a dreadful price" for being loyal to the House speaker.

In southern Illinois alone, the House Republican campaign organization paid three local broadcast TV stations $74,000 to target Democratic state Reps. Brandon Phelps of Harrisburg and John Bradley of Marion, records show. Rauner has contributed heavily to GOP campaign efforts, including $5 million to the state Republican Party. And, unlike in Chicago, the TV ad dollar goes much further in Downstate Illinois.

"There's no more Republican Party. It's the Rauner Party and the money shows it. Just follow the money," said Phelps, who along with Bradley is facing a general election GOP challenger. "His idea of compromise is when people only listen to him.  It's his way or no way and I just can't be with that."

Another nearly $47,000 was spent on cable TV in markets represented by Democratic Reps. Michelle Mussman, of Schaumburg; Sam Yingling, of Grayslake; Kate Cloonen, of Kankakee; and Andy Skoog, of LaSalle, who was appointed to fill the spot of Frank Mautino when Mautino became auditor general.

In a significant signal to the importance Rauner is placing on politics, on Friday his administration announced that chief of staff Mike Zolnierowicz will leave June 30 and assume a lead role in Republican legislative campaigns seeking to reduce Democratic supermajorities in the House and Senate.

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Zolnierowicz will not only be creating an infrastructure for the fall GOP legislative campaigns, but also will be putting together the groundwork for an anticipated Rauner re-election bid in 2018.

Promoted to the administration's chief of staff job is deputy chief Rich Goldberg, who has had run-ins with Democratic legislative leadership.

Unlike last summer's efforts against the Democrats, the governor has been able to hone his message to focus voters on fears that public schools across the state may not open this fall due to the legislature's failure to pass a budget for elementary and high schools.

Last year, when Democrats sent him a budget, Rauner vetoed everything but the elementary and secondary education spending plan. So far, Rauner won't have that option  House and Senate Democrats left town May 31 after failing to send the governor a specific school funding bill amid internal bickering. That's allowed Rauner and Republicans to accuse Democrats of engaging in a bidding war to "bailout" Chicago's schools, which CPS says face a $1 billion deficit.

Rauner has been pushing for a pair of 11th-hour measures introduced by Republicans, a stopgap budget that funds government operations for six months and a second bill that would fund schools for a full year, though without the changes in the state aid formula to aid poorer schools or Chicago teacher pensions that Democrats are seeking.

Democrats have said the two measures are being considered by closed-door rank-and-file "working groups" as a starting point for negotiations. But Rauner is accusing Democrats "not being honest" and of "hiding behind the working groups, slowing them down and using them as an excuse" for inaction.

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On Friday, at a South Side veterans event, Rauner vowed to "travel the state every day going forward" to push the passage of the GOP bills and told reporters he was working to get his message out "through your viewers and your listeners."

But in a rare acknowledgment lacking the heated political blame the Republican governor often throws at Democrats, he also said he believes people are "very angry with a failure to get results."

"We haven't passed a balanced budget. We haven't made reforms to grow jobs. We haven't passed reforms to protect taxpayers. We haven't passed reforms to get term limits and fair maps to have competitive General Assembly elections. We haven't gotten anything done. I've tried my best to negotiate with Speaker Madigan and the supermajority Democrats for almost a year-and-a-half now and I don't blame anybody for being frustrated and angry. I'm very frustrated. I am not happy at all," Rauner said.

"But we've got to stay the course. We've got to stay strong and that's what we're going to do," he said.

Chicago Tribune's Kim Geiger contributed.

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A man accused in a shooting at an apartment complex that left a sheriff's deputy and the suspect's father wounded is facing preliminary charges that include attempted murder, authorities in southwest Ohio said Friday.

Mohammed Abdou Laghaoui, 19, was taken custody at about 4:30 a.m. after he returned to the complex in Deerfield Township, where the shooting took place, said Warren County Sheriff Larry Sims. The town is about 25 miles northeast of Cincinnati.

Laghaoui initially had fled the scene, leading to a seven-hour manhunt with helicopters and K-9 units.

Sims identified the injured officer as Deputy Katie Barnes, who had been on the job for seven-and-half years starting as a corrections officer.

Barnes was responding to a domestic situation at the apartment complex Thursday night when she was shot in the lower abdomen, Sims said at a news conference. She was treated and released from a hospital Friday morning.

Barnes is expected to recover, Sims said. The suspect's father was shot in the hand. Sims did not know the latest on the man's condition, but thought he may need surgery.

Sims said Laghaoui fired an assault rifle that has yet to be recovered. He's being held at the Warren County Jail on preliminary charges of attempted murder, attempted aggravated murder and felonious assault. A court appearance was planned for Monday.

A shelter-in-place order was lifted in Deerfield Township, shortly after 5 a.m.

Sims described Laghaoui's arrested at the apartment complex as uneventful. "There were no issues with him whatsoever," he said.

Sims said investigators found six spent rounds from an AK-47 near where Barnes was shot. He said she returned fire four times with her revolver.

"We are confident she did everything appropriate," he told reporters at the news conference in Lebanon.

Brian Freedman, a resident of the apartment complex, told The Cincinnati Enquirer that he arrived home to find the area cordoned off.

"I don't know if I've ever seen so many police officers in one place," Freedman said.
Photo of Professor David Roy of the University of Chicago for his obit. Credit: University of Chicago - Original Credit: (University of Chicago / Handout)

David Roy was born and grew up in China, which led to a long career as a professor of East Asian languages and civilization at the University of Chicago and a 30-year odyssey translating a 16th-century Chinese novel.

Roy, who retired in 1999 from the Department of East Asian Languages and Culture at the University of Chicago, worked from 1982 to 2012 translating "Chin P'ing Mei," or "The Plum in the Golden Vase." The late 16th-century novel by an unknown author, first published in 1618, is considered a masterpiece of Ming-era Chinese literature.

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There were many expurgated editions where sexual passages were deleted, but in 1950 Roy found an uncensored version of the novel in a secondhand bookstore in the Confucian Temple area of Nanjing. It was an early step in Roy's decision to devote years of his life to translating the work.

"The book gives by far the most detailed description of everyday life in Chinese society that had appeared before that time. But I was a teenager so I was excited by the prospect of trying to read something pornographic," Roy was quoted as saying in a 2013 edition of Tableau, a publication of U. of C.'s humanities department.

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Roy, 83, died on May 29 of complications of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig's disease, according to his wife, Barbara. He was a longtime resident of Hyde Park.

Roy's parents were American educational missionaries working in China when he was born. His father was a professor at what was then the University of Nanking. "We were a close-knit family unit," said Roy's younger brother, J. Stapleton Roy, who served as U.S. ambassador to China from 1991 to 1995.

The family spent the war years from 1938-45 in Chengdu, the provincial capital of Sichuan, where they were subjected to frequent Japanese bombing raids. The family came to the United States in 1945, but returned to China in 1948, just in time for the final stages of the communist revolution.

Roy spent a year at the Shanghai American School until it closed following the communist takeover. He and his brother then rejoined their parents in Nanjing, where they remained until the outbreak of the Korean War in June 1950, when the two children returned to the United States.

During his year in Nanjing, university professors tutored him through his junior year in high school.

"He had become totally fascinated with Chinese  the written language," his brother said. "Within a year, he could read the local newspapers."

While completing his high school education in Philadelphia in 1951, he was able to enroll in a graduate-level Chinese program at the University of Pennsylvania. "He was obsessed with the language and within a year had completed the equivalent of four years of language studies," his brother said.

Roy went on to study at Harvard University, but interrupted his education to volunteer for the draft and a two-year stint in the U.S. Army that included service in Japan and Taiwan. Upon his discharge, he was readmitted to Harvard, where he went on to complete his doctorate.

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He taught Chinese literature for four years at Princeton University before moving to the University of Chicago.

In 1982, he began the epic task of translating "The Plum in the Golden Vase." The novel chronicles the rise and fall of a corrupt middle-class merchant, his six wives and his concubines.

His work was praised for its masterful research, reflected in more than 4,400 endnotes, providing a window into the lives of ordinary people of the time, with meticulous descriptions of everything from dinner party banter to bribery schemes to funeral rites.

At U. of C., Roy had the opportunity to teach a seminar on anything he wanted and chose to teach "Chin P'ing Mei" in Chinese. Although only one student showed up for the first seminar, he continued the seminar for two years, covering one chapter each week and becoming more fascinated with the book. Roy described the novel as loaded with poetry and songs.

That led him to spend about two years making a card index of every line of poetry, related prose and proverbial sayings to help him identify material he came across from other sources. The effort resulted in tens of thousands of cards, which became his source for notes in his translation.

Translating the first volume of the novel took more than a decade. It was published in 1993. Roy once acknowledged that the pace of the project picked up after he retired from U. of C. in 1999. The fifth and final volume of his translation was published in 2013.

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His brother said it was not long after he completed his translation that Roy was diagnosed with ALS.

"It would have been an enormous tragedy if he had been unable to complete the translation because of the disease," his brother said.

Roy had no other direct survivors.

A Chicago memorial service is being planned for this coming fall.

Graydon Megan is a freelance reporter.
The 20th annual Blues on the Fox Festival on June 17-18 features the Tedeschi Trucks Band and a newly-formed group that evokes some recording history in Aurora.

The Tedeschi Trucks Band is a husband-and-wife duo leading a nine-piece band. Derek Trucks is the son of Butch Trucks, who was the original drummer of the Allman Brother Band. Derek Trucks played slide guitar with the Allman Brothers Band before teaming up with his wife, guitarist-vocalist Susan Tedeschi. They perform at 9 p.m. June 18.

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The Robert Cray Band headlines June 17, performing at 9 p.m. Robert Cray might best be known for hits like "Phone Booth" and "Smoking Gun," but the band has performed with the likes of Bob Dylan, Eric Clapton, Buddy Guy and Stevie Ray Vaughan over its 30-year history. In the movie, "National Lampoon's Animal House," the band was the frat party band act, Day and the Knights.

Other acts include Marcia Ball at 7 p.m. June 17, Los Lobos at 7 p.m. June 18, Larry McCray at 5 p.m. June 18 and Leland at 3 p.m. June 18.

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"Leland is a newly-formed band that is performing to celebrate the Bluebird recordings that were done at (Aurora's) Leland Hotel back in the late '30s," said emcee David Glynn of Arlington Height, "which included Sonny Boy Williamson's 'Good Morning Little Schoolgirl.'

"So, there's a lot of history. In fact, the original founders of the Fox Valley Blues Society uncovered the fact that those recordings took place in the Leland Tower, which is the tallest building in Aurora. They took place in the Sky Club, which was on top of the building. It was a pretty swank nightclub in the Roaring '20s. I think it's important people realize there's a true blues history in Aurora," he said.

Glynn has served as emcee of the festival since 1998, thanks to his past involvement with the now-defunct Fox Valley Blues Society. He is a board member of the Fox Valley Music Association and said emceeing is not a hard job even though it involves talking to thousands of people.

"It's like talking to my family and friends," he said. "It's the best job in the world."

He occasionally has guest announcers introduce the headliners at the festival with crowds averaging between 6,000 and 8,000, he said.

"The large venue is great because it comfortably accommodates a lot of people," Glynn said. "We used to do the festival on two stages on Galena. After a while, the festival outgrew the street. It got kind of scary, as far as the crowds. It got very tight. We were glad the City of Aurora decided to build a new venue, and I think Blues on the Fox was pivotal to the city building that concert venue.

"The nice thing is, you can bring your own chair, and there are very little visual obstructions to the stage, so the sightlines are phenomenal," he said. "The sound is top-notch; I go to a lot of festivals every year and I would say that sound-wise, ours is the best festival I attend, and that includes the New Orleans Jazz Festival and the Chicago Blues Festival. The sound and the sightlines can't be met by any other festival, at least locally. The park is beautiful. It's right on the river, so there's usually a nice breeze. The only thing missing is some shade. We always tell people to bring sunscreen."

Attendees can bring water and small coolers of food and there will be food trucks.

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"It's a mature, well-run festival. It's the best ticket in town," Glynn said. "[The cost] is reasonable to get into the festival. For the acts that you'll see at the Blues on the Fox Festival, you would be paying a very high price to see them in a different concert venue. You get to see them all on once stage over the course of two days. And each act does a 90-minute set.

"It's a good crowd out there. People bring families. It's a wonderful way to spend the weekend."

.

Blues on the Fox

When: June 17-18

Where: RiverEdge Park, 360 N Broadway, Aurora

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Tickets: $20-$40

Information: 630-896-6666; riveredgeaurora.com/events/botf-2016

Annie Alleman is a freelance reporter
A 9-year-old child was hit by a car Tuesday evening in the 500 block of Talma Street, according to police reports.

The child declined transportation from Aurora Fire Department Medics. The driver of the car, a 2002 Hyundai Tuscon, told police she had been driving southbound, traveling 15-20 miles per hour, when a juvenile ran in front of her from the west side of the street.

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The front of the car hit the child in the left side about 7:33 p.m. Tuesday, according to police reports.

The incident occurred outside the child's house, police said.

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No citations were issued in connection to the incident.
With the scope and penalties of Chinas social credit system being further clarified in 2021, legal and regulatory compliance has become more important than...
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Philippe Mory who is considered as the father of Gabon's film industry, producer and one of the best Gabonese actors, died on Tuesday at the age of 81 years.

Well placed sources said he shot himself through the mouth at his home in the capital Libreville.

Prior to his death, Gabon's most celebrated and talented actor did not show any particular signs of distress.

According to a family member, he was expected to go to Bongolo hospital that is situated over 500 km from Libreville, for a cataract operation.

Mory began his film-making career in France and he was the first African to play a major role in a French film.

In 1962, he wrote a film titled "Le Cage," which was chosen for the 1963 edition of the Cannes festival.

Mory spent three years in prison over his involvement in the 1964 coup against Leon Mba, Gabon's father of independence.

In 1971, he directed his first film called "Les tam-tams se sont tus." Four years later, he constructed the national film center.

Mory produced about 20 films through out his career.
U.S. coffee chain Starbucks opened a store in the Shanghai Disney Resort on Wednesday, its 12th in Disney resorts around the world.

The new coffee shop is Starbucks's first in a Disney resort in Asia. The company is expecting it to be visited by thousands of customers a day, it said in a press release.

Starbucks opened its first store in a Disney resort in Disneyland Paris in 2009 and expanded to the two other Disney amusement parks in Florida and California in 2014.

The coffee chain also said last month that it will open a new outlet combining a roastery and more premium version of its high-street coffee shops in Shanghai in late 2017.

It will be the first Starbucks Roastery and Reserve Tasting Room outside the United States, as the company seeks to expand its posher coffee shops to cater to China's increasingly discerning coffee junkies.

China is Starbucks' second-largest and fastest-growing market. The coffee chain has over 2,100 stores in more than 100 Chinese cities. It has previously announced plans to have around 3,400 coffee shops in China by 2019.

According to market research firm Euromonitor, specialist coffee shops will experience the biggest sales increase in the Asia Pacific region in the next five years, with China alone contributing nearly 60 percent of that sales increase.
China's Nanshan Group has taken control of Air New Zealand's remaining shares in Virgin Australia for 301.4 million Australian dollars, giving Chinese backed airlines a near one-third stake in Australia's second largest airline.

In a statement to the ASX on Friday, Virgin Australia said Air New Zealand has agreed to sell China's Nanshan Group 19.98 percent of its stake in the second ranked carrier for 33 Australian cents (24.48 U.S. cents) per share.

"We believe Nanshan Group will be a very strong, positive and complementary shareholder for Virgin Australia," Air New Zealand chairman Tony Carter said in the statement.

"The sale will now allow Air New Zealand to focus on its own growth opportunities."

Virgin's shares shot up 6.07 percent, or 0.02 cents to 30 Australian cents (22.25 U.S. cents) by 11.10 local time (AEST).

In March, Air New Zealand flagged it was seeking to sell its 25.9 percent stake in Virgin Australia as questions continued over the airline's balance sheet.

The announcement was just days after Virgin Australia said it was seeking a 425 million Australian dollar (315.25 million U.S. dollars) cash facility from its four biggest shareholders at the time, Air New Zealand, Singapore Airlines, Etihad Airways and the Richard Branson owned Virgin Group.

It was believed the selling of Air New Zealand's stake would have been difficult as any new purchases would have to take on the airlines 131.2 million Australian dollar (97.32 million U.S. dollars) portion of the cash loan, and would also be expected to participate in any new future equity raising to draw down debt.

Air New Zealand's sell down comes less than two weeks after China's HNA aviation bought a 13 percent stake in the Australian carrier for 159 million Australian dollars (117.94 million U.S. dollars) in a major strategic partnership that will see the carrier leverage China's fast growing aviation market.

HNA's acquisition diluted Air New Zealand's shares to 22.5 percent, while Virgin Australia's remaining shareholders also had their equity stakes diluted from the issuance of new shares. HNA, over time, will seek to increase its holdings to 19.99 percent.

Virgin needs the cash injection to pay down debt as it expands out of the low-cost market to compete with Australia's top ranked carrier Qantas.

Air New Zealand's remaining holdings will be considered in due course, the company said.

Both deals require China's regulatory approval.

Once approved, Nanshan will nominate a member for the board, which Virgin will consider.
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Chinese State Councilor Yang Jiechi (5th R) and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry (5th L) co-chair the Strategic Dialogue of the eighth round of China-U.S. Strategic and Economic Dialogues in Beijing, capital of China, June 7, 2016. [Xinhua]

China and the United States have made incremental progress in accelerating bilateral investment treaty talks, addressing industrial overcapacity and expanding RMB trading in the United States at this week's annual high-level dialogue, U.S. experts said.

BIT TALKS

Senior Chinese and U.S. officials have agreed to speed up negotiations on a bilateral investment treaty (BIT) during the eighth China-U.S. Strategic and Economic Dialogue (S&ED) that concluded Tuesday in Beijing.

"The two countries will exchange new 'negative list' offers in mid-June," Chinese Vice Premier Wang Yang told a news briefing on Tuesday.

"We will try to reach a mutually beneficial and high-level agreement at an early date," he said.

A negative list outlines sectors closed to foreign investment. The last time the two sides exchanged such lists was in early September last year, days ahead of Chinese President Xi Jinping's state visit to the United States.

Xi on Monday urged both countries to strengthen coordination on their macroeconomic policies and reach a reciprocal bilateral investment treaty as early as possible.

"I think this is as good as you could hope for, given how the U.S. has already expressed its view that the Chinese list is too long and needs to be cut for a BIT to become realistic," Jacob Kirkegaard, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, told Xinhua.

That will "bode well" for the negotiations if China's new negative list offer is "significantly reduced" in length from the previous offer, said John Frisbie, president of the U.S.-China Business Council (USCBC).

China and the United States started to negotiate a BIT in 2008 and 24 rounds of talks were held ahead of the eighth S&ED as both countries sought to increase mutual investment.

STEEL OVERCAPACITY

The two sides held candid discussions on excess capacity in steel and other industries during the two-day dialogue, and both recognized that this is a global issue which requires collective responses.

"The United States and China support ongoing international efforts aimed at identifying effective government policies for addressing global excess capacity and structural adjustment, and achieving greater transparency on industry developments to promote market-driven responses," a joint statement released after the dialogue said, noting that the two countries will attend an OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) Steel Committee meeting in September to address global excess capacity.

The statement also said the United States acknowledges China's recently announced plans to close 100 to 150 million metric tons of steel capacity, and to strictly prohibit the expansion of crude steelmaking capacity over the next five years.

Thomas J. Gibson, president and CEO of the American Iron and Steel Institute, said on Tuesday in a statement that his institute welcomed "the new commitments by Chinese leaders to adopt measures to strictly contain steel capacity expansion, reduce net steel capacity, eliminate outdated steel capacity, and dispose of 'zombie enterprises' through restructuring, bankruptcy and liquidation, as appropriate."

"China's participation in further efforts to address global excess capacity at the OECD Steel Committee is also positive," Gibson said.

Frisbie, the USCBC president, called on the United States to use "internationally-accepted, legally-sound" trade tools to address distortions in the U.S. market caused by overcapacity problems.

The China-U.S. annual strategic dialogue comes at a time when steel overcapacity has become an acute global challenge and U.S. steel producers are increasingly resorting to trade remedies and tariff protection to ride out a sluggish steel market, a practice strongly opposed by Chinese steel producers and exporters.

Kirkegaard said he was convinced that this round of strategic dialogue "will help prevent a much more damaging confrontation later this year over steel and help channel the issue into a multilateral OECD-led process."

RMB TRADING & CLEARING IN U.S.

China has set up offshore RMB trading hubs in Hong Kong, London and Toronto, but the U.S. market remains untapped.

China will grant the United States a quota of 250 billion yuan (38 billion U.S. dollars) under the country's Renminbi Qualified Foreign Institutional Investor program and appointed one Chinese and one U.S. bank to conduct RMB clearing business in the United States, according to the statement.

"It's very encouraging that both sides have endorsed a framework for facilitating RMB trading and clearing in the U.S. for the first time," said Michael R. Bloomberg, chair of the Working Group on U.S. RMB Trading and Clearing and founder of Bloomberg L.P.

"This will help bring new momentum to the working group's efforts to expand trade between the United States and China by allowing the RMB to be cleared in the U.S.," he added.

S&ED MECHANISM

U.S. experts said the S&ED has become an important venue for promoting cooperation and managing differences between the world's two largest economies, but this mechanism needs improvement to become more effective in the future.

"As we approach the close of the Obama administration, it is important to remember that the S&ED was established in recognition of the need to expand engagement to address the array of issues in the U.S.-China relationship," Frisbie said.

"In the next administration, the mechanisms for dialogue can be tweaked to make further improvements and become more effective, but high-level engagement is now mandatory in the U.S.-China relationship," he added.

Kirkegaard said the S&ED is very much part of the overall process to manage the U.S.-China relations.

"The S&ED is part of the process to 'avoid doing stupid things' and keep small problems from growing into something bigger -- as such, its real value is largely preemptive as well as latent in the sense that if an important issue suddenly needs to be dealt with in U.S.-China relations, in the S&ED the two governments have a channel available," he said.

"This S&ED will surely have been instrumental in paving the ground for any big announcements made when President Xi and President Obama meet later in the year and also for helping avoid large confrontation over 'manageable issues' like steel," he said.
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Senior military officials from China and Nepal agreed on Thursday to further strengthen military ties between the two countries.

Admiral Sun Jianguo, deputy chief of the Joint Staff Department of China's Central Military Commission, and Chief of the Army Staff of the Nepalese Army Rajendra Chhetri discussed military-to-military ties and bilateral relations.

The Nepalese side has expressed belief that the meeting was helpful to further strengthen the military ties between China and Nepal, the Nepalese Army said in a statement.

Admiral Sun, who arrived here on Monday, had met with Nepalese Defense Minister Bhim Rawal. During the meeting, the two sides pledged to enhance defense cooperation between China and Nepal.
Sionbioway Group Co, Ltd, a major biotech company in China, has been seeking partnerships with US biotech companies through technology and capital investments to help realize its goal of starting a revolution in the bioindustry.

Sinobioway and BioAtla LLC, a San Diego-based company focused on the development of Conditionally Active Biologic (CAB) antibody therapeutics, are working collaboratively to develop several CAB candidates for the Chinese market.

In May 2015, the two companies entered into a strategic collaboration for the development and commercialization of select CAB antibodies and other CAB-based therapeutics in China.

Under the agreement, the companies selected their first product programs for development in January this year. BioAtla also received $19 million in program payments and equity investment from Sinobioway as part of a total of more than $70 million in payments and investment from Sinobioway over the next 12 months.

As part of the agreement, Sinobioway has exclusive rights to develop and commercialize selected CAB antibodies in China.

"Collaboration with overseas companies means more than just marketing products. Sinobioway aims to find the best technologies and best partners through direct investment," said Alex Zhang, investment and financing director of Sinobioway.

"Some innovative companies in the US have very limited resources in capital, manufacturing and marketing. A partnership with Chinese companies like Sinobioway means they have access to China's huge market and production capacity," he said, adding that an office would open in June in San Diego to facilitate investment and potential partnerships.

The strategic collaboration between Sinobioway and BioAtla is considered the keystone of both companies' long-term plans to address the growing high demand for innovative therapeutic products in the China pharmaceutical market.

"China is an immensely important opportunity for CABs and we are excited to be working with Sinobioway with its demonstrated commitment and strong capabilities to execute and to fulfill our mutual goals," said Jay Short, president and CEO of BioAtla, in a statement.

Sinobioway has also collaborated with Baylor College of Medicine to introduce the chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy technology, a breakthrough to tumor treatment, to China.

At a cost of about $30.5 million, Sinobioway has built a Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP) facility for cell preparation and a molecular biology lab for product testing.

By collaborating with leading local hospitals in China, the company said "great results" have been achieved in treating acute lymphoblastic leukemia, Burkitt lymphoma, pancreatic cancer and neuroblastoma.

Founded in 1992,Sinobiowayis affiliated with Peking University and headquartered in the 20-heactare Peking University Biocity, which houses the company's administration and R&D operations.

Encompassing more than 50 subsidiaries, Sinobioway's businesses span biomedicine, bioagriculture, bioenergy, bioenvironment, bioservice, biomanufacturing and biointelligence.

More than a dozen manufacturing bases have been built across China and five major ones are being constructed, with each of them is, or will be, the world's largest of its kind, said the company.

Among them, the Bantang Bioeconomy Experimental Zone in Hefei, Anhui province, is expected to have 100 production lines on completion and will meet the GMP requirements of China, the US, the World Health Organization and the European Union, according to the company.

Placing a premium on the R&D of new drugs and the advancement of its biomedical technology, Sinobioway is constructing a highly efficient R&D system, or what Pan Aihua, chairman of Sinobioway, called "new drug expressway", to address health issues.

Expected to be completed by 2025, the system aims to cut the average R&D cost to less than $50 million and shorten the pharmaceutical development cycle to eight years from the current 10 to 15 years, obtaining approval for about 25 new drugs annually.

"I believe in the coming decade or two, we human beings will enter the era of bioeconomy," said Pan. "Sinoboiway aims to become a flagship of the bioeconomy and will lead the next wave of industrial revolution."
Chinese consortium set to build 370-kilometer line says 'announcement violates agreement'

A private US railway company abruptly backed out of a deal with a Chinese consortium on Wednesday to build a high-speed rail line from Los Angeles, California, to Las Vegas, Nevada.

XpressWest Enterprises, a passenger rail venture supported by a Las Vegas hotel and casino developer, announced nine months ago that China Railway International USA Co would build the line. CRI is made up of State-owned railway equipment subsidiaries and service providers.

The sudden change of direction caught many by surprise, including CRI, which said breaking the deal was irresponsible and a violation of the agreement it had signed last year with XpressWest.

In a statement posted online, XpressWest said it was constrained by US government regulations.

"Our biggest challenge continues to be the federal government's requirement that high-speed trains must be manufactured in the United States," it said. "As everyone knows, there are no high-speed trains manufactured in the United States. This inflexible requirement has been a fundamental barrier to financing high-speed rail in our country."

XpressWest and CRI agreed in September to advance the substantial work already completed by XpressWest.

The 370-kilometer XpressWest high-speed railway project  also called the Southwest Rail Network  would connect Southern California with the Nevada gambling mecca using advanced tracks and equipment.

"The unilateral announcement violates the cooperation framework agreement signed by the two sides, which stipulates that one side should not release related information without approval by the other. The executive is responsible for the joint venture," said an official at CRI who did not want to be named.

The official said China Railway Corp Group, the main shareholder and the country's railway service provider, will take all necessary measures to ensure that its interests in the US are protected.

CRI, is a consortium of China Railway Construction Corp, China Railway Corp Group, China Railway Rolling Stock Corp, China State Construction Engineering Corp and China Railway Eryuan Engineering Group.

Construction work was planned to start as early as September this year, with total investment estimated at $12.7 billion.

"Traditionally, a weak global economy generates additional demand for all types of protectionism," said Luo Renjian, a researcher at the Institute of Transport Research at the National Development and Reform Commission. "China is especially targeted as a primary manufacturing rival and a serious threat to US industrial jobs in the manufacturing, transportation and telecommunication sectors."

Luo said such protectionism should not be allowed to pressure Chinese railway equipment providers and infrastructure construction companies.

Both CRI and XpressWest said their governments have much to talk about, especially regarding global and regional challenges and fair opportunities for US companies to choose global partners.

Ma Yu, a senior researcher at the Chinese Academy of International Trade and Economic Cooperation in Beijing, said there has been an obvious rise in global trade protectionism, in particular from the United States and its close trading partners, including Turkey, India and the European Union.

Contact the writer at zhongnan@chinadaily.com.cn
File photo of David Gulasi

When David Gulasi decided to leave Sydney for a teaching position in China more than five years ago, he never imagined that he would become an online celebrity.

More than 730,000 followers track his Weibo account and his videos have accrued thousands upon thousands of likes.

Gulasi, 33, accepted a teaching role in Hohhot in North China's Inner Mongolia autonomous region in 2010, and hasn't looked back since. "I was supposed to be here for only three months," Gulasi said.

He is now the managing director of the New World Language School in the region, and while he is popular with his own students, his viral videos on social media platform Weibo, have attracted attention from across the nation.

"I've always tried to do something to make people laugh. It's built in my DNA," Gulasi said.

He used to do stand up comedy in Australia at the Sydney Comedy Club.

"You know those dodgy Tuesday night open mic places, the ones where you try to be famous and if you can't you just give up," Gulasi joked.

"I use a lot of comedy, and humor to teach my students because in China education is way too serious."

Gulasi was tipped off about Weibo by a friend in China.

"I wanted to teach students about the word 'play,' because in China two adults look at each other and say 'I want to play with you,' but it sounds really weird, and sexual in a way," Gulasi said about his first viral video.

The first video of Gulasi that attracted immense Chinese attention was posted in January.

Gulasi said that after he had uploaded the video in the evening, he had about 50 followers. By the next morning, he had 120,000.

Gulasi said he made a few other videos and everyone loved them.

"It happened so suddenly. People said they liked my facial expressions."

Gulasi joked that his fame has brought with it some unexpected consequences.

"All over China, people now take my photo."

In a recent video Gulasi uploaded to Weibo, he professed his love for China and denounced foreigners who did not share his passion for the country.

Gulasi will join other well-known Weibo celebrities in a concert in Shanghai next week.
The brother of Shen Liangliang, the Chinese peacekeeper who was killed in a terrorist attack on May 31 at a United Nations camp in Mali, holds a framed picture of the hero as soldiers carry his coffin from a plane in Changchun, Jilin province, on Thursday. Shen's body was flown back to the city where his regiment is based. [LI SONG/CHINA DAILY]

The body of a Chinese peacekeeper who was killed in a terrorist attack on May 31 at a UN camp in Mali was flown back on Thursday to Changchun, capital city of Jilin province, where his regiment is based.

A military plane carrying Shen Liangliang's body touched down on Thursday afternoon in Changchun. A funeral service will be held on Friday morning.
Internet commerce helps bring local favorites to foreign buys, as Zhou Wenting reports in Shanghai.

Mayinglong Musk Hemorrhoids Ointment Cream. For China Daily

A time-honored ointment produced in China that relieves an embarrassing condition is gaining popularity in the United States.

Mayinglong Musk Hemorrhoids Ointment Cream has earned the praised of reviewers, who are calling it magic from the East, with a 4.3 out of 5 rating from more than 1,000 comments on Amazon.com.

Such success is overshadowing chili sauce Lao Gan Ma, which has been in favor in the US and many other countries for at least a decade. Lao Gan Ma won the same rating on Amazon.com, but had only 77 customer reviews.

Over the past decades, Chinese products, from food to daily commodities, have been bought overseas through either well-planned promotions or gradually by the growing number of Chinese people going abroad.

"Generally speaking, what foreigners prefer among Chinese items are those with strong Chinese characters and flavors, such as qipao (cheongsam) and red paper cutouts for window decorations. Ultimately, it all comes down to quality. Good wine will always sell itself, and it has become particularly true in today's internet shopping age," said Shun Zi, a native of Shandong province who moved to Los Angeles with her family a decade ago.

Some of the US customers, who had suffered from hemorrhoids for as long as seven years and could only resort to surgery, according to doctors, felt much better after using the product for only a couple of hours.

"The person who created this stuff should receive a Nobel Prize, front row seats at the Olympics, an entire stable of miniature giraffes, and free Ivy League education for their children," wrote one user who claimed that she could not even sit or stand the day before using the cream but could function the following day.

"This magic cream will make you whole again. You will not shift endlessly in your work chair while attempting to crush the evil troll living in your rectum. You will not wince at the thought of having to go potty. Now, I waltz right in the men's room and proudly purge burrito with cheese of last night, and I don't flinch," reads another comment.

Others even complimented China.

"Sorry team America, China wins on this remedy," reads one comment.

"Once again China has bailed us out," reads another comment, where the user also wrote that he would never be without a tube of this in his medicine cabinet.

Mayinglong Pharmaceutical Group, based in Wuhan, Hubei province, declined to take media interviews about the sudden fame. A manager from the group's marketing department, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told China Daily that "it was utterly a spontaneous eruption of word of mouth and the company never interfered".
The grandness of the Moreno Glacier is captured by photographer Liu Xiaoxi during her trip to Argentina last year.[LIU XIAOXI/CHINA DAILY]

Liu Xiaoxi, who has started a career in photography after leaving her job at the Chinese embassy in Mexico, has become a hot topic among the online community. Xing Yi reports.

Many Chinese people think that a job on a diplomatic team is too good to quit.

So when 28-year-old Liu Xiaoxi left her embassy post as an attache late last year to start a career in photography, she quickly became a popular topic among the Chinese online community.

Liu, from Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan province, studied Spanish at Beijing International Studies University and was recruited by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 2010.

She worked at the Chinese embassy in Mexico before leaving her job.
SHENYANG - Guo Chunlai will never forget the day when he saw Japanese war criminals repent on a Chinese court 60 years ago.

"I filed lawsuit against these Japanese on behalf of my country and compatriots and I felt proud," the 91-year-old man, then a prosecutor, said on Thursday.

On June 9, 1956, eight Japanese stood open trials at a special military tribunal in Shenyang, capital of northeast China's Liaoning Province, including Suzuki Keiku.

Suzuki Keiku was assistant commander of the 28th Infantry Regiment and later lieutenant general and commander of the 117th Division in the Japanese army invading China during WWII, who gave orders of slaughtering more than 2,200 Chinese peasants, burning down thousands of houses and luring Chinese and Koreans to serve as "comfort women."

"It was the first time since the Opium War when Chinese people tried foreign invaders independently," Guo said.

Facts of the offense must be supported by five kinds of evidence: records of the trial, accounts of the defendants, witness' accounts, historical files and proof of other defendants.

"All the Japanese pleaded guilty, some repenting, even kneeling down and begging for death penalty," Guo said.

According to Li Minghua, deputy director of the State Archives Administration, there were 1,109 Japanese war criminals in custody in China between 1950 and 1956. Among them, 1,017 with minor offenses were exempted from prosecution and released.

The decision of giving open trials to 45 of the rest in special military tribunals under the Supreme People's Court was made in April, 1956.

Between July 1 and 20 that year, another 28 Japanese were tried in Shenyang, including Rokusashi Takebe who once served as chief of general affairs of the "Manchukuo," a Japanese-backed puppet state in Northeast China and Inner Mongolia between 1932 and 1945.

Nine others stood trials in Taiyuan, capital of north China's Shanxi province.

None of the 45 war criminals were sentenced to death. They received jail terms of eight to 10 years.

"The result was beyond their expectation," Guo said. "After they returned Japan, most of these people became advocators of Sino-Japanese friendship. Some spent the rest of their lives promoting peace."
The beach of Yongxing Island offers clean sand and water. CHINA DAILY

Cruises offer laid-back lifestyle and maritime romance

When I stepped on the bobbing vessel heading for the Xisha Islands, two words that have frequently appeared in my daily news reports, I was expecting an arduous week on a remote island.

However, after an exhausting 15-hour trip from Wenchang, Hainan province, I was astonished by the dreamlike light-green morning sea stretching in front of me as we approached the harbor of Yongxing Island.

The spectrum of colors was more vibrant, more gasp-inducing than I had seen in the Maldives.

It was a perfect start to the Xisha trip, in which my colleagues and I cast our media net, like fishermen, to gather stories of the island, the location of Sansha, the southernmost Chinese city which administers an area of about 2 million square kilometers in the South China Sea. We also got a chance to truly appreciate its scenic lure and enjoy the laid-back island lifestyle.
An Airbus A330 jet plane of Hainan Airlines of HNA Group takes off from the Shenzhen Baoan International Airport in Shenzhen city, South China's Guangdong province, December 30, 2014. [Photo/IC]

Hainan Airlines started its first service connecting Beijing and Manchester on Friday, marking a significant milestone to boost connectivity between China and the UK's regional cities.

Before this flight's launch, most direct flights between China and the UK are through London, but increasing trade and investment links between China and other British cities is creating a demand for flights to cities outside London.

Hainan Airline's Manchester flight follows on from a flight launched by Cathy Pacific between Manchester and Hong Kong in 2014 December.

The Hainan flight will run four times a week, with journey time of 10.5 hours. It will use Airbus A330-300 aircraft, configured to carry 23 business class passengers and 260 travelers in economy.

According to Manchester Airport's statistics, the route will benefit the 100,000 passengers travelling annually between China and Manchester.

The airport also estimates the route to be worth at least 250 million pounds in economic benefits to the UK over the next decade. Two-thirds of this will be felt directly in the Northern economy in terms of increased jobs, economic activity and tourism. By providing a non-stop service, the new route will also generate journey time savings worth 5 million pounds every year for business passengers and avoid the inconvenience of changing planes at another airport.

Xie Haoming, president of Hainan Airlines, said a great number of travel agencies expressed their strong interest in working with Hainan Airlines, based upon the new route, which is encouraging for future travel between the two cities.

Xie said the Beijing to Manchester inaugural outbound and inbound flights have reached over 90 percent capacity, which is "incredibly strong" for a new route.

"With the 'Golden Age' of travel starting between China and the UK, it is foreseeable that the market between the two countries is entering a prosperous period," Xie added.

Hainan Airlines is China's largest privately-owned airline. The Beijing Manchester service was announced in October 2015 during President Xi Jinping's state visit to the UK.

UK Transport Minister Andrew Jones said the new route between Manchester and Beijing is a testament to the strength of the Northern Powerhouse, which is a government-backed project to transform Northern England's infrastructure capacity.

"Not only will this add an estimated quarter of a billion pounds to the local economy over the next decade, it will open new opportunities for businesses in both countries, boost tourism between China and the UK and will encourage students in both countries to experience studying in a new and different culture. This is an exciting new development for Manchester, the North of England and the UK," Jones said.

Ken O'Toole, CEO of Manchester Airport said the provision of a direct link between the two cities unlocks significant trade and investment opportunities, which will serve as a shot in the arm to efforts to create a re-energized Northern economy.

Richard Bell, managing partner for regional markets at Deloitte, said access to this route will provide greater scope for businesses across the North to explore the potential of the Chinese market for export, whilst at the same time allowing Chinese visitors an additional gateway into the UK.

In recent years China's business ties with Manchester have been increasing, and one landmark deal is Beijing Construction Engineering Group's participation in the 800 million pound Manchester Airport City project, with the Chinese company responsible for completing half of the project's construction work.

Xie Haoming, president of Hainan Airlines, said in a previous China Daily interview that his team first started discussions with Manchester Airport over this potential route three years ago. After conducting extensive research on the market demand for the direct flight, his team decided to launch the flight, believing that passenger numbers are sufficient.

"We realized that Manchester is a hub for many commercial activities in the English Midlands and North England, and having a direct flight between Manchester and Beijing makes sense because it will capture passenger flow from an area much larger than Manchester itself."

"We have witnessed the number of students from China coming to Manchester and surrounding areas grow, and business passengers are also growing on this route, so we are convinced that the route will be economically viable," says Xie.
A 3-year-old's simple but captivating view of Beijing is captured in a picture book, Yan Dongjie reports.

At the end of May, the mother and daughter took a day to travel around Beijing, taking pictures at the places they love so that they can take the memories back to Saudi Arabia. PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY

Before leaving Beijing, a British Saudi mom opened a window for people around the world to see China's capital through the innocent eyes of her little girl.

Lana Sultan, a 37-year-old author, translated her daughter's adventures of discovering the city, as well as her feelings and inspirations, into a bilingual book, What a Place! Expressed in simple language, the book was illustrated by a local young woman and published in Beijing in late April.

Cover of What a Place!

Maria Trabulsi moved to Beijing with her parents when she was 7 months old, and has lived here ever since. Her family, however, is moving back to Saudi at the end of June, leaving the city where she keeps all her memories in her very short life.

"I'm a Beijinger. I will miss this place so much," says the girl, now 3, who speaks fluent Chinese with the correct four tones, which is usually considered the most difficult part for foreigners.

She likes the busy streets and the quiet hutong, alleyways that usually run between ancient houses; her black-haired friends and the British-system kindergarten; and the various snacks and traditional festivalsbasically every aspect of life in Beijing, from the traditional to the modern.

Friendly, cheerful, precious, blissful, delightful, fun, festive, charming, legendary, lovelyin these words Sultan and Trabulsi describe the city in the book, which describes 10 different typical scenes in this city throughout a year with only 165 English words.
A customer examines a ring made by One Art Jewelry, a custom jewelry company based in Beijing.[ZHANG WEI/CHINA DAILY]

It was on Oct 31, 2015, the eve of her 30th birthday, that Tong Xin told Liu Yu, "I wish the feelings I have today could be transformed into a piece of jewelry that could be passed on to future generations."

Inspired by her words, Liu designed a stunning pair of gold earrings, with the numbers "1031" and the initials "TX" emblazoned on them.

Natural diamonds and pearls added to their beauty, making them elegant pieces of art.

Liu is the owner of One Art Jewelry, a custom jewelry company she set up with a partner last October, one of many startups that have opened up across the nation in the past few years.

A former teacher, Liu has some experience in art.

Liu says her company is gaining popularity among young people who like its personalized products, quality and affordability.

At One Art Jewelry, the ordering process starts with a story.

Like Tong, customers are asked to share their stories with a designer, who would then figure out the key words and select the most suitable product, such as earrings, necklaces or bracelets, to personalize the jewelry.

The final product would reflect a person's love or vision. The average age of Liu's customers is 25.

The price ranges from 200 yuan ($30) to 2,000 yuan. For customers in Beijing, the studio also offers complementary photo shoots.

"We invite customers to tell their own stories so that we can create a tangible memory for them," Liu said.

"It takes more time to make one piece like this," she said referring to Tong's earrings.

Another designer who is also attracting a lot of attention is Cao Hui.

She runs Gemoiselle, a company offering diamond and gemstone jewelry as well as customization. Cao has been in the business since 2000 when she started out as a diamond wholesaler.

She began offering customization in 2012.

The company also restores old jewelry.

Last year, Gemoiselle had a turnover of about 10 million yuan ($1.5 million).

Though the customization offered by One Art Jewelry and Gemoiselle differ, they have many similarities. Both have small workshops, small number of staff and offer exclusive designs.

They also promote themselves through word of mouth.

Both Liu and Cao believe that jewelry have immeasurable significance as people are emotionally attached to them.

Educated at the Academy of Art and Design in Beijing and at the University of London, where she majored in Asian arts, Cao is familiar with the texture and design of different kinds of jewels.

In addition, she was awarded the Diamond Grading and Color Stone Grading Diploma from the Gemological Institute of America.

Thanks to her experience, Cao says she can find ways to import jewels without middlemen, so that she can keep the price of Gemoiselle products low.

For designers like Liu and Cao, producing a piece of work is a process of getting to know others.

"The service we offer is not only about products but also about a kind of spirit," said Liu.

"We hope that customers can share their stories with us, and we will be responsible for every piece of work we make."

Jing Shuiyu contributed to this story.
CEO Bill Hu wants to make his company an 'affordable luxury' brand, offering unique and personalized accessories

Bill Hu is just 28, but he is sort of a pioneer in using three-dimensional printing technology to make custom jewelry in China.

Now CEO of Shanghai Malianghang (Hong Kong) Design Co Ltd, Hu not only possesses a rigorous thinking mode, but also has a perceptual style like artists.

In 2007, he went from his hometown of Shanghai to England to study industrial and product design, but wasn't happy until he earned a master's degree in his dream subjects of art and photography in 2012.

On his return home next year, Hu established Malianghang with an angel investment from his first employer, an apparel company.

Malianghang rolled out its first products last year, and according to Hu, the company has witnessed a monthly sales growth of almost 30 percent since then. It is the first such firm in China to offer 3-D printed jewelry.

In a recent interview with China Daily, Hu spoke about Malianghang and his plans for its future.

Hu said he started the business because he sensed the opportunities brought on by the booming internet market in China, which he called "much more intriguing" than the European market.

Young people in China, he observed, have a unique understanding of their own choices, and their aesthetic tastes are improving.

"In the past, the Chinese people, let's say those born after the 1980s, didn't buy clothes by themselves until they went to college," Hu said.

"But people born after the 1990s, under the influence of internet, are beginning to buy their own clothes at a much earlier age, for example in junior high school, or even in primary school."

Before he decided to pursue custom-made jewelry as his business field, Hu said he considered various options including apparel, shoes and artwork.

His experience in using industrial 3-D printers in the college laboratory made the choice all the more easier.

"The internet offers users a chance to customize exclusive jewelry, and they are willing to participate in the design process," Hu said.

Currently, the company offers products in four categories. Customers can submit designs online and a team of professional designers will bring them to life, using 3-D printing technology. Jewelry and fashion accessories can be made in silver or gold.

The firm's latest product is the "message" line where customers are able to get their messages printed on the jewelry.

The company also notes that its prices range from 218 yuan ($33) to 3,000 yuan.

"I have bought two necklaces from Malianghang," said Zhong Yue, who works for an internet company. "Their products are trendy and affordable."

The company has teamed up with major e-commerce firms like JD.com and Tmall to sell its products online.

However, Malianghang has no immediate plan to launch its own app. It would rather concentrate on better customer experience.

In Hu's eyes, Internet Plus is not simply the establishment of online marketing channels, but the innovation of the company's cultural gene.

He was quick to point out that all of his staff were born after the 1980s, with the oldest person born in 1981.

The ultimate goal of Malianghang, Hu continued, is to build an "affordable luxury" brand which will offer unique personalized accessories for everyday wear.

"This matters not only price, but also an exclusive user experience by means of internet development."

To facilitate that experience, the company has developed a mature online management system.

As for the future plan, Hu predicted that the company would finish A-round financing by the end of this year.

It is also planning to open the first retail store in Shanghai in 2016 and up to 30 nationwide within three years.

"We are setting up these stores so that consumers can feel our products. But the main channel remains online," Hu added. "Through the internet, Malianghang offers the costumers an easy way to express their unique personality, and guides them to think about 'What do I really want? What uniqueness do I want to express? How can I shape it?' "

Jing Shuiyu contributed to this story.
Dun Lun Tang House is a Huizhou-style house reassembled by the ancient architecture restoration team with the Anhui Yuanquan Hui-Culture Museum in Hefei, Anhui province. Photo Provided To China Daily

Team of specialists painstakingly restores Huizhou-style houses by replacing missing components with carefully crafted replicas, a complex job requiring patience and broad knowledge, as Zhu Lixin and Ma Chenguang report in Hefei.

As one of six members of an ancient architecture restoration team, Li Changyun has already spent eight months collaborating with his colleagues on reassembling an old, two-story residence that was removed from its original site in a rural village years ago. But the complicated work is far from completion.

Before working on the centuries-old Yuan De House, which literarily means house of great virtue, the team reassembled four such old residences in the private Anhui Yuanquan Hui-Culture Museum, located in Shushan district of Hefei, capital of East China's Anhui province.

Li, in his 60s, plays a key role on the team, which also includes a mason, a bricklayer, a painter and two others with carving and main structure expertise.

Like most of the traditional residences in southern Anhui province and a small part of northern Jiangxi province, which was known as Huizhou region before 1949, the house was mainly built with wooden components.

Li, a master carpenter for almost four decades, said that repairing ancient buildings is not an easy task, partly because many of the original components are missing or broken. So, replicas are made with old timber to fit neatly with the original ones.

"The joinery used in the buildings, as in most other such ancient Chinese architecture, is a complex system based on mortise-and-tenon principles to connect the wooden components of the timber frame," he said.

"The different pieces of wood are joined with carved wooden pegs. While a few nails were used to secure the rafters, the vast majority of the frame is held together without nails or glue."

Since the original components were all made by hand, almost no modern machines could be used in preparing the replicas. To qualify for the work, a carpenter must have mastery of more than 100 specific types of carpentry tools, "more than 30 of which are planes with different functions", Li said.

On Li's team, five of the six members are older than 60, with the remaining member being just 29. Xuan Fanqiu, head of the Yuanquan museum, said he chose the senior workers partly because they are more reliable in craftsmanship, in addition to the fact that "it was nearly impossible to find young people who are interested in and also good at the craftsman work".

"To qualify for restoration work of ancient buildings requires not only good skills, but also great patience and good knowledge of ancient buildings of different times," said Xuan, who gives the restoration workers professional guidance.
Here is the full text of a letter written on June 10, 2016, by Zhu Haiquan, press counselor and spokesman of the Chinese Embassy in the US, in response to an editorial titled "South China Sea Challenge" published by Wall Street Journal on June 3, 2016.

Regarding your editorial "South China Sea Challenge" (June 3), the origin of the South China Sea dispute is not China's territorial ambition but instead the illegal seizure and occupation of Chinese territory by other countries.

The islands and shoals in the South China Sea have long been Chinese territory. After World War II, China restored its sovereignty over them from Japanese occupation in accordance with the Cairo Declaration and Potsdam Proclamation, an act upholding postwar rules. But since the 1970s, 42 out of 51 land features in the Nansha Islands have been illegally occupied by other countries.

The 1898 Treaty of Paris, the 1900 Treaty of Washington and the 1930 Convention Between the U.S. and Great Britain defined the western limit of the Philippine's territory as 118 east longitude, reaffirmed by the Philippine Constitution in 1935. China's islands and reefs in the South China Sea, including Huangyan Dao (Scarborough Shoal), are all west of that line.

These historic rights are not superseded by the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (Unclos). In fact, Unclos respects the historic rights that predate it and are continuously claimed. By not accepting or participating in the arbitration unilaterally initiated by the Philippines, China is simply exercising its legitimate sovereign rights under Unclos.

China has already signed border treaties through peaceful negotiations with 12 out of 14 of its land neighbors. The same practice should be adopted in the South China Sea.

US military operations in the South China Sea only fuel tensions. The moves suggested by this editorial are even more reckless and alarming. No country's interests are served by turning the South China Sea into a geopolitical competing ground.

The US often emphasizes the importance of reducing tension and maintaining the space necessary for diplomatic solution. We hope the U.S. will match its words with deeds.
The Tribunal's Award in the "South China Sea Arbitration" Initiated by the Philippines Is Null and Void

Chinese Society of International Law

10 June 2016

Since 22 January 2013 when the Philippines unilaterally initiated arbitration with respect to certain issues in the South China Sea ("Arbitration"), China has maintained its solemn position that it would neither accept nor participate in the Arbitration, having stated that the tribunal constituted at the unilateral request of the Philippines ("Arbitral Tribunal" or "Tribunal") manifestly has no jurisdiction. On 7 December 2014, the Chinese Government released the Position Paper of the Government of the People's Republic of China on the Matter of Jurisdiction in the South China Sea Arbitration Initiated by the Republic of the Philippines ("Position Paper"), which elaborated on these positions. The Chinese Society of International Law strongly supports the positions of the Chinese Government.

China has indisputable sovereignty over the South China Sea Islands and the adjacent waters. The core of the disputes between China and the Philippines in the South China Sea is issues of territorial sovereignty resulting from the Philippines' illegal seizure and occupation of certain maritime features from China in the Nash Islands, and issues concerning maritime delimitation between the two States. These are also exactly the essence of the Arbitration instituted by the Philippines.

On 29 October 2015, the Tribunal issued its Award on Jurisdiction and Admissibility ("Award on Jurisdiction" or "Award"), in which it found that disputes between China and the Philippines concerning the interpretation or application of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea ("UNCLOS" or "Convention") existed with respect to the matters raised by the Philippines in all of its Submissions. The Tribunal further found that it had jurisdiction over some of the Submissions made by the Philippines, and reserved consideration of its jurisdiction with respect to the other Submissions to the merits phase. This finding is full of errors in both the determination of fact and the application of law, at least in the following six respects:

First, the Tribunal errs in finding that the claims made by the Philippines constitute disputes between China and the Philippines concerning the interpretation or application of the UNCLOS;

Second, the Tribunal errs in taking jurisdiction over claims which in essence are issues of sovereignty over land territory and are beyond the purview of the UNCLOS;

Third, the Tribunal errs in taking jurisdiction over claims concerning maritime delimitation which have been excluded by China from compulsory procedures in line with the UNCLOS;

Fourth, the Tribunal errs in denying that there exists between China and the Philippines an agreement to settle the disputes in question through negotiation;

Fifth, the Tribunal errs in finding that the Philippines had fulfilled the obligation to "exchange views" regarding the means of disputes settlement with respect to the claims it made;

Sixth, the Tribunal's Award deviates from the object and purpose of the dispute settlement mechanism under the UNCLOS, and impairs the integrity and authority of the Convention.

The Chinese Society of International Law is of the view that having jurisdiction over the claims is a prerequisite for the Tribunal to initiate its proceedings on merits, and a basis for the validity of any final decisions. In the present Arbitration, the Tribunal does not have jurisdiction over any of the claims made by the Philippines. Its Award on Jurisdiction is groundless both in fact and in law, and is thus null and void. Therefore, any decision that it may make on substantive issues in the ensuing proceedings will equally have no legal effect.

I. The Arbitral Tribunal errs in finding that the claims made by the Philippines constitute disputes between China and the Philippines concerning the interpretation or application of the UNCLOS

The Arbitral Tribunal recognizes that, under Article 288(1) of the UNCLOS, its jurisdiction is limited to "disputes concerning the interpretation and application of this Convention" (Award, para.130). The Tribunal also recognized that, to find its jurisdiction in the present Arbitration, it must be satisfied that 1) disputes existed between China and the Philippines with respect to the claims made by the Philippines, and 2) the disputes, if they existed, concerned the interpretation or application of the UNCLOS. It concludes that "disputes between the Parties concerning the interpretation and application of the Convention exist with respect to the matters raised by the Philippines in all of its Submissions in these proceedings" (Award, para.178). This conclusion, however, is untenable.

1. The Arbitral Tribunal erroneously determines that the relevant claims constitute disputes between China and the Philippines

A dispute in an international judicial or arbitral procedure is "a disagreement on a point of law or fact, a conflict of legal views or of interests between two persons" (Award, para.149, quoting from Mavrommatis Palestine Concessions, Jurisdiction, Judgment of 30 August 1924, PCIJ Series A, No.2, p.11). This classic definition of "dispute" has been followed extensively in practice by the International Court of Justice ("ICJ") and other international judicial or arbitral bodies.

In international practice, to determine the existence of a dispute, one must first demonstrate that specific subject-matters on which the parties disagree have come into existence before the judicial or arbitral proceedings are initiated. As the ICJ pointed out in 2011 in the Georgia v. Russian Federation Case, a State, prior to the initiation of proceedings, "must refer to the subject-matter of the treaty with sufficient clarity to enable the State against which a claim is made to identify that there is, or may be, a dispute with regard to that subject-matter" (Application of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (Georgia v. Russian Federation), Preliminary Objections, Judgment, I.C.J. Reports 2011, p.85, para.30, emphasis added). Second, apart from the existence of subject-matter of disagreement, one must also demonstrate that there is "clash of propositions" or "point of contention" on the same subject-matter or claim. In the South West Africa Cases, the ICJ held in 1962 that to prove the existence of a dispute, "[i]t must be shown that the claim of one party is positively opposed by the other" (Award, para.149, quoting from South West Africa Cases (Ethiopia v. South Africa; Liberia v. South Africa), Preliminary Objections, Judgment of 21 December 1962, I.C.J. Reports 1962, p.328, emphasis added). Therefore, a mere assertion by one party does not suffice to prove the existence of a dispute. It must be shown that the parties maintain "opposing attitudes" or "opposite views" on the same subject-matter. It is based on these criteria that the ICJ has found the existence of a dispute in a number of cases (See e.g., Alleged Violations of Sovereign Rights and Maritime Spaces in the Caribbean Sea (Nicaragua v. Colombia), Preliminary Objections, Judgment of 17 March 2016, pp.29-32, paras.67-79; Application of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (Georgia v. Russian Federation), Preliminary Objections, Judgment, I.C.J. Reports 2011, pp.84-85, paras.30-31; East Timor (Portugal v. Australia), Judgment, I.C.J. Reports 1995, p.99, para.22).

In the present Arbitration, it is obvious that the Tribunal did not follow the above-mentioned rules and practice of international law in determining the existence of disputes. To take a few examples:

In its Submission No. 3, the Philippines argues that Scarborough Shoal (Huangyan Dao) generates no entitlement to an exclusive economic zone or continental shelf. In order to prove that this claim constitutes a dispute between China and the Philippines, it must be shown, with factual proof, that prior to the initiation of arbitration the Philippines had made such a claim to China and the claim had been positively opposed by China. The Tribunal should have done this, but it did not.

In its Submission No. 4, the Philippines argues that Mischief Reef (Meiji Jiao), Second Thomas Shoal (Ren'ai Jiao) and Subi Reef (Zhubi Jiao) are low-tide elevations that do not generate entitlement to a territorial sea, exclusive economic zone or continental shelf. In order to prove that this claim constitutes a dispute between China and the Philippines, it must be shown, with factual proof, that prior to the initiation of arbitration the Philippines had made such a claim to China and the claim had been positively opposed by China. The Tribunal should have done this, but it did not.

In its Submission No. 6, the Philippines argues that Gaven Reef (Nanxun Jiao) and Mckennan Reef (Ximen Jiao) (including Hughes Reef (Dongmen Jiao)) are low-tide elevations that do not generate entitlement to a territorial sea, exclusive economic zone or continental shelf. In order to prove that this claim constitutes a dispute between China and the Philippines, it must be shown, with factual proof, that prior to the initiation of arbitration the Philippines had made such a claim to China and the claim had been positively opposed by China. The Tribunal should have done this, but it did not.

In its Submission No. 7, the Philippines argues that Johnson Reef (Chigua Jiao), Cuarteron Reef (Huayang Jiao) and Fiery Cross Reef (Yongshu Jiao) generate no entitlement to an exclusive economic zone or continental shelf. In order to prove that this claim constitutes a dispute between China and the Philippines, it must be shown, with factual proof, that prior to the initiation of arbitration the Philippines had made such a claim to China and the claim had been positively opposed by China. The Tribunal should have done this, but it did not.

As is clear from the above analysis, the Tribunal should have concluded that the above-mentioned claims of the Philippines did not constitute disputes between China and the Philippines. But, regrettably, the Tribunal does not apply the above-mentioned requirements to the Philippines' claims, one by one, in accordance with international law. It attempts to infer the existence of disputes between China and the Philippines with respect to the above claims, simply by bundling them together and asserting that they "reflect a dispute concerning the status of the maritime features and the source of maritime entitlements in the South China Sea" (Award, para.169, emphasis added). By generalizing claims regarding the status and maritime entitlements of "specific" features into a "general" disagreement concerning the status of maritime features and the source of maritime entitlements in the South China Sea, the Tribunal, sub silentio, replaces one concept with another, in order to conceal its incapability to prove that the Philippines' claims regarding the status and maritime entitlements of the nine features constitute disputes between China and the Philippines. The Tribunal then attempts to justify its approach by asserting that a dispute concerning the maritime entitlements generated in the South China Sea "is not negated by the absence of granular exchanges with respect to each and every individual feature" (Award, para.170), without giving any legal ground for this assertion, and further, says only evasively that it must "distinguish between the dispute itself and arguments used by the parties to sustain their respective submissions on the dispute" (Award, para.170). The conclusion of the Tribunal is thus unconvincing.

In fact, there exists no real "clash of propositions" between China and the Philippines with respect to the latter's Submissions No. 3, 4, 6 and 7. China has always maintained and enjoyed territorial sovereignty over the Zhongsha Islands (including Huangyan Dao (Scarborough Shoal)) and the Nansha Islands (including the above-mentioned eight features such as Meiji Jiao (Mischief Reef)) in their entirety. It has neither expressed its position on the status of individual features referred to by the Philippines such as Huangyan Dao (Scarborough Shoal), Meiji Jiao (Mischief Reef) and Ren'ai Jiao (Second Thomas Shoal), nor claimed maritime entitlements based on individual features in question, each separately as a single feature. The Philippines, on the other hand, formulated its claims on the status and maritime entitlements of certain individual features as separate features. These facts reflect that the propositions of China and the Philippines concern different issues and do not pertain to the same subject-matters. There are no positively opposed disagreements, thus no disputes, with respect to the same subject-matters.

It is undeniable that disagreements exist between China and the Philippines with respect to issues regarding the South China Sea. However, the disagreements, in essence, concern territorial sovereignty over certain features and maritime delimitation between the two States in the South China Sea, and constitute no dispute with respect to the claims advanced by the Philippines. An international judicial or arbitral body shall address "real" disputes between "real" parties with respect to "real" issues. However, in the present Arbitration the Tribunal distorts China's arguments and erroneously finds that there exist disputes between China and the Philippines over the latter's claims.

2. The Arbitral Tribunal erroneously determines that the relevant claims concern the interpretation or application of the UNCLOS

Even if a claim constitutes a dispute, the Arbitral Tribunal would still have no jurisdiction over it if it does not concern the interpretation or application of the UNCLOS (UNCLOS, art. 288). Obviously, the interpretation or application of general international law, including customary international law, shall not be regarded as falling within the scope of the Tribunal's jurisdiction. As written by Rothwell and Stephens, both Australian international lawyers, "[t]he Part XV dispute settlement mechanisms ... do not have jurisdiction over disputes arising under general international law" (Donald R Rothwell and Tim Stephens, The International Law of the Sea (Hart Publishing, 2010), p.452).

In the present case, in its Submissions No. 1 and 2, the Philippines in essence requests the Tribunal to declare that China's maritime entitlements in the South China Sea are beyond those permitted by the UNCLOS and thus are without lawful effect. The Tribunal finds that the relevant dispute between China and the Philippines is "a dispute about historic rights in the framework of the Convention", and "a dispute concerning the interpretation and application of the Convention" (Award, para.168). However, "historic rights" had come into existence long before the conclusion of the UNCLOS. Although the nature and scope of "historic rights" remain undetermined, it can be safely asserted that they originated from and are governed by general international law including customary international law, and rules of customary international law regarding "historic rights" operate in parallel with the UNCLOS. Accordingly, disputes concerning "historic rights" do not concern the interpretation or application of the Convention. In the Continental Shelf Case?between Tunisia and Libya, the ICJ pointed out in 1982 that "the notion of historic rights or waters  are governed by distinct legal regimes in customary international law" (Continental Shelf (Tunisia v. Libyan Arab Jamahiriya), Judgment, I.C.J. Reports 1982, p.74, para.100). Ted L. McDorman, a Canadian international lawyer, also wrote that, "whether historic rights exist is not a matter regulated by UNCLOS  when these rights involve fisheries and the resources of the continental shelf UNCLOS does become engaged" (Ted L McDorman, "Rights and jurisdiction over resources in the South China Sea: UNCLOS and the nine-dash line'", in S. Jayakumar, Tommy Koh and Robert Beckman (eds.), The South China Sea Disputes and Law of the Sea (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2014), p.152).

To prove that a dispute concerns the interpretation or application of the UNCLOS, it is not adequate to show that it falls within the purview of the Convention. It must also be shown that the dispute is related to certain substantive provisions of the Convention, and a real link exists between them. In the M/V "Louisa" Case, the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea ("ITLOS") stressed in 2013 that "it must establish a link between the facts advanced by [the Applicant] ... and the provisions of the Convention referred to by it and show that such provisions can sustain the claim or claims submitted by [the Applicant]", in deciding whether the dispute between the parties concerned the interpretation or application of the UNCLOS (The M/V "Louisa" Case (Saint Vincent and the Grenadines v. Kingdom of Spain), ITLOS Case No.18, Judgment of 28 May 2013, p.32, para.99). In 2012, Wolfrum and Cot, both sitting in the present case, stated in the Ara Libertad Case that "[i]t is for the Applicant  to invoke and argue particular provisions of the Convention which plausibly support its claim and to show that the views on the interpretation of these provisions are positively opposed by the Respondent" (The "ARA Libertad" Case (Argentina v. Ghana), Provisional Measures, ITLOS Case No.20, Order of 15 December 2012, Joint Separate Opinion of Judge Wolfrum and Judge Cot, p.12, para.35). Furthermore, in the Georgia v. Russian Federation Case, Judge Koroma observed in 2011 that "a link must exist between the substantive provisions of the treaty invoked and the dispute ... any jurisdictional title founded on CERD's compromissory clause must relate to, and not fall outside, the substantive provisions of the Convention" (Application of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (Georgia v. Russian Federation), Preliminary Objections, Judgment, I.C.J. Reports 2011, Separate Opinion of Judge Koroma, p.185, para.7).

In the present Arbitration, with regard to the Philippines' Submissions No. 1 and 2 concerning "historic rights", the Tribunal makes a sweeping conclusion that the relevant claims constitute a dispute concerning the interpretation or application of the UNCLOS, without identifying which specific provisions that the "dispute" relates to, and whether a real link exists between the "dispute" and the specific provisions. The conclusion is thus groundless in law.
BEIJING - The Philippines' unilateral move to bring a maritime dispute with China to an international tribunal won't help resolve the problem and the right way forward is to seek settlement through bilateral talks, several foreign experts told Xinhua in recent interviews.

While expressing support for China's position of non-acceptance of and non-participation in the arbitration of the China-Philippine dispute over islands in the South China Sea, they said that Manila's arbitration act runs against the spirit of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) and reneges on its previous promises.

Stefan Talmon, director of the Institute of Public International Law at the University of Bonn, said the arbitration court in The Hague, which was formed according to Annex VII of the UNCLOS, does not have jurisdiction over territorial disputes.

Issues of territorial sovereignty, he noted, are not governed by the UNCLOS, but by customary international law.

Saeed Chaudhry, chair of the Islamabad Council for International Affairs, also believes the Permanent Court of Arbitration has no jurisdiction to hear or judge the case.

The court should have rejected Philippines' arbitration request because the Philippines itself is "illegally occupying islands and reefs of China's Nansha Islands."

"By considering all the facts in the issue, China has complete right and comprehensive reasons to reject the arbitration proceedings and not to accept and recognize any verdict by the arbitration," he added.

Meanwhile, experts also noticed that before Manila initiated the arbitration in 2013, it had promised China in various political documents to resolve their South China Sea disputes via negotiations.

For example, China and the Philippines, along with other members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), signed in 2002 the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties (DOC) in the South China Sea.

The Philippines' arbitration move runs contrary to the Article IV of the document -- which stipulates that the parties concerned resolve their South China Sea disputes "through friendly consultations and negotiations."

While pressing for its arbitration case, the Philippines ignored diplomatic channels as well as China's willingness to negotiate, said Chaudhry.

What has happened so far surrounding the matter proves that "the Philippines and some hidden forces have ill plans and aims to disturb peace and stability" in the region, he added.

Instead of unilaterally resorting to arbitration, the right path forward regarding the South China Sea issue, as China has said repeatedly, is to conduct consultations and negotiations between directly concerned parties.

The impending decision by the arbitration court over the issue would not make the settlement of disputes in the South China Sea any easier at least, said Talmon, adding that the ruling may even be counterproductive to the solution of the problems.

Pakistani political and strategic analyst Sultan Mahamoud Ali noted that China has been very successful in resolving territorial issues with neighbors via bilateral talks.

China has already settled land boundary with 12 of its 14 neighbors and it is committed to the development of good neighborly relations with other countries in the region, including the Philippines, he said.

For Manila, it could achieve better results if it chooses to engage in direct talks with China, he added.
Mother of Shen Liangliang, a killed Chinese UN peacekeeper in a terrorist attack in Mali, weeps at the funeral service in Yongji county, Northeast China's Jilin province, June 10, 2016. Shen was killed in a recent attack by extremists on a United Nations mission camp in Mali which also injured several of his colleagues. [Photo/Xinhua]

The body of Shen Liangliang, a Chinese UN peacekeeping soldier killed in a recent terrorist attack in Mali, was cremated in Northeast China's Jilin province on Friday.

The cremation took place in Yongji county, and the ashes will be escorted back to Shen's home in the central province of Henan.

More than 1,000 people attended the memorial service for the 29-year-old sergeant first class. He had been in service for 11 years.

A vehicle-borne improvised explosive device detonated at a UN camp in the northern Malian town of Gao in the early hours of June 1 (Beijing time), injuring another seven Chinese peacekeepers.

Shen was the 11th Chinese servicemen killed in UN peacekeeping missions abroad. His body was brought back to China on Thursday afternoon.






BEIJING - China's food safety watchdog has issued a regulation, effective as of Oct 1, to tighten supervision on baby formula.

Both domestic and overseas baby formula producers must register and secure permits from the China Food and Drug Administration if they want to sell their products in China.

If they are using foreign raw materials, they must specify the place or country and vague phrasing like "imported milk," "from foreign pastures," or "imported raw materials" are forbidden, according to the Baby Formula Registration Regulation issued Wednesday.

Moreover, it is forbidden to include claims such as "good for brain," "improve immunity" or "protect intestinal tracts" in instructions or packaging, according to the regulation.

Baby formula is a sensitive issue in China, after a series of scandals beginning in 2008 when infant formula produced by Sanlu Group, a leading domestic dairy firm, was found to contain melamine.

In April, police arrested nine people implicated in the production and sale of fake baby formula under the brands "Similac" and "Beingmate." About 1,000 cans of milk powder, over 20,000 empty cans and 65,000 fake trademarks were seized.

In 2015, China produced 700,000 tonnes of baby formula, accounting for 65 percent of the annual sales nationwide.
The incoming new government of the Philippines has indicated a desire for talks to solve its territorial dispute with China, igniting hopes that a fresh atmosphere can replace the chaos in the South China Sea that has characterized the past few years.

China has responded warmly by vowing to treat the Philippines as a "partner of priority" in regional cooperation.

Salvador Panelo, spokesman for President-Elect Rodrigo Duterte, said on Thursday that the incoming leader has "determined on friendly ties with China".

"The new Philippine government will carry out bilateral talks with China," Panelo said in Manila, according to China News Service. He made the remarks at an evening party marking the 41st anniversary of diplomatic ties. Duterte will take office on June 30.

Chinese Ambassador to the Philippines Zhao Jianhua said at the event that good relations between Beijing and Manila are in line with the basic interests of the two peoples, the news report said.

"The Philippines is an important country on the Maritime Silk Road and a founding member of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank," he said.

China is willing to view the Philippines as "a partner of priority" in the Belt and Road Initiative, in regional trade, industrial capacity cooperation and other areas, the report quoted Zhao as saying.

"We're willing to work with the new government of the Philippines to draw a new blueprint to lead bilateral relations back to the channel of healthy development," Zhao said, drawing applause from the audience.

Perfecto Yasay, the incoming Philippine foreign minister, said on Thursday in an interview published in the Chinese Commercial News that he will "invite China to join us to ensure peaceful settlement of our conflicts and difficulties".

Duterte said earlier that he would consider bilateral dialogue with China on the South China Sea issue if multilateral talks fail to make progress.

China's Foreign Ministry issued a statement on Wednesday insisting on bilateral negotiations with the Philippines to solve the South China Sea issue. It said Manila had shut the door to dialogue by seeking to settle the dispute through the international tribunal of the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague.

A ruling by the international arbitration body is expected within weeks. The process was launched by the Philippines to challenge China's territorial claims in the South China Sea.

Beijing has expressed strong opposition to the move, the Foreign Ministry statement said.

The Chinese Society of International Law on Friday released a paper saying any award by the tribunal is "null and void". It said the body's claim of jurisdiction, issued in October, filled with errors both of fact and the application of law. It cited six major errors by the tribunal.

"Political decisions will have no legal effect," the paper said.
Huang Yuanpeng's fellow researchers from Shennongjia Golden Monkeys Protection and Research Center check on the monkeys. PHOTO BY LIU XIANGRUI / CHINA DAILY

Twelve researchers give their all to save an endangered species

Home is where the heart is, which raises a burning question for Huang Yuanpeng: Who pulls his heartstrings hardest  his wife and 3-year-old son or those strange creatures in the forest he has decided to devote his life to?

The group of animals that Huang, 34, has spent the past 10 years doing research on at Shennongjia Golden Monkeys Protection and Research Center high in the mountains of Shennongjia National Nature Reserve in Hubei province are as rare as pandas: golden snub-nosed monkeys that are found nowhere other than China.

Huang visits his home in a nearby town, where his wife takes care of their son, almost every month, but the transport logistics make it hard for some of the other 11 researchers aged from 20 to 60 from distant regions to go back home regularly.

They take turns to have four days off each month and even spend the traditional Chinese New Year looking after the monkeys.

And that self-sacrificing care seems to be paying off, for the group of snub-nosed monkeys he has been looking after has grown from about 50 to more than 90 over 10 years.

"I'm really happy to see that," Huang beams. "Our work has paid off."

Golden snub-nosed monkeys are distinguished by their bright fur, graceful movements, and gentle nature. They were once widely distributed throughout China but have retreated to high mountains because of changes in the environment.

They are critically endangered because of habitat destruction and human hunting, and the International Union for the Conservation of Nature has listed them as a rare animal species. China has classified them as a first-grade State-protected animal.
Victorian-era hero helped spark Britain's industrial revolution, and now China is advancing in the same vein

Isambard Kingdom Brunel; it's a name that rolls off the tongue. He also happens to be one of my personal heroes, along with Admiral Lord Nelson and the Duke of Wellington.

But it's Brunel we're addressing today. I always think his parents, a French emigre engineer and an English woman, must have had a serious sense of humor when it came to naming their firstborn in 1802.

Brunel was a man with massive vision that, combined with the breathtaking arrogance of the era he lived in, means Britain is full of the tunnels, bridges and railway lines that sprang from his imagination. He was a nationalist who firmly believed in the word "great" in the country's name, Great Britain.

When I write of his arrogance, and his nationalism, it's not in a derogatory way. Victorians were imbued with a self-confidence that saw them build an empire "on which the sun never set" and constructed engineering marvels that have stood the test of time.

I'm thinking of the Clifton Suspension Bridge over the River Avon, which links England and Wales, and the Royal Albert Bridge over the River Tamar at Saltash, which links Cornwall with the rest of the world (an in-joke; my grandmother was Cornish).

But it was railways that stamped Brunel's name on the country's consciousness. He came up with the Great Western Railway, designed to link London, Bristol and later the southwestern city of Exeter. But he didn't stop there.

The United States was just opening up, and Brunel, with his usual broader approach, said travelers should be able to buy a ticket in Paddington Station, west London, bound for New York.

And so the SS Great Western was born, at its launch in 1838 the longest ship in the world, powered by steam and sail. It made 64 crossings of the Atlantic and led to the construction of her sister ship, the SS Great Britain, made entirely of metal and driven by a screw rather than paddle wheels. Fully restored, she is now preserved in her dry dock in her homeport of Bristol.

So what's this got to do with China? Well, put simply, I think the colossal intellect and engineering genius that was Brunel would have heartily approved of modern China's approach to infrastructure. Heck, he would have probably been bidding for the contracts.

I've written before how my first view of Shenzhen from the border post in Hong Kong in the late 1980s was a couple of apartment blocks standing forlornly in a landscape of rice paddies, with the only human in sight a farmer, dressed in a sun hat, singlet and shorts, who was herding thousands of snow-white ducks and geese.

It's changed a bit and now represents one of the parallels I draw between modern China and Brunel's 19th-century vision of Britain. Both share a dramatic vision of what the future should be, and the best way to go about it.

The construction of the glittering high-tech city of Shenzhen in little under 30 years is a case in point, but one project I think Brunel would have heartily approved of is China's high-speed rail network.

If Brunel's railway vision - with its tracks, tunnels and bridges, most of which still function today - changed the face of Britain and ushered in the industrial revolution, then the same could be said of China's ambitious high-speed rail network.

Simply put, in early 2007 there wasn't one. Now, 28 of China's 33 provinces and regions are served by 19,000 kilometers of high-speed tracks, with 30,000 km planned by 2020. In 2007, daily passenger numbers were 237,000, which by 2014 had risen to 2.49 million.

A 2,298-km journey from Beijing to Guangzhou in the south takes eight hours. You work it out.

Pictures of Wuhan's new railway terminus, with its soaring glass roof, have exact parallels with London's Paddington, a bit grimy now (steam does that to glass) but blessed with the same dramatic curved roof of glass and iron when it was built by - you've guessed it - Isambard Kingdom Brunel.

As a reminder, there's a larger-than-life statue of the great man eyeing passengers as they pour off the trains onto one of the main platforms.

So please, can China's best railway brains come to the home of the railway and build us a high-speed rail link from north to south?

The author is managing editor of China Daily European Weekly, based in London.



Contact the writer at chris@mail.chinadailyuk.com
Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel (L) and China's Premier Li Keqiang attend a welcoming ceremony in Beijing, China on October 29, 2015.[Photo/Agencies]

German Ambassador to China Michael Clauss expects a mutual exemption of visas in five to 10 years, to strengthen exchanges in economy, scientific research and people-to-people communication between the two countries.

Clauss made the remarks during a media interview, ahead of German Chancellor Angela Merkel's visit to China from June 12 to 14.

Germany has exempted visa processing for Chinese diplomatic passports and shrunk the processing times of business and tourist visas to 48 and 72 hours, respectively. The next step is to significantly cut the documents and materials required for tourist visa applications.

The chancellor will attend the fourth round of China-Germany inter-governmental consultations in Beijing, before visiting Shenyang in the Liaoning province. The German delegation includes around 10 federal ministers and 20 high-level economic representatives, such as the presidents of BMW, Volkswagen and Siemens.

The two parties may sign an agreement regarding economic espionage before the inter-governmental consultation, Clauss said, as data protection cooperation is a crucial element in protecting the achievements of innovation, which is a key topic of the consultation.

China and Germany, as rotating G20 presidents this year and next year, will discuss how to play a positive role at the G20 to address the economic recovery slowdown. Opening and innovation, instead of issuing loans, are the keys to boost the world economy, spokespeople from both countries said.

Scientific research and economic topics, such as the docking of German Industrial 4.0 and China Made 2025, remain other focuses for the consultation.

According to Clauss, Chinese telecom products such as Huawei and ZTE are well accepted in Germany, and he expects more German products such as medicines, agricultural products and food to be successful in China. A fairer competitive environment with fewer restrictions will benefit German products exporting to China, along with the introduction of German investment and technology, Clauss said.

The German government will stick to its open attitude towards Chinese investment, with no laws or regulations restricting commercial activities.

While discussing the South China Sea issue, Clauss said all countries should comply with the international rules. The South China Sea arbitration was unilaterally initiated by the Philippines, according to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of China. In doing so, the Philippines has turned its back on the agreement reached and repeatedly reaffirmed by China and the Philippines to settle the relevant disputes in the South China Sea through negotiation, violating its own solemn commitment in the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea (DOC).
CEO Brian Chesky expressed his concern at various incidents of gross discrimination and bias.

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Airbnb is planning to take steps to curb discriminatory practices by hosts on the home sharing website.



The company has been hit with a barrage of complaints by various groups who claimed they faced prejudice from some of the hosts listed on Airbnb.



Speaking at the company's Open Air technical conference, CEO Brian Chesky expressed his concern over various incidents of gross discrimination and bias.



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Chesky said that the company is looking to bring about technological innovations to ensure that such instances are not repeated in the future. However, he did not provide any specific details about the measures that will be introduced to tackle the issue.



In his brief address to the conference, Chesky said, "There's been a lot of news about prejudice and bias on our platform, and this is a huge issue for us," he added, "We have zero tolerance for it and we will take swift action."



A recent Harvard Business School study found that many Airbnb hosts tend to discriminate against guests with names sounding distinctly black.



The company is also facing a lawsuit from an African-American man who claimed that the home sharing site did not take any action after he was rejected by a host because of his race.



Airbnb has also been slammed by the transgender community after a Hollywood producer revealed that the site ignored her complaints of gender-based discrimination.



The company is now planning to introduce a new program to recruit more under-represented minorities. Airbnb has also engaged civil rights advocate Laura Murphy to help create a new structure of "comprehensive" review of the process of picking guests by Airbnb hosts.



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TagsAirbnb, Airbnb Racism, Airbnb gender discrimination, Airbnb racial discrimination, Brian Chesky, Airbnb CEO
(Photo : Getty Images.) China is reportedly making all the diplomatic efforts to prevent India's entry into NSG.

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China is reportedly leading the opposition to stop United States and other major powers from including India into the 48-member Nuclear Supplier Group (NSG), which would allow India to access nuclear technology from NSG members.



Apart from China, other nations opposing India's membership include New Zealand, Ireland, Turkey, South Africa and Austria. The opposing countries stress that India's inclusion into the NSG would seriously undermine nuclear proliferation as India has not signed the Nuclear Proliferation Treaty (NPT).



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"By bringing India on board, it's a slap in the face of the entire non-proliferation regime," a diplomat from a particular bloc said on the basis of anonymity.



The opposition against India's entry into the NSG also hails from the fact that it would infuriate its archrival Pakistan, who is also vying for an NSG seat. China has already stated that it won't support India's NSG membership unless Islamabad is also allowed to join the elite nuclear group.



India's eligibility for NSG membership will be decided at the NSG plenary meeting in Seoul on June 20. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry has reportedly written letters to members asking them "not to block consensus on Indian admission to the NSG."



However, Kerry's letter has had minimum impact on China. "China, if anything, is hardening (its position)," a top diplomat said. Kerry is said to have dashed out the letter before U.S. President Obama met Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who is currently on an official tour in the U.S.



Meanwhile, various Indian media outlets report that the current diplomatic hurdles created by China are proving too stiff for India and India may have to wait a little while longer to become a member of the NSG.



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Tagschina, NSG, China and India, Nuclear Supplier Group, India NSG, India, India Nuclear Suppliers Group
(Photo : Revision Military) One of the concepts for SOCOM's TALOS combat suit

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A meeting between Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk and Secretary of Defense Ash Carter is fueling speculation the billionaire businessman might be getting involved in hush-hush Pentagon projects such a real "Iron Man" armored combat suit for US soldiers currently under development.



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Tesla added more fuel to the fire by tweeting in response to a media question this cryptic sentence: "Something about a flying metal suit ..."



The Pentagon, however, said the topic was nothing as dramatic but did say the meeting between Musk and Carter was about "innovation." More realistically, the meeting might have really been about SpaceX doing more business for the Pentagon. The company was recently awarded an $82 million contract to launch military GPS satellites into orbit.



A Department of Defense spokesman said Carter "has been reaching out to a number of members of the technology community to get their ideas, their feedback, find out what's going on in the world of innovation."



But the media attention on Musk and his enigmatic tweet might also be driven by speculation the frenetic and edgy character of Tony Stark in the hit Iron Man movies might have been inspired by Musk.



The first independently operational combat suit prototype of the Pentagon's Iron Man-type suit, which is publicly being called TALOS, is expected to be delivered by August 2018. This announcement was made in 2014 by U.S. Navy Admiral William McRaven, former Commander of the U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM).



A champion of the armored combat suit, Adm. McRaven first publicly revealed TALOS in May 2013. His support for TALOS was taken up by his SOCOM successor, U.S. Army General Joseph Votel.



TALOS is an acronym for "Tactical Assault Light Operator Suit." It's a robotic exoskeleton SOCOM is building with the help of military contractors, universities and the tech industry.



SOCOM specified that TALOS must be bulletproof; and give the soldier superhuman strength. It must also be weaponized and have the ability to monitor the soldier's vital signs.



The TALOS armor will be based on a revolutionary form of protection called "liquid armor." U.S. researchers are using nanotechnology to strengthen kevlar armor with a "magnetorheological fluid" (or MR fluid) that changes into a solid in milliseconds after being struck by a bullet.



The design of the suit could also include an attachable frame that serves as the suit's exoskeleton. The U.S. Army said the exoskeleton promises to give the U.S. soldier superhuman strength. These powerd limbs will amplify any motion made by a soldier and boost his speed and overall mobility.



In a TALOS project update last year, Gen. Votel said that if all goes well with the project, SOCOM will have "the first of its kind, fully-integrated, independently-powered prototype by the end of August 2018."



"Advanced armor, cutting-edge power sources and integrated display systems are just a few of the results this project has already yielded," said Gen. Votel. "This past year, SOCOM collaborated with industry to develop the military's first-ever, untethered, loadbearing, powered exoskeleton to augment human performance."



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TagsElon Musk, SpaceX, Ash Carter, Iron Man, TALOS, Tactical Assault Light Operator Suit, Admiral William McRaven, U.S. Army General Joseph Votel
(Photo : Koichi Kamoshida/Getty Images) The Chinese naval missile destroyer Shenzhen arrives at Harumi pier November 28, 2007 in Tokyo, Japan.

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A Chinese warship was reportedly seen near disputed islands in the East China Sea for the first time on Thursday, sparking protests from Japan.







Japanese officials said in a statement that a Chinese navy frigate was seen near the Senkaku Islands, which is controlled by Japan.



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Beijing has also laid claims to the same islands, which are referred to as the Djaoyu islands in China. Although the navy frigate was spotted in the area, China did not violate the territorial waters of Japan and has since left the disputed waters.



However, Japan's foreign ministry and coast guard claim that Chinese coast guard ships have been violating the territorial waters since Japan nationalized the ownership of the islands in 2012. In December last year, an armed Chinese coast guard vessel was seen for the first time in the area.



Chinese coast guard vessels patrol the area habitually but it was the first time that a warship from China was seen there. China said in a statement that it has the rights to sail through the waters near the islands since it is also its territory.



Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga has criticized Beijing for escalating tension in the region. Suga said that Japan is increasingly concerned because of the warship sighting and will protect the islands by any means necessary.



Japan's defense ministry said that the naval frigate entered a protected zone that is located northeast of Kuba island, which is part of the disputed Senkakus Islands. The Chinese warship remained in the area for around two-and-a-half hours.



The Japanese defense ministry claims that three Russian battleships were also seen in the contiguous zone. The ships reportedly entered at around 9:50 p.m. on Wednesday and left at around 3:05 a.m. on Thursday. This is not the first time, however, that Russian ships have entered the disputed waters.



Suga said that Japan is now investigating whether China and Russia's entrance in the disputed islands are in any way related.



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TagsEast China Sea dispute, South China Sea Dispute, Japan, china, china warship, Chinese warship, East China Sea
(Photo : Reuters) Iraq's Council of Ministers on May 19 laid out an eight-part plan on how it has decided to get back control of Ramadi and fight the Islamic State

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An American national who left the United States to join ISIS before being caught by Kurdish forces was charged with terrorism in a federal court on Thursday.







The man, identified as 26-year-old Mohamad Jamal Khweis, grew up in Virginia and appeared in court in Alexandria on Thursday to hear the charges filed against him in the presence of his family.



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Khweis' family members said nothing about the charges against him but mentioned that they were happy to see him. The ISIS defector will remain in custody until the next hearing and is scheduled to attend two more hearings in the coming weeks.



Khweis was captured by Kurdish Peshmerga military forces in March after fleeing from an ISIS-controlled neighborhood.



The 26-year-old left Virginia in mid-December and traveled through England and Turkey to join the terrorist organization.



Khweis shared that he stayed in a safe house controlled by the IS in Raqqa, Syria and was one of many recruits who had to undergo an "intake process" to join the organization.



He reportedly told officials that he interacted with an ISIS group that accepted volunteers from foreign countries. The group then trained the recruits before sending them back home to carry out attacks.



Khweis then volunteered to be a suicide bomber after an ISIS operative asked him if he wanted to, believing it as a test of his commitment to the cause.



According to the charging documents, Khweis was contacting "ISIS-affiliated social media accounts to gain information and discuss his desire to travel to Syria," and using social media platforms "to securely and privately communicate with ISIL."



Khweis said in a statement, "At the time I made the decision, I was not thinking straight. On the way there I regretted, and I wanted to go back home after things didn't work out and saw myself living in such an environment." He pointed out that the living conditions in Mosul were "very difficult" and was trying to make contact with Kurdish forces to rescue him when he was captured.



He added that the people controlling Mosul do not represent the Islamic religion and that he does not see them as good Muslims.



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TagsIslamic State, Syria, Mohamad Jamal Khweis, Virginia, Mohamad Khweis, Mohamad Khweis ISIS, ISIS, Islamic state of iraq and syria, Kurdish fighters, American, ISIL
(Photo : Getty Images) Chinas state media CCTV gave a special coverage to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modis first official visit to the U.S.

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China's state media China Central Television (CCTV) aired a special live coverage of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's first official visit to U.S., which began on Monday.



CCTV's live coverage comes amid reports of China's vehement opposition to India's entry into the Nuclear Supplier Group (NSG).



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However, the CCTV report did not adopt a confrontational tone and provided a neutral point of view on Modi's U.S. visit. It said that New Delhi considers Washington as a "key ally" in its pursuit for NSG membership.



After meeting Modi on Tuesday, President Obama stated that U.S. fully backs India's NSG bid.



The report added that several nations are supporting China's stand that India must not be included in the NSG unless it signs the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).



The report included a statement that China's Foreign Ministry spokesman, Lu Kang, made last month. "We have talked about our position many times. The NSG is an important part of the international nuclear non-proliferation regime which is based on the cornerstone of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT)," the statement said.





The report said that India is trying to draw parallels with Brazil, which was admitted to NSG in 1992 without being a signatory to the NPT. However, Brazil had signed the Treaty of Tlatelolco, a treaty equivalent to the NPT.



Apart from the NSG, Chinese state television said that enhancing defense ties with U.S. would also be a high priority on Modi's agenda.



"Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi comes to the United States expecting to close a deal for deeper defence cooperation begun by his defence chief in April," the report said.



Experts say that the U.S. is trying to shore up India's military defence in the wake of China's increasing influence in the Indian Ocean. India, over the years, has emerged as one of the biggest importers of arms and military equipment from the United States.



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TagsNarenda Modi, Modi, CCTV, china, China and India, NSG, Modi US visit, Modi visit to US, US, Narendra Modi US visit
(Photo : Reuters) Lenovo Phab2 Pro will cost $500 when it hits American shelves in September.

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Lenovo has announced its the first smartphone based on Googles Project Tango at Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2016.



Tapping Googles 3-year-old Project Tango, the new Phab2 Pro phone of Lenovo will use software and sensors to track motions and map building interiors, including the location of doors and windows. Tango-enabled devices like the Phab2 Pro are able to sense physical motion and space, track depth, and visualize and understand surrounding objects.



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The Pro uses a fish-eye camera with a wide viewing angle in conjunction with the regular camera sensor to understand motion and identify where the Pro is within a 3D space. This kind of positional tracking allows the users to apply augmented reality (AR) for a wide range of purposes, ranging from interior design to games to museum tours.



Other AR apps included a shooter that used elements of the room to create a level where you could fire at approaching enemies, as well as an interior designing app that allowed you to place furniture around the room to see how it would look. The phone was able to recall where an object had been placed even if it is turned away.



The device will run under Android Marshmallow and powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon 652 processor, along with 4GB of RAM and 64GB of internal storage, plus a microSD slot for adding more storage. It measures 7.1 by 3.5 by 0.42 inches (HWD) and weighs 9.1 ounces.



Phab2 Pro will feature 6.4-inch display with 2560  1440 screen resolution. The device will sport 16MP fast-focusing depth-sensing primary camera with a motion-tracking sensor and an 8MP selfie camera. The speaker will have a Dolby audio, an impressive 4050 mAh battery, and two SIM card slots.



The Pro will come unlocked, supporting GSM (850/1800/1900MHz), UMTS (850/1700/1900/2100MHz), and LTE bands (2/4/5/7/12/17/20/30). It will work on mobile carriers such as T-Mobile and AT&T. With support for band 12 and band 17, T-Mobile and AT&T customers will be able to take advantage of better range and building penetration.



The Chinese tech company said Phab2 Pro is officially the world's first Project Tango smartphone. It is also the first Lenovo-branded phone to be sold in the United States. The Phab2 Pro will cost $500 when it hits shelves in September.



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TagsLenovo, Google, project tango, google Project Tango, Project Tango smartphone, Phab2 Pro, Phab2 Pro specs, Phab2 Pro price
(Photo : Getty Images) Chinese UN peacekeeper Shen Liangliang was among the casualties in a terrorist attack in Mali last month while on a peacekeeping mission in the African country.

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The remains of Chinese United Nations peacekeeping soldier Shen Liangliang, who was one of the casualties in a terrorist attack in Mali last month, arrived in Beijing on Thursday, the state-run news agency, Xinhua, reported.



A Chinese air force plane carrying the body of Shen touched down at the Longjia Airport in Changchun City, Jilian Province. Shen served his tour of duty in the army for 11 years in the same city.



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China's Central Military Commission (CMC) sent an air force plane to Bamako, the capital of Mali, to bring home the body of the fallen soldier.



Shen, 29, a sergeant first class in the Army, was among the peacekeepers who were killed on May 31 in the town of Gao in Mali when a bomb was detonated at a United Nations headquarters.



11th Chinese soldier



Five Chinese peacekeeping soldiers were also injured in the blast and are currently being treated in a military hospital.



Shen is the 11th Chinese soldier killed in a UN peacekeeping mission overseas since Beijing started deploying soldiers for peacekeeping missions in the 90s.



The soldier received an honor guard in a simple ceremony at the airport.



Shen's coffin, draped in the Chinese flag, was carried out from the plane by eight honor guards while another guard held on to the deceased's portrait as he walked in front of the coffin.



As the military band played music, the honor guards placed the coffin on a platform while two soldiers placed a wreath on the coffin.



Inconsolable



Shen's parents appeared inconsolable during the entire ceremony with his mother crying loudly as she sat in a wheelchair.



Hundreds of soldiers and civilians alike honored the fallen soldier during the ceremony at the airport.



"Shen's sacrifice showed the heroic spirit and bravery of Chinese soldiers," Yi Xiaoguang, a high-ranking member of the CMC, said during the ceremony. "Peace-loving people around the world will never forget, the motherland and Chinese people will never forget, the whole army will never forget."



Shen will be buried in his hometown in central China's Henan Province on Saturday.


(Photo : Moon Express) Moon Express' MX-1 lunar lander spacecraft on the Moon (artist's concept)

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The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration has approved plans by California-based commercial space company Moon Express, Inc. or MoonEx to launch a mission that will deliver its "MX-1 lunar lander spacecraft" to the Moon in late 2017.



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MoonEx might eventually become the first private firm that will mine the Moon. Previous to this historic breakthrough, only states or groups of states have landed on the Moon to retrieve samples of the lunar surface but have not done so for commercial mining purposes.



The U.S. government has given MoonEx permission to explore the Moon for two weeks. MoonEx said its lunar mining operation will start by landing the MX-1 and progress to exploring for resources; mining these resources; learning how to process them and transporting them back to Earth.



MoonEx was founded in 2010 with the goal of winning the Google Lunar X Prize and ultimately mining the Moon for resources such as Helium-3; platinum group metals (ruthenium, rhodium, palladium, osmium, iridium and platinum) and rare earth elements (the 15 lanthanides plus scandium and yttrium).



The Google Lunar X Prize will award $20 million to the first team to put a robotic spacecraft on the Moon and deliver data, images and video from the landing site and 500 meters away.



In September 2015, MoonEx signed a rocket launch contract with Rocket Lab, a New Zealand startup company that will use its Electron rocket system to launch three missions for MoonEx. Two launches are set for 2017 with the third to be scheduled at a later date.



The size of a large coffee table, MX-1 will be carried to geosynchronous transfer orbit by Electron and from this orbit launch itself towards the Moon and land on the lunar surface. MX-1 is a spacecraft and mining robot rolled into one.



The main MX-1 rocket engine is a dual mode bi-propellant system. It uses kerosene as an afterburner to give the spacecraft the power to break free of Earth orbit; accelerate faster than a bullet then brake to zero velocity using its outboard thrusters as it touches down on the lunar surface.



MoonEx also hopes to win the Google Lunar X Prize with this breakthrough robotic space vehicle capable of a multitude of applications. These include delivering scientific and commercial payloads to the Moon at a fraction of the cost of conventional solutions.



MX-1 combines proprietary robotic technologies; advanced micro-avionics and a unique toroidal structure to produce a "green" robotic spacecraft powered by sunlight and that uses hydrogen peroxide available in drug stores as rocket fuel.



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TagsMoon Express, MoonEx, moon, Helium-3, Google Lunar X Prize, MX-1 lunar lander spacecraft
(Photo : Getty Images) Activists are calling for an end to China's dog meat festival.

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Animal activists across the world are calling for Beijing to cancel an annual dog festival scheduled to begin in Yulin, eastern China, in two weeks.



A petition signed by more than 11 million animal right activists was submitted to the Chinese Embassy in London on Tuesday. The petition calls for Beijing to ban the festival. Humane Society International is one of many organizations behind the campaign to stop the festival.



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Peter J. Li, a China policy adviser to Humane Society International, said a petition will also be presented to high-ranking officials in Yulin city. Li said around 30 campaigners would gather outside the government office in Yulin to submit the petition. Copies of the petition will also be sent by registered mail to health and food safety regulators.



Apart from the standard petition, online petitions signed by millions of social media users have been already making rounds on Facebook and Twitter for years now. Images of dogs being beaten and mercilessly killed during the festibal have evoked shock and rage among millions of animal lovers across the world.



Every year, thousands of dogs are slaughtered in Yulin for the annual dog meat festival, set to begin in June. Supporters of the festival claim that it is part of China's rich cultural heritage. They argue that eating dog meat is just as normal as eating the meat of goat and turkey.



However, animal right activists disagree with these theories. They claim China's dog meat festival has no cultural roots. Activists allege that the festival was recently invented to drum up the local meat industry.



Activists also argue that dog meat is immensely dangerous for human health as it has the potential to spread diseases like Trichinellosis, Rabies, and Cholera. They also cite the fact that Yulin and entire Guangxi Zhuang province frequently rank topmost in the list of Chinese cities affected with human rabies.



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Tagschina dog meat festival, Yulin Annual dog meat Festival, china, Dog Festival China
Convicted Chinese spy Wenxia Man.

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A South Florida jury has convicted a naturalized Chinese-American born in China for attempting to steal jet engines that power the stealthy F-22 Raptor and the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, as well as the F-16 Flying Falcon jet fighters that are superior to all operational fighters of China's People's Liberation Army Air Force.



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The U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ ) said the woman named Wenxia Man, aka Wency, 45, of San Diego, California, was found guilty of conspiring to export military weapons, equipment and technical data to the People's Republic of China.



She was convicted of conspiring to evade U.S. export laws by illegally acquiring and trying to ship fighter jet engines and aerial drones to China. Wenxia tried to buy and export jet engines made by Pratt & Whitney and General Electric.



Prosecutors said Wenxia worked with a partner, whom she described as a Chinese government "technology spy," to copy items obtained from other countries. She said this unidentified man was especially interested in stealth technology, according to the DoJ.



She was also found to have tried to export a $50 million General Atomics drone to China, and technical data for the different hardware items. Wenxia will be sentenced in August and could spend up to 20 years in jail for violating the Arms Export Control Act.



Wenxia's conviction is the latest in a continuing series of espionage cases in the U.S. involving spies working for the Chinese military or intelligence services. In March, a Chinese man pleaded guilty to cyber spying on Boeing and other U.S. firms. He hacked into their networks to steal sensitive information he attempted to send to China.



The biggest stumbling block to modernizing the People's Liberation Army Air Force is China's inability to develop the sophisticated and high-powered engines necessary to power fifth generation stealth aircraft such as the F-22. China has allegedly tried to overcome this drawback by ramping-up espionage activities directed against U.S. aerospace firms and their contractors.



China's newest five-year development plan identifies domestic development and production of engines and planes as a major goal. China's failure to develop engines at par with the best of the outside world can be seen in data that shows engines accounted for 30 percent of all imports to the country.



Russian analysts have said the shortage of engines remains an obstacle to the development of China's aviation industry.



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TagsWenxia Man, Chinese spy, People's Republic of China, jet engines, F-22 Raptor, F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, People's Liberation Army Air Force
(Photo : Getty Images.) To help Vietnam to beef up its military defense, India is likely sell its supersonic BrahMos missile to Vietnam.

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India has stepped up efforts to sell its supersonic BrahMos missile to Vietnam as New Delhi seeks to respond to the military assertiveness of its regional rival China. Reports indicate that India may sell the BrahMos missile to 15 more countries including Brazil, Indonesia, South Africa, and Chile.



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Vietnam reportedly made the request to India for the BrahMos missile in 2011. However, New Delhi was hesitant to respond to Hanoi's application for fear of annoying Beijing. The impending decision to sell BrahMos missile to Vietnam is reported to have gathered steam after the new government under Prime Minister Narendra Modi assumed office in 2014.



"Prime Minister Modi and his team of advisers have essentially turned that thinking on its head, concluding that stronger defence relationships with the U.S., Japan, and Vietnam actually put India on stronger footing in its dealings with China," said Jeff M. Smith, Director of Asian Security Programs at the American Foreign Policy Council in Washington.



New Delhi is contemplating to provide Vietnam a battleship armed with the BrahMos missiles instead of just the missile battery, Reuters reported.



Vietnam has been looking for military assistance from foreign countries to increase its military defense against China, which is getting assertive in the disputed South China Sea region. India, which considers China as its regional rival, has been more than willing to consider Vietnam's proposal for military assistance.



Vietnam's pursuit to enhance its military defense got a boost help last month after US President Obama lifted a 42-year-old arms ban during his three-day visit to Vietnam.



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Pope: Avoid 'heresy' of rigid faith & settle differences 10 June, 2016 by Gregory Tomlin , |

ROME (Christian Examiner)  In another dialogue that is sure to infuriate his conservative critics, Pope Francis warned Thursday that Catholics must avoid a rigid faith and disputes over doctrine or personal issues, Vatican Radio has reported.

Francis said in the address that Catholics should consider how Jesus looked beyond a rigid faith to generosity and holiness to care for others. Such a practice, the leader of Catholics worldwide said, frees Christians from the "idealism" that harms relationships.

Jesus is a great person! He frees us from all our miseries and also from that idealism which is not Catholic. Let us implore our Lord to teach us, first to escape from all rigidity but also to go out beyond ourselves, so we can adore and praise God who teaches us to be reconciled amongst ourselves and who also teaches us to reach an agreement up to the point that we are able to do so.

"This (is the) healthy realism of the Catholic Church: the Church never teaches us 'this or that.' That is not Catholic," Francis said. "The Church says to us: 'this and that.' 'Strive for perfectionism; reconcile with your brother. Do not insult him. Love him. And if there is a problem, at the very least settle your differences so that war doesn't break out.' This [is] the healthy realism of Catholicism."

According to Francis, rigidity leads to schism, and schism is heresy.

"It is not Catholic (to say) 'this or nothing.' This is not Catholic; this is heretical. Jesus always knows how to accompany us, he gives us the ideal, he accompanies us towards the ideal, He frees us from the chains of the laws' rigidity and tells us: 'But do that up to the point that you are capable.' And he understands us very well. He is our Lord and this is what he teaches us."

Whether Pope Francis was speaking to his critics about his generally liberal attitude toward capitalism, his perceived openness to other religions, or some internal church dispute isn't exactly clear, but the Pope claimed that "insults" between Catholics break down the bonds of brotherhood.

According to Francis, Catholics have a "very creative vocabulary for insulting others," but insulting someone is a sin like murder because it kills a person's dignity.

Francis did strike at the hypocrisy of some Catholics who say one thing and do another. In a cryptic comment, he said the churchman who does throughout the week the opposite of what he preaches on Sunday is scandalous.

"How many times do we in the Church hear these things? How many times! 'But that priest, that man or that woman from the Catholic Action, that bishop, or that Pope tell us we must do this this way!' and then they do the opposite. This is the scandal that wounds the people and prevents the people of God from growing and going forward," Francis said.

"It doesn't free them. In addition, these people had seen the rigidity of those scribes and Pharisees and when a prophet came to give them a bit of joy, they (the scribes and Pharisees) persecuted them and even murdered them; there was no place for prophets there. And Jesus said to them, to the Pharisees: 'You have killed the prophets, you have persecuted the prophets: those who were bringing fresh air.'"

"Catholic Action" is a broad term that applies to many lay Catholic groups who promote Catholic views on faith and family, or other special initiatives that lead to social transformation  that is, bringing societal views in line with Catholic teaching on issues like abortion and same-sex marriage.

Catholic Action was promoted beginning in the late 19th century and was reiterated as a tool of the church during Vatican II from 1965-68. Since then, Catholic laity have been encouraged to be engaged in politics and culture.

Being engaged, however, might lead to disputes within the body, he added, so he reminded the faithful to settle their disputes by finding agreement with one another and living at peace.

"Jesus is a great person! He frees us from all our miseries and also from that idealism which is not Catholic. Let us implore our Lord to teach us, first to escape from all rigidity but also to go out beyond ourselves, so we can adore and praise God who teaches us to be reconciled amongst ourselves and who also teaches us to reach an agreement up to the point that we are able to do so," Pope Francis said.

This is not the first time Francis has condemned the idea of a "rigid," "idealistic" or "narrow" Catholic faith. Francis said in September during a visit to the World Meeting of Families in Philadelphia that the church should avoid a narrowmindedness and also consider that there are many types of families. That led many critics to assume he saw the possibility of salvation for others outside of the Christian faith and a potential breach in the church's doctrine on exclusively heterosexual marriage.

Critics also latched on to his comments in 2013 about not judging homosexuals.

"When I meet a gay person, I have to distinguish between their being gay and being part of a lobby. If they accept the Lord and have goodwill, who am I to judge them? They shouldn't be marginalized. The tendency [to homosexuality] is not the problem ... they're our brothers," Francis said.
Hobby Lobby CEO to Give Away Company: 'We Want to Be Stewards of What God Has Given Us'
California becomes one of the five states to allow terminally ill patients to end their lives when they have less than six months to live, and are mentally fit to take the medicine.

The law is expected to increase three folds the number of terminally ill people around the US who can now choose to die.

The bill was signed into legislation by Governor Jerry Brown in October, which took effect this week.

"I do not know what I would do if I were dying in prolonged and excruciating pain. I am certain, however, that it would be a comfort to be able to consider the options afforded by this bill. And I wouldn't deny that right to others," Brown said.

The patients, above the age of 18, will have to give one written and two oral requests at least 15 days apart, and provide a proof of mental competence to be able to take the lethal medicine.

The new law was lobbied for by family of a Californian woman, Brittany Maynard, who suffered from an aggressive form of brain cancer, and moved to Oregon, where assisted suicide is legal, to end her life last year.

Many of the medical, disability, and religious groups remain opposed to the bill, including American Medical Association.

"Instead of participating in assisted suicide, physicians must aggressively respond to the needs of patients at the end of life. Patients should not be abandoned once it is determined that cure is impossible. Multidisciplinary interventions should be sought including specialty consultation, hospice care, pastoral support, family counseling, and other modalities," AMA writes about its policy on website.

"Patients near the end of life must continue to receive emotional support, comfort care, adequate pain control, respect for patient autonomy, and good communication," it continued.

Other organizations to oppose this law are: Californians Against Assisted Suicide, American College of Pediatricians, American Geriatrics Society, California Family Alliance, California Catholic Conference, California Disability Alliance, Berkeley Commission on Disability, and Autistic Self Advocacy Network.

Californians Against Assisted Suicide released a statement in which 32-year-old Stephanie Packer, suffering from a terminal illness said, "Unfortunately this vote sends a message to people like me that suicide is a preferred option."

Disability groups say that sick patients might be led into physician assisted deaths by uncaring relatives to avoid high medical costs and insurance deficits.

Religious groups say that the state's poorer communities will be the most pressured group to take the lethal medicines as a way out of expensive long-term care.

"Lawmakers did not have any chance to consider the deeper issues raised by end-of-life care in the state - the cost of treatments, especially the cost of cancer medications; insurance practices that limit access to hospice care and physicians' options in providing adequate pain relief; the impact of this legislation on the poor and other underserved populations," Los Angeles Archbishop Jose Gomez wrote in an online op-ed.
Two attackers opened fire at a cosmopolitan shooting complex in Tel Aviv, near the Defense Ministry, killing four people and injured another 16.

The assailants, identified as Palestinians, entered a cafe in Sarona Market and ordered food, but shortly afterwards pulled guns out of their bags and opened fire on unsuspecting crowd inside the cafe, and then went outside on the spree.

The wounded were admitted to Tel Aviv's central Ichilov Hospital, and are now in stable condition. They were also given emergency treatment at the scene by paramedics.

"When I arrived at the scene I saw two young people who were suffering from gunshot wounds outside of a restaurant at the Sarona center. We treated them as well as numerous other individuals who were suffering from shock," Davidi Dahan, a medic with United Hatzalah, told The Times of Israel.

"While we were treating them other volunteers from the ambucycle unit of United Hatzalah reported that they were treating an unconscious woman behind the Sarona center and that she was in critical condition. We are currently searching for and treating other people who are suffering from shock and who have fed to nearby streets due to the incident," he added.

One eye witness who identified herself as Annette told Israel's Channel 10 television: "I was with the family, eating pizza. We heard the shots, we didn't know what was happening, and everybody got down on the floor. We managed to escape to a cellar."

One of the terrorists was shot by the police, and is being treated with other injured people in the same hospital. The other shooter was captured by the police and is being interrogated.

Hamas, tweeted a picture of the shot militant, with a caption: "One of the heroes of the Tel Aviv operation," but did not claim responsibility for the attack.

In the aftermath of the attack, Israel revoked all Palestinian permits to enter Israel and travel abroad during Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the attacks "cold blooded murder by despicable terrorists."

"We will take the necessary steps to attack the attackers and defend those who need to be defended," he told reporters.

"Yata, the village from which the terrorists came, needs to undergo an operation to root out terror. The village needs to be reminded of its history, which already has experience with terrorism," said Transportation Minister and Security Council member Yisrael Katz.

U.S. State Department deputy spokesman Mark Toner condemned the incidence.

"We extend our deepest condolences to the families of those killed and our hopes for a quick recovery for those wounded. These cowardly attacks against innocent civilians can never be justified," he said. "We are in touch with Israeli authorities to express our support and concern."
Over the past year, Southern Baptists went to church less, gave less to missions, and baptized fewer people.

Yet new churches continued to open, and the people actually in the pews donated more dollars.

These are among the mixed findings of the 2015 Annual Church Profile (ACP) of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC). The report is released each year in advance of the 15-million-member denominations annual meeting.

Last year, the SBC immersed about 295,000 people, down from about 305,000 baptisms in 2014. At the same time, SBC pastors planted almost 300 new churches, bringing the total number of SBC churches to about 46,800.

Church membership dropped by about 204,000 people to 15.3 million, and average weekly attendance dropped by about 97,000 people to 5.6 million.

In contrast, undesignated giving increased more than $406 million to surpass $9 billion.

Giving to Great Commission ministry programs was down by about $24 million to $613 million, but since October, giving to North American ...

1
Local Foundation Vows to Fight Firearms Ruling



MONTGOMERY, Ala., June 10, 2016 /



Thursday's 9-4 decision held that the Second Amendment protects the right to own firearms but not to carry concealed firearms in public, leaving unanswered the question whether the Second Amendment guarantees the right to carry firearms openly. The court also upheld another provision of the California law that authorizes counties to issue permits for concealed weapons upon a showing of "good cause."



Foundation President Kayla Moore declared, "Our Founding Fathers knew that the right to keep and bear arms is essential to the preservation of freedom. I vow that the Foundation will fight this ruling with an amicus brief to the U.S. Supreme Court."



Foundation Senior Counsel John Eidsmoe noted that the Ninth Circuit decision is based on a selective and flawed reading of history. "The court noted that concealed carry was not guaranteed under English common law but ignored Madison's observation in Federalist No. 46 that unlike most European kingdoms, in America the prevalence of firearms was the primary defense of freedom against tyranny."



Eidsmoe added, "The decision runs contrary to the plain wording of the Second Amendment, which guarantees the right, not just to 'keep' arms, but also to 'bear' arms. Nothing in the Second Amendment limits the right to bear arms to open carry, nor does anything in the Amendment authorize the state to limit concealed carry to those who (in an official's subjective opinion) have shown 'good cause.' A citizen's reasons for carrying arms are none of the government's business. No wonder the Supreme Court reverses the Ninth Circuit more than any other Circuit."

Share Tweet Contact: John Eidsmoe, Foundation for Moral Law , 334-262-1245MONTGOMERY, Ala., June 10, 2016 / Christian Newswire / -- The Foundation for Moral Law, an Alabama legal foundation dedicated to the defense of the Constitution as intended by its Framers, sharply criticized a Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals decision that upheld a California law which curtails the right to carry concealed firearms.Thursday's 9-4 decision held that the Second Amendment protects the right to own firearms but not to carry concealed firearms in public, leaving unanswered the question whether the Second Amendment guarantees the right to carry firearms openly. The court also upheld another provision of the California law that authorizes counties to issue permits for concealed weapons upon a showing of "good cause."Foundation President Kayla Moore declared, "Our Founding Fathers knew that the right to keep and bear arms is essential to the preservation of freedom. I vow that the Foundation will fight this ruling with an amicus brief to the U.S. Supreme Court."Foundation Senior Counsel John Eidsmoe noted that the Ninth Circuit decision is based on a selective and flawed reading of history. "The court noted that concealed carry was not guaranteed under English common law but ignored Madison's observation in Federalist No. 46 that unlike most European kingdoms, in America the prevalence of firearms was the primary defense of freedom against tyranny."Eidsmoe added, "The decision runs contrary to the plain wording of the Second Amendment, which guarantees the right, not just to 'keep' arms, but also to 'bear' arms. Nothing in the Second Amendment limits the right to bear arms to open carry, nor does anything in the Amendment authorize the state to limit concealed carry to those who (in an official's subjective opinion) have shown 'good cause.' A citizen's reasons for carrying arms are none of the government's business. No wonder the Supreme Court reverses the Ninth Circuit more than any other Circuit."
Brandan Robertson: Why millennials are leaving megachurches and discovering liturgy

Brandan Robertson is 23 years old and describes himself as a "spiritual entrepreneur". A Bible college graduate, he's a minister, public theologian and a commentator and activist on issues of faith, politics, spirituality, sexuality and social justice. He's written for TIME, The Washington Post, Patheos, Sojourners and The Huffington Post among others.

He's also a controversial figure among evangelical Christians, many of whom would flatly deny his claim to be one of them.

As "a good evangelical Christian who felt called to be a pastor", Robertson's life and career plans were turned upside down at Moody Bible college when he began to experience feelings of same sex attraction. The strong 'black and white' beliefs that he had previously held on sexuality and faith were shattered.

For many, his affirming attitude to same-sex relationships puts him automatically outside the evangelical fold  and endorsements from Brian McLaren and Rob Bell, who have both strongly affirmed the validity of same-sex relationships, have confirmed their verdict. He's also been a spokesman for the Evangelicals for Marriage Equality campaign and is an increasingly high-profile advocate for the LGBT cause.

It's because of this that his book Nomad: Not-So-Religious Thoughts On Faith, Doubt, and the Journey In Between was dropped by publisher Destiny Image, which includes in its basis of faith the statement: "We do not condone, encourage, or accept the homosexual lifestyle. Destiny Image renounces this lifestyle as ungodly and completely contrary to the Kingdom of God."

Robertson is in the UK to promote a revised version of Nomad, described as part autobiography, part Christian spirituality and as a powerful call to inclusivity.

Nomad  why the title?

It's been with me ever since I began writing it. It describes how I feel and how my generation is feeling, wandering not only spiritually but through life in general. The millennial generation is a generation of nomads. They didn't grow up within a tradition.

There are downsides to that. I'm optimistic about millennials, as I'm one of them. But we're rediscovering tradition, rediscovering roots. Young evangelicals aren't going to megachurches, they're going to Anglican, Catholic and Orthodox Churches. They're putting their spiritual journey into broader narratives. But the danger is that they'll just wander.

What is it about traditional churches that attracts them?

The free church movement in the US, and the Puritan tradition, was always about breaking off from tradition, being authentic, expressing faith in an individualised, localised way. That reached its peak in the megachurch tradition. But that became very disconnected. They have their own music, their own teaching, their own doctrine. On the one hand that's very appealing to the consumerist, individualist mindset of the West. But the beauty of the liturgical tradition is that it gives us a rhythm and a contour to our lives. A lot of megachurches are embracing liturgy now. Willow Creek has a full liturgical service every Sunday evening.

You're happy to identify as an evangelical, though you hold some positions that aren't typical of evangelicalism. How do you define it?

If you study the history of the evangelical movement, it really means to be a moderate, middle gound faith, between fundamentalism and liberalism. But fundamentalism rebranded itself as evangelicalism. My passion for the last six years has been to reclaim that. The historic definition is David Bebbington's; he talks about crucicentricism, biblicism, conversionism, activism and evangelism. I differ from quite a lot of conservative evangelicals, but I still believe all of that. The gospel is good news for humanity. I'm reluctant to distance myself from that label. It's the tradition I identify with  I connect best in worship with 4,000 people singing Hillsong music.

Your book isn't just about sexuality. Talk to us about its themes?

It's almost not about sexuality at all. In the orginal manuscript that was only two sentences. Now it has one chapter, not bashing conservatives, but an exploration of how sexuality is one of several things that are fluid, morphing and changing. It's a call to recognise that this is all part of our conversation with God.

 We're not called to be warring against the culture 

Nomad is a series of reflective essays reflecting on the different lessons I've learned on my spiritual journey. I talk about roots, about rediscovering liturgy and ritual, experience as an authoritative source for life, war and culture wars  we're not called to be warring against the culture. So it's a number of 5,000-word essays that dig into things my generation is looking for in spirituality, that may or may not be in the Church right now.

Is there an appetite in our culture for a different way of doing religion?

Absolutely. I dedicated Nomad to Phyllis Tickle, who wrote extensively about how every 500 year mark leads to a new reformation. There is now a decline of the church establishment but an increase in spriituality. Statistics across the board show an increase in spirituality, an opennes to wonder and mystery, while organised religion has fallen apart. We are distrustful of what power and heirarchy represent.

But there might be pain along the way if people feel traditional views of sexuality are threatened?

My heart goes out to conservatives. There are a large number who truly believe that that's what God requires  and it's not because they are hateful homophobic bigots. But Jesus said, "When I go from you I will send my Spirit, who will continue to reveal truth."

We are called to abandon fear of change and open ourselves up to the Spirit. That doesn't mean conservative churches should necessarily become LGBT-affirming, but they should be open to experience God wherever He's working. If conservatives can open their churches allow LGBT people to be part of them, knowing a person face to face can change their hearts and minds. The only place I have seen unfaithfulnessness is when people aren't open to what God is doing in the lives of LGBT people.

Brandan Robertson is touring the UK and Ireland until June 20. Nomad: A spirituality for travelling light is published by DLT, price 12.99.
Christian school assemblies contravene human rights, UN tells Britain

Children must not be told to go to Christian school assemblies because it contradicts their human rights.

This is according to a United Nations committee report that called on the UK to repeal a law that forces pupils to take part in mainly Christian services at school. It was one of 150 recommendations on areas where the UK could be falling foul of the UN Charter on the Rights of the Child.

However a Christian MP ridiculed the suggestion as "ludicrous". David Burrowes, Conservative MP for Enfield Southgate, said the government should "respectfully" respond by putting the report in the bin.

The report said: "The Committee is concerned that pupils are required by law to take part in a daily religious worship which is "wholly or mainly of a broadly Christian character" in publicly funded schools in England and Wales, and that children do not have the right to withdraw from such worship without parental permission before entering the sixth form. In Northern Ireland and Scotland, children do not have right to withdraw from collective worship without parental permission."

It added: "The Committee recommends that the State party repeal legal provisions for compulsory attendance at collective worship in publicly funded schools and ensure that children can independently exercise the right to withdraw from religious worship at school."

It also called for the government to take a tougher line on domestic abuse to prevent children from being smacked by parents.

However Burrowes told The Telegraph: "The collective act of worship is not an indoctrination exercise. It is recognising and respecting the Christian heritage of the country and giving people an opportunity to reflect before the beginning of the day".

"The UN should spend more time doing its main job of preventing war and genocide rather than poking its nose in other countries' classrooms. We can respectfully put those kind of reports in the bin where they belong."
Clinton gets Obama endorsement as Democrats seek to unify party

US President Barack Obama formally endorsed Hillary Clinton's White House bid on Thursday and called for Democrats to unite behind her after a protracted battle with Bernie Sanders for the party nomination.

Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts also backed Clinton on Thursday, telling MSNBC's The Rachel Maddow Show that presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump was "a genuine threat to the country".

Clinton, the presumptive Democratic nominee, said it "means the world" to her that Obama had her back in a bruising campaign for the November 8 election.

Clinton also said she had the "highest regard" for Warren, a fiery critic of Wall Street, and was "really pleased to have her good ideas and support".

Vice President Joe Biden also waded into the campaign on Thursday. "Whoever the next president is, and God willing in my view it will be Secretary Clinton," Biden said in a speech at the American Constitution Society in Washington.

The Obama endorsement increases pressure on Sanders, a US senator from Vermont, to bow out of the race and lend his support to Clinton so that the party can focus on defeating Trump.

"It is absolutely a joy and an honour that President Obama and I over the years have gone from fierce competitors to true friends," Clinton told Reuters in an interview.

After an unexpectedly tough battle against Sanders' challenge from the left, former first lady Clinton made history when she reached the number of delegates needed to win the party nomination this week. That made her the first woman to lead a major US party as its White House candidate.

Obama, who enjoys rising approval ratings as he nears the end of eight years in office, will appear with Clinton on the campaign trail next week in Wisconsin.

The two were opponents in the 2008 Democratic presidential primary race, which Obama won, but they buried their rivalry and she served as his secretary of state for four years. Clinton is the 2016 candidate who the White House believes will best safeguard Obama's legacy.

"I don't think there's ever been someone so qualified to hold this office," Obama said of Clinton in a video. "I'm with her. I am fired up, and I cannot wait to get out there and campaign for Hillary."

Trump assailed the endorsement on Twitter: "He wants four more years of Obama  but nobody else does!"

Clinton's campaign tweeted a brash response: "Delete your account."

Sanders, who galvanised young voters with his calls for more social equality and measures to rein in Wall Street, has been reluctant to concede the race, despite concerns among leading Democrats that continuing party divisions could hamper Clinton's efforts to beat Trump.

Toward the exit

Obama and other senior Democrats are seeking a delicate balance of rallying the party behind Clinton, while not alienating Sanders and his supporters.

In what appeared to be an attempt to gently ease Sanders toward giving up his campaign, Obama met the democratic socialist for about an hour in the White House, laughing warmly as they walked into the Oval Office.

Although Sanders told reporters afterward that he still planned to compete in the final nominating contest in Washington, DC, next Tuesday, he said he would work with Clinton to defeat Trump.

Sanders was then welcomed on Capitol Hill by Senator Harry Reid, the top Democrat in the Senate. Reid said the lawmaker from Vermont was in a "good place" with his Democratic colleagues. He suggested that Sanders was close to acknowledging defeat by Clinton.

"I didn't hear a single word about him trying to change the fact that she is the nominee, I think he's accepted that," Reid told reporters.

In the endorsement video, Obama recalled the party unity that followed his prolonged primary battle against Clinton in 2008.

"Secretary Clinton and Senator Sanders may have been rivals during this primary, but they're both patriots who love this country and they share a vision for an America that we all believe in," Obama said.

Warren told MSNBC she was endorsing Clinton because "a female fighter in the lead is exactly what this country needs".

Warren's populist credentials will boost Clinton's ability to court Sanders voters as she prepares to battle Trump. Warren was the only female Democratic US senator who did not endorse Clinton during the primary race.

Clinton told Reuters she and Warren had similar views about issues such as economic policy and protecting the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform law and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which Warren pushed to start.

Trump said in an interview with Reuters last month that he would try to dismantle the Dodd-Frank law.

In the interview with Reuters, Clinton said her overall economic package, including plans to rein in Wall Street and cut taxes for the middle class, would come during the first 100 days of her presidency if she defeats Trump.

Clinton previously said a plan to generate jobs by investing in transportation and other infrastructure spending and immigration reform would be among other early priorities.

"One of the things that President Obama said yesterday is he thought his job was to remind the American people what a really serious job this is, the tough choices, the hard decisions, the high stakes in choosing a president and commander in chief," Clinton said.

"And I know how important it is to get off to a really good start in the White House," she said.

Trump, a wealthy real estate developer who became the party's presumptive nominee last month after seeing off a large group of rivals, is well behind Clinton's campaign in terms of fundraising and policy infrastructure.

On Thursday, his top donors were holding their first official meeting in New York. Trump also met with industry leaders in New York at an event organised by oil billionaire Harold Hamm.
Donald Trump turns repentant, says he will ask God for forgiveness as he explains how he views Jesus Christ

"I will be asking for forgiveness [from God]."

Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump made this remark in a recent interview with noted columnist and author Cal Thomas, thus effectively retracting an earlier statement he made that he had never felt the need for repentance and to ask for God's forgiveness.

"But hopefully I won't have to be asking for much forgiveness," the 69-year-old billionaire added while baring more about his thoughts on his Christian faith, WND reports.

In the interview, the transcript of which was published on Thomas' website, the author asked Trump point-blank, "Who do you say Jesus is?"

Trump answered: "Jesus to me is somebody I can think about for security and confidence. Somebody I can revere in terms of bravery and in terms of courage and, because I consider the Christian religion so important, somebody I can totally rely on in my own mind."

If he succeeds in winning the White House this November, Trump promised "to treat my religion, which is Christian, with great respect and care."

He focused on the persecution of Christians taking place across the globe, saying, "In the Middle East  and this is prior to the migration  you had almost no chance of coming into the United States. Christians from Syria, of which there were many, many of their heads ... chopped off. If you were a Muslim from Syria, it was one of the easiest places to come in (to the U.S.). I thought that was deplorable."

Trump said he has gained "tremendous support from the clergy" and that he is optimistic that "I will be doing very well during the election with evangelicals and with Christians."

Trump has been taking a softer tone in his campaign speeches lately, telling a massive crowd of supporters and watching television audience during one recent speech that he would make the Republican Party "proud" to call him their presidential candidate.

"You've given me the honour to lead the Republican Party to victory this fall," he said, the Hill reports. "We're going to do it, folks. I understand the responsibility of carrying the mantle and I will never ever let you down. I will make you proud of your party and your movement."

Trump did not noticeably touch on controversial topics like border-wall building and Muslim immigration bans.

"To those who voted for someone else in either party," he said, during his speech, "I'll work hard to earn your support. I will work very hard to earn that support. To all of those Bernie Sanders supporters who have been left out in the cold by a rigged system of super delegates, we welcome you with open arms."
Ending poverty by 2030: Utopian dream or achievable goal?

Can we end world poverty by 2030? Do we really care? And who is "we"?

In January 2016 the UN launched its 17 Sustainable Development Goals in succession to the Millennium Development Goals that had guided its philosophy for the last few years. They're ambitious, ranging from "End poverty in all its forms everywhere" through "take urgent action to combat climate change" to "achieve gender equality for all". They include goals relating to safe cities, loss of forests, cleaner seas, peace and justice.

It's an ambitious programme that reflects many Christian concerns. But so far the Church has lacked any kind of coherent response. While we might applaud it, we are semi-detached  and for many campaigners, that ought to change.

A House of Lords gathering yesterday chaired by Methodist peer Lord Griffiths brought together leaders from major denominations and development agencies for a round-table discussion on the issue. It was convened by End Poverty 2030, which is "in the early stages of developing a movement to equip, empower and engage the Church to more radically join this historic opportunity".

It was a fascinating encounter. Participants spoke of the importance of business in defeating poverty. Others spoke of a disconnect between the macro language of the SDGs, couched as they are in turgid UN-speak, and the reality of life in the local church. Others questioned whether Christians really regarded themselves as having a responsibility to combat poverty at all.

One of the most thought-provoking aspects of the meeting, though, was the scale of Christian involvement represented. There were people from the business and charity worlds. There were leaders of major advocacy and development organisations. Every strand of churchmanship was represented, from Roman Catholic to independent. For the Church, this is important.

Was there a sense, by the end of the meeting, that progress toward a unified response had been made? Not really, but perhaps that doesn't matter; it was the beginning of a conversation that so far has not been had.

So here, for what it's worth, is my contribution to it.

1. Poverty matters

Even today, in my own evangelical tradition, there are those who think it's not half as important as evangelism. We need to be crystal clear that they aren't in competition with each other. Yes, the Church should proclaim the Good News, but it should also enact the Good News. When people are ill, hungry, worn out from unrewarding labour and with stunted lives because of their lack of opportunity and education, we should care deeply and passionately. William Booth, the founder of the Salvation Army, said: "You cannot warm the hearts of people with God's love if they have an empty stomach and cold feet." That's as true today as it ever was. Jesus came to bring abundant life. Humans were created to flourish in body, mind and spirit.

2. See the big picture

We don't always see what we do in churches as being connected with these big SDG-type goals, though some of it already is. If a church has a debt counselling service, or a foodbank, it's contributing. If it gives to a mission agency that's active in reducing poverty or encouraging sustainable development, it has bought into the project. Some of what needs to happen is making connections between what we already do and the bigger picture. But some churches need to be challenged because they aren't doing anything. Their budgets are purely focused on evangelism and the domestic concerns of the congregation. That has to change.

3. Don't over-think it

There's no point in creating a full-scale Churches' response to world-wide problems of poverty and development. We are not, as a Church, set up to fix whole economies. As one eloquent though controversial contributor pointed out, businesses and governments are better at that  though others replied that they were good at causing the problems, too. But any idea of coordinating the work of agencies and denominations, any more than they already do, is a non-starter. The scale is too big and the impact of any re-arrangement of their work as a result would be too small.

4. Find out what's happening

There is a very useful work to be done in terms of mapping what Christians are already doing about development on to the SDGs, and encouraging churches to see their discipleship in relation to that wider picture. So far no one is doing this. If End Poverty 2030 can take this forward, it deserves every support.

5. Tell the great stories

One problem in getting churches to engage with SDGs is that these goals are simply too big. They are abstract and often rather vague. The challenge for any coordinated response is to make the problems small enough to be understandable. Another, related problem is that they are often presented as too ambitious. There are endless news stories around deforestation, climate change, gender violence and horrifying injustice. No one should close their eyes to these things, but the truth is that they become self-defeating. Climate change? It's dreadful, we know  so we don't read about it any more. Sometimes, human nature being what it is, we want to read a story because it makes our flesh creep. But we also need hope. We need to know that we can make a difference. We need stories that tell us that what we do matters.

Absolute poverty has declined dramatically in the last few decades. In 2010 there were 1.2 billion people living in extreme poverty  far too high, and representing 21 per cent of people living in the developing world. But in 1981 that percentage was more than half. Extreme poverty has fallen in every developing region in the last three decades.

That brings its own problems. It's mainly the result of rapid industrialisation in India and China. That creates ecological pressure and justice issues. But the point is that it can be done. The end of poverty is no longer unimaginable.

The goals pursued by Christians aren't set by the world, but by Christ. But these SDGs reflect the best thinking we have about what a just and prosperous world might look like. It's past time for the Church to incorporate this thinking into how it lives out its faith in the world today.

Contact End Poverty 2030 at info@endpoverty2030.com

Follow Mark Woods on Twitter: @RevMarkWoods
Family of Christian convert seriously ill in prison repeat plea for release

The family of a Christian prisoner in Iran are appealing for her to be released permanently after she was allowed home on temporary leave when she became seriously ill due to her hunger strike and other illnesses.

Maryam Naghash Zargaran, a Christian convert who has been imprisoned since 2013, was given five-day leave earlier this week from Tehran's notoriously-harsh Evin Prison, according to the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran.

"We are happy they gave her furlough, but that's not why my daughter went on a hunger strike. We want her to be free," said Zargaran's mother, Zahra Pour-Nouhi Langroudi. "Maryam has served a third of her sentence and by law she qualifies for conditional release. We don't know why she was sentenced to four years in prison in the first place."

She started her latest recent hunger at the end of May.

Her mother added: "Maryam was sentenced to four years in prison on two charges, but they had no evidence to support either one. They accused her of preaching Christianity in Babolsar with 20 other women, but no one was in court to prove that he or she had been converted to Christianity by Maryam.

She described how during the trial the judge joked with his staff and said: "What should I do, Haji? How many years do you think I should give her? Is five years good?"

Haji said she was too young and the judge decided on four years.

Her mother said she will be getting medical treatment for several health problems.

"Maryam is suffering from heart, ear, and spinal disc ailments, and neck and hand arthritis. She had heart disease before she was sent to prison and underwent an operation for it last year. The doctors had told her that she must absolutely avoid stressful situations, but the other problems with her ear, back and arthritis are the result of her imprisonment."

Zargaran, a children's music teacher, was regularly questioned about her Christian missionary activities before her arrest in November 2012 and, along with Pastor Saeed Abedini, accused of seeking property in northern Iran for an orphanage. He was also imprisoned but released last January after a prisoner swap with the US.

According to a recent Facebook post by Pastor Saeed Abedini, Zargaran's sister Naeemeh met with Nasim in prison just before she was given temporary leave, and hardly recognised her because she had lost so much weight and much of her hair.

Two other prisoners had to hold her up as she could not walk on her own and was unable to even remember conversations for more than five minutes. The whites of her eyes had turned yellow and her blood pressure was very low.
A tragic story: How racial division has held back the UK church...

"We must face the fact that in America, the church is still the most segregated major institution... At 11:00 on Sunday morning when we stand and sing and Christ has no east or west, we stand at the most segregated hour in this nation."

Martin Luther King's prophetic words were uttered in the heat of the battle for Civil Rights in the US in the 1960s. Sadly, they still ring true today. Across America, the racial divide has yet to be healed. Though we in the UK don't have a problem on the same scale, there is still division in our society, and tragically, in our churches.

What some Christians won't realise is that it wasn't inevitable. The response of many white British Christians to immigrants from the Africa and the Caribbean sadly ensured that we have a segregated Church in the 21st Century. This week, the Archbishop of Canterbury described this as, "the single biggest failure of the Church of England over the last 40 or 50 years." Most Rev Justin Welby went on to suggest that it has had a knock on effect for communities across England, "in terms of how we've dealt with integration  appalling and a great cause of shame to us and to me."

This might seem like an exaggeration, but when the history of the Church and the UK over the last 50 years is examined, it's hard to reach any other conclusion.

When the Windrush arrived in 1948 carrying over 400 Jamaicans to a new life in the UK, a majority of British people were Anglicans. Two years later, in 1950, 67.3 per cent of British babies had an Anglican baptism. While that figure isn't representative of the number who regularly attended church, England (and the rest of the UK) was legally, culturally, institutionally, and to a certain extent ethically, a Christian country.

Into that context the first generations of post-war immigrants arrived. Many of them were not only Christians, but Anglicans. They came from former colonies that had strong Christian presence and thriving Anglican churches. By 1971, the number of Jamaicans in the UK, for example, was 171,000. By then, though, the tragedy had already happened.

The African and Caribbean immigrants who arrived to help revive the moribund British economy were members of Anglican churches, as well as Methodist, Baptist, Adventist and Holiness denominations. When they arrived here and sought a church home, many were left cold by the experience. As Dr Joe Aldred from Churches Together in England recounts, white people weren't interested in welcoming them. "All the signs are that the reason for White disinterest was quite simply the dark pigmentation of the new migrants," he says. "From early on, Black people in the post Windrush era, graphically describe from personal experience... anywhere they cared to look, their reception was as cold as the winter weather they had to get accustomed to. [Black church pioneer] Io Smith complains, 'I was looking for love and warmth and encouragement. I believed that the first place I would find that was in the Church, but it wasn't there'."

Many immigrants were the victims of outright racism in accommodation, transport and employment. If they hoped for a different story when it came to church, sadly, their expectations were often thwarted. Historian Marjorie Morgan tells the painful story of rejection or indifference from White churches. "When many Caribbean migrants started their weekly presence in the majority white churches it quickly became a negative experience of repeated rejection for them. It was the one place where they believed they would be safe from discrimination  they were, nevertheless, persistently disappointed."

She goes on to describe the reality of life as a migrant believer trying to join a white church: "The long established worship spaces in the UK were not readily inclusive of the Caribbean Christians in the early 1960s... Within those environments where the vicars welcomed the migrant worshippers, there was an immediate falling away of the regular white congregation. This lack of integration within the spiritual world in their new home confirmed the complete separation of identity for the migrant black British Caribbean from that of the indigenous white British population."

It is no wonder that in 1999, the Church was accused by one of its own bishops of having "the expectation of the historic, white, educated, elite English norm," while in 2014 the Bishop of Chelmsford, Rt Rev Stephen Cottrell said there remained some elements of racism within the Church.

This is clearly a sad state of affairs. There are numerous reasons the Archbishop is correct to say that the failure to welcome sisters and brothers in Christ in the 1950s and 1960s was a tragedy.

There is a huge cost to such a lack of unity. Not only were the migrants themselves undoubtedly hurt by the unwelcoming spirit, it presented a terrible witness to the rest of the country. A chance to be at the vanguard of racial justice, inclusion and radical welcome across difference was lost. The chance to show that in Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek, White British nor Jamaican, was gone.

Not only did we present a bad witness, but the Church itself was deeply damaged. Both the indigenous church and the immigrant Christians lost out. While the Church of England was in the midst of decades of decline, how much vitality could have been injected by those faithful worshippers from Africa and the Caribbean?

Lack of unity among Christians creates a shameful waste of energy and resources. While some Anglican congregations struggle to maintain their buildings with dwindling numbers, some black majority churches are bursting at the seams and desperate for new premises. This absurd situation could have been avoided. On top of this, the narrative of decline which is popular in the media would have been challenged, if the official figures of attendance at Anglican services (still something which the media obsess over) had been representative of a much broader section of society.

Many churches in big towns and cities in the UK do now have some racial diversity. But this doesn't mean that institutional racism is over. We may have a black Archbishop of York but he has been among the many criticising the slow pace of change of attitudes within the CofE.

There are many congregations in big cities which do have diversity. I've visited plenty of Anglican churches which did (sometimes belatedly) get round to welcoming their neighbours of African and Caribbean heritage. The Church did finally begin to take the issue seriously with initiatives aiming for more diverse leaders and directly challenging racist political movements such as the BNP.

Yet much of the damage has been done and Sunday morning remains one of the most segregated hours of the week. With the Archbishop himself clearly recognizing the depth of the problems and the process of reform and renewal of the Church of England well under way, we can now hope and pray that our churches can reconcile and work together in unity for the good of their cities and for the Kingdom.

Follow Andy Walton on Twitter @waltonandy
India: Church of South India to create 1000 green schools in next year

One thousand "green schools" will be created by the Church of South India in the next year, as part of new environmental plan.

Representatives from 23 dioceses took part in a three-day programme on the environment in connection with World Environment Day (June 5) and have subsequently launched the green schools project.

"We have taken a decision to make 1,000 schools of CSI into Green Schools this year. While everyone, everywhere asserts the importance of 'learning to live sustainably', environment remains a peripheral issue in the formal schooling system," Professor Mathew Kosy Punnackadu, an environmental scientist, activist and writer who initiated the movement, told Anglican News.

The Green Schools Project aims to move beyond theory into a practice. It will include the development a student-led environment management system which will monitor the consumption of schools within campuses.

It will be run in collaboration with the Centre for Science and Environment in New Delhi, which will provide training for the eco-teachers at each school.

"Schools will become Green Schools, students will study environmental science and will get good eco-insights, teaching and study will become more interesting and the results of the schools will improve," said Punnackadu.

"We started the campaign to enrol as many schools in Green School Project. CSI has more than 1500 Schools in South India. This year project aims to work with 1,000 schools."
Why human rights and Christian faith aren't always compatible

Is the Christian faith compatibale with modern human rights? A recent conflict between Amnesty International and the Roman Catholic Church in Northern Ireland has sparked questions as to whether the modern manifestation of human rights and the Christian faith can ever see eye-to-eye.

Catholics in Northern Ireland don't want this human rights charity speaking in their schools because their views on abortion are in conflict with the Church's pro-life position. Their protest is not a dispute of the good that the charity does in other areas, but a challenge to the ethical system through which they operate.

It is easy to see be sceptical of this move, seeing it as the Catholic Church shutting itself off from alternative influences, but actually the conflict here is an example which gives insight into a far broader question that is often avoided: how do Christians interact with human rights organisations and charities founded on principles that are at odds with the foundations of their faith?

"There is the notion of giving everybody a fair crack at the whip but essentially you either stand for something or you don't," said Roman Catholic Bishop Kevin Doran, who presides over an area of Northern Ireland. "When we invite groups into our schools we need to make sure that what they stand for is consistent with our ethos."

Whether or not Amnesty International should be allowed to speak at Christian schools is a moot point. However, this case hits on an interesting  and often ignored  point of contention between the Christian faith and many secular, liberal human rights organisations.

The conversation around human rights in the mainstream is veering ever closer to basically saying that human rights equates to human autonomy and personal choice: that if I want to do something it's not up to anyone else to tell me I can't. So morality becomes free-floating, self-generated and unaccountable.

Amnesty International, for example, changed its policy towards sex work in 2015 to advocating for the decriminalisation of sex work on the grounds of personal choice. They justified their position in the proposal on the grounds that "by definition, sex work means that sex workers who are engaging in commercial sex have consented to do so". This paradigm of personal choice seemingly ignores factors like poverty, abuse and coercion that actually leave sex-workers without any real choice. Amnesty maintained that "such conditions do not inevitably render individuals incapable of exercising personal agency".

Here lies the problem. The fallen nature of this world  where power structures, pimps and child abuse exist  makes personal choice irrelevant for many. In the case of sex work, the majority of it is some form of survival sex. It simply cannot be the way to human flourishing, because  for so many  it just does not exist.

It's an awkward thing to admit that you disagree with Amnesty International. For many, that looks like you are disagreeing with human rights full stop.

This is not the case.

In fact, the whole concept of human rights was developed within and around a Christian worldview and the belief that every human being has dignity, and therefore rights.

The conflict isn't about a desire for human rights to be upheld, it's more in how that is achieved and what it actually looks like. While liberalism advocates for the absolute right of personal choice, a Christian approach has a different starting point.

Introducing God into the picture changes things: We are not autonomous individuals living independent lives, but rather people created by God in his image. Life moves from a right to a gift from God. As believers, in baptism we actively choose to die and allow Christ to live in us. This means that, as believers, our lives are going to look a little different to the average 21st century individual.

We are called to community, which knows human life to be created, reconciled and redeemed in Jesus Christ, and which protects its most vulnerable members.

Where liberalism starts from the position of personal autonomy, Christians start from a place of personal dependence on a living God who is interested in our personal and corporate flourishing. While we have been given free will and are able to choose, we also have the Bible and the rest of Christian teaching to both guide and inform our free will for the common  as well as individual  good.

While Christians may hold different views on abortion, the decriminalisation of sex work and the more general practical outworkings of ethics, the starting point remains the same: that humans are children of God.

Both Amnesty International and the Roman Catholic Church are inherently interested in ensuring that humans flourish. They both care that human rights are upheld. It is just that how this is achieved, and, to an extent, what this would look like, is fundamentally different.
Muslims raise funds and help rebuild Christian church in Pakistan

In a nation where interfaith conflict is too regular an occurrence, Muslims and Christians have joined together to rebuild a church.

Muslim villagers in Gojra in Punjab Muslims have joined Christians in the village of Khalsabad village near Gojra in Punjab, Pakistan to rebuild a church swept away by floods in the last monsoon season, according to reports from the Daily Pakistan.

The cooperation could help heal memories from a 2009 conflagration over blasphemy in which ten Christians were murdered by a Muslim mob, seven of them burned alive in their homes. Four churches were also burned.

Dilawar Hussain, a Muslim shopkeeper who donated funds towards the new church, is helping because he believes the church is a "house of Allah", the same God Muslims believe in, and is proud of helping promote religious harmony.

Other local businessmen and farmers have also contributed.

Father Aftab James Paul, assistant parish priest at the St Fidelis Church in Khushpur and responsible for pastoral outreach to 56 villages including Khalsabad, said: "This is what life is about."

He said that the mob violence of a few should not be blamed on all the followers of a religion and called for the overriding message to be one of love.

A Catholic prayer room was also constructed in Gojra in 2005 with the help of Muslims.

"Our mosque stands here from times past, but our Christian brothers also have the right to worship in their church," another local Muslim told Pakistan Daily.

The village has been without a Christian place of worship since the churches were destroyed. Most inhabitants are Muslim but there are eight Christian families.

Christian villager Faryal Masih said: "As far as I can remember, we have been living together, we partake in each other's happiness, sorrows and other religious festivals. We rest assured that our Muslim neighbours will stand by our side in times of trouble."

According to Anadolu Agency, the Muslims put forward the idea after Easter. Before that, Christians had to worship in each other's homes.

Father James said: "Muslim residents of the town, however, offered to build us a chapel as a gift. We are thankful to our Muslim brothers for this wonderful gesture. It makes us feel proud."

Christians are Pakistan's largest religious minority, and make up about three per cent of the total population of 180 million. About six in ten Protestant, while the rest are Catholic. Most work in professions such as teaching and nursing.
Orthodox churches in disarray as many pull out of historic global gathering

The Pan-Orthodox Council due to be held in Crete has been thrown into further crisis by a letter from the Serbian Orthodox Church questioning its validity and urging its postponement.

The council  the first in 1,000 years  was called by the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople with the aim of reaching a consensus around disputed issues among all 14 autocephalous or self-governing Orthodox Churches.

However, with a week to go before it begins it has been hit by a series of disputes over procedures and agendas. The Bulgarian and Antiochian Churches have refused to participate and the intervention of the Serbian Church has made it even more difficult for the Ecumenical Patriarch.

In its letter signed by Patriarch Irinej, the Serbian Church said a postponement would enable the council to be seen as a "pre-Synodal inter-Orthodox consultation" which could prepare the ground for a subsequent meeting.

It says there are unresolved issues about the texts to be discussed, relations between the Churches and the structure of the council that mean the Church "feels it difficult to participate in the summoned Holy and Great Synod".

Responding to the news, a spokesman for the Russian Orthodox Church said in a Rossiya-24 interview that the council could "probably can be called an intra-Orthodox conference, but it would be difficult to call it the Pan-Orthodox Council".

Noting that the council's proposed regulations all decisions had to be arrived at unanimously, Vladimir Legoyda said: "If at least one Church opposes one or another document, it would not get adopted. One cannot talk about the pan-Orthodox consensus in this situation when three Churches simply refused to participate."
Scottish Episcopal Church votes in favour of same-sex marriage

The Anglican Church in Scotland has passed a motion that would allow for same sex marriages.

The Scottish Episcopal Church's (SEC) general synod voted to amend its teaching on marriage so as to remove the understanding that marriage is between "one man and one woman". The decision is not final and will be discussed across Scotland's seven dioceses before a final vote is held next year.

The first reading of the change was passed on Friday morning by a strong majority in all three of the Church's houses. The House of Bishops passed the change with 71 per cent of the vote, the House of Clergy with 69 per cent of the vote and the House of Laity with 80 per cent of the vote.

The change paves the way for clergy who want to carry out same-sex weddings to do so. It also contains a "conscience clause" so clergy who are opposed to the change would not be required to carry out same-sex weddings.

It represents a significant change for the Church in Scotland as well as the global Anglican Communion.

The Archbishop of Canterbury has allegedly said the SEC would face "consequences" if it goes ahead with the change to its doctrine. In January The Episcopal Church in the United States was suspended from full participation in the Anglican body because of its decision to allow same-sex marriages.

According to Most Rev David Chillingworth, Primus of the SEC, Justin Welby threatened the same "consequences" if the SEC changed its teaching.

Chillingworth told the synod meeting on Thursday the threat "will not change what we do". He added: "Maybe it is a price worth paying for the ultimate healing of the Communion." Chillingworth also said he would be removed from some of his responsibilities in the wider Anglican body.

A spokesman for the Archbishop of Canterbury told Christian Today no comment would be made. The Church of England is currently engaged in internal discussions on same-sex marriage known as "shared conversations" and the spokesman said Welby would not comment while the discussions were ongoing.

In order for the change to be finalised the SEC must consider the responses from all seven diocesan synods in Scotland before voting again. If the change in doctrine is to be passed it must achieve more than two thirds of the vote in all three houses.

However given the strength of the vote this year, it is highly likely the change will be passed when it returns to synod in 2017.

Rt Rev Dr Gregor Duncan, Bishop of Glasgow and Galloway and Acting Convener of the Church's Faith and Order Board, said Friday's decision was "important" because it began the process of change in Church teaching.

"The passing of the first reading today will bring great joy to some; for others it will be matter of great difficulty," he said. "The wording of the proposed change recognises that there are differing views of marriage within our Church and we have attempted, and will continue to attempt, to sustain our unity in the midst of our diversity."

Beth Routledge, an LGBT activist on the SEC' s general synod, told Christian Today she was "delighted" by the decision and "overwhelmed" by the scale of the majority.

"I think we have taken a very positive step forwards within the Anglican Communion. As some people said during the debate, perhaps the naughty step is not such a bad place to be.

"I think we have established ourselves in a leadership role within the wider church and as stewards of justice."

Rev Dave McCarthy, rector of St Thomas', Corstorphine, Edinburgh, told Christian Today the decision had bought "deep sadness" for him and many others.

He accused the SEC of "double-speak" because he said it "talked about unity but has chosen to walk apart from the largest majority of the Anglican Communion" in the global south.

"The question is what happens next," he told Christian Today. "How can the Anglican Church believe two completely different things about the doctrine of marriage?"
Split looms over gay marriage as Scottish Anglicans offered 'alternative oversight'

A split over same-sex marriage in the Scottish Episcopal Church (SEC) became a real possibility on Friday as clergy were given the option to switch allegiances to conservative bishops around the world.

Gafcon, the powerful traditionalist group including bishops and archbishops, offered to provide "alternative episcopal oversight" to Anglicans in the SEC who were unhappy with today's vote towards allowing same-sex marriages in the Church.

On Friday a strong majority of the SEC's general synod passed the first stage in the process to change the Church's teaching on marriage and remove the understanding it was between "one man and one woman".

In a letter released after the vote, the Gafcon UK Panel of Bishops said they offered "to provide alternative episcopal oversight, and thereby your recognition as faithful Anglicans by the worldwide Gafcon movement, which represents the majority of Anglicans worldwide".

The letter was signed by four bishops on behalf of Gafcon UK's panel and four other Anglican clergymen.

Written before the vote, it was released by the traditionalist Scottish Anglican Network in the immediate aftermath of the decision. It said the SEC was "dividing the church" over the issue of gay marriage and promised to "stand united with faithful Anglicans in Scotland seeking to uphold the plain doctrinal and moral teaching of the Holy Scriptures".

Bishop John Ellison, one of primary signatories to the letter, told Christian Today he was in contact with "orthodox Christian leaders in Scotland" in light of the synod's vote and any split would be up to them.

"We want to stand alongside them," he said. "What form that will take we can't say at this stage. Being Anglicans we are concerned that people are under proper oversight." He said Gafcon UK would facilitate alternative oversight, should Scottish Anglicans wish to switch.

"The wider Anglican Communion is deeply concerned about what is happening in Scotland and we will act on their behalf," he said.

"There is a two way perspective. We will wait to hear from Scottish Anglicans and then make contact with other leaders in the wider union."

The prospect of a split in loyalties among Anglican clergy in Scotland comes after the leader of Gafcon warned the Church of England had crossed a "line" recently with the appointment of a pro-same-sex marriage bishop in Liverpool.

In his first pastoral letter since he became head of Gafcon, the Most Rev Nicholas Okoh, the Archbishop of Nigeria, said the "focus of concern" for conservative Anglicans had been the "heresy" of North American episcopal churches but said:

"Now our concern is increasingly with the British Isles.

"A line has been crossed in the Church of England itself with the appointment of Bishop Susan Goff, of the Episcopal Diocese of Virginia, as an Assisting Bishop of Liverpool.

"The false teaching of the American Episcopal Church has been normalised in England."
Syria 'most deadly country' for Christians and other minorities

For the second year running, Syria has topped the table of countries whose people are most at risk of genocide, mass political killings or violent represssion.

The Middle East and Africa dominate the 2016 rankings of countries where it is most perilous to live. Alongside Syria, countries that have become signifantly more dangerous include Iraq, South Sudan, Libya, Turkey, Ukraine and Azerbaijan.

Further mass migration is as a result inevitable as people flee terrible persecutions, according to Minority Rights Group, which campaigns worldwide to help disadvantaged minorities and indigenous peoples.

The group's online Peoples Under Threat interactive map shows those countries around the world most at risk of genocide, mass political killing or systematic violent repression.

Director Mark Lattimer said: "Peoples Under Threat demonstrates that although the prediction of mass killing has improved substantially since the 1990s, prevention mechanisms are still woefully inadequate. In particular in 2016, there is a global failure to address the needs of highly vulnerable internally displaced populations, making new refugee flight only a matter of time."

He said last year's global refugee crisis was a direct result of the abuses suffered by people living in countries such as Syria.

Lattimer said: "Just in South Sudan and Iraq, for example, there are five million internally displaced victims of ethnic or sectarian persecution, but the UN's crisis response plans are barely one-quarter funded. Meanwhile, the situation in the two most significant refugee embarkation points for Europe, Libya and Turkey, is rapidly deteriorating."

The agony of Syria goes on, with even the formal entry into the conflict of the US and Russia failing to bring a resolution any closer.

More than a quarter of a million people had been killed by August 2015, with the vast majority of civilian casualties caused not by Islamic State, but through indiscriminate bombardment by Syrian and Russian aircraft. More than four million people have fled to neighbouring countries.

Meanwhile, Christians and other minorities are mostly confined to government-held areas.

The group warns that mass killing of civilians is under way in the 13 states at the top of the index. Somalia, Sudan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Democratic Republic of Congo, Burma and Iraq consistently dominate the top ten.
US bishop to clergy: You don't need my permission for same-sex marriages

A US Episcopal Church bishop has given the go-ahead to priests in his diocese to conduct same-sex marriages without asking his permission first.

The bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Mississippi, Rt Rev Brian Seage, announced the move in a letter to churches.

He said: "This significant modification of our former Diocesan policy means that parishes and missions are no longer required to engage in a process of discernment and study, culminating with formal vestry action and submission to me of a petition requesting approval to perform same-sex weddings."

However, Seage said that any priest was free to decline to marry a same-sex couple and would not face disciplinary hearings. He said: "My only request is that you refer, to me, any same sex couple seeking marriage, so arrangements can be made to offer these services of the church."

Addressing LGBT Episcopalians in his letter, Seage asked them "to continue to have patience with me and our church" on the issue of marriage.

"Please know that even if you have worshipped in a specific church for years, and are active in their ministry, there remains the possibility that the church and priest may be unable to officiate at your wedding," he wrote. "Please find a way to be patient with them as they work with me to find a priest willing to solemnise your marriage."

The Episcopal Church (TEC) voted overwhelmingly in favour of allowing same-sex marriage last year in a move that rocked the Anglican Communion and saw a crisis meeting of primates from across the Communion impose sanctions on it. It agreed then that authorised liturgies that would include same-sex marriages were "only to be available under the discretion and with the permission of the diocesan bishop".

The issue has proved excruciatingly difficult for the Anglican Communion. Earlier this month the leader of worldwide evangelical Anglican Christians accused the Church of England of "normalising" the "false teaching" of the US Episcopal Church over gay marriage because of the appointment of an American bishop who supports blessing same-sex unions to a post in the Liverpool diocese.

Archbishop of Nigeria Nicholas Okoh, chairman of the Global South orthodox Anglican group Gafcon, said a "line has been crossed".

The Akure diocese in Nigeria, which was twinned with the Liverpool diocese, has also formally severed its links following the appointment of Susan Goff, a suffragan in the Virginia diocese in the US Episcopal Church, as an honorary bishop in Liverpool.
Was Hitler really a Christian?

The Hitler challenge: Wasn't he a Christian?

Adolf Hitler: Was he really a Christian?

I confess. In last week's column I sinned, at least against the internet gods. I mentioned Adolf Hitler, thus triggering Godwin's Law, which states that the minute anyone mentions Hitler in an argument they have lost.

It is astonishing how many times Hitler comes up in conversation. It's not just that people have a seemingly endless fascination with him, it's the way that the new fundamentalist atheists have adopted 'Hitler was a Christian' as one of their mantras. So how do we answer this one?

Certainly not just by saying, "No he wasn't, he was an atheist." Nor is it helpful to shrug one's shoulders and walk away from the discussion, as though it did not matter. Because if Hitler was inspired by his Christianity to do what he did, there is a serious charge to answer.

As it happens I love being asked this question (as for example in this debate with Matt Dillahunty). Firstly because when I did my history degree at the University of Edinburgh my speciality was Weimar Germany and the Nazis. Secondly because it was partly through the question of evil raised by Auschwitz that I became a Christian.

If you are asking whether Hitler was a follower of Jesus Christ, the answer is absolutely no. If you mean, was he baptised as a Catholic and did he sometimes make positive references to Christianity in his public speeches, and did he try to get the Churches on his side, then yes.

But he was not a Christian in any meaningful sense of the word. He did not read the Bible, go to church, or follow Jesus. He hated God's chosen people, the Jews. It is difficult to see how someone who hated the Jews could follow the greatest Jew of all. As his ideologue Martin Bormann put it: "National Socialism and Christianity are irreconcilable...National Socialism is based on scientific foundations... [it] must always, if it is to fulfil its job in the future, be organised according to the latest knowledge of scientific research." The condemns "the concepts of Christianity, which in their essential points have been taken over from Jewry".

Hitler's Table Talk makes it very clear what his views were.

"The only way of getting rid of Christianity is to allow it to die little by little".

"In the long run, National Socialism and religion will no longer be able to exist together" (p 61).

"As far as we are concerned, we've succeeded in chasing the Jews from our midst and excluding Christianity from our political life" (p 394).

"There is something very unhealthy about Christianity" (p 418).

"When all is said, we have no reason to wish that the Italians and Spaniards should free themselves from the drug of Christianity. Let's be the only people who are immunised against the disease" (p 145).

"We'll see to it that the Churches cannot spread abroad teachings in conflict with the interests of the State. We shall continue to preach the doctrine of National Socialism, and the young will no longer be taught anything but the truth" (p 62).

"When understanding of the universe has become widespread, when the majority of men know that the stars are not sources of light but worlds, perhaps inhabited worlds like ours, then the Christian doctrine will be convicted of absurdity" (p 69).

These are certainly not the comments of a Christian. They read far more like comments one can read every day on many atheist/secular comment pages.

On the other hand, there are lots of atheists who use the same quotes all the time to go that Hitler was a practising Christian. For example, Hitler's statement that "Secular schools can never be tolerated because such schools have no religious instruction." Case closed. Hitler supported Christian schools because he wanted religious instruction. He must have been a Christian. But in quoting history, as in quoting scripture, the key question is always context. That quote is from April 26, 1933, a speech made during negotiations leading to the Nazi-Vatican Concordat. It does not take a genius to work out why Hitler would speak in favour of Catholic schools (the vast majority of schools in Germany were either Catholic or Lutheran) when he was still trying to consolidate his power. Once you know the particular cultural and historical context of the quote it changes it considerably.

Likewise with fact that the SS had Gott mit Uns (God with us) on their belt buckles. What they don't realise is that this was the traditional motto of the German army and no more indicates Christian conviction than the fact that an American using a dollar note which says 'In God we Trust' proves a Christian conviction.

It's not just reading quotes in context that helps; a wider reading of history does too. Formal quotes in political speeches or literature are not as valuable as private papers and memoirs. In my reading I came across a memoir from his personal secretary Traudl Junge, in which she gave the following fascinating testimony: "Sometimes we also had interesting discussions about the Church and the development of the human race. Perhaps it's going too far to call them discussions, because he would begin explaining his ideas when some question or remark from one of us had set them off, and we just listened. He was not a member of any Church, and thought the Christian religions were out-dated, hypocritical institutions that lured people into them. The laws of nature were his religion. He could reconcile his dogma of violence better with nature than with the Christian doctrine of loving your neighbour and your enemy. 'Science isn't yet clear about the origins of humanity,' he once said. 'We are probably the highest stage of development of some mammal which developed from reptiles and moved on to human beings, perhaps by way of the apes. We are a part of creation and children of nature, and the same laws apply to us as to all living creatures. And in nature the law of the struggle for survival has reigned from the first. Everything incapable of life, everything weak is eliminated. Only mankind and above all the church have made it their aim to keep alive the weak, those unfit to live, and people of an inferior kind," (Until the Final Hour, p 108).

If Hitler was not a Christian, was he an atheist? The answer is we don't know and nor does it really matter. What is far more important is what influence his anti-Christian views had on his policies. In the film Downfall, Hitler is quoted as saying before his suicide that he was going to be at peace. His lack of belief in God and the judgment of God meant that he thought he would not be accountable for his crimes and that therefore he could get away with them.

Atheists like to argue that atheism, being just a lack of belief, means that it cannot be held responsible for anything. But a reason people go to war might be the absence of belief. If, like Stalin or Hitler, you believe that there is no God to answer to, that might is right and that power comes from the barrel of a gun, you are much more likely to indulge your selfish genes and go to war to get what you want. It is also the case that Hitler clearly did not go to war because he believed in God or because he wanted to spread Christianity. He hated Christianity. On the other hand he did believe that religion was a virus and that the Jews especially were vermin who should be eradicated in order to better preserve the species.

It was all perfectly logical, Darwinian and godless. Perhaps the atheist zeitgeist has moved on. But meanwhile until it is proven otherwise, I would prefer to stick with the tried and tested morality of the Bible.

Speaking of which, what about the question of suffering? I have written about this before, but let me simply state that Auschwitz was for me one of the reasons I became a Christian. It proves the Bible's teaching if human beings are left to our own devices we will make a mess and a hell of things. As Freddy Mercury, late of Queen, sang at the first Live Aid, "If there's a God up above, a God of love, then what must he think, of the mess that we've made, of the world that he created?"

Two years ago I stood at the gates of Auschwitz in tears. It was not just the industrial scale of man's inhumanity to man, but also the answer to how to deal with that, which overwhelmed me. Ultimately the atheist worldview has no answer to the problem of evil, as exemplified in the Holocaust. But Christianity does. And that answer is Christ. His life, love, teaching, death and atonement.

David Robertson is the moderator of the Free Church of Scotland and director of Solas CPC, Dundee. Follow him on Twitter @theweeflea.
5 minutes with... The earliest painted representation of the Turin Shroud

Medieval and Renaissance manuscripts specialist Eugenio Donadoni explains how while looking through a series of unrecorded illuminations in a 16th-century prayerbook he made one quite startling discovery

What first drew me to this manuscript was the fact that it contained previously unrecorded illuminations by the Master of Claude de France, explains Medieval and Renaissance manuscripts specialist Eugenio Donadoni. The Master of Claude de France was a brilliantly accomplished anonymous artist named after two manuscripts he painted for the Queen of France, wife of Francois I. That on its own is a great selling point, confirms the specialist. It was when the manuscript finally came into the office for Donadoni to catalogue, however, that he discovered the stories it revealed were far more compelling and fascinating than he could ever have expected.

Open a larger version of this image The presence of John the Baptist in this miniature alongside a kneeling patron clad in armour identify the owner as Johannes von Erlach (1474-1539)

First, I identified the coat of arms on the opening leaf, and consequently the armour-clad man in the portrait kneeling beside his name-saint John the Baptist, he recalls. This confirmed that the book belonged to Johann von Erlach (1474-1539), the mayor of the city of Bern, a Swiss ambassador and military commander. The prayerbook is a highly bespoke production  Johann von Erlach carefully selected the texts and he may have picked up the Master of Claude de France miniatures during one of his travels to France. These were not always peaceful missions, Donadoni points out, as von Erlach led an army to Dijon in 1513. One of the rubrics later in the manuscript refers to St Bernhard, which suggests that the book passed to Johanns son, Bernhard von Erlach (1518-1591).

Open a larger version of this image The von Erlach Shroud Prayerbook, in Latin and German. Manuscript on vellum with illuminations by the Master of Claude de France [Tours and Switzerland, c.1520s and c.1540s]. This work was offered in the Valuable Books and Manuscripts sale at Christies London on 13 July 2016 and sold for 116,500

There is another artist at work in the manuscript  probably Swiss  and this, says Donadoni, is where it gets interesting. One of the double-page illustrations by this second artist shows three bishops holding what at first glance looks like a long, unfurled banner.

Open a larger version of this image The double-page depiction of the Turin Shroud in its undamaged state, held by three Bishops, is perhaps the earliest explicit painted representation of the holy relic as we know it today

We had, at first, thought that the banner may have originally carried an inscription, now erased, but on closer inspection we noticed extremely faint  almost imperceptible  front-and-back images of a naked, bearded man with shoulder-length hair and hands folded across his groin, and what seemed like droplets of blood and a wound in his side, the specialist recounts. This was then clearly a unique depiction of the Shroud of Turin, he says, referring to the linen cloth in which Jesus of Nazareth was wrapped and is now kept in the Royal Chapel of the Cathedral of St John the Baptist in Turin.

Could von Erlach have been so inspired by seeing the Shroud that he had the holy relic reproduced in his prayerbook?
Luxury brands like BMW, Mercedes-Benz and Cadillac arent just expensive to buy. Theyre also costly to maintain.

An analysis done by data site Priceonomics (using a data set from the car maintenance site YourMechanic) showed how much a pricey car can cost you even after youve driven it of the lot. Americans spend approximately 5 percent of their income on buying a car. Another five percent goes towards vehicle maintenance and insurance costs, Priceonomics wrote. (See their full analysis here).

But some cost more than others. And its not necessarily the cheapest vehicles that tend to breakdown over the years. The analysis looked at the which major brands cost the most to maintain over the first 10 years of a cars life. BMW, by far, proved the most costly with maintenance fees totaling an average of $17,800.

READ MORE: Kelly Blue Book names the 10 coolest cars under $18K

Vehicles from Japanese automaker Toyota had the fewest hiccups post-purchase, costing only $5,550 on average over a decade. Not a bad deal for a car that also would cost much less than a luxury German import like a BMW or Mercedes-Benz. Toyotas luxury brand Lexus performed well too ($7,000 a year). Domestic brands like Ford ($9,100) and Chevrolet ($8,800) appeared right in the middle.

The analysis groups together all models of all years for each brand. But the site did look at which models came with the steepest maintenance costs: Chrysler Sebring ($17,100) and BMW 238i ($15,600) led the way. The Sebring was discontinued as was another faulty, high-priced car on the list: the Hummer H3.

Four of the six vehicles with the cheapest maintenance costs were Toyotas: The Prius, Camry, Tacoma and Corolla. All cost less than $6,000 to maintain (as did the Kia Soul, Honda Fit and Toyota Yaris).

See the gallery above for a look at the cars that break down the most often (and which ones dont).
Multiple disaster recovery centers opened by the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the state in the aftermath of April's floods are closing next week.

The centers are physical locations where flood victims can go to register for federal aid. Representatives from local, state and federal government have been helping residents navigate what can be a complex process to get the aid.
A missing 79-year-old man who has Alzheimer's has been found safe a day after he disappeared from his home Thursday in east Houston.

Pedro Martinez was found unharmed Friday morning after he had last been seen walking away from his house in the 7100 block of Avenue I, according to the Houston Police Department.
Two Sugar Land City Council members are vying to be the next mayor in a race that's been dominated by debate over how much apartment construction should be allowed in the diverse, fast-growing city.

The runoff election on Saturday pits Joe Zimmerman, who has been endorsed by outgoing Mayor James Thompson, against Harish Jajoo, an Indian-American who is seeking to be the city's first mayor of South Asian heritage.

Zimmerman received 41 percent in a five-candidate race on May 7; Jajoo garnered 34.5 percent.

Thompson is prohibited by term limits from seeking reelection.

Polls open at 7 a.m. and close at 7 p.m.

A victory by Jajoo would be a reflection of the changing face of Sugar Land and the Houston area, Rice University sociology professor Stephen Klineberg said.

Both candidates are running on platforms of public safety, economic development, fiscal conservatism and a greater investment in city infrastructure.

But a year-old citizens group called Sugar Land Votes, which boasts a listserv of about 1,200, has steered the debate away from the candidates' platforms to how Sugar Land should handle future development.

Sparked by a controversial mixed-use development that would have included 900 apartments, Sugar Land Votes has been attempting to rescind a year-old section of the city's development code, said Diana Miller, who helped found the group and unsuccessfully ran for the council last month.

Sugar Land Votes group members argue that the development code section could lead to more urbanization in the city of nearly 88,000, which is located about 20 miles southwest of downtown Houston.

If elected, Jajoo said he would place a blanket limit on the number of multi-family housing units in future developments.

He would also rescind the part of Sugar Land's development code to which Sugar Land Votes objects.

"Growth is inevitable but we've got to balance it with the quality of life that we have in Sugar Land," Jajoo said.

Zimmerman, 62, a local businessman with an engineering background, has been Sugar Land's At-Large Position 2 city council member since 2012.

The city shouldn't put a cap on the number of apartments in new developments or rescind part of its development code, Zimmerman said.

Instead Zimmerman would add language to the existing development code that would require traffic and school attendance studies before the apartments are built.

He'd also place regulations on the apartments, including a 4-story height limit, Zimmerman said.

Sugar Land Votes threw its support behind Jajoo after its own mayoral candidate failed to make the runoff.

Jajoo said he hopes the group's backing will allow him to overtake Zimmerman, who also has the support of the council's other South Asian member, Himesh Gandhi.

Fort Bend County's Asian population grew a remarkable 150 percent from 2000 to 2010, according to a report released by Klineberg and his colleague Jie Wu in 2013; Sugar Land is 35 percent Asian.

Jajoo's decision to embrace his endorsement by Sugar Land Votes makes sense, Klineberg, said.

"No one is going to get elected that doesn't draw on support from all other communities," Klineberg said.

In a run-off election where there's likely to be a low turnout, the backing of more motivated voters could make a difference, said University of Houston political science professor Brandon Rottinghaus.

Jajoo, 61, has been Sugar Land's District 4 city council member since 2011.

A retired civil engineer for Houston, he now runs an engineering consulting firm.

Rottinghaus, who moderated a Sugar Land mayoral debate, said Zimmerman's private-sector background makes him appealing to the business community.

But, added Rottinghaus, Jajoo's message of inclusiveness and support from Sugar Land votes could make this election close.

Also Saturday, Sugar Land voters will decide the At-Large Position 2 city council runoff between Naomi Lam and Mary Joyce.
Gov. Greg Abbott is seeking federal disaster assistance for 12 Texas counties because of the heavy rainfall and flooding that hit the areas in recent weeks.

Abbott said Thursday that he had asked President Barack Obama to make a major federal disaster declaration for homeowners, renters and business owners in those counties that suffered damages from the severe storms that began May 26.
A ringleader of a gang that stole purses and wallets out of unlocked cars while mourners were in area cemeteries was sentenced Friday to 16 years in prison.

Carl Johnson, 28, of Miramar, Fl., was charged with engaging in organized crime after investigators from Florida, Dallas and Texas pieced together a massive identity theft case criss-crossing the Gulf Coast for more than two years.

Johnson pleaded guilty earlier this year and threw himself on the mercy of the court. He had been facing up to life in prison.

Prosecutors said the gang stole purses, wallets and phones from thousands of cars at cemeteries and at daycare centers.

Assistant Harris County District Attorney Chris Handley said the gang cleared $30,000-$40,000 a week by stealing ATM cards and forging checks.

He said the gang hit cemeteries all over Houston before getting caught. A map of all of the crime scenes would ring the city like Beltway 8, he said.

Handley also said the gang arrived in Texas, first Dallas then Houston, after police in Florida started investigating them.

Several witnesses testified Friday that probation was not appropriate.

"I just think it's ghoulish for anybody to something like that," said white-haired Barbara Jackson. "Somebody who does something like that has no conscience."

The gang was able to steal more than $8,000 from Jackson before her accounts were blocked.

She broke down on the stand as she described being stolen from as she put flowers on her mother's grave.

"They took my phone with all the pictures of my mother," she cried.

Before handing down the sentence, visiting state District Judge Terry Flenniken chastised Johnson for taking a criminal path despite being "bright and articulate."

The judge also said he was considering the emotional trauma of victims who had their lives upended and their memories stolen. Four other people have been convicted in the scheme.

Defense attorney Tara Long had argued for probation and said Johnson admitted responsibility and had shown remorse.

brian.rogers@chron.com

twitter.com/brianjrogers
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Christopher Johnson wanted to smile for his booking photo last July at the Harris County jail.

The jailers may have had other ideas.

The 38-year-old man said he was choked by two jailers because he wouldn't assume a more serious pose for the camera, according to a federal lawsuit filed this week against the Harris County Sheriff's Office.

The lawsuit - which claims the jailers and a deputy violated his civil rights by choking him and deprived him of his constitutional right to free speech - is the second lawsuit in as many weeks to allege poor treatment during processing at the Harris County jail.

"My client is severely frustrated," said Andre Evans, Johnson's attorney.

A sheriff's deputy arrested Johnson, 38, on July 25 for allegedly driving drunk on his motorcycle, according to the latest lawsuit. During intake at the jail, guards took several photos of Johnson as part of the department's usual booking process.

When a guard told him to stop smiling, Johnson replied, "This is how I always take my pictures.  I'm going to beat this case. Why wouldn't I smile?" according to the suit.

One guard replied, "we gon' to make you stop smiling," then brought in a colleague, according to the suit. The jailers then placed a hand on each side of his neck and choked him for 30 seconds, the suit states. A photo included in the lawsuit shows Johnson pinned against a wall with a hand wrapped around his neck - still smiling.

In the photo, one jailer appears to be holding him by the back of his neck and his shirt, while another jailer's hand can be seen wrapped around the front of his neck.

Afterward, when Johnson asked for medical treatment because his throat hurt, he was told to "sit down and shut up," according to the suit.

First DWI accusation

"Mr. Johnson states that he has recurring nightmares and sporadic feelings of rage due to the treatment he endured while being processed into the Harris County jail," according to the suit.

Other employees at the jail knew about the assault and failed to intervene, the suit says. It is seeking unspecified damages from Harris County, the deputy who arrested Johnson and the two jailers.

Court records show Johnson has been arrested four times in Harris County, beginning with a traffic case in 1998, in which he pleaded guilty to driving with a suspended license and failing to identify himself to a police officer. He was arrested again in 1999, for again driving with a suspended license. He landed in jail in 2003 for felony assault, but a grand jury ultimately no-billed him on that charge. His latest case - for driving while intoxicated - is set for trial beginning June 27, said Morris Overstreet, his criminal defense attorney.

"We have our experts and we're ready to go," he said, adding that the most recent arrest is the first time Johnson has ever been accused of driving while intoxicated.

Johnson's suit is the second in the last two weeks to allege such treatment at the Harris County jail. Late last month, lawyers for 28-year-old Michael Alaniz filed an excessive-force lawsuit against Harris County alleging that jailers had assaulted the construction worker after he complained about being strip-searched in front of other inmates.

In the suit, Alaniz also alleged that a jailer choked him as he was being photographed.

"The way he grabbed my throat, I felt he was really trying to hurt me," he said Thursday afternoon. "He wasn't trying to calm me down or get me to pipe down. He easily could have said verbally, 'shut up' or 'be quiet.'  It didn't have to get to (the) point he started choking me."

The sheriff's office has refused to provide the Chronicle with a photograph from Alaniz's arrest, citing the pending lawsuit.

No policy against smiling

When contacted about Johnson's suit, Harris County officials said they had just received it and were reviewing it.

"Our office takes allegations of this type seriously.  We will respond to the allegations at the appropriate time," said Robert Soard, first assistant attorney for Harris County.

Ryan Sullivan, a department spokesman, said the sheriff's department does not have a policy against smiling in mugshots.

"It is not uncommon for detention personnel to assist impaired or uncooperative detainees while taking booking photographs," he said. "An initial review of the photograph in question appears to be consistent with proper procedures for assisting an impaired detainee in order to obtain a photograph. The Harris County Sheriff's Office believes that proper procedure was followed during the course of Mr. Johnson's booking. Should any evidence arise to the contrary, proper administrative actions will be taken."

Alaniz said the news of Johnson's suit - just weeks after his own - came as a surprise.

"Maybe they need to teach (the jailers) anger management and how to handle certain situations," he said.
Surveillance cameras outside an Ace Hardware store near Hobby Airport captured the violent moment on Thursday when a small, single-engine airplane crashed into the parking lot, killing all three people on board.

As seen in the footage, the shadow of the plane, a Cirrus SR-20, covers the lone car in the lot on Telephone Road at about 1:15 p.m. and then crashes violently onto it in a freefall.

RELATED: No evidence of fuel at scene of plane crash

The surveillance video shows few pedestrians got close to the airplane right after it crashed, but instead viewed the scene from a distance. One man approached the plane moments after the crash and quickly stepped away. Some smoke can be seen ascending from the front of the aircraft. Debris was scattered across the parking lot. A propane tank in the same parking lot can be seen in the video, just behind the spot where the plane hit the car.

National Transportation Safety Board investigator Tom Latson said during a Friday press conference that security footage from the store revealed the plane was relatively wing-level, relatively nose-level and spinning counterclockwise to the left when it crashed onto a car in the parking lot at 6860 block of Telephone Road.

Latson told reporters noon Friday that the air traffic controller at Hobby airport directed the pilot to fly around the airport and retry landing a second time. The controller told the pilot that the plane was too high up on the second approach and would have to try re-entry a third time.

"And for some reason, the air traffic controller directed them to go around," Latson said. "The pilot made a right turn, was directed to land on runway 35, to the north. During that second approach to runway 35, the pilot was again instructed to go around because the pilot appeared to be too high." It was during the fly around on the third entry that the plane began to fly slow and low, according to witnesses that spoke to authorities.

"Witnesses saw the plane bank to the left and impact at the 6800 block of Telephone," Latson said. He said that he didn't know the level of the pilot's experience or how the pilot flew. The pilot was also instructed to fly into a different runway on the second attempt. It's unclear to Latson why this instruction was made.

I have confirmed with the fixed-base operator at the Norman (Oklahoma) airport that the plane was topped, it should give five hours of flight time, Latson said when asked if the plane crashed due to lack of fuel. The airplane departed from the airport in Norman at about 10:15 a.m. Thursday for the flight to Houston, and crashed approximately 3 hours later.

Latson noted fuel tanks on the plane were completely disrupted, so officials will have to investigate the fuel lines to see if an empty tank was a factor in the crash.

The plane comes equipped with an emergency parachute, which did not deploy before the crash.

The parachute, which is activated via a handle in the plane's cockpit, was still in its casing, although the rocket motor used to deploy the chute was ejected on impact.

Investigators do not currently know if the handle was pulled, but a digital record of what happened will be analyzed at a later date, according to the NTSB.

Latson confirmed the pilot was a woman and that he did meet with the family of the three victims.He did not disclose their names or any additional information about them.

However, in a Facebook post on Thursday, the Thunder Valley Raceway Park in Noble, Okla. identified the victims as Tony Gray, his wife Dana and brother Jerry.

"Everyone at (Thunder Valley Raceway Park) would like to extend our deepest sympathies to the Gray family. We have no words to describe the loss to the (Thunder Valley Raceway Park) family, as the Gray family have been long time racers, sponsors, and friends at the track," they said in the Facebook post. They ended it with: "Race in Peace."

FAA records list a Dana Frances Gray from Moore, Okla., as having a license to be a private pilot. According to the Federal Aviation Administration, the airplane is owned by Safe Aviation LLC in Moore, Okla.

An investigator with the NTSB on Thursday said the tower at Hobby Airport told the pilot the airplane was approaching the runway at too high an altitude.

"On the second approach, they were also too high. The air traffic controller again directed the aircraft to go around," said NTSB investigator Tom Latson.

As it was making a third attempt to land at Hobby, the airplane apparently stalled and lost power. Witnesses saw it dive nose-first toward the ground, Latson said.

The airplane collided with a car but narrowly missed any nearby buildings, power lines and a propane tank. There were no other reported injuries.
A woman was wounded in a shooting Thursday night outside at an apartment complex in south Houston.

The shooting happened about 9:45 p.m. at the Villa Americana apartments at 5901 Selinsky near Martindale, according to the Houston Police Department.
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Long before Continental Airlines called the Lone Star State its home, a truly Texas-flavored carrier existed  going by the name Texas International Airlines.

The airline started in 1944 as Aviation Enterprises and later changed to Trans-Texas Airways. In the 1960s, the company outgrew its small-town roots and adopted the name Texas International.

On YouTube, you can find a 1967 commercial introducing the name change. The ad boldly proclaims: Weve become a big airline, even bigger than Texas.

The carrier at the time flew to 66 cities and several destinations in Mexico. Some 2.5 million passengers used the airline based out of Houston Municipal Airport (the future William P. Hobby Airport).

Not everything went smoothly with the Texas jets, however. In 1973, a crash killed all 11 passengers on a Texas International flight between two cities in Arkansas.

CHRON 115: The decades-long, sometimes-turbulent journey of Continental Airlines

Almost a decade later, in July 1982, Texas International voted to merge with Continental Airlines. The effort was led by Texas International boss and notorious union buster Frank Lorenzo. In fact, it was Texas International Airlines that took over Continental, but the parent company assumed the latters name. Continental moved its headquarters from Los Angeles to Houston.

In spite of the takeover, Texas no longer had its own namesake airline.

Continental faced turbulent years ahead. It filed for bankruptcy in 1983 and then fought to save itself. The company eventually reported an annual net income of $224 million in 1995. For the 115th anniversary of the Houston Chronicle, Andrea Rumbaugh recounts the remarkable rise and fall and rise again of Continental Airlines before its merger with United in 2010.

See the gallery above for a look back at Texas International Airlines and Continental Airlines.
A state district judge has appointed two Austin attorneys to represent the 17-year-old man accused of murder in the death of a University of Texas freshman last week.

Darla Davis and Ariel Payan will represent Meechaiel Criner, who has been charged with murder in the apparent strangulation death of Haruka Weiser.
An Arlington man faces felony charges after an ignored maintenance note led to police ultimately discovering 72,000 Xanax pills and more than 20 pounds of marijuana in his apartment, according to media reports.

Duc Chi Ta, 24, was arrested Tuesday on drug charges, including possession of a controlled substance with intent to deliver and possession of marijuana between five and 50 pounds, WFAA reports.
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The widow of the late Harris County Commissioner El Franco Lee has endorsed state Sen. Rodney Ellis for the seat that her husband held for decades, the senator said Friday.

A letter dated Tuesday and signed by Kaye Lee urges Democratic party district chairs to select Ellis, the longtime Democratic state senator, when they gather later this month. Ellis's top rival in the race for the Precinct 1 seat is Commissioner Gene Locke, a Democrat who was appointed in January to fill Lee's seat by County Judge Ed Emmett, a Republican.

Kaye Lee has not confirmed the authenticity of the letter and did not respond to several phone calls, messages passed through intermediaries and a written note seeking confirmation of her endorsement. Ellis said Friday he had spoken with Kaye Lee after the letter was sent out and said it was genuine.

The letter stresses that Ellis is a "loyal Democrat" and family friend with a track record of electoral success.

"Your vote is much more than electing a replacement for an unopposed term," the letter says. "On June 25, 2016, you will determine if we as a party will continue to have a voice and presence on Commissioners Court for years to come."

"I think it's extremely important," Ellis said by phone Friday of the endorsement, which he called a game-changer. "I'm very honored to have it."

Locke said in a statement this week that he was "surprised" by Kaye Lee's decision, but he added, "I respect her right to endorse whomever she wishes."

Locke's campaign consultant, Keir Murray, added that the commissioner has been unable to reach Kaye Lee to discuss the letter.

Commissioner Lee was nearing the end of his seventh term when he died of a heart attack in January. Because his name was still on the ballot at the time of the Democratic primary in March, party precinct chairs will determine his successor. No Republicans are seeking the seat in the heavily Democratic precinct.

Kaye Lee did not appear at a ceremony Friday honoring her late husband and kicking off the 30th anniversary of the Street Olympics, a summer youth program that was one of his signature programs. Locke attended the event, and spoke positively about El Franco Lee's impact on the community.

Both Ellis and Locke have throughout the campaign recognized El Franco Lee's influence and legacy in the precinct, which covers much of urban Houston, especially north and south.

Locke did take issue with the letter's claim that Precinct 1 funds have not been spent in accordance with El Franco Lee's priorities.

"Unfortunately the funds set aside for those very important projects have been significantly depleted," the letter reads. "I am very saddened by that. Senator Ellis understands financial planning and maximizing dollars and is committed to making sure that the residents of Precinct One continue to receive the services and amenities they have come to rely on."

In his statement, Locke, who has been in office for more than four months, said he has continued all of El Franco Lee's programs, and noted that a balance in Precinct 1 funds is greater than when he took office.

An analysis by the Harris County Budget Office conducted at Locke's request shows that he is spending on average close to $900,000 less per month than Lee did last year.

Locke acknowledged that he has spent more money on street projects and other initiatives in city limits.

"I recognize that politics can be a contact sport, but I draw the line at grossly inaccurate allegations about the management and operation of Precinct One," Locke's statement reads.

Several others, including Houston Councilman Dwight Boykins, have expressed interest in the seat.

Texas Southern University political scientist Michael Adams said that even with Ellis' endorsement by Kaye Lee, the race is still open between Ellis, Locke and Boykins.

Adams said endorsements are important, but "not decisive."

"What is really going to be decisive in the selection is not public endorsements but behind-the-scenes deals and agreements," he said.
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.
Warriors end season with win over Rebels SIOUX RAPIDS - The Alta-Aurelia football team traveled to face Sioux Central for their final game of the season and...

Cherokee takes down Generals to finish season CHEROKEE - The Cherokee football team hosted Sibley-Ocheyedan on Friday and won 35-28 to finish out their season. The...

Warriors suffer heartbreaking end to season ALTA - The Alta-Aurelia volleyball team hosted Lawton-Bronson last Wednesday and suffered a nail-biting 3-2 loss to end their season....

Unity ends Cherokee volleyball season ORANGE CITY - Out of sync early, Cherokee's volleyball squad fell hard in the first set 25-8 to ranked Unity...
Forty years ago this week, radical activists descended on Chicago to protest the Democratic National Convention. In the ensuing chaos, hospitals treated 192 policemen, more than 650 people were arrested, and one demonstrator was killed. This week, a group calling itself Recreate 68 has converged on Denver to protest the 2008 Democratic National Convention. Its name to the contrary, Recreate 68s organizers insist that they arent paying homage to the 68 protestors. Not that they believe that the protestors did anything wrong: echoing the words of the federal governments Walker Report, Recreate 68 contends that what happened in Chicago in 1968 was not a violent protest, but rather a police riot.

Numerous histories from participant-memoirists unsurprisingly second the police riot verdict. Cathy Wilkerson, whose cadre unleashed stink bombs and phoned bomb threats to local hotels, notes in her recent memoir that the rampant brutality of Chicago mayor Richard J. Daley was exposed for all the world to see. For Tom Hayden, the coordinator of the Chicago protests who was arrested for deflating a police cars tire, rioting police exhibited brutal behavior and mindless sadism. Bill Ayers, who brags of pelting Chicago cops with marbles fired from a slingshot, decries the violent police assaults and police rioting. But far from political innocents clubbed into reality by sadistic policemen, the activists who squared off with cops were generally movement veterans who went to Chicago looking for a fight. As Jeff Jones and Mike Spiegel of New Left Notes wrote six months before the convention, to envision non-violent demonstrations at the Convention is to indulge in pleasant fantasying. By 1968, the movement had moved from mere protest to open confrontation. Leaving for Chicago, Terry Robbinswho, 18 months later, would blow himself up while constructing a bomb intended for a soldiers dancetold comrades: Lets go kick some ass.

The figure most closely associated with the Chicago protests is Tom Hayden, now point man for Progressives for Obama. Students for a Democratic Society activist Gerry Long recalled to David Horowitz that Hayden noted the benefits of firebombing Chicago police cruisers. I heard Tom Hayden speak, in chillingly cavalier tones, about street actions which would run the risk of getting people killed, Todd Gitlin remembered in The Sixties. In a conversation with me, Mike Klonsky, SDSs national secretary during the convention riots, described how Hayden plotted to scatter nails over a nearby highway. And Bill Ayers writes in his memoir, Fugitive Days, of Haydens altered persona when addressing closed audiences of radicals:

His voice took on an edge, somewhere between fanatical and giddy, as he described bold plans and playful pranks. But you folksveterans of the movement and the streetshave a pivotal role to play in all of this, he continued, the color of his face deepening, his eyes once again blazing. He looked intently from person to person. He was the same articulate and thoughtful speaker as before, but these were words for only a few. This demonstration has the potential like nothing weve done before to expose the face of the enemy, to strip him naked, to force him to reveal himself as violent, brutal, totalitarian, and evil. It will be difficultand dangeroustaunting the monster, stabbing him in his most exposed and vulnerable places, but its got to be done. And he paused. And youre the ones to do it.

The behind-closed-doors Hayden occasionally ventured into public view. In Chicago, he called on activists to avenge the injuries of co-organizer Rennie Davis, who had suffered a concussion battling the police. Hayden exhorted the throngs: Make sure that if blood is going to flow, it will flow all over this city. Hayden wasnt alone among future Chicago Eight defendants in his violent rhetoric. If a pig comes up to us and starts swinging a billy club, Black Panther Bobby Seale counseled, and you check around and you got your piece, you got to down that pig in defense of yourself! Were going to barbecue us some pork! Abbie Hoffman called for a huge orgasm of destruction, and (along with sidekick Jerry Rubin) daydreamed of poisoning Chicagos water supply with LSD. Hearing the reckless pronouncements of the riots ringleaders, Americansalready weary from several years of deadly urban rioting across the countrysupported the Chicago police by greater than 21 margins. The whole world is watching! the protestors chanted, but polls showed that not everyone saw events their way.

Radicals vision of reality is as distorted now as it was then. Since 1968, Recreate 68 contends,

a right-wing backlash has attempted to roll back the gains of those years, to recreate an America in which a ruling elite of wealthy, privileged white males and large corporations made a mockery of the promise of democracy. For the past 40 years, we have seen increasing economic inequality, a fierce attack on affirmative action and other programs aimed at aiding oppressed communities, an assault on civil liberties and, most recently, an attempt to equate political dissent with criminality or terrorism. Under the Bush administration, the right has come dangerously close to achieving their goal.

That the events in Chicago might have catalyzed the nations rightward turn never seems to occur to such nostalgists. Instead, they blindly celebrate an event that helped cause the political developments they lament. Apart from the immediate effectDemocratic voters withholding votes from a party that seemed unable to govern its own convention, let alone the nationthe events of 40 years ago led to a long-term transformation of the Democratic Party. Democratic delegate Ben Wattenberg observed of the partys 1972 convention: There wont be any riots in Miami because the people who rioted in Chicago are on the platform committee. Consider the treatment of Mayor Daley, who had opened the 1968 Democratic Convention, at the 1972 gathering. The partys credentials committee, steeped in George McGoverninspired reformist impulses, refused to seat Daleys slate of delegates elected by Cook County voters. Instead, the committee replaced the slate with an unelected one led by Jesse Jackson that more closely resembled the diversity that the partys new quota system demanded.

This rule-or-ruin mentality ruined Hubert Humphreys chances of ruling, and it continues to this day. Instead of FDRs party of the working man, the post-68 Democrats have been easy to caricature as the Abortion Party, the Blame-America-First Party, and the Soft-on-Crime Party. In the ten presidential elections since the bloody 68 convention riots, Democrats have won just three to the Republicans seven. This Republican dominance exactly mirrors Democratic successes in the 40 years prior to 1968.

Yet the 68 party crashers are on the convention guest list in 2008, if not in charge of it. In the nomination of Barack Obama, a Windy City politician whose swift climb was aided by many who made homes in Chicago after the 1968 unrest, one sees in microcosm the story of Democratic Party presidential politics over the last four decades. While satisfying the vocal activist wing, the partys presidential nomineesGeorge McGovern, Michael Dukakis, John Kerryhave ultimately alienated the broader electorate. One can understand why a cynical Republican might want to recreate 1968, a time when a fever of political cannibalism infected the Left and resulted in a political realignment in favor of the GOP. But why would left-wing activists want to replay the beginnings of their movements downward spiral?
The Limousine Liberal: How an Incendiary Image United the Right and Fractured America, by Steve Fraser (Basic Books, 291 pp., $27.50)

Roughly 15 years ago, I took part in a symposium on the political legacy of former New York City mayor John Lindsay. Little of note was said from the podium, but I couldnt help noticing that the former Lindsayites who spoke all had limousines waiting for them at the curb. It was a striking reminder of the epithets hurled at Lindsay during the 1969 mayoral election when his opponent, Mario Procaccino, mocked him as part of the Manhattan arrangement and a limousine liberal.

When I saw the title of Steve Frasers new book, I anticipated that he would focus in part on Procaccino, the now-forgotten clubhouse politician from the Bronx, whose mocking of Lindsays liberalism has echoed through the decades because it captured a profound change in American political life. I also thought that a book called The Limousine Liberal would discuss the increasing role of the wealthy within the Democratic Party. In 2010s Fortunes of Change: The Rise of the Liberal Rich and the Remaking of America, David Callahan approvingly describes how moneyed liberals arrived in private jets for Barack Obamas inaugural in 2008. In fact, Fraser spends little time on the Democrats shift both leftward and upward on the social scale. Instead, as his subtitle indicates, The Limousine Liberal is more interested in rehashing the history of right-wing populist movements over the past century.

Mario Procaccino rose to political significance in the mid-1960s during an unprecedented explosion of crime and welfare in New York City, the concussive effects of which were felt nationwide. In 1965, William F. Buckleys rakish run for mayor anticipated the creation of contemporary conservatism. Further, Daniel Patrick Moynihans writings in Commentary paved the way for what would come to be called neo-conservatism. In 1969, Lindsays reelection limned the liberalism that Obama eventually brought to the White House. Lindsay was an ambitious liberal Republican congressman from the silk-stocking district on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. Now extinct, such liberal Republicans were both strongly pro-civil rights and anti-Tammany Hall. In the late sixties, southern Dixiecrats remained a power in Congress, and clubhouse politics still had a hold over the big cities.

In the 1965 mayoral election, just a year after the passage of the landmark 1964 Civil Rights Actenacted in part thanks to a race riot in HarlemLindsay faced off against Buckley, running on the Conservative Party line, and Democrat Abe Beame. Lindsay and Beame competed to denounce the cosmopolitan Buckley as a racist and neo-fascist. Lindsay won; he went so far as to plant concocted stories in the pliant press about how his campaign offices in Queens came under attack from Buckleys racist storm troopers. Procaccino, who had been brought into politics in the 1930s by New York mayor Fiorello LaGuardia, a liberal icon, became the citys comptroller. Moynihan, author of the landmark (but, on the left, notorious) account of the breakdown of the black family, was defeated for city council president.

Lindsays first term was marked by a deadly winter storm (during which only Manhattans snow got cleared) and a surge in crime. Between 1967 and 1969, violent crime in the city spiked by one-third. In 1969 alone, the city saw a record-breaking 1,000 murders. The crime explosion was matched by an eruption in the number of people on welfare, even as the country enjoyed its greatest economic boom up to that time. Under Lindsay, welfare expenditures quadrupled, consuming more than a quarter of the citys budget.

In 1969, a scandal erupted. The headline in the pro-Lindsay New York Times read MILLIONS IN CITY POVERTY AGENCY LOST BY WELFARE FRAUD AND INEFFICIENCY. According to the Timess report, a group of city employees had rigged computers to write checks to imaginary workers for nonexistent jobs. New York had the worst administrative problems of any antipoverty program in any city in the U.S., said Lyndon Johnsons labor secretary Willard Wirtz.

If that wasnt bad enough, the city was rocked by garbage, transit, and school strikes, leaving the middle classalready reeling under steep rent increasespunchy. Garbage piled up as a series of liberal-versus-liberal conflicts shook the city. The subway strike pitted the WASP mayor, who had written his senior thesis on the greatness of Oliver Cromwell, against Transport Workers Union boss Mike Quill, a former member of the Irish Republican Army. Teachers union boss Al Shanker squared off against Black Nationalists and their left-wing allies who insisted on black control over the schools in black neighborhoods. In Mr. Sammlers Planet, set in these same years, Saul Bellows protagonist notes, you could smell collapse. You could see the suicidal impulses of civilization pushing strongly.

The 1969 election took place in the midst of these convulsions. Lindsay lost the Republican ballot line to John Marchi, the cerebral state senator from Staten Island. That left the mayor to run solely on the Liberal line. But the Liberal Party was itself split over the teachers strike. Shanker, a prominent Liberal Party supporter, refused to back Lindsay, whom he rightly blamed for stirring the flames of Black Nationalism. Liberal Party vice chairman Alex Rose worked to prevent the white backlash from defeating Lindsay. New York, Rose said, had to become a political Stalingrad like the city where the forces of Hitlerism were turned back.

The liveliest primary in 1969 took place among the Democrats. There, a three-way race pitted Procaccino against Bronx congressman Herman Badillo, the citys leading Puerto Rican politician, and novelist Norman Mailer. For the good of Gotham, the competent Badillo should have carried the day. But Mailer, a concoction of Trump-like self-aggrandizement and public-policy pretensions native to Manhattan, insisted that he had to counteract the boredom produced by the fast-waning Democratic machine. Mailers call to make New York City the 51st state, and his Procaccino-like invocations of neighborhoods as the citys heart and soul, took enough votes away from Badillo to set up a showdown between Lindsay and Procaccino in the general election.

Procaccino, a master of malapropisms, proposed to tame the financial sector with an unprecedented 1 percent tax on stock transfers. Informed that his proposal would hamper the financial industrys considerable contribution to the New York economy, he replied Thats all right. Why, he asked, must we always milk the public good and never touch the sacred cow? Described as the champion of homeownersthe so-called stoop-sitting votersProcaccino criticized Lindsays support for racial affirmative action by insisting on a single standard for the city. With the support of Gothams black voters, Lindsay eked out a victory. The final tally: Lindsay, 42 percent; Procaccino, 35 percent; Marchi, 23 percent.

The central issues of the 1969 New York mayoral election remain with us. But Fraser seems little interested in the history of the political terrain that produced the famous phrase that serves as his title. Rather, he uses the metaphor of the limousine liberal to chew again the already well-chewed story of right-wing economic populism. This history was artfully covered by the great political sociologist Seymour Martin Lipset in his 1970 book, The Politics of Unreason: Right-Wing Extremism in America, 1790-1970.

The difficulty with Frasers book is that the rightward shift of working-class New Yorkers in the 1960s and 1970s cant be shoehorned into the rhetorical categories that he has laid out. He says little about crime and welfare, the two primary issues for Procaccinos supporters. At times, Fraser acknowledges the legitimate grievances that drove the white working class to abandon the Democrats. [T]he presence of a noxious racism among elements of the populist right has often overwhelmed any inclination by limousine liberals . . . to appreciate what might be simmering in those precincts of discontent, he writes. This is on target. The contemporary distaste for Obama is based more on the presidents failings than on his family tree.

With Lindsayas with Obama, who will also leave a mess in his wakeliberals decided that good intentions outweighed the cost of failure. Benevolence, insisted Lindsays and Obamas media supporters, washed away all sins, creating a kind of no-fault liberalism. The Lindsay campaign marked the turning point that shaped our current political configuration. It was the moment that limousine liberals, backed by the black poor, took center stage.

Photo by Harry Benson/Getty Images
New York Democrats may shrug off the carpetbagger charge thrown at Senate candidate Hillary Clinton, but their indifference to her never having lived in the state reveals something important.

America's Founding Fathers had clear reasons for devising a political system in which states would send representatives to the national legislature. Each state, the Founders argued, would always have regional interests, which needed a hearing in the national decision-making process, if states were to go along with decisions they disagreed with and the republic were to work.

This idea of governancecrucial to the nation's success in reconciling its often fractious diversity with an energetic executivestill runs through the thinking of Democrats and Republicans in most of the country. But in New York, the Democratic Party abandoned it long ago in favor of a left-wing ideology closer in spirit to European social democracy. This ideology, which takes a national rather than a regional or local perspective, has led New York Democrats to embrace big-government schemes regardless of their impact on the state's prosperity.

A single 1993 policy debate gives an especially clear glimpse into this key difference between New York Democrats and fellow party members elsewhere in the country. President Bill Clinton had just proposed to Congress a sizable tax-hike plan that he falsely claimed wouldn't hit any part of the country disproportionately. The plan included new taxes on energy production and gasoline and a boost in the income tax. Democratic and Republican congressmen from energy-producing states like Louisiana and Texas strongly objected to the energy tax, and with the help of former Texas Democratic senator Lloyd Bentsen (then Clinton's secretary of the Treasury) they quickly killed it. Members of Congress from western states banded together across party lines to water down the gas tax, since it would hurt residents in their sprawling part of the country, where long drives are the rule.

The federal income-tax increase, which would hurt New York more than any other state, passed easily, though. New York City residents40 percent of New York State's populationhave higher per-capita income than citizens in most of the country, but it's more expensive to live there. Unlike elsewhere, a family of four living in Gotham with an annual income of $100,000 is hardly in the lap of luxury. But the feds don't index federal income taxes for cost of living, so they whack New Yorkers, especially those living in or near New York City, hard.

Yet not a Democratic member of New York's congressional delegation rose up to oppose the income-tax hike. Even the venerable senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, whose office regularly issues reports claiming that the state sends more tax money to Washington than it gets back in federal goodies, voted for it, worsening the very problem he so often bemoans. This startling indifference to New York's regional interests is perplexing to Wall Street execs, who grumble that they get more attention paid to their problems from out-of-state congressmen than they do from the state's own Democratic congressional delegation.

Nor did any New York Democrat raise so much as a peep when the state party nominated Hillary Clinton as its Senate candidate. Yet in 1993, her health-care task force made bold recommendations to revolutionize the nation's health-care systemincluding the adoption of regional pricing pools and restrictions on specialized medical educationthat would have really hurt New York, with its high medical costs, its bigger share of elderly and of very ill citizens, and its large complex of teaching hospitals.

New Yorkers have paid a heavy price for this social democratic, anti-regional mind-set. Thanks to the swollen welfare state that this worldview has created, taxpaying entrepreneurial types and the wealthy elderly have fled the state in droves, in search of more welcoming economic climes. The state has gone from first to third in total population since 1950 and will soon slip behind Florida into fourth place, causing it to lose almost 40 percent of its congressional delegation over the same period. During the same half-century, the state has also lost more than two-thirds of the Fortune 500 companies once located there.

Hillary Clinton, a candidate for all places, is a natural for a party that considers itself above the concerns of a mere state.
BNM anunta concurs pentru postul vacant de expert principal, pe durata determinata, responsabil de elaborarea/actualizarea cerintelor metodologice de reglementare a procesului de raportare la BNM
Editors Note: This post was produced as part of a graduate course on media writing and storytelling taught by the editors of Columbia Journalism Review.

The business of publishing has been turned on its head. News outlets are handing over their journalism to powerhouses like Facebook, betting that the increased traffic will be worth the loss of control. Audiences are fickle and demanding, constantly changing what they want. Advertisers are scrambling to gain leverage. News startups are demolishing the entire publishing model, sometimes with wild success.

How to possibly make sense of it all? By thinking of it as a race, as we did, for position and power. These graphics let you sit behind the wheel with some of the industrys top racecar drivers, from Facebook to The Washington Post, as they vie for position on the track. Hopefully, youll get a sharper fix on the players, the tensions, and the reordered world we all now inhabit.

Facebook

If this is a race, and it is, then Facebook is in first place. By far, it is the biggest publisher in the country. About 70 percent of the country is on Facebook, with an estimated 600 million people getting news directly from the social media platform.

Among millennials, Facebook news consumption is even higher with a whopping 88 percent using the platform regularly. For many of them, Facebook is just a way to share stories and video with their friends.

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Facebooks digital ad revenue has doubled in the last two years, dominating 10 percent of all digital ad revenue and taking up more than a third of all mobile ads. This dominance is importantit shows how well the technology company has succeeded financially on mobile, which is exactly where the consumers are.

In the last few years, Facebook has been shapeshifting into a publisher and primary source of news. Its Instant Articles takes the work of newsrooms like The New York Times and publish them directly on Facebook. This allows news organizations to get more traffic and Facebook to create its own ecosystem. These Instant Articles load 10 times faster, so users not only like them but stay within Facebooks world for all their information needs, whether its about friends or news. Essentially, Facebook has become the portal by which people go online.

And why wouldnt it try to become a publisher too? After all, news is just another form of contenta commoditythats part of the product Facebook sells its customers. Whats more, media companies have also become hugely dependent on Facebook for their traffic. When it launched Instant Articles, the countrys biggest publishers quickly signed on: BuzzFeed, HuffPost, the Times and The Washington Post. Today, Vox gets 40 percent of visits through the site, while BuzzFeed says Instant Articles bring in more audience than any other platform.

Whats clear in this arrangement is that Facebook holds the cards. But what that means for the future is less clear. Might it tighten the controls around Instant Articles to fit whatever suits its corporate strategy? Will it favor publishers who use Facebooks ad network. Will it hide data from news organizations? Will it make judgments around what type of content a publisher puts on its platformif not directly, then by re-prioritizing what appears in users feeds. What is certain is that Facebook wont stop experimenting with news. Only it needs both users and publishers to keep coming back.

If there is one fact that publishers should keep in mind, it is this last one. For all the headaches, news organizations still have something Facebook needs, and thats a hand they should play carefully.

Astha Rajvanshi

Snapchat

If Facebook leads the publishing field, Snapchat, the youngest contender running a social platform, is catching up fast. What started off as a fun, instant messaging app that allows users to send photos and videos that disappear in seconds, has evolved into a bigger publishing platform. Now, users can broadcast their own story to the world via a 24-hour collection of photos and videos, or access news content specifically designed for Snapchat.

Last year Snapchat launched its own platform, Discover, that allows publishers to release new and exclusive content like videos, articles, and infographics on a daily basis. The ad revenue is flowing in, too, with projections for continued revenue that helped Snapchat get a generous new round of funding.

This entry into news has come almost as a reaction to Facebooks Instant Articles. Social media companies tell us what to read based on whats most recent or most popular. We see it differently, Snapchat says in describing its philosophy, emphasizing the role of editors and artists over clicks and shares to determine what stories are important.

Snapchat is pint-sized compared with the giants of social. On any given day, it has about 100 million active Snapchat users, a sliver of Facebooks (989 million). But Snapchat has something the giants dont: an abundance of young viewers. Most Snapchat users are between the ages of 13 and 25. The average Facebook user is 40 years old, which means that based purely on its user base, Snapchat is the fastest growing of any social networks. This gravitation of kids to Snapchat is also why Facebook offered to buy it for $3 billion. They said no.

Snapchats approach with Discover is to keep the party small and stay mindful of its audience. With only a handful of publishing partners including Vice, Mashable, and The Wall Street Journal, Fortune has called Discover the cool kids table of media. If publishers dont generate enough views or manage to hook new, younger audiences, Snapchat gives them the boot and brings new publications inas it did last July when it replaced Yahoo and Warner Music Group with iHeartRadio and BuzzFeed.

When it first launched, Snapchat partnered with only 10 publishers. Now, its up to 23. By design, the company doesnt have an ad sales team large enough to support demand, so it depends on its media partners to sell.

As Snapchat ventures deeper into news, it will become less of a video playground and more of a central portal for publishers wanting a pipeline to youth.

Astha Rajvanshi

Google

The wired world from Googles chair isnt looking so good right now. Sure, its one of the worlds largest corporations with over $50 billion in ad revenues last year, but the massive technology company gets the bulk of that money from its search engine. And that market is in upheaval.

Consider these facts. Since 2014, mobile use has increased at such a fast pace that the average person now spends more time on their phone than they do on desktop computers. Whats more, an astounding 87 percent of all time spent on mobile is spent on appsnot browsing the Web.

This is a problem for a company that gets its money by capturing information on how people search the Web and then serving them personalized ads the next time they sign on. Unfortunately for Google, thats not possible when everyones using apps.

This digital chaos has dropped Google into crisis mode. As a result, its scrambling for answers, first by looking at why people are moving onto apps to begin with. If there is one primary reason, its that people are annoyed by how slow the Web can be. So consumers are responding in two ways: by moving to fast-loading apps, or by installing ad blockers to speed up and de-clutter their experience online. Both are disastrous for Google. Instant Articles will result in users having to never leave the Facebook ecosystem, causing near panic for Google, the traditional gatekeeper of the Web.

Googles solution is something called Accelerated Mobile Pages, essentially a mission to make the mobile Web as good as apps are now, through faster-loading pages and a streamlined advertising experience.

Media publishers are happy that Google has provided them a framework to address issues of speed outside the closed ecosystem of Facebook, as AMP is an open source project with different news publishers, ad-providers and analytics firms all contributing to it.

However, some outlets are concerned that they are being strong-armed into adopting AMP, as AMP articles show up at the top of the Google search page. To make matters more complicated, AMP comes with significant technological challenges requiring the creation of a second code base with a specific type of HTML code, but many are forced to make the investment to remain relevant on Search.

One of the concerns raised by publishers is that AMP pages mark a radical departure from when Google served as a gateway to their websites. With AMP, the content is served from Googles cache (which is simply a mirror of the publishers page) and the reader remains in the Google ecosystem. While it still counts as a page view for the publisher, if you email or share an AMP article, the URL is not of the publishers website, but instead appears as google.com/amp/publishersite.com/publisherpage/amp. Therefore, even though the page views go back to the publisher when an AMP article is read, the publisher still loses out on branding.* Google has also been experimenting with a new feature, separate from AMP, where breaking news articles under 14,400 characters are posted directly onto search and bypass the publishers own website entirely.

All this activity has played into concerns of media outlets that they are being blindsided by tech companies wanting to cut them out of the distribution channel. Google, however, has maintained that AMP is different from other closed ecosystems and helps the mobile internet thrive as an open network.

On all the things that we are doing, we try to live by a core philosophy. One, that the approach is open to all to participate. Secondly, a keen respect in the publishers need to create an experience for users which allows them to engage further and build a relationship with publishers, says Richard Gingras, senior director of news and social products at Google. Third, respect for the publishers need to own the monetization of that experience. So all of these cut across our various efforts.

Read the full interview with Richard Gingras about the problems and future of AMP here.

Devansh Mehta

Advertisers

Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I dont know which half. The advertising scene has changed considerably since John Wannamaker, considered one of the forefathers of advertising, immortalized this frequently quoted cliche in the late 1900s. Advanced data collection and sharper analytics have changed that. Today, advertisers have a far greater ability to direct their ads to the customers most likely to buy them. Advertising is now a sciencewe know what works and what doesnt.

Unsurprisingly, Google and Facebook, each with warehouses of invaluable data, have emerged as the biggest winners of this trend. A Morgan Stanley study found that in the first quarter of this year, more than 85 percent of the $60 billion online ad industry was routed through these two technology giants.

Google, in particular, has emerged as the piping through which modern advertising travels. Like many other industries, the ad industry is being automated to a large degree, with 25 percentor $15 billionof digital ads coming through programmatic ads. This is an automated system of buying and sellings advertising that matches ads with available inventory across the Web, using algorithms. Through several strategic acquisitions and takeovers, as much as 73 percent of Googles ad buys now comes through programmatic ad buys, a market expected to have an average annual increase of 27 percent over the next four years.

All these technological shifts have been challenging for most media outlets, which arent typically very tech savvy. Newsrooms are now scrambling to get the technological capability to collect primary data on their readers. In the meantime, to avoid dependence on Google and Facebook, theyre forced to enter into partnerships with third party providers like Taboola that collect only general demographic information, which is not as valuable as the more personalized information that Google and Facebook provide.

The saving grace, however, is that advertisers, like media publishers, are wary of putting all their eggs in only a few baskets.

There is still a lot of merit in advertising with people that are not Facebook and Google, such as getting a specific audience in a specific mindset, said Ryan Engels, a director at Media Link, a consulting company with clients in the media and advertising world. Google and Facebook are essentially monopolies, it would only be worse if people actually came out and said they are the only place we want to go.If you put everything there, Google and Facebook have you.

Devansh Mehta

NowThis

If there is one news organization that has wholesale gambled its future on someone elses social platform, its the upstart video news production company called NowThis. Go to its website and something will immediately hit you: There is no homepage, only a bar of icons linking to Tumblr, Kik, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Vine, and Snapchat.

Oh, and a reminder to like and follow NowThis across those channels. Thats the strategy. The news is where you live, a message to readers says. That motto has been up since NowThis, a liberal, all-video news platform, nixed its homepage in early 2015. After Facebook began including the number of views on videos in the fall of 2014, NowThis saw its audience grow exponentiallyto 60 million views per month. For many news sites that have struggled to draw an audience to their videos, thats a shocking number.

These high numbers prompted NowThis to exclusively release content across digital social media platforms. Updated featuressuch as autoplayand a clear commitment to video from Facebook worked to the organizations advantage. As social platforms become increasingly motivated to work with publishersespecially with video content that keeps people engaged and staying longerFacebook has also developed tools to help publishers analyze the performance of their products and better understand audience engagement.

Without a legacy to maintain and a consistent formatalways video, always topical, always the same toneNowThis is exploding, hitting 1.5 billion views on Facebook in March 2016. While the ultimate authority over publishing rests with the platformsand that can be intimidatingsingle-focus media companies like NowThis stand to benefit from partnering across social channels.

Katie Ferguson

Audience

In the chaotic media industry, it is the consumers of news who occupy the drivers seat. Their ever-shifting behavior has all the other players chasing after them. Once, they liked getting information from newspapers, then it was their desktops, then Kindles, no, forget Kindles, now phones, and Facebook. First they consumed text. Now its video. To understand their behavior, think about three factors: speed, loyalty, and mobility. Lets take them in that order.

Speed: Consumers want their news fast and layered. No lag time and no obstacles. This thirst is quenched best by Facebook, Google, Apple, and tech giants who are devising fast-load pages like no other competitors. Not long ago, consumers would click an article on Facebook and it would load in a new browser within about eight seconds. Apparently, 70 percent of readers are less likely to abandon articles when content appears immediately. Sorry, legacy publications, this comes at a cost. Pull your hair out all you want. The speed of a loading bar, or in some cases, the spinning wheel, has begun to replace the publisher.

Loyalty: News sites better get used to a brutal fact: Most of their readers arent that loyal. They dont typically read stories by visiting homepages, and theyll only come back if enticed to do so. Once again, this puts them in the drivers seat. Chase, chase, chase is about all the publishers can do to keep in their audiences good graces. Traffic from referrals or social media have been steadily climbing the past two years. Facebook surpassed Google in 2015, doubling its rate to 43 percent within the span of half a year. In 2010, social media referral rates were at 10 percent. Who cares about brand, or the judgment of reporters and editors, so long as the algorithm is functioning to satisfaction? In other words, why log into a host site when its available by way of a platform like Facebook?

Mobility: Today, some 90 percent of users get their news off phones. After all, phones are everywherethe number of people who have a phone shot up wildly since 2011, when just 46 percent of the population used phones compared to 82 percent now. Clearly, the appeal of mobile is about, well, mobility. Its convenient. It may also be about the physical touch, the handheld size, and the quiet intimacy that a phone brings. All that pulls people toward phones and away from their desktops. Desktop use has sunk to 35 percent in the past two years. This is not to say its over for the dense and dusty desktop. To state the obvious, its long past time for publishers to start thinking mobile first and to stop hoping its a trend. The actual phones we use will keep changing, but their existence wont. And consumer appetite for better and better mobile content will only keep growing.

James K. Williamson

The Washington Post

Choices are tougher for a legacy brand like the Post. For established news organizations, the question of turning over content to platforms like Facebook becomes more intricate. Its one thing to shutter the homepage when youre a relative fledging like NowThis. Its quite another if youve controlled your own journalism for over a century and want to retain control over its publication. So instead, places like the Post and The New York Times are searching for a middle ground. Though The Washington Post is still investing in its own platforms and apps, it is increasingly utilizing others platforms, especially Facebooks. The site is a supermarket of contentleisure reading, straight information, brewing news, video, and morewith an enormous scale of distribution and a dependable number of eyes. As newer media companies like Vox, BuzzFeed, and The Huffington Post harness the potential of social media to their benefit, legacy organizations like the Post and the Times are scrambling to catch up. In the fall of 2014, the Post announced it would join Facebook Instant Articles, upping its previous engagement on a platform where its readers were already spending the majority of their screen time.

But Facebook is both friend and foe. Instant Articles present a new set of challenges: The slimmed down, streamlined articles pose questions about how the platform will host graphics-heavy content or specialized, signature journalism with more cumbersome digital components, such as data and interactives. Does Facebook care about press freedom the way news organizations have historically? Meanwhile, questions about algorithms abound, as do proper communications with partners. Once you lose control of publishing decisions, a lot can go out the window.

The stakes are high. But ultimately, legacy media organizations know that it is Facebook, Google, and even emerging social channels that have the best understanding of technology. And whether they like it or not, technology is the engine driving the media industry these days.

Katie Ferguson

*An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated that AMP content is hosted by Google. While the version that readers access is Googles cached copy, the hosting for all AMP articles is done by publishers.

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The Editors are the staffers of the Columbia Journalism Review.
Editors Note: This post was produced as part of a graduate course on media writing and storytelling taught by the editors of Columbia Journalism Review. It is an extended interview that accompanies this story

Mehta: So tell me a little about AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages), and why Google is investing so much time and money into it.

Gingras: Let me start with background. We began engaging with publishers early last year, to basically assess the state of the ecosystem, understand the challenges and see what we in collaborating with publishers could do to address these opportunities and challenges. AMP is the most active open-source project weve ever been involved with; theres a massive collaboration of publishers around the world. Every day, we are seeing over half a million articles produced in AMP over 20,000 domains from 30 countries around the world.

When it comes to the World Wide Web, heres where publishers and Google have a very common objective, which is that we both depend on a healthy Web for business. For Google, without a rich ecosystem of the Web, then Google search, for instance, has less relevance and value. Similarly, publishers as well require an open ecosystem like the Web to have an opportunity to build the audiences they want to build. So the truth is that AMP is existentially as important to Google as it is to publishers. That is why we are doing this.

Mehta: How does AMP help the cause of the open Web?

Gingras: When it came with the Web, there were two key issues. One is that the performance of the Web is not what we would like it to be. Its simply too slow, and has become increasingly slow over the last several years. And, secondly, is the situation with adstoo many ads that are far more annoying than they are compelling, obviously then causing users to reach for ad blockers.

These two issues have significant secondary effects on the ad side. Obviously, if ads arent working, then monetization wont work for publishers. With regard to speed, the secondary effect was really creating a greater opportunity for proprietary platforms such as Facebook and Snapchat to have even more leverage over publishers in terms of how they take and seek audiences. Clearly, Instant Articles was an understandable effort on their part to address the speed issue, but by having publishers put their content inside Facebooks environment.

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Mehta: But how is AMP any different (from Facebook and Snapchat)? I recently read a Wired article (Googles AMP is speeding the Web by changing how it works) that said when you are accessing AMP articles through Google search, its Googles cached content that is coming up, and when you share these articles the person who clicks on the shared article from AMP comes up to a Google website. So youre talking about how Facebook and Snapchat are within their own ecosystem, but doesnt Google have the same plans with AMP?

Gingras: No, not at all. This is hugely different, and I cannot emphasize this enough. Because AMP, just like any other HTML page, they control the content, they control the business model, whether that be via advertising or via subscriptions. There is zero requirement that they use Google ad systems in any way. No revenue sharing; all the revenue is theirs. So a key objective of AMP is indeed to make sure that publishers could control content, control business models, and their own destinies.

Now, caching is something that has long been done by various platforms, including Google. But the cache is a complete copy of the webpage of that publisher. The business model, the ads, do not get affected by any of the caching. All the caching does is make the page fast. And if the publisher updates the page with new information, that would get reflected in the cache almost instantly as well. So the caching is is done for additional performance purposes and has no impact on publisher controls. No impact on the publishers business model.

Mehta: Im reading out the wired article, quoting directly from it.

Thats a big change in how the Google search engine works. Historically, Google has acted as an index that points people away from Google to other websites. With its AMP search results, Google is amassing content on its own servers and keeping readers on Google. In that sense, Googles use of AMP is similar to Facebooks Instant Articles service, to which its often compared.

So want to know about the technical point they are making, is it a change from when Google was more as an index or gatekeeper to the Web, and is that feeding into the insecurity publishers have when it comes to losing control over their platforms?

Gingras: I wanna say that again: This is entirely inaccurate. The representation within Wired, absolutely inaccurate. The article is completely controlled by the publishers. Its their thing, they can do what they will.

Let me give you a specific example of how these things are different. The monetization is all theirs, the ad revenue is all theirs, there is no requirements that they use any Google ad platforms.

Every publisher, when they get a click from Google or Facebook, they want the user to spend more time on their website. They do that, obviously, by enticing readers with additional links to additional articles. Its their webpage to do that, and we encourage them to do that. Thats something cant be done with FacebookInstant Articles is their format, dictated by them, with their rules.

AMP is open-source format, much like HTML, no rules about templates, no rules about business models. No deals involved. So please do not make the mistake of concluding that caching changes any of that, because it does not. This is all about how can we make sure that the Web is as compelling as it needs to be. Whether thats other peoples websites, whether thats people accessing an article that might be shared with them on Facebook, its about making content instant everywhere, not just on Google surfaces. Want to make that very, very clear.

Mehta: So the Wired article is misleading, the way they have written it.

Gingras: Its completely misleading, and based on what I have heard from you, its actually technically inaccurate.

Mehta: Reading again from the Wired article:

If readers decide to share a link to an AMP page theyve clicked on through a Google search, the link points to Google.com (for example, google.com/amp/yoursite.com/yourpage/amp), not to your site.

Thats flat out wrong, is that correct?

Gingras: Well, again, what thats pointing to is a cache of the article, nothing new in caching. So its not wrong to say that article is indeed rendered from the cache, but that does not change the core principles that the page is controlled by the publisher, its content is controlled by publisher with respect to business model, completely.

Mehta: Im also looking at a Wall Street Journal article (Google tests feature that lets media companies, marketers publish directly to search results). There is a new feature allowing media companies to publish content on Google and allow it to appear instantly on search results. Reading out from it:

Google has built a Web-based interface through which posts can be formatted and uploaded directly to its systems. The posts can be up to 14,400 characters in length and can include links and up to 10 images or videos. The pages also include options to share them via Twitter, Facebook or email. Each post is hosted by Google itself on a dedicated page, and appears in a carousel in results pages for searches related to their authors for up to a week.

So Google has said they are keeping this experiment separate from AMP, but looking down the road and going back to the concern of media publishers which are seeing all these experiments by social media websites to host the content directly, does this play into their concerns at all?

Gingras: On all the things that we are doing, we try to live by a core philosophy, one where the approach is open to all to participate. Secondly, a keen respect in the publishers need to create an experience for users which allows them to engage further. They build a relationship with publishers. Third, respect for publishers need to own the monetization of that experience. So all of these cut across the various efforts.

Mehta: So, basically, the answer is keeping publishers in charge of the money flow. So how would these experiments of Google, whether AMP or new feature, how is the core philosophy different? Google is also moving to a setup where they directly host content.

Gingras: As I said, important part here, is whats the philosophy in terms of openness of the effort and respect for publishers being in charge of their content, in control of their business models, and ultimately in control of their destinies. So whether its an effort to help us get the freshest content or whether its an approach like AMP to architect the Web for speed, we want to do all of it with that philosophy in mind.

Mehta: Earlier, Google supported the responsive Web design, while AMP requires newsrooms to invest in a second code base. So how much of an extra investment, like newsrooms are already struggling, so how much extra investment is there for AMP, how seamlessly can it be integrated with their responsive Web design?

Gingras: First of all, publishers today are increasingly being asked to create custom implementation for various platforms, whether it be Facebook or Snapchat. The objective of AMP was to reduce that, come up with an environment that allows sites to be so fast that content distribution is not necessary. Produce it once, in one format, and have it used everywhere. Thats the objective.

And the truth is that AMP is very, very easy to adoptand, by the way, responsive design is part of the mix. WordPress, for instance, already supports AMP in all their websites, which is about 25 percent of websites. In fact, one of the things publishers are looking for AMP to do, is to be that common format that allows them to do compelling, responsive-design websites that are super fast for desktop, for mobile, even the content expressed within their native ads.

Mehta: The vice president of The Weather Channel, Sheri Bachstein, was quoted in an AMP report (by eMarketer) as saying that it is an extra investment and they need to look at ROI (return of investment) and then decide whether to invest in the new code base. The exact quote:

The challenge for publishers like us who have invested in responsive Web design with a single code base is that AMP requires a second code base. We have to understand what the ROI [return on investment] would be from additional traffic vs. managing a second code base.

Is there a number on how many extra resources to switch, from earlier responsive Web design and new code base. Is that affecting the newsroom, their calculations?

Gingras: So again, want to reemphasize this, AMP does not introduce new technology into the mix. It is basically a re-architecture of existing Web technology, and once its adopted and implemented within the content management system that a publisher uses, their work should be done. Which is why WordPress joining is so significant. AMP supports responsive design, so its not a dramatic shift.

And for small publishers, that was a core objective as well. Big publishers have more resources, they are more able to deal with and work with proprietary platforms, and so on and so forth. Small publishers dont have the ability, which is why we built AMP the way we did, why we made sure WordPress was supporting AMP the day it was announced.

Secondly, understand the issue we are talking about. One thing I was asked a long time ago is how fast does content have to be? My answer was simple: If its not instantaneous, youre losing engagement with every additional second it takes to load a page. So this is core to any publishers objective. How do they make the sites that are compelling for users; how do they make those sites accommodate advertising that is respectful of users and also helps build their bottom line?

Mehta: Anything else I should focus on or know about when it comes to AMP?

Gingras: No, I think thats largely it. With AMP specifically, I would say that it addresses the Web itself, not just content on different platforms. The Web right now is failing us and we need to, as I often say, make the Web great again.

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Devansh Mehta is a student in a course on media writing and storytelling, taught by the editors of Columbia Journalism Review.
During my first decade of practicing law in Texas, I enjoyed a good professional relationship with Texas Governor Greg Abbott. In those days, Abbott, who is my age and earned his law degree one year after me, was a young defense attorney with the Houston law firm of Butler Binion, and was opposite me in many a subrogation case. He was a great track and field athlete during college and enjoyed running. He might also be the unluckiest man on earth. On July 14, 1984, while running along a sidewalk in the upscale Houston suburb of River Oaks, a 75-foot Post Oak tree fell on him, crushing his lower spine and instantly rendering him a paraplegic. He has been in a wheelchair ever since.

Abbott sued the homeowner (prominent divorce attorney, Roy Moore) whose tree fell on him, along with a tree service company (Davey Tree Expert Company). Moore testified that he was surprised to learn that the big tree had rotted from the inside. Abbotts lawyer, Don Riddle, alleged that Moore and the tree company were negligent for failing to warn people about the dangerous tree or to take action to prevent it from falling. Basal decay in a Post Oak tree cannot be corrected by fertilization, but that is what Davey had recommended. According to news reports from 2002, Abbott won a confidential settlement of more than $10 million. Ironically, Abbott sat on the Texas Supreme Court during the years that the Court implemented significant tort reform measures in Texas.

I never forgot Abbotts experience, and today, our clients send us at least one or two of these types of insurance claims (property and bodily injury) weekly to evaluate for subrogation potential. Damage resulting from falling limbs or trees remains one of the most overlooked areas of third-party liability and subrogation. They are also the most poorly investigated. Whether the owner of a tree that has fallen is a private citizen or a municipality, subrogation professionals must be aware of available tort remedies and be prepared to properly and promptly investigate and dispatch the appropriate expert to document the condition of a fallen tree before the critical evidence reaches the chipper.

Private Owner

While the law of premises liability varies from state-to-state, the law generally is that in order to hold a property owner liable for damage caused by falling limbs or trees located on an owners property, the owner must have actual or constructive notice of the risk. This can be actual notice (e.g., they are advised by local tree company to cut it down or portions of the tree have already fallen) or constructive notice (dangerous condition is obvious and existed for such a length of time that the owner should have known). In finding negligence, courts and juries will look at a variety of factors including the amount of time the condition existed, the size of the premises, the type of condition and when a reasonable person would have discovered the condition. It would be prudent for landowners to conduct periodic inspections of trees located on their property to ensure the safety of others and surrounding property. While the early common law was generally that owners were not liable for physical harm caused to persons not on their property, even if the conditions may be highly dangerous or inconvenient to neighbors, things have evolved. Today, most owners have a duty to exercise reasonable care regarding natural conditions on their land which lies adjacent to a highway or waterway.

Public/Government Owner

Trees on public property also rot. State and local government enjoy sovereign immunity, except when waived by state law. For many municipalities, there is a duty to make periodic visual inspections of trees on public property. The inspections should be done by qualified people (e.g., certified tree inspectors). They usually have a duty to remove obvious dangers and do preventive maintenance, and may be held liable for foreseeable harm that could have been prevented. While the laws governing governmental liability for falling trees also varies, some states (e.g., Illinois) provide that a municipality does not enjoy absolute immunity from liability, but is liable only for willful and wanton conduct. This burden can be met by showing that the municipality was informed about a dangerous condition and knew that other persons had previously been damaged because of the dangerous condition.

In other jurisdictions, such as Minnesota, only conduct of a policy-making (discretionary) nature is entitled to immunity. A citys policy to trim trees along high-traffic roads before trimming trees on low-traffic roads is an example of an action that gives the city immunity. In determining where or how to trim trees along roadways, the city has to make choices based on its budget and other factors. At the same time, a city employee who negligently trims or an inspector who doesnt recognize an obviously-rotten tree that poses a hazard, may subject the municipality to liability.

Investigating Tree Damage Subrogation

Unsafe trees often give little indication of decay or instability. Rot tends to grow from the inside out, and trees can easily become unstable long before there are any visible indications of trouble. In investigating these losses, we must focus on showing that the defendant should have discovered the trees condition and the extent of the defendants duty to inspect trees for rot and other signs of interior decay. This includes both objective evidence such as warnings from neighbors or tree services, as well as more subjective evidence such as the obvious nature of the trees deterioration. Photographs of the tree should be taken and portions of it preserved for later review and use at trial.

Engage the services of an inexpensive arborist and ask him or her to document the trees condition. Warn the property owner immediately after the loss not to dispose of or move the evidence until an investigation can be conducted. Engage subrogation counsel to advise you on the burden of proof you face in the particular jurisdiction you are dealing with.

Last fall, the top of a London Plane tree fell on to a group of chess players in New Yorks Bryant Park, injuring five people, including one child, and leading to a host of subrogation opportunities. The same day, a tree fell in Charleston, South Carolina, destroying a section of a home. These are not rare or unusual instances.

When a tree falls in the woods, it does make a loud sound. When it falls in populated areas, it can be heard throughout the claims department and should be aggressively pursued for any and all subrogation potential.
A lawyer filing suit over a fatal Amtrak crash near Philadelphia blamed a colossal miscommunication for the deaths of two rail workers killed when a train traveling 106 mph struck a backhoe on the same track.

Lawyers filed a negligence lawsuit June 2 on behalf of the family of one victim, 61-year-old Joe Neal Carter Jr. The Wilmington, Delaware, man was working overtime on a Sunday morning and operating the backhoe when the Amtrak train struck him.

How could the operator of a scheduled train traveling at 106 mph not know of work being performed on the same tracks ahead? lawyer Robert Mongeluzzi asked after filing the lawsuit in Philadelphia Common Pleas Court.

The precise cause of the April 3 crash remains under investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board. However, Mongeluzzi said he hoped to determine how a colossal miscommunication  killed two men. The other person killed was Carters supervisor, 59-year-old Peter Adamovich of Lincoln University, Pennsylvania.

Mongeluzzi, along with fellow Philadelphia attorney Thomas Kline, represent Carters two adult children in the negligence lawsuit. They also represent 34 victims of the May 2015 Amtrak derailment that killed eight people and injured more than 200.

In that derailment, the speeding train jumped the tracks on a sharp curve shortly after leaving Philadelphia for New York. The NTSB concluded last month that the engineer was distracted by word that a nearby commuter train had been hit by a rock. The agency also said a contributing factor was the railroad industrys decades-long failure to fully install positive train control, GPS-based technology that can automatically slow trains that are going over the speed limit.

Mongeluzzi and Kline believe similar safety systems could have averted the April crash just south of Philadelphia that killed the rail workers.

Ten deaths in 10 1/2 months on Amtraks rails in Philadelphia alone, Mongeluzzi said at a June 2 news conference. How many more will it take before Amtrak wakes up and realizes that safety starts at the top and safety on the rails affects both employees and passengers?

Amtrak spokeswoman Christina Leeds said the company cannot comment on pending litigation.

The southbound train was heading from New York to Savannah, Georgia, when it struck the backhoe in Chester at about 8 a.m. The impact derailed the lead engine of the train, which was carrying more than 300 passengers and seven crew members. More than 40 people were hospitalized, most with minor injuries.

The train engineer had just five seconds to brake after seeing something up ahead on the track, investigators have said. The Federal Railway Administration has suggested the crash followed a breakdown in communications and issued a directive ordering Amtrak to retrain rail workers on basic safety rules.

Carter had worked for Amtrak for 40 years. Kline said he lived his life on the rails and, unfortunately, lost his life there as well.

The suit was filed by his daughter Montia Carter, of Richmond, Virginia.

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
The Casualty Actuarial Society (CAS) has selected four universities to receive the 2016 CAS University Award, an honor created to recognize schools doing exemplary work in preparing students for a career in the property/casualty insurance industry. The schools honored in the programs inaugural year include Illinois State University, University of California, Santa Barbara, University of Connecticut, and University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

The CAS encourages universities to expose their students to opportunities in the property/casualty insurance industry. According to CAS, historically at the university level actuarial students awareness of the property/casualty industry at had been limited; however, with the growth in interest of actuarial careers, as well as the increasing demand for the skills of credentialed property/casualty actuaries, schools have had success incorporating property/casualty curriculum into their programs.

The selection process for the first CAS University Award Program considered nominations of 24 schools throughout North America, Asia and Australia. Schools shared the ways they are exposing their students to the property/casualty insurance industry in the areas of curriculum, research, industry engagement and innovation.

Winners of the 2016 CAS University Award Program were determined by a panel of judges from companies across the property/casualty insurance industry.

The selection process was a challenge because there are so many schools doing really exciting work to prepare our future members, said Chris Coleianne, a fellow of the CAS who chaired the CAS University Award Program.

The four winning schools will be recognized at the 2016 CAS Annual Meeting, taking place November 13-16, 2016 in Orlando.

The CAS plans to conduct its University Award Program annually.
Global disasters led to at least $7 billion in claims during May as insurers aid the recovery process following wildfires, floods, and storms, according to Impact Forecasting, Aon Benfields catastrophe model development team.

An historic wildfire caused catastrophic damage in the Canadian city of Fort McMurray throughout the month of May, becoming the costliest natural disaster in the countrys history with insured losses estimated to be in excess of C$4.0 billion (USD3.1 billion), said the latest edition of Impact Forecastings monthly Global Catastrophe Recap report.

The fire roared through more than 580,000 hectares (1.43 million acres) of land and destroyed at least 10 percent of Fort McMurray, including more than 2,400 homes and other structures, the report said, noting that insured losses included physical damage and business interruption.

The severity of the wildfire damage in Fort McMurray is an unfortunate reminder of how significant insurable losses can be from the peril, commented Adam Podlaha, global head of Impact Forecasting.

The situation in Canada has already allowed for a strong and cooperative response from both the government and the insurance industry as residents and business owners seek to assess the damage and begin the recovery process. Since this is just the sixth individual global wildfire to surpass the billion-dollar threshold for insurers, there is not a lot of precedent for a fire event of this magnitude, he added.

Storm Elvira

Meanwhile, convective storms and widespread flooding from a storm dubbed Elvira swept across parts of northern Europe between late May and early June, killing at least 17 people, the report said.

Most damage was seen in Germany, France, Austria, Poland and Belgium where floods hit many major metropolitan regions, including Paris, it noted.

Insurance industry associations in France (AFA) and Germany (GDV) preliminarily estimated combined minimum claims payouts to exceed 2.0 billion ($2.3 billion). Tentative overall economic damage was estimated to approach 4.0 billion ($4.6 billion).

Five outbreaks of severe convective storms hit the United States during May when tornadoes, straight-line winds, and large hail affected parts of the Plains, Midwest, and Mississippi Valley. Storm-related flooding also caused major damage in portions of Texas during the latter part of the month. Total aggregated insured losses were estimated to exceed $1.0 billion.

In Asia, Cyclone Roanu brought torrential rainfall to Sri Lanka, eastern India, Bangladesh, Myanmar, and China during May. Widespread flooding and landslides ensued and at least 105 people were killed in Sri Lanka alone. Nearly 125,000 homes and structures were damaged or destroyed across all five countries. The estimated cost of reconstruction was up to 250 billion Sri Lanka rupees ($1.7 billion), though insured losses were substantially less given low insurance penetration.

Natural hazard events to occur elsewhere during May include:

Five separate instances of flooding impacted China as aggregated economic losses topped $1.5 billion. Most of the damage was attributed to agricultural interests.

Other major flood and landslide events in May were reported in parts of Hispaniola, Kenya, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Rwanda, Ethiopia, India and Yemen.

Tropical Storm Bonnie brought heavy rainfall to portions of the Carolinas and Georgia in the United States at the end of May and into June. Total economic losses were expected to be minimal.

Earthquakes in Ecuador and China caused damages to thousands of homes and a winter weather outbreak in northern China caused damage to crops totaling $61 million.

Source: Aon Benfield
Disturbance, North Rocky River Drive: The owner of Delta Blue Seafood & Barbeque, 819 North Rocky River, called police at about 6 p.m. June 6 because six girls were trying to start a fight with his 16-year-old daughter outside the restaurant.

By the time police arrived, the girls were gone. Officers saw them running eastbound behind Wild Senoritas on Front Street. The girls denied attempting to start a fight. Police told them to stay away from Delta Blue.

Petty theft, East Bagley Road: Police are trying to identify and arrest a man who stole several boxes of gum June 7 from Walgreens, 6 East Bagley Road.

Store security video showed the man enter the store at about 3:30 p.m. After grabbing the gum from the candy aisle, he walked out of the store, stepped into an older gold station wagon, which was rusted and dented, and drove away.

Theft, Sheldon Road: Five air conditioners were stolen between 3 a.m. June 4 and 3 p.m. June 6 from a storage shed outside Berea Alzheimer's Care Center, 49 Sheldon.

There were no signs of a break-in. The lock to the shed was missing.

Petty theft, French Street: A wallet was stolen late June 5 or early June 6 from an unlocked Pontiac parked in a driveway.

A woman found the wallet in the victim's driveway and returned the wallet to the victim. Nothing was missing from the wallet, but police advised the victim to contact her financial institutions to determine if unauthorized withdrawals had been made from her accounts, or if unauthorized charges had been made.

Marijuana possession, Crosby Street: A Berea woman, 43, was arrested at about 12:20 p.m. June 4 after police found marijuana in her Toyota Corolla.

Police stopped the woman's car because it had fictitious license plates. The marijuana was in a mason jar in the car's center console.

Marijuana paraphernalia possession, Seminary Street: A Berea man was arrested at about 2:30 a.m. June 8 after police caught him with marijuana pipes.

An officer checked the man's license plate while he was driving southbound on Front Street and learned that his driver's registration had expired. The man then turned east onto East Bagley and went the wrong way onto Seminary.

The man admitted having two marijuana pipes in his car and a marijuana grinder in his pocket.

If you would like to comment on this story, please visit Thursday's courts and crime comments section.
Joe-Langa_Josh-Foreman.jpg

Joe Langa and Joshua Foreman celebrated their shared graduation together. Langa, set to retire when Joshua was admitted to Holy Name High School delayed his retirement to help the blind student navigate his High School years. Foreman graduated with honors and will attend Ohio State University.

(Courtesy Joe Langa)

MAPLE HEIGHTS, Ohio - In 1971, Joe Langa first walked into Holy Name High School. Last week -- 45 years later -- he walked across a stage to receive his diploma.

It was his second diploma from Holy Name. This one doesn't declare he has "met all of the requirements for graduation." This one is emblazoned in big, bold letters that simply say "Thank You!"

Langa was voted by cleveland.com readers this week as the May 2016 Person of the Month winner. He was one of nine candidates nominated by readers and staff writers at cleveland.com for having done something extraordinary during the month. In the final hours of voting, Langa sprinted from third to win the contest.

Langa beat out Adoption Network Cleveland founder Betsie Norris, who finished second and Morgan Stock of Amherst, who collected 15 55-gallon drums of pull tabs for Ronald McDonald House. It was the closest contest to date this year.

Langa started his high school career in the fall of 1971. He was an average high schooler for the next four years: studying, sports, practical jokes. His first Holy Name diploma came in June, 1975.

He took a four-year sabbatical while he earned a college degree, then snapped up his first "real" teaching job as an interim English teacher at another school for a teacher on maternity leave. He spent that semester hoping to hear from Holy Name, with whom he had applied for a full-time teaching gig.

The call came and Langa joined the Holy Name faculty in the fall of 1981, teaching English and drama.

Four years ago, he opted for early retirement. But before he could make his exit, Langa was called to the admissions office. A prospective student had been blinded by illness. The school wasn't sure they could accommodate him, so they asked if Langa would like to repeat his high school career.

A 45-minute meeting with the student, Joshua Foreman, and his parents sealed the deal and Langa went back to school as a "freshman" that fall.

Langa had long been interested in "The Miracle Worker" story of Helen Keller. He taught himself sign language and considered volunteering with individuals with disabilities once he walked away from teaching.

"I didn't have to think much about it," said Langa. "It was as if God had a plan for us. This way, I got to spend another four years at Holy Name and still be of service to someone."

Langa and Foreman developed a fast friendship. Langa learned to anticipate needs and when to give Foreman some space. Foreman learned to ask for help when it was needed and tell his friend when it was time to back away.

Foreman used a guide dog for most of his senior year, with Langa stepping in when asked.

But it was side-by-side through the informal celebrations, Baccalaureate and the graduation ceremony itself that Foreman once again took Langa's arm to be led through the pomp and circumstance. Foreman received a braille diploma and Langa received his, and Holy Name's, formal declaration of gratitude.

Langa proudly shows off the photo taken of him and Foreman at the ceremony - a gift from the Foreman family in a silver frame engraved with "God gives us rainbows to remind us of hope."

Langa is now retired from his "rainbow" career.

Langa will be entered into cleveland.com's 2016 Person of the Year contest. Monthly winners for 2016 so far have been:
marietta-river-leisure.jpg

The Mid-Ohio Valley along the Ohio River hopes to attract new industries and supporting businesses to Ohio River region because of an over-abundance of very low cost natural gas. Shale Crescent USA is spearheading the campaign to attract heavy industry. The pitch also includes selling the region's natural landscape and recreational assets.

(Shale Crescent USA )

MARIETTA -- Five years after Ohio Gov John Kasich's energy summit concluded shale gas production would create a new manufacturing boom, business leaders in the Mid-Ohio Valley have launched a private campaign to make it happen.

Shale Crescent USA is a new privately funded effort, working with Ohio, West Virginia and Pennsylvania shale gas producers as well other industries, businesses and labor unions to market the Mid-Ohio Valley to heavy industry.

Shale Crescent USA's inaugural event at the Peoples Bank Theatre drew 750 people and a buzz of news coverage -- just days after Shell Chemical finally announced that it would build a "cracker," a kind of refinery to produce polyethylene from ethane gas, in western Pennsylvania, just across the state line from Youngstown. There are two other cracker projects being considered for the region, including one in Belmont County on the site of a shutdown FirstEnergy power plant.

James Tressel, president of Youngstown State University served as the keynote speaker at the Shale Crescent USA launch event.

The message was simple enough: The region now has the lowest priced natural gas in the industrialized world, plenty of fresh water for industry, easy transportation on the Ohio River, and an eager workforce backed by a network of tech schools.

Also, the region is close -- a day's drive -- to half of the U.S. population. The Ohio River barge system, a parallel rail system and good highways add to the competitive edge.

But it's the surplus of gas, both in the ground and being produced daily, that now give the valley a huge competitive edge. And it's not going to change.

"By the year 2020, we are looking at accounting for 35% of total U.S. Natural Gas Production. This is a world-class asset for any energy intensive industry," Dr. Benjamin Thomas, Marietta College associate professor of petroleum engineering and geology, said.

"This region is distinctively poised for greatness," said Tressel. "There is a unique alignment in the Mid-Ohio Valley based upon the abundance and low cost of natural gas in the region, access to water for processing and transportation, as well as an educated and eager work force. The local business community, regional economic development partners, non-profit and non- governmental agencies as well as financial and educational institutions are leading this charge. They are on mission to make Shale Crescent USA known regionally, nationally, and internationally as a great place to conduct business."

In a press conference earlier in the day, Jerry James, director of Shale Crescent USA and president of Artex Oil, one of the largest oil and gas producers in Ohio, explained the historic shift that the shale gas boom has created.

"Historically, natural gas has flowed from the Gulf of Mexico and from out West and has moved north. Now the epicenter of natural gas production is right here in Ohio, West Virginia and Pennsylvania," he said.

"So for somebody looking to locate a plant for the last 75 years, the right answer was the Gulf of Mexico. We now have the opportunity to compete with those areas. We now have the lowest natural gas prices in the industrialized world."

Wally Kandel, senior vice president and Marietta site manager for SOLVAY, a specialty polymer company, said the "abundance of fresh water" from the Ohio River makes the region especially attractive to petrol-chemical companies such as SOLVAY.

"SOLVAY operates in 53 countries, and there are many places where we operate that are really stressed on being able to have enough water," he said.

The abundance of low-priced natural gas and related chemicals such as ethane flowing from Ohio's Utica wells also gives the region an edge over Asian and other foreign polymer operations because they start with naphtha, an oil derivative, which therefore reflects the price volatility of oil, said Kandel.

For a look at the pitch Shale Crescent USA is making, click here.

A parallel effort by technology schools and Marietta College is also under way, because the success of the development campaign will also depend on the ability of new companies to attract and train skilled labor, both from within and outside the region.

Iryna Lendel, a Cleveland State University research associate, professor and Interim Director of the Center for Economic Development, said attracting labor has reasonable chance to succeed.

"The market for engineers is national, and they will attract people from the national market for comparable pay and the job opportunities. The market of skilled labor would be toughest, that is probably [because] blue collar labor is not so easy to relocate. But I think there would be a fair number of people eager to come home, those who left because there were not job opportunities."

Lendel and Andrew Thomas, an attorney and executive-in-residence at CSU's Energy Policy, co-authored a series of reports in 2015 on the economic opportunities the shale gas development holds for the region.

The study projected that by 2020, the region -- Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia -- would have such a surplus of ethane, which must be separated from methane before natural gas can be used as a fuel, that it would only make economic sense to build ethane refineries here rather than try to ship the volatile ethane to crackers on the Gulf Coast.

And the crackers would be just the beginning of a petrochemical industrial boom.

The ethylene and other engineered molecules that they produce are the feed stock for the petrochemical industry, which already employs nearly 74,000 people in Ohio, another 50,000 in Pennsylvania and nearly 11,000 in West Virginia, or more than two-thirds of the entire U.S. petrochemical workforce.

The study and analysis were commissioned by the Regional Economic Competitiveness Strategy (RECS) Shale Committee with support from the Economic Growth Foundation and Jobs Ohio. Click here to download a copy of the report.
Strongsville Market District Store Front.jpg

Giant Eagle is hiring for more than 300 openings at hiring events on Saturday, June 11.

(Photo courtesy of Giant Eagle)

CLEVELAND, Ohio - Giant Eagle is hosting hiring events Saturday to fill more than 300 job openings at stores through Northeast Ohio.

The positions for which there are openings include: cake decorators, meat cutters, grocery and produce clerks and cashiers.

Hiring events are scheduled for 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the following locations:

Willoughby Commons Giant Eagle

36475 Euclid Ave.

Willoughby, Ohio 44094

(440) 946-1875

Fairview Park Giant Eagle

21593 Lorain Road

Fairview Park, Ohio 44126

(440) 356-3666

Fairlawn Giant Eagle

2775 W. Market St.

Fairlawn, Ohio 44333

(330) 836-1504

Solon Market District

34310 Aurora Road

Solon, Ohio 44139

(440) 248-4440

Broadview Heights Giant Eagle

4343 Royalton Road

Broadview Heights, Ohio 44147

(440) 526-1547

Community Center Giant Eagle

1201 Doral Drive

Youngstown, Ohio 44514

Howland Giant Eagle

8202 E. Market St.

Warren, Ohio 44484

Job seekers are encouraged to apply in advance of the hiring event: www.jobs.gianteagle.com/supermarket-hiring-event
MORELAND HILLS, Ohio -- Burglary, Wychwood Drive: A resident reported that someone took her backpack from her garage sometime between May 31 and the morning of June 4. Information was taken for a report and the investigation is continuing.

Theft, Chagrin Boulevard: A resident in an apartment complex reported on the afternoon of June 5 that jewelry had been stolen, with additional information being gathered.

Animal complaint, Wiltshire Road: After a neighbor complained about a dog barking at a house where a red truck was parked, police spoke with a resident who apologized and said that the dog was being sequestered in the hallway while a worker was in her house, and that she would close the windows now and the next time Roto-Rooter was there.

Power outages, various locations: Electric company crews were notified of numerous problems with power in the area on the afternoon of June 5, including an outage along Route 91 from Jackson Road north, a blown transformer at Brandon Court and Chagrin Boulevard, as well as uprooted trees hanging on power lines.

The initial report came in as a utility pole on fire, then smoking -- believed to be the Brandon Court transformer.

Departmental information, Mill Hollow Drive: During the June 5 power outage, a police agency was unable to contact a resident who had left her purse at Starr Farms in Huntsburg, Geauga County.

Fire alarm, Chagrin Boulevard: Police and firefighters responded to complications at Flour Restaurant caused by the June 5 power outage, which left some smoke in the kitchen.

Overdose, Jackson Road: Police and a rescue squad responded on the afternoon of June 5 to a resident where a man, 54, had apparently OD'd on heroin -- on the heels of a similar incident two days earlier.

Escort, SOM Center Road: Officers assisted the Cuyahoga County Sheriff's Office with a motorcycle escort from Miles Road to Route 87 late in the morning on June 4.

Attempt to locate, Chagrin Boulevard: Police assisted officers in Pepper Pike in finding a girl, 16, who ran away from the New Directions drug treatment facility late on June 2. She was found near Lander and Miles roads and turned back over within about an hour.

Noise complaint, Giles Road: Police responded to a complaint of loud music being played near Chagrin Boulevard on June 1, where the resident agreed to turn it down.

Soliciting complaint, Hunting Trail: Police checked on one individual wearing a lanyard and going door-to-door selling magazines, saying he represented a youth group around 8:15 p.m. on June 1. Police were unable to locate the subject.

If you would like to discuss the police blotter, please visit our crime and courts comments page.
It's that time again! Jim Cramer rang the lightning round bell, which means he gave his take on caller favorite stocks at rapid speed:



Lumber Liquidators : "Keep looking but don't go in there, because we are going to Lowe's, LOW."

Western Digital : "Keep wondering, but don't pull the trigger. Why? Because that group is just really, really difficult to own. That may be hte best of a bad lot. I prefer to see you in NVIDIA."

A.O. Smith Corp : "That is a winner my friend. Heating, ventilation and air conditioning. I got this guy James Gentile who writes at RealMoney.com. He has turned me on to this and many of the other American industrials."

Micron Technology : "I think Micron is still part of a big dead cat bounce. Why do I say that? Because Applied Materials reported a big buyback after the close that could drive the semiconductor group again. I prefer NVIDIA and in that particular segment I like Lam Research, LRCX."

Baxalta Inc: "We are ringing the register because that means it's done. Baxalta is done. And congratulations if you did it."

KEYW Holding Corp : "I'm worried about cybersecurity stocks after Palo Alto can't maintain the altitude. Let me look at this one individually, but the group has concerned me ever since the Palo Alto. And the fact that Cyberark, which makes money has been going down despite the fact that it's got very important proprietary software."

Integrated Device Technology Inc : "The last time the CEO came on the show, I thought he acquitted himself well. The previous quarter had been bad, but then they came back. I think that that was just a one-off situation."

Cal-Maine Foods Inc : "This is an egg company. This is very surprising because this is one of the top five most heavily shorted stocks in the market today. Isn't that amazing? This is a battlefield stock. I don't play on battlegrounds, I say don't buy."

Metlife Inc : "No, we have two insurers we recommend. We recommend Travelers and most important we think Chubb is the best one to buy."

Chemours Company : "We caught a very big trade in Chemours and then we said take it off the table. And then subsequently, Andrew Left [Citron Research] has been saying some negative things about it. Andrew does a lot of work and I've got to tell you, I don't wan to be on the other side of his trade."
watch now

How did a country with a relatively small population, living in an area only a little bigger than Indiana, become a popular culture giant, influencing global habits from hairstyles to fried chicken? Euromonitor's experts have studied South Korea's outsize impact on consumer goods, discovering the strategies that pushed the Asian nation to the forefront of cool and supported the sales of its consumer products. Here's how Korean FMCG (fast-moving consumer goods) companies built their brand cachet:

Celebrity endorsement

Product placements in trendsetting Korean dramas has helped boost sales of everything from food such as fried chicken to beauty products. "The most unique and interesting strategy for South Korea manufacturers and government is South Korea's pop-culture, from the hit song, 'Gangnam Style' to the latest popular drama series, 'Descendents of the Sun'," wrote Singapore-based Euromonitor International research manager Warangkana Anuwong. "K-Pop has increased awareness regarding Korean products and lifestyles among audiences around the world. This soft approach has helped the Korean government set up companies and brands to succeed in other countries, since consumer demand is already prevalent globally,"



International expansion

Asian countries are the top choices for South Korean companies to expand into, with emerging market Vietnam topping the list as only few international brands have set up shop in the Southeast Asian nation so far. About 33 percent of the 400 South Korean companies Euromonitor surveyed said they had expanded their brands into Vietnam.

South Korea's rise to pop culture cool is backed by heavy investment by the government. Just last week, president Park Geun-hye attended a K-pop concert as part of a state visit to France. Thibault Camus | AFP | Getty Images

While economic giant China ranks second on the list for expansion targets, with 28 percent of 400 companies expanding into the country, its market size in terms of value terms dwarfs other markets, noted Euromonitor. Other developing economies also feature heavily in the top 10 list for South Korean companies. These include Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, Malaysia and Russia. South Korean companies are also moving into the U.S. and Europe. In 2015, Samsung phones had a 8 percent lead in the share of retail volumes over Apple 's iPhone in Western Europe.

Innovation

South Korean companies invest heavily in product development, such as cutting-edge technologies in consumer tech, and new beauty packaging systems, such as the compact cushion sponge that has been adopted by beauty giants like the L'Oreal Group .

Fast product development

Beauty companies such as AmorePacific and LG Household and Health Care thrive on short product-development cycles in order to keep up with the latest trends, such as stamping Line characters on packaging and plastering gingerbread men on products over the Christmas season.



Localization
Bond guru Bill Gross believes the growing global move toward negative yields will have dire consequences.

In a tweet from his firm, Janus Capital, Gross goes back half a millennium to assert that the current situation with the world's debt market is unprecedented and dangerous:

Gross tweet

The warning comes as yields on Japanese government bonds and German hit record lows.

While it's unclear what database Gross used to track bond yields back to the 16th century, there has been some academic research done on the topic. Bryan Taylor, chief economist for Global Financial Data, has done work on the subject and found generally that yields have declined over time.

In recent days, private banks have revolted over the growth of negative yields in Europe and Asia, a trend that has helped push big money inflows to U.S. corporate and government debt.

Gross runs the $1.4 billion Janus Global Unconstrained Bond Fund, which has returned 3.3 percent year to date. He will be on CNBC Friday at 2 pm.
Hillary Clinton becoming the presumptive Democratic nominee in the U.S. presidential elections, together with President Barack Obama's endorsement, is being hailed as a historic moment for women across America.

And it's not just nationally  on the other side of the Atlantic the U.S.'s close ally, Norway, applauded the win.



"I think that it's important to all the women in the U.S. to see that its actually possible for a woman to be nominated for president," said Norwegian finance minister Siv Jensen, to CNBC on Friday.



"It's the first time in history and I think that's a good thing to see."



Norway, a major exporter of natural gas and petroleum, enjoyed a bounceback in its economy in the first three months of the year with gross domestic product growing by 1 percent compared to the previous quarter, reported the Financial Times.



"What we have done in Norway is that monetary policy has definitely done its job, we have seen a weaker currency which has increased our competitiveness by around 20 percent in the last couple of years and then of course we have the opportunity to run an expansionary fiscal policy at least in a shorter term perspective," explained Jensen to CNBC.



"I think most countries need to focus on structural reforms because that is the only way that we can see stronger growth in world economy in the years to come," she added.



Norway, often hailed an example by the Brexit's 'Leave' campaign for its ties to the European Union (EU) without being part of the 28-member bloc, relies strongly on its partnership with the EU, said Jensen.



"The EU is by far the most important market for the Norwegian economy."


The Trump message machine still has two major jobs to do in this election: Prove he's not crazy, and win back a handful of states the GOP has lost to the Democrats in recent elections. Trump is already riding a wave of strength connected to the fact that voters from all persuasions want big changes in Washington. He's clearly more of a "change" candidate than Clinton. But change means risk. So he needs to demonstrate that he's not too risky or nuts. Many of Trump's statements over the course of this campaign challenge the notion that he has it all together. Those statements have been well calculated and targeted to certain voters, but moderate independent voters are not in that target audience. The only way to bring some confidence to those potential supporters is to make a very solid running mate choice that almost no one would think inappropriate. The key is to choose someone like that who isn't a current member of Congress or a failed establishment Republican.

It's also important for Trump to start making some gains in electoral math. He needs to win back states like Florida, Ohio, Iowa, and even Colorado, and maybe Pennsylvania. I think Trump would love to choose someone who could help deliver the biggest electoral prize of all those states, Florida. But Rick Scott doesn't work and Senator Marco Rubio is extremely unpopular in the state now too.

Nope, the only person who really fits the "not crazy/electoral help" bill is Ohio Governor John Kasich. I know, I know, Kasich is still publicly saying he isn't sure he can support Trump. And he might seem a little too establishment too. But he's not a current member of that failed Congress. And my sources tell me Kasich has been angling for the VP spot for more than a month, and this public show of hesitation about supporting Trump may not be all that it appears to be. I can see this working out nicely from a messaging perspective as Kasich can play the role of representing the millions of voters Trump hopes will be "just like John," who acknowledge their misgivings about Trump but admit he begrudgingly won them over. This makes Trump look like a winner simply by getting Kasich to agree to come on board.

And while Kasich could not garner enough national support in his presidential campaign, he did still prove he's very popular in Ohio and could absolutely deliver the key state in November. He's also the one Republican in the race who earned the most public respect from the liberal news media and Democrats. He takes a lot of the "crazy" off the ticket right away.

And speaking of well-staged scenarios, remember the GOP convention is in Cleveland and anointing the home state favorite Kasich there would go over big with the local crowd.

Again, I don't know what Trump will do. But Kasich makes a lot of sense, based on Trump's strategy and current goals. But don't be surprised if a person none of us have even considered turns out to be his choice.
Check out the companies making headlines before Friday's bell:

H&R Block  The tax-preparation firm reported adjusted quarterly profit of $3.16 per share, 1 cent above estimates. Revenue was very slightly above estimates, and the company also announced a 10-percent dividend increase to 22 cents per share. Block also said it was intensifying its focus on stemming client losses and lowering its costs.

Urban Outfitters  Urban Outfitters said current quarter comparable-store sales are falling by a "mid single-digit" percentage. That projection  coming in an SEC filing  compares to consensus analyst forecasts for a 1.1-percent increase in comparable sales.

Mattress Firm  Mattress Firm lost an adjusted 10 cents per share for its latest quarter, 6 cents wider than estimates, while the mattress seller's revenue also came up short of forecasts. The company also issued weaker-than-expected current-quarter and full-year guidance, due in part to costs related to rebranding stores acquired through acquisitions.

Tesla  Tesla is under scrutiny on news that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is examining suspension issues related to Tesla's Model S. For its part, Tesla said NHTSA had not opened any investigation. The electric-car maker maintains that there are no safety defects in either the Model S or Model X.

Mobileye , Delphi Automotive  The two automotive stocks were rated "overweight" in new coverage at Piper Jaffray. The firm feels the two companies have the best opportunity to benefit from automation and connectivity technologies taking hold in the auto industry.

Amazon.com  William Blair began coverage on the online retailer with an "outperform" rating, based in large part on the potential growth of the company's Amazon Web Services business.

Applied Materials  The maker of semiconductor manufacturing equipment announced a new $2 billion share repurchase program, which will replace a completed $3 billion repurchase.

Viacom  Sumner Redstone-controlled National Amusements is recruiting potential new board members, according to The Wall Street Journal. That follows the ouster of Viacom Chairman and CEO Philippe Dauman and Viacom board member George Abrams.

Twitter  Twitter is attracting fewer social media ad campaigns than Facebook 's Instagram service, according to a new survey done by Comcast unit Strata. That's the first time Instagram has pulled ahead of Twitter in that category.

Yahoo  Yahoo is set to put together a shortlist of bidders for its core internet assets, according to Reuters, following second round bids from Verizon , AT&T and others. CNBC's David Faber reported Thursday that Verizon's $3.5 billion-plus bid was topped by a number of other offers.

Medtronic  Medtronic won a $1.4-billion dispute versus the Internal Revenue Service, receiving a favorable U.S. tax court ruling in a battle over how much the medical device maker's profits should be taxed by Puerto Rico and how much should be subject to normal U.S. corporate tax rates.

Supervalu  Supervalu amended its planned spinoff of no-frills chain Save-A-Lot. Supervalu shareholders will own about 60 percent of Save-A-Lot, down from the originally planned 80 percent. The supermarket chain itself will hold about 40 percent, but will sell enough shares within two years to lower its stake to about 20 percent.

Wendy's  Wendy's discovered a second case of malware at its payment terminals. The restaurant chain said the number of locations affected by malware is now "significantly higher" than the 300 previously reported. The malicious software resulted in fraudulent charges on some credit and debit cards that had been legitimately used at Wendy's restaurants.
Nearly 19 percent of all corporate bond activity in the past two days is down to the European Central Bank's corporate bond-buying program, according to insights from market data provider Trax.

The ECB formally kicked off its corporate bond buying program on June 8th, a move heralded by President Mario Draghi in March. As part of its plan, the ECB will buy euro-denominated investment grade bonds issued by companies in the euro area.

Data from Trax released Friday showed that in the whole of 2015, corporate bond buying accounted for 12 percent of all corporate bond activity processed by Trax. This number went up to 14 percent in just the first half of 2016, the firm reported. The company processes approximately 65 percent of all fixed income transactions in Europe through its post-trade services.
Fire burns part of an estimated 105 tonnes of ivory and a tonne of rhino horn confiscated from smugglers and poachers at the Nairobi National Park near Nairobi, Kenya, April 30, 2016. Siegfried Modola | Reuters

Here is an illegal industry growing three times as fast as the global economy: environmental crime. A new report from the United Nations and INTERPOL says activities revolving around exploiting natural resources and pollution are becoming big business, and lining the pockets of international criminal organizations and terrorist groups. Illicit hunting and trading of wildlife, illegal mining, logging, and even waste disposal, have become the fourth largest criminal business around the world, after drugs, arms, and human trafficking. Together these illegal industries have risen by 26 percent since a previous estimate was made in 2014, and growth is continuing at an annual rate of 5-7 percent, according to a paper released this week, jointly produced by the United Nations Environmental Program and INTERPOL.

Valuing illegal activity is tough, but the latest estimate places it somewhere between $91 billion and $258 billion, annually.

These are not isolated crimes occurring on a small scale in individual countries, said the study's editor, Christian Nellemann, in an interview with CNBC.

Nellemann, who is the head of UNEP's Rapid Response Unit, said that as commerce has become global, criminal networks have globalized along with it.

Marine policemen inspect papers of migrant workers after a fishing boat arrives at a port in Thailand. Chaiwat Subprasom | Reuters

They are able to exploit and piggyback on ever more sophisticated international shipping networks and logistics channels, and circumvent both local and international laws.

"We are not talking petty crimes here," Nellemann said. "We are talking large-scale, massive tax fraud, companies issuing falsified paperwork, small fleets of vessels transporting illegal cargo from Papua New Guinea or Indonesia to China."

There is scarcely a continent not somehow affected by the trade. Asia has become a particular hotspot both for demand and production, and Nellemann notes the 5-7 percent annual growth rate for the illegal industry tracks the growth rates of some Asian economies.

There has long been a huge market for wildlife products, where everything from tiger bones to ivory, and live birds have been bought for traditional medicines, food, pets and decorative art.

But somewhat novel in Asia is that parts of it have become dumps for various forms of waste  especially hazardous waste, and electronic waste, which is costly to dispose of in the developed countries of Europe or North America.

Tiger cub carcasses are seen in jars containing liquid as officials continue moving living tigers from the controversial Tiger Temple in the Kanchanaburi province, west of Bangkok, Thailand June 3, 2016. Chaiwat Subprasom | Reuters

Criminals buy up electronic or hazardous waste from European or American clients, and use different tactics for circumventing laws preventing its transport to less regulated countries.

Old computers and electronics, for example, are sometimes transported as "second-hand goods," when really they are bound for dumps.

Also novel is the nexus of security threats and crime. The ongoing conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which Nellemann noted has claimed 7 million lives, is increasingly seen as a conflict driven by criminal interests, rather than as a political insurgency. The exploitation of resources there totals $722 million to $862 million annually. Only about two percent of that goes to armed fighters  the rest ends up in the pockets of organized crime. The East African terror group Al-Shabaab, which has been linked to Al-Qaeda, drew somewhere around $250 million in funding from illegal charcoal in 2013 and 2014. And as is well known, ISIS is funding itself with oil.

Drug cartels in Latin America have entered the illegal logging and gold mining business in Latin America.

There are measures that can be taken. Nellemann expects this will require a single international effort run by a single agency, such as INTERPOL. So far the agency has had some successes. The report tells of one particularly large seizure of illegally logged wood in Venezuela, totaling about 20,000 truckloads.
Whatever's next for Gawker Media, it's tone of snarky, no-holds-barred style of journalism has impacted digital media forever.

"Gawker's impact on digital media resonates today when you look at properties like BuzzFeed," said Rebecca Lieb, digital media analyst and author. "The really compelling headline, the almost irresistible story because it's a little bit cheeky, it's a little bit snarky. ... It was really one of the first native digital properties to really carve out a language and a voice and a tone that was uniquely suited for the medium."

The Gawker Media Group said Friday that it has agreed to sell its seven media brands and other assets to digital media company Ziff Davis, which is owned by j2 Global. Sources close to Gawker said the opening bid was between $90 million and $100 million.

"There's a tremendous fit between the two organizations, from brands to audience to monetization," Ziff Davis said in a statement.

The company added it saw Gawker brands Gizmodo, Lifehacker and Kotaku bolstering its consumer tech and gaming positions, while other Gawker sites Jalopnik, Deadspin and Jezebel would strengthen its lifestyle portfolio.



This came shortly after the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. The filings stated it had assets of $50 million to $100 million and liabilities of $100 million to $500 million.



The company, CEO Nick Denton and former editor A.J. Daulerio have been embroiled in a lengthy invasion-of-privacy legal battle with entertainer and wrestler Hulk Hogan, after its main publication wrote a story about his leaked sex tape. A Florida jury granted Hogan $140 million in damages. Recently, it was revealed that Hogan's legal case has been bankrolled by Silicon Valley investor Peter Thiel.



Denton called the trial a "sham" in a statement on Gawker. He alleged that the case was more about Hogan fearing outcry about racist sentiment on the tape than fears over his personal privacy. When it was disclosed that Thiel backed the Hogan lawsuit, Denton said during a CNBC "Squawk Box" interview that it revealed the "true interests" of the legal case.

"It becomes a story about the power of the billionaire class, particularly the power of the billionaire class in Silicon Valley. They have money. They have wealth. They have anonymity. They have special purpose vehicles. They have offshore accounts. ... They are exercising their power from behind the scenes. I think it's more important than ever that there be an independent media to hold them to account," Denton said.

That exact tone of defiance  whether you agree with it or not  is exactly what gets Gawker in trouble in the first place. When it launched in 2003, it was one of the first truly digital publications to embrace the anarchic tone of the blogosphere and turn it into a media outlet.

While some have felt that its publications have held politicians, Silicon Valley elite and media executives accountable, others have argued it's made personal life gossip of nonpublic figures mainstream. It has since toned down its rhetoric, even controversially pulling down a post that outed a senior executive at Conde Nast. Still, its legacy remains.

Denton doesn't believe this is the end of Gawker. On Friday, he tweeted that he believed Thiel would not prevail.
Nirav Modi, 45, is soft spoken and understated, much like his jewelry designs. Sitting in his upscale New Delhi store, surrounded by his celestial diamond creations, the Wharton school dropout tells CNBC about how he rose to fame as a designer by learning from his family business - even though he doesn't know how to draw. A passion for diamonds and an understanding of luxury helped Nirav Modi create a successful jewelry company in the space of just five years. Pieces designed by him have been worn by international celebrities including Kate Winslet and Aishwarya Rai. "I travel a lot, I get inspired and I give a narrative, an emotion, to my designers who sketch," says Modi. "Then the engineers figure out how to make it." Some collections, he says, have been inspired by Monet's paintings, others by the Taj Mahal, and can fetch anything from 100,000 Indian rupees ($1,500) to 500 million rupees ($7.5 million).

A necklace made by Nirav Modi on display on October 31, 2011 Dubai. Cameron Clegg | Gallo Images | Getty Images

Modi started his company, Firestar Diamond, a multinational diamond and jewelry firm in Mumbai in 1999. It has a turnover of close to $2 billion. Modi's own net worth, according to Forbes, is at $1.6 billion in 2016. Coming from a family of diamond merchants, Modi grew up in Antwerp, on of the world's hub for diamond trading. His father would regale him and his three siblings with "diamond stories" over dinner. While these were fascinating, Nirav never wanted to join the family business. He went to Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, where he studied Japanese and finance, but after a year decided to quit. "It was a great high for my parents when I got in, and let's say it was not such a high when I dropped out," laughs Modi, who as a 19-year-old decided he was going to India to work; a country that was alien to him even though he is of Indian origin. This was in the early 1990s when the Indian economy was yet to see reforms and its potential as a market was still unknown to most of the world. He began work with his maternal uncle in Mumbai, who was diversifying from diamond trading to jewelry manufacturing. Modi jumped into a business, in which his father and grandfather were veterans, as a novice. He worked 12 hours a day six-and-a-half days a week for 3,500 rupees ($52) a month, all the time learning the tricks of the trade and harboring dreams of starting out on his own. Ten years later, after amassing 50 million rupees in savings - he clarifies that he never borrowed from family - and cashing his equity investments, Modi had enough seed money to start Firestar with 15 people.



It just takes one big idea

He began selling parcels of polished diamonds (90 percent of the world's diamonds are cut in India) to jewelry manufacturers and wholesalers in the U.S. and U.K., but Modi soon realized he had to do something different to stay afloat.

That's when he got his first big idea. His clients would buy parcels of assorted diamonds from him and then sort them according to size, colour and shape to fit in with their jewelry requirements. This would take 30 days to do and in the end there would also be wastage - about 15-20 percent. Modi offered to do the sorting out for his clients, saving them time and money as the cost of doing business in India was cheaper. "It was not a glamorous thing, incredibly detail-oriented work, nobody was doing it, or wanted to do this," Modi said. He then moved up the value chain and started contract manufacturing of jewelry for U.S. clients who would in turn sell to retailers. After a year he realized the market was declining as the Indians and Chinese were bypassing the wholesalers and manufacturers to sell directly to retailers. Modi decided to talk to his largest client in the U.S., a company seven times his size, and offered to buy him out. "This required chutzpah, there had never been an Indian takeover in the U.S.," recalls Modi, who took a year and a half to convince jewelry manufacturer Frederick Goldman to sell out. The deal was finally done in 2005 for about $25 million. Two years later Modi bought another U.S. company, Sandberg & Sikorski,owners of the 120-year-old luxury bridal jewelry brand A.Jaffe, for $50 million.



Cashing in on tough times

By the time the 2008 global financial crisis hit, Modi was in a fortunate position; he had a company that was vertically integrated thanks to his timely acquisitions and with a "lot of cash reserves."

"It was the end of the world according to many but for us it was a time to buy, we bought all these diamonds at very cheap prices," says Modi who also went on another expansion binge. Already the owner of offices in Mumbai and New York, he invested in offices in Johannesburg, Russia, Armenia, Dubai and Antwerp. It was at this time that a friend asked him to design a pair of earrings for her. After months of persuasion, Modi relented and his friend "simply loved them." This is when the penny dropped. Modi decided instead of flipping all these amazing diamonds he had sourced, why not start a jewelry line?

The 'wow' moment
watch now

School is almost out at Oakridge Elementary School, but the verdict is already in: Kids who move more, learn better. That's the consensus of teachers, parents and pupils after a one-year pilot program that introduced active classroom furniture into the Arlington, Virginia, school. Pedal desks, standing balance desks, and kid-sized ball chairs kept students moving while they learned. The results were remarkable. "Some of the behaviors that teachers noticed increase were time on task, cooperation with each other, having an opportunity to sit and read for longer periods of time, complete worksheets or hands-on assignments without touching or wiggling or being disruptive to the learning community," said Oakridge Principal Lynne Wright.

A recent study in the journal Pediatrics found that reducing sedentary behavior among students, "is an important target for health promotion in children." Researchers went on to say, "The integration of classroom desks which reduce the time that students spend sitting is a promising target for children's health promotion initiatives."

Students at Oakridge Elementary school are equipped to stay active in the classroom. Source: Oakridge Elementary

A very unscientific survey of the second grade class of Martha Fishbein (Mrs. Fishbein to you) at Oakridge found much the same.

"I like all of the equipment. All of them," said Ilana Price, stretching her small arms wide as she pedaled underneath her desk.

"You can, like, concentrate," said classmate Amir Rustamov.

The experiment was born of a mother's frustration; Heather Sauve wanted to find an outlet for her active son  something to help keep him on task.

"Even if I do before-school fitness programs and recess and lunch and PE class, there's just an abundance of energy," said Sauve.

So when she saw a picture of a pedal desk online, Sauve was sold.

"We approached Wright, and she said, 'Absolutely this sounds great, as long as it's not a cost to us, it's not distracting to the kids, the teachers are still able to learn; let's see what we can do," said Sauve.

After significant research, Sauve chose Kidsfit, a South Carolina-based company that was founded in 1997. It initially made kid-sized exercise equipment for gyms and therapists. After tough times during the recession, it almost went out of business, but then CEO Ed Pinney made some contacts with local schools.

"We began seeing a need for movement in the classroom, so we built all the equipment, and everything we did was based on that science that says there is a direct correlation between a healthy child and a smart child," said Pinney.

Kidsfit came out with a line of "kinesthetic," or movement-based, classroom equipment about four years ago. Pinney also developed a training program around it, sending representatives to his customers' schools and hosting special seminars in the research behind more movement in classrooms.

"And the response was really awesome," he said.

Sales grew 40 percent in 2014, 60 percent in 2015 and Pinney says he expects 2016 to end with 75 to 100 percent growth. He is expanding the factory, and hiring more people. Kidsfit sells its products in 46 states, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia and Hong Kong.





Kid-sized ball chairs at Oakridge Elementary School, Arlington, Virginia. Diana Olick | CNBC
Florida Gov. Rick Scott visited California in May, hoping to lure away dissatisfied business owners from high-tax California to the low-tax Sunshine State. Now, a company in Florida behind the first privately funded U.S. high speed railway is manufacturing its trains ... in California.

The world is upside down.

What's with this crazy train?

A rendering of a Brightline train. Source: Brightline

The company building the railway is Brightline, owned by Fortress Investment Group . It's taking a huge gamble that high speed rail is a concept whose time has come. "Everybody loves trains," said Brightline President Mike Reininger.

Reininger might seem an unusual guy to be running a railroad. His resume includes 12 years at Disney , where he spent much of his time developing resorts. Another Brightline executive came from MGM Resorts . Their goal with the new railway is to create a "hospitality experience" that will mix state-of-the-art transportation with attractive train stations offering retail and other amenities.

The train literally reaches out to greet you at the platform. Brightline President Mike Reininger

Brightline cars will be decked out with comfortable seats, large windows, aisles twice as wide as those on airplanes, hands-free bathrooms cleaned regularly, outlets everywhere, free Wi-Fi, and something called a "gap filler," which allows you to walk onto the train without stepping up or down. "The train literally reaches out to greet you at the platform," said Reininger. The train will travel up to 125 mph to get you from Miami to Orlando in three hours.

Brightline raised $1 billion in equity and debt to launch the first phase of the rail service, which will start next year between Miami, Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach. It will use existing rail corridors, and the company is building stations on land it already owns. A second phase to send trains to Orlando will cost another $1.5 billion.

Reininger believes Brightline can capture at least 1 percent of the estimated 500 million annual car trips between cities in South Florida and Orlando. Ticket prices have not yet been revealed, but he said they will be competitive with the cost of driving. "At the end of the day, we know we've got to do one thing. We have to change your behavior a little bit. We have to convince you to get out of your car and get into what we consider a smarter way to travel."

If the concept works in Florida, Brightline might look at other markets in places like Texas or California.

Speaking of California...
Two former employees of Insys Therapeutics , Jonathan Roper and Fernando Serrano, were arrested on Thursday for allegedly participating in kickback schemes involving doctors who prescribed the company's main drug, Subsys, a pain medication containing fentanyl.



Headlines linking Prince's death to a fentanyl overdose have raised the profile of the opioid; however, CNBC has previously reported on the dangers of these highly addictive drugs and the alleged illegal tactics some pharmaceutical companies have employed to drive sales.



These include allegations against specialty pharmaceutical company Insys, whose market cap is down about a billion dollars since last year. Company officials weren't immediately available to comment on the charges against Roper and Serrano.



According to the Food and Drug Administration, Subsys has only one indication. It's meant for late-stage cancer patients with breakthrough pain, however, Insys has been accused of trying to push the drug far beyond cancer patients by convincing doctors to prescribe it for patients who have migraines or even minor neck or back pain.



According to physicians and experts, Subsys is about 100 times more powerful than morphine.



Roper and Serrano were charged with violating an anti-kickback statute, "in connection with their participation in a scheme to pay doctors thousands of dollars to participate in sham educational programs in order to induce the doctors to prescribe millions of dollars' worth of a fentanyl-based sublingual spray" the company manufactured.
Goldman Sachs' headaches stemming from its work on a Malaysian state wealth fund are growing.

The bank is under investigation by the New York Department of Financial Services, according to a source. The department sent a letter to Goldman requesting information regarding its work on Malaysian fund 1MDB and whether its dealings comply with New York state banking regulations. The inquiry is not a subpoena, but instead an information-gathering effort.

The department is pushing for the bank to reply by Wednesday.

Both Goldman and the DFS declined to comment when contacted by CNBC.


Government bond yields are hitting all-time lows, leading investors on a hunt for yield which is scaring Cowen and Co.'s David Seaburg.

"When you look at ... the outright chase for yield recently, it actually scares me quite a bit to step into some of these names that have been really bid up. I look at the overall market and  I really think that we're in a tape right now that's incredibly unpredictable. You've got hedge funds that are incredibly underweight equities and they're underperforming. That's the worst-case position they could be in right now," the firm's head of sales trading said Friday on CNBC's "Squawk on the Street."

A combination of elements, including fears over a possible Brexit and about the underlying global economy, has sent investors looking for safe havens in lieu of risk assets.

Adding fuel to the Brexit fears, The Independent released a poll Friday showing the "leave" camp has gained a lead over the "remain" camp.

On Friday, the 10-year German bund yield hit a fresh all-time low, closing in within a whisker of zero, while the benchmark U.S. 10-year yield traded near its lowest level since February. Prices and yields move inversely.
Lenovo's PHAB2 Pro Lenovo

Lenovo is hoping its joint venture with Google to launch a smartphone with augmented reality and a new handset from subsidiary Motorola with a range of snap-on accessories will help the Chinese electronics giant step up its challenge Apple and Samsung. Google's Project Tango is a technology platform that allows mobile devices to use augmented reality (AR)  the ability to superimpose computer images onto the real world and have them interact with objects in the picture. Lenovo's new PHAB2 Pro, is the first smartphone to be powered by Tango. The 6.4 inch device, unveiled Thursday, has a so-called "quad HD" screen and uses Qualcomm's Snapdragon 652 processor. While much of this is similar to many Android devices on the market, Lenovo's camera has special depth-sensing hardware to allow it to use AR technology. The main camera is 16 megapixels.



Lenovo PHAB2 Pro camera structure Lenovo

There are a number of AR apps and Lenovo outlined how the technology could be used for: Learning  where students can place dinosaurs or famous monuments in their classroom to explore them

Gaming  the electronics firm showed off a game where users had to shoot aliens that were running around a living room

Mapping an indoor area allowing you to walk around a museum so users can hold their phone up to a work of art and get lots of detailed information

Check out how furniture looks in your house before you buy it Device-makers are pushing hard to differentiate their products amid a slowing smartphone market that is only set to grow 3.1 percent this year, down significantly from the 10.5 percent seen last year, according to IDC.

And Lenovo, which was the fourth-biggest smartphone vendor in the fourth-quarter of 2015, was knocked out of the top five by young Chinese players OPPO and Vivo. Lenovo is looking to muscle back into the top five vendor list but also challenge the likes of Samsung, Apple and Huawei in the premium end of the market. Augmented reality is also seen as a big growth area for companies with giants such as Microsoft and Google all pushing forward with developing the technology. The PHAB2 Pro will be available globally from September and will start at $499.

Motorola modular phones

Motorola  which is owned by Lenovo  showed off two new devices on Thursday  the Moto Z and Moto Z force. The Moto Z is made from "military aircraft-grade aluminium and stainless steel" and boasts a 5.5 inch Quad HD display with a 13 megapixel main camera. The Moto Z Force is all-metal and apparently has a screen that won't crack or shatter if dropped.

Moto Z Motorola
Maine's governor says the European Union should deny a push from the Swedish government to have American lobster listed as an invasive species.

Sweden has asked the European Union to bar imports of live American lobsters into the 28-nation bloc after 32 American lobsters were found in Swedish waters. Swedish officials say an invasion of American lobsters could outcompete or spread disease to European lobsters.
Shares of Mylan fell Friday, slipping as much as 5 percent, after a Wells Fargo Securities analyst said he was worried about the pharmaceutical firm's pricing practices.

The stock ended the day down more than 2 percent.

In the last six months, Mylan raised prices more than 20 percent on 24 of its products, and more than 100 percent on seven products, according to Wells Fargo analyst David Maris, who cited Medi-Span pricing data for his statistics, in a research note to clients.

But Mylan spokeswoman Nina Devlin, in a written statement, called the analysis "flawed."

"Mylan has always been known to have one of the industry's broadest and most globally diversified business models and portfolios, which we have successfully managed by balancing numerous variables, including the natural price reductions that have always been inherent to the generics industry," Devlin said.

Devlin said the analysis focused on a small number of products out of the company's more than 1,400 products Mylan sells globally and the about 600 products it sells in North America, which she said was "self-serving and misleading to investors."

"This is especially true given that these generic products represent an extremely small percentage of Mylan's approximately $4 billion North American generics business," she said.



In the research note, Maris cited examples that included "a 542 percent increase for ursodiol, a generic medication used to treat gallstones, a 444 percent increase in metoclopramide, a generic medication commonly used to treat gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD) and gastroparesis, and a 400 percent increase in dicyclomine, a medication used to treat irritable bowel syndrome. Mylan also raised the price of tolterodine by 56 percent in 2016."

The report also noted Mylan has not limited price increases to its smaller drugs either. In May, the company increased the price of Epi-Pen, its largest product, by 15 percent. The analyst noted the price increases could come at a cost to patients and impact their reputation to shareholders.

In the past year, Valeant , Turing and other pharmaceutical companies have faced scrutiny over their pricing actions, prompting senate hearings, proposed legislation and discussion in the presidential election cycle.

"We believe that given the regulatory environment, these pricing actions could bring greater regulatory scrutiny and headline risk," Maris wrote. "Additionally, we wonder if aggressive price increases are being used to make EPS targets or to offset disappointing sales in other areas."

But Mylan disagreed.

"Mylan's business model is not today, nor has it ever been, premised on price hikes," Devlin said.



Mylan's stock has dropped sharply this year, falling 17 percent.

MYL 2016 Chart

Disclosure: Wells Fargo maintains a market in the common stock of Mylan.

(UPDATE: This story was updated to include the company's comments.)
It's a country of around 185 million people, a member of OPEC and the biggest economy on its continent. But Nigeria may have more than it can handle with the "Niger Delta Avengers."

Soldiers from the 7th Division of the Nigerian Army on March 25, 2016. Stefan Heunis | AFP | Getty Images

Nigeria has vowed to rein in the militants who are relentlessly bombing the country's oil infrastructure and have slashed its crude output. But experts say the government of President Muhammadu Buhari lacks the military capacity and institutions to tackle the threat  and military action could make things much worse anyway.

Little is certain about the motives of the Niger Delta Avengers. But the group claims through its website and Twitter feed that it wants a bigger share of the Niger Delta's resource wealth to go to the region's people, and it wants some sort of environmental remediation after decades of rampant oil and gas pollution. What is certain is that the Avengers are effective. Nigeria's oil production has fallen from 2.2 million barrels per day to roughly 1.6 million after a spate of attacks, which come as the country was already in crisis mode thanks to a rout in global oil prices.

It's not like an insurgency in the classic sense ... If they find these guys and hunt them down and shoot them, there will be another group the next day. Gerald McLoughlin former U.S. foreign service officer

Nigeria has deployed more troops to the delta and begun talks with state and local leaders to address their grievances. This week, Nigerian Oil Minister Emmanuel Ibe Kachikwu called on the Avengers to "sheath their weapons and embrace dialogue with the government."

The Avengers responded in their Twitter feed: "We're not negotiating with any committee. If Fed Govt is discussing with any group they're doing that on their own."

The Nigerian military has slim hopes of finding and defeating the militant group in the delta's swampy network of creeks, say experts. The terrain confounded soldiers during a prior, yearslong campaign against oil militants, who stopped bombing oil installations only after the government began paying them as part of a 2009 amnesty program. "I think it would be very difficult to tackle this issue using essentially police methods," said John Campbell, former U.S. ambassador to Nigeria. "The delta doesn't lend itself to military or police action, and in fact, it failed the last time there was an insurrection there."

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The military, which Buhari is trying to remake into a more professional fighting force, also has little support among delta residents, and its presence could make matters worse, according to Campbell. Abuse of civilians at the hands of the military in northern Nigeria provided a potent recruitment tool for Boko Haram, Campbell said. That group has gone on to become one of the world's most deadly terrorist organizations. If similar abuses were repeated in the delta, more militants would likely emerge, he said. This week, the federal government said it would withdraw troops from villages after complaints of heavy-handed tactics. Meanwhile, the Avengers have at least tacit support from some locals in the delta. Members are viewed as part bandit and part Al Capone, but they are also seen as part Robin Hood, said Gerald McLoughlin, an independent analyst and former U.S. foreign service officer with experience in Nigeria. That sympathy, coupled with a lack of economic opportunity in the delta, make the group extremely difficult to combat.

"Quite frankly, it's almost impossible. It's not like an insurgency in the classic sense," he told CNBC. "If they find these guys and hunt them down and shoot them, there will be another group the next day. What else can you do if you live there?" he said.

Winning hearts and minds

Nigeria President Muhammadu Buhari Frank Augstein | Pool | Reuters

The Buhari government could conceivably build goodwill by embarking on public works projects, said Ambassador Cambell. Construction of a long-discussed road across the delta region, for example, would employ a huge number of workers and open new areas to economic development, provided it functioned well.

The delta ostensibly has institutions in place to execute such projects, but they have accomplished little, said Manji Cheto, senior vice president at advisory firm Teneo Intelligence. The Niger Delta Development Commission was founded in 2000, followed by the Niger Delta Ministry in 2008. There is also an office dedicated to carrying out the 2009 amnesty program. The organizations carry out programs, but have no cohesive blueprint for development, and much of their funding falls into a "black hole," Cheto said. The government should merge the three organizations, she said. "Quite clearly they didn't see this as a priority. Now, with pipelines being attacked every week, it has to become a priority," she said.

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Analysts don't doubt that Buhari is committed to the anti-corruption crusade he campaigned on, but they say his hands are tied by corruption at the state and local level, where oil revenue that's distributed by the federal government is frequently misallocated.

"What happens in many cases is the funds arrive on the state governor's desk and there's no further accounting for them," Ambassador Campbell said. "The state legislatures are supposed to hold the governors accountable, but very often, the legislatures are part of the (patronage) network controlled by governors." That system makes delta people skeptical that talks between federal and local leaders will produce change, Cheto said.

Fear of an independent delta

Beyond the impact on the Nigerian economy, the Avengers could agitate separatist sentiment in the delta  a potentially disastrous development in a country like Nigeria with divided regional, tribal and religious loyalties.

Cheto said she's concerned about increased activity among independence groups in the south's Biafra region. The delta state fought a devastating civil war with Nigeria from 1967 to 1970. At the peak of that conflict, Nigeria's total blockade of Biafra led to thousands of deaths by starvation on a daily basis.

Broken pipework sits at an abandoned oil flow station operated by Royal Dutch Shell Plc in K-Dare, Nigeria, Jan. 13, 2016. George Osodi | Bloomberg | Getty Images
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Bad news isn't getting any better for dozens of marketplace lending start-ups. There's going to be a "culling of the herd," which will help weed out winners and losers, said Pat Grady of Sequoia Capital. Grady is one of the venture firm's partners and sits on the board of online lender Prosper. Industry executives' comments, which came this week at the CB Insights Future of Fintech conference in New York, supported Grady's statements. Ron Suber, president of Prosper, said he was aware of "a lot" of his competitors shopping themselves.

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Kathryn Petralia, co-founder and head of operations at online lender Kabbage, agreed that consolidation is looming for marketplace lenders. But those looking for mergers and acquisitions might not want to expect a premium. "Upside has been grossly overestimated" in the business, Grady said. So far, no big deals have unfolded. But the industry has come under pressure and scrutiny in recent months as fintech companies' public market valuations have been hammered. The ouster of LendingClub CEO Renaud Laplanche in May and subsequent investigations into the company spurred a steep drop in the stock's price, so much so that, according to one report, private investors have been trying to team with Laplanche to buy the company out at a discount. The company did not respond to requests for comment.

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Royal Caribbean has a new ship in town- and no, it's not your typical run-of-the-mill retirement cruise. The Ovation of the Seas is part of Royal Caribbean's Quantum fleet of ship that were launched in 2014. The 136-feet wide- cruise set sail on its maiden voyage on April 17, 2016 from Southampton, and is now in Asia, at the tail-end of its 52-night global odyssey. The cruise is set to return to its home port in Tianjin in China, later this month. Cruise operators have long trumpeted the facilities on board to lure travelers so what's the draw here? Technology.

The $1 billion Ovation of the Seas comes with a bionic bar, where patrons can customize their orders on a tablet screen and collect their cocktail at the bar in just thirty seconds. The twin robotic arms stir, shake and pour cocktails, making up to 1,000 drinks a day. Guests will also be able to access the internet in the middle of the ocean using high-speed WiFi while the cruise ship also comes with a skydiving simulator. "Technology is changing the way people travel and we are responding to that," Royal Caribbean's Managing Director Singapore and Southeast Asia, Sean Tracey said in a statement.



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Chinese technology companies that trade on U.S. exchanges have been so beaten down that many are trying to go private so they can potentially relist at home. That makes Friday's debut of China Online Education Group all the more unusual.

The Beijing-based company, which provides English online training for people in China, sold 2.4 million American depositary shares at $19 apiece, for a market capitalization of close to $400 million. The stock fell 2 cents on its first day of trading on the New York Stock Exchange.

COE is diving into the public market at a time when U.S. companies are steering clear. There hasn't been a domestic venture-backed tech IPO all year, and software developer Twilio's IPO filing last month is among the only indications that activity is on the horizon.

So why take the risk?

"When you're talking about teaching English, being listed on the NYSE actually helps the brand quite a bit," said Hurst Lin, the head of DCM China, COE's largest shareholder. "It's not about raising cash, it's more about raising awareness."
JM Silva | Getty Images

A tiny group of start-ups is out to take on a $1 trillion industry. While financial technology investments have gained attention, and perhaps some notoriety, in the last 12 months, insurance applications are starting to get interest from corporate behemoths and venture capitalists alike. The insurance technology, or insurtech, industry is still in its infancy. But a number of companies that recently raised millions from top venture investors and partnered with global incumbents are offering products and services including policy comparison services and peer-to-peer insurance.

Investments in insurtech hit a new peak in the first quarter of 2016, with 47 companies getting funding, said Anand Sanwal, CEO of venture capital database CB Insights, which this week in New York hosted a panel on insurtech companies. "The corporates have gotten really active" doing deals in the space, he said at the event.

Often, they're partnering with start-ups that aim to reduce the time both people and corporate clients spend locating an insurer. Embroker CEO Matt Miller, who also spoke at the conference, raised $14 million from venture investors including Canaan Partners to develop a commercial insurance start-up doing just this. He got the idea, and experience, for the start-up spending years working in private equity and with insurance companies.

"We want to be an independent arbiter," Miller said. Another budding concept on the insurtech horizon is peer-to-peer insurance. It represents a game theory twist on insurance: that a community of people with a mutual invested outcome in the policies they buy aim to eliminate fraud and boost their return. It might sound like new math, but Warren Buffett is buying in: his Berkshire Hathaway is one of the reinsurance partners in peer-to-peer start-up Lemonade. The company raised $13 million from venture investors Sequoia Capital and Aleph, with plans to unveil a business model after it gains regulatory approval. A representative for Buffett, who is not an equity investor in the company, didn't comment.
Imagine strolling into an airport, scanning your passport and face and then boarding an airplane without ever having to deal with a member of airport staff. This is what one company is hoping to make the future look like.

Portugal-based firm Vision-Box is trialing technology that will eventually make the journey from entering the airport to boarding the aircraft automated.

Its product, called Happy Flow, is a series of checkpoints that work by recognizing a passengers face. A user first checks in using their boarding pass and passport. The software then saves the person's details. Next the passenger can check in their bags solely by a camera scanning their face. The same process happens at border control and boarding the aircraft too. Once the passport and face are scanned in tandem at the beginning, the rest of the checkpoints through the airport only require a person's face to be scanned.

"The basic idea for the passenger is to create a seamless passive experience. You know we take too much time, it's too stressful today to get on time on the airline. People really stress out at the airportand we think that's not good anymore," Miguel Leitmann, CEO of Vision-Box, chief executive of Vision-Box, told CNBC in a TV interview on Friday.

"We thought let's take the same technology and build it in a way that we can start your process which you have to deal with much area. So you can do a biometric check in, a biometric baggage drop, a biometric check point, even biometric boarding, just by looking at the camera."

Last year, Vision-Box began a trial of its Happy Flow system in the Queen Beatrix International Airport in Aruba. Already there are some so-called "e-gates" at airports such as London's Heathrow where passengers can scan passports and their face to exit when they arrive. But Happy Flow's system is designed to automate the whole process in the airport.

The idea, according to Leitmann, is for airports to become more efficient. Happy Flow can automate 90 percent of the cases so staff can focus on the 10 percent where there are issues or problems.

"It's not about reducing costs. It's about using the existing infrastructureand focus on the exceptions, so you automatically deal with 90 percent for the passengers in an automatic way and you can increase the security and efficiency," told CNBC.
Career gurus have written extensively about what it takes to be successful, but according to Stanford University professor and author Carol Dweck, a simple shift in the way that you think might make all the difference.

It's very simple: Ask for help. "You don't know what your abilities are until you make a full commitment to developing them," she said. Dweck stressed that paying attention to the way you think about your abilities can be a game-changer. The psychologist described two default mindsets: fixed and growth. In the fixed mindset, people think their talents and abilities are fixed. If you think this way, then you worry about them and try to validate them, limiting you. When you operate with a fixed mindset you're afraid to ask for help, she said.

Its a big factor between success and failure. Carol Dweck Psychologist

In contrast, when you embrace a growth mindset, you believe that your talents and abilities can be developed through hard work, good strategy and mentoring, she said. "Everybody who's been successful has gotten lots of help and input from many, many people," she told CNBC.

Still, believing that your abilities are malleable doesn't guarantee that you'll be successful, but it takes away the other worries, the author of "Mindset" said. She explained that a growth mindset encourages risk taking, which in turn takes away worries about your abilities. While people are a mix of both fixed and growth mindsets, it's crucial to understand what triggers a fixed mindset or the belief that one's talents and abilities are inherent, she said.

Change the way that you think

Dweck identifies failure as a common trigger for the fixed mindset. A great example is when "you try something, it doesn't work and maybe people even criticize you. In a fixed mindset, you say, 'I tried this, it's over.' In a growth mindset, you look for what you've learned," she explained. To change this thought process, "You have to start by finding your fixed-mindset trigger. Listen to the situation; when you start feeling your ability is fixed or limited. Just accept it at first, just listen to it. Then you start working with it. You can give your fixed mindset a name; it could be your father or your aunt. Who is that person [that discourages you]? Start talking to that voice. Reason with your persona: 'Thank you for looking out for me, but I'd really like to try this,'" she said.

The mindset theory is just as important in the work environment, Dweck told CNBC. The self-conception expert has worked with many companies where she helps identify what the corporate culture is and whether it is an environment that is conducive to growth. "We did a study of a group of Fortune 500 and Fortune 1000 companies, and we found that the companies that embody more of a growth mindset had employees that felt empowered and committed to the company," she said, adding that those companies also fostered creativity. "The managers saw much more growth potential in their employees," she said. Dweck recalls visiting a financial company in Chicago that endorses a growth mindset, and she noted that "everyone felt empowered."

Culture of genius vs. growth mindset
Shares of Walgreens Boots Alliance and Rite Aid jumped after a report said there are growing signs that the Federal Trade Commission will approve Walgreens' $17 billion acquisition of Rite Aid.

The report, published in the New York Post, cited unnamed sources, and said any approval would come with conditions.

The deal hopes to combine the first and third largest drugstore operators. Some have said that if it gets regulatory approval, it could further escalate the competition between Walgreens and CVS Health .

The regulator's chief concern has been the negotiating power the combined company will have with pharmacy benefit managers, who negotiate prices with drug manufacturers for pharmacies. However, the Post said the chief executive of the number one PBM, Express Scripts CEO Tim Wentworth, said Thursday that he supported the deal.

There will still be, post-merger, plenty of competition in retail, Wentworth told the Post. He added there are questions about whether any of the sizable pharmacy benefit managers will object.

Walgreen is expected to announce in a few days the beginning of a process to divest stores in regions where the chains may have too much overlap, a source close to the situation told the Post.

Shares of both Walgreens and Rite Aid both traded in heavier-than-usual volume Friday. Walgreens shares closed up 4.4 percent with nearly 10.8 million shares trading hands, compared with its 30-day average volume of 4.3 million.

WAB 2016 Chart

Rite Aid gained 3.4 percent on volume of nearly 43 million shares, more than double its 30-day average volume of 14.1 million shares.

RAD 2016 Chart
Robert Smith, chairman and chief executive officer of Vista Equity Partners Patrick T. Fallon | Bloomberg | Getty Images

While venture capitalists are waiting for the tech IPO window to crack open, buyout shops are having a field day taking public software companies private. Three of the five top software deals in the U.S. this year have been take-private transactions, according to data from FactSet. Two were announced last week and the other was in April. The three targets  Qlik Technologies , Marketo and Cvent  sold for a combined $6.5 billion. It's a brave new world for private equity. Known for aggressively pursuing job cuts and office closures with debt-fueled deals, leveraged buyout firms are now banking on businesses that are still expanding but have fallen out of favor with Wall Street. They're playing into the trend of web-based applications and the software as a service (SaaS) delivery model, which is rapidly displacing legacy packaged software. Gartner predicts the SaaS market will grow 20 percent this year to $37.7 billion, while worldwide IT spending as a whole is increasing only 0.6 percent. To make healthy returns on their investments, private equity firms now have to prove they can juice growth. "The old wave of software LBOs was more about cost-cutting," said Owen O'Keeffe, head of West Coast technology M&A at Morgan Stanley , which advised Cvent, Marketo and Qlik in their sales. "This wave will be more about continuing to invest in growth with some cost optimization." Private equity isn't without competition in the cloud consolidation war. Salesforce.com agreed last week to buy e-commerce software provider Demandware for $2.8 billion, CEO Marc Benioff's biggest purchase ever. Oracle announced plans in the last three months to spend $1.2 billion on Textura and Opower.

2016 top software deals Seller Buyer Amount Qlik Technologies Thoma Bravo $3 bln Demandware Salesforce.com $2.8 bln Vertafore Bain, Vista $2.7 bln Marketo Vista $1.8 bln Cvent Vista $1.65 bln

Source: Source: FactSet, company reports

Driving the surge in activity are depressed stock prices. The Bessemer Venture Partners cloud index, which tracks more than 40 publicly traded cloud software companies, plunged 35 percent in the first six weeks of 2016. It's recouped most of its value, thanks largely to the big premiums that acquirers agreed to pay, but is still down more than 6 percent this year. The S&P 500, meanwhile, is up 3.5 percent.

Starting late last year, investors moved from growth mode to a focus on profitability, whacking most SaaS companies with cash-burning operations. IPOs have been nonexistent because start-ups that raised private rounds at steep valuations in recent years would have to take a discount if they were to go public. But the business environment hasn't really changed and revenue projections remain largely intact. That's enabled buyers to find some hefty discounts. In the Bessemer index, the average price-to-sales ratio (based on enterprise value) for cloud software companies has dropped to 5.4 from a peak of 9.5 in early 2014. Technology Crossover Ventures, a Silicon Valley firm that backs late-stage start-ups and invests in public companies, used a 60-plus percent plunge in LinkedIn shares as an opportunity to snap up a stake during the first quarter, in what founding general partner Jay Hoag called the "sale of the year." Similarly, Battery Ventures, a software-focused venture firm that also does buyouts, is actively searching for potential takeover targets. "Historically, there just hasn't been an opportunity for take-privates in SaaS-land," said Chelsea Stoner, a partner at Battery and investor in Marketo back when it was a start-up. "With multiples compressed, we're certainly on the lookout." When Vista swooped in to buy Cvent in April for $1.65 billion, the price of $36 a share marked a 69 percent premium to where the stock was trading. Prior to the announcement, the stock was down by more than half in a little over two years.

Vista won a bidding war that involved another private equity firm and multiple companies, according to Cvent's proxy filing. "They weren't even frankly on our radar screen," said Cvent CEO Reggie Aggarwal, who took the company public in 2013. "They came unsolicited to buy us." Cvent's web-based software helps businesses, schools and nonprofits plan and manage events and conferences. The deal is expected to close in the third quarter, and Aggarwal is now rallying the troops. After all, when employees hear private equity, they think cost efficiencies and job cuts.

They're trying to promote the idea that this is the new Vista. Byron Deeter, partner at Bessemer Venture Partners

On Tuesday, Aggarwal held two quarterly webcasts from his office near Washington D.C., for Cvent's 2,000-person global workforce. For 90 minutes in the morning and again in the afternoon, employees grilled Aggarwal on whether they'd still have jobs, opportunities to advance and keep their benefits.

To reassure them, Aggarwal pointed to the company's 180 job openings, the dozens of people hired since the deal was announced and the millions of dollars Cvent is spending to expand three offices. "Their investment thesis for us is growth," Aggarwal said in an interview, repeating his message from the webcast. "You don't pay that kind of premium and then squeeze it for a profit." Aggarwal's story stands at odds with the public perception of Vista. The firm, led by Robert Smith, is known for firing high-paid executives, replacing many U.S. positions with cheaper off-shore alternatives and milking the cash from the resulting earnings. Byron Deeter, a partner at Bessemer, said it's called the "Vista playbook." He's skeptical that these deals will be any different. "They're trying to promote the idea that this is the new Vista," said Deeter, whose investments include Box , DocuSign and Twilio, which filed to go public last month. "I suspect they will spin some other things together and then manage for profitability at a larger scale."



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For example, Cvent could team up with Lanyon, another event management software company in Vista's portfolio, combining their sales and marketing efforts.

One thing is clear  Vista isn't slowing down. The firm, with offices in San Francisco, Chicago and Austin, Texas, is in the process of raising a fund that reportedly may reach $10 billion. In addition to Cvent and Marketo, Vista recently purchased Ping Identity, a privately held security software vendor, and partnered with Bain Capital to buy insurance software provider Vertafore for $2.7 billion. A spokesperson for Vista said the firm was unavailable to comment for this story. A Marketo spokesperson declined to comment because the deal hasn't closed. Thoma Bravo, based in San Francisco and Chicago, agreed last week to spend $3 billion on data analytics provider Qlik, the firm's third biggest purchase, according to FactSet.

Like many of Thoma Bravo's deals, including Riverbed Technology, Compuware and Blue Coat, Qlik was pushed to sell by activist hedge fund Elliott Management. Elliott said in March that it had built a 5 percent stake in Qlik, calling the company "significantly undervalued." Less than three months later, Thoma Bravo came in with a purchase price 40 percent higher than when Elliott disclosed its ownership, but still 27 percent below the stock's record high in August. Seth Boro, a managing partner at Thoma Bravo, told CNBC.com in January that activist funds represent "a segment of the capital markets that's here to stay." A Thoma Bravo representative said the firm wasn't available to comment for this story.

Cvent, Marketo, Qlik
Analysts at William Blair began coverage of Amazon with a very bullish take on the stock.

The firm initiated the e-commerce giant's stock with an "outperform" rating and a price target of $820 a share, citing the strength and market share lead of Amazon Web Services. The stock traded near $718 a share on Friday.

"Despite increasingly aggressive competition from Microsoft and Google, our research suggests that Amazon maintains very high win rates. We believe this can be attributed to the company's significantly greater feature depth, geographical footprint, and industry mindshare," they said in a Thursday note to clients. "The infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) market is forecast to grow from $12 billion in 2015 to $62 billion in 2020, and we expect Amazon Web Services (AWS) to maintain its leading market share position over the duration of our forecast."

William Blair also noted Amazon would benefit from higher e-commerce penetration. "We believe e-commerce sales will continue to account for a greater percentage of retail sales, driven by convenience and faster and less expensive delivery.

Amazon's stock has been on fire over the past year, gaining nearly 67 percent, and recently hit a new all-time high.

AMZN 12-month chart

Source: FactSet

Disclosure: William Blair makes a market maker for Amazon.
May's low job creation was more a function of a legitimately weak month than an economy reaching full employment, according to a Goldman Sachs analysis.

Since the Labor Department announced a week ago that nonfarm payrolls grew by just 38,000 last month, Wall Street has debated what the numbers mean. Were they an indication of a scary economic slowdown, or just that after more than 5 straight years of monthly gains, there simply remains very little slack left in a jobs market that has 12.8 million new hires since the Great Recession ended?

Data on worker availability and supply going back to 1975 suggest that the employment situation is still a distance from topping, Goldman economist David Mericle said in a note to clients.

"Labor market tightening cannot explain away the weak May payrolls print, which instead appears to mostly reflect a month of weaker labor demand," Mericle wrote.

Assessing the progress of the U.S. labor market is difficult because of cross currents: The headline unemployment rate that the government emphasizes fell in May to 4.7 percent, which Goldman considers a reflection of full employment.
The owner of a Southern Tier wildlife removal and control business will have to change his business practices after consumers complained about incomplete work and unattended warranty issues.

New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman has obtained an agreement with Jason Carter, who conducted business under the name Fur & Feathers Wildlife Control, Schneidermans office said in a news release.

Under the agreement, Carter paid a civil penalty of $2,000.

He also agreed to file an assumed business name certificate for Fur & Feathers Wildlife Control in the Tioga County Clerks Office and any other county in which he may be conducting business.

The investigation

Schneiderman began an investigation into Carters business practices after consumers filed several complaints that he had not completed work on homes to prevent extracted wildlife from reentering the structures.

Consumers also complained that they were unable to contact Carter to have him come back and remove wildlife that had returned during the warranty period.

When consumers attempted to call Carter, their telephone messages were either not returned, or, if returned, Carter didnt show up at agreed-upon times to make repairs, Schneidermans office said.

When New Yorkers pay someone to perform a service, that service should be performed fully, properly and in a timely manner, Schneiderman said in the news release. My office will keep working to make sure that hardworking New Yorkers get the services theyve paid for and that business owners who skirt their responsibilities are held accountable.

Making changes

As a part of the agreement, Carter also agreed that he would modify his business contracts to include the approximate or estimated dates when his work would begin and be substantially completed.

He also agreed that he would return all consumer calls related to warranty work, or completion of unfinished jobs, within 48 hours.

He also agreed to make arrangements with consumers to perform warranty work and completion of unfinished contract work no later than two weeks from the time a consumer initially contacts him.

And if he doesnt complete the work, Carter agreed to refund all amounts that the consumer pays, according to Schneidermans office

Contact Reinhardt at ereinhardt@cnybj.com
The designs shown will be what will appear on the obverse and reverse of the Enhanced Uncirculated 2016-S Native American $1 coin in the 2016 American $ Coin and Currency set. Illustrated is the version with Uncirculated Mint set finish.

An Enhanced Uncirculated 2016-S Native American $1 coin struck at the San Francisco Mint will be the featured coin in the 2016 American $1 Coin and Currency set to go on sale by the U.S. Mint beginning at noon Eastern Time June 16.

The U.S. Mint had not yet disclosed as of May 27 how many of the 2016 sets will be offered, at what price and whether there will be any household ordering restrictions.

The Mint has also not disclosed details on the $1 Federal Reserve note that will be included in the set.

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2016 will be the third consecutive year the Mint will issue an American $1 Coin and Currency set with an Enhanced Uncirculated Native American dollar struck at a different Mint production facility.

The different finishes on the coins were produced on the dies by various methods, including the use of wire-brush and laser-frosting techniques.

The 2014 set contains an Enhanced Uncirculated 2014-D Native American dollar struck at the Denver Mint while the 2015 set contains an Enhanced Uncirculated 2015-W dollar struck at the West Point Mint.

That leaves just the Philadelphia Mint to execute an Enhanced Uncirculated Native American dollar for a future American $1 Coin and Currency set, if the Mint chooses to issue one in 2017.

The 2014 and 2015 sets were also each combined with a $1 Federal Reserve note. They sold for $13.95 and $14.95, respectively, per set.

The 2014 issue of 50,000 sets sold out and is now bringing a premium. Sales for the 2015 set were increased to 90,000 sets maximum, with sales as of the May 22, 2016, sales report at 88,233.

The 2015 set is still being offered by the U.S. Mint.
First lady Abigail Adams is recognized on a 2007 First Spouse gold $10 coin, the second issue to be released in the First Spouse coin series.

Abigail Adams advised her husband to "remember the ladies" when considering the consumer economy in early America.

Colonial America column from June 27, 2016, Weekly issue of Coin World:

Close your eyes and imagine a coin that circulated in pre-Federal America. Now picture the coins in the hands of a person preparing to spend it. Perhaps they bought a dozen fresh eggs, or candles to light their house, or a ream of writing paper, handing over a coin we now collect in an everyday transaction.

Imagine that persons face: its a man, isnt it?

While we have all wondered who spent our cherished coins, most modern numismatists have not paused to contemplate the role that Founding Mothers played in the early American economy.

Women in 18th century America were the chief actors in every household economy. Their responsibility for education of children and provisioning of the home forced them to engage in the sorts of transactions that required using the small change we now collect.

Abigail Adams, the wife of John Adams, left a treasure trove of letters that covered every aspect of her family life. Most are now preserved by the Massachusetts Historical Society and are available online at the societys dedicated Adams Family Papers website, http://www.masshist.org/digitaladams/archive/.

Writing to her husband, John, on Dec. 10, 1775, from the family home outside of Boston, Abigail described the then-prevailing currency situation with savvy.

She advised her husband, then at the Continental Congress, to find a legislative remedy to keep among us our gold and silver, which are now every day shipped off to the West Indies for molasses, coffee, and sugar.

I can say of my own knowledge, Abigail wrote, that a dollar in silver is now become a great rarity, and our traders will give you a hundred pounds of paper for ninety of silver.

In January 1779, Mrs. Adams wrote a long letter to her dearest friend John on financial matters.

Still away at Congress, John had directed his wife to draw bills of exchange, a financial document similar to a check, to cover household expenses. While merchants were happy to extend her credit, not a single six pence can I get of substantial coin, Mrs. Adams complained. Wartime prices were high, and necessaries were scarce, forcing Mrs. Adams and women across the country to think like financiers.

Early American merchants and tradespeople tended to be men, but when thinking about the consumer economy, recall Abigail Adams words of caution to her husband in 1776: remember the ladies.

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The hoard of silver coins was found on the site of an ancient agricultural estate in Israel.

One of the excavation expedition members works to recover the hoard, which was found during construction of a new neighborhood.

A small hoard of 16 silver half-shekel and shekel coins of the city of Tyre was found in Israel in April.

A small cache of silver coins recently found in Israel offers a fascinating look into life during the second century B.C.

The hoard contains 16 silver shekels and half-shekels (tetradrachms and didrachms) that were minted in the city of Tyre and bear the images of the king, Antiochus VII, and his brother Demetrius II.

The hoard was found in April with the participation of local youth during construction of a new neighborhood in the Modiin-Maccabim-Reut municipality. The Israel Antiquities Authority announced the find in early June.

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Ancient Modiin was the place of origin of the Jewish Hasmonean dynasty that ruled Judea for 227 years from 163 B.C. to 63 A.D. and is where the Maccabean revolt against the Seleucid Greeks started.

Soldiers of Antiochus came to Modiin to force the local Jews to make sacrifice to the heathen gods and forsake their laws, according to David Hendin in Guide to Biblical Coins.

According to a statement from IAA excavation director Avraham Tendler released by the organization, The cache may have belonged to a Jew who hid his money in the hope of coming back to collect it, but he was unlucky and never did return.

The treasure was hidden in a rock crevice, up against a wall on an impressive agricultural estate that was discovered during the excavation there.

What is in the hoard?

According to Tendler, the cache is compelling evidence that one of the members of the estate who had saved his income for months needed to leave the house for some unknown reason. ... It is exciting to think that the coin hoard was waiting here 2,140 years until we exposed it.

The cache contains one or two coins from every year between 135 and 126 B.C., a collection familiar to modern day hobbyists.

According to Dr. Donald Tzvi Ariel, the head of the Coin Department at the Israel Antiquities Authority, It seems that some thought went into collecting the coins, and it is possible that the person who buried the cache was a coin collector. He acted in just the same way as stamp and coin collectors manage collections today.

Numerous bronze coins minted by the Hasmonean kings were also discovered in the excavation. They bear the names of the kings such as Yehohanan, Judah, Jonathan or Mattathias and the title High Priest and Head of the Council of the Jews.

The site of the find had been an agricultural estate founded by a Jewish family during the Hasmonean period, according to a description provided by the IAA.

Where was the hoard?

The family planted olive trees and vineyards on the neighboring hills and grew grain in valleys. An industrial area that includes an olive press and storehouses where the olive oil was kept is currently being uncovered next to the estate. Dozens of rock-hewn winepresses were exposed in the cultivation plots next to the estate. The estate house was built of massive walls in order to provide security from the attacks of bandits.

The finds indicate that the estate continued to operate throughout the Early Roman period. The Jewish inhabitants of the estate meticulously adhered to the laws of ritual purity and impurity: they installed ritual baths (miqweot or miqwe) in their settlement and used vessels made of chalk, which according to Jewish law cannot become ritually unclean.

Why does it matter?

Evidence discovered at the site suggests that the residents of the estate also participated in the first revolt against the Romans that broke out in 66 A.D.: the coins that were exposed from this period are stamped with the date Year Two of the revolt and the slogan Freedom of Zion.

The estate continued to operate even after the destruction of the Temple in 70 A.D., and remained occupied through the Bar Kokhba War from 132 to 136 A.D.

It seems that local residents did not give up hope of gaining their independence from Rome, and they were well-prepared to fight the enemy during the Bar Kokhba uprising, Tendler said. During the excavation we saw how prior to the uprising the inhabitants of the estate filled the living rooms next to the outer wall of the building with large stones, thus creating a fortified barrier.

Tendler singled out additional hiding places that were discovered hewn in the bedrock beneath the floors of the estate house. These refuge complexes were connected by means of tunnels between water cisterns, storage pits and hidden rooms. This construction allowed stealthiness for Jews in the Bar Kokhba War.

Archaeologists discovered a miqwe containing an opening inside it that led to an extensive hiding refuge in which numerous artifacts were found that date to the time of the Bar Kokhba uprising, according to Tendler.

Finds revealed in the excavation will be preserved in an archaeological park in the new neighborhood, according to the IAA.
After a series of negative police encounters, watchdog Matt Akins is looking for answers through a civil lawsuit. He wants more than $10 million in damages, though he said the money isn't for personal gain.
CPS Foundation hires Harris as first executive director

For the first time since it formed 26 years ago, the Columbia Public Schools Foundation has a paid staff member with the hiring of Katie Harris as executive director.
Carnival Memphis king Jay Keras and queen Sarah Williamson make their grand entrance at the Crown & Sceptre Ball. (Photos by Michael Donahue/The Commercial Appeal)

SHARE Caroline Wright and Charlie Brannon were at Memphis Italian Festival. (Michael Donahue/The Commercial Appeal). Three generations of Crumps were at the Crown & Sceptre Ball: Frank M. Crump IV (from left), Frank M. Crump and Frank M. Crump III. Abigail Longfield and Addison Forsdick were at the Carnival Memphis Princess Ball. (Michael Donahue/The Commercial Appeal). June 4 2016 Elizabeth Powe (from left), Fisher Folk and Sara Brown were at the Carnival Memphis Princess Ball.

By Michael Donahue of The Commercial Appeal

Carnival Memphis, which is celebrating its 85th anniversary this year, presented its 2016 royalty at the Crown & Sceptre Coronation Ball, which was held June 3 at the Hilton Memphis.

After they settled into their thrones, king Jay Keras and queen Sarah Williamson were joined on stage by members of the Loyal Order of Scarabs, the Royal Pages, the Royal Court, former Carnival kings, queens and presidents and royalty from the grand krewes. The ball kicks off Carnival Week, which ends June 12.

During the week, the king and queen will visit retirement homes, hospitals and other organizations in the morning and afternoon and will attend parties hosted by grand krewes and country clubs in the evening. Or, as Sarah told the audience, "serving Memphis by day and celebrating it by night."

Jay, co-owner and vice president of Jim Keras Automotive Group, and his wife, JJ, are the parents of two children, Dallas and Coco. The automotive industry is being honored by Carnival Memphis this year.

Sarah, daughter of Russell and Elizabeth Williamson, is majoring in business administration and art history at Washington and Lee University.

Toof Brown, 90, a former Carnival president, was honored at this year's event. In 1931, Toof attended the first Memphis Carnival celebration, which was known at that time as Cotton Carnival. Toof, who was 5 years old, remembered the king and queen arriving on a "mail boat on the river" before ascending a carriage drawn by a white horse.

Toof told the audience he isn't as young as he was, but, he said, "I'm not as old as I want to be. So look out!"

A large bronze-colored boll weevil statue rested between the thrones of the king and queen. This year marks the 50th anniversary of the Secret Order of the Boll Weevils. The green-suited, snout-masked Weevils lived up to their reputation for Carnival mischief with a scathing skit that poked fun at just about every Carnival Memphis dignitary from the king and queen on down.

Carnival president Jim Taylor attended with his wife, Mimi.

The Jimmy Church Band performed.

Princess Ball

Carnival Memphis festivities continued with the Princess Ball, which was held June 4 at the Memphis Hunt and Polo Club.

"The Princess Ball is an event in honor of the Royal Court  the princesses and escorts  hosted by Carnival," said Carnival Memphis executive director Ed Galfsky. "The event is open to Carnival Memphis Association members and their guests. It's the second night of Carnival Week and the first night the princesses and ladies of the realm wear their official Carnival gowns."

A father-daughter dance is included at the ball, one of the events at which parents are invited. During the week, Royal Court members attend morning and evening events, which include service projects and parties.

Mark Anderson's Party Train performed.

Italian Festival

While celebrating their anniversary together, Lil Wyte and his girlfriend, Nicole Ann Di Fillippo, stopped by the Memphiosa booth June 2 during the Memphis Italian Festival. Instead of spaghetti or other Italian fare at the annual festival, the couple shared a "Finding Nemo" roll from iSushi in Cordova. That's where they dined, and that's what they ate on their first date, said the rapper.

Lil Wyte has friends on the team, which has been competing in Italian Fest for 10 years. This year, Memphiosa entered sea bass and pork tenderloin in the Anything Italian category. The team, which won that category last year, didn't win this year, said team member Guy Strong.

Memphiosa did win third place in this year's tent category, he said. "We had really good flooring this year," he said. "That was a big difference. The last couple of years people were in the mud. So we got 4-inch flooring off the ground, which kept everybody's feet dry."

Guy, who is beverage manager at Ruth Chris's Steak House, appreciated the team's attention to detail. "We rented really nice tables and chairs this year."

They also had "some handmade centerpieces. My fine dining experience really translates to being able to make things look nice. We don't use the same quality glassware and plates and knives, but it's in the right spot."
June 10, 2016 - Pallbearers carry the casket of Officer Verdell Smith out of Hope Presbyterian Church at the conclusion of his funeral service. Smith, 46, was killed on June 4 when he was hit by a suspect fleeing police. He dashed into the street to protect citizens from the suspect driving a car the wrong way down a one-way street.

(Brad Vest/The Commercial Appeal)

By Yolanda Jones of The Commercial Appeal

The seal of the Memphis Police Department bears the words knowledge, integrity and courage.

Officer Verdell Smith epitomized these traits, said Mike Williams, president of the Memphis Police Association.

Friday, law enforcement, elected officials and citizens filled Hope Presbyterian Church in Cordova to give Smith a final salute.

Smith, 46, was killed on June 4 when he was hit by a suspect fleeing police. He dashed into the street to protect citizens from the suspect driving a car the wrong way down a one-way street.

Smith sacrificed his life to save the lives of others. On and off duty he personified the shield that he wore on his uniform for 18 years.

As Smith's children, Chelsea and Verdell Jr., took to the stage to talk about their father, they delivered a moving tribute that had the audience in tears at the 5,000-seat sanctuary.

"It is crazy because every time my life got hectic or I needed somebody to talk to about boys, mom getting on my nerves, VJ (her brother) ain't acting right, school's hard, I would call my daddy," Chelsea Smith said. "Now life's hectic cause he's not here. It's hard, but I want y'all to know that God's timing is perfect. My daddy did everything he was supposed to do before God took him away."

She added, "I need to ask God for understanding and know that he took my daddy away so that this city can come together for love."

Verdell Smith Jr., who is the spitting image of his father, including his smile, thanked the citizens and the police department for their outpouring of love and support.

"My dad was asked not what the city could do for him, but what he could do for the city," Verdell Smith Jr. said.

Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland, one of the several elected officials who attended the service, lamented over the death of Smith.

"It's extraordinarily sad, these men and women are here to protect and serve us, and unfortunately that puts them in situations where these things happen," said Strickland said. "Officer Smith literally died saving people's lives."

Smith, a Memphis native and Whitehaven High School graduate, is the fourth officer in Memphis to die in the line of duty in the last five years.

Interim Memphis Police Director Michael Rallings said about Smith, "you matter, blue lives matter, all lives matter."

Like others, Rallings praised Smith's bravery in defending the public against a suspect fleeing police.

Justin Welch, 21, has been charged in Smith's death.

"He (Smith) risked his personal safety to make sure others were protected," Rallings said. "It wasn't how he died that made him a hero. It was how he lived."

At the burial service at Memorial Park Funeral Home and Cemetery on Poplar, more than 100 solemn officers lined the road to salute Smith's casket as it was pulled along by a horse and carriage.

Strickland handed out bottled water to family members fanning themselves; medical personnel at the burial site tended to a few visitors who felt ill standing in the sun on the 90-degree afternoon.

Twelve chairs lined with blue faux fur were placed in front of Smith's casket for family and friends to see the officer off to his final resting place.

A crowd of more than 50 gathered behind them.

Rallings and about 100 of his officers stood tall and looked on in silence as two members of the Navy removed the American flag from Smith's casket, folded it and handed it to his family. Smith served in the Navy before joining MPD in 1998.

Rallings also presented the family with a neatly folded American flag.

Afterward, Smith's children released white doves into the air. Throughout the service they remained poised.

Smith lived a life of service and giving.

He mentored young people and started a program called, "Face the Future."

"He was the epitome of protect and serve," said Memphis Police Association president Mike Williams.

Reporter Kayleigh Skinner contributed to this story.
June 9, 2016 - MPD interium director Michael Rallings (third from left) watches Memphis mayor Jim Strickland during a press conference at Handy Park on Beale St. Thursday morning. Strickland is looking to beef up security in the historic district after MPD Officer Verdell Smith was killed on Beale last weekend. (Yalonda M. James/The Commercial Appeal)

By Kayleigh Skinner of The Commercial Appeal

City officials held a press conference on Beale Street Thursday to announce the introduction of "Beale Street Bucks," a new security measure which will require Saturday night visitors to pay $10 to get onto the street famed for its nightlife.

"People are going to find a way onto Beale Street regardless with the $10 fee or not," Natalie Lagasca said outside of Gould's Salon on Main Street. "Will it cut down on crime, I don't know."

Patrons who pay the entry fee on Saturday after 10 p.m. will get a $7 voucher for use in any Beale establishment. The program comes as a response to a recent string of violence Downtown: May 29 marked the latest of at least 18 stampedes going back to 2013, according to former Beale manager and Downtown Memphis Commission head Paul Morris. Additionally, Memphis Police Officer Verdell Smith was struck by a car and died on Saturday as he and other officers were trying to clear the street.

Lagasca said she would pay the fee.

"They're trying to uphold everyone's safety," Lagasca said. "I'd rather have that than the other with how many problems have been on Beale Street lately."

Carolyn Soto said she could see the fee discouraging crime, but it may also discourage guests from visiting the street.

"Anybody who's coming to commit crime isn't going to pay to do it unless they really want to," Soto said. "But at the same time, tourists, if it was free to begin with and just a place to hang out, they're not going to want to pay $10."

Joseph Wooten said the program was "a way to weed out a certain class."

"A lot of people here would be considered lower income," Wooten said. "I can see where the idea came from, but I don't think it would be fortunate for the people that don't have $10 to enjoy their city. It's always been open, so why change it now? Crime is going to be here regardless."
Supporters of Carver High School walk out of the school board meeting after hearing the announcement that Carver will be closed. (Stan Carroll/The Commercial Appeal)

SHARE June 9, 2016  Supporters rally at the SCS board meeting in favor of keeping Carver H.S. open. The board passed the superintendent's recommendation to close the school. (Stan Carroll/The Commercial Appeal) June 9, 2016  Supporters in favor of keeping Carver H.S. open exit Thursday's board meeting after passage of the superintendent's recommendation to close the school. (Stan Carroll/The Commercial Appeal) June 9, 2016  Rev. Ralph White addresses supporters of Carver H.S. after the SCS board voted to close the school. (Stan Carroll/The Commercial Appeal) June 9, 2016  Rev. Ralph White. (Stan Carroll/The Commercial Appeal)

By Jennifer Pignolet of The Commercial Appeal

This year's graduates of George Washington Carver High School in South Memphis will be its last after the Shelby County School Board of Education voted Thursday afternoon to close the severely under-enrolled school.

The board voted 5-3 to close the school, putting an end to a yearslong battle between the district and the community regarding the future of the school. Board members Shante Avant, Miska Clay-Bibbs and Teresa Jones voted against the closure. Board member Stephanie Love declined to vote.

But school closure discussions may not be done for the year. After the Carver vote, board member Scott McCormick said he will ask colleagues to revisit the decision to close Northside High at the end of the 2016-17 school year. A discussion and possible vote would likely require a special meeting, but could result in the board deciding to close Northside immediately rather than waiting a year.

Superintendent Dorsey Hopson implored the board to approve Carver's closing.

"I ask the board not to be guided by emotion but to be guided by what's best for kids," he said.

A crowd of about 50 people walked out of the meeting just after the vote, some of them with tears in their eyes, many sporting shirts reflecting the year they graduated Carver.

"I think it's really going to do more damage, taking away our high school," 1968 Carver graduate Lillie Wilborn said.

She was hopeful something could be done to reverse the decision.

"It's a foundation, and that's something you need to keep no matter what," she said.

Rev. Ralph White, a leader of the community at the forefront of keeping Carver open, said he believes the fight is not over.

White said he is exploring legal options, but declined to say on what grounds.

"We don't want to say that and put it out because we want to talk to an attorney," White said.

The school district threatened to close Carver  a South Memphis landmark that opened in 1957  several times, particularly in the last five years. White said the uncertainty has pushed students away from the school, contributing to the low enrollment.

Hopson planned to wait until next year to close schools as part of a long-term facilities plan. But a severe budget shortfall pushed up the timeline. The board already voted to close the Memphis Health Careers Academy this year. Four charters were also revoked, decisions the Tennessee State Board of Education upheld last month.

The SCS board delayed a vote on Carver several times this spring, including last week, when Hopson expressed desire to hold one more meeting with the community and to review a revised plan alumni had proposed for keeping the school open.

Hopson has maintained that with fewer than 200 students, the school is not serving them well and is one of the most expensive schools in the district to operate. After reviewing the community's first plan, Hopson said he didn't see a viable path to keeping the school open.

On last year's state tests, just one in five students tested proficient or advanced in algebra 1. In English 1, just one in four students met that same bar. Across the state, 99.7 percent of schools are performing better than Carver, according to state data.

"It's not about our memories, it's about their future," board member Mike Kernell said.

Closing the school is estimated to save the district $900,000. Students will be rezoned to Hamilton High.
October 21, 2015 - Holly Swogger (right), President of West Tennessee Veterans Home, Inc., celebrates with supporters (from left) Candi Schoenberger, Sally Harrison and Janice Vanderhaar after a General Government committee meeting of the Shelby County Board of Commissioners. In a resolution sponsored by Chairman Terry Roland the charitable organization was awarded a total of $145,000 in county funds from the FY 2016 operating budget. (Stan Carroll/The Commercial Appeal)

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By Linda A. Moore of The Commercial Appeal

As an army sergeant major, David Spencer learned to "lead from the front."

Now retired, Spencer wants to be first again, this time in a project allowing him to create art drawn from his war experiences.

Guided by artist and gallery owner Ephraim Urevbu, Spencer, 55, other veterans and their loved ones will produce art displayed and sold at auction on Veterans Day to raise money for the West Tennessee Veterans Home.

"I am what you call art stupid. I can't even paint by numbers," said Spencer, who spent 27 years in the army and served in combat in the Balkans conflict and wars in the Middle East.

However, Urevbu has told him not to worry.

"Certain images, those certain things, we can transpose and put on canvas, bringing our thoughts, our experiences and life events onto the canvas with images and colors," Spencer said "It doesn't need to be a Thomas Kinkade work of art. It will still be art in the sense of it was done and how it was done and who it was done by."

Spencer is on the board of the West Tennessee Veterans Home organizing group and, as the executive officer of the Combat Veterans Motorcycle Association, led a fundraiser last year.

In this project, he will be one of many.

Urevbu is helping 40 or 50 veterans or military families create works of art for the Nov. 11 event at his 410 S. Main St. gallery.

One challenge, he said, is to find the veterans.

"A lot veterans are very private. They don't want to talk about their story," Urevbu said. "So the challenge is to unlock all that. Finding those veterans that will be eager and willing partners."

Fundraising for the home for veterans living in Shelby, Tipton and Fayette counties began in 2006. It is, for now, expected to be built in Arlington.

The federal government requires local groups to raise about a third of the money, meaning the group here must raise $25.2 million, said Don Swogger, marketing chairman with the West Tennessee Veterans Home organization.

They've raised $17 million and need about $8 million more, Swogger said. The total cost is about $72 million.

The art project is "fantastic," Swogger said, and will help them tap into a new pool of potential donors.

There are participants already signed up for the campaign, he said.

"One was career military, involved in a number of conflicts as a helicopter pilot. We have a Gold Star mother who has carried the loss of her son with her everyday," Swogger said.

There are two Vietnam War veterans, one who received a Purple Heart and is disabled, and that vet's wife, he said.

It was Ethel Richardson, retired from the Air National Guard and the Army Reserve after a total of 22 years, who brought Urevbu (already a friend) and the veterans home organizers together.

Richardson volunteers for several organizations with Swogger and his wife, Holly, president of the organizing group.

"I'm a licensed practical nurse and did some training at the VA (Memphis VA Medical Center) and saw some of the struggle," Richardson said. "I'm a big fan of art, so to bring those two together, I know it can have a therapeutic effect."

Meanwhile, Urevbu sees the possibility to raise even more money for this cause.

He envisions a Memphis factory employing vets to make his inspirational Freedom candles, a possible documentary and coffee table book based on the art project and the inclusion of a creative center once the nursing home is built.

"I am not a big proponent of war, but these kids go to war. Some of them went to war when they were 17 years old, 18 years old. They are kids," he said. "They come back home mentally damaged. They are physically damaged for life. Then we tell them, go build your own nursing home."

The phrase "thank you for your service," Urevbu said, is not enough.
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WASHINGTON  Why such vehemence among Republican leaders in their condemnations of Donald Trump for questioning the objectivity of a federal judge based on his "Mexican heritage"?

This is, in House Speaker Paul Ryan's words, "the textbook definition of a racist comment." But it is not materially more bigoted than the central premise of Trump's campaign: that foreigners and outsiders are exploiting, infiltrating and adulterating the real America. How is attacking the impartiality of a judge worse than characterizing undocumented Mexicans as invading predators intent on raping American women? Or pledging to keep all Muslim migrants out of the country? Or citing the internment of Japanese citizens during World War II as positive precedent?

Is Trump a racist? Who the bloody hell cares? There is no difference in public influence between a politician who is a racist and one who appeals to racist sentiments with racist arguments. The harm to the nation, measured in division and fear, is the same, whatever the inner workings of Trump's heart.

No, Trump's attack on Judge Gonzalo Curiel was not different in kind. But for GOP leaders, this much was new: Since Trump now owns them, they now own his prejudice. Trump must have known his attack on Curiel would humiliate the GOP leaders who have endorsed him, and did it anyway.

Republicans have clung to the hope that Trump might find unsuspected resources of leadership; lacking that, to the hope that he might be co-opted; and lacking that, to the hope of laying low and avoiding the Trump taint. All delusions. Having tied themselves to Trump's anchor, the protests of GOP leaders are merely the last string of bubbles escaping from their lungs.

So what were senior Republicans thinking when they endorsed Trump? I don't want to underestimate the difficulties involved in opposing one's own presumptive nominee. There is tremendous political pressure to be loyal to the team. The arguments against doing anything that might help Hillary Clinton are strong. "This is about moving our agenda forward," said Ryan in justifying his Trump endorsement.

Republican leaders, in other words, thought they were in a normal political moment, a time for pragmatism, give-and-take, holding your nose and eventually getting past an unpleasant chore.

But it is not a normal political moment. It is one of those rare times  like the repudiation of Joe McCarthy, or consideration of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, or the Watergate crisis  when the spotlight of history stops on a single decision, and a whole political career is remembered in a single pose. The test here: Can you support, for pragmatic reasons, a presidential candidate who purposely and consistently appeals to racism?

When the choice came, only a handful of Republicans at the national level answered with a firm "no." A handful. It was not shocking to me that the plurality of an angry GOP primary electorate  grown distrustful of establishment leaders  might choose a populist who appeals to racial prejudice. It is shocking to me  and depressing and infuriating  that almost no elected Republicans of national standing would stand up to it.

By this standard, Sen. Ben Sasse of Nebraska is the moral leader of the GOP. But given the thinness of his company, many of us will never be able to think about the Republican Party in quite the same way again. Collectively, it has failed one of the most basic tests of public justice: Don't support racists, or candidates who appeal to racism, for public office. If this commitment is not a primary, non-negotiable element of Republican identity, then the party of Lincoln is dead.

Without a passion for universal human dignity and worth  the commitment to a common good in which the powerless are valued  politics is a spoils system for the winners. It degenerates into a way for one group to gain advantage over another. For Trump in particular, politics seems to be a way for white voters to take back social power following the age of Obama.

Many Republicans, I suspect, will sicken of defending this shabby enterprise, as Sens. Lindsey Graham, Jeff Flake and Mark Kirk have done. The process of unendorsing Trump is humiliating, but only for a moment. The honor of choosing rightly, when it mattered most, will endure.

Contact Michael Gerson at michaelgerson@washpost.com.
Now you see it; now you don't.

As any Android fan can tell you, Google's become a bit notorious for changing its mind. One day, we hear about how some new app, feature, or idea is the way of the future and the answer to all of our pressing problems  and the next day (or so it often seems), that notion is mysteriously gone and forgotten.

The best fickle flipples are when Google doubles up and does another 180 soon thereafter and ends up going back to the thing it initially sold us on and then abandoned. It's enough to make even the most stable tech enthusiast bemused and befuddled.

With a handful of fresh about-faces getting added into the mix in recent months, I thought it'd be a fine time to look back at some of Google's most memorable, amusing, and occasionally groan-inducing U-turns here in the land of Android and other associated apps and services.

So buckle up and grab a bottle of Dramamine, just in case. Some serious flipping-and-flopping-caused flabbergasting is straight ahead.

[Get fresh Googley insight in your inbox every Friday with my Android Intelligence newsletter. Tons of tasty tips await!]

1. Android: "Hangouts is gonna be Android's single default messaging client!"

We'll start with the biggest, floppiest flip of all: the mess of Google's ever-evolving approach to messaging services, especially as they pertain to Android.

After a long and often-confounding journey, Google finally got its act together in 2013 and came up with a single unified messaging app for Android. Hangouts would be the "single communication app [for] users to rely on," a Google exec said at the time. It'd handle instant messaging, SMS-based texting, and even internet-based audio and video calls.

At last! Android's rusty old Messaging app was dishonorably discharged, and Hangouts started to serve as the platform's default messaging application. Until about two years later, that is, when Google Messenger came along and took over the default spot  splintering things back into a muddled messaging mess.

And that, of course, was only the beginning. (Allo? Can you hear me?)

2. Everywhere: "Google Messages and Duo are for casual consumer use! Google Chat and Meet are for businesses!"

Speaking of messy messaging about, erm, messaging, after many more years of complicated confusion and no consistent focus on a sensible messaging service strategy, Google got its act together again in 2018 and settled on a new approach that actually almost made sense (if you allowed yourself to forget the past for a moment).

Ahem: Messages and Duo were the text and video messaging apps for consumers, while Chat and Meet were the group chat and videoconferencing apps for enterprises. Google made this distinction abundantly clear, with a member of the messaging team going as far as to create and share a handy chart that illustrated the breakdown:

But then  well, y'know. By 2020, Google changed its mind about that and made Chat and Meet broad-use services, for both teams and individuals, while Messages and Duo remained minimally different variations on the same basic concepts.

And here's a bonus U-turn within this U-turn: Last fall, Google brought screen sharing into Google Duo...two years after removing that very same feature from the app.

Cool. Cool, cool, cool, cool, cool.

3. Android (and beyond): "RSS is dead!"

Way back in the prehistoric era of 2013, Google made many of its most loyal users steaming mad by announcing the shutdown of its popular (at least in certain circles) Google Reader service. Reader was a tool for following RSS feeds from individual websites, which made it super-easy to create your own custom feed of info from the sources you cared about the most.

In its 2013 announcement, Google said that "usage of Google Reader [had] declined," and "as a company, [it was] pouring all of [its] energy into fewer products"  because it thought "that kind of focus [would] make for a better user experience."

Fast-forward to 2021, and what do we have? Why, it's a new "experiment" that basically recreates the Google Reader concept right within Chrome on Android!

Per that announcement:

Today, people have many ways to keep up with their favorite websites, including subscribing to mailing lists, notifications, and RSS. Its a lot for any one person to manage, so were exploring how to simplify the experience of getting the latest and greatest from your favorite sites directly in Chrome, building on the open RSS web standard. Our vision is to help people build a direct connection with their favorite publishers and creators on the web.

The feature brings a new "Follow" button into the Chrome Android app that lets you subscribe to a site's RSS feed and then see all of its latest stories in the browser's New Tab page.

Gee willikers, that sure does feel familiar.

4. Android: "Bottom tab bars are bad, mmkay?"

When Google's Material Design standard debuted in 2014, it actively discouraged the use of bottom tab bars  the iOS-reminiscent rows of commands that appear at the bottom of the screen within Android apps.

This was no subtle suggestion, either. Google's official design guidelines were adamant about the platform's stance on the bars:

JR

But then, something changed. Within a couple years of that proclamation, bottom tab bars started appearing in Google's own Android apps. And by 2016, Google's design guidelines were updated to encourage the use of bottom-dwelling boxes in Android applications.

And here's the real kicker: Over the past year, we've seen some Google apps get updated again to do away with the bottom tab bars and move back to that original bar-free standard  for a little while, at least.

Oh, Google.

5. Android: "We're gonna put all your browser tabs in the Overview list!"

Speaking of design about-faces, with 2014's Android 5.0 Lollipop release, Google made a bold move: It took the ability to jump between browser tabs out of the actual Chrome app and put it into the system Overview list instead. Each browser tab would look like its own app or process, we were told, and it'd make perfect sense alongside all the other apps and processes in a single system-level destination. We'd get used to it!

Only, um, we didn't. For most people, having tons of tabs mixed in with apps and countless other cards made things more difficult to manage  and only added to the cluttered and confusing nature of the Overview interface in that era.

After about four years, Google seemed to admit that the move was misguided. In 2018, the company rolled out an update that eliminated the tab-Overview option and brought tabs back into the browser for everyone.

6. Android: "Widgets should go in the app drawer!"

The Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich era of Android was all about taking the simplification introduced in the tablet-only Honeycomb release before it  the moves to eliminate hidden commands and make the operating system more intuitive  and bringing those same concepts to phones in a way that made sense for the smaller screen.

Part of that effort involved moving the option to add home screen widgets from an out-of-the-way and hidden long-press menu into the main app drawer, where it'd be plainly in sight  with widgets existing right alongside all the regular app shortcuts. The idea was to create a single streamlined place for finding everything that could be added onto your home screen. It seemed to make an awful lot of sense.

But, alas, it lasted for only a brief two years: Without explanation, Google yanked widgets out of the app drawer and put 'em back into their former long-press menu with 2013's Android 4.4 KitKat release. And even with the magically renewed focus on widget discovery in this year's Android 12 update, the element remains vexingly out of sight and accessible only via that long-press action.

7. Android: "Widgets belong on the lock screen!"

In other widget-related flippity-floppity, back in 2012, Google sold us on the notion that widgets would be an excellent addition to our devices' lock screens. Lock screen widgets were a key element of that year's Android 4.2 Jelly Bean release, in fact, and the pitch was impressive: Widgets were so darn useful on the home screen  so why not also make 'em available one step higher?

By Android 5.0 two years later, user-configured lock screen widgets were but a mere memory. And in this case, I don't think too many people were choked up over the change.

8. Android: "The app drawer should scroll horizontally!"

This is getting into pretty geeky waters with the history of Android versions, I realize, but Android's app drawer scrolled vertically  up and down  all the way through the platform's 2010 Gingerbread era. Then, in 2011, Honeycomb and Ice Cream Sandwich introduced a horizontal scrolling drawer, where you'd access additional pages by swiping side to side instead (a pattern we still see used by certain third-party device-makers today). It was an easier, more sensible way to access your apps! Or so we were told.

Things stayed sideways up through 2015, when an update related to that year's Android 6.0 Marshmallow release arrived without warning and moved Android's core interface back to its original up-and-down scrolling setup.

Deja vu much, Monsieur Marshmallow?

9. Chrome OS: "The launcher should be ginormous!"

In the early days of Google's Chrome OS platform, the launcher  the Chromebook's version of an app drawer  was a small window that appeared on top of your desktop. The interface wasn't far removed from what you see with the Windows Start menu model.

At some point, though, Google rethought that approach and transformed the Chrome OS launcher into a giant, full-screen sort of affair  more like what you see on MacOS. That's still how the software behaves today.

Erm, for now, at least. Signs in the open-source Chrome OS code suggest Google's experimenting with a revamped launcher design that'd go back to the original, smaller pop-up-window setup. It'd supposedly "improve app workflows by optimizing access to apps, app content, and app actions."

Ooookay.

10. Google TV: "It's Android TV, gersh dern it!"

Maybe the funniest Google flip-flop of all time is the company's stance on its streaming media platform, Android TV.

Android TV, y'see, actually started off as Google TV when it first launched back in 2010. Four years later, Google announced it was changing the name to Android TV. And then, last October, the company launched a new Chromecast device that featured a new software layer called  wait for it  Google TV.

Technically, Google TV is a custom interface that exists atop the Android TV software. But eventually, Google says Google TV will be integrated into Android TV and the entire platform will become Google TV instead of Android TV (except maybe in certain exceptions where device-makers decide to stick with Android TV without the Google TV elements).

In related news, Google's marketing department is apparently now headed up by the ghosts of Laurel and Hardy.

11. Wear: "Smartwatches are all about notifications and proactive info!"

At its start in 2014, Google's wearable technology platform revolved around the idea of simple interactions and easy access to pertinent information. As an extraordinarily dashing Android-focused writer put it once:

It was what Wear didn't try to be that made it especially interesting. Unlike other wearable-tech efforts, the platform didn't try to cram lots of tiny buttons and complex commands into an awkward-to-use wrist-based screen. It reframed the smartwatch to be less about performing grand tasks and more about transmitting pertinent info quickly and without fuss.

But then, well, something happened: The early Wear devices weren't selling like hotcakes  and Apple's well-marketed alternative, on the other side of the mobile universe, was striking a chord with tech-hungry shoppers. So Google decided to take a little time-out and reassess its smartwatch strategy.

Self-quoting genie, hook me up again:

The Apple Watch came along, complete with its overly complicated interface and app-centric nature (something Apple would refine somewhat over time but that was almost laughably bad in the beginning). And Google, rather than sticking to the parts of its platform that made sense, decided to revamp Wear entirely and parrot Apple's flawed approach. With 2017's Wear 2.0 update, Android Wear lost the core element that made it sensible as a wearable operating system  the focus on easily glanceable info from both notifications and predictive intelligence  and instead put the focus on things that sound impressive in ads but don't make for a great real-world experience on a tiny wrist-based screen: complicated standalone apps, cramped on-screen keyboards, and notifications that don't appear in a glanceable way and require multiple taps and interactions to process.

Yuuuuuuuup.

And we all know how this story ends. Just like clockwork, a year and a half after that ill-advised revamp, Google pulled another 180 and went back to its original vision for the platform  with the focus firmly on glanceable info and proactive assistance once more. So far, signs suggest this year's coming Wear re-re-re-revamp will more or less follow that same pattern, albeit with even more focus on trying to make products people will actually want to buy.

12. Android: "Android tablets deserve their own specialized interface!"

In 2011, Google held a splashy event at its headquarters to introduce a new era for Android. It revolved around the release of Android 3.0 Honeycomb and a newfound focus on optimizing the platform for tablet use.

Honeycomb established a totally reimagined interface for Android on tablets, with key functions like navigation buttons, notifications, and the app drawer living in corners of the screen in order to provide easy two-handed access. It was a dramatic departure from the standard Android interface and was designed to let the operating system take full advantage of the larger screen space.

The tablet-specific UI was unceremoniously dumped before long, however, when Google's Android 4.2 Jelly Bean update brought a more traditional phone-like setup back to tablet screens  with "consistency and usability" being cited as the driving reasons for the reversal.

At that point, Android's notification panel remained split into two separate parts on tablets  a configuration that would stick around until 2014's Android 5.0 Lollipop release, when the tablet-based panel finished its transformation and became a single pulldown like its phone-based counterpart.

13. Android: "Face unlock is the new standard in smartphone security!"

Ah, 2011. Remember that year in Googley gadgets? All the cool kids unlocked their phones with their faces for about five minutes back then, when Google first introduced the Face Unlock feature as part of that year's Android 4.0 release. But even as the facial security system grew ever-so-slowly more reliable over the years, it was never as fast or as easy to use as a good old-fashioned pattern swipe or fingerprint tap  and it didn't take long for most folks to give up on the notion of it being anything more than an impractical-in-the-real-world parlor trick.

With the launch of 2019's Pixel 4 phone, Google gave facial recognition a fresh start. It introduced official system-level support for advanced hardware that'd make face-driven phone unlocking more consistent, secure, and effective, and it played up the Pixel 4's facial recognition feature as a meaningful advancement and advantage.

That focus on face unlocking lasted all the way to the following year's Pixel 5 flagship, which ditched facial recognition entirely without so much as a puff of explanation.

Naturally, it now looks like the feature could possibly make a comeback in this year's Pixel 6 phone. Hey, Google: You're makin' me dizzy.

14. Android: "Android needs its own native video editor!"

The high-profile launch of a new native video editing app for Android was a really big deal in 2011  especially since there weren't many great third-party options for that function at the time (and also since, y'know, That Other Mobile Platform had gotten its own high-profile native editing client just one year earlier).

But Google's Movie Studio app was abandoned more or less immediately after its birth. The app never got much in the way of updates or improvements, and after shipping sporadically with Android devices through 2012's Nexus 4 phone, it just kinda silently evaporated  never to be replaced or discussed again.

This past February, a full decade later, Google finally introduced a decent video editing function as part of its Android Google Photos app. It's not the standalone video editor Android once had, but hey, it's somethin'.

15. Android: "This operating system is all about people, mmkay?"

In 2011's Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich version, Google curiously renamed the platform's default Contacts app to People.

The idea behind the shift was logical enough: Our phones were about so much more than contacts, the thinking went, and so it made more sense to call the app People  and to have it act as a hub for all of our social communications.

To that end, the People app aimed to bring all of your contacts' social networking connections into single, centralized profiles. You could see a person's tweets or, yes, even Google+ postings right then and there  a "live window into your social world," as Google put it at the time.

Unfortunately, renaming Contacts to People mostly seemed to confuse people who couldn't figure out where their contacts had gone. By the Lollipop update a few years later, the app unceremoniously went back to its original name, and it didn't take long for the whole "single hub" thing to fade away, too  at least, up until last year's Android 11 release, when people suddenly became a key focal point for the operating system once again.

Oof. My head hurts.

So what gives?

Looking back through all these U-turns, it's hard not to wonder what's going on  why Google so frequently goes back and forth in an almost random-seeming manner with relatively significant decisions about how its platforms and services work.

The answer, best I can figure, is actually quite simple. Ready? Google is Google. Within Android and without  for better and for worse  the company has always shown a willingness to try things and then change course a short time later if it decides it doesn't like the new direction.

Hiroshi Lockheimer, Google's senior VP in charge of Android (and most everything else now, too, it seems), acknowledged the trend during a chat I had with him a handful of years ago.

"From a product development perspective, I think it's a great thing to be able to experiment and try new things and see what works [and] what doesn't," he said. He went on to note that too much back and forth can definitely have its downsides  namely on users who just want things to work consistently and without superfluous change.

"We're trying to find the right balance of how to iterate but also provide stability so that we're not causing whiplash," he told me.

It's an admirable goal. And who knows? Maybe to some extent, experimentation is better than stagnation  even if it does come with the occasional flipping and flopping.

Then again, maybe it isn't.

Oh, hell. I can't decide.

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Intel has missed out on the iPhone party until now, ceding big business to other chip makers in the process. But that could be about to change.

Apple will use modems from Intel in some models of its next smartphone, replacing chips from Qualcomm, according a Bloomberg report Friday. An Intel modem will go into iPhones for the AT&T Wireless network in the U.S. and in some international versions, the report says.

If true, it would be a big win for Intel, especially after its decision to cancel its upcoming Atom chips for phones. Intel has kept its modem business alive, in part because it hopes to capitalize on the upcoming move to 5G networks.

Chips from Qualcomm will still be used in iPhones for the Verizon Wireless network and in handsets sold in China, according to Bloomberg, which cited unnamed sources.

Qualcomm supplies all the main modem components for iPhones sold today.

The next iPhone, expected to be called the iPhone 7, is due this fall.

It won't be the first time a major phone maker has used different chips in different regions. In the U.S., Samsung's Galaxy S7 uses Qualcomm's Snapdragon 820, which has an integrated modem, while in Europe and Asia it uses its homegrown Exynos chips.

One factor in Apple's decision could be that it likes to use multiple suppliers, meaning it's not at the mercy of one vendor if it decides to raise prices, said Jim McGregor, principal analyst at Tirias Research.

Intel may also have offered discounts to Apple, he said. It did something similar with tablet chips used in Android devices, though with mixed success.

Carriers sometimes have a say in the technology used in handsets on their network, and Verizon may have insisted on the continued use of Qualcomm parts of it thinks the technology is a better fit, McGregor said.

In terms of performance, Qualcomm is widely acknowledged to have more advanced modems than Intel. In January, Qualcomm announced its X16 LTE modem, which the company claims supports download speeds of almost 1Gbps. Intel's latest XMM7480 reaches download speeds of 450Mbps.

But modem performance may not make a big difference given that carriers sometimes throttle network speeds.

For Apple, choosing a new modem could mean design changes and getting its phones requalified for networks in multiple countries, making it no small decision, said Nathan Brookwood, principal analyst at Insight 64.

It didn't have many alternative suppliers to choose from. Qualcomm and Intel lead the market, with Mediatek's technology lagging behind.

By working with both Qualcomm and Intel, Apple will be best positioned to switch to 5G as soon as either company is ready to deliver, Brookwood said. 5G will bring speed improvements as well as better support for the Internet of Things and smart home devices.

Apple may also be looking to use carrier aggregation, which can greatly boost wireless network speeds.

Eventually, Apple may create its own modem chip to integrate with its A-series processors, much as Samsung does today. That can help boost performance and extend battery life, but raises challenges when the combined chip has to be qualified for networks worldwide.
Labours campaign to keep Britain in the EU has been lacklustre from the outset. Their leaders heart isnt in it, their Party is riven with factional infighting and they are plagued by fear of a possible repeat of the disaster in Scotland, losing the support of core voters who differ with them fundamentally on the issue. I wrote earlier in the week about the bizarre message they have settled on, which essentially involves attributing all of the Labour Partys past achievements to Brussels and then telling voters Labour will never win another election.

But if the Oppositions campaign was wheezing and sputtering to start with, now its wheels are coming off.

Gordon Brown has been touring the country this week, as though people are going to be won over by a former Prime Minister who is famous for calling working class voters concerned about immigration bigoted.

Angela Eagle struggled badly in last nights debate using her Partys flawed lines, and added a whole new one  claiming that we have control of our borders inside the EU, an assertion so patently untrue that it is only likely to further alienate traditional Labour voters who know they are being lied to. By contrast, Gisela Stuart, speaking for Leave, delivered a clear, measured and expert argument that There is a successful union called United Kingdom and there is an unsuccessful union called the EU.

Shortly after the debate, two Labour MPs  John Mann, on the right of the Party, and Dennis Skinner, very much on its left  announced their decision to campaign for a Leave vote, putting further wind in Vote Leaves sails after a good fortnight. The news hasnt been covered as extensively today as Sarah Wollastons defection was yesterday (in part because they werent previously declared for the pro-EU campaign) but it still matters.

Then this morning Andy Burnham launched an attack on the messages and tone of the Remain campaign, warning that: We have definitely been far too much Hampstead and not enough Hull in recent times and we need to change that. It isnt the first time hes posed as a sage from the North, but its an intriguing sign of growing worries on the pro-EU side of the debate.

We have known from the beginning that Labour supporters would make up a large proportion of swing voters in this referendum. Indeed, part of the challenge for Leavers is crafting messages and campaigns that can build a sufficiently broad coalition across those voters, Eurosceptic Tories, UKIPers and others. This week is the first time we have seen signs of real panic developing among Remainers that they are losing ground in the Labour column.

Privately, Labour MPs who started the campaign predicting an easy victory are now conceding that Leave may well be on track to win. With less than two weeks to go, and with Brown, Blair and Miliband already deployed along with every imaginable scare story, they are beginning to wonder what else they can do to reverse that situation.
The respective debate plans were clear from the start. Remains was to repeat that quitting the Union would be a leap in the dark. Leaves was to stress that Britain has a great future outside the EU. For the former, Nicola Sturgeon was authoritative, Amber Rudd feisty and passionate, and Angela Eagle the attack dog (so to speak). For the latter, Andrea Leadsom was calm and considered, Gisela Stuart cooly intelligent (she topped the Timess Red Box poll), and Boris Johnson both infinitely sharper than he used to be  the bumbling and stuttering is now mostly a thing of the past  and admirably unruffled under fire.

And what fire: not the odd popgun attack fired off at his cheeky persona, but a nuclear-charged barrage on his record, personal integrity and standing. Note that it came not only from Eagle and Sturgeon, the Conservative Partys political opponents, but from Rudd: indeed, the Climate Change Secretary was first off the mark to assail him, ended by doing so again, and kept it up in relentlessly in between.

Immigration, she said near the start, is a complex problemyou need to look at the numbers. But the only number Boris is interested in is Number 10! And she ended as follows: Boris is the life and soul of the party. But he isnt the man you want driving you home at the end of the evening. The implication was clear  and, as is the way with these matters, deniable. The MP for Uxbridge would not only crash the car but, shortly before doing so, shove his hand up your skirt.

Now you may think that this last remark is below the belt (so to speak). Or you may believe that it is fair comment  or both. But one fact about it is undeniable: it was a blue-on-blue attack  unmissable, unmistakable. And as a live attack on national TV, it marked a new low in the clear and present dangers to party unity. It is inconceivable that both it, and the wider assault of which it was a part, could have been delivered without prior approval at the highest levels of the Remain campaign. Indeed, the attack will surely have been crafted there. Rudd is a medium-level Cabinet Minister  liked by David Cameron and a protege of George Osborne, whose PPS she was during the last Parliament. The voice was the voice of the Climate Change Secretary. But the hands looked like those of friends of the Chancellor.

Cameron has said that he didnt want to participate in referendum debates because he wants to avoid blue-on-blue attacks. After yesterday evening, it can fairly be said that he wasnt telling the truth  on that last point, at any rate. If the Prime Minister really wanted to shun them, Rudd would never have delivered those carefully-scripted lines. In a way, though, the lie is actually a tribute to Boris. Michael Gove may give Leave its intellectual depth. But it is the former Mayor of London who has the wider reach, and of whom Downing Street is evidently scared out of its wits.

It follows that, from Number Ten and the Treasurys point of view, his reputation must be destroyed. This is not to say that Leave is fighting by Queensbury rules  far from it  or that the stakes are not just as high in reverse, if not higher. Leave is going after Cameron personally: on Turkey, on immigration. If it wins the referendum, the Prime Minister is probably out, and sooner rather later. He and Osborne are fighting for their political lives.

It is all the more striking and significant, then, that Leave did not respond tit-for-tat last night. Its trio was arguably more dull and less sparky that Remains. But it was more coherent: where Sturgeon and Eagle, for their own different reasons, couldnt stop themselves launching attacks on the Tories, Stuart stuck to her script. It was also more expert. Leadsom co-founded Fresh Start. Stuart turned against the EU project because of her own personal experience as one of Britains representatives in the European Constitution process. And it had about it a poise that is a sign of growing self-confidence  of a sense that Project Fear may be running out of legs and credibility.

Be this so or not, one point is clear as a result of the debate  which, we enthusiasts must always remember, wont have been seen by most voters (and was at least half an hour too long). Cameron and Osborne may be shy of debating Boris themselves. But they are happy for others to do their low and dirty work. Sure, a lot of mud is being thrown at them as well as by them. The difference is that it is beginning to look as though throwing it is all they have left in their locker.
Nokia supplied an IP/MPLS network overlaid on an optical network to Swiss electricity transmission system operator Swissgrid for the management of its electrical grid, which has a length of 6,700 km covering 140 substations. The "Grid Control Network" additionally interconnects power plants, data centers and offices.



In a turnkey project, Nokia implemented two IP/MPLS -based networks, one an operational network and the other a business communications network. They are both overlaid on an encrypted DWDM and Coarse Wavelength Division Multiplex (CWDM) network, also from Nokia. The IP/MPLS network features Nokia's 7705 Service Aggregation Router portfolio, with features tailored to support critical applications required by utilities as well as the 7750 Service Router portfolio. The xWDM network layer, based on the Nokia 1830 Photonic Service Switch, provides optical intrusion detection and on-the-fly low latency wavelength encryption for the operational and business communications network. This means that potential physical intrusions on the fiber cable can be detected and located. In case of an intrusion, sensitive data are nevertheless protected through embedded optical layer encryption (AES-256).



Nokia said its solution is supporting mission-critical operational services such as Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems, Teleprotection, video surveillance via closed-circuit TV (CCTV), site access control and intrusion detection. This will allow Swissgrid to maintain the highest level of reliability, safety and security across the entire grid. The network is also enabling business communications between electricity substations and Swissgrid locations for tasks such as office local area network (LAN) and voice over IP (VoIP) in a highly secure way.



When fully deployed in partner sites outside of Switzerland in 2016, the "Grid Control Network" will be the key element in the exchange of electricity between Swissgrid's network in Switzerland and sites in Germany, Austria, Liechtenstein, Italy and France.



http://www.nokia.com
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Another Stolen Election?

By John Scales Avery

10 June, 2016

Countercurrents.org

Many people throughout the world view recent political developments in the United States with alarm. Is the US drifting towards fascism? If so, is there a danger that the world will be plunged into an all-destroying thermonuclear war? Will political irresponsibility in the United States result in climate change denial? Will all hope of avoiding catastrophic climate change then be lost?

https://human-wrongs-watch.net/2015/12/18/the-united-states-drifts-towards-political-irresponsibilty/

http://lankanewsweb.net/featured/item/3059-the-danger-of-fascism-in-the-united-states-john-scales-avery

https://human-wrongs-watch.net/2016/05/19/the-superdelegates-must-vote-for-sanders

The mass media rushed to proclaim Hillary Clinton the winner of the Democratic nomination, even before voting in the California primary had taken place. 100,000 people attended a rally for Bernie Sanders, but the mass media failed to mention it at all. On Tuesday, June 7, 2016, the California primary took place. It was, and is, too close to call. Gross voter suppression took place. But the mass media rushed to proclaim Clinton the winner.

http://sourceplanet.net/politics/la-county-reports-240063-provisional-ballots/

http://cosmoso.net/where-did-12-million-california-voters-go/?r=cosmosopub22&utm_source=cosmosopub22

In fact, the California Democratic primary was not the only one where suspected voter suppression or deletion took place. The same might be said of New York and Nevada. All of these election irregularities need to be investigated in detail.

http://usuncut.com/politics/bernie-wins-nevada-democratic-caucus/

One is reminded of the gross irregularities in Florida during the 2000 Presidential Election, when George W. Bush narrowly defeated Al Gore, with the connivance of the Republican-elected Supreme Court. Many people believe that Al Gore really won, and that the election was stolen.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_2000#Aftermath

Today, in 2016, is another election being stolen from the people of the United States? Both Clinton and Trump are highly unpopular. Polls show that Trump might defeat Clinton in November, but that Bernie Sanders would easily beat Trump. Polls also show that 90 percent of all US voters are dissatisfied with the electoral system. Is another election being stolen from the people? We must continue to investigate. We must find out.

Suggestions for further reading

http://www.truth-out.org/election-2016

http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/36370-we-can-control-him-why-trump-might-win-and-how-progressives-could-stop-him

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article44843.htm

http://www.commondreams.org/views/2016/06/09/bernie-or-bust-no-its-justice-or-bust

http://www.commondreams.org/news/2016/06/08/struggle-continues-sanders-refuses-bend-knee-establishment

http://www.commondreams.org/news/2016/06/09/obama-endorses-clinton-sanders-vows-fight-progressive-future

http://www.commondreams.org/news/2016/06/09/whose-party-whose-platform-progressives-seek-influence-dnc

http://www.commondreams.org/news/2016/05/31/rigged-2016-election-has-voters-feeling-helpless-unheard-and-ashamed

http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/presidential-campaign/280485-sanders-must-stay-dem-race

http://www.commondreams.org/news/2016/06/08/struggle-continues-sanders-refuses-bend-knee-establishment

http://dissidentvoice.org/2016/06/hillarys-foreign-policy-speech/

http://dissidentvoice.org/2016/06/hillary-clinton-electing-a-foreign-spy-for-president/

http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/36322-endgame-setting-the-table-for-tuesday-s-primary-showdown

http://www.commondreams.org/news/2016/06/06/what-happens-next-peoples-summit-fortify-sanders-political-revolution

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article44811.htm

http://yournewswire.com/one-hundred-thousand-attend-bernie-sanders-rally-media-remains-silent/

http://www.commondreams.org/news/2016/06/03/sanders-clinton-yes-trumps-foreign-policy-ideas-are-scary-so-are-yours

http://www.commondreams.org/news/2016/06/02/highlighting-contrast-clinton-sanders-vows-nationwide-ban-fracking

http://www.commondreams.org/news/2016/06/02/campaign-not-over-polls-show-dead-heat-california

http://www.commondreams.org/views/2016/06/01/common-sense-democratic-presidential-race

http://www.truth-out.org/buzzflash/commentary/five-things-you-need-to-know-about-donald-trump-s-pitiful-plan-for-the-planet

http://www.commondreams.org/views/2016/05/30/establishment-democrats-courting-disaster

http://www.commondreams.org/news/2016/05/29/thousands-call-dnc-oust-corporatist-tool-wasserman-schultz

http://www.commondreams.org/views/2016/05/22/expecting-sanders-supporters-close-ranks

http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/36163-trump-s-climate-change-denial-is-already-complicating-the-paris-climate-deal

http://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/281147-dems-discuss-dropping-wasserman-schultz#.V0UCKLcSTX0.facebook

http://www.commondreams.org/news/2016/05/25/dems-reportedly-asking-has-debbie-wasserman-schultz-become-too-toxic

http://www.commondreams.org/news/2016/05/24/sanders-yes-convention-about-real-issues-might-be-messy

http://www.commondreams.org/news/2016/05/24/americans-dislike-trump-and-clinton-bolsters-sanders-superdelegate-pitch

http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/36128-can-the-democrats-win-without-the-berniecrats

http://www.commondreams.org/news/2016/05/23/should-dems-be-freaking-out-first-national-polling-average-shows-trump-over-clinton

http://dissidentvoice.org/2016/05/clinton-and-trump/

http://www.rawstory.com/2015/12/bernie-sanders-unveils-climate-plan-to-end-us-oil-coal-and-nuclear-dependence/

http://www.commondreams.org/news/2016/05/19/new-national-poll-trump-increasing-lead-over-clinton

http://www.commondreams.org/news/2016/05/20/why-voters-might-respectfully-disagree-clintons-declaration-victory

http://www.commondreams.org/views/2016/05/20/why-bernie-sanders-our-best-chance-beat-donald-trump

http://www.commondreams.org/views/2016/05/20/clinton-californians-your-votes-will-not-affect-democratic-primary-whatsoever

http://www.commondreams.org/views/2016/05/20/five-things-people-should-stop-saying-about-bernie-sanders

http://www.theguardian.com/film/2016/may/20/noam-chomsky-on-donald-trump-almost-a-death-knell-for-the-human-species

http://ecowatch.com/2016/05/18/trump-paris-climate-deal/

http://www.commondreams.org/views/2016/05/18/sanders-voter-protesting-american-privilege-home-and-abroad

http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/36087-the-coming-democratic-crackup

http://www.commondreams.org/views/2016/05/17/establishment-democrats-and-next-march-folly

http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/36068-noam-chomsky-today-s-republican-party-is-a-candidate-for-most-dangerous-organization-in-human-history

http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/36057-trump-card-the-bully-who-exposes-our-bully-nation

http://opednews.com/articles/Gallup-Hillary-has-Worst-by-Meryl-Ann-Butler-Bernie-Sanders_Gallup-Polling_Hillary-Clinton_Poll-160510-917.html

http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/36052-chomsky-on-trump-s-climate-denialism-he-wants-us-to-march-toward-the-destruction-of-the-species

http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/36024-third-parties-eager-to-disrupt-the-presidential-race-and-the-two-party-system

http://www.commondreams.org/news/2016/05/11/terrifying-new-national-poll-shows-trump-and-clinton-statistically-tied

http://usuncut.com/politics/bernie-sanders-leads-new-national-poll/

http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/36373-jill-stein-to-bernie-sanders-run-on-the-green-party-ticket-and-continue-your-political-revolution



John Avery received a B.Sc. in theoretical physics from MIT and an M.Sc. from the University of Chicago. He later studied theoretical chemistry at the University of London, and was awarded a Ph.D. there in 1965. He is now Lektor Emeritus, Associate Professor, at the Department of Chemistry, University of Copenhagen. Fellowships, memberships in societies: Since 1990 he has been the Contact Person in Denmark for Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs. In 1995, this group received the Nobel Peace Prize for their efforts. He was the Member of the Danish Peace Commission of 1998. Technical Advisor, World Health Organization, Regional Office for Europe (1988- 1997). Chairman of the Danish Peace Academy, April 2004. http://www.fredsakademiet.dk/ordbog/aord/a220.htm. He can be reached at avery.john.s@gmail.com
















Even For A Democrat, Clinton Stands Out As Violent, Aggressive

By Robert Barsocchini

10 June, 2016

Countercurrents.org

Robert Parry says in his latest piece that while the Democrats have been a reluctant war party since 1968, by nominating Hillary Clinton, they have once again become an aggressive war party.

Noam Chomsky notes that indeed, Hillary Clinton would be more adventurous, ie aggressive, than Trump or Sanders in terms of foreign policy, but he and other analysts, like John Pilger, disagree with Parry that the Democrats were, during the period Parry suggests, and perhaps any other, what a rational person would call reluctant to kill.

Looking back briefly at a couple of examples of Democratic initiatives, as well as who formed the Democratic party, we see that when it comes to butchering people, the Democrats have never been shy.

John Pilger points out in a recent article that most of Americas wars (almost all of them against defenceless countries) have been launched not by Republican presidents but by liberal Democrats: Truman, Kennedy, Johnson, Carter, Clinton, Obama.

Kennedy began the US genocide against the people of Vietnam, demanding bombings and attacks with chemical weapons like napalm, and began a terrorist campaign against Cuba that continues to date.

Johnson, who viewed the Vietnamese people as barbaric yellow dwarves, continued the genocide in Vietnam and Indochina.

Carter supported numerous genocides and terrorist campaigns.

Bill Clinton, among many horrific acts, committed a major genocide against the people of Iraq, and helped lay the foundation for todays nuclear war tension by expanding NATO to Russias borders.

One of Hillary Clintons many crimes was to continue this expansion by supporting a US-backed, neo-Nazi and neo-con integrated coup in Ukraine while referring to the president of Russia as Hitler  by far the most aggressive stance towards Russia of any US candidate.

See Pilgers article for some of Obamas crimes, which in several ways are uniquely extreme.

Truman defied his military advisers and many others and carried out mass nuclear executions of civilians as a way to influence the government of Japan (and likely the Soviet Union), then followed his nuclear attacks by further targeting Japanese civilians with the biggest TNT-based mass-execution of civilians in human history up to that point. Executing civilians was a prominent part of his Democratic philosophy. He publicly stated that the German people are beginning to atone for the crimes of the gangsters whom they placed in power and whom they wholeheartedly approved and obediently followed. His logic, an example of the standard definition of terrorism, would suggest that Israelis, who support almost entirely their states illegal annexation and massacres of Palestine, should be targeted and killed until they atone for what their government is doing, and that US civilians who supported the sanctions against or invasion of Iraq (etc.) should likewise be punished until they atone. This is also the principle behind the 9/11 attacks, though US citizens who support terrorism committed by their own state are quick to engage in the wrong agent  genetic fallacy when this is pointed out.

Looking back further than Truman, we find the Democrats comprised the bulk of the pro-chattel-slavery bloc. As noted at Pbs.org, after the Civil War, most white Southerners opposed Radical Reconstruction and the Republican Partys support of black civil and political rights. The Democratic Party identified itself as the white mans party and demonized the Republican Party as being Negro dominated, even though whites were in control. Determined to re-capture the South, Southern Democrats redeemed state after state  sometimes peacefully, other times by fraud and violence. By 1877, when Reconstruction was officially over, the Democratic Party controlled every Southern state. The South remained a one-party region until the Civil Rights movement began in the 1960s. Northern Democrats, most of whom had prejudicial attitudes towards blacks, offered no challenge to the discriminatory policies of the Southern Democrats.

Backing up again, we see that in fact the Democratic party was founded by supporters of the sadistic genocidaire Andrew Jackson, who enjoyed making clothing from the skin of people who were exterminated in service of expanding the un-free world.

Are Republicans therefore a superior ogranization? Of course not. The two parties check and balance each other to maintain and expand the worlds leading terrorist state.

As we can see, it is nothing new or different for the Democrats to be a party of expansionist gangsters. What is remarkable of Clinton, then, is that even against this gory and tyrannical backdrop, she stands out as especially evil, corrupt, and extremist in her US religio-national supremacism. As Professor Johan Galtung notes, two countries today (and occasionally their proxies) continue to wage aggressive war, thanks to their belief that they have been anointed by their gods: the US and Israel. And Hillary Clinton is as fundamentalist as they come.

As Chris Hedges and Noam Chomsky, among others, have recently noted, US elections are a carnival a way of making people passive, submissive objects. Rather than petering out and cowering to the Democratic party, Chomsky says, Sanders supporters should sustain the ongoing movement, which [should] pay attention to the elections for 10 minutes but meanwhile do other things. However, at the moment, its the other way around. Its all focused on the election. Its just part of the ideology. The way you keep people out of activism is get them all excited about the carnival that goes on every four years and then go home, which has happened over and over.

Robert Barsocchini is an internationally published author who focuses on force dynamics, national and global, and also writes professionally for the film industry. Updates on Twitter. Authors pamphlet The Agility of Tyranny: Historical Roots of Black Lives Matter.














Is The Official 9/11 Story Coming Apart At The Seams?

By Eresh Omar Jamal

10 June, 2016

Countercurrents.org

Anyone who is even barely informed knows by now that the official 9/11 story is a complete fantasy. The event did, however, provide the US government with a catastrophic and catalysing event like a new pearl harbour, which the Project for the New American Century  co-written by Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz along with seven other individuals, who went onto serve for the Bush administration  said was needed, 9 months before 9/11 happened, to bring about revolutionary changes and secure energy supplies for the US.

From having the only skyscrapers in history anywhere in the world to ever even fall down from a fire, let alone vertically on its own footprint, which thousands of engineers and experts from other fields say is impossible, to having 3 skyscrapers fall vertically down on its own footprint after being hit by 2 planes, the official 9/11 story is one of the most imaginative, yet, hard to believe fairy-tales of our time. That is right. Remember building 7? It also collapsed vertically down on its own footprint after NOT being hit by a plane in the same fashion as the twin towers did, in the same way that buildings come down during controlled demolitions as confirmed by engineers and other experts.

Pointing out the many holes in the official 9/11 story, however, is not the point of this article. All I want to point out to the reader before proceeding any further is that whatever happened, the official story is a lie and that the US government was surely involved in it somehow, as the worlds most sophisticated aerospace defence system  the North American Aerospace Defence Command  which protects North America from any such attacks completely, had stood down on September 11, 2001, and many whistleblowers have even said that the orders to stand down came from the highest levels of government. Despite all of this and more, there is no way, as of yet, to confirm what really happened  all we can do is speculate. That may, however, well be changing.

Speculating

First, let me speculate based on my research of the event and from testimonies of various whistleblowers as to what really happened. What I believe happened was that the US government had funded various elements within Saudi Arabia (among others) to carry out many aspects of the 9/11 attack (for example, 15 out of the 19 hijackers were allegedly from Saudi Arabia), so that it can invade other countries to serve the interest of the Anglo-American elite, based on false allegations against those innocent countries. 9/11 was a false flag attack, just like hundreds of others carried out by various governments around the world, throughout history.

It is already well known that the US government and the CIA have had close ties with various groups in Saudi Arabia, including the Saudi royal family, for years. Various sources within the US establishment has even suggested that the attackers of 9/11 were funded by members close to, or even belonging to, the Saudi royal family. But that aside, I believe that the US government had primarily ran the whole show, hoping that they would be able to bury the evidence implicating the various elements within Saudi Arabia to the events of 9/11 so as to eradicate the trail, which would eventually lead to them. That is precisely why the establishment had tried so hard, and continues to, to keep 28-pages of the 9/11 Commission Report classified, as according to some within the US government who has looked at those pages, it clearly implicates the Saudi regime. And it is the push to declassify those 28-pages that is blowing the lid anew, on the official 9/11 story.

Turning on each other

Given the talks of declassifying those 28-pages along with the US government allowing the 9/11 victims families to sue the Saudi government for damages through the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act which was passed by the Senate on May 17, 2016, the Saudi press recently claimed what is, perhaps, already well known, that the 9/11 attacks were a false flag operation run by the US government. On April 28, 2016, the London-based Saudi daily Al-Hayat published an article written by Saudi legal expert Katib Al-Shammari, arguing that The US itself had planned and carried out the 9/11 attacks, placing the blame on a shifting series of others  first Al-Qaeda and the Taliban, then Saddam Husseins regime in Iraq, and now Saudi Arabia (Article In Saudi Daily: US Planned, Carried Out 9/11 Attacks  But Blames Others For Them, Middle East Media Research Institute, May 19, 2016).

Al-Shammaris article states that:

Those who follow American policy see that it is built upon the principle of advance planning and future probabilities. This is because it occasionally presents a certain topic to a country that it does not wish [to bring up] at that time but [that it is] reserving in its archives as an ace to play [at a later date] in order to pressure that country. Anyone revisiting... [statements by] George HW Bush regarding Operation Desert Storm might find that he acknowledged that the US Army could have invaded Iraq in the 1990s, but that [the Americans] had preferred to keep Saddam Hussein around as a bargaining chip for [use against] other Gulf states. However, once the Shiite wave began to advance, the Americans wanted to get rid of Saddam Hussein, since they no longer saw him as an ace up their sleeve. September 11 is one of winning cards in the American archives, because all the wise people in the world who are experts on American policy and who analyse the images and the videos [of 9/11] agree unanimously that what happened in the [Twin] Towers was a purely American action, planned and carried out within the US. Proof of this is the sequence of continuous explosions that dramatically ripped through both buildings... Expert structural engineers demolished them with explosives, while the planes crashing [into them] only gave the green light for the detonation  they were not the reason for the collapse.

It further says that the events of 9/11 gave the US government the ability to do certain things. For one, The US [government] created, in public opinion, an obscure enemy  terrorism  which became what American presidents blamed for all their mistakes, and also became the sole motivation for any dirty operation that American politicians and military figures desire to carry out in any country. Second, that it allowed the US government to launch a new age of global armament. And third, it made the American people choose from two bad options: either live peacefully [but] remain exposed to the danger of death [by terrorism] at any moment, or starve in safety, because [the countrys budget will be spent on sending] the Marines even as far as Mars. Concluding that, the nature of the US is [such that] it cannot exist without an enemy.

Only a few days later, on May 21, 2016, The New York Times ran an article titled, How Kosovo Was Turned Into Fertile Ground for ISIS, which said:

Saudi money and influence have transformed this once-tolerant Muslim society at the hem of Europe into a front of Islamic extremism and a pipeline for jihadists. Kosovo now finds itself, like the rest of Europe, fending off the threat of radical Islam Kosovo now has over 800 mosques, 240 of them built since the war and blamed for helping indoctrinate a new generation in Wahhabism. They are part of what moderate imams and officials here describe as a deliberate, long-term strategy by Saudi Arabia to reshape Islam in its image, not only in Kosovo but around the world Saudi diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks in 2015 reveal a system of funding for mosques, Islamic centres and Saudi-trained clerics that spans Asia, Africa and Europe.

The article then goes onto grave details about Saudi involvement with extremists and the spread of extremism. Now, the question is, given that the US government has tried so hard to protect its close allies from being implicated with the 9/11 attacks before  both Saudi Arabia and Israel  especially through its propaganda machine, why did The New York Times run such an article? Dr Paul Craig Roberts, who was the Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy under Ronald Reagan, writes:

One possible answer is that the publics confidence in the 9/11 story is eroding as a result of growing expert opinion that challenges the official line. In order to redirect the publics scepticism, a red herring is being pulled across the trail. The Saudi angle satisfies the belief that some sort of government coverup is involved but redirects [emphasis mine] the suspicion from Washington to the Saudis... We are probably experiencing a deep state disinformation play designed to protect the false 9/11 story. The publics scepticism is now directed at Saudi Arabia, and the publics outrage is directed at the US government for covering up for the Saudis.

Interestingly enough, the NYT in an editorial on May 27, 2016, wrote that Saudi Arabia has frustrated American policy makers for years. This was because the Saudis have sponsored extremist clerics who are fostering violent jihad, creating a fertile ground for recruitment to radical ideology. What is interesting is that, even if all of that is true, it was the US that had turned Kosovo into a failed state to begin with, prompting for its secession from Serbia in 2008. So if Washington is now willing to scapegoat Saudi Arabia for the disaster (or part of it) that it brought to Kosovo, there is no reason to believe that it will not do the same when it comes to the events of 9/11. As Finian Cunningham pointed out in a piece for RT, Dishing the dirt on the Saudis over Kosovo is but one aspect of a larger emerging narrative in Washington. One which seeks to offload responsibility for international terrorism, instability and conflict on to Americas Arab allies... Washington is setting the Saudi rulers up to take the rap for a myriad of evils that arguably it has much more responsibility for. The question is: how much can the strategic alliance between the US and its Saudi partner bear  before a straw breaks the camels back? (US stabs Saudi ally in the back  again  with terror scapegoating, RT, June 2).

Breaking the camels back

It seems that Washington is clearly setting the Saudis up to take the fall should the 9/11 cover-up start to unravel even further, as evident from the New York Times new narrative (which had already been popularised by the alternate media). The Saudis, it seems, can already see the guns being pointed at its direction. That is why the Saudi press had published that piece in the first place. All of this has the potential to finally bring an end to the strategic alliance between Washington and Saudi Arabia which has brought so much death and destruction to the world and, with it, bring the official 9/11 story come crashing down on its head. So, is the official 9/11 story coming apart at the seams? Given the amount of suffering that has been brought to so many innocent people around the world based on that false story by its authors, one can only hope so. For those of you who feel the same way, please spread the word, and share this article, and help the official 9/11 story come apart at the seams, as it should have, a long time ago.

Eresh Omar Jamal is an editorial assistant at New Age, a leading English daily newspaper in Bangladesh. He has done a Specialised Honours in Financial and Business Economics from York University, Canada. He can be reached at eresh17@hotmail.com.












Saudi Arabia, UN Black Lists And Manipulating Human Rights

By Dr. Binoy Kampmark

10 June, 2016

Countercurrents.org

It appears that political power and diplomatic clout have been allowed to trump the UNs duty to expose those responsible for the killing and maiming of more than 1,000 of Yemens children.- Sajjad Mohammad Sajid, Oxfam Director in Yemen, Jun 7, 2016

It is such cases that give the United Nations a bad name. And if heads and decay say something about the rest of the body, Ban Ki-Moon says all too much in his role as UN Secretary General. Always inconspicuous, barely visible in the global media, his presence scarcely warrants a footnote. This has been a point of much relief for various powers who have tended to see the UN as a parking space for ceremony and manipulation rather than concrete policy.

A most sinister feature of the latest UN reversal is the role played by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia behind the move. Other powers have previously attempted to prejudice the various organs, and functions of the UN, exerting various pressures. In March, Morocco made its position clear when it expelled 84 UN staffers from a UN peacekeeping mission in the Western Sahara region after Ban deemed the disputed territory occupied.

The Kingdom is engaged in an enthusiastically bloody campaign in Yemen against the Shia Houthi insurgents, one that can scant be described as compliant with the laws of war. This was one of the subjects of a 40-page report, written primarily by the UN chiefs special representative for children and armed conflict Leila Zerrougui.

In an expansive document spanning several countries and regions, it was found that the Saudi-led coalition had been implicated in the deaths of some 60 per cent of the 1,953 child deaths and injuries in Yemen last year. A policy of systematic targeting of hospitals and schools was also noted. In Aden alone, six facilities were attacked 10 times.

On Monday, the UN announced that the Saudi-led coalition had been removed from the childs rights blacklist. This sent a flurry through various diplomatic channels. The Secretary-General found himself red faced and crestfallen. According to Bans spokesman Stephane Dujarric, Pending the conclusions of the joint review, the secretary-general removes the listing of the coalition in the reports annex.

Ban expressed a sense of helplessness. Before reporters at UN headquarters, he explained how, This was one of the most painful and difficult decisions I have had to make. Before him was the very real prospect that millions of other children would suffer grievously if, as was suggested to me, countries would de-fund many UN programmes.

Hoping to salvage tattered credibility, Ban still insisted that he stood by the contents of the report, warning that the coalition might make an ignominious reappearance depending on the findings of an investigation. In UN-speak, those findings can always be tinkered with. Given that Saudi Arabia will front that investigation along UN officials, the result is as good as decided.

The response by Saudi Ambassador Abdullah al-Mouallimi on Thursday gave a true sense of implausible deniability. We did not use threats or intimidation and we did not talk about funding. A slew of aggressive calls from coalition countries suggested otherwise. On Tuesday, Foreign Policy reported that the Kingdom had dangled the threat of severing ties with the UN and cut hundreds of millions of dollars in counterterrorism and humanitarian aid if it was not removed from the list.

The Monday warning involved senior Saudi diplomats threatening UN officials with their powers of conviction, stretching across other Arab governments and those in the Organization of Islamic Cooperation to similarly sever ties.

What, then, could Ban have done? From the start, the role of the secretary-general was unclear. A US Department of State meeting prior to the Preparatory Commission in London (Aug 17, 1945), recorded that the SG should be a man of recognized prestige and competence in the field of diplomacy and foreign office experience. He should be between forty-five and fifty-five years of age and be fluent in both French and English.

In 1985, that noted doyen of international law, Thomas Franck, emphasised that the SG was an official best disposed to fact-finding, peacekeeping initiatives and good offices. He surmised in a Hague Academy of International Law workshop that, till that point, the office had been occupied by those completely successful in drawing a line between their role and the role played by political organs at the behest of member States.

All in all, combative, engaged UN secretary-generals remain a distant murmur, one initially built by such figures as Dag Hammarskjold and Trygve Lie. The last of any note to push the buttons of various powers, notably that of the US, was the late Boutros Boutros-Ghali, who brought a sustained arrogance to the office.

It was, to a degree, a fair call. The Cold War had thawed, thereby providing the body the prospect for a more active role. It was not to be, though Boutros-Ghali became one of the main celebrity hates for US politicians.

What we have gotten since is weak will and pliability, best reflected by Bans decision. To be fair, the organisations effectiveness has tended to suffer at stages because of an inability to collect back dues, or keeping the line of revenue flowing. The greatest violator of that tendency has been Washington itself. Again, the money card has been played, with all too predictable results. Human rights remain the playthings of the powerful.

Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. Email: bkampmark@gmail.com














What Four Syrian Refugee Children Have Achieved For Humanity In Lebanon

By Franklin Lamb

10 June, 2016

Countercurrents.org

Damascus: Given the unanticipated intense interest in the my article "Why I Bought Four Syrian Children Off A Beirut Street" , which resulted in the receipt of more than 1000 emails, approximately 130 being requests or inquiries about adopting the children (as if I had any right or role with the childrens future, since engaging in the instantaneous transaction with the vendor that day related only to the reality of an in extremis situation that prompted a spur of the moment gesture to find safety for the little ones and report the case to authorities), an update about the four beauties is warranted. Unwittingly, the four beauties achieved much for humanity, as suddenly many in Lebanon engaged publicly with the subject of abused Syrian refugee children.

Shortly after the Ramlet el Baida event with the lady who sought money in exchange for the children, they were returned to the Aleppo area of Syria and are being cared for by distant relatives. A female relative of the children who learned about what had become of them appeared and it was clear from the childrens reaction of running to her and hugging her that they knew her and wanted to be with her. After verifying her connection with the children she took custody of them and a few days after their departure from Lebanon the note below appeared outside this observers south Beirut apartment door:

This observer met again with the children, this time in Syria, and also with their uncle Khalid. They appear very well and seem as secure for the moment as is anyone living these days in north Syria near Aleppo. They have food and a clean place to live and play with other children. When we met again we were all very happy and the older child remembered well the American hide & seek game we played in Beirut and insisted that we do it again. And his little sister blurted out from memory the Ready or not, here I come! call-out that starts the hide & seek search. They love that game and have taught it to their friends including the covering of the seekers eyes without peeking and counting loudly to ten.

But they are not in school yet. Their parents remain missing and reportedly were killed.

These childrens experience and public interest in them caused the Lebanese authorities to take more seriously reports of refugee children endangerment. At the urging of this observer and others, the Internal Security Forces now patrol Ramlet el Baida strip with undercover officers as shown in the photo below. Their efforts are preventing young girls from Syria and elsewhere selling themselves to the occupants of cars that pull up to purchase roses or offer money to young boys. The street kids have as of 6/1/2016 largely disappeared, at least for now. Hopefully to a more safe area with proper housing and assistance from NGOs. More research is required to monitor their wellbeing. Hopefully the police will continue their humanitarian work and will respond seriously to reports from a concerned citizenry. The observer credits the 4 Syrian children with getting the attention of local authorities and helping other endangered children at Ramlet el Baida beach strip.

Credit due to the Internal Security Force (ISF) Lebanons police force that eventually, after many submitted reports from eyewitnesses, has last month agreed to send undercover cops to Ramlet el Baida strip. This observers friend, 12-year-old Leila from Aleppo shown above, and other Syrian children preyed upon by pedophiles using a pretense of buying roses are not currently working there. Vigilance by ISF undercover cops, one pictured below, will protect these hungry Syrian refugee children as long as they stay on the job until the kids can return to Syria.

Not only girls are being hunted along Ramlet el Baida beach. Many young Syrian males who may be their familys only breadwinner are vulnerable as they desperately seek to earn cash to feed their loved ones.

ISF undercover cops in unmarked cars with cameras on the right side of the dashboard are alert as a result of the 4 Syrian children case and the public pressure it placed on multiple Lebanese government agencies. Beirut police are finally patrolling Ramlet el Baida beach and are protecting Syrian, Palestinian and other refugee children. All praises to them if they continue their vigilance until the refugee children can return home and to the only place they want to be  which is Syria. When that can happen, as we all know, is anyones guess.

Police Crack-down on the Prostitution Network

Another consequence of the attention given to the case of the 4 Syrian refugee children being bought at Ramlet el Baida beach was to provoke a long delayed police action shutting down a Syrian refugee girls (and women) sex slave operation in Maameltein, the red-light district of Jounieh about twenty miles north of Beirut on Mediterranean coast.

One official source informed a colleague that when five women were able to escape on Good Friday and catch a van to South Beirut, one of the women who somehow had heard about the four Syrian refugee children thought she might know them and made their way to south Beirut and eventually the women were put in contact with police authorities who investigated and raided the old house known as Chez Maurice. Approximately 75 women and girls and an 8 month old child who was born in the brothel, because her mother hid her pregnancy until an abortion could not be done, were freed. According to the police, the women were imprisoned after arriving from their war-torn country, sold for less than $2,000, and forced to have sex more than 10 times a day. They were frequently beaten, tortured, given electric shocks and sometimes whipped if they didnt receive enough tips. The windows and balconies were barred and windows painted black, depriving the women of any sunlight. The women left the house only to get abortions, of which they had about 200, according to police investigators. They also left to be treated for venereal diseases, contracted after being forced to have unprotected sex with customers, or to be treated for skin ailments, brought on by their lack of exposure to the sun. The women would sometimes work for up to 20 hours a day, from 10am until 6am the following morning.

The Internal Security Forces is reportedly conducting an internal investigation to determine how the network managed to escape detection for so long since locals report that it had been in operation for years and reportedly hosted government officials. Progressive Socialist Party leader Walid Jumblatt has repeatedly accused unnamed senior government officials of complicity in the operation but the promised government investigation appears to have stalled for some unexplained reason and like countless other corruption cases that involve public officials here, the matter remains under investigation and out of the news.

But the five dozen girls and woman are freed and are receiving needed care.

The observer credits the four Syrian refugee children and the publics concern for their well-being with leading to the exposure and closing down the Jounieh sex slave operation.

Legal Ban on the Sale of Beiruts only Public Beach

Another public benefit achieved by the 4 Syrian refugee children relates to Ramlet el Baida beach strip itself.

The above photo shows Ramlet el Baida, Beiruts only free beach. It is an excellent mile long stretch and is frequented mainly by South Beiruts poor Shia, Syrian, Kurdish, Iraqi, Yazed, and Palestinian refugees as well as low paid foreign workers.

Public access has been threatened with closure for several years because many of the high priced apartment dwellers opposite the beach want exclusive use. Even though many of the apartments are currently empty, two large developers are seeking to build luxury hotels and more apartment buildings at the seas edge while closing Ramlet el Baida to public use.

Dumping their sewage directly into the Mediterranean sea from their high-rise luxury apartments across the road, many of the rich occupants and probably all of the developers seek to close Ramlet el Baida beach and rid themselves of the rabble including no-account Americans like this observer who frequent the beach and whose presence one developer told the media fouls the residents view of the sea and its glorious sunsets.

But at least for now the beach will remain public per last months order of Beirut Municipality. A humanitarian decision partly inspired, it is believed, by the saga of the 4 bought homeless Syrian refugee children and the public concern and discussion it resulted in.

On 5/3/2016 Beirut Governor Ziad Chebib approved a request to ban the sale of Ramlet al-Baida beach that was in danger of being fenced off from the public by private developers. His decision approves a request by the Public Works Ministry to prohibit the sale of the area and affirm that Ramlet el Baida beach cannot be bought or sold according to Order 144, issued in 1925 under the French mandate. Article 2 of Order 144 listed properties that should belong to the public, and included the seas shore until the farthest area reached by waves during winter, as well as sand and rock shores. However, Article 3 did grant those, who owned parts of coastal properties before the decision was issued, the right to use them for commercial purposes. If the state was to prevent such use of these properties to safeguard public interest, it ought to pay fair compensations in advance, the decision said. In 1966, another decree was issued to allow owners to build on their properties if their plans were approved by the Lebanese government and served touristic or industrial purposes.

The Beirut municipalitys important decision means that one mile long Ramlet el Baida beach will remain open to all without charge. Refugees and low income Lebanese who cannot afford the high prices demanded by Beiruts other private beaches, some of which illegally deny entrance to foreign domestic workers and certain refugees.

The municipality of Beirut has been lobbied for some time by environmentalist and civil society NGOs to keep it public. The publicity over the 4 Syrian refugee children who were sold at Ramlet el Baida and other information provided to Beiruts Municipal Council is believed to have tipped the scales.

As noted above, this observer credits the 4 Syrian refugee children and the concern over their well-being with influencing Beirut Governor Ziad Chebibs humanitarian decision.

Feeding Starving Syrian Refugee Children in Beirut

Apart from their physical security, the greatest need of Syrian and other refugee children forced into Lebanon by the war next door is to eliminate malnutrition and lack of regular meals.

Yet again, the four Syrian children have made a difference because their plight was instrumental in establishing the NGO Meals for Syrian Refugee Children in Lebanon (MSRCL). This initiative can be examined and joined

http://mealsforsyrianrefugeechildrenlebanon.com

A late April MSRCL meal distribution event in South Beirut for hundreds of Syrian and Palestinian children.

Organizing even one meal for a starving Syrian or Palestinian refugee childor for any malnourished youngster displaced by the war in Syria isnt everything that matters right now in this region. For many of those working among them and to feed them its the only thing that matters.

Until the precious ones can return home.

To provide a meal to a Syrian refugee child in Lebanon: Please visit:

http://mealsforsyrianrefugeechildrenlebanon.com

For Syria Heritage Updates please visit:

www.Syrian-heritage.com

Text and Picture By Franklin P. Lamb, LLB, LLM, PhD. Legal Adviser, The Sabra-Shatila Scholarship Program, Shatila Camp (SSSP-lb.org)








10 Questions To Kerala CM On Vizhinjam Harbour Project

By K.P Sasi

10 June, 2016

Countercurrents.org

How do we evaluate yesterdays honeymoon meeting between Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan and Karan Adani?

1. During the last few days, the news that Adani would step back from Vlizhinjam and that he would go ahead with Colachel Port had given some hopes to activists in Kerala and worries for activists in Tamil Nadu. But with yesterdays meeting, Karan Adani has stated that Colachel would be dropped and Vizhinjam Project will be completed `in time, adding to the worries of activists in Kerala and relief for the activists in Tamil Nadu.

2. What does completion `in time mean? The case is still going on in the Green Tribunal. The Kerala Government under UDF had given an assurance if the decision of the Green Tribunal is against the project, then the State Government would replace all the environmental damages created by the project till then, `back to normalcy as existed previously! Now, how is Pinarayi Vijayan going to do that?

3. Karan Adani has stated that the project will go ahead under the same agreement Adani had with the UDF Government. Has Prinaryi forgotten his criticisms on this agreement when LDF was in opposition?

4. We must welcome the appropriate stand of KSSP on both Athirappalli and Vizhinjam Transit Harbour by demanding that these projects should be dropped considering their severe negative effects on environment and people. Considering the close association of KSSP and CPI(M), what would be the action programme of KSSP on these key issues in the coming days? Will the voices of KSSP be heard more strongly on these issues?

5. We must also welcome the stand of CPI in opposing the Athirappalli project on environmental grounds. But is there a confusion within CPI on the social, economic and ecological disaster that Vizhinjam Project is threatening Kerala?

6. Before the elections, Thomas Isaac had clearly opposed the Vizhinjam Transit Harbour Project on economic grounds. Is there a difference on the stand of Thomas Isaac before elections and after elections?

7. It was a historic start for the communist movement in India to come to power in Kerala with the election promises of `Development without destroying the environment, `Development without harming people and `A corruption free Kerala. Since Vizhinjam Transit Harbour is a clear violation of all these three principles, how will LDF fulfil its election promises?

8. As per the agreement, two-third of the cost of this huge financial scam will be `donated by Kerala Government and Centre Government with a return of one per cent profit (if any) after fifteen years. Karan Adani appears to be sure that there will be no changes in the agreement. Will theLDF betray the trust that Keralas electorate had entrusted on them through this scam?

9. As per the project, two hills of the Western Ghats (one from Kerala and one from Tamil Nadu) will be removed to be dumped in a biodiversity intense region of ocean connecting Kerala and Tamil Nadu. Has the LDF discussed with the fishing communities, environmental activists and the government of Tamil Nadu on the impact of Vizhinjam Transit Harbour Project on Tamil Nadu?

10. While the above questions along with several other questions are haunting the fishing communities and the social activists in Kerala, I am wondering whether there is a common ideological ground between Pinarayi Vijayan, Oommen Chandy and Narendra Modi. It is not Marx, it is not Gandhi and it is not Golwalker. Perhaps it is Adani!

K.P Sasi is a film director. He can be reached at kpsasi36@gmail.com



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Vizhinjam Port Project Causes Environmental Havoc

By Countercurrents.org








The Independence And Gandhi : In The Clutches Of Neo-liberalism

By Prem Singh

10 June, 2016

Countercurrents.org

The RSS did not participate in the freedom struggle, and that it was responsible for Gandhis assassination, are facts that are not new. These arguments have been used repeatedly against the RSS since the Independence of India in 1947. The RSS does not claim a stake in the freedom struggle, but refutes the accusation of being party to Gandhis assassination. Ever since Modi government was formed at the centre, the secular camp has vociferously taken up these two points, and the last few months have indeed seen an intensification of this endeavour. Perhaps the camp feels that by emphasizing these two accusations repeatedly, it will discredit the RSS in the eyes of the people and gain political mileage in the bargain. However this thought process needs to be seriously deliberated upon. The reason is that the manner and the intent with which the secular camp raises these two points to attack the RSS, has little to do with the Independence or Gandhi. The intervention of the secular camp would have been significant only if it had raised the serious question pertaining to a contemporary fact - how and why did Narendra Modi-led BJP form a majority government at the centre despite its history of treason against the freedom movement and the act of assassinating Gandhi? The secular camp ought to have attempted a serious investigation as to whether the Independence and Gandhi have actually lost relevance for the people of India? If yes, then what are the reasons? The investigation requires serious self-introspection; an understanding of how it is itself responsible for this situation, then, to eventually question itself - whether it, on its own part, really values the Independence of the country and Gandhi?

The secular camp, which considers itself above all questions, can get away with the argument that the present government had merely 31 percent voters while the remaining majority of the country believes in the Independence and Gandhi; and that it is this very constituency which secularists seek to caution against the RSS. Now, the fact that the 31 percent citizens have veered away from the Independence and Gandhi should in itself be a serious cause of worry for the secular camp, for it constitutes a significant section of society. The secular camp which bears the responsibility of the nation at ideological and institutional level cannot function in terms of mine-thine social-political divisions. The other question is, how can the secular camp assume that all those who did not vote for BJP, actually value the Independence and Gandhi? The truth is that most of the political parties that have garnered the remaining 69 percent of the votes are in some measure or another, votaries of neo-liberalism. It doesnt need to be elaborated that the votaries of neo-liberalism will be, in material and moral spirit, anti-Independence as well as anti-Gandhi. Therefore, the question as to how the RSS-BJP combine, despite being against the Independence and Gandhi, could form a majority government, raises an accusing finger elsewhere too; at all the historic lapses, blunders and the blinking of eyes on the part of the secularists. Despite their reluctance to face a bitter reality, the secularists owe the people of the country their democratic right to know the truth; a certain transparency regarding political/economic positions taken by the secular camp. In other words, the question is likely to singe the ones who are raising it. But for the sake of democracy and the cause of the common people there should be no harm and no fear in such singeing and self-assessment even if it is injurious to ones own image.

It is not imperative for all or anyone to essentially believe in Gandhi. But it is not correct for detractors of Gandhi to seek political mileage by constantly upbraiding the RSS for his assassination. Gandhis opponent Mayawati and dalit intellectuals, who propagate dalit identity, do not make a hue and cry about his assassination. The same is true for the Independence. It is not essential that everybody has to believe in the freedom struggle of India and the values accrued during it. But then such people should not castigate RSS for not participating in the freedom struggle.

First, the case of the Independence; it is important before and above Gandhi. For a number of years even serious scholarship failed to notice that after 1991, with beginning of implementation of the new economic policies heralding neo-liberal slavery, there arose, simultaneously, a powerful resentment across the nation to oppose it. On the one hand laws were being passed one after the other (mostly through ordinances) against the basic spirit of the Constitution, on the other hand, those very laws were being vehemently opposed. Some of these opposing voices came from the mainstream politics also. Even the RSS-formed Swadeshi Jagran Manch expressed concerns over the policies that threatened to pawn the nations Independence. This protest was rather scattered and non-political. But a cohesive understanding and the need for an alternative politics had been generated by means of these protests by 1995. Equipped with the spirit of the Independence, this alternative politics stood in direct confrontation against the Congress, the BJP and the NGOs subsisting on foreign aid. But soon enough the supposed third force political parties including communist parties agreed to follow the path marked out by neo-liberalism. P Chidambaram was the finance minister in the Deve Gowdas government. And the world is very much aware of the events in Singur and Nandigram in West Bengal.

It was an unequal battle between the two fundamentally unequal parties, but the struggle against neo-imperialism was advancing in a systematic and strong manner. Some of the best minds of our times and a large section of the youth were involved in it at the cost of their careers and health. Despite Atal Beharis government and the two of Manmohan Singh governments that followed it, the struggle against neo-imperialism stayed strong. The country was almost flooded with anti-neo-imperialist pamphlets, tracts, folders, little magazines, booklets and books. But just then came the clarion call of the second freedom. India Against Corruption (IAC), Aam Aadmi Party and mainstream media manufactured a false contender against the Congress, and by taking along in its wake diverse elements such as RSS and communists, socialists, Gandhians, corporate houses, civil society, Ramdev-Sri Sri Ravi Shankar they destroyed the struggle against neo-imperialism. As soon as Anna Hazare put the glass of juice to his lips to break his fast at Ramlila Maidan he silenced the debate/discussions of neo-imperialist slavery from the ambit of political discourse. In the past two decades, the myriad voices echoing through the country  azadi bachao, videshi kampniyan bharat chhodo, WTO bharat chhodo - were drowned in the name of an imagined mirage of second freedom. The meaning of alternative politics was reduced to a matter of wins and losses between various neo-liberal parties; the noose of neo-imperialist slavery thus tightened even further.

Actually, the hard-earned Independence began to be disregarded in terms of spirit and values even from the point of its achievement in 1947. The partition of the country was the biggest blow. The Independence, accomplished after the protracted struggle and sacrifices of the people of India, was discredited by the progressive camp as a false, incomplete and compromised result of international developments and so on. One argument fielded was that the Independence could have easily been won by means of violence, instead of the long-drawn non-violent one. Though this very mind-set had secretly breathed a sigh of relief that lakhs of rebels, who sacrificed their lives, were defeated in 1857; because they happened to be too backward for their tastes. Even today, the Indian intelligentsia, whether Marxists or modernists, are still horrified with the thought that if 1857 had been successful, the country would have remained engulfed in ignorance as it was before the ascendance of the British. The RSS was not satisfied with Gandhi Vadh. It did not forgive Gandhi for opposing the Partition and advocating Hindu-Muslin unity. Its mission was to make India Muslim free, that is, once again dividing apart the country and society. It launched a petty campaign against not just Gandhi but also Nehru and the Congress, the platform of Indias freedom struggle. In this manner it became nationalist before as well as after the Independence while remaining completely divorced from the task of nation-building.

It was, as if, the process of gaining the Independence became a crime in free India; and the leaders of the nationalist struggle  criminals! In fact, those who put the very achievement of the Independence in the dock displayed a complete disregard for the struggle of the Indian people; and perceived them as worthless who did not help in making a communist nation or a Hindu nation of their fantasy; that too without ousting the British! Both these camps are fighting over Bhagat Singh these days, who had considered liberation from the British to be the first goal, and laid down his life for it. If this utterly denigrated Independence became the alibi for rampant loot by opportunists and corrupt politicians, businessmen and officers, it should not surprise us. In this state, people have often repeated the comment the British were better. Since the Independence has no currency in our national/civil life people have ignored the charge of treason against the RSS, and promptly voted a BJP government to power.



Now let us take the case of Gandhis assassination. Secularists, especially the communists, may use Gandhis assassination strategically, but they have been forerunners along with the Congress, in assassinating his ideas. During the freedom struggle itself they had started calling Gandhi a bourgeois, reactionary, pedestrian peddler of superstitions and so on. After the Independence, the Congress first used him as a shield for the party, and later for the family rule. Narsimha Rao and Manmohan Singh falsely linked neo-liberalism to Gandhis dreams. Now the BJP is doing the same thing. The existing dalit outrage targets Gandhi already. Libertarians want to put everything on hold to finish off Gandhi first. Ever since the backward discourse has taken off, Gandhi is their very first target. An enthusiastic backward polemicist is likely to claim that if Gandhi werent there, Brahmanism would have been long eradicated from India society. So, Gandhi shouldnt have been there at all! The absurd excess of blind anti-Gandhi sentiment is in that Gandhi is held responsible for all kinds of problems even after his death. The emergent solidarity of communist-dalit-libertarian intellectuals is basically based on anti-Gandhi sentiment. Even though the one result of this solidarity is to pull Ambedkar into a liaison with neo-liberalism. Muslims still have some respect for Gandhi. But in this era of fanaticism, it may not last long. Like the Independence, Gandhi stands devalued in the country. Then why would people protest against the RSS for Gandhis killing?



Let us discuss a little more about Gandhis assassination though it will be a bit of a digression. Gandhis assassination has been variously interpreted. Lohias interpretation is still the most important among them. Such interpretations of Gandhis assassination are no longer relevant. One simple explanation would be that it was an event that happened during the course of the Partition of India. More than ten lakh people died during the riots of Partition. In the course of things if Gandhi was killed too, it is not such an earth shattering tragedy. He had abjured the celebrations of the Independence and was touring the riot-affected areas instead. There some rioter could have easily accomplice Nathuram Godses work. Gandhis killer was convicted by a court of law; and in legal parlance, Gandhi got justice. The government carried out his funeral procession with full state honours, and constructed a fabulous memorial where leaders from all over the world come to pay their tributes to him. The Congress governmentalized him and created all kinds of havens for his followers. And all this, when crores of victims of displacement, murder and rape received no justice. While Gandhi lived, he was always tormented by such brutalities, discriminations and injustices. Therefore, perhaps, it is not appropriate to keep discussing Gandhis assassination. Instead a two-fold consolation can be drawn from his assassination. First, the positive consolation, that he sacrificed his life to redeem the bloodstained abominations of the leadership of those times. Second, the negative one, that at least one big leader also lost his life in the tragedy of the Partition!



Therefore, it could be said that the secular camp, while demonstrating against RSSs treason, is itself not entirely driven by the true spirit of the Independence. Even when it attacks the RSS on the issue of Gandhis assassination, it cannot bring itself to respect Gandhi. The style of defamation that the NGO don Arvind Kejriwal picked up from the RSS and played out like a master craftsman, the secular camp wishes to employ the same to defame the RSS to seize power. This style denigrates both : the Independence and indeed, Gandhi.

Do such attacks on the RSS by the secular camp stop communalism or even lessen it? This is a serious question that needs to be investigated because the secular camp claims that neo-liberalism can be tackled later; communalism needs to be fought urgently. While it is true that the secularists are staunch opponents of the communal RSS-BJP, it is also true that they never oppose political parties and individuals guilty of communalism - from Congress to Kejriwal. The BJPs mass base, on the basis of this general election results, is approximately one-fourth of the total. To oppose this one-fourth while pandering to the communalism of the remaining three-fourth, is to force the entire society into the vicious process of communalism. These are the dangers of the communal politics of the secular camp that I wish to argue about. Two examples may be considered here.



Despite having a majority government in the centre, when BJP suffered a humiliating defeat in Delhi, courtesy Kejriwal, the secular camp could hardly contain its happiness. A lot of communist friends walked with a spring in their steps, holding Congress in one hand and Kejriwal in the other. Kejriwal has been in the profession of social service with foreign aid for a long time. During that time he did not once open his mouth against the horrendous anti-Sikh riots in 1984, or against the Babri Masjid demolition in 1992, or against the 2002 Gujarat riots. Kejriwals NGO guru, Anna Hazare first praised Modi from Jantar Mantar, and Modi acknowledged this in a personal letter. Elements like Ramdev and Sri Sri, who run businesses of religion, meditation, spirituality, yoga and Ayurveda, were his associates. The organizational aspect of the India Against Corruptions campaign was handled by the RSS. When the Aam Aadmi Party was formed, it had a profusion of communal and lumpen elements. When western Uttar Pradesh was engulfed in the fires of communal riots, the victor Kejriwal was offering thanks to the almighty by stoking the fires in the havan-kund. Contesting from Banaras, he ensured Modis victory. For this he sought blessings of Baba Vishwanath by visiting the temple, and the Ganges by taking a holy dip. It is a matter of grave concern that after the implementation of the model code of conduct, the blatant displays of religious ritualism do not invite cancellation of candidature by the Election Commission of India.

During the mid-term Assembly elections, held in Delhi after the resignation of Kejriwal, the city was gripped by communal tension. The messages that were relayed on radio broadcasts by recognized political parties, focused on the attempts to aggravate the communal situation in Delhi by communal forces. There were also appeals to defeat the communal forces in the elections. But the BJP and AAP broadcasts contained not one word about the communal incidents. Later, the chief minister of Delhi very graciously gave his approval to rename Aurangzeb Road. He then collaborated with Modi to arrange Sri Sris festivities on the banks of Yamuna. The Justice Sachar Committee Report on the state of minorities in the country will complete ten years this November. With the exception of BJP and AAP, all big and small parties have issued statements regarding its implementation. These are merely statement of facts known to the public. It may be noted that the shades of communal politics and shades of communal collaboration of earlier secular leaders took a while to unravel. For a long time, they kept up the pressure of secularism on Jan Sangh/BJP. But for Kejriwal and his votaries there is no difference between secularism and communalism; whichever props them to power is acceptable to them. The explanation is obvious. AAP has not emerged out of any political ideology, organization or struggle; making use of only popular strategies.

The second example is from Bihar. The defeat of the BJP here was heralded by the secular camp as the peoples rejection of the brahminical and communal forces. Without going into too many details, some facts may be observed here. Nitish Kumar and his party allied with RSS/BJP for 16 years. This alliance continued through the 2002 Muslim genocide in Gujarat. The senior JDU leader was the co-coordinator of NDA. He opposed the decision to part ways with BJP. As such the credit for sowing the seeds of communalism in the, by and large, secular terrain of Bihar goes entirely to Janata Dal United. Therefore, the secular camps argument that neo-liberalism will be fought against later whereas communalism needs to be fought now, is absolutely misplaced and misleading.



When, and if, the BJP is ousted, will the secular camp honour its intentions to bring neo-liberalism to a close? Or to challenge it, at least? Is it their policy and avowed intent? This is the proverbial yaksha prashna of Indias contemporary politics. Any politics that is practiced without answering it is constitutionally invalid. In polite language it is simply called the politics of power. Within the ambit of neo-liberalism, it really doesnt matter whether the politics of power is practiced by either the communal or the secular camp. A quick glance at the current political landscape reveals the answer to the aforementioned yaksha prashna. The orientation and positioning of the active players in contemporary politics is clearly neo-liberal. About five years back I had written that Modi, born of the Sanghs womb, despite all the hype, would ultimately suffocate and wither in Gujarat. But the corporate conglomerate, the upholders of neo-liberalism, backed him up, and helped him rise to the PM office. Kejriwal is the direct product of neo-liberalism. It is clear to the corporate sector that the politicians of the so-called third front cannot be trusted at the Centre; given their social grounding, they cannot fast forward the nation swiftly on the path of neo-liberalism like the Congress or BJP. Which is why the corporate sector raised its own leader. Kejriwal is watched over by the Magsaysay award house along with corporate houses and national-international NGOs. The secular camps support to the Congress could still be acceptable to a degree but, leave alone the intent and purpose, the basic political understanding of the kind of secular camp that has mushroomed around Kejriwal, is utterly suspect. It is seemingly a very happy development for them given that Kejriwal has defeated Modi in international popularity! The absolute height of the banckruptcy of political wisdom is achieved when the secular camp begins to see Kejriwal as a viable alternative to Modi as a PM candidate.

It is true that over the past three decades it has become not only difficult, but well nigh impossible to imagine a reversal and a breaking away from the clutches of neo-liberalism. International conditions and pressures too have had a role to play in this situation. In such a scenario, it doesnt appear as if any easy resolution can be found. The secular camp can say that there is little option and that it cannot help but practice politics within the neo-liberal framework. It can also say, and indeed it does say, that the neo-liberal shackles cannot be broken without getting inside the system. It also reminds people of its achievements, such as Right to Information Act, MNREGA, Tribal Forest Rights Act, Land Acquisition Act and so on. But the politicians who wish to practice politics within the corporate framework, the intellectuals who have to head institutions, the writers and artists who have to win awards, the experts/NGO folks who have to be advisers to the governemental committees, the actors and players who have to be brand ambassadors  they should say that along with such superficial reliefs, neo-liberal system will continue to exist. This straight away indicates that the World Bank, International Monitary Fund, World Trade Organisation, multinational companies, corporate houses will continue to dictate decision-making; agreements like Dunkel and India-America Nuclear deal, which compromise the autonomy of the nation, will continue to happen; disinvestment will continue in public sector enterpirses, all services from education to defence will be privatised; international companies like Carrefour, Wall Mart, Tesko will increase their business in the retail sector; debts of big corporate houses will be written off; natural resources will continue to be plundered; towns and villages will continue to be submerged, and their denizens will continue to be displaced; farmers and small entrepreneurs will conitnue to commit suicide; legions of innumerable people will continue to be unemployed; land and labour will be subjected to even more ruthless exploitation; the abyss of economic hardship will be bottomless; five hundred smart cities and more will come up; citizens dignity/security/right to expression will no longer be legally guaranteed; the intervention of police/security forces/mafia will continue to rise in civil life . ... This list of the denigration of our civil, social, cultural, educational, religious life at the hands of corporate companies can go on.



It is useless to blame the corporate sector. It does not love the communal BJP. It has been closely watching politicians and parties for the past three decades. It has also been watching the civil society that has come up in these decades. If it is convinced that neo-liberalism will continue to have unbridled reign in the name of secularism, it will replace the RSS/BJP overnight. Such an assurance will be given to the corporate by the secular camp. In this process the genuine movements that originated against neo-imperialist slavery would be pushed into the margins, to weaken, or to die away. In other words, the real fighters against neo-imperialism will become less visible or be merged into shades of neo-imperialism. The communal camp does not have that strength to bring this about. The responsibility of making a difference, this way or that, lies only with the secular camp.



Dr. Prem Singh Dept. of Hindi University of Delhi. Visiting Professor Center of Eastern Languages and Cultures Dept. of Indology, Sofia University. Former Fellow Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla










Police stop a vehicle as Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival gets underway in Manchester, Tenn. on Wednesday June 10, 2015. (Photo: Sam Simpkins/The Tennessean)

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By Natalie Neysa Alund, The Tennessean / USA TODAY Network

Law enforcement overseeing the 15th annual Bonnaroo festival in Manchester, Tenn. said Thursday that they've cited and arrested more than 100 people less than one day into the event.

A majority of the citations and arrests stemmed from public intoxication and illegal drug use on the farm's grounds, said Coffee County Sheriffs' Office spokesman Lucky Knott.

As of mid-afternoon Thursday, about 100 people had been cited and nearly a dozen had been arrested since late Wednesday.

The arrests, Knott said many were made overnight, included disorderly conducts and illegal possession of controlled substances including harder drugs like LSD and Molly.

So far no medical emergencies had been reported.

"We've been lucky we haven't had any so far, but we are on guard because of the expected high temps and heat expected Saturday and Sunday," Knott said. "If you're out here, please, please, please stock up on fluids and stay hydrated, folks."

By mid-afternoon Thursday, temperatures had already reached 86 degrees and were expected to climb to the low 90s.

Nashville National Weather Service forecasters say temps could top out at about 100 degrees on Saturday and Sunday.

In addition to the Sheriff's Office, Manchester Police Department and the Tennessee Highway Patrol will be monitoring the farm grounds and surrounding roads and highways throughout the festival, which nearly 100,000 people are expected to attend.

Last year, there were 76 arrests made by all law enforcement agencies, up from 60 in 2014.

Knott said the 2015 arrests were mostly for drug charges, public intoxication and driving under the influence  typical kinds of cases connected to Bonnaroo, he said.
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Dear Jerry: Not counting resurrections of older material (i.e., Swan, Vee-Jay, MGM, Atco, etc.), how many consecutive No. 1 hits did the Beatles have in the U. S.?

Were they the first group of two or more members with consecutive No. 1 hits?

 Kent Camillo, Indianapolis

Dear Kent: As you requested, only the Beatles' standard catalog of Capitol singles, meaning their 5000 and 2000 series, will be considered for this honor.

Besides the labels you mention, none of the Capitol Starline, Capitol of Canada, or Capitol EPs will count against them:

1964 "I Feel Fine" (Capitol 5327)

1965 "Eight Days a Week" (Capitol 5371)

1965 "Ticket to Ride" (Capitol 5407)

1965 "Help!" (Capitol 5476)

1965 "Yesterday" (Capitol 5498)

1966 "We Can Work It Out" (Capitol 5555)

Billboard and Cash Box agree on the above six, but neither ranked "Nowhere Man" as No. 1, thus ending the streak.

But Record World magazine kept the run alive, opening the door for six additional titles:

"Nowhere Man" (Capitol 5587)

"Paperback Writer" (Capitol 5651)

"Yellow Submarine" (Capitol 5715)

"Penny Lane" (Capitol 5810)

"All You Need Is Love" (Capitol 5964)

"Hello Goodbye" (Capitol 2056)

Having 12 consecutive chart-toppers is preposterous, especially considering that the most by any of the other three vinyl era runners up have far fewer:

Ames Brothers:

1950 "Rag Mop" (Coral 60140)

1950 "Sentimental Me" (Coral 60173)

Everly Brothers:

1957 "Bye Bye Love" (Cadence 1315)

1957 "Wake Up Little Susie" (Cadence 1337)

Their next single, "This Little Girl of Mine" (Cadence 1342), barely reached the Top 25, but then came two more at No. 1:

1958 "All I Have to Do Is Dream" (Cadence 1348)

1958 "Bird Dog" (Cadence 1350)

The 4 Seasons had either two or three in a row, depending on how one views their non-chart topping Christmas single, "Santa Claus Is Coming to Town" (Vee-Jay 478). I choose not to hold a holiday release against them and will credit them with three:

1962 "Sherry" (Vee-Jay 456)

1962 "Big Girls Don't Cry" (Vee-Jay 465)

1963 "Walk Like a Man" (Vee-Jay 485)

Though not a group with pre-Beatles chart-toppers, we must acknowledge the impressive stretch of five consecutive No. 1 hits by the Supremes that began in July 1964:

1964 "Where Did Our Love Go" (Motown 1060)

1964 "Baby Love" (Motown 1066)

1964 "Come See About Me" (Motown 1068)

1965 "Stop! In the Name Love" (Motown 1074)

1965 "Back in My Arms Again" (Motown 1075)

Dear Jerry: I have searched everywhere for a recording of "Nothin' in My Letter Box," by Dale Evans.

Does her version of this song exist in any form that can be had?

 Trisha Donaldson, Pawtucket, Rhode Island

Dear Trisha: This is not one of Dale's most common tunes, but I did locate one CD that should still be available when you read this.

Among its 24 tracks from the late 1940s is "Nothin' in My Letter Box."

This is an import from the British Archive of Country Music, titled "The Rage of the Sage" (B.A.C.M. CD-153).

You may find some online sellers asking close to $50 for this disc, but shop around and you'll likely get it for under $20.

IZ ZAT SO?

A dozen years after the aforementioned No. 1 streaks by the Beatles and the Supremes, "Saturday Night Fever" struck and with it came six No. 1 hits in a row for the Bee Gees:

1977 "How Deep Is Your Love" (RSO 882)

1977 "Stayin' Alive" (RSO 885)

1978 "Night Fever" (RSO 889)

1978 "Too Much Heaven" (RSO 913)

1979 "Tragedy" (RSO 918)

1979 "Love You Inside Out" (RSO 925)

Issued between "Night Fever" and "Too Much Heaven" was "Oh! Darling," by Robin Gibb, backed with "She's Leaving Home," by the Bee Gees, Jay MacIntosh, and John Wheeler (RSO 907).

Both sides are from the Original Motion Picture Soundtrack of "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band."

This single did not chart, but it wouldn't have broken the Bee Gees' streak even if it did.
SHARE Zach Evans / Courier & Press An Evansville Police Dept. body camera.

By Richard Gootee of the Courier and Press

Since Evansville Police Department patrol officers started wearing body camera more than two years ago, official complaints against the department have been reduced by about half.

"The use of the body cameras were instrumental in disproving or sustaining many of the complaints, and played a large role in my opinion for reducing the number of complaints for a second straight year," Internal Affairs Sgt. Brian Talsma wrote in a January memo that detailed the department's 2015 statistics.

Last year, there were 15 informal complaints and four formal complaints brought against officers. Of the informal complaints, five were sustained, as were half of the formal complaints.

If a complaint is sustained, it means that there is evidence to support a citizen's complaint against police and some sort of corrective action must take place. In a formal complaint, the person making a claim goes to the internal affairs unit and requests an investigation. The complainant also files a sworn statement about the incident, according to department spokesman Sgt. Jason Cullum.

Informal complaints are made to, and handled by, an officer's supervisor. Those filing an informal complaint have the option to lodge their complaint formally if they are not satisfied with the informal investigation.

The department started testing body cams in 2013 and equipped every patrol officer with them in February 2014. Though Evansville was one of the first departments in Indiana to get such technology, whether police should have to wear them has become a national issue  one largely spurred by events in Ferguson, Missouri following the shooting death of a black 18-year-old man by a white police officer in the summer of 2014.

After a grand jury declined to bring charges against deputy Darren Wilson for Michael Brown's death later that year, the NAACP urged all departments to use body cameras to record all police actions with citizens.

The local NAACP has also been a proponent of Evansville police having body cameras, said the Rev. Gerald Arnold.

Arnold, the president of the local chapter, said he believes police having body cams "remains a good thing" because having video protects the integrity of everyone involved in police-public interactions.

"I think those body cams have definitely been a plus, not only in Evansville, but throughout the United States," Arnold said.

The cameras Evansville officers wear still have to be started manually, Cullum said, which had caused some issues when they were first introduced. Often, officers forgot to turn them on or started them late.

In 2013  the last full year before all patrol officers had cameras  Evansville police received 45 complaints against specific officers. Twelve of those were formal complaints, while 33 were informal. Four of the formal complaints were sustained while only six of the 33 informal complaints were sustained. In 2012, there were 42 informal and five formal complaints. Only five of the informal complaints and one of the formal complaints were sustained that year.

In 2014, there were 25 complaints brought against officers  eight of them formal and 17 of them informal. Only two of the formal complaints and two of the informal complaints were sustained that year.

At the time he compiled the 2014 statistics, Talsma also wrote that he thought the cameras were "instrumental" in both sustaining  or disproving  many of the complaints, as well as reducing the number of accusations.

Cullum recently told the Courier & Press that he believes the cameras deter citizens "from filing complaints that they know to be false or exaggerated" because they know there is video footage. But he also said that it has been a goal of police Chief Billy Bolin to improve the professionalism of the department's officers even "before we started using the body cameras."

"We have seen positive results in that area before and during the use of body cams," Cullum said.

Arnold also praised Bolin. He noted that he and the chief continue to meet on a regular basis to discuss police relations, a practice that started soon after Bolin assumed his role in 2011. Arnold said he believes Bolin has worked to improve "the makeup, the responsibility and the maturity of his force."

"Certainly he and I don't agree on everything that goes on  I'll tell you that right now," Arnold said. "But he has been committed to building a better law enforcement team and bringing on more African Americans and showing the diversity of our community on our forces. He has been verbally committed to that, and I see some signs of that working."

Having camera footage as part of investigations has helped speed the process of ruling on issues as well, Cullum added.

"Being able address a complaint quickly is seen as good service," he said. "Even if they don't agree with the findings, (complainants) don't feel like they were stonewalled or forced to wait for days or weeks to get an answer."
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By John Martin of the Courier and Press

In an 8-4 decision Thursday, the Area Plan Commission recommended a rezoning that would allow a four-story, name-brand hotel to be built on South Red Bank Road, just north of University Drive.

The rezoning from agricultural to commercial use remains subject to final approval by the Vanderburgh County Commission. The type of commercial zoning requested by developer Mohan Reddyreddy only allows a hotel or motel.

Reddyreddy and project engineer Jim Morley Sr. said the hotel would have 74 rooms and would be a well-known national brand.

Two people who live near the 2.5-acre property spoke against the rezoning, and so did the general manager of the existing Fairfield Inn on the West Side.

Vanderburgh County Engineer John Stoll was not at the meeting, but in a report on the proposal prepared by Area Plan Commission staff, Stoll said the width of South Red Bank Road is not adequate for the project.

In recommending approval of the rezoning, the Area Plan Commission attached conditions  that the developer pay to widen South Red Bank Road, that entrance and exit concerns be addressed and that trees or other landscaping shield the hotel property from neighbors.

One of the four Area Plan Commission votes against the rezoning came from County Commissioner Bruce Ungetheim, who asked that the proposal be tabled for a month.

Another Area Plan Commission member, County Surveyor Jeff Mueller, also pressed for another month of study and suggested the developer consider other West Side properties.

"I don't understand why it has to be here if there's so much other land for sale," Mueller said.

Reddyreddy urged the Area Plan Commission to act Thursday, saying a potential deal would be at risk if it didn't.

On the issue of land availability, Morley said the West Side has limited water and sewer availability, and the site in question is one of few where utilities can be connected to a new development.

Besides getting final approval of the rezoning from County Commissioners, the developer has other hoops to jump through before he can move forward. A site plan still must be presented to the Board of Site Review for approval.

In other business Thursday, the Area Plan Commission:

Voted 11-0, with one abstention, to recommend the City Council deny a rezoning that would allow the continued presence of a German shepherd breeding kennel at 1912 E. Riverside Drive.

Debbie Walrath, who lives next door, has run the operation since 1982, when the City Council denied a rezoning request to have the kennel at her home.

According to Area Plan Commission staff, Animal Control recently investigated a complaint of a puppy mill operating at the address. Neighbors came to Thursday's meeting to oppose its continuing operation.

Voted 11-0 to recommend approval of a rezoning that would allow a mixed-use, residential and commercial development at 5200 E. Virginia St. The land is owned by Spurling Development LLC.
Former Subway pitchman Jared Fogle (being escorted by police after an initial court hearing in August 2015) is asking a federal appeals court to shorten his prison sentence of nearly 16 years. (Photo: Matt Detrich/IndyStar 2015 file photo)

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By Kristine Guerra, IndyStar / USA TODAY Network

A federal appeals court upheld Jared Fogle's nearly 16-year-prison sentence, saying the former Subway pitchman's attempts to diminish his actions are futile, and rejecting claims that Fogle was improperly sentenced based on his fantasies.

The decision, issued Thursday, comes less than a month after a three-judge appeals court panelheard arguments from Fogle's defense attorney and Assistant U.S. Attorney Steve DeBrota in 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago. Fogle, whose massive weight loss propelled him to fame, pleaded guilty last year to possession or distribution of child pornography and traveling across state lines to have commercial sex with a minor,

U.S. District Judge Tanya Walton Pratt sentenced Fogle in November to 15 years and eight months in federal prison  a punishment that exceeded both what prosecutors and Fogle's attorneys had recommended under a plea agreement. On appeal, Fogle argued that Pratt abused her discretion and sentenced him for conduct he didn't commit.

During the hearing last month, Fogle's attorney, Ron Elberger, argued that merely fantasizing about a crime is not a crime. DeBrota said Fogle acted on his fantasies, citing several occasions in which he asked adult prostitutes to provide him access to young minors.

The appellate judges said they cannot accept Fogle's claim that he was improperly sentenced based on "things he didn't do or fantasies he may have had."

"The district court also appropriate considered the perverse nature and circumstances of the offenses...alongside ample evidence that Fogle repeatedly sought out and traveled to have sex with minors," 7th Circuit Court Judge Joel Flaum wrote.

Fogle's interest in minors dates to at least 2007, and his illegal activities accelerated after Russell Taylor became the head of his foundation a year later. Fogle viewed images of children, ages 9 to 16, who were secretly recorded by Taylor while they were changing clothes, showering and bathing. One video showed a more sexually explicit act. Fogle also traveled to New York City hotels to have sex with a 16-year-old and a 17-year-old.

Taylor is serving a 27-year prison sentence for producing and distributing child pornography.

Fogle also argued that Pratt erroneously punished him for Taylor's conduct. His attorney said Fogle's sentence was based on a "mistaken belief" that he was involved producing child pornography.

The appellate judges disagreed, saying Fogle was punished for distribution and receipt of child pornography, not production. Court records state that Fogle received child pornography depicting a 6-year-old and showed it to a woman with whom he had a romantic and sexual relationship.

In the nine-page opinion, Flaum, who called Fogle's arguments "unpersuasive," wrote that he tried to "downplay" his conduct by claiming he did not ask for the pornography, and that he only distributed it once.

Elberger said no decision has been made on Fogle's next steps. He has the option to ask the appeals court for a rehearing.
SHARE Muhammad Ali's funeral procession made its way east on Broadway, in Louisville on its way to Cave Hill Cemetery, in Louisville. June 10, 2016. (Photo: By Pat McDonogh, The CJ)

By Kristina Goetz and Phillip M. Bailey, The Courier-Journal / USA TODAY Network

Thousands lined a 19-mile farewell lap through the city of Louisville on Friday to say goodbye to the man who said: Im pretty. Im black. Im proud. I am the greatest.

Muhammad Ali, the championship boxer and global icon who oft reminded the world of the love of his hometown was showered with adoration in return  from highway guardrails and the narrow Parkland street where he grew up, to the center of downtown on Broadway and the open gates of his final resting place at Cave Hill Cemetery.

The days journey began an hour late as spectators crowded the lawn of A.D. Porter & Sons, one of Louisvilles longest-running African-American-owned funeral homes. Passersby in cars slowed  if not outright stopped  as they passed the funeral parlor, many steering with one hand and capturing the moment on a cell phone with the other.

As loved ones readied inside for the processional, motorcade attendants tucked yellow placards with the image of a butterfly beneath each shining Cadillacs windshield for his final pass.

Central High alumna Kimberly Wordlow plucked petals from a rose and scattered them as the family procession passed. She couldnt see herself anywhere else that sunny morning.

I hope they felt some love, she said.

As the motorcade turned off the highway and headed west onto Muhammad Ali Boulevard  once Walnut Street before it took the name of the citys most famous native son  hundreds of neighbors waited for the man who called himself the peoples champion.

In T-shirts emblazoned with his picture. Holding posters of his gloves. Posing with the clenched fists of a fighter.

Lawns were noticeably mowed, even the vacant lots between century-old brick homes. Neighbors wielded brooms and dustpans. They dragged chairs to the sidewalk for a ring-side seat.

Best friends Saundra Williams, 61, and Marvina Marshall, 64, sat in front of Zion Baptist Church, giggling about the time they met Muhammad Ali back in 1986 during a Friday ladies' night. He sat solo at a little, round table drinking water at the long-gone Page Four Nightclub on Broadway at 16th.

He said, Ain't I pretty? Ain't I pretty? You aint never seen a man prettier than me,  Williams recalled.

They remembered an approachable flirt from their younger days, a man who knew no stranger.

We asked him, Can we touch your face?  Williams remembered. We all rubbed our fingers on his cheeks. His skin was so smooth. He would never have any whiskers on his cheeks.

When the procession turned off Louis Coleman Jr. Drive onto Grand Avenue it brought Ali back to where a young Cassius Clay grew up. There, they talked about the child and the champion.

He was now home for the final time, greeted by a crowd of thousands. The narrow street tightened as onlookers squeezed against the hearse, SUVs and limousines carrying celebrities  actor Will Smith and former heavyweight champions Mike Tyson and Lennox Lewis  despite police warnings to stay at the curb.

Balloons floated to the tree lines and roses pelted the hood of the hearse. Those whod waited in the heat for hours rushed to greet Alis family, including eldest daughter Maryum, who lowered her window to thank them for their condolences.

As he passed, they roared his name.

It means everything because it brought this community together, Kevin Glenn, who grew up in Parkland, said.

What a great thing for Muhammad to do that one last time. The world saw Parkland today.

As the procession turned onto Broadway, the citys center turned out for him.

Hana Ali tweeted about a recurring dream her father had of running down Broadway in downtown Louisville where people were gathered on the street, clapping and cheering his name.

I waved back, she wrote of his telling the story. Then all of a sudden I just took off flying.

Near 13th Street and Broadway, Eric Tillman stood waiting for the champ to pass by. Hed always been a fan of Muhammad Ali as a boxer but grew to appreciate his religious beliefs and humanitarianism.

He said the legend makes him proud to be from Louisville and often tells people hes the most famous Louisville face  other than Alis, of course. He hopes Alis funeral sends a message to young people.

Hopefully, a lot of the young people this week will stop killing each other, he said. Maybe Alis funeral will inspire them to put down their guns.

Just down the road, Angie Whitfield and her brother, Charles, reminisced about seeing Ali perform magic tricks at a night club. The problem was he wasnt nearly as good a magician as he was a boxer. But no matter where he went he lit up the room.

On a day so full of emotion, Angie Whitfield reflected on the moment.

Its not sadness, she said. Its greatness.

As the hearse pulled toward the gates of Cave Hill Cemetery, fans whod awaited his arrival for hours began to chant, Ali! Ali! Ali! Some peeled away from the crowd and rushed toward the fence along Cherokee Road to get a better view of the procession.

For Raymond Ferrell, who grew up in Parkland, Ali was proof a person could rise above his circumstances and do the right thing. That, he said, will be Alis legacy in Louisville.

In the crowd at Cave Hill, fans imagined Alis final resting place beyond the gate. Some said there wont be a monument grand enough. But Ferrell, who was drawn to Ali more for his convictions than his athleticism, said he hoped the monument would be graceful, quiet and thoughtful, like him.

Once inside, Ali passed beneath the canopy of oak and magnolia trees, toward grassy hills speckled with clover, where monuments to other Louisville greats stretch toward the heavens.

After the hearse passed, the crowd rushed to gather rose petals left at the gate.

___

Reporters Kirsten Clark, Matthew Glowicki, Jere Downs, Jiahui Hu, Bobby Shipman, Danielle Lerner, Martha Elson, Beth Warren, Justin Sayers, Lexy Gross and Allana Barefield contributed to this story.
By Zach Osowski, zach.osowski@courierpress.com

INDIANAPOLIS  With a party platform to approve, along with an attorney general and state superintendent races to vote on, Saturday could be a long day for delegates at the Indiana State Republican Convention.

There are four candidates for the Republican nominee for attorney general. Instead of a primary, candidates for statewide elected offices such as attorney general or state superintendent, are picked by delegates at state conventions. Hoosier voters choose an overall winner in November.

This year, with current Attorney General Greg Zoeller choosing not to seek re-election, former attorney general Steve Carter, State Sen. Randy Head of Logansport, Elkhart County Prosecutor Curtis Hill and assistant attorney general Abby Kuzma are all vying for the open position.

Carter was attorney general for eight years, serving from 2001 to 2009. Now he's looking for another go-round and running on the fact that he has won this position before.

"I'm the only one of the candidates who has won a statewide race before and I've done it twice," Carter said. "I'm the only one who's done the job we're running for."

Carter said his experience and success in statewide races should make him the choice for republicans looking to boost their numbers across the state.

Head, a former deputy prosecutor, has spent most of his tenure in the Indiana General Assembly focused on crime bills. Now he wants to concentrate on combatting criminal activity full-time as attorney general. Federal government overreach and more rehab options for drug addicts are also priorities for Head.

"We've got to have a more effective way of treating drug addiction," Head said. "Incarceration isn't the answer for everyone."

Hill has won four consecutive terms as Elkhart County Prosecutor and said being an elected prosecutor gives him an advantage over the other candidates. He said his current position has allowed him to receive endorsements from several county prosecutors, including Vanderburgh County's Nick Hermann.

Hill is also courting delegates by telling them he's an outsider to Indianapolis and the status quo.

"You look at the other three candidates  one use to be the attorney general, one works for the current attorney general and the other is in the general assembly," Hill said.

Kuzma, who has been with Zoeller since 2009, said her experience gives her an advantage on the competition. She said she has spent her time learning how to react to the various problems and said she is best suited to continue the work Zoeller has done.

Kuzma specifically wants to continue to crack down on sex trafficking and fraud if elected, two priorities of the Zoeller administration. She said her goal is to keep on helping Hoosiers as the next attorney general.

"I'm not running with another goal in mind," she said. "This office is where I want to be. I want to keep working."

It could take a few ballots before a winner is decided. There are approximately 1,500 GOP delegates invited to the convention and the winner must receive a simple majority of the votes. Typically, candidates finishing last on the first ballot will drop out and then delegates will vote again.

The winner will face unopposed Democrat Lorenzo Arrendondo who will be confirmed at the Democratic convention June 18.

GOP delegates will also be choosing the Republican nominee for state superintendent of schools. Jennifer McCormick, superintendent of Yorktown Community Schools, is facing Dawn Wooten, a college teacher from Fort Wayne. The ultimate nominee will face incumbent Glenda Ritz.
Screenshot of new television advertisement from the Republican Governors Association. (Photo: Provided by the Republican Governors Assocation.)

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By Tony Cook, IndyStar / USA TODAY Network

Republicans are launching their first attack advertisement of the governor's race  a full five months before the election.

In a new 30-second spot airing in several markets across the state, the Republican Governors Association goes after Democratic candidate John Gregg on a number of issues, including his fiscal record as Indiana House speaker and his work for Enron.

It's the first negative ad from Gov. Mike Pence's allies in what is expected to be an especially contentious campaign. Pence is fending off what may be the toughest challenge of his political life from Gregg, who he narrowly defeated in 2012. Polls show the race is tight and national groups on both sides of the aisle are pouring millions of dollars into the contest.

The ad accuses Gregg of turning $2 billion state surplus into a "massive deficit," supporting "higher taxes," and helping scandal-plagued energy company Enron get a tax break.

The Gregg campaign denounced the ad, saying Gregg worked across party lines as speaker to cut taxes, balance budgets and make responsible decisions after 9/11 and during the economic downturn.

Mike Pence has failed as governor. His record is one that has brought scorn and embarrassment to Hoosiers, hurt our economy and set us all back, said Tim Henderson, Gregg campaign manager. Now, hes not even man enough to put his own name on this attack.

Although the RGA is airing the ad, the Pence campaign had reserved the air time the RGA is using.

The attack represents a departure for Pence, who once wrote an article opposing such tactics entitled, "Confessions of a Negative Campaigner." But he indicated during his re-election kick-off last year that this year's campaign would be different.

His campaign spokesman, Marc Lotter, defended the ad, arguing that Gregg's labor union allies launched the first negative ad of the campaign back in October. That advertisement accused Pence of not prioritizing infrastructure improvements.

"Any attempt to claim Republicans are airing the first negative ads of this cycle are hogwash," Lotter said.

The early attack ads are an indication of just how competitive the race is expected to be, said Laura Albright, a political scientist at the University of Indianapolis.

"The fact that the campaign  and not Pence himself but the larger Republican party  is starting out so aggressively and so early relative to the election shows that they believe it is going to be a close and competitive race," she said. "The polling numbers indicate this as well, and it is not surprising that with some of the controversial legislation produced in the past two sessions, Pence has been viewed as a vulnerable incumbent."
Rep. Luke Messer, R-Ind., leaves a caucus meeting on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., on Oct. 21, 2015. (Photo: Carolyn Kaster / AP)

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By Maureen Groppe, IndyStar / USA TODAY Network

WASHINGTON  Donald Trumps ethnically charged comments about an Indiana-born judge were inappropriate, but Trump is not a racist, Rep. Luke Messer said Thursday.

The Shelbyville Republican and member of House Republican leadership also said its unclear if Trump, the presumptive GOP presidential nominee, can conduct himself with maturity.

"I think one of the real unknowns of the upcoming campaign season is, does Donald Trump really have some sort of strange personal tic where he can't control his comments," Messer said. "Or is he an adult, is he a leader, is he somebody who can control his tongue and focus on the real challenges of the American people."

Messer, chairman of the House Republican Policy committee, was asked about Trump while appearing on C-SPANs Washington Journal call-in program.

Trump has accused Judge Gonzalo P. Curiel of bias in presiding over lawsuits against Trump University because of the judges Mexican heritage.

Trump has called Curiel a hater who doesnt like the real-estate mogul's pledge to build a wall along the U.S. border with Mexico.

After House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., denounced Trumps comments as racist Tuesday, Trump said his remarks were misconstrued as a categorical attack against people of Mexican heritage. But he did not apologize, and said hes justified in questioning the fairness of rulings in class-action challenges to his now-inactive real estate school.

Other Indiana Republicans condemned Trumps comments earlier this week.

Gov. Mike Pence, Sen. Dan Coats and several House members called them inappropriate.

To claim someones ethnicity or race contributes to his or her job performance or ability to be impartial is unacceptable and inappropriate, Rep. Larry Bucshon, R-Newburgh, tweeted Tuesday.

Messer said Thursday that, while Trumps comments were using the race card and we need to speak out against that, Trump doesnt have a record of being a racist.

Hes hired people on merit throughout his career, he said.

Messer said he doesnt endorse many of Trumps comments or ideas, but continues to support him because he will be the GOP nominee.

There is no choice between Donald Trump and my favorite candidate, or Donald Trump and perfection, he said. It is a choice between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton.
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By Tony Cook, IndyStar / USA TODAY Network

A former top official at the Indiana Bureau of Motor Vehicles will be fined $500 for violating state ethics laws when he helped negotiate a lucrative state contract with the company, then took a job with the firm.

The punishment immediately drew criticism from ethics experts and government accountability advocates who say it doesn't go far enough deter such violations in the future.

The penalty is the result of a settlement agreement between former BMV Chief of Staff Shawn Walters and Indiana Inspector General Cynthia Carrasco, who accused him of violating the state's ethics rules after an IndyStar investigationlast year. The Indiana State Ethics Commission signed off on the agreement Thursday without any discussion.

Walters helped negotiate a contract with a relatively new company called Express MVA. The deal provided the company with BMV workstations and allowed it to charge customers a "convenience fee" for providing title and registration services normally available through state license branches. The company collected about $6 million a year in fees under the arrangement.

Walters then accepted a newly created executive position at the company in 2013.

Questions were later raised about whether the convenience fees were allowed under state law. Lawmakers didn't pass legislation expressly authorizing them until last year.

In the settlement approved Thursday, Walters acknowledged that he violated a state ethics law that requires a one-year "cooling-off" period for employees who want to take a job with a company that does business with the state. The law is intended to prevent employees with the power to award or negotiate state contract from doing favors for private companies that can award them with high-paying jobs.

Critics of his $500 fine say it is too small to discourage other state employees from using their government jobs to advance their personal financial interests.

"It amounts to a slap on the wrist," said Julia Vaughn, policy director for Common Cause Indiana, a government accountability group. "Five hundred dollars really is not going to put fear into anybody. Its not a significant enough punishment to get anybodys attention or make them take these laws seriously."

Carrasco defended the penalty, saying it was consistent with what has been levied in similar cases in the past.

When asked if such a small amount of money is an effective deterrent, she said, "I wont go beyond just saying were happy with the agreed settlement and that the commission accepted it. I kind of gave you some background on how we came up with the fine. Ill probably just stick with that."

She later pointed to two settlements from previous years. One involved a former employee at the Indiana Department of Environmental Management who did consulting work for a company he had regulated. He was fined $250. The other case involved a Board of Animal Health employee who received compensation from a meat plant he had regulated. He was fined $1,000.

State law gives the ethics commission broad discretion when it comes to punishments. They can impose a civil penalty of up to "three times the value of any benefit received from the violation."

That's actually three times harsher than penalties authorized in a federal ethics law for executive branch officials, said Kathleen Clark, an ethics expert at the University of Washington School of Law.

It's not clear how that value would be calculated in Walters' case. The company said in August that Walters earned a base salary of $60,000 a year at Express MVA, with potential for significantly higher incentive pay if he brought in new business from other states.

If that amount was used, the maximum penalty would be $180,000.

"The commission appears to have more enforcement authority than it is exercising," Clark said. "It would be helpful if the commission explained why it is not using enforcement authority that it has, and why it thinks a former employee should be able to retain wrongful compensation."

"Did the commission blow him a kiss along with the $500 penalty?" she asked.

Gov. Mike Pence, who appoints both the inspector general and the five members of the ethics commission, declined to comment for this story.

He requested the ethics probe last year after the IndyStar story. He also ended the state's contract with Express MVA, saying his administration "is committed to a government that is as good as our people."

Even if the size of Walters' penalty won't do much to deter such conduct by other state employees, Pence's decision to cancel the contract with Express MVA is likely to discourage private companies from trying to entice or reward government employees, said Leslie Lenkowski, a professor at Indiana Universitys School of Public and Environmental Affairs.

"The real deterrence would come from the action against the company," he said. "It takes two to tango, not only the individual state employee, but the company as well. The deterrent effect you want is on future companies."

Walters and his attorney did not attend the ethics commission meeting and did not return messages from IndyStar. But in a legal deposition last year in another matter, Walters said he had no oversight of the companys Indiana operations, despite his title as chief operating officer.

The ethics case did not address Walters' role in millions of dollars in overcharges at the BMV. Another IndyStar investigation, published in March 2015, found that Walters and other BMV executives knew about some of those fee problems for years but chose to ignore or cover up the overcharges rather than refund the extra money to motorists and adjust to significant budget losses.

About $30 million was later refunded, but only after a class action lawsuit was filed. The state has since voluntarily refunded millions of dollars in other fees it improperly collected and a second class action lawsuit involving additional fees is ongoing.

In the meantime, Pence and state lawmakers approved a piece of legislation earlier this year to reduce the number of BMV fees and put a cap on convenience fees like those charged by Express MVA.
By Chelsea Schneider, IndyStar / USA TODAY Network

A year after same-sex marriage became legal across the nation, Indiana Republicans appear poised to maintain support for marriage between a man and a woman in the state partys platform.

Delegates to the Indiana Republican Convention on Saturday in Indianapolis will vote on the platform, along with choosing a nominee for state attorney general and schools chief.

Ahead of the gathering, a committee tasked with exploring changes to the platform voted not to revise language favoring traditional marriage that party members added in 2014. It states, We believe that strong families, based on marriage between a man and a woman, are the foundation of society.

Opponents of the language still have opportunities to alter it. A second committee, whose membership includes influential party members, will meet Friday when changes  although unexpected  could occur before nearly 1,700 delegates vote on the platform Saturday.

Republicans hoping to change the language will face strong headwinds, including from party members who feel any changes to the marriage language could reignite debate over a controversial social policy thats become a sore point for Republican Gov. Mike Pence and other GOP leaders.

Advocates of maintaining the provision say it constitutes a compromise struck two years ago, when language also was included to support diverse family structures. But those who want the between a man and a woman definition removed, such as former Indianapolis Mayor Greg Ballard and new Marion County GOP Chairman Mike McQuillen, argue its time for a more inclusive party.

Megan Robertson, a leader in the effort to remove the language, said Republicans have an opportunity to show the party is welcoming and diverse.

Instead of recognizing it as an opportunity, it was seen as We dont want to talk about this issue. We dont want to bring it up, so lets not change anything on it,'  said Robertson, a rights activist for the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community and a member of Enterprise Republicans, a group chaired by former Angies List CEO Bill Oesterle. Oesterle, a critic of Pence, left the tech firm last year to promote gay and transgender rights after the passage of the controversial Religious Freedom Restoration Act.

Serving as a backdrop to the debate is the citys annual Circle City IN Pride Festival thats occurring the same day as the state Republican convention. The festival, which supports the LGBT community, is expected to draw more than 100,000 people to Downtown.

Indiana Republican Party Chairman Jeff Cardwell said the language received overwhelming support at the 2014 state convention.

It passed with better than 80 percent of people that participated the last time around. So nothing has changed at all. I think it will be fine, Cardwell said.

Rush County GOP Chairman Michael Dora, who wrote the marriage language in 2014, said the platform-review committee felt changing it drew attention to it.

And made it more contentious than some people think it is, Dora said. Thats what the base of the party believes, that the foundation of this country was built with that belief. And if we dont stand for strong family units, then were just going to continue to go down a path of more broken families.

The language on marriage represented a pretty good compromise, said Mike McDaniel, a former state Republican Party chairman who reviewed the platform.

"At the end of the day, it was decided to keep it the way it was because it did cover a lot of ground for a lot of people, he said. Nobody was completely happy on either side of the issue.

But McQuillen, who testified in April at one of the platform committees public hearings, said the provision was at odds with the partys goal of getting more young people involved.

"What are we to say to the children of gay and lesbian parents, who dont fit this definition of a strong family?" McQuillen said, according to transcript of his remarks to the committee. "What are we to say to courageous single mothers and fathers, who dont fit this definition of a strong family?"

Tom John, GOP chairman of Indianas 7th Congressional District, said he wants to see the language of between a man and a woman removed long term, but he argued this year isnt the right time. He said Republicans need to focus on party unity and getting Pence re-elected as governor and Congressman Todd Young elected to the U.S. Senate.

And save some of the more divisive fights for another day, John said.

Robertson disagreed. With all the controversy surrounding these issues in the last few years, it is exactly the right and appropriate time to make it clear that the Republican Party is welcoming to strong families, however they are constructed.

The party had eliminated similar traditional marriage language in 2012, but social conservatives pushed in 2014 to have it restored after failing to get a constitutional same-sex marriage ban on the November ballot. Shortly after, a federal court ruling made same-sex marriage legal in Indiana, and last summer, the U.S. Supreme Court extended that right to marry across the nation.

It would be difficult to imagine Republicans abandoning the language because of a court ruling, said Andy Downs, director of the Mike Downs Center for Indiana Politics.

Its not a call for any particular legislation or a constitutional amendment. It is a statement of belief, Downs said. It is a value statement, and that minimizes to a degree the controversial nature.

In addition to the platform, delegates will choose Saturday among four attorney general candidates and two superintendent of public instruction candidates to run in the November election. Theyre also expected to formally nominate Lt. Gov. Eric Holcomb as Pences running mate.

___

IndyStar reporters Tony Cook and Brian Eason contributed to this story.
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton speaks at the Douglass Park Gymnasium during a campaign stop on May 1, 2016. Former Secretary of State Clinton visited the Lincoln Square Pancake House before the rally to speak with diners. (Photo: Mykal McEldowney/IndyStar)

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By Chelsea Schneider and Tony Cook, IndyStar / USA TODAY Network

Seeing Hillary Clinton make history this week by becoming the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, Jill Long Thompson, a former candidate for Indiana governor, thought to herself: We finally did it.

This opens up doors for little girls all across our country, she said. It opens doors for so many people. That was a thick glass ceiling. Over 200 years.

Like Clinton, Long Thompson is no stranger to breaking down barriers. On Tuesday, Clinton became the first woman to clinch the presidential nomination for a major U.S. political party. In 2008, Long Thompson, a Democrat, was the first woman to earn a major partys nomination for Indiana governor.

Being a trailblazer isnt easy, she said.

The barriers are real, whether theyre subtle or blatant, Long Thompson said. We now have a presumptive nominee who is incredibly accomplished and who has an incredible record and she broke through an incredible barrier.

With Clinton securing the nomination, she accomplished a major milestone, representing one of the last frontiers for women in the country. But many of Clinton's supporters hope her qualifications will define her candidacy, more so than her gender.

Now that Clinton's nomination is all but official, the question remains: Will the opportunity for America to elect its first woman president draw voters to Clinton?

One political observer said it might not. Voters tend to stay with their political parties and that allegiance can undermine other factors a voter weighs in determining who to support.

(Donald Trumps) actions have made him seem more misogynistic than those of any Republican nominee I can recall in recent years. But the question is whether that will move people from their normal party identification, said Marjorie Hershey, a political science professor at Indiana University. The old image that Im sure still exists of people saying I vote for the person, not the party simply isnt true, at least it isnt anymore.

No matter what happens in the fall, the Democratic Party selecting a woman as its nominee will influence national politics going forward, said Robert Dion, political science professor at the University of Evansville.

"It sends a strong message to people in all parties that women are genuine contenders," Dion said.

In celebrating her win, Clinton spoke of the generations of women in her family  of her own mother, who was born in 1919 the same year women secured the right to vote. She spoke of her own daughter and granddaughter, and how she wished her mother, who passed away in 2011, could be there to see it all.

I really wish my mother could be here tonight. I wish she could see what a wonderful mother Chelsea has become and could meet our beautiful granddaughter, Charlotte. And of course, I wish she could see her daughter become the Democratic nominee for president, Clinton said. So yes, there are still ceilings to break for women and men, for all of us, but dont let anyone tell you that great things cant happen in America. Barriers can come down, justice and equality can win.

State Rep. Linda Lawson, a high-ranking Democrat in the Indiana House, thought of her mother as she listened to Clintons speech. She was born in 1909, a decade before women were granted the right to vote, and wore high-button shoes and long dresses.

Hearing Clinton speak, Lawson also thought of her own milestone, serving as the first woman on the Hammond Police Department beginning in 1976.

For all of those women that went before me, and all of those women that went through a first of some kind  its just mind blowing, Lawson said. Its just amazing to see. I mean I cant even put into words how this is going to affect the lives of so many young women who have been told by their parents You can do anything you want.

Yet, Anne Hathaway, president of the Republican consulting firm Hathaway Strategies, was surprised by what she felt was Clinton having to remind the country that her becoming the nominee was an historic moment.

Frankly, Im also surprised that there seems to be somewhat of a lack of intensity with in regard to women supporting her just because she is a woman, said Hathaway, who is a former chief of staff for the Republican National Committee. I also think its because theres a lack of enthusiasm for the same-old-same-old politics, and frankly, Hillary Clinton is from a very political family. Her husband was president. She was First Lady. She was a senator, secretary of state, shes been engaged in the process for a long time. My gut is those voters who helped elect Donald Trump to be the Republican nominee are going to look at Hillary Clinton vs. Donald Trump and just presumably pick Donald Trump because its not the same old politics as usual.

This years presidential race could get very personal, said Kyle Kondik, managing editor of Sabatos Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia Center for Politics. On one side, Trump will bring up some of Clintons recent ethical questions, such as her use of private email when she was secretary of state and issues with donor disclosures at the Clinton Foundation. On the other side, Clinton will question whether he is fit for the office of president, Kondik said.

One thing is clear: If Clinton draws support from the same group of voters who propelled President Barack Obama to the White House, then she will win, Kondik said. But growing support among women, especially moderate Republicans and independents, also would help.

Trump could do even better than Mitt Romney did among whites with lower levels of education and with white men, but that might be balanced out by Clinton doing better than Barack Obama among college-educated whites and white women, he said.

Vi Simpson, a former state lawmaker and Democratic candidate for lieutenant governor, said shes heard of young women voters supporting Clintons opponent Bernie Sanders, saying they didnt think having a woman in the White House was a big deal.

She wonders if its because they havent faced the same battles as the older generation. Simpson recalled a time when a woman couldnt get her own credit card and receiving birth control required a husbands permission.

I hope that as the months go by, she said, and it is closer to the election, some of them will realize how much Hillary Clinton has contributed to the doors that are open for them.
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Roy A. Hensley

Owensville, Indiana

I would like to address the issue of having a great VA Clinic in Evansville.

I joined the Navy in 1952 and was discharged in December 1955. Due to my work schedules, I moved through Chicago, California, Georgia before finally returning to Indiana. I first went to the VA Clinic in Evansville in 2002, and since then it has been a relationship that I will forever be indebted to. I also would like to include the Marion, Illinois, facility, as I have and will use them for my BAHA implants to improve my hearing capabilities.

The doctors and staff, including the pharmacy, have bent over backward in answering anything I have been concerned about. I have never heard one derogatory word regarding this VA. In conversations with other patients, they have nothing but good things to say. So, contrary to what has been going on at other sites, you can be very proud of this one.
(Photo: Getty Images)

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By Matthew Will

Jan.1: I resolve not to respond to election season demagoguery, false narratives and misrepresented data distributed by political operatives.

Instead, subject matter experts like myself should focus on policy analysis, proper interpretation of data and responding to inquiries, right? Unfortunately, the gubernatorial race is barely begun, and I am already forced to break my resolution. It feels like January all over again, when I claimed to be going to the gym and got caught at Ritters with a Peanut Butter Mountain and a large soda.

Groups claiming to be nonpartisan are pushing a false narrative of low wages in Indiana and claiming Indiana workers have had a tough time getting back to work. The report often cited is the Bureau of Economic Analysis report, which lists per capita income in the state at $40,998 last year and places us 38th in the nation for the third consecutive year. These are facts, but the spin and reporting have been extremely biased.

First, learned experts prefer to use per capita disposable income. Per capita income is not disposable and has some flaws, the most important of which is the inclusion of taxes. News flash: States have different tax rates. Beyond using the proper income data, it is crucial to adjust for the cost of living. The cost of living in Indianapolis is much lower than Chicago or New York City. Unfortunately, many political talking points compare Indiana to Illinois, which is not a fair comparison without some adjustments.

Using data from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, Indiana ranked 39th in 2015 per capita disposable income at $36,471. This is modestly better than our 2012 ranking of 40th at $33,217, but there is much more to the story.

Adjusting for the cost of living, Indiana jumps to 20th in the nation, which is much better than 39th, and the 2012 ranking rises to 25th. Any objective analysis of income must include this simple adjustment for the cost of living. Doing so, in contrast to the simple income ranking, shows how much better Hoosiers are actually faring.

And the story gets even better. Cost-of-living data is broken down into groceries, housing, utilities, transportation, health and other. Given that housing is the largest expense for most families, the per capita disposable income could also be adjusted for housing costs. Under this measurement, Indiana ranks 9th in the nation, up from 14th in 2012. Yes, that puts us in the Top 10. Go Hoosiers!

Despite what Donald Trump says, manufacturing jobs are booming in the state. From a low of 425,000 in the spring of 2009, Indiana now has over 515,000 manufacturing jobs, and that figure is growing. You know it must be good, because President Obama flew to Elkhart recently to take credit for all the new jobs.

While the nation has seen real median household income drop over $5,700 between January 2008 and January 2016, Indiana continues to buck the trend by climbing in the rankings, producing more manufacturing jobs and lowering the tax burden for average Hoosiers. The Indiana economy is running on all cylinders.

Please accept this mea culpa for breaking my election season resolution, but its hard to abstain when people offer something so darn tempting. Off to Ritters.

___

Will is an associate professor of finance at the University of Indianapolis.
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News and notes from the 2016 Cruise Canada New England Symposium held in New York City.

**There are discussions well underway for the ports in Canada/New England to fund an organization with full-time employees to represent and market the region. While the Symposium is an annual event, it is organized by the major players in the region.

**Next year's Symposium will take place in Montreal, and Boston is the early favorite for 2018.

**Quebec has launched a 2025 vision for cruise, targeting over 400,000 passengers by then.

**The new workshop format was well received (see separate article) and organizers were on the ball in terms of keeping things on schedule, even battling through a long lunch and typical Manhattan traffic delaying the afternoon sessions.

**Also noted is the lack of a known 10-year plan for the region. With new ships on the books through 2026, the collection of ports was suggested to take a look at a plan for their own growth.

**Attendance was noticeably up at the Symposium, with 100 expected and roughly 150 on location.

**Need a boarding bridge after an incident? ADELTE, which is among a few suppliers for passenger gangways, has a turnaround time of at least six months.

**While Costa and MSC, which have both abandoned Canada/New England programs, were not on the attendee list, there was a representative from MSC present. In addition, TUI's Mein Schiff 6 will visit the region for the first time in 2017.

**While summer traffic is talked about, a quick look at itineraries show similar length Caribbean summer cruises significantly cheaper than Canada/New England summer offerings. A four-day Carnival cruise from New York will call in Saint John, while a similar sailing on a similar ship from Carnival from South Florida will call on two ports and cost significantly less.

**It was also conveniently noted that passengers that purchase shore excursions through the cruise lines rate both the respective ports and the cruise higher due to a better engagement level with the destination.

**Among the words positively associated with Canada/New England on passenger surveys: "lobster."
Thomson Cruises has launched its newest ship, the TUI Discovery, with a ceremony held in Palma, Majorca, on Thursday evening June 9.

The evening commenced with keynote speeches from TUI Groups CEO Fritz Joussen, Managing Director of Cruise, Helen Caron, TUI UK & Ireland Managing Director Nick Longman and TUI Discovery Captain, John Westgarth-Pratt.

The ships godmothers Mimi Kasomwoshi Ragui and Hazel Ceguera, both Thomson Cruises colleagues, were welcomed on stage during the show to formally christen the ship.

Grammy Award winning artist Jess Glynne then wowed unsuspecting guests with a medley of number one hits from her globally bestselling album, I Cry When I Laugh.

Fireworks lit up the city to close the show as Jess finished her set with her smash hit Hold My Hand, before the ship set sail for Barcelona.

Managing Director of Thomson Cruises, Helen Caron, said: The launch of TUI Discovery marks an exciting time for Thomson Cruises, so it was an honour to have Jess Glynne join us to celebrate what has been a fantastic night for everyone involved.

TUI Discovery is a real game-changer for us and shows our commitment to delivering unforgettable holidays that are personalised for each of our customers. Were incredibly proud of being able to offer truly memorable experiences in some of the worlds most exciting and exotic destinations and tonight has given a real taster of that.
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A castoff from Gov. Dannel P. Malloys cabinet is coming back to haunt Connecticut with another reminder  or parting shot  that General Electric is the one that got away.

This time, to Rhode Island, where Malloys former education commissioner, Stefan Pryor, has played a key role in the recruitment of a new GE Digital venture to Providence.

Rhode Island leaders announced the deal Thursday, which includes an initial commitment of 100 jobs in return for $5.65 million in economic incentives.

Front and center was Pryor, the states commerce secretary.

It comes six months after Connecticut lost GEs global headquarters to Boston, subjecting Malloy to intense criticism over the states business climate and retention efforts by his administration.

We are excited to welcome this new GE Digital center to the Ocean State, Pryor said. GE is one of the worlds most important and innovative companies. This state-of-the-art center will bring high-wage advanced industry jobs to Rhode Island, enhancing the tech industry cluster that will ensure the state's long-term economic success.

A spokesman for Malloy declined to comment Thursday.

The vast majority of the 100 jobs will be new positions, according to a GE spokeswoman, who said the company did not put the digital venture out to bid when asked if Connecticut was in the running.

Rhode Island officials say the deal could yield hundreds of additional jobs.

GE still maintains a workforce of 4,000 employees in Connecticut, which Malloys defenders say has been overlooked in the relocation of the companys headquarters.

But Malloys critics say that Pryors recruitment of GE Digital to Rhode Island, which had been in the running for the headquarters, adds insult to injury.

It may cause an initial bruising to Governor Malloy as far as his feelings go, said state Rep. John Frey, R-Ridgefield. GE was so put off Governor Malloys presentation and dialogue last summer and fall that I sincerely doubt that they had any conversation with Connecticut about this opportunity.

During his tenure as Connecticuts education commissioner from 2011 to his 2014 resignation, Pryor had a rocky relationship with teacher unions and some education advocates over standardized testing and charter school expansion.

Some had publicly called for his ouster, including Jonathan Pelto, a former petition candidate for governor.

Pryor didnt seem to care much for Connecticuts children as education commissioner, so it stands to reason he wouldnt hesitate to steal our jobs now that he is working in Rhode Island, Pelto said.

neil.vigdor@scni.com; 203-625-4436; http://twitter.com/gettinviggy
Speaker of the House Brendan Sharkey joined Republican leaders of the General Assembly on Friday in calling for state Insurance Commissioner Katherine Wade to recuse herself from participating in the merger of insurance giants Anthem and Cigna.

Senate Democrats, however, sided Friday with Wade, a former Cigna lobbyist, who won approval from the Office of State Ethics to oversee the possible marriage of the two companies.

Last fall, Republican leaders first asked Wade to drop out of the merger process, in which Anthem wants to acquire Cigna for $54.3 billion. They renewed their effort on Friday, following news reports on the lack of transparency, potential conflicts of interest and consumer activists critical of the millions of dollars from Cigna to state Democrats requesting that she resign or be terminated by Gov. Dannel P. Malloy, her boss.

Any merger review needs balance between the interests of the businesses and the impact on the consumers, said Senate Minority Leader Len Fasano, R-North Haven, and Sen. Kevin Kelly, R-Stratford, ranking member of the legislative Insurance Committee. We need to be able to trust the process. But because we cant, this casts a shadow on everything the department does.

Later Friday morning, Sharkey agreed. At a minimum, the commissioner should recuse herself from further involvement in the Cigna-Anthem merger review, he said in a statement. Whether a potential conflict crosses a legal ethical line should not be the only factor here. Perception of a conflict is also an important part of the equation, and most onlookers, including consumer and health-care advocates following this issue all have the same perception.

But Adam Joseph, spokesman for the Senate Democratic caucus, said Wade is expected to act professionally. The states independent Ethics Commission has already issued a decision in this matter, Joseph said. We would expect Commissioner Wade to continue to hold herself to the highest ethical standards in all of her duties as state insurance commissioner.

I am following the Connecticut ethics statutes and I have taken the appropriate measures that allow me to carry out my duties as Insurance Commissioner, Wade said in a Friday afternoon statement. I have been and will continue to be in consultation with the Office of State Ethics as necessary and appropriate.

kdixon@ctpost.com;
Mitsubishi arrives in Cuba to stay

Submitted by: Juana

Asia

Havana

Business and Economy

06 / 09 / 2016



Several media say Japan's trading houses would have serious intentions to position in Cuba soon, before the United States end up gaining all the attention, thanks to the increasing easing of US sanctions.

The Japanese purpose would be to gain space and opportunities in infrastructure and motoring, mainly. According to the business daily Bloomberg, Mitsubishi Corp., the largest company in Japan, opened an office this month in Havana and is currently processing "possible business arrangements".

Furthermore, Mitsui & Co. will open an office in September and is considering the export of Cuban nickel.



source: www.cibercuba.com




Cuba and Curacao interested in strengthening commercial ties

Submitted by: Juana

Caribbean

Havana

Business and Economy

06 / 10 / 2016



The interest in strengthening commercial bonds between Cuba and Curacao was highlighted in Havana in the context of the visit to the island of Eugene Rhuggenaath, Minister of Economic Development of that country, accompanied by representatives of 20 companies from various sectors.

In a business forum held at the Hotel Nacional, Omar Fernandez, secretary general of the Cuban Chamber of Commerce, stressed the importance of the current mission, composed of representatives of companies from areas such as transport, manufacturing, logistics, finance and energy.

As an example of the progress achieved from the bilateral meetings held in 2015, Fernandez mentioned the signing on Thursday of a memorandum of understanding between the Curinde Company of Curacao and Cubas Comercial Cupet S.A., which reflects the intention of both parties with regard to the execution of joint business and investment works.

Also signed on Thursday was a cooperation agreement between the Chambers of Commerce of Cuba and Curacao, an important tool towards contributing to the development of relations, pointed out the Cuban official.

However, he acknowledged the need to continue working on identifying new business opportunities, noting the wide investment possibilities opened in the Cuban nation, as part of the process of updating its economic model.
Cuba and the US hold talks on terrorism in Havana

Cuban and US authorities held a technical meeting on June 8 on the prevention and fight of terrorism, aimed at exchanging on possible cooperation on this issue.

According to Cuban Ministry of Foreign Affairs website, the Cuban delegation included representatives of the Ministries of Interior and Foreign Affairs, Customs and the General Prosecutor's Office.

The US delegation was made up by officials of the State Department and Homeland Security, and from the embassy in Havana.

Both teams agreed on the importance of having greater cooperation to face terrorism and on having more technical meetings in the future.




Candidates come out swinging in only debate of Florida governor's race

Gov. Ron DeSantis and his opponent, U.S. Rep. Charlie Crist, met in their first and only debate October 24 at the Sunrise Theatre in Fort Pierce.
Opinion Wordle

The next day I woke to find myself in a WhatsApp group titled Quordle is Awesome!! A small group of three. There was no getting out of it now.
Over the last few weeks, voters have been blitzed by apocalyptic predictions about a post-Brexit economy from banks who triggered the 2008 financial crisis, like Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan.

Meanwhile David Cameron and George Osborne have missed no chance to talk down this country's prospects.

Economists and Establishment figures, all of whom wanted us to join the euro, have joined in the bombardment.

Now, a man who has a better right than any of them to speak on this subject has given his verdict. In a letter to JCB's 6,000 UK employees, Lord Bamford declares himself 'very confident we can stand on our own two feet'.

David Cameron and George Osborne have missed no chance to talk down this country's prospects

He points out the EU's 'shrinking role in the world economy', and declares he will be voting to leave.

In support of Lord Bamford's positive outlook, yesterday saw the release of some of the best export figures for many years, with the UK selling more to the rest of the world than the EU for the 20th month a row.

Mr Cameron enjoys giving speeches in front of JCB diggers, but he really ought to have been listening to the JCB boss.

Time's up, Sir Philip

Sir Philip Green finds himself with more and more serious questions to answer about his role in the collapse of BHS.

As its proprietor, he extracted vast sums from the business and left a gaping hole in its pension fund, before selling it for 1 to a serial bankrupt, Dominic Chappell, who knew nothing about retailing.

It now emerges that two contenders who did know something about retailing were interested in trying to make a go of BHS, and Sir Philip may have been actively involved in putting them off.

Sir Philip Green finds himself with more and more serious questions to answer about his role in the collapse of BHS

He fervently denies this. But as further murky revelations emerge about his stewardship of the company, Sir Philip now owes a sober, factual and comprehensive explanation to the 11,000 employees who lost their jobs and the 21,000 members of the pension fund who face severe cuts in their income.

The bluster, prevarication and threats with which Sir Philip often responds to well-merited criticism will not do when he gives evidence next week to MPs.

Today, a growing number of parliamentarians is calling for his knighthood to be stripped from him.

This paper will wait to hear what he has to say. But as Alex Brummer declares on Page Seven, this whole affair stinks to high heaven.

The guilty parties

Iain Duncan Smith has exploded the myth, so eagerly propagated in recent days by David Cameron, that Britain can send home jobless EU migrants after six months.

As the former Work and Pensions Secretary today tells the Mail, when he urged the Home Office to do this, it replied with unutterable feebleness that 'we just don't have the capacity'.

Iain Duncan Smith has exploded the myth, so eagerly propagated in recent days by David Cameron, that Britain can send home jobless EU migrants after six months

Meanwhile George Osborne has had to admit the 'threat' posed by Brexit to pensioners is likewise a myth. Far from losing 32,000, as a Remain poster of an empty purse claimed, they benefit by law from a 'triple lock' on their incomes.

Both sides in this campaign have been guilty of egregious misrepresentations, but it's difficult to avoid the conclusion that the Remain campaign's are far worse.
They promise a reduction in dark circles as well as luminous under eyes

The masks come in packs of six and retail for $32 AUD a packet

FEMAIL put them to the test to see how they work on mere mortals

Celebrities such as Rosie Huntington-Whiteley are fans of the masks

The quest for perfect peepers is never ending with countless products claiming to work miracles.

The latest beauty product winning over celebrities from Jessica Alba to Rosie Huntington-Whiteley is a 24k gold eye mask which promises to put an end to dark circle.

After FEMAIL ran a story about the A-list fans of Australian skincare brand, Lonvitalite's golden eye masks, we wondered whether this pretty product also works on mere mortals.

Glow in gold: Australian beauty brand, Lonvitalite's gold-infused eye masks, are extremely popular with beauty bloggers and celebrities around the world

Celeb clientele: Rosie Huntington-Whiteley is one high-profile fan of the masks (pictured)

Road test: Home and Away's Ada Nicodemou was recently pictured wearing the silky patches - so FEMAIL decided to put them to the test

The results? Largely positive.

Donning the silky eye patches after a gruelling week at Sydney Fashion Week recently, I was not expecting them to work miracles on my tired eyes.

However, as soon as I applied them they felt soft and cooling. Like a soothing cucumber placed over the eye area. While they did slide around a bit they still felt very refreshing.

When I took the masks off 20 minutes later, I was surprised by how plump and dewy my skin was. Though the effects didn't last all day, I can imagine the products would be a great solution for a party quick fix.

To the test: While I did find the eye patches slippery the overall effect was very refreshing

After: However, afterwards my skin was more plump and dewy

What went down: Reporter, Lauren, said that she was 'amazed at how well they worked'

After: Reporter, Lauren, found her skin to be glowing, moisturised and soft afterwards

Deputy FEMAIL editor, Melissa, who also gave the masks to her mum, agreed:

'The masks felt really calming and cool on, with a slight tingling sensation,' she remarked.

When she removed the eye patches 20 minutes later, she said:

'I really noticed a difference when I took them off. I felt like the lines around my eyes weren't as deep and the eye area felt nice and plump for a good while afterwards.'

Cool process: Deputy editor, Melissa said she found the process calming with a 'slight tingling sensation'

Long lasting: Reporter, Lauren, said that the benefits to the masks came later, when she applied her make-up, which didn't stick like it can do - she said she had never done an eye mask before

After: Reporter, Lauren, said that afterwards her make-up went on really smoothly

Femail reporter, Lauren, said she was 'amazed at how well they worked - afterwards my under-eye area felt soft, moisturised and glowing'.

I found my make-up went on smoothly - they got rid of any of the places in which make-up can usually stick

While another Lauren, said she thought the benefits came later, when you applied your make-up:

'I'm not usually one for eye masks - in fact I don't even think I've done one before,' she said.

'But the mask was easy to put on and felt nice and cool.

'Afterwards the skin under my eyes felt dewy and I found my make-up went on smoothly. They got rid of any of the places where make-up can stick.'

Older skin: Melissa's mum Michelle also enjoyed trying the masks but said she wouldn't use them again

Sparkling eyes: Countless female celebrities have posted pictures of themselves trying out the masks

Melissa's mum Michelle wasn't convinced commenting that 'they felt nice, but I wouldn't bother using them again.'

Most recently, Home and Away star, Ada Nicodemou donned the silky patches between filming.

Uploading the snap to Instagram, she joins a string of female celebrities, including Rosie Huntington-Whiteley and Jessica Alba, who have posed for a selfie wearing the eye-catching eye patches.

'The eye masks promote an evenly-toned luminosity to the delicate skin that surrounds the eye,' the company based on the Gold Coast claims.

They are pitched as the perfect solution for post-party ladies - if you apply them for 20 minutes prior to putting on your make-up, your under-eye area will feel soothed and moisturised.

Pre and post party: Jessica Alba swears by the golden masks

Social media sensation: At present, the brand has nearly 30,000 followers on Instagram - a figure that grows by the day with Simone Holtznagel a fan

Pretty peepers: At $32 AUD dollars for a packet of six individually-wrapped pairs, the Lonvitalite eye masks are on sale from the brand's website

At present, the brand has nearly 30,000 followers on Instagram - a figure that grows by the day.

And for anyone who fancies trying a golden eye patch for yourself, it won't break the bank.

Despite containing 24 Karat gold, they cost just $32 AUD dollars for a packet of six individually-wrapped pairs.

With a 'one way absorption rate' of the skin by more than 98 per cent - 10 times the rate of a 'traditional' eye mask - the ingredients include vitamin C, E and B3, as well as grape seed extract, rose essential oil and red algae extract: a combination of nutrients thought to leave the skin looking 'visibly bright and youthful'.

The Queensland-based company pride themselves on their natural plant-based collagen, as well as the fact that their products are cruelty-free.

Lonvitalite's eye masks are available from the brand's website.
Cohen and Ethan pulled through and have celebrated their first birthday

Boys were born at 24 weeks and given just a 25% chance of survival

Two brides have thanked their wedding guests after their generous donations on their big day helped make their baby dreams come true.

Kirstie, 34, and Aimee Messenger, 31, from Lowestoft, Suffolk, did not ask for the usual gifts such as a toaster or a new set of wine glasses - instead asking friends and family to donate towards their IVF fund.

Following their big day, the fertility treatment using sperm from an anonymous donor worked first time and Aimee got pregnant with twins.

Brides Kirstie, 34, (left) and Aimee Messenger, 31, (right) from Lowestoft, Suffolk, asked for friends and family to donate towards their IVF fund at their wedding

The fertility treatment worked first time and Aimee became pregnant with twins. Cohen and Ethan were born at just 24 weeks

The pair began to plan for their expanding family, but when Aimee went into labour at 24 weeks, the newlyweds were told to expect the worst.

However, against all odds, the twins survived and their mothers have issued a heartfelt thank you to all the guests that bought their amazing 'gifts'.

Aimee said: 'When we asked our guests to donate towards IVF we never dreamed we'd get our wish so quickly.

'To find out it was twins was even more amazing. But when I went into labour early we thought we'd lost them.

The boys were given just a 25% chance of survival but they managed to pull through and have celebrated their first birthday

The couple threw a huge party on their boys' first birthday and thanked all their wedding guests for their generous donations

'So when they turned one, we threw a huge party and thanked all the wedding guests. There's not many brides who can say they got given two little miracles as a wedding present.'

Kirstie added: 'We hoped they didn't think it was cheeky. We didn't want them to waste money on things we already had when we wanted another baby.'

Kirstie Maguire, a senior care worker and Aimee Messenger, a nursery teacher, first met over six years ago on Facebook when they became members of a group for mothers who had lost a baby  Kirstie suffered a late miscarriage while Aimee had a stillborn baby at 33 weeks.

But turning to each other for support, the women - who were both in long-term relationships with men - grew close and their friendship turned into love.

Kirstie Maguire, a senior care worker and Aimee Messenger, a nursery teacher, first met over six years ago on Facebook when they became members of a group for mothers who had lost a baby

Kirstie suffered a late miscarriage while Aimee had a stillborn baby at 33 weeks. Turning to each other for support, the women - who were both in relationships with men - grew close and their friendship turned into love

Aimee said: 'I had never had a relationship with a woman, but I fell in love with Kirstie for who she is, not her gender.'

They set up home with Kirstie's three children Charlotte, 13, Mikey, 11, and Harrison, nine, and in August 2012, had their first son together, Austin, born thanks to IVF.

They had already begun planning their wedding, and in the invitations they included a poem to explain their unusual request for money.

In June 2014, wearing white bridal gowns, the women exchanged vows at The Hotel Victoria in Lowestoft, having received 2,500 from their 100 guests towards private IVF treatment.

After their wedding, they visited a fertility clinic in Cambridge to start the IVF process. A week later, a test revealed that Aimee was pregnant

At the reception they gave a speech thanking everyone who had donated to 'help make them mums again'.

Aimee recalled: 'There was huge applause and cheers. It was wonderful and we were overcome that our friends and family had been so kind.'

The couple left for their honeymoon, a week in a caravan in Hunstanton, Norfolk, during which time they visited a fertility clinic in Cambridge to start the IVF process.

Two fertilised eggs were implanted and one week later, on Aimee's 30th birthday on September 25, a test revealed she was pregnant.

When Aimee went into labour at 24 weeks, the couple were told to expect the worst. Cohen was born first weighing just 1lb 7oz, while Ethan was then delivered weighing 1lb 8oz

Both babies were rushed straight to a neonatal intensive care unit. Doctors placed Cohen into a freezer bag to help maintain his body temperature

Aimee said: 'It was the best birthday present ever.'

An early scan at five weeks revealed it was twins.

Kirstie said: 'It was a shock because it meant we would go from four children to six overnight but we were over the moon. It seemed crazy to think the money we had been given had helped pay for something so incredible.'

Ten weeks on, they found out they were expecting two boys. Soon their house was crammed with two of everything in blue.

Kirstie said the boys were no bigger than the iPhone they used to take pictures of them

When Ethan was three weeks old Aimee got to hold him for the first time. It was another fortnight before Cohen was strong enough to be cuddled

But in February 2015, Aimee started bleeding. She said: 'I screamed for Kirstie, then broke down, fearing I was losing them. I had lost my first baby, a daughter at 33 weeks. How on earth would the twins survive at just 24?'

Kirstie drove her to hospital but on the way Aimee started experiencing labour pains and when she arrived, they confirmed her waters had also broken.

The couple were warned the hospital's policy meant only babies over 24 weeks would receive help to live. And sadly, the twins' survival chances were lower because they would be smaller than a single baby.

Kirstie recalled: 'Basically they were telling us our babies would die and that we should let nature take its course.'

At eight days old, Ethan needed urgent bowel surgery. The following week, Cohen suffered kidney failure. But both pulled through and the boys continued to battle daily setbacks

But the women refused to accept this and Aimee was transferred to the Rosie Hospital in Cambridge, better equipped for dealing with premature babies.

The boys held on, but fearing the worst, the women used their time to plan a funeral. They decided on a joint coffin with a Peter Rabbit theme and wrote down their wishes for the undertakers, knowing they would be too upset to cope when the time came.

Aimee said: 'It broke our hearts but we had to listen to what we were being told, that our boys would not make it.'

After four days, contractions started again. Cohen Archie Jack was born first weighing just 1lb 7oz. Doctors placed him straight into a freezer bag to help maintain his body temperature.

Aimee said: 'He was tweeting rather than crying. He sounded like a bird.'

At 35 days old, they were transferred to a hospital nearer to home, the Norfolk and Norwich, which meant their older siblings were finally able to meet them

In February, the twins celebrated their first birthday with the wedding guests who helped them to get there

Ethan Michael Kevin was then delivered weighing 1lb 8oz. Both were rushed straight to a neonatal intensive care unit. Hours later, their mothers got to see them, their tiny bodies covered in tubes and wires.

Kirstie said: 'Their skin was see-through. They were no bigger than the iPhone we used to take pictures of them.'

Consultants gave them just a 25 per cent chance of survival. With the odds against them, the mothers moved into hospital accommodation to spend every minute with their sons.

At eight days old, Ethan needed urgent bowel surgery. It was touch and go but he pulled through. The following week, Cohen suffered kidney failure at 15 days but, again, he survived and the boys continued to battle daily setbacks.

When Ethan was three weeks old Aimee got to hold him for the first time. It was another fortnight before Cohen was strong enough to be cuddled. At 35 days old, they were transferred to a hospital nearer to home, the Norfolk and Norwich, which meant their older siblings were finally able to meet them.

Ethan recently took his first steps but sadly it is suspected that Cohen has cerebral palsy

At the end of June last year, they were strong enough to be allowed home and they have gone from strength to strength ever since.

Ethan recently took his first steps but sadly, it is suspected Cohen has cerebral palsy. With five children to care for, Aimee and Kirstie, now full-time mothers, are raising finds to buy him non-NHS medical equipment, including a specialist car seat, pram and supportive seating aids.

Kirstie said: 'We won't know how severe it is until he fails to meet the milestones. He may not be able to hold his head up for long, but he has a smile that can melt hearts.'

And in February, the twins celebrated their first birthday party with the wedding guests who helped them to get here.

Kirstie said: 'The guests were joking which of the twins they had paid for. But how can you find the words to say thank you for two gorgeous little baby boys?'

To donate, visit their fundraising page
The system is currently being trialled in the city of Busan, South Korea

The technology assists pregnant women who might not be showing

sitting in the courtesy chair to give up their seat

The woman has a beacon, that signals a pink flashing light

a pregnant woman is on the subway

It is common courtesy to give up your seat on public transport to a pregnant woman.

But women whose bump is not yet visible can often be left standing up, as people fail to realise they have a baby on board.

New technology is being trialled in South Korean to combat the issue by installing a pink flashing light on courtesy seats that signals when a pregnant woman is on board.

PInk is for pregnant: Wireless technology is bring trialled in South Korea to indicate priority seating on public transport for pregnant women

Smart technology: Pregnant women carry a beacon, that signals the light to flash when they get on board

So how does it work? Pregnant women can carry a pink beacon when they use public transport.

The beacon activates the pink flashing signal, alerting other passengers who might be sitting in the courtesy seat.

The system aims to eliminate awkward encounters between passengers and pregnant women who might not yet be showing.

Making it simple: The technology prevents pregnant women, who might not be showing, from having to ask for a seat

Too busy: 'These days, people are usually looking at their phones and they are not really aware that a seat is reserved for pregnant women,' Ms Si-yoon said

Ock Si-yoon, 33, said she has at times felt uncomfortable about claiming a seat reserved for pregnant women, despite being pregnant herself.

'Early on, there is a risk of miscarriage, so I'm a bit uneasy about using public transportation, since subways or buses shake a lot and it is difficult to get someone to yield a seat for me,' she said.

'These days, people are usually looking at their phones and they are not really aware that a seat is reserved for pregnant women.

'But now, with the 'Pink Light Campaign,' it is easy for people to notice when the sensor blinks.'

Easy to use: The beacon can be hung on your handbag, and the trail is being held in the city of Busan, South Korea

The technology is being trialed on subways in the city of Busan, South Korea.

With one of the lowest birthrates in the world, South Korea is eager to encourage larger families.
She says: 'It was about...showing a different kind of sexiness'

The shoot was captured by fashion photographer, Emily Abay

The 23-year-old models a variety of white outfits in the stripped-back shoot

Elyse Knowles stars in a new natural photo shoot shot in Sydney, NSW

She may only be 23, but Australian model, Elyse Knowles, already has a fair few things ticked off on her bucket list.

From modelling for the likes of Billabong and Myer to garnering an Instagram following of nearly 550,000, she is hot property both on and off the catwalk right now.

Elyse's latest shoot shows the model sporting a number of outfits in a boho-inspired, summer-y setup, which was photographed in the beach side suburb of Coogee in Sydney.

New ventures: 23-year-old model Elyse Knowles stars in a new fashion shoot shot in Sydney, NSW

Smolder smolder: In the shoot, Elyse sports a number of outfits in a boho-inspired, summer-y setup

In the shoot captured by fashion photographer Emily Abay, Elyse rocks several white-on-white outfits, as well as a pretty summer dress, which she pairs with natural waves and bare feet.

'When the sun peaks out for a second,' the blonde model captioned one of the photos she shared on her Instagram page on Thursday.

Speaking about the photo shoot's theme photographer, Emily Abay, said:

'I wanted to capture a different look on Elyse.

Fashion friend: The shoot was captured by the fashion photographer and Elyse's friend, Emily Abay

Different look: Emily Abay explained that she wanted to capture a 'different look' on Elyse

More than meets the eye: Ms Abay also said: 'She [Elyse] is known as an-all Australian beach babe, but I know her well and there's more to her than just sand and bronze skin' - the model wears much white on white

'She's known as an-all Australian beach babe, but I know her well and there's more to her than just sand and bronze skin.

'She's beautiful and soft...

'It was about stripping back the make-up, loosening the clothes and showing a different kind of sexiness that doesn't often get shown in her photos.'

Stripped back: The shoot is beautiful, soft and a far cry from Elyse's usual bikini photos

Bucket list: In the past, Elyse has revealed that she has her eyes set on an ambassadorial role with Myer

Idol in life: She has also said that she would love to replicate the success of Jennifer Hawkins - at 23, she has already had much catwalk success

In the past, Elyse has revealed that she has her eyes set on the big prize, and would love an ambassadorial role with renowned department store, Myer, one day.

'Jennifer Hawkins is my ultimate idol,' she told Daily Mail Australia earlier this year.
They've been pictured wearing everything from army camouflage to a navy outfit this week.

But the Danish Royal Family made a return to their usual elegant ways with the release of a stunning photo of Crown Princess Mary, Crown Prince Frederik and extended family.

The family portrait was taken shortly after Queen Margrethe IIs 76th birthday celebrations in April and will be used as the profile picture for their social media accounts.

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#Royals: The new Danish Royal's profile picture has been unveiled featuring Queen Margrethe II and Prince Henrik (front) and their sons and daughters-in-law Princess Mary and Crown Prince Frederik (back left) and Prince Joachim and Princess Marie (back right)

Featured in the snap are Queen Margrethe II and her husband Prince Henrik, Prince Joachim and his wife Princess Marie, as well as the Australian-born Mary and her husband Frederik.

Mary and Frederik's children and Denmark's future rulers Prince Christian, Princess Isabella, Prince Vincent and Princess Josephine were left out of the photo.

Released to the public via their official Facebook page, the photo has received more than 7,500 responses in just two days.

But that wasn't all the Danish Royal's got up to on social media this week.

Also posted to their Facebook was a video taking a journey down memory lane for the Danish Royal family.

Photographer prince: Crown Prince Frederik takes a photo of his mother, Queen Margrethe II in a new Danish Royal Family video

Talented! Prince Frederik's photo was uploaded to the official Facebook page of the Danish Royal Family

Say chesse! The Queen smiles as she poses in front of a painting of the Royal Palace in Copenhagen

The video shows Queen Margrethe II walking through the palace, revisiting milestones from throughout Denmark's history.

She remembers events from King Christian X giving a new year's speech via radio in 1941 to Princess Mary and Crown Prince Frederik's wedding in 2004.

The Queen finally stops in front of a painting of the Royal palace before her son Crown Prince Frederik appears with mobile phone at the ready to capture the moment.

After Frederik took the picture it was posted to Facebook where it has had almost 8,000 likes.

In addition to his role as part-time Royal photographer, the Danish Crown Prince was also out and about at official events this week.

On Thursday, just days after he was pictured welcoming a new helicopter on behalf of Denmark's Navy, Frederik attended an Energy Summit in Copenhagen on Thursday.

Talented: In addition to his role as a photographer Frederik was also out and about at official events this week

Busy man: On Thursday he attended the ELFORSK Energy Summit but just days earlier was pictured at the official arrival of a new Navy helicopter

Dashing! Frederik looked smart in a tan suit combined with a white shirt and classy navy blue tie

Wearing a tan coloured suit with a white shirt and navy tie, the Crown Prince looked smart as he addressed those gathered and discovered the latest energy saving technology.

Appearing in good spirits as he laughed and mingled among the crowd, the guest of honour was charged with presenting awards at the event.

Frederik has been a prominent supporter of energy saving measures, giving key note speeches at a number of energy summits in recent years.

Green thumb: Frederik has given key note speeches at a number of energy summits in recent years

Guest of honour: The Crown Prince was charged with presenting awards to energy saving enterprises
A woman with cystic fibrosis who was told she would never have children has celebrated the birth of her second miracle child with a gorgeous photo shoot.

Emmah Money, 28, from Adelaide, Australia, suffers from cystic fibrosis (CF) and at birth her parents were warned by doctors she wouldn't live past the age of five and, if she did, she'd be unlikely to fall pregnant.

Miraculously, in 2013, Emmah gave birth to Ayvah, three, and her second child, Logan, was born in July last year.

Emmah Money, 28, who suffers from cystic fibrosis (CF), pictured with second child Logan

Now the mother-of-two, who tragically watched many friends with CF pass away, shares her inspiring story on her Facebook page CF MUMMY to comfort other sufferers.

Emmah said: 'I've always wanted to be a mum but I never thought I could have children, so to have two babies naturally, I feel truly blessed.

'The knowledge I had at the time was that for a CF woman to naturally fall pregnant was almost impossible. I felt there wasn't any hope of me falling pregnant naturally.

'I feel so blessed to have fallen pregnant naturally, had a very healthy pregnancy and normal labour.'

The mother-of-two, who watched many friends with CF pass away, with Ayvah, 3, in her pregnancy photo shoot

Emmah, from Adelaide, said: 'I've always wanted to be a mum but I never thought I could have children'

Emmah with Ayvah, Logan and her husband Nick. 'The knowledge I had at the time was that for a CF woman to naturally fall pregnant was almost impossible. 'I felt there wasn't any hope of me falling pregnant naturally'

WHAT IS CYSTIC FIBROSIS? Cystic fibrosis is a genetic condition which causes the lungs and the digestive system to become clogged with mucus. Symptoms usually appear in early childhood and they include a persistent cough, recurring chest infections and failure to thrive. As the condition develops, a lung transplant may be required. There is no cure for cystic fibrosis so treatment revolves around relieving symptoms and reducing long-term damage caused by infections. The most common treatments are physiotherapy to clear the mucus from the lungs, and antibiotics to treat the infections. The condition is caused by a genetic mutation which allows too much salt and water into cells - this results in a build-up of mucus. For a child to inherit the condition, both of their parents have to be carriers of the mutated gene. In this situation, there is a one in four chance the child will not inherit either of the faulty genes, a one in two chance they will inherit one of them and be a carrier but not a sufferer, and a one in four chance they will inherit both genes and suffer from the condition. About one in every 2,500 babies born in the UK are born with cystic fibrosis. As treatments have improved, the outlook for these children has improved dramatically. Life expectancy remains in the 40s. Source: NHS Choices Advertisement

Emmah takes daily antibiotics, has physiotherapy three times a day and takes pancreatic enzymes with meals to help with digestion.

She also undergoes intravenous antibiotic therapy two to three times a year, which sees her fixed to a pump 24 hours a day for three weeks.

She added: 'Being a mum with CF is really indescribable. It's extremely hard work, it's exhausting but I wouldn't change it for the world.

'When I'm sick, I have no energy. My continuous chronic cough doesn't allow me to finish a sentence and people often think I'm contagious, when I'm not.

'I'm really lucky my kids don't know any different, so when mummy is having nebulisers or taking tablets it's not out of the ordinary for them, in fact it's quite normal.

'My daughter even helps me now by lining the pills up on the counter and gets me a glass of water.'

At just a few weeks old Emmah was given up for adoption. But the determined woman claimed it was the best thing her biological parents did for her.

She said: 'My husband is my rock and a huge support for me, as well as my family, without them I don't think I'd be able to be the way I am.

'They adopted me knowing I had this life-threatening illness and what an amazing job they did to ensure I lived as normal as possible.'

As a teen Emmah penned a novel, The Words Inside, to document her daily battles.

It was published by Random House and propelled her into the national spot light.

She became an ambassador for CF in Australia and even travelled to the US to speak at The One Young World conference in front of VIPs Sir Bob Geldof and Jamie Oliver.

With a life-expectancy of just 37-years, Emmah, 28, has vowed to continue making every day count

Emmah getting her treatment with baby Logan next to her. 'I'm really lucky my kids don't know any different, so when mummy is having nebulisers or taking tablets it's not out of the ordinary for them'

And with a life-expectancy of just 37-years, Emmah has vowed to continue making every day count.

She added: 'I have a lot of things I want to do in life and living to the age of 37 just won't cut it.

'I hope to see my children grow up and have grandchildren of my own.

'I want to be here for when the cure for CF is found and be able to say confidently I kicked CF in the butt and be free of the disease.

'Life is too short to not enjoy every moment. I want to seize every day.

'Cystic Fibrosis is not going to beat me. I will beat it.'

Emmah says: 'My daughter even helps me now by lining the pills up on the counter and gets me water'
While it might be common enough for children to throw tantrums while out shopping, this young boy found the perfect spot for his meltdown.

Four-year-old Thomas Taylor-Hahn threw his fit in the contraceptive aisle of a pharmacy, perhaps highlighting the need for using birth control in the first place.

Mother Daniela Taylor, 41, a trainee teaching assistant from Helston, Cornwall, had popped into Superdrug to buy some hay fever medication for the boy when he started to sulk.

When four-year-old Thomas Taylor-Hahn threw a fit in the contraceptives aisle of a pharmacy, he might have made the childless think twice about every procreating

Unhappy that his older brother was the one allowed to go and find a shop assistant to help them, Thomas stomped off into a corner next to shelves full of condoms and pregnancy tests.

Daniela snapped the moment Thomas stood with his back to her and his arms angrily folded - and said she looks forward to showing him the photo on his 18th birthday.

Daniela, whose partner Steven Hahn, 40, is currently deployed in the armed forces, said: 'I'd picked the boys up from school and it was really hot and Thomas needed an antihistamine for his hay fever.

'I asked his brother to go and find the shop assistant and the next thing I knew, Thomas had stomped off into the corner because he wasn't allowed to be the one to go and look for the her.

'He chose that particular corner to go and have his sulk and I just thought it was perfect. I spotted the condoms straightaway, which made me chuckle.

'Then I looked across and on opposite side were shelves and shelves of pregnancy tests. He couldn't have picked a better spot to have his tantrum.

Unhappy that his older brother was the one allowed to go and find a shop assistant to help them, Thomas stomped off into a corner next to shelves full of condoms and pregnancy tests

Daniela Taylor, 41, a trainee teaching assistant from Helston, Cornwall, had popped into Superdrug to buy some hay fever medication for four-year-old son Thomas, left, when he started to sulk

'It really was like a perfect advert for birth control. I sent it to friends straightaway and said: "Isn't this a great bit of motivation to use contraception?"'

'He's normally a really good little boy. His strop only lasted a few minutes and by the time we were paying at the till he was chatting away, happy as Larry.

'But when he does have a sulk, they really are perfect. He folds his arms, sticks his bottom lip out and really stomps around. He's fantastic at it. I can't wait to show him the photo to embarrass him when he's older, maybe on his 18th birthday.'

Daniela thought that it was like a perfect advert for birth control. She sent it to friends straightaway and said: "Isn't this a great bit of motivation to use contraception?"'

Daniela, far left, with her three sons Connor Hahn, centre left, 11, Thomas, four, centre and Josh Taylor, far right, 17

Daniela, who is also mother to 17-year-old Josh Taylor and 11-year-old Connor, said: 'I sent the photo to Steven as he is deployed at the moment on a ship, goodness knows where.

'He hasn't actually seen the photo yet but I sent it and said his son was taking after him with his sulking!

'It will be hilarious when we can show the photo to Thomas when he grows up. Josh found it highly amusing as well, but I didn't really want to go there with the little ones.
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Last night she wowed in a royal blue off the shoulder Roland Mouret gown and Cartier earrings fit for an A-lister.

And today the Duchess went for a powder blue Catherine Walker coat dress and Jane Taylor hat, as the joined Prince William, the Duke of Edinburgh, Prince Charles and the Duchess of Cornwall and Prince Harry for a service of thanksgiving to mark the monarch's 90th.

The delicately coloured dress featured a white lace embellishment all the way down the front, which matched her cream fascinator which was decorated with white corsages.

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Today the Duchess of Cmabridge opted for a powder blue Catherine Walker coat dress and Jane Taylor hat as she joined the royal family in celebrating the Queen's 90th birthday at St Pauls

The Duchess curtsied to the monarch as she left her service of thanksgiving at St Paul's

Prince William spots a potential hazard as he steps over a grate while making his way to the front of the cathedral and warns Kate not to get her heel stuck

The Duchess was seen laughing off her near miss with Prince Harry

The Duchess took her seat alongside William's uncle Prince Edward

Kate carried a small nude box clutch and teamed her outfit with blush suede court shoes.

And she narrowly missing getting her heel stuck in a grate as she made her way to the front of the cathedral with William and Harry.

Luckily her husband alerted her to a potential hazard, and she was seen laughing with Prince Harry as she realised she'd had a narrow escape.

The Duchess has clearly been perfecting her royal curtsey as she pulled off the move with aplomb as she showed deference to the Queen as she left the ceremony.

William, Kate and Harry ascending the steps of St Paul's cathedral

Kate carried a small nude box clutch and accessorised with diamond drop earrings

The royal couple greeted fellow guests as they prepared to take their seats

The Duchess was all smiles as she joined the service after last night's successful hosting of the Sports Aid gala at which she gave a self-assured speech

The Duchess joined her husband Prince William for the service marking his grandmother's 90th birthday

The close trio - William, Kate and Harry - arrived at the special service together

Kate wasn't the only royal who made an impression at today's ceremony, which was something of a family affair attended by all the senior royals.

She sometimes comes under fire for her fashion choices, but Princess Eugenie got it very right in a simple red dress by Eponine with cutouts around the neckline.

The 26-year-old who works at London art gallery Hauser and & Wirth stood out in the best way possible in the vibrant number, which she paired with an understated navy bow fascinator.

Kate's dress featured a striking lace overlay on the front

The Duchess greets members of the clergy ahead of the Queen's service

The royal trio waved to the gathered crowds as they left St Paul's cathedral

Prince WIlliam placed a supportive hand on his wife's back as they made their way through the cathedral

Prince William and the Duchess chat as they leave the ceremony with Prince Harry

The guest of honour herself was striking in a yellow embroidered coat and her customary white gloves.

Meanwhile, her cousin Zara Tindall was showing no signs of her recent late night at LouLou's private members club in London, where she partied until 2.40 am with husband Mike.

She arrived hand in hand with the former rugby player, looking delightfully summery in a navy dress with a light blue pattern and elegant fascinator.

The Duke and Duchess joined Prince Harry, William's uncle Prince Andrew and his daughters Beatrice and Eugenie after the ceremony honouring the Queen

Prince William holds the order of service at the national service of thanksgiving for his grandmother

The couple had a near miss with a cheeky pigeon as they exited St Paul's

The royals lined up on the steps of the cathedral after attending a service to honour the Queen in her 90th year

Zara's sister-in-law Autumn Phillips, wife of her brother Peter, was elegant in dark green dress by British designer Suzannah with feathered fascinator.

Sophie, Countess of Wessex looked elegant in a bespoke pale grey coat and hat, also by Suzannah, while her daughter Lady Louise, 12, showed how she's growing in confidence as she arrived at the service.

The young royal looked less like a shy little girl and more of a young lady as she made an appearance in a pretty pink coat and floral dress.

The National Service of Thanksgiving to mark the Queen s 90th birthday on Friday included a reading by another sprightly nonagenarian, Sir David Attenborough, and a tribute to her love of racing by commentator Clare Balding.

The monarch herself was striking in a yellow embroidered coat and her customary white gloves

The Duchess chose a cream hat with white applique flowers by milliner Jane Taylor

The Duchess arrived at the service of thanksgiving with Princes William and Harry, who gave a cheery wave to well-wishers as they ascended the steps of the cathedral

The Duchess paired her pastel coat dress with a pair of blush suede court shoes

The smiling royals arrive to celebrate the Queen

The service at St Pauls Cathedral was designed not just to highlight the monarchs deep faith but celebrate different aspects of her remarkable life - and even included a hymn to represent her German ancestry.

In 1917 her grandfather, George V, issued a proclamation replacing his familys German name, Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, with the more anglicised Windsor because of anti-German feeling in the UK as a result of the First World War.

The service, which was broadcast live on the BBC, was the first of three major national events to mark the Queens official birthday.

The other two are Trooping The Colour on Saturday and The Patrons Lunch, a street party for 10,000 people in The Mall to celebrate the Queens charitable work, on Sunday.

The new Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, made his first appearance at St Pauls, followed by the Prime Minister, David Cameron and then junior members of the Royal Family (effectively those without an HRH to their name).

Princess Eugenie looked impeccable in a simple red dress with cutouts around the neckline

Eugenie carried a small black clutch bag and opted for a simple bow-style fascinator

Eugenie arrived with her father Prince Andrew and sister Princess Beatrice who opted for a rather fussy black coat with an elaborate print

As the politicians took their places, representatives of the principle world faiths assembled under the Dome and members of the official procession moved into place.

Unusually, a temporary rail was installed to help the Queen and Prince Philip negotiate the steep, sometimes slippery, stone steps  a rare acknowledgement of their advancing years.

They entered the cathedral, proceeded by the Lord Mayor of London, to a traditional fanfare by the band of Her Majestys Royal Marines Portsmouth.

The opening hymn, O Worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness, was a sung at Epiphany, recalling the Queens strong sense of Christian Faith and her humble devotion to Christ.

The Countess of Wessex was the picture of elegance in a pale grey coat, a bespoke piece by Suzannah, and matching fascinator

Lady Louise Windsor, 12, was lovely in a delicate pink coat over a floral dress and nude ballet pumps

The young royal is clearly growing in confidence as she gets used to being in the spotlight

The Countess of Wessex arrived at the ceremony with her blossoming daughter Lady Louise Windsor

A special mention was made of Prince Philips 95th birthday  something the gruff royal has insisted he doesnt want publically celebrated.

Legendary broadcaster Sir David Attenborough, who celebrated his 90th birthday in May, read a reflection on the passing years from the point of view of one born in 1926, written by Paddington Bear creator, Michael Bond, also a nonagenarian.

Finally former BBC Young Musician of the Year, Martin James Bartlett, performed Burlesque by Arnold Bax, who was George VIs last Master of the Kings Music. The Queen also learnt to play the piano as a child.

The Queen's granddaughter was joined by her husband, former rugby player Mike Tindall

Autumn Phillips was elegant in dark green dress by British designer Suzannah with feathered fascinator

Peter Phillips with his wife Autumn: Earlier this week the Queen's grandson revealed how he worries about the monarch n and Prince Philip every day

Prayers were be read by six people, five of whom represent aspects of the Queens life and role.

As well as Clare Balding, whose family has trained some of the Queens own horses, there was a member of her household, a trainee barrister representing the law and a member of the armed forces.

Baroness Scotland, Secretary General of the Commonwealth offered another.

Samantha Cameron stunned in a simple striped midi dress and an elegant black hat as she arrived hand-in-hand with husband David

Hilda Price from Cardiff, the widow of an Anglican priest and a leading light in the Mothers Union, also read a prayer.

Mrs Price was born on the same day as the Queen  21 April 1926.

According to Mrs Prices daughter, Mary, her mother was given the middle name Alexandra in honour of the Queen  christened Elizabeth Alexandra Mary.

Last night the Duchess wowed in an off the shoulder Roland Mouret gown at a Sports Aid gala in London

Last night's off the shoulder Roland Mouret and Cartier earrings put the Duchess firmly in A-list dressing territory

The Duchess of Cambridge speaks with guests as she arrives for SportsAid's 40th anniversary dinner at Kensington Palace

A part-time teacher and mother of two, she has always been the most loyal Royal subject  - and has even kept a scrapbook of their occasional meetings over the years, the first time being when she was a young guide.

Mary says: In 1989 mum met the queen in Swansea when the queen was doing a walk about tour. It was on the day before their shared birthday so she held up a card that said I am 63 tomorrow too! The Queen came over to speak to her and said she hadn't met many people born on exactly the same day.

And on the Queens 80th birthday mum was invited with myself to Buckingham Palace to a beautiful three course lunch in the throne room where the Queen spoke to my mum and asked about Cardiff and the Welsh assembly, which was new at that time.
She regularly tops best-dressed lists, but Samantha Cameron suffered a rare fashion fail today as commentators blasted her choice of outfit for one of the most important public engagements of the year.

The Prime Minister's wife opted for a forties-style dress with nautical stripes from L.K. Bennett as she joined hundreds of VIP guests for a national service of thanksgiving in honour of the Queen's 90th birthday at St Paul's Cathedral.

But it was the sleeves - or lack of them - that had people riled up, with Emma, from Hitchin, taking to Twitter to blast: 'I have just shrieked at the telly because Samantha Cameron is not wearing a jacket & just looks like she's on her holidays!'

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Samantha wore L.K. Bennett stripes as she joined her husband David at the thanksgiving service at St Paul's

Samantha, 45, paired the belted midi dress with an asymmetric netted hat and black court heels, but even her headgear didn't go down well, with another Twitter user suggesting it looked 'more suited to a funeral'.

Today's service, which is being broadcast live on the BBC, is the first of three major national events to mark the Queens official birthday.

The other two are Trooping The Colour on Saturday and The Patrons Lunch, a street party for 10,000 people in The Mall to celebrate the Queens charitable work, on Sunday.

The service started 10am with arrivals including the new Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, making his first appearance at St Pauls, followed by Mr and Mrs Cameron, and then junior members of the Royal Family (effectively those without an HRH to their name).

A special mention will also be made of the fact that it is Prince Philips 95th birthday  something the gruff royal has insisted he doesnt want publicly celebrated.

Commentators took to Twitter to blast her outfit choice, suggesting she should have covered her shoulders

Not everyone was impressed with Sam's outfit choice, with some saying she should have 'made an effort'

One commentator blasted: 'SamCam looks like she's come home from shopping after finding a hat'

However Twitter users seemed more interested in the guests' fashion choices. Marcus Stead blasted: 'Doesn't Samantha Cameron know that it's rude to have your shoulders uncovered in church?' while Imelda Finnerty wrote: 'Samantha Cameron could have made an effort for HMQ service in St Pauls' *cathedral* at least by covering her shoulders.'

Annie Dewar echoed the sentiment, adding: 'Samantha Cameron and George Osbourne wife (sic.), SLEEVELESS in the Abbey!'

Another viewer, Helen Baimbridge, wrote: @has nobody told SamCam that one covers ones shoulders in church & in presence of Queen #oldfashionedetiquette (sic.).'

'Guessing that SamCam is straight off to the beach after this,' joked Lydia Starbuck, with Sara adding: 'oh my...what was SamCam thinking when she opened her closet this morning?? Not a pool party, Madam!!!'

One viewer wrote: 'Doesn't Samantha Cameron know that it's rude to have your shoulders uncovered in church?'

Special guest: Samantha's husband joined Clare Balding and David Attenborough who read during the service

Today's service will include three musical  birthday gifts for the Queen, the first being the anthem, I love all beauteous things, written by Judith Weir, Master of the Queen Music

David colour-coordinated with his wife, wearing a dark navy suit and a pale blue tie

The couple take their seats in the cathedral. David is expected to do a Bible reading during the service

I.M. Seethin added: 'SamCam looks like she's come home from shopping after finding a hat.'

Today's service also includes three musical  birthday gifts for the Queen, the first being the anthem, I love all beauteous things, written by Judith Weir, Master of the Queen Music, which sets a poem by Robert Bridges, Poet Laureate in the year of the monarchs birth, to music.

Legendary broadcaster Sir David Attenborough, who celebrated his 90th birthday in May, will also read a reflection on the passing years from the point of view of one born in 1926, written by Paddington Bear creator, Michael Bond, also a nonagenarian,

Finally former BBC Young Musician of the Year, Martin James Bartlett, will perform Burlesque by Arnold Bax, who was George VIs last Master of the Kings Music. The Queen also learnt to play the piano as a child.

Twitter user Sara wrote: 'Oh my...what was SamCam thinking when she opened her closet this morning?? Not a pool party, Madam!!!'

Frances' fashion choie (far right) didn't go unnoticed, either - Annie Dewar tweeted: 'Samantha Cameron and George Osbourne wife (sic.), SLEEVELESS in the Abbey!'
An enormous blue diamond has been sold at auction for 17.5 million.

The Cullinan Dream, which was discovered two years ago, is the largest fancy intense blue diamond to ever be offered on sale publicly.

The 122.52 carat rough was found at Petra Diamond's Cullinan mine in South Africa in 2014.

The Cullinan Dream, which was discovered two years ago, is the largest fancy intense blue diamond to ever be offered on sale publicly

It was given to a master cutter who created four diamonds ranging from seven to 24.18 carats. The largest, a cut-cornered rectangular mixed-cut diamond, was named The Cullinan Dream and was auctioned by Christie's in New York on Thursday evening.

It ended up fetching $25million (17.5million) to become one of the most expensive gems sold publicly.

Rahul Kadakia, Christie's International Head of Jewellery, said: 'Christie's is proud to have achieved yet another record with the 24.18 carat Cullinan Dream blue diamond, which sold for $25,365,000, in the presence of Mr. Mark Cullinan himself, the great grandson of Sir Thomas Cullinan.'

The largest, a cut-cornered rectangular mixed-cut diamond, was named The Cullinan Dream and was auctioned by Christie's in New York on Thursday evening

Seen in the brochure, the stone is a cut-cornered rectangular mixed-cut diamond of 122.52 carat

The Cullinan mine, at the foothills of the Magaliesberg mountain range in South Africa, is one of the world's best-known sources for pricey diamonds.

In 1905, the Star of Africa and Second Star of Africa were discovered, with the gems cut from the diamonds used for the Crown Jewels.

The mine, discovered by Sir Thomas Cullinan in 1898, is also the only significant source of blue diamonds.

One diamond expert believes the private buyer at Thursdya's auction in New York may have got a bargain with The Cullinan Dream

Mark Cullinan added: 'My great-grandfather would be delighted to see how one of the newest exceptional blue diamonds from the mine he discovered resonates with top collectors in the market today.'

One diamond expert believes the private buyer may have got a bargain with The Cullinan Dream.

Tobias Kormind, managing director of 77 Diamonds, said: 'For $25.4m, the buyer of the 24.18 carat Fancy Intense blue Cullinan Dream diamond might just have bagged a bargain.

'Blue diamonds are rarer than pink diamonds, but when a comparable diamond, a 24 carat Intense pink diamond, the Graff Pink, sold in November 2010, it fetched a handsome $46.2m.

'The price is also much lower than the $3.9million per carat achieved by the Oppenheimer Blue in May 2016, which at $57.5million became the most expensive diamond ever sold at auction, and the staggering $4.02million per carat achieved by the Blue Moon of Josephine in November 2015.

'Investor appetite for large and rare coloured diamonds remains buoyant.'
Queen Letizia of Spain turned to an old favourite today as she threw on a Hugo Boss dress to host an awards ceremony in Madrid.

The 43-year-old royal smouldered in the taupe-coloured shift dress, which accentuated her slim frame, even donning the same heels and clutch she wore with it previously.

Letizia joined her husband King Felipe VI in hosting the La Caixa scholarship awards, which help Spanish students fund their postgraduate studies.

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Queen Letizia of Spain threw on a Hugo Boss dress, clutch and heels to host an awards ceremony in Madrid

The royal kept her make-up simple with just a hint of eyeshadow and wore her hair in loose waves

And the former newsreader proved once again she is a natural in front of the camera - looking every inch the glamorous royal with her brunette locks in loose waves, and keeping her make-up to a minimum with a smoky eye and a subtle slick of lip gloss.

She teamed her dress with a pair of towering caged heels with a snakeskin design, and an ostrich skin-effect clutch.

Thrifty Letizia wore the exact same outfit during a trip to Paris in June 2015, and then again for a visit to Madrid's Telecinco TV Channel headquarters the following month.

Today's event took place at the CaixaForum, a museum and cultural centre in Paseo del Prado near the city centre.

Letizia, a former news anchor, proved she is a natural on camera as she took to the stage on Thursday

The royal couple often attend formal engagements separately, but they were very much a team today

Felipe and Letizia, who married in 2004, looked as love-up as ever as they entered the venue arm-in-arm

After arriving at Madrid's CaixaForum, the couple sat down to hear a short speech before getting up on stage

The pair make their way to the front of the room as the awards ceremony officially begins

The royal couple, who married in 2004, appeared as loved-up as ever, entering the venue arm-in-arm before sitting down to listen to speeches.

They then took to the stage to hand out the awards to the students alongside Isidro Faine, the chairman of CaixaBank.

Later, they posed for a group photo on stage alongside all of this year's winners.

The La Caixa Foundation has been giving out scholarships since 1982, and aims to give students the opportunity to gain a top master degree so that they can later contribute to the economic growth of their native country.

Letizia shows off her impeccable style in a designer dress with her trusty old snakeskin heels

The La Caixa Foundation has been giving out scholarships since 1982, and funds students' masters degrees

The pair share a tender moment on stage as Letizia gently touches Felipe's arm during the ceremony

The lucky recipients will get the opportunity to study in Spain or abroad

The royals (centre) and members of La Caixa pose for a photo on stage alongside all of this year's winners

It has been a typically busy week for the royal, who yesterday attended a meeting with the Patronato of the Student Residence Foundation at the Resedencia de Estudiantes, one of the original Spanish cultural centres in Madrid.

Letizia is mother to Leonor, Princess of Asturias, 10, and Infanta Sofia of Spain, eight. She and Felipe are often spotted out spending family time with their two daughters.
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The Duchess of Cambridge revealed today that her daughter's sweet face belied a rather 'feisty' nature.

And far from hoping that the one-year-old would keep lively Prince George, two, in check, it was likely to be the other way round.

Kate was speaking to guests at a reception at Guildhall in the City of London following the National Service of Thanksgiving for the Queen's 90th birthday at nearby St Paul's Cathedral.

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The Duchess of Cambridge revealed today that her daughter Princess Charlotte's sweet face belied a rather 'feisty' nature as she attended a reception at London's Guildhall

She may look like a little angel but her mother has revealed that Princess Charlotte has a somewhat fiery nature

Kate applauded a speech by the Lord Mayor praising the Queen's remarkable sense of duty

She was chatting to Glynis Double, whose husband, Paul, is the City's Remembrancer, rather like a head of protocol.

Mrs Double said afterwards: 'The Duchess was saying how happy she was to be here and how lovely the service was.

'As a mum myself I asked her about her children and said what a pretty little thing we all thought Princess Charlotte was.

'She said: "Oh she is very cute but she has got quite a feisty side.'

Lady Mayoress Juliet Mountevans (left), the Duchess of Cambridge and the Earl of Wessex during a reception at the Guildhall, London

William and Kate were all smiles as they arrived at a reception at London's Guildhall

The Duke of Cambridge (left), Lady Mayoress Juliet Mountevans (second left), the Duchess of Cambridge and the Earl of Wessex listen to a speech by the Lord Mayor

'I then asked her about George and she said he was a really lovely little boy.

'She said she hopes that George will keep Charlotte in order!'

Mrs Double said she had no idea the Duchess and other royals would be mingling with guests and it had been a 'real honour' to speak to her.

'It was such a surprise to be introduced to her and she was just lovely - and very, very beautiful, she said,

The Lady Mayoress Juliet Mountevans walked the Duchess of Cambridge into the reception

Prince Harry chats to guests during a reception following the Queen's thanksgiving ceremony where he said that the best birthday present the Queen could get would be the chance to put her feet up and do nothing

Harry was in a slightly more restrained mood after joking around with the Duchess of Cambridge during the St Paul's service

Beatrice and Eugenie listen to the Lord Mayor's speech paying tribute to their grandmother and her 'gentleness, good humour and understanding'

The Lord Mayor of the City of London and the Duke of Cambridge

'She kept on asking if we had enough to eat - and I told her we hadn't stopped since we arrived!

'As my husband has been involved in organising the event I really couldn't be prouder. What a fabulous day.'

The reception for 1,800 people, all of whom were at the earlier service, was attended by members of the Royal Family - including Princes William and Harry, the Duke of York and his daughters Princess Beatrice and Princess Eugenie.

The Earl and Countess of Wessex, unusually accompanied by both their children, Lady Louise and James, Viscount Severn - also mingled with guests.

Kate wore a cream floral fascinator by Jane Taylor, with a powder blue Catherine Walker coat , while Zara Tindall also opted for a striking headpiece for the formal event

More junior members of the Royal family - including the Queen's grandchildren Zara Tindall and Peter Phillips (right) arrived at the Guildhall in a hired bus

Princess Anne chatted to the crowds who were treated to canapes including rare fillet of Hereford beef in a mini brioche, Norfolk asparagus, smoked trout with a broad bean and pea salad and miniature pork pies

Scotland's First Minister Nicola Sturgeon mingled with guests at the Guildhall

The crowd enjoyed Nyetimber English sparkling wine and Pimms and canapes including rare fillet of Hereford beef in a mini brioche, Norfolk asparagus, smoked trout with a broad bean and pea salad and miniature pork pies.

More junior members of the Royal family - including the Queen's grandchildren Zara Tindall and Peter Phillips, niece Lady Sarah Chatto and Lord Freddie Windsor and his wife Sophie - all piled off a hired bus, in contrast to the chauffeur driven cars employed by senior royals and City bigwigs.

The Royal party walked into the Great Hall, with guests rhythmically clapping as they entered, and stood for The National Anthem.

The Countess of Wessex looked elegant in a bespoke outfit by British designer Suzannah

Prince Harry and his uncle Prince Andrew listen to a speech in which The Lord Mayor of London said he was the 54th the Queen had met and praised her for her remarkable sense of duty

Prince Harry catches up with the High Commissioner of Grenada, Karl Hood, and Acting High Commissioner for Dominica, Janet Charles (right)

The Lord Mayor of London also gave a speech in which he said he was the 54th the Queen had met and praised her for her remarkable sense of duty.

He said you could fill the carriages on the new Elizabeth underground line 'many millions of times over, with lives The Queen has touched.... [people] who cherish our Queen. Who look to her for strength, serenity and faith for the future.'

He added: 'Ladies and Gentlemen  it is certainly with gentleness, good humour and understanding that, against the shifting sands of societal change, Her Majesty so wonderfully exemplifies the advantages of a Constitutional Monarchy.

The royals stood for the national anthem, and afterwards Princess Eugenie (left) admitted to a guest that it always brings tears to her eyes

After the Guildhall ceremony, Princess Eugenie told a guest how much she had enjoyed the ceremony

'It represents continuity, in an uncertain world. Continuity of compassion for our communities and continuity of belief in Great Britain.

'We owe an immense debt of gratitude to The Queen, and The Duke of Edinburgh. For unfailing service. For sincere and steadfast support.'

Princess Eugenie spoke to guests at Guildhall and told of her emotion on the occasion.

Baroness Thomas of Winchester said: 'She said the national anthem always brings tears to her eyes and she said what a good service it was.'

Royals gathered for celebrations in the crypt of the City of Londons historic building the Guildhall. Left to right: Major Tim Lawnrence, Princes Anne, Princess Eugenie, Princess Beatrice, Prince Andrew and Prince Harry

Meanwhile Prince Harry revealed that the best birthday present the Queen could get would be a day off to relax.

Grenada High Commissioner Karl Hood spoke to Harry about the Queens official 90th birthday celebrations in the crypt of the City of Londons historic building.

'He said the best birthday present would be to have a day off, so she could lie about and do nothing,' Mr Hood disclosed.

Acting High Commissioner for Dominica, Janet Charles, revealed that Harry said the Queen should be putting her feet up, but had wanted to attend the service of thanksgiving in St Pauls Cathedral for the public.'

Kate, 34, and William, 33, are parents to 13-month-old Charlotte and Prince George, two, who were not in attendance at today's celebrations for their great-grandmother

The Duchess of Cambridge today opened up about her children, saying Princess Charlotte is somewhat less angelic than she looks

'He was talking about his grandmother. He said she should really be putting her feet up but she wanted to be here for the people,' Ms Charles said.

'He said he hopes theres many more years of that to come.'
Fans of the adult cake smash often post the professionally-taken photographs on social media to share the event with friends

Photographers say growing numbers of adults are requesting the shoots to mark their 30th birthdays

The cake smashing craze is well-established among parents celebrating babies' first birthdays but now it is spreading to millennials

Cake smashing - the process of fist, face or body-planting into the celebratory dessert with maximum destruction - is normally reserved for babies.

But now the trend has caught on among an audience that perhaps ought to know better - 30-year-olds.

While it may no longer be fashionable to sit for a formal portrait, adult cake smashing photo shoots are fast becoming a popular trend for millennials looking to mark the milestone birthday in a fun way that shows they do not take themselves too seriously. But the main attraction of adult cake smashing is that it will, they hope, get them plenty of attention on social media.

Popular: 'Adult cake smash' trend sees adults such as Darah Edwards, 30, from Sanger, Texas, celebrating the milestone by planting either a fist - or face - into a birthday cake for the camera and posting it on social media

Delicious: The cake smashing craze, demonstrated by Gerardo Alatorre, is well-established among parents celebrating babies' first birthdays

Yum! Now the craze is spreading from babies to millennials, pictured on Littleleapling'sInstagram

Hundreds of people are posting their pictures on Instagram using the hashtag #adultcakesmash, while The Washington Post has called it out as a trend, proclaiming: 'Thirty-year-olds are smashing cake into their faces. Yes, just like babies.'

Many of the women - and some men - dress in tutus and tiaras or princess-style dresses for the shoot and decorate the scene with props and a spectacular cake before eating it in the most indelicate way they can muster.

Darah Edwards, a high school teacher from Sanger, Texas, was given a cake smashing shoot as a 30th birthday present from her sister.

After looking on Pinterest for inspiration, she bought a pink cake and a 'birthday girl' T-shirt from Etsy before posing on the lawn with a cake stand and homemade paper crown for the shoot at Texas Women's University.

'Starting out it was a little awkward, I didn't know if I should smoosh my hand in it or put my face in it. Once you're in it, you're good, you're going to town,' she told Daily Mail Online.

The obvious downside of cake smashing is that the remains of the cake are likely to come out looking unappetizing.

'I ended up only eating about half of it. I pulled off the ragged end and then split it among my family,' said Darah.

Carefree: Often models wear tutus or 'princess'-style dresses for the occasion, as pictured by Summerlee Photography

Celebrate! Photographers say growing numbers of adults are cake smashing to celebrate their 30th birthdays, as captured by Aasved and Aasved Photography

Cake-covered: Fans of the adult cake smash often post the professionally taken photographs on social media to share the event with friends, as photographed by Renee Freeman Photography

She said reactions to the photographs, which she posted on Facebook and Instagram and printed out to give to a few relatives, were overwhelmingly positive.

Even her father, who was skeptical at first, saw the fun side of the pictures.

Darah said: 'At first my dad was like "why do you want to do that?" But when he saw the pictures he said "Oh yeah, that's cute".'

She added that as well as providing a visual memento of the landmark birthday, it also made turning 30 feel more fun.

'When you're younger you think 30 is the oldest you can be in life and now I'm 30 I think I'm so young. It kind of helped bridge that I guess,' said Darah.

Photographer Sarah Gibson, 32, of Indigo Bird Photography, who took the pictures for a fee of around $150, said Darah was her first adult cake smash, but expects to be doing many more of the shoots.

Sarah said: 'I've done it with one-year-olds before but never a 30-year-old woman...What better way to capture a cake and showing how beautiful you are at 30 years old?'

Accesories: They often wear special costumes, captured left by Ashley Parker Photo and right by Renee Freeman Photography, and pose with props

The trend is fueled by social media where models often share their shoots. One man, pictured, had a cake smash to celebrate his 40th, captured by Shutter Up Photo

She claimed its popularity is fueled by social media, adding: 'That's our generation's way of communicating with friends and family.

'It's a way to say that "I'm hitting this milestone and I'm talking it light-heartedly". It's a fun way to celebrate this milestone, you don't stop having fun when you're an adult.'

She said the new trend reflects the changing nature of society and people living longer means that people can 'take their time' growing up.

Kara Waggoner, 30, from Richmond, who had a cake smashing shoot done by photographer Ashley Dorton, said sharing the pictures helped her feel more confident.

The 30-year-old, who was photographed in a pink tutu next a huge cake surrounded by nature, told The Washington Post that she was made to feel 'beautiful even though I had a pound of cake on my face'.

Oklahoma-based photographer Garrett Bush, of Little Elephant Photography, said working with adults is not dissimilar to working with babies because they want to do the same thing to a cake as a baby would but he said they are better at 'taking directions'.

Some clients want to make their cake smash sexy - suggestively licking lollipops or icing - which photographer Amanda Alvares said is fine 'as long as it's tasteful'.

Amanda decided to adopt a different approach to the trend by shooting a bearded and tattooed man wearing a floral headdress.
A two-year-old Labrador has become a Colorado police departments new 'comfort' dog, and even had the honor of taking part in a special swearing-in ceremony.

The dog, named Pilot, gave a resounding 'woof!' when he was asked whether he promised to carry out his job to comfort the victims of crime, as best he can.

It was down to Douglas County Sheriff Tony Spurlock to conduct the dog's oath of office, and he managed to keep new recruits attention with a clever use of doggy treats.

Give me a hand? A two-year-old Labrador has been sworn in as a comfort dog at the Douglas County police department in Colorado

Working like a dog: The pup, named Pilot, was sworn in as a victim assistance K9 at the police department just outside of Denver

He has a nose for these things: Pilot will assist victim advocate Debbie Doyle at the Douglas County Sheriffs Department in comforting the victims of crime

During the investiture ceremony, Sheriff Spurlock asked Pilot if he 'solemnly swore to be a comfort dog for the citizens of Douglas County to the best of his skill and ability'.

As Pilot's attention started to wane, the police officer managed to pique his interest by waving his hands in the air.

'Okay, well shake my hand!' he said to the obedient dog while concluding the service, at which point Pilot held out his paw to the applause of all those who had gathered to watch.

Look at those eyes! No wonder he is going to be a comfort dog. Who wouldn't find him comforting?

Paw prints: Pilot signs his contract with his unique signature

Face-to-face: Pilot was sworn in by Sheriff Tony Spurlock who had a brief chat with the Lab beforehand

'His handler is the victim's advocate. His purpose is to respond to calls with her and be there for comfort,' Lauren Lekander from the Sheriff's Office said, explaining the pups important new duties. 'He is the very first working dog for the victim's advocate.'

Comfort dogs are trained from the time they are puppies and Pilot has already done some preliminary work with his handler over the past few weeks.

Therapy dogs in the US must attend classes for 12 weeks, after which they visit various facilities, to see where they may be most comfortable with their handlers.

The fine print: Pilot has been trained from birth to perform his duties for the police department and will hopefully be able to provide a lifetime of service and comfort to all

A bark of advice: Other therapy dogs were present at the ceremony to witness the historic occasion. Pilot rubbed noses with Felina, left, who is a comfort dog that works for nearby Aurora Police Department

Hey, pay attention! Sheriff Spurlock managed to get Pilot's attention via clever use of hidden doggy treats
There have been racy red minis, flashy salmon and pumpkin-coloured jackets with flares for the men, and the wash-and-go Aboriginal print dress that the female flight attendants hated at first and then loved the most.

The 1970s Emilio Pucci-designed floral patterned dress with the green jacket was also a hit, although the white dress with the multi-coloured flying kangaroos was generally regarded as a miss.

And from the days back when the women serving your tea and coffee were called 'hosties', there were an amazing array of hats, from military caps, to pillbox, the 'love heart' cap, the jaunty red berets and the latest black fedoras.

Stunning photographs of Qantas uniforms over eight decades show fabulous uniforms - and some fashion fails.

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Variety: Martin Grant (centre) designer of Qantas' current uniform steps out with past designs by, from left, Peter Morrissey, George Gross & Harry Who, Yves St Laurent, Pucci, 1971 design, 1969 red mini dress, and designs from the 1940s and 1950s

Traditional: Morrissey's Aboriginal-print dress (left and right) which was a hit with staff flanks Qantas uniform designs from Yves St Laurent, the 1969 red mini, 1971's blue suit and the popular Pucci dress with green jacket

Surprisingly, there have only been ten uniform changes in the airline's 95 year history, although in the early days of international flight, which only began in 1935,there were no flight attendants at all.

The only 'cabin service' on those early 12-day Australia to London service, which took three days and up to 15 stops via the Australian Outback just to get from Brisbane to Singapore, was the co-pilot handing out sandwiches and drinks.

Since their uniforms first hit the runway,Qantas has employed both famous international designers, such as Pucci and Yves St Laurent, and Australians including George Gross & Harry Who and Peter Morrissey.

On April 16 this year, supermodel Miranda Kerr stepped out in the new Qantas by Paris-based Australian designer, Martin Grant.

Daily Mail Australia takes a look at the uniforms worn by the hundreds of flight attendants who have traipsed up the aisles since 1938.

Retro style: Travelling 1930s style: After launching its first international service in 1936, which took 12 days and up to 31 stopovers to get from Brisbane to London with no cabin staff, Qantas entered the golden era of luxury flying boats which took just nine days and had only first class

Post war: Following World War II, female flight attendants had a lightweight summer uniform made from white cotton twill featuring military-style buttons and cap

Military style: The winter uniform for the post war era up to 1959 was a darker and heavier suit, still with the military-style buttons and trademark Qantas cap

The very first Qantas uniforms, which were worn by the male flight crew were military style khaki, much like the uniforms Australians were to wear in the coming war.

Following World War II, female flight attendants had both a lightweight summer uniform made from white cotton twill and a heavier, dark winter uniform which the airline kept for eleven years.

Both uniforms featured military-style buttons and caps and the so-called air hostesses or 'hosties' carried sturdy company issue handbags and wore plain shoes.

In 1959, although the style of uniform does not alter greatly, there is a relaxation of its form into a less severe, softer and more feminine shape, still with the trademark cap, but a shorter skirt just past the knee.

Relaxed look: In 1959, although the style of uniform does not alter greatly, there is a relaxation of its form into a less severe, softer and more feminine shape, still with the trademark cap, but a shorter skirt just past the knee

Loving the look: From 1964, in keeping with the 1960s revolution in music and fashion, the Qantas uniform designed by Hollywood-based Australian Leon Paule featured a new 'love heart' peaked cap, although the skirt stayed firmly on the knee

Pretty in pastel: In this promotional photo for the new Qantas Boeing 747 aircraft known as the Jumbo Jet in the early 1970s, the 'love heart' hat is still in place along with the pastel loose-fitting collarless suit with a sidekick pleat

From 1964, in keeping with the 1960s revolution in music and fashion, the Qantas uniform began to reflect the 'Swinging Sixties' style made famous by designers like Britain's Mary Quant and Australia's Prue Acton.

The sky blue uniform designed by Hollywood-based Australian Leon Paule featured a new and distinctive 'love heart' peaked cap, and although the skirt was higher it remained firmly on the knee.

A promotional photo for the new Qantas Boeing 747 aircraft - known as the Jumbo Jet - in the early1970s, shows the 'love heart' hat is still in place along with the pastel loose-fitting collarless suit with a sidekick pleat.

But in 1969, the Sixties well and truly made the runway, with Qantas introducing a red mini-dress which stopped well above the knee, featured gold buttons, faux pockets and a jaunty matching beret.

Swiinging sixties: In 1969, the Sixties well and truly made the runway, with Qantas introducing a red mini-dress which stopped well above the knee, featured gold buttons, faux pockets and a jaunty matching beret

Suiting up: Following the riotous red mini of 1969 to 1971, Qantas returned to a more formal style of navy suit, although the hemline was now definitely just above the knee

Designer duds: Florentine designer Emilio Pucci created the colourful uniforms worn by Qantas staff during the mid 1970s - 80s, with navy, salmon, pumpkin-coloured jackets for the men and a floral dress with green jacket that was widely popular among female flight attendants

Pumpkin patch: During the pumpkin jacket era, Qantas was the first airline in the world to introduce business class and a 747 jumbo jet only fleet as it enjoyed one of its most popular eras in the skies

In 1974, Florentine designer Emilio Pucci created the colourful uniforms Qantas staff would wear until the mid-1980s with navy, salmon, pumpkin-coloured jackets for the men and a floral dress with green jacket that was widely popular among female flight attendants.

In 1979, Qantas became the first airline in the world to introduce business class and a 747 jumbo jet only fleet as it enjoyed one of its most popular eras in the skies.

During this era, phases out its last 707 to become the world's only all-747 airline and introduces the world's first Business Class.

The next international designer invited to create a new uniform was French couturier Yves St Laurent, whose 1986 uniforms appeared to reintroduce the concept of both summer and winter costumes.

The smart blue jackets and coats plus a chic scarf for the female attendants could be paired with with a blue skirt, blue trousers or the less popular white dress scattered with multi-coloured 'flying kangaroo' symbols.

Tres chic: Yves St Laurent's 1986 uniforms featured smart blue jackets and coats plus a chic scarf for the female attendants and could be paired with with a blue skirt, blue trousers or the less popular white dress scattered with multi-coloured 'flying kangaroo' symbols.

Princess style: In 1994 Qantas returned to Australia for inspiration with Adelaide duo George Gross and Harry Who, who had an international business with clients including the late Princess Diana, designing this classic outfit

Traditional look: Designer Peter Morrissey and the Aboriginal art inspired fabric he used for the Qantas uniform he designed in 2003, which became much loved by staff for its stylish comfort and ease of care

The uniform stayed until 1994, when Qantas returned to Australia for inspiration with Adelaide duo George Gross and Harry Who, who has an international business with clients including the late Princess Diana.

Their classic navy ensembles paired with white shirts and red patterned scarfs or ties were worn for nine years up the aisles of Qantas aircraft.

In 2003, Australian designer Peter Morrissey went for something completely different and initially his simple dresses made from Aboriginal art inspired fabric in greys and browns were not popular among female attendants.

However a former Qantas staff remember revealed the indigenous print uniforms were comfortable , easy to wash and required no ironing, the jackets were fully lined with the Aboriginal print and looked like a silk smoking jacket when turned inside out, which some of boys often did.

Stand out: Martin Grant's 2013 design was a return to the classic, but with bold flashes of red and fuschia 'to ensure our employees will be visible regardless of whether they are on board or in the terminal'

French inspiration: In 2013, Paris-based Australian designer Martin Grant created a new collection in 'French navy and Qantas red' with a hat and trench coat (pictured)

But as one former Qantas flight attendant told Daily Mail Australia the dress's simple style and their ease of care - 'you just washed them and hung them up to dry, they never wrinkled nor needed ironing and they were so comfortable' - made them a hit, and the style lasted for ten years.

In 2013, Paris-based Australian designer Martin Grant created a new collection in 'French Navy, Qantas red, ruby red and fuchsia palette, with garments designed to be flattering on all body shapes', qantas.com said.

'Martin's signature piece is the bold stripe dress which will ensure our employees will be visible regardless of whether they are on board or in the terminal.'

Typically, Qantas has kept its latest uniform design for nine or ten years, so the Grant creations are likely to last well into the 2020s.
Deep-fat frying was once the preserve of greasy chip shops. But recently it has become surprisingly trendy, with top chefs battering an ever-growing selection of unexpected foods.

This week, Great British Bake Off judge Mary Berry insisted that the unhealthy craze has gone too far. Referring to deep-fried courgette flowers, a favourite of Jamie Oliver and Antonio Carluccio, the redoubtable Mary announced: That is just one thing I wouldnt cook!

Theres no doubt deep-fat frying is back in fashion, but is it an acceptable indulgence or just empty calories?

Alice Smellie donned her hairnet, tipped a selection of delicacies into her Sage Smart Fryer - by Heston Blumenthal, no less - and asked nutritionist Angela Dowden for her professional assessment.

Deep-fried courgette flowers with ricotta: 'This is basically fried cheese. The courgette flower provides diddly squat nutrition-wise and the crisp batter will have absorbed masses of fat' the nutritionist says

DEEP-FRIED COURGETTE FLOWERS WITH RICOTTA

I will gloss over how I obtained these delicate flowers, which are rare in early June. Lets leave it at: forced a remote Cornish farmer to check her fields at midnight. (Try thecornishfoodboxcompany.co.uk).

They are stunning - large, delicate flowers springing out of tiny courgettes.

HOW: Using a River Cottage recipe, I mix ricotta cheese with herbs and then gently push two teaspoons of it into each flower. I twist the petals to seal in the filling.

After dipping them in a light batter of flour, cornflour, beer and water, I plunge them into the oil for about 30 seconds.

ALICES VERDICT: Mary Berry is wrong. The soft petals are cushioned within the crisp batter and the cheese is soft and herby. They are incredible. 9/10

CALORIES before frying: Zero per flower.

DEEP-FRIED CALORIES: 80

NUTRITIONIST says: This is basically fried cheese. The courgette flower provides diddly squat nutrition-wise and the crisp batter will have absorbed masses of fat.

DEEP-FRIED GREEN OLIVES STUFFED WITH FETA

Is life too short to stuff an olive? Apparently not.

HOW: I loosely follow a recipe by chef Yotam Ottolenghi, slicing feta and shoving it into large olives. Then I roll them in flour, egg, and breadcrumbs and put them in the oil for 30 seconds.

ALICES VERDICT: Gorgeous, browned little ovals, with the green olive and white feta still visible. Im not enthralled with the taste. Id prefer them sans coating. 4/10

CALORIES BEFORE FRYING: 15 for one olive.

DEEP-FRIED CALORIES: 45

NUTRITIONIST SAYS: Eat four or five and you may as well have scoffed a Mars bar. Any nutritional value has been decimated.

DEEP-FRIED WHOLE CHICKEN

THe idea is an entire chicken plunged into boiling fat that produces crunchy skin with moist and tender meat inside.

The fad is so ubiquitous that Time Out ran a feature last month about Londons best chicken restaurants - including deep-fried suggestions.

HOW: I buy a small chicken - make sure your fryer basket will take an entire bird - and pop it in for eight minutes per pound of chicken.

ALICES VERDICT: The chicken is too large and starts to spit fat on to the table. I manage to cook it, but find the bubbling fat - like Frankenchicken - scary. However, the skin is crunchy and the meat moist. 7/10

CALORIES BEFORE FRYING: 600

DEEP-FRIED CALORIES: 750

NUTRITIONIST SAYS: Hardly healthy, but because its deep fried without batter, it doesnt absorb as much fat and calories as others.

DEEP-FRIED MACARONI CHEESE

HOW: I make the cheese sauce thicker than usual, mix in cooked macaroni, lay it flat on a tray and cool it in the fridge, which makes it go claggy and solid.

Its disgusting to roll into balls, but they hold their shape as I coat them in egg and breadcrumbs and fry for around a minute.

ALICES VERDICT: Possibly the worlds most calorific creation, but also the most delicious thing Ive ever tasted. The soft, cheesy pasta is offset by the crunchy crumbs. 10/10

CALORIES BEFORE FRYING: 600 per standard portion.

DEEP-FRIED CALORIES: 900

NUTRITIONIST SAYS: There are no redeeming features to this. Youre just adding more fat and carbs.

Deep-fried ice-cream: 'Ice-cream can be very high in fat and sugar. Deep frying adds more calories and with slices of bread soaking up the fat, youre doubling the calorie count' the nutritionist says

DEEP-FRIED ICE-CREAM IN WHITE BREAD

It sounds improbable, but all you need is an extra-cold freezer and some white bread. The delicacy is available at a surprising number of restaurants.

HOW: I make ice-cream balls with my usual scoop and return them to the freezer. Then I cut the crusts off white bread and squeeze slices carefully around each large scoop.

This is quite easy and incredibly satisfying. I lower them into the fat for less than a minute.

ALICES VERDICT: Who cares about calories? This is incredible. The ice-cream doesnt melt and the bread drinks in the oil, so they taste like hot, sugared churros. 8/10

CALORIES BEFORE FRYING: 215 for each scoop.

DEEP-FRIED CALORIES: 400

NUTRITIONIST SAYS: Ice-cream can be very high in fat and sugar. Deep frying adds more calories and with slices of bread soaking up the fat, youre doubling the calorie count.

DEEP-FRIED AVOCADO WITH CUMIN

I am so over smug avocado-eaters. Irritatingly, fried avocado has made an appearance in pop-up restaurants all over the capital.

HOW: I slice the avocado, season with salt, pepper and ground cumin and dip it into egg then flour to deep fry till golden brown.

ALICES VERDICT: Hot, slimy and tasteless. Own goal, avocado. 3/10

CALORIES BEFORE FRYING: 140 for half an avocado.

DEEP-FRIED CALORIES: 250

NUTRITIONIST SAYS: Avocado is full of good fats - the monounsaturated type and also linoleic acid, both of which can keep cholesterol in check. This turns your healthy avocado into a waist-widener.

Deep-fried battered strawberries: These take less than 30 seconds and emerge looking rather beige. I dip them in icing sugar, which looks much prettier

DEEP-FRIED BATTERED STRAWBERRIES

A London company called Crispy Candy rose to fame last year by claiming they could deep fry virtually anything, from Milky Way bars to fruit. Inspired, I attempt juicy strawberries dipped in pancake batter then deep fried.

HOW: I beat up a thick batter with eggs, flour and milk then dip the strawberries. They drip and have to be swiftly transferred into the fryer.

These take less than 30 seconds and emerge looking rather beige. I dip them in icing sugar, which looks much prettier.

ALICES VERDICT: The strawberries are disconcertingly hot, almost like jam, and the icing sugar is needed to give a bit of taste to the bland pancake mix. Id rather have strawberries and cream. 5/10

NAKED CALORIES: Three per fruit.

DEEP FRIED CALORIES: 30

NUTRITIONIST SAYS: Id be worried about how frying might deplete the heat-sensitive vitamin C content of these super fruits.

DEEP-FRIED POACHED EGGS

HOW: I poach my eggs traditionally, pat them dry with kitchen roll and dip them into flour, egg and breadcrumbs before transferring into the fryer. Within a minute the eggs are crispy and golden brown.

ALICES VERDICT: It tastes like egg on the lightest of toasts. 8/10

CALORIES BEFORE FRYING: 75 per egg.

DEEP-FRIED CALORIES: 150

NUTRITIONIST SAYS: Theres not a huge difference in calories between a shallow-fried egg and a deep-fried one, and this is good if youre trying to cut down on carbs but fancy eggs on toast.

DEEP-FRIED HOMEMADE PIZZA

Jamie Oliver describes deep-fried Italian pizzas as being the lightest he has ever tasted, so I use his recipe, with a few shortcuts.

HOW: I add water to a shop-bought pizza-base dough, stir with a fork and then knead for five minutes. After splitting into four balls, I form small, flat semi-circles.

Once in the fat, they sizzle and instantly start to rise. They look more like poppadoms than pizzas, and when I remove them, the texture seems almost doughnutty.

I slosh on tomato sauce and mozzarella and pop under the grill.

ALICES VERDICT: Not the lightest Ive ever tasted, but still tasty. I like the crisp dough. 6/10

CALORIES BEFORE FRYING: 410 for half a large pizza.

DEEP-FRIED CALORIES: 505

NUTRITIONIST SAYS: Compared with a normal thin-base pizza youre getting up to 100 calories more, but its still lighter than a deep-pan or stuffed-crust base.

Deep fried ravioli: These are horrid and dry. They taste like cheap crisps and I want a long drink of water afterwards

DEEP-FRIED RAVIOLI IN CIABATTA CRUMBS

I cheat and buy fresh ravioli. Lifes too short to make pasta.

HOW: I cover them in flour and buttermilk and roll them in ciabatta crumbs before frying for a minute.

ALICES VERDICT: These are horrid and dry. They taste like cheap crisps and I want a long drink of water afterwards. 5/10

CALORIES BEFORE FRYING: 120 for eight small ravioli.

DEEP-FRIED CALORIES: 208

NUTRITIONIST SAYS: I ate this in a restaurant - it was very nice, but I estimated that each largish piece contained around 50 calories.
A new blood test could one day analyze one drop of blood to detect a host of diseases, from cancer to autoimmune conditions.

Scientists at the University of Pittsburgh have developed a unique method for detecting antibodies in the blood of patients.

Their discovery marks a proof-of-principle concept, that could open the door to the development of simple diagnostic tests for diseases for which no microbial cause is known.

The findings mark the first evidence that it is possible to develop blood tests for any infectious disease by screening random libraries of non-biological molecular shapes.

New test could one day analyze one drop of blood to detect a host of diseases, from cancer to autoimmune conditions, experts at the University of Pittsburgh revealed

Dr Donald Burke, dean of the Pitt Graduate School of Public Health, said: 'This "needle-in-a-molecular haystack" approach is a new way to develop diagnostic assays.

'The method does not rely on starting with known viral components.

'This is important because there are conditions for which there isn't a known antigen, such as newly emerged epidemics, autoimmune diseases or even responses to traumatic injury.'

When a person's immune system is faced with an antigen or foreign invader, such as an infectious disease, or even an injury with tissue damage, it responds by producing antibodies.

Like the pieces of a puzzle, specific parts of the surface of these antibodies fit to the shape of the molecules on the invader or the damaged tissue.

This technology means that we may be able to take a single drop of blood from a patient and detect antibodies to all manner of infections, cancers or other conditions they may be carrying or have been exposed to Dr Donald Burke

The researchers used a technique, pioneered by co-author Dr Thomas Kodadek, of the Scripps Research Institute.

It synthesizes random molecular shapes called 'peptoids' hooked on to microscopic plastic beads.

The technique can produce millions of molecular shapes.

The peptoids are not organic, but if they match to the corresponding shape on an antibody, that antibody will connect to them, allowing the scientist to pull out that bead and examine that peptoid and its corresponding antibody.

Using the technique, Dr Burke and his team chemically generated a huge library of random molecular shapes.

Then, using blood from HIV-infected patients and from non-infected people, the researchers screened a million of these random molecular shapes to find the ones that bound only to antibodies present in the blood of HIV-infected patients, but not the healthy controls.

Dr Donald Burke, who led the study, said: 'This technology means that we may be able to take a single drop of blood from a patient and detect antibodies to all manner of infections, cancers or other conditions they may be carrying or have been exposed to.' (Pictured, cancer cells dividing)

No HIV proteins or structures were used to construct or select the peptoids, but the approach, nonetheless, successfully led to selection of the best molecular shapes to use in screening for HIV antibodies.

The researchers then re-synthesized that HIV-antibody-targeting peptoid en mass and tested it by screening hundreds of samples from the Multicenter AIDS Cohort Study.

Dr Charles Rinaldo, a study co-author and chair of the Pitt Public Health's Department of Infectious Diseases and Microbiology, selected the samples.

But he blinded the testers, so they did not know which samples were HIV-positive or HIV-negative.

The test distinguished between the samples of HIV-positive blood and HIV-negative blood with a high degree of accuracy.

Dr Burke said: 'This technology means that we may be able to take a single drop of blood from a patient and detect antibodies to all manner of infections, cancers or other conditions they may be carrying or have been exposed to.

'We hope that this is the first step toward development of an "Epi-chip", that can be used to reconstruct a person's entire exposure history.'
A lack of the sunshine could be triggering migraine attacks in children, teenagers and young adults, a study has found.

Migraine attacks cause dizziness, nausea and headaches - and although painkillers and other drugs can ease the symptoms, they only work for some patients.

Now a study has found a lack of vitamin D, vitamin B2 or riboflavin and coenzyme Q10 (CoQ10) - an enzyme the body produces to help energy for cell growth and maintenance - in a high percentage of migraine sufferers.

Many of the migraine sufferers were found to be lacking in vitamin D which the body produces when in sunlight

Vitamin D is produced by the skin when its exposed to sunlight and is also founds in foods such oily fish and eggs.

Riboflavin is also found in milk, eggs and rice helps keep skin, eyes and the nervous system healthy and the body release energy from the food we eat.

Meanwhile, CoQ10 is an enzyme the body produces naturally in the liver and is used to turn the glucose from the food we eat into an energy-rich compound called adenosine triphosphate.

This is essential for fuelling the body's vital processes, such as breathing, muscle contraction and digestion.

Researchers at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center suggested these deficiencies may be involved in patients who experience migraines but the connection is unclear.

Migraine attacks cause dizziness, nausea and headaches - and although painkillers and other drugs can ease the symptoms, they only work for some patients. But vitamin supplements could help

The study analysed the records of patients with migraines who had baseline blood levels checked for vitamin D, riboflavin, CoQ10 and folate, all of which have been implicated in causing migraines.

MIGRAINES: A DEBILITATING CONDITION A migraine is usually a severe headache felt as a throbbing pain at the front or side of the head. Some people also have other symptoms, such as nausea, vomiting and increased sensitivity to light or sound. Migraine is a common health condition, affecting around one in every five women and around one in every 15 men. They usually begin in early adulthood. They can severely affect quality of life and stop you carrying out your normal daily activities. Some people find they need to stay in bed for days at a time. The exact cause of migraines is unknown, although they are thought to be the result of temporary changes in the chemicals and blood vessels in the brain. Around half of all people who experience migraines also have a close relative with the condition, suggesting that genes may play a role. Some people find migraine attacks are associated with certain triggers, which can include starting their period, stress, tiredness and certain foods or drinks. Source: NHS Choices Advertisement

Many were put on preventive migraine medications and received vitamin supplementation, if levels were low.

Because few received vitamins alone, the researchers were unable to determine vitamin effectiveness in preventing migraines.

Lead author and headache medicine fellow Dr Suzanne Hagler said more research would be needed to establish the connection.

'Further studies are needed to elucidate whether vitamin supplementation is effective in migraine patients in general, and whether patients with mild deficiency are more likely to benefit from supplementation.'

She found that girls and young woman were more likely than boys and young men to have CoQ10 deficiencies from the off.

Boys and young men were more likely to have vitamin D deficiency, they found.

It was unclear whether there were folate deficiencies.

Patients with chronic migraines were more likely to have CoQ10 and riboflavin deficiencies than those with episodic migraines.

Migraine is a common condition, affecting more than 37 million people in the US and eight million in the UK.

Many experience at least one migraine attack per month.

Previous studies suggested certain vitamins and vitamin deficiencies may be important in the migraine process.

Studies using vitamins to prevent migraines, however, have had conflicting success.
Advertisement

New maps reveal the areas of Europe most likely to be hit by Zika this summer.

Southern Europe will become a 'fertile ground' for the virus because warmer temperatures increasing the rate at which the disease-carrying mosquitoes reproduce and bite, researchers said.

And the warmer weather brings with it an influx of people travelling to the region from areas of the America affected by Zika, further raising the risk of it spreading, experts said

Spain, Italy, Greece, Turkey and the part of Russia around Krasnodar are the areas where the virus is most likely to spread between the end of June and August, the maps show.

And the estimated growth rate of a potential Zika epidemic is still high in areas of France, Germany, Hungary, Croatia, Bulgaria Slovakia, Croatia, Slovenia and Serbia - although the risk is slightly lower, researchers warn.

Map shows the countries in Southern Europe most likely to be hit by Zika in July (pictured in red). Spain, Italy, Greece, Turkey and the part of Russia around Krasnodar are the areas where the virus is most likely to thrive and spread. Reproduction number is the estimated growth rate of a Zika epidemic. At levels below 1 (shown in light yellow) the virus dies out, but at higher values it grows exponentially (shown in orange, red and brown)

The risk of Zika is still highest in Spain, Italy, Greece, Turkey and the coastal area of Russia surrounding Krasnodar in August, map shows. The estimated growth rate of a potential Zika epidemic is still high in areas of France, Germany, Hungary, Croatia, Bulgaria Slovakia, Croatia, Slovenia and Serbia - although the risk is slightly lower

Co-author Joacim Rocklov, of Umea University, said: 'The presence of established Aedes mosquito populations, the warmer climate and the coinciding peak flow of air travelers into Europe, is a triage making Southern Europe fertile ground for Zika.'

The findings could help European public health officials to identify locations and times where the risk for Zika is heightened, he added.

To create the maps, the Swedish researchers created a computer model to [redict the risk of the spread of Zika throughout Europe. The model included:

The flows of of airline travellers arriving in European cities from Zika-affected areas of the Americas.

Data on the capability of populations of Aedes aegypti mosquitoes to reproduce and infect each month.

Data on the population of people in areas where the virus could be transmitted.

The researchers assumed that European Aedes aegypti mosquitoes have the same potential to spread the Zika virus as their counterparts in the Americas.

The research comes after a report by the World Health Organisation warned there are already established populations of Aedes aegypti mosquitoes - which transmit the virus - thriving on island of Madeira and the Black Sea coast of Russia and Georgia.

It warned a third of countries in Europe have a 'moderate' risk, including France, Italy, Malta, Croatia, Israel, Spain, Monaco, San Marino, Turkey, Greece, Switzerland, Bulgaria, Romania, Slovenia, Georgia, Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Montenegro.

The new maps come after a WHO report concluded Zika virus may spread into Europe in summer. Many countries such as France, Italy, Malta, Croatia and Spain are at moderate risk for local Zika virus transmission, it concluded

The WHO report said areas such as Madeira and the Black Sea are on high alert because these are where the Aedes mosquitoes thrive. However popular tourist destinations including France, Italy and Spain are also at 'moderate risk'

Thirty-six countries - or 66 per cent - have a low, very low or no likelihood, owing to the absence of Aedes mosquitoes or a suitable climate for them to survive and breed. The risk is low in the UK.

The most recent figures show that 23 UK travellers have been infected after visiting affected regions.

There have been more than 400 imported Zika cases in Europe although no local spread has been detected.

The majority of those infected with Zika will have no symptoms, but for others it can cause a mild illness with symptoms including a rash, fever and headache.

Serious complications that arise from infection are not common but experts have said the virus can cause a birth defect called microcephaly - where babies are born with under-developed heads and developmental problems.

It has also been linked with other congenital abnormalities as well as a rare disorder called Guillain-Barre syndrome which can cause muscle weakness, problems with breathing and paralysis.
Health experts have today warned teenagers of the dangers of drinking a cocktail of racing fuel and Mountain Dew, known as 'DewShine'.

It comes six months after two teen boys died in rural Tennessee, having drunk the concoction - which includes methanol.

Logan Stephenson, a 16-year-old student at Greenbriar High School, was found dead in his bed the morning of January 21.

Just minutes later, paramedics were called to Stephenson's best friend J.D. Byram's house, when the boy started having seizures.

Five days later, J.D died in hospital from the effects of the drink.

In a report released today, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention documents investigations into the two deaths.

Experts urge parents, teachers, community leaders and healthcare professionals do warn young people of the dangers of drinking 'DewShine'.

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The CDC today warned young people of the dangers of drinking a cocktail of racing fuel and soda, after two teenagers died in January, having consumed 'DewShine'. Logan Stephenson, 16 (left), and his best friend J.D. Byram (right) died after ingesting a cocktail of Mountain Dew and racing fuel

Racing fuel is typically 100 per cent methanol - an organic solvent commonly found in the laboratory, industrial and automotive industries and residential products.

The CDC report notes just one tablespoon, or 15ml of methanol can prove fatal.

Police investigating the deaths reported that the boys obtained half a gallon (1.9 liters) of an unknown brand of racing fuel.

They they mixed an unknown quantity of that racing fuel with the soda in a 2L bottle, which they then took to a party.

Two friends with the boys at the time also drank the cocktail - around two ounces - and survived.

Logan, aged 16, was found dead at his home around 11 hours after ingesting the cocktail.

His best friend, J.D, was found suffering a seizure at home about 12 hours after the friends drank DewShine.

He was taken to the emergency room where tests revealed he had 175mg/dL of methanol in his bloodstream - the presence of any methanol at all is abnormal, the CDC notes.

Despite 'aggressive measures' taken by doctors to treat J.D, the teenager passed away five days later.

Above, a makeshift memorial set up in the parking lot of the teens' school - Greenbriar High School

Police are worried that teens may be taking the cocktail of Mountain Dew and racing fuel nicknamed 'DewShine' without knowing the potentially deadly consequences

The CDC report notes that the amount drunk by Logan and J.D is not known, though an empty 2L bottle was recovered at the scene of the party.

After the death of Logan and hospitalization of J.D, the two surviving friends came forward to the authorities and admitted the four of them had made a cocktail from Mountain Dew soda and racing fuel.

They were monitored at hospital before being released.

The lethal cocktail is known as 'DewShine' but is not the same as DEWshine, an non-alcoholic beverage made by PepsiCo.

At the time local police raised concerns that teenagers may be drinking DewShine as an alternative to alcohol, which the law prevents them from buying.

Racing fuel costs about $7.50 a gallon and when mixed with Mountain Dew, it's still much more potent than regular hard alcohol.

CDC experts warn the initial signs and symptoms of methanol intoxication are similar to being drunk.

After after six to 36 hours, depending on the amount of the cocktail a person has drunk, they will likely become drowsy and suffer nausea and vomiting, as well as abdominal pain.

Later, more serious symptoms can develop, including visual disturbances, abnormal breathing, altered mental state, seizures, cerebral edema - swelling of the brain caused by excessive fluid - an ultimately death.

The CDC report states: 'The absence of severe signs or symptoms after ingestion should not deter medical evaluation.
An article of 30 March reported that Dominic Raab MP had said that Britain could stop 'ten times more terror suspects from entering the country' if it left the European Union. We are happy to make clear that Mr Raab's speech specifically compared the numbers of EU and non-EU nationals being refused entry to the UK since 2010 - 6,000 to 67,000 - figures which Mr Raab used to put forward his case that being outside the EU 'would result in stronger preventative checks at the UK border'.

The headline to an article of 26 April referred to James Clapper, the US Director of National Intelligence, warning that ISIS had taken advantage of 'Europe's open borders' to plant sleeper cells in Germany, Italy and the UK. We are happy to make clear that Mr Clapper stated that ISIS had planted sleeper cells in the UK, Germany and Italy, and then made clear that ISIS 'fanatics' had 'taken advantage, to some extent, of the migrant crisis in Europe'.
History

MY DARLING MR ASQUITH

by Stefan Buczacki

(Cato & Clarke 28.99)

On February 25, 1915, Prime Minister Herbert Asquith decided he wouldnt bother saying goodbye to his son who was going to fight in France. He had far more pressing business.

He went to the London Hospital to see a woman called Venetia Stanley, 35 years his junior. It wasnt that Asquith particularly wanted to talk to Venetia; he just wanted to see her wearing a nurses uniform.

Venetia Stanley was just 19 when she and Prime Minister Herbert Asquith, then 54, met

However inured we may think weve become to politicians behaving badly - and idiotically - the story of Asquiths infatuation with Venetia Stanley still takes a lot of beating. She was just 19 when they met, he was 54, and Asquith became helplessly smitten. He wrote her letters full of excruciating doggerel.

To make things even more complicated, Venetia only had eyes for Asquiths daughter, Violet.

While theres no proof that they had a physical relationship, Venetia and Violet constantly professed undying love for one another, as well as sending each other little presents. Ive sent you a tiny and very humble gift which you must wear always (in your bath and in your bed), wrote Violet, and if you think it too ugly you may tuck it in under your combies.

So who was Venetia Stanley, the object of not only the Prime Ministers affections, but his daughters, too? On the surface, she came from an impeccably conventional aristocratic family. Peer a little more closely, though, and what emerges is anything but conventional.

It seems quite possible that Venetias uncle may also have been her father. Certainly there were lots of rumours to that effect and her mother was known to have had an affair with her husbands brother. Despite Venetia possessing what one friend of hers called a gruff baritone voice, Asquith thought her the most alluring woman hed ever met.

Soon his letters were arriving ever more frequently - there are suggestions he even wrote to her under the table during Cabinet meetings. Along with his dreadful poems, he passed on a raft of top secret information about military tactics, thus making Venetia far better informed about the state of the War than most of his ministers.

But what exactly went on when there was no one else around? Not a lot, it seems. While Venetia may have encouraged Asquiths attentions - or at least done nothing to quell them - she had no intention of surrendering her virginity.

Her death in 1948 left obituary writers facing a tricky dilemma - whether to make any reference to the racier elements of Venetias life, or to ignore them altogether

When Venetia announced her engagement to an extremely drippy man called Edwin Montagu - Secretary of State for India - the Prime Minister was heartbroken.

However, he didnt repine for long, swiftly transferring his attentions to Venetias younger sister, Sylvia. Initially flattered, Sylvia soon discovered that if she was alone with Asquith, it was safest to sit either side of the fire . . . or to make sure there was a table between them.

Not that she was the only object of his attentions. By todays standards, Asquith was a serial groper. One woman recalled an incident when the Prime Minister had his head jammed down in to my shoulder and all my fingers in his mouth.

Meanwhile Venetia had settled down to what quickly became marital monotony with the dreary Edwin.

As Buczacki, whose prose sometimes veers towards the deepest shades of purple, puts it: Marriage had given her a first taste for the ripe fruits of sexuality, but she soon realised there were much finer and sweeter flavours to be harvested elsewhere.

It wasnt long before Venetia was harvesting away like crazy - one chapter here is all-too-aptly titled Conjugal Carnage.

Her daughter Judy was almost certainly the product of an extramarital affair, and Venetia had flings with the newspaper baron Max Aitken and the banker Victor Rothschild.

When Edwin died in 1924, Venetia literally took to the air, buying herself an airplane and whizzing around the Middle East with yet another of her lovers. By now some of her old friends, appalled by all this conjugal carnage, had given her up as a bad lot.

But not Winston Churchill and his wife, Clementine, who had always been fond of Venetia - shed been a bridesmaid at their wedding. During World War II they regularly invited her to their weekend retreat at Ditchley Park in Oxfordshire.

Her death in 1948 left obituary writers facing a tricky dilemma - whether to make any reference to the racier elements of Venetias life, or to ignore them altogether.
THE STRESS TEST

by Professor Ian Robertson

(Bloomsbury 16.99)

On an April morning in 1986, as university tutor Brian Keenan walked to work along a Beirut street, his path was blocked by an old Mercedes. Four gunmen got out and forced him into the car, ordering him to lie on the floor.

Keenan refused. He neither obeyed nor fought back: instead, he bowed his head, resting it on a kidnappers knees. This seemed to cause much confusion, he noted later with satisfaction.

Professor Ian Robertson analyses different instinctive responses to stress in this book (stock picture)

Held hostage by Islamic fundamentalists, Keenan waged a constant war of resistance, exerting all the control he could, even while blindfolded and chained. He emerged after four and a half years, physically weak but mentally stronger than he had ever been.

This story supplies the key to Ian Robertsons study of why some people are broken by traumatic events, while others take inspiration from their trials. The Dublin neuroscientist and psychology professor has been fascinated throughout his career by the effects that thoughts and emotions can have on our little grey cells.

His excellent 1999 book Mind Sculpture explored how constant use can expand specific portions of the brain, just as exercise makes muscles grow bigger. Learn a language, a musical instrument, or Braille, and - as your cortex is stimulated - it will change and grow. Experiences rewire the brain.

And if the experience is bad, the effect can be catastrophic. A single disaster, such as a burglary or a beating, can permanently change the personality, leaving the victim a wreck - sometimes afraid to leave the house, or even suicidal.

Drawing on case histories from his 40-year career, Robertson methodically analyses different instinctive responses to stress. He produces evidence that pain and anxiety can help us perform better: for instance, a good learning aid is to plunge one hand into a bucket of ice - the discomfort doesnt merely focus the mind but creates longer, more accurate memories.

Yet one businessman was almost driven to a breakdown by stress after he embarrassed himself by forgetting his speech at a convention.

How can one man be strengthened by his ordeal as a hostage, while another is shattered by public speaking? Robertson argues convincingly that the sensation of control or helplessness is crucial: it shapes the brain.

Stress, it seems, really is good for you - as long as you feel in control

Popular science writers are prey to two main flaws, laboured analogies and excessive jargon, and Robertson is occasionally guilty of both. The book opens and closes with a heavy-handed parable about computer software which would have been better removed. But these dry patches are rare.

Chapter one, which explains why the worlds most dangerous roads are the straight ones (drivers get bored and drift off the side), includes a 25-question test to assess how absent-minded you are. Chapter three, on how to win a penalty shoot-out (strike the ball to the goalies left - keepers dive to the right 70 per cent of the time), reveals how a happy dog wags its tail differently from a stressed-out one.

A study into 33 pairs of identical twins in Sweden shows that the strongest defence against senile dementia is a good education. Too much television, on the other hand, saps the brain and leaves us passive and drowsy - bad news for TV critics like me, of course.

And if you wish you could afford to take early retirement . . . dont. In France, where many people quit work in their late 50s, mental agility declines steeply after the age of 60. In America, where most people work for another decade, their brains stay as sharp as ever.
Sebastian Junger shows what our modern way of living has cost us

During Second World War, people mixed in a way they hadn't before

This book argues that people need to feel connected to others

TRIBE

by Sebastian Junger

(4th Estate 12.99)

During John Fords celebrated western film The Searchers, John Waynes character spends years hunting for his niece Debbie, kidnapped as a child by Comanche Indians.

When he finally finds her, she initially wants to stay with her Comanche husband rather than return home.

Although shocking in the film, its historically accurate. White people captured by American Indians (author Sebastian Jungers preferred name for Native Americans) commonly chose to stay with their captors - and the book cites a case of a captive woman who hid from her would-be rescuers.

Sebastian Junger argues in this book that people need to feel connected to others. During the war, people from different classes mixed in a way they hadnt before and joined together in the face of a common enemy

Even more astonishingly, from the earliest days of Europeans in America, settlers of both sexes ran away to join Indian tribes. This wasnt just a few people, it was hundreds and hundreds. The practice was so rife that in the early 1600s settler leaders made it an offence with harsh punishments, but over the following centuries people still ran off in huge numbers.

And it hardly ever happened the other way. Indians didnt want to join white society.

The attraction, argues Junger, was the sense of community, the importance of the tribe, evident in other primates and in primitive human societies. The superficial attractions of American Indian life were obvious: sexual mores were more relaxed, clothing was more comfortable, religion less harsh.

But mostly it was the structure of Indian society that appealed. It was less hierarchical, essentially classless and egalitarian. As the people were nomadic, personal property hardly mattered, since it was limited to what you or your horses could carry.

What changed this natural way of living for humans was first agriculture, then industry. Accumulation of personal property led to people doing what they thought best for themselves, rather than for the common good. But, suggests Junger, were not happy like this. Were wired to the lifestyle of the tribe.

Take the London Blitz during World War II. Before it began the government feared there would be riots and maybe even revolution as people fought one another for space in bomb shelters or for food.

In fact, exactly the reverse happened. People from different classes mixed in a way they hadnt before and joined together in the face of a common enemy.

Historians credit the spirit of the Blitz as the cause of the Labour landslide victory in the 1945 election, its strong feeling for community leading to the foundation of the NHS and a robust welfare state.

85 Percentage of buildings in Hull destroyed in the Blitz Advertisement

Junger, an American journalist and former war correspondent, gives many examples of what our modern way of living has cost us. In a modern city or suburb you can go through an entire day meeting only strangers. As affluence and urbanisation rise, rates of suicide and depression go up. According to the World Health Organisation, people in wealthy countries suffer eight times the depression rate of those in poorer ones. But when we revert to the tribe, things improve.

Those caught up in the bloody conflict in Bosnia often say they were happier during the war. The reason, they say, was they all pulled together, felt connected and part of something bigger than themselves.

Junger spent time embedded with U.S. troops in Afghanistan, and says he was never alone there. Soldiers slept a dozen to a shelter. You couldnt stretch out an arm without touching someone. Men of all colours, classes and creeds bonded as they had to look out for one another.

In a tribe the survival of the individual depends upon the survival of the group. The lack of this brotherhood is what makes it so hard for returning combat veterans to reintegrate into contemporary, fragmented societies.

Above all, people need to feel connected with others. Its a good starting point for rethinking the way we live our troubled modern lives

Community spirit in the U.S. rocketed after 9/11. The suicide rate dropped dramatically. There were no rampage shootings in public places like schools and colleges for two years.

Interestingly, such shootings happen only in middle-class rural or suburban areas. There has never been one in a poor inner-city location, where gangs provide a tribal sense of belonging.

This sense of bonding with the larger group begins almost at birth. In less developed countries, children sleep with or in close proximity to their parents and often an extended family group.

Its only in Northern European countries (and the U.S.) that small children sleep alone. Its only here that they go through a well-known developmental stage of bonding with stuffed animals or so-called comfort blankets.

In Jungers small, but convincingly argued, book he quotes the self-determination theory, the things necessary for contentment. People need to feel competent at what they do. They need to feel authentic in their lives.
BARKSKINS by Annie Proulx

BARKSKINS

by Annie Proulx

(4th Estate 18.99)

Annie Proulx's massive new novel tells the story of the deforestation of North America over three centuries through the lives of two indentured servants, Rene Sel and Charles Duquet, who arrive in Nova Scotia in 1693, and those of their descendants down to the present day.

It moves from backwoods lumberjack hardship to the industrialisation of the process of providing wood to satisfy the rampant appetite - after the European settlement and conquest of the New World - for buildings, fuel, paper and railroad ties.

As each generation succeeds the next -often after a sudden, unexpected and frequently violent death or deaths - Proulx expertly introduces and involves us with a new set of characters, while subtly informing us of the various technicalities of the timber business and the catastrophic environmental and spiritual impact of the heedless destruction.

Finally, in the present day, we are forced to confront what man is doing to the world and its impact upon his chances of continuing to survive.

Its a powerful message in a powerful book, which is always engaging and never dull, although at 700 pages and a guaranteed big print run for the Brokeback Mountain author, it will likely have cost quite a few trees itself.

VINEGAR GIRL by Anne Tyler

VINEGAR GIRL

by Anne Tyler

(Hogarth 16.99)

After misfiring efforts by Howard Jacobson and Jeanette Winterson, the Hogarth project of having well-known authors retell Shakespeare scores is a palpable hit with Anne Tylers loose - very loose - reworking of The Taming Of The Shrew.

Somehow, college dropout Kate Battista has ended up keeping house for her delightfully loopy, eccentric scientist father and her cute but bolshie younger sister while at the same time struggling to keep her foot out of her mouth so as to hold on to her job at a pre-school nursery.

She feels stuck and even more put upon when her father asks her to go through a sham wedding to keep his brilliant young lab assistant Pyotr - a lovably comic creation - from being deported.

The question is, in this day and age, would a woman like Kate make such a sacrifice to please a man? Thankfully, Tyler is shrewd enough to shake off the shackles of the Shakespeare remit and do her own thing, which is to say just go ahead and write another Anne Tyler novel.

Sure, it doesnt have the emotional depth of A Spool Of Blue Thread, but its knockabout comedy at its best, genuinely laugh-out-loud funny and, indeed, may be her funniest book to date.

EVERYONE IS WATCHING by Megan Bradbury

EVERYONE IS WATCHING

by Megan Bradbury

(Picador 12.99)

American-born, British-raised Megan Bradbury, hot off the University of East Anglia creative writing course, debuts with an impressionistic novel whose subject is New York City.

Its story is told through the lives of four men associated with it. Principal is controversial, iconic bisexual photographer Robert Mapplethorpe.

Much earlier, in 1891, Americas greatest poet, Walt Whitman, returns in old age to his native city and celebrates the history he shares with it. Then theres Robert Moses, architect of the New York we know today, the equivalent to Haussmann in Paris, building bridges and parks and stadiums and roads over four decades.

Lastly, in the near present, celebrated gay writer Edmund White moves back to the city of his youth, nostalgic for the heady hedonism of the Seventies - abruptly ended by the emergence of Aids, which killed Mapplethorpe in 1989.
A COUNTRY ROAD, A TREE by Jo Baker

A COUNTRY ROAD, A TREE

by Jo Baker

(Doubleday 14.99)

When the Nazis invade France, the writer Samuel Beckett returns from Ireland to Suzanne, his lover, in Paris where he joins the resistance. Betrayed, he and Suzanne flee to Roussillon in the south.

Like the other refugees, they scrape by on the margins of a hostile world, which is one of increasing privation and danger.

Beckett is trying to write but is haunted by the figure of his mentor, novelist James Joyce, and by a creeping conviction that words are inadequate to grapple with the darkness of existence.

Jo Bakers bestselling Longbourn threw a new light on Jane Austens Bennet sisters, but this homage to Beckett is far more daring and courageous, diving deep into the formative shifts in the writers psyche as he confronts the moral choices that the war posed. You cant help looking, Beckett wrote later in Waiting For Godot. Try as one may.

Beautifully written, empathetic and unflinching, it is very, very good.

GOLDEN HILL by Francis Spufford

GOLDEN HILL

by Francis Spufford

(Faber & Faber 16.99)

In November 1746, a ship docks in New York and the handsome Mr Smith hurries to a counting house in Golden Hill Street to present an order for the staggering sum of 1,000.

Soon, the small community is abuzz with speculation. Who is Mr Smith? What is he doing? Should he be trusted?

Mr Smith, however, is in no hurry to clear up the mystery - a risk that lands him in trouble, not least from the threat of a possible lynching.

The temptation with pastiching the early English novel is to overdo it. Not so here.

Paying tribute to writers such as Fielding, Francis Spuffords creation exudes a zesty, pin-sharp contemporaneity.

With all its religious and moral strictures and hypocrisies, its colour and dangers, a rumbustious colonial New York takes palpable shape in his dazzlingly visual, pacy and cleverly plotted novel.

SKIN AND BONE by Robin Blake

SKIN AND BONE

by Robin Blake

(Constable 13.99)

It is 1743 and the industrial revolution is stirring. Local coroner Titus Cragg has been summoned to view a dead baby in the leather yard at Prestons tannery.

This pitiful discovery will almost certainly spell trouble for the tanners, for it is no secret that some of the towns most powerful merchants wish to drive them out of their prime site for their own purposes.

Eliciting the help of the progressive Dr Luke Fidelis, Titus tries to hold the inquest at a local inn - but a fire stops proceedings.

Was it accidental? And why have allegations of lewd behaviour been laid against Titus himself?

It is clear that the two men have brushed up against corrupt business interests but, as they dig deeper, both lust and family discord also slide into the picture.
Congress veteran Gurudas Kamat has denied media reports that he objected to two party nominations

Congress veteran Gurudas Kamat has denied media reports that he objected to the nomination of former Union minister P Chidambaram for the Rajya Sabha, and Narayan Ranes nomination for the MLC election.

Describing Chidambaram as a very senior and respected leader, Kamat confirmed that he had worked under him at the home ministry.

Kamat, who recently announced he was quitting the party, also clarified that he had no differences with Rane.

Congress president wants uncensored Udta in Punjab

Joining the political fight over the Hindi film Udta Punjab, Punjab Congress president Amarinder Singh said he will release uncensored copies of the movie in Majitha on June 17, the scheduled release date of the movie.

Singh, a Lok Sabha member from Amristsar, said that like Mexico, Majitha is the epicentre of the drug trade in Punjab.

Amarinder has written to the producers of the movie, Anurag Kashyap and Ekta Kapoor, urging them to provide uncensored copies.

Come together to develop India

During the felicitation function for stakeholders of the Indira Gandhi International (IGI) Airport, organised by the GMR group, Urban Development Minister Venkaiah Naidus speech enthralled every official and media personnel present.

He defined Modi as the maker of developed India.

He asked the public to come forward in nation-building, and claimed that without everybodys participation development is not possible.

He added that 'kaam kare sarkar aur hum baithe bekar wont help.

Ambedkar didnt frame Constitution

While the BJP has consistently attempted to appropriate Dalit icon BR Ambedkar for its own use, ideological tensions continue to surface between the saffron party and the father of the constitution.

In an interview, Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts chairman and longtime RSS loyalist Ram Bahadur Rai rejected Ambedkar's role in writing the Indian Constitution.

He asserted that it was a myth, and that the Constitution was framed by BN Rau while Ambedkar only corrected the language.

Ministers spar over monkeys

Union Women and Child Development Minister Maneka Gandhi argued with Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar over the categorisation of the Rhesus Macaque monkey.

The Himachal monkeys are to be classified as 'vermin' for one year, allowing them to be culled.

Gandhi said she cannot understand this lust for killing.
The Uttar Pradesh government, led by Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav, blamed intelligence failure for the deadly Mathura clashes on June 2, in which violence between the police and armed squatters left two-dozen people dead, including two high-ranking policemen.

But now a week-long investigation by four India Today TV teams has indicated that the administration overlooked as many as 80 warnings about the dangers posed by members of a cult which called itself Swadhin Bharat Vidhik Satyagrah, who had occupied the Jawahar Bagh park for two years.

There were some lapses, chief minister Akhilesh Yadav told reporters a day after Mathuras Jawahar Bagh erupted in bloodshed.

Two dozen people were killed in clashes between the police and encroachers in Jawahar Bagh, Mathura

Police should have gone with full preparation and after holding talks, but there was no information that they would be having so much (arms and ammunition).

State DGP Javeed Ahmad also said that his men, who had gone to inspect the grounds, werent aware the occupiers were so heavily armed.

India Today TV teams then went undercover in a bid to investigate allegations of failures that led to the June 2 carnage.

First, the crew met the man who headed Mathuras Local Intelligence Unit (LIU).

Inspector Munni Lal Gaur looked distraught as he sat across his desk, strewn with secret files.

His department has been accused of failure to supply vital information.

Over time, cult leader Ram Vriksh Yadav and his gang stockpiled lethal weapons inside the Jawahar Bagh park - as the CM and police chief have acknowledged.

When reporters cited the accusations of intelligence failure, Gaur opened up.

I informed authorities on March 13, 2014 that these people (cult followers) would arrive (at Jawahar Bagh) on March 15, 2014. Nobody stopped them (from entering the public park). They stayed here. Then, they started negotiations. And when elections came, they were given water and medical supplies, he claimed.

Gaur maintained that he informed higher authorities that the park occupiers were equipped with firearms.

I gave the information that they had all sorts of weapons, licensed and illegal, (and that) they were always ready to fight, he said.

He alleged that he sent inputs not once or twice but 80 times to the UP government, warning that Jawahar Bagh was sitting on a powder keg.

This is one report Id send almost daily. This is about illegal weapons (stored at Jawahar Bagh). See, its tagged. We reported this matter first on January 23, 2015. See, this is that six-page report, Gaur said, flashing documents before the reporters.

He then read it out aloud.

Its mentioned here that men, women and children linked to the cult organisation carry three-foot bamboo flags and are battle-ready. Its also learned that they are armed with illegal weapons, which they wont mind using when required, Gaur quoted what he claimed were excerpts from his January 23, 2015 note to the state government.

Mathuras district and police officials, according to Gaur, did inform their bosses in Lucknow about the mounting trouble at Jawahar Bagh.

He brandished a few other documents which he claimed were sent to higher authorities in the state capital.

See this. This is the one that the DM and the SSP sent to the home secretary. The biggest thing here is that it quotes the report of the inspector of the LIU, he said, showing his file.

Fifteen reports were sent to the administration, which have our reports attached to them.

Gaur claimed he kept streaming his information to the government till a day before the violence.

In the note sent on June 1, Gaur explained the offensive capabilities of the cult followers.

This letter is about the stockpiling of stones, weapons and explosives. This letter was sent to the SSP, the DM, the SP (City), the city administration and the city magistrate. It illustrates the defiant mood of the satyagrahis. It mentioned about the protest march the female and child members of the organisation took out, he said, holding out a paper from his dossier.

The reporters next spoke with a sub-inspector who was posted outside Jawahar Bagh for the past two months.

Sunil Kumar Tomar said he would see men carrying guns and thick bamboo sticks roaming freely in and out of the park, but he had no orders to act.

The sub-inspector rejected the intelligence-failure theory outright.

What failure? We knew criminals are sitting here. But, we had no powers to arrest. We were not allowed to act, he claimed.

According to Tomar, police were ordered only to stand and guard outside the Jawahar Bagh.

He was on duty when the June 2 violence broke out.

He also claimed plans were afoot to lease out the entire park to its illegitimate occupier, Ram Vriksh Yadav, at the rate of one rupee per acre.

The lease was about to be finalised. It stopped only because the lawyers took the matter to the high court. It (the lease) was pre-planned, he alleged.

This land is worth billions of rupees. Thats why there wasnt any action, he claimed.

Next, the India Today TV teams met Narayan Singh, who has been working as a horticulture caretaker at Jawahar Bagh for the past 32 years.

All kinds of people would visit him (Ram Vriksh Yadav)... good and bad both... goons, history-sheeters. They would drive in, Singh said.

Bereaved: The younger son and father of SP City Mukul Dwivedi, who lost his life in the June 2 clash, during his cremation in Mathura

At Mathura's district hospital, constable Manoj Yadav was guarding an injured suspect from the cult when the TV crew met him.

He said he was part of a police team that was allegedly thrashed when it went inside Jawahar Bagh to investigate illegal construction early in 2014.

That was the time when Ram Vriksh Yadav, who was killed on June 2, was settling down there.

We were beaten up badly. It didnt happen once. It happened three or four times, he added.

As India Today TVs investigation punched holes in the UP government's intelligence-failure claims, the ruling SP came under fierce attack from political opponents.

The BJP demanded the dismissal of the state government, alleging a breakdown of law and order.

This is a government that patronises criminals, land-grabbers and the corrupt, alleged state party chief Keshav Prasad Maurya.

Those responsible for not acting on the LIU reports should be prosecuted.

Uttar Pradesh's jail minister Balwant Ramoowalia said ongoing investigations would uncover shortcomings that led to the Mathura violence.

He insisted the state administration initially tried to "persuade" the Jawahar Bagh encroachers to leave.

...when all other avenues failed, we acted against them, Ramoowalia said.

The states Congress unit trained its guns on the BJP.

What was the central government doing? Why didnt it forewarn the state government (about the growing threat at the Jawahar Bagh)? asked Congress leader Pramod Tiwari.

The state police promised action, but didn't explain why it hadnt moved earlier on the intelligence inputs.

We rely on personal information, LIU information and other information, said additional director general of police Daljit Chowdhary.
Expectations were high for Prime Minister Narendra Modis address to the joint session of the US Congress. And as expected, Modi didn't disappoint.

Although Modi was addressing the gathered Representatives and Senators of the joint session, his speech reached out beyond the elected representatives, and touched the American people.

Influence

To that extent, it was an attempt to influence both policy and opinion on Capitol Hill and reinvigorate bipartisan support for, and interest in, India.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi waves as he arrives to address a joint meeting of Congress

It was also an exercise in allaying fears and apprehensions, fuelled in large measure by a number of unfortunate events in India.

There are congressional concerns about perceived restrictions on freedom of religion, and the right to dissent, that have taken shape post-Modi Sarkar.

Addressing those concerns is important.

Firstly, Modi dispensed with the obligatory references right at the beginning of his speech, before moving on to more meaningful issues.

He paid full tribute to American democracy and the US's commitment to protecting freedom and liberty abroad, which is debatable.

More importantly, Modi reminded the gathered audience that India is governed by its republican Constitution, and that this is a country which has defied the conventional wisdom of the mid-20th century to survive not only as a democracy, but grow into a robust, vibrant, open society.

The blots and blemishes that exist are not exclusive to India.

Secondly - and this is not terribly original - Modi used the opportunity to reiterate that if liberty and freedom have made America great, they also unite India and the US.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi (front-centre) in front of US Vice President Joe Biden (left) and House Speaker Republican Paul Ryan (right), addresses a joint session of Congress in the House chamber

India's commitment to these twin cornerstones of a democracy is no less than that of the US; the two have a lot in common.

Recalling Abraham Lincoln's immortal words, "All men are created equal", Modi elaborated that India, with "equality as the essence of its soul", lives by this example.

Asserting that India celebrates its "age-old diversity" and every mohallah is "anchored in equal respect for all faiths; and in the melody of hundreds of its languages and dialects", Modi sought to address the other concern: 'rising intolerance' in India that passed as commonplace for many years.

Convince

Whether this has helped remove doubts and convinced all movers and shakers on the Hill that India lives as one; India grows as one; India celebrates as one will be known in the coming months, after the US elections are done with.

In the interregnum, it will be business as usual at best.

The real substance of his speech lies in the second half, where he addresses India's aspirations, America's interests and the mutual concerns.

The "absence of a security architecture" is not a throw-away statement. It refers to China's unrestrained emergence as an economic and military behemoth, and the missing counterfoil.

The US cannot abdicate its responsibility, as China is what it is today because of American sustenance of and investment in its economy.

While America has reassured India of its rightful place in the Indian Ocean and in India-Pacific region, frankly this has not yet amounted to much.

India needs to grow much faster, get much bigger, and drop silly pretences of 'soft power' just because the world loves Bollywood films - or so we are told.

Investment

But to get much bigger, stronger, and grow up into a tough guy not a limp-wristed dandy, India needs America.

It needs American investment, it needs American technology, it needs American defence equipment, it needs American cover as it breaches new frontiers, literally and metaphorically.

It's against this backdrop that we need to view the two most significant sentences in Modi's address to the US Congress.

Although Modi was addressing the gathered Representatives and Senators of the joint session, his speech reached out beyond them to the American people

"In every sector of India's forward march, I see the US as an indispensable partner", and that "a stronger and prosperous India is in America's strategic interest".

The first statement marks an irrevocable departure from whatever remained of the much-vaunted 'Nehruvian Consensus' and Non-aligned mumbo-jumbo in India's foreign policy.

In short, It's a definitive break with the past.

In 1949, Jawaharlal Nehru, addressing the US Congress, eloquently spoke of India's "voyage of discovery".

Along the road India discovered friends, became a Soviet ally, and waved the flag of non-alignment to signal its distance and estrangement from America.

It was not about neutrality; it was about Third World hostility.

More than half a century later we have Modi declaring America as India's indispensable partner - that's a lot more than Atal Bihari Vajpayee standing at the same podium and calling the US a "natural ally".

To be an indispensable partner, the US will not only have to accommodate India's soaring aspirations but also dovetail them into American strategic interest

The enormous importance of Modi's statement is yet to sink in at home; has its importance struck those listening to him in America?

To be an indispensable partner, the US will not only have to accommodate India's soaring aspirations but also dovetail them into American strategic interest.

A strong India, a prosperous India, is indeed in the US's strategic interest, globally and in the region.

Will the US rise to the challenge and seize the moment? If so, American and Indian diplomacy will be tested.
The oldest church in Delhi, St Jamess at the Kashmere Gate, is up for a face lift.

The Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage (INTACH), an NGO dedicated to historical restoration, has prepared a detailed project report (DPR) for conservation of the early 19th century building.

The rumblings of trains at the busy Kashmere Gate metro station near the church have damaged its foundations over the years, officials claim.

St Jamess Church is facing drainage issues because of its close proximity to the river Yamuna

Further, opening of the underground Metro Heritage Line, barely five minutes from the St Jamess Church complex, may lead to more damage.

The much-anticipated 9.3 km line, mapping several old Delhi monuments, is slated for an August 15 inauguration.

The original European stained-glass windows depicting the Crucifixion

Built next to the Yamuna river centuries back, the groundwater table here is still high, which leads to regular seepage and drainage issues.

Many beautiful architectural features - such as plinths, cornices and mouldings - have faded as a result.

Black fungus spotting has damaged the walls as the plaster and the yellow paint have peeled off in several places.

Built in 1836 AD, it is a Grade- I notified heritage building under the jurisdiction of North Municipal Corporation of Delhi (Zone C).

Sunil Joseph, a representative at St James Church, confirmed: Yes, we have assigned the restoration work to INTACH. It has begun.

Ajay Kumar, Project Director at INTACH said: Its a prominent landmark at the Kashmere Gate in old Delhi. It was built by Colonel James Skinner, an army officer at the East India Company in 1836 AD.

He added: It reflects the basic design of a Renaissance Revival style church on a cruciform plan (Greek Cross) with three porticoed porches and an octagonal dome.

It is similar to Italys Florence Cathedral. Also, it used Mughal brick masonry in lime mortar, prevalent in that era, he said.

St Jamess Church beautifully married the two cultures it was born in, he added.

INTACH has also prepared a list of valuable possessions belonging to the St Jamess Church, which need scientific restoration.

This includes the graves of Col Skinner and his family of 14 wives and children; British Commissioner of Delhi, William Frazer, and Thomas Metcalfe.

The original European stained glass windows depicting the Crucifixion, Ascension of Christ and his Resurrection, are some of the very rare pieces in the churchs possession.

Among its other great items is a painting called The Prodigal Son.

It is believed to be an original work of Italian painter Pompeo Batani, and hangs on the south-western wall of the church.

There is also a processional cross gifted by Lord Irwin, and a rare Pipe Organ, gifted in 1899 by T Ralph.

Douse, and its Church bell are also listed by INTACH.

The NGO has also recommended promoting St Jamess Church within the Delhi tourist circle.

At present, it is visited by 14-150 people for services.
In a move being seen as pro-women, the Indo-Tibet Border Police Force (ITBP) has appointed female officers to ferry ammunition and supplies to the soldiers deployed at high-altitude posts along the China border.

At a time when most of the forces are debating whether to give permanent commissions to women or not, the ITBP has worked towards womens empowerment by inducting lady officers as assistant commandants in an elite wing.

They have been entrusted with the task of ensuring the viability of Axis of Maintenance (AOM) at Border Out-Posts (BOPs), ranging from 9000 ft to 19000 ft, using ponies, mules and yaks in addition to training crack K9 dogs to perform sensitive duties.

Many women assistant commandants (vet) are posted in sensitive locations near the China border

The AT (Animal Transport) Detts commanded by the female Veterinary Officers supply ammunition, bombs, military/field stores, food, clothing, and other essentials to the soldiers.

In some BOPs, even drinking water is carried by the ponies from the nearest water point.

In freezing winters, these AT ponies carry blocks of ice that is melted to quench the thirst of ITBP personnel.

The ITBP has given commissions to many women veterinary assistant commandants, who are posted in sensitive locations at the border.
The Indian government after fighting hard to become a party to the Italian legal proceedings in their corruption case against defence conglomerate Finmeccanica and its subsidiary AgustaWestland, quietly quit the process in February 2015.

In doing so, New Delhi chose to not appeal against the accused and lost out an opportunity to seek monetary compensation.

While justifying the actions of defence ministry (MoD), the spokesperson said the attorney general (AG) advised them in February 2015 and the ministry proceeded accordingly.

The Indian government, after fighting hard against defence conglomerate Finmeccanica and its subsidiary AgustaWestland, quietly quit the process in February 2015

The MoD had earlier said the advice to quit was given by the solicitor general (SG). However, both these authorities denied ever giving such advice.

The trial concerned alleged bribes in a 560 million-euro contract awarded to AgustaWestland in 2010 to supply 12 VVIP helicopters to India.

The question that arises is what prompted the MoD's move to pull out?

Speaking to this correspondent in his Milan office, attorney Gian Luca Grossi, who represented the MoD at the lower court at Busto Arsizio where the AgustaWestland trial went on from June 19, 2013 to October 9, 2014 said, The MoD was civil party in the trial, in the first stage in Busto Arsizio. It came in only at the end of the first trial there.

Then India decided to not go ahead with the appeal. The lower court gave a clear verdict saying there was impossibility of bribery. The MoD decided to quit the trial. I dont know why, but they decided to quit. I respect that.

When asked what did he advise the MoD, he said, I think our advice was to stay on, stay inside also in the second degree at the Tribunale (Court of Appeal). I told them I was not confident (about their exit). It wasnt a very easy decision but 51 per cent I would have stayed against 49 per cent to pull out.

He added, If I had the choice in my hands, I probably wouldve (stayed). When you make a choice, take a path, even if you find some problems in walking, you have to go ahead.

In the sentence of the Milan Court of Appeals of April 7, 2016, the MoD is shown as a non appelante  a party which had not appealed.

According to Grossi, India lost out on a chance to not just secure a moral victory by being a party when the recent order came out but also monetary compensation.

If you want your money back, you go to the civil court. If you want to secure reputation and restoration, then you go to the criminal one, he said.

In effect, India went to the criminal court and opted against going to the civil one.

When India Today TV approached attorney general Mukul Rohatgi, he initially sought time to respond.

Responding days later, Rohatgi said, "I have advised the MoD on aspects pertaining to blacklisting of various companies under the Finmeccanica umbrella but in so far as the issue you are raising, I have no recollection of having done so."

Since in one of the responses the MoD had named the solicitor general as the one who advised them, he too was approached. SG Ranjit Kumar too distanced himself from the issue.

He said, The matter never came to me, nor have I given any advice.
The Delhi Police on Friday detained a personal assistant of a doctor working with Indraprastha Apollo hospital.

According to the police, the accused was in touch with T Rajkumar Rao, the kidney racket kingpin.

With this, Delhi Police have so far arrested a dozen accused involved in illegal organ sale and donation.

According to the police, the accused was in touch with T Rajkumar Rao, the kidney racket kingpin

Police are claiming that soon they will question a few other people allegedly associated with the racket.

The accused has been identified as Brijesh Chauhan.

During investigation, Rajkumar disclosed that apart from five kidney donations he was involved in almost a dozen of such organ donation. We also came to know that Brijesh was constantly in touch with Rajkumar. He took Rs 25-45 lakh from the recipients. We are also verifying details of all recipients including their addresses, contact details etc, a senior police official said.

Cops are also claiming that one of the recipients has been identified as a famous businessman of Jaipur.

We made teams to verify details of recipients given by them at the time of medical procedures. We have asked one recipient to join the investigation. Soon, we will ask other recipients as well after verifying their addresses, sources said.
Rajnath Singh denied plans to run for Chief Minister post in Uttar Pradesh

Amid the buzz over being the BJPs face for the upcoming crucial poll battle in Uttar Pradesh, Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh on Friday said that this is fictitious and he is already settled at one place.

The home minister, who is also considered number two in the Union Cabinet, rejected questions that he could be the BJPs chief ministerial candidate.

Aise kalpnik prashn nahin poochhte, hum to ek jagah hain hee (Lets avoid such fictitious questions... I am already settled in one role, he said when asked if he could be given the chance to be the chief minister.

The home minister gave enough suggestion to the partys senior leadership that he is not inclined to go back to the state as a chief ministerial candidate.

However sources claimed that being one of the most prominent BJP leaders from the state, he is likely to play a pivotal role in the partys campaign for the Assembly elections along with Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Amit Shah.

While Modi will address a rally in the state every month, Rajnath and Shah will address many public meetings every month till the elections in the state.

UP mein kabil chehron ke koi kami nahi hai (There is no dearth of capable faces in UP), the home minister said when asked about BJPs chief ministerial candidate for the 2017 Assembly polls.

Speculation is rife ahead of BJP's national executive meeting in Allahabad that Singh could play a lead role in the party campaign for the UP polls even if he is not declared the choice for the top political office in the state.

Asked whether he would be made the party's face in UP, Singh, who is Lok Sabha member from Lucknow, said, Yeh kalpnik prashna hai. Iska koi matlab nahi hai (This is a hypothetical question. It has no meaning).

The possibility that the party could enter UP with a chief ministerial candidate has gained currency after BJP's victory in Assam where it had declared the name of Sarbananda Sonowal months ahead of the contest.

As against this, the party had not declared a CM candidate in Bihar, where it lost the polls.

BJP sources said the party was treading cautiously in the state in view of caste politics as projection of Singh, who is a Rajput leader, could upset the Brahmin voters.

The home minister, one of the most prominent BJP leaders from Uttar Pradesh and former chief minister, asserted that his party would storm to power with a thumping majority in the 2017 election.

On Friday, Singh was in Lucknow on a two-day visit to the state. He has been addressing rallies, along with Modi and Shah.

He had addressed a public meeting in Mau on Thursday.

BJP had won 71 of UP's 80 Lok Sabha seats in the 2014 general election.

Sources said things will be more clear about Rajnath role in the BJP's national executive meeting in Allahabad this weekend, which will focus on the Uttar Pradesh elections, slotted as a must-win by the BJP.
Enforcing dress codes has been the forte of the khap panchayat in Haryana.

But this time the education department of the state has implemented the rule and has asked teachers in government-run schools not to wear jeans to school.

According to district fundamental education officer Raj Kumar Falswal, Jeans cannot be recognised as a proper dress. It comes under the category of prevocational dress and sends out a wrong message, especially to girls. We have to maintain decency in educational institutions and provide a healthy atmosphere for students."

The move to ban jeans for teachers has evoked criticism from various quarters

Falswal further said that in primary classes students used to sit on the floor and hence teachers also follow it.

As some jeans are skin tight, they cant sit on the floor.

Meanwhile, the boards decision has resulted in sharp reactions from school teachers and college faculties.

Vinod Thakran, state president of primary teachers association, said such decisions are generally heard in Islamic states like Syria and Afghanistan. We have not heard such a dress code in any place of Haryana.

The state education department and different boards should enhance the quality of education rather than implementing unorthodox dress code on teachers. Jeans come under the category of formal dress nowadays. Why the education board is pointing figures on it is hard to understand. The state government has been taking such decisions to hide its failures, Thakran said.

Haryana education institute association also came out in support of the government teachers.
Farerwell: John Walden will leave when Argos owner Home Retail Group was merged with Sainsbury's

It seemed almost inevitable that Argos boss John Walden would step down when the business was sold to Sainsburys.

Yesterday Sainsburys confirmed that 56-year-old Walden would leave when Argos owner Home Retail Group was merged. Sainsburys finance director Jon Rogers will take over.

But perhaps what staff hadnt expected was the gushing self-congratulatory letter they received from Walden.

Perhaps in an attempt to ensure his time at the retailer was held in fond regard, Walden, who was paid 2.75million last year and could make as much as 5million from the merger, sent the four-page long, 1,664 word missive to the chains 50,000 employees.

In it he thanks them, but then goes on to describe how he turned around Argos from the moment he joined in 2012.

Argos was in a challenging position, having suffered significantly during the preceding four-year period. Much of its historic advantage had eroded, he wrote.

In great detail he outlines eight areas where he believes he has helped transform the store and make it a success.

These include creating a better website, digital stores, faster delivery, and a number of partnerships it had struck with the likes of Google.

I could go on for many more pages; these are only the tip of a massive iceberg of your accomplishments over a surprisingly short time.

But then he does continue for another page, laying out some of the financial achievements of his time in charge.

American Walden, a married father of five sons, lives in London but is understood to be considering moving back across the Atlantic for his next job.

As part of his pay packet at Home Retail he receives a cash allowance for flights to the US.

The former boss of US chain Best Buy finishes by thanking staff and said: I believe in each of you, and have taken seriously my responsibility to help create a better future for you and your families.
If you've got the cash for a deposit, or are lucky enough to own your own home and have equity in it, mortgages have never been cheaper. But fees have never been higher.

Fierce competition between banks and building societies has driven mortgage rates on offer lower and lower over the past few months with a spate of lenders cutting rates again this week.

In the past fortnight Nationwide, HSBC and Yorkshire Building Society have all slashed rates to new lows, while Skipton and Yorkshire building societies have brought rates on their fee-free deals down in the past few days.

Mortgage rate war: lenders battle it out to tempt borrowers with rock-bottom mortgage rates

The flurry of activity follows figures released by the Bank of England last week revealing the average mortgage rate fell to 2.41 per cent in April from 2.49 per cent in March - its lowest ever - reflecting the rapidly reducing likelihood of the Bank raising the base rate any time soon.

Of all the most recent rate cuts, Post Office's 1.33 per cent rate fixed over two years, available up to 75 per cent loan-to-value with a 1,995 arrangement fee, has an attention-grabbing headline rate.

There's no higher lending charge and the option to overpay by up to 10 per cent of the outstanding balance each year are further advantages.

Of course, for all the latest deals, size of deposit is key to the rates on offer and as a general rule of thumb, the larger the deposit, the larger the choice of lender, and the better the rates will be.

Currently there 927 different mortgages on offer for those with a 25 per cent deposit or equity whereas there are 249 options for those looking to purchase or remortgage at 95 per cent LTV.

That said, the choice for those with less equity is still reasonable. Nottingham Building Society offers a first-time buyer two-year fixed rate at 3.29 per cent to 95 per cent LTV with a 999 fee.

Another good tip is to consider whether you are close to lower LTV banding. If you are at 91 per cent LTV you may want to consider the benefit of stretching to a slightly bigger deposit as the rates at 90 per cent will be better.

HSBC offers a two-year fixed rate at 1.99 per cent at up to 90 per cent LTV with a 1,499 fee.

Time for a change: If you're paying a standard variable rate, now could be the time to consider remortgaging

Mark Harris, chief executive of mortgage broker SPF Private Clients, warned that when it comes to comparing mortgages it is vital to look at the total cost - rate plus fees - to ensure you are getting a good deal.

'Lenders may offer cheap headline rates to attract borrowers but these often come with a hefty fee so look at the overall cost,' he said.

Longer-term fixed rates are also competitive at the moment. HSBC offers a 1.99 per cent rate up to 65 per cent LTV fixed for five years with a 1,499 fee while Post Office Money charges 2.94 per cent for its five-year fixed-rate deal up to 90 per cent LTV with a 995 fee.

Harris said: 'If you are choosing a fixed rate, don't fix for longer than you are absolutely sure about.

'These deals often have hefty early repayment charges if you need to get out of of the fix before the end of the term and you shouldn't assume that just because a deal is portable that you will actually be able to take it with you,as there are no guarantees.'

While every deal will have a different structure for the early redemption fees they charge, the HSBC deal's ERCs reduce annually, charging 5 per cent of the mortgage balance for early repayment in year one, 4 per cent in year two, 3 per cent in year three, 2 per cent in year four and 1 per cent in year five.

The Post Office deal, meanwhile, charges 4 per cent in the first two years of the deal to repay early, 3 per cent in the third and fourth years and 2 per cent in the final year.

Beware the hidden cost of fees

While they may not be offering the cheapest rates on the market, there are plenty of lenders vying to tempt borrowers through their doors by removing fees altogether.

Yorkshire Building Society again sliced its prices this week, this time across its fee-free range of residential purchase and remortgage deals.

Those with a 10 per cent deposit or equity in their home can fix for two years at 2.59 per cent, pay no product fee and benefit from a free standard valuation and 250 cashback on completion or free legals.

Borrowers looking to buy or remortgage with just a 5 per cent deposit or equity are looking at a 3.84 per cent rate fixed for two years or a 4.49 per cent rate fixed over five years - both deals come with no product fees and either 250 cashback or free legals.

Cambridge Building Society meanwhile has launched a 95 per cent LTV two-year fix at 3.64 per cent and a 95 per cent LTV five-year fix at 3.99 per cent.

Balancing act: Taking a fee-free deal could only be cheaper for those taking a smaller mortgage

Skipton Building Society has shaved up to 0.34 per cent off its two- and five-year fixed rates bringing two-year deals down to 3.65 per cent up to 75 per cent loan-to-value for those looking for additional borrowing. Five-year deals are on offer at 4.59 per cent up to 75 per cent LTV.

Borrowers who want to remortgage up to 90 per cent LTV can get a two-year fixed rate of 4.89 per cent or 5.45 per cent.

Balancing act

While the rates might look higher than those of some of their competitors', none of these products charges a fee.

Charlotte Nelson, of personal finance website Moneyfacts, said: 'Low headline rates look great on paper, however, borrowers would be wise not to be sucked into these attention-grabbing deals but instead look at the whole package including any fees and incentives.

'Whilst a low rate will grab the attention often these deals carry large arrangement fees, which can often make the lower priced deals a more expensive option.'

Taking a deal with no fees can make a significant difference for those borrowing a relatively small amount.

Poll Are you planning to remortgage this year? Yes No Are you planning to remortgage this year? Yes 173 votes

No 84 votes Now share your opinion





For example, when taking a 150,000 mortgage, choosing the lowest two-year fixed rate at 75 per cent LTV with a 1,995 fee - which is currently 1.33 per cent from Post Office Money - would leave you 1,482.84 worse off over two years than opting for the lowest deal with no fee at 1.93 per cent - also from Post Office Money.

But on the flipside, if you're borrowing more then a fee of 1,995 becomes less relevant and borrowers taking a large loan could be better off opting for the lower rate and paying the fee.

David Hollingworth, from mortgage broker London & Country, explained: 'The smaller the mortgage the bigger the impact of a big fee on the overall cost.

'Some borrowers with a bigger mortgage may be better off with a lower rate as the reduced interest will outweigh the cost of the fee.

'The scheme term will also have a bearing, as the impact of a fee will be spread over a longer period for a five-year fix, say rather than a two-year deal.'

Other fees and incentives that are important to factor into the calculation include the cost of switching a deal.

Remortgaging can incur a valuation fee and costs for the basic legal work involved. However, many deals will now cover those costs with a free valuation and free basic legal work included in the incentive package.

Hollingworth added: 'Its vital that borrowers dont simply head for the lowest headline rate on the assumption that it will be the cheapest deal.

'There is more to take into consideration when assessing the best overall value and fees will play a key part. Some of the very lowest rates can carry significant fees which can have a big impact on the overall cost of a deal.

'As a result it makes sense to look at the overall cost of a deal over the scheme period and based on the individual circumstances of the borrower.'
City dealmaker Guy Hands has withdrawn his case against Citigroup over the 2007 buyout of music label EMI, which saw him lose 156million.

Hands brought to an end almost seven years of on-off litigation over the disastrous deal struck by his private equity firm Terra Firma.

He had alleged that he had been mis-led by Citigroup bankers over the 4.2billion deal. He was seeking damages of 1.5billion.

Battle: Guy Hands tried unsuccessfully to sue Citigroup in the US, but the case was terminated in 2014 and it is being heard in the High Court in London

But yesterday Handss lawyer confirmed Terra Firma would not be moving ahead with the case, and Hands would retract the claims against Citigroup.

We are very pleased that Terra Firma has unreservedly withdrawn the allegations, agreed to the dismissal of the proceedings and will pay Citis costs in relation to this matter, a Citigroup spokesman said in a statement.

The latest court case over EMI, the home of musicians including The Beatles, Coldplay and Katy Perry, began only on Tuesday.

Hands had previously tried unsuccessfully to sue Citigroup in the US.
Bill Gates says people living in extreme poverty can improve their lives by raising chickens - and he's planning to do his part with a newly launched poultry philanthropy project.

The billionaire philanthropist, speaking in front of chickens pecking and clucking in a New York City skyscraper, announced plans on Wednesday to donate 100,000 chicks to poor nations in an effort to end extreme poverty.

The chicks will go to rural areas in two dozen developing countries from Burkina Faso to Bolivia, where the Heifer International charity manages breeding operations and distribution, according to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Raising and selling chickens can lift families out of poverty, and a farmer breeding 250 chickens a year could make $1,250 U.S., said the Foundation, which is partnering with the Heifer International.

Scroll down for video

Bill Gates, speaking in front of chickens pecking and clucking in a New York City skyscraper, announced plans on Wednesday to donate 100,000 chicks to poor nations in an effort to end extreme poverty

Gates said a farmer starting with five hens could earn $1,000 a year, compared with the extreme poverty line of $700 a year. Pictured, a young boy holding a cockerel in Laos

'There's no investment that has a return percentage anything like being able to breed chickens,' said Gates, the co-founder of Microsoft Corp.

'If I were living in extreme poverty, I'd want to raise chickens,' he wrote on his Twitter feed on Thursday.

Gates said a farmer starting with five hens could earn $1,000 a year, compared with the extreme poverty line of $700 a year. (A Business Insider tally from 2013 found that Gates himself makes more than $23,000 a minute).

Eventually Gates wants to help 30 percent of rural African families raise chickens, up from 5 percent now.

Gates' wife Melinda, co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, said breeding chickens can also empower women by giving them a source of income, which they are more likely than men to spend on education and healthcare.

In New York, Gates urged the public to donate through Heifer International.

Billionaire philanthropist and Microsoft's co-founder Bill Gates speaks to the media, in front of a chicken coop set up on the 68th floor of the 4 World Trade Center tower in Manhattan

'There's no investment that has a return percentage anything like being able to breed chickens,' said Gates, the co-founder of Microsoft Corp

'The numbers today in terms of Americans who give to Heifer or things like that is actually quite small, so we'd like to see that scaled up,' Gates said.

Referring to the proverb that teaching a man to fish will feed him for a lifetime, he said: 'The parable could have been stated in terms of giving somebody a chicken and showing them how to raise chickens.'

Gates said he aimed to boost household chicken ownership in places such as West Africa, where it is now 5 percent, to 30 percent.

Gates made his announcement on the 68th floor of a new building at the World Trade Center, a site not typically used for showcasing chickens, he said.

'We snuck them in,' he quipped.

Some critics said the programme was a publicity stunt and wouldn't solve the underlying problems of poverty in Africa. 'Our father, Who art Uncle Bill, Hallowed be thy whims ...' Nigerian satirist and author Elnathan John wrote on Twitter.

Gates acknowledged that some might scoff at the plan, but insisted that he believes it will have an impact. 'It sounds funny,' Gates wrote on the project's website. 'But I mean it when I say that I am excited about chickens.'

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, one of the largest private charities in the world, has invested heavily in Africa, tackling a wide range of issues in healthcare, education, women's rights and poverty alleviation.
One woman had silicone injected into her face instead of botox

A bogus plastic surgeon carried out hundreds of botched operations on her kitchen table where she cut open her patients using kitchen scissors and anaesthetised them with illegal ecstasy pills.

Kastia Valdez, 34, is nicknamed the Boob Job Butcher after she left her victims horribly disfigured and with scars after doing facelifts, boob jobs and liposuction for as 80.

Some of her victims have come forward to tell MailOnline how their lives have been irreversibly affected after they were tempted to go under the scissors, lured by cheap prices of the back street 'surgeon'.

'Monster': Bertha Alicia Hernandez, 55, said she was beautiful before her operation and now flinches when she looks in the mirror, adding she looks like a 'grotesque Picasso portrait'

Botched: She went to Kastia Valdez, 34, who also left this person with scarring following a cut price rhinoplasty

Cut open with kitchen scissors: Valdez is accused of performing abdominoplasty - or a tummy tuck - with scissors in her home

Excrutiating: Others described to MailOnline how they were given ecstasy before she opened them up

She turned me into a monster,' said Bertha Hernandez, who now refuses to leave her home after a rushed facelift left her looking like a grotesque Picasso portrait.

She told me she was a doctor and injected my face with industrial silicone sealant rather than Botox.'

Bertha, 55, told MailOnline: 'My facial muscles began to rot away and its still extremely painful to eat food, drink water or smile.

It has taken over a year of daily massages and rectifying surgery to reach a point where I dont flinch when I see myself in the mirror.

I was beautiful before, and my stupidity in being conned has turned me into something out of a horror film.'

Another victim, Dora Vasquez, 52, was serious injured when a 750 breast implant operation punctured her lung and left her with permanent nerve damage in her left arm.

In August she was taken to the home of Maria Josefina Hernandez in the slums of San Francisco del Rincon, Mexico, where Kastia Valdez conducts clandestine operations in her spare room.

MailOnline spoke to Hernandezs son, who confirmed that clandestine surgical practices are carried out there.

Dora arrived to find three more patients recovering on the hard floor of the kitchen. She was asked to lie on the shacks dining table where she was given a local anaesthetic and given a purple ecstasy pill to place under her tongue.

Aesthetic: Dora Vasquez, 52, was seriously injured when was serious injured when a 750 breast implant operation punctured her lung and left her with permanent nerve damage in her left arm

Back street clinic: This is said to be the place where Valdez performs her surgeries, leaving 'patients' to recover on the floor of her kitchen

'The butcher': Valdez, who was born in the Dominican Republic, allegedly used a stolen medical licence to convince her clients she was a legitimate plastic surgeon

I quickly began to feel both numb and euphoric,' Dora told MailOnline. Thats when Kastia began the surgery.'

Incisions were made to Doras chest using a pair of butchers scissors and implants were inserted beneath her pectoral muscles. She later discovered the silicone prostheses she given were second hand from a patient who had undergone surgery six hours before.

It was hellish,' Dora told MailOnline. The surgery took five hours and I was conscious the whole time.

When I left, I began to feel extremely sick and had terrible difficulty breathing.'

After five days of agony, she sought advice from qualified cosmetic surgeon, Dr Gerardo Casillas.

We had seen many patients who arrived showing terrible scars and deformities as a result of this surgeon,' said Dr Casillas. We had our suspicions that Kastia Valdez was not a qualified surgeon, but when we saw what she had done to Dora we knew for sure.'

Kastia Margarita Valdez Almonte, originally from Dominican Republic, allegedly used a stolen medical licence to convince Dora and other victims of her qualifications.

Not even a person with the most rudimentary medical knowledge would have done what we saw,' added Dr Casillas.

Beauty: Bertha admits she was beautiful before, but it was her 'stupidity' that sent her to Valdez

Youthful: She hoped a course of botox would bring back her more youthful days, but Valdez injected her face with industrial silicone sealant rather than Botox - leaving her facial muscles rotting away

Scars: After a year of corrective surgery and daily massages, she can now bare to look at herself once more

The scammer had cut through multiple layers of pectoral muscle, perforating her lung and causing permanent nerve damage,' he said. We had to reconstruct her entire chest in order to save her life.'

I was on life support for three days,' Dora said. I very nearly died.'

Dora filed a police complaint against Valdez in November for offering medical services with falsified documents.

When questioned by the authorities Valdez denied being a plastic surgeon and claimed another woman had been offering cut-price operations to the local community.

The case remains an open investigation with the Guanajuato state attorney.

She laughs at me when I call her,' said Dora. She says: youll never bring me down.'

MailOnline contacted Valdez, at her home in Leon, Guanajuato, but she refused to comment on the allegations.

Im not an actress, nor am I interested in commenting on lies,' she wrote in a text message.

Although Valdez has allegedly operated on over 300 people in San Francisco del Rincon, Dora Vasquez is the only victim to file a police complaint against her.

She was arrested by police and is currently on bail.

One patient, who asked to remain anonymous, was left horrifically scarred by a tummy tuck, but still refuses to involve the Mexican authorities.

My scars cause me so much embarrassment that I cant go the beach any longer,' she told MailOnline. Im in permanent pain, both mentally and physically, but I blame myself for allowing this to happen.'

Victim: My scars cause me so much embarrassment that I cant go the beach any longer,' she told MailOnline. Im in permanent pain, both mentally and physically, but I blame myself for allowing this to happen'

Fear: Most of Valdez's victims have refused to report her to police, but many have spoken to MailOnline

Tricked: One woman was told it was so cheap because it was sponsored by the Russian government

Near death: One woman who was hospitalised with blood poisoning said she just wanted to forget it happened

She went on: The evidence that it was a bad idea was there from the start. The photocopied medical licence, Kastias claims that her cut-price surgeries were sponsored by the Russian government, the unsanitary conditions she works in.

I wanted the procedure so much that I convinced myself that everything was fine when it clearly wasnt.'

Another anonymous patient, who was bedbound for 15 days after nearly dying of blood poisoning following Kastias liposuction procedure, says she wants simply to forget what happened to her.

I see the permanent effects on other victims and I think I got off lightly,' she said.

I dont want my case to be public because Im the one who will look ridiculous.'

When Valdez arrived in San Francisco del Rincon, she established her practice in the Aliza beauty salon in the centre of town with the permission of owner Celia Cervantes, who encouraged many of her friends to undergo Kastias procedures.

All her apparatus was portable and loaded and unloaded from a pickup truck before each procedure,' said Celia, who allowed her own daughters to go under the Kastias knife. But when I saw the terrible things she had done to her patients I had to ask her to leave.

The presence of that charlatan here has destroyed the good name of my business.'

Destroyed business: Celia Cervantes, who owns a beauty salon in the city, was taken in by her claims and even encouraged people to trust her - including her own daughters

Reputation ruined: Celia says the presence of Valdez has destroyed her business

Silence: MailOnline contacted Valdezat her home but she refused to comment on the allegations

San Francisco del Rincon is an affluent town of over 100,000 residents in the central Mexican state of Guanajuato.

An important industrial town in the production of footwear for major sporting brands including Nike and Reebok, extra disposable income has translated itself into a culture of cosmetic surgery amongst local women.

Its perfectly normal for a girl to receive breast implants as a 15th birthday present,' said Estefania Castro, 27, a local woman who has undergone three separate breast enhancement operations.

Guanajuato state attracts medical tourism from across North America and the region is filled with international cosmetic surgeons from Venezuela, Colombia, Cuba and the Dominican Republic.

Kastia asks no questions, charges rock-bottom prices and offers any surgical procedure you want, from circumcisions to facelifts.

Its no wonder she has been able to lure so many unsuspecting women onto her operating table.'

She was seen as a goddess when she first arrived,' said Margarita Fernandez, a local beauty therapist who has handled much of the fallout from Kastias victims. No medical tests, extremely cheap and no questions asked.

These women knew the risks they were taking from the start.'

I have little hope that shell ever be brought to justice,' said Dr Casillas.

Accepted: Its perfectly normal for a girl to receive breast implants as a 15th birthday present,' said Estefania Castro, 27, a local woman who has undergone three separate breast enhancement operations.

She would never be able to get away with this in the United States or Europe, but given that were in Mexico and any problem can be made to go away if you throw enough money at it, shell continue to harm innocent and gullible women for the foreseeable future.

All we can do is warn people not to be fooled by the false promises of cheap, hack-job surgery. If you want good results you either have to work hard or pay top dollar.
A Baltimore cop broke the neck of 25-year-old black detainee Freddie Gray by giving him a 'rough ride' in a police transport van, a prosecutor said Thursday in the first day of the latest trial related to Gray's death.

Officer Caesar Goodson Jr., 46, who is also black, was the driver in the April 12 incident that saw Gray suffering a broken neck and ultimately dying after being arrested for fleeing officers unprovoked in a high-crime area.

Goodson faces the most serious charge of all six officers linked to the incident: second-degree depraved heart murder.

Accused: Officer Caesar Goodson Jr., 46, is seen leaving the courthouse after the first day of his trial. He was driving the police van in which Freddie Gray sustained fatal injuries - including a broken neck - on April 12

Dead: Freddie Gray (left), 25, was arrested for fleeing police unprovoked in a high-crime area. His injuries (right) lead to his death on April 19 at a Baltimore hospital. His death in police custody sparked protests

The charge of 'depraved-heart murder' means that he's alleged to have acted with 'wanton indifference' to Gray's life - that is, he's accused of knowing that his actions would hurt or kill Gray, but doing so anyway, not caring if it would kill him.

In his opening statement, prosecutor Michael Schatzow said Goodson bounced Gray around by deliberately driving unsafely in retaliation for him yelling and kicking inside the van.

Goodson failed to follow procedures when Gray was put in his van while shackled and was not secured with a seat belt, Schatzow told Judge Barry Williams, who is hearing the case in a bench trial.

Goodson also stopped the van at one point and saw that Gray was injured, he said.

Gray's injures left him comatose in University of Maryland hospital, where he died on April 19, setting in motion protests and rioting in Baltimore and stoking a U.S. debate on police treatment of minorities.

But defense attorney Andrew Graham said Goodson had driven cautiously and Gray was injured because he thrashed around and stood up in the back of the van.

'There will be no evidence showing (Goodson) gave a rough ride or drove improperly,' he said at the start of what is considered the highest-profile trial in the case.

Initial testimony focused on training and procedures. Police Captain Martin Bartness, who had helped draft seat-belting guidelines, said under questioning by Schatzow that van officers were responsible for detainees in their vehicles.

In cross-examination by Graham, Bartness said that officers were not trained in medical diagnoses and that department manuals said that officers could use their own discretion.

Arrest: Goodson, who faces a murder charge, among other charges, is the third of six officers to be tried in the death of Gray, whose arrest is pictured here. Prosecutors say he drove dangerously, not caring if Gray died

Before the opening statements, Williams criticized prosecutors for withholding evidence.

Prosecutors had failed to give the defense material from a May 2015 interview with Donta Allen, who was put in a separate van compartment after prosecutors contend Gray was injured.

Williams said Schatzow would face sanctions. He ordered the prosecution to turn over all material to lawyers for Goodson and the four officers still facing trial.

Goodson elected Monday to have his fate decided by a judge, not a jury.

The trial of one officer in Gray's death, Officer William G. Porter, ended in a hung jury. His second trial is to begin September 6, 2016.

Williams issued an acquittal in the trial of Officer Edward M. Nero on May 23, 2016.

Officer Garrett E. Miller, Lt. Brian W. Rice and Sgt. Alicia D. White are all awaiting trial. Goodson is the only officer facing a murder charge.

Goodson faces charges of second-degree depraved heart murder, involuntary manslaughter, second-degree assault, manslaughter by vehicle (gross negligence), manslaughter by vehicle (criminal negligence), misconduct in office and reckless endangerment.

The murder charge carries a maximum sentence of 30 years in prison; second-degree assault, involuntary manslaughter and vehicular manslaughter (gross negligence) up to 10 years.

Reckless endangerment can result in a sentence of up to five years; vehicular manslaughter (criminal negligence) up to three years; there is no term limit for misconduct in office.
The troubles with kids these days ... are not as common as they used to be. U.S. teens are having a lot less sex, they are drinking and using drugs less often, and they aren't smoking as much, according a government survey of risky youth behaviors.

'I think you can call this the cautious generation,' said Bill Albert, spokesman for the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy.

Among a decline in several risky behaviors, a sharp decline in sexual activity stood out to researchers.

No sex, thanks: The survey found 41 percent on average said they had ever had sex, after it had been about 47 percent over the previous decade, a drop of 12.7 percent

Sex by state: The percentage of high school kids who had had sex has dropped, but highest rates are in the southeast

The survey found 41 percent on average said they had ever had sex, after it had been about 47 percent over the previous decade.

The highest percentages of students who had ever had sex, 41.9 percent to 48 percent, were concentrated in the southeast part of the nation, such as in Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas and Oklahoma.

It also found marked declines last year in the proportion of students who said had sex recently, had sex before they were 13, and students who had had sex with four or more partners.

The results come from a study conducted every two years by the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention.

The surveys included 16,000 students at 125 schools, both public and private. Participation was voluntary and required parental permission, but responses were anonymous. Results were released Thursday.

National surveys have seen a leveling off in recent years in the proportion of kids who said they had sex, after earlier declines.

That led researchers to largely attribute continuing declines in teen pregnancies and abortions to more and better use of birth control.

One experts thinks the drop in sexual activity may be due to kids spending more time inside using technology or being so comfortable with sex as a topic that they don't need to have it to rebel - or it could be a one-time statistical blip

But the new numbers suggest less sex is a factor, too. The drops are surprising enough that government officials said they'd like to see what the next survey shows to make sure it's not a statistical blip.

If it is a true drop, the reason is not clear why. 'We're trying to look at reasons why this might be happening,' said Dr. Stephanie Zaza of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, who oversees the survey.

One possibility, Albert said: 'It may be that parking at Lookout Point has given way to texting from your mom's living room couch,' he said.

In the new survey, about 42 percent said they played video or computer games or used a computer for something that was not school work for more than three hours per day on an average school day.

Beth Mattey, who until last year was a nurse at a high school in Wilmington, Delaware, suggested a factor may be how much more common it is for teens to openly discuss sex and sexual orientation.

'We want kids to have a healthy sexuality built around self-respect and self-esteem,' said Mattey, who is now president of the National Association of School Nurses.

Why would more discussion of sex reduce the amount of sex kids are having? One theory: 'Culturally we may have shifted away from sex being a taboo that adolescents would sort of reach out for,' said Beth Marshall, a Johns Hopkins University scientist focused on adolescent health.

The survey found the 30 percent of the students surveyed said they'd had sex in the previous three months, down from about 34 to 35 percent reported in each of the previous six surveys.

About 11 percent had four or more sex partners, down from the 14 to 15 percent seen over the previous decade. And about 4 percent said they'd had sex before they turned 13, down from 6 to 7 percent.

Other findings from the survey:

SMOKING

Fewer than 11 percent of the teens smoked a cigarette in the previous month - the lowest level since the government started doing the survey, when the rate was more than 27 percent. But the fall is not surprising - another CDC survey has put the high school smoking rate at about nine percent.

Fewer than 11 percent of the teens smoked a cigarette in the previous month - the lowest level since the government started doing the survey, when the rate was more than 27 percent

DRINKING

Just under a third had at least one alcoholic drink in the 30 days before the survey, down from 35 percent in the last survey and down from 45 percent in 2007.

About 63 percent had ever had a drink, down from 66 percent in 2013 and 75 percent in 2007.

VAPING

The survey for the first time asked about electronic cigarettes, which have exploded in popularity in the past few years.

It found about 24 percent had used electronic cigarettes or vaping products in the previous month - a much higher estimate than seen in other recent CDC youth surveys. CDC officials noted that the surveys are done differently, so a variation in the numbers is not that surprising.

Just under a third had at least one alcoholic drink in the 30 days before the survey, down from 35 percent in the last survey

TOKING

A little under 22 percent of teens said they used marijuana in the previous month. That's down a bit from the previous two surveys.

The proportion who said they had ever tried marijuana, and who had tried it before they were 13, also slid a bit.

The finding is considered mildly surprising, but is consistent with drops in the use of other illegal drugs like heroin (two percent), cocaine (five percent), ecstasy (five percent), and hallucinogenic drugs like LSD (six percent).

The percentage of kids who toke regularly is 22 percent, down a bit from the last two surveys - there have been drops across the board with other illegal drugs like heroin and cocaine

USING PRESCRIPTION DRUGS

About 17 percent of the surveyed students said they had taken prescription drugs without a prescription, in response to a question that listed as some possible examples painkillers like Oxycontin and Vicodin and ADHD drugs like Adderall and Ritalin.

That statistic has been declining, but is still alarmingly high, Zaza said.
Drug smugglers and dangerous individuals are a common sight on the landscapes of the Southern Arizona border.

And when police officers aren't around, farm ranchers are the ones that encounter them.

But now, they will have a new way to get help in emergencies: sheriff-issued radios usually reserved for police that connect them directly to 911 dispatchers.

So far 31 ranchers along the Arizona-Mexico border have taken the new handheld radios issued by the Cochise County Sheriff's Office.

Cattle rancher John Ladd holds his new radio issued by the Cochise County Sheriff's Department for use in cases of emergency near Naco, Arizona, about 10 miles of it sits on the international border

Drug smugglers and dangerous individuals are a common sight on the landscapes of Southern Arizona

The sheriff's office also has a team dedicated to patrolling ranch areas and an advisory group composed of law enforcement and ranchers.

Sheriff Mark Dannels obtained them through private funding in an effort to improve safety along the rural areas that often lack strong cell phone coverage.

He said the 2010 murder of rancher Rob Krentz led to increased security and more communication between ranchers and authorities. Authorities believe Krentz was fatally shot by drug smugglers.

'I don't think there's a better form of community policing out there than having them have a form of communication with us in their time of need,' Dannels said.

The sheriff's office also has a team dedicated to patrolling ranch areas and an advisory group composed of law enforcement and ranchers.

John Ladd, whose family ranch sits along 10 miles of the international border, says the radios will come in handy when he's out in remote parts of his ranch.

Ladd said that the illegal immigration landscape has changed a lot in the past decade. He used to see hundreds of migrants on his land daily, but that number is down to nearly zero now.

Instead, it's the drug smugglers and their lookouts who travel through his ranch. His house has been burglarized countless times, he says.

'If you live in the rural area, that's your big concern every day. You still have to realize that I can't just walk into my house anymore. I gotta look around and see what's going,' Ladd said.

Peggy Davis, a rancher about 25 miles north of the border, says activity has also significantly decreased but that it's not uncommon for smugglers and others to cross through her family's cattle ranch near Tombstone.

The 2010 murder of rancher Rob Krentz led to increased security and more communication between ranchers and authorities. Authorities believe Krentz was fatally shot by drug smugglers

Ladd said that the illegal immigration landscape has changed a lot in the past decade. He used to see hundreds of migrants on his land daily, but that number is down to nearly zero now.

'Sometimes we don't have cell service on areas of the ranch. I was just thrilled that we have other options,' Davis said.

Human and drug smuggling in the Tucson Sector, which comprises most of Arizona, have fallen significantly.

Fiscal year 2011 saw over 123,000 migrant apprehensions; by 2015, that number had fallen to a little over 63,000.

But as traffic has gone down in Arizona, it's picked up in parts of Texas, which have seen huge increases in the number of migrants illegally crossing the border.

The Rio Grande Valley Sector has seen a spike from nearly 60,000 apprehensions in fiscal year 2011 to more than 147,000 in the last fiscal year.

Border sheriffs in those areas say ranchers along the Texas-Mexico border have to be on alert at all times.

In Hudspeth County, Sheriff Arvin West says he has one officer who serves as rancher liaison to help with issues that affect landowners.
President Obama's endorsement of Hillary Clinton today was the catalyst for quite the Twitter feud between the newly-minted Democratic nominee and Donald Trump.

Clinton threw some shade at the presumptive Republican nominee  sassing at him with a commonly used meme  motivating disgraced ex-congressman Anthony Weiner and Reince Priebus, the chairman of the Republican National Committe, to jump in.

It all started with a very typical Trump tweet: 'Obama just endorsed Crooked Hillary. He wants four more years of Obama  but nobody else does,' The Donald wrote.

Hillary Clinton drove the internet crazy today by using a popular meme to dismiss Donald Trump's tweet about President Obama's endorsement of the now-presumptive Democratic nominee

Hillary Clinton, standing onstage Tuesday night in Brooklyn with husband Bill Clinton, has had a big week, locking up the nomination and receiving an endorsement from President Obama

Donald Trump ignited a Twitter fight today by responding to the news that President Obama had endorsed Hillary Clinton, who will be battling for the White House against Trump until November

Former congressman Anthony Weiner, who had to resign from office after a lewd photo Twitter scandal broke, probably had the best response to Hillary Clinton's tweet

Clinton, whose usual strategy is to stay above the fray, coolly responded with a trendy online meme.

'Delete your account,' her Twitter account read.

From there, Republicans pounced, bringing up her private email account.

'How long did it take your staff of 832 people to think that up  and where are your 33,000 emails you deleted,' Trump responded.

The presumptive Republican nominee was referring to how Clinton deleted all of the emails that she deemed 'personal' before handing the rest over for government transparency, a move that raised eyebrows, especially among congressional Republicans.

It was then Priebus' turn to join the fun.

'If anyone knows how to use a delete key, it's you,' the RNC chairman wrote.

Anthony Weiner, the disgraced former congressman married to Clinton's top aide Huma Abedin, and whose political downfall started after he was outed for sending lewd tweets, had his own contribution to the debate.

While maybe not as quick as today's Twitter war erupted, the Democratic primary is hurriedly being rushed to a close.

It was only this Saturday that Clinton's Democratic rival Bernie Sanders was talking about a 'contested convention' and flipping superdelegate support.

In seeing that Hillary Clinton threw him shade, Donald Trump brought up Clinton's email scandal that has plagued her presidential campaign

Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus also linked Hillary Clinton's tweet today to her emails scandal

Then, on Monday, the Associated Press, followed by other news networks said Clinton had enough delegates  when both pledged delegates and superdelegates were counted  to be the nominee.

On Tuesday she spoke before supporters in Brooklyn New York having just won New Jersey and then two other states. She then had enough pledged delegates to claim a majority.

Early Wednesday morning the race in California, where Sanders drained his remaining resources, was called for Clinton too.

On Tuesday night the White House applauded her for earning enough delegates to become the first female major party nominee, Obama would also meet with Sanders Thursday at the White House, a get together that was made at the senator's request.

Then today in rapid fire succession, Obama met with Sanders, Sanders said he was staying in, but likely only through next Tuesday's primary in Washington, D.C.

The president then threw his support to Clinton in a recorded web video.

'For more than a year now, across thousands of miles and all 50 states, tens of millions of Americans have made their voices heard,' Obama said.

'Today, I just want to add mine,' the president, who is eager to campaign with his party's nominee, said.

And, with that, the Twitter storm began.

The online conversation was a preview of the attacks between the two candidates that are expected to lay ahead.

It was last week in California, that Clinton seemed to find a stronger voice against Trump.
A barking dog has saved the lives of three people after alerting them to a fire that destroyed their family home.

A 67-year-old man and his two adult children escaped the blaze that ripped through their Acacia Ridge property, south of Brisbane.

The fire started at around 1am on Friday morning and spread to a boat that was loaded with diesel fuel.

'We could see flames from my house about two streets away, a lot of smoke and high flames,' a witness, who was woken by explosions, told 9NEWS.

A barking dog woke a 67-year-old man and his two adult children so they could escape the blaze that ripped through their Acacia Ridge property, south of Brisbane

Durack fire station Station Officer Owen George said the three family member were extremely lucky to escape after their fire alarms had failed to go off.

'They did have operating smoke alarms but because the fire was very intense downstairs there was little to no smoke actually in the upstairs area of the dwelling.'

The dog's barking woke the three adults as they were sleeping upstairs.

Mr George said the dog saved their lives 'without a doubt'.

It took six fire crews to extinguish the fire that destroyed the family's home of 40 years as well as a car and boat. Emergency services were able to save neighboring houses and stop the flames from spreading to the boats diesel fuel tank.

One nearby resident was woken from the blaze when saying she heard 'a number of explosions'.

'I heard a number of explosions, called my boyfriend and he came and picked me up and we could see flames from the property about two streets away. A lot of smoke and high flames,' Taylah-Lewise Sekulla-Collburn told 9NEWS

Durack fire station Station Officer Owen George said the three family member were extremely lucky to escape after their fire alarms had failed to go off

It took six fire crews to extinguish the fire that destroyed the family's home of 40 years as well as a car and boat

Fire investigators are examining the Caxton Street home to determine the cause of the blaze, but authorities don't believe it was suspicious

Fire investigators are examining the Caxton Street home to determine the cause of the blaze, but authorities don't believe it was suspicious.

Mr George said the home was insured and temporary accommodation has been sorted but the family were 'obviously distressed'.

'They've lost everything,' he told 9NEWS.
The Treasury's decision has been branded an 'outrageous act of bullying' and an 'attack on free speech',

An academic working as an adviser for the Treasury has been suspended from his Whitehall role after co-authoring a book criticising the EU.

Following that, Dr Radomir Tylecote was 'granted paid leave' from his job at Behavioural Insights Team  a firm contracted to work for the Government.

He wrote From Brussels With Love, an analysis of the EU's origins, with Maastricht rebel and Tory Eurosceptic MP Sir Bill Cash, chairman of the European Scrutiny Committee. Sir Bill said the Treasury's decision was an 'outrageous act of bullying' and an 'attack on free speech'.

Following that, Dr Radomir Tylecote (pictured) was 'granted paid leave' from his job at Behavioural Insights Team  a firm contracted to work for the Government

Crucially, he pointed out, Dr Tylecote is employed by a private company. As a result, he is not a crown servant, and not bound by strict impartiality rules. Sir Bill said last night: 'This is a man who is just doing his job for the Government and who is more than entitled to publish a book when he has told his employers explicitly what he intends to do 

'All this is an extension of the general attacks on Eurosceptics for daring to stand up for their country.'

Dr Tylecote, 34, has a PhD from London's Imperial College Business School, and a Master's degree in economics with Mandarin from Cambridge University.

Before joining BIT, he worked as a speechwriter in Washington DC and at the Policy Exchange think-tank in Westminster.

His work advising for the Treasury, on labour markets, innovation and trade, does not relate to the referendum or Brexit and he had been commended by bosses at the Treasury before his suspension.

Bit is jointly owned by the Government, its employees and a charity called Nesta.

BIT was set up by David Cameron, then formed into a private firm partially owned by the Government

In April, Dr Tylecote informed his employers about the book, written in a personal capacity. He told them he was writing it with a Tory MP, that it would be 'pro-Brexit' and critical of the EU.

The Mail understands he told them he wanted to discuss the book with them, but no objection was raised and it was published in late May.

On Wednesday he was called in by senior staff for questioning about the book. Within the hour he was informed by the Treasury he was being suspended from his economic advisory role.

His decision to leave followed a request from the Treasury Ethics Committee. Dr Tylecote has not spoken to the Mail and last night was understood to be consulting lawyers.

BIT was set up by David Cameron, then formed into a private firm partially owned by the Government.
Investment banker faces five years in jail at sentencing next Friday

think tank says Mr Curtis should instead pay a huge fine

Oliver Curtis should not go to jail for insider trading and instead the investment banker should be made to pay a huge fine, an independent think-tank has argued.

Curtis, husband of public relations queen Roxy Jacenko, was found guilty by a Supreme Court jury of conspiracy to commit insider trading last Thursday.

He is facing up to five years in jail and a fine of up to $220,000 when he is sentenced next Friday.

Scroll down for video

The Institute of Public Affairs says Oliver Curtis (left) pictured with wife Roxy Jacenko (right) should pay a huge fine instead of going to jail, after he was found guilty of conspiracy to commit insider trading last Thursday

The column's author Andrew Bushnall said that as a society, we should be debating if prison is the best way to punish Curtis (pictured left) and other white collar offenders

The Institute of Public Affairs published the column on Friday questioning if sending Curtis to jail was the most effective punishment for his crime.

Author Andrew Bushnall said that as a society, we should be debating if prison is the best way to punish Curtis and other white collar offenders.

He argued the incarceration rate in Australia has grown by 40 per cent in the last decade and prison sentences cost an average of $100,000 per prisoner per year.

'It's one thing to be outraged by Curtis and insider trading. It's another thing for taxpayers to be asked to pay for his punishment for the next five years,' Mr Bushnall said.

'White-collar offenders normally pose no physical threat to the community and generally have a history of prior good character.'

He argued the maximum fine Curtis may pay would barely cover the cost of sending him to prison.

'Curtis should have to pay a fine sufficiently large that it hurts him and communicates the public's outrage,' Mr Bushnall said.

The IPA argued Curtis (pictured right) should pay a fine sufficiently large that it hurts him and communicates the public's outrage, instead of facing a jail term

'Whatever their social status, nonviolent, low-risk offenders, should be given the chance to avoid prison.'

He said the proposed enormous fine, instead of a prison sentence, should also communicate to the financial industry that it needs to be more vigilant in policing itself.

'Combined with losing the ability to work in his chosen profession and the public shaming to which he has been subjected, a fine and restitution would likely be as effective a deterrent as prison,' said Mr Bushnall.

He then suggests if something stronger is needed, home detention should be an option for Curtis.
At least seven of the beach-side properties ravaged by Sydney's monster storm last weekend will need to be demolished.

Residents in Collaroy, on Sydney's northern beaches, have been told the majority of the ten multi-million dollar homes savaged by powerful waves and gale force winds in Sunday's storm face being knocked down, the Daily Telegraph reported.

The owners, who have not been able to get inside their homes since the storms because they are structurally unsound, have been waiting for engineers to assess the damage for almost a week.

Scroll down for video

At least seven of the beach-side properties ravaged by Sydney's monster storm will need to be demolished

Ten multi-million dollar homes were savaged by powerful waves and gale force winds in Sunday's storm

Most residents believed insurance would cover the repair costs and were shocked to learn that storm surge is not covered by the majority of insurance providers, which means they will be left to foot the bill.

Standard policies do not cover damage done by king tides, coastal erosion and storm surges even in the event of flooding, according to the Insurance Council of Australia (ICA).

ICA's Campbell Fuller said only a small number of policies on the market would cover actions of the sea under certain conditions.

'Home insurance policies typically do not cover damage caused by actions of the sea, such as coastal erosion, king tides or storm surges,' he told Daily Mail Australia.

Some of the affected home owners have threatened legal action against the council for not adequately warning them of the risks associated with living on the waterfront or building a sea wall to protect them.

Tony Cagorski, 55, lost 15 metres off the back of his $2.5 million Collaroy home when his entire back yard was swallowed during the ferocious storm.

The disgruntled resident, who bought the home last year, said he wanted to sue the real estate agent who sold him the property and the council which he claims had a 'duty of care' to advise about the potentially risky investment, according to The Australian.

Collaroy resident Tony Cagorski has lost 15 metres off the back of his home due to the storms that battered the east coast

The disgruntled resident said he was prepared to 'follow every course he can' as he threatened legal action against the real estate agent who sold him the property and the council which he claims had a 'duty of care' to advise about the potentially risky investment

Mr Cargorski and his neighbours are in negotiations with the Northern Beaches Council about erecting a sea wall in front of their properties

His home is on Pittwater Road where he and his neighbours have found debris scattered across the shoreline

Plans to build the wall were abandoned in 2002 after some residents claimed it would erode the beach

'Nobody said anything [about the risk]. The previous owners should have told us. I'm going to follow every course I can,' Mr Cagroski said.

'Councils have a duty of care to their residents. Nobody warned me. No joke. The real estate, the council, anybody. Nobody warned me,' he added.

Plans to build the wall were abandoned in 2002 after some residents claimed it would erode the beach.

But Northern Beaches Council general manager Mark Ferguson said home owners could have built one themselves and have no right to be compensated.

'We are not liable for any damage and home owners had the opportunity to build walls themselves,' he told the Daily Telegraph.

The council announced that it is planning on going ahead with the wall, which will cost around $10 million, and are in discussions with residents about how much they will be expected to contribute.

The council announced that it is planning on going ahead with the wall, which will cost around $10 million, and are in discussions with residents about how much they will be expected to contribute

According to the Sydney Morning Herald, the figure could be up to $120,000, with those who can not afford the lump sum given the option to pay in instalments.

The first of the demolition started on Thursday when a large excavator rolled on to the sand and started tearing down what remains of the iconic waterfront Beach Club.

Parts of the building started to collapse into the ocean as king tides battered the coast line, with the entire facade crumbling away by Monday morning.

The excavator made quick work of the Beach Club's balcony, which gave way as residents watched on and contemplated the fate of their own homes.

The building was erected in the 1920s however the part that is being torn down was built around 30 years ago.

Beach-side buildings ravaged by Sydney's monster storm last week have started to be demolished

A large excavator rolled on to the sand at Collaroy, on Sydney's northern beaches, on Thursday morning and started tearing down what remains of the iconic waterfront Beach Club

Parts of the building started to collapse into the ocean as king tides battered the coast line, with the entire facade crumbling away by Monday morning

Owners of the Beach Club in Collaroy have advised that the venue will be closed until further notice

Distraught locals watched on as they contemplated the fate of their damaged beach-side homes

The building was erected in the 1920s however the part that is being torn down was built around 30 years ago

The excavator made quick work of the Beach Club's balcony after it was significantly damaged in the storm

It gave way on Thursday morning, with piles of debris tumbling on to the sand

Excavators were seen collecting rocks and debris scattered on the beach after the ferocious storm

An excavator has been brought in to start reinforcing the unstable coast line in Collaroy

Large boulders have been strategically piled up while around 10,000 sand bags have been used

A man stands inside an area of The Beach Club which was severely damaged by heavy rain and storms

The entire facade of the popular event space was washed away by powerful waves

Distraught home owners have been patiently waiting as engineers assess the structural damage to their beach-side properties

An image captured by a drone shows the extensive damage caused by king tides during and after the storm

Northern Beaches resident Zaza Silk lashed out at the local council for not preventing the destruction, which has taken an immense emotional toll on her family.

Not only did Ms Silk lose her luxury pool and the back chunk of her property, the storm also swept away her dead mother's urn and the body of her recently deceased pet dog, Tin Tin.

Ms Silk recalled how she watched in fear as the menacing sea approached late on Saturday, with a video she recorded showing the carnage.

She returned on Tuesday to collect personal belongings and found the balcony of her in ruins and debris littered all over neighbouring properties and the beach.

'We may never be able to move back in here, now my home is all that is standing between the sea and the main road, it could be a disaster,' she said.

Ms Silk said the local council should have been quicker to act and put in place a sea wall

She recalled how she watched in fear as the menacing sea approached late on Saturday, with a video she recorded showing the carnage

Ms Silk returned on Tuesday to collect personal belongings and found the balcony of her in ruins and debris littered all over neighbouring properties and the beach

'We may never be able to move back in here, now my home is all that is standing between the sea and the main road, it could be a disaster,' Ms Silk said

Earth moving equipment brought in to help sure up the shore a 100m from where the other apartment was sand bagged in Collaroy

Residents from seven houses and a unit block at Collaroy were evacuated at about 8pm on Sunday night as eight-metre waves slammed the coast leading to major erosion

Residents from seven houses and a unit block at Collaroy were evacuated at about 8pm on Sunday night as eight-metre waves slammed the coast leading to major erosion.

More than 5000 calls for assistance were made to the State Emergency Services on Sunday and 30,000 homes in the city and on the Central Coast were left without power due to fallen trees and power lines.

Authorities were left desperately working to keep a number of sinkholes under control after they opened up on the Collaroy coast
The last time Maria Mancia saw her son Steve, the 18-month-old boy was in the home she shared with her husband Valentin Hernandez in Rancho Cucamonga, California.

But one day in 1995 she came back from work to find Valentin had disappeared - taking Steven with him. He didn't even leave her a photograph to remember the boy by.

She turned to the police, but their search seemed futile until Thursday, when Steve was brought into the U.S. from Mexico to meet his mother for the first time in 21 years, Highland Community News reported.

Reunited: Maria Mancia (right), 42, cries tears of joy as she's reunited with son Steve Hernandez, 22, who was abducted from their California home in 1995 and taken to Mexico. He was only found by authorities in February

Lost: Mancia's husband, Valentin Hernandez, took everything - including all photos of Steve. This photo, which she had earlier sent to her aunt, was the one image she had of him

One photograph from the emotional meeting shows Mancia weeping with relief as she hugs her baby boy - who is now 22 years old and taller than her.

Another shows him tenderly wiping a tear from the eyes of his newfound mom.

Mancia, now 42, had been having relationship problems with Valentin Hernandez when he disappeared.

But the cruelty of the kidnapping, which saw him taking every single photo and document relating to Steven, even his ultrasound, is shocking.

She even had to write her aunt in El Salvador to ask for a photograph of Steven to show the police.

'That became the only photograph she had of Steve for the last twenty-one years,' said Senior Investigator Karen Cragg of San Bernardino County District Attorney's Child Abduction Unit.

In the years that followed the missing children unit continued its investigations across various states - but they bore little fruit.

Meanwhile, Valentin Hernandez, who would be 54 today, vanished, presumed dead, leaving Steve without either of his parents.

But a breakthrough came in February, when investigators received a tip that a U.S. citizen called Steve Hernandez was living in Puebla, Mexico.

'We weren't positive we located the right person,' Cragg told the Highland Community News. 'So we used a ruse and told Steve we were conducting an investigation related to the disappearance of his father.

'During the conversation, we found several similarities in his history that matched that of our missing boy.'

But before they could make any announcements, they needed to be sure, and that meant DNA tests.

They managed to persuade Mexican officials and the Department of Justice to help them get a sample from Steve, which was checked against his mom. And on May 31 they had their confirmation.

'We contacted the mother and she was overcome with emotion and very thankful, she said.

'She had never given up after all these years, but had accepted the fact that she may never know her son. Maria never gave up, and neither did our office.

'Our committed teamwork paid off and we finally found Steve. To be able to return him to his country and his mother is an indescribable honor.'

Although Valentin Hernandez is believed dead, his death has not been confirmed - so he still has a $750,000 warrant in the system kidnapping and child abduction.
One of Britain's most senior education figures has criticised teachers for letting down bright pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds.

Sir Michael Wilshaw, the head of the schools watchdog Ofsted, said thousands of the brightest secondary school pupils were being let down by a 'chronic lack of ambition' among some teachers who are failing to stimulate their students' progress.

The chief inspector of schools has lamented the 'bleak picture of under-achievement and unfulfilled potential' among secondary school pupils.

Chief inspector of schools Sir Michael Wilshaw said young talent was being wasted at secondary schools across the nation

Sir Michael added children from poor and disadvantaged backgrounds were particularly susceptible to underachievement because teachers are focusing on getting GCSE pupils on the crucial C/D borderline into the 'top-grade' bracket, rather than supporting the most able to secure the top A/A* grades.

Sir Michael, who had a distinguished career as a teacher for some 43 years, spent 26 years as a headteacher in London secondary schools - most recently as Executive Principal at Mossbourne Community Academy in Hackney.

He is credited with turning the academy, which opened in 2004 in a deprived part of east London, into one of England's best performing schools which has sent countless students to Oxbridge.

It replaced Hackney Downs, which had been dubbed 'the worst school in Britain'.

He said: 'As chief inspector, I have consistently lamented the failure of too many secondary schools to stretch our most able children, particularly the poorest.

'If our nation is serious about improving social mobility then our secondary schools have got to start delivering for these children.'

Sir Michael, who is due to stand down in December, said there was a 'depressing' trend of the brightest children from disadvantaged backgrounds being the most likely not to achieve their full potential, based on their academic progress between primary and secondary school levels.

An Ofsted investigation found that of the most able children from poorer backgrounds attending a non-selective secondary school, 64 per cent achieved a top grade (B or above) in GCSE maths, compared with 81 per cent of others.

Some 66 per cent of students from a disadvantaged background achieved a top grade in GCSE English - well behind the 79 per cent of those who were not disadvantaged to achieved a B or higher.

The Department for Education said the Government's reforms were 'raising standards for all children', with 1.4 million more pupils in good or outstanding schools than in 2010 (file photo)

Sir Michael said: 'Our nation's economic prosperity depends on harnessing the talent of all our young people but especially those who have the potential to be the next generation of business leaders, wealth generators and job creators.

'As a nation, we have a problem with low productivity. The fact that so many of our poorer bright children are being deprived of the opportunity to fulfil their early promise must surely be one of the underlying causes of this.'

Sir Michael said rigorous testing in primary schools was key to helping tackle the attainment gap between poorer pupils and their peers, something he described as a 'national scandal'.

Calling on the Government to consider reintroducing external national testing for 13 and 14-year-olds, he said: 'I firmly believe it was a mistake to abolish these tests in the first place.

'If we are serious about helping all disadvantaged children, but especially the most able, to learn well and unlock their full potential, we need to know how they are doing at 14 as well as at seven, 11 and 16.'

Sir Michael (pictured), said there was a 'depressing' trend of the brightest children from disadvantaged backgrounds being the most likely not to achieve their full potential

He suggested schools should face 'further sanctions' if they 'consistently fail their brightest pupils'. Currently, schools can be placed under special measures if inspection reports identify areas of major concern.

Sir Michael said: 'This might seem draconian but unless we get this right as a nation, we will not only continue to let down thousands of our most able pupils but also thwart any ambition to match the productivity levels of our international competitors.'

The Government will be toughening up GCSEs from next year (file photo)

The Government has toughened up GCSEs and will launch a more rigorous grading scale of one to nine next year, which is pegged to international standards for the first time.

A five will be considered a good pass  between a current C and B grade  and a nine will be gained by only the highest achievers.

Ministers are also introducing a new measure of school performance across eight academic GCSE subjects including English, maths, science, languages and the humanities.

In a statement, a Department for Education (DfE) spokesman said the Government's reforms 'are raising standards for all children', with 1.4 million more pupils in good or outstanding schools than in 2010.

The DfE added: 'And like Sir Michael Wilshaw, we recognise that more needs to be done to ensure the most able children fulfil their vast potential.

'That is why we are introducing new world-class GCSEs that will stretch the brightest pupils. Alongside this, academies and innovative free schools, such as the King's Maths School, which offers young mathematicians and scientists the opportunity to study alongside leading academic experts, are giving every child the opportunity to fulfil their potential.
Jack Straw was last night mired deeper in the scandal of Britains involvement in the torture and kidnap of Libyan dissidents.

Prosecutors controversially ruled that no one would stand trial over claims that MI6 helped send two men back into the clutches of Colonel Gaddafi in 2004.

But for the first time, it was officially confirmed that politicians knew the UK was embroiled in the CIAs programme of torture flights. In a statement, the Crown Prosecution Service said there was supporting evidence that an unnamed suspect  known to be ex-MI6 counter-terror chief Sir Mark Allen  had been in communication with the Libyan regime over the renditions.

Jack Straw (pictured) was last night mired deeper in the scandal of Britains involvement in the torture and kidnap of Libyan dissidents

It added that he had also sought political authority for some actions, although nothing was ever written down. MI6 answers to whoever is Foreign Secretary, which at the time was Mr Straw.

It raises fresh troubling questions about the depth to which the Blair Government was complicit in the abuse of terror suspects and the scale to which UK involvement has been covered up.

Mr Straw and Sir Mark have been repeatedly accused of helping send Gaddafis opponents to unlawful secret detention in Libya, where they were mistreated.

But after a painstaking four-year police investigation into claims of British complicity in the CIAs torture programme, nobody will stand in the dock. Despite being presented with more than 28,000 pages of evidence by police, the CPS said it was not sufficient to press criminal charges.

Representatives of dissidents Abdul Hakim Belhadj and Sami al-Saadi, who were kidnapped along with their families, reacted with anger last night. Their lawyers said prosecutors attitude had been to see no evil, hear no evil and speak no evil and claimed the families had been denied justice.

In a statement, the Crown Prosecution Service said there was supporting evidence that an unnamed suspect  known to be ex-MI6 counter-terror chief Sir Mark Allen (pictured)  had been in communication with the Libyan regime over the renditions

Speaking to the Mail, Mr Belhadj  who was rendered with his pregnant wife  said he was disappointed that the people responsible would not be prosecuted.

He accused the authorities of crushing justice to avoid the embarrassment of powerful Establishment figures being hauled into the dock. I know pressure and influence was put on the court for my case to go no further because the evidence pointed at Jack Straw and Mark Allen, he said.

Mr Belhadj and Mr al-Saadi were handed over to Gaddafis henchmen in the same year as Tony Blair struck his notorious deal in the desert with the Libyan despot (pictured)

I believed in British justice. I believed in your justice for all, that people would be equal and not divided between Christian and Muslim, a Mr Belhadj or a Mr Jones; British or foreign. It should help all humanity. But political influence and interference crushed this justice. This is not about justice or truth, it is about politics and protecting the powerful. It is a cover up. In the eyes of the world British justice has suffered.

Mr Belhadj and Mr al-Saadi were handed over to Gaddafis henchmen in the same year as Tony Blair struck his notorious deal in the desert with the Libyan despot.

Crucial papers relating to their cases first came to light by chance when a cache of documents were discovered in the bombed-out ruins of the tyrants spy HQ during the 2011 Libyan uprising.

Sir Mark Allen, MI6s anti-terror chief at the time, wrote to his Libyan counterpart that delivering the air cargo was the least we could do for you.

The Metropolitan Police said its investigation, named Operation Lydd, had been thorough and penetrating. In a statement, the CPS said an unnamed public official  known to be Sir Mark  was investigated for aiding, abetting, counselling or procuring any offence of torture, and misconduct in public office.

Both Mr Straw, questioned as a witness, and Sir Mark have repeatedly denied any knowledge of so-called extraordinary rendition  in which suspects are flown from one country to another for imprisonment and interrogation, possibly using torture.

But Cori Crider, a lawyer for the two families at human rights group Reprieve, said the CPS findings were official acknowledgement that British officials were involved in this rendition.

She said: Sir Mark Allen took credit, in writing, for the operation. Jack Straw, we are told, signed it off. It is hard to escape the conclusion that this decision has a great deal to do with political power and very little to do with the rule of law.
Jeremy Corbyn has been accused of blocking any mention of immigration in Labours official referendum leaflet setting out its case for the UK remaining in the EU.

Furious MPs say the Labour leader was urged to include a section addressing voters concerns about immigration.

They warn that many voters in the partys traditional Northern heartlands are backing Brexit because of anger over mass immigration. Despite the warning the glossy four-page leaflet mailed to millions of homes does not mention the word immigration.

Pictured, Labour Leader, Jeremy Corbyn and Deputy Leader, Tom Watson take part in a community meeting at the Guru Har Rai Gurdwara Sahib temple in West Bromwich during a visit on Wednesday

One shadow minister told the Daily Mail: Loads of us told Jeremys office that immigration had to be included in the leaflet, but they didnt want to know. Its coming up on every doorstep, so its ridiculous that we seem to be ignoring it completely.

The episode echoes last years election campaign when Labour candidates were told to move the conversation on if voters raised concerns about immigration.

Last night, a spokesman for Mr Corbyn flatly denied he had vetoed any mention of immigration, adding: The leaflet reinforces Labours main messages about the dangers of a Tory Brexit and the threat to jobs and workers rights.

But the failure to address immigration in the leaflet will reinforce concerns that Labour is ducking the issue.

Shadow home office minister Keir Starmer said there was a growing perception among Labour voters that the party had walked round a problem, rather than confronted a problem.

He told the House magazine: What were picking up as we go around the country is the public  rightly or wrongly  think that Labour doesnt want to talk to them about immigration.

'We have absolutely got to break that and to make it clear that we are engaging.

Mr Starmer also took a thinly-veiled swipe at Mr Corbyns hard-Left agenda, saying: You wont find the answers to tomorrows questions in yesterdays answers, in recrafting, reinventing old ways of thinking, old theories, that are not relevant to the project ahead.

Many Labour MPs are alarmed at the partys failure to persuade its supporters to back EU membership

Many Labour MPs are alarmed at the partys failure to persuade its supporters to back EU membership.

Northern MPs report widespread anger about mass immigration from the EU, while some Labour supporters are said to view the referendum as an opportunity to give David Cameron a bloody nose.

Former Labour home secretary Alan Johnson dismissed suggestions that Mr Corbyns long-standing opposition to the EU was hampering the campaign.
Government officials told Iain Duncan Smith the chances of removing an EU citizen from Britain if they do not get a job after six months are close to zero

A law the Prime Minister relies on to claim he can control EU immigration is a sham, says the former Cabinet minister who was in charge of implementing it.

Government officials told Iain Duncan Smith the chances of removing an EU citizen from Britain if they do not get a job after six months are close to zero.

David Cameron has repeatedly cited the rule in referendum debates as a reason why the public should not feel worried about voting Remain.

But yesterday Mr Duncan Smith lifted the lid on how Whitehall knows the law  which has not removed a single jobless migrant so far  will never work.

He said officials told him that migrants can easily circumvent the regulations. And, in any event, the Home Office admitted it did not have the staff or the capacity to enforce it.

The former Work and Pensions Secretary said Downing Street knows this is the case  and is therefore guilty of peddling nonsense.

He added that Mr Cameron was spouting a falsehood intended to con the public. Mr Duncan Smith also:

NO 10'S 'COSY DEALS TO WIN BUSINESS BACKING' Downing Street has done cosy deals with big business leaders in return for them supporting Remain, it is claimed. Iain Duncan Smith said the full abuse of power by No 10 would become clear soon. He told the Mail: Its been going on behind closed doors. Downing Streets operation has been to mercilessly bully and flatter businesses. Business leaders have been promised all sorts of stuff. Last month, the Mail revealed details of a secret deal between Mr Cameron and the multi-national Serco to seek to scare the public into voting Remain. A leaked letter from Serco boss Rupert Soames detailed how, at a February meeting, they discussed mobilising FTSE 500 firms to campaign for staying in the EU. And in an apparent pitch for business Mr Soames told the PM the fact the private sector has only 15 per cent of the prisons market is a wasted opportunity. Advertisement

Accused No 10 of cutting cosy deals with businesses prepared to back Remain;

Attacked the sneering elite leading the Remain camp for telling the British public they are not good enough to go it alone;

Warned the civil service and Bank of England have been turned into pro-EU propaganda machines by the Government;

Hit out at pro-Brussels luvvies who do not like the country that is their home

Said No 10 is guilty of a cynical deceit over its pledge to cut net migration to the tens of thousands

In TV appearances this week, the Prime Minister and Chancellor George Osborne have trumpeted a rule which states that an EU migrant with no job in Britain after six months will be deported.

Mr Cameron has said it will ensure there is no abuse of free movement rules and is a better way of controlling EU immigration than voting to leave and wrecking the economy.

But, for the first time, Mr Duncan Smith  who was in charge of implementing the rule change as work and pensions secretary  reveals the official civil service advice is that it will not work.

The former Tory leader said: It is nonsense. I can tell you two things. The first is that it was me who set this up originally  before the Prime Ministers supposed reforms. It was me that actually changed the system.

Mr Cameron has said it will ensure there is no abuse of free movement rules and is a better way of controlling EU immigration than voting to leave and wrecking the economy

I changed it so that EU migrants could have three months waiting for benefits, three months receiving benefits and after that total of six months, if we thought and believed you werent seeking work or likely to obtain work, you should be removed. So I took this to the Home Office and said, OK, under the rules they have to be seeking work, they are not working  will you remove them?

After a while came back the answer, Cant, really, because we just dont have the capacity. So they practically cannot remove them first and foremost.

They said to us, Dont hold your breath because it is not going to happen any time soon. Asked if the public were being conned by Mr Cameron as a result, Mr Duncan Smith told the Mail: Yes. It beggars belief, really. I sat in the department over the business of six months and it is just not going to happen.

We kind of gave up saying it after a while. I stopped saying they will be taken out after six months.

CIVIL SERVICE IN THE DOCK C ivil service head Sir Jeremy Heywood has allowed it to become an engine for pro-EU propaganda, IDS warned. He said the behaviour of Whitehall and the Bank of England was unprecedented. Bank governor Mark Carney issued warnings on the dangers of Brexit, as the Treasury churned out reports claiming households would be worse off. Mr Duncan Smith said we need to have a complete rethink about the behaviour of the civil service they were manipulated into basically being mouthpieces. He added: I think [Mr Carney] kind of weighed in... and I do not think thats his role. Advertisement

I had to change it to say they are eligible to go if they are not seeking work. The truth is that, in law, as long as they can show they are seeking work, they stay. It does not take much to prove that you are seeking work. At that point, they can continue to take benefit and you cant remove them.

Second, the Home Office say the chances of getting rid of them at the moment is close to zero. This whole business about a reformed EU is just a nonsense.

The revelations will keep the referendum spotlight on immigration  on which Mr Cameron has taken a pounding over the past ten days.

Mr Duncan Smith delivered a withering verdict on the PMs commitment to cut migration to the tens of thousands  which he has never achieved. It currently stands at around 330,000 annually.

A year ago we stood on a manifesto that said we would get migration down to the tens of thousands, Mr Duncan Smith said.

Im old-fashioned. I believe if you stand on a manifesto you a) believe it and b) you try and deliver it. But it now turns out they have been rather cynical. It seems some in my party actually didnt believe it.

Well, I do believe it and the only way to deliver it is to take back control of your borders.

The former Cabinet minister also warned that the referendum is a battle for the survival of Britain as the public knows it.

He said: This has been a false debate  It is time the British public fully understood that if they vote to Remain they are signing up to a process  a process that takes them to a place where the UK will no longer be the independent nation that we believe it should be.

THE LUVVIES WHO 'DON'T LOVE BRITAIN' Luvvies such as Emma Thompson who bang the drum for Remain do not love their country, Iain Duncan Smith said. The actress described the UK earlier this year as a tiny little cloud-bolted, rainy corner of sort-of Europe, a cake-filled misery-laden grey old island. Other celebrities have since written open letters saying the UK is better off in the EU. Responding to Miss Thompsons remarks, the ex-Tory leader said: The truth is, all the people that support staying in  actually really dont like the country that is their home. They kind of sneer at it. I think this is the greatest country  We have an obligation to those great people that have gone before not to sell our country down the river to this ghastly bureaucratic EU nonsense. Britons are fed up with the Governments constant attacks on their way of life and sneering from the cultural elite, he said. Advertisement

Britain has to leave to save itself  to stop the risk of infection from what is going on in Europe. That terrible migration  problems with the euro, the problems we are seeing down the road with the serious lack of economic growth.

There is no mechanism for monitoring whether or not migrant jobseekers remain in the UK for more than six months. But, in any event, EU law forbids systematic verification of whether EU citizens are lawfully resident in the UK.

In 2015, 77,000 jobseekers came to the UK from the EU looking for work. Mr Cameron dropped a pledge to ensure EU citizens should secure a job before they came here.

Mr Duncan Smith will deliver warnings about the dangers of voting Remain at a Changing Europe conference today.




Nearly two million migrants from the European Union have settled in Britain in just ten years, it emerged yesterday.

Figures revealed by the UK Statistics Authority show that on average 535 EU citizens have come to live in the UK every day between 2004 and 2014.

It means almost twice as many European nationals have come here since Tony Blair threw open the doors to Eastern Europe as live in the whole of Birmingham  population 1.1million.

And the number is expected to have risen to record levels in the past two years as migrants continue exploit Brussels free movement laws.

Almost twice as many European nationals have come here since Tony Blair threw open the doors to Eastern Europe as live in the whole of Birmingham  population 1.1million

It total, 1.95 million EU citizens have set up home in Britain since 2004, when Poland and seven other former Soviet Bloc countries joined the EU. On top of this, some 1.49million non-EU foreigners moved here to live in the last decade  a total increase in overseas residents of 3.45million.

Brexit campaigners said the huge numbers placed massive pressure on public services including schools, hospitals and transport.

With the in-out referendum less than two weeks away, they claimed it was fresh evidence that the only way Britain can regain control of its borders is to quit the EU.

The figures will also make unsettling reading for David Cameron, who has spent a fortnight under constant attack over his record on immigration.

For the first time, the Office for National Statistics has broken down the increase in foreign population in the past ten years by region and local authority.

NOW EU BLUNDER TOTAL HITS 5,000 At least 5,000 ineligible voters have been sent polling cards for the EU referendum, ministers admitted yesterday. Cabinet Office minister Oliver Letwin said a glitch meant that thousands of EU nationals, and possibly some children, had been issued with polling cards. However, he insisted the problem had now been cured. But senior Tory Bernard Jenkin said the scale of problem could be greater than admitted. He said electoral registration officers had warned privately there was nothing they could do if ineligible residents claimed to be UK citizens because there was no way to make checks. Although it is an offence to make a false declaration, the Electoral Commission acknowledged that claims about citizenship are normally taken at face value. Advertisement

London has seen a rise of 633,000 EU residents as thousands sought to take advantage of Britains booming economy and find jobs.

Meanwhile, the South East experienced an increase of 214,000 and Eastern England  where migrants have flocked in droves because of an abundance of agricultural and factory work  rose 168,000.

By council area, impoverished Newham in East London saw a surge of 42,000 EU migrants  the biggest in the UK.

Alarming: Conservative MP William Wragg, a Leave campaigner who asked the Office for National Statistics to collate the statistics, said they were stark and alarming

It was followed by Birmingham (41,000), Brent in North-West London (36,000) and Haringey in North London (34,000). Conservative MP William Wragg, a Leave campaigner who asked the Office for National Statistics to collate the statistics, said they were stark and alarming.

He said: I am not against immigration; but I am in favour of controlled migration. The numbers we have had arriving over the past decade show that we do not have control of our own immigration system. If we want to get net migration down to the tens of thousands as promised then the only conceivable way is to leave the EU and put in place our own fairer, more robust system.

The Labour government totally underestimated the number of people who wanted to come here.

Lord Green of Deddington, chairman of Migration Watch UK, said: This is a stunning movement of population.

The reality is that if we vote to remain in the EU, we will have no means whatever of limiting such flows from whichever parts of the EU may be facing economic difficulty from time to time.

Official figures show that in total, including those who arrived before 2004, there are 2.9million EU nationals living in the UK and 2.4million from the rest of the world.
Abdul Hakim Belhadj (above) was a Libyan dissident who endured six years as a prisoner of the secret police of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi

Abdul Hakim Belhadj was a Libyan dissident who endured six years as a prisoner of the secret police of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi.

Unlike most of the dictators victims, however, Belhadjs delivery into this nightmare situation was facilitated by our own secret intelligence service - MI6 - and, it is said, signed off at Cabinet level by the government of Tony Blair.

Today, Belhadj lays the blame at the feet of former Labour Foreign Secretary Jack Straw and Sir Mark Allen, then head of counterterrorism at MI6.

Just before it emerged officially that no prosecutions would be brought against anyone for what befell him, Belhadj gave the Mail a dramatic interview at a family home in Istanbul.

Having been told by his lawyers that no further action would be taken, he said: I am shocked by this decision. I have no more trust in British justice now.

He continued: In public [the British overnment] said Gaddafi was a criminal, but behind the scenes they were working together. MI6 and the British government were supporting people that they knew to be criminals.

Jack Straw has repeatedly denied any knowledge of the rendition, telling Parliament as Foreign Secretary that there simply is no truth in the claims that the United Kingdom has been involved in rendition, full stop. Mark Allen also denies any knowledge.

A long-time opponent of Gaddafi, Belhadj, now 50, first fled Libya nearly three decades ago under threat of arrest for membership of an Islamist opposition group. He admits he travelled to Afghanistan to join the Western-backed jihad against the Soviet invasion. He says he met Osama bin Laden three times, but declined his offer to join Al Qaeda.

In 1995, Belhadj returned to his home country as head of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, an underground paramilitary organisation dedicated to Gaddafis downfall. But fearing capture after fellow members were betrayed under torture, he fled again. And so began almost a decade as a fugitive, in Iran, Iraq and Pakistan.

Prime Minister Tony Blair meets Libyan leader Colonel Muammar Gaddafi at his desert base outside Sirte south of Tripoli in 2007

He and his wife Fatima were finally stopped with fake passports in China in 2004, just as they were planning to seek political asylum in Britain.

Having claimed they had flown from Malaysia, they were deported to Kuala Lumpur and taken into custody. But when a Libyan friend of Belhadj who was living in the UK heard about his arrest, he flew to Malaysia.

Belhadj told me: He went to the British embassy and revealed who I really was. He was trying to help me, and did not realise what would happen as a result. At this point . . . MI6 became involved.

Other intelligence agencies regarded as friendly to Britain were informed, probably by MI6. One of them was that of Colonel Gaddafi who, three months before, had signalled a rapprochement with the West by renouncing the use of weapons of mass destruction.

Tripoli helpfully matched up a photograph of Belhadj taken in Kuala Lumpur with one they held on their own files. Unknown to Belhadj, it was our own MI6, and Sir Mark Allen in particular, who were claiming credit for the coup.

There was a letter I later saw [recovered from files in Libya] from MI6 to Musa Kusa [the head of Gaddafis intelligence service], Belhadj alleges, which said: I am going to give you a big game trophy. And that trophy was me!

On March 25, 2004, Blair (pictured) met Gaddafi in a Bedouin tent outside Tripoli to strike the deal in the desert. While the cameras captured the moment - Gaddafi told Blair, you look good, you are still young - Abdul Belhadj was a few miles away under MI6-arranged torture

Belhadj says when he was in custody in 2004 the Malaysians told him he and his wife would be put on a flight to Thailand and then sent on to London, but on arrival in Bangkok the couple were taken to a minivan, at which point his appalling six-year ordeal began. Here, he takes up the story . . .

The windows were blacked out and the men who got out were wearing masks. They were Americans, and they started to beat me even before they put me inside the van, Belhadj told me.

The first question they asked me was: Where is Bin Laden? Then they asked: When is the next Al Qaeda mission? 

He shrugs and spreads his hands. I had no idea of these things. I was not part of Al Qaeda.

t is believed that names and information Belhadj gave MI6 after being tortured were used in subsequent arrests of Gaddafi (pictured) opponents in the UK by the British authorities

He and his wife were taken to a black site - one of the CIAs secret prison and interrogation centres, used for the imprisonment and torture of those who had been rendered. After days of beating and interrogation, he was told he was going to Libya.

They put me on a stretcher and manacled my hands and legs. They blocked my eyes and ears and put a bag over my head. The same happened to his wife, who was six months pregnant. The couple were carried onto the same U.S. plane, and Belhadj was put into an excruciating crouched position, which he would have to maintain throughout the 17-hour flight. Even on the plane they beat me, he says.

The pair were flown to the U.S. air base on Diego Garcia, part of the British Indian Ocean Territory. It is hard not to assume - despite public denials - that the UK government had a good idea of what was happening on one of our islands.

From there, the couple were flown to the Libyan capital Tripoli, and taken to the secret police prison at Tajoura, east of the city.

After Belhadj was taken to a holding room, his blindfold was removed for the first time since Bangkok. The first person he saw was Musa Kusa - the feared head of Gaddafis intelligence service.

He was facing me. The first thing he said was: I have been waiting for you since this morning.  This was not the only piece of brutal stage management. There was a mob outside the room banging on the door and shouting: Let us in! Let us at him!  Belhadj recalls. Musa Kusa simply called out to them: Just be patient. 

After an hour of interrogation, the spy chief allowed the thugs outside the room to have their way. He was savagely beaten. Belhadjs first meal in custody was served in a dogs bowl and laced with pins.

So what of Britains role in all this?

A few days later, on March 18, 2004, a simpering fax was sent by Mark in London for the urgent personal attention of Musa Kusa.

Jack Straw (pictured) has repeatedly denied any knowledge of the rendition, telling Parliament as Foreign Secretary that there simply is no truth in the claims that the United Kingdom has been involved in rendition, full stop. Mark Allen also denies any knowledge

Mark is understood to be MI6s Sir Mark Allen, who in private life is a devout Roman Catholic and who has written a guide to preparing a child for First Holy Communion. Much of the fax concerned arrangements for the impending historic visit to Libya of the then Prime Minister Tony Blair. But it continued: Most importantly I congratulate you on the safe arrival of [Belhadj] . . . I am so glad.

[Mr Belhadjs] information about the situation in this country [Britain] is of urgent importance to us. By this, it is presumed he is referring to the presence of Libyan opponents of Gaddafi who had settled in Britain.

Belhadj was visited by intelligence officers from the secret services of America, Spain, France and Italy

On March 25, 2004, Blair met Gaddafi in a Bedouin tent outside Tripoli to strike the deal in the desert. While the cameras captured the moment - Gaddafi told Blair, you look good, you are still young - Abdul Belhadj was a few miles away under MI6-arranged torture.

Typically, he was suspended by the wrists, which were secured behind his back.

It was agonising, he says. He was beaten on the soles of his feet with cables and about the body on many occasions.

But conditions in the first months were not as bad as they later became. During this period, the Libyans wished to show him off to their new Western allies - including Britain - in the hope that those allies would help Gaddafi neutralise his enemies abroad.

Belhadj recalls: During that time I was visited by intelligence officers from the secret services of America, Spain, France and Italy. Musa Kusa gave me lists of Libyan dissidents around Europe to give to these guys and name them as [Al Qaeda] terrorists, he says.

He was also visited by what he says were British agents.

I met people who I believe to have been MI6 three times while I was a prisoner, he says. I had been given names [by the Libyan secret police] of Libyans living in England. They told me to tell the British they were terrorists and a threat to England. I told them I didnt know those people but they said: Just shut up and tell them the names.

Belhadj (pictured) spent four years in a tiny cell. By the time he was moved to another jail, he says his eyesight was permanently damaged by the poor light. He was not allowed to shower for the first 14 months

I very well remember the visits of the British. Once there was a woman with two men. One of the men had a beard and was strongly built. He looked like he was military.

When the British arrived in the room, the Libyan intelligence officers left. But I knew they were listening to what was being said. So I started to talk to the British through sign language. In this way, I told them I was being tortured to say these things I was telling them.

They made signs back to me to say that they understood.

They understood, but did nothing. It is believed that names and information he gave MI6 after being tortured were used in subsequent arrests of Gaddafi opponents in the UK by the British authorities.

Belhadj spent four years in a tiny cell. By the time he was moved to another jail, he says his eyesight was permanently damaged by the poor light. He was not allowed to shower for the first 14 months, and saw his wife Fatima and their new-born son once in four-and-a-half years. Five of his six-and-a-half years in jail were in solitary confinement.

By the time of the 2011 uprising, he had been freed under a deal with Gaddafi designed to quell the threat from Islamic opponents. Unsurprisingly, Belhadj joined the fight against Gaddafis regime.

When the Tripoli government was eventually overthrown, David Cameron arrived for a victory parade - and with the deepest of ironies, came under the protection of none other than Abdul Belhadj, who had been placed in charge of Tripolis security forces.
The cousin of 'Supergirl' star Jeremy Jordan, who was supposedly sent to a Christian boarding school to change her sexuality, is no longer there, the actor has announced.

Earlier this week Jordan's brother Joey started a GoFundMe page to pay for a lawyer to free Sarah, 17, who he says was sent to Heartlight Ministries outside Austin after she took her girlfriend to the school prom.

But on Thursday evening he Tweeted: 'Great news! She's out! In 5 days, you helped Sarah get released! ... THANK YOU.'

Released: 'Supergirl' star Jeremy Jordan announced Thursday evening that his cousin Sarah had been released from the Christian boarding school in which he claimed she was made to 'pray away the gay'

Campaign: Jordan (pictured) started a social media campaign to bring attention to his cousin Sarah's plight, and to raise money for a lawyer to get her released from what he says was enforced 'treatment'

Sent away: Sarah (pictured), was allegedly sent to Heartlight Ministries near Austin after she took her girlfriend to prom. The girl's mom said she wasn't sent there for her sexuality, but for depression and drug issues

A further statement on the GoFundMe page said: 'We are understandably excited by today's developments, and hopeful for what this means for Sarah's ability to live her life as her true self.

'And we are hopeful that one day soon all the other LBGT teens out there who face rejection by their families and attempts to "fix" their sexuality will be accepted for who they are.'

The page added that it was no longer requesting donations, and that the $64,252 that had been raised since it opened Saturday would be used to pay for legal costs that mounted during an attempt to release her.

'If there are any funds left over, they will be placed in a trust for Sarah to help her with life's next steps so that she can attend college and lead a normal life being who she is and loving whom she chooses,' it added.

A statement on the Heartlight Ministries website confirmed: 'While this young woman is no longer at Heartlight, should she ever personally choose to return, we would welcome her with open arms.'

However, the school added: 'The assertion that this teen was held at Heartlight Ministries against her will, or that Heartlight provides any "treatment" services for sexual identity, are categorically untrue.

'Heartlight is a residential counseling program for teenagers who struggle with a wide range of behavioral and emotional issues.'

Sarah was sent to the private boarding school on May 13. The GoFundMe page claimed she was sent there to 'fix' her sexuality and that she had tried to escape but was caught and 'punished'.

But on Wednesday her mother denied she was sent there because of her sexuality. 'My daughter would be heartbroken that she is being misrepresented this way,' she told the Austin American-Statesman.

'Categorically untrue': In a statement on its website, Heartlight Ministries said that Sarah was never held against her will, and that it does not provide services for 'changing' a person's sexuality

Girlfriends: Jordan put these photos on Facebook, commenting: 'My cousin Sarah, like any other teenager, loves a shameless selfie... Its just sometimes hers includes another girl... You can't see it, but the caption of the photo on the left reads "Merry Christmas from two kids in love"'

According to court filings, Sarah's parents - who have not been identified - say that she was sent to Heartlight on May 13 to put her 'in a therapeutic setting to help her with issues of depression, self-harm, drug use, and behavioral issues.'

They also add that to assume that Heartlight Ministries is 'anti-gay' just because it is Christian is 'absolutely repugnant.'

Those papers were filed in response to a suit filed by the girl's aunt, which alleges that Sarah's father and pastor both admitted that she was sent there with the aim of changing her sexuality, and add that she is vulnerable due to her issues with depression.

The lawyer who filed the suit on behalf of Sarah's aunt, Christine Andresen of CHA Law Group, told People: 'I can't comment on pending litigation, other than to authenticate that to the best of my knowledge, the background information on the GoFundMe shared by Sarah's cousin is truthful.'

Jordan, whose relationship to Sarah's aunt is unclear, created the GoFundMe page to raise money to pay for the family's lawyer, Christine Andresen of CHA Law Group.

'Sarahs parents, who believe that homosexuality is a sin and abnormal, sent Sarah away against her will to an East Texas Christian boarding facility for troubled teens to "pray away the gay,"' the page said.

Superstar: Jeremy Jordan and Melissa Benoist in Supergirl. 'I can't believe beautiful, smart, incredible kids like my cousin Sarah are still being told that being gay is wrong,' Jeremy wrote on Facebook

Family: Jeremy Jordan is seen dancing with Sarah at his wedding to Ashley Spencer in 2012

Plight: Jeremy campaigned for his cousin on Facebook (pictured), Twitter and GoFundMe

'My amazing friends & fans, PLEASE help us save my sweet gay cousin Sarah whos trapped at a boarding facility in TX,' Jordan tweeted on June 4. The hashtag #SaveSarah quickly began trending.

The 'Supergirl' actor, who plays Winn Schott on the CBS show, further added on Facebook: 'I can't believe beautiful, smart, incredible kids like my cousin Sarah are still being told that being gay is wrong.

'But it's worse than that for Sarah... She's been placed at a remote boarding facility to help "pray away the gay" for a year with no communication to the outside world.

'She may not be able to see it now, but please show her how much she matters and take a stand to help us free this wonderful young woman and welcome her back to a world of love and acceptance.'

In another post he added: 'My cousin Sarah, like any other teenager, loves a shameless selfie... Its just sometimes hers includes another girl... You can't see it, but the caption of the photo on the left reads "Merry Christmas from two kids in love."

'It BREAKS MY HEART this sweet young girl who's only "issue" is loving another girl has been sent to a facility for "troubled teens." News flash, folks, there's nothing wrong with her.'

Julie Moody, a spokeswoman for the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services, told the New York Daily News that she could not discuss whether the agency is investigating the situation but confirmed that the girl was at the facility.

Heartlight: Sarah was sent to Heartlight Ministries (pictured) in Texas. The facility says it does not offer 'treatment' for gender identity

School: The boarding school's website says that it serves 56 children and has 40 member of staff

No longer funding: The GoFundMe page that was set up to pay for legal bills is no longer accepting donations. Anything left over from legal fees will go to Sarah's college fund

In Texas, a teen who is not yet 18 can be remanded to a residential boarding facility against their will, says the page's administrator, Joey Jordan, also a cousin of Sarah's.

The page also says that Sarah tried to escape but was brought back to the facility and 'punished' and that friends tried to rescue her but were threatened with arrest by local police.

Sarah is described as an excellent student who was at the top ten percent of her class, on the debate team, and in the National Honor Society, and had been applying to colleges.

Sarah, whose surname was not immediately clear, is described as being cut off from her friends and family with no email, phone, or visitors allowed.

'Not only does this type of "therapy" not work, mental health professionals from organizations like the American Medical Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics have found it to be psychologically damaging, especially for minors,' the page said.
A customer affected by the recent string of Telstra network outages has playfully trolled the telco giant by posting photos of her cat to their Facebook page.

Thousands of customers have been left with no internet as the company grapples with its fourth network meltdown in four months.

Laura Carrie, from Sydney, needs internet to work and wants high speed connection so she can host Netflix parties.

So with the frustrating inability to do either, she decided to rekindle her connection with her cat, Kittie Smalls, and shared the renewed relationship with Telstra.

Laura Carrie (pictured), from Sydney, needs internet for work and wants high speed connection so she can stream Netflix. Without internet, she decided to rekindle her connection with her cat, Kittie Smalls, and share the renewed relationship with Telstra

'Usually I'd be slogging away on my computer taking care of my customers but thanks to you I can't do that anymore, so I'm having a night off,' Ms Carrie posted to Telstra's Facebook page

'Usually I'd be slogging away on my computer taking care of my customers but thanks to you I can't do that anymore, so I'm having a night off,' she posted to Telstra's Facebook page.

'Now I can't watch Netflix... so I have to make my own fun.'

'So I thought I'd reconnect with my cat, Kittie Smalls. Seeing as this night wouldn't have been possible without YOU I thought I'd share some moments with you.'

After 11 days with no internet, no work and no Netflix, Ms Carrie decided to take up yoga with her feline friend.

After 11 days with no internet, no work and no Netflix, Ms Carrie decided to take up yoga with her feline friend

'Guess what?! No, no, you'll never guess.... Still no broadband!' she said.

'This gives me yet another wonderful opportunity to continue the awkward journey of reconnecting with Kittie Smalls. Telstra Thanks!

'We're extra grateful today as we've started doing yoga. So, as well as rekindling our friendship, we're also getting mad limber.'

Finally after 12 days, Telstra told Ms Carrie she would be connected the following day - so along with Kittie Smalls, she began preparations for a Netflix party.

After 12 days without access, Telstra told Ms Carrie she would be connected the following day - so along with Kittie Smalls, she began preparations for a Netflix party

'This means Kittie Smalls and I, in our last night of awkward re connection thanks to sheer boredom, are planning a special party for tomorrow night!'

But the party flopped when the outage continued into its thirteenth day.

'Why Telstra?? Why do you do this to me??? Worst. Netflix. Party. Ever.'

A Telstra staff member responded to her post and said Telstra understood her frustration and promised they were trying to fix the problem.

'I agree. Worst Netflix party ever. Feeling for you during this very frustrating time,' they said.

A Telstra spokesperson said they were working to have Ms Carrie and Kittie Smalls connected as soon as possible.
She is described as Caucasian, 165cm tall, of slim build with blonde hair

Her family is worried for her safety and are desperately trying to reach her

She disappeared without her phone or a change of clothes

The 35-year-old failed to turn up to her partner's house for a day out

Family, friends and police are desperately trying to find a mother-of four who went missing more than a week ago without her mobile phone or a change of clothes.

Michelle Brebner was last seen at a house in Keperra, in inner-city Brisbane, on Tuesday May 31 at about 9am.

Ms Brebners partner, noticed the 35-year-old was missing when she failed to turn up for a planned day trip as well as contact a best friend who was going overseas.

Michelle Brebner, 35, has been missing since May 31 and was last seen at a Silver Top Street residence in Keperra, Brisbane

The mother of four children below the age of ten informed her partner Garry Genrich that she was going to have a few drinks with some friends.

But after going out on Monday night, family and friends failed to hear from her.

She had just got a new job and she was happyits not normal that she hasnt contacted anyone, Mr Genrich told Daily Mail Australia.

Ms Brebners car, a blue 2003 Hyundai Getz bearing Queensland registration 861TPT is also missing.

The police have been really good exceptionally helpful but if anyone sees her, the car or anything please ring because everyone is so worried, said Mr Genrich.

Originally from South Australia, Ms Brebner moved to Queensland a couple of years ago however her children still reside in SA.

Ms Brebner is described as Caucasian, 165cm tall, of slim build with blonde hair.

A spokesperson for Queensland police told Daily Mail Australia there are no grave concerns for Ms Brebner's well-being and she just may not want to be found.

Anyone with information is urged to contact Crime Stoppers.
The Wisconsin mom accused of killing her young daughter and two nieces in a horrific car crash because she was using the Facebook messaging app while driving suffers from amnesia and shouldn't stand trial, argues her defense attorney.

Kari Jo Milberg, 35, of Centuria, was behind the wheel in Decmeber 12, 2013 when her car careened into another vehicle on Highway 35 near 468th street in Prescott. Milberg's daughter Lydia, 11, was instantly killed. Her two nieces, both five, Clara Pavek and Laynie Jo Amos, later died in the hospital.

Kari Jo Milberg, 35, is accused of messaging on Facebook while driving, causing a car crash that took three small lives

Crash victims: (Left to right) Easton Milberg, 3, the driver's son, survived the crash, but Clara Pavek and Laynie Jo Amos - both five - died in hospital. Their aunt, Kari J. Milberg, has now been charged with their death

Kari Jo Milberg, 35, appeared in court Wednesday (above) and her lawyer argued that she has amnesia and isn't fit for trial - he also suggested maybe it was her 11-year-old daughter Lydia, who died, who was on Facebook, not the mom

Each of the nieces were the daughters of Milberg's two sisters, meaning all three women lost a daughter in the tragedy.

Milberg is charged with three counts of homicide by negligent operation of a motor vehicle and a single misdemeanor count of reckless driving, according to Fox9.

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Tragedy: Kari J. Milberg, 35 (left), was allegedly using Facebook while driving when she lost control of her SUV in December 2013, causing a crash that killed her daughter Lydia, 11 (right) and two nieces

Cousins Laynie, left and Clara, right, were inseparable and loved their older cousin, Lydia, 11 - all were tragically killed in the December 2013 car crash

Now her attorney argues that she is unfit for trial since she suffers from amnesia and brain damage.

Milberg was in a coma for an unspecified period of time after the accident.

Medical experts agreed that Milberg suffers from retrograde amnesia and can't remember the events leading up to the crash.

A state psychiatrist said that while Milberg is coherent and can communicate effectively.

Prosecutors allege that the mom was distracted messaging people in Facebook right up until the crash when she crossed the center line and was hit by a truck.

Her lawyer argues that it could have been her 11-year-old daughter Lydia who was using the app.

'Who was using the phone?' attorney Aaron Nelson asked the judge. 'No one in the car can testify as to who was using the phone.'

Scene: The crash, where three children suffered fatal injuries in western Wisconsin. The driver has been charged, accused of being on social media on her phone

It's unclear if the messages can be retrieved in order to determine who may have been writing, or why whomever received the message can't testify as to who he or she was messaging with.

The tragedy has divided the once-tight family.

Clara's father, Michael Pavek, once Milberg's father-in-law, sat in the courtroom on Wednesday holding a picture of Clara.

When Judge Boles, who must decide whether Milberg is fit to stand trial, told him to remove it, Pavek left the courthouse.

Close: Family members said cousins Laynie Jo Amos (left) and Lydia Milberg (right) were incredibly close

Milberg's young son, Easton, then three, was also in the crash but survived.

The truck driver, 24-year-old Jose Mendoza, and his two passengers were not injured.

Mendoza was not ticketed.

Police found prescription Oxycodone in Milberg's purse.
Teenagers may lose their virginity to sex robots in the future, a leading expert predicted yesterday.

Professor Noel Sharkey, emeritus professor of robotics at Sheffield University, warned that android sex dolls may have damaging consequences for society.

He said that just as the rise of internet porn took the Government by surprise, a similarly seismic robot revolution is on the way  with far-reaching consequences.

Professor Noel Sharkey, emeritus professor of robotics at Sheffield University, warned that android sex dolls may have damaging consequences for society if teens lose their virginity to them (file image)

Professor Sharkey, speaking at the Cheltenham Science Festival, explained that he was 'fairly liberal about sex'.

But he explained: 'It's not a problem having sex with a machine. But what if it's your first time, your first relationship?

'What do you think of the opposite sex then? What do you think a man or a woman is?'

He added: 'It will get in the way of real life, stopping people forming relationships with normal people.'

Life-like sex robot dolls with limited speech recognition are already on the market in the US and Japan.

Devices such as the Roxxxy (pictured), which come with an optional 'talking' feature, can currently be bought online for around 7,000

SEX ROBOTS COULD BE A BEDROOM STAPLE IN JUST TEN YEARS Sex robots could become a staple of the bedroom within ten years as the devices become more lifelike and affordable. As well as sex robots, 'companion' devices are being used to provide stimulation to elderly people in countries like Japan. Pepper, for example, is a robot that was created two years ago. The humanoid robot is designed with the ability to read certain emotions from analysing expressions and voice tones. Professor Sharkey said there was evidence that companion devices were also being use by parents to keep their children company. Advertisement

Professor Sharkey said these dolls should not be sold to under-16s, but would inevitably fall into the hands of teenagers.

He said: 'Sex robots are accessible now and certainly [will be common] within the next ten years. I think there will be an age limit. Certainly there should be, but if your dad or mum had one, you could sneak in and use it.'

Robot sex dolls currently available vary, but a variety called TrueCompanion  which comes as Roxxxy for the female model and Rocky for the male  sell for 6,900 in the US. The dolls can be customised and the firm offers a plethora of skin tones, faces and hair colours that clients can choose from.

However, truly autonomous robots that can 'think' and act like human beings are still some years away.

Another robot expert, Dr Kathleen Richardson, of De Montfort University, called for the sex dolls to be banned from being imported to Britain.

She told the BBC last year: 'Sex robots seem to be a growing focus in the robotics industry and the models that they draw on  how they will look, what roles they would play  are disturbing indeed.

'We think that the creation of such robots will contribute to detrimental relationships between men and women, adults and children, men and men and women and women.'
Dylann Roof, accused of killing nine in a South Carolina church, wants a judge not a jury to decide his fate

Attorneys for Dylann Roof, the man accused in the shooting deaths of nine parishioners at a South Carolina church, want a judge rather than a jury to decide his ultimate fate.

His lawyers have filed notice that they want to forgo a jury trial. Federal prosecutors have made it clear they will not consent to waive a jury.

Prosecutors have said they are seeking the death penalty for Roof, 22, who killed nine people on June 17 during a Bible study at the Mother Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston.

The trial is set to begin on November 7. Roof's lawyers also said he would plead guilty if the death penalty is taken off the table.

'Pursuant to this order, the defendant hereby states that he is willing to waive jury, and to be tried and sentenced by the court,' read the notice filed by Roof lawyers David Bruck and Michael O'Connell, according to USA Today.

Roof faces murder charges as well as hate crime charges as he reportedly admitted that he targeted those in the venerable church because they were African-American.

Roof's lawyers, David Bruck and Mike O'Connell, have filed to have a judge decide the outcome of Roof's trial, set to start November 7

The church is the oldest African Methodist Episcopalian church in the south.

U.S. District Judge Richard Gergel set the federal proceedings, in which prosecutors will seek the death penalty for Dylann Roof, ahead of a state capital punishment trial scheduled for January.

If a jury trial goes ahead, up to 1,500 people from across South Carolina could be called as possible jurors for the federal trial.

State prosecutors had signaled their plans to seek the death penalty last year, making the case a rare instance of a defendant facing the death penalty in federal and state courts at the same time.

State prosecutors charged him with murder and attempted murder, while federal prosecutors charged him with 33 counts including hate crimes, obstruction of religion and firearms offenses.

Roof (left) is accusd of killing nine people inside of Mother Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston during a Bible study

Jury selection in the state trial is due to start in early December, which could overlap with the federal proceedings. Gergel estimated that jury selection and the guilt and penalty phases of the federal trial could last six weeks.

'The most important thing is bringing justice to these families and this case as efficiently and as quickly as possible, still getting it done right,' state prosecutor Scarlett Wilson said after the court hearing in Charleston.

Roof's lawyers have said he would agree to plead guilty rather than go to trial if federal prosecutors ruled out capital punishment.

Defense attorney David Bruck said his client's offer to plead guilty provided the death penalty gets taken off the table still stands. 'Our plea offer has not been withdrawn and will never be withdrawn,' Bruck told the hearing.

Roof and more than a dozen family members of the shooting victims attended the hearing, held ahead of the first anniversary of the shooting next week.

A number of remembrance events are planned in Charleston, including a Bible study and service at the church and a service at the arena where President Barack Obama gave the eulogy for the church's slain pastor.
A French woman is facing up to five years in prison for pretending to be a victim of the Paris terror attacks so as to win thousands of pounds in compensation.

The 25-year-old, who cannot be named for legal reasons, pretended she was badly hurt when an Islamic State cell struck on November 13th last year, murdering 130 people.

She said she was in the Carillon bar, one of the first places hit by the Kalashnikov-wielding suicide bombers.

The woman, from the Paris suburb of Conflans-Saint-Honorine, said she deserved up to 16,000 compensation for a wounded arm.

The 25-year-old, who cannot be named for legal reasons, pretended she was badly hurt when an Islamic State cell struck on November 13th last year, murdering 130 people

A month after the attacks, she approached police, saying she had also suffered a miscarriage because of the bomb blast, and even presented a medical certificate supporting her claim.

In fact, no bomb actually went off at the Carillon  all those killed were hit by machine gun fire.

Despite this, the woman presented photos downloaded from the Internet that showed burn wounds which she claimed as her own.

Medical examination proved the absolute charade said an investigator from the Versailles judicial police, who said the woman was soon arrested.

She was also found to be pregnant at the time of the investigation, proving that she had not suffered a miscarriage.

The defendant has already pleaded guilty to fraud at the Versailles Criminal Court, where she faces a five-year sentence and a fine of up to 300,000 pounds on Monday.

She has since given birth, and will be sentenced alongside the doctor who forged the medical certificate used in the attempted deception.

A month after the attacks, she approached police, saying she had also suffered a miscarriage because of the bomb blast, and even presented a medical certificate supporting her claim

A parliamentary enquiry is currently underway in Paris into the November 13th attacks, which saw bars, restaurants, the Bataclan music venue, and the Stade de France all hit.

Modest preliminary sums have been paid to victims families, and these sums are expected to increase once the conclusions of the enquiry are published.
A Coles truck was spotted driving through the carpark of a new Aldi store in Perth this week in a bid at 'ambush' marketing to discourage shoppers from going to their competitors.

But the tactic ended up a bit of a fizzer.

A photograph circulating on social media shows a lone Coles truck a hoarding advertisement and the slogan 'even better, Coles' splashed across the side doing laps around an Aldi grocery store.

But the store is not due to open until July 2, WA Today reported.

'It was driving around in the car park, then came back about an hour later and it looked like two Coles workers started getting photos taken in front of it,' said the person who posted the photo, who was not identified.

A Coles truck with the slogan 'even better' splashed across the side was spotted driving laps in the carpark of its rival Aldi in Perth this week (pictured)

Aldi, which has stores along the east coast of Australia, jumped across to Western Australia, opening four stores this week (pictured)

Hundreds of customers (pictured) were seen queuing at the new stores in Joondalup, Mirrabooka, Belmont and Kwinana

'We didn't know what was going on, but surely they weren't stooping that low by trying to advertise Coles in front of Aldi?'

The man said he had also heard that the same truck was seen in the carpark of a Woolworths nearby.

German discount grocery chain Aldi is gaining in popularity and is said to be drawing customers away from grocery giants Woolworths and Coles.

German discount grocery chain Aldi (pictured) is gaining in popularity and is said to be drawing customers away from grocery giants Woolworths and Coles

Aldi, which has stores along the east coast of Australia, jumped across to Western Australia, opening four stores this week.

Hundreds of customers were seen queuing at the new stores in Joondalup, Mirrabooka, Belmont and Kwinana.

Aldi will open 20 stores across the western state by the end of the year, stretching along the south coast from Australind, south of Mandurah, to Butler, north of Perth.

Daily Mail Australia has contacted Coles for comment.
Deputy Assistant Commissioner Maxine de Brunner was criticised by a tribunal after a row which started when she saw an officer walking around in just a towel led to a case for sexual discrimination

A senior woman police officer who objected to a male colleague walking around wearing just a towel tried to punish a chief inspector because of his unit's 'macho culture', it was claimed.

An employment tribunal found that Chief Inspector Adrian Denby was unfairly punished for failings, while a female colleague in a similar position was not.

The hearing was told that Deputy Assistant Commissioner Maxine de Brunner, one of Commissioner Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe's closest aides, arrived at the unit that Mr Denby was in charge of, 'on a mission to drive out the macho culture'.

Shortly after arriving she encountered an unnamed male colleague in the corridor wearing only a towel around his waist, on his way to the locker room.

The tribunal in North London was told the encounter made her angry and she admitted it was her 'pet hate'.

It is believed Miss de Brunner was so incensed following the incident that Mr Denby, who has had nine commendations and previously had an unblemished police career, feared he was going to be removed from his position.

He was placed under investigation because of alleged malpractice by officers in his unit, including cheating on overtime hours worked and operating an off-licence from in the police station.

It is believed Mr Denby, who was placed on restricted duties and had promotion opportunities curtailed, was criminally investigated.

But it is thought that a female peer in another unit who also came under investigation was not subjected to similar measures.

The Times reported that a string of senior officers gave evidence to try to justify the treatment suffered by Mr Denby, but the judge concluded the force's case was 'marked by a lack of transparency', missing documents and lacking explanations.

The tribunal said Mr Denby's case was 'striking for its unfairness' and concluded that his treatment was down to his sex.

It found the Metropolitan Police guilty of repeated sex discrimination. A damages hearing will take place later this year.

The hearing was told that Deputy Assistant Commissioner Maxine de Brunner (pictured) was 'on a mission to drive out the macho culture' in the Territorial Support Group (TSG) unit in Paddington, west London

At the time of the incident, in September 2014, Mr Denby was in charge of the Territorial Support Group (TSG) unit in Paddington, west London.

The unit was struggling to recover its reputation since the death of newspaper vendor Ian Tomlinson at the G20 protests in 2009.

A spokesman for the Metropolitan Police last night said: 'The MPS took the decision to defend the claims made in this employment tribunal. Now we have carefully considered the judgment we have sought leave to appeal the findings.'

Channel 4 News claimed that of the 62 male officers who have made sexual discrimination claims against the police in the past five years, only seven won their case.

In the same period, 91 out of 374 female officers who made sexual discrimination claims won their cases.

In 2013, Miss de Brunner came under heavy criticism after it was revealed her ceremonial head-dress, a Napoleon-style hat with a black and white feathered plume, cost 660.

In 2013, Miss de Brunner came under heavy criticism after it was revealed her ceremonial head-dress, a Napoleon-style hat with a black and white feathered plume, cost 660

The Met defended the purchase on health and safety grounds, saying the headgear had to be fitted exactly because it has no chin strap.

She was also one of the investigating officers in the elite special inquiry team involved in the case of the former royal butler, Paul Burrell, who was charged with three counts of theft of Princess Diana's belongings.
An 18-year-old student has been arrested for allegedly making a threat that resulted in the cancellation of a Pennsylvania high school's graduation ceremony.

Colton Yeager, a student at Manheim Central High School, faces two felony counts of terroristic threats, the Lancaster County District Attorney's Office said Friday.

The Manheim Central School District had said that it was forced to cancel Thursday night's ceremony after receiving reports of a threat made by a student earlier in the day.

The threat allegedly referenced the 1999 Columbine High School shootings, in which 15 people were killed including the two gunmen.

Colton Yeager, an 18-year-old student, has been arrested for allegedly making a threat that resulted in the cancellation of a Pennsylvania high school's graduation ceremony

The threat allegedly referenced the 1999 Columbine High School shootings, in which 15 people were killed including the two gunmen

The district attorney's office said: 'On Thursday, police were notified that Yeager made statements that day about the 1999 shootings at Columbine High School during a graduation practice at Lancaster County Bible Church, 2392 Mount Joy Road.

'A student overheard Yeager making statements about the shootings and then confirmed with Yeager if that was what he was talking about. Yeager said he was.

'The student told Yeager, "If you are going to shoot up graduation tonight, don't shoot me."

'Yeager replied, "No promises."

'The student recalled a conversation in May when Yeager referred to himself as Eric Harris, one of the Columbine shooters.'

The Lancaster County District Attorney's Office said: 'The student recalled a conversation in May when Yeager referred to himself as Eric Harris, one of the Columbine shooters.' Harris is seen in a file image

The Manheim Central School District had said that it was forced to cancel Thursday night's ceremony after receiving reports of a threat made by a student earlier in the day. Pictured is Manheim Central High School

The district attorney's office stated: 'In an interview with police, Yeager admitted to making the statements at graduation practice.'

Manheim Borough Police Chief Joseph Stauffer told Pennlive on Friday: 'After a thorough investigation, no plot or plan of violence was discovered and we are comfortable having ceremonies tonight.

Stauffer told the website that: 'References to school shootings in any school environment are threats, whether spoken jokingly or not.'

Yeager's arraignment took place Friday, and he is being held on $1million bail, according to the district attorney's office.
His Facebook page has more than 2000 likes and discusses the Quran

He continues to work at Muslim school, Australian International Academy

Khoder Soueid has previously been connected to men who fought for ISIS

A teacher who connected online with men who left Australia to fight with Islamic State has been allowed to remain working at a prominent Muslim school.

Khoder Soueid was investigated by teaching authorities in Victoria for posts he published on Facebook that mentioned ISIS and the wars in Iraq and Syria.

After the six-month investigation, the Victorian Registrations and Qualifications Authority found Khoder could continue teaching at the Australian International Academy in Caroline Springs, a western suburb of Melbourne.

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Online Muslim preacher Khoder Soueid (pictured) who connected with men who left Australia to fight with Islamic State has been allowed to remain working as a teacher at a prominent Muslim school

A joint investigation by two Victoria's teaching authorities into Facebook posts by Khoder Soueid, found the teacher can continue to work at Australian International Academy in Caroline Springs, Melbourne's west

'The VIT and VRQA have completed their investigations and found no evidence of misconduct by Mr Soueid and that the school meets the necessary minimum standards,' VIT chief Melanie Saba said in a statement.

His public Facebook page has more than 2000 likes and was recently reactivated.

A recent post raised concern for the future of Fallujah, an ISIS-held city in Iraq. Other posts discuss teaching of the Quran.

The six month investigation by Victorian Institute of Teaching and the Victorian Registrations and Qualifications Authority, found Mr Soueid (pictured) had not breached conduct

The Australian International Academy (pictured), previously known as King Khalid, refused to comment when contact by Daily Mail Australia

A recent post on his popular Facebook page raised concern for the future of Fallujah, an ISIS-held city in Iraq. Other posts discuss teaching of the Quran

'Why is there a concerted effort against Fallujah? Fallujah is the city that has no women walking around uncovered,' his post read.

'May Allah protect Fallujah and its people from the plots of the oppressors.'

He previously told Herald Sun that his posts were to raise awareness of the 'plight of Muslims throughout the world', not incite violence.

It was also revealed the Islamist teacher was named in documents related to a young boy who pleaded guilty to plotting an attack last year, according to the newspaper.

The Australian Federal Police reportedly believe the 17-year-old used Soueid's Facebook page to get in touch with other people who had extremist views.

'Enquiries reveal he is an Australian-based Muslim sheik. Soueid has expressed sympathetic opinions in relation to the actions of the IS to Australian media,' the AFP statement of facts related to the 17-year-old said, according to the Herald Sun.

It was also revealed the Islamist teacher was named in documents related to a young boy who pleaded guilty to plotting an attack last year

Soueid (pictured) has previously been linked to ISIS recruiter Neil Prakash, who is suspected of helping to radicalise the two 18-year-old arrested over the alleged Anzac Day terrorism plot

Soueid has previously been linked to ISIS recruiter Neil Prakash, who is suspected of helping to radicalise the two 18-year-old arrested over the alleged Anzac Day terrorism plot.

Prakash made contact with Soueid, who has a large following of young men in Melbourne, via Twitter so the pair could communicate, according to The Age.

The Australian International Academy, previously known as King Khalid, refused to comment when contact by Daily Mail Australia.
Prosecutors in O.J. Simpson's 1994 murder trial didn't know that he had been taking arthritis medication before trying on the famous ill-fitting bloody gloves, former Los Angeles County District Attorney Gil Garcetti said Thursday.

Garcetti, who led the prosecutor's office during the trial, told ABC's Good Morning America that he learned about the medication from watching the new ESPN documentary: O.J.: Made in America.

'What we didn't know until I saw it on this film was that O.J. Simpson was taking arthritic medication for his hands and he was told, 'If you stop taking this arthritic medication, your hands will swell. Your joints will stiffen,'' Garcetti said. 'My God.'

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In a pivotal moment of the trial, OJ Simpson tried on both gloves found- one at the crime scene and one behind his guest house - and they didn't fit

Garcetti said, however, that he didn't think Simpson's lawyers were wrong to tell him to do that, but it 'ticked [him] off.'

'[His lawyers] did everything in their power. They got away with a lot,' he said.

Simpson was acquitted of murder charges for the death of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend, Ronald Goldman.

A key moment came when prosecutors had Simpson try on a bloody gloves found at the crime scene with the blood of Nicole Simpson and Ron Brown on it and they appeared to be too small.

After that, defense attorney Johnnie Cochran told jurors: 'If it doesn't fit, you must acquit!'

OJ Simpson head office prosecutor Gil Garcetti talks for the first time about the Simpson murder trial in ESPN's documentary OJ: Made in America

Garcetti said prosecutors Chris Darden and Marcia Clarke were never supposed to ask Simpson to try on the gloves.

'He'd probably been working out his hand, developing muscles in his hand, and we knew that the glove would shrink, right?' Garcetti said. 'It'd been in the elements. It's leather.'

The defense may have 'baited' prosecutors into the exhibition, Garcetti said.

Garcetti said he had expected to win the case in the end.

'We expected a hung jury and then the sympathy towards O.J. Simpson would dissipate and we knew we'd find more evidence' and win during retrial, he said.

Garcetti referenced finding the Bruno Magli shoes 'that [Simpson] claimed he never owned.'

Shoe prints that were traced to the Bruno Magli brand were found in the blood around the two victims.

Garcetti said he was stunned when former President Jimmy Carter, who was visiting Southern California, predicted a not-guilty verdict based on racial tensions.

Garcetti recalled Carter telling him: 'We all know he did it but he's not a street thug and you and I know he's not a danger now to anyone else, and many innocent black men have been convicted, some executed. This is payback time.'

Former prosecutor Gil Garcetti, left, says that Jimmy Carter predicted Simpson would go free and that it was 'payback time' for all of the black men who had been wrongfully convicted in Los Angeles

In March, the LAPD said it was testing a knife that was supposedly found buried in Simpson's Rockingham estate and found by a construction worker who gave it to a police officer, identified as George Maycott, 70, who then kept it as a 'souvenir.'

'It's complete bulls**t. But this is all they got. It's pathetic, really pathetic,' Simpson told a prison source. 'Let me tell ya'll something, I'm not that stupid, I got on a plane that night going to Chicago, that's all I'm gonna say.'

In the new documentary, defense insiders reveal how they took down all of Simpson's photos in his house that showed him with white people and replaced them with photos of him with black people for a jury visit (nine of the twelve jurors were black). 'He put up pictures he'd probably never seen before,' said his agent, Mike Gilbert.

'If we had had a Latin jury, we would have had a picture of him in a sombrero, there would have been a mariachi band out front,' said one of his defense attorneys, Carl Douglas.
A sniper in the Sydney siege could have taken a shot at the gunman 10 hours into the stand-off, and he told his seniors so at the time.

The sniper, who was in the Westpac bank on the corner of Phillip Street and opposite the cafe, raised the option of taking a shot at Man Haron Monis at 7.35pm, an inquest heard on Thursday.

Evidence presented at the inquest included a communication between the sniper and the deputy tactical commander during the siege.

Police pictured in Martin Place during the December 2014 siege in the Lindt Cafe. A sniper told the inquest he could have taken a shot at the gunman 10 hours into the stand-off, and he told his seniors so at the time

'He told me he had an observation of the POI (person of interest) ... and could take a shot if required,' the deputy tactical commander recorded, according to evidence read out by counsel assisting the inquest, Sophie Callan.

But the officer in charge of tactics during the Sydney siege told the inquest he did not believe the sniper would have had the legal authority to take the shot, because he would have had to have established someone was about to be killed, or seriously injured.

The officer, who for legal reasons cannot be identified, also told the inquest it was not until 4.15pm that police discovered the glass on the outside of the Martin Place cafe, which was formerly a bank, was not bulletproof.

The sniper based at the bank had a 'shooting solution' - meaning he believed he could fire through the glass - although options were 'limited and difficult'.

'It was normal glass but in terms of the shooting solution of a bullet in flight, it has an impact,' the officer, who is also the commander of the NSW Police tactical operations unit, told the inquest.

Pressed on the issue by Ms Callan, the officer said the glass, both at Westpac and the cafe, presented 'impediments'.

'But not to the extent if it was bulletproof?' Ms Callan asked.

The officer replied: 'That team believed they could breach that glass.'

The officer in charge of tactics (not pictured) told the inquest he did not believe the sniper would have had the legal authority to take the shot, because he would have had to have established someone was about to be killed, or seriously injured

The officer in charge of tactics during the siege also told the inquest on Friday that a plan to storm the Lindt Cafe was 'sound', and would have given police a tactical advantage and helped prevent the loss of lives.

At about 2am, three minutes before six hostages escaped and Man Haron Monis fired his sawn-off shotgun for the first time, the tactical adviser, who is also commander of the NSW Police tactical operations unit, was in favour of police enacting a direct action plan.

'It was a sound plan and it was able to be conducted by the personnel on the ground,' the superintendent, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, told the inquest.

Police stormed the Lindt Cafe shortly after 2am, about 17 hours after the siege began, when Man Haron Monis killed cafe manager Tori Johnson.

The gunman was killed by police and hostage Katrina Dawson died after being hit by police bullet fragments.

The inquest continues.

The officer also told the inquest on Friday that storming the cafe 'was a sound plan and it was able to be conducted by the personnel on the ground'
A thief wearing a 'beautiful flowery arrangement' has been caught on CCTV speeding off in a stolen car from a petrol station.

The car owner had left the keys in the ignition and had gone inside the Puma service station in the northern Darwin suburb of Jingili when the brightly attired thief made his move.

Senior Sergeant Garry Smith told Daily Mail Australia that the thief's fashion style isn't something he see's everyday.

'He's dressed very brightly in a beautiful flowery arrangement, it appears like he's wearing a onesie.'

A thief wearing 'beautiful flowery arrangement' has been caught on CCTV speeding off in a stolen car from a petrol station

The car's owner can be seen on CCTV filling up his white Hyundai Hatchback just before 4.30am on Thursday morning.

The thief wearing a long flowing floral dress around his neck and camouflage trousers can be seen hovering by the car and and walking around the petrol station, before going to a dark area.

The car's owner walks inside the petrol station to presumably pay for the petrol, leaving the keys in the ignition and the car door ajar.

The brightly dressed thief makes his move while the owner is inside, making a beeline for the car and drives away, as the owner runs out of the service station after him.

Senior Sergeant Smith describes the thief as a: 'A male aboriginal, dressed in what appears to be a very bright coloured and flowery type dress.

'I'd say he's the prettiest dressed offender I've come across.'

The car owner had left the keys in the ignition and had gone into the the Puma service station in the northern Darwin suburb of Jingili when the brightly attired thief made his move

The car's owner can be seen on CCTV filling up his white Hyundai Hatchback just before 4.30am on Thursday morning

The thief wearing a long flowing floral dress around his neck and camouflage trousers can be seen hovering by the car and and walking around the petrol station, before going to a dark area

The stolen car and the brightly dressed thief are still outstanding according to Senior Sergeant Garry Smith

The brightly dressed thief makes his move while the owner is inside, making a beeline for the car and drives away, as the owner runs out of the service station after him

The Senior Sergeant added that according to Australian Road Rules, a driver must remove the ignition key before leaving their vehicle if they're over three metres from the closest part and there is no one left inside or there is only a child or children under 16 years old left inside.

He says that in the Northern Territory motorists face a total fine of $80 if they fail to secure their vehicle.
Hillary Clinton is reportedly desperate to get a hold of a tell-all book written by a former Secret Service agent who helped protect her while she was in the White House.

Clinton's campaign went into 'war mode' after the Drudge Report linked to the book last week, pushing it to the top of Amazon's bestseller list for five days.

They have reached out to reporters and friends in the publishing industry in a bid to get a copy of 'Crisis of Character' by Gary Byrne before it is published at the end of the month, sources told the Washington Examiner.

The sources say that the Clinton campaign and its super PAC are also combing through public records in a bid to discredit Byrne, a 29-year law enforcement veteran who was dubbed 'the Mayor of the West Wing' during his time there because of his work ethic.

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Hillary Clinton (pictured) is reportedly desperate to get a hold of a tell-all book written by a former Secret Service agent who helped protect her while she was in the White House

The Clinton campaign is concerned about the contents of the book and desperate to read it after some details were revealed  such as an anecdote in which the former Secretary of State flung a vase at her husband.

The account 'completely negates' Clinton's claims that Donald Trump lacks the temperament to be president, the sources told the Examiner.

Byrne recalls arriving to work in 1995 to see the aftermath of a fight that left a light blue vase 'smashed to bits' and Bill sporting a 'real, live, put-a-steak-on-it black eye.'

He writes that the former first lady had a 'volcanic' temper and occasionally got violent with her husband.

Things got so bad that Secret Service agents had discussions about the possibility that they might have to protect the president from his wife's physical attacks, the New York Post reported in advance excerpts of the book.

'Everyone on post that night' couldn't help but hear the fracas, according to early chapters posted online. It describes a big argument that 'ended with a crash.'

Byrne writes that he saw the president at about 9am after the fight.

'I was well-accustomed to his allergy-prone puffy eyes,' he writes. 'But this was a shiner, a real, live, put-a-steak-on-it black eye. I was shocked.'

Gary Byrne, the man behind the expose, says he was posted outside Bill Clinton's Oval Office in the 1990s and that what he saw 'sickened him'

When Byrne asked White House scheduler Nancy Hernreich about the black mark on the president's face, she replied, 'Oh, uh, he's allergic to coffee,' Bryne writes she responded.

'I'm also allergic to the back of someone's hand,' Byrne says he responded.

The book casts Hillary as too 'erratic, uncontrollable and occasionally violent' to lead the nation, according to promotional excerpts for the book.

'Hillary Clinton is now poised to become the Democratic nominee for president of the United States, but she simply lacks the integrity and temperament to serve in the office,' writes Bryne.

'From the bottom of my soul I know this to be true. And with Hillary's latest rise, I realize that her own leadership style  volcanic, impulsive, enabled by sycophants, and disdainful of the rules set for everyone else  hasn't changed a bit,' he adds.

Byrne even claims he once threw out a White House towel stained with a woman's lipstick and the president's 'bodily fluids.'

Byrne, who was one of the agents who complained about Monica Lewinsky's behavior, says he wants voters to see the 'real' Hillary before they head to the polls

The book is set for release on June 28, but it jumped from obscurity to No. 1 on Amazon's list of bestsellers after the Drudge Report linked to it.

The Clinton camp has dismissed the book as fantasy.

'Gary Bryne joins the ranks of Ed Klein and other 'authors' in this latest in a long line of books attempting to cash in on the election cycle with their nonsense,' campaign spokesman Nick Merrill said.

'It should be put in the fantasy section of of the book store,' he added.

Former New York Times reporter Ed Klein wrote his own harsh indictment of the Clintons, called 'Unlikeable: The problem with Hillary.'

It detailed intimate conversations the Clinton camp says he couldn't have known about.

Former Washington Post reporter Ronald Kessler also described a fight between Bill and Hillary in his 2014 book 'First Family Detail.'

'Crisis of Character: A White House Secret Service Officer Discloses His Firsthand Experience with Hillary, Bill, and How They Operate' is set to hit shelves on June 28.

The Democratic convention, where Hillary could be confirmed as the nominee, will take place a month later.

A description of the book reads: 'Posted directly outside President Clinton's Oval Office, Former Secret Service uniformed officer Gary Byrne reveals what he observed of Hillary Clinton's character and the culture inside the White House while protecting the First Family.

'Now that a second Clinton administration threatens - their scheme from the very beginning - Byrne exposes what he saw of the real Hillary Clinton.

'While serving as a Secret Service Officer, Gary Byrne protected President Bill Clinton and the First Family in the White House and outside the Oval Office.

'There, he saw the political and personal machinations of Bill and Hillary Clinton and those who were fiercely loyal to them.

'In CRISIS OF CHARACTER Byrne provides a firsthand account of the scandals - known and unknown - and daily trials ranging from the minor to national in scale.

'Having witnessed the personal and political dysfunction of the Clinton White House - so consumed by scandal and destroying their enemies, real and imagined - Byrne came to understand that, to the Clintons, governing was an afterthought.

'He now tells this story - before voters go to the polls - in the hopes that Clinton supporters will understand the real Hillary Clinton.'

Byrne was one of the Secret Service agents questioned by a grand jury about Bill's encounters with Monica Lewinsky in 1998.

His expose is reportedly causing deep concern in the White House and its release comes as Hillary comes within touching distance of securing the Democratic nomination

According to the Washington Post article published on the hearing, Byrne complained to then-White House deputy chief of staff Evelyn S. Lieberman about Lewinsky's actions in 1996.

A short time later, Lewinsky was removed from her position because of 'immature and inappropriate behavior'.

He claimed that he saw Lewinsky in the West Wing of the White House when she was not authorized to be there.

The New York Times reported that Byrne also expressed concerns about Lewinsky's after-hours access to the West Wing, which houses the President's Oval Office and the work spaces of the most senior White House aides.

Since her husband's administration ended, Secret Service agents assigned to Hillary have slammed her behavior.

LIST OF CHAPTER TITLES Chapter 1 - The Vase Chapter 2 - The Air Force Security Police Chapter 3 - Club Fed Chapter 4 - To The White House Chapter 5 - Meet The New Boss Chapter 6 - The Boy From Hope, Arkansas Chapter 7 - 'Billary' Chapter 8 - Clinton World Chapter 9 - Oklahoma City Chapter 10 - Mole Chapter 11 - Wild Bill Chpater 12 - USSS Work Environment Chapter 13 - Tours And JJRTC Chapter 14 - Mud Drag: Part 1 Chapter 15 - Mud Drag: Part 2 Chpater 16 - *Commerce Firing* Chapter 17 - New Skies Chapter 18 - Cyprus (Source: Drudge Report) Advertisement

In investigative journalist Ron Kessler's book, he claims that agents saw her as one of the most detested assignments and believed her marriage to Bill was 'fake'.

It reveals how both current and former agents strongly dislike being on Mrs Clinton's detail, while also revealing how they felt about protecting Chelsea Clinton and Bill Clinton.

In the book, Kessler presented Chelsea as someone who not only respected and appreciated her agents, but also was a model protectee.

The former president is described as a difficult chief executive who is also easygoing in the book.

However, Hillary is exposed as being the complete opposite of her husband and daughter, and instead is reportedly very rude and acted nasty toward a number of agents.

'Hillary was very rude to agents, and she didn't appear to like law enforcement or the military,' former Secret Service agent Lloyd Bulman recalled to Kessler.

'She wouldn't go over and meet military people or police officers, as most protectees do.

'She was just really rude to almost everybody. She'd act like she didn't want you around, like you were beneath her.'

On another occasion, a member of the uniformed Secret Service once cheerfully greeted Mrs Clinton by saying 'Good morning, ma'am.'

'F*** off,' is how she replied, according to Kessler's book.

Kessler explained in the book that when Clinton is in public, she smiles and acts graciously.

'As soon as the cameras are gone, her angry personality, nastiness, and imperiousness become evident,' he wrote.

'Hillary Clinton can make Richard Nixon look like Mahatma Gandhi.'

His book also revealed how Clinton allegedly didn't like the attire military aides wore.

'Hillary didn't like the military aides wearing their uniforms around the White House,' one former agent recounted to Kessler.

Dan Emmett, who began covering President Clinton on his first day in office in January 1993, said Hillary was arrogant, never said 'thank you' to the agents and treated them like 'hired help'.
Australian men are soliciting vulnerable women for sex in exchange for free accommodation, sordid messages sent to renters on Gumtree and Craigslist show.

One man, who lives in the Sydney suburb of Mosman, asked what favours a new tenant might be willing to provide for him, in a conversation with an unnamed woman on Craigslist.

'If I could provide a room for free what favours would you be able to provide?'

'What do u look like and what are you happy to do?' the man said.

One man even expected that a tenant would 'cook for me and massage me for 1 hour after training.'

Sordid messages show that men expect women to cook for them or to give massages in exchange for accommodation

Men would consider giving free accommodation to women depending on what they looked like and what they were 'happy to do'

The men have offered women these kind of unsavoury arrangements on websites like Craigslist and Gumtree

Another man said on Gumtree that he'd be happy to house a female tenant, as long as she was happy to share a single room.

The man also said that he had a number of women viewing his place and that he'd be able to choose a tenant after deciding who he found most attractive.

'I haven't decided yet, (you) may not be that cute,' the man said.

Some men suggest that they screen multiple women at the same time to select the most attractive tenant

Though most of the messages express an interest in sex, cooking and cleaning were also accepted as payment for housing.

'I can offer you a temporary place to stay if you can help me cook and clean,' said one man in North Sydney.

'You don't have to pay in money just help me with house work, can you please tell a bit more about yourself?'

Another man said that a tenant could stay for free if she 'looked after' him.

'I'm Rob im 39 single and need good woman. I live in Western Sydney you look after me you stay for free if you like.'

Though most of the men expect sex in exchange for accommodation some ask to be 'looked after'

Tenants services have suggested that renters should always get a written agreement with their landlord



Professor Bill Randolph, of the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute, says the phenomenon is driven by expensive housing costs and the anonymity offered by the internet.

'Years ago, you couldn't have this kind of access to people and be hidden.'

'Now, this is the opportunity for people to exploit the vulnerable, who desperately need housing they can afford,' Professor Randolph said to Domain.

The Northern Sydney Area Tenants Service, (NSATS) said that there were a number of ways that renters could ensure their safety.

'New or inexperienced renters should always make sure that they get a written agreement with their landlord.'

'The agreement should include the names of the parties, the address of the property and a description of the part of the property they will occupy, the rent payable, the start and end dates, and the agreement should be signed by both parties,' the organisation said to newspaper the North Sydney Notices.
Schools minister Nick Gibb said he was 'disappointed' by last month's ruling and instructed schools to continue applying the regulations

Head teachers have been ordered to ignore a High Court ruling that overturned fines imposed on parents for taking children on term-time holidays.

Schools minister Nick Gibb said he was 'disappointed' by last month's ruling and instructed schools to continue applying the regulations.

Thousands of families have paid fines after a Government crackdown on unauthorised absence in 2013.

But last month Isle of Wight father Jon Platt won a landmark case that exonerated him for refusing to pay a 120 fine for taking his daughter out of classes for a holiday to Florida.

He argued that the law requires only 'regular' attendance, not attendance every day.

The ruling was interpreted as a green light for parents to organise term-time holidays  which are much cheaper than holidays during school breaks  without fear of punishment, but yesterday the Government claimed this was not the case.

Mr Gibb wrote: 'The High Court's judgment did not establish a hard and fast rule. Instead a decision will have to depend on the facts of each case.'

Following the minister's intervention, Isle of Wight Council announced it would appeal the High Court's decision.

Department for Education rules mean head teachers can authorise term-time absence only in 'exceptional circumstances', such as funerals.

Previously they had discretion to grant up to two weeks of absence for pupils with good attendance records.

Mr Platt posted on Facebook last night: 'Isle of Wight Council have announced an appeal to the Supreme Court.

'This is absolutely outrageous. A huge waste of taxpayers' money on an issue that is beyond any doubt.'
Melbourne tenants who listed their rented apartment on Airbnb broke their own lease agreement by doing so, a court has ruled.

Supreme Court Justice Clyde Croft's finding on Friday comes after a battle between the owner of a St Kilda apartment, Catherine Swan, and her two tenants, former ABC executive Barbara Uecker and Michael Greaves.

The fight went to the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal after Ms Swan tried to kick the pair out of her apartment in January because they had listed it as available on the popular short-stay website.

Melbourne tenants who listed their rented St Kilda apartment (pictured) on Airbnb broke their own lease agreement by doing so

Supreme Court Justice Clyde Croft ruled on Friday in favour of landlord Catherine Swan (right), evicting tenants Michael Greaves and former ABC executive Barbara Uecker (left)

VCAT ruled in the tenants' favour, finding Airbnb listings - for a room or entire apartment - should be classed as a licence, rather than a lease, as guests didn't have exclusive possession of the property.

Ms Uecker and Mr Greaves were charging guests $74 a night to stay in the two bedroom apartment they described as an 'Art Deco Treetop Escape' in the 'Paris End' of Fitzroy Street.

Ms Swan launched an appeal in the Supreme Court, where her lawyer, Jason Pizer QC, argued listing an entire apartment was effectively leasing it.

Ms Swan tried to evict the pair out of her apartment (pictured) in January after finding it on the popular short-stay website for $74 a night

The fight went to the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal after Ms Swan tried to kick the pair out but the VCAT ruled in the tenants' favour

The court ruled in her favour.

Justice Clyde Croft found that by entering into the Airbnb agreement, Ms Uecker and Mr Greaves were subletting the apartment and subsequently breaching the provisions of their own lease.

In handing down his findings Justice Croft warned against using this appeal as some sort of test case for the legality of Airbnb in Victoria.

Ms Swan launched an appeal in the Supreme Court, where her lawyer, Jason Pizer QC, argued listing an entire apartment (pictured) was effectively leasing it

Justice Clyde Croft found that by entering into the Airbnb agreement, Ms Uecker and Mr Greaves were subletting the apartment (pictured) and subsequently breaching the provisions of their own lease

Justice Croft said the appeal was about the particular circumstances of this lease.

Ms Swam will take possession of the apartment again.

She told The Sydney Morning Herald that she was 'very pleased' with the ruling.

'It gives landlords like me confidence that the persons they lease the property to are the persons who will be living there,' she said.

Ms Swan said she will be altering the lease for the apartment banning any 'house sharing.'
House Speaker Paul Ryan said Thursday afternoon on MSNBC that even though Donald Trump is still rough around the edges, the GOP needs to make its peace with the idea of the billionaire as its standard bearer.

But hours later in an ABC News interview he pivoted in a more aggressive direction, calling Trump's recent comments questioning the objectivity of a Hispanic federal judge 'beyond the pale' and 'something that needed to be condemned.'

Speaking with MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell, Ryan suggested that November is far enough away for Trump to overcome the unforced error.

'Look, I think there is no justifying those comments and I was very clear about that,' Ryan said. 'And I think we all  everybody, not just Republicans  should disavow comments like that and I am glad he walked it back.'

But like it or not, Ryan hinted, the Grand old Party seems stuck with Trump.

IT'S ALL BAD: Paul Ryan told ABC News on Thursday that Donald Trump's comments about a Mexican-American judge were 'beyond the pale' and 'something that needed to be condemned'

IT's ALL GOOD: On the same afternoon, Ryan painted tensions between Trump and congressional Republcans as just part of the ordinary checks and balances of government

'He has a ways to go to give us a campaign we can all be proud of,' he said, 'but it's really clear with me we have one of two choices: Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump.'

'He won the delegates. He won fair and square. He won 1,237 delegates, this what you have to do to win the nomination of our party.'

In excerpts ABC released from Ryan's sit-down with George Stephanopoulos, however, Ryan sounded like a man running out of patience.

'Suggesting that a person can't do their job because of their race or ethnicity, that's not a politically incorrect thing to do,' he said. 'That's just a wrong thing to say.'

The Daily Caller reported late Thursday that one possible reason for Ryan's noncommittal vacillation on Trump is that he himself wants to run for president in 2020. Having Trump in the White House next year would make that all but impossible.

That report was based on conversations with an unnamed longtime GOP donor who attended a New York campaign financing event with Trump earlier in the day.

Ryan was the GOP's 2012 vice presidential nominee, losing the election alongside Mitt Romney.

Ryan told MSNBC that House Republicans' newly minted national security strategy will clash with some of the billionaire real estate magnate's more radioactive policies.

'We do have some difference of opinions on those things,' he said. 'Thats fine, that is the way it works between Congress and the president.'

He shied away from a confrontation on the topic of Trump's proposed wall between the U.S. and Mexico, however.

NOT POLITICALLY INCORRECT: Ryan told ABC of Trump that 'suggesting that a person can't do their job because of their race or ethnicity [is] a wrong thing to say'

POLITICALLY WORKABLE: He told MSNBC that setting walls and other details aside, 'securing our border is something that is in our national security interest'

'We can debate how best to secure the border,' said a diplomatic Ryan, 'but securing our border is something that is in our national security interest.'

'We think, yeah, we should listen to our experts on the border. There are a lot of things you need to do to actually secure the border.'

Ryan also put considerable daylight between his caucus and Trump on the question of temporarily halting non-citizen Muslims from entering the United States. Trump proposed such a measure six months ago in the wake of a terror attack in San Bernardino, California, but later said it was 'just a suggestion.'

'I dont support that policy as well,' Ryan said. 'I dont think we should have a religious test on anyone. I think we should have a security test on people coming to this country.'

Ryan struggled Tuesday to justify his endorsement of Trump just five days earlier, telling reporters that the Republican presidential candidate's recent criticism of a Hispanic judge 'is sort of like a textbook definition of a racist comment.'

Ryan said he would 'not attempt to try and defend the indefensible,' but insisted that sending Hillary Clinton to the White House was not 'the answer' to a growing divide between the Trump campaign and centrist lawmakers on Capitol Hill.

Ryan clobbered Trump on Tuesday over his 'racist' complaints about a Hispanic federal judge but insisted Republicans would be better off casting their lot with Trump than with Hillary Clinton

Beginning on May 27 during a speech in San Diego, California  the city where Curiel hears cases in federal court  Trump has accused the him of being incapable of judging him fairly because he is of Mexican descent and Trump plans to wall off Mexico from the U.S. if he's president.

'I disavow these comments. I regret those comments that he made,' Ryan said Tuesday.

'I don't think  claiming someone cannot do their job because of their race is sort of like a textbook definition of a racist comment. I think that should be absolutely disavowed. It's absolutely unacceptable.'

'But do I believe that Hillary Clinton is the answer? No, I do not,' he added, explaining that Republicans in Congress 'have more likelihood of getting our policies enacted with him than we do with her.'

'But I do absolutely disavow those comments. I think they're wrong, I don't think they're right-headed, and the thinking behind them is something I don't even personally relate to.'

Chris Christie, the New Jersey governor who was among Trump's earliest high-profile endorsers, rushed to his aid shortly after Ryan made his brief comments

Ryan said he wouldn't 'defend the indefensible' but pledged to help the GOP solidify its congressional majority in spite of Trump's 'racist' comments

Asked how he could continue to support a presidential candidate whom he had just accused of racism, Ryan threaded a rhetorical needle.

'I don't know what's in his heart,' he declared. 'But I think the comment itself is defined that way.'

'So I am not going to defend these kinds of comments, because they're indefensible. I'm going to defend our ideas. I'm going to defend our majority.'

'I see it as my job as Speaker of the House to help keep our party unified,' Ryan said, forecasting that 'if we go into the fall as a divided party, we are doomed to lose.'

Later in the day on Fox News Radio's 'Kilmeade & Friends,' Ryan told host Brian Kilmeade that he wasn't judging Trump personally  only the words he chose.

'No, Im not,' he replied when Kilmeade asked if he was saying Trump is racist. 'Im saying that the comment was.'

'I dont know whats in his heart. I cant speak to that whatsoever. What Im saying is to suggest that a persons race disqualifies them to do their job is "textbook." Thats what Im saying.'
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The Australian Outback can be a lonely place, but a male kangaroo and his female pig companion appear to have found a solution.

Photographs of the two animals show they are extremely intimate friends, and the farmer who owns the pig says they have been in a relationship for a year.

Sydney-based PhD candidate Ryan Frazer said he found the couple getting very cosy as he passed by a paddock in Aileron, near Alice Springs in the Northern Territory, during a research trip.

He took a series of photographs, which show the kangaroo cuddling up to the female pig - whose name is Apples - by placing his paws on both sides of the animal while crouched in front of her - as if the two animals were hugging. There were also two geese in the paddock, and one watched on from up close.

A Sydney student photographed a kangaroo and a pig getting intimate while on a research trip to the Northern Territory

After a few minutes, the kangaroo 'worked himself up and went for it', Sydney-based PhD candidate Ryan Frazer

Mr Frazer said when the kangaroo was 'finished' the pig tried to jump on his back to 'reciprocate'

After a few minutes, the kangaroo 'worked himself up and went for it', Mr Frazer said.

'I didn't even know it was possible,' he told Daily Mail Australia.

'The animals saw us ... we met them at the fence and they just stood together in front of us.

'The kangaroo was ripped, a bit aggressive, huffing a bit. But the pig stayed with him, nuzzling under his arm, and the kangaroo was hugging the pig for a while.'

A kangaroo and a pig have been photographed having sex in a paddock in outback Australia

The kangaroo and pig approached a student visiting the area before the stopped and appeared to 'hug'

Sydney-based PhD candidate Ryan Frazer was visiting Aileron, near Alice Springs, Northern Territory, on research trip when he saw the animals

Mr Frazer said he and his colleague were 'bewildered by the affection' the animals had for another, as they nuzzled for a few minutes.

'Then the kangaroo started hugging the pig from behind, worked himself up a bit and went for it,' he said.

'The pig was totally nonchalant about the whole thing, was not concerned at all.

'We were just standing there like, "this is strange. Should we still be standing here, watching, taking photos"?

'When the kangaroo finished, the pig tried to jump on the back of the kangaroo for a bit, maybe to reciprocate... that's when we decided we'd had enough.'

The entire affair last for about five or 10 minutes.

'I didn't even know it was possible,' the PhD candidate who photographed the encounter said

'The kangaroo was ripped, a bit aggressive, huffing a bit. But the pig stayed with him, nuzzling under his arm, and the kangaroo was hugging the pig for a while'

Mr Frazer said he and his colleagues headed to a nearby art gallery, where a local asked if they had 'met the kangaroo and pig'

'I said "yes, they seem pretty close",' he said.

'He said, "yeah, the kangaroo's been heaps calmer since the pig has been in there".

'One of my colleagues was from Northern Arizona University and hadn't seen outback Australia before.'

'Then the kangaroo started hugging the pig from behind, worked himself up a bit and went for it'

Local man and the pig's owner, Greg Dick, said he had tried to break up the couple previously but failed, and that they had been 'in a relationship' for more than a year.

'I tried to take the pig away the other day and the kangaroo almost tore the fence down,' Mr Dick told the NT News.

'They're in love.'

The encounter between the kangaroo and the pig last for about five to 10 minutes

Local man and the animals' owner, Greg Dick, said the kangaroo was named 'F*** It', and the pig was named 'Apples'

'I tried to take the pig away the other day and the kangaroo almost tore the fence down,' Mr Dick said. 'They're in love'
Value of taxi licences plunged from about $500,000 to around $140,000

Another shot in the war on taxis as cab customers continue to decline

Promotional codes will be worth $20 to a new user and their

Ride-sharing service Uber is offering free rides to users who refer friends as the company as it fires another shot in the war on hired wheels.

Starting on Friday, promotional codes will give an existing user a $20 free ride when they refer a friend - who will also receive a free $20 trip.

'Whether its that friend that always jumps in their mates Uber but never their own, your colleague who starts the day complaining about their long commute, or a parent that still only uses their smartphone for calls - sharing Uber with others just got twice as nice,' an Uber spokesperson said.

Starting on Friday, promotional codes will give an existing user a $20 free ride when they refer a friend - who will also receive a free $20 trip

In the wake of Uber's rise, the value of taxi licences has plunged from about $500,000 to around $140,000 and customers using their services have also plummeted

Uber has battled for years with regulators but was legalised in most states in 2015, while a court decision in Victoria last month effectively legitimised the service.

But State and Territory based taxi associations and the Australian Taxi Industry continue to challenge its legitimacy.

In the wake of Uber's rise, the value of taxi licences has plunged from about $500,000 to around $140,000 and customers using their services have also plummeted, The Courier Mail reported.

As the company's legal battles diminish, it has been able to establish corporate relationships to extend the company's reach.

A recent collaboration with telecommunications giant Optus will see WiFi installed in 100 Uber cars in Sydney and Melbourne.

While Uber and Westpac announced a deal last week that will see the banks customers receive discounted Uber rides and allow its employees to use the ride-sharing service for business travel, The Australian reported.

The $20 referral ride offer starts on Friday June 10 and will run for one month.

As the company's legal battles diminish, it has been able to establish corporate relationships to extend the company's reach
A jury has found a Sydney convenience store owner guilty of murdering a 27-year-old man, who died in an inferno at his Rozelle shop.

Former Sydney convenience store owner Adeel Ahmad Khan was found guilty of the murder of Chris Noble who died in a blaze at the shop after he deliberately set fire to it for an insurance payout.

On Friday a NSW Supreme Court jury found Khan, 46, guilty of murdering Mr Noble, who perished in the September 2014 inferno, and guilty of causing grievous bodily harm to Todd Fisher and wounding Corey Cameron, who were both injured in the fire.

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Adeel Khan, 46, is escorted by Corrective Services officers at the NSW Supreme Court in Sydney. He has been found guilty of the murder of Chris Noble, 27, who died in a blaze at his Rozelle shop

Khan claimed three robbers tied him up in the convenience store before the explosion and fire (pictured)

The jury has not yet reached verdicts on Khan's charges of murdering 31-year-old Bianka O'Brien and her baby son Jude. Mr Noble, as well as Mrs O'Brien and her baby son, lived in separate units above the convenience store.

Members of Mr Noble's family quietly gasped and shed tears when the murder verdict was read out on Friday.

Mr Noble and the O'Briens lived above Khan's Darling St store, and were killed when a large explosion and fire tore through the shop and reduced it to rubble in the early hours of September 4, 2014.

Mr Noble is thought to have become trapped in his room and sent his mother a text message saying 'I love you' in his final moments.

Bianka O'Brien, 31, and her baby boy Jude lived in a unit above the store in Rozelle in Sydney's inner-west and were killed

Her neighbour Chris Noble, 27, was also killed in the 2014 inferno, which Mr Khan is accused of starting to secure an insurance payout

At his trial Khan was accused of placing petrol-filled containers around his shop and lighting the fire in order to secure an insurance payout and to avoid lease obligations.

He denied this and testified that robbers had tied him up for hours, spilled fuel on the shop floor and left shortly before the blaze erupted.

Khan claimed robbers tied him up and ate sandwiches before blowing up the building in an inferno that killed the three people.

John O'Brien, husband of late wife Bianka and 11-month-old son Jude O'Brien, who died in the Rozelle shop explosion, leaves the NSW Supreme Court on Friday

Liz (second left) and Ross Noble (second right), the parents of Rozelle store explosion victim Chris Noble, leaves the NSW Supreme Court in Sydney

This is what he told police from his hospital bed three days after the 2014 explosion and fire at the shopkeeper's Rozelle convenience store in Sydney's inner-west.

The recordings of the police interview were played in Mr Khan's NSW Supreme Court trial last month, in which the Greenacre man said two men bought cigarettes from his store at about 11.30pm before one showed him a black pistol and told him to get into a storage room.

A third man later entered from the back of the building, near where Mr Khan had his hands tied around his back and a rubbish bag put over his eyes, the court heard.

Mr Khan (pictured after his appearance at the Supreme Court last month) told police robbers tied him up in the convenience store, drank and ate sandwiches before setting the building alight

The explosion and inferno in September 2014 caused massive damage to the building and killed three

An SES crew member searches through rubble in the aftermath of the 2014 explosion that killed three

Lying in an intensive-care bed with a tube on his face, the 46-year-old recalled smelling petrol as the men moved in and out of the building.

'They told me they're going to blow up the building but, I questioned them, ah, not to do that,' he said in the video recording.

'And then they said: 'OK that's fine for me'.'

Mr Khan told police the robbers removed his hand restraints and eye covering and told him not to move for 10 minutes before they left the building.

'Suddenly I heard a big blast,' he said in an interview the day after the fire.

'I was under the bricks  I thought I had died.'

The Crown alleges Mr Khan set his shop on fire in a bid to secure an insurance payout and escape his lease obligations.

Baby Jude, the son of Bianka O'Brien, was killed in the fire that Mr Khan said was sparked by robbers who tied them up

Mr Khan is accused of intentionally lighting the fire to secure an insurance payout, killing three including baby boy Jude (pictured)

The 46-year-old is pictured being transferred to a prison van after his appearance at the Supreme Court last month

Tape recordings of Mr Khan's police interview after the 2014 fire were played at the Supreme Court in May

Mr Noble (pictured), 27, was killed in the 2014 blaze and Mr Khan was found guilty of his murder

Mr O'Brien was widowed and lost his son Jude (pictured together) in the September, 2014 explosion

Emergency services at the scene of the destruction after an explosion and fire destroyed a convenience store and units above

Mr Khan said the robbers stole his phone, wallet and $3000 cash from his pocket during the incident.

More than $1400 was also taken from his cash register, he said.

Mr Khan estimated the men, two of whom he described as European and the other as Aboriginal or African, were in the building for two or three hours.

'They were having some drinks and sandwiches,' he said.

The two Europeans were speaking a language he did not understand, Mr Khan told police.

Emergency services at the scene of the destruction in 2014 which killed three people

Emergency services search through the rubble at the scene of the Rozelle, inner-west Sydney explosion

Mr Khan (right) is accused of setting the building alight to make an insurance claim

John O'Brien was widowed when his wife Bianka O'Brien (pictured together) was killed

Mr O'Brien lost his wife Bianka in the September, 2014, explosion that took down Mr Khan's convenience store and units above
Disgraced blogger Belle Gibson has been given one more chance to file a defence against court action claiming she made profits by deceiving people into thinking the health regime she sold had cured cancer she did not have.

Gibson made more than half a million dollars after claiming to have cured her illness with natural remedies which she published online, in a book and on an app called The Whole Pantry.

Barrister Catherine Button, for Consumer Affairs Victoria, said liquidators had told the Federal Court they would not appear, but Gibson had given no such notice.

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Disgraced blogger Belle Gibson (pictured), who claimed to have cured her terminal cancer, has been given one more chance to file a defence against a Federal Court action made by Victorias consumer watchdog

A case management hearing was held at the Federal Court in Melbourne on Friday and this is the second time she and her liquidators failed to appear.

Justice Debra Mortimer gave Gibson one more chance to file a defence on the case - by 4pm on July 10.

She told the court: These are serious allegations and I want to make sure Ms Gibson knows the consequences of not contributing in this case.

She also refused a suggestion by Ms Button that Gibson's address be suppressed in affidavits that will be made available to the media.

Ms Gibson pictured with her son was the founder of the popular wellness and recipe app, The Whole Pantry

Gibson is accused of falsely claiming she healed herself from terminal cancer naturally while promoting her Whole Pantry app and book.

Gibson made more than half a million dollars after claiming to have cured her illness with natural remedies which she published online, in a book and on an app called The Whole Pantry

Court documents release late May said that Gibson had made $578,005 from sales of her app The Whole Pantry and book with the same name, as well as a deal with Apple Watch.

Watchdog Consumer Affairs Victoria want Gibson to pay a fine - possibly more than $1 million - and publish in newspapers an apology that acknowledges her lies.

They have also asked for Gibson to advise cancer patients to seek information from medical professionals, according to the court documents.

The regulator says Gibson engaged in 'unconscionable conduct' by claiming she had been diagnosed with brain cancer in 2009.

The blogger had said that she believed she only had four months to live, before rejecting conventional treatments and healing herself naturally.

They also say she engaged in misleading or deceptive commerce by making these claims to promote her app and book.

This deceptive commerce was repeated when Gibson said she would donate a portion of her app's revenue to charities or other humanitarian causes.

This included the Birthing Kit Foundation, One Girl, the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre, and the family of a seven-year-old boy who is battling terminal brain cancer.

Gibson had made claims that she believed she only had four months to live - because of terminal cancer - before rejecting conventional treatments and healing herself naturally. She continues to evade questioning

In an interview with reporter Tara Brown on 60 Minutes (pictured) in 2015, Ms Gibson was unable to explain her web of lies and would not even confirm whether her age was 23 or 26

However in 2015, in an interview with The Australian Women's Weekly, she revealed that her incredible story of healing her terminal brain cancer with wholefoods and alternative therapies had been made up.

In an interview with reporter Tara Brown on 60 Minutes in 2015, Ms Gibson was unable to explain her web of lies and would not even confirm whether her age was 23 or 26.

The Whole Pantry app was available for purchase between August 2013 and May 2016.

By March 2015, it had been downloaded 115,324 times from iTunes.

The Whole Pantry app made by Gibson (pictured)was available for purchase between August 2013 and May 2016. By March 2015, it had been downloaded 115,324 times from iTunes

The consumer regulator say Gibson's company was paid $263,947 by publisher Penguin for her The Whole Pantry book, released in October 2014 and withdrawn from sale five months later

Gibson received $20,725 from Apple, while her company Inkerman Road Nominees - formerly known as Belle Gibson Pty Ltd - was paid $264,881.

It's believed Gibson and her company also received $28,452 from sales of the android version of Whole Pantry.

The consumer regulator say Gibson's company was paid $263,947 by publisher Penguin for her The Whole Pantry book, released in October 2014 and withdrawn from sale five months later.
The mother of a little girl found dead in a Melbourne gutter more than 30 years ago has faced her daughter's alleged rapist and murderer in court.

Six-year-old Kylie Maybury vanished after she and her mother visited their neighbour Lorna Simpson on Melbourne Cup Day, 1984, in Preston.

She was sent to a nearby shop to buy sugar, but didn't make it home.

Her body was found dumped in a gutter in Preston early the next day.

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The body of six-year-old Kylie Maybury was found dumped in a gutter in Preston a day after she disappeared on Melbourne Cup Day in 1984

Kylie's mother, Julie Maybury, faced the man that allegedly raped and murdered her daughter in court on Friday

Gregory Keith Davies was charged over the alleged abduction, rape and murder of Kylie

On Thursday, Gregory Keith Davies was charged over the alleged abduction, rape and murder of Kylie.

The 73-year-old fronted the Melbourne Magistrates Court on Friday and was remanded in custody.

Kylie's mother, Julie Maybury, sat in the front row of the public gallery with relatives, supporters and detectives during the brief hearing.

She watched Davies for most of the hearing and at one stage put her head in her hands and cried silently, The Age reported.

Davies, who wore a cream jacket and black track pants, stayed quiet while in the dock. He replied briefly to a question from Magistrate John Hardy, the Herald Sun reported.

Police allege Davies, of Waterford Park, falsely imprisoned and raped Kylie on November 6 and murdered her the following day.

Julie Maybury sat in the public gallery with relatives, supporters and detectives during the hearing

Davies, 73, was remanded in custody after his appearance in the Melbourne Magistrates Court on Friday

The court heard he needed to see a nurse while in custody, because he had a pre-existing back injury and high blood pressure.

He is due to appear in court again in September.

Detectives are still trying to locate three people who may have information that can help the case.

Police allege Davies falsely imprisoned and raped Kylie on November 6, 1984, and murdered her the next day

A potential witness approached Kylie's neighbour, Lorna Simpson, while she was searching for the girl.

The woman said she saw a girl fitting Kylie's description in a white station wagon with a male driver.

Two anonymous callers also contacted police following Kylie's murder.

One called two weeks after the killing and said a white Holden Kingswood station wagon was involved in Kylie's death.

The other, who called in May 1997, nominated a person of interest.

Police have released this image of Lorna Simpson in the hope a potential witness, described as an Italian woman, may recall speaking with her and contact police
Trent Southworth says bystanders could've been killed if they didn't shoot

Three elderly women were injured by police bullets during the incident

A former policeman defended two officers who shot a man on Thursday

A man who spent fourteen years in the police force has defended the actions of two officers who opened fire on a mentally ill man as he ran around a busy shopping centre wielding a large knife.

The two officers have faced criticism for shooting Jerry Sourian in the stomach after the 23-year-old allegedly lunged at them with a large carving knife at a shopping centre in Horsnby on Thursday.

Sourian was hit three times but three women aged between 60 and 82 were also caught in the crossfire and were hospitalised with bullet wounds after the incident.

Questions have been raised about whether officers should have used a taser or capsicum spray to subdue Sourian but former police officer Trent Southworth said they were completely justified as the man was a threat not only to them but the innocent shoppers who surrounded him.

A man carrying a carving knife, 23, was shot by police at Westfield shopping centre in Hornsby, north-west Sydney after appearing to lunge at police (pictured)

He was wielding a 14 inch knife  it is obvious that his actions could have had deadly consequences and that is when police need to make a quick decision and act,' Mr Southworth told Daily Mail Australia.

He very well could have been capable of turning three feet and ramming that blade into someones gut or slitting someone's throat then the family would have been asking why they didn't shoot.'

Mr Southworth, who was an officer with the NSW Police for 14 years, said police have the power to use lethal force when they feel their lives, or the lives of others, are in danger.

'When you establish in your mind that someones life is at threat and you have the power to discharge your weapon  you shoot to kill,' he said.

The woman was one of two police officers who shot at the man who was barefoot and carrying a knife

Paramedics are seen treating shooting victims at the scene on Thursday

Three women aged between 60 and 80 were also struck by police bullets. Blood is pictured on the ground after a woman was mistakenly shot

Trent Southworth said the officer's actions were completely justified as the man was a threat not only to them but the innocent shoppers who surrounded him

Batons, tasers and capsicum spray are to be used when they feel they may be physically threatened.

'If they dont have weapon you would more likely use a baton to control that particular offender, but when it comes to someone with a knife or a gun it becomes a life threatening situation.'

Mr Southworth said there would have been considerable backlash if the man had harmed someone and that the officers made a decision to protect themselves and members of the public.

'You're damned if you do, damned if you dont. If police dont attempt to use lethal force and a member of the public gets stabbed the family comes back and blames police.

'You cant win either way but at the end of the day this person, mentally ill or not, was wielding a knife in a public space putting people in danger.'

Witnesses said the 23-year-old man was barefoot and appeared 'really depressed' before the shooting

Two officers who fired several shots at him when he appeared to lunge at them while carrying a carving knife

Blood is seen smeared on the tiles outside of the shopping centre as police tape cordons off the area

Forensic police look over the scene at Westfield Hornsby to gather evidence in the shooting

People were going about their day, having coffee or lunch, when the incident happened. Above is a forensic officer at the scene

Emergency services were called to Westfield shopping centre in Hornsby about 11.50am on Thursday after reports of a man was armed with a knife

Mr Southworth - who now speaks to students and athletes about the risks associated with alcohol and drugs - said criticising officers for taking action in potentially deadly situations undermines their confidence and ability to act next time they are faced with a similar scene.

The way that officer is being treated puts all police off making decisions that could potentially save your family members life,' he said.

'You need to be careful not to push the wrong buttons and make police too scared to do their jobs.'

Sourian was being treated for mental illness in a psychiatric facility. Mr Southworth said we need to start putting more money towards mental health services before criticising police.

'The lack of mental health services means these sort of people are continually finding themselves on the street and these are the things we need to start looking at before we blame police.'

NSW Police has also defended the officers behaviour, saying they were forced to confront a 'life or death' situation.

'In a life and death situation police had to make a very critical decision on the actions they took,' Assistant Commissioner Denis Clifford told reporters at the scene.

'It's alarming (that innocent bystanders were injured) but I wonder what may have happened had the police not intervened and stopped this person with a knife.'
It's been less than a month since Katie Couric was scolded for deceptive editing in her 2016 documentary 'Under the Gun,' but now she's facing criticism again - this time for a documentary on food made in 2014.

In May, interviewees in gun control documentary 'Under the Gun' said that they had been edited to look like they didn't know the answer to a question.

And on Thursday Dr. David Allison, an obesity researcher interviewed in 2014's 'Fed Up,' told Fox News Couric's team had done the same thing to him.

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Complaint: Katie Couric (left) has come under fire from Dr. David Allison (right), who said she unfairly edited his interview in 2014's 'Fed Up'. Allison says she made him look clueless by cutting his answer short

Edited: The film (pictured) is about the dangers of sugar. Allison, who is skeptical about the negative effects of soda, was asked to explain the science behind his thinking. He seems to lose his train of thought and fall silent

Allison, whose titles include associate dean for science at University of Alabama at Birmingham's School of Public Health, was invited to speak to Couric for the documentary, which says that America's obesity crisis is caused by added sugar in foods.

'They had reached out to me... and indicated to me that they were particularly interested in having a diversity of viewpoints,' Allison told Fox News.

Allison's brief segment in the film is preceded by an introduction that quotes him as saying there is 'not enough solid evidence' that soda contributes to the country's obesity crisis.

The film then says that Allison's critics say he is influenced by the soda industry, and that he has accepted more than $2.5million from soda companies. Only after this does Allison appear.

Couric, speaking off-camera, asks him whether 'the ingestion of sugary beverages contributed to the obesity problem.'

Allison says that 'ingestion of all calories contributes' and says a more 'challenging' question is whether sugary beverages contribute more than other sources. Couric then asks him to answer that question.

'It's a good question,' he says, 'there's reasons to believe they might, but I don't think the evidence is quite clear, for example--'

Couric interjects: 'What would be the science behind that?'

Allison replies: 'Well, the ideal study might be requiring people to uh, uh--' he pauses for a second. 'Excuse me, let me start again on that, just get my thoughts together.'

Not sweet at all: Allison said later he had paused to frame his answer in a non-technical way for viewers, but that his real reply was cut from the film (pictured). He said he spoke for 90 mins but only a small part was used

'Okay,' says Couric. Allison is then shown looking at the ground silently for around three seconds before the documentary cuts away to other interviewees - giving the impression that Allison couldn't answer the question.

Allison told Fox News that the clip was a misleading excerpt taken from 90 minutes of interview footage and that he was told 'if at any point something didn't come out quite right... just go back and redo that... that's what I was doing.

'(Couric) also made clear to me that I should speak in terms that people who aren't trained scientists could understand... I wanted to carefully choose my words...

'I gave a very clear answer after that pause... I wasn't as clever as the people in ('Under the Gun') to tape (the interview) myself.'

Allison was referring to the backlash that came from pro-gun advocates featured in Couric's 'Under the Gun'.

In that film the director, Stephanie Soechtig, placed an eight-second-long pause between one of Couric's questions and an answer from the advocates - making it appear as though they had to concoct an answer, whereas their own recording revealed them answering almost immediately.

Soechtig said she had added the pause for 'dramatic effect' and Couric apologized, adding that the pause did not accurately reflect the actual reply.
President Barack Obama became the first sitting president to appear on The Tonight Show on Thursday as he sat down with current host Jimmy Fallon to 'slow jam' the news and talk about the U.S. presidential election.

Making jokes about Congress blocking his agenda so much he had to come in 'through the back door,' according to Fallon, and how much 'lemonade' he's making - 'Beyonce started calling him "Baracky with the Good Hair" ' - the duo chronicled Obama's nearly eight years in office, an appointment that will soon come to an end.

Fallon and Obama also talked about what life outside the White House will be like for the outgoing president who will have a unique housing arrangement after he's booted from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

His first stop after the White House won't be his new residence, though, Obama said. It will be somewhere warm, unlike like Washington, D.C., which drops to freezing temperatures in January when the inauguration is held.

'I'm gonna get some sleep that's for sure,' Obama said.

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Host Jimmy Fallon and President Barack Obama Slow Jam The News on The Tonight Show

After the slow jam, pictured above, Obama was interviewed by the late-night TV host

Obama is constitutionally prohibited from serving a third-term and must make way early next year for a new president

No president has ever appeared on Tonight, but Obama in 2012 teamed up with Fallon when the comedian was still the host of The Late Show to 'slow jam' the news.

On the Thursday episode of Tonight, Obama participated in the sometimes-raunchy sketch again.

He allowed Fallon to claim the country wasn't in the 'mood' when he took office in 2008 because it was 'too tired' but now, after lighting some candles and putting on silky, satin sheets, Obama's 'stimulating long term growth in both the public and private sector.'

At that point The Roots' Tariq Trotter chimed in to say Obama, who by the time the pre-taped show had aired had made an endorsement in the presidential race, 'created tons of jobs for you and me, he's got one left for Hillary.'

Obama is constitutionally prohibited from serving a third-term and must make way early next year for a new president.

'I can't stay forever,' he said during the musical skit. 'Besides, daddy's got a Hawaii vacation booked in about 223 days, days but who's counting.'

Obama and host Fallon write Thank You Notes on The Tonight Show. Fallon's thank you notes addressed major controversies since Obama came on the scene in 2008, like his birth certificate and Hillary Clinton's emails

Commenting on the race to replace him, Obama vaguely said, 'I know some of the presidential candidates have been critical of my foreign policy - I don't want to name names.'

'He's talking about Donald Trump,' Trotter helpfully explained.

Fallon asked Obama in the sketch if he'd been paying attention to Trump and the Democratic politician said he hasn't.

'No, but I have been watching my new favorite show, Orange is Not the New Black,' Obama jested, leading Fallon to say he just needs to 'Netflix and Chill.'

The comedian said he must be 'wound up' after all this time and that he can't imagine having the same job for eight years.

'Jimmy, you probably never will,' Obama retorted, finishing the talk with a mic drop.

Fallon asked Obama in the sketch if he'd been paying attention to Trump and the Democratic politician said he hasn't. 'No, but I have been watching my new favorite show, Orange is Not the New Black,' Obama jested, leading Fallon to say he just needs to 'Netflix and Chill'

When their terms are up U.S. president's typically leave Washington, D.C. but Obama said recently that he would stay in the District of Columbia until his youngest daughter, Sasha, finishes her secondary education.

Making her transfer half way though high school 'would not make me popular,' he told Fallon.

He and Fallon then joked about how awkward it would be if he stuck around the White House at the start of the new administration, throwing keggers on the East lawn, causing people ask why he's still there.

Malia, his eldest, who graduates tomorrow, is 'very eager to get out of there,' Obama revealed.

The president said he'd likely be donning sunglasses at her graduation because he might get a bit weepy.

Obama told Fallon that his first stop after the White House won't be his new residence. It will be somewhere warm, unlike like Washington, D.C., which drops to freezing temperatures in January when the inauguration is held

Obama said he and wife Michelle were worried their daughters might become snobs after living at the White House but they have grown up to be smart, funny and kind, and 'they don't have an attitude.'

It's a testament to the job that Michelle and her mother did raising them, he said, because they didn't let their upbringing 'go to their heads.'

Fallon intimated that it may be difficult for Obama to return to private life, too. Does he even remember how to use an ATM?

'The ATM thing I remember, pressing buttons on elevators I'm worried about,' Obama snarked.

The president said the one experience that will be new to him is using a smart phone. He has one now, but it's limited in function.

'I was this cool, high tech guy when I got there, right, and I was the first president to have a Blackberry,' he said. 'And so years pass and nobody else a Blackberry...'

Finally, this year he said the government gave him a smart phone. 'So I'm excited.'

Then he said he found out that for security reasons, 'it doesn't take pictures, you can't text, the phone doesn'tt work, you cant play your music on it.'

It's basically a play phone like a three-year-old would play with, he said.

Obama has not said what he will do after he leaves office, but he suggested to Fallon he isn't interested in being appointed to the open Supreme Court position.

'I look pretty good in a robe,' he said, laughing before he seriously rejected the notion that he wants to sit on the high court. 'It's not something that I think is the best way for me to use my time after I get out of office.'

Later in the appearance during another canned segment Fallon helped Obama write thank you notes related to his time in office.

No president has ever appeared on Tonight, but Obama in 2012 teamed up with Fallon when the comedian was still the host of The Late Show to 'slow jam' the news

The president suggested during the segment that he could bring back the 'Obama fro' after he departs the White House.

To Republicans he said, you spent 'eight years wishing you could replace me with a Republican.

'Or put another way, how do you like me now? he said with pizzazz.

Fallon's thank you notes addressed major controversies since Obama came on the scene in 2008, like his birth certificate and Hillary Clinton's emails.

Thank you Clinton for maybe becoming the first 'fff-president,' Fallon said. 'I would have said female, but someone deleted the 'emale.' Obama then suggested he should write the notes on his own.

In a portion of the interview that was released Wednesday, Obama addressed the schism in the Democratic party caused by the competition between Clinton and Bernie Sanders.

He said it's time that the party starts 'pulling things together.'

The president said he hoped that divisions between Democrats would start to heal in coming weeks, now that his former secretary of state has clinched the party's nomination for the presidential election.

The president did not explicitly endorse Clinton or call for rival Bernie Sanders to drop out. The endorsement came in a video released earlier Thursday by the Clinton campaign.

Instead, he praised Sanders for bringing 'enormous energy' to the party and said he thinks the fight made Clinton a better candidate.

Obama also acknowledged that there are plenty of bruised feelings after the bitter fight  and said it may take some time for Democrats to unite against Republican nominee Donald Trump.

'My hope is that over the next couple of weeks we're able to pull things together,' Obama said in his first public remarks since Clinton's primary wins on Tuesday in California and elsewhere propelled her to victory over rival Sanders.

'What happens during primaries is you get a little ouchy,' Obama said.

Obama told Fallon that 'it was a healthy thing for the Democratic Party to have a contested primary' and praised Sanders for the 'enormous energy and new ideas' in his campaign.

'He pushed the party and challenged them. I thought it made Hillary a better candidate,' Obama said.

The White House has said Obama, who is very popular among Democrats, will play a unifying role on the campaign trail.

'The main role I'm going to be playing in this process is to remind the American people that this is a serious job. This is not reality TV,' Obama told Fallon in a swipe at presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump, who starred in reality television show The Apprentice.

Sanders, who has not conceded the race, met with Obama today the White House.

Obama and Fallon then joked about how awkward it would be if he stuck around the White House at the start of the new administration, throwing keggers on the East lawn, causing people ask why he's still there

The White House said Wednesday that Obama was holding off on endorsing Clinton more formally until after he met with Bernie Sanders out of respect for the race that Sanders ran.

Asked whether Obama thought Sanders, a U.S. senator from Vermont, should quickly end his campaign, White House spokesman Josh Earnest said the senator had 'more than earned the right to make his own decision about the course of his campaign.'

Earnest made similar comments today as he talked to reporters after the meeting between Obama and Sanders.

The White House wouldn't say what Obama discussed with the Vermont senator but it became clear an hour and a half later, when Clinton released the video of Obama endorsing her - on Tuesday no less - that the president told him it's time to bow out.
A man and a woman have drowned after scuba diving off a beach in Mornington in southern Victoria.

Emergency services were called to Schnapper Pier near the Mornington Boat Club about 12.15pm and the two divers were located underneath the pier.

Sergeant Anthoula Moutis said the pair were seen by a local person walking on the pier, who alerted police.

A man and a woman have drowned after scuba diving off a beach in Mornington in southern Victoria

Emergency services were called to Schnapper Pier about 12.15pm and the two divers were located underneath the pier

According to a report from 7 News, it is believed one of the divers was an instructor and the other was a student.

The pair were reportedly on diving on a reef and got into difficulty at the pier.

The Herald Sun reported that Victoria Marine Rescue said one man was dead when they attended the scene and another woman had been trapped under the pier.

Search and Rescue are present and are retrieving the bodies from the water.

The deaths are not being treated as suspicious and the cause is still being investigated.

Sergeant Anthoula Moutis said the pair were seen by a local person walking on the pier, who alerted police

It is believed one of the divers was an instructor and the other was a student. The pair were reportedly on diving on a reef and got into difficulty at the pier
A monastery worker was hacked to death by Islamic extremists as he was taking his regular early morning walk.

The murder was the latest in a series of attacks against religious minorities in Bangladesh.

Bangladeshi police announced a special week-long crackdown on militants as they ramp up their efforts to stem the killings, with five members of a banned Islamist outfit killed in gunbattles with officers in the past three days.

Nityaranjan Pande, 62, was walking to the monastery when the attackers set upon him, killing him on the spot, police said.

Bangladesh is reeling from a wave of murders of secular and liberal activists and religious minorities that have left nearly 50 people dead in the last three years

'As a diabetic, everyday he walks early in the morning. Today as he was walking, several attackers hacked him in the neck... He died on the spot,' local police station chief Abdullah Al-Hasan told AFP.

'He had been working at the monastery for around 40 years. In recent years he was the head of its office staff,' he said.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility.

But the head of police in the northwestern district of Pabna where the Shri Shri Thakur Anukulchandra Ashram is located said the killing bore the hallmarks of recent attacks by Islamist extremists on minorities and secular activists.

'There was no eye-witness to the attack as it happened very early in the morning,' Alamgir Kabir told AFP.

Bangladesh is reeling from a wave of murders of secular and liberal activists and religious minorities that have left nearly 50 people dead in the last three years.

Relatives and friends attend the funeral prayer of an earlier victim of suspected militants, Bangladeshi activist Xulhaz Mannan in Dhaka, on April 26

The murders have spiked in recent weeks with a gruesome wave of killings that has spanned from the capital Dhaka to remote parts of the north and coastal south.

In the past week alone, an elderly Hindu priest was found nearly decapitated in a rice field, a Christian grocer was hacked to death near a church while the wife of an anti-terrorism officer was found stabbed and shot.

Her husband had led several high-profile operations against the banned Jamayetul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB), an Islamist militant group, in the southeastern city of Chittagong.

Most of the latest attacks have been claimed either by the Islamic State group or by a South Asian branch of Al-Qaeda.

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's government has however blamed homegrown Islamists for the attacks, rejecting claims of responsibility from IS and Al-Qaeda.

The JMB is one of the main domestic militant outfits in the frame for the murders, with police shooting dead five members of the group since Tuesday.

Shahidul Hoque, inspector general of police, vowed in an address to a meeting of top police officials in Dhaka Thursday that those involved in the killing of the police officer's wife would be 'brought to justice very soon'.

Experts say a government crackdown on opponents, including a ban on Bangladesh's largest Islamist party Jamaat-e-Islami following a protracted political crisis, has pushed many towards extremism.

Victims of the attacks by suspected Islamists have included secular bloggers, gay rights activists and followers of minority religions.
Due to his fainting spell, Prins's sentence will be announced at a later date

Her body was found the next morning, on August 12 last year

She was strangled with her bikini and dumped in the river in Port Orange

But she returned because she feared for those who tried to save her

The jury heard how Pifer had tried to flee Prins's boat after he beat her

After his verdict was read, he fainted and lay unconscious for one minute

A Volusia County man slumped to the ground in court Thursday after a jury pronounced him guilty of murdering his girlfriend on his boat and dumping her body in the Halifax River.

Thomas Prins, 43, could face life behind bars for his role in the death of Crystal Pifer, 28, last August, but his sentencing was delayed after his dramatic reaction.

Jurors returned their verdict after six hours of deliberation, causing Prins to apparently faint, sending him sprawling on the floor, WFTV reported.

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Faint: Thomas Prins (pictured, at back of picture), 43, fainted in court Thursday after being found guilty of strangling girlfriend Crystal Pifer, 28, to death with her bikini top and dumping her in a river in August

Unconscious: Prins was unconscious for over a minute as courts staff (pictured) bent over him, forcing his sentencing to be delayed. Prosecutors said he beat and threatened Pifter on his boat the night she was killed

Murder: Prins (left) could face life behind bars for killing Pifer (right) on August 11 last year. Pifer had fled to a neigboring boat, but returned because she was scared he would hurt the disabled girl who lived there

Deputies were still 'working on' Prins as the courtroom emptied, WFTV said. According to the Daytona Beach News-Journal he was unconscious for more than a minute.

Pifer vanished on the night of August 11, 2015 after having an argument with Prins on his boat on the river in Port Orange.

She was found in the water the following morning by a fisherman. She had 30 injuries on her body and had been strangled to death.

On the night she disappeared, Prins called 911, telling them that she had taken the keys to his boat and jumped overboard. This call was replayed to the jury at their request.

The verdict came the day after the jury heard evidence from James Wagner, who lives with his mentally disabled daughter on a river boat and talked to Pifer the night she vanished.

A key witness, Wagner said Pifer had swum to the night before her body was found. Prins had been been beating her and she had attempted to escape, prosecutors said.

Wagner said Wednesday that Pifer was 'crying hysterically' when she climbed onto the dinghy attached to his boat, and was terrified of Prins.

Wagner called 911 and mistakenly reported that a 'gang' of men had been beating her, before realizing that Prins and Pifer had been alone.

In the call, which was played to the jury Tuesday, he told the operator that he was going to take the boat to shore, but then said that Pifer elected to return to Prins, as she was afraid that Prins would beat up Wagner's daughter.

Wagner told the court Wednesday that Prins had sailed up saying, 'Yeah, I got the engine running honey, get back on the boat.'

Wagner said that once Prins's boat returned to the dock, he heard the man yelling, 'Get off my (expletive) boat.'

The jury was told that a boat rescue team arrived afterwards but could not find Prins's boat as he had turned off the lights and left it to drift.

It was an hour after that, prosecutors said, that Pifer was strangled with her own bikini top and dumped into the water.

Fred Campagnuolo, Pifer's father, told WFTV that he was happy with the verdict.

'We've been waiting for a long time for it,' he said. 'It's bittersweet. We still lost our daughter and we'll never get her back.'

Prins later woke up from his faint and was 'awake and responsive,' according to court officials.

He was hospitalized for observation and his sentencing will be rescheduled.
Controversial former politician Pauline Hanson appeared upset after finding out her party will be stuck in the bottom half of Queensland's Senate ballot paper at next month's election.

Ms Hanson grimaced as she heard her One Nation Party will sit 24th on the ballot of 38 in her home state, after a draw was carried out in Brisbane by the Australian Electoral Commission on Friday.

Photographs taken at the draw show how the order is set, with a member of the AEC choosing each party out of a tumbler while wearing a blindfold.

Controversial former politician Pauline Hanson appeared to be upset after finding out her party will be stuck in the bottom half of Queensland's Senate ballot paper at next month's election

The Australian Cyclists Party fittingly took out poll position in the draw, followed by the Arts Party, the Secular Party and then the Australian Labor Party.

The Liberal National Party was drawn seventh.

The Nick Xenophon Team (12), Palmer United Party (28), Glenn Lazarus Team (29) and Jacqui Lambie Network (30) all finished ahead of The Greens who were drawn second-last.

Greens Deputy Leader and Queensland Senator Larissa Waters said she didn't believe the party's low position on the ballot paper would hinder its chances of winning two seats.

Ms Hanson's One Nation Party sits 24th on the list of 38 on the ballot in her home state, after a draw was carried out in Brisbane by the Australian Electoral Commission on Friday

Ms Hanson shares a laugh during the Australian Electoral Commission's ballot draw for the Queensland Senate

'I think they've saved the best for second-last,' she said.

'I think it's a really good outcome, we've got even more people putting their hand up for the Senate than last time.'

The 19 independent candidates will be listed after the 38 parties.

A blindfolded member of the Australian Electoral Commission picks random numbers during the ballot draw for Queensland's Senate candidates

Australian Greens Senator Larissa Waters (centre) attends the Australian Electoral Commission's ballot draw for Queensland's Senate candidates in Brisbane

Ms Hanson has previously said she is 'quietly confident' of returning to parliament at the election.

She is running on a platform to create more jobs, make the streets safer, and reduce Muslim immigration.

'I believe we've got to put a stop to further Muslim immigration,' she told the Sydney Morning Herald last month.

Ms Hanson has previously said she is 'quietly confident' of returning to parliament at the election

One Nation's Pauline Hanson talks to an alpaca farmer at the agricultural expo Farmfest, near Toowoomba, west of Brisbane, Wednesday, June 8, 2016

'Don't bring in people who don't assimilate into our culture [or] further down the stretch you're going to have problems on our streets.'

Ms Hanson was elected to Federal Parliament in 1996, where she served for two years as the Member for Oxley - a seat near Brisbane, Queensland.

The anti-immigration campaigner was controversially elected on a Liberal ticket, despite being disendorsed by the party prior to the election. Ms Hanson then sat as an Independent prior to creating the One Nation Party.
Anti-Brexit campaigners have been accused of scraping the barrel today after it emerged they had planned to make a spoof 'are you in?' porn film to attract younger voters.

The film, planned for various porn sites, was to show a couple having sex as the man stares at a picture of the Prime Minister and German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

The male actor then asks his partner: 'Am I In?' and she screams back: 'Yes baby!'

It came as Remain supporters are set to release a poster of Boris Johnson naked on a wrecking ball in a spoof on the famous Miley Cyrus pop video.

The former Mayor of London turned Brexit figurehead is shown smashing into a Union Flag wall.

Target: A poster of Boris Johnson naked on a wrecking ball will be released today as it emerged Remain had even planned a spoof porn film as a campaign video

Imitation: The naked Boris picture is a spoof on the famous Miley Cyrus pop video for her hit Wrecking Ball

The brief for the porn spoof was to 'Get people searching RedTube/YouPorn', according to The Sun

According to the porn script, from a group apparently funded by Lord David Sainsbury and former M&S chief Lord Rose, actors were also to make references to the Queen and Winston Churchill.

Campaign group We Are Europe had hoped the film would spread across the internet in the run up to the June 23 vote, and cause a 'spike of interest' among younger voters.

Filming was due to start yesterday but was scrapped at the last minute, The Sun claims. Lord Sainsbury and Lord Rose were said to have been 'appalled' by the idea.

Vote Leave chief executive Matthew Elliott told the newspaper: 'Weve had Project Fear now Project Leer. Is there any depth the In campaign wont sink to?'

Today Campaign group We Are Europe said they had rejected the idea for the porn spoof - and blamed an outside PR firm for the leak.

A spokesman said: We were approached by Freuds PR with a video content idea for our campaign. However, after looking at the proposal we decided that it was not something that we were comfortable with.

'We informed the agency that we could not agree to any further action on this project.

'Were investigating the events which led to the agency acting without our permission, and in direct breach of a written agreement between We Are Europe and Freuds, to release a casting call in our name, without our knowledge, consent or support, and how details of the rejected idea made it into a newspaper'.

We are Europe also said that they had not seen the script.

The porn script, from a group apparently funded by Lord David Sainsbury and former M&S chief Lord Stuart Rose, left and right, actors were also to make references to the Queen and Winston Churchill.

Boris Johnson, and even his wife Marina, have been targeted by anti-Brexit campaigners before.

Some had falsely claimed that she was the QC caught having sex in the street outside a London station.

The vicious slur wrongly claims that Marina Wheeler was the senior lawyer alleged to have been caught in a broad-daylight sexual act during the evening rush hour outside Waterloo station in August last year.

Remain supporters have been accused of helping the false rumours - said to have been circulating online and through Westminster - to spread. The official Britain Stronger In Europe campaign has strongly denied having anything to do with the rumours.

A Government minister suggested the rumours had been spread by Remain campaigners, who want Britain to stay in the European Union.

The rumour is said to have spread at Lord Ashcroft's 70th birthday party in March, and at a drinks party held at the home of ex-Defence Secretary Liam Fox that same month.
Collins International Australia staffer Alexandra Marks (pictured) could get a hefty pay-out in her sexual harassment case

New photographs have emerged showing top Colliers International executive Sean Unwin partying with his ex-assistant Alexandra Marks at the company's 'Welcome to the Jungle' dress up Christmas party.

The pair are shown crammed in a tiny jungle-themed photo booth with other colleagues at the property company's 2014 end-of-year function at exclusive Sydney nightspot, The Ivy.

The photos were obtained exclusively by Daily Mail Australia as the sexual harassment claims head to private mediation.

Alexandra Marks, who is the former executive assistant of Colliers International Australia's chief financial officer Sean Unwin, claims her boss pushed her face into his crotch and tried to look up her skirt.

Workplace law experts estimate Ms Marks could be looking at a pay-out upwards of $750,000 if she can prove her allegations, the Australian Financial Review reported.

But other workplace law experts have been more conservative in their estimates.

The Workplace Employment Lawyers principal Patricia Ryan told Daily Mail Australia the payout would be in the range of $250,000 and $300,000.

Alexandra Marks (right) and Sean Unwin (front centre) are snapped at the Colliers International jungle-themed Christmas party at Sydney nightspot The Ivy in 2014

Ms Marks (pictured right) claims Mr Unwin, her former boss, pushed her face into his crotch and tried to look up her skirt

Mr Unwin, pictured in a set of photobooth images with colleagues at the Christmas party, is also accused of asking Ms Marks who she had slept with in the office, and offered to set her up with someone

She said historically cases of workplace harassment fell within a smaller range of $12,000 and $20,000, but the outcome of an Oracle case where a woman was handed $130,000 after her colleague made remarks to her, such as 'How do you think our marriage was? I bet the sex was hot'.

Ms Ryan said court decisions were finally recognising the community's expectation that workplace harassment was not acceptable.

She also added she did not think Ms Marks would proceed with the case if she did not have grounds to prove the allegations.

Workplace law experts estimated Ms Marks (right) could be looking at a pay-out upwards of $750,000 if she can prove her allegations against Mr Unwin (centre back)

Workplace Employment Lawyers principal Patricia Ryan said she believed Ms Marks (right) would not proceed with the case if she didn't have grounds to prove the allegations against Mr Unwin (back left)

The case against Mr Unwin, 47, also accuses him of undressing in front of Ms Marks (right) on more than one occasion

Court documents claim in one instance Mr Unwin grabbed Ms Marks (right) from behind and pushed her face towards his crotch before he walked off laughing

'Whether sexual harassment or any sort of misconduct, people will react in different ways,' Ms Ryan told Daily Mail Australia.

'So I'm assuming she's not going to argue it had a significant impact on her if she had walked away and everything was hunky dory. I really doubt she would bring forward proceedings [if this was the case].'

In her case, Mr Unwin, 47, is also accused of undressing in front of Ms Marks on more than one occasion.

In a lawsuit filed in the Federal Court Circuit on Tuesday, Ms Marks - who worked for Colliers from March 2014 until August 2015 - is suing both Mr Unwin and the company, The Sydney Morning Herald reported.

Court documents claim in one instance Mr Unwin grabbed Ms Marks from behind and pushed her face towards his crotch before he walked off laughing.

A Colliers spokesman told Daily Mail Australia: 'The company will take the allegations seriously and will vigorously defend them.'

On another occasion after Ms Marks had cut her hair off into a 'bob' style, her boss allegedly compared her to an older photograph when she had longer hair and said: 'That's the girl you sold me on in your interviews... that's what I want.'

Chief financial officer Sean Unwin (pictured), is being sued for sexual harassment by Ms Marks. Legal experts say she could get a $750,000 pay-out

Mr Unwin then allegedly pulled her hair and criticised her new appearance telling her to grow her hair back.

The executive is also accused in the documents of asking Ms Marks who she had slept with in the office, and offered to set her up with someone.

Another claim alleges Mr Unwin pushed his assistant over while she was bending down on at least five occasions in an attempt to look up her dress.

Ms Marks said she did not report the harassment to the human resources department because she was unconvinced of its ability to deal with sensitive information.

Colliers International was established in Australia in 1976.

It was named after Robert Collier, a real estate heavyweight at the time.

Harmers Workplace Lawyers are representing Ms Marks, according to Fairfax.

They declined to comment when contacted by Daily Mail Australia.
A New York bus driver saved a disabled passenger from a fire and carried her off the vehicle this week.

Cindy March, who uses a wheelchair, said she's alive because the carried her to safety when the vehicle's wheelchair lift lost power as the bus burst into flames.

Jean Jeune had been driving the paratransit bus in Plainview on Long Island Thursday when he smelled smoke.

Flames shot out from the engine as the bus pulled over.

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A New York bus driver saved a disabled passenger from a blaze and carried her off the vehicle this week

Jeune said the flames quickly spread and the wheelchair lift died.

March, who has spinal weakness and narrowing of the spinal canal, said she screamed, fearing she was about to die.

She told Newsday: 'I don't know what I would've done because I wasn't getting down those steps.'

That's when Jeune lifted her from the wheelchair and carried her to safety.

Jean Jeune lifted Cindy March from the wheelchair and carried her to safety

Also on board the bus was March's aide, who exited the bus unharmed, according to a report from Plainview Patch.

The bus and the wheelchair were engulfed by the flames within 20 minutes.

Plainview Fire Department deputy Robert Salerno told the website that: 'Jean's quick actions and lack of concern for his own safety without a doubt saved this lady's life.'


A herd of roaming camels have attacked a car in the dead of night on a remote Russian road.

Dash cam footage taken on Wednesday shows the driver of a Toyota Auris, travelling from the Astrakhan region to Penza, slam on the brakes and sound the horn as something slowly emerges from the darkness.

It quickly becomes clear that that something is a group of stampeding camels who charge the car, jump over the bonnet, dent some of the bodywork and smash the windscreen.

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Stampede: A herd of camels attack a car on a remote Russian road

Russian woman and two children attacked by a herd of camels

The sudden and very unexpected ambush came to an end as quickly as it began, with the humped animals disappearing into the darkness.

Russian website Penzanews reported that the incident occurred on a remote stretch of the Kazakhstan Border Highway and that the 37-year-old female driver and two children in the backseat - a five-year-old girl and her newborn baby sister - were unharmed.

A spokesperson for the Ministry of the Interior Department said an investigation was currently underway to find the owner of the herd.

The camels can be seen moving in the same direction

A herd of camels in Russia attack a car travelling on a remote road
Now that Hillary Clinton has reached the delegate number required to win the Democrat presumptive nomination, according to the Associated Press, some voters feel they are caught between a rock and a hard place.

Supporters of Bernie Sanders, particularly younger African-Americans who are concerned about Donald Trump's xenophobic stance, feel they have no choice but to endorse Clinton.

And the President has inadvertently provided the social media generation with the perfect hashtag for them to reluctantly show their support for the presumptive Democrat candidate, by tweeting #GirlIGuessImWithHer.

Barack Obama yesterday endorsed his one-time rival to be his successor, signaling to Democrats it was time to unify after a bitter primary campaign and beat Donald Trump.

'Tens of millions of Americans made their voices heard. Today I just want to add mine,' Obama said in a video endorsement. 'I'm with her.'

The liberal anti-Clinton brigade have seized on the soundbite, and slightly tweaked it as a way of voicing their collective sigh.

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The liberal anti-Clinton brigade have seized on Obama's 'I'm with her' soundbite, and slightly tweaked it as a way of voicing their collective sigh

Supporters of Bernie Sanders who are concerned about Donald Trump's xenophobic stance feel they have no choice but to endorse Clinton

#GirlIGuessImWithHer

Me and the rest of the Bernie supporters headed to the polls in November like ... pic.twitter.com/C0Q4ORZ0zx  A (@aksala13) 8 June 2016

#girliguessimwithher is everything we're all feeling rn. i'm way too emotional today. #BernieSanders pic.twitter.com/WaGdk2Gc85  Jill Danielle Fisher (@JillDanielle) 8 June 2016

Obama's endorsement was a shot in the arm for the Clinton campaign.

She has struggled for a year against leftist rival Bernie Sanders. The 74-year-old ran an unlikely grassroots campaign that swelled to a 12-million-strong movement.

Clinton finally clinched the nomination just days ago, prompting Obama to offer his backing.

Hillary Clinton (pictured on Monday afternoon in Los Angeles) has reached the number of delegates needed to clinch the Democratic presidential nomination

Obama has endorsed his one-time rival to be his successor. 'Tens of millions of Americans made their voices heard. Today I just want to add mine,' Obama said in a video endorsement. 'I'm with her.' Above, Hillary Clinton's Snapchat account after receiving the President's support

HILLARY AND THE 'SUPER PREDATORS' GANG COMMENT Hillary Clinton was heckled in February at her own fundraiser by a Black Lives Matter activist. The activist demanded an apology from the former first lady for mass incarceration and her claim 20 years ago that children in gangs had become 'super-predators'. The Huffington Post identified the protester as Ashley Williams. She says she paid $500 to attend the Clinton fundraiser in Charleston, South Carolina, with an unnamed associate. Williams was there to ask Clinton about a remark she made in Keene, New Hampshire, in January of 1996 while talking about the Violent Crime Control Act. Clinton said at the time that the government must have an 'organized effort against gangs, just as in a previous generation we had an organized effort against the mob'. 'We need to take these people on. They are often connected to big drug cartels. They are not just gangs of kids anymore,' she said. 'They are often the kinds of kids that are called "super-predators." 'No conscience, no empathy. We can talk about why they ended up that way but first we have to bring them to heel and the President has asked the FBI to launch a very concerted effort against gangs everywhere.' Advertisement

'I don't think there's ever been someone so qualified to hold this office,' Obama said.

The 44th president's support gives Clinton a potent surrogate on the campaign trail.

Ex-presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton were so toxic by their eighth year in office that would-be successors kept them at arm's length.

By contrast, Obama is still one of the country's most popular politicians.

His approval ratings among black, Hispanic, young and liberal voters are stratospheric.

Clinton welcomed the vote of confidence: 'Honored to have you with me, @POTUS.

'I'm fired up and ready to go!' she tweeted, echoing one of Obama's own campaign rallying cries from 2008.

In that primary race, Obama bested Clinton and eventually became the first black president.

They later made peace, as Clinton became his first secretary of state.

Now the 68-year-old Clinton is trying to make history of her own by becoming the first female commander in chief.

Standing in her way is bombastic businessman Trump.

He has shocked the world by becoming the presumptive Republican presidential nominee.

'Obama just endorsed Crooked Hillary.

'He wants four more years of Obama  but nobody else does!' Trump tweeted.
Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce has told a member of his New England electorate to 'p*** off' after a heated argument in a pub.

Nicola Chirlian, a beef farmer and anti-mining campaigner, challenged the deputy leader on the issue of coal seam gas on the ABC's Q&A program on Monday night.

Ms Chirlian is an activist who is convening an anti-coal mining forum in Tamworth, in the heart of the New England electorate, on June 23.

She told Fairfax Media she spotted Mr Joyce on Thursday night at the Top Pub in Uralla, near Armidale, and asked him if he would attend the forum.

Nicola Chirlian, a beef farmer and anti-mining campaigner, says Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce told her p*** off at the Top Pub in Uralla. Above, Mr Joyce speaks with constituents at the pub

Ms Chirlian said that she spotted Mr Joyce on Thursday night at the Top Pub in Uralla and asked him if he would attend an anti-coal mining forum she is convening

'He got really quite loud, other people in our group who were in the other room could hear him. He said 'Nicky piss off, just piss off, piss off',' Ms Chirlian said, according to The Sydney Morning Herald.

'He was physically quite close. He's a big bloke and I'm 5'6 and coming up on 60 years-old. I was pretty shocked.'

Other witnesses said Ms Chirlian and her companion had been 'getting in the face' of Mr Joyce, according to Fairfax.

The incident comes after the deputy leader sparked global headlines last year when he famously said that Johnny Depp's dogs had better 'bugger off' back to the states or they would be put down

The incident comes after the deputy leader sparked global headlines last year when he famously said that Johnny Depp's dogs had better 'bugger off' back to the US or they would be put down.

'It's time that Pistol and Boo buggered off back to the United States,' Mr Joyce said at the time.

'He can put them on the same chartered jet he flew out on to fly them back out of our nation.'
Comes after petition against rule is signed by more than 1.3 million people

Police investigating whether it is linked to transgender bathroom policy

A small explosion went off at a Target store - and police have confirmed they are investigating whether it is connected to the retail branch's controversial transgender bathroom policy.

The bomb - which went off just after 4pm in Evanston, Illinois, on Wednesday - was placed in the women's bathroom.

Police are investigating whether the blast is related to the store's stance permitting access to bathrooms and fitting rooms on the basis of gender identity.

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Police are investigating whether the blast at a Target store in Evanston, Illinois (pictured) related to the store's controversial bathroom policy

It left minimal damages and nobody was hurt, according to a local news station.

Police commander Joseph Dugan told Evanston Now a 44-year-old woman has been taken into custody - but that the investigation continues and no charges have been filed.

The store's controversial bathroom policy has sparked a national boycott effort.

The American Family Association (AFA), a Christian group, launched a petition in April arguing against the rule just one day after it was announced - and so far more than 1.3 million people have signed it.

In a statement, Target said it enforced the policy because it supports the federal Equality Act.

'We believe everyoneevery team member, every guest, and every communitydeserves to be protected from discrimination, and treated equally,' it states.
Standing too close to those next to you was also found to be a big faux pas

Two thirds admitted they would not challenge a queue jumper but would tut

Poll finds 97 per cent of Brits would not start up a conversation with others

New study has revealed the two main rules surrounding queuing in the UK

Some people sigh, others huff, most look at their smartphones, a few actually pay others to do it for them, and only the most patient among us grin and bear it.

The British nation's propensity for queuing is unmatched anywhere else in the world and continues to baffle those visiting the shores of the UK.

But thankfully for those unaware of the social norms surrounding the British phenomenon, a new study has revealed the two fundamental rules to queuing.

Brits queue patiently at Waterloo bus station on a day of travel chaos following tube strikes in 2014

The first rule is to not make small talk with those standing with you, while the second is to never complain or make a scene, regardless of queue-jumping.

Despite this, two thirds of those polled said they would be unable to confront a queue-jumper and were more likely to tut as a way of communicating their unhappiness.

Dr Zsuzsanna Vargha, a queuing expert at the University of Leicester, told The Times: 'We as social beings are very reluctant to allow a social situation to break down, and this is why people do not challenge queue jumpers.'

The research also found that 97 per cent of Brits would never dare break the first rule of starting up a conversation, while eight in ten said they passed time by criticising other queue members.

Research found that 97 per cent of Brits would never dare break the first rule of starting up a conversation, while eight in ten said they passed time by criticising other queue members (stock image)

Three quarters confessed to eavesdropping on shoppers' conversations with staff to see how friendly they are, while two thirds said they judged others by their clothes or the contents of their shopping.

Standing too close to the person next to you was also found to be a big faux pas, with three quarters of those polled claiming that touching distance was still 'too close'.

Nine in ten were annoyed by those who hold a place in the queue for a friend, while the same percentage said they were irritated by people taking too long to make a payment.

The research, conducted by queue management specialists the Tensator Group, discovered that six minutes was the maximum time Brits were willing to stand in a queue at the supermarket.
A public swimming pool in Germany has banned Muslim women from wearing the 'burqini' after complaints from non-Islamic bathers.

Only one woman wore the total-body swimsuit - complete with head covering - during an all-female swim day at the baths in Neutraubling near Regensburg last week.

But the sight so offended other swimmers that town officials decided to post the ban on all burqinis being worn in future.

Banned: Female swimmers at a public pool in southwest Germany complained when a woman wore a full-body swimsuit, known as a burkini

A local newspaper report said there were loud complaints from the other female swimmers when the Muslim woman swam and did water aerobics in the all-over costume.

'Why the burqini as a full-body suit would be necessary to wear during a women's swim day is for me incomprehensible,' said mayor Heinz Kiechle said.

'Only generally typical apparel is to be worn,' he added.

'Because the pool is financed publicly for all people it makes no sense to have special arrangements for individual religions if this adseresly affects the general public.

The sight of a woman in a covered bathing suit so offended the other women that burkinis are now banned at the public pool (file photo)

'This also contradicts the fundamental ideas of integration and mutual understanding, which is always being discussed in many towns.'

He added that some refugees had tried to go swimming in their underwear and this was banned too.

The burqini ban, while seemingly supported by townspeople, has offended some politicians and human rights groups.
A man beat mother to death because he believed she was a witch after taking a legal high and eating cow manure, a court heard.

Alun Evans, 34, had taken ketamine replica MXP and also covered himself in manure when he launched the assault on mother Margaret, 69.

Belfast Crown Court heard the mother-of-three sustained multiple injuries and died from blunt force trauma to her head and chest after being punched, kicked and hit with pieces of wood.

Evans, who admitted manslaughter on grounds of diminished responsibility, was said to have been in a drug-induced psychosis and had previously enjoyed a good relationship with his mother.

Margaret Evans, pictured, 69, was beaten to death by her son Alun, 34, after he took legal high MXP

According to Belfast Live, prosecutor Ciaran Murphy QC said police officers arrived at the scene in June 2014 to find a naked Evans drinking out of a bird bath, before he told them I think I killed my mum, and she was a witch.

Evans, of Portstewart, Londonderry, was also said to have believed one of the officers was Bear Grylls and surrendered to him as he was arrested, saying I trust you Bear.

Police found a bloody handprint on the windowsill of the familys bungalow as well as pieces of broken wood and clumps of hair near Mrs Evans body.

Mrs Evans, who owned Madam Margos hair salon in Portstewart, had been trying to get her son to drink water to flush the drugs out of his system, the court was told.

Her son was said to have kicked her in the head 10 times as well as gouging her eyes with his thumbs.

She sustained 14 rib fractures, cuts and bruises, a broken nose and defense wounds to her hands and arms.

According to Belfast Live, the court was told Evans had a long history of drug use and was battling depression.

Belfast Crown Court, pictured, heard Evans assaulted his mother by punching, kicking and beating her with a piece of wood

But had been supported and protected by his mother, who had accompanied him to see a GP a day before her death.

The MXP was said to have been bought over the internet from a UK company and had been delivered to his home days before the killing.

He is said to have told his sister he felt like Superman on the drug.

After being arrested, Evans was detained under mental health laws and remanded in custody.

In mitigation, Charles MacCreanor QC said Evans actions were out of character and so unexpected and that he accepted responsibility for the horrific death and had to live with what he had done.
'I'm a jihadist, get me out of here,' would appear to be the cry from disillusioned Westerners who joined Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL) in the Middle East and who are now - in increasing numbers - pleading with their respective governments to help them return home,

'Some have turned up at diplomatic missions in Turkey and others have sent furtive messages to their governments seeking assistance in escaping from territory the extremist group controls in neighboring Syria,' reported The Wall Street Journal, citing Western diplomats and a Syrian network set up to help defectors.

This isn't what I signed up for: Western Jihadis are apparently turning their backs on ISIS in increasing numbers

Defectors from the West have pleaded succour from the countries and the families on whom they turned their backs as ISIS is reportedly losing territory and manpower in both Iraq and Syria.

Pro-Islamic fighters are also facing a new assault from American-backed armed forces and the Russian-allied regime of Syrian dictator, Bashar al-Assad.

'Father, help me,' a female teenager from Europe allegedly wrote to her father in a text message around six months ago. 'I want to get out. But I now have a small child.'

The girl had travelled to Raqqa, Syria - ISIS' de facto capital - in 2013 to join up with the hardline organisation.

According to the diplomats cited in the Wall Street Journal report, an estimated 150 citizens from six countries have begged for assistance in helping them escape.

Others have managed to make their own way back since the number of departures began to increase in autumn last year.

'The overall number of Westerners who joined the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq and then returned home is unknown, but Western officials have said several a hundred fighters have come back to Europe,' said The Wall Street Journal.

ISIS does not take kindly to people defecting from its ranks, meting out harsh punishments - such as decapitations - to those caught trying to abandon the cause.

Government officials who allow former terrorists who claim to have rejected ISIS and other terrorist groups back into the countries they left face a constant threat from the jihadist group.

The WSJ says that jihadists hell-bent on causing mayhem and destruction will pose as refugees and defectors in an attempt to enter Western nations.

This led to last year's deadly terror attacks in Paris and Brussels, which were linked to terrorists with connections to ISIS who had come into Europe posing as Syrian refugees.

Jack Letts, aka 'Jihadi Jack,' is the first white British male known to have joined ISIS

In November 2015, the House Committee on Homeland Security warned that members of ISIS and other like-minded groups are 'determined to infiltrate Syrian refugee flows' into the United States and other Western countries.

President Barack Obama, however, has continued to allow increasing numbers of Syrian refugees into the United States.

In September 2015, the same committee reported that at least 'several dozen' American ISIS fighters (an exact figure was not given) were able to sneak back into the United States without being arrested or put under surveillance.

Western Jihadi, Andrew Poulin

As reported by the Associated Press (AP), FBI Director James Comey warned Tuesday that as far as its efforts to recruit fighters to carry out jihad overseas and launch attacks in the US is concerned, ISIS is America's main threat.

Comey observed that the number of FBI cases linked to ISIS has not decreased, stating that the 'FBI is continuing to focus on the Islamic State group, and there are close to 1,000 open cases nationwide involving people at various stages of recruitment.'

Comey emphasised that fewer Americans are travelling abroad to fight alongside the terrorist organisation and suggested that the misplaced allure that inspired curiosity, unwavering devotion and fanaticism has been almost entirely eradicated.



A group of ISIS fighters travelling in convoy

The overall number of foreign fighters travelling to fight alongside ISIS in its so-called Caliphate in Iraq and Syria has dropped by 75 per cent over the past year, to nearly 500 a month, according to the Pentagon.

Analysts and political figures in the Obama administration have said that the group has recently lost both territory and fighters.

A spent force in Iraq and Syria?: ISIS fighters holding the Al-Qaeda flag with 'Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant' written on it

According to a report released in March by the liberal Centre for American Progress (CAP) think tank, based in the American capital of Washington DC, 'An estimated 27,000 to 31,000 foreign fighters from at least 86 countries have travelled to Syria and Iraq to fight with the Islamic State and other extremist groups.

'Around 4,250 of these foreign fighters are European and a further 250 are American.'

CAP said its sources for this information were The Soufan Group, a New York-based consultancy firm, and the House Committee on Homeland Security.
Noirbnb and Noirebnb have been launched by two separate founders

Two new websites have been set up as an alternative to Airbnb by people who feel the billion-dollar company does not do enough to combat discrimination.

Noirbnb.com and Noirebnb.com are two separate startups that were set up by black people in a bid to be the go-to alternative after they personally experienced discrimination when using Airbnb.

This comes just weeks after user Gregory Selden launched a lawsuit against the popular house sharing website after he claims a homeowner turned him down because of his skin colour.

Noirbnb (left) and Noirebnb (right) are both yet to be launched, but hope to provide an alternative to Airbnb after experiencing racial discrimination

Despite the confusingly similar names - which are a coincidence - Noirbnb and Noirebnb are run by different people.

However Noirbnb's founders, Stefan Grant and Ronnia Cherry, claim to have had the name and idea first.

The pair were staying at an Airbnb in Decatur, Georgia, with friends last year when a neighbour suspected them of robbing the house they were renting - and ended up calling the police.

They went to Airbnb's headquarters after suggesting to them ways that it could tackle racism via email.

Ronnia told BuzzFeed news: 'They opened their doors and ears to us but I dont think it was as much a priority within the company as it was a priority with the people.'

Although Stefan and Ronnia plan to create a platform entirely unique, Noirebnb can be seen to have based its website around that of Airbnb.

Rohan Gilkes announced the launch on Monday days after his blog post about being discriminated against by an Airbnb host in Idaho went viral.

According to BuzzFeed news, Gilkes explained that the 'biggest challenge' will be the volume, and said it will be 'difficult to get things moving' until the number of hosts and number of guests even out.

Like Stefan and Ronnia, he also contacted Airbnb to talk about the issue of racial discrimination.

The new website startups come just weeks after Airbnb user Gregory Selden (pictured) launched a lawsuit against the popular house sharing website after he claims a homeowner turned him down because of his skin colour

He received an apology two weeks later but said it was 'a little too late'.

He also said that his suggestion for Airbnb to stop using profile pictures on the site to prevent racial profiling was dismissed by the company.

Gilkes says Noirbnbs Facebook likes shot up in just a few hours on Monday - which he believes shows that the #AirbnbWhileBlack movement has the potential to work.

He said: 'My email is destroyed. My Twitter mentions are destroyed. Its not going to be difficult.'

Both Noirbnb and Noirebnb will be open to people who are not black and are open to outside funders.
Comedian Eddie Izzard was heckled by the audience on Question Time last night as he ranted at Nigel Farage over immigration.

The Labour supporter and the Ukip leader were engaged in a series of furious rows over the EU referendum during a feisty edition of the BBC show.

Mr Izzard accused Mr Farage of betraying his migrant roots and German wife by demanding we cut ties with Brussels - insisting his background should make him a 'champion' for free movement of people.

Ukip leader Nigel Farage and comedian Eddie Izzard were involved in a series of fiery clashes during the episode of BBC Question Time in Folkestone last night

Making a case for Remain, the flamboyant celebrity said: 'The governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney, says we will most likely go into recession.'

But Mr Farage hit back: 'Luckily, Eddie we didn't listen to you - we didn't join the Euro.'

Mr Izzard broke in to insist: 'No no no, I didn't say join the Euro.'

As the pair clashed over a question about how to curb immigration, Mr Izzard said: 'I know people are concerned about immigration but we have got to look at the facts.'

And he raised the fact that Mr Farage's heritage is French and his wife German.

'You don't let me explain why you, an immigrant family, are so anti immigration,' the comedian said.

'Everyone here would like to hear, the whole of the country would like to hear.'

The other members of the panel were sidelined for large parts of the show while the pair tried to shout each other down

Labour supporter Mr Izzard waved his hands around as he accused Mr Farage of betraying his migrant background by calling for Brexit

Waving his hands around, the flamboyant celebrity said: 'You are French protestant on one side, you are German from the other side. You should be the champion.

'Your ancestors are revolving in their graves.'

Mr Farage insisted he was not opposed to immigration, and complained that EU membership meant we discriminated against people from the Commonwealth.

He said the population was on track to be 80 million by 2040 and net migration had to be returned to 'an acceptable level'.

The audience applauded after a man shouted 'Shut up!' as Mr Izzard tried to talk over Mr Farage

The comedian appeared taken aback by the heckling and went quiet for a few seconds before the pair's rowing resumed

As Mr Izzard tried to speak over the MEP a man in the audience yelled: 'Shut up!'

A slightly taken aback Mr Izzard took their advice, but the battle was soon raging again.

Presenter David Dimbleby repeatedly tried to stop the pair's running row from dominating the session, in Folkestone, Kent.

'There are three other people on the table, I am going to go to them,' he said at one point.

He said later: 'I think we should make you change seats if you go on like this.'

A woman in the audience also shouted 'shut up' at Mr Farage as he tried to interrupt Shadow Foreign Secretary Hilary Benn.

Veteran presenter David Dimbleby suggested at one point that Mr Farage and Mr Izzard would have to be moved to different chairs rather than sitting next to each other

Twitter users on both sides of the referendum debate voiced their disapproval of the way Mr Izzard handled his appearance on QT last night

Mr Dimbleby joked: 'Calm down, the audience will get so cross they'll walk out. They will do a Brexit!'

Mr Benn said: 'There's a bit of a problem controlling the panel this week.'

The rowdy epidose came on the same night Boris Johnson and Tory colleague Amber Rudd were embroiled in the nastiest clashes yet of the campaing.

During a special ITV referendum debate show, the Energy Secretary accused the former London Mayor of repeatedly lying about the UK's contributions to Brussels.

In the most personal jibe, she said Mr Johnson was 'not the man you want to drive you home at the end of the evening'.

Ms Rudd accused Mr Johnson of 'sneering at experts' who have backed George Osborne's warnings about the impact of Brexit on the economy.

'If you wanted to build a bridge you would talk to expert engineers to make sure it didn't fall down if I wanted expert advice on a good joke I might ask Boris.'

In another pointed attack the Cabinet minister said: 'There is no saving from leaving the European Union. They should repaint that bus  and put a leprechaun at one end and a pot of gold at the other.'

Ms Rudd and Mr Johnson clashed again after he claimed that Britain could be drawn into further eurozone bailouts, even if it is not a member of the single currency bloc.

'We have no protection at all, as part of the EU from paying into this,' he said. 'They will take us further and further into a united states of Europe.'

Ms Rudd accused him of 'misleading the public' by ignoring the exemptions secured by Mr Cameron in his re-negotiation.

Mr Izzard asked Mr Farage to explain why he was so anti-immigration when his wife is German

'We have vetoes, we can use them. Don't undermine this country's position,' she told him.

In an apparent reference to the ex-Mayor's tumultuous love life, Ms Rudd said: 'Boris, he's the life and soul of the party.

'But he's not the man you want to drive you home at the end of the evening.'

Mr Johnson did not respond directly to the insult, but said in his closing statement: 'There is a contrast between this side of the argument that is offering hope and that side of the argument that is offering nothing but fear...

'They say that we have absolutely no choice but to stay locked in the back of the EU car, driven in the wrong direction going in a direction we do not want to go; we say we can take back control...

'This is a once in a lifetime opportunity for this country to speak up for democracy.'

The nature of the ambush on Mr Johnson will fuel suspicions that the 'Get Boris' strategy was devised by Number 10, which has been rattled by recent polls showing the contest is neck and neck.

Mr Johnson, energy minister Andrea Leadsom and Labour's Gisela Stuart were representing the Brexit side, taking on Scottish first minister Nicolas Sturgeon, Ms Rudd, and shadow business secretary Angela Eagle.

Ms Sturgeon said he 'can't be trusted', while Ms Eagle accused him of 'staggering' untruths about the cost of EU membership.

But Mr Johnson insisted Brexit would mean the government could reclaim control over immigration and have up to 350million a week more to spend on the NHS.
Shoppers who purchased fresh food at a regional grocery store have been warned they may be at risk of exposure to Hepatitis A.

The supermarket confirmed a deli worker at Foodworks, in Yarram, eastern Victoria, has been diagnosed with the infection after a trip to India, sparking a decontamination of the store.

The Victorian Health Department issued a warning that all ready-to-eat deli items, fresh fruit and vegetables from the store should be discarded, reports ABC.

A deli worker at Foodworks in Yarram (pictured) has been diagnosed with Hepatitis A after a trip to India

'Anyone who has bought ready-to-eat foods from the supermarket, particularly cold meats, smallgoods and pre-prepared salads from the delicatessen, should be aware of the signs and symptoms of hepatitis A,' Victorian chief health officer Charles Guest said.

'Between the 25th of April and the 9th of June, it's possible that food prepared at Foodworks in Yarram was contaminated by somebody who turns out to have had hepatitis A.'

Hepatitis A is a viral disease affecting the liver, with symptoms including abdominal discomfort, fever, vomiting, and yellow skin and eyes.

It is disseminated when traces of faecal matter containing the virus contact hands, objects, water or food and are then taken in by mouth.

The department said there were no further cases at this stage, but urged anyone who has consumed foods that may be affected to monitor their health.

Hepatitis A (pictured: a microscopic image of the infection) is a viral disease affecting the liver
Rosie, from Bromley, Kent, believes it's because staff thought she was ugly

But when she got her Frappuccino back someone had written 'Virgin' on it

Rosie Anderson gave her name to baristas so they could write it on her cup

A woman was left mortified after a Starbucks barista wrote 'virgin' on her cup instead of her name.

Rosie Anderson only noticed the scribble after leaving a London branch of the coffee house. Angry, the 22-year-old emailed a photograph to their customer services department.

She was hoping for an apology but instead received an automated email response and two drinks vouchers.

Rosie Anderson, left, was left mortified after a Starbucks barista wrote 'virgin' on her cup instead of her name

She said: 'I was so angry, they may as well have written 'troll' on my cup - that's how it made me feel.

'I can laugh about it now, but what if the staff are doing that to every girl who goes in on their own? It could really upset them, especially if they're really insecure.'

Miss Anderson, a dental nurse from Bromley in Kent, visited a south London branch of the cafe whilst on her way to Victoria Station on May 18.

She ordered a strawberry and cream rappuccino with whipped cream on top, and the male staff member asked her for her name to write on her cup so that the drink could be identified as hers.

She continued: 'I said Rosie and I thought I spelled it out to them. There's no way they could mistake Rosie with virgin. I didn't notice anything funny about the staff, they were joking around, or not.'

It was only after she left to catch a bus to Manchester that she noticed what had been written.

'I was so angry,' she recalled. 'I took the photo then threw away the cup. I didn't even drink the drink. Later, I relayed what happened to my parents and they said I should take it as a compliment.

'They thought it meant that the two male staff members behind the counter thought I was classy  but I thought they meant ugly.'

Rosie said she took the word to mean that the Starbucks staff believed her to be ugly, while her parents argued it meant she looked classy

Rosie ordered a strawberry and cream Frappuccino with whipped cream on top, and the male staff member asked her for her name to write on her cup so that the drink could be identified as hers

A week later, Miss Anderson emailed Starbucks' complaints department, asking what they thought staff had meant by 'virgin,' and told them how she'd been embarrassed.

But instead of a personalised reply, she initially received an automated response. It was only after she prompted Starbucks again that she got a letter in the post with two drinks vouchers enclosed.

'I don't feel like I've had an apology,' she said. 'Looking back, while I was waiting for my drink, the two guys behind the counter were giggling too. I don't know if they were laughing at me.

'I'll never go to Starbucks again. They've been so rude and I'll throw the vouchers away.'

A Starbucks spokesman said: 'We are disappointed to learn of this incident and would like to sincerely apologise to our customer for her experience.

'We strive to provide an inclusive and positive experience for all and this is not representative of the service we know our customers expect.
Human rights lawyer Amal Clooney is demanding an investigation against ISIS committing crimes against humanity during the Yazidi genocide.

The human rights lawyer is hoping to represent thousands of Yazidi women kidnapped, raped and enslaved by ISIS terrorists in Iraq and Kurdistan at The Hague International Criminal Court.

Mrs Clooney is demanding that ISIS are prosecuted by the ICC for crimes against humanity committed against the Yazidi, saying 'it is time that we see ISIS commanders in the dock in The Hague'.

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Taking ISIS to court: Human rights lawyer Amal Clooney is demanding that ISIS face justice over crimes against humanity committed during the Yazidi genocide

She is representing thousands of Yazidi women and children kidnapped, raped, tortured and enslaved by ISIS, including Nobel Peace Prize nominee Nadia Murad Basee Taha.

'We know that thousands of Yazidi civilians have been killed and that thousands of Yazidi women have been enslaved by a terrorist organization, IS, that has publicly proclaimed its genocidal intent,' Clooney told the New York Times' Women in the World.

'We know that systematic rapes have taken place, and that they are still taking place. And yet no one is being held to account.

'It is time that we see ISIS commanders in the dock in The Hague, and I am honored to have been asked to represent Nadia and the Yazidi community in their quest for legal accountability.'

Mrs Clooney, a barrister at Doughty Street Chambers specializing in international law and human rights law, is offering her counsel and representation for free.

Pro bono: Mrs Clooney is representing thousands of Yazidi women and children kidnapped, raped, tortured and enslaved by ISIS, including Nobel Peace Prize nominee Nadia Murad Basee Taha (pictured)

Laying down the law: Mrs Clooney, pictured with Britain's Prime Minister David Cameron, is demanding that ISIS are prosecuted by the ICC, saying 'it is time that we see ISIS commanders in the dock in The Hague'

Ms Murad 21, was orphaned when ISIS extremists slaughtered six of her brothers as well as her mother in the northern Iraqi town of Sinjar in August 2014.

She was among more than 5,000 Yazidi women taken captive when extremists swept through the town and was held in a building in the ISIS stronghold of Mosul where she was raped and tortured.

She managed to escape the clutches of the jihadists three months later and now lives in Germany, where she has been working with the UN to highlight the plight of her people.

Considered infidels by ISIS militants, many from the Yazidi community were stolen from their homes and sold into the sex trade when ISIS attacked in August 2014.

An estimated 5,000 people were slaughtered in the terrorists' offensive, and some 400,000 people were displaced in Sinjar, the Ninevah plain, and Syria.

While many Yazidi have been able to escape the clutches of ISIS, it is believed more than 3,000 women and children are still in captivity.

Ms Murad is from the northern Iraqi town of Sinjar, which is heavily populated by the Yazidi community.

Considered infidels by ISIS militants, many from the Yazidi community are stolen from their homes and sold into the sex trade.

She was among more than 5,000 Yazidi women taken captive and more than 3,400 women and children are still being held hostage by ISIS.

Role model: Mrs Clooney, pictured with her husband, U.S. actor George, is offering counsel and representation to the Yazidi people pro-bono

Mrs Clooney now hopes that an ICC investigation will see ISIS representatives prosecuted and the Yazidi people's case brought to trial in the Hague.

The Oxford graduate completed her Masters of Law at New York University and worked in the city at the firm Sullivan & Cromwell.

She returned to London in 2010, joining Doughty Street Chambers as a barrister, where she has worked on several high-profile cases such as the legal wrangle between the British and Greek governments over the disputed ownership of the Elgin Marbles.

Mrs Clooney has since lectured on international criminal law at SOAS (University of London), The New School in New York City, The Hague Academy of International Law, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Mrs Clooney is currently fighting for the release of former Maldivian President Mohamed Nasheed, the archipelago's first democratically elected leader, who is in prison on terrorism charges following a controversial trial.

Mrs Clooney is the wife of Hollywood actor George Clooney.

The ICC in The Hague is financed by contributions from the 124 states who are parties by signing and ratifying the Rome Statute, determined based on each country's capacity to pay.
A former grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan has claimed there is a Jewish conspiracy against Donald Trump during a recent edition of his extremist radio show broadcast on his white nationalist website.

David Duke attacked an American-born judge of Mexican heritage, Gonzalo Curiel, over his handling of a class action case involving the business mogul.

The racist former leader claimed powerful Jewish forces are manipulating the election process to block Trump's White House aspirations.

Former Ku Klux Klan chief David Duke, pictured, has claimed there is a Jewish conspiracy currently trying to block Donald Trump from winning the White House in November involving senior media figures

Duke, pictured far left, claimed a law firm taking a class action against Trump University was part of this conspiracy against the Republican candidate who has also attacked the judge presiding over the case

Trump attacked Judge Gonzalo Curiel who is hearing a class action against the mogul's failed university

The former Klan chief said the class action against Trump University was part of this conspiracy.

He told his followers: 'The Jewish establishment is absolutely zeroing in now on Donald Trump. The viciousness of these Jews is unbelievable.

'I think this whole Trump University case really, if we exploit it, can really expose the entire Jewish manipulation of the American media the American political process, the American control of politics in America, and truly how that they are the dominant and dangerous power that exists in the United States of America today.'

According to CBS News, Duke named the law firm Robbins Geller Rudman and Dowd who are taking the class action against Trump University.

Duke claimed they were 'an overwhelmingly Jewish firm'.

David Duke, left, attacked Gonzalo Curiel, right, because the judge is hearing a case involving Donald Trump's failed . Duke accuses the law firm taking the class action of being 'overwhelmingly Jewish'

He also named several high profile media figures and journalists as either 'Jewish agents' or 'Jewish extremists'.

Trump had earlier 'disavowed' Duke after the far right leader had reluctantly backed the businessman in February.

Trump is almost guaranteed the Republican nomination to run for president, but the billionaire businessman's attacks on Judge Curiel have caused concern among GOP leaders.

House Speaker Paul Ryan has finally endorsed Trump but labelled the remarks about the judge as 'racist'.

Some in the party believe they can still derail Trump at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland next month because they fear he will further alienate voters and possibly hand the Senate to the Democrats.

Democratic US Senator Elizabeth Warren attacked Trump as a racist and accused the Republican Party of fostering his intolerance.

She said: 'Donald Trump chose racism as his weapon, but his aim is exactly the same as the rest of the Republicans

Trump accused Curiel of bias because of the judge's Mexican heritage. Trump claimed the judge was ruling against him because of his plans to build a wall between the US and Mexico.
when he was gored and trampled

A cattle farmer was almost killed by a wild bull at his Queensland property, before his son ran into the aggressive animal at high speed breaking its neck.

Graeme Ware, 66, suffered eleven broken ribs, a collapsed lung, a broken shoulder and leg and groin wounds as he was gored and trampled by a bull while working near Mackay on Monday, Ruralweekly reported.

After the attack Mr Ware's son and grandson tracked down the bull on their quad bike before the wild animal charged at them.

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After a wild bull attacked cattle farmer Graeme Ware his son and grandson tracked down the animal on their quad bike, breaking its neck (pictured)

Graeme Ware (pictured), 66, suffered eleven broken ribs, a collapsed lung, a broken shoulder and leg and groin wounds as he was gored and trampled by a bull while working near Mackay on Monday

'He hit him hard as he could with the bike and broke his neck and killed him,' Mr Ware told ABC News.

Describing the incident Mr Ware said: 'When the bull come at me I jumped behind the shed post, but he just whipped his head around the corner- because I'm older and not as quick he got hold of me by the coat and threw me up in the air.'

After 'playing dead', Mr Ware said the bull backed off.

Despite his life threatening injuries he then scrambled over a fence to his car where he activated his Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacon (EPIRB), before driving to seek medical treatment, Ruralweekly reported.

The beacon led police to his vehicle on a dirt road, before he was flown to Mackay Base Hospital where he will undergo surgery for his injuries.
A microlight with two people on board has gone missing on a flight from Northern Ireland to Scotland.

A major air and sea search was launched on Thursday evening when the light aircraft was reported overdue, and continued to 3am on Friday, when it was suspended due to fog.

The RNLI confirmed that the search, which the Coastguard and Mountain Rescue, has now resumed but the fog is still making it challenging.

A major air and sea search was launched on Thursday evening when the light aircraft was reported overdue, and continued to 3am on Friday, when it was suspended due to fog. File image

James Instance, duty controller with UK Coastguard said, The weather has caused problems for the search operation. However we have drawn up an extensive search and rescue plan which will be put into action today.

The flight took off from the City of Derry airport and had been tracking towards Stranraer but never arrived. It was last seen near Cushendun in Co Antrim at around 11am yesterday.

The UK Coastguard search and rescue helicopter based at Prestwick, and the Irish Coastguard helicopter based at Dublin, searched from the air.

The Coastguard and RNLI lifeboats from Scotland and Northern Ireland were involved in the operation in the North Channel but nothing has yet been found.

The Northern Ireland North West Mountain Rescue Team joined the search today.

Ryan Gray, senior maritime operations officer at the UK Coastguard, said: 'UK Coastguard has also issued a Mayday relay broadcast in the area and several merchant shipping vessels have responded and are keeping a lookout for this aircraft. We may send further resources as the search widens.'

The Police Service of Northern Ireland and Police Scotland have been informed.




A Christian ice-cream salesman was beaten by a gang of Muslims for selling 'unclean merchandise' to Muslim children.

Khaleel Masih, a father-of-six, was selling ice cream from the back of his bicycle in a village near his home city of Changa Manga when he was attacked.

Christians make up less than two per cent of the population in Pakistan and attacks have increased in recent years in the Muslim-majority nation.

Khaleel Masih, a father-of-six, was selling ice cream from the back of his bicycle in a village near Changa Manga (pictured), where he lives

Masih, 42, had visited a nearby village in the Kasur district to sell ice cream when two Muslim brothers - Muhammad Rizwan and Muhammad Farman - started insulting him.

They called him 'Chora', an insulting word for Christians.

He told International Christian Concern: 'They then began accusing me of selling unclean merchandise to Muslim children. I wanted to argue and make them understand that this wasn't true but they didn't listen to me. Instead, they began to beat and torture me.'

Soon, around 20 other men had joined in the beating. They also damaged his bicycle and scattered his ice-cream along the ground.

He said other Muslim men and women shouted at him: 'Christians are untouchables! They are not followers of our holy prophet.

'They are meant for cleaning our houses and therefore should not be allowed to sell anything edible to Muslims.'

When Masih explained what had happened at the local police station, they refused to take a statement, the ICC said.

When he was finally allowed to file a report, he was pressured into withdrawing his complaint and forced to sign a reconciliation agreement.

His experience reflects the regular persecution Christians in Pakistan face from hard-line Muslims, who want to see a strict interpretation of Islamic law take precedence in Pakistan's legal system.

In March at least 74 people were killed - including 24 children - in a sickening attack on a children's playground that targeted Christians celebrating Easter Sunday
Security minister John Hayes is backing a Brexit vote in the referendum on June 23

Britain would be safer from terrorists outside the EU, David Cameron's own security minister has insisted.

John Hayes said the Brussels club's ability to fight extremism was compromised by the 'grand scheming' of bureaucrats.

Trying to coordinate security links through the bloc was a 'distraction' and a 'waste' of effort, he argued.

The claim, in an article for the Telegraph, directly contradicts the view expressed by the Prime Minister and Defence Secretary Michael Fallon on the issue.

They have insisted that cooperation within the EU is crucial to protect the safety of citizens on the streets of the UK.

Home Secretary Theresa May also dismissed Mr Hayes' remarks today, saying that 'walking away from the table' would damage our interests.

Speaking at a summit in Brussels, Mrs May said: 'I am very clear that the decisions that are taken here protect the UK's security and safety...

'Taking control is not about walking away from the table.'

In his article, the Brexi-supporting security minister dismissed pro-EU interventions from former Prime Minister Sir John Major.

'Understandably, yesterday's politicians' view of Europe is dimmed by the dark shadow of the Second World War,' he wrote.

'But there are clear generational differences between Euro-enthusiasts such as Sir JohnMajor and Lord Heseltine, and what the people want now.

'The economic imperatives we face largely stem from the rise of powers on other continents. Our greatest security challenge is a pan-national terrorist threat, fuelled by an ideology that's anything but European.

'Western countries, sharing values, have a compelling mutual interest in cooperation.'

Mr Hayes said Britain already tackled terrorism at a 'global' level.

'The effectiveness of our security cooperation is forged in the urgent operational day-to- day battle against terrorism - in defence of our shared interests,' he said.

'Trying to build new structures is a distraction and a waste. It is driven by those who see institutions appropriating power, rather than people doing the job in hand.

'Their grand scheming harks back to a time before the internet and modern communication.'

Mr Hayes pointed out that the Government had 'resisted EU attempts to take security into the ambit of Brussels'.

'It makes most sense for nation states to collaborate with services not run by the EU, but flexibly designed to work together,' he added.

Despite being at odds with Mr Cameron over the EU, Mr Hayes rejected suggestions that the PM would have to quit if there is a Leave vote on June 23.

'This referendum is not about his leadership, nor about settling old scores or reducing big arguments to petty points. The people deserve a grown-up debate not childish name-calling,' he wrote.

'The debate is about who we are and where we belong; of where power should be vested and how the powerful are held to account.

'So, let us dismiss the idea that only one side in this campaign loves their country.'

Mr Hayes dismissed suggestions that Prime Minister David Cameron, seen on a visit to the Hitachi factory yesterday, will have to quit if there is a Leave vote in the referendum
Migrants are trying to sneak into Britain at a rate of one every six minutes, it was revealed today.

Official figures showed border officials stopped 84,088 at the British border last year  the equivalent of 230 a day or nearly 10 every hour.

The alarming rate of detections has more than doubled compared to the previous year and were described as 'truly shocking' by former Cabinet minister Iain Duncan Smith.

Migrants are trying to sneak into Britain at a rate of one every six minutes - many stowed away in the back of a lorry, such as above, where UK border officials discover a man hiding behind boxes in the back of a trailer at Calais Ferry Port in France

There were 9,946 illegal attempts at entering the UK in the first three months of this year. The figures  released under a freedom of information request to the Daily Express  do not include the estimated tens of thousands of migrants who have entered Britain illegally.

With less than two weeks before the June 23 EU referendum, today's figures were used by the Brexit campaign to back-up their argument that leaving the EU will give authorities greater control over Britain's borders.

Steven Woolfe, Ukip MEP and the party's immigration spokesman, said: 'The failure of the EU to control its external borders has seen tens of thousands of illegal migrants attempt to gain access to Britain.'

Alarmingly, Home Secretary Theresa May warned the sheer number of migrants trying to come into Britain 'shows no sign of easing'.

She said: 'The situation in northern France is a symptom of a wider international crisis, a crisis that shows no sign of easing in the short term.

'So it is important we redouble our joint efforts to protect our border, move migrants in the region into more suitable facilities in France, and return those not in need of protection to their home countries.

'The Government has already invested tens of millions of pounds to bolster security at the ports in northern France, and the UK and French governments have been working at pace to implement actions agreed in the joint declaration last August.

'Security at the Calais port and around the Eurotunnel site has improved significantly as a result.'

Responding to today's figures, which were released after weeks of delay, Mr Duncan Smith told the Daily Express: 'These shocking figures show our ability to secure our own borders is collapsing. This is a direct consequence of the EU's obsession with freedom of movement and insistence on an open border policy.

'Migration is soaring and the EU has comprehensively failed to deal with the crisis. This now threatens the UK's security.'

The figures show the number of clandestine entries into the UK is rising at an ever-greater scale.

Earlier this year the impact of the migration crisis on Britain last summer was revealed, with figures showing 13,000 migrants tried to enter Britain illegally in July alone.

Earlier this year the impact of the migration crisis on Britain last summer was revealed, with figures showing 13,000 migrants tried to enter Britain illegally in July alone - a huge rise on previous years

This was a staggering 1,300 per cent rise from 2012, when the number of people who were caught by UK authorities trying to enter Britain illegally by hiding in lorries, walking through the Channel Tunnel or arriving without visas at ports and airports stood at around 1,000 a month.

In 2013 this monthly figure doubled to 2,000 and in 2014 it doubled again to 4,000, according to figures released by the Home Office.

The sharp rise, uncovered in a Freedom of Information of request by the Economist, has been caused by the worsening conflict in Syria, which has seen more than 4 million refugees flee the country since the civil war erupted five years ago.

But the increase in the number of people detected trying to enter the UK is also down to the fact that the attempts at entering Britain are becoming increasingly tenacious.

Franck Duvell, an immigration expert from Oxford University, said most migrants camped in northern France are now prepared to try 11 or 12 times to get to the UK - up from five or six times in 2014.

The rise in the number of illegal entry attempts detected is also caused by a significant tightening in checks of vehicles arriving from across the Channel.

Lorries are X-rayed to check for stowaways, carbon-dioxide sensors are used to detec human activity while sniffer dogs are deployed to patrol ports.
However he survived the fall, suffering only a broken ankle and injured toe

He plummeted more than 70ft at the Olympic National Park in Washington

Josh Reichert, 30, toppled down three waterfalls after losing his footing

This shocking footage shows the moment a man was swept off his feet by powerful rapids and thrown 70ft down THREE waterfalls, narrowly avoiding death.

Josh Reichert tumbled down the falls after he lost his footing in the Olympic National Park, Washington.

The 30-year-old was visiting Sol Duc Falls with his wife to celebrate their anniversary and had crossed to a rock at the centre of the river - just above the falls - when he discovered himself stranded.

Josh Reichert and his wife Katrin Kim (pictured) who can be heard screaming as her husband plummets down the waterfalls

The hiker speaks to Good Morning America (pictured) about his terrifying fall at the national park

But he then lost his footing and was swept over the edge of the 70ft fall - before miraculously pulling himself up onto shore.

His wife, Katrin Kim, can be heard shouting 911 as his body is flung over the side of the deadly drop.

Caught on camera by eyewitnesses, the footage even shows one of his shoes in the air as it is knocked off by the impact of the water.

A dramatic nine-and-a-half-hour rescue ensued, with medics racing down the hills with supplies to help keep Josh warm.

First responders hauled him back to the top in a basket, then transported him to Olympic Medical Center.

According to a local news website, Reichert miraculously escaped with only a shattered heel, injured toe, and bumps and bruises.

He is now recovering at home in Lynnwood, Washington.

Josh Reichert, 30, can be seen perching on a rock in the middle of the rapids - right next to a 70ft drop

Before he knows it, he loses his footing and is swept over the edge of the waterfall at the Olympic National Park in Washington (pictured)

His body can be seen flying through the torrents of water as an eyewitness captures the fall on camera
Kathleen Wyatt, 55, leaves the Supreme Court after a ruling in her landmark divorce case

In a landmark court ruling, a woman has won a 300,000 share of her ex-husband's fortune - more than two decades after they divorced.

Kathleen Wyatt, 55, had earlier demanded a 1.9 million payout from Dale Vince, 53, although she did not lodge a maintenance claim until more than 25 years after they had separated, and nearly 20 years after their divorce.

The Supreme Court awarded her a 300,000 share of his fortune, which will include legal costs.

Mr Vince is a former New Age traveller who became a millionaire businessman through his company Ecotricity, which he launched years after the couple parted.

Mr Vince, who last year said his ex-wife was 'cashing in on an old lottery ticket', described the ruling as 'mad'.

He said: 'I feel that we all have a right to move on and not be looking over our shoulders.

'This could signal open season for people who had brief relationships a quarter of a century ago. It's mad in my opinion.'

Judges were told the couple met as students, married in 1981 when they were in their early 20s, and lived a New Age traveller lifestyle.

They separated in the mid-1980s and divorced in 1992.

In the mid-1990s Mr Vince began a career in business and went on to become a green energy tycoon after launching a company called Ecotricity - a business group now worth at least 57 million.

Ms Wyatt lodged a claim for 'financial remedy' in 2011.

The success of Ecotricity - which supplies energy to more than 100,000 customers - has made Mr Vince considerable wealth, and he now lives in a 3million 18th century Georgian fort and drives a custom made electric supercar. He remarried in 2006.

Meanwhile Ms Wyatt, has four children by three different men. Her eldest child Emily is a convicted burglar, drug addict and prostitute.

Lord Justice Wilson told the court Ms Wyatt was in poor health and lived in a 'modest house' in Monmouth. He said she sometimes has low-paid jobs, and at other times she 'gets by' on state benefits.

She hired society lawyers Mischon de Reya - who handled Princess Diana's divorce - to fight her claim for a payout.

Mr Vince said he was disappointed with the case and called for a statute of limitations for divorce cases.

Dale Vince (pictured) is a former New Age traveller who became a millionaire businessman years after he and his wife split

Mr Vince, who made his millions running green energy giant Ecotricity, has remarried (new wife Kate pictured)

Deputy High Court Judge Nicholas Francis gave Ms Wyatt's claim the green light in 2012. Three appeal judges blocked the claim in 2013.

But the Supreme Court justices last year said it should go ahead.

One justice, Lord Wilson, said Ms Wyatt's claim was 'legally recognisable' and not an 'abuse of process'.

He said she had been unwise to pitch her claim at 1.9million, adding that an award approaching that size was 'out of the question'.

But he said justices thought that there was a 'real prospect' that she would get a 'comparatively modest award' - perhaps enough to buy a mortgage-free house.

The court heard Ms Wyatt (left) often survives on state benefits, while her ex-husband (right) now runs a multi-million pound company

Lord Wilson described Mr Vince, of Stroud, Gloucestershire, as a 'remarkable man': 'In his 20s he was a New Age traveller with no money at all,' said Lord Wilson.

'But one year at the Glastonbury festival he rigged up a contraption from which he provided a wind-powered telephone service.

'It was the start of a business which, as a result of his ingenuity and drive, has led to his manufacture and sale of green energy on a massive scale.

'His company, Ecotricity Group Ltd, is now worth at least 57million.'

Lord Wilson said Mr Vince lives with his second wife in a Georgian fort.

Approving the terms of the settlement, High Court family judge Mr Justice Cobb, sitting in London, said: 'I am perfectly satisfied that it is reasonable, and that the wife is entitled to receive a modest capital award following the breakdown of this marriage.

'The lump sum payment agreed between the parties fairly represents, in my view, a realistic and balanced appraisal of the unusual circumstances of this case.'

The court heard Mr Vince lives with his second wife in a 3million 18th century Georgian fort (pictured)

Lord Justice Wilson told the court Ms Wyatt was in poor health and lived in a 'modest house' in Monmouth (pictured). He said she sometimes has low-paid jobs, and at other times she 'gets by' on state benefits

Neither Ms Wyatt, of Monmouth, nor Mr Vince, of Stroud, Gloucestershire, were in court for the announcement of the settlement.

However, speaking after the ruling, Mr Vince said: 'I am pleased to confirm that the financial proceedings brought by my ex-wife  now 32 years since our separation  have been concluded.

'This case has been a terrible waste of time and money on a meritless claim.

'I'm disappointed that the Supreme Court decided not to throw out the case, given it was brought over 30 years since the relationship ended. We'd both moved on and started families of our own.

'The passing of time was extremely prejudicial, it's been so long that there are no records, no court has kept anything, and it's hard to defend yourself in such circumstances - indeed the delay itself has enabled the claim, because there is no paperwork in existence.

'There clearly needs to be a statute of limitations for divorce cases - a time limit beyond which a claim cannot be made. Such a thing exists in commercial law for good practical reasons. It's six years, which is plenty long enough to bring a claim. Divorce law needs to catch up.
Witness Alan Day said he believed police were right to pull the trigger

She and two other victims

Three elderly women were injured by police bullets during the incident

Patient report said he should not be released under any circumstances

This is the innocent bystander who was caught up in police gunfire as officers shot a knifeman at Westfield Hornsby.

Grandmother Anne-Marie Petitfils, 70, was yesterday recovering in Royal North Shore Hospital following surgery to remove shrapnel from her left calf, according to the Daily Telegraph.

Ms Petitfils is one of three elderly women to be hit by police gunfire during the shooting on Thursday.

Grandmother Anne-Marie Petitfils, 70, (pictured) was yesterday recovering in Royal North Shore Hospital following surgery to remove shrapnel from her left calf

The retiree and two other elderly victims Lorraine Pendleton, 82, and Elaine For, 65, have been offered $30,000 each as part of a NSW Government the Victims of Crime scheme, according to the newspaper.

Officers opened fire on Jerry Sourian after the 23-year-old allegedly lunged at them with a carving knife at Westfield Hornsby in Sydney's Horsnby on Thursday, reports Sydney Morning Herald.

Witness and businessman Alan Day told the Daily Telegraph that police were right to pull the trigger.

The 54-year-old, who watched the police shooting take place, said: 'The bullets hit him but he kept on walking. I couldn't believe it.

'He just kept on coming, he wasn't going to stop.'

A man carrying a carving knife, 23, was shot by police at Westfield shopping centre in Hornsby, north-west Sydney after appearing to lunge at police (pictured)

Sources have revealed Mr Sourian had recently been admitted to an intensive mental health unit after allegedly harbouring 'homicidal tendencies towards police' but was released on the day he was shot. Mr Sourian is now under police guard in hospital.

His patient report said he should not be released under any circumstances, however a senior doctor overruled the report by letting him leave for one hour a day.

Last week he fled the facility and somehow flew to Melbourne, but was still granted day release when he returned to the hospital.

On Wednesday - the day before the attack - he had fiery argument prior to his hour of release and managed to escape in an aggressive state.

The hospital has reportedly been calling for a bolstered mental health security presence at the hospital for years,

Jerry Sourian was granted day release from a mental hospital before he shot, it has been revealed

His patient report said he should not be released under any circumstances, however a senior doctor overruled the report by letting him leave for one hour a day

Three women aged between 60 and 80 struck by police bullets have been offered $30,000 each as part of a NSW Government scheme

'Having only two staff on for a major metropolitan hospital with seven mental health units is just untenable. We desperately need more staff,' said Nathan Sing Hornsby Hospital security guard.

Hornsby state liberal MP Matt Kean personally called Ms Petitfils from Hornsby, Ms Pendleton from Thornleigh and Ms For from Waitara to offer the payment.

Ms Petitfils and her partner are concerned about the cost of her two operations, and are yet to hear if NSW Police will be covering them.

Witnesses to the traumatic incident are also eligible to seek support services, including counselling, through the Department of Justice.

One witness, who was grazed by shrapnel, said police did the right thing when they shot the knifeman.

Witnesses said the 23-year-old man was barefoot and appeared 'really depressed' before the shooting

Witnesses to the traumatic incident are also eligible to seek support services like counselling

Blood is seen smeared on the tiles outside of the shopping centre as police tape cordons off the area

Forensic police look over the scene at Westfield Hornsby to gather evidence in the shooting

People were going about their day, having coffee or lunch, when the incident happened. Above is a forensic officer at the scene
The Canadian Supreme Court has ruled that sex acts with a pet are legal as long as the animal is not penetrated or suffers any form of injury.

The case involved a man who had been convicted of sexually abusing two of his step daughters, who had also been convicted of bestiality after he attempted to make the dog engage in sexual activities with one of the young girls.

A lower court convicted the man of bestiality after it heard he smeared peanut butter on the girl, who was 15 at the time of the abuse, to entice the dog to lick it off.

The Canadian Supreme Court has ruled animals can be used for sexual gratification as long as they are not penetrated because the government has not updated the definition of bestiality since the 1860s, file photo

The lower court ruled the man was guilty of bestiality because he had received sexual gratification from the act.

However, the man, known only as D.L.W. successfully challenged the bestiality decision in the appeals court.

According to The Canadian Lawyer and Law Times, The higher court decided that a strict interpretation of the law, which dates from the English 1861 Offences Against the Person act, required penetration for a bestiality conviction.

Animal rights charity Animal Justice then challenged this decision to the Supreme Court, who ruled that when the Canadian parliament updated the criminal law relating to sexual offences it did not change the historically understood meaning of bestiality.

The Supreme Court said Parliament could have updated the interpretation of what constituted bestiality if it wished and claimed it was not the role of the courts to introduce new criminal offences.

According to the ruling: 'Courts will only conclude that a new crime has been created if the words used to do so are certain and definitive. This approach not only reflects the appropriate respective roles of Parliament and the courts, but the fundamental requirement of the criminal law that people must know what constitutes punishable conduct and what does not, especially when their liberty is at stake.'

Leading animal rights activist Camille Labchuck demanded action by the Canadian Government claiming the current legislation gave a green light to individuals to use animals for their own sexual gratification

Camille Labchuck of Animal Justice urged the Canadian Parliament to change the law in order to protect children and animals.

Speaking after the hearing, she said: 'The Supreme Courts decision is a wake up call that laws protecting animals are severely out of date. As of today, Canadian law gives animal abusers license to use animals for their own sexual gratification. This is completely unacceptable, contrary to societal expectations, and cannot be allowed to continue.

Peter Sankoff, who argued the case said: 'As an intervener in the case, Animal Justice drove home the importance of ensuring our laws protect animals from sexual abuse.

'This decision reflects the fact that the Supreme Court was forced to work with our outdated laws. Although Animal Justice hoped for a different decision, it is encouraging that both the majority and the dissent adopted aspects of our arguments, and recognized that protecting animals is a fundamental societal value.
Officer argues with the man for six minutes and threatens him with a ticket

Biker says he blew horn because man was 'impeding traffic and on phone'

This is the unbelievable moment a police officer blocks traffic to argue with a motorcyclist who honked his horn at him at a junction.

Devin Jones captured the six-minute exchange with the officer who he alleges was 'impeding traffic' while on his phone while behind the wheel of an unmarked car in Denver, Colorado.

The helmet-camera footage shows the officer exiting his vehicle and approaching the rider in his full police uniform before accusing him of committing road rage.

The officer, dressed in uniform, approaches the motorcyclist after he blows his horn at him at a junction

In the video, the motorcyclist can be heard saying: 'No, I was honking because you were on the phone and I needed you to get off so we could travel smooth.'

The officer replies: 'Sometimes I'm required to be on my phone,' before adding that it is none of the man's business what he does in his car.

The biker attempts to explain that he was not blowing his horn in anger, and claims he was merely bringing attention to the fact it is dangerous to be on the phone while behind the wheel.

But the officer repeats that honking a horn at a vehicle is road rage as the petty argument drags on and other motorists become frustrated as traffic builds up.

The queue of vehicles behind are then heard blowing their horns before one car even overtakes the duo bickering in the street and continues with his journey.

The police officer accuses the biker of committing road rage and later threatens to issue him a ticket

The biker claims he blew his horn because he was concerned about the police officer being on the phone

Later in the video the officer accuses the biker of standing up while riding - something he says he saw the man doing prior to their confrontation.

He threatens to write him a ticket as the motorcyclist continues to fight his corner.

The footage concludes with the officer stating he has work to do and walking back to his car after the six minute debate.

Following the incident, the biker told FOX31 Denver: 'He was extremely aggressive, his body language, everything he was doing is what I would classify as road rage.'

He added: 'Being distracted while driving is still a terrible thing to do and honking at someone who's distracted only brings their attention back to the road.'

The officer accuses the biker of standing up while riding, something he says he saw prior to the confrontation

The petty argument drags on and other motorists, who become frustrated, start to blow their horns at the pair

Denver Police were approached by the news station following the release of the footage, which was posted to YouTube by the motorcyclist.

Writing alongside the clip, the biker added a disclaimer that read: 'Anything that seems illegal/legal was simulated using computers and nothing in my videos can be taken as reality.'

A spokesman for Denver Police said they were unaware of any complaint regarding the footage and they are not investigating the situation.

They added that honking a horn in the state of Colorado is not considered road rage, but standing up while riding is illegal.
Advertisement

Beautiful photographs capture a New Zealand cave in blue light, illuminated by hundreds of glow worms.

British photographer Shaun Jeffers spent between six to eight hours submerged in cold water to capture the tranquil scenes at the Ruakuri Cave.

The worms light up the cave as they hang from the walls of the cave above a pool of water. Light from the worms is surprisingly bright, and highlights every crease in the limestone cave.

Mr Jeffers told Shutterstock Editorial that the Waitomo area in New Zealand was well known for its limestone caves, which are occupied by what he says are 'one of the most magical insects in the world'.

'Glow worms emit a luminescent glow that lights up the cave and creates a surreal environment,' he said.

The Ruakuri Cave is located about 200 kilometres from Auckland on New Zealand's North Island.

Ruakuri translates to 'den of dogs'. According to Maori legend, the cave was discovered between 400 and 500 years ago by a young Maori boy who was hunting for birds. He was attacked by dogs just outside the cave entrance.

Close up photos of light emitted from the glow worms give the appearance of illuminated individual water droplets

As the stunning blue light hits a pool of water in the Ruakuri cave, it is blurred in to a smooth blue line

The glow worms give the cave a magical feel, with a photograph of a cavern within the cave appearing as something from out of a movie

Flash photography has played a big part in the loss of the glow worm population - multiple flashes can damage the worm's eyesight and affect their ability to function

The light emitted from the hundreds of insects highlights every crease in the limestone cave's shawl-like interior
Google has defended its image search engine amid racism claims after one user typed in 'three black teenagers' and was presented with a group of mugshots.

However, when the same user changed the word black, for white, the images returned by Google featured stock photographs of teenagers smiling.

The internet search engine denied that it was racist. In a statement, the company said: 'Our image search results are a reflection of content from across the web, including the frequency with which types of images appear and the way they're described online.'

Is Google Images racist? A viral video posted to twitter shows the differences in typing in 'three black teenagers' compared to 'three white teenagers'

The results for 'three black teenagers' mostly shows pictures posed so they look like mugshots, whereas in the case of the latter predominately happy white teens are pictured

The company continued: 'This means that sometimes unpleasant portrayals of sensitive subject matter online can affect what image search results appear for a given query.

'These results don't reflect Google's own opinions or beliefs - as a company, we strongly value a diversity of perspectives, ideas and cultures.'

The experiment was posted online by Kabir Alli, who defended the California-based search engine.

He told The Guardian: 'The results were formed through the algorithm they set up. They aren't racist but I feel they should have more control over something like that.'

The company said offensive or biased images or searches were 'fundamentally a societal problem'.

According to Google: 'There are persistent and problematic biases, and they're pervasive in the media and on the web. This is not unique to our search engine; if you research this, you may find other search engines show similar results.'

A Twitter video of a man typing in this supposedly unremarkable search has gone massively viral since it was uploaded yesterday afternoon.

That's because his clip shows the results for the former almost exclusively show mugshots, or at least pictures posed to look like them, and the latter reveals mostly stock photos of happy white teens.

But since @iBeKabir posted his tweet it has become so popular, with favourites and retweets reaching over 100,000 shares combined, the image results themselves are being skewed.

Current results for 'three black teenagers': The tweet has gone so viral the order of the results have changed

Current results for 'three white teenagers': The results for this search have changed even more notably

@iBeKabir What the fox! that is just shameful! most white people I know don't even look like that but there's no excuse for that, sorry man.  what.the.fox! (@MartensShell) June 8, 2016

Go to GOOGLE.

Type in "three black teenagers "



Now...



Go to GOOGLE.

Type in "three white teenagers"



WHITE PRIVILEGE at its finest.  aKEMPnameSlickback (@KEMPSAIDWHAT) June 7, 2016

In the footage the man, from Virginia U.S.A, scrolls through the results for 'three black teenagers', which in his words is mainly 'inmates'.

He then says: 'Now let's just change the colour,' before he and his friends laugh in amazement at the surprising outcome for such a simple adjustment in the search.

'What the f***!' exclaims the American man.

Commenters have also expressed their shock, one writing: 'What the fox! that is just shameful! most white people I know don't even look like that but there's no excuse for that, sorry man.'

User @iBeKabir told MailOnline he had seen the search done before and 'wanted to see if it was actually real for myself.

'When I saw the results I was shocked, I feel like a search engine like Google should have more control over something like that. I understand it's really just an algorithm but it's still a problem,' he said.

STATEMENT FROM GOOGLE 'Our image search results are a reflection of content from across the web, including the frequency with which types of images appear and the way they're described online. This means that sometimes unpleasant portrayals of sensitive subject matter online can affect what image search results appear for a given query. These results don't reflect Google's own opinions or beliefs - as a company, we strongly value a diversity of perspectives, ideas and cultures.' Advertisement

Earlier in March British YouTuber Antoine Speaks had previously drawn attention to the results of the exact same search.

In a blog post accompanying the video Antoine had a message for how people can alter the images the search brings up.

He advised that instead of pushing Google to change the order of the results, users must take it upon themselves.

'Start sharing, searching and making more positive stories about black teenagers. Ie if there were more stories of black teenagers doing well or positive news they would be higher up in the search results,' he wrote.

'This is the best and my preferred strategy of working towards changing the perception of Black teenagers/people,' he added.

Google advised MailOnline that search engines simply reflect what's on the web, so 'this is fundamentally a societal problem', said a spokesperson for the company.

'There are persistent and problematic biases, and they're pervasive in the media, on the web. Images are meta-tagged with their own descriptions especially in media articles.

'As a company we strongly value a diversity of perspectives, ideas and cultures - these search results do not reflect Google's view on the matter.'

On his reaction to how viral the tweet has gone, @iBeKabir said: 'I never thought the tweet would blow up like this at all. I'm an avid Twitter user and I've never gotten this much attention from a tweet before.'

In the responses to his tweet, debate raged over who was to blame, and what the wider implications are from such a result.

@lou_haus wrote: 'How can a search engine be racist? It pulls up results based on frequency.'

While Andrew Panebianco responded: 'This is such a sad reflection of our society.'

There was similar controversy over Google Image search results earlier this year, when a woman from Botswana found only black women had 'unprofessional hairstyles'

There was similar controversy over Google Image search results earlier this year, when a woman from Botswana exposed the differing outcomes from typing in 'unprofessional hairstyles for work' compared to 'professional hairstyles for work'.

Bonnie Kamona posted on Twitter: 'I saw a tweet saying 'Google unprofessional hairstyles for work'. I did. Then I checked the 'professional' ones',' which she discovered to her horror were all images of white women.
The model ex-wife of a Saudi billionaire is demanding a divorce payment of 250million to fund new homes, clothes, cars and even art as she starts her new life, a court heard.

Christina Estrada, 59, says Dr Walid Juffali, 61, must give her up to 68million to buy a seven-storey house in London after she moves out of the 22.5million marital home near Windsor Castle.

The former Pirelli calendar girl is also asking for 4.4million for a country house near the Thames in Henley, 6.5million a year living expenses, 1million for art and 500,000 for five cars, it is claimed.

Her husband's QC said today said her want list is 'firmly in "gasp" territory' and claims it is 'excessive and exaggerated'.

Divorce claim: Ex-model Christina Estrada, 59, pictured left outside court in January this year and right in the same month, is battling for 250m from her ex-husband Dr Walid Juffali, 61,

Dr Juffali, who has stage four lung cancer, claims he has offered Ms Estrada, pictured together in 2005, more than 32million

Ms Estrada already owns a 12million property in Beverly Hills, a 3.5million flat in South Kensington and jewellery estimated at 7million, according to ex-husband.

She is also asking Dr Juffali to return a 10million Chopard blue diamond ring, even though he says he has given away.

According to details of her annual budget released during a hearing at the Royal Courts of Justice, Ms Estrada spends 2.1million for travel and 1million on clothing

According to details of her annual budget released during a hearing at the Royal Courts of Justice, Ms Estrada spends 2.1million for travel and 1million on clothing.

The clothing budget includes 40,000 for a new fur coat, 83,000 for 15 new cocktail dresses, 80,000 for a ball gown and 109,000 for seven haute couture dresses, as well as 58,000 for two luxury handbags, 23,000 for six casual handbags and 4,000 for fifteen pairs of sunglasses.

Ms Estrada is also asking for 335,000 a year to pay for staff at her London home including a live-in butler, housekeeper, chauffeur, two cleaners, a chef and an office manager, the court heard.

It is claimed she wants 26,000 a year to cover her mobile phone expenses - and if she wins the 250million she is demanding it would be one of the biggest divorce payouts in UK history.

In November 2014 American Jamie Cooper-Hohn was awarded 337m in Britains biggest ever divorce settlement from her ex-husband Sir Chris Hohn.

Dr Juffali, who has stage four lung cancer, claims he has offered Ms Estrada an overall reward of more than 32million including a lump sum of around $10million and maintenance at the rate of 2million for five years.

Justin Warshaw QC, for Dr Juffali, told the court: Ms Estrada says she needs more than a quarter of a billion pounds to meet her own personal reasonable needs.

Her claims are striking and, we say, excessive and exaggerated.

These costs are extraordinary and go way beyond the standard of living enjoyed during the marriage.

Ms Estrada argues that her ex-husband is worth up to 6billion - but he claims he has personal assets of only 19.5million.

Charles Howard QC, for Ms Estrada, has rejected the suggestion that she was greedy.

Referring to the budget details, Mrs Justice Roberts said: He has throughout provided this family with an extraordinary standard of living and it is one which they both enjoyed.

Ms Estrada says her husband, together left in 2000 right in 2006, must give her up to 68million to buy a seven-storey house in London - Dr Whalid's QC said said her want list is 'firmly in "gasp" territory'

Home: The divorced model will be moving out of the 22.5million marital home near Windsor Castle, pictured, so is planning for the future

Juffali divorced Ms Estrada by talaq in Saudi Arabia in September 2014 after 13 years of marriage.

Ms Estrada is applying for financial relief under Part III of the Matrimonial and Family Proceedings Act 1984 at the Family Division of the High Court in London.

CHRISTINA ESTRADA'S 250M WISH LIST FROM HER BILLIONAIRE EX 68m - Cash for new London house 10m - Return of Chopard blue diamond ring 6.5m a year - Overall living expenses 4.4m - Berkshire country house 1m - Art fund 500,000 - Five cars 335,000 a year - Staff at her London home including a live-in butler, housekeeper, chauffeur, two cleaners, a chef and an office manager 109,000 - Seven haute couture dresses 83,000 - 15 new cocktail dresses 80,000 - A ball gown 58,000 - Two luxury handbags 40,000 - New fur coat 26,000 a year - Mobile phone expenses 23,000 - Six casual handbags 4,000 - 15 pairs of sunglasses. Advertisement

Mrs Justice Roberts will consider the case during a week-long hearing beginning on 24 June.

Earlier this year the court heard she is fighting for more money in their bitter divorce battle claims she cannot manage with only one butler and two maids, a court has heard.

Pirelli calendar girl Christina Estrada had claimed that Walid Juffali has cut the number of staff at her 100m mansion house near Windsor Castle.

She was demanding that she hand over a 10m blue diamond ring because she believes the billionaire, who tried to use diplomatic immunity to shield him in their acrimonious dispute, is seriously ill in hospital in Switzerland.

The court heard that Dr Juffali also claims he bought his ex-wife an 8m home in Beverley Hills, California, and spent another 2m on renovations.

Mr Pointer said: This is not a man who is trying to squeeze her out.

After the breakdown of the marriage he bought the property in Beverley Hills, he is paying her $100,000 per month, he is paying the costs of the house (in Egham). Of course there is argument about whether she should have more than that.

She is complaining she cannot manage with only one butler and she needs two and she cannot manage with two maids and needs three.

Well known: Christina Estrada and Idris Elba attend a private view of British-American pop artist Russell Young's new exhibition in January

Socialite: The former model, pictured with Prince Andrew, has denied her divorce payout would make her 'greedy'
A group of British teenagers found themselves in the middle of a gangland shootout in a popular tourist resort in Bulgaria. which left a one man dead and two injured.

Masked men opened fire at the 4you pub in Sunny Beach in front of shocked tourists, including five teenagers from Dumfriesshire, Scotland on their first holiday abroad.

Ross Warbeck, Joel Ewart, Craig Pool, Jack Adams, all 17, and Nathan Smith, 18, have spoken of how they were forced to flee for their lives when the gunmen entered the pub wielding pistols.

Caught up: Ross Warbeck, Joel Ewart, Craig Pool, Jack Adams, all 17, and Nathan Smith, 18, were sat in a pub in Sunny Beach, Bulgaria when five men in ski masks walked in and opened fire

The teenagers, who are in Bulgaria on their first holiday abroad to celebrate leaving school, revealed how one of them first noticed five men in ski masks walking into the bar at around 9pm.

'It was totally surreal and I still can't believe it even happened, let alone so close to us as we were right by the shooters, they were just ten feet away from us,' Mr Warbeck told The Mirror.

'We all ran out of the bar by jumping over the low wall surrounding the pub and when we looked back we could see that about ten more unmasked men were outside shooting into the bar and a gunfight happened for about a minute before they all ran off in different directions.'

Gangland showdown: Masked men opened fire at the 4you pub in Sunny Beach in front of shocked tourists, killing one man and injuring two

The five teenagers from Dumfriesshire, Scotland on their first holiday abroad, celebrating leaving school

Mr Warbeck also revealed that Mr Ewart was helped by a brave local man who 'who shielded him from the gunfire with his body.'

Bulgarian media reports that the shooting was an underworld showdown between two criminal gangs.

A leader of one of the gangs was critically injured, as was another person involved in the gangs.

The person killed in the incident was a bodyguard of the injured gang leader.

Local media has named the murdered man as 'notorious drug lord Dimitar Zhelyazkov, known as Mityo The Eyes'.
The Bobolas have been fighting with the council over the state of their home for over 16 years

The property - in Sydney's swanky Bondi Beach - was expected to fetch $2million when it went to auction

It has been estimated that $160,000 was needed to clean the property which is piled high with trash

The owners attended court with $177,000 on Friday but their final effort to save the house failed

A notorious 'hoarder house' will be sold after the owner's failed to pay the council for cleaning it up

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One of the 'Bondi hoarders' turned up to court on Friday with $177,000 in a grey plastic shopping bag in one final desperate bid to save the notorious property from sale- but she was unsuccessful and the property will now be sold..

Elena, Mary and Liana Bobolas only have $5 in the bank but were given the huge bag of cash by a 'friend' who wanted to help them keep the home, The Daily Telegraph reports.

The women's final effort to save their property was rejected by the judge, now their Boonara Avenue home, and the piles of junk that litter the yard is up for sale.

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Elena Bobolas leaving court with $177,000 in a plastic shopping bag. She had attempted to save her 'hoarder house' from being sold by Waverly Council but failed

The court ruled the money which was a gift was an 'extraordinary offer' but could not guarantee the Bobolas family would pay their debts

Magistrate Keogh acknowledged the money was an 'extraordinary offer' but couldn't be sure the Bobolas' debts would be paid.

Liana Bobolas was angry with the court's decision 'they (Waverly Council) are thieves your honour and this court is supporting that,' she said.

The family home in Bondi Beach, Sydney, was due to be forcibly sold on Thursday night so the council could recover the estimated $160,000 needed to clean the trash-strewn property reported Seven News.

The home is expected to fetch $2m on the open market - and the new owners will have to clean up the mess themselves.

Bondi's notorious 'hoarders house' which is littered with rubbish was set to be auctioned on June 9 as Waverley Council seeks to recoup $160,000 in cleaning costs

The owners of the property, the Bobolas family, have blocked the forced sale of the property for the third time after securing a last-minute injunction

The dilapidated house was previously due to go to auction in 2015 over $180,000 the family owed in previous clean-up bills. This is the third time the family have blocked attempts to sell the property

The Bobolas family have blocked council attempts to auction the house on three occasions but this final ruling means it will be sold.

The owners of the property - Mary, Elena and Liana Bobolas - have been the centre of controversy over the past few decades as they resist increasingly desperate council attempts to get them to clean up.

Rubbish has been a constant fixture at the property over almost 26 years. The women have been dubbed 'the Bondi hoarders'.

The owners of the property - Mary, Elena and Liana Bobolas - have been the centre of controversy over the past few decades as Waverley Council and furious neighbours have battled to get them to clean up their yard

Liana Bobolas (pictured) has previously been taken into custody for trying to stop a court-ordered clean up. Her family has fought a 16-year battle with the council to keep the property

More than $350,000 of ratepayers money has been spent across 15 separate clean-ups in a bid to control the piles of rubbish in and outside the property.

Empty glass bottles, cardboard boxes, discarded appliances and pieces of old wooden furniture are regularly piled high outside the home.

Plastic bags full of rubbish, old paint tins, a rusted wheelbarrow and a suitcase have caused the gates to almost burst at the seams as they hold back the mountains of trash.

More than $350,000 of ratepayers money has been spent in a bid to control the piles of rubbish in and outside the Bondi property

Plastic bags full of garbage, slabs of wood, what looks to be old carpet samples and cardboard boxes litter the front of the house
Five men were sentenced to life imprisonment Friday for the gang-rape of a Danish tourist who asked them for directions after getting lost in New Delhi's tourist district in early 2014.

The 52-year-old woman was attacked at knifepoint while trying to get back to her hotel, in a case that reignited worries about sexual violence against women in India.



A Delhi court found the men guilty on Monday for robbing and raping the 52-year old Dane at a secluded spot close to New Delhi railway station.

One of the men found guilty of gang-raping a Danish tourist after she asked for directions is led into court

One of the men found guilty of gang-raping a Danish tourist arrives at court

'All the five convicts have been sentenced to rigorous life imprisonment for their offences,' additional public prosecutor Atul Shrivastava told Reuters at the court.

The Danish woman was walking through an area of narrow lanes near Delhi's Paharganj district, a tourist area packed with backpacker hotels, on the evening of January 14th, 2014, when she stopped to ask a group of men for directions to her hotel.

The men then lured the woman to an isolated area near New Delhi railway station where they raped her and robbed her at knifepoint, the prosecution said in its charge sheet.

The police station in New Delhi that had been investigating the attack, which happened in January 2014

India was shaken into deep soul-searching about entrenched violence against women after the fatal gang-rape in December 2012 of a female student on a bus in New Delhi.

The shocking crime, which sent thousands of Indians on to the streets in protest against what many saw as the failure of authorities to protect women, encouraged the government to implement tougher jail sentences for rapists.

Police accused nine men of attacking the Danish woman in 2014, though three are juveniles currently being tried in a separate court. A fourth died during the trial.

Lawyer D.K. Sharma, representing the five convicted men, said his clients would appeal against the verdict.

The problem of sexual violence towards women in India has gained widespread attention since the horrific gang rape and murder of a 23-year-old woman on a moving bus in December 2012
An RAF serviceman had to be led away by paramedics after fainting while standing guard outside St Paul's Cathedral today.

The incident happened shortly before the Queen - and hundreds of dignitaries, leaders and members of the Royal Family, arrived at the cathedral for a special thanksgiving service to kick-off Her Majesty's 90th birthday celebrations.

Those on duty maintained their professionalism and composure, helping the young serviceman - a member of the RAF Regiment - back to his feet before continuing to stand guard while he was led away.

The incident happened shortly before Her Majesty - and hundreds of dignitaries, leaders and members of the Royal Family, arrived at the cathedral

The RAF Airman forming part of the Guard of Honour is helped to his feet after collapsing prior to the arrival of The Queen

Those on duty maintained their professionalism and composure, helping the young serviceman back to his feet

With temperatures of around 22C in London today, standing for hours in the heat - and full military uniform - took its toll on the guard, who was taken to see a doctor before returning to duty.

An MOD Spokesperson said: 'We can confirm that a member of the RAF Regiment who was involved in the step lining ceremony for the Queen's 90th Thanksgiving Service at St Paul's Cathedral fainted. The individual recovered and returned to his duties.'

Prince William, Prince Harry and the Duchess of Cambridge led the arrivals at St Paul's Cathedral as they joined hundreds of politicians and dignitaries in supporting the Queen and the extended Royal family.

Queen Elizabeth II is celebrating her official landmark birthday with a three-day series of festivities, starting today with the special ceremony at St Paul's.

Today's incident comes just weeks after two guards had to be carried from Horse Guards Parade on stretchers after reportedly fainting during rehearsals for Trooping the Colour.

The two men were thought to have passed out on May 23 as members of the Household Division, the Queen's personal troops, practiced a impressive display ahead of Her Majesty's official birthday.

And just days earlier, a soldier fainted during a parade to mark the 300th anniversary of the Light Dragoons at Catterick Garrison barracks, North Yorkshire.

The young serviceman fainted on the steps ahead of the special ceremony for the 90th birthday of the Queen

The RAF guard was quickly helped back to his feet and led away following the incident

The royal guard was taken away by paramedics and police officers prior to the arrival of Her Majesty

The monarch and her husband Prince Philip - who is celebrating his own 95th birthday today - attended a televised service of thanksgiving from 11am and will be joined by a star-studded congregation.

Young royals such as Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie were pictured arriving alongside the likes of David Attenborough, former Prime Ministers John Major and Tony Blair and television pundit Clare Balding for this morning's ceremony, which will be led by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby.

Politicians past and present, religious leaders and invited guests will gather to mark the Queen's 90 years, with David Attenborough giving a special reading at the ceremony.

Afterwards, Her Majesty, accompanied by the Duke of Edinburgh, the Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall, will host visiting governors-general for lunch at Buckingham Palace.

The monarch and her husband Prince Philip - who is celebrating his own 95th birthday today - arrive at St Paul's Cathedral

Prince William, Duke of Cambridge, the Duchess of Cambridge and Prince Harry at the service today
He was handed 12-month community order with 100 hours' of unpaid work

Farrimond, from Wigan, pleaded guilty to sending the offensive messages

In one Facebook post the 45-year-old asked for a Quran so he could burn it

Keyboard warrior Gary Farrimond, pictured, posted a string of Islamophobic messages online

A man who posted on Facebook that Muslims should be 'nuked' wept in court as he apologised for what he had done.

Keyboard warrior Gary Farrimond, 45, posted a string of Islamophobic messages online, under the Facebook account 'Gary Gaz Farrimond', including asking for a Quran so he could 'burn it'.

Tess Kenyon, prosecuting, told Wigan Magistrates' Court, Greater Manchester, that a police officer had been alerted to Farrimond's vile postings on the Facebook group: 'No more economic migrants in the Britannia hotel'.

Describing the post, Ms Kenyon said: 'There was an image of a Trojan horse with Isis on its forehead and Syrian refugees on its body.

'Underneath, Mr Farrimond had written 'is the refugee crisis an Islamic invasion?'

Ms Kenyon said one post read: 'They will turn our churches into mosques. I'm after a copy of the Quran so I can burn it.'

Another said: 'All foreigners teach their kids to hate the English, let's do this with our own.'

In another post he offered bungee jumping to Pakistani people, adding 'no strings attached'.

In another post he wrote about Muslims: 'The sooner they get nuked the better'.

Melissa Fagan, mitigating, said: 'It's fair to say the defendant does feel ashamed of his actions.

'He is a relatively simple man. He feels someone duped him. He was brought into all of this by another man who befriended him.

'The defendant has had to live with what he has done.'

Farrimond, from Wigan, was handed a 12-month community order, with 100 hours' of unpaid work after pleading guilty to sending offensive messages at an earlier hearing.

After the hearing Farrimond said: 'This is not what I'm about. I have been through a lot. This has really knocked me. I'm very sorry to anyone offended.'
Parsons has now been jailed for five years and banned from driving

Danielle Parsons has been jailed after she killed her daughter in a car crash after taking cocaine

A mother who crashed her car into a tree fatally injuring her toddler daughter had taken cocaine just hours before getting behind the wheel, a court heard.

Danielle Parsons was jailed for five years after pleading guilty to causing death by dangerous driving at Birmingham Crown Court.

Her two-year-old little girl Esmee O'Reilly, who was on the car's back seat, died in hospital after the crash in Selly Oak, Birmingham, last year.

Following what police described as a 'complex' investigation, officers found out how the 23-year-old, of Birmingham had made the 'grave mistake' of taking drugs before driving.

Following the crash, members of the public including a medical student tried tirelessly to resuscitate the little girl at the roadside, but all in vain.

A family friend was also seriously injured, but has since recovered.

Parsons was also told at her sentencing on Thursday that she would serve two years in jail after admitting causing serious injury by dangerous driving, to run concurrently.

She was also banned from driving for five-and-a-half years.

Sergeant Steve Newbury, from the force's collision investigation unit, said: 'Parsons made the grave mistake of using cocaine that day and then put her family and friends in danger by driving under its influence with them as passengers.

'Her young daughter suffered the ultimate consequence of that decision and lost her life and she will have to live with the knowledge that she caused her death.

'This is the most graphic example that drug driving can kill and change people's lives forever.'

Little girl Esmee O'Reilly was in the car's back seat when her mother crashed into a tree. She died in hospital

Speaking at the time of the crash, the little girl's uncle, Brendan O'Reilly, paid tribute to his 'happy-go-lucky' niece.

He said: 'She was always smiling, and never stopped smiling - she was a happy-go-lucky little girl.'

Mr O'Reilly said he last saw his niece the night before the fatal crash on April 30, when she was her usual happy self.

'She had beautiful blue eyes,' he added.

The toddler's aunt Alana Mary paid tribute on Facebook posting: 'You are our beautiful angel we love u Esmee theres not a day that we wont think about your lovely infectious smile u bought so much happiness to our life we are all guna miss u so much sleep tight angel.'

Passer-by Henna Rai told at the time how she stopped her car in a vain bid to help Esmee.

Ms Rai, a mum herself, said she was joined by a woman named Catherine who called the emergency services and relayed instructions about how to perform CPR.

Parsons was given a five-year term in a case described as 'the most graphic example that drug driving kills'

A final year medical student named Emily, who lives in the road, also helped paramedics who arrived at the scene.

She added: 'I was driving down the road soon after it happened. There was lots of noise and people screaming.

'The mother was screaming 'my baby please help my baby'.

'As far as I could see it was an accident and the car had lost control somehow.

'We gave her CPR while the child was laying on her grandmother's lap. It was very traumatic for everyone. The mother was in a terrible state.
Infighting broke out in the Labour party today as two senior MPs declared they are backing Brexit and Jeremy Corbyn was warned he'll lose out to Ukip if he ignores voters' concerns on immigration.

Labour MPs John Mann and Dennis Skinner - who both represent working class heartlands - announced they will vote leave in the June 23 referendum, taking the number of Labour MPs backing Brexit to 12.

Mr Mann, MP for Bassetlaw, said Labour voters 'fundamentally disagree' with the party's official position to remain in the EU because they were suffering the consequences of the influx of EU migration on public services and viewed the EU as 'undemocratic' and 'broken'.

Infighting broke out in the Labour campaign today as two of the party's MPs declared they are backing Brexit, but deputy leader Tom Watson (pictured left) and former shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper (pictured right) tried to shift the focus onto the consequences of a Brexit vote on public spending. Mr Watson presented Labour analysis indicating Brexit could result in 18bn of welfare cuts and tax hikes as the Tories impose austerity measures

Even pro-EU Labour MPs are expressing concern over the party's position, with shadow home secretary Andy Burnham criticising Mr Corbyn for failing to appeal to traditional Labour voters.

'We have definitely been far too much Hampstead and not enough Hull in recent times and we need to change that,' he told the BBC.

And in comments that will shock some in the party, he added: 'Here we are two weeks away from the very real prospect that Britain will vote for isolation.'

Pro-Remain Labour Dudley MP Ian Austin: 'There's no point people in north London lecturing people in places like Dudley about the benefits of immigration without listening to their real and legitimate concerns about this issue and coming up with fair and reasonable answers to address it.'

Mr Corbyn was also warned that he risks losing a million votes to Ukip in the next general election because of the party's official support for EU membership.

The pro-Brexit former Labour minister Frank Field said Labour should be encouraging its supporters to vote 'as they believe is in the best interests of our country' instead of taking a pro-EU stance which risks driving them into the arms of Ukip.

Former leader Ed Miliband (pictured at The UK in a Changing Europe event this morning) also appeared to criticise Mr Corbyn's lack of passion on the EU this morning by admitting: 'Not enough of our voters have heard that we're in and we're for remain'

Labour MPs John Mann (left) and Dennis Skinner (right) - who both represent working class heartlands - announced they will vote leave in the June 23 referendum, taking the number of Labour MPs backing Brexit to 12

He said: 'In trying to scare Labour voters to back Remain, our leadership is on course to lose another one million votes to Ukip, just as we did in 2015.'

But the pro-EU campaign was given a boost after Khalid Mahmood, a former board member of the Vote Leave campaign, defected to Remain. He said he decided to switch sides because the Brexit camp had focused too much on 'immigration and race'.

Vote Leave dismissed his defection as 'old news' because he had quit the Vote Leave board 'months ago'.

Former leader Ed Miliband also appeared to criticise Mr Corbyn's lack of passion on the EU this morning by admitting: 'Not enough of our voters have heard that we're in and we're for remain.'

But he attempted to shift the focus onto the Tories, claiming Boris Johnson is 'trying to perpetrate a fraud on Labour voters' by saying he shares their values on the NHS, workers' rights and fairness.

Mr Skinner, a left-wing firebrand and MP for Bolsover in Derbyshire, said he will vote for Britain to leave the EU because it could better fight capitalism outside the 28-state bloc.

Jeremy Corbyn (pictured alongside Commons Speaker John Bercow at the Queen's 90th birthday celebrations) was criticised for failing to do enough to address Labour voters' concerns on immigration

Jeremy Corbyn (pictured with Sadiq Khan at the Queen's 90th birthday celebrations) has repeatedly refused to share a platform David Cameron in the EU referendum campaign

He told the Morning Star: 'My opposition from the very beginning has been on the lines that fighting capitalism state-by-state is hard enough.

'It's even harder when you're fighting it on the basis of eight states, 10 states and now 28.

'In the old days they could argue you might get a socialist government in Germany, but there's not been one for donkeys' years.

'At one time there was Italy, the Benelux countries, France and Germany, Portugal, Spain and us.

'Now there's just one in France and it's hanging on by the skin of its teeth.'

Mr Mann, declaring his backing for Brexit in The Sun today, wrote: 'If you are a Labour voter you can proudly vote on Labour values to the leave the European Union.

'You are voting for fairness, you are voting for rights at work, you are voting for the NHS.

'And you are voting for a country that is not increasingly run by big businesses in co-operation with the European Commission.'

But Mr Burnham, warning of the consequences of leaving, told BBC Newsnight last night: 'I think it would have a profound effect on our national life  the fragmentation that will come, the fear and the division.

'Those are all the things that the terrorists couldn't create with their bombs and yet we will have a situation where society becomes more divided.

'If this decision is taken, dominoes will start to fall. It won't just be the EU that starts to break up, it will be Britain too.'

Jeremy Corbyn (pictured right with deputy Labour leader Tom Watson, left, at a community meeting at the Guru Har Rai Gudwara Sahib temple in West Bromwich yesterday) was warned that Labour voters 'fundamentally disagree' with the party's official position to remain in the EU because they were suffering the consequences of the influx of EU migration on public services and viewed the EU as 'undemocratic'

Even pro-EU Labour MPs are expressing concern over the party's position, with shadow home secretary Andy Burnham (pictured campaigning in Manchester yesterday) criticising Mr Corbyn for failing to appeal to traditional Labour voters

Former cabinet minister Yvette Cooper was releasing a report warning of the damage facing Labour heartlands if the 'far right of the Conservative Party' gets its way.

The Britain Stronger In Europe report warns that Labour supporters will bear the brunt of austerity measures imposed as a result of a post-Brexit recession, and that a Leave victory would result in the 'far right of the Conservative Party' setting the agenda.

Deputy Labour leader Tom Watson was setting out Labour analysis indicating Brexit could result in 18 billion of welfare cuts and tax hikes as the Tories impose tighter austerity measures.

The analysis predicts cuts of 2.8 per cent in day-to-day spending by Whitehall departments in 2019/20 on top of George Osborne's existing plans.
A scuba-diving instructor has drowned trying to save her student, who also died, off a beach in Mornington in southern Victoria.

Leonie Hanson, 38, was diving with a 39-year-old man at Mornington Pier on Friday.

Emergency services were called to Schnapper Pier near the Mornington Boat Club about 12.15pm and the two divers were located underneath the pier.

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Leonie Hanson (pictured), 38, was diving with a 39-year-old man at Morning Pier on Friday morning

A man and a woman have drowned after scuba diving off a beach in Mornington in southern Victoria

Emergency services were called to Schnapper Pier about 12.15pm and the two divers were located underneath the pier

Sergeant Anthoula Moutis said the pair were seen by a local person walking on the pier, who alerted police.

Rob De Santis, a local restaurant owner jumped into the water to try and help the instructor who was holding a fellow diver five metres off the pier, 9 News reported.

Ms Hanson became overwhelmed by exhaustion as a boat came to Mr De Santis' aid.

'I was just saying "hold on, hold on", and I don't know... I had a rope around my leg... then the fireman told me to let go she started sinking,' Mr De Santis said.

Rob De Santis (pictured), a local restaurant owner jumped into the water to try and help the instructor who was holding a fellow diver five metres off the pier

Ms Hanson was an Open Water Diving instructor with Harbour Dive Australia,The Age reported.

The pair were reportedly diving on a reef and got into difficulty at the pier.

The Herald Sun reported that Victoria Marine Rescue said one man was dead when they attended the scene and another woman had been trapped under the pier.

Search and Rescue are present and are retrieving the bodies from the water.

The deaths are not being treated as suspicious and the cause is still being investigated.

Sergeant Anthoula Moutis said the pair were seen by a local person walking on the pier, who alerted police

It is believed one of the divers was an instructor and the other was a student. The pair were reportedly on diving on a reef and got into difficulty at the pier
Mr Whyte, who was a Qantas pilot, has still not been found

Paul Whyte hired the Cessna 172 before it crashed it into the ocean

Debris from a light plane which crashed near Byron Bay have been found

Debris from a light plane which was flown into the ocean at speed has been found - but the pilot is still missing.

The Cessna 172 wreckage was discovered at the bottom of the ocean off Byron Bay.

The plane, which was being flown by Qantas pilot Paul Whyte, 46, crashed into the water on March 21.

The aircraft was found today by a navy minesweeper at 12.30pm, according to Nine News.

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The wrecked remains of a Cessna 172 rented by Qantas pilot Paul Whyte, pictured, have been found off Byron Bay

The wreckage was found by a navy minesweeper off the coast of Byron Bay on Friday

Police divers had searched 1.5 square miles of ocean floor before calling the navy for help.

Video from the minesweeper shows the crashed plane but there in no sign of Mr Whyte's body.

Mr Whyte rented the light aircraft from a company at Lismore in northern NSW before crashing it six nautical miles offshore from Byron Bay.

Despite dealing with a broken marriage, Mr Whyte passed an mental health check in February, the Gold Coast Bulletin reported.

It has also been revealed that Mr Whyte flew a passenger plane with a capacity of 467 people from Brisbane to Los Angeles just weeks before his death.

Qantas said in a statement that it 'won't be commenting on speculation' about the cause of the tragedy while the coroner's investigation is underway.

The pilot's body was not found with the crumpled plane

Qantas chief pilot Richard Tobiano noted that Whyte was off duty when the crash occurred.

'As you can imagine, this is a very upsetting time for his family, friends and colleagues, and we're providing them with as much support as we can,' Tobiano said in a statement.

Mr Whyte's death has raised questions about the frequency and efficiency of mental health checks and experts have called for the implementation of peer support systems.

Paul Whyte (pictured with his family) passed a mental health check a month before his death

Police and rescue teams launched a wide-scale search for the missing pilot after he failed to return to Lismoreon March 21. The navy was called in this week to help with the search

'It would allow airlines to keep track of mental health on a more immediate level,' Griffith University psychiatrist Harry McConnell told the Bulletin.

Earlier it was reported Mr Whyte spoke to his daughters prior to boarding the plane, and sent a final text message to his family before crashing at 'high speed' into the water, according to the Gold Coast Bulletin.

His rented Cessna 172 aircraft left Lismore at about 4.20pm and radar information shows all contact with the plan was lost .

Police and rescue teams launched a search for the missing pilot and his plane after he failed to return to Lismore later that night.

Qantas has confirmed Paul Whyte worked for them as a first officer

His rented Cessna 172 aircraft left Lismore at about 4.20pm and radar information shows all contact with the plan was lost 11 kilometres north-east of Byron Bay, pictured, just 30 minutes later

Northern Rivers Aero Club president Bill Kiernan, who rented the plane to Mr Whyte, told Daily Mail Australia he knew him and didn't ask questions when he rented the plane.

'We own and have access to quite a few aeroplanes. As long as the pilots are qualified and meet CAA requirements, that's our business. Mr Whyte cert met the criteria,' he said.

'Mr Whyte rang me and said can I have a plane, I rang my colleague and said Paul was good to go.'
A group of teenage girls are accused of luring a 15-year-old girl to an apartment before bashing her head against a wall and threatening to cut off her fingers.

The three girls attended Gold Coast's Southport Magistrates Court on Friday charged over the assault of the girl on Wednesday.

The victim was allegedly invited to the Gold Coast Highway apartment complex where the assault unfolded through a Facebook message, reports Gold Coast Bulletin.

Three girls have appeared at Gold Coast's Southport Magistrates Court (pictured) accused of brutally bashing a girl, 15, before threatening to cut off her fingers

The victim was allegedly forced to strip off her clothes before being repeatedly kneed in the head and getting her head pushed against the wall, a hearing heard.

The girl was then allegedly ordered to 'walk home in her bra and undies', leaving her to to catch public transport to a police station.

'I torture people for a living. You know what I do to people', one of the girls then told her before threatening to cut off her fingers and running a knife over fingers, police allege.

The victim was told she would be shot in the head if she called the police, it is alleged.

The girl was taken to Coast University Hospital with a black eye, a lump on the right side of her head and her arm sitting at a right angle.

The three teenagers did not apply for bail on Thursday and are due to appear in court again next week charged with robbery with violence in company and deprivation of liberty.
David and Tonya Goss (pictured) have set up an online dating site for supporters of Donald Trump

A husband and wife have set up a dating website for die-hard supporters of the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, Donald Trump.

Committed Republican David Goss thought up the idea of TrumpSingles.com after his female friend - who is also a Trump fan - revealed she had been ditched on a date after revealing her political leanings.

Since it went live in May, more than 500 people have signed up.

David from Santa Clarita, California, told the New York Post: 'I think there's a special stigma when people say they're supporting Trump, because of some of the brash things that he's said.

'That immediately gets [projected] on his supporters, and it makes it hard for them when trying to date.'

Similar to other dating sites, users can search using age, location and interests.

But if users want to send more than one message a day, they will have to pay a $4.95 monthly subscription.

'At first I was concerned that people would think this was a parody site,' added David.

'But people have told me that they're so happy they can finally go on dates without worrying about political differences.'

And the website has been praised by people who have signed up so far.

Richard, a 27-year-old retail associate from Oxnard, California, told the Post 'it's hard for me sometimes to meet new people' as Trump is 'demonised' in the media.

The Trump fan recently got out of a four-year relationship with a liberal woman and claims political differences played a factor in their breakup.

Founder David plans to roll out a TrumpSingles mobile app in the next week.

Since TrumpSingles.com went live in May, more than 500 people have signed up across America
William Powell, 63, who was shot at his home by officers who responded to the wrong address, has died, according to his family's lawyer

A 63-year-old Georgia man who was shot after police went to the wrong house has died, according to the family's lawyer.

William Powell died Thursday afternoon at Atlanta Medical Center, said Jonesboro attorney Keith Martin.

The incident occurred after someone called 911 a little before midnight on Tuesday to report hearing a woman yelling for help and gunshots, according to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI).

The GBI said a preliminary review of the 911 call indicates the three officers who responded had gone to the wrong home and showed up at Powell's house instead.

Powell's wife said he had picked up his gun and gone outside after hearing commotion in his yard, WTVM reported.

Authorities confirmed that Powell was armed with a handgun and was shot in the neck by one of the officers after he didn't obey their commands to drop the weapon.

He was taken to a hospital for treatment.

The GBI is investigating the actions of Henry County police in the shooting early Wednesday morning in Stockbridge, about 20 miles south of Atlanta.

'We have been notified that special agents of the GBI wish to speak to Mrs Powell and, when she is available, we will meet with the investigators and cooperate in every way,' Martin said in a statement.

Authorities say Powell was armed with a handgun and was shot in the neck by one of the officers after he didn't obey officers' commands. The incident happened on the 600 block of Swan Lake Road in Stockbridge (pictured)

Officers reportedly identified themselves and stayed in the driveway. They said Powell came out of his garage with the gun.

But Powell's neighbors told CBS 46 that officers flashed a light into the man's home.

'If you're a cop, you don't go up to someone's house and start shining your light in their window,' Powell's next door neighbor told the station.

The woman who had been reported screaming told police she was involved in a verbal argument and wasn't hurt.

GBI spokesman Scott Dunton would not confirm whether officers used a flashlight to look into the home or whether officers knocked on the door, according to CBS 46.

The officer who shot Powell was placed on administrative leave.
In a bizarre statement this morning, pensions minister Ros Altmann (pictured) said the majority of MPs support Britain staying in the EU and said voters should follow their lead by voting Remain in the June 23 referendum

An unelected peer has told voters not to defy their 'democratically elected leaders' by backing Brexit.

In a bizarre statement this morning, pensions minister Ros Altmann said the majority of MPs support Britain staying in the EU and said voters should follow their lead by voting Remain in the June 23 referendum.

'They're your democratically elected leaders,' she wrote. Voting Brexit overrules your own MPs.'

Baroness Altmann, who sits in the undemocratic House of Lords, was immediately ridiculed and condemned by senior political figures and members of the public.

Her former boss at the Department for Work and Pensions Iain Duncan Smith said MPs are elected 'to serve their constituents not, as Ros Altman believes, to be served by them'.

One Twitter user - accountant Rob Henderson - replied angrily to Baroness Altmann by telling her: 'Extremely disappointed in you. How dare the paupers of the nation have a different view from their masters eh?'

Baroness Altmann, a pensions expert, was given a peerage by David Cameron so she could become a minsiter after last year's General Election.

But despite joining the Government last summer, it was revealed that she had been a member of the Labour party for more than 18 months.

Responding to Baroness Altmann's tweet, Mr Duncan Smith told MailOnline: 'This is a very strange statement.

'The EU referendum is about the British people having a say over our future, yet a Government minister now seems to be suggesting that they should just obey their MP's - that voters have no right to their own opinions.

'I believe MPs are there to serve their constituents not, as Ros Altman believes, to be served by them.'

In a bizarre statement this morning, Pensions minister Ros Altmann said the majority of MPs support Britain staying in the EU and said voters should follow their lead by voting Remain in the June 23 referendum

One Twitter user - accountant Rob Henderson - replied angrily to Ms Altman by telling her: 'Extremely disappointed in you. How dare the paupers of the nation have a different view from their masters eh?'

Baroness Altmann has not had the best first year as a government minister.

As well as being found out as a Labour member weeks after joining the Government - paying her annual 46.50 subscription as recently as March 2015 - she launched a highly personal and unprofessional attack on her former boss Mr Duncan Smith after he quit from the Work and Pensions department earlier this year.

Her job was hanging by a thread in March after her ferocious broadside against Mr Duncan Smith, accusing him of trying to inflict maximum damage on the party leadership and claiming his departure was all about Europe.

She wrote: Im particularly saddened that this really seems to be about the European referendum campaign rather than about DWP policy.

Her statement plunged the department into chaos as the rest of the welfare ministers lined up to support Mr Duncan Smith.

Government sources said her remarks threatened her position. One senior Government source said: I would imagine that Ros Altmanns position is close to untenable. How can she go on if the department is going to function properly?

Baroness Altmann survived but a vote to leave the EU would almost certainly see her lose her government post.

Project Leer: Anti-Brexit group planned bizarre viral sex film and a poster of a naked Boris Johnson swinging on a Miley Cyrus- style wrecking ball to woo young voters

Anti-Brexit campaigners have been accused of scraping the barrel today after it emerged they had planned to make a spoof 'are you in?' porn film to attract younger voters.

The film, planned for various porn sites, was to show a couple having sex as the man stares at a picture of the Prime Minister and German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

The male actor then asks his partner: 'Am I In?' and she screams back: 'Yes baby!'

It came as Remain supporters are set to release a poster of Boris Johnson naked on a wrecking ball in a spoof on the famous Miley Cyrus pop video.

The former Mayor of London turned Brexit figurehead is shown smashing into a Union Flag wall.

Target: A poster of Boris Johnson naked on a wrecking ball will be released today as it emerged Remain had even planned a spoof porn film as a campaign video

Imitation: The naked Boris picture is a spoof on the famous Miley Cyrus pop video for her hit Wrecking Ball

The brief for the porn spoof was to 'Get people searching RedTube/YouPorn', according to The Sun

According to the porn script, from a group apparently funded by Lord David Sainsbury and former M&S chief Lord Rose, actors were also to make references to the Queen and Winston Churchill.

Campaign group We Are Europe had hoped the film would spread across the internet in the run up to the June 23 vote, and cause a 'spike of interest' among younger voters.

Filming was due to start yesterday but was scrapped at the last minute, The Sun claims. Lord Sainsbury and Lord Rose were said to have been 'appalled' by the idea.

Vote Leave chief executive Matthew Elliott told the newspaper: 'Weve had Project Fear now Project Leer. Is there any depth the In campaign wont sink to?'

Today Campaign group We Are Europe said they had rejected the idea for the porn spoof - and blamed an outside PR firm for the leak.

A spokesman said: We were approached by Freuds PR with a video content idea for our campaign. However, after looking at the proposal we decided that it was not something that we were comfortable with.

'We informed the agency that we could not agree to any further action on this project.

'Were investigating the events which led to the agency acting without our permission, and in direct breach of a written agreement between We Are Europe and Freuds, to release a casting call in our name, without our knowledge, consent or support, and how details of the rejected idea made it into a newspaper'.

We are Europe also said that they had not seen the script.

The porn script, from a group apparently funded by Lord David Sainsbury and former M&S chief Lord Stuart Rose, left and right, actors were also to make references to the Queen and Winston Churchill.

Boris Johnson, and even his wife Marina, have been targeted by anti-Brexit campaigners before.

Some had falsely claimed that she was the QC caught having sex in the street outside a London station.

The vicious slur wrongly claims that Marina Wheeler was the senior lawyer alleged to have been caught in a broad-daylight sexual act during the evening rush hour outside Waterloo station in August last year.

Remain supporters have been accused of helping the false rumours - said to have been circulating online and through Westminster - to spread. The official Britain Stronger In Europe campaign has strongly denied having anything to do with the rumours.

A Government minister suggested the rumours had been spread by Remain campaigners, who want Britain to stay in the European Union.

The rumour is said to have spread at Lord Ashcroft's 70th birthday party in March, and at a drinks party held at the home of ex-Defence Secretary Liam Fox that same month.
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This is the moment when a 230-ft-long 'Noah's Ark' crashed into a Coast Guard vessel as it was being towed into Oslo harbour.

The wooden exhibition ship was built as a representation of the Ark described in the Bible, and smashed into the side of the Coast Guard vessel, which was moored in the harbour, Norwegian officials said.

Coast Guard spokesman Rune Svartsund said the wooden ship was being towed into the harbor Friday morning when it ran into the 'Nornen' patrol vessel.

Svartsund said no one was injured but both ships were damaged.

Photos showed the wooden ship had a large hole above the water line. Svartsund said a crane aboard the patrol vessel was damaged.

According to its website, the 'Noah's Ark' is a 230-foot-long Dutch-built model of the Biblical ship, and is used as a floating museum.

Collision course: The 230-foot-long 'Noah's Ark' was being towed into Oslo harbour when it crashed into a coast guard vessel

Damange done: No one was injured in the incident, but the crash opened up a large hole in the side of the 'Ark'

The 230-foot-long wooden ship, which is used as a floating museum, was being towed into the harbor Friday morning when it ran into the 'Nornen' patrol vessel, which was moored at a quay
The German finance minister has warned that Britain won't be allowed to stay in the single market if we vote to leave the EU.

Wolfgang Schauble also suggested it would only be a matter of time before we regretted the decision and want to rejoin the Brussels club.

But Brexit campaigners dismissed his threat and said there is 'no question' that Britain will still have access to the EU's single market following a Brexit vote because imposing tariffs would 'do far more damage to them than to anyone else'.

The warning came as one of Germany's most influential magazines delivered gushing praise for everything from 'James Bond to Twiggy's haircut' as it urged us not to abandon the EU.

Der Spiegel, which sells around 800,000 copies weekly, said Britain had contributed 'inner strength' as well as 'nonchalance and progress' to the Brussels club.

In a special bilingual issue with the front page headline 'Please Don't Go!', the magazine says the UK needs to realise how much 'admiration' it has from the rest of Europe.

Spiegel is producing a special bilingual issue pleading with Britain to stick with the EU in the crucial referendum on June 23

The magazine said it wanted to make clear 'how much the rest of Europe admires them'.

'It's unbelievable that they don't seem to see how much they've shaped the continent, how much we value them here, how close we Germans feel to them,' the article said.

'Germany has always looked across the Channel with some degree of envy.

'On our emotional map of Europe, the Italians were responsible for love and good food, the French for beauty and elegance and the Brits for nonchalance and progress.

'They have an inner independence that we Germans lack, in addition to myriad anti-authoritarian, defiant tendencies.

'A lot of what happened in Britain spilled over to us sooner or later, reinforcing our cultural ties.'

Paying homage to British cultural exports from 'James Bond to Twiggy's haircut', the magazine said it wanted to offer Britain a 'firm handshake, coupled with an honest, straightforward appeal: remain'.

The haircut sported by 1960s supermodel Twiggy was hailed as one of the reasons Britain is so admired across Europe

But in an interview in the magazine, influential finance minister Mr Schauble spelled out a tough approach should the UK vote to leave.

He insisted there was no chance that Britain would be granted full access to the bloc's single market - an option that leading Brexit supporters Boris Johnson and Michael Gove have said they oppose anyway.

'That won't work,' Mr Schauble said. 'It would require the country to abide by the rules of a club from which it currently wants to withdraw.

'If the majority in Britain opts for Brexit, that would be a decision against the single market. In is in. Out is out. One has to respect the sovereignty of the British people.'

Mr Schauble also said we would regret our decision to leave and change our minds later.

'Europe will also work without Britain if necessary,' he said. 'At some point, the British will realise they have taken the wrong decision. And then we will accept them back one day, if that's what they want.'

German finance minister Wolfgang Schauble

The Christian Democrat said it would be a 'miracle' if there was no economic pain for Britain after a vote to leave.

He also admitted that a Brexit could have dramatic consequences for the rest of the EU, and suggested other countries could follow our lead.

'How, for example, would the Netherlands react, as a country that has traditionally had very close ties to Britain?' he said.

'It is important for the EU to send the message that it has understood the vote and is prepared to learn from it ...

'In response to Brexit, we couldn't simply call for more integration. That would be crude; many would rightfully wonder whether we politicians still haven't understood.

'Even in the event that only a small majority of the British voters reject a withdrawal, we would have to see it as a wake-up call and a warning not to continue with business as usual. Either way, we have to take a serious look at reducing bureaucracy in Europe.'

Former business secretary Lord Mandelson said: 'This finally knocks on the head the Leave campaign's claim that we can leave the EU and still enjoy the benefits of the single market.

'We cannot leave the club and continue to use its facilities. Being outside the single market wold be a hammer blow to the UK economy.

'Our future trade will be hit and our manufacturing sector, which relies on the single market's free movement of goods and people, will be at risk.

'This is the cold reality of Brexit that the British people must face. If we leave we lose the economic gains of being the world's largest free trade zone, putting jobs and livelihoods at risk.'

But Vote Leave countered Mr Schauble's warnings by saying it would be in EU member states' best interests to continue trading freely with the UK.

Matthew Elliott, chief executive of the leading Brexit campaign, said: The Eurozone economies are dependent on trade with the UK. We are the fifth largest economy in the world, while many of them are in a desperate state due to the failing single currency.

There is no question about it, Britain will still have access to the Single Market after we Vote Leave.

'It would be perverse of the Eurozone to try to create artificial barriers - and would do far more damage to them than to anyone else.

One thing that will change if we vote leave is that we will be able to forge trade deals with the economic powerhouses of the future - the emerging markets - which we are currently forbidden from doing by the EU.

Thats why we will not only be stronger and more secure if we vote to leave the EU, we will also be more prosperous.

Der Spiegel has upped its circulation in the UK for Saturday's special bilingual edition, and reduced the cover price from 5.20 to 2.
A 19-year-old man who vanished from a Queensland town nearly two months ago has still not been found.

Concerns are held for the wellbeing of Wyatt Joss who was last seen at a Wonga Beach home, north of Cairns, on April 19.

A man believed to be him was seen at Craiglie, which is just south of Port Douglas, on May 24.

Queensland teenager Wyatt Joss has not been seen or heard from for nearly two months

Mr Joss has not been in contact with his family or friends since his disappearance, and Queensland police believe he may still be in the Port Douglas area.

The man is 173cm tall, with short brown hair, blue eyes and a goatee. He is thinly built and has a tattoo of a rose and the word 'mom' on his upper left arm.

Police encourage anybody with information on his whereabouts to contact Crime Stoppers.
Predator: Cheyenne Cody Vedaa Foster was sentenced to nearly 30 years in prison

A Washington man was given double the maximum sentence Thursday after he was convicted of sexually abusing a 13-year-old girl in what amounted to internet rape.

Cheyenne Cody Vedaa Foster, 20, of Lake Elmo received 28 years and eight months after pleading guilty in April to first-degree criminal sexual conduct involving sexual penetration, personal injury and force or coercion - even though he never met his victim in person, reported Fox News.

It is believed that the acts may have been a 'copycat from the character in the novel and movie Fifty Shades of Grey', according to an officer.

Foster admitted that in December 2014, he began a 'dominant-submissive relationship based on sexual gratification' with the victim, according to a plea-hearing in April.

Stillwater police Sgt. Jeff Stender called the conviction 'revolutionary' and noted the sharp rise in internet crimes.

Stender told the Star Tribune: 'This is the future of prosecution.'

Foster admitted to conveying threats of punishment through text messages, video chats and social media, forcing the young girl, a Stillwater Junior High School student from Lake Elmo to sexually abuse herself.

According to the Star Tribune, he called himself Sir, Master or Daddy while the girl was called 'Kitten' and he made her wear a collar 'to show her commitment to him'.

Described by the girl's father as a 'monster' and 'truly evil' during sentencing, Foster kept the girl on a kind of alleged 'sexual contract'.

The complaint described how Foster would tell the girl to commit sex acts while suffocating herself and at one point Foster told her 'she had almost committed suicide' when they spoke over FaceTime.

When the parents were alerted to what was going on, they took her phone away and spoke to Foster directly to ask him to stop.

But the contact continued throughout 2015 - via the girl's friends electronic devices - and they then contacted the girl's school, which launched a police investigation, reported Twin Cities.

Foster is believed to have victimized others in similar cases in other states, according to prosecutors who say he may have avoided federal pornography charges by pleading guilty to criminal sexual conduct and accepting the harsher sentence.

The 20-year-old must spend at least 19 years in custody and will have to register for life as a predatory offender, pay $3,324 in restitution and may face civil commitment, reports Twin Cities.

Washington County prosecutor Imran Ali said that Foster's crime was 'committed with particular cruelty,' which included circulating videos of the girl's sex acts to other girls, according to the Tribune.

During sentencing Foster, of Arlington, Washington, said: 'It burns me inside to think of what I've done, of who I hurt.'

District Judge Mary Hannon told him: 'It's going to take work on your part. There have been some serious flaws in your development that need correcting.'

While the victim was not present in court the father read out a statement where he said his daughter was forced to 'follow a set of rules that were 'dark, sexually explicit and sadistic in nature, involving the use of pain'.
Donald Trump resumed attacking Elizabeth Warren on Friday, the morning after the Massachusetts senator endorsed Hillary Clinton's presidential run against her.

'Pocahontas is at it again! Goofy Elizabeth Warren, one of the least productive U.S. Senators, has a nasty mouth. Hope she is V.P. choice,' he tweeted.

The 'Pocahontas' jab was a reference to Warren's early professional history when she claimed to be 1/32 Cherokee Indian on academic employment applications, a move that Republicans have said gave her an unfair advantage in university hiring.

'I think she is as Native American as I am. OK?' Trump said May 26 during a press conference in Bismarck, North Dakota. 'She's a woman that's been very ineffective  other than she's got a big mouth.'

VICIOUS: Donald Trump clobbered Elizabeth Warren on Friday, the morning after she endorsed Hillary Clinton

Warren and Trump have taken their feud to Twitter as Hillary Clinton mulls making Warren her running mate and Trump relishes the prospect of 5 months of fake-Native American jokes

Warren fired back Friday morning, tweeting in response to Trump's broadside: 'No, seriously. Delete your account.'

Her counter-punch had far less power than Hillary Clinton's similarly worded Twitter jab on Thursday night, which became the former secretary of state's most-retweeted posting ever.

Warren endorsed Clinton Thursday night on MSNBC's 'Rachel Maddow show,' using the liberal safe harbor of the progressive program to declare: 'I'm ready to get in this fight and work my heart out for Hillary Clinton to become the next president of the United States and to make sure that Donald Trump never gets anyplace close to the White House.'

Her moment of jumping off the fence came just hours after President Barack Obama gave Clinton his own formal endorsement in a video, saying 'I don't think there's ever been someone so qualified to hold this office.'

Warren's name has been floated for months as a potential vice presidential nominee who could pacify fans of the far-left Bernie Sanders, who continues to stubbornly challenge Clinton.

The prospect of a Clinton-Warren ticket has emboldened Trump to publicly clobber the Massachusetts senator again and again.

During his May event in North Dakota, a reporter asked him about their ongoing feud.

'Who, Pocahontas?' he boomed, drawing a claim from a Native American blogger that he was 'very offensive.'

'Is it offensive? You tell me,' Trump replied. 'Oh, I'm sorry about that.'

Without skipping a beat, he turned back to the original questioner and asked: 'Pocahontas? Is that what you said?'

Trump told his supporters that Warren 'is as Native American as I am. OK?' during a press conference in Bismarck, North Dakota

A fired-up Warren endorsed Hillary Clinton on Thursday during an appearance on MSNBC

'She said she was Native American, but she wasnt able to document it,' Trump said then.

'She said, "Well, I have high cheekbones. You see? I have high cheekbones, so Im a Native American!" I dont know if youd call it a fraud or not, but she was able to get into various schools because of the fact she applied as a Native American.'

Thursday night in Washington, Warren delivered a speech to a constitutional lawyers' group in which she slammed Trump for his comments about a Mexican-American federal judge overseeing fraud cases against one of his businesses.

'Donald Trump is a loud, nasty, thin-skinned fraud who has never risked anything for anyone and who serves no one but himself,' she said.

'Trump is picking on someone who is ethically bound not to defend himself  exactly what you'd expect from a thin-skinned, racist bully.'

Trump has said the judge should recuse himself from the case because of his heritage, and because a professional association he belongs to disagrees with Trump's positions on border security and illegal immigration.
Millionaire business man Peter Bialek, 66, was today jailed for 16 months at Winchester Crown Court after ploughing through marquee in his Mercedes

A millionaire businessman was today jailed after drunkenly driving his wife's car through a marquee full of 'black-tie' guests at a charity event.

The court heard how revellers bounced off the windscreen of Peter Bialek's Mercedes and witnesses described the horrific scenes as 'like a bomb going off'.

Bialek had twice the legal limit of alcohol in his system and was today jailed for 16 months at Winchester Crown Court.

More than 20 people were injured in the crash after he took the wheel - despite his wife being sober - and one woman's bone was so badly broken that it penetrated the skin.

Others suffered from broken ribs and severe bruising at Dene Farm, near Andover, on October 3.

The judge heard that Bialek had tried to find the brakes on his wife's car but instead hit the accelerator and was only able to stop by switching off the engine.

He was today told of the serious injuries he caused his victims before he was sent to prison to begin his sentence.

Prosecuter Simon Jones said: 'This was a black tie event. As a result of his actions, serious injuries were sustained by a number of people.

'This defendant and his wife were guests and the defendant consumed a large amount of alcohol. There was evidence to suggest he had drunk two bottles of wine at the event.

'It was initially a case of his partner driving but she could not manoeuvre the car and it was his decision to take the wheel and, of course, he got it dramatically and recklessly wrong.

'Witnesses described screaming and shouting and were simply unable to avoid the Mercedes as it came crashing through. One described it as if a bomb had exploded.

'Guests were bouncing off the front and off of its windscreen.'

'The most significant injury was an open fracture to the right ankle.'

The court heard that the defendant's Mercedes crashed straight into the marquee and mowed down a group of 21 people.

He managed to stop the car by turning off the engine before he was dragged out by a furious guest and assaulted.

He was described as shocked and horrified by the crash and immediately admitted his actions to the police.

The court heard how revellers bounced off the windscreen of Peter Bialek's Mercedes (pictured) and witnesses described the horrific scenes as 'like a bomb going off'

Charles Gabb, defending wealthy Bialek, aged 66 years, described him as an exceptional man who has dedicated more than 70 acres of his land to a special needs school.

He added: 'This was a dreadful mistake by him. I hope you are able to accept that he is utterly devastated by what he has done.

Guests were bouncing off the front and off of its windscreen Prosecuter Simon Jones

'You will have seen from evidence that when the car came to a stop he was heard to be expressing shock and horror at what had happened.'

Debbie Trant, Bialek's step-daughter, added: 'This has had a devastating effect on him. There is not a day that goes by that he doesn't regret his actions.

'He has become almost a recluse, he doesn't go out, it is a terrible shame to see such a great men be reduced to this.'

Bialek, from Salisbury, Wiltshire, admitted two counts of inflicting grievous bodily harm, one count of unlawful wounding and one count of causing injury by wanton/furious driving, at an earlier hearing.

Sentencing at Winchester Crown Court, Judge Nigel Teare said his actions were too severe to be covered by a suspended sentence.

More than 20 people were injured in the crash after he demanded to drive - despite his wife being sobre - and one woman's bone was so badly broken that it penetrated the skin

'You have been exceptionally generous to charity and you have expressed remorse,' he said.

'It was submitted that you have been utterly devastated by these events and I accept that. You are 66 years old and you are not in good health.

'I accept that the evidence I have heard in every other aspect you are a good man, if it was not for that, the sentence would have been higher.'

The 66-year-old was banned from driving for two years and ordered to pay costs of 750. His step-daughter cried as she watched him be taken from the dock to begin his sentence.

The millionaire skip hire company owner is no stranger to the law courts.

He was fined in 150,000 and ordered to pay 55,000 in costs in 2011 after breaching Health and Safety Executive laws following the death of a worker at his skip hire firm CB Skips in Salisbury, Wilts.

The judge heard that Bialek had tried to find the brakes on his wife's car but instead hit the accelerator and was only able to stop by switching off the engine

Jozef Trhan died on his birthday in February 2008 when he was fixing a split rim wheel on a loading shovel when it exploded and he was thrown head first into an excavator loading shovel.

He had no training or experience in repairing wheels or large industrial machinery.

Bialek admitted failing to ensure workers' safety and was sentenced at Salisbury Crown Court.

A Health and Safety Executive investigation found that C Bialek gave its workers dangerous and unsafe machinery to use and it failed to carry out any risk assessments for tyre repairs.

Bialek was also cleared of threatening to kill his former prostitute girlfriend and her son in 2002.

At the time the then 53-year-old was formally found not guilty of two charges of affray and one count of possession of a shotgun with intent to cause fear or violence.
The Pakistani teenager burned alive by her own mother as punishment for eloping with her boyfriend had begged him to marry her so she could be free from her abusive family.

Zeenat Rafiq 18, was tied to a bed by her mother and brother, doused in kerosene and set her alight in the family home in Lahore, eastern Pakistan.

Her husband Hassan Khan, 19, has revealed that she came to his house beaten and bloodied and asked him to elope with her so she could escape the brutal clutches of her mother and brother.

Burned alive: Zeenat Rafiq, 18, died after her mother and brother tied her up and set her on fire in the family home in Lahore, eastern Pakistan, because, in their eyes she had married the wrong man

Bloodied: Zeenat's grieving husband Hassan Khan, 19, told MailOnline she came to his house after they were married beaten and bloodied and asked him to elope with her so she could escape their brutal clutches

Mr Khan, a mechanic, told MailOnline: 'Zeenats family was very bad. She was often beaten by her mother just for nothing.

'Her mother also knew about our affair and once her brother beaten her so severe that she had three stitches over her head.

That was the day when we decided that we would married now even without the consent of the Zeenats family.

'I was really very hurt when she was beaten by her brother. I wished that i should go to her home and beat her brother like he beaten Zeenat but my friends stopped me to do so.

My friends wanted me to marry her with the consent of her family. But Zeenat always said that she would never allow to marry me. So we decided for court marriage.'

Recalling the day they married, Mr Khan said: 'The day we eloped she had been abused, there was blood on her nose and on her lips.

'She was in distress; she asked me to take her away and marry her.'

Mr Khan revealed on the fourth day of their marriage Zeenat's mother Parveen a cousin and another family member arrived at their home and told his parents they wanted to take Zeenat home so that a proper marriage could be arranged.

They claimed that so far many family members are unaware that Zeenat eloped from her home and they wanted their honour to be restored as people should not knew about this happening.

Beaten: Her husband Mr Khan, a mechanic, told MailOnline: 'Her family was very bad. She was often beaten by her mother just for nothing.' He said they came to his house four days after the wedding to take her home

Justice: Family comfort Hassan Khan, centre, the husband of Zeenat Rafiq, at his home in Lahore, Pakistan

Murder: Parveen Rafiq, tied her daughter Zeenat, 16, to a cot, doused her in kerosene and set her alight as punishment for eloping to marry her boyfriend

'Honour killing': After the killing of her daughter, Mrs Rafiq began shouting on the street to neighbours that she had killed the teen for bringing shame on her family, while beating her chest

He went on: 'Zeenat was unwilling to go back to her home and told me that she would be killed by her family, but later agreed when one of her uncles guaranteed her safety.

He went on: 'They gave us assurance that in a couple of days, proper marriage would be arranged with relatives and friends and then they would hand over Zeenat to them in the presence of relatives and friends.

'After discussions between both the families, my parents agreed to their proposal and we have allowed her to go with her mother. Although, Zeenat was reluctant to go with them but even then we decided to send her.'

'After two days, she called me and said that her family had gone back on their word and asked me to come to get her, but I told her to wait for the promised eight days. Then, she was killed.'

Khan's ethnicity, he is an ethnic Pashtun, while Zeenat was a Punjabi, was the main cause of the family's disapproval, according to the Rafiq family.

After the murder, Zeenat's mother Parveen Rafiq then went outside and began shouting on the street to neighbours that she had killed the teen for bringing shame on her family, while beating her chest.

Zeenat's 'crime' was getting married to Mr Khan, who had been her boyfriend for years, before a court magistrate last month, Police official Sheikh Hammad said.

'Perveen killed her daughter Zeenat by burning her alive around 9:00 am on Wednesday,' Haidar Ashraf, a senior police official told AFP.

Mr Khan told local TV station Geo News that the pair had eloped, but he had reluctantly allowed her to return to her family home after they promised they would hold a celebration and not harm her.

He said: 'After living with me for four days following our marriage, her family contacted us and promised they would throw us a proper wedding party after eight days. Then we would be able live together.

Shameful: Punjabi Zeenat's 'crime' was getting married to her Pashtun boyfriend, a motorcycle mechanic, and her mother said the teenager had brought shame on the family

Charges: Perveen Rafique in the custody of Pakistani police after confessing to the murder of her daughter

Hassan's mother Shahida Khan said that Rafiq's family 'had promised that not even one hair on her head would come to harm.'

'We called up her uncle and he told us that they will bring her back to us themselves -- we trusted them,' she told CNN.

Hassan Khan, her husband of 11 days, today buried his wife, who was found to have smoke in her lungs suggesting she was still alive when she was set on fire.

'We went to her house, she was gone, she was finished and they had thrown her burnt body on the stairs,' he said.

Ashraf, the police official, said Perveen and other family members had confessed to the crime and that police had seized kerosene oil from the scene.

At the victim's two-bedroom family home in a low-income southern neighbourhood of the city, Perveen's family remained defiant.

Naseem Bibi, Perveen's younger sister, told AFP: 'After killing her daughter, Perveen went out on the street, took off her shawl and started beating herself on her chest, shouting: 'People! I have killed my daughter for misbehaving and giving our family a bad name.'

'My sister declared a long time ago she would not allow her daughter to marry a Pashtun,' she said.

Defiance: Mr Khan, shows his marriage certificate, proving that he married Zeenat in a civil ceremony, something which greatly angered her family

Fears: Mr Khan says his wife Zeenat had begged him not to let her family take her back to their house, as she feared they would kill her as punishment for eloping

The victim's sister Shazia also blamed Zeenat for defying her mother, but said she had urged her mother to cut ties with her instead of killing her.

Perveen's husband died several years ago and her relationship with her daughters had deteriorated, according to Shazia.

'Our mother became distressed because of her daughter's disobedience and because she felt there was no man in the house to rein her in.'

Nearly 1,000 women are killed each year in so-called 'honor killings' in Pakistan for allegedly violating conservative norms on love and marriage.

Last week, a 19-year-old teacher was tortured and burned alive for refusing to marry the son of her boss - a man twice her age.

Maria Sadaqat,was attacked in the village of Upper Dewal, outside the capital Islamabad, on Monday night, and died two days later as a result of injuries.

Anger: Local residents gather outside the home of Parveen Rafiq, who has confessed to killing her daughter for refusing to have a traditional wedding

Shock: The ambulance transporting the body of Zeenat Rafiq drives to the morgue of a local hospital in Lahore

Ms Sadaqat had recently been forced to leave her teaching job at the school, after the principal had begun harassing her when she turned down the proposal from his son, who was 'twice her age'.

Before she died, she managed to give a statement to the police, testifying that five attackers had broken into her home, dragged her out to an open area, beat her and set her ablaze.

The prime suspect in the case  her former boss and the father of the man she refused to marry  and the other four are all in custody.

A month earlier, police arrested 13 members of a local tribal council who allegedly strangled a girl and set her on fire for helping a friend elope. The charred body of 17-year-old Ambreen Riasat was found in a burned van.
Debris which has washed up on a beach in Madagascar could be from Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370, which vanished more than two years ago.

Blaine Gibson, an American who has been hunting for MH370 for the past year, contacted the Australian Transport Safety Bureau to report what he had found in Madagascar.

It comes only days after a piece of debris washed up on Kangaroo Island, off the coast of southern Australia.

The missing Boeing 777 vanished more than two years ago with 239 people on board.

Blaine Gibson holds some of the debris and stands on the spot where he found it on Nosy Boraha Island, off the east coast of Madagascar

It is thought MH370, which was flying from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, came down midway between Madagascar and Australia in the southern half of the Indian Ocean.

Why it was so far off course remains a baffling mystery.

The Australian Transport Safety Bureau said it would carry out its own analysis on the debris before passing it on to the Malaysian authorities, who are leading the investigation into the crash.

Don Thompson, a British engineer who is part of a group investigating MH370, said he thought one piece was the back of a seat and another piece could be a cover panel from a wing.

He told the BBC: 'The seat part I am 99.9% sure on. It's the right colour of fabric for Malaysian Airlines. It shows the seat had to have disintegrated to have come away.'

Air crews are expected to complete their sweep of a 46,000 square mile area in the southern Indian Ocean by August.

Malaysia, China and Australia are co-ordinating the search for the plane.

ATSB chief Martin Dolan said: 'We have some way to go and our best bet is that we will complete that search late July, early August, depending on unforeseen circumstances.

Mr Gibson holds a piece of debris on Nosy Baraha island, previously known as Ile Sainte-Marie

'At this point there is a diminishing level of confidence that we will find the aircraft. There will be a lot of disappointment if we don't find it.'

Earlier this week Samuel Armstrong, while out looking for driftwood on a beach in South Australia, found a piece of wreckage he believed came from MH370.

He said: 'I have found things that could have been dropped off boats, which have come a long way, but this time I thought about planes that have come down and thought about MH370.'

Blaine Gibson holding pieces of debris he found on Nosy Boraha island, off the coast of Madagascar. It is thought the debris may have come from MH370

Oceanographer Jochen Kaempf said the area where both pieces were found was consistent with the drift of the southern Indian Ocean.

Drift patterns could have carried some parts towards Africa while other currents could have carried wreckage towards Australia, experts suggest.

Many of the families of the 153 Chinese passengers are convinced it did not crash into the sea at all.

Conspiracy theorists maintain MH370 was hijacked by either North Korea or Russia or that it was shot down by the US after it approached the sensitive air base of Diego Garcia.

Local resident Samuel Armstrong came across debris while looking for driftwood on the beach on Kangaroo Island
Newly released State Department emails reveal that a donor to Clinton Foundation received a post on a intelligence advisory board even though he was comparatively unqualified for the position.

'We had no idea who he was,' one board member told ABC anonymously.

The donor, Raj Fernando, spent heavily to get Hillary Clinton in the White House in 2008, and is one of her superdelegates and bundlers now, ABC News reports.

He also traveled to Africa once with Bill Clinton and has given between $1 and 5 million to the Clintons' charity, its website says.

Newly released State Department emails reveal that a donor to the Clinton Foundation received a post on a intelligence advisory board even though he was comparatively unqualified for the position. The donor, Raj Fernando, is pictured above.

When the news organization began asking questions about his placement on the International Security Advisory Board (ISAB) in 2011, he suddenly resigned.

ABC continued tracking of the case through 2012, and chased down Fernando at the Democratic National Convention that year. The news network was intercepted by security and threatened with arrest, however,

As the result of an email dump to conservative investigative and documentary group Citizens United after two years of litigation, ABC now has its hands on emails related to the appointment, bringing the story back to the forefront.

The internal State Department emails prove officials actively worked to to keep the conflict of interest appointment from becoming a story, first by stalling, then by accepting Fernando's resignation, all in to 'protect the name' of the secretary and undersecretary of state.

ABC stumbled across the Clinton Foundation donor's involvement with the ISAB while it was working on another story.

What began as a routine line of questioning about Fernando's qualifications as a securities trader in Chicago to serve on a committee that also included a former Secretary of Defense, a former National Security Advisor and members of Congress, ballooned as State ducked and dodged.

'As you can see from the attached, it's natural to ask how he got onto the board when compared to the rest of the esteemed list of members,' the press aide handling the inquiry said in an email.

In the same email, to Wade Boese, who was Chief of Staff for the Office of the Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security, sent on the evening of August 15, she said 'it appears there is much more to this story that we're unaware of.

The purpose of the ISAB, according to one State Department email, was to provide independent insight and advice on arms control and international security.

'It is certainly a serious, knowledgeable and experienced group of experts,' Princeton professor Bruce Blair, whose centers on the elimination of nuclear weapons, told ABC.

Blair said, 'Much of the focus has been on questions of nuclear stability and the risks of nuclear weapons use by Russia and Pakistan.''

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The Clinton Foundation associate also traveled to Africa once with Bill Clinton and has given between $1 and 5 million to the charity, its website says. He's seen here at a Clinton Foundation event with Bill Clinton

A bio approved for release after several ABC inquiries says Fernando brought a 'unique perspective' to the board that dealt with top secret information, given his position.

Internally, it was said that he brought 'youth, enthusiasm, a business perspective and and expertise in cybersecurity.'

ABC described his craft as electronic investing and high-frequency trading and said its review of his work suggests his only real qualification seemed to be that he was tech savvy.

The only tangible criteria Fernando, who at the time ran Chopper Trading, a top firm in that field, met, according to the documents, was that Hillary Clinton's office wanted him.

Emails from 2009 that Clinton's Chief of Staff Cheryl Mills sent regarding the vetting process for members of the ISAB include two names that were not on the original list that specifically asked about.

Those emails are almost entirely redacted, including the names of the individuals that Clinton requested.

But later, as ABC poked around,the press aide handling the request, Jamie Mannina, received this explanation for the post from Boese: 'The true answer is that S staff (Cheryl Mills) added him.

'The board's membership preceded me. Raj was not on the list sent to S; he was added at their insistence,' Boese told her.

The letter 'S' was often used as short-hand for the secretary's office.

That was in response to Mannina's request for information she could share about the selection process that was used to decide who should serve on the government intelligence advisory board.

As ABC poked around,the press aide handling the request, Jamie Mannina, received this explanation for the post: 'The true answer is that S staff (Cheryl Mills) added him. Mills is seated here behind Clinton as she testifies before Congress on Benghazi in October of 2015

When the news organization began asking questions about his placement on the International Security Advisory Board (ISAB) in 2011, he suddenly resigned

In the meantime, ABC was also reaching out to Fernando and other board members about the matter, the internal deliberations show.

An email from Fernando's email to the board's executive director, Chip Hartman, on August 15, the same day that Mannina put in press requests, was redacted as confidential.

The next day emails show she was asked by Mills 'to stall for 24 hours.' A paragraph of that message was also redacted.

A day late, on August 17, Fernando resigned.

He stated in the letter to Clinton that the 'unique, unexpected and excessive volatility in the international markets these last few weeks and months require me to focus on the operations of my company.'

'Mr. Fernando chose to resign from the Board earlier this month citing additional time needed to devote to his business, it reads, noting that membership on the board was required to be fairly balanced in terms of the points of view represented and the functions to be performed by the advisory committee,' State told ABC News two days later.

State's claim that he left the board 'earlier this month' hid the true timeline of events, which include the fact that he resigned just two days after ABC began asking questions.

Fernando's appointment to the board raise suspicions given his long history of giving to the Clintons.

He maxed out to Hillary's presidential PAC, HillPAC, in 2007 and 2008, ABC says, and raised $100,000 for her campaign directly.

Fernando also raised big dollar amounts for Barack Obama in 2008 after Clinton lost the Democratic nomination to him.

After Barack Obama bested Clinton for the 2008 nomination, Fernando became a major fundraiser for the Obama campaign. Six months after his resignation from the intelligence advisory board, he was invited to attend a State dinner at the White House for the British prime minister.

At the time he was given the State Department appointment, he'd given between $100,000 and $250,000 to Clinton Foundation, ABC discovered.

He further donated $30,000 to the group WomenCount that was renting out Clinton's campaign email list as she struggled to run down her debt after her campaign collapsed.
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A millionaire cosmetic surgeon's 1million mansion is in ruins today after it collapsed during work to create a super-basement below.

Sid Gautum, 36, looked shocked as he arrived to see the ruins of the building in Penarth, south Wales, which came down at around 10am.

He wanted to add extra rooms to the property bought for 800,000 in 2014 but the walls crumbled and collapsed into the planned new bottom floor.

Dangerous: A millionaire cosmetic surgeon's 1million mansion is in ruins today after it collapsed during work to create a super-basement below

Collapse: The property's rear section has crumbled into the giant basement below - which is being created as part of the major refurbishment

In shock: Property owner Sid Gautam looked on in disbelief today when he came to inspect the ruins of his mansion in Penarth

Mr Gautum's plans are for a dream home for his family but disgruntled neighbours called the project 'disastrous' and accused the new owner of having 'virtually raped' the interior of 1920s house.

Danger zone: Health and safety chiefs had to shut down gas and electric supplies to the property in case of an explosion - nobody appears to have been trapped

After the collapse this morning sniffer dogs and rescue teams were sent to the house to check if anyone was trapped inside, but it appears all workers are safe.

Health and safety chiefs had to shut down gas and electric supplies to the property in case of an explosion.

The collapse happened on Clinton Road, Penarth, South Wales, a sought-after tree lined avenue with several detached houses worth over 1million.

Underground extensions are popular in London as wealthy homeowners bid to add extra space without extending upwards - but are extremely rare in Wales.

Cosmetic surgeon Mr Gautum said the work was to make the house a six-bedroomed family home in the same 1920s style and the basement is for extras storage and a playroom for children.

'It's frustrating, unforeseen and irritating to lose this time on the project.

'The delay is not through lack of will or funds. We bought the house a couple of years ago. Work started more recently and due to issues with our contractor we have faced delay after delay.

'Luckily its a house of two halves. The front is strong, but the insides have fallen in.

'Ultimately it's a groundwork issue and we're in the process of getting new guys in because the contractors haven't delivered.'

The collapse came days after a 700,000 house in Lewisham, south-east London, fell down when it was also being gutted and refurbished/

A neighbour, who refused to be named, told of the 'disastrous' building work in Penarth and said it had been a nuisance to the street for more than two months.

He said: 'The work is precarious to say the least. I have already raised my concerns about it but couldn't do more to help.

'We have never met or seen the owner of the property but it is believed locally that he is a well off cosmetic surgeon.

'He has plans to completely change the use of the property and add ten rooms to the dwelling.'

Another neighbour said: 'The interior of the property has been virtually raped.'

Fire station manager Justin Jones said: 'This shouldn't have been allowed to happen.

'The site is still very dangerous and will be boarded up.

'We were alerted by the collapse by a work man who had come to collect some tools.

'He is believed to have been the only person on site but we have sniffer dogs at the scene to confirm this.

'Safety boarding to put up and the existing contractor has been sent off site.'

Remains: The emergency services were called at around 10am today - the front section of the house remains standing this afternoon

Gaping hole: The millionaire owner said that the collapse was caused by a 'groundwork issue' two years into the project

Starting again: The house is said to be split, and supported in two halves, meaning the rear portion fell down but the front remains

Perilous: Police and health and seafety experts inspect the hole from a neighbouring property in the leafy seaside street

Emergency: Health and safety chiefs had to shut down gas and electric supplies to the property in case of an explosion - sniffer dogs were sent in by police and the fire brigade

The house's former owner, winemaker Ian Symonds, said the property was sold to Mr Gautam in October 2014 in excess of 800,000.

Mr Symonds said: 'I lived there for 33 years and have many happy memories of our time in that house. It's very sad what's happened to it.'

A spokeswoman for South Wales Fire and Rescue said: 'We were called Clinton Road, Penarth at 10.43am to a house under rennovation. The rear of the property had collapsed.

'No persons were trapped and the local authority health and safety executive are in attendance to locate gas and electric supplies to isolate them..'

A spokesman for South Wales Police said: 'We attended to make sure the area was safe'.
A restaurant owner who snatched a gun from a would-be robber was shocked when she later fired the weapon which she thought was fake - but evidently wasn't.

Keqiu Wang, who runs Crazy Wings in Norfolk, Virginia with her husband Jiamde Lin, encountered the armed teenager on Sunday night.

Jabrie Brown, 19, entered the premises and demanded money from a customer and a cashier, according to police records, the Virginia Pilot reported.

Footage from the incident on CNN shows Wang trying to take the gun from Brown as he was putting the customer's money in his pocket.

At that point, her husband came from the kitchen and chopped Brown's shoulder with a cleaver, leaving two deep wounds, the police said - while Wang managed to wrest the firearm from him.

After he fled the scene, Wang is seen firing the gun at the floor and is clearly shocked to discover the 9mm handgun is genuine.

Keqiu Wang, who runs Crazy Wings in Norfolk, Virginia with her husband Jiamde Lin, encountered the armed teenager on Sunday night. Above, the assailant points his gun at Wang

Wang's husband is seen above rushing from the kitchen with a cleaver, causing the assailant to flee

While Lin confronts the suspect near the entrance of the shop, Wang manages to snatch away the gun

When Wang later fired the weapon at the floor, she was shocked to find the 9mm handgun was the real deal

Wang told CNN: 'I told [my husband] "it's not a real gun" and then I shot it...'

Brown fled with the money but was later found and taken to a hospital.

He has since been taken into custody on charges of robbery and use of a firearm in a felony.

It's unclear whether Brown has an attorney.
He has been remanded in custody and will be sentenced on August 5

An Adelaide man has been found guilty of murdering 25-year-old sex worker Ting Fang at a hotel in Adelaide during the early hours of New Years Day.

A jury in South Australia's Supreme Court took five hours to unanimously decide Chungaung Piao had used Ms Fang's stiletto and a cleaning razor to murder the Sydney-based woman, the Adelaide Advertiser reported.

Throughout the case, the jury heard evidence that the married father's thumb print was found on the bottom of the shoe used to hit the woman in the head, and the razor used to slice the sex-worker's throat matched a packet Piao had purchased for his cleaning business.

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Ting Fang's lifeless body was found in a room of the Hotel Grand Chancellor in Adelaide

Chungaung Piao, a 28-year-old married father from Adelaide, denies the charges

This stiletto is allegedly one of the weapons used to murder the 25-year-old, Sydney based sex worker

Prosecution allege Piao struck Ms Fang over the head with her own stiletto (pictured) in her hotel room

The newspaper said jurors also heard that Ms Fang had happily agreed to an extended overnight booking with Piao and texted her minder to say she was tired and would be able to earn a night's wages without having sex, as the 28-year-old man was impotent.

Jurors were also told that Piao was being threatened over a $3000 debt when he booked an appointment with Ms Fang at the Hotel Grand Chancellor in Adelaide.

His bank accounts were also allegedly empty or overdrawn at the time, meaning he would not have been able to pay for the booking.

Ms Fang's lifeless body was found with two V-shaped lacerations on her scalp and a 13cm, deep wound on her throat caused by two separate slashing motions.

A mistrial was declared in May by Justice David Lovell and a new jury was sworn in for Piao's retrial.

The reasons for the mistrial have been suppressed until Justice Lovell reaches a verdict in the retrial.

Piao has denied the charges since his arrest, and his counsel argued someone else was responsible for the young woman's death.

The married father was remanded in custody and will face court again for sentencing on August 5.

State law suggests he will face a mandatory life sentence and a non-parole term of at least 20 years.

Ms Fang was working out of a hotel room (pictured) when she was brutally murdered

Piao has denied the charges put against him since his arrest and his counsel say someone else is responsible

The alarm was raised after the bath in her room began to flood on New Years Day 2015
A heartbroken mother lost the last connection to her dead daughter thanks to a clerical error by the Chicago police.

Terry Porter says Chicago Police accidentally destroyed her daughter Nicole's suicide letter last year, after taking the note as evidence in her death investigation.

Mrs Porter said she and her husband were told by a detective that the letter would be released to them once the investigation was complete.

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Terry Porter (left) says Chicago Police accidentally destroyed her daughter Nicole's (right) suicide letters, after the 29-year-old woman injured herself with a lethal dose of insulin in February 2015

Chicago detectives took the two letters, one addressed to her parents and the other addressed to her best friend, as part of the death investigation. They promised Nicole's parents that they would be released to them after the investigation was complete

That came in May 2015, when Nicole's death was officially categorized as a suicide. The 29-year-old woman committed suicide by injecting herself with a lethal dose of insulin on February 27, 2015.

By August of 2015, the Porters started pressing police to see when the letter would be released to them.

'His response was I haven't received anything from the coroner's office,' Mrs Porter told CBS Chicago. 'The case isn't closed. I can't release them.'

Frustrated with the lack of information, the Porters went to pick up the letter in person a month later and found that the note had actually been destroyed three days after the hold was lifted.

Mrs Porter cries as she reads from a scanned copy of the suicide letter Chicago police accidentally destroyed. Authorities say the letter's destruction was an administrative mistake

In a statement, the Chicago Police said that the letter's destruction was an accident caused by an administrative error.

'It was like everything was ripped right open again,' she said.

Mrs Porter said having the letters 'would be part of her that I can hold onto. It would mean the world to me right now'.

She added: 'It was the last "I love you" she ever said to us. It's the last physical thing she ever left for us. They're a part of her that she gave to us in the last hours of her life.'

Luckily, the couple were given a scanned copy of the letters before they were destroyed.

She is now coming forward with her story in hopes that the Chicago Police will review their evidence policies to insure this doesn't happen to another family.

 For confidential help, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255 or click here
North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un was photographed with a cigarette in his hand while visiting a children's camp during the middle of a state sponsored anti-smoking drive.

The despot was photographed by the official KCNA news agency during a 'field guidance' visit to the Mangyongdae Children's Camp in Pyongyang.

Kim often tours the hermit state's capital providing his wisdom on matters ranging from agricultural production to the development of nuclear weapons.

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Kim Jong-un was photographed holding the lit cigarette despite being in the middle of an anti-tobacco drive

During the field guidance visit, Kim sat down on one of the children's bunk beds followed by his entourage

Several men dutifully scribbled down Kim Jong-un's instructions to further improve the running of the camp

CNN claimed Kim was photographed with the cigarette during the middle of a anti-smoking drive.

In May, KCNA reported that North Korea had reduced the area of land which had been set aside to grow tobacco 'as much as possible'.

The hermit sate claimed smoking rates among men were eight percent lower in 2013 than four years earlier.

KCNA said: 'The number of non-smokers is remarkably increasing with each passing day.'

Meanwhile, the two Koreas stepped up an angry war of words Friday as tensions mounted over a series of North Korean defections and the South's rejection of Pyongyang's repeated offers of military talks.

Tensions have been running high on the divided Korean peninsula ever since the North conducted its fourth nuclear test in January followed by a long-range rocket launch.

In the past month, a new source of friction has emerged with two cases of group defections by North Korean staff working in Pyongyang-run restaurants in China.

A dozen women and their restaurant manager arrived in Seoul in April, and three others from a separate restaurant followed them this week.

North Korea insists the staff were duped and effectively kidnapped by South Korean intelligence agents and are being held in the South against their will - an accusation Seoul categorically denies.

Kim Jong-un visited the dining area of the children camp but had to wait for lunch as there was no food ready

In another portrait outside the children's camp, there is no sign of the offending cigarette

The Mangyongdae children's camp in Pyongyang has recently been refurbished according to KCNA

According to the North Korean Red Cross, 'The allurement and abduction clearly proves that the puppet forces of south Korea are the most hideous human rights abusers.'

Referring to the latest case of the three women who had been working in a restaurant in the northern Chinese province of Shanxi, the spokesman said they were the victims of a sophisticated, 'premeditated abduction'.

He said South Korean agents 'lured' the women away from their work and spirited them across the border with Laos and then into Thailand.

Seoul's unification ministry dismissed the 'groundless' accusations on Friday, and said North Korea could better spend time examining why its citizens wanted to flee.

The South Korean government estimates that Pyongyang rakes in around $10 million every year from about 130 restaurants it operates - with mostly North Korean staff - in 12 countries, including neighbouring China.

Tough UN sanctions imposed on North Korea after its January nuclear test significantly curtailed the isolated state's ability to earn hard currency, making the restaurants an even more important source of income than before.

There have been reports of staff not being paid, with restaurants pressured into increasing their regular remittances to Pyongyang.

Another recent source of cross-border tension has been South Korea's negative response to a proposal from North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un to hold military talks to defuse the situation.

Seoul argued that the offer amounted to little more than diplomatic posturing given Kim's renewed commitment to expanding the North's nuclear arsenal.

In a statement issued late Thursday, the North's Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of Korea said the South's rejection of talks was confrontational.

'If they turn their back on us, the result will be miserable,' the statement said.

'Our response will be the toughest offensive aimed to push them deeper into the abyss and lead them faster to self-destruction,' it added.

In Seoul, the Unification Ministry said such bellicose rhetoric only served to underline the duplicity inherent in the North's talks proposal.
Just four people were expected at the funeral of a 91-year-old U.S. Navy veteran who died last month with no living relatives.

But when word got out that Serina Vine - who had been homeless for part of her life - was not going to get the honoring she deserved, hundreds showed up to pay their respects.

Facebook group Ms Veteran America was among those who posted an appeal last week, explaining that Vine was to have full military honors at her funeral - but so far, only a few were due to attend.

U.S. Navy veteran Serina Vine (pictured) died last month with no living relatives

Honor: But when word got out that Vine was not going to get the honoring she deserved, hundreds of people showed up to pay their respects. Pictured: Members of the Navy honor guard watch over the casket

Respect: Maj. Jaspen Boothe, president of the non-profit Final Salute (pictured) said: 'We are all a testament to what we do when we are called to honor our fellow brothers and sisters.'

Hundreds shared and commented on the post, with some saying they would be at the June 7 ceremony in person, while others said they could only be there in spirit.

Tim Madison posted: 'This is Tim Madison with the Some Gave All foundation here in Fredericksburg VA I've shared the Ms.Vine's obituary on our Facebook page and there will be people showing up to pay respects'.

While Jasmine Cordova wrote: 'I am coming and I am bringing a whole bunch of people with me.'

Attendees ranged from combat veterans, to uniformed Marines and other retired and active-duty service members, according to The Freelance Star.

Army Maj. Jaspen Boothe, who is president of the nonprofit Final Salute Inc., which assists homeless female veterans, had learnt that only four were attending and had spread the word to organizations, urging them to attend the ceremony at Quantico National Cemetery in Quantico, Virginia.

Speaking at the funeral she said: 'We are all a testament to what we do when we are called to honor our fellow brothers and sisters.'

Marine William Jones of Spotsylvania County, who had organized the funeral told the crowd that when he learned that only four were due to attend: 'I said to myself: unacceptable', according to The Star.

A contingent of sailors salute during the playing of "Taps" at the funeral service for World War II veteran Serina Vine

Pastor Dwight Micheal, from Spotsylvania's Piney Branch Baptist Church, delivers a eulogy

Attendees ranged from combat veterans, to uniformed Marines and other retired and active-duty service members

Vine was a WWII Veteran and served in the Navy from 1944 to 1946 and had joined the navy in the footsteps of her father, who had served in WWI, according to her obituary.

She never married and had no children, according to the appeal post.

Vine served in the radio intelliegence division from November 26, 1944 to August 7, 1946.

Upon returning from her tour of service, she attended the University of California-Berkeley, where she graduated with a degree in General Studies.

When her health deteriorated later in life, she moved into the Veterans Affairs' Community Living Center in Washington, where she lived for 20 years, until her death on May 21, 2016.

She had been homeless for about a year in 2006.

Pastor Dwight Micheal explained that she had graduated from University of California, Berkeley in 1954, a time when 'higher education wasn't an expectation for most women' and had spoken three languages.

He also said she 'a woman of spirit' who delighted in dressing up for church every Sunday.

Michael added: 'We might not know much about sister Vine, but what we do know is she should be remembered as one who had a character to serve and that she contributed to the life that we enjoy today in this nation.'
The driver said a witness later called the collision into police as a

This is the terrifying moment a lorry slams into the back of a car travelling along a British motorway and sends it hurtling into a nearby field.

The frightening incident was captured on a dashcam as Ian Reid and his wife Tina drove along the M25 from their home in Hythe, Kent to the cinema.

Mr Reid, a 55-year-old former solider, was on his way to watch Jurassic World for his birthday when the heavy vehicle moved into the middle lane and ploughed into his car.

Ian Reid and his wife Tina were travelling to the cinema from their home in Kent when the crash occurred

As the lorry slams into the back of the car at speed it causes it to spin and move into the hard shoulder

The shocking footage captures the moment of impact as the passing lorry smashes into the back of the silver Peugeot 206.

The staggering force throws the car into the elevated bank alongside the road, which flips the vehicle onto its roof and then back down on its wheels.

The collision causes the dashcam to become dislodged and its spins round to capture the terrified faces of the couple following their terrifying ordeal.

Mrs Reid can be heard asking her husband whether he is injured before he returns the question.

She then admits that her ribs are hurting from the impact of the crash.

Speaking to The Sun, Ian said that other motorists immediately started phoning the police.

The staggering force of the high speed collision throws the vehicle into the elevated bank alongside the M25

The dashcam is dislodged as the car is slammed into the grass verge and thrown onto its roof with force

The footage becomes blurry as the car takes a tumble after it is sent hurtling into the bank alongside the road

And in a harrowing turn of events one witness, who watched in horror as the small vehicle was wiped out by the lorry, called it in as a fatality.

According to Mr Reid five or six police cars arrived within 15 minutes along with three or four ambulances, no doubt expecting the worst.

He admitted to the paper that he does not know how the couple survived.

Since the crash, which occurred 11 months ago, Tina is still recovering and the full extent of her injuries are not yet known.

Mr Reid, who also spent 18 years in the police force, said that the diver was not charged following the incident but that he lost his job with Toyota Motorsport.

The dashcam spins around in the crash and manages to capture the couple as their car rolls onto its roof

Mrs Reid looks terrified as the car is thrown onto its roof before it continues to roll back onto its wheels
What was supposed to be a quick pit stop at the Baja 500 before a fun day at the beach turned tragic for one California family as a racing truck veered off course - and came right at them.

Melissa and Brandon Hendriks, of San Clemente, are now speaking out about the horrifying crash that took the life of their eight-year-old son Xander in Ensenada on Saturday.

'We all ran as fast as we could,' Melissa said. 'But we couldn't run fast enough.'

Xander Hendriks, 8, was tragically killed while watching the annual Baja 500 with his parents Brandon and Melissa during a trip to Ensenada, Mexico on Saturday

The family saw the truck, driven by racer Todd Pedersen, veer off course and come right toward them before it plowed into Xander, Melissa and a third spectator

Brandon and Melissa, in Mexico to visit friends who were doing missionary work, immediately felt uncomfortable as they stood with their three sons to watch the start of the annual off-road race.

The family were watching from the second turn, less than half-a-mile away from the starting line, when Brandon noticed a few trucks almost lose control.

'I wanted to take my family somewhere safer to watch for a little longer,' he wrote on Facebook. 'The boys were loving it so much we couldn't leave yet.'

The family asked an official for directions to the track's straight dirt path, which would keep them far away from the dangerous quick turns.

But as they headed for a safer place to sit, racer Todd Pedersen lost control of his truck and slid off the track.

Melissa saw the truck and looked at her husband. 'It's coming right at us,' she told him.

'With that kind of terrain it was so unpredictable which way the truck was going to go,' she told KTLA.

Pedersen plowed right into Melissa, Xander and a third spectator in a horrific moment that was caught on camera.

'We all ran as fast as we could,' Melissa (pictured with Brandon) said. 'But we couldn't run fast enough'

Xander (pictured with his parents in 2009) was pronounced dead on arrival at the hospital. Melissa, 28, suffered major injuries to her head, arm and back, as well as a broken leg

The family revealed medical expenses and costs for Xander's funeral have already been taken care of by an anonymous donor

Xander was pronounced dead on arrival at the hospital. Melissa, 28, suffered major injuries to her head, arm and back, as well as a broken leg.

Pedersen, who is the millionaire CEO of home security company Vivint, visited the Hendriks at the hospital after the race.

'I wrapped my arms around him and prayed he would be able to find forgiveness and love and grace of God that I have,' Brandon, a youth pastor at Pacific Coast Church, told CBS Los Angeles.

'I said, "I've been forgiven of things that I've done on purpose. You didn't do this with malice or ill-intent.'

Authorities have not filed any charges in connection with the crash, NBC San Diego reported, as they recognized it was an accident

A GoFundMe page has raised more than $115,000 for the family and will be used to cover grief counseling, physical therapy and Melissa's loss of income.

The family revealed medical expenses and costs for Xander's funeral have already been taken care of by an anonymous donor.

Pedersen, who is the millionaire CEO of home security company Vivint, visited the Hendriks at the hospital after the race - where the family revealed they embraced him and forgave him

Authorities have not filed any charges in connection with the crash, which is being treated as an accident

Brandon and Melissa said they immediately felt uncomfortable as they stood with their three sons to watch the start of the annual off-road race, noticing a few trucks almost lose control while negotiating the second turn

The family was hit just as they were heading for a safer place to sit and watch the race

The page has since become a place where friends and family members have shared their favorite memories for the boy who loved surfing, fishing, riding his bike and playing with his little brothers.

'When I think about Xander, I think of the word Joy,' wrote Jasmine Nelson-Ebargaray. 'He always had a big smile on his face and made my kids feel special and loved.'

'So much so, that on more than one occasion my Ella has said that she was going to marry Xander.'

'Xander could light up the room with just his presence and energy. I smile when I think of him and his recent desire to wear a "man bun"'.

Heather Vaughn wrote that the little boy had left an impression on 'so many hearts'.

'It was amazing,' she wrote, 'How he channeled both his intelligence and maturity yet was still a total kid at heart.'

As for Brandon, he will remember the son who was a 'ray of sunshine from day one'.

Brandon wrote a heartbreaking tribute to Xander, who he said never stopped loving to cuddle and was his younger brothers' hero.

He said Brandon was spiritually mature, always asking questions about the likes of gravity, photosynthesis, theology and 'other topics far beyond his years'.

'I've never met a child so curious about not only the obvious things of life, but the inner workings of things unseen,' he wrote.

'I love you, son. You know that. I miss you so terribly it burns.'

'But I will be with you again one day.'

Brandon wrote a heartbreaking tribute to Xander, who he said never stopped loving to cuddle and was his younger brothers' hero

'I love you, son. You know that. I miss you so terribly it burns,' he wrote. 'But I will be with you again one day.'




A Virginia man has been arrested after he allegedly assaulted a woman and bit her finger, drawing blood, in a road rage attack.

Timothy Dubois, 55, is facing several charges including assault and battery following the Wednesday incident when Markeater Holyroyd said Dubois shouted at her for being in the wrong lane.

In his mugshot, the Arlington resident is pictured battered and bruised in the apparent aftermath of the altercation with what appears to be a black eye, scarred eyeball and a bruised forehead.

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Timothy Dubois, 55, of Virginia is pictured battered and bruised in a mugshot after he was involved in an altercation in which he allegedly assaulted and bit the finger of a woman during a road rage attack

An Arlington County Police Department spokeswoman told Daily Mail Online that the victim and suspect were involved in a fight in which Dubois was determined the dominant aggressor.

However, the spokeswoman noted that when police went to his home to arrest him, Dubois did not report or complain about any injuries, and did not need medical treatment.

Prior to his arrest, officers had responded to reports of a fight in progress at 8.20pm in the 800 block of South 15th Street where they said they found Holyroyd suffering from several injuries.

Her injuries included a bite wound on her index finger which police said was the result of an argument stemming from the bout of road rage.

Holyroyd said she was driving with her son 11-year-old son when Dubois drove up behind her and started yelling from his car, 'You're in the wrong lane,' NBC Washington reported.

Timothy Dubois, 55, is facing several charges including assault and battery following the Wednesday incident when Markeater Holyroyd said Dubois shouted at her for being in the wrong lane

While at a red light, Dubois allegedly got out of his car, assaulted Holyroyd and bit her finger, drawing blood

Dubois then reportedly threw something at her car before he continued driving.

Holyroyd said Dubois was flashing her the middle finger and kept trying to cut her off as she drove down the road.

When she came to a stop at a red light, she said Dubois put his car in park, got out, went to the driver's side window of her car and assaulted her.

At the time, she said her car window was rolled down.

'He put his car in park, took his seat belt off and ran around to my driver's side and he striked (sic) me,' Holyroyd told NBC Washington.

Police said Holyroyd opened her car door in an attempt to push him away and ended up getting out of her car.

On Wednesday, officers responded to reports of a fight in progress at 8.20pm in the 800 block of South 15th Street where they said they found Holyroyd suffering from several injuries

An Arlington County Police Department spokeswoman told Daily Mail Online that the victim and suspect were involved in a fight in which Dubois was determined the dominant aggressor

The altercation continued and that is when Dubois is accused of biting her finger before fleeing the scene.

'He put my finger in his mouth and he was just biting me,' Holyroyd told the station.

She was treated at the scene for non-life threatening injuries.

Officers were able to locate Dubois at his residence where he was taken into custody after a witness took a photo of his license plate.
over on Saturday and came back on Monday with a higher offer after the storm

Sydney man purchased $5.5m property in Narrabeen only 1km from where homes were

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A tenacious buyer has forked out more than $5.5 million for a beachfront property only one kilometre along the coast from where multi-million dollar waterfront homes were ravaged by Sydney's monster storm last weekend.

A businessman from outer Sydney handed over a contract on Saturday, before returning with a higher offer on Monday, despite the storms apparent destruction, The Daily Telegraph reported.

'The purchaser actually increased his offer in Collaroy/Narrabeen's worst week in real estate history,' Nathan Tse from McGrath Manly, who negotiated the sale, told the publication.

A tenacious buyer has forked out more than $5.5 million for a beachfront property (pictured) only one kilometre along the coast from where multi-million dollar waterfront homes were ravaged by Sydney's monster storm last weekend

A businessman from outer Sydney handed over a contract on Saturday for the home (pictured), before returning with a higher offer on Monday, despite the storms apparent destruction

107 Ocean Street, Narrabeen (pictured) was listed with a price guide of $5.5 million to $6 million

107 Ocean Street, Narrabeen was listed with a price guide of $5.5 million to $6 million and it is believed that the property sold within that vicinity.

It is understood that friends of the buyer tried to talk him out of the purchase following the wild weather, but he was undeterred and finalised the sale on Tuesday, the publication reported.

Mr Tse said the five-bedroom home remained untouched during Sydney's worst storm in 40 years.

The 835 square-metre property features an outdoor entertaining terrace, a pool, lounge/media room, gym and a double lock-up garage.

Mr Tse said the new owner plans to live in the home with his family.

It is understood that friends of the buyer tried to talk him out of purcahsing the luxury home (pictured) following wild weather

Mr Tse said the five-bedroom home remained untouched during Sydney's worst storm in 40 years

The 835 square-metre property features an outdoor entertaining terrace (pictured), a pool and a lounge/media room

The buyer was undeterred by last week's storms and finalised the sale on Tuesday

Mr Tse said the new owner plans to live in the home (pictured) with his family

The property only one kilometre from where Sydney's monster storm ravaged homes last weekend also features gym and a double lock-up garage (pictured)

Seven beach-side buildings ravaged by Sydney's monster storm last week will need to be demolished
Reports have come in from an Iraqi TV channel that Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has been wounded in an air strike in northern Iraq.

Al Sumariya TV cited a local source in the northern province of Nineveh saying that Baghdadi and other Islamic State leaders were wounded on Thursday in a coalition air strike on one of the group's command headquarters close to the Syrian border.

The channel has good connections with Shi'ite politicians and Iraqi forces involved in the battle against Islamic State. There have previously been reports that Baghdadi (real name Ibrahim al-Samarrai) was killed or wounded after proclaiming himself caliph of all Muslims two years ago.

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Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, born 28th July 1971, is the leader of the jihadist militant organisation known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, which controls territory in western Iraq, Syria and Libya

The ultra-hardline Sunni group is under increased pressure in both Iraq and Syria and the territory under its control has shrunk significantly since 2014, limiting the possibility for its leaders to move around or seek shelter.

Earlier this year, the U.S. announced an intensification of the war on Islamic State with more air strikes and more American troops on the ground to advise and assist allied forces.

The U.S.-led coalition has regularly flown raids out of Erbil, the capital of Iraq's Kurdistan region, in an effort to kill and capture Islamic State leaders.

Leader of the Islamic State (IS) jihadist group, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, adresses Muslim worshippers at a mosque in Mosul

A Kurdish intelligence official and an Arab from the Baaj area west of Mosul said such a raid had taken place there earlier this week - though the coalition did not confirm this.

Kurdish Peshmerga forces are positioned in an arc around the north and east of Mosul while the Iraqi army try to capture Falluja, 50 km (30 miles) west of Baghdad.

The army's elite Counter Terrorism Service was involved in a battle on Friday in al-Shuhada, a southern district of Falluja, a Reuters photographer reported from the scene.

Loud explosions and bursts of gunfire were heard coming from the district, while aircraft believed to belong to the coalition flew overhead.

Al-Shuhada marks the first advance of the army inside the built-up area of Falluja, after two weeks of fighting on the outskirts in an attempt to secure the city.

The operation was undertaken with help from Iran-backed Shi'ite militias who did not take part directly in the assault so as to not inflame sectarian feelings.

Leader of the Islamic State (IS) jihadist group, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, aka Caliph Ibrahim

A government official said Islamic State militants are putting up a tough fight to defend the city that remains a symbol of the Sunni insurgency that came following the U.S. occupation of Iraq in 2003.

Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said the troops are progressing cautiously in order to protect tens of thousands of civilians trapped in Falluja.

The United Nations says 90,000 civilians may have remained in Falluja under 'harrowing' conditions with little access to food, water and healthcare - and no safe exit routes.

Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, leader of terrorist organisation Islamic State

The insurgents have dug a network of tunnels to move around without being detected and have also planted thousands of mines and explosive devices to try and delay the army's advance.

Finance Minister Hoshiyar Zebari said last week that the battle for Falluja 'will take time.' The Iraqi army is also amassing tanks and troops south of Mosul, in preparation for an offensive planned later this year to retake the largest city under militant control.
Several towns and villages in

This is the joyful moment a woman literally casts off ISIS rule by taking off her terrorist-imposed black niqab in front of fellow liberated villagers in northern Syria.

The strict dress code implemented by ISIS in their conquered areas in Syria and Iraq dictates that all women be covered from head to toe in black, covering their faces with a veil.

Images of women celebrating their freedom by no longer covering their faces in black veils are flowing out of Aleppo, where several villages and towns have been liberated from ISIS this week.

Three cheers: A woman is seen removing the ISIS-imposed full-face veil - a niqab - after her village on the outskirts of Manbij city, Aleppo province, Syria was liberated from the terrorist group

The unnamed woman is seen cheering as she removes the full-face black niqab to reveal a bright purple hijab underneath.

Other women in the village on the outskirts of Manbij, Aleppo, stand next to her, all wearing coloured dresses with their hands and faces exposed.

On Thursday, Khadija Abdu Al-Muotee from liberated Abu Qalqal, south of Manbij, also cast off the ISIS rules, and swore to never wear black again.

'Now I will only wear red!' an exhilarated Mrs Abdu Al-Muotee told Ara News after her town in northern Syria was freed from ISIS this week.

Celebrating the freedom of her home, Mrs Abdu Al-Muotee can be seen wearing a red leopard-print hijab decorated with flowers over a leopard-print dress with red patterns.

The woman's village was freed by U.S.-backed Syrian-Kurdish Syria Democratic Forces (SDF) this week

Images of women celebrating their freedom by no longer covering their faces in black veils are flowing out of Aleppo, where several villages and towns have been liberated from ISIS this week

'They forced us to cover our faces with the Islamic veil and threatened to kill us,' she adds.

Video from Abu Qalqal shows women and children dressed in colourful clothes and adults no longer covering their faces in full niqab.

The crowd can be heard chanting 'We are freed! We are freed!'

The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a U.S.-backed Kurdish and Arab alliance, have liberated several villages and small towns on the edges of Manbij, cutting of an important supply route.

Manbij is strategic town held by IS that serves as a waypoint between the Turkish border and ISIS's self-declared 'capital' of Raqqa.

ISIS has come under growing pressure on various fronts in Syria and Iraq, where it established its self-declared 'caliphate' in 2014.

The extremists lost control Friday of a vital supply artery when Arab-Kurdish forces completely surrounded a key jihadist-held town.

'The SDF cut off the last road from Manbij to the Turkish border,' said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a British-based monitoring group.

Free: Khadija Abdu Al-Muotee from the liberated town of Abu Qalqal, in Aleppo, northern Syria, celebrated not having to adhere to ISIS's strict dress code anymore

Celebrating: Mrs Abdu Al-Muotee had sworn never to wear black again, and only dress in the colour red

Three cheers: Women and children in Abu Qalqal celebrate being liberated from ISIS

All dressed up: Celebrating her freedom to dress as she wishes, Mrs Abdu Al-Muotee opted for a a red leopard-print hijab decorated with flowers over a leopard-print dress with red patterns

Manbij lies at the heart of the last stretch of territory along Turkey's border still under IS control, and was a key point on the jihadists' supply line from Turkey.

Other secondary roads to the frontier are more dangerous and difficult to access, Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman said.

The US envoy to the anti-IS coalition backing the SDF, Brett McGurk, confirmed the road had been severed.

'ISIL terrorists now completely surrounded with no way out,' he wrote on Twitter, using another acronym for ISIS.

This week the SDF, backed by coalition air strikes, cut the road north out of Manbij to the IS-held border town of Jarabulus, which the jihadists had used as a transit point for fighters, money and weapons.

The SDF also blocked the road south out of Manbij heading to IS's de facto capital of Raqa.

'For the jihadists to reach the Turkish border from Raqa, they now have to take a route that is more dangerous because of regime troops nearby and Russian air strikes,' Abdel Rahman said.

Russia launched air strikes in support of President Bashar al-Assad's regime in Syria in September.

Thousands of residents have fled Manbij - held by IS since 2014 - but jihadists who evacuated their families stayed to defend the town, the Observatory said.

About 20,000 people are still living in the town, which had a pre-war population of about 120,000 -- mostly Arabs, but about a quarter Syrian Kurds.

Last month, the SDF launched attacks on two fronts from the north of Raqa province towards Manbij and in direction of the IS-held town of Tabqa on the same vital supply line further south.

Regime troops backed by Russian air strikes have also pushed an offensive to the southwest of Tabqa.

Moscow and Washington -- despite backing different sides in Syria's five-year conflict -- have both focused efforts on fighting the jihadist group.
The US Air Force is fitting smart technology to its $1,500 Hyrdra rockets so they can target individual jihadis while reducing the risk of collateral damage without wasting a more expensive Hellfire missile.

The Hydra rocket features a 2.5-inch warhead and had to be 'aimed' by pointing the aircraft directly at the target, meaning it was not entirely accurate.

As a result, the US Air Force often decided to fire $70,000 Hellfire missiles to destroy an ISIS truck worth only a few thousand dollars in order to reduce the risk of civilian casualties.

The US Air Force has fitted the newly upgraded rockets to the F-16, similar to this aircraft in Nevada

The $1,500 rockets have also been fitted to the tank-busting A-10 Thunderbolt, similar to this

The rocket, pictured, is ideal for targeting small groups of jihadis and soft-skinned vehicles such as jeeps

However, BAE Systems have developed a new laser-guided device which can be fitted to the existing rockets, which will guide the weapon to its target.

The rockets, described as the Advanced Precision Kill Weapon System, has already been fitted to the US Marines' Harrier II jump jets, as well as attack helicopters such as the AH-1Z Viper and AH-64 Apache gunship.

But now, the technology is being deployed on the F-16 and A-10 aircraft to dramatically reduce the cost of killing individual or small groups of jihadis.

A Paveway smart bomb costs in the region of $20,000 and cannot be used in urban neighbourhoods due to the threat of collateral damage.

According to Aviation Week, the kit was first tested on fixed-wing aircraft in May 2013.

David Harrold of BAE Systems said: 'We are confident that the addition of this highly accurate, low-collateral-damage weapon system will be a game-changer for F-16 and A-10 users in the U.S. Air Force and around the world.'

It is understood the first upgraded rockets have already been used against ISIS.
Multimillionaire tobacco tycoon Travers Beynon has vowed he will not let legal action lodged against him by a rival company get in the way of plans to globally expand his business.

The injunction against Travers, aka the Candyman, lodged in Melbourne's Federal Court by competing tobacconist TSG would not hinder his expansion plans, he said in a statement.

It comes after a string of legal battles from the Gold Coast socialite, who earlier this week won a case against A Current Affair over claims his children 'were exposed to his raunchy lifestyle', reports Gold Coast Bulletin.

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Multimillionaire tobacco tycoon Travers Beynon has vowed he will not legal action lodged against him by a rival company hinder his plans to globally expand his business

An injunction against Travers, aka the Candyman, has been lodged by competing tobacconist TSG

The injunction lodged in Melbourne Federal Court (pictured) found Travers Company, Freechoice, was guilty of misleading and deceptive conduct

The injunction found Travers Company, Freechoice, was guilty of misleading and deceptive conduct by poaching a franchisee of TSG to violate their contract in order to do business with Freechoice.

Addressing the legal action in a statement, he said he would the decision would not 'dampen' his crusade to 'increase market share locally and expand with franchises overseas is well underway'.

'It's not surprising that a large number of competitor franchisees, including the one in question in the court case, moved to Freechoice because they were not satisfied with the service provided by their former franchisors.'

He confirmed he had invited the TSG franchisees to join Freechoice, but said the inducements were carried out by a Freechoice staffer since sacked 'with further action against them being taken'.

Tobacco tycoon The Candyman recently won a legal battle against Nine Network's A Current Affair after the program aired a string of segments about his controversial lifestyle

It comes after the Candyman won a legal battle against A Current Affair amid a string of segments about his controversial lifestyle.

The news program ran several stories about Candyman's debaucherous parties and bikini-clad models at his Gold Coast mansion on its program in May and June of last year.

His lawyer Chris Nyst lodged a formal complaint in July 2015 to the Australian Communications and Media Authority over the program's portrayal of The Candyman and his family.

The media watchdog has now ruled that Nine breached the Commercial Television Code of Practice by allowing the segments to go to air about how his children were exposed to his raunchy lifestyle.

This isn't the first time he has sought successful legal actions against his critics.

Last October, he won $25,000 in defamation damages from his former nanny Michelle Manthey who alleged his daughters were watching as a nude photoshoot of his wife was taken.

The Nine Network submitted a response to The Candyman's complaint, claiming they did not breach his privacy or his children because of his expansive social media presence and public persona The Candyman
In an emotional homecoming in Georgia this week, a solider on a short trip home from Iraq went to to great lengths to surprise his mom.

Army Staff Sergeant Salomon Robinson only has two weeks to catch with his family in West Point after returning from the middle east and decided to make the most of it for his mother, Claudette Hutchinson.

Robinson teamed up with the West Point Police Department to exact a plan for the big surprise, and a police car followed Hutchinson as she left her home on Wednesday.

Salomon was hiding on the backseat when the cruiser stopped Hutchinson.

Surprise!: Army Staff Sergeant Salomon Robinson returned home to West Point, Georgia, from Iraq this week and decided to surprise his mother

Big reveal: After police pulled over Claudette Hutchinson and asked her to get out of the car (left), her son got out out of the police cruiser and surprised her

Shriek: This is the moment Mrs Hutchinson realizes her son has returned from Iraq and surprised her

'I'm going to kill him, he got me good,' Hutchinson told ABC after the emotional reunion

'It was a great experiment to see her reaction and happiness, and joy and tears,' Robinson said afterwards

The officers told Hutchinson they were investigating a hit-and-run told her she had some damage on the back of her car and she got out of the vehicle, ABC 7 reported.

But that is when Robinson got out of the car, with an arm full of balloons, and revealed what this traffic stop was really about.

The touching moment was caught on the dashcam of the police cruiser, and Hutchinson can be heard letting out a high-pitch scream.

'I'm going to kill him, he got me good,' Hutchinson told ABC afterward.

'I'm glad to see him though.'

Police tricked the mom by pulling her over in a traffic stop but instead of getting into trouble, she was greeted by her son

Short break: Robinson has just two weeks before he has to return to Iraq for another year

Robinson will return to Iraq in two weeks to serve for another year.

'This young man coming home, after serving three deployments protecting us and our freedoms, I don't think there was a single request this young man had that we shouldn't make happen,' said West Point Police Chief Tony Bailey told ABC.

Robinson added: 'It was a great experiment to see her reaction and happiness, and joy and tears.'
Boy told dispatchers he 'accidentally' hit him after forgetting it was loaded

A 13-year-old boy is in a critical condition after he was accidentally shot down by his friend, it has been reported.

Matthew Fluty, from Erie County, New York, was shot in the back at around 11.30am on Tuesday.

According to an incident report, his 15-year-old friend told investigators the pair were going to shoot birds in the back yard when he accidentally fired a pump action shotgun loaded with bird shot.

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Matthew Fluty (pictured), from Erie County, New York, was shot in the back at around 11.30am at his home on Tuesday

This is the gun that Matthew's 15-year-old friend was holding when he accidentally fired a bird shot into his friend's back

This then hit Matthew in the back, who was six to nine feet away.

Fox 8 reports that the boy told dispatchers: 'I just accidentally shot my friend.

'We were shooting guns, and I forgot there was a shell in the chamber. I thought I cleared it.'

Matthew's grandmother, Carleen Fluty, said she happened to be listening to a police scanner at her home when she heard the dispatch.

'I heard the Sheriff ask again for the address, and I said, "oh my God, that's my grandson",'she said.

She said she sped to the house, where she saw her grandson on the living room floor being attended to by first responders.

The boy was shot at his home in Erie County, New York (pictured) before being rushed to hospital

The youngster was flown to Mercy St. Vincent Medical Center in Toledo, where he underwent more than five hours of surgery to save his damaged organs.

Police have confirmed a decision on potential charges will not be made until the investigation is completed.
Residents in a suburban street were evacuated after police uncovered a hand grenade during a raid on a property.

The explosive was given to the Australian Defence Force after it was seized from a Blackburn South home on Holland Rd around 6pm on Friday.

Police confirmed the weapon was deactivated and passed onto the ADF to be safely disposed of, reports News.com.

Residents in a suburban street were evacuated after police uncovered a hand grenade during a raid on a property



The bomb response unit attended the scene and launched an investigation into the circumstances which led to the incident.

Neighbours were forced to leave their homes for about five hours until they were given the green light to return about 11pm.

It comes after police seized grenades and other weapons after swooping on an Edithvale house on Tuesday last week.

Officers also uncovered a large number of guns, bullets, knives, and and a spear gun, leading to a A 52-year-old being charged with weapons possession and proceeds of crime offences.
David Letterman is letting his feelings be known on Donald Trump in a upcoming interview, the first he has done since leaving his eponymous show last May.

The retired late night host, who was known for his comedic barbs and comments about politicians during his many years on the air, seems to find little humor in Trump's current campaign.

'I understand that he's repugnant to people,' Letterman tells Tom Brokaw in a new preview for the interview.

Letterman then adds about Trump however that 'there's nothing illegal going on' when it comes to his comments or beliefs.

'It's just he's despicable,' says Letterman.

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David Letterman (above) is sitting down with Tom Brokaw for his first full interview since leaving late night last May

In a new preview he attacks Donald Trump, calling him 'repugnant' and 'despicable' (pair above in a 1987 interview)

Letterman did manage to find a little humor in the Trump situation though, telling the legendary news anchor as they walk around his alma mater Ball State University: 'And in this very school, an everybodys school, you hear: "The great thing about America is anybody can grow up to be president."'

Letterman than pauses before muttering: 'Ooh, jeez.'

Letterman's first big public appearance after he retired came last July when he showed up at an event in Texas to roast the billionaire businessman alongside Martin Short and Steve Martin.

'I retired and I have no regrets, none. I was happy. I'll make actual friends,' Letterman told the audience at the event.

'I was complacent I was satisfied I was content... And then a couple of days ago Donald Trump said he was running for president.

He then proceeded to deliver one of his famed Top 10 lists, this one of Trump put-downs.

They included: 'During sex Donald Trump calls out his own name'; 'Donald Trump weighs 240lbs, 250 with cologne'; and coming in at number one, 'Thanks to Donald Trump the Republican mascot is also an ass.'

Letterman told Brokaw 9above) in a previously released clip: 'I couldnt care less about late-night television'

Letterman will also speak about his time on late night, and what it is like to now be out of the loop, during the interview.

'I devoted so much time to the damage of other aspects of my life,' Letterman told Brokaw about his many years working in television in a preview of the interview released on Thursday.

'The concentrated, fixated, focusing on that  its good now to not have that. I couldnt care less about late-night television.

Letterman went on to say about the current crop of hosts: 'There should be more women. And I dont know why they didnt give my show to a woman. That would have been fine.'

He also revealed that he thought he would miss the job, but as soon as he saw Stephen Colbert host the show for the first time an 'energy' left him and he thought: 'You know, thats not my problem anymore.'

Letterman, 69, left his show last May after 33 years as a late night host.

He got his start in 1982 on NBC with Late Night with David Letterman and then moved to CBS in 1992 after being passed over in favor of Jay Leno for Johnny Carson's late night gig.

He said shortly before his departure that he played no role in selecting his replacement, but that he liked Colbert.

He reiterated this to Brokaw, saying: 'No, they didn't ask me about anything. They were just - they were just happy I was going.'
A Virginia mother is kicking up a splash as her local pool, demanding that her daughter's swim instructor be required to wear a shirt in the water because of his 'man boobs'.

The mother, who only goes by Lynn in her letters, complained that she felt 'extremely uncomfortable' watching the instructor's breasts 'flopping on the water' so close to her young daughter.

'To be in such close and intimate proximity to this man's bare chest, breasts and hair is unfathomable and I can not believe it is tolerated,' she wrote to the Arlington Department of Parks and Recreation.

Lynn was outraged that her daughter's swim instructor dare touch and hold her in his attempts to teach her how to swim in the pool, complaining she was in 'such close proximity to his intimate space'.

A Virginia mother has demanded that her daughter's swim instructor at the Yorktown High School's pool in Arlington, Virginia (pictured) be forced to wear a shirt in the water because of his 'man boobs'

'I'd like to switch my daughter's class to an instructor who is more appropriate,' she wrote. 'And does not make us feel uncomfortable.'

A source with the department said this is one of many complaints the mother has had against the Parks and Recreation department, and said the instructor has a 'normal male physique', according to ARLNow.

Trina Wood, the department's Aquatics Coordinator, then informed Lynn that although instructors are provided with a rash-guard shirt, they are only optional.

Arlington's Department of Parks and Recreation informed the mother that although instructors are provided with a rash-guard shirt (pictured is an example), they are only optional

'I am sorry that you feel uncomfortable,' Wood wrote Lynn. 'However, [the instructor] handles himself in a very professional manner in water with students.'

Wood then told Lynn that the class her daughter was enrolled in, called 'Fin 3', required rare physical contact with the instructor.

'Most of the swimming skills are taught through verbal direction and demonstration and are practiced independently, with some correction from the instructor,' she wrote.

'But some skills do require the instructor to have contact with the students.'

Wood then told Lynn there was not another Fin 3 class in the program that her daughter could switch to, but offered to cancel her enrollment with a full refund.

The Fin 3 class is an 'advanced introductory course' that teaches students how to 'front crawl' and tread water, according to the department's website.

The half-hour class takes place twice a week at the Yorktown High School swimming pool and is open to children aged four to five years old.

Lynn was not satisfied with the response she received from Wood, and wrote to various local outlets to air her complaints and insult the staff of Arlington's Department of Parks and Recreation.

'Do you know how badly the Arlington County Parks & Recreation System sucks?' the letter begins.
Controversial Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio, who is facing possible jail time over a racial profiling case, has announced he is holding a two day boot camp for school children this summer.

The camp is designed to prevent 'adolescent involvement in drugs, tobacco, alcohol use, violence and gangs' and is aimed at children aged between eight and 18.

It will be held at the lawman's Tent City Jail that has been branded 'inhumane' and has been the subject of many protests for allegedly being an 'outdoor deathtrap'.

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Controversial Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio, who is facing possible jail time over a racial profiling case, has announced he is holding a two day boot camp for school children this summer

The camp is and is designed to prevent 'adolescent involvement in drugs, tobacco, alcohol use, violence and gangs'. Pictured: TOUGH Tents program in 2015 for teens

The campers will follow jail regulations, wear inmate clothing, work as inmate laborers, eat jail food, sleep in jail tents and bunks, and attend educational programs. Pictured: TOUGH Tents program in 2015 for teens

In true Arpaio style, the campers will follow jail regulations, wear inmate clothing, work as inmate laborers, eat jail food, sleep in jail tents and bunks, and attend educational programs.

The summer program is billed as 'Sheriff Arpaio's Camp Summer Stars' and combines two programs of teaching: T.O.U.G.H. Tents and S.T.A.R.S, according to the flyer.

The former stands for Teen Orientation Underscore Good Habits and is an 'anti-drug, anti-crime program aimed at showing kids the realities of jail life before they find out the hard way'.

While the latter stands for Sheriffs Teaching Abuse Resistance to Students and along with drug prevention, it addresses 'peer pressure, anger management, online safety and issues of self-esteem and respect'.

The program, which is to run for two, two-day sessions in June and July is aimed at Maricopa County Middle and High School students and designed for children aged between eight and 12 and 13 to 18.

And while the program appears to be demanding at best, its location is also questionable.

Parents may be concerned to learn of an 1997 Amnesty International report that said Tent City was not an 'adequate or humane alternative to housing inmates in suitable jail facilities', according to the Guardian.

Temperatures in the summer can reportedly reach more than 120 degrees Fahrenheit, though Arpaio compares the conditions to those faced by soldiers in Iraq.

But this is not the first time Arpaio has created a boot camp for children.

The T.O.U.G.H. Tents program runs once a month for most of the year, according to Arizona Family.

Controversial Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio has been found in contempt of court for disobeying a federal judge's orders in a racial profiling case

It is to be held at the lawman's Tent City Jail (pictured) that has been the subject of many protests for allegedly being an 'outdoor deathtrap

In May of this year, Arpaio was found in contempt of court for disobeying a federal judge's orders in a racial profiling case. Pictured: People stage a protest against Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio during a news conference about Arpaio's 12th crime-suppression operation in Surprise, Arizona

The unconventional approach stems from Arpaio, who has proclaimed himself 'America's toughest sheriff', and gained nationwide attention for his support of a conservative Arizona immigration law that was later almost entirely struck down by the Supreme Court.

In May of this year, Arpaio was found in contempt of court for disobeying a federal judge's orders in a racial profiling case.

The profiling case that Arpaio lost three years ago prompted contempt-of-court proceeding after U.S. District Judge Murray 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.

A new hearing date for the ongoing federal lawsuit has been set for June 17 at the federal courthouse in Washington Street, reports ABC-15.

The six-term sheriff could face fines and, if a criminal contempt case is later filed, jail time.
The La Moneda Reserva Malbec, which is on offer at just 4.37, was the best in its category, according to the prestigious Decanter World Wine Awards

A cheap bottle of Chilean red from Asda has been named one of the worlds best wines.

The La Moneda Reserva Malbec, which is on offer at just 4.37, was the best in its category, according to the prestigious Decanter World Wine Awards.

The Chilean red was praised for flavours of freshly crushed black fruit, creamy vanilla yoghurt and pepper spice.

The wine, which has a normal shelf price of 5.75, was awarded best in show in the best single-varietal red under 15 category.

Ed Betts, Asdas Wine Buying Manager said: La Moneda Reserva Malbec is the perfect example of how were able to offer shoppers exceptional quality at low prices. It is a perfect match for barbecued meats.

English wines were praised in the Decanter awards, with 90 per cent of those entered into the competition receiving medals.

Two were awarded platinum accolades - Gusbourne, a Pinot Noir in the best red over 15 category; and Kits Coty Estate, a Chardonnay from Chapel Down Estate in Kent, in the best white over 15.

The success is further evidence of the quality of British wines, which are taking sales away from other countries with a much greater wine heritage, particularly France.

English wines were praised in the Decanter awards, with 90 per cent of those entered into the competition receiving medals - and now British wines are taking sales away from other countries

Marks & Spencer has seen an astonishing 74per cent increase in sales of English wine over the last two months compared to the same time last year.

For example, its sales of Chapel Down Sparkling Rose are up by some 200per cent.
A Royal Marine who travelled around the world on official duty returned to find his house had been reduced to rubble - and he's still paying the mortgage four years later.

Warrant Officer Ross Hunt, 38, bought the building - which consisted of a former pub and an upstairs flat in Inverkeithing, Fife, Scotland - for 150,000 in 2004.

The property was situated next to the derelict Inverkeithing paper mill, which was demolished as planned in 2012.

But W.O. Hunt, who was living and working elsewhere at the time, was stunned when he was told his home had been flattened too.

Warrant Officer Ross Hunt, 38, has told a court that he broke down in tears when he saw that his home had been reduced to rubble in Inverkeithing, Fife

It was knocked down when his career as a Royal Marine bandmaster took him away from Scotland and his fully-finished home was left unoccupied.

He has now told a court that he broke down in tears when he saw that his home had been knocked down following the demolition of the mill next door, reports The Courier.

W.O. Hunt, who is still paying a 500-a-month mortgage on the flattened property, has now gone to court to seek damages.

At Dunfermline Sheriff Court, he recalled receiving a phone call from a friend with the devastating news.

He said: 'He asked why I had knocked it down. He's a bit of a joker and so I thought it was just a sick joke.

'He told me that he'd walked past the property that day and it was a pile of rubble.

'Once I'd established it had happened I went through a number of emotions.

'Prolonged disbelief that it would be possible for my home to be knocked down, for my home to be gone without me knowing about it.'

The former pub, called The Quayside Inn, was previously known as Ye Olde Foresters Arms and had been a pub since 1873

But W.O. Hunt, who was living and working elsewhere at the time, was stunned when he was told his home (pictured) had been flattened

It was knocked down when his career as a Royal Marine bandmaster took him away from Scotland and his fully-finished home was left unoccupied

W.O. Hunt added that he was upset and angry and a few days later he received photos of 'what was left of it'. He came up to Scotland a few weeks later.

His solicitor Jonathan Mathieson-Dear asked him how he had felt when he saw the site.

The bandmaster said: 'I don't mind saying I broke down. I was beset by disbelief, horror and sadness that it was gone.

'When I saw items like the cream sofa, VHS tapes and other things poking through the rubble it brought it home what I had lost.'

W.O. Hunt told the court that the property was not insured from 2008.

His insurance firm had withdrawn his cover when he told them the building would be unoccupied. He was then quoted 'extortionate' prices from other insurers.

The court action is against Andrew Davidson, Colin Dempster and Chris Marsden, all of Ernst and Young, as receivers of Inveresk, former owners of the paper mill.

His property was situated next to the derelict Inverkeithing paper mill, which was demolished as planned in 2012

W.O. Hunt, who is still paying a 500-a-month mortgage on the flattened property (pictured), has now gone to court to seek damages.

The Quayside Inn, at Harbour Place, was previously known as Ye Olde Foresters Arms and had been a pub since 1873.

The pub part of the building was already closed and Mr Hunt lived in the upstairs flat.

His work took him away from Fife in 2005 and friends were living there up until 2009.

The last time Mr Hunt saw inside the flat was in 2010 and the property was boarded up after youths had broken into the bar several times.

In August 2012, Mr Hunt visited Scotland ahead of his planned return to work at Rosyth at the start of 2013.

He did not go into the boarded up property but was 'content' with the way the building looked.

W.O. Hunt told the court: 'I remember thinking there was one tile on the roof that was coming away and I would have to have it fixed when I moved back in.'

He had to live in naval accommodation at HMS Caledonia, Rosyth, when he took up role of bandmaster with the Royal Marine Band Scotland.

W.O. Hunt is currently based in Portsmouth as bandmaster at the RM School of Music.
Stanford rapist Brock Turner sent a photo of his victim's breasts to friends after the attack outside a frat house party.

Court documents seen by Daily Mail Online reveal that the disgraced athlete was sent a text via a group messaging app shortly after his arrest that read: 'Whos tit is that'.

The message, which arrived through the GroupMe app, was sent by Stanford swimmer Justin Buck, originally of Aberdeen, UK.

Detectives were unable to access the photo sent by Turner. Pictures sent on it can be deleted by third parties. It is unclear who deleted the photograph.

Buck, 21, was raised in Clearwater, Florida, and is currently working as an investment banking summer analyst' at Bank of America Merrill Lynch in San Francisco.

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Suspicious message: Detectives saw the message about a 'tit' on Turner's phone shortly after his arrest. They could not find an original picture and believe that it was deleted by another member of the group

Turner (left and right) was convicted of taking the victim from a frat party, partially stripping her, digitally penetrating her, and then dry-humping her unconscious body behind some dumpsters

Cover-up? Prosecutors say police believe another member of the group chat deleted the image

Asking the question: Fellow Stanford swimmer Justin Buck was the member of the group chat who sent the message about the 'tit' which led police to believe Turner photographed his victim

Friend: Justin Buck was one of the group which received am image which prompted him to write about a 'tit'

He is due to graduate from Stanford with a major in economics next summer.

Unlike other swim team friends of Turner, among them Israeli Olympic hopeful Tom Kremer, of Los Altos Hills, California, Buck did not send a letter of support to Judge Aaron Persky.

The reference to the message appears in the People's Sentencing Memorandum, which was prepared by prosecutor Alaleh Kianierci.

Part of a section on cell phone extraction, which also covers the messages exchanged by Turner and his high school friends about drug taking, it reads:

'Shortly after the Defendant's arrest in the early morning hours of January 18 2015, Detectives noticed a text message in the 'Group Me' application that appeared on the Defendant's phone.

'It stated: 'Who's tits are those?' [sic]. A search warrant for the Defendant's phone was obtained and it was searched by the Santa Clara County crime lab.

'Detectives were unable to locate the text from the 'Group Me' application or any photos related to that text.

'However, they learned that when there is a third party application, the images are not stored in the phone and can be deleted by a third party member in the group.'

It is unclear who was a member of the group beyond Buck and Turner.

Blake Bolton, a witness who was visiting Stanford on the weekend of the sex attack, later told police that he had seen a man standing over the victim with a phone.

In his statement to cops, Bolton said 'the male subject was standing over her with a cell phone. The cell phone had a bright light pointed in the direction of the female, using either a flashlight app in his phone or its built-in app.

'He approached the subject and asked if everything was okay. The male subject did not say anything to Bolton.

'He told the male subject to roll her over onto her side to breathe. The male subject did not do this. Bolton then got on his knees and checked her pulse.

'When he got back up, the male subject was gone.'

The police report also notes that a silver iPhone was found close to the victim, with its blue cover lying discarded close by.

Turner's phone records have come under scrutiny in recent days, with copies of his text exchanges and photographs of him smoking a hash pipe stored on the device submitted to Judge Persky prior to sentencing.

The 20-year-old, of Dayton, Ohio, repeatedly claimed to be a stranger to drugs and alcohol prior to arriving at Stanford but his lies were exposed through a series of messages referencing marijuana, LSD and MDMA  the powdered form of club drug ecstasy.

They also revealed that Turner is fond of using the racial slur 'n****'  repeatedly sending text messages containing the word to his high school friend, Brock Alderton.

Last week, Turner was sentenced to six months in Elmwood Jail, in Milpitas, California, where the majority of the 3500 inmates are housed in military barracks and tents.

Instant messaging: Buck and Turner were using GroupMe, an instant messaging app which allows anyone in the group to delete the picture.

Drug interest: How prosecutors rubbished Turner's claims that he had been an innocent young man and stranger to drugs until he arrived at Stanford

Prosecutor: Alaleh Kianerci sent the file detailing his drug use to the

However, this website learned that the convicted rapist is being kept away from the general prison population and enjoys a cell to himself.

Daily Mail Online also discovered that Turner is set to serve just half of his six-month sentence and will be released on September 2.

He has also applied to serve his three-year probation term in Ohio rather than California.

Turner was convicted of raping a 23-year-old woman outside a Stanford frat party in March, attacking his victim while she was unconscious.

Despite Turner's claims that she 'appeared satisfied' with the sexual contact and agreed to it by saying 'yeah' when asked, witnesses said she was totally unresponsive.

An examination on the night of the attack also revealed that Turner 'fingered' the victim so roughly, her vagina was left covered in lacerations.

When accosted by Swedish graduate students Peter Jonsson and Carl-Frederik Arndt, Turner attempted to flee the scene but was tackled by Jonsson and held until the police arrived.

Court documents seen by this website also reveal that the incident was not the first time Turner had behaved in an aggressive manner towards women.

The previous weekend, Turner had approached two women at another party at the Kappa Alpha frat house  and left them 'creeped out' by his behavior.

Evidence: Court documents reveal a picture of Turner with what appears to be a hash pipe. The picture was seized from his mobile phone records

Obsessed: Just some of the texts in which Brock and his friends spoke about drugs repeatedly. He asked 'do y'all n****s have marijuana' on 22 August - slightly less than a month before enrolling at Stanford

Friend: Brock Alderton, a high school friend of Turner, exchanged messages about drugs with him

In a statement made to detectives on June 25 2015, Stanford student Allison Harman and Kelly Moran, who was visiting her, said they had encountered Turner at a bash on January 9.

'While on campus, they attended a party at the Kappa Alpha fraternity where Ms Moran was introduced to the Defendant,' the report reads.

'She described the Defendant as living in the same dormitory as Ms Harman and said they had mutual friends but were not close.

'She stated that during the party, she and Ms Harman were dancing on a table and the Defendant followed them onto the table.

'She described the Defendant as being flirtatious. He put his hat on her and she took it off. He then started to dance behind her and tried to turn her around to face him.

'She felt uncomfortable and tried to turn her body away so he would not be directly behind her. He became really 'touchy' and put his hands on her waist and stomach.

'He even put his hands on her upper thighs. She felt more and more uncomfortable and got down off the table.

'She said the Defendant 'creeped' her out because of his persistence.'

The sister of Turner's victim also reported a similar experience, telling police that he had attempted to kiss her and acted aggressively on the night of the rape.

Turner had claimed to have been talking with and kissing the victim herself  a statement later derided as 'lies' by prosecutor Alaleh Kianierci.

Writing in a sentencing memo to Judge Persky, she added: 'Despite his lies that there was some sort of 'flirtation' between himself and [the victim's sister] both at trial and in his statement to probation, it was abundantly clear from Jane Doe 2's [the victim's sister] testimony that she was caught completely off guard by his multiple attempts to kiss her that night.

'She even had to get away from him after he grabbed her waist, and she alerted her friend Colleen to his behavior.'

She concluded: 'Even though he was twice rejected by [the victim's sister], he felt it was acceptable to pursue [the victim] later that night when she was alone and inebriated.
Calvin Harris (mugshot above) was charged with fourth-degree stalking on Thursday

A New York man who has tried for the murder of his wife on four separate occasions was arrested on Thursday following a confrontation with a cop.

Calvin Harris, 55, was charged with fourth-degree stalking after he allegedly threatened a state police investigator and his family outside their home in Oneonta.

He claimed on Friday however that he was walking down the street and minding his own business when the officer confronted him and asked where he buried the body of his wife.

Harris did not explain however what he was doing in the town, which is located 75 miles away from where he lives in Spencer.

The investigator who reported Harris was involved at some point in one of Harris' murder cases, the most recent of which ended just three weeks ago when a judge cleared him of all charges following a non-jury trial.

It was the fourth time he had fought accusations that he killed his wife Michele, who disappeared on the same day of the September 11 terror attacks. Her body has never been found.

The two were in the process of divorcing but still living in the same home with their four children.

Harris was arraigned shortly after his arrest on Thursday in the town court and released on his own recognizance by the judge, who ordered that he surrender all firearms and issued an order of protection for the police officer and his family.

'This is a feeble, feeble attempt by them to try to get even,' said Harris.

Michele's empty minivan was found the morning of Sept. 12, 2001, with the keys still in the ignition at the end of the couple's long driveway.

Because her body was never found prosecutors have relied on a largely circumstantial evidence during their cases, along with blood stains found in the home which were very small.

They also claim that Harris told people his wife would never get money from his family's wealthy car dealership in their divorce.

A 2007 conviction against Harris was set aside when a new witness potentially helpful to the defense belatedly came forward.

A second guilty verdict in 2009 was overturned based on trial-court errors.

Jurors in the third trial last year failed to reach a verdict after 11 days of deliberations.
A barrister had an 18 month on-off affair with a single mother after he was unable to have sex with his wife, a court heard.

Jonathan Simpson, 48, told jurors he felt he was 'not really respecting' his property lawyer wife Katherine, 49, or 'giving her the love she needed'.

The married couple of more than 20 years are accused of harassing the young mother with a 'campaign of embarrassment and threats' following her affair with Mr Simpson.

Mr Simpson allegedly turned up at the woman's house 'drunk' and made claims about anal sex and 'spat' in her new partner's face on a train.

Mr and Mrs Simpson, who have been married for more than 20 years, are accused of harassing a young mother after her affair with Mr Simpson

He told jurors at Southwark Crown Court today that he was on a 'slippery slope' following his first kiss with the woman who cannot be named for legal reasons.

The barrister, who was called to the bar in 1993, admitted to jurors: 'I would never have wanted myself as a client.'

He denied that he had been looking to have an affair when he and the woman first met in an Apple Store in February 2013.

Mr Simpson claimed the woman described the incident as 'serendipity' which he believed referred to the 2001 film in which John Cusack and Kate Beckinsale meet by chance.

Jurors heard the pair had sat and chatted for 50 minutes as they waited at the Genius Bar for their laptops to be fixed.

He asked for her email address and over the following weeks they exchanged a number of 'flirty' messages before arranging to meet.

Mr Simpson said: 'Within minutes [of getting her email address] I said: 'I am a married man but things aren't right.'

Today, Southwark Crown Court heard that Jonathan Simpson, 48, felt he was 'not really respecting' his property lawyer wife Katherine, 49, or 'giving her the love she needed'

'There was no mention of fancying or liking.

'The agreement was to collect her from her home - I picked her up from her home and when we drove to the Chilworth Arms.'

Mr Simpson admitted he had been nervous and described the date, which ended with him kissing her, as 'the beginning of a slippery slope'.

He told the court he could not remember an occasion where he had met the woman and not taken her a gift which included hair tongs, scented candles and flowers.

The pair went shopping together and Mr Simpson claimed he bought her 'the largest one' of a line of Chanel products.

Mr Simpson claims he was asked to remove traces of his interactions with the woman by her early on in the affair.

'I was told, and I did, delete everything. Everything.

'The only reason there is this limited amount is that this was all we could find from the darkest recesses of the internet.

'This case would not be here if we had everything.'

The barrister, who was called to the bar in 1993, admitted to jurors: 'I would never have wanted myself as a client'

The woman is said to have initially 'chucked' Mr Simpson in June 2013 which he said he believed was due to her feeling his 'unease' and that she had a 'very strong conscience'.

'All I said throughout the first trench of the relationship with [the other woman] in so far as my relationship was concerned was that it was perfect but for the fact that I had lost the sexual relationship with my wife.

'I think I was slowly feeling quite inadequate for my wife.

'Katie is perfect - I felt partly with my job, partly with my whole history that I was not really respecting Katie and giving her the love and the time that she needed.

'I think this was a way out and in some ways saying to Katie find somebody better than me.

He sobbed as he added: 'I never lost my love for Katie, I just couldn't make it happen in that department.'

Simpson accepted that he had sent the woman an email purporting to be from his wife saying she was fine with the affair but claimed it was a 'spoof'.

When the woman was in Spain in early August 2013 Mr Simpson said his 'only fear was that she was going to find some dark, handsome Spaniard'.

Mr Simpson spoke of his distressed emotional state during a family holiday to France in August 2013 during which he claimed he received several messages asking him to leave his wife.

'I became two separate people, it played havoc with my mind.'

While in France Mr Simpson admitted pushing his son away as he used the only wi-fi spot to contact his romantic interest.

'That's when, in France, I was expected to tell [my family] that I had decided to make the break.

'My girlfriend was expecting that because I had intimated it to her.'

Mr Simpson said the woman became pregnant and had a termination.

'The baby was the breaking point,' Mr Simpson admitted.

'I did not promise her a baby.'

'She always told me that she would not be able to conceive at the times when we had sex.

'She was not on the pill and we didn't use contraception.

'The chances of getting pregnant were remote in my mind, it was something to avoid.'

Mr Simpson claimed that when he got the phone call telling him about the pregnancy the woman sounded 'neutral' as if she was trying to 'gauge his reaction'. He told his wife 'immediately.'

The barrister said there was a 'sudden end' to the affair following that holiday and he 'just wanted to know what was going on' so he continued to try and make contact.

This involved twice turning up outside the woman's child's school, after the second of which he admitted believing the affair was over despite her taking further gifts from him.

The Simpsons, both of Clifton Terrace, Winchester, each deny a single count of stalking involving series alarm or distress.

Mr Simpson is also charged with acting in breach of a restraining order but jurors have now been told to find him not guilty of this as the incident it relates to did not involve 'contact'.
S chubert got six years in prison after her family begged for leniency

Two days later she said she 'had to go in for round two and beat her' agai n

She then left Driscoll on the floor of her home without food or water

A New Jersey woman who beat her 94-year-old grandmother, left her on the floor for two days and then fatally beat her again in what she called 'round two' wept Friday as she was sentenced to six years in prison.

Katherine Schubert, 39, pleaded guilty to manslaughter in April for the May 2014 death of Mary Driscoll. She had been charged with murder, but prosecutors said she was offered the plea deal given potential defense arguments and after hearing from the victim's family.

Schubert had been released from a drug rehabilitation program on the day of the first attack and was on probation for endangering the welfare of a child by driving drunk with a minor in her car.

Guilty: Katherine Schubert, 39, beat grandmother Mary Driscoll, 94, in April. She left her on the floor without food or water for two days, then beat her again - fatally - in May 2014. She was sentenced to six years Friday

Schubert said that after drinking, she attacked her grandmother and left her on the floor of their home in Brick without food or water.

Two days later, she said, she tried to put Driscoll into pajamas and into bed but then had to 'go in for round two and beat her into submission.'

Driscoll died six days later at a hospital.

Schubert, who said previously that she had taken sleeping pills and doesn't remember what happened, apologized before she was sentenced Friday.

'My grandmother was left in my care, and this is my fault,' Schubert said. 'Not a day goes by that I don't think of her and miss her.'

Schubert told police that before the attack a friend she had met in drug rehab came to pick her up, but wouldn't let her in the car because she was drunk. That led to an argument with Driscoll and the first attack.

'She put her grandmother at great risk by making the decision to ingest copious amounts of alcohol,' said Assistant Prosecutor Michelle Armstrong.

'Instead of celebrating her sobriety in a more socially acceptable way, she decided to ingest alcohol. She decided to ingest sleeping pills.'

Defense attorney Alton Kenney said that after Schubert was arrested in her grandmother's death, she had to be hospitalized because she was still intoxicated, according to the Asbury Park Press.

Al Della Fave, a spokesman for Ocean County prosecutors, told The Associated Press that 'the state felt that the plea to manslaughter was in the best interest of the family given the ... potential defenses and the input from the victim's family, all of whom strongly wanted leniency for Schubert.'
A British tourist drifted for two hours through New York harbor after he got stuck on a makeshift barge and floated away as he admired the view.

Armaan Raj Munglani, 19, miraculously dodged ferries and boats as he was swept out from Jersey City and round the southern tip of Manhattan.

He so convinced he was going to die that he started writing goodbye messages to family in a small book he had with him.

Lucky: Armaan Raj Munglani, 19, miraculously dodged ferries and boats as he was swept out from Jersey City

Above shows the rough route Armaan Raj Munglani took as he floated two nautical miles from Newport Yacht Club and Marina in Jersey City to Near Governors Island

Mr Munglani's rescuers, from left, marine engineer Robert Rae, Lt. Keith Nebel, FF Barney Duffy, FF Billy Tonner, FF Carlton Hilliard III, Capt. Lou Guzzo, pilot Robert Senatore and FF Vinny Viskovic

Two hours later Mr Munglanis soaked phone started working and he called the New York Fire Department who rescued him in lifeboats two nautical miles from where he started.

His adventure began when he couldnt sleep so got up at 4am and caught a train from Manhattan to New Jersey so he could look at the city as the sun came up.

But at the Newport Yacht Club and Marina, just over the Hudson River from New York, he got into difficulties when he spied the 8ft long wooden barge.

Mr Munglanis soaked phone started working and he called the New York Fire Department who rescued him in lifeboats (pictured after the rescue) two nautical miles from where he started

Newport Yacht Club and Marina in Jersey City where the British tourist's nightmare begun

The tourist from London eventually ended up being rescued from near Governors island, pictured above

As he stood on it a small part of the float broke off and drifted away - leaving him with no paddle and no sail.

Mr Munglani, from London, said: I just got on it for the sake of it, because Im 19, and 19-year-olds do this sort of thing.

The next thing I know, this dirty, old, stinking barge starts floating away.

I tried screaming for help, but no one was around. I was waving my hands, waving my jacket. I had a lighter, and I tried to make a signal, but no one saw me.

A British tourist drifted for two hours through New York harbor (pictured) after his makeshift barge floated away as he admired the view

With no way of steering himself through the strong currents Munglani said he was dead meat and prayed he would avoid any cruise ships and the Staten Island Ferry.

He said: I just knew for a fact that now Im screwed. Im a sitting duck because any boat could come along and literally kill me. I thought, well Im dead, I might as well enjoy this.

Mr Munglanis phone got soaked, he dropped his wallet in the water and so he started to write goodbyes to his family in his book.

He said: It was my last words to my family, my friends, people I know, people that matter to me.

Fortunately I tore up the paper now. You dont want anyone reading that stuff while you are still alive.

After two hours his phone began to work again and he dialled 911.

Within 10 minutes the first of two FDNY rescue boat came to save him and picked him up a quarter of a mile off Governors Island.

Mr Munglani said: I was as happy as a kid in a candy store. I was screaming and shouting out. I was so happy I think I had tears in my eyes.

Captain Louis Guzzo, commander of the FDNYs Marine Company 6, said that Munglani was in a bad spot - right in the middle of the Staten Island ferry traffic.
A Houston man who fired gunshots into his neighbors apartment after complaining about noise later killed himself during a standoff with police on Wednesday night, authorities say.

The incident occurred at the Copperwood Ranch Apartments in northwest Houston.

Resident Tracy Krause said she was doing some cleaning in her third floor apartment and made a thud as she got off a chair.

'I went and sat on my couch, and I heard, ''pop pop pop'', and when that happened all of a sudden, drywall from my wall got onto my couch and I was like, ''I just got shot at'',' Krause told CW39.

Scene: Police were called to the Copperwood Ranch Apartments in northwest Houston on Wednesday night after a resident said the man in the apartment below her had opened fire into his ceiling

'I just got shot at': Resident Tracy Krause said she had been cleaning when a bullet came through her floor

Police say the neighbor directly below Krause on the second floor had fired a gun into his ceiling.

One of the bullets came through the floor of Krause's apartment and then hit her roof.

When Krause noticed the bullet mark she called 911. Because the report came in as an active shooting, police arrived at the complex in force.

'Next thing I know, I got 100 cop cars out here and a SWAT team,' said Kyle Etter, who was with Krause when the shooting occurred.

Police tried to negotiate with the man and get him to surrender, however he barricaded himself inside his apartment.

The HCSO's High Risk Operations Unit was called to the scene to negotiate with the man.

Shooting situation: Police, including SWAT units and negotiators, arrived at the scene to deal with the armed man, who killed himself

'The man was found deceased with what it appears to be a self-inflicted gunshot wound,' said Deputy Thomas Gilliland

The standoff between the man and the police lasted 4.5 hours. During that time a gunshot was heard.

When they could not in contact with him after some time, they decided to enter the apartment.

'At 9:40 pm, a hard entry was made into the room, and unfortunately the man was found deceased with what it appears to be a self-inflicted gunshot wound,' said Deputy Thomas Gilliland.

Police have said they not immediately releasing the name of the man involved.

However they did confirm the man had been making noise complaints in the building before the incident.
David Cameron was told he had 'f***ed every f***ing thing up in this country' as he faced angry voters in a live EU debate tonight and minutes later faced a further blow as a shock new poll gave the Brexit campaign a massive 10-point lead.

Audience member Yasmin said she was on the same side of the EU debate as the Prime Minister but said it was 'nothing to do with' him, adding: 'I hate the Tories' and branding him 'Dodgy Dave' straight to his face.

In a sign of panic a rattled Mr Cameron admitted to the audience: 'I've got a lot more people to convince I can see.'

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Audience member Yasmin (pictured left) said she was on the same side of the EU debate as David Cameron (pictured right) but said it was 'nothing to do with' him, adding: 'I hate the Tories' and branding him 'Dodgy Dave' straight to his face

The survey of 2,000 people found the Leave campaign is winning on 55 per cent, compared with 45 per cent of voters who believe the UK should stay in the EU

Less than an hour later an ORB poll of 2,000 people for The Independent found 55 per cent of people believe the UK should leave the EU, while just 45 per cent wanted to stay.

It is the latest survey in recent days to show the Brexit camp ahead and will send Downing Street into even more of a panic over the outcome of the June 23 referendum.

The increasing panic in the Remain camp was exposed last night as Energy Secretary Amber Rudd delivered a savage attack on her Tory colleague Boris Johnson, branding him a liar obsessed with becoming PM.

She even jibed that he was 'not the man you want to drive you home at the end of the evening'.

This evening Mr Cameron defended the ferocious blue-on-blue attack, saying: Ive done these debates  theyre lively debates and thats the way it is.'

Mr Cameron was also forced to defend his refusal to take part in any head-to-head TV debates with his Brexit rivals, insisting he did not want the EU campaign turned into a 'Dave versus Boris show'.

During a 45-minute Q&A with Buzzfeed and Facebook users, Mr Cameron came under fire from all sides of the EU debate - criticised by Remain supporters for 'scaremongering' people into voting for Britain to stay in the EU.

During a 45-minute Q&A with Buzzfeed and Facebook users, David Cameron (pictured centre) came under fire from all sides of the EU debate

David Cameron (pictured left with his wife Samantha at the Queen's 90th birthday celebrations at St Paul's Cathedral this morning and right, answering questions at the Buzzfeed and Facebook Q&A this evening) said he will 'spend all my time' ahead of the June 23 poll trying to convince voters to back staying in the EU

Audience member Yasmin told him: 'I'm voting Remain, but [it's] nothing to do with guys, I hate the Tories, I'm just going to say you've f***ed every f***ing thing up in this country, you've screwed students, you've screwed the disabled, the vulnerable.

'Seriously, I've heard you want to take back the Human Rights Act and everything as well and I wouldn't put that past you at all. Dodgy Dave.'

She added: 'I just don't want to give any more power to the Tories because that would be the worst thing right now.'

A stunned Mr Cameron replied: 'That's the great thing about this debate: You can have a ferocious argument with someone about health policy or education policy or human rights policy but this issue of whether we stay in or get out of the European Union actually transcends these issues.

'So I would argue that one of the strengths of the side of the argument that Yasmin and I are on is we've got the Labour party, a Conservative government, the Lib Dems, the Greens, the trade unions.

David Cameron attempted to put on a positive and passionate performance as he tried to convince voters to back staying in the EU tonight

David Cameron endorsed Amber Rudd's very personal attacks on Boris Johnson in the debate last night

'We argue with each other - we've got a lot of differences - but on this issue we have the broadest possible coalition saying it's better and stronger staying in.'

Last night Ms Rudd targeted an extraordinary personal attack on her Tory colleague Mr Johnson in one of the most brutal TV clashes yet of the campaign.

In an apparent reference to the ex-Mayor's tumultuous love life, she said: 'Boris, he's the life and soul of the party.

'But he's not the man you want to drive you home at the end of the evening.'

She also took a swipe at his personal ambitions to become Prime Minister, telling viewers: 'I fear that the only number Boris is interested in is Number 10.'

The vicious assaults - which provoked a storm of protest on Twitter and were dismissed as 'playground' tactics by Mr Johnson's aides - came during a six-strong primetime ITV debate that saw the battle catch fire.

But they were endorsed by Mr Cameron on Twitter last night and this evening he said: Ive done these debates  theyre lively debates and thats the way it is.'
Exams watchdog Ofqual has launched an investigation into the claims

There are concerns about pupils taking exams in their native language

Native speakers of foreign languages may be putting other pupils at a disadvantage by taking A-levels in those subjects, officials say.

Ofqual has launched an investigation to discover how many native speakers are taking exams in their mother tongue and whether this is affecting the grades awarded.

The exams watchdog said it is responding to concerns that growing numbers of pupils are taking qualifications in their native language - making the exams unfair for those who are studying them as second languages.

They said the main concerns centre around large-entry subjects including French, German, Spanish, Italian and Russian - rather than 'community' languages such as Polish.

Exams watchdog Ofqual has launched an investigation to discover how many native speakers are taking exams in their mother tongue and whether this is affecting the grades awarded

Those taking qualifications in languages do not have to declare whether or not they are learning it from scratch.

Because grade boundaries are set after the results come in, a large number of native speakers achieving very high marks could mean the standard needed for an A* or A grade is much higher.

It could mean non-native speakers getting lower grades than they would have done, had there been no native speakers.

Ofqual has asked schools for details of how many of their pupils who take the subjects are native speakers.

In a letter to schools, it said it would use the information to determine 'whether any action needs to be taken', the Times Educational Supplement reported.

Rachel Taylor, a research fellow for the regulator, said in a blog post: 'We're conducting the research because we know from anecdotal evidence that there are concerns about the potential impact of native speakers on A-level modern foreign language results.

'In particular, there are concerns that the number of native speakers is increasing and that, as a result, students for whom the [language] is a second language are being disadvantaged.'

The news comes amid concerns about a decline in language learning in England's schools and colleges.

The exams watchdog said it is responding to concerns that growing numbers of pupils are taking qualifications in their native language - making the exams unfair for those who are studying them as second languages

Entries for A levels in French and German have fallen every year since 2010.

The Language Trends survey, carried out by the British Council and the CfBT Education Trust, published in April, showed that the introduction of the English Baccalaureate performance measure, under which schools are given an incentive to enter more pupils for language GCSEs, had had 'little impact' on take-up of language A levels.

The report found that many schools put this down to 'the widely reported inconsistency of A-level exam marking and the resulting difficulty of getting a top grade in a language'.

Around one in six youngsters in primary schools do not have English as their first language after a period of high migration.

These demographics are expected to transfer to secondary schools as the current cohort gets older.




This is the moment police shot a man outside Dallas Love Field airport as he begun hurling rocks at his ex-girlfriend's car in a domestic dispute.

Surveillance footage captured the moments which led up to the shooting of Shawn Nicholas Diamond, 29, of Edgewood, Maryland, on Friday afternoon.

Diamond can be seen throwing large rocks at the car, which had his ex inside, and attacking the vehicle with a traffic cone.

Witnesses said that during the incident Diamond said to officers 'you are going to have to shoot me'.

Assistant police chief Randall Blankenbaker told reporters at a news conference that an officer stepped in to stop the altercation, but Diamond refused to drop the rocks he was carrying.

Smartphone footage from the scene shows the officer with his weapon drawn shouting 'get down!' repeatedly, before opening fire at least nine times.

Diamond is seen using a traffic cone to smash the back windshield of the car before he grabs rocks and starts throwing them at the vehicle

The woman gets out of the car and Diamond throws the rock in the windows of the vehicle

Officers try to reason with Diamond. An officer with his weapon draws it and shouts 'get down!'

An officer tries to break-up the dispute and Diamond lunges at him with a large rock in each hand so a cop opens fire

The officer then shoots and Diamond falls to the ground. Witnesses said during the incident that Diamond said to officers 'you are going to have to shoot me'

According to nbcdfw.com, the incident happened just hours after Diamond was released from Denton County Jail.

He had left his job in Maryland on Monday and flown to Dallas to visit his ex-girlfriend. The pair have a young son together and have a history of domestic disturbances, according to police.

Carrollton police spokeswoman Jolene DeVito said Diamond was arrested in Carrollton on Tuesday and charged with criminal mischief after destroying city-owned trees valued at $3,700 through reckless driving.

This photo released by police shows Shawn Nicholas Diamond. Police say Diamond was shot by an officer after making a threatening move toward him with a rock in each hand at Dallas Love Field

Police say he had been arguing with his ex and deliberately drove into the trees.

Diamond was booked and had been released on bond Friday. But police say the argument continued as she agreed to drive him to the airport and when she parked up he started attacking the vehicle.

Incident: An officer (circled in red) at Dallas Love Field Airport can bee seen opening fire at the exit outside the baggage claim area on Friday

Run and hide: People initially ran away from the scene when the shooting occurred

At least nine shots are heard to be fired in a video from the scene. The footage was posted to Instagram and shows frightened people scatter and run, while a woman can be heard saying 'Oh my God', again and again.

Police blocked off the damaged black car following the shooting. The car had a large rock on the hood, and at least two others could be seen nearby.

The front driver window and rear windshield of the car had been completely shattered.

Police say the suspect was throwing rocks at this car while his girlfriend and some children were inside. Footage from the scene shows the car badly damaged. Police then approached the man and later opened fire

An investigator works the scene of an officer-involved shooting which prompted a lockdown at Dallas Love Field airport

Witness reports say the man was approaching police with a large rock when he was shot. Rocks can be seen strewn around this car, as well as one shoe

Witness Bryan Armstrong - who filmed the terrifying footage - said it appeared the man who was shot approached an officer brandishing a rock.

The officer told the man to 'drop the rock and stop walking,' but he continued to approach the officer slowly as people came through the terminal door unaware of what was happening, Armstrong told CNN.

Local media reports said car traffic had been halted to the airport a few miles from central Dallas, which is a major center for Southwest Airlines.

Airport officials said the terminal had to be completely cleared so that every passenger could be re-screened, causing major delays, according to the airport's director of aviation, Mark Duebner.

By late Friday afternoon, nearly 100 flights at Love Field had been delayed, representing a higher percentage of delays than at busier airports including DFW, Los Angeles International and Boston.

'Many delays': People gather inside Dallas Love Field airport after an officer-involved shooting prompted a lock down on Friday afternoon

The Transportation Security Administration checkpoint reopens following an officer involved shooting, as travels wait in line at Dallas Love Field airport on Friday

Mike Boyd, a Colorado-based consultant who advises airports, was sympathetic to Friday's officer.

'At an airport if you see something crazy going on in this day and age, maybe it's better to overreact than underreact,' he said.

Love Field has one major checkpoint used by all passengers at 20 gates for flights on Southwest, Virgin and Delta Air Lines. Nearby Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport has several checkpoints spread across five terminals.

'Any kind of a disturbance like that is going to affect the airport, especially at an older airport like Love Field,' Boyd said. 'That's just one of the vulnerabilities we're going to have to live with.'

By late Friday afternoon, nearly 100 flights at Love Field had been delayed. Passengers are seen above waiting in line

The baggage claim area is shut down due to a shooting at Love Field Airport on Friday

The rescreening was necessary after some passengers ran through security without being vetted when the gunshots went off.

'Right now we're going to have to empty the terminal, sweep it to make sure it's empty and rescreen them,' Duebner told the Dallas Morning News.

'It doesn't take too long to get people out of the airport.
Hillary Clinton and Elizabeth Warren met privately for about an hour on Friday morning at Clinton's home in Washington, D.C., as speculation swirls that the former Democratic secretary of state might tap the far-left senator as her presidential running mate next month.

The result would be an all-female ticket, a double-smash to the ultimate political glass ceiling.

Clinton, the presumptive Democratic nominee, has played her cards close to her pantsuit jacket.

Hillary Clinton emerged from an hour-long meeting with Elizabeth Warren on Friday morning at one of her homes, in Washington, D.C.

Warren and the former secretary of state have spoken several times in the past month, and Washington is rife with speculation about an all-female presidential ticket

Trump has been hammering Warren mercilessly on Twitter

On Tuesday she told ABC News that she wasn't ruling out making the Massachusetts lawmaker her VP pick.

'I'm not going to get into vice presidential choices,' Clinton said, 'but I have the highest regard for Senator Warren.'

The Washington Post reported Friday that the two women have spoken several times over the past month, including one conversation that that lasted around a half-hour.

Friday's tete-a-tete consumed 66 minutes, according to reporters staked out across the street.

So far there has been no indication that Clinton and Warren are engaged in practical talks about how to win in November; such strategizing has been left to their aides.

But the pair have reportedly spent their time together discussing big-issue politics and how to frame progressive ideas for mass consumption in November.

The Massachusetts senator is an attack dog in public, which could make her a workable VP choice during a brutal campaign season

Photographers staked out Clinton's home as Warren arrived from Capitol Hill on Friday morning for their private meeting

Warren endorsed Clinton Thursday night during a TV appearance in the safe liberal confines of MSNBC, calling her a tough fighter who will consign Donald Trump to the political dustbin.

But the senator herself is aggressive with her Republican foils, and could fulfill the traditional vice presidential role of attack-dog in public.

Warren's presence as a co-standard-bearer for the Democrats could draw Trump into a protracted shouting match, however.
The photo of Hillary Clinton on her Blackberry that birthed the 'Texts from Hillary' meme and softened her image is turning out to be less of a blessing and more of a curse for the former secretary of state.

A State Department official testified this week she didn't know Clinton even had an email address until she came across that photo, as the address was not provided through the federal government.

State Director of Executive Secretariat Staff Karin Lang said she was told when Clinton started that she would not use an 'official account.' And she didn't.

The email address was a private one she set up without permission, an Inspector General report confirmed last month, through a private server she kept at her home.

The photo of Hillary Clinton on her Blackberry that birthed the 'Texts from Hillary' meme is turning out to be less of a blessing and more of a curse for the former secretary of state

'When Mrs. Clinton's photo appeared in the media with her using  appearing to use some sort of a mobile device, Clarence Finney checked with [information management staff] to confirm ... whether the answer was still that she did not have a State.gov e-mail account,' Lang said in a deposition.

Lang said she didn't know for the first year and a half that Clinton worked at State that she had an email address at all.

Because her address was not controlled by the government, that kept it out of the reaches of Freedom of Information Act requests like the one brought forth by Judicial Watch, the oversight group pursuing testimony from Clinton and other State Department officials now.

'No one engaged in this FOIA search had awareness of that source of potentially responsive documents during the time period of this FOIA search,' Lang said, in a section posted by Politico. 'They were not aware of the existence of e-mails from the former Secretary that could be potentially responsive to this request.'

A federal judge ordered the seven State Department officials at the time Clinton was in office to speak to the conservative watchdog group.

He's allowing videotapes of the sessions to be withheld from the public, but not transcripts of the conversations.

Lang was the latest official to have her deposition. Former Clinton Chief of Staff Cheryl Mills has already had her turn.

Bryan Pagliano, the IT specialist who worked at State and also set up Clinton's server in her home, has exercised his Fifth Amendment right not to incriminate himself in an FBI investigation into the security of Clinton's server.

The judge in the Judicial Watch case is allowing him to withhold testimony indefinitely, pending a court filing that details the terms of his agreement with the FBI.

Judicial Watch filed a brief with the court today demanding the agreement be made public.

'Simply put, we need to see Paglianos immunity agreements so our attorneys are able to prepare his questions  especially if hes going to assert his Fifth Amendment privilege,'Tom Fitton, Judicial Watch president said.

'We have faced astonishing roadblocks to getting simple questions answered about the Clinton email system.'

Hillary Clinton is seen here campaigning in Washington, D.C. on Friday. She became the presumptive Democratic nominee on Tuesday evening after winning the Democratic popular vote

Judicial Watch's probe centers on Clinton aide Huma Abedin's use of a private address connected to the server while she worked at State.

Once full time, she eventually took a part time position that also allowed her to consult for the Clinton Foundation and other private businesses.

The court case seeks to determine whether Clinton, Abedin and others intentionally skirted the law, and legitimate FOIA requests, by using email addresses outside the reaches of the federal government.

Clinton turned over her work-related emails more than a year after she left State. She says she handed over them all. There's no way to prove that it's true as the emails were deemed personal in nature had already been erased.

Abedin will testify in the case later this month as will Undersecretary of State for Management Patrick Kennedy.
David Cameron has used today's Queen's birthday honours to dish out gongs to Remain supporters.

At least 20 business chiefs and luvvies backing his campaign to keep Britain in the EU have been handed knighthoods or other accolades.

Gisela Stuart, a senior Labour MP, described the situation as 'bordering on the corrupt'. The honours row came as:

A poll giving Brexit a ten-point lead caused panic within the Remain camp;

After a mauling by an audience of young voters, the Prime Minister admitted he had to do 'a lot more to convince people' of his case;

He condoned a brutal personal assault on Boris Johnson led by the pro-Brussels energy secretary Amber Rudd;

A Tory minister apologised for suggesting that voters had no right to defy their elected leaders over the EU.

Among those handed a knighthood is Damon Buffini, a private equity boss who has helped bankroll the In campaign. Fellow donor John Armitage receives a CBE.

David Cameron has used today's Queen's birthday honours to dish out gongs to at least 20 business chiefs backing his campaign to keep Britain in the EU

Prominent individuals who signed pro-Brussels letters coordinated by Downing Street have also been honoured. They include Innocent drinks founder Richard Reed, who is deputy chairman of Britain Stronger in Europe.

Mr Reed, who describes the EU as 'fantastic', is rewarded with a CBE.

Downing Street last night denied handing out honours in return for support in the bitter referendum battle.

But the honours list appears to confirm predictions from former British Chambers of Commerce boss John Longworth, who quit his post after No 10 complained about his pro-Brexit stance. He said in March that Downing Street had a number of ways of persuading business chiefs to sign supportive letters, including the offer of honours.

'Some organisations want a government contract,' he said. 'You can go down the list. Some corporate chiefs want a gong. Others are foreign or multinational and other pressure can be applied.'

Mrs Stuart, who chairs the Vote Leave campaign, accused Mr Cameron of abusing the power of patronage to skew the referendum debate in his favour.

'David Cameron and George Osborne have used every single ounce of their power to try to bully and frighten the British people into backing their campaign to keep us in the EU,' she said.

Among those handed a knighthood is Damon Buffini (pictured), a private equity boss who has helped bankroll the In campaign

Prominent individuals who signed pro-Brussels letters have also been honoured, including Innocent drinks founder Richard Reed (pictured), who is deputy chairman of Britain Stronger in Europe

'But abusing our honours system to reward campaign cronies and donors is a new low.

'People in this country are sick of the Establishment doing these shabby stitch-ups and will view this as bordering on the corrupt.'

No 10 rejected the claims, pointing out that the honours lists were drawn up in January and February before the referendum campaign had started.

A Government source said: 'This is an independent process and people from both sides of the campaign have received honours.'

The source pointed out that a small number of pro-Brexit figures have been handed gongs, including donor Paul Marshall, who is a supporter of the academy schools programme, and the Eurosceptic MPs Desmond Swayne and Jeffrey Donaldson.

But Brexit supporters are dwarfed by the number of pro-EU figures on the list. Signatories of letters co-ordinated by Downing Street appear to have done particularly well. Three business chiefs who signed a letter to The Times have been honoured, as have two others whose firms supported the letter.

John Armitage (CBE), founding partner of the hedge fund Egerton Capital LLP, gave 15,000 to the In campaign.

Tim Steiner (pictured), founder of the grocery delivery firm Ocado, signed a letter to The Times with 200 other businessmen claiming the UK could not stand alone from Europe

They include Weir Group chief executive Keith Cochrane, who is made a CBE, and Ocado online supermarket founder Tim Steiner, who receives an OBE. Fujitsu UK chairman Simon Blagden and BP regional president Trevor Garlick, whose firms signed the letter, were also honoured.

Supporters of a pro-EU open letter from members of the creative industries have also done well, with four signatories picking up honours.

Beneficiaries include actor Brian Blessed, who was made an OBE, artist Michael Craig-Martin, who was knighted, and Felix Barrett, founder of the immersive theatre group Punchdrunk, who is made an MBE.

THEY BACKED BRUSSELS... THEN GOT THEIR GONGS The buyout king Damon Buffini, who receives a knighthood, is a former private equity chief worth an estimated 100million. He is believed to have donated 10,000 to Britain Stronger in Europe. Known in financial circles as a 'buyout king', Mr Buffini, 54, led Permira to huge growth over nearly three decades, but the firm was accused of indulging in 'blatant asset-stripping'. He once made partners at the firm eat hamburgers after they moaned about the quality of food at five-star hotels, according to 2009 reports. The smoothie tycoon Millionaire Richard Reed (CBE), founder of the smoothie maker Innocent Drinks, is deputy chairman of the In campaign. He is a vociferous supporter of the EU, often taking to Twitter to denounce the 'deliberate lies' of Brexit campaigners. The Ocado founder Tim Steiner (OBE), founder of the grocery delivery firm Ocado, signed a letter to The Times with 200 other businessmen claiming the UK could not stand alone from Europe. He recently set the stage for a huge divorce battle over his 100million fortune after splitting from his wife of 14 years and starting a new relationship with a 27-year-old Polish model. Mr Steiner, 46, cited 'unreasonable behaviour' as grounds for separating from his wife Belinda, the mother of his four children. The hedge fund partner John Armitage (CBE), founding partner of the hedge fund Egerton Capital LLP, gave 15,000 to the In campaign. Mr Armitage, 55, now manages more than 10billion in assets, and specialises in a 'research-intensive stock picking approach to investing'. The Scottish engineer Keith Cochrane (CBE), chief executive of the Scottish engineering firm Weir Group, signed the letter in The Times warning against Brexit. Mr Cochrane, 51, was last in the news when shareholders overwhelmingly vetoed plans that could have seen bosses taking home millions in stock options regardless of how well the company performed. Advertisement

Six signatories of a pro-EU letter from entrepreneurs to the Financial Times were also honoured, as were signatories to letters from health experts and scientists.

John Kingman, who was acting permanent secretary at the Treasury for much of the campaign, during which it has been accused of pro-EU bias, was knighted.

Former Tory leader Iain Duncan-Smith told the Mail: 'It's been going on behind closed doors. Downing Street's operation has been to mercilessly bully and flatter businesses. Business leaders have been promised all sorts of stuff.'

But Sir Ian Cheshire, who chairs the honours committee's economy section, said: 'This idea of a darkened room and stitch-up is not the case. It's not some sort of secret society. It's about recognising role models. We are extremely independent.'

An unelected Tory minister faced an angry backlash last night after suggesting voters had no right to defy Mr Cameron over Britain's membership of the EU. Ros Altmann, who has the pensions portfolio, said the public should listen to their elected political leaders rather than making up their own minds on Brexit.

She tweeted: 'Majority of MPs want to stay in EU. They're your democratically elected leaders. Voting Brexit overrules your own MPs.'

IT'S DAME POTTYMOUTH... SCOURGE OF THE PC BRIGADE By Daily Mail reporter Louise Casey, national scourge of the political correctness brigade and hand-wringing liberals, has been given a Damehood. In 2005 in an after-dinner speech she boasted about 'getting hammered' and said she would 'deck' Downing Street officials who quoted 'bloody evidence-based' policy and that ministers worked better if they were 'p****d'. Her honour recognises years of speaking about multiculturalism. As David Cameron's integration tsar, she has been outspoken about the failures to tackle forced marriage and other abuses in Muslim communities. She also chaired the Government's troubled families unit and led a hard-hitting investigation into social services in Rotherham where Asian sex gangs abused as many as 1,600 children. She is known in Whitehall for delivering 'hard truths' to the Muslim community that ministers cannot. Dame Louise, an official at the Department for Communities and Local Government, recently said the liberal elite had turned a blind eye to problems within some Muslim groups, adding: 'We let forced marriage happen because we were so wrapped up in political correctness and wanting our multicultural Britain. We forgot to talk about equality and we forgot to talk about equal rights.' On the Rotherham abuse scandal, she said more effort had been expended on 'Tipp-Exing out the word 'Pakistani' on folders in Rotherham' than addressing the root causes of the problems. A youth worker whose revelations about child sexual exploitation in Rotherham helped expose the scandal has been awarded the MBE. Jayne Senior said she was honoured but said it has come in the wake of so many 'ruined and devastated' lives. Advertisement

My knighthood? I'll wear it well says the new Sir Rod Stewart as he leads a host of showbiz names including Ant and Dec, Downton actress and Dame Vera Lynn to be honoured by the Queen

By Sam Greenhill for the Daily Mail

Rock star Rod Stewart, 71, (pictured with his wife Penny) is to receive a knighthood in the Queen's Birthday Honours

He's had 62 hit singles and six Number Ones  not to mention eight children by five women.

But today rocker Rod Stewart will cap his decades-long career with perhaps the greatest honour of all, receiving a knighthood in the Queen's Birthday Honours.

The 71-year-old said the award was a 'monumental honour' and joked he would 'wear it well'  a reference to one of his hits. His citation reads: 'Roderick David Stewart. Singer/Songwriter. For services to music and charity.'

Last night he said: 'I've led a wonderful life and have had a tremendous career thanks to the generous support of the great British public. This monumental honour has topped it off and I couldn't ask for anything more. I thank Her Majesty and promise to 'wear it well'.'

Sir Rod leads a host of showbiz names who are among the 1,149 people to receive accolades in this year's Birthday Honours for their achievements across a wide range of fields including politics, industry, sport, and charity work

They include Downton Abbey star Penelope Wilton, journalist and broadcaster Janet Street-Porter, actor Brian Blessed and singer Dame Vera Lynn.

Olivier award-winning actress Miss Wilton, 70, who played Isobel Crawley in the hit ITV show, becomes a member of the Establishment for real as she is made a Dame for services to drama.

Presenting duo Ant and Dec, who recently hosted The Queen's 90th Birthday Celebration and worked with Prince Charles on a documentary commemorating 40 years of his charity the Prince's Trust, have both been awarded OBEs.

The pair  full names Anthony McPartlin and Declan Donnelly, both 40  said they were shocked to receive the gongs, adding that despite their 27 years in television this is the achievement their 'mams' will be most proud of them for.

'We are just two ordinary lads from the west end of Newcastle,' they said in a joint statement.

'We hope us receiving this honour can inspire young people to chase their dreams and believe that anything is possible. This will definitely be the proudest our mams have ever been.

TIM PEAKE IS OVER THE MOON... Tim Peake (pictured) has become the first person to be honoured while in Space British astronaut Tim Peake is the first person to be honoured while in space. Major Peake could hardly be more qualified for his 'international' award as he floats around Earth. His Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George award is on the diplomatic list for 'promoting UK interests overseas'  250 miles over seas in his case. He received the news when he was contacted on the International Space Station by the head of the diplomatic service, Sir Simon McDonald, who said: 'A particular highlight for me was phoning Tim Peake to ask if would accept an honour. As you'll see from the list, he said Yes.' Major Peake said he was honoured by the award, and dedicated it to everyone who had made his space mission possible. He is spending six months on the space station after blasting off in a Russian Soyuz FG rocket in December. Advertisement

'We are both shocked, but incredibly honoured to receive OBEs. We absolutely love what we do and have done since we started out aged 13.' Forces' sweetheart Dame Vera said she was 'surprised' and 'honoured' to be given another accolade. The 99-year-old, whose songs brought hope during the darkest days of the Second World War, joins the likes of Sir David Attenborough, Dame Maggie Smith and Stephen Hawking in becoming a Companion of Honour.

She said: 'I was very surprised. I felt very greatly honoured to be given a Damehood and never expected to receive anything else. So for Her Majesty to bestow a further accolade on me is very unexpected and I feel even more honoured.'

Miss Street-Porter, 69, becomes a Commander of the British Empire to honour a lifetime of achievement. As well as being a regular Daily Mail columnist, she has been the editor of the Independent on Sunday and is a Bafta-winning television veteran who has produced, presented or appeared on hundreds of programmes.

With her distinctive accent  she has been accused of 'murdering vowels'  she broke into television in 1975 and rose to head of youth and entertainment features at the BBC, where she commissioned popular shows such as Rapido and Red Dwarf.

Presenting duo Ant and Dec, who recently hosted The Queen's 90th Birthday Celebration, have both been awarded OBEs

Downtown Abbey star Penelope Wilton (left) will be awarded a Damehood in the Queen's Birthday Honours for her services to Drama. Broadcaster Janet Street-Porter will also receive an award (right)

But she is best known for being in front of the lens, appearing on shows such as ITV's I'm A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here! Miss Street-Porter said: 'I accepted this honour on behalf of older people whose experiences and expertise can contribute so much and who often feel invisible, overlooked in the workplace and portrayed as 'problems' in the media.

'Ageing is a positive process, and I want to celebrate that. I've enjoyed working across the media for nearly fifty years and still feel an outsider  which is a source of great strength.' Actor Brian Blessed, 79, who receives an OBE for services to the arts and charity, said: 'This is a complete surprise. I am absolutely delighted. A huge thank you to all of the people that nominated me.'

Others named OBEs were Golden Globe-winning television producer Gareth Neame  who has worked on shows including Downton Abbey, Spooks and Hustle  and presenter and Citizen Khan actor Adil Ray.

In another record for Major Peake, his CMG - Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George - made him the first person to be honoured while in space.

Major Peake, awarded for space research and scientific education, said from the International Space Station: 'I am honoured to receive the first appointment to the Most Distinguished Order of St Michael and St George for extraordinary service beyond our planet.'

Actor Brian Blessed, 79, receives an OBE for services to the arts and charity (left) and presenter and Citizen Khan actor Adil Ray (right) also received an OBE

Dame Vera Lynn (left) joins a host of showbiz names who are among the 1,149 people to receive accolades in this year's Birthday Honours. Others named OBEs were Golden Globe-winning television producer Gareth Neame (right)  who has worked on shows including Downton Abbey, Spooks and Hustle

A string of stars from the sporting world were also recognised for their achievements, with record-breaking England cricket captain Alastair Cook and former England football skipper Alan Shearer receiving CBEs for their services to cricket and charity, respectively.

Following Great Britain's triumph in the Davis Cup, Andy Murray's older brother Jamie Murray was given an OBE for services to tennis and charity, and Cup captain Leon Smith received the same honour for his services to the sport.

Despite calls for England's 1966 World Cup winning squad to be knighted in The Queen's 90th birthday honours - to mark the 50th anniversary of the famous win - none of them featured on the list.

Writer Paul Bede Johnson was given a CBE for his services to literature, and John Micklethwait, former editor-in-chief of the Economist, received the same honour for services to journalism and economics.

Martine Wiltshire, a Team GB sitting volleyball player and Paralympian, who lost both her legs in the London 7/7 bombings, was awarded an MBE.

Featured on the diplomatic service and overseas list was Baroness Amos, who was recommended to the Companion of Honour for services to the United Nations and emergency relief.

Nobel prize winner Professor Angus Stewart Deaton joined the Order of the British Empire and Knight Bachelor for his services to research in economics and international affairs.

He was accompanied by Lucian Grainge, chairman and chief executive of Universal Music Group - instrumental in the careers of artists like Amy Winehouse, The Rolling Stones and Sam Smith - for services to British business and inward investment.
Donald Trump has responded after a video went viral this week claiming to show Google has been fiddling with autocomplete results to suppress terms unfavorable to Hillary Clinton.

The presumptive Republican presidential nominee told Business Insider that if the claim it is true, 'it is a disgrace that Google would do that,' adding 'very, very dishonest.'

'They should let it float and allow people [to] see how crooked she really is,' he told the business site in a statement on Friday.

The accusation is based on Google queries conducted by SourceFed compared with searches it did on Bing and Yahoo for phrases that are unflattering to Clinton.

Scroll down for video

Donald Trump responded to claims that Google has been fiddling with autocomplete results to suppress terms unfavorable to Hillary Clinton, saying if they are true, 'it is a disgrace that Google would do that'

Hillary Clinton pictured on Friday. Search engine giant Google said the claims are not true and that 'Google Autocomplete does not favor any candidate or cause'

SourceFed Googled the terms 'Hillary Clinton cri' the word 'crime' is not in the first three autocomplete suggestions to pop up.

SourceFed's researchers got crime reform, crisis and crime bill 1994, a video shows.

On Yahoo the search brought up the terms criminal charges, crimes and criminal, in that order. Bing's search engine directed SourceFed to crimes, criminal and criminal investigation.

SourceFed found this odd given how many Google users search the terms 'Hillary Clinton crimes.'

It also found it odd that on Google's competitors' sites, 'Hillary Clinton ind' brought up terms related to a possible indictment, the top completions are Indiana, India and independent voters.

Bing and Yahoo searches immediately brought up the word indictment and related phrases.

SourceFed therefore determined from its research that Google is 'actively altering search recommendations in favor of Hillary Clinton's campaign.'

The evidence: searches for Bernie Sanders soc - socialist - and Donald Trump rac - racist - on all three sites brought up the exact same results.

'The intention is clear, Google is burying potential searches for terms that could have hurt Hillary Clinton in the primary elections over the past several months by manipulating recommendations on their site,' SourceFed said in its video.

A spokesperson for the group says that is not true.

'Google Autocomplete does not favor any candidate or cause. Claims to the contrary simply misunderstand how Autocomplete works.

'Our Autocomplete algorithm will not show a predicted query that is offensive or disparaging when displayed in conjunction with a person's name. More generally, our autocomplete predictions are produced based on a number of factors including the popularity of search terms.'

The term 'crime' falls into that category, Vox explained today. Search anyone's name and the word crime on Google and it won't show up as an autocomplete result.

SourceFed found it odd that on Google's competitors' sites, 'Hillary Clinton ind' brought up terms related to a possible indictment, yet on Google the top completions are Indiana, India and independent voters. DailyMail.com got similar results - but also an indictment related term

SourceFed's researchers got crime reform, crisis and crime bill 1994, a video shows, which is not the same result DailyMail.com, suggesting search results are based on user activity - or Google changed the result after the video went viral

That's because Google doesn't pair anyone's name up with the word crime, regardless of whether the individual is accused or or has committed one.

DailyMail.com could not SourceFed's search results.

When one user searched for Hillary Clinton cri, the first three suggestions were: criminal prosecution, crime bill 1994 and criminal video. Hillary Clinton ind brought up Indiana, India and independent - sans the word voters.

And five down in the DailyMail.com search was this term - 'indictment Benghazi.'

One possibility is that Google altered the search terms affiliated with Clinton's name after the SourceFed video made the rounds.

When asked about deviations between the results one person might compared to another user searching for the same terms and the notion that certain words may autocomplete because that a user regularly searches for that phrasing Google gave a non-specific answer.

'Our systems are periodically updated to improve Search, and our users' search activity varies, so the terms that appear in Autocomplete may change over time.'

After Google released the statement denying that its protecting Clinton specifically from negative searches, SourceFed promised a response of its own.

'We're currently working on an update to yesterday's video, stay tuned,' the video-producing site said.

On Friday, Matt Cutts who heads the webspam team at Google, hit out at SourceFed's claims in a series of tweets calling them 'simply false,' and also alleged the author of the video did not reach out to Google prior to publishing the video.

On Friday, Matt Cutts who heads the webspam team at Google, hit out at SourceFed's claims in a series of tweets calling them 'simply false'

Cutts also alleged the author of the video did not reach out to Google prior to publishing the video

'1/ @SourceFed claims "Google has been actively altering search recommendations in favor of Hillary Clinton's campaign." That's simply false,' Cutts tweeted.

'2/ Their two anecdotes: [hillary clinton in] didn't suggest [hillary clinton indictment] & [hillary clinton cri] didn't suggest crimes.'

Cutts then went on to explain that 'lots of people' searching negative things about Clinton search using just her first name and a search term, not her full name and a search term.

For example, 'Hillary ind' versus 'Hillary Clinton ind.'

He then went on writing that he asked Google's search PR and that they could not find a record of the video author reaching out to the search engine giant prior to publishing the video.

'@mattlieberman this is a super-technical area. Why make a long video of these claims without doing deeper research? It's just not true,' he tweeted.

Earlier this week, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange claimed Google has been working closely with Clinton's campaign.

'Google is directly engaged with Hillary Clintons campaign,' Assange said while speaking at a European journalism summit on Tuesday, the International Business Times reported.

While noting that Google's former CEO Eric Schmidt is now heading the Pentagon's innovation branch, Assange said 'Google is heavily integrated with Washington power, at a personal level and at a business level.'
The 21-year-old, identified only as Zara, from Wolverhampton (pictured with PC Jody Edwards) feared ending up a slave and was told by her devout father she had to undergo female genital mutilation.

A Muslim whose father plotted to marry her to a stranger online has become the subject of a groundbreaking legal order to protect her from her parents.

The 21-year-old feared ending up a slave and was told by her devout father she had to undergo female genital mutilation.

But the student was brave enough to seek help and is now the first recipient of civil court orders saving her from forced marriage and barbaric circumcision.

Although both are already offences, the order allows police to stop them taking place at all. Her family faces up to five years in prison if they defy the ruling.

The woman, identified only as Zara, is said not to blame her parents and continues to live with them. Instead she faults the community they were brought up in.

Police believe that by revealing Zaras plight they can save other women from the fate she only narrowly avoided.

Born abroad, she grew up in a run-down terraced house in Wolverhampton where she claims she was bullied for refusing to wear a face-covering burqa. We would go to family gatherings and they would get up and sit elsewhere and refuse to speak to me, she said. At 17 she received her first marriage proposal from a college friend, but the offer was withdrawn when he discovered she had not been circumcised.

When I started getting proposals, they always asked if I was circumcised. I would say no and the marriage wouldnt go ahead, she told the Mail.

This kept happening. I kept on getting rejected because I wasnt circumcised. I was told I was not a Muslim and wasnt respectable because I hadnt had it done. But I am a good Muslim. I fast during Ramadan, I pray five times a day, I wear a hijab. And the Koran does not say that women should be circumcised.

Zaras mother, who cannot speak English, was herself circumcised and had warned her daughter against the procedure. But pressure from her community and her father made her decide to look into circumcision when she turned 21.

She consulted her Muslim GP who told her that FGM was illegal and put her in touch with the NSPCC which in turn put her in touch with police. Fearing Zara would be taken out of the country and forced to marry, officers moved quickly to protect her.

They told her to secure her passport which, to her horror, she found contained an Islamic marriage registration form from her local mosque bearing her name. Signed by her father and uncle, it named a suitor in the Middle East she had never met.

The form said the marriage would be carried out on the Skype telephone service in her absence. Zara would then be wed under Islamic law without it being registered in British law.

In my country, only the man has a say in the marriage. The woman is not required to give her permission, she said.

Introduced by Labour in 2007, forced-marriage protection orders are dealt with by county courts. They can be used to confiscate passports, to restrict contact with victims and to prevent marriages being arranged. The orders guarding against FGM were introduced by David Cameron (pictured) in 2015

Women dont have to be present or sign any forms for the marriage to take place because the father can sign, or anyone from the fathers family. In my country, they dont accept a signature from a woman on her own marriage certificate.

The form did not specify when the wedding would take place.

I just didnt know whether or not I was married, said Zara. If I was, I knew I would be circumcised immediately, she recalled. I was crying my eyes out, begging to know if I was married. I fainted. I lost all hope for my future, I felt like it was the end of my life. Then, when the court order was made, I knew nobody could circumcise me or force me to marry. At that moment I felt safe.

Introduced by Labour in 2007, forced-marriage protection orders are dealt with by county courts. They can be used to confiscate passports, to restrict contact with victims and to prevent marriages being arranged. The orders guarding against FGM were introduced by David Cameron in 2015.

Police officers obtained the court orders on Zaras behalf. She said: Its not the individual parents who are at fault, its the community they are brought up in.

The people from my dads community have told him he cannot be buried in the Islamic cemetery because he is not doing his job as a father. They pressurise and emotionally blackmail parents so they circumcise their children. They say its normal and its to protect the family honour.

She appealed for girls in her position to trust the police, who she credits with saving my life.
Last Monday night the tax-dodging comedian Jimmy Carr held a party at his North London home with the most diverse and unlikely celebrity guests in attendance.

Royalty mingled with trashy reality television stars, while pop luminaries rubbed shoulders with ballroom dancers and disgraced TV presenters.

The only thing most had in common was their scandalous pasts and salacious love lives. But what on earth did the guests all talk about?

Here, CLAUDIA CONNELL imagines eavesdropping on all the gossip...

Awkward introductions

Jimmy Carr: Lord and Lady Lloyd Webber, may I introduce you to Miss Kardashian? Shes flown in today from Los Angeles.

Lord Lloyd-Webber: Hello Kim. My, your bottom looks nowhere near as big as in the photographs.

Kourtney K: Im not Kim, Im her sister Kourtney, with a K. Youre a Lord? Wow. Thats like a king, right? Can I get a selfie?

Jimmy: And this is Beatrice, shes seventh in line to the throne.

Kourtney K: OMG, theres a queue? Thats the problem with these British houses  not enough bathrooms. Ive got seven of them in my house in California.

Jimmy: No, Kourtney, shes not waiting for the toilet. I meant the royal throne. Shes a real-life Princess.

Princess Beatrice: The Queen is my grandmother.

Kourtney K: Cool. I named my youngest son Reign because were, like, Americas royal family. Although were not as dysfunctional as you guys.

Jimmy Carr with his girlfriend Karoline Copping

Jimmy: This is Jemima Khan and this is Hugh Grant, hes in Love Actually.

Kourtney K: You guys are in love? Awesome.

Hugh Grant: Well, gosh, no I mean Jems and I used to date but not any more. Im still awfully fond of her and everything but Im with Anna this evening and were sort of a couple and have kids but then I have two other kids the same age with someone else its complicated. Jem is going out with a rotter of a guy called Matthew Freud.

Jemima khan: No, Hugh. We split up.

Hugh: Oh thats right, youre with Russell Brand.

Jemima: No, we split up as well.

Hugh: Joey Essex? Harry Styles? Howard from the Halifax adverts?

Jemima: Im single!

Jimmy: And this is Vernon Kay.

Vernon kay: Hi. Can I borrow your phone?

Food for thought

Elton John: Wow, Heston, did you cook all this? Its delicious.

Jemima: Is it organic? Low-carb? Responsibly sourced?

Kourtney K: Awesome. I am, like, so gonna Instagram this.

Elton: David and I keep saying how we must get round to visiting your restaurant. Whats it called again?

Heston Blumenthal: Fat Duck.

Elton: No need for that, I only asked.

Heston: Thats what my restaurant is called, The Fat Duck. Ive got three Michelin stars and Im famous for my liquid nitrogen sorbet and snail porridge.

Jeremy Clarkson: What a load of old rubbish. Im a steak man. I go to a restaurant to eat my dinner, not get a bloody science lesson.

Sue Perkins: Do you bake, Kourtney? Do you know what a soggy bottom is?

Kourtney K: What Kim gets when she sits on a wet bench?

Vernon: No waiting jobs going, are there, Heston? Work seems to have dried up a bit lately.

Heston: Ill look into it and get back to you. Whats your mobile number?

Tess Daly: Vernon no longer has a phone, do you Vernon?

Vernon: Probably best if you email

Bringing up babies

Hugh: So exhausting being a dad, isnt it? At what age did the tantrum stage end with yours, David?

David Furnish: About 62. He naps during the day now, which really helps with the grumpiness.

Tess: Were looking for a new nanny, if any of you know of anyone...

Furnish: What are your criteria?

Tess: Old, unattractive, obese, flat-chested, doesnt speak English and doesnt know how to text. Other than that, Im pretty open to suggestions.

Taking a break

Jemima: Bea, any holidays planned?

Beatrice: No, not really. Just the South of France later this month, then Italy in July, Greek islands in September, Caribbean in October and South Africa in December and then the ski season starts.

Jemima: Dont work mind you taking all that time off?

Actor Hugh Grant and Anna Eberstein, mother of two of his children, arriving at Jimmy Carr's house party in North London

Beatrice: Oh. Dont know. Ive never asked!

david Walliams: Youre just back from Marbella, arent you, Hugh?

Jemima: I loathe Marbella. So tacky. Full of girls with giant, inflatable breasts strutting around in string bikinis.

Vernon: Where did you stay, Hugh?

Work-life balance

Lloyd Webber: Hows the new job going, Beatrice?

Beatrice: Its in finance. Complete yawn-fest, I want to do something more exciting.

Princess Beatrice of York

Lloyd Webber: Theres a job going at my theatre company, The Really Useful Group. And you couldnt be any more useless than your uncle Edward! He couldnt even make a decent cup of tea.

Beatrice: Whats the holiday allowance?

Lloyd Webber: Twenty days.

Beatrice: Per month?

Lloyd Webber: Per year.

Beatrice: Think Ill pass.

Pasha Kovalev: Not long until the next series of Strictly, Tess. Wonder who well get taking part this year?

Tess: The usual bunch of saddos and fading stars in desperate need of a career revival. Have they asked you yet, Hugh?

Walliams: Im at a loose end now Britains Got Talent has finished.

Beatrice: Who won this year?

Walliams: A magician. He was amazing. Made things just totally disappear into thin air.

Jimmy: Does he do accounts?

Hot properties

Jimmy: I hear youre house-hunting in London, Anna.

Anna Eberstein: Thats right. Im moving here full-time from Sweden so Hugh and I can live together.

Hugh: Absolutely. My bachelor days are over. I want to be like any other normal, family man  who cant commit and has a second family living across town.

Jimmy: A friend of mine is selling a fabulous house in Kings Cross. I can give you his details.

Hugh: Kings Cross? Ill say

Jimmy: Theyve really cleaned the area up now. Its nothing like the seedy red-light district it used to be.

Hugh: Second thoughts, well probably stick to Chelsea.

Elton: Thats a shame, Ive just sold a flat there  you could have had that.

Vernon Kay and Tess Daly attended Jimmy Carr's bash. They are pictured leaving the event

Jemima: Why did you sell, Elton?

Elton: Oh, you know what its like when you get older. You just want to downsize and live a simpler life.

Jimmy: So you just have the one house now?

Elton: Yes, just the one. In London, that is. Then another two in LA, one in Atlanta, a little chateau in the South of France, our main home in Windsor and an apartment in Venice.

Vernon: Shout if you need any painting or decorating doing.

Keeping Fit

Hugh: What does everyone do to stay in shape? Ive really piled on the old timber over the past few months and need to get rid of the love handles and moobs.

Tess: Zumba and Pilates does it for me.

Pasha: Strictly keeps me fit. I must practise ballroom dancing for about eight hours a day.

Rachel Riley: Ive got a rowing machine, treadmill and cross-trainer at home.

Jimmy: And would they all be tax-deductible?

Kourtney K: Make sure you upload pictures of your workout on Instagram. People totally love that. Ive got 41 million followers just from, like, posting photos of my abs and thigh gap.

Vernon: You can borrow some of my exercise DVDs if you like. Ive got loads at home: Gwyneth Paltrow, Cindy Crawford, Katie Price, Elle Macpherson, all those TOWIE girls

Walliams: Swimming is the best exercise. I swam the English Channel and the entire length of the Thames for charity.

British music star Sir Elton John (R) and partner David Furnish, a Canadian film maker

Clarkson: Youre amazing, David. I dont know where you get the energy. Id struggle to swim the length of a swimming pool.

Elton: Id struggle to swim the length of a paddling pool!

EU referendum

Elton: So, David, are you in or out?

Walliams: Look, I dont know who youve been talking to but Im straight, ok? I used to be married to a supermodel.

Furnish: Hes talking about the EU referendum, David. Elton is voting out but Im voting in  Im worried it will affect trade.

Jimmy: So hard to know what to do. Will voting out mean easyJet fares to Monaco go up? A friend was asking

Jemima: That reminds me, Jimmy, I thought I spotted you in Monaco when I was there for the Grand Prix... going into a bank.

Jimmy: Must have been a lookalike.

Rachel Riley: Im hooked on the EU opinion polls and analysing the percentages and swing vote potential. I love crunching numbers.

Jimmy: Dont do accounts, do you?

Rachel: How will you vote, Lord Lloyd-Webber?

Lloyd Webber: Voting gets me in trouble. Look at all that fuss when I jetted in first class from New York to vote in the Lords in favour of cutting tax credits for the working poor.
Theres no doubt that the human mind is a powerful organ. But is it so powerful that it can actually give you cancer?

That is the view of Noel Edmonds, who triggered anger this week when he suggested that cancer was caused by negative energy.

The 67-year-old TV presenter claimed that he had developed prostate cancer because of a stressful period in his life.

This sounds unbelievable, but hes far from alone in thinking that negative energy can somehow cause malignancy.

Noel Edmonds triggered anger this week when he suggested that cancer was caused by negative energy

Ruby Wax, the comedian-turned-mental health campaigner, recently voiced similar opinions, saying: Every single disease goes from the fact youre thinking about stress. Im talking cancer, diabetes 2, heart disease, infertility, obesity, premature ageing. All this you can give yourself, just by your own thinking.

This attitude is nothing new. Throughout the Forties and Fifties, it was accepted within the medical community that people with certain personality traits were more likely to get cancer.

Doctors would talk of type C personalities to describe people who were unemotional, unassertive and who repressed their feelings.

It was thought such buried negative emotions might end up re-directed into their body and make them prone to diseases.

Of course, this was at a time when there was much less scientific knowledge of the causes of cancer. Since then, huge advances in medical research has meant that psychologists and oncologists have rejected such theories.

Nevertheless, some cling to the view  partly, I presume, because it offers a neat explanation as to why certain people get cancer.

Indeed, it is far more reassuring to blame someones negative energy than accept the truth  life is unfair and sometimes people just get the short straw.

However, the fact is that blaming a cancer-sufferer for their own negativity is very hateful. Not only is it cruel, its also untrue.

Of course, for anyone recently diagnosed with cancer, the last thing you want to hear is some idiot suggesting it might not have happened if only you had smiled more often.

The 67-year-old TV presenter claimed that he had developed prostate cancer because of a stressful period in his life. This sounds unbelievable, but hes far from alone in thinking that negative energy can somehow cause malignancy

Worse, these kind of quack theories also make cancer-sufferers vulnerable to crooks and charlatans. Indeed, Ive had several patients reject life-saving chemotherapy in the misguided belief that positive thinking is all they needed to recover.

One woman travelled to South America to see a guru she had read about on the internet who promised to rid her of the negative energy that was causing her sickness.

Her family begged her to stay in the UK and get proper treatment. But she spent all her savings to fly to see this conman. When she failed to get better, the quack shamefully blamed her for not letting go of the negative feelings. Tragically, she died shortly after returning home.

Yet what makes this such a delicate issue is that there is a kernel of truth to such views  but it has become distorted.

Being stressed isnt going to give you cancer, but theres no doubt that our psychological state can impact on how we experience being unwell.

We know from many studies done on people suffering from cancer and chronic pain that a positive mental outlook helps improve their condition. Often, it helps relieve pain and they require less medication. But its important to put this in context.

Numerous research studies have shown that having a brighter outlook on life doesnt affect the eventual outcome. For example, optimism cant stop your cancer becoming terminal.

One study conducted into this area  the largest ever  looked at 60,000 people over a minimum period of 30 years and it took into account risk factors such as smoking or obesity.

Being stressed isnt going to give you cancer, but theres no doubt that our psychological state can impact on how we experience being unwell

The conclusion, reported in 2010, was that there was absolutely no link between personality types and the development of cancer.

Equally, there was also no link between personality and survival rates. So while having a hopeful approach to things can help us feel a bit better, its not going to affect the long-term medical prognosis.

Thus, its important that patients dont feel under pressure to feel or behave in a certain way to avoid hampering their chances of recovery. Feelings of sadness, guilt and fear are all natural and normal responses to having a life-changing illness such as cancer.

Cheery, smiley cancer patients such as the ebullient Noel Edmonds may disagree, but no one should put pressure on others to feel or behave in a certain way.

Instead, they should be free to deal with their illness and get better in whatever way they feel best.

There was a touching piece of research published recently that showed that being a charity worker is the happiest job. Apparently, these people derive the most pleasure and satisfaction from their work. Its yet more evidence, as if it were needed, that as a society weve got the wrong priorities. Money  or the pursuit of it  doesnt make you happy. People are happiest when they are helping others. What a lovely thought.

NO SEX PLEASE, WE'RE WATCHING VERSAILLES After watching the tawdry sex scenes in the BBCs new strip-off-costume-drama Versailles, I concluded how tricky it is to discuss such matters in a sensible, adult way. Especially, it would seem, with doctors. For a study published this week and reported in the Mail showed that the vast majority of GPs never ask their patients about sex. Only six per cent initiated discussions about a patients sex life. But sex is an incredibly important thing to discuss. Many medical conditions  from diabetes to depression  can affect sex lives and therefore be an important symptom when considering a diagnosis. From my experience, the type of patient least likely to be questioned is the one for whom sex is often the most important issue: young men. I think part of the reticence is due to the fact that many GPs are middle-aged women. For some reason they seem to find it awkward talking to young men about such matters. And, understandably, the young men are reluctant to initiate that conversation. Nevertheless, I believe that doctors are seriously letting patients down by not broaching the subject. I feel very strongly about this because Ive seen time and time again the fallout from this failure in psychiatric outpatient clinics. I have witnessed how one of the side-effects of antidepressants is that peoples sex life suffers. Indeed, its the main reason why young men stop taking their medication. I dont blame them: for they have discovered that one of the things that might give them some pleasure has been taken away from them. This further compounds their sense of social isolation. Since doctors dont discuss this with them, they just stop taking their pills and then avoid the doctor. Inevitably, their depression gets worse and they risk ending up in a psychiatric outpatient clinic. But there is an answer: perhaps GPs should subtly ask their patients if they watched last weeks episode of Versailles! Advertisement

There's no quick fix for curing addiction

Sugar is as bad for our health as smoking. Video games are as addictive as heroin. Energy drinks are as harmful as crack cocaine. These are just some of the ludicrous comparisons made by researchers to try to get their work noticed.

But they insult our intelligence. We are perfectly cap-able of understanding that something is risky, dangerous or unhealthy without having to listen to such daft hyperbole.

This week, we were offered more of this claptrap. Shopping addiction is as bad as drug addiction, we were told by a consultant for charity Action On Addiction.

Shopping addiction is as bad as drug addiction, we were told by a consultant for charity Action On Addiction (stock image)

Are we really expected to believe you can die from buying too many skirts in Topshop!?

While a shopping obsession can have an impact on someones life and get them heavily into debt, its not in the same league as drug addiction.

But even though the researchers have overstated their case, they raise an important point.

Shopping addiction, drug use, alcohol dependency, eating disorders are all what doctors call maladaptive coping strategies  behaviours that give someone a temporary sense of relief or respite. Of course, its just an illusion  buying new shoes or downing several vodkas doesnt really deal with your problems, but it gives, for a moment, the feeling that it does. This fleeting relief can be very powerful.

The fact is that these behaviours are the symptom of an underlying problem  often serious issues relating to how people can regulate and cope with their emotions.

Ultimately, though, the key solution means having to tackle the root of the problem. But NHS mental health services dont work in this way.

While there are individual treatment areas for drugs, alcohol, over-eating etc, there is no over-arching service to tackle the root difficulty.

This means that when someone overcomes one problem, they risk developing another. For example, a cured bulimic might then turn to drug use because while they dealt with the eating problem, they didnt address the underlying issue.

If only the NHS would treat people in a more holistic way and set up mental health services accordingly, then we might make more headway in helping the unfortunate people dogged by such self-harming behaviour.
Horrifying footage has emerged showing dog thieves stealing pets from a home by attaching a rope around their necks and dragging them up a wall.

The footage, appeared on People's Daily Online, was taken from surveillance footage above a yard in a house in eastern China.

The 47-second video comes just two weeks before the annual Yulin dog meat festival where as many as 10,000 canines are butchered, cooked and eaten to celebrate the summer solstice.

Animal catchers: The thieves enter the yard by climbing over the wall and try to grab the animals

Sickening moment: They then chase the dogs attempting to grab them by their necks with a rope

The man can be seen climbing the wall still holding the rope which is around the dog's neck

Horrifying: The dog struggles and tries to escape as the man is dragging the dog over the wall

Footage shows the animals wandering around the yard of a house in China when suddenly the dogs start to bark at something outside.

Two men appear in the video, jumping over the wall which is thought to be around six feet.

They can be seen heading towards the animals who try to move away from the men.

The men are carrying rope attached to a long stick.

In a matter of seconds, the men manage to hook the dogs and get hold of them.

One man tries to open the gate but it's locked.

They then start jump over the gate first before dragging the animals after.

The dogs look in pain as they writhe and try to avoid being dragged over.

The whole process took about 30 seconds.

According to reports, the group operate in Jiangsu and Anhui provinces.

The incident comes just two weeks ahead of the Yulin dog meat festival.

The annual festival, which takes place in south China's Guangxi Province, sees tens of thousands of animals beaten to death, cooked and sold on the market to celebrate summer solstice.

It's thought as many as 10,000 dogs - many of them believed to be stolen pets are skinned alive, butchered, cooked and eaten deep in the largely rural and poor Guangxi province.

Figures released by Humane Society International show some 30 million dogs are killed across Asia for their meat every year - some 10 to 20 million in China alone.

Protests have been staged by animal activists in a bid to stop the upcoming festival from happening, including one in Beijing today and one in London on June 7.

PETA Director Mimi Bekhechi told MailOnline: 'The violent criminals seen in the video breaking into a home and stealing two terrified dogs by dragging them over a wall with a rope around their necks must be found and brought to justice.

'We urge anyone who recognises these men or the van they were driving to contact authorities immediately before more beloved family companions meet a similar fate.

'Investigations have shown that many animals killed for China's dog-meat trade are stolen from their homes or snatched off the streets, and last year, a deeply disturbing PETA Asia eyewitness investigation revealed that dogs were bludgeoned and killed so that their skin could be turned into leather gloves, belts, jacket collar trim, cat toys and other items to be sold around the world. '

The poor animal struggles as the man drags him over a wall estimated to be six feet high
Red cracker butterflies hover around a hot pink frangipani flower. A ripe pomelo fruit attracts a pair of green-banded moths. A rainbow whiptail lizard stretches on a banana plant.

These are just some of the extraordinary specimens painted by the botanical artist Maria Sibylla Merian on her travels to the Dutch colony of Suriname at the end of the 17th century.

Fruity beauty: Ripe Pineapple with Dido Longwing Butterfly by Maria Merian now at the Queen's Gallery

Collected for an exhibition, Maria Merians Butterflies, at The Queens Gallery, Buckingham Palace, they are a lush and blooming source of inspiration. Her ruby-topaz hummingbirds and Nymphidium butterflies make you scowl at white walls and crave tropical colour and pattern.

Maria Merians meticulous watercolours capture in exact detail the hummingbirds, beasts and bees of Suriname in South America, where she arrived from Amsterdam in 1699, aged 52, with her daughter and paintbox in tow.

The Surinamese were bemused by this odd European woman with her paintbrushes and sheets of vellum.

They mocked me for seeking anything other than sugar, she wrote. Sugar was the countrys most valuable crop, exported by the thousand-tonne to rot the sweet bourgeois teeth of Holland, England and France.

Pineapple paper: Lively tropical inspired wallpaper by Barneby Gates will add a sense of fun

Nevertheless, Merian pressed on with her paintings of Carolina sphinx moths, pink-toed tarantulas, and prickly pineapples  the most outstanding of all edible fruits, she wrote, with an unsurpassable flavour.

The creepy-crawlies of Suriname agreed. One of her pineapples is painted with golden cockroaches among its leaves. Her studies were published in an exquisite book The Metamorphosis Of The Insects Of Suriname.

In 1705, King George III bought the books coloured plates for his scientific library. For pineapples as bright and tempting as Merians, try wallpaper and fabric designers .

Barneby Gates, founded by former Vogue living editor Vanessa Barneby and fine artist Alice Gates.

The design comes in two colourways: fuchsia and scarlet pineapples on cream paper or gold pineapples on charcoal (81 for a 10m roll, barnebygates.com). Vanessa says not to be afraid of bold papers.

I am all for the traditional way of wallpapering, she says, all four walls and, if its a tiny room like a downstairs loo for example, the ceiling as well.

Jungle fever: Try a daring new look with this Wild wallpaper by Wayfair 92.99

Matching the curtains or blinds to the walls is even better. Its like stepping into a jewel box.

Choosing a wallpaper with a design inspired by nature  flora and fauna  is also a lovely way of bringing the outside in, and theres something quite peaceful about that.

She also recommends the Fresco Birds design for a staircase or hallway with all the birds seeming to take flight up the stairs.

There are no butterflies in the range yet, but the Dragonfly and Honey Bees wallpapers would have delighted Merian.

The Glasgow-founded wallpaper and fabric company Timorous Beasties make a Merian Palm wallpaper (126 per metre, timorousbeasties.com), riotously alive with lizards, bananas and birds of paradise.

At that price, one might keep it for papering just the inside of a wardrobe, to give you a breezy blast of the tropics each morning. There are also Iguana (118) and White Moth cushions (138) for a dash of Merians colour.

Reptile textile: The Iguana cushion by Glasgow based designers Timorous Beasties

Paul Simmons, co-founder of Timorous Beasties, says that with a paper as flamboyant as their Birds n Bees pattern (300 per 10m roll), with its parrots, macaws and songbirds, you might use it just on one wall. Because of its scale and drama, there is no need to have it everywhere.

John Lewis stocks a Butterfly Parade Wallpaper by Christian Lacroix for Designers Guild. It is psychedelically colourful  a choice for the bold (65 per 10m roll, johnlewis.com).

The more nervous soul could start with a Wedgwood Butterfly Bloom mug (25).

The Parisian family firm Tillier Decoration makes lampshades based on designs from antique botanical and travellers prints.

There are elephants at the watering hole, great clouds of butterflies and scenes of the jungles of Peru (from 71, tillierdecoration.wordpress.com).

Graham & Green sells a family of resin monkey lamps, standing, sitting, or hanging like chandeliers from the ceiling (from 150, grahamandgreen.co.uk), while Dar Lighting sells a golden pineapple lamp base (72.50, from wayfair.co.uk).

Surinamese cockroaches most definitely not included.
The region is informally named Krun Macula, a reference to the Mandaean lord of the underworld

at the border of the plain and can be twice as deep as the Grand Canyon

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Nasa has released a new image from the New Horizons spacecraft, revealing the jagged highlands that border the southeastern portion of Plutos great ice plains.

The region is informally named Krun Macula, a reference to the Mandaean lord of the underworld.

According to the astronomers, the highlands sit 1.5 miles above the plain, dotted with clusters of circular pits that create deep valleys stretching more than 25 miles long.

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Nasa has released a new image from the New Horizons spacecraft, revealing the jagged highlands that border the southeastern portion of Plutos great ice plains. The region is informally named Krun Macula, a reference to the Mandaean lord of the underworld

KRUN MACULA Krun Macula reaches 1.5 miles above Sputnik Planum, the surrounding plain. Along the highlands are clusters of connected, roughly circular pits that reach between 5 and 8 miles across, and up to 1.5 miles deep. The pits form boundaries at the border of the plain, which can be 25 miles long, 12.5 miles wide, and almost 2 miles deep. Advertisement

The valleys at the border of Sputnik Planum, the informal name of the surrounding plain, are almost twice as deep as the Grand Canyon and are covered with nitrogen ice.

These formations are up to 12.5 miles wide, and almost two miles deep.

They may have been formed as a result of surface collapse, the astronomers say, though what caused the collapse remains a mystery.

Many of the clusters along Krun Macula are connected, and can be up to 1.5 miles deep, the researchers say.

In the image, Plutos striking red colour can also be seen.

Scientists believe this is a result of complex molecules called tholins, which are found along much of the surface.

To create the scene, astronomers stitched together three separate New Horizons observations from July 2015.

The highlands sit 1.5 miles above the plain, dotted with clusters of circular pits

On the right side, they used 260 feet-per-pixel data from the Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI).

This was taken 9,850 miles from Pluto, roughly 23 minutes before New Horizons closest approach.

The left half of the image is made up of 410 feet-per-pixel LORRI data, taken about six minutes earlier.

At this point, New Horizons was 15,470 miles from Pluto.

The images come from the highest and second highest-resolution observations made by the spacecraft, Nasa says.

It was colourized using New Horizons Ralph/Multispectral Visual Imaging Camera.

Earlier this month, Nasa revealed a new mystery on the dwarf planet.

Taken only a few minutes after closest approach on July 14, 2015, it shows the 'twilight zone' or haze of the planet.

It also appears to show a cloud - which Nasa describes as ' an intriguing bright wisp measuring tens of miles'.

The space agency believes it could be a low-lying cloud in Pluto's atmosphere, making it the only one yet identified in New Horizons imagery.

The image was obtained at a high phase angle that is, with the sun on the other side of Pluto, as viewed by New Horizons.

Seen here, sunlight filters through and illuminates Pluto's complex atmospheric haze layers.

Nasa's New Horizons spacecraft took this stunning image of Pluto only a few minutes after closest approach on July 14, 2015. It shows sunlight filtering through and illuminating Pluto's complex atmospheric haze layers. It also appears to show a cloud - which Nasa describes as ' an intriguing bright wisp measuring tens of miles'.

The southern portions of the nitrogen ice plains informally named Sputnik Planum, as well as mountains of the informally named Norgay Montes, can also be seen across Pluto's crescent at the top of the image.

Looking back at Pluto with images like this gives New Horizons scientists information about Pluto's hazes and surface properties that they can't get from images taken on approach.

The image was obtained by New Horizons' Ralph/Multispectral Visual Imaging Camera (MVIC) approximately 13,400 miles (21,550 kilometers) from Pluto, about 19 minutes after New Horizons' closest approach.

THE BIGGEST ICE VOLCANO IN THE SOLAR SYSTEM: IMAGES REVEAL 90 MILE-WIDE CRYOVOLCANO ON PLUTO The most detailed image yet of a giant mountain on Pluto, which is suspected to be an ice volcano, was released by Nasa last month. It is one of two potential cryovolcanoes spotted on the surface of Pluto by the New Horizons spacecraft in July 2015. At about 90 miles (150km) across and 2.5 miles (4km) high, this feature is enormous. The feature, known as Wright Mons, was informally named by the New Horizons team in honor of the Wright brothers. If it is in fact a volcano, as suspected, it would be the largest such feature discovered in the outer solar system. 'These are big mountains with a large hole in their summit, and on Earth that generally means one thing  a volcano,' said Oliver White, a New Horizons researcher. The most detailed image yet of a giant mountain on Pluto, which is suspected to be an ice volcano, has been released by Nasa (left). It is one of two potential cryovolcanoes spotted on the surface of Pluto by the New Horizons spacecraft in July 2015. At about 90 miles (150km) across and 2.5 miles (4km) high, this feature is enormous Mission scientists are baffled by the sparse distribution of red material in the image and wonder why it is not more widespread. Also perplexing is that there is only one identified impact crater on Wright Mons itself, telling scientists that the surface - as well as some of the crust underneath - was created relatively recently. This is turn may indicate that Wright Mons was volcanically active late in Pluto's history. The other potential ice volcano on Pluto has been named Piccard Mons, is up to 3.5 miles (6 km) high. Both ice volcanoes are located near Pluto's South Pole. 'We're not yet ready to announce we have found volcanic constructs at Pluto, but these sure look suspicious and we're looking at them very closely,' said Jeff Moore, a planetary scientist at Nasa said in an earlier release. Nasa says that if Pluto does have cryovolcanoes, it may be an indication that there is volatile ice that coats its surface. Advertisement

The image has a resolution of 1,400 feet (430 meters) per pixel. Pluto's diameter is 1,475 miles (2,374 kilometers).

The inset at top right shows a detail of Pluto's crescent, including an intriguing bright wisp (near the center) measuring tens of miles across that may be a discreet, low-lying cloud in Pluto's atmosphere; if so, it would be the only one yet identified in New Horizons imagery.

This cloud  if that's what it is  is visible for the same reason the haze layers are so bright: illumination from the sunlight grazing Pluto's surface at a low angle.

Atmospheric models suggest that methane clouds can occasionally form in Pluto's atmosphere.

The scene in this inset is 140 miles (230 kilometers) across.

The inset at bottom right shows more detail on the night side of Pluto.

This terrain can be seen because it is illuminated from behind by hazes that silhouette the limb.

A full-resolution, unannotated view of Plutos Twilight Zone. The image was obtained by New Horizons' Ralph/Multispectral Visual Imaging Camera (MVIC) approximately 13,400 miles (21,550 kilometers) from Pluto, about 19 minutes after New Horizons' closest approach.

The topography here appears quite rugged, and broad valleys and sharp peaks with relief totaling 3 miles (5 kilometers) are apparent.

This image, made from closer range, is much better than the lower-resolution images of this same terrain taken several days before closest approach.

These silhouetted terrains therefore act as a useful 'anchor point,' giving New Horizons scientists a rare, detailed glimpse at the lay of the land in this mysterious part of Pluto seen at high resolution only in twilight.

The scene in this inset is 460 miles (750 kilometers) wide.

When scientists received the first high resolution images of Pluto last year, they were amazed to find an intricate network of shapes covering its icy surface.
Many knee operations conducted by keyhole surgery are no more effective than painkillers, according to a leading surgeon.

Professor Andrew Carr said the success of such procedures was often down to the placebo effect, where patients feel better as a result of their belief in the treatment.

He warned some who had keyhole knee surgery suffered serious complications such as infections or pulmonary embolisms. Some people die, he said.

I dont think we should be doing operations where the entire effect is placebo, the founder and director of the University of Oxford Institute of Musculoskeletal Sciences told the Cheltenham Science Festival.

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Many knee operations conducted by keyhole surgery are no more effective than painkillers, according to a leading surgeon

Professor Carr was discussing a study comparing patients who underwent keyhole surgery with those who had simply had an anaesthetic and incision but no surgical procedure.

The research by scientists at Lund University in Sweden involved a systematic review of previous studies of arthroscopy used to treat pain caused by tears in cartilage or arthritis.

The procedure involves using a device called an arthroscope, a thin, metal tube with a light source and a camera inserted via a small incision.

This allows a detailed examination and sometimes treatment by a surgeon seeing the inside of the knee on a video screen.

The Swedish researchers found that both arthroscopy and exercise improved knee pain, although the surgical procedure was slightly better.

Researchers said the improvement was about the equivalent of using a painkiller such as paracetamol

However, they said the improvement was about the equivalent of using a painkiller such as paracetamol. They found that around one in 1,000 died a result of the procedure.

Also speaking at the science festival, psychologist Felicity Bishop said the placebo effect can be used without surgery by doctors to improve treatment. Research suggests that doctors who encourage their patients to be more confident and optimistic about their treatment and do so in an empathic, sympathetic way can indeed increase the effectiveness of treatment, she added.

Professor Andrew George, an immunologist and deputy vice-chancellor of Brunel University, said that in the 18th century doctors worked with a huge sense of drama.

They actually bigged it up so it had the placebo effect, he said.

You could argue that weve gone to the other extreme, where were trying to almost de-emphasise the drama, make it routine, so going to the doctor seems like going to the local supermarket.

It may be that actually, we are losing some of the effectiveness by taking the magic out of it.

He added that conventional doctors might learn from homeopaths because their consultations had a placebo effect.

Professor Carr said much of the placebo effect was a result of offering good care, giving patients detailed explanations and lots of information.

If we can adopt those across other areas in medicine we should do that to get better effects, he told the festival.

He added that placebo treatment worked only for appropriate conditions, but there were an enormous number of those conditions and disabilities.
THE BIZARRE MARTIAN ZOO THAT ALIEN HUNTERS HAVE SPOTTED ON MARS

It has become a popular past time in some of the stranger corners of the internet - searching for rocks that look like animals in photographs sent back by Nasa's Mars rovers.

Among the recent creatures to join this red planet 'zoo' is one that looks like a silver back gorilla.

Beside it, eagle eyed enthusiasts say there is another rock that looks much like a camel.

Others have said the two rocks look more like a mother bear and its cub.

Videos posted by a mysterious animal and UFO enthusiast calling himself Mister Enigma also claimed to have spotted an octopus like creature on Mars and an Egyptian statue built by Martians.

Previously conspiracy theorists have found everything from 'crabs' and 'lizards' to 'bears' and 'rabbits', by combing images of the red planet taken by rovers such as Curiosity.

Of course, however, the majority of experts believe they are simply interestingly-shaped rocks and it is a clever trick of the mind that makes us think we're seeing creatures.

In October last year, UFO hunters spotted a baby bear on Mars and claimed that it was alive, based on its 'hair' and shadows seen around its body.

It was pinpointed by YouTube user Paranormal Crucible among photos of Gale Crater taken by Nasa's Curiosity rover, who alerted the website UFO Sightings Daily.

Site editor Scott C Waring, who is based in Taiwan, said: 'There is a reason Nasa puts photos into black and white. To hide the living creatures and plants that are an obvious colour.

One month earlier, a blogger claimed to have seen a lizard meandering around Mars.

The claim, posted again on UFO Sightings Daily, caused some excitable conspiracy theorists to fear Nasa could be planting life on the planet for scientific testing.

'With water existing on Mars in small amounts, it's possible to find such desert animals wandering around...although very rare mind you,' Mr Waring wrote on his site.

In November 2013, a 'fossilised Martian lizard' caused considerable excitement.

The mysterious object was first spotted by UFO Sightings Daily which uncovered the photograph in Nasa's archives.

It would be easy to miss, but the keen eye of Scott Waring, who owns the site, was able to spot the 'iguana' rock in photos taken by the Mars Curiosity rover.

In August, alien hunters shared an image on 'Journey to the Surface of the Mars' Facebook page of a mysterious Martian 'facehugger crab,' which they noted bears some resemblance from the monster in 'Alien'.

A year previously, alien hunters spotted a 'frog' on Mars (pictured above). The dubious discovery was made by Jason Hunter who shared a video showing the amphibian-shaped rock on YouTube

The 'crab' can be seen in an image taken by the Mars rover Curiosity, which shows a formation that looks like a cave mouth on the red planet.

A year previously, alien hunters spotted a 'frog' on Mars.

The dubious discovery was made by Jason Hunter who shared a video showing the amphibian-shaped rock on YouTube.

Other small animals have also been spotted, including a rat, eagle and rabbit.

Photographed in 2014, Nasa admitted that its Opportunity rover had snapped an object that resembled a rabbit.

Jeff Johnson, a scientist from the US Geological Survey was alerted to a small 'fuzzy-looking object' measuring about two inches long (4-5cm).
When an enormous section of the Antarctic ice shelf equivalent to the size of Rhode Island disintegrated in a matter of days, it sparked worldwide concern.

But analysis of recently declassified images from spy satellites have revealed that the destabilisation of the Larsen B ice shelf on the Antarctic Peninsula was already underway in the 1960s.

Researchers who have examined the images say the ice shelf was already accelerating in the 1960s and 1970s, and by the late 1980s it was 20 per cent faster than the previous decades.

Satellite images taken by the CIA's ARGON spy satellite have revealed how the accelerated movement that triggered the collapse of the Larsen B ice shelf on the east side of the Antarctic Peninsula began in the 1960s. The declassified images taken by the satellite on 29 August 1963 and 1 September 1963 are pictured right

WHAT HAPPENED TO LARSEN B In 2002 a massive section of the Larsen B ice shelf disintegrated in just 32 days. The 656 feet (200m) thick ice sheet broke apart into thousands of ice bergs that gradually drifted away over several years In total 1,235 square miles of ice collapsed into the sea. It is thought increased ice flow from behind the ice shelf had weakened it and caused cracks to appear. Melt water flowing into these cracks acted as wedges that forced the ice shelf apart, causing it to shatter. About 625 square miles of Larsen B remains - an area roughly the size of Lake Superior and Lake Michigan combined. Advertisement

They say it appears rising temperatures in the region were having an impact on the movement of the vast ice sheets long before the problem came to worldwide attention.

The collapse of the Larsen B ice shelf on the east side of the Antarctic Peninsula in 2002 saw a 1,235 square miles (3,200 square km) section of ice break apart into thousands of icebergs in just 35 days.

Larsen B was thought to have been stable for up to 12,000 years, according to studies on the collapse, but had become a hotspot of global warming.

Previous studies had suggested that the ice shelfs began melting only a few years before it disintegrated in 2002.

Rising summertime temperatures are thought to have increased the water flow into cracks which then acted like wedges to lever the ice shelf apart.

It sparked widespread concern about the impact that climate change is having on the ice sheet balance in Antarctica, although a recent study showed ice mass on the continent has actually increased.

But analysis of a series of images taken by the CIA's ARGON spy satellites have allowed scientists to reconstruct the ice shelf's movements further back into history than previously possible.

Writing in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, Shujie Wang, a glaciologist at the University of Cincinnati, and her colleagues said: 'This allowed us to extend the ice velocity records of Larsen Ice Shelf back into 1960s ~ 1970s for the first time.

'The retrospective analysis revealed that acceleration of the collapsed Larsen B occurred much earlier than previously thought.'

The Larsen B ice shelf is thought to be one of the largest collapses of sea ice to have been witnessed. It lies off the east coast of the Antarctic Peninsula, which is thought to be a warming hotspot

The researchers say the acceleration of ice flow seen in the Larsen B ice shelf may be due to changes in the properties of the ice itself.

ANTARCTICA HAS BEEN GAINING MORE ICE THAN IT IS LOSING Antarctica is gaining more ice than it loses, research by Nasa last year found. It said Antarctica's ice sheet is thickening enough to outweigh increased losses caused by melting glaciers. The research challenges the conclusions of other studies, including the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's report which says that Antarctica is losing land ice overall. But it also warns that losses could offset the gains in years to come. The increase in Antarctic snow began 10,000 years ago and continues in East Antarctica and the interior of West Antarctica by an average of 0.7 inches (1.7cm) per year, according to the space agency. Researchers analysed satellite data to demonstrate the Antarctic ice sheet showed a net gain of 112 billion tons of ice a year from 1992 to 2001. That net gain slowed to 82 billion tons of ice per year between 2003 and 2008. Advertisement

Melting may have caused the ice to become more plastic and increased the slipperiness of the ice behind the ice shelf, bushing it further out to sea.

Professor Hongxing Liu, head of environmental sensing at the University of Cincinnati and senior author of the study, said this would have put more strain on the ice and weakened it.

Writing in the journal said: 'During 19631988, the Larsen B ice front advanced by around 10 km (6.2 miles).'

The collapse of the Larsen Ice shelf in 2002, which is one of the biggest on record, is thought to have triggered further acceleration and thinning of the glaciers behind it.

There are now growing fears over the remaining section of the Larsen B ice shelf - which is around 625 square miles, and the large Larsen C ice shelf further to the south.

A recent study revealed that on the opposite side of the Antarctic Peninsula, more than 386 square miles of ice  an area the size of Berlin  has been lost in the past 40 years.

But elsewhere in the Antarctic, the ice sheet has been growing. Satellite data showed that the continent's vast ice sheet has showed a net gain of 112 billion tons of ice each year between 1992 and 2001.

However, between 2003 and 2008, that has slowed to 82 billion tons of ice per year.

In 2002 a massive section of the Larsen B ice shelf disintegrated in around a monnth. The 656 feet (200m) thick ice sheet broke apart into thousands of ice bergs that gradually drifted away over several years

Cracks that appeared in the Larsen B ice shelf ultimately led to its collapse (pictured) sparked widespread alarm over the speed at which it fell apart and fears it was being driven by global warming
Google's plans to introduce its popular 'Street View' service in India have hit a roadblock today.

The interior ministry said it had rejected an application from the tech giant citing security concerns - although the government could yet approve it.

The company applied several months ago to bring in the street-mapping feature showing 360-degree panoramic images of streets, monuments, mountains and rivers - a service it first introduced in the US in 2007.

Street View is currently available in India at some tourist attractions, including the Taj Mahal in Agra and Delhi's Qutub Minar monument. Since its launch in 2007, Google Street View has captured some of the world's most far-flung and scenic destinations, including the Amazon rainforest, Antarctica and Canada's Arctic tundra

WHY WAS IT BANNED? The defence ministry said it was not possible to monitor the service once it was launched and it would be detrimental to national security. Some reports have suggested the delay is due to a controversial draft law, the Geospatial Information Regulation Bill, which proposes imposing strict new rules on the publication of maps. Maps are a highly sensitive issue in India, which has long-running border disputes with several of its neighbours, most famously over the divided Himalayan region of Kashmir. Advertisement

An interior ministry spokesman told AFP that Google's proposal had been rejected but added that a final decision would likely be taken later in the year.

'We have rejected the plan by Google to expand its maps feature,' the spokesman said.

'The final decision would come hopefully sometime this year,' he said without elaborating further.

A Google spokesman told AFP the government had 'not indicated to us that the application has been rejected'.

Since its launch in 2007, Google Street View has captured some of the world's most far-flung and scenic destinations, including the Amazon rainforest, Antarctica and Canada's Arctic tundra.

Street View is currently available in India at some tourist attractions, including the Taj Mahal in Agra and Delhi's Qutub Minar monument.

Google's plans to introduce its popular 'Street View' service in India have hit a roadblock today. The interior ministry said it had rejected an application from the tech giant citing security concerns - although the government could yet approve it

The Hindu newspaper said permission for the feature was denied after the Indian defence ministry raised red flags.

'The defence ministry said it was not possible to monitor the service once it was launched and it would be detrimental to national security,' the paper quoted a senior government official as saying.

Some reports have suggested the delay is due to a controversial draft law, the Geospatial Information Regulation Bill, which proposes imposing strict new rules on the publication of maps.

Maps are a highly sensitive issue in India, which has long-running border disputes with several of its neighbours, most famously over the divided Himalayan region of Kashmir.

India is a vast yet challenging market for Google, with only a quarter of its 1.2 billion citizens online.
The Natural History Museum is one of London's biggest attractions, and home to the enormous skeletons of many animals.

Last year, the museum announced that the huge skeleton a blue whale would be taking main stage in the entry hall.

But it seems that the blue whale skeleton, which has hung inside the Natural History Museum for eight decades, was held together with newspaper.

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An artist's impression of how the skeleton of a blue whale will look suspended and 'diving' from the ceiling of the Hintze Hall at the attraction in London

HOME TO 80 MILLION TREASURES The Natural History Museum holds over 80 million specimens, including mammoth skeletons and items from the voyages of Charles Darwin and Captain James Cook. The museum has a moon rock brought back from the Apollo 17 mission, the only piece in the UK. It keeps a 900-strong colony of tiny flesh-eating beetles, which it uses to strip carcasses down to skeletons for study or display. The most valued fossil in the museum's collection is the archaeopteryx, or the 'first bird', which is 150 million years old. Advertisement

The blue whale, which was bought by the museum from a merchant for 250 in 1891, will replace Dippy the Diplodocus, who has stood in Hintze Hall for 35 years.

As staff helped to relocate the 25-metre long blue whale, they discovered a number of copies of the Kent Messenger newspaper, which had been used to hold the fragile bones together.

The editions used to hold the skeleton together include the Christmas Eve edition of the local paper - from 1932.

A museum spokesperson said: 'Various issues of the Kent Messenger have been discovered in the 'stuffing' of our iconic blue whale skeleton here in South Kensington.

'Workmen onsite clearly had connections to the county and perhaps even intended on creating this time capsule for the modern museum to eventually uncover.'

The museum is replacing the iconic skeleton of a diplodocus, affectionately named 'Dippy', in summer 2017, as a reminder of 'our responsibility to the planet'.

The change is part of a 'decade of transformation' planned at the museum by its director, Sir Michael Dixon.

The whale, previously the centrepiece of the Mammal Hall, and a resident of the museum since 1891, is a symbol of environmental destruction and hope, according to the museum's director, Sir Michael Dixon.

As staff helped to relocate the 25-metre long blue whale, they discovered a number of copies of the Kent Messenger newspaper

From early 2018, Dippy, who is between 156 and 145 million years old and 68.8ft long, will go on tour around the UK.

The whale, previously the centrepiece of the Mammal Hall, and a resident of the museum since 1891, is a symbol of environmental destruction and hope, according to Sir Dixon.

Blue whales are the biggest animals ever to have lived on Earth, weighing around 160 tonnes, but they were hunted to near extinction for their oil, meat and body parts.

The animals are still endangered but the population has recovered ten-fold after being granted protected status in 1967.

Sir Dixon said: 'The story of the blue whale reminds us of the scale of our responsibility to the planet.

'Our purpose is to challenge the way people think about the natural world, and that goal has never been more urgent.'

During the change over between Dippy and the wale, conservators have had to carefully de-install the displays.

The museum spokesperson added: 'In preparation for [the blue whale's] arrival in Hintze Hall in 2017, the Plaster-of-Paris-like material that was used to conjoin the fragile bones in the 1930s has unveiled its secrets.'
Music will stop play if users stops moving their fingers

Taught system which movements to accept and which to reject

Playing the worlds saddest song on the worlds tiniest violin is no longer just a sarcastic dream.

Using a tiny-radar based chip, the team at Design I/O built a device that detects the movements of this unsympathetic gesture and transforms them into a violin solo.

This innovation is based on Googles Project Soli, which uses invisible radar emanating from a chip to recognize finger movements and broad beam radar to detect movement, velocity and distance.

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Using a tiny-radar based chip, the team at Design I/O has built a device that detects movements of the unsympathetic gesture and transforms them into a violin solo. This invention is based on Googles Project Soli - a tiny radar chip that detects hand gestures

HOW WAS THE WORLD'S TINIEST VIOLIN MADE? Using a tiny-radar based chip, the team at Design I/O has built a device that detects movements of the unsympathetic gesture and transforms them into a violin solo. This invention is based on Googles Project Soli, a system that uses radar technology for motion tracking, emitting electromagnetic waves through a tiny chip and measuring the reflected waves. Design I/O used the Wekinator machine learning tool and openFrameworks to detect if the users hand is making a motion that resembles two fingers moving together  as if theyre playing a mini violin. To build this tiny violin, the team first taught the Wekinator different finger movements that represent the playing of a violin and which ones are not acceptable. The final step mapped the number to the volume of the violin ample that was being played back by the openFrameworks app. Advertisement

Silo works by using the 60Ghz radar spectrum at up to 10,000 frames per seconds.

These movements are then translated into commands that mimic touches on a screen.

The 'Worlds Tiniest Violin' is a speed project that uses Googles technology, according to Creative Applications.

Design I/O detects if the users hand is making a motion that resembles two fingers moving together  as if theyre playing a mini violin.

Users simply place their thumb and forefinger over the device, start rubbing them together and a tune using just the string instrument will play  which some might deem the saddest tune in the world.

And when you stop playing, so does the Soli.

To build this tiny violin, the team first taught the Wekinator different finger movements that represent the playing of a violin and which ones are not acceptable.

Using the software, the team recorded different movements and assigned an output value of 1.0 on the Wekinator slider.

Then they set the slider to 0.0 to record gestures the system should reject.

After a few minutes of recording these gestures, the training was initiated and they were then able to send back an animated value ranging from 0.0 to 1.0 representing how much the hand looked like it was trying to play a tiny violin, says Creative Applications.

And the final step mapped the number to the volume of the violin ample that was being played back by the openFrameworks app.

The Worlds Tiniest Violin is a speed project that uses Googles technology, according to Creative Applications. Design I/O used the Wekinator machine learning tool and openFrameworks to detect if the users hand is making a motion that resembles two fingers moving together  as if theyre playing a mini violin

Google unveiled Project Soli last year, which was the brain child of Ivan Poupyrev  technical program lead for the search giant.

'Using a tiny, microchip-based radar to track hand movements we can now track the minutest movements and twitches of the human hand to interact with computers and wearable devices, he told MailOnline.com.

To build this tiny violin, the team first taught the Wekinator different finger movements that represent the playing of a violin and which ones are not acceptable. Using the software, the team recorded different movements and assigned an output value of 1.0 on the Wekinator slider

The whole world is becoming a gadget that we interact with, with software everywhere, which raises the question how can we react with the entire world?'

The Russian inventor's reply is to track our finger movements creating virtual dials, touchpads, and more.

HOW DOES PROJECT SOLI WORK? Google's Project Soli uses invisible radar emanating from a microchip to recognize finger movements. In particular, it uses broad beam radar to recognize movement, velocity and distance. It works using the 60Ghz radar spectrum at up to 10,000 frames per seconds. Project Soli uses invisible radar emanating from a microchip to recognize finger movements. In particular, it uses broad beam radar to recognize movement, velocity and distance. These movements are then translated into commands that mimic touches on a screen. The chips, developed with German manufacturer Infineon, are small enough to be embedded into wearables and other devices. The biggest challenge was said to be to have been to shrink a shoebox-sized radar - typically used by police in speed traps - into something tiny enough to fit on a microchip. Inspired by advances in communications being readied for next-generation Wi-Fi called Wi-Gig, leading researcher Ivan Poupyrev's team shrank the components of a radar down to millimeters in just 10 months. Advertisement

The team said its biggest challenge was to shrink a shoebox-sized radar - typically used by police in speed traps - into something tiny enough to fit on a microchip.
Japan's first 'naked restaurant' opens in Tokyo next month with draconian rules of entry - podgy prospective diners will be weighed and ejected if found to be too fat.

Following the lead of establishments in London and Melbourne, 'The Amrita' - Sanskrit for 'immortality' - also has strict age restrictions, with only patrons between 18 and 60 allowed in, after they check in their clothes and put on paper underwear provided by the restaurant.

'If you are more than 33lb above the average weight for your height, we ask you refrain from making a reservation,' a list of rules posted on the restaurant's website states, explaining that patrons could be weighed if they do not appear to be within the correct weight range.

Japan's first 'naked restaurant' opens in Tokyo next month with draconian rules of entry - podgy prospective diners will be weighed and ejected if found to be too fat

Guests found to be 'overweight' will be refused entry to the restaurant, which opens on July 29, and will not be entitled to a refund, its website points out. All payments must be made in advance on an online booking page.

The list of rules asks visitors not to 'cause a nuisance to other guests' by touching or talking to fellow diners. Tattooed customers are barred from entry.

Those who meet the restaurant's entry requirements will be asked to lock away mobile phones and cameras in a table-top box.

Diners will fork out up to 80,000 yen ($750) for tickets at Tokyo's first naked restaurant

The restaurant owners were not immediately available for comment when contacted by AFP.

Guests will fork out up to 80,000 yen (520 or $750) for tickets entitling them to eat food served by muscle-bound men wearing g-strings and watch a dance show featuring male models.

Meal tickets, not including a show, will cost from 14,000 (90, $130), to 28,000 yen (180, $260) depending on choice of menu.

Earlier this week MailOnline reported on a naked restaurant that is set to open in London.

Bunyadi, in Shoreditch, is billing itself as the capital's first nude restaurant, where customers are free to hang out and enjoy a meal while stark naked.

The Bunyadi is the new project of the people behind ABQ, a Breaking Bad-inspired cocktail bar in trendy Shoreditch, where revellers mix their drinks using test tubes and conical flasks.

Founder Seb Lyall said: 'We believe people should get the chance to enjoy and experience a night out without any impurities: no chemicals, no artificial colours, no electricity, no gas, no phone and even no clothes if they wish to. The idea is to experience true liberation.'

The restaurant will be separated into two sections, a 'non-naked' half, where diners can keep their clothes on, and a 'naked and pure' section, where customers can sit in their birthday suits.

A changing room is on hand and modest diners will be given a gown and slippers to protect their modesty if they wish.

Photography is banned at the restaurant - whose name means 'natural' - and the menus are divided between 'vegan' and 'non-vegan'.
A celebrated violinist says she was forced to hold her 18th-century instrument on her lap throughout a one-hour flight after British Airways staff wouldn't allow the case to be brought into the cabin as hand luggage.

Cecilia Bernardini wrapped a scarf around the violin in an attempt to protect it when she flew from Amsterdam to London for a performance at Wigmore Hall.

When she checked in at Schiphol airport she was told the case would have to travel in the cargo hold because there was no room for it in the passenger cabin.

Musicians say air travel is a stressful experience (pictured: a file photo of an Antonio Stradivarius violin)

BRITISH AIRWAYS' POLICY ON MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS On its website, British Airways tells passengers they can bring musical instruments on board as part of, but not in addition to, their free hand luggage allowance. However, the instruments and their cases must fit within the maximum bag dimensions, up to 40cm by 30cm by15cm (16in by 12in by 6in). The airline said it tries to accommodate slightly larger instruments, where possible, and instruments that are too large to be carried in the cabin must be checked in. A passenger's checked instrument is part of his or her checked baggage allowance, meaning they could face excess baggage charges. British Airways said it will carry instruments larger and heavier than the standard checked baggage limits, up to 45kg (99lbs) and 190cm by 75cm by 65cm (75in by 29.5in by 25.5in) as long as at least 24 hours' notice is given. It asks passengers to transport their musical instruments in a hard backed case. Advertisement

The Dutch-Italian performer, who leads the Scotland-based Dunedin Consort, didn't want to risk it on last Saturday's flight, so she took the violin on board with her and checked the case, which contained three bows, the Strad reported.

A British Airways spokeswoman told MailOnline: 'We are sorry that our customer was unable to make use of our extra hand baggage allowance for instruments on this occasion, as there were an unusually high number of musicians booked on to the flight.'

She said the airline does its best to accommodate instruments larger than the standard hand luggage size if passengers notify staff at least 24 hours before the scheduled departure.

MailOnline has contacted Bernardini for comment. The musician, who performs on modern and baroque violins, is scheduled to appear at a festival in Copenhagen this weekend.

British Airways said 'there were an unusually high number of musicians booked on to the flight'

With policies varying by airline, many musicians have encountered problems while travelling with expensive or priceless instruments.

There have been a number of situations in recent years where performers have been forced to remove their instruments from their cases in order to bring them on board or check them into the hold and hope for the best.

Fellow violinist Paula Muldoon, an Irish-American musician who is based in London, started a petition after learning of Bernardini's ordeal, and is urging British Airways to change its policy and allow smaller instruments such as violins as hand luggage.

She told MailOnline Travel: 'It's a problem that we all face every time we come to an airport. We're not sure if we'll be able to get on the plane [with our instrument]. It's a constant source of stress.'

Muldoon said British Airways is 'generally really good' when it comes to allowing musicians to carry their instruments on board.

Even one small crack - as a result of being mishandled or extreme cold at a plane's cruising altitudes - can render a violin unplayable, lead to repairs or financial losses in the thousands of pounds or cause the instrument to be permanently devalued.

This instance seems to be an unfortunate misjudgement by a member of airline staff, who probably would have had second thoughts had they seen the valuation of this 18th-century instrument Simon Morris, owner and managing director of London's world renowned musical instrument shop J&A Beare

Muldoon said: 'It's completely not safe to put a violin or a viola into the hold, they're so delicate.'

Her insurance policy would not cover her violin travelling in the hold of an aeroplane unless it's packed in a 'suitable case', which does not exist, she said.

Muldoon wrote in the petition: 'We believe that BA needs to understand that the instruments we carry around are not just tools of our trade but also priceless works of art.

'If any instrument or bow were to be damaged because the staff insisted on its being transported in an unsafe manner, it would be a tragedy not just for the individual musician but for the dozens of musicians who will play it in the future and the thousands of audience members who could have been moved and inspired by the instrument.'

Musician Fiona Brice, from Brighton, told MailOnline that Bernardini's story didn't surprise her.

She said: 'This isn't the first time I have seen an airline forcing instruments to be carried unprotected in the cabin, it's insulting to professional musicians and is an insurance nightmare.

'BA are supposed to be musician friendly, but the ground staff are sometimes ill-informed.'

Simon Morris, owner and managing director of London's world renowned musical instrument shop J&A Beare, said: 'For a musician, flying with an instrument is a monthly, if not weekly, necessity: international travel is just part and parcel of the job. In the vast majority of cases airline staff are very helpful and use discretion when dealing with musicians and their instruments.

'This instance seems to be an unfortunate misjudgement by a member of airline staff, who probably would have had second thoughts had they seen the valuation of this 18th-century instrument.
Manchester Airport is launching direct flights to mainland China today - the only hub in the UK outside London to offer such a service.

The non-stop flights from the North West will touch down in Beijing, signalling a significant development for UK aviation and the regional economy.

The service will be run by Hainan airlines.

The inaugural flight of the direct service from Manchester Airport to Beijing will take-off today (Friday)

Announced in October 2015 by the President of the People's Republic of China, His Excellency Xi Jinping, the four-times-a-week service will open up a wealth of trade and tourism opportunities.

Hainan Airlines is China's largest privately owned airline, and since 2011 it has won five consecutive global Skytrax five-star airline ratings.

It is only one of only seven airlines in the world to currently have this accolade. Last year it was also rated as the Best Airline in China, by Skytrax.

The service departs on Friday, Saturday, Monday and Wednesday, and will be served by an Airbus A330-300.

For the inaugural flight, the aircraft branding has been cleverly changed to say 'HaiMAN chester' in recognition of the new route.

The cabin will have 32 business class seats and 260 in economy. Return fares start from 487.

Airport workers get the Hainan Airlines aircraft ready for action

Ken O'Toole, CEO of Manchester Airport, said: 'Today's inaugural flight with Hainan Airlines is clear evidence of the vital economic role that Manchester Airport plays both nationally and regionally within the UK.

'Providing a direct link between the two cities unlocks significant trade and investment opportunities, which will serve as a shot in the arm to efforts to create a re-energised northern economy.

'This direct route will also have a significant impact on inbound tourism across the whole of the north.

'And the early indications are good, with summer load factors currently averaging out at more than 80 per cent.

'Finally, it will also deliver a boost to universities, both in terms of providing a vital service for Chinese students and their families, and when it comes to finding commercial applications for the world-leading research being carried out by these institutions.'

The service departs on Friday, Saturday, Monday and Wednesday, and will be served by an Airbus A330-300

Xie Haoming, president of Hainan Airlines, added: 'We are delighted to commence our direct scheduled service to Manchester. Beijing to Manchester's inaugural outbound and inbound flight load factors have reached over 90 per cent, which is incredibly strong for a new route.

'A great number of travel agencies expressed their strong interest in working with Hainan Airlines, based upon the new route, which is encouraging for future travel between the two cities.

'With the 'Golden Age' of travel starting between China and the UK, it is foreseeable that the market between the two countries is entering a prosperous period.

'I am sure the route between Manchester and Beijing will be incredibly popular and we look forward to developing our relationship with the city.'

Manchester Airport is the self-proclaimed 'global gateway for the north of the UK' and the largest airport outside London, with over 210 destinations served by 70 airlines.

Manchester Airports Group plc serves more than 50 million passengers and handles almost half a million tonnes of air freight every year through its ownership and operation of the airports of London Stansted, Manchester, East Midlands and Bournemouth airports.

Bob Atkinson Travel Expert at TravelSupermarket.com told MailOnline Travel; 'Yet another new long haul route is being launched from the Northern powerhouse airport at Manchester to a global destination.

'It's fantastic to see more and more direct long haul services to serve both business and leisure customers from the north and just shows how much demand there is outside of the London catchment area for these kinds of flights.

'Add in increases in capacity from the Middle East carriers via their hubs to the Far East, Africa and Australasia and new entrant Oman Air alongside additional flights with Virgin Atlantic to the USA and the Caribbean and Manchester continues to go from strength to strength and with great fares to rival those from London due to the competitive forces at play.
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The landmark Paris Ritz hotel has opened its palatial doors this week to guests after nearly four years of renovations and a major fire.

The classically styled hotel, owned by Egyptian billionaire Mohamed Al Fayed, has undergone a top-to-bottom overhaul after promising a 'legend to be reborn' when it closed for the works in 2012.

The Ritz, situated on the swanky Place Vendome, now only has 142 rooms and suites, compared to 159 previously, but not all of them will be immediately available as final touches are still taking place.

The landmark Paris Ritz hotel has opened its palatial doors to guests after nearly four years of renovations and a major fire

The classically styled hotel, owned by Egyptian billionaire Mohamed Al Fayed, has undergone a top-to-bottom overhaul after promising a 'legend to be reborn' when it closed for the works in 2012

The hotel was supposed to have re-opened in March but a fire ravaged a section of the building in January, delaying the plans

The hotel was supposed to have re-opened in March but a fire ravaged a section of the building in January, delaying the plans.

The hotel founded by Swiss entrepreneur Cesar Ritz in 1898 is storied as the lodging of choice of Charlie Chaplin, Coco Chanel and Ernest Hemingway, who has a small bar named after him.

'When I dream of afterlife in heaven, the action always takes place in the Paris Ritz,' Hemingway once said of the hotel that inspired the word 'ritzy'.

The American writer famously rallied a group of Resistance fighters to go and liberate his beloved hotel which had been requisitioned in June 1940 by the Nazis and occupied by German brass including on occasions Hermann Goering and Joseph Goebbels.

However, he was too late as the Nazis had already left, so he took to the bar where he is said to have run up a tab for 51 dry Martinis.

The Ritz, situated on the swanky Place Vendome, now only has 142 rooms and suites, compared to 159 previously, but not all of them will be immediately available as final touches are still taking place

The hotel, founded by Swiss entrepreneur Cesar Ritz in 1898, is storied as the lodging of choice of Charlie Chaplin, Coco Chanel and Ernest Hemingway, who has a small bar named after him

The refurbishment of the hotel, estimated at 140 million euros (110 million) in 2012, was aimed at sprucing up the ageing hotel to cater to the tastes of its mega-rich clientele

In more recent history however, the Ritz has become known as the place where Britain's Princess Diana spent her last hours before a car accident in a tunnel in the French capital while being pursued by paparazzi.

The refurbishment of the hotel, estimated at 140million euros (110million) in 2012, was aimed at sprucing up the ageing hotel to cater to the tastes of its mega-rich clientele.

It now boasts a summer restaurant under a movable glass canopy, a larger ballroom and the latest technology in its rooms.

The exterior and interior of the luxury hotel is designed to impress, with a plush red carpet (right) covering the entrance to the ornate welcome areas (left)

Two Paris Ritz employees man the desk at the newly-opened hotel, which features colourful flowers and golden lamps
He's the most famous voice in Sydney breakfast radio, earning the title of 'King' Kyle Sandilands.

So it's hardly surprising the KIIS 106.5 shock jock would celebrate his 45th birthday on Friday in typically over-the-top style.

The Kyle and Jackie O Show star was surprised with a Kit Kat-themed cake fit for a King - as his co-host Jackie Henderson mocked him for his 'growing' waistline.

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King Kyle! KIIS 106.5 shock jock Kyle Sandilands celebrated his 45th birthday on Friday in typically over-the-top style as he was treated to a Kit Kat-themed cake fit for a 'King'

It was a celebratory mood as fans and celebrities, including James Blunt and Jason Derulo, called in to the show to wish Kyle a happy birthday.

And KIIS 106.5 joined in by sharing an Instagram photo of a very delicious treat by Sydney cake maker Jonathan Massaad.

The indulgent cake was emblazoned with the words 'King Kyle' and featured lavish decoration and plenty of Kit Kats.

Meanwhile, Jackie affectionately poked fun at Kyle over his weight on-air as she paid tribute to her long-serving radio partner.

Friendly banter: Kyle Sandilands (L) was surprised with a Kit Kat-themed cake fit for royalty - as his co-host Jackie Henderson (R) mocked him for his 'growing' waistline

The 41-year-old said: 'I'm not sure what's growing quicker, my friendship and trust with you or your waistline, but it's been a joy to watch these things.'

Kyle quipped back: 'A lot of bloody insults in here!'

Jackie continued to mock Kyle's health, saying: '45's a significant number. It's your age. It's the number of cigarettes you smoke a day.'

She also referenced their decade-long run at the top of the Sydney breakfast ratings, which has seen them face several controversies.

'We've been through some hard times together': In her birthday tribute to Kyle, Jackie also referenced their decade-long run at the top of the Sydney breakfast ratings, which has seen them face several controversies

'We've been through some hard times together, those days where we think the day will never end or we'll never recover from a situation,' she said.

'Even in our darkest moments, we've always been there for one another.'

Coincidentally, two years ago, Kyle became the target of a stalker who bombarded his Dover Heights mansion with deliveries of Kit Kats.

Kyle told Daily Mail Australia at the time: 'He's leaving Kit Kats everywhere. He's dropping off pictures of himself, writing letters and leaving thousands of dollars...he just wants to be friends.'

Confirming the matter was being investigated by Rose Bay police, Kyle added: 'I'm not too concerned about it, he doesn't want me dead'.
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She's been enjoying family time in Queensland recently.

And Gold Coast native Sophie Monk has decided to return to her roots after 15 years.

The 36-year-old media personality is said to have dropped $1.1m on a 4000sq/m mansion back in April this year.

New home: Sophie Monk dropped $1.1m on this Gold Coast mansion back in April this year

Back to her roots: The media personality has lived in the US and Sydney for several years, however Queensland has always been home

The luxury home boasts five bedrooms, three bathrooms, horse stables, a swimming pool and direct ocean access.

The Australia's Got Talent judge can enjoy cooking in her all-white open kitchen and views of a nearby river.

Sophie, who previously spoke of her desire to 'settle down,' relocated to Sydney in recent years after having lived in Los Angeles for work.

Open kitchen: The Australia's Got Talent judge is now the proud owner of a waterfront home

Plenty of room to scrub up: The mansion boasts three luxury bathrooms

She moved into a new home in 2014 although she now appears to be ready for a another change.

'Theres no time to really think about (a relationship) but Id like to eventually settle down in maybe a year or so  but I better hurry up,' she told News Corp earlier this year.

Recent Instagram posts reveal that the model, who was working in Byron Bay for a photo shoot this week has been spending much time with family in the Gold Coast.

Plenty of space: Sophie's new home has five bedrooms with views

In-ground pool: The home features a swimming pool, which is perfect for cooling off in the Queensland heat

Horsing around: The model enjoys horse riding and will no doubt make use of the horse stables in her new home

Her parents live within minutes from her new pad.

Last month, the former pop star announced that she is returning to radio after a brief hiatus.

She will be hosting The Fling breakfast show across the Australian Radio Network (ARN)'s Sydney and Melbourne stations alongside fellow radio star Matty Acton.

Waterfront home: The home is located near a river and has direct ocean access

The decision came following the success of the pair's KIIS FM collaboration in December, last year.

'Im super excited to be back on air waking up Sydney and Melbourne with Matty on KIIS,' she said.

'We had such a great time with the summer show, and I know its only going to be bigger and better for The Fling  But I still wish breakfast radio started at 10am. And the early starts gives me a real excuse for my ugg boots right?'

Picturesque views: Sophie's new home is 4000sq/m and surrounded by nature

Life change: The blonde beauty said in January that she is planning to 'settle down' in a year
He's presently serving 41 months for fraud in Fort Dix Federal Correctional Institution in New Jersey.

But three months into his jail time, Joe Giudice's wife Teresa has found that she and their four daughters can't see him nearly as much as they would like.

The problem partly appears to be the points system that the facility runs for visits, Teresa's lawyer James Leonard explained to People on Thursday

Limited visiting time: Teresa Giudice, pictured with husband Joe during their fraud trial in 2014, is only able to take their four daughters to see their dad in jail every other weekend, according to the family lawyer

'Where he is, you get a certain number of points every month and each visit counts as a point. Weekend visits are considered more points,' he said.

'So because he also has his mother and sister coming to visit, and Teresa can't go during the week because the girls are in school, they're having to do it every other weekend.'

That's a blow for the 44-year-old Real Housewives Of New Jersey star, who wrapped her 11-month prison sentence for fraud in December.

The couple share Gia, 15, Gabriella, 12, Milania, 10, and Audriana, six, and both Joe and Teresa were adamant that they didn't want their incarceration affecting their daughters' weekend activities.

Better days: Teresa posted this snap to celebrate Joe's 44th birthday in May. He is presently three months into his 41-month sentence at Fort Dix Federal Correctional Institution in New Jersey.

This means the 44-year-old has been taking whichever of the girls is free to visit their dad.

'They want their kids to be able to have a normal schedule and feel like they're living a normal life,' James added.

He says Teresa and Joe are in constant contact and 'speak every day on the phone and over email and with the girls. Just like when she was away.'

Putting on a brave face: The Real Housewives Of New Jersey star and her husband appeared at an event in Mount Pocono City, Pennsylvania on March 5 just 15 days before he reported to prison.

The lawyer added that Joe, also 44, is 'getting acclimated' to his new surroundings and that 'he's settling in and getting along as well as can be expected.'

Meanwhile, Teresa is 'looking forward to when the girls get out of school and they can visit Joe with more frequency.'

The Real Housewives Of New Jersey returns to Bravo on July 10.
She was seen in the company of her high-flying boyfriend William Mack Knight last week.

But on Thursday night Emma Watson ensured she kept up-to-date with her social circle, as she headed out in London for a night out with her friends.

Heading to the Chiltern Firehouse in Marylebone, the 26-year-old Harry Potter actress showcased her wish take on summer style - donning a low-cut floaty white dress.

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Out on the town: On Thursday night Emma Watson ensured she kept up-to-date with her social circle, as she headed out in London for a night out with her friends

Heading to the favoured haunt of celebrities in London, Emma looked to be enjoying a relatively low-key night out with her friends.

And the actress - who has also modeled for the likes of Burberry in the past - showcased her sassy take on summer style in a white knee length rocker billy dress.

Straddling the line between restrained boho glamour and retro rocker chic, Emma's floaty, pleated dress featured a low-cut button-up neckline, which allowed the actress to coyly flash her decolletage.

Dressed for the weather? Heading to the Chiltern Fire House, in Mayfair, the 26-year-old Harry Potter actress showcased her wish take on summer style - donning a low-cut floaty white dress

Grazing the knee, the dress' pleated A-Line fit helped draw the eye to the Noah actress' lithe legs, while she rounded her relaxed yet chic ensemble off with a pair of black leather slip on shoes

Cinching in the waist with a tan belt Emma left the rest of her look largely uncluttered, only choosing to wear a silver pendant necklace, and a handful of glittering rings.

Wearing her brown locks swept back off of her face in a stylish slick bad do, the actress allowed her pretty features to come to the fore.

Summer chic: Straddling the line between restrained boho glamour and retro rocker chic, Emma's floaty, pleated dress featured a low-cut button-up neckline, which allowed the actress to coyly flash her decolletage

Laid-back chic: Grazing the knee, the dress' pleated A-Line fit helped draw the eye to the Noah actress' lithe legs, while she rounded her relaxed yet chic ensemble off with a pair of black leather slip on shoes

Wearing a minimal palette of make-up, the star only used a hint of eyeliner and complementary foundation to define her striking looks.

Obviously ready for home, Emma was seen hopping into the car as rain began to fall on the capital.

With two films in post-production at the moment, Emma appears to be enjoying some downtime before she has to hit the promotional trail.

Sci-fi thriller, The Cirlcle (which also stars Tom Hanks) is due out later this year, while Beauty and The Beast is due in 2017.

Starring alongside Downton Abbey's Dan Stevens as the Beast, Emma plays Belle in the live action version of Disney's classic fairy tale.
Despite claiming she loves her natural looks more this week, Sam Frost proved she still likes to keep up with her beauty regime.

The Bachelorette star, 26, took to her social media sites on Thursday to share a picture of herself, showing off a new and updated hairstyle.

The Instagram snap sees the popular media personality showcase her newly lightened blonde tresses after getting them spruced up for winter.

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'Blonde for winter': Bachelorette star Sam Frost took to her social media sites on Thursday to share a picture of herself, showing off a new and updated hairstyle

In the caption, she gushed: Thank you to the lovelies at @_edwardsandco for lightening up the locks #Blonde for winter.

The post comes days after Sam posted a candid picture of herself on Instagram, where she claimed she likes being just me when completely makeup-free.

Alongside the naturally stunning shot, she wrote: 'I'm not going to lie.. I spent 10 minutes fiddling around, more contrast, more highlight, less shadow, to try and make the dark circles under my eyes not look so harsh.

Switching it up: The 26-year-old is pictured here with darker tresses at the launch of Australia's Biggest Blood Pressure Check in April

'Then I had the realisation.. that it completely defeats the purpose of posting photos of me, just being me.. So I reverted everything & here's the raw pic.' [sic]

It's not the first time Sam has been an advocate for sharing an au natural selfie, taking to social media a few months ago to encourage fans to 'love yourself.'

'I feel very flattered when young girls comment on my photos or send me DM's about how much they look up to me & they want to be as pretty as me,' the radio star said at the time.

'Here's a raw pic': The post comes days after Sam posted a candid photo of herself on Instagram, where she claimed she likes being just me when going completely makeup-free

'Which is so lovely and adorable, but this is the every day me... no filter, no edits, dark circles, messy hair, break outs, uneven skin tone. And I wouldn't change anything about myself!

'I've said it before, but it's what I live by... love yourself, be yourself, exactly the way you are xo, she added.

Meanwhile, her beau and final rose receiver Sasha Mielczarek recently spilled to Daily Mail Australia that he prefers the radio host with no makeup.

'I like to see her without her makeup on, he confessed. I am not into her getting all dressed up and Photoshopping all her photos. I am just in to see her looking natural and beautiful.'
Tryst with a toyboy: Helen McCrory as Hester Collyer and Tom Burke as her live-in lover Freddie

The Deep Blue Sea (Royal National Theatre)

Verdict: Hidden shallows

Rating:

When Rattigan is done really well, English theatregoers will leave the show with a feeling almost of shame. Rattigan is the great depicter of English reserve, of stiff restraint.

How I hate getting tangled up in other peoples emotions, says a character in The Deep Blue Sea.

Yet top-class Rattigan productions suggest that gay, unhappy Terence (who wrote at a time when gay love was illegal) wanted us, as a people, to declare our feelings. He sensed that bottling things up made us miserable.

The Royal Nationals new production of Rattigans The Deep Blue Sea fails in this respect. There are several things to admire here, but at the end I felt unmoved. It left me as cold as the sort of dead fish Rattigan often sketched.

Helen McCrory plays Hester Collyer, who has just tried to gas herself. The show opens with neighbours bursting in to her living room and reviving her after this suicide attempt. Hester has split from her lawyer husband (Peter Sullivan) and is now being neglected by her younger, live-in lover, Freddie. Former RAF pilot Freddie is turning to drink.

Hester has developed an evil affinity for this sot. The attraction between them, purely lustful, is killing both of them.

Yet maybe it is preferable to stiff upper lippishness. Is a supposedly dashing toyboy not more necessary for a womans needs than an emotionally repressed husband?

A decent night out: Marion Bailey, Helen McCrory and Philip Welch in The Deep Blue Sea

Tom Scutts design, on the Lyttelton stage, shows us various levels in the Notting Hill boarding house where Hester and Freddie have their drab flat. No effort has been spared in the staging. The lighting is blue, as suits the title.

Miss McCrory is, as ever, watchable; yet despite the period detail of the set, her accent and attitudes seem too modern for early Fifties London. Why, when I watch this talented actress, does it strike me that she is projecting her own vanity as much as the character of her role?

Director Carrie Cracknell makes almost no effort to explore the class subtleties which abound in Rattigan.

Inoffensive: Tom Burke makes an unsexy Freddie - but should he not be more of a swine?

Marion Bailey, as landlady Mrs Elton, sounds far too posh. More could be made of the younger neighbours, the snooping Welches, were they deftly lower middle-class.

Tom Burke makes an inoffensive, unsexy Freddie. Is that right? Should he not be more of a swine? Where is the spark between him and Hester? Adetomiwa Edun is miscast as Freddies old RAF chum, but Nick Fletcher does a tidy job as disgraced Dr Miller.
The Spoils (Trafalgar Studios, London)

Verdict: Sweet and sour smut

Rating:

Since playing Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg in the 2010 film Social Network, Jesse Eisenberg has cornered the market in (almost) lovable egomaniacs.

He is the latest in the line of Jewish New York funnymen, and has written himself a play  about a self-important slacker  to showcase his talents. Its a motormouth talkathon: Woody Allen with Tourettes.

Energy: Actor Jesse Eisenberg and Kunal Nayyar (Raj in TV's The Big Bang Theory) star in The Spoils

Eisenberg draws on his own social network for support: appearing alongside Kunal Nayyar (Raj in TVs The Big Bang Theory), Alfie Allen (son of Keith, sister of Lily, now appearing in Game of Thrones), Katie Brayben (from the Carole King Musical) and foxy Annapurna Sriram (from the original Off-Broadway production last year).

The story is about Ben, a film school dropout who sets out for revenge when he discovers his high school crush has become engaged to a boring Wall Street banker.

Eisenberg has created a sometimes brilliant star turn for himself, with the four other actors on the receiving end of his licence to offend. Freighted with strong expletives and lavatorial imagery, his performance walks the line of political correctness.

Sweet and sour smut: Jesse Eisenberg, Annapurna Sriram, Kunal Nayyar and Katie Brayben

But the energy of Eisenbergs tale of flamboyant self-destruction dips in the second half as he tries to pull off an unfeasible (and incomprehensible) redemption story.

There are some good, mostly unrepeatable, jokes in Scott Elliotts production and our main man is a formidable actor. You cant take your eyes off him; he speaks as if every line is just occurring to him.

Nayyar plays his sweet but smart room-mate, an economics major who is dating Srirams hot-to-trot med-student.
They are currently enjoying the beautiful sights and surroundings of Positano, one of the wonders of Italy's breathtaking Amalfi Coast.

And on Thursday, Bachelor couple Anna Heinrich and Tim Robards decided to share more envy-inducing snaps from their idyllic vacation where they are celebrating her mother's 60th birthday.

Stripped down to a sexy black bikini, the blonde beauty happily paraded her lean and slender frame in all its glory as she stepped perfectly out of the pool at their luxury resort.

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Looking fine: Bikini-clad Anna Heinrich and Tim Robards shared more envy-inducing snaps from their idyllic vacation in Positano on Thursday

The skimpy two-piece, designed by Slinkii, drew attention to her lithe, toned limbs, whittled waistline and lightly curved sun-kissed hips.

She also donned a pair of retro designer shades, while her golden-tinted locks were swept back into a chic ponytail to keep the heat off her neck.

Some afternoon pool action, the pretty TV star captioned one shot, alongside the hashtags #inlove and #poolworkout.

Some days, the intermittent fasting can wait!' TV hunk Tim uploaded a shirtless snap of himself tucking into a variety of tasty food treats during breakfast

Meanwhile, Tim uploaded a shirtless snap of himself tucking into a variety of tasty food treats during breakfast.

Some days, the intermittent fasting can wait! #doesntevenmakesense, he cheekily wrote.

Moments later, the fitness hunk could not resist to urge to gloat about how stunning his girlfriend looked while she walked down some floral adorned steps.

Stairway to heaven': Moments later, he could not resist to urge to gloat about how stunning his girlfriend looked while she walked down some floral adorned steps

Preened to perfection: Anna exuded style and glamour in a striking canary yellow lace dress, created by Rebecca Vallance

Preened to perfection, Anna exuded style and glamour in a striking canary yellow lace dress, created by Rebecca Vallance.

Stairway to heaven #getdownfromthere #beautifullines #beautifulcurves, Tim proudly gushed.

The smitten couple, who found love on the first season of The Bachelor Australia, are staying at the exclusive Villa Boheme, which boasts gorgeous ocean views.

And while they are not filming this European holiday for their YouTube show, Anna and Tim have wasted no time in sharing plenty of photos across social media.

That's Amore! The couple shared a passionate kiss as they posed for a photo while standing on the cliff edge over looking the endless seas of Italy
She knows how to make a fashion statement.

And Roxy Jacenko has certainly passed on her style tips to her daughter, Pixie.

The Sydney PR maven shared a flashback photo of her four-year-old little girl on Friday, in which she could be seen channeling Vogue Japan editor-at-large, Anna Dello Russo.

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Flashback: Roxy Jacenko shared this throwback photo of her four-year-old daughter Pixie when she was younger on Friday

Wrapped in brightly coloured fur and clutching her mother's hand, a slightly younger Pixie looked cute in the old photo.

The toddler was pictured dressed in bright pink and orange and Roxy likened the flamboyant style to that of fur-loving style icon, Anna.

'FBF with my buddy @anna_dello_russo aka @pixiecurtis,' she captioned the photo.

Fashion inspiration: Pixie's was said to be channelling fur-loving Vogue Japan editor Anna dello Russo, who was also tagged in the caption

Popular: An Instagram page for Pixie has 110k followers which is more than her successful mother has

The Sweaty Betty PR CEO appeared to be in a nostalgic mood one week after husband, Oliver Curtis, was convicted of conspiracy to commit insider trading.

A Sydney jury delivered its verdict last week following a three week trial that involved Oliver's former best friend John Hartman, who gave evidence against him.

The banker has not yet been sentenced however he faces up to five years imprisonment and a $220,000 fine.

Happy family: Roxy remains upbeat despite her husband Oliver's recent conviction for insider trading

Despite the verdict, Roxy and Oliver remain united and on Wednesday, the couple celebrated her 36th birthday.

The entrepreneur shared family photos on Instagram, which included images of the couple with Pixie and their two-year-old son Hunter.

'These kids don't do early mornings let's just say that!!! Ones still MIA  @huntercurtis14 @pixiecurtis @1903oprc,' she captioned one birthday shot.
Passion project: Mel Gibson is said to be working on a new film about the resurrection of Jesus Christ

Filmmaker Mel Gibson is now working on a followup to his controversial smash hit film The Passion Of The Christ which will tell the story of his resurrection.

It is 12 years since the first 2004 R-rated film hit cinemas, and ended up making an astonishing $612 million off a $30 million budget.

According to the Hollywood Reporter, the 60-year-old actor and director is working on a script with Braveheart writer Randall Wallace.

Twelve years on from the staggering box office success, Gibson's longtime screenwriting partner confirmed that work has begun on telling the story of Christ's resurrection - which occurred three days after events in the Passion.

And while the film may depict the most central pillar of Catholicism, if the film is as successful as the Passion, could also bring a resurrection of sorts for Gibson's career too.

The Oscar winning actor and director has been essentially blackballed from Hollywood since his racist, anti-Semitic and sexist rant against officers when he was stopped for a DUI bust in 2006.

Matters got worse for devout Catholic Gibson when his marriage collapsed, had another child with his then-girlfriend and was accused of abusing her and then caught making racist statements.

And while he has never completely gone away, making appearances in The Expendables 3 and The Beaver, Gibson has relied on the charity of friends for work.

A film that depicts the resurrection of Jesus could provide Gibson at least with a commercial hit, if not the artistic praise he once universally held after films such as Braveheart.

Oscar-nominated Wallace confirmed he was working on the script, saying they decided to work on the movie while making Hacksaw Ridge, which tells the story of a Second World War army medic who became the first conscientious objector to be awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor.

Hacksaw Ridge is currently in post-production in Australia, helmed by Gibson.

Wallace, who studied religion at Duke University, said: 'I always wanted to tell this story. The Passion is the beginning and there's a lot more story to tell.'

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Brutal: The 2004 film was controversial due to the level of violence used in portraying the crucifixion

The writer said they were interested due to the huge demand among the religious devotees who helped the original become the highest grossing independent movie of all time.

He said: 'The evangelical community considers The Passion the biggest movie ever out of Hollywood, and they kept telling us that they think a sequel will be even bigger.'

However they have yet to secure any funding, as the project is still at an early stage. Wallace did however say there has already been interest from financiers.

He added: 'It's too early to talk money. This is such a huge and sacred subject.'

His crowning achievement: But it is unclear whether Jim Caviezel will return for the sequel

Gibson expressed interest in making a sequel to The Passion last month, when he was asked about the subject at the Christian university graduation ceremony in Virginia, where he was holding an advance screening of Hacksaw Ridge.

The actor's spokesman declined to comment on the project.

The original film split reviewers, with the likes of Roger Ebert hailing it as an artistic triumph, while other labelled it a snuff film, and criticized how it portayed Jewish people.

It is unclear whether the 2004 film's original stars Jim Caviezel and Monica Bellucci, who portrayed Jesus and Mary Magdalene respectively, will return to their roles.

A movie about Christ's resurrection called Risen was released in February, and made $46 million worldwide on a $20 million budget.

Now: It may be decided Jim, seen here at a Los Angeles film festival in January, is now too old for the role
Chris Rock took to Twitter to validate a meme comparing Selena Gomez unfavorably to Beyonce.

'This is true,' Chris, 51, tweeted on Tuesday along with a meme showing Selena, 23, performing during her Revival Tour in an outfit similar to Beyonce's wardrobe from her The Formation World Tour.

A catchphrase above the photo read: 'when you buy your formation tickets on craigslist'.

Internet meme: Chris Rock recently took to Twitter to validate a meme that called Selena Gomez a poor man's Beyonce

Chris had posted four tweets celebrating the life of the late Muhammad Ali before uploading his gibe at Selena for his nearly four million followers on Twitter.

Selena has more than 43 million followers on Twitter and her fans known as Selenators quickly came to her defense.

One Selena backer tweeted: 'she isn't trying to be Beyonce. It's an outfit...you're attacking a 23 year old....this is why Kevin Hart ended you.'

Another posted: 'but go ahead and pick on the girl with the Lupus disease who is selling out arenas and stay pressed your "career" is over.'

Comic and actor: The comedian is shown in April in New York City

World tour: Beyonce is shown performing last month during her The Formation World Tour in Chicago

Pop star: Selena is shown performing last month on her Revival Tour in Ottawa, Canada

'I liked you more as a zebra,' another Selena fan tweeted in reference to his role as Marty in the Madagascar animated film franchise.

Another Selenator referenced his cancelled sitcom and simply tweeted: 'everybody still hates Chris'.

The Selena slight was a bit surprising since she posed for photos with Chris and his daughters Lola, 13, and Zahra, 12, back in 2010 during the Nickelodeon Kids' Choice Awards in Los Angeles.

Happier times: Selena is shown with Chris and his daughters Lola and Zahra in 2010 in Los Angeles

Awards show: Chris looked on as Selena hugged his daughter at the Nickelodeon Kids' Choice Awards

Catching up: Selena and Chris caught up at the Kids' Choice Awards held at UCLA

Selena told Us Weekly during an April interview that her Revival Tour has brought out the best in her.

'I have never cared about a tour as much as I care about this one. Ive never worked as hard. Every day I start with a workout, I do vocal lessons, I do piano lessons. I go on stage and we map out the whole thing,' she told the magazine.

Selena launched the Revial Tour on May 6 in Las Vegas and it's scheduled to conclude on December 18 in Guadalajara, Mexico.

Beyonce embarked on her The Formation World Tour on April 27 in Miami and it concludes on October 2 in Nashville.
She ain't afraid of no ghost nor, it seems, afraid of getting a little hot under the collar in LA's spring time heat.

Melissa McCarthy rugged up in lots of clothing as she flew out of Los Angeles on Thursday.

The 45-year-old actress was spotted heading into LAX in a rather unusual outfit that was not what you would expect to see at this time of year.

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feeling a chill? Melissa McCarthy rugged up in lots of clothing as she flew out of Los Angeles on Thursday

Perhaps on her way to somewhere with a cooler climate than LA and not wanting to check a bag, the Ghostbusters star wore lots of layers.

For her flight, the actress and designer wore a pair of tailored trousers with a black top and a flowing jacket.

Melissa then added a pair of leather sneakers, a big green hat and a black and white scarf wrapped around her neck and cascading down her front.

The 45-year-old also added a black Givenchy handbag to her look and ported a small Louis Vuitton carry-on.

Layered up: For her flight, the actress and designer wore a pair of tailored trousers with a black top and a flowing jacket

Added extras: Melissa then added a pair of leather sneakers, a big green hat and a black and white scarf wrapped around her neck and cascading down her front

Despite a very busy schedule of late, the star seemed in a great mood and energized, smiling away as she headed into the terminal.

The night before, Melissa had been busy promoting Ghostbusters at the Elle Women in Comedy Event and his spent the last week on the set of the Gilmore Girls revival.

While for a long time it was thought Melissa would not be part of the reboot, the 45-year-old was photographed on set over the weekend, dressed as her beloved character Sookie St. James.

Not stopping her: Despite a very busy schedule of late, the star seemed in a great mood and energized, smiling away as she headed into the terminal

Sookie's back: Melissa was photographed in the Gilmore Girls reboot set for the first time on the weekend alongside Yanic Truesdale and costume supervisor Brenda Maben

The star was snapped on the Netflix reboot set for the first time by Gilmore Girls' costume supervisor Brenda Maben.

Also in the pictured is Melissa's fellow co-star, Yanic Truesdale who plays Michel, and the snap was captioned simply, '#gilmorecostumesjoylove.'

It has been a long road to get Melissa back to being the chef of the Dragonfly Inn - not just because it has been nine years since Gilmore Girls ended.

Back in the look: In the picture, Melissa is wearing Sookie's signature flamboyant and colour chef's uniform with a bandanna around her head (as seen here in the original series)

The star had previously said that she was not asked back to the show, then said her scheduling was an issue.

However, recently she told People that a set visit made her realise what she would be missing: 'Oh, my God, it was so sad. I got so sentimental. And it felt like the greatest idea in the world. It was lovely.'

As luck would have it, another project she was working on changed its plans allowing her to return to the show: 'Once we decided is there any possible way, something fell out for me, something changed for them, and then we immediately nabbed it.'

'It felt like the greatest idea in the world': Melissa revealed to People at the Time 100 Gala in New York in April how 'sentimental' it was for her to revisit the world of Gilmore Girls

Back in the hot seat: Melissa portrayed Sookie St. James throughout the series, who was the best friend of Lauren Graham's Lorelai Gilmore

The Netflix reboot will pick up ten years later and includes almost all of the original main characters, including those played by Lauren Graham, Alexis Blendel and Scott Paterson, among others.

While no air date has been announced yet, the streaming service has decided to release the reboot in four 90 minute parts.

Filming of the new Gilmore Girls episodes started in Los Angeles on February 2 and is currently scheduled to last until June 30.
She's always one to completely own a look, whether it's an off-duty chic getup or an extravagant red carpet ensemble.

And on Thursday, Andreja Pejic once again pulled together another style statement as she headed to the 7th Annual amfAR Inspiration Gala, which was held in New York.

The transgender model, 24, joined a litany of stars at the exclusive event at Skylight Manhattan, turning heads in a gorgeous silver lace number.

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Style star! Andreja Pejic once again pulled together another style statement as she headed to the 7th Annual amfAR Inspiration Gala, which was held in New York, on Thursday

The Australian star drew attention to her svelte frame in the sexy structured garment, which particularly showed off her incredibly slender limbs and toned arms.

The rest of her look was kept simple, with just a dainty bracelet around her wrist, a delicate pair of drop-down earrings and black heels to set off her striking ensemble.

Once inside the event, the pretty blonde mingled with the likes of Naomi Campbell, Kelly Osbourne, Karrueche Tran and Zayn Malik.

Fancy that: The transgender model, 24, joined a litany of stars at the exclusive event at Skylight at Moynihan Station, turning heads in a gorgeous silver lace number

Leggy display: The Australian star drew attention to her svelte frame in the sexy structured garment, which showed off her incredibly slender limbs and toned arms

Meanwhile, on Tuesday, Andreja dazzled in a billowing red gown at the 2016 Fragrance Foundation Awards presented by Hearst Magazines in New York City.

Born in Bosnia-Herzegovina, the model and her family immigrated to Melbourne as political refugees when she was eight years old in 2000.

She was scouted at age 16 while working at McDonald's and began making a name for herself as an androgynous model, showcasing both male and female designs.

In 2014, Andreja made the transition to female and has since become the first transgender model to front a cosmetics campaign. Her debut as the face of Make Up Forever was unveiled in July 2015.

Not alone: Once inside the lavish event, Andreja mingled with the likes of American actress Hari Nef

Beaming: The two ladies appeared to be in great spirits as they stopped and posed for photographs

In February last year, she made her triumphant debut on the catwalk as a woman following a year spent undergoing a series of gender reassignment procedures.

Speaking to Vogue about her decision to transition, the Melbourne-raised beauty revealed that she had been advised not to undergo the surgery because it would transform her from an interesting enigma into just another pretty girl.

There was definitely a lot of, "Oh, youre going to lose whats special about you. Youre not going to be interesting anymore. There are loads of pretty girls out there,"' she explained, before adding: 'It is about showing that this is not just a gimmick.'
Kelly Bensimon looked glamorous at the 7th Annual amfAR Inspiration Gala on Thursday.

The former Real Housewives of New York star wore a sheer dress as she showed her support for the AIDS charity's event at Skylight Manhattan.

the 48-year-old's eye-catching Jovani gown featured silver details and a see-through skirt.

Glamorous: Former Real Housewives of New York star Kelly Bensimon wore a sheer dress as she attended the AmfAR Inspiration Gala in New York City on Thursday

The reality star appeared to be in high spirits, flashing a smile as she arrived at the gala.

Kelly's dress featured a see-through fabric and plunging neckline, and was covered with delicate silver beading.

She added matching silver sandals that showed off a light pink pedicure.

Cheers! The 48-year-old was all smiles as she toasted the AIDS fundraiser with Moet & Chandon

Stylish: The reality star's shimmering Jovani gown featured a sheer skirt and beaded design

The jewelry designer kept her accessories simple, wearing a large ring and adding a metallic clutch.

The former RHONY star left her brunette hair down in waves, and played up her features with a glowing blush.

The mother-of-two appeared happy to be showing her support for amfAR, which raises funds to fight AIDS and promotes AIDS awareness.

Stylish: The mother-of-two's see-through dress featured a silver design and sheer train

At the gala, Kelly caught up with MAC Cosmetics CEO John Demsey, who looked sharp in a black suit with dapper polka dot pocket square.

The former Bravo star has also been busy promoting her debut novel, A Dangerous Age, which came out on Tuesday and was inspired by her time on RHONY.

Red carpet: Kelly was joined by MAC Cosmetics CEO John Demsey, who looked sharp in a black suit

Good cause: The reality star added a metallic clutch and silver heels

Speaking to Bravo, Kelly said her book, which follows a group of New York women, was partially based on her experiences of entering the wild world of reality TV in her 40s.

'Now I feel that I've learned so much, and I've grown so much, and I have to thank Housewives for that,' she said of her post-reality TV life.

'All the altercations that everybody saw on Housewives have made me a better person,' she said.

'I've learned to navigate different situations differently. I've grown up a lot, like I'm a lot more calm now than when I was on Housewives.'

The former model split from her ex-husband, famed fashion photographer Gilles Bensimon in 2007. They share two daughters: 15-year-old Thadeus and 17-year-old Sea.
She may have less than a month to go until she welcomes her first child, but this star is taking it all in her stride.

Despite having a late night the previously evening, heavily pregnant Nicky Hilton looked simply stunning in an understated summer frock.

The 32-year-old mom-to-be headed out for a stroll in New York on Thursday afternoon, showing off her maternity style.

Blooming lovely: Nicky Hilton looked simply stunning in an understated summer frock in New York on Thursday afternoon

Embracing Manhattan's warm weather, Nicky wore a patterned mini dress which was loose enough to be comfortable but still highlighted her bump.

The dress' short hemline also showed off the heiress' slender legs as she walked along texting.

Nicky accessorized her look with a pair of black leather espadrilles which featured studded straps that wrapped around her ankles as well as a long rosary style necklace and round framed sunglasses.

The designer - who is due next month - was out the night before with her husband James Rothschild at the opening of a new animal shelter, Animal Haven.

Maternity style: Embracing Manhattan's warm weather, Nicky wore a patterned mini dress which was loose enough to be comfortable but still highlighted her bump

Added extras: Nicky accessorized her look with a pair of black leather espadrilles which featured studded straps that wrapped around her ankles as well as a long rosary style necklace and round framed sunglasses

There she cuddled up to a sweet puppy dog, despite previously revealing she is a cat person.

The star - who is expecting a little girl - told People: 'I love cats, so there are lots of vintage cat motifs and prints [in the nursery].

'I've been online and I'm trying to do it all myself!'

Date night for a cause: The designer was out the night before with her husband James Rothschild at the opening of a new animal shelter, Animal Haven

The star also told the magazine that she has tried to avoid buying maternity wear.

'I've only bought one pair of pregnancy jeans, one pair of leggings and one pair of workout leggings. I've been borrowing a lot from my mother.

'The baby shower dress I wore [in New York] was her vintage Valentino.'
Johnny Depp, whose Hollywood career and personal life have been rocked by his acrimonious split from wife Amber Heard, is still set to star in a movie about a sex scandal.

PageSix.com reported Thursday that director Brett Ratner is moving forward with a film version of the Dominique Strauss-Kahn affair with Depp in the leading role.

His project The Libertine is set to star the Pirates of The Caribbean star as a politician accused of sexual assault and Ratner is sticking by his choice of lead despite the controversy surrounding the actor's divorce.

Still in demand: Reports Thursday claimed Johnny Depp, pictured in Hollywood May 23, is 'still attached' to play the lead in Brett Ratner's upcoming movie The Libertine, about a politician's sex scandal

In a bizarre coincidence, The Libertine is also the title of a 2004 period drama in which Depp starred as the debauched 17th century poet John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester.

Ratner announced plans for his big screen project at the Cannes Film Festival on May 11.

The plot is 'loosely based' on the 2011 scandal in which criminal charges were filed and ultimately dropped against French politician and then head of the International Monetary Fund Strauss-Kahn relating to a claim of sexual assault by a hotel maid in New York.

DSK, as he styles himself, settled a civil suit with the maid for an undisclosed amount.

See Johnny Depp updates as he's 'still attached' to star in Brett Ratner's sex scandal movie

Upcoming project: Ratner, pictured in Cannes last month with Salma Hayek's husband Francois-Henri Pinault, announced he plans to make the film 'loosely based' on the 2011 scandal involving Dominique Strauss-Kahn

'Loosely based': Strauss-Kahn, a French politician and then head of the International Monetary Fund, was accused of sexual assault by a New York hotel maid. In 2011, charges were dropped and he reached a civil settlement with the maid

It had been suggested in industry circles that to continue with Depp in the light of his estranged wife's allegations of domestic abuse would be problematic for Ratner and his movie.

Depp has denied the abuse allegations though his attorney Laura Wasser.

And a rep for Ratner told Pagesix.com that the project remains 'in active development' with Depp still attached.

Also on Thursday it emerged that the Hollywood star who is worth an estimated $400 million is selling part of his collection of Jean-Michel Basquiat paintings.

Auction house Christie's announced in a press release that Depp would be selling nine works of art by the renowned artist in London later this month.

Scandal: Hollywood has been rocked by Amber Heard's decision to file for divorce from Depp after 15 months of marriage claiming domestic abuse. The actress, pictured with the actor last September, was granted a restraining order against her estranged husband

Depp and Heard were married in 2014 and she filed papers asking for a divorce in May after 15 months of marriage.

The couple did not have a prenuptial agreement which entitles her to half the money he made over the course of their relationship, which looks to be somewhere between $20 and $30million.

Heard, 30, had also asked a judge for spousal support and her legal fees to be covered during the divorce, but that was rejected by the court.

Depp, who turned 53 on Thursday, has been overseas touring with his band Hollywood Vampires.

The estranged couple is due back in court later this month and Heard has been granted a temporary restraining order against Depp.
A picture of J.K. Simmons pumping iron went viral last Thursday, and now the man who helped achieve the amazing results has come forward to discuss how they did it.

After the picture went viral, 36-year-old trainer Aaron Williamson explained to the New York Daily News how his 61-year-old Hollywood veteran client managed to get so muscular.

'Hes doing such a good job of being disciplined and staying dedicated to doing something he hasnt done before with his physique,' said Aaron, 'he's ripped.'

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Friends: After the picture went viral, 36-year-old trainer Aaron Williamson (left) explained to the New York Daily News how his 61-year-old Hollywood veteran client managed to get so muscular (pictured December 9th)

Apparently Simmons' passion for training actually began when he took up a rigorous cardio workout with another trainer.

Aaron continued, 'where I come into play is now that hes at this point we are giving him muscles he didnt have before.'

It turns out that the Thank You for Smoking star did have a goal in mind when he started training heavily in the weight room.

'His motivating factor with a lot of it is to do something with his arms and shoulders to be able to possibly down the road play a character who can wear a tank-top.'

'#OldManCranking': Trainer Aaron Williamson shared an eye-popping snap of his client J.K. Simmons flexing his sinewy, bulging biceps at Gold's Gym in Los Angeles on Thursday, which promptly went viral

Always a competitor: Aaron is a former marine and body building enthusiast (shared on June 7th)

Dynamic duo: 'where I come into play is now that hes at this point we are giving him muscles he didnt have before,' said Aaron (right, pictured in April)

'He's making me look bad': The 61-year-old Oscar winner has been buffing up for his role as Gotham City Police Commissioner James Gordon in Zack Snyder's two-part Justice League films (pictured April 30)

The former Marine also gave readers a taste of the kinds of exercises he expects his client to complete.

'We really typically are doing a lot of unilateral movements with dumbbells, because J.K. has aches and pains and stuff, so we try to keep things mobile and loose.'

When asked if his intense training regimen has something to do with his role in the upcoming Justice League movies, Aaron reported that he's not aware of any connection.

Williamson wrote: 'Every time we train together I forget he's 61 years old...Making the young generation jealous. This is what dedication looks like...His intensity in the gym is through the roof' (pictured April 23)

'As far as the whole Justice League stuff goes, if he is trying to get ready for something in that arena, Im not aware of it and he never shared it with me.'

The fascination with Simmons-and trainer Aaron-started last week when Aaron shared an eye-popping snap of his client J.K. Simmons flexing his sinewy, bulging biceps at Gold's Gym in Los Angeles.

'Every time we train together I forget he's 61 years old,' Williamson captioned the work-out picture.

The retired US Marine - who also worked with Simmons on Terminator: Genisys - has previously trained Zac Efron, The Rock (pictured on June 7th), James Marsden, Sylvester Stallone, and Jamie Foxx

Buddies: Aaron (right) and actor James Marsden mugging for the camera (pictured February 10th)

'Making the young generation jealous. This is what dedication looks like...His intensity in the gym is through the roof. It's been a privilege helping him stay on point. I've got a lot of respect for this man.'

The retired US Marine - who also worked with Simmons on Terminator: Genisys - has previously trained Zac Efron, The Rock, James Marsden, Sylvester Stallone, and Jamie Foxx.

J.K. - born Jonathan Kimble - may want his Gordon to look physically impressive like his future Justice League co-stars Henry Cavill, Ben Affleck, and Jason Momoa.

'My understanding, from what I've learned so far about Commissioner Gordon, is that he's the older guy with the mustache who relates with our hero in a certain way,' the Spider-Man alum told Collider in April.

Big boys: J.K. - born Jonathan Kimble - clearly wants his Gordon to look physically impressive like his future Justice League co-stars Henry Cavill (L), Ben Affleck (M), and Jason Momoa

The Spider-Man alum told Collider in April: 'Commissioner Gordon is the older guy with the mustache who relates with our hero in a certain way. I'm sure there will be differences and similarities with what Gary Oldman or Pat Hingle have done before, but I'm just going to try to do my take on it' (pictured Sunday)

'I'm sure there will be differences and similarities with what Gary Oldman or Pat Hingle have done before, but I'm just going to try to do my take on it and be as informed as I can about the rich history of the Batman universe, going into it.'

The Zootopia actor will next play Ray King, the head of Treasury Department's Crime Enforcement Division, in The Accountant hitting US theaters October 14.

The forensic accounting thriller - hitting UK theaters November 4 - also stars Anna Kendrick, Ben Affleck, John Lithgow, and Jeffrey Tambor.

Hitting US theaters October 14! The Zootopia actor will next play Ray King, the head of Treasury Department's Crime Enforcement Division, in The Accountant

Hitting UK theaters November 4! The forensic accounting thriller also stars Anna Kendrick, Ben Affleck, John Lithgow, and Jeffrey Tambor

And Simmons has memorably voiced the Yellow M&M in adverts since taking over for John Goodman back in 1996.

The Broadway thespian has two children - son Joe and daughter Olivia - with his wife of 20 years, Michelle Schumacher.

Michelle will soon direct her Michigan-born man in the 2017 drama I'm Not Here alongside Mandy Moore, Maika Monroe, and Sebastian Stan.

Candy-coated voiceover gig: And Simmons has memorably voiced the Yellow M&M in adverts since taking over for John Goodman back in 1996
They are the fun-loving couple who seem to have the perfect relationship, bouncing off each other with wit and humour at every turn.

And on Friday, Zoe Foster-Blake opened up about her marriage to radio funnyman Hamish Blake, telling fans how they keep their relationship positive and happy.

The former beauty editor admitted that 'marriage isn't always cupcakes,' in an article penned for Expedia Travel, but said the key to a successful marriage is 'obnoxiously celebrating anniversaries.'

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'Marriage isn't always cupcakes': Zoe Foster-Blake opened up about her marriage to Hamish Blake in a blog post on Friday and said the key to their success is 'obnoxiously celebrating anniversaries'

Expressing the important of celebrating milestones within a relationship, to keep it from going stale, the 35-year-old admitted it isn't always easy.

'Marriage isn't always cupcakes and Jesus juice, but its important to show each other your marriage is a priority, and that you still love them,' she wrote.

'An anniversary is a reminder as to why you love and married this person.'

'Its important to show each other your marriage is a priority': The 35-year-old admitted the importantance of celebrating milestones within a relationship, to keep it from going stale, adding that it isn't always easy

'My husband and I will take any excuse to kick up a fuss': The mother-of-one then explained that she and Hamish celebrate anything and everything, and make a big deal of even the smallest occasions

The mother-of-one then explained that she and Hamish celebrate anything and everything, and make a big deal of even the smallest occasions.

She writes: 'My husband and I will take any excuse to kick up a fuss, especially if it involves a weekend away, or a new restaurant or drinking strong, well-mixed alcohol in elegant glasses.

However, instead of celebrating the milestone with gifts, the brunette beauty admitted the couple prefer to commemorate the special occasion by visiting a new place or doing something they 'use to do'.

'And yes, the longer you've been married, the more extravagant and obnoxious those things are allowed to be. (I plan on buying a diamond-encrusted pergola for our 20th.),' she said.

Before finally encouraging: 'Go on. Be obnoxious on your anniversary.'

Fun-loving: Instead of celebrating the milestone with gifts, the brunette beauty admitted the couple prefer to commemorate the special occasion by visiting a new place or doing something they 'use to do'

Soulmates: Zoe and Hamish tied the knot in secret in 2012, after two years of dating, in front of just 22 guests at Wolgan Valley in the NSW Blue Mountains

Cute family: The pair welcomed their first son Sonny in May 2014

Zoe and Hamish tied the knot in secret in 2012, after two years of dating, in front of just 22 guests at Wolgan Valley in the NSW Blue Mountains.

The pair welcomed their first son Sonny in May 2014.

The Blake family recently moved into a $4.5 million-dollar property in the Melbourne suburb of Richmond.

Zoe's book The Wrong Girl, is currently being adapted to television and will feature an all-star Australian cast, including Jessica Marais, on Network Ten.
She's unfailingly flawless on the red carpet.

And Bryce Dallas Howard kept it classic and simple in black as she arrived at the AFI Life Achievement Gala in Los Angeles on Thursday.

The 35-year-old added a sexy twist to the LBD - revealing a slashed back to her otherwise demure garment.

Stunning: Bryce Dallas Howard kept it classic and simple in black as she arrived at the AFI Life Achievement Gala in Los Angeles on Thursday

Showcasing her hourglass curves, the actress upped the glamour and added a pair of fun leopard print high-heels.

The Jurassic World star's trademark flame locks were sleeked into an elegant up-do, which left her with loose side-bangs framing her pretty face.

Bright red lips lead the way for her make-up, adding a flicked eyeliner as she flaunted her flawless porcelain skin.

Sexy surprise: The 35-year-old added a twist to the LBD - revealing a slashed back to her otherwise demure garment

Classic: Showcasing her hourglass curves, the actress upped the glamour and added a pair of fun leopard print high-heels

Bryce - who is the daughter of director Ron Howard and made her film debut as an extra in Parenthood in 1989, aged eight - shared on social media her excitement to be at the event.

She captioned a shot of her on the red carpet: 'So honored to be part of the celebration for John Williams' AFI Life Achievement Award!'

The mother-of-two will be back on the big screen this year with roles in Pete's Dragon and Gold.

Top honor: John Williams accepted the AFI Life Achievement Award from Steven Spielberg during the gala

Music man: Williams, 84, has composed some of the most popular and recognisable scores in film history

Hollywood legend: Harrison Ford had a thick beard for the event

Producing partners: Drew Barrymore and her producing partner Chris Miller sat together at the gala

Bryce - who has 9-year-old son Theo and daughter Beatrice, four, with actor husband Seth Gabel - will also return to her role as Claire for the upcoming Jurassic World sequel.

She was joined at the star-studded event by Idina Menzel.

The Frozen star, 45, also jazzed up a black dress for the occasion.

Glam: Idina Menzel arrived at the star-studded event wearing a black floor-length gown featuring a metallic silver geometric pattern

Her floor-length gown featured a metallic silver geometric pattern and showcased her toned arms and shoulders.

The Wicked mezzo-soprano styled her glossy brunette tresses over one shoulder.

Camille Grammer clearly got the dress-code memo - also opting for a black gown.

The blonde ex-wife of Kelsey Grammer, 47, tousled her curls around her shoulders, keeping up the glamour.

The Real Housewives star kept her lips nude and added plenty of lash to her evening look.
He's played huge stadiums across the world and even rocked the Superbowl half-time show alongside Beyonce and Bruno Mars.

But Coldplay frontman Chris Martin admits he doesn't get stage fright - but is afraid of meeting headmasters when visiting potential schools for his children.

The British rocker, 39, told Nova 96.9 he feels 'nervous' being interviewed by principals because he wants his two kids with ex-wife Gwyneth Paltrow to receive a good education.

Parent-teacher anxiety: Coldplay frontman Chris Martin told Nova 96.9's Smallzy's Surgery this week he doesn't get stage fright - but is afraid of meeting headmasters when visiting potential schools for his children

Chris, who was privately educated in the south of England, suffers anxiety about getting his daughter Apple, 12, and son Moses, 10, into the right school.

He told Australian DJ Kent 'Smallzy' Small this week: 'I get nervous meeting some people, but sometimes it's not the people you'd expect.

'It's like your young kids' next potential headmaster,' he added during the Sydney radio chat.

Best interests: Chris feels nervous about getting his daughter Apple (right) and son Moses (left) into the right school. Pictured with their mother Gwyneth Paltrow (centre) in an Instagram snap

Chris continued: 'Where I live now, they put the fear of God in you, like you've got to be impressive in the interview otherwise your child might not be able to go to this school.

'I'm like, "OK, OK, I've got to polish my Grammys and bring them with us!"' he joked.

Chris also claimed it was 'much harder' than being a rock star 'because you're trying to succeed on someone else's behalf, you're trying to do what's good for your kids.'

Anxiety: The British rocker said he feels 'nervous' being interviewed by principals because he wants his two children with ex-wife Gwyneth to receive a good education

It is possible that Chris and Hollywood actress Gwyneth would like their children to attend prestigious private schools like they did.

In the mid-90s, Chris attended Sherborne School in Dorset, which charges boarding fees of AUD$22750 (11,675) per term, as of the 2016/17 academic year.

Chris' former wife Gwyneth, 43, was also privately educated, attending the Crossroads School in Santa Monica, California before enrolling at the all-girls Spence School in New York.
Perhaps he thought it was the best way to put his highly-publicised comeback as Han Solo behind him.

But Harrison Ford's decision to enter the brave new world of beard wearing turned into a dystopian nightmare after he showed off his scruffily overgrown fuzz at the AFI Life Achievement Gala in Los Angeles on Thursday.

He looked far from the handsome hunk his fans know and love, and indeed looked more akin to a salty old sea dog as he posed up for photographers on the pre-show red carpet.

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For Ford's sake! Harrison's journey into the brave new world of beard wearing left him looking like a red carpet nightmare at the AFI Life Achievement Gala in Los Angeles on Thursday

The dramatic makeover: His scruffy overgrown beard is a stark difference from his clean-shaven face only five months ago (right)

 Slide me  Miracle grow: Slide the red box to see what Ford looks like with and without his beard

The actor has most likely grown out his beard for when he reprises his role as Rick Deckard in the forthcoming Blade Runner sequel which is set to begin shooting in July.

The star managed to overshadow all of his fellow attendees at the event, where legendary composer John Williams - the man behind the soundtrack for films such as Star Wars, Superman and Indiana Jones - was being honoured.

Ford was looking great for his age in a smart black tuxedo, bow tie and leather shoes.

Indeed it proved to be a popular attraction when he sat down for his meal, with several guests wandering over to garner a close-up look at the wondrous specimen.

Steven Spielberg and Dreamworks Animation CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg were also there.

Right up her Ally: The icon's wife Calista Flockhart is no doubt relishing his manly new look

Doing a blade runner: The actor seems to have been avoiding razors at all costs in recent months

Aye, aye captain: Harrison looked like the saltiest of old sea dogs thanks to his bushy beard

Any excuse will do: Dreamworks Animation CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg was one of many who found a reason to wander over to Harrison's table for a closer look

The original model Ford: The star with wife Calista at the Golden Globe Awards in January

Finally, his facial fuzz got the level attention it really deserved, when the Witness legend went onto the stage to address the hundreds in attendance from the lectern.

Ford has no doubt grown his heard for the new Blade Runner movie. He is set to return as replicant hunter Deckard in the long-awaited sequel.

The film, which also stars Ryan Gosling, Robin Wright and Dave Bautista, is to hit cinemas sooner than expected.

'And this guy walks into a barber shop': Perhaps Harrison was regaling a table with his best beard gags

Enchanting: The eye was irresistibly drawn to the actor's burgeoning growth

Your beard is weak old man: Harrison had boasting rights when he spoke to iconic Star Wars composer John Williams at the event

Taking place a few decades after the events of the first film, it is now set to hit theaters on October 6 2017, months ahead of its originally planned February 2018 release.

And given Deckard was, in director Ridley Scott's opinion, a replicant in the first film, it seem's Harrison's character may be trying to lie low in the forthcoming feature.

He is also set to once again pull on his stetson an grab his bullwhip to play perhaps his signature role as Dr Henry 'Indiana' Jones.

It was confirmed back in March a fifth film is currently in development, with Steven Spielberg returning to direct, and which will be released in July 2019.

And in an exciting development, Williams was confirmed to be returning to score the forthcoming film at the AFI event.

Close encounter of the furred kind: No doubt ET legend and fellow beardy Steven Spielberg was impressed

Getting the attention it deserves: The hundreds in attendance got a chance to stare at the wondrous specimen when he took to the stage

He's grown out of the role: Growing a beard has allowed him to put his return to his loathed Han Solo role firmly behind him
Natasha Oakley and Devin Brugman often make their followers green with envy by posting various snaps from idyllic vacations.

But when they joined forces with Harper's Bazaar to show exactly what they get up to on a daily basis, they surprised their fans by tucking into French fries.

The self-made models were seen indulging in the fast food while flaunting their best assets in statement bikinis.

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They're just like us: Natasha Oakley, 25, and Devin Brugman, 26, showed they still do indulge on foods like fries as they posed for a 'day in the life' video for Harper's Bazaar in Manhattan

Natasha, 25, flaunted her sun-kissed curves and ample assets in a Fifties-style two-piece.

Californian beauty Devin, 26, slipped into a brown triangle bikini which she teamed with a white semi-sheer shirtdress.

The girls let their perfectly tousled hair fall effortlessly around their face and complemented their look with bold-rimmed sunglasses.

Keeping it real? Natasha explained that people see the pair by beaches or a pool and don't think they live real lives 'but we do' she reaffirmed

Natasha recently claimed that she maintains her fabulous figure by eating healthily and working out rather than using waist-trainers.

Speaking to Women's Health, she slammed the devices - which are often worn by celebrities such as Kim Kardashian - calling them 'extremely unhealthy'.

'I would never in a million years endorse something like waist-trainers, she confessed. It's extremely unhealthy.

These women [the Kardashians] have so many young girls following them - they are supposed to be role models.'

A Bikini A Day takes Manhattan! The self-made models gave their trusted followers an insight into their lives by giving them a playful tour around New York City in their swimwear

Wearing their typical getup, the two famous bloggers decided to give their trusted followers an insight into their lives by giving them a playful tour around New York City.

Heading inside a Manhattan-based designer store, the friends were seen perusing the clothing rails for statement bikini pieces to feature on their social media sites.

In the video, Natasha explained: People always see us by beaches or by a pool, they seem to think we dont live real lives - but we do.

Ladies at work: The much-loved bloggers joined forces with Harper's Bazaar to show exactly what they get up to on a daily basis

Specs appeal: Heading inside a Manhattan-based designer store, the friends were seen perusing the clothing rails for statement bikini pieces to feature on their social media sites

Working it: Natasha flaunted her sun-kissed curves and ample assets in a sexy peach two-piece, while Californian beauty Devin slipped into a white semi-sheer shirtdress

99 percent of success is dressing for the occasion. And it can be so hard finding something appropriate to wear. I recommend relying on gut instinct.

Its not all selfies and poses, we have real business to attend to and to take care of, quipped Devin. Were not all work and no play.

Later adding: At the end of the day, we are just normal girls living normal lives.

Cheers to that! Devin added in the video, At the end of the day, we are just normal girls living normal lives
He moved to the sunny shores of Australia to pursue a career in the NRL, following in the footsteps of his three brothers.

But despite completely uprooting his life in the United Kingdom, for Thomas Burgess, it seems that home is wherever his family is.

The South Sydney Rabbitohs prop celebrated the purchase of his new $1.3 million Sydney apartment by inviting the whole Burgess clan over for dinner on Thursday, and shared a sweet snap to mark the special occasion.

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'Making memories': Thomas Burgess celebrated the purchase of his new $1.3 million Sydney apartment by inviting his family over for dinner on Thursday, and shared a sweet snap to mark the special occasion

The jam-packed photo of the family gathered around an outdoor table, features twin George and his fiancee Joanna King, sister-in-law Phoebe, mother Julie and eldest brother Luke.

While it appears brother Sam was behind the camera, tagged in the plate at the edge of the shot.

Also present at the special dinner was former Rabbitohs team-mate Michael Crocker.

The only members missing from the family snap was Luke's partner Yolanda Hodgson and their young daughter Grace.

'Great feeling having the family over to the new place for pre-game spaghetti bolognese! Loved it!' Tom captioned the shot.

'@mm_crocker and @arianastephens part of the fam too!' he added, with the hashtag: 'Making memories.'

Tom Burgess was the last of the league-playing brothers to climb on to the property ladder with his purchase of a $1.3m apartment in Coogee Beach

The apartment is located on the ground floor of a luxury nine-unit block and boasts a large private courtyard surrounded by trees

The 167sqm space features separate lounge and dining areas and floating floorboards give the apartment a touch of elegance

Tom is the last of the league-playing foursome brothers to climb onto the Sydney property ladder, with his recent purchase in Coogee Beach.

The 167sqm space is located on the ground floor of a luxury block of nine apartments and boasts a large private courtyard surrounded by trees.

It also features separate lounge and dining areas and floating floorboards give the apartment a touch of elegance.

Tight-knit: The Burgess clan have become even closer since moving to the shores of Australia

The tight-knit Burgess clan, who originally hail from Dewsbury, United Kingdom, have become even closer since moving to the shores of Australia, regularly hanging out together and doing things as a whole family.

Sam was the first brother to make the cross-Continental move in 2009, followed closely by eldest brother Luke in 2011.

Their young twin brothers, George and Thomas were hot on their heels, moving over in 2012.

Back to their roots: The burly brothers originally hail from Dewsbury, United Kingdom

Quality time: The Burgess clan regularly hang out with one another and enjoy doing things as a whole family

When Thomas decided to move to Australia in late 2012 the family was reunited and all four brothers became Rabbitoh's players with all family members, including Julie, deciding to move to Australia permanently.

The possibility that all four could one day play together for their team, came true in Round 25 or the 2013 NRL.

Sam and wife Phoebe tied the knot on December 28 - just less than two years after meeting.

Meanwhile, George is engaged to model Joanna King, 27, and brother Luke shares a child, Grace, with Yolanda.
The graphic sex scenes in its debut episode sent viewers into a frenzy.

And 17th Century drama Versailles, which follows the exploits of libidinous King Louis XIV, is the raunchiest drama on television, according to a report by The Sun.

The BBC 2 period piece wasted no time in introducing viewers to the highly-sexed King's lustful ways with no less than six sexual scenes in episode one.

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Too hot for TV: Raunchy historical drama Versailles, which follows the exploits of libidinous King Louis XIV, is officially the raunchiest drama on television, according to a report by The Sun

Over the course of the ten-episode series, fans can expect 23 scenes of sex or nudity, which The Sun reports is more than double that of Game of Thrones -- itself renowned for graphic content.

The programme's historical researcher Mathieu da Vinha told MailOnline: 'A producer told me that in general terms nowadays a TV series has to have a scene of sex or violence every 15 minutes, although that wasnt set out as a specific rule.'

Meanwhile, a BBC spokesman said: 'Versailles is shown after 9pm on BBC2 and its content is nothing beyond the expectations of a post-watershed UK television audience.'

Not holding back: The BBC 2 period piece wasted no time in introducing viewers to the highly-sexed King's lustful ways with no less than six sexual scenes in episode one

Such is the nature of the show's content that scenes from the show's opening episode have appeared on adult site Pornhub.

However, while the series is jam-packed with sex, David Wolstencroft- one of the show's writers - denied that it cheapened the production.

Speaking to The Telegraph, he said: 'Sex is a fact of life. Were all here because of sex. If you look at the honesty of what the show is doing, the depiction of it as a function of power, the context of it, rather than avoiding the subject entirely, which would be laughable.

'Its actually a very carefully organised, much thought about, calculated way by Simon and I of exploring power.

More to come: Over the course of the ten episode series, fans can expect 23 scenes of sex or nudity, more than double that of Game of Thrones -- itself renowned for graphic content

'But if you want to get titillated and count the nipples, go ahead, but thats not the way that French audiences have consumed it, Canadian audiences have consumed it, and the way I think English audiences will consume it, I think theyll look about it and say "What was all that fuss?"'

The womanising king was put on the throne at just four years of age in 1643, and stayed there until his death in 1715, some 72 years later.

Geprge Blagden, who plays King Louis, says he felt uneasy about disrobing; the first episode saw him bury his head between the thighs of his mistress, played by Sarah Winter.

He said: 'Sex scenes are always awkward.

'Anyone that's ever done a sex scene in our industry know that they are the most embarrassing and really awkward as they're really technical, difficult to shoot,' he said. 'I'd not done a lot of them before these series.'

The programme explores the debauched heart of the court of Versailles, a world of skulduggery, political manoeuvres and declarations of war and sex.
She's previously discussed her battle with body dysmorphia and her struggle to feel confident in her own skin.

And Ashley James expressed her pride at her curvaceous figure in a heartfelt new Instagram post on Friday morning, in which she detailed her self-esteem issues.

Posing in a skimpy black floral bikini, the former Made In Chelsea star, 29, looked happy and relaxed as she reclined on a beach bed during her girls' holiday on the Greek island of Mykonos last week.

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'Things we think aren't perfect are what make us sexy': Ashley James expressed her pride at her curvaceous figure in a heartfelt new Instagram post on Friday, in which she detailed her previous self-esteem issues

Hitting out at photo-editing in an impassioned post, Ashley wrote: 'This time last year I'd have not put up this pic or I'd have edited it to make my tummy look flatter and crease-free.

'But now I feel that all the things we think aren't perfect are actually what makes us sexy #bodyconfidence.'

In March, the reality star revealed her former struggle with body dysmorphia in a Twitter post.

Ashley shared a selfie as she explained: Just found this pic I took it to send to @Josiestweet cause I thought I looked too fat. Body dysmorphia is real.

Struggle: In March, the reality star, 29, revealed her former struggle with body dysmorphia in a Twitter post

The beautiful blonde shared a series of envy-inducing holiday snaps with her Instagram followers from her Grecian girls' getaway.

On Monday morning, Ashley made the beginning of her fans' week a bit brighter, as she shared a number of sizzling bikini pictures.

The model looked stunning in a pink pineapple-print bikini, putting on a very busty display as she frolicked in the crystal clear sea.

The Boux Avenue bikini featured a pink halterneck bikini top which made the most of her famous assets, and a pair of tie-string bikini bottoms which flattered her pert posterior to perfection.

Smoking hot! Ashley looked stunning in a pink pineapple-print bikini as she posted a series of snaps from her girls' Grecian getaway earlier this week

Gal pals: The former Made In Chelsea star, 29, showcased her toned curves to perfection as she larked around with her model friend, Charlotte de Carle

Going make-up free, the former reality star wore sunglasses and a dainty pendant necklace, as she played on the beach with her gal pals.

But it would seem in spite of her toned appearance, Ashley had enjoyed a spot of over-indulgence when it came to traditional Greek cheese pies on her holiday.

Alongside another bikini snap, she wrote: 'My abs have gone but the cheese pie out in #Mykonos was worth that, the gym'll be there next week.'

Ashley wore her blonde hair loose, holding it back as she threw her hands in the air.

Tasty treat: In spite of her toned appearance, Ashley told her Instagram followers she had enjoyed a spot of over-indulgence when it came to traditional Greek cheese pies on her holiday

Girls on tour: Ashley and Charlotte were also holidaying with pals Sophie Ball and Laura Pradelska (C)

Sun's out, bums out! Ashley hasn't been shy in showcasing her pert posterior in a series of playful Instagram posts during her Grecian holiday

Bottoms up! The blonde beauty seemed to be having plenty of fun in the sun if her social media snaps were anything to go by

It's understandable that Ashley wanted to show off her figure, after she worked hard to achieve it with the help of bodybuilder James Crossley, otherwise known as Hunter from Gladiators.

Speaking to MailOnline about her transformation earlier this year, she gushed: 'I am absolutely thrilled with the results.

'I have seen such a huge transformation in my body, I feel so energised, toned and healthy, I am in the best shape I have ever been in!'

Explaining her reasons for wanting to indulge in such a drastic method to improve her body and fitness, she said: 'I wanted to train with James initially because I was a huge fan of the Gladiators TV programme and the prospect of training with a real Gladiator was just too cool to turn down!

Lady in red: The former reality star flew out to the picturesque Greek island last Wednesday and has been delighting her army of social media fans with stunning steps ever since

Covering up: Just after the comments, Ashley was pictured at Hoxton Radio, where she works
They joked they were 'long lost' twins as they joined forces for a night out in London earlier this week.

And Kourtney Kardashian proved she shares more than a special bond with the Mean Girls actress, stealing her style choices as she slipped into Lindsay's stripy dress the very next day.

After Lindsay had put on a super stylish display in the silk number, Kourtney took to her Instagram to showcase herself wearing the chic ensemble.

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Seeing double: Kourtney Kardashian donned her friend Lindsay Lohan's stripy minidress as she posed on a London rooftop on Thursday

Long lost twins! Kourtney was spotted making her exit from Restaurant Ours in London with former party princess Lindsay the previous evening, with the Mean Girls actress wearing the very same fashionable frock

The eldest Keeping Up With The Kardashaisn sibling shared a cute video of herself twirling on a rooftop in the English capital.

The short clip makes the most of the fringing hanging from the dress' epaulettes and the wasitband as she twists and turns.

The reality star also uploaded a posed shot of herself modelling the red and blue number, brimming with confidence as she poses against the cityscape.

Cute: The eldest Keeping Up With The Kardashaisn sibling shared a cute video of herself twirling on a rooftop in the English capital

Joining in on the action: Lindsay's rumoured fiance Egor Tarabasov was also in attendance on the night out

Flower power: The mother-of-three took a Snapchat selfie of herself with Lohan, where they both sported matching flower crowns

Just after jetting into the British capital, Kourtney Kardashian had none other than her 'long lost twin' to show her around for a night on the town.

The 37-year-old was spotted making her exit from Restaurant Ours in London with Lindsday on Wednesday, a day which also saw the reality star take a Snapchat selfie of themselves sporting matching flower crowns as she declared in the caption, 'I found my long lost twin.'

Also tagging along on the night out was Lindsay's rumoured fiance Egor Tarabasov, who was trailing behind the new besties.

Sharing your closet? Kardashian snapped an image of herself seated cross-legged in the exact same outfit Lindsay wore later that evening

It seems the ladies are getting along famously as well, with Lindsay sporting an outfit that seemed to have selected straight from Kourtney's closet.

The 29-year-old sported a festive red and blue fringe dress along with strappy silver heels - an outfit which was a dead-ringer for the one Kourtney sported on Snapchat earlier that same day.

Kourtney, on the other hand, donned a sexy and fitted black frock with an intricate pattern across the chest and asymmetrical skirt as she headed out of the eatery.

Festive fashion! Lindsay was hard to miss in her red and blue fringe dress, which featured a deep low V-cut neckline and a cinched waist

Super sexy: Kourtney, on the other hand, donned a sexy and fitted black frock with an intricate pattern acrosjs the chest and asymmetrical skirt

Big grin: The Mean Girls favourite couldn't hide her happiness as she placed a protective arm on her beau's shoulder

The reality star wore her jet black hair down in long and loose waves, while she highlighted her famous features with a dramatic and sultry swipe of eyeliner and glossy lipstick.

A healthy coat of mascara rounded out her eye makeup, while she stood tall in her sexy black heels.

Lindsay sported a similar hair 'do, adding some glitz and glam with her gold purse, strappy silver heels, and shimmering pendant necklace.

Flawless finish: The reality star wore her jet black hair down in long and loose waves, while she highlighted her famous features with a dramatic and sultry swipe of eyeliner and glossy lipstick

Polished to perfection! Lindsay sported a similar hair 'do, adding some glitz and glam with her gold purse, strappy silver heels, and shimmering pendant necklace

Added extra: Highlighting Lohan's features was a slick of glossy pink lipstick and eyeliner to bring out her eye colour

Highlighting her features was a slick of glossy pink lipstick and eyeliner to bring out her eye colour.

After making their way out of the London eatery, the ladies squeezed their way into the backseat of their car as they headed towards their next destination.

And it seems the pair indeed enjoyed themselves during their night on the town, with Kourtney sharing a selfie of the pair, which she captioned, 'London calling.'

Toned and terrific! Putting their gym-honed legs on full display were their sexy mini dresses

New besties: Lindsay and Kourtney put on a united front as they hit the town

Wherever the night takes them! After making their way out of the London eatery, the ladies squeezed their way into the backseat of their car as they headed towards their next destination

All together now: Kourtney and Lindsay were beaming with happiness as they sped off into the night

Piling into the taxi: The Russian businessman also joined the girls in the backseat of the taxi

Candy stripes: Lindsay was on fine sartorial form in her colourful minidress

Lucky charm: The redhead accessorised with a pretty silver pendant necklace

Egor never strayed far from Lindsay's side as they kept the party going well into the evening.

The Russian businessman reportedly proposed to the actress at a Duran Duran concert in front of her parents Michael and Dina Lohan in April.

News of the reported engagement was sparked when she began to wear rings on her fourth finger, although a representative for the star later shot down the claims.

Kick back and relax: The ladies must have been happy to have some time to relax in their car before taking to their next destination

Top spirits: The actress grinned from ear-to-ear as she took a seat with her gal pals

Night owls: And it seems the pair indeed enjoyed themselves during their night on the town, with Kourtney sharing a selfie of the pair, which she captioned, 'London calling'

Trying it on for size: The actress had some fun trying out a photographer's camera

Strike a pose: The 37-year-old had some fun snapping her way through London on Wednesday

Snap happy: Selfie-obsessed Kourtney gave her sister Kim Kardashian a run for her money

Smile: The mother-of-three perfected her poses for the cameras

They have been an item since meeting at a party in 2015 and have now been dating for seven months.

Also partying at the private members' club in Mayfair was TOWIE star Chloe Sims and her millionaire property tycoon pal Robert Tchenguiz, as well as comedian Jimmy Carr.

Despite previously insisting she was just friends with Robert, Chloe looked mighty cosy with Robert.

Just friends: TOWIE star Chloe Sims was also partying at the same address with her millionaire property tycoon pal Robert Tchenguiz

Denial: Chloe was previously forced to deny there was anything romantic going on between her and Robert after the pair were looking pretty cosy at the Cannes Film Festival

Getting the giggles: Chloe couldn't contain her excitement as she headed home for the evening

Fancy seeing you here: Comedian Jimmy Carr was also in attendance at the Mayfair venue




She turned up the glamour during her stunning wedding to media mogul Jose 'Pepe' Baston in Mexico last month.

But Eva Longoria took things back to basics and went make-up free as she took her nephews and nieces to The Loeb Boathouse in New York City's Central Park for a fancy lunch date.

The Desperate Housewives star, 41, showed off her flawless skin and unmistakable newlywed glow as she made her way through the park in casual attire.

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Flawless! Eva Longoria took things back to basics and went make-up free as she took her nephews and nieces to The Loeb Boathouse in New York City's Central Park for a fancy lunch date on Thursday

Wearing a pair of large aviator sunglasses with her brunette hair scraped back into a ponytail, the actress wore a black and white striped top and fitted white jeans to show off her toned pins.

Eva ditched her heels in favour of comfortable black Nike trainers, carrying her blue padded jacket in the heat as she headed to meet her family at the upmarket Big Apple eatery.

Keeping her accessories simple, she wore a delicate gold necklace and a chain strap bag, allowing her new wedding bling on her ring finger to take centre stage.

The Devious Maids star, who recently changed her Instagram name to Eva Longoria Baston, shared an arty snap from inside the restaurant, toasting the sunny day with a glass of champagne in her hand.

Bare-faced beauty: The Desperate Housewives star, 41, showed off her flawless skin and unmistakable newlywed glow as she made her way through the park in casual attire

Cheers! The Devious Maids star, who recently changed her Instagram name to Eva Longoria Baston, shared an arty snap from inside the restaurant, toasting the sunny day with a glass of champagne in her hand

The boat lake could be seen beyond the eatery's balcony against the pretty backdrop of the New York skyline.

On Monday night,Eva turned up the glamour in bridal white as she attended Hillary Clinton's She's With Us fundraiser at The Greek Theatre in Los Angeles.

Her outfit was a sleeved white mini dress complete with black collar, which she teamed with a pair of fresh white heels by Christian Louboutin, highlighting her golden skin tone.

The concert included a star-studded lineup including Christina Aguilera, John Legend, Stevie Wonder, Ricky Martin and Andra Day.

Clear to show where her support lies, Eva gave a wave to the crowds outside the venue.

Wedding white! On Monday night Eva turned up the glamour in bridal white as she attended Hillary Clinton's She's With Us fundraiser at The Greek Theatre in Los Angeles

She took to the stage at the event and made a dig at Hillary's rival Donald Trump, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Referring to the entrepreneur's recent attacks on a Mexican-American judge, she said: 'I'm a ninth-generation American. But I'm sure Trump will tell you otherwise.'

Eva and Pepe married at a private residence in the lakeside town of Valle de Bravo on May 21, with the star's best friend Victoria Beckham having designed her stunning wedding dress.

Mario Lopez and Ricky Martin were also among the guests, and both shared photos from the reception.

Other celebrity attendees included Melanie Griffith and Jane The Virgin star Jaime Camil.

The Desperate Housewives star got engaged to the president of Latin America's largest media company Grupo Televisa in December after he popped the question in Dubai.

Supporting Hilary: Her outfit was a sleeved white mini dress complete with black collar, which she teamed with a pair of fresh white heels by Christian Louboutin, highlighting her golden skin tone
She has been waging a war of words with her ex Jeremy McConnell since she revealed the news of her shock pregnancy with the Irish hunk last month.

And Stephanie Davis appears unlikely to stop the feud anytime soon, as she launched her latest attack seemingly directed at her 'toxic' former partner.

The 23-year-old took to Instagram to post a meme on Friday, which read: 'When a toxic person can no longer control you, they will try to control how others see you.

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War of words: Stephanie Davis appears unlikely to stop the feud anytime soon, as she launched her latest attack seemingly directed at her 'toxic' former partner Jeremy McConnell on Thursday night

'Me and my beautiful bump': The Celebrity Big Brother star, 23, seemed in a reflective mood as she took to her Instagram page to rant about her former flame

'The misinformation will feel unfair, but stay above it, trusting that other people will eventually see the truth, just like you did.'

Stephanie seemed to be in a good place, despite her ongoing problems with Jeremy, as she captioned the shot: 'Never read anything so true. Ahh so relaxed and breathing easy.'

She added: 'Can't wait to see friends, me my beautiful bump and laughs.' (sic)

The post quickly attracted almost 3,500 likes from her 516,000 followers.

She received many messages of support, with one follower writing: 'Steph you are a beautiful person inside and out. I have loved you ever since Hollyoaks. Ignore what people say about you.'

See celebrity Instagram updates as Stephanie Davis launches attack on Jeremy McConnell

High spirits: Stephanie seemed to be in a good place, despite her ongoing problems with Jeremy

But others dismissed her latest attack on Jeremy and questioned if she was pregnant at all.

Earlier this month, Jeremy provoked fresh outrage after he posted a snap of himself and a busty mystery woman on Instagram.

But despite the pair's close pose, Jeremy insisted that he was only friends with the woman, as he simply captioned the image: 'Buds.'

The tattooed hunk could be seen smiling broadly as he places a hand on the glamorous lady's shoulder, while showing off his muscular physique in a form fitting T-shirt.

Just 'buds'? Jeremy posted a snap of himself and a busty mystery woman on Instagram earlier this month

Meanwhile, the blonde beauty also flashed a her pearly whites as she leaned towards the camera in a plunging black and white lace gown.

But despite gaining thousands of likes on the social media site, the photo has sparked controversy amongst Jeremy's followers with some saying the image is disrespectful to ex Stephanie Davis.

And Jeremy proved his former Celebrity Big Brother love interest couldn't be further from his mind as he cosied up to a mystery girl on Friday night.

The heartthrob shared a Snapchat of himself posing with a pretty blonde during a club appearance in Colchester and cryptically captioned the snap: 'Me and the accountant.'

Mystery companion: Jeremy proved Stephanie couldn't be further from his mind as he cosied up to a pretty blonde on Friday night

Just the corner of Jeremy's face could be seen in the image as he took the selfie, while his female friend pretended to plant a kiss on his cheek.

With her false lashes and heavily contoured cheekbones, she bore a resemblance to Jeremy's ex Stephanie.

MailOnline contacted the CBB star's representative for comment.

Jeremy previously insisted that Stephanie is not pregnant with his child and has even called for a DNA test if she gives birth to prove she is lying.

The reality star called Stephanie's claims 'ridiculous,' and added she would look like a 'mug' when it is revealed any child is not his after a paternity test, Ireland's TV Now Magazine reports.

No love lost: The Irish hunk has insisted that Stephanie is not pregnant with his child and has even called for a DNA test if she gives birth to prove she is lying

Following a bitter war of words between the former couple, the 26-year-old again said: 'I'm not going to be a dad. If she is pregnant, it's not mine.

'If I was a dad, I'd be 100 per cent no, 110 per cent, the best dad in the world. But you'll see in the future that it's not my kid, and she'll look like a mug.'

A representative for Stephanie said in a statement to MailOnline: 'Our client is categorically pregnant. We do not need to continue repeating this.'

Despite their strained relationship, Jeremy showed he still cared for the former Hollyoaks actress and dismissed her behaviour as a tactic to secure media coverage.

'I still love Steph and Id never bad mouth her, but I just think the whole thing is a media approach and its ridiculous,' he said.

Two weeks ago Stephanie, 23, alleged her ex had a serious drug problem and begged him to go to rehab.

'Healthy mind and body': The Irish male model posted a lengthy statement on Twitter last week, denying he had a drug problem and accusing her of having an affair with her ex Sam Reece

In response, Jeremy denied he was abusing narcotics and accused Stephanie of having an affair with her ex-boyfriend Sam Reece during their rocky four-month romance.

The former Beauty School Cop-Out star also denied Stephanie's claims again that he is the father of her unborn child.

Posting a lengthy statement on Twitter, he wrote: 'Was gonna stay quiet about the whole thing and just let it come out normally, first of all I'd like to let people know I'm perfectly healthy mind and body and have took the break up privately, but when me and my family are effected by what I'd call a person with no shame, she is slandering me and trying to portray me in a certain light for a reason, to make me look like a terrible lad.

'People can choose to believe or not. I do not care. For months she was seeing Sam behind my back and now in Ibiza together. It will all unfold in time.

'People don't know what I put with in that relationship. I was never perfect but please, don't believe 90 per cent of what she says. I've messed up but I'd never be as evil. This will be my last message about her #bookclosed.'

The night before his lengthy post, he tweeted: 'I'm as shocked as all you are at this whole saga, I'm sure you can join the dots yourself #letmelive.

Concerns: The former Hollyoaks actress accused Jeremy of being a drug addict and urged him to go to rehab

'She's not pregnant with my child come on. It's all lies I've been told by her friends.'

The following morning, an angry Steph hit back: 'Tell me I'm not pregnant and keep denying your child, and I#ll throw u right under that bus as the s**t I have in u, u would never survive!'

Responding to the Irish model's claims she's in Spain with her ex - who she dumped on TV after falling for Jeremy on Celebrity Big Brother - Stephanie posted a photo of her legs on a balcony in Liverpool.

Former flame: Jeremy accused Stephanie of having an affair with her ex-boyfriend Sam Reece, who she dumped to date the Irish male model in January

She wrote: 'Sorry does his tweet not show how f**ked he is... I'm in Ibiza with Sam.......... Sure I'm in Liverpool.

'Let's look positively he needs this to sort his life out , for all u to understand what I've been through with his crazy mind. It's all good.'

Jeremy's statement came an hour after Stephanie posted her own lengthy essay, accusing her ex of failing to turn up for baby scans.

She wrote: 'I think it's disgusting that Jeremy hasn't turned up for scans and is constantly drunk and partying, the stress he has had me under. I've already been in hospital once with pains and stress.

'I don't hate the lad I feel very VERY sorry for him the fact no one is getting him the help he needs. His management should have him in rehab and sorting his life out so he can then be there for his child before he dies.

'I wouldn't mind but don't WANT to get someone pregnant and have a family. To not be there. I'm happy doing it alone. Off for a chilled week away with bump.

'Been doing this since his act from Big Brother was over after sleeping with what 9 girls now? Boy need help. Sort it out and be a dad. Bye for now, Steph.'

On-screen romance: Stephanie and Jeremy fell for each other on Celebrity Big Brother in January - while she was still dating Sam Reece
She's the ultimate career woman after establishing her own billion dollar business Honest.

And after using her savvy knowledge to give an inspiring talk to high school students on Tuesday, Jessica Alba led by example as she headed to a business meeting in California on Thursday.

Dressed appropriately, the 35-year-old actress proved that office attire doesn't have to look drab in a pin-stripe shirt and skin-tight DL1961 jeans.

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Career woman: Jessica Alba, 35, rocked her 'business chic' look as she headed to a business meeting in Westwood, California on Thursday

Looking effortlessly chic, she teamed the look with a long figure-skimming grey cardigan and matching sophisticated heels.

Drifting away from the colour scheme slightly, she balanced a light blue leather MCM Worldwide handbag in her arm as she flaunted an array of silver rings in the other hand.

As the spearhead of an all-natural business, the Dark Angel star flaunted her flawless skin with blush infused cheeks, a hint of pink on her lips and a subtle lashing of mascara.

Her honey brunette tresses billowed in the wind and gave way to her intricate long silver earrings as she looked raring to impress while heading to her meeting.

Entrepreneurial beauty: The actress proved that business attire doesn't have to look drab in a pin-stripe shirt and skin-tight jeans, which she teamed with slick grey heels and a light blue handbag

And it didn't seem like the California native would falter as she had racked up a confident career-woman demeanour- which was evident as she spoke to students from the Los Angeles Unified School District campus earlier this week.

Her words spoke of their achievements and how they overcame financial restrictions and difficult circumstances to get to this point.

All of the students live below the level of poverty so Jessica's speech had an impact.

Jessica stood at the podium flanked by huge arrangements of white hydrangas, a big screen boasting Baby2Baby and The Honest Company logos behind her.

Business chic: Jessica was business class all the way at the Baby2Baby hosted Graduation Event presented by her own The Honest Company in LA on Tuesday

Speech: The talented star spoke to 70 and more graduates living below poverty level about their amazing achievements while Baby2Baby presidents Norah Weinstein and Kelly Sawyer Patricof looked on

Inspiration: Everyone was enthralled by Jessica's starry appearance

They got theirs: Jessica was a smiling co-host as she posed with a couple of guests who received a tote bag full of The Honest Company eco-friendly products

Her brown hair was parted center and allowed to hang loose over her shoulders with no apparent gels or fancy styling.

She kept her make-up clean to match the snowy white of her jacket and lacy top.

Afterwards, Jessica took time to pose with Kelly Sawyer Patricof and Norah Weinstein, presidents of Baby2Baby, and some of the other guests.

Here you go: The students lined up to get their goody bags

She's an angel: The former Dark Angel star linked arms with some of the students

The students were gifted with black totes filled to the top with eco-friendly products from The Honest Company.

After the event, Jessica was back to mommy mode as she celebrated her daughter's eighth birthday at Bouchon in Beverly Hills with husband Cash Warren and their younger daughter Haven, four.

Jessica was still clad in her bright ensemble with not a wrinkle detected on that bright white jacket.

Birthday girl: The mom-of-two celebrated daughter Honor's eighth birthday later on Tuesday at Bouchon in Beverly Hills with the family

Mommy duties never end: Jessica was still wearing her chic tailored outfit at the celebration and seemed in a more subdued mood as she waited at the valet with Honor and husband Cash Warren

By the end of the day it seems the multitalented actress was feeling a bit nostalgic, as she posted a sexy throwback snap of herself at a photo shoot in Hawaii.

In the photo, the beauty is posing in front of a large tropical palm in a one piece over the shoulder swimsuit.

Her somewhat fractured caption read 'jessicaalba#bts #tbt take me back to #Hawaii ?? @instylemagazine photo by @thomaswhiteside makeup @laurenandersen hair @dennisgots @honest_beauty on mah face ??'
She is a new mum juggling a $53 million fitness empire.

But on Friday, Michelle Bridges took some much needed time out of her busy schedule to enjoy some picturesque beach views with her six-month-old son, Axel.

Kicking back in a fold out chair, Michelle sat the cherubic tot on her lap and looked into his big blue eyes as they lapped up the peaceful serenity.

Doting mum: A smitten Michelle Bridges cuddled up to her six-month-old son, Axel, during a beach camping trip to Double Island Point in Queensland on Friday

The 45-year-old fitness trainer kept warm in a black thermal jacket teamed with white wash denim trousers and boots.

She completed her winter chic look with a beanie placed firmly on her head, while leaving her auburn coloured locks out and straight.

Meanwhile, Axel looked cosy in a simple black puffa jacket with a hoodie and snuggled up to his famous mother on the empty beach.

Winter chic: The 45-year-old fitness trainer kept warm in a black thermal jacket teamed with white wash denim trousers and boots with silver detailing

Adorable: Axel appeared to be in absolute bliss as he snuggled up in his blanket and beanie

The celebrity trainer simply captioned the image: 'Looks like it's just us dude.'

Michelle, her partner Steve 'Commando' Willis and their little lad have been soaking up the sun and the water while on a camping trip to Double Island Point in Queensland.

But the holiday hasn't been all about watching the waves roll in and out for the famous fitness family.

Michelle took to Instagram to upload a video of herself performing a series of workout-inspired dance moves on the beach, with her baby strapped to her torso.

In the background, a distinctly nineties-sounding dance track can be heard.

Keeping active: Michelle took to Instagram to upload a video of herself performing a series of workout-inspired dance moves on the beach, with her baby Axel strapped to her torso

Fun in the sun: Michelle squatted and grape-vined across the sandy shore-side during the beach workout

'Beach baby workout!!' wrote Michelle in the caption as she squatted and grape-vined across the sandy shore-side.

Speaking to the Daily Mail Australia earlier this year, a gushing Michelle said her little lad enjoyed coming along to her training sessions.

'He comes to training, but not every time,' she said.

'But definitely when we go out outdoors. We go on big long walks together. He has been to the gym with me a few times and he quite likes it.'

Michelle is also determined to continue her growing fitness empire which includes a 12-Week Body Transformation programme, clothing line, health products and multiple books.

Michelle and her partner recently launched a health campaign which Steve said on Instagram is designed to 'help Australia combat the obesity crisis.'

The couple met while working as trainers on Ten's weight-loss series, The Biggest Loser.

They welcomed Axel on December 19.

Loved-up: Michelle met her partner Steve 'Commando' Willis while working on Ten's weight-loss series, The Biggest Loser




Momager Kris Jenner has always played an active part in her family's life.

But it seems the Kardashian matriarch has been overstepping her boundaries while eldest daughter Kourtney, 37, is away in London, taking it upon herself to style her granddaughter Penelope, three.

Mother-of-three Kourtney shared a funny snap of Kris and her middle child posing in the hallway of the family matriarch's Calabases mansion.

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Seeing double: Kourtney Kardashian shared a cute snap of her mother Kris Jenner and daughter Penelope, three, clad in matching lemon print outfits

Kris looks lovely in a bright lemon print dress, while Penelope looks every inch her mini-me in a matching ensemble.

The cute toddler is kitted out in full lemon themed gear, including a headband, sundress, neon yellow shoes and a matching handbag.

'This is what happens when I leave town', Kourtney joked alongside a host of heart emojis.

Proud mama: Mother-of-three Kourtney was impressed with Kris' twee styling, adding plenty of heart emojis to her caption

Doting dad Scott Disick has also been spending quality time with Penelope in ex-partner Kourtney's absence.

The 33-year-old reality king held hands with his middle child, as they enjoyed a one on one outing.

A grey T-shirt, skinny jeans and some tan cowboy boots rounded the simple ensemble.

Daddy-daughter day: Doting dad Scott Disick has also been spending quality time with Penelope in ex-partner Kourtney's absence

Accessories were limited to some vintage-style shades and a chunky gold watch on his left arm.

While he's been enjoying some late nights in recent weeks, Kourtney's ex was well put together, sporting perfectly coiffed hair.

Penelope looked adorable herself in a lovely knee-length white dress with puffy sleeves and her own cowboy boots, albeit with some red flower embellishments.

Simple style: Accessories were limited to some vintage-style shades and a chunky gold watch on his left arm

While he obviously tries to stay active in his children's lives, he is still very much a part of the larger Kardashian family as well.

On Wednesday, the TV personality continued to maintain his close ties with the clan as he stepped out to dine with Kourtney's younger brother Rob Kardashian in Beverly Hills, California.

The casually-dressed men were spotted exiting Scott's luxury black Rolls Royce as they made their way into the upscale Montage Hotel.

Cute as a button: Penelope looked adorable herself in a lovely knee-length white dress with puffy sleeves and her own cowboy boots, albeit with some red flower embellishments

Their outing occurred on the same day that Scott took to Instagram and joked that he could potentially be the father of Khloe Kardashian's 'unborn child.'

While Khloe is not pregnant and Scott shares three children with his ex Kourtney, he clearly still saw the comedy in the rumour.

'The Lord' shared a snap of a magazine cover story featuring the report with the caption: 'Got my fingers crossed!'

Scott's relationship with Kourtney became strained after his party-loving ways constantly hit the headlines last year.
He's rumoured to be dating blonde British model Roxy Horner.

And Leonardo DiCaprio certainly looked as though he had plenty to smile about as he enjoyed a boys' shopping trip with a group of male pals in New York City on Thursday.

The Oscar-winning actor, 41, appeared happy and relaxed as he left the New York Shaving Company clutching a number of bags and sharing a joke with his chums.

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No wonder he's happy! Leonardo DiCaprio certainly looked as though he had plenty to smile about as he enjoyed a boys' shopping trip with a group of male pals in New York City on Thursday

High spirits: The Oscar-winning actor, 41, appeared happy and relaxed as he left the New York Shaving Company clutching a number of bags and sharing a joke with his chums

The Revenant star rocked a dressed down look of a white T-shirt, dark jeans and a pair of matching casual slip on shoes for his day out.

Mindful of the sun on the bright day, the Hollywood heartthrob sported stylish shades and a fashionable baker boy cap.

He accessorised his pared-back ensemble with a simple gold medallion on a light chain worn over his low cut T-shirt.

Leo appeared in high spirits and laughed and smiled as he chatted with his friends who had accompanied him on his outing.

Larking around! The star has recently been linked to beautiful blonde British model Roxy Horner

He's got a type! Leo and Roxy were allegedly seen getting extremely close during a night out together in the UK recently and are thought to be 'seriously dating'

Low-key look: The Revenant star rocked a dressed down look of a white T-shirt, dark jeans and a pair of matching casual slip on shoes for his day out

His pals had opted for remarkably similar outfits and also wore white T-shirts and dark trousers on the hot day.

Despite the A-lister being occupied with his male companions, Leo has been linked to a new flame - the 24-year-old model Roxy.

The two were allegedly seen getting extremely close during a night out together in the UK recently and are thought to be 'seriously dating,' according to The Sun.

'Leo didn't leave Roxy's side. After the club, they headed to the Chiltern Firehouse, where a number of onlookers said the pair looked extremely cosy together,' a source told the newspaper.

Dapper dude: Mindful of the sun on the bright day, the Hollywood heartthrob sported stylish shades and a fashionable baker boy cap

Matching! His pals had opted for remarkably similar outfits and also wore white T-shirts and dark trousers on the hot day

He's a lucky man! Roxy was spotted browsing for lingerie at Boux Avenue at Lakeside Shopping Centre in Essex, England, on Thursday

They added: 'Roxy is a really sweet, caring normal girl. Shes naturally stunning and she has a lot in common with Leo. Theyre smitten and enjoy spending time together.'

The Wolf of Wall Street star is said to regularly fly across the world to spend time with the model and even flew across to the UK to meet her last week.

The star won the Best Actor Oscar for his role in Revenant earlier this year and in his acceptance speech, the environmental activist described the movie as 'man's relationship to the natural world'.

Energetic! The star won the Best Actor Oscar for his role in Revenant earlier this year and in his acceptance speech, the environmental activist described the movie as 'man's relationship to the natural world'

He also revealed that production for the film 'needed to move to the southern tip of this planet just to be able to find snow,' he said.

'I thank you all for this amazing award tonight. Let us not take this planet for granted. I do not take tonight for granted. Thank you so very much.'

His other nominations included work for his roles in What's Eating Gilbert Grape, The Aviator, Blood Diamond and The Wolf of Wall Street for Best Actor and Best Picture.

Distracted: The actor looked engrossed in his phone as he walked along the pavement in the city

Looking good! Leo's other Oscar nominations included work for his roles in What's Eating Gilbert Grape, The Aviator, Blood Diamond and The Wolf of Wall Street for Best Actor and Best Picture
Her character Ygritte enjoyed a steamy romp in a cave with her now-boyfriend Kit Harington in the fantasy series Game Of Thrones.

And Rose Leslie has now spilled behind-the-scenes details of her days shooting in icy terrain for the highly successful HBO series.

Speaking on BBC Breakfast on Friday morning, the 29-year-old actress revealed most of the shoot took place in Iceland, where temperatures would regularly plummet to minus eighteen degrees.

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Spilling the beans: Rose Leslie, 29, looked casual in a pinstriped shirt as she arrived at the BBC Breakfast studios in Manchester, where she discussed her time on Game Of Thrones

Battling harsh temperatures: The red-haired beauty, whose character was killed off in 2014, revealed Icelandic temperatures would regularly plummet to minus eighteen degrees, making shooting conditions difficult

'We were paranoid the camera lens would freeze over,' the casually clad red-haired beauty revealed before adding that they would stop every few takes to sort out the issue.

When pressed on how she kept warm, she added with a big smile: 'Being covered in fur helped!'

But despite the harsh elements, the LAMDA graduate - who grew up in a Scottish castle - is still the source of one of the most famous quotes in Games Of Thrones history.

Her one-liner, 'You know nothing, Jon Snow, resonated with fans who asked her to repeat the phrase long after the show, only to be shocked by her Posh accent - which was a far cry from her Northern twang on-screen.

Finally warming up: While the stunner forewent any outerwear, it was a different story for her Game Of Thrones scenes as she had to don layers of fur to keep herself warm

Oo la la: Her time on the show also saw her engage in a steamy sex scene with her boyfriend Kit Harington, who stunned fans by being resurrected at the start of the current series

Speaking of her juicy scene with the British heartthrob two years earlier, Rose revealed to Guilty Pleasures: 'You have no idea how many takes that took.'

However, she insisted like any love scene it had to be justified.

I felt certainly within that scene with Jon Snow and Ygritte that it needed to happen, she continued.

They finally got together and got to show their love to one another. There was no political ploy or tactical play. It was pure romantics.

However, it wasn't a happy ending for the duo since Rose was shot through the heart and perished during an epic battle scene in the penultimate episode of the fourth series.

Keeping it casual: Rose went for tomboy chic in a pair of leather trousers, trainers and backpack as she allowed her red tresses to reign free

And in January, Rose sent Game Of Thrones fans into a frenzy when she confirmed her romance with Kit wasn't just an on-screen affair.

After months of rumours, the couple revealed they were dating as they shared a kiss whilst out shopping in Los Angeles.

Recently the actor was forced to apologise after his character was miraculously resurrected in the new season.

Harington has spent the last year repeatedly denying that Jon Snow would be making a comeback, after devastated fans watched the character be stabbed repeatedly and left for dead in the dramatic season five finale of the hit HBO snow.

On-screen passion: She filmed her first ever sex scene with her now boyfriend Kit Harington back in 2014 for Game Of Thrones and revealed it took many takes to get it right

I felt certainly within that scene with Jon Snow and Ygritte that it needed to happen': She previously talked about her sex scene with Kit's character Jon Snow

'Im glad that people were upset': While Kit apologised for lying to fans about whether he would be returning or not, he also mentioned he was glad he got such a reaction

The show's producer had asked the actor to keep the show's secret with a stellar off-camera performance.

'Id like to say sorry for lying to everyone. Im glad that people were upset that he died,' Kit said in the newly-released video, which preceded a mass reaction from fans of the fantasy drama.

'I think my biggest fear was that people were not going to care. Or it would just be, ''Fine, Jon Snow's dead,"' he added.

While Kit's career has soared to new heights, Rose isn't far behind and spoke enthusiastically of her new play 'Contractions' on BBC Breakfast, which she hopes will be an 'uncomfortable' viewing experience for the audience.
She works hard at the gym to keep her slim figure in shape.

But Teri Hatcher found herself a workout buddy in the form of her lookalike teen daughter, Emerson Tenney, 18, as they stepped out in Studio City, Los Angeles, on Thursday.

The former Desperate Housewives actress, 51, looked trimmed and toned in a purple vest, grey leggings and turquoise Nike trainers.

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Like mother like daughter: Teri Hatcher found herself a workout buddy in the form of her lookalike teen daughter, Emerson Tenney, 18, as they stepped out in Studio City, Los Angeles, on Thursday

Proving the apple doesn't fall far from the tree, Emerson - Teri's only child with ex-husband Jon Tenney - followed suit with her own bright blue Nikes, which she teamed with black leggings and a navy blue vest.

The brunette beauties both kept their hair tied back, while Teri was prepared for a tough workout, shielding her eyes with a pair of sunglasses and carrying a box of juice drinks to keep the pair hydrated all day long.

While Emerson opted for a stylish green handbag, Teri kept things practical with a sleek black leather rucksack.

Teri looked pleased to be spending time with her lookalike daughter, waving to passers-by as the pair ran errands together in the Californian sunshine.

Gym bunny: The former Desperate Housewives actress, 51, looked trimmed and toned in a purple vest, grey leggings and turquoise Nike trainers

The apply doesn't fall far from the tree: Emerson - Teri's only child with ex-husband Jon Tenney - followed suit with her own bright blue Nikes, which she teamed with black leggings and a navy blue vest

Emerson is now 18 and the actress' healthy lifestyle is clearly rubbing off on the teen, with the pair regularly spotted hitting the gym and grabbing a bite to eat together.

Last month, the teenager shared a heartwarming family photo of herself, mother Teri and grandmother Esther Hatcher on Mothers' Day.

As Emerson prepares to leave home for college, she and her mother found a philanthropic way to give back.

While road-tripping to visit various schools, Emerson started a blog, which aims to raise money for the Fulfillment Fund, an organisation helping underprivileged students seeking higher education.

The endorphins are flowing! Teri looked pleased to be spending time with her lookalike daughter, waving to passers-by as the pair ran errands together in the Californian sunshine

Busy bee: The actress can next be seen in romantic-comedy Sundown, slated for release in 2016

In an interview with People, Teri said: 'I think when you have fortune, one of the most important things to do as a parent is to not raise a brat.

'The older she gets, now things are beginning to come more and more from her. This idea of wanting to really help education locally in our community really came from her.'

The actress can next be seen in her upcoming romantic-comedy Sundown, slated for release in 2016.
She founded her swimwear company in 2015 and it's gone from strength to strength ever since.

And Imogen Thomas looked thrilled with the latest fruits of her labour as she attended a meeting to check out her new collection in London on Thursday.

The 33-year-old Welsh beauty queen cut a casual figure as she met her colleague for a business lunch, showing off her cleavage in a low-cut grey vest.

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Back to business: Imogen Thomas looked thrilled with the latest fruits of her labour as she attended a meeting to check out her new swimwear collection in London on Thursday

The mother-of-two looked casual in fitted black ripped jeans and flip flops, showing off her ample assets in a loose-fitting Victoria's Secret top.

Tying her hair up in a top knot, Imogen covered her tanned, make-up free face behind large black shades.

Completing her relaxed ensemble the former Big Brother star sported black flip flops and a practical holdall bag.

Model businesswoman: The 33-year-old Welsh beauty queen cut a casual figure as she met her colleague for a business lunch, showing off her cleavage in a low-cut grey vest

Busty: Imogen's swimwear range is designed for curvier ladies, something the reality star is passionate about

Keeping things casual: The mother-of-two looked casual in fitted black ripped jeans and flip flops, showing off her ample assets in a loose-fitting Victoria's Secret top

Casual chic: Tying her hair up in a top knot, Imogen covered her tanned, make-up free face behind shades

Imogen met with a colleague from her Chasing Summer swimwear company, to check out the latest collection.

And by the looks of things the reality star, who models her own range, looked thrilled with the new pieces.

Amongst the pieces was a pink zip-up swimsuit, a neon orange triangle bikini and a black monochrome one-piece with white piping and cut-out side panels.

Business lunch: Imogen met with a colleague from her Chasing Summer swimwear company, to check out the latest collection

Pretty in pink: By the looks of things the reality star, who models her own range, looked thrilled with the new pieces

Neon fun: The BB star seemed thrilled by a neon halterneck orange bikini with metal hardware

Miaow! She gushed over a purple and black animal-print bikini bottoms with a pretty tie waist

The TV personality founded her company last year and appears to be relishing the challenge.

Her website explains that she decided to launch Chasing Summer after struggling to find a well-fitting bikini for a curvier woman.

It reads: 'The dream came true when she started jotting down different designs at night and making them in to a reality today!'

Sunshine yellow: Imogen held up a yellow bikini with pink piping, cut high on the leg

Brainstorm: Imogen and her colleague went through the new collection of summer swimwear pieces

Taking to Instagram the same day, Imogen showed off a new white sheer kaftan with lace edging, captioning the snap: 'Another new cover up added to @chasingsummeruk love love love chasingsummer.co.uk.'

And the mother-of-two was keen to show off her trim figure and toned tum in animal-print leggings and a Calvin Klein crop top, captioning the snap: 'Morning getting the bod ready for Vegas with @chelseawhitephotog got about 7 weeks to go! I will get the 6 pack (well try).'

The former Big Brother contestant is combining her time as a businesswoman with raising her two young daughters - Ariana, two, and Siera, six months - who she shares with Australian businessman boyfriend Adam Horsley.

'Love love love': Imogen took to Instagram the same day to show off a new white kaftan added to her range

'Getting ready for Vegas!' The mother-of-two revealed she has seven weeks to tone up even further before hitting Las Vegas for a holiday
Normally Times Square is home to crowds of Big Apple tourists.

But on Thursday the supermodels took over as Adriana Lima, Milla Jovovich, Eva Herzigova, Carolyn Murphy, Isabeli Fontana and Liya Kebede set up camp in the NYC hotspot for a Vogue Italia shoot.

Working with famed photographer Peter Lindbergh the all-star shoot saw the ladies dressed to the nines in power suits and glam dresses, with Milla, 40, suffering an unfortunate nip slip under her jacket.

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Wardrobe malfunction: Milla Jovovich suffered an unfortunate nip slip as she shot an all-star Vogue Italia spread in the middle of Times Square New York on Thursday

The 40 year-old beauty, from Kiev was looking super smart in a fitted black jacket teamed with loose trousers.

The top model went braless under her jacket, which was fastened with a single button.

And the daring ensemble failed to keep Milla's chest in place as she suffered a nip slip while strutting around the rainy NYC streets.

Suits you! The 40 year-old beauty, from Kiev was looking super smart in a fitted black jacket teamed with loose trousers

Turning heads: The beauty didn't seem to notice her wardrobe malfunction as she got into work mode

Daring! The top model went braless under her jacket, which was fastened with a single button

The beauty didn't seem to notice her wardrobe malfunction as she got into work mode.

Her short locks were slicked back off her face, while she sported natural makeup to highlight her stunning features and flawless complexion.

It was a shoot of quick changes as Milla was also spotted on set modelling a black and gold print jacket and skinny jeans for a stunning group shot.

Walking the walk: As tourists milled around her and the rain fell down, Milla was in full on work mode

Ready for her close up: Her short locks were slicked back off her face, while she sported natural makeup to highlight her stunning features and flawless complexion

All change: It was a shoot of quick changes as Milla was also spotted on set modelling a black and gold print jacket and skinny jeans for a stunning group shot with Isabeli Fontana and Carolyn Murphy

Ethiopian-born model Liya Kebede (far left) was also on set alongside Eva Herzigova, Adriana Lima, Liya, Carolyn and Milla

Stopping traffic: The beautiful models turned heads in a rainy and packed Times Square

Milla kept her Twitter fans up to date with the day's shoot, tweeting on Friday morning: 'Hanging like a bunch of weirdos in the streets of NYC for @VogueItalia.'

It's been a busy few weeks for Milla who made a trip to Cannes for the annual film festival this month.

She's also been shooting her latest film, Resident Evil: The Final Chapter, which is set to hit theaters in January 2017.

Time for some sightseeing? Rain fell over the Big Apple landmark during the shoot

All-star shoot: Milla was joined by a host of fellow beauties for the huge shoot, including Adriana Lima

Work it: The 34-year-old beauty kept covered up in a fur-trimmed coat, while showcasing her endless legs in a crop top and hot pants as she posed for esteemed photographer Peter Lindbergh

Leggy: Adriana's long and shapeley legs were on full display in the tiny, high-rise shorts, which featured a cable knit pattern

Her husband Paul W.S. Anderson wrote and directed the sixth (and final) installment of the viral zombie franchise, which comes out next year.

Milla - born Milica Jovovic - and her 51-year-old British beau are also parents to eight-year-old Ever, with her family joining her in NYC as she works with Vogue.

Milla was joined by a host of fellow beauties for the huge shoot, including Adriana Lima.

The 34-year-old beauty kept covered up in a fur-trimmed coat, while showcasing her endless legs in a crop top and hot pants as she posed for esteemed photographer Peter Lindbergh.

Stretching out: Adriana made sure she was on top form for the epic shoot

Looking glam: The Brazilian bombshell's high fashion look was completed with a grey mixed wool coat with a fur collar and matching sleeves

Model coming through: Despite her daring outfit, Adriana managed to blend in with the crowds

Adriana's long and shapely legs were on full display in the tiny, high-rise shorts, which featured a cable knit pattern.

The Brazilian bombshell's high fashion look was completed with a grey mixed wool coat with a fur collar and matching sleeves.

The winter chic ensemble was finished off with black leather brogues and statement gold buttons.

Hardly the season: The rainy weather fitted the winter clothes modelled by the beauties

Ready for business: The model was also seen rocking a white trouser suit with chic black trim for another set of shots

Runway walk: She added a pop of colour with a pair of patent red platform heels, which the pro managed to strut around the streets in with ease

Beauty: All the models rocked natural makeup and hair for the shoot

Adriana's hair and make-up was pared down for the shoot, with a hint of bronzer highlighting her cheekbones and her brunette tresses scraped back in a loose bun.

The model was also seen rocking a white trouser suit with chic black trim for another set of shots.

She added a pop of colour with a pair of patent red platform heels, which the pro managed to strut around the streets in with ease.

Sultry: Eva Herzigova matched in her own white blazer, flashing a skimpy black bra as she went shirtless underneath

Showing some skin: Eva seemed to forget her shirt as she posed up a storm

Matching: Eva kept warm in the dismal weather in a cosy coat as she waited for the shot to be set up next to Carolyn Murphy

Another look! Eva was also styled in head to toe black including a plunging top and furry collared coat

Model behaviour: Vogue didn't bother cordoning off the streets for the shoot with the models mingling with the tourists

Eva Herzigova matched in her own white blazer, flashing a skimpy black bra as she went shirtless underneath.

The smart jacket was toughened up with a pair of black trousers studded with buckle detail.

The blonde beauty had her locks styled into voluminous curls as she worked her magic for Vogue.

Edgy look: The smart jacket was toughened up with a pair of black trousers studded with buckle detail

Pit stop: Eva was spotted dressed down as she took a well deserved meal break

Healthy option: The slender model piled her plate with salad in the catering tent

Taking five: Milla slipped on comfy jeans to take a coffee break with Carolyn

Looking glam: Eva was later spotted dressed in an elaborate black ruffled gown

Feeling the chill? While Eva looked in good spirits, Adriana seemed to be suffering in the rainy weather

That's better! The beauty soon got back into the spirit of things though

What a talent: Top photographer Peter Lindbergh was the man in charge for the epic shoot

What a setting! The bright lights of the world famous Times Square provided a colourful backdrop

Top US model Carolyn Murphy, 41, was also on set, standing out in a bright red winter coat, which at least matched the dismal weather.

The blonde beauty was styled in the same towering platforms as Adriana for the group shot, while the colourful ensemble continued with a hot pink suit layered under her coat.

The group shot set-up had a glam vibe with Eva shimmering around in a glam ruffled gown while her co-stars posed up a storm in their suits.

Scarlet fever: Top US model Carolyn Murphy, 41, was also on set, standing out in a bright red winter coat, which at least matched the dismal weather

Say cheese! The top models pouted up a storm for the cameras

Bright lights in the big city: The blonde beauty was styled in the same towering platforms as Adriana for the group shot, while the colourful ensemble continued with a hot pink suit layered under her coat

Working it: The ladies were perfectly coordinated in their sharp suits

Celeb spotting: A tourist bus drove by as the models headed to set in the crowded spot

Talented group: Vogue Italia has assembled some of the world's fashion world's biggest models for the spread
Her A Place in the Sun presenting job ensures she has plenty of opportunity to wear bikinis in sun-drenched locations.

And Laura Hamilton, 34, showed that she is certainly beach body ready despite only giving birth seven months ago, as she put on a loving display in Portugal with her husband Alex Goward while promoting her Laura Hamilton Full Body Workout App.

The pretty blonde sizzled in a mint green two piece adorned with shimmering detailing as she lounged poolside at Vilamoura World in the Algarve.

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Stunning: Laura Hamilton, 34, showed that she is certainly beach body ready despite only giving birth seven months ago, as she put on a loving display in Portugal with her husband Alex Goward

The loved-up couple gazed adoringly at each other as they strolled around the deserted pool area holding hands.

Alex, wearing a pair of purple swimshorts emblazoned with turtles, leaned in to give his wife a passionate kiss.

Making their way to the water's edge, Laura sat in the overflow area and dipped her feet in the pool.

Laugh out loud: The pretty blonde sizzled in a mint green two piece adorned with shimmering detailing as she lounged poolside at Vilamoura World in the Algarve

Loved-up: The loved-up couple gazed adoringly at each other as they strolled around the deserted pool area holding hands

Pucker up: Alex, wearing a pair of purple swimshorts emblazoned with turtles, leaned in to give his wife a passionate kiss

Turning to look at her husband, she let out a hearty laugh while her blonde locks fell messily in front of her face.

They then headed to a couple of sun-loungers and reclined while sipping refreshing drinks. A female companion headed over to speak to them and the three shared a joke together.

Alex chivalrously applied suntan cream onto the backs of Laura's arms before moving onto her back as she perched on the edge of the sun-lounger.

Kneeling, Laura sprayed the lotion onto her man's stomach to prevent him from getting burnt.

He then placed his hands over Laura's as she joined him on his sun-lounger. The petite presenter then laid on top of her husband while he chatted on his phone.

The mother-of-two gave birth to her second child Thalia, in May 2015. She went into labour a week before her planned Caesarean turning a routine procedure into an extremely dangerous labour.

Cooling off: Making their way to the water's edge, Laura sat in the overflow area and dipped her feet in the pool

Looking good: Laura's showed off her toned tum and ample assets as she sauntered by her man

Just the two of us: The pair appeared to have the pool area all to themselves

All eyes on her: Smitten Alex couldn't take his eyes off his beloved wife

Romantic: Alex placed his hands over Laura's as she joined him on his sun-lounger

Cosy: Petite Laura laid on top of Alex while he chatted on his phone

Staying safe: Alex chivalrously applied suntan cream onto the backs of Laura's arms

Real love: Alex sprayed the lotion on Laura's back as she perched on the edge of the sun-lounger

A job well done: He made sure it was properly rubbed in before asking Laura to return the favour

Your turn: Kneeling, Laura sprayed the lotion onto her man's stomach

Don't neglect the back: Laura flipped onto her stomach to ensure she developed an even tan

Having a blast: A female companion headed over to speak to them and the three shared a joke together

Her uterus nearly ruptured and, according to the presenter, 'it was lucky things didn't go differently'.

Three months after giving birth, the mother-of-two began training again. She was spurred on to shed a few pounds after reading negative comments in articles which said she looked 'massive' and 'overweight'.

'I put the pressure on myself to lose weight after reading these horrible comments,' she told FEMAIL. 'I try and avoid reading the comments on articles now as I know you're never going to appeal to everyone, but I knew I was nearly five stone overweight at the time.

'Before I was pregnant with Thalia but after Rocco I was 13st 8lb on the scales - I'm only 5ft 3in. I wasn't eating that much and at the time I didn't think I'd put on that much weight, so it was a real shock.'

'I'm constantly in summer dresses on my job so wanted to look good, but it was really hard to find the time to work out with two children.

'Also because I travel so much for work it was difficult to commit to a regular exercise routine.'

Life of luxury: Placing his hands behind his head, Alex looked deeply relaxed

That's the life: The couple reclined on the lavish loungers while sipping refreshing drinks
She's used to displaying her incredible figure in lingerie on the Victoria's Secret catwalk.

So Adriana Lima was in her element as she strutted through Times Square in New York City on Friday, turning heads as she joined her fellow supermodels for a star-studded Vogue magazine shoot.

The 34-year-old beauty kept covered up in a fur-trimmed coat, while showcasing her endless legs in a crop top and hot pants as she posed for esteemed photographer Peter Lindbergh.

In her element: Supermodel Adriana Lima turned heads as she strutted through Times Square in New York City on Friday, while shooting a Vogue editorial spread

Adriana's long and shapely legs were on full display in the tiny, high-rIse shorts, which boasted a cable knit style.

The Brazilian bombshell's high fashion look was set off with a grey mixed wool coat with a fur collar and matching sleeves.

The winter chic ensemble was completed by black leather brogues and statement gold buttons.

Glamorous: The Brazilian bombshell's high fashion look was completed with a grey mixed wool coat with a fur collar and matching sleeves

Winter chic: The 34-year-old beauty's outfit was set off by black leather brogues and statement gold buttons

Adriana's hair and make-up was pared back for the shoot, with a hint of bronzer highlighting her cheekbones and her brunette tresses scraped back in a loose bun.

The striking star was joined by top industry names Milla Jovovich, Eva Herzigova, Carolyn Murphy, Isabeli Fontana and Liya Kebede on the photoshoot.

The catwalk sensation's outing comes after she confessed she'd love to try her luck at acting and wants to star in a Tarantino film.

Striking: Adriana's hair and make-up was pared back for the shoot, with a hint of bronzer highlighting her cheekbones and her brunette tresses scraped back in a loose bun

Toned physique: The catwalk sensation showcased her slender figure in her high-rise shorts and crop top

Going incognito: Despite having a supermodel in their midst, Adriana managed to pass unnoticed in NYC

New direction: The model's outing comes after she confessed she'd love to try her luck at acting and wants to star in a Tarantino film

Adriana revealed her secret dream while chatting with The New York Post's Page Six at the Fragrance Foundation Awards in New York City on Tuesday.

'My dream role is with Quentin Tarantino,' the Victoria's Secret Angel confessed, adding: 'Fingers crossed.'

But the mother of Valentina, six, and Sienna, three - with ex-husband Marko Jaric - noted: 'I haven't had a chance to tell him that directly.'

Legs for days: The Brazilian bombshell made the most of her long and lean legs in the wool separates

Strutting her stuff: The brunette was in her element as she sashayed around Times Square

Adriana is planning to audition for more roles and hopes that directors will start to notice her.

The Brazilian beauty added to the newspaper: 'I'm just waiting for someone to see me. I'm like, 'Hello, I'm here.''

The runway model has tried her hand at acting in the past with a role in 2001 movie The Follow opposite Mickey Rourke.

She has also played herself with TV appearances on shows How I Met Your Mother, The Crazy Ones, and Ugly Betty.

Here come the girls: Adriana was joined by top industry names Milla Jovovich, Eva Herzigova, Carolyn Murphy, Isabeli Fontana and Liya Kebede on the photoshoot

Silver screen ambitions: Adriana is planning to audition for more roles and hopes that directors will start to notice her




He's a multi-millionaire who's used to the finer things in life.

And Jay Rutland, 35, cut a dapper figure in a stylish suit as he joined pals for a fancy lunch in West London on Friday.

The Essex native, who's married to socialite Tamara Ecclestone, 31, chose a grey jacket and trouser combination which he teamed with a buttoned down pale pink shirt.

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Suited and booted: Jay Rutland, 35, cut a dapper figure in a stylish suit as he joined pals for a fancy lunch in West London on Friday

He sported a finely groomed beard and wore his well-coiffed brown locks slicked back. The businessman dined with a mix of male and female pals, and the conversation looked to be flowing as a waitress tended to their table.

It looked to have been an enjoyable meal as the group were all smiles as they emerged into the pleasant sunshine.

Jay stood on the curbside as his pals stepped into the road laughing heartily. The father-of-one then gave the women a peck on the cheek goodbye before returning to his matte black Range Rover.

In good company: Jay dined with a mix of male and female pals, and the conversation looked to be flowing as a waitress tended to their table

All smiles: It looked to have been an enjoyable meal as the group were all smiles as they emerged into the pleasant sunshine

Meanwhile, Tamara enjoyed a day out with the couple's daughter Sophia. Sharing a series of images with her 221,000 followers, they showed Sophia playing with her pet dog, before heading to the park and then finally to a restaurant where she enjoyed ribs.

Jay and Tamara, who is the daughter of F1 tycoon Bernie Ecclestone, married in 2013.

Rutland's high-earning career in the City of London ended in shame in 2012, when he was banned from trading over 'market abuse'.

Playing it cool: One of Jay's pals appeared to reach towards his pocket while he casually stood still

Warm embrace: The father-of-one then gave the women a peck on the cheek goodbye before returning to his matte black Range Rover

In a damning ruling, the Financial Services Authority concluded he was not a 'fit and proper person' and his behaviour demonstrated a lack of 'honesty and integrity'.

In 2013 he needed treatment for facial cuts after he was ambushed by two men in a mugging when he stopped his black Ferrari - just a month after marrying Tamara.

He was robbed of a 50,000 Rolex and a 20,000 bracelet by at least two thugs in an attack caught on CCTV, but the high-profile prosecution of a suspect was dropped due to insufficient evidence.

Dinner time: Tamara enjoyed a day out with the couple's daughter Sophia, sharing a series of pics on Instagram
She doesn't seem to have aged since the Nineties and still manages to outshine starlets half her age on the red carpet with her youthful glow and statuesque figure.

Andie MacDowell looked as radiant as ever as she attended Heal The Bays' annual Bring Back The Beach Gala in Los Angeles on Thursday.

The 58-year old actress sported a white loose fit sleeveless and button decorated jumpsuit showcasing her enviably toned body.

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Youthful glow: Andie MacDowell looked as radiant as ever as she attended Heal the Bays' Annual Bring Back the Beach Gala in Los Angeles on Thursday

The Four Weddings And A Funeral actress rounded off her minimal look with a pink crocodile clutch bag with matching pink floral sandals.

She appeared to be in great spirits and wore her trademark curly dark tresses loose an parted to one side.

The Groundhog Day star kept her make-up natural and stunning with a dab of light foundation setting off her ageless complexion, a smokey eye make-up showcasing her dazzling peepers and a slick of cherry gloss highlighting her splendid lips.

Andie kept her accessories simple, choosing a pair of opal drop earrings in yellow gold and adding some more sparkle to her beauty with a diamond ring and a gold bracelet.

She was all smiles: The Four Weddings and a Funeral actress appeared to be in great spirits and wore her trademark curly dark tresses loose an parted to one side

Aside from having great genes, the Sex, Lies, And Videotape actress keeps in shape with a constant workout routine involving weight training, cardio and yoga.

As for her eating habits, she prefers to keep it simple and clean with veggies, brown rice and plenty of water.

'Preserving the natural attributes of organically grown vegetables is a great way to nourish my whole body again,' she stated.

The stunning brunette once revealed one of the secrets to her youthful appearance: chocolate! 'Thanks to all the antioxidants, it helps me young!' she confessed. 'Plus, it relaxes my blood pressure and balances certain hormones in my body.'

Ageless complexion: The 58-year old star kept her make-up natural and stunning with a dab of light foundation setting off her ageless complexion, smokey eye make-up showcasing her dazzling peepers and a slick of cherry gloss highlighting her splendid lips

Minimal look: Andie kept her accessories simple, choosing a pair of opal drop earrings in yellow gold highlighting her beautiful smile, adding some more sparkle with a diamond ring and a gold bracelet

She's got great genes: The 58-year old star rounded off her minimal look with a pink crocodile clutch bag with matching pink floral sandals

Andie, who rose to prominence co-starring with Hugh Grant in the romantic comedy Four Weddings and a Funeral, most recently appeared in Magic Mike XXL and has now rounded out the cast of Granite Mountain, starring Josh Brolin and Miles Teller.

The film also stars Jeff Bridges, Taylor Kitsch and James Badge Dale.

Tron: Legacy helmer Joseph Kosinski will direct the movie, which tells the inspirational true story of the Granite Mountain Hotshots, how a wildland firefighter created the first municipal Hotshot crew and, together with his men, faced one of the worst wildfires in history to save an Arizona town.

Keeping in shape: Aside from having great genes, the Sex, Lies, and Videotape actress keeps in shape with a constant workout routine involving weight training, cardio and yoga

Is chocolate her secret? The stunning brunette once revealed one of the secrets to her youthful appearance; chocolate! 'Thanks to all the antioxidants, it helps me young!' she confessed. 'Plus, it relaxes my blood pressure and balances certain hormones in my body'
Her enviable figure has helped her land countless modelling contracts throughout her career.

And on Friday, Jennifer Hawkins took to Instagram to flash her famous model physique in a white bikini from her swimwear business venture, Cozi.

Putting her fabulous figure on display, the 32-year-old Myer ambassador dazzled as she kicked back on a marble staircase and stretched out her sun-kissed limbs.

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Her own best promotion! Jennifer Hawkins showed off her impeccable figure in a white bikini from her Cozi swimwear collection in a post to Instagram on Friday

Wearing her blonde tresses out and straight, Jennifer opted for minimal make-up to let her natural beauty shine through.

The model added a pop of sparkle to her look with drop earrings and a gold bracelet, and the bling could be seen in full view as she ran one hand through her hair.

Earlier this week! she captioned the picture of herself seductively looking away from the camera, while showing off her cleavage and toned tummy.

Bikini businesswoman! The 32-year-old is working to launch a new collection from her COZI swimwear line (Pictured on the runway in August 2013)

The Sydney native recently launched her latest collection for Cozi, which prominently featured the popular Brazilian cut.

'I love it because all women love the Brazilian bum!' the 32-year-old told the Daily Telegraph.

She continued: 'They can be petite or have a more generous butt and I love that look, its great.'

The blonde bombshell also stated that she believes the Brazilian bottom is the 'sexiest' cut around.

The revealing style might be a little skimpy for some, but the flattering cut is known for adding shape and volume to more petite behinds that need a little extra junk in the trunk.

'I love it because all women love the Brazilian bum!' The 32-year-old recently spoke about the skimpy cut brief in her new range

Busy schedule: It's been a busy few months for blonde beauty who is gearing up to appear on the forthcoming instalment of Australia's Next Top Model, where she is returning as the host

It's been a busy few months for the blonde beauty who is gearing up to appear on the forthcoming installment of Australia's Next Top Model, where she is returning as the host.

Jennifer and husband Jake Wall, who have become regular fixtures on the social scene, recently celebrated their third wedding anniversary - the couple wed in a lavish Bali wedding in 2013 after eight years together.

Jennifer met her handsome beau just prior to winning the 2004 Miss Universe crown.

In the years since, they have managed to grow an impressive, multi-million-dollar company, J Group, which they operate jointly.

Not just a pretty face: Jennifer and her husband Jake wall have a $10 million portfolio which ranges from beauty products to a property development company

Moving forward: She also hinted there was more news to come from her Jbronze range with a post to Instagram

Their $10 million portfolio ranges from beauty products such as her fake tanner, J Bronze, property development, and the recent addition of Sesion Tequila to their ever-growing brand.

Despite only launching Sesion Tequila in December, the line is already off to an incredible start.

The Mocha Tequila won a gold medal at the 2016 San Francisco World Spirits Competition, while the Sesion Blanco and Reposado won silver medals.

She also hinted there was more news to come from her Jbronze range with a recent post to Instagram.

#missingsummer but grateful for what is happening right now! Can't wait to share our @jbronze__NEWS!, she wrote alongside a picture which feature her Louis Vuitton organiser, various Jbronze products and pencils.

Happy couple: Jennifer and husband Jake Wall have been married since 2013




They went public with their romance at the Oscars earlier this year.

And Alicia Vikander and Michael Fassbender appeared to be just as much in the honeymoon period as they enjoyed a workout session together on Friday at Bondi Beach in Sydney, Australia.

The pair were joined by a trainer, who put them through their paces with an array of taxing exercises as they worked up a sweat in the sunshine.

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Happy: Alicia Vikander and Michael Fassbender appeared quite the couple in love as they enjoyed a workout session together on Friday at Bondi Beach in Sydney

Alicia opted for a typical gym look with skin tight grey leggings and a darker hooded top - finishing the outfit with a pair of white trainers.

She wore her long brunette tresses in a relaxed messy up do to keep her hair out of her face while she undertook the vigorous workout.

Mindful of the glare, the actress wore a pair of oversized dark sunglasses to keep out the glare as she exercised.

And she carried a bottle of water to ensure she kept hydrated in the warm weather while running.

Pushing through: The couple were joined by a trainer, who put them through their paces with an array of taxing exercises

Stylish: Alicia opted for a typical gym look with skin tight grey leggings and a darker hooded top - finishing the outfit with a pair of white trainers

Heartthrob: Michael rocked a dressed down ensemble comprising a black T-shirt, grey jogging pants and Nike trainers

Enjoying it? He was put through his paces and was seen doing lunges, squats and star jumps during the extended session

Painful? The star looked like the run was getting the better of him as he gritted his teeth through the exercise

Looking good: She wore her long brunette tresses in a relaxed messy up do to keep her hair out of her face while she undertook the vigorous workout

Sensible: Alicia carried a bottle of water to ensure she kept hydrated in the warm weather while running

Heartthrob Michael rocked a dressed down ensemble comprising a black T-shirt, grey jogging pants and Nike trainers.

He was put through his paces and was seen doing lunges, squats and star jumps during the extended session.

The pair confirmed their romance after months of speculation in February when they kissed at the Oscars after she'd been awarded Best Supporting Actress for her role in The Danish Girl.

In love: The pair consolidated their romance after months of speculation in February when they kissed at the Oscars after she'd been awarded Best Supporting Actress for her role in The Danish Girl

Star jumps! Stepping out at the X-Men premiere in Sydney in mid-May, the actor politely refused to discuss his relationship status with any reporter who asked

No comment! According to the Sydney Morning Herald, Michael simply said: 'Nice talking to you,' and moved onto the next journalist along the red carpet

Busy: Fassbender's current project, Alien, is a sequel to 2012's Prometheus and will eventually become a trilogy, with Michael reprising his Prometheus role as the android David 8

Resting: The series is actually a prequel to 1979 fantasy thriller Alien, which starred Sigourney Weaver and Tom Skerritt

Stepping out at the X-Men premiere in Sydney in mid-May, the actor politely refused to discuss his relationship status with any reporter who asked.

According to the Sydney Morning Herald, Michael simply said: 'Nice talking to you,' and moved onto the next journalist along the red carpet.

His current project, Alien, is a sequel to 2012's Prometheus and will eventually become a trilogy, with Michael reprising his Prometheus role as the android David 8.

The series is actually a prequel to 1979 fantasy thriller Alien, which starred Sigourney Weaver and Tom Skerritt.

Nice surroundings: Michael looked out to sea as he completed one of his arduous exercises

Feeling the burn? The star used the equipment on the beachside to help with his routine

Distracted? Mindful of the glare, the actress wore a pair of oversized dark sunglasses to keep out the glare as she exercised

Taking a moment: The actor seemed distracted by his phone during the tough session

Winding down: Michael made sure he did some stretches so he didn't pull a muscle during the workout
She's a natural beauty with a successful modelling and photography career under her belt.

But Penny Lancaster admits that despite her confident exterior, she suffered from crippling shyness for years and has only overcome her fears with the help of her husband Rod Stewart.

The 45-year-old star confessed during an appearance on Friday's installment of Loose Women that the 71-year-old rocker's support has been invaluable to her.

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Shy at heart: Penny Lancaster admits that despite her confident exterior, she suffered from crippling shyness for years and has only overcome her fears with the help of her husband Rod Stewart

Penny explained: 'I'm 6ft1 so I think people think I'm confident. But when I was at school I had borderline dyslexia and I was terrified of reading aloud.

'It was Rod who gave me the confidence. He always says to me, "Just says yes (to opportunities)".

'He knows what I'm capable of. He's got more confidence in me than I have!'

Her rock: The 45-year-old star - who wed Rod in June 2007 near Portofino, Italy - says Rod has been invaluable to helping Penny overcome her insecurities

Lovely in lace: The former model and photographer looked elegant in a bright orange lace dress for the special royal edition of Loose Women

However, Penny revealed that she still gets incredibly shy, citing a recent example of when Rod asked her to go on stage in his place.

Recalling how terrified she was when he told her to introduce his daughter Ruby Stewart's band in The Sisterhood in front of a huge audience, Penny said: 'I was terrified but I had to do it for my family.'

Photographer Penny and Rod first met in 1999 when he offered to let her take photos of him while on tour and began dating shortly afterwards.

Penny explained: 'I'm 6ft1 so I think people think I'm confident. But when I was at school I had borderline dyslexia and I was terrified of reading aloud'

Social anxiety: Penny revealed that she still gets incredibly shy, citing a recent example of when Rod asked her to go on stage in his place

Embarrassing: Recalling how terrified she was when he told her to introduce his daughter Ruby Stewart's band in The Sisterhood in front of a huge audience, Penny said: 'I was terrified but I had to do it for my family'

The pair - who have two children together - tied the knot in June 2007 near Portofino, Italy.

Penny recalled Rod's emotion as she walked down the aisle on their big day.

She said: 'We had an Italian boys' choir and I asked them to play his favourite song, The Fields of Athenry.

'His eyes were completely welled up. It was a very tender moment.'
Since leaving Made In Chelsea, Kimberley Garner has become known for bikini designing.

And she found a cheeky way to model hers on Friday when she posted a steamy photo of herself flashing her pert posterior whilst toting a guitar backwards, around her shoulders.

The reality TV star posed with her back to the camera in the shot, which she captioned: 'Cali[fornia] throw back, miss this place and the freedom and creativity and energy #fender.'

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Flashback: Kimberley Garner took to Instagram on Friday to post a steamy photo of herself flashing her pert posterior whilst toting a guitar, explaining that she was missing California, where the snapshot was taken

The British beauty was lamenting her time spent in the US at the start of the summer, especially since she is now back in her native, London.

Former MIC star Kimberley couldn't tear herself away from the exclusive London borough where the show is set when she enjoyed a day of shopping on the Kings Road the same afternoon.

No doubt trying to take her mind off her Cali blues, the 26-year-old lapped up the glorious sunshine as she put on a leggy display in a tan suede miniskirt that just skimmed her toned thighs.

Chelsea's finest! Now permanently back in London, Kimberley enjoyed a day of shopping on the Kings Road that morning

And Kimberley couldn't resist adding a few extra inches to her already never-ending pins as she slipped on a pair of strappy block heels that featured pretty gold stud detailing.

However, she made sure to dress down her look with a simple navy t-shirt that she tucked in to accentuate her tiny waist.

But the swimwear designer couldn't resist adding a touch of sparkle to her outfit with some delicate glittering pendants and a stylish across the shoulder bag that came complete with a shimmering gold chain.

Feeling hot! The 26-year-old lapped up the glorious sunshine as she put on a leggy display in a tan suede miniskirt that just skimmed her toned thighs

Although Kimberley decided to hide her face away from the June sunshine with a pair of large round shades, she nevertheless made sure that her makeup was perfectly pristine as she sported highly groomed eyebrows, a dewy complexion and a slick of dusky pink lipstick.

The TV star maintained her chic look as she blowdried her trademark golden locks into a sleek and straight style that perfectly framed her heart shaped face.

The blonde beauty leaped to fame in 2012 when she appeared in Series 3 of Made In Chelsea before leaving the show later that year.

Best foot forward: Kimberley couldn't resist adding a few extra inches to her already never-ending pins as she slipped on a pair of strappy block heels that featured pretty gold stud detailing

In the navy! Kimberley dress down her look with a simple navy t-shirt that she tucked in to accentuate her tiny waist

She received a lot of attention from the male castmembers and after one date with Spencer Matthews, ended up dating Richard Dinan.

In a recent interview, Kimberley declared she would never return to the E4 reality show, admitting she felt 'like a caged animal' while filming it.

She told OK! Online: 'I've done those (cast) trips before and they are not very fun. It's beautiful, but you feel like you're a caged animal. There is so much drama that it's like being on a bad holiday.'

Kimberley admitted she was unhappy with the way she was edited in the show and accused producers of persuading her to say certain things.

She explained: 'They definitely edit a lot - I was shocked when I watched it back. They get you to say certain phrases, and suddenly create scenes that happened completely differently to reality.

'You'd watch it back thinking, "That didn't even happen!" and the storyline would be completely different. That was one of the reasons why I left.'

Originally working in property when she joined MIC, Kimberley has been focusing her attentions on her Kimberley London swimwear range, which she launched in 2013.
They're on an envy-inducing holiday, enjoying the beautiful sights of Positano on Italy's Amalfi Coast.

But it seems Anna Heinrich was enjoying a view of a different kind on Friday as she relaxed on a sun lounger at the couple's idyllic hotel, while beau Tim Robards enjoyed a dip in the pool.

The buff chiropractor and personal trainer made a sexy exit out of the small pool on the balcony overlooking the ocean, wearing his Aussie Bums swimsuit and channelling his inner James Bond.

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Channelling his inner James Bond? Tim Robards made a sexy exit out of his luxurious hotel pool in Positano on Friday as he and girlfriend Anna Heinrich continued to share envy-inducing snaps from their holiday

Showcasing his rippling muscles in the tiny wears, the 33-year-old shared the image to Instagram, telling fans: 'Pulled the old Aussie Bums out of the bottom draw'.

He also acknowledged the bike lodged inside the pool, saying: 'As much as I tried I couldn't work up a sweat on the spin bike!'

Meanwhile, the 29-year-old old blonde beauty flaunted her lean limbs in a frilly bright yellow lace mini dress by Australian designer Rebecca Vallance - hot off the Resort Collection runway at Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week Australia last month.

Earlier, Anna had been in the same pool and shared a photo as she too up the steps in her black bikini paraded her lean and slender frame in all its glory.

Room with a view! Anna showed off her lean limbs in a sexy yellow lace mini dress by Rebecca Vallance, hot off the Resort Collection runway at Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week Australia last month

Stairway to heaven': Tim could not resist to urge to gloat about how stunning his girlfriend looked while she walked down some floral adorned steps

The skimpy two-piece, designed by Slinkii, drew attention to her lithe, toned limbs, whittled waistline and lightly curved sun-kissed hips.

She also donned a pair of retro designer shades, while her golden-tinted locks were swept back into a chic ponytail to keep the heat off her neck.

Some afternoon pool action, the pretty TV star captioned one shot, alongside the hash-tags in love and pool workout.

Meanwhile, the fitness hunk could not resist to urge to gloat about how stunning his girlfriend looked while she walked down some floral adorned steps.

Looking fine: Bikini-clad Anna Heinrich shared a similar shot to her beau as she exited the hotel pool on Thursday in a skimpy black two-piece

Some days, the intermittent fasting can wait!' TV hunk Tim uploaded a shirtless snap of himself tucking into a variety of tasty food treats during breakfast

Preened to perfection, Anna exuded style and glamour in the striking canary yellow lace dress, with Tim's breath clearly taken away by his beauty.

Stairway to heaven,' he captioned the shot, adding the hash-tags 'get down from there', 'beautiful lines', 'beautiful curves'.

Tim also uploaded a shirtless snap of himself tucking into a variety of tasty food treats during breakfast.

Some days, the intermittent fasting can wait! #doesntevenmakesense, he cheekily wrote.

That's Amore! The couple shared a passionate kiss as they posed for a photo while standing on the cliff edge over looking the endless seas of Italy

The smitten couple, who found love on the first season of The Bachelor Australia, are staying at the exclusive Villa Boheme, which boasts gorgeous ocean views.

They are in Italy to celebrate Anna's mother Jude's 60th Birthday, along with the rest of the Heinrich family.

However, they've found some time to steal away some romantic moments just between the two of them.

And while they are not filming this European holiday for their YouTube show, Anna and Tim have wasted no time in sharing plenty of photos across social media.
The recent British Soap Awards gave best on-screen partnership to Coronation Streets Sally and Tim (Sally Dynevor and Joe Duttine). It was so deserved. Tim started off as a small character, but pairing him with Dynevor gave Duttines brilliant comic timing room to breathe alongside hers. Both actors deliver laugh-out-loud moments, but also moments of extreme poignancy, when Sally (the character) lets her mask of social climbing slip, and Tim has the rare opportunity to pick up the pieces.

Finding the right other half for characters is central to soaps main storylines, and the Streets had more than its fair share of them  Vera and Jack, Bet and Alec, Mavis and Derek. When a partner dies or the relationship breaks up (usually as a result of adultery), as viewers we feel the separation keenly; we invest in pairings in the same way we do in real life.

It was good to see, also in the Soap Awards, Vals death in Emmerdale win Scene of the Year. It brought to an end one of Emmerdales greatest-ever pairings, with Erics subsequent grieving being the icing on the cake. As Noahs Ark showed, animals travel best in twos.

EASTENDERS: COURTING ANOTHER DISASTER

It's judgement day for Bobby Beale in EastEnders this week over Lucy's murder

Theres milking it  and theres making a dairy farm out of it. The saga relating to Lucys murder will never end, I suspect (when did it begin? 1993?), but finally Bobbys hearing is here. Ritchie reckons if Bobby pleads guilty, he could be home by the end of the day. Even by EastEnders School of Bad Legal Advice standards, this is pushing it a bit. Sharons not happy, but when Kathy overhears her say that Bobby deserves prison, an argument between the pair causes Ian to snap. Will Bobby receive a sentence, or will he be set free to kill again?

There is a lot of snapping going on among the men, and when Mick grows frustrated by the lack of answers over Ollie at his check-up, he storms off. Dont expect his facial expression to change; hell still look as if hes having trouble locating a lost contact lens.

Theres also aggro between Martin and Shakil, and Sonia has to step in to take charge (you know youre in deep trouble when you have to rely on Sonia as the placatory party). At least the moment makes Bex realise how much she needs her mother, which encourages Sonia to make an appointment with her surgeon. The decision she makes stuns Martin. Dont expect a change of expression on him, either.

CORONATION STREET: STEAMY TODD

Jason and David comes to blows in the Rovers this week

Could Jason be any duller if he were struck down with rigor mortis? If Id been accused of a murder I didnt commit, Id do more than frown and spout monosyllables from a sofa. Determined to put David in the frame, the two almost come to blows before Steve steps in (for a man whos got one arm in a sling, Steve is doing very well in the fight stakes at the moment).

Billy undergoes something of a character change when he dumps Sean, claiming that hes fallen for Todd. Im not convinced. Todd is a liar, a cheat and... on second thoughts: him or Sean? No contest. Im a bit worried about Billy, anyway. Does he know that the parish extends beyond his front door and the pub? Does he know there are parishioners beyond the end of the street? Does he even know where the church is? And why, by the way, was he not chosen to conduct Nick and Carlas wedding? Can we get that other vicar drinking in the pub, please? But whats Todd up to, telling Sean that he needs to give Billy some space? Yes, a parking space big enough for himself, methinks.

Izzy Deals on Wheels is finally in court but tells them she has no regrets (oh, please dont sing... No, seriously: please dont). And should this not be spectacle enough for you, Kate and Maria enjoy a belly dancing class at the gym. Front row tickets, anyone?

EMMERDALE: A KISS IS STILL A KISS  EVEN AS TIME GOES BY

Bernice leans in for a kiss but will Andy return it in Emmerdale?

Will Bernice ever be able to get Andys body out of her system? (I know I cant). This week, Torso-gate brings about another close encounter, after Bernice shares the information about Lawrences gay relationship with Ronnie. Moving in for a kiss with her ex, it looks like sparks might fly, but Andy is gutted when Bernice says they should keep out of each others lives (as if thats going to happen).
He has already hit headlines after storming into the Big Brother house and ruffling feathers with his outrageous flirting.

But TV chef Marco Pierre White's hell-raising son has now spoken about the moment he confessed to his famous father of his splurge on his party lifestyle.

Marco Pierre White Jr, 21, told his Masterchef Australia star dad, 54: 'I spent a quarter of a million pounds on prostitutes, cocaine and alcohol.'

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Party boy! Marco Pierre White Jr, 21, said: 'I spent a quarter of a million pounds on prostitutes, cocaine and alcohol'

Marco Jr's revelation came after he was confronted by his famous father over his spending.

He said: 'One summer holiday, I came back to London with no money, and my Dad says "You have spent a quarter of a million pounds in 3 months and what do you have to show for it?"

'And I was like f*** knowsI spent a quarter of a million pounds on prostitutes, cocaine and alcohol.'

His shock confession comes a day after Big Brother warned Marco 'to respect housemates' physical boundaries' after he gets a little too hands-on with redhead beauty Laura Carter.

See Big Brother updates as Marco Pierre White Jr reveals run-in with TV chef father

Marco Snr! The dutiful dad reprimanded his son for his spending habits over one summer holiday

Instant attraction: Marco Pierre White Jr, 21, has wasted no time in getting close to his attractive Big Brother housemate Laura Carter, 30

Told off: Marco appeared to have already overstepped the mark with the 30-year-old red head after his touchy-feely approach led to him being reprimanded in the diary room

Naughty: There was certainly plenty of chemistry between Marco and Laura, with the latter crudely revealing: 'I definitely would f**k him, Id want him to f**k me really hard'

Marco appeared to have already overstepped the mark with the 30-year-old red head after his touchy-feely approach led to him being reprimanded in the diary room.

He was reminded by Big Brother about the importance of respecting people's personal space after he was placing his hands all over Laura as the pair cosied up inside the house.

The heavily-tattooed housemate was told: 'Big Brother wants to talk to you about your behaviour in the house and remind you that it is important to always respect your fellow housemates physical boundaries.

'That includes uninvited physical contact. Big Brother just wants to make sure no-ones in a situation where they might feel uncomfortable. And that includes anyone in the house.'

And Marco 'completely agreed' with Big Brother's comments, adding that making Laura feel uncomfortable was 'the last thing' he wanted to do.

Meanwhile, it seems as though his reprimand may have fallen on deaf ears, as in the house on Friday, Marco gets even closer to Laura.

During the Live with Emma Willis segment, The Others will choose to evict two housemates from the house.

But it turns out to be a fake eviction as the evictees will join The Others. Viewers will decide which two of The Others will enter the house undercover in a bid to become housemates.

Big Brothers Bit On The Side with Rylan Clark-Neal is on at 11pm on Channel 5, and includes guests M People star Heather Small, Ricky Norwood, Vogue Williams and Su Pollard.
Nicky Hilton put her baby bump on display while out in New York City.

The pregnant heiress wore a loose white blouse over her growing belly as she ran errands in Noho on Friday.

The 32-year-old is expecting her first child, a girl, with husband, banking heir James Rothschild.

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Mom-to-be: Pregnant Nicky Hilton showed off her growing baby bump while out in New York City on Friday

The handbag designer looked engrossed in a phone conversation as she strolled around Manhattan on Friday.

Nicky kept her look low-key in a summery linen blouse and black skinny jeans.

She pulled her long blonde hair back in a ponytail, and added large tortoiseshell sunglasses as she stopped to pick up a healthy green juice.

Casual look: The designer wore a white blouse and black skinny jeans as she stopped for a healthy green juice

Stylish: The 32-year-old added white Adidas sneakers and over-sized tortoiseshell sunglasses

The mother-to-be skipped heels in favor of comfortable Adidas sneakers, and carried a stylish black-and-white handbag that matched her monochrome look.

Nicky and her British husband wed in a lavish ceremony at Londons' Kensington Palace in July, and announced they were expecting in January.

And she shared a flashback photo of their Seychelles honeymoon on Instagram this week.

Out and about: The heiress and handbag designer carried a white and black leather handbag

Gorgeous spot: Nicky shared a flashback photo with husband James Rothschild from their Seychelles honeymoon. They wed in a lavish ceremony in London in July.

Nicky and James are all smiles as they sit perched at a scenic spot overlooking the gorgeous coast in the rare snap of the couple.

'Honeymooning in the Seychelles,' she wrote, adding a kissing emoji.

While Nicky has been focusing on motherhood, her younger brother Conrad Hilton,22, was this week sentenced to two months in prison after admitting to using drugs while on probation.

Baby girl on the way: Nicky and her husband James Rothschild are expecting their first child, a daughter

Busy day: Nicky stayed glued to her phone while out running errands in Noho

But the heiress - whose older sister is socialite Paris Hilton - has been putting the family drama behind her and throwing herself into preparing for her daughter's arrival.

Nicky told People she's been busy decorating the baby's room with plenty of cute kitty designs.

'I love cats. So there are lots of vintage cat motifs and prints - Ive been online and Im trying to do it all myself,' she said.

The 32-year-old also recently had a second baby shower in New York, after attending her first shower in Bel-Air with sister Paris, parents Kathy and Richard Hilton and her aunt, Real Housewives of Beverly Hills star Kim Richards.

Lovely: Nicky celebrated her first baby shower in Bel-Air last month
She's been jetting from country to country this week in the name of work.

But Lindsay Lohan was finally reunited with her rumoured fiance and Russian business heir, Egor Tarabasov, as they enjoyed a romatic stroll around Madrid on Friday.

The couple, who have been inseparable since they started dating seven months ago, put on a particularly amorous display in the Spanish sunshine as they held hands, hugged and even smooched in the street.

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Back together! Lindsay Lohan was reunited with her rumoured fiance and Russian business heir, Egor Tarabasov, as they enjoyed a romatic stroll around Madrid on Friday

Egor and Lindsay also proved that they were fully in sync as they managed to coordinate their outfits for the date.

Lindsay, 29, looked pretty in a demure stripey dress that came complete with delicate spaghetti straps.

The flame haired beauty also made sure to coordinate her accessories for the outing as she toted a large black leather holdall on the crutch of her arm and slipped on a pair of matching slipper shoes.

Loved up: The couple, who have been inseparable since they started dating seven months ago, put on a particularly amorous display in the Spanish sunshine

Romantic: The couple held hands, hugged and even smooched in the street

Perfect pair: Egor and Lindsay proved that they were fully in sync as they managed to coordinate their outfits for the date

Proving that she was completely at ease with her new beau, Lindsay appeared to go almost virtually makeup free for the stroll, as she covered her face behind a pair of oversized aviator shades and sported a natural looking complexion.

And she let her luxuriously long red hair fall in gentle waves that cascaded down her back, for an effortlessly chic style.

Meanwhile, Egor, 22, also looked laid back as he cosied up to his film star girlfriend in a simple plain white T-shirt and faded grey jeans.

Lady-like: Lindsay, 29, looked pretty in a demure stripey dress that came complete with delicate spaghetti straps

Stepping out in style: The flame haired beauty also made sure to coordinate her accessories as she toted a large black leather holdall and matching slipper shoes

Lindsay let her luxuriously long red hair fall in gentle waves that cascaded down her back, for an effortlessly chic style

Relaxed: Lindsay appeared to go almost virtually makeup free for the stroll as she hid her face behind some aviator shades

However, he couldn't resist adding a dash of colour to his look with some striking electric blue slippers.

Egor completed his edgy look with some rose tinted sunglasses, a chunky watch and his trademark stubble.

Alongside their stroll, the couple were also seen to sit down and enjoy a tipple in the sunshine, at a cute outdoor cafe.

Quality time: Alongside their romantic walk, the couple also sat down and enjoyed a tipple at a cute outside cafe

Sunny disposition: The pair looked to be engaged in an energetic discussion as they basked in the sunshine

Though he followed her to London this week, where she partied with Kourtney Kardashian, Egor was noticeably absent from her red carpet moment in Madrid on Thursday night.

The Russian business heir reportedly proposed to the actress at a Duran Duran concert in front of her parents Michael and Dina Lohan in April.

News of the reported engagement was sparked when she began to wear rings on her fourth finger, although a representative for the star later shot down the claims.

They have been an item since meeting at a party in 2015 and have now been dating for seven months.

Keeping her cool: Lindsay gathered up her hair and swept it away from her face in the Spanish heat

Refreshing: The couple looked loved up as they enjoyed a drink together
Before she went on to become an A-list Oscar-winning actress, she was just a sweet college girl.

Reese Witherspoon studied at Stanford University in the Nineties for one year before leaving to more seriously pursue her acting career.

And on Friday the 40-year-old mother-of-three shared a very rare photo where she was beaming while sitting in her far-from-glamorous dorm room.

Cramming for finals? Reese Witherspoon shared a flashback photo on Friday to when she was a college studying at Stanford University in the Nineties

Not the Ritz: It's obvious her room is far from inviting as there is a filing cabinet behind her as well as a messy bed and overall clutter

The Wild star captioned the photo: 'TBT to the good 'ol days (aka #collegeyears).'

The beauty had on a pair of round glasses and was holding what looked to be a lollipop up to her lips.

It's obvious her room is far from inviting as there is a filing cabinet behind her as well as a messy bed and overall clutter.

They starred as a mother-daughter duo in 2014's Oscar-nominated picture Wild, and are both set to appear in upcoming HBO drama Big Little Lies.

And on Thursday Reese Witherspoon and Laura Dern showed how close they've become as costars, as they carpooled to a meeting in Beverly Hills, California.

The two showed off big smiles after the 49-year-old Jurassic Park star drove to the meeting, while her 40-year-old pal rode shotgun.

Still close! Wild stars Laura Dern (L) and Reese Witherspoon (R) showed that they're as close as ever as they carpooled together for a meeting in Beverly Hills on Thursday

Reese wore a playful, form-fitting, short-sleeved top with a floral pattern in bright shades of orange and pink, which was likely from her Draper James line.

She coupled the eye-catching shirt with a pair of skintight, dark wash jeans that highlighted her toned pins.

Finishing off her summery look, the mother-of-three wore a pair of navy blue wedges, while carrying a Vidalia Vine Tennessee Tote ($215) from her Draper James collection.

She accessorized with a collection of gold bracelets, while hiding her eyes behind a pair of tortoiseshell sunglasses.

In good spirits: Reese showed off a big smile as she was seen arriving after riding shotgun in the car, as pal Laura drove

Her long, blonde tresses were worn in a center part, and styled in soft curls that cascaded past her shoulders.

Reese looked to be in good spirits for the outing, showing off a big smile - outlined in cherry red lipstick - as she arrived for her meeting.

Laura, meanwhile. sported a sheer, navy blue and teal blouse, which she wore over a fitted, navy blue tank.

Pretty as a petal: The blonde beauty looked ready for summer in a floral patterned top in bright shades of orange and pink

She coupled the shimmery top with a pair of skintight, black trousers, finishing off the look with a pair of turquoise loafers that matched the green in her blouse.

Laura carried a black jacket as she made her way inside, also toting a large, black leather handbag with a gold chain.

She wore her long, blonde tresses pulled back into a ponytail, and hid her eyes behind a pair of black sunglasses.

Self promotion! The star accessorized with a pretty blue tote, which happened to be the Vidalia Vine Tennessee Tote ($215) from her Draper James collection

A few days earlier Reese had shared a snap alongside Laura (as well as other costars from Big Little Lies, such as Shailene Woodley and Zoe Kravitz), to share that they had wrapped filming.

She showed off a big smile while cuddling up to her costars in the cheery picture, captioned: 'Wrapped #BigLittleLies with all these amazing people over the weekend! Can't wait for you all to see it! #LoveTheseGuys #Squad #WorkFamily.'

Big Little Lies follows a group of moms whose perfect lies begin to unravel, and is set to premiere in 2017.
Last week she stood up for her ex Johnny Depp during his battle with estranged wife Amber Heard by writing a letter in his favor.

Not has been heard from Amber Heard since.

But on Friday the French actress and musician - who has two children with the movie star - was spotted in Los Angeles. The 43-year-old sported a loose-fitting menswear ensemble as she was seen leaving the restaurant Joan's On Third solo.

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Laid-back: Vanessa Paradis cut a low-key figure as she stepped out in a loose-fitting, menswear ensemble in Los Angeles on Friday

Vanessa wore a grey and white striped T-shirt underneath a large, loose-fitting, menswear style navy blue blazer.

She coupled the slouchy jacket with a pair of light wash jeans, finishing off her casual look with black sneakers.

She wore her long, blonde tresses pulled back into a messy bun, and hid her eyes behind a pair of over-sized sunglasses.

Solo stroll: The model kept it casual as she was spotted leaving Joan's on Third after defending ex Johnny Depp with a letter testifying to his character

The mother-of-two accessorized with a stylish, gold choker necklace, as she was spotted walking with her hands in her pockets while leaving the cafe.

Recently Vanessa's ex Johnny - who she dated from 1998 to 2012 - has been going through a very public divorce from wife Heard since she filed for divorce in May.

She later filed a restraining order against the Pirates of the Caribbean star, saying that she is the victim of repeated domestic violence at his hands.

On his side: In a letter shared by TMZ, Vanessa refuted Amber Heard's claims of domestic violence, as she said that Johnny was 'a sensitive, loving, and loved person'

Following said incidents, TMZ obtained a letter from Johnny's ex Vanessa, in which she defended the Oscar nominee, calling him a 'sensitive' and 'loving' person.

'Johnny Depp is the father of my two children, he is a sensitive, loving, and loved person, and I believe with all my heart that the recent allegations being made are outrageous,' she wrote.

'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,' she concluded.

Friendly exes: Amber and Johnny - who dated from 1998 to 2012 - share two children (pictured in 2004)

Vicious: Amber and Johnny are currently going through a public and nasty divorce battle, with gold-digger and abuse allegations being thrown at each other (pictured in January)

Vanessa and Johnny share 17-year-old daughter Lily-Rose, as well as 14-year-old son John Christopher.

Their daughter Lily also recently defended her father, posting to Instagram: 'My dad is the sweetest 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.'
Pregnant Angela Simmons shared an ultrasound snap with her 4.9M social media followers Friday announcing the gender of her unborn baby.

'I can't wait to kiss your little toes baby boy! #itsaboy #MamasLittleBoy!' the 28-year-old mother-to-be announced.

It's been less than two weeks since the nepotistically-privileged daughter of Run-D.M.C.'s Rev. Run confirmed she was expecting her first child with a mystery fiance.

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Baby bumping: Pregnant Angela Simmons shared an ultrasound snap with her 4.9M social media followers Friday announcing the gender of her unborn baby

The 28-year-old mother-to-be wrote: 'I can't wait to kiss your little toes baby boy! #itsaboy #MamasLittleBoy!'

'We are overjoyed and super excited to receive a blessing this big! Starting a family was something that I could have only dreamed of,' Angela wrote on May 27.

A month earlier, the Growing Up Hip Hop starlet announced her engagement to whom many speculate is Atlanta-born, LA-based man Sutton Sean Tennyson.

According to Bossip - Simmons is keeping Tennyson out of the spotlight due to his long rap sheet that includes carrying a concealed gun, hit and run, credit card forgery, identity theft, drug possession, and police obstruction.

There are other claims that the former 106 & Park host already married the tall ex-con, who allegedly did two prison stints in Georgia.

Bun in the oven: It's been less than two weeks since the nepotistically-privileged daughter of Run-D.M.C.'s Rev. Run confirmed she was expecting her first child with a mystery fiance

'Everything happened in the most perfect way': A month earlier, the Growing Up Hip Hop starlet announced her engagement to whom many speculate is Atlanta-born, LA-based man Sutton Sean Tennyson

Crimimal past: According to Bossip - Simmons is keeping Tennyson out of the spotlight due to his long rap sheet that includes carrying a concealed gun, hit and run, credit card forgery, drug possession, and more

'They got married in April': There are other claims that the former 106 & Park host already married the tall ex-con, who allegedly did two prison stints in Georgia (pictured May 27)

'They got married in April. They're only doing a ceremony for the family. You got it here first,' Fameolous tweeted on Monday.

'Angela Simmons getting cheated on already but to be real he always has another chick. You lose them how you found them.'

Regardless of her mate, the raven-haired socialite will next star in the second season of Growing Up Hip Hop, which premieres next year on WE tv.

Fameolous tweeted: They're only doing a ceremony for the family...Angela Simmons getting cheated on already but to be real he always has another chick. You lose them how you found them'

Angela Simmons getting cheated on already but to be real he always has another chick. You lose them how you found them  Fameolous (@Fameolous) June 8, 2016
She has embarked on a seemingly never-ending European vacation.

And on Friday, Fiona Falkiner continued to share more envy-inducing pictures from her getaway as she kicked back on the beautiful Costa-Costa beach in Greece.

Stripped down to a colourful beaded bikini, the 33-year-old happily flaunted her sun-kissed complexion and ample assets in all its glory.

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Busty display: Bikini-clad Fiona Falkiner shared more envy-inducing pictures from her getaway as she kicked back on the beautiful Costa-Costa beach in Greece on Friday

The popular TV personality flaunted her fabulous curves in the sexy two-piece, which featured a plunging neckline, as she soaked up the balmy rays.

In another image, the barefaced beauty glares straight into the camera lens with sunglasses poised on her head as she shows off her surroundings in a selfie.

Earlier on in the week, she gave her Instagram followers a cheeky insight into her delightful-looking day out on the water - but this time from her stay in Italy.

The clip shows a fresh-faced and smiling Fiona quickly posing for the camera as she stands on the stern of a small boat, before jumping playfully into the deep blue water surrounding her.

Fresh-faced beauty: With sunglasses poised on her head, the barefaced beauty glared straight into the camera lens as she showed off her surroundings in a selfie

What a treat: Over the past few days, the 33-year-old has been enjoying the European summer, with trips to Greece, Italy and the UK

Racy: Earlier on in the week, she gave her Instagram followers a cheeky insight into her delightful-looking day out on the water in Italy

Fresh-faced and happy! She also shared a short video to Instagram showing her jumping off a boat in a skimpy white bikini

She has her ample assets on display in a skimpy white bandeau-style bikini with a halter-neck and her bikini bottoms tie in cute bows at her hips.

The former Biggest Loser contestant and now host of the show has been enjoying a whirlwind trip around the world over the past couple of weeks, combining work and pleasure.

She is currently in Ischia, an island in the Bay of Naples where she is soaking up the Italian sun.'

The model and TV presenter has been regularly sharing snaps from the US, the UK and now Europe with her followers.

Before departing for her extensive trip around the world, Fiona was enjoying a new relationship with a mystery restaurateur.

A while it is not known whether the two are still an item, Fiona seemed very happy with her new man in April.

'Boating': The model is currently in Europe where she is soaking up the sun after visiting the States

Speaking to Daily Mail Australia at the launch of her friend Jodi Anasta's range for Mon Purse, the blonde beauty gushed over her restaurateur beau.

Suggesting online dating services such as eHarmony, for which she is an ambassador, the 33-year-old said: 'If you're kind of not really meeting new people then why not try something new.

'I did and I went on some really great dates and met an incredible guy. Just step out of the box and try something different.'

Little is known of the beauty's new boyfriend other than that he is in the restaurant business.

Of their relationship after stepping out for the first time together last month, Fiona said the pair were enjoying their time together.

London life: Fiona was recently in London where she enjoyed seeking out cafes and healthy foodie joints

Busy lady! Fiona, who hosts The Biggest Loser Australia has said she would like to one day design a range of plus size clothing

'The time I spend with him is really lovely and we've been doing really fun stuff. He's a restaurateur. One of my passions is food and I love checking out restaurants and stuff like that; so that's definitely something we have in common'.

She also revealed hopes to one day design a range of plus size clothing, adding: 'I represent the curvier lady. It's something I've always been passionate about.'

And as an advocate for healthy body and lifestyle transformations, Fiona has often preached messages of body positivity and accepting one's imperfections.

Having lost 30kg after her stint on The Biggest Loser's first season in 2006, Fiona got down to a size 12 before realising it wasn't a 'maintainable' size for her.

'I get asked a lot what size I am, it's not about size it's about being the best you that you can be,' she wrote on social media.
Google co-founder fuels flying car labs: report

Google co-founder Larry Page has secretly poured more than $100 million into building flying cars, Bloomberg reported Thursday.

Page has backed Zee.Aero while striving to keep his involvement hidden, according to the report that cited unnamed sources described as having intimate knowledge of the flying car startup launched in 2010.

"Based in the heart of Silicon Valley, Zee is developing a revolutionary new form of transportation," the startup said on its website, which invited people with engineering skills to apply for jobs.

Google co-founder and CEO Larry Page speaks during a news conference at the Google offices on May 21, 2012 in New York City Justin Sullivan (Getty/AFP/File)

Zee is "working at the intersection of aerodynamics, advanced manufacturing, and electric propulsion," it said.

As part of a bid for secrecy, Zee.Aero employees referred to Page as "GUS," a play on "Guy UpStairs" since, for a time, the Google co-founder had a private hideaway on the second floor of their facility, according to Bloomberg.

It said Zee.Aero has nearly 150 employees and expanded operations to an airport hangar a little more than an hour's drive from Alphabet-owned Google's headquarters in the California city of Mountain View.

Page has spent more than $100 million on Zee.Aero, according to Bloomberg.

It also reported that Page was backing a second flying car startup, Kitty Hawk, that began operating last year not far from Zee.Aero and is taking a different design approach.

Neither Zee.Aero nor Alphabet responded to AFP requests for comment.

Page is pursuing a flying car dream on his own, not as part of Alphabet's investments in "moonshots" such as self-driving cars, Bloomberg said.

Google announced plans last month to open a Detroit-area technology center for its self-driving car program.

The new center in Novi, Michigan, will house engineers and others testing vehicles provided by Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, according to an Alphabet statement.

Google added 100 new 2017 Chrysler Pacifica hybrid vehicles to its fleet of self-driving vehicles in a major expansion earlier in May.

The collaboration with Fiat Chrysler marked the first time the California-based Internet giant has worked directly with an automaker to build self-driving vehicles.

Google has said it would not license its autonomous car technology nor sell the self-driving minivans.

The tech titan began testing its autonomous driving technology in 2009 using a Toyota Prius equipped with Google equipment.
Lenovo looks beyond computers with slick new phones

Chinese computer titan Lenovo showcased a series of new smartphones, including a keenly-awaited Tango handset and new Moto Z models that can be transformed into video projectors or powerful speakers.

A market-ready PHAB2 Pro smartphone imbued with Google-created Tango augmented reality technology was given star treatment at a Lenovo Tech World gathering in San Francisco.

PHAB2 can sense and map its surroundings, enabling holograms to be overlaid on real world settings for anything from game play to figuring out which size sofa would fit in a room.

Chinese computer titan Lenovo showed off a keenly-awaited Tango smartphone on June 9, 2016, as it focused on a future at the heart of the Internet of Things Philippe Lopez (AFP/File)

The big-screen gadget will be available globally in September for $499.

"It is a pretty incredible piece of technology for, really, a great price," said Tango engineering director Johnny Lee.

- Transforming smartphones -

In what Lenovo chief executive Yang Yuanqing billed as perhaps the most important announcement at the event, Lenovo also unveiled new Moto Z smartphones that can be customized with "mods" -- specialized pieces of hardware that snap into place magnetically to give handsets added capabilities.

For example, one mod let a Moto Z project video on walls or ceilings at sizes as large as a 70-inch television screen.

Another mod turned Moto Z handsets into powerful speakers.

"This phone can transform itself," said Hollywood star and Lenovo spokesman Ashton Kutcher.

"This is actually a full-blown game-changer."

Lenovo also launched a smartphone mod program for developers, enticing them with a million-dollar prize for a mod that best integrates handsets with services hosted in the Internet cloud.

Moto Z will be available in the United States in coming months through carrier Verizon, with models debuting globally later in the year, according to Lenovo.

Pricing was not disclosed.

Moto Z is made by Motorola, which Lenovo bought from Google in early 2014 in a deal valued at $2.91 billion.

The acquisition was part of a strategy by Lenovo to look beyond personal computers, where it is a market powerhouse, to a future of nearly everything being smart and connected to the Internet, according to Yang.

"Devices will become entry points for diverse content and services," he said.

- Smartphones that bend -

Lenovo's core business will remain personal computers, but it wants to use its expertise to combine hardware and cloud capabilities to help devices "listen, see, sense and understand the world," according to Yang.

Lenovo's innovative offerings showed that the company is committed to smartphones even though it only broke into the market with the purchase of Motorola, according to Gartner principal research analyst Mikako Kitagawa.

Gartner ranked Lenovo as the seventh biggest player in the smartphone market last quarter.

"They are really catching up as a late-comer to the market, but they are already successful," Kitagawa said.

"I am pretty happy about the innovations I saw today."

Lenovo innovations included a smartphone with a shatterproof screen, which Kutcher demonstrated by dropping a handset from high above the stage.

"Customers drop phones a lot," Lenovo chief technology officer Peter Hortensius said during the demonstration.

"This gave us an idea. What about a screen that won't break?"

Hortensius also provided a peek at work Lenovo is doing on smartphones and tablets that can bend.

YouTube star Meghan McCarthy wrapped a prototype smartphone around one wrist like a bracelet and folded a tablet in half while watching a cat video.
Amnesty backs Biafra group's shooting claims

Amnesty International on Friday claimed the Nigerian military shot dead unarmed civilians before a march to mark the anniversary of the 1967 Biafran declaration of independence.

But the army rejected the claims, accusing pro-Biafran protesters of being armed, violent and carrying out "wanton destruction" and "a number of unimaginable atrocities".

Police have said at least 10 people were killed -- five in the town of Onitsha, Anambra state, and five in Asaba, in neighbouring Delta state -- in violence linked to the commemoration on May 30.

Pro-Biafran graffiti messages in Port Hardcourt, south-east Nigeria. Amnesty International on June 10 claimed the Nigerian military shot dead unarmed civilians before a march to mark the anniversary of the 1967 Biafran declaration of independence in May Stefan Heunis (AFP)

The Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) movement, which has revived calls for an independent homeland for the Igbo people in southeast Nigeria, claimed at least 35 were killed.

Amnesty said it was unclear exactly how many people lost their lives, as soldiers -- who the army says acted in self-defence -- took away the dead and injured.

The human rights organisation said that based on visits to hospitals and mortuaries at least 17 were killed and nearly 50 injured in Onitsha alone.

"The real number is likely to be higher," it added in a statement, saying some of the dead and injured seen by researchers had been shot in the back, indicating they were fleeing at the time.

"Opening fire on peaceful IPOB supporters and bystanders, who clearly posed no threat to anyone is an outrageous use of unnecessary and excessive force," said Amnesty's Nigeria director, MK Ibrahim.

One person was shot dead while sleeping, he added.

- Tear gas, live bullets -

IPOB has staged regular demonstrations across the southeast since the arrest in October last year of its leader, Nnamdi Kanu, who has been charged with "treasonable felony" and is awaiting trial.

Kanu, who is also head of the banned Radio Biafra, is accused of calling for a separate republic of Biafra, nearly 50 years after a previous declaration of independence sparked a civil war.

The fighting between 1967 and 1970 left more than one million people dead, most of them from starvation and disease, as the Igbo nation was blockaded into submission.

The May 30 protests were to commemorate the 49th anniversary of the independence declaration.

Army spokesman Colonel Ha Gambo said the protestors killed two Nigerian policemen, wounded several soldiers and burnt a police vehicle.

- 'Worrying pattern' -

Amnesty, which said it had spoken to 32 eye-witnesses in Onitsha, said it could not substantiate the police deaths and had seen "no evidence" the security services acted in self-defence.

IPOB maintained the protesters were unarmed and one man interviewed said he threw stones but the military and police fired back teargas then used live ammunition.

Another said soldiers stormed a church where protesters were sleeping the night before the march and let off teargas, while another said he saw a young boy shot dead as he had his hands up.

Gambo said: "Wanton destruction of lives and properties were brazenly carried out by the protesters who employed firearms, crude weapons as well as other volatile cocktails such as acid and dynamites."

He also accused Amnesty of a "campaign of calumny" against the military.

But Amnesty's report echoes multiple claims about the tactics of armed police and soldiers made by protesters who attended three previous IPOB demonstrations from November to February.

Group members told AFP last month that injured and dead protestors were carted away and dumped in mass graves while others disappeared.

"This is not the first time that IPOB supporters have died at the hands of the military," Ibrahim said.

"It is becoming a worrying pattern and this incident and others must be immediately investigated," he said, calling for an end to "the pattern of increased militarisation of crowd control"

Human rights groups have previously highlighted similar claims against the military in December last year, when at least 350 Shiite Muslim protesters were killed in the northern city of Zaria.

The military has also been accused of a catalogue of abuses against civilians during Boko Haram's Islamist insurgency in the northeast.

On Biafra, President Muhammadu Buhari has said he "will not tolerate" threats to Nigeria's unity.

Odumegwu Emeka Ojukwu led the breakaway Republic of Biafra from 1967-1970

A Biafran supporter who was shot in the leg during a pro-independence in 2015 Stefan Heunis (AFP/File)
Four decades on, Soweto wounds still raw

It was supposed to be day of reconciliation and remembrance on the 40th anniversary of the Soweto uprising, a turning point in South Africa's anti-apartheid struggle that cost the lives of at least 170 people.

But plans for a march on Saturday involving both black former students and white former soldiers have instead exposed unhealed wounds amid frustration at post-apartheid South Africa's failure to deliver jobs and opportunities.

"We will not participate," said Granny Seape, sister of Hastings Ndlovu, a 17-year-old boy who was among the first victims shot.

Mrs Nomkhitha Mashinini looks at the collage made in honour of his son, Tsietsi Mashinini, one of the leaders of the Soweto student uprising in June 1976 Gianluigi Guercia (AFP/File)

"We feel as a family that it is insensitive. We can't embrace something where we still have had no closure. We feel very aggrieved," she told AFP.

On June 16, 1976, security forces opened fire on black youngsters protesting in Soweto township against a government order that schools could only teach in the Afrikaans language used by whites.

Over three days, at least 170 people were killed, with some estimates putting the death toll at several hundred over one month, in violence that brought the injustices of the apartheid regime to the world's attention.

As protests spread across South Africa, a new era of black activism emerged that eventually led to the fall of the apartheid regime and Nelson Mandela's election as president in 1994.

Saturday's march at the Orlando Stadium in Soweto is intended to bring together both those who joined the uprising and white army conscripts not deployed in Soweto but who were forced to serve in the military.

But despite the organisers efforts, it is not only the families of some of the black youngsters who died who are reluctant.

Police officers from the time have declined to join Saturday's commemoration.

And a group of white former army conscripts, attending to express support for reconciliation, has said it will not issue an apology.

"The (conscript) veterans are mostly grandfathers now," Jan Malan, 59, chairman of the South African Defence Force Association (SADFA), told AFP.

"We see the grandkids and we believe we need to not hate each other but to work together. We are not going there to say we are sorry. We are sad about people who lost loved ones. (But) we were soldiers."

- Anger boils -

Divisions along racial lines remain strong in South Africa, with most black people enduring worse education, housing and unemployment than white people.

Recent racist Internet postings have underlined long-standing frictions worsened by the country's dire economic performance and anger at politicians' failure to meet expectations.

Dee Mashinini, younger brother of the late Tsietsi Mashinini, a student leader of the uprising, warned that anger still boiled in Soweto over the killings.

"If they think they can come to Soweto and pull this off, then they don't understand anything," he told the Business Day newspaper.

"Many people lost brothers and sisters. Many disappeared. Many people are going around in wheelchairs, lost in life and with no compensation."

Despite the disagreements, march organisers still believe the event can be a symbol of hope in the future.

"It is not going to be a black event -- it is going to be a white and black event. It is completely new for Soweto," Reverend Frank Chikane, a celebrated anti-apartheid campaigner, told AFP.

Another of the organisers, Dan Montsitsi, who was a marcher in 1976, said it was a time to commemorate the uprising but also acknowledge how much more needed to be done in South Africa.

"June 16 was a watershed in our struggle," he said. "We were able in a very big way to show the world the atrocities and the harshness of apartheid.

"The problem that we have now is that if I buy a house in the suburbs, next to a white, in three months' time, that white person leaves."

South African children pose next to the famous photo of 13-year-old Hector Pieterson being carried by students, at Hector Pieterson Museum in Soweto, in 2010 Yasuyoshi Chiba (AFP/File)
New debris images examined by MH370 search team

Images of three new pieces of debris are being examined by Australian search teams looking for missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, they said Friday.

One of the items washed up on remote Kangaroo Island off Australia's south coast, while the other two were reportedly found in Madagascar.

"The ATSB has been advised and has received photos of the item (on Kangaroo Island)," a spokesman for the Australian Transport Safety Bureau, which is coordinating the search for the plane, told AFP. "It needs to be examined before coming to any conclusion."

A photo released by the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) taken in December 2015 shows earlier MH370 wreckage -- a part of the aircraft engine cowling from missing the Malaysia Airline flight MH370, stencilled with the Rolls-Royce logo, which was found at Mossel Bay, South Africa Schalk Luckhoff (AFP)

He added that images of other pieces of debris found in Madagascar were also being studied.

"We have seen the photos and governments are being consulted on how best to have that examined," he added.

The fate of the passenger jet, which is presumed to have crashed at sea after disappearing en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 passengers and crew on board in March 2014, remains a mystery.

So far eight pieces of debris, excluding the most recent finds, have been discovered thousands of kilometres (miles) from the current search zone far off the west Australian coast.

They are presumed to have drifted there with five of the parts identified as definitely or probably from the Boeing 777, while three others are still being examined.

The piece found on Kangaroo Island among seaweed and driftwood resembles part of a plane, with the words "Caution No Step" visible, according to footage on Channel Seven.

Whether it is from MH370 remains unclear, with the broadcaster saying another possibility was that it came from a Cessna that went down several kilometres off the island's coast in 2002.

One of the items found on the Madagascan island of Nosy Boraha resembled an airplane seat part while another appeared to be a cover panel on a plane wing, the BBC reported.

The first concrete evidence that MH370 likely met a tragic end was when a two-metre-long (almost seven foot) wing part known as a flaperon washed up in the French overseas territory of La Reunion in July last year.

Australian authorities have since said two pieces of debris found in Mozambique were "almost certainly from MH370" and two fragments that came ashore in South Africa and Mauritius were also likely to be from the jet.

Australia is leading the painstaking search for MH370 in the remote Indian Ocean, but wild weather has not allowed the three ships involved to make any progress in recent weeks.

So far 105,000 square kilometres (40,500 square miles) of the designated 120,000-square-kilometre seafloor search zone has been covered without success.
Queensland Reds score coup with flanker Smith's signing

Flanker George Smith on Friday signed with Australian Super Rugby side Queensland Reds in a major coup that allows the veteran to also continue playing club rugby in Japan.

The 35-year-old is one of the Wallabies' greatest-ever flankers with 111 Test caps having also won two Super Rugby titles with the Brumbies.

The Reds said Smith would join for the 2017 and 2018 seasons, while juggling stints with Suntory Sungoliath in Japan's Top League.

35-year-old George Smith is one of the Wallabies' greatest-ever flankers with 111 Test caps having also won two Super Rugby titles with the Brumbies William West (AFP/File)

"The body feels great and the experience in England has been outstanding," said Smith, who made his Super Rugby debut in 2000 and is coming off a stellar season in the English Premiership with London Wasps.

"I'm really looking forward to playing Super Rugby again. I want to make a positive difference wherever I go and I feel I can do this with the Reds."

The Reds have already secured the services of Wallaby skipper Stephen Moore and flanker Leroy Houston for 2017.

"George is one of the greats of the modern game. He is still one of the best number sevens in the world," Queensland Rugby Union executive general manager Daniel Herbert said.

"He just took out the Rugby Players Association Players Player award in England and helped lift Wasps to an English Premiership semi-final this season.
US Navy admiral admits he lied in massive bribery scandal

A US admiral pleaded guilty Thursday to lying about his relationship with a Singapore-based defense contractor at the center of a massive bribery scandal that has tarnished top naval officers.

Rear Admiral Robert Gilbeau -- the highest-ranking Navy officer charged in the ongoing probe -- admitted before a federal judge in San Diego that he had lied when he told investigators that he had never received gifts from Leonard Francis, owner of Glenn Defense Marine Asia (GDMA).

Few admirals in the history of the US Navy have ever been convicted of a felony charge.

The Pentagon in Washington, DC, has been in the spotlight after Rear Admiral Robert Gilbeau pleaded guilty to lying about his relationship with a Singapore-based defense contractor at the center of a massive bribery scandal that has tarnished top naval officers Staff (AFP)

Gilbeau, 55, told the court that he had misled investigators when he told them he always paid his share when he and Francis dined together about three times a year over a period of several years.

He also admitted that he destroyed documents and deleted computer files when he became aware in September 2013 that Francis and others had been arrested in connection with the fraud and bribery probe.

Gilbeau, who was awarded the Bronze Star and Purple Heart during his 37-year career, is scheduled to be sentenced in the case on August 26.

His attorney David Benowitz told AFP that he would seek probation for his client while prosecutors have agreed to ask the judge that Gilbeau be sentenced to no more than 12 to 18 months in prison.

According to the plea deal, Gilbeau also agreed to pay $50,000 restitution to the Navy and a $100,000 fine. He will also perform 300 hours of community service.

"Of those who wear our nation's uniform in the service of our country, only a select few have been honored to hold the rank of admiral -- and not a single one is above the law," prosecutor Laura Duffy said.

"Admiral Gilbeau lied to federal agents investigating corruption and fraud, and then tried to cover up his deception by destroying documents and files."

- Cuban cigars, Kobe beef -

Francis admitted in January that his company, which provided port services, plied naval officers with cash, prostitutes, Cuban cigars and Kobe beef to ensure US Navy ships stopped at ports where GDMA operated.

The Malaysian businessman earned the nickname "Fat Leonard" in maritime circles because of his girth.

So far, a total of 14 people, including 11 current and former Navy officials, have been charged in connection with the case.

Seven of them have already pleaded guilty and been sentenced to prison terms ranging from 27 months to six and a half years, accompanied by heavy fines.

One of those convicted, US Navy Captain Daniel Dusek, was sentenced in March to 46 months in prison for giving classified information to GDMA in exchange for prostitutes and lavish gifts.

In one instance, according to court records, Dusek arranged for the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln to stop at a port terminal in Malaysia owned by Francis.

The 2010 port visit cost the United States about $1.6 million, officials said.

As part of his guilty plea, Francis, who is awaiting sentencing, admitted he bilked the US military out of tens of millions of dollars by routinely overbilling for fuel, tugboat services and sewage disposal.

He agreed to forfeit $35 million that he made in the scheme and to repay the navy whatever amount the court decides.

Alex Wisidagama, another GDMA executive who has pleaded guilty in the case, was sentenced in March to five years and three months in prison and ordered to pay $34.8 million in restitution.

During his career in the Navy, Gilbeau was promoted to several top positions, including that of supply officer on the USS Nimitz in 2003-2004, where he was responsible for procuring all goods and services needed to operate the ship.

He also headed the Navy's logistics response to the 2004 tsunami in Southeast Asia.

After being promoted to admiral, he assumed command in August 2010 of the Defense Contract Management Agency International, where he was responsible for critical defense contracts outside the United States.
From war to wildlife: fighting for Angola's future

At dusk in southern Angola, former civil war soldier Elias Kawina leads a drill parade for 30 rangers who fight armed poachers in the country's vast, little-explored interior.

Kawina, 38, rose to the rank of lieutenant in government forces during the bloody, 27-year conflict that finally ended in 2002.

Now he battles illegal hunting that threatens the fragile recovery of Angola's wildlife, which was decimated during the war but is today seen a potential tourism draw.

Angolan Luengue-Luiana National Park rangers parade during a ceremony on the eve of the official opening of a new Park Ranger school in Menongue, on June 3, 2016 Benjamin Sheppard (AFP/File)

"I was a soldier but, after peace, I was demobilised and now we are rangers -- as we call it 'nature soldiers'," Kawina told AFP at a new training centre in the remote province of Cuando Cubango.

"We are dealing with poachers who have firearms. When we find them, we fight them.

"It is not an easy job, but I have my weapon, so I am not concerned."

Angola's government has vowed to revive wild animal numbers -- particularly elephants -- by ending poaching and ivory trafficking.

The country is also a major trafficking route from Congo and the Democratic Republic of Congo, with ivory trinkets openly sold at markets in the capital Luanda targeting Chinese buyers.

The authorities in the former Portuguese colony have vowed to shut the markets, and pledged to toughen up legal penalties for poachers.

They even hope that Angola, which is the source of the rivers that flow into the Okavango Delta, could eventually become a safari destination to match Botswana or Kenya.

In pursuit of that distant dream, Kawina spends much of the year living away from his wife and 10 children, deep in the national parks, pursuing poachers through the bush.

"During the civil war, the animals were used as food," he said. "But after the war, the government thought that it was time to also bring peace to wildlife."

- Angola opens up? -

Angola, largely known for its civil war, corruption and staggering inequality of wealth, seems an unlikely holiday choice even for adventurous tourists.

But the country's recent oil boom has been hit hard by falling prices, and officials say President Jose Eduardo dos Santos, who has been in power since 1975, is seeking fresh sources of investment.

Last Sunday, Angola made a rare foray onto the international stage by hosting United Nations World Environment Day -- a sign that it is keen to engage with the global conservation movement.

"The president cares a lot about the environment and wants to protect elephants," Environment Minister Maria Jardim said at a new eco-tourism lodge set on a riverbank in Cuando Cubango.

"We haven't yet taken advantage of wildlife to diversify our economy, reduce poverty, make jobs and help future generations."

Tourism in Angola faces huge challenges, ranging from difficult visa procedures and $600 (528-euro) hotel rooms to yellow fever outbreaks and street crime.

And there is also the lack of animals.

"If there is little wildlife, infrastructure or transport, how do you attract clients?" said Paul Funston of the Panthera wildlife charity.

"Angola's conservation is severely underfunded. They don't have the resources, so attracting big donors is critical to success."

Funston remains optimistic, saying Angola's vast savannah is a resilient environment that could bounce back and teem with wildlife within a decade -- if the authorities quash poaching and the bushmeat trade in edible animals.

"The bushmeat harvesting that concerns us is of zebras, wildebeest, kudu, giraffe, buffalos -- the herbivores that feed the carnivores that drive tourism," he said. "To draw in visitors, you must have something to sell."

- Pristine land -

Elephants were often shot from helicopters to finance the conflict through ivory sales. Now there is peace, numbers are thought to be slowly increasing, though the exact figure is unknown.

"Angola hasn't got much wildlife, but the opportunity here is the huge areas of pristine land following the years of war," said Alex Rhodes, of the Stop Ivory campaign

"The strength of the political commitment to deal with these issues is impressive. This is not just about wildlife, but organised crime and corruption."

But it remains less unclear how to change the cultural tradition of bushmeat consumption, both by local villagers and for commercial retail in towns and cities.

For the few experts who have ventured to the farthest corners of Angola, the country's prospects are limitless.

Steve Boyes, a biologist with the National Geographic Society, has led several long expeditions across the region, including paddling dug-out canoes to the source of the Cuito river that feeds the Okavango Delta.

"This area is the least sampled landscape on the planet for botanical diversity," he told AFP, adding that his team may have discovered almost 20 new species, including a small mammal.

"We have seen elephant, lion, leopard -- they are all up there, in some of the most beautiful landscapes in the world," he said.

"There is momentum in Angola. It is a time of change, a time for opening up and new beginnings."

Journalists stand by a Rhino sculpture at the Kambumbe eco lodge in Menongue, Angola Benjamin Sheppard (AFP)

Angolan Luengue-Luiana National Park rangers parade during a ceremony on the eve of the official opening of a new Park Ranger school in Menongue, on June 3, 2016 Benjamin Sheppard (AFP/File)
Israel bars Palestinians after Tel Aviv attack

Israel on Friday temporarily barred Palestinians from entering the country, a step criticised by the UN but which officials said was a response to this week's deadly Tel Aviv shooting.

Thousands of Palestinians from the occupied West Bank, however, were allowed to attend weekly Muslim prayers at Al-Aqsa mosque compound in Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem.

An army spokeswoman told AFP that crossings to Israel from the West Bank and Gaza Strip would be closed for Palestinians in all but "medical and humanitarian cases".

A Palestinian family at an Israeli checkpoint between the West Bank town of Bethlehem and Jerusalem on June 10, 2016 Thomas Coex (AFP)

She said the closure would remain in force until midnight on Sunday.

The measures came during the first Friday of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, when tens of thousands of Palestinians visit Al-Aqsa to pray.

A spokeswoman for COGAT, the defence ministry unit which manages civilian affairs in the West Bank, said about 10,000 Palestinians were allowed to visit Al-Aqsa despite the ban.

The worshippers had to return home after Friday prayers, the spokeswoman said.

Palestinian men between 12 and 35 were not allowed to enter the mosque, with those between 35 and 45 needing permission and those older than 45 having unrestricted access, police confirmed.

Passage was unrestricted for women.

Sheikh Azzam al-Khatib, head of the Islamic Waqf which administers Al-Aqsa, said 100,000 people attended Friday prayers, down from more than 200,000 the year before.

Police declined to give a specific figure, giving an estimate of tens of thousands.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu convened his security cabinet on Thursday and announced a slew of measures against Palestinians after Wednesday's shooting in a popular Tel Aviv nightspot that killed four people, the deadliest attack in a months-long wave of violence.

Among the measures, the government said it was revoking entry permits for more than 80,000 Palestinians to visit relatives in Israel during Ramadan.

It also revoked work permits for 204 of the attackers' relatives and the army blockaded their West Bank hometown of Yatta, with soldiers patrolling and stopping cars.

The government also said it was sending two additional battalions -- amounting to hundreds more troops -- into the West Bank.

- Assailants' bodies held -

United Nations rights chief Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein's office in a statement on Friday condemned the attack but said the Israeli measures may amount to "collective punishment".

"The measures taken against the broader population punish not the perpetrators of the crime, but tens -- maybe hundreds -- of thousands of innocent Palestinians," it said.

French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault expressed concern that the Israeli measures risked "fuelling tensions", while the US State Department hoped they would not increase tensions.

Newly installed Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman ordered that the bodies of Palestinians killed while carrying out attacks would no longer be returned to their families for burial, a spokesman said.

The policy is backed by Israeli hawks as a deterrent measure.

Israel last closed its crossings for two days in May during its Remembrance Day and Independence Day commemorations.

A closure is often imposed over Jewish holidays, when large numbers of Israelis congregate to pray or celebrate, presenting a potential target for Palestinian attacks.

The start of April's Passover festival saw this type of shutdown.

Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan said the police in Jerusalem would safeguard both Muslim and Jewish prayers at the city's holy sites over the weekend, which will also see the Jewish festival of Shavuot begin late Saturday.

"We of course want to allow (Jewish) worshippers here in the Old City and throughout Jerusalem to pray in safety and also for Muslims to get here freely and allow them freedom of worship," he said in an address broadcast from the Western Wall, the holiest site where Jews can pray.

"We are in the wake of a harsh attack and we continue today to bury some of those murdered in the attack," Erdan said.

"The security forces and the police are doing everything they can, every day, and during the holiday ahead of us."

Violence since October has killed at least 207 Palestinians, 32 Israelis, two Americans, an Eritrean and a Sudanese.

Most of the Palestinians were carrying out knife, gun or car-ramming attacks, Israeli authorities say.

Others were killed in clashes with security forces or by Israeli air strikes in the Gaza Strip.

On Friday, a Palestinian who tried to stab soldiers at a checkpoint near the West Bank city of Nablus was wounded by Israeli fire, the army said.

The slew of measures announced by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu against Palestinians is in the wake of the June 8 shooting in a popular Tel Aviv nightspot, the deadliest attack in a months-long wave of violence Hazem Bader (AFP)
Maldives jails ex-VP for plotting to kill president

Former Maldives deputy leader Ahmed Adeeb has been jailed for 15 years for plotting to assassinate the president, the latest in a string of prosecutions of senior politicians and opposition figures in the troubled island nation.

Adeeb was convicted late Thursday of attempting to kill President Abdulla Yameen by setting off a bomb on his speedboat last September, his lawyer said.

Two of the vice president's military bodyguards were also convicted after the trial, which was held behind closed doors.

Former Maldives deputy leader Ahmed Adeeb, right, seen in July 2015 welcoming Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena to Male, has been jailed for 15 years for plotting to assassinate the president, the latest in a string of prosecutions of senior politicians and opposition figures in the troubled island nation HO (SRI LANKAN PRESIDENCY/AFP)

The verdicts mean almost all of Yameen's key rivals are in jail or exiled from the Maldives, a popular honeymoon destination that has been rocked by political turmoil in recent years.

They come weeks after Mohamed Nasheed, the country's first democratically elected president, was granted asylum in Britain.

Nasheed, whose legal team includes high-profile human rights lawyer Amal Clooney, was sentenced to 13 years in prison on controversial terrorism charges last year but was allowed to travel to Britain for surgery in January and was granted political asylum last month.

Adeeb, 34, was considered a close confidant of Yameen until he was dramatically impeached in November following allegations he was trying to topple the president.

Yameen escaped the blast unscathed, but his wife and two others were slightly injured. The FBI was called in to investigate the incident, but found no evidence the blast was caused by a bomb.

Reporters were barred from attending the trial after the court invoked national security concerns and said it would not make the hearings or verdict public.

- Silencing dissent -

Adeeb's lawyer, Moosa Siraj, told the Maldives Independent website he would appeal.

"The Criminal Court has barred me from calling the trial unfair, but we have concerns and intend to launch an appeal immediately," Siraj said.

Another lawyer who declined to be named said Adeeb's two bodyguards were also convicted Thursday, sentenced to 10 years each in jail.

The same court tried former prosecutor general Muhthaz Muhsin of conspiracy to kidnap the President by arranging a fake arrest warrant in February and sentenced him Thursday to 17 years in jail, his lawyer Husnu Al Suood said.

Adeeb, who enjoyed a meteoric rise until his impeachment, was given a separate 10-year sentence on Sunday on a terrorism charge relating to his role in cracking down on an anti-government protest in May 2015.

Opposition activists in the Indian ocean archipelago say dissidents risk arrest or exile under Yameen, the half brother of former strongman Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, who ruled the archipelago for 30 straight years until he was defeated in the first democratic election in 2008.

In July last year, Yameen sacked his then vice president Mohamed Jameel after accusing him of conspiring to seize power. Jameel is now living abroad in self-imposed exile.

Yameen's defence minister Mohamed Nazim was sentenced to 11 years in prison in March 2015 for trying to topple the government, and another ex-defence minister Tholhath Ibrahim was jailed for 10 years the following month.

And nearly four months ago, Yameen secured the jailing of Sheikh Imran Abdulla, leader of the opposition Islamist Adhaalath Party.

He was sentenced to 12 years after being tried for allegedly inciting unrest during an anti-government rally in 2015.

Maldives President Abdulla Yameen, seen in October 20145, speaks of the dismissal of Vice President Ahmed Adeeb from his duties in an address to the nation in Male HO (MALDIVES PRESIDENCY/AFP)
Fiji, New Zealand look to mend fences

New Zealand Prime Minister John Key said Friday he wanted to "reset" ties with Suva after his Fijian counterpart accused Wellington of failing to understand the coup-plagued Pacific nation.

Making the first visit to Fiji by a New Zealand leader in a decade, Key said it was time to look beyond tensions generated by a military takeover in 2006.

Key said his trip aimed to "to reset the relationship so we can go forward together in a spirit of great friendship".

New Zealand Prime Minister John Key, left, says he wants to "reset" ties with Suva after his Fijian counterpart Frank Bainimarama, right, accused Wellington of failing to understand the coup-plagued Pacific nation. The two leaders are pictured upon Key's arrival at Suva on June 9, 2016 Str (AFP)

However, Fiji Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama, who led the 2006 coup before winning an election in 2014, told Key that New Zealand attitudes must change to improve the relationship.

At a welcoming function for Key late Thursday, the former military strongman complained that some New Zealanders still questioned the legitimacy of his leadership.

"I stand before you tonight not as a coup maker or dictator -- as some in your country would still have it -- but as the popularly elected, freely chosen leader of Fiji," he said.

New Zealand led international calls for sanctions when Bainimarama seized power in 2006 and he said Wellington now needed an approach that was "less prescriptive, more consultative".

"Fiji seeks a new political relationship with New Zealand that is more equal, more rooted in mutual respect, more understanding," he said.

Bainimarama also launched into a lengthy justification of his coup, saying it was needed to remove a corrupt and racially biased government.

He defended Fiji's right to ban journalists from the country, including a number from New Zealand, an issue Key said he had intended to raise during his trip.

"We cannot allow the wilful propagation of false information that damages the national interest and undermines our vulnerable economy," the Fijian leader said.

Since the 2014 vote, Fiji's government has been accused of trying to muzzle the press and opposition lawmakers, as well covering up police brutality.

Amnesty International said Key, whose two-day visit wrapped up on Friday, needed to put human rights at the top of the agenda during his talks with Bainimarama.
How one family escaped Iraq's besieged Fallujah

Abu Marwan, his wife and his three children are among the very few Iraqi civilians to have escaped from the heart of the Islamic State group's besieged stronghold of Fallujah.

Most of the more than 20,000 people who have reached safety since Iraqi forces launched an offensive last month are from the outskirts of the city, which lies only 50 kilometres (30 miles) west of Baghdad.

The 49-year-old man and his family were able to leave Fallujah this week but tens of thousands more civilians remained trapped in the city by IS.

Most of the more than 20,000 people who have reached safety since Iraqi forces launched an offensive last month on Fallujah are from the outskirts, almost none from the heart of the city Ahmad Mousa (AFP/File)

This is the account he gave AFP by telephone of life under the jihadists and how his family eventually got out:

"We did not flee Fallujah when Daesh (IS) took over at the end of 2013," he said, referring to the start of a period of anti-government protests during which IS's previous incarnation gradually took over the city.

"We expected the crisis would end within weeks or months. But the gunmen soon had the people on a tight leash, imposing new rules, issuing decrees, setting up barriers and planting bombs on the streets.

"That continued through 2014 and 2015... We were already affected by this but our living conditions deteriorated abruptly at the beginning of this year.

"My neighbour and I contacted somebody called Abu Omar, who is a Daesh member known as the "wali" (local chief) of southern Fallujah, to facilitate our exfiltration from the city in return for smuggling his wife with us," Abu Marwan said.

"He had cut a deal for his wife to be taken to Kirkuk.

"Daesh calls the wives of its members 'State women' and women in the city who have not pledged allegiance to the movement are called 'common women'," Abu Marwan explained.

- Euphrates crossing -

The deal was sealed with the 'wali' in two days. Abu Marwan prepared his car and his family and Abu Omar's wife all squeezed in.

"We were stopped at many checkpoints but when we said Abu Omar sent us, they let us through. Then he appeared on a motorcycle and drove in front of us to open the way. He told us we should keep a distance of 100 metres.

Abu Marwan said they snaked their way down to an area called Zoba by the Euphrates.

"There were many Daesh fighters along the way, heavily armed and hiding in various shelters," he said.

A senior commander in the operation to retake Fallujah, one of the jihadists' most emblematic bastions, said up to 2,500 IS fighters were defending the city.

In Zoba, IS was out in numbers, controlling who left the area.

"Some families had been there for four days, waiting to cross the river. Some were arguing with Daesh," Abu Marwan said.

"I left my car with Daesh. After also arguing with them, we boarded a small boat with my family and Abu Omar's wife but Daesh said the men should swim," he said.

According to the Norwegian Refugee Council, which runs most of the camps where the people displaced by the operation are housed, hundreds of families fled through Zoba in recent days.

Several people were shot by IS trying to cross the river while others drowned, according to several aid groups.

- Sweets and water -

"After crossing the river, we walked a short distance and found the Iraqi army and the Hashed al-Shaabi" paramilitary umbrella organisation, he said.

"They welcomed us and handed out sweets, juice and water. Then they separated the men from the women, started conducting security checks and inspected our bags.

Abu Marwan said they were asked whether they had any information about IS leaders inside the city.

"The security forces began releasing the older men... The middle-aged and young men were kept all night as they carried out checks on us with laptops.

"I told them Abu Omar's wife had been with us but I have no information on what happened to her," said Abu Marwan, who was eventually allowed to leave and join his family.

Abu Marwan and his family were among very few Iraqi civilians to have escaped from the heart of the Islamic State group's besieged stronghold of Fallujah, with tens of thousands still trapped in the city Ahmad Mousa (AFP/File)
DR Congo opposition demands Kabila quit by year's end

Opposition parties in the Democratic Republic of Congo on Friday said they had forged an alliance to demand that President Joseph Kabila quit when his term expires in December.

After a two-day meeting in Belgium, the groups issued a statement saying they had set up a joint organisation called "Rassemblement" whose goal is to "realise the struggle of the Congolese people for change and a state of law".

The opposition also a warning to Kabila, saying that if he stayed in power beyond December 19, when his second term elapses, it would be tantamount to a "constitutional coup d'etat".

A so-called committee of wise men headed by veteran opposition figure Etienne Tshisekedi (front) will be set up to coordinate decisions by a new DR Congo opposition alliance Thierry Charlier (AFP)

But Kabila's camp -- represented by the Coalition for Presidential Majority -- rejected the resolutions adopted at the meeting as illegal, denouncing them as an "attempt to stage a coup d'etat".

"It's a plot against the nation," said coalition head Aubin Minaku in Kinshasa, who is also president of the National Assembly.

In power since 2001, Kabila is widely believed to be eyeing a third term in office in contravention of the constitution which allows only two.

The Belgian meeting, which took place at a hotel in Genval near Brussels, was called by veteran opposition figure Etienne Tshisekedi who will head up a committee to coordinate the group's decisions.

Tshisekedi, 83 -- an opposition leader since the era of strongman Mobutu Sese Seko, who ruled the country for three decades until 1997 -- came second to Kabila in a fraud-tainted 2011 election. He has been convalescing in Belgium since 2014.

Belgian Foreign Minister Didier Reynders welcomed a meeting whose outcome he hoped would prove "favourable".

"Belgium welcomes the work undertaken at the gathering this week with a view to reaching common opposition positions," Reynders said in a statement.

The statement added that Belgium hoped the talks would offer an opportunity to make real progress "as is the hope of the African Union."

- 'United against you-know-who' -

Earlier, Tshisekedi told delegates they were gathered "as patriots to exchange views on the grave crisis affecting our country.

"More than ever, we must be united to get rid of you know who," he said.

At the same time, the opposition must be mindful of the possible dangers and get the president "to leave quietly... and not expose the people to bullets," he said.

Tshisekedi said the opposition could consider dialogue with Kabila but only under certain conditions -- respect for the constitution, release of political prisoners and oversight by the international community to ensure any agreement was enforced.

The strongman's supporters want elections due later this year to be delayed for two to four years.

No date has yet been set for the polls and late last year Kabila said he hoped to organise a "national dialogue" aimed at reaching a wide consensus ahead of any vote.

Tensions have soared in DRC in recent months over fears Kabila will postpone elections to extend his time in office.

The opposition groups attending the Belgian meeting said they wanted to see the full implementation of UN resolution 2277 which notably calls for political dialogue and legislative and presidential elections by November, a sentiment Reynders echoed.

Moise Katumbi, a leading DR Congo opposition figure who has announced his candidacy for the presidency, had been expected to attend the Belgian meeting but sent his closest advisers instead, organisers said.

Katumbi quit the DRC in May ostensibly for medical treatment and is now staying in Britain. He left the day after the government said he would be tried for endangering state security.

DR Congo leader Joseph Kabila has been in power since 2001 and is believed to be eyeing a third term Carl De Souza (AFP/File)

The President of the Democratic Republic of Congo opposition party New Forces for the Union and the Solidarity (FONUS) Joseph Olenghankoy poses on June 10, 2016 in Genval Thierry Charlier (AFP)
S. Korea launches military patrol against Chinese fishing boats

South Korea launched an operation Friday to drive out illegal Chinese fishing boats from neutral waters close to the disputed sea border with the North, in a move that could further escalate cross-border tensions.

The patrol is the first military operation in the buffer zone -- an effective no-man's land at sea -- between the two Koreas since the area was drawn up at the end of the Korean War in 1953.

Seoul has repeatedly complained to Beijing about the number of illegal Chinese trawlers fishing in the waters.

South Korea launched an operation to drive out illegal Chinese fishing boats from neutral waters close to the disputed sea border with the North Kim Jae-Hwan (AFP/File)

But the number of Chinese boats in the neutral waters of the Han River estuary and around the disputed sea border in the Yellow Sea has continued to surge in the absence of patrols.

"Diplomatic efforts have met their limits.... We've decided to enforce restrictions in cooperation with the UNC," a South Korean military official said according to Yonhap news agency, referring to the US-led United Nations Command (UNC), which oversees the armistice that ended the 1950-53 Korean War.

"The troops carried out their first crackdown operation in the estuary area earlier in the day."

The personnel have been authorised to use force against Chinese fishing boats if they do not comply with verbal warnings to leave, the official said.

South Korea has warships and helicopters on standby, which will be deployed in the event of any skirmishes with North Korea, he added.

The was no immediate reaction from Pyongyang to the rare military patrols.
Hindu monastery worker hacked to death in Bangladesh

A 62-year-old Hindu monastery worker was hacked to death in Bangladesh on Friday, police said, the latest in a series of such attacks on religious minorities in the mainly Muslim country.

The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the murder of a Hindu in Pabna in northern Bangladesh through its Amaq news agency, according to the SITE monitoring group, saying he was assassinated with "blade weapons".

The latest murder came as Bangladeshi police announced a special week-long crackdown on militants as they ramp up efforts to stem the killings, with five members of a banned Islamist outfit killed in gunbattles with officers in the past three days.

Bangladesh is reeling from a wave of murders of secular and liberal activists and religious minorities that have left more than 40 people dead in the last three years Munir Uz Zaman (AFP)

Nityaranjan Pande was taking his regular early morning walk when unidentified attackers set upon him, killing him on the spot, police said.

"As a diabetic, everyday he walks early in the morning. Today as he was walking, several attackers hacked him in the neck... He died on the spot," local police station chief Abdullah Al-Hasan told AFP.

"He had been working at the monastery for around 40 years. In recent years he was the head of its office staff," he said.

The head of police in the northwestern district of Pabna, where the Shri Shri Thakur Anukulchandra Ashram is located, said the killing bore the hallmarks of recent attacks by Islamist extremists on minorities and secular activists.

"There was no eye-witness to the attack as it happened very early in the morning," Alamgir Kabir told AFP.

Bangladesh is reeling from a wave of murders of secular and liberal activists and religious minorities that have left nearly 50 people dead in the last three years.

- Police crackdown -

The murders have spiked in recent weeks with a gruesome wave of killings that has spanned from the capital Dhaka to remote parts of the north and coastal south.

In the past week alone, an elderly Hindu priest was found nearly decapitated in a rice field, a Christian grocer was hacked to death near a church while the wife of an anti-terrorism officer was stabbed and shot.

Her husband had led several high-profile operations against the banned Jamayetul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB), an Islamist militant group, in the southeastern city of Chittagong.

Most of the latest attacks have been claimed either by the Islamic State group or by a South Asian branch of Al-Qaeda.

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's government has however blamed homegrown Islamists for the attacks, rejecting claims of responsibility from the international jihadist groups.

The JMB is one of the main domestic militant outfits in the frame for the murders, with police shooting dead five members of the group since Tuesday.

Shahidul Hoque, inspector general of police, vowed in an address to a meeting of top police officials in Dhaka Thursday that those involved in the killing of the police officer's wife would be "brought to justice very soon".

Experts say a government crackdown on opponents, including a ban on Bangladesh's largest Islamist party Jamaat-e-Islami following a protracted political crisis, has pushed many towards extremism.

Victims of the attacks by suspected Islamists have included secular bloggers, gay rights activists and followers of minority religions.

Although it is officially secular, around 90 percent of Bangladesh's 160 million-strong population is Muslim. Some eight percent of the population is Hindu.

A Hindu shop owner was hacked to death outside his store in a northern district late last month, while a Hindu tailor was killed in April after allegedly making derogatory remarks about the Prophet Mohammed.

IS claimed responsibility for both those killings.

Relatives and friends attend the funeral prayer of an earlier victim of suspected militants, Bangladeshi activist Xulhaz Mannan in Dhaka, on April 26, 2016. Two leading gay rights activists were hacked to death on April 25, at an apartment in Bangladesh's capital, police said, the latest deadly attack on minorities in the Muslim-majority nation Rehman Asad (AFP)

Indian Buddhist monks protest in Mumbai on May 23, 2016, against the hacking to death of a Buddhist monk earlier in the month in Bangladesh Indranil Mukherjee (AFP/File)
US-backed forces cut main IS Syria-Turkey supply route

Arab-Kurdish fighters backed by the United States on Friday cut the Islamic State group's main supply route between Syria and Turkey in a major setback for the jihadists.

IS has come under growing pressure on various fronts in Syria and Iraq, where it established its self-declared "caliphate" in 2014.

The extremists lost control Friday of a vital supply artery when Arab-Kurdish forces completely surrounded a key jihadist-held town.

Syrian Democratic Forces in the village of Fatisah in the northern province of Raqa, on May 25, 2016 Delil Souleiman (AFP/File)

"The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) cut off the last road from Manbij to the Turkish border," said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based monitoring group.

Manbij lies at the heart of the last stretch of territory along Turkey's border still under IS control, and was a key point on the jihadists' supply line from Turkey.

Other secondary roads to the frontier are more dangerous and difficult to access, Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman said.

The US envoy to the anti-IS coalition backing the SDF, Brett McGurk, confirmed the road had been severed.

"ISIL terrorists now completely surrounded with no way out," he wrote on Twitter, using another acronym for IS.

"Manbij is where we believe the Paris attackers, the Brussels attackers, they all kind of pulsed through this area," McGurk said, "from Raqa up to Manbij and then out to the capitals where they had organised their attack."

This week the SDF, backed by coalition air strikes, cut the road north out of Manbij to the IS-held border town of Jarabulus, which the jihadists had used as a transit point for fighters, money and weapons.

The SDF also blocked the road south out of Manbij heading to IS's de facto capital of Raqa.

"For the jihadists to reach the Turkish border from Raqa, they now have to take a route that is more dangerous because of regime troops nearby and Russian air strikes," Abdel Rahman said.

- Food reaches rebel enclaves -

Russia launched air strikes in support of President Bashar al-Assad's regime in Syria in September.

Thousands of residents have fled Manbij -- held by IS since 2014 -- but jihadists who evacuated their families stayed to defend the town, the Observatory said.

About 20,000 people are still living in the town, which had a pre-war population of about 120,000 -- mostly Arabs, but about a quarter Syrian Kurds.

Last month, the SDF attacked on two fronts from the north of Raqa province towards Manbij and in the direction of the IS-held town of Tabqa on the same vital supply line further south.

Regime troops backed by Russian air strikes have also pushed an offensive to the southwest of Tabqa.

Moscow and Washington -- despite backing different sides in Syria's five-year conflict -- have both focused efforts on fighting the jihadist group.

Syria's war has killed more than 280,000 people and displaced millions since it started in 2011 with the brutal repression of anti-government protests.

The United Nations says a total of 592,000 people live under siege in Syria -- most surrounded by government forces -- and another four million in hard-to-reach areas.

The Syrian Arab Red Crescent and the UN said aid was delivered to Douma on Friday. The SARC said 39 trucks took food and non-food items including medicines into the besieged town.

According to the Observatory, it was the first time that the United Nations delivered food aid to Douma since autumn 2013.

Late on Thursday, another food aid convoy approved by the regime entered the rebel-held town of Daraya near Damascus in the first such delivery since the start of a regime siege in 2012.

- Barrel bombs prevent handout -

But the Observatory and a resident said the regime dropped barrel bombs -- crude unguided explosive devices -- on Daraya on Friday, preventing residents from receiving the desperately needed food.

"Aid received by the council has not been distributed yet because of the intensity of the raids," local council member Shadi Matar said.

French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault voiced outrage over the barrel-bombing.

He accused Damascus of "extraordinary duplicity", saying the regime had finally granted access for aid after heavy international pressure "and then the bombing restarted."

The Observatory and local council estimate that 8,000 people live in Daraya, one of the first towns in Syria to erupt in anti-government demonstrations in 2012 and one of the first to come under regime siege the same year.

But the United Nations speaks of 4,000 besieged residents, angering inhabitants who say the food delivered is not nearly enough.

A previous UN aid convoy reached Daraya on June 1 but contained no food.

The town is just a 15-minute drive from central Damascus and is even closer to the regime's Mazzeh air base, which hosts the feared air force intelligence services and their notorious prison.

The UN's humanitarian agency said on Friday it was still awaiting permission from Damascus to deliver aid to two more of Syria's besieged areas, Al-Waer in Homs province and Zabadani in rural Damascus.

UN-backed peace talks on ending the war have stalled after the opposition walked out of negotiations in April over lack of humanitarian access.

A nationwide ceasefire between the regime and non-jihadist rebels -- brokered by Russia and the US -- is in tatters.

Islamic State fighters still controls territory along the Syria-Turkey border

Syrians unload lorries after a UN and SARC aid convoy, with food, nutrition, health and other emergency items, entered the rebel-held town of Douma, east of the Syrian capital Damascus, on June 10, 2016 Abd Doumany (AFP)

Syria's war has killed more than 280,000 people and displaced millions since it started in 2011 Karam Al-Masri (AFP)

US planes operating from the USS Harry S. Truman aircraft carrier in the eastern Mediterranean have mounted dozens of air strikes this week on Islamic State jihadists in Syria and Iraq MC3 Bobby J. Siens (Navy Office of Information/AFP)
Dozens of Philippine fish species in danger: study

Dozens of fish species have disappeared or are on the verge of being lost from marine biodiversity hotspot the Philippines, an environmental group said Friday, citing a new study.

Fishermen reported that 59 coral reef species had gone missing from catches since the 1950s, according to the study conducted by Haribon, one of the Philippines' oldest conservation groups, and Britain's Newcastle University.

It based its findings on interviews with 2,600 fishermen across the Philippines, which has one of the highest concentrations of marine species in the world.

Fishermen reported that 59 fish species had gone missing from catches since the 1950s, according to a new biodiversity study Romeo Gacad (AFP/File)

Overfishing to meet the demands of a fast-growing population and Chinese restaurants around the region was a key factor in the decline, according to Gregorio dela Rosa, a marine biologist with Haribon.

"These species are usually served in restaurants, swimming around in aquariums. They command a high price. If you have lots of mouths to feed, you need lots of fish to catch," dela Rosa, told AFP.

The Philippines' population has grown to more than 100 million people, from about 20 million in the 1950s.

Dela Rosa said demand from China added to pressure from the local market.

"It has a very big impact because most of our fish are exported to China, also Singapore and Hong Kong. The groupers are highly priced, especially the red ones which are in demand in Chinese wedding (receptions)," he said.

While dynamite and cyanide fishing are illegal and no longer rampant, the study found that they continue to contribute to depleting fish stocks.
Alibaba founder Jack Ma buys up two more French vineyards

Chinese billionaire Jack Ma, the founder of e-commerce giant Alibaba, has snapped up two historic French vineyards for nearly 12 million euros ($13.56 million).

Ma bought the Chateau Guerry and the Chateau Perenne, dating back to the 18th century, in the heart of the fabled Bordeaux wine-growing region.

Their owner, French wine magnate Bernard Magrez, confirmed the sale to AFP late Thursday after the transaction was reported by British magazine Decanter.

Chinese billionaire Jack Ma, the founder of e-commerce giant Alibaba, has snapped up two historic French vineyards Eric Feferberg (AFP/File)

The Chateau Perenne is spread over 64 hectares (158 acres) in the Blaye Cotes-de-Bourg appellation, producing about 500,000 bottles of red and white wine annually.

Chateau Guerry is the oldest estate in the Cotes de Bourg appellation, producing 84,000 bottles of red a year over about 20 hectares.

The purchases add to the Chateau de Sours vineyard, which Ma bought in Bordeaux' Entre-Deux-Mers wine region in February. It includes a magnificent 18th-century country house.

Magrez told AFP that the sale of the estates were part of a "strategy to move away from entry-level Bordeaux wines" to top-level appellations, as wine classifications are called.

More than 100 properties in Frances southwest wine-producing area are today owned by Chinese tycoons looking to diversify their fortunes. This makes up 1.5 per cent of the regions 7,000 vineyards.

Part of the appeal for the Chinese is the status that comes with possessing a noble French chateau as part of their wine-growing property.
France fines Uber 800,000 euros over ride-sharing service

Uber was fined 800,000 euros ($900,000) by a French court on Thursday, half of which was suspended, over its controversial UberPOP ride-sharing service that was banned in the country after violent protests last year.

Uber suspended its low-cost UberPOP offering in France in July following a storm of opposition to the service from taxi drivers and the arrest of two of its French bosses.

UberPOP was subsequently banned in France, but the company still operates its full-price service using professional drivers.

Uber has been accused of producing advertisements portraying UberPOP is a normal taxi service rather than a ride-sharing service Nicolas Maeterlinck (Belga/AFP/File)

In the court case that ended Thursday, Uber was charged with "the illegal organisation of a system that puts clients in contact with providers of road transport for payment".

The verdict accused Uber of "repeated and lasting violations" and said the company had "encouraged a large number of people to take part in an activity which led to them being convicted of criminal offences".

Uber France's chief executive, Thibaud Simphal, and the company's director general for Western Europe at the time the charges were brought, Pierre-Dimitri Gore-Coty, were fined 30,000 euros and 20,000 euros respectively. Half of those sums were also suspended.

A spokesman for San Francisco-based Uber said the company would appeal "immediately".

The fine for Uber was however lower than the 1.0 million euros that prosecutors had asked for.

The court also chose not to grant a prosecution request for the executives involved to be banned from running a company for five years.

France was the first country after the United States to have UberPOP when it was launched in February 2014.

But Uber soon became a victim of its success in Europe, with taxi drivers and hotel owners up in arms at the inroads made by one of the main players in the so-called "sharing economy".

Jean-Paul Levy, a lawyer for the complainants, hailed a "landmark decision".

"It demolishes the edifice put in place by Uber to try to conceal the responsibility of a number of individuals," he said.

Uber was also accused of producing advertisements that portrayed the service as fully legal by claiming UberPOP was a normal taxi service rather than a ride-sharing service.

Uber has filed complaints with the European Union against France and other EU members, arguing that national policies that are hostile to its operations violate European law.

Brussels is currently deliberating its response to those complaints.

Uber has become one of the world's most valuable startups, expanding to more than 50 countries.

Earlier this month, the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia pumped $3.5 billion into the company, in a major boost for its global expansion plans.

The injection of funds gives Uber a valuation of $62.5 billion, according to the company.

UberPOP is Uber's low-cost ride-sharing service Geoffroy Van der Hasselt (AFP/File)
MTN to pay $1.7 bn Nigeria telecoms fine

South African telecoms giant MTN said Friday it would pay a $1.7 billion fine to the Nigerian government in a "full and final settlement" over its failure to disconnect unregistered mobile phone users.

The Johannesburg-based company said in a statement that "MTN Nigeria has agreed to pay a total cash amount of naira 330 billion over three years."

Africa's biggest mobile-phone operator was fined $3.9 billion last year and has since been in negotiations with the Nigerian government to reduce the size of the penalty.

South Africa's MTN was hit with the huge fine amid fears that some of the 5.1 million affected lines were being used by Boko Haram insurgents Pius Utomi Ekpei (AFP/File)

The company was hit with the huge fine amid fears that some of the 5.1 million affected lines were being used by Boko Haram insurgents.

Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), the west African country's telecoms regulator, confirmed that following six months of talks, the MTN fine had been reduced.

It said in a statement that its decision to reduce the fine was based on "professionalism and global best interest."

"We were careful not to take decisions that were likely to cripple the business interest of the operators we regulate," said the commission's executive vice chairman Umar Danbatta.

"Besides, the downturn of the global economy is biting hard on everybody and every sector, so we must therefore be sensitive and flexible in our decisions," he said in the statement.

After MTN's announcement, its shares on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange rose as much as 21 percent, on track for the biggest gain since 2008, according to Bloomberg News.

The country's telecoms regulator had handed down the fine last year citing an inability to trace users in a country plagued by frequent kidnappings and Boko Haram militants.

The sum was originally set at $5.2 billion before being to lowered to $3.9 billion on appeal.

- 'Relief to investors' -

"MTN is pleased to inform shareholders that the matter has been resolved with the Federal Government of Nigeria," the company statement said.

MTN executive chairman Phuthuma Nhleko "expresses his thanks and gratitude to (the Nigerian government) for the spirit in which the matter was resolved," it added.

MTN paid one instalment in February and has scheduled six other payments to cover the fine by May 2019.

"The news is a huge relief to investors, given the fact that Nigeria ended up not imposing the initial amount of the fine," Dobek Pater, telecoms specialist at the Africa Analysis consultancy, told AFP.

"MTN could not afford to lose a major market such as Nigeria and by paying the fine it shows that they still have faith in keeping their investment there."

As part of the deal has undertaken to "tender an apology" to the government and people of Nigeria over the matter, according to the NCC.

It also promised to "take immediate steps steps to ensure the listing of its shares on the Nigerian Stock Exchange as soon as commercially and legally possible," said the NCC.

The Boko Haram violence has left at least 17,000 dead and forced more than 2.6 million people from their homes since 2009.

The MTN fine dominated South Africa's President Jacob Zuma visit to Nigeria earlier this year.

Commenting on the MTN penalty, President Muhammadu Buhari had in March said his government was more concerned about national security than the fine.

"You know how the unregistered GSM (Global System for Mobile communication) are being used by terrorists.

"Unfortunately MTN was very slow and contributed to the casualties," said Buhari during Zuma's visit to Nigeria.

Relations between the continent's two economic powerhouses have been strained over recent years on issues including economic rivalry and political friction.
Iraq special forces 3km from Fallujah centre

Iraq's elite counterterrorism service moved to within three kilometres of central Fallujah Friday and consolidated positions in the south of the city, the operation's commander said.

Speaking to AFP from the edge of the city's Shuhada neighbourhood, Lieutenant General Abdelwahab al-Saadi said the operation to retake one of the Islamic State group's most emblematic bastions was progressing well.

"Daesh (IS) wanted the battle to take place outside the city but we have moved in, and retaken all this area in eight days," he said, standing on rooftop overlooking Fallujah's southern neighbourhoods.

Iraqi government forces supported by Popular Mobilisation Units engage in combat in the Saqlawiyah area, north west of Fallujah, during an operation to regain control of the area from the Islamic State group Ahmad Al-Rubaye (AFP/File)

"Our troops are here," he said pointing on his tablet computer to spots along one of the main streets in southern Fallujah. "That's 3.1 kilometres (less than two miles) from the main official building in the centre."

"We'll be there, in the very centre, in days. Days, not weeks," he said.

Plumes of smoke and dust rose up in Fallujah's low and grey skyline as special forces carried out controled detonations of bombs planted by IS and jets struck IS targets.

An Australian accent called in on the radio of a counterterrorism service (CTS) coordinator.

"I've got two guys in a building," it said, spelling out coordinates.

"Which one? The building facing east or west?" the CTS officer asked in perfect English before taking a sip from a can of energy drink. "West? OK, you're clear to engage."

Minutes later, a jet dropped its payload on the target and a huge mushroom of grey dust rose up.

"Splash on target," the CTS officer radioed back, confirming the strike was successful.

Iraqi forces are receiving air support from the US-led coalition that was formed after IS took over Iraq's second city Mosul and large parts of the country two years ago.

The operation to retake Fallujah, which lies only 50 kilometres (30 miles) west of Baghdad, was launched on May 22-23.

The first phase focused on sealing the siege of the city and the CTS has been leading a second phase that saw forces break into the urban centre of Fallujah.

Concern over the fate of tens of thousands of civilians has slowed Iraqi forces' advance but Saadi said the operation was meeting its goals.

"More than 500 Daesh members have already been killed since the start of the operation," he said.

"Fallujah is a very symbolic place for Daesh... but the battle is not different from other ones and when they are trapped, they try to run away just like they did before," Saadi said.

IS fighters have tried to leave the besieged city by blending in with the flow of displaced civilians who are attempting to escape by crossing the Euphrates south of Fallujah.

According to the Norwegian Refugee Council which runs displaced camps in Amriyat al-Fallujah, south of Fallujah, more than 20,000 people have fled the fighting over the past three weeks.

The battle for Fallujah
Held in Italy, Eritrean denies being trafficking kingpin

An Eritrean man extradited from Sudan to Italy on suspicion of being the head of a migrant trafficking ring has told investigators he is not the man they want, his lawyer said Friday.

The suspect, identified by Italian authorities as Medhanie Yehdego Mered, 35, is accused of shipping thousands of people to Europe and sending some to their deaths in the Mediterranean.

Dubbed 'the general' for his control over a vast area and number of 'troops', and described as "cynical and unscrupulous", Mered has been described as a people smuggling kingpin.

The man presented by police as Medhanie Yehdego Mered, 35, is escorted by police upon his extradition from Sudan to Italy late on June 6, 2016

But Italian prosecutors admitted on Thursday that they were checking his identity after reports claimed he was the victim of a case of mistaken identity, and a woman claiming to be his half-sister said he was just a simple carpenter.

Lawyer Michele Calantropo told AFP his client "denied being the suspect and also denied being linked in any way to a trafficking network" when questioned by Italian magistrates.

Sudan's interior ministry, Italian police and Britain's National Crime Agency (NCA) had made much of Mered's arrest in Khartoum at the end of May and his deportation to Italy this week.

But family and friends soon came forward to say the man pictured being dragged off a plane in Rome was not 'the general', identifying him as someone with a different name.

Calantropo was hired by a woman claiming to be the sister of the detainee, a man she named as Mered Tesfamariam.

Segem Tasfamariam Berhe, who said she had recognised her 27-year-old brother in the footage, told Italian media he had nothing to do with human trafficking.

"I want to tell Italian police my brother is innocent, he is not the man they are looking for. Please, investigators, release my brother," she was quoted as saying from Khartoum by Italy's Rai News.

- 'An innocent man' -

From Eritrea's capital of Asmara, a woman claiming to be his stepsister, Saliem Kesete, told the Italian broadcaster that Mered Tesfamariam "was a carpenter, with a family", describing him as an "innocent man" who had "wanted to go to the US".

"Europe was his second choice," she said.

Key suspect Mered, who has been wanted on smuggling charges since 2015, is accused of packing migrants onto a boat that sank in 2013 off the Italian island of Lampedusa, claiming at least 360 lives in one of the worst disasters in the Mediterranean.

He reportedly described the sinking as "Allah's will" and is accused of organising the smuggling of up to 8,000 people a year.

Wiretaps of his conversations show him having contact with traffickers in northern Europe, particularly in the Netherlands and Scandinavia, and he held a "senior position in a criminal network operating in several continents", Italian police said.

In phonecalls with his family, he sounded loving, making several references to leaving Libya and moving to Sweden to be with his wife, but by contrast, had showed "utter disregard for the lives of the migrants", Italian police said.

His capture was hailed by officials as a significant blow to the people smuggling business as Europe moves to stem the flow of migrants across the Mediterranean.

According to the UN's refugee agency (UNHCR), over 49,600 people have arrived in Italy by boat so far this year.

More than 10,000 people have died crossing the Mediterranean to Europe since 2014.

Migration: the Mediterranean crossing Thomas SAINT-CRICQ, Frederic BOURGEAIS, Kun TIAN, Jules BONNARD (AFP)
Bairstow highs and lows as Sri Lanka hit back

Jonny Bairstow continued a brilliant year of run-scoring with a Test-best 167 not out against Sri Lanka at Lord's on Friday.

But the debate about whether he should continue to keep wicket for England intensified when he dropped a routine catch to reprieve Dimuth Karunaratne on the second day of the third Test.

At stumps, Sri Lanka were 162 for one in reply to England's first innings 416, a deficit of 254 runs.

England's Jonny Bairstow acknowledges the crowd after reaching 150 runs not out on the second day of the third Test against Sri Lanka at Lord's cricket ground in London on June 10, 2016 Ian Kington (AFP)

Kaushal Silva was 79 not out and Kusal Mendis unbeaten on 25 after left-handed opener Karunaratne made exactly 50.

Considering the start of this series saw Sri Lanka become the first side since 1958 to be dismissed for under 120 in three successive Test innings, this was a fine effort, albeit a placid pitch and lack of swing meant conditions at the "home of cricket" favoured batsmen on Friday.

There had been signs of recovery in their last innings, where Sri Lanka made 475 in a nine-wicket defeat in the second Test, giving England an unassailable 2-0 lead in this three-match series.

Karunaratne should have been out for 28 on Friday when he nicked all-rounder Chris Woakes, only for Bairstow to drop the two-handed waist-high chance.

Even allowing for the possibility that Bairstow was mentally and physically tired after his more than six-hour innings, it was still an extraordinary miss by a Test keeper.

It is not the first time this series that Bairstow has grassed a chance -- although Friday's miss was the most glaring.

Karunaratne cashed in and after tea struck James Anderson, the world's number one ranked Test bowler, for three fours in as many balls, including a well-hit drive.

Yet having completed a 95-ball fifty, Karunaratne was dismissed when a leg glance was well caught by a diving Bairstow to give under-pressure fast bowler Steven Finn a wicket on his Middlesex home ground.

- 'Confidence' -

Karunaratne's exit ended an opening stand of 108 with Silva -- easily Sri Lanka's best top-order partnership of the series.

Silva took Sri Lanka to 150 with a sublime drive through extra-cover for four off Stuart Broad.

"That innings at Durham helped us a lot in terms of our confidence," Silva told Sky Sports after Friday's close.

"We just had to get into our system that we can do things. When the sun is out and the ball doesn't swing much, it's easier for us," he added.

"But still we have to play really well to score runs -- they (England) have a quality attack."

Meanwhile Woakes admitted: "Getting 19 wickets after today is going to be tough.

"But that's Test cricket. The Sri Lankans batted well."

Bairstow, who was himself dropped on 11 when Shaminda Eranga floored a routine catch at mid-wicket, said after Thursday's opening day: "It's not my fault he dropped it. That's the nature of cricket.

"Unfortunately, he put that one down and I was able to take advantage."

Bairstow, as if forecasting his own error in dropping Karunaratne, although in reality making a statement of fact, added: "There are going to be more chances put down."

It wasn't until January that the 26-year-old Bairstow scored his first Test century.

But since January 1 he has been in prolific batting form for both county champions Yorkshire and England, scoring 594 runs at an average of 118.8 in Tests and 1,127 runs in first-class cricket at 102.4.

Friday saw Bairstow receive good support from Woakes (66) in a seventh-wicket partnership of 144.

Meanwhile Sri Lanka left-arm spinner Rangana Herath took an economical four for 81 in 36 overs.

England resumed on 279 for six with Bairstow 107 not out and Woakes unbeaten on 23.

Bairstow's second century of the series, following his 140 on his Headingley home ground in the first Test, helped rescue England from the depths of 84 for four.

Woakes was the initial aggressor on Friday and a boundary off Eranga saw him to a maiden Test fifty in 102 balls.

But Woakes fell when caught and bowled by Herath off a chipped drive.

Bairstow batted on and his leg-glanced four off Sri Lanka captain Angelo Mathews saw him surpass his previous Test-best 150 not out against South Africa at Cape Town in January.

Sri Lanka's Dimuth Karunaratne was 30 not out at tea on the second day of the third Test against England at Lord's on June 10, 2016 Ian Kington (AFP)

Sri Lanka's Rangana Herath (2nd L) celebrates with teammates taking the wicket of England's Chris Woakes for 66 runs at Lord's cricket ground in London on June 10, 2016 Ian Kington (AFP)
'Starving to death': Boko Haram displaced facing food crisis

At least 10 people are "starving to death" every day in a camp in northeast Nigeria for people displaced by Boko Haram violence, highlighting warnings about a food crisis in the Lake Chad region.

A civilian vigilante and a soldier said the deaths were occurring in the town of Banki where they are based, some 130 kilometres (80 miles) southeast of the Borno state capital, Maiduguri.

Troops liberated the remote town near the Cameroon border last September.

According to the UN there are 9.2 million people living around Lake Chad are in desperate need of food

"People are dying in large numbers in the camp every day from lack of food," the vigilante, who asked not to be identified because of his job assisting the military, told AFP Thursday.

"They are starving to death on a daily basis. Between 10 and 11 people, including men, women and children, die daily since the IDP (internally displaced persons) camp was opened three months ago.

"As of yesterday (Wednesday) we counted 376 graves in the Bulachira cemetery belonging to dead IDPs who died in the last three months."

The soldier, who has been in Banki since the liberation and also asked to remain anonymous, gave a similar account: "At least 10 people are buried every day in the cemetery.

"The whole camp is hunger-stricken. People are emaciated and starving to death. If nobody intervenes, a huge catastrophe is looming because these people can't hold out."

- Supply routes -

The Borno state government and aid agencies have warned about acute food shortages in the Lake Chad region as a result of seven years of violence.

The United Nations said in May that 9.2 million people living around the lake, which forms the border of Nigeria, Chad, Cameroon and Niger, were in desperate need of food.

One Nigerian refugee in a camp in southeastern Niger told AFP last month: "I think that everyone has abandoned us." Another said it had been four months since they last received food aid.

Even at the giant Dalori camp outside Maiduguri, which houses about 20,000 people, IDPs complain there is not enough to eat and children especially are always hungry.

The camp has been locked down since a suicide blast outside in January, forcing residents to rely on twice daily bowls of cooked rice and beans.

"The food ration given to all the occupants of a room is so little that it can be consumed by this boy," Aisha Bala, 35, told AFP last month, pointing to a six-year-old next to her.

"We force ourselves to eat the food despite its bad taste so as not to die from starvation, " added Babagana Mustafa, 46.

Ahmed Satomi, executive secretary of the Borno state emergency management agency, said there were some 10,000 IDPs in Banki and "relief items" were delivered two weeks ago.

But the vigilante disputed the claim, saying the IDPs received nothing from the state and only UNICEF provided them with water containers and sanitary items in April.

Satomi said they were "preparing to procure maize and rice that will last them (the IDPs) for the next 40 days" but said priority was being given to Bama, 60 kilometres away.

There were more IDPs in Bama and Maiduguri was its only supply route, whereas "Banki can access supplies from neighbouring Amchide in Cameroon", he added.

- 'Walking corpses' -

Boko Haram Islamist insurgency is one of the world's most brutal conflicts: at least 20,000 people have been killed since it began in 2009 and more than 2.6 million others displaced.

Nigeria's government has been encouraging IDPs to return home since the recapture of swathes of territory lost to the Islamist militants in 2014.

But most are still largely reliant on food hand-outs, with farmlands devastated, and homes and local infrastructure destroyed.

Nearly 6,500 children were found to be severely malnourished at camps in Borno state last year; more than 25,000 others had "mild to moderate symptoms", health officials said in February.

The vigilante and the soldier said troops had been giving two-thirds of their rations to the IDPs, who also lacked access to medical facilities and even basic medicine such as paracetamol.

"People have no food, they are just walking corpses," he said by telephone, adding he was watching another funeral procession as he spoke.

Without the soldiers' rations "only a few would have been alive by now", he added.

The soldier called for urgent action, adding: "These people fled their homes to escape death in the hands of Boko Haram terrorists but they are now slowly dying from starvation."

The Borno state government in Nigeria and aid agencies have warned about acute food shortages in the Lake Chad region as a result of seven years of violence

The giant Dalori camp outside Maiduguri in Nigeria houses about 20,000 people
Thirty held in Uganda over 'coup plot'

At least 30 people with suspected ties to a shadowy rebel outfit have been arrested in Uganda over an alleged plot to topple President Yoweri Museveni, the army said Friday.

The detainees include serving soldiers and a senior opposition lawmaker and are "linked to a rebel group," army spokesman Paddy Ankunda told AFP, but declined to name the outfit.

"We and the police are investigating the matter," Ankunda said, adding that most of those arrested were soldiers.

Uganda President Yoweri Museveni seized power in 1986, and was sworn into office for a fifth term during a ceremony in Kampala, on May 12, 2016

At least one member of parliament and another opposition politician have been arrested.

The only detainee named by the spokesman was Michael Kabaziguruka, an MP from the main opposition Forum for Democratic Change (FDC) party whose leader Kizza Besigye is in custody on treason charges.

Besigye, who cried foul after coming second to Museveni in February's presidential election, was arrested last month for holding a mock swearing-in ceremony.

Museveni garnered a first-round victory with a more than 60 percent share of the vote that foreign monitors said was held in an atmosphere of intimidation.

Besigye, an old foe of the president, was previously charged with treason in 2005 but the case was eventually abandoned. At the time, prosecutors had accused him of leading a shadowy rebel group called the People's Redemption Army, a charge Besigye always denied.

FDC party spokesman Ssemujju Nganda went to visit Kabaziguruka after his arrest.

"He told me he was questioned on rebel links, which he didn't know about," said Nganda, adding that other party supporters "are under detention on the same claim".

The local newspaper Daily Monitor said one of the arrested soldiers is a captain responsible for the armoury at the Bombo Military Barracks, the army headquarters north of the capital Kampala.

It also quoted the FDC spokesman as saying that Kabaziguruka had been grilled "about Dr Besigye and General (David) Sejusa's links to the same rebel group".

Sejusa was Uganda's former spymaster.

Over the years Besigye has been frequently jailed, placed under house arrest, accused of both treason and rape, tear-gassed, beaten and hospitalised.

Following the latest charges of treason, Besigye was sent to a maximum security prison in Kampala.

His trial opened last week with the prosecutor saying he could not be brought to court because of a "specific security threat" and requested that further hearings be held inside the prison.
West slams Syria's regime over Daraya bombings

Western powers lashed out at Syria's government, accusing regime forces of dropping barrel bombs on the town of Daraya hours after it received its first food aid in almost four years.

The strikes, using crude unguided explosive devices, came as Arab-Kurdish fighters said they had encircled a stronghold of Islamic State (IS) fighters in northern Syria, cutting off a major supply route.

French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault accused Damascus of "extraordinary duplicity" over the bombings, which came just as aid workers were beginning to distribute supplies to thousands of desperate people.

A convoy of trucks carrying food arrived in Daraya delivering rice, lentils, sugar, oil and wheat flour to civilians for the first time since the regime laid siege to the town in late 2012 Fadi Dirani (AFP)

Ayrault said he was "outraged beyond words", declaring the end of an already shaky ceasefire and calling world powers to meet.

A convoy of trucks carrying food arrived in Daraya late Thursday, delivering rice, lentils, sugar, oil and wheat flour to civilians for the first time since the regime laid siege to the town in late 2012.

Assad's forces bombarded the town shortly after, according to a witness and human rights monitors, dropping indiscriminate barrel bombs from helicopters as residents shared food.

Local council member Shadi Matar said aid had not yet been distributed "because of the intensity of the raids".

US State Department spokesman Mark Toner said "such attacks are unacceptable in any circumstance, but in this case they also hampered the delivery and distribution of badly needed assistance".

Nearly 600,000 people live in besieged areas in Syria, most surrounded by government forces, and another four million in hard-to-reach areas, according to the United Nations.

UN-backed peace talks on ending the war stalled in April when the opposition walked out over lack of humanitarian access.

Aid agencies said supplies reached Douma on Friday -- the first UN delivery since autumn 2013, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based monitoring group.

The Syrian Arab Red Crescent said 39 trucks took food and non-food items including medicines into the besieged town.

But the UN's humanitarian agency was still awaiting Damascus's approval to deliver aid to two more of Syria's besieged areas: Al-Waer in Homs province and Zabadani in rural Damascus.

- 'No way out' -

Elsewhere, Arab-Kurdish fighters backed by the United States on Friday cut IS's main supply route between Syria and Turkey, in a major setback for the jihadists.

IS lost control of a vital supply artery when the troops completely surrounded the town of Manbij, at the heart of the last stretch of territory along Turkey's border still under the jihadists' control.

IS has come under growing pressure on various fronts in Syria and Iraq, where it established its self-declared "caliphate" in 2014.

"The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) cut off the last road from Manbij to the Turkish border," said the Observatory.

The US envoy to the anti-IS coalition backing the SDF, Brett McGurk, said the move had severed an important route for IS fighters looking to attack Europe.

"ISIL terrorists now completely surrounded with no way out," he wrote on Twitter, using another name for IS.

"Manbij is where we believe the Paris attackers, the Brussels attackers, they all kind of pulsed through this area," McGurk said. "From Raqa up to Manbij and then out to the capitals where they had organised their attack."

About 20,000 people are still living in the town, which had a pre-war population of about 120,000 -- mostly Arabs, but about a quarter Syrian Kurds.

This week the SDF, backed by coalition air strikes, cut the road north out of Manbij to the IS-held border town of Jarabulus, which the jihadists had used as a transit point for fighters, money and weapons.

The SDF also blocked the road south out of Manbij heading to IS's de facto capital of Raqa.

"For the jihadists to reach the Turkish border from Raqa, they now have to take a route that is more dangerous because of regime troops nearby and Russian air strikes," Abdel Rahman said.

Moscow and Washington -- despite backing different sides in Syria's five-year conflict -- have both focused efforts on fighting the jihadist group.

Syria's war has killed more than 280,000 people and displaced millions since it started in 2011 with the brutal repression of anti-government protests.

Islamic State fighters still controls territory along the Syria-Turkey border

A Syrian Arab Red Crescent and UN aid convoy enters the rebel held town of Douma, the first UN delivery since autumn 2013 Abd Doumany (AFP)

Syrian families who fled the assault launched by Arab and Kurdish forces against Islamic State (IS) group fighters in the town of Manbij, arrive at an encampment on the outskirts of the town Delil Souleiman (AFP/File)

Syrian Democratic forces and an armed man in uniform identified by them as US special operations forces (R) are seen in the village of Fatisah in the northern Syrian province of Raqa Delil Souleiman (AFP/File)
France warns of escalation risk after Israel bars Palestinians

Israel's decision to bar Palestinians from entering its territory following the Tel Aviv attack could raise tensions and lead to more violence, French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault warned Friday.

"The decision by the Israeli authorities today to revoke tens of thousands of entry permits could stoke tensions which could lead to a risk of escalation," said Ayrault.

"We must be careful about anything that could stoke tensions," Ayrault told reporters at UN headquarters.

A Palestinian woman is checked at the Israeli checkpoint between the West Bank town of Bethlehem and Jerusalem on June 10, 2016 Thomas Coex (AFP)

The foreign minister made the remarks after the Israeli army announced it was temporarily barring Palestinians from entering Israel, stepping up tough restrictions announced after Palestinian gunmen shot dead four Israelis in Tel Aviv on Wednesday.

Crossings to Israel from the West Bank and the Gaza Strip were closed for all Palestinians except those seeking urgent medical care and other humanitarian cases.

France has condemned the attack in a popular Tel Aviv nightspot that also wounded five people and was the deadliest in a months-long wave of violence.

Ayrault was at the United Nations to take part in a Security Council debate on the protection of civilians in peacekeeping, a week after France hosted an international meeting in Paris on reviving the peace process.

"There must be a political initiative from the international community to create conditions conducive to appeasement and a return to negotiations," said the foreign minister.

"France is always working for the security of Israel," he said.

The Paris meeting brought together representatives from 29 countries and international organisations to agree on the way to re-start talks that have been comatose since a US peace initiative collapsed in April 2014.
'Silent crisis' in Boko Haram-hit Cameroon: UN

Unabated attacks by Boko Haram in Cameroon have sparked soaring food insecurity and driven 190,000 people from their homes, creating fertile ground for recruitment by the jihadists, the UN warned.

Nigeria-based Boko Haram fighters have in recent months carried out fewer spectacular attacks and suicide bombings in neighbouring Cameroon.

But the UN humanitarian coordinator for the country Najat Rochdi said the jihadists were attacking villages and burning homes and fields across northern Cameroon on a daily basis.

A wounded woman is evacuated by rescuers after suicide attacks in January 2016 in the border city of Kerawa, northern Cameroon, in a region targeted by Nigeria's Boko Haram Islamists

"The impact of the violence by Boko Haram is not over, and we have to remain vigilant," she told AFP this week.

While the current attacks are less eye-catching, they have a more devastating effect, Rochdi said.

She said that in the last six months alone, the number of Cameroonians displaced within their own country had jumped from 60,000 to 190,000.

In addition, Cameroon is hosting 60,000 refugees from Nigeria and another 312,000 from the Central African Republic, amounting to more than 500,000 displaced people in all.

The number at risk of going hungry, she said, has meanwhile soared from 900,000 to 2.4 million since January, as Boko Haram fighters have continued to attack fields and food supply routes.

"It is a kind of silent crisis, which is really the danger," Rochdi said, warning that if humanitarian needs are not addressed in Cameroon, "we will see a radicalisation" of young people in the country.

"If people are not left with some hope, the only alternative for them is Boko Haram," she cautioned.

She said the problem was communicating what truly is at stake to international donors, with only 30 percent of the requested $280 million (248-million-euro) humanitarian aid budget for Cameroon this year funded so far.

"The gap in terms of humanitarian assistance is just dramatic," she said, insisting that providing desperately need assistance in the country was not just about saving lives.

"It is also about making sure that there is no fertile ground for recruitment by Boko Haram."

Boko Haram's insurgency is one of the world's most brutal conflicts, leaving at least 20,000 people dead since it began in 2009, with more than 2.6 million others displaced.

A multinational force from Nigeria, Niger, Chad, Benin and Cameroon has since last year significantly weakened the group but have been unable to vanquish the Islamists entirely.

Rochdi acknowledged that Boko Haram had been more successful in recruiting inside Cameroon last year, but said that could quickly change.

Some 250 children recruited or abducted by Boko Haram have meanwhile managed to escape over the past nine months or so, she said, adding most of them were "in very bad shape".
Obama approves more aggressive Taliban fight

President Barack Obama has ordered the US military to tackle the resurgent Taliban more directly -- in tandem with Afghan allies, officials said Friday, ratcheting up a 15-year conflict he had vowed to end.

US forces have been in an advisory role in Afghanistan since the start of 2015 and were only authorized to hit Taliban targets for defensive reasons, or to protect Afghan troops.

The changes mean US troops can now work more closely with local fighters in striking the Taliban.

There are still 9,800 US troops in Afghanistan Martin Bureau (AFP/File)

"This is using the forces we have ... in a better way, basically, as we go through this fighting season, rather than being simply reactive," Pentagon chief Ashton Carter said.

"This makes good sense. It's a good use of the combat power that we have there."

A senior administration official told AFP that US forces will more proactively support Afghans, and outlined plans to provide more close air support and accompany Afghan forces on the battlefield.

But "this does not mean a blanket order to target the Taliban," the official cautioned.

Obama was elected in 2008, promising to end one of America's longest and most grueling wars.

The first US troops arrived in Afghanistan 15 years ago, after the Taliban government refused to turn over Osama bin Laden, the mastermind of the September 11, 2001 attacks, and more than 2,000 US personnel have died in the ensuing war.

Afghan security forces last year took the lead in ensuring security across the country, but suffered a devastating string of setbacks at the hands of the Taliban.

Some 9,800 US troops remain in Afghanistan in an advisory capacity, down from a peak of around 100,000 in March 2011. That number is set to drop to just 5,500 by the year's end.

Currently, US forces are mainly confined to ministries or bases. Only special forces assist their Afghan counterparts on the battlefield.

A US defense official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the changes mean US troops can now embed with all Afghan troop units, not just their special forces.

Still, he said, US troops won't be fighting on the front lines against the Taliban, and will stay in an advisory role.

"Our mission is the same," Carter said. "Which is to help the Afghans maintain control of the country and to avoid having a counter-terrorism challenge once again from Afghanistan."

- Taliban strengths -

The campaign to neutralize the Taliban has suffered multiple setbacks in the twilight of Obama's presidency and Afghanistan's fledgling security forces have struggled in the face of bloody Taliban assaults.

More than 5,000 Afghan troops died last year alone, prompting Obama to indefinitely postpone the withdrawal of US troops.

Afghan authorities on Wednesday recovered the bullet-ridden bodies of 12 security officials captured by the Taliban in eastern Ghazni province. Gunmen kidnapped 40 others.

Local support for US efforts has been undermined by the unintended killing of Afghan civilians.

Last year, US missile strikes on a hospital in Kunduz killed 46 people and prompted worldwide outrage.

At the same time, diplomatic efforts to engage the Taliban appear to have broken down.

The United States killed Taliban leader Mullah Akhtar Mansour in a drone strike in Pakistan last month.

Obama then warned that the organization's new leadership would fight on.

"We anticipate the Taliban will continue an agenda of violence," he said during a visit to Japan.

Obama's latest Afghan decision would appear to push any brokered solution well beyond his presidency.

But it could also significantly boost Afghan forces, who currently have limited close air-support capacities.

That could help bridge the gap before the delivery of dozens of A-29 Super Tucano aircraft over the next 18 months.

"We are going to do what we can to enable Afghan forces to achieve strategic effects on the battlefield," a second US defense official told AFP.

"What we are doing now is taking a look at the battle space and making sure we provide the things we can," he added.

"It's not just about a wide blanket to strike the Taliban whenever we want. It's about the core mission of protecting the ANDSF (Afghan National Defense and Security Force)."

US President Barack Obama came to office in 2008 promising to end the war in Afghanistan Jim Watson (AFP/File)
Six US airlines licensed to start Cuba flights

Six US airlines have been licensed to operate up to 90 round-trip flights per day to Cuba, potentially opening up a new era for mass tourism.

The US Department of Transportation announced the licenses on Friday, as the former Cold War foes continue to negotiate a new relationship now that decades of enmity are over.

"Last year, President Obama announced that it was time to begin a new journey with the Cuban people," Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx said.

The US awarded licenses to American Airlines, Frontier Airlines, JetBlue, Silver Airways, Southwest and Sun Country Airlines top fly to Cuba Joe Raedle (Getty/AFP/File)

"Today, we are delivering on his promise by re-launching scheduled air service to Cuba after more than half a century."

Cuba and the United States restored diplomatic ties in July 2015 after a long stand-off, and in February this year agreed to resume flights.

On Friday, Foxx awarded licenses to American Airlines, Frontier Airlines, JetBlue, Silver Airways, Southwest and Sun Country Airlines.

They will each be permitted to operate flights from their hubs in Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Chicago, Minneapolis-St. Paul and Philadelphia.

The Cuban cities served will be Camaguey, Cayo Coco, Cayo Largo, Cienfuegos, Holguin, Manzanillo, Matanzas, Santa Clara and Santiago de Cuba.

US airlines also asked to serve the Cuban capital Havana, but requests exceeded the slots available so officials are sorting through the requests.
Tunisia's Ben Ali files complaint against TV impersonator

Tunisia's toppled dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali filed a complaint on Friday against a private television station in an attempt to stop a comedian impersonating him, his lawyer said.

"I have filed a complaint at the request of Ben Ali himself," Mounir Ben Salha said. "This is a complaint aimed at halting the transmission, and a hearing has been set for Tuesday."

The former president was ousted in a revolution that sparked the "Arab Spring" in 2011 and has since lived in exile in Jeddah in Saudi Arabia.

The former Tunisian president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali was ousted in a revolution that sparked the "Arab Spring" in 2011 and has since lived in exile in Jeddah in Saudi Arabia Fethi Belaid (AFP/File)

The television programme "violated his dignity" said the lawyer, who filed a complaint for "violation of honour and identity theft".

Moez Ben Gharbia, the head of Attessia TV that broadcasts the show, confirmed to AFP he had been informed about the complaint, but said that "of course" it would continue to be aired.

In "Hello Jeddah", which goes out after the breaking of the fast in the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, comedian Migalo imitates Ben Ali and claims to be broadcasting live from the Saudi city.

On Thursday night, Ben Ali supporter Mondher Guefrech began to cry when he heard what he thought was the voice of the ousted dictator.

The day before, Imed Dghij, leader of a now dissolved brutal pro-Islamist militia, engaged in a virulent exchange with "Ben Ali".

Reservations have been expressed in some quarters about the satirical broadcast's suitability.

But Ben Gharbia remains undeterred.

"There are no ulterior motives. Among the guests on the programme are people who are pro-Ben Ali, while others are against him. It's only a joke," he said.
Indian charity worker kidnapped in Afghanistan

An Indian charity worker has been kidnapped in Kabul, officials said Friday, the latest in a wave of abductions of foreigners in the war-battered country.

The woman, identified as Judith D'Souza, was kidnapped on Thursday night, prompting desperate pleas from her family to Indian officials on social media.

"I seek your support for the release of my sister Judith D'Souza in Kabul. Parents and family are in deep distress over this situation," one of the tweets said.

Danziel D'Souza, the father of abducted Indian charity worker Judith D'Souza, reacts as he talks with the media at his residence in Kolkata on June 10, 2016 Dibyangshu Sarkar (AFP)

In response, India's Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj tweeted: "She is your sister and India's daughter. We are doing everything to rescue her. Pl take care of your sick father."

D'Souza, who is aged 40 according to the Indian media, is a staff member of the Aga Khan Foundation, a well-known NGO long based in Afghanistan.

"An investigation by the authorities has been launched, in conjunction with security officials and various partners. Every effort is being made to secure the safe release of the staff member," the charity said in a statement, without elaborating.

The Indian embassy in Kabul told AFP D'Souza was abducted near her residence in the Afghan capital's Qalai Fatullah area.

The abduction comes after Katherine Jane Wilson, a well-known Australian NGO worker, was kidnapped on April 28 in the city of Jalalabad, close to the border with Pakistan.

Wilson, said to be aged 60, ran an organisation known as Zardozi, which promotes the work of Afghan artisans, particularly women.

The United States warned its citizens in Afghanistan last month of a "very high" kidnapping risk after an American citizen narrowly escaped abduction in the heart of Kabul.

Aid workers in particular have increasingly been casualties of a surge in militant violence in recent years.
Gawker seeks bankruptcy after sex tape case, finds buyer

Gawker Media filed for bankruptcy protection Friday after being slammed with a $140 million judgment for releasing a Hulk Hogan sex tape in a lawsuit bankrolled by a Silicon Valley billionaire.

Following the bankruptcy filing, the embattled US media group said it had reached a deal to sell its seven brands to publishing group Ziff Davis.

The filing in New York follows a jury award earlier this year for releasing a tape of pro wrestler Hogan having sex with a friend's wife.

Hulk Hogan accused Gawker of invading his privacy when it posted a sex tape featuring him and a friend's wife Gerardo Mora (Getty/AFP/File)

The case drew even more attention when Silicon Valley titan Peter Thiel acknowledged that he had helped fund the litigation and others against Gawker, with whom he has feuded for years since it "outed" him as homosexual.

The filing in federal bankruptcy court in New York lists assets in a range of $50 million to $100 million, and liabilities between $100 million and $500 million.

It seeks protection of its assets under Chapter 11 of the US bankruptcy code.

The Gawker statement offered no financial details but said the media assets would be sold "free and clear of legal liabilities and maximize value for all stakeholders."

It said the sale will be conducted through a bankruptcy court supervised auction, in which other bidders may also participate.

"Gawker Media Group is putting its properties up for sale after a coordinated barrage of lawsuits intended to put the company out of business and deter its writers from offering critical coverage," the statement said.

Gawker founder Nick Denton said in the statement: "We are encouraged by the agreement with Ziff Davis, one of the most rigorously managed and profitable companies in digital media."

The developments have highlighted the no-holds barred approach of Gawker, but also raised questions about powerful interests aiming to silence the media.

Thiel said last month he was working with lawyers to find and help "victims" of Gawker Media, whose Valleywag site in 2007 revealed he is homosexual. "It's less about revenge and more about specific deterrence," Thiel told the New York Times.

German-born Thiel was a founder of the online payments firm PayPal, and served as its CEO before it was sold to eBay. He was also an early investor in Facebook and has been active in venture investing in Silicon Valley.
Tehran urged to release British-Iranian charity worker

The husband of an Iranian-British charity worker who has been held without charge in Iran since April on Friday called for her release at a rally outside the Iranian embassy in London.

Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, 37, was arrested at Tehran airport on April 3 as she prepared to return to Britain with the couple's daughter Gabriella after visiting family in Iran, Richard Ratcliffe told AFP.

Gabriella, who turns two on Saturday, was born in Britain and has a British passport, which was confiscated by the Iranian authorities, leaving her stranded with her grandparents in Iran.

Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe (R) poses for a photograph with her husband Richard and daughter Gabriella (L)

His wife, who spent the first 45 days in solitary confinement, was later transferred to Karman prison, 1,000 kilometres (621 miles) from Tehran, although Ratcliffe said the family had not received "any news since Sunday".

Britain's Foreign Office has said it has raised the case "repeatedly and at the highest levels" and will continue to do so at "every available opportunity".

Middle East Minister, Tobias Ellwood, had met the family to reassure them that diplomats would "continue to do all we can on this case", a ministry spokesman told AFP.

Zaghari-Ratcliffe works for the Thomson Reuters Foundation, a charity organisation coordinating training programmes for journalists around the world.

"She has nothing to do with Iran in her work and the foundation doesn't work with Iran anyway, so we have no idea why she has been detained for more than two months, first in isolation and then in a common cell," foundation CEO Monique Villa told AFP.

"Now we don't know because she seems to have disappeared from where she was."

Ratcliffe led the celebrations for his daughter's birthday, talking to her on Skype, leading a mass singalong of "Happy Birthday" and placing a giant card and balloons on the steps of the embassy.

The case of 76-year-old Iranian-British man Kamal Foroughi, was also brought up at the rally by his son Kamran.

Foroughi was arrested in 2011 and sentenced to eight years in prison on spying charges, having spent two years in detention without charge.
Clinton vows to prioritize abortion rights if elected

Preserving the right to seek and obtain an abortion will remain a key component of Hillary Clinton's presidential bid, the presumptive Democratic nominee said Friday.

Speaking to the political arm of the national reproductive health and advocacy organization Planned Parenthood, Clinton placed herself in stark contrast to her Republican rival Donald Trump, whom she portrayed as a sexist enemy of women's rights.

"When Donald Trump says 'let's make America great again,' that is code for 'let's take America backward' -- back to a time when opportunity and dignity were reserved for some, not all," Clinton said.

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton addresses the Planned Parenthood Action Fund on June 10, 2016 Chris Kleponis (AFP)

"Back to the days when abortion was illegal, women had far fewer options and life for too many women and girls was limited."

"Donald, those days are over," she said, speaking in a direct style that she has recently adopted to challenge Trump's often brusque manner.

The brash billionaire real estate mogul meanwhile addressed religious conservatives just blocks away, seeking to re-assure them of his Christian values.

"We want to uphold the sanctity and dignity of life," Trump told a Faith and Freedom Coalition conference.

He also knocked Clinton for seeking to "push for federal funding of abortion on demand up until the moment of birth."

Trump has been embroiled in a scandal over his criticism of a Hispanic federal judge who he said could not preside fairly over a case regarding a Trump business interest because of his Mexican heritage.

Trump struck a different tone Friday.

"Freedom of any kind means no one should be judged by their race or... the color of their skin," he said.

"Right now we have a very divided nation... If I win, we're going to bring our nation together."

He also downplayed his vast wealth, something he rarely does, saying family happiness was the priority.

"The happiest people have that great religious feel and that incredible marriage (and) children," he said. "It's more important than the money, folks. Believe me."

Clinton for her part reminded her audience that Trump has advocated scrapping paid family leave, equal pay laws, threatened to defund Planned Parenthood and could appoint Supreme Court justices who want to strip abortion rights.

"Anyone who would so casually agree to the idea of punishing women like it was nothing... that's someone who doesn't hold women in high regard," Clinton said.

Trump said last year that of all the candidates in the race, he would "be the best for women."

Potentially the first female US commander in chief, Clinton cited her record as a longtime advocate for gender equality, going back to her years as first lady, a senator and as Barack Obama's secretary of state.
'Sobbing' Obama marks daughters high school graduation

President Barack Obama made the short but sentimental drive across Washington on Friday to attend his oldest daughters high school graduation.

Obama has joked that Malia's graduation was the one event where he could not give an address.

"Malia's school asked if I wanted to speak at commencement and I said no," Obama said in Detroit earlier this year.

US President Barack Obama and his daughter Malia Obama walk during a visit to the Honolulu Zoo January 2, 2016 in Honolulu, Hawaii Brendan Smialowski (AFP/File)

"I'm going to be wearing dark glasses... and I'm going to cry."

True to his promise, Obama was photographed by guests at Sidwell Friends School wearing dark glasses.

He was accompanied by First Lady Michelle Obama, Malia and his youngest daughter Sasha.

Malia was 10 years old when Obama entered office, almost eight years ago.

She is expected to attend Harvard in 2017, after a gap year.

Obama earlier this year told television host Ellen DeGeneres of his sorrow at thinking that she would soon fly the nest.

He said he would be "sobbing" at the graduation.
No charges in death of Milwaukee mother shot by toddler son

MILWAUKEE (AP)  No criminal charges will be filed in the death of a mother who was shot by her 2-year-old son as she drove along a Milwaukee freeway, according to the Milwaukee County Sheriff's Office, which investigated the case.

Patrice Price, 26, was driving her boyfriend's car on Highway 175 on April 26 when his loaded handgun slid from under the driver's seat and the toddler, who was riding in the back seat, picked it up, sheriff's officials said.

The child fired the gun through the front seat, striking Price. A .40-caliber gun was recovered from the floor of the back seat behind the driver, along with a security officer's gun belt belonging to the victim's boyfriend, sheriff's officials said.

The woman's mother was in the front seat, with Price's 1-year-old son. Family members said the older woman was able to put her foot on the brake and maneuver the car to the side of the highway after her daughter was shot. Price was pronounced dead at the scene despite life-saving efforts of first responders.

Investigators found nothing illegal about the gun that belonged to Price's boyfriend, sheriff's department spokeswoman Fran McLaughlin said Thursday. Prosecutors from the Milwaukee County District Attorney's office concurred with the sheriff's investigators findings, McLaughlin said. A spokesperson for the DA's office did not immediately return a call for comment.

Relatives said Price had borrowed the car from her boyfriend because her vehicle, along with the boys' car seats, had recently been stolen.

The case was similar to one in Florida recently in which Jamie Gilt, 31, was shot in the back by her 4-year-old son who used a handgun that slid from underneath the front seat to the back where he was seated. Gilt survived the shooting.
Canadian, Chinese companies sign deal on proposed Idaho mine

BOISE, Idaho (AP)  A Canadian mining company has reached an agreement with a Chinese firm that will bring $700 million in financing for a possible open-pit molybdenum mine near Boise, Idaho.

Vancouver, British Columbia-based American CuMo Mining Corp. said it reached the deal with Hong Kong-based MCC8 Group Co. Limited.

American CuMo said it marks a major step in paying for a feasibility study and will keep local control of the project with its subsidiary, Boise-based Idaho CuMo Mining Corp.

The area northeast of Boise contains the largest unmined deposit of molybdenum in the world, the company said.

Estimates run from at least 2 billion tons to as much as 4 billion tons of molybdenum, copper and silver worth up to $60 billion at current prices.

Estimates put the deposits at 65 percent molybdenum, 32 percent copper and 3 percent silver, Shaun Dykes, American CuMo's president and chief executive officer, said Thursday.

He said at least $100 million from the agreement will be used to better understand the deposits so a decision can be made on whether to move forward with the mine. The rest of the money would cover the start of mine construction, if approved.

"As of today there's no decision with mining," Dykes said.

The total cost of getting the mine operating could reach $2.5 billion, he said.

MCC8 Group Co. Limited, on its website, describes itself as an international company specializing in mining operation and investment management. Officials said it has 10,000 full-time employees and its activities include project management of overseas mineral exploration and development.

The deal gives the company 80 percent of net proceeds from the joint venture.

"Our team looks forward to working with Idaho CuMo Mining Corp., the state of Idaho, and community stakeholders to promote a sustainable project and to create good-paying Idaho jobs," William He, president and CEO of MCC8 Capital Limited, said in a prepared statement.

Molybdenum has a variety of uses but mainly as an alloy to make steel, cast iron and other metals.

American CuMo officials say the mine would create as many as 5,000 jobs during construction and 1,000 jobs for 100 years during production.

Three environmental groups have filed a federal lawsuit challenging U.S. Forest Service approval of the company's exploratory drilling.

They say the project threatens groundwater as well as a rare flower called Sacajawea's bitterroot that the groups say grows only in about 30 locations in the mountains of central Idaho.

The mining company intervened on the side of the Forest Service in April. It's not clear when a ruling will be made.
The Latest: NTSB official: Plane likely stalled before crash

HOUSTON (AP)  The Latest on a plane crash in Houston that killed three people (all times local):

5:45 p.m.

A National Transportation Safety Board investigator says a small plane that crashed into a car in a parking lot near a Houston airport, killing three people aboard the aircraft, likely stalled before plummeting to the ground.

Authorities investigate the scene where a small plane crashed into a car in a parking lot near a Houston airport on Thursday, June 9, 2016. The aircraft had been trying to land at Hobby Airport, in the southeastern part of the city, when it crashed less than a mile northwest of the airport, said Lynn Lunsford, a spokesman for the Federal Aviation Administration. (Mark Mulligan/Houston Chronicle via AP) MANDATORY CREDIT

Tom Latson with the NTSB says officials are still investigating what caused Thursday's crash.

NTSB officials say the plane took off from Norman, Oklahoma, and was trying to land at Houston's Hobby Airport when a traffic controller told the pilot the plane was too high and asked it to go around.

During the second attempt to land, the traffic controller determined the plane was still too high and asked it to again go around. NTSB officials say the plane made a turn to the left and then took a nose dive into the parking lot.

___

5:20 p.m.

A woman who was in her resale shop near where a small plane crashed in Houston, killing three people, says the deadly incident sounded like a bomb.

Susan Conklin says she was in her business Thursday when she heard "a great big loud noise, like a bomb and a real screechy noise."

Conklin says she ran out of her store and saw the plane in the parking lot of a nearby hardware store.

Fire officials say three people in the plane died in the crash that happened shortly after 1 p.m. Thursday. No other injuries were reported.

Conklin says people didn't immediately rush to the plane over concern it might explode.

Television news footage showed the plane narrowly missed hitting a couple of propane tanks in the hardware store parking lot.

___

2:20 p.m.

Fire officials say three people were killed after a small plane crashed into a car in a parking lot near a Houston airport.

Houston Fire Department spokesman Jay Evans says the plane crashed shortly after 1 p.m. Thursday into a car that was parked at a hardware store near Hobby Airport.

Fire Capt. Ruy Lozano (ROO'-ee) says officials believe the three people killed in the accident were on the plane. No one was in the parked car that was hit by the plane.

Lozano says he doesn't know if the plane had taken off or was trying to land at the airport.

Authorities investigate the scene where a small plane crashed into a car in a parking lot near a Houston airport on Thursday, June 9, 2016. The aircraft had been trying to land at Hobby Airport, in the southeastern part of the city, when it crashed less than a mile northwest of the airport, said Lynn Lunsford, a spokesman for the Federal Aviation Administration. (Steve Gonzales/Houston Chronicle via AP) MANDATORY CREDIT
US to turn drug cartel founder over to Mexico

MEXICO CITY (AP)  The U.S. Embassy in Mexico says Sinaloa cartel co-founder Hector "El Guero" Palma will be turned over to Mexican authorities after his release from a U.S. prison.

The U.S. bureau of prisons says Palma will be released Saturday. Palma served five years in a Mexican prison before being extradited to the United States, where he was sentenced to 16 years for transporting 50 kilograms of cocaine.

It is unclear whether Palma still faces any charges in Mexico.

Attorney General Arely Gomez says prosecutors are looking through files for any remaining criminal cases. She said that in some cases the statute of limitations has expired.

Palma was arrested June 23, 1995 in western Mexico.
Pennsylvania to reconsider record $11.4M fine against Uber

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP)  State utility regulators voted Thursday to reconsider the record-setting $11.4 million fine they imposed on ride-hailing company Uber.

The Public Utility Commission fined San Francisco-based Uber in April for operating in Pennsylvania for six months in 2014 without the required approval. Uber contends the amount of the fine is unreasonable.

Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf and Pittsburgh-area officials have asked the commission to greatly reduce the fine, saying it could discourage innovative companies from investing in Pennsylvania. They noted Uber has picked Pittsburgh as its world headquarters for advanced technology research and for testing self-driven vehicles.

The commission voted Thursday to conduct a rehearing of the matter.

Uber has argued that it successfully filled a void in the state's transportation infrastructure. It wants the fine recalculated using the number of days it violated state authority, not the number of trips it provided.

The commission, which regulates buses and taxis in all counties except Philadelphia, approved a fine considerably lower than the $50 million recommended by a pair of administrative law judges in November, but it's still the largest in commission history. The fine also far surpasses the $250,000 fine issued to Uber's main competitor, Lyft, for similar violations.

Uber employs private drivers who use their own cars to give people rides. The commission said it had concerns because there was no uniform way to ensure vehicle safety or to determine whose insurance would cover damages in an accident.
Alaska marijuana regulators approve first licenses

JUNEAU, Alaska (AP)  Alaska regulators were applauded Thursday as they approved the first licenses for legal marijuana growing and testing facilities  another milestone for the fledgling industry.

Priority was being given to growing and testing operations to ensure that retail stores will have legal product to sell. The first retail licenses are expected to be issued later this year.

Thirty applications were on the agenda Thursday at a meeting of the Marijuana Control Board in Anchorage. Two were for testing facilities. The rest were for grow operations.

Alaska Marijuana Control Board members Bruce Shulte of Anchorage, left, and Loren Jones of Juneau are shown during the board's meeting Thursday, June 9, 2016, in Anchorage, Alaska. The board was poised Thursday to award the first licenses for legal marijuana businesses in the state, another milestone for the fledgling industry. (AP Photo/Mark Thiessen)

The first application approved came from CannTest LLC of Anchorage, a marijuana testing facility. The action was greeted by applause and cheers.

"That's history right there, folks," board member Brandon Emmett said.

Businesses that were granted licenses still need to clear national background checks and, in some cases, complete local requirements.

Mark Malagodi, CEO of CannTest LLC, said it felt good. "It's just the first hurdle," he said. "It's a big one and it's really exciting."

Testing facilities will play an important role in the industry because cultivators and processors must have their product tested for such things as potency and potential toxins.

It's not yet clear how many testing facilities the industry will need because the amount of product to be examined has not yet been determined, board member Bruce Schulte said Wednesday. Alaska needs at least one functioning lab, he said.

"Whether the right number is two or four or one, that remains to be seen," said Schulte, who served as board chair until Thursday, when a new chair was elected.

Both businesses approved for testing licenses are in Anchorage. But getting samples to the labs could be tricky for businesses in communities not connected to the road system.

Marijuana has been legalized in Alaska but is still prohibited under federal law.

Cynthia Franklin, director of the Alcohol and Marijuana Control Board, said she's not sure the state will get a definitive answer from the U.S. Postal Service about shipping by mail.

She noted, however, that state regulations authorize the transport marijuana samples from a licensed facility to a licensed testing site. An accompanying transportation manifest would make clear the items are being sent in compliance with state regulations, she said.

Franklin also noted that in Portland, Oregon, where recreational pot is also legal, the airport permits people to transport marijuana within the state and federal officials haven't moved in to stop the practice.

Jeremy Woodrow, a spokesman for the state ferry system, said it's in a tough spot because it's regulated by the U.S. Coast Guard. Ferry officials have tried to be as lenient as possible within the confines of the state law, allowing travelers to carry pot that meets personal use limits of one ounce or less, he said.

Use on board is banned and any larger amounts could be reported to the Coast Guard, he said.

The system isn't telling anyone not to bring marijuana on board but anyone who does needs to know the risk, he said.

Bobbie Egan, a spokeswoman for Alaska Airlines, said the airline has no formal policy at this time but it is something that is being evaluated.

___

AP reporter Mark Thiessen contributed to this report from Anchorage, Alaska.

Alaska Marijuana Control Board member Brandon Emmett of Fairbanks, right, and Cynthia Franklin, director of the Alcohol and Marijuana Control Office, are shown at the board's meeting Thursday, June 9, 2016, in Anchorage, Alaska. The board was poised Thursday to award the first licenses for legal marijuana businesses in the state, another milestone for the fledgling industry. (AP Photo/Mark Thiessen)

Peter Mlynarik of Soldotna, Alaska, was elected chairman of the Alaska Marijuana Control Board on Thursday, June 9, 2016, during the board's meeting in Anchorage, Alaska. The board was poised Thursday to award the first licenses for legal marijuana businesses in the state, another milestone for the fledgling industry. (AP Photo/Mark Thiessen)

Alaska Marijuana Control Board members, from left, Mark Springer of Bethel, Bruce Shulte of Anchorage, Loren Jones of Juneau and Peter Mlynarik of Soldotna are shown from the board's meeting Thursday, June 9, 2016, in Anchorage, Alaska. The board was poised Thursday to award the first licenses for legal marijuana businesses in the state, another milestone for the fledgling industry. (AP Photo/Mark Thiessen)
Singlet worn by Olympic champ Snell to be auctioned

WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP)  The black singlet worn by New Zealander Peter Snell when he won the 800- and 1,500-meter gold medals at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics is expected to fetch up to $50,000 when it is sold at auction this month.

Snell, now 77 and living in Texas, says he has no idea how the singlet came to be offered by Cordy's auction house in Auckland. He told National Radio it had been years since he last saw the item and thought he may have donated it to charity.

Andrew Grigg of Cordy's said it was difficult to estimate a sale price as the singlet was an "iconic" piece of New Zealand sporting memorabilia.
Judge: Transgender California inmates must get female items

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP)  California prison officials must let transgender inmates have more female-oriented commissary items including nightgowns, robes, sandals, scarves and necklaces as part of a settlement that will make California the first state to pay for an inmate's sex reassignment surgery, a federal judge ruled Thursday.

Aside from providing the surgery for 56-year-old Shiloh Quine, the state agreed in August to provide some items to transgender inmates such as Quine who are housed in men's prisons.

The proposed policy doesn't go far enough, ruled U.S. Magistrate Judge Nandor Vadas. He said transgender inmates housed in men's prisons should have many of the same items as are provided to female inmates.

This June 11, 2015 photo provided by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation shows Shiloh Quine. U. S. Magistrate Judge Nandor Vada ordered California prison officials to allow transgender inmates to have more female-oriented commissary items including nightgowns, robes, sandals, scarves and necklaces. The ruling stems from a legal settlement with Quine, a transgender inmate serving a life sentence for murder at Mule Creek State Prison. (AP Photo/California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.)

Shiloh and her attorneys argued the state was prohibiting some items "based solely upon gender norms" rather than security concerns. They objected to continuing to bar male inmates from having clothing designed specifically for women.

Vadas agreed, saying the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation should give transgender inmates or those having symptoms of gender dysphoria in men's prisons at least some access to chains and necklaces, pajamas and nightgowns, robes, sandals, scarves, T-shirts and walking shoes.

They should have supervised access to pumice stones, emery boards and curling irons, he ruled.

But he drew the line at bracelets, earrings, hair brushes and hair clips, saying those may pose significant safety and security risks.

"Transgender women like Shiloh shouldn't be denied items that every other woman in CDCR custody has access to," Ilona Turner, legal director at the Oakland-based Transgender Law Center, said in a statement. "We are pleased that the court recognizes the importance of having access to clothing and personal items that reflect a person's gender, and that denying items because someone is transgender is discrimination."

Quine is serving a life sentence for murder, kidnapping and robbery at Mule Creek State Prison. The men's prison, which is in Ione 50 miles southeast of Sacramento, houses about 3,200 inmates. She is set for surgery in December.

Kent Scheidegger, legal director at the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, which supports crime victims, called Vadas' ruling "ridiculous."

"Civil rights laws should not create a right to such minor matters. The civil rights of prisoners are to not be treated cruelly, and getting down to such details goes far beyond what a reasonable interpretation of civil rights laws would provide," he said.

Moreover, the feminine items may cause problems in men's prisons, he said.

"Sexual assault does happen in prison, it's a major problem and certainly people who have a feminine appearance are more likely to be targets," Scheidegger said.
10 Things to Know for Friday - 10 June 2016

Your daily look at late-breaking news, upcoming events and the stories that will be talked about Friday:

1. OBAMA BACKS CLINTON

It is all part of a campaign aimed at easing the former secretary of state's rival Bernie Sanders toward the exit and turning fully to the fight against Republican Donald Trump.

In this undated photo released by Buckingham Palace on Friday, June 10, 2016, Britain's Queen Elizabeth II, left and Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh pose for a photograph to mark the Queen's 90th birthday, in Windsor, England. The queen, Britains oldest and longest-reigning monarch, turned 90 on April 21. She usually celebrates her birthday privately, but this years milestone served as the jumping off point for weeks of celebrations. (Annie Leibovitz/ Buckingham Palace via AP)

2. WHO IS FED UP WITH POLITICS AS USUAL

Billionaire Charles Koch turns his attention away from the presidential race and directs his private company to begin airing ads that encourage Americans to work together to fix the economy.

3. U.S. MOVING TO EXPAND AIRSTRIKES IN AFGHANISTAN

There is a broad desire to give the military greater ability to help the Afghan forces fight and win the war, a senior U.S. defense official tells the AP.

4. HOUSE PASSES BILL TO HELP EASE PUERTO RICO'S DEBT

The bipartisan vote is 297-127 for the legislation that will allow restructuring of some of the U.S. territory's $70 billion debt.

5. WHY IRAQI FIGHTERS BREAK RAMADAN FAST

They are trying to retake the Islamic State-held city of Fallujah, and both sides say the Muslim holy month gives their struggle a greater significance.

6. WHAT THE LATEST ADVICE ON ZIKA IS

The WHO says women who live in areas where the virus is spreading should consider delaying pregnancy.

7. MUHAMMAD ALI REMEMBERED AS ICON WHO PUSHED FOR UNITY

He "was the people's champion and champion he did the cause of his people," says Sherman Jackson, a Muslim scholar.

8. FORMER WORLD BANK ECONOMIST CELEBRATES WIN IN PERU ELECTION

Pedro Pablo Kuczynski garners 50.1 percent compared to 49.9 percent for the daughter of imprisoned ex-President Alberto Fujimori.

9. TOP 'HAMILTON' PREMIUM TICKET PUSHED TO RECORD $849

But lead producer Jeffrey Sellers also opens access for people unable to spend hundreds by increasing the number of last-minute digital lottery seats for $10 from 21 to 46 people.

10. PALACE RELEASES NEW PORTRAIT OF QUEEN BY ANNIE LEIBOVITZ

The monarch is shown in a soft-toned image with her husband, Prince Philip, at Windsor Castle just after Easter. Both are smiling, but only just.

A supporter of presidential candidate Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, dressed as a cavy or Peruvian guinea pig, poses for photo as supporters await results, in Lima, Peru, Thursday, June 9, 2016. Former World Bank economist Pedro Pablo Kuczynski won the majority of votes in the country's closest presidential contest in five decades, Peruvian electoral authorities said Thursday. His rival Keiko Fujimori has yet to concede however. (AP Photo/Silvia Izquierdo)
The Latest: Navy admiral pleads guilty to lying to feds

SAN DIEGO (AP)  The Latest on a Navy bribery scandal that bilked the Navy out of $34 million (all times local):

6:05 p.m.

A Navy admiral on Thursday pleaded guilty to lying to federal authorities investigating a $34 million fraud scheme involving a Malaysian contractor known as "Fat Leonard."

Rear Adm. Robert Gilbeau is the highest-ranking military official to be taken down in the wide-spanning scandal. He is also believed to be the first active-duty Naval flag officer to be charged in federal court.

Gilbeau declined to comment after the hearing.

Prosecutors say Gilbeau lied about accepting gifts from Leonard Glenn Francis. Francis has admitted to bribing Navy officials with more than $500,000 in cash, prostitutes, and others gifts in exchange for classified information to help his company, Glenn Defense Marine Asia.

Prosecutors say the company overbilled the Navy by $34 million.

_____

1:30 p.m.

A lawyer says a Navy admiral will plead guilty to lying in a probe of a bribery scandal that bilked the Navy out of $34 million.

Defense attorney David Benowitz says his client, Rear Adm. Robert Gilbeau, plans to enter his plea at a federal court hearing in San Diego on Thursday.

Gilbeau is the highest-ranking military official to be brought down in the wide-spanning case centered on a Malaysian contractor known as "Fat Leonard."

He has been charged with lying to investigators, but not with accepting bribes like other Navy officers in the case.
California mother reunited with son abducted in 1995

LOS ANGELES (AP)  A California mother was reunited Thursday with her abducted son, laying eyes on him and wrapping her arms around him for the first time in 21 years.

Maria Mancia had been left with just a single photo of her son since his father took him in 1995. The boy she last saw when he was just 18 months old is now a man.

Steve Hernandez, 22, was found living in Puebla, Mexico, and on Thursday morning was brought to the U.S. to meet his mother for an emotional reunion.

Steve Hernandez wipes a tear from his mother's eye after seeing her for the first time in 20 years in San Diego, Calif., on Thursday, June 9, 2016. Steve Hernandez was abducted by his father Valentin Hernandez from their Rancho Cucamonga residence in 1995 when he was 18-months-old. Since that time, 42-year-old Maria Mancia had searched for her son to no avail. The boy, Steve Hernandez, now a man of about 22, has been found in Mexico. On Thursday he was brought to the U.S. to meet his mother.Authorities interviewed the boy and took a DNA swab. The facts of his life, and the DNA, matched. (Christopher Lee/San Bernardino County District Attorney's Office via AP)

"Now this anguish I've carried is gone now that I have my son back," Mancia told KABC-TV. "I spent 21 years looking for him not knowing anything."

The San Bernardino County District Attorney's Child Abduction Unit had been looking for Hernandez through the years, searching for him in several states. Investigators then received a strong tip in February that he was in Mexico. The father, Valentin Hernandez, is missing and believed to be dead, authorities said.

Investigator Karen Cragg, who led the search, said they had to approach Steve Hernandez delicately.

"We used a ruse to contact him. We told him we were investigating his father and we needed his DNA to help locate his father," Cragg told The Associated Press on Thursday. "We didn't want to scare him off. We weren't sure what the circumstances were down there. We had to tread very carefully."

The two parents and their toddler boy had been living in Rancho Cucamonga, California, in 1995. The parents were having relationship struggles. Mancia came home from work one day to find both the elder Hernandez and their son missing.

The father had even taken all of their photos of the boy, including an ultrasound. Mancia had to write to a relative to get a picture.

"That became the only photograph she had of Steve for the last 21 years," Cragg said.

She immediately reported the boy missing and the investigation had been active ever since, first with the Sheriff's Department, then with DA's investigators.

Neither the mother nor her child was told when Steve Hernandez was first found, lest false hope be created.

Once the DNA sample was obtained in February, Cragg asked the Department of Justice if they could hurry on the test, knowing it could take several months.

"They called me in two weeks and said it was a match," Cragg said.

Cragg and her partner drove straight to Mancia's house.

"It was like she didn't believe us at first," Cragg said. "She began to cry. She said she couldn't believe he was still alive."

Because Steve Hernandez is a U.S. citizen, there were no immigration troubles returning him to the U.S., Cragg said. Authorities in both countries were hugely helpful in making it happen.

He had no personal documents at all, but his mother had his birth certificate and more.

The boy's father had told him that his mother abandoned the two of them.

He now knows that wasn't true. And he now knows his mother.

"I lived all these years without my mother, then to find out she's alive in another country, it's emotional," Hernandez told KABC. He said he plans to stay in the U.S. and hopes to attend law school, which he already started in Mexico.

He hugged his crying mother when he finally met her. Then wiped tears from her eyes.

___

Associated Press Writer Amy Taxin contributed to this story from Santa Ana, California

Steve Hernandez wipes a tear from his mother's eye after seeing her for the first time in 20 years in San Diego, Calif., on Thursday, June 9, 2016. Steve Hernandez was abducted by his father Valentin Hernandez from their Rancho Cucamonga residence in 1995 when he was 18-months-old. Since that time, 42-year-old Maria Mancia had searched for her son to no avail. The boy, Steve Hernandez, now a man of about 22, has been found in Mexico. On Thursday he was brought to the U.S. to meet his mother.Authorities interviewed the boy and took a DNA swab. The facts of his life, and the DNA, matched. (Christopher Lee/San Bernardino County District Attorney's Office via AP)
New Zealand leader visits Fiji for first time in a decade

WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP)  A New Zealand leader has visited Fiji for the first time since a military coup there a decade ago, although it's clear that political tensions remain.

Prime Minister John Key's two-day visit, which ended Friday, was an attempt to improve relations after Fiji held democratic elections in 2014. Since then, New Zealand has lifted economic sanctions directed against the South Pacific nation.

But while Fijian Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama said during his welcome speech that the relationship was being "reinvigorated and redefined" after a period of estrangement, he also used the opportunity to recount a number of historic grievances it has with New Zealand.

FILE - In this Feb. 4, 2016 file photo, New Zealand Prime Minister John Key speaks to delegates at the signing of the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement in Auckland, New Zealand. Key has visited Fiji for the first time since a military coup there a decade ago, although it's clear that political tensions remain. Key and his Fijian counterpart Voreqe Bainimarama met for formal talks Friday, June 10, 2016. (David Rowland/SNPA via AP, File) NEW ZEALAND OUT

And Bainimarama rejected Key's requests for him to re-engage with neighboring nations on the Pacific Islands Forum and to lift a longstanding travel ban on some New Zealand journalists.

The visit came at an awkward time for Fiji. The government was criticized by human rights groups last week when it banned an opposition lawmaker from parliament for two years for comments she made about a government minister.

Bainimarama defended the move, saying Tupou Draunidalo's comments were racially charged and threatened the stability of Fiji.

Bainimarama first seized power during the 2006 coup and then retained his leadership role eight years later when his political party won the election.

He said during the welcome speech that the "strains and irritants" between the two nations in recent years provided a textbook case on how not to conduct friendly relationships between neighboring governments.

He described the New Zealand media as being "generally hostile" toward Fiji and criticized it for promoting the notion his election victory lacked legitimacy.

In defending the ban on some New Zealand reporters, he said Fiji "cannot allow the willful propagation of false information that damages the national interest and undermines our vulnerable economy."

Key told reporters Friday that he would "agree to disagree" on the ban. He said he thought democracy was made stronger when there were challenges from opposition lawmakers and the media. Key said he nevertheless considered the visit worthwhile.
Uruguay's blind 'bird man' can identify 3,000 bird sounds

MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay (AP)  Born blind, Juan Pablo Culasso has never seen a bird. But through his gifted sense of hearing, he can identify more than 3,000 different bird sounds and differentiate more than 720 species.

The 29-year-old said he realized he had perfect, or absolute pitch, when he was a boy. Tossing stones in a river, he was able to tell his father exactly the note each one made when it hit the water.

Absolute pitch, the rare ability to hear a tone and immediately know it's a C-sharp, for example, is so unusual that only one of every 10,000 people has it, Culasso said, adding that Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was among them.

In this June 1, 2016 photo, Juan Pablo Culasso stands in a natural reserve with his recording equipment, on the outskirts of Montevideo, Uruguay. Born blind, Culasso has never seen a bird. But through his gifted sense of hearing, he can tell the difference among more than 720 species and identify more than 3,000 different bird sounds. (AP Photo/Matilde Campodonico)

Culasso said his dad later read to him about birds from an encyclopedia that came with an audio cassette of their calls.

"That's when I realized that I could memorize birds by their sounds," he said.

He said he discovered his calling as a teenager, when he joined an ornithologist on a 2003 field visit, inspired by his love of birds. The bird expert gave him a recorder, and he was hooked.

"At that moment, I felt as if I had been doing this forever without knowing it. I fell in love with that task," he said.

Culasso's passion now is to record and learn from the sounds of nature. He recently completed a two-month journey to Antarctica, where he recorded sounds from the Earth's coldest, wildest and most mysterious continent.

"I keep adding sounds to my list," he said. "In Antarctica, I recorded sea lions, seals and a melting iceberg."

Although Culasso can distinguish light, allowing him to differentiate night from day, he cannot register shapes, forms, and even less so the colors of birds. His ears have always been his way to connect more profoundly with the world.

His ability to recognize and record nature's sounds has landed him jobs working for documentary soundtracks. Culasso currently lives in his native Montevideo after more than a decade in Brazil, where he studied bioacoustics and nature sounds.

In 2014, Culasso's ability to recognize birds through their sounds landed him a top prize of $45,000 on a Nat Geo TV program. He invested most of the money in audio equipment. In the final test, he had to identify the sounds of 15 birds picked at random from a group of 250 birds and recognized every one.

The achievement was possible thanks to early music training and his perfect pitch.

Carrying a professional audio recorder and a microphone with a furry windscreen, Culasso recently visited the shores of the Santa Lucia river on Montevideo's outskirts. As he walked and listened, he cried out the names of birds before anyone else saw them.

Alicia Munyo, who heads the phonology department at Uruguay's Republica University, says that perfect pitch has more to do with the brain than the ear.

"It's not that these people hear more, they hear the same as anyone else," said Munyo. "It's that their brain has a great capacity to interpret sounds and their nuances, much more than normal people do."

Culasso has always pushed boundaries. As a young boy, he rode his bicycle with friends, following the sounds of the other kids. He didn't mind falling occasionally then and he doesn't mind risking it now as he recently rode a horse at an equestrian center.

"Most blind people move within the confines of the blind world, and never leave that comfort zone, but I was never that way," he said.

In this June 1, 2016 photo, Juan Pablo Culasso holds a microphone in a natural reserve on the outskirts of Montevideo, Uruguay. Although Culasso can distinguish light, allowing him to differentiate night from day, he cannot register shapes, forms, and even less so the colors of birds. His ears have always been his way to connect more profoundly with the world. His ability to recognize and record nature's sounds has landed him jobs working for documentary soundtracks. (AP Photo/Matilde Campodonico)
Debris in Madagascar, Australia to be analyzed by MH370 team

SYDNEY (AP)  Debris found washed ashore in Madagascar by a man who previously found a part from Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 will be examined by investigators to see if it, too, came from the missing plane, officials said Friday.

Blaine Gibson, an American adventurer who has been hunting for Flight 370 over the past year, contacted the Australian Transport Safety Bureau to report he had found debris in Madagascar, the agency said in a statement.

Malaysian authorities, who are leading the investigation into the plane's disappearance, have procedures in place to examine any suspected debris, though Australia will help analyze Gibson's discovery if asked, the agency said.

In February, Gibson found debris off the coast of Mozambique that experts later determined came from the missing Boeing 777 that vanished more than two years ago with 239 people on board.

In a separate development, a man found a piece of debris on an island off southern Australia that the transport bureau will examine, said ATSB spokesman Dan O'Malley. The agency was informed of the find on Thursday, and was working with island officials to have the part sent to the ATSB's headquarters, he said.

That piece was found on Kangaroo Island, just off the coast of South Australia state. Video of the part shows it bears the words "No step"  a phrase that also appeared on the part that Gibson found in Mozambique in February.
Suspect pleads not guilty to charges in Ohio cop's slaying

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP)  A suspect in the fatal shooting of an Ohio police officer has pleaded not guilty to charges that could carry the death penalty upon conviction.

Lincoln Rutledge is accused of shooting Columbus SWAT officer Steven Smith in the head while officers were trying to arrest him on an arson warrant. The 54-year-old officer was shot April 10 while standing in the turret of a SWAT vehicle. He died two days later.

The 44-year-old Rutledge is charged with aggravated murder, attempted murder, felonious assault and aggravated arson. He entered his not guilty plea Friday in Franklin County court and was ordered held without bond.

Lincoln Rutledge, right, appears in Common Pleas Court to face charges that includes the death penalty for the murder of Columbus Police Officer Steven Smith, Friday, June 10, 2016, in Columbus, Ohio. (Chris Russell/The Columbus Dispatch via AP) MANDATORY CREDIT

Ohio law includes killing a police officer as a factor that can lead to capital punishment.

Messages were left for the public defenders representing Rutledge.

FILE - This undated file photo provided by the Columbus Division of Police shows police SWAT officer Steven M. Smith. A suspect in the fatal shooting of the Ohio police officer is scheduled to be arraigned on charges that could carry the death penalty upon conviction. Forty-four-year-old Lincoln Rutledge was indicted earlier this week on charges including aggravated murder, attempted murder, felonious assault and aggravated arson. His arraignment is set for Friday, June 10, 2016. Rutledge is accused of shooting Smith in the head while officers were trying to arrest him on an arson warrant. (Columbus Division of Police via AP, File)
Mohammad Abdou Laghaoui, 19, is being sought in connection with the shooting of a deputy in Ohio

Authorities in Ohio say two people have been shot including a sheriff's deputy, and the alleged gunman remains on the loose.

The shooting happened Thursday night in Deerfield Township, about 25 miles northeast of Cincinnati.

The Warren County Sheriff's Office says the female deputy was shot while responding to report of a domestic situation at an apartment complex.

Authorities say she was taken to a hospital, and was 'conscious and alert.' Another person also was shot. He was taken to a hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.

Officials said they first responded to reports of a domestic situation around 9:45 p.m. at an apartment complex several blocks away at the Orchards on Landen apartment complex on Old Orchard Lane near the Kroger grocery store and Landon Square Shopping Center, reported WLWT.

The station identified the suspect as Mohammad Abdou Laghaoui,19, in connection to the shooting.

The area around Landon Square Shopping Center was chaos as police and other agencies swarmed the area looking for the suspect in the shooting of a Warren County deputy and an unidentified man

The Deerfield Township Fire Rescue sent out a tweet late Thursday warning of an active shooter situation. They advised people to stay inside and not to open their doors to strangers.
Ex-DA says meds could have affected O.J. glove try-on

LOS ANGELES (AP)  Prosecutors in O.J. Simpson's 1994 murder trial didn't know that he had been taking arthritis medication before trying on the famous ill-fitting bloody glove, former Los Angeles County District Attorney Gil Garcetti said Thursday.

Garcetti, who led the prosecutor's office during the trial, told ABC's "Good Morning America" that he learned about the medication from watching the new ESPN documentary: "O.J.: Made in America."

"What we didn't know until I saw it on this film was that O.J. Simpson was taking arthritic medication for his hands and he was told, 'If you stop taking this arthritic medication, your hands will swell. Your joints will stiffen,'" Garcetti said. "My God."

FILE - In this May 14, 2013, file photo, O.J. Simpson sits during a break on the second day of an evidentiary hearing in Clark County District Court in Las Vegas. Prosecutors in O.J. Simpson's 1994 murder trial didn't know that he had been taking arthritis medication before trying on the famous ill-fitting bloody glove, former Los Angeles County District Attorney Gil Garcetti said Thursday, June 9, 2016. Garcetti, who led the prosecutor's office during the trial, told ABC's "Good Morning America" that he learned about the medication from watching the new ESPN documentary: "O.J.: Made in America." (AP Photo/Ethan Miller, Pool, File)

Simpson was acquitted of murder charges for the death of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend, Ronald Goldman. A key moment came when prosecutors had Simpson try on a bloody glove found at his house and it appeared to be too small.

After that, defense attorney Johnnie Cochran told jurors: "If it doesn't fit, you must acquit!"

Garcetti said prosecutors Chris Darden and Marcia Clarke were never supposed to ask Simpson to try on the glove.

"He'd probably been working out his hand, developing muscles in his hand, and we knew that the glove would shrink, right?" Garcetti said. "It'd been in the elements. It's leather."

The defense may have "baited" prosecutors into the exhibition, Garcetti said.

Garcetti said he had expected to win the case in the end.

"We expected a hung jury and then the sympathy towards O.J. Simpson would dissipate and we knew we'd find more evidence" and win during retrial, he said.

Garcetti said he was stunned when former President Jimmy Carter, who was visiting Southern California, predicted a not-guilty verdict based on racial tensions.

Garcetti recalled Carter telling him: "We all know he did it but he's not a street thug and you and I know he's not a danger now to anyone else, and many innocent black men have been convicted, some executed. This is payback time."

Simpson currently is serving 33 years in Nevada for a 2007 armed robbery at a hotel room.
Private Buffett lunch goes to highest bidder for over $3.4M

OMAHA, Neb. (AP)  For the second time, an anonymous bidder has agreed to pay more than $3.4 million for a private lunch with billionaire Warren Buffett, with the auction proceeds going to a San Francisco homeless charity.

The bid of $3,456,789 from Friday night's winner ties the record highest from 2012, when a bidder also paid $3,456,789 to become the most expensive individual charity item ever sold on eBay.

The weeklong eBay auction to raise money for the Glide Foundation began Sunday and wrapped up Friday night. By midmorning Friday, the bidding reached more than $2.6 million, nearly $300,000 higher than last year's winning bid by Beijing-based Dalian Zeus Entertainment Co.

FILE - In this May 2, 2016 file photo, Berkshire Hathaway Chairman and CEO Warren Buffett is interviewed in Omaha, Neb. Buffett has raised more than $20 million for a San Francisco homeless charity since 2000, and he's about to add to that total by auctioning off a private lunch. The weeklong eBay auction that began Sunday, June 5, 2016, will wrap up Friday night. (AP Photo/John Peterson, File)

Six of the past eight winners paid more than $2 million to dine with Buffett, the investor who leads the Berkshire Hathaway conglomerate.

Buffett has raised more than $20 million for Glide. The lunch auctions began after Buffett's first wife, Susie, showed him the charity, where she had been volunteering. Susie Buffett died in 2004, but the connection between Warren Buffett and Glide's founders has endured.

Buffett has praised the foundation's approach in providing meals, health care, job training, rehabilitation and housing support to the poor and homeless.

"I am proud to be part of something that has directly benefited so many people in need," Buffett said ahead of the auction. "Glide is a bridge for thousands of people on the brink of despair, helping them achieve dignity and opportunity by providing them with basic services."

After the auction, the Rev. Cecil Williams, one of Glide's co-founders, said: "We are astonished by the results of this year's auction and send heartfelt gratitude to Mr. Buffett for his deep investment in unconditional love and community."

Buffett has said he gets a wide range of questions at the lunches that usually run for several hours. The only limit on lunch conversation is what Buffett might invest in next, but any other topic is open.

The winners of the lunch auction typically dine with Buffett at Smith and Wollensky steak house in New York City, which donates at least $10,000 to Glide each year to host the lunch. But when the winner wants to remain anonymous, the lunch happens elsewhere.

Buffett's company owns more than 90 subsidiaries including insurance, furniture, railroad, jewelry and candy companies, restaurants and natural gas and corporate jet firms, and has major investments in such companies as Coca-Cola Co., IBM and Wells Fargo & Co.

___

Online:

Auction site: www.ebay.com/glide

Berkshire Hathaway Inc.: www.berkshirehathaway.com

Glide Foundation: www.glide.org

___
A man accused in a shooting at an Ohio apartment complex that left a sheriff's deputy and the suspect's father wounded is facing preliminary charges that include attempted murder, authorities said Friday.

Mohammed Abdou Laghaoui, 19, was taken custody at about 4.30am after he returned to the complex in Deerfield Township, where the shooting took place, said Warren County Sheriff Larry Sims. The town is about 25 miles northeast of Cincinnati.

Laghaoui initially fled the scene, leading to a seven-hour manhunt with helicopters and K-9 units.

Sims identified the injured officer as Deputy Katie Barnes, who had been on the job for seven-and-half years starting as a corrections officer.

Deputy Katie Barnes is pictured above. She was wounded in a shooting at an apartment complex that left her and the suspect's father injured. Mohammed Abdou Laghaoui is facing preliminary charges that include attempted murder, authorities in southwest Ohio said Friday

Mohammed Abdou Laghaoui, 19, was taken custody at about 4.30am after he returned to the complex in Deerfield Township. He is pictured above in mugshots

Barnes was responding to a domestic situation at an apartment complex Thursday night when she was shot in the lower abdomen, Sims said at a news conference. She was treated and released from a hospital Friday morning.

Barnes is expected to recover, Sims said. The suspect's father was shot in the hand. Sims did not know the latest on the man's condition, but thought he may need surgery.

Sims said Laghaoui fired an assault rifle that has yet to be recovered.

He's being held at the Warren County Jail on preliminary charges of attempted murder, attempted aggravated murder and felonious assault. A court appearance is planned for Monday.

Police and Deerfield Township Fire & Rescue crew investigate the scene of the shooting on Thursday

A shelter-in-place order was lifted in Deerfield Township, shortly after 5am.

Sims described Laghaoui's arrested at the apartment complex as uneventful. 'There were no issues with him whatsoever,' he said.

Sims said investigators found six spent rounds from an AK-47 near where Barnes was shot. He said she returned fire four times with her revolver.

'We are confident she did everything appropriate,' he told reporters at the news conference in Lebanon.

Brian Freedman, a resident of the apartment complex, told The Cincinnati Enquirer that he arrived home to find the area cordoned off.

'I don't know if I've ever seen so many police officers in one place,' Freedman said.
BY THE NUMBERS: Japanese visas soar with tourism push

TOKYO (AP)  As Japan steps up its efforts to attract overseas tourists, the number of visas issued hit a record high in 2015. Not all foreign nationals require visas to enter Japan, but data from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs reflect the overall growth in tourism and the sharp rise in travelers from China. Here's a look, by the numbers, at Japanese visas in 2015.

___

Visas issued in 2015: 4,768,286

Chinese tourists walk around the Ginza shopping district in Tokyo, Friday, June 10, 2016. As Japan steps up its efforts to attract overseas tourists, the number of visas issued hit a record high in 2015. Not all foreign nationals require visas to enter Japan, but data from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs reflect the overall growth in tourism and the sharp rise in travelers from China. (AP Photo/Koji Sasahara)

Visas issued in 2014: 2,871,639

Increase over one year: 66 percent

___

Visas for Chinese nationals: 3,780,773

Share of total: 79 percent

Visas for Chinese tourists (under the most common visas): 3,156,259

___

Visas for Philippine nationals (No. 2) : 225,676

Indonesians (No. 3): 162,273

Vietnamese (No. 4): 139,236

___

Visitors to Japan in 2015: 19,737,409

Visitors to Japan in 2014: 13,413,467

Increase over one year: 47 percent

Chinese tourists wait in queue to get on a bus at the Ginza shopping district in Tokyo, Friday, June 10, 2016. As Japan steps up its efforts to attract overseas tourists, the number of visas issued hit a record high in 2015. Not all foreign nationals require visas to enter Japan, but data from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs reflect the overall growth in tourism and the sharp rise in travelers from China. (AP Photo/Koji Sasahara)

Chinese tourists rest on the ground at the Ginza shopping district in Tokyo, Friday, June 10, 2016. As Japan steps up its efforts to attract overseas tourists, the number of visas issued hit a record high in 2015. Not all foreign nationals require visas to enter Japan, but data from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs reflect the overall growth in tourism and the sharp rise in travelers from China. (AP Photo/Koji Sasahara)

Chinese tourists walk around the Ginza shopping district in Tokyo, Friday, June 10, 2016. As Japan steps up its efforts to attract overseas tourists, the number of visas issued hit a record high in 2015. Not all foreign nationals require visas to enter Japan, but data from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs reflect the overall growth in tourism and the sharp rise in travelers from China. (AP Photo/Koji Sasahara)

Chinese tourists wait for a bus at the Ginza shopping district in Tokyo, Friday, June 10, 2016. As Japan steps up its efforts to attract overseas tourists, the number of visas issued hit a record high in 2015. Not all foreign nationals require visas to enter Japan, but data from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs reflect the overall growth in tourism and the sharp rise in travelers from China.(AP Photo/Koji Sasahara)
Members of the Washington National Guard took park in a megaquake and tsunami drill Thursday, in preparation for a dual natural disaster which could kill thousands.

It was part of a four-day event that ends Friday, called Cascadia Rising.

The event is built around the premise of a 9.0 magnitude earthquake 95 miles off the coast of Oregon that results in a tsunami.

Both events would likely destroy buildings, roads and buildings and disrupt communications.

Scroll down for video

Members of the Washington National Guard look at screens showing a map of damage to roads following a simulated earthquake and tsunami

Washington National Guard Lt. Col. Adam Iwaszuk shows a map of operations for an earthquake and tsunami drill at the Mason County Fairgrounds

Parachutes slowly floated down from Chinook helicopters, first carrying boxes of supplies and then the paratroopers who set up a field operations center as part of the readiness drill for a megaquake and tsunami.

Chief Warrant Officer James Pierce packed up his parachute and grabbed his gear shortly after hitting the ground Thursday at Sanderson Field, an airfield in the small city of Shelton on the west side of Puget Sound.

Parachuting in may be the only option for some responders following a massive earthquake, especially to get to remote locations that are rendered undriveable.

'It's a good, effective way to get gear to the ground,' Pierce said.

For the drill, the airfield and adjoining Mason County Fairgrounds have been converted into a staging area with hundreds of members of the National Guard, a tactical operations center where officials communicate directly with officials at Camp Murray and a trauma center.

Emergency officials believe Shelton will be the closest airfield to the Washington coast  about 70 miles west of Seattle  to survive the disaster.

'After a Cascadia Subduction Zone earthquake, we fully anticipate that roads are going to be cut off, bridges are going to be down and we're going to have isolated pockets of people that are going to need some help and support,' said Major General Bret Daugherty, commander of the Washington National Guard.

A member of the National Guard walks by a medium tactical vehicle that can be used for decontamination, on Thursday

Washington National Guard X-ray technicians Spc. Jorie Fernandez, left, and Spc. Holly Bench show their work area at a staging area in a trauma tent set up as part of the readiness drill

A Chinook drops paratroopers over Sanderson Field in Shelton, Washington, on Thursday

Research suggests that the Cascadia Subduction Zone  a 600-mile-long fault just off the coast that runs from Northern California to British Columbia  on average produces magnitude 9.0 quakes every 500 years. Big quakes have been separated by as few as 200 years and as many as 1,000, so it's impossible to predict when the next monster quake occurs. However, tectonic stresses have been accumulating for more than 300 years and seismologists say it could rupture any time.

Officials say about 20,000 people have been involved in the disaster drill throughout the Pacific Northwest, representing federal agencies, the U.S. military, and state and local emergency response managers from Washington, Oregon and Idaho, Native American tribes and emergency management officials in British Columbia. More than 8 million people live in the zone, which includes the population centers of Portland and Seattle.

Paratroopers drop over Sanderson Field on Thursday

A National Guard paratrooper gets close to the ground at Sanderson Field

The area has been converted into a staging area with hundreds of members of the National Guard, a tactical operations center, a trauma center and various equipment, including decontamination trucks

One main goal is to test how well they will work together to minimize loss of life and damages when a mega-quake unleashes a tsunami. They're also testing their ability to communicate without the internet or phones; delivering services in emergency conditions; and search and rescue, decontamination and evacuation abilities.

On Wednesday, one exercise showed the Navy's capability to deliver personnel and equipment to a disaster zone where ports would be destroyed by tsunami waves.

The Navy sent the USNS Bob Hope with about 500 sailors to build a temporary camp on a Naval Magazine Indian Island, a munitions depot in the Puget Sound.

It took the Navy four weeks from loading the Bob Hope to setting up the camp  a similar timeline would be expected after the earthquake.

In Port Angeles, a shoreline city on Washington's Olympic Peninsula, members of the Washington National Guard practiced decontaminating vehicles and first responders. Tsunami waves hitting this area would pick up biohazards while surging through land.

First Sgt. Kent Keller of the Washington National Guard said that these drills allow them to make mistakes now, so they don't make them later during the real thing.

'We are going to learn, and we're going to change the way we behave based on the lessons learned in this training,' he said.

Officials in the Pacific Northwest have been rehearsing scenarios on how the region would deal with a dual natural disaster that could kill thousands, cut off coastal communities, and collapse phone and internet service
New US-Cuba ties fuel bitter Havana Club rum trademark fight

MIAMI (AP)  With his tuxedo loosened and her dress slightly askew, the couple unwinding with cocktails in a new U.S. ad for Bacardi's Havana Club evokes the openness and decadence of pre-revolution Cuba that many exiles have longed for.

By contrast, an online gallery of portraits of employees at the distillery in Cuba of a rival brand of Havana Club jointly run by Pernod Ricard and the Cuban government shows Cubans proud to show the craft and heritage their country offers now, without looking back.

The fresh marketing campaigns for the two brands are the latest escalation in the liquor industry giants' 20-year fight to secure the exclusive right to sell Havana Club throughout the U.S. when the half-century-old embargo on Cuban goods ends.

In this Wednesday, June 8, 2016, photo, a bartender pours Cuban Havana Club rum as he prepares a mojito at the Floridita bar in Havana. Two liquor giants are escalating a 20-year fight to secure the rights to sell Havana Club rum in the United States when the Cuban embargo finally ends. Bacardi is launching sales nationwide for the Havana Club it produces in Puerto Rico, while competitor Pernod Ricard is expanding the distillery it shares with Cubas government to prepare for the day when their brand can be sold in the U.S. (AP Photo/Desmond Boylan)

Both Bacardi and Pernod Ricard hope to capitalize on consumers' growing appreciation for premium rums, as well as U.S. excitement for easier travel to Cuba and its once-forbidden rum and cigars. Similar disputes typically are resolved by establishing who registered first, but this case is complicated and has been defined by bitterness between Cuba's government and exiles.

After President Barack Obama announced a detente in December 2014, Pernod Ricard's chairman and CEO said the thaw was good news for Cubans and Americans, and the company hopes to finally sell its Havana Club in the United States. Bacardi, privately held by its founding Cuban family, still seeks the rights to its own name in Cuba, a trademark it lost to Fidel Castro's government.

Cuba registered its U.S. trademark in 1976 and exported Havana Club mostly to Eastern Europe until a 1993 joint venture with Paris-based Pernod Ricard. Now it's sold in over 120 countries  except the United States, the world's biggest rum market.

U.S. rum sales generated $2.3 billion in revenue for distillers last year, and premium brands meant for sipping are gaining on popular flavored and spiced rums, according to figures from the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States.

Bacardi produces its rums in Puerto Rico and Mexico, but the company argues that it's been supplying the U.S. with Cuban rum for over a century.

It has sold its Havana Club in a handful of states since the mid-1990s. The new "golden age" ad campaign alluding to Bacardi's past in Cuba is part of a nationwide rollout that includes a new, dark style of Havana Club.

Bacardi bought the name and a distillation formula handwritten from memory by the Arechabala family, who created the brand in Cuba in 1934 but lost control to Castro's government in 1960. The company's filings in federal lawsuits and trademark board appeals bristle with indignation while describing Castro's troops forcibly confiscating the Arechabalas' office property.

When Havana Club was acquired, then-Chairman Manuel Jorge Cutillas felt obligated to help the Arechabalas, who lacked facilities outside Cuba to sustain their business, said Rick Wilson, Bacardi's senior vice president of corporate affairs.

"I remember him in particular saying that it was important that we were going to help this family so that all of their assets were not taken outside of Cuba," Wilson said in an interview in Bacardi's suburban Miami offices.

In court documents, Bacardi describes the rum produced by its competitor as "ersatz Havana Club." Pernod Ricard's general counsel, Ian FitzSimons, scoffed at Bacardi's labeling of rum distilled in Puerto Rico as Cuban in any way.

"There's a tradition of over 100 years of rum-making in Cuba, and we rely heavily on that. If you're going to have a rum named Havana Club, it should be made in Cuba, and it should be made with Cuban products," FitzSimons said by phone from Havana.

Havana Club's sales, buoyed by promotions featuring Cuban artists and classic cocktails, totaled 4 million cases for the 2015 fiscal year, according to Pernod Ricard's annual report that listed $9.7 billion overall in net sales.

Pernod Ricard is investing $90 million over the next few years to expand its operations in Cuba in preparation for the opening of the U.S. market, said Havana Club CEO Jerome Cottin-Bizonne.

Bermuda-based Bacardi doesn't disclose its earnings, but its corporate responsibility report for the 2014 fiscal year tallied 60 million cases generating $4.477 billion in net sales. Court records show it paid $1.25 million to the Arechabalas for the Havana Club rights.

U.S. courts generally have ruled against Cuba in this case, but the island's government pursued renewal for its Havana Club registration, arguing that if the U.S. could not renew the trademark it also couldn't cancel it under the embargo.

In spite of decades of icy relations, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office appeals board regularly declined Bacardi's request to have Cuba's registration canceled, saying it lacked the authority to answer Bacardi's politically charged complaints.

A stalled federal lawsuit was revived when U.S. trademark officials abruptly renewed Cuba's trademark in January. Republican Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, echoing Cuban hard-liners in her Miami-area district, blasted the Obama administration for siding with Cuba over U.S. business interests.

In its response to Bacardi's latest legal challenge, Pernod Ricard and the Cuban government say the U.S. trademark for Havana Club had been abandoned by its originators after Cuba "assumed managerial control" of the Arechabalas' company.

Bacardi ultimately lost its claim to the Havana Club trademark in Spain after lengthy litigation there. The World Trade Organization also has sided with Cuba, saying the U.S. violates multilateral trade rules with its regulations for cases involving assets seized by the island's government.

None of that matters, Wilson said, because only two companies run by the two Cuban families have ever sold rum labeled Havana Club in the U.S.

"Regardless of what happened with the registration, we have the common law rights. Cuba doesn't," Wilson said.

___

This story has been corrected to show that Arechabalas created Havana Club to 1934, not 1935.

In this Wednesday, June 8, 2016, photo, bottles of Cuban Havana Club rum are displayed at the bar in the Rum Museum in Havana. Two liquor giants are escalating a 20-year fight to secure the rights to sell Havana Club rum in the United States when the Cuban embargo finally ends. Bacardi is launching sales nationwide for the Havana Club it produces in Puerto Rico, while competitor Pernod Ricard is expanding the distillery it shares with Cubas government to prepare for the day when their brand can be sold in the U.S. (AP Photo/Desmond Boylan)

In this Monday, May 23, 2016, photo, bottles of Havana Club rum appear on display at the Bacardi USA offices in Coral Gables, Fla. Two liquor giants are escalating a 20-year fight to secure the rights to sell Havana Club rum in the United States when the Cuban embargo finally ends. Bacardi is launching sales nationwide for the Havana Club it produces in Puerto Rico, while competitor Pernod Ricard is expanding the distillery it shares with Cubas government to prepare for the day when their brand can be sold in the U.S. (AP Photo/Alan Diaz)

This Monday, May 23, 2016, photo shows a general view of the bar containing bottles of Bacardi and Havana Club rum and posters at the Bacardi USA offices in Coral Gables, Fla. The fresh marketing campaigns for Bacardi's Havana Club rum and a rival brand of Havana Club jointly run by Pernod Ricard and the Cuban government, are the latest escalation in the liquor industry giants' 20-year fight to secure the exclusive right to sell Havana Club throughout the United States when the half-century-old embargo on Cuban goods ends. (AP Photo/Alan Diaz)

In this Wednesday, June 8, 2016, photo, a bartender pours Cuban Havana Club rum as he prepares daiquiris at the Floridita bar in Havana. Two liquor giants are escalating a 20-year fight to secure the rights to sell Havana Club rum in the United States when the Cuban embargo finally ends. Bacardi is launching sales nationwide for the Havana Club it produces in Puerto Rico, while competitor Pernod Ricard is expanding the distillery it shares with Cubas government to prepare for the day when their brand can be sold in the U.S. (AP Photo/Desmond Boylan)

In this Wednesday, June 8, 2016, photo, people sit with daiquiris made with Cuban Havana Club rum beside a statue of U.S. artist Ernest Hemingway at the Floridita bar in Havana. Two liquor giants are escalating a 20-year fight to secure the rights to sell Havana Club rum in the United States when the Cuban embargo finally ends. Bacardi is launching sales nationwide for the Havana Club it produces in Puerto Rico, while competitor Pernod Ricard is expanding the distillery it shares with Cubas government to prepare for the day when their brand can be sold in the U.S. (AP Photo/Desmond Boylan)

This Wednesday, June 8, 2016, photo, shows a sign of Cuban Havana Club rum on a refrigerator at a local bar in Havana. Two liquor giants are escalating a 20-year fight to secure the rights to sell Havana Club rum in the United States when the Cuban embargo finally ends. Bacardi is launching sales nationwide for the Havana Club it produces in Puerto Rico, while competitor Pernod Ricard is expanding the distillery it shares with Cubas government to prepare for the day when their brand can be sold in the U.S. (AP Photo/Desmond Boylan)

This Monday, May 23, 2016, photo shows a framed sketch of Don Jose Arechabala at the Bacardi USA offices in Coral Gables, Fla. Arechabala founded Jose Arechabala, S.A., in 1878 and created its Havana Club rum in 1934. The fresh marketing campaigns for Bacardi's Havana Club rum and a rival brand of Havana Club jointly run by Pernod Ricard and the Cuban government, are the latest escalation in the liquor industry giants' 20-year fight to secure the exclusive right to sell Havana Club throughout the United States when the half-century-old embargo on Cuban goods ends. (AP Photo/Alan Diaz)

In this Monday, May 23, 2016, photo, Rick Wilson, Bacardi, senior vice president of corporate affairs, right, talks to a reporter as Fabio de Giammarco, global vice president of rums, left, listens, at the Bacardi USA offices in Coral Gables, Fla. Two liquor giants are escalating a 20-year fight to secure the rights to sell Havana Club rum in the United States when the Cuban embargo finally ends. Bacardi is launching sales nationwide for the Havana Club it produces in Puerto Rico, while competitor Pernod Ricard is expanding the distillery it shares with Cubas government to prepare for the day when their brand can be sold in the U.S. (AP Photo/Alan Diaz)

In this Monday, May 23, 2016, photo, bottles of Havana Club rum appear on display at the Bacardi USA offices in Coral Gables, Fla. Two liquor giants are escalating a 20-year fight to secure the rights to sell Havana Club rum in the United States when the Cuban embargo finally ends. Bacardi is launching sales nationwide for the Havana Club it produces in Puerto Rico, while competitor Pernod Ricard is expanding the distillery it shares with Cubas government to prepare for the day when their brand can be sold in the U.S. (AP Photo/Alan Diaz)

In this photo taken Tuesday, June 7, 2016, cars drive by a Havana Club billboard on Biscayne Boulevard in downtown Miami. The fresh marketing campaigns for Bacardi's Havana Club rum and a rival brand of Havana Club jointly run by Pernod Ricard and the Cuban government, are the latest escalation in the liquor industry giants' 20-year fight to secure the exclusive right to sell Havana Club throughout the United States when the half-century-old embargo on Cuban goods ends. (AP Photo/Alan Diaz)
But the child is only 1/64th Choctaw, and some say law is being misapplied

Lexi was removed under law designed to keep Native

Rusty and Summer Page say they miss tucking their foster child into bed and giving her kisses months after the part-Native American girl was wrenched from their care.

On Friday, the couple continued their legal battle to return 6-year-old Lexi to California.

Lexi, who is 1/64th Choctaw, was taken from her foster home north of Los Angeles earlier this year and placed with distant relatives in Utah under a decades-old federal law designed to keep Native American families together.

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In this March 21, 2016 file photo, Rusty Page carries, Lexi, while Summer Page, in the background, cries as members of family services, left, arrive to take Lexi away from her foster family in Santa Clarita, California

On Friday, Rusty and Summer Page, former foster parents of Lexi, a 6-year-old girl with Native American heritage continued their legal battle to return 6-year-old Lexi to California

Lori Alvino McGill, right, lawyer for Rusty and Summer Page, left, former foster parents of Lexi, speaks to reporters following arguments before the California State Court of Appeal in downtown Los Angeles Friday

An attorney for the Pages asked a state appeals court to reverse a lower court ruling that ordered the family to surrender the girl.

The lower court made 'fundamental legal errors' and failed to take into account the girl's bond with her foster parents and siblings, said attorney Lori Alvino McGill.

A representative for Lexi didn't deny the close relationship, but argued it was the right decision to reconnect Lexi with her tribal roots.

'She's doing well. She's adjusting,' attorney Christopher Blake told a three-judge panel, which has up to 60 days to decide.

The appellate court also heard from a lawyer for Lexi's biological father, who asked the judges to take his point of view into consideration. Two of the judges balked.

'His conduct is reprehensible,' said presiding Justice Paul Turner, adding that Lexi's father made 'bad choices' by not caring for her.

The mother of the Utah family that Lexi is living with declined to comment Friday, saying she's bound by court orders not to discuss the case. The Associated Press isn't naming the woman to protect the girl's identity.

Handed over: Lexi clutched a teddy bear as she was forced to enter a black government car with social workers on Monday

The case is one of dozens brought by foster families since the Indian Child Welfare Act was passed in the late 1970s. Lawmakers found that Native American families were broken up at disproportionately high rates, and that cultural ignorance and biases within the child welfare system were largely to blame.

Lexi was 17 months old when she was removed from the custody of her mother, who had drug-abuse problems. Her father has a criminal history, according to court records.

Although foster care is supposed to be temporary, the Pages want to adopt Lexi and for years have fought efforts under the federal act to place the girl with relatives of her father, who is part Choctaw.

The Pages have said the law is outdated and misapplied. Lower courts found the Pages had not proven Lexi would suffer emotional harm by the transfer and, in March, the California Supreme Court refused to intervene.

The Choctaw Nation has said the girl had long-time contact with her Utah relatives, who spoke to her online and frequently drove out to see her.

While some other tribes use a blood quantum to determine eligibility, the Choctaw Nation is among a handful of tribes that determines eligibility for membership by tracing a person's lineage to a member of an original roll of tribal members.

Real father: Jay Ellerforbes can be named as the biological father of Lexi, the girl taken from her foster parents after a court order. He has lost custody of both the children he is seen with

INDIAN CHILD WELFARE ACT - POLICIES AND REGULATIONS ICWA gives tribal governments a strong voice concerning child custody proceedings that involve Indian children, by allocating tribes exclusive jurisdiction over the case when a child is a ward of the tribe. The tribe also has jurisdiction over non-reservation Native Americans foster care placement proceedings It was enacted in 1978 because of the high removal rate of Indian children from their traditional homes and therefore from Indian culture as a whole. Before enactment, as many as 25 to 35 percent of all Indian children were being removed from their Indian homes and placed in non-Indian homes. The tribe and parents or Indian custodian of the Indian child have an unqualified right to intervene in a case involving foster care placement or the termination of parental rights. Source: Cornell University Law School Advertisement

Lexi is now living in Utah with relatives of her father who are not Native Americans.

Dozens of supporters turned out for the latest court hearing, waving banners that read: 'Let Lexi Speak' and 'Bring Lexi Home.'

The Pages said they have not heard from Lexi in nearly three months in what they described as '81 days of both torment and hope.'
Rough ride theory is a twist in police custody death case

BALTIMORE (AP)  Prosecutors introduced a new theory as a murder trial started for a Baltimore police van driver charged in the death of Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old black man whose neck was broken in the back of the wagon.

Not only was Officer Caesar Goodson negligent when he didn't buckle Gray into a seat belt, prosecutors said, he intentionally wanted to injure Gray by giving him a "rough ride"  blowing through a stop sign and making a sharp turn at such a high speed that he crossed a double yellow line. With his hands cuffed and his legs shackled, Gray was thrown helplessly against the rear compartment, the prosecutor said.

Goodson, 46, who is black, faces second-degree murder, manslaughter, assault and other charges. Prosecutors had hinted earlier that Gray was subjected to a "rough ride." But opening statements Thursday marked the first time they accused the driver of intending to hurt Gray, whose death in April 2015 touched off the worst riots in Baltimore in decades.

Officer Caesar Goodson, right, one of six Baltimore city police officers charged in connection to the death of Freddie Gray, leaves the courthouse after the first day of his trial, Thursday, June 9, 2016, in Baltimore. (AP Photo/ Mark Makela, Pool)

A "rough ride" is police lingo for putting a prisoner in a police wagon without a seat belt and driving so erratically that he or she is thrown around.

Goodson is the third officer to stand trial. So far the state has not won a conviction. Officer William Porter's trial ended in a mistrial in December. The judge acquitted the second officer last month.

Schatzow was unequivocal about the state's position during opening statements.

"There was no good reason for the defendant not to belt him in, except to bounce him around," he said.

Goodson attorney Andrew Graham flatly disputed the notion that Gray was deliberately bounced around, saying: "There was no rough ride. It simply didn't happen."

He said Gray's injuries were self-inflicted when he stood up inside a moving vehicle and that officers "virtually never" belt prisoners in. Goodson is such a "slow and cautious" driver that he sometimes lulls his prisoners to sleep, he said.

Graham said Goodson  "a good officer, a gentle man, a nice guy"  didn't belt Gray in because of his "violent and erratic behavior" that included screaming and kicking with such force that the wagon shook. Gray continued thrashing around in the van for several stops, the attorney said.

Graham said Goodson's supervisors never directed him to seek medical attention for Gray, and that Gray wasn't exhibiting symptoms of distress.

"He did his job, and he followed instructions," Graham said. "Freddie Gray's death was a tragedy, but convicting a good officer just to assign blame would make a tragic situation worse."

Graham told the judge that the assistant medical examiner who performed Gray's autopsy and ruled his death a homicide initially told an investigator it was "a freakish accident" before meeting with prosecutors and changing her mind.

"It was the result of a pressurized investigation," Graham said.

On Friday during cross-examination, Dr. Carol Allan contradicted defense attorneys' assertion that she initially thought Gray's death was accidental.

"I had an open mind, and after reading the medical records and performing the autopsy, that's when I said, this is not an accident," she said. "The word 'accident' never crossed by lips."

Goodson's wagon stopped six times altogether.

Allan conceded that medical evidence by itself doesn't prove that Gray suffered his spinal injury between the second and fourth stops. But she said when she reviewed witness statements and other investigatory materials, she stood by her conclusion.

"Without the recorded statements I can tell you it happened in the van, but not when," she said.

She also said Gray's spinal injury could have occurred because the van sped up or slowed down  but because Gray wasn't belted and, in her opinion, was standing up, he could have suffered his injury even if the van hadn't been speeding or moving erratically.

Prosecutors have called 11 witnesses so far, including two friends of Gray who testified that they say the officers put Gray into the wagon with his hands cuffed and legs shackled at the van's second stop. One of them, Jamel Baker, testified that he never saw the van shake and that Gray couldn't really move. He acknowledged that the scene was chaotic, he said none of the civilians present were harassing the officers.

The state on Friday also called Officer Lloyd Sobboh to testify, and showed a video of him demonstrating being placed inside a transport wagon with his hands cuffed and legs shackled as Gray was.

Testimony will continue Monday.

Officer Caesar Goodson, left, one of six Baltimore city police officers charged in connection to the death of Freddie Gray, leaves the courthouse after the first day of his trial, Thursday, June 9, 2016, in Baltimore. (AP Photo/Brayan Woolston, Pool)

Baltimore State's Attorney Marilyn Mosby, leaves the courthouse in Baltimore during the trial of Officer Caesar Goodson, one of six Baltimore city police officers charged in connection to the death of Freddie Gray, Friday, June 10, 2016, in Baltimore. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

Officer Caesar Goodson, left, one of six Baltimore city police officers charged in connection to the death of Freddie Gray, leaves the courthouse after the first day of his trial, Thursday, June 9, 2016, in Baltimore. (AP Photo/Brayan Woolston, Pool)

Arthur B. Johnson Jr., of Baltimore, demonstrates alone outside Baltimore's Courthouse East on the first day of the trial of Officer Caesar Goodson, not pictured, one of six Baltimore city police officers charged in connection to the death of Freddie Gray, in Baltimore, Thursday, June 9, 2016. Goodson, the driver of the transport wagon that carried Gray after his arrest, faces second-degree murder, manslaughter and other charges. (AP Photo/Steve Ruark)

FILE - In this March 3, 2016, file photo, Officer Caesar Goodson Jr., one of six Baltimore city police officers charged in connection to the death of Freddie Gray, leaves the Maryland Court of Appeals in Annapolis, Md. Prosecutors say Goodson, the driver of the transport wagon, is the most culpable in Gray's death, and that he was grossly negligent when he failed to buckle Gray into a seat belt and call for medical aid during Gray's ride. But with no eye witnesses and very little physical evidence, experts say the government could be facing an uphill battle. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana, File)

Chief Deputy State's Attorney Michael Schatzow, left, and Deputy State's Attorney Janice Bledsoe arrive for the first day of the trial of Officer Caesar Goodson, not pictured, charged with murder in the death of of Freddie Gray, Thursday, June 9, 2016. Goodson, the driver of the transport wagon that carried Gray after his arrest, faces second-degree murder, manslaughter and other charges. (AP Photo/Steve Ruark)

Baltimore State's Attorney Marilyn Mosby, leaves the courthouse in Baltimore after a lunch break during the trial of Officer Caesar Goodson Jr., charged in connection to the death of Freddie Gray, Thursday, June 9, 2016, in Baltimore. Goodson, the driver of the transport wagon that carried Gray after his arrest, faces second-degree murder, manslaughter and other charges. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

Baltimore Police Officer Caesar Goodson, center, leaves Courthouse East with his lawyer Matthew Fraling on Monday, June 6, 2016, in Baltimore. Caesar Goodson, who was driving the transport wagon, faces second-degree murder, manslaughter, assault, misconduct in office and reckless endangerment charges in the death of Freddie Gray. (Jerry Jackson/The Baltimore Sun via AP) WASHINGTON EXAMINER OUT; MANDATORY CREDIT
Syrian-born US citizen gets 32 months for aiding militants

ALEXANDRIA, Va. (AP)  Amin al-Baroudi wanted to do the right thing in Syria, but knowing what the right thing is in a quagmire like the Syrian war isn't always easy.

Al-Baroudi, 50, of Irvine, California admits now that he went astray: In addition to performing humanitarian work, al-Baroudi also sneaked rifle scopes, night-vision goggles and other military gear to rebel fighters seeking to topple the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

The problem, prosecutors say, is that the group Al-Baroudi was helping, Ahrar el-Sham, frequently fights alongside the al-Qaida affiliate in Syria, Jabhat al-Nusra.

On Friday, a judge sentenced al-Baroudi to nearly three years in prison for violating U.S. sanctions in Syria.

Al-Baroudi, a naturalized U.S. citizen who was born in Syria, apologized for his conduct at the hearing.

"I came to realize there's no right way to do the wrong things," al-Baroudi wrote in a statement that his lawyer, Anthony Capozzolo, read when Al-Baroudi became too choked up to maintain his composure. "I simply pray for my old country to exit this crisis and enjoy ... what my family enjoys in this country."

Capozzolo asked the judge for a sentence of probation or to sentence al-Baroudi to the six months' time he had already served since his arrest in December. He said al-Baroudi was motivated to act by his own life experience growing up in the town of Hama, where tens of thousands were massacred in 1982 by Assad's father, Hafez al-Assad.

"He's not a for-profit mercenary," Capozzolo said. "Mr. al-Baroudi was trying to help, although in a fully misguided way."

Prosecutors say al-Baroudi illegally exported the tactical gear to Syria from late 2011 to 2013. In 2013, al-Baroudi realized his actions were under scrutiny when he was stopped from boarding a flight back from Turkey to the United States. After that, al-Baroudi turned his efforts to purely humanitarian work, working with the humanitarian arm of a Syrian opposition coalition.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Julia Martinez did not dispute al-Baroudi's good intentions, and said the government took that into account in filing the charges, which allege a violation of sanctions rather than supporting a terrorist group. But she still argued for a sentence of nearly four years, saying his actions were dangerous.

"His knowledge about Syria made abundantly clear he knew how dangerous what he was doing was," Martinez said.

U.S. District Judge Liam O'Grady echoed prosecutors' concerns.

"You had no control over who was going to use those items" once they got into Syria, O'Grady said.

Federal prosecutors have found themselves prosecuting defendants on all sides of the Syrian conflict. Just this week at the federal courthouse in Alexandria, a grand jury indicted an individual who prosecutors say was part of the pro-Assad Syrian Electronic Army and helped hack computer accounts associated with perceived enemies of the regime.
Kazakhstan says 5 suspected militants killed in sweep

MOSCOW (AP)  Five suspected militants were killed in gunbattles with police that followed a series of recent armed attacks that have challenged the stability of the energy-rich ex-Soviet nation of Kazakhstan, authorities said Friday.

Kazakhstan's National Security Committee said in a statement that its agents tracked down four suspects hiding in an apartment building early Friday in Aktobe, a city in the northwest, about 70 kilometers (some 45 miles) south of the Russian border.

The agency said the suspects refused to surrender, fired on police and security officers, and were killed in the ensuing gunbattle.

Another gunman fired at police at a different location and was killed by retaliatory fire. Two police officers were wounded, the committee said.

At least 20 people were killed in Aktobe on Sunday when groups of gunmen attacked a military base and gun shops. The death toll comprised three servicemen, four civilians and 13 attackers. Nearly 40 people were wounded.

Kazakhstan's authorities described the violence as a terror attack and blamed it on radical Islamists. Police and security forces have launched a sweeping hunt for those involved.

The National Security Committee said Friday that it was continuing the search for some attackers who have remained at large.

The violence has shaken Kazakhstan and set a serious challenge to 75-year old President Nursultan Nazarbayev, who has led the energy-rich Central Asian nation since before the 1991 Soviet collapse. He has maintained a tight grip over the nation's political system, winning his fifth presidential term in 2015 with 98 percent of the vote.

Kazakhstan's economic fortunes have collapsed due to slumping prices for oil, its main currency earner, and the economy is expected to slow to 0.5 percent growth this year. On top of economic problems, a new law allowing foreigners to own agricultural lands has fueled discontent and triggered protests across the country.

Some observers saw the attacks as a sign of an intensifying battle for influence among political clans in Kazakhstan, while others have pointed at possible foreign influence.

In an address to the nation earlier this week, Nazarbayev said "adherents of radical pseudo-religious movements who got their instructions from abroad" were behind the attacks. On Friday, he told his Security Council that the perpetrators of the attacks were followers of fundamentalist Salafi Islam.

Nazarbayev ordered authorities to toughen criminal punishment for Kazakh citizens who join international terrorist organizations, strengthen protection of guns shops and military arsenals and tighten control over migration flows. Following Russia's example, the Kazakh leader also called for closer monitoring of foreign funding of Kazakh organizations.
5 Indians who raped Danish tourist get life prison sentence

NEW DELHI (AP)  Five Indians who raped a Danish tourist after she asked for directions in New Delhi were sentenced to life in prison Friday for the attack two years ago that highlighted the plague of sexual violence in the country.

Judge Ramesh Kumar said the convicts, aged 23 to 30, were guilty of gang rape, kidnapping, wrongful confinement and criminal intimidation. Dinesh Sharma, the attorney for the defendants, sought leniency, saying the convicts came from poor backgrounds. The men had pleaded not guilty and can appeal the verdict.

Police said the 51-year-old woman approached several vagabonds on the night of Jan. 14, 2014, to ask for directions back to her hotel near Connaught Place, a popular shopping area in the capital. Nine attackers took her to a secluded spot, robbed her and raped her repeatedly at knifepoint. One of the convicts was found with the victim's glasses case and 1,000 rupees ($15) in cash.

In this Thursday, June 9, 2016, photo, three of the five convicts in the gang rape of a 51-year-old Danish tourist in 2014, are escorted by the police for a hearing at a city court, in New Delhi, India. Five Indians who raped a Danish tourist when she asked them for directions in New Delhi have been sentenced to life in prison for the attack that highlighted the plague of sexual violence in the country. (AP Photo/Manish Swarup)

One of the accused men died during trial in February. Three who were younger than 18 at the time of the attack were handed to the Juvenile Justice Board to remain in custody until they are 18 and reformed.

Violence against women in India has caused increasing alarm since the fatal gang rape of a 23-year-old Indian physiotherapy student in New Delhi in 2012. Several foreign tourists also have been targeted in attacks that often get international attention, although Indian women are assaulted far more frequently.

Public fury over the 2012 rape case led to more stringent laws that doubled prison terms for rape to 20 years and criminalized voyeurism and stalking. But many women say daily indignities and abuse continue unabated and that the new laws have not made the streets any safer.
In Turkey bombings, media bans 'arrive before ambulances'

ISTANBUL (AP)  Well before police could establish who was responsible for a car bombing in Istanbul that killed 11 this week, the government in Turkey had banned the media from reporting anything about the investigation.

Bans have been implemented after such incidents since 2013 and have become so routine that some joke on Twitter that the ban arrives before the ambulance  but they're part of what free-speech advocates say is an increasingly concerning pattern of restricting news coverage in Turkey. Violating the ban leaves local news channels vulnerable to fines and possible prosecution.

The Committee to Protect Journalists describes Turkey as "the current master" of the media blackout practice.

FILE - In this Tuesday, June 7, 2016 file photo, Turkish security officials and firefighters work at the explosion site after a bus carrying riot police official was struck by a bomb in Istanbul. Well before police could establish who was responsible for the car bombing, the government had banned the media from reporting anything about the investigation. Bans have been implemented after such incidents since 2013 and have become so routine that some joke on Twitter that the ban arrives before the ambulance _ but they're part of what free-speech advocates say is an increasingly concerning pattern of restricting news coverage in Turkey. (DHA via AP, File) TURKEY OUT

Although other countries, especially in the Middle East, use such bans, what makes Turkey different is their extremely broad nature and the absence of clarity as to when they expire and what the consequences are for those who take the risk of violating them. They are usually issued by an official regulatory body but they have also come from courts or even the office of the prime minister.

"How these bans are defined, we don't know," says Kadri Gursel of the International Press Institute. "How these so-called violations of the bans are prosecuted, we don't know. So it is a very arbitrary situation. ... These are very vaguely defined bans but they have a chilling effect."

Critics say Turkey has witnessed a sharp decline in press freedoms since two polarizing elections that dominated headlines in 2015; the resurgence of conflict between Turkish security forces and Kurdish militants as a truce collapsed last summer; and a string of suicide attacks blamed on Islamic State militants.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan advocates a broader legal definition of "terrorism" and "terrorist" to include journalists, as well as activists and legislators, who voice support for terror organizations. The European Union wants Turkey to narrow the definition out of concern that existing laws are used to crush dissent.

Turkish officials defend bans, saying that they are necessary to protect the investigation into the attacks, prevent fear and panic among the public and bar images from serving as "propaganda" for the terror groups. That is a point of view that has considerable support in the broader public.

A senior official told the AP the orders don't amount to "media bans," as news channels do cover the general aftermath of terror attacks, but aim to prevent Turkish media from publishing and broadcasting violent images that Western media outlets would not publish or broadcast "due to ethical standards."

News coverage in Turkey and the Middle East can indeed be more grisly and graphic than what is shared with audiences in the West.

The bans prohibit reports that name suspects and increase the flight risk of collaborators, he said. The official spoke on condition of anonymity in line with government regulations that prevent public officials from speaking to journalists without prior authorization. As well as restricting reporting of attacks, the bans have been used during a fatal mining disaster in 2014 and a probe into top brass corruption in 2013.

Gursel of the International Press Institute rejects the notion that the bans are in the interest of smoother investigations. The goal, he says, is to intimidate journalists and TV channels from covering stories that could hurt the reputation of the government or from carrying out investigative reporting.

"The aim is mainly to make the public know less, see less and read less about these incidents, of which the coverage is seen as detrimental to the government," he told the AP. "It is a reflex to protect and safeguard government interests. It is a kind of perception management."

Aykan Erdemir, a former Turkish legislator and currently a fellow at the U.S.-based Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, says it is true that local media outlets publish graphic images without any concern for the rights of the victim.

But these bans, he says, are primarily used as a form of censorship to silence critical media outlets and "to veil the government's incapacity in its struggle against terrorism." It is on a par with the firing of critical journalists and the government takeovers of opposition media that have become so commonplace in the country, he says.

Ozgur Ogret, the Turkey representative for the Committee to Protect Journalists, says the news bans violate the right to be informed. Although some citizens sidestep them through the internet or by accessing foreign satellite channels, "they are very effective in the medium of television which is the number one news source of this country," he told The Associated Press.

Suleyman Demirkan, a member of the Radio and Television Supreme Council, RTUK, says broadcasters that violate the ban are issued a warning for a first infringement. If violations continue, they are fined 1 percent of the revenue they declared to the regulatory body the month prior to when the infringement occurred.

The fine can be raised to 5 percent if a channel is deemed to be aiding a terror organization through its infringement, said Demirkan, who is one of two members appointed to the nine-member council by the main opposition party and is critical of the blackouts.

The bans are just one of a slew of measures that have made reporting difficult for journalists in Turkey. The president has launched some 2,000 lawsuits over "insults," multiple foreign journalists have been deported and local journalists are in jail for revealing "state secrets" in what press freedom advocates call a widening crackdown on dissent.

Access to the conflict zones of the southeast, where the security forces are battling Kurdish militants, is limited to state media. Local Kurdish journalists are routinely jailed. This week, three journalists were attacked by a mob as they tried to cover the aftermath of a suicide bomb attack on a police station in the town of Midyat.

Turkey ranks 151 out of 180 countries in the 2016 World Press Freedom index compiled by Reporters Without Borders. It fared better than most Middle East countries and China but was far behind in comparison with the countries of the European Union, a bloc it aspires to join.

Journalism is a dangerous profession across the world. There's now an arc of countries from Russia to southern Africa where the kind of journalism that would be praised in many societies may get you imprisoned or killed. In Turkey's neighbor Syria, journalists are routinely tortured, killed or disappeared.

News bans are only one weapon in the broad arsenal deployed to silence critical media across the region, and are not uncommon. Jordan this week issued a gag order on a shooting attack that killed five employees at an intelligence office in a refugee camp. In volatile regions of Pakistan, journalists risk jail if they publish statements issued by militant groups.

When militants in Gaza or Lebanon fire rockets at Israel, the military censor bans immediate reports of the precise locations of the exploding shells to prevent gunmen from using the information to deploy more accurate fire. Sometimes Israeli police issue temporary gag orders if they think it could jeopardize a case.

Although there are no known cases of Turkey media outlets being prosecuted for violations of the ban, Demirkan points to the case of opposition journalists Can Dundar and Erdem Gul who were convicted last month of revealing state secrets for their reports on alleged government arms shipments to Syrian jihadists.

"Unfortunately, in the long run, these practices are causing harm to the Turkish state which they claim to protect," Demirkan said. "They are bruising the state's respectability and trustworthiness."

___

This story has been corrected to show the analyst's name is Aykan Erdemir, not Akyan Erdemir.

___

Suzan Fraser in Ankara, Turkey; Zeina Karam in Beirut; John-Thor Dahlburg in Brussels; Karin Laub in Amman, Jordan; Kathy Gannon in Islamabad; and Ian Deitch in Jerusalem contributed to this report.

FILE - In this Tuesday, June 7, 2016 file photo, Turkish police and ambulances gather at the explosion site after a bus carrying riot police official was struck by a bomb in Istanbul. Well before police could establish who was responsible for the car bombing, the government had banned the media from reporting anything about the investigation. Bans have been implemented after such incidents since 2013 and have become so routine that some joke on Twitter that the ban arrives before the ambulance _ but they're part of what free-speech advocates say is an increasingly concerning pattern of restricting news coverage in Turkey. (AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis, File) TURKEY OUT

FILE - In this Tuesday, June 7, 2016 file photo, a Turkish police officer speaks with onlookers near a damaged shop from an explosion in Istanbul. Well before police could establish who was responsible for the car bombing, the government had banned the media from reporting anything about the investigation. Bans have been implemented after such incidents since 2013 and have become so routine that some joke on Twitter that the ban arrives before the ambulance _ but they're part of what free-speech advocates say is an increasingly concerning pattern of restricting news coverage in Turkey. (AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis, File) TURKEY OUT

FILE - In this Tuesday, June 7, 2016 file photo, Turkish security officials and firefighters work at the explosion site after a bus carrying riot police official was struck by a bomb in Istanbul. Well before police could establish who was responsible for the car bombing, the government had banned the media from reporting anything about the investigation. Bans have been implemented after such incidents since 2013 and have become so routine that some joke on Twitter that the ban arrives before the ambulance _ but they're part of what free-speech advocates say is an increasingly concerning pattern of restricting news coverage in Turkey. (DHA via AP, File) TURKEY OUT
Kosovo asks for EU rule of law mission to be extended

PRISTINA, Kosovo (AP)  The Kosovo government says it has asked the European Union to prolong its rule of law mission, known as EULEX, for two years.

Since 2008, EULEX has supported Kosovo on its path to greater European integration in the areas of rule of law and the fight against corruption.

Last year Kosovo signed a stabilization and association agreement with the EU and last month the European Commission recommended a visa-free travel regime for Kosovo.

Kosovo came under U.N. and NATO administration after a 1999 NATO-led air war halted a Serb crackdown on ethnic Albanian separatists. In 2008 Kosovo declared independence, recognized by 111 countries but rejected by Serbia.
Israel sets 3-day West Bank closure after Palestinian attack

JERUSALEM (AP)  The Israeli military said on Friday the West Bank will be closed off until the end of the Jewish holiday of Shavuot on Sunday, due to security concerns following a Palestinian shooting attack this week in Tel Aviv that killed four Israeli civilians.

The army said that crossings will be open for "humanitarian and medical" cases only and for Palestinians to worship at al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem.

Tens of thousands of Palestinians attended prayers at the mosque on Friday, the first of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. Police were on high alert in Jerusalem and prayers passed peacefully.

Palestinian men pray at the Al Aqsa Mosque compound, during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, in Jerusalem's Old City, Friday, June 10, 2016. (AP Photo/Mahmoud Illean)

Much of the past months of violence stems from tensions at the hilltop compound. Muslims refer to it as the Noble Sanctuary, and it is their third holiest site, after Mecca and Medina in Saudi Arabia. It is the holiest site for Jews, who call it the Temple Mount because of the revered Jewish temples that stood there in biblical times.

West Bank closures are often imposed ahead of holidays in Israel when there are fears of Palestinian attacks. Tensions are especially high now after Palestinian gunmen killed four people and wounded five others in a popular and crowded area of Tel Aviv on Wednesday night.

The military said it arrested several people in connection to that attack in the West Bank overnight but there were no further details. In raids Friday morning in the territory, Israeli troops found two workshops Palestinians used for manufacturing weapons, including the improvised home-made gun used in Wednesday's attack.

Over the last eight months, Palestinians have carried out dozens of attacks on civilians and security forces, mostly stabbings, shootings and car ramming assaults that have killed 32 Israelis and two Americans. About 200 Palestinians have been killed during that time, most identified as attackers by Israel. The assaults were once near-daily incidents but they have become less frequent in recent weeks.

The day after the Palestinian shooting, Israel froze 83,000 permits for Palestinians in the West Bank to visit relatives in Israel. The army imposed checkpoints to restrict movement in and out of the village where the Palestinian gunmen in the Tel Aviv attack were from.

The office of the United Nations' High Commissioner for Human Rights, Zeid Ra'ad al-Hussein, on Friday condemned the Tel Aviv shooting.

Spokeswoman Ravina Shamdasani said that Israel had an "obligation" to bring those responsible to account, but said some measures punish "thousands of innocent Palestinians" and could constitute "collective punishment."

Later in the day, a Palestinian tried to stab soldiers in the West Bank who opened fire and wounded him, the military said. The Palestinian was evacuated to hospital for treatment, it said.

The military says the closure will end Sunday night after the Shavuot holiday.

Israeli security forces search a Palestinian woman at a checkpoint as she makes her way to attend the first Friday prayers in Jerusalem's al-Aqsa mosque during Muslim holy month of Ramadan, in the West bank city of Bethlehem, Friday, June 10, 2016. (AP Photo/Nasser Shiyoukhi)

Palestinian women take a picture during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan at the Dome of the Rock Mosque in the Al Aqsa Mosque compound in Jerusalem's Old City, Friday, June 10, 2016. (AP Photo/Mahmoud Illean)

Palestinian women pray at the Al Aqsa Mosque compound, during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, in Jerusalem's Old City, Friday, June 10, 2016. (AP Photo/Mahmoud Illean)

Palestinian men pray at the Al Aqsa Mosque compound, during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, in Jerusalem's Old City, Friday, June 10, 2016. (AP Photo/Mahmoud Illean)

Palestinian men pray at the Al Aqsa Mosque compound, during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, in Jerusalem's Old City, Friday, June 10, 2016. (AP Photo/Mahmoud Illean)

Israeli soldiers argue with a Palestinian at a checkpoint near the West Bank city of Nablus, Friday, June 10, 2016, after a Palestinian attempted a stabbing attack. Palestinian was shot and wounded, army said. (AP Photo/Majdi Mohammed)

Palestinian women pray in front of the Dome of the Rock at the Al Aqsa Mosque compound, during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, in Jerusalem's Old City, Friday, June 10, 2016. (AP Photo/Mahmoud Illean)

Israeli soldiers stand at a checkpoint near the West Bank city of Nablus, Friday, June 10, 2016, after a Palestinian attempted a stabbing attack. Palestinian was shot and wounded, army said. (AP Photo/Majdi Mohammed)

An Israeli soldiers uses binoculars at a checkpoint near the West Bank city of Nablus, Friday, June 10, 2016, after a Palestinian attempted a stabbing attack. Palestinian was shot and wounded, army said. (AP Photo/Majdi Mohammed)

Israeli security forces search a Palestinian woman at a checkpoint as she makes her way to attend the first Friday prayers in Jerusalem's al-Aqsa mosque during Muslim holy month of Ramadan, in the West bank city of Bethlehem, Friday, June 10, 2016. (AP Photo/Nasser Shiyoukhi)

Israeli soldiers and security forces stand at a checkpoint near the West Bank city of Nablus, Friday, June 10, 2016, after a Palestinian attempted a stabbing attack. Palestinian was shot and wounded, army said. (AP Photo/Majdi Mohammed)

Palestinian men pray at the Al Aqsa Mosque compound, during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, in Jerusalem's Old City, Friday, June 10, 2016. (AP Photo/Mahmoud Illean)
The Latest: Ohio sheriff: Shot deputy expected to recover

LEBANON, Ohio (AP)  The Latest on a shooting at an Ohio apartment complex that left two people shot, including a sheriff's deputy (all times local):

11:15 a.m.

A southwest Ohio sheriff says a man accused in a shooting that left a deputy and the suspect's father wounded is facing preliminary charges that include attempted murder.

Police and Deerfield Township Fire & Rescue crew investigate the scene of a shooting from the intersection of Hwy 22 & Columbia Road on Thursday, June 9, 2016, in Landen, Ohio. Authorities say two people have been shot including a sheriff's deputy, and the alleged gunman remains on the loose. The shooting happened Thursday night in Deerfield Township, about 25 miles northeast of Cincinnati. (Sam Greene/The Cincinnati Enquirer via AP) MANDATORY CREDIT; NO SALES

Warren County Sheriff Larry Sims said Friday that 19-year-old Mohammed Abdou Laghaoui was taken into custody at about 4:30 a.m. after he returned to an apartment complex in Deerfield Township, where the shooting took place.

Authorities say Laghaoui initially had fled the scene, leading to a seven-hour manhunt.

Sims said Deputy Katie Barnes was responding to a domestic situation at the apartment complex when she was shot in the abdomen. She's expected to recover. The suspect's father was shot in the hand.

Sims said Laghaoui fired an assault rifle yet to be recovered. He's being held at the Warren County Jail.

___

6:20 a.m.

Authorities in Ohio say a suspect is in custody for a shooting at an apartment complex that left two people wounded, including a sheriff's deputy.

Lt. John Faine of the Warren County Sheriff's Office said early Friday that 19-year-old Mohammed Abdou Laghaoui was found at about 5 a.m., not far from the shooting scene, after a seven-hour manhunt.

No further information about how the suspect was apprehended was immediately available.

Faine said the female deputy who was shot while responding to a report of a domestic situation at the apartment complex at about 9:45 p.m. Thursday has been treated and released from a hospital. Another person also was shot and taken to a hospital with non-life-threatening injuries. The names of the two were not immediately released.

A shelter-in-place order has been lifted in Deerfield Township, about 25 miles northeast of Cincinnati.

___

2:05 a.m.

Authorities in Ohio have identified a man who they say shot two people including a sheriff's deputy.

The shooting happened Thursday night in Deerfield Township, about 25 miles northeast of Cincinnati.

The Warren County Sheriff's Office is searching for 19-year-old Mohammed Abdou Laghaoui.

Authorities say the female deputy was shot while responding to report of a domestic situation at an apartment complex.

They say she was taken to a hospital, and was "conscious and alert." Another person also was shot. He was taken to a hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.

The Deerfield Township Fire Rescue sent out a tweet late Thursday warning of an active shooter situation. They advised people to stay inside and not to open their doors to strangers.

___

12:45 a.m.

Authorities in Ohio say two people have been shot including a sheriff's deputy, and the alleged gunman remains on the loose.

The shooting happened Thursday night in Deerfield Township, about 25 miles northeast of Cincinnati.

The Warren County Sheriff's Office says the female deputy was shot while responding to report of a domestic situation at an apartment complex.

Authorities say she was taken to a hospital, and was "conscious and alert." Another person also was shot. He was taken to a hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.

Authorities say they are searching for a 19-year-old man.

The Deerfield Township Fire Rescue sent out a tweet late Thursday warning of an active shooter situation. They advised people to stay inside and not to open their doors to strangers.

___

12:10 a.m.

Authorities in Ohio say two people have been shot including a sheriff's deputy, and the alleged gunman remains on the loose.

The shooting happened Thursday night in Deerfield Township, about 25 miles northeast of Cincinnati.

The Warren County Sheriff's Office says the deputy was shot while responding to report of a domestic situation.

Authorities say the deputy was taken to a hospital, and was "conscious and alert." Another unidentified person also was shot. Their conditions were not immediately available.

The suspect is described as a 19-year-old man.

The Deerfield Township Fire Rescue sent out a tweet late Thursday warning of an active shooter situation. They advised people to stay inside and not to open their doors to strangers.

No other information was immediately available.

The investigation is ongoing.

This photo provided by the Warren County, Ohio Sheriff shows Mohammed Abdou Laghaoui. Authorities say Abdou Laghaoui is in custody in a shooting at an Ohio apartment complex that left a sheriff's deputy and another person wounded, officials said early Friday, June 10, 2016. (Warren County, Ohio Sheriff via AP)
Abducted son, devastated mother reunited after 21 years

LOS ANGELES (AP)  For over two decades, all Maria Mancia had of her son was a single photo, a slightly blurry image of a boy, 18 months old, staring unsmiling into the camera.

On Thursday, he was wiping away her tears at a reunion neither of them ever expected.

When the boy's father abducted him from their Southern California home in 1995, he also took every picture she had of him, even the ultrasound of him during her pregnancy. She had to write to a relative just to get one picture to show the police.

Steve Hernandez wipes a tear from his mother's eye after seeing her for the first time in 20 years in San Diego, Calif., on Thursday, June 9, 2016. Steve Hernandez was abducted by his father Valentin Hernandez from their Rancho Cucamonga residence in 1995 when he was 18-months-old. Since that time, 42-year-old Maria Mancia had searched for her son to no avail. The boy, Steve Hernandez, now a man of about 22, has been found in Mexico. On Thursday he was brought to the U.S. to meet his mother.Authorities interviewed the boy and took a DNA swab. The facts of his life, and the DNA, matched. (Christopher Lee/San Bernardino County District Attorney's Office via AP)

But early this year a tip led investigators to Mexico and the son, Steve Hernandez, now a 22-year-old law student.

On Thursday morning, he came to the U.S. and immediately met his mother.

"It was a shock," Hernandez told the San Bernardino Sun. "I didn't know if she was alive or not and to get a call that says they found my mother and that she had been looking for me, it was like a cold bucket of water. But it's good. It's good."

The two parents and their toddler boy had been living in Rancho Cucamonga, California, in 1995. The parents were having relationship struggles. Mancia came home from work one day and thought they had been robbed. It took her a while to figure out that both her son and his father were gone.

The San Bernardino County District Attorney's Child Abduction Unit had been looking for Hernandez for years, searching for him in several states.

Investigators then received a good tip in February that he was in Puebla, Mexico. The father, Valentin Hernandez, is missing and believed to be dead, authorities said.

Senior Investigator Karen Cragg, who led the search, said they had to approach Steve Hernandez delicately, and at first used a ruse.

"We didn't want him to know what was going on," Cragg told The Associated Press on Thursday. "We didn't want to scare him off. We weren't sure what the circumstances were down there. We had to tread very carefully."

They told him they were investigating his missing father so they could interview him and get a DNA sample. The facts fit what they knew of the missing boy.

Cragg then asked the Department of Justice if they could hurry on the test, knowing it could take several months.

"They called me in two weeks and said it was a match," Cragg said.

Cragg and her partner Michelle Faxon drove straight to Mancia's house.

"It was like she didn't believe us at first," Cragg said. "She began to cry. She said she couldn't believe he was still alive."

Because Steve Hernandez is a U.S. citizen, there were no immigration troubles returning him to the U.S., Cragg said. Authorities in both countries were hugely helpful in making it happen.

The boy's father had told him that his mother abandoned the two of them.

He also has four younger siblings he knew nothing about, including an 8-year-old brother who came to the reunion but mostly hid behind his mother.

He said he plans to stay in the U.S. and hopes to attend law school, which he already started in Mexico.

He hugged his crying mother when he finally met her, and wiped tears from her eyes.

"Now this anguish I've carried is gone now that I have my son back," she told KABC-TV. "I spent 21 years looking for him not knowing anything."

___

Associated Press Writer Amy Taxin contributed to this story from Santa Ana, California.

___

This story has been corrected to show last name is Hernandez in 6th paragraph, not Martinez.

Steve Hernandez wipes a tear from his mother's eye after seeing her for the first time in 20 years in San Diego, Calif., on Thursday, June 9, 2016. Steve Hernandez was abducted by his father Valentin Hernandez from their Rancho Cucamonga residence in 1995 when he was 18-months-old. Since that time, 42-year-old Maria Mancia had searched for her son to no avail. The boy, Steve Hernandez, now a man of about 22, has been found in Mexico. On Thursday he was brought to the U.S. to meet his mother.Authorities interviewed the boy and took a DNA swab. The facts of his life, and the DNA, matched. (Christopher Lee/San Bernardino County District Attorney's Office via AP)
Eritrean extradited to Italy says he's not migrant smuggler

ROME (AP)  The Eritrean man extradited to Italy under great fanfare as an alleged kingpin of a migrant smuggling ring told authorities on Friday that his arrest in Sudan was a case of mistaken identity and denied that calls from his phone to Libya were related to trafficking, his lawyer said.

"It is clear for him he is not the man who is smuggling or trafficking humans," Michele Calantropo said outside the Rome prison where the suspect was questioned by prosecutors from Sicily, leading Italy's anti-smuggling investigations in the presence of a judge.

Prosecutors identified the suspect as Medhane Yehdego Mered, an alleged mastermind of a migrant smuggling ring that has brought thousands of migrants from the Horn of Africa to Italy via lawless Libya. Within hours of the announcement, however, the Eritrean diaspora in Europe starting buzzing with reports that the man escorted off the plane was not Mered, but an Eritrean refugee with the same first name who had been living in Sudan.

In this picture taken Thursday, June 9, 2106, Hiweet Berhe Tesfamarian Kidane, holds photocopies of documents she told the Associated Press belong to her brother Medhanie Tesfamariam Kidane during an interview in Oslo. Hiweet Berhe Tesfamarian Kidane said that her brother was misidentified for Medhane Yehdego Mered, an Erithrean man detained in Sicily and who is accused to be an alleged mastermind of a migrant smuggling route that brought tens of thousands of migrants to Italy. (AP Photo/David Keyton)

Italy's Interior Minister Angelino Alfano declined to comment on the case, telling reporters in Luxembourg that competent authorities were working on it.

The news agency ANSA, reporting from Palermo, said that the suspect admitted to some intercepted calls that investigators believe prove his role in the smuggling ring. ANSA also said that the smuggler Mered is known to have used aliases.

Calantropo told The Associated Press that the two or three phone calls in question were to a Libyan number, but that his client said they were to a cousin and had nothing to do with trafficking. The calls were traced during the investigation and were part of the documents that formed the basis of the arrest warrant.

"He confirmed the calls from 2016. He had phone calls with a Libyan cell phone because there was a cousin in Libya. He did not admit to any contact with smugglers," Calantropo said.

The man in custody has been identified by many in the Eritrean community, including his sister, a close friend of the family and a Swedish-based Eritrean broadcaster who fielded calls after the arrest, as Medhanie Tesfamariam Berhe. Medhane and Medhanie are different transliterations of the same name.

Meron Estefanos, the broadcaster, has interviewed Mered, the smuggling suspect, in the past, albeit by telephone, and said she quickly realized it was two different people.

She said Mered told her he was responsible for smuggling 13,000 people over a two-year period and that he didn't supply migrants with life jackets because such a large-scale purchase would draw suspicion.

Calantropo said that British authorities and the Sudanese police who arrested the suspect two weeks ago maintained they had the right man and that Italian authorities were now taking steps to verify his identity. Calantropo said he is requesting documents from relatives in Norway and Sudan.

He said no requests for DNA samples or fingerprint verifications have been made so far.

The lawyer made a request to release his client from jail, arguing that he is not a danger. He expects a ruling next week.

A request for an indictment has already been made, and Calantropo said he expects the case to proceed to a preliminary hearing.

He added his client says he does not speak Arabic, as Mered is known to do, and has never been to Libya. Mered is 35, while Berhe is 30, according to documents provided to The Associated Press by his sister in Norway.

An Eritrean political asylum seeker living in Sicily says the man being held in an Italian jail grew up in his house and that he has no connection whatsoever to smuggling networks.

Fishaye Tesfay told The Associated Press by telephone from Palermo that his family in Sudan notified him after news of the arrest swept through the Eritrean community. He was shocked to see the picture of the man he considers a brother plastered all over his Facebook feed as a criminal suspect.

"This is a big error," said Tesfay, a 42-year-old political asylum seeker who has been in Italy for 13 years.

Tesfay said Berhe is much younger than the alleged trafficker and that they bear no physical resemblance.

"He is not working as a smuggler. He is a migrant," Tesfay said.

He said Ethiopian authorities would have Berhe's fingerprints because he arrived there as a migrant from Eritrea in 2014, and it should be possible to quickly verify the mistake. Berhe left the next year for Sudan, where both men have family members.

Italian authorities took five months to clear a suspect jailed on suspicion of participating in the Bardo Museum attack in Tunisia after questions about his identity emerged. It was eventually proved he was in Italy at the time of the attack and had reported his passport missing.

___

This story has been corrected to say Berhe is 30 years old, not 27.

___

Barry reported from Milan. David Keyton contributed from Stockholm and Elias Meseret from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

In this picture taken Thursday, June 9, 2106, Hiweet Berhe Tesfamarian Kidane, holds photocopies of documents she told the Associated Press belong to her brother Medhanie Tesfamariam Kidane during an interview in Oslo. Hiweet Berhe Tesfamarian Kidane said that her brother was misidentified for Medhane Yehdego Mered, an Erithrean man detained in Sicily and who is accused to be an alleged mastermind of a migrant smuggling route that brought tens of thousands of migrants to Italy. (AP Photo/David Keyton)

Lawyer Michele Calantropo leaves the Rebibbia penitentiary in Rome, Friday, June 10, 2016. The Eritrean man extradited to Italy under great fanfare as an alleged kingpin of a migrant smuggling ring told authorities on Friday that his arrest in Sudan was a case of mistaken identity, his lawyer, said. It is clear for him he is not the man who is smuggling or trafficking humans, Michele Calantropo said outside the Rome prison where the suspect was questioned by prosecutors from Sicily leading Italys anti-smuggling investigations in the presence of a judge. (AP Photo/Fabio Frustaci)

Lawyer Michele Calantropo talks to journalists outside Rebibbia penitentiary in Rome, Friday, June 10, 2016. The Eritrean man extradited to Italy under great fanfare as an alleged kingpin of a migrant smuggling ring told authorities on Friday that his arrest in Sudan was a case of mistaken identity, his lawyer, said. It is clear for him he is not the man who is smuggling or trafficking humans, Michele Calantropo said outside the Rome prison where the suspect was questioned by prosecutors from Sicily leading Italys anti-smuggling investigations in the presence of a judge. (AP Photo/Fabio Frustaci)
Bayern chairman Rummenigge extends contract through 2019

MUNICH (AP)  Bayern Munich chairman Karl-Heinz Rummenigge has extended his contract with the club through 2019.

The club says on its website that Rummenigge, whose current deal was to expire at the end of this year, agreed to the contract extension with its board members.

The 60-year-old Rummenigge thanks club president Karl Hopfner "for the trust and the serious and constructive work together."

Hopfner says "it's a good day for Bayern Munich."
Florida man tells police he killed wife for not being loyal

HOLLYWOOD, Fla. (AP)  A man who was shot by Florida police officers during a domestic disturbance is accused of first-degree murder and arson.

A Hollywood police report says 27-year-old Michael James told officers on Wednesday that he killed his wife for "not being loyal."

The Miami Herald (http://hrld.us/1XdHZgW ) reports when officers asked James if anyone else was home, he respond, "no it was just me and my dead wife."

The report says James was shot when he "aggressively began charging" officers.

James told police there wasn't a gun and that he actually stabbed his wife. Police found smoke coming from the bedroom where the body of 27-year-old Latoya James was on a bed. She'd been stabbed in the neck, head and back.

James is recovering from multiple gunshot wounds in a hospital. It's not known whether he has a lawyer.

___
UN refugee agency alters Greek, Balkans plan as flows slow

GENEVA (AP)  The U.N. refugee agency and partners are revising their operations in Greece and the Balkans, and seeking more money to help tens of thousands of people stuck in Greece.

UNCHR says a European Union-Turkey accord on handling migrants has vastly reduced flows through the Turkey-to-Greece route that over 1 million migrants have crossed since January 2015 to reach Europe.

UNHCR says some 57,000 people remain stranded in Greece, and says dealing with people who settle is more costly than giving temporary aid to people moving deeper into Europe.

Spokesman William Spindler said Friday that UNHCR and 60 partner organizations are seeking nearly $670 million for the regional refugee and migrant response plan, up from $550 million when launched in January.
EU leader to meet with Putin in St. Petersburg next week

BRUSSELS (AP)  The European Commission's president will meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin next week.

Jean-Claude Juncker will be the most high-profile EU official to go to Russia since it annexed the Crimean Peninsula from Ukraine in 2014. He will address a Russian economic conference in St. Petersburg on Thursday and his office said he would also meet with Putin, who is attending the conference.

Both sides have already warned against any optimism of a sudden warming in relations and Juncker said last week there would be no letup of sanctions against Russia.
Afghan official: Blast in eastern mosque kills 4, wounds 40

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP)  An Afghan official says four civilians have been killed and around 40 wounded by a bomb blast inside a mosque in the restive eastern province of Nangarhar, which borders Pakistan.

Attaullah Khogyani, spokesman for the provincial Nangarhar governor, says the blast occurred during Friday prayers in the Rodat district, near the provincial capital of Jalalabad.

He says the mosque was full as Muslims are observing the holy month of Ramadan. Khogyani says the death toll is expected to rise as many of the wounded are in a critical condition.

Insurgent and criminal activity is high in Nangarhar, where the Taliban earlier this year fought fierce battles with gunmen claiming loyalty to the Islamic State group.
Teen dies 2 days after sand collapse on Florida beach

PANAMA CITY BEACH, Fla. (AP)  Law enforcement officials in Florida say an Oklahoma teenager has died two days after the walls of a hole he dug in the sand collapsed on him.

The Bay County Sheriff's Office reports on social media that 17-year-old Travor Brown died at Panama City hospital Friday.

The News Herald (http://bit.ly/1ZDDfPA ) reports that Brown was visiting the area with friends. On Wednesday, beachgoers told Bay County Sheriff's deputies they'd seen a couple of teens digging in a sand bank at St. Andrews State Park. Later, they noticed a teen's feet sticking out of the sand and started digging him out.

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Homeowner shot after Georgia police went to wrong home dies

ATLANTA (AP)  A Georgia homeowner shot in the neck after police went to the wrong house has died, a lawyer for the family said Friday.

William Powell, 63, died Thursday afternoon at Atlanta Medical Center, attorney Keith Martin said.

A preliminary review of the 911 call indicates the three officers who responded had gone to the wrong home and showed up at Powell's house, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation said.

Powell was armed with a gun and was shot in the neck by Sgt. Patrick D. Snook, the GBI said in a report.

Snook is on paid leave, the standard protocol in such cases, Henry County police Capt. Joey Smith said.

Powell had grabbed the gun for protection, not knowing who might be outside in the dark of night, Martin said. A nearby home had been burglarized just two weeks before the shooting, he added.

The GBI is investigating the actions of Henry County police in the shooting early Wednesday morning in Stockbridge, about 20 miles south of Atlanta.

Someone had called 911 a little before midnight Tuesday to report hearing a woman yelling for help and gunshots, prompting the police response, the GBI has said. Authorities have not released the 911 call.

The officers "gave verbal commands for Powell to drop his handgun which he did not comply with," GBI agent Scott Dutton said in a statement.

But his wife, who was standing outside in the garage area, near her husband, never heard the officers say a word, Martin said.

"First thing she heard was two shots, her husband fell, she ran back into the house, locked the door and called 911," he said. "She saw her husband fall, and was terrified."

Powell had just left the house, opened the garage door and walked just outside the garage when he was shot, Martin said.

Though the garage was lighted, there are no exterior lights outside the garage, the lawyer said. She saw only one person outside in the darkness, and "she was not able to see anyone in uniform," Martin said.

GBI special agents want to speak with Powell's wife when she's available, and "we will meet with the investigators and cooperate in every way," Martin said.

After Powell was shot, some Henry County police officers continued to try to find the home where the 911 caller said screams and gunshots were heard, Dutton said in an interview Friday. They canvassed the neighborhood and believe they found the home the caller was talking about, Dutton said. A person at that home said there had been an argument, but that no one screamed for help and no gunshots were fired, he said.

The investigators looking into the shooting will be looking into the circumstances surrounding the 911 call as well, Dutton said.

It wasn't known Friday whether the officers were wearing body cameras or whether any other video captured part of what transpired. Smith referred questions about the case to the GBI.

Powell was an Air Force veteran and has three grown children, according to his mother-in-law, Geraldine Huey, 85, who lives next door.

She said she heard a "racket" around 11:30 p.m. Tuesday, but went back to sleep, she told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. She later awoke early Wednesday to see a swarm of police cars outside.

"He worked all his life. Went to school," Huey told the Atlanta newspaper. "Just somebody you'd really like to know. He's right here for me any time."

Martin said the family "is most thankful for the wishes and prayers of neighbors, friends and the community and ask that the prayers continue through this difficult time."

___

AP reporter Kate Brumback contributed from Atlanta.

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Virginia Tech fraternity banned from campus for 10 years

BLACKSBURG, Va. (AP)  Virginia Tech's first black Greek organization has been banned from campus for 10 years after a pledge says he was blindfolded and beaten over several days earlier this year.

The Roanoke Times (http://bit.ly/22XKHqS ) reports that the school's Theta Iota chapter of the Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity was barred for abusive conduct and hazing.

In an executive order from the fraternity recommending that the chapter disband, national fraternity investigators say that pledges were blindfolded and attacked for several nights in January while being quizzed about fraternity history.

One pledge told the national fraternity he was hospitalized and withdrew from school. Five other pledges backed his statement.

Blacksburg Police Lt. Mike Albert says an investigation was conducted, but no criminal charges were filed. He didn't immediately reply to email and voicemail messages asking why.

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Panel: Poland's new police law allows privacy infringement

WARSAW, Poland (AP)  An international human rights commission on Friday criticized a new Polish law regulating police surveillance powers as leaving too much room for breaching the privacy of individuals.

The opinion released by the Venice Commission, a body of constitutional law experts with the Council of Europe, was the second criticism it has issued concerning policies of Poland's conservative government that took power in November.

The commission said that safeguards included in the law that took effect in February to increase police surveillance powers are "insufficient to prevent excessive use and unjustified interference with individual privacy."

Meanwhile, Poland's lawmakers adopted on Friday a new law proposed by the government that allows for close surveillance of people suspected of links to terrorism. It allows for monitoring of suspects' phone calls, mail and internet activity, especially in the case of foreigners. It allows authorities to remove suspicious content from the internet, ban public gatherings and use sharpshooters in emergencies. It also coordinates the task of various intelligence and security forces.

Opposition lawmaker Monika Wielichowska said that with the law, Poland is moving in the direction of a "dictatorship." Interior Minister Mariusz Blaszczak said on Twitter it will help ensure public security.

The law is expected to obtain the required approval from the Senate and from President Andrzej Duda.

The government argues that new threats to public security and high-level events, such as a visit by Pope Francis visit and a NATO summit, both in July, require wider surveillance.

Concerning the police law, the Venice Commission said that traditional surveillance methods like wire-tapping, and new ones, like collecting data related to the use of internet and mobile phones, were areas where more oversight was needed by independent bodies of experts. The opinion was sought by the Council of Europe's Parliamentary Assembly.

Some types of metadata are so sensitive that authorization by a judge should be required for obtaining them, the commission argued.

For less sensitive data, subsequent oversight should be made possible, it said.

In March, the commission criticized Poland for effectively paralyzing the nation's top court, the Constitutional Tribunal, and said such actions could undermine the country's democracy, human rights and the rule of law. It urged Poland to find a quick solution to the stalemate, which, however, has not yet been found. The government insists on placing some judges of its choice on the panel, the opposition says that would be a breach of the constitution.

The commission can recommend solutions but has no enforcement powers.
Merkel hopes for progress this month on Ukraine peace deal

BERLIN (AP)  German Chancellor Angela Merkel says she hopes for progress this month on implementing a peace deal for eastern Ukraine.

Merkel noted in a speech Friday to representatives of family-owned businesses that last year's Minsk peace agreement is "the basis on which we can create the conditions to lift the sanctions" against Russia that were imposed over its actions in Ukraine.

Merkel reiterated that "sanctions are not an end in themselves" and said that "good economic relations between the European Union and Russia are in all our interests." She added that, in the long term, a common economic area stretching from Vladivostok to Lisbon "is an idea on which she should work step by step."

German Chancellor Angela Merkel addresses the media during a joint news conference with the President of Azerbaijan, Ilham Aliyev, as part of a meeting at the chancellery in Berlin, Germany, Tuesday, June 7, 2016. (AP Photo/Michael Sohn)
Prosecutors: new search, arrest in Brussels attacks probe

BRUSSELS (AP)  Belgian authorities have carried out another search and arrest in the investigation into the suicide bombings that killed 32 at Brussels Airport and the city's subway in March.

The Federal Prosecutor's Office on Friday said an apartment in the Schaerbeek area of Brussels was searched the previous day and a man detained and charged with participation in the activities of a terrorist group, terrorist murder and attempted terrorist murder.

The 31-year-old Belgian national was identified only as Ali E.H.A.

The bombers who attacked the airport took a taxi to their target from Schaerbeek, with their bombs hidden in suitcases.
Poland appoints economist as new central bank head

WARSAW, Poland (AP)  Poland's lawmakers have approved economist Adam Glapinski to be the nation's new top banker.

Glapinski succeeds Marek Belka, whose six-year term as head of the National Bank of Poland expired Friday.

The 66-year-old Glapinski is a member of the bank's Monetary Policy Council and its board of managers, and is considered to be a moderate. He has vowed to protect the bank's independence from political pressure.

Glapinski is an associate of Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the head of the ruling conservative Law and Justice party that is focused on improving living standards for those on the lowest income through a system of financial benefits.
lawyer claimed that she shot herself while taking a selfie

Kenyan police on Friday charged a British man with murder after a woman was shot in his house.

Richard David Alden, former chief executive of Wananchi Group, an internet and multimedia service provider in Kenya, denies the charges.

Justice Stella Mutuku ordered that the 53 year old be held until Thursday, when his bail application will be heard.

Richard David Alden's (left) previous lawyer told British newspapers that Grace Wangeci (right), 42, died after she shot herself Saturday while taking a selfie with Alden's gun

His previous lawyer, Evans Monari, told British newspapers that Grace Wangeci, 42, died after she shot herself Saturday while taking a selfie with Alden's gun.

Alden's current lawyer, Cliff Ombeta, says Alden was in a different room when Wangeci shot herself and that there is no proof she was taking a selfie.

'Our defense is that while this incident took place, Mr. Alden was in a different room where the gun and the safe were. The deceased is the only one who knows what happened,' Ombeta said.

In his argument for bail, the father of three said he took Wangeci to a hospital after the shooting and called the police.
Turkey's Erdogan, in US for Ali's funeral, cuts trip short

ANKARA, Turkey (AP)  Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Friday abruptly cut short a visit to the United States to attend boxing legend Muhammad Ali's funeral and returned home.

Erdogan, who has expressed his admiration for Ali as a boxer and a champion of Muslim rights, did not make a statement on his arrival in Istanbul and his office did not provide an explanation as to why he had returned early.

Turkish media reports however, said the Turkish leader was vexed after funeral organizers rejected his request to lay a piece from the cloth covering the Kaaba  located in Islam's most sacred mosque in Mecca, Saudi Arabia  on Ali's coffin during a funeral ceremony held Thursday.

Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, second right, Mehmet Gormez, the head of Turkey's Religious Affairs, second left, and Berat Albayrak, Turkish Energy Minister and son-in-law of Erdogan, left, attend Muhammad Ali's Jenazah, a traditional Muslim service, in Freedom Hall in Louisville, Ky, USA, Thursday, June 9, 2016. Officials say Turkey's president, who flew to the United States to attend the funeral of Muhammad Ali, is cutting short his visit and returning home, according to Private Dogan news agency, which reported that the Turkish leader was upset that funeral organizers rejected his request to lay a piece from the cloth covering the Kaaba, in Mecca, on Ali's coffin. (Kayhan Ozer, Presidential Press Service/Pool via AP)

They reportedly also denied a request for Turkey's top cleric  who had traveled to Louisville, Kentucky, with Erdogan to attend the funeral  to read from the Quran, according to the private Dogan news agency.

Erdogan and Jordan's King Abdullah were scheduled to speak at the funeral but lost their spots when two other speakers were added later.

Erdogan attended the traditional Muslim prayer ceremony for Ali on Thursday but missed Friday's funeral. Ali died last Friday at 74 after a long battle with Parkinson's disease.

Before departing for Turkey, the president attended a Ramadan fast-breaking dinner given in his honor by a community of U.S.-based Meskhetian Turks  an ethnic group which was expelled from their homeland by Stalin in 1944  and paid tribute to Ali.

"Muhammad Ali drew our admiration because despite all obstacles he continued to walk on the path he knew to be right, after converting to Islam at age 22, in a country like the United States," Turkey's state-run Anadolu Agency quoted Erdogan as saying during dinner.

"While he went from victory to victory in the boxing rings, Muhammad Ali also became the voice of the Muslims in all corners of the world, as well as of the oppressed and aggrieved," he said. "Every punch that he threw was a breath of relief for the oppressed and the aggrieved, because they knew that Muhammad Ali was leading this struggle for them."

Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his wife Emine Erdogan visit Muhammad Ali Museum in Louisville, Ky, USA, Thursday, June 9, 2016. Officials say Turkey's president, who flew to the United States to attend the funeral of Muhammad Ali, is cutting short his visit and returning home. According to Private Dogan news agency the Turkish leader was upset that funeral organizers rejected his request to lay a piece from the cloth covering the Kaaba, in Mecca, on Ali's coffin.(Kayhan Ozer, Presidential Press Service/Pool via AP)

Flowers pile up on the hearse carrying Muhammad Ali as spectators watch his funeral procession enter Cave Hill Cemetery, Friday, June 10, 2016, in Louisville, Ky. Ali died last Friday at 74 after a long battle with Parkinson's disease. (AP Photo/John Minchillo)

Stephfon Moran, left, sits with his grandson Kevin Slaughter, 9, as they wait for Muhammad Ali's memorial service to begin Friday, June 10, 2016, in Louisville, Ky. (AP Photo/David Goldman)
Police in Alabama shoot, kill man in Birmingham

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (AP)  Authorities in Alabama have identified a man who was shot and killed by a police officer in suburban Birmingham.

Jefferson County Chief Deputy Coroner Bill Yates said in an email Friday that 34-year-old William Michael Hollis was shot to death by an Irondale Police officer.

Alabama Law Enforcement Agency Senior Trooper Chuck Daniel said in an emailed statement that the shooting happened Thursday after a vehicle pursuit out of Irondale, a suburb of Alabama's largest city. Hollis, a white male, was reportedly armed.

Irondale Police Sgt. Michael Mangina says no officers were injured. The Alabama Law Enforcement Agency is investigating.
Turkey sets in motion prosecution of lawmakers

ISTANBUL (AP)  Turkey's Justice Ministry has sent dozens of cases involving 57 lawmakers to public prosecutors after the president lifted their legal immunity, it said Friday.

Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag said 152 parliamentarians in the 550-seat assembly could eventually face prosecution for criminal offenses.

The 152 deputies face 799 charges for offenses ranging from insulting the president to corruption and supporting terrorism.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan recently approved a constitutional amendment lifting immunity from a pool of lawmakers.

The changes have been criticized by officials in the European Union and Germany and condemned by Turkish opposition lawmakers. Last week, Turkey's highest court rejected a petition by opposition legislators to strike down the legislation.

Erdogan has repeatedly called for the trial of pro-Kurdish lawmakers on terrorism-related charges, publicly accusing them of being an arm of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK.

The Turkish state has been locked in renewed conflict with Kurdish fighters since last summer when a 2 -year truce with the PKK collapsed. Kurdish rebels have set up trenches, barricades and explosives to keep the authorities out of areas where they want autonomy.

Most of the lawmakers at risk of prosecution belong to the pro-Kurdish People's Democratic Party, HDP, or the opposition Republican People's Party. Some 29 deputies from the ruling Justice and Development Party, 10 from the Nationalist Movement Party and one independent could also face charges.

The vast majority of the charges  511 out of 779  have been levelled against deputies of the HDP, which entered the assembly for the first time last year.
Senate presses ahead on defense bill despite divisions

WASHINGTON (AP)  The Senate is heading toward passage of a defense policy bill that would authorize $602 billion in military spending, prohibit the closing of the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and require young women to register for a potential draft.

In a rare Friday session, the Senate voted 68-23 to proceed with the National Defense Authorization Act.

A vote on the legislation had been scheduled for earlier this week as lawmakers sought to resolve differences over potential amendments to the bill. Among them are measures that would allow Afghan civilians who assisted the American-led coalition to resettle in the United States, alter the military justice system to curb sexual assaults, and prohibit the indefinite detention of U.S. citizens.

The White House has threatened to veto the bill, objecting to the Guantanamo provision and others  including one that would limit the size of the president's National Security Council staff.

Even as progress in the Senate loomed, a prominent conservative group on Friday called for the legislation to be rejected over the female draft registration requirement and a lack of funding to modernize the military after 15 years of non-stop demands.

"Regardless of whatever merits the bill may have, it deserves to be defeated because lawmakers should not force young women into military services through the Selective Service," Heritage vice president Dan Holler said in an emailed statement.

A dispute that erupted late Thursday underscored divisions among Republicans, many of whom have called for the bill to be passed urgently.

A bipartisan group of senators is pushing to extend and expand a program that gives visas to Afghans who defied the Taliban and worked for the coalition as interpreters, firefighters and construction laborers. Without the option to leave, they and their families risk being harmed or killed by militants, the top American commander in Afghanistan has warned.

Despite broad backing, an amendment to keep the so-called special immigrant visa program from expiring bogged down after Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, objected to a vote being held.

Lee, who said he supports the Afghan visa program, demanded that senators also agree to a vote on his amendment that prevents the government from detaining indefinitely U.S. citizens apprehended on American soil for being suspected of supporting a terrorist group.

But Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., objected to a vote on Lee's amendment, leading to a stalemate. Graham said Lee's amendment could lead to terrorists being treated as criminals instead of enemy combatants.

The chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Republican John McCain of Arizona, on Friday lamented the objections, saying that's not the way the Senate is supposed to operate.

"I have reached a level of frustration that I would even consider changing the rules of the Senate (so) that one individual out of 100 can't bring everything to a screeching halt," McCain said.

Due to the Senate's procedural rules, McCain said he was forced to object to an amendment by Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., that would make a major change in how the military handles allegations of sexual misconduct.

Her measure would strip senior military officers of their authority to decide whether sex crimes and other serious offenses go to trial. That responsibility would be given instead to independent military trial counsels. Proponents of Gillibrand's amendment say a seismic change is needed to end sexual assaults in the ranks.

But the Pentagon has objected. U.S. military officials said curbing a commander's power to punish or pardon service members will send a message there is a lack of faith in the officer corps. They've also argued that removing the prosecution decision from the chain of command will mean fewer victims of sexual assault get justice.

Sen. Jerry Moran, R-Kansas, is seeking a vote on his amendment that would bar the Defense Department from spending money on the design, construction or modification of facilities in the United States to house Guantanamo detainees. Moran's measure is spurred by the possibility of detainees being moved to the Army prison at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.

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Tesla denies safety problems with Model S suspensions

DETROIT (AP)  Electric car maker Tesla Motors Inc. on Friday denied allegations that there are safety problems with its vehicle suspensions.

The Palo Alto, California, company said one of its cars had an abnormal amount of rust on a suspension part, a problem it hasn't seen in any other car.

On Thursday, the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said it asked for information from owners and Tesla about Model S suspension failures. The agency has not opened a formal investigation and said late Friday that the inquiry was a "routine data collection."

FILE - In this Monday, April 25, 2016, file photo, visitors gather around a Tesla Model S electric car on display at the Beijing International Automotive Exhibition in Beijing. Tesla Motors is denying allegations that there are safety problems with its vehicle suspensions. The Palo Alto, Calif., company says one of its cars had an abnormal amount of rust on a suspension part, a problem it hasn't seen in any other car. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein, File)

Tesla the Model S with the rust had over 70,000 miles on it and was caked in dirt when picked up for service. The company said it has given the agency all relevant information.

NHTSA said Thursday that it was concerned that Tesla has asked owners to sign nondisclosure agreements about safety issues. The agency said it was concerned the agreements could prevent owners from reporting problems to the government. But it said Friday that Tesla has clarified the agreement language in a "satisfactory way" that resolves the issue.

Tesla said it has asked customers to sign a "Goodwill Agreement" when it agrees to fix a problem that wasn't the fault of the car. Those agreements make sure that repairing the car is not used against the company in court, Tesla said.

"This agreement never comes close to mentioning NHTSA or the government and has nothing to do with trying to stop someone from communicating with NHTSA," Tesla's statement said.
Federer beats Mayer to set up semifinal with Thiem

STUTTGART, Germany (AP)  Top-seeded Roger Federer cruised in the tiebreakers to beat German qualifier Florian Mayer 7-6 (2), 7-6 (1) for a place in the Mercedes Cup semifinals on Friday.

Federer struggled in some parts of the match but was at his best when most needed. He saved a set point to force the second tiebreaker, and fired a powerful forehand to clinch the match.

"I am very happy to have made it two sets," Federer said.

His next opponent will be rising star and third-seeded Dominic Thiem, who beat him in the third round of the Italian Open before Federer went on a month-long break that included the French Open because of a back injury.

Thiem, from Austria, came from behind to beat Mikhail Youzhny of Russia 3-6, 6-4, 7-5.

Federer fired 15 aces to gain his 1,072nd win on the tour, surpassing Ivan Lendl for second place in the Open era behind Jimmy Connors with 1,256.

"It's crucial to serve well in a tiebreaker," Federer said. Two months shy of his 35th birthday, Federer is looking for his first title of the year following knee surgery and the back problem.

"It's good to be back and to win two matches," he said.

Thiem, a semifinalist at the French Open, said he was surprised to find himself at the same stage on grass.

"I really didn't expect it. But against Roger on grass, I'm not expecting anything," Thiem said.

Seventh-seeded Philipp Kohlschreiber beat qualifier Radek Stepanek 6-4, 7-5 and will face Juan Martin del Potro in the other semifinal.
South African fined $10,000 over 'monkey' Facebook post

JOHANNESBURG (AP)  A white South African woman has been fined the equivalent of $10,000 for referring to black beachgoers as "monkeys" in a Facebook post.

Penny Sparrow's remark in January caused an outcry. The ruling African National Congress urged stiff punishment of those making racist remarks.

"Her words convey the message both explicitly and implicitly to the reader that black people are not worthy of being described as human beings," magistrate Irfaan Khalil of the Umzinto Equality Court in Durban said in a written judgment Friday.

Sparrow's daughter told the court her mother was too ill to appear.

Sparrow wrote that some celebrating the new year at beaches were making a mess.
A decorated Army Reserve officer at Fort Bragg left bacon at a mosque and brandished a handgun while threatening to kill Muslims and bury them there, North Carolina authorities said Friday.

Maj. Russell Thomas Langford, 36, made death threats against members of the Masjid Al Madina mosque in Raeford about 20 miles southwest of Fayetteville, authorities said.

'He told people at the mosque that he would kill them and bury them behind the mosque,' said Capt. John Kivett of the Sheriff's Office. 'He brandished a weapon while he was on the property.'

Russell Thomas Langford has been charged with ethnic intimidation and assault with a deadly weapon, among other counts after he allegedly issued a series of threats to mosque members

Langford, who lives in Fayetteville, was charged with ethnic intimidation, assault with a deadly weapon, going armed to the terror of the public, communicating threats, stalking and disorderly conduct, the sheriff's office said.

'It was absolutely frightening because you were in your worship place people eating and praying and someone pulls a gun out,' Farhae Chouehry, a worshiper at the mosque, told WNCN.

It began Thursday afternoon when the man insulted a mosque member doing construction work nearby and then left the packages of bacon at the mosque entrance, according to authorities and witnesses.

Advocacy groups say pork is often used to insult Muslims, whose religion doesn't allow them to eat it. The Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations said the act constituted a desecration of the place of worship.

Witnesses say the suspect left and returned to the Masjid Al Madina mosque several times in his Chevrolet Tahoe, prompting tense moments inside while children sheltered in the back of the building. Authorities said there were no injuries.

At one point, the suspect followed one member home, resulting in the stalking charge, according to a Hoke County Sheriff's Office news release. The person tried to evade him but couldn't. He also allegedly tried to run down a mosque member with his SUV. It's unclear if the same member was involved.

A mug shot of Langford shows him with close-cropped hair, a tattoo resembling the U.S. flag on his right forearm and a green shirt emblazoned with a military-style rifle emblem.

Capt. Eric Connor with the U.S. Army Reserves Command at Fort Bragg said Langford first enlisted in the Army in 2003 and served two tours of Iraq, one in 2004 and another in 2008, according to WNCN.

He is a highly decorated vet who has been awarded a Bronze Star, Army Commendation Medal, Army Good Conduct Medal, as well as other theater service medals. He went off active duty in November 2008 and went into the Army Reserve.

Langford has been working in the Army Reserves G 3-3 Mobilization Section at Fort Bragg and had no prior issues in his Army record.

Members of the Masjid Al Madina mosque in Raeford, N.C., attend a service on Friday, the day after Army Reserve officer Langford was arrested for threatening them

Authorities found several handguns and other weapons, plus about 500 rounds of ammunition in Langford's vehicle, Kivett said. He said Langford didn't make specific threats about a mass shooting other than to say he wanted to kill mosque members.

Langford made his initial court appearance Friday, posted a $60,000 secured bond and was released, Kivett said.

Since posting bond, Langford has been placed under the control of his commander on base at Fort Bragg, said Army Reserve spokesman Capt. Eric Connor. He said what Langford is charged with doing is 'totally contradictory to Army values.'

Langford, who works full-time as a major in the Army Reserve, served two tours in Iraq while on active Army duty and earned the Bronze Star for 'outstanding dedication to duty during combat' while with a military police battalion, Connor said. He received other decorations including the Army Good Conduct Medal.

About three miles from the mosque, several people at a house listed by authorities as Langford's address declined to comment Friday afternoon. Phone listings for him rang unanswered.

The threats came during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations asked authorities to investigate the case as a possible hate crime and increase patrols around the area, especially during nighttime Ramadan activities.

Ahead of midday prayers Friday, a patrol car was parked outside the mosque just off a state highway between Fayetteville and Raeford.

'We've never had a problem with anyone,' said Kamal Allan of Raeford. The mosque has been there for about three decades.

The general contractor and mosque member said he was leading a crew tearing down a nearby outbuilding when the suspect drove up in the late afternoon. Allan said Langford began insulting him and using expletives while asking white crew members, 'Do you know who you're working for?'

'I said: 'Don't talk to him. Don't talk to him. Just leave him alone and let the police handle it,' Allan said.

Retired Army officer Mohammed Khan, who served three decades in the military, said he was delivering tables to the mosque when Langford drove up. He said he spoke calmly to Langford, who was spewing hate and eventually flashed a gun at him.

'I was kind of dismayed, shocked and in disbelief. In all of my 32 years of military service I never encountered this kind of redneck,' said Khan, who still serves as a volunteer Muslim chaplain at Fort Bragg. 'He told me to go back to my country. I said, 'Which country do you want me to go to? Give me the ticket and I will fly.' He said, 'No I will not give you a ticket. I will kill you and bury your body right there.''

Khan said Langford followed another member of the mosque to that person's home.

Witness Abdu Alsaidi, another mosque member, said police were called in the late afternoon, but they didn't arrest Langford until sometime after 8 p.m.

At one point while Langford was parked out front, Alsaidi said members made children move to the back of the building for fear of an attack.
Uganda to withdraw troops from Central African Republic

KAMPALA, Uganda (AP)  Uganda plans to withdraw all of its troops from a mission in Central African Republic whose goal is to hunt down members of the Lord's Resistance Army rebel group, a military official said Friday.

Authorities have notified the African Union of plans to withdraw the 2,500 or so troops before the end of this year, Ugandan military spokesman Lt. Col. Paddy Ankunda told The Associated Press.

Ankunda said the rebel group no longer poses a threat to Uganda, where the rebels' presence once forced millions of people to live in camps for the displaced.

"The rebels have been sufficiently degraded," he said.

The Ugandan soldiers are operating in the jungles of Central African Republic under the AU mission, supported by U.S. special forces.

LRA leader Joseph Kony is wanted by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity and war crimes.

He is believed to be hiding in Kafia Kingi, a Sudanese-controlled enclave on the border of Central African Republic and South Sudan. Watchdog groups have described Kafia Kingi as a safe haven for Kony because African troops hunting for him do not have access to the territory.

One of Kony's former lieutenants, Dominic Ongwen, was arrested in Central African Republic last year and sent to face trial at The Hague.

The LRA, which originated in Uganda in the 1980s as a tribal uprising against the government, became well-known for kidnapping children to become fighters and forcing girls to be sex slaves.
Outside jury likely for Pennsylvania barracks ambush trial

MILFORD, Pa. (AP)  An out-of-town jury will decide the fate of a survivalist charged with fatally ambushing a state police trooper near a rural barracks, prosecutors and defense lawyers agreed Friday.

The stipulation keeps Eric Frein's murder trial in Pike County, where he is charged with opening fire outside the Blooming Grove barracks on Sept. 12, 2014, killing Cpl. Bryon Dickson and seriously wounding Trooper Alex Douglass.

Frien led police on a tense 48-day manhunt through the northeastern Pennsylvania woods before U.S. marshals caught him outside an abandoned airplane hangar about 30 miles from the shooting scene, prosecutors said.

He has pleaded not guilty. Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty.

Defense lawyers had asserted that Frein couldn't get a fair trial in Pike County, in the Poconos, because of the heavy news coverage about the ambush. His attorneys also said that Pike County District Attorney Ray Tonkin distributed campaign fliers last year that referenced the case and surrounded Frein "with an aura of guilt."

With Friday's stipulation, the defense dropped its bid to get the trial moved elsewhere. A judge told the sides at a pretrial hearing that he will likely sign off on it but needs to work out the details with state court administrators.
Keiko Fujimori concedes defeat in Peru presidential vote

LIMA, Peru (AP)  The daughter of imprisoned ex-President Alberto Fujimori conceded defeat to conservative economist Pedro Pablo Kuczynski on Friday, ending five days of suspense over Peru's closest presidential election in decades.

In a short statement, Keiko Fujimori wished Kuczynski good luck and vowed to lead a responsible opposition to his government in congress, where her party controls 73 of 130 seats.

But in a not-so subtle jab at Kuczynski, a former Wall Street banker, she accused politicians, business leaders and members of the media of orchestrating a "hate-filled" campaign to discredit her candidacy.

Keiko Fujimori concedes defeat in the presidential election in Lima, Peru, Friday, June 10, 2016. The daughter of imprisoned Peruvian ex-President Alberto Fujimori conceded defeat to economist Pedro Pablo Kuczynski in the nation's closest presidential election in five decades. (AP Photo/Martin Mejia)

"The country has witnessed a campaign that promoted clashes between Peruvians, that sought and managed to awaken hatred and fanaticism," she said while surrounded by lawmakers from her Popular Force party.

Fujimori, 41, had been favored to win the presidential runoff after topping a crowded field of candidates in the first round by almost 20 points.

But she hobbled to the finish line after Kuczynski accused her of being a harbinger of a "narco-state" when it was revealed that the secretary-general of her party was being investigated by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration for alleged money laundering.

The scandal, which fueled fears of a return to the corruption and criminality associated with her father's authoritarian rule, proved decisive: After trailing in pre-election polls, Kuczynski prevailed by fewer than 43,000 votes, making it the closest race in Peru since 1962.

"This was a real shock to her," said Steve Levitsky, a Harvard University political scientist who has spent two decades studying Peru. "She didn't plan for this scenario. She and her supporters all expected to win for the last five years."

As Fujimori regrouped, the president-elect on got to work forming his government as regional leaders and the Obama administration offered congratulations.

His first move was to confirm his campaign manager, former JP Morgan investment banker Alfredo Thorne, as his finance minister. For other cabinet picks, he said he's looking for people with a more political background.

"I'm a technocrat but I need to surround myself with some musicians who know how to play the cajon," said Kuczynski, referring to the box-shaped Peruvian percussion instrument, in comments to Latina radio.

Kuczynski, an Oxford and Princeton-educated economist, has had a long career in business, most of it in the U.S. Despite being married to an American and having relinquished his U.S. passport only recently, he said his first trip as president would be to China, whose purchases of gold and copper have fueled the country's decade-long boom.

Despite the bitterness of the campaign, Kuczynski also seemed determined to seek an alliance with Fujimori. The two share a pro-business agenda and Kuczynski even supported her in the 2011 runoff won by President Ollanta Humala.

"In a democracy, all voices are welcome," Kucyznski said in a message on Twitter thanking Fujimori after she conceded.

Kuczynski's fledgling party, whose initials echo the PPK moniker with which he's universally known in Peru, has just 18 seats in congress, so he'll need to seek alliances.

One way to possibly unlock support in congress is releasing Alberto Fujimori, who is serving a 25-year sentence for corruption and supporting death squads during the 1990s.

Keiko Fujimori during the campaign pledged she would never pardon her father, but Kuczynski was more flexible.

In his first interview since being declared winner, Kuczynski said that while he doesn't favor pardoning Fujimori, he would sign a bill giving older inmates like him the right to house arrest if lawmakers pass one.

Presidential candidate Pedro Pablo Kuczynski speaks during a news conference in Lima, Peru, Thursday, June 9, 2016. Kuczynski won the majority of votes in the country's closest presidential contest in five decades, Peruvian electoral authorities said Thursday. His rival Keiko Fujimori has yet to concede however. (AP Photo/Martin Mejia)

Keiko Fujimori concedes defeat in Lima, Peru, Friday, June 10, 2016. The daughter of imprisoned Peruvian ex-President Alberto Fujimori conceded defeat to economist Pedro Pablo Kuczynski in the nation's closest presidential election in five decades. (AP Photo/Martin Mejia)

FILE - In this Nov. 28, 2013 file photo, Peru's jailed former President Alberto Fujimori holds up a notepad with a message that reads in Spanish "Why do you summon an accused man who is sick with cancer?" as he leaves his court hearing at a police base on the outskirts of Lima, Peru. Perus apparent president-elect says he is open to the possibility of granting house arrest to Fujimori. Pedro Pablo Kuczysnki reiterated the campaign pledge in his first interview since declaring himself the victor in the June 5, 2016 election over the imprisoned ex-presidents daughter, Keiko Fujimori. Alberto Fujimori is serving 25 years for corruption and supporting death squads during his authoritarian rule in the 1990s. (AP Photo/Karel Navarro, File)
US airlines to start scheduled flights to Cuba

HAVANA (AP)  Six airlines won permission Friday to resume scheduled commercial air service from the U.S. to Cuba for the first time in more than five decades, another milestone in President Barack Obama's campaign to normalize relations between Cold War foes.

The airlines  American, Frontier, JetBlue, Silver Airways, Southwest and Sun Country  were approved by the Department of Transportation for a total of 155 roundtrip flights per week. They'll fly from five U.S. cities to nine cities in Cuba other than Havana.

U.S. law still prohibits tourist travel to Cuba, but a dozen other categories of travel are permitted, including family visits, official business, journalist visits, professional meetings and educational and religious activities. The Obama administration has eased rules to the point where travelers are now free to design their own "people-to-people" cultural exchanges with little oversight.

In this Thursday, June 9, 2016, photo, Galo Beltran, Cuba country manager for American Airlines, tests a handheld baggage scanner at Havanas Jose Marti International Airport. Beltran is based in Dallas. The Department of Transportation said Friday that six airlines: American, Frontier, JetBlue, Silver Airways, Southwest and Sun Country, have been selected for routes to nine Cuban cities other than Havana. (AP Photo/Scott Mayerowitz)

Most of the airline service is expected to begin this fall and early winter, the department said.

Approval is still required by the Cuban government, but some carriers say they plan to start selling tickets within the next few days while they wait for signoffs from Cuba.

More than a year ago, Obama announced it was time to "begin a new journey" with the communist country. "Today we are delivering on his promise," said Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx.

As it considers opening routes to Havana, the department's selection process has been complicated because airlines have requested far more routes than are available under the U.S. agreement with Cuba. A decision on Havana routes is expected later this summer.

The routes approved Friday were not contested because there was less interest among U.S. airlines in flying to Cuban locations other than Havana. The routes include service from Miami, Chicago, Philadelphia, Minneapolis and Fort Lauderdale, Florida. The Cuban destinations are Camaguey, Cayo Coco, Cayo Largo, Cienfuegos, Holguin, Manzanillo, Matanzas, Santa Clara and Santiago de Cuba.

All flights currently operating between the two countries are charters, but the agreement the administration signed with Cuba in February allows for up to 110 additional daily flights  more than five times the current charter operations.

The Transportation Security Administration is in the process of completing a security review of Cuban airports expected to have direct flights to the United States, and it is working with the Cuban government to schedule and complete the security assessment of any additional airports that propose to begin service, the agency said.

American Airlines has been the most aggressive in its approach, requesting more than half the possible slots to Havana plus service to five smaller Cuban cities. The airline has a large hub in Miami, home to the largest Cuban-American population. The Fort Worth, Texas-based airline has also been flying on behalf of charter companies for the longest time, since 1991.

U.S. airlines have been feverishly working to establish relationships with Cuban authorities. For instance, American had a number of meetings this week in Havana with Cuban aviation and banking officials.

"We have been working for months on this plan," Galo Beltran, Cuba country manager for American Airlines, told The Associated Press this week during the trip to Havana. "For us, it is going to be fairly easy because of the experience we have."

Cuba already has seen dramatic growth in flights. Last year, it saw 18 percent more passengers than in 2014, according to government aviation officials.

Currently, 46 airlines fly to Cuba, including Air France, Aeromexico, KLM, Air Canada, Aeroflot and Iberia.

Cuban aviation officials say they are ready for the extra flights but that questions remain, especially at Havana, about where the additional planes will park.

There has been plenty of interest by Americans in visiting Cuba since relations between the two nations started to thaw in December 2014. Nearly 160,000 U.S. leisure travelers flew to Cuba last year, along with hundreds of thousands of Cuban-Americans visiting family.

Prices for an hourlong charter flight now are about $500. Commercial airlines will probably offer flights for significantly less, although none has publicly discussed pricing. The check-in process for charters is also a cumbersome one, and the companies lack the traditional supports of commercial aviation such as online booking and 24-hour customer service.

___

Lowy reported from Washington.
The Latest: Murder trial for van driver wraps for the week

BALTIMORE (AP)  The Latest on the trial for the police van driver facing a second-degree murder charge in the death of Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old black man whose neck was broken in the van (all times local):

4 p.m.

Testimony has wrapped up in the second day of trial for a police van driver charged with murder in the death of a man whose neck was broken in the back of the transport wagon.

Officer Caesar Goodson, left, one of six Baltimore city police officers charged in connection to the death of Freddie Gray, leaves the courthouse after the first day of his trial, Thursday, June 9, 2016, in Baltimore. (AP Photo/Brayan Woolston, Pool)

Caesar Goodson is charged with second-degree murder, manslaughter and other offenses stemming from Freddie Gray's death.

The state called Officer Lloyd Sobboh to testify, and showed a video of him demonstrating being placed inside a transport wagon with his hands cuffed and legs shackled as Gray was. Prosecutors also called Brandon Ross and Jamel Baker, two friends of Gray's who witnessed Gray being placed in the wagon. Ross also took a video of Gray's arrest.

Prosecutors say Goodson gave Gray a "rough ride" and was negligent when he failed to call for medical help. Goodson's attorneys say the officer drove carefully, and did nothing wrong.

Trial will resume Monday.

___

Noon:

A medical examiner who did the autopsy on a 25-year-old black man who died in police custody last year has testified that she never believed his death was an accident.

Dr. Carol Allan testified Friday in the trial of Officer Caesar Goodson, who faces second-degree murder and other charges in the death of Freddie Gray. Gray died a week after his neck was broken in the back of Goodson's police wagon. Goodson is black.

Allan ruled Gray's death a homicide.

Goodson's attorney said Allan told an investigator that Gray's death was a "freakish accident" before meeting with prosecutors and changing her mind.

But Allan testified that "the word accident never crossed my lips."

Prosecutors say Goodson gave Gray a "rough ride," intending to injure him. Goodson's attorneys say the officer did nothing wrong.

___

10:30 a.m.

In the second day of a Baltimore police van driver's murder trial, prosecutors have called to the witness stand a doctor who did an autopsy on a man who died after his neck was broken in the back of the van.

Officer Caesar Goodson is charged with second-degree murder, manslaughter and other offenses stemming from Freddie Gray's death. Gray died April 19, a week after his spine was snapped in Goodson's van.

The state on Friday called its eighth witness, assistant medical examiner Carol Allan, who ruled Gray's death a homicide.

Prosecutors say Goodson gave Gray a "rough ride" and failed to call for medical help. Goodson's attorneys say Goodson did nothing wrong and followed orders.

___

5 a.m.

Prosecutors will call more witnesses to the stand to try and prove that a police van driver committed second-degree murder when he allegedly took a 25-year-old black man, who was handcuffed and shackled, for a "rough ride."

Officer Caesar Goodson's trial in the death of Freddie Gray began Thursday.

Gray died April 19, 2015, a week after his neck was broken in Goodson's wagon.

Prosecutors say Goodson intentionally meant to hurt Gray by not buckling him into a seat belt and speeding, running a stop sign and making a sharp turn.

Goodson's defense attorneys say the rough ride never happened and that Gray's injuries were self-inflicted when the man stood up inside a moving vehicle.

Officer Caesar Goodson, left, one of six Baltimore city police officers charged in connection to the death of Freddie Gray, leaves the courthouse after the first day of his trial, Thursday, June 9, 2016, in Baltimore. (AP Photo/Brayan Woolston, Pool)

Arthur B. Johnson Jr., of Baltimore, demonstrates alone outside Baltimore's Courthouse East on the first day of the trial of Officer Caesar Goodson, not pictured, one of six Baltimore city police officers charged in connection to the death of Freddie Gray, in Baltimore, Thursday, June 9, 2016. Goodson, the driver of the transport wagon that carried Gray after his arrest, faces second-degree murder, manslaughter and other charges. (AP Photo/Steve Ruark)

FILE - In this March 3, 2016, file photo, Officer Caesar Goodson Jr., one of six Baltimore city police officers charged in connection to the death of Freddie Gray, leaves the Maryland Court of Appeals in Annapolis, Md. Prosecutors say Goodson, the driver of the transport wagon, is the most culpable in Gray's death, and that he was grossly negligent when he failed to buckle Gray into a seat belt and call for medical aid during Gray's ride. But with no eye witnesses and very little physical evidence, experts say the government could be facing an uphill battle. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana, File)

Chief Deputy State's Attorney Michael Schatzow, left, and Deputy State's Attorney Janice Bledsoe arrive for the first day of the trial of Officer Caesar Goodson, not pictured, charged with murder in the death of of Freddie Gray, Thursday, June 9, 2016. Goodson, the driver of the transport wagon that carried Gray after his arrest, faces second-degree murder, manslaughter and other charges. (AP Photo/Steve Ruark)

Baltimore State's Attorney Marilyn Mosby, leaves the courthouse in Baltimore after a lunch break during the trial of Officer Caesar Goodson Jr., charged in connection to the death of Freddie Gray, Thursday, June 9, 2016, in Baltimore. Goodson, the driver of the transport wagon that carried Gray after his arrest, faces second-degree murder, manslaughter and other charges. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

Baltimore Police Officer Caesar Goodson, center, leaves Courthouse East with his lawyer Matthew Fraling on Monday, June 6, 2016, in Baltimore. Caesar Goodson, who was driving the transport wagon, faces second-degree murder, manslaughter, assault, misconduct in office and reckless endangerment charges in the death of Freddie Gray. (Jerry Jackson/The Baltimore Sun via AP) WASHINGTON EXAMINER OUT; MANDATORY CREDIT
Governor to military: Fund blood tests over tainted water

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP)  Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf has called on the military to fund blood tests for nearly 70,000 residents in suburban Philadelphia who might have been exposed to contaminated water.

The Democratic governor wrote a letter to the secretaries of the Navy and Air Force on Thursday issuing the request to fund tests for residents in Warminster, Warrington and Horsham.

"We believe blood testing is critical to addressing the concerns of the private citizens who may have been exposed," Wolf said in the letter.

Lawmakers have called on the federal government to do more to address concerns over contamination of local water supplies with unregulated chemicals. Perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) and perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS) were widely used for decades at three area military bases. The compounds are found in the firefighting foams that have been used on military bases throughout the country, as well as in household items including food packaging.

The state Department of Health issued a "very conservative" estimate that testing could cost $7 million.

An Environmental Protection Agency testing program first found the chemicals in public drinking water supplies two years ago near the former Naval Air Station Joint Reserve Base in Horsham and former Naval Air Warfare Center in Warminster and the active Horsham Air Guard Station.
Seagull masala? Bird falls in vat of curry, turns orange

LONDON (AP)  Officials at a wildlife hospital say a seagull turned bright orange after falling into a vat of chicken tikka masala in Wales.

The gull was likely scavenging for food when it became stuck in the thick sauce.

The bird was rescued and taken to Vale Wildlife Hospital near Tewkesbury, a town about 110 miles (177 km) west of London. Staff cleaned the seagull until it returned to its original color, but said it still smelled spicy the following day.

In this image dated Monday June 6, 2016, supplied Friday June 10, 2016, by Vale Wildlife Hospital & Rehabilitation Centre, the seagull rests at Vale Wildlife Hospital near Tewkesbury, Wales, after the sea bird fell into a container of the bright orange thick sticky Indian spice dish, chicken tikka masala, which turned the seagul bright orange. The bird was rescued by workers before being taken to Vale Wildlife Hospital near Tewkesbury, Wales, to be cleaned and treated. (Vale Wildlife Hospital & Rehabilitation Centre via AP) MANDATORY CREDIT

Caroline Gould, who founded the wildlife hospital, has nicknamed the gull David Dickinson, after the British TV presenter known for his tanned complexion.
Pilot: Blue Angels will fly again 'when the time is right'

PENSACOLA, Fla. (AP)  During an emotional candlelight vigil in Florida, members of an elite flight demonstration squad said goodbye to one of its pilots, Marine Capt. Jeff Kuss.

Kuss, a 32-year-old married father of two young children, died June 2 while practicing for an airshow in Smyrna, Tennessee.

The Pensacola News-Journal (http://on.pnj.com/1Xe2Bpg ) reports fellow Blue Angel pilot Navy Lt. Matt Suyderhoud promised the crowd Thursday the squad will fly the skies over Pensacola where it is based "when the time is right."

The Navy announced in a news release that Kuss will be buried Saturday in a private ceremony in Durango, Colorado. The ceremony includes a flyover by the Checkerboards, Kuss' unit before joining the Blue Angels.
France: Israel's ban on Palestinians could escalate violence

UNITED NATIONS (AP)  France's foreign minister warned Friday that Israel's ban on Palestinians entering its territory following the "abominable" attack on a popular cafe in Tel Aviv could escalate violence instead of focus attention on the need to pursue peace.

Jean-Marc Ayrault reiterated France's condemnation of the attack, which killed four civilians, but was critical of Israel's response.

Israel imposed travel restrictions Thursday on Palestinians and sent hundreds of additional troops into the West Bank. On Friday, the military announced it was closing the West Bank until the end of the Jewish holiday of Shavuot on Sunday due to security concerns, except for "humanitarian and medical" cases and for Palestinians to worship at al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem.

In this photo provided by the United Nations, Jean-Marc Ayrault, center, Minister for Foreign Affairs and International Development of France, addresses the United Nations Security Council, Friday, June 10, 2016 at United Nations headquarters. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is seated to his left and Hasmik Egian, Acting Director of the Security Council Affairs Division, is to the right. Ayrault addressed a small group of reporters on Friday, warning that Israel's ban on Palestinians entering its territory following the "abominable" attack on a popular cafe in Tel Aviv could escalate violence instead of focus attention on the need to pursue peace. (Rick Bajornas/The United Nations via AP)

"The decision by the Israeli authorities today to revoke tens of thousands of entry permits could stoke tensions which could lead to a risk of escalation," Ayrault told a small group of reporters. "We must be careful about anything that could stoke tensions."

France currently holds the presidency of the U.N. Security Council and Ayrault was at U.N. headquarters to preside over an open council debate on the protection of civilians in peacekeeping operations.

Last Friday, France hosted an international meeting in Paris attended by more than two dozen Western and Arab countries to try to come up with a new strategy for Mideast peace and revive Israeli-Palestinian negotiations which have been all but dead for two years. The participants welcomed the "prospect" of a conference with both parties later this year.

"There must be a political initiative from the international community to create conditions to appease the situation and return to negotiations," Ayrault said.

"We need intense mobilization to start something new to force the parties, who will all be invited in the second part of the year to our conference, to talk to one another again," he said.

Ayrault told a news conference later he plans to set up working groups to see what incentives can be offered to the Israelis and Palestinians to come back to the negotiating table.

Earlier, he urged a halt to Israeli settlement building which he called a "serious provocation."

Israel captured the West Bank, Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem in the 1967 Mideast War. It withdrew from Gaza in 2005, but nearly 600,000 Israeli settlers remain in east Jerusalem and the West Bank.
Maryland county panel votes again to keep Rebel flag statue

EASTON, Md. (AP)  A Maryland county council has voted to keep a century-old statue depicting a color bearer holding a Confederate flag on the courthouse lawn.

The Star Democrat newspaper reports (http://bit.ly/24FFQd5) the Talbot County Council's unanimous decision Tuesday to keep the Talbot Boys Statue repeats one the council made in a closed session last fall. But that meeting, held in private, violated Maryland's Open Meetings Act.

The statue has faced criticism, and in July the NAACP recommended its removal.

County Council President Corey Pack said Tuesday that the Talbot Boys statue doesn't promote slavery, but the values of the Confederacy. He said it's part of the county's history.

Maryland was a Union state in the Civil War, but its Eastern Shore, where Talbot County is located, was a hotbed of Confederate sympathy.

___
Bulgarian church says it won't attend Orthodox synod

SOFIA, Bulgaria (AP)  The Bulgarian Orthodox Church on Friday pulled out of a meeting due later this month that is meant to bring together leaders of all the world's Orthodox churches for the first time in more than a millennium.

Alexandra Karamihaleva, responsible for media contacts at the Holy Synod, the church's ruling body, told The Associated Press that the decision, officially signed by Bulgarian Patriarch Neophyte and his bishops, was final.

"No further meetings or discussions on this issue have been scheduled," she said.

In this Thursday, June 9, 2016, photo released by Holy and Great Council, Chairman of the Messaging Committee for the Holy and Great Council Metropolitan Emmanuel, right, and Vicar of the Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia and Head of the Administrative Secretariat of the Moscow Patriarchate, Bishop Sergey of Solnechnogorsk, second right, review the program of the Holy and Great Council at Kolymbari, Crete, Greece, Thursday, June 9, 2016. The Bulgarian Orthodox church confirm Friday June 10, it will withdraw from a meeting later this month for Orthodox leaders. The gathering of 14 independent Orthodox churches later this month on the Greek island of Crete, is aimed at promoting unity among the world's 300 million Orthodox Christians, and the meeting will go ahead even if Bulgaria remain absent. ( Holy and Great Council via AP)

Istanbul-based Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I, who ranks as "the first among equals" hopes the gathering of leaders of 14 independent Orthodox churches later this month on the Greek island of Crete, can promote unity among the world's 300 million Orthodox Christians.

The Bulgarian church, however, could still attend and resolve whatever differences it feels it has at a meeting two days before the June 19 start of the week-long meeting, said an official for the secretariat of the Holy and Great Council. The gathering will take place even if the Bulgarians do not attend, said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity because the official wasn't authorized to speak to the media.

All the Orthodox churches, old and new that emerged over the centuries, have never met like this before  not since the "great schism" of 1054, when the Orthodox and Roman Catholics split after disputes over the Vatican's power.

Bulgaria's absence from the summit could mar but not stop the initiative, which has the backing of Church leaders such as Patriarch Kirill of Moscow, who leads the world's largest Orthodox flock with an estimated 100 million believers.

Initially, Bulgaria had called for a postponement of the Council, but on June 3 said it was withdrawing its participation. It also said it had canceled a chartered flight to Crete, all reservations for the summit, and said it had informed the heads of the other 13 churches about the decision.

Among the reasons for the withdrawal was the argument that there was a lack of "particularly important" topics on the agenda, the proposed seating plan, and a rule that texts being discussed would not be subject to editing in the course of discussions. The Bulgarian Holy Synod also protested about what it said were "large and unfounded expenses" for participation in the summit.

The official said the Bulgarian church's objections were not understandable because it had agreed and signed up to all the rules at a January meeting and participated at every planning meeting. The seating plan was changed, and the costs to participate were significantly reduced. There will also be a preliminary meeting on June 17 to address any outstanding issues including any the Bulgaria church may still have, the official added.

The Holy and Great Council has been 55 years in the preparation. Since the "great schism" there have been about a dozen smaller Orthodox councils over the centuries to discuss theological or doctrinal issues, but there has never been a meeting on the scale of the Holy and Great Council.

The Crete council will discuss the mission and role of the Orthodox Church and its global flock, issues relating to the function of the churches and its relations with other Christian faiths. Unity of the Orthodox churches is considered a key prerequisite to any reconciliation with the Vatican.

___

Quinn reported from Cairo.
Most defendants settle in Connecticut teen assault lawsuit

HARTFORD, Conn. (AP)  Six of seven men sued in connection with the sexual assault of a 13-year-old girl at a New Year's Eve party when they were all Connecticut middle school students have settled claims against them made in the victim's lawsuit.

The victim, now a 20-year-old college student, accused six of the men of touching her inappropriately when she was drunk at the party in 2009 at one of their homes in Madison, Connecticut. The seventh defendant was accused of taking a photo of her during the assaults and showing it to others.

Three of the settlements came within the past month as the case neared trial, according to court documents obtained Friday by The Associated Press. All seven men's parents also were sued for being liable for their children's actions and all have settled, according to the documents.

Most of the cases were settled in mediation. Details were not disclosed, with some attorneys citing confidentiality agreements.

Claims remain pending in state Superior Court in New Haven against the seventh man, who has failed to respond to the allegations, court records show. The lawsuit accuses him of sexual assault and false imprisonment, for holding her down during the assaults.

The Associated Press generally does not name sexual assault victims and juvenile offenders.

Five of the men were arrested on sexual assault and other charges as juveniles and sentenced to probation and community service, according to some parents of the defendants.

Matthew Auger, a lawyer for the victim, declined to comment. Several lawyers for the defendants also declined to comment.

The victim and her mother also sued Madison school officials on allegations that they allowed several boys involved in the assault to remain at her middle school afterward, traumatizing her for weeks. The school system settled that lawsuit last year for about $35,000, according to court documents.

At the time of the assault, the victim and the defendants were students at Polson Middle School in Madison. The lawsuit against the school system said school officials learned about the assaults about 11 days after the party but took no disciplinary action against the boys.

The boys were allowed to stay at the school for weeks, until they voluntarily withdrew after they were arrested, according to the lawsuit. The girl also said she was subjected to repeated harassment and intimidation by the boys and their friends.

The lawsuit against the seven men and their parents drew media scrutiny after it was filed in 2011 because a judge temporarily sealed the entire case from public view without explanation. Lawyers for the victim and defendants asked another judge to permanently seal the case, but the judge rejected the request after opposition from the AP.

Judge Jonathan Silbert noted the case involved a number of issues of social importance, including parental responsibility.

____
Brazil president suggests referendum after impeachment trial

SAO PAULO (AP)  Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff is suggesting she would hold a national referendum on her presidency if she survives an impeachment trial expected for August.

Rousseff said in an interview aired by state-run TV Brasil on Thursday night that Brazilians should be consulted on the future, even if the Senate does not permanently remove her from office.

Such a referendum could lead to a new presidential election.

FILE - In this Oct. 6, 2014 file photo, Brazil's President Dilma Rousseff listens to a question during a re-election campaign news conference at the Alvorada Palace, in Brasilia, Brazil. Rousseff's government had become paralyzed during her last months in office. When Rousseff was impeached, the once-popular leaders approval ratings hovered around 10 percent and polls showed that 61 percent of Brazilians wanted her out. Perhaps the biggest catalyst for her downfall, though, was the worst recession to hit Latin Americas largest economy since the 1930s, which has no end in sight. (AP Photo/Eraldo Peres, File)

Rousseff was impeached and suspended May 12. She is accused of using illegal accounting techniques hide large federal budget deficits. She has repeatedly denied wrongdoing.

"Given the level of contradiction among different political actors in this country, it is necessary to appeal to the population," the suspended president said. "I think it can be some sort of plebiscite. I won't give a full menu here, but this is something under intense discussion."

Lawmakers who support neither Rousseff nor acting President Michel Temer have called for new elections to resolve the nation's political crisis.

For that to happen, both would have to resign or be removed from office before the end of the year. Otherwise, by law, Congress would choose a new president to serve out the second half of Rousseff's four-year term that ends in 2018.

"Only a popular consultation can wash away and rinse this mess that the Temer administration is," Rousseff said.

Allies of the interim president have rejected calls for new elections.

Rousseff's suggestion comes as an increasing number of senators say they have not decided how they will vote in the trial.

After just a month in charge, Temer has become as unpopular as Rousseff. He has been dogged by a series of damaging leaked audio recordings, the abrupt exit of two ministers due to corruption probes, allegations of graft involving other interim officials and criticism after he appointed a Cabinet of all white men.

Even before Temer took office, 58 percent of the population wanted his impeachment, according to a Datafolha poll in April. At that time 61 percent wanted Rousseff out too.

Anti-impeachment protests occurred in at least 18 states and Brazil's capital Brasilia on Friday, with thousands taking to the streets. In Sao Paulo demonstrators blocked the city's main road, Avenida Paulista.
Jaime King aims to inspire with gender-bending kids' clothes

LOS ANGELES (AP)  Jaime King believes lessons about tolerance should start young.

The actress and mother of two recently launched a gender-neutral children's clothing line which she hopes will inspire acceptance and self-expression among kids and adults alike.

"It's interesting how we've created these social norms that are incredibly stifling for our children," said King of traditional kids' clothing. "Our children should be allowed to express themselves however they want."

FILE - In this Saturday, Jan. 10, 2015, file photo, actress Jaime King arrives at The Art Of Elysium Heaven Gala at Hangar 8 in Santa Monica, Calif. King has launched a gender-neutral children's clothing collection she hopes will inspire acceptance and self-expression among kids and adults alike. Its interesting how weve created these social norms that are incredibly stifling for our children, said King of traditional kids clothing. Our children should be allowed to express themselves however they want. (Photo by Omar Vega/Invision/AP, File)

King teamed with Singapore-based, Swedish designer Kristin Nystrom of Gardner and the Gang for the organic, gender-free capsule collection. There are dresses that boys can wear, pants for girls, and the patterns are not gender-specific either. Anything and everything can be for boys and girls.

"(We) get an opportunity to send that message to children and their parents that it's OK, whatever you want to wear. You're beautiful the way you are," said Nystrom in a recent interview.

King, who starred in the CW series "Hart of Dixie," said that message is particularly relevant amid the on-going debate over bathroom access for transgender people.

"Our intention is never to be political, but we are speaking inherently to what the issues are within the world and we don't shy away from that. Like the fact is, we have major issues in regards to what's happening with the transgender community," said King.

"I have several friends that have children that don't identify with the bodies that they were born in and that was a big reason why I wanted to do this. And I have since received incredible messages from them thanking me for doing something that to me I felt was ... my civic duty to do."

King practices what she preaches by celebrating her son's bold style choices.

"Yesterday he wanted red hair so he spray-painted his hair red with glitter," she said of 2-year-old James Knight. "He chose these white sneakers with gold spikes. So he looked rad. And all the kids are like 'James Knight! James Knight!' at preschool because he comes in looking like a total rock star. ... It's really amazing how at like two years and 10 months this kid is really specific about what he wants to wear, but I love that!"

_____

Online: http://www.gardnerandthegang.com

___
AP Interview: Savchenko calls for early elections in Ukraine

KIEV, Ukraine (AP)  Pilot Nadiya Savchenko on Friday called for early parliamentary elections to "infuse fresh blood" into Ukraine's politics, a call that could send shock waves across the volatile nation.

Savchenko, 35, who has become a national icon in Ukraine after spending two years in a Russian prison, told The Associated Press that the "Ukrainian people deserve a better government that they now have."

She said that the Ukrainian government has failed public expectations raised by the ouster of the country's former Moscow-friendly president, Viktor Yanukovych, who was driven from power in February 2014 after months of massive street protests on Kiev's main square, the Maidan.

Ukrainian pilot Nadiya Savchenko speaks to the Associated Press during an interview in Kiev, Ukraine, Friday, June 10, 2016. Ukrainian pilot Nadiya Savchenko says the nation needs early parliamentary elections "to infuse fresh blood" into its politics. (AP Photo/Sergei Chuzavkov)

"The longer this dishonorable government leads us, the further back toward a precipice it will drive us," Savchenko said, speaking with emphasis. "People believed in it after the Maidan; they gave a big credit of trust to the government, which it has failed."

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and his allies in the ruling parliament coalition strongly oppose early elections, arguing that they would only foment instability and deepen the country's economic crisis. With the popularity of Poroshenko and his coalition partners sinking amid economic troubles, an early vote would likely leave them with far fewer seats in parliament.

"This government is sinking like the Titanic," she said. "The more people see that this government is hurting them, the quicker they will ask it to step down."

Savchenko voiced hope that voters next time will make a more thoughtful choice and won't sell their votes.

Savchenko's broad popularity, energy and charisma could help rally those unhappy with the status quo and raise pressure for an early election. She also already has declared presidential ambitions, aspiring to become a voice for the many people angry with plummeting living standards and endemic corruption, which has continued to run amok despite official promises to eradicate it.

"I can honestly tell you that I don't want to be president, I have no ambition to be president for the sake of it," she said. "If I see that I can do it better than anyone else and people need it, I will be president."

She didn't say when she thinks the early parliamentary election should be held, and described her relationship with Poroshenko as "business-like."

Savchenko was elected into parliament on the ticket of Yulia Tymoshenko's political party in 2014 months after her Russian ordeal began. She was captured by Russia-backed rebels in eastern Ukraine in June 2014 while serving in a volunteer battalion, and ended up in a Russian jail soon after.

In March, she was convicted of acting as a spotter for mortar fire that killed two Russian journalists and sentenced to 22 years in a Russian prison following a trial in which she wore an embroidered Ukrainian shirt, sang the national anthem and raised her middle finger in a show of contempt for the Russian authorities.

Savchenko was released last month after being pardoned on humanitarian grounds by Russian President Vladimir Putin  he said at the urging of the journalists' relatives  and traded for two Russian military men convicted in Ukraine. She received a hero's welcome in Kiev and started working in parliament.

She said Tymoshenko's party "isn't the worst one" and "still has some conscience," adding that she will stay with it for now and try to learn more about politics. She wouldn't say if she might create her own party.

Savchenko told the AP that the U.S. and its allies should exert more pressure on Russia to make it honor a Ukraine peace deal to avert what she described as the danger of another world war over Ukraine. She spoke about Ukraine as the last frontier protecting Europe from Russia's "imperial tyranny."

"The international community must show Russia its place," Savchenko said. "If it doesn't happen, Russia will show its ambitions to the international community, and it may slide into a third world war."

At the same time, Savchenko said she believes it's possible to hold talks with separatist leaders of Donetsk and Luhansk regions, Alexander Zakharchenko and Igor Plotnitsky. "If there are no such talks, we will never have peace on our Ukrainian land," Savchenko said, adding that the withdrawal of Russian soldiers and the sealing of Ukraine's border with Russia must precede such negotiations.

"We have an open border," she said. "I was abducted through those holes in the border. I have seen loads of Russian weapons, Russian instructors, Russian mercenaries, Chechens flowing in."

Russia has denied that it had sent any regular troops into eastern Ukraine, saying that Russian citizens who fought alongside the rebels there were volunteers. The Kremlin also likes to emphasize that the February 2015 Minsk agreement, which was brokered by France and Germany, envisages giving broader powers to rebel regions and holding elections there before Ukraine moves to re-establish full control over the border with Russian in those regions.

That deal has been widely criticized in Ukraine, where nationalist forces have seen it as a betrayal of Ukrainian interests.

Fighting in eastern Ukraine erupted after Russia's annexation of Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula, leaving more than 9,300 people dead since April 2014.

The Minsk agreement has helped reduce fighting, but regular clashes have continued. Savchenko said that both warring parties have continued to use diversionary units, and stressed that the deployment of an international peacekeeping mission is needed to fully restore peace.

She also argued that rebels who haven't committed war crimes could be amnestied.

"It won't refer to looters, brutal killers or rapists who broke the boundaries of humanity," she said. "Some people have fallen under the spell of the Russian propaganda and have gone to fight for those ideas. Those people, who haven't crossed the boundary, naturally should be amnestied."

"We must learn to forgive, otherwise we won't be able to exist as a single country," Savchenko added.

Ukrainian pilot Nadiya Savchenko speaks to the Associated Press during an interview in Kiev, Ukraine, Friday, June 10, 2016. Ukrainian pilot Nadiya Savchenko says the nation needs early parliamentary elections "to infuse fresh blood" into its politics. (AP Photo/Sergei Chuzavkov)

Ukrainian pilot Nadiya Savchenko speaks to the Associated Press during an interview in Kiev, Ukraine, Friday, June 10, 2016. Ukrainian pilot Nadiya Savchenko says the nation needs early parliamentary elections "to infuse fresh blood" into its politics. (AP Photo/Sergei Chuzavkov)
Lawmakers vote to increase budgets for House offices

WASHINGTON (AP)  House lawmakers Friday passed legislation to increase their office budgets for the first time in years but again deny themselves a pay raise of their own.

The additional money for staff salaries and other office expenses is aimed in large part at retaining staff aides, who are often 20-somethings who struggle to make ends meet in Washington, where rents have skyrocketed and opportunities outside of Congress often pay more than Capitol Hill jobs. It's common for staff aides to get a little experience and move on.

"We are unable to pay young people that come here and keep them with their institutional memory," said Rep. Alcee Hastings, D-Fla.

The increase in staff salaries is included in a $3.5 billion measure, which passed by a 233-175 vote, that would increase the budget for operations of the House of Representatives and supporting agencies such as the Library of Congress by 2 percent to $3.5 billion.

GOP leaders originally sought to maintain a freeze in office budgets, but the House Appropriations Committee last month approved an amendment by Sam Farr., D-Calif., to increase office budgets by $8 million, or 1.5 percent. The proposal passed the panel on a sweeping voice vote.

Lawmakers receive between $1.2 and $1.4 million to run their offices and travel back to their districts, depending on how far they live from Washington. Office budgets peaked in 2010, the last year of Democratic control of the House, at between $1.4 and $1.8 million.

While they are moving to increase staff pay, lawmakers also voted to deny themselves the cost-of-living pay raise they would otherwise automatically receive in January.

That means congressional salaries would be frozen at $174,000 a year. Lawmakers haven't received a pay hike since January 2009.

The legislative operations funding measure is the second of the 12 annual spending bills to pass the GOP-controlled chamber, where a split between tea party lawmakers and House leaders over funding levels has meant delays and a controversy over a gay rights amendment by Democrats has scuttled one major bill. GOP leaders have since moved to block Democrats from again offering the LGBT measure, which is aimed at protecting lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people from discrimination by federal contractors.

Most Democrats also opposed the legislative branch measure over a tea party-fueled provision urging the Library of Congress how to label immigrants living in the country illegally. The GOP move is designed to force the Library of Congress to retain the term "illegal alien" for cataloging and search purposes, reversing the library's plan to replace "illegal alien" with less prejudicial terms like "noncitizens" or "unauthorized immigration."

Conservatives were upset with the library's change and urged bill author Tom Graves, R-Ga., to reverse it. But Graves' move whipped up opposition from Democrats who say it's an unnecessary slap against immigrants.
GOP Sen. David Perdue: Pray that Obama's 'days be few'

WASHINGTON (AP)  A Republican senator told conservatives Friday they should pray for President Barack Obama and suggested a biblical passage that says, "Let his days be few."

Georgia Sen. David Perdue told a gathering of religious conservatives that "we need to be very specific about how we pray." He suggested using Psalms 109:8, which reads: "Let his days be few, and let another have his office."

As the audience at the Faith & Freedom Coalition's "Road to Majority" conference laughed and applauded, Perdue said, "In all seriousness, I believe that America is at a moment of crisis."

Sen. David Perdue, R-Ga. addresses the Road to Majority Conference in Washington, Friday, June 10, 2016. Perdue told conservatives they should pray for President Barack Obama and suggested a biblical passage that says, "Let his days be few." (AP Photo/Cliff Owen)

The next lines of the Psalm read: "Let his children be fatherless and his wife a widow."

Kristen Orthman, a spokeswoman for Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid, said Perdue's comments "left the impression he was praying for the death of President Obama."

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., followed Perdue on stage "and did not condemn him," Orthman said. "If Republicans are still wondering why Donald Trump is their nominee, look no further than today's Faith and Freedom conference," she said.

Megan Whittemore, a spokeswoman for Perdue, said the senator told the Faith & Freedom audience that, "We are called to pray for our country, for our leaders and for our president."

Perdue "in no way wishes harm toward our president, and everyone in the room understood that," Whittemore said.

A spokesman for McConnell said the senator was not on stage when Perdue made the comment.
Remains of WWII Marine from NYC identified, set for burial

NEW YORK (AP)  The U.S. military says the remains of a Marine from New York City who was killed in World War II have been identified and are being returned for burial on Long Island.

The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency said Friday that 19-year-old Pfc. John F. Prince was among the 35 Marines whose remains were found last year on Tarawa in the Gilbert Islands, scene of a three-day battle November 1943.

The agency says its scientists used dental records and other evidence to identify Prince's remains, which were found along with others by Florida-based History Flight buried beneath a parking lot.

Prince served in the 2nd Marine Division. He was among more than 1,000 American servicemen killed while assaulting the Japanese-held island.
The Latest: Foster parents still fighting for Indian girl

LOS ANGELES (AP)  The Latest on the custody dispute over a Native American girl who was removed from her foster home (all times local):

10:45 a.m.

Lawyers for a California foster family who gave up a 6-year-old girl with Native American ancestry have returned to court.

FILE - In this March 21, 2016 file photo, Rusty Page carries, Lexi, while Summer Page, in the background, cries as members of family services, left, arrive to take Lexi away from her foster family in Santa Clarita, Calif. The foster parents who gave up the 6-year-old girl with Native American ancestry to her distant relatives are continuing their yearslong custody fight in a California court. Arguments are scheduled Friday, June 10, 2016, before a state appeals court in Los Angeles over the fate of the girl, Lexi. (David Crane/Los Angeles Daily News via AP, File) NO SALES; MAGS OUT; HILLS OUT, LOS ANGELES TIMES OUT; VENTURA COUNTY STAR OUT; ANTELOPE VALLEY PRESS OUT; MANDATORY CREDIT

A state appeals court in Los Angeles heard arguments from both sides Friday over the fate of the girl, Lexi.

Attorneys for the girl's former foster parents say it's in her best interest to return to the foster family because she has developed a bond.

Representatives for the girl say a lower court made the right decision to reunite the girl with relatives in Utah.

The three-judge panel has up to 60 days to make a decision.

___

Foster parents who gave up a 6-year-old girl with Native American ancestry to her distant relatives are continuing their yearslong custody fight in a California court.

Arguments are scheduled Friday before a state appeals court in Los Angeles over the fate of the girl, Lexi.

She lived with Rusty and Summer Page of Santa Clarita for four years before being removed in a tearful parting in March. The Pages say they haven't seen nor heard from her since then.

Her legal representatives say Lexi is thriving and happy.

The girl, who's part Choctaw, was placed with extended family in Utah, where she also has sisters. She was placed under the federal Indian Child Welfare Act, which was passed in the 1970s to prevent the breakup of Native American families.

The Pages' lawyer will argue that Lexi's case meets a "good cause" exception to the placement preferences in the law.

However, observers have said the appeals court is unlikely to reverse the decision.
The Latest: Activists file petitions in judge recall effort

SAN FRANCISCO (AP)  The Latest on six-month jail sentence for a former Stanford University swimmer convicted of sex assault (all times local):

2:35 p.m.

A women's advocacy group has turned in petitions in a symbolic effort urging a California agency to remove the judge who sentenced a former Stanford University swimmer to six months in jail for sexually assaulting an unconscious woman.

This June 27, 2011, photo shows Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge Aaron Persky, who drew criticism for sentencing former Stanford University swimmer Brock Turner to only six months in jail for sexually assaulting an unconscious woman. The swimmer's father, Dan Turner, ignited more outrage by writing in a letter to the judge that his son already has paid a steep price for "20 minutes of action." Dan Turner wrote that his son's conviction on three felony sexual assault charges has shattered the 20-year-old, who has lost his appetite. The letter was made public over the weekend by a Stanford law professor who wants Persky removed from office because of the sentence. (Jason Doiy/The Recorder via AP) MANDATORY CREDIT

They left the boxes of petitions with the California Commission on Judicial Performance after holding a rally with sexual assault survivors Friday afternoon.

The group has also filed a formal complaint with the commission. Before delivering the boxes, they held rally with signs that read "Protect survivors not rapists," and "Protect survivors: Fire Judge Persky" and gave speeches about surviving sexual assault.

Persky has faced intense outcry after sentencing 20-year-old Brock Turner last week.

1 p.m.

Three prominent political consultants say they're joining the effort to recall the judge who sentenced a former Stanford University swimmer to six months in jail for sexually assaulting an unconscious woman.

A Stanford law professor launched a formal campaign to remove Santa Clara County Judge Aaron Persky from the bench. He was re-elected Tuesday after running unopposed.

The campaign announced Friday that media consultant Joe Trippi, campaign strategist John Shallman and pollster Paul Maslin are on board.

Organizers would need to collect 58,634 signatures from registered county voters, and a recall election would follow.

Trippi has worked for a number of Democratic presidential candidates, while Maslin's clients include Gov. Jerry Brown and members of Congress.

Shallman worked for the president of the California Senate, who spearheaded passage of a law requiring state colleges and universities to apply a "yes means yes" standard in sexual misconduct cases.

___

11:40 a.m.

A group of California lawmakers is asking a state agency to investigate and discipline the judge who sentenced a former Stanford University swimmer to six months in jail for sexually assaulting an unconscious woman.

Nine members of the California Assembly and two state senators joined women's rights activists Friday in petitioning the California Commission on Judicial Performance to take action against Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge Aaron Persky.

The lawmakers, all Democrats, sent a letter to the commission's chairman alleging that Persky may have engaged in misconduct by giving 20-year-old Brock Turner jail time and three years' probation instead of a longer term in state prison.

They also want the county's district attorney to ask an appeals court to overturn the sentence.

___

11 a.m.

Several prospective jurors who opposed a judge's decision to sentence a former Stanford University swimmer to six months in jail for sexually assault have refused to serve in his courtroom.

Jurors were dismissed from service this week on an unrelated case before Santa Clara County Judge Aaron Persky after they came forward with their complaints.

Persky has faced intense outcry after sentencing 20-year-old Brock Turner last week.

A women's advocacy group plans to turn in 824,000 signatures Friday in a symbolic effort urging the California Commission on Judicial Performance to remove the judge. The agency investigates complaints of judicial misconduct and disciplines judges.

But to officially recall Persky, organizers would need to collect signatures from 58,634 registered county voters.

A call to a commission attorney about what penalties the commission could impose wasn't immediately returned.

___

7:30 a.m.

A women's advocacy group planned to turn in petitions Friday in a symbolic effort urging a California agency to remove the judge who sentenced a former Stanford University swimmer to six months in jail for sexually assaulting an unconscious woman.

The organization, UltraViolet, said it collected more than 824,000 signatures and other groups gathered thousands more that they will deliver to the California Commission on Judicial Performance, the agency that investigates complaints of judicial misconduct and disciplines judges.

Persky has faced intense outcry after sentencing Brock Turner, 20, of Dayton, Ohio, last week to six months in jail and three years' probation for assaulting the woman behind a campus dumpster in January 2015.
Kerry off to Dominican Republic for OAS meeting, then Arctic

WASHINGTON (AP)  Secretary of State John Kerry is heading to the Dominican Republic next week for talks on developments in the Western Hemisphere and will then visit the Arctic to discuss climate change and environmental issues.

The State Department said Friday that Kerry will attend the Organization of American States general assembly in Santo Domingo next Tuesday. Officials said his talks there are likely to include the current political instability in Haiti and Venezuela.
GOP insiders pressure Trump to steer clear of controversy

NEW YORK (AP)  Weary Republicans are looking for assurances that Donald Trump can maintain the discipline needed to stay on message as he prepares for a bruising general election run-up against Hillary Clinton.

Trump's conciliatory, teleprompter-guided victory speech Tuesday appeared to stave off at least for the time being  a near-revolt over his racially divisive attacks against the American-born judge of Mexican heritage hearing the case against his now-defunct Trump University.

As he kicked off his general election campaign Friday, a thorny question has arisen: How does the party keep Trump in check?

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump gestures during a rally in Richmond, Va., Friday, June 10, 2016. (AP Photo/Steve Helber)

"A primary campaign against 16 opponents is very different and combative in a different way than a general election against a well-organized, well-funded Clinton machine," said Rep. Chris Collins, who has been helping to coordinate Trump's outreach to Congress.

Collins said he understood there would be lingering questions about Trump after the distracting episode, but said the speech was part of what he sees as a "total pivot" by the candidate.

"Mr. Trump is a very smart guy and wants to win," he said after a weekly gathering with Trump staff on Thursday. "I'm convinced we'll see a very disciplined GOP nominee moving forward."

The judge episode arguably marked the biggest crisis of Trump's campaign to date, and sparked a series of phone calls from concerned Republicans, including House Speaker Paul Ryan, pressing the gravity of the situation.

"I explained exactly what I thought about that comment. I said it publicly and I said it privately," Ryan said in an interview that aired on "Good Morning America" Friday.

"I don't know what's in his heart," he added. "But I do think, hope and believe that he's going to improve the tenor of the campaign, the tone of the campaign, the kind of campaign that he's going to run."

It remains to be seen, however, how deeply Trump has internalized the message. Since launching his campaign, Trump has pushed back against calls by some of his closest aides and family members to adopt a more "presidential tone." His fiery language and penchant for controversy has earned him endless free media attention and energized voters during the primaries, helping him secure victory.

"You think I'm going to change? I'm not changing," he boomed at a press conference recently.

Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski dismissed the idea of an intervention, and downplayed the significance of the victory speech, noting that Trump has used teleprompters on multiple occasions to deliver specific remarks.

"From time to time, he'll use it. But's a function of the audience and what he wants to say. I can guarantee you this: In Richmond tonight, it will not be a teleprompter speech," he said.

Indeed, Trump was already showing signs that general election Trump will sound a lot like primary Trump.

He tweeted "Pocahontas is at it again!" Friday morning, using his favored nickname for Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who officially endorsed Clinton Thursday evening and met with her Friday. At a rally later in Richmond, Virginia, he evoked the nickname yet again, saying "Pocahontas is not too happy!" That prompted some in the crowd to break out into Indian war cries.

Trump  indeed, not using a teleprompter  delivered a speech that sounded like the ones from his rallies during the primaries, delivering familiar riffs about the Mexican border wall, claiming he was "the least racist person you'll see" and suggesting that Clinton "hates" President Barack Obama.

Speaking in a 12,000-person-capacity arena that was only about one-third full, he also mused that he might hold a "Winners Night" at the Republican convention next month, during which various sports heroes would appear.

To try to keep Trump, who is notoriously resistant to advice, on track, some on his team are turning more to his grown children  Eric, Don Jr. and Ivanka, as well as Ivanka's husband, Jared Kushner  in the hope that they can exert influence. In addition to giving them more public roles, some campaign aides have been pushing for them to travel more with the candidate, according to a person familiar with the efforts, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak about private discussions.

The goal is to try to keep Trump on message, while asserting more control over Lewandowski, who is a constant presence by Trump's side. Lewandowski led Trump to victory in the primary with the motto "Let Trump be Trump," and has long resisted suggestions that Trump needs to change his tone.

Lewandowski pushed back against the notion that Republicans are looking for Trump to tone down his rhetoric and stressed the candidate is not going to change.

"I don't know if they're saying we need to rein him in. They are not used to a presidential candidate who speaks from the heart and talks the way the American public speaks. They are used to politicians who are all talk and not action. That's not Mr. Trump," Lewandowski told The Associated Press, adding, "His messaging is not going to change going forward."

Still, supporters say they're confident that Trump is growing into his new role.

"I think Donald is learning how to be a candidate," said John Catsimatidis, a major New York donor, as he left a closed-door gathering with Trump on Thursday. "I think he's getting better and better at it."

Others, however, remain doubtful.

"You know, I think everybody can change. The question is does he have the self-discipline and some control over his ego to be able to say 'I'm wrong' every now and then?" said former Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma on "Morning Joe" Thursday. "And I haven't seen that."

__

Colvin reported from Washington. Associated Press writer Alan Suderman contributed reporting from Richmond, Virginia.

___

Contact Jill Colvin on Twitter at http://twitter.com/@colvinj and Lemire at http://twitter.com/@JonLemire

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump points to the audience after addressing the Faith and Freedom Coalition's Road to Majority Conference in Washington, Friday, June 10, 2016. (AP Photo/Cliff Owen)
Life sentence for man who raped and killed stepdaughter

HAGERSTOWN, Md. (AP)  A Maryland judge has sentenced a man to life in prison plus 20 years for raping and killing his 17-year-old stepdaughter.

Thirty-six-year-old Ernie Chase was sentenced Friday in Hagerstown, about 75 miles west of Baltimore. He was convicted in a plea deal in December of first-degree murder and second-degree rape in the 2015 slaying of Melissa Collins.

Collins was reported missing by her mother. Police found her body later that day under a pile of clothes in a bedroom of their Hagerstown home. An autopsy showed she died of strangulation and blunt force injuries.

In this May 20, 2015 photo provided by Washington County Sheriffs Office shows Ernie Chase. Chase was sentenced to life plus 20 years in prison for raping and strangling his 17-year-old stepdaughter in Hagerstown, Maryland in 2015. (Washington County Sheriffs Office via AP).
Clinton expected to receive AFL-CIO endorsement

WASHINGTON (AP)  Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton is expected to be endorsed next week by the AFL-CIO, the nation's largest labor federation, in another sign of Democrats shifting toward the general election against Republican Donald Trump.

A union official said the AFL-CIO's political committee voted on Friday to recommend that the labor federation's general board hold a call next Thursday to consider the endorsement. Clinton is all but assured of it because she has received most of the endorsements of the AFL-CIO's member unions.

The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the person was not authorized to speak publicly about the private meeting.

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton speaks during a Planned Parenthood Action Fund membership event, Friday, June 10, 2016 in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

The powerful labor federation represents 12.5 million workers and is a key member of the Democratic party's coalition. It has withheld an endorsement during the primaries as Clinton received a spirited challenge from Democratic rival Bernie Sanders, who has made his opposition to faulty trade deals a cornerstone of his campaign.

Clinton has received the endorsements of many of the AFL-CIO's largest members, including the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees and the American Federation of Teachers.

But some labor activists, including many rank-and-file members who support Sanders, have questioned Clinton's past support for trade deals, including her role as secretary of state in the early development of the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

Clinton announced her opposition last October to the trade pact between the United States and 11 Pacific Rim nations. She said it did not meet three conditions needed for a trade deal: creating good jobs in the U.S., raising wages at home and advancing U.S. national security.

Labor leaders had said they expected the endorsement to come after a series of June 7 primaries, the penultimate contests in the race. Clinton won four of the six states voting that day, including California and New Jersey.

The timing of the endorsement mirrors the AFL-CIO's eventual endorsement of then Illinois Sen. Barack Obama during the 2008 primaries. After Obama and Clinton's lengthy primary, Clinton dropped out in early June and the labor federation issued its endorsement near the end of the month.

___
Man faces deportation to Ecuador on Canada rape conviction

TORONTO (AP)  Ontario's top court has ruled that the conviction and 15-month jail sentence handed to a man who raped an unconscious woman should stand, resulting in automatic deportation to the man's native Ecuador.

Fernando Crespo, a permanent resident of Canada, was convicted in December 2013 of sexually assaulting a woman who had passed out on her bed after a night of heavy drinking. A sentence of six months or more renders foreigners inadmissible to Canada.

The woman, who may not be identified, testified she woke up with Crespo on top of her engaging in sexual intercourse.

Crespo appealed, arguing Ontario court judge Michael Epstein was wrong to discount his assertion that the woman consented to the sex.
Oakland chief resigns amid police misconduct probe

SAN FRANCISCO (AP)  Oakland's police chief has resigned amid an investigation of sexual misconduct allegations involving several officers.

In a statement released late Thursday, Chief Sean Whent said that he had worked to make the city safer by forging better ties with its diverse communities, and that the vast majority of Oakland officers shared that commitment.

He gave no reason for stepping down.

FILE - In this May 13, 2016, file photo, Oakland Chief of Police Sean Whent speaks during a media conference in Oakland, Calif. Chief Whent has resigned amid a spate of police misconduct cases. Mayor Libby Schaaf announced Thursday, June 9, 2016, that Whent was stepping down after a two-decade career with the department. (AP Photo/Ben Margot, File)

Whent made his own decision about leaving the job, Mayor Libby Schaaf told reporters Friday.

Schaaf did not explain the chief's sudden resignation, but thanked Whent for "incredible strides to rebuild trust in the department" during his two-year tenure.

The historically troubled Oakland department currently is investigating allegations that several officers had sex with an underage girl. Two officers have resigned and two others remain on paid leave.

Prosecutors still are reviewing the police department's initial investigation of the allegations, Schaaf said.

Oakland police have been under supervision of monitors appointed by federal courts since 2003. The supervision stemmed from a civil settlement involving allegations that four night-shift officers in predominantly black west Oakland were beating and robbing residents and planting evidence.

The monitors since have faulted department managers and internal investigators for allegedly failing to hold officers accountable for misconduct.
Ex-DC nurse found guilty of sexually assaulting patients

WASHINGTON (AP)  A former Washington nurse has been found guilty of sexually assaulting three women who were emergency room patients.

Media outlets report 38-year-old Jared Kline was found guilty on Wednesday. Prosecutors say Kline encountered the three victims in separate incidents during 2013 and 2014 while he was working as a staff nurse at three different hospital emergency rooms.

Prosecutors argued Kline forced the women to touch him as he was taking their blood pressure and performing examinations.

Kline was found guilty of second-degree sexual abuse for three incidents, two of which with aggravating circumstances.

The jury acquitted him on an additional three counts and didn't reach a unanimous verdict in the four remaining counts.
Ex-Florida cop pleads not guilty in shooting of black man

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP)  A fired Florida police officer has pleaded not guilty to charges related to the fatal shooting of a legally armed black musician who was waiting for a tow truck.

The Palm Beach Post (http://goo.gl/uRSsXn) reported Friday that 38-year-old Nouman Raja has entered a written plea of not guilty to one charge each of attempted murder and manslaughter by culpable negligence.

Raja was charged earlier this month in the Oct. 18 death of Corey Jones.

Jones' SUV had broken down on an Interstate 95 offramp before dawn. He had gotten out and called for a tow truck when Raja pulled up in an unmarked car, wearing civilian clothes.

Raja is of South Asian descent.
A fledgling campaign to recall the judge who sentenced a former Stanford University swimmer to six months in jail for sexually assaulting a woman gained momentum Friday.

Three prominent political consultants joined the effort to recall Judge Aaron Persky.

The campaign said media consultant Joe Trippi, campaign strategist John Shallman and pollster Paul Maslin would help secure the signatures and votes required to remove the Santa Clara County jurist from the bench next year.

Trippi has worked for a number of Democratic presidential candidates, while Maslin's clients include Gov. Jerry Brown and members of Congress.

Shallman has worked for the president of the California Senate, who spearheaded passage of a law requiring colleges and universities to apply a 'yes means yes' standard in sexual misconduct cases.

Controversy: Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge Aaron Persky drew criticism for sentencing former Stanford University swimmer Brock Turner to only six months in jail for sexually assaulting a woman

Activists from UltraViolet, a national women's advocacy organization, attempt to deliver over one million signatures to the California Commission on Judicial Performance calling for the removal Persky from the bench

Persky was re-elected in an unopposed election Tuesday, five days after sentencing Brock Turner, 20, to six months in jail and three years' probation.

The punishment for the Dayton, Ohio, native ignited intense outcry as too lenient.

Prosecutors had argued for Turner to spend six years in prison for three felony convictions that could have sent him away for 14 years.

The judge said in court last week that he followed a recommendation from the county's probation department and cited Turner's clean criminal record and the effect the conviction will have on his life.

'I have daughters in college myself, and I find it deeply disturbing that a judge like Persky could let a campus predator like Turner off with barely a slap on the wrist,' Shallman said.

'Justice is supposed to be blind not stupid.'

A request to interview the judge wasn't returned Friday.

A court spokesman has said Persky is barred from commenting because Turner is appealing his convictions of felony assault and attempted rape.

Judge Persky sparked outrage when he sentenced former Stanford University swimmer Brock Turner (pictured in a 2015 mugshot) to only six months in jail for sexually assaulting an unconscious woman

Stanford law professor Michele Dauber speaks at a rally before activists delivered over one million signatures to the California Commission on Judicial Performance calling for the removal of Persky from the bench Friday

Meanwhile, a group of California lawmakers joined women's rights advocates in urging the California agency that investigates complaints of judicial misconduct to take action against Persky.

Eleven Democratic state lawmakers asked the Commission on Judicial Performance to investigate and discipline the judge, alleging he may have engaged in misconduct in sentencing Turner.

The judge's decision 'confirms what women already knew: That rape culture blames us for being vulnerable when crimes are committed against us, but treats the same factors  drinking, in particular  as reasons to be exceedingly lenient with rapists,' Assemblywoman Susan Talamantes Eggman of Stockton said.

The lawmakers also want District Attorney Jeff Rosen to ask an appeals court to overturn the sentence.

But prosecutors have said they don't think Persky's decision can be appealed because it was 'authorized by law and was made by applying the correct standards.'

Rosen also has said the judge should not lose his job because of the ruling.

Women's group UltraViolet submitted more than 800,000 signatures to the commission's San Francisco offices Friday in a symbolic effort for Persky's removal.

The group also has filed a formal misconduct complaint.

Sexual assault survivor Chris Huqueriza speaks at a rally before over one million signatures were delivered to the California Commission on Judicial Performance calling for the removal of Persky from the bench Friday

The commission meets every six to eight weeks and usually decides whether to open an investigation within 60 days of receiving a complaint, agency attorney Victoria Henley said.

To trigger a recall election, campaign organizers need to collect signatures from 58,634 registered Santa Clara County voters. A majority vote would be required to remove the judge.

'His statements during the sentencing show that he does not understand sexual violence. He does not understand violence against women,' said Stanford law professor Michele Dauber, who launched the recall campaign.

'And so we are going to recall him, and we're going to replace him with someone who does.'

Lawyers who have appeared in Persky's court have called him a fair and respected judge. He has no record of judicial discipline and previously worked as a prosecutor responsible for keeping sexual predators locked up.

Several prospective jurors who opposed Persky's decision refused to serve on a jury this week in an unrelated case he's handling. They were dismissed after reporting their complaints.

Online records show Turner is expected to be released from jail after three months. County jail inmates serve 50 percent of their sentences if they keep a clean disciplinary record.

Turner is being segregated from the general jail population, which is standard for high-profile inmates who could be targets.
Construction company convicted in death at NYC building site

NEW YORK (AP)  A construction company in charge of a New York City building site has been convicted of manslaughter in the death of a worker in a trench collapse.

The company, Harco Construction LLC, was also convicted Friday of criminally negligent homicide and reckless endangerment in the April 2015 death of 22-year-old Carlos Moncayo.

The Ecuadorean emigrant died when a 14-foot trench caved in at a building site in Manhattan.

Under city building code, trenches deeper than 5 feet are supposed to be fortified.

Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance says the conviction will send a message that contractors aren't insulated from criminal prosecution in a worker's death.

Harco faces fines of up to $35,000 at sentencing scheduled for July 13.
Obama widens US Afghan role in final months in office

WASHINGTON (AP)  Far from ending the two wars he inherited from the Bush administration, Barack Obama is wrestling with an expanded set of conflicts in the final months of his presidency, from Iraq and Afghanistan to Libya and Syria, with no end in sight. In Afghanistan, where a Taliban resurgence has upset Washington's "exit strategy," Obama is giving the U.S. military wider latitude to support Afghan forces, both in the air and on the ground.

The White House says U.S. forces are not taking on a new mission in Afghanistan but rather will "more proactively support" government forces. That amounts to an acknowledgement that the Afghans need more help than the Pentagon had anticipated last year, and it is a signal to allies not to abandon the U.S.-led coalition. Defense Secretary Ash Carter will be discussing this next week in talks at NATO headquarters in Brussels.

The 9,800 U.S. troops in Afghanistan are scheduled to drop to 5,500 by the end of this year, but the pace of that decline has yet to be decided. One factor in deciding future troop levels is the extent to which NATO allies are willing to remain involved in training and advising the Afghans.

FILE - In this May 27, 2016 file photo, a member of a breakaway faction of the Taliban fighters guards a gathering in Shindand district of Herat province, Afghanistan. After months of debate, the White House has approved plans to expand the military's authority to conduct airstrikes against the Taliban when necessary as the violence in Afghanistan escalates, senior U.S. and defense officials said Thursday. Afghan officials welcomed the change. (AP Photos/Allauddin Khan, File)

Five years ago this month, in announcing the beginning of his effort to "wind down this war" in Afghanistan, Obama declared that "the tide of war is receding." He had ended the U.S. combat role in Iraq, but since then has gradually expanded a renewed U.S. involvement there against the Islamic State group. He also put U.S. warplanes in the skies over Libya in 2011 in the name of preventing a slaughter of civilians, only to see chaos ensue, and now small teams of U.S. special operations forces have been involved in activities there. Libya, along with Syria and to a lesser extent Afghanistan, became a breeding ground for extremism in a wider conflict against the Islamic State.

The administration says it remains committed to a partnership with Afghanistan to ensure that it does not revert to a haven for al-Qaida or other extremists with global reach, as it was before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. In a letter to Obama last week, several former U.S. ambassadors to Kabul and five retired U.S. generals who commanded American troops there urged that the president keep current troop levels through the end of his term, allowing his successor to consider next steps. They argued that Afghanistan remains important to the broader campaign to defeat global terror movements.

"If Afghanistan were to revert to the chaos of the 1990s, millions of refugees would again seek shelter in neighboring countries and overseas, dramatically intensifying the severe challenges already faced in Europe and beyond," they wrote. "Afghanistan is a place where we should wish to consolidate and lock down our provisional progress into something of a more lasting asset."

With U.S. special operations forces already focused on al-Qaida remnants in Afghanistan, the Afghan government says it can handle the Taliban if the U.S. expands its air support. That is at the core of Obama's decision, disclosed Thursday, to authorize U.S. commanders to increase air support and to allow U.S. soldiers to accompany and advise Afghan conventional forces on the ground in the same way they have been assisting Afghan commando forces.

This will make a difference on the battlefield, Carter said Friday, by enabling U.S. commanders to anticipate situations in which U.S. support is needed, rather than to be reactive. He did not mention it, but an illustration of the problem with being reactive is the Taliban's takeover of the northern city of Kunduz last September, which was reversed only after U.S. special operations forces intervened. The intervention, while ultimately successful, led to one of the worst U.S. mistakes of the 15-year war when an AC-130 gunship pummeled a hospital, killing 42 people.

Carter said the changes Obama approved amount to "using the forces we have in a better way, as we go through this fighting season," adding, "It's a good use of the combat power we have there."

Gen. John F. Campbell, who was the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan until March and was among the retired generals who signed last week's letter to Obama, said in an interview Friday that although he had not seen the specifics of the White House decision to expand U.S. military authorities, he welcomed the move. Before Gen. John Nicholson succeeded him in Kabul in March, Campbell urged the administration to grant expanded authorities to assist the Afghans, arguing that they faced an especially difficult fight against the Taliban this summer.

"I had asked for more authorities for the commander on the ground to help the Afghans out, and if this is what that is, I would be all for it," he said. "We have an ally there that we need to continue to support."

___

Associated Press writers Lolita C. Baldor in Washington and Lynne O'Donnell in Kabul contributed to this report.
Former lawmaker involved in sex scandal to wed

RICHMOND, Va. (AP)  A former Virginia lawmaker is marrying the woman at the center of a sex scandal that sent him to jail.

Joseph Morrissey said Friday that he plans to marry Myrna Warren on Saturday at a farm in Varina.

Morrissey spent his days at the General Assembly and his nights at a county jail during the 2014 legislative session after he was accused of having sex with Warren while she was his 17-year-old receptionist.

The couple now have two children and Morrissey is running to be Richmond's next mayor.
RED LODGE  Those closest to John Charles JC Graham on the night deputies shot and killed him said officers had no choice.

That was the testimony Thursday in Red Lodge, where a coroners inquest began in the case involving Carbon County Sheriffs Office deputies. The inquest took place in the courthouse in Red Lodge before a jury of five women and two men, as well as an alternate juror.

After 15 minutes of deliberation, the jury returned its decision that deputies Chad Glick and Jeremy Neibauer were justified in shooting Graham.

Park County Coroner Al Jenkins presided at the inquiry. Carbon County Attorney Alex Nixon and Deputy County Attorney Scott Pederson questioned the witnesses.

In his testimony, Glick said that he saw Graham walk out of the house at an aggressive pace toward a barricade of law enforcement vehicles. Glick and Neibauer said that they felt and heard a shot fired in their direction when Graham exited.

I felt that I had to stop the threat, Glick said.

Graham, 41, was killed during an incident on March 7 in Joliet. Among the witnesses were Gail Stradtman, Grahams mother, and Katie Rushton, Grahams girlfriend. They both testified that Graham was experiencing serious mental health issues that night and that he ultimately fired first toward the officers.

In her emotional testimony, Stradtman said that the officers were not at fault.

Had they not been there, Katie would not have been alive today, and they had no choice, she said.

In recounting the night, Stradtman and Rushton said that Graham was having hallucinations. His anger and other problems had become more visible since the death of his grandfather shortly before March 7, they both testified. Stradtman said that Graham, a Navy veteran, had dealt with mental issues since he left the service.

Early in the evening, Rushton said that Graham was talking to two men in the corner of the bedroom in her house. There were no men there, Rushton said. Stradtman said that Graham would occasionally see grey people when nobody was there.

Graham continued to act erratically and grabbed his .30-06 rifle.

He pretty much told me that Im going to be a witness in a shootout, Rushton said.

Rushton said that Graham threatened her with it. Stradtman, who showed up later, testified that Graham pointed the gun at her.

When Stradtman arrived at the house, shed already dialed 911 and made a report.

I told them that my son was having a psychotic breakdown, she said.

Before law enforcement arrived, Rushton testified that Graham had fired the rifle out of the windows and through a glass door. Bob Reed, a Joliet pastor and reserve Carbon County Sheriffs Office deputy, was first on the scene. He met Stradtman coming out of the house.

Reed testified that he heard two shots, but he didnt know which direction the bullets went. He said that he took refuge behind his car and Stradtman left the scene shortly after.

At this point, Im figuring things are not good, Reed said. My very first thought was that he had killed himself and killed Katie.

Back-up arrived about nine minutes later. Glick was the first full-time officer on the scene, according to Reed. Neibauer and Montana Highway Patrol Trooper Shane Warehime showed up after that and other deputies followed.

Reed testified that he didnt see Graham come out of the house, but he heard the sound of the gunfire change.

When he came out the front door, it was much louder still, he said. I heard the front shot and I started to shift position to where I could see what was happening out in front of the house.

Glick said he felt the concussive blast of Grahams shot, as if he were at a firing range. Neibauer said he felt the shot. Neither officer saw a muzzle flash.

Warehime, the highway patrol trooper at the scene, testified that the bullet from Grahams final shot was lodged in a Pontiac car that was in front of the house. He referenced a photo of the car with a damaged but not broken spot on the windshield.

Warehime also provided dash cam video from his squad car, which was shown at the inquest. It showed Graham leaving the house and walking in Glicks direction. Seconds later, the Glick and Neibauer opened fire.

He definitely had a look of purpose on his face, Glick said. And intent.

He added that it appeared Graham was starting to bring the rifle to his shoulder. After Graham was down, a deputy with EMT training moved in with Glick and Neibauer to assist.

Dr. Robert Kurtzman, a forensic pathologist for the Montana Department of Justice, testified that Graham died from three gunshot wounds. A toxicology screen found small amounts of alcohol and methamphetamine. It also showed an anti-seizure and anti-psychotic medications in his system.

Glick and Neibauer, the deputies, were placed on administrative leave following the incident. Carbon County Sheriff Josh McQuillan said on Thursday that they have already returned to work.

Nixon has the ultimate say on whether charges are filed, but he said after the inquest that he will respect the jurys verdict.
Call for a better birthday for autistic teen answered

PORTLAND, Maine (AP)  Hallee Sorenson sat alone in a bowling alley, flanked by balloons and streamers, at her 18th birthday party after no one showed up. Her cousin wants to make things right for her this year.

Rebecca Guildford, of Oxford, Massachusetts, said that Sorenson, who is autistic, deserves a big celebration for her 19th birthday next month, so she posted the party picture of Sorenson on Facebook.

"This would mean a lot to her mother as well, for as you can imagine, watching your child cry into her birthday cake breaks your heart," Guildford wrote. "If there is anyone who deserves a great birthday, this is the girl."

In this photo provided by Rebecca Guildford and taken sometime between 2014 and 2016, Hallee Sorenson, of Bangor, Maine, poses for a photo in the Bangor area. Guildford's Facebook post calling for people to help her autistic cousin have a better birthday has been shared more than 150,000 times on the social media website. (Allyson Seel-Sorenson/Courtesy of Rebecca Guildford via AP)

Sorenson lives in Bangor, Maine. Guildford asked people to "flood her mailbox" with birthday cards and letters, and included an address in the Facebook post.

The response has been overwhelming.

The 33-year-old police dispatch operator posted the message Tuesday and it has generated news coverage as far away as Australia, as well as an outpouring of sympathy for the young woman. The post had been shared more than 150,000 times on the social media website by Friday afternoon.

Guildford said many people have asked if they can also send gifts. She said it's not necessary but her cousin does love puzzles, baby dolls, costume jewelry and anything related to zoo animals.

"She's going to see that a lot of people want to be her friend and want to wish her well," Guildford said in a phone interview Friday.

Sorenson wanted to go bowling and eat cake and ice cream for her birthday last year; the family sent invitations to her classmates and friends, Guildford said. Sorenson sat anxiously awaiting their arrival, but no one showed up, she said.

Plans for a bigger, private birthday party with family next month are in the works.

In this photo provided by Rebecca Guildford and taken sometime between 2014 and 2016, Hallee Sorenson, of Bangor, Maine, poses for a photo in the Bangor area. Guildford's Facebook post calling for people to help her autistic cousin have a better birthday has been shared more than 150,000 times on the social media website. (Allyson Seel-Sorenson/Courtesy of Rebecca Guildford via AP)
US review board rejects Kenyan release bid from Guantanamo

MIAMI (AP)  A U.S. government review board has rejected a Kenyan prisoner's bid to be released from the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, after nine years in custody.

The Periodic Review Board said in a brief statement that continued detention of Mohammed Abdul Malik Bajabu is necessary because he poses what it calls a "significant threat" to the security of the United States. The statement was posted Friday on a Pentagon website.

Abdul Malik is a suspected member of Al-Qaida in East Africa and has been accused of involvement in two terrorist plots in Kenya. He has not been charged with a crime.
White House preparing to hand over the keys to a successor

WASHINGTON (AP)  The presidential candidates still have months of campaigning ahead, but the White House is already preparing to hand over the keys to President Barack Obama's successor.

The White House Transition Coordinating Council met for the first time this week. The committee includes senior officials from across the executive branch tasked with helping to ease the shift from one administration to the next. White House chief of staff Denis McDonough leads the group.

The group will eventually include representatives from the major-party campaigns. But campaign staff won't be invited until after the parties officially nominate their candidates at their conventions in July.

White House officials say the meeting Thursday was part of a process that began ramping up earlier this year.

In March, McDonough convened the Cabinet to review the transition plan, which includes guidance for how agencies should prepare materials  such as budget information, flow charts and logistics  and details on succession plans for when the scores of political appointees leave the government. The plans also include how and when transition teams should communicate with the candidates' campaigns.

In April, Office of Management and Budget Director Shaun Donovan asked all Cabinet agencies to prepare and organize the budget information the next administration will need to craft its first budget request, setting a September deadline.

Obama formally created the White House transition council and a similar council for the agencies, the Agency Transition Directors Council, in an executive order earlier this month.

White House officials say the aim is to ensure its house is in order for the next team. They're taking their cues, they say, from the George W. Bush White House, which earned high points from Obama administration officials when it came to handling the transition.

Some tasks, however, will be unprecedented. The rise of email and electronic communication has transformed the records archiving process, a key part of the transition. The White House says it's been holding monthly meetings with the National Archives and Records Administration since 2012 and has been testing the required massive data transfers since January 2015.
Appeals courts agree on concealed weapons ban restrictions

NEW YORK (AP)  A federal appeals court's decision upholding California's restrictions on carrying concealed weapons gives lawyers a fourth chance to try to get the U.S. Supreme Court's attention on a subject directly affecting eight states and the nation's capital.

Thursday's ruling by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco upheld a law requiring gun applicants to show good reason beyond mere safety. It was consistent with rulings since 2012 in three other circuits upholding similar restrictions in New York, Maryland and New Jersey. The Supreme Court did not take up the issue after those rulings. Alan Gura, an Alexandria, Virginia-based lawyer, has represented plaintiffs in each case. He did not immediately return a request for comment Friday.

UCLA Law School professor Eugene Volokh said he thinks there is less chance that the high court will hear the California case than the three that came before it because there are currently only eight justices.

The Supreme Court has never addressed directly whether an individual has the right to bear arms outside the home for the purpose of self-defense.

"It's an important question, the most important of the remaining questions on gun rights" that the Supreme Court has not addressed, Volokh said.

He predicted that the Supreme Court might eventually take up the subject if an appeals court in Washington, D.C., strikes down the city's strict gun law. Two lower court judges have issued conflicting opinions about the constitutionality of the district's law requiring that a firearm applicant demonstrate a "good reason to fear injury to his or her person or property" before being licensed to carry a pistol.

James B. Jacobs, a professor of constitutional law at New York University School of Law, noted the Supreme Court had decided two previous gun cases by a 5-4 vote. He said the court might be reluctant to tackle the issue until there are nine justices.

David Kopel, an adjunct professor of constitutional law at Denver University, agreed it was unlikely that the Supreme Court would address the issue now.

"It's less an issue of laws than their application," Kopel said, noting that there were substantial differences in how the laws are carried out within the states where licensing laws are strict.

He said Hawaii makes it most difficult to obtain a permit to carry a concealed weapon while New Jersey, Maryland and Washington D.C., are close behind with strict laws.

He said it is easier to get permits in some counties of New York and Delaware than in others while the odds of getting a permit can vary widely in Massachusetts. Rhode Island, he said, has two complicated laws pertaining to concealed weapon permits.

In 2012, the Chicago-based 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals struck down the only statewide ban on carrying concealed weapons, in Illinois. But the ruling was not appealed after the court gave state lawmakers the opportunity to change the law to conform with its findings.
The Latest: Man in court in deaths of 5 Michigan bicyclists

KALAMAZOO, Mich. (AP)  The Latest on charges in the deaths of five bicyclists near Kalamazoo, Michigan (all times local):

5:10 p.m.

A man charged with second-degree murder in the deaths of five bicyclists in southwestern Michigan has made his first court appearance.

Police investigate the scene after multiple bicyclists were struck in a deadly crash Tuesday, June 7, 2016, in Cooper Township, Mich. (Bryan Bennett/Kalamazoo Gazette-MLive Media Group via AP) LOCAL TELEVISION OUT; LOCAL RADIO OUT; MANDATORY CREDIT

Charles Pickett Jr. heard the charges Friday via video from jail, three days after a group of bicyclists was mowed down by a pickup truck in Kalamazoo County's Cooper Township, 160 miles east of Chicago.

Judge Richard Santoni refused to set a bond, saying Pickett is a "danger to the community" and might flee.

Pickett will have a court-appointed attorney unless he decides to hire his own. He says he's unemployed and takes care of his father in the Battle Creek area.

Besides the five deaths, four bicyclists were injured. One was in serious condition while the other three were fair or good Friday.

___

12:25 p.m.

Federal safety investigators are taking a rare look at a crash that killed five bicyclists in southwestern Michigan.

Eric Weiss, a spokesman at the National Transportation Safety Board, says investigators were at the scene Thursday. He says the NTSB's highway safety staff could make recommendations to prevent a similar tragedy.

Weiss said Friday that it's been decades since the agency has "looked at bicycles and cars and safety."

Five bicyclists were killed and at least four were injured Tuesday when a pickup truck struck the group from behind on a two-lane road in Kalamazoo County's Cooper Township. The driver, Charles Pickett Jr., is charged with second-degree murder.
A glance at Peru's presidential election

LIMA, Peru (AP)  Former World Bank economist Pedro Pablo Kuczynski has eked out a victory in Peru's closest presidential election since 1962, defeating the daughter of imprisoned ex-President Alberto Fujimori. With all votes counted, electoral authorities said Kuczynski won 50.1 percent compared to Keiko Fujimori's 49.9 percent.

A look at some of the issues that dominated the vote and the main challenges the next president will face:

WHO IS KUCZYNSKI?

Presidential candidate Pedro Pablo Kuczynski acknowledges the crowd at the end of a news conference in Lima, Peru, Thursday, June 9, 2016. Kuczynski won the majority of votes in the country's closest presidential contest in five decades, Peruvian electoral authorities said Thursday. His rival Keiko Fujimori has yet to concede however. (AP Photo/Silvia Izquierdo)

At age 77, Kuczynski will be Peru's oldest president. The son of a Jewish-Polish immigrant father who was one of Peru's leading tropical health experts, Kuczynski's first stint in government in the 1960s was cut short by a military coup. He fled Peru and moved to the United States, where he worked at the World Bank and then embarked on a successful career in business. He also served as Peru's finance minister twice and prime minister under President Alejandro Toledo. A conservative economist, he said he wants to modernize Peru by lowering taxes, attracting foreign investment and delivering water and public services to long-forsaken areas.

___

WHAT ARE PERU'S CHALLENGES?

Peru has been the darling of foreign investors during much of the past decade thanks to an abundance of gold and copper deposits. But with the commodities boom over, growth is slowing. Other major concerns are crime and drug-trafficking. Peru has surpassed Colombia as the world's largest supplier of cocaine.

___

HOW WILL KUCZYNSKI GOVERN?

Kuczynski's fledgling movement has just 18 of 130 seats in congress, so he'll need to build alliances  most likely with Fujimori's Popular Force party, which has a solid majority. In his first comments as president-elect, Kuczynski called for dialogue. One bargaining chip would be to grant release to house arrest to his election rival's father, former strongman Alberto Fujimori, who is serving a 25-year sentence for corruption and death squads during his rule in the 1990s.

___

WHAT IS KEIKO FUJIMORI'S FUTURE?

At age 41, she has plenty of time to mount a comeback. But she'll need to rein in hardliners and opportunists within her Popular Force party who yearn for a return to her father's authoritarian ways.

___

WHAT ABOUT THE OPPOSITION?

Although the main leftist alliance didn't qualify for the runoff, it played a huge role helping Kuczynski get elected by staging an anti-Fujimori protest on the eve of vote that was the largest demonstration seen in a generation. But it's unlikely to support his conservative policy agenda once he's in power. With the second-biggest electoral bloc in congress, it will have a strong position from which to negotiate.
The Latest: Authorities release Wyoming crash victims' names

CODY, Wyo. (AP)  The Latest on the wreck that killed three motorcyclists in northern Wyoming (all times local):

5:50 p.m.

The Wyoming Highway Patrol has released the names of three German motorcyclists who were killed in a traffic accident outside of Yellowstone National Park on Thursday.

This Thursday, June 9, 2016 law enforcement booking photo provided by the Park County, Wyo., Sheriff's Department shows Manuel Moreno Defuentes, 61, of Ontario, Ore. Defuentes was arrested following a wreck Thursday that killed three motorcyclists from Germany who were heading to Yellowstone National Park in northern Wyoming. Defuentes was scheduled to make his first court appearance Friday in Cody, Wyo. (Park County Sheriff's Department via AP)

The highway patrol on Friday released the following names of people killed at the scene:

 Tino Cachey, a 53-year-old man,

 Ute Cachey, a 52-year-old woman,

 Erik Brecht, a 37-year-old man.

The highway patrol hasn't yet determined the home cities of the deceased.

Three other German riders were airlifted from the accident scene for medical treatment in Billings, Montana. The agency identifies them as:

 Frank Brecht, 47, of Buch Gannertshofen,

 Dieter Brecht, 65, of Ludwigshafen,

 Renate Geiger, 67, of Ludwigshafen.

Another rider, Christine Mueller, 44, of Buch Gannertshofen, was treated and released from West Park Hospital in Cody.

___

3:40 p.m.

A 61-year-old man has been charged with misdemeanor homicide by vehicle after his pickup crashed into a group of motorcyclists from Germany who were heading to Yellowstone National Park in northern Wyoming.

Three of the motorcyclists died.

Manuel Moreno Defuentes, of Ontario, Oregon, made his first court appearance Friday in Cody.

Circuit Judge Bruce Waters set bail at $25,000 cash and set a preliminary hearing for Aug. 8. Defuentes doesn't have an attorney yet and remains in custody.

___

12:29 p.m.

A 61-year-old man has been arrested following a wreck that killed three motorcyclists from Germany who were heading to Yellowstone National Park in northern Wyoming.

The Cody Enterprise reports (http://bit.ly/1Ul296n ) that the Wyoming Highway Patrol arrested Manuel Moreno Defuentes, of Ontario, Oregon.

Defuentes was scheduled to make his first court appearance Friday in Cody. Defuentes doesn't have an attorney yet and is being held at the Park County Detention Center.

The wreck occurred Thursday afternoon when a pickup truck crossed the center line of U.S. Highway 14-16-20 west of Cody and crashed into a group of motorcyclists about 25 miles from Yellowstone. Two men and one woman were killed. Three others were injured and are in stable condition at a hospital in Billings, Montana.

Victim names have not been released.

___

Information from: The Cody Enterprise, http://www.codyenterprise.com

In this Thursday, June 9, 2016 photo, shows the scene of an accident in which five motorcycles (three pictured) and pick-up collided on the North Fork Highway west of Cody, Wyo. Three fatalities were reported. A 61-year-old man has been arrested following a wreck that killed three motorcyclists from Germany who were heading to Yellowstone National Park in northern Wyo. The Wyoming Highway Patrol arrested Manuel Moreno Defuentes, of Ontario, Ore. (Chelsea Blake/The Cody Enterprise via AP)MANDATORY CREDIT.
10th Circuit: Kansas can't block voters from casting ballots

WICHITA, Kan. (AP)  Kansas cannot prevent thousands of eligible voters from casting ballots in the November federal election because they didn't prove they were U.S. citizens when registering to vote at motor vehicle offices, a federal appeals court ruled Friday.

The 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling temporarily upholds a court order that required Kansas to allow those individuals to vote in federal elections even though they didn't provide citizenship documentation when applying or renewing their driver's licenses, as required under Kansas law. The state has said as many as 50,000 people could be affected.

The appeals court judges said Kansas had not made the necessary showing for a stay pending appeal, but agreed to hear the appeal quickly.

The initial court order was made last month by U.S. District Judge Julie Robinson, who said enforcement of Kansas' proof-of-citizenship law has disenfranchised more than 18,000 otherwise eligible voters. That amounts to about 8 percent of all voter registration applications, "not an insignificant amount," she wrote in her ruling.

Robinson ordered the state to comply with her ruling by Tuesday.

The decision means that Robinson's preliminary injunction will go into effect, and that means "tens of thousands of citizens who have had their voting rights denied would be put on the voter rolls," said Micah Kubic, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Kansas. "In any other state they would be on the voter rolls."

Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach did not immediately return messages left on his cellphone and in emails seeking comment on the ruling.

The state had asked the 10th Circuit to block her ruling, arguing that Robinson's injunction would cause a "heavy administrative burden." The state estimated that in addition to the people whose registrations had already been canceled or suspended under the law, the order would affect anyone who registers to vote at motor vehicle offices before the November elections. The state estimated that could total 50,000 motor voter applicants.

Kobach has championed laws across the nation requiring voter ID to cast a ballot and proof of citizenship to register to vote. The Republican argued that Robinson's ruling would cause widespread confusion and force an overhaul of Kansas' voter-registration process just months before a presidential election.

He also argued that her ruling would "cause an earthquake upsetting the administration of elections across the country." But of the four states that have such a law, Kansas is the only one that fully enforces it.

The rulings stem from a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of voters. The organization argues that Kansas is an outlier and that blocking the law would bring the state's registration practices "in line with federal law and prevailing practices in virtually every other state."

The ACLU notes that Alabama, Arizona and Georgia also have documentary proof of citizenship laws to register to vote, but that Alabama and Georgia don't enforce them. Arizona enforces its law for some registrants but doesn't require applicants registering to vote at motor vehicle offices to submit any additional information beyond what is needed to get a driver's license.

Kansas, which has more than 1.7 million registered voters, has required since January 2013 that new voter applicants provide a birth certificate, naturalization papers, passport or other proof of U.S. citizenship to register to vote.

In her ruling, Robinson said Kansas' law likely violates the National Voter Registration Act, a federal law that requires only "minimal information" to determine a voter's eligibility for federal elections. The law  commonly known as the "motor-voter law"  was designed to make it easier for people to register to vote for federal elections when they get their driver's licenses.

About 44 percent of Kansas voters registered at motor vehicle offices in the past 10 years, court documents show. The ACLU's lawsuit only deals with voter registrations at motor vehicle offices.

The proof-of citizenship requirement has mostly affected Kansas' younger citizens. Although those between the ages of 18 and 29 comprise only 14.9 percent of registered Kansas voters, that age group makes up more than 58 percent of motor-voter applicants whose registrations have been canceled or suspended.
Driver to be sentenced for crashing into marquee

A pensioner is to be sentenced for crashing his car into a marquee at a charity ball injuring 14 people.

Peter Bialek, 66, of London Road, Salisbury, Wiltshire, pleaded guilty at a previous hearing at Winchester Crown Court to three counts of grievous bodily harm without intent and a fourth charge of causing bodily harm by wanton or furious driving.

The incident happened during a ball attended by 300 people at Dene Farm, close to Nether Wallop, near Andover, Hampshire, on October 3 last year.

Peter Bialek is to be sentenced at Winchester Crown Court

Eyewitnesses have described how a white BMW car crashed into a marquee before hitting people on the dance floor.

A total of 14 people were injured while eight casualties who suffered serious injuries were taken to hospitals in Salisbury, Winchester, Basingstoke and Southampton.
Queen's dedication to duty hailed at service marking 90th birthday

The Queen's special contribution to the life of the nation during her 90 years has been celebrated with a service of thanksgiving.

Surrounded by her family, leading figures from national life and ordinary people who have made outstanding contributions, the Queen was honoured by the Archbishop of Canterbury for sustaining the country "through war and hardship, through turmoil and change''.

It was a day of reflection on the monarch's life with the Lord Mayor of London, Jeffrey Mountevans, paying tribute to the Queen's qualities of "gentleness, good humour and understanding".

The Queen and Prince Philip leave the service

While Prince Harry had a personal 90th birthday wish for his grandmother the Queen - a day off from her hectic anniversary year.

The service marked the start of a weekend of celebrations that will encompass the pomp and pageantry of Trooping the Colour, staged tomorrow, and the informal carnival atmosphere of the Patron's Lunch street party for 10,000 being held in The Mall on Sunday.

Archbishop Welby gave his sermon before the St Paul's Cathedral congregation of more than 2,000, and told the Queen: "Your Majesty, today we rejoice for the way in which God's loving care has fearfully and wonderfully sustained you - as well as Prince Philip marking his 95th birthday today."

The Queen has been a constant in a changing world and has seen Britain undergo developments affecting all areas of life, from technology and society to the political landscape.

Born Princess Elizabeth Alexandra Mary of York on April 21 1926 - the year of the General Strike - she was never expected to be Queen.

But she has become the longest reigning and oldest monarch in British history - and now the first to reach 90.

Archbishop Welby read excerpts from Psalm 139 and told the congregation it explored "fear and wonder, and the connection between them''.

He added: " But just as the Psalmist sees through fear to something more stirring and more extraordinary, so we look back on Your Majesty's 90 years in the life of our nation with deep wonder and profound gratitude.

"Through war and hardship, through turmoil and change, we have been fearfully and wonderfully sustained.''

Among the St Paul's congregation was Prime Minister David Cameron, who gave a reading from the New Testament, the Prince of Wales, Duchess of Cornwall, Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, Prince Harry and other members of the Royal Family. Senior cabinet members were represented and former prime ministers Tony Blair and Sir John Major were among the guests.

During the service Sir David Attenborough read Paddington Bear creator Michael Bond's personal account of growing up to be 90.

It was a birthday gift for the monarch, and brought laughter from the congregation.

Sir David, who like the children's author turned 90 earlier this year, recounted one story about Bond's ''very polite'' but accident-prone father, who always wore a hat, even when swimming in the sea, in case he met someone he knew.

He told the congregation: ''He rode a bicycle to work, and one day he managed to get both wheels caught inside a tram line. Instead of stopping there and then to unravel himself, he left it until he reached the depot, only to fall and break a collarbone."

William, Kate and Harry later joined 1,800 guests at London's Guildhall for an after-service reception where the Lord Mayor of London Jeffrey Mountevans paid tribute to the Queen's "unfailing service'' to the nation.

He said: "It is certainly with gentleness, good humour and understanding that, against the shifting sands of societal change, Her Majesty so wonderfully exemplifies the advantages of a constitutional monarchy." .

Grenada High Commissioner Karl Hood said after chatting to Harry: ''He said the best birthday present would be to have a day off, so she could lie about and do nothing,''

The Queen arrives for a national service of thanksgiving in her honour

Kate is greeted by clerics

Sir David Attenborough speaks during the national service of thanksgiving

The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and Prince Harry at St Paul's

Royal watchers gather outside St Paul's Cathedral

Armed police patrol outside St Paul's

The Queen waved to wellwishers outside

Prince Harry, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge arrive

The Queen is greeted by the Archbishop of Canterbury

The Prince of Wales and Duchess of Cornwall

Royal watchers were ready to greet the Queen

The Queen's long life has seen her reign for more than 64 years

Crowds greeted the Queen along the route to St Paul's

Prince Harry, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge after the service

Wellwishers marked out their places along the barriers early

Her Majesty's Body Guard of the Honourable Corps of Gentlemen at Arms outside St Paul's

Members of the armed forces line up outside St Paul's

Mike and Zara Tindall arrive for the service

The service was held at St Paul's

The Duke of York and Princess Beatrice

Prime Minister David Cameron and wife Samantha

Mayor of London Sadiq Khan and wife Saadiya

Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn with Speaker of the House of Commons John Bercow

Former Prime Minister Tony Blair

The Princess Royal arrives at St Paul's

The Queen and Prince Philip walk through the congregation

The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and Prince Harry

The service featured a sermon by the Archbishop of Canterbury

The Queen and Duke of Edinburgh

Barriers were put up outside the cathedral

TV presenter Clare Balding

The Queen's car arrives at St Paul's

The national service of thanksgiving was lead by the Archbishop of Canterbury

The Countess of Wessex and Lady Louise
CODY, Wyo.  A 61-year-old Oregon man whose pickup slammed into a group of motorcyclists from Germany who were heading to Yellowstone National Park in northern Wyoming, killing three, was charged with misdemeanor homicide by vehicle on Friday.

Manuel Moreno Defuentes, of Ontario, Ore., was being held in the Park County Detention Center in Cody, according to court officials.

Circuit Judge Bruce Waters set bail at $25,000 cash and set a preliminary hearing for Aug. 8. Defuentes doesn't have an attorney yet. Waters said a public defender will be appointed to represent Defuentes.

The wreck occurred about 12:15 p.m. Thursday when a pickup crossed the center line of U.S. Highway 14-16-20 west of Cody and crashed into a group of motorcyclists about 25 miles from the entrance to Yellowstone, according to patrol Capt. Tom Pritchard.

Defuentes was traveling alone in a 2003 GMC pickup and was "in the process of negotiating a right hand curve in the roadway, which he fails to properly negotiate, so he crosses into the oncoming traffic lane," Pritchard said.

Two men and one woman were killed. Three others were injured and were in stable condition at a hospital in Billings, Pritchard said.

The Wyoming Highway Patrol identified the victims Friday as Tino Cachey, 53, Ute Cachey, 52, and Erik Brecht, 37. The highway patrol hasn't yet determined the home cities of the deceased.

Three other German riders were airlifted from the accident scene for medical treatment in Billings. The agency identified them as Frank Brecht, 47, of Buch Gannertshofen, Dieter Brecht, 65, of Ludwigshafen, and Renate Geiger, 67, of Ludwigshafen. Another rider, Christine Mueller, 44, of Buch Gannertshofen, was treated and released from West Park Hospital in Cody.

Pritchard said it was a complicated process notifying relatives in a foreign country.

The accident remains under investigation.

"It just seems to be figuring out why he crossed over into the other lane," Pritchard said.

The section of highway where the wreck occurred has a 50 mph speed limit.

Defuentes was traveling to Cody to pick up his ex-wife, Pritchard said.

Defuentes recently had an "abdominal type" surgery and had been prescribed pain medication, but whether that played any role in the accident hasn't been determined, he said.

The group from Germany consisted of nine people who had flown into Denver, where they rented six motorcycles, he said.

"They were head to the park to do a quick tour and then back to Cody," Pritchard said.

Two of three who died were on one motorcycle, while the third was riding alone, he said.
Ex-wife of green energy tycoon awarded 300,000 in divorce cash battle

The ex-wife of a green energy tycoon has been awarded a "modest" lump sum payment of 300,000 in final settlement of the couple's divorce cash battle.

Kathleen Wyatt had earlier demanded a 1.9 million payout from Dale Vince, although she did not lodge a maintenance claim until more than 25 years after they had separated, and nearly 20 years after their divorce.

How much she will actually receive of her award remains uncertain, because of outstanding legal bills which have yet to be fully quantified.

Kathleen Wyatt had earlier demanded a 1.9 million payout

Approving the terms of the settlement, High Court family judge Mr Justice Cobb, sitting in London, said: "I am perfectly satisfied that it is reasonable, and that the wife is entitled to receive a modest capital award following the breakdown of this marriage.

"The lump sum payment agreed between the parties fairly represents, in my view, a realistic and balanced appraisal of the unusual circumstances of this case."

Neither Ms Wyatt, 55, of Monmouth, nor Mr Vince, 53, of Stroud, Gloucestershire, were in court for the announcement of the settlement.

Mr Vince is a former New Age traveller who became a millionaire businessman years after the couple parted.

There was a legal battle over whether her late claim against him could proceed, which Ms Wyatt finally won in the Supreme Court. Mr Vince described the decision as "mad".

Judges were told that the couple met as students, married in 1981 when they were in their early 20s, and lived a New Age traveller lifestyle.

They separated in the mid-1980s and divorced in 1992.

In the mid-1990s Mr Vince began a business career and went on to become a green energy tycoon after launching a company called Ecotricity - and justices were told that the business group is worth at least 57 million.

Ms Wyatt lodged a claim for "financial remedy" in 2011.

Deputy High Court Judge Nicholas Francis gave her claim the green light in 2012. Three appeal judges blocked the claim in 2013.

But the Supreme Court justices said it should go ahead.

One justice, Lord Wilson, said Ms Wyatt's claim was "legally recognisable" and not an "abuse of process".

He said she had been unwise to pitch her claim at 1.9 million, adding that an award approaching that size was "out of the question".

But he said justices thought that there was a "real prospect" that she would get a "comparatively modest award" - perhaps enough to buy a mortgage-free house.

Lord Wilson said Ms Wyatt was in poor health and lives in a "modest house" in Monmouth.

He said she sometimes has low-paid jobs, and at other times she "gets by" on state benefits.

Lord Wilson said Mr Vince, of Stroud, Gloucestershire, was a "remarkable man".

"In his 20s he was a New Age traveller with no money at all," said Lord Wilson.

"But one year at the Glastonbury festival he rigged up a contraption from which he provided a wind-powered telephone service.

"It was the start of a business which, as a result of his ingenuity and drive, has led to his manufacture and sale of green energy on a massive scale.

"His company, Ecotricity Group Ltd, is now worth at least 57 million."

Lord Wilson said Mr Vince lives, with his second wife, in a Georgian fort.
Zlatan Ibrahimovic barred from leaving Sweden camp for transfer talks

Zlatan Ibrahimovic's potential move to Manchester United looks to be on hold for the time being after Sweden boss Erik Hamren stressed it "would not be okay" for the striker to fly to England at the moment.

Ibrahimovic is with the Sweden squad in France preparing for their Euro 2016 opener against the Republic of Ireland on Monday.

The 34-year-old, who is leaving Paris St Germain this summer at the end of his contract, has been heavily linked with United.

Zlatan Ibrahimovic is being heavily linked with Manchester United

Reports a week ago suggested the Old Trafford outfit were close to signing him and on Tuesday Ibrahimovic himself, having been asked about it directly, refused to confirm whether or not he was set to join United, adding: "You will have to have patience."

Now Hamren has had his say on the speculation surrounding the frontman.

Quoted by Swedish newspaper Goteborgs-Posten, he said: "Players have their leisure time on the schedule - there's nothing I can control.

"But it would not be okay for Zlatan to fly to Manchester."

Hamren also emphasised his confidence the speculation will not have a negative impact on Ibrahimovic or any of the rest of the Sweden squad.

He added: "I'm 100 percent sure it will not affect Zlatan. He has been in the business a long time.

"I understand there is a lot of Zlatan media. Not only in Sweden. I understand that.

"But with us, it is nothing. He handles it perfectly. The players are familiar with it.
Kyle Lafferty fit for Northern Ireland opener

Kyle Lafferty returned to horsing around at training on Friday before declaring himself fit for Northern Ireland's Euro 2016 opener with Poland in Nice on Sunday.

The 28-year-old striker brushed off any concerns over the groin problem which forced him to the sidelines on Tuesday by rejoining Michael O'Neill's group three days later and was in high spirits.

During a resistance-band training exercise, he mimicked a horse at the Saint-Georges-de-Reneins training base, much to the amusement of his colleagues, and then insisted that, despite scaring himself earlier in the week, he would be fine for the Polish test lying in wait on the French Riviera.

Kyle Lafferty was in good spirits on Friday morning

In an interview with the Irish Football Association, he said: "It's feeling good, I trained by myself yesterday, did a few runs, a few twists and turns and it feels good.

"Seeing the way I fell, the way I landed, I thought the worst, but I came through it and got the scan results which were all clear and I've never felt better.

"When I had the sharpest pain in my groin, I thought the worst, as you do, but the longer the day went on, I started feeling better as I was getting more stiff and that was probably a good sign.

"I went for a scan and the results came back clear and it gave me the go-ahead to start training intense again. I have and I feel great."

While he has been unwanted by Norwich, his evolution into his country's leading forward was a huge factor behind Northern Ireland's successful qualifying campaign, in which Lafferty scored on seven occasions.

O'Neill's role in transforming him from class clown to lethal marksman has been praised by Lafferty himself, although the striker showed on Friday that the joker is a guise he can still adopt in the right situation.

"That's Kyle, he keeps us all entertained," said defender Gareth McAuley.

"He's not far off making himself the clown, but once we get there and at the stadium he will be fully focused and he knows how important he is to us. He's a big player in what we're trying to do.

"He's all right, I think he was like Bambi on ice the other day. He's gone through it all right - at some stage he slept in the chapel at the hotel the other night!

"But he's in good spirits. It gave us all a bit of a scare but he's fine."

Northern Ireland fly out to Nice on Saturday morning and will train at the stadium in the afternoon prior to their first ever fixture at a European Championship finals.

And the hype surrounding such a momentous occasion will ensure there is plenty of adrenaline to help get Lafferty through.

"I've never been so excited about a football match," he added.

"I heard there's over 40,000 fans coming (to France) which is incredible and we're not going to go out there and let anyone down.
Mother 'took cocaine hours before crash that killed young daughter'

A mother who crashed her car into a tree fatally injuring her toddler daughter had taken cocaine just hours before getting behind the wheel, a court heard.

Danielle Parsons was jailed for five years after pleading guilty to causing death by dangerous driving before her sentencing at Birmingham Crown Court, West Midlands Police said.

Her two-year-old little girl Esmee O'Reilly, who was on the car's back seat, died in hospital after the crash in Gibbins Road in Selly Oak, Birmingham, last year.

Esmee O'Reilly died in hospital after the crash in Gibbins Road in Selly Oak

Following what police described as a "complex" investigation, officers found out how the 23-year-old, of Castle Road, Weoley Castle, Birmingham had made the "grave mistake" of taking drugs before driving.

A family friend was also seriously injured, but has since recovered.

Parsons was also told at her sentencing on Thursday that she would serve two years in jail after admitting causing serious injury by dangerous driving, to run concurrently.

She was also banned from driving for five-and-a-half years.

Sergeant Steve Newbury, from the force's collision investigation unit, said: "Parsons made the grave mistake of using cocaine that day and then put her family and friends in danger by driving under its influence with them as passengers.

"Her young daughter suffered the ultimate consequence of that decision and lost her life and she will have to live with the knowledge that she caused her death.

"This is the most graphic example that drug driving can kill and change people's lives forever."

He added: "I would like to thank the hard work and determination of the collision investigation team to get to the truth and establish all the evidence which has led to this successful prosecution and the dedicated work of the family liaison team in their support of the family.

"Our thoughts remain with them as they continue to come to terms with their loss."

Speaking at the time of the crash, the little girl's uncle, Brendan O'Reilly, paid tribute to his "happy-go-lucky" niece.

He said: "She was always smiling, and never stopped smiling - she was a happy-go-lucky little girl."

Mr O'Reilly said he last saw his niece the night before the fatal crash on April 30, when she was her usual happy self.

"She had beautiful blue eyes," he added.

Following the crash, members of the public including a medical student tried tirelessly to resuscitate the little girl at the roadside, but all in vain.
Lewis Hamilton shows his rivals the way in practice for Canadian Grand Prix

Lewis Hamilton completed a practice double at the Canadian Grand Prix to prove his prowess at the Gilles-Villeneuve Circuit.

Hamilton, a winner here on four occasions - including his debut victory back in 2007 - was comfortably quickest in the morning before ending the afternoon session on top again.

The triple world champion posted an impressive lap of one minute and 14.212 seconds to finish a quarter-of-a-second clear of Sebastian Vettel in the Ferrari with Nico Robserg only third in the order.

Lewis Hamilton was fastest in first practice for the Canadian Grand Prix

Rosberg, who in stark contrast to Hamilton is yet to win in Montreal, was an alarming half-a-second slower than his Mercedes team-mate and fellow championship protagonist.

Hamilton ended his seven-month losing streak with victory at the Monaco Grand Prix to enable him to slash the gap to Rosberg, who crossed the line a lowly seventh, from 43 to 24 points. And this imperious start to his weekend in Canada will provide him with further confidence that the deficit will be even slighter by Sunday evening.

Hamilton was gift-wrapped his victory at the rain-hit Monte Carlo race after a Red Bull pit-stop blunder on Daniel Ricciardo's car, and the Australian, who revealed he could not speak to his team in the days after the error, was fifth fastest on Friday, one place shy of his team-mate Max Verstappen.

The drivers conducted their media briefings in coats, and in some cases winter hats at an usually cold Montreal on Thursday - but the sun returned for practice with the air temperature reaching 20 degrees in the afternoon. Rain however, is forecast for Sunday's race.

Jenson Button memorably won the 2011 edition of this grand prix following a deluge of rain, and the McLaren driver was a relatively impressive seventh on Friday afternoon.

Elsewhere, Valtteri Bottas was sixth for Williams with Ferrari's Kimi Raikkonen eighth. Jolyon Palmer, the British rookie, was only 20th in the order, and nearly one second slower than his Renault team-mate Kevin Magnussen.

Earlier, the opening session was red-flagged for 10 minutes after the Williams driver of Felipe Massa endured a high-speed shunt at turn one. The Brazilian lost control of his car under braking before heading for the tyre barrier.
Chris Froome zooms into the Criterium race lead

Chris Froome took over the race lead at the Criterium du Dauphine after clinching victory on stage five on Friday.

The Team Sky rider launched an attack 2.5 kilometres from the summit of the final climb in the 140km route to Vaujany and was too strong for Richie Porte (BMC) as he crossed the line first to take the yellow jersey from Alberto Contador (Tinkoff).

Froome and Porte finished 19 seconds ahead of Adam Yates (Orica-GreenEdge) and Dan Martin (Etixx-QuickStep), with Contador (Tinkoff) a further two seconds back.

Team Sky rider Chris Froome now leads the Criterium du Dauphine

The Briton, who is gearing up for a bid to land a third Tour de France title, finished the stage with a seven-second lead over Australian Porte in the overall standings, with Contador now back in third, 27 seconds behind.

"It's an amazing feeling," Froome said on www.cyclingnews.com.

"It's always good to win a race before the Tour de France. The team rode very well to take me to the final climb in the best position. They set it up perfectly for me.
At largest U.S. training site, police dogs learn to thwart attacks

By Laila Kearney

STORMVILLE, N.Y., June 8 (Reuters) - At a sprawling campus north of New York City, a 3-year-old German Shepherd named Johnny frantically sniffed through seats and luggage bins on an out-of-service commuter rail train trying to catch a whiff of hidden explosive.

When Johnny found a black bag with the faint scent of C-4, commonly used to blow up buildings, he sat statue-still at attention, alerting handler Kevin Pimpinelli of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority police to his discovery. In return, Pimpinelli rewarded him with a prized chew toy.

"In the real world, he can find the explosive before it gets on the train," Pimpinelli said. "Our job is to try to prevent that device getting in."

Johnny is one of 50 of the transit authority's police dogs being trained at its $13 million, 72-acre training center in Stormville, New York, about 70 miles (113 km) north of New York City.

The Metropolitan Transit Authority operates subways, buses, and railroads in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut and provides more than 2.7 billion trips each year to travelers, according to the agency's website.

The canine training center, the biggest facility of its kind in the United States, begins full operations on Wednesday and will train dogs used by police across the nation.

Amid attacks including the March bombing of a Brussels train station and airport, which killed 32 people, U.S. police agencies see highly trained dogs as key to maintaining security in large public spaces.

Their sharp sense of smell exceeds the ability of humans and machines to detect explosives and track suspects.

"The importance of this facility is growing daily because we get more threats daily," said MTA Police Lieutenant John Kerwick, who oversees the agency's police-dog training operations.

The dogs are carefully selected. Only about one in 30 dogs assessed at breeders are chosen for the canine police force. The dogs are mainly German Shepherds like Johnny or Belgian Malinois, high-energy breeds known for a strong desire to work.

HIGHLY TRAINED SNIFFERS

Those handpicked few are trained to detect threats such as explosives or contraband including narcotics, said David Ferland, who heads the United States Police Canine Association (USPCA).

The MTA dog training facility includes rooms modeled after classrooms and bus stations, 26 kennels and a veterinary clinic. Outside, there are nine buses, ponds and train cars at the end of a retired Metro North railroad track. All are used to train the dogs.

While there is no central database tracking the number of police dogs in service in the United States, the USPCA estimates the figure at about 10,000.

Ferland said interest in training police dogs has risen dramatically since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington, evidence of a sense of urgency in combating similar threats.

"Before 9/11, there were only a handful of these training sites," Ferland said. "Now, there are training facilities an hour's drive from every major city in the U.S."

The Stormville facility will offer initial 12-week courses where dogs learn to detect explosives and the refresher courses that dogs are required to take each month.

The canines are exposed to heights, loud noises, fumes, moving vehicles and other distractions they would face on the job.

Typically they work until about the age of 10, after which they normally go on to live as pets in their primary handlers' homes.
Western-backed southern Syria rebel leader killed in suicide attack

By Suleiman Al-Khalidi

AMMAN, June 9 (Reuters) - A Western-backed rebel leader involved in the fight against Islamic State in southern Syria was killed by a suicide bomber suspected to be from the ultra-hardline group, rebel sources said on Thursday.

Saleem Bakour, a defector from the Syrian army where he was a colonel, was killed when a militant managed to get into his heavily guarded base in the desert near the Jordanian-Iraqi border and blew himself up. He was buried in Amman on Thursday.

Bakour, a founder of the Free Syria Army's Southern Front alliance of rebel groups, took a lead in recent fighting to drive out Islamic State militants when they pushed south after being driven out of the central city of Palmyra in March.

Unlike parts of rebel-held northern Syria, Syria's south has long been one of the last major footholds of rebel groups that are not dominated by hardline jihadists.

A rebel source said Bakour played a crucial role in April in pushing out Islamic State militants when they launched an attack on northeast Damascus around Dumier airport and abducted scores of workers.

"The martyr was one of the toughest leaders who fought Daesh (Islamic State). We are committed to fighting them to the end," said Issam el-Rayyes, the spokesman for the FSA's Southern Front told Reuters.

Bakour, a member of the mainstream opposition body the Saudi-based High Negotiations Committee (HNC), was among the rebel leaders who coordinate operations from a joint command centre in Jordan that provides support to Syrian rebels provided by foreign states, including Gulf Arab governments.

This year, these moderate rebel groups have fought their biggest offensives in the south against hardline groups such as Liwa Shuhada al Yarmouk, suspected of ties with Islamic State, in ongoing battles that have killed dozens.
Taliban gains in Afghanistan threaten costly U.S. reconstruction effort -watchdog

By Idrees Ali

WASHINGTON, June 9 (Reuters) - The United States has wasted billions of dollars in reconstruction aid to Afghanistan over the past decade, and now a renewed Taliban insurgency is threatening the gains that have been made, the U.S government's top watchdog on Afghanistan said.

"The bottom line is too much has been wasted in Afghanistan. Too much money was spent in too small a country with too little oversight," John Sopko told Reuters. "And if the security situation continues to deteriorate, even areas where money was spent wisely and gains were made, could be jeopardized."

The nearly $113 billion Congress has appropriated for reconstruction since 2001, when U.S.-led forces invaded the country and toppled the Taliban regime, has long been plagued by corruption, waste and mismanagement, according to a series of reports from Sopko, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR).

Appointed by President Barack Obama, Sopko has led the watchdog agency for nearly four years. He said the planned drawdown of U.S. troops could compound the reconstruction effort's problems and add to the amount that already has been wasted, which he estimated is in the billions of dollars.

According to Sopko's latest report, issued in April, U.S. reconstruction funding for Afghanistan includes projects for programs to combat the drug trade, build electric power lines, develop new industries, improve the banking and legal systems and modernize agriculture, which the report says "employs more than 50 percent of the labor force".

While he declined to comment on how many American troops he thinks should remain in Afghanistan, his new warning could increase the pressure on Obama to reconsider his timeline for reducing the U.S. force in Afghanistan from about 9,800 today to 5,500 by the time he leaves office in January.

NEW LEADER

Last month, the Afghan Taliban selected Mullah Haibatullah Akhundzada as their new leader after the United States killed their former chief, Mullah Akhtar Mansour, in a drone strike in Pakistan. The Taliban are making steady battlefield gains against Afghan security forces and Akhundzada has vowed, in an audio recording, that there will be no return to peace talks.

Last week, more than a dozen retired U.S. generals and diplomats urged Obama to maintain the current level of troops in Afghanistan, warning that a reduction would undercut the morale of Afghan government forces and bolster the Taliban.

Nearly $951 million - less than one percent - of the aid money has been saved in "restitution, fines, forfeitures, recoveries, savings, civil settlements," and between 2015 and 2016, 107 people and companies have been barred from doing business with the U.S government for contractor misconduct, Sopko's office said.

"Our agency wasn't created until half the money or more was spent," Sopko said.

About 60 percent of the $113 billion Congress has appropriated has gone to train and equip Afghan security forces. However, how effectively Afghan forces can fight the Taliban remains a big question, Sopko said, and if the security situation deteriorates further, it could threaten the ability of Afghan President Ashraf Ghani's government to provide services to citizens.

"If we can't get out there ... we can't see if the troops are getting shoes, or getting bullets, or getting grenades, or getting paid, and the security will have an impact on that," Sopko said.

ROOM FOR IMPROVEMENT

In May, a Brookings Institution report cited as evidence of greater insecurity a rise in deaths among both civilians and Afghan security forces, as well as persistent deficiencies in the army and police, including retention and support functions.

Pentagon officials said that while Afghan forces have made steady progress, there is room for improvement.

"Obviously in a perfect world we would love to see them further along, you know, than perhaps (what) they demonstrated last year," said U.S. Army spokesman Brigadier General Charles Cleveland.

Large portions of Afghanistan's territory, including the provincial capital of Kunduz and multiple districts of Helmand province, have fallen, at times briefly, to the Taliban over the past year and a half, and many other districts and provinces are under Taliban control.

Still, U.S. reconstruction money has helped Afghanistan make some strides in human development, according to experts and former senior U.S. officials, and the U.S. Agency for International Development said it is not concerned about the planned drawdown of U.S. forces in Afghanistan.

James Dobbins, the State Department special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan from 2013 to 2014, said despite some humanitarian gains in Afghanistan, the invasion has yet to achieve its objective, despite the billions of dollars spent.

"We went into Afghanistan to make it more peaceful, and so far we haven't succeeded," Dobbins said.
Private company wants U.S. clearance to fly to the moon

By Irene Klotz

WASHINGTON, June 9 (Reuters) - U.S. government agencies are working on temporary rules to allow a private company to land a spacecraft on the moon next year, while Congress weighs a more permanent legal framework to govern future commercial missions to the moon, Mars and other destinations beyond Earth's orbit, officials said.

Plans by private companies to land spacecraft on the moon or launch them out of Earth's orbit face legal obstacles because the United States has not put in place regulations to govern space activities, industry and government officials said.

"We do not have formal authority today to deal with what happens on orbit or on other planetary terrestrial bodies. That's the issue that we're wrestling with," said George Nield, head of the Federal Aviation Administration's Office of Commercial Space Transportation.

"What is being looked at right now is a Band-Aid fix because the system is broken," Nield said at an American Bar Association space law forum in Washington on Wednesday.

A 1967 international treaty obliges the United States and other signatories to authorize and supervise space activities by its non-government entities. But no U.S. agency has authority to regulate commercial space activities outside of rocket launches, spacecraft re-entries into the atmosphere and operations of telecommunications and remote sensing satellites in Earth orbit.

The issue is coming to a head in part because of a request by Florida-based Moon Express for permission from the U.S. government to land a spacecraft on the moon in 2017. So far, only government agencies have flown satellites beyond Earth's orbit.

"No commercial company has ever asked to go outside of Earth orbit and go elsewhere before. We're a pathfinder out of necessity," Moon Express Chief Executive Bob Richards said in an interview on Monday.

Richards and Nield declined to comment on what specifically Moon Express is proposing.

Other countries are moving faster to establish rules for space launches in compliance with international treaties. Luxembourg last week announced it was partnering with two U.S. companies interested in mining asteroids and set aside 200 million euros to woo space firms to relocate. The United Arab Emirates also intends to serve as a commercial space haven.
In a Big Horn County courtroom on Friday, Mary Lou Little said she didn't recognize her daughter when she saw her in August 1999, days after she was found floating face down in the Afterbay Reservoir.

She turned toward Brian David Laird, who was sentenced Friday for killing Little's daughter, Kathryn Laird, and held up family photos.

"This is what she looked like," she said.

At the end of the hearing, a judge handed down a 100-year prison sentence to Laird, 48, who maintained his innocence and showed little emotion in the courtroom.

District Judge Michael Hayworth placed no restriction on parole, for which Laird will be reviewed in 25 years.

Earlier this year, a jury found Laird guilty of killing his wife, Kathryn Laird, on July 31, 1999, in Fort Smith. She was found less than a mile from the trailer park where they lived. Kathryn Laird had bruises on her body, an autopsy noted.

Fridays hearing included testimony from two of Kathryn Lairds family members. Her sister, Sheri Harber, said that they had a tight-knit family, especially during holidays.

They destroyed the family, Harber said, referring to Lairds actions. There are no holidays. I couldnt pick up the phone and share life with my sister. We did everything together.

Little said her daughter had dreams of being a veterinarian and could train any horse. Little had just finished visiting her mother at the cemetery when Brian Laird called her with the news that Kathryn had died.

It was just too devastating to know that she died the way that she did, Little said. And that she had her whole life ahead of her.

The case of Kathryn Lairds death had gone quiet for years. It was closed in 2004 and remained that way until FBI Special Agent John Teeling began reviewing evidence. He said that a conversation he had with an assistant that year stuck with him.

She said they were closing a case on a murder that was very disturbing, Teeling said. She said the belief was Brian Laird, an attorney, had murdered his wife, and that she ultimately was murdered by putting his foot on her back, or his knee, and killing her in a body of water. And watching her drown.

In 2012, Teeling reopened the case. Under questioning from prosecutors, he spoke about the lengthy list of interviews he conducted in the case. In particular, he recalled speaking with a friend of Kathryn Lairds shortly before her death.

(Kathryn) was unhappy, sad and she made a decision that she was going to end the marriage or file separation papers, Teeling said.

The team of prosecutors, who were from the Montana Attorney Generals Office, repeated that point of motive  that Brian Laird became angry after learning that Kathryn wanted to leave him. Little testified to this as well, saying that her daughter had expressed it during a phone call.

Teeling estimated that hed spent as many as 1,000 hours on the case.

The catalyst in Teelings investigation came when two witnesses who had been overlooked years ago were interviewed. Eric and Kathleen Anderson were living next to the Lairds. The Andersons provided evidence that contradicted Brian Lairds story.

Brian Laird gave a brief statement on Friday.

I did not do this, your honor, he said. I still dont know how Kathryn died.

It was revealed at the hearing that Brian Laird had been seeing mental health professionals and abused prescription drugs since his wife's death. He told different stories to different doctors, including that he saw Kathryn Laird die in front of him. He told others that it was a boating accident or that she overdosed on medication.

Defense attorney Sandy Selvey called this an extremely circumstantial case. He noted that the U.S. Attorneys Office had previously declined to file a grand jury indictment on Brian Laird, and the case was passed to the Montana Attorney General.

Its because his wife is gone, defense attorney Matt Wald said. He recognizes the loss to the family. No matter what anyone else thinks, he has felt the loss every day.

Brian Lairds attorneys requested a 40-year sentence.

In closing recommendations, Assistant Attorney General Brant Light spoke about the trials of Kathryn Lairds family while the case went cold.

Sixteen years knowing that the man that killed their daughter, their sister, was free to live life without any restrictions. All while they suffered.

Brian Laird had been convicted of an unrelated felony in Colorado in 2008.

After hearing the sentence, Little and Harber said that they suspected right away that Brian Laird had killed Kathryn Laird.
Colombia to set new price for Novartis cancer drug -minister

By Julia Symmes Cobb and Luis Jaime Acosta

BOGOTA, June 9 (Reuters) - Colombia will set a new price for the Novartis cancer drug imatinib in a bid to cut healthcare costs after price negotiations with the Swiss company broke down, the health minister said on Thursday.

A so-called public interest declaration for imatinib will allow health regulators to examine the case and set a new, lower price for the drug. Colombia stopped short of declaring a compulsory license, which would have overridden Novartis' patent and permitted other companies to make cheaper generic versions.

Novartis will be legally obliged to sell the drug, used to treat leukemia and other cancers, at the new price.

"The negotiations have definitively broken down," Health Minister Alejandro Gaviria told reporters at a conference in Cartagena, adding the formal declaration will come within days. "What that entails is declaring public interest with the principal objective of unilaterally fixing a price."

Colombia, looking to curb costs for its beleaguered healthcare system, had asked Novartis to decrease the price of imatinib. But the company had proved "reticent," Gaviria told Reuters last month.

The drug, sold under brand names Glivec or Gleevec, was not under patent in Colombia between 2003 and 2012, sparking competition from generic producers whose prices are 197 percent cheaper than those of Novartis, according to the health ministry. The current patent is valid until mid-2018.

Each 400 milligram tablet of imatinib currently costs 129,000 Colombian pesos, around $44. The government had proposed to Novartis that the price be lowered to the equivalent of $18.50. Imatinib is used by some 2,500 patients in Colombia.

The new price will likely be near the average price the drug cost before the Novartis patent came into force, a health ministry spokesman told Reuters, and is expected to be announced in the coming days.

"We have remained fully committed to finding a resolution that benefits patients, innovators and the Colombian healthcare system," Novartis said in a statement, adding it had not yet received official confirmation from Colombia about the end of talks.

Declarations of public interest can be legitimate, the company added, but one was not required in this case. "There are already non-infringing generic versions of imatinib on the market, which the government could purchase instead of Glivec in order to reduce its costs."
Peru's Kuczynski beats Fujimori in near-final vote count

By Mitra Taj and Caroline Stauffer

LIMA, June 9 (Reuters) - Former investment banker Pedro Pablo Kuczynski was on track to become Peru's next president after a near-final vote tally gave him a slim lead in the tightest election in decades, although his populist rival Keiko Fujimori had yet to accept defeat.

Outgoing President Ollanta Humala and the leaders of Colombia, Chile, Argentina and Mexico congratulated Kuczynski after the latest official results on Thursday made it nearly impossible for Fujimori to catch up even though Kuczynski led by only 40,000 votes.

Kuczynski, a centrist economist known in Peru by his initials PPK, said he would wait for a complete count before claiming victory as thousands of disputed or unclear ballots remained uncounted.

Kuczynski promised to unify Peru after the divisive election that many saw as a referendum on the controversial legacy of Fujimori's father, imprisoned former authoritarian leader Alberto Fujimori, in Peru's fourth straight democratic election.

"We're going to work for all Peruvians," Kuczynski, 77, said in a news conference as supporters cheered him in the streets. "We take this virtual verdict with much modesty."

The thin margin of victory and lack of allies in Congress would leave Kuczynski with one of the weakest mandates of any recent Peruvian president.

Either of the two business friendly candidates would face tough economic challeges, as slumping mineral prices have hit Peru, a global supplier of copper, zinc and gold.

To kickstart the economy, Kuczynski has proposed widening the fiscal deficit, lowering sales taxes, and investing in new infrastructure projects.

The latest count put Kuczynski ahead of 41-year-old Fujimori by just a quarter percentage point, according to electoral office ONPE. While the gap has fluctuated somewhat in recent days, Fujimori has trailed throughout the vote count.

Still, 0.2 percent of votes had not be tallied because they were unclear or dispute.

Members of Fujimori's Popular Force party said electoral authorities should annul bundles of ballots because they had detected irregularities at polling stations.

"Nobody, absolutely nobody...can claim victory yet," congressman Pedro Spadaro told reporters.

Some 140 bundles of ballots were still under review by authorities late on Thursday. However, with each bundle holding up to 300 votes, Fujimori would not be able catch up to Kuczynski even if all were in her favor.

Fujimori remained largely silent amid growing calls for her to congratulate Kuczynski.

"Acknowledging defeat would be best for democracy," said Fernando Tuesta, a political analyst and the former head of Peru's electoral board.

'DEADLY THREAT TO DEMOCRACY'

Fujimori, who became her father's first lady at 19 when he divorced her mother, had long been the favorite to win the election, thanks in part to the popularity of the family name in provinces where his government built schools and cracked down on the bloody Shining Path insurgency.

Alberto Fujimori is now serving a 25-year sentence for graft and human rights abuses committed during his 1990-2000 government.

On the campaign trail, she tried to distance herself from her father and criticized him for ordering the military to shutter Congress in 1992. But she never acknowledged he committed any crimes.

"I voted for PPK because he is a man with experience and does not have her past," said Mario Palomino, 70.

But the broad support that Kuczynski enjoyed as many rallied behind him in the second-round race to defeat Fujimori might evaporate once he assumes power, making it hard for him to govern. His party will control just 18 congressional seats, behind Fujimori's 73 and a leftist party's 20.

Widely seen as honest, Kuczynski caught up with Fujimori in the final stretch of campaigning after he called her "a deadly threat to democracy" in a debate as she was stung by scandals involving her close advisers.

It would be Fujimori's second consecutive narrow loss in a presidential run-off race and a further blow to the populist politics that have fallen out of favor in the region.

But her apparent defeat does not mean the Fujimori name is politically dead in Peru. Popular Force is the country's best organized party and her younger brother, a lawmaker, has said he would run for president in the next election if she lost.

A former prime minister, Kuczynski dismissed Fujimori's tough stance on crime, including promises to build prisons high in the Andes to isolate prisoners, as myopic and cruel.

Kuczynski has promised to ensure every town has piped water while cleaning up endemic corruption in the Andean country where one in five Peruvians still live in poverty despite nearly two decades of uninterrupted economic growth.

"Many Peruvians feel the train has already passed them by," said Kuczynski. "I want all to get on board right away."
Cathedral service starts celebrations for British Queen's 90th birthday

LONDON, June 10 (Reuters) - Britain holds a National Service of Thanksgiving in honour of Queen Elizabeth on Friday, kicking off a weekend of events to mark the official 90th birthday of the country's longest-reigning monarch.

The church service at London's St Paul's Cathedral, attended by a host of dignitaries including other members of the royal family and Prime Minister David Cameron, will be a double celebration for the queen with Prince Philip, her husband of 68-years, marking his 95th birthday.

"Most especially today do we give thanks for the length of years that has been granted to our most gracious Sovereign Lady, Queen Elizabeth: for her faithful devotion, dutiful commitment, loving leadership, gentle constancy, royal dignity and kindly humanity," David Ison, the Dean of St Paul's, will say.

The queen, who has been on the throne for 64 years and is by far the oldest monarch in British history, turned 90 in April but in keeping with tradition to ensure celebrations take place in the summer, she also has an official birthday usually in June.

To mark the occasion, the sixth and final portrait in the series of official birthday pictures taken by U.S. photographer Annie Leibovitz was released, showing the monarch with her husband at her Windsor Castle home, west of London.

Then on Saturday Elizabeth will attend the traditional Trooping the Colour parade of soldiers in ceremonial uniforms in central London followed by a fly-past of Royal Air Force aircraft over Buckingham Palace.

To conclude the celebrations, the queen hosts "The Patrons Lunch" for 10,000 guests at the largest street party to be held on the Mall, the grand avenue that leads to Buckingham Palace, an event organised by her grandson, Peter Phillips.

The guests will hail from some of the more than 600 charities and other organisations of which she is patron with the festivities beamed to large screens in the capital's parks.
Amnesty accuses Nigerian army of killing at least 17 unarmed Biafran separatists

LAGOS, June 10 (Reuters) - Amnesty International said on Friday that Nigeria's army last month killed at least 17 unarmed members of a group calling for secession from Africa's most populous nation, but the military dismissed the allegations as unfounded.

An army spokesman said Amnesty's accusations, the latest in a series of allegations of impropriety levelled against Nigeria's military in the last year, revealed a bias that undermined its credibility.

Amnesty's report -- which it said was based on details from eyewitnesses, morgues and hospitals -- says soldiers opened fire on members of the Indigenous people of Biafra (IPOB) and their supporters in the southeastern city of Onitsha during the build up to a march in late May.

The human rights group said the killings took place during a security operation in the early hours of the morning shortly before the march when the military raided homes and a church where IPOB members slept.

The army issued a statement in which it said troops had to "resort to self defence" after IPOB members attacked security agencies with "firearms" and various weapons including dynamite.

It said five members of IPOB were killed, eight wounded while nine were arrested.

"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," it said.

Secessionist feeling has simmered in the southeast since the Biafra separatist rebellion tipped Nigeria into a 1967-70 civil war that killed an estimated 1 million people.

It flared up again last year after IPOB leader Nnamdi Kanu was arrested and detained on charges of criminal conspiracy and belonging to an illegal society. He remains in detention.

Amnesty said its investigation showed at least 17 people were killed and nearly 50 injured, adding that "the real number is likely to be higher".

"Information gathered by Amnesty International indicates that the deaths of supporters and members of IPOB was the consequence of excessive, and unnecessary use of force," said Amnesty, which urged the government to investigate.

The contents of the report were rejected by army spokesman Sani Usman. "The allegations are unfounded," he said.

The report is the latest in a series of accusations levelled at the army by Amnesty.

Last year, Amnesty said more than 8,000 people died in detention during a crackdown on Boko Haram and that soldiers killed hundreds of Shi'ite Muslims in the northern city of Zaria in December.
GRAINS-Soybeans set for 9th week of gains as supply woes mount

SINGAPORE, June 10 (Reuters) - U.S. soybeans edged lower on Friday after climbing to a two-year high this week, but were still set for their ninth week of gains, underpinned by shrinking South American supply and doubts over U.S. production prospects. Wheat eased for a second session as expectations of bumper production of the U.S. winter crop weighed on prices. FUNDAMENTALS * Soybeans have gained more than 28 percent in nine consecutive weeks of gains as unseasonal rains caused widespread damage to Argentina's crop. Forecasters are now predicting a dry growing season for the U.S. soybean crop due to the La Nina weather pattern. * The corn market is up 1.4 percent this week, its fifth week of gains, driven by lower supplies in the world's second largest exporter Brazil. * Wheat has risen 2.2 percent this week, although gains have been capped by expectations of bumper production of the U.S. winter crop. * Warm weather this week and the potential for La Nina in the U.S. Midwest this summer have made investors nervous about stress to soybean plants. * Argentine farmers have brought in 86.7 percent of land planted with soybeans this season, the Buenos Aires Grains Exchange said on Thursday, adding 8 percentage points during the week but lagging last year's harvesting tempo by 9.9 percentage points due to rains. * Harsh early April storms wrecked the crop in parts of southern Cordoba, Santa Fe and Entre Rios provinces, leaving other areas too wet to be harvested on schedule. * Export sales of U.S. corn to be shipped ahead of the fall harvest have topped last year's pace for the first time this season, government data on Thursday showed, fuelled by competitive prices and a lack of available grain from drought-hit Brazil. * Commodity funds were net sellers of Chicago Board of Trade corn, wheat and soybean contracts on Thursday, traders said. Analysts estimated that funds sold a net 10,000 corn contracts and 6,000 to 8,000 wheat contracts. * Analysts polled by Reuters expect USDA on Friday to boost its forecast for U.S. winter wheat production amid good yield results in early-harvested fields in Kansas and Texas. * The analysts also expected the government to lift its U.S. wheat ending stocks outlook and slash supplies of corn and soybeans, in a midday announcement that typically roils markets. MARKET NEWS * Bond prices and the yen rallied on Thursday as investors sought the safety of low-risk assets, while crude oil prices and stocks retreated after recent gains. DATA AHEAD (GMT) :: China Foreign direct investment May 0600 Germany Wholesale price index May 0645 France Industrial output Apr 1400 U.S. Univ of Michigan sentiment index Jun Grains prices at 0048 GMT Contract Last Change Pct chg Two-day chg MA 30 RSI CBOT wheat 508.00 -2.25 -0.44% -2.21% 478.93 64 CBOT corn 424.25 -2.25 -0.53% -1.62% 399.45 63 CBOT soy 1175.00 -1.00 -0.09% -0.23% 1083.46 78 CBOT rice 11.31 -$0.01 -0.09% -1.91% $11.47 47 WTI crude 50.61 $0.05 +0.10% -1.21% $47.60 67 Currencies Euro/dlr $1.130 -$0.001 -0.12% -0.81% USD/AUD 0.7408 -0.002 -0.26% -0.80% Most active contracts Wheat, corn and soy US cents/bushel. Rice: USD per hundredweight RSI 14, exponential (Reporting by Naveen Thukral; Editing by Joseph Radford)
Russia-Ukraine deal implementation possible by early 2017 -Obama adviser

WASHINGTON, June 9 (Reuters) - The White House is pushing hard to have a Russia-Ukraine peace deal implemented by the time President Barack Obama leaves office, top national security adviser Susan Rice said on Thursday.

Rice, who coordinates foreign policy at the White House, said she saw potential for resolution in the Ukraine crisis by the end of the year, and said U.S. officials were intensifying their work with French and German counterparts on the Minsk deal, signed in February 2015.

"This is something that could get done between now and the end of the administration if the Russians in particular exhibit sufficient political will," Rice said at a Washington Post event. Obama is set to leave office on Jan. 20, 2017.

"We are hopeful if the Russians want to resolve this - and we have some reason to believe they might - we have the time and the wherewithal and the tools to do so," Rice said.

More than 9,000 people have been killed since April 2014 in violence between Russian-backed separatists in Eastern Ukraine and the Kiev government.

The United States and European Union have stood firm on economic sanctions on Russia pending progress implementing security measures and electoral reforms included in the Minsk ceasefire deal. EU leaders are set to weigh extending the sanctions at a summit at the end of June.
Obama approves broader role for US forces in Afghanistan

WASHINGTON, June 9 (Reuters) - President Barack Obama has approved giving the U.S. military greater ability to accompany and enable Afghan forces battling a resilient Taliban insurgency, in a move to more proactively assist them, a U.S. official told Reuters.
Quake of 6.1 magnitude shakes western Nicaragua -USGS

MANAGUA, June 10 (Reuters) - An earthquake of magnitude 6.1 struck in western Nicaragua on Thursday, the U.S. Geological Survey reported, and was felt strongly as far away as the capital of neighboring Honduras.

There were no immediate reports of deaths or casualties from the quake, which hit 25 km (16 miles) northeast of the city of El Viejo, in the Chinandega region, at a depth of 10 km (6 miles).

Nicaraguas government said there was some damage to a church near the epicenter, and that it was still checking for any other damage in the area.
Kazakh security forces fired on by suspected militants behind Aktobe attack

ALMATY, June 10 (Reuters) - Kazakhstan security forces were locked in a gunbattle on Friday with suspected "religious radicals" in Aktobe, the northwestern city where at least 20 people were killed in a militant attack days earlier.

The National Security Committee (KNB) said in a statement law enforcers had hunted down gunmen suspected of carrying out Sunday's attack, but they had refused to surrender.

"The terrorists have responded with armed resistance to a proposal to surrender," KNB said in a brief statement without providing any details.

Authorities have not identified the group responsible for the Aktobe attack, but have described them as "religious radicals", a term commonly used in Kazakhstan to refer to Islamist militants.

Kazakhstan's president, Nursultan Nazarbayev, said on Wednesday the attackers had received instructions from abroad and were adherents of a pseudo-religious movement, though he did not identify it.
In Greek camps, wait for asylum fuels unrest

By Karolina Tagaris

ATHENS, June 9 (Reuters) - Tents were set on fire, punches were thrown, children cried through the night and families were forced to flee the burning detention camp and sleep in open fields.

The tension is palpable on Greece's islands, where about 8,000 asylum seekers feel stranded by a European Union deal with Turkey to stem the arrival of refugees and other migrants on European shores from Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and beyond.

The deal, hailed a success by its European architects, prevents migrants from going beyond Greece - or even its islands - in their search for a new home in Europe, until their asylum claims are processed and those rejected are sent back to Turkey, from where they arrived.

But some European officials say the assessment has been slow, and the wait long for those confined to often overcrowded camps.

In June, the most violent month yet, dozens were injured in clashes on three islands, police said. Videos in Greek media showed clouds of smoke rising over the centres on three occasions.

In clashes on Lesbos the night of June 1-2, families with young children had to flee and spend the night in nearby fields or Mytilene town, several kilometres away, Amnesty International said. Many returned to burned down tents and destroyed belongings. Women told Amnesty they "live in constant fear" in camps where fights break out in food queues.

Journalists are barred from entering the camps on the islands. But humanitarian organisations and police officials on the ground speak of people on edge.

"They're reacting. They want to leave the islands," said a police official for the northern Aegean region which includes the islands of Lesbos, Samos and Chios where rival migrant groups brawled. "We're bracing for all eventualities."

Rumours and a lack of information and legal help made things worse, said Giorgos Kosmopoulos, an Amnesty International researcher and former Greece director. Non-Syrians said they were not given priority and felt neglected, he said.

"People are left wondering 'what's happening with my application, when will I get an answer, what's going on?'" he said.

PROGRESS?

Since the EU-Turkey accord was agreed in March, nearly 500 people have been ferried back to Turkey, but none of those who had requested asylum were among them, Greece says. Meanwhile, nearly everyone currently on the islands has expressed an interest in applying.

The process - which includes thorough identity checks, interviews and an assessment of whether Turkey is safe or not for a particular individual - can take weeks. Applicants can appeal a negative decision, prolonging the procedure.

"It is important to recognise that these procedures do take time," said Boris Cheshirkov, a spokesman for the United Nations refugee agency on Lesbos, the gateway into Europe for nearly a million people last year.

Greece, also mired in its worst economic crisis in generations, says it is doing its best to accelerate the process but insists each case must be given the attention it requires.

"It's a sensitive procedure, it's complicated, we make sure we strictly follow the rules," said the government's spokesman for the migration crisis, Giorgos Kyritsis.

So far, 726 cases have been heard and 519 of those have been deemed eligible to apply for asylum in Greece, Kyritsis said, while the remaining 207 can appeal the decision.

Despite its intention to process all cases, Greece lacks the manpower to deal with the volume of applications. It says it needs more help from EU institutions.

As many as 6,656 people applied for asylum in March and April this year, up from 1,899 in those months last year. Even if it could hire more people, they would need to be highly qualified legal experts, government officials say.

Brussels acknowledges the process should be in line with international humanitarian law but EU officials and diplomats are pressing Greece to speed things up.

"We have been telling Greece and will say it again that the vast majority of EU member states consider Turkey a safe country for Syrians to be returned to," one EU diplomat said.

Beyond the claims made on its islands, Greece must process claims of some 48,000 refugees and migrants stranded on the mainland by the closure of Balkan borders, which shut the main overland route used last year by migrants headed for Germany.

Those at the frontier are eligible for an EU relocation scheme intended to help frontline countries Greece and Italy share the burden, but it too has been moving slowly.
CROW AGENCY  The family of the victim found alive after being set on fire on the Crow Indian Reservation in April is organizing a march in order to call attention to the attack.

At the Crow Legislature on Thursday, Crow Sen. Shawn Real Bird, who represents the Central Lodge and Reno district, called for a U.S. Congressional hearing to discuss the way Bureau of Indian Affairs and FBI investigations are handled on the Crow Indian Reservation.

Real Bird called the Thursday committee meeting a formal inquiry into the burning of a Crow woman.

Real Bird said the meeting was a first step, and next Thursday the Crow Tribe will be marching together to support the woman and her family.

The victim's family spokesperson Trista Fog in the Morning, said the event will be called Walking by Faith. The family didnt attend the Thursday meeting but said the event's name came from the fact that they are standing on prayer and faith during the woman's recovery.

The attack happened on April 17, and a woman was found burned after collapsing in a field near the border between the Northern Cheyenne and Crow reservations. Few other details have emerged about the crime, due in large part to FBI and BIA refusing to release information to the public or tribe leaders.

"The victim is being treated for her injuries. The FBI and the BIA continue to conduct a joint investigation. We cannot release any further information due to the ongoing nature of the case," said a spokesperson on May 9.

Real Bird said doctors had informed the womans family that she had burns over the majority of her body. He said the woman walked 3 miles after being set on fire.

When a crime like this happens, the tribal government must be kept informed about the investigation, Real Bird said.

If this had happen to a non-Indian in any other community, it would have made 'Good Morning America,' Real Bird said.

Judicial Committee Chairman for the Crow Tribe Paul Hill, Secretary of the Crow Tribe A.J. Not Afraid, Montana state legislators Sharon Stewart Peregoy and Carolyn Lopez-Pease and several Crow Legislators gathered at the Crow Legislature to discuss increasing public safety on the Crow Reservation.

The Legislatures in-house legal counsel Dawn Gray said the FBI was violating the 2010 Tribal Law and Order Act. The act was supposed empower tribal government with the information needed to provide public safety. Gray said this should include the FBI briefing the tribe on investigations. The FBIs statement is unacceptable, Gray said.

I want people to remember that a few years ago the Crow Tribe sued an FBI agent for dereliction of duties, Gray said. That seems to be happening again.

Some wanted more than information; they wanted action.

I need assistance, Tribal Head of Crowland Security Henry Rides Horse said. I oversee law enforcement  but the BIA  theyll listen to me, but nothing gets done.

Crow Agency has a law enforcement budget for 15 police officers, Not Afraid said. At the moment, only seven of those positions are filled.

Taking action requires an understanding of the problem, Real Bird said. In addition to ongoing investigations, the FBI must share information about crimes it chooses not to investigate as well as cases that aren't prosecuted by the U.S. Attorney for the State of Montana. Real Bird said the tribe must arm itself with information. The Tribal Law and Order act provided for regular reports from the U.S. Department of Justice regarding tribal investigations and prosecutions. The last report was generated in 2014.

We cannot put our arms around this problem by ourselves, Real Bird said. Each and every agency must corporate with the tribal government to correct the lawless nature of the reservations, he said.

Sen. Peregoy said she was frustrated with the lack of investigation into crimes on the Crow Reservation as well as the lack of prosecution. Without the ability to enforce laws, crime will continue to run unimpeded on the reservation, she said.

Gray said sometimes it takes more than an hour for a BIA police officer to respond to a call.

Real Bird said it was time for people on the reservations to speak out about the violence against their families and around their homes. He said he has felt pressure from the FBI not to speak to the media about crimes committed against his family members.

He said the Shane family was told by the FBI not to speak to the press about the deaths of Tana Shane, 50, and her 52-year-old husband, Jason Shane, and the shooting of their daughter, who survived her injuries. Jesus Yeizon Deniz Mendoza, 18, was charged with shooting the couple on July 29 on Pryor Gap Road on the Crow Indian Reservation

If we cant communicate with the press, thats martial law, Real Bird said. We need to protect ourselves and we need to raise awareness.

When asked if FBI agents ever pressure victims' families to stay silent about cases the bureau is investigating, FBI Spokesperson Sandra Barker said reporters should know better than to ask that question and the FBI had no comment.

Barker said the FBI doesnt operate like a local sheriffs department.

U.S. Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., sent a letter to Department of the Interior Secretary Sally Jewell expressing concerns about the responsiveness of the BIA to press inquiries regarding crime on Native American reservations.

In one instance, a news organization couldnt get information about an alleged murder, leaving many residents concerned that a suspect was on the loose, Tester wrote. The matters, while sensitive and under investigation, need to be immediately communicated to the public.

Sen. Steve Daines said the circumstances surrounding the womans attack were horrible and he believes its critical that we hold the FBI and BIA accountable in order to ensure people feel safe and secure in tribal communities.

The march will be at 8 a.m. June 16 on U.S. Highway 212. It will start just past the Little Bighorn Battlefield.

A GoFundMe page set up for the victim has a photo of the woman and a 241-character message.

"Our loved one was hurt and as family we want to help raise money for her recovery. ... She has 6 beautiful children. ... With the assault and burns she will require skin graphs (sic). ... Sorry not much detail. ... Thanks for your help, love and generosity."
Blast hits NPDC pipeline in Nigeria's Delta region -security source

YENAGOA, Nigeria June 10 (Reuters) - An explosion hit a pipeline operated by a subsidiary of Nigeria's state oil company in the West African country's restive Delta region late on Thursday, a security official said on Friday.

The Nigerian Petroleum Development Company (NPDC) pipeline at the Sanomi creek, around the Ogidigben area of Warri South West, exploded around 8 p.m. local time (1900 GMT), said the source who added that people nearby heard "a loud explosion".

A community leader, Chief Godspower Gbenekama, also said a blast was heard. "There is fire burning," he said.
Hindu hacked to death in latest attack on Bangladesh minorities

DHAKA, June 10 (Reuters) - Suspected Islamist militants hacked a Hindu to death in Bangladesh on Friday, police said, the latest in a series of attacks on minority groups in the south Asian nation.

Nitya Ranjan Pandey, 60, who had worked at a temple as a volunteer for 40 years, was taking an early morning walk in the northwestern district of Pabna when he was attacked, police said.

The killing came days after an elderly Hindu priest and a Christian were hacked to death in attacks claimed by Islamic State.

Militants have killed more than 30 people in Bangladesh, including members of religious minorities, liberal bloggers and academics, since February last year.

Islamic State and al Qaeda have claimed responsibility for most of the killings, but the government denies either group has a presence in Bangladesh and says domestic militants are responsible.
Hungary, Factors to watch, June 10

BUDAPEST, June 10 (Reuters) - Following is a list of events in Hungary and the region, as well as news stories and press reports which may influence financial markets.

(For any queries: Budapest editorial +36 1 327 4745)

WHAT IS HAPPENING IN HUNGARY (ALL TIMES GMT)

No events of note.

IN THE REGION

ROMANIA - May CPI (0600)

SLOVENIA - April industry output (0700)

IN THE NEWS REUTERS

Hungary's GDP growth could slow to 2-2.5 pct in 2016 -Matolcsy

Hungary's economic growth could slow to 2-2.5 percent this year, central bank Governor Gyorgy Matolcsy was quoted as saying by the daily newspaper Lokal on Thursday.

Poland talks down zloty, bond auctions robustly bid
New Zurich CEO starts overhaul by combining businesses

By Joshua Franklin

ZURICH, June 10 (Reuters) - Zurich Insurance Chief Executive Mario Greco is counting on the integration of life and general businesses and a new regional structure to provide a basis for his efforts to turn around Switzerland's biggest insurer.

Greco, 56, joined Zurich only in March after he was poached from Italian rival Generali to help boost Zurich's struggling general insurance business and deliver a strategy for beyond the current year.

The first fruits of that strategy came on Friday with changes to structure and personnel which will see general insurance head Kristof Terryn take on the new role of chief operating officer.

Global life CEO Gary Shaughnessy will become Zurich's CEO for Europe, Middle East and Africa. Chief Operations and Technology Officer Robert Dickie will leave the company.

Greco said his aim was to simplify "the famously complicated structure of Zurich Insurance" and to remove internal barriers at Europe's fifth-biggest insurer which at times had meant different parts of the group competed with each other.

"With this organisational structure we would be in a much better position to respond to what's going in the market, in the industry, and to respond to the needs of the customer," Greco said in a call with reporters about the new structure.

In the new COO role, Terryn will focus on operations and technology as well as underwriting, claims, reinsurance, actuarial and pricing.

Greco said the new structure would support Zurich's previously announced cost-cutting programme but that this was not his main motivation.

Zurich, which returned to profit in the first three months of 2016, is in the middle of a $1 billion-plus cost-savings drive and has said that around 8,000 jobs would be affected by the end of 2018. Zurich has around 55,000 employees.

Greco said the new structure would lead to further redundancies but that it was too early to quantify these.

"Today's announcement of an improved organisational structure leaving the inflexible matrix organisation behind makes absolutely sense," Vontobel analyst Stefan Schuermann, who has a "hold" rating on the stock, wrote in a note.

"Helped by such action, we expect Zurich to overachieve on its cost savings targets."

In the first quarter, Zurich's global life business generated operating profit of $317 million on business volume of $7.4 billion. Overall group operating profit was $1.1 billion on business volume of $17.6 billion.
Slovakia - Factors To Watch on June 10

BRATISLAVA, June 10 (Reuters) - Here are news stories, press reports and events to watch which may affect Slovak financial markets on Friday. ALL TIMES GMT (Slovak Republic: GMT + 2 hours) =========================ECONOMIC DATA======================== Real-time economic data releases.................. Summary of economic data and forecasts......... Recently released economic data................ Previous stories on Slovak data.......... **For a schedule of corporate and economic events: http://emea1.apps.cp.thomsonreuters.com/Apps/CountryWeb/#/1C/events-overview ========================EVENTS=============================== BRATISLAVA: Statistics office will release industrial output data for April. Related stories: =========================NEWS=============================== GAS TRANSIT: The gas pipeline operators of Slovakia and Bulgaria signed an memorandum of understanding on Thursday to work together on the proposed Eastring pipeline project. Story: Related stories: TRADE BALANCE: Slovakia's trade balance showed a higher-than-expected surplus of 404.0 million euros ($460.48 million) in April after a revised 309.4 million euro surplus in March, data from the country's statistics office showed on Thursday. Story: Related stories: For real-time stock market index quotes click in brackets: Warsaw WIG20 Budapest BUX Prague PX Main currency report TOP NEWS -- Emerging markets News editor of the day: Jason Hovet on +420 224 190 476 E-mail: prague.newsroom@thomsonreuters.com
Maldives ex-VP Adeeb jailed for plotting president's assassination

COLOMBO, June 10 (Reuters) - A court in the Maldives has jailed former vice president Ahmed Adeeb for 15 years for plotting to assassinate President Abdulla Yameen following an explosion on the president's speed launch last September, his lawyer said on Friday.

The judgment was delivered late on Thursday, four days after Adeeb was sentenced for 10 years on terrorism charges for possessing firearms. The trial was held behind closed doors because of security concerns, according to authorities.

The secret trial is likely to raise international concern over the evidence used to convict Adeeb, once seen as a future leader of the Indian Ocean atoll whose popularity as a tourist paradise is at odds with its deeply troubled politics.

"He was sentenced for 15 years based on seven anonymous witnesses. The court said it can conclude that there was an IED (Improvised Explosive Device)," Moosa Siraj, Adeeb's lawyer told Reuters.

He said one witness testified that Adeeb had given orders for an IED to be planted.

The Maldives invited foreign agencies to examine the evidence of the alleged assassination attempt that took place when Yameen's launch prepared to dock on Sept. 28 last year.

Notably, the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation said it found "no conclusive evidence" of a bomb blast.

"The FBI report clearly said it was not an IED, while Saudi investigators' report said there was no evidence to say it was a bomb. We will definitely appeal against the verdict," Siraj said.

Yameen was unhurt in the blast, but his wife and two aides were injured as ti blew off the rear doors of the launch.

Adeeb, 34, was arrested on Oct. 24 after an initial probe. Parliament impeached him on Nov. 5.

Adeeb's sentencing comes a week after exiled former leader Mohamed Nasheed, now in exile in Britain, formed a united opposition group aimed at toppling Yameen.
Extended period of low ECB rates risks abrupt rise in risk premia: Weidmann

ELTVILLE, Germany, June 10 (Reuters) - Investors may get increasingly nervous if the European Central Bank's ultra-low rates stay in place for an extended period, increasing the chance of a sudden increase in risk premia, Bundesbank President Jens Weidmann said on Friday.

"They (asset managers) might become increasingly nervous the longer monetary policymakers try to maintain the low-interest-rate policy," Weidmann told a conference. "This, in turn, could raise the probability of a sudden hike in risk premiums, the longer that forward guidance is in place and the more aggressively quantitative easing is pursued."

Weidmann, who also sits on the ECB's Governing Council, added that such a risk needs to be taken into account in setting rates, in order to avoid unintended consequences.
PRESS DIGEST - Bulgaria - June 10

SOFIA, June 10 (Reuters) - These are some of the main stories in Bulgarian newspapers on Friday. Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.

-- The parliament ratified the raising of two loans of 600 million euros by the Deposits Guarantee Fund from the European Bank of reconstruction and Development and the World Bank. (Capital Daily, 24 Chasa, Sega, Standart, Trud)

-- The drop of Bulgarian exports accelerated in April and reached 3 percent on an annual basis, mainly due to decrease of exports to countries outside of the E, data from the statistics office showed. (Capital Daily, Trud)

-- Bulgaria will be able to receive up to 3 million cubic meters of natural gas from Greece though Bulgaria's transit as pipeline network after the country's pipeline operator Bulgartransgaz upgraded a compressor station, Bulgartansgaz's chief executive Georgi Gegov said. (Capital Daily, Monitor)

-- Global hotel chain Hyatt will open a luxury hotel in Bulgaria, which should be built by the end of 2017. (Capital Daily, Monitor, Trud)
PRESS DIGEST - RUSSIA - JUNE 10

MOSCOW, June 10 (Reuters) - The following are some stories in Russia's newspapers on Friday. Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.

VEDOMOSTI

www.vedomosti.ru

- The government has approved a strategy for the development of small and medium-sized business up to 2030, the daily writes, but businessmen say the strategy consists only of slogans.

- Russia's state highways company, Avtodor, is planning to issue securities to attract money for construction of a new highway encircling Moscow.

KOMMERSANT

www.kommersant.ru

- Almost 70 percent of Russia's prominent analysts, who gathered in Moscow to discuss the most challenging problems for Russia, agreed that growing isolation from global markets is the most burning problem for Russia's internal and external policy.

- President Vladimir Putin has refused to pardon Alexei Pichugin, former security chief of the oil company Yukos, serving a life sentence for several murders.

IZVESTIA

www.izvestia.ru

- Russia's state space agency Roscosmos is stopping its project to build Spektr-UV, an orbiting telescope, in favour of spending money on more urgent needs.

- A programme for issuing food cards to low-income citizens is being postponed as the state has to review its cost, which might grow to 342 billion roubles from 240 billion roubles because of a growing number of poor people.

- About 1.3 million Russians are HIV infected, according to Vadim Pokrovsky, head of the Federal AIDS Centre.

NEZAVISIMAYA GAZETA

www.ng.ru

- The Pentagon is sending warships to the Mediterranean to seize the initiative from Russia, the daily says adding that the United States and NATO are gradually moving towards a "Plan B" for Syria.

ROSSIISKAYA GAZETA

www.rg.ru

- Kiev does not want to implement the Minsk Agreements and put an end to the civil war in eastern Ukraine, the daily says in connection with an attack by Ukrainian armed forces on the towns of Donetsk and Makeevka on Wednesday night. One person was killed and at least 15 were injured as a result, the daily says.
France to formally ratify Paris climate accord on June 15 -Minister

PARIS, June 10 (Reuters) - President Francois Hollande will formally sign the Paris climate agreement on Wednesday, June 15, making France the first industrialised nation to ratify the landmark accord, Environment Minister Segolene Royal said on Friday.

France's Senate adopted a bill authorising the government to ratify the agreement on Wednesday after a near unanimous vote by the lower house in May, Royal told a carbon pricing forum in Paris.

Royal, who is the current chair of the United Nations climate talks COP21, said several other industrialised nations were expected to ratify the agreement by the end of the year.
POLSON  A Western Montana woman says her family, including two children, lived for more than two months in a trailer with the decomposing body of her husband's 18-year-old cousin in the shower, covered with clothes.

The body of Robert Warner was found June 2 in the trailer near Arlee.

Court records say Kassandra Seese told Lake County investigators that she and the children were in the trailer when her husband beat Warner with a hammer in mid-February and that they lived there until early May, before moving to Idaho.

Stephen W.L. Seese, 25, was jailed in Wallace, Idaho, on a probation violation when he was arrested this week for deliberate homicide for Warner's death. Sheriff Don Bell says Seese has waived extradition.

Kassandra Seese was arrested in Springdale, Wash., also for deliberate homicide.
Tesco reshaping continues with Turkey and Giraffe sales

LONDON, June 10 (Reuters) - Tesco has agreed the sale of its Turkish business and Giraffe restaurant chain in the United Kingdom as the country's biggest retailer continues its reshaping under Chief Executive Dave Lewis.

Lewis joined Tesco in 2014 when the firm was in crisis, its profits battered by market share losses at home to discounters Aldi and Lidl. A damaging accounting scandal was then uncovered shortly after his appointment.

He is now focusing on reviving Tesco's main grocery business in Britain and also wants to cut debt to rid the group of its junk credit rating.

Tesco on Friday confirmed the proposed sale of its 95.5 percent controlling stake in the Kipa business in Turkey to Migros, the country's largest supermarket chain.

The sale, which is subject to local regulatory approvals, will provide cash proceeds of 30 million pounds ($43.3 million) and reduce net debt by 110 million pounds.

"The sale of Kipa reflects the particular strategic challenge we have faced in Turkey as a small regional player in a highly competitive market," said Lewis.

"It removes the need for the sustained investment required to enable the business to compete independently."

Last year, Lewis sold Tesco's South Korean arm for $6.1 billion, which means the firm now only has overseas businesses in Thailand and Malaysia, central Europe and Ireland.

Under the previous management Tesco made costly exits from Japan and the United States, and reduced its exposure to China.

"Although this was largely expected and is very small (Kipa made up less than 1 percent of group sales in 2015-16) it demonstrates the willingness and ability of management to exit non-core operations," said UBS retail analyst Ben Gorman.

Tesco also said it planned to sell the Giraffe restaurant chain to Boparan Restaurants Holdings. The sale includes 54 standalone restaurants, of which 12 are franchise sites, and three restaurants within Tesco stores. No price was disclosed.

Tesco bought Giraffe for 49 million pounds in 2013, when Philip Clarke was CEO and wanted to diversify its shopper appeal. Clarke was sacked before Lewis took over.

"While casual dining remains an important part of the shopping trip for many of our customers, we will continue to meet these needs through our Tesco Cafes and other providers," said Lewis.

In April, Tesco reported its first rise in underlying operating profit in four years and its first quarter of underlying UK sales growth for more than three years.

Though Tesco shares are up 5 percent so far in 2016, they are down 25 percent from a year ago.

They were down 0.6 percent at 156.8 pence at 0713 GMT, valuing the business at about 13 billion pounds.
Vale's Mozambique unit says trains attacked by gunmen

JOHANNESBURG, June 10 (Reuters) - The Mozambique unit of Brazilian mining company Vale said on Friday that its trains had targeted by gunfire twice in recent days on the Sena rail line which carries coal from the interior to the Indian Ocean port of Beira.

"Vale has been working with the relevant authorities to ensure that logistic activities on the Sena railway line can safely continue," the company said in a statement.
Kurdish militant group says it was behind Istanbul bombing

By Seyhmus Cakan and Humeyra Pamuk

DIYARBAKIR/ISTANBUL, June 10 (Reuters) - Kurdish militants said on Friday they carried out a suicide bombing which killed eleven people in Turkey's biggest city Istanbul this week and warned the country was no longer safe for foreign tourists.

A car bomb ripped through a police bus in central Istanbul during the morning rush hour on Tuesday near the main tourist district, a major university and the mayor's office, the latest in a series of attacks in the city this year.

In a statement on its website, the Kurdistan Freedom Hawks (TAK), an offshoot of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), vowed to continue attacks across Turkey and said while it was not targeting tourists, they could be at risk.

"Some may miss peace, but we have just started the war," the group said in its statement.

Turkey, the world's sixth-biggest tourist destination, has seen a sharp drop-off in visitors due to concerns about deteriorating security. Arrivals saw the biggest drop in 17 years in April, while average hotel occupancy rates are down nearly 70 percent nationally, according to industry data.

Islamic State has been blamed for two suicide bombings in Istanbul this year, while Kurdish militants have increasingly staged attacks outside the largely Kurdish southeast, where they have been waging an armed insurgency for three decades.

Peace negotiations between the PKK and the state collapsed last July, triggering the worst violence in the southeast since the peak of the unrest in the 1990s. Thousands of militants and hundreds of security officials have since been killed.

The unrest has been fuelled by the war in neighbouring Syria. Turkey says the PKK - considered a terrorist group by the European Union and the United States - has deep ties to the Syrian Kurdish YPG militia fighting just across the border.

There is little sign of any let-up in hostilities. Prime Minister Binali Yildirim has said there will be no negotiations to end the violence despite what he said were recent attempts by the PKK to revive the peace talks.

Turkish jets bombed the southeastern region of Daglica in Hakkari province, near the border with Iraq, killing between eight and 10 suspected PKK militants, military sources said on Friday. The military also said in a statement it had hit PKK targets elsewhere in Hakkari on Thursday.

PROSECUTION

In a move that could further fuel tensions with Turkey's Kurdish minority, Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag said legal proceedings had been launched which could pave the way for dozens of members of parliament from the pro-Kurdish HDP opposition party to be prosecuted over alleged militant links.

President Tayyip Erdogan, who views the HDP as the political wing of the PKK, signed a bill on Tuesday lifting lawmakers' immunity from prosecution and has made no secret of his desire to see members of the pro-Kurdish party indicted.

Bozdag said 117 dossiers had been sent to the relevant prosecutors and there were pending cases against 152 lawmakers, warning they would be stripped of their parliamentary seats if convicted.

The move could see the HDP's parliamentary presence wiped out. Its co-leader, Selahattin Demirtas, told Reuters this week his party members would not comply with the prosecutors and would have to be removed by force if necessary.

The government is also preparing a bill that would give members of the security forces a partial exemption from prosecution for their actions in parts of the southeast, a move likely to further raise concern about the heavy force Turkey has deployed in the southeast in recent months.

Yildirim said last week the fighting had destroyed some 11,000 homes in five urban areas alone and the cost of rebuilding could approach 1 billion lira ($340 million) and Western allies have repeatedly urged restraint.
S.Africa's Zuma appeals reinstatement of graft charges against him

PRETORIA, June 10 (Reuters) - South Africa's President Jacob Zuma and the state prosecutor launched an appeal on Friday against a High Court ruling to reinstate 783 corruption charges against the head of state.

The National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) set aside the charges against Zuma in April 2009, allowing him to run for president that same month, but the High Court this May ordered a review of that decision, terming it "irrational".

The case has reemerged in the run-up to local government elections in August that should be a stern test for the ruling African National Congress (ANC) as opposition parties gain support on the back of Zuma's perceived failures and scandals.

Zuma's office said the High Court made a mistake in saying the National Director of Public Prosecutions was not entitled to terminate a prosecution on the basis of misconduct and abuse of the process.

The NPA's decision in 2009 was based on phone intercepts presented by Zuma's legal team that suggested the timing of the charges may have been part of a political plot against Zuma.

The state prosecutor is appealing the ruling on the grounds that the law allowed him the discretion to decide when to lay charges and that the court ruling could dilute the NPA's powers.

It was not clear how long the appeal process would run.

Should the appeal fail and the charges be reinstated, it would be the latest political setback for Zuma after he was ordered by the Constitutional Court to pay back some of the 240 million rand ($16 million) in state money spent upgrading his private home.

The hundreds of corruption charges relate to a major government arms deal arranged in the late 1990s.
U.S.-backed forces cut off all routes into IS-held Manbij - Syrian Observatory

BEIRUT, June 10 (Reuters) - U.S.-backed forces seized control of the last route into Islamic State-held city of Manbij in northern Syria on Friday, completing their encirclement of the main target in a major advance against the militants, a monitoring group said.

The Syria Democratic Forces, supported by U.S.-led air strikes and American special forces, launched and advance last week to seize Islamic State's last territory on the Syria-Turkey border and cut the self-declared caliphate off from the world.

Other enemies of Islamic State, including the governments of Syria and Iraq, also launched major offensives on other fronts, in what amounts to the most sustained pressure on the militants since they proclaimed their caliphate in 2014.

Officials of the SDF, a U.S.-backed group formed last year to unite powerful Kurdish militia with Arab anti-Islamic State fighters, could not immediately be reached.

The SDF had by Thursday advanced to within firing distance of the last main highway into Manbij, Islamic State's main bastion in the border area west of the Euphrates. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group said the SDF had effectively taken control of the final road to the city early on Friday.

"There's no road left... they're all cut," the Observatory's director, Rami Abdulrahman, said.

The offensive near the border is the most ambitious advance yet in Syria by a group allied to Washington, which has previously struggled to develop capable allies on the ground amid Syria's five-year multi-sided civil war.

SDF forces have also advanced in the neighbouring province of Raqqa, and Syrian government forces and their allies, backed by Russia, opened a separate front against Islamic State in Raqqa province last week.

The Iraqi government has launched its own assault on the Islamic State bastion Falluja, an hour's drive from Baghdad, at the opposite end of Islamic State territory.

The SDF has said this week that it was holding back from an immediate assault to enter Manbij out of concern for civilians.
To defend nation, Indonesia to give weapons training to Bali "gangsters"

By Kanupriya Kapoor

JAKARTA/DENPASAR, Indonesia, June 10 (Reuters) - Indonesia's army will give "semi-military" weapons training to people including unemployed men and "gangsters" on the island of Bali, a spokesman said on Friday, under a programme that has raised concern about the re-emergence of military influence.

President Joko Widodo's administration has become increasingly uneasy about the military-run "Bela Negara" or "Defend the Nation" programme aimed at guarding against "foreign influences" like communism, religious extremism and homosexuality.

Over the last few months, the programme has gained momentum, partly in reaction to support from Widodo for an investigation into an anti-communist purge in 1965. The suggestion of an investigation has angered some retired military men, many of whom say the purge was justified.

The training on the resort island of Bali was apparently the first to include street thugs, and was aimed partly at making them "good citizens", a military spokesman said.

"The introduction to weapons is part of the material so the participants are not bored ... and so they can feel what it's like in the military," said Hotman Hutahaean, spokesman for Bali's military command.

"There will be other material ... like marching and physical training ... so the public can know their rights and obligations, especially gangsters, because they need to be prepared to be good citizens," he said.

Hutahaean said the training of the "gangsters" would begin in August and he expected about 100 people to enrol altogether. He did not elaborate on what he meant by gangsters but said no one with a criminal record would be accepted.

The proposal has raised questions.

"They are basically empowering young guys with murky backgrounds who will go around playing army," said defence expert Yohanes Sulaiman.

"Arming civilians or even training them this way is not a good idea unless you organise them properly and have laws and regulations to control it."

The defence ministry launched the "Bela Negara" programme last year to counter what it calls an erosion of nationalistic values. The aim is to mould millions of civil servants, doctors, students and others into a civilian defence corps.

But many Indonesian view "Bela Negara" as an attempt by the military, which ruled for decades, to claw back some of the influence it lost after it was forced out of politics when strongman Suharto was ousted in 1998.

About 1.8 million people nationwide have signed up for the voluntary programme and some classes are underway.
Fight over Ramadan led to blaze at German refugee centre-prosecutor

BERLIN, June 10 (Reuters) - Residents of a refugee centre in the German city of Duesseldorf set their shelter alight after a fight among Muslim refugees over Ramadan meals, a prosecutor said on Friday, in an incident that is likely to increase unease among anti-immigrant groups.

On Tuesday a fire ripped through the accommodation that was home to around 280 refugees on the site of Duesseldorf's trade fair. All residents were brought to safety but 24 suffered from smoke poisoning.

Ralf Herrenbrueck, senior public prosecutor in Duesseldorf, said there had been disputes among Muslims living in the home over how to celebrate Ramadan -- the Muslim holy month that revolves around daily fasts from dawn to sunset before meals during night hours -- before the blaze broke out.

"There are two groups -- one group wants to follow it strictly and so only eat when it's dark while the other group wants to eat at normal times -- for example because there are also pregnant women there," he said.

Herrenbrueck said the Red Cross, which is running the home, had decided to provide a basic lunch and only distribute warm food late in the evening, causing the group of Muslims that did not want to follow Ramadan strictly to complain since it started on June 6.

"They threatened that they would do something if this didn't change and when there was no warm food at lunchtime again on Tuesday, the arson happened," he said.

More than a million migrants arrived in Germany last year and while they were initially welcomed, the mood towards them has worsened as concerns about integration and security grow, boosting support for the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD).

Five migrants were detained but three have since been released because they could not be directly linked to the fire, Herrenbrueck said.

Criminal police are investigating a 24-year-old Syrian, two Moroccans aged 18 and 26 and two Algerian men aged 16 and 26, police said in a statement.

Police said most of the men had been living in the accommodation under false names and having given false birth dates and countries of origin.
Italy arrests 2 Ukrainians suspected of trafficking Syrians by boat

ROME, June 10 (Reuters) - Italian police have arrested two Ukrainians suspected of trafficking Syrians to Italy on a sail boat, and have launched a probe to find the criminal organisation ultimately responsible.

Almost 50,000 sea-borne migrants have landed this year in Italy, which is on the front line of Europe's biggest migration crisis since World War Two.

Most are sub-Saharan Africans and many travel on boats so rickety they risk sinking before arriving and are picked up in Italian or Libyan waters and brought ashore by the coastguard.

But finance police said in a statement the suspected traffickers arrested on Thursday had managed to leave 16 people with wet clothes on a beach in Calabria, in the toe of Italy's boot, and start making a getaway towards international waters.

Police chased and boarded the 10-metre (33 ft) single-mast vessel and arrested the two Ukrainians on board. The boat was confiscated and the pair were taken to jail after the migrants identified them.

The group consisted of two children, six women and eight men, who said they were Syrian nationals and had started their voyage from a beach in Turkey.

"Investigations are ongoing to identify the organisation that systematically profits in this odious and deplorable way," police said in the statement.

Migrant trafficking has bloomed into a profitable trade as civil war has pushed Syrians to pay up to flee their country and international gangs have packed poorer Africans onto unseaworthy rafts and fishing boats to maximise the profit they can make from each trip across the Mediterranean from unstable Libya.
Maldives ex-VP Adeeb jailed for plotting president's assassination

By Shihar Aneez

COLOMBO, June 10 (Reuters) - A court in the Maldives jailed former vice president Ahmed Adeeb for 15 years for plotting to assassinate President Abdulla Yameen in an explosion on the president's launch last September, his lawyer said on Friday.

The judgment was delivered late on Thursday, four days after Adeeb was sentenced to 10 years on terrorism charges for possessing firearms. The trial was held behind closed doors due to security concerns, authorities said.

The secret trial was denounced by the opposition and is likely to raise international concern over the evidence used to convict Adeeb, once seen as a future leader of the Indian Ocean atoll whose popularity as a tourist paradise is at odds with its deeply troubled politics.

"He was sentenced to 15 years based on seven anonymous witnesses. The court said it can conclude that there was an IED (Improvised Explosive Device)," Moosa Siraj, Adeeb's lawyer, told Reuters.

Adeeb's two bodyguards were jailed on Thursday in the same case, each for 10 years. A former chief prosecutor was sentenced to 17 years in jail for conspiring to kidnap Yameen.

"Anyone who is a threat to Yameen's despotism is bound to be found guilty of terrorism charges. Maldives continues to be a travesty of justice," Ahmed Mahloof, spokesman for the Maldives United Opposition, told Reuters via a text message.

The Maldives had asked foreign agencies to examine the evidence of the alleged attempt on Yameen's life that took place just as his launch prepared to dock last Sept. 28.

Notably, the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation said it found "no conclusive evidence" of a bomb blast.

"The FBI report clearly said it was not an IED, while Saudi investigators' report said there was no evidence to say it was a bomb. We will definitely appeal against the verdict," said Siraj, the lawyer.

Yameen was unhurt in the blast, which blew off the rear doors of the launch, but his wife and two aides were injured.

Adeeb, 34, was arrested on Oct. 24 after an initial probe. Parliament impeached him on Nov. 5.

Adeeb's sentencing came a week after exiled former leader Mohamed Nasheed, now in exile in Britain, formed a united opposition group aimed at toppling Yameen.
Incoming Philippine minister rules out bilateral talks with China before tribunal decision

MANILA, June 10 (Reuters) - The Philippines will not pursue bilateral talks with China until an international tribunal decides on a case brought by the Philippines in connection with claims in the South China Sea, incoming foreign minister Perfecto Yasay said on Friday.

The Philippines has brought a case at an international tribunal in The Hague contesting China's claims, a case rejected by China which wants to solve the issue bilaterally.

"We should not pursue any bilateral talks at this time until we hear, or wait for, the outcome of the decision of the arbitral tribunal to come out," Yasay said in an interview with ABS-CBN news channel.

Yasay's remarks follows advice from a former Philippine foreign minister and a U.S. security expert for President-elect Rodrigo Duterte not to hold unconditional bilateral talks with China to try to resolve the dispute.

China said on Wednesday the Philippines had ignored a proposal for a regular talks mechanism over maritime issues, as it repeated that its door was always open to bilateral talks with Manila.

China claims most of the waters, through which $5 trillion in ship-borne trade passes every year. The Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Taiwan and Brunei have overlapping claims.
After blasting away at clay pigeons at the Blue Creek Sport Shooting Complex and Preserve on Thursday, Montana gubernatorial candidate Greg Gianforte and former Texas Gov. Rick Perry took aim at a litany of policies they described as federal overreach, tying many to current Gov. Steve Bullock.

Along with former NRA director David Keene, the group praised Gianfortes gun views.

(But) a governor does a lot of other things, Keene said.

On a hot day  I believe its cooler in Lubbock than it is right here, Perry said  the former governor attacked the Clean Power Plan. Montana is expected to cut its smokestack carbon dioxide pollution by 47 percent by 2035.

It kills economies like Colstrip, he said.

Gianforte has said states that rely on coal revenue need to band together.

We need to push back hard against the Clean Power Plan, he said. Montanas future is being decided by out-of-staters.

Washington Gov. Jay Inslee signed a bill to finance the closure of the two older of Colstrips four units, despite protests from Bullock and Gianforte.

Other counties around the state are warily watching decreasing coal production this year, fearful of plummeting tax revenues. Several top economists have linked dropping coal prices to an increased supply of cheap natural gas and a glut of coal supply combined with a slowdown in demand, especially in China.

The market will find its place, Perry said. We live in a global economy.

Under Perry, Texas was noted for investing in oil, natural gas and wind energy.

Perry also reinforced a push to create more high-paying jobs that Gianforte has hammered on throughout his campaign.

Montana is not a competitive state economy, Perry said.

Perry said he believes Gianforte can turn that around, making governors from nearby states consider Montana a job-swiping threat.

They ought to be scared of this guy, he said. Perry said that several groups, including public schools, need to do a better job aligning with workforce needs, though he declined to name specific policies that need improving.

Ill leave that to the people of Montana to decide, he said.

Representatives from the American Legion and the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation were also at the event, where Gianforte appeared to shatter several clay pigeons, though crowded shooting often made it difficult to identify who hit what.

Gianforte and Perry have both gotten in line behind Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, with Perry endorsing him in early May despite earlier calling him a cancer on conservatism.

Gianforte, when asked if party leaders have a responsibility to support Trump, said its up to each individual to support who they wish.

On the same day Bullock touted a public lands proposal, Democrats criticized Perrys and Gianfortes public lands records, seizing on comments Perry made in 2014 to Fox News in an interview about conflict between the Bureau of Land Management and Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy.

The federal government already owns too much land, Perry said.
U.S, Iraqi officials can't confirm report Islamic State leader wounded

BAGHDAD/FALLUJA, June 10 (Reuters) - U.S. and Iraqi officials said on Friday they could not confirm a report by an Iraqi TV channel that Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi had been wounded in an air strike in northern Iraq.

A spokesman for the U.S.-led coalition fighting the radical Islamist militants, Colonel Chris Garver, said in an email that he had seen the reports but had "nothing to confirm this at this time".

Brett McGurk, the U.S. envoy to the coalition, told a daily briefing at the White House in Washington that there was no reason to believe that Baghdadi was not alive "even though we haven't heard of him since late last year."

"We presume that he's still alive," he added. "It's really a matter of time for him."

Kurdish and Arab security officials in northern Iraq said they also could not confirm the report.

Al Sumariya TV cited a local source in the northern province of Nineveh saying that Baghdadi and other Islamic State leaders were wounded on Thursday in a coalition air strike on one of the group's command headquarters close to the Syrian border.

The channel has good connections with Shi'ite politicians and Iraqi forces engaged in the battle against Islamic State.

There have been several reports in the past that Baghdadi, whose real name is Ibrahim al-Samarrai, was killed or wounded after proclaiming himself caliph of all Muslims two years ago.

In the last audio message, posted at the end of December on Twitter accounts that had published Islamic State statements previously, Baghdadi said the air strikes carried out by Russia and the U.S.-led coalition had failed to weaken the group.

The ultra-hardline Sunni group is under increased pressure in both Iraq and Syria, and the territory under its control has shrunk significantly since 2014, limiting the potential for its leaders to move around or seek shelter.

The U.S. earlier this year announced an intensification of the war on Islamic State with more air strikes and more American troops on the ground to advise and assist allied forces.

The U.S.-led coalition has regularly flown raids out of Erbil, the capital of Iraq's Kurdistan region, in operations aimed at killing and capturing Islamic State leaders.

A Kurdish intelligence official and an Arab from the Baaj area west of Mosul said the U.S.-led coalition had conducted such a raid there earlier this week. The coalition did not confirm this raid.

Kurdish Peshmerga forces are positioned in an arc around the north and east of Mosul while the Iraqi army is trying to capture Falluja, 50 km (30 miles) west of Baghdad.

The army's elite Counter Terrorism Service was battling on Friday in al-Shuhada, a southern district of Falluja, a Reuters photographer reported from the scene.

Loud explosions and bursts of gunfire were heard from the district, while aircraft believed to belong to the U.S.-led coalition flew overhead.

Al-Shuhada marks the first advance of the army inside the built-up area of Falluja, after two weeks of fighting on the outskirts to complete the encirclement of the city.

The encirclement was completed with help from Iran-backed Shi'ite militias. They deployed behind the army's lines and did not take part directly in the assault on the city to avoid inflaming sectarian feelings.

A government official said Islamic State militants are putting up a tough fight defending the city that stands as a symbol of the Sunni insurgency that followed the U.S. occupation of Iraq, in 2003.

Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said the troops are progressing cautiously in order to protect tens of thousands of civilians trapped in Falluja.

The United Nations says 90,000 civilians may have remained in Falluja, under "harrowing" conditions with little access to food, water and healthcare, and no safe exit routes.

The insurgents have dug a network of tunnels to move around without being detected and planted thousands of mines and explosive devices to delay the army's advance.

Finance Minister Hoshiyar Zebari said a week ago that the battle of Falluja "will take time".

The Iraqi army is also massing tanks and troops south of Mosul, in preparation for an offensive planned later this year to retake the largest city under the control of the militants.
Indian men given life for gang-rape of Danish tourist

NEW DELHI, June 10 (Reuters) - Five Indian men were sentenced to life in prison on Friday for raping a Danish tourist in the heart of New Delhi's tourist district in 2014, in a case that reignited worries about sexual violence against women in India.

The men, all in their twenties, were found guilty by a Delhi court on Monday for robbing and raping the 52-year old Dane at a secluded spot close to New Delhi railway station.

"All the five convicts have been sentenced to rigorous life imprisonment for their offences," additional public prosecutor Atul Shrivastava, told Reuters at the court.

The Dane was walking through an area of narrow lanes near Delhi's Paharganj district, a tourist area packed with backpacker hotels, on the evening of Jan. 14, 2014, when she asked a group of men for directions to her hotel.

The men then lured the woman to an area near New Delhi railway station where they raped her and robbed her at knife-point, the prosecution said in its chargesheet.

India was shaken into deep soul-searching about entrenched violence against women after the fatal gang-rape in December 2012 of a female student on a bus in New Delhi.

The crime, which sent thousands of Indians onto the streets in protest against what many saw as the failure of authorities to protect women, encouraged the government to enact tougher jail sentences for rapists.

Police accused nine men of attacking the Danish woman in 2014. Three are juveniles being tried in a separate court while a fourth died during the trial.
Gambian opposition leader says he will boycott trial

DAKAR, June 10 (Reuters) - A Gambian opposition leader on trial since April for participating in a protest has said he is a victim of political persecution and will boycott the proceedings.

Ousainou Darboe, a lawyer, was arrested after taking part along with other senior members of the United Democratic Party (UDP) in a small protest near the capital Banjul.

The UDP said 50 people had been arrested after the protests in two round-ups, which the United Nations and the United States condemned. It says it fears that three of the detainees are dead, including senior party official Solo Sandeng.

Twenty UDP officials including Darboe are being tried for holding a protest without a permit.

Protests are rare in Gambia, a sliver of territory almost encircled by Senegal, where President Yahya Jammeh has ruled for two decades since seizing power in a bloodless coup.

Rights groups say he has been cracking down on opposition figures with an eye on December's election, where he will seek his fifth term, having scrapped term limits; Jammeh once told a journalist he could rule for "a billion years".

Lawyers for Darboe and for the other party leaders walked out of the courtroom on Thursday.

"This is a political case, a case against me and my party supporters," Darboe said on Thursday. "We will not participate in this trial to legitimise our pre-arranged conviction."

A police officer told the court on Thursday that protesters had refused to disperse and started throwing rocks, at which point the police fired tear gas at them.
Under new chief, China's securities regulator pushes fixes ahead of MSCI deadline

By Michelle Price

HONG KONG, June 10 (Reuters) - China's securities regulator has rushed through stock market rule changes under its new chairman in a bid to persuade MSCI to include domestic Chinese shares in one of its global benchmarks.

The New York-based index provider will announce on June 14 if China has done enough to overcome investor concerns, which were heightened by its heavy-handed response last year to a stock market crash.

A decision to allow yuan-denominated shares - or A shares - into its widely used Emerging Markets Index, could draw $400 billion into Chinese shares in the next decade, MSCI estimates show.

Still, while China has met some key requirements of the MSCI, other concerns remain unaddressed, investors and people familiar with the discussions said, making the widely anticipated decision far from certain.

The MSCI told China last June that it needed to increase access to its equity markets and fix other rules to win foreign investor backing for inclusion in the benchmark, tracked by $1.5 trillion in assets globally.

Scepticism China could satisfy the requirements deepened owing to unprecedented intervention by authorities during last summer's stock market crash. As shares slumped more than 40 percent in a few months, more than half of Chinese companies suspended their stocks to avoid the slide.

Over the past four months though, the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) has stepped-up its efforts to woo global benchmark providers under a new reform-focused senior management team led by Chairman Liu Shiyu, investors and people familiar with the discussions said.

A CSRC spokesman said an MSCI Emerging Markets Index without A shares was a "shortcoming" and the regulator would be happy to see them included.

Shiyu, a former chairman of the Agricultural Bank of China and former deputy governor of the People's Bank of China (PBOC), was appointed to the top CSRC job in February, replacing Xiao Gang, who had been widely criticised for mishandling the stock-market crisis.

Since Shiyu's appointment, the CSRC has satisfied two of MSCI's key demands; introducing restrictions on company share suspensions and clarifying the beneficial ownership rights of foreign investors under China's cross-border investment schemes.

"The CSRC had previously been pretty slow at working out liberalisation issues," said Ivan Shi, head of research at Shanghai-based investment consultancy Z-Ben Advisors.

"Everyone is more on the same page regarding market opening and the CSRC has responded to many of MSCI's requirements."

Last June, the MSCI and the CSRC said they would create a working group to address MSCI's concerns. Neither party has provided details about the working group.

Discussions were slow to start as the CSRC dealt with the market crash, said people briefed on the matter. Key CSRC managers also left, making it difficult to schedule meetings, and a CSRC roadshow to woo U.S. and European investors was postponed, they said.

But they picked up gear from February, said people briefed on the matter. One source said Shiyu attended some of the meetings. MSCI also fielded top executives and its global chief executive, Henry Fernandez, visited regulators in Beijing in April, three people briefed on the matter said.

MSCI declined to comment.

GAPS

While many foreign investors harbour worries over inclusion, investment banks are more bullish. Goldman Sachs, for example, said in May there was a 70 percent chance MSCI would add the shares to its major index, citing the steps taken by China to remove investment obstacles.

Still, China has yet to address another MSCI concern, which is to remove rules that require foreigners get permission from the Shanghai and Shenzhen exchanges to launch A share hedging products.

Nor does the CSRC have the power to address all of MSCI's concerns. The PBOC and the State Administration of Foreign Exchange control the size of investment quotas and have played a central role in liberalising the country's $81 billion Qualified Foreign Institutional Investor (QFII) scheme and its yuan equivalent, RQFII.

Neither the PBOC nor SAFE were immediately available to comment on Friday, a public holiday in China.

Under the QFII scheme, China has yet to lift a 20 percent net monthly cap on capital repatriation, one of MSCI's last remaining concerns. A Hong Kong-Shenzhen stock connect system has yet to be announced, a route that would allow two-way trade and which foreign investors expect to dramatically open up the market.

"The problem is that there is not just one regulator involved," said one person with direct knowledge of the discussions. "But I am convinced they are trying to meet our requirements."
Breaking the back of the London copper market: Andy Home

By Andy Home

LONDON, June 10 (Reuters) - It's been a tough week for copper bulls.

The price of benchmark three-month delivery copper on the London Metal Exchange (LME) has slumped almost $250 to a current $4,498 per tonne, the lowest level since February.

Copper is now challenging out-of-favour lead as the worst performing base metal so far this year.

This is not a story of macro headwinds. Zinc, for example, hit a fresh one-year high above $2,100 per tonne on Thursday.

Rather, it is all about the surge in LME copper stocks, a total 65,550 tonnes hitting the LME warehouse system in the first four days of the week.

Headline registered inventory hit a four-month high of 213,225 tonnes as of Thursday's daily report.

At first glance this might appear to be no more than an acceleration of the recent rebalancing of global inventory away from a sated Chinese to a depleted LME market.

But the timing and scale of the inflows suggest that there was more going on than just fundamentals.

This week's events bear all the hallmarks of a battle between two of the market's bigger players for control of the London copper spreads.

OVERRIDING THE TREND

This week's inflow of copper was largely concentrated on just four LME locations: Singapore (39,650 tonnes), Taiwan (3,850 tonnes) and the two South Korean locations of Busan (11,450 tonnes) and Gwangyang (6,800 tonnes).

All four have seen sporadic arrivals of copper since the start of April, roughly corresponding to export flows out of China over the first few months of this year.

Chinese exports hit a near two-year high of 32,400 tonnes in April, bringing the year-to-date tally to 75,500 tonnes. How much was exported in May will only be known when the full trade figures are released later this month.

The consensus is that outbound flows will have remained robust, given high bonded stocks at Chinese ports and correspondingly weak physical market premiums.

The small handful of Chinese smelters permissioned to export copper without paying the export tax will almost certainly have been enticed to continue shipping material by the combination of the cash premium on the LME and delivery incentives offered by LME warehouse operators.

But when large tonnages of any metal hit the LME warehousing system over a limited timeframe, it's a tell-tale sign that the material hasn't just physically arrived at the port the prior day.

More likely is that it was already sitting in situ in off-market storage or was gradually accumulated before being placed on warrant, at which stage it "shows up" in the LME's stock reports.

Singapore, for example, saw 18,350 tonnes of warranting activity in Tuesday's stocks report. The previous highest daily inflow since copper arrivals began in early April was just 4,800 tonnes.

All the evidence suggests this week's "arrivals" were coordinated and executed to have maximum impact on the market.

Graphic on LME copper spreads and stock inflow:

http://tmsnrt.rs/1POjVyN

BREAKING THE BACK(WARDATION)

To understand why someone may have wanted to flood the London market with copper, you need look no further than the LME's market positioning reports.

What the exchange terms a dominant long position emerged on the copper market last week.

This player controlled 50-80 percent of all LME open stocks, excluding metal earmarked for physical load-out, and had bulked this up with cash positions to the point that its overall position represented in excess of 90 percent of all available stocks.

That position was being rolled forward daily, forcing shorts to pay the backwardation price as they too rolled their positions.

The cash premium over three-month metal , the backwardation, had flexed out as wide as $27.75 per tonne the previous week as the long tightened its grip on the London market's nearby date structure.

Someone, it seems, was not prepared to pay the roll price and decided to deliver physical metal against their position.

And they did so in a way to generate the maximum bang for their buck.

It seems to have worked.

That cash premium has evaporated. As of Thursday's close, the cash-to-three-months spread was valued at $15 per tonne contango.

The ripple effects have spread down the curve, LME broker Marex Spectron noting that the July-December spread eased $10 to $35 per tonne contango over the course of Thursday.

The latest positioning reports, denoting the state of play as of Wednesday's close, show the dominant long still holding 50-80 percent of stocks <_0LME-WHL> but with no equivalent cash position <_0LME-WHC>.

The war may continue but it's clear who won this particular battle of the LME copper spreads.

MORE TO COME?

This morning's LME stocks report showed no copper arrivals at all, suggesting that this week's flood has now abated.

Will more arrive?

It seems likely that there will be a resumption of the sporadic inflows seen earlier as long as Chinese smelters favour the LME over the domestic market.

Set against this outbound flow, however, is a continued much stronger import flow.

Imports of refined copper totalled 1.45 million tonnes over the first four months of this year, up 27 percent year-on-year.

The preliminary figures for May suggest the import pace may be slowing but is still running much higher than year-earlier levels.

It's worth bearing in mind that China is still absorbing more than the entire LME stocks total every month.

Its appetite is surprising given the combination of slower usage growth and higher domestic output of refined metal.

But the simple fact is that every tonne that enters China is a tonne that is not destined for an LME warehouse.

That said, if this week's events have taught us anything, it is that there is evidently still a lot of free metal available for LME delivery.

Whether it gets delivered in such quantities as just seen is going to depend on whether the two parties involved in this week's battle of the LME spreads resume hostilities in the coming weeks.
Angola's sovereign fund steps up local private equity push

By Ed Cropley

LUANDA, June 10 (Reuters) - Angola's $5 billion sovereign wealth fund is stepping up private equity investments at home and in sub-Saharan Africa as low commodity prices and currencies give it a cheap way in to hotel, farming and infrastructure projects, its chairman said.

Jose Filomeno dos Santos, the 38-year-old London-educated son of President Jose Eduardo dos Santos, said the fund had earmarked 60 percent of its capital to regional private equity, a shift in focus towards its own back yard.

Previously the fund, set up in 2012 to help wean Angola's economy off oil, wanted to invest a third of its cash in the region, with another third in "opportunistic" international investments and the rest in safe havens such as U.S. debt.

Oil accounts for a third of Angola's GDP and 95 percent of its export revenues, making it particularly vulnerable to the commodity cycle.

After being criticised for the slow pace of investment in its early stages, the fund is now in a strong position given the depressed currencies in oil producers such as Angola and Nigeria and commodity exporters such as Zambia and South Africa.

Low commodity prices have pushed down the price of local assets, either because economic growth has slowed, or because their value, in local currencies, has fallen.

"The situation we have now, it's obviously ideal because the prices are fairer than when commodity prices are high," dos Santos told Reuters in an interview at the fund's central Luanda offices.

Of its seven private equity units, by far the biggest is a $1.1 billion infrastructure fund, 20 percent of which is now invested in projects in Kenya and Angola.

The fund is particularly keen on public-private partnership deals that improve regional trade links, dos Santos said.

A quarter of its $500 million hotel fund is invested in two hotel projects in Angola and the Intercontinental chain in Zambia, dos Santos said, while its timber fund is involved in a major eucalyptus concession in Angola.

Dos Santos said its agriculture and healthcare units - each worth around $250 million - were looking to make "sizeable" debut allocations this year.

The fund's initial endowment of $5 billion from excess state oil revenues was fully paid up in 2014, but since then low oil prices and pressure on the state budget have meant it has received no additional state cash.

The fund is meant to receive additional endowments of up to the equivalent of 100,000 barrels of oil per day if the oil price rises above the level forecast in the budget, giving the government a surplus.

Angola, which only emerged from a 27-year civil war in 2002, pumps over 1.7 million barrels a day, making it Africa's biggest oil producer while output in Nigeria - which normally holds that crown - is hammered by militant violence in the Niger Delta.

After cutting spending dramatically in the last year, the government is budgeting for oil at $45 a barrel, slightly below the current price but dos Santos was unable to say when the fund's drip-feed of cash would kick in again given other fiscal pressures.

"What we hope is that the context eventually becomes more favourable and that the endowments will continue, but we are also aware that the country has many priorities," he said.

"We believe that the financial situation of the country is fairly manageable. We hope that it picks up. We invest to make sure that it picks up."

NOT ON THE LIST

Dos Santos' appointment to run the fund has fuelled speculation that his father - who has stated he intends to step down in 2018 after what will be nearly four decades at the helm - is grooming him for succession.

Talk of a dynastic family handover plan intensified this month when President dos Santos made his billionaire businesswoman daughter Isabel - Africa's richest woman, according to Forbes magazine - head of state oil giant Sonangol.

However, Jose Filomeno dos Santos denied any political ambition and said he was in no position to short-circuit the rigid internal dynamics of his father's MPLA party, many of whose senior members are ageing civil war-era generals.

"It's a party that has a very clear hierarchy and as you might be aware, I am nowhere near the top of the hierarchy that would entitle me to be a candidate for a potential presidential election," dos Santos said.

"So my name is most likely not on the cards."
Military sweep in Nigeria's Delta risks fuelling more dissent

By Tife Owolabi

OPOROZA, Nigeria, June 10 (Reuters) - The Nigerian army has swept into villages in the southern swamplands in an operation to crush the Niger Delta Avengers group, but allegations by residents of brutal tactics and rapes by some of its soldiers risk stoking anger in the region.

The army has vowed to stop the militant group which has claimed a string of attacks on oil pipelines which have cut Nigeria's oil output by half a million barrels a day to a 20-year low. It denies the allegations of abuse.

The military has deployed dozens of gunboats in the Delta swamps to search a cluster of villages that are home to a former militant leader whom officials link to the previously unknown group, residents said.

Community leaders and a security source said the sweep has failed to produce results, despite the arrest of some 15 suspects, while relations with locals already angered by deep poverty and oil spills have worsened.

"Our people are very angry with the arrest of innocent people in the name of looking for pipeline vandals," said Eric Omare, a spokesman for Ijaw Youth Council, which represents the main ethnic group in the Delta region.

Five of the arrested were released after it turned out they were oil workers unrelated to the militants. Activists say several students who also had no connection to the Avengers remained in custody.

In interviews with Reuters, the first foreign news outlet to visit the Oporoza community raided by the army, 10 villagers said soldiers had searched their houses in the middle of the night after arriving in gunboats and surrounding the village.

Two villagers said they were raped, while two others reported looting. One villager said he was struck by a soldier with the butt of a gun.

"About 3 a.m., military men invaded our community. Four of them stormed my house and broke the doors," 50-year old Ebimobore Oboivu said, wailing in front of her hut in the creeks criss-crossed by oil pipelines.

"Two them raped me as the other two pointed guns at my head," she said.

Army spokesman Rabe Abubakar denied troops had used force or raped anyone when searching Oporoza. "The reason we are there is because of some criminal guys who by all means decide to do unholy and inappropriate acts against their country," he said.

But the Delta state government, under whose jurisdiction the community falls, has urged the military to launch an investigation. "This is not the first time such allegations are made," state government spokesman Charles Anaigwu said.

A smashed window and bullet holes could be seen at one house and one hut with an iron roof. A television set inside a house had a bullet hole from a gun fired by one of the soldiers, villagers said.

A second woman, Simply Timi, also described being the victim of a gang rape. "I heard a loud bang on my door with three army men. One of them pinned me to the ground and they all raped me."

President Muhammadu Buhari has launched a reform of the army which has long faced accusations of abuses. But rights groups routinely accuse soldiers of detentions without arrest warrant, looting and beating of prisoners.

In April, the United States urged Nigeria to investigate a report by Amnesty International that soldiers killed hundreds of Shi'ite Muslims in the northern city of Zaria in December. The army has said it acted in self-defence after the sect had ambushed a convoy.

CALLS FOR INQUIRIES

Oporoza, at the centre of a group of villages, is home to Government Ekpemupolo, known as Tompolo, a former militant leader who laid down arms with other commanders in 2009 under an amnesty promising generous cash payments.

Buhari, faced with a revenue squeeze due to low oil prices, has cut funding for the amnesty plan, causing widespread resentment in the Delta, where the plan also funds job training for the unemployed.

Officials link Tompolo with the attacks, saying they began in January, around the same time that a court issued an arrest warrant for him on graft charges, prompting him to go into hiding. Tompolo has denied any link to the Avengers.

Security officials say villagers have been hiding militants like Tompolo.

Soldiers ransacked Tompolo's compound and searched dozens of huts but a Nigeria-based security source, asking not to be named, said the army sweep had not generated any leads about who was behind the militant group.

"You can't ruin the life of a whole community because of one man," said Nelson Okagbami, an Oporoza community leader.

He said he saw soldiers dragging away one wounded teenager. "Bullets were flying around. I had to hide in a church," he said.

At a meeting earlier this week, Delta state governors agreed with Vice President Yemi Osinbajo to address local grievances. But in Oporoza people fear the army will come back.
Awning collapse at Pakistan mosque kills five

By Asad Hashim

KARACHI, Pakistan, June 10 (Reuters) - A collapsed metal awning killed at least five people after Friday prayers at a mosque in the southern Pakistani city of Karachi, police said.

A temporary sun shade fell on the courtyard area of the Usman mosque in central Karachi following prayers, said police official Zulfiqar Haider.

"I was in the mosque myself ... people were offering a prayers following the conclusion of the (main) Friday prayer when we heard a loud crash following a gust of wind," he said.

The corrugated metal awning fell directly on worshippers, he said.

Friday midday prayers hold special significance in Islam, particularly during the holy month of Ramadan, which began this week.

Temperatures in Karachi often hit maximums of near 40 degrees Celsius in the summer, and the awning had been erected to shield worshippers from the sun.

Karachi, a sprawling metropolis of more than 20 million people, is one of the world's largest urban areas, but construction codes are often ignored.
Nigerian official confirms attack on ENI pipeline in Niger Delta

ONITSHA, Nigeria, June 10 (Reuters) - A Nigerian security official confirmed there had been an attack on Friday on a pipeline operated by Italy's ENI in the Niger Delta region.

"There was an attack on the Obi Obi Brass Pipeline between 1 and 2 am today Friday," said Desmond Agu, commander of the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps in Bayelsa state.

"There is an oil spill at the scene ...but the place is not on fire."
Lawyer of Briton in Kenya denies woman died taking "selfies with a gun"

NAIROBI, June 10 (Reuters) - A defence lawyer for a British business executive who was charged on Friday with the murder of a Kenyan woman has denied a previous account which suggested she had died while taking "selfies with a gun" that accidentally went off.

Another lawyer, Evans Monari, who is no longer defending businessman Richard Alden, 52, gave the "selfies" account on Monday when the Briton was remanded in custody pending further investigations into the death of Grace Wangeci, 42.

"The selfie story is not consistent with the statement recorded by Richard Alden at the police station," a current member of the defence team, lawyer Tom Okundi, told Reuters, adding he could not explain how that version had emerged.

He said Alden pleaded not guilty to the murder charge and would seek bail at a hearing on June 16. Okundi said he could not for now give further details about the case.

Lawyer Monari, who had said on Monday that Wangeci died accidentally while "taking selfies with a gun", directed enquiries to the defence team when contacted on Friday.

In his bail application, Alden said he had taken Wangeci to hospital and had called the police, citing these as reasons why he was not a flight risk, according to a copy of the document seen by Reuters.
A library policy that provides patrons with four computers with unfiltered access to the internet will remain in place.

In January, the Billings City Council asked the library board to create a policy for blocking access to obscene material on the librarys public computers. Eighty-five of the computers have filtered internet access. The four computers that are unfiltered have recessed monitors, making it difficult for passersby to see whats on the screen.

The Billings Public Library Board voted unanimously Thursday to leave its current internet usage policy in place. Board members and library staff will meet with the city council next month to explain the board's policy.

In a memo to the library board, Library Director Bill Cochran and Assistant Director Michael Carlson said that during the 2014-15 fiscal year, more than 85,000 people used library computers to access the internet or the library's Wi-Fi service. By board directive, all computers in areas used by minors are filtered, and all users under the age of 13 have the filter applied to their sessions, even if they are using a computer in another area  unless a parent or guardian has authorized unfiltered use.

The Billings Public Library is the only large public library in Montana that filters internet work stations at all, the librarians wrote to the board. We are already the most restrictive large library in the state.

Filtering internet access at public libraries can raise First Amendment challenges, the two librarians noted, unless the library can unblock filters on request. The Billings Public Library cannot do that without spending up to $8,000 for new software and equipment, in addition to ongoing costs.

The city councils request came during its Jan. 25 meeting after Councilman Chris Friedel, according to the meeting minutes, referenced a recent news story describing an incident at the library" in which a library patron walked by a computer and saw obscene material being viewed by another user.

Library Board Member Roger Young said he wondered why the age is set at 13 for access to the unfiltered computers  and then he answered his own question. Some young people are now reading books I wasnt ready to read at that age, he said.

Most of the people he sees at the four unfiltered computers are looking at financial reports or tax statements, he said, not pornographic images.

They are people who want their private stuff to remain private, he said.

I dont think we should be filtering anything, said Board Member Bernard Rose. It becomes a slippery slope.

The library board is made up of six appointees from the city and three from the county. According to the meeting minutes, Cochran told the city council on Jan. 25 that the city council does not have the authority to adopt a policy for the library; that duty lies with the Library Board."

I think Bill and Michael have put together a very good package, said Board Chair Stella Fong. They can now go before the city council in July.

Library director search

With Cochran retiring, a committee seeking candidates to succeed him is narrowing the field from five to three candidates following initial interviews. According to Fong, those finalists will appear for a meet-and-greet with the public at 5:30 p.m. June 22 in the Royal Johnson Community Room at the library. City Administrator Tina Volek will select Cochran's successor.

Library statistics

The board received statistics showing continued growth in the use of library materials and services.

Audio book downloads are up 28 percent over the first nine months of the previous fiscal year, with total circulation up 2 percent.

At more than 276,000, the total people in the library during the first three quarters of the fiscal year is up 14 percent, and the number of computer sessions up 16 percent.

During the current fiscal year to date, nearly 1,200 teens had used the librarys Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Math (STEAM) Lab  a growth of 105 percent over the previous year.

With fewer programs being offered to children  162 during the current year to date, and 232 during the previous year  the number of children attending those programs was down 1 percent from the previous year.
Eritrean extradited to Italy denies being human trafficker - lawyer

By Crispian Balmer

ROME, June 10 (Reuters) - An Eritrean man extradited to Italy from Sudan this week and accused of being a human-trafficking boss has denied the allegation and says he is the victim of mistaken identity, his lawyer said on Friday.

If confirmed, it would be a huge blow to Italy and Britain, which had combined forces to track down alleged trafficker Medhane Yehdego Mered and had hailed his deportation from Sudan as a rare victory in the fight against people smuggling.

However, when photographs of the detained man were released after his arrival in Rome on Wednesday, family and friends said he was an Eritrean refugee named Medhanie Tesfamariam Berhe.

Italian magistrates interviewed the suspect for the first time on Friday in front of his lawyer, Michele Calantropo.

"My client has denied all the allegations and says he is not the person in question," Calantropo told reporters outside the Rome jail where the interrogation took place.

"He is another man ... and doesn't understand the meaning of this arrest," he said, adding that Berhe was a simple carpenter.

Italian magistrates and the British National Crime Agency, which played a central role in the operation to seize Mered, have said they are looking into claims they got the wrong man.

Mered, nicknamed "the General", had been heard on intercepted telephone calls boasting about cramming more people onto rickety boats to make the dangerous crossing from Libya to Italy than other traffickers did, prosecutors have said.

A legal source, who declined to be named, said Italian and British investigators had given the Sudanese authorities precise information about the mobile phone Mered was using and believed the arrested man had been in possession of the phone.

However, Italian authorities did not have any access to him in Sudan following his arrest on May 24, the source said.

Palermo Chief Prosecutor Francesco Lo Voi has played a central role in the Mered investigation, but he has distanced himself from the arrest operation.

"The arrest, delivery and extradition to Italy were officially communicated by the National Crime Agency and Sudan authorities through Interpol," he told Ansa news agency.

Calantropo said his client did not say why or when he was arrested. "He didn't explain that to me. We are still waiting for the paperwork from Sudan," he said.
MTN settles Nigeria dispute, looks at local listing

By Zandi Shabalala, Felix Onuah and LA

JOHANNESBURG/ABUJA, June 10 (Reuters) - MTN Group has agreed to pay a reduced fine of 330 billion naira ($1.7 billion) in a settlement with the Nigerian government of a long-running dispute over unregistered SIM cards, sending shares in the South African telecoms group soaring.

Nigeria, battling its worst economic crisis for decades, agreed to cut the fine initially demanded by almost 70 percent after MTN threatened to pull out of the West African nation, a Nigerian official said.

The settlement clears the way for MTN to list its local unit on the Nigerian Stock Exchange. Such a step had been on the firm's radar but plans accelerated during negotiations over the fine, Executive Chairman Phuthuma Nhleko told Reuters.

The fine will be paid by MTN Nigeria over three years and is only around a third of the $5.2 billion figure initially demanded by the west African country last October for failing to deactivate more than five million unregistered SIM cards.

Nigeria has been cracking down on unregistered SIM cards, concerned they are used for criminal activity in a country fighting an insurgency by Islamist militant group Boko Haram.

MTN had threatened to shut down its operations in Nigeria as paying the fine in full would have crippled its business, a government official said, asking not to be named.

"It was a dicey situation of collecting the fine in full and rendering many Nigerians jobless," he said. "This would have subsequently thrown hundreds of Nigerians out of jobs when we are still battling with the current high rate of unemployment."

Nigeria, Africa's largest economy and most populous nation, faces its worst crisis for decades after the sharp fall in oil prices and last year's introduction of a currency peg that put investors to flight.

But in a possible complication, Nigeria's House of Representatives said it was surprised by the deal as its own probe into the MTN fine had not been concluded.

In March, the lower house launched an investigation, arguing that reducing the initial fine of $5.2 billion would require changing the law.

"We are still continuing with our investigation," Fijabi Akinade, chairman of the House's committee on communications, told Reuters. Lawmakers had summoned the communications minister and a top regulator official to discuss the deal on Monday.

"We want to know how they arrived at that decision and if it was done in good faith ... But honestly, we are surprised," Akinade told Reuters.

The dispute removed a cloud hanging over MTN and its shares surged more than 20 percent at one point and closed 13.18 percent higher at 140 rand. They had shed 22 percent since the fine was first announced.

"The relationship between MTN, the Federal Government of Nigeria and the Nigerian Communication Commission (NCC) has been restored and strengthened," Nhleko said.

The Nigerian regulator said the settlement was acceptable to both parties and that it had not been "out to kill MTN".

"Money was not the issue here. The breach was the issue. I believe MTN has learned its lesson," NCC spokesman Tony Ojobo told Reuters.

MAJOR MARKET

MTN is the largest mobile phone operator in Nigeria with 62 million subscribers and the west African nation accounts for about one third of its revenues.

Nhleko, who was chief executive for nine years until 2011, was appointed on an interim basis for six months in November but has stayed on as the company negotiated with Nigerian authorities.

In February, MTN hired Eric Holder, the former U.S. attorney-general, to help negotiate the fine.

MTN, Africa's largest telecoms company, has already paid 50 billion of the 330 billion naira owed. The rest will be paid in six instalments over three years, the company said.

Five weeks after the fine was first announced, MTN's chief executive Sifiso Dabengwa resigned and the company asked Nhleko to take the reins temporarily.

A Johannesburg-based analyst gave Nhleko credit for not settling the fine earlier at a figure of $3.9 billion, the first sign Nigerian authorities gave after months of talks that it was willing to accept a lower sum.

"He's the guy who built this ship and this shows he can still steer the ship," Momentum SP Reid Securities analyst Sibonginkosi Nyanga told Reuters.

The telecommunications firm which spans 20 countries, set aside $600 million in March to pay the fine.
S.Africa's Zuma appeals reinstatement of graft charges against him

By Zimasa Mpemnyama

PRETORIA, June 10 (Reuters) - South Africa's President Jacob Zuma and state prosecutors on Friday sought the right to appeal against a High Court ruling to review a decision to drop 783 corruption charges against the head of state.

The National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) set aside the charges against Zuma in April 2009, allowing him to run for president the same month.

But the High Court last April ordered a review of that decision, terming it "irrational", a ruling that opened the possibility of the charges being reinstated.

The case has re-emerged before local government elections set for August where the ruling African National Congress (ANC) faces a challenge from opposition parties that have used Zuma's perceived failures and scandals in their campaigns.

The state is appealing the ruling on the grounds that the law gives prosecutors the discretion to decide when to lay charges and that the order for a review could dilute the NPA's powers.

"The court went too far in saying that Mr. Zuma should face the charges in the indictment," NPA lawyer Hilton Epstein told the court on Friday.

But David Borgstrom, a lawyer for the opposition Democratic Alliance which initiated the original court application, said the judgment for a review should stand.

High court judge Aubrey Ledwaba said he would rule on the matter at a later date.

The NPA's decision in 2009 was based on phone intercepts presented by Zuma's legal team that suggested the timing of the charges may have been part of a political plot against him.

Zuma's office said the High Court had made a mistake in ruling that the public prosecutor was not entitled to terminate a prosecution on the basis of misconduct and abuse of the process.

Should the appeal fail and the charges be reinstated, it would be another political setback for Zuma after the Constitutional Court said in March he had erred by ignoring an order to pay back some of the 240 million rand ($16 million) in state money spent on upgrading his private home.

The hundreds of corruption charges relate to a major government arms deal arranged in the late 1990s. DA leader Mmusi Maimane said on Friday any further delays in bringing back the charges were a waste of taxpayers' money.
Dutch insurer ASR priced at 2.9 bln euros on market debut

By Toby Sterling

AMSTERDAM, June 9 (Reuters) - Insurer ASR, one of the last financial institutions under control of the Dutch state to be re-privatised, was valued at 2.9 billion euros ($3.3 billion) on its stockmarket debut.

Including an overallotment option, the Dutch state will raise around 1.17 billion euros selling a 40 percent stake in ASR, the Netherlands' fourth-largest insurer.

The shares rose to 20.14 euros by midday Friday after being priced at 19.50 euros late Thursday.

The government split ASR and ABN Amro out from former Belgian owner Fortis in a 16.8 billion euro rescue scheme in 2008, pumping 4 billion euros into ASR.

The insurer remained profitable throughout its time under government stewardship and its solvency was never in doubt. In February ASR reported a 25 percent rise in full-year 2015 operating profit to 521 million euros($580 million).

CEO Jos Baeten told Reuters on the sidelines of a listing celebration at the Euronext stock exchange in Amsterdam that the company had marketed itself to investors as a reliable dividend rather than a growth stock -- and had received a warm welcome.

"Because we generate capital, we stand out in comparison with some of our European peers," he said.

ASR returned 170 million euros to taxpayers in 2015, and has said it will seek to maintain a payout ratio of 45-55 percent of operating profits as a private company.

When ASR announced its intention to seek a listing in May, it said its solvency ratio stood at 185 percent under Europe's new Solvency II rules. Analysts look to this figure as an indicator of a company's ability to pay dividends.

ASR is the Netherlands' largest disability insurer, and a major seller of property and casualty, funeral and health insurance.

The Dutch state has said it will gradually sell off its stakes in ASR and ABN Amro which returned to the stock market in November.

The largest financial services firm now remaining in state hands is SNS Bank, which was rescued in 2013 amid heavy losses on its real estate portfolio.

The Cabinet has said it intends to return SNS to private hands but has not said whether that will happen by stock market listing or a sale to a private investor.

Analysts believe the state will seek an IPO for SNS in the fall as long as financial markets are stable.
Court orders another audit of price in Kabel Deutschland case

FRANKFURT, June 10 (Reuters) - A German court has handed a victory to hedge fund Elliott in a battle over the price Vodafone paid for Germany's Kabel Deutschland by ordering another audit of the value of Germany's largest cable group.

Vodafone acquired just over three quarters of shares in Kabel Deutschland with an 84.50 euro per share, or 7.7 billion euro ($8.70 billion) bid in 2013 as it was seeking to expand its range of television and fixed-line services in Germany.

But U.S. hedge fund Elliott, which holds 14.4 percent of Kabel Deutschland shares, filed a legal suit in 2014 demanding higher compensation for minority shareholders.

Kabel Deutschland responded by appointing a special auditor to establish the underlying value which said that the company was worth almost a quarter more than what Vodafone offered.

Elliott was not satisfied and decided to pursue its case and the Munich regional court on Thursday called for a new audit of the Kabel Deutschland takeover. The decision was made public only on Friday.

The new auditor, appointed by the court, will examine whether Kabel Deutschland obstructed the work of the previous auditor.

He will also examine the period between April 2013 and the launch of the buyout offer in June 2013. The previous auditor's work had been limited to the end of March 2013.

Elliott portfolio manager Franck Tuil said the cost to Vodafone of compensating minority shareholders could be more than a billion euros.

"Using the mid-point of Kabel Deutschland's own internal valuation the total cost per share to Vodafone, after interest has been taken into consideration is 188 euros (a share), an increase of 1.4 billion euros over the cost currently estimated by the market," he said in a statement.
Uganda says to withdraw troops hunting rebels in Central African Republic

KAMPALA, June 10 (Reuters) - Uganda plans to withdraw troops involved in an operation to hunt down Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) rebels in Central African Republic by the end of this year, a spokesman for its military said on Friday.
Fake vaccination papers let yellow fever spread in Angola

By Ed Cropley

LUANDA, June 10 (Reuters) - The world's worst yellow fever outbreak in decades took hold in an Angolan slum because its early victims were Eritrean migrants whose false vaccination papers sent doctors off on the wrong path for weeks, international health officials said.

The flare-up of the mosquito-borne disease has killed 325 people in Angola, spread as far as China - which has close commercial links with oil-rich Angola - and raised fears of the world running out of vaccine, but it might have been stopped in its tracks if it had been identified quickly in Luanda.

Since the outbreak was identified in January, 10.5 million Angolans - 40 percent of the population - have been vaccinated and the World Health Organization (WHO) plans to cover the rest of the war-scarred country by the end of the year.

But with a reported case this week of the disease jumping via a mosquito from one person to another in Kinshasa, a city of over 12 million in neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo, there are concerns about global vaccine supplies running out.

Luanda WHO representative Hernando Agudelo said he and government experts thought they were dealing with a mystery disease when unexplained deaths first surfaced in Km 30, part of the capital's sprawling Viana district, in mid-December.

"The first people that we found with this strange way of dying, this syndrome, they had vaccination cards," Agudelo told Reuters. "The first meeting with the minister, we were analysing 'What the hell is it?'"

Yellow fever is transmitted by the same mosquitoes that spread the Zika and dengue viruses, although it is much more serious with death rates as high as 75 percent in severe cases requiring admission to hospital.

The condition takes its name from the jaundiced colour of some patients.

With the devastating West African Ebola outbreak in the back of their minds, Angolan and WHO investigators quickly nailed down a restaurant in Km 30, home to the biggest informal market in the city of 7 million, as the link between the victims.

"We started to look at what they had in common and they were from Eritrea," Agudelo said. "All of them had passed through the same restaurant."

Most people fleeing rigidly controlled Eritrea in the Horn of Africa try to get into Europe, although a few head to other African countries such as Angola, which denies entry to anybody without vaccination documents.

When the restaurant owner also died, samples were sent to South Africa's National Institute of Communicable Diseases, where technicians who had been told about the vaccination papers only ran a yellow fever test "by chance", Agudelo said.

The lab confirmed yellow fever on Jan. 19, according to the WHO.

But by this point, the outbreak had long since spread from Viana, and by February suspected cases were recorded in more than half of Angola's 18 provinces. In April, victims who contracted it in Angola were dying in Congo.

CHOLERA, TYPHOID, PLAGUE

The outbreak has been a brutal wake-up call for Angola, currently Africa's biggest oil producer and, until recently, one of its brightest investment prospects.

The economy has grown rapidly since the end of a 27-year civil war in 2002 as billions of dollars have been ploughed into reconstruction, although the government has been criticised for failing to make similar investments in education and health.

Routine yellow fever vaccination, which only started in the late 1980s, still reaches only 70 percent of the population, said Francisco Sondane, a medical doctor running Angola's UNICEF operations who confirmed Agudelo's account of the Eritreans.

Nearly the whole of Luanda has now been vaccinated, but the mass campaign across the rest of the country has depleted the world's emergency vaccine stockpile and there is no quick way to boost production.

Manufacturers, including the Institut Pasteur, government factories in Brazil and Russia, and French drugmaker Sanofi , use a time-consuming method involving sterile chicken eggs.

Should the disease take hold in Kinshasa, one of Africa's biggest cities, health officials may have little option but to stretch out the global stockpile of 6 million shots by administering one-fifth doses.

In Luanda, health officials are ruing the missed early opportunities and the massive cost that has now entailed.

"If we had contained this at the Luanda level, we would not have had to spend the money that we're spending now," said Francisco Sondane, a medical doctor running UNICEF's operations in Angola.

Nor may yellow fever be the only public health emergency Angola has to tackle.

The collapse in oil revenues has hammered the government budget - 70 percent of which normally comes from petroleum receipts - to the point that basic services such as garbage collection in the capital have ground to a halt.

Mounds of rubbish lie rotting on street corners, a breeding ground for pests such as flies and rats and, in the rainy season, mosquitoes. Many roads - even in the shadow of glittering skyscrapers - reek of sewage.

Nearly 3,000 people died of malaria in the first three months of this year, compared to 8,000 in the whole of 2015, according to the WHO, and outbreaks of diseases such as cholera, typhoid or plague are not out of the question, Sondane said.

"The situation with the garbage is really bad," he said. "Now we're grappling with yellow fever, but others will come."
South Africa confirms two separate cases of African Swine Fever

JOHANNESBURG, June 10 (Reuters) - South Africa confirmed on Friday two separate cases of African Swine Fever, a highly contagious haemorrhagic fever among pigs, which the government said could affect the trade of pigs and pig products.
Nigerian official confirms attack on ENI pipeline in Niger Delta

ONITSHA, Nigeria, June 10 (Reuters) - A Nigerian militant group attacked a pipeline operated by Italy's ENI in the Niger Delta region early on Friday, the militants and a security official said.

"There was an attack on the Obi Obi Brass Pipeline between 1 and 2 am today Friday," said Desmond Agu, commander of the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps in Bayelsa state.

"There is an oil spill at the scene...but the place is not on fire."

The Niger Delta Avengers militant group earlier claimed responsibility for the attack on the pipeline via its Twitter feed. The pipeline is related to the Brass River crude oil stream in Nigeria's Bayelsa state, the site of many attacks over the past month.

The Avengers said the attack hit Agip's major crude oil line but oil traders said there was no immediate indication that flows from Brass River had completely stopped.

ENI did not immediately comment on the attack or its impact on oil production and exports.
Kazakhstan's President says salafists behind recent attacks in Aktobe

MOSCOW, June 10 (Reuters) - Kazakhstan's President Nursultan Nazarbayev said on Friday that salafists, the followers of an ultra-conservative school of Islam, were behind recent attacks in the city of Aktobe, in which at least 20 died on Sunday.
On March 31  the day before the Billings parks department started registering kids for swimming lessons and summer camps  an arson fire heavily damaged the Rose Park pool building.

The fire burned plumbing, wires and roofing, causing damage estimated at $300,000.

The arson could have put the citys biggest outdoor pool out of business for the summer of 2016. But the parks department staff didnt let that happen.

In the 10 weeks between the blaze and the scheduled pool opening day, the department scrambled to fix what needed to be fixed to operate safely this season. With the help of local contractors, the Rose Park pool was ready for swimmers and sliders on Wednesday as scheduled. More than 400 people were poolside by early afternoon as the temperature climbed above 90.

In addition to recreation, the pool also provides dozens of summer jobs, mostly for teens.

The park departments long-term plan includes renovating the Rose Park pool building next year, so the repairs were designed just to get through this summer.

The fire released asbestos, which required mitigation and subsequent air testing. A damaged portion of the building had to be demolished. A temporary roof was installed over a portion of the building. Temporary water service had to be installed. Blackened cinder block walls were repainted.

There was a whole lot of people involved in make this happen, Parks Planner Mark Jarvis said last week. CTA Architects Engineers helped the department obtain needed certifications and provided analysis of building safety. Dick Anderson Construction crews reframed damaged portions of the building. Then roofers, plumbers and electricians made repairs.

Pepsi donated the use of a snack shack so that concessions are available. Concession sales are a significant source of revenue for operating the pool.

Jarvis has credited the citys legal, administrative and purchasing departments for expediting temporary repairs, which were expected to cost $150,000.

Last year, about 43,000 adults and children splashed into Rose Park pool between the first week of June and the third week of August. The pool is again a cool summer destination, thanks to the concerted efforts of staff in several city departments and the good work of local businesses.

Congratulations to everyone who helped get the pool ready in time for a hot opening day. Gazette opinions complain when local government lags in fixing problems. In the pool fire case, we applaud city leaders and the parks department for getting the repairs finished fast.

The Rose Park pool building fire was one of three arson blazes reported early on March 31. The others were in a local business and in a vehicle. The crimes remain under investigation, but no arrests have been made, according to Police Lt. Casey Hafner.
Uganda says will withdraw troops hunting rebels in Central African Republic

By Elias Biryabarema

KAMPALA, June 10 (Reuters) - Uganda plans to withdraw by the end of the year troops involved in an operation to hunt down Lord's Resistance Army rebels in Central African Republic, a military spokesman said on Friday.

Uganda leads a U.S.-supported African Union regional task force tracking the LRA rebels, who are notorious for mutilating civilians and kidnapping children for use as fighters and sex slaves.

Most of its 2,500 troops are in eastern Central African Republic. A smaller contingent is based in South Sudan.

Spokesman Paddy Ankunda said the withdrawal did not mean Uganda was ending the operation. But while the African Union favoured keeping the Ugandan troops in place, he said, Kampala had been discouraged by insufficient international support.

"There seems to be no serious goodwill on the part of international actors or stakeholders to participate or contribute toward the ending of the LRA problem," he said.

He added that Uganda had not yet considered an African Union request to maintain its troops in Central African Republic.

The International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants for the LRA's messianic leader, Joseph Kony, and other senior commanders.

However, the brutal rebel movement was known to relatively few outside Central Africa until KONY 2012, a highly successful social media campaign, raised international awareness about the reclusive warlord four years ago.

Abdoulaye Batilly, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon's special representative in Central Africa, acknowledged the strain on Ugandan resources, but warned the withdrawal must not allow for a rebel resurgence.

"With Uganda wanting to pull out, we must create conditions so that a vacuum is not created ... And we're discussing this with everyone, the European Union, the USA, and of course the government of CAR," he said, speaking in Central African Republic's capital, Bangui.

Though originally from northern Uganda, the LRA was driven out of the country by a military offensive a decade ago. Today, its fighters roam a poorly policed area straddling the borders between Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of Congo and South Sudan.

Those countries are also meant to contribute to the task force, but separate conflicts in Central African Republic and South Sudan have meant that the bulk of the operation has fallen to Ugandan troops.

General David Rodriguez, commander of the U.S. military's Africa Command, estimated in March that less than 200 LRA fighters remained.

"To defeat your enemy does not mean to kill all of them. It means to deny them the means to make war. And that's where we are with the LRA," Ankunda said.
Terra Firma boss Hands drops $2 bln EMI case against Citi

By Freya Berry

LONDON, June 10 (Reuters) - Briton Guy Hands has withdrawn his case against Citigroup over the 2007 buyout of music label EMI, his private equity firm Terra Firma said on Friday, ending almost seven years of on-off litigation over the disastrous deal.

Hands, the outspoken founder of Terra Firma and a well-known figure in the private equity world, had been seeking damages of 1.5 billion pounds ($2.2 billion), alleging that the U.S. bank misled him over the EMI deal.

"Terra Firma confirms it unreservedly withdraws its allegations of fraud," a lawyer for the firm told a London court, adding that it would also pay Citi's legal costs.

At the time of the acquisition, Citigroup advised the then publicly listed EMI as well as providing financing to Terra Firma.

Terra Firma's case had focused on a series of alleged "oral misrepresentations" by senior Citi bankers David Wormsley, Chad Leat and Michael Klein, which it claimed led to the firm overpaying for EMI. All three men were set to be called as witnesses at the trial.

"These claims were brought in good faith," Terra Firma said in an emailed statement.

"However, it has become evident that our documentation of the fast-moving and complex events, and memories of these events after nine years, are no longer sufficient to meet the high demands of proof required for a fraud claim in court."

Citi welcomed the end of the case.

"We are very pleased that Terra Firma has unreservedly withdrawn the allegations, agreed to the dismissal of the proceedings and will pay Citi's costs in relation to this matter," Citi said in a statement.

The latest court case over EMI, the home of artists including The Beatles, Pink Floyd and Kylie Minogue, began only on Tuesday.

Terra Firma bought EMI for 2.4 billion pounds in 2007, at the height of the credit bubble. But when EMI's performance slumped and the financial crisis hit, the buyout house lost its entire investment and had its reputation severely dented.

Hands, the man once known as "the king of British private equity" told the court that the deal personally cost him around 200 million euros ($225 million).

Hands had previously tried unsuccessfully to sue Citi in the United States. ($1 = 0.6945 pounds) ($1 = 0.8857 euros)
Croatia signs contracts for onshore oil and gas exploration

ZAGREB, June 10 (Reuters) - Croatia signed contracts on Friday with one local firm and one Canadian company that had been awarded onshore oil and gas exploration blocks in the north and east of the country.

Zagreb awarded four exploration blocks to Canada's Vermilion and one block to Croatia's energy firm INA, whose biggest shareholder is Hungary's MOL, in June last year.

"We have secured an investment worth 500 million kuna ($75 million) and much more if oil or gas are found. Croatia needs investments and this is a step towards a better investment climate," Prime Minister Tihomir Oreskovic told reporters.

The exploration period will last five years and the concession for exploitation will be valid for 25 years in the case of a commercially viable discovery.

Another concession was awarded to Nigeria's Oando Plc and that contract is due to be signed next week.

Economy Minister Tomislav Panenic said he planned to announce another round of tenders for onshore oil and gas exploration, possibly next month.

Under the previous government, Croatia was preparing to award offshore exploration and drilling licences in the Adriatic but the new centre-right government stopped them amid concerns they might harm the country's lucrative tourist industry.

"There are no plans for oil exploration in the Adriatic," Panenic said.
Ireland under no illusions about South Africa challenge

By Mark Gleeson

CAPE TOWN, June 10 (Reuters) - Ireland are under no illusions about the challenge that lies ahead as they prepare to face South Africa at Newlands on Saturday in the first of three tests, captain Rory Best said on the eve of the match.

"We've prepared well all week but we're under no illusion that three training sessions versus a full blown test match means we have to step it up a gear," he told reporters on Friday.

"In terms of the mental side of things, we have had a bit of a freshener because we were out of the European Cups early ad so we've had weekends off between the Six Nations and now although it has been a long season, that has really helped guys."

Best, who has won 94 caps for his country, said Ireland also had to make the best of losing key players, including flyhalf Johnny Sexton, to injury.

"New guys coming in give a burst of enthusiasm so it's a great squad to be around at the minute but ultimately the mood next week will be reflected by what happens tomorrow," he said.

Ireland have never won a test in South Africa but did beat the Springboks in their last clash in Dublin in 2014, largely by neutralising the forward threat posed by the Springboks.

"Any game we go into we expect the key battle to be among the forwards. Certainly South Africa traditionally have, and still do have, strong scrums and line outs. It is definitely an area, that if we are going to compete tomorrow, we have to be somewhere near our best," the 33-year-old said.
Croatian PM refuses to resign despite coalition party pressure

ZAGREB, June 10 (Reuters) - Croatia's technocrat Prime Minister Tihomir Oreskovic said on Friday he had no plans to resign under pressure from the conservative HDZ party, the biggest in the ruling coalition.

The HDZ filed a no-confidence motion against Oreskovic on Tuesday over his handling of a political row between the HDZ and its junior coalition partner, the Most ("Bridge") party .

"I can't step down as it would mean I'm guilty and accept false accusations against me. I want to respond to it in the parliament which approved me as prime minister. It is a matter of honour," Oreskovic told reporters.

The HDZ has accused Oreskovic of trying to boost his own political power instead of tackling economic priorities.

The HDZ has voiced confidence it can gather a new parliamentary majority, but analysts believe it will be very difficult to achieve without Most.

Most's leader and Deputy Prime Minister, Bozo Petrov, has also dismissed the HDZ call for Prime Minister Oreskovic, Deputy Prime Minister Tomislav Karamarko, who is also leader of the HDZ, and Petrov himself to step down.

Most wants Karamarko to leave the government because of an alleged conflict of interest arising from his wife's business ties with a lobbyist for Hungarian energy group MOL, the biggest shareholder in Croatian utility INA.

The government in Zagreb and MOL are in dispute over management rights and investment strategy at INA.

A vote on the HDZ's motion against Oreskovic is expected to take place next Thursday or Friday.

"I still hope reason will prevail and that this government, with some changes, will be able to carry on," Oreskovic said.
Shaqiri hails team ethic in Switzerland squad

PARIS, June 10 (Reuters) - Xherdan Shaqiri may be regarded as Switzerland's key player, but the midfielder believes only a team approach can help them beat Albania in their opening Euro 2016 Group A game on Saturday.

Switzerland have been tipped to reach the last 16 from the group along with hosts France, but Albania and Romania stand in their way.

"Of course, journalists talk about it, of course I'm a player who can make a difference in this team, but for me it's not important to be the star in the media, I'm just playing for the squad," Shaqiri told a news conference on Friday.

"I'll be fighting for the squad. I will try to make a difference but Switzerland do not depend on one player.

"We have always stood out as a team so we will stay as a team."

It will be a special game for Shaqiri, whose parents are Kosovar Albanian.

"Tomorrow will be a serious game, both teams will give their best to win it, there won't be any friends," he said.

Captain Stephan Lichtsteiner insisted the Albania match could be key.

"For everyone it seems to be done and dusted, France first and Switzerland second. It's not that easy so the most important thing is to win tomorrow's game," he said.
S.Korea, U.N. Command join patrols to halt illegal Chinese fishing

By Ju-min Park

SEOUL, June 10 (Reuters) - South Korea and the U.N. Command, which overseas the Korean War armistice, said on Friday they had begun a joint operation to keep Chinese fishing vessels from operating illegally off the west coast.

The move comes after South Korean fishermen, frustrated with incursions by Chinese fishing boats in defiance of coastguard warnings, used rope to impound two Chinese trawlers this month and handed them over to authorities.

South Korea's navy and coast guard joined with the U.N. Command to patrol the approximately 60 km (40 mile) stretch of waters in the Han River estuary that runs between the coasts of the rival Koreas, a Defence Ministry official told Reuters.

"Our navy, coastguard and U.N. Command set up a military police to enter into an operation to expel Chinese fishing vessels," said the official.

North Korea had been notified of the team's operation as a safety precaution, an official at the Joint Chiefs of Staff said separately.

North and South Korea are technically still at war because their 1950-53 conflict ended in the armistice, not a peace treaty.

There were more than 10 Chinese boats fishing in the estuary on Friday but they fled to areas near North Korea's shore after the South Korean-U.N. operation began, the Joint Chiefs of Staff official said.

China's Foreign Ministry said Beijing paid close attention to the education of fishermen and always urged them to respect international agreements.

"China is willing to strengthen communication and cooperation in the fishing industry with related countries in order to uphold the normal order of the fishing industry," it said in a statement emailed to Reuters.

"China hopes that the South Korean side will execute the law in a civilised and rational way, and thoroughly protect the legal rights of Chinese fishermen, avoiding incidents that endanger personal safety."

The waters are near the Northern Limit Line, the maritime border disputed by the North which has been the scene of deadly naval clashes between the rival Koreas and violent confrontation between South Korea's coastguard and Chinese fishing vessels.
Syrian government forces seize strategic crossroads in Raqqa province - army, monitor

BEIRUT, June 10 (Reuters) - Syrian government forces and their allies took control of a strategic crossroads in Raqqa province on Friday in their latest advance towards Islamic State strongholds in the area, the army and a monitoring group said.

The seizure of the junction, which leads to Raqqa city, Islamic State's de facto capital and also to Tabqa, another city it controls, came as part of a week-old Syrian government offensive against the jihadists, backed by Russian air power.

The Syrian army's campaign is taking place as U.S.-backed forces separately advance against IS militants around Manbij near the Turkish border further northwest and make gains in the countryside north of Raqqa city.

The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group said government-allied forces were 15 km (9 miles) from Tabqa. A military source said in February that Tabqa, some 50 km (30 miles) west of Raqqa city, would be the first target of a Syrian government attack in Raqqa province.

The army said large numbers of IS fighters had been killed in the campaign. The Observatory said some 80 IS militants had died.

It was the first confirmation from the army that it had advanced into Raqqa province itself, after beginning the campaign further west in Hama province.
Iran snaps up first sugar purchases since lifting of sanctions -trade sources

By Jonathan Saul and David Brough

LONDON, June 10 (Reuters) - Importers in Iran have bought at least 250,000 tonnes of Brazilian raw sugar in the first purchases since international sanctions were lifted on Tehran in January, trade sources said on Friday.

One source said the purchases were between 250,000 and 300,000 tonnes for May to June shipment, while another said the quantity was probably bigger than that.

"Buyers in Iran have clubbed together to make up cargoes given tight financing," one source said.

Another source said further buying was unlikely for the moment given a rally in ICE raw sugar futures that pushed them to their highest level in more than 2-1/2 years.

"The market has shot up, and that puts a question mark over (further business)," the second source said.

"When the business was booked, the market was 16.5-17 cents a pound. Now it's 19.68. You can't make a profit if you take it in now."

International measures against Iran - including banking restrictions - were lifted in January as part of a deal with world powers under which Tehran agreed to curb its nuclear programme.

While there were never restrictions on Iran's food and humanitarian trade, continuing trade finance problems together with stockpiling of commodities, including sugar, last year has slowed activity.
Syria requiring released prisoners to join army, opposition says

By Tom Miles

GENEVA, June 10 (Reuters) - Syria's government has freed prisoners on condition that they join the army upon their release, the president of the opposition Syrian National Coalition told Reuters on Friday, citing reports from Adra Central Prison near Damascus.

"Preliminary reports indicate that between 100-150 prisoners have been released under this arrangement but taken directly to the front lines in Aleppo and Qamishli. It is believed the regime is inclined to take those released to the front lines with ISIS in particular to minimize chances of defection," Anas al-Abdah said.

On Thursday, U.N. Syria envoy Staffan de Mistura said he had information from Russia and Syria that "some substantial number of fighters appeared to have been released".

He suggested the release could be timed to coincide with the holy month of Ramadan or as a unilateral gesture by the government, but he was seeking more information to confirm that those released were "genuine fighters, political prisoners".

His office had no more information 24 hours later, and referred Reuters back to his previous statement.

Al-Abdah said those reportedly released were not political prisoners but mostly criminal convicts, especially those jailed for drug crimes.

"The Syrian National Coalition is deeply concerned by those reports and calls on the international community, particularly the U.N. Special Envoy and his team, to take a firm stance of the regime's hideous manoeuvres and blackmail tactics it typically uses with regards to the issue of detainees," he said.

The Syrian opposition has long demanded the release of detainees, especially women and children, and de Mistura has appointed a former Red Cross official, Eva Svoboda, to take charge of the issue.
I recently took a business trip to our nations capital. It wasnt your typical business trip though. I went to D.C. to educate our Montana delegation and federal lawmakers that some places are more valuable than gold.

Im a member of the Yellowstone Gateway Business Coalition. A pro-business, property rights organization seeking to limit the impact of two controversial gold mines near Yellowstone National Parks northern boundary and in the Paradise Valley. These mines dont make sense for the economy and quality of life in Montanas Park County.

I was joined on this trip by Bryan Wells, owner of Emigrant Creek Cabins. This was only Bryans send time in his lifetime that he had been east of Billings. He rode a 46-hour train to Washington to speak his mind, and then came back home again.

I was also joined by Tracy Raich, owner of Raich Montana Properties, LLC in Livingston. Tracy handles ranch and recreational properties and strives to encourage positive development in the Paradise Valley. She worries that gold mines will negatively impact our local economy, ranching and quality of life. Her husband, a mining engineer agrees that gold mines are not appropriate near Yellowstone.

We and the 200-plus other businesses that make up the Yellowstone Gateway Business Coalition, are seeking a permanent solution that protects the economy, the way of life, and private property rights near Yellowstone National Park. One that fits Park County, and Montana. Thats why we went to Washington. For business.

One potential tool to consider in limiting the impact of mining near Yellowstone is a modest legislative mineral withdrawal for public that protects property rights. This is similar to what has already been done with the North Fork Watershed Protection Act championed by Sen. Steve Daines, Sen. Jon Tester and the Rocky Mountain Front lease withdrawal legislation championed by former Sen. Max Baucus and the late Sen. Conrad Burns.

Montanas delegation has a successful track record of listening to Montanans and advancing bipartisan leadership solutions. We are investigating whether they can do it again.

However, we need time for the right solution to come together. Legislation takes time and our clock is ticking. In addition to conversations with our Montana delegation, we are investigating what tools the federal government has to push a pause button and give us more breathing room.

We came to Washington DC armed with plenty of ammo to support our arguments.

A new economic report from the OConnor Center for the Rocky Mountain West, notes that large-scale, highly visible, and environmentally disruptive activities  such as large-scale mining and heavy manufacturing  may pose the greatest threats to Park Countys economy.

The economic report, titled Park Countys Growing Economy, specifically warns that any economic benefits from large-scale mines in Paradise Valley are often short-term or transitory while their negative impacts are deep, continuing sometimes in perpetuity.

The Yellowstone Gateway Business Coalition has shared the report with Tester, Daines, and U.S. Rep. Ryan Zinke, as well as agency officials at the U.S. Department of Agriculture and Department of Interior.

This report reinforces what we have known for years, that Yellowstone National Park provides small business owners in Park County with a competitive advantage and a brighter future, Tester said. That is why I support the business leaders and land owners who are working together to protect Yellowstone from short-sighted decisions that will limit economic opportunities and slow down job creation in the Paradise Valley.

A summary of the report can be found on our website at dontmineyellowstone.org.

Montana cannot afford any proposal that will pollute our clean water, hurt our businesses and threaten our jobs. We traveled the 2,000 miles between Montana and Washington to give a voice to Montanas outdoor heritage and to protect our state as a home for thousands and a destination for millions.

Is it really worth mining for gold near Yellowstone when you stand to lose so much? We dont think so; thats why we called it a business trip.
Slovakia's EU presidency to focus on European border guard, returns to curb migration

By Gabriela Baczynska

LUXEMBOURG, June 10 (Reuters) - Slovakia will focus on putting a new European Union border guard to work and streamlining deportations of migrants with no case for asylum when it takes over the bloc's presidency for the first time from July, Interior Minister Robert Kalinak said.

Kalinak said Bratislava would also put forward "compromise" proposals on the disputed reform of EU asylum rules that pits Berlin and Brussels against eastern states in the bloc.

"Effectively guarding Europe's external borders is the most important point to be successful in all migration issues," Kalinak told Reuters three weeks before he will start chairing meetings of the EU's interior ministers who deal with migration.

The EU is creating a joint Border and Coast Guard to prevent an uncontrolled influx of people by deploying it where the bloc's external frontier gets overwhelmed. The aim is to make it operational swiftly but that is likely to take weeks or several months and will be overseen by Slovakia's six-month presidency.

How to return failed asylum seekers or economic migrants to their home countries is the other priority. "This is one of the main points discouraging migrants from moving from their homes to Europe," Kalinak said.

EU states are at loggerheads over how to manage migration after 1.3 million refugees and migrants reached the bloc last year. Germany, Sweden and Austria took in most of the people and have voiced frustration with poorer EU states in the east, including Slovakia, who have refused to admit any.

Slovakia is mounting a legal challenge to an EU decision to spread out 120,000 asylum seekers, many fleeing war and poverty in the Middle East and Africa, around the bloc. The stand-off with Brussels deepened in May when Prime Minister Robert Fico said Islam had no place in Slovakia.

Some EU diplomats have voiced concerns that Bratislava will not leave its national agenda behind when it takes over the presidency of the 28-member bloc.

But Kalinak dismissed that, echoing comments by Fico last week by saying: "We will be an honest broker. Our task is to find compromises ... Being underestimated is a very good position to be in. We can surprise."

Kalinak said he would push forward Brussels' proposals to make development aid and trade ties with African states conditional on migration as the bloc worries a Mediterranean route to Italy would become the main one now after a deal with Turkey cut arrivals to Greece to a trickle.

ASYLUM REFORM

Slovakia will also put forward proposals on the reform of the bloc's asylum system, which has further divided EU states, Kalinak said, acknowledging that a compromise "won't be easy".

Prospective refugees are not allowed to choose the country they want to live in, but that rule only works on paper as people go to wealthier states or where they have relatives.

"We can take part in relocation but it's an empty gesture, in 24 hours they will have moved from Slovakia," Kalinak said.

Since August 2015, he said Slovakia had offered temporary shelter to more than 1,200 people who filed for asylum in neighbouring Austria, which was unable to accommodate them.

Bratislava wants to add this mechanism to the broader reform of EU asylum rules.

"The asylum seekers were satisfied because their application was filed with the destination country. But this country at the moment has no possibility to deal with the application ... so temporarily they can stay in another country," he said.

"The relocation mechanism is not working ... At the end of the day we would be able to accommodate the same number of people - but in a different system."

The EU relocation plan was due to cover 160,000 people but only 2,195 were moved from Greece and Italy so far.

Bratislava also wants to grant visa-free access to Europe's free-travel Schengen zone to former Soviet republics of Georgia and Ukraine, where Kiev is struggling with a Russia-backed rebellion in the east.
Kenya's opposition to go ahead with banned rallies next week

NAIROBI, June 10 (Reuters) - Kenya's opposition coalition said on Friday it would go ahead with political protests next week even while it acknowledged progress was being made in talks with the government.

Tensions have been mounting since early April, when the opposition began weekly protests demanding the leadership of the Kenya's electoral committee be sacked, calling them incompetent and biased in favour of the government.

At least four protesters have been killed in clashes with security forces in the opposition stronghold of western Kenya and scores have been injured nationwide. The government banned the protests this week, but the opposition said it would disregard that.

In a statement on Friday, the opposition Coalition for Reform and Democracy (CORD) said its "programmes for demonstrations are still in place for Monday and Thursday next week."

In a bid to resolve the dispute, on Wednesday President Uhuru Kenyatta set up a bipartisan committee in parliament to discuss the issue.

CORD said in the statement it had engaged with the government in talks over the dispute for three days and that "70 per cent of the sticking points have been agreed upon."

But it said the ongoing talks were not sufficient to guarantee success in reforming the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC).

The IEBC has denied bias and its members have said they will not quit.

The opposition criticised the commission after the last presidential election, in 2013, when it fumbled technology to identify voters and transmit results from polling stations.

Kenyatta said on Friday he would not directly participate in the talks himself, even as legislators from his ruling coalition hold dialogue with CORD.
EU signs trade deal in Botswana with six African countries

GABARONE, June 10 (Reuters) - The European Union on Friday signed a trade deal giving six African nations unlimited access to the economic bloc.

Known as the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA), the deal was signed off by EU Commissioner for Trade Cecilia Malmstrom and trade ministers from Botswana, Lesotho, Mozambique, Namibia, Swaziland and South Africa.

The EPA does gives the African nations access to the EU's single market of 500 million consumers.

"Under the EPA, it will also become easier for companies and consumers to source European products that are needed here," Malmstrom said.

The EPA takes account of the different levels of development of each partner. It guarantees Botswana, Lesotho, Mozambique, Namibia and Swaziland duty-free, quota-free access to the European market.

South Africa, which already had a standing separate deal with the EU, will also benefit from enhanced market access, going beyond the existing bilateral arrangement.
Eleven family members executed in home in central Mexico

By Natalie Schachar

MEXICO CITY, June 10 (Reuters) - Eleven members of the same family, including two children, were killed in the central Mexican state of Puebla when gunmen burst into their home, authorities said on Friday.

Shooters broke into the house in a mountainous area known as Sierra Negra early on Friday morning and killed five women, four men and two girls, before fleeing on foot, according to the state attorney general's office.

Two other girls with chest and stomach wounds were taken to a hospital in nearby Tehuacan.

Vicente Lopez de la Vega, a mayor from the city of Coxcatlan, said it was not immediately clear if the shooting was the result of a family feud or organized crime.
Brazil's Rousseff calls for referendum on early elections

By Anthony Boadle

BRASILIA, June 10 (Reuters) - Brazil's Dilma Rousseff said she would call a referendum on holding early elections if she is reinstated as president, an offer analysts saw as a bid to sway undecided senators to help clear her in an impeachment trial.

If Rousseff survives the Senate trial, expected to conclude in August, the Constitution would provide for her to serve out her term until 2018, although she would be scarred and in a weak position to govern.

Rousseff's proposal for early elections, which emerged on Thursday, is seen by many political analysts as a way out of Brazil's political crisis because it would subject a political class tainted by scandal to a popular vote.

Rousseff's supporters have questioned the legitimacy of an interim government led by her Vice President Michel Temer, which is governing while she is suspended for the duration of the trial.

Protesters took to the streets of several cities in Brazil late on Friday in the first widespread organized demonstration against Temer. There were no official estimates regarding the number of people in the protests.

Most participants were from leftist parties or from movements such as the landless rural workers. Former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva took part in one of the protests, in Sao Paulo. He called on Temer to step down.

"Temer, as a constitutional lawyer you know that what you did was not right. Give the power back to the people and to Dilma and try to gain the Presidency in the next election," he said.

Lula also criticized the anti-corruption investigations against him and said that if he felt provoked, he could decide to run for President in 2018. He has strongly denied any wrongdoing.

Just one in 10 Brazilians view Temer's government positively and a majority want new elections this year, a poll showed this week. The survey also showed that nearly two-thirds of Brazilians support Rousseff's impeachment.

"We must consult the population to rebuild a constitutional pact that was broken by the impeachment process," Rousseff said in an interview on Thursday on government television channel TV Brasil.

Rousseff told a group of senators and political allies on Thursday that she was open to the holding of a plebiscite for the country to decide new elections, the Folha de S.Paulo newspaper reported.

The leftist leader was suspended on May 12 when the Senate voted 55-22 to put her on trial for allegedly breaking budget laws. To block her conviction and definitive ouster she needs five more votes, or one-third of the Senate.

Temer's camp has opposed the idea of early elections, which would require a constitutional amendment by Congress.

A wave of scandals stemming from a corruption investigation at state oil company Petrobras have buffeted his month-old government and weakened the resolve to remove Rousseff among some senators who voted for the impeachment trial.

Business leaders and investors have praised Temer for picking a strong economic team led by former central bank governor Finance Minister Henrique Meirelles to rescue Brazil from a fiscal crisis and the worst recession since the 1930s.

But his popularity has been undermined by policy reversals and allegations by prosecutors - based on recordings leaked to the media - that members of his Cabinet and the leader of his Brazilian Democratic Movement Party (PDMB) sought to obstruct the investigation into the massive graft scheme at Petrobras.

Temer has canceled a trip to northeastern Brazil, the first travel plans of his interim term, in order to personally deliver a proposed constitutional amendment to Congress on Wednesday, according to two presidential aides who asked not to be named.
Liberty eyes other acquisitions if bid for Tata Steel UK fails

By Tom Miles

GENEVA, June 10 (Reuters) - Liberty House Group, which wants to buy the British assets of Tata Steel, has its eye on other steel plants in the United States, Africa and India if the Tata deal doesn't happen, Executive Chairman Sanjeev Gupta told Reuters.

Liberty and other companies belonging to the Gupta Family Group (GFG) are looking for acquisitions and GFG plans to list part of its assets to expose itself to the rigorous governance demanded of public companies, Gupta, who is co-owner of the group, said on Friday.

"We are discussing various alternatives but something within the group will be listed within the next 12-18 months," he said. "It's ambitious but that's what we're going to try to do," he said. He did not say where the group planned to list.

GFG companies are particularly interested in turnaround assets, Gupta said.

"Whatever we have bought so far has been cheap and we've managed to turn them around," he said.

"Every single one of our peers is out there trying to deleverage, dumping high-quality assets into a market that doesn't want to buy them," Chief Investment Officer Jay Hambro said.

Liberty is one of a number of companies that have put forward offers to buy Tata Steel's loss-making UK operations and save thousands of jobs in Britain, whose steel industry has been hit by cheap Chinese imports, high energy costs and a global supply glut.

"If it happens then for the short to medium term we would be focused on the UK. But if it doesn't happen then we have a few options in the U.S., in Africa, again India where we are looking at opportunities," Gupta said, referring specifically to steel plants.

Liberty and its sister company SIMEC each have assets worth about $400 million, with no long-term debt, and the group also includes an investments arm worth a further $200 million, Gupta said.

GFG agreed late last year to buy Britain's Tungsten Bank for about 30 million pounds ($43 mln).

"It's somewhat of a distressed asset that we will completely reinvigorate and launch as a specialist trade finance bank," said Hambro.

SIMEC, which has energy, mining and infrastructure assets, is also looking at coking coal assets in Australia, Gupta said.

SIMEC is planning a major expansion of its European trading operations with a new Geneva office and new hire Ugur Hekimoglu as head of oil, it said in a statement.

The company is building a depot in Britain to store and distribute oil products, and in principle it would be interested in upstream and downstream assets as well, such as mid-sized oil refineries in areas where the firm already has a strong presence, Gupta said.

"The UK and Europe is the first place - but it's not the only place. We'd look at Asia, Middle East, Africa, even America," he said.

The GFG group, owned by Gupta, his father PK Gupta and family trusts, aims to raise earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation to $300 million in 2020 from $140 million this year, with net assets rising to $1.75 billion from $1 billion.
POLL-Clinton leads Trump by 11 points in White House race -Reuters/Ipsos

By Chris Kahn

June 10 (Reuters) - Hillary Clinton leads Donald Trump by 11 points in the U.S. presidential race, showing little change after she became the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee this week, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Friday.

The online poll, conducted from Monday to Friday, shows 46 percent of likely voters support Clinton while 34.8 percent back Trump. Another 19.2 percent support neither candidate. Their parties hold conventions in July ahead of a Nov. 8 election.

Clinton's lead was nearly the same a week ago, before she had amassed enough convention delegates to win the nomination and before Trump drew criticism from leaders of both parties for questioning the impartiality of a Mexican-American judge.

Trump, 69, enjoyed a bigger boost after becoming the presumptive Republican nominee in May. Having trailed Clinton, 68, for most of the year, Trump briefly erased a double-digit gap and pulled about even with the former secretary of state.

Clinton this week defeated party rival Bernie Sanders, 74, in four of six nominating contests, most notably California and New Jersey, and won the endorsements of President Barack Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and other party leaders.

Trump this week sparred with party leaders and struggled with questions about his now-defunct Trump University. A lawsuit accuses Trump and the for-profit school of defrauding thousands of people, including many who paid as much as $35,000 to learn Trump's real estate strategies.

A wealthy businessman who asserts the lawsuit is politically motivated, Trump said presiding U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel was biased against him because of Trump's plans to build a wall on the border with Mexico. Trump later added that Muslim judges could be biased against him also because of his pledge to temporarily ban Muslims from entering the country.

Trump's comments drew sharp criticism from Republican leaders, including House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. Trump later said he would no longer talk about the judge.

Friday's results had 1,276 respondents and a credibility interval, a measure of accuracy, of 3.2 percentage points. (Reuters/Ipsos polling results: http://polling.reuters.com/#!poll/TM651Y15_13/filters/LIKELY:1/t ype/smallest/dates/20160401-20160610/collapsed/true/spotlight/1)
Colombian government and rebels plan joint drug crop eradication

By Nelson Acosta

HAVANA, June 10 (Reuters) - Colombia's government and leftist FARC rebels agreed on Friday to a pilot project to replace illicit crops, mainly coca, as part of negotiations aimed at ending Latin America's last and longest guerilla war, which is fueled in part by drug profits.

Colombia is one of the world's biggest producers of cocaine, derived from the coca plant. Experts hope an end to hostilities can lead to a drop in production.

A joint statement said the United Nations-backed project would begin next month in the municipality of Briceno, Antioquia, where a joint effort to eliminate land mines began in 2015 as part of confidence building between the two sides.

Under the agreement, the government will provide security for FARC delegates to implement the agreement, as well as funding programmes to help farmers transition to alternative crops.

"This joint work on the ground with local leaders and their communities has opened up the possibility to incorporate alongside the humanitarian de-mining effort the voluntary substitution of illicit crops," the statement said.

The agreement comes as the two sides are in the final stretch of peace negotiations begun in November 2012 in Havana, where all issues except for a final ceasefire, disarmament and the reincorporation of fighters into civil society have been settled.

"We made the decision to begin the transcendental and unique project before signing the final peace agreement in consultation with the farmers and with support of the United Nations," FARC lead negotiator Ivan Marquez said in Havana.

The FARC agreed in 2014 to break ties with drug traffickers, help eradicate illegal crops like coca and help fight the production of narcotics.

But authorities have accused the rebels of instead stoking resistance to the eradication of illicit coca crops and keeping up their ties to drug trafficking.

The latest U.N. figures showed a 44 percent increase in coca cultivations in 2014 to 69,000 hectares (170,503 acres) in the South American nation, a jump the U.N. linked to the peace talks, suspension of aerial spraying and rising market prices for coca.
U.S. Army reserve major threatened N. Carolina mosque -police, media

By Karen Brooks

June 10 (Reuters) - A North Carolina man faces ethnic intimidation charges after leaving bacon at a mosque and making death threats to its members as they prepared for worship in observance of Ramadan, Islam's holy month, authorities said on Friday.

Russell Thomas Langford of Fayetteville was arrested late on Thursday, the Hoke County Sheriff's Office said. He is a major in the U.S. Army Reserve, WTVD-TV in Raleigh said, quoting officials at Fort Bragg military base in North Carolina.

On Thursday afternoon, members of the Masjid Al Madina in Raeford found two packages of bacon at the mosque entrance, the sheriff's office said.

Observant Muslims are prohibited from consuming pork products. Ramadan is Islam's holy month, during which believers abstain from eating and drinking during daylight hours.

Langford is charged with ethnic intimidation, assault with a deadly weapon, going armed to the terror of the public, communicating threats, stalking and disorderly conduct, the sheriff's office said in a statement.

Officials with the sheriff's office and Fort Bragg military base could not be reached for comment on Friday.

"We have called for stepped-up police presence not only for that mosque but others in that state," said Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a Muslim advocacy group.

"Every mosque all over the country has nightly Ramadan activities, so they're vulnerable," he said.

A Chevy Tahoe was in the parking lot when the bacon was found, and the driver of the Tahoe, later identified as Langford, followed one of the members home, the sheriff's statement said.

The suspect returned in the evening, showed a gun to one of the members, a retired Army captain and Muslim chaplain at Fort Bragg, and threatened to kill him, according to a report by WRAL-TV in Raleigh, N.C.

The chaplain invited him inside to talk, but the man left, the report said. Later, the man returned in his SUV and tried to run over a group of people who were going inside the mosque for evening Ramadan prayers, the report said.
MISSOULA  For the world, the photograph of a Syrian 3-year-old in a red T-shirt and black sneakers, his lifeless body washed up on a Turkish beach, was a horrific symbol of the desperation of hundreds of thousands of refugees.

For Mary Poole, a young mother haunted by "those little shoes ... the little face," it was an inspiration.

She and members of her book club asked: Why not bring a small number of Syrian families to Missoula?

She knows now that this was a "romantic" notion. "It wasn't even a grain of sand in my brain that people wouldn't want to help starving, drowning families. I didn't do this to be controversial. I didn't do this to stir the pot."

But it did. And what started as a disagreement over whether to welcome dozens of refugees to this peaceful corner of western Montana soon erupted into something much larger, encompassing wildly divergent views of Islam, big government and whether Americans should "take care of our own" before worrying about newcomers.

Neighboring counties  and in some cases, neighbors  locked horns.

Demonstrators took to the streets: "No Jobs, No Housing, No Free Anything," proclaimed some opponents' signs. Some warned that Islamic State terrorists could infiltrate their communities; others suggested that the federal government, long accused of tyranny in its dealings with the West, was at it again.

The refugees' supporters did not back off. "Rise Above Fear, Refugees Welcome" they declared.

Missoula's mayor, John Engen, was among them. "I think that the war on terror has produced an internal war on compassion," he says. "We have been programmed to be very afraid since 9/11 and to think of people who aren't white Anglo-Saxon Americans as 'other' and we should be afraid of people who are 'other.'"

This did not occur in a vacuum. What's happened here reflects what's happening across the nation in an election year dominated by inflammatory rhetoric over immigration, including calls for building a border wall, the mass deportation of immigrants living in the country illegally, and temporarily banning Muslims from entering the U.S.

And more generally, Montanans are like other Americans who ask: How are we to live together, as one nation, when we are so estranged?

At a time when the public is polarized over issues ranging from gay marriage to guns, the Rev. Joseph Carver, pastor at St. Francis Xavier Parish, sees this as just another "incarnation of the larger divide in the country." His congregation, which gathers in a towering 124-year-old brick structure with frescoes, ornate scroll work, is overwhelmingly in favor of refugees.

Carver, like others here, believes the spark that ignited this conflict is fear. "Refugees," he declares, "are seen as a threat to our way of life."

Montana is a place of great beauty, with its snow-capped mountains, Ponderosa pines, bighorn sheep, bison and elk. Fly fishermen reel in trout from shimmering streams. College kids can be spotted kayaking on the Clark Fork River on cool spring nights. And a bookstore owner can point to the park down the street where a moose is known to frequent.

It is not, however, a diverse place. Though the sparsely populated state is home to seven Indian reservations, nearly nine of 10 residents are white, according to Census figures. Only about 2 percent are foreign-born. Since 2012, the state has welcomed just 13 refugees from Cuba and Iraq, according to officials.

But Missoula, site of a World War II detention center for Japanese-Americans, Italian merchant seamen and others, has a recent history of embracing refugees. The International Rescue Committee resettled the Hmong in the late 1970s and through the 1980s; some remain as farmers. Later, another agency brought Ukrainians and Belarusians here.

With its coffee houses, murals and bike trails, Missoula has a laid-back feel. It is home to the University of Montana, as well as a peace center named for Jeannette Rankin, a pacifist who was the first woman member of Congress  and the only vote against declaring war on Japan after the Pearl Harbor attack. The center's philosophy is captured on a wall lined with bumper stickers  "Peace is Patriotic," ''Books Not Bombs" and "Practice Nonviolence"  and a stenciled message on a front window: "Refugees Welcome."

When Poole, a jewelry maker, and others formed a group called Soft Landing, they quickly expanded their plan to include not just Syrians but all refugees and turned to the International Rescue Committee to lead the resettlement. Their efforts were endorsed by the mayor, most council members and the three Democratic county commissioners, who sent letters to federal officials.

But Missoula is an island of progressive blue surrounded by a sea of conservative red, and often diverges politically from other communities in Montana.

Just to the south, in rural and Republican Ravalli County, a county commissioners' hearing over the issue was moved to a middle school gym to accommodate the hundreds who showed up for what turned into a raucous meeting. Several pro-refugee speakers were jeered. The commissioners formalized their opposition in their own letter to federal officials and Flathead County, nearly 130 miles north of Missoula, did the same weeks later.

In testimony and letters in Ravalli County, those saying "no" outlined their objections. They argued that Muslims or others from the Middle East could create the kind of chaos seen in Europe, impose an enormous tax burden and wouldn't be able to assimilate because they don't share American values. Many said their biggest fear was the U.S. government couldn't conduct adequate screening. Some spoke of apocalyptic visions of terrorists posing as refugees making their way to the quiet countryside.

"There's no 800 number you can call into Morocco or Libya or any one of those places ... and say, 'Can you check the identity of this person?' Without the ability to properly vet them, it's literally putting Americans' lives at risk," says Eli Anselmi, who felt compelled to write a letter even though he lives three hours away in Bozeman.

The risk may be minimal, he says, but the potential harm is great. "Let's say that you have a bowl of M&Ms ... and there are two that have cyanide. Will you eat from that bowl?"

Ray Hawk, a Ravalli County commissioner, has similar worries. "These are folks that have declared war on the United States," he says. "Their war is terrorism and that's the way they're going to do it. And I don't feel that we need to give them that chance. Now, if the government gets a handle on this thing and has a way to vet these people, I'm all for them. I love to see anybody come into America and succeed."

Supporters of the refugees weighed in with reminders of America's tradition of providing sanctuary to those who've fled war and oppression; some cited their own family history. They spoke of empathy, pointed to a lengthy screening process and noted the other refugees who resettled here successfully in recent decades.

Shawn Wathen, a bookstore owner in Ravalli County, was appalled his 18-year-old son was booed when he testified in support of the refugees and then later cursed by some opponents. Wathen wrote the commissioners, accusing them of "xenophobic grandstanding." One replied that he was "ignorant."

Wathen, who has called the sprawling Bitterroot Valley home for 20 years, sees the rejection of refugees as a blend of misinformation, economic anxiety and fear of the unknown.

"It surpasses any notion of reason ... that kind of idea that they are not us, and therefore they pose a threat," he says. "There's just that sense the horde is out there and if we don't circle the wagons ... we're going to be overrun and poor white America is going to suffer."

America has a long history of wariness of refugees.

Last November, shortly after the Paris terrorist attacks, a Gallup poll found that Americans, by 60 to 37 percent, opposed taking in refugees fleeing the Syrian civil war. In 1978, there was a 57 to 32 percent opposition to accepting Indochinese boat people, and in 1946, after World War II, the public was against welcoming displaced people from Europe, including Jews, by 72 to 16 percent.

Generally, Americans tend to favor refugees with whom they share some connection  political, religious or personal  and the public has little interaction with Muslims, says David Haines, a professor emeritus at George Mason University who has written extensively about refugees.

He says the public doesn't understand the rigorous vetting process. "The risks from refugees are really low because it's an extremely well-screened population," he says. "But it's hard for people to settle down on this issue, especially in a highly politicized context."

In Missoula, academics and religious leaders have expressed alarm about the harsh tone of the presidential campaign, especially comments aimed at Muslims by Donald Trump. In April, they sponsored "Celebrate Islam Week" at the university in hopes of countering the trend.

Among the participants was Samir Bitar, an Arabic studies professor who arrived at the University of Montana in the 1970s as a 16-year-old freshman, raised a family and has spent most of his adult life here.

Bitar has lectured for decades across the state without controversy  until this year, when about a dozen people in the nearby town of Darby objected to his planned talk at the library. The reason: They didn't want a Muslim in their town, according to the librarian. The library board voted. Bitar spoke and received a warm reception.

But the tone and atmosphere are decidedly different now, he says.

"This is the first time I actually look behind me as I walk. I've been here 42 years," he says. "It's like every part of my identity is coming under attack, including my American identity."

Recently, two students accepted Bitar's challenge to walk around wearing Muslim head gear to see how people would react. One young man donned a kufi, or skull cap, and classmates wouldn't sit next to him, Bitar says. While working at a deli, the student was rebuffed by a customer's wife who said: "'We're not going to have a Muslim help us.'"

Bitar, who is Palestinian, finds it all disheartening. People now are "motivated by pure emotion and not really thinking in logical terms," he says. "Fear turns into hatred."

Jameel Chaudhry, the campus architect, a native of Kenya and another member of the small Muslim community, says he, too, senses a new hostility.

"All of a sudden WE are the problem," he says. "We've never had this before, and I've been here 20 years. We didn't have this even after 9/11."

Chaudhry attributes this attitude to Trump, accusing the presumptive Republican nominee of stoking fears for political gain.

"He's become the champion of the anti-Muslim, anti-refugee movement," he says. While that group talks of being tired of political correctness, Chaudhry sees something else: "They don't want the other races coming in here."

But those who've publicly spoken out against refugees bristle at suggestions they're racist. They say they're trying to protect their communities.

"It doesn't make any difference if they're Muslims, Russians, whatever. You have to know who they are, what they've been doing in the past," says Jim Buterbaugh, a construction worker who organized three opposition rallies, including one at the state Capitol. "Are you going to go downtown and take five people off the streets and move them into your house without knowing who they are? Nobody in their right mind would do that."

He and others are upset they have no vote on this issue. State and local governments legally don't have authority to bar refugees, though they can refuse to directly provide local services, according to Haines. Last fall, more than half the nation's governors declared their opposition to accepting Syrian refugees, saying a pause was needed until security concerns are addressed.

That sense of being shut out of decision-making reflects a wider distrust of the government in parts of the West, where federal policies involving land, water and endangered species often clash with energy, timber and grazing interests. Though the refugee debate is different, it exposes the same raw nerves among opponents, who also question the economic and social impact.

In a letter to her commissioners, Ravalli County resident Birte Nellessen said, "to fool ourselves that we are helping 'poor folks driven out of their homeland by war' is ridiculous. They openly and blazingly state that they are coming to destroy us and our culture. ... Why we would spend any of our hard earned money on people like that?"

Nellessen, who moved to the U.S. from Germany 20 years ago, says officials should instead support local folks in need and that a smarter course would be to send supplies or money to help refugees rebuild in their homeland.

"I mean, what's a Syrian or Kenyan going to do in winter in Montana? Seriously."

The answer is coming. The International Rescue Committee has met with Missoula's mayor, police chief and others to prepare for the refugees  about 100 will come over a year's time. The agency plans to reopen a resettlement office here this fall, after a 25-year absence. Those most likely to be relocated include Congolese, Afghans and Syrians who will have no family ties, so they'll have to live within a 50-mile radius of the office.

Mary Poole is looking forward to their arrival.

About 750 people have signed up to help refugees make the transition, she says. One former Missoula resident now living in Mongolia wants to get involved when she returns.

Poole is already thinking ahead, too, about how this could change the life of her 17-month-old son, Jack.

She envisions a day, she says, when he "will be able to sit in a school next to someone of a different color, of a different language, of a different culture  and be able to learn that he lives in a global world. ... I don't think we can be insulated anymore."

Poole knows resistance remains, and still meets with those who don't want refugees here. She says she's even made friends with some vocal opponents, recently inviting them to her house for a barbecue.

"We're asking for compassion," she says, "and must be able to give that ourselves."

And there's always a chance to win some over.

"They are us,' she says of the opponents. "They are part of our community, and in order for this to be as successful as it possibly can be, it's about being in it together."
There was understandable build-up of popular expectations from Prime Minister Narendra Modi's address to the joint session of the US Congress.

As expected from Modi the master communicator, those expectations have not been let down.

For sure Modi was addressing, primarily, the gathered representatives and senators, and through them the American people and the American administration.

It was an outreach event, like all addresses to joint sessions of Congress by foreign heads of government are, reaching out to Democrats and Republicans.

Influence

To that extent, it was an attempt, a commendable one, to influence both policy and opinion on Capitol Hill and reinvigorate bipartisan support for, and interest in India. It was also an exercise in allaying fears and apprehensions, fuelled in large measure by unwholesome events and unedifying utterances in India.

There are congressional concerns, even if restricted to a handful of members, about perceived restrictions on freedom of religion and right to dissent that have taken form and shape after the advent of Modi sarkar in 2014. Addressing those concerns is important.

So we had Modi getting rid of the clutter of necessary and obligatory references right at the beginning of his speech before moving on to more meaningful issues.

He paid fulsome tribute to American democracy, the world's oldest, and the US' commitment to protecting freedom and liberty abroad, which is debatable.

More important, Modi reminded the gathered audience that India is governed and lives by its republican Constitution, that this is a country which has defied conventional wisdom of the mid 20th century to survive not only as a democracy but grow into a robust, vibrant, open society. The blots and blemishes that exist are not exclusive to India.

Second, and this is not terribly original, Modi used the opportunity to reiterate that if liberty and freedom have made America great, they also unite India and the US.

Narendra Modi at Capitol Hill. (Reuters)

India's commitment to these twin cornerstones of a democracy is no less than that of the US; the world's oldest and largest democracies have a lot in common.

Recalling Abraham Lincoln's immortal words, "All men are created equal," Modi sort of elaborated that India, with "equality as the essence of its soul," lives the dictum by example.

Asserting that India celebrates its "age-old diversity" and every mohalla is "anchored in equal respect for all faiths; and in the melody of hundreds of its languages and dialects," Modi sought to address the other concern: "rising intolerance" as the liberals at home and abroad label commonplace every day stuff that went unnoticed all these decades.

Convince

Whether this has helped remove doubts and convinced all movers and shakers on the Hill that "India lives as one; India grows as one; India celebrates as one" will be known in the coming months, after the US elections are done with.

In the interregnum, it will be business as usual at best.

The real substance of his speech lies in the second half where he addresses India's aspirations, America's interests and mutual concerns. The "absence of security architecture" is not a casual throw of words.

It refers to China's unrestrained emergence as an economic and military behemoth, and the missing counterfoil. The US cannot abdicate its responsibility, not the least because China is what it is today because of American sustenance of and investment in its economy.

While America has made the right noises and reassured India of its rightful place in the Indian Ocean and in India-Pacific region, frankly they have not amounted to much.

India needs to grow much faster, get much bigger and drop silly pretences of a "soft power" just because the world loves Bollywood films, or so we are told.

Investment

But to get much bigger, stronger and grow up into a tough guy (and not a limp-wristed dandy), India needs America. It needs American investment, it needs American technology, it needs American defence equipment, and it needs American cover as it breaches new frontiers, literally and metaphorically.

It's against this backdrop that we need to view the two most significant sentences in Modi's address to the US Congress: "In every sector of India's forward march, I see the US as an indispensable partner" and that "a stronger and prosperous India is in America's strategic interest".

The first statement marks an irrevocable departure from whatever remained of the much-vaunted Nehruvian consensus and non-aligned mumbo-jumbo in India's foreign policy. It's a definitive break with the past.

In 1949, Jawaharlal Nehru, addressing the US Congress, eloquently spoke of India's "voyage of discovery". Along the road India discovered friends, became a Soviet ally, and waved the flag of non-alignment to signal its distance and estrangement from America. It was not about neutrality; it was about Third World hostility.

More than half a century later we have Modi declaring America as India's indispensable partner, that's a lot more than Atal Bihari Vajpayee standing at the same podium and calling the US a "natural ally".

The enormous importance of Modi's statement is yet to sink in at home; has its import struck those listening to him in America?

To be an indispensable partner, the US will not only have to accommodate India's soaring aspirations but also dovetail them into American strategic interest.

A strong India, a prosperous India, is indeed in the US' strategic interest, globally and in the region.

Will the US rise to the challenge and seize the moment? That will test both American and India diplomacy.
Will it be President Pranab Mukherjee again or not? Or, will it be "President Murli Manohar Joshi" instead, whose place currently is confined to BJP's hall of retirees - the Margdarshak Mandal. Forget both, would it actually be "President LK Advani", who has been critical of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and party president Amit Shah at times? Or, has Bollywood superstar Amitabh Bachchan completely lost the chance after his name found mention in the controversial Panama Papers?

And, thus, the speculation goes on, as to whom the ruling BJP would nominate as its presidential candidate in 2017 elections. But one name which the BJP should pick among the limited stock available is that of the Amitabh Bachchan of the South - Padma Vibhushan Rajinikanth.

The Atal Bihari Vajpayee government had nominated superman of missile science APJ Abdul Kalam in 2002, who was elected unopposed as the 11th President of India. There are uncanny similarities between Kalam and Rajinikanth. The Modi government should think out of the box like Vajpayee and choose Rajinikanth as the BJP's candidate for the 14th President, and these are the reasons why:

1. Non-political

Like Kalam, Rajinikanth is also largely non-political. Just on two exceptional occasions in several decades of his super stardom did he reveal his political proclivities. First, in 1996, when he said, "Even God cannot save Tamil Nadu if AIADMK returns to power." His outburst did have an impact and DMK won.

And, second, in 2004, when he said, "I will cast my vote for the Vajpayee-led BJP front in Tamil Nadu, but I will not force my fans or the public to vote for the same combine." It hardly had any impact and NDA could not garner much seats in the South.

Barring these two occasions, the Shahenshah of South has not just kept to himself his political affiliations but has also remained aloof from politics. And this suits the BJP. This brings us to the second point.

2. Extraordinary citizen

While Kalam was an acclaimed scientist, having been the backbone behind India's missile technology, Rajini has excelled in the field of cinema. Both have earned respect and became hugely popular in their respective fields. Movie lovers desperately await his latest film Kabali which is scheduled to release on July 15.

Their achievements also become extraordinary because of their humble origins and backgrounds. Writing for DailyO, senior journalist Javed M Ansari of India Today TV wrote, "President Kalam came from a very humble background; a boat man's son, he sold newspapers as a young kid growing up in Rameshwaram. He was a god-fearing, pious man, who never forgot to say his morning prayers. But unlike many others in public life, neither did he ever play up his humble origins, nor did he wear his religion on his sleeves."

The same holds true for Rajini, the carpenter-turned-coolie-turned-bus conductor-turned-actor. Born on December 12, 1950 in Karnataka, he was the fourth child to his parents Ramabai and Ramoji Rao Gaekwad. Originally, Shivaji Rao Gaekwad, he lost his mother at the age of five. He did his schooling from the Acharya Patasala in Bangalore and subsequently at the Vivekananda Balak Sangh, a unit of the Ramakrishna Mission.

Simplicity and originality are Rajini's hallmark.

A fan website www.rajinikanth.com describes Rajini's modesty. It states: "Ego and starry airs are unknown to Rajnikanth. During breaks he hardly ever rushes to his air-conditioned makeup room. Instead, he prefers to sleep on the sets, even without a pillow, merely covering his eyes with a wet cloth. He never comes to functions with a retinue behind him and even prefers to drive his own car."

3. Showcasing India's soft power

With Kalam as President, India had showcased to the world its achievement in the field of nuclear science, scientific research and defence technology. His role as the chief project coordinator of the Pokhran-II nuclear tests in 1998 earned him the title of "Missile Man of India" and the country's highest civilian award, the Bharat Ratna.

Rajini is a recipient of Padma Vibhushan (2016) and Padma Bhushan (2000), the second and third-highest civilian awards respectively, for his contribution in the field of arts. After the military might, now it is time for the country to showcase its soft power. At a time when Bollywood has become a global brand and actors like Priyanka Chopra, Irrfan Khan, Anil Kapoor and others are sought after in Hollywood, it would be logical that India displays its softer side to the world.

4. Non-controversial

Kalam never courted any controversy, either before becoming a President, or during his entire tenure, or even after demitting office. Similarly, Rajini has remained untouched by any unwarranted fiasco - either concerning financial irregularities or behavourial aspect.

5. Advantage BJP

The BJP will serve an ace by proposing the name of Rajini for the top job. The BJP-led NDA would never want a contest as it does not enjoy majority in the electoral college. Hence, it would be very difficult for either the principal opposition Congress or the regional parties, particularly of the South such as AIADMK, DMK, former prime minister HD Deve Gowda's JD(S) or K Chandrashekar Rao's ruling Telangana Rashtra Samithi, to oppose a suitable candidate like Rajini. Like Kalam, he will likely be elected unopposed.

Shouldn't Rajini be Modi's natural choice?

6. Target 2019 Lok Sabha

Electorally, the BJP has already started making inroads into the South. It opened its account for the first time in Kerala and increased its vote share to above ten per cent. The NDA will earn credit for Rajini occupying the President's chair and may, therefore, stand to gain in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. The BJP, though, had hoped to get the support of Muslims in the 2004 Lok Sabha elections after appointing Kalam in 2002 as President. But it lost power to the Congress-led UPA.

This should not discourage the BJP from nominating Rajini as the presidential candidate, because 2019 will not be 2002. Besides ensuring that the NDA's candidate won, a moderate Vajpayee had chosen Kalam also to assuage the hurt feelings of the Muslims.

However, far from forgiving the BJP for the Gujarat riots, they severely punished it by voting for the Congress. But this should not worry Modi. One, because the voters of the South have no axe to grind against him. And, two, the southern voters are not as homogenous as the Muslims and, hence, the BJP may finally get the support of splinter groups and fence-sitters in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls.
SUPERIOR  Striking employees of the Mineral County sheriff's department have returned to work now that a mediation session is scheduled.

Teamsters Local 2 spokesman Shawn Fontaine said the deputies, dispatchers and detention officers went back to work Thursday morning. The mediation session is scheduled for June 15.

The 16 employees went on strike on May 30 seeking a larger raise and more than a one-year contract. They had been working without a contract since July 2015.

Fontaine says if the mediation doesn't work, the strike may resume, but deputies will be on patrol until then.
CHEYENNE, Wyo.  Wyoming Gov. Matt Mead says he condemns Donald Trump's statement that a federal judge shouldn't preside over a case against him because of the judge's Mexican heritage.

But Mead, a Republican, says he still supports Trump for president over presumptive Democratic Party nominee Hillary Clinton. Mead says Trump's policies would be better for Wyoming and the West.

Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, has drawn fire from top national Republicans over his recent criticism of U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel.

Trump has said he believes Curiel can't be fair in handling a case involving Trump University because the judge is of Mexican heritage while Trump has called for building a wall between the U.S. and Mexico.

"I'm building a wall," Trump has said. "It's an inherent conflict of interest."

Trump has denied his comments about Curiel were racist.

In an interview Thursday with The Associated Press, Mead said he regards Trump's comments as clearly inappropriate. Mead is a former U.S. Attorney for Wyoming and has worked as a state and federal prosecutor.

"Anytime you're saying that a person will be thinking one way or another or biased one way or another just based upon race, I just think it's certainly going to be subject to that criticism of racism," Mead said. "Clearly inappropriate."

Nonetheless, Mead said he supports Trump over Clinton.

"This isn't the first, and may not be the last thing he has said that I have disagreed with and wish he would not say it," Mead said of Trump. "But I am still comparing him to Secretary Clinton and who will be the best leader for the country, and who will be the best in terms of addressing western issues and Wyoming issues. And I still think that clearly would be Mr. Trump over Secretary Clinton."

As governor of Wyoming  the nation's leading coal-producing state  Mead has seen state revenues fall sharply in recent years. He has blamed recent federal restrictions on mining and increasing restrictions on power plant emissions, all enacted by the Barack Obama administration.

Mead has been pushing to open ports in the Northwest that could allow exports of Wyoming coal to Asia, but has been stymied so far by opposition there. His administration has filed repeated lawsuits against the federal regulations he says target the coal industry.

Trump, meanwhile, has garnered support in coal country by promising to roll back regulations and restore coal industry jobs.

Wyoming Democrats said Thursday that regardless of energy policy, they disagree with Mead's continued support of Trump.

Sen. Chris Rothfuss, D-Laramie, serves as minority floor leader in the state senate. He's one of only four Democrats versus 26 Republicans.

"He is overtly racist, sexist," Rothfuss said of Trump. "He has offended various religions and in no way represents the character of the people of Wyoming. And the expectation that somehow a few of his policies related to natural resource management might somehow make up for his glaring shortfalls in every other aspect of the presidency is unreasonable."
RAWLINS, Wyo.  Increasing Wyoming's tax on wind generation could derail a proposed 1,000-turbine wind farm in Carbon County, a representative of the company behind the project said.

"The discussion of increasing the taxes on wind puts the project at risk," Roxane Perruso, vice president and general counsel of Power Company of Wyoming, said. "It's another uncertainty. One that was unexpected, coming just after our announcement to start construction by the end of this year."

Members of the Legislature's Joint Revenue Committee are discussing two proposals that would raise wind taxes. One plan would increase the tax per megawatt hour of wind produced in Wyoming, while the other would require wind companies to give up a portion of a tax credit they receive from the federal government.

The discussion comes as Power Company of Wyoming continues to seek permits for its proposed Chokecherry and Sierra Madre Wind Energy Project south of Rawlins.

Perruso said the prospect of higher taxes adds more uncertainty to the project. Perruso noted that Power Company of Wyoming doesn't have any customers lined up yet to buy the wind power to be produced by the project.

"The decision by the revenue committee to draft the two bills creates the question if we are going to take on this additional risk," she said.

The downturn in the state's mineral extraction industry has cost state coffers hundreds of millions of dollars, prompting the look at other sources of revenue.

"The simple truth of the matter is that wind can't make up for the lost revenues in and of itself, and the fact that our wind project goes forward or not has absolutely no impact on what is happening with coal," Perruso said. "In fact, wind is a way for Wyoming to diversify its economy at the exact same time it needs to do that very thing."

The Legislative Joint Revenue Interim Committee is tentatively scheduled to meet next on Sept. 22 and 23 in Buffalo.
The Bismarck-Burleigh Public Health Building is free of mold, according to documents acquired by a taxpayer watchdog organization.

According to a statement by the North Dakota Watchdog Network, Bismarck moved too quickly last fall in agreeing to sell the downtown lot to the University of Mary and may have sold it under market value. While discussing the sale last month, Commissioner Parrell Grossman told the Tribune there may be mold in the building, along with ventilation and dampness problems.

Grossman, in a Thursday segment on KFYR radio, said he misunderstood the past mold issue in the building. At one point, tests showed there were concerns about mold in the building, but the problems were cleaned up.

LaVonne Wohl, facilities manager for Bismarck, said there have been other rumors of mold and problems in the building, so the city had Badlands Environmental Consultants test the building to put minds at ease.

Badlands Environmental Consultants, in a letter dated June 6, said a mold assessment conducted on June 3 found no mold, no fungi and no water damage in the building, according to the documents obtained by North Dakota Watchdog Network.

Problems with mold and other issues mostly were a concern before the city owned the building, said Wohl, adding that had there been problems, people working in the building would have been exhibiting respiratory symptoms.

Environmental Health for Bismarck has worked in the building since last year, Wohl said.

We have the best people in town to know if there is an issue, she said.

The basement is used, though little of it is allocated as office space, Wohl said. While there is a kitchen in the basement, Wohl said her staff uses part of the basement as work space along with a state employee who works there.

The University of Mary in October secured a five-year purchase plan to buy the property at 500 E. Front Ave. for either $2 million to $2.2 million, depending on the date of the sale. The building would be torn down and the lot used to develop a graduate school for health sciences and potentially student housing. U-Mary has not finalized the deal.

Nolan Canright, who is running for the commission, heard concerns from several people that the sale may have been a money loser for the city. He asked the North Dakota Watchdog Networks Dustin Gawrylow for assistance in researching the matter. Gawrylow says he believes the building could be worth $3.5 million to $5 million because of money put into the building.

Mayor Mike Seminary and Grossman defended the sale as an appropriate price and a positive move for the citys long-term plan.

Wohl said the building has served the city well. In addition to taking in more than $1 million in rent, it housed departments from the City/County Building when that structure was renovated, saving the city a considerable amount compared to what leasing another space would have cost. Since the building is city-owned, there is no accounting for the amount saved by the temporary housing of other city departments, Wohl said.

Though the building has not been a bad investment, Wohl added that the building likely wouldnt be of use to anyone who wants to use the lot. The Downtown Master Plan called for the space to become a new parking garage, and any other proposed use of the lot likely would not include the building, she said.

It already had a target on its back before U-Mary came around, Wohl said.

Building with a history

The building was constructed as a warehouse in 1929. Chad Wachter said his family ran its first business, the Wachter Dray and Transfer Company, out of the building. The land at that time was owned by the railroad, and the Wachter family leased it for 99 years. Wachter said the lease, at some point, was purchased.

The Wachter family ran its ranching and farming operations out of the building in the mid-1900s and stored ice cut from the Missouri River there in the days before refrigerators.

There even was a bomb shelter underneath that building back in the Cuban Missile Crisis days, said Wachter, who expressed surprise the building wasnt listed under the National Register of Historic Places. Theres a huge amount of history there."

Workforce Safety and Insurance owned the building before the city and transformed it into office space.

When the city purchased the building, officials learned the stairways were not up to fire code, according to Wohl, who said much of the money put into the building went to those renovations. Other funds were put into necessary maintenance, as any building requires, she added.

She said its not fair to compare the value of the building to office buildings that were built for that function. The shape of the building  long and narrow  means there is only room for one hallway, limiting the layout for offices. The west side has few windows, and the heavy masonry structure prevents adding more. Columns throughout the building prevent other changes.

Since the citys time owning the building likely is short whether U-Mary completes its deal or not, Wohl said the city is foregoing long-term maintenance items, such as replacing the cooling tower. However, maintenance necessary to keep the space safe and functional will continue, she said.
LONDON - England - The European Commission's own figures reveal that their own lack of trade policy cost the UK 284,341 jobs.

The EUs failure to conclude just five trade agreements with the United States, Japan, ASEAN, India and Mercosur has, according to the European Commissions own figures, cost the UK 284,341 jobs.

The UK will be able to strike more valuable free trade deals than the EU has done to date.

The aggregate GDP of all the countries with which the EU had a trade agreement in force in January 2014 was $7.7 trillion. By contrast, the aggregate GDP of all countries with which Chile had trade agreements was $58.3 trillion. The figure for South Korea was $40.8 trillion and that for Switzerland was $39.8 trillion.

It is possible to strike free trade deals very quickly.

Oxford Economics has said that an analysis of regional trade deals conducted over the past 20 years found an average duration of 28 months.

There are many examples: the US-Australia free trade agreement (FTA) was concluded in less than two years; the Switzerland-China FTA was negotiated in a little over two years; and the US-Canada FTA was negotiated in less than two years.

It is in the commercial interests of the EU to strike a deal.

In 2015, the EU sold 67.8 billion more in goods and services to the UK than the UK sold to the EU.

The UK is the EUs biggest single export market, bigger even than the United States.

Output has been growing, with production output up 2.0% in the last month. Manufacturing output is up by 2.3%, driven by higher exports.

The ONS states that: Total production output is estimated to have increased by 2.0% in April 2016 compared with March 2016.

Manufacturing output increased by 2.3%, the largest rise since July 2012. Anecdotal evidence suggested increased exports as a contributing factor. This suggests that companies are continuing to engage in international commerce.

The ONS states that Total production output is estimated to have increased by 1.6% in April 2016 compared with April 2015.

Independent studies have found that: Over the years 1993 to 2011, the first 19 years of the Single Market, exports of goods from 27 non-member countries to EU members have grown at a faster rate than those of the UK and over the 11 years for which we have reasonable data, the services exports of 21 non-members have also done so.
LONDON - England - Remain campaigner Amber Rudd MP is wrong about the accession process on Turkey, and four other countries joining the EU.

During the ITV debate last night Amber Rudd MP, who is campaigning to remain in the EU, wrongly suggested that accession talks are not going ahead for five more countries to join the EU.

The accession process is being accelerated. On 4 May 2016, the European Commission announced that: The accession process will be re-energised, with Chapter 33 to be opened and preparatory work on the opening of other chapters to continue at an accelerated pace.

On 4 May 2016, the European Commission announced that: The accession process will be re-energised, with Chapter 33 to be opened and preparatory work on the opening of other chapters to continue at an accelerated pace. David Cameron strongly supports this. In 2010, Cameron said he was angry at the slow pace of Turkish accession, that he was the strongest possible advocate for EU membership for Turkey, and that I want us to pave the road from Ankara to Brussels. In 2014, he said that: In terms of Turkish membership of the EU, I very much support that. Thats a longstanding position of British foreign policy which I support.

In 2010, Cameron said he was angry at the slow pace of Turkish accession, that he was the strongest possible advocate for EU membership for Turkey, and that I want us to pave the road from Ankara to Brussels. In 2014, he said that: In terms of Turkish membership of the EU, I very much support that. Thats a longstanding position of British foreign policy which I support. The Government admitted it supported Turkish accession last month. Last month, the Europe Minister, David Lidington, said: The UK supports Turkeys EU accession process  .

Last month, the Europe Minister, David Lidington, said: The UK supports Turkeys EU accession process . The British public will not get a vote on the accession of Turkey to the EU . The European Union Act 2011 allows the Government to ratify EU accession treaties without a referendum. There was no referendum on the accession of Croatia to the EU in 2013.

. The European Union Act 2011 allows the Government to ratify EU accession treaties without a referendum. There was no referendum on the accession of Croatia to the EU in 2013. The Government opposes giving the British people a say. As the Minister for Europe, David Lidington, said in 2011: A few years ago, 10 new member states joined the European Union at the same time. I believe that their combined population then was 73 million, which is slightly greater than Turkeys population is now. I do not believe that anybody in this country argued at that time that a British referendum on those accessions was right.

As the Minister for Europe, David Lidington, said in 2011: A few years ago, 10 new member states joined the European Union at the same time. I believe that their combined population then was 73 million, which is slightly greater than Turkeys population is now. I do not believe that anybody in this country argued at that time that a British referendum on those accessions was right. The UK is paying 2bn to help Turkey, Albania, Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia to join the EU. Turkey alone is set to receive over 1 billion of UK funds to help prepare it for membership.

The EU is planning to take further control as part of the Five Presidents Report.

The Five Presidents Report (published in June 2015) sets out the European Commissions plans to create a political union in the Eurozone.

This will affect the UK, since the Commission is clear is clear that it will continue to use single market legislation as a means of achieving this. The report states: Much can be achieved already through a deepening of the Single Market, which is important for all 28 EU Member States.

The report contemplates the harmonisation of capital markets, insolvency law, company law and property rights. The latter presumably includes real property, securities and the law of contract.

Since this single market legislation will be adopted by qualified majority voting, the UK will not be able to opt out from it or veto it.

We cannot remove dangerous people because of EU law.

Terrorists. In 2015, the Special Immigration Appeals Commission ruled the UK could not exclude ZZ from the UK because of EU law, despite the fact that he was a suspected terrorist. The Commission concluded that: We are confident that the Appellant was actively involved in the GIA [Algerian Armed Islamic Group], and was so involved well into 1996. He had broad contacts with GIA extremists in Europe. His accounts as to his trips to Europe are untrue. We conclude that his trips to the Continent were as a GIA activist.

Killers. In 1995, Chindamo, who is an Italian citizen, murdered the headteacher Philip Lawrence who went to help a 13-year-old boy who was being attacked. He was sentenced to life imprisonment in 1996. Chinamo was released in 2010 but recalled to prison due to accusations he intimidated and robbed a man at a cash machine, charges of which he was later acquitted. In 2007, Mr Justice Collins, sitting in the Asylum and Immigration Tribunal, ruled that removing Chindamo would be disproportionate under EU law. David Cameron said that Tribunals decision flies in the face of common sense. It is a shining example of what is going wrong in our country. He is someone who has been found guilty of murder and should be deported back to his country What about the rights of Mrs Lawrence or the victim?. Cameron said: This does seem to be complete madness.

Rapists. Mircea Gheorghiu, a Romanian national, entered the UK without leave in January 2007. In November 2007, he was convicted of driving a motor vehicle with excess alcohol, fined and disqualified from driving for 20 months. It later emerged that he had a criminal record in Romania. In 1990 he was convicted of the offence of rape and sentenced to 6 years imprisonment. Between 2001 and March 2002 he was convicted on three occasions of forestry offences, cutting timber without a licence, and received custodial sentences on the last two occasions. The Secretary of State removed him from the UK in March 2015. Nonetheless, on 18 November 2015, Mr Justice Blake, sitting in the Upper Tribunal, decided this was unlawful under EU law, ruling Gheorghiu must be reunited with his family as quickly as possible and that he was entitled to a permanent residence on his return and the residence card issued to him will reflect that.

Leading counter-terrorism figures and two Defence Ministers have made clear a vote to leave would not affect security and in fact offers significant advantages.

The former Secretary-General of Interpol, Ronald K Noble has said the EU is effectively an international passport-free zone for terrorists to execute attacks on the Continent and make their escape.

Sir Richard Dearlove, the former Chief of the Secret Intelligence Service, has said: the truth about Brexit from a national security perspective is that the cost to Britain would be low. Brexit would bring two potentially important security gains: the ability to dump the European Convention on Human Rightsremember the difficulty of extraditing the extremist Abu Hamza of the Finsbury Park Mosqueand, more importantly, greater control over immigration from the European Union. Sir Richard has said: European and Brussels-based security bodies are of little consequence and that the crucial practical business of counter-terrorism and counter-espionage is conducted, even in Europe, through bilateral and very occasionally trilateral relationships.

Richard Walton, former Head of Counter Terrorism Command at New Scotland Yard (2011-15), has said: membership of the EU does not really convey any benefits that we couldnt access if we were outside it Success in countering terrorism does not depend on any of us being members of a particular club. It is simply achieved through international collaboration to prevent known threats from passing across borders.

Major General Julian Thompson, who commanded land forces during the Falklands War has said membership of the EU weakens our national defence in very dangerous times.
A Lincoln City Council meeting turned into a heated debate Thursday among city officials, residents and two property owners over moving dirt on their land and the citys involvement -- or, as several residents put it, the lack thereof.

One resident shouted dissent at Thursday's meeting, and then another.

You should recuse yourself, one resident told Mayor Gerarld Wise. Another person in the audience: You forget who you work for, Mr. Mayor.

At one point, there was loud clapping and cheering among audience members when one citizen alluded to the mayor playing favorites when he referred to one of the property owners in question as buddy.

During the final hour of the meeting, the council heard from several Apple Creek Township and Lincoln residents who voiced concerns over dirt being moved on Brandon Schock and Chris Kreins property, which is within Lincolns jurisdiction.

In a previous interview, Schock -- who owns Fire Express Transport LLC, a delivery truck service -- said he began moving dirt about two months ago to flatten a portion of his 47 acres so he could plant sweet corn. After hearing his neighbors were complaining about what he was doing on his property, he placed a sign on a fence as a joke: Pigs Coming Soon.

I have no plans. My plan was I have a neighbor that came, and he needed some dirt. I wanted to get rid of some dirt because I wanted to flatten mine out, Schock told council members Thursday.

He also said he got the corn planted last weekend but isnt sure if it will mature in time so his children can sell it and donate the money to a local organization.

Shocks neighbors were concerned with not only his property at 2105 66th St. S.E., but also Kreins, which comprises about 5 acres at the corner of 66th Street Southeast and Northgate Drive. Dirt has been moved there, and the land has been raised.

Several neighbors called Burleigh County building official Ray Ziegler. He visited the property and determined that the soil being moved could impact the floodplain near Apple Creek, which most recently flooded in 2009 and 2011.

Ziegler and Lincoln City Attorney Justin Hagel sent violation notices to Schock and Krein last month, informing them they were not in compliance with Lincoln municipal code regarding flood damage mitigation.

No permit has yet been issued for either Schock or Krein, Ziegler said earlier this week, and additional hydrological testing needs to be done.

On Thursday, residents of Lincoln and Apple Creek Township attended the regular city council meeting to express frustrations with not knowing what was going on. Both sides  the two property owners and concerned citizens  showed up to discuss their concerns with city officials.

How come somebody didnt come say something to us? Schock said. We know that we werent right when moving the dirt, but we didnt know it when we started it, and nobody said (anything).

One council member said Thursday he had no idea the two property owners had no permits to make changes on their land.

I drive that road every day, and it never occurred to me they didnt have a permit just because its such a massive project, said council member Tom Volk. You would just assume somebody knows to take out a permit.

Kay LaCoe said her property, which is near Schocks, could be impacted by the changes the next time the river floods.

I want to know that when that next flood comes, whether its next year or in 30 years, that Im not going to get it worse because of something that my neighbor did, she said.

What I want to know is, how did a project of that magnitude get so far without somebody telling them it was wrong? LaCoe asked the council members.

All we want to know is whats going on, said another resident, Bob Bolinske Sr., an attorney and Apple Creek Township resident. It seems to me that somebody in this city should know.

Schock said both he and Krein are in the process of getting the necessary permits. He said he hired an engineer from Swenson, Hagen & Co. and is working on getting another engineer to do a hydrology test. He said when the test results come back, he will do whatever it says needs to be done.

Basically, you had 30 people in here trying to figure out what someone wants to do in his backyard, Mayor Gerarld Wise said after the meeting. I didnt expect this, so I was blindsided in a way.

He said he visited Schocks property once about three weeks ago after he saw the "pigs" sign and neighbors called him with complaints.

In the long run, I want everyone to be happy. I want it to be done correctly. If there are some violations out there, they will be addressed, Wise said. But right now, I got other things on my mind. Ive got an election to deal with Tuesday. I might not be mayor here after Tuesday.

The council decided Thursday that once a hydrology test is completed, a public meeting will be held on the matter.

Volk stressed the city council needs to assess how the dirt project slipped through on its watch.
Officials representing charities say granting North Dakotas five American Indian tribes exclusive rights to host online gambling could effectively end charitable gambling in the state. The tribes want Gov. Doug Burgum to approve the idea under tribal-state agreements known as compacts. The current compacts expire at the end of this year and only Burgum can approve them. The tribes argue that their casinos have been hurt by the explosion of the charities Las Vegas-style pull tab machines. Burgum heard arguments from the charities and tribes on Friday. He says the terms of the compacts are still being negotiated and should be completed next month.
In March 2015 the Tribune Editorial Board endorsed changes in the states anti-corporate farming law. The Legislature passed and Gov. Jack Dalrymple signed Senate Bill 2351 that allows restricted corporate dairy and swine operations. Nothing that has happened since then has swayed our position.

Measure 1 on Tuesdays primary ballot will determine the fate of SB2351. Voters should vote yes to approve SB2351.

In the 2015 editorial we warned, Those unhappy with new corporate farming legislation in the state, would be wise to proceed with caution. Corporate farming law in North Dakota, in its entirety, could be at risk otherwise. That warning has come true with the North Dakota Farm Bureau last week filing a lawsuit in federal court challenging the law as unconstitutional and discriminatory.

North Dakota has had the anti-corporate farming law on the books since 1932. It was intended to protect small farmers and at that time and over the years there were many who relied on their little operations for their livelihood. They also, as a group, supplied the nation with food. Unfortunately, the number of family farms have dwindled in the state, even with the protections afforded by the law.

SB2351 was an attempt to intject some life into the fading swine and dairy industries in the state. Under the new law, non-family-owned corporations for dairy and swine operations with guidelines, would be granted the same considerations as family-owned corporations in the state. Opponents see SB2351 as the first step in dismantling the anti-corporate farming law.

At the time SB2351 was passed, North Dakota Agriculture Commissioner Doug Goehring suggested easing the law might help fend off legal challenges seeking to end the anti-corporate farming law. After the lawsuit was filed last week, Goehring noted it would be interesting to see how it plays out. The state will defend the law in what will likely be lengthy proceedings.

Nine states have corporate farming laws and most have some form of exemptions. South Dakotas 1998 corporate farming ban was struck down by a federal judge because it interfered with interstate commerce.

North Dakota voters would be wise to vote yes on Measure 1. Legislators were seeking a compromise with SB2351 and if voters allow those changes to become law it could help when the state defends the law in court.

The Tribune has been and continues to be supporters of North Dakota farmers. Sometimes laws have to be crafted to meet changing times. That was one goal of SB2351, unfortunately, it may be too late to save the anti-corporate farming law.
We need an amendment that will expand the 15th Amendment of the Constitution of the U.S. The right to vote is certainly of greater importance than the right to own a gun.

Some people dont see the voting restrictions in North Dakota as discriminatory or burdensome. Jim Silrum claims the voter ID requirements are not a barrier to 97 percent of the state residents. I dont believe he, government officials and the GOP have any concept of the number of disenfranchised people in North Dakota. It is certainly more than 3 percent. He sees the requirements only from the perspective of the privileged class. Because he has no problem presenting the documents for obtaining a voter ID he believes the disenfranchised have no problem either. There is no comprehension of the burden on the disenfranchised.

Now that Native Americans are running for political offices in North Dakota I expect more Native Americans will be turned away from the voting booth on June 14 and in the general election.

I will work with any effort in North Dakota to help Native Americans get their voter ID, burdensome as it is, for the general election in November. It's too late for the primary.
WEST FARGO -- A former combat medic and North Dakota State University artist marched 20 miles in Fargo and West Fargo with a military rucksack sculpted in ice strapped to his back.

It was all part of a grand project created by Joshua Zeis called "Project Unpack: Telling Stories, Creating Community."

The piece represents the burden he carries from his experiences, including surviving a bomb attack. But the burden slowly melts away. It also served a dual purpose on his trek.

"I didn't have water for several miles so I had to eat it, I had to eat my pack," Zeis said.

He says the trail he walked included the same points he traveled the day he learned he was being deployed.
Dalhousie loves to celebrate the excellence and achievements of its students. But for many students, their success often depends a great deal on the empathy and support of certain faculty and staff along the way.



Every year, Dal recognizes some of those individuals who have provided outstanding service to students in a non-teaching capacity with the Rosemary Gill Award.



The awards  established in 1995  are inspired by Rosemary Gill, a graduate of the Faculty of Medicine who later served as director of University Health Services (now Student Health Services) between 1985 and 1991. A physician at the university and a member of Student Services staff, Dr. Gill was known for her deep commitment to student success.



The best part of my job is celebrating excellence, Dal president Richard Florizone said at an awards ceremony for this years awardees Tuesday.



Meet this years recipients:



Shelley Caines, Masters of Engineering in Internetworking



Gaining practical knowledge and work experience early on as a student can make all the difference when it comes time to transition to the workforce, and that's particularly true when it comes to competitive fields such as internetworking. For nearly 20 years, Shelley Caines has helped ensure students in Dal's Masters of Engineering in Internetworking program develop that professional edge they need.



Shelley first joined the Internetworking program in 1997 in a part-time capacity before moving into a full-time position as administrative assistant two years later. As the program evolved over the years, so too did Shelley's role and she eventually became program administrator in 2001 and then program manager in 2012. Her dedication to preparing students professionally is evident from the many initiatives and programs she has helped introduce over the years, including Cisco training and certification, lab upgrades to better simulate the workplace, and lab assistantships in which students work alongside staff to resolve technology related issues.



Shelley has also been a pillar of support for the many international students the internetwrorking program attracts. She has a reputation as a community builder and has been a fixture at Diwali celebration events and at the recently introduced Colour festival, both of particular interest to the many South Asian students in the program. She also introduced a peer-to-peer program to help ensure those students coming from far and wide have a smooth transition to life in Canada. One student praised Shelley's "natural compassion" and "unwavering enthusiasm," calling her "more than just a student advisor; she's a mentor, a motivator, an inspiration and a good friend."



"Each year we invite many enthusiastic individuals who have dreams and goals and high expectations," Shelley said in remarks after receiving her award, adding later that "it's absolutely important to ensure that our students feel that we at Dalhousie University care about them and their success. That's what drives me and motivates me each and every day."



Barb Hamilton-Hinch, School of Health and Human Performance



Barb Hamilton-Hinch first arrived at Dal 25 years ago as an undergraduate in the Recreation Management program. Today, she teaches other students in that same program as an assistant professor focusing on diversity and inclusion of marginalized populations. Her impact on students stretches far beyond what she teaches them in the classroom, though.



Barb has been a tireless supporter of students over the years, through committee and advocacy work. She was instrumental in the creation of the Black Student Advising Centre and served as its director for several years. She has also worked hard to ensure students are represented in various forums across the university and played a key role in the decision to include a student representative on the Faculty of Health Professions's affirmative-action committee, which she co-chairs. She has paid particular attention to the needs of African Nova Scotian youth and worked to boost enrolment and retention of students from that community over the years. The Imhotep Lagacy Academy, a program that aims to increase the presence of African Nova Scotians in science and technology fields, was also developed with Barb's help.



Barb, who graduated with her Interdisciplinary PhD earlier this month, has been an important mentor to many students at Dal, getting to know many of them personally and offering support during tough times. It's this personal connection and genuine concern that seem to endear Barb to people, as so many of her past students attest. As one former student put it, Barb is "tireless and selfless" and has "cared for me as a mother would for her child."



Accepting her award, Barb thanked her family, students and others at the university for supporting her during her own journey. "Without the students and without you, none of this would be possible."



Chibuike Udenigwe, Department of Environmental Sciences (Faculty of Agriculture)



Chibuike Udenigwe has made a big impact at Dal in a short span of time. Since joining Dalhousie's Faculty of Agriculture four years ago to establish a new program in health and food bioproducts, he has become an important leader on the Agricultural Campus and a mentor and role model to students.



Two of Dr. Udenigwe's students were so inspired by his course on communications skills for scientists that they decided to start a student group called Ruminate that gives students on the campus the opportunity to explore ideas and discussions beyond their own topics. Dr. Udenigwe attends the group's sessions each week, often bringing students and other faculty along as well.



Dr. Undenigwe has also encouraged more students to get involved the Three-Minute Thesis competition, and, this year, three of the eight finalists were from the Agricultural Campus. As one of those finalists says, "Dr. Undenigwe has made great efforts to augment the graduate student experience, not just for his own graduate students, but for each one of the graduate students on our campus."



Dr. Udenigwe cites his own experience moving to Winnipeg, Manitoba from Nigeria as an international student 11 years ago as one of the key reason he works so hard to support students in a holistic way. "I have tried to use that experience to help them get something better from what I got as an international student," Dr. Udenigwe said after receiving his award. "They came here for school, but it's very refreshing for them to see that they can get more than that."



Kelly Underwood, School of Physiotherapy



Professional programs are known for being tough to get into. But Kelly Underwood has helped to settle the rattled nerves of more than a few applicants to graduate programs in the School of Physiotherapy since taking over as admissions and graduate programs assistant in 2008.



As the first point of contact for the more than 400 prospective applicants to the schools programs each year, Kellys attention to detail and work ethic have been crucial to the success of the admissions process in recent years. Whether it is explaining the increasingly complex pre-requisite criteria or suggesting course equivalencies, Kellys expertise has been invaluable to both students and colleagues. One colleague called her the brains, heart and soul of the admissions committee.



Then there is her commitment to treating all applicants fairly. Rather than dismissing applications that are incomplete, Underwood follows up with the students to point out the missing areas and help them finish their submissions. Theres no denying that without Kellys hard work and patience, some of us who are in the program right now would not be here, writes one current student. Thankfully her attention to detail makes up for our lack of it.



I love my job. I love working with the students, she said. Just receiving this award is like the icing on the cake, really.


A multi-well oil pad above one of the busiest boat ramps on Lake Sakakawea is under extended review by federal land managers and already has been approved by the State Oil and Gas Division.

Slawson Exploration Co. plans to drill 11 wells and direct them 3 miles laterally beneath the lake into the Bakken shale, a project a company spokesman says is its biggest multi-well pad to date.

The pad for the rig platform, frack staging and well bores will be 1,000 feet from the Van Hook Resort boat ramp parking lot, part of a popular camping and recreation complex near New Town.

Eric Sundberg, company environmental and regulatory manager, said its application has been in the works for almost four years and drilling could start next season, pending a final decision by the Bureau of Land Management. Sundberg said the storage tanks, flare pit and heater treater will be set back at least another half mile. A pipeline will transport the raw oil and brine to the production location.

The pad was originally to be located only 300 feet from the boat ramp area, but got pushed back to protect the endangered piping plover. In past years, birds have nested in the boat ramp parking lot.

BLM Dickinson field manager Loren Wickstrom said, because of the proposed project's proximity to the lake and visual impacts, he decided to extend a public comment period another 30 days through July 5.

In this case  I opted for an additional comment period, said Wickstrom, adding the well is on Fort Berthold Reservation land so his only jurisdiction for an environmental assessment comes from the federally owned oil under the lake that Slawson has under lease.

I do have a little bit of flexibility. We did make them move 700 feet; it was going to be even closer to the marina, Wickstrom said.

Slawson has assured the agency that the drilling rig is a safe distance in the event of a rig collapse, or fall down.

Terry Fleck, chairman of Friends of Lake Sakakawea and Van Hook cabin owner, said hes appalled at the location even at 1,000 feet from the boat ramp instead of 300.

Its unconscionable that anybody would put a well pad right above a boat ramp. On some occasions, that ramp gets used more than state park ramps. Theyre going to stand up a drilling rig 1,000 feet from the boat ramp parking lot? he said. Where is our conscience and sense of social responsibility?

The Oil and Gas Division issued permits a year ago and those are on confidential status, says spokeswoman Alison Ritter.

However, generally speaking, wells in close proximity to the lake are given permit stipulations on a case-by-case basis, she said.

Dawn Ritts manages the Van Hook Resort as a concessionaire through Mountrail County and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. She said the first location just 300 feet from the parking lot was nerve wracking, but the further one is acceptable, even if its not ideal.

We can scream and holler, but, at the end of the day, there are wells everywhere around the lake, she said. We have no choice but to accept it and be happy that its Slawson. Theyre always responsible and responsive and proactive at respecting the natural resources.

Slawson operates 300 wells in the Bakken. According to the State Health Department, it has reported 142 oil fluid spills, of which all but 31 were contained within the pad berm. One was a blowout, when it lost control of a well very near Lake Sakakawea. It spilled 800 barrels of oil and 400 barrels of salt water across from the Van Hook Resort, said department spill program manager Bill Suess.

Suess said the companys spill record doesnt stand out among oil companies.

We hardly ever hear about Slawson, he said.

The company was fined $62,500 for the blowout incident out of a potential $375,000 penalty, mostly for failing to report its frack chemicals within the allotted 60 days. It has been fined in four other spill incidents, according to Oil and Gas Division records.

Fleck said the fact that the company has had at least one well blowout raises fears there could be another one when hundreds, possibly thousands, of people are in the resort area.

If they have to evacuate everybody, what will they do? If theres an overspray and boats out there, will they run everybody out of the park? he said.

Sundberg said the company has employees who live in the Van Hook area and is one of nine companies that created the Sakakawea Area Spill Response, with equipment staged for water spill cleanups.

As an industry, we know the importance of the lake. Thats in the core of our operations area, Sundberg said.

Wickstrom said his decision will be based partly on comments he receives about the project.

What were finding with these operations is that the easy locations have been drilled. The ones left are more complicated, both topographically and geopolitically, he said.

Comments can be emailed to pwkelley@blm.com and jtowner@swca.com or mailed to SWCA, 116 N. Fourth St. No. 200, Bismarck, N.D., 58501.
Rocky Brown said you couldnt help but like Colbie Fandrich.

Hes the son everybody would want their son to be, Brown said.

Fandrich, 20, was killed Thursday when the plane he was piloting crashed into a lake near Wishek. Also killed were his aunt, Christine Fandrich, 38, of Bismarck, and cousin, Aaron Nordstrom, 10, of Bismarck.

Brown works as the agriculture teacher and FFA adviser in Wishek along with serving as the assistant chief of the Wishek Fire Department. He got close to Fandrich and his family over their years of traveling for FFA. The two also competed in ranch rodeos together, where Fandrichs specialty was roping.

He got along with everybody. He was everybodys friend, Brown said.

Fandrich in May received an associate's degree in instrumentation and control technology from Bismarck State College. Before attending BSC, he graduated from school in Wishek, where he was active in FFA. He received his State FFA Degree in 2014 and was the State Star in Ag Placement for his work experience.

Brown said Fandrich was known for being dependable, trustworthy and honest. There was a moment of silence for Fandrich at the State FFA Convention on Thursday night, he said.

Besides FFA and rodeos, Fandrich also worked on the Wishek Ambulance when he was home from college. That, along with the many connections that come with living in a small town, made the Thursday crash that much harder for first responders.

A lot of the first responders either knew the (victims) or were family, Fire Chief Dave Just said. The entire community is affected. It is a very big loss.

Brown said he was one of the first people on the scene of the crash. The responders had trained for plane crashes, but the added element of the plane crashing into the water made it more difficult, said Brown, adding everything went as smoothly as could be expected.

Brown and Just said theyve responded to their share of crashes and other incidents where they knew the victims. It comes with being in a small town. But the Thursday plane crash was more difficult and devastating than anything they previously had to handle.

I wouldnt want to do it twice, Brown said.

The operation switched from a rescue to a recovery when they learned all on board were killed. Anyone who they thought would have a problem being close to the scene was shifted to traffic control and other duties, Just said.

Everybody did well, Brown said. Nobody froze.

A debriefing team, including chaplains, will be going to Wishek on Monday to help them move forward in their recovery, Just said. Brown said that will be necessary and helpful, as he expects the crash to resonate in the community for a long time.

This is the kind of thing that can define a small town, he said.
GRAND FORKS -- Wayne Stenehjem's gubernatorial campaign is sending online advertisements using university student emails obtained by a consulting firm's open records request.

One such email went to University of North Dakota student Michael Dulitz. It depicts Stenehjem and running mate Nicole Poolman with a message about their track record of "championing the needs of our state's college students."

Dulitz was traveling Thursday afternoon, but said via email the advertisement was "particularly off-putting."

"I am used to seeing campaign ads on the news, on email, on Facebook and in just about every other venue," he said. "But to see one in my (university) email, it was completely unsolicited and made me feel invaded."

Campaign manager Nate Martindale said the practice is commonplace and ethical.

"It's an opportunity to inform a large voting base," he said.

The email addresses were obtained in 2014 by Bismarck-based Odney Advertising, Martindale said. The company's records request for the emails of about 48,000 students at all North Dakota University System institutions made headlines at the time, with then-Democratic-NPL Party Chairman Bob Valeu calling the request "absolutely inappropriate."

Odney President Pat Finken previously said marketing agencies routinely make such requests.

Martindale said the firm used the 2014 information instead of requesting up-to-date emails because "it's what we had."

The campaign emails were sent to UND, North Dakota State University and Minot State University.

"In terms of political emails, yes, I would say with legislative races with districts that have college campuses, it's a common practice," Martindale said.

UND and several other North Dakota colleges and universities are public; therefore, the emails are subject to open records requests, according to North Dakota Century Code.

"Is it ethical to follow the law? I would say it is," interim UND Vice President for University and Public Affairs Peter Johnson said.

UND emails used to be available in a directory that was discontinued roughly five years ago. Student emails are accessible online with a UND login and password, while all employee emails are public.

Johnson said he remembers the campus community receiving emails about ballot measures in past years, but not from candidates.

Martindale said students have the option to opt out of the campaign emails, but for Dulitz, that isn't enough.

"Students should have the opportunity to opt out of having their UND email public, as they have no opportunity to opt out of having a UND email," Dulitz said. "While public records are important and a very much a 'Dakota virtue,' privacy is of equal importance."
The National Transportation Safety Board should have a preliminary report within five days on a Thursday plane crash that killed three people in Wishek.

Colbie Fandrich, 20, of Wishek, was the pilot of the Piper PA 28-140 that crashed into May Lake at 3:30 p.m. Thursday. His aunt, Christine Fandrich, 38 of Bismarck, and cousin, Aaron Nordstrom, 10, of Bismarck, were passengers in the plane, McIntosh County Sheriff Laurie Spitzer said. All three were dead at the scene of the crash.

Mike Folkerts, investigator in charge of the crash scene for the NTSB, said he is working with three people from the Fargo office of the Federal Aviation Administration and representatives from the manufacturers of the plane and its engine.

The purpose of the investigation, Folkerts said, is to try to prevent future similar events from occurring. He said they will look into factors related to the pilot, the airplane and the environment that could have led to the crash.

Folkerts said Friday afternoon he did not know for sure whether there was a witness to the crash. He said there was no way yet to confirm earlier reports that there was trouble on takeoff.

Were not sure at this point if there is a witness who actually saw the accident, said Folkerts, explaining the Wishek Airport is not controlled, so it is not unusual for someone to take off with no one around.

A final report on the crash will not be completed for six to 12 months, Folkerts said.

The plane was believed to be en route to Bismarck. Colbie Fandrich got his private pilots license last year, Folkerts said. He said the plane may have reached an altitude of 200 to 500 feet before crashing,

May Lake is about a mile across a grass field from the Wishek Airport. Wishek Fire Chief Dave Just said the water is about four feet deep. A four-person team from Bismarck was working to retrieve the plane from the lake Friday afternoon so it could be inspected. After inspection, it will be taken to salvage in Minneapolis.

The four-seat plane was manufactured in 1964. Folkerts said thats not old for a plane; there was a high production rate for such aircrafts in that decade, he said.

The plane belonged to a club, and Fandrich was believed to have rented it.
The government may give more time to overseas high-tech companies like Apple Inc to comply with the domestic sourcing norms for opening single-brand retail stores in the country.

New Delhi: The government may give more time to overseas high-tech companies like Apple Inc to comply with the domestic sourcing norms for opening single-brand retail stores in the country.

The government, according to officials, is not in favour of diluting the mandatory 30 per cent local sourcing norm but is open to the possibility of giving more time to such firms. The department of industrial policy and promotion (DIPP) is looking to tweak the FDI policy on sourcing. The 30 per cent local sourcing norm may not be changed, but the time given to comply might be relaxed, a finance ministry official said.

The local sourcing norm has become a bone of contention between both the ministries as the commerce and industry ministry has recommended to exempt Apple Inc from this rule, while the finance ministry has rejected it.

A panel headed by DIPP secretary has recommended to exempt Apple Inc, which wants to open wholly-owned single brand retail stores in the country, from the mandatory sourcing norms saying the US-based companys products are state of the art and cutting edge. At present, 100 per cent FDI is permitted in single-brand retail sector but companies are required to take FIPB permission if the limit exceeds 49 per cent.
New York: Billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates on Wednesday said that he plans to donate 100,000 chicks to poor nations in an effort to end extreme poverty. The chicks will go to rural areas in two dozen developing countries from Burkina Faso to Bolivia, where the Heifer International charity manages breeding operations and distribution, according to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Speaking in front of chickens pecking and clucking in a New York City skyscraper, he said: Theres no investment that has a return percentage anything like being able to breed chickens. Raising and selling chickens can lift families out of poverty, and a farmer breeding 250 chickens a year could make $1,250, said the Foundation, which is partnering with the Heifer International.

Referring to the proverb that teaching a man to fish will feed him for a lifetime, he said: The parable could have been stated in terms of giving somebody a chicken and showing them how to raise chickens. Mr Gates made his announcement on the 68th floor of a new building at the World Trade Centre, a site not typically used for showcasing chickens, he said. We snuck them in, he quipped.
New Delhi: National Investment and Infrastructure Fund (NIIF) and Qatar Investment Authority (QIA) have signed an agreement for facilitating investment from Qatar in the infrastructure sector in India. The agreement is to facilitate QIA to study investment opportunities in the Indian infrastructure sector. It will remain in effect for 12 months during which period, both parties will discuss and agree on the terms, principles, criteria for such investments. The NIIF will share with QIA a pipeline of investment opportunities available in the infrastructure sector in India. QIA is the sovereign wealth fund of Qatar. They are long-term investors and access investment opportunities across all geographical areas, sectors and asset classes. The majority of their investments are outside Qatar.
MUMBAI: Leading players in the IT sector have expressed their disappointment and concern over a recent clarification issued by the government of Tamil Nadu stating that software employees are free to form trade unions and the IT industry is bound by all labour laws that govern other industries. While the industry body Nasscom played down the development saying that the government has just clarified the existing law, industry veteran and former chief financial officer of Infosys Technologies, T.V. Mohandas Pai, said the development will have an adverse impact on the industry.

This is definitely bad for the state of Tamil Nadu. These antiquated laws were meant for the nineteenth century. They are no longer relevant for the digital century. This will seriously hurt emplo-yment generation for the next four to five years, Mr Pai said and added that any new software firm planning to set up shop in India would prefer cities like Hyderabad or Benga-luru to Chennai.

My only request to the government is not to hurt job creation and growth through such antiquated and archaic laws, he said. The government clarification came in response to a petition filed by the New Democratic Labour Front  IT Employees wing (NDLF). Following the alleged illegal laying off of about 25,000 employees by Tata Consultancy Services in January 2015, NDLF filed a petition with the labour department and later filed a public interest litigation (PIL) before the Madras High Court.

However Nasscom is of the opinion that the latest clarification is just a reiteration of the applicable laws to the industry. This notification is a clarification issued by the secretary following the High Court Order and is not a new legislation. The IT industry is in compliance with applicable provisions. Our initial discussions with the members indicate while the legislation is not new, it will be important to understand changes, if any to the implementation process, Nasscom said. It said that the IT-ITeS sector is undisputedly an employer of choice for the youth in the country and has created 3.5 million direct and 10 million indirect jobs.
New Delhi: Giving up to the pressure from the government on call drops, telecom companies on Friday promised to install 60,000 new towers at a cost of Rs 12,000 crore within three months to improve the quality of their services.

The industry has realised that the negative customer sentiment is too high. So investments will not be constrained, said telecom secretary J.S. Deepak after a meeting with the top executive of the telecom companies.

The DoT (department of telecom) has asked telcos to submit a 60-90 days plan to resolve call drops issue. If the industry buys all the spectrum that offered in the upcoming auction, then there will be no shortage of spectrum even for providing international quality of service, Mr Deepak said.

During the meeting, every telecom company presented its 100-day plan for improving service quality and raised issues hampering improvement in the networks.

Operators also raised issues such as regulatory hurdles by local authorities and opposition by residents associations to installation of mobile towers. The secretary said that the government will work with operators to facilitate installation of mobile towers.

Call drops have been a major issue for over a year now after Prime minister Narendra Modi personally expressed serious concern over the qu-ality of mobile services.

While telecom companies have been claiming that they have improved the quality of their services, latest test drive by Trai in Delhi and Hyderabad released in June revealed that most of them have failed to meet the benchmark on call drops.

With the Supreme Court struck down its order imposing fine for call drops, Trai asked the government give it penal powers. The secretary, however, said penal powers cannot be one and final solution for call drop and the government will take a view on Trais demand for more powers. But in his opinion, he said a person cannot be sent to jail for every call drop.
Mumbai/New Delhi: Censor Board chief Pahlaj Nihalani on Wednesday faced heat on multiple fronts in the escalating row over Udta Punjab with demands for his sacking including over his allegation that its maker Anurag Kashyap may have taken money from AAP to make the drug-themed Bollywood film.

As the film fraternity rallied behind Kashyap in the censorship row with superstar Amitabh Bachchan saying creativity should not be killed, the producers moved the Bombay High Court seeking a copy of the order passed by Censor Boards Review Committee suggesting 13 changes and removing reference to Punjab in the film.

The producers later said they got a copy of the order. Nihalani said that the producers themselves did not collect the order until Wednesday and instead went to media persons making the matter public.

We met with the producers on Monday and told them about the cuts. They said, If we get cuts, will you give us the certificate? I said, Of course yes. But they did not turn up to collect the letter. They directly went to media. Today they came to collect the letter.

Mahesh Bhatt, Mukesh Bhatt and Anurag Kashyap alleged that the Censor Board was intentionally delaying the films clearance.

The Shahid Kapoor, Alia Bhatt, Kareena Kapoor Khan and Diljit Dosanjh starrer movie that delves into how the youth in Punjab have succumbed to drugs is slated for release on June 17.

Mukesh Bhatt while targeting Nahalani said a person who is a roadblock and not a facilitator should be removed.

That is something intolerable, unacceptable to film fraternity and we want him out. His move is malicious and vicious. He lies, delays the process and will bully the person, Mukesh, president, The Film and Producers Guild of India, told reporters at a joint news conference in Mumbai.
Mumbai: Celebrations have begun at the Basra household as Harbhajan Singhs wife Geeta Basra is due to deliver their first baby in July. Her family and friends hosted a white-themed baby shower, several pictures of which have found their way online.

Harbhajan and Geeta tied the knot on October 29 last year after dating for five years. The actress looked stunning in a long off-white gown, flaunting her baby bump .

Geeta, who made her Bollywood debut in 2006 has starred in movies like The Train (2007), Second Hand Husband (2015) among a few others.
Patna: Bollywood diva Priyanka Chopra today came out in support of Anurag Kashyap's 'Udta Punjab' and said creativity should not be stopped in democracy.

"Our forefathers achieved freedom of speech and expression for us after a long struggle... Creativity should not be stopped in democracy," Chopra told reporters here.

In reply to a question regarding the action on 'Udta Punjab' by the censor board, which had raised objection to her film 'Jai Gangaajal', Priyanka said it was a 'Certification body and not censor'.

Read: Heres a complete list of all the cuts demanded by Censor Board for Udta Punjab

"In democracy you cannot dictate what one should eat or watch a movie on a social issue," said Priyanka, who was recently awarded the Padam Shri and has now ventured into Hollywood.

In a reply to another query on whether removal of a word in the title of a movie was justified, she said, "Title is the creativity of every producer and director. So, how can it be changed?"

The leading Bollywood star was here to promote Bhojpuri film 'Bum Bum Bol Raha hai Kashi' produced by her. She was accompanied by her mother Madhu Chopra, who is a co-producer of the film.

"Bum Bum Bol Raha hai Kashi" will be released in cinema halls tomorrow. The film's script is written and directed by Santosh Mishra and has Dinesh Lal Yadav 'Niruaha' in the lead role. Amrapali Dubey and Antra Banerjee are the female cast in the film.

Asked why she chose to produce a Bhojpuri film as her first venture, Priyanka said, "Bhojpuri is my mom's mother tongue. Besides, regional movies should be encouraged."

Priyanka's family hails from Gumla near Jamshedpur which was part of undivided Bihar till 2000, when Jharkhand was carved out of it. The film promotion was held at P & M Mall owned by filmmaker Prakash Jha.
Raj Kapoors daughter Ritu Nanda plans to revisit her book on her father, Raj Kapoor Speaks, an archive that she put together more than a decade ago. It became a bestseller, with millions of copies sold worldwide in multiple languages. Ritu had said then, that she wasnt the best person to write a book on him, since Raj spent little time with her. In fact, Kapoor was at the peak of his career during her wedding. Years later, here she is again, wanting to make additions to the book. This time around, she wants to add more chapters, providing more anecdotal and visual content to the readers.

In order to gather more material, Ritu has reached out to friends from the film industry. Recently, she also messaged Amitabh Bachchan to share few more anecdotes of Raj Kapoor that he could think of. During a recent conversation, the actor mentioned that the Kapoor daughter had indeed gotten in touch with him, seeking more information on her father.

Ritu has been a top agent of LIC for having sold the maximum number of policies in a short span of time. She later set up Ritu Nandas Insurance Service. The updated book promises to reveal never-before-seen pictures of the showman.
Rating:

Director: Ribhu Dasgupta

Cast: Amitabh Bachchan, Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Vidya Balan

Ribhu Dasgupta sets his film in Kolkata tracking the lonely and a painful journey of John Biswas (Amitabh Bachchan) who will stop at nothing to get justice. John's granddaughter was kidnapped and eventually found dead despite trying his best to get her back safely. 8 years and John has not even blinked once in a hope to find the person responsible for his loss who is still at large.

Ribhu's character description of John is so detailed that he leaves nothing about the man to present it to the audience. It is this very close attention to detailing that makes you follow John's journey as if it was yours. Be it at the police station where he patiently sits for hours to get an answer or his personal space where he is shown dotingly takes care of his wife. Within 15-20 minutes of the film, you know John enough to believe and empathize with his day-to-day struggle.

Coming to Amitabh's performance he thoroughly shines in a plot which in certain portions appeared slow. May be because the story is about an aged character, the director decided to stick to a certain pace. Big B's expression, his walk, his mannerisms makes him look like John throughout. If a director can strip off the stardom of an actor and bring out a character from his performance, he has won the battle. Only towards the ending of the film in a very important scene Amitabh slipped out of John's closet and was himself. That is the only time it felt he wasn't in his character.

Coming to the music by Clinton Cerejo, he takes the weight of a heavy story line and adds a certain mood to the film which keeps you involved in the scenes. Tushar Kanti Ray's cinematography highlighting Kolkata as its backdrop and the way he has filmed in real locations is commendable. Editor Gairik Sarkar keeps the run time in check and with an interesting way of jumping back and forth in the storyline.

Vidya Balan plays a cop (Sarita Sarkar) and Nawazuddin steps into the role Father Martin Das in the film which sees both of them in a very crisp and powerful role. The two flawlessly pull off the challenging parts in the film. Watch it for the raw display of human drama and the realistic approach to many situations which has been missing at the movies for sometime now.
The catalog of the auction Magnificent Jewels and The Cullinan Dream is displaying at Christie's in New York, June 9, 2016. (Phoot: AFP)

New York, United States: A blue diamond from the South African mine famous for contributing to the British Crown Jewels sold for more than $25 million in New York on Thursday, Christie's said.

The auction house said the Cullinan Dream was the largest Fancy Intense Blue type diamond to go under the hammer and was snapped up by an absentee bidder for $25.4 million, including premiums.

Christie's said it is the biggest of four blue diamonds cut from a 122.52 carat rough discovered in 2014 at the Cullinan mine northeast of Pretoria where the biggest ever rough diamond was unearthed a century ago.

The mine yielded the 530.20 Cullinan I, which is the largest polished white diamond in existence and part of the Crown Jewels housed at the Tower of London.

Thursday's sale comes weeks after a dazzling blue diamond once owned by Britain's late mining magnate Philip Oppenheimer fetched a record $57.5 million in Geneva.

Jewel auctions have seen a surging value of precious stones, as the world's ultra-rich invest in hard assets as a safeguard against stock market volatility.

The Cullinan mine is where a 3,106-carat diamond was discovered in 1905. It was presented to the British monarch King Edward VII and cut up, resulting in gems forming part of the British crown jewels.

They include the Cullinan I in the Queen's Sceptre and the Cullinan II, which is in the crown that the British monarch wears to the opening of parliament.
A man who has been ordered by the court to give a 24-hour-notice to the police before he has sex has complained that the restrictions are making him feel that hes living in a virtual prison. The unidentified man, who is reportedly a parent in his forties, was given a sexual risk order in January that requires him to restrict his sex life and internet use and even submit to the police details of his electronic devices.

The man, who has no previous criminal history, says that the order was granted by a judge post a retrial after he was cleared of rape charges. He even revealed to the media that the jury took just six minutes to acquit him. When he was accused of biting and scratching the alleged victim, he claimed that the scratching was only part of a massage. He also stresses that his admission about his interest in S&M was used against him at trial, according to BuzzFeed.

It puts an end to your life. I had more freedom in prison. The severity of the restrictions exceed what convicted criminals would get on a sexual offence prevention order, he told the Yorkshire Post reporters outside York magistrates court.

He says that as long as the order was in place, his chances of getting involved in a romantic relationship would remain slim. Can you imagine, 24 hours before sex? Come on. Theres a nice French restaurant Id like to take you to, but first the police are just going to come around for a little chat, he adds. Sources say that such an order can last for a minimum of two years but in case of a breach, it could land him a jail sentence of up to five years.
This photo of blogger Aarti Dubey along with her two friends in bikinis was initially taken down by Instagram. (Photo: Instagram)

Instagram was compelled to apologise to Singaporean-Indian blogger Aarti Olivia Dubey after her two-week protest following the deletion of her photos in a bikini. They claimed that a member of their team had removed the picture accidentally.

Dubey, who describes herself as a fat brown feminist with a penchant for fashion, was angry when Instagram took down photos of herself and two other plus-size models from a bikini shoot on May 21. She shared the official apology from Instagram on her account Curves Becomes Her along with a note that read: "It's almost TWO weeks. So I accept your apology Instagram but it does not change a thing. You have placed the image back but at what cost? You are answerable to ALL of my plus size friends for removing their images or accounts on Instagram or Facebook.

The plus-size blogger then later posted several photos of herself in a bikini to reiterate her stand against body-shaming.
Chennai: A youth from Royapuram was allegedly killed by members of a neighbours family for taking obscene videos of the housewife and posting the same in Facebook with face morphed but with valid contact numbers after the woman reportedly refused to entertain him sexually, he housewife started getting obscene calls because of the FB posts.

The deceased has been identified as Gavaskar 29, who had been staying with his grandmother in Royapuram since he was 10 years old after the death of his mother. His father, after marrying again, has been living in Puducherry.

The murder took place on May 25 in a moving vehicle on East Coast Road when the suspects identified as Anbu (43), who runs a manpower consultancy in Chennai, assaulted and strangulated Gavaskar to death. Gavaskar had allegedly blackmailed Anbus wife for sexual favours by threatening to post her obscene videos on the net. Anbus family was furious over Gavaskars FB activities as the family started getting calls and comments on FB posts by him. Anbu had warned Gavakar and forced him to go back to Puducherry a month ago. But he continued posting morphed obscene images of Anbus wife on FB.

Anbus family first tried forcing Gavaskar to drink poison on Marina beach, but he survived the attempt. On May 25, Anbu went to Puducherry along with three others and managed to bring Gavaskar in a vehicle to Chennai. On the way they allegedly murdered him by strangulating and hanged his body from a tree in an isolated area near Mahabalipuram.

Only after a relative of Gavaskar lodged a complaint with the Kirumampakkam police station in Puducherry did the police start probing his disappearance. The probe led to details of mobile calls exchanged between Anbu and Gavaskar after which the police picked up Anbu, who reportedly confessed to the crime. Police arrested Anbu and his associate Karthik and are hunting for his wife and a relative.
Police produce three of the accused in the Danish woman gangrape case at the Tis Hazari Courts in New Delhi. (Photo: PTI)

New Delhi: DNA and other forensic reports, including the report on detailed medical examination of the 52-year-old Danish gangrape victim conducted at Copenhagen at the request of Indian government, today sealed the fate of five accused in the sensational gangrape case of 2014.

The court, which awarded them life imprisonment till their death, relied on these reports and observed that the involvement of the accused was "proved beyond reasonable doubt through the scientific evidence i.e. the DNA report".

It noted that matching of the DNA profile clearly connected these accused with the commission of crime and there was no possibility of any manipulation in medical examination and DNA report prepared in a foreign country.

"Furthermore, it is very important to mention that as per request from Indian government, the victim lady was subjected to detail medical examination at Copenhagen and PW 25, expert from FSL (Rohini), has clearly stated that similarity has been observed in the report prepared at Department of Forensic Medicine, University of Copenhagen and the report prepared by him," Additional Sessions Judge Ramesh Kumar said.

"Judicial notice can be taken that there is no possibility of any manipulation in medical examination and DNA report prepared at foreign country i.e. Copenhagen and no suggestion has been given by the defence in this regard also," the court said.

It said medical examintaion of the victim conducted in Copenhagen also corroborated with the forensic science laboratory (FSL) report here.

"The DNA profile was generated from clothings of the victim which was seized from the spot in the night of incident itself and those DNA profile matched with the DNA profile generated from the samples of accused persons. Thus, it is clear that accused persons are the offenders who committed the offence," the court said in its 69-page judgement.

It observed that the "most vital evidence" to connect all these accused with the commission of crime was the DNA report. "The DNA is a individual characteristic of each individual and is most important thing for identity of an individual," it said adding the DNA profile generated from the clothes of the victim had matched with the DNA profile generated from the sample of the accused persons.

The court also referred to the testimony of an FSL expert who had deposed as a prosecution witness in the case and said that he had "found similarities" between DNA report prepared by him and the DNA report prepared in Denmark.
Congress claimed that the comments of Pahlaj Nihalani showed the appointments made by the Modi government were of 'partisan nature' to drive the BJP-RSS agenda.

New Delhi: Congress on Thursday latched on to the comments of the censor board chief in the row over film "Udta Punjab" to allege that Prime Minister Narendra Modi has "covertly ensured" that it be banned or "at least neutered" to hide the scale of the drug problem there.

"Desperate to ensure that the scale of the malaise is not revealed, Modi has covertly ensured that this movie is banned or at least neutered," the AICC said in a commentary.

It claimed that comments of Pahlaj Nihalani, chief of the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC), showed the appointments made by the Modi government were of "partisan nature" to drive the BJP-RSS agenda.

"In an act of sycophancy, Nihalani readily admitted in an interview that he was a lackey (a chamcha) of Prime Minister. This ... shows the integrity and partisan nature of the appointments of the Modi government."

"Institutions are being robbed of all autonomy, and being turned into agents to drive the BJP-RSS agenda and to help Modi's electoral prospects," the AICC said in the commentary posted on its website.

Titled "CBFC chief is taking orders from BJP & Akalis, who have, together, ruined Punjab", the party noted that there is drug menace in Punjab.

"This film is a fictionalised account of this problem. Drug abuse is a problem that has devastated lakhs of families in Punjab, and the BJP-SAD government has refused to acknowledge this as a major issue."

It claimed that when token action is taken, it is directed at the addicts rather than drug mafia or peddlers. "When the Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi raised this issue in 2012, the Badal government subjected him to ridicule and abuse".

Congress insisted that BJP is a coalition partner of Akali Dal and is "equally culpable" for the "inaction" of the Punjab government.

"The BJP is scared. It is scared that it has done nothing for the people. To ensure that its own inadequacies are not made public, it is desperate to control all information being disseminated to the public, which is why they have invested heavily on social media and in advertisements," it said.

Besides, it stressed that more than blowing their own trumpet, the BJP is "systematically targeting" everyone who is talking about the many ills in our society.

"Currently, it is the controversy surrounding a movie, but under Modi rationalists have been murdered, freedoms of university students been stamped down and artists and writers forced to silence," it alleged.

At the AICC briefing, party spokesman Raj Babbar took a dig at Nihalani for his controversial comments. "It seems that Modi government is a government of chamchas (lackeys)," he remarked.
At the main event, to be held in Chandigarh with the participation of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, at least 2,000 paramilitary jawans will take part the event. (Photo: Representational Image/PTI)

New Delhi: At least 30,000 paramilitary jawans will participate in events organised in state capitals and other prominent cities across the country to make the June 21 international Yoga Day celebration a success.

A high-level meeting of the Committee of Secretaries decided that the celebrations must be participated by at least 1,000 central paramilitary force personnel at each locations in ensuring the "grandeur" of the event across the country.

At the main event, to be held in Chandigarh with the participation of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, at least 2,000 paramilitary jawans will take part the event.

The Indo-Tibetan Border Police has been made the nodal force for the Chandigarh event. The force's primary mandate is to guard the Sino-Indian border, sources said.

According to a circular, a minimum of 1,000 personnel of paramilitary forces will be deployed in concerned state capital and cities for participation. The event will be held at 28 prominent cities or state capitals.

Every state capital will have a nodal force like CRPF, BSF, CISF, ITBP, SSB and Assam Rifles and they will ensure the jawans participation with common dress white T-shirts and black track pants.

The paramilitary forces were told to organise Yoga Day event in all state capitals where state governments are not involved. State governments of a few non-BJP rule states are not organising the celebration, sources said.
Sehore: BJP MLA from Nepanagar, Rajendra Dadu, was on Thursday killed in an accident on Indore-Bhopal road between Ashta and Sehore towns. Three others were injured.



The BJP legislator was coming to Bhopal to attend a party meeting at the Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan's residence ahead of the June 11 Rajya Sabha election.



His car overturned and he died on the spot, a police officer said.



Sehore collector and the superintendent of police reached the spot after getting information about the incident.



Madhya Pradesh Minister and cabinet spokesman Narottam Mishra confirmed Dadu's death.



Dadu was 54 and survived by his wife, four daughters and a son, family sources said.



Dadu had won from Nepanagar (ST) seat for a second time.



State BJP president Nandkumar Singh Chouhan reached Sehore hospital soon after getting information about the mishap.



BJP legislature party's meeting was cancelled after learning about the incident, party sources said.
New Delhi: BJP on Friday played down the buzz over Home Minister Rajnath Singh as its face for Uttar Pradesh assembly election, saying he has been a lead campaigner in most recent state elections and its ranks were full of capable leaders.

Speculation has been rife over who will be its chief ministerial candidate for the crucial polls and Singh, the last BJP chief minister in Uttar Pradesh, is being seen as a "natural" face by many due to his experience even though top party leaders have maintained a studied silence over the issue.

Party spokesperson Sudhanshu Trivedi told a press conference, "We have many capable leaders," parrying questions over the issue.

"Whenever a decision is taken, parliamentary board will convey it to you," he said.

The party's comments came on a day when Singh also insisted that there is no dearth of capable people in the party as he chose to downplay talks about him.

"UP mein kabil chehron ke koi kami nahi hai (There is no dearth of capable faces in UP)," he said in Lucknow when asked about BJP's chief ministerial candidate for the 2017 Assembly polls.

Party President Amit Shah had recently said it was yet to decide whether a chief ministerial candidate should be projected or not.

Singh in the past has said he was not keen on returning to state politics. What is though almost certain he will play a prominent role during the campaign.

Trivedi, though, pointed out that Singh after Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Shah had campaigned most in Assam and Bihar polls as well.

Though its success in Assam has fuelled talks within the party that the formula of projecting a face will be repeated in Uttar Pradesh too, the lack of a candidate with appeal across the country's most populous is a hindrance.

A BJP leader also pointed out that it has done poorly in the last three polls despite projecting a CM pick, Singh in 2002, Kalyan Singh in 2007 and Uma Bharti in 2012.

Bharti was not officially announced as a candidate and was part of a quartet, including Singh, Kalraj Mishra and Surya Pratap Shahi. But her OBC credentials and the party's decision to task her with reviving the party in the state had created the impression of she being in charge of its campaign.

Many believe that the party needs to project a leader to counter Mulayam Singh Yadav-led SP and Mayawati-led BSP, two leaders with wide appeal.
Judith's family received a call at around 1:30 am by Embassy officials informing them about her abduction. (Photo: Twitter/ANI)

Kolkata: Parents of Judith D'Souza, the Indian woman who has reportedly been abducted in Kabul, on Friday appealed to the government to get their daughter back.

"I would like to ask the Central Government and the Chief Minister to please look into the matter and bring my daughter back," Judith D'Souza's father told reporters in Kolkata.

D'Souza's father said his daughter was in Kabul for the past one year. "She is a development officer and works with women and children. We had spoken to her last on Wednesday," he said adding, "She was supposed to be here, next week."

"The Indian embassy in Kabul called up at 1.30 this morning to inform about her abduction. They said they think that she has been abducted," he added.

"My daughter was in Kabul for the past one year and before that, she had worked at a number of places. She had worked with United Nations; she had several appointments at various places," he added.

Earlier, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj assured the D'Souzas of all help. Taking to Twitter, Swaraj said, "I have spoken to the sister of Judith D' Souza. We will spare no efforts to rescue her."

"She is your sister and India's daughter. We are doing everything to rescue her. Pl take care of your sick father," Swaraj told in reply to her sibling Jerome who sought her help for the release.

According to television reports, the 40-year-old woman, who was a senior technical adviser with the Aga Khan Foundation, was snatched by unknown gunmen from Kabul's Taimani area on Thursday night.
Kochi: A Special Investigation Team probing the murder of a Dalit woman in nearby Perumbavoor has secured CCTV footage from a shop in the neighbourhood of her residence to examine whether it captured movements of the suspected killer on the day the law student was murdered.



"We have secured the CCTV camera details from the shop hoping that it might have captured visuals of the suspected killer," a senior police official probing the case said.



The official, who did not wish to be named, downplayed local media reports which claimed the CCTV footage secured by police showed the suspected killer following the law student in the neighbourhood of her residence, hours ahead of the incident on April 28.



According to the reports, CCTV evidence secured from the fertiliser depot showed a man wearing a yellow T Shirt following a woman, believed to be the victim, who was on her way home after getting down from a bus at Vattolippady near Perumbavoor around 1.30 PM that day.



"It is not sure whether the people found in the footages are related to the incident," the official told PTI when asked about such reports.



Meanwhile, the owner of the fertiliser depot, Shibu, told reporters that the police probing the case took the hard disc of the CCTV footage on Wednesday.



Newly appointed Kerala Police chief Loknath Behera, while visiting the house of the 30-year-old woman on Sunday, had said a scientific probe has been launched to nab the culprits involved in the crime.



Noting that the probe into the sensational case was progressing well, he had said it might take some time to nab the criminals.



The case is being investigated by a team headed by ADGP B Sandhya.



The newly sworn-in LDF government in one of its first decisions had appointed the senior woman IPS officer as head of the new team to probe the case.



The Kerala High Court had last week rejected the plea for a CBI probe into the case, noting that the new Special Investigation Team had been set up in the case.



The woman, who hailed from a poor family, was allegedly raped and brutally assaulted using sharp-edged weapons before being murdered at her house on April 28.



The murder was in focus during the May 16 Kerala Assembly poll campaigns with political parties attacking the then UDF regime for "tardy" progress in the investigation and its failure to nab the culprits.
Delhi court on May 27 had dismissed his plea seeking 12 weeks' parole for medical treatment. (Photo: Representational Image)

New Delhi: Delhi High Court on Friday sought the response of the Aam Aadmi Party government on the plea of INLD leader Ajay Chautala, serving a 10-year jail term in a teachers' recruitment scam case, seeking two months' parole to maintain social and familial ties.

Justice Sanjeev Sachdeva issued notice to the government and sought its reply on plea of Ajay who has also sought setting aside of the government's May 3 order by which his application for parole was rejected.

Ajay Chautala, in his plea, has contended that his parole application was "illegally" rejected by the Delhi government. He has also alleged in his plea, filed through advocate Amit Sahni, that the rejection was communicated to him only after his appeal against a similar earlier decision had been filed and was pending before the high court.

The court on May 27 had dismissed his plea seeking 12 weeks' parole for medical treatment. The petition further states that Ajay Chautala does not come in the category of persons who are to be denied parole as per Delhi government's guidelines for parole/furlough.

The INLD leader has alleged that in his case the said guidelines have been "completely overlooked".

Regarding the government's May 3 order, the petition alleges that it was passed "in a mechanical manner, without application of mind and appreciation of facts" and "no reasons have been assigned" for declining the relief.

The Supreme Court on August 3 last year had dismissed the appeals of Ajay and his father O P Chautala challenging the high court's verdict upholding their conviction and sentence of 10 years awarded by a trial court in the junior basic trained (JBT) teachers recruitment scam case.

The high court had on March 5, 2015, upheld the 10-year jail term awarded to Chautalas and three others, saying, "The overwhelming evidence showed the shocking and spine-chilling state of affairs in the country."

The father-son duo and 53 others, including two IAS officers, were convicted on January 16, 2013 by the trial court for illegally recruiting 3,206 JBT teachers in Haryana in 2000.
The current environment on the campus is extremely vitiated and is perceived by the Dalit community as intimidating and hostile, alleges Prof Sreepati Ramudu. (Photo: DC)

Hyderabad: A Hyderabad University Dalit professor has resigned protesting against the appointment of Prof Vipin Srivastava as the varsity's Pro-Vice-Chancellor-1 and has alleged that there was "hostile" the environment for his community in the campus.

In his resignation letter to the university Registrar, Prof Sreepati Ramudu, Head of the Centre for the Study of Social Exclusion and Inclusive Policy, on Thursday referred to the death of Dalit research scholar Rohith Vemula on January 17 that stirred nation-wide protests, and said he had been following the developments on the campus before and after the incident.

"The current environment on the campus is extremely vitiated and is perceived by the Dalit community as intimidating and hostile," he said.

"They (Dalits) feel very vulnerable and lack confidence in the impartiality of the administration. So, I had hoped that knowing very well the sentiments of the Dalit faculty expressed in many letters from the SC/ST Teachers Forum, the administration will take up confidence building measures. Instead, to my shock, I see a circular naming Prof Vipin Srivastava as the Pro-Vice-Chancellor-1," Ramudu said.

Reacting to the development, Srivastava on Friday alleged Ramudu was not cooperating in administrative matters and that he was not attending to any work.

"I don't know if he is protesting, but he has not been happy since January. He was not signing any papers, he was not cooperating in administrative matters. He was not attending to any work," he said.

Srivastava said a student wanted to attend a conference but Ramudu was not signing his paper nor was he responding to administrative work. "The Dean and I cleared that paper (of the student)," Srivastava told PTI.

"As far as Ramudu is concerned he has not tendered formal resignation as Head of the Centre, whether he has done so or not I don't know because I am on leave today and it is only through news reports that I came to know about it. I need to check from the university authorities if he has resigned," he said.

Ramudu alleged Srivastava had faced a serious allegation in the past. Srivastava was the chairman of the committee that had recommended punishment for five Dalit research scholars, including Vemula, who committed suicide.

The university had appointed Srivastava as the Pro-Vice-Chancellor-1 on June 7. He would be assisting the Vice-Chancellor Prof Appa Rao Podile.

Ramudu wrote, "I am pained at the constant humiliation and oppression that is meted out to the Dalit community in the university. I am pained and my conscience as the Head of the Centre at a time when the Dalit community on campus lacks the confidence in the administration that should ideally be impartial."

Ramudu said he was the supervisor of one of the suspended students and that he was never informed by the administration about the issue until the suspension order was issued.

"When the students started living in the shopping complex in the 'velivada', in response to the punishment, Prof Appa Rao told us to influence the students in the capacity as supervisors and ask the students to leave the campus. I have been convinced that there have been many omissions and commissions against the Dalit students (violation of procedures) in the investigation of events culminating in the punishment of students which I took to his (Appa Rao) notice," says Ramudu.

He said, he made many constructive suggestions on how to solve this problem which were ignored. As a result of the intransigent attitude of the administration, which he believed resulted in the tragic death of Vemula, he had also expressed these same thoughts openly in the academic council meeting held on April 6, 2016, he said.

He said in his capacity as the Head of the Centre, he thought there will be measures taken by the university administration to build confidence among Dalits on campus but to his dismay, the things were turning the other way round.

"In view of this evidence of a hostile atmosphere on campus against the most vulnerable community, i.e. the Dalits, my conscience does not permit me to continue as Head of a Centre. Therefore, in continuation to the earlier collective decision of SC/ST Teachers' Forum to resign from all administrative posts, I reiterate my decision to resign as Head, CSSEIP in protest," Ramudu said.
New Delhi: JNU students union president Kanhaiya Kumar, along with 42 others, were on Friday detained by police at Bihar Bhawan in Chanakyapuri here for protesting against the alleged attack on students in hunger strike at the College of Arts and Crafts in Patna.

The demonstration started around 3.30 pm, following which Kumar and 42 others were put inside a bus and detained at Parliament Street Police Station here. "The protesters were detained considering law and order issues," DCP (New Delhi) Jatin Narwal said.

The protesters also demanded extension of the date of Bihar Public Service Commission (BPSC) main exams so that the dates do not clash with that of UPSC prelims.

Read: Finishing PhD now a political responsibility for me: Kanhaiya Kumar

"The condition of education in Bihar is continuously deteriorating. The government is not taking the demands of students regarding quality education seriously. And those who are fighting for this significant and relevant cause are facing violence and imprisonment," Kumar said.

He further said, "From the last few days, whenever there is a protest, Delhi Police detains us in five minutes. Throughout India, students are being attacked and whenever they protest, which is an elemental right, they are not allowed to do so. It is an attack on democracy".

Read: Delhi High Court stays JNU action against Kanhaiya, others

Earlier this week, seven students of College of Arts and Crafts under Patna University sustained injuries in an attack allegedly carried out by some miscreants while they were protesting against the conduct of the administration.

Read: ISIS asked us to infiltrate Kanhaiyas JNU stir, say recruits: report

"The protesters were demanding that the corrupt principal of the college be sacked when they were shot at by the guards of the vice chancellor of the University. The goons and police trashed them, and when others went for protest against these actions, they were detained. We demand their immediate release," Kumar said.

"We will keep the struggle alive and if needed we shall go to Patna," he added.
The High Court had last month stayed the NGT order which directed the state government not to register any diesel vehicle with capacity of 2000 CC and more, except public transport and local authority vehicles. (Photo: PTI)

Kochi: The Kerala High Court on Friday stayed the National Green Tribunal's order which banned diesel vehicles that are older than 10 years in six cities across Kerala.

The High Court had last month stayed the NGT order which directed the state government not to register any diesel vehicle with capacity of 2000 CC and more, except public transport and local authority vehicles.

In a landmark judgement, an NGT bench in Kochi had on May 23 banned light and heavy diesel vehicles, which are more than 10 years old, in six major cities, including Thiruvananthapuram, Kollam, Kochi, Thrissur, Kozhikode and Kannur.

The order was issued against diesel vehicles while hearing a petition filed by Lawyers' Environmental Awareness Forum. The bench had 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.
Mumbai: Downplaying Prime Minister Narendra Modi's meeting with US President Barack Obama, NCP chief Sharad Pawar on Friday said the exercise is not going to serve any purpose as Obama's term in office is coming to an end.

He also took a dig at Modi over his "frequent" foreign visits "at the time of drought" in many parts of the country, saying the BJP-led NDA dispensation has lost its appeal in the last two years.

Addressing the party workers who assembled here to mark the 17th Foundation Day of NCP, Pawar said, "See, Modi is Prime Minister of India, but is visiting foreign countries frequently. He meets Obama more frequently, notwithstanding the fact that Obama's days in the office are numbered. Modi's meeting with the US president is not going to serve any purpose. It's a futile exercise."

Pawar had formed the NCP after breaking away from the Congress in 1999 over the "foreign origin" of Sonia Gandhi.

"In the last two years, the BJP is fast losing its sheen. This has been proved time and again by the frequent drubbings suffered by the BJP in the elections in Delhi, Bihar and West Bengal," he said.

Pawar said the NCP could replace BJP in power if it works hard because initially the BJP too had only two seats.

"If the BJP can do it (come to power), then why cannot we? Rather we have bigger capabilities (sic)," Pawar said. However, the Maratha strongman clarified that he was

not against the foreign visits of Modi per se, but "people should be aware that these tours are taking place at a time when most parts of the country are reeling under severe drought."

On the occasion, Pawar also asked Mumbai unit NCP chief Sachin Ahir to call on Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis and "pressurise" the government in handing over the keys of 23,000 flats that have been constructed for the needy by different agencies.

"This is really unbelievable that 23,000 flats have been built and are lying unoccupied since the last 4 to 5 years. (Previous) Prithviraj Chavan government did not allot these flats to the poor and the Devendra Fadnavis government too is doing the same (not handing over possession of flats)," he said.

Pawar was referring to the housing units constructed under various welfare schemes by the government agencies, but not being handed over to the beneficiaries so far.

Interestingly, Pawar's party was the ruling partner with Congress in the erstwhile Democratic Front government headed by Prithviraj Chavan in its last leg before it lost in 2014 polls.

"I am handing over this responsibility to Sachin Ahir to meet the CM and give him a deadline of 15 days to allot the keys of all flats. Otherwise, we will start agitation and would forcefully enter into these flats," Pawar said.

During his address, Pawar's confidante and former Union minister Praful Patel said the Modi government at Centre and Fadnavis government in state are working like "event management companies".

Ahir alleged that the Sena-BJP combine, which rules the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation, is responsible for the "plight" of Mumbaikar
New Delhi: Congress on Friday said India has suffered a "setback" as it has failed to gain entry into the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) in the backdrop of China playing a spoiler.

"Unfortunately, when the NSG met last night, on the question of admission of new members essentially to consider India's application, nothing really came out of that meeting and so in real terms, it has really been a setback for India rather than something to be proud of", party spokesman Manish Tewari told reporters.

Tearing apart claims of the government and the BJP that PM's just concluded tour to several contries including US as a big strategic and diplomatic success, he dismissed as a "big zero" the sum total of the foreign visits and foreign policy initiatives.

"Never ever in the past almost three decades, China has taken such an absolutely hostile position to India whether on the question of the Nuclear Suppliers Group or even getting the Jaish-e-Mohd and Maulana Masood Azhar labeled as terrorist entity", Tewari said. He said China "has never been so belligerent in the past 29 years".

"China is extremely crucial and has a sensitive relationship with India but has never been so belligerent in the past 29 years ever since late Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi broke the ice with China in 1987", he said.

Reports from Vienna had it that with the US pushing its case, India's bid for membership of the elite 48-member grouping has received positive indications from most of the member countries but China was still playing the spoiler by persisting with its opposition.
Hyderabad: The Osmania University appears to have become the destination for anyone who wants to raise his or her voice against the TRS government and Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao.

Leaders from the Congress, BJP, TD and more recently, TJAC chairman M. Kodandaram, have found the OU campus a perfect platform to criticise Mr Rao from, and the students have been quite a receptive audience.

The OU students had been angry at Mr Rao even before he became the CM. In 2014, when Mr Raos chopper landed in the campus, he was shown chappals by the students.

The OU has seen protests and effigy burning incidents in the past two years, each dharna lightly more strident than the one earlier, on wide ranging issues like plans to use the OU land for housing scheme, promise of regularisation of government contract workers, lack of job notifications and appointment of Vice-Chancellor.

OUJAC leader M. Krishank says, If Osmania University students can bring a person to power, we can also bring him down. That is why TRS government is considering non-academicians, including IPS officers, for the Vice-Chancellors post to suppress the voice of students.

He said that students from OU and other state universities have not been given due credit for achieving Telangana state. Telangana Nirudyoga Vidyarthi JAC chairman J. Kalyan says, OU is representative of entire Telangana as students from all districts study and even raise their voice of protest here. OU has produced pioneers in all fields, including politics. Naturally, if there is injustice, the university becomes a powerful platform for anyone who would like to air their grievances and views.

Some OU student leaders who were active in Telangana agitation like Pedapalli MP Balka Suman, MLA G. Kishore, mayor, Bonthu Rammohan, Telangana SC corporation chairman Pidamarthi Ravi and TRS politburo member E. Srinivas did occupy good positions in the government.

However, the students complain that none of these former OU students raise their issues or make official visits to the campus to find out their problems.

When asked if the allegations were true, Mr Balka Suman declined to comment.

TPCC working president, Mallu Bhatti Vikramarka said, OU has all the right elements: Ideological diversity, intellectuals, youths and teachers from across Telangana which makes it the right platform to raise any issue and protest against injustice.
New Delhi: Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar will on Saturday meet with industry representatives to carry forward the discussion on strategic partnerships that the government plans to enter with private firms in critical sectors of defence manufacturing.

The meeting will be the first one with a sub-group that has been created to have a more focused discussion on it, sources said. Former DRDO chief V K Aatre had earlier this year submitted a report to the Defence Ministry recommending guidelines for selecting domestic private firms for strategic partnership.

However, Indian private defence industry is divided over the issue with some big players batting for it while others pushing to delay it by at least next five years. Parrikar has already held a round of talks with the industry chambers over the issue.

The feeling among several private industry players is that only the big firms will benefit out of this move. However, many large firms are not open to the idea since they feel they would be restricted to just specific fields and, therefore, their overall investment and plans will get affected.
It has emerged that over 80 intelligence inputs were sent to the government but it did not act because it was in collusion with land mafia, alleges BJP. (Photo: PTI)

New Delhi: BJP on Friday cited a purported sting operation to fire a fresh salvo at the Samajwadi Party government in Uttar Pradesh, alleging it has "exposed" the ruling party's collusion with Mathura's Jawahar Bag encroachers. The party also asked the state government to immediately recommed for a CBI inquiry so that truth could come out.

"The sting has exposed Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav and his government. He had blamed officers for the violence. Now it has emerged that over 80 intelligence inputs were sent to the government but it did not act because it was in collusion with land mafia," BJP national secretary Shrikant Sharma claimed.

The sting operation purportedly showed intelligence officials saying they had informed the Uttar Pradesh government about threats posed by the well-armed encroachers, who were also part of a sect.

The government has been making efforts to cover up its crime but BJP will continue with its agitation till all those involved are exposed, he alleged.

Sharma said Yadav should apologise to officials for blaming them for the killing of cops and demanded that the chief minister should not take action against the officials shown in the sting video.
Subramanian Swamy said that Javadekar must call Maneka and resolve the public spat between them.

New Delhi: With Prakash Javadekar and Union Women and Child Development Minister locking horns over the culling of wild animals, senior party leader Subramanian Swamy on Friday advised the Minister of State for Environment and Forests to call up Maneka Gandhi and solve the issue.

"Maneka has a long record of being concerned about this issue and I think the proper thing to do is not to reply to her publicly but for Javadaker to pick up the phone and call her. I mean it is also true that she could have picked up the phone but by then he had already announced it," Swamy said.

Read: 200 nilgai shot dead in Bihar; Maneka, Javadekar lock horns over 'culling'

"I think he should not respond to her publicly but pick up the phone and call, saying let's have tea and discuss this and come to a conclusion," he added.

Gandhi had on Thursday trained guns at Javadekar and said the latter's ministry is frivolously granting permission to kill innocent animals.

On the reports of large number of deer being killed in Patna in Bihar, Gandhi said that she does not understand this 'lust' to kill.

"The Environment Ministry here is writing to every state asking them which animal they want to kill and they will grant permission. In Bengal they gave permission to kill elephants, in Himachal they gave permission to kill monkeys, in Goa they gave permission to kill peacocks," said Gandhi.

"In Chandrapur where the condition is so adverse that they have already killed 53 wild boars and permission to kill 50 more has been given. Environment Ministries own wildlife department said that they don't want to kill animals and should not be pressurised for the same. I don't understand this lust for killing," she added.

Later on, Javadekar countered Maneka's charges and asserted that such decisions were taken keeping scientific facts in mind to help those affected by such animals.

"I will not react on who said what. But as per the law, we must help the farmers whose crops get ruined. The state government sends us a proposal and only then we initiate a step for a specific region and for a specific period of time keeping the scientific facts in mind," he told the media here.

Defending the Centre, Javadekar stated that taking such a decision was not the Centre's prerogative, adding the Environment Ministry acted as per the law.
Lucknow: The Akhilesh government, late on Wednesday night, dismissed Kuldeep Ujjwal, the chairman of Uttar Pradesh Liquor Prohibition Board after an audio clip of him threatening and abusing senior officials in Baghpat district went viral on social media.

Kuldeep Ujjwal, who is also the Samajwadi Partys Baghpat candidate for the assembly polls next year, however, alleged that this was a conspiracy by his rivals and said that the audio clip was doctored.

Principal Secretary (Information) Navneet Sehgal confirmed that Kuldeep Ujjwal had been dismissed on the orders of the chief minister, he did not elaborate on the reasons behind the move.

In the audio clip that has gone viral, the SP leader can be clearly heard threatening the district panchayati raj officer (DPRO) Sarvesh Kumar Pandey for ignoring his diktats and also using abusive language for Baghpat district magistrate Hriday Shankar Tiwari.
Mallagi: Come to think of her post, she is an ordinary middle level Karnataka State Police Service officer. But Kudligi DySP Anupama Shenoy, who kept the media on tenterhooks for four days, surfaced at Kudligi early Thursday.

Ms Shenoy who got huge support in the social media and in Kudligi town where she worked, announced she would not withdraw her resignation. In her unblemished career, Ms Shenoy was literally stood for the poor, eliminating anti-social elements.

During a chat with Deccan Chronicle, she spoke her mind. She was soft but firm, and aggressive about her stand. Here are the excerpts of her interview

Are you going to Ballari today to meet your higher ups - SP and IGP at Ballari?

No. I am going back to my house.

Udupi?

No. Going to Bhatkal.

You came early morning, but you refused to meet your colleagues till afternoon. What were you doing inside your house?

I was busy packing my luggage.

Why did you resign?

I already told. Its because of personal reasons.

What you have to say to the common people who are urging you to withdraw resignation?

I continue my fight as per law. In fact, I sought help from many to fight injustice. But, everyone is using my fight for the benefit of their own vested interests and I cannot bear it.

It is reported that Chief Minister has instructed to initiate disciplinary action against you.

I am not bothered. Disciplinary action, not only against me, how they immediately dismiss a police constable from the service, let the government also dismiss the higher officers in my department, who have done injustice to me.

What kind of legal fight you are thinking of?

Lawyers are there, judges are there. I still have faith on this.

So, you are moving to KAT (Karnataka Administrative Tribunal)?

Why should I go to KAT? I am committed to my resignation. I go (court of law) for other issues.

When you plan to release the CD ?

Why do you (media persons) ask the same question again and again. I will put it when time comes.

So, you are only operating the Facebook account in your name and posting updates.

I told it already. I dont have a Facebook account and I am not updating anything there. You go and interview the person who is posting updates.

Then, why cannot you complain to cyber police for hacking your FB account?

How many complaints I have to give? Do you still think that I get justice in my department?

So, you dont have faith on getting justice in your department?

Its not me. You have to see it.

Anupama Shenoy has disowned the Facebook account in her name, where many of the postings are said to be against state government and her higher-ups. She told reporters that she is not having any FB account.

However, a reliable source who met Anupama at her residence during her brief visit to Kudligi confirmed that it is her FB account and she was posting the updates. The Kudilgi DYSP reportedly told that she is using her FB to awaken common people to raise their voice against injustice meted out to honest people in the society.

I wished my resignation to become a peoples movement against injustice and atrocities by powerful people, but here the real cause is being sidelined and everyone is using my resignation to benefit their own interests and no one is understanding my concerns, Shenoy had reportedly posted.

Shenoy resigns, govt gives in

The resignation of deputy superintendent of police, Anupama Shenoy, was accepted by the state government on Thursday after she declined to give her decision to quit a second thought and returned to her home in Bhatkal.

The officer had quit on June 4 as she was miffed with leaders of the ruling Congress for backing an upper caste liquor merchant who commenced construction of a building though it would block access for Dalits to Ambedkar Bhavan in Kudligi town.

She spent about ten hours in her official quarters before heading for Bhatkal but refused to answer the door when her colleague and in-charge deputy superintendent S R Patil came to visit her evidently at the behest of the top brass of the police department. She also left without calling on either Superintendent of Police, R Chetan, or Inspector General of Police (IGP) Murugan at Ballari.

Anupama, however, stepped out to chat with representatives of several organizations who wanted her to resume office, but remained steadfast in her decision not to withdraw her resignation letter.

She was upset that though leaders like CM Siddaramaiah make tall claims about their commitment for the welfare of Dalits and those belonging to the backward classes, none spoke up for her when she tried to ensure access to Ambedkar Bhavan in Kudligi.

When asked why she came to Kudligi all the way from Bhatkal when she had made up her mind not to reconsider her decision to quit, she reportedly said To pack my luggage.
New Delhi/Kolkata: An Indian woman working for an international NGO has been kidnapped by suspected militants right outside her office in the heart of Kabul and efforts were being made to secure her release.

The woman, identified as Judith D'Souza, a resident of Kolkata, was abducted from Taimani area along with two other persons last evening. Judith is working for Aga Khan Foundation as senior technical adviser and was scheduled to return to India next week.

External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj said government was doing everything to rescue her.

"Our embassy is in touch with senior Afghan authorities and the government is also in touch with her family in Kolkata. All efforts are being made by the Afghan authorities to secure her early release," an official source said.

I have spoken to the sister of Judith D' Souza. We will spare no efforts to rescue her. @VohraManpreet  Sushma Swaraj (@SushmaSwaraj) June 10, 2016

The woman's father D. D'Souza said in Kolkata that the family received information that three persons -- Judith, a security guard and the driver of the vehicle, were abducted.

"I want my daughter back," said a sobbing D'Souza. "External Affairs minister Sushma Swaraj rang up and spoke to me and assured that the government is making all-out efforts to bring her back," Judith's sister Agnes D'Souza told PTI.

Reponding to a tweet by one of the family members of Judith, Swaraj said "She is your sister and India's daughter. We are doing everything to rescue her. Pl take care of your sick father."

She is your sister and India's daughter. We are doing everything to rescue her. Pl take care of your sick father. https://t.co/WsYdLyMIbE  Sushma Swaraj (@SushmaSwaraj) June 10, 2016

A source said the woman was abducted by suspected militants.

Chief Executive of Aga Khan Trust for Culture, India, Ratish Nanda said every effort is being made to secure her safe release.

"On Thursday, June 9, a staff member of the Aga Khan Foundation was abducted. An investigation by the authorities has been launched, in conjunction with security officials and various partners. Every effort is being made to secure the safe release of the staff member," he said in a statement in New Delhi.
The education department had initiated these steps following pressure from parents associations and different organisations against exorbitant fees being collected by private schools. (Representational image)

Hyderabad: In order to regulate fees in private schools, the Education department has issued orders for constituting a governing body in each school that would have a parent as member.

The decision was taken on June 1. Private institutions were told to complete the formalities and submit the list to the DEO of the respective district. Though the deadline is set to end in two days, most private school managements were yet to begin the exercise.

Brother Show Reddy of Missionary Schools Association (all of which are affiliated to the state education board), said that the government should give more time. Only after the schools re-open can the managements focus on such matters, he told this newspaper.

The education department had initiated these steps following pressure from parents associations and different organisations against exorbitant fees being collected by private schools. The regional joint director of school education and the education officers in the 10 districts were directed to ensure that private school managements fell in line.

While CBSE schools reopened on June 9, a majority of state-affiliated schools will commence classes from June 13. Few private schools took permission from the government and reopened on June 6. Most ICSE schools in the twin cities are reopening on June 13, and some others on June 15.

Meanwhile, the School Fee Regulation joint action committee will be embarking on a mahadharna at Indira Park on Saturday.
File photo of Judith D'Souza who has been reportedly abducted in Kabul. (Photo: PTI)

Kolkata: An Indian woman working for an international NGO, Judith DSouza, who had been abducted in Afghanistan on Thursday was scheduled to return home for a month-long holiday next week. Judiths family, which lives at CIT Road in Kolkata, was eagerly looking forward to her return.

Last time we spoke to her was two days ago. She informed that she would be coming home next Wednesday (June 15), her elder sister Agnes DSouza (43) said on Friday.

Her septugenarian father Denzil DSouza said Judith was very excited about her forthcoming home coming.

However, one long-distance call from the Indian embassy in Kabul in the early hours of Friday came as a rude shock to the DSouza family. Judith has been abducted, they were told.

Read: Bring our daughter back from Kabul: Parents of abducted Indian woman urge govt

Judith has been working in Afghanistan for Agha Khan Development Network as social development officer.

It was 1.30 am when the Indian ambassador to Kabul, Manpreet Vohra, called the DSouza family to inform them about the incident, Agnes said, adding that Judith had been working in Afghanistan for the past one year, but she never voiced any security concerns. She in fact likes Kabul and enjoys the work she has been doing there, she said.

Her father said that she had earlier worked in Nepal, Bangladesh and some Southeast Asian countries, but had never faced any threat or felt insecure. After passing out from Loreto Sealdah, Judith graduated from St. Xaviers College in Kolkata in English (Honours). Later, she shifted to Mumbai to do her masters in social work.

Mr DSouza informed that the family later came to know that the abduction took place when Judith was returning from a dinner on Thursday night.

She was travelling in a car with the driver and her security guard when she was kidnapped, Mr DSouza added. He recalled the family members had a serious discussion about Judiths security before she travelled to Afghanistan.

But she convinced us she would be provided adequate security and indeed there was lot of security for her, he said.
Suryapet: BJP national president Amit Shah took a dig at the critics of the Prime Ministers foreign trips, especially the Congress, saying that Modis foreign tours were comparatively fewer than former PM Manmohan Singhs but more fruitful.

He claimed that the NDA government, under Modi, has put the countrys economy back on track and this has led to the highest-ever growth rate, beating even China, and record FDI inflows into the country.

Congress leaders like Kamalnath say Narendra Bhai goes on foreign trips quite frequently. Yes, but its less than Manmohan Singhs trips. I know why you feel it. Manmohan Singh went abroad carrying a two-page written speech. Unfortunately, he delivered speech meant for Thailand in Malaysia and vice versa, Shah said.

He said, Soniaji, we gave a talking PM. You gave a PM who didnt speak, except to you and your son. We gave a government without scams, no allegation of corruption. You ruled for 10 years and are involved in a `12 lakh-crore scam... you looted the treasury.

He added, When Mauni Baba visited countries, none noticed it. Only Soniaji and Rahul Baba could hear him. But when Modiji visits Bhutan, Nepal, China, Germany, Japan, England, US, thousands welcome him. When Modiji got thunderous applause in US Congress, its not him, but the people of India who were welcomed. He was addressing a public meeting at Suryapet in Nalgonda district on Friday.
K. Laxman said that the BJP would celebrate Hyderabad Liberation Day on September 17 across the state if the TS government failed to do it officially.

Suryapet: Alleging that the TRS was in the clutches of the MIM, TS BJP president K. Laxman said that the BJP would celebrate Hyderabad Liberation Day on September 17 across the state if the TS government failed to do it officially.

The government is scared to celebrate Hyderabad Liberation Day officially as KCR has succumbed to MIM pressure. We will do it, he said. Dr Laxman also accused the TRS government of failing to keep its poll promises.

You will see a change in state politics soon. It will begin from Nalgonda where the Telangana armed struggle began under leaders like Bandi Yadagiri who fought against the tyranny of the Nizam and wrote the famous song Bandenka...bandi katti, the state BJP chief said.
When she refused to do the chores, she was confined to a room and beaten severely. (Representational image)

Hyderabad: A 38-year-old woman from Hyderabad who had travelled to Saudi Arabia for work and was held captive by her employer, was rescued and sent back home.

Husna Begum, who had traveled for tailoring work, was forced into doing household chores and was tortured for days. She was united with her family after undergoing 35 days of torture.

Ms Begum, a resident of Mohammad Nagar in Hasannagar, has a seven-year-old son. Her husband had left her and she was living with her parents.

She had accepted an offer from a Mumbai-based agent to travel to Saudi Arabia. The agent had approached her through a local woman for a tailoring and designing job and she travelled to Saudi Arabia 40 days ago.

But when she reached, her employer Abu Saad Faris, showed her a different agreement which stated that she was employed as a help. When she refused to do the chores, she was confined to a room and beaten severely.

But she managed to send word out to Hyderabad and her family informed the Ministry of External Affairs, who, through the embassy at Saudi Arabia, rescued her.
Bengaluru: The excess of seats for engineering courses in the state has forced the private universities to surrender them to the government CET students for lower fees. According Karnataka Examination Authority (KEA) sources, except Manipal University, all other private universities have voluntarily surrendered their seats, fearing they may go vacant.

According to the draft engineering seat matrix prepared by the Directorate of Technical Education (DTE), Alliance University, which has 420 seats in seven branches, has come forward to surrender 159 seats to the state government while CMR University has transferred 236 seats out of 620 to the state government.

The other universities that have transferred their seats to the government CET are Dayanand Sagar University (229 seats), Gitam School of Technology (243), M.S. Ramaiah University of Applied Sciences (172), PES University (523), Presidency University (741), Rai Technology University (115), Reva University (819) and Sri Siddhartha Institute of Technology (386).

According to the sources at the state higher education department, these private universities were not part of the CET seat allotment plans. We have not signed any agreement with these colleges over the seats. But now these universities have come forward voluntarily to surrender 40 per cent of their intake to the state government. These seats will be filled up through the Karnataka Examination Authority (KEA), he said.

According to the officials, private universities such as M.S. Ramaiah, PES University, Dayanand Sagar are in demand among the CET students. The problem with these institutes is that for other students they have a hefty fee structure. Because of that students from outside the state are not joining them in big numbers. But for CET students they are charging fee fixed as per the consensual agreement, said an officer from KEA.

The KEA has published the provisional merit list of wards of J&K migrants. Ishaan Wazir has secured 4th rank in the medical stream, while another student Sourav Dhar has secured 119th rank in the medical stream.
Women say the Muslim Personal Law Application Act, which is based on Sharia law and permits triple talaq, is being misused. (Photo: AFP)

Bhopal: Only three words were scrawled on the letter from her husband and posted to her parent's home in central India, but they were enough to shatter Sadaf Mehmood's life.

Using an ancient and controversial Islamic practice, Mehmood's husband wrote "talaq, talaq, talaq" or "I divorce you" three times in Arabic, instantly ending his marriage of five years.

"I was completely shocked and shattered. We had differences soon after we wed but it never looked so bad," the mother-of-three told AFP.

Mehmood, who is from Bhopal, is one of a number of Indian Muslim women whose husbands dissolved their marriage using triple talaq. The message delivered by everything from traditional letters to Facebook and Whatsapp.

Banned in many Muslim countries, India is one of the few nations that legally permits the practice.

"The talaqnama (divorce letter) came without any intimation or warning," said Mehmood, 31, adding that she now struggles to make ends meet without her husband's support.

Now another divorcee, Shayara Bano, has asked the Supreme Court to outlaw it, as a backlash against the practice gathers steam.

"I understand my marriage is over but something needed to be done so that other Muslim women do not suffer," Bano told AFP of her petition filed in February, which has encouraged at least one other divorcee to follow suit.

'Second-class citizens'

India's religious minorities, including its 155 million Muslims, are governed by personal laws that are meant to enshine their religious freedom in Hindu-majority India.

But women say the Muslim Personal Law Application Act, which is based on Sharia law and permits triple talaq, is being misused, allowing men to instantly walk away from their families.

"Women are generally treated as second class citizens in our society and they are further discriminated against by those misinterpreting religion," Sadia Akhtar who works for Bharatiya Muslim Mahila Andolan, a charity helping to empower Muslim women.

A survey of Muslim women by the charity last year found an overwhelming majority favoured abolition of the practice, deeming it unIslamic. Some 500 of the 4,000 women surveyed said they had been divorced that way.

In recent weeks some 50,000 Muslims signed a petition organised by the charity as part of a campaign to ban it.

The Koran prescribes a procedure for divorce to be undertaken in 90 days, starting from the first utterance of talaq, followed by two more but with a 30-day gap in between each one.

Islamic scholars say this gives couples time to reflect on their marriage and possibly reconcile.

Most Muslim scholars say the instant talaq diverts from the Koran. Although it was given official approval during the rein of Islam's second caliph Omar in the seventh century, it was discouraged.

Akhtarul Wasey, a professor of Islamic studies, said it was only supposed to be used as a last resort when husbands were "traumatising their partners" by endlessly pronouncing talaq and then revoking it.

"(But) It has lost its essence and become an arbitrary law," Wasey from New Delhi's Jamia Millia Islamia university told AFP.

Many Muslim majority countries including neighbouring Bangladesh have already banned it, while legislation on the same is pending in Pakistan's parliament.

Changes unacceptable

But Muslim leaders are reluctant to amend the personal law, fearing an erosion of their religious identity. Some fear Hindu hardliners will use such changes as an excuse to push for the law's entire abolition.

Kamal Faruqui, member of an influential Muslim body, said Muslims have a right to practise their religion according to Sharia law and that should be protected at all costs.

Faruqui conceded triple talaq was a "problem for Muslims" but changes to the personal law were "unacceptable to us".

"We discourage Muslims to seek divorce and certainly triple talaq should never be used. Instead couples should go for the honourable exit route mentioned in the Koran," said Faruqui, from the All India Muslim Personal Law Board.

Shaista Ali, also from Bhopal, said she appealed to clerics for assistance after her husband suddenly divorced her and she was shunted from the family home, but "they sided with my in-laws".

Divorcee Mehmood accepts that her marriage is over, but she remains hopeful of change so that other women are spared her ordeal.

"We can't stop talaqs but there should be some consequences so that men think ten times before uttering talaq, talaq talaq," she said.
Titled "Words Matter: Writings Against Silence", the book has been edited by award-winning poet and scholar K Satchidanandan.

New Delhi: Eminent authors and activists who have previously voiced their opinions against the curbing of freedom of expression and inhuman killing of rationalists and thinkers, have now come together to pen a new book advocating critical thinking against all forms of discrimination.

Titled "Words Matter: Writings Against Silence" (Penguin Random House India), the book has been edited by award-winning poet and scholar K Satchidanandan.

It contains essays written by scholars and writers including Romila Thapar, Githa Hariharan, Pankaj Mishra, Salil Tripathi and Ananya Vajpeyi among others.

"In their perceptive and insightful essays, the contributors argue that we must nurture critical thinking to fight all kinds of discrimination and insularity," publishers

said.

The book includes excerpts of writings of rationalists Narendra Dabholkar and Govind Pansare and scholar M M Kalburgi, who were killed by fundamentalists, besides articles and speeches by eminent public figures like Markandey Katju, Shyam Saran, Nayantara Sahgal and Keki Daruwalla.

In the past, some of them were also part of the 'Award Wapsi' campaign that took the country by storm late last year, where over 40 artists and writers returned their Sahitya Akademi awards protesting against the killings of Kalburgi, Dabholkar and Pansare.

The book emphasises the need for intellectuals to take the responsibility of safeguarding the democratic nature of the nation and advocates free speech.

It also highlights that change is imperative and inevitable and that the status quo (of traditions) must be challenged to enrich the diversity India has perpetually

cherished.

"Myths, texts and systems of faith and thought have been cherished, revisited and also challenged. It lies in our interest as a modern nation to preserve our cultural strength and help democracy flourish.

"They have often inspired imaginative versions through oral retellings and local adaptations. The dynamism of Indian culture has kept it open to influences and has stood the test of time," the book says.
Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh during BJP's Jansamwad function on completion of two years by the union government, in Lucknow. (Photo: PTI)

Lucknow: Amid speculation over BJP's chief ministerial candidate for Uttar Pradesh, Home Minister Rajnath Singh on Friday said there is no dearth of capable people in the party.

"UP mein kabil chehron ke koi kami nahi hai (There is no dearth of capable faces in UP)," he said when asked about BJP's chief ministerial candidate for the 2017 Assembly polls. Speculation is rife ahead of BJP's national executive meeting in Allahabad that Singh could play a "lead role" in the party campaign for the UP polls even if he is not declared the choice for the top political office in the state.

Asked whether he would be made the party's face in UP, Singh, who is Lok Sabha member from Lucknow, said, "Yeh kalpnik prashna hai. Iska koi matlab nahi hai (This is a hypothetical question. It has no meaning)."

The possibility that the party could enter the UP arena with a chief ministerial candidate has gained currency after BJP's victory in Assam where it had declared the name of Sarbananda Sonowal months ahead of the contest.

As against this, the party had not declared a CM candidate in Bihar.

BJP sources said the party was treading cautiously in the state in view of caste politics as projection of Singh, who is a Rajput leader, could upset the Brahmin voters.

The Home Minister, one of the most prominent BJP leaders from Uttar Pradesh and former chief minister, asserted that his party would storm to power with a thumping majority in the 2017 election. Singh was here on a two-day visit to the state.

He has been addressing rallies, along with Prime Minister Narendra Modi and party chief Amit Shah. He had addressed a public meeting in Mau yesterday.

BJP had won 71 of UP's 80 Lok Sabha seats in the 2014 general election.
BJP national president Amit Shah, along with TS BJP chief Dr K. Laxman and other party leaders, waves to the crowd at a public meeting at Suryapet in Nalgonda district on Friday. (Photo: PTI)

Suryapet: BJP national president Amit Shah on Friday launched a scathing attack on the Congress and the ruling TRS government in Telangana.

For the first time, Mr Shah took the TRS government head on and alleged that Central funds sent to Telangana for various schemes were not reaching the people.

In the past two years, the Narendra Modi-led BJP government has provided funds to the tune of Rs 90,000 crore under various schemes to Telangana. If anyone asks me for details, I am ready to account for every paisa. Forget development of the state, Nalgonda people still drink fluoride water. Only the BJP can develop Telangana, he said.

Mr Shah was addressing a huge public meeting at Suryapet in Nalgonda district as part of the nationwide Vikas Parva on completion of two years of the Modi government.
Rutba, an Urdu word, means status or honour. In Indian sarkari parlance, however, its closer to the shock and awe tactics used by the US Army in Iraq and Afghanistan. The difference is that the Americans evoked awe by unleashing firepower from the air and thousands of armed soldiers on the ground, while rutba is really the authority or charisma exerted by a single district officer or superintendent of police to quell a local disturbance.

Clearly, rutba was lacking in Mathura last week when an armed mob of land-grabbers, operating in the guise of social do-gooders and political anarchists, killed two police officers and injured many others. Twenty-two squatters reportedly also died in the retaliatory police firing. What led to this ruckus was the enforcement of a High Court order for their eviction from a public park they had illegally occupied since 2014, that was adjacent to the local police headquarters.

It is difficult to preserve rutba if a police force has to be on good neighbourly terms with criminals unauthorisedly camping on public land right under their nose as the squatters had the right political connections. Rutba is the capacity of a single individual to control many others. But it derives salience from institutional prestige and power. The only Indian institutions that still demonstrate rutba are the Supreme Court and the Army. A soldier in uniform still creates a stir and evokes awe, but this too is rapidly dwindling with the politicisation of the upper echelons of the armed forces.

Bollywood has for long either reviled the policeman as a bumbling Inspector Clouseau (of Pink Panther fame) or played up the image of the good, fearless cop  Amitabh Bachchan in Zanjeer, Om Puri in Ardh Satya and Ajay Devgn in Gangaajal  who takes on criminals and vanquishes all. Neither image is really helpful. Being a policeman is an unenviable task. The police works best, like the Army, in a regulatory environment where the dos and donts are clear and in line with the law. Today, there is nothing muddier than when and how a police officer should wield powers legitimately vested in him or her.

Whom to challan or ignore for a traffic offence; how forcefully to quell unruly behaviour on the streets  each petty incident requires the police officer to first think of the political consequences. Decisive, timely, preventive action often suffers. Events snowball as the local police waits for directions from seniors, who ignore such events till they explode and become above the radar on centralised flashpoint monitors. By then its often too late.

Indians view the rule of law not as a framework according to which we should mould our behaviour, but as a hurdle, crossing which is a signal of prowess and power. District magistrates and superintendents of police have to be adept at this game of privileging and stratifying people  just like their colonial predecessors. Your social status is evident in the treatment you get from these worthies. The poorest, unorganised litigants are stopped outside the gate by police guards.

Their only chance to get the big mans attention is to hope that his car will stop, its window wound down so that a written petition can be stuffed in and heart-rending pleas babbled to the inhabitant of the car. For the middle-class petty businessmen, small farmers and the poor who come through intermediaries  lawyers, village and block-level politicians or non-state actors  a darshan is usually arranged by the peon in tacit recognition of their collective power.

The aggrieved persons stand before the big man and only the leader is offered a chair to sit, as the issue is discussed and assurances given to have it looked into.MPs, MLAs, rich landlords, top businessmen and senior government officers are ushered into an inner office where the atmosphere is more relaxed and tea/coffee may be served or at least offered. When ministers visit and want to meet the DM or SP, who will call on whom depends on the relative political weight  closeness  of the two to the chief minister.

Under the British, the rule of law was primarily imposed to protect the interests of Europeans. After Independence, the laws became aggressively egalitarian on paper. Our laws are hopelessly idealistic and unenforceable. We have the right to private property but it can be taken away, quite casually, for public purposes. Other than purposefully poor oversight of public property, the reason why encroachments are seen so benignly is that property rights are only lightly embedded in our political and social consciousness.

The Allahabad High Court was correct to order the eviction in Mathura. But the political circumstances which allowed the encroachment in the first place made its order unenforceable. The cost of such hypocrisy is the death of at least two dozen people, many more injured and a nail in the coffin of the rule of law. We ignore the political economy, within which laws operate, only at our peril.
The public spat between Union women and child development minister Maneka Gandhi, a well-known animal activist, and Union minister of state for environment Prakash Javadekar, accused by her of showing a lust to kill, renders the sensitive subject of the ecological process of management of animal species extremely complicated. Environmentalists are up in arms over the ministry using an old statute to grant permission to various states to cull vermin.

It is not a pleasant sight to see the blue bull (nilgai), the Rhesus monkey or the wild boar being eliminated in their hundreds. There are well-established international practices to control any unusual increase in animal population that has undue impact on people or farm produce. In India, any permission to cull is blatantly misused for commerce.

Man-animal conflicts are of greater concern than crop damage as hundreds of human deaths are caused every year, particularly by pachyderms and the occasional tiger that turns man-eater. Scientific processes are employed to contain crossings into human habitation. It would be in the interest of our national wealth if the Centre were to sit down with conservationists and experts in wildlife and come up with the guidelines in a far more scientific manner than envisaged when the law was written up years ago. A great amount of care is needed now when humans have already been pronounced guilty of exterminating many species.
It takes a long time to make a story short

They say that enough rope will cut a victim short

Theres greater joy in union for the sheep who stray

Embrace the double negative, its the only way.

From The Korma of Karma

by Bachchoo

Wander out in London, Manchester, Birmingham, Dewsbury, Luton, Bradford or 50 other cities in Britain on a Friday and witness the pious heading for their prayers in significant numbers. Very many of them, mostly male, will be dressed in imitation-Arab attire, the loose white long shirt and pyjama-like white trousers or even the skirt-like lungi wrap. On Saturdays, particularly in parts of London and elsewhere, the similar but much smaller congregations, the men in long black coats and wide-brimmed black hats with twisted plaits of hair down the sides of their faces, the women with modest dark dresses and wigs covering their natural hair, can be seen making their way to the synagogues.

On Sundays in the cities of Britain Christians go to their worship. No, they are not dressed in frock-coats and bow-ties or what used to be called their Sunday best; the majority of the urban flock are dressed in African robes, the men in dashikis and women in long patterned skirts and turbans, the young for the most part in Western attire, going to prayer. Their churches are not called St. this-or-that. They are called the Balm of Gilead, the Ministry of Everlasting Kindness, Church of Divine Revelation or some such inspiring designation. These congregations are black, the African churches distinct from the West Indian ones.

In the countryside, where almost every English, Scottish or Welsh village is built around a church, the congregations on a Sunday are small. The great and good make it a point to attend the Anglican service, confirming the adage that the Anglican Church is the Tory Party at prayer. No longer the whole Tory Party, but a fragment of it that still believes or can be bothered to attend. For the first time since such statistics were recorded, Britain has more non-believers than believers. Forty-eight per cent of Britons say they have no religion, whereas 44 per cent say they are Christians.

The remaining eight per cent are followers of other religions. Of these five million, three million are Muslims and the rest Jews, Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists and minorities of religions, which believe, for instance, that God is a spaceman. The statistic does not go on to examine the strength of faith of any of those questioned. It would be safe to say that those who dont follow any religion may have some residual faith in the presence of a God and may be agnostic rather than blatantly atheistic  hedging their bets, just in case  but gauging the strength of faith of professed Christians has to be entirely speculative.

So lets speculate. The majority of the 44 per cent who call themselves Christian almost certainly dont observe the Sabbath. If they did, Britain would be stultified on Sundays with walkers and drivers (and bikers) heading to their nearest St. Trinians or other parish church. The only places thronged on Sundays in this manner are the out-of-town shopping centres, which attract weekend browsers and buyers. Nevertheless, the professed Christians will, I guess, have their children baptised, nominate a friend or two as godparents, allude to their childrens first names as Christian names and celebrate Christmas.

But then I am equally certain the 48 per cent who profess not to have any religion also celebrate Christmas with trees, presents, turkeys and a great deal of alcoholic merriment in the increasing number of days-off from work that the allocated birth date of Jesus Christ allows. I know of several Muslim families that celebrate in the same way but have to be cautious about guessing that all Muslims do. The reason for such caution is that last Christmas an Ahmadi shopkeeper in Glasgow wished his clients a Merry Christmas and was stabbed to death by some maniac who professed to be carrying out his Islamic duty of putting such an infidel to death. There might well be others, perhaps numbering a handful, who would condone such a murder.

This division in religion has in a thin disguise been brought into the current hot debate in Britain, on the referendum to be held in two weeks time on whether the British public will vote to remain in the European Union or to leave it. When Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister she raised the bogey of immigration by playing upon the latent xenophobia of the ignorant. She made a statement about the British way of life being swamped by alien cultures as the country was admitting too many foreigners. The spokespersons of the campaign to leave the EU are using the anti-immigration argument as their main appeal to the electorate. Of course they talk of autonomy from the bureaucracy of unelected commissioners of the EU.

They also argue that leaving will save money which could be used profitably in Britain. And yet the strongest and most calculatedly deceitful argument they use is to say immigration from Europe is putting intolerable pressure on the medical, educational and housing resources of the country. And for good measure they boldly spread the untruth that Turkey will soon join the EU and 80 million Turks will have the freedom to migrate to Britain and swamp it with their Islamic, oriental culture.

Turkey has applied to join the EU for 30 years and it will be 50 more before they can fulfil the criteria to do so. Nigel Farage, one of the leaders of the Leave campaign, has gone so far as to say that staying in the EU would mean allowing thousands of potential rapists into the country. He points the finger at potential Muslim migrants  Syrian refugees and Turks. And the world thinks Donald Trump is mad!
The brouhaha over the treatment of Udta Punjab by the Central Board of Film Certification has again focused attention on the arbitrary use of powers available under the Cinematograph Act 1952 and Cinematograph. (Certification) Rules 1983, and the rules made therein. The circumscription of creative licence has become the norm in the past two years of the BJP government. But before dealing with the constriction of Indias liberal space by an obscurantist establishment, it may be worth examining how the process of certification/censorship plays itself out these days.

Article 19(1)(a) of the Constitution guarantees freedom of speech and expression to all citizens. There is a caveat in Article 19(2), however, that lets the State put reasonable restrictions on exercising this right. As the scope of these constraints are almost infinite, they were engrafted almost in toto in Section 5(B) of the Cinematograph Act. This virtually gives the censor board unbridled powers to refuse certification, impose arbitrary cuts, grant certificates ranging from U (universal) to S (specialised presentation).

All this and more is done almost on a daily basis, supposedly to protect the sovereignty and integrity of India, security of the state, friendly relations with foreign nations, public order, decency, morality, defamation, contempt of court or even the incitement of an offence. The power to certify a film is vested exclusively in the Centre. But state governments routinely misuse law and order powers and state laws promulgated under entry 33 of the State List to ban films that are granted certification by the CBFC.

A good example is the Tamil Nadu Cinemas (Regulation) Act 1955, that was invoked with Section 144 CrPC by the Tamil Nadu government to stop the screening of Vishwaroopam in January 2013, despite it being cleared by the censor board. Under Rule 21 of the Film Certification Rules, a producer applies for the certification of a film. It must be vetted in 21 days. This rule is routinely violated for big banners, ostensibly in the name of stopping piracy. It is then referred to an examining committee drawn from people on the advisory panel attached to every regional centre.

The committee recommends how a film should be certified. If the producer or CBFC chairman is not satisfied with the committees decision, it is referred to a revising committee. If the producer is unhappy with the revising committees decision, he or she can appeal to the Film Certification Appellate Tribunal, after which a writ lies to the High Court, then a special leave petition to the Supreme Court.

The fundamental point is that wide, arbitrary and almost draconian powers are vested in the CBFC that can drive even a conservative filmmaker around the bend. Given the huge financial investments in play, time is of the essence, which makes a producer a virtual puppet in the hands of the board. That is the reason why allegations of corruption, malfeasance and carnal favours are often rife. A command performance to deny certification at the Centres behest is the easiest one-person act to perform.

If a filmmaker can navigate his/her way around this byzantine maze, state governments can always stop a film being screened there on the spurious ground of a threat to law and order, as happened in the case of Vishwaroopam in Tamil Nadu, Sadda Haq in Punjab, etc. My experience in a former avatar with the functioning or rather malfunctioning of the CBFC convinced me that this institution should be abolished. I was trying to find a way to demolish this architecture. The opportunity came in the form of the Tamil Nadu governments move to ban Vishwaroopam.

Despite my repeated public entreaties that this was wholly illegal, the state government wouldnt budge. While the state government was bent on using its law and order powers to curb artistic freedom, the larger question was that if every state government took this route, where would it leave the Cinematograph Act, and, more important, would filmmakers be forced to run from state secretariat to state secretariat to get their films exhibited, after spending huge sums to make the movie and then get all the clearances as required by the law?

On February 4, 2013, as the Vishwaroopam controversy was raging, I set up a committee with some of the most eminent people to examine the issue. It was tasked with reviewing the CBFCs mandate and functioning, and recommend steps to enable it to deal with the needs of a changing society. After wide consultations across the country, it submitted its report on October 9, 2013, and given that it included lawyers in addition to creative people it even drew up a model Cinematograph Bill.

When the committee came to submit its report to me, the first question I asked was: have you recommended the scrapping of this whole silly censorship process masquerading as certification? The chairperson, Justice Mudgul, smiled back, saying we did not know that you wanted that. I reparteed back, saying it would have been wholly inappropriate for me to impose my subjective desires over your objective consideration.

It was another matter that, left to myself, I would have repealed the Cinematograph Act lock, stock and barrel and replaced it with statutory guidelines whose violation would entail hefty pecuniary consequences. If television can be beamed into peoples bedrooms 24x7 regulated by only a programme code and advertising code, why have a censorship for films? Unlike TV, that someone may involuntarily be forced to watch, in case of a film you actually go to a theatre and buy a ticket to see a movie. There is no coercion involved in the process.

However, since it was late in the day and the process of inviting public comments would require time, I thought it prude-nt to put the report and the draft model bill in the public domain for people to peruse and react, hoping the next government would make it a legal reality. The BJP-led government, however, chose to cold shoulder this and set up another panel under top filmmaker Shyam Benegal to reinvent the wheel.

Coming back to Udta Punjab, the mutilation of the film is undoubtedly a command performance as the Akali-BJP government is widely seen as either complicit or at least patronising of drugs trade in Punjab that has ruined so many innocent lives. A movie that exposes the magnitude of the horror and monstrosity of the crime perpetrated on 30 million hapless people is obviously inconvenient to the powers-that-be and therefore must be discredited as propaganda, if not banned and consigned to the dustbin. This government and their trolls are giving even Josef Goebbels a run for his money. The fundamental problem is, however, institutional and structural. As long as the Cinematograph Act is not repealed, Udta Punjab will become the rule rat-her than the exception. Censorship must go, let freedom reign.
Note: Later today at the Faith & Freedom conference Ill be speaking on a panel titled, A Cronyism Crisis: How Corporate Welfare Undermines Markets and Human Flourishing. If youre at the conference please stop by this session.

The Term: Crony capitalism (sometimes referred to as cronyism or corporatism)

What it means: Crony capitalism is a general term for the range of activities in which particular individuals or businesses in a market economy receive government-granted privileges over their customers and/or competitors.

Why it Matters: For as long as there have been government officials, there have been economic croniesfriends, family, and associates who use their connections for their own financial gain.

In ancient Israel, for example, when the prophet Samuel appointed his own sons as leaders, they began to engage in cronyism: [Samuels] sons did not follow his ways. They turned aside after dishonest gain and accepted bribes and perverted justice. (1 Samuel 8:3).

Unsatisfied with these corrupt leaders, the elders of Israel asked Samuel to appoint a king over them. God told Samuel to warn the people of the consequences, which included even worse forms of economic cronyism: [The king] will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive groves and give them to his attendants. He will take a tenth of your grain and of your vintage and give it to his officials and attendants (1 Samuel 8:14-15).

We read passages like that and instantly recognize this as unfair and unjust, a corrupting influence on both the people and the government. Yet we tend note to even notice the cronyism that occurs in our own economic system. Because the dishonest gain is often more subtle than the examples found in the Bible, we often do not recognize cronyism because we dont know what to look for.



To help in the identification process, here are nine of the most common types of government-granted privileges individuals and businesses receive that give them an unfair advantage (click on this link for detailed explanations of each):

Monopoly privilege  Government uses its power to directly protect certain firms or industries from competition by limiting or keeping other firms out of the market. This type of direct cronyism is relatively rare. (Examples: cable companies, utilities, the USPS)

Regulatory privilege  Large corporations used to lobby government to reduce the regulatory burden on their industries. But many corporation realized they could gain a competitive advantage by lobbying for specific regulations that benefit their firm and hamstring their competitors. (Examples: Obamacares mandate requiring insurance companies to buy contraceptives, a regulation that benefits the pharmaceutical companies that make them.)

Subsides  Subsidies, which are sometimes referred to as corporate welfare, occur when the government gives taxpayer money directly to a business or industry. According to a report by Philip Mattera and Kasia Tarczynska, two-thirds of the $68 billion in business grants and special tax credits awarded by the federal government over the past 15 years have gone to large corporations. The largest recipient is the Spanish energy company Iberdrola, which has collected about $2.2 billion in subsidies by investing heavily in U.S. power generation facilities, including wind farms that have made use of a renewable energy provision of the 2009 Recovery Act.

The other five most common types of government-granted privileges are: Loan Guarantees, Tax Privileges, Bailouts (and expected bailouts), Tariffs and Quotas on Foreign Competition, Noncompetitive Bidding, and Occupational Licensing.

So whats wrong with some firms getting special privileges? The main reason we should oppose crony capitalism is because it circumvents the moral process involved in a free exchange of goods and services.

In a free exchange, the one who most often benefits is the individual consumer. As Frederick Bastiat argued,

consumption [i.e.,the use of goods and services by households] is the great end and purpose of political economy; that good and evil, morality and immorality, harmony and discord, everything finds its meaning in the consumer, for he represents mankind.

He summarizes his argument for the consumer and against cronyism as follows:

There is a fundamental antagonism between the seller and the buyer. The former wants the goods on the market to be scarce, in short supply, and expensive. The latter wants them abundant, in plentiful supply, and cheap. Our laws, which should at least be neutral, take the side of the seller against the buyer, of the producer against the consumer, of high prices against low prices, of scarcity against abundance. They operate, if not intentionally, at least logically, on the assumption that a nation is rich when it is lacking in everything.

Bastiat uses this as the basis of his argument that the interests of the consumer, rather than the producer, align more closely with the interests of mankind (you should read his essay to fully appreciate the connection). The producer tends to have their own self-interest in mind, and so has a strong incentive to get the government to use its force and power to help them gain an economic benefit over the consumer. This causes goods to be either more expensive and/or more scarce than they normally would be without government intervention. The result is that cronies get richer, while everyone else is made poorer.

Other stuff you should know:

 Increasing the power of the government is often posited as a way to keep Big Business in check. But as Randall G. Holcombe notes, The substantial and well-established economic literature on the components of crony capitalism shows that big government is the cause of crony capitalism, not the solution.

 Cronyism often leads to corruption, though it can be rather subtle. Take, for example, intertemporal corruption. An intertemporal choice occurs when a choice at one time influences the possibilities available at other points in time. For example, you may decide to spend less money today in order to save and be able to spend more at a future point in time, such as during retirement. When combined with cronyism, such intertemporal choices can lead to intertemporal corruption. As economist Bryan Caplan explains,
The updated version will also feature DPI scaling-which allows users to all the elements of the interface larger.

Google is all set to reveal what the N in Android N stands for.

In a tweet posted by Google via @Android, the company said that it will reveal the official name of Android N in just a few weeks, having concluded it from its crowdsourcing #NameAndroidN campaign.

Thanks for your submissions. Well reveal the new name in a few weeks! #NameAndroidNhttps://t.co/qLtDZJNe9y  Android (@Android) June 8, 2016

Looking at Androids previous versions, dubbed-Ice Cream Sandwich, KitKat, Jellybean and Lollipop, it is being speculated that the N could possibly stand for another sweetner. Given that it was crowdsourced, the N could be called nutella or nougat.

In March 2016, two months ahead of its I/O developer conference, Google surprised everyone when it unveiled the preview build for the OS, and announced that it would release the preview updates every month till July 2016.

The updated version will also feature DPI scaling-which allows users to all the elements of the interface larger, a more-minimal design for notification, support for split-screen apps and a dark Night Mode for late night browsing.

Click on Deccan Chronicle Technology and Science for the latest news and reviews. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter.
Maria Mancia (right), 42, cries tears of joy as she's reunited with son Steve Hernandez, 22, who was abducted from their California home in 1995 and taken to Mexico. He was only found by authorities in February. (Photo: AP)

Los Angeles: For over two decades, all Maria Mancia had of her son was a single photo, a slightly blurry image of a boy, 18 months old, staring unsmiling into the camera.

On Thursday he was wiping away her tears at a reunion neither of them ever expected.

When the boy's father abducted him from their Southern California home in 1995, he also took every picture she had of him, even the ultrasound of him during her pregnancy. She had to write to a relative just to get one picture to show the police.

But early this year a tip led investigators to Mexico and the son, Steve Hernandez, now a 22-year-old law student.

On Thursday morning he came to the U.S. and immediately met his mother.

"It was a shock," Martinez told the San Bernardino Sun. "I didn't know if she was alive or not and to get a call that says they found my mother and that she had been looking for me, it was like a cold bucket of water. But it's good. It's good."

The two parents and their toddler boy had been living in Rancho Cucamonga, California, in 1995. The parents were having relationship struggles. Mancia came home from work one day and thought they had been robbed. It took her a while to figure out that both her son and his father were gone.

The San Bernardino County District Attorney's Child Abduction Unit had been looking for Hernandez for years, searching for him in several states.

Investigators then received a good tip in February that he was in Puebla, Mexico. The father, Valentin Hernandez, is missing and believed to be dead, authorities said.

Senior Investigator Karen Cragg, who led the search, said they had to approach Steve Hernandez delicately, and at first used a ruse.

"We didn't want him to know what was going on," Cragg told The Associated Press on Thursday. "We didn't want to scare him off. We weren't sure what the circumstances were down there. We had to tread very carefully."

They told him they were investigating his missing father so they could interview him and get a DNA sample. The facts fit what they knew of the missing boy.

Cragg then asked the Department of Justice if they could hurry on the test, knowing it could take several months.

"They called me in two weeks and said it was a match," Cragg said.

Cragg and her partner Michelle Faxon drove straight to Mancia's house.

"It was like she didn't believe us at first," Cragg said. "She began to cry. She said she couldn't believe he was still alive."

Because Steve Hernandez is a U.S. citizen, there were no immigration troubles returning him to the U.S., Cragg said. Authorities in both countries were hugely helpful in making it happen.

The boy's father had told him that his mother abandoned the two of them.

He also has four younger siblings he knew nothing about, including an 8-year-old brother who came to the reunion but mostly hid behind his mother.

He said he plans to stay in the U.S. and hopes to attend law school, which he already started in Mexico.

He hugged his crying mother when he finally met her, and wiped tears from her eyes.

"Now this anguish I've carried is gone now that I have my son back," she told KABC-TV. "I spent 21 years looking for him not knowing anything."
Responding to a question, Toner said Pakistan was one of the issues discussed between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and US President Barack Obama. (Photo: PTI)

Washington: The US has asked Pakistan to ensure that its territory is not used for planning attacks in India, after Prime Minister Narendra Modi said terrorism is being "incubated in India's neighbourhood".

"This is one of the steps that the US is encouraging Pakistan to do for the improvement of its relations with India," a State Department spokesman said yesterday. "We believe that Pakistan and India stand to benefit from practical cooperation and encourage direct dialogue aimed at increasing cooperation and reducing tensions," State Department Deputy Spokesman Mark Toner said.

Read: Obama asks Pakistan to punish Pathankot attack perpetrators

"And that includes steps by Pakistan to ensure that its territory is not used to plan attacks in India and that Pakistan takes steps to address or to go after, I think, all the terrorist groups that are currently using its territory," Toner said.

"That continues to be an area of collaboration and cooperation that we pursue with Pakistan is its counterterrorism operations," he said in response to a question.

Responding to a question, Toner said Pakistan was one of the issues discussed between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and US President Barack Obama.

Read: In US, Modi hits out at Pak, says terror incubated in Indias neighbourhood

"Certainly that was one of the discussions, frankly, that was raised at the or one of the issues, frankly, that was raised in discussions with Prime Minister Modi. They talked about a wide range of regional issues, in fact," he said.

"Our bilateral relations with India and Pakistan are separate and stand on their own merits, and so I don't think we it's not prudent for us to view our security cooperation in the region in kind of a zero-sum game or zero-sum terms, rather.

"I think it's important for the countries of the region that they all have constructive security relationships with each other. And that's Pakistan, that's India, and it's also Afghanistan," Toner said.

In his address to the joint sitting of US Congress in Washington, Modi had said terrorism has to be fought with "one voice" as he commended the American Parliament for sending out a clear message by refusing to "reward" those who preach and practice terrorism for political gains, an apparent reference to the blocking of sale of 8 F-16 fighter jets to Pakistan.
Clinton and Obama will begin campaigning together next week in Green Bay, Wisconsin. (Photo: AP)

Washington: US President Barack Obama formally endorsed fellow Democrat Hillary Clinton for president on Thursday, describing himself as eager to get out and campaign for her, days after she gained the delegates needed to secure the party's White House nomination.

"I don't think there has ever been someone so qualified to hold this office," Obama said in a video released by the Clinton campaign.

"I'm with her, I'm fired up and I cannot wait to get out there and campaign with Hillary."

Hillary Clinton on Thursday welcomed President Barack Obama's endorsement, telling Reuters in an interview that it "means the world" to her that her former rival has her back in the 2016 campaign.

"It is absolutely a joy and an honor that President Obama and I, over the years, have gone from fierce competitors to true friends," Clinton said.

Clinton and Obama will begin campaigning together next week in Green Bay, Wisconsin.

Obama and Clinton were rivals during the 2008 Democratic primary that Obama won. Clinton went on to serve as Obama's secretary of state during his first term in office.
Daniel Glaser, the Treasury's assistant secretary for terrorist financing, told Congress that a combination of bombing attacks on IS cash stores and oil shipments, locking it out of the banking system, and cutting off Iraq government cash flows to IS-controlled areas, has left the group struggling financially.(Representational Image)

Washington: Efforts to choke off the finances of the Islamic State group have left it unable to pay its fighters and spurred corruption within the group, a senior US official said on Friday.

Daniel Glaser, the Treasury's assistant secretary for terrorist financing, told Congress that a combination of bombing attacks on IS cash stores and oil shipments, locking it out of the banking system, and cutting off Iraq government cash flows to IS-controlled areas, has left the group struggling financially.

"As a result of these efforts, ISIL is struggling to pay its fighters and we have seen a number of ISIL fighters leaving the battlefield as their pay and benefits have been cut and delayed," he said, using the US's preferred acronym for Islamic State.

"When we see indications that ISIL cannot pay the salaries of its own fighters and is trying to make up for lost revenue elsewhere, we know we are hitting them where it hurts.... ISIL, like any terrorist organization, needs money to survive," he said.

In written testimony for a House of Representatives committee hearing on security threats, Glaser said the US government's focused attack on the financial resources of

Islamic State and other groups the US dubs terrorist have had significant impact.

Al-Qaeda, which has relied traditionally on money transferred from the Gulf region, has felt the result of efforts to block that funding, with the help of financial authorities in Gulf countries, he said.

But he said Gulf States need to do more using domestic laws to freeze funds and assets of suspect groups and individuals.

Glaser also claimed significant successes in cutting off finances for Lebanon's Hezbollah in efforts that have stretched from Asia to Latin America.

"Our actions are creating a hostile operating environment for Hezbollah, raising its costs of doing business, restricting its ability to move funds, and diminishing its revenue base," he said.
Washington: The United States has wasted billions of dollars in reconstruction aid to Afghanistan over the past decade, and now a renewed Taliban insurgency is threatening the gains that have been made, the U.S governments top watchdog on Afghanistan said.

"The bottom line is too much has been wasted in Afghanistan. Too much money was spent in too small a country with too little oversight," John Sopko said. "And if the security situation continues to deteriorate, even areas where money was spent wisely and gains were made, could be jeopardized."

The nearly $113 billion Congress has appropriated for reconstruction since 2001, when US-led forces invaded the country and toppled the Taliban regime, has long been plagued by corruption, waste and mismanagement, according to a series of reports from Sopko, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR).Appointed by President Barack Obama, Sopko has led the watchdog agency for nearly four years. He said the planned drawdown of US troops could compound the reconstruction effort's problems and add to the amount that already has been wasted, which he estimated is in the billions of dollars.

According to Sopko's latest report, issued in April, US reconstruction funding for Afghanistan includes projects for programs to combat the drug trade, build electric power lines, develop new industries, improve the banking and legal systems and modernize agriculture, which the report says "employs more than 50 percent of the labor force".

While he declined to comment on how many American troops he thinks should remain in Afghanistan, his new warning could increase the pressure on Obama to reconsider his timeline for reducing the US force in Afghanistan from about 9,800 today to 5,500 by the time he leaves office in January.

New Leader

Last month, the Afghan Taliban selected Mullah Haibatullah Akhundzada as their new leader after the United States killed their former chief, Mullah Akhtar Mansour, in a drone strike in Pakistan. The Taliban are making steady battlefield gains against Afghan security forces and Akhundzada has vowed, in an audio recording, that there will be no return to peace talks.

Last week, more than a dozen retired US generals and diplomats urged Obama to maintain the current level of troops in Afghanistan, warning that a reduction would undercut the morale of Afghan government forces and bolster the Taliban.

Nearly $951 million - less than one percent - of the aid money has been saved in "restitution, fines, forfeitures, recoveries, savings, civil settlements," and between 2015 and 2016, 107 people and companies have been barred from doing business with the U.S government for contractor misconduct, Sopko's office said."Our agency wasn't created until half the money or more was spent, Sopko said.

About 60 percent of the $113 billion Congress has appropriated has gone to train and equip Afghan security forces. However, how effectively Afghan forces can fight the Taliban remains a big question, Sopko said, and if the security situation deteriorates further, it could threaten the ability of Afghan President Ashraf Ghani's government to provide services to citizens.

If we can't get out there ... we can't see if the troops are getting shoes, or getting bullets, or getting grenades, or getting paid, and the security will have an impact on that, Sopko said.

Room for Improvement

In May, a Brookings Institution report cited as evidence of greater insecurity a rise in deaths among both civilians and Afghan security forces, as well as persistent deficiencies in the army and police, including retention and support functions.

Pentagon officials said that while Afghan forces have made steady progress, there is room for improvement.

Obviously in a perfect world we would love to see them further along, you know, than perhaps (what) they demonstrated last year, said US Army spokesman Brigadier General Charles Cleveland.

Large portions of Afghanistans territory, including the provincial capital of Kunduz and multiple districts of Helmand province, have fallen, at times briefly, to the Taliban over the past year and a half, and many other districts and provinces are under Taliban control.

Still, US reconstruction money has helped Afghanistan make some strides in human development, according to experts and former senior US officials, and the US Agency for International Development said it is not concerned about the planned drawdown of US forces in Afghanistan.

James Dobbins, the State Department special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan from 2013 to 2014, said despite some humanitarian gains in Afghanistan, the invasion has yet to achieve its objective, despite the billions of dollars spent.

"We went into Afghanistan to make it more peaceful, and so far we haven't succeeded, Dobbins said.
Washington: Describing the just concluded US visit of Prime Minister Narendra Modi as historic, the Obama administration has christened his vision of Indo-US ties that has overcome the hesitations of history and working for the betterment of the global good as Modi Doctrine.

The most important outcome in my mind of the visit this week and of the years of effort that preceded it is the clear and compelling vision that was laid out by Prime Minister Modi before the joint session of the US Congress, Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asia Nisha Desai Biswal said.

This vision which I have come to call The Modi Doctrine laid out a foreign policy that overcomes the hesitations of history and embraces the convergence between our two countries and our shared interests, Biswal told a Washington audience.

Biswal, the Obama Administrations point person for South and Central Asia, said this at a discussion on Security and Strategic Outcomes from the Modi Visit organised yesterday here jointly by the Heritage Foundation (an American think-tank) and India Foundation; a New Delhi based think-tank.

Modi, she said, in his speech furthered his bold vision of India-US partnership that can anchor peace, prosperity and stability from Asia to Africa, from the Indian Ocean to the Pacific and help ensure the security of the sea lanes of commerce and freedom of navigation on the seas.

Read: Ensure territory not used for planning attacks in India: US to Pak

This Modi Doctrine notes that the absence of an agreed security architecture creates uncertainty in Asia and reiterates Indias adherence to and calls for others support for international laws and norms, Biswal said.

India, she said, is now a key element of Obama Administrations rebalances to Asia, a strategy which recognizes that Americas security and prosperity increasingly depend on the security and prosperity of the Indo-Pacific.

Joint strategic vision

The joint strategic vision which was issued last year laid out our mutual goals and interests in the Indo-Pacific and across the global commons. We are now implementing a roadmap that sets out a path of co-operation to achieve those goals and protect those interests, Biswal said.

In his remarks, US Ambassador to India Richard Verma said the US welcomes and shares the Prime Ministers vision.

We have made a clear and strategic choice to support Indias transition to become, as Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar has articulated, a leading power. Our actions, as security partners in every sense of the word, speak to this endeavour, he said.

Read: In Modi, Obama has found partner to boost Indo-US ties: White House

We envision India as a leading power that can uphold international norms and support what Defence Secretary Carter called last week a principled security network in Asia. A leading power that can grow its economy while at the same time demonstrating global leadership on clean energy and climate, he said.

And a leading power that joins likeminded partners to safeguard the global commons. Realising this vision will require diligent work on part of the bureaucracies in both Washington and Delhi and resilience to overcome obstacles that may arise, Verma said.
Washington: The US-led coalition fighting Islamic State said on Friday it could not confirm a report by an Iraqi TV channel that Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has been wounded in air strikes.

A spokesman of the coalition, Colonel Chris Garver, said in an email that he had seen the reports but had "nothing to confirm this at this time".

Al Sumariya TV cited local sources in Iraq's Nineveh province that Baghdadi and other Islamic State leaders were wounded on Thursday in a coalition air strike on one of the group's command headquarters close to the Syrian border.
The Sri Dharma Munisverar temple was reported to have been damaged in Friday's incident though the extent of the damage was yet to be ascertained, Deputy Chief Minister Dr P Ramasamy said. (Representational images)

Kuala Lumpur: A Hindu temple was on Friday vandalised in Malaysia's Penang state by unidentified persons who damaged the deities, a top state official said, less than a week after a similar incident in the area.

The Sri Dharma Munisverar temple was reported to have been damaged in Friday's incident though the extent of the damage was yet to be ascertained, Deputy Chief Minister Dr P Ramasamy said.

This is the second such incident involving a Hindu temple in Butterworth town. The Munisverar temple is located about one km away from the Muthumariamman Temple in Penanti Estate, Ara Kuda which was reportedly vandalised last Saturday, he said.

A police report was lodged by the temple authorities. Malaysia's 28 million population comprises eight per cent ethnic Indians mostly Hindu and Tamils.

Last week, two statues of deities were vandalised in Ara Kuda, prompting the temple committee to look into installing closed-circuit television (CCTV) cameras for security purposes.

The attack was believed to be a hate crime as no items were stolen from the temple. Ramasamy said he had written to Inspector-General of Police Khalid Abu Bakar urging the police to investigate the incident last week.
Kabul: A 40-year-old Indian woman identified as Judith D'Souza was abducted from Taimani area of Kabul in Afghanistan on Thursday night. She was reportedly working with the Aga Khan Foundation.

Surveillance teams and special security forces are trying to locate her.

Indian embassy is in touch with senior Afghan authorities and also the family members, who reside in Kolkata.

Indian government sources said that all efforts are being made by Afghanistan authorities to secure early release of the woman.

External Affairs minister Sushma Swaraj said, I have spoken to Judith D'Souzas sister. We will make all efforts to rescue her.
mike harrell.JPG

Former ACIPCO Federal Credit Union CEO Mike Harrell

Everyone at ACIPCO Federal Credit Union respected Mike Harrell. He was the CEO of ACIPCO, but for many, he was more than a boss - he was a friend and confidant. He was active in the community and a large supporter of philanthropic efforts in Birmingham. When Mike suffered a heart attack and passed away suddenly, it left many of the employees who knew him devastated.

"After the passing of Mike, it was very difficult for the staff and members of the credit union because of the relationships he had formed over his 26 years with us," Valerie Garner, a loans manager for ACIPCO, says.

With the help of the American Heart Association, Mike's family and the employees at ACIPCO were able to get a better understanding of heart disease through the American Heart Association's awareness campaigns. The company began to implement the American Heart Association's workplace wellness programs to help prevent similar tragedies from happening to other coworkers.

"The American Heart Association was such a supportive resource for ACIPCO as they provided information on the causes of heart disease and its prevention," Valerie says.

Because of the support that they received after Mike's passing, ACIPCO Federal Credit Union, Heritage South Federal Credit Union and Guardian Credit Union came together to form a Birmingham Heart Walk team in order to honor Mike. Together, the groups have raised over $25,000 this year, which will come back to the state of Alabama in the form of local heart research and education programs.

The American Heart Association's Birmingham Heart Walk is a time for the community to come together to remember those who have been affected or even lost their lives to heart disease or stroke. There will be a Memorial Wall at the event to honor those loved ones. ACIPCO says they will definitely be writing Mike's name this year and every year that they participate.

"The Birmingham Heart Walk reminds us all that this disease affects everyone in some way or another. We have to be committed to support this cause," Valerie says. "The Heart Walk will not only educate our community, but it will also bring more awareness of the importance of knowing ways we can prevent heart disease and stroke."

While honoring loved ones affected by heart disease and stroke is a key part of the Birmingham Heart Walk, it is also a time of hope for Birmingham.

"The Birmingham Heart Walk is a time for the central Alabama community to come together to raise funds for local heart research and educational programs, while showing people the lasting impact lifestyle change can have on preventing heart disease and stroke," Betsy Postlethwait, CEO of Princeton Baptist Hospital and 2016 Birmingham Heart Walk chair, says.

"Healthy lifestyles will benefit us all. Walking is just one of the things you can do that is easy, enjoyable and heart-healthy," Valerie says.

ACIPCO Federal Credit Union, Heritage South Federal Credit Union and Guardian Credit Union say they are excited for the Birmingham Heart Walk, which is being held on Saturda,y June 11 at Uptown at the BJCC. Festivities start at 7:30 a.m., and it is free and open to the community. The ACIPCO team says they are ready to celebrate and honor Mike's life at the Walk.

"We named our campaign Healthy Hearts for Harrell in memory of Mike and to honor his legacy at ACIPCO Federal Credit Union because he was loved and respected by so many," Valerie says.

For more information on how to become involved with the Birmingham Heart Walk, visit our website.
Brussels: Belgian police investigating the Brussels airport and metro attacks have arrested a man in connection with "terrorist murders", the federal prosecutor said on Friday.

The 31-year-old man, identified only as Ali E.H.A., was detained on Thursday during a house search in the Schaerbeek area of the capital, the prosecutor's office said.

Several people have previously been charged over the March 22 suicide bombings at Zaventem airport and Maalbeek metro station which killed 32 people.

"In connection with the federal investigation after the terrorist attacks in Zaventem and Brussels, a house search was conducted," the statement said.

"The Belgian national Ali E.H.A., born on 23rd September 1984, was arrested and later put in detention by the Investigating Judge for participation in the activities of a terrorist group, terrorist murders and attempted terrorist murders, as a perpetrator, co-perpetrator or accomplice."

It added: "Currently, no further information will be given in the interest of the investigation."

The announcement comes a day after a Belgian court approved the extradition to France of Mohamed Abrini, a key suspect in both the Brussels attacks and the November Paris attacks in which 130 people were killed.

He will not be handed over to French authorities for some time as he is still being investigated over the Belgium attacks.

Abrini has confessed to being the "man in the hat" caught on video with the two airport bombers and who was allegedly preparing to detonate a third bomb before fleeing the scene.

Another key suspect linked to both the Paris and Brussels killings, Salah Abdeslam, was extradited to France in April. Abdeslam's brother Brahim blew himself up during the Paris massacre.

Both attacks were claimed by the Islamic State group and appear to be linked to the same cell of attackers.

The airport bombings were carried out by Ibrahim El Bakraoui and Najim Laachraoui -- who was the alleged bomb-maker for the November 13 attacks on Paris.

The metro bomber was Khalid El Bakraoui, Ibrahim's brother.

Among the other suspects charged in Belgium is Swedish national Osama Krayem, 23, arrested on April 8, who reportedly told investigators that he was also to have blown himself up in the metro but instead disposed of the explosives in a toilet.

Belgium is still recovering from the impact of the worst terror attacks in its history.

Brussels airport only fully reopened to passengers this month, now with increased security, but it suffered a major power outage early Friday which left many people queuing outside.
The minor victim had recently lost her mother to a disease and was being raised by her father and maternal grandmother. (Photo: YouTube Screengrab)

Minais Gerais: In a horrifying incident, a man has been arrested on the charges of brutally raping a 10-year-old girl and ripping her heart out. The incident took place as the girl walked to school in the Brazilian state of Minais Gerais.

The accused, identified as 42-year-old Jairo Lopes, targeted Raiana Aparecida Candida, the victim, on June 1 and raped her before ripping her heart out.

Lopez was arrested days after Raiana's body was found at a country farm in Buenopolis. Her heart was allegedly torn out when she was found.

He was taken into custody after being found hiding in a farm. Investigators said that Lopez had to be airlifted from the hiding place as about 500 people had gathered near the spot to lynch him.

We had to move him out quickly from the hiding place he was found in because locals wanted to kill him, police chief Giovanni Idalmo de Faria was quoted as saying by the Mirror.

He pleaded guilty to raping and murdering Raiana. Earlier, investigators investigated this as an extortion case, but later they suspected black magic angle. Police believed it could be the result of black magic as Lopez had a tattoo on his stomach that referred to a particular sect.

The minor victim had recently lost her mother to a disease and was being raised by her father and maternal grandmother.

In the most recent case of sexual assault against minor girls in Brazil, police had registered a case against 30 men suspected of gangraping a 16-year-old in Rio de Janeiro. The attackers posted pictures and videos of the assault on the unconscious teenager on Twitter.

In her statement to the police, the victim said that the moment she woke up, she saw nearly 30 men surrounding her with weapons in their hand. Before she could think of anything, they attacker her and brutally raped her till she passed out.
A man sits in his damaged shop near the site of Tuesday explosion in Istanbul. (Photo: AP)

Istanbul: A Kurdish militant group on Friday claimed responsibility for a car-bomb attack in Istanbul this week that killed 11 people, saying it was just the beginning of a war.

In a statement posted online, the Kurdistan Freedom Falcons also warned tourists that Turkey was no longer secure for them.

"You are not our targets but Turkey is no longer safe for you," it read. "We have just started the war."

The Kurdistan Freedom Falcons is considered an offshoot of the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, and has carried out several attacks in the past.

It denounced the ruling Justice and Development Party, which was founded by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, for its "wild war" against Kurds.

Turkey's southeast plunged into violence last summer when a 2?-year fragile truce between the state and Kurdish rebels collapsed.

The rush hour car-bomb attack on Tuesday morning targeted a police vehicle in Istanbul and injured 36 people in addition to those killed.

Istanbul's bombing was followed on Wednesday by a suicide attack in the southeastern town of Midyat that killed three police officers and three civilians.

On Thursday, The PKK said the Midyat attack was carried out by one of its "comrades," code name Dirok Amed.

The authorities were quick to report they suspected Kurdish militants in both cases. The claims of responsibility confirmed those suspicions.

The Kurdistan Freedom Falcons, also known as TAK, was also behind two deadly suicide bombings this year in Ankara, the capital.

The PKK routinely attacks military and police targets in the southeast, where large-scale security operations to flush out Kurdish rebels have left hundreds dead, displaced entire communities and done extensive damage to urban infrastructure.

The PKK, labeled a terror organization by Turkey and its allies, is fighting for autonomy for Turkey's Kurds in the southeast. The decades-long conflict has claimed 40,000 lives.
Nearly 752,000 migrants and refugees have reached Europe's shores this year, causing bitter divisions within the European Union. (Photo: AFP)

Vienna: Swimming lessons for refugee children have whipped up a storm in Austria, with a lifeguard's car window smashed and a newspaper on Friday filing charges against a woman who said the migrants should drown.

Local newspapers reported this week that the southern state of Carinthia was offering the courses free of charge for unaccompanied minors in order to prevent accidents in lakes and swimming pools this summer.

This provoked a torrent of what local politician called Heinz Kernjak called "ignorant and offensive" online comments, while an unknown assailant smashed the window of a van belonging to lifeguards in the town of Wolfsberg.

When national daily Kurier reported the story on Thursday, it provoked complaints, alongside messages of support, about the costs of the lessons to the taxpayer and how the courses would only encourage more immigration.

One woman even commented on Facebook that the migrants "should drown", prompting the Kurier on Friday to file charges with the authorities, the first time it has done so for a comment on an article on the social media website.

"Because of the growing number of hate posts, Kurier will from now on be more rigorous in its efforts against hate posts and in bringing charges," the daily said.

Austria last year received some 90,000 asylum requests, the second highest per capita in the European Union, resulting in a sharp rise in the number of racist attacks, although it lags well behind neighbouring Germany.

Last week police said that a fire that burned to the ground a recently completed but still empty refugee centre was likely caused by arsonists.

In May a suspected neo-Nazi was arrested and weapons were recovered at his home after telling friends he wanted to massacre migrants.

The influx has also boosted support for the anti-immigration Freedom Party (FPOe), which on May 22 came close to winning presidential elections and which this week filed a legal challenge against the result.

FPOe leader Heinz-Christian Strache and Frauke Petry, head of the anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD), on Friday held talks on the Zugspitze, Germany's highest mountain, to discuss increased cooperation.

Marine Le Pen, the head of France's National Front who will run for president in 2017, is due to meet Strache outside Vienna next Friday for an event dubbed by the FPOe the "Patriotic Spring".
Geneva: The Israeli army's decision to block Palestinians from entering Israel following a deadly attack in Tel Aviv may amount to collective punishment, the UN said on Friday, criticising the move.

After Palestinian gunmen shot dead four people in the coastal city, the Israeli army said crossings to Israel from the West Bank and the Gaza Strip would be closed in all but "medical and humanitarian cases".

United Nations rights chief Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein condemned the attack but was also "deeply concerned" by Israel's response, his office said in a statement. The Jewish state's reaction "includes measures that may amount to prohibited collective punishment and will only increase the sense of injustice and frustration felt by Palestinians in this very tense time," the statement said.

Israel's mission to the UN in Geneva accused the rights chief of rushing "to defend the terrorists." It called on Zeid's office to "take another look at the current situation in the Middle East, so it may understand the absurdity of its own statement."

An Israeli army spokeswoman said the closure would remain in force until midnight Sunday. A spokeswoman for COGAT, the defence ministry unit which manages civilian affairs in the occupied West Bank, said that about 10,000 Palestinians were nevertheless allowed into Jerusalem for Muslim prayers on the first Friday of Ramadan at the Al-Aqsa mosque complex.

Israel has also revoked work permits for 204 of the attackers' relatives and the army blockaded their West Bank hometown of Yatta.
Monitors compiled the list dating back to the declaration of ISIS in June 2014, showing regular beheadings, shootings, stoning and other methods of murder such as throwing people off buildings and setting them on fire. (Representational Image)

London: The Islamic State militant group has executed over 4,000 people within two years, a UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) said, calling on the UN to stop the crimes and violations committed against the Syrian people by the outfit.

Monitors compiled the list dating back to the declaration of ISIS in June 2014, showing regular beheadings, shootings, stoning and other methods of murder such as throwing people off buildings and setting them on fire.

The so-called offences of those executed included sodomy, apostasy and alcohol smuggling, SOHR notes. It concludes that by the end of the 22nd month of the so-called "caliphate" under ISIS, 4,144 people had been executed.

SOHR said civilians made up the bulk of those executed, estimated at 2,230 people, including in three large-scale massacres of Sunni and Kurdish citizens.

The civilians, including women and children, are among the number, as are hundreds of ISIS' own members and enemy fighters from Bashar al-Assad's army and opposition rebel groups, 'The Independent' reported.

"The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights call again on the UN Security Council to work seriously to stop the crimes and violations committed against the Syrian people by the 'Islamic State' and the regime of Bashar al-Assad," a spokesperson said.

In the month until March 29 this year, 80 killings were recorded in ISIS territory in the provinces of Deir ez-Zor, Raqqa, Damascus, Aleppo, Homs and Al-Hasakah.

A child was among 37 Syrian civilians executed, while 24 ISIS members, six rebels and fighters and more than a dozen Syrian army and militia members were beheaded and shot, SOHR said.

A former London student who joined ISIS in Syria last year described the reign of terror they enforce in their strongholds in an interview with the newspaper.

"I witnessed stonings, beheadings, shootings, hands chopped off and many other things," said Harry Sarfo, currently in prison in Germany awaiting trial for terror offences after fleeing Syria last July.

He added: "I've seen child soldiers 13-year-old boys with explosive belts and Kalashnikovs. Some boys even driving cars and involved in executions."

"My worst memory is of the execution of six men shot in the head by Kalashnikovs. The chopping off of a man's hand and making him hold it with the other hand," he said.

"The Islamic State is not just un-Islamic, it is inhuman. A blood-related brother killed his own brother on suspicion of being a spy. They gave him the order to kill him. It is friends killing friends," he added.
Displaced Iraqi families, who fled their homes in and around Fallujah, head to receive food rations in Amriyat al-Fallujah. (Photo: AFP)

Baghdad: Abu Marwan, his wife and his three children are among the very few Iraqi civilians to have escaped from the heart of the ISIS's besieged stronghold of Fallujah.

Most of the more than 20,000 people who have reached safety since Iraqi forces launched an offensive last month are from the outskirts of the city, which lies only 50 kilometres (30 miles) west of Baghdad.

The 49-year-old man and his family were able to leave Fallujah this week but tens of thousands more civilians remained trapped in the city by ISIS.

This is the account he gave AFP by telephone of life under the terrorists and how his family eventually got out:

"We did not flee Fallujah when Daesh (ISIS) took over at the end of 2013," he said, referring to the start of a period of anti-government protests during which IS's previous incarnation gradually took over the city.

"We expected the crisis would end within weeks or months. But the gunmen soon had the people on a tight leash, imposing new rules, issuing decrees, setting up barriers and planting bombs on the streets.

"That continued through 2014 and 2015... We were already affected by this but our living conditions deteriorated abruptly at the beginning of this year.

"My neighbour and I contacted somebody called Abu Omar, who is a Daesh member known as the "wali" (local chief) of southern Fallujah, to facilitate our exfiltration from the city in return for smuggling his wife with us," Abu Marwan said.

"He had cut a deal for his wife to be taken to Kirkuk.

"Daesh calls the wives of its members 'State women' and women in the city who have not pledged allegiance to the movement are called 'common women'," Abu Marwan explained.

Euphrates crossing

The deal was sealed with the 'wali' in two days. Abu Marwan prepared his car and his family and Abu Omar's wife all squeezed in.

We were stopped at many checkpoints but when we said Abu Omar sent us, they let us through. Then he appeared on a motorcycle and drove in front of us to open the way. He told us we should keep a distance of 100 metres.

Abu Marwan said they snaked their way down to an area called Zoba by the Euphrates.

"There were many Daesh fighters along the way, heavily armed and hiding in various shelters," he said.

A senior commander in the operation to retake Fallujah, one of the terrorists' most emblematic bastions, said up to 2,500 IS fighters were defending the city.

In Zoba, ISIS was out in numbers, controlling who left the area.

"Some families had been there for four days, waiting to cross the river. Some were arguing with Daesh," Abu Marwan said.

"I left my car with Daesh. After also arguing with them, we boarded a small boat with my family and Abu Omar's wife but Daesh said the men should swim," he said.

According to the Norwegian Refugee Council, which runs most of the camps where the people displaced by the operation are housed, hundreds of families fled through Zoba in recent days.

Several people were shot by ISIS trying to cross the river while others drowned, according to several aid groups.

Sweets and water

"After crossing the river, we walked a short distance and found the Iraqi army and the Hashed al-Shaabi" paramilitary umbrella organisation, he said.

"They welcomed us and handed out sweets, juice and water. Then they separated the men from the women, started conducting security checks and inspected our bags.

Abu Marwan said they were asked whether they had any information about ISIS leaders inside the city.

"The security forces began releasing the older men... The middle-aged and young men were kept all night as they carried out checks on us with laptops.

"I told them Abu Omar's wife had been with us but I have no information on what happened to her," said Abu Marwan, who was eventually allowed to leave and join his family.
According to reports, Baghdadi was injured along with some members of the organisation who were gathered at that meeting. (Photo: PTI)

Baghdad: Islamic States dreaded chief Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has been wounded in an air strike by coalition forces on one of the outfits command headquarters close to the Syrian border in Iraq, media reports said Friday.

Iraqi news channel Al Sumariya TV claimed local sources in Iraqs Nineveh province had confirmed that Baghdadi and other leaders in the Islamist group were wounded Thursday in the coalition bombing raid.

The planes of the international coalition yesterday bombed a location where there is a base of Isis members along the border area between Iraq and Syria, 65 kilometres west of Nineveh, Express UK quoted an Iraqi source as saying.

According to reports, Baghdadi was injured along with some members of the organisation who were gathered at that meeting.
An Israeli couple looks towards people gathering at a restaurant which was targeted by Palestinian gunmen at a shopping complex in Tel Aviv (Photo: AFP)

Jerusalem: The Israeli army said Friday that it was temporarily barring Palestinians from entering Israel, stepping up already tough restrictions announced after Palestinian gunmen shot dead four Israelis in Tel Aviv.

An army spokeswoman told AFP that crossings to Israel from the West Bank and the Gaza Strip would be closed for Palestinians in all but "medical and humanitarian cases".

She said that the closure would remain in force until midnight Sunday.

A spokeswoman for COGAT, the defence ministry unit which manages civilian affairs in the occupied West Bank, said that about 10,000 Palestinians were nevertheless allowed into Jerusalem for Muslim prayers on the first Friday of Ramadan at the Al-Aqsa mosque complex.

The worshippers would have to return home after Friday prayers, the spokeswoman said.

Passage was unrestricted for Palestinian women, but there were age restrictions for men.

The age limit was not immediately clear, with crossing guards telling Palestinians that admission for males was restricted to those over 45 years of age, while other officials told AFP the threshold was either 35 or 30.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu convened his security cabinet on Thursday and announced a slew of measures against Palestinians in the wake of Wednesday's shooting in a popular Tel Aviv nightspot, the deadliest attack in a months-long wave of violence.

Among the measures, the government said it was revoking entry permits for more than 80,000 Palestinians to visit relatives in Israel during Ramadan.

It also revoked work permits for 204 of the attackers' relatives and the army blockaded their West Bank hometown of Yatta, with soldiers patrolling and stopping cars as they entered and exited.

The government also said it was sending two additional battalions -- amounting to hundreds more troops -- into the occupied West Bank.

Assailants' bodies held

Newly installed Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman ordered that the bodies of Palestinians killed while carrying out attacks would no longer be returned to their families for burial, a spokesman said.

The policy is backed by Israeli hawks as a deterrent measure.

Israel last closed its crossings for two days in May during its Remembrance Day and Independence Day commemorations.

A closure is often imposed over Jewish holidays, when large numbers of Israelis congregate to pray or celebrate, presenting a potential target for Palestinian attacks.

The start of April's Passover festival saw this type of shutdown.

The closure announced Friday came as Israeli security forces deployed in Jerusalem, prepared for thousands of Muslim worshippers at Al-Aqsa.

"Thousands of police will be in and around the Old City of Jerusalem carrying out security measures," a police statement said.

Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan said the police were there to safeguard both Muslim and Jewish prayer at the city's holy sites over the weekend, which will also see the Jewish festival of Shavuot begin late Saturday.

"We of course want to allow (Jewish) worshippers here in the Old City and throughout Jerusalem to pray in safety and also for Muslims to get here freely and allow them freedom of worship," he said in an address broadcast from the Western Wall, the holiest site where Jews can pray.

"We are in the wake of a harsh attack and we continue today to bury some of those murdered in the attack," Erdan said.

"The security forces and the police are doing everything they can, every day, and during the holiday ahead of us."

Violence since October has killed at least 207 Palestinians, 32 Israelis, two Americans, an Eritrean and a Sudanese.

Most of the Palestinians were carrying out knife, gun or car-ramming attacks, according to Israeli authorities.

Others were killed in clashes with security forces or by Israeli air strikes in the Gaza Strip.

The violence had declined in recent weeks before Wednesday's deadly shooting.
US and Iraqi officials couldn't confirm report by an Iraqi TV channel about the Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi been wounded in an air strike. (Photo: AP))

Baghdad/Falluja: US and Iraqi officials said today that they could not confirm a report by an Iraqi TV channel that ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi had been wounded in an air strike in northern Iraq.

A spokesman for the US-led coalition fighting the radical Islamist terrorists, Colonel Chris Garver, said in an email that he had seen the reports but had "nothing to confirm this at this time".

Kurdish and Arab security officials in northern Iraq said they also could not confirm the report.

Al Sumariya TV cited a local source in the northern province of Nineveh saying that Baghdadi and other ISIS leaders were wounded on Thursday in a coalition air strike on one of the group's command headquarters close to the Syrian border.

The channel has good connections with Shia politicians and Iraqi forces engaged in the battle against ISIS.

There have been several reports in the past that Baghdadi, whose real name is Ibrahim al-Samarrai, was killed or wounded after proclaiming himself caliph of all Muslims two years ago.

The ultra-hardline Sunni group is under increased pressure in both Iraq and Syria, and the territory under its control has shrunk significantly since 2014, limiting the potential for its leaders to move around or seek shelter.

The US earlier this year announced an intensification of the war on ISIS with more air strikes and more American troops on the ground to advise and assist allied forces.

The US-led coalition has regularly flown raids out of Erbil, the capital of Iraq's Kurdistan region, in operations aimed at killing and capturing ISIS leaders.

A Kurdish intelligence official and an Arab from the Baaj area west of Mosul said the US-led coalition had conducted such a raid there earlier this week. The coalition did not confirm this raid.

Kurdish Peshmerga forces are positioned in an arc around the north and east of Mosul while the Iraqi army is trying to capture Falluja, 50 km (30 miles) west of Baghdad.

The army's elite Counter Terrorism Service was battling on Friday in al-Shuhada, a southern district of Falluja, a Reuters photographer reported from the scene.

Loud explosions and bursts of gunfire were heard from the district, while aircraft believed to belong to the US-led coalition flew overhead.

Al-Shuhada marks the first advance of the army inside the built-up area of Falluja, after two weeks of fighting on the outskirts to complete the encirclement of the city.

The encirclement was completed with help from Iran-backed Shia militias. They deployed behind the army's lines and did not take part directly in the assault on the city to avoid inflaming sectarian feelings.

A government official said ISIS terrorists are putting up a tough fight defending the city that stands as a symbol of the Sunni insurgency that followed the US occupation of Iraq, in 2003.

Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said the troops are progressing cautiously in order to protect tens of thousands of civilians trapped in Falluja.

The United Nations says 90,000 civilians may have remained in Falluja, under "harrowing" conditions with little access to food, water and healthcare, and no safe exit routes.

The insurgents have dug a network of tunnels to move around without being detected and planted thousands of mines and explosive devices to delay the army's advance.

Finance Minister Hoshiyar Zebari said a week ago that the battle of Falluja "will take time".

The Iraqi army is also massing tanks and troops south of Mosul, in preparation for an offensive planned later this year to retake the largest city under the control of the terrorists.

In Syria, Russian- and Iranian-backed Syrian government forces and US-backed Syrian opposition and Kurds are separately trying to advance on Raqqa, the group's capital in Syria.
 Yahoo News, Russia Today, Misreport Tel Aviv Terror Attack | Main | A Preoccupied Western Media Fails to Appreciate the Historic Revival of Ties Between Russia and Israel 

June 10, 2016

CAMERA Waiting for Response to Letter to Mart Green About Little Town of Bethlehem

This is a screenshot of a plane shown in the 2010 movie Little Town of Bethlehem directed by Jim Hanon and produced by Mart Green, who currently serves as chief strategy officer for Hobby Lobby. The film, which is about the Arab-Israeli conflict, showed footage of this plane as if it were an Israeli fighter. The name on the fuselage, which can be seen clearly, is that of an Australian pilot. In sum, the film passed off footage of an Australian fighter as if it were an Israeli plane. The use of footage in this manner is a clear violation of the norms of documentary making.

CAMERA is waiting for a response to a letter sent to Mart Green, producer of the 2010 movie Little Town of Bethlehem.

On June 1, 2016, CAMERA sent a letter to Mart Green who currently serves as Chief Strategy Officer for Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc.

Copies of the letter were also sent to Mart Greens father David Green, CEO of Hobby Lobby and Mart Greens brother, Steve Green, who serves as President of the company, which has 700 stores throughout the United States.

Another copy of the letter was sent to Jim Hanon, the movies director.

In the letter, CAMERA asks Mart Green to embark on a campaign to unwind the damage done to Israels reputation (and to the reputation of American Jews who support the Jewish state) by the misinformation broadcast in the movie.

The movies propagandistic treatment of the Arab-Israeli conflict incited hostility and unwarranted contempt toward Israel and its Jewish supporters in the minds of thousands of viewers,? the letter stated.

CAMERA asked Mart Green to publish and distribute a fact sheet that would be sent to officials at the 400 venues where the movie was shown. CAMERA also asked that Mart Green issue a press release drawing attention to his efforts to correct the record.

Accompanying the letter was a 20-page analysis of the factual misstatements and misinformation broadcast in the movie. Some, but not all of CAMERAs complaints about the movie can be seen in this article published in November 2015.

One problem described in the letter (but not the article) is how the movie misleads its viewers by passing off footage of an Australian jet as an Israeli fighter plane.

At various points throughout the film, LTOB shows footage of a jet fighter doing aerial maneuvers while Yonatan Shapira, who is featured at length in the film, speaks about serving in Israels air force. Viewers are led to believe that the plane in being shown is an Israeli fighter jet.

It is not.

A close examination of the footage in question reveals that the plane in question has the name of an Australian fighter pilot whose name and rank and story can be readily found on the Internet. (A screenshot of the stenciling on the fuselage, with the pilot's name can be clearly seen in the image at the top of this entry).

This information can only be obtained by looking at the film on a frame-by-frame basis, as CAMERA has done. Viewers who see the film in a public setting simply will not be able to do this.

This is only one of the many problems in the list sent to Mart Green.

In the letter, CAMERA also asked Mart Green if the Green family was involved in the production of another anti-Israel film, With God on Our Side produced by Porter Speakman, Jr. Despite repeated requests for information about the funders of this film, Speakman has not revealed their identities. Individuals and organizations who felt it was an important topic to address donated toward this project,? Speakman wrote in an email to CAMERA in July 2012.

Earlier today, CAMERA contacted LTOB's director Jim Hanon and asked if he would be issuing a public statement in response to the letter. (No.)

While speaking with CAMERA, Hanon said that he produced Little Town of Bethlehem to allow people with a particular perspective a chance to tell their stories. He was not offering it up as a historical document,? Hanon said. When told that he was not merely offering up different perspectives, but misinformation about the Arab-Israeli conflict, Hanon stated that the sources in the film would consider the information presented in the letter to the Greens as misinformation and that giving them a chance to tell their story in a public forum is not harmful.? Watch this space for more information.



Posted by dvz at June 10, 2016 01:42 PM

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In April 2000, days after Clinton's departure, Pakistani courts had sentenced the deposed Prime Minister Sharif to life imprisonment rather than the gallows. (Photo: PTI)

Islamabad: US President Bill Clinton visited Pakistan in 2000 to save deposed premier Nawaz Sharif from the gallows and tried to take him out of the country, former Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz has claimed.

"The sole purpose of Clinton's visit to Pakistan was to save Sharif from hanging," Aziz said, adding that Clinton was driven by humanitarian objectives and wanted that no personal vendetta be carried out against Sharif after his government was overthrown by General (retd) Pervez Musharraf in a coup in October 1999.

In April 2000, days after Clinton's departure, Pakistani courts had sentenced the deposed Prime Minister Sharif to life imprisonment rather than the gallows. After intervention by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the US, Sharif was sent to exile in Saudi Arabia.

"The final agreement took place after he (Musharraf) came to know through Lebanese business tycoon and the country's then PM Rafiq-Al-Hariri that the Saudis were angry over Sharif's treatment by the government after his ouster from power," he added.

Aziz, who held the prime minister's office under Musharraf from 2004 to 2007, further claimed that both Musharraf and Benazir Bhutto did not want Sharif to return to Pakistan before the 2008 general elections and tried to keep him in exile.

Talking in a Geo TV's programme about the claims made in his recently published book 'From Banking to the Thorny World of Politics', Aziz said: "The then US Assistant Secretary of State for Central and South Asia Richard Boucher told me that both Musharraf and Bhutto wanted Sharif to stay abroad to avoid competition."

He also claimed that the US also found merit in the preposition and had wanted Benazir to become the Prime Minister with Musharraf remaining president.
Islamabad: Pakistan on Thursday expressed concern over growing Indo-US defence relations. Addressing a news conference here, Adviser on Foreign Affairs Sartaj Aziz said Pakistan will share its concerns with international community about threats to regional peace and stability.

He said Pakistan had the right to maintain minimum nuclear deterrence to defend itself in the given situation. Sartaj Aziz said dialogue was the only way to solution of all outstanding issues between Pakistan and India. He said Pakistan always facilitated Afghan-led peace process for the restoration of peace in that country.

The Adviser on foreign affairs said the recent drone attack in which the Taliban leader Mullah Akhtar Mansour was killed, has breached our sovereignty, caused a serious setback to the peace efforts and intensified hostilities in Afghanistan.

Mr Aziz said the most important diplomatic achievement during the last three years was path breaking transformation in Pakistans strategic partnership with China.

He said China-Pakistan Economic Corridor involving Chinese investment of $ 46 billion was manifestation of that partnership. Meanwhile on Thursday, Finance Minister Ishaq Dar said Pakistan highly valued China's continued support on issues of its national security, territorial integrity and the war on terror.

He said Chinese commitment to Pakistan's infrastructural development, capacity building and emergency relief operations was unmatched and commendable.
Victims of the attacks by suspected Islamists have included secular bloggers, gay rights activists and followers of minority religions.. (Representational Image)

Dhaka: Unidentified attackers hacked a 62-year-old Hindu monastery worker to death in Bangladesh on Friday, police said, the latest in a series of such attacks on religious minorities in the mainly Muslim country.

Police said Nityaranjan Pande was taking his regular early morning walk when the attackers set upon him, killing him on the spot.

"As a diabetic, everyday he walks early in the morning. Today as he was walking, several attackers hacked him in the neck... He died on the spot," local police station chief Abdullah Al-Hasan said.

"He had been working at the monastery for around 40 years. In recent years he was the head of its office staff," he said.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility.

But the head of police in the northwestern district of Pabna where the Shri Shri Thakur Anukulchandra Ashram is located said the killing bore the hallmarks of recent attacks by Islamist extremists on minorities and secular activists.

"There was no eye-witness to the attack as it happened very early in the morning," Alamgir Kabir said.

Bangladesh is reeling from a wave of murders of secular and liberal activists and religious minorities that have left nearly 50 people dead in the last three years.

Most of the latest attacks have been claimed either by the Islamic State group or by a South Asian branch of Al-Qaeda.

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's government has however blamed homegrown Islamists for the attacks, rejecting claims of responsibility from ISIS and al-Qaeda.

Experts say a government crackdown on opponents, including a ban on Bangladesh's largest Islamist party Jamaat-e-Islami following a protracted political crisis, has pushed many towards extremism.

Victims of the attacks by suspected Islamists have included secular bloggers, gay rights activists and followers of minority religions.

Although it is officially secular, around 90 percent of Bangladesh's 160 million-strong population is Muslim. Some eight percent of the population is Hindu.
Mansour, who was in his early 50s, and a Pakistani driver, Muhammad Azam, were killed on May 21 when US special forces targeted their vehicle in a drone strike in Noshki district of Balochistan. (Photo: AP)

Beijing: Backing Pakistan's stand against US drone strike that killed Taliban chief Mullah Akhtar Mansour, China on Friday said the international community should respect sovereignty and territorial integrity of Pakistan which has made "enormous efforts" to combat terrorism.

"Pakistan has made enormous efforts to combat terrorism and support the Afghan reconciliation process. The international community should fully recognise that and respect Pakistan's sovereignty and territorial integrity," China's Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said.

He was responding to a question over Pakistan denouncing the US drone strike in Balochistan last month as violation of its sovereignty.

Mansour, who was in his early 50s, and a Pakistani driver, Muhammad Azam, were killed on May 21 when US special forces targeted their vehicle in a drone strike in Noshki district of Balochistan.

"The Quadrilateral Coordination Group (QCG) of Afghanistan, Pakistan, China and the US is aiming at creating positive conditions for the reconciliation of Afghanistan, and all relevant parties should make joint efforts to achieve this goal," he said.
Supporters of Pakistani religious group Jamaat-ud-Dawa protest against the US drone strike in Pakistani territory which killed Taliban leader Mullah Mansour (Photo: PTI)

Beijing: Backing Pakistan's stand against US drone strike that killed Taliban chief Mullah Akhtar Mansour, China on Friday said the international community should respect sovereignty and territorial integrity of Pakistan which has made 'enormous efforts' to combat terrorism.

"Pakistan has made enormous efforts to combat terrorism and support the Afghan reconciliation process. The international community should fully recognise that and respect Pakistan's sovereignty and territorial integrity," China's Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said.

He was responding to a question over Pakistan denouncing the US drone strike in Balochistan last month as violation of its sovereignty.

Mansour, who was in his early 50s, and a Pakistani driver, Muhammad Azam, were killed on May 21 when US Special Forces targeted their vehicle in a drone strike in Noshki district of Balochistan.

"The Quadrilateral Coordination Group (QCG) of Afghanistan, Pakistan, China and the US is aiming at creating positive conditions for the reconciliation of Afghanistan, and all relevant parties should make joint efforts to achieve this goal," he said.
New Delhi: Nepal's relations with India is "incomparable" and its growing ties with China was not at the cost of India, Nepalese Deputy Prime Minister Kamal Thapa said on Friday, seeking support of both its neighbours to tide over the "most difficult" period in its recent history.

On a three-day visit here, Thapa said there was no threat to Prime Minister K P Sharma Oli's government though Maoist leader Prachanda had set certain conditions to continue his party's support to the coalition regime.

Fielding questions on a range of issues at a media interaction, Thapa, also Nepal's Foreign Minister, said his government was committed to resolve the contentious Madhesi issue and a high-level panel has been set up to suggest within three months ways to resolve their demands.

He also rubbished media reports that Oli accused India of destabilising his government, saying his comments were "misrepresented". Thapa said Ambassador Deep Kumar Upadhyay was recalled as government found somebody more suitable who can further strengthen ties between the two neighbours.

Thapa cited Nepal's transition to democracy, the Maoist struggle, last year's devastating earthquake and blockade of supplies from India due to Madhesi agitation as major crisis facing the country during the last two decades and said it wants now to embark on a path of economic growth and development.

"Nepal's relations with India is incomparable. If we try to expand our relations with China, that should not be seen at the cost of India. 50 years back the Himalaya was seen as a barrier, now it is no more a barrier.

"Railway is coming next to Nepal's border, highways are coming around Tibet. Do not you think it will be wise for Nepal to take advantage of that situation. It is very simple. We want development.

"Naturally we would like to take advantage from both our neighbours. But not at the cost of each other. Nepal does not have a policy of playing cards against each other," he said.
Islamabad: Pakistan has reached out to Mexico and Italy seeking support for its NSG membership bid, stepping up diplomatic efforts for its inclusion in the elite 48-nation bloc whose membership India is also eyeing.

"Adviser to the Prime Minister on Foreign Affairs Sartaj Aziz spoke over telephone with Mexican Foreign Minister Claudia Ruiz Massieu as part of Pakistan's continuing diplomatic efforts towards mobilising support for Pakistan's application for the membership of Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG)," a Foreign Office statement said here.

He highlighted Pakistan's credentials for the NSG membership with a view to seek Mexico's support. Significantly, Mexico had expressed its backing to India this week during the visit of Prime Minister Narendra Modi there. The Mexican support followed that of the US and Switzerland. Japan too has expressed its support for India's inclusion.

"Adviser Sartaj Aziz spoke with Italian Foreign Minister Paolo Gentilioni to seek support for Pakistan application for NSG membership. They had a very cordial exchange," Pakistan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs Spokesperson Nafees Zakaria tweeted on Wednesday.

As part of Pakistan's diplomatic push towards mobilising support for Pakistan's application for NSG membership, Aziz had earlier this week also spoke over telephone with the Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.

On Wednesday, Aziz also contacted Foreign Minister of New Zealand Murray McCully and Foreign Minister of Republic of Korea Yun Byung-se to highlight Pakistan's credentials for the NSG membership with a view to seek their support.

Pakistan's push to secure NSG membership comes at a time when India is also looking to secure membership of the elite grouping.

With the US pushing its case, India's bid for NSG membership has received positive indications from most of the member countries but China is still playing the spoiler by persisting with its opposition.
US approaches Pakistan whenever it needs it, and abandons it when it doesn't need Pakistan, Dawn newspaper quoted Mr Aziz as saying. (Photo: PTI)

Islamabad: Pakistan on Thursday expressed concern over the growing strategic ties between India and the US and accused that Washington approaches Islamabad whenever it needs it and abandons it when it does not.

"Pakistan will convey its concerns to the US over the latest issues in the bilateral ties," Pakistan Prime Minister's Adviser on Foreign Affairs Sartaj Aziz said, adding a high-level meeting is planned in Islamabad between the two nations today.

The US approaches Pakistan whenever it needs it, and abandons it when it doesn't need Pakistan, Dawn newspaper quoted Mr Aziz as saying.

His comments came a day after the two countries signed a number of agreements for security cooperation during Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to the US.

Pakistan is also upset that President Barack Obama has backed India's bid for membership in the Nuclear Suppliers Group.

"We firmly conveyed it to the US that maintaining effective nuclear deterrence is critical for Pakistan's security and only Pakistan itself can determine how it should respond to growing strategic imbalance in South Asia," Mr Aziz said.

He said Pakistan has decided to take up the issue of Kulbhushan Jadhav, an alleged Indian spy, with the UN and other international forums.

He claimed that the statement made by Director General of India's National Investigation Agency (NIA) that no evidence linked Pakistan to the Pathankot attack has vindicated Pakistan's position in attack probe.

The perpetually oscillating Pak-US relationship is once again at low as reflected by the Congressional restriction on financing of F-16 fighter jet's sale from Foreign Military Financing programme, due to which Pakistan lost the opportunity to buy the jets, the paper said.

The relationship was further strained when the US carried out a drone strike in Balochistan, killing Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Akhtar Mansour, which was termed by Pakistani leadership a violation of the country's sovereignty.
Baba Jan, a left wing political activist from the Hunza Valley in Pakistan's northern Gilgit-Baltistan, was convicted by an anti-terrorism court for participating in political riots in 2011 and lost an appeal against his life sentence on Thursday. (Representational image)

Islamabad: A Pakistani court has upheld the life sentence of a political activist from the country's semi-autonomous north, which observers say could see a "nationalist upsurge" in a region also claimed by India.

Baba Jan, a left wing political activist from the Hunza Valley in Pakistan's northern Gilgit-Baltistan, was convicted by an anti-terrorism court for participating in political riots in 2011 and lost an appeal against his life sentence on Thursday.

Jan has vocally protested what he and supporters describe as political, constitutional and human rights violations in the region, organising rallies and demonstrations in protest.

He contested local elections last year from prison, placing second in the polls.

"The decision was aimed at barring Baba Jan from contesting elections but it will have a counter-productive impact," said political analyst Amir Hussain.

"This decision will backfire and trigger extremist views like a nationalistic upsurge," he said.

A simmering resentment has been building in Gilgit-Baltistan since Islamabad began mulling upgrading its constitutional status in a bid to provide legal cover to a multi-billion-dollar Chinese investment plan in the area.

Gilgit-Baltistan, which borders China and Afghanistan, is not constitutionally part of Pakistan, and like Kashmir, it is also claimed by India.

Islamabad has historically insisted that the area, along with the parts of Kashmir it controls, are semi-autonomous and has not formally integrated them into the country, in line with its position that a referendum on sovereignty should be carried out across the whole of the region.

But Pakistan's adviser on foreign affairs Sartaj Aziz last week confirmed that a committee established to come up with a plan to reexamine the area's constitutional status had completed its work, adding that it was waiting a final approval from the prime minister.

Aziz did not give any further details on what the plan entailed.

Human rights organisations have been demanding the release of Baba Jan. An international petition for his release has been signed by leading left wing intellectuals, including Noam Chomsky, Tariq Ali and David Graeber.
Two young girls stand inches away from charred bricks and ash, staring at the detritus of a "kind and gentle" teenager who taught them the Quran. (Photo: AFP)

Lahore: Two young girls stand inches away from charred bricks and ash, staring at the detritus of a "kind and gentle" teenager who taught them the Quran but was savagely burned by her mother for marrying the man of her choice.

Maham and Muskan were pictured on Wednesday with their eyes riveted to the spot where, just hours before, 16-year-old Zeenat Bibi was doused in kerosene and set alight.

That night, Maham's mother told Agence France-Presse, she had to reassure her tearful and confused daughter that she loved her.

"She cried a lot and wept a lot, she did not eat anything," Rani Bibi, who shared the common last name with Zeenat's family, said on Thursday.

"She slept with me. Before sleeping she asked many questions: 'Why was my teacher killed? Why did her mum kill her?'

"I said, 'Don't worry. You are my beloved daughter.''

Maham, pictured in pink and black and frowning as she looked at the burn marks, said she had seen her teacher's feet beneath the shroud covering her body.

"When I saw that I started weeping because my teacher was dead," the 10-year-old said. "I was so afraid."

Muskan, also 10, lived opposite Zeenat in Pakistan's teeming cultural capital of Lahore, and had been taught the Quran by her too, the child's grandmother Nasreen Bibi told Agence France-Presse.

"Her face was very pale when she returned from the house," she said of her granddaughter. "She was looking very afraid."

Zeenat, both the women added, was "so kind and gentle".

An ambulance transports the body of a Pakistani teenager burnt alive by her mother from her home in Lahore. (Photo: AFP)

Police have said the teenager was killed on Wednesday by her mother after marrying Hasan Khan, her long-term boyfriend.

Burns covered 90 per cent of her body. A post-mortem to determine whether she was still alive when she was set on fire was being conducted.

None of her relatives sought to claim her body, police said on Thursday, leaving her new husband's family to bury her charred remains before dawn in a graveyard near the city.

#NoMoreKillingGirls

The vicious murder has sparked fresh calls for action against so-called "honour killings" in Pakistan.

Hundreds of women are killed by their relatives each year after allegedly bringing shame on their families in the deeply conservative Muslim country.

"I never (saw) such a mother in my whole life," Zeenat's mother-in-law Shahida Bibi said.

"Zeenat was so cute, so simple, so innocent and so kind... I loved her very much."

Her own child is demented with grief, she said. "Our boy has gone mad."

"The family, which is supposed to be the basic unit of society, turning against their own child shows that there is something flawed in law and society," rights activist Hina Gilani told Agence France-Presse.

The hashtag #NoMoreKillingGirls was being used by Pakistanis on Twitter on Thursday and was officially trending in Karachi, the sprawling port megacity of 20 million.

"They are killing minds and souls," wrote one user in Karachi.

Tweeting the image of Maham and Muskan staring at the ash, @Veengasj added: "What r girls thinking & getting msg? Girls hv no value?"

Fear and depression has taken over the neighbourhood a day after the murder, residents said.

"Parents should protect their children," said Muhammad Asghar, a neighbour who has two daughters and one son.

His daughters, Amina and Fatima, were also students of Zeenat, he said.

They were visiting their grandparents when the teenager was killed, and learned of her death on television. "They phoned me... they were weeping, wanted to come home."

It is the first time such an attack has taken place in that neighbourhood, he said, but it frightened him so much he is now considering moving.

"We will start preaching to parents in this street to take care of their kids," said another neighbour, 60-year-old Firdaus Bibi.

The message will fall into a void at Zeenat's home, where the doors on Thursday were locked closed.

"They have left," Ashgar said.

"Why they have gone, when everybody is coming to share their grief?"
The Left-backed students on Thursday staged a protest near the Human Resource Development (HRD) Ministry, pressing for their demand to give reservation to Other Backward Classes (OBCs) candidates at all levels of faculty recruitments in the universities.





Delhi Police personnel, however, swiftly rounded them up from the protest site and took them to Parliament Street Police Station minutes after they reached the spot to stage demonstration.



The agitating students were led by Jawaharlal Nehru University Students Union (JNUSU) president Kanhaiya Kumar, who is facing charge of sedition over February 29 Afzal Guru event row on the JNU campus.



The police action against the agitating students drew a scathing response from the JNUSU.



This is very shocking that this shameless government has been attacking on the fundamental rights of people. Earlier they attacked fellowship, then on education budget and possibility of employment, and now on social justice, Kanhaiya charged.



Cautioning the National Democratic Alliance government, JNUSU president also said, We want to give them strong message that government is formed through ballet, not trough bullet.



While the protest was called by the JNUSU, activists of all the Leftist students unions and Dalit students groups joined the JNU students demonstration.



We are facing lathicharge, water cannon and detention. They are using their repressive tools to suppress our voice, we'll use our democratic power to thorough them out of power, Kanhaiya said. The JNUSU on Wednesday had staged a protest at (UGC) office.
An AAP councillor was beaten up by the BJP corporators for wearing 'aam aadmi' cap during a joint meeting of the three municipal corporations at Ramlila Maidan, which was called to overshadow the Delhi Assembly's special session on the prevailing sanitation condition in the city on Thursday.





The thrashing of a Dalit AAP councillor blew up into a political controversy with Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal training his guns on the saffron party for its allegedly anti-Dalit steps.



"Utterly shameful. BJP is a party of gundas. Rakesh is dalit. BJP assaulting Dalits all over India in a systematic way," tweeted Kejriwal, soon after the Rakesh filed a police complaint.



Rakesh Kumar, a councillor from Kuanch Pandit ward in the North Delhi Municipal Corporation, was wearing a cap with Aam Aadmi Party written on it. After over an hour of the house proceedings, BJP councillors in the South Delhi Municipal Corporation objected to him wearing the cap. Neeraj Gupta a councillor from Sanfam Vihar and Chote Ram a councillor from Tughlakabad took blows at the AAP councillor and few others were seen manhandling Kumar.



A ruckus ensued soon after with the Congress staging a walkout amid the commotion demanding registration of FIR against the accused councillors. "Such behaviour is not tolerable in a House meeting. Its disrespectful to the chair and against the constitution," said Leader of Opposition in South Corporation, Farhad Suri.



Condemning the attack on AAP councillor, North Delhi Municipal Corporation A BJP councillor in North Corporation Azad Singh addressed the meeting after which the House proceedings were adjourned.



After the meeting was over Kumar said that he would register an FIR against the accused persons. "The BJP is feeling threatened by the presence of AAP in the corporation. The BJP councillors were reacting to the Delhi Assembly special session on the condition of sanitation in the city," said Kumar, wearing the 'AAP cap.



North Delhi Mayor Sanjeev Nayyar sought the video footage of the incident. "If anyone has the video footage please give it to us so that we can take the appropriate action against the culprits," said Nayyar. The BJP Delhi unit, however, said that wearing caps as political symbols is not allowed in the House meeting.



"Today a joint session of three civic bodies was called under special circumstances and an avoidable incident occurred due to a Aam Aadmi Party's councillor was wearing party symbol cap and he used abusive language when objected to," it said. "We have similarly seen AAP MLAs violating the decorum of the Delhi Vidhan Sabha by entering the house wearing party symbol caps and todays incident in civic bodies special session appears to be a repetition of the same."



The Delhi BJP said that it does not approve of violence "but the avoidable incident seen in the joint session appears to be the result of a planned conspiracy by Aam Aadmi Party".
The Opposition BJP on Thursday walked out of the Delhi Assembly as the Chair disallowed its plea to move an adjournment motion calling for discussion on alleged corruption in AAP governments app-based premium bus scheme.





As Speaker Ram Niwas Goel refused permission to table the adjournment motion, Leader of Opposition Vijender Gupta protested and claimed: Corruption is a very big issue. We are talking on facts, let the minister answer my questions.



Goel dismissed the BJPs plea for the motion saying the subject mentioned in the notice was not so important to call for adjournment of the House proceedings.



Angry BJP members, including Gupta and Jagdish Pradhan, stood near their seats and objected against the Chairs ruling. You are suppressing voice against corruption, said Gupta.



Laxmi Nagar AAP MLA Nitin Tyagi retorted by challenging the BJP legislators for debate on corruption in BJP-ruled three municipal corporation. You first tell us about whats going on in municipal corporations, said Tyagi.



As the BJP members refused to be silenced by verbal attacks from the treasury benches, the Speaker said: Vijender ji you seem to be living in illusionary world.



The BJPs strength in the House was one less, as Vishwas Nagar MLA O P Sharma is serving a suspension penalty for misbehaviour, still the Opposition members managed to hold up the proceedings in the House.



Gupta opened another front by telling the Speaker that the ruling party was victimising him because he had raised the issue of corruption in the app-based premium bus scheme.



The AAP government has withdrawn his official car with driver and reduced his office staff due to political vendetta, he alleged.



I want replies for my questions as exposing corruption is my right and it is an important issue, said Gupta, calling it an attempt to throttle the voice of democracy for exposing corrupt and unconstitutional practices.



The BJP leader said he was mentally harassed by the AAP government over which he had even given a police complaint. There was a wave of laughter in the treasury benches over Guptas allegation of the AAP government mentally harassing him.
An elderly Hindu ashram worker was today hacked to death by suspected Islamists in Bangladesh, becoming the fourth person from the minority community to be killed in a series of brutal attacks on secular activists in the Muslim-majority nation.





Nityaranjan Pandey, 60, who was working as a volunteer for the past 40 years at the Thakur Anukul Chandra Satsanga Paramtirtha Hemayetpurdham Ashram, was murdered this morning in Pabna's Hemayetpur Upazila.



Pandey was taking his routine morning walk when several machete-wielding attackers hacked him in the neck, killing him on the spot only 200 yards away from the ashram, Pabna's police superintendent Alamgir Kabir told PTI over phone.



It appears, he said, the same group which carried out the recent clandestine attacks on secular and liberal activists and religious minorities killed Pandey.

Residents in the neighbourhood said the killers hit him on the head and neck with machetes and fled the scene.



"He was the most devoted worker of our ashram...to our understanding he never developed personal enmity with anyone during his stay here for the past three decades," a member of the monasterys managing committee told newsmen at the scene.



The monastery, named after a famous Hindu saint, draws large number of Hindu devotees from across Bangladesh and neighbouring India. Pandey's murder comes within a week of killings of a Hindu priest, a Christian grocer and wife of an anti-terror police officer.



There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the murder. The ISIS and al-Qaeda in Indian Peninsula have claimed responsibility for some of the recent attacks although the government denies their presence in Bangladesh.



The latest attack came just hours after police said they launched a nationwide anti-militancy week-long crackdown also engaging elite anti-crime Rapid Action Battalion and paramilitary Border Guard Bangladesh.



TV reports suggested the authorities detained over 100 people and 47 of them were detained alone from Jhinaidah, the scene of the murder of Hindu priest Sunil Ganguly on Sunday.



The security clampdown was launched a day after Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina promised to intensify a nationwide anti-terror security clampdown.



"If they (militants) think they could turn Bangladesh upside down, they are wrong...they will be exposed to justice in the soil of Bangladesh and their patrons will also not be spared," she told the parliament.



In February, militants stabbed to death a Hindu priest at a temple and shot and wounded a devotee who went to his aid.



In April, a liberal professor was brutally hacked to death in Rajshahi city. In the same month, a Hindu tailor was hacked to death in his shop and Bangladesh's first gay magazine editor was brutally murdered along with a friend in his flat in Dhaka by Islamists.
Describing the just concluded US visit of Prime Minister Narendra Modi as "historic", the Obama administration has christened his vision of Indo-US ties that has overcome the "hesitations of history" and working for the betterment of the global good as "Modi Doctrine".





"The most important outcome in my mind of the visit this week and of the years of effort that preceded it is the clear and compelling vision that was laid out by Prime Minister Modi before joint session of the US Congress," Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asia Nisha Desai Biswal said.



"This vision which I have come to call The Modi Doctrine laid out a foreign policy that overcomes the hesitations of history and embraces the convergence between our two countries and our shared interests," Biswal told a Washington audience.



Biswal, the Obama Administration's point person for South and Central Asia, said this at a discussion on 'Security and Strategic Outcomes from the Modi Visit' organised yesterday here jointly by the Heritage Foundation - an American think- tank - and India Foundation, a New Delhi based think-tank.



Modi, she said, in his speech furthered his bold vision of India-US partnership that can anchor peace, prosperity and stability from Asia to Africa, from the Indian Ocean to the Pacific and help ensure the security of the sea lanes of commerce and freedom of navigation on the seas.



"This Modi Doctrine notes that the absence of an agreed security architecture creates uncertainty in Asia and reiterates India's adherence to and calls for others support for international laws and norms," Biswal said.



India, she said, is now key element of Obama Administrations rebalance to Asia, a strategy which recognizes that Americas security and prosperity increasingly depend on the security and prosperity of the Indo-Pacific.



"The joint strategic vision which was issued last year laid out our mutual goals and interests in the Indo-Pacific and across the global commons. We are now implementing a road map that sets out a path of co-operation to achieve those goals and protect those interests," Biswal said.



In his remarks, US Ambassador to India Richard Verma said the US welcomes and shares the Prime Ministers vision.



"We have made a clear and strategic choice to support India's transition to become, as Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar has articulated, a leading power. Our actions, as security partners in every sense of the word, speak to this endeavor," he said.



"We envision India as a leading power that can uphold international norms and support what Defence Secretary Carter called last week a 'principled security network' in Asia. A leading power that can grow its economy while at the same time demonstrating global leadership on clean energy and climate," he said.



"And a leading power that joins likeminded partners to safeguard the global commons. Realising this vision will require diligent work on part of the bureaucracies in both Washington and Delhi and resilience to overcome obstacles that may arise," Verma said.
The UN has temporarily removed the Saudi-led coalition in strife-torn Yemen from a blacklist for killing children due to threats from its supporters to defund programmes of the world body, Secretary- General Ban Ki-moon said.





Ban said he stands by his annual report on children and armed conflict, which "describes horrors no child should have to face."



The UN chief said he had to consider "the very real prospect" that millions of other children in the Palestinian territories, South Sudan, Syria, Yemen and many other places "would suffer grievously" if U.N. programs were defunded.



"This was one of the most painful and difficult decisions I have had to make," he said.

Speaking to the press outside of the UN Security Council chamber, he acknowledged that there was "fierce reaction to my decision to temporarily remove the Saudi-led Coalition countries from the report's annex."



Insisting that he stands by the report, the UN chief added that the Organisation "will assess the complaints that have been made, but the content will not change."



"I fully understand the criticism, but I would also like to make a larger point that speaks to many political challenges we face. When UN peacekeepers come under physical attack, they deserve strong backing by the Security Council," he added.



"When UN personnel are declared persona non grata simply for carrying out their jobs, they should be able to count on firm support from the Member States," he said.



Ban also underlined that when a UN report comes "under fire" for raising difficult issues or documenting violations of law or human rights, Member States should defend the mechanisms and mandates that they themselves have established.



"As the Secretariat carries forward the work that is entrusted to us, I count on Member States to work constructively and maintain their commitment to the cause of this Organization," he told reporters.



Responding to questions, Ban said in the course of making reports available to the Member States or in the course of preparing these reports, the Organization has found that some countries were more concerned that their names are listed together with some non-State actors, like terrorist and extremist groups.



"Therefore, I think the main reaction of the Coalition is also that their names are included and listed together with some terrorist and extremist groups. Therefore, we are now in the process of considering what would be the better modalities of listing those countries," he said, but reiterated that no decision has been made as the matter is still being discussed.
Five men were today sentenced to life imprisonment by a Delhi court for gangraping a 52-year- old Danish woman at knife-point near the New Delhi railway station two years ago.



Additional Sessions Judge Ramesh Kumar awarded the jail term to convicts Mahender alias Ganja (25), Mohd Raja (25), Raju (23), Arjun (21) and Raju Chakka (30).



"For the offence of section 376 D IPC, all the convicts are sentenced to life imprisonment," the judge said while pronouncing the order.



The court also imposed a fine of Rs 83,000 each on Raju and Raju Chakka, Rs 93,000 each on Mahender and Mohd Raja and Rs 1,03,000 on Arjun respectively.



The court has held these five men guilty for the offences under IPC sections 376 (D) (gang rape), 395 (dacoity), 366 (kidnapping), 342 (wrongful confinement), 506 (criminal intimidation) and 34 (common intention).



Besides sentencing these convicts for the offence of gangrape, the court also awarded varying jail terms to them for other offences for which they were held guilty.



According to the police, the nine persons, all vagabonds, had robbed and gangraped the Danish tourist at knife-point on the night of January 14, 2014, after leading her to a secluded spot close to the Divisional Railway Officers' Club near the railway station.



The sixth accused, 56-year-old Shyam Lal had died in February this year and proceedings against him were abated.





Three other accused in the case are juveniles and inquiry against them is in progress before the Juvenile Justice Board.



Before commencement of proceedings today, the convicts were taken out of the courtroom and were frisked by the police on the direction of the judge.



Special Public Prosecutor Atul Shrivastava had sought maximum punishment for the convicts ie. imprisonment till the remainder of natural life, saying the crime was committed in a barbaric and inhuman manner.



Legal aid counsel Dinesh Sharma, who represented the convicts, had sought leniency for them saying they belong to poor background.



The victim had come here on January 1, 2014, and stayed for a couple of days before leaving for Agra. After visiting several places, she returned to Delhi on January 13, 2014, and stayed in a hotel in Paharganj near the station.



The next day when she was returning to her hotel, she lost her way and had asked one of the accused for directions when the men waylaid and gangraped her.



During the trial, the accused had claimed innocence.
An Indian woman working for an international NGO has been kidnapped by suspected militants right outside her office in the heart of Kabul and efforts were being made to secure her release.





The woman, identified as Judith D'Souza, a resident of Kolkata, was abducted from Taimani area along with two other persons last evening.



Judith is working for Aga Khan Foundation as senior technical adviser and was scheduled to return to India next week.



External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj said government was doing everything to rescue her.



"Our embassy is in touch with senior Afghan authorities and the government is also in touch with her family in Kolkata. All efforts are being made by the Afghan authorities to secure her early release," an official source said.



The woman's father D D'Souza said in Kolkata that the family received information that three persons -- Judith, a security guard and the driver of the vehicle, were abducted.



"I want my daughter back," said a sobbing D'Souza.



"External Affairs minister Sushma Swaraj rang up and spoke to me and assured that the government is making all-out efforts to bring her back," Judith's sister Agnes D'Souza told PTI.



Reponding to a tweet by one of the family members of Judith, Swaraj said "She is your sister and India's daughter. We are doing everything to rescue her. Pl take care of your sick father."



A source said the woman was abducted by suspected militants.



Chief Executive of Aga Khan Trust for Culture, India, Ratish Nanda said every effort is being made to secure her safe release.



"On Thursday, June 9, a staff member of the Aga Khan Foundation was abducted. An investigation by the authorities has been launched, in conjunction with security officials and various partners. Every effort is being made to secure the safe release of the staff member," he said in a statement in New Delhi.



The family, Agnes said, received information about the abduction in the early hours of the day. "We received the news from the Indian embassy in Kabul at 1.30 AM."



"The embassy said we are doing our best. We shall inform you as soon as we get any information.



"We are now awaiting. We hope that the government does something and gets my sister back," she said, adding the Afghanistan government should also take steps to trace her.



She said Judith was scheduled to return home Wednesday next and had rung up two days ago. "She did not express any apprehension," she said.



Agnes said, "We had asked her (Judith) not to go there but she did not listen."



He said his daughter was working for uplifting the condition of women and children there.



The Aga Khan Foundation is an agency of the Aga Khan Development Network and has been working on restoration projects in the war-ravaged country.



"It will continue to work with local communities, the Government of Afghanistan and those in need to enhance the development of the country," said Nanda.
A former senior woman police officer, who resigned her post over alleged inteference in her work by a district-in-charge minister, today claimed her life was under threat.





The claim by Anupama Shenoy, who was Deputy Superintendent of Police of Kudligi sub-division, Ballari District, came a day after Karnataka government accepted her resignation and she surfaced after remaining incommunicado for several days.



"There is a threat to my life," Shenoy said but did not elaborate.



Shenoy was reportedly at loggerheads with Labour Minister P T Parameshwar Naik, also the district in-charge minister, and had tendered her resignation abruptly on June 4 and was untraceable since then.



Replying to a query, Shenoy said she will be releasing a CD and audio before the media in Bengaluru.



As Shenoy had remained elusive, police had set up a special team to track her down. Her alleged posts on Facebook levelling accusations against Naik had created a storm.



Asked about her Facebook posts, she has maintained that she did not know about Facebook and it might have been hacked also.



Before she surfaced, Ballari SP had also deputed an officer to go to her hometown Udupi to contact Shenoy and her family. Shenoy had yesterday refused to meet Kudligi in-charge Deputy SP R S Patil, who went to her official quarters.



Following protests by a group of people against her for taking three persons into preventive detention, Shenoy left the office on June 4 after handing over her resignation letter to subordinate officers, instructing them to give it to the Superintendent of Police.



Officials had said Shenoy was acting on a complaint by Dalit activists against the extension of a liquor shop that was blocking the way to Ambedkar Bhavan nearby.



Naik has said he has nothing to do with the officer's resignation and expressed doubts about the veracity of the Facebook account and its user. In January, Shenoy was transferred allegedly at the behest of Naik for putting his call on hold, with the incident triggering a storm.



A video footage purportedly showing Naik making a boastful claim about shunting out Shenoy had also gone viral later.


Alleged Maoist ideologue Kobad Ghandy was today absolved of serious charges under stringent unlawful activities law for being a member of the banned CPI (Maoist) by a Delhi court which held him guilty of residing here using fake identities.





The court held him guilty under various provisions of the IPC, including sections 120-B (criminal conspiracy) read with, 420 (cheating) and 468 (forgery) and awarded him jail term which he has already undergone during adjudication of the case.



It noted that 68-year-old Ghandy was in custody for almost six years and six months during the pendency of case.



"Ghandy is in custody since December 20, 2009 which is almost six years and six months. I, therefore, impose upon him a term of imprisonment already undergone by him," the court, while imposing a fine of Rs 40,000 on him, said.



Ghandy, an alumnus of the prestigious Doon School and St Xavier's College Mumbai, is facing prosecution in around 20 criminal and terror cases in different parts of the country.



Acquitting Ghandy of charges under UAPA, Additional Sessions Judge Reetesh Singh noted that "none of the evidence relied upon by prosecution have been found to be admissible in evidence by this court. The testimonies of prosecution witnesses suffer from infirmities."



"The recoveries made at the instance of the accused have not been proved beyond reasonable doubt. The disclosure statements of Kobad Ghandy cannot be read in evidence...as the same had been made to a police officer.



"...in the facts and circumstances of this case, there are reasonable doubts on the version of the prosecution on charge under sections 20 and 38 of UAPA," the judge said.



While holding him guilty of using assumed names and fake identities, he said "it is true that prosecution has been able to prove that Ghandy was residing in Delhi in an assumed name and that he had in his possession forged documents."



"These circumstances do give rise to a grave suspicion that he wanted to avoid himself from from being discovered. Suspicion, however grave it might be, cannot be equated with proof of the said fact. Material relied upon by prosecution to prove membership and association of Ghandy with said banned organisation is not reliable and admissible in evidence...



"Ghandy was residing in Delhi in assumed names with fake identities. However, gap between using fake identities and membership of the said banned organisation cannot be filled on the basis of suspicion," the court said.



Besides Ghandy, the court also convicted Rajinder Kumar alias Arvind Joshi for the offence under several sections of IPC, including 120-B (criminal conspiracy) and 420 (cheating).



Kumar was also awarded jail term already undergone by him during the adjudication of the case and the court imposed a fine of Rs 20,000 on him.



According to police, Ghandy was residing in Delhi with fake name and identity provided by Kumar, who himself was not using his real name or identity.



The prosecution had earlier claimed that Ghandy, who was arrested in September 2009 in this case in south Delhi for the alleged charges of being a Politburo member of banned outfit CPI(Maoist), was trying to set up a base for naxal activities here and was the "main piller and the think-tank of outfit".



One election ID card in the name of Dalip Patel was recovered from his possession along with other belongings, it had said, adding that he was residing in a house with Kumar in Badarpur area here.



The police had claimed to recover literature and CDs of the outfit. It also claimed that Ghandy was in touch with other associates via e-mail and used to motivate people for joining the outfit.



It had also alleged that Ghandy had visited Nepal in relation to Left extremist activities.



Ghandy was earlier absolved by the court of terror charges due to want of proper sanction and later, a fresh charge sheet was filed by the Special Cell of Delhi Police with another sanction for his prosecution under the provisions of UAPA.



Ghandy's counsel, however, had denied all the allegations levelled against him and had claimed that the evidence were planted.
Pakistan today told the US that the American drone strike on its soil that killed the Afghan Taliban chief had "vitiated" ties even as the two sides held "candid" talks on issues like dismantling of terror safe havens, Afghan peace talks and regional security.





A US delegation which included senior Director for Afghanistan and Pakistan at the US National Security Council Peter Lavoy and Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan Richard Olson arrived here this morning and held talks with Pakistan's civilian and military leaders.



Lavoy called on Prime Minister's Adviser on Foreign Affairs Sartaj Aziz and Foreign Secretary Aizaz Ahmed Chaudhry.



Aziz told the US officials that the May 21 drone strike in Balochistan, which killed Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Akhtar Mansour, "was not only a violation of Pakistan's sovereignty and breach of the principles of the United Nation's Charter, but has also vitiated bilateral ties".



General John Nicholson, Commander Resolute Support Mission in Afghanistan, and Olson called on Pakistan army chief General Raheel Sharif.



"Regional security situation, with particular reference to border management and peace and stability in Afghanistan in the post the US drone strike came under discussion," an Inter-Services Public Relations statement said after the meeting.



Expressing "serious concern" on the US drone strike in Balochistan as a violation of Pakistan's sovereignty, General Raheel highlighted as to how it had impacted the mutual trust and respect and was counter productive in consolidating the gains of 'Operation Zarb-e-Azb' that was targeted at militants.



The army chief stressed that the US action was counter- productive in consolidating the gains of Pakistan military operation in the tribal regions.



"All efforts for durable peace in the region have to be synergised with shared commitment and responsibility in order to make them successful," Raheel was quoted as saying.



Raheel said that while the operation was launched against terrorists of all hues and sanctuaries of terrorists have been dismantled without discrimination, all stakeholders need to understand Pakistan's challenges with regard to porous border, inter-tribal linkages and decades-old presence of over three million refugees.



In response to US queries on safe havens in Pakistan for the Taliban, it was emphasised that Pakistan is already pursuing its objective of eliminating all militants and terrorists from its soil in accordance with the National Action Plan, a Pakistan Foreign Office statement said.



At the same time, Pakistan would have to safeguard its own security through better border management and early repatriation of Afghan refugees, it said.



The high-level meetings between top officials of both countries assume significance as Pakistan-US ties are sliding down due to differences over handling of peace process in Afghanistan and US' growing defence ties with India, especially its support for India's candidacy for the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG).



Pakistan is also unhappy over the scuttling of eight F-16 fighter jet deal by US Congress which blocked funding to it citing Pakistan's unsatisfactory actions against Haqqani network. But Islamabad believes that the US Congress was prompted to act due to Indian lobbying and pressure.



General Raheel demanded targeting of Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan and Mullah Fazlullah in their bases in Afghanistan.



He also reiterated Pakistan's resolve not to allow "hostile intelligence agencies' efforts, especially RAW (India's Research and Analysis Wing) and (Afghanistan's) NDS National Directorate of Security, of fomenting terrorism".



The Pakistani Foreign Office statement said that "they (US and Pakistani officials) held candid discussions on bilateral relations, regional security situation and the Afghan peace process" in the wake of the drone strike that killed Mansour.



"(In the meeting Aziz had with officials) it was emphasised that any future drone strike in Pakistan will be detrimental to our common desire to strengthen relations," it said.



The family of the Pakistani driver killed along with Mansour in the US drone strike has also demanded justice.



Aziz said the drone strike had "seriously undermined" the ongoing efforts for Afghan peace and reconciliation process at a time when Pakistan along Quadrilateral Coordination Group (QCG) countries was engaged in serious efforts to revive peace talks between Afghan Government and the Taliban.



The Foreign Secretary recalled that in QCG's fifth meeting on May 18, 2016, when it was decided that peace negotiations remained the only option for a political settlement.



He emphasised that this would require collective efforts on the part of all QCG members to promote lasting peace in Afghanistan. Besides Pakistan, the QCG includes Afghanistan, China and the US.



Pakistan also expects action by Afghan forces against TTP operatives in Afghanistan.



These steps would also help to promote better relations between Afghanistan and Pakistan and reduce mistrust.



Lavoy, while conveying President Obama's good wishes for the Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's speedy recovery, said that President Obama was committed to improving relations with Pakistan, the statement said.


Two persons  an Indian Navy personnel and a civilian  were killed following a gas leak on board aircraft carrier INS Vikramaditya on Friday.



The Russian-made vessel is undergoing maintenance at the Kadamba Naval Base on Karwar coast of Karnataka.



The Western Naval Command (WNC), while confirming the incident, said that four persons  two sailors and two civilian workers  had to be evacuated following the gas leak and were taken to the Patanjali Hospital at the Naval base, where two of them succumbed to the gas that they had inhaled.



According to WNC officials, the incident took place around 5 pm when maintenance work was being undertaken at the Sewage Treatment Plant (STP) compartment.



The deceased were identified as Shipwright Artificer Class 4 Rakesh Kumar from Bihar and Mohandas Kolambkar, an employee of M/s Royal Marine, who hailed from Amadalli in Karwar taluk.



The next of kin of the deceased have been informed. The condition of the other two personnel is stable, WNC officials said.



The Navy has ordered an inquiry into the incident. Action has been taken to render the compartment area on the ship safe. A case has been registered with the Karwar Rural Police Station. INS Vikramaditya is one of the two serving aircraft carriers of the Indian Navy  the other being INS Viraat.



She was commissioned on November 16, 2013, at a ceremony held at Severodvinsk, Russia. On June 14, 2014, Prime Minister Narendra Modi formally inducted INS Vikramaditya into the Indian Navy and dedicated it to the nation.



This is the second accident involving the huge carrier. On June 5, 2014, a MiG 29K naval combat aircraft suffered damage while landing on the aircraft carrier INS Vikramaditya during operations in Arabian Sea, off the Goa coast.
The market for large business jets has fared remarkably well in recent years, despite the global recession, as a new generation of buyers in Russia, China or Brazil has been won over by the sleek appeal of speedy and luxurious planes that can connect most points in the world without stopping for fuel.



But there are now signs of a slowdown in the private jet market. The oil and commodities collapse and the slowdown in emerging markets over the past two years has put a dent in demand, particularly from emerging countries.



Clearly, as the global economy continues to soften, the business aviation industry has felt that impact, said Brian Sill, the president of commercial aviation for Honeywell Aerospace, a major provider of avionics, engines and other components. There are some headwinds in the world right now, in places like China, and in Russia, and those are being felt in the industry.



Last year, new plane sales reached about $22 billion, with 712 new jets delivered, according to Rolland Vincent, an aviation consultant and market researcher.



The market this year should soften, with projected sales of 680 jets. Large planes account for over half of all business jet purchases each year, and for 80% of the industrys sales value, given the much higher prices they can command. Its always been a cyclical business and people tend to forget this in the good times, Vincent said.



Still, the appeal of private jets remains strong, particularly in the category of bigger jets with larger cabins that can fly farther than ever without stopping for fuel.



These jets remain a staple of corporate fleets in the United States and are prized by hedge fund managers and venture capitalists looking for bragging rights. As demand slows down in Asia and West Asia, it is picking up in North America, where buyers are looking for deals in the previously owned market.



The appetite for size and speed is behind the global success of the Gulfstream G650, a $65-million twin-engine jet with a top speed of 610 miles per hour (982 km per hour) and range of 7,000 nautical miles (13,000 km), along with rivals like the Bombardiers Global 5000 and the Dassault Falcon 7X.



These planes can effortlessly link New York to Beijing or London to Los Angeles in a dozen or so hours while offering great comfort and luxurious amenities  like leather chairs, oversized windows, and wood paneling. They offer the billionaire class and top corporate leaders a shortcut from commercial flying with none of the hassles of regular air travel.



Cabins are pressurised at half the levels of commercial airplanes, which means less dryness and fatigue and more comfortable trips. High-speed Internet is readily available for streaming movies or conducting video conferences. Pilots have heads-up displays that allow them to see obstacles even when visibility is low.



The great beauty is that people can really get somewhere nonstop they couldnt get to before, said Vincent. These people want to be very discreet, and going direct nonstop is a big deal for them. They save time and save the hardships of being observed. Its a privacy and security issue for them.



Chad Anderson, the president of Jetcraft, a trader, investor and brokerage company, summed up the appeal of business jets as range, comfort, and a general sensibility to operating economics. The globalisation of the world isnt getting any less global, said Anderson. Its getting more global. There is more demand to go international. There are also more and more sensitivities to security and safety.



Honeywell, which has conducted market surveys for more than three decades, forecast about 9,200 deliveries of new jets through 2025, worth a total $270 billion. The company also expects that deliveries in 2016 will be slightly lower than last year, but it sees a sharp rebound after 2017 as new jets come on the market.



Analysts pointed out that, while demand was slowing in Asia and elsewhere, the market for jets in the United States and North America generally  which accounts for more than half global sales  had picked up. Planes that were sold to Chinese buyers five or six years ago are returning on the second-hand market in the US.



We have what used to be an eastward-heading market heading west again, said Anderson. Were seeing more corporate buyers in the US right now, primarily in the replacement market.



Many corporate fleets had put their replacement plans on hold in recent years and now find the need to renew their planes. Aircraft values are still pretty depressed in historical terms, but in the eyes of astute buyers thats an opportunity, Anderson said.



Estimates about the future vary. Vincent expects to see 7,900 jets delivered in the next 10 years. He recently reduced his forecast by 6-7% because of current market dynamics. In addition, analysts point out that theres a long list of new planes to pick from for buyers seeking their first plane or looking for a replacement option.



The polish has come off some of the legacy models that have been in the market for a while, and customers are migrating to the new models, said Vincent.



Newer, better models



The top three major manufacturers all have a new plane at various stage of development and certification. Dassaults new tri-engine Falcon 8X, which is close to certification, recently completed a round-the-world demonstration tour covering 55,000 nautical miles and over 60 flights, ahead of its anticipated entry into service in the second half of this year.



The airplane, estimated to cost about $58 million, made its debut at the 2015 Paris Air Show, and provides more range that its predecessor, the 7X. It would be able to reach Beijing from Los Angeles. That model will be followed by the Falcon 5X, a twin-engine plane.



That aircraft, expected to be delivered in 2020, will have less range than the other variants but comes with a more spacious cabin because of its larger fuselage volume. The plane will also have what is widely believed to be the first-ever skylight in an aircraft.



At Gulfstream, the new G500 and G600 are currently in early production and testing stages, and should come out of the production lines in 2018. Chasing them both in terms of delivery time is Canadas Bombardier, whose production of the new Global 7000 and Global 8000 have been delayed at least two years and should come into service, respectively, in 2018 and 2019.



In addition, theres a crop of new planes coming on the market, starting with the newest addition to the list of business jet manufactures, Honda Aircraft, which recently delivered the first HondaJet in Europe after receiving its flight certification last year.



Others include the Pilatus PC-24, a six-passenger midrange jet that is being developed by Pilatus Aircraft in Switzerland and had its first flight last year, with deliveries expected in 2017.



The second half of next year should also see the certification and first delivery of the Cessna Citation Latitude, from Textron Aviation.



There are several major new platforms in development, and we are very excited about that, because it always creates a lift for the industry, said Sill of Honeywell.




The Health Department has intensified measures to control malaria and has requested people to follow precautionary measures.





District Vector Borne Disease Control Officer Dr Arun said due attention has been given to early detection of malaria and dengue in primary health centres across the district. Special surveillance teams, formed by the department, have been visiting construction sites to collect the blood samples of workers for testing. Treatments are provided if any symptoms are found. Six such teams are active, Dr Arun said.



A total of 1,966 positive cases of malaria were reported last year in the district in the months of January, February, March, April and May. Among them, 1,793 cases were reported in urban areas and 173 in rural areas.



This year, a total of 1,786 cases have been reported during the same period. As many as 1,697 cases are related to urban areas and 89 to rural areas.



A 50-member team, comprising trained multipurpose workers (MPW) by the Mangalore City Corporation (MCC), is visiting houses. The follow-up of malaria cases is being done through Malaria Control Software, which enables real time reporting from laboratories. The Mangaluru City Corporation team is working in coordination with the department of Health, he said.



He said the people can contact the 24x7 helpline for malaria diagnosis and treatment, if they have any symptoms. The helpline number is 9448556872. The team will visit the site, collect the blood samples and will provide treatment, if necessary.



Owing to timely interventions, malaria cases are being detected in an early stage and there has been an increase in the number of hospital admissions. The department has been providing health education as a control measure. Apart from these, mosquito repellent solutions have been sprayed near the sheds of construction workers and the mosquito nets are treated with chemicals to control and kill mosquitoes, he added.



Dengue cases

So far, 86 cases of dengue have been reported during this year and one death has been reported from Puttur.



Mohammed Azwan, a six-year-old boy from Belandur in Puttur, was suffering from fever and was given treatment in Puttur. As the fever did not subside, the boy was rushed to a private hospital in Mangaluru, where he was diagnosed with Dengue.



According to the sources in KMC, the boys parents requested the doctors to discharge the boy against medical advice to be taken to a different hospital. The boy breathed his last after a few hours of discharge, they added.

DH News Service
The Enforcement Directorate on Friday moved a court in Mumbai to declare liquor baron Vijay Mallya a proclaimed offender in a bank loan fraud case.





Official sources said they moved the special anti-money laundering court under Section 82 of the Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC) seeking to declare Mallya as a proclaimed offender as there is a non-bailable warrant and other arrest warrants against him.



The ED is not leaving any option to corner the liquor baron in the case arising out of a Rs 900 crore IDBI bank loan default probe, they said.



There are multiple warrants. He is also wanted in the money laundering case. The court has been apprised of the status of investigations and the need for bringing him to join the probe, the sources said.



The court is likely to hear the case again on June 13 where the ED expects a favourable order.



Mallya had left India on March 2 for London and did not return despite his passport being revoked. He was issued three summons by the ED for joining the probe, but he refused and sought more time.



Following this, the ED approached court for non-bailable warrant. However, its efforts to get him deported could not materialise after the United Kingdom refused to do so. At present, India is working on an extradition plea.



A court can declare a person a proclaimed offender if it believes that the accused against whom a warrant of arrest has been issued by it, has absconded or is concealing himself so that such warrant cannot be executed.



As per Section 82 of the CrPC, the court can publish a written proclamation requiring such an accused to appear at a specified place and at a specified time in not less than 30 days from the date of publishing of such a proclamation.



Official sources said the ED can also invoke Section 83 of the CrPC (attachment of property of person absconding) if Mallya does not comply with proceedings initiated under Section 82.

DH News Service


The crackdown on rhino poachers in and around Kaziranga national park is bearing results. The Assam Police and the Special Task Force (STF) of the Forest Department in the past three days have managed to apprehend five poachers and recovered huge cache of arms.





Other 19 people, who are suspected to be linked with rhino poaching in Assam, have been arrested from Biswanath Charali on the northern bank of Brahmaputra. Districts Superintendent of Polcie Ankur Janin told reporters that arms have also been recovered from them and during initial interrogation they have admitted of being involved in rhino poaching.



According to police sources, the arrested poachers were identified as Ronoj Pegu, Bipul Bora, Bapai Orang and Golap Talukdar. Security forces have also seized four 303 rifles, 24 rounds of live cartridges, one silencer, two magazines and some other incriminating

materials from the possession of the arrested persons, sources added.



It was only on last Tuesday that the Forest and Environment Minister Pramila Rani Brahma accompanied by two of her ministerial colleagues and MLAs touring the Kaziranga National Park, poaching took place. The carcass of the rhino was found on Thursday in between Boralimora and Uttor Kathoni area of the national park under Agoratoli range.



Assam Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal has directed Pramila to lead the monitoring of the crackdown against the poachers.

DH News Service
In 2012, when former Supreme Court judge Markandey Katju stunned everyone at a seminar here by arguing that there was no press freedom in Bihar, only one person dared to oppose Katju who was then the chairman of the Press Council of India.





The person was Lalkeshwar Prasad Singh. He was then principal of the Patna College where the function took place in which Katju blamed Nitish for throttling media in his state. L P Singhs opposition to Katju was obvious as the man, who became principal of Patna College, owed his elevation to the JD (U) strongman. His politician wife Usha Sinha was then the JD (U) MLA from Hilsa in Nitish Kumars home district Nalanda from 2010 to 2015.



Singh, who joined Patna University in 1978 as geography teacher, remained principal of Patna College from 2009 to 2013 before being appointed as chairman of the Bihar School Examination Board (BSEB) in 2014.



Call it coincidence or design, but its a fact that the BSEB earned bad name from 2014 itself when Shalini Rai, daughter of controversial principal of Vishun Roy College, Bachcha Rai, topped the matriculation examination. The trend continued in 2015 followed by 2016 intermediate results when the three toppers belonged to the same institute.
The controversy over Udta Punjab has once again brought to fore Punjabs drug menace, which according to one study had even gripped children below the age of 10, although in a minuscule number.





Almost all studies on drug abuse in Punjab conducted in the last decade have brought out one thing in common  that over 70% of Punjab youth in the 16-35 age group suffer from addiction. A study by the Institute of Development and Communication (IDC) in 2010 says 3% of them are below 10 years of age. The ruling SAD-BJP government dismissed the magnitude of drug menace saying its an opposition ploy to defame Punjab youth even as the Congress and the AAP accuses the ruling alliance for the mess.



The study stated that drug abuse was a historical problem and not a recent phenomenon, IDC chairman Dr Promod Kumar told DH. Political nexus is also not new, he said.
India and Nepal on Friday reviewed their overall bilateral ties including in areas of connectivity and trade.





In a meeting, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj conveyed to Nepalese Deputy Prime Minister Kamal Thapa that development and stability in Nepal were in Indias interest.



External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Vikas Swarup said bilateral mechanisms including political exchanges, connectivity and trade were reviewed in the meeting.



Thapa, also Nepals Foreign Minister, is here to attend the convocation of South Asian university, a SAARC project which came into being in 2010. He will leave for Nepal on Sunday.



India and Nepal discussed issues relating to security at the 12th meeting of their Bilateral Consultative Group (BCG) on security on Thursday.



The programme of the visiting Nepalese delegation included a courtesy call on the Chief of Army Staff Dalbir Suhag.



The BCG discussions covered issues relating to mutual security concerns as well as defence and training requirements, exchange of experts/instructors, cooperation in disaster management, and the 10th Surya Kiran Joint Military Exercises at battalion level to be held in Nepal in October-November 2016, the MEA said.


Though the BJP is yet to decide on projecting a chief ministerial nominee for the 2017 Assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh, it is already facing dissension over possible candidates.





Speculation was rife that Home Minister Rajnath Singh could be projected as the partys face in UP. Clarifying that he was not in the race for the top post, Singh told reporters in Lucknow on Friday, ''BJP mein aur bhi kai kaabil log hain'', (there are many capable people in BJP). He, however, made it clear that he was ready to shoulder any responsibility given to him by the party. ''I will cooperate in every way to make sure the BJP wins the next Assembly elections, Singh, a former UP chief minister, said.



Meanwhile, there seems to be dissension against Singh if he is made the chief ministerial nominee.



Former party MP Ramakant Singh, who had unsuccessfully contested from Azamgarh against SP supremo Mulayam Singh Yadav and lost narrowly, said Singh's projection as chief minister could ''hit'' the party prospects hard in the state.



Yadav told reporters in Azamgarh on Friday that Singh's remarks on providing reservation to the most backwards from within the OBC quota had not gone down well with the Yadavs and Kurmis. Singh, while addressing a meeting in Mau on Thursday, advocated reservation for the most backwards among the backward castes.



The BJP plans to cash in on the Thakur votes through Singh, considered one of the most prominent party leaders from the state. To keep the forward castes intact, the party has fielded state vice-president Shiv Pratap Shukla, a Brahmin, for the June 11 Rajya Sabha elections, and shifted Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi to Jharkhand.



In Allahabad, BJP youth wing workers again demanded that Sultanpur MP Varun Gandhi be made the party's face in the state. An internal survey indicated that Gorakhpur MP Yogi Adityanath, HRD Minister Smriti Irani and Gandhi have emerged frontrunners for the top post.



Of the three, Adityanath may find a berth in the Council of Ministers, party sources said in New Delhi. It remains to be seen if the party will announce a nominee for the chief ministers post during the BJP national executive meeting scheduled to be held at Allahabad from Sunday.
An Indian woman working for an international NGO was kidnapped in Kabul, officials said on Friday, the latest in a wave of abductions of foreigners in Afghanistan.



Indian Embassy officials told that the woman, Judith DSouza, a resident of Kolkata, was kidnapped on Thursday night from near her home in Kabuls Qalai Fatullah area along with two others.



Judith (40) is a senior technical adviser at the Aga Khan Foundation, a well-known NGO long based in Afghanistan, and was scheduled to return to India next week.



The abduction comes after Katherine Jane Wilson, a well-known Australian NGO worker, was kidnapped on April 28 in the city of Jalalabad, close to the border with Pakistan.



In February, New Delhi managed to secure release of Jesuit priest Father Prem Kumar from the captivity of Taliban. Prem Kumar, who hailed from Tamil Nadu, was kidnapped from Herat in Afghanistan in June 2014.



Aid workers in particular have increasingly been casualties of a surge in militant violence from outfits which are mostly based in Pakistan.



Judiths family sought help from the government through the social media. Responding to the tweet, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj said: She is your sister and Indias daughter. We are doing everything to rescue her. Pl take care of your sick father.



The Aga Khan Foundation stated: An investigation by the authorities has been launched, in conjunction with security officials and various partners. Every effort is being made to secure the safe release of the staff member.

DHNS & Agencies



Judith was unhappy with security

One of Judith DSouzas last posts on Facebook questions the security provided to her at Afghanistan, DHNS reports from Kolkata.



The aid worker from Kolkata shared a strip from the popular cartoon series Peanuts on June 3. Snoopy is a better guard than what we have here in Kabul, she wrote.



This, however, found no reflection in her conversations with her family back home, with whom she spoke almost every day. Judith never spoke of any danger to herself, said sister Agnes and father Denzel.



She has worked in several countries, mostly in Southeast Asia. This is the first time such a thing has happened, said Agnes. Judith, a 40-year-old gender specialist, has been working at Kabul on women empowerment since July 2015 with the Aga Khan Foundation.



She called every night and there was never any hint she might have been in danger. We had long conversations. The last time she called was on Wednesday, said Denzel. A pall of gloom and anxiety had set in over the familys modest apartment at Entally in south-central Kolkata.




JD(S) MLA Mallikarjun Khuba who would have to face a CBI probe following the cash-for-vote sting operation, on Friday claimed that he is well aware of the trap laid out for him by the Congress.





He also said that he conducted a reverse sting operation, in which he had captured in a 30-minute video. He said he knew well that it was a conspiracy against him and thus was cautious.



Khuba who was the last MLA to cast his vote during the biennial Legislative Council election at Vidhana Soudha on Friday, looked unfazed by the controversy dogging him.



The MLA from Basavakalyana said that he had flown in from New Delhi and was unaware of the CBI probe ordered against him by the Election Commission of India. He also said that he hasnt received any notice from the ECI.



He said if there is an inquiry, then he would face it. In the so called sting operations by two television channels last week, there was just a general conversation with a man who claimed that he had come on behalf of the Congress, he added. Though I hadnt accepted any money, he started blackmailing me. But I knew well that it was a conspiracy against me and I played along. The channels have played only two minutes of that conversation, which has been twisted. But what they dont realise is that I have a 30 minute video, which I will be submitting to my party leadership, Khuba said.



Unlike Khuba, JD(S) state president H D Kumaraswamy was visibly upset with the development. Lashing out at the ECI for overlooking the assurance given by Chief Minister Siddaramaiah to the Independent MLAs, Kumaraswamy said that this by itself was a controversy. He said Khuba was a badapayi (innocent).



Prima facie there is no indication of exchange of money. Khuba knew it was a sting operation. I dont understand why there has to be a CBI inquiry. There are those who have taken money and gotten away scot free. Much ahead of the sting operation itself, the JD(S) had filed a complaint before the ECI about the ongoing horse trading. This is nothing but witch hunting, he said and added that the party will explore a legal recourse.



Chief Minister Siddaramaiah, while welcoming the CBI probe ordered against JD(S) MLA Mallikarjun Khuba, said that there were no charges against his party MLAs. Only Khuba is under the scanner. Let the investigations reveal the truth, he added.



EC note on Khuba awaited



Returning Officer in Rajya Sabha polls S Murthy on Friday said he had not received any official communication from the Election Commission of India (ECI) pertaining to filing an FIR against JD(S) MLA Mallikarjun Khuba. I have not received any official communication yet. I will take appropriate steps as per the ECI direction, he said. The ECI on Thursday decided that an FIR should be filed against Khuba and others under relevant sections of the Indian Penal Code and the Prevention of Corruption Act.


The HSR Layout traffic police have booked a BBMP executive engineer, a contractor and a supervisor for executing a drainage project without permission and causing impediments in the free flow of traffic.





The BBMP officials had submitted a letter to HSR Layout traffic police station seeking permission to carry out the project about two weeks ago.



The police identified alternative routes for traffic diversions and before they could grant permission, the Palike workers started the work between Sarjapura Road and Agara Junction opposite Springfield Apartment on June 4, said the police.



The work hampered the traffic movement leading to bumper-to-bumper jams in Sarjapura, Aralu, Marathahalli, KR Puram, Silk Board Junction and surrounding areas. The traffic police deployed additional men to ensure smooth flow till 1 am on June 5, said the police.



The BBMP workers did not stop the work despite repeated requests by the police. Nagaraj, a constable attached to HSR Layout traffic police station at the behest of higher-ups, lodged a complaint against the Palike EE and contractor.



BBMP EE Vijay Kumar, supervisor Basavalingaiah and the contractor have been booked under IPC Sections 341 (wrongful restraint) and 283 (danger or obstruction in public way), said the police.



Jams, congestion and slow movements have become a regular feature ever since the work began, added the

police.

DH News Service


Union Minister of State for Commerce and Industry Nirmala Sitharaman on Friday requested state BJP MLAs to vote for her and she will take care of the states interest in all aspects.





Sitharaman was formally introduced to State BJP MLAs at the partys legislature party meeting. She is the partys candidate from Karnataka for the Rajya Sabha elections.



Sitharaman said Prime Minister Narendra Modi and party National President Amit Shah had given her an opportunity to contest from Karnataka, a legislator who attended the meeting said. Sitharaman said she will learn to speak in Kannada soon. An informal meeting of the party legislators will be held at legislature party leader Jagadish Shettars chambers in Vidhana Soudha on Saturday morning ahead of the Rajya Sabha polls.
The Bangalore Development Authority (BDA) is set to release on June 15 the provisional list of site allottees in Kempegowda Layout. But an important issue of tracing ineligible applicants, who have submitted false affidavits, has not been addressed yet.





Under the BDAs allotment rules, which form the basis for allotment of sites from the Karnataka Housing Board (KHB) and housing societies, a person who owns a site/house/apartment or allotted by any other body is ineligible for another allotment.



The multiple allotment of G category sites has been an issue for the last five years. Justice Shivaraj V Patil even resigned as Lokayukta on similar charges and surrendered the site allotted to him by a housing society. Similarly, Congress leader in the Lok Sabha Mallikarjun Kharge surrendered a site allotted to his daughter while former minister S Suresh Kumar surrendered a site to the BDA.



Apart from these known cases of false affidavits, there are numerous complaints by genuine members of housing societies, who still wait for a legitimate site despite paying full amount. Yet, neither the Cooperation Department nor the BDA could take any effective step to prevent such allotments. The main reason is the amendment to various allotment rules.



An amendment to the Karnataka Co-operative Societies Act, 1959, which provides for admitting outsiders as associate members even in societies meant for employees of a particular organisation, has been thoroughly misused. The authorities still have no mechanism to verify the authenticity of the mandatory affidavits submitted by applicants. Given this, the allotment of sites in Kempegowda Layout may not offer sites only to eligible allottees.



Ganesh S Kaundinya of Committee for Judicial Accountability said: The governments inaction in not prosecuting influential people, who got sites illegally, has encouraged repeated violation of law. The senseless amendments without understanding the context and purpose of law, especially in the case of associate members in co-operative societies, is the reason for the present imbroglio.

DH News Service



The government doesnt want to provide sites to eligible people. It has colluded with builders and land mafia. Unless corrective steps are taken in regard to allotment of sites to ineligible people, there is no point going for fresh allotment in KG Layout. Genuine allotments are a myth. The BDA shouldnt be only a developing authority but also a regulatory authority.

A T Ramaswamy, former chairman, joint legislature committee



Our officials are going through the allotment list in Arkavathi Layout, which is computerised, to trace false affidavits. The details of other allottees, along with their affidavits in the city, be in any housing society or private layout, are not available. We will display the provisional list for some time so that people can come forward and complain about a possible false affidavit. We will immediately remove the name from the list, if found true.

T Sham Bhatt, Commissioner, BDA








A nursery student of St Vincent Palloti School in Babusapalya near Banasawadi is said to have been sent home by the school for sporting a religious hairstyle.





Manjunath and Rupa, the parents of the child, said that their son had gone to the school last week with a tuft of hair, on account of a vow they had taken.



The principal of the school sent the child back home asking him to cut his hair.

We had allowed the hair to grow because of a vow we had taken. We will cut it once the vow is fulfilled. If the hair is cut now, he will die the parents said.



The principal of the school, however, did not agree and termed it a superstitious belief. He said that all the students had to follow the schools regulations.



The principal also claimed that the child was only sent home and not expelled from the school.

DH News Service


Trophy hunting of grizzlies snuffs out the rarest and often the fittest of animals and undermines conservation goals. Above, famed grizzly 399 of Yellowstone playing with her cub. Photo by Jim Laybourn

1.4K shares







The HSUS today fired the first shot in its legal campaign to prevent trophy hunting of grizzly bears.

With the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service having announced plans to remove federal Endangered Species Act protections for grizzly bears in the Greater Yellowstone ecosystem, the states of Wyoming, Idaho, and Montana are salivating at the prospect of opening a trophy hunting season for the first time in 40 years on North Americas second largest carnivore (only polar bears are larger). In Wyoming, the states Game and Fish Commission has hastily  without giving the public enough time to weigh in  rammed through a management plan to put the hunting framework in place. Today The HSUS, along with the Center for Biological Diversity and local wildlife filmmaker Jim Laybourn, filed a lawsuit in Wyoming state court challenging the Commissions failure to provide adequate time for public notice and comment on its deadly plan.

Trophy hunting of grizzlies is disgraceful. It snuffs out the rarest and often the fittest of animals and undermines conservation goals. Whats more, it hurts local economies built around eco-tourism, since sighting a bear is the most coveted wildlife experience for millions of people throughout the world who trek to Yellowstone and Grand Teton every year. The small fraternity of American trophy hunters who travel around the world to kill rare animals for decorations and prizes will now have a big prize here in the United States to chase and kill.

It is a fundamental principle of democracy that citizens have a voice in government decisions. This is especially important when it comes to management of wildlife, which states and the federal government are entrusted with preserving for future generations. Wyomings short-sighted plan to sell thrill kills to the highest bidders is not only scientifically and ethically unjustifiable, it is undemocratic. Seven unelected commissioners ignored the will of the public and rushed through a plan without following procedure required by state law  that risks destroying our collective wildlife heritage and draining tens of millions of dollars from the local economy. Decisions of this magnitude should not  and legally cannot  be made without giving all stakeholders an opportunity to make their voices heard.

American trophy hunters are waging a war on Americas native carnivores already. In the past decade alone, theyve shot more than 29,000 cougars in the United States, and tens of thousands of black bears. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service believes that there are 750 grizzly bears now living in the Greater Yellowstone ecosystem. That number is contested by other grizzly bear researchers who say the animals face grave existential threats from a loss of food resources due to climate change. Leading biologists agree that this fragile population cannot sustain the additional pressure from trophy hunting. Further, a recent scientific study shows that when states allow trophy hunting of carnivores in a misguided attempt to manage the species, the rate of poaching actually increases, multiplying threats to the species.

At The HSUS, we are dedicated to working with wildlife managers to reduce human-wildlife conflict and to ensure that wild animals are allowed to thrive without persecution. We hope that this lawsuit will be a wake-up call reminding Wyoming wildlife officials that they cannot continue to favor the narrow interests of elite trophy hunters over sound science, economic health for the region, and the opinions of the majority of the American public who want to see protections maintained.
The 3.5 mm port has been our trusted companion for many years now. Every earphone, headphone, in-ear and aux cable has sported the cylindrical mini audio connector since time immemorial. But now, it's time to say goodbye, or so it seems.

Last night, Lenovo unveiled the Moto Z and Moto Z Force at the Lenovo Tech World event, being held at San Francisco. Yes, the much awaited Moto Z smartphone is now officially out there, bringing with it the power of Qualcomms latest SoC, the Snapdragon 820. But, thats not what we are here to talk about. Along with a host of new features and updated specifications, the Moto Z has also ditched the 3.5 mm jack, and hopped onto the USB Type C bandwagon. This makes the Moto Z, the third smartphone to ditch the trusted 3.5 mm port completely, the first being Oppo R5, followed by LeEco Le 2.

When the Oppo R5 dumped the 3.5 mm jack, the phone was touted to be the worlds thinnest device with a thickness of 4.85 mm. That obviously leaves no room for a 3.5 mm port. Sadly the phone was dependant on Bluetooth or a micro-USB to 3.5mm adapter for headphone connectivity. Now, Motorola and LeEco have also done away with the 3.5 mm headphone connector, moving on to a single USB Type C port to connect it all.

The one BIG problem with a single USB Type C port is that it takes away the ability to charge a smartphone while having a pair of headphones connected at the same time. Yes, both Moto Z and LeEco Le 2 come with a Type C to 3.5 mm adapter, but that clearly defeats the purpose of ditching the 3.5 mm port in the first place. By adopting the Type C standard, these phones are definitely future ready, but the future has not arrived yet. Not unless all headphones, earphones, speakers and music players start sporting a Type C connector as well. The low popularity of USB type C headphones will definitely be a deterrent to new technologies such as CDLA (Continual Digital Lossless Audio), found in the LeEco Le 2.



Bluetooth headphones may be the answer, but wireless audio quality is still not upto the mark. Moreover, most budget smartphones also use the 3.5 mm connector as an antenna for FM radio (unless the antenna is housed in the smartphone itself). Bluetooth speakers on the other hand could definitely gain popularity as more and more manufacturers start ditching the 3.5 mm port completely. Word is that Apple is also looking to do so for the upcoming iPhone 7, and that the company is working on wireless earpods for the new device, which we guess will connect over Bluetooth.

As of now, the onus of setting Type C as an industry standard is a tough responsibility for smartphone manufacturers to bear. We hope the accessories' industry follows suit soon. Only then can be expect an era of truly lossless audio from a smartphone.


Londons FTSE 100 is expected to open 12 points lower on Friday as oil prices fell and as concerns on this months European Union referendum persisted.

Oil prices dropped after rising earlier this week on continued supply disruptions and government data showing a decrease in US weekly crude inventories.

At 0731 BST Brent crude fell 0.58% to $51.65 per barrel and West Texas Intermediate dipped 0.69% to $50.21 per barrel.

Meanwhile, uncertainty grew on Britains 23 June EU referendum as former London Mayor Boris Johnson tried to persuade voters to side with the Leave campaign in a televised debate on Thursday night. Johnson urged Britain to take back control and prosper as never before outside of the EU as he put forward his case alongside Conservative lawmaker Andrea Leadsom and Labour's Gisela Stuart.

On the opposing side were Nicola Sturgeon, the first minister of Scotland, Angela Eagle, a senior Labour Party politician, and Amber Rudd, Britains energy secretary.

With the referendum just around the corner, investors will continue monitor developments on Friday. Labour Party deputy leader Tom Watson and shadow cabinet colleagues are expected to warn in a report on Friday that leaving the EU would lead to an emergency budget, further cuts in public spending and tax rises.

In economic data, UK construction output figures are due at 0930 BST and the University of Michigans consumer confidence index will be released at 1500 BST.

In company news, J Sainsbury has announced it will appoint its chief financial officer John Rogers as chief executive of Home Retail Group on completion of its 1.4bn takeover. Rogers will replace John Walden, who is stepping down from the company. The takeover deal is expected to be completed in the third quarter.

BP and Det norske oljeselskap on Friday said they were creating of Aker BP ASA, an independent oil and gas company combining the assets and expertise from both companies' Norwegian exploration and production operations to form the largest Norwegian independent oil and gas producer. Under the terms of the proposed deal, Aker BP will be independently operated and listed on the Oslo Stock Exchange. It will be jointly owned by current Det norske shareholder Aker (40%), other Det norske shareholders (30%) and BP (30%). BP will also receive a cash payment of $140m plus positive working capital adjustments as part of the transaction

Grocery giant Tesco confirmed the proposed sale of its Kipa and Giraffe businesses on Friday, as it continues to slim down and focus on its core retail business. The FTSE 100 firm said it has agreed to sell its 95.5% controlling share in Turkish supermarket chain Kipa to Swiss retail group Migros.

In a separate transaction, Tesco confirmed it is also selling the Giraffe restaurant chain which it picked up in 2013, to Harry Ramsdens owner Boparan Restaurants Holdings.
In total, 433,696 people registered to vote in the 48-hour extension granted for the upcoming 23 June EU referendum with 1.5m Britons registering last week.

The original deadline of midnight on Tuesday was extended after a glitch on the governments website. It was reported that there was record demand from 22:15 until midnight when 50,711 people were on the site simultaneously.

As of 23:55 on that same day, 26,000 concurrent users were on the website and after the deadline had passed there were still 20,416 people on it.

Oliver Letwin, the cabinet minister, said the surge of applications experienced on Tuesday was three times as intense a spike [as the one] that occurred before the general election

MPs and the Electoral Commission urged for an extension and legislation was quickly passed through the houses of Commons and Lords without a vote on Wednesday which extended voter registration till midnight on Thursday.

Not all of the people who registered during the extension were new voters; some were checking that they had correctly registered. The extension was not covered in Northern Ireland as the online system was not in use there.

The extension was controversial as some MPs and leave campaigners objected. Arron Banks Leave.EU founder and insurance millionaire said he was considering launching a legal challenge.

"We've got lawyers that are looking at [the extension] at the moment. They are tending to say it's unconstitutional because once you've set the rules you can't really change it halfway through, and Parliament really shouldn't be doing this," Banks told BBC Radio 4s Today programme.

Conservative MP Sir Gerald Howarth, who has declared for the Leave camp, said: "People have had months and months in which to register and ... if they left it to the last minute and all tried to register yesterday, that's their fault.

"We should not change our regulations in the middle of a very important referendum campaign simply to suit those who haven't organised their personal affairs well enough to secure their registration in good time."

The proportion of younger voters was very high in the week before the original deadline, as 77% were under 45 years old. Younger voters are considered to be more pro-EU, therefore many on the Leave side saw the extension as disingenuous and biased towards the Remain side.

People are still able to apply to vote by proxy by completing a separate application form, which needs to be returned by 17:00 on 15 June.
Shares in Anglo Pacific Group were down almost 7% as the company warned the royalty from its Kestrel underground mine in Australia will be lower than expected.

Anglo owns a slice in certain of the Kestrel project's land areas. The project is operated by mining titan Rio Tinto, which means the company only receives royalties when mining is being undertaken on those specific areas.

It said Rio Tinto had indicated mining within the group's private royalty lands in first-half 2016 would be about 20-25%, from a previously guided range of 30-35%.

At 12:36 BST, Anglo's shares were down 6.44% to 83.5p each.

London- and Toronto-quoted Anglo said it understood this was due to the delayed commencement of mining of longwall panel 404, which was largely within the group's private royalty area.

Mining of the longwall panel 404 was now seen beginning at the start of second-half 2016.

"We expect mining within the group's private-royalty land will be approximately 85-90% in second-half 2016 resulting in significantly higher volumes than first-half 2016," the company said.

Anglo continued to expect that total mining within its private-royalty land in 2016 would be approximately 60-65%, as previously guided.
12 teens charged in standoff at Ohio youth prison

Twelve teens are charged with rioting, inducing panic, escape and vandalism in a takeover of the Indian River youth prison school.
Cassel Vineyards of Hershey

There's plenty happening at wineries around the region this weekend, including at Cassel Vineyards of Hershey. In addition to Music in the Vines from 6 to 8:30 Friday to a porch concert from 4 to 6 Saturday to the Sweet Arrow Wine Trail's Swine and Wine event all day Sunday, the Hummelstown producer will release its first reserve vintage starting Friday night. The newly released newly released 2014 Winner's Circle Red is a blend is a combination of its estate grown Chambourcin and Cabernet Franc. The tasting fee is $3.

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Standing on the doorstep of another weekend means a chance for free tastings at several regional Fine Wine & Good Spirits Stores. Here's a look at what four of the shops will have to offer Friday and, in some cases, Saturday.

Lemoyne, West Shore Shopping Center

4 to 6 p.m. Friday and noon to 2 p.m. Saturday

Wines from Bordeaux, per retail wine specialists Kirt Heintzelman and Rob Eckard

When you think of wine regions and prestige... what comes to mind first for most of us? Maybe Napa Valley or Tuscany and Piedmont in Italy... or maybe Priorat and Rioja in Spain...but when France is added into the mix, maybe Burgundy or the Rhone Valley... but when you really think about it... what comes to mind as the most prestigious wine region in France (if not the world) is Bordeaux. We received a few new Bordeaux into the store in the last few weeks so we decided to do a tasting of them for you.

Grapes

Red Bordeaux is generally made from a blend of grapes. Permitted grapes are Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc, Merlot, Petit Verdot, Malbec and rarely Carmenere. Today Carmenere is rarely used, with Chateau Clerc Milon, a fifth growth Bordeaux, being one of the few to still retain Carmenere vines.

As a very broad generalization, Cabernet Sauvignon (Bordeaux's second-most planted grape variety) dominates the blend in red wines produced in the Medoc and the rest of the left bank of the Gironde estuary. Typical top-quality Chateaux blends are 70% Cabernet Sauvignon, 15% Cabernet Franc and 15% Merlot. This is typically referred to as the "Bordeaux Blend." Merlot tends to predominate in Saint-Emilion, Pomerol and the other right bank appellations. These Right Bank blends from top-quality Chateaux are typically 70% Merlot, 15% Cabernet Franc and 15% Cabernet Sauvignon.

White Bordeaux is predominantly, and exclusively in the case of the sweet Sauternes, made from Semillon, Sauvignon blanc and Muscadelle. Typical blends are usually 80% Semillon and 20% Sauvignon blanc. As with the reds, white Bordeaux wines are usually blends, most commonly of Semillon and a smaller proportion of Sauvignon blanc. Other permitted grape varieties are Sauvignon gris, Ugni blanc, Colombard, Merlot blanc, Ondenc and Mauzac.

In the late 1960s Semillon was the most planted grape in Bordeaux. Since then it has been in constant decline although it still is the most common of Bordeaux's white grapes. Sauvignon blanc's popularity on the other hand has been rising, overtaking Ugni blanc as the second most planted white Bordeaux grape in the late 1980s and now being grown in an area more than half the size of that of the lower yielding Semillon.

From BBR.com... "There are 120,630 hectares under vine, almost all of which produces wine of Appellation d'Origine Controlee (AOC) quality, making it the largest producer of AOC wine in France, representing 1.5% of the world's total vineyard area. Red wine, with minimal amount of rose, accounts for 88% of production.

The vineyards lie around the confluence of the Dordogne and Garonne rivers with the Gironde Estuary. These waters exert a significant influence on both the climate and the soil structures of each sub-region in the appellation, by virtue of their sedimentary deposits. Those vineyards lying to the west of the Garonne and Gironde are deemed to be wines of the Left Bank, those to the east, Right Bank.

Bordeaux lies on the 45th parallel, in south-west France, close to the Atlantic Ocean, warmed by the Gulf Stream, and enjoys a mostly mild, maritime climate. This usually protects the vineyards from freezing winters although spring frosts remain an anxiety. A normal spring will be warm and damp, but the region's proximity to the Atlantic means that weather can be unpredictable, especially during the crucial flowering period in June.

Summers are hot, often with thunderstorms in August but the pine forests of the Landais to the west of the region help to moderate temperatures and protect the vineyards from the strong, prevailing winds off the Bay of Biscay. Harvest is from early September to the middle of October, depending on the grape variety and the conditions of the year and, as autumn approaches, rain during that period is a constant threat."

We'll be tasting two items from the Right Bank (which means to the right [East] of the Gironde River)... one from Cotes de Francs (the light pink area between the purple and light green areas), and then one from Pomerol (which is the slate gray area between the purple and light green areas)... and then two items from the Left Bank (which means the area to the left [West] of the Gironde River) ... one from St. Estephe (the small area in dark rust) and one from Margaux (the red area within the pinkish area). If you're interested, there's a ton of information on this website... http://www.bordeaux.com/us

Chateau Les Charmes Godard 2014 Blanc Cotes De Francs ($24.99), which is a blend of 50% Semillon, 35% Sauvignon Gris and 15% Sauvignon Blanc. "This has a rating of 90 points from Vinous Media (April 2015) with this review... "The just-bottled 2014 Les Charmes-Godard is vibrant and beautifully layered in the glass. Pear, brioche, peach and smoke meld together in a highly expressive, textured Sauvignon/Semillon blend that captures the combination of richness and lively acidity that make this vintage so attractive for whites. Winemaker David Suire favors larger 500-liter barrels, which help to keep the flavors bright as there is less exchange with oxygen than there is with standard size barriques. Once again, Les Charmes-Godard is one of the vintage's under the radar jewels."

And a rating of 87-90 points from Wine Spectator 2015 with this review... "Fresh, with lemon curd, white asparagus and white peach flavors. Has some zip, but the more caressing side will likely win out in the end."

Chateau Martin 2013 St Estephe "Cuvee Coutelin" ($29.99), which is a blend of Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot and Petit Verdot. Quoted at $45.00 at the winery, with their winemaker's notes... "Beautiful, dark-red color with powerful structure and great aromatic subtlety. Bright acidity and forest fruits on the palate with rich, round and fleshy tannins."

Steve Pollack, wine buyer for the Chairman's Selection(r) program, says... "Aromas of cedar, cherry currants and earth. The palate is fresh and pure with mineral and black berry fruit. Well-balanced and smooth finish. Excellent!"

Chateau Rauzan-Gassies 2010 Margaux ($34.99). This has a rating of 89 points from Wine Spectator 2013 with this review... "Ripe and direct, with a solid core of roasted plum and steeped black currant fruit framed by charcoal and bay leaf notes. Shows flashes of hot stone on the finish. Solid, but a touch shy on range and length. Best from 2014 through 2023."

And a rating of 90 points from Wine Advocate (Feb 2013) with this review... "The 2010 is a very strong effort from this estate, which is situated next to the other, better-known Rauzan, Rauzan Segla. Dense purple, its sweet notes of underbrush, forest floor, licorice, black currants and a hint of lead pencil shavings are followed by a lush, ripe, surprisingly fleshy and succulent wine that is much more evolved and forward at this stage than when tasted from barrel. I thought this wine would need more cellar time, but it is actually approachable in spite of its size, richness and density. Give it several years of cellaring and drink it over the following 20+ years."



Chateau L'Enclos 2010 'Le Petit Enclos' Pomerol ($27.99), which is 65% Merlot and 35% Cabernet Franc. The winemaker says... "In 2009, we launched a second wine from Chateau L'Enclos - Le Petit Enclos. As the second wine from this prestigious site, Le Petit Enclos is made to drink early, with forward fruit in the mouth and an elegant finish. Le Petit Enclos is a true small-lot wine with a production of only 8,000 bottles! This beautiful wine offers a lovely sweet toffee and black cherry perfume. It is ripe, medium-bodied, and displays a silky texture. Already providing a lot of pleasure, this wine will offer even more in the coming four to five years."



York store, 2547 York Marketplace

4 to 6 p.m. Friday and noon to 2 Saturday

Eastern Hemisphere wines, per wine specialist Patti Meckley

2013 Dr Frank Konstantin Chardonnay, Finger Lakes, $15.99. This wine is from an excellent vintage, the fruit aromas of this wine really shine! Characterized by notes of fresh pineapple, dried apricots and honeysuckle. Finishes with a mineral and creamy mouthfeel.

2014 Barboursville Pinot Grigio, Virginia, $18.99. This grape is tolerant in great variations in growing season conditions, Pinot grigio is always at the forefront of drinkability and food friendliness in our range of white wines. It is harvested promptly when ripe, to conserve its structuring acidity and fermented and aged in stainless steel. A deceptive simplified palate is backed by alluring tropical notes, saline and ample mouth feel. Romantic and youthful spirited, extremely flavorful with apple, pear and a touch of pineapple. Dry and well balanced with a gentle finish.

2013 Silver Thread Pinot Noir, Finger Lakes, $22.99. *88 pts from Wine Enthusiast. This wine is made from 100 percent estate grown grapes. Aged in French oak barrels for nine months, this wine has a clean ruby hue and aromas of ripe cranberries, plum, subtle cherry notes with earthy nuances. It is a well balanced wine with tight tannins and medium acidity with a long finish. Pinot Noir is a fickle and finicky grape , which makes for a challenge to grow and takes a lot of tender care to produce this high quality of wine.

2008 Chateau Frank Brut, Finger Lakes, $26.99. This almost clear colored sparkler with a pink rose hue opens with a faint strawberry bouquet with a hint of apricot. On the palate, this wine is medium bodied with a nice blend of acidity and fruit. The finish is dry with a sharp acidity that lingers and lasts for awhile. Perfect with sushi, chicken and salads!



Lancaster store, 558 Centerville Road

4 to 6 p.m. Friday



Wines from Portugal, per wine specialist David Speakman

2014 Arca Nova Vinho Verde. Visual: Bright and clear with a light lemony colour. Aroma: Fruity and fresh. Clean and pleasant aromas add a rich and interesting bouquet. Green apples is the most evident. Flavor: It presents itself with a soft minerality, very well balanced and medium structure. Enjoy Arca Nova on a Picnic or at an outdoors cocktail party. Ideal to pair with fish meals, salads and poultry. It is amazing with Asian dishes and seafood. It should be served between 8oC to 10oC. Better if consumed until 2 years after bottling date. Grape Variety: Loureiro 50%, Arinto 40%, Trajadura 10% - Winery notes

2013 LAGO Cerqueira Red: Lago Red features a beautiful ruby color. The nose reveals an aroma of ripe red fruits with well integrated toasted wood notes revealing rich body and elegance. Full-bodied on the mouth with soft and engaging tannins that result in a rich and complex finish. Fruit notes such as black currents, strawberries and blackberries and light nuances of toasted vanilla from oak. Straight and round tannins reflecting good balance and structure. The selected grapes were gently pressed and the juice was fermented in stainless steel barrel with controlled temperature. After fermentation, the wine aged in French and American wood for approximately 3 months. Before bottling the wine was filtered and stabilized. -Woodbury wine

Leacock's Rainwater Madeira Non Vintage. Made from Tinta Negra Mole grapes collected from multiple small, terraced vineyards that cling to the steep mountainous slopes of the island, this is a medium-dry wine combining soft fruit flavors with a dry, nutty quality. The grapes are fermented in stainless steel tanks until a neutral grape spirit brandy is added to stop the fermentation. Following fermentation, the wine undergoes a heating process, estufagem, where it is placed in cask in a special lodge or estufa where it will remain for at least three months. This heating process oxidizes the wine, giving it a very long shelf life and its characteristic nutty, rich flavors. - Winemaker's notes. WS90 Wine Spectator: "Delicious, smoky style, with a good balance to the off-dry caramel and butter cream flavors and the ripe melon, apricot and tropical fruit elements."

Warre Porto Fine White NV. Wine Spectator, 91 points. This is luscious and creamy, with concentrated flavors of baked apple, vanilla, pear and almond tart that feature loads of spicy notes. Honey and creme brulee accents linger on the long finish. Drink now through 2025. 800 cases imported.

Harrisburg store, 5070 Jonestown Road



4 to 6 p.m. Friday and Saturday



Mix of wines, per wine specialist Paul Robertson

2010 Covington Cellars "Ode" Sangiovese, $36.99 ($60 on the website). Our tribute (or 'ode') to the classic and beautiful Brunello Style wines of Tuscany, Italy; this wine is made from 100% Sangiovese Grosso; and spent 3 years in neutral French Oak prior to being bottled. One year minimum aging in the bottle prior to release allows this wine time to develop interest and elegance. This wine has notes of earth and mocha while retaining the wonderful tannic structure of the old world Italian wines. - winemakers notes

2015 Chronic Cellars Pink Pedals Paso Robles California, $14.99. 84% Grenache, 16% Syrah. Aromas of fresh watermelon and a hint of cherries are carried in the wind as you pedal along the path to a delicious bouquet of strawberries, raspberries and hints of mild spice. A rose that stays true to style and lets you ride along nicely.



2014 CaMomi Pinot Noir Napa Valley, $19.99. The rich ruby hue of this Pinot Noir beams out of the glass, with dark brambly aromas of blueberry compote and macerated strawberries, blended with thyme and smoky white pepper. On the palate, wild strawberries and ripe blueberries brighten soft undertones of forest floor and the caramel sweetness of oak. Mouthwatering black cherry agrodolce carries earth tones into are freshingly savory finish.

2014 Affentaler Valley of the Monkey Riesling Baden, $15.49. Affentaler has its ancestries in the Cistercian monks, who were nurturing grapes in that area around 1250. Because of the local chapels, the valley was known as Ave Valley, named after Ave Maria which in German is "Ave Tal." Over the centuries this area became Affental Vaelly, which means Valley of the Monkeys. The winery is located in Baden at the foot of the Black Forest along the Rhine River.


Vynecrest Winery

The view from Vynecrest Winery, one of the state's oldest operating producers, in Breinigsville, Lehigh County.

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Pennsylvania consumers soon will be getting - as much as anything - more access to wine, something many have been demanding for years.

What the liquor reform bill signed Wednesday by Gov. Tom Wolf is giving the body that oversees the state's wineries is even more significant. It will provide a funding steam that will give the state's Wine Marketing and Research Program upwards of $1 million annually to pay for marketing, promotion and research.

"No question, this is 90 percent tremendous. It's going to be transformational as far as I'm concerned for our industry," Bob Mazza said by phone Thursday afternoon. Mazza is owner and founder of Mazza Wines, which operates Mazza Vineyards and the South Shore Wine Company in North East, Pa., by Lake Erie, and Mazza Chautauqua Cellars and Five & 20 Spirits & Brewing in New York state. He's also past president of the Pa. Wine Association (PWA) and among the most influential on Pa. wine industry policy and its direction. He continued: "To have this kind of dedicated funding stream so we can make long-term plans not only in marketing but in research initiatives. This is going to be transformational for our industry and finally puts us on par with neighboring Ohio and New York state."

Up until Wednesday, funding for promotion and research came from a line item in the Department of Agriculture's budget and, to some extent, from the 20 cents per gallon fees on production that are assessed PWA members. Mazza said Thursday that previously the biggest amount the marketing and research program had received was $250,000.

But passage of Wednesday's bill that allows for out-of-state wineries to ship into Pennsylvania and the revenue it produces through the 6 percent sales tax and a $2.50 gallonage tax could give that aforementioned program as much as four times more than it has in the past. "That's why I'd call this truly transformational," Mazza said.

"The intent is that the wine industry, the wine marketing research program, will get a million dollars," he continued, noting that the money wouldn't come in a lump sum but through grant applications. "While that money though, and that's kind of the gray area, is going to be deposited into the general fund, and through grants up to a million dollars will be made available to the wine marketing research program. The mechanics of that, how that's going to work, are really unclear to all of us at this stage in time."

Mazza said that he interprets the legislation as providing that available funding perhaps even before the law takes effect in 60 days. "We should see those monies immediately as far as I'm concerned. I don't think they're going to wait until the $250 fee for the [wine-shipping] license, the 6 percent sales tax or the $2.50 a gallon basically accumulates to a million dollars before we receive those funds. That would not be my understanding nor the interpretation of the legislation. Now, I could be wrong. There's certainly a lot of things that are subject to interpretation that are not crystal clear . . . the Liquor Control Board will develop regulations in terms of how that stuff's going to work out."

Nine individuals make up the state's Marketing and Research Program, now chaired by Mario Mazza, Bob's son. Some of the winery owners who fill the other seats include John Landis from Vynecrest (Lehigh County), Brad Knapp from Pinnacle Ridge (Berks County), Karl Zimmerman from Shade Mountain (Snyder County) and Dr. Dave Hoffman from Paradocx (Chester County).

Here are the most recent minutes from a meeting held in February.

Part of the deal worked out is that the board will be adding four members, all to be recommended by the legislative caucus. Together, those individuals will have a chance to assess their options and expand an industry that now includes more than 200 wineries but has been lagging financially compared to other key Eastern wine producers such as New York and Virginia. Most of that money figures to go to the Pennsylvania Winery Association, of which many of the wineries are members.

"It's going to be a boon," said Jamie Williams, who's president of the PWA. Williams and his family run The Winery at Wilcox and The Winery at Hunters Valley in Pennsylvania and The Winery at Versailles in Ohio. "It opens up a lot of opportunities for marketing and PR and advertisement, but as well gives us a little more leverage to get some research done and get some viticultural positions filled that we haven't had filled in awhile."

One opening that has existed for more than two years is the viticulture educator for the Penn State Cooperative Extension. Mark Chien left that position in May for the Oregon Wine Research Institute to set as program coordinator.

"We're just starting to even think about the possibilities because we've been in this position so many times the past six years and sort of have, you know, had our hopes up and then back to reality a bunch of different times."

Williams wasn't certain at the time of the Tuesday interview just how much money the wine marketing research program would have to work with. "A lot of numbers were bandied about," he said. "But let's say we're at the $500,000 to a $1 million .. number, it really sort of gets us into parity with a lot of other states around us.

"In Ohio they have a bottle tax, 5 cents a bottle, and a similar wine marketing research board doles out a fair amount of money, up into the million-plus-dollar range. In Virginia they have a liter tax and those things really give a lot of leverage and really help grow the industry and make it really viable for the best candidates to come to do research and put investment in the wineries as well."

There are a number of other items in the bill that will change the Pennsylvania wine industry and, to some extent, also alter who's making and selling craft beer and distilled products. Consumers could start seeing these changes before the end of the summer.

While there are aspects of the bill that were not received well, this emailed response from Jason Reimer, one of the principal owners of The Vineyard & Brewery at Hershey, echoed the general sentiment that was heard once the liquor reform bill seemingly came out of nowhere Tuesday afternoon and wound up on Wolf's desk by that evening.

"This is a GREAT day for our industry - and one that the forefathers of the PA wine industry, like Mr. Nissley, Mr. Naylor, and Bob Mazza, paved the way for," he wrote Thursday night. "We cannot celebrate this triumph without acknowledging their role in ensuring the industry would mature responsibly such that the legislature would recognize the importance of the industry and its impact going forward."

Look for more on the specific changes and how these will evolve the business models of many regional wineries over the coming weeks.
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By KEITH RIDLER

Associated Press

BOISE  A Canadian mining company has reached an agreement with a Chinese firm that will bring $700 million in financing for a possible open-pit molybdenum mine near Boise.

Vancouver, British Columbia-based American CuMo Mining Corp. said it reached the deal with Hong Kong-based MCC8 Group Co. Limited.





. . .
Many politicians across the county are of the opinion that should Britain leave the European Union (EU) it will affect on Donegal.

Many public representatives across the political terrain agree that the re-introduction of some manner of border control, no matter how subtle, could undo much of the good work that has been done in building peace and trust along the border area in recent decades.

Fine Gael junior minister, Joe McHugh, will travel to London next week to try and communicate the importance of remaining within the EU to the Irish diaspora living there.

He said: I will be traveling to London next week to speak to Irish leaders, the department of foreign affairs and the British embassy are preparing a programme of events for me.

Deputy McHugh, who was the Chairperson of the joint Oireachtas committee on the implementation of the Good Friday Agreement, said that there are 600,000 people of Irish origin living in the UK who are eligible to vote in the upcoming referendum.

As a Donegal man, I am proactively encouraging people born in Ireland who have a vote in the UK to look at the positives of staying in the EU. We don't want to go back to the dark old days, any type of surveillance, along the border, no matter how subtle it could send us back so far.

He said that should the UK vote to exit the EU, work will begin in relation to that on June 24th. He added that it could take up three years for all parties to agree on the best policies in relation to the border areas.

We don't know what this might involve, it could be a light presence on the border. But the bottom line is that there is going to be some kind of control.

Meanwhile, Fianna Fail Deputy, Charlie McConalogue, said that the impending referendum could have huge implications on border counties.

I'd be very concerned about the impact that this may have on Donegal, he said.

He said that if the UK leave the EU, we would be trading with them as an EU country and our communication with them would be as an EU country.

It'll be European engagement in terms of trade and the movement of people, he said. He added that a key for Britain in is immigration.

He said: They will try to restrict movement.

Sinn Fein Senator Padraig MacLochlainn said that while their party would have serious concerns in relation to the EU, they recognise that the re-introduction of border controls would be negative.

The EU has moved away from the solidarity and the progressiveness it once had.

However, the implications of this for Donegal are significant, we will see two health systems, two tax codes and two education systems.

He said that these services are efficient when combined.

Meanwhile, Independent TD, Thomas Pringle said that the manner in which the EU dealt with Ireland during the financial crisis and in relation to the fishing industry exemplifies the manner in which they work.

He said he'd be in favour of Brexit adding that if the EU broke up, it would be positive: If the EU ceased to exist it wouldn't be a bad thing for the ordinary citizens of Europe.
A thirst for the Irish language and culture has manifested itself amidst the grand antebellum mansions and forests of a small county in Alabama.

Rankin Sherling, a history lecturer from Mississippi, who teaches in the Marion Military College in Alabama, has a great love and appreciation for the Irish language and this appreciation has blossomed among those at the college.

The academic has visited Gleann Cholmcille on a number of occasions to learn and be immersed in the Donegal Irish dialect.

This year, the love of the Irish language, in his native Perry County, has been reflected in the fact that they raised $18,600 to ensure that Mr. Sherling and four cadets could attend the Oideas Gael Irish language course.

Money was received from areas such as Oman, much to their surprise.

Mr. Sherling attended the University of Mississippi, a place which is famous for its scholars of Southern Culture, it was there he wrote his thesis on Irish immigration.

He won a scholarship with his thesis which reflected a fresh opproach to the subject.

The thesis actually won me a scholarship to go and study the history of Irish migration with D.H. Akeson, the world's foremost in the field, he said.

He studied in Canada where he became aware of two Gaeltachtai. The Irish Gaeltacht was borne from the sheer determination and will of Aralt Mac Ghiolla Chainnigh.

It was here that Mr. Sherling was told to go and study Irish in Donegal. A small university grant ensured the journey and a love was borne. During his time there he lived in a tent. Spates of study in Belfast and Galway ensued. Now, he teaches Irish at the military school. His bunrang takes place once a week and is well attended.

It takes place in Irish American Charlie Flaherty's used bookstore on a Thursday evening. The bunrang houses a consistent 6-8 students.

They absolutely love it, and they greet me as Gaeilge when they see me on campus. It makes us happy to use our secret language here, he said.

Last year, he applied for and won a grant to bring two cadets to Oideas Gael.

This year, alongside four cadets, Mr. Sherling has brought his lovely wife Claire and their beautiful baby Maire. All are enjoying their time amongst the team in Oideas Gael.

Mr. Sherling has a great ability to speak the Irish language and admitted that, on more than on one occasion, he has been told he has a Donegal dialect when he speaks Irish, despite his southern American accent in English.

Mr. Sherling will now have the opportunity to show his students what inspired him to love a language that his forefathers spoke as they left their native homes and went overseas in search of work for money with the greatest of riches in their hearts.
President Higgins will make his first official visit to Letterkenny this weekend when he unveils a plaque honouring the towns achievement of being named Irelands tidiest town.

The President will unveil a plaque during a ceremony which will be held at the Plaza at An Grianan theatre on Saturday.

The President and his wife Sabina will arrive at the event at noon. They will be welcomed by a guard of honour comprising of children from the 14 schools in the town.

Presentations to the President and Mrs Higgins will be made by Ciara McDermott, a student from Woodlands National School, and Odhran Keys, a pupil at Scoil Cholmcille.

Odhran will present a copy of the book Letterkenny: Where the Winding Swilly Flows by Kieran Kelly, while Ciara will present flowers to Mrs. Higgins.

The President will address those gathered before unveiling the plaque. He will then meet people in the Plaza before a reception in a marquee which will be attended by representatives of all the groups involved in the Letterkenny Tidy Towns effort.

Chair of the Letterkenny Tidy Towns Committee, Anne McGowan, said the committee is delighted to be welcoming the President to join in Letterkennys celebrations of the achievement.

The President will recognise the achievement of all those who contributed their time and effort to the community and due to their commitment, Letterkenny was chosen as Irelands tidiest town, she said.

We are looking forward to welcoming the President. Letterkenny is a wonderful place which has all the charm and warmth of a small town but most of the amenities of a large urban centre and it is situated central to some of the most beautiful and interesting places in the county. We are indeed very, very proud to showcase Letterkenny on this very important day for the town.
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.
Fort Rucker and Army leaders gathered at the site of a renewable energy groundbreaking as the installation moved forward with the services sustainability initiatives.

Among those to take part in the groundbreaking were Russell B. Hall, U.S. Army Aviation Center of Excellence and Fort Rucker deputy to the commanding general; Col. Shannon T. Miller, Fort Rucker garrison commander; David Williams, Energy Programs Integration U.S. Army Corps of Engineers chief; Susan Damour, General Services Administration Rocky Mountain Region regional administrator; Zeke Smith, Alabama Power Company external affairs executive vice president; and Chip Beeker and Jeremy Oden, Alabama Public Service commissioners, who all welcomed the addition to the installation during the ceremony June 2.

Today marks a great step forward in our efforts to stay energy efficient, said Hall during the ceremony. We are very proud to partner with Alabama Power to help us in our endeavor to meet the Armys mandates for renewable energy and guidelines for enhancing energy security in the future.

The 10-megawatt solar array will provide Fort Rucker with about 16 percent of its energy consumption, which furthers the installations Net Zero goals and reduces Fort Ruckers carbon footprint by fostering sustainability in the community, he added. The facility will generate enough energy to power about 1,600 homes per year.

Its very important that we increase our capability, increase our diversity of energy awareness and ensure that we are maintaining our flexibility to provide national defense, said Hall. This project is the first step to ensure the continuity of ongoing operations in support of the missions right here at Fort Rucker.

This is truly a great success story for Fort Rucker, the Army, Alabama Power and the state of Alabama, added Michael McGhee, Army Office of Energy Initiatives executive director. Renewable energy produced on Army installations increases resilience through energy security, which is essential to mission effectiveness.

McGhee said that energy shortfalls and power distribution failures increase the risk to Army mission, and in order to have an effective force, the Army must have confidence to be able to accomplish any mission.

Bringing increased resiliency to the regional power grid that Fort Rucker relies on improves the base security posture, helping to reduce the risk to the Army mission, he said. The Armys Energy Security and Sustainability Strategy envisions a ready and resilience Army strengthened by secure access to critical resources.

Ensuring access is the first step to energy security at the installation level, said McGhee, and the key to assuring that access is by diversifying and expanding that energy resource supply.

If you consider the energy it takes to operate all of the federal governments facilities, the majority of that energy is used by the Department of Defense, and of the Department of Defenses share, the Army uses 35 percent of that, making Army facilities the largest consumers of electricity in the federal government, he said. Last year alone, the Army spent over $1.3 billion on facilities energy, and each of the military services has made a commitment of deploying one gigawatt each of renewable energy on our installation by the year 2025, and this project will help us reach that target.

Hall said the solar array includes a design plan for a microgrid-compatible renewable energy generating facility thats directly connected to the electric distribution system on Fort Rucker, and although the groundbreaking is a big deal, its only the beginning.

This is the first of our projects  because I think we can increase from 16 percent to 32- or even as must as 45-percent capability in our local design capability, he said.

Additionally, although the array is housed on Fort Rucker, the Alabama Power Company will develop, finance, design, install, own, operate and maintain the project, which comes at no cost to taxpayers.

But it isnt just about saving money, according to Williams.

At the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, we do a lot of support to the Army and other federal agencies in a number of areas, but we are extremely proud that we are on the forefront in helping the Army and our installations with our energy initiatives, said Williams. What we see here today is the beginning, not just for Fort Rucker, but for the Army as a whole. We have goals and mandates, but were not just doing it because of those mandates  were doing it because its the right thing to do for Fort Rucker, for our Army and for our nation.
After having to scale back their rescue of animals in peril in recent months, the Southern Souls Animal League will soon be back to rescuing cats, dogs, and other animals from kill shelters and from neglect by their owners.

On Friday, June 3, SSAL founders Jo Vaughn and Anna Sheperd received the keys from Eufaula Mayor Jack Tibbs to SSALs new center of operations. The nonprofit organization will take over the former Alabama State Troopers office on High way 431, north of Eufaula by the airport, immediately and begin to rehab the property to suit their needs.

With major plans in mind, Vaughn detailed what would go where during a tour of the property last week to John Lougee, Director of Sales and Export (Southeast) of Cosmo Prof. and Kimberly J. Davis, Regional Sales Manager for Farouk Systems Inc., both of whom donate to SSAL through the businesses they represent.

We are planning to put kennels at the back of the property, but first we have to get concrete pads poured for the floors of them, Vaughn said. Thats just one of our major expenseswe are also going to have to have a privacy fence put up around part of the property to protect the animals.

That is part of the agreement with the mayor and the city of Eufaula, that we install a privacy fence to block the view of the kennels.

We want to make sure all the animals are safe  you can never tell what someone would do, Vaughn noted as she pointed out other area that would receive work.

Other improvements to the property the Sheperd and Vaughn would like to see done is to enclose part of the covered area at the back of the building, making a large screened in room for cats, leaving part open for loading and unloading animals from vehicles when they are transported for spay and neutering.

Installation of a washer and dryer, along with a refrigerator to keep medicine in, and painting the inside of the building are other crucial improvements that Vaughn said she saw during a walk through with the mayor recently. We will be able to have a puppy room, kitten room, treatment room, and an office with a waiting area along with some rooms designated for other uses, she commented.

The grounds of the facility at present time are in need of some maintenance including picking up limbs, cutting the grass and planting some fresh plants in areas. Vaughn hopes to have a sign identifying the new location of the organization painted on the existing sign area in front area of the building near the road soon, Its another thing on our list, she noted. We hope to have a cleanup day before long, so we can get moved in and back to rescuing animals.

The same day Vaughn gave a tour of the future home of the SSAL, she accepted a big check from Lougee and Davis in the amount $2,377.46. The actual check has already been spent; it went to pay vet bills for a couple of our rescue animals. Thats were a lot of our donated funds go, she said. We even have some people that call the vet directly and donate money towards our bill. Every penny we receive is greatly appreciated, people just dont know how much we appreciate iteven a few dollars can help to save the life of a cat or dog that might not make it another day.
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- Gotham Motorcycles, New York City's only authorized Indian, Victory and Slingshot motorcycle dealership, celebrated its one-year anniversary recently with an outdoor picnic in Tompkinsville.



More than 300 clients and residents enjoyed an afternoon of fine food, family fun and music by SINY Deejays, posing for photo ops with celebrities and playing games as they awaited the drawing for the winner of the 2014 KYMCO scooter.



"I am so grateful to our customers and neighbors who have been tremendously supportive of us over the past year," said Gotham Motorcycles owner Mark Crescitelli. "(My) family has a long history of selling motorcycles on Staten Island. I am thrilled to be able to celebrate the success of our first year and to have firmly replanted new roots by going back to selling Indian motorcycles on Staten Island as my grandfather did nearly 100 years ago."



The scooter give-away was the brain child of Gotham's General Manager, Alex Figliolia Jr., as his way to thanks customers both old and new.



"Gotham is more than just a motorcycle dealership -- it's a place for people to gather and share stories about their lives and to come together to help people in need," Figliolia said. "The men and women who walk through the doors are generous to their very core and I wanted them to know how much they are appreciated so we decide to have a contest to give away one of our 2014 KYMCO scooters."

Interestingly, the contest began in January with contestants able to enter both online, by mail and in person.

"The Sopranos" star Tony Sirico, who portrayed "Paulie Walnuts," chose the winner from the nearly 10,000 entries.



"I am so shocked I actually won! I'm very excited and I would like to thank Mark and the staff at Gotham Motorcycles for helping make my day," said Kevin McVicar, winner of the KYMCO scooter.

DAY OF REMEMBRANCE

The Thomas J. Tori Chapter No. 421, Vietnam Veterans of America will conduct their annual Day of Remembrance and Roll Call of Honor Ceremony, Sunday, June 12 at 11 a.m. at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial at the Armory, Manor Road and Martlings Avenue, West Brighton.

As tradition dictates, there will be a roll call of the 85 men listed on the wall who gave the ultimate sacrifice.

All are invited to partake in the Memorial Ceremony which takes place every Sunday before Father's Day.

Seating is available for all.

CELEBRATIONS: JUNE 10 & 11

Happy birthday Friday to Kay Galant who turns 96, Patty Haggerty, Christopher and Joseph Viola who turn 18, Rosemarie Signorile, who turns 78, Patricia Bertolino who turns 78, Marie Lanahan, Carl Schlichtinger, Linda Kaplan, Johanna C. Abbruzzese and Jenna Pillarella.

Happy wedding anniversary Friday to Michelle and Greg DeBiase who celebrate their 10th and to Kathleen and George Petersen.

Saturday is birthday time for

Thomas Allocco, Mary Jane McGinley, Greg Meade, Nicolas Marrero, Barbara Hanley, Ryan Eisler, Brian Reilly, Katie Ebner

and

Hannah Tait.

Happy wedding anniversary Saturday to Mary and Richie Nielsen.
After securing grants and having the new shooting range built, a name was all that was needed to complete the project.

Only one name came up, Eufaula Mayor Jack Tibbs said. It needed to be someone who excelled here, and Kenneth Walker was the police chief here for 25 years, so weve decided on the Kenneth Walker Shooting Range.

The range was enjoyed last fall by members of the Southeast Outdoor Writers Association, who praised the facility as they tried new products from various vendors.

Were very proud of this new facility, Tibbs said. Its a nice facility. We needed a training site, and (Eufaula Police Chief) Steve Watkins is working on getting classes out here for the public. The public can come out here. Its a city facility, so we have to have a firearms instructor here each time its open.

Tibbs credited the many entities that made the project possible, including the NRA (National Rifle Association). Barbour County and the City of Eufaula also gave money for the project.

Barbour County, the City of Eufaula and ADECA (Alabama Department of Economic and Community Affairs) also helped with the project. There are still additions to come, including sidewalks on the short range (25 yards).

Walker told the crowd gathered at the dedications that the shooting range brought back memories, particularly the first time he went to a shooting range and forgot to wear ear plugs. Im still paying for it today, he laughed.

Watkins thanked Walker for all of his help while I was coming up through the ranks in the police department.

The Eufaula NRA Banquet is set for Friday, July 29, at the Eufaula Community Center.
OPELIKA -- The felony ethics trial of indicted Alabama House Speaker Mike Hubbard is drawing to a close after three weeks of testimony and arguments.

The defense, led by attorney Bill Baxley, wrapped up its closing arguments after about an hour Friday morning, claiming that the state has not proven Hubbards guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.

Acting Attorney General Van Davis presented rebuttal arguments for the prosecution, arguing that Hubbard was well aware of what he was doing when he violated the state ethics law.

Lee County Circuit Court Judge Jacob A. Walker III will charge the jury this afternoon.

Defense: Only you can decide

Baxley went over the details of some of the prosecutions most prominent arguments, and explained how and why he believes Hubbard is innocent. Baxleys main argument was that the state has to prove that Hubbard intentionally violated the Alabama Ethics Law and that they have not and cannot prove such claims.

Baxley said jurors, in the time theyve spent on this case, have heard hundreds of questions a day but that the most important questions to have been asked in his clients trial are those that were posed when selecting jurors.

We felt like we had an idea of what witnesses were going to saywhat we needed was to make sure we had jurors that were impartial, said Baxley.

Every one of you on this jury right now promisedthat you would hold the state to what the law requires them to do, and thats to prove each and every element of that charge beyond a reasonable doubt, he said.

The prosecution has not done that, Baxley argued.

He said once jurors were selected we were satisfied, and we are satisfied today, reflecting on the importance of the jurys role in the justice system.

Baxley said the defense is counting on them to consult their notes and use their common sense to deliver the proper verdict.

It is in the law itself  construe it in a common sense way, Baxley said, adding that what theyve shown youis common sense thrown out the window.

Baxley referred to some charges as so ridiculous, and told the jury that, for Hubbards family, conviction on any one of the counts Hubbard faces is just as bad conviction of all 23 of them.

He said Hubbards case will set a powerful precedent for cases to come.

If theyre able to get away with that -- somebody like Mike Hubbard who holds a high position that has the resources to fight back and hires lawyers to fight back -- what in the world do they have to do to the people out there that dont have the resources that he has to present the arguments that he has?

Defense attorney Lance Bell, who began closing arguments for the defense Thursday afternoon, echoed the same concerns in his statements.

Bell said it "scares him" that the government could go after someone the way they have gone after Hubbard.

Baxley reminded jurors that nothing he or the prosecution or even the judge says should be considered evidence -- only the testimony of witnesses.

What you heard from that witness stand is not proof beyond a reasonable doubt that Mike Hubbard did anything.

But whether Hubbard is guilty or not guilty is ultimately left for the jury to decide.

Only you can decide that, said Baxley, later adding that he is confident that it will do the right thing come back with a not guilty verdict for all 23 charges.

Prosecution: We didnt bring these charges

Davis, in a high-powered and intense rebuttal to the defenses closing arguments, essentially told the jury that Hubbards attorneys are wrong to suggest that prosecutors are the government or enemies of the people in any way.

Rather, Hubbards desire to make money at the expense of the people of Alabama is the reason for the trial, he argued.

Weve been referred to as the government. Were not the government. Were prosecutors for the people of the state of Alabama, Davis said. We didnt bring these charges, ladies and gentlemen a Lee County grand jury did.

He responded to comments the defense made about former Alabama Ethics Commission director Jim Sumner, as Hubbard attorneys called Sumner one of them in reference to the prosecution and questioned his testimony as an expert on the ethics law.

The defense was seeking to distract jurors, he said. Davis also attacked comments from the defense that Hubbard did everything in his power to avoid violating the ethics law.

Not one time did Hubbard get a formal opinion, Davis said, adding that a formal opinion about his business dealings from the commission would have protected him from virtually any and all charges.

Sumner testified last week that Hubbard never sought advice on about half his consulting contracts.

Mike Hubbard was no ordinary speaker, Davis said, telling jurors that he became an icon in the Republican Party when he and others stormed the Statehouse.

He helped many of the states witnesses get elected to office, Davis said.

That adds up to power. He had a lot of power, he said, adding that public service officials are supposed to serve the people.

All hes done is serve himself, Davis said.

Case could go to jury today

Once the jury is charged by Walker, it will begin deliberations.

Deliberations could begin sometime today. A verdict could be delivered any time afterward.

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.
Stan Houston is on a roll.

Houston, of Enterprise, who started his acting career by attending a workshop in Colquitt, Georgia and then getting a role in an independent horror movie filmed nearby, will appear in "USS Indianapolis," a World War II era drama coming out later this year. Houston has also filmed several television pilots, including one with comedian Louie CK and will appear in an upcoming pharmaceutical commercial to be aired nationwide.

When I started acting eight years ago, I made a bucket list of 10 things, he said. Thanks to acting, Ive been able to cross off eight of them.

Houston will play a high level intelligence officer in "USS Indianapolis." The film tells the story of the USS Indianapolis' secret mission to bring parts for the atomic bomb to Tinian Island and its sinking after completing the mission. Nicholas Cage plays the captain of the vessel, who was court-martialed for the sinking and later exonerated.

Houston said the intelligence officer he plays in the movie helps orchestrate the scapegoating of Cages character for the sinking.

Im not a nice guy, he said.

Houston said he enjoyed working with director Mario Van Peebles on the film, which was shot in Mobile. Houston credits Peebles father, Melvin Van Peebles, with starting the independent film genre, which provided much of his work in acting.

I told him to thank his dad for me, because I wouldnt have a job right now without him, Houston said.

Houston has previously worked in Selma, a movie about the civil rights movement, and Devils Knot, a film about the West Memphis Three, who were three men wrongfully convicted of killing three boys.

Houston said hes learned a lot about the acting trade over the past eight years.

My patience is better, I dont get as frustrated with not getting a role as I used to, he said. You run your career like a business.

Houston said watching some Academy Award winners like Reese Witherspoon, Colin Firth and Matthew McConaughey work has been a master class in acting.

Its the greatest school in the world, he said. Heres podunk Stan from Blakely, Georgia working with the best actors in the world.

Houston credits his new agent Valerie Hanna of Fruition Talent in New Orleans with much of his current success.

"She knows the business and she fights for her clients," he said.

Houston said he thinks Alabama is missing out on not offering more tax incentives to the film industry and not doing enough to accommodate their needs. Houston said he hopes the Legislature will address this issue in coming sessions.
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.
Home Four wheelers Chevrolet Imports 2016 Trailblazer To India For R&D Purpose oi-Ajinkya

Chevrolet India has imported its all-new Trailblazer into the country. The 2016 updated model of Trailblazer has currently been imported for R&D purpose. The American-based automobile manufacturer is most likely to introduce the all-new Trailblazer in India soon.

The Trailblazer was recently introduced in the Indian market during 2015. Unfortunately, sales for the manufacturer has not improved in India. Chevrolet India is trying its very best to improve its current portfolio for the Indian market.









Previously, Chevrolet showcased its all-new Trailblazer at the Thailand Motor Show. The 2016 Trailblazer by Chevrolet has been launched in several international markets. The Trailblazer LTZ variant has been imported to India from Thailand for the R&D purpose.

Powering the all-new 2016 Trailblazer is a 2.8-litre DURAMAX diesel engine. The engine will produce 200bhp, along with 500Nm of peak torque. The Chevrolet Trailblazer's engine will be mated to a 6-speed automatic transmission and will power all four wheels.











Several design updates have been carried out on the 2016 Trailblazer over the existing model sold in India. The interior will also be spruced up for a more premium and upmarket feel. Safety features will also be added for additional occupant safety.
Public schools embrace of the maker movement has prompted a sharp new focus on equity and diversity.

Among those looking at the issue most deeply are Northwestern University researcher Shirin Vossoughi, Meg Escude of San Franciscos Exploratorium, and independent learning scientist Paula Hooper. The trio co-authored Making Through the Lens of Culture and Power: Toward Transformative Visions for Educational Equity, an essay that will appear in the Summer 2016 issue of the Harvard Educational Review .

In general, maker education refers to hands-on activities that support academic learning, problem-solving, and a mindset that values experimentation, growth, and collaboration. The movement has historically been rooted outside of school, either in science museums such as the Exploratorium or in the informal crafting and building activities that everyday people have employed for generations.

This month, as part of our annual Technology Counts report, Education Week took a deep look at the opportunities and challenges associated with bringing making into K-12 schools.

One of the most important dynamics associated with this shift, argue Vossoughi, Escude, and Hooper, involves efforts to recognize and value the histories, needs, assets, and experiences of working-class students and students of color.

The trios essay is based largely on their work developing and studying the Tinkering Afterschool Program, a partnership between the Exploratorium and local Boys & Girls Clubs in low-income communities in the Bay Area. They argue that its critical for educators embracing making to challenge educational injustices (to ensure that lower-resourced schools also have access to making technologies, for example), to recognize a multicultural mix of making activities (such as sewing and crafting, in addition to computer science and robotics), and to focus on good pedagogy (including direct assistance from teachers, which is anathema to some in the maker community.)

I caught up with Vossoughi, Escude, and Hooper by phone to discuss these issues in April, prior to the annual conference of the American Educational Research Association. Following is a transcript of our conversation, edited for length and clarity.

Why is equity such a big part of the conversation around maker education?

Vossoughi: From my perspective, equity was not a focus of the maker movement during its inception and rise, and that led to pretty quick pushback from people who said, This is a problem. Theres a disproportionate focus on white male middle class practices and populations.

Whats happened since then is definitely a much greater emphasis on questions of diversity and inclusion. The field is wrestling now with what making looks like and the range of views of how it happens. If we imagine it only as this normative experience, as opposed to what local communities all over the world have been doing for decades, we start to reproduce ideas about intelligence, about who is inventing, and who gets to participate.

Escude: Makings move into the educational field has sort of forced the conversation about equity. In our case, we try to look for projects that might reference practices around the worldnot just tools like 3D printers, but also more traditional practices.

Why do you believe that focus on equity is valuable?

Escude: Theres a sewing-circuit activity we do at the Tinkering Afterschool Program. We noticed that our students were really excited about the sewing itself, that it brought up wonderful conversations about family and references to who sews at home. It generated sense of pride and having a history.

Hooper: I believe that when students culture is involved in their learning, it has an impact on how kids come to understand and learn math and science. The research that many of us have done really indicates that things like the everyday practices that are comfortable for kids in a home setting, when those are used in a math classroom, those help kids to interact with math more deeply. When kids are exploring a science idea, and they dont feel like they need to think and talk about exactly the way a teacher does in order to learn it, but can do so in a way that feels comfortable to them, that really helps.

The goal should be helping kids to understand these ideas for themselves. They find meaning when they can make ideas truly their own.

What will it take for public schools to adopt that kind of equity-focused approach to maker education?

Vossoughi: Part of it is to complicate the ways we might think about what counts as learning. In the aftermath of NCLB and high-stakes testing and in a strict accountability context, there tends to be a rigid experience of what learning and intelligence mean. But when making includes references to students everyday activities and what their parents and siblings and neighbors might be engaged in, theres a widening of what counts as intelligence and learning, so that students might pay attention in new ways.

How can this kind of approach fit with schools current focus on blending making with STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) education?

Escude: I dont see tinkering and making as being exclusively STEM-based. It has the potential to be much broader than that. For example, theres a lot of creative writing in our program.

We also shouldnt think of equity as just meaning getting kids access to existing STEM programs. That economy is not necessarily ready to adapt to them. We need to examine how to change those structures in order to better serve the kids for whom were trying to get access.

What do you want K-12 educators to be thinking about as they begin experimenting with making?

Hooper: Making can provide a means for kids to really develop ideas in deep ways, but you also have to have a lens towards what it means to engage each child. That means really listening to and making sense of each childs experience, by paying attention to what they do and seeing how they interact with materials and with other people. I want people to see making as a way to leverage teachers into becoming more aware of what kids need for their learning, and all the places they need to pay attention to.

Vossoughi: Sometimes the introduction of making in schools gets framed as less teaching and more self-directed learning. From our perspective, theres a real danger in shortchanging the kind of pedagogy and professional development that need to accompany the making in schools. More open-ended and inventive practices require intentionality and skill. Without that, theres a risk that deficit-oriented ideas about which kids can and cant engage in making might be reproduced. I personally worry that a focus on pedagogy is missing in efforts to scale making.

Escude: Making is such a different way of learning from what typically happens in school. If we dont offer information or support on what this new kind of teaching looks like, well see a lot of novice educators thinking that making means they should be completely hands-off, or alternatively that they need to be really hands-on to get a project done. Theres still so little understanding of what can happen between those two extremes.

Photo: Jadon Neal, front left, age 9, and Reed Novak, 8, look over the contents of a maker box in order to complete a hand buzzer circuit. The Albermarle school district in central Virginia has taken a very aggressive and progressive approach in integrating maker spaces into instruction throughout the district.-- Reza A. Marvashti for Education Week

See also:
Earlier this week, we posted a general overview of education in India, today we turn to a look at the vocational education system. Heather Ridge , an agriculture and science teacher at Boulder Universal school in Boulder, Colorado, has just returned from a Fulbright Distinguished Awards in Teaching grant in India where she spent six months examining workforce readiness. Here is what she observed. This post is part of our ongoing series exploring vocational education around the world with Advance CTE .

If youre looking for an electrical engineer, India is a great place to find one, but good luck getting the phone number of someone qualified to wire the house. The push towards higher education over the last decade has doubled the number of students enrolling in higher education but, much like in the US, the skills they are graduating with have many who follow workforce development concerned. Current policy makers are turning to new programming in vocational education as a way to meet this challenge.

India will soon have the largest and youngest workforce in the world.

With more than 40% of the countrys 1.2 billion people under the age of 20, the level of skills and talents these youth might bring with them will have profound impacts on both social and economic factors within the country and around the world. In a recent report, only 2% of the Indian workforce was considered formally skilled and less than 7% of students under 15 were involved in any form of vocational training. Industry sectors projected to face the largest gaps are skilled trades for construction and infrastructure as well as banking and finance, which are seen as essential to economic growth and development.

These kinds of numbers demand attention from the government to address the growing skills gap between what knowledge and abilities students leave the classroom with and what the workforce demands. With 17 different ministries in India currently engaged in some sort of skill development scheme, the push towards revamping the role that vocational education can play in secondary schools has led to the newly revised policy of Vocationalisation of Secondary and Higher Secondary Education and the launch of the new National Skills Qualification Framework (NSQF ). As a career and technical education teacher (CTE), I spent the first few months of 2016 traveling around India to see how this new policy was being implemented at the classroom level.

Creating a Career and Technical Framework

The National Skills Qualification Framework was launched in 2013 and is a framework that organizes competency-based learning into levels that allow learners to gain certification through both formal and informal skill development. As part of this new framework, both universities and secondary schools are gaining access to resources that allow them expand vocational courses and degree programs. As a high school teacher, I was most interested in seeing how new vocational programs were being created for students in class 9-12 around the country.

With centralized curriculum being taught in the countrys estimated 1.3 million different schools, the first step the government took in creating new vocational course options was to develop learning standards. The creation of new Sector Skills Councils (SSC), which are industry-led groups focused around particular job clusters like manufacturing, agriculture, and trades, has worked to create new National Occupation Standards. Along with industry-specific competencies, each of the job qualification packets that the SSCs put together include soft skills, such as communication, designed to prepare students for the professional environment. From here, the National Occupation Standards go to the PSS Central Institute for Vocational Education, where they are turned into curriculum and materials for teacher training.

At the implementation level, government-run schools are selected by the state and two vocational programs based on the National Skill Development Corporations skill gap analysis . This public-private partnership looks at industry needs and workforce data to map out where skills gaps exist.

Due to the growing technology demand, each school offers an IT/Computer Science program, in addition to options ranging from automotive, agriculture, security, and healthcare as the second program option. From the 40 schools originally piloted, there are now over 2,000 schools around the country offering these four-year programs to boys and girls in class 9-12. That number is expected to double within the next year as more states become involved in the program.

Connecting Industry with Classrooms



The vocational classrooms I visited while in India were cramped, crowded, and under-resourced, but filled with enthusiasm. Students were clearly very excited about a style of hands-on learning that combined both theory and practice and diverged from the traditional rote memorization and recitation that is commonly associated with government schools. Evidence for the growing demand for these types of course can be seen in the enrollment. At all of the schools I visited, applications for the programs far exceeded number of seats available, which are capped at 25 per program per class.

When questioned, it was clear the part of class students liked best was the practical experience that not only involved their own labs, but visits to industry. As part of the newly revised scheme, all programs have a prescribed number of visiting guest lecturers, who are remunerated for their time, as well as field visits to different industry partners each year. While labor laws forbid students actually working as interns at a business, they have multiple opportunities to visit sites with their class and explore careers and skills within that industry.

Through the newly established National Skills Qualification Framework, students within the programs earn standardized level certification that they can take with them to higher education or the workforce.

Combining Best Practices

When evaluating best practices in vocational education, all eyes turn towards Switzerland, Germany, and Finland. These countries offer duel-track programming that sees higher enrollment in career and technical courses than other countries and, correspondingly, have some of the lowest youth unemployment rates in the world. Delegations have been sent and articles reviewed as to how these models might be replicated in American and Indian classrooms, but many fail to recognize the duel challenge when it comes to cross-cultural vocational education solutions. Along with the cultural differences in regards to education, one must also consider the cultural attitudes toward work.

In the US, and in India, there is a hierarchy of knowledge and not all jobs are seen as equalthis has deep roots in Indias caste system and in Americas white collar vs. blue collar economy. Do an informal investigation of school children on any street in India and the vast majority are being pushed by parental expectation into engineering and commerce fields. In both countries, certain jobs are viewed as prestigious or acceptable, while others are not. This negative social bias exists despite the level of interest by the student or even other tangible factors like overall lifetime earnings, which often show those in skilled trades out-earn and are more employable than those who have pursued more academic pathways. By contrast, those western European countries with a tradition of vocational education (perhaps because of this tradition) demonstrate less cultural stratification around employment options and pull enrollment from all levels of socio-economic backgrounds. India and the US have much more in common with each other than with the European models they hope to emulate.

One thing both countries can further develop is the idea that vocational education is not only for certain kinds of students. While both countries could benefit from addressing the negative social bias, many current policies serve to reinforce it. In India, introducing vocational education policy at only government schools, which are perceived as the schools of last resort, encourages the misconception that vocational programing is only for the poor to earn livelihoods. In the US, there is still a strong belief that vocational training is a lesser alternative to academic learning, rather than a step on the way towards lifelong learning and professional development.

One thing both countries can celebrate, however, is a shifting commitment to supporting students in developing their postsecondary workforce readiness. Whether they want to be electrical engineers or electricians, educators and policymakers are starting to implement new approaches to skill development for future graduates.

Follow Heather Ridge , Asia Society , and Advance CTE on Twitter.

Image of author reviewing curriculum with CTE teachers at GSSS Ambamata in the state of Rajasthan. Courtesy of the author.
In the past week, two Texas high school valedictoriansLarissa Martinez and Mayte Lara Ibarra have announced they are undocumented immigrants.

Theyre among the estimated 65,000 undocumented students who graduate from American high schools each year. Unlike Martinez and Ibarra, most of them arent valedictorians. Some are still struggling to map out their futures and learn English.

My colleague Denisa Superville profiled Katherine and Kenia, two unaccompanied minors from Honduras who are set to graduate from high school in Charlotte, N.C. Education Week withheld the students last names at their request because of their immigration status.

The majority of unaccompanied minors who enrolled are still in school, but a growing number are graduating, Denisa wrote. Such students are largely still undocumented, meaning that they cannot legally hold jobs or qualify for in-state tuition at many state colleges. Some are still mastering English and will need tutoring after graduation.

The Honduran immigrants she profiled have come of age during a moment in history when racial and ethnic tensions have flared on many K-12 campuses.

The valedictorians, Martinez and Ibarra, have faced deportation threats.

As a prank, seniors at a North Carolina high school built a wall made of boxes and blocked access to a common area. They shared a photo on social media captioned, We built the wall first. It was a nod to Republican presidential nominee Donald Trumps pledge to stop illegal immigration on the United States southern border by building a wall between the U.S. and Mexico.

Racial tensions have flared in St. Cloud, Minn., where enrollment of Somali, and mostly Muslim, students has skyrocketed in the past decade.

Many students worry about being deported , wrote the authors of a recent report from the Southern Poverty Law Center . Teachers have noted an increase in bullying, harassment, and intimidation of students whose races, religions, or nationalities have been the verbal targets of candidates on the campaign trail.

Martinez is headed to Yale and Ibarra is headed to the University of Texas at Austin. But as Denisas story illustrates, high school graduation will mark the end of stability for many undocumented students.

With graduation approaching, Katherine and Kenia both have post-high-school plans, she wrote. They both know that achieving them will be difficult given that they are still undocumented and are working to improve their English.

Heres a link to a forum hosted by the Albert Shanker Institute and American Federation of Teachers this week on educating English-language learners.

Photo credit: Kenia, who came to the United States from Honduras, participates in a graduation award ceremony at her Charlotte, N.C., high school. -- Chris Keane for Education Week

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Kansas, youre not alone.

Randy Dorn, Washingtons superintendent of public instruction, has told the states supreme court in an amicus brief that it should do what Kansas court did and threaten to shut the states school system down if the legislature continues to ignore its demand to fix its school-funding formula.

In the brief filed Wednesday , Dorn said that the legislature has acted far too slowly in fixing the states funding formula which the court deemed unconstitutional in 2012, and he said the court shouldnt tolerate it. The $100,000-a-day fine the court has levied on the state has so far failed to produce a new funding formula acceptable to the court.

Fully funding basic education is a very complex political and policy problem that the legislature must treat with real urgency, Dorn wrote. The court cannot simply rely on the legislatures promise. The legislature must act. More effective sanctions are required for the legislature to have the policital will to solve the problem.

While the legislature has expanded all-day kindergarten, and increased transportation funding, among other things, it has yet to fix the funding formula so that local property owners arent left paying the majority of teachers salaries. That effort is expected to cost the state an estimated $3.2 billion every two years, according to the Seattle Times .

This past session, lawmakers passed a bill that establishes a task force to design a new funding formula, which the legislature will vote on during the 2017 session. Many called it a plan for a plan and a punt.

The problem is not a lack of information, Dorn wrote in his brief. It is the lack of political will to use the information. Instead of solving the problem, the 2016 legislature kicked the can down the road and appointed another task force.

In the 18-page amicus brief, Dorn suggests that the court hold individual legislators in contempt of court, require them to pay fines to the court out of their own pocket (to be reimbursed after they fix the funding formula); have county treasurers withold special levy dollars reserved for local school districts; put a halt to a series of tax breaks the legislature gave to local businesses in recent years; and, finally, shut the public school system down.

Closing schools is harmful to the students. ... however ... closing the schools cannot be ruled out a possible remedy, he said citing a 1976 case in which New Jerseys state supreme court witheld funding from the schools, forcing a temporary shutdown.

Dorn, whos elected and has a term that ends at the end of this year, has grown increasingly frustrated with the legislatures actions regarding the states education-funding formula.

In January, he refused to listen to Democratic Gov. Jay Inslees governors State of the State address when he first proposed his task force solution, instead leaving a note on the chair reserved for the state superintendent that read, Reserved for kids and students.

In an interview with me in February, Dorn said he was considering suing the state himself.

I still believe that we dont have a strong enough internal force to force the legislature to do its job, but I think its coming to a head that our state may have to look at its whole tax system in the 21st century, Dorn said. We have one of the least-fair systems in the nation. This is the Armageddon. Its a culminating moment of McCleary.

At one point this year, Dorn flirted with a run for the governor, but said earlier this month it wasnt feasible.

For a story I wrote in a recent Education Week issue about funding formula cases, Richard Levy, a legal scholar at the University of Kansas, said forcing legislatures to adhere to court orders has been, historically, very challenging.

What would they do if the legislature says no? Levy said. You cant jail legislators, because they have legislative immunity.

Meanwhile, in Kansas where the court system actually did threaten to shut down school funding if lawmakers dont fix their funding formula by June 30, GOP leaders are preparing for a special session June 23 where theyre expected to debate how to give at least $38 million more to the states poorest districts.

GOPs party letters also are threatening school district officials with a $5,000 fine if they use their work e-mails to campaign against legislators for not supporting more school funding.

After endorsing providing the states poor districts with $38 million, Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback, a Republican, made one of his first public statements on Thursday on a local radio show to gripe about the justices order and the anxiety thats roiled the state in recent weeks.
This afternoon, Michigan Governor Rick Snyder, with no apparent sense of irony or sarcasm, sent out an email titled An historic night for Michigan. He was referring to the previous evening when Republicans passed bailout legislation for Detroit Public Schools that has inadequate funding for DPS, harms children by putting unqualified, uncertified teachers in their classrooms (illegal in every other classroom in the entire state), and once again attacks the heroic teachers who toil away each day in their struggle to educate Detroit students in working conditions most of us would demand combat pay for. Most galling of all, this legislation was written, amended, and passed without ANY input from Detroit legislators. (My analysis of that hideous legislation is HERE.)

When you click the link in that email, it takes you to a Medium.com post that, if you didnt know better, would lead you to believe that everything is A-OK in our fine state. That our cities and schools arent circling the drain. That Flint residents arent being poisoned by their own drinking water. That Detroit schools arent falling apart by degrees and the children there arent getting what can only be called substandard education. No, according to that page, we are doing GREAT!

Of course, nothing could be further from the truth. Schools across the state are going broke. Municipalities are having to cut services and raise local taxes (when they can) due to austerity policies enacted by Republicans. Michigan has disinvested in its local municipalities more than any other state. Our middle class is shrinking more than any other state. Our roads, bridges, and tunnels are disintegrating with no end in sight. The list goes on and on.

The night before Gov. Snyders historic night, actual history was made when Sec. Hillary Clinton secured enough pledged delegates to be the presumptive Democratic candidate for president, the first woman to ever do so in a major political party:

THAT, Gov. Snyder, is what an historic night looks like. What you refer is a night that will go down in history as our states collective shame. A night when Republicans made it crystal clear that Detroit kids are second class citizens in their own state, not worthy in the minds of the Republican legislators and our Republican governor to receive the same quality education provided by the same quality educators in the same quality facilities as the kids in the rest of the state.

In a sense, it was an historic night. But not in the sense that Gov. Snyder is portraying. And no amount of Happy Happy Joy Joy emails or internet posts will ever change that.
Why Grace could do to Trump what Stage did to Romney

When Donald Trump was confronted with evidence that he lied about thousands of American Muslims celebrating 9/11, what did he do?

At a campaign rally in November, he viciously mocked Serge Kovaleski  a disabled reporter who covered the aftermath the terror attack for the Washington Post  for politely refuting his claim. And when called out for his cruelty, he denied knowing Kovaleski, though the reporter had covered Trump for years.

Trumps sick impression has now become the centerpiece of this Priorities USA ad airing widely in several swing states:

The focus here, Greg Sargent explains, is on Trumps personal cruelty  not just in business, but also from the perch of his newfound media dominance.

Its also a larger critique of what Trump presents as strength.

To Trump being strong is being willing to offend the powerless and people you know cant fight back, like a federal judge barred by law from defending himself. Believing you can brutalize anyone who hurts or threatens you is the core of a philosophy that justifies torture and advocates for the killing of innocent women and children. Its the reason that he seems conservative, regardless of having the convictions of kelp.

Whats important about the ad is what it doesnt mention  the context of the attack.

Instead it forces you to experience Trumps attacks from the perspective of the parents of a disabled girl, inviting you to imagine the actual consequences of his buffoonish cruelty.

And the logic behind this is reassuring to anyone who hopes to keep Trump on Twitter and out of the White House.

You may have heard that there may be more white voters than pollsters originally suspected based on census data, which is supposed to be good news for Trump (and his pals in the #WhiteGenocide movement).

The billion dollar babys only path to the presidency  besides a massive landslide that would actually put New York and California in play  is to outperform Mitt Romney with white voters in the Rust Belt states. And he has to do this while not doing much worse minority voters and nearly matching Romneys prodigious support among college-educated Republicans. Its difficult math to make work  but its his only hope.

So here Democrats are reaching out to the white voters Trump desperately needs.

This ad points doesnt touch on Trumps race-baiting and religious bigotry, which triggers all sorts of primal fears and summons up decades of conservative dog whistle frames. It just says: heres a man who when challenged attacks the most vulnerable person he can find; heres a man you cannot trust to look out for your familys interests.

This ad  named Grace after the little girl profiled  has the potential to be this cycles Stage, which was also produced by Priorities USA.

Remember this?

The Obama Administrations incredibly successful auto rescue certainly helped. But some argue that this ad played a significant role in seeing President Obama do better in 2012 with working-class white voters in the Midwest than he did in the rest of the U.S.

Stage made the case that Romney was at least blind to the callousness of his own actions. It implicitly argued that if he carried that mentality to the White House, he might be willing to do anything to achieve his goals  including passing into laws the brutal austerity outlined in his running mates budget.

Like Stage, Grace shows is that Democrats have a decent understanding of the Republican nominees psychological appeal.

Romney knew business  so they argued he lacked empathy for those impacted by his ruthless dealings. Trump makes hurt people feel strong  so theyre challenging the very notion of what it means to be strong by challenging one of the most toxic messages of our society.

Weve been taught to hate weakness, especially in ourselves. When hurt people see a bully, they often identify with him in hopes they will avoid his wrath.

But as most of us get older, we realize that what drives the bully often is fear, especially fear of the weaknesses we all suffer in these flimsy flesh shells.

This ad asks you to see that real strength comes from empathizing with the vulnerable. It asks you to show real strength  for Grace.
China is investigating the encryption and data storage features of technology products sold there by large foreign companies such as Apple, The New York Times reported this week.

Authorities apparently are focusing on whether the products pose a security threat.

A committee associated with the Cyberspace Administration of China reportedly is conducting reviews that include interviews of company executives and other employees.

Other countries, including the U.S. and the UK, do review some tech products, but they tend to focus on those to be used by the military or government departments involved with security. Beijing apparently is looking at consumer software and gadgets as well.

In addition to ensuring that the products arent being used in espionage, the reviews could be used to siphon off technological knowledge, according to the Times. They might be used to block the import of products or to extract trade secrets in exchange for access to Chinas market. Tech knowledge so obtained might be passed on to Chinese companies competing with foreign ones, or expose vulnerabilities that could be exploited by hackers in China.

Pingpong Antidiplomacy

In March, China was the second biggest U.S. trading partner behind Canada, accounting for nearly 15 percent of Americas foreign trade, while Canada chalked up just over 15 percent, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

U.S. exports to China totaled just over US$25 billion of the $128 billion bilateral trade between the two countries, according to the Census Bureau.

Yet both countries have been cracking down on this trade for years.

In 2010, Google threatened to pull out from China over hacking and censorship concerns and got the U.S. government involved.

Last year, U.S. business groups asked China to postpone new rules for American businesses selling technology to banks there.

Meanwhile, Microsoft is facing antitrust scrutiny in China. Apples iBooks and iTunes Movies servicesshut down in China in April  but Apple has just invested $1 billion in Chinas answer to Uber,Didi Chuxing.

The U.S. has imposed restrictions on Chinese companies Huawei and ZTE, and in May the U.S. Department of Commerce imposed a ban on ZTE for exporting U.S. tech to Iran. The ban was lifted after two weeks in exchange for ZTEs pledge of cooperation with the departments investigation.

China Pushes Back

The U.S. has created various roadblocks for Chinese infrastructure companies such as Huawei and ZTE to compete effectively, citing national security concerns, said Brent Iadarola, VP of mobile and wireless communications at Frost & Sullivan.

The Chinese are attempting to level the playing field or at least plant the seed that, if the U.S. continues to subject Chinese commercial products to harsh review and regulatory requirements under the pretense of national security, they will retaliate, he told the E-Commerce Times.

Since NSA whistleblower Edward Snowdens revelations about the agencys spying activities, U.S. products are assumed to be compromised much like Chinese products were before that, noted Rob Enderle, principal analyst at the Enderle Group.

The NSAs and FBIs insistence on including encryption backdoors in high-tech products may have provided grounds for concern over espionage activities.

These efforts by the three-letter agencies are foolish and damaging and are badly damaging U.S. technology exports across a broad number of firms, Enderle told the E-Commerce Times.

On the other hand, China has a pattern of abusing the intellectual property rights of foreign companies, said Daniel Castro, vice president at theInformation Technology and Innovation Foundation.

Any actions by the Chinese government that force companies to unnecessarily disclose proprietary business information are cause for concern, he told the E-Commerce Times.

The goal of Chinas increased scrutiny, at least initially, Enderle maintained, is to reduce U.S. tech imports.
Yahoo has notified potential buyers that it plans to auction off about 3,000 patents and will be accepting bids until mid-June, The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday.

The intellectual property for sale includes patents for its original search technology. Yahoo has hired Black Stone IP to run the auction, according to the WSJ.

Up for Grabs

The patents cover strategic areas such as search, e-commerce and online advertising, said Andreas Scherer, managing partner at Salto Partners.

Its very much like selling the crown jewels. Its safe to assume that the days of Yahoo as a standalone business are numbered, he told the E-Commerce Times. Naturally, companies such as Alphabet and Microsoft will take a close look at this merchandise.

Following is a sampling of the patents on offer:

Content-based billing

A computerized advertising offer exchange

A method and system for serving ads

Techniques for increasing the recall and recognition rate for Internet display ads

A Sell through rate evaluation framework for pricing inventory profiles in advertising systems

How Much Are Those Patents in the Window?

The patents are expected to fetch about US$1 billion.

EnvisionIPs Patentvue this spring assessed Yahoos patent portfolio as strong but overvalued at the $3-$4 billion figure bandied about at the time. Whether the latest $1 billion estimated value of Yahoos 3,000 patents on offer is more realistic is not clear  EnvisionIP had identified only 2,000 U.S. patents in Yahoos portfolio as active and in force.

Yahoo hasnt generally kept up with the evolution of browsers or social media, observed Mike Jude, a program manager at Stratecast/Frost & Sullivan.

It has a nifty approach to social media  one thats integrated with online services  but doesnt have the means to capitalize on that, he told the E-Commerce Times. Any buyer will need to consider the investments needed to bring Yahoo up to speed and will discount their bids accordingly.

Who Will Buy?

Although Yahoo was among the earliest search engines, it hasnt invested in advanced search technologies the way its competitors have, said Jude.

The search patents may not have much competitive value, he suggested, but they might be useful as a foundational technology base for anyone acquiring a company interested in constructing a unique search capability.

That might include telephony companies, because having search technology that doesnt depend on Google or Microsoft built into a communication service could have a very high appeal to consumers, Jude pointed out.

Mayers Cunning Game Plan

If the value of Yahoos patents has declined, thats not the only bad news for Yahoo this week.

Verizon is expected to offer less for Yahoos Web business than previously thought  $3 billion, rather than the $4-$8 billion ranged predicted earlier this year  according to the latest reports.

Verizon has probably deduced that there are fewer bidders and that since they made their first round bid, Yahoos traffic numbers, which anyone can track, have continued to decline, noted Barry Randall, chief investment officer at Crabtree Asset Management.

Yahoo CEO Marissa Meyer is managing this process cannily, by deferring everything to the committee assigned to weigh the various bids, he told the E-Commerce Times.

That way, she gets credit for the rise in stock price since she took over while keeping her fingerprints off of any decision to bust up the company, Randall explained. She gets plausible deniability straight out of the Richard Nixon playbook.
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Lone Star State Leading the Way in Illegal Teacher-Student Relationships

Everything's bigger in Texas. But that doesn't mean it's better. The Lone Star state is hitting some big numbers in a very bad category.

The Texas Education Agency revealed it has launched a whopping 162 investigations into alleged inappropriate teacher-student relationships between September 1 and May 31. The agency had a total of 188 investigations all of last year, the most in the nation, and the number of incidents has been rising for five straight years. So what's going on down in the former Republic of Texas, and what can state officials do about it?

Not Just Inappropriate -- Illegal

The age of consent in Texas is 17, and many of the reported incidents involve students as young as 13. Texas law also criminalizes improper relationships between teachers and students:

An employee of a public or private primary or secondary school commits an offense if the employee: (1) engages in sexual contact, sexual intercourse, or deviate sexual intercourse with a person who is enrolled in a public or private primary or secondary school at which the employee works.

Having a sexual relationship with a student is a second degree felony in Texas and could mean up to 20 years in prison.

Despite this prohibition, teachers are having illicit sexual relationships with students at a record-setting pace. And some are blaming social media. Kathy Tortoreo, director of crisis services at Family Support Services in Amarillo, Texas told the Amarillo Globe-News, "In the past, you might not have had students choosing to interact socially with a teacher. Now they'll friend them on Facebook or they'll reach out to them on Snapchat."

Appropriately Sanctioned

Whatever the cause, education groups and legislators are feverishly searching for the cure. The Texas Teachers Classroom Association and Texas division of the United Educators Association already provide extensive materials to teachers on improper relationships with students, but those warnings, the statute, and the 78 former teachers sitting in Texas prisons on charges of improper sexual relationships clearly aren't enough of a deterrent.

Texas Education Agency spokesperson Lauren Callahan told Fox 4 News the agency will meet with state legislators in the next session to discuss new student teacher communication rules. "We want to make sure they're appropriately sanctioned," Callahan said. "And if they need to come out of the classroom forever, then certainly we want to make sure that happens as quickly as possible."

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(Image: SBC website)

The biggest U.S. Protestant group is preparing to meet in Columbus, Ohio but it has reported its largest annual decline in more than 130 years - a loss of 236,467 members.

With just under 15.5 million members, the Southern Baptist Convention remains the largest Protestant group in the United States. But it has lost about 800,000 members since 2003, when membership peaked at about 16.3 million, Christianity Today reported.

The number of SBC baptisms has declined in eight of the past 10 years, according to the denomination, The Associated Press reported. In 2014, baptisms declined by more than 5,000 to just over 305,000.

This past year, however, the number of SBC churches grew by 1 percent to 46,449, Christianity Today reported.

That's in part due to church planting efforts, aimed at starting new churches. Southern Baptists started 985 new churches in 2014, up 5 percent from the previous year.

Yet a new major survey from the Pew Research Center shows a similar decline for the SBC. In 2007, Pew found that about 6.7 percent of Americans claimed to be Southern Baptists. In 2014, 5.3 percent of Americans were Southern Baptists.

Pew also found Southern Baptists are aging, with the median age rising from 49 in 2007 to 54 in 2014. That makes them older than Nazarenes, "nones," and non-denominational Christians, but younger than Presbyterians, Episcopalians, and Methodists.

Frank S. Page, president of the SBC's Nashville-based executive committee, said that the numbers were disappointing.

"The truth is, we have less people in our churches who are giving less money because we are winning less people to Christ, and we are not training them in the spiritual disciplines of our Lord," he told Baptist Press.

Mark Woods wrote in the UK publication Christian Today, "With all due respect to Thom Rainer and Frank Page, it doesn't seem likely that the decline is down to a lack of prayer or effort.

"It may be something rather more fundamental: that the SBC label is associated with a kind of Christianity which is not attractive in the kind of country America is becoming, which is far more socially liberal than many evangelicals are comfortable with."

Ina piece headlined, Is the Southern Baptist Convention in terminal decline? Woods wrote, "The SBC still has a lot going for it, and while it might be argued that a softening of its line in certain areas would make evangelistic sense, it is likely to remain a power in the land for years to come."
(Facebook/EmpireFOX)Cookie's decision to turn her back on Lucious will color the next season.

Television's most dramatic and twisted family is about to face more tragedy as the executive producer of "Empire," Ilene Chaiken, talked about a heated battle that will fall upon the clan in season three.

In the finale of season two, viewers saw Lucious (Terrence Howard) choosing a path that once again pointed to his self-centered ways. Fans of the great and strong Cookie (Taraji P. Henson) were also devastated as the lady of the house finally gave up on Lucious. No one can blame her since she has stood beside Lucious and his wrong decisions through it all but the latter chose to marry Anika (Grace Gealey) to save himself.

In a recent interview with TV Line, Chaiken hinted on a few things that fans should expect when the show returns. "What we're setting up is a battle of dark vs. light. Who are the Lyons and how will they continue to define themselves going forward?" she said.

Regarding Cookie's decision to walk out on Lucious for possibly the last time, Chaiken teased that the damage will remain despite the family and the company still staying clasped together. "Her [being finished with Lucious] is going to color everything," the EP teased.

Aside from Cookie's anger that will potentially threaten Lucious in the upcoming episodes, the revelation of Tariq's (Morocco Omari) identity is expected to pose a threat to Lucious' reign in his vast kingdom that's beginning to fall.

According to Movie News Guide, there will be a huge storm within the Lyons' den in case Tariq turns out to be Lucious' blood brother. Aside from his children already fighting for the crown, the powerful Lyon might see his kingdom finally fall at Tariq's feet.

Lucious is definitely in the middle of all the chaos as the question about how long he has known that his sham wife actually pushed Rhonda (Kaitlin Doubleday) off the stairs is expected to be answered very soon.

A report by The New York Times last month notes that Lucious knows every bit of truth regarding Rhonda's fall from the stairs even if Anika initially denied her involvement. Now, fans will have to wait and see how Lucious will use his precious knowledge to get Anika to play the cards his way.

FOX has yet to announce when "Empire" season three will premiere.
(www.samsung.com)Samsung's next release may not be a Note 6 but a Note 7. In photo: Samsung Galaxy Note 5.

Samsung fanatics are patiently waiting for the South Korean tech giant's next release, which is believed to be the Samsung Galaxy Note 6. However, rumor has it that despite being a fresh release, the Note 6 won't be shipped with the latest operating system, Android N.

Previously, Note 6 is rumored to be one of the first few devices to have the Android N operating system straight from the box. But according to a leaked user profile of the device, the Note 6 will run on an Android Marshmallow OS.

This may not come as a surprise for a lot of Android fans since Samsung is known to receive software updates late. Google has yet to name the new Android operating system and it's highly likely that the 2016 Nexus devices will receive the update first once it gets released.

Meanwhile, the Note 6 is not only rumored to get a Marshmallow OS, but reports about the next device not being a Note 6 have also made the rounds. A couple of weeks ago, SamMobile reported about a source who revealed that Samsung will skip a number and the next device will instead be called the Note 7, the reason for which is to avoid giving the wrong impression to consumers.

"When Galaxy Note 6 that has its model number lower than Galaxy S7, which is the newest model, is released, it can give out a feeling that it is an outdated phone," says a high-ranking official, as reported by the news outlet.

On the heels of this rumor comes a leak that seems to hint that it's likely the case for the next device. NowhereElse's Steve Hemmerstoffer posted an alleged leaked photo that shows a big number 7 with the words "The Next Note" written below it. It is unclear if the photo is legitimate but Samsung's logo was not placed, suggesting it's not official.

Samsung has not confirmed anything yet regarding its next device, so fans may need to take the reports with a pinch of salt. More updates should be dropped soon.
The Southern Baptist Convention, the largest Protestant denomination in the United States, continued its drop in baptisms, membership, and weekly attendance in 2015.

Some contend the declining statistics result from tightened bookkeeping regulations while others note lacking evangelism, patheos.com reported June 8.

Even so, with record-breaking church planting and renewal efforts, Southern Baptists have reason to hope for a prosperous future in its latest Annual Church Profile report, Lifeway.com reported.

The Southern Baptist Convention added more churches in 2015, due mostly to church planting efforts. Churches also experienced an increase in total giving.

However, according to the Annual Church Profile compiled by LifeWay Christian Resources in cooperation with state conventions, other key measures declined.

Those included membership, average worship attendance, baptisms, and missions giving.

A bright spot in the ACP data was the increase in churches. The number of churches affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention grew by 294 to 46,793, a 0.63 percent increase over 2014. This is the 17th year in a row the number of SBC churches has grown.

At the same time that the number of SBC-related congregations increased, reported membership declined more than 200,000, down 1.32 percent to 15.3 million members.

Average weekly worship attendance declined by 1.72 percent to 5.6 million worshippers.

Southern Baptists also experienced a decline in baptisms, down 3.3 percent to 295,212. Reported baptisms have fallen eight of the last 10 years. The ratio of baptisms to total members decreased to one baptism for every 52 members.

The SBC is an association comprised of more than 15 million members in over 46,000 churches in the United States. Individual church membership is typically a matter of accepting Jesus Christ as personal Savior and submitting to believer baptism by immersion

"God help us all! In a world that is desperate for the message of Christ, we continue to be less diligent in sharing the Good News," said Frank Page, SBC Executive Committee president and CEO.

"May God forgive us and give us a new passion to reach this world for Christ."

"The ACP report shows many faithful Southern Baptists continue to worship, share the Gospel, give generously, and live in community with other believers," said LifeWay President and CEO Thom S. Rainer. "We praise God for these efforts every year.

"While a decrease in baptisms is very disappointing, we don't take for granted 295,000 baptisms," he said. "We should rejoice with each of those individuals who chose to follow Christ."

An increase in the number of churches, aided by Southern Baptists' church planting efforts, is also something to celebrate, Rainer said.

"People underestimate the importance of momentum," he said. "It only takes a few people in each church, being intentional about sharing their faith, for some new momentum to build."

Southern Baptists increased giving in 2015. Total and undesignated church receipts reported through the ACP increased 3.51 percent and 4.64 percent respectively.
(Photo: Reuters / Rebecca Cook)Oakland County Clerk Lisa Brown (L) signs the marriage license of newly married James Ryder (2nd L) and Frank Colasonti Jr., as witnesses Susan Horowitz (2nd R) and Jan Stevenson watch at the Oakland County Courthouse, after a Michigan federal judge ruled a ban on same-sex marriage violates the U.S. Constitution and must be overturned in Pontiac, Michigan March 22, 2014.

The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) has voted to allow its pastors to perform same-sex marriages and has approved the definition of marriage as between two persons as well as between a man and a woman.

The largest Presbyterian denomination in the United voted Thursday to change its definition of marriage allowing its clergy to solemnize same-sex ceremonies in states where gay marriage is legal.

The vote was passed by 429 to 175 votes by the delegates from the 1.76 million-member Presbyterian Church (USA). It makes the church the first big American denomination to unequivocally allow clergy to officiate at gay marriage ceremonies and to define marriage as between two persons.

The vote came during the denomination's once every two years General Assembly and it changes the denomination's Book of Order to describe marriage as being between "two people."

Conservatives are concerned the move could divide the church and lead to further membership declines, the Detroit Free Press newspaper reported.

It said that since 1992, Presbyterian Church USA has lost more than a million members, declining 37 percent from 2.78 million to 1.76 million last year. Congregations opposed to same-marriage have broken away, and more could leave after Thursday's vote.

The action effectively removes the ban on Presbyterian pastors marrying same-gender couples in jurisdictions where gay-marriage is legal, said the PC USA news service.

The text of the Book of Order says, "Exercising such discretion and freedom of conscience under the prayerful guidance of Scripture, teaching elders may conduct a marriage service for any such couple in the place where the community gathers for worship, so long as it is approved by the session; or in such other place as may be suitable for a service of Christian worship.

"In no case shall any teaching elder's conscience be bound to conduct any marriage service for any couple except by his or her understanding of the Word, and the leading of the Holy Spirit."

The Presbyterian Church is one of the largest Protestant denominations in the United States, but trails far behind the Southern Baptist Convention in size with around 16 million members.

However, eight U.S. presidents, including Ronald Reagan and Dwight D. Eisenhower, have been Presbyterians.

The Stated Clerk Gradye Parsons, who is the effective chief executive of PC USA, said, "The conversations about sexuality began in 1978." In that years, he said, there was a church declaration that "homosexuality does not accord with God's plan for humanity."

Parson's noted, "There have been places along the way when our talk turned to action, and this is one of those days."

He added, "Both the church and the society have changed  more people are getting to know gays and lesbians, laws are changing and pastoral situations are changing."

Presbyterians from Africa and the Arab countries said that many people where they live do not approve of homosexuality, and this concerned them.
(Photo:  Peter Kenny / Ecumenical News)African Christian Health Associations Platform chairperson Karen Sichinga from Zambia addresses a meeting looking at the role of church and faith based organizations in providing health services held at the Ecumenical Center in Geneva Switzerland on May 25, 2016.

The World Health Assembly has adopted the World Health Organization Framework of Engagement with Non-State Actors, after more than two years of intergovernmental negotiations.

It was announced on May 28, the final day of the WHA, which involved a variety of church and faith-based organizations among the many non-state actors during its week of meetings in Geneva as it grappled with the new arrangement.

"The framework on engagement with non-state actors was arguably the most difficult item to negotiate," WHO director general, Dr. Margaret Chan said in her closing remarks after grappling with corporate interests and NGOs arguing their cases.

NGOs and faith-based organizations are uncertain if this will increase the voice they have in the world health body, but international organizations are certain that the role of faith groups is vital in global health.

Members of the United Nations, international groups and non-governmental organizations came together at a panel discussion entitled "Global Public Health: The future role of faith-based organizations" held on 25 May in the Ecumenical Centre at the World Council of Churches.

WCC general secretary, Rev. Olav Fykse Tveit, said, "It is not a discussion of whether faith-based organizations belong to big discourse, but is one of how shall we do it, and how shall we do it in a decent way."

He said that FBOs, the acronym used to refer to religious groups in health, made up of the likes of Buddhists, Christians, Jews, Muslims and others had met at the World Humanitarian Summit in Istanbul the week before.

Tveit said in seeking a holistic solution to medical health, use can be made of the "commitment, capacity and networks" along with the "real faith, faith in God and faith in the gifts God has given to the church to participate" in the "healing of the world and bringing just communities together."

Representatives of UN groups and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria said it was easier to deal with representative groups such as the WCC and ACHAP (African Christian Health Associations Platform) whose chairperson, Karen Sichinga from Zambia, spoke.

"It is clear that therefore our national governments cannot work alone. They will require strong partnerships and from non-state actors such as Christian health associations," said Sichinga noting, "it is estimated that 20 to 60 percent of health care in sub-Saharan Africa is provided by FBOs mainly from the Christian faith."

Sichinga said, "Governments need to transform the way they operate and need to be more cognizant of the role of our association or FBOs. FBOs' unique role has to be strengthened by national governments and by our international community.

"We have been relied upon by our national government to deliver services at low cost, high efficiency and reduced bureaucracy. We bring to the table value for money serving poor and vulnerable communities for more than 100 years."

Dr. Sam Mwenda, general secretary of the Christian Health Association of Kenya (CHAK) and vice chair of ACHAP said, "FBOs' engagement with health is a long-term commitment. Even in times of conflict in our nations we continue being there working through our extensive networks.

"We provide a wide range of health services and with compassion to those who are really disadvantaged. We have a lot of investment in infrastructure at parish, national and global levels."

Mwenda said Christian health associations embrace partnerships and in Kenya they are training doctors and nurse and are responsible for about 40 percent of medical services in the country.

The panel moderator, Dr. Manoj Kurian coordinator of the WCC's Ecumenical Advocacy Alliance, noted that the transition from the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) to the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) has shown an unfinished agenda in global public health.

The meeting looked at transforming from the era of the MDGs to the UN's SDGs for 2030 in which medical services are clearly mapped.

Dr. Christoph Benn, director of external relations at the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria told the panel that faith communities play a fundamental role in addressing health challenges.

HOSPITAL ROOTS IN PEOPLE OF FAITH

"Many hospitals and clinics around the world can trace their roots to people of faith and are still managed by churches and other religious bodies," said Benn, noting that faith leaders and institutions have been fundamental in addressing stigma and educating communities about health.

Dr. Cherian Varghese,coordinator for the management of Non Communicable Diseases for the WHO from India explained that civil society along with FBOs are powerful in the medical health services sector.

"At the national level FBOs can be role models helping churches to promote good health in their work as providers of health care and with their community participation can influence health literacy," said Varghese.

"In the international context, the WCC is engaged in global advocacy for highlighting health needs as it participates in global dialogue and policy making."

Dr Mwai Makoka, executive director of the Christian Health Association of Malawi said that church health groups represent a structure complementary to governments for service delivery.

"They have the same goals but different mandates. The one is constitutional while the other is biblical," said Makoka.

He noted that medical institutions run by FBOs "are resilient, especially where governments are weak or nonexistent, and in emergencies and epidemics," while citing the combatting of HIV and AIDS and Ebola.

Theresa Nyamupachitu, a senior program advisor with IMA World Health in Kenya spoke about her US-based international NGO founded in 1960 by six Protestant mission organizations with a vision of health, healing and well-being for all.

"FBOs play a significant role in health service delivery  with geographic coverage, infrastructure, different services and with their community network" and are they are "first responders in emergencies such as in the Christian Health Association of Liberia," in the fight against Ebola

Dr Bimal Charles, general secretary of the Christian Medical Association of India (CMAI) explained how this group punches above its weight in many of the Indian states, serving not only minority Christians but all others in the country.

In Allied Health Science, the CMAI runs 25 Allied Health Professional (paramedical) courses through 57 training centers under the Central Education Board of CMAI and also supports many government health ventures in different aspects of health care.
Should Doctors Have to Tell Patients If They're on Probation?

Would you want to know if your doctor was on probation? Would it make a difference in how you received that expert's recommendations? Patients' rights activists think so and are disappointed that this week a California bill was nixed by the senate that would have required doctors to tell patients if they're under state supervision in an easy-to-read one-page document.

The information is already available online, but some say it's not easy to access. Still, California senators rejected legislation making individual disclosures a requirement, reports KQED News. Let's look at what was proposed and why it's controversial.

The Proposal

The legislation proposed to inform patients of the probationary status of a small pool of physicians. Doctors with convictions for gross negligence, sexual misconduct, substance abuse, or a felony related to patient care would have to let patients know this information up front in a clear written document. If it had passed, this bill would have applied to physicians, chiropractors, podiatrists, and acupuncturists.

The proposal seems to have some merit. Shouldn't patients know if the people they trust their bodies to have a suspect past, and one that requires continued supervision?

Probationary terms exist so that people convicted of crimes, who are a potential risk but not so much they have to be imprisoned, can be supervised for a time. During that time they must show that they fulfill all the requirements, which might mean taking anger management classes, counseling, addiction treatment, and any number of other possible terms ordered by the court.

The Controversy

The bill was controversial because opponents say it violates due process, punishing physicians in addition to the conviction. The California Medical Association opposed its passage, saying it created a de facto suspension by severely restricting physicians' ability to practice. They also noted that information about doctors' offenses is already available on the internet.

Some said they opposed the bill because it forced doctors to publicize unproven allegations. Senator Richard Pan, a Sacramento pediatrician, said he voted against the legislation for this reason.

But that reasoning fails to recognize criminal procedure. A doctor who is on probation has already been convicted either after making a plea deal or standing trial, so the case has been proven to the extent that due process demands.

That misunderstanding is why patients' rights advocates believe that they can still win if the bill is reintroduced. Lisa McGiffert, manager of the Safe Patient Project at Consumers Union, told KQED, "We believe [the senators] have been misled in some ways." The bill was sponsored by Senator Jerry Hill of San Mateo, whose office told reporters that he has not yet decided whether to propose it again.

Injured?

If you've been hurt due to the negligence of a healthcare practitioner, or anyone else, talk to a lawyer. Tell your story. Many attorneys consult for free or a minimal fee and will be happy to assess your case.

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Andrew Brennen wants students to play a bigger role in their education.

As Andrew Brennen crisscrosses the country listening to high school students, he is trying to build a huge wave of sound: the sound of students raising their voices to make school better.

Brennen, 20, is on a national tour to engage 10,000 high school students in conversations designed to help them claim powerful roles in their education. The field director for the activist group Student Voice, Brennen has been catching buses and trains from city to city since February, often sleeping on friends couches, as he meets with teenagers in their schools to talk about what works there, and what doesnt. He plans to keep doing it until December.

The goal of our tour is to amplify and elevate all students voices, to shift their confidence about the role they can play in their schools, he said in an interview from San Francisco.

He begins those discussions by asking students to tell him things about their school that adults dont know. Typically, students start out with little to say, Brennen said. He walks them through the Student Bill of Rights, which Student Voice created to highlight key areas of school life that students can influence, from fair testing and use of technology to free expression, safety, and well-being. Bit by bit, conversation will build.

By the end of the roundtable, when I ask them again what adults dont know about their schools, they have so much to say theyre tripping over themselves, Brennen said. Its because theyve started learning to think critically about school.

Brennen is building on activism skills he learned as a high school student in Kentucky, where he worked with the Prichard Committee for Academic Excellence to infuse state policy with student input. He later formed a student-voice team for the committee whose members, from middle school through college, have pushed state lawmakers for more education funds.

To help create space for student empowerment nationally, Brennen decided to take a year off from his communications and journalism studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and work with Student Voice. Since its founding four years ago, Student Voice has been convening weekly #StuVoice Twitter chats to facilitate students sharing their experiences. It is supporting Brennens trip with grants and donations from foundations, corporations, and individuals.

Expanding the Movement

But the organization wanted to expand its connections with students, building them face to face, state to state, to reach more students. The White House heard about the plan to dispatch Brennen on a national tour and invited him to publicize itand the need for a powerful student role in educationat a White House gathering on next generation high schools last November.

As he works his way around the country, Brennen says he hears certain themes consistently: Students feel powerless over most things in their school lives, from curriculum to school governance. They hate that their schools look and feel so much like prisons, with bland colors of paint on the walls, bars on the windows, and armed guards by the doors. And many are unhappy that they dont see their own diversity mirrored in the teaching and administrative staffs at their schools. That lack of shared experience makes it tough for students to feel understood and supported by their teachers, Brennen said.

Everywhere he visits, he tries to connect students in the roundtable discussions with existing activist groups and to facilitate concrete plans for projects. But he acknowledges that its often an uphill road; turnover among student leaders is high and projects difficult to sustain.

#StudentsSpeakUp Students, what improvements would you make to schools? Share your responses on social media with the hashtag #StudentsSpeakUp.

Hes inspired by the conversations hes had, though, and the bits of help hes been able to offer to the youth projects getting started. Theres the South Carolina high school senior, Merrit Jones, who set up a nonprofit, Student Space, to help students organize for improvement in their schools and at the Statehouse.

Theres Ana Little-Sana, a San Diego 16-year-old whos pushing to get a bill passed to change the California constitution to allow 16- and 17-year-olds to vote in local school board and community college elections. And theres the Kentucky budget, which includes $15 million for needs-based scholarships for a projected 8,000 students. Students played a pivotal part in restoring that funding.

Student Voice has been assembling the faces and stories of students like those into a montage called Students of America. Brennen hopes to combine their stories with research data and the Student Bill of Rights to produce a kind of state of the schools report at the end of the year. And he might turn his journey into a podcast series. Who knows? Its a work in progress. And he hopes the seeds of student activism strewn during his tour will take root.

When you sit down and create space for students to think critically about school, its often the first time theyve been given the opportunity to do that, he said. And its a powerful thing.
More than 7 million school children in America are absent more than 10 percent of the school year. The problem has garnered increased attention from local, state, and federal officials, including President Barack Obama. In February, the Obama administration launched an initiative to raise awareness and to help solve the problem with the use of student mentors.

One reason for the increased focus on this issue is the growing body of research documenting the detrimental impact of chronic absenteeism. Students who are more frequently absent from school have weaker performance on state exams, higher odds of grade retention and dropout, reduced psychological development, increased problem behaviors, higher chances of alcohol and drug use, and lower employment prospects. These outcomes not only have an impact on students themselves; they also generate substantial costs to taxpayers in reduced tax payments, higher health-care costs, and an increased toll of crime.

More effectively addressing the problem requires good data. With the right data, school districts can identify those students who are chronically absent and intervene before they fall behind. But which data are good data?

At first glance, it may appear that simply knowing the number of days that a student misses school is sufficient. However, not all absences are created equal. Research reveals that excused versus unexcused absences have completely different implications for how well students fare at school.

Two students who miss the same amount of school will experience different outcomes if one is sick and one is cutting class. Neither is great for student performance, but the latter has more significant consequences. Tracking the reasons for missing school also might lead to different systems of support. A reliable data-collection system must take into account the type of absence. Any data collection must also take into account truancythe act of missing school for unexcused reasons. Truancy includes not only unexcused absences but unexcused tardies as well.

If we are to understand all reasons why a student might be missing school, it can be critical to examine tardies. With truant tardies, students are missing increments of school. While it may not seem as dramatic as missing an entire day, missing small portions of in-school time adds up, over time, to large amounts of valuable instructional minutes.

Not all absences are created equal."

Hence, a focus strictly on absences may obscure the full portrait of who is missing school and how much school theyre actually missing and why. To identify students who are frequently absent as well as frequently tardy, the reach of attendance programs and practices must be far broader in order to have a greater impact.

Another element of missing school involves days students are not enrolled. Some students enter school late, after the first day of class. One study found that 19 percent of middle school students entered school after the first day of class. Other students transfer schools midyear and miss school because they fail to enroll in their new school immediately after leaving their old school.

Enrollment data need to be coupled with absenteeism data to get a complete picture of how many school days students are enrolled in and attending school over the course of the year.

Finally, it is important to consider rates of absences. Recently, there has been a focus on chronic absenteeismstudents missing 10 percent or more of the school year, or about 18 days. But we shouldnt get too fixated on that rate. A study in Chicago found that missing even five days of school in a semester reduced graduation rates by 24 percentage points.

The bottom line? Good data are critical for addressing Americas school attendance crisis.
At Pittsburghs Avonworth School District educators are experimenting with a new way to test digital tools they might buy for their classrooms.

In the past, the approach to such an ed-tech pilot project might have involved an administrator or teacher hearing a buzz about an app or software, trying it out in a class for some period of time, then recommending it based on whether students or teachers said they liked it. But in Avonworth this year, that process is more formal, with upfront planning, a relationship with the product vendor, and conclusions based on hard data.

The old way was more of an impulse buy, said Scott Miller, the principal of the Avonworth Primary Center, a K-2 school. Thats not really effective. We want to make an educated, informed decision to see if a product is a fit for us.

School districts routinely do some kind of testing to sample ed-tech products for their students and often invest in much of that technology. In 2014, pre-K-12 schools spent $8.3 billion on educational software and digital content , according to the Software & Information Industry Association.

But the evaluations often look very different in different districts, or within the same district. They can be short-lived or long term, spread over several academic years. These trials can be an amorphous exercise with no defined way to determine what products are best.

I see a lot of misunderstandings during this process, said Katrina Stevens, the deputy director of the office of educational technology at the U.S. Department of Education . Its ripe for improvement.

As districts are inundated with ed-tech products that aim to solve their pain points and claim to provide everything from personalized instruction to gamified content, finding ways to help districts run more effective pilot projectsand ultimately make better spending decisionshas become a high priority.

More structured pilot projects are now being encouraged through a number of initiatives. For example, the Learning Assembly project, funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, brings together seven organizations working to improve school and district ed-tech projects. (The Gates Foundation also provides support for Education Weeks coverage of college- and career-ready standards and personalized learning.)

One of those organizations, the Washington-based nonprofit Digital Promise , which promotes the use of ed-tech in schools, is working with the 1,650-student Avonworth district, and Miller said thats made a big difference.

Under the project, Avondale was paired with researchers from Pittsburghs Carnegie Mellon University who helped the district set up two elementary-grade pilots this academic year. ESpark, a personalized-learning program, is being used in 1st grade classes, while the digital toy Puzzlets is being sampled in grades K-2. Students used the tools from October through April.

District officials worked with researchers upfront to determine if the products were aligned with district needs, Miller said. And the district collaborated closely with both vendors to be sure teachers were using the products as intended. Teachers also provided feedback about how eSpark and Puzzlets worked or didnt, Miller said.

For eSpark, the district will primarily use student-growth and -achievement data to determine effectiveness. For Puzzlets, the district is strictly looking at engagement and student interest, Miller said. Out of this process, the district hopes to craft a system or checklist for pilot projects that can be replicated when its grant through the Gates Foundation runs out, Miller said.

This is going to allow us to make an educated and informed decision on whether these products are a fit for us, he said. If they are, great, but do they need any tweaks? If not, well walk away, no harm, no foul.

Financial concerns play a major role in the growing interest in creating more formal ed-tech pilot projects in schools.

Ed-tech products can be an enormous investment for a district, said Julia Freeland Fisher, the director of education research for the Clayton Christensen Institute, which studies blended learning. They want to make sure theyre spending their scarce dollars wisely.

The Education Departments Stevens said her office is currently trying to improve rapid-cycle evaluations for ed-tech products by working to create an online pilot wizard, akin to a TurboTax for school-product-testing projects, she said.

The digital toolkit would give districts a guide on the front end on how to do a needs assessment, the technicalities of rolling out a pilot, what questions to ask the product developer, and how to collect and analyze data to determine if a product should be used on a wider basis.

Currently, the department is creating a prototype of the pilot tool and will test it out in districts in the fall, she said.

We want to walk a school or district leader through setting up a pilot and evaluating the tools being used in their system, Stevens said.

Other efforts to streamline the pilot-testing process are more regional. LEAP Innovations , a Chicago-based nonprofit that is also part of the Learning Assembly project, is working with schools to bridge the gap between innovation and education, said CEO Phyllis Lockett.

LEAP partners with Chicago-area K-8 schools to match them with ed-tech companies seeking to pilot their products. Many of our schools get calls from vendors constantly, and they dont know where to start, she said.

LEAP has a panel of experts, including learning scientists, educators, and ed-tech investment experts, to evaluate and vet ed-tech products. Those that are approved are matched with individual Chicago-area schools for one-year pilots. Educators involved receive semester-long professional development before their project launches to hone their role in the process, Lockett said.

LEAP then works with researchers to crunch the data. We can tell schools if the solution moved the dial on achievement, Lockett said.

Digital Promise is working on pilots with several other districts in addition to Avonworth. It also plans to use the information it has gleaned to create a product-testing template, which can then be tailored to each districts unique characteristics, said Aubrey Francisco, the organizations research director. Digital Promise is also hoping to share the results of district pilot projects to provide information to other educators.

A district might look at a study and say, I feel comfortable using this product, based on the research done elsewhere, she said

Along those lines, Jefferson Education, a commercial entity advised by the University of Virginias Curry School of Education, hopes to build a system to share robust pilot-project information with valid data on a wider scale, so that every district doesnt have to do its own test of a product, said CEO Bart Epstein. The project is in the beginning stages, he said.

Very few schools have the bandwidth to be able to do pilots properly, he said. Right now there are probably 1,000 school districts all reviewing the same 15 math products.

In a 2015 Digital Promise study, researchers found that districts prevailing processes for testing technology products are largely informal and often lack a clear approach and consistency. The study also found a disconnect between the aims of companies looking to test their products and schools.

Theres a real need to have a more structured process to talk about what is needed, how to bring teachers in early so they buy in, how to work with the developer, implement properly, and measure success, Francisco said.

Some of these new pilot efforts may also help districts that have already purchased ed-tech software and digital tools in an ad hoc way. Thats the situation in the 1,200-student West Ada district in Meridian, Idaho, where 50 different math programs are being used across schools, said Eian Harm, the districts research and data coordinator.

West Ada is, in effect, trying to do pilot projects in reverse on the most popular five math programs to determine which ones are most effective, Harm said.

To that end, a tool like the new EduStar platform might be of help, said Benjamin F. Jones, a professor of entrepreneurship and strategy at Northwestern Universitys Kellogg School of Management, who is a co-creator.

EduStar, developed in collaboration with the nonprofit digital-learning provider PowerMyLearning, aims to provide rigorous and rapid trials of digital-learning tools and more granular content, like a lesson, video, or a game. Those trials can take just a few minutesto test an app, for exampleand are done through an automated system, he said. Currently the system is being tested with 40 schools already using the PowerMyLearning platform, but Jones said he hopes to add many more that want to test out digital content.

The goal is to provide feedback to the developer about how a product works in a real classroom and to communicate deeper research about why or how certain games or techniques work or dont, Jones said.

In the long run, he said, we hope the system can scale so it could test large numbers of digital-learning activities and provide a Consumer Reports function in the marketplace.
The European Investment Bank (EIB) has signed a EUR 125 million loan agreement with Landsvirkjun, the National Power Company of Iceland, to finance a new geothermal power station and its geothermal wells at Theistareykir, near Husavik in north-eastern Iceland.

The financing will be used to support the design, construction and operation of a new 90 MWe geothermal power station and its geothermal wells, operated by the National Power Company of Iceland. The project will be located at Theistareykir, some 30 km south-east of Husavik in the northeast of the country, where nine wells with over 50 MWe capacity have already been drilled and tested.

Vice-President Cristian Popa, responsible for EIB-operations EFTA-countries, commented: Iceland is in a very special position when it comes to renewable energy and its great to see how Landsvirkjun is making the most of it. The EIB is glad that it can support this important energy project, which also highlights how the bank supports the energy sector around Europe. The Icelandic expertise in this area is state of the art and serves as a blue print for geothermal projects around the globe."

This is an important milestone for Landsvirkjun and we are grateful for the support the EIB is showing renewable energy in Iceland. The EIB has in the past demonstrated its strong support in providing funding for sound and sustainable projects in Europe and we see this agreement as a sign of confidence in our company. added Horur Arnarson, CEO of Landsvirkjun.

The loan is the first EIB project in Iceland since 2011, when it lent EUR 70 million also to Landsvirkjun, for the construction of the Budarhals hydropower plant in the lower highlands of southern Iceland on the rivers Tungnaa and Kaldakvisl. These projects are crucial in the fight against climate change through support for renewable energy, one of the main priorities for the European Investment Bank. Last year, more than a quarter of all EIB-lending supported projects that help safeguard the environment.
Oct. 13, 2022

Prior to this summer, the memorial garden had lost its shine and perhaps had gone forgotten. That was when 18 year old Annabelle Smith, daughter of an Eielson Airman and a Girl Scout for 13 years, decided to take on a renovation project as a part of a Gold Award project, one of the highest awards in
CA's Assisted Suicide Law Is Now in Effect

A California law allowing terminally ill adults with less than six months to live to receive a prescription for a lethal dose of "aid-in-dying" drugs went into effect today. The California End of Life Option Act makes the Golden State just the fifth state to allow physician-assisted suicide and was hotly debated but ultimately unopposed by the California Medical Association.

Now that the law is in effect, who can ask for aid in dying and how will physician-assisted suicide be regulated?

Welfare of the Patient

Under the statute, terminally ill patients must make three formal requests to their attending physician asking for lethal drugs: one written and two oral, with the oral requests delivered at least 15 days apart. Physicians must get informed consent from their patients and patients must administer the lethal drugs themselves.

According to the Los Angeles Times, the California Medical Association issued 15 pages worth of additional guidelines for physician's under the new law, including:

Mandating physicians inform the patient that he or she may rescind the request for an aid-in-dying drug at any time and in any manner;

Prohibiting prescription requests on behalf of a patient, i.e., through an agent under a power of attorney, an advance healthcare directive, a conservator, or any other person;

Requiring mental health evaluations for patients with possible mental disorders before prescribing aid-in-dying drugs; and

Urging physicians to advise patients on the importance of ingesting the drug in private and having another person in the room when the drug is ingested.

Physicians uncomfortable with a request for lethal doses of drugs don't have to comply, nor are they required to refer the patient to another doctor.

Personal Dignity

As for the law's impact, that remains to be seen. Oregon passed a similar law in 1997 and saw 16 patients end their lives in the first year. By 2015 that annual number had risen to 132. California has almost 10 times the population of Oregon, and many doctors and hospitals will be required to figure out policies and procedures on their own.

If you have more questions about assisted suicide laws where you live, contact an experienced health care attorney in your area today.

Related Resources:
Ely, Cambridgeshire is best known for its majestic cathedral dubbed the 'Ship of the Fens' because it dominates the flat landscape. The city, which is the second smallest in England, is about 14 miles north-northeast of Cambridge and about 80 miles by road from London.

13:33, 25 OCT 2022
SMEs were done in the past and now we are considering how to develop these here. There is very little land ownership in Chin State. Previously we could grant loans to people if they had documents such as land lease grants. Now a forum will explore how to draft a master plan for the development of SMEs and on how to grant loans without these documents, he said.

He said that there was a population of 450,000 living in 9 townships in Chin State and only 30% of them were engaging in SMEs.

There are plans in Chin State to provide labour intensive technology for the service industry, technology for SMEs, and loans with bank interest. The forum for drawing up a strategic master plan for the development of SMEs in Chin State will be held in Hakha on June 15-16.

This forum is co-sponsored by Friedrich Naumann Foundation (FNF) and CAD and it is co-organized by Chin State Government, Chin State Municipal Committee, Chin State Electrical and Industrial Ministry and Naypyitaw Industrial Inspection Department Head Office.

The forum will be attended by about 60 legislators from the State Legislative Assembly, SME industrialists in Chin State, academics and experts, departmental representatives, CSOs and special invitees.
The highway expansion project was headed by the Oriental Highway Company, a former subsidiary of the Asia World Group. The project undertaken by the firm expanded the road from two to four lanes. The company was granted permission to expand the road during the Thein Sein administration by the Ministry of Construction.

Local residents told SHAN that many houses were damaged by the construction. Every day hundreds of heavy trucks travel on the newly expanded highway which has created large cracks in the walls of homes located along the route and damaged their foundations.

My shop was damage because of the construction, said a resident in Muse Township who wished to be anonymous. I have not heard anything about compensation.

The expansion of the highway, an important trade link connecting Burma to China, has affected many households and will continue to do so, the villager told SHAN.

This road is the main route for border trade between Burma and China. The highway is more than 280 miles (450 km) long and has 13 toll gates. Asia World, a firm founded by the late businessman Lo Hsing Han and his son Stephen Law (also known as Lo Ping Zhong and Tun Myint Naing) recently announced that it had divested itself of the Oriental Highway Company and several other subsidiaries. It remains unclear who now controls the Oriental Highway Company and the other firms offloaded by Asia World.
As Kachin State, Shan State and Chin State that have joined the agreement in 1947, we should have a meeting before the 21st Century Panglong Conference takes place, Col. Sai Hla said.

When we talk about this coming conference, we have to look at the 1947 Panglong Agreement, explained Col. Sai Hla. He added that in order to bring peace to the country, he believes that all groups should work together.

The special convention which is expected to be held some time in July is being convened by Burmas State Counsellor and National League for Democracy (NLD) leader Aung San Suu Kyi. This will be a follow-up to a meeting convened by her father in 1947 that was attended by representatives from the Shan, Chin and Kachin communities.

The agreement reached at Panglong in 1947, stipulated a significant level of autonomy for Burmas ethnic groups in exchange for their decision to support Aung Sans bid for independence from Britain. Aung San, was assassinated just months after the agreement was reached, his successor U Nu, did little to implement the agreement before he was overthrown by General Ne Win in 1962. The subsequent military regimes that ruled Burma also disregarded the commitments made by General Aung San at Panglong.

On June 3, Dr Tin Myo Win, who is the chair of the 21st Century Panglong Conference Preparatory Committee (21 CPCPC), met with the Delegation for Political Negotiation (DPN) from the United Nationalities Federal Council (UNFC) in Chiang Mai to discuss the progress of ongoing negotiations between the government, the military and ethnic armed organizations.

The UNFC, an organization comprising of non-state ethnic armed groups who did not sign last years Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement (NCA) with Thein Seins government includes both the KIO and SSPP/SSA.
The Oklahoma Department of Public Safety has purchased several 'Electronic Recovery and Access to Data' devices to install in police cruisers for seizing funds from prepaid debit cards during roadside arrests.

Oklahoma Watch first broke the news. There, Clifton Adcock reported that police use of this technology represents a new approach to civil forfeiture, and began with a DHS initiative.

Using the scanners, cops can increase the number of roadside seizures of cash earned through sales of illicit drugs. Criminals are kind of like the rest of us: they're not carrying around cash as much anymore. Everything's plastic or digital these days. What is money now? A lot of the time, it's code.

The portable card scanners were first introduced for law enforcement use by the Department of Homeland Security, and are sold by Texas-based ERAD (Electronic Recovery and Access to Data).

The ERAD scanners are designed for use in law enforcement vehicles. Using the ERAD device, troopers in Oklahoma will be able to "freeze and seize" funds that a suspect has previously loaded on their prepaid debit card. The technology can also be used to return funds to an account from which funds were previously seized or frozen.

The vehicle-mounted scanners can read and store some data from other cards, too: debit cards, credit cards, and "payment account information from virtually any magnetic stripe card," according to ERAD's website and patent documents.

But the scanners can only retrieve funds from "open loop" prepaid debit cards (Visa and American Express offer them, as do other providers). Any "debit cards attached to a valid checking account or valid credit cards cannot be processed" to freeze and seize by an ERAD (Electronic Recovery and Access to Data) system.

In other words, this is not a magical device with which cops can empty your bank account if they decide you're a drug dealer. Could they empty a prepaid debit card you're carrying at the time of a traffic stop, if they say you're a drug dealer? Well, yeah, that's the idea.

Here is a Department of Homeland Security video for police, on how to use ERAD.

Civil asset forfeiture is the subject of heated debate throughout America, and it's a subject we cover frequently here at Boing Boing.

Federal and state laws allow police to take property or cash said to have been earned through drug trafficking. The officer grabs the assets, and the law enforcement agency they work for then takes ownership of the assets through a civil court action.

Sometimes the police officers steal valuables or cash along the way for themselves.

The contract signed by the state and ERAD Group, obtained by Oklahoma Watch, states that Department of Public Safety will pay a one-time $5,000 implementation charge and a $1,500 training charge for the devices. ERAD Group will receive a 7.7 percent cut of all funds seized via the card readers. Vincent said the 16 prepaid card readers obtained by the department were installed in May. The card readers will not be used to randomly swipe motorists' gift or prepaid cards, Vincent said, but only in cases in which the trooper suspects criminal activity is taking place. The device logs which trooper is using the device when a card is swiped. "If we have reasonable suspicion to believe there's a crime being committed, we're going to investigate that. If someone has 300 cards taped up and hidden inside the dash of a vehicle, we're going to check that," Vincent said. "But if the person has proof that it belongs to him for legitimate reasons, there's nothing going to happen. We won't seize it."

"New Front in Civil Forfeiture: Authorities Get Devices to Seize Funds Loaded to Prepaid Cards" [Oklahoma Watch]

Here is a copy of Oklahoma's state contract with ERAD Group: [PDF Link]

Related reporting: Forbes.com, Oklahoma News 9.
Joshua Linn, Dallas Burtraw and Kristen McCormack:

On February 9, 2016, the Supreme Court issued a surprising decision to halt implementation of the Environmental Protection Agencys Clean Power Plan until the resolution of the rules legal challenges. The court did not explain its action, but one of the central arguments for the stay was that the rule would impose large, immediate, and irreparable costs to the coal sector. We analyze these claims in a recent paper and conclude that the stay was unjustifiable based on economic harm to the coal sector.

This conclusion is based on an analysis of prevailing trends in the electric power sector and an understanding of the timing and flexibility for complying with state emissions targets. Recent developments in the electricity sector have caused a dramatic shift away from coal and toward cleaner generation sources. Since 2007, shale gas development in the United States has expanded, leading to lower natural gas prices. At the same time, technological progress and policies supporting renewable energy have reduced the cost and improved the performance of wind and solar powerand other environmental regulations have raised the cost of coal-fired generation. The Clean Power Plan will continue this shift away from coal as a generation fuel, but the rule is by no means the most important source of pressure on the coal sector.

These trends, along with the 20082009 economic recession, have contributed to the decade-long reduction in carbon emissions depicted in the figure. The Clean Power Plan will continue the path of lower emissions, although at a less rapid pace than has been observed in the last decade. Our modeling shows that the overall cost of the policy will be low. Indeed, our analysis and that of MJ Bradley & Associates suggest that costs will be close to zero through the mid-2020sand will be far outweighed by the public benefits of the policy. ...

The claims of large, immediate, and irreparable costs to the coal sector during the ongoing judicial review of the Clean Power Plan are not supported by economic reasoning. To the extent that these claims played a prominent role in the Supreme Courts decision to stay the rule, the stay appears unjustified. However, we anticipate that the stay, by itself, will have little effect on the coal industry or US emissions. Using the stay to push back compliance deadlines (which would also be economically unjustified) could slow international momentum to curb greenhouse gas emissions and have a detrimentaland very realeffect on the global climate.
9 June 2016

Benoit Battistelli and Antonio Costa arrive at the ceremony

The EPO showcased the best and brightest in innovation today at the European Inventor Award 2016 ceremony in Lisbon. Now in its 11th year, the award is presented annually by the EPO to recognise outstanding inventors from Europe and around the world, who have made an exceptional contribution to social development, technological progress and economic growth.

"Today's award ceremony is a tribute to the spirit of innovation and the work of dedicated individuals who through their inventions advance the state of the art for all of us," said EPO President Benoit Battistelli. "The inventions recognised with this year's award give new hope to people suffering from disease, increase diagnostic efficiency, protect the environment and save thousands of lives on the road. The significance and impact of the work of these inventors underlines the importance of the European patent system for the benefit of economic strength and technological progress in Europe," said Mr Battistelli.

Benoit Battistelli greets Carlos Moedas

The 2016 award winners are:

Nearly 600 guests from the areas of politics, business, intellectual property and science were in attendance at Lisbon's MEO Arena as the EPO President, Portugal's Prime Minister Antonio Costa and European Commissioner for Research, Science and Innovation Carlos Moedas opened the award ceremony.

Industry

Bernhard Gleich, Jurgen Weizenecker and team (Germany)

Jurgen Weizenecker and Bernhard Gleich

Germany physicists Bernhard Gleich and Jurgen Weizenecker and their team received the award for laying the foundation for a new category of medical imaging solutions. Developed in the laboratory of Philips Research Hamburg, magnetic particle imaging (MPI) offers real-time images of body tissues in unprecedented quality. Their magnet-based imaging method, currently in pre-clinical evaluation, promises to enable doctors to obtain instant 3D images of tissue complications, including cancers and vascular diseases.

Jurgen Weizenecker said he was really happy and deeply honoured to accept the award. He thanked our families for their support and patience with sometimes strange scientists. Bernhard Gleich thanked all the people who contributed to the success of magnetic particle imaging and the scientific community for their valuable contributions.

Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs)

Tue Johannessen, Ulrich Quaade, Claus Hviid Christensen and Jens Kehlet Nrskov (Denmark)

Tue Johannessen and Ulrich Quaade

The Danish research team received the award for the ground-breaking application of ammonia in solid form to reduce air pollution from diesel engines and act as an emissions-free fuel. Released into the exhaust system of diesel engines, it can reduce the amount of harmful emitted NOx (mono-nitrogen oxides; a key component of smog) by up to 99%. Theirs is a true start-up success story powered by patented inventions.

In his acceptance speech, Tue Johannessen stressed that this was a big team effort and thanked the team, the investors and everyone involved. He said it is really important to keep CO2 levels low. His colleague Ulrich Quaade thanked our co-inventors, who are not present today.

Research

Alim-Louis Benabid (France)

Alim-Louis Benabid

French physicist and neurosurgeon Alim-Louis Benabid was honoured for revolutionising the treatment of Parkinson's disease and other neurological conditions with the use of high-frequency deep brain stimulation. Based on controlled electric charges administered via a probe implanted into the patient's skull - akin to a "brain pace-maker" - Benabid's method has become a standard treatment around the world, and has benefited over 150 000 people, who can now lead self-directed, independent lives thanks to the invention.

Accepting the award, Alim-Louis Benabid said: doing research is a privilege, finding something useful is a privilege, being recognised is a privilege. He said only artists and writers are the sole owners of their discoveries. In science, we work together with other scientists and patients and said the award was dedicated to everyone who worked with me.

Non-European countries

Robert Langer (US)

Robert Langer speaks via video link

US chemical engineer Robert Langer received the award for the ground-breaking invention of biodegradable plastics that encapsulate powerful anti-cancer drugs for a new level of targeted delivery. His bioplastics can be shaped into "wafers" filled with cancer-starving drugs, implanted right above the site of tumours where natural degradation releases the drug for maximum efficacy. Langer's patented inventions have been licensed to more than 300 pharmaceutical companies and have already benefited more than one million people worldwide. The prolific inventor heads a team of over 100 researchers at MIT.

Speaking via a video link, Robert Langer said he had been told that the ideas are wrong and would never work. He said it was a tremendous honour to receive the award and be in the company of the other nominees.

Lifetime achievement

Anton van Zanten (Germany/Netherlands)

Anton van Zanten with Prime Minister Antonio Costa and President Benoit Battistelli

Engineer Anton van Zanten was honoured for his landmark contributions to automotive safety systems that have saved thousands of lives and are now mandatory features in new automobiles. Throughout an automotive engineering career with German company Robert Bosch spanning more than 40 years, van Zanten pioneered the electronic stability control (ESC) system and other solutions to prevent automobiles from veering off the road and crashing in extreme braking situations.

Winner Anton van Zanten used his acceptance speech to advocate for stricter car safety laws. I would like to encourage countries where ESC is not in legislation to put it in and save many lives, he said.

Popular Prize

Helen Lee (UK/France)

Helen Lee with the trophy for the Popular Prize

Cambridge University researcher Helen Leewas picked by an overwhelming majority of the public to receive the Popular Prize for her invention of diagnostic kits for resource-poor regions of the globe. Already used to test more than 40 000 people, her robust, instant blood diagnostic kits are cost-effective and easy-to-use for detection of infectious diseases such as HIV, hepatitis B and chlamydia. Lee received more than 36 300 votes, or 64%, of the total record number of 56 700 votes cast online by the public in the five weeks leading up to the award ceremony (up from 46 800 total votes last year). This was by far the highest number of public votes ever received by any European Inventor Award finalist since the launch of the Popular Prize category in 2013.

Helen Lee said: life is a journey and the journey of Samba has not always been easy and thanked those who had helped in choppy waters. She said, Our rudder was never give up and our direction was to be useful... thanks for putting wind behind our sails. I hope it will bring people to safer shores.

About the European Inventor Award

Launched by the EPO in 2006, the annual award distinguishes individual inventors and teams of inventors whose pioneering inventions provide answers to some of the biggest challenges of our times. The winners are selected by an independent jury consisting of international authorities in the fields of business, science, academia and research, who examine the proposals in terms of their contribution towards technical progress, social development, and wealth and job creation in Europe. The general public also takes part in conferring the award: the winner of the Popular Prize is chosen from among the 15 finalists by online voting.

Further information
Critically evaluating the draft guidelines for on-tap bank licences put up by the Reserve Bank of India, it is argued that Indias banking system is already sufficiently competitive, and there appear to be few who would be willing to enter the banking business. Entry of newer players, especially those with corporate backing, cannot be the priority at the moment. The priority over the next two or three years has to be the resolution of the non-performing assets problem and strengthening of the existing players.

As promised, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has come out with draft guidelines for on-tap bank licences. Earlier, the RBI gave out bank licences for universal banks in occasional bursts. There was one round of licensing following guidelines issued in 1993 when the RBI issued nine bank licences. Subsequent to fresh guidelines issued in 2001, another two bank licences were issued. More recently, following guidelines issued in 2013, the RBI issued licences for differentiated banks, that is, payment banks and small banks. Need for More Banks?
This is with reference to the letter  Evergreen Revolution by Jaydev Jana (EPW, 28 May 2016). He has aptly praised the role of technology in increasing agricultural production. But, mere increase in production using technology is not the panacea for the problems of agricultural development. As Neils Roling has pointed out,

When a new technology begins to be adopted it allows the ones using it to produce more, or more efficiently, against the going price, which is initially still determined by the old state-of-the-art  But as more farmers adopt (seeing the good results of the early ones), the state-of-the-art changes. Total production increases.
Gawker Media was crushed by the $140 million legal judgment in Hulk Hogan's invasion-of-privacy lawsuit, which we now know was financed by a bitter and resentful Peter Thiel. Nick Denton's gossip news site Gawker.com published a sex tape featuring former wrestler Hulk Hogan, and the former wrestler (real name: Terry Bollea) sued with Thiel's help.

The publishing company is now putting itself up for sale, reports the New York Times, citing an anonymous source. Gawker Media Inc. filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on Friday "after a judge overseeing the suit against the company entered the full judgment and denied Gawker's request for a stay under terms the company could meet."

Reports Sydney Ember at the New York Times:

The company is beginning an auction, said the person, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the auction has not been announced. ZiffDavis, a digital media company, has submitted an opening bid of $90 million to $100 million, the person said. The person said Gawker has filed for bankruptcy to protect jobs and ensure continued operations. The company's decision to sell itself came just weeks after it was revealed that the Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel financially supported Mr.Hogan's lawsuit. The company still plans to appeal the case.

As our own Rob Beschizza wrote earlier in the privacy case, Every tabloid wants to die for its virtues. Looks like Gawker gets its wish.
Most Indians find it difficult to break through narrow domestic walls and make concerted efforts to stray into the unfamiliar, yet unintimidating, world of the other.

At the international conference on the theme Intimacy and Belonging in Contemporary India held recently at the Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla, the overriding argument that ran through many presentations was the need for India and Indians to be united a little more intimately than just be satisfied being integrated. I wondered if most Indians made any attempts, first of all, to be integrated at all, before even considering intimacy with others.

One of the speakers at the conference observed that integration was to be fair to the other, while intimacy was to be there for the other. Well said, even if it sounds rhetorical. The only problem is that being fair or being there for the other can only occur when we break our narrow domestic walls and make concerted efforts to stray into the unfamiliar, yet unintimidating, world of the other. Strangely, it is a big deal for most Indians.
ID01, Tuesday morning. Five young scientists scrutinize the screens in front of them while Marie Ingrid Richard, researcher on the beamline, shows them how to aim the X-ray beam onto a silicon-germanium wafer to map its strain and structure. They are participants of the 26th Hercules school, the Higher European Research Course for Users of Large Experimental Systems, and this is the first of a series of practical sessions at the ESRF.

For most, this is their first visit to a synchrotron. It is very exciting, the practicals give you a different view of the facility compared to the lectures, although both are necessary, explains Alexandra Mannig from ETH Zurich in Switzerland. "The course is as good as I expected it to be after hearing about it from people at Uni", says Tomas Verhallen from TU Delft in The Netherlands. "The lectures are given by professionals and are really well explained".

Two beamlines further around the ring, on ID29, five other HERCULES students are fishing crystals with Daniele de Sanctis, beamline scientist. After this they will try to solve the structure of a protein, following the same steps the users follow when they come here. The atmosphere is relaxed and although the students are only two weeks into their five week course, they already seem to know each other quite well.

On ESRF ID29, from left to right: D. De Sanctis (ESRF), Alejandro Panjkovich, EMBL Hamburg, Chris Yen-Chen Lo, NTHU, TPS, Taiwan, Manuela Denz, Georg August University, Germany, Jacopo Cantela, University of Rome "Sapienza", Italy. Photo: ESRF/M. Capellas. On ESRF ID01, from left to right: Tomas Verhallen, TU Delft, The Netherlands, Alexandra Mannig, ETH, Zurich, Switzerland, Benoit Geslot, CEA Cadarache, Yu-Hsiang Chen, Linkoping University, Sweden, Marie-Ingrid Richard (ESRF). Photo: ESRF/M. Capellas.

Every year since 1991 the HERCULES European school brings together around 80 scientists from all over the world to train them in the use of large instruments by providing a general overview of the techniques and scientific possibilities associated with neutrons and synchrotron radiation. Competition is fierce and only half the applicants obtain a place on the course.

This year, HERCULES includes students from as far away as Russia, South Africa and Taiwan. Some are already studying for their PhDs at a synchrotron, for example Alejandro Panjkovich from DESY in Germany, and Chris Yen-Chen Lo from the NTHU in Taiwan. They have already spotted some differences between their home institutes and the ESRF: "Coffee machines are everywhere around the ring here. It's a great idea, we should really take up on that in Taiwan, says Chris. He adds that the safety measures here are very strict compared to back home. For Alejandro, "DESY is very similar to the ESRF", although the "food here is great by comparison!

On 22th April, the Taiwanwese students received the visit of M.Zhang Ming-Zhong, Ambassador of Taiwan in France. It wa the occasion to present the HERCULEs School in presence of the Director General of the ESRF, Francesco Sette, the President of the COMUE Grenoble, Patrick Levy, the president of the University Grenoble-Alpes, Lise Dumasy, and the Administrator General of Grenoble INP, Brigitte Plateau.

Over the five week course, the students will spread their time between the ESRF, ILL and IBS on the EPN campus, as well as spending one week on another site, either at Soleil and Laboratoire Leon Brillouin in Paris-Saclay, at DESY and the European XFEL in Hamburg, Elettra and Fermi in Trieste, Italy, or PSI in Villigen, Switzerland.



HERCULES is co-organised by Universite Grenoble Alpes and Grenoble Institute of Technology, in partnership with the CNRS (French National Centre for Scientific Research) and the CEA, and the large scale research infrastructures mentioned above.
On 21st April 2016, the ESRF welcomed the winners of the 2nd prize in the French national physics Olympiads competition. They are a team of six high school students from the Lycee Viette in Montbeliard (north-east from Grenoble), who won the prize for their work entitled When the Atmosphere plays with Light.

The students are Heidi Macherel,Caroline Marion, Valentine Marion, Guillaume Demet, Enzo Sacchi, Bertrand Turck. The visit to the ESRF, together with a cash prize, was the prize of the competition. They visited the ESRF control room from where the particle accelerators are operated before getting some hands-on experience by fishing for crystals and preparing samples in the molecular biology laboratory. They pursued the visit with a tour of several beamlines, notably ID24, which studies high pressure and extreme conditions. The group then got the chance to discuss life as a researcher with the Palaeontology team headed by Paul Tafforeau. At the end of the visit, the students explained that the experience had helped them to be even more convinced of following a career in science.

Winning stratospheric balloon

The aspiring physicists won their trip to the ESRF thanks to their successful project with the schools science club. They designed, built and equipped a stratospheric balloon to observe the sunrise from 26 km above the Earth. The data collected from the detectors placed on the balloon were then analysed around two main themes: the role of the Earths atmosphere in the magical colours of the sky, and the atmosphere: a shield for Earth?

The French National Olympiads is an annual competition organised since 1992 by the Union of Physics and Chemistry Teachers and the French Physics Society.
The research article - Targeting the PI3K/AKT/mTOR Pathway in Prostate Cancer Development and Progression: Insight to Therapy, by Dr Claudio Festuccia (University of L'Aquila, Italy) and published in Clinical Cancer Drugs, volume 3, issue 1 - discusses experimental and clinical data on the pharmacological inhibition of the Akt/mTOR pathways. These pathways play a key role in the modulation of cellular proliferation, tumor growth and survival through phosphorylation of different downstream molecules. Prostate tumor growth and progression is negatively regulated by Phosphatase and tensin homolog (PTEN) which is genetically and/or functionally silenced in this neoplasia. The aim of the presentation was to analyze the synthesis and functional characterization of different compounds inhibiting phospatidylinositol-4,5-bisphosphate-3-kinase (PI3K), Akt and mTOR activities as well as the feasibility of these inhibitors functioning alone or in combination with standard therapies in aggressive castration resistant prostate cancers (CRPC), a disease stage characterized from high percentage of patients with bone metastases. Conventional treatment for this disease stage requires, indeed, a multidisciplinary approach (medical therapy, surgery, and radiation), but is primarily palliative. Pharmacological resistance is commonly observed. Activation of PI3K/Akt/mTOR pathways plays a significant role in therapy. The blockade of this pathway may be necessary to increase standard therapies. "Several preclinical data support the rationale to advance the use of pharmacological inhibitors of PI3k/Akt/mTOR into clinical trials in CRPC as performed for several other solid tumors" remarked Dr. Festuccia.

###

Author(s): Festuccia Claudio.

Affiliation: Department of Clinical and Applied Sciences and Biotechnologies, Laboratory of Radiobiology, University of L'Aquila, L'Aquila, Italy

This article is open access and can be downloaded from Bentham Science Publishers' webpage here: http://benthamscience.com/journals/clinical-cancer-drugs/volume/3/issue/1/page/36/
(Boston) -- Ali Guermazi, MD, PhD, professor of radiology at Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM) and vice chairman of academic affairs in the department of radiology at Boston Medical Center (BMC), is the recipient of the Ibn Khaldun Award from the Ibn Khaldun Institute. The annual award recognizes high achievers whose behavior constitutes a direct or indirect service to the Tunisian-American community.

Guermazi, who also is the director of the Quantitative Imaging Center at BUSM and BMC, is a French board-certified radiologist. His interests include musculoskeletal diseases and in particular identifying structural risk factors for developing and worsening osteoarthritis. Guermazi was presented with the award during the Tunisian American Day formal hafla or gala held at the Tunisian Embassy in Washington, DC, June 4. Guermazi had been involved in developing several original and widely accepted radiological methods to assess osteoarthritis disease risk and progression. He has been an MRI reader for several large U.S. research projects, including the Health Aging and Body Composition (Health ABC) study, the Boston Osteoarthritis Knee Study (BOKS), the Multi-center Osteoarthritis STudy (MOST), the Framingham study, Osteoarthritis Initiative (OAI) and other large National Institutes of Health-funded studies, in addition to several pharmaceutical-sponsored clinical trials.

###

About the Ibn Khaldun Institute

The Ibn Khaldun Institute, an affiliate of the Tunisian Community Center, is a non-partisan, non-profit and secular advocacy-type think tank. Its focus is on the socio-economic development of Tunisia. The Ibn Khaldun Institute aims to be a talent bank as well as an online clearinghouse for information on activities taking place in the U.S. that aim to promote the development of Tunisia. Created by the Tunisian Community Center in 2005, the think tank was named after Ibn Khaldun, the renowned 14th Century Tunisian polymath and statesman, whose name came to symbolize kinship and solidarity. It is comprised of Tunisian and Tunisian-American professionals in all disciplines, dedicated to promoting business, as well as, cultural and professional exchanges between the U.S. and Tunisia.

Contact:

Gina DiGravio

617-638-8480

ginad@bu.edu
Our dear friends Richard Metzger and Tara McGinley of the essential Dangerous Minds blog are profiled in the new issue of Cincinnati Magazine. Richard and Tara recently moved to Cincinnati, where Tara and I both grew up! From Cincinnati Magazine:



When Dangerous Minds does dig for a bone, moreover, it digs deeper than the others. For instance, one day Metzger was spelunking through the 'net for La Dolce Gilda, a black-and-white short film he remembered seeing on Saturday Night Live in the late 1970s. "I couldn't believe no one had put it on YouTube," he says. "I discovered that the director had also done a feature film that was never released to home video. It starred Bill Murray. So I found it on an underground torrent tracker. Dubbed in German."





Mere days after that 2014 Dangerous Minds scoop, complete with a link to the full lost Bill Murray movie Nothing Lasts Forever, articles on the film popped up in the Chicago Tribune, Yahoo!, and Slate. It was front-page news for Britain's The Telegraph newspaper. For Dangerous Minds, it was just one of 13 articles posted that day, among them "Make Your Own Marcel Duchamp Chess Set with a 3-D Printer"; "Scenes from Marc Bolan's Funeral"; and "Freaky Armadillo Purse."





"Richard is an anthropologist of high weirdness," says David Pescovitz, a partner and editor at the popular blog Boing Boing, which is like an older, cyber-oriented brother to Dangerous Minds. "He doesn't judge. He doesn't exploit. His fascination and obsession is infectious."
DURHAM, N.C. -- A Duke University study of coal ash ponds near 21 power plants in five Southeastern U.S. states has found evidence that nearby surface waters and groundwater are consistently and lastingly contaminated by the unlined ponds.

High levels of toxic heavy metals including arsenic and selenium were found in surface waters or groundwater at all of the sites tested. Concentrations of trace elements in 29 percent of the surface water samples exceeded EPA standards for drinking water and aquatic life.

"In all the investigated sites, we saw evidence of leaking," said Avner Vengosh, a professor of geochemistry and water quality in Duke University's Nicholas School of the Environment. "Some of the impacted water had high levels of contaminants."

The study, which appears June 10 in the journal Environmental Science & Technology, did not test drinking water wells, but that will be the next phase of the research, Vengosh said.

During the summer and fall of 2015, the team sampled 39 surface water and seep samples from coal ash ponds at seven sites. They also analyzed water chemistry data from 156 shallow groundwater monitoring wells near coal ash ponds at 14 North Carolina power plants that had been compiled by the state's Department of Environmental Quality.

Shallow wells -- typically 30- to 50-feet deep -- are not as deep as a drinking water well, which might be 100 to 300 feet. But there's a potential the shallower contamination could flow deeper and affect drinking wells, Vengosh said.

Not only was the evidence of contamination widespread, it also appears to be persistent in the environment. Some of the sites studied have been retired and no new coal ash is being deposited there, but nearby surface waters, and in one case groundwater, were still being contaminated.

"The degree to which leakage affects the concentration of toxins in nearby waters varies because of several factors, including the nature of the coal ash, processes in the pond and the flow through the local soil," said Jennie Harkness, a Ph.D. student at the Nicholas School and the lead author of this study.

While it is legally permitted for some coal ash ponds to release liquid effluents to nearby surface waters through regulated outfalls, the new data show that these ponds are also leaking in unpermitted ways. "Coal ash ponds pose risks to the environment and water resources," Vengosh said.

The highest concentrations of dissolved metals and metalloids (manganese, vanadium, selenium, arsenic and molybdenum) were found in shallow wells near a retired ash-disposal site in Tennessee. The contaminated groundwater there had concentrations exceeding drinking water and aquatic life standards for cadmium, iron, nickel, lead, selenium and zinc.

Vengosh said it is reasonable to conclude from these findings that physically removing the coal ash ponds would leave "a legacy of contamination. You would still have a major issue to address the subsurface groundwater contamination. After decades of leaking, the impact has already happened."

###

Funding for this study was provided by the Southern Environmental Law Center.

CITATION: "Evidence for Coal Ash Ponds Leaking in Southeastern United States," Jennifer Harkness, Barry Sulkin and Avner Vengosh. Environmental Science and Technology, online June 10, 2016. DOI: 10.1021/acs.est.6b01727
London, United Kingdom, June 10, 2016: The results of a study presented today at the European League Against Rheumatism Annual Congress (EULAR 2016) showed for the first time that a combination of text messages and individual counselling sessions to motivate patients with Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA) to be more active resulted in improved patient-reported clinical outcomes. This type of behavioural intervention was effective at reducing daily sitting time by an average of more than two hours in RA patients, and also reduced their cholesterol levels.

Due to their disease, patients with RA tend to be more sedentary than the general population, which can have serious health consequences, including an increased risk of cardiovascular disease and premature death. In Denmark, 67% of patients with RA do not meet public health recommendations for daily moderate and vigorous physical activity, and similar proportions of physically inactive RA patients are found in Germany (68%) and the United Kingdom (67%). Patients with RA already have an increased risk of cardiovascular disease and premature death, partly caused by the chronic inflammatory rheumatic disease itself, and partly by traditional risk factors, such as hyperlipidaemia.2, ,

Although exercise is known to have a positive effect on pain and physical functioning in patients with RA, pain often acts as a barrier against maintenance of a physically active lifestyle. A more feasible approach for improving health and well-being in RA patients would therefore be to focus on reducing sedentary behaviour and increasing light intensity activity, rather than solely concentrating on increasing moderate and vigorous physical activity.

"We know that behavioural approaches are effective in reducing sedentary behaviour in healthy populations," , said Miss Tanja Thomsen of the Copenhagen Centre for Arthritis Research, Centre for Rheumatology and Spine Diseases, Rigshospitalet, Denmark. Our findings support the introduction of behavioural approaches as an effective way to improve the health of rheumatoid arthritis patients, which may also be applicable in other populations with chronic disease and limited mobility," Miss Thomsen added.

75 adult RA patients with a self-reported daily sitting time greater than five hours and Health Assessment Questionnaire score less than 2.5 underwent a 16-week individually tailored, behavioural intervention that included three individual motivational counselling sessions with a health professional and regular text messages aimed at improving motivation to reduce daily sitting time and replacing it with light intensity physical activity. A control group of 75 healthy adult patients matched for other characteristics was encouraged to maintain their usual lifestyle. Daily sitting time was recorded using a wearable activity monitor.

After 16 weeks, there was a significant between-group difference in average daily sitting time in favour of the intervention group of 2.20 hours per day (p<0.0001, with a mean decrease of 1.61 hours per day in the intervention group; an increase of 0.59 hours per day in controls). Secondary outcomes that were also in favour of the intervention group included self-assessment scores of pain, fatigue, physical function and blood measurements of total cholesterol.

Abstract Number: OP0286-HPR

###

NOTES TO EDITORS:

For further information on this study, or to request an interview with the study lead, please do not hesitate to contact the EULAR congress

Press Office in the London Suite at ExCel London during EULAR 2016 or on:

Email: eularpressoffice@cohnwolfe.com

Onsite tel: +44 (0) 7725 915 492 / +44 (0) 7786 171 476

Twitter: @EULAR_Press

Youtube: Eular Pressoffice

About EULAR

The European League Against Rheumatism (EULAR) is an umbrella organisation which represents scientific societies, health professional associations and organisations for people with Rheumatic Musculoskeletal Diseases (RMD) throughout Europe.

EULAR aims to promote, stimulate and support the research, prevention, and treatment of RMD and the rehabilitation of those it affects.

EULAR underlines the importance of combating rheumatic diseases not only by medical means, but also through a wider context of care for rheumatic patients and a thorough understanding of their social and other needs. EULAR is supported in this mission by its 45 scientific member societies, 36 PARE (People with Arthritis/Rheumatism in Europe) organisations, 22 HPR (Health Professionals in Rheumatology) associations and 23 corporate members.

The EULAR Annual European Congress of Rheumatology is the foremost international medical meeting announcing the latest research on rheumatic and musculoskeletal diseases. EULAR 2016 is expected to attract over 14,000 delegates from around 120 countries. Most if not all professions working in the vast field of RMD will be represented.

To find out more about the activities of EULAR, visit: http://www.eular.org

References

1. EULAR 2016; London: Abstract OP0286-HPR

2. Thomsen T, Beyer N, Aadahl M, et al. Sedentary behaviour in patients with rheumatoid arthritis: A qualitative study. Int J Qual Stud Health Well-being. 2015; 10: 10.3402/qhw.v10.28578

3. Sokka T, Hakkinen A, Kautiainen H, et al. Physical inactivity in patients with rheumatoid arthritis: data from twenty-one countries in a cross-sectional, international study. Arthritis Rheum. 2008; 59(1): 42-50

4. John H, Toms TE, Kitas GD. Rheumatoid arthritis: is it a coronary heart disease equivalent? Curr Opin Cardiol. 2011; 26 (4): 327-33

5. Boers M, Nurmohamed MT, Doelman CJ, et al. Influence of glucocorticoids and disease activity on total and high density lipoprotein cholesterol in patients with rheumatoid arthritis. Ann Rheum Dis 2003; 62: 842-5

6. Esbensen BA, Thomsen T, Hetland ML. The efficacy of motivational counseling and SMS-reminders on daily sitting time in patients with rheumatoid arthritis: protocol for a randomized controlled trial. Trials, 2015; 16 (1): 1

7. Gardiner PA, Eakin EG, Healy GN, Owen N. Feasibility of reducing older adults' sedentary time. Am J Prev Med. 2011; 41 (2): 174-7

8. Kozey-Keadle S, Libertine A, Staudenmayer J, Freedson P. The feasibility of reducing and measuring sedentary time among overweight, non-exercising office workers. J Obes. 2012; 16 2012: 282303
Nice, France - 10 June 2016: The first consensus paper on atrial cardiomyopathies is set to be published simultaneously in EP-Europace, HeartRhythm, and the Journal of Arrhythmia. The key contents are launched today at CARDIOSTIM - EHRA EUROPACE 2016.1

The report was written by a working group of the European Heart Rhythm Association (EHRA) which is a registered branch of the European Society of Cardiology (ESC), the Heart Rhythm Society (HRS), the Asia Pacific Heart Rhythm Society (APHRS), and Sociedad Latinoamericana de Estimulacion Cardiaca y Electrofisiologia (SOLAECE).

Professor Andreas Goette, chair of the working group, said: "Atrial cardiomyopathies contribute to the development of atrial fibrillation, which is the most common heart rhythm disturbance. They can also lead to atrial clots and consequent stroke, and therefore have substantial clinical significance."

He continued: "There are multiple papers on ventricular cardiomyopathies but until now, no consensus was reached about atrial cardiomyopathies. This is a global consensus paper and an important step forward for research and treatment in this field."

The document contains the first definition and classification of atrial cardiomyopathies. The definition states that atrial cardiomyopathy is "any complex of structural, architectural, contractile or electrophysiological changes affecting the atria with the potential to produce clinically relevant manifestations".

The novel classification scheme, called EHRAS (EHRA/HRS/APHRS/SOLAECE), denotes four classes based on histological and pathological findings including cardiomyocyte changes, fibrosis, and non-collagen infiltration.

"This is the first attempt to separate atrial pathologies into discrete groups," said Professor Goette. "It can be used to describe the underlying pathology in various clinical conditions. Ultimately it should help us to tailor therapies for atrial fibrillation based on the underlying cause, which might improve patient outcomes."

The paper outlines the triggers of atrial fibrillation. These include mutations, congestive heart failure, obstructive sleep apnoea, medications, aging, hypertension, obesity, and diabetes. Advice is given on how to prevent or delay the occurrence of atrial fibrillation.

Controversies surrounding the mechanism of atrial fibrillation are discussed. One theory is that fibrillation results from the continued random propagation of multiple independent electric waves that move independently throughout the atria. The opposing view is that fibrillation is a consequence of the continued activity of a few vortices (rotors) that spin at high frequencies. Regardless of the mechanism that maintains it, sustained atrial fibrillation leads to electrical remodelling that is reversible in the short term but not if it lasts for months or years. Professor Goette said: "Ongoing investigations into the mechanisms will stimulate improved treatment and prevention."

The paper addresses the potential use of biomarkers to predict atrial fibrillation and stroke risk. The authors state that "The clinical benefit of considering biomarkers associated with atrial fibrillation is questionable" and there is limited evidence for their added value in stroke risk prediction.

Finally, advice is given on the use of imaging to screen and follow patients with atrial cardiomyopathies. For example, echocardiography is the modality of choice for screening and following patients with diseases involving left atrial morphology and function. Cardiac computed tomography can be used to screen for thrombus before ablation of atrial fibrillation.

Professor Goette said: "More research is needed to correlate EHRAS classes I-IV with imaging findings to help us better characterise atrial cardiomyopathies. This could have large clinical implications because patients with various degrees of myopathy might be treated differently."

He concluded: "Atrial fibrillation stems from a number of causes. Here we define and classify the different atrial pathologies so that ultimately, patients can be given individualised treatment that gives them the best possible outcome."

###

Notes to editor

SOURCES OF FUNDING: None.

DISCLOSURES: Professor Goette has no disclosures related to this paper. He has received lecture fees from Daiichi-Sankyo, Bayer AG, Boehringer Ingelheim, Astra Zeneca, and Medtronic.

References and notes

1The paper will be presented at Cardiostim EHRA Europace 2016 on 10 June, 11:00-12:30, Room 3.1 / Clio.

About CARDIOSTIM - EHRA EUROPACE

CARDIOSTIM - EHRA EUROPACE is an established, international conference attracting key opinion leaders, well-recognised scientists, physicians, allied professionals and industry.

About the European Heart Rhythm Association (EHRA)/EHRA

The European Heart Rhythm Association (EHRA) is a registered branch of the European Society of Cardiology (ESC). Its aim is to improve the quality of life of the European population by reducing the impact of cardiac arrhythmias and reducing sudden cardiac death. EHRA promotes science and education in the field of cardiac arrhythmias with a special focus on atrial fibrillation (AF). Besides patient engagement programmes, EHRA organises scientific and educational events for physicians and allied professionals. In cooperation with other associations and societies EHRA promotes the quality of care for patients with AF with the publication of international consensus documents.

About the European Society of Cardiology

The European Society of Cardiology (ESC) represents more than 95 000 cardiology professionals across Europe and the Mediterranean. Its mission is to reduce the burden of cardiovascular disease in Europe.

Information for journalists attending CARDIOSTIM - EHRA EUROPACE 2016

CARDIOSTIM - EHRA EUROPACE 2016 takes place 8 to 11 June at the Nice Acropolis Convention Centre. The full scientific programme is available here http://cardiostim.event.y-congress.com/ScientificProcess/Schedule/index.html?setLng=en#filtersPanel=true

To register please contact Catherine Rouille on 33-6-73-62-57-61 or contact@cr-communication.fr
A workplace outcome study published in The Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine (JOEM) found that offices equipped with alcohol-based hand sanitizers and hand sanitizing wipes throughout the building and at employees' desks resulted in 24.3 percent fewer healthcare claims for hand hygiene preventable illnesses -- such as cold, flu and respiratory illnesses -- than the office and employees in the control group without these products.

"This study builds on the decades of science demonstrating the effectiveness of a comprehensive hand hygiene program when PURELL products are used in real-world settings," said Jim Arbogast, Ph.D., the lead author of the study and vice president of hygiene sciences and public health advancements at GOJO. "With this study, the evidence is clear that PURELL products in a workplace can directly reduce hand hygiene preventable illnesses tied to doctors' visits by more than 24 percent."

The study, "Impact of a Comprehensive Workplace Hand Hygiene Program on Employer Health Care Insurance Claims and Costs, Absenteeism, and Employee Perceptions and Practices," was published June 9th in JOEM. The study evaluated a comprehensive hand hygiene program with PURELL Hand Sanitizer and PURELL Hand Sanitizing Wipes and its impact on actual medical insurance claims tied to doctors' visits. The study found in the first year of having PURELL products available at an employee's workspace as well as throughout the building, there was a statistically significant 24.3 percent lower incidence of hygiene preventable medical insurance claims compared to the control group.

GOJO and Medical Mutual of Ohio began collaborating on the study in 2013. The study, funded by GOJO, began in February 2014. The Medical Mutual Strongsville, Ohio, and Toledo, Ohio, offices were equipped with a comprehensive hand hygiene program, including alcohol-based hand sanitizer and hand sanitizing wipes. Medical Mutual's downtown Cleveland headquarters served as the control group. Al Parker, biostatistician at the Center for Biofilm Engineering at Montana State University, provided the statistical analysis.

"As a health insurance company we look for ways to help employers improve the health of their workforce," said Kathy Golovan, chief health officer and executive vice president for Medical Mutual. "The significance of this study is that it demonstrates an immediate health solution for employers that is easy to implement, cost effective and one that employees clearly value. Employers often focus on long-term chronic diseases like diabetes, heart health and weight loss of their workforce, but short-term solutions like a hand hygiene program can be impactful because it can quickly improve the health and wellness of their employees without economic stress to the organization."

The major findings of the study included:

24.3% lower incidence of hand hygiene preventable insurance claims compared to the control group

13.4% fewer sick episodes or unscheduled paid-time-off (PTO) in 2014-2015 in the intervention group compared to the previous year

8 in 10 employees indicated having PURELL products throughout the office positively impacted their impression of their employer

"As a physician, I am a strong advocate for hand hygiene," said William Jarvis, M.D., co-author of the study and former acting director of the Hospital Infections Program at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. "Doctors and other health professionals have been telling people for years the benefits of the healthy habit of hand hygiene, but some need proof that it makes a difference. This well-designed 13-month real-world environment study, with thorough analysis of four years of retrospective data, shows that when people use PURELL products only a few times a day, it can reduce sickness and ultimately reduce a trip to the doctor's office. Improving the health of workplace employees should be every employers' top priority."

###

For more information about the study, go to http://www.GOJO.com/purelladvancedworkforce.

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 family owned corporation headquartered in Akron, Ohio, USA, with offices in the United Kingdom, France, Australia, Japan and Brazil.

About Medical Mutual of Ohio

Founded in 1934, Medical Mutual of Ohio is the oldest and largest health insurance company based in Ohio. For more than 80 years, the company has served customers with high-quality, affordable group and personal health insurance plans, and third-party administrative services to self-insured group customers. As a mutual health insurance company, Medical Mutual is unique in that it operates for the benefit of its members. Unlike publicly-traded insurance companies that must maximize their financial return, Medical Mutual does not answer to stockholders or Wall Street analysts. For more information, visit the company's award-winning website at MedMutual.com.
Kennedy's disease leads to progressive muscle wastage. It is a condition that affects only men and it appears between 40 and 50 years of age. There is no specific treatment available

Knowledge of the minute details of the proteins that are linked to diseases is crucial if we are to discover therapeutic targets and thus pave the way for possible treatments. Such knowledge gains even more relevance when dealing with rare diseases that have received little attention and for which no treatments are available, such as the case of Kennedy's disease. This week Xavier Salvatella, ICREA researcher at the Institute for Research in Biomedicine (IRB Barcelona), in collaboration with scientists from the University of Florence (Italy), has described a molecular system of protection that involves the androgen receptor protein, a molecule that is mutated in patients with Kennedy's disease and which cause progressive muscle wastage.

The finding brings in-depth molecular insights that can lead to new studies and bring researchers closer to finding a therapeutic target for Kennedy's disease. The study has been published in Biophysical Journal, part of the Cell group.

In Kennedy's disease, the muscle cells and motor neurons -- the latter linked to muscle function too -- are damaged as a result of the accumulation of androgen receptor fibers -- a process that causes them to die. "Many aspects of diseases involving aggregates, such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's, are unknown. In this regard, Kennedy's disease is in a worse position because it is a rare condition," explains Xavier Salvatella, head of the Molecular Biophysics Lab at IRB Barcelona.

The onset of this genetically inherited disease occurs in late adulthood, affecting one in every 40,000 men and causing progressive deterioration of all muscles. Although not fatal, the condition is debilitating, and 20% of those affected eventually need a wheel chair.

Backed by funding from the "Fundacion La Marato de TV3" and a Consolidator Grant from the European Research Council, Salvatella studies the sequence of molecular events that causes the aggregation of androgen receptors. He and his team seek to determine the regions of the protein sequence responsible for aggregation in order to identify valid targets to direct therapies and to prevent this process.

Attacking the flanks of the protein

The mutation carried by those affected by Kennedy's disease causes a repeated and excessively long chain of a specific amino acid, namely glutamine, which impairs the activity of the androgen receptor. This protein, which activates the hormone testosterone, is responsible for triggering the genetic programme that favours the differential characteristics of men: more hair, deep voice, larger hands, etc.

During adolescence, and depending on the extent to which they are affected, boys with the mutation do not fully develop the male phenotype, but this is often not diagnosed. In a second stage, in adulthood, muscle degeneration begins. "It is known that the longer the polyglutamine chain, the earlier the onset of muscle atrophy. What we don't know and what this study helps us to understand is why the harmful effect is triggered when the length of the poly glutamine exceed 38 residues".

Thanks to access to one of the main Nuclear Magnetic Resonance facilities in Europe, located at the University of Florence, for the first time the scientists have studied the protein in a test tube. They have observed that right next to the glutamine chain there is a region comprised by four leucine residues that allay the effects of the mutation.

The leucine molecules favour the folding of the polyglutamine chain into a helix, a structure that prevents the chains from adhering to one another. However, the impact of the leucine molecule on the glutamine region is limited, and if there are many glutamine amino acids, the chains do not fold. Instead, they stretch out like rods, stick to each other, and end up forming a fibrous wall.

"We have seen that four leucine molecules delay this process. What would happen in the presence of six?" asks Salvatella. "Conceptually speaking, one clever way of delaying the aggregation could be to use drugs to strengthen the effect of the leucine residues that have so much influence on the mutation site that causes the protein to aggregate," reflects Salvatella.

Salvatella's work indicates that in-depth knowledge of the different protein sequences and how they affect each other may reveal new therapeutic targets. The IRB Barcelona scientist is engaged in several research lines devoted to Kennedy's disease. His studies involve the development of techniques and studies with mice and with chaperones -- proteins that bind to any protein that is about to aggregate. "This is the first article in a series in which we can slowly explain how we think Kennedy's disease develops and propose therapeutic solutions," he explains.

The Iranian researcher Bahareh Eftekharzadeh is the first author of the paper. She did her PhD at IRB Barcelona funded by an International "la Caixa" Fellowship and is currently doing postdoc work at the University of Harvard. Salvatella's lab also receives funding from the Ministry of the Economy and Competitiveness, complemented by support from the ERDF and the Government of Catalonia.

###

Reference article:

Sequence Context influences the Structure and Aggregation Behavior of a PolyQ Tract B. Eftekharzadeh, A. Piai, G. Chiesa, D. Mungianu, J. Garcia, R. Pierattelli, E. C. Felli, and X. Salvatella Biophysical Journal (7 June 2016) doi: 10.1016/j.bpj.2016.04.022
A team of medical personnel, emergency management specialists and drone technology experts, including from NJIT's New Jersey Innovation Institute (NJII), will conduct the first ship-to-shore drone delivery in the U.S. on June 23 on the New Jersey coastline.

The flights will demonstrate the capacity of unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) to provide lifesaving aid to victims of a disaster, such as a hurricane or system-wide failure of electrical or communications infrastructure. In a test, the Nevada-based drone delivery company Flirtey will fly medical samples for emergency testing between an improvised onshore medical relief camp at Cape May and a test facility on a vessel stationed off the coast. In a round trip, the company's drones will also deliver medical supplies from the vessel to the onshore camp.

The Red Cross and several United Nations (UN) agencies will participate in the event, coordinated by the disaster readiness organization Field Innovation Team (FIT), to assess the technology's ability to improve the timelessness and reliability of medical equipment delivery and diagnostic testing in disaster zones.

"We recognize the opportunity for us to engage with drone developers and operators in ensuring the principled application of game-changing technologies in response to humanitarian crises around the world," said Andrew Billo, of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA). "Participating in this event supports the mission of the OCHA to mobilize and coordinate effective humanitarian action with a broad range of partners."

The flights will be conducted out of the Cape May Ferry Terminal under NJIT's federal Certificate of Authorization (COA) to fly in the national air space, granted by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). In 2015, NJIT and its partners were the first team to conduct UAS flights in the state under an FAA program to test the feasibility of safely integrating drones into the national airspace and to assess the research and operational capabilities of communications and mapping sensors aboard an autonomous aerial platform.

"The use of this disruptive technology in supporting humanitarian and emergency operations is a major paradigm shift and significantly enhances the ability to support field medical operators and first responders in remote or otherwise inaccessible disaster sites," said William Marshall, assistant vice president for government and military relations for NJIT. "The data captured here will be shared with all of the participants, including the FAA, in support of the agency's ongoing research into the integration of UAS into the national air space."

Dr. Timothy Amukele, a pathologist at Johns Hopkins Hospital and pioneer in the use of drones to transport blood samples and blood products into and out of remote regions lacking health infrastructure, will be on site to oversee the deliveries.

The demonstration grew out of discussions last year between U.N. humanitarian relief agencies and FIT, a Utah-based non-profit that brings together experts from a variety of fields to come up with innovative methods to deliver aid and services to disaster zones, including medical aid and electricity to Syrian refugee camps and 3D-printed maps to emergency personnel responding to mud slides in Colorado. Denise Spell, president of Currant, Inc., a technology company based at NJIT's Economic Development Center (EDC) that develops disaster management tools such as mapping software, collaborates with FIT and suggested the New Jersey site.

"The idea was to hold what the FIT calls a 'do tank,' which means more doing than talking, to bring together humanitarian organizations and technology companies to brainstorm methods to use drones safely and effectively during emergencies without intimidating the people you're helping. Needs in these scenarios include collecting blood samples, delivering medicines and taking aerial photos of damaged areas," said Spell, who knew of plans by Cape May County and the Delaware River Bay Authority to develop a hub for UAS technology at the Cape May County Airport.

"It's pivotal that in disaster and crisis we look to support our relief efforts with cutting-edge technology," said FIT founder Desiree Matel Anderson.

Eight of the 10 largest cities in the world are coastal cities, and more than three billion people, or 44 percent of the world's population, live within 95 miles of the coast, according to the UN.

"Exploring new technologies and innovations, like drones, is one way that the American Red Cross can effectively prepare and respond to disasters around the world," said American Red Cross GIS expert Matthew Gibb. "The Drone Do Tank will allow us to collaborate with other humanitarian partners and understand the potential for emerging technologies."

Flirtey, the first company to conduct a fully autonomous drone delivery to a home in the U.S., is developing the capability to rapidly deliver medical supplies along a coastline where road systems are damaged.

On June 22, Luftronix, Inc., a technology company also led by Spell, will demonstrate another drone capability - the use of precision technology to simulate the inspection of an F14 fighter jet, located indoors at the World War II Museum at Naval Air Station Wildwood. Luftronix technology allows drones to fly through tunnels, over areas of collapse and through GPS-denied environments to locate people in need of rescue and to drop critical supplies while they wait for the recovery team.

Additionally, Rutgers School of Engineering, with assistance from its Center for Advanced Infrastructure and Transportation, will demonstrate an unmanned amphibious vehicle that can both swim and fly - an engineering feat and the first of its kind. The drone will be operating in waters off the coast.

NJII leads the New Jersey-based unmanned aerial test site for the Mid-Atlantic Aviation Partnership, (MAAP) an agency established by the FAA to advance UAS-based aeronautical research for emergency management and humanitarian purposes.

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About NJIT

One of the nation's leading public technological universities, New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) is a top-tier research university that prepares students to become leaders in the technology-dependent economy of the 21st century. NJIT's multidisciplinary curriculum and computing-intensive approach to education provide technological proficiency, business acumen and leadership skills. With an enrollment of 11,300 graduate and undergraduate students, NJIT offers small-campus intimacy with the resources of a major public research university. NJIT is a global leader in such fields as solar research, nanotechnology, resilient design, tissue engineering and cybersecurity, in addition to others. NJIT ranks fifth among U.S. polytechnic universities in research expenditures, topping $110 million, and is among the top 1 percent of public colleges and universities in return on educational investment, according to Payscale.com. NJIT has a $1.74 billion annual economic impact on the state of New Jersey.
Coronary or peripheral bypasses are the most frequently performed vascular operations. Although one million patients per year and around the world, undergo this intervention, its failure rate reaches 50%, because of poor vessel healing, leading to vessel graft occlusion. To improve the outcome of bypasses, researchers from the University of Geneva (UNIGE) work together with medical doctors from the Lausanne University Hospital (CHUV). They developed a gel containing microparticles -'GeM', enabling the controlled release of a drug inhibiting cellular over-proliferation. Administered locally, directly on the bypass graft during surgery, this preventive treatment will reduce the risk of obstruction reoccurrence. This research can be read in The Journal of Controlled Release.

The vascular bypass allows a blocked artery to be bypassed by implanting a vessel removed from the patient, and this is done in order to create a deviation in circulation. However, in 50% of cases, excessive vascular cell proliferation, called hyperplasia, occurs around the suturing site of the transplanted vessel. Hyperplasia then leads to a decrease in blood flow within five years following the operation, requiring a new surgery. Today, doctors prescribe atorvastatin (ATV) orally against hyperplasia. However, this route of administration is not adapted to this pathology.

This is why Doctor Francois Saucy's team from CHUV joined forces with Florence Delie and Olivier Jordan, researchers at the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences at UNIGE Faculty of Science. The goal: to find a way for local administration of ATV, that will remain available over a long time period, in order to overcome the disadvantages of high dosage taken orally. 'We immediately thought of a gel mixed with ATV, being directly applied on the vessel during surgery. Being viscous, it remains in place and enables local release, explains Florence Delie. 'But, we had an important challenge- doctors recommended the presence of the drug over a period of four weeks to avoid hyperplasia development, while the gel is only effective for three days'. Researchers from UNIGE have consequently added polymer microparticles containing ATV to the original formulation. These microparticles carry the encapsulated drug and gradually dissolve into the gel, therefore releasing ATV over one month.

The right dose in the right place

'It is about a controlled release system: the right dose at the right place, with the correct release profile, emphasises Olivier Jordan. 'We discovered that this formulation only works using the combination of, on one side, quickly released ATV mixed into the gel and on the other side, the microparticles, which act over the long term. There lies our innovation', adds Ioanna Mylonaki, researcher at UNIGE. 'Its use on patients is contemplated in five to ten years. Its efficacy would revolutionize the success rate of vascular bypasses.'

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Is copper deficiency contributing to the obesity epidemic?

Though small amounts of copper are essential to health - oysters, liver, beans and nuts are good sources - copper's role in metabolism has been unclear: Some studies found that it boosted fat burning, others that it depressed it.

University of California, Berkeley, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Howard Hughes Medical Institute researchers have now clarified the critical role that copper plays in nutrition: It helps move fat out of fat cells - called adipocytes - and into the blood stream for use as energy.

Without enough copper, fat builds up in fat cells without being utilized, said Christopher Chang, the Class of 1942 Chair and a professor of chemistry and of molecular and cell biology at UC Berkeley.

"Unlike other studies that link copper levels both to increased or decreased fat metabolism, our study shows definitively how it works - it's a signal that turns on fat cells," said Chang, who also is a faculty scientist at Berkeley Lab and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator. "If we could find a way to burn fat more efficiently, this could be a big contribution to dealing with obesity and diabetes."

The new study appeared online this week, and will be published in the July print issue of the journal Nature Chemical Biology.

The findings point not only to a new role for copper in metabolism, but highlight the key role copper plays throughout the body. Previously, Chang showed that copper is a key signaling molecule in the brain, tamping down over-excitation of nerve cells.

"The work we have done with copper really shows that signaling is not restricted to just a few elements on the periodic table, like sodium, calcium and potassium," he said. "Copper is a brand new class; in a sense we have basically added a fourth letter to the alphabet, in terms of metal elements that contribute to the language of signaling."

The similar roles copper plays in regulating nerve cells and fat burning highlight a growing perception that the neurological system, specifically the brain, plays a role in diseases of metabolism and the immune system, such as obesity and inflammation.

"Some of us are now thinking about obesity as a neurological disease rather than strictly a metabolic disease, because there are potentially connections between your fat tissue and the brain," he said. "The notion that obesity and obesity-related diseases like diabetes may be neurological in nature opens the door to new basic science and therapeutic approaches."

Chang cautions against ingesting copper supplements as a result of these studies, however. Too much copper can lead to imbalances in other essential minerals, including zinc.

Copper-related diseases

With a longstanding interest in the biological roles of metals, Chang focused on fat metabolism after reading that copper is often given to cows to regulate weight gain. To discover how copper actually works in fat metabolism, he chose to study mice with a genetic defect that produces symptoms similar to those of a rare human illness, Wilson's disease. In both situations, a key enzyme that moves copper in and out of cells is mutated, causing misregulation and copper overload - often to toxic levels - in the liver. The condition is also characterized by bloated fat cells.

He and his team, in particular postdocs Lakshmi Krishnamoorthy and Joseph Cotruvo Jr., discovered that in the mice, copper is hoarded by the liver, basically starving fat cells of copper so that they cannot properly regulate fat storage and burning in organs such as the stomach and pancreas. This overload is accompanied by lower than normal levels of fats, or lipids, in the blood.

"Lipolysis is the breakdown of large pieces of fat into smaller pieces so they can circulate in the blood and be burned throughout the body," he said. "We discovered that in these Wilson's mice, low copper in the fat cells made them unable to burn fat as well as normal mice."

They succeeded in tracking down exactly how copper works: It releases a brake on fat burning. Normally, a second messenger molecule called cyclic-AMP (cAMP) activates the enzymes that break down the fat molecules. They found, however, that another enzyme (phosphodiesterase 3, or PDE3) blocks cAMP, probably to prevent fat breakdown when it is not needed, such as when we're couch potatoes. Copper blocks this enzyme, thereby "putting a brake on a brake," Chang said.

Chang is continuing his study of copper's roles in the brain and in fat metabolism, looking for possible ways to target the copper pathway to treat neurodegenerative brain diseases or diseases of metabolism. He also is looking at copper's roles in perception and sleep.

These studies have led him also to explore the connections between the central nervous system - the brain and spinal cord - and the peripheral nervous system, which innervates all our organs, and how that may cause disease.

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The work was funded by the National Institutes of Health (GM 79465, GM067166, GM101502).
In a multinational collaboration, researchers from the Universities of Luxembourg, Ljubljana and Vienna have developed a new method to produce unique reflecting patterns that can be applied on valuable objects. As these patterns can't be cloned or copied, they could be used to identify products unambiguously in order to avoid counterfeiting.

In today's globalized and connected world, the ability to authenticate objects and people has become a security-critical business at many levels; personal, societal, and national. Object authentication is desirable, for instance, in the purchase of high-value objects. Buyers and sellers have a shared interest to prove that the goods that the customers receive are the same that they pay for, and not copies. Object authentication is of utmost importance in businesses that are threatened by counterfeited or cloned phones, sim-cards, debit-cards, and similar pieces of equipment. Sometimes, the object's holder is authenticated directly, as with passports, ID cards and badges. Currently in uptrend is the use of biometric authentication, such as fingerprint or iris recognition. Badges are mainly used to control access to high security areas, fingerprints mostly to open access to personal devices, such as a smart phone.

However, authentication strategies are not bulletproof: Objects can be forged, cards are regularly cloned, and even fingerprints can be stolen. The case of copied fingerprints has recently made the headlines, exposing a great risk with this approach: people cannot invalidate their fingerprints nor can they renew them, thus the stolen copies remain a threat indefinitely.

From this point of view, an attractive solution would be to have unclonable non-biometric physical tokens, which are as unique as the biometric elements in our bodies but available aplenty. For being commercially appealing, the production costs of such unique tokens need to be low. These features lead to the concept of Physical Unclonable Functions (PUFs). These are objects that respond in a unique way to physical inputs of different kinds. For instance, they scatter light in unpredictable directions or sparkle with variable colors when illuminated, react with unknown delays or start up in random states when switched on. PUFs are nowadays inside microchips, ensuring that the silicon components come from an authorized factory. Much more rare are optical PUFs, generating a response to light input that can be captured by a camera in order to authenticate the item of value, to which the PUF is attached.

In a cross-disciplinary collaboration between the Physics & Materials Science Research Unit (PhyMS) and the Interdisciplinary Center for Security and Trust (SnT) at the University of Luxembourg, Dr. Gabriele Lenzini (SnT) and the group of Prof. Jan Lagerwall (PhyMS) propose an entirely new type of PUF, based on the peculiar optics of spheres of a so-called cholesteric liquid crystal. Thanks to the self-assembled periodic structure that is characteristic of this type of liquid crystal, the spheres reflect specific colors in the same way as do butterfly or peacock wings. With the help of photonics experts Prof. Irena Drevensek-Olenik (University of Ljubljana) and Prof. Romano Rupp (University of Vienna), the team carried out a detailed analysis of the optics of a large number of such spheres, finding that the spheres communicate with each other in unexpected ways. This communication by light gives rise to a unique colorful pattern that can be tuned dynamically by changing the way the spheres are illuminated. Because different types of liquid crystal spheres can be arranged randomly in a token, generated patterns that the authors postulate are equally random, therefore it is impossible to copy the token and its related set of patterns, rendering it highly attractive as a PUF to authenticate people or objects.

In their paper, published in the renowned science journal Scientific Reports1, Geng et al. furthermore introduce a technique for ensuring adequate robustness of the spheres, such that they can be handled easily for preparing a PUF token, yet they are still delicate enough that an attempt to tamper with the token would break the spheres and thus invalidate the token. Moreover, they have developed a new method of annealing the spheres that drastically reduces production time, using a microfluidic process that can be scaled up at low cost. The authors discuss how this new category of PUF can be used in a variety of security applications, thereby aiding to solve a problem of great current societal importance.

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LOUISVILLE, Ky. - A group of researchers from the University of Louisville, Japan and Austria is the first to identify a protein, AF1q, associated with multiple myeloma and a condition that occurs in approximately one-fourth of very aggressive multiple myeloma, extramedullary disease or EMD.

The group will present their findings at the European Hematology Association's 21st Congress, June 10-12, in Copenhagen, Denmark. Their presentation is entitled "High expression of AF1q is an adverse prognostic factor and a prediction marker of extramedullary disease in multiple myeloma."

William Tse, M.D., the Marion F. Beard Endowed Chair in Hematology and chief of the Division of Blood and Bone Marrow Transplantation at UofL, was senior investigator on the project, working with researchers in Tokyo and Vienna.

Multiple myeloma is one of four types of myeloma and the most prevalent. It is a form of blood cancer that develops in the bone marrow. In multiple myeloma, normal plasma cells transform into malignant myeloma cells and produce large quantities of toxic abnormal immunoglobulin called monoclonal protein that can damage multiple organs. The monoclonal protein produced by the myeloma cells interferes with normal blood cell production.

The American Cancer Society estimates that 30,330 new cases of multiple myeloma will occur in the United States in 2016 and about 12,600 people will die from it.

Approximately 25 percent of patients with multiple myeloma also simultaneously develop extramedullary disease. This disease occurs when the myeloma cells form tumors outside of the bone marrow in the soft tissues or organs of the body. The prognosis of myeloma patients with EMD behaves like other metastatic cancers and is extremely poor because its clinical course is very aggressive, Tse said.

"We know that multiple myeloma with EMD involvement has an extremely poor outcome," Tse said. "However, not much is known about the mechanism in which EMD progresses."

The group looked at an oncogene, AF1q discovered in Tse's lab, which is expressed in hematological cancer cells and is known to be related to multiple myeloma. Its presence indicates a poor prognosis for the patient.

Tse and the team analyzed the degree of expression of AF1q in 117 patients with multiple myeloma. They found that EMD was present in 25 percent of patients with a low AF1q expression and in 44.7 percent of patients with a high AF1q expression.

"We found that the incidence of EMD was significantly higher in patients with high expression of AF1q than those with low expression," Tse said. "The significance of this finding gives us a tentative approach to target this marker and could lead to new therapies for this subtype of myeloma."

Tse's research team included Drs. Shotaro Hagiwara, the lead author and chief of hematology, and Sohtaro Mine of the National Center for Global Health and Medicine in Tokyo, Ana-Iris Schiefer of the Medical University of Vienna and Lukas Kenner of the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Cancer Research and Medical University of Vienna. The study patient cohort was organized by Hagiwara.

Tse practices with University of Louisville Physicians-Medical Oncology/Hematology and with UofL's James Graham Brown Cancer Center, a part of KentuckyOne Health.

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THIS IS A HOAX.

Because of the one-child-only law in China, combined with the practice of abandoning baby girls to make room for a boy, the country now has a gross gender imbalance of three boys for every girl under the age of 18. So to make sure at least one-third of the men still have a chance of marrying a Chinese woman, the Supreme People's Court of China just passed a law that will forbid Chinese women from marrying a non-Chinese man. But Chinese men will still be able to marry anyone they choose, regardless of race.

Business owners seem to be more concerned with how this new law will affect their businesses than the fairness of it. One owner of a matchmaking business says that allowing men more freedom with marriage is "common sense."

"I had feared that they might also ban men from interracial marriage," commented the owner of a successful matchmaking business in China's Fujian Province. "Thankfully common sense has prevailed, although by banning Chinese women from marrying foreigners, my business will have more competition."

Those in charge of English-speaking schools, on the other hand, are worried the law will prevent them from getting good teachers.

"The majority of teachers are male, and most end up wedding local women," said a spokesperson for a chain of English-teaching cram schools in Shanghai. "If our teachers are banned from marrying Chinese girls, they may not stay in the country as long, and we risk losing talented staff."

The law will go into effect by early 2018. Read the full story on East Asia Tribune.
In a milestone years in the making, a vaccine to prevent cholera, invented and developed by researchers at the University of Maryland School of Medicine's Center for Vaccine Development, was approved today by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

The vaccine, Vaxchora, is the only approved vaccine in the U.S. for protection against cholera. Its licensure allows for use in people traveling to regions in which cholera is common, including travelers, humanitarian aid workers, and the military.

PaxVax, a global biotechnology company based in California, received marketing approval from the FDA for Vaxchora, a single-dose oral, live attenuated cholera vaccine that is indicated for use in adults 18 to 64 years of age. Vaxchora is the only vaccine available in the U.S. for protection against cholera and the only single-dose vaccine for cholera currently licensed anywhere in the world.

The vaccine was invented in the 1980s at Center for Vaccine Development (CVD). Since 2009, CVD researchers have worked closely with PaxVax to develop the vaccine and secure FDA licensure approval.

"This important FDA decision is the culmination of years of dedicated work by many researchers," said Myron M. Levine, the Simon and Bessie Grollman Distinguished Professor at the University of Maryland School of Medicine (UM SOM). "For travelers to the many parts of the world where cholera transmission is occurring and poses a potential risk, this vaccine helps protect them from this disease. It is a wonderful example of how public-private partnerships can develop medicines from bench to bedside." Dr. Levine is co-inventor of the vaccine, along with James B. Kaper, Professor in the UM SOM Department of Microbiology and Immunology.

Cholera is an acute intestinal diarrheal infection acquired by ingesting contaminated food or water. Globally, cholera cases have increased steadily since 2005 and, millions of people are affected by this disease each year. Cholera can cause severe dehydration and death in less than 24 hours, if left untreated. While some cholera cases are rarely acquired in the U.S. from ingestion of uncooked seafood from the Gulf of Mexico, the vast majority of cases of domestic cholera cases occur in travelers to areas with epidemic or endemic cholera (for example, parts of Africa, Asia, or the Caribbean). A report from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggests that the true number of cholera cases in the U.S. is at least 30 times higher than observed by national surveillance systems. The currently recommended intervention to prevent infection is to avoid contaminated water and food. But studies have shown that 98 percent of travelers do not follow these precautions.

Vaxchora is expected to be commercially available later this year. The FDA approval is based on results from a phase 1 safety and immunogenicity trial, a phase 3 efficacy trial, and a phase 3 trial to test manufacturing consistency. The first two of these trials were led by Wilbur H. Chen, associate professor of medicine at UM SOM, and chief of the CVD's Adult Clinical Studies section. The pivotal efficacy trial, which demonstrated protection from cholera of more than 90 percent at 10 days and 80 percent at 3 months after vaccination, is the first instance the FDA has based the decision to approve a product on a human experimental challenge model. Therefore, the licensure of Vaxchora marks a significant regulatory milestone. The most common adverse reactions to Vaxchora in the clinical trials were tiredness, headache, abdominal pain, nausea/vomiting, lack of appetite and diarrhea.

Cholera is chiefly a disease of poverty, poor sanitation, and lack of access to safe drinking water, so the global health burden of cholera rests on those populations residing in vulnerable developing countries. The World Health Organization estimates the burden of cholera to be between 1.4 and 4.3 million cases per year globally. Dr. Chen said that the next steps for this cholera vaccine are to explore formulations that could be developed into successful strategies to prevent and control cholera in countries where cholera is common. These future activities would involve immunizing young children in developing countries; this group has the highest risk of dying from cholera.

"The FDA approval of a new vaccine for a disease for which there has been no vaccine available is an extremely rare event. The approval of Vaxchora is an important milestone for PaxVax and we are proud to provide the only vaccine against cholera available in the U.S.," said Nima Farzan, chief executive officer and president of PaxVax. "We worked closely with the FDA on the development of Vaxchora and credit the agency's priority review program for accelerating the availability of this novel vaccine. In line with our social mission, we have also begun development programs focused on bringing this vaccine to additional populations such as children and people living in countries affected by cholera."

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DENVER - The amino acid acetylcarnitine may help predict an individual's neurobehavioral performance during chronic sleep restriction, according to results of a new study (abstract 0251) from researchers at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania that will be presented at SLEEP 2016, the 30th annual meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies LLC.

Previous studies have shown that sleep loss degrades behavioral attention, cognitive processing and memory, but this study offers the first experimental evidence that acetylcarnitine -- which transports fatty acids into the mitochondria where they are broken down and oxidized and formed into energy -- may predict neurobehavioral vulnerability to sleep loss in healthy adults.

In the study at the sleep lab at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, participants' blood samples were taken after 10-12 hours of fasting following one night of baseline sleep (10 hours time in bed), chronic sleep restriction (5 consecutive nights of 4 hours time in bed), and one night of recovery sleep (12 hours time in bed).

The Psychomotor Vigilance Test (PVT), the Digit Symbol Substitution Task (DSST), the Digit Span Task (DS), the Karolinska Sleepiness Scale (KSS) and the Profile of Mood States (POMS) tests were administered every two hours while participants were awake.

The preliminary data associated acetylcarnitine with six neurobehavioral variables during sleep loss, including PVT lapses (longer than 500 millisecond responses) and errors, PVT response speed, DSST total correct, DS total correct, KSS scores, and POMS vigor scores -- but not at baseline or recovery. Higher levels of this molecule predicted poorer behavioral attention, slower ability to process information, and poorer memory and increased sleepiness.

"We know that there are robust differences in how individuals respond to sleep loss," said Namni Goel, PhD, a research associate professor of psychology in Psychiatry in the division of Sleep and Chronobiology, and lead author on the study. "Some people are very vulnerable, while others are more resistant to these effects. Identifying this marker is an important step in identifying measures to mitigate the disruptive effects of sleep loss in those who are more affected."

The findings have implications for government agencies and other institutions interested in predicting who may be vulnerable to sleep loss and finding ways to offset the negative effects of sleep loss when they occur.

These data build on earlier work by members of the Penn team, who previously found two markers of sleep debt that reliably track when a person is sleep deprived (Weljie et al 2015, PNAS 112(8):2569-74).

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Co-authors on the study include Arjun Sengupta, Ted Abel, Amita Sehgal, Aalim M. Weljie, and senior author David F. Dinges, all from Penn, as well as Peter Meerlo from the University of Groningen in The Netherlands.

This work was supported by the Department of the Navy, Office of Naval Research Award No. N00014-11-1-0361 (NG); NASA NNX14AN49G (NG); NIH grant R01 NR004281 (DFD); the National Space Biomedical Research Institute (NSBRI) through NASA NCC 9-58 (DFD); Clinical and Translational Research Center (CTRC) grant UL1TR000003; Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and the U.S. Army Research Office (TA, W911NF1010093).

Penn Medicine is one of the world's leading academic medical centers, dedicated to the related missions of medical education, biomedical research, and excellence in patient care. Penn Medicine consists of the Raymond and Ruth Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania(founded in 1765 as the nation's first medical school) and the University of Pennsylvania Health System, which together form a $5.3 billion enterprise.

The Perelman School of Medicine has been ranked among the top five medical schools in the United States for the past 18 years, according to U.S. News & World Report's survey of research-oriented medical schools. The School is consistently among the nation's top recipients of funding from the National Institutes of Health, with $373 million awarded in the 2015 fiscal year.

The University of Pennsylvania Health System's patient care facilities include: The Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania and Penn Presbyterian Medical Center -- which are recognized as one of the nation's top "Honor Roll" hospitals by U.S. News & World Report -- Chester County Hospital; Lancaster General Health; Penn Wissahickon Hospice; and Pennsylvania Hospital -- the nation's first hospital, founded in 1751. Additional affiliated inpatient care facilities and services throughout the Philadelphia region include Chestnut Hill Hospital and Good Shepherd Penn Partners, a partnership between Good Shepherd Rehabilitation Network and Penn Medicine.

Penn Medicine is committed to improving lives and health through a variety of community-based programs and activities. In fiscal year 2015, Penn Medicine provided $253.3 million to benefit our community.
DENVER - Since the 1980s, continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) - in which positive pressure is pushed through the nasal airways to help users breathe while sleeping - has been by far the most widely used treatment for obstructive sleep apnea (OSA). With more than 18 million people experiencing OSA, a number expected to rise, new results from a Penn case study of a new device implanted in the chest called hypoglossal nerve stimulation (HGNS) offers promise for patients with moderate to severe OSA who cannot tolerate CPAP. Researchers at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania will present data (abstract 0378) on their outcomes with hypoglossal nerve stimulation for the treatment of patients with sleep apnea at SLEEP 2016, the 30th annual meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies LLC.

The device is a pacemaker with a tiny generator and a sensing lead, but instead of using electrical pulses to control abnormal heart rate, the device uses two wires to stimulate the tongue. Patients use a remote control to turn on the device before going to sleep and turn it off upon waking up. A delay allows the user to fall asleep before the pulse generator begins stimulation. After detecting the user's breathing pattern, the machine stimulates the hypoglossal nerve (the nerve that controls tongue motion) which enlarges the upper airway.

In the current Penn case study, 20 implants were completed at the University of Pennsylvania between January 2015 and March 2016. All patients had information from a baseline polysomnography (PSG) recording prior to HGNS implant, as well as a post PSG approximately two months after HGNS, to assess the severity of their apnea and any change after treatment. Those who received the implant were typically overweight, middle aged, and had severe OSA.

Total apnea-hypopnea index (AHI) - which measures severity of sleep apnea by counting the number of pauses in breathing during sleep - for all patients significantly decreased an average of 35 events per hour after the device was planted, which corresponds to an average reduction of 84 percent. Additionally, the lowest oxygen level measured in the blood during the night significantly increased by 11 percent, from 79 percent to 90 percent.

In the previous STAR clinical trial, NCT01161420, which led to the device's FDA approval in April 2014 for patients unable to tolerate CPAP, patients implanted with the Inspire Upper Airway Stimulation device showed a 78 percent reduction in AHI and 80 percent fewer oxygen desaturation events (number of times the oxygen levels in the blood were low). These results were sustained three years after the device was implanted.

The STAR trial was conducted under controlled conditions, while the Penn study takes the next step by looking at outcomes in post-approval clinical use of the device. By replicating the success of the clinical trial, the findings show that the device is as successful in the general clinical population as it was in participants that met the previous clinical trial criteria.

"Considering that sleep apnea can lead to high blood pressure, heart attack, stroke, and other serious health problems, it is critically important that we study devices that may serve as another option instead of CPAP to treat patients with sleep apnea," said lead author Richard Schwab, MD, co-medical director of the Penn Sleep Center. "There is no perfect treatment option for obstructive sleep apnea, but our preliminary data suggest that hypoglossal nerve stimulation can effectively treat patients with sleep apnea who are unable to tolerate CPAP."

###

Co-authors on the study include Sarah E. Leinwand, MPH, Brendan T. Keenan, MS, and Erica R. Thaler, MD.

Penn Medicine is one of the world's leading academic medical centers, dedicated to the related missions of medical education, biomedical research, and excellence in patient care. Penn Medicine consists of the Raymond and Ruth Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania(founded in 1765 as the nation's first medical school) and the University of Pennsylvania Health System, which together form a $5.3 billion enterprise.

The Perelman School of Medicine has been ranked among the top five medical schools in the United States for the past 18 years, according to U.S. News & World Report's survey of research-oriented medical schools. The School is consistently among the nation's top recipients of funding from the National Institutes of Health, with $373 million awarded in the 2015 fiscal year.

The University of Pennsylvania Health System's patient care facilities include: The Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania and Penn Presbyterian Medical Center -- which are recognized as one of the nation's top "Honor Roll" hospitals by U.S. News & World Report -- Chester County Hospital; Lancaster General Health; Penn Wissahickon Hospice; and Pennsylvania Hospital -- the nation's first hospital, founded in 1751. Additional affiliated inpatient care facilities and services throughout the Philadelphia region include Chestnut Hill Hospital and Good Shepherd Penn Partners, a partnership between Good Shepherd Rehabilitation Network and Penn Medicine.

Penn Medicine is committed to improving lives and health through a variety of community-based programs and activities. In fiscal year 2015, Penn Medicine provided $253.3 million to benefit our community.
TORONTO, ON - Super-computer modelling of Earth's crust and upper-mantle suggests that ancient geologic events may have left deep 'scars' that can come to life to play a role in earthquakes, mountain formation, and other ongoing processes on our planet.

This changes the widespread view that only interactions at the boundaries between continent-sized tectonic plates could be responsible for such events.

A team of researchers from the University of Toronto and the University of Aberdeen have created models indicating that former plate boundaries may stay hidden deep beneath the Earth's surface. These multi-million-year-old structures, situated at sites away from existing plate boundaries, may trigger changes in the structure and properties at the surface in the interior regions of continents.

"This is a potentially major revision to the fundamental idea of plate tectonics," says lead author Philip Heron, a postdoctoral fellow in Russell Pysklywec's research group in U of T's Department of Earth Sciences. Their paper, "Lasting mantle scars lead to perennial plate tectonics," appears in the June 10, 2016 edition of Nature Communications.

Heron and Pysklywec, together with University of Aberdeen geologist Randell Stephenson have even proposed a 'perennial plate tectonic map' of the Earth to help illustrate how ancient processes may have present-day implications.

"It's based on the familiar global tectonic map that is taught starting in elementary school," says Pysklywec, who is also chair of U of T's Department of Earth Sciences. "What our models redefine and show on the map are dormant, hidden, ancient plate boundaries that could also be enduring or "perennial" sites of past and active plate tectonic activity."

To demonstrate the dominating effects that anomalies below the Earth's crust can have on shallow geological features, the researchers used U of T's SciNet - home to Canada's most powerful computer and one of the most powerful in the world- to make numerical models of the crust and upper-mantle into which they could introduce these scar-like anomalies.

The team essentially created an evolving "virtual Earth" to explore how such geodynamic models develop under different conditions.

"For these sorts of simulations, you need to go to a pretty high-resolution to understand what's going on beneath the surface," says Heron. "We modeled 1,500 kilometres across and 600 kilometres deep, but some parts of these structures could be just two or three kilometres wide. It is important to accurately resolve the smaller-scale stresses and strains."

Using these models, the team found that different parts of the mantle below the Earth's crust may control the folding, breaking, or flowing of the Earth's crust within plates - in the form of mountain-building and seismic activity - when under compression.

In this way, the mantle structures dominate over shallower structures in the crust that had previously been seen as the main cause of such deformation within plates.

"The mantle is like the thermal engine of the planet and the crust is an eggshell above," says Pysklywec. "We're looking at the enigmatic and largely unexplored realm in the Earth where these two regions meet."

"Most of the really big plate tectonic activity happens on the plate boundaries, like when India rammed into Asia to create the Himalayas or how the Atlantic opened to split North America from Europe," says Heron. "But there are lots of things we couldn't explain, like seismic activity and mountain-building away from plate boundaries in continent interiors."

The research team believes their simulations show that these mantle anomalies are generated through ancient plate tectonic processes, such as the closing of ancient oceans, and can remain hidden at sites away from normal plate boundaries until reactivation generates tectonic folding, breaking, or flowing in plate interiors.

"Future exploration of what lies in the mantle beneath the crust may lead to further such discoveries on how our planet works, generating a greater understanding of how the past may affect our geologic future," says Heron.

The research carries on the legacy of J. Tuzo Wilson, also a U of T scientist, and a legendary figure in geosciences who pioneered the idea of plate tectonics in the 1960's.

"Plate tectonics is really the cornerstone of all geoscience," says Pysklywec. "Ultimately, this information could even lead to ways to help better predict how and when earthquakes happen. It's a key building block."

###

MEDIA CONTACTS:

Philip Heron

Department of Earth Sciences

University of Toronto

011-0044-7857688947

philip.heron@utoronto.ca

Russell Pysklywec

Department of Earth Sciences

University of Toronto

1- 416-537-2683 (M)

russ@es.utoronto.ca

Sean Bettam

Communications, Faculty of Arts & Science

University of Toronto

1-416-946-7950

s.bettam@utoronto.ca
According to a new study by The University of Texas at Austin, increasing the diversity of pollinator species, including bees, flies and butterflies, can dramatically increase cotton production. The researchers estimate that in South Texas, the region they studied, increasing the diversity of pollinators could boost cotton production by up to 18 percent, yielding an increase in annual revenue of more than $1.1 million.

The research is published in the June 16 issue of the journal Agriculture, Ecosystems & Environment.

South Texas accounts for about 15 percent of the state's cotton production. Because pollinator populations and growing conditions vary across the state, it's difficult to extrapolate statewide. But the researchers say boosting pollinator diversity could be worth several millions of dollars to Texas cotton farmers.

Cotton is the world's most economically valuable nonfood crop. Texas alone produces 25 percent of U.S. cotton.

The researchers also examined what factors increase the diversity and abundance of pollinators in cotton fields. They found that the greater the area of natural land cover -- areas not used for farming or ranching -- within about 800 feet (or 250 meters) of cotton crops, the more diverse the pollinators that visit the plants.

Based on these findings, the researchers recommend several ways to increase the diversity of pollinators in cotton fields. Farmers can plant a row of wildflowers between rows of their crops or even on the edges of the crop field. In addition, farmers can introduce flowering crops into the crop rotation and reduce pesticide spraying, especially during the daytime.

One of the most important implications of this research is that local government officials "can increase cotton crop yield by supporting habitat for native pollinators," said Shalene Jha, assistant professor of integrative biology and senior author of the study. This gives an economic impetus to municipal projects that protect biodiversity, such as permanent wildflower spaces.

"We've shown that there are multiple benefits to biodiversity," Jha said. "With the right management, cotton farmers can have higher crop yields and support native plants and animals."

In addition to Jha, the study's authors are Sarah Cusser, a Ph.D. candidate at UT Austin; and John Neff, director of the Central Texas Melittological Institute.

The researchers estimate that in Texas, the boost in crop yield due to increased pollinator diversity would translate to an increase in annual revenue of $108 per acre.

The study focused on 12 field sites representing a wide range of landscapes across South Texas, one of four major cotton production regions in the state. The researchers netted pollinators foraging on cotton plants and determined their abundance and diversity; analyzed geographic information system, or GIS, data derived from satellites and other sources to map landscape types; and conducted hand-pollination experiments.

The cotton plant, which produces large flowers that later develop into the white fiber for which it is known, is able to produce cotton without pollinators to a certain extent, mostly by using its own pollen. However, by introducing pollinators, the pollen from one plant is spread to others, and this increases cotton yield significantly.

One key reason that a large diversity of pollinators is beneficial is that cotton blooming does not perfectly coincide with the most active times of the European honeybee, one of the most common pollinator species. Therefore, having a variety of native pollinators would allow more pollen distribution -- a necessary step in production of the harvestable cotton bolls.

Despite the fact that preservation of biodiversity and the development of agriculture might seem at odds, this new research shows not only that they can coexist, but that both are necessary to have a healthy economy and ecosystem.

###

This research was funded in part by the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, the U.S. Army Research Office, the National Science Foundation, and the Winkler Family Foundation. Work was done in collaboration with the Welder Wildlife Refuge and the Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service.
African researchers demonstrate a 100x increase in the amount of information that can be 'packed into light'

The rise of big data and advances in information technology has serious implications for our ability to deliver sufficient bandwidth to meet the growing demand.

Researchers at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa, and the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) are looking at alternative sources that will be able to take over where traditional optical communications systems are likely to fail in future.

In their latest research, published online today (10 June 2016) in the scientific journal, Scientific Reports, the team from South Africa and Tunisia demonstrate over 100 patterns of light used in an optical communication link, potentially increasing the bandwidth of communication systems by 100 times.

The work is freely available online at http://www.nature.com/articles/srep27674 [This link will only be available once the paper is published online.]

The idea was conceived by Professor Andrew Forbes from Wits University, who led the collaboration. The key experiment was performed by Dr Carmelo Rosales-Guzman, a Research Fellow in the Structured Light group in the Wits School of Physics, and Dr Angela Dudley of the CSIR, an honorary academic at Wits.

The first experiments on the topic were carried out by Abderrahmen Trichili of Sup'Com (Tunisia) as a visiting student to South Africa as part of an African Laser Centre funded research project. The other team members included Bienvenu Ndagano (Wits), Dr Amine Ben Salem (Sup'Com) and Professor Mourad Zghal (Sup'Com), all of who contributed significantly to the work.

Bracing for the bandwidth ceiling

Traditional optical communication systems modulate the amplitude, phase, polarisation, colour and frequency of the light that is transmitted. Yet despite these technologies, we are predicted to reach a bandwidth ceiling in the near future.

But light also has a "pattern" - the intensity distribution of the light, that is, how it looks on a camera or a screen.

Since these patterns are unique, they can be used to encode information:

pattern 1 = channel 1 or the letter A,

pattern 2 = channel 2 or the letter B, and so on.

What does this mean?

That future bandwidth can be increased by precisely the number of patterns of light we are able to use.

Ten patterns mean a 10x increase in existing bandwidth, as 10 new channels would emerge for data transfer.

At the moment modern optical communication systems only use one pattern. This is due to technical hurdles in how to pack information into these patterns of light, and how to get the information back out again.

How the research was done

In this latest work, the team showed data transmission with over 100 patterns of light, exploiting three degrees of freedom in the process.

They used digital holograms written to a small liquid crystal display (LCD) and showed that it is possible to have a hologram encoded with over 100 patterns in multiple colours.

"This is the highest number of patterns created and detected on such a device to date, far exceeding the previous state-of-the-art," says Forbes.

One of the novel steps was to make the device 'colour blind', so the same holograms can be used to encode many wavelengths.

According to Rosales-Guzman to make this work "100 holograms were combined into a single, complex hologram. Moreover, each sub-hologram was individually tailored to correct for any optical aberrations due to the colour difference, angular offset and so on".

What's next?

The next stage is to move out of the laboratory and demonstrate the technology in a real-world system.

"We are presently working with a commercial entity to test in just such an environment," says Forbes. The approach of the team could be used in both free-space and optical fibre networks.

###

Further information:

Project support

This project was supported by the African Laser Centre, a virtual centre funded by the South African Department of Science and Technology (DST) to support research collaborations between African countries in the field of photonics.

Paper abstract

Title: Optical communication beyond orbital angular momentum

Abderrahmen Trichili, Carmelo Rosales-Guzman, Angela Dudley, Bienvenu Ndagano, Amine Ben Salem, Mourad Zghal and Andrew Forbes

Mode division multiplexing (MDM) is mooted as a technology to address future bandwidth issues, and has been successfully demonstrated in free space using spatial modes with orbital angular momentum (OAM). To further increase the data transmission rate, more degrees of freedom are required to form a densely packed mode space. Here we move beyond OAM and demonstrate multiplexing and demultiplexing of over 100 modes using the radial and azimuthal degrees of freedom. By creating wavelength independent holograms we are able to demonstrate this technique on a spatial light modulator. Our results offer a route to higher bit rates for next generation optical networks.

Multimedia pack: Download images, video from Dropbox via this link: http://bit.ly/1Ybtj0X

Media interviews:

Professor Andrew Forbes

School of Physics

University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg

+27 82 823 1836

andrew.forbes@wits.ac.za
Established Aedes-mosquito population could spread the Zika virus in Europe this summer if infected travelers introduce the virus. An analysis of temperatures, vectorial capacity, basic reproductive number (R0), and air traveler flows suggests parts of Southern Europe may be at risk for Zika outbreaks between June and August. This according to a study, led by Umea University researchers in Sweden and published in the journal EBioMedicine.

"We know warm climates create the kind of conditions suitable for mosquito-borne illnesses to spread," says Joacim Rocklov, researcher at Umea University's Unit for Epidemiology and Global Health and co-author of the article.

"Vectorial capacity depends on a number of parameters but in general, warmer temperatures increase the rate in which the female mosquitos bite, the mosquito virus reproduction, and their virus transmission risk. The presence of established Aedes mosquito populations, the warmer climate and the coinciding peak flow of air travelers into Europe, is a triage making Southern Europe fertile ground for Zika."

Following a similar epidemiological study conducted on the similar dengue virus, the group of researchers led by Joacim Rocklov at Umea University, used a temperature dependent computer model to predict Zika virus infection risks for Europe. The research exploration was undertaken in close collaboration with the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC). In the analysis, the researchers overlaid data on monthly flows of airline travelers arriving in European cities from Zika-affected areas, data on month-by-month estimates of virus infection reproduction capabilities of Aedes-mosquito populations in Europe, and human population data within the areas where mosquito-borne transmission of the Zika virus could be possible.

The main findings, presented in EBioMedicine, a journal initiative integrating the Lancet and Cell, are:

The risk of mosquito-borne transmission of Zika virus is estimated to peak between June and August in parts of Southern Europe (see map)

The peak flow of air travelers from regions of the Americas affected by the Zika virus coincides with the peak in the Aedes-mosquitos capacity to transmit the virus.

The findings could help European public health officials to identify locations and times where the risk for Zika is heightened.

The risk assessment assumes that European Aedes-mosquitos have the same potential to spread the Zika virus as their South-, Middle- and North American counterparts.

Earlier research has shown that increasing temperatures will enlarge Europe's seasonal window for the potential spread of mosquito-borne viral disease and expand the geographic areas at risk for epidemics to include large parts of Europe. The threat includes tropical and sub-tropical viruses such as Zika and Dengue.

The Aedes mosquitos -- Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus -- are largely responsible for the transmission of the Zika virus. Both Aedes mosquitos are likely to become a fixture in Europe. Historically, Aedes mosquitos were present in many European countries during the first half of the 1900s. Aedes aegypti has recently been documented in Russia and Georgia. And current surveillance indicate that Aedes albopictus are present in much of Southern Europe and as far north as the Netherlands.

###

Read a digital publication of the article in EBioMedicine

Read a similar report from Umea University

Umea University is Sweden's fifth oldest university located in the mid-northern region of Sweden surrounded by tranquility and fresh air and still close to knowledge, expertise and ground-breaking research. The University has approximately 32,000 registered students and more than 4,200 employees. Read more at http://www.umu.se
LAist offers a fantastic look back at 100 years of the Santa Monica Hippodrome.

Such a beautiful, storied building. I loved reading the stories and memories of this iconic, waterfront landmark.

Via LAist:

In the 60s, the building had a very famous visitor, though many who encountered her were probably oblivious.

"Towards the end of her life, Marilyn Monroe was living in Brentwood and hung out at the Santa Monica Beach a lot," Harris says, noting that many of the iconic photos George Barris took of the actress were shot here.

Harris continues:

She would come to the Hippodrome to find solace. She'd sit on a bench and watch the horses go round and round. Being sensitive to who she was, she would come in disguise wearing a scarf and overcoat and sunglasses. One day, the gentleman who was operating the carousel walked up to her and said something along the lines of, 'Why do you come here every day? You're young and you should get a job.' She then revealed [her identity] and said, 'I do have a job, I'm Marilyn Monroe.'





On the second floor of the building, you'll currently find office spaces, including the office where Harris works. However, in the 60s and 70s, the second floor contained apartments. Author William Saroyan and musician Jimmy Henderson used one of the units to work, while actor Paul Sand and his then-girlfriend Joan Roan lived in another. Perhaps the most interesting person to live there was an outspoken activist named Colleen Creedon.





"[Creedon] was a prominent women's activist," Harris says. "She would protest the Vietnam War, she held fundraisers for Cesar Chavez and Daniel Ellsberg."



She was also close friends with musician Joan Baez, who often crashed at Creedon's place. In 1974, two young men lit the trash cans outside of Creedon's apartment ablaze. The flames licked up the side of the building to Creedon's unit. Creedon managed to escape the fire, but long believed that the arson was more calculated than two wayward youths causing trouble. She told Harris herself that she believed she was targeted because of her beliefs.



"Until the day she died, she insisted that the fire was set deliberately to shut her up," Harris said. "And, she might not be far off with that reasoning."



Creedon, who passed away a few years ago, long claimed that two other women activists in the area were also victims of arson. Whatever the cause, the fire permanently disrupted residential life above the carousel. The building was condemned and everyone was evicted. The upper floor would remain vacant until 1983, at which point it became office space.


Matt Taibbi takes to Rolling Stone to tell us about the lessons that the US military learned from the powerful bruising it received from Muhummad Ali's refusal to fight in Vietnam: namely, that America should fight its wars with all-volunteer armies whose ranks were disproportionately drawn from the poor and desperate, which dissipated the political pressure that arose from drafting the rich, the powerful and the famous to fight.

Muhammad Ali in the Sixties easily penetrated Pentagon propaganda about the enemy in the jungle by pointing out that he personally had no quarrel with the Vietnamese. He forced Americans to think about the moral consequences of killing other human beings half a world away who really had nothing to do with us, until we started herding them into "strategic hamlets."

But a generation later, we Americans mostly lack the instinct to even ponder those questions. We sit through movies like American Sniper that tell us that Iraqis are villains because they shoot at our soldiers. The question of why we were ever there in the first place to shoot or be shot at is not talked about as much.

In large part that's because the government has successfully sanitized the use of force. The brutality and ugliness of war is mostly kept separate from pop culture. Wars look like video games to young people today. This isn't an accident. It's the result of billions of dollars of research and propaganda devoted to the problem of preventing the wholesale attacks of conscience that broke out during the Sixties.


Leaving the European Union could make the UK a less attractive place for international students to study and could also lead to a brain drain with top graduates seeking work overseas, research suggests.First, a report from the Institute for Social and Economic Research (ISER) points out that students from EU countries are among the strongest performers in UK universities and suggests they are attracted to study in the country due to not needing a visa or a work permit.They are more likely to earn a first class degree than their British colleagues and twice as likely to go on to post-graduate studies, the research found and it says that it is likely that Brexit would reduce the flow of these high performing students in a variety of ways.New immigration rules, for example, could discourage students from taking up studies in the UK, or from remaining in the country after graduation and they would also likely face higher tuition fees.Understanding what Brexit would mean for EU domiciled students in higher education, and the knock on effects on the graduate labour force, is a complicated question, the report explains.However, we can safely assume that the process of negotiating exit from the EU would create a period of significant uncertainty, complicate the procedures of recruitment for education and work, and could well make the UK a less desirable place to study during the period of transition, it adds.Secondly, a survey from education services consultants Hobsons which asked more than 10,000 foreign students for their views on the UK leaving the EU found that 47% said such a move would make the country less attractive to study in.However, 17% said that they would find the UK more attractive outside of the EU, while another 35% said a British exit would make no difference to them.But a breakdown of the figures shows that among the European students some 82% of said a Brexit would make the UK less appealing compared to 35% of non-EU students.Referring to the nearly half of respondents who said a post-Brexit UK would be less attractive, Hobsons estimates that translates into more than 113,000 foreign students, about 50,000 EU students and another 63,000 from outside the EU, that could be put off studying in the country with a potential loss of international student fees of up to 690 million.For universities in the UK, the market is tougher than ever before, and growth can no longer be depended on, said Hobsons EMEA managing director Jeremy Cooper.The UK higher education sector has faced major challenges but international students still represent a significant, strategic opportunity for UK universities. In terms of the EU, the results of this survey demonstrate precisely what scale the impact of the EU referendum could be felt on, he added.
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KENEDY  Ranchers in drought-prone South Texas usually celebrate every drop of water that falls their way, but when an oil field services company pumped the contents of a frac pond onto his property April 30, Tommy Shockome called the sheriffs department.

Shockome and neighbor Gilbert Torres watched the water pour from the lined pond on another ranch onto their properties southwest of Kenedy, one of the busiest areas of the Eagle Ford Shale, a 400-mile oil field that arcs across South Texas.

The water was brown and rust-colored and foamy. And it was everywhere  flooding Torres terraced land before running across Shockomes property and into his pond. Some of the waste eventually disappeared down a county road.

The call to the sheriff was an attempt to make sure that someone else saw what happened, but it was also the start of what would come to be a weeks-long circle of state, federal and corporate bureaucracy for the neighbors to navigate.

I felt like a pingpong ball going back and forth on the phone, Shockome said. That was my biggest beef, how long it took.

Releasing or spilling water onto someones land falls into a gray area for monitoring in the Texas oil patch, and its impossible to know how often this happens. The ranchers had landed in a regulatory no mans land.

International oil company Statoil ASA, based in Stavanger, Norway, built the frac pond, which is commonly used to temporarily hold water used for hydraulic fracking. Similar ponds dot the South Texas oil field, where fracking requires 4 million to 5 million gallons of water per well.

Companies must report oil spills of more than five barrels  around 210 gallons of fluid  to the Texas Railroad Commission. But unless a fresh or brackish water release contains at least that much oil in it, it isnt tracked by the states oil and gas regulator or any other agency.

Oil companies can drain water onto a ranch if they have permission from the landowner, but its supposed to stay on that site and not flow to other properties.

Who knows how much of that stuff is going on in the Eagle Ford? Its like bulldozers moving late at night, said attorney Jim Bradbury, who is based in Fort Worth and works primarily on environmental and water issues. It absolutely should not happen. They did things so horribly wrong, and it sounded to me like they knew what they were doing.

In Shockomes case, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality received a complaint but determined that it fell under the responsibility of the railroad commission. That agency said it first learned about the incident May 2 and sent an inspector the next day but didnt find any violations, agency spokeswoman Ramona Nye said by email.

The agency later switched direction. Statoil Texas Onshore Prop received a letter May 16 citing a violation of Statewide Rule 8, which covers water pollution and protection.

Our district office is monitoring the situation until the operator achieves compliance with commission rules, Nye said. Additionally, soil and water sampling was required to determine the type of fluid released.

On May 20, nearly three weeks after the water release, an environmental company spent nearly six hours taking water and soil samples from Shockomes and Torres properties and from the ranch where the water pond  since bulldozed back into the earth  used to stand. A railroad commission inspector was on site.

Shockome had been able to loop in the Environmental Protection Agencys Dallas office, which outlined protocols to follow and locations to test soil and water, though the EPA did not visit the site.

The tests showed elevated chloride levels in the water, which Statoil said were naturally occurring in the area and within regulatory guidelines. There was also some grease and oil, which Statoil said in its report to the railroad commission were not at levels threatening to human health and could have come from farming equipment and activities.

Statoil spokesman Peter Symons said the company had permission from the landowner where the pond was located to release water on that property. Though a service company pumped the water, Statoil is ultimately responsible for the site, he said.

This is a regrettable situation and something we feel very bad about and want to make sure this doesnt happen again, Symons said. The company is going through an internal review.

The water was fresh, Symons said, and should not cause any environmental damage, though the company will take follow-up samples. It didnt create any remediation requirement under regulation standards, Symons said.

An environmental report prepared by a service company for Statoil a few days before the water was pumped from the pond said the water was safe to release as long as the surface owner gave permission.

The pond didnt hold drilling waste or serve as a production reserve pit, so before the release it was not tested for pollutants such as oil or benzene, a sweet-smelling carcinogen.

But the neighbors said they didnt feel that they could trust that first report.

How do I know if that water is contaminated? Priscilla Torres asked. We dont have much. But for what we do have, dang it, dont come mess us up. Theres all these what-ifs. This is not right. They sure as hell would not like it if this happened to them.

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She joined Shockome in making calls to people at various agencies, most of whom wanted to pass her off to colleagues or other agencies. I call them and they dont call back, she said. Its like calling the cops and they dont do anything.

Attorney Bradbury said the experience is not uncommon.

The worst part is you call the state, and youre paying these people to do this sort of thing, Bradbury said. This is a softball. It didnt follow the regulations even if it was fresh water.

Attorney Robert Park of Uhl, Fitzsimons, Jewett and Burton, a firm that often represents landowners in oil and gas deals, said he had not heard of a situation where a frac pond, in which water is often stored in advance of hydraulic fracturing, had been pumped onto another property.

More common complaints have to do with water pouring off large caliche drilling pads onto a neighbors ranch or with surface mining for things such as gravel because such activity can alter the grade of the land, sending storm water rushing onto neighboring properties.

Normally, theyre a bit smarter to discharge somewhere they have permission, Park said I have never heard of anyone draining a frac tank and just letting it go.

If land or water gets polluted, Park said, regulators usually require a cleanup that falls short of what landowners think is appropriate. Theyll just make them dig up some topsoil and add amendments to the topsoil. Thats about all youre going to get, Park said. Its not usually to a level of what the landowner would want.

That leaves landowners who want to pursue it further with a trespass and nuisance claim in the court system, Park said.

Shockome said he simply wants to know why his pond remains brown a month later. He said Statoil had told him it would have an environmental manager explain the water and soil test results and answer questions but has withdrawn that offer.

They say its OK, but why do I have brown water? What is that? Shockome asked. They created this situation. Im not real pleased with how this was handled.

jhiller@express-news.net

Twitter: @Jennifer_Hiller
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Microsoft scientists have demonstrated that by analyzing large samples of search engine queries, they may in some cases be able to identify internet users who are suffering from pancreatic cancer  even before they have received a diagnosis of the disease.

The scientists said they hoped their work could lead to early detection of cancer. Their study was published this week in the Journal of Oncology Practice by Dr. Eric Horvitz and Dr. Ryen White, the Microsoft researchers, and John Paparrizos, a Columbia University graduate student.

We asked ourselves, If we heard the whispers of people online, would it provide strong evidence or a clue that somethings going on? Horvitz said.

The researchers focused on searches conducted on Bing, Microsofts search engine, that indicated someone had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. From there, they worked backward, looking for earlier queries that could have shown that the Bing user was experiencing symptoms before the diagnosis. Those early searches, they believe, can be warning flags.

While five-year survival rates for pancreatic cancer are extremely low, early detection of the disease can prolong life in a very small percentage of cases. The study suggests that early screening can increase the five-year survival rate of pancreatic patients to 5 to 7 percent from just 3 percent.

The researchers reported that they could identify 5 to 15 percent of pancreatic cases with false positive rates of as low as 1 in 100,000. The researchers noted that false positives could lead to raised medical costs or create significant anxiety for people who later found out they were not sick.

The data used by the researchers was anonymized, meaning it did not carry identifying markers such as a user name, so the individuals conducting the searches could not be contacted.

A logical next step would be to figure out what to do with that search information. One possibility would be some sort of health service where users could allow their searches to be collected, allowing scientists to monitor for questions that indicate warning flag symptoms.

The question: What might we do? Might there be a Cortana for health some day? said Horvitz, in a reference to the companys speech-oriented online personal assistant software service.

Although the researchers declined to offer specific details, White is now the chief technology officer of health intelligence in a recently created Health & Wellness division at Microsoft.

They acknowledged that health-related data generated from web search histories was still new territory for the medical profession.

I think the mainstream medical literature has been resistant to these kinds of studies and this kind of data, Horvitz said. Were hoping that this stimulates quite a bit of interesting conversation.

The new research is based on the ability of the Microsoft team to accurately distinguish between web searches that are casual or based on anxiety and those that are genuine searches for specific medical symptoms by people who are experiencing them, he noted.

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Both a computer scientist and a medical doctor by training, Horvitz said he had been exploring this area in part because of a phone conversation with a close friend who had described symptoms. Based on their conversation, Horvitz advised him to contact his doctor. He received a diagnosis of pancreatic cancer and died several months later.

The availability of vast sets of behavior data based on individual web queries using the search engines offered by companies such as Google and Microsoft has for a number of years been seen as a potential indicator of health-related information.

In 2009, Google published a research paper that explored the potential of early detection of flu epidemics based on statistical analysis of web search logs, though the results of that effort ultimately fell short of what had been hoped.

More recently, Microsoft researchers have had significant success in finding early evidence of adverse drug reactions from patterns observed in web logs. In 2013, they detected unreported side effects of prescription drug before they were found by the Food and Drug Administrations warning system.

The researchers are exploring evidence related to a range of devastating diseases.

They also said that unlike the drug interaction data, which would be of direct value to the FDA as an early alert, it was possible that symptom alert data might be made available as part of a broader online health service that a company like Microsoft might offer.
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WASHINGTON  The Obama administration on Friday authorized six American air carriers to begin direct flights to Cuba as soon as this fall, paving the way for the resumption of scheduled air travel between the United States and Cuba for the first time in more than 50 years.

The Department of Transportation said it had approved applications from American Airlines, Frontier Airlines, JetBlue Airways, Silver Airways, Southwest Airlines and Sun Country Airlines to begin flying to Cuba as early as this fall from Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Chicago, Philadelphia, and Minneapolis/St. Paul.

The action was the latest piece of President Barack Obamas push to normalize relations between Washington and Havana after more than a half-century of hostility. In place of U.S. efforts to isolate Cuba, the new policy encourages Americans to travel to the island nation, 90 miles south of Florida.

The service approved Friday will fly to nine Cuban cities, including Cayo Largo, Cienfuegos, Matanzas and Santiago de Cuba. The Transportation Department said it would announce routes to the Cuban capital, Havana, later this year.

U.S. officials signed an agreement with Cuban authorities in February to allow for re-establishing scheduled flights  including 20 daily round-trip flights to Havana  and the Department of Transportation invited U.S. carriers to apply. Interest in flying to Havana was overwhelming; the airlines applied for three times as many flights daily as the agreement allows, and the administration is still choosing among those proposals.

The flights are an example of Obamas determination to use executive and administrative authority to get around the U.S. embargo with Cuba, including a tourism ban.

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The Treasury Department in March relaxed travel restrictions to allow Americans to take their own people to people educational trips to Cuba without getting special permission from the U.S. government, and it lifted limits on the use of American dollars there.

Last year, President Obama announced that it was time to begin a new journey with the Cuban people, Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx said in a statement. Today, we are delivering on his promise.

Many Republicans oppose Obamas effort to establish warmer relations with Cuba, and despite bipartisan efforts to scrap the statutory restrictions, Congress has yet to approve legislation that would do so.
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BOERNE  Donald Burtons expectations were far exceeded at Champion High School on Thursday when he came to pick up a mobile hunting blind that hed commissioned welding students to build for use by disabled veterans.

Rather than modifying the small flatbed trailer left by Burton in January, Dorman Vicks class of award-winning welders used donated materials to create  from scratch  a flashy blind/trailer combo.

Its overwhelming, said Burton, a quadriplegic from an incident when he was a Green Beret, absorbing the surprise before a slew of cameras and onlookers, including students, military retirees and school district officials.

Tears mixed with sweat in the toasty welding shop as Burton reunited with Bob Hand of Cibolo, who was his battalion sergeant major when Burton was injured, and accepted gifts of a hunting rifle and hunting trips.

Wow! This is totally awesome, said Burton, 57, inspecting the mobile blind whose exterior bears the logo of the Texas Disabled Veterans Association, a nonprofit he helped form in 2009.

Vick, whose welding students have taken top honors in each of the past 10 years in the Skills USA competition, said they performed well in completing the project under a tight deadline before school ended.

It held a special allure because it combined agriculture, manufacturing and the military, three areas in which America once excelled and needs to again, he said.

Were just honored to be able to do it, Vick told Burton and the crowd, which also included military representatives and school district officials. Out of everything weve ever made in this shop, this means the most.

Burton said hed heard the schools reputation for welding prowess when he asked Vick for help oufitting his old 4-by-8 trailer for use by disabled hunters. He had hunted all his life before his injury, which happened during drug interdiction work in Peru in 1993, he said, and just last year took it up again using a specially adapted rifle.

Burton said he will use the trailer/blind himself and plans to make it available to other disabled veterans so they, too, can again enjoy the sport.

He said the Texas Disabled Veterans Association has about 450 members. It provides free refurbished computers to veterans, snacks and drinks to Audie Murphy VA Hospital patients and wireless services for some of them.

Morgan Burgett, 16, said Vick drives her and other students hard because he wants them to succeed. The veterans project was special, she said, noting, Its good to give back, because they give so much to us.

Watching from the sidelines, Boerne Independent School District Superintendent David Stelmazewski said: Were very proud of our welding program and we appreciate our kids. They understand the meaning of community service.

Taking a cue from the television show Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, Vick had led Burton to think hed get his modified flatbed trailer when summoned from his Bergheim home to the school.

With the crowd hiding in the welding bays, Vick raised a garage-style door to reveal the old trailer, unimproved, telling Burton, You deserve way more!

Up went the next door. The glimmering steel trailer/blind has a 6-by-10 interior, a roll-up ramp and cedar shooting benches.

I thank you for what youve done for my husband today from the bottom of my heart, Patricia Burton told the crowd. Yall are a blessing.

But wait! Theres more. Dale Garner of Wheelers Feed & Outfitters in Boerne presented Burton with a Weatherby rifle, equipped with a scope.

It can be used during hunting trips promised by retired Army Lt. Gen. Leroy Cisco, a co-owner of Texas Trophy Hunters Association  outings that he plans to feature on the groups television show.

Were going to make a movie star out of him, said Cisco, whos also the founder and CEO of the Military Warriors Support Foundation.
WASHINGTON  Melissa Padilla could not have known two years ago that her discovery in the Dartmouth College library would lead to a battle in Congress over Library of Congress word choices that could live on in the 2016 elections.

Growing up in Georgia, Mexican-born Padilla often had heard illegal alien, a phrase she detested. But she was unprepared to see those words over and over in the rarefied environs of the Ivy League institution where hard study had landed her.

People use it in a derogatory way in conversations, she said this week. But seeing it in an academic setting seemed really inappropriate. These are safe places where learning is a positive experience and dialogue is supposed to make things better.

The Library of Congress, citing a campaign by Padilla and others, in March declared that it would drop both illegal alien and alien from its subject headings  a decision affecting schools, research institutions and major public libraries across the country and abroad.

Citing the pejorative tone of illegal aliens, the library said it would substitute unauthorized immigration and change the heading aliens to noncitizens.

But the issue is far from over. A GOP-led effort may force the Library of Congress to back off, fueling even deeper divisions in Congress over immigration and perhaps further threatening Republican Party efforts to appeal to Latino voters.

The Republican-controlled U.S. House has rebuffed furious efforts by Rep. Joaquin Castro, D-San Antonio, and allies to allow the Library of Congress to proceed with the changes.

Legislation advanced on Friday would order the library to abide by language in the U.S. Code of Laws, which uses aliens. After Castros three-day effort, 175 Democrats withheld support from a bill to fund Congress that includes the order to the library. It passed nonetheless.

Never before has Congress interfered with its word choices for cataloging at the library, which was established in 1800 and stands as the nations oldest federal cultural institution. The prospect of it happening now, in combination with immigration politics, suggests that the issue will live on in the fall elections.

Castro spoke of his family heritage in the House debate Friday.

In 1922, the only grandparent I would come to know came from Mexico to the United States. She was not a rapist or a murderer or an alien. She was a 6-year-old girl whose parents had died around the time of the Mexican Revolution, and the closest relatives that could take them in, her and her sister, were in Texas, he said.

I bet if we went around this chamber, I know there would be beautiful stories, similar stories, of ancestors who came from Germany and Italy and Ireland and Africa and Asia and every corner of the world. They are the immigrants to this country. They are the strength of this country. And language matters.

He added in an interview: Whats surprising to me is that Republicans are shocked at how they ended up with Donald Trump as their nominee. Its things like this that get you a Donald Trump.

Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida, chair of the Democratic National Committee, also failed to advance her amendment preserving the Library of Congress changes.

We are members of Congress, not captains of the word police. Free the card catalog, she said.

Rep. Louise Slaughter of New York, another of Castros Democratic allies, likened the GOP action to Trumps racially charged comments about California U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel.

With fallout still landing over Trumps recent remarks about Curiels alleged lack of fairness and his Mexican heritage, Republicans approached the Library of Congress issue cautiously.

The Library of Congress should use terms consistent with the U.S. Code as opposed to terms preferred by Dartmouth College, said Rep. Tom Graves, R-Ga.

Earlier, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and U.S. Rep. Lamar Smith of San Antonio, both Republicans, criticized the librarys misguided decision, contending that it would impede researchers understanding of the historical landscape of immigration law.

There is no other way to put this: the library has bowed to the political pressure of the moment, the Texans wrote in a letter to David Mao, acting librarian of Congress.

Smith added in a statement: These terms are legal terms of art that have been enacted into law by Congress. If individuals want to revise terms in the United States Code, they can only do so by passing legislation.

Republicans blocked Castros efforts on procedural grounds. He was not allowed to offer amendments, which were characterized as poison pills that could impede passage of the congressional spending bill.

Then the full House ruled out of order Castros attempt to force a vote on his legislation to remove alien references from federal law  a change that also would have the effect of letting the Library of Congress proceed with new subject headings.

The action leaves the Library of Congress in cataloging limbo as it moves forward with plans to make the wording changes throughout its system. The library routinely changes subject headings and did so nearly 5,000 times last year, updating and modernizing an indexing system used by thousands of libraries.

The Library of Congress planned to complete the changes this summer, but that decision rests with what ultimately emerges from Congress this year.

If the law changes, we will follow it, Library of Congress spokeswoman Jennifer Gavin said.

The American Library Association had joined with Dartmouth students in recommending removal of illegal alien.

Norm Medeiros, president of organizations Association for Library Collections and Technical Services, said he was dismayed by the House action.

To any reasonable person, the word alien is offensive when were thinking about another person. We ought to have shared respect for our humanity, said Medeiros, associate librarian at Haverford College in Philadelphia.

He added: The political rhetoric and the confrontational attitude that this election cycle has engendered is really why we have these partisan politics.

Padilla, on pace to graduate from Dartmouth next year, has a new project: In September she leaves for Mexico to shoot a documentary film about Mexican-Americans who have moved to Mexico after growing up in the United States.

She said she is disappointed that the movement she helped start is, for the moment, stalled.

Its kind of funny that they are taking time out of their schedules to change one word when they should be busy with other things, she said.

bill.lambrecht@hearstdc.com
AUSTIN  Attorney General Ken Paxton, facing criminal indictments for violating state securities-fraud laws, has hired a former top lawyer for the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to fight a related civil case filed against him by that agency.

His new attorney, Matthew Martens, immediately filed court papers Thursday to dismiss the SEC charges against him.

In a prepared statement, Paxton said Martens will head the legal team defending him in a pending securities-fraud case filed against him in April by the SEC. Paxton is accused of accused of raising hundreds of thousands of dollars for a company called Servergy Inc. without disclosing he was making a commission.

The case dates to when Paxton was a member of the Texas House, before he was elected attorney general in 2014.

Martens, a partner in the Washington law firm of Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr that touts itself as one of the countrys leading securities-defense practices, served as chief litigation counsel at the SEC.

While there, he led the agencys enforcement litigation nationwide and was lead counsel in the high-profile securities fraud case against Goldman Sachs trader Fabrice Tourre. Before joining the SEC, he spent nearly a decade as a federal prosecutor after beginning his legal career as a law clerk to U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist.

Having Matt focused on responding to the SECs case will allow me to focus on my duties as Texas attorney general and the interests of the people I serve, Paxton said in a statement Thursday. I did not violate the federal securities laws, and I intend to defend myself vigorously against these allegations.

In new court filings, Martens sought to dismiss the entire SEC case, insisting that Paxton had not made any false statements to investors, that investors are not alleged to have lost any money and that Paxton himself was deceived by the founder of Servergy, William Mapp, who also is named as a defendant in the SEC case.

Paxton repeatedly has denied the allegations in both the SEC case and the separate pending criminal indictments against him.

According to the SEC case, Paxton persuaded five investors to put $840,000 into Servergy  and did so without attempting to confirm Mapps claims about the sales of its data servers and their technological capabilities. A month later, Paxton received 100,000 shares of stock in the company.

Two years ago, at the time Paxton was running for attorney general, the state securities board fined him $1,000 for failing to register with the board, as required under state law.

Thursdays filings and announcement were the latest in Paxtons legal travails that began in July 2015, when a Collin County grand jury indicted him on two first-degree and one third-degree felony charges.

Paxton is accused of persuading two investors to buy at least $100,000 worth of stock in Servergy without disclosing that he would be compensated for it, according to court filings in the criminal case.

Last week, a Dallas appeals court rejected Paxtons request to dismiss the criminal case on various legal grounds. His attorneys have not said whether they will appeal that dismissal to the Texas Court of Criminal appeals or go to trial.

Paxton is the first Texas attorney general to be indicted while in office since the early 1980s, when Jim Mattox was charged with commercial bribery. He later beat those charges.
The second suspect in a robbery attempt that resulted in the death of a 5-year-old girl at her Southeast Side home was arrested early Thursday.

Abdi Abdi, 18, has been charged with capital murder in the death of Ana Garza, who was shot in the head while she slept in the front bedroom of her home in the 800 block of Pecan Valley last week.

San Antonio Police Department spokesman Jesse Salame said Abdi was among four men who backed into the driveway of the home June 1 and lured a man, later identified as Carlos Aguilar, outside by telling him they had hit his car.

According to an arrest warrant affidavit, Aguilar was then held at gunpoint by the four men, one of whom had a shotgun that they later told police was empty.

They were about to walk him inside the house when he yelled at his family to close the door, investigators said. Aguilar told police he tried pulling away when he was shot in the neck and then several more times in the upper torso after he fell to the ground.

After that, the men fired their guns at the house, the affidavit states. One bullet went into Anas bedroom and hit her in the head, investigators said.

She died Wednesday after a week on life support. Aguilar is expected to survive his injuries, police said.

Investigators have not determined why the men chose to rob Aguilar.

As far as we can tell, there is no indication that they knew this guy, Salame said Thursday. Why they picked him, if there was a particular reason, I dont know.

The men took off in their vehicle after the shooting but were later spotted and chased down by patrol officers.

The first suspect in the case, Murjan Issack Abdi, 20, was arrested near the 400 block of Briarglen shortly after the attack.

According to an affidavit, he told police that the men planned to rob the residents of marijuana and that no one was supposed to be shot.

Authorities believe that Murjan Abdi and Abdi Abdi are cousins.

Murjan Abdi was initially booked into Bexar County Jail on a charge of aggravated robbery, which has been upgraded to capital murder.

Another witness told police this week that Abdi Abdi said he did not mean to shoot Garza. We all fired guns, he said, according to the affidavit.

Salame said investigators are still searching for two other suspects in the case. To provide information, call 210-225-7867.

This is senseless, Salame said. Its incomprehensible, and were really glad to take this guy into custody.

mdwilson@express-news.net
Next week marks the one-year anniversary of the day Brad Parscales life went from busy to insanely hectic.

On June 16, 2015, Parscales client, Donald J. Trump, escalator-ed his way to an announcement that he was officially seeking the Republican nomination for president of the United States.

Parscale, 40, a San Antonio-based web designer, had been tapped by Trump early last year to build a website for the brash billionaires exploratory campaign committee. Trump joked at his campaign announcement that while President Barack Obama spent billions on the creation of a website for the Affordable Care Act, I hire people, they do a website. It costs me $3.

In fact, Parscales role with the Trump campaign  which includes digital consulting services and maintenance of the website he created  has been a bit more lucrative than that.

Between May 15 of last year and April 29 of this year, Trumps campaign paid Parscales firm, Giles-Parscale, nearly $2 million, campaign finance reports show.

In response to an interview request for this column, Parscale texted the following message: Right now all I can say is I am now the national digital director. I am unable to comment further.

Trumps campaign payments of $1,958,864 to Giles-Parscale over the past year are significant because Trump has prided himself on running a frugal operation that generates major mileage from earned media.

Hillary Clinton, Trumps likely general election opponent, has spent more than three times as much as Trump ($179 million to $56 million) during the 2016 presidential-election cycle. Parscales work is one the few services for which Trump has been willing to fork over considerable campaign funds.

Trump turned to Parscale because the web designer had won his trust over the past four years on a variety of projects.

In 2012, the New York mogul awarded Giles-Parscale a contract to build a website for Trumps real-estate interests. That led to work on a site for Trumps wife, Melania, a redesign for the Trump Winery site and Parscales pro-bono work for a foundation created by Trumps son, Eric.

Giles-Parscale is a true class act in every regard and one of the best in the business, Eric Trump said in 2013.

Parscales eye-catching campaign website won plaudits from Slate (hardly the most Trump-friendly media source), which concluded that almost all of the 2016 presidential-campaign websites were boring, longwinded, ultimately off-putting, and indistinguishable from all the others. Except for Donald Trumps.

On Trumps campaign-kickoff day, Parscale admitted on Twitter to some early nervousness about how his website would hold up to the inevitable spike in traffic. He added, with obvious gratification, that donaldj.trump.com was handling nearly 10K requests a sec with ease.

Until Trump hired him for the campaign, Parscale hadnt demonstrated much of a taste for partisan politics. According to the Bexar County Elections Office, he never voted in a local primary election until this year, when he cast his ballot predictably, given his most famous client  in the Republican primary. He has only voted in one general election (2012) in Bexar County.

According to the Federal Election Commission, he has donated $484.99 to Trumps campaign.

In recent months, however, his commitment to free-market conservatism has been unmistakable. Two weeks ago, he mixed it up on Twitter with Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, one of the Democratic Partys leading progressive voices.

I fight for working families every day, @realDonald Trump. You fight only for Donald Trump, Warren wrote.

Parscale shot back: Im working class  @realDonaldTrump has fought for me. He creates jobs and fulfills dreams. You spill rhetoric.

Parscale, through his work with the local collective TechBloc, has also emerged as a leading voice in favor of ride-hailing companies Uber and Lyft, and he successfully urged the city to soften the regulations that caused both companies to bolt San Antonio early last year.

When it comes to local matters, Parscales focus on attracting tech-savvy millennials and reinvigorating San Antonios urban core often brings to mind former Mayor Julian Castros passionate calls for a Decade of Downtown.

Of course, if Castro gets picked (as some predict) to be Clintons running mate, Parscale will be working for the other team.

ggarcia@express-news.net

Twitter: @gilgamesh470
MEXICO CITY  The drug that killed Prince has become a favorite of Mexican cartels because it is extremely potent, popular in the United States  and immensely profitable, American officials say.

U.S. law enforcement and border authorities warn that Mexican cartels are using their own labs to produce the drug, fentanyl, as well as receiving shipments from China. Then the cartels distribute the substance through their vast smuggling networks to meet rising American demand for opiates and pharmaceuticals.

It is really the next migration of the cartels in terms of making profit, said Jack Riley, acting deputy administrator of the Drug Enforcement Administration. This goes to the heart of the marketing genius of the cartels. They saw this coming.

It is still unclear how Prince, who authorities say died of an overdose of fentanyl in April, obtained the drug. Doctors can prescribe fentanyl, a synthetic opioid, for cancer patients and for palliative care, including end of life treatment.

But the presence of illicit fentanyl is surging to levels not seen since 2006, when a similar streak of overdose deaths in the United States was connected to a single laboratory in Mexico.

Officials say the popularity of fentanyl among the cartels hews to a familiar narrative: changes in the illegal drug market and basic opportunism.

As a crackdown on prescription drugs drove the cost of pills like oxycodone higher, cartels began banking on users opting for heroin instead. It was cheaper, more readily available and easier to procure. Now, Fentanyl is a more lucrative  and deadly  iteration.

Hundreds of Americans have died in fentanyl-related overdoses in recent years. Yet it offers tremendous profits for criminal networks in places like Massachusetts, where the fentanyl epidemic has arguably hit hardest.

A kilogram of heroin, or about 2.2 pounds, purchased from Colombia for roughly $6,000 can be sold wholesale for $80,000, according to DEA data.

But a kilogram of pure fentanyl, purchased from China for less than $5,000, is so potent that it can be stretched into 16 to 24 kilograms when using cutting agents like talcum powder or caffeine. Each kilogram can then be sold wholesale for $80,000  for a total profit in the neighborhood of $1.6 million.
WASHINGTON  President Barack Obama on Thursday formally endorsed Hillary Clinton and called her the most qualified candidate to seek the White House, imploring Democrats to come together to elect her after a bruising party primary.

In a video posted on Clintons Facebook page, Obama said, I dont think theres ever been someone so qualified to hold this office.

Obama is impatient to begin playing an active role in the race to succeed him.

White House officials had been discussing an endorsement with Clintons camp for days, but they kept the precise timing of the announcement under wraps, in part as a gesture of respect for Sen. Bernie Sanders and his highly motivated coalition of progressive supporters.

The president met with Sanders on Thursday morning.

Obama recorded the Facebook message Tuesday, aides said.

The president had been circumspect about declaring the race finished, even after Clinton captured sufficient delegates in primaries Tuesday to clinch the Democratic nomination. On Thursday, he congratulated her on making history and said he had personally witnessed her qualifications for the Oval Office.

I have seen her judgment, Ive seen her toughness, Ive seen her commitment to our values up close, the president said.

Obama also praised Sanders  who left the White House about 90 minutes before the video was posted  for what he called an incredible campaign.

He said the Vermont senators emphasis on addressing income inequality, reducing the influence of money in politics, and bringing young people into the political process would strengthen the party.

Embracing that message is going to help us win in November, Obama said.

He also said he knew how hard being president can be, and that Clinton was up to the job.

Shes got the courage, the compassion, and the heart to get the job done, he said.

Thats why I know Hillary will be so good at it, he said. In fact, I dont think theres ever been anyone so qualified to hold this office.

The Clinton campaign said Obama and Clinton would campaign together in Green Bay, Wisconsin, on Wednesday.

Im with her, I am fired up, and I cannot wait to get out there to campaign for Hillary, Obama said.
Nick Wagner / Associated Press

MEXICO CITY  Renaissance art lovers in Mexico wont need to travel to Vatican City to see the glories of the Sistine Chapel.

A private art project has created a temporary replica of the chapel in Mexicos art deco Monument to the Revolution.
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.
The Prairie Doc: We need to be more intentional with antibiotics
The need for an accessible agri-environment scheme which offers every farmer in Wales the opportunity to participate if they so wish was called for by members of NFU Cymrus Less Favoured Area (LFA) Board at its recent meeting.

The Board expressed concern that farmers with Glastir Entry contracts finishing at the end of 2016 would have no opportunity to extend their contract or apply for a new Glastir Entry contract.

The Welsh Government has made no commitment to open an application window in 2016 for 2017 entry to the Scheme.

It was noted that there had been no application window for Glastir Entry Scheme during 2015 either.

Glastir is a whole farm land management scheme open to all farmers and land managers throughout Wales.

Applicants will make a commitment to deliver environmental goods for five years under a legally binding contract.

NFU Cymru LFA Board Chairman John Owen said: "Farmers across all sectors are experiencing challenging market conditions at present.

"We are asking Welsh Government to make clear its commitment to an agri-environment scheme that is accessible to every farmer in Wales to participate in if they so wish.

"This will assist farm businesses in considering the full range of options available to them and allow for focussed business planning."
The most important and largest agricultural estate and organic farm to come to the Irish market this century is now for sale with a 17m guide price.

The company, formerly Donegal Creameries, has placed the land for sale with estate agents Savills.

One of the largest organic farms in Europe, Grianan Estate is is situated at Speenoge, Burt, Co Donegal  20 minutes from the larger towns of Letterkenny and Derry.

Grianan Estate is one of the most interesting and sizable farming enterprises to come to the market for many years.

It comprises a substantial agricultural farm of approximately 970 hectares / 2,400 acres to include arable and grazing land and the lake and foreshore.

The farm is laid out in large easily accessible divisions currently in arable crops, vegetables and grass.

They are maintained to a high standard creating a successful commercial opportunity with a proven income stream.

Under the present arrangement a substantial portion of the land is leased out to one party, who operates the largest organic dairy farm in the country.

The property includes a 500-acre lake, and consists mainly of land reclaimed from Lough Swilly, fertile and suitable for all farming enterprises.

Several brands are sourced from the farm

For the past 10 years, the farm has produced some 3,000 tonnes of organic milk, vegetables, and cereals annually. Several Irish household brands are sourced from the farm.

A number of leases are currently in operation across the Grianan Estate including to conventional producers of potatoes, wheat, oats and barley.

The estate overlooks the shores of Lough Swilly, which is famous for wildlife watching (dolphins, porpoise, seabirds, migratory geese, and swans), and for diving on shipwrecks such as the White Star Lines SS Laurentic  sunk in 1917 by a German mine.

According to Pat OHagan of Savills, the sale has already generated significant interest from investors, active farmers, and farming companies.

"For anyone with a vested interest in the Irish agri-food industry, the sale of the Grianan Estate will be significant news due to the sheer scale and quality of the offering," he said.

"There has already been interest from a whole host of potential buyers. No other opportunity of this scale is likely to be presented again in the Irish farming property market in the near future."
Arla farmer owners are celebrating their role in a record breaking Open Farm Sunday on June 5.

Of the 400 farms participating across the UK, 60 were Arla farmer owners who welcomed nearly 45,000 visitors.

This total beat the record from last year, in which 44 Arla farms took part in the day with 37,000 visitors.

Arla farms hosted events including welly throwing, hay bale hurdles and tractor driving, to farmers markets and craft demonstrations.

In addition, Arla colleagues were on hand with products for visitors to sample and take away with them, including Arla Cravendale and Arla 'Best of Both' milk, Arla Lactofree cheese and Arla skyr.

The event gave people from around the country the chance to see first-hand what happens on a farm, and where the milk and dairy products they enjoy come from.

Arla farmer owners were also on hand to explain how, as a cooperative, they own the business, meaning that all profits from the dairy products people buy go back to them.

Supporting the food and farming sector

The farmer-owned dairy company is a principal sponsor of the annual event, now in its 11th year, is organised by LEAF (Linking Environment and Farming), which helps to deliver sustainable agriculture and better public understanding of farming life.

In total, since 2006, the event has seen over 1.6 million people visit a farm.

LEAF estimates that over a quarter of a million more were added to that total during this years event.

The day is part of Arlas ongoing work to support the food and farming sector which is especially important as the dairy industry faces tough times globally and in the UK.

Commenting, Arla farmer owner Roger Hildreth at Curlew Fields Farm in Hessay, North Yorkshire, said: "This years Open Farm Sunday was a really great opportunity for me to show people from around the local community how a dairy farm operates.

"It was superb to see all the happy faces as visitors young and old made their way around the site and visited various events including sheep shearing, beehives and milk tasting."

"While having a good time is an important part of the day, for us its also about showing the local community the skill and effort it takes to produce a wide range of delicious dairy products. We look forward to welcoming back an even bigger group next year!"
As the dairy industry continues in a perilous state, with many farmers being paid less than the cost of production, regional retailer Booths marked two years of Fair Milk scheme with a review of the impact of the scheme on both farmers and customers.

The pioneering Fair Milk scheme pledges to pay the highest market price to farmers, ensuring farmers receive a fair price for their milk, covering the cost of production and enabling them to invest in a stable, profitable future as a result.

Customer research carried out by independently audited ABA indicated 93% percent of Booths shoppers supported the ethos of Fair Milk and would continue to buy milk that paid a fair price to farmers, even if that meant paying more for milk.

66% percent of shoppers said that the fair price paid to farmers on Booths milk was their most important consideration on purchase.

CEO Chris Dee said: "Im gratified, but not surprised by the support of our customers for Fair Milk.

"Paying farmers a fair price for milk is as important to us as a business as it is to our customers.

"We trade in rural locales and our farmers are often our customers, giving a fair deal is core to our buying ethos."

The two year impact on the family farms producing milk for Booths has been staggering.

The fair price paid to farmers has enabled all the farms supplying Booths to make significant capital investments to their farms, improving livestock conditions and working conditions for the farmers.

This is in stark contrast to the farming industry as a whole, where recent research by the Princes Countryside Fund reported 1 in 5 farmers were facing severe financial hardship.

Smallest number of dairy farmers in living memory

The UK now has fewer than 10,000 dairy farmers, less than half the number in 2002. Its the smallest number in living memory.

Roger Mason from Heaves Farm, Kendal in Cumbria said: "Put simply, Fair Milk has allowed us to invest in the future.

"Most dairy farmers are subject to volatile and punishing price drops which make maintaining and developing their farms very difficult; farmers get behind very quickly and it takes years to catch up."

"Were very fortunate that Fair Milk has allowed us to invest significantly, in technologies which have streamlined our efficiency and greatly improved our cows welfare, from a responsive cow collar system, to LED lighting in our sheds to give the herd consistent light in the winter months.

"Booths has set a brilliant precedent for supporting local farmers and it has transformed our farms fortunes."

"We made a permanent decision to commit to paying our farmers a fair price. Booths stand by their promise and commit to paying the highest farm gate price for milk in the market. Its the right thing for our customers and farmers," says Dee.
The EU Commission should withdraw its authorisations for the use of herbicide-resistant GM carnations and maize, say two non-binding resolutions voted on Wednesday.

Authorising GM carnations would encourage the worldwide use of a diabetes medicine as a herbicide, while the GM maize is resistant to glyphosate, said the MEPs..

MEPs objected, by 430 votes to 188, with 33 abstentions, to a European Commission implementing decision in which it proposed to authorise the import, distribution and retailing in the EU of cut flowers of the genetically modified (GM) carnation SHD-27531-4, which is resistant to sulfonylurea herbicide, for ornamental use.

MEPs point out that sulfonylureas, which are a common second line option for managing type 2 diabetes, are also used as herbicides, as they are highly toxic to plants at very low doses.

So "creating a market for sulfonylurea resistant plants will encourage the worldwide use of this medicine against diabetes as a herbicide," possibly entailing "worldwide detrimental effects on biodiversity and chemical contamination of drinking water", they say.

Moreover, MEPs say that although "the European Food Safety Authority GMO Panel is aware of a food habit in certain populations to intentionally consume carnation petals as garnish," it did not assess the possible consequences of the intentional consumption of GM carnations by humans.

MEPs also objected, by 426 votes to 202 with 33 abstentions, to a separate proposal to authorize the placing on the market of products containing, consisting of, or produced from genetically modified maize, and genetically modified maizes combining two or three of the events Bt11, MIR162, MIR604 and GA21.

They point out that while some of those GM events confer tolerance to certain pests, MON-21-9 maize is resistant to glyphosate herbicide, which is classified as probably carcinogenic to humans by the WHOs specialised cancer agency.

Flawed process

MEPs also point out that since the current GM authorisation process came into force, every GM authorisation decision has been taken by the Commission without the support of a qualified majority of EU member states. In effect, this turns what should be the exception into the norm.

Background

A separate draft EU law that would enable any EU member state to restrict or prohibit the sale and use of EU-approved GMO food or feed on its territory was rejected by Parliament in October 2015.

MEPs are concerned that this law might prove unworkable or that it could lead to the reintroduction of border checks between pro and anti-GMO countries. They called on the Commission to table a new proposal.
Learn how to get your invention to a finished product at this years Institution of Agricultural Engineers Conference (IAgrE)  Concepts to Cash (#IAgrEconference)

Being an inventor is one thing but having the ability to fund your idea through development and manufacture is something else and the theme of this years IAgrE conference which takes place on Wednesday 16 November at Harper Adams University.

The conference is designed to deal with the challenge of ensuring your new idea stays with you and is not stolen, how you can work with others openly and yet retain intellectual property, what challenges you will need to consider and where to find funding.

Delegates will also be able to listen to experts in research and development, copyrighting, intellectual property and patents who have dealt with these issues.

A round table discussion with four experienced innovators led by Andy Newbold of Farm Smart Events will debate the lessons and pitfalls to be addressed and overcome.

The panel consists of Toby Mottram, founder and chief engineer of eCow, Brian Knight, CEO and Chief Engineer, Knight Farm Machinery, John Baines, technical director of Fullwood and Richard Robinson founder of Autoguide Equipment.

Finally, there will be a round-up of recent case studies from HAU, SRUC and Cranfield on research council funded innovations which are at the point of moving mainstream. These will be announced over the summer.

So whether you are a technologist or inventor, senior engineer, designer, technical specialist or student, graduate, consultant, analyst, venture capitalist or just interested in innovation, this conference is for you.

Delegate rate is 120 + vat, early bird booking is 100 + vat, student rate of 20 + vat and retired rate is 75 + vat.
Defra Secretary of State Liz Truss identified three key issues she saw as priorities for the immediate future of farming at the Royal Cornwall Show yesterday (9 June).

She said the Government would shortly be revealing details of its 25 year plan for helping farmers improve competitiveness and resilience.

The CLA, which represents landowners, farmers and rural businesses, hosted the Secretary of State at a CLA breakfast for 240 members and guests where she confirmed her priorities were bovine TB, reducing red tape and improving the Basic Payment Scheme.

Environment Secretary Elizabeth Truss

She said she was absolutely determined to deal with TB and said it would be a huge mistake for the Government to listen to the voices raised in protest because, in addition to cattle management regimes, she was absolutely clear there was a need to cull badgers in areas where the disease was rife.

"When we came into Government in 2010, this country had the highest level of TB in Europe  and while I am Secretary of State we will carry on fighting this disease until it is eradicated," she said.

Farmers need to 'spend time farming, not filling forms'

She added she was concerned that people were under the illusion that leaving the EU would mean dumping red tape and regulation.

She warned that not all regulations emanated from Europe  but promised action including a single inspection regime reducing on-farm inspections by 20,000 annually and a re-alignment of boundaries between Natural England and the Environment Agency.

"If we leave the EU we are not going to end up in some red tape-free nirvana.

"But I do understand that we have to get out of the way of farmers, we want them to be able to spend their time farming, not filling in forms."

A 'painful' divorce from EU

Speaking about the referendum she emphasised the importance of access to the single market and how the legacy of BSE meant that while we were exporting large amounts of beef to Europe, the American and Chinese markets were still closed to us.

She said: "I fully recognise that the EU is far from perfect and I do not have a magic wand to cure all the problems.

"But neither do I want to spend the next 10 years going through a painful divorce, renegotiating and disentangling ourselves from Europe.

"That will be a diversion from the serious issues of improving investment in our industry, of building competitiveness and resilience."

CLA President Ross Murray said the vote on Europe was a momentous decision for everybody, the result of which will affect the whole country and each of us individually for generations to come.

He confirmed that the CLA would not be instructing members how they should vote and would be ensuring both arguments were heard at events taking place over the course of the show.

Mr Murray praised the Ministers determination to tackle bovine TB saying there was now a strong strategy in place which everybody, collectively, must deliver on.

He said: "It will take courage and persistence and I wish to acknowledge the courage and determination of the Secretary of State in this endeavour."
Massey Ferguson has announced that the Daniel Massey Bronze Sculpture is to be exhibited at the Herbert Museum & Art Gallery in Coventry from 1 June to 25 September 2016.

The sculpture, by John Sherlock OBE ARUA, is a dramatic narrative piece telling the story of a key development in agricultural machinery which went on to revolutionise grain harvesting around the world.

Farm equipment maker Massey Ferguson commissioned the piece as part of the 2013 celebrations to mark the 75th anniversary of the launch of the MH-20 self-propelled combine harvester developed by harvesting experts Massey-Harris, forerunners of todays Massey Ferguson.

Campbell Scott, Massey Fergusons Director of Marketing Services Europe/Africa/Middle East (EAME), officially handed over the sculpture to Gary Hall, Chief Executive for Culture Coventry at a ceremony at the Herbert Museum & Art Gallery.

The artwork features a 1.4m portrait in bronze of Daniel Massey (1798 -1856), the founder of the Massey side of the business which eventually joined forces with the Harris farm machinery firm in 1891.

Daniel is depicted as a blacksmith in 1847 in Newcastle, Ontario, Canada where he first began production of farm implements.

Representing the soil and the metal, he is shown with scythe and rake in hand and an anvil at his side gazing almost 100 years into the future.

His vision is the 1938 MH-20, the worlds first commercially-successful self-propelled combine harvester, a machine born from his legacy of harvesting equipment expertise.

The model of the combine is in 1/25th scale fashioned in bronze and sheet metal.

MH 20 SP combine - important piece of machinery

The M-H 20 SP combine is ranked as among the most important advances in farm machinery.

Combining the crop cutting and threshing operations, it ushered in a harvesting revolution - for the first time separating the tractor from the trailed reaper machines.

Providing large-area farmers with huge gains in productivity and performance, the machine not only made a massive leap forward in farm mechanisation but also introduced the term combine harvester.

"75 years of self-propelled harvesting is a significant milestone in the heritage of Massey Ferguson and in the development of farm mechanisation," remarks Campbell Scott.

"The inspiration of Massey-Harris lives on in the innovative spirit and success of Massey Ferguson today.

"We were determined to produce a symbol which would have enduring significance beyond the 75th anniversary date and which could be enjoyed for years to come.

"We are thrilled that it is to be displayed in Coventry. Our former tractor plant at Banner Lane helped make Massey Ferguson a worldwide force in farm machinery and AGCO's European Office Facility at Stoneleigh, Warwickshire, continues to be an important centre of operations for us today.

"Our full-line of Massey Ferguson agricultural machinery including tractors, harvesting equipment and implements is used by farmers throughout the world."

Gary Hall said: "Were delighted to bring the Daniel Massey Bronze to the city which has such strong links with Massey Ferguson.

"The sculptures display at the Herbert Art Gallery & Museum complements our current Tractors  from factory to field exhibition at Coventry Transport Museum inspired by the 70th anniversary of the start of production of the Ferguson TE20 tractor at the Massey Ferguson Banner Lane factory in Coventry."

Took two years to complete

For John Sherlock, the sculpture was a challenging creative and technical work and took almost two years to complete.

Other symbols woven into the artwork include the Massey Harris Companys first ever factory in Canada, and its first dedicated combine harvester factory in Europe at Kilmarnock, Scotland.

This early Canadian-Scottish link is underpinned with illustrations of the Maple Leaf and Thistle entwined in panels around the edge.

A Shamrock is also included on these panels, a reference to the brilliant inventor Harry Ferguson from Northern Ireland, widely acknowledged as the father of the modern farm tractor and another of the founding names of the Massey Ferguson brand.

Harry Ferguson established a tractor factory in Coventry in 1946 and merged with Massey-Harris in 1953 to form Massey-Harris Ferguson. The name was changed to Massey Ferguson in 1958.

AGCO, Massey Fergusons parent company, employs nearly 500 people at its European Office facility at Abbey Park Stoneleigh in Warwickshire.

The site is a centre for a wide range of functions including Sales and Marketing, Customer Support, Finance and Accounting, Legal Services and IT.

It also houses a Training Centre and is the headquarters of Massey Fergusons UK and Ireland operations.

Look out for other events running alongside the Coventry Transport Museums Tractors  from factory to field exhibition including Fields of Joy, a musical celebration of the tractor around the world, from South Asia and beyond (12 June) and 70 Tractors for 70 Years, a spectacular parade of Massey Ferguson tractors through the city to Millennium Place outside the Coventry Transport Museum (30 July).
The Ulster Farmers Union has urged the Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs (DAERA) to take a more flexible approach on the inclusion of fencing in the new Farm Business Improvement Scheme (FBIS).

UFU deputy president, Ivor Ferguson, said: "Is is our understanding at this stage that fencing may not be included in this scheme, despite it being part of a similar scheme south of the border."

With the scheme due to open later this year, the UFU is concerned that despite demand from the industry for fencing to be included, DAERA may reject this.

Mr Ferguson says farmers are being urged to become more efficient, with a big drive to improve grassland management.

"If the scheme included funding for new and improved fencing, this would automatically deliver better grassland management.

"There would be additional benefits for biosecurity too," he said.

Mr Ferguson added that UFU members have shown a keen interest in using the scheme for upgrading fences and erecting new fencing.

"Like us, they are well aware that farmers in the Republic of Ireland have recently been given access to a sheep fencing scheme.

"The DAERA approach will put our members at a potential competitive disadvantage," he said.

The UFU says it will continue urging DAERA to include fencing in the first tranche of the scheme and to ensure the FBIS is rolled out as soon as possible.
The European Commission has today formally extended for a further year the safety net measures for the European fruit and vegetables sector.

This sector was due to expire at the end of this month, as announced by EU Agriculture Commissioner Phil Hogan at the Council meeting of EU agriculture ministers in March.

The safety net measures were first introduced in 2014 in response to the Russian ban on the import of EU fruit and vegetables and were already extended one year ago.

In confirming the measure, the Commissioner responsible for Agriculture and Rural Development, Phil Hogan said today: "The extension of safety net measures for the fruit and vegetable sector is a concrete demonstration of solidarity by the European Commission with European fruit and vegetable producers, who have been particularly badly-affected by the ongoing Russian ban.

"Since the ban was introduced, the Commission has implemented a series of measures to support producers in a number of sectors, recognising the difficult market situation in which they have found themselves."

Aimed at easing market pressures for the main groups of fruit and vegetables that were previously exported to Russia, the measures available consist of withdrawals of produce for free distribution to charitable organisations and for "other purposes" (such as animal feed, composting, distillation), as well as so-called "non-harvesting" and "green harvesting" measures.

The products covered are tomatoes, carrots, cabbages, sweet peppers, cauliflowers and headed broccoli, cucumbers and gherkins, mushrooms, apples, pears, plums, soft fruit, fresh table grapes, kiwifruit, oranges, clementines, mandarins, lemons, peaches, nectarines, and  new since last year - cherries and persimmons.

The specific levels of support for each product according to the measure taken remain unchanged, and the Annex is updated to reflect the maximum volumes remaining for the different product groups.

These volumes are based on Member State exports to Russia in the 3 years prior to the ban, with an additional quantity of up to 3 000 tonnes for all Member States in order to further stabilise the market.

Today's move extends these measures until 30 June 2017 or, if earlier, until the volumes detailed in the annex have been reached.

According to the notifications from the Member States, up to 31 May 2016 under the measure currently in force more than 323 000 tons have been withdrawn from the market with an estimated cost to the EU budget of around  112 million.

In the face of the Russian ban, EU farmers have proved to be exceptionally resilient with agri-food exports to third countries having increased by 4% in value compared with the previous year. However, the impact has been uneven across sectors and countries.
The simpler the mix the better a herbal ley performs, trial shows
Wheat: Net sales for the 2016/2017 marketing year, which began June 1, totaled 223,800 metric tons. Increases were reported for unknown destinations (127,200 MT), Mexico (77,500 MT), South Africa (48,000 MT, including 45,000 MT switched from unknown destinations), Chile (30,000 MT), and Brazil (26,200 MT). A total of 1,297,300 MT in sales were carried over from the 2015/2016 marketing year, which ended May 31. Exports for the period ending May 31 of 338,700 MT brought accumulated exports to 19,440,100 MT, down 14 percent from the prior years total of 22,622,500 MT. The primary destinations were Indonesia (63,000 MT), Nigeria (58,800 MT), China (57,800 MT), Chile (33,000 MT), Colombia (29,700 MT), and Jamaica (21,000 MT). Exports for June 1-2 totaled 120,700 MT, with South Africa (48,000 MT), Brazil (29,700 MT), El Salvador (15,800 MT), Colombia (11,000 MT), and Mexico (6,500 MT) being the primary destinations.

Corn: Net sales of 1,558,900 MT for 2015/2016 were up 18 percent from the previous week and from the prior 4-week average. Increases were reported for Japan (409,200 MT, including 108,500 MT switched from unknown destinations and decreases of 1,500 MT), South Korea (210,200 MT, including 68,000 MT switched from unknown destinations), Venezuela (150,000 MT), unknown destinations (144,900 MT), Vietnam (127,600 MT), and Saudi Arabia (78,700 MT). Reductions were reported for the French West Indies (6,800 MT) and Morocco (900 MT). For 2016/2017, net sales of 120,400 MT were reported for unknown destinations (68,300 MT), Mexico (22,100 MT), Peru (11,000 MT), Honduras (10,000 MT), and Colombia (9,000 MT). Exports of 1,242,200 MT were up 65 percent from the previous week and 19 percent from the prior 4-week average. The primary destinations were Mexico (262,000 MT), Japan (257,900 MT), Saudi Arabia (148,700 MT), South Korea (137,700 MT), El Salvador (66,600 MT), Peru (56,700 MT), and Algeria (46,600 MT).

Optional Origin Sales: For 2015/2016, new optional origin sales totaling 60,800 MT were reported for unknown destinations. The current optional origin outstanding sales balance is 394,800 MT, all unknown destinations.

Barley: Net sales for the 2016/2017 marketing year, which began June 1, totaled 200 MT were for Japan. A total of 2,100 MT in sales were carried over from the 2015/2016 marketing year, which ended May 31. There were no exports for the period ending May 31. Accumulated exports were 26,200 MT, down 82 percent from the prior years total of 144,700 MT. Exports for June 1-2 totaled 400 MT, all Japan.

Sorghum: Net sales of 119,600 MT for 2015/2016 were down 43 percent from the previous week and 6 percent from the prior 4-week average. Increases were reported for China (63,600 MT) and unknown destinations (56,000 MT). Exports of 59,500 MT were up 11 percent from the previous week, but down 8 percent from prior 4-week average. The destinations were China (56,600 MT) and Mexico (2,700 MT).

Rice: Net sales of 24,500 MT for 2015/2016 were down 62 percent from the previous week and 55 percent from the prior 4-week average. Increases were reported for Mexico (14,800 MT), El Salvador (3,900 MT, including 3,500 MT switched from unknown destinations), Guatemala (2,700 MT, including 2,300 MT switched from unknown destinations), Honduras (2,500 MT), and Jordan (1,600 MT). Reductions were reported for unknown destinations (5,000 MT) and Israel (2,200 MT). For 2016/2017, net sales of 600 MT were reported for Mexico. Exports of 104,300 MT, up noticeably from the previous week and from the prior 4-week average, were reported to Libya (35,600 MT), Iraq (32,500 MT), Japan (13,300 MT), Haiti (7,200 MT), and El Salvador (3,900 MT).

Exports for Own Account: The current exports for own account outstanding balance totals 400 MT, all Canada.

Soybeans: Net sales of 758,500 MT for 2015/2016 were up noticeably from the previous week and 98 percent from the prior 4-week average. Increases were reported for unknown destinations (573,900 MT), Iran (120,000 MT), Mexico (61,300 MT), Indonesia (47,600 MT, including 44,000 MT switched from unknown destinations), and Japan (12,100 MT, including 9,000 MT switched from unknown destinations and decreases of 300 MT). Reductions were reported for China (54,000 MT), Malaysia (15,000 MT), and Colombia (100 MT). For 2016/2017, net sales of 475,500 MT were reported primarily for unknown destinations (280,000 MT), China (152,000 MT), Cuba (16,000 MT), and Malaysia (15,000 MT). Exports of 125,600 MT were down 41 percent from the previous week and 35 percent from the prior 4-week average. The primary destinations were Indonesia (58,000 MT), Mexico (29,400 MT), Japan (14,500 MT), Vietnam (6,700 MT), and Taiwan (5,800 MT).

Optional Origin Sales: For 2015/2016, new optional origin sales totaling 3,000 MT were reported for Pakistan. The current outstanding sales balance of 659,000 MT is for China (603,000 MT) and Pakistan (56,000 MT). For 2016/2017, the current outstanding balance is 63,000 MT, all China.

Exports for Own Account: The current exports for own account outstanding balance totals 500 MT, all Canada.

Soybean Cake and Meal: Net sales of 44,300 MT for 2015/2016 were down 36 percent from the previous week and 59 percent from the prior 4-week average. Increases were reported for Egypt (18,000 MT), Guatemala (14,100 MT, including 12,600 MT switched from unknown destinations), Mexico (9,800 MT), El Salvador (6,700 MT, including 7,400 MT switched from unknown destinations and decreases of 1,200 MT), Panama (6,700 MT, including 7,600 MT switched from unknown destinations and decreases of 900 MT), and Canada (3,300 MT). Reductions were reported for unknown destinations (17,900 MT), Colombia (2,500 MT), and the French West Indies (2,500 MT). For 2016/2017, net sales of 136,700 MT were reported for unknown destinations (78,700 MT) and Mexico (58,000 MT). Exports of 285,500 MT were up 57 percent from the previous week and 43 percent from the prior 4-week average. The primary destinations were the Philippines (75,300 MT), Mexico (57,100 MT), Ecuador (31,400 MT), Colombia (27,000 MT), the Dominican Republic (24,000 MT), Canada (14,300 MT), and El Salvador (14,100 MT).

Optional Origin Sales: For 2015/2016, the current optional origin outstanding sales balance totals 99,000 MT, all unknown destinations.

Soybean Oil: Net sales of 14,500 MT for 2015/2016 were down 68 percent from the previous week and from the prior 4-week average. Increases were reported for Cuba (7,600 MT), Mexico (3,200 MT), Guatemala (1,800 MT), and the Dominican Republic (1,700 MT). For 2016/2017, net sales of 7,600 MT were reported for Cuba. Exports of 22,800 MT were up noticeably from the previous week and from the prior 4-week average. The destinations were primarily to Colombia (10,000 MT), the Dominican Republic (4,700 MT), Mexico (3,800 MT), Guatemala (2,000 MT), and Panama (2,000 MT).

Cotton: Net upland sales totaling 110,100 RB for 2015/2016 were down 12 percent from the previous week and 19 percent from the prior 4-week average. Increases were reported for Vietnam (49,800 RB, including 200 RB switched from Japan and decreases of 100 RB), China (12,800 RB), Indonesia (11,000 RB, including 200 RB switched from Japan), Taiwan (9,200 RB), and Ecuador (5,500 RB). Reductions of 600 RB were reported for Japan. For 2016/2017, net sales of 112,700 RB reported primarily for Mexico (80,800 RB), South Korea (10,200 RB), Pakistan (9,900 RB), and Turkey (7,700 RB), were partially offset by decreases for Vietnam (2,300 RB). Exports of 203,600 RB were down 14 percent from the previous week and 7 percent from the prior 4-week average. The primary destinations were Vietnam (63,100 RB), Turkey (35,800 RB), South Korea (18,200 RB), China (13,000 RB), and Pakistan (12,100 RB). Net sales of Pima totaling 6,800 RB for 2015/2016 were down 30 percent from the previous week and 37 percent from the prior 4-week average. Increases were reported for China (4,900 RB), Japan (700 RB), India (500 RB), and Taiwan (500 RB). For 2016/2017, net sales of 17,800 RB were reported primarily for India (17,800 RB). Exports of 11,200 RB were down 21 percent from the previous week and 17 percent from the prior 4-week average. The primary destinations were India (4,600 RB), China (3,300 RB), Vietnam (2,100 RB), Switzerland (300 RB), and Turkey (300 RB).

Exports for Own Account: The current exports for own account outstanding balance of 39,800 RB is for China (34,200 RB) and Vietnam (5,600 RB).

Hides and Skins: Net sales of 420,400 pieces for 2016 were down 23 percent from the previous week, but up 4 percent from the prior 4-week average. Whole cattle hides of 394,500 pieces were primarily for China (271,100 pieces), South Korea (57,900 pieces), Mexico (19,700 pieces), Thailand (13,600 pieces), and Italy (7,900 pieces). Reductions were reported for Vietnam (100 pieces). Exports of 391,100 pieces, all whole cattle hides were down 9 percent from the previous week, but up 4 percent from the prior 4-week average. The primary destinations were China (235,700 pieces), South Korea (69,300 pieces), Mexico (28,700 pieces), Thailand (26,400 pieces), and Taiwan (15,300 pieces).

Net sales of 125,300 wet blues for 2016 were up noticeably from the previous week, but down 17 percent from the prior 4-week average. Increases were reported for China (53,600 unsplit), Italy (53,500 unsplit), Vietnam (15,600 unsplit), Taiwan (7,200 unsplit), and Mexico (4,300 grain splits). Reductions were reported for China (8,600 grain splits), Japan (200 grain splits), and Mexico (100 unsplit). Exports of 107,700 wet blues were down 37 percent from the previous week and 34 percent from the prior 4-week average. Exports were primarily to China (25,700 unsplit and 7,800 grain splits), Italy (26,700 unsplit and 1,700 grain splits), Mexico (7,100 grain splits and 2,800 unsplit), Thailand (7,600 grain splits), and the Dominican Republic (6,100 unsplit). Net sales of splits totaling 462,200 pounds for 2016 reported for South Korea (441,600 pounds), Hong Kong (17,300 pounds), Italy (8,000 pounds), and China (900 pounds), were partially offset by reductions for Mexico (3,200 pounds) and Taiwan (2,200 pounds). Exports of 733,000 pounds were reported to South Korea (339,800 pounds), Hong Kong (305,900 pounds), Italy (44,900 pounds), and Mexico (42,300 pounds).

Beef: Net sales of 12,600 MT for 2016 were up 25 percent from the previous week, but down 5 percent from the prior 4-week average. Increases were reported for Japan (5,300 MT), South Korea (2,800 MT), Canada (1,700 MT), Mexico (1,300 MT), and Hong Kong (600 MT). Exports of 12,300 MT were down 6 percent from the previous week and from the prior 4-week average. The primary destinations were Japan (4,400 MT), South Korea (2,600 MT), Mexico (1,500 MT), Canada (1,200 MT), and Hong Kong (900 MT).

Pork: Net sales of 16,700 MT for 2016 were down 24 percent from the previous week, but up 8 percent from the prior 4-week average. Increases were reported for China (7,100 MT), Japan (3,200 MT), Hong Kong (2,400 MT), Mexico (1,500 MT), and Canada (1,300 MT). Exports of 17,000 MT were down 23 percent from the previous week and from the prior 4-week average. The primary destinations were Mexico (5,100 MT), Japan (3,100 MT), China (3,000 MT), South Korea (1,500 MT), and Canada (1,200 MT).

Source : USDA
What was it like to be an Oath Keeper? John Zimmerman can tell you

John Zimmerman said he was active with the Oath Keepers from September to November 2020, then left after a falling out with founder Stewart Rhodes.
Johnny Depp's lawyer has claimed Amber Heard has refused to give a deposition under oath.

Amber Heard and Johnny Depp

The 'Magic Mike XXL' actress has been granted a temporary restraining order against her estranged husband after accusing him of hitting her in the face with an iPhone ahead of a full trial on the matter on June 17, but she has not yet sat down to be quizzed on her allegations.

According to TMZ, the 53-year-old actor's lawyer, Laura Wasser, has filed documents which state Amber and her best friend, Raquel Pennington, have both claimed they don't have a day available before then to answer questions under oath.

According to the documents, lawyers for both stars wanted a meeting to try and settle the case - which could possibly involve staying clear of one another and arranging a financial settlement - with the meeting scheduled four days ago to take place on Friday (10.06.16).

When that fell apart, Ms. Wasser wanted to use the day for Amber's deposition but the actress' lawyer suddenly claimed she wasn't available.

The attorney believes the 30-year-old star and her friend are lying about being unavailable and if they won't sit for a deposition, they shouldn't be allowed to testify in the trial.

Her documents state: "[Amber] has tried her claims in the media. It is now time to do so in a court of law."

Ms. Wasser and Samantha Spector, Amber's lawyer, were in court on Friday, with the 'Danish Girl' actress' legal representative asking for the June 17 hearing to be pushed back as she needs more time to prepare.

But the 'Pirates of the Caribbean' actor's lawyer is unhappy with this as she feels the longer the matter drags on, the more it will damage her client's career.

At the legal meeting, Amber's lawyer explained she had been unable to sit for a deposition because she is in New Jersey for her best friend's engagement party, and then has to fly to the UK for a 'Justice League' costume fitting and won't be back until hours before the trial next week.

During the hearing, Ms. Wasser requested phone records from Amber which show any records referencing domestic violence since 2015.

This is reportedly because the 'Mortdecai' star's team believe leaked text messages supposedly from his estranged wife's phone are fake or doctored.

Amber filed for divorce last month after 15 months of marriage.
Marnie Simpson has been banned from driving.

Marnie Simpson

The 'Geordie Shore' star - who is currently shooting for the show in Magaluf, Spain - has revealed she's had her licence taken away after she was recently caught speeding.

Speaking to Star magazine, she said: "I got my driving licence taken away for speeding. Because I've been driving for less than two years, I can't do the Speed Awareness Course. Instead I have to retake my tests. It took me about 10 times to pass me theory for the first time, and I've already failed it again... The lesson is never to break the limit."

However, Marnie isn't the only star of the show to be dished out a ban as her former co-star Charlotte Crosby - who recently quit the programme over her on/off relationship with Gary 'Gaz' Beadle - isn't legally allowed to get behind the wheel for three years after she was caught drink-driving.

The blonde beauty, who was also ordered by cough up 1,185 in fines, was struck with the ban after she was caught whizzing home in her Range Rover in January following a boozy session on the train from London.

But that wasn't the first time Charlotte has been caught drink-driving as she also committed the same offence in 2012 and was dished an 18-month driving ban at the time.
Muhammad Ali will still be famous in "two million years", his close friend and author Davis Miller believes.

Muhammad Ali

The critically-acclaimed American writer has penned two books about the former heavyweight champion - who passed away last Friday (03.06.16), aged 74 - and Miller suggested Ali's impact surpasses that of any other popular culture icon in recent history.

He told BANG Showbiz: "Forget Michael Jackson, Ali is going to live on. In two million years' time people will still know the name Muhammad Ali. Think about that, it's incredible. I lived for his fights - I would jump around the living room to his fights. Then I was lucky enough to meet him and then lucky enough to call him my friend."

Ali's remarkable life and career has been turned into an exhibition at the O2 Arena in London, where fans can recall the boxer's incredible rise to the top of his profession.

What's more, the indoor venue is set to screen coverage of Ali's funeral service to the public from 7pm today (10.06.16).

Miller - who helped to create the 'I Am The Greatest' exhibition - thinks it is a fitting tribute to his friend and a remarkable man.

He reflected: "When people walk through the exhibition they will be joined by the singularly greatest man in history. It's a spiritual experience."

Ali's funeral service in Louisville, Kentucky, is set to be attended by a host of big-name guests from all areas of society, including former US President Bill Clinton and Hollywood star Will Smith, who is a family friend.
Elvis & Nixon is one of the June movies that I am looking forward to the most as Michael Shannon and Kevin Spacey are set to join forces.

Elvis & Nixon

Shannon and Spacey will take on the roles of Elvis Presley and President Richard Nixon, who came face to face in 1970. I really cannot wait to see these two great actors come face to face.

Elvis & Nixon is inspired by real events and sees Liza Johnson in the director's chair for what is her first feature film since Hateship Loveship back in 2013.

There are just two weeks to until the film finally hits the big screen and we have some terrific clips for you to take a look at:

A great cast has been assembled for the film as Alex Pettyfer, Johnny Knoxville, Colin Hanks, Evan Peter, Sky Ferreira, and Tracy Letts star alongside Shannon and Spacey.

Shannon and Spacey really are two of the most exciting actors around and I am looking forward to them taking on these iconic roles. Their performances won praise when the film premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival earlier this year.

On the morning of December 21st, 1970 the world's biggest star, Elvis Presley (Shannon) arrived on the White House lawn to request a meeting with the most powerful man in the world, President Richard Nixon (Spacey).

Elvis & Nixon tells the astounding true story of this meeting between two men at the height of their powers.

The summer programme is packed with blockbusters and big CGI animation films, if you are looking for something a little different, then Elvis & Nixon could well be the film for you.

Elvis & Nixon is released 24th June.

by Helen Earnshaw for www.femalefirst.co.uk

find me on and follow me on
Thin Lizzy dedicated their Kerrang! Hero award to past member Phil Lynott, who died in 1986.

Thin Lizzy

The iconic Irish rock band - who are currently comprised of Scott Gorham, Darren Wharton, Ricky Warwick, Damon Johnson, Scott Travis

and Tom Hamilton - claimed the prestigious gong during a star-studded evening at the Troxy in east London on Thursday (09.06.16).

Speaking to BANG Showbiz, guitarist and songwriter Scott Gorham explained: "It has been a goal of mine [to keep the spirit of Thin Lizzy alive].

"Phil died this year 30 years ago. It is my aim that he is not forgotten. I don't think he ever will be. It's my way of hoping that he doesn't. That's why we are doing these five shows. We keeping using the word 'celebrate' Phil's death and it's horrible word to use, but we want to pay homage to my buddy."

Elsewhere on the evening, the American rock band blink-182 - who formed in 1992 - were handed the Icon Award, with vocalist Mark Hoppus saying he remains grateful for the support of the band's loyal fanbase.

The 44-year-old star said: "This is a dream come true - blink has been through so much and has worked so hard.

"We are very fortunate after all that has happened with our band to come to the UK and people want to hear our band people stick with us and to be exited about the new album it's a gigantic blessing."

Another big winner on the night was Frank Carter, who was given the Spirit of Punk gong, one year after he launched Frank Carter & The Rattlesnakes' debut album 'Blossom'.

Meanwhile, Kerrang! Editor James McMahon opened the ceremony by dedicating the awards ceremony to Lemmy, who founded and fronted the rock band Motorhead.

The heavy metal icon passed away in December last year, aged 70.

A select list of winners from the 2016 Kerrang! Awards:

Kerrang! Legend:

Iron Maiden

Kerrang! Hero:

Thin Lizzie

The Icon Award:

blink-182

Spirit of Punk:

Frank Carter

Best Event:

You Me At Six - The Ghost Inside Benefit Show

Best British Band:

Asking Alexandria

Best British Newcomer:

Creeper

Best International Newcomer:

Cane Hill

Best Track:

'All Time Low' - Missing You

Best Live Band:

BABYMETAL

Best Album:

'No Devotion' - Permanence

Best International Band:

A Day to Remember
Comedy Central is set to roast Rob Lowe.

Rob Lowe

The 52-year-old actor is the latest star who has signed up to be ridiculed by a host of comics and famous faces for the network, following in the footsteps of Justin Bieber and Charlie Sheen.

Comedy Central president Kent Alterman said: "Rob Lowe is handsome, talented, successful and handsome. He needs to be roasted."

Rob added: "What a thrill to once again be following in Justin Bieber's footsteps. I look forward to a night of hilarious jokes recycled from the James Franco Roast. I would like to express my gratitude to the members of my family who have passed away and therefore will not have to endure what promises to be a very special evening."

Rob - who has been married to Sheryl Berkoff since 1991 - has overcome alcohol addiction and a sex tape scandal in the past to become one of America's best-loved actors and frequently pokes fun at his own past indiscretions.

Meanwhile, Bieber's manager Scooter Braun says his comedy roast marked a turning point in his career after his reputation took a hit following a series of damaging stories shortly after he became a worldwide star.

Recalling the circumstances behind Justin's Comedy Central roast, Scooter said: "I had a meeting in the office, and I said: 'O.K., guys, these are some of my ideas. What person do you think Justin should do the intense sit-down interview with? Is it Katie Couric? Do we call Oprah and see if we can do a special?'

"And Ava [Coleman] - 21 years old, at the time an intern - she said: 'I just think my generation doesn't care about that. I think if you want people to see that he's for real, he should do a Comedy Central roast.'

"And I went: 'That is genius. Get it done.' Twenty-four hours later, I was on the phone with Comedy Central."
NIDHI SUNIL

The Bangalore beauty is currently living it up in New York, which would explain her delicious food posts and abundant stellar fashion work.

A photo posted by Nidhi Sunil (@nidhisunil) on Mar 7, 2016 at 8:20am PST



ANGELA JONSSON

Part-Indian, part-Icelandic, Angela divides her time between Los Angeles, New York and Goa. That just means plenty of gorgeous travel photographs and selfies that would give you pout-envy.

A photo posted by Angela Jonsson (@ang_jonsson) on Jan 23, 2016 at 8:32am PST



KENDALL JENNER

As a young Kardashian, Kendall is a master of the art of social media. If you want further proof, her follower list is currently at 58.7m followers. Hit follow to get some off-duty model fashion inspiration and some adorable baby pictures of the Kardashian clan.

A photo posted by Kendall Jenner (@kendalljenner) on Apr 16, 2016 at 5:50pm PDT



JOURDAN DUNN

Jourdan hangs out with Naomi Campbell and the Victorias Secret Angels crew, walks the runway for every major fashion brand and has some seriously memorable red carpet looks.

A photo posted by Jourdan Dunn (@officialjdunn) on Feb 24, 2016 at 10:03am PST



ERIKA PACKARD

The Mumbai-girl does exactly what her Instagram bio says she doeseat burgers and drink beeras well as taking some adorable morning selfies and pictures from her shoots for all the big fashion mags.

A photo posted by E (@erikapackard) on Jun 6, 2016 at 4:57am PDT
1. Taj Vivanta, Gurgaon, not just welcomes your [pet but also has a host of treats in store like shampoo, brush, untangling spray, leashes, dog chews and dog food. You can check in your buddy by paying a fee. Your pet should be over a year old.

2. Ibis Aerocity, Delhi This budget hotel at Aerocity near the IGI Airport, welcomes pets happily. This is essentially a transit hotel so it works well if you are flying in or out your pet.

3. Camp Della Resort is a luxury property in Lonavla that has plenty of facilities for your furry friends from pet food to kennels, and pet-sitting so that you can explore the surrounds without worrying if your pooch is being looked after.

4. The White Peaks, Gagar, Nainital (Uttarakhand) is a homestay owned by a dog-loving couple and your pets are more than welcome here. You can have the whole cottage to yourself and your pets. No extra charges are levied for pets.

5. The Four Seasons Hotel, Mumbai has a well defined pet policy where you can bring one pet weighing less than 15 pounds with you. The concierge will arrange for pet supplies if you request in advance.

6. Cafe Canine, Gurgaon, is as the name suggests a must-visit for dog-lovers and their furry babies. The pet-friendly cafe has plenty of space, a pool for the doggies, pet grooming facilities and a menu that has plenty of doggie treats.

7. Gostana, Mumbai. With a cute-in-house doggie, the restaurant in Bandra has an open door policy as far as pets are concerned. If you let them know in advance, they will have a meal ready for you pooch as well.

8. The Madras Place in Adyar, Chennai, not just has a pet-friendly policy but lovely outdoor seating where they can be comfortable. The restaurant will arrange for some treats or a meal if you request in advance. Bookings must be made
The expected award of European Union's GSP Plus status can push Sri Lanka's apparel export earnings to $20 billion by 2020, from around $5 billion at present, primary industries minister Daya Gamage has said.

Due to the efforts of prime minister Ranil Wickremesinghe and president Maithripala Sirisena, Sri Lanka will once again be awarded with the GSP Plus. This will be a major advantage for the industry and it could take the country to the apparel export target of $20 billion by 2020, Gamage said at the inauguration of three-day Apparel Industry Suppliers Exhibition (AISEX) in Colombo.

The apparel industry contributes more than 45 per cent to the total merchandise exports from Sri Lanka, but the value addition is still around 50 per cent, Gamage said.

The expected award of European Union's GSP Plus status can push Sri Lanka's apparel export earnings to $20 billion by 2020, from around $5 billion at present, primary industries minister Daya Gamage has said. Due to the efforts of prime minister Ranil Wickremesinghe and president Maithripala Sirisena, Sri Lanka will once again be awarded with GSP Plus.#

He stressed on encouraging more apparel accessories to be made in Sri Lanka, and added that AISEX 2016 would help towards that goal.

Sri Lankans should also look at more R&D for the industry to be more competitive, he added.

AISEX has been revised after seven years, following a visit by an EU delegation and the increased prospect of Sri Lanka achieving GSP Plus.

The event is being organised by Lanka Exhibition and Conference Services Ltd (LECS) and supported and endorsed by the Sri Lanka Apparel Institute (SLAI), Joint Apparel Association Forum (JAAF), Sri Lanka Institute of Textile and Apparel (SLITA), and the ministry of industry and commerce. (RKS)

Fibre2Fashion News Desk  India
India's e-commerce market is growing at a breakneck speed. The market that was valued at Rs.1.2 trillion at the end of December 2015 will touch Rs.2.1 trillion by December 2016, according to the Digital Commerce Report 2015, by the Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) and IMRB International.Between December 2011 and December 2015, the market has grown at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 30 per cent.Travel which accounts for 61 per cent of this. It will grow by around 40 per cent to touch Rs.1.2 trillion by the end of 2016, the report said. This includes air, train, and bus-tickets booked online, as well as hotel rooms booked online.E-tailing (including apparel and footwear) will grow 57 per cent over 2015 to become a Rs.72,639 crore business this year, the report said.

The sales in this apparel and footwear segment recorded a 52 per cent Y-o-Y growth from Rs 4,699 crore in December 2014 to Rs 7,142 crore in December 2015.



Financial services (Rs.5231 crore, a CAGR of 17 per cent since 2012) and other online services such as booking movie tickets, food-tech, and cab aggregators (Rs.5,207 crore, a CAGR of 36 per cent) account for the rest. (SH)

Fibre2Fashion News Desk  India
With an eye to tap the great Indian middle class market, Swedish home furnishing major Ikea is considering to set up a production unit in the country amidst reports of setting retail stores in India next year.According to an agency report from Almhult in Sweden, Ikea which has already purchased land in Hyderabad and Mumbai to start retail operations, is also looking to double sourcing of products for its global operations from India by 2020."It is important for us to set up our production (unit) in India," Ikea Group President and CEO Peter Agnefjall said.Having production facilities in India would not only support the economic growth of the host country but would also enable Ikea to sell its products without compromising on its margins, Agnefjall said.What we do is that we sell products, which are inexpensive. You cannot distribute these inexpensive products long distances because if you do that then you would ruin the margin of the product."So it's important for us to go in for the local production Then only, I think we can reach the big middle class and not the affluent few but the many people in India. There is enormous growth of the people of the middle class year by year and by 2025 it would look different from today."Agnefjall disclosed that Ikea planned to invest more than 1.5 billion euros in the near future in stores and distribution. It's very difficult to be spot on but I think it would be enough," he said.Ikea is slated to open its first store in India at Hyderabad in next year. It has also bought land in Mumbai as part of its expansion in India and is looking for more sites in Delhi-NCR, and Bengaluru.

Agnefjall said that once the company covers the four territories in Bangalore, Delhi, Mumbai and Hyderabad, it look beyond to expand.



The Ikea boss gave no time frame for opening stores in Delhi- NCR region saying that it depended on how quickly IKEA could manage to identify and acquire sites, obtain retailing permits and then build its stores there.



For a big city like Delhi, IKEA would probably need three to five stores to cover it in a good way, the CEO said adding that the company would ideally like to locate its stores where there is good connection to public transportation too.



Describing these plans acting as starting points, Agnefjall said: "It would keep us occupied for a number of years to go but eventually we would like to be (there) for the many people living in India beyond those territories too." (SH)

Fibre2Fashion News Desk  India
America's South Carolina state has amended a law on revitalizing or reviving sick textile units by enhancing financial incentives available in the South Carolina Textiles Communities Revitalization Act.The taxpayer-friendly amendment, cleared on May 23, seeks to remove a 50 percent cap applicable to the income tax credit provided by the Act. The amendment enhances the value of the credit by accelerating the time period for claiming the credit and applies to credits claimed for income tax year 2016, regardless of when the credit was earned.

America's South Carolina state has amended a law on revitalizing or reviving sick textile units by enhancing financial incentives available in the South Carolina Textiles Communities Revitalization Act. The taxpayer-friendly amendment, cleared on May 23, seeks to remove a 50 percent cap applicable to the income tax credit provided by the Act. #

The South Carolina Textiles Communities Revitalization Act provides financial incentives for rehabilitation, renovation, and redevelopment of abandoned textile mill sites in South Carolina. A textile mill site means a textile mill together with the land and other improvements on it which were used directly for textile manufacturing operations or ancillary uses. A textile mill site is considered to be abandoned when at least 80 per cent of the mill has been closed or is non-operational for at least one year.The act provides two credit options: a 25 per cent credit against real property taxes, or a 25 per cent state income tax or corporate license fee credit. The credit is determined based on the rehabilitation expenses incurred to redevelop the textile mill site. Rehabilitation expenses generally include the costs incurred for demolition, environmental remediation, site improvements, and the construction of new buildings, it said.In order to receive the credit, a taxpayer (business entity) must file a notice of intent to rehabilitate. Expenses incurred before submission of the notice (with the local government in the case of the property tax credit and the Department of Revenue in the case of the income tax credit) are not eligible to avail the tax credit. If a taxpayer seeks to receive the income tax credit, the notice of intent to rehabilitate should be filed before building permits are received.A notice of intent to rehabilitate must include, among other information, an estimate of the rehabilitation expenses. The credit a taxpayer may ultimately receive may be limited or eliminated based on the estimated expenses included in a notice of intent to rehabilitate. Actual expenses which exceed 125 per cent of the estimate are disregarded when determining the amount of the credit. If actual expenses are less than 80 per cent, then no credit is allowed.A taxpayer who seeks to receive a credit against property taxes receives a credit equal to 25 per cent of the rehabilitation expenses incurred. However, expenses exceeding 125 per cent of the estimate included with the notice of intent to rehabilitate are disregarded and a taxpayer must incur expenses that are at least 80 per cent of the estimate in order to receive any credit.The credit for property taxes requires approval of local taxing entities, a public hearing, and specific ordinance approval by a municipality or county. The approval ordinance must provide for the credit to be taken as a credit against no more than 75 per cent of the property taxes otherwise due for up to 8 years. There is no otherwise applicable cap on the property tax credit. (SH)

Fibre2Fashion News Desk  India
Marubhoomiyile Aana, directed by V K Prakash and starring Biju Menon in the lead role has been in the news for quite some time now.

The film which is getting ready as a perfect entertainer would have Biju Menon in the role of an Arab. The film is said to be having Biju Menon in sublime form.

Take a look at some of the recent posters of Marubhoomiyile Aana..

Image Courtesy: Facebook

According to V K Prakash, the director of the film, Marubhoomiyile Aana has a class act by Biju Menon equally well-supported by other actors like Krishna Sankar, Lalu alex, Harish Kanaaran etc.

Major portions of the film were shot in Qatar and Kerala. The film had hit the news when a tiger which was brought in for shooting of the film escaped and created some issues in Qatar.

The film has Samskruthy Shenoy doing the female lead. The actress was previously seen in the film Anarkali, which had Prithviraj in the lead role.

The script of the film has been written by Y V Rajesh who also scripted for V K Prakash's films like Gulumaal and Three Kings.

V K Prakash, hasn't had a big hit for quite some time now. Even though, his Nirnayakam gained some great reviews, the film wasn't a big hit at the box-office. His previous film Rockstar failed miserably at the box-office.
Nivetha Pethuraj, who was recently crowned Miss India UAE, has said she is a huge fan of Ilayathalapathy Vijay, in one of her recent interviews to Deccan Chronicle.

The Madurai-born girl, who has spent more than 10 years in Dubai, know her roots and is in love with Tamil movies.

Nivetha, who made her acting debut with Oru Naal Koothu, which released in cinemas today (June 10), has admitted that she is more comfortable while working in Tamil Nadu and communicating in her mother tongue.

"I love Tamil movies and have always wanted to be an actress. I was quite particular that I make my acting debut in a Tamil film because I am more comfortable in my mother tongue. After winning the pageant, I came to Chennai," she told the leading daily.

She thinks the makers of Oru Naal Koothu roped her in because of her knowledge in Tamil.

"Though I've been in Dubai for more than a decade, my native is Madurai. One of the reasons I think why the makers chose me is because I am fluent in Tamil. I had read the script a number of times to be convinced of my role and I was confident about it," she has said.

So, how was she treated during her shoot? The actress has said, she couldn't have asked for a better debut. "They never made me feel like a newcomer. I was very comfortable on the sets. I got to learn a lot from everybody. In fact, I couldn't have asked for a better debut."

Talking about the film, Nivetha has said, "We shot in and around Chennai in places like OMR. The story revolves around three different episodes and some questions, which arise when we talk about marriage. My portion is sort of a romantic-comedy. The present-day audience can easily relate themselves to this film."

Not surprisingly, Nivetha seems to know whom to pick as her favourites from the industry.

"I would love to work with Mani Ratnam sir some day. Among actresses, I like Simran and Nayanthara. I am also a huge Ilayathalapathy fan," she has said.

Also Read: Kamal Haasan Starts Shooting For 'Sabhash Naidu' Even As An Association Files Complaint Against Him!
DALLAS, TX--(Marketwired - July 10, 2016) - With a strong economy, low taxes and mild weather, Texas is one of the most attractive places for relocation. Its high standard of living is due in part to its "low cost of living to high wage" ratio. Over the past 15 years, Marcus Hiles Dallas property investor has been a driving force in continuing to elevate that standard through his savvy business practices and agility in adapting to the constantly evolving housing market.

Early in his career, Hiles recognized the potential for luxury rental homes, townhomes, and apartments that delivered state-of-the-art amenities in desirable communities. Marcus Hiles' Dallas-based real estate company created a formula designed to fill the unmet demand. By catering to this -- at the time -- niche market, he has single-handedly shifted the paradigm in residential real estate. "We consistently secure premiere land in the best school districts," he states. "We deliver value by offering competitive rental prices for superior homes." Over the years, Hiles' approach has been one of continuous improvement, most remarkably in the area of environmentalism and energy conservation. Developments are designed to exceed eco-friendly standards, thus reducing their carbon footprint and saving residents money on utilities. Taken together with Texas' high employment rates and no state income tax, Hiles' properties help residents' standard of living soar.

By implementing his unique vision for luxury living, Marcus Hiles has also profoundly impacted the residents' of Western Rim properties quality of life. Marcus Hiles' Dallas models, which were the genesis of his community-centric vision, have extended throughout the Lone Star State. In the process, his firm has created expansive private community parks, designed miles of jogging trails, and planted thousands of shade trees. As a result, Hiles has been able to serve the ever-increasing number of individuals, couples, and families who -- along with 43 million other American families -- are choosing to rent rather than own their homes. He has forever changed the face of residential real estate in Texas. All 15,000+ luxury homes managed and owned by his companies reflect the finest workmanship, resulting in accommodations that are beautiful, elegant, and functional.

Marcus Hiles' commitment to investing in the lives of others extends far beyond his achievements as a renowned real estate mogul. His philanthropic efforts set him apart as a compassionate individual who is engaged, concerned and committed to positively impacting the communities he builds. He has donated over $2.5 million to public and private K-12 initiatives, supports job placement programs, and works to ease the hardships of economically disadvantaged women and children. His work ethic and passion to help others can be attributed to his humble beginnings as the son of a hardworking inner-city minister.

Marcus Hiles Dallas Property Investor: http://www.MarcusHilesDallas-News.com

Marcus Hiles -- Responds to Texas Jump in Home Sales this Quarter: http://finance.yahoo.com/news/marcus-hiles-responds-texas-jump-035042395.html

Marcus Hiles Dallas Developer On National Boom in Luxury Apartments: http://finance.yahoo.com/news/marcus-hiles-dallas-developer-national-060815445.html

Image Available: http://www.marketwire.com/library/MwGo/2016/7/11/11G105967/Images/Marcus_Hiles_Dallas_Real_Estate_Mogul_Improves_the-2335f50cd588914181e7d5c3cc9d123d.jpg

Embedded Video Available: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-VD8VW2A0-w

Contact Information

ICMediaDirect.com

TEL: 1.800.595.0821

www.ICMediaDirect.com

pr@icmediadirect.com
Anfang April eine W-Formation mit der Chance, den Abwartstrend zu erreichen! Dieses Szenario konnte sich durchsetzen, die Aktie der Merck KGaA mit kraftigen Zugewinnen. Nun wurde und wird der seit April 2015 laufende Abwartstrend getestet. Die jungsten Tages- und auch Monatskerzen lassen einen Breakversuch des Abwartstrends zu. Ein weiterhin ...

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.
Gainspeed and Nokia to Deliver Next-Generation Access Solutions to the Cable Market

Gainspeed, the pioneer in DAA (Distributed Access Architectures) for cable, is excited to announce its planned acquisition by Nokia. Gainspeed's Virtual CCAP (Converged Cable Access Platform) solution is a perfect complement to Nokia's current fiber access solutions and enables Nokia to provide a complete cable access solution for MSOs (Multiple System Operators). Nokia's well-established footprint in cable and telco networks would accelerate the acceptance and deployment of Gainspeed's solution. Upon the closing of the prospective transaction, Gainspeed would become part of Nokia's Fixed Networks business.

The transition from legacy video to IP video, and the associated demand for high-speed data services, is placing enormous capacity demands on cable operator networks. Major cable operators generally agree that DAA is the next-generation access solution that will enable them to transition and capitalize on the dramatic impacts the legacy video to IP video move will have on their networks.

Gainspeed's Virtual CCAP solution is the industry's first and only available DAA. It enables MSOs to increase the capacity and performance of their existing HFC (Hybrid Fiber Coax) infrastructure, reduce headend power and space requirements, and migrate to an all-IP network.

Virtual CCAP eliminates the physical CCAP by leveraging software defined networking (SDN) and network functions virtualization (NFV) to distribute cable-specific functions including DOCSIS processing and RF modulation to the edge of the network while centralizing control and management in the data center.

Virtual CCAP would be a strategic addition to Nokia's cable access portfolio, which includes industry-leading routing, video and PON solutions. Together, Gainspeed and Nokia would deliver the industry's most advanced network solutions to cable operators.

Gainspeed was founded in 2012 and is privately held. It is located in Sunnyvale, California, and has approximately 70 employees. The planned transaction is expected to close in Q3 2016, subject to customary closing conditions. Gainspeed is being advised on the planned transaction by Evercore.

Supporting Quotes:

"New and innovative services in broadband are important to us and to our customers. We appreciate technology partners who make innovation one of their core values and look forward to Nokia and Gainspeed joining forces to bring new technologies and products to the industry."

Tony Werner, President, Technology and Product, Comcast Cable

"Gainspeed is one of the pioneers in the Remote PHY and Remote MAC-PHY architecture development. They have been committed to developing this solution for the cable industry, and I congratulate them on becoming part of Nokia. The combination of Gainspeed's innovations and Nokia's scale will be a positive contribution to the access solutions for our industry."

Balan Nair, Chief Technology Officer, Liberty Global

"Gainspeed has been a leader in the broad industry shift toward Distributed Access Architectures to handle increased bandwidth demands and support of the network transformation to all IP. We are well down the path testing and preparing for deployment of Gainspeed's Virtual CCAP solution and have been using Nokia access products for years. We are excited to see these technology leaders coming together, and view their solutions as a key strategic component in our network evolution and delivery of gigabit services."

Cash Hagen, Chief Technology Officer, WOW! Internet, Cable Phone

"Gainspeed is excited to become part of the Nokia family. The cable industry is in the midst of major changes driven by the competitive environment, consumer and business demands, and technological landscape. Together, Gainspeed and Nokia could deliver the innovation the cable industry needs to address these challenges."

Krish Padmanabhan, CEO, Gainspeed

"The combination of Gainspeed and Nokia would deliver a complete portfolio of cable access solutions. Nokia's broad expertise and resources would expedite the implementation of our Virtual CCAP solution and enable us to deliver a fully integrated coax and fiber access solution to the cable industry."

Jeff White, Co-founder and Chief Strategy Officer, Gainspeed

About Gainspeed

Gainspeed is redefining how cable networks are built. Its software driven, all-IP distributed access architecture addresses the limitations of today's monolithic headend and overburdened access networks. Gainspeed's Virtual CCAP solution, distributes processing to the edge of the network and centralizes control, enabling cable operators to satisfy exponentially growing capacity requirements, accommodate the shift to IP video, rapidly deploy new residential and commercial services, and reduce CAPEX and OPEX. Headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, Gainspeed is backed by leading investors including NEA, Andreessen Horowitz, Shasta Ventures, Juniper Networks and Technicolor. Additional information can be found at www.gainspeed.com. Follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn.

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160609006530/en/

Contacts:

Gainspeed

Don Reckles, 408-675-5069 x2101

Director of Communications

don.reckles@gainspeed.com
ESPOO (dpa-AFX) - Nokia (NOK) announced that it has planned to buy Gainspeed, a US-based start-up specializing in DAA (Distributed Access Architecture) solutions for cable industry via its Virtual CCAP (Converged Cable Access Platform) product line. The planned transaction is expected to close in third quarter of 2016. Upon closing of planned transaction, Gainspeed would become part of Nokia's Fixed Networks business group. Gainspeed was founded in 2012 is privately held, widely regarded as the industry leader in DAA, which the cable industry has adopted as its next generation solution to address increasing capacity requirements. Nokia said that Gainspeed's Virtual CCAP solution would strategically diversify Nokia's product portfolio for cable access customers and expand Nokia's footprint in this growing market. With the acquistion of Gainspeed, Nokia would have an extendible and flexible platform that can host the future innovations of the cable industry. Federico Guillen, president of Nokia's Fixed Networks business group, said: 'We are very excited to have Gainspeed, the technology leader in its field, joining us. Cable is one of the fastest growing areas in our fixed networks business, and we are committed to delivering a complete solution set to cable operators. Gainspeed's Virtual CCAP perfectly complements our leading fiber access solutions for cable MSOs.' 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.
BINGHAMTON, NY--(Marketwired - June 09, 2016) - Dr. Saeed Bajwa, an experienced and patient-centered neurosurgeon based in New York, recently attended the 2016 The American Association of Neurological Surgeons (AANS) Scientific Meeting in Chicago, IL. The event, which took place on April 30 th to May 4 th , was the 84 th annual meeting and biggest gathering of health care professionals around the world. Dr. Bajwa was a panelist on numerous discussions involving the latest technological advances and research in neurosurgery.

An organization that speaks for all of neurosurgery, AANS strives to advance neurological surgery to provide comprehensive care of the highest quality to patients. The theme for the 2016 AANS Annual Scientific Meeting Neurosurgery was "Leading the Way," and the gathering highlighted fascinating developments in neurosurgery. Founded in 1931, the American Association of Neurological Surgeons is comprised of over 8,000 members around the world. In addition to sharing his expert knowledge at the AANS meetings, Dr. Saeed Bajwa has dedicated much of his time to the organization's Young Neurosurgeons Mentorship Program over the years, providing guidance to medical students and encouraging them to take an interest in the fascinating and rewarding field of neurosurgery.

With his extensive research in advanced and training in cutting-edge technology, Dr. Bajwa brought first-hand expertise to the meeting. He participated in multiple forums, including an update on brain tumors, management of spinal cord injury, and the business of neurosurgery. In past meetings, he was a panelist on the forum Neurosurgeon and CEO, giving insight on how to develop the expertise of running a successful practice and building the program of neurosciences in hospitals. In addition to his work with the AANS, Dr. Bajwa offers his time teaching undergraduates and post-graduates in New York universities, and is involved with many academia clinical research studies. A recipient of various distinctions for his exceptional work, he was recently awarded the ICNA Relief USA Award of Appreciation for his commitment and community services. A valued professor, Dr. Bajwa received the President's Award for Excellence in Teaching from the SUNY Health Science Center.

A medical professional with a compassionate method, Dr. Saeed Bajwa is always committed to attaining additional knowledge of cutting-edge technology and qualifications to further improve his patients' lives. He recently earned certification for Endoscopic Surgery of the Spine in order to further complement his patient-centered approach to medicine, and this distinguished certification has allowed him to perform many successful endoscopic surgeries. Dr. Bajwa is also an innovator of CyberKnife technology, advanced equipment that non-invasively fights previously-classified inoperable tumors, both benign and cancerous, bringing hope to the lives of many patients. A participant in artificial lumbar disk development with Pioneer Surgical Technology in 2008 and 2010, he also took part in Pfizer's study of the development and testing of a vaccine used to prevent infections after surgery. Recently named Director of Neurosciences at United Health Services, Dr. Bajwa remains actively involved in many clinical studies, lectures, and the development of innovative treatments. With a keen understanding of the precision and delicate nature of the field, he continues to broaden his philanthropic efforts while being dedicated to individuals and their well-being.

Dr. Saeed Bajwa -- Expert Brain and Spine Neurosurgeon: http://drsaeedbajwanews.com

Dr. Saeed Bajwa -- Named One of The Leading Physicians of the World: http://www.streetinsider.com/Press+Releases/Dr.+Saeed+Bajwa+--+Named+One+of+The+Leading+Physicians+of+the+World/11676088.html

Dr. Saeed Bajwa -- Speaks at Meeting of International Neurosurgeons in Dubai: http://finance.yahoo.com/news/dr-saeed-bajwa-speaks-meeting-191210971.html

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NEW YORK, NY--(Marketwired - June 09, 2016) - Jacob Frydman, New York real estate investor and philanthropist, will participate in the National Committee for Furtherance of Jewish Education's Toys for Hospitalized Children program. Mr. Frydman's generous commitment and support for the NCFJE's initiative will help provide toys, gifts, and smiles to children in need.

Located in Brooklyn, NY, NCFJE is a multi-faceted charity founded in 1940 by Rabbi Yosef Yitzchok Schneerson dedicated to protecting, feeding, and educating thousands throughout the New York metro area. Today, the NCFJE has several programs under the leadership of Rabbi Jacob Hecht with the objective of providing fast, discreet, and dignified service to all sectors of the Jewish community. Under the direction of Program Director, Mrs. Baila Hecht, the organization's roster of initiatives includes Toys for Hospitalized Children, which sends over 10,000 toys and gifts annually to numerous hospitals, senior residences, and special needs facilities. For more than 50 years, these gifts have brought joy and smiles to those that need it most, and Jacob Frydman is pleased to be able to give back to the community through this meaningful and impactful program.

Toys for Hospitalized Children is also helping children learn how easy and fulfilling it is to reach out to help others who are less fortunate. The young volunteers of the program gather to wrap toys, and when possible, visit the recipients to offer the gifts personally. During his years of active involvement in Toys for Hospitalized Children, Jacob Frydman has witnessed on numerous occasions how an unexpected gift uplifts a hospitalized child, senior, or special needs adult by letting them know they are not forgotten. This simple gesture sends a message of compassion and hope to patients and family members that leaves a lasting sense of community spirit in all who participate.

A renowned expert on value added investments, Jacob Frydman has made a positive and lasting impact over his 30-year career in the real estate acquisition and development industries. As a recognized leader in his field, Jacob has served as a contributor and panelist at numerous industry seminars, speaking on aspects of property investments. He has been a guest lecturer on real estate finance at Columbia University, and in the Master's Lecturer series sponsored by New York Law School. His television appearances include CNBC, Bloomberg TV, FOX News, and others, where he discusses trends in commercial real estate and provides his invaluable expertise. Frydman has served as a member of the Board of Directors of the Bardavon Opera House, home of the Hudson Valley Philharmonic and is also an avid philanthropist, often donating his time and capital to various charitable endeavors. He is a firm supporter of organizations such as Chabad of Dutchess County and The Brem Foundation of Washington DC.

Jacob Frydman -- Property Expert and Consultant: http://jacobfrydmannews.com

Jacob Frydman -- Contributes to the Released Time Program of Greater New York: http://www.streetinsider.com/Press+Releases/Jacob+Frydman+--+Contributes+to+the+Released+Time+Program+of+Greater+New+York/11719489.html

Jacob Frydman -- Devoted Member and Supporter of The Rhinebeck Jewish Center: http://finance.yahoo.com/news/jacob-frydman-devoted-member-supporter-050741846.html

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NEW YORK, NY--(Marketwired - June 09, 2016) - One of the world's most renowned leaders in online reputation and a PR powerhouse, ICMediaDirect will join other companies, industry leaders, and influencers at Affiliate Summit East (ASE) 2016 to share invaluable market insights and hear views of other participants on most trending issues nationwide and internationally. Scheduled to take place July 31 through August 2 at the New York Marriott Marquis in New York, the annual tradeshow is expected to bring together over 5,000 marketers, vendors, networks and media outlets. Reputation management experts at ICMediaDirect will speak on the importance of building an unparalleled online brand for businesses as well as individuals and will tackle some of the forward-thinking strategies they utilize for successful content marketing. To access your personal or your company's Online Reputation Report, visit ICMediaDirect homepage at http://www.icmediadirect.com

Established in 2003, Affiliate Summit Inc. has a proven track record in managing highly successful marketing projects and delivering numerous insightful events, educational sessions, and tradeshows. With combined experience of more than 30 years in affiliate marketing, founders of the company Shawn Collins and Missy Ward believe in the power of interpersonal networking and information exchange in today's fast-paced digital world. Their landmark events create an invaluable learning and sharing environment for thought leaders, start-ups, merchants, and vendors to discuss new opportunities for effective business development and digital innovations. With an established expertise in providing state-of-the art solutions to customers who aim to showcase their brand online in the best light, ICMediaDirect is delighted to bring first-class advice and tips on effective reputation management to affiliates and merchants at the conference that is now less than two months away. Experts at ICMediaDirect reinforce confidence in search engine optimization (SEO) techniques and emphasize the need for every brand to regularly put out content and use technological advancement to develop and maintain captivating online presence.

This year's edition of Affiliate Summit will feature a collection of keynotes from the most influential and thought-provoking public figures in the field of digital platforms and marketing. Speaker Scott Stratten, a social media and relationship marketing expert, President of Un-Marketing and the author of four best-selling business books, is one of "America's 10 Marketing Gurus," according to Business Review USA. The final and concluding day of Affiliate Summit East 2016 will see an SEO keynote panel, featuring Bruce Clay (President of Bruce Clay, Inc.), Duane Forrester (VP at Bruce Clay, Inc.), and Stephan Spencer (Co-Author of The Art of SEO).

Founded in 1996, ICMediaDirect is an award-winning PR and online reputation management company, dedicated to brand repair for customers across the globe. Its cutting-edge technological solutions and highly competitive and unmatched online reputation packages have vastly improved the Internet presence of numerous businesses, professional athletes, politicians, fortune top 500 CEOs, celebrities, among many others. Major marketing conferences and events frequently benefit from ICMediaDirect's participation and sponsorships, including Affiliate Summit, Leadscon, SES, and ad:tech conferences. 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 -- Reputation Management -- IC Media Direct to Attend New York ad:tech 2016: http://finance.yahoo.com/news/icmediadirect-com-reputation-management-ic-041656580.html

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Global medical cannabis leader proud to help Croatian patients in need

GROZNJAN, Croatia, June 10,2016 /PRNewswire/ --Tilray, a global leader in medical cannabis research and production, today announced that the company has shipped precisely crafted medical cannabis products to Croatia to be dispensed to patients with prescriptions via pharmacies. This marks the first time medical cannabis products containing the active compound tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) are being legally imported into the European Union from North America for commercial medical use. It marks another strategic milestone for Tilray as the company aims to build the world's most trusted and admired medical cannabis brand by offering patients, physicians, researchers and pharmacies pure, precise and predictable products.

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Tilray is supplying pharmacies around Croatia with orally administered medical cannabis products through a partnership with the Croatian Institute of Immunology, which will oversee distribution of Tilray products cultivated and processed at the company's federally licensed, state-of-the-art production facility in Canada. After receipt of all necessary approvals and permits from the Croatian and Canadian regulatory authorities, Tilray announced the partnership at Croatia's annual Media and Health Symposium in GroAnjan this morning. Initially, two varieties of Tilray Liquid Capsules will be available in Croatia. One formulation contains 5.0 mg of THC and 5.0 mg of cannabidiol (CBD) per capsule. The other formulation contains 2.5 mg of THC and 2.0 mg of CBD per capsule. The inclusion of both primary cannabinoids ensures maximum therapeutic effect, reduces risk of adverse reactions and enables precise dosage and easy titration.

Professor Ognjen Brborovic PhD MD, Chairman of Croatia's Committee for Medical Cannabis, welcomed the arrival of Tilray Liquid Capsules in Croatia. "It took eight months for the Committee for Medical Cannabis to deliver necessary documents needed to change Croatian legislation to get cannabis to Croatian patients. It took another eight months of diligent work with Tilray to secure all certificates and licenses needed to import and distribute cannabinoid preparations into the European Union from Canada and for actual production of the first batch of cannabis extract oil. I am glad that Croatia is the first EU country that will be able to assure patients first-class cannabis extract oil is available in pharmacies. I hope that patients in other EU countries will soon have the same opportunity," Dr. Brborovic said.

It is expected that thousands of Croatians could soon benefit from medical cannabis as therapy for conditions including multiple sclerosis, HIV/AIDS, chronic pain, Dravet syndrome, and nausea. Compared to other prescription medicines available in Croatia, medical cannabis offers patients an affordable way to manage symptoms for many different diseases with relatively benign side effects and a good safety profile.

Croatia and the EU join Australia as Tilray's newest markets outside of Canada as the company continues to shape the future of the medical cannabis industry around the globe. This effort to facilitate legitimate medical access further establishes Canada as a leading source of cannabis for medical and scientific applications globally. In May, Tilray received approval from Australia's Therapeutic Goods Administration and the Queensland Department of Health to begin supplying a patient in Australia with medical cannabis via a federally administered Special Access Scheme. Earlier in the year, Tilray announced a clinical research trial in Australia in partnership with the Government of New South Wales, Chris O'Brien Lifehouse and the University of Sydney to study the safety and efficacy of medicinal cannabis for patients suffering from chemotherapy-induced nausea and vomiting.

In the coming months, Tilray will announce several additional clinical research partnerships in Australia, Canada and Europe as well as further medical market partnerships in Europe. With today's announcement, Tilray becomes the first Canadian company to export medical cannabis products from the country's federally regulated medical cannabis program.

"We estimate that medical cannabis has the potential to be a $100 billion industry globally. We are excited about the rapid development of the medical cannabis sector in Europe, and we are pleased to be the first company to legally import medical cannabis products into the European Union after meeting all regulatory requirements in Canada and Croatia," said Mr. Brendan Kennedy, Tilray President. "With demand at an all-time high, we look forward to working with the Institute of Immunology to help eligible patients in need access medical cannabis products in Croatia."

About Tilray

Tilray is a global leader in medical cannabis research and production dedicated to advancing the science and safety of cannabinoid medicine for patients with a diverse range of conditions including epilepsy, cancer, chronic pain and multiple sclerosis. The company operates one of the largest and most sophisticated medicinal cannabis research and production facilities in the world and offers pharmaceutical grade medical cannabis products to patients, pharmacies and researchers in Australia, Canada, the European Union and the Americas. Learn more at www.tilray.com


AIM: MARL Suite 102, 3 Eden Street 10 June 2016 North Sydney, NSW 2060 Australia



THIS NEWS RELEASE IS NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION TO THE UNITED STATES NEWSWIRE SERVICES OR FOR DISSEMINATION IN THE UNITED STATES.



MARIANA RESOURCES - EXPIRY AND ISSUE OF OPTIONS



Mariana Resources Ltd ('Mariana' or 'the Company'), the AIM listed exploration and development company with projects in Turkey and South America, advises that following the expiry of 2,900,000 options earlier this year, the Board has approved the remuneration committee recommendations to issue 21,150,000 incentive and performance options to employees, directors and consultants. All options to employees and directors are issued under the conditions of the Employee Share Option Plan. The new options issued to directors are performance options specifically at an exercise price of 4.25p, 4.5p and 4.75p aiming at aligning the key objective of share price performance of the company and expire on 1 June 2019.



Currently the share options under the Employee Share Option Plan post this issue represent 4.33% of the company's total shares on issue (2015- 4.38% at time of last issue). As a result of the above option expiry and issue, the Company has the following options outstanding:



Employees 19,300,000



Directors 32,630,400



Other 6,798,100 ------------- Total outstanding 58,728,500 -------------



Directors Option Holdings for this year following this issue:



+--------------+---------------+---------------+--------------+---------------+ |Director |Opening Balance|Expired Options|Options issued|Current Balance| +--------------+---------------+---------------+--------------+---------------+ |John Horsburgh| 5,900,000 | 600,000 | 1,750,000 | 7,050,000 | +--------------+---------------+---------------+--------------+---------------+ |Glen Parsons | 8,200,000 | 600,000 | 5,000,000 | 12,600,000 | +--------------+---------------+---------------+--------------+---------------+ |Eric Roth | 5,230,400 | - | 5,000,000 | 10,230,400 | +--------------+---------------+---------------+--------------+---------------+ |John Goodwin | 1,000,000 | - | 1,750,000 | 2,750,000 | +--------------+---------------+---------------+--------------+---------------+ |Total | 20,330,400 | 1,200,000 | 13,500,000 | 32,630,400 | +--------------+---------------+---------------+--------------+---------------+



The issue of these incentive options will result in a non cash flow charge to the 2016 income statement of GBP 613,671.



**ENDS**



For further information please visit website at www.marianaresources.com or contact the following.



In Australia:



Glen Parsons (CEO) Mariana Resources Ltd +61 2 9437 4588



Eric Roth (COO) Mariana Resources Ltd +56 9 8818 1243



Rob Adamson RFC Ambrian Limited (Nomad) +61 2 9250 0041



Will Souter RFC Ambrian Limited (Nomad) +61 2 9250 0050



In U.K.



Oliver Stansfield Brandon Hill Capital (UK Broker) +44 20 3463 5061



Jonathan Evans Brandon Hill Capital (UK Broker) +44 20 3463 5016



Camilla Horsfall Blytheweigh (Financial PR) +44 20 7138 3224



Megan Ray Blytheweigh (Financial PR) +44 20 7138 3203



About Mariana Resources Mariana Resources Ltd is an AIM quoted exploration and development company with an extensive portfolio of gold, silver and copper projects in South America and Turkey. Mariana's most advanced asset is the Hot Maden gold-copper project in north east Turkey, which is a joint venture with its Turkish JV partner Lidya (30% Mariana and 70% Lidya). A maiden mineral resource estimate of 2.03 Moz gold Equivalent (Indicated Category) and 0.97 Moz gold Equivalent (Inferred Category) (100% basis) was reported for Hot Maden on August 18, 2015. Elsewhere in Turkey, Mariana holds a 100% interest in the Ergama gold-copper project. In southern Argentina, the Company's core gold-silver projects are Las Calandrias (100%), Sierra Blanca (100%), Los Cisnes (100%), Bozal (100%). These projects are part of a 160,000+ Ha land package in the Deseado Massif epithermal gold-silver district in mining-friendly Santa Cruz Province. Mariana acquired 100% interests in the Dona Ines gold-silver and Exploradora East copper prospects in northern Chile through the Aegean Metals Group transaction which closed in January, 2015, with Mariana exploration now being funded by Asset Chile through the provision of $1.65m for a total 50% interest. In Suriname, Mariana has a direct holding of 10.2% of the Nassau Gold project.) The Nassau Gold Project is a 28,000 Ha exploration concession located approximately 125 km south east of the capital Paramaribo and immediately adjacent to Newmont Mining's 4.2Moz gold Merian project. In Peru, Mariana is focusing on acquiring new opportunities which complement its current portfolio.



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: Mariana Resources Ltd via GlobeNewswire [HUG#2019476]



B12GJ72R1041



Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX

Kostenloser Wertpapierhandel auf Smartbroker.de
Rising Passenger Numbers in a Weak Quarter

Regulatory News:

SAS (STO:SAS) (OSE:SASNOK):

FEBRUARY 2016 APRIL 2016

Income before tax: MSEK 127 (355)

Income before tax and nonrecurring items: MSEK -601 (-331)

Revenue: MSEK 8,916 (9,403)

Unit revenue (PASK) declined 11.5%[1]

Unit cost (CASK) decreased 1.3%[2]

EBIT margin: 2.7% (4.9%)

Net income for the period: MSEK 171 (279)

Earnings per common share: SEK 0.25 (0.58)

The outlook for the full year 2015/2016 remains firm, see page 8.

NOVEMBER 2015 APRIL 2016

Income before tax: MSEK -182 (-481)

Income before tax and nonrecurring items: MSEK -1,005 (-1,160)

Revenue: MSEK 17,191 (17,774)

Unit revenue (PASK) declined 10.8%[1]

Unit cost (CASK) decreased 3.9%[2]

EBIT margin: 0.3% (-1.1%)

Net income for the period: MSEK -75 (-361)

Earnings per common share: SEK -0.76 (-1.63)

[1] Currency adjusted.

[2] Currency adjusted and excluding jet fuel.

COMMENTS BY THE PRESIDENT AND CEO OF SAS:

"We close the book on a quarter that was unsatisfactory in terms of results. However, it is pleasing to note that the commercial strategy with a focus on frequent travelers is delivering results and increasing numbers of customers are choosing to fly with SAS, which is also reflected in the positive cash flow. Despite substantially reduced jetfuel costs, we reported weaker results than last year. The weak results were primarily attributable to three factors: increased price pressure, technical maintenance costs and negative currency effects.

We are focusing on frequent travelers and are targeting our initiatives using innovation and increased digitization to strengthen loyalty in this target group. This has attracted 130,000 new EuroBonus members during the quarter and, at the same time, our new corporate program SAS Credits has gained almost 5,000 new customers compared with last year. Our investment in new long-haul routes is appreciated by our customers and, overall, the bookings status for the summer looks stable. At the same time, we note that the European civil aviation landscape is undergoing rapid change. The market trend toward main growth in the leisure travel segment and an increasing price sensitivity with customers poses challenges for profitability in the industry. At present, SAS is the only airline that operates between Scandinavia and Europe where the flight crews are exclusively subject to Scandinavian employment terms.

Given this background, we have to continue to change to thereby ensure long-term competitiveness and a sustainable return for our shareholders," says Rickard Gustafson, SAS President and CEO.

SAS discloses this information pursuant to the Swedish Securities Market Act and/or the Swedish Financial Instruments Trading Act. The information was provided for publication on June 10, 2016, at 8:00 a.m.

This information was brought to you by Cision http://news.cision.com

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160609006551/en/

Contacts:

Bjorn Tibell

Head of Investor Relations

Phone: +46 70 997 14 37

E-mail: bjorn.tibell@sas.se
THOUSAND OAKS (dpa-AFX) - Amgen (AMGN) announced new data from a prespecified interim analysis of the Phase 3 TOWER study, in which BLINCYTO (blinatumomab) demonstrated an almost two-fold increase in median overall survival compared to standard care chemotherapy in adult patients with Philadelphia chromosome-negative relapsed or refractory B-cell precursor acute lymphoblastic leukemia. Amgen said the BLINCYTO adverse events observed in the TOWER study were consistent with the known safety profile of BLINCYTO. As per the recommendation of an independent data monitoring committee, Amgen ended the study early for efficacy based on these results. BLINCYTO is currently approved for the treatment of Ph-negative B-cell precursor relapsed or refractory acute lymphoblastic leukemia under accelerated approval, and the company looks forward to working with regulatory authorities for a full approval for BLINCYTO in the patient population. 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.


Date: 10th June 2016



Not for distribution, directly or indirectly, in or into the United States or any jurisdiction in which such distribution would be unlawful.



Issuer:



BMBG Bond Finance S.C.A.



Post Stabilisation Notice



BNP Paribas (co-ordinator) Contact: Erin Brown Telephone number 00 44 207 595 8222, hereby gives notice that no stabilisation was undertaken by the Stabilising Manager(s) named below in relation to the offer of the following securities.



+------------------------------+---------------------------------+ | Issuer: | BMBG Bond Finance S.C.A. | +------------------------------+---------------------------------+ | Guarantor (if any): | | +------------------------------+---------------------------------+ | Aggregate nominal amount: | EUR 435,000 | +------------------------------+---------------------------------+ | Description: | 3.00% 5NC2 due 15 June 2021 | +------------------------------+---------------------------------+ | Stabilising Manager(s) | BNPP (B&D), UCI | | | | | | Commerzbank, HSBC | +------------------------------+---------------------------------+ | Stabilisation started: | | +------------------------------+---------------------------------+ | Stabilisation last occurred: | N/A (no stabilisation occurred) | +------------------------------+---------------------------------+



This announcement is for information purposes only and does not constitute an invitation or offer to underwrite, subscribe for or otherwise acquire or dispose of any securities of the Issuer in any jurisdiction.



This announcement is not an offer of securities for sale into the United States. The securities referred to above have not been, and will not be, registered under the United States Securities Act of 1933 and may not be offered or sold in the United States absent registration or an exemption from registration. There has not been and will not be a public offer of the securities in the United States.



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: BNP Paribas Primary New Issues via GlobeNewswire [HUG#2019496]



R1062



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Kostenloser Wertpapierhandel auf Smartbroker.de
On 9 June 2016, the Boards of TEO LT, AB and its subsidiaries - AB Omnitel and AB Baltic Data Center - approved the Terms of Merger of TEO LT, AB (hereinafter - TEO), AB Omnitel (hereinafter - OMNITEL) and AB Baltic Data Center (hereinafter - BDC).Based on the Terms of Merger, TEO, OMNITEL and BDC undergo merger pursuant to Part 3 of Article 2.97 of the Civil Code of the Republic of Lithuania by the way of merger of OMNITEL, which after the merger shall terminate its activities as a legal entity, and BDC, which after the merger shall terminate its activities as a legal entity, into TEO, which after the merger shall continue activities engaged by TEO, OMNITEL and BDC.TEO, the company involved in merger:  name of a legal entity - TEO LT, AB;  legal form of a legal entity - public limited liability company;  registered address of a legal entity - Lvovo str. 25, Vilnius, the Republic of Lithuania;  registration number of a legal entity - 121215434;  register with which data about a legal entity is gathered and kept - the Register of Legal Entities of the Republic of Lithuania, administrator;  value-added tax payer's code - LT212154314;  authorised capital amounts to EUR 168,957,810.02;  authorised capital is divided into 582,613,138 ordinary registered shares with nominal value of EUR 0.29 each;  amount of paid-up authorised capital - EUR 168,957,810.02.OMNITEL, the company being merged:  name of a legal entity - AB "OMNITEL";  legal form of a legal entity - public limited liability company;  registered address of a legal entity - T. Sevcenkos str. 25, Vilnius, the Republic of Lithuania;  registration number of a legal entity - 110305282;  register with which data about a legal entity is gathered and kept - the Register of Legal Entities of the Republic of Lithuania, administrator;  value-added tax payer's code - LT103052811;  authorised capital amounts to EUR 11,509,777.81;  authorised capital is divided into 39,688,889 ordinary registered shares with nominal value of EUR 0.29 each.BDC, the company being merged:  name of a legal entity - AB "BALTIC DATA CENTER";  legal form of a legal entity - public limited liability company;  registered address of a legal entity - Zirmunu str. 141, Vilnius, the Republic of Lithuania;  registration number of a legal entity - 125830791;  register with which data about a legal entity is gathered and kept - the Register of Legal Entities of the Republic of Lithuania, administrator;  value-added tax payer's code - LT258307917;  authorised capital amounts to EUR 289,600;  authorised capital is divided into 10,000 ordinary registered shares with nominal value of EUR 28.96 each.Taking into consideration, that TEO is a sole owner of OMNITEL and BDC, merger of TEO, OMNITEL and BDC shall be implemented under simplified merger procedure in accordance with Article 2.103 of the Civil Code of the Republic of Lithuania and Article 70 of the Law on Companies of the Republic of Lithuania.No new legal entity shall be established as a result of merger. During merger shares of OMNITEL and BDC shall not be exchanged to shares of TEO. Authorised capital of TEO shall not be increased.During the process of merger, TEO, continuing after the merger, shall assume all assets, rights and obligations of OMNITEL. TEO shall assume OMNITEL assets, rights and obligations under the terms, conditions and in accordance with the procedure set forth in these Terms of Merger based on the transfer-acceptance act(s). Assets, rights and obligations (including rights and obligations under transactions) of OMNITEL shall be transferred to TEO as of the moment of execution of the OMNITEL Transfer-Acceptance Act and shall be deemed assumed by TEO as of the same moment, unless otherwise stated in the OMNITEL Transfer-Acceptance Act.All and any transactions of OMNITEL concluded before the moment of execution of the OMNITEL Transfer-Acceptance Act shall after the execution of the OMNITEL Transfer-Acceptance Act be deemed as transactions of TEO and shall be recorded in the books of TEO, unless otherwise stated in the OMNITEL Transfer-Acceptance Act.During the process of merger, TEO, continuing after the merger, shall assume all assets, rights and obligations of BDC. TEO shall assume BDC assets, rights and obligations under the terms, conditions and in accordance with the procedure set forth in these Terms of Merger based on the transfer-acceptance act(s). Assets, rights and obligations (including rights and obligations under transactions) of BDC shall be transferred to TEO as of the moment of execution of the BDC Transfer-Acceptance Act and shall be deemed assumed by TEO as of the same moment, unless otherwise stated in the BDC Transfer-Acceptance Act.All and any transactions of BDC concluded before the moment of execution of the BDC Transfer-Acceptance Act shall after the execution of the BDC Transfer-Acceptance Act be deemed as transactions of TEO and shall be recorded in the books of TEO, unless otherwise stated in the BDC Transfer-Acceptance Act.ENCL. Terms of merger of TEO LT, AB, AB Omnitel and AB Baltic Data CenterPaulius Pakutinskas, Senior Legal Adviser, tel. +370 5 236 7330Attachment:https://cns.omxgroup.com/cds/DisclosureAttachmentServlet?messageAttachmentId=575192
The European Investment Bank (EIB) has signed a EUR 125 million loan agreement with Landsvirkjun, the National Power Company of Iceland, to finance a new geothermal power station and its geothermal wells at Theistareykir, near Husavik in northeastern Iceland.

This Smart News Release features multimedia. View the full release here: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160610005063/en/

The financing will be used to support the design, construction and operation of a new 90 MWe geothermal power station and its geothermal wells, operated by the National Power Company of Iceland. The project will be located at Theistareykir, some 30 km southeast of Husavik in the northeast of the country, where nine wells with over 50 MWe capacity have already been drilled and tested. Further information on the Theistareykir Geothermal Power Station can be found here.

Vice-President Cristian Popa, responsible for EIB-operations in EFTA-countries, commented: "Iceland is in a very special position when it comes to renewable energy and it's great to see how Landsvirkjun is making the most of it. The EIB is glad that it can support this important energy project, which also highlights how the bank supports the energy sector around Europe. The Icelandic expertise in this area is state of the art and serves as a blue print for geothermal projects around the globe."

"This is an important milestone for Landsvirkjun and we are grateful for the support the EIB is showing renewable energy in Iceland. The EIB has, in the past, demonstrated its strong support in providing funding for sound and sustainable projects in Europe and we see this agreement as a sign of confidence in our company," added Horur Arnarson, CEO of Landsvirkjun.

The loan is the first EIB project in Iceland since 2011, when it lent EUR 70 million, also to Landsvirkjun, for the construction of the Budarhals hydropower plant in the lower highlands of southern Iceland on the rivers Tungnaa and Kaldakvisl. These projects are crucial in the fight against climate change through support for renewable energy, one of the main priorities for the European Investment Bank. Last year, more than a quarter of all EIB lending supported projects that help safeguard the environment.

About EIB

The European Investment Bank (EIB) is the European Union's long-term financing institution lending for investments that contribute to achieving the EU's objectives. Founded in 1958, it operates in the 28 EU Member States, the EU's neighbour countries and more than 100 other countries around the globe. Since 1994 the Bank can lend to eligible projects in Iceland under the EFTA Facility. This mandate enables the Bank to support projects notably in the sectors of energy, environment, research, development and innovation located in the territories of the EFTA countries (Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland).

About Landsvirkjun

Landsvirkjun was established in 1965 and is an energy generation company owned by the Icelandic nation. Landsvirkjun's objective is to maximise the yield on the energy resources entrusted to the Company with emphasis on sustainable utilisation, value creation and efficiency. The Company produces 3/4 of all electricity in Iceland from renewable energy resources, hydroelectric energy, geothermal energy and wind energy. The Company is a leader in sustainable utilisation of energy resources and contributes to increased knowledge, innovation and technical development.

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160610005063/en/

Contacts:

EIB

Tim Smit, +352 691 286423

Press Office: +352 4379 21000,

t.smit@eib.org, www.eib.org/press, press@eib.org

Landsvirkjun:

Magnus or Gylfason, +354 515 9000

magnus.thor.gylfason@landsvirkjun.is, www.landsvirkjun.is
TORONTO, ONTARIO -- (Marketwired) -- 06/10/16 -- A giant 10-foot tall wooden rocking chair is touring 19 towns across Ontario. Joining the giant rocking chair in highly visual media events, will be local health coalition members, including seniors, family council members, union and care workers, long term care residents and concerned citizens. The goal is to bring awareness about improving the care standards at long term care facilities.

The care levels in Ontario's long term care homes are inadequate:

-- More than 18,500 hospital beds have been closed since 1990 and patients are moved out of hospitals ever quicker and sicker. -- Access to care is poor with long-waits and increasingly severe rationing of access to care. There have been approximately 20,000 people on wait lists for long-term care home spaces for more than a decade. -- Almost 2/3 of long-term care residents have dementia and almost half have aggressive behaviours. Since 2001, more than 24 long-term care residents in Ontario have died as a result of violence from other residents and thousands have been attacked by other residents.

There is a solution. The Ontario provincial government must:

1. Set a minimum care standard of 4-hours of hands-on care per day per resident. 2. Improve access to care and reduce wait times.

The coalition will be collecting 20,000 signatures on postcards as they travel with the chair to symbolize the approximately 20,000 people waiting for long-term care placements.

When and Where?

Each event will be approximately 1/2 hour.

Day 1: Monday June 13 Prescott 10 a.m., S/W corner Churchill Rd. W & Edward St. S. Plantagenet 2:30 p.m., Pinecrest Nursing Home (front lawn) 101 Parent St. Day 2: Tuesday June 14 Orleans 10 a.m., Waterfront lawn at Rosyln Ave. & Hiawatha Park Rd. Carleton Place 1 p.m., Centennial Park (near waterfront) Joseph St. Almonte 3:30 p.m., Waterfront rest area, corner of Martin St. S. & St. Paul St. Day 3: Wednesday June 15 Barry's Bay 10 a.m., S/E corner Opeongo Line and Mintha St. Bancroft 2 p.m. north sidewalk of Monck St. & Manor Lane Day 4: Thursday June 16 Norwood 10 a.m., Asphodel-Norwood Community Centre (lawn in front of playground), 88 Alma St. Lindsay 2 p.m., Manorview Park, Wilson Ave. & Andrew Dr. Day 5: Friday June 17 Newmarket 10 a.m., N/E corner Davis Dr. & Yonge St. Alliston 1 p.m. N/E corner of Victoria St. E. & Sir Frederick Banting Rd. King City 3:30 p.m., entrance to Centennial Park, Jane St. & Kingswood Dr. Day 6: Saturday June 18 Orangeville 10 a.m., N/W corner Broadway & Blind Line. Exeter 2:30 p.m., sidewalk in front of Municipality of South Huron, 322 Main St. S. Day 7: Monday June 20 Amherstburg 10 a.m., Parkette at Sandwich St. S. & Rankin Ave. Essex 1:30 p.m., Cenotaph at Talbot St. S. & Iler Ave. Day 8: Tuesday June 21 St. Thomas 10 a.m., S/W corner Wellington St. & Stokes Rd. (across from Elgin Mall). Tillsonburg 1 p.m., N/W corner Broadway St. & Ridout St. W. Woodstock 3:30 p.m., sidewalk across from Caressant Care Nursing Home, 81 Fyfe Ave.

Contacts:

Tina Si, Campaign Coordinator

Ontario Health Coalition

416-441-2502 (office)

647-505-8253 (cell)



Peter Boyle, Tour Lead

613-539-3622 (cell)






St Peter Port Capital Limited AIM Disclosure Update



10 June 2016



Pursuant to Rule 17 of the AIM Rules for Companies (the 'AIM Rules'), the following disclosures fall to be disclosed under Schedule Two, paragraph (g) of the AIM Rules:



Peter Francis Griffin is employed by Intertrust, a corporate administration company, who provide administration services to St Peter Port Capital including providing the services of Mr Griffin as a Director. Mr Griffin was a director of the companies listed below, all of which were administered by Intertrust.



Equity Special Situations Limited is a Guernsey company which became insolvent following the collapse of Landsbanki one of its bankers and custodians. Its directors applied for Compulsory Liquidation in December 2008. The liquidation was completed September 2013 and the company was then dissolved. Mr Griffin was a Director of the Company at the time it went into liquidation.



Omaha Holdings Limited, Seto Omaha Limited, Seto Omaha One Limited, Seto Omaha Three Limited and Seto Omaha Four Limited are all within the same group of companies incorporated in Guernsey. In August 2014 the directors applied for an administration order seeking the appointment of an Administrator to each of the companies to assist with the orderly realisation of the company's assets. Mr Griffin resigned as a Director in June 2016.



Cumberland Holdings Limited is a Gibraltar company. Administrative Receivers were appointed in April 2009 pursuant to a charge registered over the company's property asset as security for a loan advanced to the company's parent company. Mr Griffin resigned as a Director in March 2015.



New Europe Property Holdings (Lux) SARL and its wholly owned subsidiary NEPH (Elblag) SARL incorporated in Luxembourg. Following the withdrawal of financial support by the ultimate parent company the directors made application in July 2015 for the appointment of an Insolvency Trustee. Mr Griffin resigned as a Director in August 2015.



Enquiries:



St Peter Port Capital Limited Lynn Bruce, Director +44 (0) 1481 724 222



Grant Thornton UK LLP (Nominated Adviser) +44 (0) 20 7383 5100 Philip Secrett Jamie Barklem Carolyn Sansom



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: St Peter Port Capital Limited via GlobeNewswire [HUG#2019552]



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Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX

Kostenloser Wertpapierhandel auf Smartbroker.de
Copenhagen Airport: More people are travelling to DenmarkIn May, more than 2.5 million people travelled through the airport, which was 10.8% more than in May of last year. The main driver of this growth is an increase in the number of tourists visiting Denmark.Denmark is ranking higher on the list of attractive travel destinations for many people. In the first quarter of 2016, 27.2% more tourists travelled to Denmark via Copenhagen Airport compared with the same period of last year. The growing number of tourists helps drive the growth in passenger numbers at Copenhagen Airport, which was 10.8% higher in May of this year than in the same month of last year.- When more tourists visit Denmark, it helps generate growth and create jobs in tourism throughout the country. An important explanation of the high growth is accessibility. Denmark is very well connected to Europe and the rest of the world. In the past year, accessibility has increased substantially, especially because new routes have been opened to Copenhagen Airport and, not least, due to the many more flights out of Copenhagen. More flights out of Copenhagen and several airlines operating on the same route make it easier for tourists to find a flight that fits their plans, explains Copenhagen Airport's CEO Thomas Woldbye.Most of the tourists are from other European countries, and European traffic grew by 207,052 passengers compared with the same month of 2015, but intercontinental traffic is also growing rapidly, and was 12.2% above last year's level.- The Danes like to travel long distances for their holidays, and the more than 30 non-stop intercontinental routes out of Copenhagen provide a good starting point for accommodating them. But it also means that more tourists and business travellers from far away have easy access to Denmark. As an example, both Norwegian and SAS opened non-stop services to Boston in north-eastern United States this spring, opening a brand new market and giving even more Americans better possibilities of travelling to Denmark. That is one of the reasons why we apply so many resources to attract new routes to Copenhagen Airport, said Woldbye.The year-to-date growth in traffic at Copenhagen Airport is 11.5%, and a total of 10,947,321 passengers travelled through Copenhagen Airport in the first five months of 2016.Attachment:https://cns.omxgroup.com/cds/DisclosureAttachmentServlet?messageAttachmentId=575032
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.
SUGAR LAND, TX -- (Marketwired) -- 06/10/16 -- Researched by Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas) -- CB&I Incorporated (NYSE:CBI) (The Hague, Netherlands), also known as Chicago Bridge & Iron Company, is maintaining a healthy slate of projects, despite a slowing business environment due to the consistent weakness in commodity prices. According to Industrial Info's project database, CB&I is involved in more than 140 projects, with a total investment value (TIV) of $175.6 billion. More than half of the TIV is attributed to the 10 highest-valued projects, all of which involve construction and additions at liquefied natural gas (LNG) facilities.

Within this article: Details on the 10 highest-valued projects to feature CB&I, including those from major companies such as Chevron Corporation (NYSE:CVX), Sempra Energy (NYSE:SRE), NextDecade, Anadarko Petroleum Corporation (NYSE:APC), Rosneft OAO, Engie (formerly GDF Suez), Mitsubishi Corporation and Mitsui & Company Limited.

For details, view the entire article by subscribing to Industrial Info's Premium Industry News, or browse other breaking industrial news stories at www.industrialinfo.com.

Industrial Info Resources (IIR), with global headquarters in Sugar Land, Texas, five offices in North America and 10 international offices, is the leading provider of global market intelligence specializing in the industrial process, heavy manufacturing and energy markets. Industrial Info's quality-assurance philosophy, the Living Forward Reporting Principle, provides up-to-the-minute intelligence on what's happening now, while constantly keeping track of future opportunities. To contact an office in your area, visit the www.industrialinfo.com "Contact Us" page.

Contact:

Brian Ford

(713) 980-9393




BOSTON, MA--(Marketwired - June 10, 2016) - BioBridges, a career portfolio management company providing integrated services to the emerging life sciences community, is proud to announce their ongoing support for friend of BioBridges, Emily Quitzau, and her JettRide fundraiser.

14-year-old Emily Quitzau is a triplet with two brothers, both of whom were born with severe disabilities. Emily's brother Calvin was diagnosed with Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy at age five, and over the years the degenerative muscle disease has confined him to a wheelchair with limited use of his arms.

Today the promise of new breakthroughs in research and treatment for Muscular Dystrophy offer new hope for the Duchenne community. Just last week the FDA delayed their decision on market approval for Sarepta Therapeutics' drug, eteplirsen, which could be the first-ever Muscular Dystrophy drug in the United States. Still, Sarepta's shares have been rising in anticipation that the delay suggests approval could be around the corner.

In the absence of unified institutional progress, individuals like Emily Quitzau have stepped up to raise money, awareness, and support for the fight against Duchenne. On July 22 nd Emily will set off on JettRide, a tri-state, 500-mile bike ride far more grueling than the many triathlons and road races she has completed in the past to raise money and awareness for Duchenne.

While BioBridges has played an active role working on therapies for Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy, it was Emily's remarkable personal story that truly inspired them to get behind her mission. "Sure, one could say our donation would suffice to support her cause," says BioBridges Founding Partner, Jason Falchuk, "but we wanted to go a step further and get behind her in a bigger way by sharing her story with the greater BioBridges community."

"Emily is an example for all of us," Falchuk explains. "She reminds us of the courage, determination, and relentless strength it takes to face and overcome adversity."

For more information and to donate to Emily's JettRide, please visit her fundraising page.

About BioBridges

Founded by industry veterans, BioBridges helps align exceptional life science professionals with the programs that need them. The company's scalable consultant management model provides the experience that works, and delivers the contributions necessary to advance science and produce breakthrough therapies. For more information, please visit www.biobridges.com.

Image Available: http://www.marketwire.com/library/MwGo/2016/6/9/11G102285/Images/250-20fa54d8283e9994917da351f75b2fda.jpg

Media Contact

Amy Steinberg

asteinberg@biobridges.com

781-591-4740
RED DEER, ALBERTA -- (Marketwired) -- 06/10/16 -- Gamehost Inc. ('Gamehost', the 'Company') (TSX: GH) reports that re-entry to the Boomtown Casino in Fort McMurray took place on June 1, 2016. The re-entry was attended by four Company representatives including our Chief Operations Officer and VP together with the casino's General Manager and Assistant General Manager. Representatives from the Alberta Gaming and Liquor Commission, the Company's insurer and independent experts in catastrophe remediation also attended.

The re-entry confirmed the evidence of smoke damage and some heat damage caused by heating units that ran continuously. Based on the confirmation, the Company's property and business interruption claim has been amended from a cause by civic evacuation to a cause by fire and smoke. Accordingly, the non-coverage period has been reduced from 72 hours to 24 hours. The Company has full coverage for property damage as well as coverage for lost profits, continuing costs and extra costs incurred as a result of the fire for a period of up to 18 months.

Remediation work began on June 4, 2016. Presently there are 40-50 professionals onsite cleaning every square foot of space and all equipment from ceiling to floor. Cleaning and neutralizing air quality will continue into July.

Initial assessments of electronic equipment show minimal damage with any repairs expected to be completed on site. Until timelines for remediation of carpets and fabrics are confirmed, our best estimate for a re-opening is mid-July.

Gamehost is a corporation established under the laws of the Province of Alberta. The Company's operations are all located in the Province of Alberta, Canada. Operations of the Company include the Boomtown Casino in Ft. McMurray, the Great Northern Casino, Service Plus Inns & Suites hotel and a strip mall all located in Grande Prairie. The Company has a 91% controlling interest in Deerfoot Inn & Casino Inc. who operates the Deerfoot Inn & Casino in S.E. Calgary.

Gamehost common shares trade on the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX) under the symbol GH. For more information, visit www.gamehost.ca. Complete disclosure of the Company can be found on SEDAR at www.sedar.com.

The TSX does not accept responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

Contacts:

Gamehost Inc.

Craig M. Thomas

(403) 346-4545 or Toll Free: (877) 703-4545

(403) 340-0683 (FAX)



Gamehost Inc.

Darcy J. Will

(403) 346-4545 or Toll Free: (877) 703-4545

(403) 340-0683 (FAX)

info@gamehost.ca

www.gamehost.ca




GRASS VALLEY, CA -- (Marketwired) -- 06/10/16 -- Simlatus Corporation (OTC PINK: SIML) announces today that it has received new orders from their distributors, and is recruiting a new marketing manager to head-up the export division for the company.

Mike Schatz, Chief Operations Officer, stated, "We have received a sales order from our New York based distributor, Dale Pro Audio, to ship SoundPal power supplies to the Fox News Quartermaster Corps in New York. Fox News has been a steady customer of our product line and we continue to build relationships with our client based major broadcast networks. Further, our New Jersey based Distributor, Diversified Systems, Inc., has purchased our SoundPal systems for the New Jersey based DSI Video Systems. The SoundPal MSRP is $1,255 each."

The SoundPal is the DTG-1, and an economical source of a variety of audio test signals that are generated entirely in the digital domain and output in the AES/EBU format. It is used in the studio as a reference tone generator or on the bench as a troubleshooting tool. Rugged, compact, and capable of running off battery power, the DTG-1 is also ideal for portable applications. The DTG-1 has internal oscillators for both 44.1 and 48kHz sample rates, or it may be locked to an external reference. The DTG-1 has all the adjustments needed to make isolation of digital transmission problems simple and easy to find. Like all of the modules in the SoundPals line, the DTG-1 is housed in a compact, rugged aluminum enclosure.

As a complement to the SoundPal, the Company is designing the new SyncPal for deliveries in 2017. With over 10,000 TV Broadcast Stations in the USA alone, according to the FCC's 2013 census, our SyncPal is priced to move at a low cost of $3,299. We are targeting 30% of our major customers who already own some of our products and this opens a new revenue stream of nearly $30M for 2017-2018. We expect our global distributors to target Europe, Asia, South America, Canada, Mexico and Australia which would be an additional revenue stream for the company.

SyncPal was developed a result of a phenomenon that can occur in television broadcasting called "out of lip-sync." This happens when the sound of the announcer's voice reaches your ears before the movement of his lips reaches your eyes. This can be corrected by adjusting the delay of the sound until the voice and lip movement are "in sync." In High-Definition broadcasting, a majority of times the audio signal is embedded (or buried) into the video signal for transmission between the originating source and the TV station. Multiple signal processing of the video portion of the combined signals can cause this video delay. The Simlatus' SyncPal has been specifically designed to allow the broadcaster to make this video-to-audio adjustment.

Simlatus has 55 proprietary products that they own and manufacture in Northern California, and sell through a distribution network. These products are commercial broadcast equipment systems, inclusive of Protection Switches, HD Routers, Analog Routers, Router Control panels, SoundPals and Audio Distribution systems used by CBS, NBC, ABC, FOX, ESPN and DirecTV, as well as hundreds of other smaller broadcast networks. You can visit all of our products and distributor at www.simlatus.com.

Safe Harbor for Forward-Looking Statements: This news release includes forward-looking statements. While these statements are made to convey to the public the company's progress, business opportunities and growth prospects, readers are cautioned that such forward-looking statements represent management's opinion. Whereas management believes such representations to be true and accurate based on information and data available to the company at this time, actual results may differ materially from those described. The Company's operations and business prospects are always subject to risk and uncertainties. Important factors that may cause actual results to differ are and will be set forth in the company's periodic filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

Investors:



Gary B. Tilden

CEO

Simlatus Corporation

(800) 390-8446

www.simlatus.com




A.M. Best has affirmed the financial strength rating of A- (Excellent) and the issuer credit ratings of "a-" of StarStone Insurance Bermuda Limited (StarStone Bermuda) (Bermuda), StarStone Insurance Limited (StarStone UK) (United Kingdom), StarStone Insurance Europe AG (StarStone Europe) (Liechtenstein), StarStone Specialty Insurance Company (StarStone Specialty) and StarStone National Insurance Company (StarStone National). StarStone Specialty and StarStone National are domiciled in Wilmington, Delaware, USA. All companies are collectively referred to as StarStone. The outlook for each rating remains stable.

StarStone has been owned by Enstar Group Limited (Enstar) and the Trident Funds funds, managed by Stone Point Capital LLC (Stone Point), since April 2014. The support of Enstar and Stone Point is a positive rating factor. The group's owners provide strategic and operational support to StarStone, as well as financial assistance if needed. Both companies have a proven track record of building strong and profitable insurance businesses, Enstar in insurance run-off and Stone Point in active underwriting.

StarStone benefits from strong risk-adjusted capitalisation on a consolidated basis and for each rated operating company. StarStone Bermuda is the group holding company and operates as the carrier of most of the group's underwriting risk through 65% quota share treaties and aggregate stop loss contracts with StarStone UK, StarStone National and StarStone Specialty; a 95% quota share treaty with StarStone Europe; and an 85% quota share treaty with StarStone's Lloyd's corporate members. StarStone Bermuda also reinsures 100% of its operating subsidiaries' discontinued lines. The owners are committed to maintaining StarStone's risk-adjusted capitalisation at a level that is supportive of the ratings. In 2014, StarStone entered into a loss portfolio transfer reinsurance agreement (LPT) between StarStone Bermuda and a cell of Fitzwilliam Insurance Limited (Fitzwilliam), which is a subsidiary of Enstar, domiciled in Bermuda. The LPT covers reserves for the group's discontinued lines at 1 January 2014.

An underwriting profit was achieved in 2015, and performance over 2014 and 2015 has been broadly in line with expectations. However, StarStone's historical consolidated financial performance previously was weak with underwriting losses each year from 2010 to 2014. Also, the 2014 and 2015 underwriting results benefited from the LPT with Fitzwilliam. Management, supported by the group's new owners, is committed to further improving financial performance. Action has been taken to achieve significant expense savings, and underperforming lines have been discontinued. A.M. Best believes that achieving sustainable and sufficiently profitable results remains a challenge given the strong competition in StarStone's main business lines and the company's limited profile.

Since its launch in 2008, StarStone has built scale through a combination of acquisitions of teams and businesses, and organic growth. As a result, StarStone now writes a diversified specialist portfolio from operations in London, Bermuda, the United States and Continental Europe.

This press release relates to rating(s) that have been published on A.M. Best's website. For all rating information relating to the release and pertinent disclosures, including details of the office responsible for issuing each of the individual ratings referenced in this release, please see A.M. Best's Recent Rating Activity web page.

A.M. Best is the world's oldest and most authoritative insurance rating and information source. For more information, visit www.ambest.com.

Copyright 2016 by A.M. Best Rating Services, Inc. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160610005457/en/

Contacts:

A.M. Best

Anthony Silverman +44 20 7397 0264

Senior Financial Analyst

anthony.silverman@ambest.com

or

Christopher Sharkey, +1 908-439-2200, ext. 5159

Manager, Public Relations

christopher.sharkey@ambest.com

or

Catherine Thomas +44 20 7397 0281

Senior Director, Analytics

catherine.thomas@ambest.com

or

Jim Peavy, +1 908-439-2200, ext. 5644

Assistant Vice President, Public Relations

james.peavy@ambest.com
To: PR Newswire

From: Capital Gearing Trust P.l.c.

Date: 10 June 2016

Capital Gearing Trust P.l.c.

Publication of Circular

On 6 May 2016 Capital Gearing Trust P.l.c. (the "Company") published a prospectus in connection with the issue of further new ordinary shares pursuant to the Company's discount and premium management policy. In order to meet the recent and continuing demand for shares, the Board is now seeking an early renewal of its authority to issue further ordinary shares for cash on a non pre-emptive basis. Accordingly, the Company has today published a circular convening a general meeting (the "General Meeting") to be held at 11.00 a.m. on 27 June 2016 at the offices of Dickson Minto W.S., Broadgate Tower, 20 Primrose Street, London EC2A 2EW.

At the General Meeting a resolution will be put to shareholders to give the Board authority to disapply rights of pre-emption in respect of the allotment of up to 348,389 ordinary shares which represents approximately 10 per cent. of the Company's current issued share capital.

The Board will only issue new shares at a premium to net asset value, to meet demand from investors and when the Board believes it is in the best interests of the Company and its shareholders to do so.

The circular will shortly be available for inspection on the National Storage Mechanism which is located at http://www.morningstar.co.uk/uk/nsm.do.

All enquiries:

Steven Cowie

Company Secretary

Tel: 0131 538 6604

Email: company.secretary@capitalgearingtrust.com
BEIJING, 2016-06-10 16:00 CEST (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The 7th Clean Energy Ministerial Meeting (CEM7) was held on June 1-2 in San Francisco's Union Square. During the 2 day event, Sansi was invited to showcase its Smart Pole System and share their latest research results with the participants.Sansi's 'Smart Pole System' caught the attention of many visitors including the U.S. Secretary of Energy, Dr. Ernest Moniz and China's Deputy Ministry of Technology, Yin Hejun.Both leaders showed strong interest in Sansi's lighting applications and were impressed by the detailed research that was provided. Yin spoke highly of Sansi's LED technologies and expressed strong expectations for the future.A video accompanying this announcement is available at http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/413f6704-5de1-495d-bad6-97375 07fd8c9Photos accompanying this announcement are available athttp://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/0d9fea21-8ecd-4421-954c-15f31 46f16b6http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/9faa4035-5038-48b4-b929-9f3a9 6a8782eMultiple news media outlets including China's Xinhua News Agency, Phoenix Satellite Television, and the local press were present during the event and took part in learning about Sansi's 'Smart Pole System'.The Smart Pole System includes an integrated system of data acquisition, data processing, data release, emergency alarms, electric charging ports, and base station. All the modules were controlled through an integrated controller and were in direct coordination with each other. The system would help provide cities with a safer and more intelligent road system for its communities.Sansi's road lighting systems are highly efficient while using minimal energy consumption. The intelligent lighting systems will help solve a series of problems most cities deal with that include energy consumption, city management, and multi-functional usages.A report of Sansi and CEM7 can also be found at CEM7 Startups & Solutions Showcase Features Innovative Clean Energy SolutionsMedia Contact: Anna Feng Phone: 1 (800) 476-1356 Email: info@sansilighting.com Web: en.sansitech.com

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 University of Michigan is set to release its preliminary U.S. consumer sentiment index for June at 10 am ET Friday. Economists expect the index to have declined to 94.5 from 94.7 in May. Ahead of the data, the greenback traded mixed against the other major currencies. While the greenback rose against the euro and the pound, it held steady against the yen and the franc. The greenback was worth 1.1283 against the euro, 106.91 against the yen, 0.9644 against the franc and 1.4342 against the pound at 9:55 am ET. Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX

Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann.
PUNE, India, June 10, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

The report "Aircraft Cabin Interiors Market by Fit (Line, Retro), Product Type (Seating, IFEC, Galley Equipment, Cabin Lighting, Windows & Windshield, Lavatory), Aircraft Type (NBA, WBA, VLA, RTA) and Region (Line Fit, Retro Fit) - Global Forecast to 2021", published by MarketsandMarkets, the market is projected to reach USD 29.16 Billion by 2021, at a CAGR of 11.57% from 2016 to 2021.

(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160303/792302 )



Browse 107 market data Tables with 167 Figures spread through 219 Pages and in-depth TOC on "Aircraft Cabin Interiors Market".

http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/aircraft-cabin-interior-market-74760139.html

Early buyers will receive 10% customization on this report.

Factors such as increasing number of aircraft orders, growing regional economies; modernization of aircraft programs to reduce operational costs, and increasing demand for air travel are expected to drive the global aircraft cabin interiors market.

The seating segment to dominate the aircraft cabin interiors market

On the basis of product, the seating segment dominates the aircraft cabin interiors market and is expected to continue its dominance over the next five years. The demand for aircraft seating is primarily driven by upgradation of aircraft programs to reduce operational cost, increasing aircraft deliveries, and significant growth in air traffic across the globe

The retrofit segment is expected to grow at the highest pace during the forecast period.

The retrofit segment dominates the overall aircraft cabin interiors market, by fit and is expected to exhibit a similar trend during the forecast period. It is expected to dominate the market on account of modernization of aircraft programs to reduce operational costs and the replacement requirement for aircraft cabin interiors including seating, galleys, windows & windshields, cabin lighting, lavatory, and IFEC.

The aircraft cabin interiors market is expected to witness the highest growth in the Asia-Pacific region.

The Asia-Pacific region has been witnessing strong growth in the aviation industry over the past few years, mainly driven by increasing demand for new aircraft deliveries and increasing air traffic in this region, which in turn is expected to boost the aircraft cabin interiors market. This growth can also be attributed to the increase in trade and tourism, increasing disposable of the middle class population in emerging countries such as India and China.

Inquiry Before Buying: http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Enquiry_Before_Buying.asp?id=74760139

Key players in the aircraft cabin interiors market includes Thales Group (France), Honeywell International Inc. (U.S.), Diehl Stiftung & Co. KG (Germany), B/E Aerospace (U.S.), United Technologies Corporation (U.S.), Luminator Technology Group (U.S.) Panasonic Corporation (Japan), and PPG Industries Inc. (U.S.) among others.

Browse Related Reports

Aircraft Lighting Market by Fit (Linefit, Retrofit), Aircraft Type (NBA, WBA, VLA and RTA), Light Type (Interior Light, Exterior Light), Technology and by Geography - Global Forecast to 2021

http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/aircraft-lighting-market-1092.html

Galley Equipment Market by Fit (Line Fit, Retro Fit), by Galley Type (Single Aisle, Twin Aisle, Business Aviation), by Galley Inserts (Electric Inserts and Non-Electric Inserts), by Application (Aviation, Marine), by Geography - Global Forecast 2020

http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/aircraft-galley-equipment-market-16966730.html

About MarketsandMarkets

MarketsandMarkets is the world's No. 2 firm in terms of annually published premium market research reports. Serving 1700 global fortune enterprises with more than 1200 premium studies in a year, M&M is catering to a multitude of clients across 8 different industrial verticals. We specialize in consulting assignments and business research across high growth markets, cutting edge technologies and newer applications. Our 850 fulltime analyst and SMEs at MarketsandMarkets are tracking global high growth markets following the "Growth Engagement Model - GEM". The GEM aims at proactive collaboration with the clients to identify new opportunities, identify most important customers, write "Attack, avoid and defend" strategies, identify sources of incremental revenues for both the company and its competitors.

M&M's flagship competitive intelligence and market research platform, "RT" connects over 200,000 markets and entire value chains for deeper understanding of the unmet insights along with market sizing and forecasts of niche markets. The new included chapters on Methodology and Benchmarking presented with high quality analytical infographics in our reports gives complete visibility of how the numbers have been arrived and defend the accuracy of the numbers.

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Washington D.C.--(Newsfile Corp. - June 10, 2016) - The Securities and Exchange Commission today announced fraud charges and an asset freeze obtained against a Connecticut man accused of misleading people into investing in his company and then taking their money for his personal use. His victims include several women he met through an online dating website.

The SEC alleges that Thomas J. Connerton told investors that his company Safety Technologies LLC was developing a material to make surgical gloves better resistant to cuts or punctures. He claimed that several major glove manufacturers wanted the technology and Safety Technologies was on the brink of imminent deals that would result in large payouts for investors in his company. But no deals have ever been anywhere close to materializing, and Connerton has emptied the company's bank account by writing a series of checks to himself and using investor funds for his own expenses.

According to court documents filed by the SEC, among Connerton's improper spending of investor funds was $20,000 for an engagement ring for his latest online date turned investor. There are more than 50 investors in Safety Technologies, including six women Connerton met through online dating and 14 others who are family or friends of those women.

"We charge Connerton with lying about the state of his business and exploiting personal connections to lure in investors," said Paul G. Levenson, Director of the SEC's Boston Regional Office. "Investors beware: a rosy picture of a business that's about to take off could still lead to a total loss of investment."

According to the SEC's complaint, Connerton failed to comply with the requirements for private offerings exempt from registration under the federal securities laws, such as providing investors with appropriate financial information and confirming that they have sufficient knowledge and experience to evaluate the merits and risks of the investment. Connerton also is not registered to sell investments. Investors can quickly and easily check whether people selling investments are registered by using the SEC's investor.gov website.

The SEC has obtained a court order freezing the assets of Connerton and Safety Technologies. The SEC's complaint seeks a permanent injunction as well as the return of allegedly ill-gotten gains plus interest and a penalty.

The SEC's investigation was conducted by Jonathan R. Allen, Sofia Hussain, Alfred Day, and Amy Gwiazda of the Boston office.




WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - Netflix Inc. (NFLX) has provided details about shows that are binge watched by its customers and shows that take more time to digest.



Netflix released the Binge Scale, revealing which shows are the most devoured, or savored, by its customers. Series viewed less than two hours per day were identified as 'savored', while those viewed more than two hours per day were identified as 'devoured.'



The online movie rental service said it examined global viewing of more than 100 serialized TV series across more than 190 countries between October 2015 and May 2016.



Netflix found that when members are focused on finishing a series, they watch a little over two hours a day to complete a season. The global median days to complete the first season of these series was five days, while the median hours per session for completers overall was two hours and ten minutes.



According to Netflix, science fiction, horror, and thriller series were 'devoured' on its binge scale.



Science fiction series like 'Sense8,' 'Orphan Black' and 'The 100' made it hard for consumers to pull away. In addition, the classic elements of horror and thriller series pushed the placement of series like 'The Walking Dead,' 'American Horror Story' and 'The Fall' towards the 'devour end' of the scale.



Crime dramas, dramatic comedies and action & adventure series came in at the middle of the Netflix Binge Scale. The time spent by consumers watching these is about two hours each day.



These include comedies with a dramatic bent, like 'Orange is the New Black,' 'Nurse Jackie' and 'Grace and Frankie,' crime dramas like 'Bloodline' and 'Fargo,' and Action & Adventure series like '24', 'Arrow' and 'Marco Polo.'



Irrelevant comedies, political dramas, historical dramas and superhero dramas are shows meant to be savored, or watched less than two hours a day, due to their complex narratives.



These include irrelevant comedies like 'BoJack Horseman,' 'Love' and 'Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt,' political dramas like 'Homeland' and 'House of Cards,' and historical dramas set in bygone eras like 'Peaky Blinders' and 'Mad Men.'



Superhero dramas such as 'Gotham' and 'Marvel's Daredevil' also come under this category.



Cindy Holland, vice president of Original Content at Netflix said, 'Netflix helps you to find a series to binge no matter your mood or occasion, and the freedom to watch that series at your own pace - whether that's to appreciate the drama of Bloodline or power through Orange is the New Black.'



Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX

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NEW YORK, June 10, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

Growing Disposable Income Coupled With Increasing Product Innovations and Effective Marketing Strategies to Drive the Sales Of Diapers in the United States.

According to TechSci Research report, "United States Diapers Market By Product Type, By Adults Vs Kids, By Region, Competition Forecast and Opportunities, 2011-2021", diapers market in the United States is projected to cross $ 9.8 million by 2021. With anticipated revival in US GDP growth as well as consumer spending, the diaper market is expected to grow over the course of next five years. The market is expected to witness growth on account of rising expenditure on baby care, growing demand for adult diapers, coupled with quality product offerings from leading diaper players at competitive prices.

(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20140117/663730 )



Browse 20 market data Tables and 21 Figures spread through109 Pages and an in-depth TOC on

"United States Diaper Market"

http://www.techsciresearch.com/report/united-states-diapers-market-by-product-type-disposable-diapers-training-diapers-cloth-diapers-swim-pants-and-biodegradable-diapers-by-adults-vs-kids-by-region-competition-forecast-and-opportunities-2011-2021/684.html

Disposable diapers accounted for a majority revenue share in the US diapers market in 2015, and the segment is anticipated to continue its dominance during the forecast period. However, a slight decline in the value share could be witnessed, on account of higher growth anticipated in adult diapers and bio-degradable diapers. Kids diaper held the majority value share in the US diapers market in 2015, and this trend is expected to continue over the next five years. Procter & Gamble and Kimberley Clark are the leading players in the country's diapers market, and both of them cumulatively accounted for more than three-fourths of the revenue share in the US diapers market in 2015.

Download Sample Report @ http://www.techsciresearch.com/sample-report.aspx?cid=684

Customers can also request for 10% free customization on this report.

"Being a developed country with a large population base, United States is a huge market for diaper companies. A vast population of working women makes the country even more attractive marketplace for huge brands as well as private labels. Growing use of adult diapers as well as cloth diapers is also positively influencing the country's diaper market. Moreover, with diaper companies increasing their focus on introducing innovative product offerings and adopting aggressive marketing strategies, the US diapers market is expected to continue growing in the coming years.", said Mr. Karan Chechi, Research Director with TechSci Research, a research based global management consulting firm.

"United States Diapers Market By Product Type, By Adults Vs Kids, By Region, Competition Forecast and Opportunities, 2011-2021" has thoroughly evaluated the future growth potential of US diaper market and provides statistics and information on market structure, size, share and future growth of the country's diaper market. 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 present in the United States diapers market.

Browse Related Reports

Global Organic Food Market Forecast and Opportunities, 2020

http://www.techsciresearch.com/report/global-organic-food-market-forecast-and-opportunities-2020/450.html

United States Chocolate Market By Type, By Age Group, By Point of Sale, Competition Forecast and Opportunities, 2011-2021

http://www.techsciresearch.com/report/united-states-chocolate-market-by-type-by-age-group-by-point-of-sale-competition-forecast-and-opportunities-2011-2021/661.html

India Women's Cosmetics Market Forecast and Opportunities, 2020

http://www.techsciresearch.com/report/india-women-s-cosmetics-market-forecast-and-opportunities-2020/419.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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ALBANY, New York, June 10, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

According to a new market report published by Transparency Market Research "Civilian Less Lethal and Self Defense Weapons Market - North America Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast 2015 - 2023,"North America civilian less lethal and self defense weapons marketwas valued at USD 58.10 million in 2014, growing at a CAGR of 4% from 2015 to 2023 to account for USD 82.16 million in 2023.

Less lethal weapons are devices used to cause temporary damage to an individual or group of people, without causing fatal or permanent injury. Various less lethal devices such as electroshock weapons, mechanical and kinetic weapons, gases and sprays are gaining popularity among the civilian population in North America, especially, the U.S. Proper deployment of less lethal self-defense weapons causes temporary incapacitation of the assailant and helps the victim in quick flight from the point of incident. The physical impact of these weapons lasts temporarily without resulting in any permanent injury or risk of fatality. The North America civilian less lethal and self-defense weapons market is analyzed to emerge as a key domain for civilian self-defense product providers. The market for less lethal and self-defense weapons is expected to grow at a slow yet steady pace over the forecast period. Possession of less lethal weapons by civilians for self-defense is regulated under different national and state laws in the U.S. and Canada.

Get Sample Report Copy or for further inquiries, click here:

http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=S&rep_id=12029

With the advent of modern technology and increasing demand for self-defense devices, various companies are adopting the manufacture of less lethal weapons. Following the concerns raised by humanitarian groups on the deployment of lethal force on civilians by armed troops, traditional weapons manufacturers are also diversifying into development of less lethal weaponry. Moreover, the steadily rising demand for self-defense weapons is compelling less lethal weapons manufacturers to cater to the civilian markets in North America.

Considering the rapidly increasing investment in research and development of less lethal and self-defense weapons for civilians in North America, the market is expected to gain lucrative opportunities over the forecast period. In addition, customer preferences for less lethal self-defense weaponry in the region are expected to substantially influence growth of the market. Moreover, the impact of various humanitarian groups and government policies discouraging possession and use of lethal weapons by civilians is fuelling demand for less lethal weapons for self-defense in the region. Moreover, considering the growing crime rate in Canada, the government laws are expected to undergo significant amendments, which in turn is expected to further open up the market for civilian less lethal and self-defense weapons in the country. Due to these factors, the market for civilian less lethal and self-defense weapons in North America is expected to experience optimistic growth over the forecast period, resulting in major changes in market shares of established players and introduction of a new range of weaponry.

Browse The Press Release: http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/pressrelease/north-america-civilian-less-lethal-self-defense-weapons-market.htm

The civilian less lethal and self defense weapons market has been segmented by types into air powered guns, lighting devices, pepper sprays, knives, batons, stun guns, tasers and animal repellants among others. As the use of less lethal weapons such as stun guns and tasers are strictly prohibited for civilians in Canada and hence they have a lower market share in this region. However, there is a steady demand for animal repellants and knives due to the presence of hunting seasons in this region. In the U.S market, civilians are permitted to possess less lethal weapons in compliance with state laws and national laws for self-defense. The country has numerous distributors, wholesalers, storefront retailers, and web based retailers for various less lethal and self-defense weaponry. Any unauthorized distribution leads to criminal charges against both the seller as well as the customer. Furthermore, there is an increasing demand for pepper sprays as they are more popular with females using it as a medium of self defense. These factors are pushing the growth for pepper sprays in North America.

The key manufacturers of less lethal weapons include, LRAD Corporation, TASER International, Inc., SABRE Security Equipment Corporation, Pepperball Technologies, Inc., AMTEC Less Lethal, Safariland Group, Piexon AG, Kimber Mfg, Inc. Oxley Group, Arma USA, Inc.and Salt Supply Company among others.

North America Civilian Less Lethal and Self Defense Weapons Market, By Type

Air Power Weapons

Lighting Devices

Pepper Sprays

Knives

Batons

Stun Guns

Tasers

Animal Repellants

Others

North America Civilian Less Lethal and Self Defense Weapons Market, By Country

U.S.

Canada

Other Research Reports by Transparency Market Research:

Peer-to-Peer Lending Market:



http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/peer-to-peer-lending-market.html

Digital Asset Managementmarket:

http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/digital-asset-management-market.html

Interactive Whiteboard Market:

http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/interactive-whiteboard-market.html

About Us:

Transparency Market Research (TMR) is a global 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.



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Date: 10th June 2016



Not for distribution, directly or indirectly, in or into the United States or any jurisdiction in which such distribution would be unlawful.



Issuer:



Ipsen S.A.



Post Stabilisation Notice



BNP Paribas (co-ordinator) Contact: Frederic Zorzi, Telephone number 00 44 207 595 8222, hereby gives notice that no stabilisation was undertaken by the Stabilising Manager(s) named below in relation to the offer of the following securities.



+------------------------------+--------------------------------------------+ | Issuer: | Ipsen S.A. | +------------------------------+--------------------------------------------+ | Guarantor (if any): | | +------------------------------+--------------------------------------------+ | Aggregate nominal amount: | EUR 300 million | +------------------------------+--------------------------------------------+ | Description: | 1.875% Notes due 16 June 2023 | +------------------------------+--------------------------------------------+ | Stabilising Manager(s) | Active Books : BNPP / HSBC / SG CIB (B&D) | | | Passive Books: CACIB / Natixis | +------------------------------+--------------------------------------------+ | Stabilisation started: | | +------------------------------+--------------------------------------------+ | Stabilisation last occurred: | N/A (no stabilisation occurred) | +------------------------------+--------------------------------------------+



This announcement is for information purposes only and does not constitute an invitation or offer to underwrite, subscribe for or otherwise acquire or dispose of any securities of the Issuer in any jurisdiction.



This announcement is not an offer of securities for sale into the United States. The securities referred to above have not been, and will not be, registered under the United States Securities Act of 1933 and may not be offered or sold in the United States absent registration or an exemption from registration. There has not been and will not be a public offer of the securities in the United States.



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: BNP Paribas Primary New Issues via GlobeNewswire [HUG#2019651]



R1054



Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX

Kostenloser Wertpapierhandel auf Smartbroker.de
WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ken., is standing by his support of presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump but questioned the real estate tycoon's knowledge of the issues. In an interview with Bloomberg's Masters in Politics podcast posted on Friday, McConnell suggested that Trump needs to pick a running mate with more political experience. 'He needs someone highly experienced and very knowledgeable because it's pretty obvious he doesn't know a lot about the issues,' McConnell said. 'You see that in the debates in which he's participated.' He added, 'It's why I have argued to him publicly and privately that he ought to use a script more often - there is nothing wrong with having prepared texts.' McConnell also urged Trump to change course on his rhetoric, noting that he vehemently objects to some of the billionaire's remarks. Trump has recently come under fire from both Democrats and Republicans for suggesting Hispanic Judge Gonzalo Curiel could not be impartial in a case involving Trump University because of his heritage. 'I think all of that needs to stop,' McConnell said. 'Both the shots at people he defeated in the primary and these attacks on various ethnic groups in the country.' He added, 'I think he'd have a much better chance of winning if he would quit making so many unfortunate public utterances and stick to the script.' McConnell argued that staying on script indicates a level of seriousness that is improvement to convey when seeking the presidency. The Senate Majority Leader said he currently remains 'comfortable' supporting Trump but would not rule out revoking his endorsement. 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.
TWENTYFOUR SELECT MONTHLY INCOME FUND LIMITED

(a closed-ended investment company incorporated in Guernsey with registration number 57958)

("the Company")

10 June 2016

NOTICE OF ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING

Notice is hereby given of the 2016 Annual General Meeting of the Company to be held at the offices of Northern Trust International Fund Administration Services (Guernsey) Limited, Trafalgar Court, Les Banques, St Peter Port, Guernsey GY1 3QL on 7 July 2016 at 9.30 a.m.

The Notice has been dispatched to shareholders.

In accordance with Listing Rule 9.6.3, a copy of the Notice has been submitted to the National Storage Mechanism and will shortly be available for inspection at: www.morningstar.co.uk/uk/NSM

Enquiries:

Northern Trust International Fund Administration Services (Guernsey) Limited

The Company Secretary

Trafalgar Court

Les Banques

St Peter Port

Guernsey

GY1 3QL

Tel: 01481 745189

END
Over the last six months, pv magazine has been investigating cases where PV components have been provided with quality defects and faults, or cases in which conflicts have arisen due to under performing PV projects. In the latest case in the ongoing series, a module manufacturer first delivers panels with a lower wattage rating than ordered. When the replacement shipment arrives, the dealer says that the modules had obviously been relabeled. Old nameplates lay crumpled in the boxes, reported the distributer, indicating that the modules were neither the watt class nor the type of panels ordered. This rankled both the wholesaler and the end customer. But the manufacturer now refuses to deliver replacement modules. In the summer of 2014, an installation company ordered 680 modules from a reputable dealer, each with a rated capacity of 250 watts, for a 170 kW PV plant. The dealer then ordered the modules from the manufacturer for direct delivery to the installer. Initially, however, only modules with 240 watt nameplates on them were delivered to the installer. The dealer then complained to the manufacturer about the delivery of the lower-capacity modules, and the manufacturer sent replacements. This is where the story takes a rather strange and unusual twist. Do you want to discuss black sheep cases?pv magazine is organizing another Quality Roundtable on the second day of this year's Intersolar Europe in Munich. We will kick off the Roundtable with a discussion among all participants ...

Den vollstandigen Artikel lesen ...
COLORADO SPRINGS, CO -- (Marketwired) -- 06/10/16 -- Cannabis Science, Inc. (OTC PINK: CBIS), a U.S. company specializing in the development of cannabis-based medicine, to host "black tie, red carpet" event in Los Angeles. Company officials state the gala is a celebratory fundraising event, "Cannabis Kills Cancer." Celebrities and Shareholders alike will join in on this unparalleled occasion to raise money for targeted cancer treatments using cannabinoids and unprecedented drug development expansions.

CBIS through its international relationships will bring several well-known celebrities to headline the affair. Including star-studded performances, renowned athletes, medical guest speakers on drug development progress, patient testimonials, and ground breaking lab reports sharing the latest results on cannabinoids and cancer.

"This should be billed as 'The Event of the Year' as this superlative gala hosted by CBIS will highlight the need for more research and development and will focus on fundraising to benefit with the battle of killing cancer. Coined, 'Cannabis Kills Cancer.' Recognition and loyalty gift announcements will be made at the Event. Shareholders who have submitted their 'loyalty gift forms' will be pleased to know that the team has continued working tirelessly, brought on extra help, and is nearing the final process of the thousands of forms received. We are elated that our shareholders are as excited as we are; as it pertains to their gift, your patience is greatly appreciated as I'm sure you can imagine there is a lot to go through one by one. Giving Thanks and recognition to our shareholders at the Event is one of our top priorities," stated Raymond C. Dabney President & CEO, Co-Founder, Cannabis Science Inc.

The Event will be highlighted by a briefing of our recent successful South Africa Trip. While the work continues in the processing aspect the goal is to tie the Cannabis Kills Cancer event with shareholders and the gift from Mr. Dabney together. "Nothing would please me more than to be able to shake every shareholder's hand and thank them for their support personally," said Mr. Dabney.

"The Event will be memorable. We will follow up shortly with announcements of the complete structure and program highlights. All our associates and partners will be using their resources to assist us in creating a most successful and effective fund raising event, highlighting the venue, the food, and the atmosphere. We will come together for one common cause, to kill cancer. Hosting the event in Los Angeles leads to the availability of more celebrities, coupled with patient success stories and CBIS to share new product information from research to launches will be an additional gift to our shareholders. Cannabis Science, and specifically myself, have been shown nothing but respect and gratitude for our efforts in the field of medical cannabis. We truly do have the best shareholders and we plan to expand that base and our successes dramatically with this type of event," concluded Mr. Dabney.

About Cannabis Science, Inc.

Cannabis Science, Inc., takes advantage of its unique understanding of metabolic processes to provide novel treatment approaches to a number of illnesses for which current treatments and understanding remain unsatisfactory. Cannabinoids have an extensive history dating back thousands of years, and currently, there are a growing number of peer-reviewed scientific publications that document the underlying biochemical pathways that cannabinoids modulate. The Company works with leading experts in drug development, medicinal characterization, and clinical research to develop, produce, and commercialize novel therapeutic approaches for the treatment for illnesses caused by infections as well as for age-related illness. Our initial focus is on skin cancers, HIV/AIDS, and neurological conditions. The Company is proceeding with the research and development of its proprietary drugs as a part of this initial focus: CS-S/BCC-1, CS-TATI-1, and CS-NEURO-1, respectively.

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 words such as "anticipate," "seek," intend," "believe," "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 may not occur. Factors that could cause or contribute to such differences include the future U.S. and global economies, the impact of competition, and the Company's reliance on existing regulations regarding the use and development of cannabis-based drugs. Cannabis Science, Inc., does not undertake any duty nor does it intend to update the results of these forward-looking statements. Safe Harbor Statement. The Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 provides a 'safe harbor' for forward looking statements. Certain of the statements contained herein, which are not historical facts are forward looking statements with respect to events, the occurrence of which involved risks and uncertainties. These forward- looking statements may be impacted, either positively or negatively, by various factors. Information concerning potential factors that could affect the company are detailed from time to time in the company's reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Image Available: http://www2.marketwire.com/mw/frame_mw?attachid=3020370



Cannabis Science, Inc.

Investor Relations

Teresa Misenheimer

teresa@cannabisscience.com

Tel: 1-888-263-0832



Cannabis Science, Inc.

Mr. Raymond C. Dabney

President & CEO, Co-Founder

raymond.dabney@cannabisscience.com

Tel: 1-888-263-0832




According to the latest research report released by Technavio, the washing machine market in the US is likely to reach USD 7.46 billion in revenue by 2020.

This report titled 'Washing Machine Market in the US 2016-2020', provides an in-depth analysis of the market in terms of revenue and emerging trends. To calculate the market size, the report considers revenue generated from the sale of the following types of washing machines in the US for the residential segment:

Front loading washing machine

Top loading washing machine

Request sample report: http://bit.ly/1t35Tjg

"Wireless technologies like ZigBee and Wi-Fi are making interoperability between devices possible. Wi-Fi is being extensively used in smart washing machines while near field communication is also being explored to establish radio communication with smartphones and to bring them at a proximity," said Poonam Saini, one of Technavio's lead industry analysts for retail goods and services

"For instance, in 2014, LG Electronics introduced a smart washing machine using NFC that allows users to pair up their smartphones to download additional programs. The smart diagnosis feature of this machine can also be used to detect functional issues in these machines," added Poonam.

Some of the other driving forces behind the growth of the global washing machine market in the US are as follows:

Increasing demand for energy and water-efficient washing machines

Rapid technological advances and product innovation

Strong distribution channels

Increasing demand for energy and water-efficient washing machines

A major driver of the washing machine market in the US is the increasing demand for energy and water-efficient appliances. The average US household consumes electricity worth approximately 911 kilowatts per month, which is higher than the energy consumed in other developed countries. In an attempt to curb this high energy consumption, the US government is encouraging manufacturers and consumers to switch to energy-efficient appliances that use smart grids.

The Department of Energy has released test procedure amendments for clothes washers in 2014 that provide information about energy conservation standards for residential clothes washers. The manufacturing tax credit provision was extended in 2013 for accelerated US production of super-efficient washers that meet the threshold for energy and water conservations set by the US DOE.

Energy Star certified washing machines have become a common choice as they use less energy. Consumers are even shifting toward energy-efficient washing machines to save money and reduce their negative impact on the environment. Companies like GE are selling Energy Star certified washers that use less water and energy (approximately 35% less).

Rapid technological advances and product innovation

Continuous technological advancements and product innovations in the design of household and professional appliances have led to the development of advanced washing machines that increase comfort levels and convenience of users. Companies are coming up with advanced, innovative features. For example, Samsung launched its AddWash front load washer in 2016, which gives the user the convenient option to add laundry mid-cycle. The UK-based startup company called Xerox introduced a washing machine for the US domestic market in 2014. This machine uses nylon polymer beads, which allow them to go through clothing to absorb dirt and stains using 80% less water. Similarly, Samsung came up with a smart washing machine in 2014, designed to reduce the amount of energy used by using an eco-bubble generator that dissolves detergents quickly. These product innovations are gaining consumers' attention.

Features in washing machines such as Auto Optimal Wash, Smart Control, Eco-Check, Smart Diagnosis, and Smart Nudges have been launched by Samsung, LG Electronics, and Whirlpool. Such rapid technological advancements will help users in the US experience better washing machines over the next four years.

Strong distribution channels

Vendors are emphasizing on developing holistic distribution channels to cater to all types of customers. Investments in supply chain management strategies along with enhancement in product assortments have been noted in recent times.

Players are also launching informative and interactive websites to enhance customer reach. These websites provide expert advice on the use of products along with product promotions.

Before purchasing products, most consumers now prefer researching about product features and conduct a thorough price comparison. Another advantage of online shopping is the opportunity to voice opinions about products while gaining an opportunity to read customer reviews in order to make informed decisions prior to the purchase.

Browse related reports

Global Smart Connected Washing Machine Market 2016-2020

Connected Home Appliance Market in the US 2015-2019

Smart Home M2M Market in the US 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/20160610005020/en/

Contacts:

Technavio Research

Jesse Maida

Media Marketing Executive

US: +1 630 333 9501

UK: +44 208 123 1770

www.technavio.com

media@technavio.com
"MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA--(Marketwired - June 10, 2016) - Fenwick & West today announced its integrated, firmwide corporate social responsibility (CSR) program, along with the first of its CSR projects, Fenwick Gives Back, set to begin next week. The program integrates key CSR components such as the firm's nationally-recognized and award-winning pro bono work, charitable contributions and volunteerism, with the goal of increasing and focusing employee engagement, and ultimately, making a larger impact within the communities where Fenwick employees live and work.

Fenwick is one of the first West Coast-based law firms to establish a CSR program. Through integrating these components, Fenwick seeks to deepen understanding of the communities the firm serves and to focus efforts and resources around holistic programs and strategies.

Fenwick Corporate Social Responsibility Team

Heading up the larger CSR program is Hilarie Atkisson, Fenwick's new Director of Corporate Social Responsibility and Pro Bono Counsel. Ms. Atkisson will be helping to identify community volunteer and charitable giving opportunities that provide the greatest possible benefit to the broader community and the most rewarding experiences for those donating their time. In addition, she will be working directly with Julie Park, Fenwick's Director of Pro Bono, and Patrick Premo, Litigation Partner and Chair of Fenwick's Pro Bono Program, to provide lawyers and staff members at Fenwick with new meaningful opportunities for volunteer legal and community service.

Ms. Atkisson benefits from insights gained through more than 17 years working in pro bono legal services and involvement with public interest and community service organizations. "Hilarie is well known for her pro bono work and for innovating how law firms address community engagement," Fenwick Managing Partner Kate Fritz said. "We're thrilled to have Hilarie here at Fenwick and to further invest in pro bono and community service programs, which have long been priorities at the firm. We view service, not only to our clients but also to our broader community, as a core part of the practice of law."

Fenwick's Director of Pro Bono Julie Park commented, "We're extremely proud of the pro bono program that we've built at Fenwick, now one of Silicon Valley's top programs for attorney involvement and time donated. Our attorneys have made a huge difference in countless lives, particularly over the past decade as we have extended our pro bono services. With Hilarie on board, we're looking to grow our efforts and involvement even more with partners, clients and employees."

"By integrating pro bono with charitable giving and volunteer work, we can find new ways to collaborate -- across organizations and across the firm -- which will increase our community impact," Patrick Premo added.

"Fenwick has always been at the forefront of the legal industry for innovation, and our new CSR program is a great example of that leadership," Ms. Atkisson said. "Fenwick is a tremendous place for pro bono legal services, and we have a great opportunity to incorporate elements of pro bono into a cohesive CSR program. I'm looking forward to focusing our efforts with employees, clients and other companies' CSR programs and to maximizing our impact in the communities where we work and live."

Prior to joining Fenwick, Ms. Atkisson spent many years directing the firmwide administration of pro bono programs at two top tier international law firms. She received her J.D. from the University of California, Hastings College of the Law, and undergraduate degree from Mills College.

Fenwick Gives Back Week

As one of its first projects, Fenwick's CSR Program will host a coordinated annual pro bono, volunteerism and community service week, named Fenwick Gives Back Week: Raising Awareness and Inspiring Action. Fenwick Gives Back Week starts June 13, 2016.

The firm invites its attorneys, non-legal staff employees and clients to participate in this year's Fenwick Gives Back Week. The week will provide a number of pro bono and community service opportunities, including:

Film screening of "Sin Pais" -- a short documentary that explores one family's complex and emotional journey involving deportation. The family featured in the movie will attend the screening, as will filmmaker Theo Rigby,

Pro bono asylum training,

The first Silicon Valley workshop aimed at better understanding the real world challenges and tough choices imposed by poverty and

Various community volunteer events.

Fenwick is also planning numerous CSR activities including summer events geared towards its summer associates, key clients, as well as the upcoming presidential election this fall, including an election protection call center to ensure voters in a variety of states have the information and support they need to vote.

For more information about Fenwick's CSR program, including its pro bono services, please visit fenwick.com.

About Fenwick & West

Fenwick & West LLP provides comprehensive legal services to ground-breaking technology and life sciences companies -- at every stage of their lifecycle -- and the investors that partner with them. We craft innovative, cost-effective and practical solutions on issues ranging from venture capital, public offerings, joint ventures, M&A and strategic relationships, to intellectual property, litigation and dispute resolution, taxation, antitrust, and employment and labor law. For more than four decades, Fenwick has helped some of the world's most recognized companies become and remain market leaders. For more information, please visit fenwick.com.
TORONTO, ONTARIO -- (Marketwired) -- 06/10/16 -- Nitinat Minerals Corporation ("Nitinat" or the "Corporation") (TSX VENTURE: NZZ) would like to announce that, further to its press release of March 21, 2016, it has issued an aggregate of 4,627,320 common shares (the "Shares") and 3,703,500 common share purchase warrants (the "Warrants") in exchange for the cancellation of an aggregate of $231,366 in debt. Each Warrant entitles the holder thereof to acquire one (1) common share of the Corporation at an exercise price of $0.075 per share at any time until close of business on May 26, 2018.

An aggregate of 3,247,000 Shares and Warrants are subject to resale restrictions over a period 12 months with release dates of September 27, 2016, November 26, 2016, February 27, 2017 and May 26, 2017. The remaining 1,380,320 Shares and 456,500 Warrants subject to a statutory four month hold period expiring on September 27, 2016.

In addition, the issuance of an aggregate of 2,707,500 Shares for the cancellation of an aggregate of $135,375 in debt is subject to shareholder approval. The Corporation has called a shareholders' meeting for July 28, 2016 to approve, among other things, the issuance of the 2,707,500 Shares.

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.

This press release contains forward-looking statements based on assumptions, uncertainties and management's best estimates of future events. Actual results may differ materially from those currently anticipated. Investors are cautioned that such forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties. Important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements are detailed from time to time in the Corporation's periodic reports filed with the Ontario Securities Commission and other regulatory authorities. The Corporation has no intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

Contacts:

Nitinat Minerals Corporation

Herb Brugh

President and Director of the Corporation

416.216.0964

www.nitinatminerals.com




Offer price set at 27 per share

Issuance of 1,388,889 new shares representing a total amount of 37,5 million

Funds to finance the acquisition of Gazonor, the reimbursement of certain shareholders' loans (including a loan granted by EGLUK) and the expenditures of its coal bed methane production activities in Lorraine

Valuation of 137 million

Regulatory News:

Francaise de l'Energie (Paris:LFDE) ("Francaise de l'Energie" or the "Company"), a key participant in the gas sector in France, announces today the completion of its Initial Public Offering on compartment C of the Euronext regulated market in Paris ("Euronext Paris"), raising 37.5 million through a capital increase.

The Open Price Offering and the Global Placement price has set at 27 per share. The total number of shares issued will be 1,388,889, resulting in a capital increase of 37.5 million. Based on a total of 5,065,174 shares to be admitted to the market and a price of 27 per share, La Francaise de l'Energie's valuation will be 137 million at the end of the operation.

Julien Moulin, Chairman CEO of La Francaise de l'Energie states: "We are pleased about the completion of La Francaise de l'Energie's IPO on Euronext Paris. We would like to thank first of all our historical shareholders who have renewed their trust and demonstrated their ongoing support to our strategy. We would also like to thank each of our new investors, individuals or professionals, for putting their savings and trust in our unique project focusing on developing local cleaner gas production for the benefits of the territories where we operate. The quality of the investor base is another positive takeaway from this fund raising exercise. With the funding of RGreen Invest, the capital raise is a significant milestone in our development strategy and will enable us to focus on the implementation of our development in Lorraine and Nord-Pas-de-Calais.

The settlement/delivery of issued shares in the Open Price Offering and the Global Placement will take place on June 14, 2016. Shares will begin their conditional trading on Euronext Paris from June 13, 2016 at 9.00 AM CET in the form of undertakings to deliver shares (promesses d'actions) until June 14, 2016. The shares issued upon conversion of convertible bonds issued by the Company, i.e. a number of 449,665 shares, will be issued the same day. The shares will then be traded under a unique quotation line "FRANCAISE ENERGIE" from June 15, 2016 onwards.

TERMS OF THE GLOBAL OFFERING

Offering Price: 27 per share.

Breakdown of the Offering: 1,3456,365 shares were allocated to the Global Placement (representing 36.4 million or 72.7% of the total shares initially offered). 42,524 shares were allocated to the French Public Offering (representing 1.1 million or 2.3% of the total shares initially offered), which represents the total of shares issued in the French Public Offering.

Size and Gross Proceeds of the Offering: 1,388,889 new shares issued by the Company through the French Public Offering. The gross proceeds from the issuance of new shares amount to a total of 37.5 million.

Shares issuable upon conversion of convertible bonds issued by the Company 449,665 new shares will be issued by the Company upon conversion of convertible bonds.

Subscription from main shareholders As indicated in the Complementary Note that received a visa from the Autorite des Marches Financiers on June 7, 2016 under number 16-231, Mr Julien Moulin, Mr Jean Chalopin (acting on its own behalf and on behalf of some of the main existing shareholders, of which those indicated below excluding Mr Julien Moulin) have placed a subscription order of 398 369 new shares, in addition to their subscription commitment as described in the note d'operation that received a visa from the Autorite des Marches Financiers on May 23, 2016 under number 16-194. Consequently, the breakdown of additional subscriptions is as follows:



Investor Shareholder Amount of additional subscription

commitment Jean Chalopin* 7,800,000 Financiere Gabriel (Jean-Francois Michaud) 2,000,000 The Philippe Fund 200,000 Julien Moulin 571,000 Frederic Durr 184,960 TOTAL 10,755,960

As indicated below, Mr Chalopin may decide to sell a part of these shares to other existing shareholders

All the shares subscribed by existing shareholders account for a total amount of 19.5 million, representing 51.9% of the gross proceeds of the Offering. The remaining shares have been subscribed by new shareholders, notably Credit Mutuel Nord Europe (CMNE).

EVOLUTION OF THE SHARE CAPITAL

Following the Company's IPO and the issuance of new shares issuable upon conversion of convertible bonds, the share capital will include:

5,065,174 existing shares

of which 1,388,889 shares issued through the Offering

of which 449,665 shares issued upon conversion of convertible bonds

In addition 370,370 shares may be issued if the bonds with redeemable warrants (BSA) issued by the Company are exercised simultaneously with the convertible bonds and detached from these ones. There is no other dilutive financial instrument as of the date of this press release.

Following the Offering and the issuance of new shares issued upon conversion of convertible bonds, the shareholding structure of La Francaise de l'Energie is as follows:

Shareholder structure following the Offering Shareholders Number of

shares % of share

capital Number of

voting rights % of voting

rights Chaldon Asia Limited (Famille Chalopin) 782,579 15.45% 782,579 14.31% Deltec Bank 663,536 13.10% 663,536 12.13% EGL UK 403,905 7.97% 807,810 14.77% Maritime Manufacturers Associates (Hugues

Lamotte Associates) 350,000 6.91% 350,000 6.40% Julien Moulin 267,290 5.28% 267,290 4.89% Ginkgo Holdings Limited (Famille Durr) 238,076 4.70% 238,076 4.35% Financiere de Rosario et Financiere Gabriel

(Famille Michaud) 250,334 4.94% 250,334 4.58% Credit Mutuel du Nord Europe 185,185 3.66% 185,185 3.39% Total historic shareholders and large new shareholders 3,140,905 62.01% 3,544,810 64.82% Others, and notably: the Lorenceau Family,

the Cromback Family, the Labruyere Family

and various clients of LCF Rothschild 1,440,968 28.45% 1,440,968 26.35% Public 483,301 9.54% 483,301 8.84% Total 5,065,174 100.00% 5,469,079 100.00%

As indicated above, Mr Jean Chalopin (acting on its own behalf and on behalf of some of the main existing shareholders) has placed an additional subscription order for an amount of 7.8 million through the Offering, representing 288,888 new shares. Mr Jean Chalopin, who has acted on behalf of several other existing shareholders, may decide to sell a part of the 288,888 new shares subscribed through the Offering to other existing shareholders of the Company.

Reminder of the use of proceeds:

Finance the expenditures of its coal bed methane production activities in Lorraine (subsidised electricity tariff guaranteed over the next 15 years)

Finance the acquisition of Gazonor in Nord-Pas-de-Calais and the transformation of coal mining methane into electricity (regulatory approval applicable to the mining law was deemed obtained May 23, 2016)

Finance the reimbursement of the convertible loan granted by EGLUK to the Company in 2014 and finance the reimbursement of the shareholders' loans granted to the Company in February 2016.

IPO schedule Next steps

June 13 2016 Beginning of conditional trading in the Company's shares on Euronext Paris on the unique quotation line "FRCAISE ENGIE PROM" June 14 2016 Issuance of new shares issuable upon conversion of convertible bonds

Settlement and delivery of the Offering June 15 2016 Beginning of unconditional trading in the Company's shares on Euronext Paris on the unique quotation line "FRANCAISE ENERGIE"

Francaise de l'Energie codes

Name: FRANCAISE DE L'ENERGIE

ISIN code: FR0013030152

Mnemonic: LFDE

LFDE Section: Compartment C

Compartment C Business sector: ICB: 0530 Oil Gas Producers

ICB classification: 0533 Exploration Production

Information available to the Public Copies of the prospectus, that received a visa from the AMF, comprising a document de base registered with the AMF on March 14, 2016 under number I. 16-009, the "Securities Note" that received a visa from the AMF on May 23, 2016 under number 16-194, the complementary note to the prospectus that received a visa from the AMF on June 7, 2016 under the number 16-231, and the summary of the Prospectus (contained in the securities notes), may be obtained free of charge from La Francaise de l'Energie, (1 avenue Saint-Remy, Esp. Pierrard, 57 600 Forbach) as well as from the Company's (www.francaisedelenergie.fr) and the AMF's (www.amf-france.org) websites.

Risk factors - Francaise de l'Energie draws the public's attention to the business-related risks described in Chapter 4 "Risk Factors" of the Document de Base and the offer-related risks described in Chapter 2 "Offer-related Risk Factors" of the Securities Note. If all or some of these risks materialise, this could have an adverse effect on the activity, reputation, operating results, financial situation or future prospects of the group. Furthermore, other risks, which were not identified or were not considered relevant by the group at the time the document received its visa from the AMF, could have the same adverse effect.

About La Francaise de l'Energie

Francaise de l'Energie is a young, innovative company (Bpifrance label) based in Forbach in the Lorraine region of France. Based in the region since 2009, Francaise de l'Energie is a dynamic SME which employs almost 20 people, and is already a leader in the evaluation of gas resources in France. Francaise de l'Energie specialises in CBM (Coal Bed Methane), and its experienced technical team has demonstrated the presence of significant gas resources in the coals of former French producing basins. With the production of this new generation energy, which is both clean and strategic, Francaise de l'Energie is developing an ambitious project based on recognised expertise.

For more information, go to www.francaisedelenergie.fr

Disclaimer

This press release does not constitute, nor can it be construed as, a public offer or offer to buy or solicit the public's interest in a public offer.

No communication or other information related to this transaction or to Francaise de l'Energie may be transmitted to the public in a country in which any approval or registration is required. No steps to such end have been taken (or will be taken) by Francaise de l'Energie in any country in which such steps would be required (other than France). The subscription for or the purchase of Francaise de l'Energie shares may be subject to specific legal or regulatory restrictions in certain jurisdictions. Francaise de l'Energie assumes no responsibility for any violation of any such restrictions by any person.

This press release does not constitute a prospectus within the meaning of Directive 2003/71/CE of the European Parliament and Council dated 4 November 2003, as amended, in particular by Directive 2010/73/EU in the case where such Directive was implemented into Law in the member States of the European Economic Area (together, the "Prospectus Directive").

This press release is promotional in nature.

In France, an offer is open to the public only after the delivery by the AMF of a visa. With respect to the member States of the European Economic Area other than France (the "Member States") having implemented the Prospectus Directive into Law, no action has been or will be taken in order to permit a public offer of the securities which would require the publication of a prospectus in one of such Member States. As a result, securities may not and will not be offered in any Member States (other than France), except pursuant to the exemptions set forth in Article 3(2) of the Prospectus Directive, if such exemptions have been implemented into Law in the Member State(s) in question or in other cases not requiring Francaise de l'Energie to publish a prospectus under the Prospectus Directive and/or regulations applicable in these Member States.

Any shares sold in the United States will be sold only to "qualified institutional buyers" (as defined in Rule 144A under the U.S. Securities Act of 1933, as amended) pursuant to Rule 144A.

This press release was not disseminated or approved by an "authorised person" within the meaning of Section 21 of the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000. As a result, this press release is directed at and intended for only (i) persons outside the United Kingdom, (ii) investment professionals falling within Article 19(5) of the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 (Financial Promotion) Order 2005, (iii) persons listed in Article 49(2) (a) to (d) (high net worth companies, unregistered associations, etc.) of the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 (Financial Promotion) Order 2005, or (iv) to any other person to whom this press release may be directed by Law (persons mentioned in paragraphs (i), (ii), (iii), and (iv), together referred to as "Relevant Persons"). The shares of Francaise de l'Energie described herein are available only to Relevant Persons, and any invitation, offer or agreement to subscribe, purchase or otherwise acquire Francaise de l'Energie securities will be addressed to and engaged in only with Relevant Persons. Any person who is not a Relevant Person must not act or rely on this document or any of the information it contains. This press release does not constitute a prospectus approved by the Financial Services Authority or any other regulatory authority in the United Kingdom within the meaning of Section 85 of the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000.

This document does not constitute or form part of an offer of securities or a solicitation for purchase, subscription or sale of securities in the United States or any other jurisdiction (other than France). Securities may not be offered, subscribed or sold in the United States without registration under the U.S. Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the "U.S. Securities Act"), or pursuant to an exemption from this registration requirement. Francaise de l'Energie shares have not been and will not be registered under the U.S. Securities Act and Francaise de l'Energie does not intend to undertake a public offering of its securities in the United States.

The release of this press release in certain jurisdictions may constitute a violation of applicable laws. The information contained in this press release does not constitute an offer of securities in Canada, Australia or Japan. This press release must not be directly published, transmitted or distributed in the territory of the United States, Canada, Australia or Japan.

For a period of 30 days from the date the Offer Price is made public (i.e., according to the indicative timetable until July 7, 2016, inclusive), Societe Generale, as stabilisation agent, pursuant to applicable laws and regulations, specifically Regulation No. 2273/2003 of the European Commission of 22 December 2003 governing terms for applying Directive 2003/06/EC of the European Parliament and the Council of 28 January 2003 on insider dealing and market manipulations, may (but is not required to do so) undertake stabilisation operations in order to stabilise or sustain the price of the Company's shares in the Euronext Paris regulated market. Pursuant to Article 10-1 of regulation (EC) 2273/03 of 22 December 2003, stabilisation operations may not be performed at a price that exceeds the offer price. Such interventions are liable to affect the share price and may result in a market price above that which would otherwise have prevailed. Even if stabilisation operations are performed, Societe Generale may decide to interrupt such operations at any time. The relevant market authorities and the public will receive information pursuant to Article 9 of the aforementioned regulation. In accordance with the provisions of Article 11 b) of the aforementioned regulation, Societe Generale, acting on behalf of the institutions underwriting the Offer, may, if needed, undertake overallotments in connection with the Offer up to the number of shares covered by the overallotment option, plus 5% of the Offer as applicable (excluding exercise of the overallotment options).

NOT TO BE PUBLISHED, TRANSMITTED OR DISTRIBUTED, DIRECTLY OR INDIRECTLY IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, AUSTRALIA, CANADA OR JAPAN

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160610005800/en/

Contacts:

Citigate Dewe Rogerson

Investor Relations

Antoine Denry, + 33 1 53 32 78 95

antoine.denry@citigate.fr

or

Citigate Dewe Rogerson

Media Relations

Daiana Hirte, +33 1 53 32 78 90

daiana.hirte@citigate.fr
SOUTH SAN FRANCISCO, CA -- (Marketwired) -- 06/10/16 -- Diadexus, Inc. (OTCQB: DDXS), a diagnostics company developing and commercializing products that aid in assessing the prognosis of cardiac disease, today announced that it is filing for relief under Chapter 7 of Title 11 of the US Bankruptcy Code in order to initiate an orderly liquidation of the assets of the Company. The Company has been notified that its lender, Oxford Finance LLC, exercised certain of its rights under the August 2014 Loan and Security Agreement, including with respect to acceleration of obligations and demand for repayment and the removal of all of the available cash and investments from the accounts of the Company.

The Chapter 7 case will be filed in the US Bankruptcy Court for Northern District of California. Upon the filing, a Chapter 7 trustee will be appointed in the case and the assets of the Company will be liquidated in accordance with the bankruptcy code. Additional information on the process may be obtained through the bankruptcy court.

The Company has been in discussions with Oxford Finance LLC for several months in an attempt to restructure its current loan agreement and reduce near-term financial constraints on its business but has been unable to reach an agreement. As of March 31, 2016, $13.3 million in principal remained outstanding under the Loan and Security Agreement with Oxford. As part of this process, the Company engaged Alvarez & Marsal Healthcare Industry Group, LLC as its restructuring advisor.

The Company also announced that Leone Patterson, the Company's Chief Financial Officer (CFO) since March 2015, has notified Diadexus that she will be leaving effective immediately.

About Diadexus, Inc.

Diadexus, based in South San Francisco, California, is a diagnostics company developing and commercializing products that aid in the prediction of cardiac disease risk, providing healthcare providers with actionable information for managing patients. The Company pioneered the testing of Lp-PLA2, a marker of vascular-specific inflammation that provides new information, over and above traditional risk factors measured in a lipid panel, and has over a decade of peer-reviewed literature validating its utility. Diadexus' products, the PLAC Test ELISA Kit, first cleared by the FDA in 2003, and the PLAC Test for Lp-PLA2 Activity, cleared in December 2014, are the only two FDA-cleared tests to measure Lp-PLA2.

The Company also has a pipeline of biomarkers for heart failure, proADM, proET-1 and proANP, each of which provide distinct, additive information for healthcare providers over currently available markers. Diadexus also provides services to pharmaceutical partners to address the need to incorporate biomarkers in clinical development.

Forward-Looking Statements

This release contains forward-looking statements that are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties, including, but not limited to, statements related to the liquidation of the assets of the Company and the outcome of proceedings in bankruptcy court. Forward-looking statements are based on current expectations and assumptions and entail various risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed in such forward-looking statements. Important factors known to us that could cause our results to differ materially from those described in the forward-looking statements can be found in our recent quarterly report on Form 10-Q, annual report on Form 10-K, and other reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission that are available at the SEC's web site at www.sec.gov. Except as required by law, we disclaim any obligation to update or revise any forward looking statement, whether as a result of new information or otherwise.

Contact:

Diadexus, Inc.

(650) 246-6400




BUENA PARK, CA--(Marketwired - June 10, 2016) - American Racing, an iconic brand and a wheel industry leader, today announced the launch of its online Custom Shop feature that allows customers to completely customize any wheel available to purchase. This option is made possible by its state-of-the-art, custom wheel building facility located in Southern California, allowing for nearly unlimited customization capabilities. Customers can build a custom wheel online with features including custom forging, specialty two-piece fitments, unique finishes and colors and drill-from-blank services.

"American Racing believes this advanced customization feature is a game changer in the custom wheel industry as far as the cutting-edge options it offers," said Jody Groce, President at Wheel Pros. "Providing the Custom Shop feature is a ground-breaking option for automotive enthusiasts and drivers searching for a superior wheel that not only looks first-class, but is precisely crafted to the requirements of their vehicle."

The American Racing Custom Shop offers a wide range of finishes including an extensive stock of paint colors, powder coating, tinted clear coat and vehicle paint matching for a uniquely personalized look. Providing a wide range of fitment flexibility, the Custom Shop can build two-piece styles specifically to order. American Racing's drill-from-blank services and custom backspacing available in eighth-inch increments ensure a perfect fit.

You can visit the American Racing Custom Shop here:

http://www.americanracing.com/customShop.cfm.

You can find American Racing at www.americanracing.com or on social media at:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AmericanRacingWheels

Instagram: @americanracing

About American Racing:

American Racing is an iconic brand and a wheel industry leader in craftsmanship, engineering, innovation and performance. Founded in 1956 as a manufacturer of bespoke magnesium and aluminum racing wheels, its roots date back to the golden era of hot rodding. American Racing is a Wheel Pros brand. Wheel Pros products are sold worldwide in more than 20 countries on four continents and through a U.S. network of more than 25,000 authorized dealers.

About Wheel Pros, LLC

Headquartered in Denver, Colorado, Wheel Pros is a leading designer, marketer, and distributor of branded aftermarket wheels. The company also distributes performance tires and accessories. Founded in 1995 with two distribution centers, the company today carries proprietary, leading brands that are recognized across all major vehicle segments and are sold through a national footprint of 27 distribution centers and internationally.

Image Available: http://www.marketwire.com/library/MwGo/2016/6/10/11G102386/Images/American-Racing_CustomShop_Red-9076fee65fd9a8139f073b0aac3defb2.jpg

Media Contacts:

Manda Manning

Manda@masterplanpr.com

(850) 549-5652

or

Deborah Cser

Deborah@masterplanpr.com

(714) 310-9651
TORONTO, ONTARIO -- (Marketwired) -- 06/10/16 -- (TSX: PIC.A)(TSX: PIC.PR.A) Premium Income Corporation (the "Fund") announces results of operations for the six months ended April 30, 2016. Increase in net assets attributable to holders of Class A shares amounted to $4.4 million or $0.41 per Class A share. Net assets attributable to holders of Class A shares as at April 30, 2016 were $61.8 million or $5.80 per Class A share. Cash distributions of $0.43 per Preferred share and $0.41 per Class A share were paid during the period.

Premium Income Corporation is a mutual fund corporation, which invests in a portfolio consisting principally of common shares of Bank of Montreal, The Bank of Nova Scotia, Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, National Bank of Canada, Royal Bank of Canada, and the Toronto Dominion Bank. The Fund employs a proprietary investment strategy, Strathbridge Selective Overwriting, to enhance the income generated by the portfolio and to reduce volatility. In addition, the Fund may write cash covered put options in respect of securities in which it is permitted to invest.

The investment portfolio of the Fund is managed by its investment manager, Strathbridge Asset Management Inc. The Fund's Preferred and Class A shares are listed on Toronto Stock Exchange under the symbols PIC.PR.A and PIC.A respectively.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Selected Financial Information: ($Millions) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Statement of Comprehensive Income For the six months ended April 30, 2016 (Unaudited) Income (including Net Gain on Investments) $ 10.4 Expenses 1.4 --------- Operating Profit $ 9.0 Preferred Share Distributions (4.6) --------- Increase in Net Assets Attributable to Holders of Class A Shares $ 4.4 --------- ----------------------------------------------------------------------------

For further information, please contact Investor Relations at 416.681.3966, toll free at 1.800.725.7172 or visit www.strathbridge.com.

Contacts:

Strathbridge Asset Management Inc.

Aaron Ho

Vice-President, Finance

416.681.3966; 1.800.725.7172



Strathbridge Asset Management Inc.

121 King Street West, Suite 2600

Toronto, Ontario, M5H 3T9

416.681.3966; 1.800.725.7172

info@strathbridge.com

www.strathbridge.com




DUBLIN, June 10, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

Research and Markets has announced the addition of the "Research Report on Lactic Acid and Polylactic Acid (PLA) Industry in China, 2011-2020" report to their offering.

The global lactic acid market is mainly produced in the U.S., West Europe, Japan, China, etc. The fermentation method is adopted in most manufacturers. The production capacity of lactic acid is concentrated in North America, Asia and Europe. Lactic acid is widely used in many fields. In recent years, with the extremely insufficient resources and more concerns for environmental protection, the degradable polylactic acid (PLA) made from lactic acid is more widely applied.



In the Chinese lactic acid industry, only 10 enterprises, such as Henan Jindan Lacitc Acid Technology Co., Ltd. and COFCO Biochemical (Anhui) Co., Ltd. can reach annual production capacity of tens of thousands of tons. Most enterprises are small-sized with annual production capacity of hundreds to thousands of tons. Many enterprises in China issued the proposed projects or expansion plans. It is expected that the annual production capacity and output volume will rapidly increase.



A sound industry chain system is formed in the Chinese lactic acid industry. In terms of the constitution of upstream and downstream industries, lactic acid manufacturing industry is the extension of the raw material industry, which partly realizes the development from raw materials to high-end industry chain.



In China, the major upstream raw material of lactic acid is corn starch, and the downstream includes food and beverage, medicine, chemical engineering, cosmetics and electronics industry. With the largest consumption of lactic acid, the food and beverages enjoys the annual growth rate of above 10%. The application in other industries includes leather manufacture, micro electronics, electroplating and PLA production. The output volume of China's lactic acid exceeded more than 180,000 tons in 2015.



China's PLA production capacity is gradually increasing. Major manufacturers include Zhejiang Hisun Biomaterials Co., Ltd., Nantong Jiuding Biological Engineering Co., Ltd., etc. It is predicted that the consumption of lactic acid for PLA production will increase in the next few years. The global production capacity of PLA is expected to increase from 200,000 tons in 2012 to 800,000 tons in 2020. However, it is estimated that the production capacity in Asia will reach 400,000 tons, accounting for nearly half of the global. Many Asian countries issue policies to support the development of various bio-based materials. In addition, Asia possesses a large number of agricultural raw materials, which will promote the development of PLA. However, there is still less demand for PLA in Asia, which indicates that most of its new production capacity will be exported.



Key Topics Covered:



1 Basic Concepts of Lactic Acid and Polylactic Acid



2 Analysis of Global Lactic Acid and Polylactic Acid Industry, 2011-2015



China

China

China

China

China

Anhui

China

3 Development Environment of Lactic Acid and Polylactic Acid Industry in, 2011-20164 Operation Status of Lactic Acid and Polylactic Acid Industry in, 2011-20155 Import and Export of Lactic Acid and Polylactic Acid in, 2011-20156 Major Lactic Acid and Polylactic Acid Manufacturers in, 2015-20167 Prospects of Lactic Acid and Polylactic Acid Industry in, 2016-2020- COFCO Biochemical () Co., Ltd.- Chongqing Bofei Biochemical Products Co., Ltd.- Hebei Xinhua Co., Ltd.- Henan Jindan Lacitc Acid Technology Co., Ltd.- Musashino Chemical () Co., Ltd.- Nantong Jiuding Bio-Engineering Co., Ltd.- Ningxia Hypow Bio-technology Co., Ltd.- Shanxi Leda Biochemical Co., Ltd.- Xiaogan Kaifeng Bioengineering Co., Ltd.- Yancheng Haijianuo Biological Engineering Co., Ltd.- Zhejiang Hisun Biomaterials Co., Ltd.For more information visit http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/xkg9ph/research_report

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
BAAR, Switzerland, June 10, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --Weatherford International plc (NYSE: WFT) (the "Company" or "Weatherford") announced additional amendments with respect to the previously announced offers (as amended, the "Amended Tender Offers") by Weatherford International Ltd., a Bermuda exempted company and indirect, wholly owned subsidiary of the Company ("Weatherford Bermuda"), and Weatherford International, LLC, a Delaware limited liability company and indirect, wholly owned subsidiary of the Company and indirect subsidiary of Weatherford Bermuda ("Weatherford Delaware" and, together with Weatherford Bermuda, the "Offerors") to purchase for cash Weatherford Delaware's 6.35% senior notes due 2017 (the "2017 Notes") and Weatherford Bermuda's 6.00% senior notes due 2018 (the "2018 Notes"), 9.625% senior notes due 2019 (the "2019 Notes") and 5.125% senior notes due 2020 (the "2020 Notes" and, together with the 2017 Notes, 2018 Notes and 2019 Notes, the "Notes").

The additional amendments provide for:

(i) an increase in the aggregate maximum purchase price (excluding accrued interest) of Notes the Offerors are offering to purchase from $2.1 billion to $2.6 billion (the "Amended Aggregate Maximum Purchase Price");

(ii) an increase in the consideration offered per $1,000 principal amount of the 2019 Notes and 2020 Notes as shown in the table below;

(iii) an elimination of the $275.0 million cap on the aggregate principal amount of 2020 Notes Weatherford Bermuda is offering to purchase; and

(iv) Weatherford Bermuda having closed by the Early Settlement Date (as defined below) an offering of senior notes, in one or more tranches and with terms and conditions satisfactory to Weatherford Bermuda (the "Senior Notes Offering"), that provides gross proceeds of at least $1.5 billion (an increase from the previously announced amount of $1.1 billion) (the "Amended Financing Condition").

This announcement amends Weatherford Delaware's and Weatherford Bermuda' Offer to Purchase, dated June 1, 2016, as amended by the press release filed on June 8, 2016 and as hereby further amended, the "Offer to Purchase"). Other than the amendments described above, all terms and conditions in the Offer to Purchase remain unchanged.











Dollars per $1,000 Principal Amount of Notes Title of Security CUSIP Number Aggregate Principal Amount Outstanding Tender Cap / Initial Tender Cap Acceptance Priority Level Tender Offer Consideration/ Previously Announced Tender Offer Consideration Early Tender Premium Total Consideration/ Previously Announced Tender Offer Consideration Weatherford Delaware's

2017 Notes 947074AJ9 /

947074AF7 /

U94320AC9 $600,000,000 N/A 1 $1,020.00 $30 $1,050.00 Weatherford Bermuda's

2018 Notes 947075AD9 $500,000,000 N/A 2 $1,025.00 $30 $1,055.00 Weatherford Bermuda's

2019 Notes 947075AF4 $1,000,000,000 N/A /

$250,000,000 3 $1,070.00 / $1,065.00 $30 $1,100,00 / $1,095.00 Weatherford Bermuda's

2020 Notes 94707VAA8 $773,088,000 N/A / $100,000,000 4 $915.00 / $910.00 $30 $945.00 / $940.00

Holders of Notes that are validly tendered (and not validly withdrawn) prior to 5:00 p.m., New York City time, on June 16, 2016 (the "Early Tender Date"), and accepted for purchase pursuant to the Amended Tender Offers will receive the applicable Total Consideration (as set forth in the table above) for such series, which includes the early tender premium for such series of Notes set forth in the table above (with respect to each series of Notes, the "Early Tender Premium"). Holders of Notes tendering their Notes after the Early Tender Date will only be eligible to receive the Tender Offer Consideration (as set forth in the table above), which is the Total Consideration less the Early Tender Premium.

All Notes validly tendered and accepted for purchase pursuant to the Amended Tender Offers will receive the applicable consideration set forth in the table above, plus accrued and unpaid interest on such Notes from the last interest payment date with respect to those Notes to, but not including, the applicable Settlement Date (as defined below). Tendered Notes may be withdrawn from the Amended Tender Offers prior to 5:00 p.m., New York City time, on June 16, 2016 (the "Withdrawal Deadline"), unless extended by Weatherford Bermuda or Weatherford Delaware. Holders of Notes who tender their Notes after the Withdrawal Deadline, but prior to 12:00 midnight, New York City time, at the end of the day on June 30, 2016 (the "Expiration Date"), may not withdraw their tendered Notes.

The Offerors reserve the right, but are under no obligation, subject to the satisfaction or waiver of the conditions (including the Amended Financing Condition) to the Amended Tender Offers, to accept for purchase any Notes validly tendered and not validly withdrawn prior to the Early Tender Date, at any point following the Early Tender Date and before the Expiration Date (the "Early Settlement Date"), subject to the Acceptance Priority Levels (as set forth in the table above), the Amended Aggregate Maximum Purchase Price and proration. The Early Settlement Date will be determined at each Offeror's option and is currently expected to occur on June 17, 2016, subject to all conditions to the Amended Tender Offers (including the Amended Financing Condition) having been either satisfied or waived by the applicable Offeror. If the Amended Financing Condition is not satisfied or waived by the Early Settlement Date, the Offerors reserve the right, but are under no obligation to accept for purchase any Notes validly tendered and not validly withdrawn prior to the Early Tender Date, at the Early Settlement Date, subject to an aggregate maximum purchase price of $1.1 billion (the "Initial Aggregate Maximum Purchase Price"), the Acceptance Priority Levels, the Initial Tender Caps (as set forth in the table above), and proration. Irrespective of whether an Offeror chooses to exercise its option to have an Early Settlement Date, such Offeror will purchase any remaining Notes that have been validly tendered and not validly withdrawn prior to the Expiration Date and that such Offeror chooses to accept for purchase promptly following the Expiration Date, subject to the Initial Aggregate Maximum Purchase Price or the Amended Aggregate Maximum Purchase Price, as applicable, the Initial Tender Caps, as applicable, and proration (the "Final Settlement Date," the Final Settlement Date and the Early Settlement Date each being a "Settlement Date"). The Final Settlement Date is expected to occur on the first business day following the Expiration Date. Regardless of whether the Amended Financing Condition is satisfied or waived by the Early Settlement Date, Holders tendering Notes pursuant to the Amended Tender Offers will receive the applicable Total Consideration or the Tender Offer Consideration (as set forth in the table above).

Subject to the Initial Aggregate Maximum Purchase Price or the Amended Aggregate Maximum Purchase Price, as applicable, the Initial Tender Caps, as applicable, and proration, the Notes accepted on any Settlement Date will be accepted in accordance with their Acceptance Priority Levels set forth in the table above, with one being the highest Acceptance Priority Level and four being the lowest Acceptance Priority Level. All Notes tendered before the Early Tender Date will be accepted for purchase in priority to other Notes tendered after the Early Tender Date, even if such Notes tendered after the Early Tender Date have a higher Acceptance Priority Level than Notes tendered prior to the Early Tender Date.

Acceptance for tenders of any Notes may be subject to proration if the aggregate principal amount for any series of Notes validly tendered and not validly withdrawn would cause the Initial Aggregate Maximum Purchase Price or the Amended Aggregate Maximum Purchase Price, as applicable, to be exceeded. Acceptance for tenders of 2019 Notes and 2020 Notes may be subject to proration if the aggregate principal amount of the 2019 Notes or 2020 Notes validly tendered and not validly withdrawn is greater than the applicable Tender Cap, if any.

The consummation of the Amended Tender Offers is not conditioned upon any minimum amount of Notes being tendered. However, the Amended Tender Offers are subject to the satisfaction or waiver of certain conditions in the Offer to Purchase, including the Amended Financing Condition.

Deutsche Bank Securities Inc., Citigroup Global Markets Inc., RBC Capital Markets, LLC and Wells Fargo Securities, LLC are the dealer managers in the Amended Tender Offers. Global Bondholder Services Corporation has been retained to serve as both the depositary and the information agent for the Amended Tender Offers. Persons with questions regarding the Amended Tender Offers should contact Deutsche Bank Securities at (toll-free): (855) 287-1922 or (collect): (212) 250-7527, Citigroup Global Markets Inc. at (toll-free): (800) 558-3745 or (New York): (212) 723-6106, RBC Capital Markets, LLC at (toll-free): (877) 381-2099 or (collect): (212) 618-7822 or Wells Fargo Securities, LLC at (toll-free): (866) 309-6316 or (collect): (704) 410-4760. Requests for copies of the Offer to Purchase and other related materials should be directed to Global Bondholder Services Corporation at (toll-free): (866) 807-2200 or (collect): (212) 430-3774.

None of the Company, its board of directors, the dealer managers, the depositary or the information agent or any of the Company, the Offerors or their respective affiliates, makes any recommendation as to whether holders of the Notes should tender any Notes in response to the Amended Tender Offers. The Amended Tender Offers are made only by the Offer to Purchase. The Amended Tender Offers are not being made to holders of Notes in any jurisdiction in which the making or acceptance thereof would not be in compliance with the securities, blue sky or other laws of such jurisdiction. In any jurisdiction in which the Amended Tender Offers are required to be made by a licensed broker or dealer, the Amended Tender Offers will be deemed to be made on behalf of the Offerors by the dealer managers, or one or more registered brokers or dealers that are licensed under the laws of such jurisdiction.

ABOUT WEATHERFORD INTERNATIONAL PLC

Weatherford is one of the largest multinational oilfield service companies providing innovative solutions, technology and services to the oil and gas industry. The Company operates in over 100 countries and has a network of approximately 1,100 locations, including manufacturing, service, research and development, and training facilities and employs approximately 33,100 people.

FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS

This press release includes forward-looking statements as defined under federal law, including those related to the Company's potential securities offering and tender offers. These forward-looking statements are generally identified by the words "believe," "expect," "anticipate," "estimate," "intend," "plan," "may," "should," "could," "will," "would," and "will be," and similar expressions, although not all forward-looking statements contain these identifying words. Such statements are subject to significant risks, assumptions and uncertainties. Known material factors that could cause the Company's actual results to differ materially from the results contemplated by such forward-looking statements are described in the prospectus as supplemented, which is a part of the registration statement, and the risk factors described in the Company's Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2015 and those risk factors set forth from time-to-time in other filings with the SEC. Weatherford undertakes no obligation to correct or update any forward-looking statement, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise, except to the extent required under federal securities laws.

Investor Contact:





Krishna Shivram +1.713.836.4610 Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer



Karen David-Green +1.713.836.7430 Vice President - Investor Relations, Corporate Marketing & Communications

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/19990308/WEATHERFORDLOGO
TORONTO, ONTARIO -- (Marketwired) -- 06/10/16 -- Xylitol Canada Inc. ("Xylitol Canada", or the "Company") (TSX VENTURE: XYL) is pleased to announce that it has issued convertible debentures (the "Debentures"), on a private placement basis, for aggregate gross proceeds of $410,000, representing a third tranche of the previously announced offering of Debentures for aggregate gross proceeds of up to $3 million (the "Offering"), as announced on February 8, 2016, and March 15, 2016. The Debentures are convertible into common shares of the Company at a price of $0.10 per share, have a maturity date that is three years from the date of issuance, and accrue interest at a rate of 10% per annum. The Company also issued an aggregate of 820,000 share purchase warrants (the "Warrants") to Debenture subscribers, each Warrant entitling the holder thereof to acquire one common share of the Company at an exercise price $0.15 per share, for a period of three years from date of issuance.

In connection with the Offering, the Company paid Canaccord Genuity Corp. ("Canaccord") a finder's fee of $24,600 and issued 246,000 non-transferable share purchase warrants, entitling Canaccord to acquire one common share of the Company at an exercise price of $0.15 per share, for a period of two years from the date of issuance.

Securities issued in the Offering will be subject to a hold period expiring on October 11, 2016. Further details regarding the terms of the Offering can be found in the Company's February 8, 2016, and March 15, 2016 press releases.

About Xylitol Canada Inc.

Xylitol Canada operates two business units that address the growing xylose and xylitol markets. Xylitol Canada's consumer packaged goods division is based in Denver Colorado and has grown from under $500,000 in revenue in 2010, to over $8,600,000 in 2014. Xylitol Canada operates a 50,000 square foot xylitol facility where it produces and packages a full catalog of natural sugar free products, most notably its natural sugar alternatives. Through this Denver based facility, the Company services major retail customers such as Loblaws, Whole Foods, Costco, Sprouts, and many others.

Xylitol Canada markets xylitol and xylitol based-products and is focused on becoming a major low-cost manufacturer of xylitol and related products, serving the global market from operations in North America. Xylitol Canada's business strategy is to leverage novel proprietary technology and processes to become North America's premier manufacturer of low cost, high quality xylitol from readily available environmentally-sustainable biomass. Xylitol is a natural sweetener which is marketed globally including Canada and the United States and is accepted by the American Food and Drug Administration, the World Health Organization and the American Dental Association. Xylitol contains 75% less carbohydrates and 40% less calories than sugar, has a myriad of oral health benefits including the prevention of tooth decay and is safe for diabetics. To date, wider spread use of xylitol has been limited by the lack of a reliable, low cost, high quality supplier.

Forward Looking Statements

This press release contains forward-looking statements. Often, but not always, forward-looking statements can be identified by the use of words such as "plans", "expects" or "does not expect", "is expected", "estimates", "intends", "anticipates" or "does not anticipate", or "believes", or variations of such words and phrases or state that certain actions, events or results "may", "could", "would", "might" or "will" be taken, occur 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 Xylitol Canada to be materially different from any future anticipated results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements. Actual results and developments are likely to differ, and may differ materially, from those expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements contained in this press release. Such forward-looking statements are based on a number of assumptions which may prove to be incorrect, including, but not limited to: the ability of Xylitol Canada to complete the Offering. While Xylitol Canada anticipates that subsequent events and developments may cause its views to change, Xylitol Canada specifically disclaim any obligation to update these forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements should not be relied upon as representing Xylitol Canada's views as of any date subsequent to the date of this press release. Although the Xylitol Canada has attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual actions, events or results to differ materially from those described in forward-looking statements, there may be other factors that cause actions, events or results not to be as anticipated, estimated or intended. 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, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. The factors identified above are not intended to represent a complete list of the factors that could affect Xylitol Canada. Additional factors are noted under "Risk Factors" Xylitol Canada's financial statements and related management's discussion and analysis.

Neither TSX Venture Exchange Inc. 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:

Xylitol Canada Inc.

Matt Willer

Director

303.991.1999

matt@xylitolusa.com




TravelPerk, a Barcelona, Spain-based free platform for companies to budget, book and manage business travel, raised $7m (approx. 6.3m) in Series A funding.

The round was led by Spark Capital, with participation from Sunstone Capital and existing backers LocalGlobe. In conjunction with the funding, Spark Capitals Alex Finkelstein will join TravelPerks Board of Directors.

The company plans to use the funds to triple their team in Barcelona, further develop their technology and expand globally.

Co-founded in 2015 by and Ron Levin, Avi Meir and Javier Suarez, TravelPerk operates a free platform for office managers to book and manage their business travel all in one place, offering expense integration and travel budget reporting.

FinSMEs

10/06/2016
Early stage venture capital firm Initialized Capital is raising its third fund.

According to a regulatory form filed with the SEC, the firm is seeking to raise $100m for Initialized III L.P. The document lists Alexis Ohanian (Co-Founder of Reddit) and Garry Tan (previously a partner at Y Combinator) and Alina Libova as people related to the offering. Former partner Harjeet Taggar is not listed in the filing as he is working as founder and CEO at Triplebyte, a YC backed hiring startup that connects engineers with tech companies.

The firm, which will be based in San Francisco (while previous forms listed New York as headquarters), has already managed two funds totalling over $45m in total. Porfolio companies include SendHub, Weave, LeadGenius, Zeus, Two Tap, HelloSign, Make School, Flexport, digit.co, NewHive, ParkWhiz, Her, Parsable, Trusted Insight, Cleanly, LiftIgniter, Blend, Egomotion, and Bellhops.

FinSMEs

10/06/2016
If you have seen the South Korean thriller Montage, then you do not need this cautionary note: Te3n is to be watched with rapt attention. No loo breaks, no glances at your cellphone.

This Amitabh Bachchan-Vidya Balan-Nawazuddin Siddiqui-starrer is an official remake of the 2013 film by writer-director Chung Keun-Sup, who is acknowledged in the credits here for the story. The narrative of the Hindi film is firmly rooted in Kolkata where events unfold over an eight-year period.

Bachchan plays John Biswas in Te3n, an old man whose eight-year-old granddaughter Angela is kidnapped and killed in 2007. Over the next eight years, Biswas relentlessly pursues police officer Martin Das (Siddiqui) who handled his case, determined to persuade him not to give up on finding the kidnapper whose trail had apparently long gone cold.

Angelas death had a profound impact on Das too. He handles his trauma  or perhaps tries to escape his sense of guilt  by leaving the force to become a Christian priest. In 2015 when Biswas arrives at his church with a clue to the whereabouts of the kidnapper/s, Fr Martin Das urges him for the nth time to heal rather than rake up an old wound.

Biswas is undeterred, of course. Meanwhile, Fr Das curiosity is piqued when another kidnapping takes place and his old friend, police officer Sarita Sharma (Balan), asks for help with the investigation because of the similarities between the two cases.

Central to the effectiveness of Te3n is its pace, which serves to build up a sense of dread and foreboding until the identity of the culprit/s is revealed. There are no high-speed car chases, screeching tyres and high-decibel shootouts anywhere in sight. This is not that kind of film. The simmering treatment is designed to unite viewers with Biswas frustration, to help us understand why he takes so many risks to attain closure. It is almost impossible to shake off the fingers of fear that grip the heart as he appears to repeatedly endanger himself in his quest for the truth. And when the big oh moment arrives without drumbeats and trumpeters, it is hard not to share his anguish and sense of helplessness.

The star of this film is director Ribhu Dasguptas refusal to step on the accelerator. Dasgupta clearly has a deep understanding of the films milieu and a firm handle on the solid written material at his disposal.

Suresh Nair and Bijesh Jayrajans screenplay favours minimalism over verbosity. So do the dialogues by Ritesh Shah. Both add to the films atmospherics and unyielding tension.

Tushar Kanti Rays cinematography complements their labours, capturing Kolkatas chaos and colours sans cliches, lending shades of gray and a pall of detached gloom to the crowded city. It is as if, like John Biswas, for the camera too time has stood still while a bustling city hurries about all around.

The Howrah bridge, those bright yellow taxis, the immersion of Durga idols  all the familiar indicators make an appearance without screaming out that they have been dragged in to remind us that we are in Kolkata. And while none of these visual landmarks is overwhelming, there are some refreshing additions that Bollywood tends to not notice: Fr Das imposing church and an equally imposing imambara, both of which are crucial to the story.

Equally to the point, it is nice to see the way Ray focuses on the three beautiful faces that are pivotal to the film, without overdoing it as many DoPs have done particularly while working on Bachchans post-2000 films.

The detailing in the sound design by Shajith Koyeri and Tanmoy Chakrabortys production design (especially of Biswas home and the interiors of the spaces from which Fr Das and Sharma operate) also play an essential role in Te3ns very real, dramatic-yet-not-melodramatic quality. So is the action by Sham Kaushal, who is careful not to hark back to Bachchans invulnerable Angry Young Man avatar of the 1970s and 80s.

Clinton Cerejos music is apt till the big reveal, although it is over-used after that point, which is also when the film carries on a lot longer than it needed to. Still, there is enough humanity, believability and suspense in Te3n to put its flaws in the shade.

Beyond the gripping mystery are some delightful elements that are unobtrusively woven in, indicating the teams intimate knowledge of Kolkata, interest in Indian society at large and disinterest in superficiality, for the most part. For instance, minority community members are usually featured in Bollywood stories with a specific purpose: Muslims  secularism; Christians  glamour and exoticism; Sikhs, Parsis and homosexuals  comedy; Dalits  youve got to be kidding, they do not exist as far as most of mainstream Bollywood is concerned. In Te3n, however, a huge deal is not made of the fact that two of the three main characters are Christians, perhaps Sharma is too. And except for the irritating insistence on having them use the English words god and prayer instead of bhagwan and prarthana though they are speaking in Hindi throughout, they do not otherwise conform to the stupid Christian stereotype that dominated Bollywood till the 1990s and has occasionally reared its head since then. A song and dance is not made either of the religion of the kindly gentleman at the imambara.

The backroom team of Te3n is ably fronted by sound acting. Bachchan shrugs off the star persona and trademark mannerisms that have marked many of his post-2000 films, to deliver a felt performance, drawing us into Biswas grief and silent fury. Siddiquis subtlety as he switches from priest to policeman to priest to policeman underlines his casual brilliance. And Balan  who is inexplicably cited as a guest appearance in the opening credits  is as sturdy as ever, though hers is the least fleshed out character of the trio.

Thankfully too, nobody is trying to do Bengali accents here. Seriously, accents are superfluous in such films. After all, it calls for a suspension of disbelief to buy that characters in Kolkata would operate entirely in Hindi. If we are willing to go that far, unless we never ever want a Hindi film to be set anywhere outside the Hindi belt, why would we needlessly burden actors with accents? This is one of many sensible directorial decisions that make up this film.

Te3n is not without weaknesses: it could have done with some snipping at the end, the title does not work and there are a couple of important loose ends that should have been  and easily could have been  tied up. For instance, the actions of a primary character hinge on the extreme cooperation and trust of an individual who is a satellite player in the story, but we never fully understand why and how that trust was won. You will get that sentence only after you watch the film in its entirety.

It is a measure of Te3ns strengths that, in the overall analysis, these complaints recede into the background. It is so wonderful to see director Sujoy Ghosh who gave us Kahaani, backing this film as a producer. Ribhu Dasguptas Te3n is a strong, entertaining whodunit, so lovely in its sadness and so thoroughly engaging in its observations on old age, escapism, persistence, love and revenge.
New Delhi: Virtually ruling out setting up of a Civil Aviation Authority to replace DGCA, Union Minister Ashok Gajapathi Raju today said that he saw no need to merely rename the regulator.

The UPA government had proposed to replace Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) with Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) having full functional and financial autonomy to give the regulator more teeth.

"What is the need for CAA? What purpose will be served by just changing the name? I do not see any reason (to replace DGCA)," the Civil Aviation Minister said.

Raju, however, admitted there is "opaqueness" in working of DGCA and promised to usher in transparency in the body in the interest of passenger safety and security.

The Minister said an ambitious plan is being worked out to make the DGCA a more "responsive" and "meaningful" body, which had faced a downgrade on safety grounds during the UPA regime.

The DGCA is expected to make completely online 18 major services including granting of licence to pilots, approval of safety procedures and engineering and flight operations this month as part of its e-GCA (e-Governance in Civil Aviation) project.

"We need more transparency in DGCA. Things have to be more transparent and the opaqueness has to go away so as to make things more responsible and responsive," Raju told PTI in an interview.

His comments come at a time when there are increasing threats to aviation security worldwide, particularly after the terror attack on Brussels airport in March.

Questions relating to safety of passengers had come into focus following incidents such as a pilot trying to land an aircraft on a road mistaking it for the runway and another pilot allowing a cabin crew to travel in the cockpit.

Against the backdrop of safety lapses in domestic carriers raising concerns about the effectiveness of DGCA, Raju said safety was very important and no government can ignore it.
A Delhi court on Friday handed out life imprisonment to five men for the gangrape of a Danish woman in the city. The judgment brings some closure to the incident, which sent shockwaves in the capital two-and-a-half years ago.

Additional sessions judge Ramesh Kumar II, who on 6 June had convicted the five men, after which the arguments on sentencing took place. Arjun, Raju alias Chhakka, Mohammad Raja, Mahendra alias Ganja and Raju alias Bajji were held guilty of the offences of gang rape, dacoity, kidnapping, wrongful confinement, criminal intimidation and common intention under the Indian Penal Code.

Special Public Prosecutor Atul Shrivastava had said the crime was committed in a "barbaric and inhuman" manner and he would demand the maximum punishment for the convicts, that is imprisonment till the remainder of natural life.

"The manner in which this act has been committed is barbaric and inhuman and, despite mercy by the woman, she was not let off for about five hours. She was beaten while committing rape and the weapon of offence was also used in commission of crime," he said.

He said in India guests are treated as God but the convicts raped a foreigner, therefore, a message should be sent to the society that rule of law prevails in India and wrongdoers would be dealt with an iron hand.

The five convicts sought leniency, citing that they belong to the 20s age group and come from poor family background.

The victim had arrived in Delhi on 1 January, 2014, and stayed for a couple of days before leaving for Agra. After visiting several places, she returned to Delhi on 13 January, 2014, and stayed in a hotel in Paharganj near the station. On the next day when she was returning to her hotel, she lost her way and had asked one of the accused for directions when the men waylaid and gangraped her.

The accused had robbed and raped the Danish woman at knife point near the New Delhi railway station in January 2014 after she sought directions to her hotel in nearby Paharganj area.

One of the accused, Shyam Lal died in February in Tihar Jail here and proceedings against him were abated. Three minors are also facing proceedings before the Juvenile Justice Board in the case.

Police said the accused were vagabonds who took the woman to an isolated spot near the Divisional Railway Officers' Club, snatched her belongings and then raped her.

With inputs from agencies
Union Minister Maneka Gandhi and her activism for animals is nothing unknown. The minister has on many occasions vociferously advocated for animal rights. In fact the BJP MP, who also initiated an NGO People for Animals (PFA) which is currently one of the largest animal rig in the country. So it was not surprising when the Union Minister for Women and Child Development lashed out at her colleague Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar for permitting the "killing of animals" across the country.

So here's what had happened:

In the last six days, 200 nilgais or blue bulls were shot dead in Bihar. Owing to increasing damage to farmlands, the state government had knocked the Centre's door to seek permission to cull nilgais to prevent further harm to standing crops. It sought permission to use professional shooters for that purpose. Acres of crops were being destroyed in areas where the nilgais exist in large numbers and regularly stray onto farms growing crops like wheat and pulses.

"When state governments write to us about farmers' suffering due to crop damage by animals, then such permissions are given. It is on the recommendation of state governments. This is not a Central government programme, as it is an existing law," Javadekar was quoted as saying.

According to reports, Maneka's anger was directed at Javadekar for the three notifications issued by the Ministry of Environment in the last six months. Maneka told reporters that every notification had dubbed a wild animal a 'vermin' or 'pest' in a state for the period of one year. In December last year, it was nilagi, a vermin, in Bihar; in February, it was wild boar, again a vermin, in Uttarakhand and in March, the ministry declared monkeys in Himachal Pradesh as vermins. According to The Indian Express, the West Bengal government issued kill notices for elephants on several occasions and even assigned hunters to "exterminate" the animal.

These notifications were issued a while back, but what triggered Maneka's anger was the mass killing of nilgai in Bihar.

"The Environment Ministry, suo motu, issued a letter asking states to come forward with proposals (to kill wild animals). They then gave the go-ahead for killing elephants in West Bengal, wild boars in Uttarakhand, peacocks in Goa, nilgai in Bihar. I dont understand this lust for killing," she said.

Maneka said the Union environment ministry "is writing to every state government, allowing them to provide a list of animals that can be killed so that the Centre can give permission.

"This is happening for the first time. I don't understand this lust for killing of animals. It is shameful."

However, Javadekar insisted that it was "scientific management" of animal population and the permissions for killing animals designated as 'vermin' were restricted to particular areas and time period.

The verbal spat between the two BJP leaders escalated quickly and was seized upon by the opposition parties which alleged there was no teamwork or cohesion in the Modi government. BJP MP Subramanian Swamy even intervened between the two and advised Javadekar to call up Maneka and come to a conclusion.

"Maneka has a long record of being concerned about this issue and I think the proper thing to do is not to reply to her publicly but for Javadaker to pick up the phone and call her. I mean it is also true that she could have picked up the phone but by then he had already announced it," Swamy told ANI.

This, interestingly is not the first time that a war of words has ensued between the two Union ministers of BJP. Javadekar, a former member of the party's student wing ABVP and a trusted lieutenant of Modi, has rubbed off Maneka on the wrong side a number of times.

Amazon, Maneka and Javadekar

In May this year, after a wildlife body alleged that Amazon website was selling wildlife specimens including sea horses and alligator heads, protected under the country's laws, Maneka condemned the online retailing giant for selling such ware.

"The Government of India and NGOs like Wildlife SOS are struggling to protect our wildlife and make this country safer for animals, yet we have a giant like Amazon shamefully selling wildlife specimens and animal traps that directly contribute to the slaughter of wildlife," Maneka had said in a press statement.

According to The Wildlife SOS, an NGO in Delhi, snares, traps and specimens like alligators, snakes, bats, butterflies, spiders, ladybugs, beetle, scorpions, frogs and several aquatic animals like seahorse, starfish, octopus, crab and shark teeth among others are on sale in both the Indian and international website of Amazon.

Javadekar's environment ministry, in response to her letter, said that it would let off Amazon after the company offered an apology. An allegedly furious Maneka did not wait for the online retail giant's apology and demanded that Amazon produce "the list of 200-plus sellers who have been trading in such products on their site."

"We are yet to receive the list of sellers from Amazon and several of these items are still available on their website, such as hunting weapons and manuals on how to kill, trap, maim and snare animals. If they fail to comply soon, there will be no option but to go ahead with a complaint against them for violating the Wildlife Protection Act," Wildlife SOS co-founder Kartick Satyanarayan was quoted as saying by The Indian Express.

When Maneka slammed Javadekar over his stand on climate change

In December last year, when the MoEF was attending the climate change summit in Paris and taking a firm stand by saying developed nations cannot expect a still developing India to shoulder the burden of reducing emissions, Maneka had said that India, as one of the main contributors to the global warming, needs to do much more. Speaking to NDTV during the Paris climate summit, Maneka was responding to the Indian government's stand that the country has lower CO2 emissions.

She said: "Rubbish. We said that in Montreal protocol and we have been saying that for 50 years. And in the meantime we go on and on and on."

In fact, Prime Minister Narendra Modi took the 'not our fault' high ground when the world's top three carbon culprits met in Paris but back home his own party's top minister took a different line.

Maneka further said, "It is a question of putting the blame always the West did it. They may have done it hundred years ago. India is one of the main players destroying the climate. We, China and Brazil are the largest producers of methane. Coal, animals and rice, these are the three reasons for methane and methane is 26 per cent more powerful than carbon dioxide in creating climate change." In Paris, Modi had said "climate change is not of our making".

Ban on Jallikattu

In January last year, after the BJP promised to lift the ban and said that the party would consider taking steps, including amending laws, to allow Jallikattu (a popular bull taming sport in Tamil Nadu), which has been banned, Javadekar said. Jallikattu had been banned by the Supreme Court. "If need be, we will attempt to bring in laws to lift the ban on Jallikattu," Javadekar had said in January last year in the then poll-bound Tamil Nadu.

As a rebuttal to the party's stand, Maneka said that jallikattu is a Western concept that leads to killings of humans and animals. "Jallikattu tradition is Western culture and BJP is against it. The Supreme Courts decision to ban it is a welcome step," Maneka had said.

She said that in this tradition cows and bulls, which are very useful for the farmers, are killed. "Not only the animals, but humans are also killed in this tradition," Maneka said.

With inputs from agencies
Hyderabad: Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar will attend the commissioning ceremony of three women officers

as the fighter pilots for the first time in the IAF history on 18 June at Air Force Academy in Dundigal near Hyderabad.

On the occasion, Parrikar will review the Passing out Parade and confer the 'President's Commission' to 129 graduating trainees of various branches including 22 women trainees.

The graduation parade, which will be held as part of successful completion of the pre-commissioning training by the flight cadets of various branches of Indian Air Force will be a landmark event in the history of IAF, as the first three women pilots will be commissioned in the fighter stream of the flying branch, a defence release stated on Friday.

The women to be inducted as fighter pilots are Bhavana Kant, Mohana Singh and Avani Chaturvedi.

They will go to Bidar in Karnataka for their stage-III training for a year on Hawk advanced jet trainers, before they get to fly supersonic warplanes.

Six female cadets were competing to become fighter pilots after the government, in a landmark move, approved an IAF plan in October to induct them as fighter pilots.

However, only three female trainees were selected for the fighter stream.

Parrikar will also present the 'wings and brevets' to the newly-commissioned officers of the flying branch and to the officers from sister services i.e. Navy and Coast Guard who have successfully undergone the flying training.

The reviewing officer will present the President's Plaque and the Sword of Honour to the flight cadet standing first in the order of merit in 'flying branch' who will have the privilege of commanding the parade, stated the release.

The reviewing officer will also award the President's Plaque to the toppers (first in overall merit) in the navigation and ground duty branches of the graduating course.
The Mumbai- Pune Expressway on Sunday saw a deadly accident which was widely reported in the media. A bus rammed into two cars, killing seventeen people and injuring 30 others.

This was just another accident among the 14,500 accidents that the 94 km Expressway has seen since its construction in 2002.

Over the years, India has seen a steep rise in road accidents. According to a report on road accidents in India released by the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways, 2015 has seen the greatest rise in number of accidents in five years- 12,023 accidents more than the previous years. Such a massive rise has not been seen since 2010 when the number of accidents rose by 13,244.

From around 4.4 lakh annual accidents in 2005, India saw over 5 lakh accidents in 2015. In this period, fatalities rose from 94,968 to 1,46,133 for the same time period. The report says that thirteen top states namely Tamil Nadu (69,059), Maharashtra (63,805), Madhya Pradesh (54,947), Karnataka (44,011), Kerala (39,014), Uttar Pradesh (32,385), Andhra Pradesh (24,258), Rajasthan (24,072), Gujarat (23,183), Telengana (21,252), Chhattisgarh (14,446),West Bengal (13,208) and Haryana (11,174) together account for 86.7 per cent of all road accidents in the country.

The data shows that on an average day 1324 accidents occur on Indian roads leading to the death of 349 people. This means 55 accidents and 15 lives lost per hour. In other words, a life lost every four minutes. A terrifying number!

Accident severity has also reached its highest with 29 people dying in every 100 accidents.



Harman Singh, President, Arrive Safe, a Chandigarh-based road safety NGO, says that apart from actual increase the rising numbers could also be due to more cases of accidents being reported. "With accidents, generally the affected parties just reach informal agreements and do not report it. Only when there are fatal accidents do officials get involved and then there is a formal reporting. Often, the actual figures are much higher than what are reported."



The number of vehicles being registered in India is ever increasing. From 6.7 crore vehicles registered in 2003, the number has steeply increased to 18.2 crore in 2013. While currently 27 kilometres of roads are being built everyday, the road transport and highways ministry aims to construct per day more than 40 kms of roads in the fiscal year of 2016-17. However, it remains to be seen if the ministry will succeed in reducing road accidents in the near future.

Though the report says that 77.1 per cent of times, accidents take place due to the drivers fault, Nitin Gadkari, Minister for Road Transport and Highways, admitted that "faulty road engineering" could also be one of the major causes for road accidents. Speaking to PTI he said, Human sacrifices cannot be allowed. We have taken a slew of steps in the last two years to minimise this, including launch of Pradhan Mantri Sadak Suraksha Yojana and earmarking 1 percent of the project cost for road safety that translates to Rs 5,000 crore on it."

Further Rs. 11,000 crores have been allocated to fix 726 black spots on national highways in the coming five years. The black spots have been identified based on the deaths reported from fatal highway stretches during the three years from 2011 to 2013. According to government guidelines, a black spot is classified as a location on a national highway that witnesses more than 10 accidents a year.

To grade the safety of Indian cars and make them safer an agency will be set up -the Bharat National Car Assessment Programme. Even scooters and motorcycles in India will have automatic headlamps on.

The Ministry is also hoping that the passage of the Road Safety Bill will further bring down road fatalities.

But Harman Singh, speaking to Firstpost, makes a vital point. "Identifying and fixing black spots may not be the only solution. A black spot maybe corrected, but four- five kilometres away from there a new spot may arise. What is required is identification of problematic zones and dedicated teams to analyse the issues," he says.
It would seem that all that is needed for the sinking Titanic to stay afloat and even turn around and charge forward, all hooters blazing, is for a woman to wear elegant cotton sarees just like the way her grandmother did.

Sounds confusing? It isn't. The Congress may be undergoing the worst crisis in its 129-year-old history, the Indians may have shown it the door almost everywhere, it may have sunk to a historic low of just 45 MPs in Lok Sabha, all that it needs to do to become an unstoppable force once again is to persuade Priyanka Gandhi to join politics.

Once she does, the stars will align themselves; the earth, which was haltingly revolving around the sun these days will speed up its proceedings and even global warming will be reversed (well, maybe not quite but you get the drift). Uttar Pradesh, where she will start her journey by aggressive campaigning, will be in the bag in 2017 and in 2019, the Congress with an eerily Indira Gandhi-like figure at the helm, shall charge full steam ahead and throw the despotic Narendra Modi out of power. I told you, it's really that simple.

That, at least, is the plan. News18, quoting top party functionaries, reported on Friday that Priyanka will, in all probability, take a direct plunge into electoral politics in the 2019 general elections from Amethi, and, as a first step, aggressively campaign across Uttar Pradesh in next years Assembly elections.

It is not known whether campaign manager Prashant Kishor suggested it but apparently Priyanka could contest from Amethi, in which case Rahul will leave the Lok Sabha seat for his sister and shift to Rae Bareli. These shifts do not require much explaining to the electorate since Amethi and Rae Bareli are family fiefdoms and the poor voters will only be too obliged to embrace Priyanka with open arms.

Rahul's sibling is the proverbial 'Brahmastra' that Congress has been forced to unleash to shower blessings on a parched India and initiate doomsday mayhem against political rivals (read Narendra Modi).

Not only is Priyanka fiery, feisty, fierce, intense and scorchingly brilliant, her resemblance to Indira Gandhi, her late grandmother, especially when slips into those elegant cotton sarees, is a big perception asset. If her brilliance doesn't bring victory, the sarees will.

Reports of late had been suggesting that Prashant Kishor had been pushing for Priyanka to head Congress campaign in UP and if indeed she listens to her inner voice, this will be a game-changer in Indian politics.

The Congress rank and file will be energised, senior leaders will bless her with misty eyes, many in the media (of the 'secular-liberal' variety), academics and civil society will finally get someone to rally behind, someone who can lead Congress, that big tent of all ideas, out of the morass and spell the end of BJP's majoritarian rule.

Critics will point out, as they have this nasty habit of doing, that merely draping a cotton saree doesn't automatically make her a leader as her grandmother was. Some will point out that Indira Gandhi had cut her teeth in politics at quite an young age. Having been father Jawaharlal Nehru's virtual chief of staff for 17 years, she was also a Congress Working Committee member, party president by 1959, Rajya Sabha MP and Union information and broadcasting minister before she became the prime minister.

In contrast, Priyanka had been limiting herself to cameos in her brother and mother's constituencies every five years. Even if she takes the plunge at 44 after having almost zero experience in public life, that won't be a problem because she belongs to the country's premier dynasty and it will be the nation's sacred duty to elect the airdropped leader as and when she presents herself. Besides, say party insiders, her sartorial acumen will make up for the lack of field practice.

There is but one little problem in this apparently foolproof plan and it goes by the name of Robert Vadra, Priyanka's husband who flaunts a six-pack gym-built body and allegedly dubious land deals. This is where the similarity between Indira and Priyanka ends.

Indira's husband Feroze Gandhi was among those rare individuals who didn't think twice before crossing the path of even his illustrious father-in-law law when it came to raising his voice against corruption.

In 1957, when Congress was in office led by then Prime Minister Nehru, Feroze, who represented the Rae Bareli seat in Lok Sabha, blew the whistle and initiated a debate in the Parliament on LIC's public money being invested in a Calcutta-based Marwari businessman Haridas Mundhras dubious firms.

Feroze, Indira's husband who had role in government's taking over the Life Insurance Corporation of India, began his speech thus in the Lok Sabha on the 'Mundhra scandal' on 1 16 December, 1957: "Parliament must exercise vigilance and control over the biggest and most powerful financial institution it has created, the Life Insurance Corporation of India, whose misapplication of public funds we shall scrutinise today."

Forced to act, Nehru set up a one-man commission headed by Justice MC Chagla who concluded that Mundhra had sold fictitious shares to LIC, thereby defrauding the insurance behemoth to the tune of Rs 1.25 crore (not a paltry sum those days). The businessman was sentenced to 22 years in prison. The scam also forced the resignation of the then Union Finance Minister TT Krishnamachari.

So when Indira Gandhi took public office, she had the ability to flaunt the unimpeachable morality of her husband and that lent her campaigning and subsequent role in public office a stamp of incorruptibility.

For Priyanka though, husband Vadra is a millstone around the neck. His name has been linked to dubious land deals, alleged benami property deals in London and he cannot open his mouth without creating a controversy. At best, he will be a liability and expect the opposition to tear Priyanka apart on Vadra if and when she decides to take the plunge.

Also, we have moved a few decades forward. The Congress' national footprint stands at a measly 7 percent of the population, a far cry from Indira days. Almost two-thirds of India are ruled by regional forces and the country has a predominantly young population who do not get misty-eyed at the mention of The Family. There is a multiplicity of media and social and digital media are now challenging the hegemony of mainstream medium.

But these are conjectures. Perhaps Priyanka can just step in and in a whirlwind of mind-bending brilliance, sweep the electorate off her feet. The country waits in bated breath.
New Delhi: Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Friday targeted Prime Minister Narendra Modi for taking control of Delhi's Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB).

Kejriwal told the Delhi assembly that he was unable to act against incidents of corruption of the Congress period because he did not have the ACB with him any more.

"We were doing a good job of battling corruption" after taking power in February 2015, the Aam Aadmi Party leader said.

That is when Modi sent paramilitary forces to take control of the ACB, the chief minister said.

"The ACB is not in our hands," he pointed out, giving reasons why a probe had not been ordered into the so-called water tanker scam.

"Everyone knows that the Congress and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) are hand in glove (over corruption issues)," he said. "They are like 'pati and patni' (husband and wife)."

Kejriwal spoke after BJP legislator Vijender Gupta dramatically stood on the bench to demand action by the Kejriwal government on the water tanker scam that had taken place during the earlier Congress regime.

The chief minister accused the BJP - the party has three legislators in Delhi, of which one, O.P. Sharma, has been barred from attending the house - of doing nothing but creating a ruckus.

"They also know how to abuse women," he said, in a clear reference to Sharma, who has been suspended from the house for two sessions on charges of using derogatory language about AAP woman legislator Alka Lamba.
As the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) elections closes in gradually, the current ruling party in the BMC  Shiv Sena  and its alliance partner BJP are openly waging a war against each other on social media since the last two days. The civic body polls are slated to be held in February 2017.

According to sources, this recent scuffle on social media clearly points out that both parties might go alone in the upcoming elections.

Both the parties tried to outmatch each other using words laced in sarcasm and images that bespoke that they are capable enough to take each other down. Here are the few images which they used against each other.

The fiery Shiv Sena  known for never mincing its words  called Prime Minister Narendra Modi a 'Gaddaar' (traitor) while showing him as a snake emerging from the pit. While the words read: "Snake in someone else's pit. You flourished with Shiv Sena's support till now; traitor; you forgot our favours."

The BJP came up with a visual depiction of the Hindi proverb: Haathi chale baazaar showing Prime Minister Narendra Modi's larger-than-life presence towering Uddhav Thackeray. The proverb  Haathi chale bazaar, kutte bhauken hazaar  urges a person to be thick-skinned, when baseless and harsh criticisms are hurled at the person. The half-written proverb indicates how they have likened Uddhav Thackeray to a dog.

This file image shows Narendra Modi bowing down in front of the then Sena supremo Bal Thackeray with respect and another image of Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis shaking hands with Uddhav Thackeray with words that meant: Is this the same NaMo's BJP which forgot the favours done to it by Matoshree?

A fiery rejoinder followed by the BJP attacking one of the Sena's symbols  tiger  and showing Narendra Modi's joint address at the US Congress at the Capitol Hill with words that read: Shiv Sena's job is to criticise wearing a tiger's skin. But it takes a true tiger's heart to boost the image of India at an international diaspora.

This particular caricature showed how in 1989, Bal Thackeray (his hands) nursed a tiny lotus plant when the ties between the two parties were cordial. The other hand on the right shows how Uddhav (again, his hands) has the power to uproot the fully-grown lotus by 2019.

This text is a popular Marathi saying which has an English equivalent: Birds of a feather flock together. This clearly implies that Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, Congress leader Digvijaya Singh, Sena spokesperson Sanjay Raut and party chief Uddhav Thackeray are like-minded.

Flinging another attack, Shiv Sena showing Narendra Modi as 'Churan Baba' (loosely translated as someone who boasts of his achievements and can easily fool people using smart words). The write-up meant: There won't be any acche din, people will show them who is the boss. We are in no hurry.

Stating that the nation doesn't run because of the deeds of one's father (hinting at Bal Thackeray) and blessings of one's mother (hinting on Matoshree); to run a nation one must truly confront the hurdles bravely (hinting at their mouthpiece Saamna - which means to confront)

However, so far neither BJP nor Shiv Sena leaders or spokespersons have claimed any responsibility for the posters. There are reports that it may be the handiwork of BJPs Mumbai unit president Ashish Shelar who has adopted a strident posture against Sena ahead of crucial BMC polls early next year.

Sena spokesperson, Sanjay Raut, had recently likened the BJP regime at the Centre with the rule of the Nizam. Addressing a Sena rally in Aurangabad on Wednesday, Raut had slammed Prime Minister Narendra Modi for not visiting the drought-hit Marathwada region.

This ongoing battle between the allied parties for wresting the BMC polls has only become more interesting, one poster at a time.
Most of you who saw PM Modi speaking in the US Congress on Wednesday, must have been impressed with his oratory skills. After all, standing in front of such a huge, impressive crowd and pelting out a flawless speech, is no small feat.

But our prime minister had some help in the matter. He went the 'Obama way' and decided to employ the use of two teleprompters which guided him through his eloquent speech.

So what if he has always 'winged it' in most of his rallies, or used notes in other foreign trips. This time around he couldn't afford to forget his speech midway or lose eye contact with his audience. Hence the teleprompter, which ensures his smooth sailing.

Some politicians (read Obama) have been chided for employing the use of a teleprompter because it makes their speeches sound mechanical. According to a report, Joe Biden once famously said, "You cant tell Barack that the teleprompters down. The standing joke in the office is Baracks learning to speak without a teleprompter, Im learning to speak with one. I apologize for the teleprompter."

Now you might think that speaking from a teleprompter is fairly easy. But, while it gives one the reassurance of a written script, there are many 'technological' errors that can take place. Modi himself has had a steep learning curve, because only last year in February, he was a butt of a lot of jokes for taking the teleprompter too literally.

While welcoming the visiting Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena and his wife, he greeted the first lady as M R S Sirisena, and that invited a host of nasty comments. Some claimed his Gujarati roots were to blame for the gaffe.

But judging by his new avatar, we think the prime minister has learnt his lesson since then.

But here are a few others who have been publicly embarrassed, thanks to a teleprompter.

In 1993, when Bill Clinton was addressing US Congress to promote his health-care plan, the teleprompter was fed the wrong speech. The problem took seven minutes to resolve during which time a resourceful Clinton winged it and spoke successfully. Some even thought he did better than the prompted speech.

In 2002 George Bush was due to speak in the United Nations about the looming confrontation with Iraq. Bush had agreed to seek a new Security Council resolution after much deliberation, but when the speech was fed into the teleprompter, the key line went missing. Many panicked when they saw that the line was missing. When Bush noticed it, he ad-libbed it, but with a plural connotation. He said he would seek "the necessary resolutions" and the Europeans kept hounding him to seek a second resolution before going to war.

Trump was famously chided for mis-pronouncing the country Tanzania, and many blame the teleprompter for not feeding him the phonetic description of the word. He was mocked by a spokesman of Obama administration who during a meeting with the reporters said, "Apparently the phonetics arent included on the teleprompter," and hence his mis-pronunciation?

And here is a small treat. See what happens when Obama has to go without a teleprompter for a few seconds:
Brussels: Belgian police investigating the Brussels Airport and metro attacks have arrested a man in connection with "terrorist murders", the federal prosecutor said Friday.

The 31-year-old man, identified only as Ali E.H.A., was detained on Thursday during a house search in the Schaerbeek area of the capital, the prosecutor's office said.

Several people have previously been charged over the 22 March suicide bombings at Zaventem airport and Maalbeek Metro station which killed 32 people.

"In connection with the federal investigation after the terrorist attacks in Zaventem and Brussels, a house search was conducted," the statement said.

"The Belgian national Ali E.H.A., born on 23 September 1984, was arrested and later put in detention by the Investigating Judge for participation in the activities of a terrorist group, terrorist murders and attempted terrorist murders, as a perpetrator, co-perpetrator or accomplice."

It added: "Currently, no further information will be given in the interest of the investigation."

The announcement comes a day after a Belgian court approved the extradition of Mohamed Abrini to France, a key suspect in both the Brussels attacks and the November Paris attacks in which 130 people were killed.

He will not be handed over to French authorities for some time as he is still being investigated over the Belgium attacks.

Abrini has confessed to being the "man in the hat" caught on video with the two airport bombers and who was allegedly preparing to detonate a third bomb before fleeing the scene.

Another key suspect linked to both the Paris and Brussels killings, Salah Abdeslam, was extradited to France in April. Abdeslam's brother Brahim blew himself up during the Paris massacre.

Both attacks were claimed by the Islamic State (IS) and appear to be linked to the same cell of attackers.

The airport bombings were carried out by Ibrahim El Bakraoui and Najim Laachraoui  who was the alleged bomb-maker for the 13 November attacks on Paris.

The metro bomber was Khalid El Bakraoui, Ibrahim's brother.

Among the other suspects charged in Belgium is Swedish national Osama Krayem, 23, arrested on April 8, who reportedly told investigators that he was also to have blown himself up in the metro but instead disposed of the explosives in a toilet.

Belgium is still recovering from the impact of the worst terror attacks in its history.

Brussels airport only fully reopened to passengers this month, now with increased security, but it suffered a major power outage early today which left many people queueing outside.
NEW YORK Donald Trump's presidential campaign is likely to launch a small donor fundraising effort akin to the grassroots one that powered another insurgent presidential contender, Democrat Bernie Sanders, according to two top donors who attended the first official meeting of Trump's national finance team.

The Trump finance machine kickoff took place at New York City's Four Seasons Hotel amid growing concerns about the Republican presidential candidate's lack of a campaign infrastructure heading into a Nov. 8 election battle against presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.

"The pitch to this group in the room was a traditional pitch, but the backroom discussion was, because of this being a populist movement, there's going to be significant outreach to, you know, those who give $1, $2, $20," said Trump Texas fundraising co-chairman Gaylord Hughey. "There's a huge opportunity there."

Sanders, who has effectively lost the 2016 presidential nomination to Clinton, broke fundraising records during his long-shot bid for the presidency, collecting more than $210 million through more than 7.4 million individual contributions, averaging $27 apiece.

Trump could well find his supporters eager to pitch in $1, $5 or $20. For a story in May, Reuters found that nearly all three dozen Trump supporters it interviewed were not only unmoved by Trump's about-face to accept money from outside donors, they said they would also happily contribute.

The Trump campaign did not respond to requests for comment about replicating the fundraising apparatus of Sanders, a democratic socialist U.S. senator from Vermont.

LATE START?

Some donors were fearful of the late start of Thursday's gathering. Normally such a meeting would take place two years earlier in a candidate's campaign. But others in attendance said they left assured that Trump would be able to easily plug into the Republican National Committee's robust infrastructure.

Trump, a wealthy businessman, became the presumptive Republican nominee last month after seeing off 16 rivals in a largely self-funded primary campaign.

The gathering featured talks by Trump, campaign manager Corey Lewandowski, chief strategist Paul Manafort, Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus, former rival-turned-ally Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey and Republican fundraisers Ray Washburne and Lew Eisenberg.

Trump's late start on fundraising has raised questions about whether he can achieve his previously stated aim of raising $1 billion before November. On the Democratic side, Clinton's well-oiled operation is well ahead of schedule.

FREE MEDIA

Trump is also pulling back from his earlier statements on his fundraising goal. Campaign manager Lewandowski told Reuters on Wednesday that he sees no need for Trump to raise that sum and that Trump may be able to stick to his low-cost style of campaigning.

That includes garnering free media, which is estimated will reach a value of $5 billion by November, according to media analytics firm mediaQuant. That is more than double what Clinton is likely to get, mediaQuant says.

While Trump shot to the top of the Republican race with freewheeling rhetoric, insults of rivals and promises to get tough on issues such as illegal immigration, even his biggest donors say they are discouraged by the candidate's attacks in recent weeks on a Mexican-American judge.

In comments that have been widely condemned, Trump has suggested that U.S. Federal Judge Gonzalo Curiel, who is presiding over a case against Trump University, has an inherent bias because of his heritage.

"He needs to stop the campaign infighting, shut up and stop calling an American who was born in Indiana a Mexican," said Texas billionaire Doug Deason.

(Editing by Howard Goller)

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
Who will Hillary Clinton settle on could be the deciding factor in halting the Trump juggernaut from gate-crashing the White House. It would have been ideal for the Democrats if Bernie Sanders, her runner up in the nomination race could be her running mate but it doesnt happen that way and that is unfortunate because both of them together could give the Republicans a bit of scare and squeak the Trump chariots wheels.

Hillary Clinton said she would consider the most qualified people for the vice presidents position  which would include women.

According to a report on CNN she wants her ducks in a row in selecting a running-mate ahead of the partys convention in Philadelphia on 25 July.

Im looking at the most qualified people, and that includes women, of course, because I want to be sure that whoever I pick could be president immediately if something were to happen  thats the most important qualification, Clinton reportedly said.

Im going to really begin to pay attention to that now that weve wrapped up the primary process, she said. But it doesnt matter to me who the person is, as long as that person can really do the job that is required.

Thats all very nice and dandy and it better matter. Though there are candidates who might give her vote banks there isnt anyone who stands out as a perfect foil and yet, a support. US Presidents also dont like strong Veeps even though the latter is a heartbeat away from the Oval office. Rather he be sworn in mid-term as a weak facsimile of the fallen warrior.

Having left a window open by saying she is turning to the Bernie brigade to back her, could there be a message in the bottle? After all, in her own words she said, we have the same goals, we just came at them from different directions. Will the Senator from Vermont be open to such a suggestion or has Hillary no intent of pulling up the man she just beat.

Contrast that with Donald Trump, who set up a fake university, Trump University, that committed fraud on people, Clinton said.

Well ,that sort of attack is all very fine but when it is Trump, such skullduggery comes off as romantic buccaneering, a political Johnny Depp beating the system and winning. Not many people see him as venal or corrupt, more colourful and candid.

So then, who? Clinton has choices. Some good, some very good, rising stars and men and women of stature but their nationwide popularity is a bit suspect. She could look at Sherrod Brown, the Ohio senator who is in good standing with the progressives. Would she go for an African American like Massachusetts former governor Deval Patrick to underscore continuity and disarm core black constituencies? No pun intend, but that plan might have paled unless she goes a step beyond and opts for a Latino like Julian Castro, thereby giving the Obama administration space in her cabinet and sending the trumpet-eers back to their maths.

Another strong contender is labour strongman Tom Perez who would be both Latino and capable of influencing the blue collar workforce.

At this point it isnt that germane but having a former prez as your husband and one who has maintained a certain intellectual stature and pretty much eliminated memories of another day, isnt going to hurt Hillary. As the elections come closer, the canny Bill will have an increasing role to play. Americans like him and they will begin to feel that a maverick in the White House is far more dangerous and risky than a woman like Hillary and a husband whos been there and done that to advise her.

As it is said, they could hit the ground running. With the right choice for Veepee the US would get three for the price of one.

Whom she chooses could have a global impact because if she chooses wrong it will fuel the Trump bandwagon and having him as POTUS changes the paradigm of foreign policy across the world. For four years at least Donald Trump will do what wants, how he wants, when he want. Can Hillary and her unknown Tonto stop him?
Sydney: Images of three new pieces of debris are being examined by Australian search teams looking for missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, they said Friday.

One of the items washed up on remote Kangaroo Island off Australia's south coast, while the other two were reportedly found in Madagascar.

"The ATSB has been advised and has received photos of the item (on Kangaroo Island)," a spokesman for the Australian Transport Safety Bureau, which is coordinating the search for the plane, told AFP. "It needs to be examined before coming to any conclusion."

He added that images of other pieces of debris found in Madagascar were also being studied.

"We have seen the photos and governments are being consulted on how best to have that examined," he added.

The fate of the passenger jet, which is presumed to have crashed at sea after disappearing en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 passengers and crew on board in March 2014, remains a mystery.

So far eight pieces of debris, excluding the most recent finds, have been discovered thousands of kilometres (miles) from the current search zone far off the west Australian coast.

They are presumed to have drifted there with five of the parts identified as definitely or probably from the Boeing 777, while three others are still being examined.

The piece found on Kangaroo Island among seaweed and driftwood resembles part of a plane, with the words "Caution No Step" visible, according to footage on Channel Seven.

Whether it is from MH370 remains unclear, with the broadcaster saying another possibility was that it came from a Cessna that went down several kilometres off the island's coast in 2002.

One of the items found on the Madagascan island of Nosy Boraha resembled an airplane seat part while another appeared to be a cover panel on a plane wing, the BBC reported.

The first concrete evidence that MH370 likely met a tragic end was when a two-metre-long (almost seven foot) wing part known as a flaperon washed up in the French overseas territory of La Reunion in July last year.

Australian authorities have since said two pieces of debris found in Mozambique were "almost certainly from MH370" and two fragments that came ashore in South Africa and Mauritius were also likely to be from the jet.

Australia is leading the painstaking search for MH370 in the remote Indian Ocean, but wild weather has not allowed the three ships involved to make any progress in recent weeks.

So far 105,000 square kilometres (40,500 square miles) of the designated 120,000-square-kilometre seafloor search zone has been covered without success.

If nothing turns up once the area is fully scoured, the search will be abandoned, Australia, Malaysia and China  the countries that most of the passengers came from  have jointly said.
Islamabad: A Pakistani court has upheld the life sentence of a political activist from the country's semi-autonomous north, which observers say could see a "nationalist upsurge" in a region also claimed by India.

Baba Jan, a left wing political activist from the Hunza Valley in Pakistan's northern Gilgit-Baltistan, was convicted by an anti-terrorism court for participating in political riots in 2011 and lost an appeal against his life sentence yesterday.

Jan has vocally protested what he and supporters describe as political, constitutional and human rights violations in the region, organising rallies and demonstrations in protest.

He contested local elections last year from prison, placing second in the polls.

"The decision was aimed at barring Baba Jan from contesting elections but it will have a counter-productive impact," said political analyst Amir Hussain.

"This decision will backfire and trigger extremist views like a nationalistic upsurge," he said.

A simmering resentment has been building in Gilgit-Baltistan since Islamabad began mulling upgrading its constitutional status in a bid to provide legal cover to a multi-billion-dollar Chinese investment plan in the area.

Gilgit-Baltistan, which borders China and Afghanistan, is not constitutionally part of Pakistan, and like Kashmir, it is also claimed by India.

Islamabad has historically insisted that the area, along with the parts of Kashmir it controls, are semi-autonomous and has not formally integrated them into the country, in line with its position that a referendum on sovereignty should be carried out across the whole of the region.

But Pakistan's adviser on foreign affairs Sartaj Aziz last week confirmed that a committee established to come up with a plan to reexamine the area's constitutional status had completed its work, adding that it was waiting a final approval from the prime minister.

Aziz did not give any further details on what the plan entailed.

Human rights organisations have been demanding the release of Baba Jan. An international petition for his release has been signed by leading left wing intellectuals, including Noam Chomsky, Tariq Ali and David Graeber.
Istanbul: Turkey's President has cut short his trip to the US and will not attend the funeral of boxer Muhammad Ali, his office said Friday, amid reports of a rift with the ceremony's organisers.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan had specially flown to Louisville in the southern US state of Kentucky to say farewell to Ali, who the Turkish president is known to have admired hugely as a committed Muslim and civil rights campaigner.

Erdogan on Thursday attended a prayer ceremony for Ali and had been due to attend the funeral on Friday along with several other high profile political leaders.

But the president's office said that Erdogan left the United States for Turkey late Thursday after attending the prayer ceremony and joining a Ramadan fast-breaking dinner with the US diaspora of Meskhetian Turks who were expelled from their homeland by Stalin in the 1940s.

The Dogan News Agency quoted presidential sources as saying funeral organisers refused to allow Erdogan to lay a cloth from the Kaaba -- the cube-shaped structure at the centre of Islam's most sacred mosque -- on Ali's coffin during the ceremony.

Erdogan and the Sunni cleric who heads Turkey's religious affairs agency, Mehmet Gormez, had also wanted to give readings from the Koran but were not allowed to, it added.

The Turkish president's bodyguards and US Secret Service agents also clashed briefly while he was in Louisville.

During his trip, Erdogan was full of praise for Ali, hailing him as a fighter not just in the ring but for Muslims in general.

"While running from success to success in the rings, he also became the voice of the oppressed and victims along with Muslims from every corner of the world," he said.

Erdogan's lightning visit to the US also caused consternation in Turkey, with Erdogan leaving the day after a bomb attack in Istanbul claimed by Kurdish militants that killed 11 people.
A seagull in Gloucesteshire, United Kingdom, recently got himself an image makeover after he fell into a vat of chicken tikka masala, news reports said. At the end of his quest to fix up his dinner, the seagull turned a bright orange (or, if you prefer, saffron.)

According to a report in The Guardian, the bird was trying to pick up meat from a food factory bin, after which it fell into the container. He was later rescued by people who were working there.

Staff at a wildlife hospital had to use washing up liquid to clean the bird's feathers, as per a BBC report. Though the staff managed to remove the colour, removing the smell proved to be a more difficult proposition. "Boy, did he smell good!," CNN quoted a rescue staff member as saying.

After his fall, the seagull quickly rose to social media fame

One's a stupid dodo dunked in a vat of chicken tikka masala, the other's the Curry Seagull! pic.twitter.com/wdgSk6xfNN  Camilla Long (@camillalong) June 10, 2016

His landing skills were second to naan  "Seagull gets a makeover after landing in a vat of curry"https://t.co/UWXd0uewaH  Georgia Obertelli (@Georgia__O) June 10, 2016

@CNN I wonder if his lil seagull friends will be racist towards him now?  edith crump (@gluegun000) June 10, 2016

Me: hi Seagull: eat me pls Kash: no Seagull: *falls in tikka masala* Seagull: wb now? Me: ok  https://t.co/9PDKTG3hfp  K a s h || XO (@YoungKashMoney) June 10, 2016

Meanwhile, we are just happy that the hungry seagull gave Indian food much publicity on foreign shores.
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What: May was a rough month for California Resources (CRC). The company's poorly received first-quarter earnings report kicked off a selling spree, which cut the stock's value by a quarter last month.

So what: California Resources reported an adjusted net loss of $100 million, or $0.26 per share, for the first quarter. While that did beat analysts' expectations by $0.05 per share, it was another weak showing for the struggling oil and gas producer. The main culprit behind its struggles were low oil and gas price realizations during the quarter, which were the weakest in the company's history.

Another big weight is the nearly $6 billion in debt on its balance sheet, which the company has been working to address through a combination of debt exchanges and the use of free cash flow to pay back borrowings. In fact, despite the very weak oil prices last quarter, California Resources was able to generate $87 million in free cash flow to bolster its balance sheet.

That said, the company wants to do more and is assessing all its options to improve leverage. It could explore a debt-for-equity exchange, for example. With market conditions improving, it is cracking open the door for these exchanges once again. In fact, last month Chesapeake Energy (CHKA.Q) completed two such exchanges. In Chesapeake Energy's case, it diluted its existing shareholders by 10% in return for a 4% reduction in its outstanding debt. While those debt-for-equity exchanges weighed heavily on Chesapeake Energy's stock last month, they also removed a meaningful amount of debt that had been weighing down its balance sheet.

Now what: California Resources has been hit hard by the oil market downturn due to its debt-laden balance sheet. While the company has made some progress in reducing outstanding debt, more work remains. It's the uncertainty surrounding the route the company will take that's putting pressure on the stock right now and will continue to do so until a substantial amount of its debt has been addressed.
As someone who's followed Bank of America (BAC 0.91%) closely for years, I can't think of a time since the financial crisis that's as jam-packed as the next three weeks with events that will dictate the direction of bank-stock prices. From the stress test results to a possible dividend increase to the vote in the United Kingdom to exit the European Union, it's fair to say that investors in the nation's second-biggest bank by assets could be in for a wild ride between now and the end of June.

Even though Bank of America has navigated through the Federal Reserve-administered stress tests every year since 2011, it's still far from a sure bet that it will emerge from the gauntlet this year unscathed -- the results are due out on June 23. We got a taste for this last year, when the Fed required Bank of America to resubmit its capital plan to address weaknesses in the bank's capital-planning processes.

Investors got a second serving of Bank of America's struggles to satisfy regulators more recently when the Fed rejected its so-called resolution plan, which directs how a bank will wind down if it finds itself on the brink of failure. The Fed said in the middle of April that Bank of America's plan, along with those of four other major U.S. banks, "was not credible or would not facilitate an orderly resolution under the U.S. Bankruptcy Code, the statutory standard established in the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act."

If Bank of America were to run into problems on this year's stress test, there's little doubt that its shares would suffer. A recent analysis by Merrill Lynch, which is a Bank of America subsidiary, showed that there's a direct relationship between a bank's stock price and its stress-test performance: Banks that do well see their stock prices rise, while banks that do poorly see their stock prices fall.

Making matters worse, if Bank of America struggles on this year's test, it probably wouldn't receive approval from the Fed to raise its dividend. Unlike Wells Fargo and JPMorgan Chase (JPM 0.26%), both of which have boosted their quarterly payouts annually over the last five years, Bank of America has been allowed to increase its dividend once given its past troubles on the stress tests. Investors will know whether or not this is the case on June 29, when the Fed releases the results of the Comprehensive Capital Analysis and Review.

Not only does a low dividend weigh on the bank's profitability, as it allows capital to build up on Bank of America's balance sheet, which, in turn, reduces its return on equity, but it also signals to investors that regulators don't have confidence in the nation's second-largest bank by assets. And in a business like banking that relies on confidence and trust, the lack thereof filters directly into a bank's valuation. This goes a long way toward explaining why Bank of America's shares continue to trade for a 40% or more discount to its book value.

June 23 is also important because it's the day that voters in the United Kingdom will vote on whether or not to stay in the European Union. Jamie Dimon, the chairman and CEO of JPMorgan Chase, was recently in England as a show of support for the status quo. If the United Kingdom were to break off from the rest of Europe, not only would it cause extreme market volatility, but JPMorgan Chase also said that it would require banks to relocate many London-based operations to the continent. Bank of America is likely in the same boat given that it also has a substantial investment-banking presence in London.

The net result would be twofold. In the first case, the heightened volatility in the markets would likely hit banks' trading revenues. This was the case in the first quarter, where Bank of America, Citigroup, and JPMorgan Chase all saw double-digit declines in trading activity as scared clients chose to stay on the sidelines to wait out the turmoil. Additionally, it's fair to assume that moving offices and thousands of employees from England to the continent wouldn't be cheap.

It remains to be seen, of course, how the vote in the United Kingdom comes out, as well as how Bank of America performs on this year's stress tests. But regardless of the outcomes, investors in the meantime would be doing themselves a favor by assuming the worst, and hoping for the best.
Claire, the daughter of team co-founder Sir Frank, was awarded the honour in recognition of her services to Formula One.

Today is a very proud day for me, but this is also a bit of a surprise, Claire Williams said. To be recognised in this way is a tremendous honour but one everyone at Williams can take credit for.

Im extremely lucky that I get to do a job that I love. To be able to play a role in a family legacy is an enormous privilege and one I dont take for granted. Formula One, and Williams, are great success stories for the UK and I will continue to use my role to help showcase what a great sport Formula One is, what a brilliant platform for this countrys expertise in high class engineering it is, as well as a place that welcomes women across all of its disciplines.

Since stepping into her Deputy Team Principal role, Claire has been instrumental in the successful restructuring of the Williams Group and has helped the F1 team achieve successive third place finishes in the constructors standings.

She has also used her position as a female in a traditionally male dominated industry to encourage more women to consider careers in engineering and technology. In addition to this, Claire has recently been appointed Vice President of the Spinal Injuries Association, a charity extremely close to her heart.
With so many needy American families, should people who earn hundreds of thousands of dollars a year live in public housing? Shouldn't being a millionaire prevent you from living in public housing? I wish these were stupid questions.

The purpose of public housing programs is to help lower-income families find and maintain suitable housing, but an audit performed by the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) discovered that these programs are not being used to their full potential. Specifically, tenants that make too much to qualify for public housing squeeze many lower-income families out of potential housing options. In some cases, auditors found that public housing tenants were bringing home hundreds of thousands of dollars annually.

The OIG's review of the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) public housing programs found a case in New York City where a public housing family earned just short of $500,000 annually. Cases from California and Massachusetts revealed public housing tenants earning over $200,000 annually, and a case in Nebraska showed an annual income of $65,000 but assets of over $1.6 million.

In all, over 25,000 families in public housing were found to be "overincome," making more than the HUD income limits for public housing eligibility (generally 80% of the local median income). Programs exist that allow families to stay in public housing even with excessive income, but only 232 of the more than 25,000 overincome families were known to be participating in such programs.

How does this happen? The primary reason is that there are no time limits on evaluating a family's qualifications for public housing. HUD only requires that families meet the income requirements when they are admitted into the assistance program. Beyond that point, there are no time limits on how long a family can stay. From the federal perspective, as long as tenants are meeting the terms of their rental agreements, they can continue to stay in public housing.

Programs are administered at the state level. A 2004 ruling gave states and localities authority to set up policies for upper-income limits that would require finding housing in the unassisted housing market, but the OIG found that no state authorities had set up such policies. In addition, some housing authorities argued that it is desirable to have some proportion of overincome families in public housing.

Local authorities argue that a mixture of incomes not only brings in more income, but it also makes the project more desirable and prevents concentrations of poverty. Such families serve as an example to struggling families  they show a path to success and a more stable lifestyle. The income part of the argument is not trivial, either. According to HUD, if all of the overincome families were forced to find housing on their own, the loss of income to HUD would require an extra $116.5 million in annual subsidies.

The sensational cases listed above can be misleading as to the nature of the problem. Just over 50% of the overincome families were $10,000 or less above the minimum HUD income  not a staggering amount in most housing markets. Since 1.1 million families reside in public housing, the overincome rate is only around 2.6%. Even so, it would seem that there is middle ground available. There is no reason for people making multiples of the median income to stay in public housing  but from the perspective of the overincome tenant, why would you want to go through the headache of searching for new housing and paying more rent than you have to?

Nobody wants to kick needy people out of their public housing, or set up incentives for a family to keep their income low just to qualify for public housing options. However, it is reasonable for housing authorities to set up some type of graduated system that nudges well-off public housing residents to find their own housing and open up room for a family in greater need  and HUD officials should be able to evict residents at some level of income relative to the local housing market. Not everyone can be expected to do the right thing and give up inexpensive living space to a family that is in much greater need.

This article was provided by our partners at moneytips.com.

Read More From MoneyTips:

Taxpayers Are Supporting Working Families

HUD To Announce New Mortgage Sale Guidelines

New Campaign to Help People of Color Buy Homes
Typically when you have that long of an expansion, you typically have a recession somewhere in there and so its a tortoise and hare type situation. Weve added a lot of jobs, its just been slow. And then the second question is, is that because of whats happened in Washington or is that because of the Federal Reserve? Right now the Federal Reserve is in new territory, they are trying new things without really having a roadmap of where its going to take them. The point being  its not easy, he said.

Over the course of their campaigns, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders have said the top one percent have to pay more in taxes. While Cuban is ok with paying more, he says the main problem is how its spent.

Its all about marginal costs. If Im making a $100 million a year, on the next $10 million Im paying 50%  I can live with that. Its not going to affect my lifestyle More important to me is how we spend it. I think we are collecting enough in taxes We have to be far more efficient [about] how we spend it. And we have to know how to deal with that now because technology is going to replace more and more and more jobs, he said.
Weave all been there.

Youare at an office cocktail party, or any party. Maybe your boss or somebody youad like to get to know better brings up the financial collapse of 2008, or the gold standard. Or religion. Or the history of the Kings and Queens of England, World War I or II, or the American Constitution. Or nuclear weapons. Or the names of authors, composers or their favorite plays.

And then you dive right in, not knowing what youare talking about. In fact, as you listen to yourself, you suddenly realize how awfully random you sound, as your train of thought makes all local stops. And even though the conversation felt at the outset like a nice warm pond, itas starting to feel like you've jumped into a pool of live hair dryers. So, like a cuttlefish blowing off ink, you start voicing orotund, meaningless sentences. And pretty soon, this keening reality sets in, you areajustifiablyastanding there all alone. Wondering how you can prevent this from happening ever again.

Thereas now a new book that will rescue you from such awkward situations and stop you from ever putting yourself through yet another fresh hell like that.

Itas Imogen Lloyd Webberas new book, "The Intelligent Conversationalista (St. Martinas Griffin, June 2016). A New York-based, British author, Webber is also the senior editor of Broadway.com and People Now's royals correspondent. And Webber is a respected, formidable TV analyst who is a regular on the FOX News Channel, the FOX Business Network and Don Imusas radio show on WABC, Imus in the Morning. Webber always does her homework, using cheat sheets to demolish opponents on air.

Itas the use of those cheat sheets that has expanded into a full-blown, solid book filled with 31 crib sheets you can use anywhere, to sound as smart as a TV expert, be it at an office party, a networking get together, or even if you have to schmooze after a work conference.

The book takes a load off your shoulders, and makes you feel at ease anywhere. It can make you appear to be well-versed in anything, as if youave read dozens of books, policy briefs and newspapers. Even though you havenat. Because Webber has done that work for you.

"The Intelligent Conversationalista is loaded with interesting facts spanning a range of topics. Some of my favorites:

a More than 210 million people around the world use currencies pegged to the euro;

a There were at least six botched investigations by the financial authorities of the fraudster Bernie Madoff;

a Fun is not a word that appears in the Russian language;

a China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and the U.S. are, in that order, the countries that executed the most people in 2014;

aApparently Shakespeare invented about 1,700 of the 17,000 words he wrote;

aGeorge Bernard Shaw is the rarity who has won both an Oscar and the Nobel Prize. Shaw won the Nobel Prize in literature in 1925 and also won an Oscar for writing the screenplay to "Pygmaliona in 1938.

Plus Webber gives you witty advice to get out of any sticky conversation. For example, Webber suggests when talking about the Eurozone, to athrow in the word Greece after Glass-Steagall and then take an elaborate sip of your beverage. People will nod and mutter and then focus on the nearest canapA.a

Webber also has unearthed quotes you may not have ever heard. Like this gem from President John F. Kennedy: aWe enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.a

Or this from former Secretary of State Colin Powell, on what the Founding Fathers contended with in four monthsa time, in 1787: aThey argued about what a House should be, what a Senate should be, the power of the president, the Congress, the Supreme Court. And they had to deal with slavery.a

Or this from Winston Churchill: aShow me a young conservative and Iall show you someone with no heart. Show me an old liberal and Iall show you someone with no brains.a

Or this from George Washington: aSomeday, following the example of the United States of America, there will be a United States of Europe.a

I wonder what Washington would say about the Eurozoneas 28-nation apparatus if he were alive today. Webber provides plenty for you to say on that subject, and much more. Go buy the book.
Image source: Chipotle Mexican Grill.

While it's generally difficult to say exactly why a stock dropped on a particular day, you can often nevertheless tease out the primary culprits. In the case of Chipotle Mexican Grill , which saw its shares fall more than 3% on Thursday, there appears to be two explanations.

In the first case, the results of a consumer poll released on Thursday showed that Chipotle is no longer the preferred brand among fast-casual Mexican restaurants. After topping the Harris Poll for three years in a row, it didn't even rank in the top four this year.

The list was led by Moe's Southwest Grill, which is owned by the same companythat operates Auntie Anne's andCinnabon. Moe's performance is notable given that it has only 650 locations compared to Chipotle's more than 1,900.

The three other fast-casual Mexican restaurants that outranked Chipotle were Taco Bell, Qdoba, and Baja Fresh. Taco Bell is owned by Yum! Brands, an international company that also operates Pizza Huts and KFCs. Qdoba is a subsidiary of Jack in the Box. And while Baja Fresh was once controlled by Wendy's, it was sold a decade ago to a group of investors who also run the Sweet Factory.

Suffice it to say that Chipotle's performance in this year's Harris Poll reflects the damage to its brand from food-borne illness incidents that struck a number of its locations last year. Its shares since the crisis erupted are down roughly 40%.

CMG data by YCharts.

A second possible explanation for the drop in Chipotle's stock price on Thursday relates to another study. This one cuts to the core of the burrito chain's value proposition as a healthy alternative to fast food.

Entrees at fast-casual chains such as Chipotle and Panera Bread have as many as 35% more calories compared to entrees at fast-food chains, according to researchers at the University of South Carolina's Arnold School of Public Health.

The analysis showed that an average meal at a fast-casual restaurant is 200 calories higher than a typical fast-food meal, noted a press release that announced the study. The researchers came to this conclusion after examining the menus at 34 fast-food and 28 fast-casual restaurants, the press release explained, finding that fast-food entrees had an average of 760 calories per entree compared with 561 for fast-food entrees.

Two things are worth noting here. The first is that the study looked at entrees, not full meals. If you include, say, French fries from McDonald's in the equation, the results would differ. At Chipotle, meanwhile, it's probably fair to say that most people are content with only a burrito, an order of tacos, or a burrito bowl.

On top of this, while the results of the study were covered in the media on Thursday, it was published last month. As such, it seems unlikely that this was the primary culprit for the drop in Chipotle's share price. The media attention surrounding the results today more likely served to fuel negative sentiment ignited by the first study, which suggested that the burrito chain has fallen out of favor with consumers.

The article 2 Reasons Chipotles Stock Tanked on Thursday originally appeared on Fool.com.

John Maxfield owns shares of Chipotle Mexican Grill. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Chipotle Mexican Grill and Panera Bread. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services free for 30 days. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that considering a diverse range of insights makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

Copyright 1995 - 2016 The Motley Fool, LLC. All rights reserved. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
McDonald'slatest step on the path toward reinventing itself as a "modern, progressive burger company" could be its biggest. The world's largest fast-food chain is testing serving fresh beef patties at 14 locations in the Dallas area. The test only applies to quarter-pound-sized patties, meaning the Big Mac and regular hamburgers at those locations will continue to be made from frozen beef.

The experiment follows other initiatives from new CEO Steve Easterbrook to get McDonald's in sync with shifting consumer demands. Last October, the company began serving breakfast all day, a move that pushed comparable-store sales up more than 5%. It has also embraced higher animal welfare and food quality standards. Last year, McDonald's said it would stop serving chicken raised with antibiotics, and later said it would shift to using only cage-free eggs, following in the footsteps of several other restaurant and supermarket chains. Outside of animal welfare, the fast-food chain has also tested a more customizable menu it's calling "Create Your Taste," looking to compete with better burger chains that may have snatched some of its customers away.

Image Source: Getty.

Fresh vs. frozen

The rise of fast-casual chains and the popularity of organic foods are transforming the way Americans eat. Perhaps no chain has had more influence on shifting fast food trends than Chipotle Mexican Grill(NYSE: CMG). Its recent problems notwithstanding, the burrito roller became one of the fastest-growing and most popularrestaurant chains in the country. This was in part because of its "Food with Integrity" platform, which promises responsibly raised meats, local produce when in season, and food without artificial ingredients or fillers, and no GMOs. Chipotle brags that its restaurants contain no freezers, microwaves, or can openers, and it seems McDonald's might be borrowing from this philosophy in many of its recent decisions.

But Chipotle isn't the only up-and-comer that's rejected frozen food. Better burger chain Five Guys shuns freezers, and popular chains like In-N-Out andShake Shack use only fresh beef patties.EvenWendy's has longserved fresh, never-frozen beef, and it recently launched an ad campaign to remind customers of that difference between it and McDonald's and Burger King, both of which use frozen patties.

Will Mickey D's make the switch?

The fresh beef trial is still in its early stages, and a spokesperson toldFortunelast month that "it's very premature to draw any conclusions from the test." Customer response to the experiment is also unclear at this point.

Image Source: Fool Flickr

Converting from frozen to fresh beef nationwide would be a major undertaking for the chain, likely more complex than the all-day breakfast rollout, which McDonald's refused to do for years despite the fact that customers' have long urged it to do so. Switching to fresh beef would cause supply chain shifts -- there isn't even enough supply currently to run the test nationally --new operating procedures, and, perhaps most importantly, a different price point, as fresh beef is more expensive than frozen.

That last point may be the dealbreaker that prevents a full-on switch to fresh. Price wars among the fast-food giants have been heating up, and McDonald's understands that value is key to its selling proposition. Despite the fresh-ingredients trend, the chain, with its $5 value meals, is targeting a different customer from Chipotle, whose burritos are in the $8 range. Trying to lure a less price-conscious set of customers to the Golden Arches would seem to be the wrong move, especially when the recent results from McDonald's and its rivals have shown that legacy fast-food chains continue to be popular despite the fast casual uprising. In addition, if fresh beef is what McDonald's customers' want, you'd think more of them would have switched to Wendy's instead, but McDonald's average unit volumes trounce those of its redheaded rival.

Still, even if McDonald's doesn't go national with fresh beef, the test shows that the company under Easterbrook is unafraid to throw out the old playbook in an attempt to give customers what they want, just as it did with its all-day breakfast launch. As consumer demands change, McDonald's must continue to adapt, and the new management team gets this. Converting to fresh beef would be a huge step if the company chooses to take it, but a national rollout would likely take several years to implement, much like its switch to cage-free eggs. Expect to hear more about the results of the test and any potential expansion of it on McDonald's earnings call next month.

The article Here's Why Investors Should Be Excited About McDonald's Latest Experiment originally appeared on Fool.com.

Jeremy Bowman owns shares of Chipotle Mexican Grill. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Chipotle Mexican Grill. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services free for 30 days. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that considering a diverse range of insights makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

Copyright 1995 - 2016 The Motley Fool, LLC. All rights reserved. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
Image credit: Apple.

In September, Apple is expected to unveil its next generation iPhone, presumably called the iPhone 7. The device is going to be a particularly important one for the company as it looks to recover from the slump in sales that it suffered from throughout the iPhone 6s cycle.

Although it's far too early to tell how well the device will do in the market, particularly as the weak reception to the iPhone 6s series seemingly came as a surprise to everyone (including Apple itself), there are a number of Apple suppliers that should benefit from the launch. Here are three.

1. Intel

Chip giant Intel has been harshly criticized for largely missing out on the smartphone revolution. The company has tried for years to build products suitable for smartphones, but aside from a few token design wins, it has been unsuccessful.

However, there are several reports that Intel will win the modem/baseband spot inside some percentage of the next generation iPhones that ship. If the reports are true, then whether Apple sees iPhone unit growth or not over the coming product cycle, Intel should benefit by virtue of simply shipping modems to Apple during this iPhone cycle when it hadn't in many previous cycles.

Looking longer-term, if Intel can execute to a series of competitive modem products, it may be able to continue to win spots in future iPhones. This isn't likely to be a huge revenue/profit driver for the company, but as long as Intel can generate incremental profit from such deals, I don't think shareholders will complain.

2. Broadcom

Today's Broadcom is a combination of a company that was formerly known as Broadcom (management refers to it as "Classic Broadcom") and Avago. Both Classic Broadcom and Avago were suppliers to Apple. Avago provided RF filters while Classic Broadcom provided a Wi-Fi chip as well as some other components.

On Broadcom's recent earnings call, management indicated that it expects to see a significant increase in both RF content in the next iPhone (which would benefit "Classic Avago") as well as a boost in Wi-Fi content (which benefits "Classic Broadcom").

This means that even if iPhone unit sales don't grow much (or at all), Broadcom could still register revenue growth related to the iPhone in the coming product cycle.

3. TSMC

For the A8 chip that powered the iPhone 6/6 Plus, as well as the A8X chip that powered the iPad Air 2, Apple moved away from longtime chip manufacturing partner Samsung and toward Taiwan-based contract chip manufacturer TSMC .

For the A9 chip that powered the iPhone 6s/iPhone 6s Plus, Apple split the orders between TSMC and Samsung (and it is generally believed that TSMC got the minority allocation of the orders).

However, for the upcoming A10 chip, it is widely believed that Apple will move back to TSMC exclusively. Furthermore, it is expected that the A10 will use TSMC's new chip packaging technology known as InFO, which should give TSMC greater content share.

In this case, just as with Intel and Broadcom, TSMC should benefit from this coming iPhone cycle whether or not iPhone shipments ultimately grow or not.

The article 3 Apple Inc. Suppliers That Could Benefit from the iPhone 7 Launch originally appeared on Fool.com.

Ashraf Eassa owns shares of Intel. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Apple. The Motley Fool has the following options: long January 2018 $90 calls on Apple and short January 2018 $95 calls on Apple. The Motley Fool recommends Broadcom and Intel. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services free for 30 days. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that considering a diverse range of insights makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

Copyright 1995 - 2016 The Motley Fool, LLC. All rights reserved. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
Image source. Getty Images.

Midstream MLPs have been unexpectedly crushed during the oil market downturn. In fact, over the past year the average equity value of a midstream MLP is off by 25% as measured by the Alerian MLP Index :

^AMZ data by YCharts

While the Alerian MLP Index has bounced off its lows, MLPs in general have a long way to go before they recapture their former highs. Further, while the sector is down right now, the future of energy infrastructure still remains strong due to the expectation that demand for energy will keep growing. While that rising tide will lift all boats, there are a number of emerging MLPs that could capture an outsized share of this future growth. In particular, Summit Midstream Partners , Boardwalk Pipeline Partners , NGL Energy Partners are worth keeping an eye on due to their solid footprints and strong growth potential.

A growing gathering and processing footprint

Summit Midstream Partners bills itself as a growth-oriented MLP. It has done just that since going public in 2012, with the MLP increasing its distribution by 44% as the result of a number of acquisitions and investments that grew its footprint across most of the major shale plays. That footprint is shown on the map below, which also notes that the company owns natural gas, oil, and water gathering and processing assets that are supported by strong producer contracts.

Source: Summit Midstream Partners Investor Presentation.

In the near-term Summit Midstream Partners has clear visibility to invest between $150 million to $200 million per year in organic growth capex to expand its current systems. However, as the energy market improves the company's opportunities should expand, with it being able to compete for additional organic growth development projects in the Utica and Williston to go along with the potential for bolt-on acquisition opportunities across all its operating areas. It's the company's ability to build upon its already solid footprints in these key producing basins that makes Summit Midstream Partners an emerging MLP to watch.

An expanding transportation and storage asset base

Boardwalk Pipeline Partners is taking a slightly different approach to growth by focusing primarily on the transportation and storage of natural gas and NGLs. Further, its assets are not only positioned for growing supply, but also benefit from growing demand due to its connections with end-users. As such, it too has a diversified footprint across several shale plays as well as key demand centers:

Source: Boardwalk Pipeline Partners Investor Presentation.

Boardwalk Pipeline Partners' dual focus on both supply and demand is driving a lot of growth opportunities its way. The MLP currently has $1.6 billion in projects that were either recently put into service or are under construction. These projects are expected to drive strong fee-based revenue growth for the next few years, given that each asset is backed by long-term contracts. Further, because of the scale and optionality of its asset base, the company is well positioned to capture additional growth opportunities in either direction in the future.

The one-stop MLP shop

NGL Energy Partners' name might suggest that it's singularly focused on NGLs, but that's not the case. Instead, the diversified MLP provides multiple services including transportation, blending, and storage of crude oil, NGLs and refined products as well as water solutions and retail propane distribution. Further, its asset base spans almost the entire country:

Source: NGL Energy Partners Investor Presentation.

Given its large and diversified asset base NGL Energy Partners has multiple ways to grow. Organically, the company has a number of growth projects currently under way, including the Grand Mesa crude oil pipeline, a crude oil terminal in Louisiana, and the Sawtooth NGL storage caverns. Beyond that, the company's five business segments provide it with multiple future expansion opportunities through both organic growth and strategic acquisitions.

Investor takeaway

Summit Midstream Partners, NGL Energy Partners, and Boardwalk Pipeline Partners still have a lot of growth ahead of them. Not only do all three have near-term projects nearing completion, but each has a solid asset footprint that can be easily expanded in the future. That's what makes them all interesting growth stories to watch as the energy market begins to emerge out of its doldrums.

The article 3 Emerging MLPs to Keep an Eye On originally appeared on Fool.com.

Matt DiLallo has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services free for 30 days. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that considering a diverse range of insights makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

Copyright 1995 - 2016 The Motley Fool, LLC. All rights reserved. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
The drama-filled proposed merger between Energy Transfer Equity and Williams Companies took another interesting turn this week. The companies were granted approval by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission to close the merger, but on one condition: Williams Companies needed to sell its stake in an interstate natural gas pipeline that serves Florida to ease anti-competition concerns. What remains to be seen is if this condition helps or hurts the deal, which has been embroiled in a bitter legal battle.

A new hurdle to clear

In order to gain full FTC approval for the deal, Williams Companies, or more precisely, its affiliated MLP Williams Partners , will need to sell its 50% stake in the Gulfstream Natural Gas System, which is an interstate pipeline that delivers natural gas to Florida. The reason for the required divestiture is to ease antitrust concerns surrounding the pipeline given that it services electric power companies in Florida, which don't want to see their rates increase.

Gulfstream System Map. Image source: Williams Companies Inc.

The Gulfstream System, which was placed into service in 2002, is a 745-mile pipeline that has the capacity to carry 1.3 billion cubic feet of natural gas per day across the Gulf of Mexico to market areas in Florida. The system is currently co-owned by Spectra Energy , though Williams Partners is the operator of the system.

There are antitrust concerns regarding this particular pipeline system because Energy Transfer Equity's affiliated MLP,Energy Transfer Partners , owns a 50% stake in the Florida Gas Transmission Pipeline. That system controls more than 5,000 miles of interstate natural gas pipelines that have the capacity for 3.1 Bcf/d of natural gas. It's also the principal transporter of natural gas to Florida, delivering over 66% of the natural gas consumed in the state. In other words, by owning stakes in both pipelines, Energy Transfer Equity would in effect have a monopoly on gas transmitted to Florida, though half of both pipeline systems would still be owned by other pipeline companies. Still, it was enough of an antitrust red flag for the FTC to require the divestiture of the Gulfstream stake.

What to make of this condition?

Under normal circumstances, this divestiture requirement would not likely be a deal-breaker for Energy Transfer Equity given that its primary purpose for the acquisition wasn't to acquire this one particular pipeline system. Instead, it was interested in Williams Companies' diversified asset footprint, including its rapidly expanding Transco system and its rich expansion opportunities in the Marcellus and Utica shale plays. Having said that, Energy Transfer Equity has been looking to break up this deal for quite some time -- unless Williams Companies is willing to renegotiate the structure. As such, it could use this condition to force Williams back to the negotiating table.

Energy Transfer Equity could conclude that without Gulfstream, the deal is no longer attractive given that the company could have likely squeezed out some merger synergies if both pipeline systems were managed under the same system. Instead, Williams would have to seek a buyer for that asset at a time when pipeline assets aren't as richly valued as they'd been prior to the downturn in the energy credit markets toward the end of last year. Those credit market issues also limit the buyer base, with current 50% Gulfstream owner Spectra Energy one of the few large pipeline companies that would have the scale and financial capacity to make such an acquisition.

Another potential sticking point is the fact that the Gulfstream stake is technically owned by Williams Partners. Because of that, its sale won't directly flow through to Williams Companies, and therefore couldn't be used as a potential funding mechanism to pay off some of the debt Energy Transfer Equity would need to take on to close the deal under its current structure. In other words, selling this stake won't help either company overcome one of the deal's key hurdles.

Investor takeaway

While the FTC approval clears the merger of its last antitrust hurdle, it doesn't clarify the eventual outcome. However, it does seem to suggest Energy Transfer Equity has one more reason to claim that the deal is no longer worth pursuing under its current framework, therefore forcing Williams back to the negotiating table.

Still, it's anyone's guess as to whether that will happen, or if both companies will just choose to go their separate ways.

The article The Energy Transfer Equity LP/Williams Companies Inc. Megamerger Is Approved -- on 1 Condition originally appeared on Fool.com.

Matt DiLallo has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Spectra Energy. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services free for 30 days. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that considering a diverse range of insights makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

Copyright 1995 - 2016 The Motley Fool, LLC. All rights reserved. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
Image credit: NVIDIA.

Graphics chip specialist NVIDIA signaled some time ago that it would refocus its Tegra system-on-chip business on automotive applications. The company had previously tried to sell its Tegra chips into smartphones and tablets, though the company has since largely stopped gunning for such products.

In the CFO commentary provided alongside the company's May earnings release, NVIDIA said that its revenue from both "infotainment modules and product development contracts increased 47 percent from a year earlier and was up 22 percent sequentially."

On the accompanying earnings call, management went into more detail about the nature of these development contracts. Let's take a closer look.

What exactly is a "development contract"?

"In our automotive business, there's definitely a process even before we're shipping platforms into the overall cars that we work jointly with auto manufacturer start-ups and others on what may be a future product," NVIDIA CFO Colette Kress said on the call. "Many of those agreements continue, and will likely continue going forward, and that's what you see incorporated in our automotive business."

Kress did warn that revenue from such contracts is "not necessarily consistent."

"It starts in some quarters, bigger in other quarters, but that's what's incorporated in our automotive," she explained.

Additional commentary from the CEO

After Kress offered up her answer, CEO Jen-Hsun Huang took the opportunity to add additional color for investors.

Huang said that NVIDIA is working with about 80 companies, from tier-1 automakers to start-ups in a host of countries working on autonomous vehicles. The executive went on to make the case that NVIDIA isn't just selling chips to car companies but is, actively working in concert with these companies to build autonomous cars.

"We have a development mechanism that allows car companies to work with our engineers to collaborate to develop these self-driving cars, and that's what most of that stuff Colette was talking about," Huang finished.

How does this tie into NVIDIA's automotive strategy?

NVIDIA's goal in its automotive chip business -- just as it was in its core graphics processing unit businesses -- is to develop full-fledged platforms rather than simply sell silicon. This additional platform work is intended to allow NVIDIA to capture value from more than just a chip sale, ultimately bolstering the blended gross profit margins of its automotive business.

Right now, the company's automotive business carries gross profit margins materially lower than the corporate average, so anything it can do to bolster those margins should help further the margin expansion that it has been experiencing for quite a while.

Investor takeaway

Although automotive is a hot topic in the world of chips, and although NVIDIA is doing a good job of growing its automotive related revenue, I think its other businesses are more exciting. PC gaming continues to be robust, and the company's data center revenues have begun to really break out.

NVIDIA ought to continue its efforts in automotive, and perhaps one day it will be a large, fairly high margin business. But, for now, I think that investors should stay focused on the company's core graphics processor business, as it is more profitable and, frankly, more exciting.

The article NVIDIA Corp. Finally Explains a Key Part of Its Automotive Chip Business originally appeared on Fool.com.

Ashraf Eassa has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Nvidia. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services free for 30 days. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that considering a diverse range of insights makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

Copyright 1995 - 2016 The Motley Fool, LLC. All rights reserved. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
Retail investors betting on a weaker pound before Britain's vote on European Union membership have pumped money into exchange traded funds (ETFs) that allow them to short the currency, echoing a trend seen before the 2014 Scottish referendum two years ago.

Total assets held by such ETFs have doubled this year and have climbed to about $113 million, close to their peak of $123 million in 2014.

In contrast, "long" sterling positions are at around $17.5 million, according to ETF Securities, which says it has a 99 percent share in the European foreign exchange ETF market.

The threat of a possible British exit from the EU, or Brexit, has dominated the sterling market since late last year, driving a decline of more than 10 percent in the currency on a trade-weighted basis between mid-November and mid-April.

The latest betting odds on website Betfair show the implied probability of a British vote to stay in the European Union at 74 percent, down from as high as 78 percent on Thursday.

Niche ETFs are popular among retail investors who otherwise find it expensive to short currencies or access complex trades that often require derivatives and leverage.

"If you are a very sophisticated fund manager, you could buy such a short sterling product in other ways, but in the retail space, it's one of the simpler and cheaper ways to access this product," said James Butterfill, head of research and investment strategy at ETF Securities.

ETF Securities' currency exchange traded products are based on Morgan Stanley's foreign exchange indices, and use forward contracts and swaps to replicate the performance of the underlying index.

(Editing and graphic by Vikram Subhedar; Additional editing by Mark Potter)
In the third-to-last paragraph of Brian Moynihan's 2014 shareholder letter, the Bank of America CEO rolled out the bank's current PR campaign, which emphasizes the importance of "delivering responsible growth." He doubled down on the message in his 2015 letter, which was released three months ago and dedicated to flushing out the contours of this point.

"When we look at where we stand today, our company is stronger, simpler, and better positioned to deliver long-term value to our shareholders, thanks to the straightforward way in which we serve our customers and clients," Moynihan wrote. "The path forward is clearly one of responsible growth."

The 56-year-old executive then spent the next seven pages detailing the four pillars of Bank of America's strategy to grow responsibly. These have since been encapsulated in a graphic that's often included in the bank's presentations to analysts:

Image source: Bank of America.

Every time I come across this graphic, I'm reminded of the line from Shakespeare's Hamlet, "The lady doth protest too much, methinks." Shouldn't investors today be able to assume that Bank of America is dedicated to growing responsibly? And if so, then why does the bank feel the need to constantly remind us that it's focused on doing so?

The easy answer is that acting responsibly represents a departure from Bank of America's former strategy to grow at any cost. Before the financial crisis, the North Carolina-based bank thought nothing of acquiring companies at exorbitant multiples of book value and approving credit cards for anyone capable of applying for one. This "bigger is better" mind-set explains why Bank of America nearly drowned under a sea of toxic loans and legal liabilities in the wake of the crisis.

But there's a second and, I believe, more pressing reason that Bank of America feels the need to constantly reaffirm to investors and analysts that it's seen the light in terms of responsible growth. It's my opinion that the bank's executives have finally come to terms with the fact that growing responsibly is hard, particularly under the specific post-crisis regulatory constraints that the $2.2 trillion bank faces.

The most onerous constraint concerns capital. As a global systematically important bank, Bank of America can't use as much leverage as its smaller and simpler peers. This is because it has to hold more capital relative to its assets than virtually every other bank in the United States, with the exceptions of JPMorgan Chase and Citigroup. This weighs on Bank of America's profitability, which in turn throttles the speed that its retained earnings accumulate and compound.

A second and similarly onerous constraint concerns liquidity, which is just a fancy way to say that a larger percentage (compared to most other banks) of Bank of America's assets must consist of cash or low-yielding assets, such as government bonds. This drives down its pre-tax net interest income and, as such, its after-tax earnings. The so-called liquidity coverage ratio is to blame, as it requires banks with Wall Street operations to hold more liquidity than banks that focus on loans and deposits.

Taken together, Bank of America is fighting an uphill battle when it comes to growth. And I believe this is the reason Moynihan feels the need to constantly emphasize acting responsibly.

Moynihan knows that growing a bank irresponsibly is easy -- all you have to do is lower your credit standards and underwrite more loans. That's what Bank of America did in the decade leading up to the 2008 crisis. But with regulators monitoring Bank of America's every move, and with its performance during the crisis fresh on its executives' minds, this is no longer a viable option.

The key is to make sure that the market understands this, and to thereby calibrate investors' expectations appropriately, which is exactly what Bank of America is doing now that it's put the worst of the crisis behind it. Indeed, it's no coincidence that nation's second-biggest bank by assets doubled down on its focus on responsible growth in the same year that it seems to have turned the corneron the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression.

The article This Is Bank of Americas Biggest Challenge originally appeared on Fool.com.

John Maxfield owns shares of Bank of America and Wells Fargo. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Wells Fargo. The Motley Fool recommends Bank of America. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services free for 30 days. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that considering a diverse range of insights makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

Copyright 1995 - 2016 The Motley Fool, LLC. All rights reserved. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
Many investors have wondered when Chinese smartphone giant Xiaomi , the world's most valuable start-up with a $46 billion valuation, will go public. But back in March, Xiaomi's global VP Hugo Barra told Reuters that the company had "no need to raise more money" and no plans to file an IPO.

But if Xiaomi eventually goes public, its initial investors will likely profit, and the start-ups it invested in will be thrust into the spotlight. Let's get better acquainted with those companies.

Barra also noted that Xiaomi, which generated $12.5 billion in sales last year, is "self-funded" and the funds it raised during six funding rounds have been "allocated to investments." The company has already invested in over 50 start-ups to expand its ecosystem and diversify its business away from smartphones.

11 companies and investment firmshave invested in Xiaomi. That list includes Morningside Group, Qiming Venture Partners, and IDG Capital Partners -- which are all private firms that are off-limits to mainstream investors.

But it also includes Qualcomm Ventures, the investment arm of the world's biggest mobile chip maker. Qualcomm's stake in Xiaomi is unknown, but the Series B funding round it participated in raised$90 million and included five other investors. That round, completed in late 2011, valued Xiaomi at just $1 billion.

Qualcomm's investment in Xiaomi has proven useful before. Xiaomi's flagship devices have always been powered by Qualcomm's Snapdragon SoCs. Xiaomi also quickly inkedwith Qualcomm after the chipmaker claimed that Chinese OEMs were underreporting shipments to pay lower licensing fees. But that investment doesn't ensure long-term loyalty -- Xiaomi recently developed its own first-party chipfor its lower-end devices to cut costsand put cheaper chipsfrom MediaTek in its low-end devices in India. Both moves could cause Qualcomm to lose market share.

Meet Xiaomi's top investments

Xiaomi's investment portfolio includes a broad range of companies focusing on mobile games, payments, videos, and online-to-offline (O2O) initiatives. Notable investments in that category include a stake in Chinese gamemaker Kingsoft, an investment in Andon's connected fitness device maker iHealth, a stake in Baidu-owned video site iQiyi, and a partnership with Uber. Xiaomi had hoped that revenue from those services would hit $1 billion last year, but it onlyreached $564 million.

Xiaomi owns a major stake incamera maker Yi Technology, which created the action cameras that it sells online in China. Yi's cameras are frequently compared to GoPro's , because they offer nearly identical hardware specs at much lower pricesMisfit, which was acquired by Fossil for $260 million last year. That investment complements its Mi Bands, which offer similar features as Fitbit's low-end trackers for a fraction of the price.

Yi's Action Camera (L) and Xiaomi's Mi Band (R). Image source: Company websites.

Xiaomi signed a mobile payments partnership with chipmaker NXP earlier this year, which puts NXP's NFC (near field communication) chips into its flagship Mi 5 phones for payment and transportation purposes across China. It also bought about 1,500 patents from Microsoftin June, which could finally give it the IP muscle to launch its smartphones in new markets like the U.S. and Europe.

Fewer investors, more investments ahead

It could be tough for Xiaomi to generate excitement for an IPO after its annual sales growth slowed from 135% in 2014 to just 5% in 2015. Smartphone sales in China are slowing down, and rivals like Huawei are successfully copying Xiaomi's core strategy of selling low-margin devices online with minimal advertising.

As its core smartphone market gets saturated, Xiaomi will likely boost its investments in other companies to diversify its business. U.S. investors should watch these moves carefully, since they could cause international headwinds for companies like Fitbit and GoPro, and also give it the momentum to challenge smartphone giants like Apple and Samsung in additional overseas markets.

The article Who Owns Xiaomi Technology, and What Does It Own?
Image source: Getty Images.

What: Shares of NewLink Genetics Corporation, a biopharmaceutical company developing immuno-oncology therapies, sank 27.6% last month, according to data from S&P Global Market Intelligence. A large part of its clinical-stage program came into question after announcing a phase 3 failure in a pancreatic cancer study.

NLNK data by YCharts.

So what: NewLink's self-described wide range ofimmuno-oncology portfolio candidatesbecame much smaller whenalgenpantucel-L (HyperAcute-Pancreas Immunotherapy) added to a standard chemotherapy regimen failed to improve outcomes in a group of patients with surgically resected pancreatic cancer.

In fact, median survival of 30.4 months in the control arm (the group that didn't include NewLink's experimental drug) was 3.1 months longer.The difference could be due to chance, but it doesn't bode well for the company's HyperAcute Cellular Immunotherapy platform. It's designed to produce candidates composed of human cancer cells that are tumor- but not patient-specific, that would provide off-the-shelf convenience that other cellular therapies lack.

Now what:This failure in resected pancreatic cancer patients is discouraging on several levels. Most importantly, there is a dearth of effective options, and NewLink should be given credit for even making an attempt in this famously difficult-to-treat patient population.

The recent failure also casts a dark shadow on a more recent phase 3 trial with about 302 unresectable or borderline resectable pancreatic cancer patients adding the same experimental drug, algenpantucel-L, to two common chemotherapy cocktails.

Results from the trial are expected in December, and although I'll keep my fingers crossed, I'm not expecting success.At the end of May, NewLink terminated its agreement withWuXi, the company it had hired tosupply it with algenpantucel-L for commercial sale.

A phase 2 trial with another HyperAcute-based immunotherapy candidate,tergenpumatucel-L in lung cancer, produced some positive results a few years ago.NewLink is running a larger, 135-patient phase 2/3 trial to measure itagainst common chemotherapies in similar patients. The trial's estimated completion date is this December, but given what we've seen recently with its HyperAcute-based candidates, optimism is in short supply.

NewLink is down but not out. It has an oral immunotherapy drug, indoximod, intended to block a pathway tumor's use to suppress immune system attack. At a recent scientific conference, the company presented some positive response rates from early trials combining the IDO inhibitor, with Keytruda from Merck & Co., and Yervoy fromBristol-Myers Squibb.Indoximod is also under investigation in combination withRoche's therapies in a phase 2 pancreatic cancer study.

It's far too early to draw conclusions, but indoximod could have a future in combination with some of these popular cancer therapies. When the company last reported, it had about $177 million in cash,which should buy it enough time to find out before it needs to raise equity again.

There are biotechs far worse off than NewLink, but it's probably best to wait and see with this one.

The article Why NewLink Genetics Corporation Dropped 27.6% in May originally appeared on Fool.com.

Cory Renauer has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. You can follow Cory on Twitter @TMFang4apples or connect with him on LinkedIn for more healthcare industry insight. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services free for 30 days. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that considering a diverse range of insights makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

Copyright 1995 - 2016 The Motley Fool, LLC. All rights reserved. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
Happy birthday, Emily Ratajkowski!

The model turned 25 on Tuesday, and to celebrate, she took to Instagram to share a series of sexy snaps, showing off her incredibly toned body.

WATCH: Emily Ratajkowski Supports Cara Delevingne's Decision to Quit Modeling

In one of the pics, Ratajkowski stands near the water, rocking a cheeky one-piece swimsuit. "25," she captioned the snap.

The London-born babe flaunted her front side, too. She looked seemingly flawless while taking a dip in the ocean, sporting an oversized hat and an eye-popping black string bikini.

She also gave her 6.5 million followers a peek at her gorgeous view, posing on a rock in an emerald green two-piece at the luxurious Amanyara Resort in the Caribbean Island of Providenciales, Turks and Caicos.

WATCH: Kim Kardashian and Emily Ratajkowski Pose Topless Together

Twenty-five looks good on you, girl!

Back in February, ET caught up with Ratajkowski, where she explained why she has no shame inposting risque pics via social media.

"I think that as a woman, it's important to celebrate your sexuality and your beauty, and claim it as your own -- just as it's as important to speak politically," the "Gone Girl" actress revealed. "I think it all goes hand-in-hand."

She also gave us some insight on how she keeps her backside in tip-top shape.

WATCH: Emily Ratajkowski on Her Super Bowl Ad With Odell Beckham Jr.

"Honestly, first of all, my mom has a similar butt to me -- I got lucky in that department," she said. "But for me, that's also the part that if I gain weight, that's where it goes. Honestly, hikes and walking -- uphill hikes -- that's the way I feel that step burn the most."
Gawker Media filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on Friday ahead of a planned sale to media company Ziff Davis, according to a press release.

The move comes after a Florida judge ruled in March that the gossip website should pay $140 million to Hulk Hogan for posting a clip of a sex tape the wrestling legend said he had no idea was being filmed.

The website stated in its bankruptcy filing that it intends to begin marketing and selling assets of the company.

According to the court documents, Gawker has between 200 and 1,000 creditors.

Gawker Media includes websites like Gawker.com, Jezebel.com and Deadspin.com. The company was founded by Nick Denton.

Denton said in a statement, We are encouraged by the agreement with Ziff Davis, one of the most rigorously managed and profitable companies in digital media. A combination would marry Ziff Davis strength in e-commerce, licensing and video with [Gawker Media Groups] premium media brands.

In May, a judge denied Gawker's motion for a new trial in the Hogan case. A press release from Gawker states the reason behind the sale and bankruptcy filing is to give Gawker money to fund an appeal of the Hogan verdict and to preserve jobs.

Hogan, whose real name is Terry Bollea, sued Gawker after it posted a 2007 video of him having sex with the wife of his best friend, Tampa radio personality Bubba The Love Sponge Clem. Hogan said Clem betrayed him by secretly videotaping him. A three-week trial gave an up-close look into Hogans past and grappled over the newsworthiness of the wrestling stars sex tape.

Hogan told FOX411 in March that for him, the trial was about exposing Gawker's practices.

All I wanted was to let everyone know what Gawkers all about and what they do to destroy lives," he said.

Hogan's legal counsel, David Houston said in a statement that "we have every intention to continue to pursue our judgement against Gawker and to hold them accountable for violating Mr. Bollea's privacy whether it be in the bankruptcy court or any other court."

Denton has maintained he thinks the sex tape was newsworthy. He has also said he does not think Hogan is credible when he says he did not know he was being recorded.

Hogan sued Gawker again in May, saying the website leaked sealed court documents containing a transcript that quoted him making racist remarks. In the transcript, Hogan, who is white, makes several racist statements about his daughter's ex-boyfriend, who is black. Once the Enquirer published the story, WWE severed its longtime ties with the famous wrestler.

Gawker denies that it leaked the transcript.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Some wearable activity trackers can keep a fairly accurate count of steps for older people with ambulatory issues who use canes or walkers, but a few underestimate steps by a large margin, a recent study suggests.

"We were particularly surprised to see that even some of the wrist-worn devices were accurate among those with no walking impairments or those with mild walking impairments," said senior author Matthew P. Buman of the College of Health Solutions at Arizona State University in Phoenix.

"Our results also demonstrated that both hip and wrist-worn devices were not accurate among those that used walkers or canes," since walker and cane users have much different walking patterns and activity monitor sensors have not been designed to work in these populations, Buman told Reuters Health by email.

"According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than a quarter of adults 65-74 years of age have difficulty with physical functioning activities," he said. "This number increases to almost 50 percent by the age of 75."

The researchers tested four widely available consumer wearable monitors, the Fitbit One and Omron HJ-112 mounted on the participants' non-dominant hip and the Fitbit Flex and Jawbone UP mounted on the non-dominant wrist. A fifth device, the StepWatch monitor that is available to researchers, was mounted on the non-dominant ankle for comparison.

All but the Omron HJ-112 rely on accelerometers, which measure force and acceleration through so-called microelectromechanics. The Omron device is a pedometer, which relies on a mechanical pendulum that swings as a person walks to count each step. These devices cost between $30 and $100.

For the study, 99 people aged 62 years and older wore all of the monitors simultaneously and walked a predetermined 100-meter route at a local community center. The volunteers fell into four categories of mobility: About one quarter of participants could walk unimpaired, one quarter had some difficulty, one quarter used a cane and one quarter used a walker.

Researchers directly observed and counted each person's steps to gauge the accuracy of the devices.

The FitBit One, Omron and Jawbone UP all underestimated actual steps by less than 10 percent for people walking without assistive devices, but had much larger margins of error for those using canes or walkers. The FitBit Flex underestimated steps significantly for all groups, according to the results in the Journals of Gerontology Series A: Biological Sciences and Medical Sciences.

Even for non-impaired adults, the FitBit Flex underestimated steps by almost 27 percent.

"Maintaining physical activity is very important as individuals age and wearable devices can play an important role in encouraging individuals to track their physical activity over time," Buman said.

"Activity monitors are increasingly being discussed as an additional physical assessment tool that could be used by patients to share information with their health care providers," added lead author Theresa A. Floegel of Arizona State University and the University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill.

Regardless of exact accuracy, tracking steps can help older adults move more, and most of their activity already comes from walking, said Tara O'Brien, assistant professor at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center in Memphis, who was not part of the new study.

"What's really coming out in literature is that even a slight increase in activity will decrease chronic disease effects," O'Brien told Reuters Health by phone.

Activity monitors worn on the wrist tend not to be accurate for older people with mobility issues, said Jung-Min Lee of the University of Nebraska Omaha who was also not part of the new study.

Wearing a simple pedometer on the waist is a good way to track steps, and only costs about $40, Lee told Reuters Health.
A California restaurant has closed as health officials investigate a possible outbreak of Campylobacter, which has sickened dozens of patrons. Solano County health officials say undercooked meat is a likely cause of the bacteria, which can cause diarrhea, fever and other abdominal issues.

Not everybody goes to their doctor, not everybody gets tested, so theres probably others who potentially got sick, Michael Stacey, Solano County deputy health officer, told Fox 40.

Of the 32 reported cases, all patients had eaten at Alejandros on or after May 26. Stacey told Fox 40 affected patrons may have eaten there between May 26 and June 8.

Undercooked meat is a likely source. We dont know what the [exact] source is in this case, so here in the lab, were testing lots of food specimens and seeing if we can figure out exactly what the source of Campylobacter is, Stacey said.

Symptoms typically take a few days to present and can last up to a week.
A simple breath test can detect changes in people who have undergone surgery for lung cancer, a new study reports.

Researchers found that three chemical markers known as carbonyl compounds, which are gases released when people exhale, were reduced in patients with lung cancer after they had an operation to remove their tumors, compared with before their operations. The findings were published online today (June 9) in the journal The Annals of Thoracic Surgery.

This study demonstrated that levels of certain chemical markers associated with a tumor went down in people after they had surgery for lung cancer, said Dr. Victor van Berkel, a thoracic surgeon at the University of Louisville School of Medicine in Kentucky, who was a co-author of the study. [5 Amazing Technologies That Are Revolutionizing Biotech]

Researchers don't yet know why the compounds detected in the breath samples were reduced. It could be because the tumor that was removed made the compounds, or because the inflammatory process in the body associated with the tumor made them, van Berkel told Live Science.

But the findings suggest that scientists may be able to use these markers in the future as a screening method when they monitor patients after surgery for lung cancer, he said.

Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer deaths among men and women in the U.S., van Berkel said.

"More people die from lung cancer each year than from breast, prostate and colon cancers combined," he said. If cancer returns in a patient who had surgery, it is helpful to identify this right away, when treatment can be most effective, he explained.

The current screening test used for lung cancer is a chest computed tomography (CT) scan, which involves being exposed to a small amount of radiation. The CT scan can show whether a person has any nodules present on his or her lungs. But if the scan reveals nodules, then follow up invasive testing, such as a biopsy procedure, is needed to figure out whether the nodules are benign or malignant, van Berkel said.

Breath analysis

Unlike a CT scan, taking the breath test used in this new study required each person to give one big exhalation into a balloon-like bag, which collected a 1-liter (34 ounces) sample of air. The bag was connected to a pump that passed the breath over a computer chip that trapped certain chemicals that were present in the air. [Top 10 Cancer-Fighting Foods]

The computer chip was then sent to a lab where the chemicals from the breath were analyzed and quantified. The breath test is not FDA-approved. But someday, it could be a less expensive way to screen for lung cancer compared with a CT scan, and it could be done in a doctor's office, van Berkel told Live Science. The estimated cost of breath test is between $20 and $30 per test, he said.

The breath analysis test was patented in 2010, said van Berkel, who is one of the patent owners.

In this new study, the researchers asked 31 people with lung cancer to take the breath test before and after they had surgery to remove their lung tumors. The researchers compared these patients' results to those of 187 healthy people who were also given the breath test, but who did not have lung cancer.

The breath analysis showed that after the surgery, the average levels for three out of four tumor markers in people who had lung cancer were reduced, and these levels were near the average of those seen in people without lung disease.

Future studies of the device will look at whether it can detect a recurrence of lung cancer  that is, whether the breath test can quickly catch when levels of these tumor markers go back up in people, signaling that the cancer has returned, van Berkel said.

Lung cancer screening

To obtain FDA approval for the test as screening tool for lung cancer, a very large multicenter trial of approximately 7,000 people needs to be done, to show that the breath test is as good a method of identifying lung cancer as CT scans are, van Berkel said. He and his colleagues are in the process of arranging such a clinical trial, which means the breath test is optimistically at least five years away from being used in doctors' offices, he said.

If this technology does get introduced to the market, people with positive breath tests for lung cancer would still need to undergo a CT scan, van Berkel said.

This study brings doctors one step closer to a better test that could help refine lung cancer screening, said Dr. Inga Lennes, director of the pulmonary nodule clinic at Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center in Boston, who was not involved in the research.

The problem with existing lung-screening methods, such as CT scans, is that up to 30 percent of people who get the tests are found to have lung nodules, but only a small percentage of those nodules turn out to be cancerous, Lennes said.

The results from this new study still constitute an early finding, and much more work needs to be done before the breath analysis test could be useful in everyday medical practice, Lennes told Live Science. That work includes gaining a better understanding of how the test performs in different circumstances, to determine its best use in different populations, she explained. For example, doctors need to evaluate it as a general screening tool to initially diagnose lung cancer, or as a way to monitor people in both the short and long term after surgery for lung cancer.

The public wants researchers to develop cancer screening methods that are noninvasive and don't involve unnecessary procedures, needles or surgeries, Lennes said.

"Anything that moves us forward to finding lung cancer earlier is a step forward for the whole field," Lennes said.

Originally published on Live Science.

Editor's Recommendations
Fertility-focused apps and websites that aim to figure out which days a woman is most likely to conceive may not be very accurate, according to a new study.

Researchers analyzed more than 50 popular websites and smartphone apps that offer to predict a woman's "fertility window," or the days during a woman's menstrual cycle when she can become pregnant.

They found that the fertility windows predicted by the apps and websites varied widely, and that many of these windows included days after ovulation, when the chances that sexual intercourse will result in pregnancy are close to zero.

"Websites and electronic apps used by the general public to predict fertile windows are generally inaccurate," the researchers, from Weill Cornell Medicine in New York City, wrote in the July issue of the journal Obstetrics & Gynecology. "Because there is no rigorous screening process in effect to vet these websites and apps, we recommend caution in their use to assist with fertility," they said. [Conception Misconceptions: 7 Fertility Myths Debunked]

However, other experts not involved in the study said the fertility windows predicted by these websites and apps could still be helpful for couples trying to conceive.

The study included the top 20 fertility websites found using a Google search, and the 33 most popular fertility apps in the Google Play store and the Apple App Store. The researchers compared the fertility window predicted by each website and app with the "gold standard" method of predicting a fertility window, determined by research. The gold-standard method assumes that a woman's most fertile days include the day of ovulation (when the egg is released from the ovary), and the five days leading up to ovulation.

The researchers created a hypothetical case of a woman who had a 28-day menstrual cycle that started on the first day of the month. (The first day of the menstrual cycle is the first day of a woman's period.) In this case, the woman's date of ovulation would be the 15th of the month, and her actual window of fertility would be from the 10th of the month to the 15th.

The study found that most websites and apps (80 to 87 percent) correctly predicted the day of ovulation as the 15th. In addition, all of the websites and apps predicted at least some of the days that were within the true fertility window.

However, the predicted fertility windows varied widely  from four days to 12 days  and about 75 percent of the websites and apps included days after ovulation in the window.

Just one website and three apps precisely predicted the correct fertility window. (The study did not specify which site and apps these were.)

Granted, most websites and apps differed from the precise fertility window by just a few days. But suggesting a fertility window that is even a few days too early or too late "may lead to patients having intercourse in patterns that will not maximize their chances of conceiving," the researchers said.

Dr. Wendy Vitek, an assistant professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Rochester Medical Center who was not involved in the study, noted that the day a woman actually ovulates can vary from cycle to cycle. The apps might be taking this into account  Vitek noted that all of the websites and apps predicted a fertility window that started before the expected day of ovulation.

These windows "are acceptable given the variation in ovulation, so I think this information could help a couple be more informed about timing [of intercourse]," Vitek said.

The general recommendation for couples trying to become pregnant is to have intercourse every two to three days after the woman's period ends  "which should ensure that there is always sperm available [in the reproductive tract] and eliminates the chance of missing the fertile window," Vitek said.

For people who want to try a fertility tracking app, Vitek said that apps that encourage tracking and recording changes in cervical mucus, in addition to tracking cycles, "may be most helpful." (Changes in cervical mucus are a reliable marker of ovulation, she said.)

If a couple doesn't become pregnant after six to 12 months of trying, they should speak with their doctor for guidance, Vitek said.

It's not clear whether using these apps can actually affect couple's chances of conceiving, so more research is needed to determine this, the researchers said.

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.
Owen Lima had been searching for a job for nearly 10 years, but no one would hire the Canadian man because he requires around-the-clock assistance from his service dog, Fox 5 Atlanta reported. Lima reportedly has been suffering from the effects of a brain injury that occurred about 40 years ago.

But recently, a Lowes in Limas home country decided to take a two-for-one deal in their hiring process, bringing both Lima and his companion, Blue, who is a mixed-breed dog, on board. Fox 5 Atlanta reported that the pair started their new job at the Regina, Saskatchewan, location on Monday.

We asked what the dog was for, obviously, and then [Lima] took us through the story and we went on with our interview process like anybody else, store manager Paulo Gallo recalled hiring Lima to CTV.

The store reportedly calls Blue their customer service dog. Like his owner, he wears a red Lowes vest on the job.


Thursday, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in a 7-4 decision that Americans dont have a right to carry concealed handguns for protection. Since California bans people from openly carrying guns, their decision amounted to prohibiting people from carrying guns at all (whether openly or concealed).

It is clear that a judges political affiliation determines whether he thinks that people have a right to defend themselves. Democratic judges are now moving to overturn recent Supreme Court decisions that struck down bans on guns.

Last year, about 0.24 percent of adult Californians had a concealed handgun permit. In the rest of the U.S., the rate was 24 times higher, for a rate of 5.8 percent.

In many parts of California, it is essentially impossible to get a permit. In San Francisco County, just four people (0.0005 percent of the adult population), got a permit in 2015. That is an improvement over 2012, when just two permits were granted  one of which was to the sheriffs personal attorney.

Los Angeles has a slightly higher rate of 0.007 percent. But all of the permits went to judges, reserve deputies, and very wealthy donors to the Los Angeles Sheriff's campaign fund. Clearly, this isnt the same thing as letting civilians defend themselves.

Police are probably the single most important factor in stopping crime. But police understand the simple fact that they virtually always arrive on a scene after the crime has already occurred. Police strongly support permitted concealed handguns not only for this reason but also because they know how important it is for their own safety.

PoliceOne, the largest private organization of police officers, surveyed its 450,000 members in March 2013. Ninety one percent of respondents expressed support for relatively liberal concealed handgun laws.

Americans also agree. An October 2015 Gallup poll found that a 56 to 41 percent margin of Americans believe that increased concealed carry leads to improved safety.

The majority in the 9th Circuit's ruling on Thursday made a sorry attempt to cite two economics papers, which they claim, show that permitted concealed carry causes an increase in some violent crime. In fact, one of the papers showed no statistically significant changes and the other actually showed a statistically significant drop in crime after the right-to-carry laws were passed.

One paper by Jens Ludwig examined whether homicides of adults who could carry concealed handgun permits fell faster than the deaths for juveniles who arent allowed to carry, but just like previous work that I had done with David Mustard, there was no statistically significant difference that people in the two groups are killed (please see page 51).

But no matter who carries a permitted concealed handgun, people in both groups can benefit.

Research has found that as more people carry:

- Some criminals have stopped committing crimes.

- Some have moved to commit crime in places where permitted concealed handguns werent yet allowed.

- Some criminals switched out of crimes like robberies where there was direct contact between victims and criminals and into crimes like larceny where victims arent directly threatened.

In the other paper for the Brookings Institution by John Donohue, the results clearly show that violent crime, murder, and robbery fall after the law is adopted.

What the court doesnt seem to understand is that the impact of the laws are being measured simultaneously in two different ways and that you can only see the impact on crime by looking at the net effect of those two measures. When you do that the effect for the law during its first year is not statistically significant, but the trend showed a clearly growing significant benefit over time. And this is what you might expect as the number of people with concealed handgun permits, and thus the risk to the criminals committing crime, increases over time.

The figure here from my book "More Guns, Less Crime" (University of Chicago Press, 2010, 3rd edition) graphs out a different set of estimates from that paper. The key thing here isnt that some of estimated impacts on murder are initially positive, but, even in those cases, how they are less positive than they were before.

Among published, peer-reviewed papers by economists and criminologists, about two-thirds find that concealed carry is associated with a decline in violent crime rates. The remaining papers find no change in murder, rape, or robbery rates.

So far, the Supreme Court has acknowledged that the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms includes the right to carry for self-defense.

Given this right, Californias prohibition of both open and concealed carry would seem to be unconstitutional. But in this debate, the Bill of Rights has become secondary to political preferences.

If you look at all the eleven 9th Circuit Court judges who made the ruling on Thursday, 8 were Democrats and 3 were Republicans. One Democratic judge voted with the Republicans. Seven of the judges claimed that there is no right for people to defend themselves outside their homes with concealed handguns, 4 said that there is such a right. That partisan split is seen time after time in these Second Amendment cases.

This unfortunately holds true of some members of the U.S. Supreme Court, too. If given the chance, the four liberal Justices currently on the Court are almost certain to vote to overturn the Heller and McDonald decisions, which struck down gun bans in D.C. and Chicago.

Hillary Clinton has clearly indicated that she would appoint new Justices who would also vote in favor of such a ruling.

This case is likely to be appealed to the Supreme Court. Whether people are allowed to defend themselves outside their homes in the eight relatively restrictive states such as California hangs in the balance with this election.
The appellate court decisions that upheld the "contraceptive mandate" of the Department of Health and Human Services have been given the judicial heave ho. Those rulings, which supported the administrations attempt to force non-profit religious groups to violate our faith, were vacated by the Supreme Courts Zubik v. Burwell decision last month  rendering them null and void.

The Supreme Courts eight justices had asked both sides in the Zubik case to describe a scenario of health insurance coverage that would be satisfactory to their concerns. Both sides having identified a workable scenario, the high court then told us all, "Then go see if you can work it out."

Will the officials at the Department of Health and Human Services now draft a new regulation that actually respects religious liberty by not requiring us to be complicit in the provision of abortion-causing drugs to our employees? Or will they once again try to punish religious charities for practicing our faith?

And beyond whatever revision of the HHS mandate that the presidents bureaucrats devise, there are legal issues that the Supreme Court did not directly address. Those issues are now again before the judges in seven cases, spanning four appellate courts, who may or may not be disposed to protect religious rights.

But it is our case, itself a consolidation of lawsuits brought by Priests for Life and the Archdiocese of Washington in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, that is worthy of the closest scrutiny.

After we appealed to the Supreme Court, Solicitor General Donald B. Verrilli, Jr., in the governments initial brief to the Supreme Court, stated that our case was a more suitable vehicle than the others for the justices to use in deciding the legality of the HHS mandate and its accommodation. Solicitor General Verrilli noted at the time that our appeal presents all of the health coverage arrangements and all issues that could be contested under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA).

This was important. Out of the seven lawsuits that were eventually accepted by the Court and which are now back in their respective appeals courts, only the D.C. Circuit case included all of the necessary elements for a thorough review and decision.

For instance, there are three types of insurance arrangements that have been the subject of HHS mandate lawsuits  insured, self-insured, and self-insured church plans.

Insured plans are typical ones where an organization contracts with an independent company to provide health insurance to its employees.

A self-insured plan is where the organization underwrites its own insurance, but hires an independent company to administer the coverage.

A self-insured church plan is the same as a self-insured plan, except that the organization underwriting its own insurance is a church as defined by the Internal Revenue Code.

Our consolidated case in the D.C. Circuit is the only one of the seven considered by the Supreme Court to include organizations with each of these plans. And as Solicitor General Verrilli noted, the HHS mandates accommodation operates somewhat differently with respect to those different plan types, and some judges have concluded that the differences are material to the RFRA analysis.

Further, there are three key elements in RFRA that courts may address. Again, our consolidated lawsuit is the only one that addresses them all.

In the RFRA-based challenges to the HHS mandate, courts must consider whether the government is placing a substantial burden on our groups. If the courts so find, the HHS regulation then comes under strict scrutiny  does it further a compelling interest of the government and is it the vehicle thats least restrictive of religious rights to further that interest?

Curiously, when the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruled against us, it basically redefined the governments compelling interest.

While the government argued that its dual objectives in issuing the mandate were to further public health and gender equality, the D.C. Circuit declared that the governments interest was actually in providing seamless health insurance coverage for contraceptives.

While a different circuit court had held that, for instance, the government could achieve its objectives through tax incentives to contraceptive and sterilization suppliers and/or consumers, the DC Circuit tried to say that increased contraceptive access could only be achieved by mandating contraceptive coverage in our own health insurance plans. By using this redefinition, seamless insurance coverage suddenly became the governments compelling interest and the least restrictive means of furthering that interest, thereby satisfying RFRAs tests.

The oral arguments made before the Supreme Court circled around this point. Both Chief Justice John Roberts and Paul Clement, who was arguing for the religious non-profit groups, noted the inconsistency of the governments seamless coverage argument. After all, if the administrationsays that its scheme of providing abortifacients to religious non-profit group employees is seamless, how can it claim that we are not part of its fabric?

The DC Circuit, in its now-vacated 2014 opinion in favor of the government, ignored this contradiction and basically held that the governments interest was compelling because the government said it was. With this as our past, the future could be interesting.

If it wants, the government could resolve the HHS mandate lawsuits quickly. After all, it admitted in its supplemental brief to the Supreme Court that an accommodation that truly protects the rights of religious non-profit groups is feasible. But then again, such a solution was feasible over four years ago, too.

We pray that the administration acts in good faith.
The death of Muhammad Ali  who lived a rags-to-riches story and overcame prejudice and adversity  is a reminder that our nation has benefited and our lives have been enriched by people of every income group, religion, race and ethnicity.

Ali grew up in a working-class family, the son of a father who was a sign painter and a mother who was a domestic worker, and attended segregated all-black schools.

When he left Christianity to become a Muslim and changed his name from Cassius Clay to Muhammad Ali, he was denounced by many. Yet against all odds, he became not just a great boxer and multimillionaire, but a great humanitarian and a beloved icon who worked for peace and harmony around the world.

Fortunately, much progress has been made in the long struggle to make equal opportunity a reality in our country and to embrace diversity as a strength, instead of rejecting it as a weakness. But we still dont take advantage of the talents of all our people. For example, there are millions of young people born into poor families who could do great things for our nation, if only we opened the doors of higher education to them.

Without college degrees, the career prospects of even our most talented young people are limited. But with degrees, they could make great contributions  healing the sick, starting new businesses to create millions of jobs, working in nonprofits and government, and much more.

Yet many academically qualified young people face tremendous obstacles keeping them out of many colleges and universities  whether because they come from low-income families, are undocumented or for other reasons. In some cases, young people been thrown out of their homes without financial support by their parents for being gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender.

In my role as executive director of the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation, which awards scholarships to high-achieving students from low-income families, Ive met many students like these. Thankfully, weve been able to help some of them go on to college, but we dont have the funds to help the millions of young people who could benefit.

Let me tell you about one of these students, a young woman with exemplary grades and a history of volunteering on behalf of her community who submitted an application for a Cooke Scholarship. Lets call her Teresa.

At 15, I watched my mother and brother handcuffed and dragged from our home by immigration officials, Teresa wrote in her application. I was a minor so they chose not to deport me, but the painful family separation lasted a decade, 10 years worth of lonely birthdays and Christmases. I made countless attempts to attend college, but each resulted in failure as my above average grades were not enough to overshadow a missing 13-digit resident number on applications. Disheartened and discouraged, I stopped dreaming.

Teresa continued: In constant fear of deportation, my legal status was something I hid even from my closest friends. Since I couldnt go to college, cleaning gloves and Clorox replaced my textbooks. As a housemaid, I worked 12-hour shifts earning $20 a day. Besides deportation, I also faced the threat of homelessness. My life had no direction; I couldnt get an education, I couldnt grow, I couldnt flourish. No one would give me a chance.

The story has a happy ending. Teresa now has legal status under President Obamas Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which defers attempts to expel immigrant children who entered the United States before they turn 16.

She has the grades and academic record to attend an elite college, and the Cooke Foundation will help her do so.

But there are many more Teresas across our nation whose dreams of a college education will never come true. This is not just a personal tragedy for the students. It is an American tragedy.

Muhammad Ali achieved success and world renown without ever going to college. But few young people have the skills to become professional athletes. And today a college degree is required for far more jobs than it was in 1960, when Cassius Clay graduated from high school.

Both morality and our national self-interest demand that we give our young people the chance to climb as high as they can on the education ladder, regardless of the wealth of their families, how they pray, where they come from, the color of their skin or who they love.

Ali called himself "The Greatest." Embracing diversity and equal opportunity for all is what enables America to claim the same title.
Joshua Bruner is a real-life Captain America.

The 15-year-old country boy from Ringoes, New Jersey is a lifetime member of the National Rifle Association. Hes a member of two state shooting teams and he serves as a United States Sea Cadet.

Darcy Meys said her son wants to follow in his great-grandfathers footsteps and enlist in the Marines.

Click here to join Todds American Dispatch: a must-read for conservatives!

Josh considers himself to be a patriot, she told me. He loves his country.

A few weeks ago Josh was given an assignment in a photography class at Hunterdon Central Regional High School. He had to take a self-portrait representing self-expression.

So Josh and some of his buddies gathered in a field behind his house and set up a tripod  striking their best male model poses.

Josh climbed atop a four-wheeler. He was holding Old Glory in one hand and a shotgun in the other  a Remington pump action 12-gauge to be precise.

It was, by all accounts, an epic picture that summed up the heart and soul of this teenage patriot.

Now, at Hunterdon Regional kids have to upload their assignments to the schools Google site. And thats when Josh learned there was a problem.

Click here to get your primer on how to restore traditional American values!

His self-portrait was rejected because it violated the schools gun policy.

The rules of our school prohibit students from using artwork depicting themselves or another person with any weapon, the teacher wrote to Mrs. Meys.

Mrs. Meys told me she looked at the school policy and she believes it was referring to actual guns on school property  not a photograph of a gun taken on private property.

Josh was just showing pride for his country and who he is as a shooter and as a kid who wants to be in the Marines and protect his country and follow in his grandfathers footsteps, she told me. He was not dressed inappropriately. He was not holding the gun incorrectly and He was respecting the flag.

The school decided to offer Josh a compromise, according to email correspondence between his mother and the teacher.

But its really not much of a compromise.

The school agreed to grade Joshs photograph  but they were adamant that it could not be uploaded onto the schools server nor could it be publicly displayed.

He will not be able to upload the image to our server, post them to his Google site or display them in his presentation, the teacher wrote. We would like to recognize his work on the portrait but limit the possibility that the photo can be taken out of context.

Good Lord! Its not pornography, people. Its a kid holding Old Glory and a shotgun.

They are crushing his spirit, Mrs. Meys told me. They are stifling his creativity.

And for that matter  they are in effect telling this child that he cannot take pride in who he is  his identity as an American.

If it is okay for people to show pride in their sexuality, why cant my son show pride in his country, she asked.

I know the answer to that question. These days Gay Pride is in vogue and American Pride is passe.

Im supposed to accept guys going into bathrooms with my daughters and girls going into bathrooms with my boys but they wont accept my kid for just wanting to be a patriot, she said.

In this age of tolerance and diversity its too bad our public school system cant be more tolerant of red-blooded American patriots like Josh Bruner.


Me Before You is Jojo Moyes's much-anticipated movie adaptation of her 2012 novel by the same name. I'm not really a fan of romance novels. I read the book and saw the film because of their larger agenda: the escalating debate over euthanasia.

The movies euthanasia theme resonates particularly strongly with me today, as Californias law legalizing physician-assisted suicide took effect yesterday. Furthermore, Canada's prime minister recently introduced legislation to legalize euthanasia in his country. Its with these events in mind that I attended Me Before You.

Everyone who reads the book or sees the movie knows that Moyes is a brilliant writer. She has twice won the Romantic Novel of the Year Award; her novels have been translated into eleven different languages. Emilia Clarke and Sam Claflin are perfectly cast in the movie. The film is persuasive, the novel even more so.

And that's what worries me about Me Before You.

Here's the plot (spoiler alert): Will Traynor becomes disabled after a motorcycle accident. Louisa Clark is hired to help him choose not to end his life. But Will is convinced that his death is best not just for himself but for Louisa as well: "I don't want you to be tied to me, to my hospital appointments, to the restrictions on my life. I don't want you to miss out on all the things someone else could give you."

This is his decision, and we should accept it. As Nathan, Will's nurse, explains, "I can't judge him for what he wants to do. It's his choice. It should be his choice." Ultimately Louisa comes to agree: "I trust Will to know what is right for him." Will knows that his life will never be what it was before the accident. And so it is a life not worth living.

That's where Will is wrong.

Ellen Clifford is an activist with Not Dead Yet, an organization that campaigns against assisted suicide. According to her, "the message of the film is that disability is tragedy and disabled people are better off dead . . . It comes from a dominant narrative carried by society and the mainstream media that says it is a terrible thing to be disabled."

Actress and disability rights activist Liz Carr calls Me Before You "offensive to disabled people, the vast majority of whom want to live  not die." Other disabled activists have adopted the film's #LiveBoldly hashtag and repurposed it to argue against euthanasia. Alex Schadenberg of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition is even calling for a boycott of the movie.

But Me Before You is a bestselling novel and will be a popular movie because it captures what our culture believes. We're told that truth is whatever we choose for it to be. As a result, life is ours to live as we wish and to end when we wish.

The "death with dignity" movement expresses the ethos of our day. Whether the issue is abortion rights, marriage equality, gender identity or euthanasia, the decision is ours to make.

Except that it's not.

Me Before You portrays euthanasia as a courageous and loving choice. But the opposite is actually true. To live with grave physical challenges is much harder than to end the struggle. To give those you love the gift of yourself, no matter what limitations you face, is far more compassionate than to deny them your life.

Moyes is wronglife is not "Me Before You" but "You Before Me." We belong to everyone who loves us.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren threw her support behind Democrat Hillary Clinton for president Thursday, following President Barack Obama in sending a signal to progressive voters now backing Bernie Sanders that it's time to unite around the presumptive Democratic nominee.

"I am ready to get in this fight and work my heart out for Hillary Clinton to become the next president of the United States and to make sure that Donald Trump never gets anyplace close to the White House," the Massachusetts senator said on MSNBC's "The Rachel Maddow Show."

Warren was the only holdout among the Senate's Democratic women and, given her stature among liberals, her endorsement could be an important boost for Clinton. She also is being floated as a potential vice presidential pick for Clinton.

Ahead of her endorsement Thursday, Warren spoke to the American Constitution Society and attacked Trump as a "loud, nasty, thin-skinned fraud."

Trump "has never risked anything for anyone and serves nobody but himself. And that is just one of the many reasons why he will never be president," Warren said in the scathing broadside also aimed at the top two Republicans in Congress.

The liberal lawmaker increasingly has tangled with Trump, taking on an attack-dog role that she seems able to execute more effectively than other Democrats, including Clinton herself. Trump has lashed back, labeling her "Goofy Elizabeth Warren" and ridiculing her claims to Native American heritage.

Warren took aim at Trump's contention that U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel can't preside fairly over a case involving Trump University because the U.S.-born Curiel is of Mexican descent and Trump wants to build a wall along the border with Mexico.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., both have strongly condemned those comments, but Warren, D-Mass., argued that McConnell and Ryan are really no better than Trump on the issue of judges. She cited what she contends is McConnell's blockade of Obama's judicial nominees and Ryan's acquiescence in the strategy.

"Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell want Donald Trump to appoint the next generation of judges. They want those judges to tilt the law to favor big business and billionaires like Trump. They just want Donald to quit being so vulgar and obvious about it," Warren said.

"Donald Trump chose racism as his weapon, but his aim is exactly the same as the rest of the Republicans. Pound the courts into submission to the rich and powerful."

McConnell's office pushed back against Warren's criticism. Spokesman Don Stewart said, "If Sen. Warren held her current beliefs about ensuring votes for all nominees when her party was engaged in serial and unprecedented filibusters against women and minorities during the Bush administration, she kept them to herself."
Charles Krauthammer told viewers Thursday on Special Report with Bret Baier that after Bernie Sanders' planned meeting with presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, he will officially hand over his sword and drop out of the race.

Krauthammer, a syndicated columnist and Fox News contributor, said Sanders exit will be a carefully orchestrated process.

The Vermont senator has met with President Obama and Vice President Biden in addition to the high-profile meetings he held on Capitol Hill with Democratic leadership.

Considered a political outsider in Washington, Sanders received a royal reception at the White House and on the Capitol Hill, Krauthammer said.

He's never seen the inside of these institutions. The vice president and the president [and] leader of the Senate honor him. He then steps out and says Ill be in [for] another week, which is a way of saying Ill be given a decent interval, he said.

Sanders made it clear he will participate in District of Columbia Democratic primary on June 14.

And, he said he's going to meet with Hillary. That will be the point at which he formally hands over his sword and will have negotiated a quid pro quo inside his own Appomattox, Krauthammer said, referring to the Civil War's historic conclusion when General Robert E. Lee surrendered to General Ulysses Grant in Virginia.
A fresh trove of documents released by a House panel probing abortion clinics and companies trading in body parts shows the extent of their fetal tissue harvesting operation -- and what the committee's chairwoman alleges are violations of the law.

Rep. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., head of the House Select Investigative Panel on Infant Lives, is now making a fresh request for a federal probe.

I believe the investigation will move forward because this is so appalling, she told FoxNews.com.

One of the more striking exchanges was contained in a set of January 2015 emails.

When a customer inquired with company StemExpress about the availability of aborted tissue, an employee promptly emailed back seemingly while an abortion was under way: There is one case currently in the room, I will let you know how the limbs and calvarium [skull] look to see if you are able to take them in about fifteen minutes.

Less than an hour later, the employee reported, the calvarium is mostly intact, while the limbs ... are totally intact.

The House committee for months has been probing whether abortion clinics and companies buying and selling body parts in exchanges like this were profiting  which, if so, would be a felony under a law signed by President Bill Clinton. StemExpress, which worked with Planned Parenthood, is a California-based company that procures body parts and fetal tissue and sells to researchers.

What we have seen is how this has moved to a business and contractual agreements, Blackburn said.

Blackburn claims it appears some technicians even reviewed medical files without initial permission from patients. She has asked the Department of Health and Human Services to probe whether StemExpress and three California abortion clinics might have shared so much information that federal privacy law and research regulations were violated.

The three clinics under review that contracted with StemExpress are Planned Parenthood Mar Monte, which says it has more than 30 centers throughout California and Nevada; Planned Parenthood Shasta Pacific; and Family Planning Specialist Medical Group.

The select panel was appointed after undercover videos seemingly showed Planned Parenthood staff trying to sell aborted baby body parts. Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, who addressed the Planned Parenthood Action Fund in Washington Friday, has adamantly defended the group against allegations of wrongdoing. Democrats have criticized the investigation and recently said the panel is putting people in danger.

They are doing so by continuing their nearly year-long witch-hunt targeting women's access to safe and comprehensive health care, Maryland Democratic Reps. Steny Hoyer and Chris Van Hollen wrote in a Baltimore Sun op-ed. Their investigation has so far failed to identify any wrongdoing ... Yet what has come to be known as the Republican Panel to Attack Women's Health continues to operate without an end-date.

A StemExpress spokesman didnt address specific questions from FoxNews.com but referred to an earlier statement:

Stem Express is confident there has been no violation of law and appropriate consents were made for every fetal tissue donation. We welcome the opportunity to answer any questions from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services or any other agency related to Representative Blackburn's continued unfounded accusations. StemExpress will continue to support life-saving research.

Potential violations of the privacy law or research regulations could be part of a larger pattern the select panel is probing regarding the violation of Title 42, of U.S. Code Section 289g-2. Thats the 1993 law that makes it a felony to sell human tissue for profit. Three former Justice Department attorneys told the panel in an April 20 hearing the documents made a case that Title 42 might have been violated, and agreed the panel should review bank records.

StemExpress and the clinics have not complied with a panel subpoena for banking records.

However, the documents released show StemExpress paid $55-$75 per body part, beginning in 2010. Blackburn, in a recent letter, told HHS officials, StemExpress paid the abortion clinic per tissue fee and then marked up the tissue four to six hundred percent for sale to the researcher.

Blackburn also asserted the documents provide evidence StemExpress and the clinics committed systematic violations of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996. Better known as HIPAA, the law establishes a patients right to determine when his or her private medical information will be released. HHS can impose civil penalties on medical entities for violations.

Blackburn wrote letters urging Jocelyn Samuels, director of the HHS Office of Centralized Case Management Operations, to investigate potential HIPAA violations; and urging Jerry Menikoff, director of the HHS Office for Human Research Protection, to determine if StemExpress used invalid consent forms to mislead scientific researchers. This would violate rules from the Institutional Review Board, a committee that reviews and approves research involving human subjects.

HHS spokeswoman Marissa Padilla told FoxNews.com, "We have received the letters and are in the process of reviewing them."

FoxNews.com contacted each of the three California abortion clinics by phone. Planned Parenthood Mar Monte deferred comment to the national Planned Parenthood press office, which has not yet returned phone calls. The other two California clinics did not respond.

The documents also assert StemExpress frequently received a fax from clinics with information about abortions scheduled the next day, while clinics granted StemExpress employees access to the medical files of individual patients believed to be good candidates for fetal tissue donations. A researcher could place an order with StemExpress through an online portal that allowed the customer to request a gestational range for the tissue.

While the Obama administration has defended Planned Parenthood, Blackburn is optimistic there will be additional investigation into the matter, even if it requires watchdog agencies such as the Government Accountability Office or the HHS inspector general.

I fully expect the HHS inspector general and the GAO to move forward with this, Blackburn told FoxNews.com. This is a tremendous concern that women are subjected to these violations of HIPAA rights and are not aware of it.
Hillary Clintons former chief of staff at the State Department had a Democratic donor with virtually no relevant experience appointed to a nuclear intelligence advisory board, according to a new report that also claims the aide tried to stall journalists examining his background.

ABC News reported that copies of internal emails obtained under the Freedom of Information Act indicate Rajiv K. Fernando had thin qualifications for a seat on the board, other than his close connection to Bill and Hillary Clinton.

Fernando, a Chicago securities trader, had been a fundraiser for Democratic candidates and a financial contributor to the Clinton Foundation and even traveled with Bill Clinton on a trip to Africa. The board he was appointed to  the International Security Advisory Board  included nuclear scientists, members of Congress and former cabinet secretaries.

The board is a governmental body, overseen by the Under Secretary for Arms Control and International Security, that advises the department on arms control and related issues. According to the groups charter, members who are not full-time government employees may receive compensation for the time served at the rate of GS-15 step 10, plus transportation and per diem for overnight travel. That indicates the highest level of pay for typical federal government employees.

However, a Clinton spokesman said it was unpaid and defended his qualifications.

In a statement, spokesman Nick Merrill said, This was an unpaid, volunteer advisory board, and one of several foreign policy-focused organizations that he was involved with. As the State Department itself has said, the ISAB charter calls for a diverse set of experiences for its members. That's all there is to it."

The emails reportedly show that Clinton's chief of staff, Cheryl Mills, pushed for Fernando.

A top official in the Office of the Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security explained to a press aide, The true answer is simply that S staff (Cheryl Mills) added him. ... Raj was not on the list sent to S; he was added at their insistence.

"S" apparently refers to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich told Fox News on Friday the suggestion Clinton got Fernando onto a board that advised on the use of nuclear weapons is even more significant than reports her private emails had details on drone strikes.

He was appointed to the group, which has some of the most sensitive secrets because it looks at Pakistan, North Korea, Russia, Gingrich said. It is very clear that this was just pure corruption. This was cash for a seat on a board. 

At the time, Fernandos appointment seemed to confuse some staffers, according to emails.

We had no idea who he was, one board member told ABC News.

The news organization first contacted the State Department in August 2011 and asked for a copy of Fernandos resume.

Subsequent emails show officials trying to slow-walk the process.

One press aide wrote that it appears there is much more to this story that were unaware of.

We must protect the Secretary's and Under Secretary's name, as well as the integrity of the Board. I think it's important to get down to the bottom of this before there's any response  As you can see from the attached, it's natural to ask how he got onto the board when compared to the rest of the esteemed list of members," press aide Jamie Mannina wrote.

According to the emails, Mannina was instructed by Mills to stall with ABC News. When Mannina did get back several days after the initial inquiry, it was only to say Fernando had resigned.

Mr. Fernando chose to resign from the Board earlier this month citing additional time needed to devote to his business, Mannina wrote. Fernando was working at the time at the firm he founded and later sold, Chopper Trading.

Fernando, an early supporter of Clintons 2008 presidential bid, maxed out the number of contributions he could give to her campaign and to HillPAC in 2007-2008.

He also helped raise more than $100,000 for her and ended up giving the William J. Clinton Foundation $250,000 and $30,000 to advocacy group WomenCount, which helped Clinton with her 2008 campaign.
Hillary Clinton huddled with liberal icon Elizabeth Warren in Washington Friday morning, stoking already-burning speculation about the possibility of an all-female Democratic ticket  and one pulled markedly to the left.

The Massachusetts senator, who at one time was under pressure from progressive groups to run herself, met with the now-presumptive nominee at her Washington, D.C., home for about an hour.

She did not take questions from the press.

A Clinton official later told Fox News Clinton thanked Warren for her endorsement, and they talked about working together over the course of the campaign to advance a progressive agenda.

The meeting comes after Warren on Thursday threw her support behind Clinton, following President Obama in sending a signal to progressive voters now backing Bernie Sanders that it's time to unite around the presumptive nominee.

"I am ready to get in this fight and work my heart out for Hillary Clinton to become the next president of the United States and to make sure that Donald Trump never gets anyplace close to the White House," the Massachusetts senator said on MSNBC's "The Rachel Maddow Show."

Warren was the only holdout among the Senate's Democratic women and, given her stature among liberals, her endorsement was seen as a potentially important boost for Clinton.

Moreover, signing on Warren as a running mate could energize a base that has its reservations about Clinton.

In an interview with Politico, Clinton said earlier this week that Warren is qualified for any role including VP. Its unclear how seriously she may be under consideration.

But she already has taken on the role of lead attack dog for the Democrats against presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump.

Amid the buzz Friday morning, Trump said on Twitter he hopes Clinton does pick her as running mate.

The liberal lawmaker increasingly has tangled with Trump, at times more effectively than other Democrats, including Clinton herself. Trump has lashed back, labeling her "Goofy Elizabeth Warren" and ridiculing her claims to Native American heritage.

Ahead of her endorsement Thursday, Warren spoke to the American Constitution Society and attacked Trump as a "loud, nasty, thin-skinned fraud."

Fox News Serafin Gomez and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
EXCLUSIVE: Hillary Clinton, from the moment her exclusive use of personal email for government business was exposed, has claimed nothing she sent or received was marked classified at the time.

But a 2012 email released by the State Department appears to challenge that claim because it carries a classified code known as a portion marking - and that marking was on the email when it was sent directly to Clintons account.

The C - which means it was marked classified at the confidential level - is in the left-hand-margin and relates to an April 2012 phone call with Malawi's first female president, Joyce Banda, who took power after the death of President Mutharika in 2012.

"(C) Purpose of Call: to offer condolences on the passing of President Mukharika and congratulate President Banda on her recent swearing in."

Everything after that was fully redacted before it was publicly released by the State Department -- a sign that the information was classified at the time and dealt with sensitive government deliberations.

A US government source said there are other Clinton emails with classified markings, or marked classified, beyond the April 2012 document.

A January 2014 federal government training manual, called "Marking Classified National Security Information," provides a step-by-step guide for reviewing classified information, and allocating classified codes or "portion markings."

"This system requires that standard markings be applied to classified information...Markings shall be uniformly and conspicuously applied to leave no doubt about the classified status of the information, the level of protection required, and the duration of classification."

It adds, "A portion is ordinarily defined as a paragraph, but also includes subjects, titles, graphics, tables, charts, bullet statements, sub-paragraphs, classified signature blocks, bullets and other portions within slide presentations, and the like."

"Portion markings consist of the letters (U) for Unclassified, (C) for Confidential, (S) for Secret, and (TS) for Top Secret."

Congressman Mike Pompeo, who sits on the House Intelligence Committee, has read the 22 Top Secret emails too damaging to national security to release, and routinely reviews classified documents.

While he could not speak directly to the April 2012 email, he said, "I've seen information like that often. Often certain parts of a particular message will be unclassified and other parts will be classified and they are almost always marked paragraph by paragraph."

Pompeo added, If, in fact, it is truly marked confidential that would.. and she read it, that made it to her, that would conflict with what she had previously said."

On Wednesday, Clinton told Bret Baier on Special Report, the fact is, nothing that I sent or received was marked classified, and nothing has been demonstrated to contradict that. 

Meantime, Clinton confidante Sidney Blumenthal, who spoke to Fox News as part of a book tour to promote his new biolgraphy, "A Self-Made Man: The Political Life of Abraham Lincoln, 1809-1849,"said that the Romanian hacker known as Guccifer -- who claimed to breach Clinton's personal server - may have worked for foreign intelligence.

"Marcel Lazar is a Romanian. He worked from a Russian server. He may well be part of a Russian information operation," Blumenthal explained.

While he said there's no way Lazar compromised Clinton's emails, the hacker told Fox News in a telephone interview before reaching a plea deal with the Justice Department that it was "easy for me, for everybody to access the Clinton server.

Given more than 2,100 classified emails were on the server, Fox asked Blumenthal if he had a security clearance to handle such material. "I was her friend, and I had no security clearance, nor did I seek it, nor did anyone ever send me anything that was classified. So I had no access to, nor did I send or receive any classified material."

Blumenthal said he expects FBI Director James Comey to publicly confirm that Clinton and her aides did not deliberately compromise the nation's secrets.

"This is the question that is at the center of the Department of Justice FBI investigation: Whether anybody had intent, criminal intent to put classified information outside of the system. I believe that was not the case, and I think then, that we will see a statement coming from the FBI stating that, saying that... I assume that the FBI has an interest in - James Comey, the FBI Director has an interest in acting promptly to resolve this remaining question. But I feel confident about the resolution, " Blumenthal said.

Asked about the April 2012 email, and how the campaign could reconcile the classified marking with Clintons public statements, spokesman Brian Fallon did not directly address the issue. "This email was just a request for Secretary Clinton to make a phone call to express condolences over the passing of the President of Malawi. The fact that this email was classified after the fact suggests again that agencies in the government tend to err on the side of classifying even routine matters of diplomacy."

Fox News' Adam Housley contributed to this report.
Donald Trump is making a California 9-year-old boy feel great again.

Days after Logan Autry's school banned him from wearing his Make America Great Again hat, and dogs ultimately ate it, the Trump campaign sent him two new autographed hats, KFSN-TV reported Thursday.

The replacement hats arrived in a FedEx package that included a framed photograph, the station reported. The photo was Trump and inscribed, To Logan, thanks for your support. Keep up the great work.

The third-grader from Fresno made national headlines earlier this week when he said his school wouldn't let him wear his autographed Trump hat because it was stirring negative emotions in other students who didn't like Trump.

School officials had told Logan to leave the hat home June 2. The next day his dogs got ahold of it while he was swimming.

As for the new hats, the boy told the station, Its wonderful.

Trump campaign aide Michael Cohen saw Logans story on TV and sent the hats and the photo.

As he was being interviewed by KFSN, Logan called Cohen. Thank you for telling Mr. Trump about my story, the boy said.

Youre very welcome, Cohen replied. I had Mr. Trump sign two hats for you. One that you can continue to wear to school and the other you can now have right in your room and it will never get damaged or eaten up by the dogs again.
American voters think Hillary Clinton put national security at risk by mishandling classified emails -- and that shes lying about it.

By a 60-27 percent margin, they think shes lying about how her emails were handled while she was secretary of state, according to the latest Fox News national poll of registered voters.

And by 57-32 percent, voters say U.S. safety was at risk because of Clintons mishandling of national secrets.

Clintons explanations are clearly not cutting it with voters, says Republican pollster Daron Shaw, who conducts the Fox News Poll along with Democratic pollster Chris Anderson.

CLICK TO READ THE POLL RESULTS

This issue continues to act as a drag on her personal ratings.

Over half of voters feel Clinton lacks the integrity to serve effectively as president (54 percent), and nearly 6-in-10 have an unfavorable opinion of her (56 percent).

Roughly one third of self-identified Democrats think Clinton is lying about her emails (35 percent) and put national security at risk (32 percent).

Twenty-seven percent of those backing Clinton over Republican Donald Trump in the presidential race think shes lying about her emails.

The State Department Inspector General concluded May 25 that Clinton failed to comply with department policies by using a private email server.

The question is whether beliefs about Clintons handling of emails are already fully baked into perceptions of her, or if the issue can drag her down further, says Anderson.

Her emails must be the most talked about in the history of emails. Some voters are certainly bored with the issue and tuning it out.

Views on this issue are holding steady. Earlier this year, 60 percent said Clinton had mishandled classified emails (February 2016). And 58 percent felt she was lying about it in September (the last time the question was asked on a Fox News Poll).

The Fox News poll is based on landline and cellphone interviews with 1,004 randomly chosen registered voters nationwide and was conducted under the joint direction of Anderson Robbins Research (D) and Shaw & Company Research (R) from June 5-8, 2016. The poll has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points for all registered voters.
Despite suspending their presidential campaigns weeks ago, Ohio Gov. John Kasich and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz both have managed to pick up hundreds of thousands of additional votes  along with more delegates  heading into next month's GOP convention.

While the ghost candidates and their zombie delegates won't have that much leverage in Cleveland -- barring a drastic change in party rules -- the pick-ups speak to the lingering discontent among some primary voters over the choices in this election. Donald Trump clinched the nomination in late May and earlier this week passed another milestone when he earned enough 'bound' delegates alone to secure the party nod.

Trumps off-the-party-line stances and controversial remarks  including comments about the heritage of the judge in his Trump University lawsuit -- have voters and even influential Republican leaders throwing their support behind 'candidates' who realistically have no shot.

On Tuesday, though Trump took home all the delegates in Californias primary, thousands of GOP voters including former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said they didnt vote for him.

I can confirm he voted for Kasich, Schwarzeneggers spokesman Daniel Ketchell said.

All told, since the last competitive primary in Indiana on May 3, Kasich has won about 408,000 votes and Cruz has pocketed over 376,000.

Of the 1,560,820 ballots cast in the California Republican primary, Kasich won 176,620 votes (11.3 percent) while Cruz placed third with 144,125 votes (9.2 percent).

California delegate rules give the GOP candidate holding the majority of votes in any of the 53 congressional districts all three district delegates; Trump won it all.

Cruz and Kasich have picked up delegates elsewhere, however.

When Oregon held its GOP contest more than a week after Trump became the last candidate standing, Cruz managed to walk away with 61,590 votes and Kasich with 59,096.

They each picked up five delegates in the state. Kasich also picked up one in West Virginia, which also voted after Trump emerged as the lone primary survivor.

The two candidates continued to rack up thousands of votes through the final primaries this past Tuesday -- though that didn't add to their delegate counts in part because states like New Jersey hold winner-take-all primaries. Trump easily won, taking all the delegates. In total, Cruz has 559 delegates to his name, Kasich has 161, and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio has 165.

That's not to overlook the historic primary support Trump has earned since February: more than 13 million votes. He's working to unify the party, but also touts broad support that includes independents and cross-over Democrats. As of Friday, he had 1,542 delegates, well over the 1,237 needed to clinch.

On Thursday, Kasich told Fox News Bill Hemmer that he feels no special obligation to endorse Trump ahead of the Republican convention being hosted in his home state next month.

Were like two companies, you know, we have a different vision, a different value system and a different objective.  The divisiveness, the division, the name-calling, it just doesnt go down well with me.

Still, GOP strategist Brad Blakeman downplayed the impact of Republican holdouts in places like Ohio, California and Oregon -- arguing that in the general election, the unease in the party might not hurt him.

The broad appeal of Donald Trump needs to be broad, way beyond the base, he told FoxNews.coms "Strategy Room." We need to appeal to independents and fiscally conservative Democrats, and you dont do that being a fringe candidate because there arent enough of those people who are going to come out and vote.
When Oregon Governor Kate Brown signed a minimum wage bill into law in March, it was the highest statewide wage floor in the U.S. It was also the most convoluted, setting three different wages and raise schedules depending on the area's population. 

Wages will rise to $12.50 in rural Oregon, $13.50 in mid-size regions and $14.75 in greater Portland, all by the year 2022.

But before the ink was even dry, Democrats, who control the state House, Senate and governor's office, announced they wanted to change the bill that was rammed through in a five-week legislative session despite fierce Republican opposition.

"They just wanted to pass something," said economist Eric Fruits, a Portland Republican. "They were really worried about the 15 Now people sending something to the ballot, and I think they got so snakebit they would have passed anything that was called a minimum wage increase."

Labor unions, spearheaded by the S.E.I.U., had been collecting signatures for a $15 statewide wage initiative and hoping to build on recent victories in several cities.

But Oregon Democrats acted before state economists even had a chance to weigh in. Last week, state analysts concluded in a prepared forecast the high wage will "result in approximately 40,000 fewer jobs in 2025 than would have been the case absent the legislation."

Orchard owner John Zielinski said his family business will take a big hit.

"When those pears and apples are sold on the market, they're not going to give us any more money because we're from Oregon and have a higher pay rate," said Zielinski of E.Z. Orchards.

Rural counties threatened to file a lawsuit against the state, calling the minimum wage a maximum mess and an unfunded mandate. Oregon's constitution allows local governments to opt out of state programs that raise costs significantly and are not funded by the legislature.

Hearing the outcry, Democratic leaders quickly admitted they may have messed up. They promised a fix-it bill next year allowing for a lower training wages for young workers and some new hires.

But not everyone in the party or the public is onboard with the proposed changes. Low wage worker activists and some Democrats fear a loophole that will be abused.

"I think having a sub-minimum wage, while it might sound good, could end up hurting the very people we're trying to help," said Democratic state Senator Diane Rosenbaum.

Republican leaders support the fixes, including a possible exemption for some Eastern Oregon farmers who, if nothing changes, will have to pay $5 more per hour for labor than their competitors across the state line in Idaho.
President Barack Obama has said that the ascension of Donald Trump to become the presumptive Republican presidential nominee is "not actually good for the country" and "not something Democrats should wish for."

Obama made the remarks in a pre-recorded interview on NBC's "The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon" that aired Thursday evening.

When Fallon asked Obama whether he thought Republicans were happy with primary voters' choice of Trump, Obama jokingly responded, "We [Democrats] are" before adding,"the truth is I am actually worried about the Republican Party."

"You want the Republican nominee to be somebody who could do the job if they win," Obama said. "So I am actually not enjoying, and I haven't been enjoying over the last seven years, watching some of the things that have happened in the Republican Party, because there's some good people in the Republican Party."

The interview, which was recorded Wednesday, aired hours after Obama endorsed his former rival and secretary of state Hillary Clinton, who fought off a surprisingly robust challenge from Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders to clinch the Democratic nomination this week. Obama told Fallon that he thought Sanders "made Hillary a better candidate."

"It was a healthy thing for the Democratic Party to have, a contested primary," he said. "I thought that Bernie Sanders brought enormous energy and new ideas. And he pushed the party and challenged them."

Obama, who became the first sitting president to appear on the long-running late-night program, opened the show by joining Fallon to "slow jam" the news. The segment reprised an appearance by Obama on the Fallon-hosted "Late Night" in 2012.
As if the 2016 cycle couldnt get any uglier, a nasty war of words broke out Friday when Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid accused a Republican senator of praying for President Obamas death.

The allegations followed Georgia Sen. David Perdues remarks Friday to a Faith and Freedom Coalition conference in Washington.

We are called to pray for our country, for our leaders, and yes, even our president, Perdue said. I think we should pray for Barack Obama.

He added, We need to be very specific about how we pray. We should pray like Psalms 109:8 says. It says, 'Let his days be few, and let another have his office.'

Reid spokeswoman Kristen Orthman let Perdue have it, claiming he had just issued a call to prayer for Obamas demise  as opposed to the end of his term.

If Republicans are still wondering why Donald Trump is their nominee, look no further than todays Faith and Freedom conference where a sitting Republican Senator left the impression he was praying for the death of President Obama and then the Republican Leader followed him on stage and did not condemn him, she said in a statement.

Perdues office rejected the allegation.

Megan Whittmore said in a statement: "Senator Perdue said we are called to pray for our country, for our leaders, and for our president. He in no way wishes harm towards our president and everyone in the room understood that. However, we should add the media to our prayer list because they are pushing a narrative to create controversy and that is exactly what the American people are tired of."

Perdue was speaking at the same Washington conference that Donald Trump addressed Friday afternoon.

In the remarks, he made clear he was joking. In all seriousness, I believe that America is at a moment of crisis, he added.

He did not recite the next lines of Psalm 109, which are: Let his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow.

Asked later at Friday's briefing whether the senator should apologize, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said: As Senator Perdue considers whether or not an apology is appropriate, there are a variety of other Scripture he might consult.

Fox News Chad Pergram contributed to this report.
Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, now at the starting line of a general election race, traded shots across the capital Friday in dueling addresses before two very different D.C. audiences -- each warning the other would take the country backward.

Trump headlined the Faith and Freedom Coalitions Road to Majority summit while Clinton addressed a Planned Parenthood national conference.

Trump, looking to solidify his standing with evangelical Christians, offered assurances Friday that he would restore respect for people of faith -- and stressed the sanctity and dignity of life.

If there was any doubt he wanted to throw Clinton's Planned Parenthood speech into sharp relief, he took on his presumptive rival later in his remarks. Trump warned Clinton would "appoint radical judges," eliminate the Second Amendment, "restrict religious freedom with government mandates," and "push for federal funding of abortion on demand up until the moment of birth."

He also cast her support for bringing in Syrian refugees as a potential clash of faiths. "Hillary will bring hundreds of thousands of refugees, many of whom have hostile beliefs about people of different faiths and values," he said.

Clinton, meanwhile, in her first speech as the Democratic Partys presumptive nominee, said a Trump presidency would take the country back to a time when abortion was illegal  and life for too many women and girls was limited.

Clinton thanked the nonprofit womens health group and abortion provider for their support in the Democratic primary race. In January, Planned Parenthood backed Clinton, offering its first-ever primary endorsement in the groups 100-year history.

Clinton made it clear that womens issues would be a staple of her campaign, promising abortion rights supporters that she would always have your back if elected president.

Clinton repeated claims that Trump wants to take America back to a time when women had less opportunity and freedom.

Well, Donald, those days are over. We are not going to let Donald Trump -- or anybody else -- turn back the clock, she told the cheering crowd.

Before arriving at the event, Clinton held a private meeting at her D.C. home with Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who has been rumored to be a consideration for running mate.

Echoing some of the attacks Warren has made in recent days, Clinton attempted to elevate the importance of this election.

We are in the middle of a concerted, persistent assault on womens health across the country, warned Clinton, who said the 2016 election was profoundly different than previous elections.

In what is a campaign trail staple of hers, Clinton highlighted Trumps insults toward women and asserted that it would be hard to imagine depending on him to defend the fundamental rights of women.

Trump, meanwhile, continued calling Clinton, crooked Hillary and referred to her ongoing email scandal. He took her to task on her domestic and foreign policy stances.

Trump was interrupted by protesters at the annual gathering of evangelical Christians. The protesters shouted Stop hate! Stop Trump! and refugees are welcome here.

Trump called the chants a little freedom of speech but added it was also a little rude, but what can you do?
Perhaps it was an unguarded moment, but the White House has seemingly confirmed that the Justice Department is conducting a criminal investigation regarding Hillary Clintons personal email use  despite persistent claims from the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee that investigators are pursuing a mere security inquiry.

Press Secretary Josh Earnest used the term at Thursdays briefing, after being asked by Fox News about whether President Obamas newly unveiled endorsement of Clinton might apply pressure to investigators assigned to the Clinton case.

Earnest rejected the premise, saying the job of career prosecutors is to follow the evidence to its logical conclusion.

That's why the president, when discussing this issue in each stage, has reiterated his commitment to this principle that any criminal investigation should be conducted independent of any sort of political interference, Earnest said.

The Republican National Committee seized on the use of the term criminal investigation.

The White Houses admission that the FBI is investigating Hillary Clintons email server as a criminal matter shreds her dishonest claim that it is a routine security inquiry, RNC spokesman Michael Short said in a statement.

Asked Friday to clarify his comments, Earnest said he hasnt been briefed by the Justice Department and had no particular insight to give.

In fact, FBI Director James Comey had already shot down the Clinton campaigns terminology last month. Asked at the time by Fox News about Clinton's characterization of the bureau's probe, Comey said he doesnt know what "security inquiry" means -- adding, Were conducting an investigation.  Thats what we do.

Yet days earlier, Clinton in an interview had downplayed the probe as a security inquiry.

And her campaign website still asserts there is no criminal investigation.

On a campaign factsheet about the email controversy, the website includes this Q&A:

Is Department of Justice conducting a criminal inquiry into Clintons email use?

No. As the Department of Justice and Inspectors General made clear, the IGs made a security referral. This was not criminal in nature as misreported by some in the press. The Department of Justice is now seeking assurances about the storage of materials related to Clintons email account.

Clinton has voiced confidence all along that, no matter what its called, the probe will not result in an indictment.

She said so again on Wednesday during an interview with Fox News.

That is not going to happen. There is no basis for it, and I'm looking forward to this being wrapped up as soon as possible, she said.

The Wall Street Journal reported overnight that investigators handling the criminal probe are focusing on emails that discussed drone strikes in Pakistan.
In depths of the ocean where light can't penetrate, there are fish that generate their own eerie glow  shining spotlights on their prey, flashing warning signs to deter predators, or trading signals within their own species.

And since the first of these creatures lit up the seas about 150 million years ago, the ability to produce light  known as bioluminescence  evolved across fish species far more often than scientists suspected, according to a new study.

Researchers analyzed lineages of glowing fishes, tracing them back to their origins in the early Cretaceous period (145.5 million to 65.5 million years ago). They found that bioluminescence emerged 29 times in marine fish across 14 clades  groups that diverged from a single shared ancestor.

More from LiveScience: See Images of the Amazing Glowing Fish That Light Up Oceans

And there are likely many more instances of evolving bioluminescence radiating throughout the entire tree of life, study co-author John Sparks told Live Science.

Sparks, a curator of ichthyology at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, explained that before the study, bioluminescence was thought to have evolved just 40 times across all known species  so discovering 29 instances in fish alone is a very big deal.

"Bioluminescence is so bizarre, for it just to evolve once is amazing," Sparks said. "But to show that it's evolved all these times independently just among marine fishes is almost shocking."

Shining on

And fishes are known to use light in a variety of ways, according to study co-author Leo Smith, an assistant curator at the University of Kansas Biodiversity Institute.

Deep-sea hatchetfishes and dragonfishes use light-producing organs called photophores on their bellies for camouflage; the photophore patterns on their bellies mimic light streaming down from the surface and render the fishes effectively invisible to predators that might be looking up. These types of photophores typically appear earliest in a lineage, Sparks said.

Photophores along the sides of fishes' faces, such as dragonfish, are used to communicate within their own species, Sparks said, and tend to first appear further along the family tree, so more recently than other photophores.

Bioluminescence can also help fish catch their prey. Illuminated net devils have long, flexible appendages on their heads called barbels that are tipped with a photophore, which they use to lure smaller fish into their waiting jaws, Smith said.

For bioluminescent fish that communicate with light signals, the arrangement of their light organs varies from species to species  but what each species' signals might look like and what flashing patterns they might use are still unknown, Sparks said.

"We're currently developing camera technology that can capture those patterns in life," he told Live Science. "They need to be very fast to work in low light and see how those unique signals are firing. Cameras can't do that yet, but we're working on it."

The researchers also discovered that once bioluminescence appeared in a lineage, diversification along that lineage into more species soon followed. And groups that used bioluminescence to communicate were particularly diverse and species-rich.

If a lineage of fishes developed unique bioluminescent signals for mate recognition, that ability tended to accompany a radiation of unique species, "like colors and ornamentation in birds being tied to high diversity," Smith told Live Science in an email.

A bright future

What's next? The team will investigate bioluminescence on a genetic level, according to Sparks, to understand how bioluminescent fish evolved to catalyze the chemical that gives them their glow.

"There's this whole system, and we don't know where it comes from," Sparks said. "There are still tons of questions  that's what makes this so interesting."

And the questions apply to more animals than just fishes, Smith added, as scientists begin to identify the number of times bioluminescence evolved independently across the animal kingdom.

"Once all the biodiversity scientists do this, we can begin to ask about the role of bioluminescence and explore the impact of its evolution on animals," Smith said.

The findings were published online today (June 8) in the journal PLOS ONE.

Copyright 2016 LiveScience, a Purch company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
On April 12, 1981, NASA astronauts John Young and Bob Crippen climbed aboard the space shuttle Columbia for a mission unprecedented in human history. For the first time, a crewed spacecraft was going to be tested with humans aboard on its inaugural flight. And this wasn't just any spacecraft  the enormous delta-wing orbiter was utterly unlike any of the capsules that humans had flown since Yuri Gagarin first flew to space exactly 20 years earlier.

The launch of Columbia appeared to go perfectly. But, after the astronauts opened the payload bay doors on orbit, they spotted missing protective thermal tiles at the aft end of the orbiter. The question was whether other tiles had been knocked off on the crucial underside of the ship. If they had been, the shuttle could burn up during re-entry.

The secret effort by NASA and the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) to find the answer to this question using spy satellites is recounted in Rowland White's new book, "Into the Black: The Extraordinary Untold Story of the First Flight of the Space Shuttle Columbia and the Astronauts Who Flew Her" (Touchstone, 2016). [STS-1: The First Space Shuttle Flight in Photos]

Released in April, in time for the 35th anniversary of Columbia's first flight, the book is much more than a recounting of the 2.5-day flight. White tells the story of how a group of astronauts from the U.S. Air Force's canceled Manned Orbiting Laboratory helped form the core of the team that got the shuttle to orbit. The author also follows the orbiter's difficult development history through the 1970s, particularly the fragile thermal protection tiles.

Space.com recently spoke with White about the book.

Space.com: What made you pursue this project?

Rowland White: I was born in 1970 and grew up as an aviation nut. Of course, the last time that the American astronauts launched in the '70s was in 1975 for Apollo Soyuz. So I sort of missed out on the excitement of the whole Apollo program. So when the shuttle launched in 1981, it really captured my imagination for two reasons, really. One, it was the first time that I had been old enough to really enjoy the launch of American astronauts. The second reason was that here was a spacecraft with wings, it wasn't one of sorts of spidery tin cans that had taken astronauts to the moon. It was a sort of spacecraft out of the pages of science fiction, designed to carry a crew of up to seven or eight people on a mission of a couple of weeks, before swooping down and landing at an airfield ready to fly again. It just felt like it was the machine that was almost designed to capture my imagination in a way that with Apollo I sort of missed out on.

Space.com: Why did you focus on the first mission as opposed to a broader kind of book that might have covered the whole program?

White: I hope that through the sort of prism of that first flight I'd be able to draw in the various strands of the shuttle's development, the story of the astronauts, the story of the relationship between NASA and the military. And have at the heart of the story a sort of single focal point that would mean I can build a narrative that felt like a thriller, although I hope that all of the history and the science was rigorous and accurate. But I wanted to try to build a narrative that really had readers ripping through the pages to a sort of climax that felt like the last act of a big movie. In order to do that, you've really got to have a focal point, you have to have characters that readers can invest in, and you've got to have those characters in a situation that involves a measure of jeopardy and uncertainty. And in first flight of the shuttle where so much was unknown despite all the testing, despite all the research. So much was unknown about how she would perform in reality, that you had all of that. In John Young and Bob Crippen, you had a pair of really interesting characters flying together on board the shuttle's first flight.

Space.com: How would you describe their differences and their characters and how they meshed together?

White: They were to an extent a different generation. John Young had come up through Gemini and Apollo. He was very much a contemporary; obviously he first flew with Gus Grissom, a contemporary of Neil Armstrong. He sort of conducted himself in a different way to Bob Crippen, who always sort of seemed looser, more at ease, a sort of a cooler character somehow. I really came to appreciate and like enormously John Young. First of all, it's impossible to question either his experience or his competence or his intelligence, but I really came to value his incredibly dry and very funny sense of humor as well. I think he had a sort of perfect sense of comic timing. John Young, when he was asked whether or not he was nervous about the first flight of Columbia, said anyone who climbs aboard the biggest hydrogen oxygen explosion and isn't a little nervous doesn't appreciate the gravity of the situation they're in. He was a funny guy.

Bob Crippen obviously came to the shuttle along a very different path. Throughout the '60s he was kind of immersed in the black world of the Manned Orbiting Laboratory project. He had come through Chuck Yeager's Aerospace Research Pilot School at Edwards. And then he was part of the MOL program for the whole of the '60s. He was a refugee from that program in 1969. He and Richard Truly and Gordon Fullerton and a handful of others were taken on by NASA in 1969 kind of rather against Deke Slayton's better judgment because it was reckoned that NASA would need Air Force support for the shuttle, and that taking on some of these refugee military astronauts might win favors from the Air Force.

Space.com: How many of these guys did you get to talk to? Did you get to talk to Young and Crippen?

White: I spoke to Crip and Dick Truly, Fred Haise. I spoke to Joe Engle. I spoke to a handful of the TFNG's [Thirty-Five New Guys] like John McBride and Dan Brandenstein, Rich Hauck. I spoke to George Abbey. I spoke to Tom Moser, who was head of the structural mechanics division, Hugh Harris, who was the public affairs officer. As well as meeting and talking to some of the astronauts and engineers and administrators involved, I also made great use of the incredible JSC (Johnson Space Center) oral history program. The archive there is extraordinary, and I really went through that with a fine-tooth comb.

Space.com: Did John Young not want to speak?

White: John Young was the only member of that first primary crew and reserve crew that I didn't get to talk to, and it was a great shame. As I understand it, he's not in the best of health. Thankfully, he's published an autobiography and that alongside of a lot of interviews with him, film footage of him, and written material, allowed me, I think, to certainly get a feel for him.

Space.com: Did you pursue any big mysteries in the book?

White: We know that a request of the Air Force for photographs of Columbia on orbit in 2003 was rescinded by Mission Control. So I asked one of the astronauts, in 1981 when you knew that there was damage to the heat shield, did NASA ask the Air Force for pictures? And he sort of chuckled to himself and said, "You know, that's a great story and I can't tell you a thing about it."

That, of course, that was the moment when I thought, that's the story I want to tell. Because that's the one which no one knows. That became the ambition from that point [] to try to bring that story to light. And it remained deeply classified. No one who knew what had happened could go on the record. They couldn't even mention the names of the spy satellites involved. They couldn't give me confirmation or not.

I had to go looking for a proper smoking gun, proper evidence that confirmed beyond all reasonable doubt in my mind that this is what happened and this is how it happened and when it happened and where it happened. That was a fantastic and exciting piece of detective work, which I hope I've kind of brought to life in an exciting and a dramatic way in the book. [Countdown: 10 Amazing Space Shuttle Photos]

Space.com: An interesting part of the book for me is how you talk about how they designed it for the stresses and also the whole heat shield issue.

White: They couldn't use the same approach they had used in Apollo. They couldn't use an ablative shield because it was by definition not reusable because its destruction was the thing that protected it by creating a sort of layer of plasma gas. You couldn't use metal because it buckled and twisted under heat, and the gaps that it would create would destroy the airframe. And so they had to look for something entirely new, and they settled on sand, essentially, silica sand.

You know that the surface of a desert is, essentially, impervious to heat and cold. It doesn't change shape, however hot it gets or however cold it gets. And that was the quality of the silica that was so valued in the tiles. But it was also brittle, so you couldn't just attach big sheets of it to the shuttle airframe because the shuttle airframe is made of metal. You see an airliner's wings flex as you go through turbulence. The shuttle, while it may have been more rigid a structure than an airliner wing, twisted, flexed and moved through different parts of the flight envelope. And big sheets of that silica material would have cracked and crumbled as the machine underneath it twisted.

So they made this incredible mosaic of 33,000 tiles, each one individually numbered and shaped, and that was what protected the aluminum skin beneath from the temperatures on the other side of the tile of 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit. Aluminum melts at 1,200 degrees Fahrenheit. And so, two or three inches of silica tile  which are incredible light  are managing to prevent that incredible heat on the other side reaching the skin beneath it. It was a really novel and ingenious solution to the problem of the heat shield.

[Engineers developed a method of keeping the fragile tiles attached to the orbiter. But, they miscalculated the strength of the sonic shock wave produced by the shuttle's two solid rocket motors. The shock wave  10 times more powerful than projected  bounced off the launch pad and knocked tiles off the back of the orbiter.]

Space.com: There were some rather harrowing aspects of the re-entry as well, right?

White: I mentioned the body flap, which was critical to controlling the shuttle, and the point at which it looked as if they might exceed the limits that the body flap could cope with and lose control of the shuttle as a result. The other thing that was not anticipated was the extent to which the shuttle's tail would kind of fishtail, would sort of swing outside of the expected limits.

And this is quite an interesting point. This is something John Young was always quick to point out. It demonstrated on that occasion just how critical the computers were to the shuttle's fortunes. What was happening with that porpoising tail was that it was beyond what a human pilot could have coped with. So without the avionics, without the computers supporting what John Young was doing, again, the limitations of what the shuttle could have coped with would have been exceeded, and she would have been lost. It was a high-wire act, that first flight. The only way of establishing whether the space shuttle system worked, whether or not that 10-year design process, the computers, the heat shield, the solid rocket motors, the main engines, the only way of working out and proving that all of that worked ultimately was to fly her. And so that's why that first shuttle flight was described by contemporaries of Young and Crippen as the boldest test flight in history. Because it was the only occasion before or since, and I'm sure it will never happen again, it's been the only occasion where a manned spacecraft has ever been launched with a crew on board without first being tested in an unmanned configuration.

Space.com: That's true. You had monkeys flying on Mercury and you had a bunch of unmanned tests in Gemini and Apollo.

White: But, here Young and Crippen ponied up and strapped themselves into the cockpit. We get used to acts of courage from astronauts, but it was an extraordinarily ballsy thing to do.

Original article on Space.com.
Solar Impulse 2 is expected to arrive in New York early Saturday on the latest leg of its solar-powered journey around the world.

The plane will take off from Lehigh Valley, Pennsylvania around 11 p.m ET Friday, arriving at JFK airport in New York about 5 hours later after a flyby of the Statue of Liberty.

Solar Impulse 2 was originally scheduled to arrive in New York early on Tuesday but the flight was postponed due to bad weather.

Related: Solar Impulse 2 postpones New York flight

The flight will mark the 14th leg of the solar planes historic solar-powered trip around the world.

Finally coming to #NYC to fly over the #StatueofLiberty tonight, tweeted pilot Andre Borschberg Friday.

The plane is the brainchild of explorer and Solar Impulse Chairman Piccard, who is taking it in turns with his fellow Swiss pilot Borschberg to fly the aircraft on its journey across the globe.

Related: Solar Impulse 2 reaches Hawaii, shatters records in historic Pacific flight

The aircraft, a larger version of a single-seat prototype that first flew six years ago, is made of carbon fiber and has 17,248 solar cells built into the wing that supply the plane with renewable energy, via four motors. The solar cells recharge four lithium polymer batteries, which provide power for night flying.

Solar Impulse 2 typically flies between 30 mph and 40 mph, although this can increase and decrease significantly depending on wind speed.

The plane has travelled 18,375 miles since setting off from on the first leg of the trip from Abu Dhabi to Oman in March 2015, and has racked up almost 385 hours of flight time.

Related: Solar Impulse 2s epic journey in pictures

Prior to its arrival in Lehigh Valley, Solar Impulse 2 made stops in India, Myanmar, China, Japan, Hawaii, California, Phoenix, Tulsa and Dayton. From New York, the plane will fly across the Atlantic Ocean to Europe. The final leg of the odyssey is from Europe to Abu Dhabi.

The plane proves the immense potential of solar-powered technology, according to Piccard. Solar Impulse 2, he told FoxNews.com last year, could spark increased interest in technologies such as LED lights and electric cars, as well as lightweight vehicles.

A huge inflatable mobile hangar that can be quickly assembled and disassembled is being used to shelter Solar Impulse 2 on its journey around the world.

Follow James Rogers on Twitter @jamesjrogers

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
This story has been updated to reflect the removal of Donald Trump's image from the search result.

Googles search function is once again in the spotlight for connecting Donald Trump and Adolf Hitler.

Typing When was Hitler born into the search engine Friday generated some of the expected information on the Nazi dictator, but also a Donald Trump image and link. Trumps image appeared alongside that of Hitlers wife, Eva Braun, and Charlie Chaplin, who famously satirized the Nazi leader in his 1940 movie The Great Dictator.

The unusual search result caught the attention and sparked debate on the online forum Reddit, and has spread across the internet. Google told FoxNews.com that it was looking into why Trumps image would appear alongside Hitlers. The search giant subsequently removed the image of Trump from the search result.

Google said that the image will be removed from the search result until it can clarify why it appears.

Related: Reddit administrators accused of censorship

Some Trump critics have compared the presumptive Republican presidential candidate to Hitler, which could be influencing Googles search algorithms. And theres certainly no shortage of Trump references online. A Trump Hitler Google search Friday generated 25.7 million results. A Trump Clinton search, meanwhile, returned 199 million results.

This is not the first time the search engine has connected the two men. In December, The Pulse 2016 reported Google showed Hitlers Mein Kampf in response to an image search for Trumps book Crippled America: How to Make America Great Again.

The Trump-Hitler issue is the second controversy involving Google search this week. Googles autocomplete function, which offers potential searches to users based on the topic they type into the engine, was questioned in a report released Thursday for allegedly favoring presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.

Related: Zuckerberg denies Facebook has anti-conservative bias

In a video posted to YouTube, the pop culture website SourceFed said the search engine generated less critical autocomplete results than Yahoo! and Bing for similar Hillary Clinton-related searches. Typing Hillary Clinton cri, into Google, for example, generates the autocomplete results crime reform, crisis and crime bill 1994, whereas autocomplete results on Yahoo! and Bing generate phrases that are much more critical.

Google has denied any autocomplete bias. "Google Autocomplete does not favor any candidate or cause, the company said in a statement emailed to FoxNews.com. Claims to the contrary simply misunderstand how Autocomplete works. Our Autocomplete algorithm will not show a predicted query that is offensive or disparaging when displayed in conjunction with a person's name. The Mountain View, Calif.-based firm adds that, more generally, its autocomplete predictions are produced based on a number of factors, including the popularity of search terms.

In a blog post Friday Google explained that autocomplete "isnt an exact science," noting that the output of the prediction algorithms changes frequently. "Predictions are produced based on a number of factors including the popularity and freshness of search terms," it added. "Given that search activity varies, the terms that appears in Autocomplete for you may change over time."

Follow James Rogers on Twitter @jamesjrogers
People using apps to alert each other about animal sightings in South Africas national parks are causing problems like speeding, road rage, and even road kills, a problem that concerns the countrys national park organization.

In fact, South African National Parks (SANParks) is even looking into a legal way to reduce the use of the apps.

Its especially a problem in Kruger National Park, a 7,580 square mile preserve thats home to over 147 species of mammals, including lions, elephants, leopards and rhinos.

Related: Watch this endangered monkey 'chat' with a camera

After people started using the apps, the problems like congestion and speeding increased, according to SANParks.

As an organisation we appreciate the fact that technology has evolved and that guests are taking advantage of it, however this is compromising the values of good game viewing in national parks, Hapiloe Sello, SANParks managing executive for tourism development and marketing, said in a statement.

The apps run contrary to the philosophy of the parks, Sello said, where people can drive around without any rush and possibly just see an animal fortuitously.

Related: Incredible photos show injured owl hugging the man who took care of her

We at SANParks discourage the use of these mobile applications as they tend to induce an unhealthy sense of eagerness for visitors to break the rules and, we are exploring legal mechanisms to curtail the use of sightings apps, Sello added.

The teenage inventor of one such app, Latest Kruger Sightings, spoke with the BBC, telling them hed like to work with the park to solve the issues.

He added that the app was intended to be about enriching people's experience in the park - but if there are other effects, then we need to look at that."

Related: Dogs were domesticated twice, new DNA research shows

Meanwhile, in the United States, parks have also explored the fraught relationship between technology and nature, with national parks cracking down on the use of drones.

Follow Rob Verger on Twitter: @robverger
Six airlines won permission Friday to resume scheduled commercial air service from the U.S. to Cuba for the first time in more than five decades, another milestone in President Barack Obama's campaign to normalize relations between the Cold War foes.

The airlines  American, Frontier, JetBlue, Silver Airways, Southwest and Sun Country  were approved by the Department of Transportation for a total of 155 roundtrip flights per week. They'll fly from five U.S. cities to nine cities in Cuba other than Havana.

The airlines must begin service within 90 days of the dates proposed in their applications, although they can request an extension if they need more time. Some of the airlines have been working for months on logistics and have told the department they could start flying in as few as 60 days. Other airlines have indicated they may need as many as four months to get ready. Most service is expected to begin this fall and early winter, the department said.

Approval is still required by the Cuban government, but the carriers say they plan to start selling tickets in the next few weeks while they wait for signoffs from Cuba.

U.S. law still prohibits tourist travel to Cuba, but a dozen other categories of travel are permitted, including family visits, official business, journalist visits, professional meetings and educational and religious activities. The Obama administration has eased rules to the point where travelers are now free to design their own "people-to-people" cultural exchange tours with very little oversight.

More than a year ago, Obama announced it was time to "begin a new journey" with the communist country. "Today we are delivering on his promise," said Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx.

As it considers opening routes to Havana, the department's selection process has been complicated because airlines have requested far more routes than are available under the U.S. agreement with Cuba. A decision on Havana routes is expected later this summer.

The routes approved Friday were not contested because there was less interest among U.S. airlines in flying to Cuban locations other than Havana. The routes include service from Miami, Chicago, Philadelphia, Minneapolis and Fort Lauderdale, Florida. The Cuban cities are Camaguey, Cayo Coco, Cayo Largo, Cienfuegos, Holguin, Manzanillo, Matanzas, Santa Clara and Santiago de Cuba.

All flights currently operating between the two countries are charters, but the agreement the administration signed with Cuba in February allows for up to 110 additional flights  more than five times the current charter operations.

The Transportation Security Administration is in the process of completing a security review of Cuban airports expected to have direct flights to the United States, and is working with the Cuban government to schedule and complete the security assessment of any additional airports that propose to begin service, the agency said in a statement.

American Airlines has been the most aggressive in its approach, requesting more than half the possible slots to Havana plus service to five other, smaller Cuban cities. The airline has a large hub in Miami, home to the largest Cuban-American population. The Fort Worth, Texas-based airline has also been flying aircraft on behalf of charter companies for the longest time, since 1991.

U.S. airlines have been feverishly working to establish relationships with Cuban authorities. For instance, American had a number of meetings this week in Havana with Cuban aviation and banking officials.

"We have been working for months on this plan," Galo Beltran, Cuba country manager for American Airlines told The Associated Press this week during the trip to Havana. "For us, it is going to be fairly easy because of the experience we have."

Cuba already has seen startling growth in aviation. Last year, it saw 18 percent more passengers than in 2014, according to government aviation officials.

Currently, 46 airlines fly to Cuba, including Air France, Aeromexico, KLM, Air Canada, Areoflot and Iberia.

Cuban aviation officials say they are ready for the extra flights but that questions remain, especially at Havana's airport, about where the additional planes will park.

There has been plenty of interest by Americans in visiting Cuba since relations between the two nations started to thaw in December 2014. Nearly 160,000 U.S. leisure travelers flew to Cuba last year, along with hundreds of thousands of Cuban-Americans visiting family.

Prices for an hourlong charter flight are about $500, while commercial airlines will probably offer flights for significantly less than that amount, although none have publicly discussed pricing. The check-in process for charters is also a cumbersome one, and the companies lack the traditional supports of commercial aviation such as online booking and 24-hour customer service.
Attorneys for the man accused in the shooting deaths of nine parishioners at a South Carolina church have filed notice that they want to forgo a jury trial and have the judge hearing the death-penalty case decide their client's fate.

The court document shows that attorneys for Dylann Roof filed the notice Thursday in U.S. District Court. In the filing, lead defense attorney David Bruck acknowledges that federal prosecutors have said they will not consent to waive the jury.

The 22-year-old Roof faces federal charges including hate crimes in connection to the shootings, which took place June 17 during a Bible study at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston. The trial is scheduled to begin on Nov. 7.

Roof faces nine counts of murder in a state trial set to begin in January.
Jennifer Lawrence recently starred in a lukewarm-reviewed biopic about Joy Mangano, an entrepreneur who made millions selling the self-wringing Miracle Mop on QVC.

Related: What Entrepreneurs Can Learn From Theranos's Fall From Grace

Now, shes signed on to a film about Elizabeth Holmes, the CEO and founder of Theranos, a biotech company once valued at $9 billion. After a series of investigations exposed its miracle blood-testing product didnt work so well, Holmes, 32, has been knocked off her perch as one of the most successful female entrepreneurs of recent time. All of the drama will play out in the upcoming film.

Adam McKay, who directed The Big Short and Anchorman, has taken on the project, according to Deadline.

Related: Theranos Doesn't Just Need New Executive Assistants. It Needs a New Executive.

No one knows what will happen next in the Theranos saga, but Holmes has not retreated from the company she founded as a Stanford sophomore. Theranos has bolstered its board with medical experts and is hiring dozens of new employees, including executive and personal assistants for Holmes. Most recently, Forbes has issued a new net worth for Holmes, knocking her down from $4.5 billion to virtually $0.
When it comes to getting major influencers to help with your marketing efforts, you can be embarking down a treacherous path. While its crucial to on-board folks who have a lot of sway with your market, you have to be careful not to rub them the wrong way.

In some cases, it can be just as easy to either get ignored by the influencers altogether, or goad them into giving you the wrong kind of marketing. With that in mind, here are four dos and four donts to pay attention to when you are trying to get influencers to help market your product.

1. Do choose your influencers wisely.

First, and probably most importantly, is to choose the right influencers to reach out to. You want to make sure their following is actually part of your market. That way, your message gets conveyed to people who will actually have an interest in what youre promoting.

For example, in 2010 when author Shel Horowitz published his 10th book, "Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green," he quickly identified that the appropriate influencers for his market would be newsletter publishers, bloggers, best-selling authors and the like. He reached out to these influencers, and saw tremendous results from the campaign.

Based on a Google search showing 1,070,000 responses for an exact-match search for the book title, I estimate that at least 5,000,000 people were exposed to the campaign (that would be a very low average of five people seeing each page).

Also, remember that bigger isnt always better. Victor Ricci of Trend Pie says that targeting the big name social celebrities is nice but doesnt always have the best results. When looking to get the lowest CPI, engagement is much more important than follower count.

Related: How Influencer Marketing Moves Beyond Raising Awareness

2. Do amplify influencer messages.

Influencers are often under tremendous pressure to drive traffic to their message, so anything you can do to help them do that will be noticed and greatly appreciated. You should find an influencer you greatly admire, and start amplifying their content by sharing it on your own social media networks. Be sure to tag the influencer so he or she knows what youre doing.

Digital marketing entrepreneur Spencer X. Smith found out just how powerful this courtship could be when he began sharing articles by Cheryl Conner of Forbes. He would share her stories on LinkedIn and Twitter, always providing his own thoughts about the piece and how his audience might use it. As a result of his efforts, Conner actually contacted Smith to be the subject of a feature article at Forbes.

3. Do offer influencers something to entice them.

Sometimes, just building the relationship might not be enough. Many influencers need something a bit more tangible than just you sharing their message, so you need to entice them. This could take the form of a charitable donation in the influencers name or something more along the lines of helping the influencer get even more exposure.

For example, Cloudways struggled at first to get influencers to promote its new cloud hosting management platform. They pitched a list of influencers one at a time, and were either ignored or told they were being too pushy. While part of this might be a lack of relationship-building first, what finally worked for Cloudways tells the rest of the story.

Cloudways reached out to influencers again, this time inviting them to be interviewed for the companys blog. This got the attention of several influencers, especially mid-level ones and the response was strong enough that Cloudways has published more than 120 interviews and has created a community that loves the companys product and talks about it often.

Related: Enterprise Tech Takes the Guess Work Out of Influencer Marketing

4. Do use an evangelical approach.

Remember who youre approaching. Top influencers respond to a different kind of value propositions than regular users. While regular users respond to quantitative value propositions like cheaper, smaller, or faster, top influencers are more interested in qualitative value propositions. This is where youll use words like revolutionary, breakthrough, and game-changing. Influencers want to be involved in exciting ventures, so you need to attract their attention with engaging text.

Rick Carlile, the founder of Aegora.com, the Professional Marketplace, used a very evangelical approach in trying to attract influencers to come on board. As a result of his influencer marketing campaign, Aegora.com was able to attract around 500 high-quality signups to the site, a tremendous number in a highly competitive niche.

5. Dont spam influencers with follow ups.

Yes, you should follow up with your influencer, but dont be obnoxious about it. This means having a bit of patience, since most influencers are very busy people and may not have an opportunity to reply to your email in just a day or two. If you dont hear back from the influencer within a week, then its probably safe to send a follow up email.

Adarsh Thampy, CEO of LeadFerry, points out that you have to walk a fine line between persistence and pushiness. Thampy suggests you should send no more than two follow ups, with at least a weeks gap in between, to maximize your chances of success. Remember, though, not to be pushy:

It goes without saying. But influencers are humans too. Do you feel like doing something if someone you barely know acts pushy? No. When you face resistance, let it go.

6. Dont forget to build influencer relationships.

Remember our suggestion in the dos section about courting your influencer? This is crucial, because it builds a relationship with them before you even think about asking them for help. Failing to build that relationship first will mean you come across as being spammy and pushy.

Chris Boulas, the founder and president of digital marketing firm Formulytic, has built businesses from $5 million to more than $30 million in revenue, largely on the back of influencer marketing. Boulas points out how you can go about developing a relationship first:

Business is about give and take, so dont approach influencers with a take-only mindset. Be ready to provide value in return. Do you have a skill, idea or feedback on an influencers business? Apply your skill or share your ideas for free and provide value upfront first.

Related: 50 Online Marketing Influencers to Watch in 2016

7. Dont forget to set influencer guidelines.

How does your influencer reach out to his or her following? Through Twitter, Facebook, Instagram or some other medium? Make sure you have specific guidelines in place for how you should be promoted and especially tagged, to generate the maximum exposure possible.

For example, Lindsay White of Lot801 Marketing points out that Instagram has recently made it possible to tag images. As a result of that, many influencers are only tagging people in the images when they are working with brands. This is a major problem, White points out:

"No one taps on the photo anymore to see who they tagged. But, they will read the captions. If your influencers arent tagging you in the caption, youre missing out on some serious sales and social media followers. Since weve made this a requirement when working with any influencers, our sales are about 30 percent higher than if they didnt tag us in both the caption and photo along with an increase of about 50 percent in sales."

8. Dont rely solely on the influencer for buzz.

Marketing almost has to take a multi pronged approach, so make sure you dont get tunnel vision. You cannot rely just on the influencer to generate the buzz that will make your campaign successful. Consider the influencer just a piece of the puzzle, albeit a possibly big piece.

Marc Nashaat, of Powered by Search, stresses the importance of this multifaceted approach. He points out that at the same time you are building your influencer network, you should also be identifying the people or publications that cover your campaign topic or the engagements of your influencer. Do outreach to them to help seed your influencer-based marketing campaign.

Run a great influencer marketing campaign.

With these tips under your belt, you should be able to successfully attract the right influencers to help you with your marketing efforts. Just remember to be yourself, and follow the advice of folks who have been doing influencer marketing with great success for many years.
A student has been arrested for allegedly making a threat that resulted in the cancellation of a Pennsylvania high school's graduation ceremony.

The Manheim Central School District, located about 30 miles east of the state capitol of Harrisburg, says it was forced to cancel Thursday night's ceremony after receiving reports of a threat made by a student earlier in the day.

The threat allegedly referenced the 1999 Columbine High School shootings, in which 15 people were killed including the two gunmen.

The school district says an unidentified student has been arrested, and the investigation into the "very serious threat" is ongoing.

A new graduation date has not yet been announced.
In a story June 9 about an Illinois child custody case, The Associated Press, relying on story in The (Bloomington) Pantagraph, reported erroneously that the legal guardian of three children who were placed in state custody two years ago recommended to the court that their mother, Amanda Ware, be given another chance to raise them. The guardian only recommended that Ware be given the chance to continue working toward regaining custody.

A corrected version of the story is below:

Guardian: Mom linked to drownings deserves chance to work toward getting 3 kids back

The legal guardian of three Illinois children placed in state custody in 2014 after a doctor linked their mother to the drownings of three other children more than a decade earlier has told a judge the woman deserves the chance to keep working toward regaining custody of them.

CHICAGO (AP)  The legal guardian of three Illinois children placed in state custody in 2014 after a doctor linked their mother to the drownings of three other children more than a decade earlier has told a judge the woman deserves a chance to continue working toward regaining custody of them.

Carol Casey told a Cook County Circuit Court judge Wednesday that Amanda Ware has undergone mental health and substance abuse counseling and that her opinion is based on the interests of the children, who love their mother and want to go home.

Judge Demetrios Kottaras said he will rule Friday on whether the custody case should remain on a track to return the children to Ware and her husband within 12 months. In November, he called Amanda Ware an abusive and neglectful parent, noting her mental illness and history of drug abuse, and rejected her request to have the children returned.

Amanda Ware, then known as Amanda Hamm, was convicted of child endangerment and served five years in prison for watching then-boyfriend Maurice LaGrone Jr. drown her three children from a previous relationship in 2003 in Clinton Lake. Prosecutors said LaGrone, who is serving a life sentence, wanted to kill the children  a 6-year-old, 3-year-old and 23-month-old  because they interfered with the couple's relationship and his sex-and-drugs lifestyle.

The state took custody of Ware's current children in 2014 after a doctor recognized her.

In her report, Casey also had positive remarks for her Ware's husband, Leo Ware, who is receiving drug treatment after a relapse almost a year ago. The drug habit "is a challenge I think he should be given the opportunity to meet," Casey said Wednesday.

Prosecutors disagreed with her assessment, saying Ware and her husband haven't made substantial progress with treatment services and remain unfit, unwilling and unable to care for their children.

Assistant State's Attorney Gina Perdue also said the Wares have not dealt with the history of domestic violence and drug abuse that has impacted their family.

Lawyers for the Wares, who live in Chicago, said both have worked to complete services and visit the children almost daily in foster care, with attorney Stephen Dore pointing out she has been clean and sober for more than two years.

"The children adore him and wait for him to visit," said attorney Lisa Dedmond, who represents Leo Ware.

___

Information from: The Pantagraph, http://www.pantagraph.com
The court file of a former Stanford swimmer convicted of raping a woman behind a campus dumpster reportedly shows that he lied to a judge about his history of drinking and drug use, labeling himself as inexperienced in that field before his sentencing.

The San Jose Mercury News reported Wednesday that prosecutors Alaleh Kiancercis file on Brock Turner contains texts and photos found on Turners cellphone indicating that he used drugs and alcohol in high school.

The prosecutor told Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge Judge Aaron Persky about the lies during Turners sentencing hearing, but Persky failed to comment on Turners dishonesty.

According to the paper, material found on Turner's phone included video of him smoking from a bong and drinking out of a liquor bottle. The date capture indicated the video was taken Dec. 27, 2014  more than a month before he assaulted a woman on the Stanford campus.

A series of other text messages show that Turner was asking friends for wax so he could do some dabs. Dabs are a potent form of marijuana that is a THC-concentrated mass. References to Turner buying, smoking or sharing marijuana date back to April 2014 when he was still living in Ohio.

The Mercury News also reported that Turner boasted about doing acid in a text message to a friend.

In a letter to the judge, Turner had portrayed himself as an inexperience drinker and a person with high moral values.

"Coming from a small town in Ohio, I had never really experienced celebrating or partying that involved alcohol, he wrote. "Living more than 2,000 miles from home, I looked to the guys on my swim team as family and tried to replicate their values in how they approached college life."

The judge received several letters supporting Turner.

Retired federal prosecutor Margaret M. Quinn blamed the entire assault on alcohol.

"There is no doubt Brock made a mistake that night -- he made a mistake in drinking excessively to the point where he could not fully appreciate that his female acquaintance was so intoxicated. I know Brock did not go to that party intending to hurt, or entice, or overpower anyone, she wrote.

Turners older sister Caroline asked the judge to spare prison time because of a devastating irreverisible effect of what she described as "a series of alcohol-fueled decisions.

Turner's father, Dan Turner, added to the controversy, writing that his son's life "will never be the one that he dreamed about and worked so hard to achieve. That is a steep price to pay for 20 minutes of action out of his 20-plus years of life."

At Turner's sentencing, meanwhile, the victim read a 12-page statement in court, addressed primarily to Turner and taking him to task for not taking responsibility for his actions.

She did not criticize the university and thanked the graduate students who tackled Turner and summoned police.

"I stood there examining my body beneath the stream of water and decided, I don't want my body anymore. I was terrified of it, I didn't know what had been in it, if it had been contaminated, who had touched it," she said. "I wanted to take off my body like a jacket and leave it at the hospital with everything else."

"I don't sleep when I think about the way it could have gone if the two guys had never come. What would have happened to me?," she added, addressing Turner directly. "That's what you'll never have a good answer for, that's what you can't explain even after a year."

Ultimately, Turner received a six-month jail sentence. The decision has sparked outrage nationwide, with some calling for Judge Persky's removal from the bench.

In his ruling, Persky, who also attended Stanford, cited Turner's age, no "significant" prior legal problems and said he carried "less moral culpability" because he was drunk the night of the attack.

Persky also said that state prison could have a "severe" impact on Turner's life.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Click for more from the San Jose Mercury News.
His story: When I graduated from college, friends went to Manhattan to interview for corporate jobs. I found that terrifying -- as did two of my closest buddies, Daniel Saxe and Daniel Smetana. We wanted adventure. So, in July 2004, we traveled to the archipelago of Bocas del Toro, Panama, and rented a single room in a rustic bungalow balanced on stilts over the water. The roads were made of mud. For a few months, we learned the town, the people and the beaches, and we fell in love with the place. We knew the backpacking scene well, and started thinking: Could we run a business here?

We reached out to the owner of the Mondo Taitu hostel -- a ramshackle clapboard house in nearby Isla Colonand were just in time. Hed decided to leave the island and was looking to sell. Within three weeks, it was ours. The seller promised to give us extensive training, but all we got was a one-hour walk-through. The rest was total trial by fire. Employees, it turned out, were easy to find: Locals mostly worked in the banana industry, a grueling line of work they were happy to leave. But, dealing with customers? When the first guest came to our reception desk, we fumbled the check-in so badly that she turned around and left.

The island was a gritty place -- the power would go out, thered be floods, toilets would break, you name it. So we learned to ask for help. Our cleaning lady, Huba, knew we were a lost cause, and she became the eyes and ears of our hostel. And what we lacked in experience, we made up for in energy. We knew all our guests names, and we had a bar, so wed hang out all night. Transparency, we learned, was key: If somebodys bed wasnt ready when we said it would be, we told them why. If there was a robbery, wed admit something was stolen and work with the police. Guests are forgiving if they feel youre being up front.

We also learned Spanish. We saw other expats come here to start businesses but refuse to learn the local language. That didnt engender much respect. Language is necessary to form bonds and to resolve disputes.

As we grew as businesspeople, we began expanding our business. We opened a second hostel, Heike, in Bocas in 2006 and a third, Lunas Castle, in Panama City in 2008. Our conversations had to do with occupancy rates and TripAdvisor reviews. We replaced our paper ledger with Excel spreadsheets. As we matured, so did the tourism industry. And in 2009, we sold that first hostel -- for nearly four times what we bought it for.

Secondary markets are amazing places to do business, if youre willing to chase opportunity. When we heard the Groupon craze was spreading in the States in 2010, we built a similar site for Buenos Aires and Panama City called OfertaSimple; within two weeks of launching, there were 10 competitors. So we scaled back and focused on Panama, the small but healthy market we knew best. Back then, those living in Panama City rarely bought things online using a credit cardbut they were excited to start. They were quickly drawn to the novelty of it. Now OfertaSimple is the most highly trafficked e-commerce site in Panama, and its our main business.

Weve taken an unexpected path. Most investors arent going to look at us and think, This is my next unicorn, but we prefer teaming up with investors willing to take bets on those with colorful pasts. We just wanted to create a strong, well-received business that put smiles on peoples faces. And we did.
A Georgia woman was arrested Saturday after she pulled a gun on a pro wrestler during a match, authorities said.

Patricia Anne Crowe, 59, was a spectator at the American Wrestling Federation event in Ringgold on June 4, the Catoosa County Sheriffs Department said.

Crowe said in a police report that she let her temper get the best of her when she confronted wrestler Paul Lee, his manager and the shows commissioner. Northwest Georgia News reported that deputies arrested Crowe after she jumped into the ring and pulled the gun on Lee.

Lee was in the middle of a match with a wrestler known as Iron Mann and was in the middle of hitting him with a chair.

I had him tied up and was beating on him, and this lady jumps up with a knife, cuts him loose, and then pulled a loaded gun on me, Lee said. She had that thing loaded with one in the chamber and the safety off. All it would have taken was for her to get shaky with that thing and it could have fired.

Lee said the woman had been to shows before and should have known it was all part of the act.

Shes been to several shows over the years off and on, but she was acting like a nut Saturday night, Lee added.

Part of Lees character is to draw heat from the crowd and banter back and forth with spectators to get them riled up. Cpl. Chris Faulk said Crowe, of LaFayette, admitted she pulled the handgun after a verbal exchange.

Weve done fraternity shows at colleges and stuff before where drunk college kids will try to run into the ring or something, but nothing like this, Lee said. In about 1992, at another location, we were doing a show and I got stabbed by about a six-inch blade by a fan. Fans usually dont get involved though, they usually just watch.

Lee said Crowe got angry after he told her to sit her toothless self back down.

Crowe is charged with aggravated assault and reckless conduct. She was released from jail Monday on a $4,000 bond.

Lee said he wasnt really happy after hearing that Crowe was released from jail. Promotion officials said they will reevaluate their security measures.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Click for more from Northwest Georgia News.
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The Latest on campaign 2016 (all times Eastern):

1:35 p.m.

Donald Trump has been interrupted by protesters as he addresses a gathering of evangelical Christians.

A handful of protesters shouting "Stop hate! Stop Trump!" and "Refugees are welcome here!" were escorted out of the ballroom as Trump addressed the Faith & Freedom Coalition's Read to Majority Conference in Washington Friday.

Trump stressed his commitment to conservative causes and criticized presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton for her domestic and foreign policy stances.

He said a Trump administration would "restore respect for people of faith."

___

1:10 p.m.

Hillary Clinton is offering an unabashedly feminist attack on GOP rival Donald Trump, in her first speech since becoming the Democratic party's presumptive nominee.

Linking abortion rights and birth control to national economic growth, Clinton argues that Trump would take the country back to a time when "when abortion was illegal women had far fewer options and life for too many women and girls were limited."

She says: "When Donald Trump says let's make America great again that is code for let's take America backward."

Clinton is speaking to the national conference of Planned Parenthood in Washington, D.C. She's thanking the non-profit women's health group for their support in the primary and highlighting her staunch support for abortion rights.

In January, the group backed Clinton, offering its first endorsement in the group's 100 year history.

"This victory belongs to all of you," says Clinton.

___

10:45 a.m.

Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren has arrived at the Washington home of Hillary Clinton for their first meeting since Warren endorsed the presumptive Democratic nominee.

Clinton is in Washington for a speech to Planned Parenthood. Warren was in town for a rare Friday session in the Senate.

Warren threw her support behind Clinton Thursday night, following President Barack Obama. On Thursday, she offered a blistering attack on the presumptive Republican nominee, Donald Trump.

Warren was the only holdout among the Senate's Democratic women and, given her stature among liberals, her endorsement could be an important boost for Clinton. She also is being floated as a potential vice presidential pick for Clinton.

___

10:40 a.m.

It almost went unnoticed, but in a nine-word tangent, Vice President Joe Biden has endorsed Hillary Clinton for president.

Biden had been expected to hold off on his formal endorsement for a day or two after President Barack Obama endorsed Clinton on Thursday. Biden met with Bernie Sanders on Thursday and had been arranging to speak by phone to Clinton.

But in a speech to the American Constitution Society on Thursday evening, Biden said that the next president would likely have to deal with a Supreme Court vacancy for another court term. He added as an aside: "God willing, in my view, it'll be Secretary Clinton."

Biden's office says Friday that the off-the-cuff remark is his endorsement for Clinton. Biden is expected to hit the trail aggressively for Clinton and for Senate Democratic candidates in the coming months.

___

9:10 a.m.

Hillary Clinton is meeting with Sen. Elizabeth Warren, just hours after the progressive hero endorsed the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee.

Clinton is in Washington for a speech to Planned Parenthood. Massachusetts' Warren was in town for a rare Friday session in the Senate. A senior Democratic official said the two women planned to meet.

The official spoke on condition of anonymity to confirm the private meeting, first reported by The Washington Post.

Warren threw her support behind Clinton Thursday night, following President Barack Obama.

Warren was the only holdout among the Senate's Democratic women and, given her stature among liberals, her endorsement could be an important boost for Clinton. She also is being floated as a potential vice presidential pick for Clinton.

___

3:00 a.m.

Democrats are coalescing around Hillary Clinton's presidential bid and looking to reunite the party through a carefully orchestrated plan aimed at nudging rival Bernie Sanders aside.

President Barack Obama's endorsement of Clinton headlined a day of unity for Democrats Thursday as the party prepares for Republican Donald Trump. Amid the message of harmony, Sanders crisscrossed the nation's capital and received praise in meetings with Obama, Vice President Joe Biden and Senate Democratic leaders.

At his campaign rally outside RFK Stadium, Sanders didn't mention Clinton and didn't repeat his calls to persuade superdelegates to support him. Nor did he talk about plans for a contested convention in Philadelphia.

Democrats are wary that divisions that emerged between Clinton and Sanders during the primaries might spill out during next month's Democratic National Convention.
Authorities in Ohio Friday arrested a man accused of wounding two people, including a sheriffs deputy, in an apartment complex shooting.

Deerfield Township fire officials confirmed the suspect was taken into custody at around 5 a.m Friday. The suspect was identified as 19-year-old Mohammed Abdou Laghaoui, who faces preliminary charges including attempted murder.

Suspect Mohammed Abdou Laghaoui in shooting of deputy and another man. Call 911 @Local12 pic.twitter.com/UfU87nFD7m  Angenette Levy (@Angenette5) June 10, 2016

The shooting occurred Thursday night in Deerfield Township, about 25 miles northeast of Cincinnati. The Warren County Sheriffs Office said Deputy Katie Barnes was shot in the abdomen while responding to a report of a domestic situation at an apartment complex. She's expected to recover.

The suspect's father was shot in the hand.

Laghaoui fired an assault rifle yet to be recovered, Warren County Sheriff Larry Sims said. "The shooting was basically right after the deputy's arrival," Lt. John Faine added.

Authorities said the deputy was taken to a hospital and was conscious and alert.

Brian Freedman, a resident of the apartment complex, told The Cincinnati Enquirer that he arrived home to find the area cordoned off.

"I don't know if I've ever seen so many police officers in one place," Freedman said.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Human remains found behind a Rhode Island mill in March have been identified as those of a Massachusetts nightclub manager who disappeared in 1993.

The FBI said Thursday that Steven A. DiSarro was identified through DNA analysis. DiSarro was 43 years old when he was reported missing by his wife.

"For 23 years, the family of Mr. DiSarro has been awaiting news of his whereabouts," FBI special agent in charge Harold Shaw said in an emailed statement. "The thoughts and prayers of everyone in the FBI are with them during this difficult time. Our investigation will continue to pursue those responsible for Mr. DiSarro's death in an effort to bring them to justice."

DiSarro managed a South Boston nightclub called The Channel and was an associate of the son of mob boss "Cadillac Frank Salemme. Salemme was sentenced to five years in prison in 2008 after he admitted to misleading investigators by falsely suggesting that a rival mob leader was involved in DiSarro's disappearance.

The Boston Globe reported that Boston gangster Stephen "The Rifleman" Flemmi told investigators in 2003 that he saw Salemme's son, also called Frank, strangle DiSarro at a home in Sharon, Mass. Flemmi said "Cadillac Frank" told him that DiSarros' body was buried at a Rhode Island construction site.

Salemme has denied any involvement in DiSarro's disappearance or death.

DiSarro's wife Pamela thanked the FBI for not giving up on the case and for finding his remains after all these years.

"We look forward to the conclusion of the FBI's investigation so we can learn as much as possible about what really happened to Steven and finally get some closure for our family," she said.

The remains were recovered by an FBI evidence response team on March 31 after they received an anonymous tip. The mill had previously been raided last year for an illegal marijuana growing operation. About 1,400 marijuana plants, cash and a gun were recovered in that operation.



The owner of the property, 69-year-old reputed mob associate William L. Ricci, has pleaded guilty to federal drug charges as part of a deal with prosecutors.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Click for more from the Providence Journal.
Police shot a man engaged in an apparent domestic dispute outside Dallas Love Field Friday, sparking a panic and forcing officials to evacuate part of the nearby baggage claim area.

The suspect, an unidentified black man, had been hurling large rocks at the mother of his children, Assistant Police Chief Randall Blankenbaker told reporters. When an officer approached, the man started yelling, "basically saying, 'shoot me, shoot me, I dare you,' something to that effect," witness Lucinda Fonseca told WFAA-TV.

Police said the suspect ultimately charged at police with a rock before an officer fired several times. They said the woman and the officer were not hurt, and that their children were not at the scene.

The suspect's condition was unclear. Paramedics rushed him to nearby Parkland Hospital.

Police blocked off a damaged black car with luggage on the ground nearby.

Airport officials told KRLD departures may be delayed as passengers go through re-screening. The airport serves as a hub for Southwest Airlines.

Video from the scene showed panicked fliers running away as at least eight shots rang out. Officers were heard shouting, "get down" and "stay down."

Fox News is told the TSA was monitoring the incident but considered it a local law enforcement matter.

Fox News' Matt Dean contributed to this report.

Click for more from Fox 4.
Amin al-Baroudi wanted to do the right thing in Syria, but knowing what the right thing is in a quagmire like the Syrian war isn't always easy.

Al-Baroudi, 50, of Irvine, California admits now that he went astray: In addition to performing humanitarian work, al-Baroudi also sneaked rifle scopes, night-vision goggles and other military gear to rebel fighters seeking to topple the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

The problem, prosecutors say, is that the group Al-Baroudi was helping, Ahrar el-Sham, frequently fights alongside the al-Qaida affiliate in Syria, Jabhat al-Nusra.

On Friday, a judge sentenced al-Baroudi to nearly three years in prison for violating U.S. sanctions in Syria.

Al-Baroudi, a naturalized U.S. citizen who was born in Syria, apologized for his conduct at the hearing.

"I came to realize there's no right way to do the wrong things," al-Baroudi wrote in a statement that his lawyer, Anthony Capozzolo, read when Al-Baroudi became too choked up to maintain his composure. "I simply pray for my old country to exit this crisis and enjoy ... what my family enjoys in this country."

Capozzolo asked the judge for a sentence of probation or to sentence al-Baroudi to the six months' time he had already served since his arrest in December. He said al-Baroudi was motivated to act by his own life experience growing up in the town of Hama, where tens of thousands were massacred in 1982 by Assad's father, Hafez al-Assad.

"He's not a for-profit mercenary," Capozzolo said. "Mr. al-Baroudi was trying to help, although in a fully misguided way."

Prosecutors say al-Baroudi illegally exported the tactical gear to Syria from late 2011 to 2013. In 2013, al-Baroudi realized his actions were under scrutiny when he was stopped from boarding a flight back from Turkey to the United States. After that, al-Baroudi turned his efforts to purely humanitarian work, working with the humanitarian arm of a Syrian opposition coalition.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Julia Martinez did not dispute al-Baroudi's good intentions, and said the government took that into account in filing the charges, which allege a violation of sanctions rather than supporting a terrorist group. But she still argued for a sentence of nearly four years, saying his actions were dangerous.

"His knowledge about Syria made abundantly clear he knew how dangerous what he was doing was," Martinez said.

U.S. District Judge Liam O'Grady echoed prosecutors' concerns.

"You had no control over who was going to use those items" once they got into Syria, O'Grady said.

Federal prosecutors have found themselves prosecuting defendants on all sides of the Syrian conflict. Just this week at the federal courthouse in Alexandria, a grand jury indicted an individual who prosecutors say was part of the pro-Assad Syrian Electronic Army and helped hack computer accounts associated with perceived enemies of the regime.

On Thursday, a northern Virginia man, Mohamad Khweis, made an initial appearance on charges that he joined the Islamic State and spent time at a safe house in Syria where he expressed his willingness to serve as a suicide bomber.
Did you know plastic was created during a Belgium-born scientists search to find a substance to replace beetle poop?

Thats right. In the early 20th century, beetle excrement was used to create shellac, a resin material used to line the inside of electronics. During chemist Leo Baeklands experimentation with formaldehyde and phenol (an acid extracted from coal tar), he noticed that a new substance emerged. It was extremely durable, moldable, heat-resistant and totally non-conductive.

He called his discovery Bakelite, the first plastic. This material has found its way into so many of our everyday products, such as auto parts, camera, telephone casings (if you remember those), the buttons on our clothes, clocks, radios, toys and chess pieces, just to tick off some.

Its difficult to envision a world without plastic. Here are five more life-altering innovations that were founded by accident.

Related: 5 Amazing Innovations Coming to Cars

1. Penicillin

Associates - Biophoto | Getty Images

Can you imagine life without this powerful mold called penicillin?

While early groundwork on the bacteria-killing properties of penicillin was done by a French medical student named Ernest Duchesne in 1898, it was Scottish bacteriologist Sir Alexander Fleming who zeroed in on the curative cocktail of penicillin that we know today.

In 1928. Fleming, a professor at St. Marys Hospital in London, returned from summer break to find his lab in somewhat messy condition. He noticed that a culture containing of the Staphylococcus aureus virus had been contaminated by a blue-green mold called Penicillium notatum.

Whats more, he observed that colonies of bacteria close to the mold were being killed. So, he grew the mold again in a pure culture -- and found that it killed a number of disease-causing bacteria.

Nobel Prize in Medicine

2. Microwave ovens

Pictorial Parade | Getty

Fans of Hot Pockets and microwave popcorn alike can give greasy thanks to Percy Spencer for the invention of the microwave. This appliance, which revolutionized the time it took to heat and cook food, was discovered while Spencer was working at the Raytheon Corporation conducting research on radar signals.

It was during this engineers work with magnetrons -- electron tubes used to generate radar signals and in this case, microwave radiations -- that he discovered the use of microwave cooking.

As his great grandson Rod Spencer tells Business Insider, one fateful day in 1946 Spencer was working near the magnetrons when he noticed a peanut cluster bar in his pocket had melted.

Instead of being put off by the sticky mess, He put two and two together and he decided to get some popcorn, so he sent the popcorn in and it started popping all over the place," Rod said. "The next morning, he brought in an egg. One of the engineers who was a little disbelieving in terms of a microwave's ability to cook, just as he was looking over, the egg blew up in his face."

That egg blowing up lead to Spencer and Raytheon patenting the RadaRange, the first commercial microwave oven, which weighed 750 pounds (not exactly fit for the college dorm), standing at almost 6 feet tall and cost $5,000 (equivalent to $52,628 in todays dollars).

It took over a decade before the more affordable and smaller countertop version came into play. As a result, our eating habits and the food market had never been the same since. According to 2013 information from the U.S. Census Bureau, 93 percent of the U.S. population owns a microwave.

Related: 5 Invisible Innovations Consumers Love

3. Teflon

Leonard Lessin | Getty

When Roy Plunkett invented Teflon, he didnt mean to invent a new polymer that could serve as a nonstick surface for cooking ware. The young chemist at Dupont was experimenting with new refrigerants and wanted to combine hydrochloric acid with tetrafluoroethylene gas -- but set aside the gas to use for a future date.

So he cooled and pressurized the gas in canisters overnight. The next day, he found the canisters empty. When he sawed them in half, he discovered them lined with a slick, inert surface that was low-friction and chemically resistant to heat.

Trademarked in 1945, that substance became what is known as Teflon. It wasnt immediately used for cooking pans. At first, it was used in artillery shell fuses and nuclear material.

However, it required the insight of a woman nearly 10 years after its discovery to think of lining cooking pans with Teflon. It was French engineer Marc Gregoires wife -- Colette -- who suggested he create Teflon-coated cooking pans. The rest is nonstick history.

Related: 5 Innovations Changing Work as We Know It

4. X-rays

Chris Ryan | Getty

In 1895, German physicist Wilhelm Rontgen discovered the power of X-rays purely by accident one day while experimenting with cathode-ray tubes. (What exactly are cathode-ray tubes? Today we know them as high-vacuum tubes through which cathode rays are beamed, become luminous and produce an image onto a screen. Theyre largely used in televisions and computer terminals today.)

One day, while running electricity through the gas in the tubes, Rontgen haplessly put a piece of cardboard that was covered with a fluorescent mineral (barium platinum cyanide) near the tubes and soon noticed the mineral substance glowed in the dark.

Next, he tried covering the tubes in black cardboard and ran the same experiment -- and the mineral on the cardboard still glowed.

Thats when he realized that that invisible rays could pass through the cardboard. He termed these rays as X-rays. (The X stood for the unknown.)

Rontgen went on to capture the first X-ray image: a shot of his wife's skeleton within her hand, to which she freaked out and exclaimed, I have seen my own death!

5. Stainless Steel

Liam Norris | Getty

We take our stainless steel cutlery for granted, however at one time, cutlery was prohibitively expensive and required constant care and polishing because of its rusting qualities.

Stainless steel was born out an English metallurgists search for creating a better gun that would resist erosion. Most gun barrels are grooved in a spiral pattern, which causes the bullet to spin when ejected increasing accuracy, according to the Christian Science Monitor.

However, the spinning causes friction, wearing down the barrel and eventually making it too large for the bullet. Harry Brearly was seeking a way to solve that problem in 1912, experimenting with various kinds of steel alloys to no avail.

After a while, he noticed that within his scrap pile of rusting steel alloys, one of them had remained lustrous and rust-free. The steel was a mixture of steel and 12 percent chromium, which had reacted with the oxygen in the air to form a thin, protective layer.

Creating cutlery out of this steel was a natural progression for Brearly, who came from the town of Sheffield, known for its cutlery manufacturing. He approached an old school friend who was a manager at a steelworks factory. After his friend tested the steel material in vinegar, it was christened stainless steel" forevermore, and we no longer have to polish our cutlery. (Thank God).
Prosecutors filed several charges Thursday against a mom in Utah accused of giving teens alcohol during a massive drug-fueled house party before passing out in a gutter around the corner.

Amber Bradley, 29, allegedly invited the teens to play beer pong, KSL reported. After officers found her early Saturday morning in Layton, they said she had trouble walking and her speech was "extremely slurred."

Bradley claimed at least one teenager was watching her children who range in age from 4 to 8, investigators said. When cops arrived at her house, they said they found Xanax, pot, and beer along with four unconscious teenagers. Her children were asleep in a different room, police added.

One teen traveled with Bradley to purchase Xanax even though the mom didn't have a prescription, investigators said.

Officials had filed an eviction notice against Bradley claiming she owed more than $1,000 in rent, the Deseret News reported.

Bradley faces charges including third-degree felony child endangerment. There was no word on a possible plea.

Layton is roughly 20 miles north of Salt Lake City.
A pair of North African refugees who on Tuesday set a German shelter on fire reportedly did so because they were angry the special Ramadan meals there weren't up to snuff.



Ramadan meal row 'prompted German fire' at Duesseldorf shelter: German investigators believe a disp... https://t.co/8TSzMHhPXm @bbcworld  The News (@WBNews) June 9, 2016

Investigators told the BBC that the men -- who were not fasting at the shelter in Duesseldorf -- had complained their lunch portions were too small. The fire burned the facility to the ground, causing $11 million in damages.

"We had to do it so that things would change, one of the two 26-year-old North African suspects told reporters. Police charged them with arson.

Refugees also fought over meal times. Some wanted food service only when it was dark, in accordance with Muslim law, while others wanted to eat during the day, prosecutor Ralf Herrenbrueck said.

Muslims and Christians were living at the shelter. Police told Reuters many of the residents had given false names, birthdays or countries of origin when they entered the facility.

The city is currently housing some 7,000 refugees and migrants, Germany's DPA news agency reported.

Red Cross workers who spoke to German media said the mood at the shelter was already poor during Ramadan, as refugees spat at staffers and hurled shoes at them.

Rescuers brought everyone in the shelter to safety during the fire. Some suffered from smoke inhalation, the BBC reported.
The teacher crisis is real, and were not going to work our way out of it simply by making it easier to hire teachers.
The biggest cancer conference in the world, an annual meeting hosted by the American Society of Clinical Oncology that attracted more than 35,000 cancer researchers, oncologists, patient advocates, politicians and other major players in pharma and biotech, just closed its doors for another year.

Immunotherapy was one of the hottest topics there, with presentations on new therapies for lung cancer, metastatic melanoma, metastatic kidney cancer and much more, including exciting results from Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Centers Dr. Cameron Turtle regarding his recent work with CAR T-cell therapies in leukemia and lymphoma patients.

Hundreds of new findings and insights were presented during the five-day event in Chicago, covering all things cancer from biomarkers to big data, prevention to palliative care, survivorship to social media. There was even news of a new drug that uses artificial intelligence to slow the growth of cancer.

What were some of the other big takeaways at this years meeting, dubbed Collective Wisdom: The Future of Patient-Centered Care and Research? Whats cool but perhaps not quite ready for primetime? We turned to a handful of experts  online and off  to provide a bit of perspective.
MBMA Announces 2015 Manufacturer Safety Award Winners

The Metal Building Manufacturers Association presents its 2015 Safety Awards to metal building manufacturers nationwide in recognition of exceptional workplace safety measures and OSHA compliance.

June 9, 2016 (FPRC) -- CLEVELAND, OHIO  www.mbma.com: The Metal Building Manufacturers Association (MBMA) annually recognizes metal building systems manufacturers that show exceptional commitment to assuring workplace safety. The Annual MBMA Safety Awards were presented at the MBMA Spring Meeting held May 10-11, 2016 in Fort Worth, Texas.



Last year, a total of 45 plant facilities participated in MBMAs Quarterly OSHA Injury Statistics Program, states Dan Walker, PE, Associate General Manager of MBMA. Awards were presented to recognize plants with noteworthy safety records, which is based on our analysis of submitted data that is directly compared to the OSHA industry average.



MBMAs members are committed to the safety of everyone who works in the metal building systems industry. The organization has had a long-standing Safety Committee and Safety Award Program, which was revamped in 2013 to increase the stringency of the awards so that companies with truly outstanding safety performance records are acknowledged for their achievements. Our members are focused on providing a safe work environment for their employees, and MBMA is very pleased to recognize their commitment through these awards, says Walker.



From the 45 manufacturing facilities nationwide that submitted data, 10 awards were presented. MBMAs award criteria stipulates that winning plants must have work-related accident and illness rates that are 50% or less than the OSHA-reported averages for the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) Code 332311 (Prefabricated metal building and component manufacturing). For the Safety Performance Award, the industry average incident rate, as reported by OSHA, was 5.0 for NAICS Code 332311. Therefore, MBMAs award cut off was just 2.5 or fewer incidents.



The Superior Safety Award, under the rules of the MBMA Program, was awarded to the plant that achieved zero recordable cases for the 12-month period, which is a significant accomplishment.



Awards were presented at the following levels to individual plant locations:



2015 Superior Safety Award  In recognition of having zero recordable incidents



RUFFIN BUILDING SYSTEMS

Oak Grove, Louisiana



2015 Safety Performance Award  In recognition of having achieved an incident rate equal to 50% or less than the industry average as reported by OSHA



AMERICAN BUILDINGS COMPANY

Carson City, Nevada

Eufaula, Alabama



BLUESCOPE BUILDINGS NORTH AMERICA, INC.

Annville, Pennsylvania

Jackson, Tennessee

Laurinburg, North Carolina

Visalia, California



CBC STEEL BUILDINGS

Lathrop, California



NUCOR BUILDING SYSTEMS

Waterloo, Indiana



SBC BUILDING SYSTEMS, LLC

Ambridge, Pennsylvania



SCHULTE BUILDING SYSTEMS

Hockley, Texas



_______

Founded in 1956, MBMA serves manufacturers and suppliers as it works to promote the metal building systems industry. For 60 years, its membership has supplied high-quality buildings for use in commercial, retail, office, industrial, institutional and other end-uses. The association provides a wealth of useful information on its website, www.mbma.com, for anyone who works with or is interested in metal building systems, including numerous technical materials and design guides.



Contact: Dan Walker, Associate General Manager

Phone: 216.241.7333

Email: mbma@mbma.com





###







Send an email to Dan Walker, Associate General Manager of r

216.241.7333

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Pure Natural Healing Releases Free Report On Instant Pain Relief

Pure Natural Healing has today released a free report on Instant pain relief - titled "Celebrities' healing method of choice". For those interested in downloading the report at no cost, it is currently available at http://detox-authority.com/naturalhealingfree

--

Pure Natural healing has today released a free report on Instant pain relief -Celebrities' healing method of choice

This report aims to benefit anyone who suffers from serious diseases like arthritis, cancer, migraines, cardiovascular diseases.

It also aims to show that acupressure helps with various health issues, ranging from simple to very serious diseases: Accelerated healing of wounds - Cysts -Fertility -Migraines and all kinds of pain relief -Depression and anxiety -Alleviating cancer symptoms -using Natural remedies and Natural pain relief techniques.

This is achieved by activating specific points located on the body. The Body naturally channels life energy, or what Chinese call "Chi" into these pressure points in order to improve the body's healing potency within a short time. Experience long lasting benefits with the Pure Natural Healing program.

The report has been made openly available and at no cost by Pure Natural healing.

""Studies suggest that acupressure may help with low back pain, postoperative pain, headache, even menstrual cramps." WedMD.com

Any person who suffers from serious diseases like arthritis, cancer, migraines, cardiovascular diseases, should consider acupressure to successfully treat it.

Gwyneth Paltrow, Robert Downey, and Julianne Moore have sworn their allegiance to this weird healing method......high profile public figures recognizing its power and effectiveness. In fact, Julianne Moore in an interview for Health Magazine said... "This was the only thing that really got me back to normal" ...Then she went on to say that it has also been amazing for her back pain and insomnia. And no, it's not just these celebrities... Harvard Medical School even created a new division to study this weird method of healing. ."

Interested parties can find the report ready to download, for free here

Pure Natural Healing teaches ways to put pressure on specific meridian points -using Meridian Therapy- through videos and a manual. All techniques are explained with crystal clarity. - It teaches ways to find key meridian points on the body, massage them and reverse disease, illness or infection. - Pure Natural Healing teaches self-healing through art therapy, in a simplified and easy way. Gently massage the disease out of the body and get freedom from surgery, drugs and life threatening disabilities..

More information on Pure Natural Healing can be found at here

For more information about us, please visit http://detox-authority.com/purehealingdiscount

Contact Info:

Name: Detox Authority

Email: admin@detox-authority.com

Organization: Pure Natural Healing

Address: A1,Townhouse



Release ID: 118730

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Bob Arnold of Superior Income Group Attends Prominent Financial Industry Conference

( June 10, 2016 ) Dearborn, Michigan -- Superior Income Group of Dothan, AL announced its founder, Mr. Bob Arnold attended the "Making History" industry event in Dearborn, MI. The event brought together retirement management leaders from across the country to discuss cutting-edge financial practice building strategies.

The event featured many of the top financial minds together from all parts of the United States. Attendees at the event shared their successes at building financial management practices that serve their clients by helping ensure their retirement is secured.

Mr. Arnold commented on the event: "It was a privilege to participate in this event. There were many of the nation's top financial minds all together in one place. It was great being able to share insights with the group."

The Making History event was held at the Henry Ford Museum and was hosted by M&O Marketing of Southfield Michigan. M&O Marketing is a leading FMO representing the top firms in the insurance and financial services fields. The company has more than 10,000 agents contracted with it.

More About M&O Marketing

Source: http://www.mandomarketing.com/there-can-only-be-one-gold-standard-fmo/

"Today, M&O continues to be on the forefront of the Annuity, Long Term Care and Life Insurance arenas. We fulfill the marketing, training and support needs to thousands of independent insurance agents nationwide. "

About Mr. Arnold

Bob Arnold is an investment advisor representative who has been working with individuals and businesses for over 33 years. He received the CIC (Certified Insurance Counselor) Designation in 1983 and passed Series 65 exams in 2007. Licensed to sell various investment and insurance products, he's also active in the Alabama Independent Insurance Agents' Association and has been a chairman of the education committee for 10 years. Bob is an instructor of property and casualty courses. In addition, he has a reputation of helping clients assess their financial goals, manage their finances, and developing lasting relationships.

About Superior Income Group, LLC 36300:

Superior Income Group, LLC concentrates in developing customized financial programs. It provides a step-by-step process for helping clients make decisions. Tax management, investment management, retirement strategies, estate conservation, and insurance and annuity products are included in a vast array of financial services. In addition, it maintains relationships with various other financial service companies, so it can refer clients to products and services these organizations offer. The full-service financial firm is strategically located in Dothan, Alabama and serves clients in the surrounding communities.

To learn more about Superior Income Group and its financial services, go to http://www.superiorincomegroup.com/

Contact:

568 S Oates St, Dothan, AL 36301

(334) 596-1621

info@superiorincomegroup.com

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ESFS Brings Online Kitchen Renovation Quotes to California

Renovation website ESFS has just announced its home remodeling quote service is now available for visitors from California seeking kitchen refurbishment quotes.

--

Residents of California can now use ESFS to source free quotes online for kitchen remodelling projects. ESFS connects users with multiple contractors in their local area who compete to provide the best value quote.

"ESFS is pleased to make free online quotes easier to source for millions of Californians," announced director Matt Aird. "The kitchen is one of the most popular areas of a house to remodel. Commonly used by both residents and guests, changing the kitchen can affect the entire atmosphere of a home. It gives the homeowner the opportunity to both personalise a primary area to their taste and express themselves to others, unlike a bedroom or bathroom which is rarely seen."

A kitchen renovation need not be expensive, if the homeowner researches their options and is prudent with selecting materials. ESFS makes this process much simpler by letting the user source multiple free quotes for their project quickly and without obligation. As each company is provided with identical information, the quotes are easier to directly compare and can boost the homeowner's confidence in bargaining terms.

The visitor to ESFS simply fills out a single form that details whether the renovation is to change the floor plan, the status and scope of the project and what components will be renovated, such as cabinets, counters or sinks, and a project description. "All contractors that ESFS partners with and directs quote requests to are pre-approved and reliable," declared Mr. Aird.

The new kitchen remodelling service has gone live for almost 300 areas across California, from bustling San Diego and San Francisco to the quieter Madera, ensuring most users will be able to find a local contractor through ESFS.

About ESFS.org

ESFS stands for Easy Simple Fast Serviceand is an online service dedicated to providing customers with no obligation quotes for a variety of services including home repair and additions, interior design and decoration, cleaning, roofing and construction from pre-screened local contractors.

For more information about us, please visit http://www.esfs.org

Contact Info:

Name: Matt Aird

Organization: Easy Simple Fast Service

Address: www.esfs.org



Release ID: 118948

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Surprise, AZ New Legal Services Available For Criminal, DUI & Domestic Violence

A Surprise, Arizona based lawyer has launched legal defence services for clients in the nearby area. These include representation for DUI crimes, theft, drug crimes, felonies, domestic violence cases and other misdemeanours.

--

Surprise, AZ New Legal Services Available For Criminal, DUI & Domestic Violence Cases A new legal service has been launched in Surprise, Arizona, where clients can receive information, aid and representation in criminal, DUI, and domestic violence cases. The law offices of Gary L. Rohlwing is nor providing legal defense services for clients in Surprise.

Find out more information on Gary, his background, and how he can help clients to fight their case by visiting the Law Offices of Gary Rohlwing.

Criminal defense is a complicated area of the legal system, and anyone embroiled in it will need the best representation they can in order to fight for the best possible outcome to a case. Gary L. Rohlwing is an experienced attorney with over 30 years in the business. Because he was formerly a prosecutor before he turned his attention to representing clients as their legal defense, he has experience on both sides of the system. This gives him insight into what arguments the prosecutor is likely to bring to a case, and allows him to plan the best case for every client.

The Arizona court system has started to crack down heavily on alcohol related road crimes. If someone has been arrested and charged with driving under the influence, or driving while intoxicated, Gary will be able to explain their rights and can help to avoid some of the severe penalties associated with the crime. Gary also represents clients dealing with drug related crimes and incidents.

The conviction for a drug related crime can be severe, and it's difficult to fight these cases. Using his legal experience, he can choose the right mode by which to handle the case, which can be the difference between facing jail time and earning clients their freedom. Other areas Gary L. Rohlwing serves in include domestic violence cases, covering assault and injunction violation, felonies which includes manslaughter, burglaries and fraud, other misdemeanours which encompass trespassing and disorderly conduct. He also represents clients facing theft charges.

Visit the Law Offices of Gary Rohlwing in Surprise, AZ to learn more about the services offered. His office is located at: 7112 N 55th Ave #A Glendale, Az 85301. Interested parties wanting to get in touch directly can reach him on: (623) 937-1692.

For more information about us, please visit http://www.criminal-duiattorney.com/practice-areas.html

Contact Info:

Name: Gary Rohlwing

Organization: Law Offices Of Gary L. Rohlwing

Address: 7112 N 55th Ave #A Glendale, Az 85301

Phone: (623) 937-1692

Release ID: 118941

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Digitallize Launches Revamped Website Prompted by Surging Trust in Online News

Growing reliance on the internet for information brings about a need for more extensive news coverage, publishes digitallize.com

--

According to figures released last year by Internet World Stats, an estimated 90 percent of the Canadian and American population now turns to the web for news and information. This report shows an uptick of almost 200 percent over the last 15 years. These numbers come as no surprise to the staff of Quebec-based Digital Magazine, Digitallize who are the collective driving force behind a rising leader in the global media outlet sector. In response to this skyrocketing reliance on the internet for World News, spokesperson Pare Denis recently launched the magazine's newly revamped website.

Said Denis, "More people now look online for information than television and print combined, and that's why were here. From the beginning, we set out to become the nation's go-to source for top breaking headlines from around the world, and each story we share brings us closer to our goal. Our new website is designed to give our readers a more user-friendly experience while still bringing them all the Latest News for which we've become known."

In addition to breaking news from across the globe, Digitallize addresses numerous other items of public interest. Among the categories covered by the online magazine is technology as it applies to Android, Apple and other popular mobile platforms. Trending games, consoles and other relevant topics are discussed as well. With focus on web-related issues, social media and similar matters continually on the rise, the magazine likewise broadcasts information related to these affairs.

New developments in the scientific community are additionally discussed, including stories from NASA, the medical realm and the world of archeology. A how-to section has been incorporated into the magazines new format, offering instructions on a variety of points drawing public attention. Staff members are investigating newly released products and services as well in an effort to further enlighten readers.

"Our magazine was founded with a desire to aid the public in its quest for knowledge," concluded Denis, "and we're proud to have grown into an all-inclusive hub providing readers a wide range of inside stories and information about the world around them. Our newly launched website design is the latest step in our efforts to better serve our followers. We will continue to cover the latest local and international news, provide product reviews and discuss trending topics, and will update our website as new developments arise."

About Digitallize:

Digitallize.com is digital magazine providing fresh news from around the world and covering a vast range of matters of public interest.

For more information about us, please visit https://digitallize.com/

Contact Info:

Name: Pare Denis

Organization: Digitallize

Phone: 510 322 8184

Source: http://marketersmedia.com/digitallize-launches-revamped-website-prompted-by-surging-trust-in-online-news/118972

Release ID: 118972

For more information visit r



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My Bahamas Vacations Publishes Six New In-Depth Guides to Bahamian Islands

Full of the kind of detail and insights not to be found anywhere else, new guides cover islands ranging from anglers' favorites to secluded, uninhabited secrets, My Bahamas Vacations reports

--

My Bahamas Vacations published at http://www.mybahamasvacations.com six new, exclusive, in-depth guides to particular islands and cays in the Bahamas. Covering everything from the sprawling, secluded reaches of Mayaguana Island to the rich fishing grounds surrounding the Berry Islands, the new guides boast the kind of hard-to-find depth of detail and insider's knowledge that have already become hallmarks of the young site. Since launching in late 2015, My Bahamas Vacations has grown at a rapid pace, with visitors appreciating the way it so consistently offers up information and perspectives that cannot be found anywhere else. The site's six new guides will be of great interest to anyone who seeks to learn more about one of the world's most beautiful and popular vacation destinations.

"It has been a real pleasure welcoming so many new visitors to My Bahamas Vacations in recent months," site founder Sonnox James said, "As huge fans of the Bahamas ourselves, we thought it was time this fascinating, wonderful country gained a site that would do it justice. The initial response to our first guides and features was extremely gratifying and further strengthened our commitment to researching and publishing more unique new articles. With the six new guides that have gone up on My Bahamas Vacations in recent weeks, we think visitors are going to enjoy plenty of fascinating reading."

With its northern end lying only a short maritime trip from the southeastern coast of Florida, the Commonwealth of the Bahamas stretches 532 miles over a chain of more than 700 islands and cays. In addition to appealing tropical weather and easy access to the splendor of the surrounding ocean, the Bahamas encompasses everything from world-class luxury resorts to tiny islets where people rarely set foot.

My Bahamas Vacations was founded last year to give visitors insight into everything that makes this beautiful country so special and appealing. Early on, for example, the site's editors published at http://www.mybahamasvacations.com/atlantis-bahamas-resort/ a comprehensive guide to Paradise Island's $800-million-dollar Atlantis development, detailing the history and contemporary state of the resort and its thousand-plus rooms, dozens of restaurants and many further attractions.

Another major feature from the early days of the site at http://www.mybahamasvacations.com/bahamas-about-the-out-islands/ introduces readers to the Out Islands of the Bahamas, places where peace and tranquility more often prevail. Making it easier and more rewarding than any other website to learn about the country's impressively varied destinations, My Bahamas Vacations has grown quickly in the short time since its founding.

With the publication of a major new wave of guides to particular islands and areas, interest in My Bahamas Vacations is sure to rise even higher. Providing the kind of information that cannot be found anywhere else online, the new guides cover Great and Little Inagua, San Salvador, Mayaguana, Long, Ackins, Crooked, and Berry Islands, and more. The new My Bahamas Vacations guides are online now and freely available to all visitors, like the rest of the site's features.

About My Bahamas Vacations:

With an ever-growing collection of guides and features, My Bahamas Vacations makes it easy to learn about and plan a trip to one of the world's most beautiful and rewarding places.

For more information about us, please visit http://www.mybahamasvacations.com

Contact Info:

Name: Sonnox James

Organization: My Bahamas Vacations

Phone: 612-998-1589

Source: http://marketersmedia.com/my-bahamas-vacations-publishes-six-new-in-depth-guides-to-bahamian-islands/118971

Release ID: 118971

For more information visit r



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In Money Managements May 2001 edition, genetically engineered insurance was under scrutiny. Scientific advances in genetic testing had obvious implications for the insurance industry, and as a result, experts were advising anyone who may be taking a genetic test to consider buying insurance ahead of the results rather than waiting due to the risk of becoming uninsurable depending on the outcome of their results.

UK insurance companies were threatened with legislation if they did not follow recommendations from a government select committee when assessing life insurance premiums. As of May 2001 there was just one test officially approved by the Genetics and Insurance committee (GAIC). A government and ABI-imposed moratorium came in soon after and a version still polices insurance today.

Meanwhile the cover story was written by current Tax Spotlight writer, Danny Cox, who was then with Solomon Hare Personal Finance and Money Managements reigning Financial Planner of the Year.

The feature looked at the Alphabet soup of financial qualifications and attempted to cut through the abundance of qualifications available to determine which were worth having.

The financial planning certificate (FPC) had been introduced as a target for advisers in June 1997 and was still the benchmark for giving financial advice in 2001. However, the award was deemed to be below A-level standard and, to further their career, financial advisers were urged to look at different qualifications that allowed them to practice in different areas. For instance, the advanced financial planning certificate (AFPC) was needed to conduct specialist pensions advice.

Other relevant qualifications included the Mortgage Advice Qualification (MAQ), Associate of the Chartered Insurance Institute (ACII), Advanced Financial Planning Certificate (AFPC), Associate of the Pensions Management Institute (AMPI) and Professional Investment Certificate (PIC). These different qualifications were all deemed relevant to personal finance at the time, a decade before the introduction of the RDR.

In other news...

John Prescot punched an egg-throwing member of the public while campaigning ahead of Junes general election.

The UK relaxed sanctions put in place to tackle a foot and mouth outbreak.

Liverpool won the first FA Cup final to be held at the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff, beating Arsenal with two late goals from Michael Owen.

In the charts, Geri Halliwells Its Raining Men knocked Dont Stop Movin by S Club 7 off the number 1 spot. Shrek, Pearl Harbor and The Mummy Returns were all on general release at UK cinemas.

Previous Back in the day:

January 1970

September 1988

June 1975
Troy Trojan Global Equity fund manager Gabrielle Boyle has rejigged her top-10 positions after stepping in to buy fallen giants in recent months.

Ms Boyle said her 116m fund had initiated a new position in Procter & Gamble and increased holdings in both Alphabet and Swiss pharmaceutical Novartis in a bid to boost returns.

The moves meant Novartis shot its way up the funds rankings to become the largest holding by the end of April, at 6 per cent.

At the end of January the firm had been the seventh-largest position, accounting for 4 per cent of the portfolio.

We like the dynamics of the healthcare sector, Ms Boyle said. We think the companies involved save and prolong lives, and that is pretty fundamental.

Novartis shares were weak in the early months of 2016, dropping 20 per cent by April 1 before rebounding slightly last month.

Ms Boyle remained confident in her position despite headwinds including the threat of regulatory intervention in the US.

Novartis has a good business line in generic drugs and eye care, and the US is not the biggest market for it. It had a 4 per cent dividend yield along with good news on products so we expanded the holding, Ms Boyle explained.

Healthcare now accounts for 21.5 per cent of the fund. The 32-stock portfolio also holds Becton Dickinson, Medtronic, Roche and Johnson & Johnson, with only the latter not featuring in the top 10.

Healthcare is profitable, cash-generative and unleveraged. Everything we like, Ms Boyle said.

The funds largest sector exposure remains consumer staples, however. Procter & Gamble became the funds latest addition, and its 15th consumer-focused stock, last August, as the manager took advantage of continued share price weakness.

Ms Boyle said: Its been a business that has struggled for a number of years but its share price got low enough to warrant investment.

The stock reached its lowest point in almost four years on September 14 but since rallied 15 per cent.

The fund also placed more money behind Alphabet, the owner of Google. Despite the firm coming under criticism for misaligned investment and the opacity of some underlying businesses, Ms Boyle said she remained positive on a long-term view.

We like the way it is run. It is opaque but this is an issue with a lot of companies, she added. It trades on 20 times next years earnings, and is a completely different prospect to the other Fangs [Facebook, Amazon, Netflix and Google]. It has been weaker so we added to the position.

However, she acknowledged the stock was now raising a few valuation concerns: Were always thinking about both sides of the value and quality coin, Ms Boyle said. Paying 20 times earnings and a 5 per cent free cashflow rate might be too much, so we would like it to be cheaper, but we dont think it is over-valued.
The political voices calling for us to remain in the European Union say change is to be feared and would damage the prosperity we enjoy.

Remain campaigners Nicola Sturgeon, first minister of Scotland, and former pensions minister Angela Eagle, took part in a televised debate last night and argued we all benefit from our membership of the European Union.

Just as Prime Minister David Cameron did earlier in the week during his televised question-and-answer session, the Remain campaigners last night repeatedly said our economy would be worse off if the UK left the European Union.

The Remain campaigners warned of recession, the loss of workers rights and less protection for pensions if we vote to leave the European Union on 23 June.

They played on our nations fears  what if change means we are worse off?

Playing on our fears may well prove a tactic that delivers the result they want but the fact they keep saying we are enjoying prosperity could be what pushes many towards voting for a Brexit.

Because I dont think most of my friends of all ages living in the UK today feel they are well off.

Mr Cameron would be branded a liar if he were to copy his predecessor Harold Macmillan who in 1957 said most of our people have never had it so good.

If the Remain campaigners think we are going to stick with the European Union because they say we have a strong economy then they may find themselves disappointed on 24 June. If the Remain campaigners think we are going to stick with the European Union because they say we have a strong economy then they may find themselves disappointed on 24 June. Emma Ann Hughes

The leave the EU campaigners were putting forward change and empowerment.

They argued the European Union was a noble idea that had failed to deliver value for money for the 350m a week they claim we pay to be part of it.

Boris Johnson, the former Mayor of London and leading Brexit campaigner, pointed out a city the size of Newcastle arriving in the UK every year was something our country was struggling to cope with.

Andrea Leadsom, former City minister who worked in the financial services industry for 25 years, said the truth is if we stay in the European Union there is no way to control our immigration.

She pointed out the Bank of England had observed immigration at current levels had pushed wages down.

Ms Leadsom said 80 per cent of the worlds economies were outside of the EU. She pointed out the makers of JCB were saying we would be fine it we left the European Union. Ms Leadsom also noted only 6 per cent of our companies export to nations in the European Union.

On the flipside, Nicola Sturgeon, first minister of Scotland and representing the Remain campaign, said a vote to remain was a vote to continue to access 500 million people in the European Union to trade with.
Final salary schemes are likely to boycott the pensions dashboard, thereby seriously undermining efforts to empower consumers to take charge of their retirement savings, unless the government makes participation compulsory, pension experts have warned.

Currently in the early stages of development and due to go live in 2019, the pensions dashboard is intended to be an online portal for consumers to review, and potentially consolidate, all their pension pots.

But experts have warned there is no incentive for final salary schemes, also known as defined benefit schemes, to participate in the voluntary initiative. Given the DB sector accounts for almost 70 per cent of the UKs retirement savings, not having their data to feed into the dashboard would leave a gaping hole.

Former pensions minister Steve Webb, now of head of policy at Royal London, said older workplace schemes feared the dashboard would cost them money and members, so are highly unlikely to participate voluntarily.

There are an awful lot of people for whom this [the dashboard] is not a good thing, he told FTAdviser. The old, closed providers are worried theyll stick the information on a dashboard, and members will all transfer their money out.

Unless the government gets a big stick, these people will drag their heels.

Mr Webb said therefore compulsory participation was vital. If we want the dashboard to be comprehensive, they [pension providers] will have to be obliged to do it. But he

However, he added the government had no appetite for taking a leading role, because it did not want the expense, headache and potential bad press of another government IT project.

HM Treasury, the department responsible for the policy, confirmed it had no plans to make the dashboard compulsory.

This reluctance has meant DB schemes have so far not needed to lobby against the initiative, Mr Webb pointed out.

However, Peter Scott, who is head of pension regulation and compliance at pensions administrator Equiniti Pension Solutions, said DB schemes could very well lobby against the dashboard if the government did move to make it compulsory.

The dashboard will create huge problems for old DB schemes, he said. If youve been around since the 1940s, a lot of this data isnt even recorded digitally. He said some records were in dusty boxes, with others on microfiche, an archaic method of digitally recording paper documents.

The data is there, he said, but it doesnt exist in a readily available format. Its doable, but it will be time consuming and costly, and the old DB schemes will ask whos going to pay.

Mr Scott noted it is not just an issue for DB schemes, with single employer DC schemes also standing to lose members through the dashboard. You could ultimately see a lot of the single employer DC schemes wither on the vine, he said, predicting some such schemes would end up farming out their pensions to emerging auto-enrolment master trusts.
Post pension freedom problems, regulatory delays and fund outflows for the biggest providers all made the news over the last five days.

These themes and a couple more will now be condensed into our regular end-of-week round-up.

The week began with the Chartered Insurance Institute issuing an unprecedented call to life, pension and long-term savings providers to commit to a new framework of professional standards.

After last Aprils landmark at-retirement reforms, the CII and various industry stakeholders undertook a year of analysis, looking at the challenges facing the sector and identified the first point of contact for savers as being a crucial area to aim at improving, in order to ensure consistency of consumer experience across the industry.

Nine big name companies have already signed up to the two-year commitment to raise their game, with the CIIs director of financial services and insurance markets Steve Jenkins telling FTAdviser the rest of the industry is getting on board soon.

More post-freedoms data dribbled out this week as well, with predictions of the death of annuities turning out to be wide of the mark, according to eValue statistics.

Meanwhile, Intelligent Pensions suggested defined benefit pension transfer requests have surged by more than 14 times over the last year, as members take advantage of the increased flexibility.

Yesterday (9 June), Hargreaves Lansdown announced it would not to revive its DB pensions transfer operations, after temporarily closing the service last August in response to an inundation of transfer requests.

When a client asks us whether they should transfer out of a DB scheme, the trouble is most of the time the answer is no you shouldnt, pointed out head of communications Danny Cox.

Finally, on DB issues, Standard Life Wealths head of business development Ronnie Binnie argued that the regulation covering such legacy schemes must keep pace with that covering the rapidly-expanding defined contribution side of the market.

2) Asset managers hit by volatility

Standard Life was also in the news as the hardest hit - 1.4bn left its European Equity Income fund - of a group of its peers that took the brunt of an asset management sales downturn across last year.

BlackRock, Deutsche Asset Management, JPMorgan, Fidelity, Schroders and Invesco - six of Europes top 10 largest fund providers - all suffered at the hands of chaotic market conditions, according to Morningstar figures.

The wider industry appears to be in flux, with M&G again changing the pricing on its 4.7bn Property Portfolio, reflecting flows in and out of the fund.

Meanwhile, Aviva Investors is to close its 60m Global Cautious Income and 39m Global Balanced Income over fears their income targets could lead to an inappropriate level of risk being taken in future.

3) Advisers in the dock

On Monday (6 June), four men were found guilty of a tax avoidance scheme that conned HM Revenue & Customs out of 100m.
The investment management industry is in danger of losing out unless it works quickly to overhaul the way it builds and distributes products, auditing giant KPMG has warned.

Its report, examining the evolving regulation in investment management, outlined the raft of rules which have been introduced in countries around the world in recent years, with fund managers deemed slow to keep up with mounting pressure over the past 12 months.

Tom Brown, partner and global head of investment management at KPMG, said investment firms risk falling behind while they struggle to address legacy issues like fund charges and distribution processes, along with failing to properly take advantage of technology.

He said firms need to respond constructively to this closer scrutiny, despite it being uncomfortable and at times frustrating.

Mr Brown also said firms should be open to challenge from the regulators and ensure they highlight the unintended consequences of investment decisions.

Julie Patterson, UK investment management director at KPMG, said the industry has to catch up with the influx of changes to regulatory investigations, which are becoming more intense in the wake of information sharing.

So far the sector has been slow to adapt, that is changing, but it needs to happen faster, she said, adding firms need to ensure financial products earn their fees.

If the investment management sector is to gain from the opportunities at hand, it needs to make significant investments in technology and reform the way it builds and distributes products, she stated.

However, Ms Patterson conceded technology in the investment industry is currently at an experimental stage. This has not gone unnoticed by regulators, which are looking at developments and starting to conduct research, reviews and consultations.

She pointed out regulators are questioning whether they need to extend the regulatory perimeter to cover new digital distribution channels.

The report pointed to the rise of blockchain, a technology which allows assets to be moved between financial services organisations without using a central ledger to record the deal.

Regulators are watching developments such as these with a measure of concern, the report read, pointing to fears over the safety of transactions.

katherine.denham@ft.com
One of Europes largest organic farms is for sale, bringing about 1,900 acres of land and a 500-acre lake to the market in Ireland.

Located 20 minutes north-west of Londonderry, the An Grianan Estate sits in County Donegal on the North Atlantic coast and is being sold after its owners  Donegal Investment Group  decided to rationalise its assets.

The estate is for sale as a whole at a guide price of 17m (13.4m).

Pat OHagan, partner at Savills, said the sale represented the largest agricultural estate and organic farm to come to the Irish market since 2000.

The majority of the land is reclaimed from Lough Swilly, making it particularly fertile and suitable for all farming enterprises, he said.

For the past 10 years, the farm has been producing more than 3,000 tonnes of organic produce a year  including milk, vegetables and cereals.

He added that the sale had already generated significant interest from investors, active farmers and farming companies.

Big veg, arable and dairy-producing holding

Much of the land has been reclaimed from the sea and has medium and shallow soils.

About 1,300 acres is farmed organically, producing potatoes, carrots, beetroot, swedes, leeks, parsnips, cabbages, oats, wheat and barley. A further 290 acres is suitable for arable or good-quality grazing. The balance of the acreage is made up of grazing land.

About 400 acres of grassland and 400 acres of arable land are let to a large organic dairy producer, who is seven years into a 25-year lease and is the sole supplier to the Organic for Us milk brand.

There are a number of other 11-month grazing and cropping licences let on the estate.

No houses are included but a concreted farmyard has nearly 8,000sq ft of buildings and a silage clamp. Winter housing is provided by two interconnected cattle sheds, each with 160 cubicles, and the 34-point milking parlour has a 25,500-litre bulk tank.

A fodder store and additional cattle housing is provided in three large sheds nearby, while a separate group of buildings is currently used for washing and storing vegetables.

Donegal Investment Group operates in Ireland, the UK, Holland, France and Brazil and has a range of interests, including distributing seed potatoes and organic produce and manufacturing dairy products.

What is demand like for organic farmland? Richard Nocton, partner, Woolley & Wallis In the current financial climate, buyers will be looking for any possible angle to increase the diversity of their farming portfolio and there could be much more interest in organic land from investors with an ethical motive as well as from farmers. However, in recent sales of organic land, prospective buyers were more interested in the quality of the buildings and facilities than whether the ground had been managed in an organic manner for 10 years. Kate Mortimer Lee, farm agent, Strutt & Parker Organic land will attract interest just like any other farm if it is in the right location with good access and it is of good quality. The organic element doesnt necessarily mean it is worth any more or less. Some buyers will be keen to keep the organic element going but others wont. Edmund Smith, partner, Carter Jonas From what we have seen, there are no premiums paid for organic land, but you could say that it opens up a slightly larger market for those who want to grow their organic holding. It will be one of the contributing factors in terms of attracting interest, but location, size and local demand remain the overriding factors. Hayley Coristine, spokesperson, Soil Association Soil Association Certification is receiving more enquires into converting to organic farming than in recent years. With good prices, stable support payments and a healthy demand for organic, the future of organic farming is looking positive.
Story Highlights 12% of Republicans approve, below the 16% national average

Republicans have registered lower approval since last summer

Prior GOP-led Congresses rated much more positively by Republicans

PRINCETON, N.J. -- Just 12% of Republicans approve of the job Congress is doing, a lower rating than the historically subpar rating all Americans (16%) give the GOP-led institution. Immediately after the Republican Party took control of both houses of Congress in early 2015, Republican identifiers were more positive than the general public about Congress, but by the summer of that year Republicans' approval dropped below the national average.

Since last July, Republican approval has averaged 11%, compared with 15% for independents and 17% for Democrats. The recent trends for all three major party groups are shown in a graph at the end of this article.

Republicans have failed to make progress in getting their preferred legislation passed since they gained control of the Senate in early 2015. John Boehner resigned as speaker last fall as a result of unhappiness with his leadership among many Republican House members, not to mention Republican Party supporters more generally. After a prolonged search to find a replacement, the GOP tapped Paul Ryan as its new House leader. However, that has done little to improve Republicans' evaluations of the way Congress is handling its job.

In the past, supporters of the majority party may have been happy just to have their party in power. Over the past two decades, the majority party's supporters have given Congress significantly higher job approval ratings than supporters of the opposition party when one party had control of both houses of Congress. These data go back to 1993, when Gallup began compiling approval of Congress by party.

Job Approval of Congress, by Party Identification and Party Control of Congress Years Majority party in House and Senate Average approval, Republicans Average approval, Democrats Gap in favor of majority party % % pct. pts. 1993-1994 Democratic 21 31 +10 1995-2000 Republican 52 36 +16 2003-2006 Republican 55 25 +30 2007-2010 Democratic 18 33 +15 2015-2016 Republican 14 17 -3 Note : 2001-2002 and 2011-2014 not included because control of Congress was shared, with one party controlling the House and the other the Senate. Gallup

To illustrate, when the GOP was the majority party in 1995 through 2000, Republican approval of Congress was 16 percentage points higher on average than that of Democrats, 52% to 36%. The gap was even larger -- 30 points -- from 2003 through 2006, perhaps because Republican George W. Bush was president at the time.

Democrats were also much more positive toward Congress in the two recent periods in which they were the majority party. From 1993 through 1994, Democrats' average approval rating of Congress was 10 points higher than that of Republicans. And from 2007 to 2010, Democrats' ratings were 15 points higher on average.

In the current period, which includes the initial months of 2015 when Republicans were more positive toward Congress, Republicans' approval ratings have averaged three points lower than Democrats', 14% to 17%.

Implications

Rank-and-file Republicans are not alone in having a negative opinion of Congress, as independents' and Democrats' approval ratings are also currently low from a historical perspective. But Republicans are unusual in giving Congress lower approval at a time when their party has control of both houses. In the past, supporters of the majority party typically had approval ratings at least 10 points higher than supporters of the opposition party.

Republicans' negativity toward the GOP-led Congress is not merely a function of there being divided government. Republicans were more positive than Democrats toward the GOP-led Congress when Democrat Bill Clinton was president in the 1990s. Likewise, Democrats were more positive than Republicans toward the Democratically controlled Congress in 2007 and 2008 when Bush was president.

Nor are Republicans' lower ratings of Congress attributable to unawareness of or confusion as to which party controls Congress -- 64% of Americans and 69% of Republicans correctly identify the Republican Party as the majority party in the House. Those were easily the highest scores on five questions testing Americans' knowledge of Congress included in the June 1-5 poll.

Republicans' frustration with their own party leadership, in both the House and Senate, likely contributed to their negative evaluations of Congress. Some Republicans are probably upset with the leadership for not doing more to pass legislation to address the nation's problems, even if that meant compromising with Democrats. Other Republicans may have been unhappy with the leadership for failing to take a more aggressive approach against President Barack Obama and the Democrats, wanting Republicans to pass GOP-favored legislation even in the face of a certain presidential veto and to take active steps to thwart the president's ability to pass legislation he favored. Regardless, the change in the House leadership last fall seems to have done little to make Republicans feel better about Congress.

Republican approval of Congress would almost surely improve if Donald Trump were elected president in 2016 and the party maintained control of both houses of Congress, mainly because Republicans would see more of their preferred legislation passed than has been the case with Obama in the White House. However, if Hillary Clinton is elected along with a Republican Congress, it is unlikely that much would change to make Republicans feel better about the way Congress is doing its job.

Historical data are available in Gallup Analytics.

Survey Methods

Results for this Gallup poll are based on telephone interviews conducted June 1-5, 2016, with a random sample of 1,027 adults, aged 18 and older, living in all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia. For results based on the total sample of national adults, the margin of sampling error is 3 percentage points at the 95% confidence level.

For results based on the total samples of 308 Republicans and 313 Democrats, the margins of sampling error are 7 percentage points at the 95% confidence level.

For results based on the total sample of 386 independents, the margin of sampling error is 6 percentage points at the 95% confidence level.

All reported margins of sampling error include computed design effects for weighting.

Each sample of national adults includes a minimum quota of 60% cellphone respondents and 40% landline respondents, with additional minimum quotas by time zone within region. Landline and cellular telephone numbers are selected using random-digit-dial methods.

View survey methodology, complete question responses and trends.

Learn more about how the Gallup Poll Social Series works.


'General Hospital' (GH) Spoilers: Will Jake Open Up To Franco About His Cassadine Past?

It seems that in the coming "General Hospital" episodes, Hudson West's character Jake Webber could be in the spotlight. Apparently, "General Hospital" spoilers suggest that Jake might be ready to spill the beans on what happened during his time on Cassadine Island. [Warning: "General Hospital" spoilers ahead.]

"General Hospital" Spoiler Number 1 - Jake Could Tell Franco

The possibility of Jake actually telling Franco, played by Roger Howarth, is hinted at by Celebrity Laundry. The boy had grown closer to Franco after the older man befriended Jake during art therapy. Now, latest "General Hospital" spoilers suggest that Jake spilling the beans to Franco could lead to a major story arc, a possible backstory about the Cassadine Island events.

Of course Jake's real father, Jason would not have liked Jake getting close to Franco. However, Jake's mother Liz Webber, played by Rebecca Herbst, is pretty adamant that Jake needs Franco around. Incidentally, "General Hospital" spoilers suggest that Jason and his daughter Sam Morgan, played by Kelly Monaco, would be leaving Port Charles soon in search for Nikolas Cassadine, played by Tyler Christopher, who has disappeared.

With Jason out of the picture temporarily, this could set the stage for the opportunity for the boy to open up to Franco. In addition, "General Hospital" spoilers suggest that Franco could use the little book left by Helena Cassadine to get Jake to start talking. Whatever the means Franco will use to draw the boy out of his shell, expect exciting "General Hospital" episodes up ahead.

"General Hospital" Spoiler Number 2 - A Possible Liz and Franco Romance?

Is it possible that a romance might be building up between Liz and Franco? A lot of viewers think it is highly likely given the pair's onscreen chemistry, according to Inquisitr.

It is also possible that Franco's closeness to Liz's son could be a catalyst for a Liz and Franco romance. In addition, "General Hospital" spoilers suggest that Liz and Franco could be captured in the coming episodes, after going to Cassadine Island to look for answers. After going through a lot together, it is not impossible to see them getting closer in such situation.
Kate Middleton, Prince William Divorce: Duke, Duchess of Cambridge Jealous of Prince Harry? Jecca Craigs Ex Splitting up with Wife for Idolizing Angelina Jolie?

Kate Middleton and Prince William have been weighed down with countless nasty rumors ever since they officially announced that they are already an item. Now, new reports are claiming that the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge are jealous of Prince Harry's popularity.

Kate Middleton, Prince William feels so jealous of Prince Harry

Celeb Dirty Laundry reported that both Kate Middleton and Prince William are jealous of Prince Harry. The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge have been very busy since day one as they were given a lot of Royal duties.

However, it seems like Kate Middleton and Prince William are not happy about it anymore. As the parents of Prince George and Princess Charlotte try to model themselves to younger Britons, Prince Harry does not seem to care as he continues to enjoy being a bachelor.

Other than that, Kate Middleton and Prince William are reportedly envious of Prince Harry's popularity. The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge have been trying their best not to put a dirt on their name, while not even being photographed naked has affected the popularity of Ellie Goulding's rumored boyfriend.

Well, both Kate Middleton and Prince William carry so much weight on their shoulders as they are projected to be the next King and Queen of England. Prince Harry, on the other hand, has a long way to go before he can take over the crown and the throne.

Prince William to divorce Kate Middleton for idolizing Angelina Jolie

Meanwhile, Parent Herald previously reported Prince William planning to divorce Kate Middleton after his wife started idolizing Angelina Jolie. Reports have it that the older sister of Pippa Middleton is now following the unhealthy lifestyle of Brad Pitt's wife to keep his body slim.

Palace insiders have even claimed that Kate Middleton is not fond of eating meals and only drinks smoothie and snack bars. Other than that, the wife of Prince William has also been very busy exercising than doing her Royal duties.

Rumors say that Prince William had warned Kate Middleton to change her unhealthy habits. Otherwise, the ex-boyfriend of Jecca Craig reportedly told his wife that he will be divorcing her.

Do you think Kate Middleton and Prince William should be jealous of Prince Harry? Do you think Kate Middleton should stop idolizing Angelina Jolie's unhealthy eating habits? Share to us your thoughts in the comment section below.
Long Beach Mayor Robert Garcia was among the right people enshrined on the memorial wall on Saturday, Oct. 21.
It doesnt get much more worst-case scenario than a 9.0-magnitude earthquake that could not only destroy much of the Pacific Coast, but potentially decimate Corvallis infrastructure.

And thats exactly the scenario emergency-management coordinators at Good Samaritan Regional Medical Center faced this week during a tabletop training drill that was part of the four-day exercise known as Cascadia Rising 2016.

On Wednesday, roughly 30 hospital staff members joined an estimated 20,000 people throughout the Pacific Northwest in the disaster drill, representing numerous federal agencies, the U.S. military, Native American tribes and emergency management officials in British Columbia.

While its unclear exactly what potential devastation could occur in the mid-valley, Good Samaritan staff members took no chances during the training exercise.

With something of this scale, there are so many unknowns, said Joe Hutchinson, director of emergency management for Good Samaritan. Thats why we prepare for the worst-case scenario, and we (also) prepare for minimal impact. Then we adapt using a layered system.

For hospital staff on Wednesday, that meant everything from state-of-the-art internet and phone systems to communicating solely with ham radios. And that meant preparing a few hospital beds to having to evacuate from the hospital itself.

If we had to go outside of the hospital, we can set up alternate care sites with as many as 80 fully functional beds, Hutchinson said, adding that the hospital typically has space for about 120 beds. We work hard at it for this specific purpose. Thats why its so important to be a part of an event like this, so we can work closely with the county and the state and prepare for that.

In the event of an emergency, the hospital can operate its incident command system with as few as five people  as it did during the September 2014 fire at Chip Ross Park. For larger events, the team scales up to about 30 people. This weeks Cascadia Rising event was one of the most massive disaster training scenarios and meant the local team needed all hands on deck.

Our drill today was to test our hospital capability and communications. But the real goal isnt to have a perfect event, its to find out where the holes are and where we can improve, Hutchinson said. We dont teach on fear. We want people educated, prepared and aware.

'In the hot seat'

Vicky Lyons, the hospitals emergency management coordinator, stood on the front line Wednesday as the local facilitator receiving messages disseminated from the state incident command center. From there, Lyons team delegated tasks to the hospitals operations chief, logistics chief, planning chief and finance administration chief.

As hospital staff, when a full-scale disaster hits, we know were in the hot seat, Lyons said. Thats whats so valuable about a tabletop exercise. When you have a full-scale exercise and the cats out of the bag, you cant catch it. With the tabletop, you have controllers in place and you can work on those holes.

Lyons added that the scale of this weeks exercise  which included coordination with all five Samaritan Health Services hospitals  provided a unique opportunity for the Corvallis team to get realistic hands-on training with local, county and state partners.

My goal was to open eyes and get people excited about being in that room. So many people are afraid to be in the command center, because quite frankly no one wants to look stupid, Lyons said. You can talk until youre blue in the face, but until you show them truly what the rest of Oregon is saying is going to happen, its hard for people to get it. I wanted them to see that this is the job they do every day  only on steroids. Thats what they see to relieve the fear.

Lyons said Thursday that she was very pleased with the teams overall performance. But she was more thankful that the exercise allowed the team to recognize its mistakes.

If we were perfect, Im not needed, she said. I think we did great, but we saw some holes, particularly with our ham (radio) operation.

During a true activation, a county ham radio group would likely be deployed to monitor the county rather than the hospital. So, last year Lyons organized the hospitals own ham operators club, which meets monthly to train on disaster scenarios.

Samaritan's hospitals in Albany and Lebanon have their own ham groups onsite, she said, "and they were stellar (during the drill) but theyve been doing it for years, Lyons said. When I built mine up a year ago, I had one seasoned person, and the rest got their licenses in the last six to eight months.  So were still missing a couple of elements that wouldve made it smoother.

Lyons said the ham group is set to meet with Albany and Lebanon club members in the near future.

Weve spotted the bugs, now were going to find out how to make those bugs go away, she said. We look at these disaster drills and we do improvement logs. We look at where we failed, come up with ways to improve it, and test it next time.
A 21-year-old Oregon State University student has been charged with encouraging child sex abuse.

Kun Huang, an international student at Oregon State University from China, was arrested Saturday after a combined Benton County Sheriffs Office and Linn County Sheriffs Office investigation reportedly linked Huang to a Corvallis computer that hosted child pornography on a file-sharing website. Huang was booked into the Benton County Jail and is being held on a $225,000 security.

Huang pleaded not guilty Monday in Benton County Circuit Court to two counts of first-degree encouraging child sex abuse and one count of second-degree encouraging child sex abuse. According to court records, during his arraignment, Judge David Connell ordered that if Huang was released, he would need to turn over his passport to law enforcement.

According to a probable cause affidavit, Linn County Sheriffs Office detectives used an investigative computer in March and, with the help of child pornography investigators, obtained files reportedly disseminated from a Corvallis laptop that contained a visual recording of sexually explicit conduct involving a child. Investigators reportedly then obtained a search warrant to track the IP address to an apartment at Park West Apartments.

On Saturday, the Benton County Sheriffs Office executed the warrant at the apartment and located and arrested Huang, who reportedly had been the sole resident at the apartment when the files were shared in March. Detectives executing the search warrant connected to the apartments router and reported that the IP address was the same as the one under investigation. Huang reportedly told investigators during the arrest that he is a pre-computer science major at OSU.

Huang's court-appointed defense attorney, Robert Corl, did not immediately return calls seeking comment.

Huang is scheduled for a status check on June 16.
This log includes incidents in which there might have been a public disturbance or a risk to the public. Information comes from the Corvallis Police Department, the Benton County Sheriffs Office and Oregon State Police. It does not include all calls for service. The status of incidents might change after further investigation. Locations are approximate. People arrested or suspected in crimes are considered innocent until proven otherwise.

Corvallis Police Department

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 8

THIS IS NOT MY BEAUTIFUL CAR: 11:20 a.m., 700 block Northwest Kings Boulevard. A woman reported that an unknown man got into her vehicle while she was sitting in it. The woman did not want to press charges and the case was discontinued.

ASSAULT: 7:05 p.m., 2900 block Southwest Third Street. An officer responded to a report of a disturbance. Richard Matthew Zib, 39, of Corvallis reportedly walked on top of a man's vehicle and threatened to fight him. The officer later learned that prior to the incident, Zib allegedly threw a beer bottle and hit a woman in the face. Zib was arrested and charged with fourth-degree assault and second-degree disorderly conduct.
David vs. Goliath

To the Editor: The St. Pauls debate has been heavily dominated -- in the media and public meetings -- by sermons from save the building advocates. The latter group is...

POAs start primary process open to all residents

As previously announced, the four Property Owners Associations (Western, Estates, Central and Eastern) have made changes to their processes to nominate residents to serve as trustees for the Village Board of Trustees (BOT) and the Board...

Now the time has come

To the Editor: The Governance Committee should be appreciated for their work which generated several meritorious recommendations relating to the Village government. I was present when two members of Governance...

School tax bill fiasco

To the Editor: The county assessments are now in a 5-year phase-in program thanks to our past county executive's changes to the assessment process. Also, the Star program which once...
Bad Godesberg floods : Dog trapped in Fronhofer Galeria car park

Bonn An owner has recounted the tale of her dogs rescue.

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One of the 29 cars in the Fronhofer Galeria when the floods struck belonged to Katrin Weis. She and her partner, Rudolf Hochholzer, had come to Bad Godesberg because Hochholzer, who is a trainer at the Beez Neez self defence school, was giving a seminar there.

They left their dog in their car in the garage because it was not allowed in the fitness studio. Weis said they did not normally do this. Then came the announcement that car owners should immediately remove their cars. For Weis, it was too late. Luckily my partner was able to rescue the dog, but we were too late to take the car.

Weiss young daughter started to panic when they heard a sort of explosion in the lift well and saw a cloud of smoke. Weis had also been shocked. She said it was very difficult to get information afterwards. She only found out from the internet that her car was now in Mehlem.

Fronhofer Galeria centre manager, Anke Opfermann, said she had no further information on exactly when the centre would reopen, but it would likely be the middle of next week. This is longer than expected.

And what about the other public underground carparks in Bonn? Reiner Loffel, from City_Parkraum GmbH, said the third underground level of the Oxford Street garage floods when the water levels in the Rhine are particularly high. He said the garage was constructed in the 1960s above an old tributary of the Rhine. When the Rhine rises, so does the groundwater and it gets into the lowest level of the garage. Therefore we always keep an eye on the water levels, so we can close the car park level in time.
DLRG : Swimming in Rhine like playing on motorway

Bonn The German Life-Saving Organisation demonstrated the dangers of swimming in the Rhine yesterday.

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The Deutsche Lebens-Rettungs-Gesellschaft (the German Life-Saving Organisation, DLRG) demonstrated yesterday by the promenade next to the Schaumburger Hof just how dangerous swimming in the Rhine is, even for the professionals.

A life-saver from the DLRG tried to reach the shore swimming against the current and had to give up, totally out of breath. Press officer Achim Wiese said swimming in the Rhine could be compared to taking ones children to play on the A2 motorway. The demonstration was part of a press conference held to review the organisations previous years activity.

A total of 488 people drowned in Germany last year, 70 in North Rhine-Westphalia. This was 100 more than 2014. DLRG vice president Achim Haag said, More than half happen in the summer months. Many drown in rivers and streams. There are many causes including lack of rescue services, recklessness, inability to judge ones own capabilities and alcohol.

The DLRG has 549,592 members and 850,000 sponsors. The Bonn area has 2700 members, more than Cologne and Dusseldorf. The DLRG sees the closure of more and more swimming pools as a critical problem. Should the Kurfurstenbad (swimming pool) in Bad Godesberg close, area head Klaus-Peter Hentschel said this would also be a problem for the DLRG as they give many courses there.

In Bonn the DLRG was called out 20 times in 2015 because of people in the Rhine. Two people were rescued. The others either died, could rescue themselves or were false alarms.
Article

Protecting the worlds oceans  an important goal of Germanys climate diplomacy

The worlds oceans are vital to our survival. They regulate the global climate and are a source of food and income for billions of people. Only a very small part of the seas enjoys legal protection, however. Our diplomats are working in New York right now to change this state of affairs.
Sony Launches Next-Gen G Master Brand of Interchanegable Lens News oi -Vigneshwar

Recently, Sony Electronics, introduced their flagship G Master brand of interchangeable lenses in the Indian market, taking a next step in the photography arena.

Sony's new brand includes three new E-mount full frame lenses including a 24-70mm constant F2.8 standard zoom, an 85mm F1.4 prime and a 70-200mm constant F2.8 telephoto zoom.

New FE24-70mm F2.8 GM Standard Zoom Lens

The new FE 24-70mm F2.8 GM (model SEL2470GM) can be used for those who want the highest possible optical performance for portrait, travel and event photography or even simple everyday shooting

The lens features a 9-bladed aperture that maintains a near circular shape at all settings and is coated with Sony's original Nano AR coating to suppress reflections. and ensure spectacular contrast and clarity.

To maximize usability, the lens is dust and moisture resistant and features a compact, streamlined design that includes AF/MF switch as well as focus hold, zoom lock and hood release buttons.

New FE 85mm F1.4 GM Telephoto Prime Lens

The lens features a new XA (extreme aspherical) element as well as three ED glass elements that work together to ensure that the in-focus areas are captured in extremely high resolution while the surrounding out-of-focus areas dissolve smoothly.

This new professional portrait lens is dust and moisture resistant and also has an aperture ring with on/off switchable click stops that can be adjusted based on whether a user is shooting still images or movies. It also has an AF / MF switch and a focus hold button.

New FE 70-200mm F2.8 GM OSS Telephoto Zoom

The new FE 70-200mm F2.8 GM OSS telephoto zoom lens (model SEL70200GM) offers extremely high rendering, AF performance and image stabilization, that helps in shooting wildlife, sports, weddings and a variety of other events and locations.

The lens includes a SSM (Super Sonic Motor) plus dual linear motors that work together to move large lens elements quickly - a task that requires a high level of drive control and ensures focus accuracy. Also, the new model also has built in Optical SteadyShot image stabilization for capturing sharp, blur-free subjects at all focal lengths and a rotating tripod mount that allows the camera to be quickly removed from a connected tripod as needed.

Price

In terms of pricing, the FE 24-70mm F2.8 GM is priced around Rs 1,54,990, while the FE 85mm F1.4 GM Telephoto Prime Lens is priced at Rs. 1,29,990.

Best Mobiles in India

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Carter Unveils Next Wave of Force of the Future Initiatives

By Cheryl Pellerin DoD News, Defense Media Activity

WASHINGTON, June 09, 2016  Defense Secretary Ash Carter today announced the next steps in his Force of the Future initiative to modernize the rules and regulations that govern how the Defense Department recruits, develops and retains service members and civilian employees.

These are the third and fourth steps he's announced since a snowy week in February 2015, his first week in office, when he spoke urgently during an all-hands meeting here about one of his top priorities: building the force of the future.

"Generations change, technologies change, labor markets change. That's why one of my responsibilities now -- and a job for all of us in the years ahead -- is to make sure that amid all this change DoD continues to recruit, develop and retain the most talented men and women America has to offer," Carter said during remarks today in the Pentagon courtyard.

"It's critical we do so to meet and overcome the five challenges we face today -- from Russia, China, North Korea, Iran and terrorism -- especially [the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant]," he added, "and to be flexible and agile in preparing for  unknown dangers we can't anticipate today."

Today's proposed changes -- which the secretary called "the capstone of how the department is building the Force of the Future" -- for the uniformed military services, focusing on giving them room to make common-sense improvements to the officer promotion system, and for DoD civilians, focusing on continuing to attract and retain the best talent, Carter said.

Landmark Changes

The department is proposing four landmark changes to the 36-year-old Defense Officer Personnel Management Act, or DOPMA, all of which Congress must approve.

Today, DOPMA governs the 100-year-old military "up or out" promotion system involving promotion boards, minimum time-in-grade requirements and maximum age limits that still mean officers have to be good enough to advance or they have to retire, the defense secretary said.

"Together, these stand to be the most consequential changes to our officer promotion system in over 30 years, if not more," Carter said, "and they'll improve that hundred-year-old system and help bring it into the 21st century."

The proposed DOPMA changes include:

-- Adjusting Lineal Numbers: DOPMA limits how many personnel are allowed in each grade, so officers chosen for promotion must wait for an opening in the grade above them. When there is an opening, the order in which they advance is determined by line numbers based on seniority. This might mean an assignment goes to the senior person on the list, even if someone lower down would be better in the job, or that high-performing officers chosen for promotion ahead of their peers have to wait in line behind everyone who is more senior.

"That's why we're seeking to change DOPMA to let the services adjust lineal numbers based on superior performance," Carter said. "It's a key part of good talent management, and it'll help us recognize and incentivize the very best performers."

-- Deferring Promotion Boards: DOPMA has specific timelines for officers coming up for promotion. Everyone in a year group is considered when the system says they've stayed long enough at their current grade, and they're considered in competition with their chronological peers. To advance, officers must meet experience and knowledge requirements within a specific amount of time, and the system can penalize deviations from the typical career path.

"The second change we're seeking -- to ensure our force doesn't lose or penalize talented officers who wish to broaden their careers -- is the authority for the services to be able to temporarily defer when those officers are considered for promotion," Carter said.

-- Expanding Lateral Entry: Civilian doctors can become commissioned military officers at grades commensurate with their skill and experience, Carter said, but in most other specialized fields, there's no way for the services to recruit a properly skilled and experienced civilian who wants to serve in uniform without having to start at the lowest ranks.

In situations where, for example, a network defense or encryption expert from a tech company feels a call to serve and is willing to contribute to the DoD mission as a reservist or on active duty, the department needs a way to harness their expertise and put it to use, the secretary said.

"Allowing the military services to commission a wider segment of specialized outside talent  who can meet our standards, who provide unique skills we need and who are willing to serve in uniform will help fill critical gaps in our force and will make us more effective," he added.

-- Enduring Flexibility: Under certain conditions the services must be able to waive select DOPMA constraints to quickly build up expertise in a critical career field, the secretary said. This will enable them to respond to an uncertain future in ways that can be tailored to their specific capability requirements and personnel needs without casting off a system that still largely meets department needs for most officers across the force.

"Here we're seeking enduring flexibility for future defense secretaries to let the services make needed tweaks to DOPMA-related policies down the line, for purposes of improving the force," Carter said. "While the other three changes are about providing specific solutions to specific problems, this change will help us be prepared for what we can't anticipate."

Other Military Efforts

The department also is proposing other measures to improve military recruiting efforts, Carter said.

These include moving to an all-digital system for recruiting and processing new personnel into the military, and expanding work being done by DoD's Joint Advertising, Market Research and Studies program to leverage advances in data science and microtargeting to build a precision recruiting database and making sure the department has access to the nation's entire population.

"Rather than identifying geographic and demographic groups that already have a higher propensity to serve and sending recruiters to find people like them -- which is what we do now -- we're going to build and use this precision recruiting database to identify those who'd be a great service member but might not know it," the secretary added.

Changes for DoD Civilians

For DoD civilians, the department is proposing three changes to current policies. These include:

-- On-Campus Direct Hire Authority: Today, if a DoD recruiter meets an undergraduate student, a graduate student or a recent graduate who is a perfect candidate for a particular job, the candidate must go to the USAJOBS website and start a 90-day or longer process of applying for the job, not counting the time it takes to get a security clearance.

In this change, Carter said, "we're seeking authority from Congress to directly hire civilian employees from college campuses.  This has potential to be a real game-changer for us. Our civilian recruiters will be able to go to a campus job fair, do some interviews, and if they find someone who's the right fit, they can make a tentative offer on the spot, pending security clearance."

-- Two-Way Talent Exchange with the Private Sector: In this change, the department proposes to create a new two-way talent exchange program for DoD civilians with the private sector.

"Right now we only have one such program, and it's limited to information technology-related fields," Carter said. "If we want to send a civilian from the Defense Logistics Agency or the U.S. Transportation Command to spend six months at a place like Amazon or Federal Express to see what we might be able to learn, there's no formal mechanism for that."

-- Paid Parental Leave: For this change the department is calling on Congress to authorize paid maternity and paternity leave for DoD civilians.

"Parental leave is fully paid for military personnel, and the same should be true for their civilian colleagues.  We can't afford to risk losing civilian talent just because private-sector companies will pay them during their maternity and paternity leave and we won't," Carter said.

Other Civilian Efforts

The department has other proposals that will help build its civilian force of the future, the secretary said, including to better leverage existing authorities to directly hire more highly qualified experts across the department.

A highly qualified expert is an individual, usually from outside of the federal government, who possesses cutting-edge skills or world-class knowledge in a particular technical discipline or interdisciplinary field beyond the usual range of expertise. The expertise and skills of such personnel are generally not available within the department and are needed to satisfy emerging and nonpermanent requirements.

"Today," Carter said, "we only have about 90 such experts  across DoD, including some really talented and innovative people like the director of the Defense Digital Service, the head of DoD's Strategic Capabilities Office and the Air Force's chief scientist,  so we're going to use this authority more often and increase our number of highly qualified experts by 10 percent a year over the next five years."

The department also will increase participation by 10 percent a year over five years in the dozens of career-broadening programs now offered to civilians, and expand by 10 percent over five years DoD's decade-old scholarship-for-service program, which brings in graduates in mission-critical science, technology, engineering and math fields to build the next generation of DoD science and technology leaders, Carter said.

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U.S., Coalition Continue Counter-ISIL Strikes in Syria, Iraq

From a Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve News Release

SOUTHWEST ASIA, June 10, 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, fighter and remotely piloted aircraft conducted nine strikes in Syria:

-- Near Abu Kamal, a strike destroyed an ISIL oil pump jack.

-- Near Manbij, eight strikes struck eight separate ISIL tactical units and destroyed 11 ISIL fighting positions and an ISIL vehicle.

Strikes in Iraq

Ground-attack, attack and fighter aircraft conducted 10 strikes in Iraq, coordinated with and in support of the Iraqi government:

-- Near Baghdadi, a strike destroyed two ISIL rocket rails.

-- Near Fallujah, two strikes struck a large ISIL tactical unit and destroyed 16 ISIL fighting positions, two ISIL vehicles, two ISIL rocket propelled grenade systems, an ISIL recoilless rifle, three ISIL light machine guns, four ISIL heavy machine guns and an ISIL mortar system and denied ISIL access to terrain.

-- Near Habbaniyah, two strikes struck an ISIL tactical unit and destroyed an ISIL fighting position, an ISIL mortar system, two ISIL bunkers, an ISIL staging area and an ISIL vehicle-borne bomb and denied ISIL access to terrain.

-- Near Mosul, a strike struck an ISIL tactical unit and destroyed two ISIL assembly areas.

-- Near Qayyarah, two strikes struck an ISIL improvised weapons factory and destroyed an ISIL command-and-control node.

-- Near Sinjar, a strike produced inconclusive results.

-- Near Sultan Abdallah, a strike struck an ISIL staging area.

Task force officials define a strike as one or more kinetic events that occur in roughly the same geographic location to produce a single, sometimes cumulative, effect. Therefore, officials explained, a single aircraft delivering a single weapon against a lone ISIL vehicle is one strike, but so is multiple aircraft delivering dozens of weapons against buildings, vehicles and weapon systems in a compound, for example, having the cumulative effect of making those targets harder or impossible for ISIL to use. Accordingly, officials said, they do not report the number or type of aircraft employed in a strike, the number of munitions dropped in each strike, or the number of individual munition impact points against a target. Ground-based artillery fired in counterfire or in fire support to maneuver roles is not classified as a strike.

Part of Operation Inherent Resolve

The strikes were conducted as part of Operation Inherent Resolve, the operation to eliminate the ISIL terrorist group and the threat they pose to Iraq, Syria, the region, and the wider international community. The destruction of ISIL targets in Syria and Iraq further limits the terrorist group's ability to project terror and conduct operations, officials said.

Coalition nations that have conducted strikes in Iraq include the United States, Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Jordan, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. Coalition nations that have conducted strikes in Syria include the United States, Australia, Bahrain, Canada, France, Jordan, the Netherlands, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, United Arab Emirates and the United Kingdom.

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Navy sailing near Diaoyu 'legitimate'

People's Daily Online

(China Daily) 09:56, June 10, 2016

Japan hypes up situation, intensifies tensions unreasonably, says expert

The Defense Ministry on Thursday refuted Japan's protest over Chinese warships sailing close to the Diaoyu Islands in the East China Sea.

"The Diaoyu Islands and its affiliated islands are China's inherent territory. The sailing of Chinese warships through waters under its own jurisdiction is reasonable and legitimate," the ministry said in a statement released on its official Weibo account.

The statement came after Japan said on Thursday a Chinese frigate sailed within 38 kms of the Diaoyu Islands shortly after midnight.

The Chinese frigate stayed in the waters around the islands for about an hour before sailing toward the Chinese coast.

It was confirmed by the Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force's destroyer Setogiri, which was keeping watch on the frigate, Japan's newspaper Asahi Shimbun said.

Japan's Vice-Foreign Minister Akitaka Saiki summoned Cheng Yonghua, the Chinese ambassador in Tokyo, at around 2 am to "express serious concern", the Japanese government said in a statement.

Three Russian naval vessels were also spotted sailing close to the islands at around the same time as the Chinese warship.

While Chinese coast guard vessels routinely patrol the area, it was the first time a Chinese warship was spotted, Japanese officials said, according to The Associated Press.

Sino-Japanese relations plunged after Tokyo's illegal "nationalization" of China's Diaoyu Islands in September 2012. Tokyo's ongoing attempts to meddle in the South China Sea are making things worse.

Lyu Yaodong, an expert on Japanese studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said it is quite normal for China to assert sovereignty over its own territories, whether by sending a coast guard vessel or a naval ship.

"Japan should not hype up the situation and intensify tensions unreasonably," Lyu said.

Da Zhigang, director of the institute of northeast Asian studies at Heilongjiang Academy of Social Sciences, said Tokyo making a fuss of the case demonstrated its sense of crisis over its illegal control of China's Diaoyu Islands.

"China is justified to safeguard its territorial sovereignty and maritime interests," Da said.

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Obama gives go-ahead to more US military role in Afghanistan

Iran Press TV

Fri Jun 10, 2016 3:45AM

US President Barack Obama has allowed the American military to assume a bigger role in Afghanistan.

A senior US military official, speaking on condition of anonymity, has told Reuters that the move will allow greater use of US air power against Taliban militants, including close air support for the Afghan army.

The official added, however, that "this is not a blanket order to target the Taliban."

The report gave no further details of the decision which comes after months of debate on the expansion of airstrikes against the Taliban.

Still, reports say the US troops currently in Afghanistan would not get involved in direct combat.

The latest move comes as Afghanistan struggles with a resurgent Taliban, particularly in the south.

It also runs afoul of President Barack Obama's pledge to get US forces out of Afghanistan, which Washington blames on the slow pace of the development of the Afghan military and the resilience of the Taliban.

US officials say the Taliban have stepped up their attacks recently mostly in the southern provinces of Helmand, Kandahar and Uruzgan, noting that the Afghan militant group is also increasing strikes in Kunduz Province in the north.

Terror attacks have also been rising in frequency in Afghanistan's eastern provinces bordering Pakistan during past months.

The intensified attacks by the Taliban come more than one and a half months after the group began its annual spring offensive.

Estimates show that about 200,000 people have been killed in less than three decades of Taliban militancy in Afghanistan.

Afghanistan faces a security challenge years after the United States and its allies invaded the country in 2001 as part of Washington's so-called war on terror. The offensive removed the Taliban from power, but many areas in the country are still beset with insecurity.

There are currently some 10,000 foreign forces in Afghanistan despite the end of the US-led combat mission on December 31, 2014. The forces, mainly from the US, are there for what Washington calls a support mission. NATO says the forces focus mainly on counter-terrorism operations and training Afghan soldiers and policemen.

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Rocket and mortar attacks in Yemen's Taiz condemned by UN rights office

10 June 2016  The United Nations human rights office today strongly condemned a series of rocket and mortar attacks against several residential areas and markets in Taiz, Yemen, since last Friday, which killed 18 civilians including seven children, and injured 68 others.

"Several markets were hit while full of people who were shopping ahead of Ramadan," said Ravina Shamdasani, Spokesperson for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, at a press briefing in Geneva.

According to several victims injured during an attack near the Delux Market on 3 June, the shelling originated from the Tabat Al-Sofitel hill, in the eastern part of the city of Taiz, which is currently under the control of the Popular Committees affiliated with the Houthis and forces loyal to former President Saleh.

The shelling on civilian areas reportedly continued until the evening of 4 June and restarted on the 6th, when several houses in the Al Ta'iziyah and Al-Qahirah districts were hit, killing three civilians and injuring twelve others, including nine children.

Another very serious incident took place in the early hours of 8 June when a school near the Al-Thawrah hospital was hit, killing five people, including three children.

"All victims belonged to a marginalized community, the Al-Muhamasheen, and had taken refuge in the school after having been forced to flee their homes due the ongoing violence. According to eyewitnesses, the shelling also came from the Tabat Al-Sofitel Hill," Ms. Shamdasani said.

Since 26 March 2015 and up to 8 June 2016, the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) has documented a total of 3,539 civilians killed and 6,268 injured.

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Airstrikes Cause Two-Thirds of Civilian Casualties in Yemen

by Lisa Schlein June 10, 2016

The U.N. human rights office has released its latest figures on civilian casualties in Yemen, showing more than 3,500 people have been killed and nearly 6,300 wounded since Saudi Arabia's bombing campaign against the Houthi rebels began in March of last year.

These figures are being issued amid an international firestorm regarding Saudi Arabia's responsibility for the high number of civilian casualties in Yemen, particularly child deaths.

Human rights groups have denounced the removal of Saudi Arabia from the U.N.'s annual child rights blacklist. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who has come under a barrage of criticism, reacted angrily to what he called "unacceptable" undue pressure from Saudi Arabia. Saudi U.N. Ambassador Abdallah al-Mouallimi reiterated his denials that Riyadh threatened Ban over the blacklist.

The ambassador, said, quoting,"It is not in our style, it is not in our genes, it is not in our culture to use threats and intimidation."

Ravina Shamdasani, a spokeswoman for the U.N. human rights office, says her organization stands by its figures on civilian casualties, which show that three-quarters of the deaths and injuries are due to Saudi coalition airstrikes.

"The methodology that we employ in gathering these civilian casualties is in line with our very strict human rights methodology," she said. "Where we are unsure whether somebody is a civilian or a combatant, that person is not counted in our total account. And, then there are some parts where we just do not have access for security concerns. So the numbers that we collect are the bare minimum in fact."

Heavy toll among children

A report issued by the U.N. Children's Fund on March 29 finds more than 900 children have been killed and more than 1,300 injured over the past calendar year.

The U.N. human rights office condemns a series of rocket and mortar attacks against several residential areas and markets that took place in the city of Taiz between June 3 and 8. Shamdasani says 23 civilians were killed and 77 injured, including children.

"In the overall count of civilian casualties, that is still the case that airstrikes have resulted in more deaths than other types of hostilities; however, in the last week, in fact, it was attacks that were launched by the al-Houthis that led to all of the civilian casualties."

Shamdasani says the U.N. rights office often faces pressure from states that do not like what it is reporting and that some have threatened to cut off funding. While that certainly would affect its work, she says such threats do not hold back the agency from reporting on human rights violations.

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'This is not yet the moment' for tangible peace talks - UN envoy for Syria

9 June 2016  The United Nations envoy mediating a resolution to the crisis in Syria said today that the time is not yet right for a resumption of the intra-Syrian talks, but that the intention is to begin an official third round "as soon as possible," as efforts continue towards the decisive outcome of a political transition.

"We want to do it as soon as possible. No doubt about that," said Staffan de Mistura, the UN Special Envoy for Syria, during a press briefing in Geneva at the conclusion of a meeting of the humanitarian task force set up by the International Syria Support Group (ISSG)  which consists of the UN, the Arab League, the European Union and 18 countries that have been working on a way forward since late last year.

Emphasizing that a third round of talks needs to be "concrete," he highlighted that he had been told by his predecessors that any action should avoid the situation of "Geneva III," an earlier series of UN-backed talks which had no concluding points.

Noting that "we want to give maximum chances for a concrete outcome," Mr. de Mistura said this would signify the beginning of a political transition.

"But in my opinion, based on my assessment, this is not yet the moment," he added.

He said that preparations were continuing towards that goal, in what he called "technical meetings." Such meetings would not take place in Geneva, and he would not be directly involved, although members of his team would be moving to various locations in order to have technical discussions with "anyone who has been mentioned" in Security Council resolution 2254, or anyone who was "usefully contributing" to preparing the talks, the Special Envoy said.

Meanwhile, Mr. de Mistura said that the deadline of 1 August set by the ISSG is "attainable."

"[We] should be aiming at that one because at the end of the day, that's a date which has been put as a target date, but not just for anything but for beginning of a serious concrete message in terms of political transition," he stressed.

Access to besieged areas

The Special Envoy also said that he had been informed by his team in Damascus that the Government of Syria has approved access to 15 of the 17 besieged areas in the country by the end of the month.

Of the 19 besieged locations, 17 were requested as part of the June plan; written permission has been given for 15 of those 17. Two other besieged locations were not requested as part of that plan, as they are being covered by the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) and the World Food Programme (WFP) air drops, respectively.

The besieged locations where written approval has not been received are Al Wa'er in Homs and Zabadani in rural Damascus.

"Of course, you know very well that approval, and we know very well, does not mean delivery," the Special Envoy said, noting that many actions needed to take place between an approval in delivery.

"In the next few hours, we hope to see some of that approval actually become concrete. That is the test, of course, as always," he added.

Attacks on medical facilities; issue of air drops

The Special Envoy also noted that reports were received that Darayya had been heavily shelled, and said that more information was being sought.

Moreover, he said that reports from the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) on attacks against three medical facilities  including a paediatric facility  in Aleppo yesterday were "extremely concerning."

Mr. de Mistura also highlighted that thus far, 270,250 people in besieged areas had been reached.

In addition, UNICEF, the World Health Organization (WHO) and all partners in Syria, including the Ministry of Health, had helped to push the numbers of children receiving vaccinations to nearly 70 per cent, with more than 900,000 children younger than 5 years old being reached. The special envoy underscored, however, that an equal number of children had not yet been reached.

On the issue of detainees, the Special Envoy said that some information had been received today from a main source that a "substantial number of fighters" appeared to have been released, although details were still forthcoming.

He said he was also informed by Russia that it is ending the demining of about 26 square kilometres of Palmyra, which means that people can start coming back.

"We have information that up to 1,500 people have actually returned and we are obviously looking forward to be able to assist anyone who does return to a place which has been devastated by Da'esh," Mr. de Mistura said.

On the issue of air drops, he said that an official request had been made to the Government of Syria on 5 June for air bridges, air drops and air lifts, which were each meant to respond in one form or another when land access was not possible.

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Damascus Approves Aid Delivery to Besieged Areas, In Principle

by Lisa Schlein June 09, 2016

The United Nations says the Syrian government has given approval for the delivery of humanitarian assistance to 15 of 17 besieged areas in the country. But, it cautions approval does not mean delivery.

The government of Bashar al-Assad has given the go-ahead for the delivery of humanitarian aid to people trapped in areas under siege on many previous occasions. And, on a number of those occasions, the government has backtracked on its promises.

So with a certain sense of cynicism, U.N. special envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura welcomed this latest approval by Damascus.

"There is a lot of actions that need to take place between an approval and delivery, including the possibility of not being stopped at the last moment at a roadblock; including the fact of not medicines being pulled out; including the fact that at a certain point there will not be an indication that the quantity, which was meant is not what will be allowed," he said.

De Mistura says he hopes to see some of that approval swiftly turned into concrete action. He says it is particularly crucial humanitarian aid reach Darayya and Douma, as well as Kafraya and Foah. He says 270,000 of the nearly 600,000 people living in besieged areas have been reached. He adds that is not enough.

He says the United Nations has made contingency plans for airdrops and airlifts into besieged and hard to reach areas if land convoys are not possible. But, he adds, air deliveries also have to be approved by Damascus.

As for the stalled peace negotiations, he says the time is not yet ripe to hold an official third round of Intra-Syrian talks. He says he intends to resume the talks as soon as possible and is aiming for August 1.

"In order to be effective, we need to also give the perception that there is some concrete intention and critical mass for producing this time political transition steps," he said.

De Mistura says the atmosphere surrounding the talks needs to be improved for them to be fruitful. He says there must be a cessation of hostilities and an improvement in humanitarian assistance.

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Syria: UN agencies reach families with food in the besieged town of Darayya

10 June 2016  The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) today announced it delivered food for the first time since 2012 to the besieged town of Darayya, a suburb of Damascus, as part of a joint UN and Syrian Arab Red Crescent (SARC) convoy.

WFP delivered a family ration  enough to feed 2,400 people for one month  and enough wheat flour in bags to feed the entire population of 4,000 people for a month. The nine-truck convoy also carried medical supplies and health items late on Thursday to the people of Darayya. WFP food boxes included rice, lentils, chickpeas, beans, bulgur, oil, salt and sugar.

According to a press release issued by the UN agency, more convoys are planned to all of the 19 besieged locations in Syria as part of the plan for June, following the Government of Syria's approval to reach all these locations.

Elsewhere, WFP reported that a series of airdrops over the besieged town of Deir Ezzor have delivered a month's supply of food for the 100,000 people trapped inside the city. It plans to continue the flights in the next few weeks to deliver another monthly ration.

In total, during the first few days of June, WFP has already provided life-saving food assistance to more than 1.4 million people across Syria as part of the organization's monthly plan to reach 4 million displaced and vulnerable people.

In addition, the agency provides assistance  mostly cash-based transfers through "e-cards"  to around 1.5 million Syrian refugees living in the neighbouring countries of Jordan, Turkey, Lebanon Iraq and Egypt.

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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.
Dozens of residents were displaced in two separate overnight fires occurring at the same time, resulting in the deployment of every front-line apparatus of the Danville Fire Department and 13 off-duty firefighters being summoned to help.

Thirty-two residents of Fitzgerald Apartments at 1236 W. Main St. will be homeless for an undetermined time after a fire Thursday night.

When crews arrived at about 11:45 p.m., they found smoke coming from a first-floor apartment in the middle of the complex.

The fire was primarily in the bedroom, said Battalion Chief Brian K. Alderson in a news release. A back window had broken from the heat allowing the fire to reach past the second floor and enter the attic.

Electric power was shut off to the entire complex.

Several displaced residents will stay with friends and family; the American Red Cross is taking care of more than half of the occupants.

Officials said the fire started from an overloaded extension cord.

Meanwhile, the fire department was battling another blaze at 134 White St.

Crews arrived at about 11 p.m. to find the kitchen on fire. The house suffered significant damage, leaving seven residents displaced.

The cause was unattended cooking, Alderson said.

The Danville Fire Department sent a ladder truck, two support vehicles and 17 fire personnel to White Street and remained on scene for approximately two hours.

When the call on West Main Street came in, the fire department sent four engines, several support vehicles and 22 firefighters to the scene. Fire crews stayed on West Main Street for three hours and 45 minutes.

"The call was dispatched during another working fire on the north side of town," according to a Danville Fire Department news release. "Every DFD front line apparatus was on the two fires during this time; 13 off-duty personnel were called in to assist with the fire scene and man a reserve engine."
King William County officials seized 42 horses from an Aylett rescue organization that had taken in nearly a dozen horses from the Peaceable Farm seizure in Orange County last fall, officials say.

Six horses from Peaceable Farm were among those seized from New Beginnings Horse Rescue on Tuesday, according to Orange County officials.

The King William Sheriff's Office said in a release that the seizure is the result of an ongoing investigation into animal cruelty by the farm owners and that animal control deputies had received multiple complaints of malnourished and unhealthy horses with little or no food or water.

The sheriff's office says charges are pending at this time.

During the Orange County seizure in October 2015, our Animal Control Office faced a crisis situation involving more than one hundred horses, and we were led to believe New Beginnings was a legitimate rescue organization, a news release signed by Orange County Sheriff Mark Amos, Commonwealths Attorney Diana OConnell and Orange County Attorney Thomas E. Lacheney states.

It is deeply discouraging that these horses have suffered abuse and lack of care again. Unfortunately, Orange County does not have jurisdiction over these animals, the officials wrote.

The Daily Progress is attempting to contact King William County officials for more information on the seizure.

Private rescue organizations are not regulated by state or local officials, the three Orange County officials noted.

The fact that the situation in King William County is strikingly similar to what occurred in Orange County last October underscores the reality that the lack of oversight, inspection and regulation of animal rescue facilities in Virginia limits the ability of local government to prevent, manage or budget for these situations.
Kymon OBrien Haley, 17, has been charged in Caswell County, North Carolina, with felony aiding and abetting in a murder, according to a news release from the sheriffs office.

He is believed to have had a role in the June 4 shooting death of Miguel Tyheim Wenstley, 19, that occurred at 222 Sunset Drive, Milton.

Haley was arrested Thursday and is being held on a $1 million bond at the Caswell County Detention Facility. His first court appearance is scheduled for June 15 in Caswell County District Court.

Haley is the third person arrested for the incident.

Jonathan Marquette Hicks, 41, and Ronnie McDowell McCain, 32, both of Milton, North Carolina, were arrested Wednesday and charged with first-degree murder.

Hicks and McCain are being held at the Caswell County detention facility under no bond. Their first court appearance is June 15 in Caswell County District Court.

The investigation is ongoing.
A project that would bring nearly two-dozen loft-style apartments to High Street received approval from the River District Design Commission Thursday afternoon.

The commission approved  by a 6-0 vote  a certificate of appropriateness for River District Lofts LLCs plans to bring 23 loft-style apartments and 25 parking spaces to 549 High St.

Commissioner Courtney Nicholas did not attend the meeting.

Patrick Reilly, managing partner with River District Lofts, said during an interview Thursday he hopes construction will begin in August, with the rental units ready for occupancy in fall 2017.

Rehab Development Inc, in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, is the developer converting the area  which included two buildings, one of which collapsed  into the apartments, a courtyard and parking lot.

We thought the building was naturally suited to be a good building for apartments. Reilly said.

Most of the apartments will range from 700-900 square feet and include wide open spaces, hardwood floors and granite countertops, Reilly said.

Theyll have a very unique feel to them, Reilly said.

Rent will be from $900-$1,200 per month, depending on the units size, he said. Rent will include cable, Internet and utilities.

The area at 549 High St. had two adjacent buildings, one of which collapsed, said Corrie Teague, Danvilles assistant director of economic development. Some of the exterior walls were saved, she added.

Railing and gates for the entrance to the parking lot will be installed, as well as a courtyard for tenants, Teague said. Each unit in the four-story building  except those on the top floor  will have exterior entrances, she said. The top floor will have a common entrance and a corridor.

Redevelopment of the existing structure will require replacement windows, replacement roofing, handrails and exterior stairs with corrugated metal awnings to be installed. An aluminum gate is also planned for the parking lot entrance.

Commission Chairman George Davis III asked Teague  who spoke on behalf River Street Lofts  if the developer was going to leave a piece of brick wall standing, and expressed safety concerns. The Virginia Department of Historic Resources is requiring them to maintain the wall  which will be used to create an interior courtyard  in order to receive tax credits, Teague said.

It will be stabilized, Teague told the commission.

The Danville Redevelopment and Housing Authority acquired the property for no money in the summer of 2014 due to outstanding code violations, Teague said. At the time, the buildings were used for storage, she said.

The DRHA began reaching out to developers to gauge interest in performing a redevelopment project there. Rehab Builders showed interest, with the city and the firm working together on the projects parameters, Teague said.

Reilly is president of Rehab Development; Rehab Builders is the High Street projects contractor. Dunn Dalton in Kinston, North Carolina, is the architect, and Rehab Engineering will be the projects engineer. River District Lofts is a real estate entity formed to hold the project, Reilly said.

Rehab Developments construction company performed the design and building work for Pemberton and Continental Lofts, among others.

Reilly  also a managing partner of Ferrell Historic Lofts at 533 Main St.  is working on getting tax credits from the Virginia Department of Historic Resources for the project. He said he hopes to get approval within the next 30 days, before the department forwards it to the National Park Service.

In another matter, the commission voted to approve installation of a personal electronics charging station  donated by Womack Electric  at Main Street Plaza. The station will include a 3-inch-by-8-inch dedication sign.

Planning Director Ken Gillie told the commission there would be additional stations installed in other parts of the city following the commissions approval.
EDEN, N.C.  Big Mac fans will have to find another place to eat for a few months, as McDonalds on Van Buren Road is slated for demolition soon  but dont worry, it will be rebuilt.

A permit for the project was issued Thursday morning, May 26, and is good for six months, said Bob Vincent, chief building official for the City of Eden.

He said he was approached a few months ago about the project.

It will have double drive-thru windows, and will look a lot like the McDonalds at the other end of N.C. 135 in Mayodan, Vincent said. This ones ready to go, and theyre supposed to be doing the one in Madison, too.

Its unclear from the architectural drawing whether outdoor seating will be available; it is clear, however, that there will be no playground, a feature which Vincent said McDonalds doesnt do anymore.

With the fast food restaurants, if you notice, Taco Bell did a makeover, Wendys did a makeover, there are plans for Arbys its just one of those things [thats done] every five or six years, he said. A lot of times, [restaurant owners] will come through and do a facelift, but in this case, its a complete tear-down and rebuild.

Its only been a few weeks since McDonalds replaced its signature sign out front, a move that may seem odd, with the upcoming demolition.

My theory is that if the sign was gone, then they tear down the McDonalds, everyone will think its gone, Vincent said. So its kind of like, if I have my flag planted there, were coming back.

Another oddity is that Vincent has heard the restaurant has a basement.

Ive talked to people who have been to birthday parties down there, he said. I never knew it.

Restaurant owner/operator Adrian Smith did not return a phone call to his management company, Ice Age Management. However, a spokesperson there first said the rebuild was news to them, and called back to say they had no comment because no date has been set for the demolition.

Edens Director of Economic Development Mike Dougherty, however, has suggested the doors may close on June 13. And according to Vincent, once the building is torn down, it only takes about three months for them to be up and running, serving customers again.

Smiths parents own Ice Age Management and have been with McDonalds for over 40 years, according to their web site. They owned McDonalds restaurants in Houston and Los Angeles before settling in the Greensboro market.

Smith worked in the restaurants with his parents, and has more than 20 years of experience. The Eden restaurant was his first, taking ownership in 2000. In 2012, he acquired six more locations in Burlington. He is also currently president of the Black McDonalds Owner/Operator Association South Zone.
VANCOUVER, BC--(Marketwired - June 10, 2016) - Millrock Resources Inc. (TSX VENTURE: MRO) ("Millrock") announces it has purchased the Willoughby high-grade gold prospect from John Bernard Kreft of Whitehorse, Yukon, Canada. The 995 hectare claim block is located three kilometers east of the Red Mountain development project operated by IDM Mining Ltd. (TSX VENTURE: IDM) and eight kilometers south of Millrock's Poly property and the LNT property, which Millrock has an option to purchase from Teuton Resources Corp. (TSX VENTURE: TUO) along the Del Norte trend. Highway 37A lies fourteen kilometers to the north. The town of Stewart, British Columbia lies 27 kilometers to the west.

High grade gold-silver drill intercepts have been reported by prior explorers. Historical intersections that have been reported include:

Hole # From (m) To (m) Core length (m) Gold (g/t) Silver (g/t) NZ89-061 22.0 42.5 20.5 25.0 184.2 95-532 64.5 77.5 13.0 13.3 59.2 including 72.5 75.5 3.0 31.1 124.5 95-362 88.4 91.3 2.9 398.0 199.4 95-512 47.8 53.7 5.9 16.2 50.2 94-263 75.6 81.6 6.0 17.1 664.3 94-153 66.0 77.7 11.7 39.8 102.4

Note: The Qualified Person ("QP") has not inspected the drill cores. No check assays have been performed.The QP does not have inadequate information to determine whether the reported intersections represent true widths. The results presented are historical in nature and cannot necessarily be relied upon as accurate. The drill hole information was sourced from the following assessment reports, which are in the public domain.

1 Assessment Report #19,474, 1989 Drill Report, Andreas H. Vogt, Bond Gold Canada Inc. 2 Assessment Report # 23,674, 1995 Drill Report, David A Visagie, P.Geo., Camnor Resources Ltd. 3 Assessment Report # 24,169, 1994 Drill Report, David A Visagie, P.Geo., Camnor Resources Ltd.

Millrock has purchased a 100% interest in the project for the sum of $40,000 and 300,000 Millrock shares. All currency referenced herein are Canadian dollars. Millrock will also make other payments in the event the following milestones are met:

In the event that 2,500 meters of drilling is completed, $40,000 or 200,000 Millrock shares at the option of the vendor; and If a Preliminary Economic Assessment ("PEA") is completed, Millrock will pay 50 cents per ounce of gold contained on the property in an Inferred Resource (Canadian Institute of Mining definition) to a maximum of $2 million; and If a Decision to Mine is made, Millrock will pay $1.00 per ounce of gold contained on Reserves and Resources in all categories delineated at the time, less any amount paid at the time of the PEA, to a maximum of $5 million.

Mine production, if it occurs, will be subject to a 3% Net Smelter Returns royalty. The royalty may be purchased in its entirety for the sum of $3 million at any time prior to the commencement of commercial production.

The purchase and sale agreement is subject to approval by the TSX Venture Exchange.

Gregory A. Beischer, Millrock President stated: "The prospect is in steep mountainous terrain on the eastern edge of the Cambria Icefield. The terrain will present challenges, but also opportunities. Glaciers have been rapidly receding over the years since the last exploration drilling work was done in 1995. Much more may now be visible and accessible. The gold grades intersected by previous explorers are quite high. We look forward to following up on the discoveries made previously."

Eleven different zones of mineralization have been identified on the property. The host rocks are Jurassic in age and are geologically assigned to the lower portions of the Hazelton Group. The high grade gold zones are associated with vein structures and sulfide minerals.

For a complete overview of all of Millrock's Golden Triangle projects, click here.

The technical information within this document has been reviewed and approved by Gregory A. Beischer, President, CEO and a director of Millrock Resources. Mr. Beischer is a Qualified Person as defined in NI 43-101.

About Millrock Resources Inc.

Millrock Resources Inc. is a premier project generator to the mining industry. Millrock identifies, packages and operates large-scale projects for joint venture, thereby exposing its shareholders to the benefits of mineral discovery without the usual financial risk taken on by most exploration companies. The company is active in Alaska, British Columbia, the southwest USA and Sonora State, Mexico. Funding for drilling at Millrock's exploration projects primarily comes from its joint venture partners. Business partners of Millrock have included some of the leading names in the mining industry: Centerra Gold, First Quantum, Teck, Kinross, Vale, Inmet and Altius.

ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD

"Gregory Beischer"

Gregory Beischer, President & CEO

Some statements in this news release contain forward-looking information. 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 without limitation the completion of planned expenditures, the ability to complete exploration programs on schedule and the success of exploration programs.

"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."

Image Available: http://www.marketwire.com/library/MwGo/2016/6/9/11G102289/Images/BC-Provincial-Map-201606-c5cb28dccafeb4b39f4398dd582c3d8f.jpg


TORONTO, ONTARIO--(Marketwired - Jun 10, 2016) - Galantas Gold Corp. (the "Company") (TSX VENTURE:GAL)(AIM:GAL), the AIM and TSXV quoted gold producer and explorer with a 100% interest in Northern Ireland's Omagh gold mine, announces the closing of an over-subscribed private placement that was announced 11th May 2016.

Placing priority was given to existing shareholders, with 18,619,841 common shares issued, at a price of CDN$0.07875 per common share (the "Placing") for a total of CDN$1,466,312. A four month hold period will apply, which expires on 10th October 2016. The shares issued pursuant to the Placing will rank pari passu with the existing common shares in issue of the Company.

The majority of the placement was taken up by Mr. Ross Beaty, who acquired 12,825,397 common shares. As a consequence of the Placing, Mr. Beaty has an interest in 28,825,397 Common Shares or 20.9% of the Company's issued common shares and continues to have an interest in 16,000,000 warrants.

In addition to the private placement, Roland Phelps, President & CEO, Galantas Gold Corp., entered into a shares for debt exchange on the same terms as the placement, including the four month hold period, expiring 11th October 2016. Mr. Phelps exchanged debt accruing to him, as of 31st March 2016, for CDN$935,852 for 11,883,835 common shares (the "Debt Exchange"). Shareholder consent was received for the Debt Exchange by means of a written resolution, with a majority of disinterested shareholder votes consenting.

Following the Debt Exchange, Mr. Phelps holds 33,356,750 common shares, representing 24.2% of the enlarged number of common shares in issue.

Mr. Phelps is deemed to be a related party of Galantas by virtue of being a Director of the Company (as defined in the AIM Rules for Companies). As a consequence, the Directors of the Company (other than Mr. Phelps) consider, having consulted with their nominated adviser, Grant Thornton UK LLP, that the terms of the Debt Exchange are fair and reasonable insofar as shareholders are concerned.

Mr. Beaty is deemed to be a related party of Galantas by virtue of being a Substantial Shareholder of the Company (as defined in the AIM Rules for Companies). As a consequence, the Directors of the Company consider, having consulted with their nominated adviser, Grant Thornton UK LLP, that the terms of the Placing to Mr. Beaty are fair and reasonable insofar as shareholders are concerned.

The Company has applied for admission of the common shares in connection with the Placing and the Debt Exchange to trading on the AIM market of the London Stock Exchange ("Admission") with Admission expected to occur on or around 16th June 2016.

Roland Phelps, President & CEO, Galantas Gold Corp., said, "I am delighted with the support demonstrated by shareholders and welcome the increased participation by Ross Beaty. The funding allows us to continue to invest in the exciting Omagh gold project."

The net proceeds raised by the Placing are intended to be used for working capital purposes, to finance the Company's legal commitments in regard to its underground planning consent, finance work on conditions precedent and progress exploration activities.

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.

Galantas Gold Corp.'s Issued and Outstanding Shares total 137,800,830 as of 10th June 2016.
TORONTO, ONTARIO--(Marketwired - June 10, 2016) -

NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION TO U.S. NEWSWIRE SERVICES OR FOR DISSEMINATION IN THE UNITED STATES. ANY FAILURE TO COMPLY WITH THIS RESTRICTION MAY CONSTITUTE A VIOLATION OF U.S. SECURITIES LAWS.

Latin American Minerals Inc. (TSX VENTURE:LAT) (the "Company") is pleased to announce that it has closed the first tranche of its previously announced non-brokered private placement by issuing 6,165,000 units ("Unit") at a price of $0.10 per Unit for gross proceeds of $616,500 (the "Offering"). Each Unit is comprised of one common share (a "Common Share") of the Company and one Common Share purchase warrant (a "Warrant"). Each Warrant entitles the holder thereof to purchase one Common Share for a period of two (2) years from the closing of the Offering at a price of $0.15 per Common Share.

Certain eligible persons (the "Finders") were paid a cash commission equal to 8% of the proceeds raised from subscribers introduced to the Company by such Finder, and also issued an aggregate of 490,000 broker warrants (the "Broker Warrants"). Each Broker Warrant entitles the holder thereof to purchase one Common Share for a period of two (2) years from the closing of the Offering at a price of $0.15 per Common Share.

The Common Shares, Warrants and Broker Warrants issued pursuant to the Offering are subject to a hold period expiring on October 11, 2016.

The Company also announces that the Offering has been oversubscribed and the Company is increasing the gross proceeds of the Offering from $750,000 to $1,000,000.

The Company also announces that a new strategic investor, Plethora Precious Metals Fund has subscribed for a portion of the Offering. Basil Botha, CEO of the Company, commented: "We thank Plethora Precious Metals Fund for their support and encouragement in assisting us to advance our Paso Yobai gold project in Paraguay. Plethora has an exceptional track record for identifying quality assets with large upside potential; their involvement is a big vote of confidence to the merits of this project."

Douwe Van Hees, fund manager at Plethora commented: "We commend the work Basil and his team have accomplished to advance the Paso Yobai gold project and look forward to future production as well as exploration success."

The proceeds of the Offering will be used to reconfigure the mill and improve recoveries and to initiate a drill program on the Paso Yobai site as well as for G&A.

In addition, Mr. Tim Lallas has resigned as Chief Financial Officer of the Company to pursue other endevours. A replacement will be announced in due course.

The first tranche of the Offering constituted a related party transaction within the meaning of TSX Venture Exchange Policy 5.9 and Multilateral Instrument 61-101 ("MI 61-101") as an insider of the Company subscribed for 40,000 Units. The Company is relying on the exemptions from the valuation and minority shareholder approval requirements of MI 61-101 contained in sections 5.5(a) and 5.7(1)(a) of MI 61-101, as the fair market value of the participation in the Offering by the insider does not exceed 25% of the market capitalization of the Company, as determined in accordance with MI 61-101. The Company did not file a material change report in respect of the related party transaction at least 21 days before the closing of the first tranche of the private placement, which the Company deems reasonable in the circumstances in order to avail itself of the proceeds of the private placement and complete the Offering in an expeditious manner.

About the Company

Latin American Minerals Inc. is a mineral exploration and gold mining company which holds its core gold and diamond projects in Paraguay. The Company is currently expanding its Independencia Mine gold processing plant to encompass vat-leach gold recovery from mineralization extracted in open pit bulk mining activities at its fully permitted mining concession.

Management has identified six gold zones for drill testing on the Company's adjacent exploration claims, which is part of the Company's 15,020 hectare Paso Yobai gold project.

Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

This news release contains certain "forward-looking information" within the meaning of applicable securities law. Forward looking information is frequently characterized by words such as "plan", "expect", "project", "intend", "believe", "anticipate", "estimate", "may", "will", "would", "potential", "proposed" and other similar words, or statements that certain events or conditions "may" or "will" occur. These statements are only predictions. Forward-looking information is based on the opinions and estimates of management at the date the information is provided, and is subject to a variety of risks and uncertainties and other factors that could cause actual events or results to differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking information. For a description of the risks and uncertainties facing the Company and its business and affairs, readers should refer to the Company's Management's Discussion and Analysis. The Company undertakes no obligation to update forward-looking information if circumstances or management's estimates or opinions should change, unless required by law. The reader is cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking information.
You're not alone if the thought of hunching over a bowl of hot noodle soup, the broth steaming up your glasses while shovelling noodles into your mouth, makes you actually and longingly dewy-eyed for the cold weather. Looking for noodle-soup inspiration? Here's our top 12 places get your slurp on.

Dong Ba

Don't be afraid. The slick of chilli oil in each bowl of bun bo hue isn't half as spicy as you think. This spicy beef noodle soup  originally from central Vietnam  is a specialty here. Thick ropes of rice noodles swim among shaved slices of beef, hunks of pork and peppery pork loaf. Add extra lemongrass chilli paste from the table condiments tray. Skip the pigs blood if you prefer.

5/117 John Street, Cabramatta, 02 9723 0336 (also in Bankstown)

Pho from Pho Tau Bay, Cabramatta. Photo: Wesley Lonergan Photo: Wesley Lonergan WLO

The bun bo hue at Dong Ba, Cabramatta. Photo: Edwina Pickles

Happy Chef

A back-lit photo menu offers more than 50 noodle soup options, each customisable with your preference for thin egg noodles, fresh rice noodles, dried rice noodles or flat egg noodles. Seafood wonton noodle soup is reviving and the king prawn laksa is richly satisfying but we love No. 1, a Cambodian combination noodle soup with prawn, beef mince, pork liver, blood jelly and pork intestines in a clear chicken broth.

Sussex Centre, Level 3, 401 Sussex Street, Haymarket, 02 9281 5832

Jugemu & Shimbashi

The soba noodles here are made fresh every day by hand with freshly milled Tasmanian organic buckwheat. Time your visit right and you can watch the noodle master in the front window. Savour the toothsomeness of fresh soba with juicy slices of duck and mushroom in a dried bonito and soy-based soup or try the walnut soba noodles in a nutty sesame and walnut soup. Vegetarian soup bases are available.

246 Military Road, Neutral Bay, 02 9904 3011

Soba dumpling soup from JuGeMu & Shimbashi, Neutral Bay. Photo: Marco Del Grande

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Manpuku, Kingsford

Ten types of ramen await at Manpuku, Japanese for "all health and happiness". Broths are based on chicken or pork and you can choose from three types of noodle. Order the salt-based chicken soup for something lighter or go full throttle with the collagen-rich pork tonkotsu. The soy-based pork and chicken soy (No. 7) is a treat too. Traditional conical bowls should keep your soup hot until the last drop.

482 Anzac Parade, Kingsford, 02 9662 136 (also in Chatswood)

Mie Kocok Bandung

Mie kocok means "shaken noodles" in Indonesian, a specialty of Bandung city in West Java. Springy egg noodles arrive in a light beef soup with all kinds of beef bits including a giant meatball stuffed with a quail egg  like an Indonesian scotch egg. Order the yamien for crinkly noodles topped with beef mince. Soup on the side can be sipped separately or poured onto the noodles as you please.

Shop 1, 108 Maroubra Road, Maroubra, 0423 587 878

Malay Chinese Takeaway

The spicy richness of one of Sydney's best laksas is guaranteed to warm you up from the inside. Thin vermicelli noodles and bobbing puffs of deep fried tofu soak up this fragrant coconut milk soup, customised with your choice of chicken, beef, vegetables, tofu, prawn or mixed seafood. Prefer something lighter? The har mee special on Tuesdays, Fridays and Saturdays yields two kinds of noodles in an intense prawn broth.

Shop 1, 50-58 Hunter Street, Sydney, 02 9231 6788

Chicken soup from Malay Chinese Takeaway, Sydney. Photo: Jennifer Soo

New Thainatown

Sure you could order the hot and sour tom yum noodle soup but you'll notice the Thais around you tucking into bargain bowls of $4 boat noodle soup. This fragrant herbal soup is thickened with pigs blood and dotted with nuggets of crackling. You pick between pork and beef balls. Yen ta fo is another favourite, rice noodles and a bounty of seafood tinted pale pink from fermented soybean paste.

91 Goulburn Street, Sydney, 02 9211 0090

Shop 12, 117 John Street (enter from Hill Street), Cabramatta 02 9726 4583

Spring River

Crossing-the-bridge noodles is a classic Yunnan dish, a chicken, pork and duck-based soup served in a clay pot for maximum heat retention. The kitchen can serve it ready-to-eat but it's much more fun to do it the traditional way and cook it yourself. That means a parade of plates holding meat, vegetables, egg and noodles that you add in a specific order. Staff will provide a crash course in instructions.

Shop 2, 203 Thomas Street, Haymarket, 02 9211 5881

Sun's Burmese Kitchen

Mohinga is Burma's version of pho, most popular at breakfast but readily eaten any time of day. This hearty fish soup is known for its balance of sweet, sour and salty; we're talking ginger, lemongrass, tamarind, shrimp paste and turmeric. Dig past the mound of split chickpeas, hard-boiled egg and fresh coriander and you'll find a tangle of rice vermicelli noodles. Shards of deep fried crackers provide a welcome crunch.

10 Tulloch Street, Blacktown, 02 9676 2837

Pho Tau Bay

Slurp as loud as you like at this Cabramatta institution, ladling out restorative bowls of pho for more than 35 years. The clear beef broth has a deep intensity, rounded out by the sweetness of aromatic spices. Seven types of pho include chicken, beef and seafood. Also try hu tieu, tumble of bouncy tapioca noodles in a clear pork and fried red shallot soup draped with either seafood or chicken.

12/117 John Street, Cabramatta, 02 9726 4583

Get slurping at Pho Tau Bay, Cabramatta. Photo: Wesley Lonergan.

The Mandoo

This narrow 20-seater in Strathfield's Korea Town is always busy, known for its handmade dumplings (mandoo) and noodles. Cosy up with the beef bone noodle soup, tinted milky white after boiling beef bones at high heat, or succumb to the spicy seafood noodle soup, jam-packed with prawns, mussels, squid and crab. Both come with kalguksu, handmade knife-cut wheat flour noodles that are pleasurably chewy. Complimentary kimchi is a hospitable bonus.

12a The Boulevarde, Strathfield, 02 9701 0949 (also in Eastwood)

Yang Guo Fu Malatang

Choose your own adventure at this self-serve station for malatang, a Sichuan-style hot and numbing soup charged by weight. Choices include bean curd sheets, bamboo shoots, lotus roots, leafy greens, exotic mushrooms and a dazzling assortment of fish cakes. Pick your noodles and ask for raw beef or housemade Harbin sausage at the counter. After cooking they'll add seasonings  accept them all but get the chilli sauce on the side.

Dixon House Food Court, 413415 Sussex Street, Haymarket, 0414 388 878/0431 317 777 (Also in Chatswood)
Dello Mano, the family-owned Brisbane company that elevated the brownie to haute dessert status, has opened a CBD cafe. Famous fans of the Dello Mano brownie include Anne Hathaway, Steve Carell, Oprah Winfrey and Ashton Kutcher, who liked them so much he famously ordered a batch to be flown to Paris to celebrate his birthday.

Opening on June 1, with an official launch on Friday night, the Tattersall's Arcade venue is the second for owners Deb and Bien Peralta, who are celebrating their 10th year in the brownie biz.

The pair met while working at Cadbury and had a brownie brainstorm while on holiday in Rome. They started in a humble Breakfast Creek commercial kitchen, hand-delivering each box themselves before opening their first chocolate-themed cafe in Fortitude Valley in 2012.

Dello Mano in Tattersall's Arcade. Photo: Chris Hyde

So why expand to the city?

"We believe that our wider range would capture the imagination and whet the appetites of the general public in the city, and Tattersalls is a beautiful arcade and is a nice fit for our positioning," says Bien Peralta.

In addition to their classic range, they've introduced seven new flavours; rum and raisin, raspberry and hazelnut, salted caramel, spiced chilli, maple pecan, "dad's carnivale" (rocky road) and a vegan version of their classic.

Peanut butter tart at the new Dello Mano. Photo: Chris Hyde

There's also a selection of tarts and cakes, from a ganache tart, to black forest cake and a "golden gaytime" mudcake, as well as desserts including a brownie bowl of warm brownie and ice-cream, with a hot fudge sauce and a chocolate-caramel brownie affogato.

Dello Mano will also serve light breakfasts, including savoury and sweet pastries with their own blend of Di Bella coffee on pour.

Open Mon-Thu 7am-5pm; Fri 7am-9pm; Sat-Sun 9am-5pm

Golden Gaytime mudcake. Photo: Chris Hyde

Tattersall's Arcade, 215 Queen Street, Brisbane, 1300 661 682, dellomano.com.au
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Influence in D.C. declines with prices

By Jennifer A. Dlouhy, Bloomberg News (TNS)

WASHINGTON  Tumbling crude and natural gas prices have weakened the energy industry's influence in Washington as cutbacks in the oil field have spread to the nation's capital.

Casualties include the army of lobbyists battling new regulations and the rosters of trade groups trying to elect friendly candidates in November.

The Independent Petroleum Association of America has shed about 100 members in the past year, as low prices force oil and gas companies to merge, declare bankruptcy and scrutinize every transaction, including as much as $60,000 they send the trade group in annual dues. At the National Stripper Well Association, officials started a monthly payment plan to keep some members on their rolls. But they've still lost about 10 percent of their lineup.

The National Ocean Industries Association slashed 10 percent off its 2016 dues  the first time it's given an across-the-board reduction  to try to keep its roster full. Even the biggest industry group  the American Petroleum Institute  waived dues briefly last year.

"When everybody starts looking at their bottom line, trade association dues can be the first to go," said Tim Charters, vice president of governmental and regulatory affairs at the stripper well group, which represents the producers, owners and operators of marginal, low-producing wells. "At the same time, this is when you need D.C. representation because the fight is on. With everything that's rolling out of this administration and the presidential election on the line, we need to be right here in the middle of the fight."

The industry already feels battered by a two-year slump in oil and gas prices. After peaking at $6.149 per million British thermal units Feb. 19, 2014, futures contracts for natural gas tumbled to nearly a quarter of that  $1.64  on March 3, before recovering modestly to $2.48 on Tuesday. Oil prices sunk to a 12-year low of $26.21 per barrel in February. Although oil rebounded slightly, reaching $50.36 per barrel Tuesday, West Texas Intermediate is still less than half its June 2014 high of $107.26 per barrel.

More than 140 North American oil and gas producers and service companies have filed for bankruptcy since the beginning of 2015, according to Haynes & Boone LLP, a law firm that tracks industry restructurings. Those that survived did so by cutting costs, including laying off more than 350,000 workers globally and cutting back on new drilling.

Those cash-strapped oil and gas companies have less room in their budget for advocacy in the nation's capital. Exploration and production companies spent just $6.2 million on lobbying during the first quarter of 2016  17.5 percent less than they did the same period two years ago, according to public disclosure data analyzed by Bloomberg Government. Lobbying spending by the entire oil and gas industry  including refiners, service companies, pipeline operators and producers  is down 4.2 percent.

The sector is relying on a smaller army of lobbyists to deliver their message to lawmakers and regulators  608 so far this year, versus 812 at the beginning of the price slide in 2014, according to data from the not-for-profit Center for Responsive Politics.

Oil companies haven't closed their outposts in D.C., but they haven't rushed to fill lobbyist openings either. Consider Chevron Corp., which reported activity by 13 internal lobbyists at the beginning of this year, down from 15 two years ago. ConocoPhillips reported lobbying by four employees this year, compared to five in the first quarter of 2014.

Oil and gas companies also have canceled contracts with outside consultants and lobbyists, who are sometimes hired to bring special expertise and personal connections to a single issue. Exxon Mobil Corp, the largest U.S. oil company, relied on 13 outside lobbying firms during the first quarter of 2016, according to disclosures filed with Congress  down from 14 in the first quarter of 2014. Four lobbying companies reported doing work for Halliburton Co., the oil field services company that made a failed bid to merge with Baker Hughes Inc. this year, compared with six in the first quarter of 2014. The lobbying disclosures don't capture spending on consultants, strategists and public relations firms that aren't involved in direct advocacy.

Still, cutbacks in Washington haven't matched the carnage in the oil field. Lobbying experts say there's a good reason for that: The industry knows it's in the middle of an epic battle for survival.

Climate change concerns are driving a wave of new regulations and environmental activism aimed at oil and gas. Environmentalists united behind a "keep it in the ground" approach to fossil fuels have camped outside the homes of federal regulators deciding whether to permit new pipelines and have protested government auctions of drilling rights. They also have pushed the Obama administration to crack down on greenhouse gas emissions tied to oil and gas development, scoring a big win last month when the Environmental Protection Agency required energy companies to plug methane leaks at new wells and other facilities.

Because oil and gas companies' "economic fortunes are very closely tied to policy around climate change, this is an industry with a tremendous amount at stake," said Lee Drutman, a senior fellow at the think tank New America who analyzes corporate influence and political spending. The industry "is facing a number of almost existential threats" and is "going to be directly affected by public policy choices in the next several years."
Warner Bros. Entertainment Emilia Clarke stars as a woman hired to be a companion to a wealthy quadriplegic (Sam Claflin) in "Me Before You."

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'Alice Through the Looking Glass'

Some years after the first film, faced again with the prospect of losing her independence, Alice climbs through a mirror and is transported back to Underland, where she decides to help look for Hatter's (Johnny Depp) family. The film trudges through the lushly designed world, answering questions we never asked: "What was the Mad Hatter's childhood like?" and "Why does the Red Queen have such a large head?" In other words, it's an Underland origin story. It's less than enchanting and the plot gets less and less compelling as it goes on.

Rated: PG for fantasy action/peril and some language

Grade: C-

'The Angry Birds Movie'

The concept of this movie, adapted from an addictive app, is simple: How did the angry birds get so angry? At first, the angry ones are sort of the outcasts of this happy society of flightless birds. Red (Jason Sudeikis), an aggravated loner bird, ends up in anger management alongside some other volatile types. But then some pesky pigs arrive by ship and overrun Bird Island. "The Angry Birds Movie" doesn't quite achieve the relative superiority of "The Lego Movie," but it's surprisingly fun and heartfelt at times.

Rated: PG for rude humor and action

Grade: C+

'Me Before You'

Some people like to cry at the movies. If you are one of those people, chances are you'll enjoy "Me Before You," the story of good-hearted but unambitious Louisa Clark (Emilia Clarke), who is hired as a companion to wealthy, bitter quadriplegic Will Traynor (Sam Claflin). After a rough start they soften toward each other  until Lou discovers Will's plan to commit legal suicide in Sweden. She vows to show him a life with her is worth living no matter the constraints. "Me Before You" is a juicy, ripe red apple of a romance with a razor blade embedded under its skin.

Rated: PG-13 for thematic elements and some suggestive material

Grade: B

'Neighbors 2'

Take "Animal House" or "Revenge of the Nerds," turn the gender roles inside out, and you have "Neighbors 2." A trio of college girls (Chloe Grace Moretz, Kiersey Clemons and Beanie Feldstein) who want to party on their own turf and by their own rules find their own sorority house, formerly the Delta Psi house next door to 30-something parents Mac (Seth Rogen) and Kelly (Rose Bryne), who are trying to sell the property. How do they confront the wild new sorority next door? A prank war, of course. The film is an instant classic and even better than its predecessor.

Rated: R for crude sexual content including brief graphic nudity, language throughout, drug use and teen partying

Grade: A

'Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping'

This music mockumentary by the sketch comedy group The Lonely Island has Andy Samberg, Jorma Taccone and Akiva Schaffer playing a Beastie Boys-esque rap group that fizzles when Connor's (Samberg) stardom takes off. The film follows the peak of his success and ultimate downfall. The pop parody is on point through the first two-thirds, but the last third feels like The Lonely Island team decided to stop writing and wrap things up too quickly and easily.

Rated: R for some graphic nudity, language throughout, sexual content and drug use

Grade: C+

'Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows'

The plot itself is pretty straightforward  the brothers TMNT must stop the evil Shredder (Brian Tee) and Krang (Brad Garrett) from opening up a space portal for world domination  but the film is filled with unnecessarily complicated tangents. The dynamic between the brothers and their struggle over their desire to be "normal" are the most heartfelt and resonant elements of the film, but mostly it's a befuddling and loud jumble of computer graphics.

Rated: PG-13 for sci-fi action violence

Grade: D+

'X-Men: Apocalypse'

Apocalypse (Oscar Isaac), a superpowered mutant who was revered as a god millennia ago, is resurrected in 1983 after centuries of lying dormant. Disgusted at the state of the world, he wants to wipe out humans and restore mutants to their deified status. Magneto (Michael Fassbender) and other disillusioned mutants join forces with Apocalypse while Professor X (James McAvoy) and his proteges try to stop them. It is ultimately a satisfying conclusion to the rebooted trilogy.

Rated: PG for some sequences of scary action and peril

Grade: B-

Wire services
SHARE Contributed photo by Bruce Burr Herd will appear in a 2017 book of character actors. Contributed photo Herd played Sheriff File in a 1955 stage production of "The Rainmaker." NBC photo Richard Herd played Mr. Wilhelm in "Seinfeld."

Richard Herd honored to receive Silver Spur Award

By Nick Thomas

When discussing Westerns, Richard Herd's name may not immediately pop up. The 83-year-old veteran character actor is probably best recognized from several 1990s TV series, such as "Seaquest DSV," "Star Trek: Voyager" and "Seinfeld"  for his recurring role as Mr. Wilhelm.

But this fall Herd will be honored for his Western connections at the 16th annual Silver Spur Awards, presented by The Reel Cowboys, a film and TV appreciation organization that has included among its members Western icons such as Ronald Reagan, Angie Dickinson and James Arness (see reelcowboys.org).

"It was a total surprise when I received the call from the award committee," Herd said from his home in Los Angeles. "I came late to Hollywood and missed the great TV Western era, of which I had always wanted to be a part, so the pickings were very slim."

Nevertheless, Herd's connection to the cowboy community dates back to his childhood.

"I'm indebted to my grandfather, Thomas Lydon, who took me many times on his buckboard to the Keith Stables where he worked in Brighton, Massachusetts," he said, noting that the smell of horse manure and gun smoke "has long lingered in my being."

Like many actors, Herd's acting skills were first sharpened in theater long before his move to television and film in the 1970s. In 1955 he played the sheriff in "The Rainmaker" at The Erie Playhouse in Pennsylvania.

"It was a winter stock regional theater company with a six-month season," he said. "I was a very young actor, and being there was one of the best learning acting experiences of my theatrical life. Jerry Stiller of 'Seinfeld' and Vic Morrow of 'Combat' had been members of the company at one time or another as well."

Much later, in 2001, Herd portrayed famed filmmaker Cecil B. DeMille on stage. "It was a one-man show. DeMille produced the first full-length Western, 'The Squaw Man,' (in 1914) along with many other great Westerns."

On television, Herd appeared in the 1978 Western comedy "Kate Bliss and the Ticker Tape Kid."

"It was directed by Burt Kennedy, who worked with John Wayne for over 20 years," he said. Herd also had a role in the 2007 TV Western "Love's Unfolding Dream." It reused old sets from the popular 1990s Western series "Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman," in which Herd also appeared. Other TV Western roles included the series "The Adventures of Brisco County Jr."

In addition to acting, Herd creates music, crafts jewelry, writes poetry and is an established artist (see richardherd.com). He also has taught acting classes at colleges around the country.

In July he will be a guest at Alamo City Comic Con in San Antonio, and his name was recently added to the massive list of guests attending the Star Trek 50th anniversary celebration in Las Vegas in August. But this year, he's especially looking forward to the Silver Spur Award in September.

"It will be presented to me by Morgan Woodward," he said. "I feel blessed that I got to do the handful of Westerns that I've done. I look forward to the day when this more hardened and mature man gets the opportunity to saddle up, slap on my six-shooter and chase the bad guys again."

Nick Thomas has written features, columns, and interviews for over 600 magazines and newspapers. See tinseltowntalks.com
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If you're Donald Trump, you must surely know that opponents are on a constant search for weapons to beat your brains in.

In most cases, if you're Donald Trump, it won't matter. Things that would have sunk other candidates have barely nicked him; some may have actually helped.

But now, as the nation starts to pay closer attention, the margin for error has narrowed. This means if there is a controversy that requires clarity, then that's what you deliver.

Trump is having a tough stretch as the primary season comes to an end, not because he is a racist, but because he has done a thoroughly inadequate job insulating himself from that charge in a case that is so easy to explain that even I can do it.

His complaint is that a Hispanic judge, Gonzalo Curiel, is treating him unjustly in the lawsuits against Trump University, which may well be the case. But does he explain the sadly common practice of racial politics poisoning the judiciary? Not quite. America currently understands his objection as: "The judge is a Mexican."

This has led to sprawling sessions of hand-wringing from Trump critics reminding us constantly that the judge is from Indiana, and as American as any of us. This is undeniably true, and wholly irrelevant to the Trump's stated concerns.

So here is the case he could have been making these last few days:

Judge Curiel's ethnicity is of no inherent significance whatsoever. But there are reasons to believe that he may harbor the kind of racially charged political animus common in many walks of life.

He is a member of the San Diego La Raza Lawyers Association, which his defenders will accurately assert is not the same as the infamously radical National Council of La Raza. But that lawyers' group is far from the nonpartisan enclave some have suggested in an attempt to dissuade suggestions of Curiel's possible impartiality.

The SDLRA website lists links of various groups it considers part of its "community." It is a litany of pro-amnesty interests who could be expected to recoil at a Trump agenda that promises a return to serious borders.

The group may align itself with whomever it pleases, but if those associations carry a distinct anti-Trump flavor, it is hardly racist to ask if there may be a political grudge flavoring the Trump University proceedings.

A law firm appointed to a plaintiff by Judge Curiel has contributed to Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign and paid the Clintons well over a half-million dollars in speaking fees. Reactions to this may differ, but is a defendant off base in harboring concerns in that light?

Finally, a sitting Supreme Court justice has confirmed that racial logic is welcome in modern rulings. Have we forgotten Sonia Sotomayor's 2009 claim that a "wise Latina" could be a source of better rulings than jurists sadly lacking her ethnicity? That is an affront to the very concept of impartial justice, and a valuable part of any assertion of doubt about Curiel's fairness.

Trump has repeated that his argument against the judge is behavioral, not racial. But that requires a few moments of nuanced heavy lifting so that people don't bog down on "He's a Mexican" and "He's proud of his heritage." He may feel invincible in view of what he has gotten away with. But a general election win means reaching beyond his base to attract new supporters by erasing, not creating, doubts.

His concerns about Judge Curiel are thoroughly sound and supportable. It would be nice if his explanations were.

Mark Davis, the host of a radio show in Texas, is a special contributor to the Dallas Morning News. Contact him at markdavisshow@gmail.com.
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The following editorial appeared in Monday's Dallas Morning News:

Donald Trump's presidential campaign is littered with more insults and disrespect than anyone can count. Now he's added a racist assault on a member of the federal judiciary to his hit list. Has he no respect for anyone or institution?

Trump's latest target is U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel, the presiding judge over two of the three Trump University lawsuits that accuse the billionaire's business venture of defrauding students. Last week, Trump ranted and tweeted that Curiel is "Mexican" and is biased in the court proceedings. Why? Trump claims the judge opposes his plan to build a wall on the border between Mexico and the United States and is a "hater."

No evidence exists of any of these vile accusations. But that hasn't slowed Trump's hair-trigger tongue. Given his status as the presumptive GOP nominee, these comments undeservedly trash the integrity of a federal judge, threaten the independence of the judiciary and reveal, once again, the smallness of the man who could become president.

Judge Curiel was born in Indiana to Mexican immigrants who arrived with elementary school educations. He is as American as Trump, who is the grandson of immigrants. Suggesting that Curiel is biased because of his heritage insults any minority who has pursued the American Dream to laudable accomplishments.

Curiel's parents gave him an opportunity at the American Dream, as did Trump's ancestors. Are we to assume that any judge is unfit to judge someone of another background? For the sake of the judicial system, the answer had better be "no."

Some Republicans who back the party's presumptive nominee are shocked by Trump's behavior. No less a Trump supporter than former Speaker Newt Gingrich called the comments inexcusable and labeled them among the worst mistakes of Trump's campaign  and that's saying something.

Sadly, others, including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and former U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, offered weak-kneed responses that prioritize politics over principle. On "Meet the Press," McConnell said he disagreed with Trump's comments but favored party unity behind Trump. In his op-ed in The Washington Post, Gonzales defended Trump's right to question whether a judge is biased.

That misses the point. Trump crossed a line when he questioned Curiel's judgment based on his ethnicity and threatened to do something about the judge when he becomes president. Such actions are indefensible and should have been denounced without equivocation.

Trump continues to pick vile fights with anybody who doesn't look like him  women, Mexican-Americans, even the pope. The very future of the GOP  not to mention personal reputations  are at stake each time Republican leaders tolerate his foul behavior.
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John Chinn, San Angelo

Let's have police chief debate

The broadcast media wants debates between the two candidates for police chief. Tim Vasquez is willing to debate. The problem is Frank Carter claims nothing new would come from additional debates. He is wrong. The voters deserve the debates.

Carter claims that anyone interested in the position of the candidates can watch online the previous debates. The problem is that there are additional items worthy of debate that are not answered by reviewing earlier debates.

Unresolved from the previous debates is the substantial out-of-town financial contributions (75 percent) to Carter's campaign. What was Carter's role in having CLEAT conduct a survey and release it in the middle of early voting? Carter joined CLEAT less than six weeks before the survey/election, gaining an endorsement and financial contribution from them. This has all the appearance of a deliberate act to influence the election.

Carter wants to reorganize staffing by increasing certain departments, some by double current staffing. What departments are going to be reduced and what will the impact of the reductions be? He claims that he can modify officer assignments to better serve the city. What are the actual problems with current staffing? What will improve under his plan since the overall complement of officers remains the same?

Carter claims there is a lack of communication within the department. Yet he decides to divide the department by asking for public endorsement from less than 50 percent of the force. By refusing to debate, there is absolutely a lack of communication to the public  the employer.

Based on information currently available to the public, Tim Vasquez is a proven leader and the most qualified candidate. If Carter wants to prove otherwise, he has an obligation to debate the issues.
Standing on the steps of the U.S. Supreme Court, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced Thursday morning that his office is launching a lawsuit against the state of Delaware over millions of dollars he argued are owed to Texas and 20 other states.Texas is co-leading the lawsuit with the state of Arkansas, charging that Delaware unlawfully took possession of uncashed MoneyGram checks instead of the state where the money order was purchased.MoneyGram, a money transferring company, is based in Delaware.Delaware is ignoring controlling federal law in exchange for financial gain, Paxton told reporters on Thursday. They have hundreds of millions of dollars that rightfully belongs to taxpayers of our states.Arkansas and Texas are co-leading this coalition of states to get our money back, he added. We are urging the Supreme Court to enforce federal law."In a news release, the Texas attorney generals office said an audit showed Delaware owed the states $150 million. Of that share, Paxton was unable to give a specific figure of how much belonged to Texas but estimated it was in the tens of millions.Moneygram spokeswoman Michelle Buckalew said in a statement, "This is a dispute among states over which state has the priority to property escheated to the State of Delaware in good faith by MoneyGram. MoneyGram will comply with the decision made by the U.S. Supreme Court.Delaware Finance Secretary Thomas Cook suggested Texas' lawsuit is redundant.This issue has been the subject of two prior lawsuits, filed by Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, against Delaware in federal district courts earlier this year," Cook said in a statement. "Delaware disputes the allegations in those suits and, to bring some clarity to this issue, filed an action in the U.S. Supreme Court last week to resolve the outstanding legal question. Delaware cannot speculate why Texas did not intervene in the existing Supreme Court case, but is hopeful that the Supreme Court will provide all states with guidance on how companies should handle this particular type of unclaimed property in the future.Along with Texas and Arkansas, 19 other states joined the suit: Alabama, Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Utah and West Virginia.
Just how valuable is Medicaid expansion? According to a new study, it can be the difference between a state with a thriving health-care system and one with a fledgling system.Georgetown Universitys Center for Children and Families published a report this week that looked at hospital systems and federally qualified health centers (FQHC) in three states that had not expanded Medicaid and four that had. The report's major takeaways echo findings that have already been well-documented but also show that a state's decision about whether to expand Medicaid can impact other states.The report found that making more lower-income people eligible for Medicaid drops the uninsured rate and the amount of uncompensated care that hospitals and health centers foot the bill for. In effect, some health systems that were struggling financially have become profitable.One FQHC reported having anend-of-year loss of $2.5 million before its state expanded Medicaid. The very next year, after expansion, it had a surplus of $2.5 million. This extra money can be the difference between investing in health infrastructure projects or being forced to lay people off, according to Paul Taylor, CEO of Ozarks Community Hospital system, a safety-net provider with clinics in both Arkansas (an expansion state) and Missouri (a nonexpansion state).In the case of Ozarks Community Hospital systems, Missouri's rejection of Medicaid expansion hurt Arkansas.I had to cut 100 full-time employees in both states because of the losses in Missouri. If I hadnt done that, the whole system would be endangered," said Taylor. Missouri is benefitting from Arkansas expansion simply because weve been able to continue operations. Its been a very real, horrific experiment to live through. But at least we are holding on."There's also a medical brain-drain occurring in states that chose not to expand. According to the report, doctors are increasingly worried about layoffs and cuts in nonexpansion states and moving to places with more opportunities.According to the Georgetown researchers, this is an example of two health-care systems existing in America.On the one hand, we are seeing states where providers are becoming more integrated and holistic. And then there are states where the status quo is being maintained, said Adam Searing, senior fellow at Georgetown Universitys Center for Children and Families.For the 19 states that havent expanded Medicaid -- nearly all of which are led by Republicans -- it's likely going to stay that way.South Dakota Gov. Dennis Daaugard could still call for a special session this summer on Medicaid expansion, but he appears to be the last governor open to negotiation. Other governors have either stood firm against it or have legislatures opposed to the idea.The opposition to expanding Medicaid typically revolves around money. Governors and legislatures believe that while the federal government is footing the bill for expansion now, it won't be a sustainable option once federal money starts to be phased out. In 2020, the feds will start paying 90 percent (opposed to 100 percent) of states' Medicaid expansion costs.It's not a perfect system, not even in states that have expanded. Some doctors still either refuse to see Medicaid patients or cap their number of Medicaid recipients because it tends to pay less than private insurers. This means long wait times to see a specialist, or worse, not being able to find care at all.But Georgetowns researchers hope that reports like this will push politicians to realize that an insured population is better for not just their state but others.Getting people covered is just the first step to a better and more coordinated health system, said Searing.I hope that soon the differences between expansion and nonexpansion states will be so overwhelming that compromises can be made."
Where Conservatives Lost Ground

California Primary Highlights

Other Races in Other States

The split between more conservative Republicans and establishment types played out in a number of Western legislative races this week.Republicans control the Montana Legislature, but Democratic Gov. Steve Bullock has managed to steer a number of his priorities into law. He has benefited from the willingness of self-described "responsible" Republicans to join Democrats and thwart more conservative members on issues like school funding, campaign finance, pensions and Medicaid expansion.That coalition was strengthened on Tuesday in the state's primaries. Not only were two conservative state House incumbents defeated, but moderate Republicans also picked up one seat in both the House and Senate that had been left vacant by conservatives.Power didn't change hands, however, in about a dozen other contested races."What's really important here is that the only two incumbents who lost were two prominent conservatives," said David Parker, a political scientist at Montana State University.Heading into the primaries, the so-called responsible Republicans enjoyed much deeper financial backing than conservatives, receiving help from groups representing businesses, union members and Native Americans."The real winner, frankly, is probably Bullock," said Parker.On top of the prospect of gaining more help in the legislature, Bullock won the Democratic primary and will face Republican businessman Greg Gianforte in what will be a contentious race for governor in November.InGOP Gov. Dennis Daugaard didn't enjoy quite the same success as Bullock.He offered financial backing to Republicans in eight state Senate primaries -- all of whom favored changes in school funding formulas and a state sales tax increase.But three of his eight favorites lost on Tuesday to more conservative candidates, including state Sen. Bruce Rampelberg and two state representatives looking to move up to the Senate.Democrats are mayors in 22 of the 25 largest cities. As mayor of, Kevin Faulconer presides over a larger city than any other Republican. Nevertheless, he easily won re-election Tuesday against a split field.The Democratic candidate, Ed Harris, actually finished third behind Lori Saldana, a former Democratic state representative who ran as an independent.Saldana presented herself as a progressive alternative to Faulconer. But Faulconer ran as a moderate, touting his significant financial investment in the city's plan to slow climate change and refusing to endorse Donald Trump. California news outlets touted Faulconer as " perhaps the most prominent Republican leader in the state of California ," offering a " glimmer of hope for a Republican revival ."The California GOP can use it. For the first time since the adoption of the 17th Amendment in 1913 allowed direct election of senators, no Republican will be on the general election ballot this fall. Thanks to the state's primary system, which allows the top two finishers to advance regardless of party, the contest for the U.S. Senate seat comes down to state Attorney General Kamala Harris and U.S. Rep. Loretta Sanchez, both Democrats.San Diego voters also approved a ballot initiative that increases the minimum wage to $10.50, with scheduled cost-of-living adjustments that could eventually increase local pay above the $15 minimum wage recently enacted by the state. The measure also mandates 40 hours of paid sick leave per year.In, the most expensive mayoral election in the city's history ended in favor of Darrell Steinberg. A former California state Senate president pro tem, Steinberg will succeed Kevin Johnson, who has been embroiled in scandal surrounding allegations of sexual misconduct.Steinberg's 59 percent showing was good enough to avoid a November runoff against City Councilmember Angelique Ashby Ashby sought to portray Steinberg as a "hired gun" due to fees he collected advising the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California. But Steinberg focused on his plans for combating crime and homelessness while also touting his work in the Senate on mental illness and other issues.One of the other complaints Steinberg had to deal with was his handling of the criminal indictments of three state senators in 2014. Each was suspended but continued to collect their legislative salaries, which were only forfeited following resignation or expulsion. As part of the continuing fallout, California voters on Tuesday approved a ballot measure that will let the Senate and Assembly not only suspend their colleagues but dock their pay with a two-thirds vote.With control of the state Supreme Court at stake, North Carolina primary voters set up an expensive November race between incumbent Justice Robert Edmunds and Superior Court Judge Mike Morgan. Although the contest is nominally nonpartisan, Edmunds is a Republican and Morgan a Democrat. Republicans currently have a 4-3 majority on the court.In an Albuquerque district,Democratic state Rep. Idalia Lechuga-Tena lost to high school teacher Debbie Sarinana. Lechuga-Tena had been appointed to the seat last year by a split vote among Bernalillo County commmissioners. Lechuga-Tena, who received more support from Republican than Democratic commissioners, was the last in a string of appointments made to fill the seat as its occupants moved on to higher offices. Sarinana got the backing of state Sen. Mimi Stewart, who had previously held the House seat.Third-term Democratic state Rep. Dan Kelly was the loser in Iowa. He has been a vocal opponent of the Bakken pipeline, which would carry oil as it crosses the state on its way from North Dakota to Illinois and is supported by unions. In turn, unions backed his challenger, police officer Wes Breckenridge.Iowa state Sen. David Johnson also made news on Election Day by renouncing his membership in the Republican Party. He declared himself an independent because of Trump's candidacy. Johnson called it "sheer insanity" that prominent Republicans were supporting Trump even as they condemned his racist remarks. "How do you stop a bigot?" Johnson said on Iowa Public Radio. "You've got to stop him or her in their tracks."
'Flawed ruling'

Preserves state law

Ruling in 2014

Shooting in Arizona

In a major victory for gun control advocates, a federal appeals court on Thursday upheld California's handgun license law, saying there is no constitutional right to carry concealed weapons in public and setting the stage for a potential showdown in the U.S. Supreme Court."The Second Amendment does not protect, in any degree, the carrying of concealed firearms by members of the general public," the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco said in a 7-4 decision.The ruling upheld a century-old state law -- which a previous court panel had declared unconstitutional -- requiring handgun owners to obtain licenses from local law enforcement agencies before carrying concealed weapons in public. The issue could be headed for the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled in 2008 that the Constitution's Second Amendment protects the right to possess guns at home for self-defense, but has not said whether that right applies outside the home.Several other federal appeals courts also have concluded that states can restrict carrying loaded weapons in public, but in 2012 an appellate panel struck down an Illinois ban on carrying concealed weapons in public. The Supreme Court often takes up cases to resolve conflicts in appellate courts."This flawed ruling underscores the importance of the 2016 election," the California Rifle and Pistol Association, which joined the challenge to the state law, said of Thursday's ruling. "It is imperative that we elect a president who will appoint Supreme Court justices who respect the Second Amendment and law-abiding citizens' right to self-defense."Attorney General Kamala Harris, whose office defended the state law in court, said the ruling "ensures that local law enforcement leaders have the tools they need to protect public safety by determining who can carry loaded, concealed weapons in our communities."The ruling preserves a licensing system in California in which concealed handgun permits are virtually unavailable to anyone except law enforcement officers and security guards in most metropolitan areas, including San Francisco, and are issued in most rural and inland areas to any adult who asserts a need for self-defense and does not have a disqualifying criminal record. A contrary ruling would have made permits widely available statewide.About 35,000 Californians held concealed-weapons licenses in 2011, according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office, and the number is likely to have increased substantially since then as gun sales have risen.California is one of eight states that allow local governments to deny concealed-weapons permits. The ruling covers the nine states in the Ninth Circuit, including Hawaii, which is the only other state in the court's jurisdiction that has a law like California's.The California law was challenged by two men who were denied concealed-weapons permits in San Diego and Yolo counties, and were joined by firearms advocates in their lawsuit.The court disagreed Thursday with a Ninth Circuit panel that ruled 2-1 in February 2014, that the California law violated the constitutional right to bear arms for self-defense. The law has remained in effect, however, while Harris' office -- not a party to the original case, but allowed to intervene -- appealed to the full Ninth Circuit, which granted a new hearing before the larger panel, consisting of 10 randomly selected judges and Chief Judge Sidney Thomas.The case, argued nearly a year ago, produced five separate opinions covering 89 pages. The seven judges in the majority were appointed by Democratic presidents, and three of the four dissenters were Republican appointees.The majority opinion by Judge William Fletcher combed through the histories of the United States and England, dating to a 15th century British legal treatise, to conclude that, in the Anglo-American tradition. the right to bear arms in self-defense does not extend to carrying concealed firearms outside the home.English law has prohibited the carrying of concealed weapons since at least 1541, Fletcher said, and the U.S. Supreme Court declared in 1897 that the right to bear arms "is not infringed" by such laws. He said the court did not need to decide whether private citizens have a right to openly carry unloaded weapons -- a practice that California lawmakers prohibited in 2012 -- but was being faithful to history and Supreme Court precedent in finding no constitutional right to carry concealed handguns.Dissenting Judge Consuelo Callahan read history and past rulings differently and concluded that both support a right to be armed in public."The Second Amendment is not a 'second-class' constitutional guarantee," said Callahan, who was joined by Judges Barry Silverman, Carlos Bea and N. Randy Smith. Silverman, in a separate dissent, said there was no evidence that preventing law-abiding citizens from carrying firearms reduces gun violence.Judge Susan Graber, in an opinion joined by two colleagues, retorted that previously law-abiding citizens, licensed to carry guns under their states' more-permissive laws, have carried out many mass shootings, including the slaughter at an Arizona supermarket parking lot in 2011 that killed six people, including a judge, and wounded 13 including Gabrielle Giffords, a Democratic member of Congress.Leaving authority over gun permits to local law enforcement agencies in California "allows more careful and accurate consideration of each individual's license application," said Graber, who also joined Fletcher's opinion upholding the law.
Description

GIS - 10 June, 2016: Accreditation services should help our business community export with more confidence and gain a competitive edge on the market. Conformity to international standards and accreditation of public organisations should stand high on our agenda for the next phase of economic development. Accreditation services should help our business community export with more confidence and gain a competitive edge on the market.Conformity to international standards and accreditation of public organisations should stand high on our agenda for the next phase of economic development.

This statement was made yesterday by the Minister of Industry, Commerce and Consumer Protection, Mr Ashit Gungah, at the opening of a seminar organised on the occasion of World Accreditation Day 2016 at Voila Hotel in Bagatelle. Around 60 representatives from t esting and calibration Laboratories, Certification bodies, Inspection bodies from the public and private sectors, as well as from Government institutions were present.

Minister Gungah stated that at the level of his Ministry, a Steering Committee on technical regulations has been revived to ensure better coordination among different regulatory bodies. The ultimate objective will be to enhance consumer protection and facilitate trade, he said.

According to him, it is imperative to meet customers' aspirations through safe and eco-friendly products for improved customer relation. Hence the need, he stressed, for economic sectors to develop new competitive forces in an increasingly liberalised global trading arena by leveraging on factors such as quality and compliance to international norms. Our institutions should be also pro-active and act as game changers to help our business community adapt to fast global business conditions, he added.

Speaking about MAURITAS, Minister Gungah pointed out that the body has a long journey to travel and one of its critical milestone will be to gain international recognition by the International Laboratory Accreditation Cooperation and the International Accreditation Forum. The development of MAURITAS into a Centre of Excellence for the country should be our cherished objective, particularly as accreditation services will be increasingly important for our economic sectors, he said.

The seminar

The seminar, organised by MAURITAS, focused on the theme of the World Accreditation Day 2016 - Accreditation: A global tool to support Public Policy. The programme comprised presentations from the Forensic Science Laboratory and the National Environmental Laboratory on accreditation as a tool that helps Government to support public policy in the areas of public security and environment protection. A video film jointly prepared by the International Laboratory Accreditation Cooperation and the International Accreditation Forum was also shown.

On the same occasion, an award ceremony was held where certificates of accreditation were handed over to three new laboratories namely Albion Fisheries Research Chemical Centre , Alteo Refinery Ltd; and Les Moulins de la Concorde Ltee .

The objectives of the seminar were to raise awareness among the relevant stakeholders and reiterate how accreditation can be used as a tool to support Public Policy by Government in order to deliver better regulation, environment protection, public safety, fair and efficient markets and public trust.
civictech-report-copy.jpg

Top 10 Civic Tech Cities The Omidyar Network and Internet research firm Purpose compiled a list of the top 10 cities that hosted civic tech events between 2013 and 2015 using data from popular event site Meetup. The researchers compiled the listing using a number of search terms related to civic tech like "open data," "govtech," "civic innovation" and others.



Results showed that in 2015, civic tech events were held in 46 states, up from 28 in 2013. Based on RSVPs, the cities with the most attendees were San Francisco, followed by New York and Washington, D.C.



1// San Francisco held 420 events and had 10,818 RSVPs



2// Miami held 265 events and had 1,899 RSVPs



3// New York City held 180 events and had 9,566 RSVPs



4// Philadelphia held 161 events and had 5,411 RSVPs



5// Oakland, Calif., held 154 events and had 2,059 RSVPs



6// Washington, D.C., held 129 events and had 8,350 RSVPs



7// Denver held 103 events and had 1,190 RSVPs



8// Salt Lake City held 102 events and had 567 RSVPs



9// Kansas City, Mo., held 99 events and had 877 RSVPs



10// Virginia Beach, Va., held 99 events and had 797 RSVPs





At the start of any significant movement theres always that urge to define it. We attempt to crystallize the core dogmas, spotlight the guiding voices, measure influence and predict potential. With the emergence of civic tech, it is no different. This space  associated with government apps, open data, transparency and civic engagement  is in a state of flux as practitioners wrestle to define its character and vision.Against these existential challenges, the Omidyar Network, one of the civic tech sectors most prominent nonprofit and for-profit investors, has attempted to accelerate the space with the release of a new report analyzing civic tech within the framework of a social movement. The group partnered with digital research firm Purpose to chart civic techs investment growth, its activity, media reach and the strategic steps needed to propel civic tech forward.Looking at investment, growth is strong. The report noted that civic tech funding totaled $870 million from 2013 to 2015, showing a rise of 119 percent. Similarly, in a tally of advertised events on Meetup, grass-roots activity more than doubled at 609 events in 2013 and 1,645 events in 2015. The top three cities hosting these events were San Francisco, Miami and New York with lesser-known tech hubs like Salt Lake City, Virginia Beach, Va., and Kansas City, Mo., rounding out the top 10  see sidebar below for a complete list."I think when you look at the map [of civic tech events] and you see the difference between 2013 and 2015 I think it's a pretty big difference," said Purpose CTO Josh Hendler. "We're really seeing that there are more and more people in parts of America that aren't just big cities like San Francisco and New York, or Washington, D.C., and Chicago that are truly embracing civic tech."Omidyar Investment Partner Stacy Donohue, who leads Omidyar Network's Governance and Citizen Engagement Initiative in the U.S., agreed that what they found was as encouraging as it was revealing."The big takeaway is that civic tech is promising, but lacks scale," she said, "and to get to that scale, we really need to create a shared vision and identity in the same way other movements have a shared vision and identity. "In comparison to progressive movements like Black Lives Matter or the campaign for marriage equality, the report  that analyzed a diverse array of online data  observed civic techs objectives are far more abstract and far less unified.Some, like Micah Sifry, founder of the New York civic tech organization Civic Hall, describe civic tech loosely as the use of technology for the public good . Others, like Ron Bouganim, founder of the Govtech Fund , which invests exclusively in government service startups, define it as tech that directly interfaces with citizens. While still others  like those ats e.Republic Labs  say the space is more of a sub-component within government technology.The report said these disparate definitions are problematic as they blur civic techs impact and identity in the mainstream media.Hendler suggested identity branding as a critical next step if advocates hope to distinguish civic techs apps and contributions as something greater than one-off city projects or as standalone ventures  like the popular petition-signing platform Change.org or the fix of HealthCare.gov.One of our conclusions is that terminology matters and that people should be conscious of this," Hendler said.For startups this means identifying themselves as civic tech startups, for cities this means embracing the term for public outreach, and for thought leaders and organizers this means reaching outside of their tech circles for participation and agreeing on a universal definition  even if they do retain their own internal definitions.As it stands now, Purpose ultimately concluded that until civic tech generates more momentum, it will remain more of an aspirational movement than a movement in itself. Hendler said civic tech excelled in the social movement measurements of sustained engagement, grass-roots activity and collective action, but fell short of benchmarks in the categories of shared vision, scale/growth and shared identity  since many active participants still dont identify themselves with the term.
(TNS) -- With some new technology in place, there were at least a few nervous moments over the past few weeks in the Jasper County, Iowa, Auditors office.Despite all the testing and re-testing of new software and hardware, designed to streamline and simplify the ballot-counting and reporting process, it still had yet to be tried out in a real-life election cycle. Tuesdays primary was the first chance for the Jasper County Auditor staff to use many components of the system in a full, live collection of data and reporting it to the Secretary of State.As it turned out, not only did the new technology allow Jasper County to quickly count thousands of ballots  it also allowed the county to be first in Iowa in having results posted on the Secretary of States website.Deputy Auditor Tina Mulgrew said the machines and software went flawlessly.It was like a dream, Mulgrew said. There are a lot of different types of frustration in each day, so its nice that at a moment when there is so much immediate focus on this process, it went so well. The system worked like it was supposed to, and we had everything sent off about 20 minutes after the polls closed.While practically no one expects a system to fail or roots for that to happen, its common in elections to expect at least a few snags.Ive been doing this since 2007, and in each even-year cycle, it seems like there was nearly always something that went wrong, Mulgrew said. But this time, there were no glitches. It was an emotional time, in that we were very happy.Aside from a flash-drive transfer used to get results from the ballot-counting machine to a computer to send results to the state (a built-in safeguard for security purposes), the process is largely paperless in terms of data movement. A recent demonstration of Jasper County machinery showed how swiftly ballots are counted.The results reported online Tuesday evening will be unofficial until next weeks official canvassing and June 20 deadline for submitting a report to the state. However, the Auditors office only received 21 absentee ballots Wednesday with the correct June 6 deadline postmark date and a proper signature, and with that number expected to drop each business day, its unlikely any of Tuesdays outcomes would be changed.Mulgrew said one aspect that made preparing for the primary a smooth process has been the responsiveness of Election Systems & Software  a company the county is paying thousands of dollars per year in contracting for equipment and support.They have been ready to quickly and easily deal with all the concerns weve brought up, Mulgrew said.The deputy auditor said with all the news made through the years about election technology issues, its refreshing to have something go well the first time around.Sometimes technology is our friend, Mulgrew said. Tuesday night was one of those times.
(TNS) -- Traditional economic development projects often focus on things like building residential districts, retail centers and industrial parks.A partnership of the Joplin Area Chamber of Commerce Foundation, the Workforce Investment Board of Southwest Missouri and Crowder College is narrowing that focus to a common denominator of economic activity: the worker.Renovations are underway at the former Franklin Technology Center, 420 S. Grand Ave., to create the Advanced Training and Technology Center, where Crowder instructors will offer adult education programs focused on training in five skilled labor fields: advanced welding, computer network systems, advanced manufacturing technology, computer-aided drafting and community health.The chamber foundation purchased the building with federal grant funds and is leasing the space to Crowder. The schools rent will be staggered in a manner that grows relative to the centers enrollment and therefore its revenue.Its a great opportunity for us to be here and work with students, said Glenn Coltharp, Crowder vice president. And work with the community. So this gets us closer to the industry needs, and we also feel like were being a partner with the industries more being here. It helps the city with economic growth and development. With a new industry coming to town, one of the things they always look for is whether training is available for employees."In addition to relationships with industries that hire workers in the field, a 100 percent job placement rate among Crowders advanced manufacturing technology department graduates indicated to administrators that there was high demand for workers.Andy Wilson, an AMT instructor at Crowder, said a large percentage of jobs outsourced to foreign countries in his field are not sent away because the labor can be obtained cheaper elsewhere but because of a shortage of employees in the U.S.I recall one company in Phoenix who had outsourced a project to Europe, he said. And they had had openings for 60 technical positions for three years and were unable to fill those jobs. The company stated they did it with white knuckles; they didnt want to turn it loose, but they had to. And almost across the board, industries are saying the same thing; its a lack of technical trained workers.Carla Hess, a Joplin branch manager for Adecco Staffing, an employment agency, said finding applicants with adequate experience can be challenging for companies looking to hire welders, forklift operators and machinists in particular.I think that would be great for our community, she said of the center. We always have applicants that could use the training.Renovations to the building began in May and are scheduled to be completed later this year, meaning the center could begin taking students for the spring semester of 2017.Story continues below videoThe Workforce Investment Board will be moving a portion of its office operations to the site this fall, creating a one-stop shop where students can get training from instructors and the help the WIB offers.Theyre the perfect fit for us, Coltharp said. People might be out of a job. They want to get them trained, get them back out there. So theyre coming in, getting that counseling, getting that advisement and, hopefully, going into the programs.The building will be outfitted with 36 booths for welding instruction, where students will be broken up into two groups of 18, one in the morning and another in the afternoon.The advanced manufacturing technology instruction area will feature 12 stations, but Wilson said 40 students could receive instruction at one time in that department.Kathy Collier, Crowder grants director, said the schools conservative estimate is that 750 students could have gone through the different programs after five years.Rob O'Brian, Joplin chamber president, said technological advancements have made industries such as welding and manufacturing more efficient, but they also now require employees with more specific training to operate the technology. He cited in particular two new Joplin manufacturing plants  Owens Corning west of town and Heartland Pet Foods in the Crossroads Center Business and Distribution Park, both of which will employ more than 100 people.The thing is, its so automated, he said. You think, that 20 years ago wouldve been a 400-500 person operation. Now its 100 people or 150 people. But its a huge amount of capital investment, which is good in the community.When you have a good workforce, as companies you tend to stay and expand, OBrian said. Which creates more jobs, which creates more opportunities for the people that are here. Thats good economic development. This was an opportunity, I think, to really, really step that game up.
With the ever-inflating Smart City Challenge approaching a close, one more gigantic tech company has stepped up to promise services to the competitions winner: telecommunications provider AT&T.Speaking at an event on June 9 where mayors from the seven finalist cities in the contest presented their respective pitches, U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx announced that AT&T plans to give up to $1 million worth of products and services to the winning city. That would likely, according to an email from a department representative, include the kind of connectivity services that make up the core of AT&Ts business  cellular connections, perhaps, or Wi-Fi. But there are other options on the table as well, since AT&T is venturing into the Internet of Things realm, as well as big data and analytics.AT&Ts contribution would be on top of an already enormous pile of prizes slated for the challenges winner: $40 million from the U.S. Department of Transportation, $10 million from the investment firm Vulcan earmarked for electric vehicle projects, data-gathering kiosks and a traffic analytics platform from the Alphabet company Sidewalk Labs, a pedestrian and bicycle detection system for buses from Mobileye, cloud services from Amazon, and more And thats not to mention all the money matching offers coming in from private industry in and around the competing finalist cities. Columbus, Ohio, Mayor Andrew Ginther announced in May that a business coalition in the region was prepared to kick in another $90 million if Columbus won the challenge. San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee told Foxx on June 9 that private industry could provide as much as $150 million to his city should the DOT pick its proposal.Connectivity would be an important piece of the strategy for the winning city regardless of who it is. At the final pitches on June 9, all seven cities described plans to use wireless technology that would require some sort of signal connection  smart traffic lights connecting to vehicles, for example, or sensors collecting data on things like traffic flow and air pollution. AT&T  along with its rival Verizon  has already started working to develop a component of its business devoted to providing connectivity services for public-sector clients looking to deploy such sensors, both for transportation and other concepts.The DOT is aiming to pick the winning city by the end of June.
The Austin City Council reviewed a budget proposal from the Austin Police Department, requesting to use civil asset forfeiture dollars to purchase automatic license plate readers for their police cruisers. The budget request was postponed two weeks after questions regarding privacy concerns, improper use of the readers and apprehension over purchasing the product with civil asset forfeiture dollars arose.Automatic license plate readers, which are becoming more and more prevalent across Texas, are high-speed cameras that collect and store license plate numbers. There are unquestionably major public safety benefits to this technology. The software can be connected to law enforcement's lists of missing children, stolen cars, warrants, etc. If an officer passes a car with a license plate associated with an "Amber Alert," for example, cops know where that car is in real time.However, as we have seen in many jurisdictions, a lack of safeguards has brought major negative consequences that need to be addressed as this technology continues to spread.Last Texas legislative session, a bill passed that allowed officers to offer individuals who had a warrant out for not paying certain court ordered fees (such as traffic tickets) the option to pay the fines during a traffic stop via debit or credit card.The Texas Public Policy Foundation testified in favor of the legislation, and we still support the policy behind it. However, with automatic license plate readers, officers can now round these warrants up rapidly, giving motorists the "silver or the lead" deal on the side of the road: Pay the fine or go to jail. Changes to how readers can be used are necessary to preserve the original intent of this legislation.On top of that, third-party vendors (frequently a company known as "Vigilant") routinely provide free readers to police on the condition that data will be shared, along with a 25 percent surcharge added to the fine. What is supposed to be lifesaving technology now turns into debt collection on steroids, leaving the poorest of Texans disproportionately impacted while third-party vendors use government resources to do their bidding. Not a bad deal  for government and industry.Concerns over the policy and legality of surcharges led companies to change their business models in cities such as Austin. Instead, civil asset forfeiture dollars have been proposed as funding.The technology costs many thousands of dollars to operate each year, with the Austin contract estimated to be up to $900,000 in forfeiture dollars over six years. Without detailing the threat of civil asset forfeiture (a process where the government can take ownership of your property without charging you with a crime) is on property rights and personal liberty, relying on forfeiture dollars or traffic fine money to perpetuate the use of automatic license plate readers incentivizes the use of law enforcement officers for non-public safety matters  in essence turning them into profit centers for government.Constitutionally, it's concerning that these cameras are capable of tracking your moves throughout the day without a warrant. Litigation will undoubtedly ensue, testing recent Supreme Court cases saying a warrant is required before law enforcement can surreptitiously attach a GPS to a vehicle.Data can also be stored indefinitely, and although third parties and law enforcement have ensured data they collect will not be sold to private third companies, there is very little safeguard contractually or statutorily to prevent this occurrence.Let's not forget the chaos that occurred in Ferguson, Missouri, two years ago. Although the shooting death of Michael Brown sparked the violence, distrust for police had been implanted in the population long before.In 2013 alone, the city of 21,135 people collected $2.6 million in court fines and fees, mainly from minor traffic infractions, equating to 13 percent of the citys revenue. Those who didn't pay were issued a warrant (a total of over 32,000 for nonviolent offenses) and arrested. Essentially, politicians pressured or directed police to use traffic violations and other minor code infractions to generate revenue, creating distrust between themselves and the public.Although license plate readers are potentially life-saving technology, proper safeguards are necessary to prevent misuse. Local and state governments should address how data from automatic license plate readers is used, how it is retained, what types of warrants should and should not be pinged by officers to prioritize public safety and what types of funding can be used to purchase these products.
Valtteri Bottas is keeping quiet amid early rumblings that, as in 2015, he could play a role in this year's driver movement 'silly season'.

Although he ultimately stayed at Williams, the Finn was linked last year with a move to Ferrari, the fabled Italian team that is once again surrounded by rumours it may be on the market to replace Kimi Raikkonen.

"I am personally interested in what is happening on the driver market, but for now it's still pretty quiet," Bottas, 26, is quoted by the Dutch publication Formule1.

"If there are as many rumours as there were last year, I guess I should be better able to deal with it now," he added.

When asked about whether he could once again be linked with Ferrari, Bottas said he is "not really saying anything" this time around.

And as for whether talks with Williams have already started, he replied simply: "No.

"I'm sure we'll talk soon, but as for the exact timing there is no urgency at the moment. We'll see."

(GMM)
Forget Amaravati, KCR Village To Become Singapore!

Telugu Desam Party president and Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu might have claimed a number of times that he would build the new capital of Amaravati on the lines of Singapore; and might have engaged Singapore consultants to build the capital city.

But, he has a competitor back in the neighbouring state of Telangana  Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao.

On Friday, KCR declared that he would make his village Erravelli in Medak district as another Singapore.

I am not going to rest till Erravelli becomes another Singapore with the help of villagers and the government support, he said, while addressing the gathering in the village where his farmhouse is located.

How can it become Singapore? Well, KCR says all the residents of the village would get double-bedroom houses shortly. Each household will be given two buffaloes and 10 hen on the day of Gruhapravesham. Besides, all the houses will be provided with LED bulbs.

Thats all; the village will look like Singapore. Are you convinced?
Johnson Controls is forming a joint venture with Binzhou Bohai Piston Co., Ltd., an auto parts affiliate of Beijing Automotive Industry Group Co., Ltd. (BAIC Group), to build its fourth Chinese automotive battery manufacturing plant. Aimed at serving both automakers and aftermarket customers, the facility will be located in Binzhou, Shandong Province.

This joint venture is a strategic move to position Johnson Controls and Bohai Piston to take advantage of what will be the worlds largest automotive battery market by 2020. Joe Walicki, president, Johnson Controls Power Solutions

At full capacity, the more than $200-million plant will employ 650 people who will manufacture both conventional flooded and absorbent glass mat (AGM) battery technologies. AGM powers start-stop systems, which increase vehicle fuel efficiency up to 5%, helping automakers meet increasingly strict environmental regulations.

In the China market there is strong demand for auto part technologies that can improve fuel efficiency and there will be rapid growth for AGM batteries in start-stop vehicles. The new joint venture will position both companies to take advantage of this market opportunity and we believe our cooperation with Johnson Controls, the global automotive battery leader, will help promote leading products and technologies in China. Han Yonggui, BAIC Group director and chairman of Beijing Hainachuan Automotive Parts (BHAP)

By 2020, 50%about 15 million new vehicleswill be equipped with start-stop functionality in China, saving an estimated 1.2 billion liters of gasoline per year. It also reduces greenhouse gas emissions by 2.8 million metric tons per year.

Construction of the state-of-the-art facility is expected to begin in 2017, with production starting two years later. Once up and running, the plant will be able to produce 7.5 million batteries per year.

Approximately 23.5 million new vehicles were produced in China in 2015, making it the worlds largest automotive market. In 2015, Johnson Controls announced it signed an agreement to build a new battery manufacturing facility in Shenyang, China. It is expected to start operations in 2018. The company also has battery plants in Chongqing and Changxing, and an energy storage research and development center in Shanghai.
Schaeffler signed a cooperation agreement with Chinese Southwest Jiaotong University (SWJTU) to establish a joint research laboratory. The research institution is located in the National Key Laboratory for Traction Drives and will be dedicated to the research and development of axlebox bearings for rail vehicles.

The National Key Laboratory for Traction Drives is the most important research center at SWJTU, which pursues innovation research in the area of high-speed and heavy freight train technology.

The joint research project between Schaeffler and Southwest Jiaotong University (SWJTU) was sealed as part of the celebrations marking the 120th anniversary of the founding of the university.

As a session of the Pioneering Technologies for Rail Transport forum, Schaeffler held a roundtable discussion with presentations by speakers from the Schaeffler Group, Southwest Jiaotong University, and Chinese rail transport experts, followed by technical discussions.

Schaeffler Chief Digital Officer Gerhard Baum presented on the development of digitalization at Schaeffler and applications of big data technologies in the railway sector, such as systems for the predictive maintenance of axlebox bearings.

Dr. Michael Holzapfel introduced Schaefflers comprehensive solutions for rail transport and offered insights into future innovations. More than 30 experts from Chinese rail vehicle manufacturers, suppliers, and research institutions took part in the forum.
Toyota Motor North America has awarded MP2 Energy, a full-service power company based in The Woodlands, Texas, a five-year retail electricity contract to provide 100% renewable energy solutions to Toyotas new North American headquarters in Plano, Texas.

The contract takes into consideration the forecasted hourly energy consumption for the approximately 2.1 million square-foot campus comprising office space and office support, a data center and light industrial and light automotive service facilities. The five-year deal also supports 7.75 megawatts of on-site solar generation at the new headquarters through MP2 Energys Net Energy Billing program for the purchase of all excess solar generation.

The remaining electricity MP2 procures for Toyota will be 100% renewable, sourced from various resources including local Texas wind and offsite solar.

MP2 will also provide Toyota with supply flexibility and innovation for risk management, including the possibility of future integration of demand response and other onsite generation.

Traditionally, solar energy has been offered exclusively through long-term contracts, most of which begin at 20-year terms. This deal, however, is a shorter five-year agreement, improving Toyotas ability to forecast its energy costs and adjust accordingly. By taking this purchase position on solar energy, Toyota is able to consume reliable energy and meet its electric needs without being exposed to the price movement associated with natural gas and the real time spot market for power.

We are dedicated to making sure our new headquarters campus supportseven redefinesToyotas commitment to the environment. he Plano solar system will not only reduce our environmental footprint and educate team members about renewable energy, it moves us closer to Toyotas 2050 global environmental challenge to eliminate carbon emissions in all operations. Kevin Butt, Regional Director, North American Environmental Division of Toyota Motor North America

As part of its overall sustainability effort, Toyota engaged Priority Power Management to negotiate a comprehensive retail electricity supply contract with MP2 Energy, including the integration of a 7.75 MW solar-generated power system located behind the utility meter.

Toyotas new North American headquarters, estimated to open in May 2017, will house 4,000 employees that will manage 14 regional offices across the United States. The approximately 2.1 million square feet of conditioned space will include 1.9 million square feet of office and office support, 20,000 square feet of data center and IT support and approximately 350,000 square feet of light industrial, quality control and testing, and light automotive service. Oncor will serve as the chosen Transmission Distribution Service Provider (TDSP).

MP2 Energy is a full service power company, serving approximately 1,300 MW to commercial, industrial and residential customers in Texas, Illinois, Pennsylvania and Ohio.
TRUMBULL  The public is invited to a grand opening and open house of the St. Vincent's Trumbull Center Urgent Care Clinic on Thursday, June 16, 2016, from 5:30 - 7:30 pm. The clinic, which opened its doors on June 6, is located at 900 White Plains Road, Trumbull. Visitors attending the grand opening will enjoy a free small cup or cone of ice cream from Sunny Daes.

"When we heard that the previous provider was closing, we knew that there was an immediate need for convenient and accessible urgent care in Trumbull," explains Dianne J. Auger, senior vice president and chief strategy officer, St. Vincent's Medical Center. "We already have primary care doctors in Trumbull and we are excited to provide Trumbull residents with even more options for convenient care."
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GREENWICH  The scores of students who assembled Thursday night on the auditorium stage at Greenwich High School picked up a homework assignment that they probably will not mind completing.

To the award winners of the amazing class of 2016, tonight you receive gifts from all of these generous people, Greenwich Scholarship Association President Marie Hertzig told the honorees on stage. I want you to remember to show your appreciation by sending a thank you note within 10 days.

Thursdays ceremony for the 44th edition of the GSA awards recognized 114 college-bound high-school seniors who have received college scholarships worth a record total of about $546,000 from more than 110 local sponsors, through the coordination of the nonprofit GSA. Almost all of the recipients attend Greenwich High.

Its nice to see the community involved in the students lives and making sure all the high school graduates are going on to the next level, said student Cory Myrtil, who will attend American University. Its very inspiring, and Im very honored.

Individual awards start at $750, and many students receive more than one scholarship.

The recipients are generally in the top third of their graduating classes and have participated in several extracurricular activities, while also working in paid off-campus jobs.

Many, like Damian Williamson, are already planning for the years ahead. He is headed to the University of Connecticut and wants to then move on to medical school.

This education at UCONN will be the starting point for my career, Williamson said. Having the support of GSA is very important. It shows that they want to help.

In most cases, the students colleges have already awarded a financial aid package to them. GSA tries to bridge the gap between college assistance and what students families can pay.

This shows that somebody cares about me and wants to help me with my college education, said Christian Silva, who will attend the University of New Hampshire. Ive been completely stressed out over the financial situation. This is reassuring.

Sponsors of awards established in honor of family members encouraged the recipients to live up to the ideals of their late loved ones.

Dave was given to service and would encourage any graduating senior here to pursue your passion and goals in life through commitment to community, said Ginny Theis, who presented a scholarship in honor of her late brother, Dave Theis, a Greenwich selectman who died unexpectedly in 2014. Keep in mind all of you who are graduating to remember to pay back and carry all the thoughts of what Greenwich did in raising and educating you.

Deputy Superintendent Ellen Flanagan, who leaves in the summer after 17 years in the district, presented a scholarship that she and her sister set up in honor of their late mother, Virginia Flanagan.

This evening represents what I would say is best about Greenwich, Flanagan said. Its that public and private partnership, private citizens coming together with public organizations to ensure bright futures for our children.

GSA was founded in 1972 as an umbrella organization to support the administrative needs of local scholarship funds. Since its founding, GSA has awarded more than $10 million in scholarships.

Today, GSA manages scholarships from scores of sponsors, which include local businesses, nonprofits and foundations and other community organizations.

Its an honor to have this opportunity and see our town is willing to give back and give people an extra push and motivation to pursue their education, said Teya James, who will attend Norwalk Community College.

pschott@scni.com; 203-625-4439; twitter: @paulschott
GREENWICH  The Archaelogical Associates of Greenwich are holding a symposium on the early settlement of Connecticut by Europeans. The event will be held this Sunday afternoon:

Connecticuts Earliest European Settlers: Recent Finds from Glastonbury and Windsor Connecticuts State Archaeologist Dr. Brian Jones

Free to AAG, Bruce Museum members and students with an ID. Non-member admission $15.

State Archaeologist Jones has led these excavations that date between AD 1650 and AD 1721. He will explain how they bring to light Connecticuts Colonial past and its earliest European settlers. Modern radar-based surveys have helped find these long forgotten sites.

Dr. Jones special interest is in Northeast Native American archaeology. After receiving his BS from Oberlin College, he lived and traveled in Southeast Asia, then studied European prehistory in Cologne and returned to the U.S. in 1992 where he completed his PhD at UConn. Before becoming the State Archaeologist, he served as Senior Archaeologist with Archaeological and Historical Service in Storrs CT. He has taught in the Anthropology Department at UCONN. He was appointed CT state archaeologist two years ago, following Nick Bellantoni, one of the AAGs popular speakers.
In the wake of recent downgrades by two credit rating agencies of the states General Obligation (GO) paper, the bond package (SB 503), which was supported unanimously in the House and 34-2 in the Senate, took a necessary new path. I have always believed that bonding is an investment for the future of our state, and while we did cut nearly $1 billion in borrowing  we still managed to provide a mechanism for advancing proven projects in a timely, cost effective manner. Our bonding subcommittee conducted three full days of meetings with departmental commissioners  legislative members were present, prepared, attentive and alert . . . as were members of our professional support staff.

In these dire economic times  it is always darkest before pitch black  the subcommittee was steadfastly optimistic and remained fiscally responsible. The line items included in the bond bill are authorizations which can be thought of as enabling legislation. Authorizations include school construction, municipal aid in the form of Town Aid Road, STEAP and Urban Act grants, housing, environmental initiatives, economic development programs, and pools of money to help subsidize the work of nonprofit organizations. However, to become monies spent, the items must be allocated or approved by the State Bond Commission. This legislation is a real time road map that defines what could be accomplished with bond funds  both the possible and probable.
Editors note: These are excerpts from a recent Civility in America address presented at Stamfords Ferguson Library by Gillian Tett, U.S. managing editor of the Financial Times. The speaking series is sponsored by The Dilenschneider Group, the Hearst Connecticut Media Group and the library.

Why is it that so often in the modern world we know people, who are incredibly bright, then go out and do dumb things? Why is it that we are surrounded by institutions, which are filled with very well-meaning individuals, maybe even including ourselves, but end up going completely off the rails in ways that subsequently seem quite spectacular?

I started asking that question back in 2008 during the height of the financial crisis. ... I used to run the financial markets team for the Financial Times. When the crisis hit in the autumn of 2008, I was running the market section out of London and many of my friends, or at least the friends who were not bankers, would say to me, Why did this happen; whats going on? When I spoke to people who were not bankers, at the root of the crisis was the fact that bankers had somehow either gone collectively mad, were unbelievably stupid, incredibly evil and greedy, or probably all four at once.

I listened to my friends talking about bankers and I said to myself, Well, yes, maybe there are some greedy people in finance. Guess what  its about money. Maybe some of them are a bit mad and there might be one or two evil people, too. But, for the most part, the people I know, who work in finance, are not crazy, greedy, mad people. For the most part, they are actually pretty well-meaning people who are doing things that make sense within the context of where they are working. The issue really was the context. When I looked around at the financial system in 2008, the thing that struck me very forcibly was that one of the great unspoken reasons for the financial crisis, one of the reasons why the bankers seemed to go collectively mad, was that they worked in a system that was so fragmented and marked by what I came to use as a shorthand word  silos. ...

I dived into the question of why some of the banks and some of the insurance companies had done some stupid things. Time and again, I found that the right hand didnt know what the left hand was doing. The right hand didnt talk to the left hand, and worse still, the bankers and financiers, who were scurrying around in their own trading desks, in their own little corners and departments, werent talking to each other. They were simply overwhelmed by what they were doing for their own team and so desensitized by a bonus culture that encouraged them to keep their eyes myopically on their own little team. They werent only beset by tribalism, they had tremendous tunnel vision, too.

The story I tell in a book I wrote is the story of UBS, which used to be considered one of the safest banks in the world. In early 2007, you had regulators going around writing report cards from UBS saying it was fantastically safe, solid and sound. UBS also thought it was fantastically safe, solid and sound. It spent most of the early part of 2007 hiring consultants to come in and peer over its books and the areas it thought were the biggest risks  namely, hedge funds and leveraged loans. It went to enormous lengths to try and scrub itself of risk with those UBS leveraged loans and hedge funds. Yet, all the while they missed the great elephant in the room  mortgage-backed securities coming out of America. Why did they miss them? UBS being good, diligent and responsible Swiss citizens wrote not one, but three separate, detailed reports going through what went wrong. Those efforts painted a picture of a bank absolutely beset by silos  by the right hand not knowing what the left hand was doing.

The point that UBS made was quite fair. It wasnt just UBS. You look at what happened at Citigroup; you look at what happened at Merrill Lynch and at AIG. You look at almost any large financial institution and the problem of silos is very, very glaring. ...

Technology can be a double-edged sword because in some ways it can make silos much, much worse. Far too often, people go onto the Internet, go into cyberspace, and use technology to communicate, thinking they are becoming more connected and dont notice that technology often sucks us into deeper silos than ever before because we dont even notice what it is doing to us.

If, however, you use technology cleverly, you can use it to break down silos in some very exciting and creative ways. The great thing about data, computing and technology is they dont have preset channels. Data can be mixed and matched in very original ways that can help you see the world entirely differently.

There are things that we can all do if we are willing to think outside the box or rather shuffle the box around somewhat. The first step we all have to take is to recognize that there are boxes in our lives; recognize that we all inherit a cultural map, a classification system that most of us never think about. But if we are willing to think about it and challenge it by not behaving in dumb ways, we can, in fact, often be very smart and innovative.

Acknowledging that silos exist and are a necessary component of so much of contemporary life is important. At the same time, one should keep in mind that they can also be a huge deterrent to cooperative actions that wisely implemented can prevent major disasters.

Gillian Tett is the U.S. Managing Editor for the Financial Times
He famously shunned the spotlight. Photo: Getty Images

Roger Verge  an influential chef and restaurateur who famously shunned the spotlight, but who nonetheless was instrumental in creating the modern era of celebrity chefs  died at home in Mougins, France, on June 5. He was 85.

The chef was born April 7, 1930 in Commentry, France. Like several of his contemporaries, Roger Verge came from a working-class family. He credited his aunt, Celestine, to whom he later dedicated a series of cookbooks, as the person who introduced him to cooking, and at the age of 17, Verge eschewed what would no doubt have been a surefire (and more lucrative) career path as a pilot in favor of taking a low-level kitchen job at a restaurant in his hometown.

Grueling apprenticeships in Pariss toniest brigade-style kitchens at the Tour dArgent and Plaza Athenee followed. Verge then cooked in North Africa before moving to Kenya in 1955 to work for the food-service division of an airline. It was during this time that the chef began to reconsider his approach to ingredients, and pull apart the through-lines of butter and cream that were the dominant hallmarks of textbook-modern French food. While he never exiled beurre blancs from his restaurants completely, Verge devised menus to include a broader palette of Provencal and Mediterranean flavors, many of which had been dismissed previously for being too regional or low class to fit in with refined standards like pastry-wrapped terrines and the high-maintenance workhorse dishes of the Escoffier era. In doing so, Verge became a de facto champion of using locally sourced ingredients over what was then a kind of rote faithfulness to the old-school approach practiced by his peers who polished their skills in culinary academies.

Verge was a proponent of fruits, for example, that had long been relegated to the pastry department. Most often, oranges were cooked down in molten sugar and apples were stewed beyond recognition; now fanned, raw slices alongside rare Magret duck, and tiny orange supremes were served nestled with just-cooked-through oysters broiled on the half-shell with a dab of orange butter. The latter dish wowed New York Times critic Craig Claiborne. Before I lived in Africa, Verge told Claiborne in 1981, it had never occurred to me to combine the flavors and textures of fruits with savory foods.

What seems more like a culinary given these days was deft and revolutionary in the 1970s, in Michelin star-besotted France. Verge opened the restaurant Moulin de Mougins with his wife, Denise, in 1969. He added brightness to dishes with olive-oil-preserved lemons and fatty mouthfeel with raw avocado. Rather than relying on the wheelhouse of slurries and rouxs, Verge ratcheted flavors with layered stocks and added dimension with vinaigrettes. He soon had three Michelin stars and opened a second restaurant in 1977. His Barigoule-style artichokes were famous. Verges savory gateaus bound with clarified and reduced stocks were imitated by dozens of chefs. Along with chefs such as Paul Bocuse and Michel Guerard, he became known as a proponent of nouvelle cuisine. Verge branded his own style Cuisine du Soleil, or Cuisine of the Sun.

A chance meeting with Shep Gordon in 1972, when the famed talent manager was in town for the Cannes Film Festival, led to an unlikely alliance. Gordon was drawn to Verge and even became his apprentice for a time; the pair traveled the world and gave cooking demonstrations, putting the chef on par with bona-fide rock stars like Alice Cooper, whom the agent also represented. This was unheard of, Gordon later recounted, because nobody respected the culinary arts. Shep Gordon went on to be instrumental in launching the careers of celebrity chefs such as Emeril Lagasse and Daniel Boulud.

The long list of future titans of fine dining who spent time working for Verge include Alain Ducasse, David Bouley, and Jacques Maximin. Daniel Boulud himself cooked for Verge at Moulin de Mougins, and recounted for this months Haute Living how Verge, his biggest influence, sent him to further his education in Luxembourg and then to Denmark, where the elder chef paid for Bouluds Berlitz course in English. In his appreciation, Boulud called Roger Verge the Cary Grant of the culinary world.

Roger Verge never quite sought to establish the global empire established by the Ramsays and the Robuchons of the world, but he still wrote cookbooks, opened a cooking school, and sold olive oil and wine. He opened two properties at Epcot Center with Paul Bocuse and famed pastry chef Gaston Lenotre in the 1980s, but never had the kind of marquee-name success enjoyed by Bocuse. (The trade publication Food Arts characterized Verge as the Sundance Kid to Paul Bocuses Butch Cassidy.) He eventually opened an ill-fated restaurant in Rockefeller Center called Medi, which opened a month prior to September 11, 2001, and served a $38.50 gold-tinged Scotch egg. Verge left his role as consultant after eleven months.

Verge was often at his best when his cooking was its simplest. His three-ingredient recipe for fried eggs with vinegar kicks off Food 52s excellent Genius Recipes book and is a masterclass in elegance. Along with Michel Guerards confit byaldi, the chefs tian of tomatoes and zucchini informed the inspiration for the pivotal presentation of ratatouille in the Pixar movie of the same name.

Roger Verge retired in 2003, but remains an influence, even for chefs who may not be aware of his name. Much of this has to do with the fact that he preferred his kitchens and dining rooms the most. What I learned from Mr. Verge, Shep Gordon said his namesake documentary released last year, is that you can be successful and happy. I had only seen success and misery. And his joy came from always putting the comfort of other people before his own.

[Le Figaro]
Shelskys pan bagnat is a cross between a muffaletta and tuna nicoise. Photo: Melissa Hom

Not that any other rationally minded gourmands would disagree, but as far as Grub is concerned there is no such thing as sandwich season. Anytime is a good time to eat a sandwich, and New Yorks chefs and deli masters continue to introduce excellent new creations, variously stuffed with cured or roasted meats, and takes on old classics. Here, five ones to check out this summer.



Tuna Pan Bagnat

Where: Shelskys

Price: $11

Its like a muffaletta for fish-sandwich fiends. At the Court Street store, day-old campagna bread from Orwashers is first dressed with olive oil and white-wine vinegar. Its then stacked with ingredients inspired by the classic nicoise salad, including red leaf lettuce, sliced tomato, Kalamata olives, hard-boiled egg, anchovies, and Spanish tuna. The sandwich is then pressed overnight, so the bread becomes soft but not soggy and it all conforms neatly together. One caveat: Only six are available on Saturdays and Sundays.

Le Big Matt

Where: Emmy Squared

Price: $22

Matt Hyland serves one of New Yorks most impressive and lusted-after burgers at his and his co-owner and wife Emilys original Clinton Hill pizzeria, so of course hes created another awesome burger for his white-hot Williamsburg spot, Emmy Squared. Here, the beef is fresh (unlike at Emily) and comes as a double stack with white American cheese, pickles, and lettuce, on a pretzel bun. Juicy and messy in the right away, its served with waffle fries and typically only available Friday and Saturdays in the downstairs burger bar, and daily during lunch.

Cheesesteak

Where: Amada

Price: $16

Jose Garces first New York restaurant, an outpost of one of his Philadelphia spots, specializes in Spanish cuisine, and his menu features dishes like rabbit paella. But during lunch, the chef serves an homage to his home base: a cheesesteak made with shaved rib eye, caramelized onions, wild mushrooms, and a fondue made of mahon, the buttery Spanish cheese.

Dagwood Sandwich

Where: Momofuku Nishi

Price: $22

Part of Nishis just-debuted brunch menu, the Dagwood is a bit of Americana (its inspired by a sandwich-loving character from the Blondie comic strip) and a total monster. Its a multilayered creation stacked with ingredients: country pork pate; cured mackerel; and roasted chicken; plus a trio of spreads in hozon remoulade, dijonaise, and Ssam Sauce special sauce; and lettuce, tomato, onion, and pickles. You will almost certainly take a nap after.

C.B.E.

Where: Southside Coffee

Price: $12

Josh Sobel, its been noted around these parts, knows his way around a breakfast sandwich. For the summer breakfast menu at his South Slope cafe, he introduced a new, much different spin on the morning bread and meat ritual. Called the C.B.E., it has corned beef with Swiss, eggs, pickles, and Russian dressing on rye.
Lenovo's Tech World took place today live from San Fransisco where the newly owned Motorola and Lenovo announced a two new smartphone lineups for both the Moto and Lenovo brands. The Lenovo Phab2 Pro is the first consumer phone to incorporate Tango, Googles camera system that is able to detect physical objects in 3D.

The other two Lenovo phones dont have Tango built in. For the price, they are compelling devices that give other budget phones a run for their money. Lenovo will release these devices in the US with desire to reach for a better presence in the US mobile market.

Like the Lenovo Phab2 Pro, both the Phab2 and Phab2 Plus have 6.4 inch screens. The Phab2 has a 720p IPS screen, quad-core MediaTek 8735 CPU paired with 3GB of RAM, and 32GB of internal storage expandable via microSD card slot, and 13 MP camera.



Lenovo Phab2

The Phab2 Plus is the middle tier of the lineup. Unlike the Phab2, the Plus version has a 1080p IPS screen of the same 6.4 inches. The CPU gets a bump up to a quad-core MediaTek 8783 and the same 3GB of RAM and 32GB of internal storage also expandable via microSD.



Lenovo Phab2 Plus

The Phab2 Plus gets a significant upgrade in the camera department when compared to the Phab2. The Plus model gets a dual camera setup for changing backgrounds, and refocusing after taking images, complete with a laser autofocus sensor, and rear mounted fingerprint scanner.

The Phab2 and Phab2 Plus are going to be released this summer and will be aggressively priced at $199 and $299, respectively. Theyll be available worldwide by September with the US likely to get dibs before then. It should be very interesting to see Lenovos future in the mobile industry from the US point of view.

Via
The Rescue Paw Foundation will have an adoption event at Herrick Park on Sunday, October 23rd. The event is sponsored by London Jewelers and will be an all out dog lover's dream, but it is also going to be fun...
Published on 2016/06/10 | Source

Added new on-the-set images for the Korean movie "Horror Stories 3" (2015)

Advertisement

Directed by Baek Seung-bin, Kim Gok, Kim Sun, Min Gyoo-dong

With Lim Seulong, Kyung Soo-jin, Park Jung-min, Hong Eun-hee, Cha Ji-yeon, Ji An,...

Synopsis

"Horror Stories", 2012, was about the four horror stories told by a high school student girl who was kidnapped by a murderer, and 'Horror Stories 2', 2013, depicted horror about death and the world after death. "Horror Stories 3" plays a role as a bridge between the first and second sequels, thus talks about past, present as well as future. The story of the third sequel is delivered in a unique setting borrowing the scientific fiction genre.

'A Girl from Mars' by Min Gyoo-dong

A girl makes an emergency landing on a planet ruled by machines.

The girl starts revealing her horrible memories about mankind one by one, while she tries to explain to the machines the reasons why she had to leave the people on earth and ended up landing on this planet.

Story of the Past - The Horrible tale 'Fox Valley'

'Man is not the lord of creation. In fact, they are a parasite.

A scholar Saengwon (classics licentiate) Lee (Lim Seulong) who was heading to his hometown after he successfully finished his Civil Service examination. He is chased down by a gang of robbers all of sudden and finds himself in a remote village after he ran and ran to save his own life. He decides to stay one night at a house, where a mysterious woman and one elderly person reside. However, the place he ended up happens to be the Fox Valley, where people say no one could get out alive! Saengwon Lee is trying to escape the Fox Valley to save his life.

Story of the Present - The Horror story of instinct of speed 'Road Rage'

'Why kill people? I don't know'

Dong-geun (Park Jung-min) and Soo-jin (Kyung Soo-jin) were driving on a highway late at night. A strange freight truck appears in front of them. As the truck keeps passing their car and blocking them several times, Dong-geun gets angrier each time and tries to pass the truck by driving even more violently. However, the freight truck won't give up either and keeps following them, then threatens Dong-geun and Soo-jin. On a dark night, the horrible speed competition accompanied by rage begins!

Story of the future - The Horror story of Artificial Intelligence 'Ghost of Machine'

'We will be together, forever'

An artificial intelligence robot, Doon-ko makes the best friend for a young boy, Jin-goo in place of his mom Ye-seon (Hong Eun-hee). Jin-goo and Doon-ko have been together for ten years and promise to be with each other forever. However, one day Doo-ko develops errors and hurts Jin-goo. Jin-goo's mom Ye-seon gets rid of Doon-ko without telling her son and purchases a new robot. But the new robot also develops strange symptoms. And Doo-ko keeps appearing in front of Ye-seon and Jin-goo's eyes. The curse of a promise you can't keep; what will be the end of it?

Release date in Korea : 2016/06/01

More
Whats new at Art Cellar Gallery?

The Art Cellar Gallery has been a leader in the arts community in the region for over twenty-three years and continues to highlight the paintings and sculptures of regional, national and internationally acclaimed artists from across the Southeastern United States.

For more information about any gallery events and artists the gallery can be contacted at 828-898-5175, online at artcellaronline.com, or by visiting the Gallery on Hwy. 184 (920 Shawneehaw Ave), Banner Elk, NC Gallery hours are Monday through Saturdays from 10am to 5pm each day.

Ending This Weekend

Local Color watercolor and oils by artist Robert Eoff continues through Saturday, June 11.

Originally, from Memphis, Tennessee, Bob spent most of his adult career in broadcast television for The New York Times Company in New York City. He began painting in the early 1970s after being inspired by the work produced in an artist colony in Memphis. Initially self taught, Bob trained himself in the way of the brush and the flow of colors. Eventually, Bob took classes in 2001 which led him away from his colored water paintings into the richly pigmented watercolors that are evident today.

On Exhibit Through July 24

Memories of Appalachia  paintings by Arlee Mains. Reception and book signing at the Hickory Museum of Art in Hickory, North Carolina from 6-7:30 p.m. on Thursday, June 23.

Opening Soon

A Different Light with Margaret Salisbury, June 16  July 2

June Coffee Talks

June 11: Richard Oversmith, Journeys in Oil Demo

June 18: Margaret Salisbury, A Different Light

June 25: Walter Stanford, Feathers and Forests Pastel Demo

Upcoming Special Events

Art, Fact and Fiction  Recent Works on Paper with acclaimed American artist William Dunlap: join for cocktails and tall tales on Sunday, June 25 from 3-5 p.m. This is a rare opportunity to join in the conversation presenting recent work along with a reading and book signing of Short Mean Fiction.

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By Jesse Wood

North Carolinas Division of Air Quality Director Sheila Holman has put Maymeads permit application for its proposed asphalt plant on U.S. 421 on hold due to violations at its Boone asphalt plant on N.C. 105.

Holman notified Maymead President Wiley Roark of the air quality permit status in a letter dated May 31, which High Country Press obtained earlier this week. She noted that this issue of compliance of various Maymead operations in the state was raised at the public hearing on March 3.

She stated that while Maymead Materials operations appear to be operating in compliance with their air quality permit requirements, inspectors with the N.C. Department of Environmental Quality, Division of Energy, Mineral and Land Resources found three violations during a recent inspection of its asphalt plant on N.C. 105 in Boone and issued violation notices on May 27. The facility was inspected on May 26.

Therefore, I am placing your permit application on hold until the deficiencies identified by DEMLR have been resolved. This hold includes the May 27, 2016 (notice of violations) above as well as any pending deficiencies documented in recent DEMLR inspections, Holman wrote.

In the notice of violations dated May 27, which High Country Press also obtained in a records request, DEMLR Regional Engineer Matt Gantt said that the same team of inspectors had previously conducted an inspection most recently on Oct. 22, 2015 and agreed to give Maymead, Inc. additional time to correct violations/deficiencies prior to initiating further action.

Gantt noted that the N.C. 105 facility is covered under General Permit No. NCG 160141, which allows the discharge of stormwater point source discharges associated with activities classified as Asphalt Paving Mixtures to the surface waters of North Carolina.

The three violations found and required response are as follows:

Gantt noted that DEMLR requires the violations to be abated immediately and properly resolved by Maymead.

Environmental damage and/or failure to secure proper authorizations have been documented on the subject tract as stated above, Gantt wrote. Your efforts to undertake activities to bring the subject site back into compliance is not an admission, rather it is an action that must be taken in order to begin to resolve ongoing environmental issues.

According to N.C. General Statutes, the violations are subject to a fine of up to $25,000 per day for each violation.

Your above mentioned response to this correspondence, the degree and extent of harm to the environment and the duration and gravity of the violation(s) will be considered in any civil penalty assessment process that may occur, Gantt wrote.

Maymead Inc. bought an asphalt plant permit for the 5251 U.S. 421 site from Johnny Hampton, which secured the permit from Watauga County unknown to the public in 2011 for potential use at JW Hampton Co. Last year, Roark said that the plant near Deep Gap would provide asphalt for the U.S. 221 widening project from Jefferson to Deep Gap.

The lease agreement between Roark and Johnny and Joan Hampton, which began on Jan. 13, 2015, has an initial term of eight years with a five-year option to renew. Roark is leasing the 4.341-acre property from the Hamptons for $6,000 per year during the initial eight years, according to the contract. The contract also includes Roarks right of first refusal to purchase 104+ acres in and around the site. The 104 acres includes 22 acres owned by the Hamptons, which also includes the 4.341-acre site, and 82 more acres of land owned by adjacent property owners, including Gateway Crew, LLC and Summer Tract, LLC.

But in June 2015, Watauga County Planning Director revoked the permit and deemed it expired and nontransferable. Furman said that no appreciable progress toward the implementation of the asphalt plant had occurred in the four years since the original permit was issued.

After an uproar from members of the community, the Watauga County Board of Commissioners, which have a 3-2 GOP majority, then enacted a brief moratorium to study high impact land uses. They now require nearby property owners to be notified of a proposed high impact land use next door. Other changes included adopting a 750-foot buffer between a category of uses that includes asphalt plants and residential property lines and 1,500-foot buffer between a scenic byway and the category of uses that includes asphalt plants.

Citing vested rights, Maymead Inc. appealed Furmans decision to the Watauga County Board of Adjustment, which in February overturned the permit revocation. The GOP majority of the Watauga County Board of Commissioners declined to appeal. But Watauga County citizens, Carolyn and Randall Henion, who are the closest residents to the proposed site on U.S. 421, according to court records, personally appealed to Watauga County Superior Court in April.

View documents recently obtained from DAQ & DEMLR:

Maymead NOV Ltr 05272016

05312016 Holman to Roark re Maymead Permit Application

For more stories on this issue in the past year, click here.

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Dear Editor:

It is difficult to believe that another school year has come to a close. It seems only yesterday we were preparing schools for our students return. While this school year has brought many challenges and successes to our school system, we have met those challenges because of a team effort on the part of all involved in our school system.

We, again, take this opportunity to thank our entire community for the support given to our schools and the acknowledgement that the education of our children is very important to the future of Avery County. From our businesses, we have also garnered tremendous support, not only financially, but also by allowing their personnel to come into our schools to mentor students, to proctor tests, and to provide contacts with positive adult role models.

In addition, we acknowledge the tremendous support on the part of parents, and we appreciate the concern for their children and their willingness to work with us to provide the best educational opportunities possible. We continue to believe that one of the most important relationships that can be established is between the home and the school. If we work together and support each other, the potential for success of every student is greatly enhanced.

However, we would be remiss if we did not thank our students for the great job they have done this year. We are proud of them, their accomplishments, and the way they represent our school system. We read the horror stories around our country about violence in schools, and while we know that could happen here, we are thankful for our outstanding Avery County Schools students. We can still have school-wide assemblies, feel comfortable inviting guests into our schools, and allow our students to represent us in extra-curricular activities without fear of problems and embarrassment. Students, thank you for being the people you are; and, parents, thank you for the lessons you have taught your children! You represent all of us very well.

Additionally, much of the success we have experienced this year must be attributed to the faculty and staff at each local school. Because of the hard work of our faculties and staffs, we provided clean, well-maintained buildings, an excellent transportation system, nutritious meals, as well as an educational program complimented by many across our state. Without these quality individuals, our school system would not be making the positive difference it is.

On another note, one of our school systems goals is to provide students the opportunity to be successful in their pursuits. One area that measures their success is the testing program implemented by the state of North Carolina. Based on preliminary results, we did well again in the state accountability programs. Even though we are proud of the accomplishments we have made, we continue to set higher goals for the students of our school system. While we do understand that testing is important, we also understand it is not as important as the students we serve. Therefore, our desire continues to be to provide a well-rounded, balanced education for all our children so they are able to meet the demands of an ever-changing world. We cannot allow testing to dictate what we do for our children, but we must allow the needs of the children to dictate what we do for them. We are also proud of our seniors who are now ready to enter the next phase of their lives and are proud of the fact that the class of 2016 was awarded over $958,500 in scholarships.

As we talk about schools around the country, one major area of concern continues to be the issue of safe schools. We are proud of the many initiatives our Safe Schools Task Force, which consists of members representing all aspects of the schools and community, have helped put in place over the last several years. This hard working group of individuals tries to be on top of all school safety issues. One of the issues this Task Force has worked on is the new SPKUP app that can be used by our students and staff to report a safety concern or possible criminal act.

We believe in community schools and in empowering the communities to help their schools be successful. We also believe in empowering school faculties and staffs to establish rules and procedures that work best in their school, for we must do the best for the students we serve. Moreover, sometimes we must establish rules and procedures that will not be popular with every student but are necessary in maintaining order and discipline in the school environment. Therefore, our goal is for our Student Code of Conduct to mirror the expectations you, as the Avery County community, expect in our schools.

We believe in working with the community to make our schools the center of their communities. Likewise, we appreciate all our community does for our schools. As we work to make the Avery County Schools the best school system it can possibly be, we look forward to your continued support.

Sincerely,

David Burleson

Superintendent

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Shortly after the Council of State approved the first $200 million issuance and sale for the Connect NC Bond, Appalachian State University was awarded a construction contract to build a new College of Health Sciences Building. Appalachian State will receive a total of $70 million as part of the Connect NC Bond proposed by Governor Pat McCrory and overwhelmingly passed by voters in March.

New university facilities like the Health Sciences Building at Appalachian State will prepare students for high-demand medical careers to further enhance the health and quality of life in the region and state, said Governor McCrory. This is a historic milestone as we begin to advance projects that will benefit North Carolinians for generations to come.

Since 2008, the College of Health and Sciences at Appalachian State University has nearly doubled in size to 3,332 students. The new facility will provide specialty laboratories, classrooms and support space centralizing several different health sciences degree programs under one roof.

Construction is expected to begin in July with a projected completion date of July 2018.

The vast majority of the $200 million approved for the first bond issuance, or 87 percent, will support projects at our universities and community colleges. Additionally, 52 percent of bond investments in year one will support construction. The remaining money will be used for the planning of future construction projects.

About Connect NC

The Connect NC bond will invest $980 million into the states 17 universities. The vast majority of these improvements will build facilities that will improve teaching and research in the science, technology, engineering and medical fields. An additional $350 million will go to the community colleges, primarily for new construction, repairs and renovations on its 58 campuses.

Another $309.5 million will be awarded to smaller cities and towns to build and repair water and sewer systems. These investments are crucial to retaining and attracting new jobs outside of the states metro areas.

Agriculture and consumers will also benefit from Connect NC. Approximately $94 million will be spent to construct a new Agriculture and Consumer Sciences Lab for veterinary, food, drug and motor fuel testing. An additional $85 million will go toward a new Plant Sciences Research Complex at NC State University.

The National Guard will receive $70 million to rehabilitate Regional Readiness Centers in Burke and Wilkes counties as well as construct a new readiness center on Guilford County. Another $9 million will go toward the completion of the Samarcand Corrections and Law Enforcement Training Center in Moore County.

To improve North Carolinas quality of life and help preserve the states environment and natural beauty, the Connect NC bond will invest $75 million into our state parks. An additional $25 million will go the North Carolina Zoo for upgrades to service support facilities, trails and exhibits.

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The party made its way back to the top of the poll despite recording a decrease of 0.2 percentage points in its support rating to 20.2 per cent in May, as voter support for the Social Democrats dipped by as much as 1.4 percentage points to 20.1 per cent.

The Centre has re-emerged as the most popular political party in Finland, finds an opinion poll commissioned by YLE .

The National Coalition and Green League, meanwhile, recorded notable increases in their support ratings  the former from 17.0 to 17.7 per cent and the latter from 13.4 to 14.8 per cent. YLE highlights that the Green League was the only opposition party to gain popularity in May, as voter support for the Left Alliance, Swedish People's Party and Christian Democrats slipped marginally.

The Green League also saw its support rating increase to an all-time high already for the second consecutive month, the national broadcasting company points out.

The Finns Party similarly recorded an increase in its support rating  from 8.5 to 9.0 per cent  but is nowhere near as popular as in the aftermath of the previous parliamentary elections.

Taloustutkimus interviewed a total of 3,858 people for the poll between 9 May and 7 June, 2016.

Aleksi Teivainen  HT

Photo: Antti Aimo-Koivisto  Lehtikuva
Judge tosses Hamlin's 'bad faith' bankruptcy petition

Hamlin filed a notice of bankruptcy with three minutes to spare on the eve of a scheduled foreclosure sale.

Dale Hamlin may have reached the end of the line when it comes to saving his Carriage Park development.

Related Stories

The creator of the ridgetop development on N.C. 191 suffered what could be a game-ending defeat in U.S. Bankruptcy Court on May 27 when a judge granted a motion by his biggest creditor and threw out the Chapter 11 bankruptcy petition Hamlin filed hours before a scheduled foreclosure sale.

Ive got an attorney that would have to answer that so Ill tell them to give you a call, Hamlin said when asked about his next steps.

The foreclosure order resulted from civil complaints filed by Arendale Holdings Corp., a Jacksonville, Fla.-based development company that had loaned Hamlin $9.7 million in 2011. Hamlin failed to make payments on the loan by Dec. 31 of each year since then as required under the terms, Arendale said.

After a hearing, Henderson County Clerk of Superior Court Kim Gasperson Justice entered a foreclosure order on the Carriage Park property that Hamlin put up as collateral loan and set a foreclosure sale on the courthouse steps for April 8. Hamlin had filed a Chapter 11 bankruptcy petition at three minutes before 5 p.m. on April 7, blocking the property sale.

Six days later, Arendale filed a motion asking the court to dismiss the Chapter 11 petition on the grounds that it was filed merely to block the foreclosure sale.

In the petition Carriage Park Associates valued its real property, its only asset, at $10,000,000 but reveals that it owes debts of $13,651,677.59 which are secured by perfected liens on the real property, Arendale said. Further, Arendale asserts that the amount of its claim is significantly higher than what is listed in the debtors petition, and that the petition fails to list the other outstanding judgment liens other creditors had gotten through lawsuits. On the other hand, the debtor has no operating capital and is generating no revenue.

The chance that Hamlin could turn things around is virtually non-existent, Arendale attorney Chad Sharkey said.

Hamlins only apparent source of revenue would be from the sale of lots, Sharkey said. However, those lots are already subject to the perfected security interest of Arendale (as well as the liens of multiple judgment creditors) and the debtor has no equity whatsoever in the real property. Further, any future lot sales by (Hamlin) are speculative at best, especially considering that (he) has only managed to sell 17 lots within the past five years.

Hamlin and his attorney, Trade Elkins, have argued that Arendale has unfairly hamstrung his ability to sell lots and has taken the proceeds when he did make sales. Elkins could not be reached for comment on Tuesday.

The judge agreed with Sharkey that the Hamlin bankruptcy petition met the courts two-pronged standard for dismissal  objective futility of reorganization and subjective bad faith.

Carriage Park Associates cannot present a confirmable or viable plan for reorganization, he said, as it has no operating capital, it cannot generate any income not already subject to the lien of a third party, and has no other assets to offer to adequately protect its creditors.

In short, the sole purpose of the Debtors eleventh hour filing is to again put off the foreclosure after having exhausted its abilities to delay in the state courts, the Arendale attorney wrote.

Sharkey cited a bankruptcy judges decision in a 1988 case in Florida, in which the judge said: Bad faith is shown if the purpose of a Chapter 11 debtor is to hold a single asset hostage in order to speculate that such asset may increase in value  at the creditors risk.

Allowing the property to remain shielded from foreclosure and other civil actions by the Chapter 11 protection would cause Arendale irreparable harm, in part because of erosion control violations worsening on the property.

The financial disputes that have encumbered Hamlins property do not affect the privately owned homes and most of the improved common areas, which are owned by the homeowners association. Sharkey has said that Arendale, as a proven developer, would be able to sell lots and complete the last phases of Carriage Park.
A pal of slain Real IRA boss Alan Ryan who is facing a murder charge, is believed to be in Spain after being granted a change to his bail conditions by the High Court.

Dean Evans (27), of Grange Park Rise in Raheny, has been charged with two others for the 2013 murder of 35-year-old Peter Butterly, the father-of-three who was shot dead in the car park of the Huntsman Inn pub in Gormanston, Co Meath, on March 6, 2013.

Evans went to the High Court to have his bail conditions changed to allow him to travel to Spain on holidays with his family.

The application was opposed by gardai who argued that the strength of evidence against him and the seriousness of the crime made him a potential flight risk.

Evans was successful in his application however, but the costs of the application were awarded against him. He is understood to have flown to Spain on Monday and is due back in Ireland later this month.

The 55-day long trial of Evans and his co-accused collapsed at the Special Criminal Court in January last year after a failure in evidence disclosure.

The court delivered its ruling after the disclosure of previously privileged material contained in a statement given in July 2013 by witness David Cullen to gardai.

Witness

Cullen (30), with a last address in Balbriggan, was allegedly part of the murder plan but turned State's witness against his former co-accused Evans, as well as Edward McGrath (33), of Land Dale Lawns, Springfield, Tallaght, and Sharif Kelly (44), of Pinewood Green Road, Balbriggan.

They had pleaded not guilty to murdering Butterly.

Evans and McGrath also pleaded not guilty to the unlawful possession of a 9mm semi-automatic pistol and seven rounds of 9mm parabellum calibre ammunition on the same date.

The pair also pleaded not guilty to intent to endanger life at the car park of The Huntsman Inn on the same date.

A retrial was ordered for January 2017, and Mr Justice Michael Moriarty said "justice demands" that bail be granted to Evans until then.

He was granted bail under certain conditions but in last week's application had those conditions altered to allow him to travel abroad.

Last year, the Herald reported how Evans posted the words "Shoot to kill" online along with a photo of himself and another man posing with replica guns.

He uploaded the image to his Facebook page and appears in the picture with Baldoyle man Derek Nolan (32).

Both men are under threat of death from the drugs mob who murdered their close friend Alan Ryan in September 2012.
A former school caretaker has been found guilty of stealing fruit that was meant to be given to disadvantaged pupils as part of a healthy food initiative.

Thomas Byrne (55) had contested eight counts of theft of bags of bananas, apples and oranges worth about 66 from Scoil Fhursa in Kilmore, in Dublin 5, between February 24 and March 7 in 2014, when he was employed as a caretaker.

However, he was found guilty yesterday at Dublin District Court by Judge Ann Ryan.

Father-of-two Byrne, who is now doing a history and archaeology course in Trinity College, has no prior criminal convictions, the court heard.

The judge adjourned sentencing for a report on his suitability for participating in a restorative justice programme.

School principal Martin Stynes told Judge Ryan that the HSE and Dublin City Council had run a healthy-eating programme for schools.

He said Scoil Fhursa was in a socially disadvantaged area and the aim of the scheme was for the pupils to try different foods.

Mr Stynes said there were inconsistencies in the supply of fruits for the children.

Trusted

He asked the secretary to keep an eye on the records of what was supplied to the school, he said, adding that the caretaker had responsibility for some of the fruit.

He claimed Byrne - of Howth Road, Raheny, Dublin - told him "some days we get more, some days we get less, you cannot depend on the delivery".

Mr Stynes said "given that this person was trusted in his area of work, I took him at his word".

School secretary Catherine Fowler confirmed the shortfall of fruit.

John Mooney, the owner of Glanmore Foods, said the fruit was delivered to schools four days a week. He confirmed the amount of food on the order for Scoil Fhursa.

Byrne's counsel told the court his client thought some of the fruit left in a basket outside his office was freely available and he did not see a problem taking it.

The court prosecution followed his refusal to accept an adult caution.

CCTV was shown of him bringing bags out to his car on a number of dates.

Judge Ryan was satisfied that if anyone else had access to the fruit they would have been easy to see.
Dublin District Court heard the incident happened at North William Street flats on September 17 last year (Stock picture)

A young woman arrested for damaging her mother's front door threatened to "kick a garda's head in", a court heard.

Harley Wynne (20) had been abusing alcohol and tablets at the time of the incident.

Judge Denis McLoughlin referred her case to the Drug Treatment Court.

Wynne, of no fixed address, pleaded guilty to criminal damage and breaching a protection order.

Dublin District Court heard the incident happened at North William Street flats on September 17 last year.

Gardai went to the scene to find the accused banging and kicking the door.

Damaged

She had damaged the lock and panel on the door and threatened one of the gardai.

In a separate incident, the accused stole moisturisers and air fresheners worth 96 from Tesco Express in Ringsend on May 22.

Wynne had been abusing alcohol and tablets from the age of 11, her solicitor Alan Doyle said. At the time of the earlier incident, her drinking and drug taking had escalated to "an extent that I have never seen anything like in someone that young", he said.

"She would literally show up to court and wouldn't be able to stand on her own two feet."
The scene at the Church of the Sacred Heart of Jesus which was destroyed by fire (Mark Condren)

Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin has lent his support to a parishioners of north Dublin church which was gutted by a massive fire.

The Sacred Heart of Jesus Church, on Huntstown Way in Clonsilla, suffered serious damage following the blaze.

Parish representatives now face the cost of a major clean-up and refurbishment as the building remains too unstable to enter.

Archbishop Martin visited the site of the fire with local parish priests and gardai to survey damage yesterday.

In a statement, he expressed his solidarity with the priests and parishioners and called it "a very sad day for all".

The fire is believed to have been sparked by a light fitting at the rear of the church at around 1.30am on Thursday.

Local parish priest Fr George Begley said he was at the scene of the fire once he heard the alarms going off.

While Fr Begley said fire services had rushed to the scene, they were unable to prevent the blaze taking hold.

"A lot of the roof has caved in at one part of the church," he told the Herald.

"It's not safe to go in to see the full extent of the damage."

"It's a terrible thing to go through, but we are just happy that no one died or was injured in the fire," he added.

Mass is normally held in the church twice during weekdays and twice at weekends.

The parish office is now making arrangements for masses to be said elsewhere.

Refurbishment

Asked about how much the cost of refurbishment could rise to, Fr Begley said he had "no idea".

"Thank God we have insurance," he said.

"We'll be meeting with the insurance companies to see how much the actual cost will be."

Fr Begley also thanked members of the local community in Clonsilla for their support following the blaze.

"People have been very supportive," he said.

"Everyone seems to have come out of the woodwork to help us.

"We have had a lot of people offering to help us in any way that they can," he added.

It is not yet known how much parish representatives will have to resort to fundraising to help cover the eventual costs, or how long the building will be out of action.

The area has been sealed off for a garda investigation.

However, the incident is not being treated as suspicious.
A Fine Gael TD who spoke out against what she said was a gender imbalance in Enda Kenny's ministerial appointments has been isolated by her colleagues.

Dublin Bay South's Kate O'Connell heavily criticised the selections of Mr Kenny and said bias towards male Seanad nominee was the "final nail in the female coffin".

However, several other high-profile women in the party have failed to back up her view, insisting they are happy with the Taoiseach's appointments.

Female

Ms O'Connell said the fact that just three out of 18 junior ministers were female was "outrageous".

However, new Health Promotion Minister Marcella Corcoran Kennedy - who previously complained about the lack of opportunities for women in the party - told the Herald she couldn't fault the new line-up.

The Offaly TD said the promotion of herself, Helen McEntee and Catherine Byrne to portfolios relating to health was "a very good thing".

"There are only so many places. There are tons of very talented men as well that were left disappointed," she said.

Senator Catherine Noone said she hoped the "good work previously in the area of gender quotas in Fine Gael will continue. I'd like to see more women promoted on merit," she said.

Dun Laoghaire TD Mairia Bailey said all of Mr Kenny's appointments were warranted.

Josepha Madigan, who represents Dublin Rathdown, said: "I always want to see women being promoted to senior roles but I believe in a meritocracy above all."
A number of local officials, legislators and business people, some who earlier questioned the project, spoke in support of the proposed merger of Wellmont Health System and Mountain States Health Alliance during a hearing held by Tennessee officials earlier this week. How do you feel about the proposed merger now?
Halloween is coming! Here's when to trick or treat in your town
On Friday, May 27 the second floor social hall at Spring Hills Assisted Living in Lake Mary was packed wall-to-wall with more than 40 kippot-clad residents, caretakers, and family members, for a memorial service in tribute to late resident, Charles "Dill" Hurvitz, who passed away on Sunday, May 8, 2016. He was a resident at Spring Hills for eight years, and lived to age 98.

However, this was not Mr. Hurvitz's funeral. That service had already taken place graveside with a handful of mourners in his hometown of Boston, Mass. This Memorial Service Program, sponsored by the Jewish Pavilion, was developed and delivered by Pavilion volunteers, Terri Fine Stenzler and her husband, Paul Stenzler. This program was made possible in part by a grant from the Jewish Federation of Greater Orlando.

The couple, under the guidance of Jewish Pavilion Executive Director Nancy Ludin, worked together to extend the Pavilion's mission of bringing the Jewish community to the doorstep of elder-care residents. The Memorial Service Program enables elder-care residents, both Jewish and non-Jewish, to bring closure and foster community among residents who have lost a Jewish friend living among them. "Our elders in long term care are not well enough to travel to a Shiva or funeral. When someone dies in their building, they simply disappear, leaving friends and neighbors without an opportunity to say good-bye," commented Ludin. "The Memorial Service Program allows residents, volunteers and staff to celebrate their memory, share anecdotes about their relationship and grieve together. The closure is very helpful for everyone."

Spring Hills resident, Charles Curb, was Hurvitz's next door neighbor at the Seminole County senior living community for the past year and a half. He noted that Dill's memorial service had been the talk of the building for the past few days, as it was the first of its kind onsite. Curb reflected that he was going to miss Hurvitz's daily wake up calls, and though he wasn't Jewish, he was pleased to be part of the occasion. He shared, "We need to this kind of thing (onsite) more often for a series of complex reasons. Number one: the service helps us remember the person that was lost. Number two: the service helps us reflect on what that person's life meant to us."

Curb captured the intention that the Stenzlers had when they conducted their first memorial service program in 2013 when Elise Schilowitz's mother, Mrs. Esther Hoffeld, passed away while a resident at Lake Mary's Oakmonte Village. Fine Stenzler explained, "While Elise is a member of Temple Israel, the rabbi was on his summer vacation when her mother passed away. The synagogue leadership was looking for someone to lead the service, and I volunteered, as I was coordinating services at Temple Israel in the rabbi's absence. Elise's request was unusual in that she decided to host the service at Oakmonte, and not at her own home, which is the more typical practice."

Fine Stenzler realized that leading the service at Oakmonte was quite different than the other memorial services she had conducted before, and fulfilled an unmet need for elder-care residents, who are often frail and/or infirm. She explained, "The Schilowitz family's decision to bring the service to the continuing care community enabled Mrs. Hoffeld's friends to share their memories of their dear friend. Because residents normally lack transportation, or information about pending memorial services, they would have had no way to attend such a service had it been held off the Oakmonte campus. Yet Mrs. Hoffeld's friends had a lot to say about the person with whom they shared meals, memories, activities and time together. In hosting the service onsite, the Schilowitz's allowed Mrs. Hoffeld's friends to achieve closure together and to say their parting words and prayers, whether to the group or to themselves."

The Stenzlers led a second memorial service at Health Care Center of Windermere in July 2013, when Paul's mother, Roslyn, passed away. "The service was well attended by Jews and non-Jews, both residents and staff, all of whom shared a bond with Paul's mother," commented Fine Stenzler. "It also meant a lot for Paul to be there to thank Roslyn's friends and facility staff in person for all that they did for her, just like Elise and her husband did at Mrs. Hoffeld's service."

Following the positive response to these two services, the Stenzlers were inspired to create a Memorial Service Program with the Jewish Pavilion to fulfill the needs of elder-care residents. Fine Stenzler stated, "I appreciate the unique opportunity for conducting memorial services at continuing care facilities, and believe that they serve an important purpose for these communities. Specifically, Jewish law recognizes direct family members as mourners, yet residents at continuing care facilities form bonds and friendships in their later years that often go unacknowledged when they pass away because they cannot attend a Shiva minyan at the resident's children's home or synagogue, which may be local or out of the area. We also appreciate the need for the service to be accessible to non-Jews such that the prayers should be explained, provided in transliteration, and translated into English."

The Stenzlers relied on their experience conducting services as lay leaders in synagogues and in community settings when developing the Memorial Service Program. The couple has years of experience working with the elder-care community, and has led the second night Passover Seder at Brookdale Senior Living/Chambrel for the last four years, along with a variety of programs throughout the years. Additionally, Paul has been involved with the Jewish Pavilion Board of Directors for the last several years.

Recently, the couple compiled their own senior-friendly Memorial Service Program geared to elders served by the Jewish Pavilion at more than 50 continuing care facilities in the community. The program includes prayers that are not time specific so that the service may happen at any time of the day or week such as on a Sunday afternoon. The Memorial Service Program features an abridged service component, followed by a healthy dose of community and conversation, along with the typical trays of goodies found at an oneg. It is senior friendly because it is printed in large font while it also provides opportunities for residents and staff to lead responsive readings and to share memories if they wish to do so.

The Memorial Service Program is being promoted to the senior living communities by the Jewish Pavilion's four program sirectors so that activities directors can inform the family members of anyone who passes, and provide them with this option. The Federation grant will help fund additional work that the program directors do as a result of the program, including coordinating and attending the services, inviting the volunteers who connected with the resident to attend, and arranging for food services. Additionally, they will need to lead the service when the Stenzlers are unavailable. A leader's manual was written for this purpose.

Sammy Goldstein, executive director of Beth Shalom Memorial Chapel (and Jewish Pavilion Board of Directors member) noted that the implementation of a memorial program is vital to the elder-care community, and strongly supports the Stenzler's efforts. Goldstein shared, "When a member of the community passes the immediate family has its own type of closure, which may be a funeral service and sitting Shiva with the community. However, the elder community is underserved when it comes to end-of-life rituals, and are often left with an open wound when a community member passes."

As part of the May 27 service for Dill Hurvitz, the Stenzlers invited the Spring Hills community, made up of residents, caretakers and family, to share memories as part of the healing process. Cheryl Wiener, Hurvitz's daughter, thanked the Jewish Pavilion for visiting with her father for so many years, noting that he always had a special place in his heart for holidays and visits, and recalled her father lighting up whenever Program Director Emily Newman or the children from Congregation Ohev Shalom came by. She shared that "this beautiful service meant so much to me because I was among my father's friends at the place he called home".

Dill's daughter continued, "My Dad was fortunate to have family that visited him on a regular basis. Many do not see or hear from family (Jewish or otherwise) with any frequency. We maintained his membership at Ohev even after it became too difficult to bring him there for services and holidays. The visits from the Pavilion helped to keep his yiddishkite alive and remember all the holidays with his family in years gone by. Emily and the entire group of Pavilion volunteers became part of what he considered his Florida family. I can't thank them enough for all their efforts to do this."

Sister-in-law, Esther Wheeler continued the community conversation, choking back sobs as she shared, "Dill loved all people, and they loved him back." Spring Hills Program Director Robin Wolfe called Hurvitz "an amazing man", and remarked that after eight years together she knew all about his children, his grandchildren, and his love of the lottery and candy. One resident commented that Hurvitz was her first friend at the home, and later became her lunch buddy. A member of the staff reminisced about "Dill's unique character" and remembered him as a man "who had touched all our hearts". Laughter and tears intermingled, as happy times were remembered, while a tinge of sadness hung in the air over the communal loss.

Paul Stenzler and Terri Fine Stenzler leading a Memorial Service Program at Spring Hills Assisted Living in Lake Mary.

The group was brought together one last time in Hurvitz's memory for an oneg with some food and drink. Fine Stenzler shared with the group, "In the Jewish community we believe life is for the living. Please join us was we share some goodies and sweetness in Dill's honor." The Stenzlers spent time getting to know the residents after the service while everyone lingered over cookies and juice. Several stopped to visit with Cheryl Wiener, swapping anecdotes about her father, along with smiles and more than a few tears. Charles Curb shared that he had enjoyed the service. After a brief discussion about Jewish life cycle events often being combined with food, he continued the community conversation, noting that people of all faiths "pretty much do it the same way."

The Memorial Service Program is a new program offered by the Jewish Pavilion to residents of more than 50 elder-care homes throughout Greater Orlando. This program was made possible in part by a grant from the Jewish Federation of Greater Orlando. To volunteer at or to request a memorial service, or for more information, please call 407-678-9363 or visit http://www.jewishpavilion.org.
(JTA)Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders said Israel has a right to be protected by the United States.

Sanders, who has spoken out in favor of Palestinian interests as well as Israels right to exist in security, made the assertion last Sunday during an interview with NBCs Meet the Press.

I am 100 percent pro-Israel in the sense of Israels right to exist, Sanders said. I lived in Israel, I have family in Israel, Israel has the right to live not only in peace and security, but to know that their very existence will be protected by the United States government.

In recent weeks, Sanders appointed three Israel critics, including Cornel West, who supports boycotts against Israel, to help draft the Democratic Party platform ahead of the convention in Philadelphia.

On Meet the Press, Sanders said the United States has got to respect the needs of the Palestinian people. They cannot be pushed aside. Asked whether he wanted the party platform to say the Palestinians were occupied, Sanders said conditions were premature for determining the language, but added: Weve got some good people on our platform-writing committee.

Last month, Sanders suspended his campaigns Jewish outreach coordinator shortly after her appointment after it was revealed that she had posted an expletive-ridden Facebook diatribe against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Simone Zimmerman wrote last year on Facebook that Bibi Netanyahu is an arrogant, deceptive, cynical, manipulative a--hole, and: F--- you, Bibi... you sanctioned the murder of over 2,000 people this summer.

The campaign of Hillary Clinton, the Democratic front-runner, insisted that the 2016 platform will reflect the partys longstanding strong support for Israel.

The Democratic Party has always, in the platform, reflected longstanding, strong support for Israel. I dont expect that to change, Wendy Sherman, the former under secretary of state for political affairs and a foreign policy adviser to Clinton, told Jewish Insider on Friday.

I believe that everybody is in strong support for Israels security and I think that Secretary Clintons views about the importance of Israels security and the unbreakable bond between the U.S. and Israel is something that is held by all Democrats.
Earlier this month, Ben Rhodes, a national security official in the Obama administration, admitted in a New York Times profile that he used non-governmental groups to create an "echo chamber" to garner cover for the nuclear deal with Iran. Rhodes stated that his efforts to manipulate media coverage of the deal were made easier by the youth and ignorance of journalists who cover foreign policy.

The implications are appalling. The whole point of having a free (and competent) press is to give the American people the information they need to exercise oversight over their elected (and non-elected) officials. It is one of the essential tools of American self-governance.

Journalists are not the only people who were implicated as a result of Ben Rhodes's stunning admission. Christian churches and para-church organizations were an important part of the echo chamber that Rhodes created.

Christian organizations such as the National Council of Churches, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, the United Church of Christ, the United Methodist Church, the Presbyterian Church (USA), and the Mennonite Central Committee repeated, relayed, and affirmed messages that came out of the echo chamber to their supporters. By behaving in such a manner, these institutions did harm to the civil society in which they operate and to their own reputations.

Kate Gould, a lobbyist with the Friends Committee on National Legislation (FCNL), which describes itself as a "Quaker Lobby," would like us to believe that she and the organization she works for were not part of the echo chamber Rhodes boasted of creating, but the evidence is overwhelming that they were.

The FCNL enlisted religious leaders from a number of different Christian organizations to sign letters in support of the Iran deal that echoed the talking points that came out of the echo chamber Rhodes said he created. The FCNL also hosted a conference call in which opponents of the deal were depicted as well-funded and dishonest by a State Department spokesperson.

As a result of Gould's activism, the FCNL and other Christian organizations portrayed those who were opposed to the deal as "rejecting diplomacy in favor of an unconstrained Iranian nuclear program and a new push for war." This deal-or-war dichotomy was, according to David Samuels, the author of the New York Times piece on Rhodes, one of Rhodes's most effective talking points.

Gould also promoted the notion that the 2013 election of Hassan Rouhani as president of Iran in 2013 indicated that the country was headed for a more moderate attitude toward the rest of the world. But even Rhodes himself is not so sure that this is the case, a point that became evident in his discussions with Samuels. He's not "betting on it," he told Samuels.

Amazingly, Gould argued that the 2013 deal brokered with the Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria over its chemical weapons stockpile served as a model for negotiations with Iran.

According to the Syrian American Medical Society, 77 percent of the chemical weapons attacks that have taken place in Syria took place after the agreement was signed at the United Nations in 2013.

Maybe the Iran deal is a good thing. But the willingness of Christian organizations to support the effort to demonize opponents of the deal and exaggerate the prospects for reform in Iran-one of the leading practitioners of state-sponsored terrorism (much of it directed at Jews) and a leading proponent of genocidal anti-Semitism in the world-is a shock to those who know church history.

If these church institutions had said, "Yes, we know the Iranian regime is profoundly hostile to Jews and Israel, but we still think this deal is a risk worth taking," then fine. But instead of promoting an honest assessment of the risks and rewards of negotiating with Iran, these church institutions, under FCNL's leadership, made such an analysis more difficult.

If Christian leaders are going to roll the dice with Jewish lives and safety, let them do so out in the open, not in secret. And if they can't do it out in the open, then let them not do it at all.

Dexter Van Zile is a Christian media analyst for the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA). His opinions are his own.
NEW YORK (JTA)-Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump is facing growing accusations that his campaign is countenancing anti-Semitism-if not encouraging it outright.

Trump's foreign policy slogan, "America First," echoes the World War II-era noninterventionist movement championed by a notorious anti-Semite. During the height of the primary campaign, Trump delayed disavowing the support of white supremacist David Duke. And the candidate has failed to condemn the recent anti-Semitic vitriol directed by supporters against journalists who have written critically of Trump, including New York Times reporter Jonathan Weisman and GQ writer Julia Ioffe.

In his defense, Trump and his supporters cite the fact that his daughter, son-in-law and three grandchildren are Jewish (Ivanka Trump underwent an Orthodox conversion before she married Jared Kushner in 2009), that Trump was the grand marshal of the 2004 Salute to Israel Parade and that he has many Jewish friends.

"He's not Hitler," Melania Trump said of her husband in an interview last month after being told the comedian Louis C.K. compared the candidate to the Nazi leader.

Many, however, remain unconvinced of the defense.

Let's take a closer look at the anti-Semitism controversies surrounding Donald Trump. Is he enabling anti-Semitism? You be the judge.

Slurring Jon Stewart, Trump accentuates the comedian's original Jewish name.

On April 24, 2013, Trump seems to go out of his way to highlight the "Daily Show" host's Jewish background, tweeting: "I promise you that I'm much smarter than Jonathan Leibowitz-I mean Jon Stewart @TheDailyShow. Who, by the way, is totally overrated."

Trump tells Republican Jews: 'I don't want your money'

In a speech in Washington to the Republican Jewish Coalition last December, Trump appears to traffic in stereotypes about Jews. "You're not going to support me because I don't want your money," he told the Jewish audience. He also says, "Is there anyone in this room who doesn't negotiate deals? Probably more than any room I've ever spoken."

Trump muddles the message on David Duke.

After David Duke, the white supremacist and former grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, says he supports Trump, CNN's Jake Tapper asks Trump on Feb. 28 if he would disavow Duke's support. Though Trump in the past had condemned Duke-and two days earlier at a news conference said, "David Duke endorsed me? OK, all right. I disavow, OK?"-this time Trump demurs.

"Just so you understand, I don't know anything about David Duke. OK? I don't know anything about what you're even talking about with white supremacy or white supremacists," he tells Tapper. "So, I don't know. I don't know, did he endorse me or what's going on, because, you know, I know nothing about David Duke. I know nothing about white supremacists."

Pressed on whether he unequivocally disavows the support of the Klan, Trump dodges the question. A day later Trump blames a "bad earpiece" for failing to disavow Duke during the exchange with CNN and notes that he had disavowed Duke previously.

After the Anti-Defamation League releases a statement saying, "The onus is now on Donald Trump to make unequivocally clear he rejects those sentiments and that there is no room for Duke and anti-Semitism in his campaign and in society," Trump responds with a statement saying, "Anti-Semitism has no place our society, which needs to be united, not divided."

Journalist Julia Ioffe is inundated by anti-Semitic vitriol

After Melania Trump criticizes Ioffe's April 27 profile of her in GQ as "another example of the dishonest media and their disingenuous reporting," the neo-Nazi website Daily Stormer urges followers to "go ahead and send her [Ioffe] a tweet and let her know what you think of her dirty kike trickery." Ioffe, who is Jewish, then is inundated with a deluge of anti-Semitic online wrath, including a doctored photo of her wearing a Holocaust-era Jewish star, a cartoon of a Jew getting his brains blown out and threats that she would be sent "back to the oven."

The online anti-Semitism directed at Ioffe is similar to online attacks directed at other Jewish commentators who denounced Donald Trump, such as Forward columnist Bethany Mandel.

When CNN's Wolf Blitzer, a Jew and former reporter for The Jerusalem Post, asks Trump if he has a "message" for supporters who were flooding Ioffe with "anti-Semitic death threats," Trump says, "I know nothing about it. You'll have to talk to them about that." He then went on to echo his wife's criticism of Ioffe's article. Pressed, Trump says, "I don't have a message to the fans," and added, "There is nothing more dishonest than the media."

Trump champions 'America First'

In a major speech designed to unveil his prospective foreign policy agenda, Trump declares, "'America First' will be the overriding theme of my administration." The theme carries echoes of the America First Committee, which lobbied hard against America's entry into World War II and whose most prominent spokesman was aviator Charles Lindbergh, an avowed anti-Semite.

A Jewish New York Times editor becomes a target of Trump-supporting anti-Semites

After tweeting a link to an essay about emerging fascism in the United States, New York Times editor Jonathan Weisman is attacked by anti-Semitic online trolls identifying themselves as Trump supporters.

"Trump God Emperor sent me the Nazi iconography of the shiftless, hooknosed Jew," Weisman writes in a Times essay about the responses to his tweet. "I was served an image of the gates of Auschwitz, the famous words 'Arbeit Macht Frei' replaced without irony with 'Machen Amerika Great.' Holocaust taunts, like a path of dollar bills leading into an oven, were followed by Holocaust denial."

Trump's white supremacist delegate

William Johnson, leader of the white supremacist American Freedom Party, is among the list of delegates the Trump campaign submitted in California ahead of the state's May 9 deadline. After news organizations begin reporting about the controversial delegate, the Trump campaign blames Johnson's inclusion on its list as a "database error." Johnson then says he is resigning as a delegate and will not attend the convention.

Interpreting Trump

Following Trump's refusal to condemn the anti-Semitic vitriol against Ioffe, Daily Stormer founder Andrew Anglin tells the Huffington Post, "We interpret that as an endorsement."

Trump adviser and lawyer Jason Greenblatt, who is an Orthodox Jew, says, "I do not think Mr. Trump can be responsible for people who are anti-Semitic who support him."

Ari Fleischer, a former spokesman for President George W. Bush and current board member of the Republican Jewish Coalition, shares Greenblatt's view.

"The fact that the Black Panthers came out for Barack Obama doesn't make Barack Obama a Black Panther sympathizer," Fleischer tells the Huffington Post. "You cannot ascribe to a candidate the views of the worst radical fringes that may support them... These arguments about how Donald Trump shouldn't be supported because fringe radical groups have said good things about him-I reject entirely."

But others note that candidates historically disavow bigots who act in their name-without taking responsibility for their views. In February, the conservative American Spectator urges Trump to take a page from President Ronald Reagan, who forcefully repudiated an endorsement from the Ku Klux Klan. In a letter to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights in 1984, Reagan wrote, "Those of us in public life can only resent the use of our names by those who seek political recognition for the repugnant doctrines of hate they espouse. The politics of racial hatred and religious bigotry practiced by the Klan and others have no place in this country, and are destructive of the values for which America has always stood."

Shortly after the Ioffe episode, Sheldon Adelson, the hawkishly pro-Israel, super-rich Jewish casino magnate, announces he will back Trump for president.
UNITED NATIONS (JTA)It was an incongruous sight: The U.N. General Assembly hall filled to capacity with 1,500 cheering people waving miniature Israeli flags and singing Hatikvah, Israels national anthem.

No, hell hadnt frozen over.

The occasion was a one-day conference hosted by Israels U.N. mission devoted to fighting the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against the Jewish state. It turns out any U.N. member state can reserve space at the world bodys headquarters in New Yorkeven the iconic General Assembly hallfor events. Last Tuesday, the Israeli mission stacked the seats of the great hall not with delegates representing countries from around the world but with Jews and pro-Israel activists, many of them college students and high school seniors.

The irony of holding a conference to combat BDS at a site notorious for producing lopsided resolutions against Israel was not lost on anyone.

Today here in this room we are making our voices heard, Danny Danon, Israels ambassador to the United Nations, said to a standing ovation at the conferences opening session. BDS has already infected the United Nationsyes, the United Nations. When the U.N. is opening the door to BDS, we have to respond.

Look around this room. Look at all the people who came to support Israel, Danon said.One day you will tell your children: I was there when we stopped BDS. I stood up when they tried to turn the world against the Jewish state. I was there for Israel.

The conference was part pep rally and part strategizing session, aimed both at making a statement and educating, motivating and advising pro-Israel activists about best practices to combat BDS on campus and beyond. Aside from speeches, the General Assembly session included a short video message by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and a brief live performance by ex-Hasidic reggae star Matisyahu. He sang Jerusalem and One Day, a ballad about ending war, with his long graying hair wound into a ponytail and one of his young children by his side.

Though the conference was called Ambassadors Against BDS-International Summit at the United Nations (its Twitter hashtag was #stopBDS), the main panelists at a discussion devoted to fighting BDS on campus said the negative approach most anti-BDS activists adopt is counterproductive.

Defensiveness is not effective, said David Sable, global CEO of Young & Rubicam, an international advertising firm that has done extensive research on Americans sentiments about Israel.

Theirs is a positive message, ours is negative. Were anti, theyre pro, Sable, a veteran of the Israeli Defense Forces, said of the BDS movement. We look like a corporate brochure. What theyve put out is a creative platform for self-expression. If you were a college student, which one would you go for? Its clear. We got a problem, my friends.

Sable suggested activists instead focus on winning over the undecidedsthose who dont favor one side or the other in the Israeli-Palestinian conflictwith positive messages about Israel that can resonate with young people.

Frank Luntz, the Republican political consultant and pollster, said pro-Israel activists need to speak in language that appeals to the demographics least sympathetic toward Israel: women, 18- to 29-year-olds and Democrats.

Focus on language to the left. Imagine you are speaking to a 21-year-old college Democrat woman, he said. Focus on educating, dont yell and dont be afraid of expressing sympathy for the plight of the Palestinian people, Luntz advised.

Indeed, while the crowd at Tuesdays conference was strongly, even stridently pro-Israel, speakers who expressed sympathy for the plight of the Palestinians were greeted with warm applause. Among them was SodaStream CEO Daniel Birnbaum, whose West Bank factory in Maale Adumim, which employed Palestinians alongside Israelis, long was a target of the BDS movement. When SodaStream shuttered the factory in 2013 to consolidate its operations at a larger, newly constructed facility in the Israeli city of Beersheba, the move was falsely cited as a victory for the BDS movement. In fact, it was to accommodate the companys rapid growth, Birnbaum said.

Lets get to know Palestinians. There are good Palestinians. Theyre not all terrorists, believe me, Birnbaum said, urging audience members to wish Palestinians a happy Ramadan next week, when the Muslim holy month begins.

The conference included two Palestinian presenters: Son of Hamas author Mosab Hassan Yousef, who for years served as a Shin Bet informant and whose life story has been made into a film, and Bassem Eid, founder of the Palestinian Human Rights Monitoring Group, a watchdog focused on Palestinian institutional malfeasance.

Like many of the speakers at the conference, Eid took advantage of the conference setting to take swipes at the host locale, blaming the United Nations for helping perpetuate the Israeli-Palestinian conflict rather than resolve it by focusing on good governance, accountability and economic growth for the Palestinians.

Not one country around the world tried to focus on the economic issues and economic prosperity, Eid said. At the end of the day we the Palestinians are the ones who are suffering not only from the foreign policies of the international community, but also from the policies of our own leadership.

The president of the World Jewish Congress, Ronald Lauder, whose group helped sponsor the conference, said organizers chose to hold the event at the United Nations to send a message. The international body was created 70 years ago with the pledge that the world would never again countenance the kind of destruction wrought against the Jews during the Holocaust, yet today the U.N. is being used as a platform for the BDS campaign, he said.

But there is something that has changed in the last 70 years. We have changed. The era of the quiet Jew, the timid Jew, the ghetto Jew is long over, Lauder said. We are no longer victims. We no longer have to rely on others to protect us. And we are absolutely done being quiet. Enough is enough.
(JTA)Ahead of the 50th anniversary of Israels reunification of Jerusalem, the Cabinet allocated an extra $220 million for a plan that encourages the citys high-tech industry.

This is almost NIS 1 billion that we are investing in the development of Jerusalem, in technology and in companies, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Thursday about the Jubilee Plan, a five-year project initiated last year.

The face of Jerusalem is changing. There is an interesting technological development here, he said, adding that the Israeli capital is now producing not only scripture but also software.

The announcement was made three days before Jerusalem Day, a national holiday in Israel that marks the capture of eastern Jerusalem by Israel from Jordan in the 1967 Six-Day War. While Israel regards the lands captured in that war in Jerusalem as part of Israel proper, they are widely seen internationally as occupied by Israel.

Approximately 40 percent of the programs budget will go to strengthening and establishing Jerusalems status in advanced industries, the plans outline states, including through grants to Jerusalem-based high-tech firms and cinema and animation enterprises, as well as startup incubation platforms.

Another 10 percent will go toward academia, enabling institutions of higher learning to upgrade their infrastructures and diversify their fields of research and instruction, the plan states. Fifteen percent of the budget will help promote Jerusalem internationally and attracting visitors, including participants in international conferences.

And another $42 million, or 19 percent of the budget, will go toward improving infrastructure, with an emphasis on high-tech and industrial hubs, by making them more accessible to public transportation and with bicycle paths and beautifying them with parks. The remainder will become available for a second phase of the program once the initial goals have been reached, the outline says.

Jerusalem, whose 870,000 residents make up 10 percent of Israels population, is among the nations poorest cities, according to the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics 2015 report on the city. A third of its residents are Arabs. Among the Jewish residents, 32 percent describe themselves as haredi Orthodox and 17 percent are modern Orthodox. Only 21 percent define themselves as secular.

Jerusalems population grew by 20,000 last year over 2014. Of the new Jerusalemites, 19 percent were Jewish immigrants from abroad.

On average, Jerusalemite women have approximately four children, compared to the national average of three children per mother.

Participation in the workforce stood at 51 percent in Jerusalem last year, compared to 64 percent nationally.
Member of Knesset Michael Oren (in front, third from left) with other attendees of JNFuture Israel's barbecue for Israel's 68th Independence Day.

Member of Knesset Michael Oren (Kulanu), the self-described "resident old man," surveys the scene unfolding before his eyes with growing astonishment.

Seven-hundred pounds of grilling meat, 20 bags of charcoal, 150 gallons of Negev beer, and 600 new immigrants from the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Brazil, Argentina, France, Chile, Japan, Ukraine, Russia, South Africa, India, Greece, Spain, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Venezuela, and Guatemala, all coming together last week to celebrate Israel's 68th Independence Day at JNFuture Israel's annual Yom Ha'atzmaut barbecue.

Israel's former ambassador to the U.S. shakes his head in astonishment.

"I don't know whether to be excited or to cry," Oren quips as he enjoys a hot dog right off the grill. "I'm a little envious. We had nothing like this when I came to this country. Zero. Israel was a frontier country then."

Tel Aviv's young immigrant community has boomed since Oren's own aliyah (immigration to Israel) from his native New Jersey in the late 1970s. Today, the number of immigrants from the U.S. tops 200,000-and the numbers keep rising.

According to Jay Shultz, president of the Am Yisrael Foundation and co-founder of Jewish National Fund's (JNF) community of young professionals, JNFuture Israel, one reason behind the increased aliyah among young American Jews is that Israel has become a more attractive place for Jews to live.

"There has never been an easier time in history to be a Jew living in the land of Israel," Shultz says. "Many of the new immigrants are also drawn to Tel Aviv's cultural and financial capital. This is where everyone initially comes to network, get a job, and explore future opportunities."

Known as "The White City," what happens in Tel Aviv very quickly influences the rest of the country, says Oren.

"The fact that young Jewish people from different backgrounds, some religious and some far less, come to this city and find an inclusive, exciting, vibrant, creative society in which one can fulfill oneself not only spiritually but also professionally, that's an amazing accomplishment," he says.

Shultz explains that the Independence Day celebration is just one of many events on the Israeli calendar designed to foster community and inspire young Jews to take an active role in what he calls "modern pioneering."

"Bringing everyone together to celebrate our national independence with such vibrant community sends an important message: Young Israelis are hungry to take the reins of the Zionist dream, and steer it towards a brighter and stronger future. At 68 years young, the most exciting part of the tremendous success of this country is that it has only just begun," he says.

JNFuture Israel has strived to create a movement that empowers the next generation to take up the mantle of nation-building. For Birmingham, Ala., native Natalie Solomon, that sentiment is especially felt on Yom Ha'atzmaut.

"It's really a day for me of humility, but also of pride-an incredible sense of we did this, we built this, and I feel honored to be a part of the next generation of people who came to Tel Aviv and said, 'We're not done yet, we have a lot still to do,'" says Solomon, the CEO of the Am Yisrael Foundation.

Solomon also notes the high price the Jewish state has paid for its freedom in its 68 years of existence, and in a nod to the soldier standing next to her, expresses her gratitude for all the immigrants and native Israelis serving in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).

The soldier standing alongside Solomon is 26-year-old Iowa native Sariba Feinstein, who is now living out her childhood dream and serving in the IDF's Caracal battalion.

"Moving to Israel has given more meaning to my life than I could have ever imagined," Feinstein says. "I am so thankful to live here every day, and even when it gets really difficult you know that you have a purpose, you know that there's a bigger picture."
(JNS.org)After ordering to dissolve the countrys parliament on Sunday, Jordans King Abdullah II appointed a politician known for his strong ties to Israel as the new Jordanian prime minister, Al Jazeera reported.

Although Jordans government has a peace treaty with Israel, a majority of the outgoing Jordanian parliaments members held anti-Israel views. But the newly appointed prime minister, Hani Mulki, chaired the Jordanian government committee that negotiated peace with Israel from 1994-1996. He is expected to now join the effort to restart peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians.

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 will be at the expense of the Palestinian people, Husam Abdallat, a former senior government aide within the Jordanian prime ministers office, told Al Jazeera.

Tareq al-Fayed, a Jordanian policy analyst and a journalist at the London-based Al-Quds Al-Arabinewspaper, said Mulki will have two major tasks while in office.

The first is to manage the news phase of the parliamentary elections and set the governments political agenda. The second is to manage Israeli-Jordanian relations, which have seen tension over Israels policies and encroachment on the Palestinians in Jerusalem and against Al-Aqsa Mosque, Fayed told Al Jazeera. Although Jordan in April released a statement slamming Israeli settlers and police for storming the Al-Aqsa Mosque/Al-Haram al-Sharif (Temple Mount), Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to maintain the Israeli-Jordanian-Palestinian status quo of a ban on Jewish prayer at the Temple Mount.

Fayed also said that under Mulki, the possible strengthening of Israeli-Jordanian relations could encourage Israeli investment in Jordans economy.
Uri Pilichowski, who lives in the Mitzpe Yericho settlement (pictured here) within Samaria's Binyamin region, says, "All along my street they are building. Jews are here to stay on their land forever."

One report says the Obama administration will soon get "tougher" with Israel over an alleged surge of Jewish settlement construction. Another report says Israel is currently halting new settlement construction. What's the real story?

The Associated Press (AP), citing three anonymous American diplomats, reported last month that the U.S. plans to sign a new Middle East Quartet document aligning its criticism of Israel's construction policies with those of mediator partners including the European Union, Russia, and the United Nations. The document, according to the AP report, "is sure to infuriate Israel."

But just weeks after the initial report, recordings of a closed-door meeting between Israeli Construction and Housing Minister Yoav Galant and members of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations revealed that the Israeli government's current policy is not to build new Jewish housing units in the settlements-and that Galant abides by that policy.

"Basically, I am following the policy of the government, and it is that we are not building in Judea and Samaria," Galant said, Haaretz reported. "But I am not the only one with the ability to build. There are private people and other segments of the government that work according to different ministers."

Amid the conflicting reports, what's the actual situation on the ground regarding Israeli settlement contraction? First, here's an overview of the terminology and dynamics at play.

The "West Bank" is the area of land located west of the Jordan River, also known by its biblical name of "Judea and Samaria." The international community mostly uses the term "West Bank," the Israeli government uses "Judea and Samaria," and others prefer "disputed territories." (The policy of this news service is to refer to Jewish areas of the disputed territories as Judea and Samaria, and Palestinian Authority-administered territories as the West Bank.) Judea and Samaria's Jewish neighborhoods are referred to as towns, communities, or settlements-highlighting the complexity of the situation. There are approximately 350,000 Jews living in the settlements, not counting the disputed areas of eastern Jerusalem.

The settlements, which comprise about 3 percent of the land in Judea and Samaria, are not monolithic. The most significant settlement growth is in the suburban areas of the Jordan Valley, close to Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. These settlements include towns such as Ma'ale Adumim, located less than five miles from Jerusalem and containing a population of about 40,000 people.

There are also larger "settlement blocs"-among the best-known blocs are Ariel and Gush Etzion-all of which contain core towns surrounded by smaller villages. Jews have been living in Gush Etzion since the 1920s. Today, the Gush Etzion bloc has 22 settlements and approximately 70,000 people. Ariel, established in the 1970s, has approximately 20,000 residents.

There are also "outlying settlements," which are small communities (up to roughly 150 people) usually situated along the Jordan River, and "outposts," which are makeshift illegal communities established on private Palestinian land. Outposts make up less than 1 percent of the Israeli settlements.

U.S. policy-regardless of the president's party-has always opposed settlement construction.

"The first settlement in the [19]70s was a bone of contention between the U.S. and Israeli governments," Daniel Pipes, president of the Middle East Forum think tank, told JNS.org. "All American governments have been displeased."

Yet the dispute seemed to calm over time through various agreements. The 1995 Oslo II agreement broke the disputed territories into three areas: A, B, and C. Areas A and B are controlled by the Palestinian Authority and Area C falls under Israeli jurisdiction. According to Oslo II, there are no prohibitions or restrictions regarding Israeli construction in Area C.

Later-according to Elliott Abrams, senior fellow for Middle Eastern Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations think tank and former deputy national security adviser in the administration of president George W. Bush-an informal agreement between Bush and Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon in 2004 allowed construction to take place only in specific settlement blocs and only based on "natural growth."

"[The 2004 agreement stipulated] no new settlements, no incentives to move to the settlements, and while settlements could grow in population, no geographic expansion," Abrams told JNS.org, noting that it is his understanding that this is still Israel's policy.

But when President Barack Obama took office, his administration did an about-face. Obama took office on Jan. 20, 2009. Two days later, he appointed special envoy for Middle East peace George Mitchell, who immediately called for an absolute freeze of settlement construction-including in Jewish neighborhoods in parts of Jerusalem formerly controlled by Jordan-as a precondition for even low-level peace talks.

"The Bush administration's policy was that settlement expansion was unhelpful. This administration has called it illegitimate. This was a terrible mistake....The result has been to make [Israeli-Palestinian] negotiations almost impossible," Abrams said.

Today, said Abrams, "it is hard to figure out what is going on" in Judea and Samaria, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is caught between the settlement enterprise's supporters and critics.

"Netanyahu has been keeping the pressure against expansion beyond [Israel's West Bank] security barrier," Abrams said. "Many in the settler movement are angry at him for this, but he also gets no thanks from the Obama administration or the [political] left in Israel."

Pipes said he is under the impression that settlement construction has been limited for at least the last decade. Those who live in the settlements say they see construction going on, but mostly at existing houses and in existing neighborhoods.

Uri Pilichowski, a resident of Mitzpe Yericho in the Binyamin region of Samaria, took a picture of a home expansion in his area last month and posted it on Facebook along with a message about solidifying the Jewish presence beyond the pre-1967 lines.

"Ever since I got here a year and a half ago, they told us they are going to build a new neighborhood. I saw a guy selling apartments already, so I imagine that counts for something," Pilichowski told JNS.org.

American-Israeli journalist Josh Hasten, who lives in Elazar in the Gush Etzion bloc and works with the Hatzalah emergency medical response organization in Judea and Samaria, said observers should differentiate between new building and new contracts.

"If you see new building, that doesn't mean new approvals," he said.

But Gershom Gorenberg, an American-born Israeli historian and author of the 2007 book "The Accidental Empire: Israel and the Birth of the Settlements," said every house built in a settlement is an "anti-Zionist act."

"Every single settlement, every house, has been built with the goal of it being permanent," said Gorenberg. "The idea to build the settlements was a project of the [Israeli] Labor [party] government in 1967, and it was continued by Likud to make a statement about what was going to remain ours for historical and strategic reasons."

Gorenberg argued that it is incorrect to differentiate between building in one part of the disputed territories or another. While the failed Camp David Accords of 2000 mulled the possibility of land swaps-that Israel would keep a certain number of acres of land in Judea, Samaria, and Gaza in exchange for giving up land in sovereign Israel-no agreement was ever reached on what pieces of land those would be.

"When someone says, 'We will build on this land because it will obviously be part of land swaps,' to whom is this obvious?" asked Gorenberg. "It might be obvious to you (the Israelis), but it is not obvious to the other side, and you are preempting negotiations."

Gorenberg said that while Israel expresses a desire for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, its policy cannot be one of words, but of actions.

"Every additional room built and settler that moves in makes it more difficult for Israel to take the steps necessary to reach a two-state agreement," Gorenberg said. "Any government really committed to reaching a two-state agreement would want for its own sake to stop all construction and show it is strategically making the preparations necessary for evacuating at least some of the settlers."

Abrams said that if Israelis "want a two-state solution, separation from the Palestinians, why are Israelis moving into areas that are not going to be part of Israel? That is a tough thing to defend in the international community."

Pipes disagrees, saying that he believes building in Judea and Samaria puts pressure on the Palestinians to come back to the negotiating table before evacuation of those lands would become a strategic impossibility. He also questioned why building in areas that might one day belong to the Palestinians would be an obstacle to peace.

"There is no reason to preclude Jews from living on the West Bank any more than there is [a reason to preclude] Muslims from living in Israel," said Pipes. "Israel is nearly one-fifth Muslim and no one has a problem with that....It is obnoxious to think that no Jews could live [in the settlements], especially with the Jewish ancient historical connection to that land."

Either way, according to Abrams and Gorenberg, it is unlikely that the forthcoming Middle East Quartet document-produced by negotiators that have been largely irrelevant for the last several years-will have any tangible effect. Rather, they said, it will serve to further frustrate already-strained relations between the Obama administration and Israel.

For his part, Pilichowski, an American immigrant to Israel, said he thinks the U.S. has a right to be vocal about its opinions on settlements because of the funds and other support it gives to Israel.

"I think Israel should take America's thoughts into consideration and address its concerns," Pilichowski said.

But when push comes to shove, does the sovereign Israeli government need to listen?

"No," said Pilichowski. "I don't think so."
Hes not Hitler. He wants to help America.

Melania Trumps comment about her husband, GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump, will go down as one of the more memorable quotes in an election cycle that has had its fair share of gaffes, outbursts, and the like. While her second sentence is debatable, the first one is undoubtedly true. If you are looking for this eras aspiring Hitlers, you will not find them in America.

In another country and in another political system, Donald Trump could quite conceivably become a dictator. Given his admiration for the collection of clowns and thugs who currently fit that political descriptor, he clearly has the right personality. And even if the strength of our democratic structures means that Trump cannot become an American caudillo, the fact that one can easily picture him enjoying such a role is a critical reason why so many Americans shudder at the thought of Trump in the White House.

While most American Jews share that visceral reaction, there are a growing number who dontand who are going to campaign for and vote for Trump. Those Ive spoken to have all said that they cant stomach the thought of a Hillary Clinton presidency after eight years of President Barack Obama. They list positive reasons, toothey think Trump will be receptive to Jewish concerns, that hell be tough on national security, and that he should be applauded for standing up to the same progressive Democrats who treat Israel as an enemy instead of an ally.

Those are all positions that deserve to be considered and debated rationally. Jewish supporters of Trump have a point when they say that the reality TV star is well-poised to win the election, and that therefore we would be wise to engage him. But equally, they need to understand that, historically, Jews have invariably oriented towards the center of politics. Demagogues articulating strident messages that translate uneasily into policy are the polar opposite of the establishment, experienced political figures who have traditionally won Jewish support.

At issue here, moreover, is not just Trump, but Trumps supporters. As I said, even if Trump wants to imitate Russian President Vladimir Putin, conditions in America mean that he cannot do so. In a country like Russia, Putin can court the far rightlike the Rodina party, whose Tiger youth wing pledged allegiance to Putin in 2015 from the depths of a nuclear bunker in central Moscowwithout any political cost. Contrastingly, in America, a would-be president is expected to act like a statesman; by that logic, and sooner rather than later, Trump should disavow, explicitly and unreservedly, the semi-literate Klan-like rabble that is riding his coattails.

Crucially, nobody has given him an incentive to do soyet. That incentive can, realistically, only be provided by Trumps Jewish supporters, since he never listens to his adversaries. If these Jews are going to give him legitimacy, and assist him in resisting the false charge that hes an anti-Semite, then their voices need to be heard on the following developments that have further marred Trumps appeal to Jewish voters:

Anti-Semitic harassment of Jewish critics

Julia Ioffe, a prominent journalist whose GQ magazine profile of Melania Trump earned her the enmity of the Trump campaign, was bombarded with sickening anti-Semitic messages from pro-Trump trolls on social media. Nazi imagery was richly in evidence in the case of Ioffe, as it has been with other Jewish critics of Trump, like John Podhoretz of Commentary magazine (Are you gonna flee to Israel after TRUMP is elected president?! LMAO KIKE!! read one message) and Daily Wire editor Ben Shapiro, whose newborn baby was described by one sociopath, in the fashion of Der Sturmer, as a cockroach. In public at least, Trump has been unmoved by any of this, and has even ventured that these critics brought this foul invective upon themselves.

As a Jew... apologetics

When I read the vile attack carried by Breitbart.com on Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol, which identified him as a Renegade Jew, I wondered whether this would be an isolated example or the harbinger of a new phenomenon. The author of the piece, David Horowitz, has embraced Trump with the same dogmatic fury that he employed in embracing the far left in the late 1960s. In highlighting the irrelevant fact that Kristol is Jewish, Horowitz trod the same ground as those forelock-tugging Jewish leftists who ingratiate themselves with Israels enemies by disavowing the Jewish state.

I am a Jew who has never been to Israel and has never been a Zionist in the sense of believing that Jews can rid themselves of Jew hatred by having their own nation state, Horowitz implored pathetically. For good measure, he added that he is an American (and an American first)thereby insinuating that the remainder of the Jewish community is fatally compromised by a greater loyalty to Israel. Are there other Jews on the right who are going to follow the shabby example of those on the left by presenting themselves as the good Jews? Does a Trump supporter who invokes the dual loyalty smear get a free pass?

The rise of the alt-right

The alternative right, to give its full name, is a toxic cluster of blogs, websites, and one-person think tanks that fuses old-style white power nationalism with what its followers mistakenly regard as witty ripostes to political correctness on race and gender. Many of these people are Holocaust deniers, baiters of the disabled, and similar malcontents. They have all lined up behind Trump. Are Jewish supporters of Trump really going to employ the same argumentation as those on the far left, soothing themselves that we have nothing to worry about because his daughter converted to Judaism and some of his best friends are Jews?

If theres one lesson we have learned in dealing with the left-wing anti-Zionist onslaught of the last decade, its that some very ugly fringe memes can suddenly emerge in mainstream discourse. There is no reason why that should be any different on the right. That the Jew-hatred is not confined to Trumps supportersthe billionaire Koch brothers, who are opposed to Trump, are financing a conference featuring the anti-Semitic academics John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, authors of the discredited book The Israel Lobbyis even more cause to act quickly to prevent the mainstreaming of this poison.

Here, therefore, is my challenge to Donald Trumps Jewish supporters: Will you seize the opportunity to display the same toughness youve shown towards the left with your favored presidential candidate? Will you tell Trump that he needs to ditch this faction of his supporters? Your answer is eagerly awaited.

Ben Cohen, senior editor of TheTower.org & The Tower Magazine, writes a weekly column for JNS.org on Jewish affairs and Middle Eastern politics. His writings have been published in Commentary, the New York Post, Haaretz, The Wall Street Journal, and many other publications. He is the author ofSome of My Best Friends: A Journey Through Twenty-First Century Antisemitism (Edition Critic, 2014).
The U.S. State Departments admission that it altered an embarrassing video exchange about its nuclear negotiations with Iran is disturbingbut its not the first time that the Obama administration, or some of its predecessors, have tampered with words that it deemed politically inconvenient.

State Department spokesman John Kirby confessed this week that part of a 2013 video recording in its archive had been deliberately removed. In that portion of the video, then-State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki confirmed to a reporter that the department had sometimes lied to the press in order to hide information about its dealings with Iran. For the past three weeks, the State Department had claimed the deletion of Pskais statement had been caused by a technical glitch. Kirby, however, in admitting this week that the deletion was deliberate, claimed that the person involved could not remember which government official had ordered him to delete it.

The claim of a faulty memory was reminiscent of a May 2014 exchange between the Obama administrations former National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor and Bret Baier of Fox News. The subject was the talking points that were prepared for then-ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice when she appeared on talk shows following the Benghazi attacks. The original draft of the talking points called the violence attacks, but someone changed it to demonstrations before the document was given to Rice. When Vietor was asked by Baier if he was the one who changed it, Baeir said, I dont remember. When Baier pressed him, Vietor replied, Dude, this was like two years ago.

Another apparently politically inspired editing took place just two months ago, but it has not received much attention. During a meeting with President Barack Obama at the White House on March 31, French president Francois Hollande used the term Islamist terrorism when referring to the recent Islamic State terrorist attacks in Europe. Consistent with the administrations opposition to that term, somebody at the White House apparently decided to retroactively revise Hollandes language: The official White House video of the Obama-Hollande meeting contained a momentary gap in the audio at the point when Hollande uttered his politically inconvenient words.

After a watchdog group called the Media Research Center called reporters attention to the deletion, the Obama administration backtracked. A White House official claimed there had been a technical issue that led to a brief drop in the audio. He could not explain how it was that the alleged technical problem occurred at the precise moment that the words Islamist terror were spoken, or how the glitch managed to correct itself in time for Hollandes next words.

The late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat was another beneficiary of political editing. It happened in September 1995, when Arafat traveled to Washington, DC, to meet with president Bill Clinton. The Israeli government had just agreed to withdraw from significant portions of the disputed territories, and many Israelis were nervous about the possibility that the concessions could lead to a Palestinian state.

When Arafat arrived at the White House, reporters asked him if he expected the latest developments would lead to a Palestinian state. According to Reuters, Arafat was quite emphatic... Reporters clearly heard Arafat say definitely... A tape recording of the exchange shows that Arafat said definitely twice. The official White House transcript, however, omitted Arafats definitely reply. The gap in the transcript raises the possibility that some diplomatic editing had taken place, Reuters noted at the time.

In another instance, it was a president himself who benefitted from the State Departments protective editing. At the 1945 Yalta conference, president Franklin D. Roosevelt mentioned to Joseph Stalin that he would soon be seeing Saudi Arabian leader Ibn Saud. The Soviet leader asked FDR if he intended to make any concessions to the king. Roosevelt repliedaccording to the official American note-takerthat there was only one concession he thought he might offer and that was to give him the 6 million Jews in the United States.

But when the Yalta transcripts were published by the State Department in 1955, Roosevelts remark about the Jews was replaced by a line of asterisks. Eventually, in 2011, a State Department researcher revealed that then-assistant secretary of state Walter Bedell Smith had instructed the typesetter, Delete thisit is not pertinent history. Translation: Smith, who worked closely with the FDRs inner circle and frequently briefed Roosevelt during World War II, likely wanted to protect the presidents reputation by hiding his unpleasant joke about Jews.

What all of these incidents have in common is a certain arrogancean attitude by some government officials that they have a right to alter the historical record in order to advance some political goal. One can only hope that the latest exposes will make other government officials think twice before engaging in such troubling behavior in the future.

Dr. Rafael Medoff is founding director of The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies and author of 16 books about Jewish history.
Palestinian terrorist attacks that result in only a few casualties vanish quickly from the headlines. The victims are hospitalized, the politicians issue condemnations, the Palestinian Authority praises the attacker, and then the episode is quickly forgotten. Its rare that anybody is still paying attention weeks later, when the attacker appears in court.

Thats a shame, because sometimes what comes out during the legal process can be very revealing. Consider the attack on May 2, when a Palestinian terrorist named Muhannad Muhtaseb stabbed an elderly Jewish man in the Old City of Jerusalem. The attacker somehow managed to elude police for many hours, and then was found close to the scene of the attack, late that night.

It had been a mystery how Muhtaseb had managed to hide right nearby for so long. But now we know the answer: Three Arabs who reside in that neighborhood last week were indicted for sheltering the terrorist.

The prosecutions charge sheet explains what happened. Immediately after attempting to murder the elderly Jews, Muhtaseb enlisted the help of an Arab man standing nearby. The helper was not involved in the attack. He did not know the stabber beforehand. He was a complete stranger. It appears the only thing he had in common with the terrorist was that they are both Arabsand that was sufficient for the stranger to decide he should assist the would-be murderer. The stranger led Muhtaseb into a hard-to-find compound nearby that was concealed from security cameras. (There are many such cameras in the dense urban streets of the Old City.)

He was not the only bystander to make the immoral choice to help the killer instead of the victim. Apparently he telephoned some acquaintances, and in short order, two other accomplices arrived. One of them harbored the attacker in his nearby home, and allowed him to wipe the blood from his body and change into a different pair of clothes. The other accomplice kept watch near the compound and, when he saw [police] officers in the area, rushed to tell Muhtaseb to flee. Two of the three helpers then took Muhtaseb to another home nearby.

These three accomplices obviously understood that what they were doing was illegal. If caughtas they soon werethey would go to jail. Yet they were willing to risk their own freedom to help someone who had just brutally stabbed an innocent old man. In fact, they were helping him precisely because the old man he had stabbed was a Jew.

We Americans naturally find such behavior surprising. Imagine if you happened to be walking down a street in, say, Chicago, and you saw a man with a knife stab somebody and then start to run away. Would your response be to take him to your house and hide him from the police? Would you enlist your friends to provide additional assistance? And how likely would it be that there would be multiple homes in the immediate vicinity where the homeowners were so sympathetic to the stabber that you could bring him there?

I have been troubled by the response of Arab bystanders in a number of recent Palestinian attacks. On May 11, two elderly Jewish women were stabbed and wounded by two terrorists as the women and three friends were strolling along the popular Haas Promenade in Jerusalems Armon Hanatziv neighborhood. One of the friends, Marina Fuchs, age 86, told Israels Channel 10 what happened when they asked some Arab laborers for help: We walked and next to the bathrooms stood Arabs who were cleaning there. We asked them to call an ambulance. They wouldnt agree to do so, and acted as if they were talking on the phone.

Imagine the scene. Two elderly women lying on the ground, bleeding profusely. Three other elderly women begging for help. And the Arab workers refused to even call an ambulance.

Last October, 21 year-old Aharon Banita Bennett was stabbed to death on Hagai Street, in the Old City of Jerusalem. His wife and 2-year-old son were wounded by the attackers. Rabbi Nehemia Lavi witnessed the attack from the window of his home, and rushed outside to intervene. He, too, was stabbed to death. Israels Channel 2 reported that an Arab-run health clinic adjacent to the scene of the attack was open at the time of the attack and medical staff was present inside, yet the Arab medical team did not go out to provide treatment to the wounded.

Bennetts wife said that as she attempted to flee the terrorists, Arab storekeepers mocked and laughed at her, instead of helping her.

It is often pointed out that only a small minority of Palestinian Arabs personally engage in violence against Jews. That is obviously true. But I wonder about the much larger number of Palestinians who respond to terrorism against Jews by sheltering the killers, or laughing at the victims, or refusing to call an ambulance. And I wonder about the Palestinian society that fosters the environment and culture of hatred which inspires such despicable behavior.

Stephen M. Flatow, an attorney in New Jersey, is the father of Alisa Flatow, who was murdered in an Iranian-sponsored Palestinian terrorist attack in 1995.
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Narendra Modi is pushing India-US ties in ways that work at cross purposes with the objectives of the India-China relationship. He should realise that many countries, including the US, continue to advance ties with China while expressing concerns about Beijings territorial ambitions. Indias interests are not served by settling into an adversarial relationship with China.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has again underlined his preference, when it comes to deciding between Washington and Beijing. Via three summits and seven meetings with US President Barack Obama in two years, Modi has decisively lurched India into the US orbit, consolidating steps to bring the two sides closer  a strategy initiated by the previous Manmohan Singh government.

In January 2015 India and the US agreed on a Joint Strategic Vision for the Asia-Pacific and Indian Ocean Region to promote peace, prosperity and stability in those regions. Amid a fluid Asian landscape that was coming to terms with Chinas rise and territorial assertion, New Delhi endorsed Washingtons views on the importance of freedom of navigation and over flight throughout the region, especially in the South China Sea Following through, India and the US have, as part of expanded military-to-military ties, finalised the text of a logistics support agreement where both countries can avail of support facilities in each others territory, confirming at least in Beijing's eyes that this bilateral surge is about China, as this Global Times article shows.

There are, of course, sound reasons for India to forge closer ties with the US. As the September 2014 India-US joint statement indicates, Delhi sees the US as a principal partner in the realisation of Indias rise as a responsible, influential world power. India looks to the US as a source of investment, weapons, high technology and expertise in several areas including agriculture, education, health, energy and space. It wants to leverage Washingtons influence in international institutions for its purposes and values American counterterrorist cooperation and intercession with Pakistan.

Theres also a strong social impetus for closer ties. Thanks to the precipitous decline in its education system, a significant chunk of Indias elite are sending their children to the US for study and work and these are now part of a 3 million diaspora that understandably clamour for closer ties with Washington. The common English language and American soft power exercised through universities, film, music and merchandise makes it easy for people-to-people ties to thrive. The US, meanwhile, sees India as a promising market and as a potential counter to China in Asia.

Competing interests

All this would translate into a fairly stable harmony of interests if there wasnt an explicit security edge to the India-US relationship that adversely affects China and India-China ties, notwithstanding Delhis anxieties about Beijings ambitions. As things stand, both the India-US rhetoric and direction of bilateral ties work at cross purposes with the declared objectives of the India-China relationship, which even Modi has signed on to  as recently as 2015. India will be hard pressed in times ahead to square the circle.

Take, for example, the May 2013 India-China joint statement after Premier Li Keqiangs visit to India. It said The two sides welcome each others peaceful development and regard it as a mutually reinforcing process. There is enough space in the world for the development of India and China, and the world needs the common development of both countriesBoth countries view each other as partners for mutual benefit and not as rivals or competitors. (emphasis added)

There is, in addition, language on the promotion of a multi-polar world in the 2013 joint statement and the one issued after President Xi Jinpings India visit in September 2014. In fact, in the May 2015 joint statement after Modis return visit there is a striking paragraph on India and Chinas shared outlook on world affairs:

The leaders agreed that simultaneous re-emergence of India and China as two major powers in the region and the world offers a momentous opportunity for realisation of the Asian Century. They noted that India-China bilateral relations are poised to play a defining role in the 21st Century in Asia and indeed, globally. The leaders agreed that the process of the two countries pursuing their respective national developmental goals and security interests must unfold in a mutually supportive manner with both sides showing mutual respect and sensitivity to each others concerns, interests and aspirations. This constructive model of relationship between the two largest developing countries, the biggest emerging economies and two major poles in the global architecture provides a new basis for pursuing state-to-state relations to strengthen the international system.

Whatever happened to notions of an Asian Century in the space of one year? Indian analysts have a ready answer. The incursion of Chinese troops in Ladakh while Modi was chatting to President Xi Jinping on a swing at Ahmedabad was a serious breach of trust. China will always keep propping up Pakistan to contain India. It is blocking proscription of terrorists like Maulana Masood Azhar on technical grounds at the United Nations and it is currently backing Pakistan, not India, when it comes to membership of the Nuclear Suppliers Group. Indian policymakers likely insist that Delhis pro-US tilt is the product of Beijings efforts to undercut India (and they will contest arguments which suggest that closer India-US ties over the last decade may have prompted Chinese counter-reaction).

Chinas actions vis-a-vis India in recent years are legitimate grounds for alienation but it is debatable if they warrant a hiatus in high-level political contact and visible conversation  and an explicit banding with the US just when Beijing is using its brinkmanship and construction activity in the South China Seas as a way to sort its friends from adversaries. It is not clear why India cannot be an instrumentalist bystander  a strategic position, anyway, for our post-Nehruvian policymakers.

India has been lately caught in a bind by being projected by others as a net security provider in the Indian Ocean and primed to take on a greater role in line with its great power ambitions. The sense in Southeast Asian capitals like Singapore and Hanoi is that they were waiting for India to step up and stand up to China.

Chinese dredging vessels are purportedly seen in the waters around Fiery Cross Reef in the disputed Spratly Islands in the South China Sea in this image from video taken by a P-8A Poseidon surveillance aircraft provided by the United States Navy, May 21, 2015. (REUTERS)

Complex motivations in changing Asia

A few points worth noting in this regard. One, at the stage of development it is in, when most of Indias challenges are internal, confronting China and souring relations with its establishment is not in our economic interest.

Two, Modi must remember that for all their anxiety about Chinese expansionism, other Asian powers, including Australia, are eagerly consolidating economic ties with China. Singapore, a thought leader in Asia and one very wary of Beijings ambitions had bilateral trade with China worth $121.5 billion last year. Vietnam wants India to export weapons and explore oil in the South China Sea to contest Chinas claims but its trade volumes with the latter are expected to reach $100 billion this year. Likewise, Australias strategic community is very worked up about Beijings adventurism but China is the countrys largest trade partner with two-way trade at A$153 billion in 2014. And US-China trade was worth $599 billion last year.

Clearly all these powers are reconciled to China being a central part of their future. India is arguably no different, maintaining a healthy trade of $80 billion in 2015 but Delhi fails to maintain a public narrative that captures both economic opportunity and political differences  it has a tendency to get into a sulk imagining unchanging Chinese malevolence, which plays its part in the slowdown of ties.

The reason Delhi needs to challenge its own adversarial lens from time to time is that strategic assumptions of today may not hold in the face of a crisis tomorrow. What form the US-China confrontation on South China Sea will eventually take is unclear. Will the US succeed in rolling back Chinese positions or acquiesce with a (new) status quo like it did in Ukraine, leaving other powers in the region confused and vulnerable? What is the guarantee that priorities in Washington will not change; some analysts like FTs Geoff Dyer note that the Pentagon is currently more on a confrontation mode with China than the White House wants to be  and these dynamics too can change.

The principal question is why should India be party to recriminations concerning the South China Sea and invite further Chinese investment in the South Asian neighbourhood, either though active the wooing of Sri Lanka or buying land in the Maldives?

As historian and IR scholar Srinath Raghavan argues Chinas rapid military modernisation and assertive behaviour are evident. But there is little to suggest that we needed to cosy up to the US on such terms.

He writes: An overwhelming amount of Chinas own trade flows through the South China Sea, so how is it in Chinese interests to impede freedom of navigation there? The phrase freedom of navigation is a euphemism for the freedom of the US navy to patrol close to Chinese coasts. By embracing it so enthusiastically, we are signalling our willingness to help uphold US naval dominance in the Asia-Pacific. The claims by some Indian analysts that the US will help ensure a multipolar Asia is naive. The US is committed to only ensuring its own unquestioned primacy. And there are ways of leveraging American power to our own purposes without going down the current path.

And Raghavan also mentions that the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which the US is pressing ahead along with 11 other countries, threatens to shut out India of the most dynamic economies in the Asia-Pacific owing to the high regulatory standards which India cannot meet  and so while there may be a measure of convergence on security matters Indias emerging partnership with the US in the Asia-Pacific will stand on a weak economic leg.

This is clearly a complex environment, where no powers motivations, including the US, are what they seem. Each nation is looking out for itself, talking up the dragon but actively dealing with it simultaneously and India must be no different.

This is admittedly not easy for India since it has a border dispute with China; the China-Pakistan axis is a constant irritant and Beijing resists granting market access to address trade imbalances. But since India has glossed over the American funding of the Pakistan military for decades which nurtured terrorist networks that harm India and since we understand Washingtons compulsions when it privileges Pakistani interests in Afghanistan at the expense of Indias (i.e. by not picking the Haqqanis as drone targets, as some in Delhi would prefer), it may similarly be useful to have a more nuanced reading of Chinas motivations and strive to alter its objectives in Indias favour.

Consider OBOR

One way of practically doing so is to craft a creative response to Chinas One Belt One Road (OBOR), a gigantic initiative that will build land and sea links between China and Europe through projects that build roads, railways, ports, power plants, logistical hubs and other infrastructure. Well-regarded Indian analysts have already asked Delhi to consider the merits of engaging with OBOR (see here, here, and here).

Spanning 65 countries and covering 60% of the worlds population, the trade with countries involved is expected to reach $2.5 trillion by 2025. China is investing $46 billion in the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor as part of OBOR. A large part of the initiative still is provisional at the moment as securing credit, consent of other countries, and establishing the terms of governance is a work in progress. But even sceptics will concede that this will remake Asian and world geography. According to a report by the Peterson Institute for International Economics, Chinese state banks have already invested more than $250 billion in new projects; in the first half of 2015, Chinese companies signed 1,401 project contracts worth $37.6 billion. At maturity, investment in the Belt and Road is expected to reach $4 trillion, equivalent to Chinas 2015 foreign currency reserves.

A map illustrating China's "One Belt, One Road" initiative at the Asian Financial Forum in Hong Kong, January 18, 2016. (Reuters / Bobby Yip)

India has so far not expressed an interest in OBOR and is pretending that it can work with alternatives like Chabahar  which are effectively trifle investments given the scope of Chinese ambitions. The OBOR is grand in conception but specialists argue that it also faces uncertainties like failed timelines and low returns of investments in sparsely populated countries like Central Asia or violent ones like Pakistan. In such a scenario, India stands as an opportunity for China and vice versa. For India to steer clear of an enterprise of such scale is to be blissfully unmindful of an Asia that will soon emerge.

To summarise, India needs a level-headed analysis of great power motivations in a changing Asia, it should remain alert to the opportunity and risk that China represents and nurture a narrative that reflects both adequately. It can be wary of Beijings ambitions and extend the scale and breadth of military partnerships in the region including with the US  but without being drawn into everyday battles that are not necessarily ours.

China is, to be sure, an awkward customer to handle. But tackling it requires dexterity, expertise and stamina. Rushing in to de facto alliances on terms that dont always suit us is the lazy way of doing foreign policy.

sushil.aaron@hindustantimes.com

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Family planning in India has always been looked upon as something that is synonymous with regulating family size and reproductive behaviour. However, in 2012, when India made a commitment at the London Summit on Family Planning, this provided the much-needed impetus to re-imagine the agenda of family planning in India. The revamped family planning vision of reaching out to an additional 48 million new users was seen not just as a target but rather as a commitment to enable users to choose and plan healthier lives for themselves. The Family Planning 2020 goals promised an increased basket of contraceptive choices for women in the country, equity to the poorest and most vulnerable, and improved service delivery, making family planning a matter of womens rights, gender justice and equity. It enforced the fact that young people, especially women, must have a say in decisions relating to their reproductive health and not be subjected to coercive practices.

Womens health is not only about technical solutions or contraception but its about womens agency, choice and quality of reproductive health services.

Read | Indias health is in its villages

Wide disparities and inequities in womens access to healthcare persist. Sadly, access to health services still depends upon where one lives, how educated one is, how rich one is, and to which community one belongs. Here are some telling figures: As against the national average of 73% of women who gave birth in institutions, the proportion of women who had no education was 54%; 55% belonged to the lowest wealth quintile; 57% to the Scheduled Tribes; and 68% of these were rural women, according to the National Family Health Survey III.

According to the District Level Household and Facility Survey (DLHS) III figures, nearly 44 million people in India have an unmet need for contraception. Of the 44 million 16.3 million have an unmet need for spacing and 25.5 million an unmet need for limiting methods.

Read | Social marketing: Looking beyond contraceptives

The quality of care (QoC) is the crucial ingredient that has the potential to bridge the gap between an unmet demand and the supply of services, along with ensuring equity and choice. An expanded base of well-served individuals will translate into increased contraceptive prevalence, thereby accelerating reduction in fertility and mortality.

The elements of QoC  choice of method, interpersonal communication (verbal and non-verbal), technical competence, information, follow-up and appropriate constellation of services  will determine the acceptance and more sustained use of the contraception.

The giant leap of the Union government to introduce the injectable contraceptive to the basket of choice in public health centres is a welcome step. Studies show that increased choice accelerates fertility decline and also reduces maternal, neonatal and infant mortality. However, its success hugely depends on the QoC that would be made available by the government.

Read | And now, a birth control pill which works for both men and women

An important catalyst to improve QoC is responsiveness to service users. Good quality of care creates demand from clients and ensures satisfied clients, who, in turn, come back for services. This has been demonstrated globally and in India.

To implement an effective and sustainable programme, family planning services need to be convenient and adequately meet the requirements of the consumer. One of the ways of accomplishing this could be through the creation of a hub or a one-stop-centre. The constellation of services  such as integrating family planning into other healthcare services, as a subset of reproductive and child health needs, and adding family planning services along with the routine ones, under the same roof  may attract more clientele.

Read | Family planning: A cost effective-development tool

Some of the requirements that are essential for an efficient QoC in the country are: An adequate infrastructure, requisite clinical competencies, positive provider attitudes, incentives, motivation and an acknowledgement that service providers and field workers are the heroes of family planning.

India plays an important role for the world to reach its Family Planning 2020 goals. It shares 40% (48 million) of the total Family Planning 2020 target (120 million) of ensuring access to family planning services to women and girls by 2020. It can be achieved by creating a shared vision and action plan among the key stakeholders for improved reproductive health and family planning services. For the family planning discourse to be meaningful, there is a need for the inclusion of men, and equal sharing of responsibility for family planning between women and men and increased use of contraception. QoC in family planning should be the major focus area in order to ensure the success of family planning programmes. This calls for all  programme managers, service providers, researchers, and consumers  to advocate and commit to the idea that quality matters. Increased efforts need to be made to understand and motivate providers, improve their performance, and help them become active partners in improving not only access to but also the quality of family planning and reproductive health services. The 22% increase in budget allocation for health over the previous years budget estimate to Rs 39,533 crore is a welcome step by the government.

Read | Increase health spending, women empowerment for family planning success

It is imperative for the government to stay the course in terms of a sustained policy environment for family planning in the national development agenda and to keep the momentum of the commitment going. It is critical to ensure that the QoC standards are maintained in order to avert another Bilaspur incident in the country, as well as to establish QoC as a basic human right.

Sanjay Jaiswal is a member of the Lok Sabha

The views expressed are personal
Actor Lauren Gottlieb, who recently bought a house in Mumbai, says she had to face a lot of hurdles before she found her dream home. I was trying to get a place since some time now, but nothing seemed to work out. I always knew that it wouldnt be easy but never thought that it will be so difficult. During my first year here, I came in second at Jhalak Dikhhlaa Jaa and there were a lot of people who knew me. And that had its drawbacks as well. People kept thinking that I would throw Bollywood parties. I have never spoken about this to anyone earlier, but I was homeless during my first year here and stayed with my friends, says Lauren.

I am so happy with my house now. I am going to create a dance space at my new place, she adds.

Read: ABCD 2 star Lauren Gottlieb to learn Hindi in Lucknow

The 28-year-old, who is from Scottsdale, Arizona, says that it has always been challenging for her to stay away from home, but this has got easier over the years. It has been crazy being away from home. I dont know how I would have done this when I was younger. Also, with so many apps available now, its become easier. I can talk to them all the time. The first two years here, my heart felt broken. I never felt that I fit in here, she says.

Actor Lauren Gottlieb will be mentoring budding dancers for her new web series. (Pramod Thakur/HT Photo)

Read: Lauren Gottlieb to judge another dance reality show, now for the web

The actor will also be part of a web series, where she gets to mentor budding dancers. I am excited about this project. This is like a digital talent hunt and its incredibly beautiful to see a child find his passion. I think this show will also help change the mindset of many parents who feel that dancing cant be a career. Thats not true, I have such a great career only because of my dancing, she says.
Bollywood actor Priyanka Chopra on Thursday came out in support of Anurag Kashyaps Udta Punjab and said creativity should not be stopped in a democracy. Our forefathers achieved freedom of speech and expression for us after a long struggle... Creativity should not be stopped in democracy, Chopra said.

In reply to a question regarding the action on Udta Punjab by the censor board, which had raised objection to her film Jai Gangaajal, Priyanka said it was a certification body and not censor.

Co-produced by Anurag Kashyap, Udta Punjab, starring Shahid Kapoor in the lead role, focuses on Punjabs drug problem.

The censor board, headed by Pahlaj Nihalani, demanded 94 cuts to the film before it could be released to theatres as scheduled on June 17, the films producer, Anurag Kashyap, has said on Twitter.

Read: How censor board made Udta Punjab bleed

Kashyap has challenged the boards order before the Bombay high court, while also seeking financial relief for the delay in certification, which seems very likely to postpone the films opening until at least July. The court, after a hearing Thursday, adjourned the case until Friday.

In democracy you cannot dictate what one should eat or watch a movie on a social issue, said Priyanka, who was recently awarded the Padam Shri and has now ventured into Hollywood with Dwayne Johnson-starrer Baywatch.

In a reply to another query on whether removal of a word in the title of a movie was justified, she said, Title is the creativity of every producer and director. So, how can it be changed?

Read: Anurag Kashyap compares India with North Korea

The leading Bollywood star was here to promote Bhojpuri film Bum Bum Bol Raha hai Kashi, which is produced by her. She was accompanied by her mother Madhu Chopra, who is a co-producer of the film.

Asked why she chose to produce a Bhojpuri film as her first venture, Priyanka said, Bhojpuri is my moms mother tongue. Besides, regional movies should be encouraged. Priyankas family hails from Gumla near Jamshedpur which was part of undivided Bihar till 2000, when Jharkhand was carved out of it.

Follow @htshowbiz for more.
Gujarat 2002 is still with us. A suppurating sore that continues to agonize, shame, and enrage us, whether we swing to the Left, Right, or dawdle in between. Though a generation focused on economic progress and with little memory of the horror has appeared in the 14 years since the event, the rest of us pick at the scab and contemplate, in Hannah Arendts phrase, the banality of evil, the possibility that we could have been the ones looting that Shoppers Stop in Ahmedabad, stuffing stolen goods into our car boot, or cheering on incensed gangs as they murdered neighbours. Because those who identified as Hindu did gape at images of that burning train at Godhra and feel rage, a sense that the other had gone too far. Only amnesiacs will deny this.

Then came the danse macabre on the streets, the charred bodies, the raped women, the burning homes, and the savagery that filled many, including this reviewer, with disgust and intense shame, and led to a personal reassessment of what it means to be a Hindu, even a nominal one. In the years since that bloody spring, identities and allegiances have hardened, ostentatious displays of faith have become the norm, the shadow of terrorism has lengthened, the protracted battle to bring justice to the victims is nowhere near the end, and attempts continue to be made to arrive at the truth of what happened during those terrible days.

Gujarat Files: Anatomy of a Cover Up is a self-published book by journalist Rana Ayyub. The book is priced at Rs 295. (Rana Ayyub)

Rana Ayyubs Gujarat Files, Anatomy of a Cover Up, which grew out of an eight-month-long undercover investigation conducted for Tehelka magazine in 2010 -- looks not just at the riots but also at the encounter deaths of 19-year-old Ishrat Jahan and Sohrabuddin Sheikh, among others, and the murder of Gujarat Home Minister Haren Pandya. A social media celebrity with some 102K twitter followers, Ayyub is articulate and possessed by an unflagging desire to unmask the guilty, to unearth the invisible lines that connected the powerful with those who executed the killings.

Towards this end, she assumed the identity of an NRI filmmaker, a fictional Ms Maithili Tyagi keen to make a feel-good film about Gujarat, and set out to meet police officers, politicians and bureaucrats who served in the state between 2001 and 2010.

Transcripts of her secretly taped conversations with Girish L Singhal (former head of the Gujarat ATS and an accused in the Ishrat Jahan case), Rajan Priyadarshi (Gujarat ATS Director General in 2007 when the Gujarat CID investigated the fake encounters), Ashok Narayan (Home Secretary in 2002), Chakravarthy (DG of Police in 2002), PC Pande (Commissioner of Police), GC Raigar (Intelligence Head of Gujarat), Maya Kodnani (politician convicted of engineering the Naroda Gam and Naroda Patiya massacres that killed close to a 100 Muslims), Geeta Johri (who headed the CID investigation into the killing of Sohrabuddin Sheikh and his wife Kausarbi), and Jagruti Pandya (wife of Haren) form the text of this book. The conversations implicate powerful politicians and reveal sins of omission and commission.

Read: Why Gulberg Society killing of 2002 is not flattering for our justice system

This is a gripping read but a difficult one. Only those obsessively immersed in the details of the horrific events will make complete sense of it in a single reading. The book could have done with a sterner editorial hand that weeded out spelling errors and reworked the bits of jerky writing. It would also have benefitted greatly from the attentions of a subject matter expert.

Judging from recent Twitter conversations, AAP Politician Ashish Khetan, another former Tehelka journalist, who did some of the most chilling stories to emerge from Gujarat, and the author are not on amicable terms. Ayyub, who has self published, should then, perhaps, have roped in someone like Manoj Mitta (author of The Fiction of Factfinding: Modi and Godhra) to point out the holes and give the narrative more coherence. As it is, the book seems to confirm the readers worst suspicions about the riots but lacks analysis, and the rigour of an editor who knows the subject.

Read: Review of Manoj Mittas The Fiction of Fact-finding here

And then there are the especially troubling bits. The Maya Kodnani transcript, which appears to present the former minister of Gujarat for Women and Child Development as blameless, is one of these:

A) I know I am innocent and God will help me. I was not there Maithili, I was 20 kms away from that place. I was at Sola. I went to the assembly, which started at 8.30. I went there. I started from my house, went to Anandibens office. We went there. We chatted there...

Q) So whats the allegation?

A) They are using witnesses to prove that I was instigating riots. That I was leading the mob. I came to my hospital attended a labour patient. 3 o clock I went to the hospital. They said that the mobile was there in this particular locality so I was there.

There were riots in all of Gujarat, but they were after the Naroda MLA, me.

Q) Made you into a scapegoat?

A) Yes.

This is explosive stuff and you wish some serious commentary accompanied it.

Some sections could also have been pared down. The conflicted Singhal suggests that lower caste officers are often used to do things upper caste officers will not. This includes encounter killings. Discrimination against Dalits has been widely documented so Ayyubs surprise at its existence reveals a touching naivety. That Singhal uses the treatment of Dalits as an excuse for his involvement in encounters becomes particularly galling when you read the transcript of the conversation with Rajan Priyadarshi, another Dalit senior police officer, who refused to do anything against his conscience.

Clearly, greed and the absence of character, rather than caste status, is what allowed Singhal, Vanzara et al to eliminate people. Again, there is no authorial voice to provide the reader with this overarching perspective. Often, the authorial voice properly surfaces only when Ayyub talks about food, her young assistant, her interaction with her family, or in descriptions of her disguise, and lacks the gravitas required when writing about an event that has scarred a nation.

In the last chapter, Ayyub suggests that Tarun Tejpal and Shoma Chaudhury of Tehelka chose to kill her story as they were afraid of the repercussions. Tejpal has responded that the editorial decision was taken because the story was incomplete. Incomplete it may be but if the magazine had intended to carry the piece, the gaps would have been identified and Ayyub asked to fill them. There is definitely much sensational material here that needed to be crafted. This reviewers advice to Ayyub: bring out another heftier and better edited edition complete with copious footnotes and references. Internet links as footnotes just will not do.

Gujarat 2002 is still with us. The shame and horror continues to haunt us, which explains the packed book launch venues and the eagerness of several liberal public figures to be seen at them. Registering your presence is a public announcement of your cosmopolitanism and enlightened politics, disseminated in quick time over social media networks. Ayyubs repeated suggestion that mainstream media has blacked out her book  most print publications, at least, seem to have reviewed it within a fortnight of the launch, an honour normally reserved for the likes of Amartya Sen  has contributed to the conspiracy theories besides bolstering the authors reputation as a fearless journalist.

Still, despite her relentless self promotion (Here, Ayyub can quote Gore Vidal: Heroes must see to their own fame. No one else will.), her understandable suspicions, and the books clunky narrative, Gujarat Files is an important work.

Read it and ponder.

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LONDON: US bank Citi told its UK staff that it could look to spread its British business across the European Union if the UK voted to leave the bloc, in what would be a blow to Londons financial district.

Campaigners seeking to win a vote for Britain to remain in the EU in a June 23 vote have said the countrys role as a global financial hub could be under threat if it gives up its membership, resulting in job losses. Citi, which employs 9,000 people Britain, said in a memo to UK staff on Wednesday that a leave vote would likely have implications for its business. Citi declined to comment on the memo which was first reported by Sky News.

The Citi comments echo those from US bank JPMorgan Chase earlier in June when CEO Jamie Dimon told British staff a decision to leave the European Union could mean fewer jobs with the bank there and more jobs in Europe.
You want to earn a bit extra from your peers? Learn a foreign language.

A recent advertisement on the professional networking site LinkedIn by tech giant IBM read: Need a core Java developer with proficient Japanese.

An MBA, or an engineering degree, may not earn you as much money as knowing a foreign language can, especially if it is German, Japanese or Mandarin.

With the growing business relationships across the globe, the Indian companies as well firms having operations in the country, such as IBM, L&T, Genpact, Accenture, Geometric Ltd and Fujitsu Technology, among others, are now evaluating employees on their foreign language proficiencies. They are even offering a premium of about 20% of the salary as additional language allowance.

Experts say there is a massive requirement for language trainers, translators and software developers.

There is also a significant demand for coordinators, who can coordinate with the offshore development centres of other countries, said Vikrant Pande, head at TeamLease Skill University, a part of staffing firm TeamLease Services, which provides vocational education and training.

The top three languages in demand include Mandarin, Japanese and German. Knowing a foreign language is an added advantage for employees as they help the company communicate with clients in a personal tone and helps in easy sharing of documents and information.

The worlds fourth-largest IT services company, Japan-based Fujitsu plans to hire about 500 people in India with excellent communication skills in Japanese.

Auto component major, Germany-based Bosch is also planning to hire about 500 people in India with expertise in German language.

As per the estimates of Sakuraa India Foundation, which provides corporate training in Japanese, at present more than 45,000 candidates are required with Japanese language proficiency in India.

TeamLease in a research found that last year nearly 50 companies in India required more than 5,000 people with foreign language proficiency, and the demand for bilingual candidates is increasing each year by more than 20%.

There are about 200 Chinese firms operating in India, and almost 5,000 Japanese firms are operating here, Pande noted.

Kumar Prabhas, chief operating officer, L&T Technology Services, agreed that the demand for technical competencies coupled with multilingual proficiency has been steadily on rise.

Industry verticals such as automotive, industrial, telecom and hi-tech, are well developed in Germany, Japan and China. Access to these markets is highly dependent on local language proficiency of our employees, Prabhas said.

And, theres another side of the story as well.

As per a research by a professor of psychology at York University in Toronto, bilinguals are better at multi-tasking.

Some of other incentives of knowing additional languages include more job opportunities across industries, higher salary as compared to regular graduates, on-site options, and ease of business with counterparts and stakeholders based outside the country.

Most organisations pay additional language allowance as the premium, which is in the range of 15% to 20% of their salary, said Dilpreet Singh, vice-president, HR at IBM India and South Asia.

Apart from valuing additional language while hiring employees, the companies are also training and certifying their staff.

We have been training our employees extensively in languages such as Spanish, Japanese, Dutch, German and Swedish from the last five years as demand has been increasing progressively, L&Ts Prabhas added.

Our clientele are based across the world and it makes it easier and effective when employees are well versed in different languages, IBMs Singh said.

BG Sridar, managing director of Sakuraa India Foundation, which in the last 10 years has trained around 2,000 people with Japanese, said: It takes almost 2.5 years for a candidate to learn the second-highest level of Japanese, and it costs about Rs 1 lakh. In India, only odd 1,000 people know the highest level of Japanese. But to get a decent job in the technical filed, knowing till the third level is fine.

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NEW DELHI: An Aam Aadmi Party councillor was beaten up by a group of BJP councillors at a joint session of the three municipal corporations, the first such meeting after the municipal body was trifurcated, on Thursday.

The scene was captured live by television cameras and shared on social media. The session was called on a day the Delhi assembly was convened to discuss the working of the municipal bodies and state of sanitation in the Capital.

The MCDs had called the session to expose the alleged attempts by the AAP government to starve the civic bodies of funds.

AAP councillor Rakesh Kumar, from Kucha Pandit in Chandni Chowk, had worn the signature Main Hoon Aam Aadmi cap of his party but some BJP members objected. When Kumar refused to take it off, the BJP members got aggressive. After a brief altercation, the BJP members beat him up and pushed him away.

The session was being held at the Ramlila Maidan in central Delhi, from where AAP emerged out of an anti-corruption movement led by activist Anna Hazare.

I had worn the party cap to highlight that there are members from other political parties and they should be given a chance to voice their views. However, as soon as the Mayors objected, I removed it, said Kumar.

Soon after, the BJP councillors brutally assaulted me, he said.

A police complaint has been filed.

To express their solidarity with Kumar, Congress members walked out demanding action against the guilty.

We are not supporting a political party here, we are objecting to an assault on a councillor who has been democratically elected. The guilty should be barred from attending municipal house sessions and strict action should be taken against them, said Farhad Suri, leader of the opposition, SDMC.

The BJP councillors accused Kumar of using unparliamentary language and provoking the assault. Kumar abused the councillors to provoke them. When I confronted him, he attacked me, said Neeraj Gupta, councillor, SDMC.

The Delhi BJP said the party didnt approve of violence but the incident was a result of a conspiracy by AAP. We have similarly seen AAP MLAs violating the decorum of the Delhi Vidhan Sabha by entering the house wearing party caps, said a party spokesperson.

North Delhi Mayor, Sanjeev Nayyar, who was in the chair, condemned the incident and said an inquiry would be initiated.
Delhi Police on Thursday detained for questioning the staff of a senior nephrologist of Indraprastha Apollo Hospital in connection with the kidney trade racket busted last week.

Although the person was not arrested till Friday night, investigators claimed they had enough evidence to prove he was part of the racket allegedly being run at the hospital by kingpin T Rajkumar Rao.

Meanwhile, Rao told interrogators that besides targeting poor people who needed money, he had lured his sister-in-law and made her donate her kidney to one of his clients at a hospital in Coimbatore in 2012-13. Police are verifying his claims and have launched a search for Raos sister-in-law.

Read: Kidney racket kingpin owns two houses in Kolkata, gave lavish tips to barber

Eleven people  including two personal assistants of another senior nephrologist of Apollo hospital and four kidney donors  have been arrested in the kidney racket. The police verified at least five illegal kidney transplant surgeries conducted at Apollo hospital.

Officers probing the case said that the interrogation of Rao and his aides  Aseem Sikdar, Devashish Mauli, Satya Prakash alias Ashu, Aditya Singh and Shailesh Saxena  revealed five more kidney transplants conducted at Apollo hospital apart from two other surgeries that took place in private hospitals.

A senior police officer said the alleged involvement of the personal staff of the senior nephrologist came to the fore during the joint interrogation of Rao and Sikdar. The detained staff, according to Rao and Sikdar, used to swap original relationship documents with fake ones supplied to him by Rao and his three agents.

The personal secretary of a senior nephrologist has been picked up, confirmed a senior executive of the hospital administration.

The staff, an officer probing the case said, joined the racket after Rao offered him a commission of `50,000 for each successful transplant.

It has been learnt that he allegedly played a key role in swapping original files with forged ones in as many as three surgeries and he was paid around `1.5 lakh as commission by Rao.

Read: Kidney racket kingpin reaches Delhi, involved in trade since 2010
NEW DELHI: Some people, said to be residents of north Delhis Burari, protested in the Delhi assembly premises against lieutenant governor Najeeb Jung over restoration of a ration shops licence.

The protesters said the shop owner of the fair price shop in Burari used to sell poor quality ration.

After the locals complained, the shops licence was cancelled on the MLAs intervention. But the shop owner approached the L-G, and his licence was restored. It is a clear case of corruption, said Sukesh, a protester.

The protesters said the shop owner claimed she spent Rs 12 lakh to get the licence back.

Malviya Nagar legislator Somnath Bharti said, The L-G has misused his post. He had no authority in the matter. A committee should be formed to investigate the matter.

The pro testers left the premises after shouting slogans against L-G and the centre for about 20 minutes.

The Delhi assembly met on Thursday for a two-day special session to discuss the working of the municipal corporations in the capital and the state of sanitation, which is a major responsibility of the civic bodies.
Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal said on Friday that a conspiracy was afoot to defame his government and file a police complaint against deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia for a so-called advertisement scam.

Leader of opposition Vijender Gupta had claimed a CAG audit had proved the Delhi government was wasting public money on advertisements.

Addressing the Delhi assembly, Kejriwal said he had heard some people would try to get an FIR registered against Sisodia. Later, he tweeted, Sources- LG getting FIR regd in ACB against Manish Sisodia on some fictitious ad scam. We welcome LG to do that. (sic)

Kejriwal also said he had heard transport minister Gopal Rai would be called by the ACB in connection with the bus aggregator mobile application.

Sources- ACB will summon Gopal Rai. Gopal Rai ji, pl visit ACB urself on Mon rather than wait ACB summons, (sic) he tweeted.

Speaking in the Assembly, Kejriwal said he was wondering why there was a flurry of activity against his government and then he realised that the prime minister was back in India.

He sees only two things  international travel and me. I will ask Sisodia to go to the ACB himself. We will not get scared of these tactics or the ACB and CBI, he said.

Earlier, Sisodia, while responding to Guptas allegations, said, Vijender Gupta belongs to the jumla party and doesnt understand how important it is to have a conversation with the public.

On the CAG report , Sisodia said while he was happy that the audit was taking place he thought there was an agenda behind the questions posed.

CAG asked whether in our ad with the tagline, Vo pareshaan karte rahe, hum kaam karte rahe, Vo meant Modiji. Even CAG knows he keeps troubling us.The report mentions we spent R18.5 crore in a day on advertisements. This is wrong. This was spent over months. It is unprecedented CAG is auditing expenditure in the current year. We request that the governments of Haryana, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Kerala be audited along with Delhi as they have advertised in other states, Sisodia said.

.
A Delhi court awarded life imprisonment to five convicts in 2014 gangrape case of a Danish tourist on Friday.

Twenty-seven-year-old Mahendra alias Ganja, 24-year-old Raju, 23-year-olds Mohammad Raja and Raju Chakka and 22-year-old Arjun were convicted under sections 376 (D) (gangrape), 395 (dacoity), 366 (abducting woman), 342 (wrongful confinement), 506 (criminal intimidation) and 34 (common intention) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC).

For the offence of section 376 D IPC, all the convicts are sentenced to life imprisonment, additional sessions judge Ramesh Kumar said while pronouncing the order.

The court also imposed a fine of Rs 83,000 each on Raju and Raju Chakka, Rs 93,000 each on Mahender and Mohammad Raja and Rs 1,03,000 on Arjun respectively.

A total of nine people had gangraped a 52-year-old Danish woman at knife point near the New Delhi railway station on January 14 , 2014, when she approached them for directions to her Paharganj hotel.

The woman, who had returned to Delhi after visiting Agra, was taken to a secluded placed, beaten up and raped.

Fellow accused  Shyam Lal (56)  died in February in Tihar Jail while the remaining three  minors  are facing proceedings before the Juvenile Justice Board.

Special public prosecutor, Atul Shrivastava, had sought maximum punishment for the convicts  imprisonment till the remainder of natural life  saying the crime was barbaric and inhuman.

However, defence counsel Dinesh Sharma sought leniency on the grounds that convicted were from a poor background.

India brought in more stringent laws two years ago against sexual offenders after the fatal gangrape of a paramedical student in Delhi in December 2012. However, it has failed to stem the tide of violence against women across the country. The case however championed the cause of trying juveniles (aged 16-18) as adults in case of a heinous crime, including rape.

(With inputs from agencies)
Taking on the BJP-ruled municipal corporations, Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal on Friday said the civic bodies were so corrupt that even prime minister Narendra Modi would have to bribe officials if he wanted to build a balcony in his house.

I challenge Modiji to build one balcony in his house without paying bribe. It is impossible. Even God cant construct a house in Delhi without bribing MCD. That is how corrupt the corporations are, Kejriwal said.

Speaking at a special session of the Delhi Assembly on Friday, he said if the corporations cant pay their employees than they should call for fresh elections.

The two-day session was called primarily to highlight alleged corruption and irregularities in the corporations. The session was extended by a day and is expected to conclude on Monday.

Delhi has become a gutter. London and Washington are squeaky clean. I am sure if Obama (US president Barack Obama) meets Modi ji, he would say that Delhi stinks. BJP (in MCD) misappropriates all the money and doesnt pay safai karamcharis. If you cant pay your employees, quit and call for fresh elections. You should die of shame if you cant pay their salaries, he said.

Read: Day 1 of assembly session: AAP govt targets L-G Jung

We gave more money than the previous government. Where did it go? I went to Jaitley ji (Union finance minister Arun Jaitley) when safai karamcharis went on strike the first time and asked them to give more money. He remained silent and I realised even they didnt trust the BJP-ruled MCDs with money because of the level of corruption, he said.

The special session saw a number of MLAs raising issues related to the municipal corporations, including sanitation, corruption, misappropriation of funds and irregularities.

You started doing dharnas outside MLAs houses as soon as you came to know we are holding a special session on MCD. If you were doing a good job, the session would have been to praise you but you knew you were not doing your job and started dharnaYou talk about money all the time. You dont need money to clean the streets, only brooms, he said.

The CM asked how councillors, who earn R300 per meeting, could afford to buy big cars and houses. If the anti-corruption branch were with us, 95% of councillors would be in jail, he said.

The assembly adopted a motion to set up a house committee to enquire into charges of rampant corruption and irregularities in municipal corporations. The committee will include BJP MLA from Mustafabad, Jagdish Pradhan.

The panel will probe allegations of corruption, recommend measures to improve sanitation, health, sanitation and education. It will also look into the feasibility and suitability of having trifurcated municipal corporations.

Read: AAP councillor beaten up at joint session of Delhis civic bodies
NEW DELHI: The wait to see street-level and 360-degree views of Indian cities and tourist spots in Google maps just got longer.

As of now, the Centre has denied permission to Google to cover India through its street view application citing security considerations, officials said on Thursday.

Most of the images for the street view application are captured by cameras mounted on cars but some are also taken from tricycles, boats, snowmobiles and camels or by trekkers and underwater apparatus.

The online images are accessible to all.

According to sources, Google will have to wait for a year or two before it can capture street-level images of the countrys cities as the government wants the pending Geospatial Information Regulation Bill to be enacted before considering the internet giants application afresh.

All such issues will be sorted out after the bill comes into being, said Kiren Rijiju, minister of state for home affairs. The geospatial bill is being brought to regulate data and high-resolution images collected from the skies and shared through applications such as Google Earth or Map.

According to Google, street view application is a technology featured in Google Maps and Google Earth that provides panoramic views from positions along many streets in the world. It was launched in 2007 in several cities in the United States and now covers a large part of the world.

Once the bill is enacted, disseminating, publishing or displaying information that is likely to affect security, sovereignty or integrity of the country will become a punishable crime.

Sources said the security agencies and defence ministry had analysed security implications of allowing capturing of this kind of imagery and threats posed by it. Security sources say some of targets for the 26/11 Mumbai attacks were shown to the attackers by their handlers using similar applications.

Googles plan was rejected only after that. The government had allowed Google to capture street-level imagery of some tourist spots like the Qutub Minar, Taj Mahal, Red Fort on an experimental basis. But the matter didnt go further than that, said a senior official who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Sources said once the geospatial data bill is enacted, India can make a legally binding case for service providers to exclude sensitive security installations like forward airbases, nuclear plants or the prime ministers residence from coverage under the applications.
Its been nearly two weeks since teachers in Delhi University refused to check the answer sheets of students. By boycotting the evaluation process, the teachers are protesting against University Grants Commissions (UGC) new regulation that requires varsities to adjust their workload. Wearing black bands, they are out on the street on Friday to march from Mandi House to the Ministry of Human Resource Development. Heres why they want the amendment withdrawn.

1. Direct teaching hours: The regulation says teachers are required to put in 40 teaching hours in a week, which include classroom teaching, practicals, invigilation and all academic activities. Out of these, 16 hours for an assistant professor and 14 hours for an associate professor/professor have to be direct teaching hours (time spent in classroom). Earlier, tutorials were included in the direct teaching hours. But no longer.

Teachers say removing tutorials from the direct teaching hours will defeat the purpose. Tutorials are classes where students are divided in small groups and taught. The close interaction between a teacher and students will be over. Hence, it will impact the quality of teaching.

2. Tutorials should be held separately: UGC wants teachers to provide a total of six hours of tutorials in a week over and above the teaching hours. Teachers have opposed it as it will increase their workload. Adding six hours will take their time spent with students up to 22 hours for an assistant professor and 19 hours for an associate professor/professor.

3. Two hours of a practical will be counted as one period of lecture: Teachers say it will again add extra hours and increase the workload of a teacher. All this will ultimately bring down the number of teachers required for the same amount of work. Nearly 4,000 ad-hoc teachers in DU may be out of work.

4. The Academic Performance Indicator (API): The point system which determines the promotion of teachers to be considered from 2008. Teachers say API was notified in 2010 and implemented in DU only in 2013. So its not possible for them to show points since 2008.

6. Student feedback made part of the API system: Introducing student feedback will destroy the objectivity of the system, teachers claim. They fear then quality of teaching will not be the only basis of feedback.

7. Publishing papers only in journals recognised by UGC: Awarding points to teachers only on the basis of papers published only in UGC recognised journals will create more problems than solutions, they say.

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NEW DELHI: The Delhi Assembly on Thursday set up a special panel to investigate the alleged irregularities by lieutenant governor Najeeb Jungs office while restoring the licence of a ration shop. The shops licence was revoked by the Delhi governments food and supplies department.

The House adopted a motion moved by A AP legislator Saurabh Bharadwaj to form a nine-member panel after Burari MLA Sanjeev Jha raised the issue and pleaded with the assembly to take a serious view of the matter. He said it was a fit case to be considered under the Prevention of Corruption Act.

Jha said the ration shop owner claimed she had paid

12.5 lakh to get the licence restored. The L-G misused his office and circumvented rules to set aside the decision of the state government, he said.

Allegations against L-G are v serious. Enquiry committee set up by Delhi Assembly will find the truth. I urge all to cooperate in enquiry (sic), chief minister Arvind Kejriwal tweeted.

The matter relates to an order passed by the L-G on April 13, in which Jung as an appellate authority revoked the food and supplies departments order cancelling the licence of the fair price shop in Burari.

The L-G office clarified that the order was passed as it was a case of appeal under clause 6 (8) of the Delhi Specified Articles (Regulation of Distribution) Order 1981.

Jung dismissed the allegations by quoting a couplet by Mughal emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar: Umr-e-daraaz maang kar laaye they chaar din/ do arzoo mein kat gaye aur do ikhtalaf mein.

On an appeal filed by the aggrieved widow shopowner, (the) Lt. governor as an appellate authority, after hearing all sides, including the department of food supplies & consumer affairs, has passed a considered and detailed order, based on facts placed before him in his court, setting aside the cancellation of the licence of the fair price shop and restoring the licence to the widow, a statement from the L-G office said.

The Burari legislator, however, said the L-G had circumvented rules besides failing to follow the principle of natural justice as he passed the order without giving a chance to the stakeholders an opportunity to defend themselves.

The AAP legislator said criminal proceedings should be initiated against the L-G under the Prevention of Corruption Act. Case must be initiated under section 420, 409 and 120 (B) of the Indian Penal Code, he said.

The terms of reference set for the special inquiry committee includes looking into the procedure adopted by the authorities concerned in cancelling the licence of the ration shop. It will look into the veracity of the restoration of the cancelled licence as ordered by Delhi L-G and examine whether there was a mala fide intent.

The committee included BJP legislator Jagdish Pradhan but he was later replaced by AAP MLA Bhavna Gaur after the two BJP legislators, Pradhan and Vijender Gupta, opposed the formation of the committee.

The committee is politically motivated. We oppose the move, Gupta, the leader of the opposition, said. Earlier, a motion on alleged corruption in notifying aap-based bus aggregator policy by Gupta was turned down by the Speaker.
NEW DELHI: The official flat of an Indian Air Force (IAF) wing commander in Lutyens Delhi was burgled on Wednesday. The burglars made away with the wing commanders official and personal mobile phones, his laptop and gold jewellery, police said on Thursday.

Sources said the stolen official 3G enabled Air Force Cellular (AFCEL) Net mobile and laptop contained sensitive information.

Though an FIR was registered at the Tughlaq Road police station, the police do not have any clue about the burglars. Despite repeated attempts, the district DCP, Jatin Narwal, could not be contacted. In the FIR, a copy of which is with HT, wing commander Mohan Rana, 38, mentioned he was posted at IAF headquarters at Rafi Marg in New Delhi. He lives with his family at Sujan Singh Park. On Wednesday, Rana locked his home and left for office around 8am. His family members had gone to their native village.

The IAF officer returned home around 5.40pm and found the main door of the flat unlatched. The entire house was ransacked. His personal Samsung Grand phone and service AFCEL mobile, laptop, and four gold bangles were found missing from the house, said a police officer.

Wing commander Mohan Rana refused to comment on the matter.
A day after an Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) councillor was thrashed during the joint session of the municipal corporations at Ramlila Maidan on Thursday, an FIR in the case is yet to be registered.

Though Rakesh Kumar had registered a police complaint, municipal officials said the police cannot investigate the case until the mayor formally requests the cops to do so. Since the incident took place at a house meeting and involved elected members, privileges apply, they explained.

Police sources confirmed that no FIR had been registered in the case yet.

As per the Delhi Municipal Corporation Act, police cant enter a meeting convened by the municipal corporation. The house proceedings have special privileges and outsiders, including police, cant intervene on their own, said a senior municipal official.

Another hurdle in the registration of a formal case is that while North Delhi Mayor Sanjeev Nayyar was in the chair, those accused of attacking Kumar are members of the South Delhi municipal corporation.

All three municipal corporations are separate entities now, and an official (Mayor) from one civic body cant initiate an inquiry into a case involving members of the other body, said a senior municipal official.

The BJP had called a joint session of the three municipal corporations to discuss the financial crisis and other issues involving the Delhi government.

Read: AAP councillor beaten up at joint session of Delhis civic bodies

But a couple of BJP councillors attacked AAP member Rakesh Kumar, who wore a party cap during the session.

Mayor Sanjeev Nayyar said the corporation will wait for an internal enquiry report before taking a decision.

We have received complaints from many councillors and we are examining all the allegations and counter allegations. It seems the AAP councillor wanted to disturb the meeting. He was sitting along with ruling party councillors, wearing party symbols. Many women councillors have alleged that he used abusive language during the session, said Nayyar.

Kumar said he would resign if the BJP proved the charges. We have lodged complaint with the police, the SC/ST commission and also met the President and apprised him about the incident. We will continue to fight the case until action is taken in the matter. The allegations of me using unparliamentary language are baseless, said Kumar.

Leader of the opposition in the South Delhi Municipal Corporation Farhad Suri tabled a resolution in the House on Friday, condemning the attack on Kumar and demanded action against the guilty.
Union highways minister Nitin Gadkari on Thursday said the previous UPA government did not build flyovers, overbridges and underpasses on many crucial roads, including the Delhi-Gurgaon expressway, to keep cost low. This, he said, led to many accidents.

The minister said faulty road engineering was one of the main causes of road accidents. He said the Centre would build four flyovers and two underbridges on the Delhi-Gurgaon stretch to make it safe.

A government report on road accidents in India, released by highways minister Nitin Gadkari on Thursday, said the drivers fault accounted for 77 % of total road accidents in 2015.

Gadkari, who released the report, said this was not completely true. Its not only the drivers fault. Faulty road engineering also leads to many road accidents in India in PPP (public private partnership) projects, big mistakes have been made, he said.

In many instances, project developers have cut cost by compromising on safety standards and not building flyovers, overbridges and underpasses, he added.

Gadkari gave the example of the Delhi-Gurgaon expressway. If you go to Gurgaon from Delhi, starting from Hero Honda Chowk, four flyovers have not been built. In three-four places, underpasses have not been built. When I asked the NHAI, they said the structures were not built to keep the project economically viable, he told reporters.

The expressway was the first PPP project, awarded in 2002, in the highways sector.

Gadkari said, The UPA government followed a policy of not building underpasses, etc., to reduce the cost of construction. But they did not realise their policy would result in people getting killed.

Read: Capitals deadly roads claim one life every 6 hours

Gadkari said safety measures would not be compromised anymore. On the Hero Honda Chowk, we are building four flyovers and two underpasses, he said.

An estimated two lakh vehicles cross the Delhi-Gurgaon toll plaza to reach the National Capital.

Last year, 628 accidents were reported on the Delhi-Gurgaon expressway. Thirty persons were killed. According to a Hindustan Times report, in the last eight years, 500 people were killed on the expressway. Half of them were pedestrians and motorcyclists.

A study, done by DIG (traffic and highways) Sibash Kabiraj, identified 31 blackspots across the state. Of these, 25 were in Gurgaon alone, mostly on the Delhi-Gurgaon expressway stretch. Of the 129 fatal accidents reported at these blackspots, 125 were in Gurgaon.

Alarmed at the high number of fatalities, the road ministry has also proposed to set up a system where highway builders would be penalised if the stretch they have built is unsafe.

The safety index would be incorporated in all highway contracts under the PPP to reduce fatalities on Indian roads.
ISLAMABAD: India is presuming Jaish-e-Mohammed chief Masood Azhars guilt by seeking a ban on him, Pakistans foreign adviser Sartaj Aziz told Hindustan Times in an exclusive interview.

India accuses Azhar of masterminding the January attack on the Pathankot airbase and wanted him added to the UN Security Councils sanctions list, but the move was blocked by China.

We follow a principled position on this. The Security Council system is meant for al Qaeda and related organisations but India is trying to use the forum to point fingers at Pakistan vis-a-vis groups and individuals, Aziz said in response to why Pakistan took Chinas help to block the move.

India alleges that the groups and individuals are sponsored by our intelligence agencies. You are presuming Masood Azhars guilt. You mentioned agencies in the resolution. Indias National Investigation Agency has also said Pakistans agencies are not involved in Pathankot.

Ties between India and Pakistan have been on a downswing after the Pathankot attack in which seven soldiers and four Pakistan-based terrorists were killed.

Aziz acknowledges this. As far as Pakistan is concerned, friendly relations with all our neighbours remain our cornerstone but there are obstacles. The lack of trust is the most obvious obstacle and the only way forward in overcoming the trust deficit is dialogue, he said.

India and Pakistan had agreed to resume the comprehensive dialogue after meetings between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his counterpart Nawaz Sharif and between the national security advisers. But the Pathankot attack has led to a deadlock. India has sought strong and effective action against the JeM, while Pakistan wants the dialogue process to continue.

Making terrorism an excuse for not talking is not justified, Aziz said .We have had good cooperation on Pathankot and even sent a team to India. Blaming us for not doing enough is not justified. It is for India to decide whether they want to break the logjam or not. We dont deny the need for a discussion on terrorism and it is one of the eight topics under the comprehensive dialogue.

Foreign secretaries of the two nations were scheduled to resume talks in mid-January but the meeting was postponed after the Pathankot attack. Modi and Sharif continue to stay in touch and speak to each other over the phone but the two countries have made little headway in having a structured dialogue.

Also, Modi has accepted an invitation by his Pakistani counterpart to participate in the Saarc summit that Islamabad will host in November. But will the lack of effective action against the Pakistan-based JeM militant group make it difficult for him to go?

Aziz offers a solution. The resumption of dialogue will provide the opportunity to discuss all issues so that Modis visit can provide the basis for further initiatives.

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NEW DELHI: Almost a week after one-year-old Siberian Husky, Zoru, was abducted from a park in south Delhi s Vasant Kunj South, the dog was found tied to an electric pole. Barely 50 metres away from the spot, he was whisked away in an Innova car when his owner was walking him in the morning.

Zoru was spotted around 5am by the colonys security guard, Sunil, while he was taking his employers two pet dogs for a walk in the area. Aware of Zorus abduction, Sunil immediately informed the dogs owner, Aftab Khan, about his return over the phone. Khan was overjoyed.

As we all were eagerly waiting to see Zoru back, my family members and I rushed to the spot. My daughter, Alisha, ran towards Zoru and hugged him tightly. Everyone in my family is celebrating Zorus return. We thank the local police and the media for their cooperation, said Khan.

The family is celebrating Zorus return. They have distributed sweets to their neighbours, police personnel and media persons visiting their home since morning. In the evening, Khans family threw an Iftar party for their friends and relatives.

Though the family had launched a social media campaign to find Zoru, their hope was fast fading. Since everyone in our family keeps a roza (fast) for Ramzaan, we all wake up at 3am and pray for two hours. We had been praying for Zorus return, he said.

Khans daughter, Alisha, who was very close to Zoru, was elated. The dog was stolen by four cattle thieves on Monday morning.

My daughter was heartbroken after she learnt the dog that was her birthday gift was stolen. She was not eating properly. She is now ecstatic, said Khan.

Though the entire family is delighted about Zorus return, a few things still concern them. The dog suffered minor injuries in its legs. He seemed restless throughout the day. The family believes that Zoru s abductors kept it in the sun and didnt feed it.

Zoru has been drinking a lot of water and seems very hungry. But we hope he will recover from the trauma soon, said Khan, adding they will take him to the veterinarian soon.
NEW DELHI: Two persons were killed and another was injured after a wall collapsed on them in outer Delhis Aman Vihar late on Wednesday night.

Amula (55) died on the spot and her son Rajesh (23) succumbed to injuries during treatment.

Another person, Kalicharan, sustained injuries and has been admitted in hospital.

According to the police, Amula and Rajesh were sleeping on the terrace at night when the wall of the adjacent house collapsed on them.

The locals, who woke up on hearing the thud, informed the police and the fire department. It took around 30 minutes for the rescue team to pull out the duo trapped under the debris.

The police have registered a case of negligence against the owner of the house and investigation has begun.

The DM and SDM of Rohini went to the spot and announced compensation for the family of the deceased.
Hundreds of teachers of Delhi University took to the streets on Friday again to protest a University Grants Commissions (UGC) notification that could lead to around 5,000 temporary teachers losing their jobs..

The teachers, sporting black bands, marched from Mandi House towards the Union ministry of human resource development (MHRD). They were stopped midway by the police and whisked away to the Parliament Street police station where they courted arrest.

A delegation of office-bearers from Delhi University Teachers Association (DUTA) later went to the MHRD, where officials refused to meet them.

The teachers have been protesting against the UGCs third amendment regulation that would lead to ad-hoc teachers losing jobs due to changed workload.

The notification also makes the Academic Performance Indicator stringent.

Read more: As admissions loom, DU teachers up ante on evaluation freeze

The teachers have been boycotting the evaluation process since May 24 because of which DUs undergraduate results may be delayed. The teachers have threatened to boycott the admission process.

They want a complete withdrawal of the UGC notification with DUTA president Nandita Narain having written to the Union HRD minister Smriti Irani on the issue.

Fridays protest was led by Delhi University Teachers Association (DUTA) and supported by student representatives and political leaders.

CPI (M) leader Nilotpal Basu and JD (U) leader KC Tyagi joined the teachers on Friday.

We want a written assurance from the UGC immediately that there will be no job cuts. We want that the workload norms  including tutorial and practical period  will be prior to the third amendment regulation. We want the process of permanent appointments to start immediately, said AK Bhagi, DU executive council member.

The teachers said that with no clear word from UGC so far, they will continue with their boycott of the evaluation process.

This regulation is a move to demolish public funded institution of higher learning. With every passing day, our commitment and resolve is becoming stronger. We will continue with the boycott of the evaluation process, said Rajesh Jha, DUTA office bearer.

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GREATER NOIDA: The families of the men accused of Mohd Ikhlaq for allegedly slaughtering a cow have moved a court seeking registration of a case against his family members.

The move comes after a forensic report by a Mathura laboratory said that the meat recovered from Ikhlaqs house was of a cow or its progeny. Ikhlaq was lynched and his son Danish was brutally beaten up by a mob on September 28 following rumours of cow slaughter.

Recently, the family of the accused had met police officials with a complaint and demanded registration of an FIR after the forensic report came to light.

On October 8, 2015 we had sent the copy of letter to senior superintendent of police, deputy inspector general and other officials, requesting to lodge an FIR against Ikhlaqs family for cow slaughter. Now, we have moved the application before a judicial magistrate for issuing orders to police to lodge an FIR, said advocate BR Sharma.
NEW DELHI: Every Sunday afternoon, she would leave her west Delhi home hoping to return with several lakh rupees of cash. Posing as a shopper, the 55-year-old woman would enter shops in busy markets across the city and steal other womens bags.

Police have arrested Savita Gandhi, her son Ajay and a Karol Bagh shopkeeper for their involvement in around 100 cases of bag theft. Police have recovered 39 handbags and 22 mobile phones they had stolen over the last few months.

Savita targeted only women knowing they carried cash and mobile phones in their handbags. After each theft, she gave the mobile phones to her son Ajay, who passed it to Suresh, alias Honey, a secondhand mobile phone dealer. Honey, police claimed, sent sold the phones in the Karol Bagh market.

Police say the woman may have stolen hundreds of phones as she has been stealing bags for the last one- and-half years.

Savita, who was earlier arrested for shoplifting, had served time in prison and is currently out on bail. The south district police were on the lookout for Savita after a woman filed a case of bag theft last month.

While shopping, the woman had kept aside her bag containing three mobile phones, cash Rs 10,000 and debit/credit cards of different banks. Within seconds, she realised her bag was missing. She informed the shop owner. The CCTV footage showed the accused woman stealing the bag. In the recent weeks, around a dozen similar incidents were reported at Sarojini Nagar, said DCP (south) Ishwar Singh.
It is an encouraging sign that 200 Muslim men, including the film personality Resul Pookutty, have lent support to the demand of 50,000 Muslim women that the triple talaq system of divorce be abolished. An organisation called Bharatiya Muslim Mahila Andolan (BMMA), a Muslim womens advocacy group, had started the campaign against triple talaq, which the organisation said had no sanction in the Koran. The same organisation had earlier released a draft document for the codification of the Muslim Personal Law. Apart from triple talaq, the women want to end the practice of nikah halala, which says that couple divorced through triple talaq cannot remarry unless the woman concerned marries someone else and then gets divorced from her second husband. Hence the move is a positive sign because Muslim men and women have stepped into an area that was until now the preserve of only activists.

Read: Muslim men lend support to campaign against triple talaq

That there is a climate of opinion building up against triple talaq is undeniable. In May the Lucknow regional bench of the Armed Forces Tribunal (AFT) had decreed that the declaration of oral triple talaq by ex parte proceedings should not be given force by the government machinery or the courts because it was contrary to the Constitutional ethos. Also, a former Muslim woman legislator, Bader Sayeed, has asked the Supreme Court to bar clerics from validating triple talaq. Ms Sayeed, who was also a senior legal officer of the Tamil Nadu government, wants the court to lay down guidelines till a law is framed asking Muslims to seek divorce through courts. Regardless of whether triple talaq has the sanction of Islamic theology or not, one thing that is certain is that this practice is heavily stacked against poor Muslim women. Reports have come to light that men have sought talaq in this manner on the phone. This is is degrading to a womans dignity and honour. A woman in Jaipur, Aafreen Rehman, has approached the Supreme Court against the triple talaq system after her husband divorced her in a letter sent by post.

Read: Muslim advocate takes triple talaq battle to Supreme Court

All this should be seen in the backdrop of the Shah Bano Case of 1985, when the then Chief Justice of India, YV Chandrachud, upheld the common civil code while awarding maintenance to a divorced Muslim woman. However, this gave rise to protests and eventually a new law reversed the award. But last year the Supreme Court had ruled that divorced Muslim women were entitled to seek maintenance from their ex-husbands under the Criminal Procedure Code.

Read: Why not four spouses for Muslim women too, asks Kerala HC judge

But on the issue of triple talaq the court had reserved its right to pronounce on the matter because it viewed the issue as one concerning fundamental rights and not one of legislation. It is here that Parliament needs to step into the breach. It would be encouraging for the Muslim women if political parties and the Muslim Personal law Board apply their mind to the problem and come up with a solution within a timeframe.
What does being creative mean? How does it feel? What do creative people do differently? Do they have a different wiring?

Much to the dismay of creatively actualized people, in my opinion, the answer is a big no. They are not different or special, everyone is creative. The only difference is that some people dont tap into their creative side or allow its expression as the human brain is designed to be alert and active. This is why we feel restless or bored whenever stuck in a stagnant situation or a fixed routine. This is a clue that this restlessness should be channelised into doing something creative like writing, drawing, painting, taking photographs, playing music or even cooking, every day!

However, not everyone can do it. Many people firmly believe that they are not creative. Many people also believe that they are naturally creatively gifted. So what are we saying? Can creativity be taught? There are two aspects to this answer. One is the contention that it need not be taught because it is inherent in every person. Whether someone else values your expression of it is another story, the fact is that creativity exists and there is satisfaction in expressing it. This leads us to the next aspect, that of its nurturing and teachability. Now that is something that can certainly be taught. There are tools that can give shape to your ideas. The attitude to problem-solving impediments and alternatives can be taught by imitating, emulating and modelling the behaviours of art adepts, of course, with the ultimate goal of developing your own unique style.

Read more: A new Indian neurological study decodes the creative mind

Everyone can learn how to construct ideas and things that work to some degree. Experience plays a pivotal role in this process. People can learn by experience some part of what it means to take on a problem, to prepare with relevant practice and imaginative study, to incubate choices, to elaborate a solution and test it and how to consider feedback and revision. But even this process, broken down into its compositional and conceptual aspects, does not guarantee a creative result. The only substantial learning from such a creative process is that it makes people familiar with behaviours and strategies that may inform their own problem solving.

For those who are still not convinced that they are creative (yes, imagine that) I have another helpful strategy. They need to stop thinking of creativity as something necessarily mysterious as even those who are creative are at a loss to explain this phenomenon. They should start considering their creativity from three angles, which I have followed in my professional journey.

There are people who are artistic in nature. They thrive on creative expression through various mediums of arts - writing, music, painting, drama or sculpture. While they develop skills in their chosen artistic domain, they are highly sensitive to all art forms. Easily inspired by new forms and unique artistic forms and expressions, they enjoy reaching out to people through art. They are interested both in the vast spectrum of pure art as well as applied art areas such as design, architecture and advertising.

Then there are people who are aesthetically creative. They have a very keen and well-developed sense of what looks good and sounds good, leading them to understand and appreciate things that are tasteful. While they may not be churning out original art by the bushel, they often enjoy working with colours, textures, layout, musical instruments etc to create appealing visuals and sounds. These are also the people to whom creativity is most teachable as they enjoy learning creative skills and performing. They also enjoy being in aesthetically pleasing environments. You too would have such people in your social network. Think of someone who would enjoy interior design, hotel management, fashion management (more than fashion design) and cosmetic dentistry.

Apart from these two categories, there are those who are the idea generators, who sometimes dont view themselves as creative in the usual sense but its time they acknowledge it and take a bow. Original thinkers, they are often inspired by new ideas in a variety of fields. They firmly believe that new ideas can work and are inspired to translate such ideas into action. Idea generators have original ways of understanding situations and approaching problem-solving in varied areas, be it interpersonal, logistical or entrepreneurial. They have an urge to use new approaches in almost everything they do. They think freely and enjoy new concepts and solutions. Think advertising, sales and marketing, entrepreneurship, scientific research and journalism.

So there you are. Now that you know you are creative (well done!) and that you can build your creativity muscle, here is an unexpected bonus. Being creative will help in divergent thinking in all aspects of life as well. Whether it is work, play or an unfamiliar situation in life, the knowledge that you can tap into your creative side to come up with new solutions for the toughest of things is an advantage that will help you no matter what.

And yes, theres more. When you know that you neednt rely on external factors for mental stimulation, it is a major personal triumph. When you know that you are living up to your true potential, you are truly happy.

(Kapur is the head of counselling and content at Inomi (www.inomi.in). Views expressed are personal.)
Hollywood star Johnny Depp is auctioning off millions of dollars worth of paintings ahead of his potentially pricey divorce with Amber Heard. The 53-year-old Alice Through the Looking Glass star is set to unload his collection of paintings by famed artist Jean-Michel Basquiat, according to a press release by Christies auction house, reported People magazine.

He will sell nine paintings in total, which he collected over the past 25 years. Most of the pieces were completed by Basquiat in 1981.

Actress Amber Heard leaves the Superior Court of Los Angeles in Los Angeles in May with what appears to be a bruise on her right cheek after obtaining a restraining order against husband Johnny Depp.

Nothing can replace the warmth and immediacy of Basquiats poetry, or the absolute questions and truths that he delivered, Depp said, according to Christies. The beautiful and disturbing music of his paintings, the cacophony of his silence that attacks our senses, will live far beyond our breath.

Read: Johnny Depp physically abused me throughout marriage, says Amber Heard

Heard filed for divorce from Depp on May 23 citing irreconcilable differences. In the divorce petition, Heard, asked for spousal support from Depp.

The actor has an estimated net worth of up to $450 million, and the two reportedly did not have prenuptials. Legal experts say Heard may indeed win spousal support, along with her share of the couples joint earnings during the short 15-month duration of the marriage.
The election to Chhattisgarh assembly is over two years away, but former chief minister Ajit Jogis announcement to float a new party has led to speculation about its possible impact on the states bipolar politics dominated by BJP and Congress.

It is impossible at this stage to predict the gains Jogis new outfit may or may not make in the assembly election, but his sudden decision has created a buzz right from Delhi to Raipur, a political observer said.

The fact that he has a strong following in the state despite being out of power since a long time has prompted the ruling BJP as well as the Congress to devise strategies to counter him, he claimed.

Jogi said he was forced to make the new outfit as the state Congress was incapable of taking on the Raman Singh government.

It appears that the main opposition Congress is working like a supporter of the ruling BJP instead of fighting against its misrule. The state needs a strong opposition. My supporters and well wishers want me to take a decision to free this state from the corrupt governance, Jogi said.

The ruling BJP is likely to face anti-incumbency factor, apart from stiff opposition from Congress and a third party led by Jogi in the 2018 assembly polls.

Jogi has considerable influence over the Satnami SC community and tribals who comprise nearly 50% population of the state, and he may damage the prospects of both BJP and Congress.

If he succeeds in garnering support of SC voters, it could harm the BJP, which is currently holding 9 out of 10 SC reserved seats in the assembly.

However, leaders of the two key parties do not see Jogi as a threat and, in fact, claim that they will be benefited with his move.

Jogis disassociation with the Congress would inflict damage to the main oppositions vote bank in the state which in-turn will benefit BJP. Its not right to say BJP is worried with the recent political events in the state, BJP state chief Dharamlal Kaushik said.

Chhattisgarh Pradesh Congress Committee chief Bhupesh Baghel also feels Jogis new outfit will certainly help his party to wrest power in Chhattisgarh.

The formation of Jogis new party will not have any effect on Congress. In fact, the BJP cashed on the (negative) image of Jogi in the previous polls.

With Jogi on his way out, the Congress will get rejuvenated, Baghel said.

Jogis announcement has marked the culmination of the long-drawn factionalism within the Chhattisgarh party unit.

Jogi, a bureaucrat-turned-politician, was made the first chief minister of the newly formed Chhattisgarh after its division from Madhya Pradesh. However, when Congress suffered defeat in 2003 by BJP, Jogi was blamed for it.

Subsequently, BJP won the assembly polls consecutively for three times in the state and pushed Jogi to the edge.

In January this year, the state Congress unit had expelled Ajit Jogis son Amit from the party for a period of six years after some audio tapes purportedly revealed that the by-poll held for Antagarh assembly seat in 2014 was fixed.

The seat went to BJP as the Congress candidate had pulled out of the race apparently over financial inducements. The state Congress had also sought sacking of Ajit Jogi from the party.
Former US president Bill Clinton visited Pakistan in 2000 to save deposed premier Nawaz Sharif from the gallows and tried to take him out of the country, former prime minister Shaukat Aziz has claimed.

The sole purpose of Clintons visit to Pakistan was to save Sharif from hanging, Aziz said, adding that Clinton was driven by humanitarian objectives and wanted that no personal vendetta be carried out against Sharif after his government was overthrown by General (retd) Pervez Musharraf in a coup in October 1999.

In April 2000, days after Clintons departure, Pakistani courts sentenced the deposed Prime Minister Sharif to life imprisonment rather than the gallows.

After intervention by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the US, Sharif was sent to exile in Saudi Arabia.

The final agreement took place after Musharraf came to know through Lebanese business tycoon and the countrys then PM Rafiq-Al-Hariri that the Saudis were angry over Sharifs treatment by the government after his ouster from power, he added.

Aziz, who held the prime ministers office under Musharraf from 2004 to 2007, further claimed that both Musharraf and Benazir Bhutto did not want Sharif to return to Pakistan before the 2008 general elections and tried to keep him in exile.

Talking in a Geo TVs programme about the claims made in his recently published book From Banking to the Thorny World of Politics, Aziz said: The then US assistant secretary of state for Central and South Asia Richard Boucher told me that both Musharraf and Bhutto wanted Sharif to stay abroad to avoid competition.

He also claimed that the US also found merit in the preposition and had wanted Benazir to become the prime minister with Musharraf remaining president.


BJP leader Shazia Ilmi and actor Poonam Dhillon have been nominated by the Information and Broadcasting Ministry to the Film Certification Appellate Tribunal (FCAT), which hears appeals against the decisions of the censor board.

Sources said Dhillon and Ilmi were nominated last month.

The five-member FCAT has Justice (retd) S K Mahajan as its chairman and its other members are journalist Shekhar Iyer and advocate Bina Gupta.

The two new members could be a part of the panel which would look into the issue of certification of the movie Udta Punjab if it comes before the Appellate Tribunal.

The matter is currently in the Bombay High Court and whether FCAT hears issues related to the movie will depend on its order, a source said.

The makers of Udta Punjab have approached the FCAT and the matter may come before it on June 17. The film was earlier slated for release on June 17.

Filmmaker Anurag Kashyap had earlier lashed out at censor board chief Pahlaj Nihalani over the slew of changes that had been suggested by a revising committee to be made including deleting a Punjab signboard in the film.
The BJP will focus on Goonda Raj in Uttar Pradesh when its national executive meeting begins at Allahabad on Sunday, followed by a public rally by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, as the party launches into campaign mode ahead of the 2017 assembly elections.

Citing the law and order situation in the poll bound state, BJP national secretary Shrikant Sharma said, Goonda Raj in the state is the main issue for us. There is a collapse on every front. The matter will feature prominently at the national executive meeting and the political rally.

To better highlight the issue, the party intends to contrast what it calls governance deficit in Uttar Pradesh with the NDAs achievements at the Centre.

There will be an exhibition and a session to highlight the Centres achievements in the last two years, a party general secretary said.

The BJP had in fact began harping on the NDAs good governance when Modi opened the governments second anniversary celebration in Saharanpur, an electorally significant district in the state. Uttar Pradesh is a significant state in itself as it contributes the largest number of MPs to the Lok Sabha.

In focus at the BJPs meeting and rally will be the NDAs pro-poor and pro-farmer policies and initiatives such as the PMs crop insurance scheme and the PMs irrigation scheme  the Pradhan Mantri Krishi Sinchai Yojana. In doing so, the BJP hopes to underline the ruling Samajwadi Party (SP) governments failures

While the BJPs main opponent is Mayawatis Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), by targeting the SP, it hopes to turn the elections into a triangular contest.

If that happens, we stand to gain from it like we did in the Lok Sabha elections, sources added.

The party had bagged 71 of the states 80 seats in 2014, with its ally Apna Dal winning two more.

But, after the stellar mandate, the BJP took a severe beating in its first year in power when it attempted to pass an amended land acquisition act. The amendment had sought to reverse some of the pro-farmer clauses the existing law, passed by the Congress-led UPA, detailed.

The opposition took the opportunity to brand the Modi-government as anti-poor and anti-farmer.

Matters turned worse with the NDA repeatedly attempting to pass the bill in the Parliament despite opposition from different quarters, including some of its allies.

The BJP managed to salvage the situation the next year with Modi addressing the Kisaan Kalyan Melas in agrarian states, including Uttar Pradesh, and the government announcing a number of schemes for the agriculture sector. The election campaign will be a chance for BJP to publicise its pro-farmer measures, party sources said.

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The Centre is ready to order CBI probe into Mathura violence if the Uttar Pradesh government seeks it, Union home minister Rajnath Singh said even as he questioned how the state government was unaware of land grab by thousands of people.

Thousands of people had grabbed land in Mathura and the state government was unaware, he said on Thursday while addressing a rally in Mau as he referred to the action of a so-called organisation Vidhik Vaicharik Kranti Satyagrah which had occupied hundreds of acres of government land for two years.

When police went to clear the occupied land last week following an order of the Allahabad high court, activists of the organisation indulged in large-scale violence, including firing, in which the Mathura SP and SHO were killed along with 27 others.

If state government demands a CBI probe, we are ready for it, Singh said at the rally organised to highlight the schemes of the two-year-old Narendra Modi government.

Later, when asked to comment on the state governments claim about presence of Maoists in Mathura, Singh told reporters in Lucknow, We have no such information...I have yet to go into the report sent by the state government.

Singh also asked the UP government to show more alacrity in implementing the central government schemes, a comment that comes close on the heels of BJP president Amit Shah alleging that the state government was creating roadblocks in this endeavour.

To state governments allegations of Centre not extending support to Uttar Pradesh, Singh said these were wrong.

Whatever support is sought is extended to Uttar Pradesh, he said.

Replying to the allegations levelled by SP leaders that his relatives had tried to disturb the atmosphere in Bisada village in Greater Noida where they were conspiring to hold a mahapanchayat, Singh said they can call for an inquiry into it. Whosoever had tried to do it should be put behind bars.
By declaring some animals vermin that allows them to be culled, the environment ministry has taken a short cut out of a festering problem that is unlikely to go away anytime soon.

The decision offers a quick fix to growing discontent over human-animal conflict, saving the government from going down the difficult, and possibly time consuming, path of scientific management of forests and wildlife.

It also appeases the farming community, a sizable voting bank. Animals dont have voting rights nor can they organise themselves to raise voice against the unethical order that declares them unwanted -- ready to be killed.

It is Jallianwala Bagh happening again, with the government acting as General (Reginald Edward Harry) Dyer, said Gauri Maulekhi of Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

It is indeed a matter of concern. With the sole exception of women and child development minister Maneka Gandhi, who has accused environment minister Prakash Javadekar of having lust to kill animals, the ruling class seems to have rallied against animals.

Killing animals for development is a given, almost a matter of right though it is humans who have encroached green spaces, eating into animal habitat.

In normal course, encroachers face action but when it comes to the man-animal conflict, the dice is loaded against animals.

By classifying them as vermin, the ministry has condemned blue bulls (nilgai), monkeys and wild boars  pronouncing them guilty without a trial.

In Himachal Pradesh, where monkeys are vermin, apple growers have encroached thousands of acres of forest land. Successive governments -- both of the BJP and Congress -- have been extremely slow in evicting the trespassers -- they are influential and a precious vote bank.

Similarly, wild boars can be hunted down in Uttarakhand though it is their territory that has been invaded in the name of tourism and progress.

Forest survey of India reports offer a glimpse into the countrys green cover and also the reasons for the present sad state of affairs.

Since early 1990s, when India started moving towards an open market, around one-third of the dense forest cover has been lost. Half of the traditional wildlife corridors, which allow free movement of animals from one habitat to another, have disappeared.

As a result, 60% of Indias tigers, the face of the countrys conservation effort, are now caged  living in a protected territory, or the core area, that can span a few hundred to thousand square kilometres. The remaining big cats live in the outskirts called buffer of protected areas and are in direct conflict with humans.

Elephants fare no better. Half the population, 14,000, are caught in this cross-fire, especially in states such as West Bengal and Assam.

India does not have data on population and spread of other wildlife such as boars, blue bulls and red bulls. But, the government has declared them vermin without a scientific study warranted under the wildlife protection act that was enacted in 1972 after a call to ban hunting was signed by more than 50 heads of state.

The vermin provision was included as an exception to be used in rarest of rare circumstances and that, too, after all options have been exhausted.

Thirty-two years later, the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance government, which has positioned itself as the protector of cows, thinks nothing of killing the nilgai. Invoked the clause for the first time, the Centre asked the states to seek its permission to kill unwanted animals by declaring them vermin.

The decision was based on the recommendations of a committee headed by former cabinet secretary TSR Subramanian. The government has been selective, as many progressive suggestions of the panel such as making green regulation independent of the government have remained on paper.

And, that is not all.

States are required to back their demand for culling with a proper study, but the Centre seems to have ignored the stipulation. Bihar was allowed to kill the nilgai on the basis of a three-page request letter.

None of the states considered relocating the animals. Most cited huge financial costs -- compensation for the losses caused by animals  as the ground for culling, an unjustified and unscientific argument.

Wildlife habitats are being destroyed in the name of development and there is no one to speak for these silent creatures. Rules are being twisted to suit the cause of the entire political class, Maulekhi said.

She is right as two of the three states where culling has been allowed are ruled by the Congress. But, the story is that of the colossal failure of the entire political class to conserve Indias rich wildlife and forest heritage in pursuit of high economic growth.

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Four persons have been arrested for allegedly hatching a plan to kill gangster Chhota Rajan, presently lodged in Tihar jail, at the behest of his arch rival and fugitive don Dawood Ibrahims aide Chhota Shakeel.

The four alleged contract killers, identified as Robinson, Junaid, Yunus and Manish, were arrested on June 3 following which they were sent to police remand and interrogated for five days.

Later, they were produced in a court which sent them to judicial custody, a senior police official said on Friday.

Investigation is underway, special commissioner of police (special cell) Arvind Deep said.

Delhi Polices special cell zeroed down on the four through telephone intercepts. The accused were in constant touch with Shakeel, police claimed.

Once identified, the four were picked up from their residences in Rohini in Outer Delhi, Seelampur in northeast Delhi, Ghaziabad and Noida, the official said.

Police also claimed have recovered a pistol and live cartridges from possession of one of the accused.

They had allegedly planned to eliminate Rajan while the don is taken to court for hearing.

The four accused are also lodged in Tihar jail, where Rajan is in a high-security ward, the official added.

Rajan (55), who was on a run for around 27 years, was arrested from Bali in Indonesia, based on a tip-off from Australian Federal Police, and brought to India in November last year.
A trial against terror outfit Indian Mujahideens (IM) top operatives - Yasin Bhatkal, Asadullah Akhtar, Zia Ur Rehman and Tehseen Akhtar - in connection with the twin blasts in Hyderabads Dilsukhnagar area three years back is all set to be concluded, a top NIA official said.

At least 17 people, including a pregnant, were killed and 131 were injured in the twin blasts in Hyderabads Dilsukhnagar area on February 21, 2013.

Of around half a dozen trials launched against the IMs top operative Yasin Bhatkal, the Hyderabad case is first to reach the judgment stage.

Read: 7/11 blasts: How IM co-founder Sadiq, Yasin Bhatkal negated ATSs theory

The deposition of witnesses has been completed and the National Investigation Agency has submitted its final arguments in the court requesting the judge to convict all the accused, National Investigation Agency (NIA) chief Sharad Kumar said.

Yasin was picked up from Nepal along with Asadullah on August 29, 2013, and arrested by the NIA on the Indo-Nepal border. Tehseen and Zia were arrested six months later.

During the trial, the NIA told the court that Asadullah, Zia and Tehseen conducted a recce of Hyderabad and decided to target Dilsukhnagar for being a predominantly Hindu area under instruction from their top boss Riyaz Bhatkal, who is in Pakistan. During the period, Yasin remained at his hideout in Nepal.

The NIA charged that Asadullah and Tehseen parked two cycles with Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) fabricated in a pressure cooker, mounted on them.

During the probe, Pakistani national Zia told investigators that he can assemble an IED if provided with all parts and components. The demonstration of the assembly of the IED was videographed by the NIA and produced before the court as an evidence as well.

Shopkeepers, who sold the accused cycles and pressure cookers, also identified the accused during trial.

The NIA bust a hideout of the accused in Mangalore where material to assemble IEDs was recovered. Counter-terror officials also managed to seize Yasin Bhatkals laptop when they arrested him and it helped them retrieve his internet chat IDs.

The agency sent a request to the United States under mutual legal assistance treaty and sought details of the chats conducted on these IDs from the service providers based there.

The chat details sent by the US-based service providers had details about the conspiracy to target Hyderabad. After sanction from the US department of justice, the NIA produced these chats before the court as evidence.

Accused would be given final chance to rebut our submission and the court may pronounce its judgement anytime after that, Kumar said.

Read: 13/7: IMs Yasin Bhatkal was in Mumbai ?

Revealed: how India got Yasin Bhatkal from Nepal town

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The United States has asked Pakistan to ensure that its territory is not used for planning attacks on India, a state department spokesperson said on Thursday, a day after Prime Minister Narendra Modi told the US Congress that countries sponsoring terror groups should be isolated.

This is one of the steps that the US is encouraging Pakistan to do for the improvement of its relations with India, deputy spokesperson Mark Toner said.

Ties between nuclear-armed neighbours India and Pakistan are seeing a chill after the January attack on an airbase in Punjabs Pathankot. New Delhi blames the strike on Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammed. India also accuses Pakistan of not taking enough action on the 26/11 Mumbai attacks that killed more than 160 people when terrorists believed to be from Pakistan attacked the city.

We believe that Pakistan and India stand to benefit from practical cooperation and encourage direct dialogue aimed at increasing cooperation and reducing tensions, Toner said.

And that includes steps by Pakistan to ensure that its territory is not used to plan attacks in India and that Pakistan takes steps to address or to go after, I think, all the terrorist groups that are currently using its territory, Toner said.

In an address to the US Congress, PM Modi said on Wednesday terrorism had to be fought with one voice and commended American Parliament for sending out a clear message by refusing to reward those who preach and practice terrorism for political gains, an apparent reference to the blocking of sale of 8 F-16 fighter jets to Pakistan.

Toner said Pakistan was one of the issues discussed between Modi and Obama when the leaders met at the White House on Tuesday. A joint statement issued after the meeting said the two leaders called for Pakistan to bring the perpetrators of the 2008 Mumbai and 2016 Pathankot terrorist attacks to justice.

Certainly that was one of the discussions, frankly, that was raised at the - or one of the issues, frankly, that was raised in discussions with Prime Minister Modi. They talked about a wide range of regional issues, in fact, he said.

Our bilateral relations with India and Pakistan are separate and stand on their own merits, and so I dont think we - its not prudent for us to view our security cooperation in the region in kind of a zero-sum game - or zero-sum terms, rather.

I think its important for the countries of the region that they all have constructive security relationships with each other. And thats Pakistan, thats India, and its also Afghanistan, Toner said.

Read| Terror is no excuse for India to avoid talks with Pakistan: Sartaj Aziz
KOLKATA: Judith DSouza was all set to return home from Kabul on next Wednesday after a gap of 16 months. But on the wee hours of Friday her family member received the sad news from the Indian Embassy in Kabul  around 10.30 pm unknown gunmen abducted Judith along with her driver and personal security.

According to reports from the Indian Embassy in Kabul, around 10 pm Thursday Judith set out from the embassy office in the Malalaiwat locality in central Kabul and was heading towards her office accommodation in the Taimani region. En route gunmen stopped the car in the vicinity of Qala e-Fatullah area and kidnapped Judith with her personal security and driver. All three were kidnapped on the office car they were travelling. Till Friday evening no militant agencies accepted responsibility in this incident.

We received a call at around 1.30 am from the Embassy officials in Kabul. We were told that three persons have been abducted, my daughter, the driver and the security guard. Thereafter there has been no news on her. We are all very tense and anxious. We just want her to return safely home, said Denzel Dsouza, Judiths father talking to HT at their home on CIT Road in Kolkata.

Shocked and traumatized family members pray for her safe return and are keeping a close contact with the central and state government for her safe release.

Minister of external affairs Sushma Swaraj called and said that Judith is not only my daughter, but she is also a daughter of this nation. She promised that the government would extend all possible helps to find out my daughter. Prime Minister Narendra Modi met Afghan president recently and both countries share good relations. The government should take up the issue seriously and bring back my daughter safe, said Agnes, Judiths elder sister sitting at their Entally CIT Road home.

Later in the day Derek O Brien, Rajya Sabha MP from Trinamool Congress called up the family and assured all help possible.

We just spoke two days back over phone with her two days back. She never mentioned any tension there nor she was scared of anything. Initially we were reluctant, but she went there for work. Atleast three to four times in a week she would call us up. She is a brave girl and I am waiting for her return, said Agnes.

Judith is the second among two sisters and one brother. She is a student of Loreto School and completed her graduation in English from St. Xaviers College. Judith then moved to University of Mumbai to complete her post graduate in Social Work. In Afghanistan she was working with an NGO Aga Khan Foundation  where she was the technical advisor for the department of gender equality. Her elder brother works in Bangalore, her mother is a housewife and her father is a retired private firm employee.

This is for the second time that an Indian woman encountered the wrath of suspected militants in Afghanistan.

Late on September 4, 2013 49-year old Sushmita Banerjee was gunned down by suspected Talibans outside her in-laws house in Paktika Province in Afghanistan.

Mukherjee  who hails from Kolkata  fell in love with an Afghan money lender in Kolkata and eventually married her. Bollywood film Escape from Taliban is based on her memoir - Kabuliwalah-ar Bangali bou (A Kabuliwalahs Bengali wife). It is believed that she also became a victim of the Talibans once she turned out to be an activist on gender equality in Afghanistan.

Acting on directives from the ministry of external affairs, the Indian embassy in Kabul is keeping a close contact with the senior Afghan authorities and Afghan intelligence agencies. The Indian embassy in Kabul had earlier issued a security alert to the Indian citizens residing in Afghanistan and travelling to the country, warning regarding the persistent volatile situation of the country.

All Indians residing in Afghanistan and Indian travellers to Afghanistan are advised that the security situation in Afghanistan remains highly volatile. Terrorist attacks have taken place in many parts of the country against a variety of targets including foreigners and are expected to continue. There is also the risk of kidnapping and hostage taking throughout the Afghanistan, the statement mentions.

EOM

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In a rather bizarre order issued by the Haryana education department last week, elementary and middle school teachers have been asked not to wear jeans to work or while visiting the directorate in Chandigarh.

While the four-line order said wearing jeans to work was not appropriate and the teachers should wear formal clothes, it did not attribute any particular reason for it.

However, top education department officials defended the order, saying teachers were regarded as role models for students and should be dressed appropriately.

Teachers ask students to maintain discipline, including wearing school uniforms. They themselves should wear formal attire to set an example, said an education official.

Officials said Haryana chief secretary too had issued instructions regarding dress code for government officials some time back, asking them to wear only formal clothes to work.

In 2012, the women and child development department had also issued similar instructions, albeit for women employees, to wear decent clothes while on the field.

The department order, which asked women employees to desist from wearing jeans and T-shirts to work and instead opt for salwar-kameez or saree, drew flak from various quarters. The order was later withdrawn.
Thousands of Kashmiri Pandits will on Sunday celebrate Kheer Bhawani, the biggest Hindu festival in Jammu and Kashmir after the Amarnath Yatra, that will fall in the Muslim holy month of Ramadan after three decades.

Amid a debate over their return to Kashmir, Pandits from across the state and outside will converge at the temple of Kheer Bhawani representing Hindu goddess Ragnya Devi in Tulmulla village of Ganderbal, 27 km from Srinagar.

Muslims began fasting for the holy month of Ramadan from Tuesday.

The Kheer Bhawani festival falls in the month of May, June or July and the Muslim month of Ramadan shifts 11 days each year, as the cycle of the lunar calendar does not match the solar one.

The last time when the two religious symbols of Muslims and Pandits coincided was in the early 1980s. A majority of Kashmiri Pandits left the valley after militancy erupted in the valley in 1989. Their return has now become a matter of public debate between different stakeholders.

Vijay Aima, president of All India Kashmiri Samaj, expressed hope that the coincidence will bring something better for the people of Kashmir particularly after the politics over the return of Pandits.

Every Kashmiri believes in these divine coincidences. We look forward to something concrete in these auspicious days, he said.

Sanjay Tickoo, the head of Kashmiri Pandit Sangarsh Samiti in the valley, said the coincidence is a good omen for the people of Kashmir who have suffered the conflict for the past 25 years.

The day is pious for us and the Ramadan is holy for you. We will read Geeta and you will read Quran. Maybe God will listen to us this time, he said.

As a majority of the Pandits migrated from the valley, local Muslims took care of the temple of Kheer Bhawani. Since 2008, the temple has seen a revival with thousands of devotees, especially migrant Pandits, thronging it every year as the conditions in the valley improved.

The annual festival has become a rare platform where Pandits and Muslims exchange their feelings, a religious geniality which became elusive in the strife-torn state. Muslims make arrangements like installing flower stalls and other puja items for the visiting pilgrims.

We have a tradition of Hindu-Muslim bonhomie on these festivals. Earlier, when Pandits would visit Kheer Bhawani, Muslim elderly women would request us to pray for them as well. Similarly, a Muslim neighbour would come to a Pandit to say goodbye before going to Hajj, Tickoo said.
They are very different politicians on every count. But there is a great deal of similarity and some pronounced differences in what both Narendra Modi and Manmohan Singh told the joint session of the US Congress on Wednesday and in July 2005 respectively.

But as it is the case with their strikingly different persona, there was a marked difference in how they both said them allfrom showering platitudes, talking about similarities between two democracies, and how they see the present and visualize the future of the bilateral relationship.

Despite all the proximity Singh was accorded to with the US, at the end, a comparison of their speeches show Modi was more willing for a strategic embrace of the Americans than Singh ever was.

Modi told the American lawmakers that constrains of the past are behind us and a new symphony is in play in the conclusion of the speech. Singh had spoken of transforming ties drawing from the principles and pragmatism and welcomed US to be on our side. Modi was perhaps building upon what AB Vajpayee talked to the US lawmakers. Unlike Modi, Singh chose to make no reference to China in his speech with phrases Americans love such as freedom of navigation, but both took the opportunity to make oblique reference of Pakistan: Modi is the context of terrorism and Singh on non-proliferation.

Both the speeches, Singh reading out from a written text and Modi using teleprompter was applauded by the lawmakers. The two leaders started by comparing oldest democracy (the US) and the largest democracy in the world (India) in their similarities and their shared values such as freedom and celebration of diversity.

They both spoke about Indian constitution drawing inspiration from the American constitution: The difference was Modi quoted BR Ambedkar and Singh Jawaharlal Nehru to emphasis the point.

Both quoted Gandhi, the father of the nation in the speech and they also said India and US are natural allies, Modi attributing the credit of the phrase to Vajpayee. There was one person the two leaders praised in equal measure: Norman Borlaug, the American scientist, father of Green Revolution. Singh quoted no other American, but Modi cited three others, including President Abraham Lincoln.

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After positive indications on Indias entry into the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) emerged from the Vienna preliminary meeting that concluded on Friday, New Delhi hopes China will come on board at the plenary meeting in Seoul on June 24.

India does not consider Beijing a roadblock to its entry into the nuclear export regime. While China has raised the issue of non-NPT members joining the NSG, India has no intention to polarise the 48-member body and believes Beijing will come around to supporting its membership claim, sources said.

Though Beijings posture could take the issue to the wire, Prime Minister Narendra Modi is expected to take it up with Chinese president Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit in Tashkent on June 23-24. India is slated to join the SCO after its membership was approved last year.

Sources in the government said India had fulfilled all its commitments and the protocol required for entry into the NSG since 2008 and believed the Chinese position was ambiguous. India, therefore, did not see merit in singling out Beijings opposition.

Though the US, Switzerland and Mexico came out in support of Indias entry into the NSG during Modis just completed five-day visit, sources said New Delhi was capable of doing the diplomatic heavy lifting required to get into the regime. India is already a nuclear supplier after French company Areva tied up with NPCIL and L&T for manufacturing of nuclear reactors.

During Modis trip to the US, the logistics exchange memorandum of agreement was finalised with finite cooperation and applicability, sources said. According to that, there was convergence between India and the US on Afghanistan unlike in 2001 when Washington wanted New Delhi to only undertake developmental activities. There was also convergence on the right to navigation and freedom of innocent passage in the South China Sea without any prejudice to contesting territorial claims.

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Nepals deputy prime minister Kamal Thapa met external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj in New Delhi on Friday as he began a three-day visit aimed at mending relations between the neighbours.

After the meeting, during which the two discussed bilateral ties, Thapa tweeted the talks had been very useful and constructive.

Thapa said relations are back on track and the Himalayan nation now looks to its southern neighbour to play a major role in consolidating the political change it has adopted: The misunderstandings of the recent past have been resolved... as many as 13 bilateral meetings lined up during June-July are proof that relations are good, he said.

Thapa is slated to preside over the first convocation of South Asian University on Saturday.

Nepal last month recalled its ambassador to India and cancelled a trip by President Bidhya Devi Bhandari to the country, not long after an unsuccessful attempt was made by the countrys Maoists at dislodging Nepal Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli. Many within Olis party, the Communist Party of Nepal-Unified Marxist Leninist, accused New Delhi of being behind the political maneouvres. Oli survived by inking a deal with the Maoists, who are part of the ruling coalition.

The recent series of events, which come after Indias cold response to Nepals new constitution and a five-month-long border-blockade imposed by Madhesis, have severely impacted relations.

We must not allow things to continue like they are now. All recent hurdles should be removed and high-level dialogues intensified, former Nepal foreign minister Bhekh Bahadur Thapa told Hindustan Times.

Thapa, who is also part of the eminent persons group constituted by both nations to take stock of bilateral treaties, said Kathmandu is keen to take ties to a new level.

The visit by Kamal Thapa shows there is an attempt to build up trust, but we shouldnt expect any quick fix solutions, said Sridhar Khatri, a former executive director of the Colombo-based Regional Centre for Strategic Studies.

India is unhappy with half-hearted attempts by the Nepal government to address demands of Madhesis and other marginalised groups seeking changes in the new constitution. Talks between the Nepal government and groups opposed to the statute have come to a halt. Protesters who held rallies in Kathmandu last month have now resorted to a relay hunger strike.

Thapa said on Sunday his government is committed to resolving the issue and a high-level panel has been set up to suggest within three months ways to resolve Madhesi demands. He said Nepals relations with India are incomparable.

(With inputs from agency)

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India rejected on Friday Islamabads contention that evidence of Pakistani involvement in the Pathankot air base attack was insufficient, saying investigators have legally admissible proof to confirm involvement of militant group Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) and Pakistani nationals.

The National Investigation Agency (NIA) said three phone calls, reportedly made by the attackers to their Pakistani handlers and family members, were intercepted legally.

These calls were intercepted after Punjab SP Salwinder Singh informed about his abduction by four men in military fatigues on the night of December 31, 2015. The phone belonged to Salwinders friend Rajesh Verma, who was travelling with him.

Our evidence can stand any international scrutiny, said NIA chief Sharad Kumar.

The NIA also found the attackers brought Made in Pakistan food packets to sustain themselves after crossing over the border.

When we presented the evidence about these calls to the Joint Investigation Team that came from Pakistan, they never rebutted it, said Kumar.

NIA officials said JeM top operative Mufti Abdul Rauf Asghar, brother of founder Maulana Masood Azhar, claimed responsibility for the attack in a 14-minute-long audio clip. The onus is on Pakistan to probe into the JeM links of attackers families in Pakistan. We have shared DNA samples of dead attackers which can be matched the family, he added.

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The Election Commission (EC)s decision to not countermand the June 11 elections to four Rajya Sabha seats in Karnataka after four MLAs were allegedly taped negotiating bribes is surprising, but not without precedent.

Last year, a legislator in Telangana was caught red-handed attempting to bribe another MLA in the run up to a Legislative Council election. The scandal ensnared top politicians and made national headlines, but no heads rolled. As in Karnataka now, the EC allowed the Telangana poll to go ahead then.

The long arm of the law suddenly is amputated... when the politically powerful get away (with such misconduct), said L Ravichander, a Hyderabad-based activist.

Read | Copy of sting on Karnataka RS polls to be given to Election Commission

On May 31 last year, a senior MLA of the Telugu Desam Party (TDP), Revanth Reddy, was caught paying an alleged bribe of Rs 50 lakh by the Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB).

Reddy had approached Elvis Stephenson, a nominated MLA, to vote for TDP nominee V Narender Reddy in the election to the Telangana Legislative Council on June 1. He was caught after Stephenson informed the ACB of his offer.

An elaborate spy camera set-up ensured that Revanth was caught on tape, spreading wads of currency notes before Stephenson on the table. For the world, it was a view of the depravity in Indian politics.

Revanth was heard constantly repeating that he was acting on instructions from his Boss. Though there is no indication of who Boss is, one presumption is that he is party president N Chandrababu Naidu, which would make the chief minister a co-conspirator.

To make matters worse, an audio recording of a phone conversation allegedly featured Naidu telling Stephenson that everything will be taken care of.

The expose jolted the TDP and it went on the offensive, alleging that the AP CMs phone lines were being tapped. In a sense, the party confirmed it was indeed Naidus voice in the audio recordings. The ACB though did not name the chief minister as an accused in the chargesheet but mentioned his alleged role in great detail.

It was an attempt to sully the image of Chandrababu Naidu, who is not just a CM but a leader with a national profile, said K Rammohan Rao, a TDP leader.

Even though the EC was immediately informed on May 31 of the attempt, it did not countermand the election. It even allowed both Reddy and Stephenson to vote in the election on June 1. In fact, even though the attempted bribe was for an election, the EC allowed the ACB, that reports to the Telangana government, to take charge of the case.

According to political analyst, K Nageshwar, the EC had a reason not to countermand the election.

The complaint was made by the MLA Stephenson who was sought to be bribed. He did not yield to the temptation which means the election process was not getting vitiated, he reasoned.

In the 13 months since the case broke, forensic labs have analysed the phone conversations to establish the identity of the people involved. But the ACB suffered a setback with the quashing of the FIR against accused no. 4, Jerusalem Mathaiah, who argued that at no point had he spoke to Stephenson and the agency was not able to establish any link between him and Reddy. All the accused are out on bail.

The evidence available in the Telangana cash-for-vote case, prima facie, is far more incriminating and politically explosive, than in Karnataka. The case has made slow progress only because the forensic labs took time to acquire sophisticated equipment to undertake voice analysis, said a senior ACB officer.

The opposition has also alleged that an understanding at the highest political level has been worked out to let the big fish off the hook. It points to the fact that Naidu moved out of Hyderabad soon after the case and did not even campaign in the municipal elections in Hyderabad in January.

The Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) too has been mum on the matter, though it earlier loudly claimed it would get Revanth expelled from the Assembly.

At one time, K Chandrasekhar Rao was talking of sending Naidu to jail. Now he is friendly with him, said Congress president Uttam Kumar Reddy.

TRS leaders deny the charge. The government has done its job in bringing the case to the court and now it is for the judicial process to take over, argued Srinivas Goud, a TRS MLA.

In Karnataka, the story that unfolds could very well follow the same lines.
Separatists in Kashmir have objected to a Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS)-supported groups plans to conduct a pilgrimage to a cave in Kashmir where Shaivite philosopher Abhinavgupta is said to have renounced the world.

The opposition has cast a shadow on the ongoing yearlong celebrations to mark the 1,000 years of Abhinavguptas renunciation. The celebrations are being organised by the RSS supported Jammu Kashmir Study Centre (JKSC) in association with the Art of Living under the aegis of the Acharya Abhinavgupt Sheshadri Samaroh Samiti.

The RSS is seen as the ideological fountainhead of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) that runs a coalition government with the Peoples Democratic Party in Jammu and Kashmir.

As celebrations kicked off in February this year, a yatra was scheduled to take place on June 11 to the cave in Beerwah in Budgam, where the 10th-century philosopher along with his few followers is believed to have entered a state of intense meditation before dying.

All Parties Hurriyat Conference chief Syed Ali Geelani told media persons on Thursday that the yatra was a deliberate attempt to disturb the peaceful environment in the state.

Geelani challenged the claims of the group Samitis that the cave is of historical and religious significance.

Organisers, who traversed across the country over the past few months raising awareness about the philosopher, said they will go ahead with the yatra, despite the opposition.

We expect the state government of Jammu and Kashmir to ensure that the yatra is conducted peacefully, a Sangh functionary said.

He said the state government should do its bit to promote the legacy of Abhinavgupta who authored over 70 books, including a commentary on poetry, drama, dance and music.

We dont expect the separatists to act differently, but we will conduct a public programme on Acharya Abhinavagupta. On June 11, a small group of people will travel to the cave to offer floral tributes. There is no agenda or a plan to upset anyone or any group, a functionary of the JKSC told Hindustan Times.

The celebrations took off after the RSS threw its weight behind the programme to highlight the contribution of Abhinavgupta.

At the end of the Sanghs annual meet at Ranchi in 2015, RSS general secretary Suresh Bhaiyyaji Joshi described him as a great philosopher and literary critic and the tallest scholar of Shaiva philosophy.

Joshi said it would be a true homage to Acharya Abhinavgupta to enlighten the whole world, especially the youth of Kashmir, with the life and deeds of the legend who interpreted the ancient spiritual and cultural heritage of Kashmir in a new unifying philosophy with the challenges of times, in this era of ideological fanaticism.

This is not the first time that separatists have opposed a programme of religious significance to the Hindus in the valley. In 2014, the valley was on the boil after Pandits were stopped from undertaking a yatra to Kousar Nag, in the Pir Panchal mountain range, following protests by locals and separatists.

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In addition to celebrating a Yoga Day every month, the school education department on Friday asked schools and colleges to hold five-day long yoga festivals every year. Criticising the departments excessive focus on yoga, academicians said that such activities will eat into the teaching hours.

The education department issued two government resolutions (GRs) on yoga in one day, urging schools and colleges to celebrate yoga day on a monthly and annual basis. Both the GRs have asked all schools and colleges to organise a five-day festival from January 12 to 26 to promote yoga among the youth, every year, along with the token celebrations for the Yoga Day on June 21. Around 11 to 17 member panels have been set-up to plan the festival at district and zonal levels.

The resolutions were issued a couple of days after education minister Vinod Tawde announced that schools and colleges should celebrate yoga day on the 21 of every month. There is no compulsion, if schools dont want to hold the festival for five days they can even do it for a couple of days, he said. On the other hand, academicians are upset that such extra activities will leave less time for studies. This will increase the number of non-instructional days in the academic year, making it impossible for schools to meet the requisite amount of teaching hours and days stipulated in the RTE act, Rajesh Pandya, senior teacher, Fatimadevi English High School, Kandivli and member of the Teachers Democratic Front said.

Under the RTE Act, 2009, there should be 220 working days for Classes 1 to 8 and 230 days for Classes 9 and 10. At present, most schools are only able to follow 200 working days due to the long list of holidays.

Few academicians also pointed out that instead of focusing on yoga, the department should first address the problems of students at hand.

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Nepals deputy prime minister Kamal Thapa will arrive in New Delhi on Friday on a three-day visit during which he will hold talks with external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj on a range of bilateral issues.

Thapa will be here primarily to attend the convocation of South Asian university, a Saarc project which came into being in 2010.

Thapa, who is also Nepals foreign minister, is expected to meet Swaraj on Friday during which a number of key issues relating to Nepals Constitution and internal situation are likely to figure.

He will attend the convocation of the South Asian University on Saturday. Swaraj is also scheduled to attend it. This will be Thapas fourth visit to India since he assumed office in October last year.
A day after Haryana chief conservator of forests, Ajay Kadiyan, 51, committed suicide by jumping off the sixth floor of Bella Vista hotel in Sector 5, Panchkula, doctors have ruled out any foul play. Kadiyan was reportedly under depression due to personal reasons Dr Sunil Gambhir, who led the team that conducted the post-mortem, said the body had multiple fractures and the spleen, liver and kidneys were damaged after the fall. The body was handed over to the family and cremated. Meanwhile, police questioned the hotel staff about the sequence of events before Kadiyan committed suicide.

The hotels CCTV footage showed that he looked up at the height of the building after stepping out of his Toyota Corolla car on Thursday evening. He headed straight for the sixth floor, where the swimming pool has also been built. The swimming trainer, Hemant Kumar, asked him if he had membership for the pool. When Kadiyan replied in the negative, the trainer went to check from the reception about him over the phone. In the meantime, Kadiyan jumped off the parapet. He fell on the cemented pathway and died on the spot.

No suicide note was recovered.

1987-BATCH OFFICER

Kadiyan was a 1987-batch Indian Forest Service (IFS) officer. Earlier, he had held positions of conservator of forests (North) and also member secretary Haryana State Pollution Control Board.

One of his colleagues described him as a happy-go-lucky officer who used to treat his juniors well.

He is survived by his wife, Anita, who is employed as a scientist at the Forensic Science Laboratory at Madhuban in Karnal, a son and a daughter.

Local councillor CB Goel said, Kadiyan was also the member secretary of Haryana State Pollution Control Board well. We, the members of Haryana Chamber of Commerce and Industry, condole the death of our friend, who had guided us very well.
A Pakistan joint investigation team (JIT) which visited India to gather evidence on the Pathankot airbase attack is not convinced that its soil was used to plan the strike, a senior aide of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif told HT.

Anybody can call the Jaish-e-Mohammad numbers from India, the aide said, dismissing Indias assertion that terrorists who attacked the air base in January called up several persons including Jaish leaders based in Pakistan.

Ties between India and Pakistan have been on a downswing since the audacious attack on January 2 and the assertions from Islamabad are likely to further increase tensions between the neighbours.

All four terrorists who attacked the strategic defence installation were killed besides seven Indian security personnel.

India has shared what it believes is concrete evidence of Jaishs involvement including the phone numbers to which calls were made.

Read | Terror is no excuse to avoid talks: Aziz

India says one of the terrorists, identified as Nasir, had called his mother from Pathankot and told her that he was on a suicide mission. This evidence too has been dismissed by the JIT.

The conversation does not prove that he went from here, the aide said. The National Investigation Agency could not tell us the exact location from where the terrorists had crossed over from Pakistan into India.

Pakistan is likely to seek more information from India but it is clear that the security establishment is protecting the Jaish, an organisation that it views as its strategic asset.

Sharif had called Prime Minister Narendra Modi soon after the attack and promised cooperation but the Pathankot probe is proceeding on the same lines as the 26/11 investigation. After the Mumbai attacks in 2008, Pakistan arrested Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi, the military commander of the Lashkar-e-Taiba who was subsequently freed on bail.

The Jaish and Lashkar allegedly have deep connections in the Pakistani Army and ISI and are considered their proxies.

India has also provided DNA samples of the four terrorists killed during the Pathankot siege and believes it has a strong case against the Jaish but signals from Islamabad are not positive.

The NIA has also put in a request that it be allowed to send a team to Pakistan but the aide said it was very unlikely.

Read | Pakistan concerned over growing Indo-US ties

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Prime Minister Narendra Modi arrived at New Delhi on Friday morning after concluding his five-nation tour to Afghanistan, Qatar, Switzerland, the US and Mexico, beginning with his visit to Herat on Sunday, on a high note.

He was received at the Palam Airport by a delegation of Bharatiya Janata Party leaders

The Prime Minister and Afghan President Dr. Ashraf Ghani launched the Afghan-India Friendship Dam, earlier known as the Salma Dam, followed by a lunch hosted by President Ghani.

The Prime Minister, who arrived in Qatar in the evening, visited a workers camp. He interacted with the workers; he saw the medical facilities that are being provided to them, the kind of treatment facilities that are available to them.

On Monday, the Prime Minister started the day with a meeting with business leaders. After that, we went to the Emiri Diwan, where he had a meeting with the Emir of Qatar, which was followed by signing of seven agreements.

His last engagement there was a meeting with the Father Emir, which was also a very constructive, very positive meeting, said Ministry of External Affairs Spokesperson Vikas Swarup while detailing the media about his engagements in Qatar.

The Prime Minister also had a meeting with members of the Indian community at a reception hosted by the Indian Ambassador, following which he departed for Switzerland in the evening.

The next day, the Prime Minister arrived in Switzerland, where he held a meeting with the President of the Swiss Confederation, followed by a business meeting and then he left Switzerland for the United States, where he directly arrived in Washington at the invitation of President Barack Obama on Monday.

On June 6, the Prime Minister went to the Arlington Cemetery for a wreath laying, and then he attended two events at Blair House, where he was staying. The two events included a meeting with heads of American think tanks and the other was a function involving the repatriation of cultural property.

Briefing the media, Indian Ambassador to the US Arun Kumar Singh said in terms of the ceremony at Arlington, it was broadly divided in two parts. First part was laying of wreath at the Memorial of Unknown Soldier. From the US side, the US defence secretary Ashton Carter was also present and then the Prime Minister laid wreath at the memorial for those who were on the Colombia Shuttle, where as an Indian origin astronaut, Kalpana Chawla, was also involved. At the event, we had representatives from the families and relatives of Kalpana Chawla, who were present. Then other Indian origin astronaut Sunita Williams was also present on the occasion and some representatives from Nasa were present because cooperation between India and the U.S. in space has been important area of cooperation, he said.

Elaborating on an interaction with heads of number of think-tanks, he said these think-tanks that were represented there were from Brookings, Council on Foreign Relations, Centre for American Progress, The Atlantic Council, Hudson Institute, Centre for National Interest, Global Energy Capital, Carnegie Endowment, The Asia Group, Pew Research Centre, The US Institute of Peace and The Foundation for Defence of Democracies.

So this is sort of think-tanks representing a whole spectrum of opinion here and the aim of the interaction was to understand from them, how they see global trends in the coming years, the challenges and what US and India could work together. If you recall among the templates that the Prime Minister has articulated is What can US and India do together for the World? and that was really the theme, said Singh, adding that it was in that framework that different current global issues were discussed in a medium and longer term perspective and we looked at opportunities and ways for us to be able to work together.

Now, in terms of the ceremony for returning of a number of cultural artefacts, 12 pieces were identified as being ready to be handed back to the government and people of India, said Singh.

These are significant because some of them date back to a thousand years, from the period of the Chola Dynasty. Some of them date back to more than two thousand years, some terracotta pieces and others. So some very significant items have been handed over to us and of course now they will be repatriated to India, he added.

On June 7, Prime Minister Modi held a meeting with President Barack Obama, followed by a lunch that President Obama hosted for him.

In the evening, the Prime Minister met business leaders in the US and addressed the US-India Business Council. Between the two, between the Presidents meeting and the business meeting at the end of the day, Defence Secretary Ashton Carter called on the Prime Minister.

Marking their third major bilateral summit, the Prime Minister and the President reviewed the deepening strategic partnership between the United States and India. They pledged to pursue new opportunities to bolster economic growth and sustainable development, promote peace and security at home and around the world, strengthen inclusive, democratic governance and respect for universal human rights, and provide global leadership on issues of shared interest.

The leaders welcomed the significant progress made in bilateral relations between India and the United States during their tenure, in accordance with the roadmaps set out in the Joint Statements issued during Prime Minister Modis visit to the United States in September 2014 and President Obamas visit to India in January 2015.

The leaders affirmed the increasing convergence in their strategic perspectives and emphasised the need to remain closely invested in each others security and prosperity.

On June 8, the Prime Minister devoted the forenoon to the US Congress, meeting the Speaker, the Congressional leadership, and delivering an address to the joint meeting of the US Congress.

It was followed by a lunch hosted by the Speaker in honour of the Prime Minister and a reception jointly hosted by the House and Senate Committees on Foreign Relations and the India Caucus.

In the afternoon, the Prime Minister took off to Mexico City, where he had a meeting with President Enrique Pena Nieto.

During their meeting, President Enrique Pena Nieto and Prime Minister Modi recognised the opportunities to define the path of the India-Mexico Privileged Partnership for the 21st Century that allows the growth of bilateral relations in economic field, in science and technology and in the most important issues of the global agenda reflecting a broad convergence of long-term political, economic and strategic goals.

President Enrique Pena Nieto elaborated on the structural reforms undertaken in Mexico to promote economic growth and development. On his part, Prime Minister Modi highlighted the initiatives undertaken by his Government for the economic growth and the improvement of standard of living of the people.

Later, the Prime Minister attended a dinner hosted by President Enrique Pena Nieto and after the dinner, the Prime Minister took off from Mexico to return to India en route Frankfurt, Germany. (ANI)
Union home minister Rajnath Singh on Friday deflected a question about the BJPs plan to project him as its chief ministerial candidate in next years assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh saying there was no dearth of deserving leaders in the party.

In any case, this is a hypothetical question. The party has several capable leaders who can fit the bill, Singh told reporters on the sidelines of an event at Charbagh Railway Station in the state capital.

Singhs comment comes amid reports that he might be given a key role in the BJPs campaign for the crucial Uttar Pradesh polls although the party has not spelt out its plans to project anyone as its CM candidate.

Posters put up by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of its party leaders in the state show Singh, who was the BJP chief minister from October 2000 to March 2002 when the saffron party was at the helm in UP, prominently  an indication perhaps of the role he would play in the poll campaign.

Speculations over the partys decision about its probable chief ministerial nominee have gained momentum in the wake of BJPs national executive committee meeting scheduled to take place in Allahabad on June 12. Prime Minister Narendra Modi would also be present on the occasion.

State BJP chief Keshav Maurya tried to play down the issue saying that the partys face in the UP polls would be its symbol. People will vote for Kamal (Lotus), he said referring to the official party symbol.

Singh has attended multiple rallies both alone and along with Modi and party chief Amit Shah, as well as independently, like his public meeting in Mau on Thursday.

Sources in the state BJP are of the view that Singh would play a lead role in the campaign even if he is not projected as the CM candidate by the party.

By projecting a Thakur (Singh), the party may alienate Brahmins and hence the dilemma within the BJP continues, feel observers.

Ever since it scored a victory in Assam by projecting Sarbananda Sonowal as its CM candidate, a debate has been going on within the BJP whether it should adopt a similar strategy for UP as well.

The Bihar debacle where the party did not project anyone as the CM candidate is being given as an example by those in favour of party declaring its nominee ahead of the UP polls.

Speculation is also rife that Union human resource development minister Smriti Irani, party MPs Varun Gandhi and Yogi Adityanath could be named as BJPs chief ministerial candidate for state elections.

The state has an assembly comprising 403 seats and a party/alliance has to win 202 seats to form the government.
As 27 Rajya Sabha seats from seven states go to elections on Saturday, a close finish is expected in at least four states where independent candidates have jumped into the fray, jeopardising the established poll arithmetic.

Altogether, 58 Rajya Sabha seats fell vacant from 16 states over the past two months. Of these seats, 31 candidates have already won unopposed and their results will be formally announced, along with the 27 seats, on Saturday.

This round of biennial polls is likely to see the strength of the NDA government marginally increase in the Upper House by one seat at the expense of the Congress and its supporters. However, this will not change the ruling dispensations minority status in Rajya Sabha.

In states like Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh, the BJP is backing independent candidates in order to rob the Congress from winning seats, leading to a keen contest this time .

Read | RS election: Lunch and dinner diplomacy in Cong to keep flock together

Read | RS election: 3 court judgments give boost to Cong prospects in MP

The biennial polls have also been marred by the sting operations showing alleged vote trading in Karnataka, where four seats will see elections on Saturday. The Congress is set to win two of these, the BJP is sure of bagging one, but the last seat is up for grabs with former Prime Minister HD Deve Gowdas party, the Janata Dal (Secular) also trying to win it.

The Election Commission (EC) had sought reports from the state poll panel but finally allowed elections to go on as it didnt find sufficient material in the sting operation footage to establish graft and either call off or defer the polls.

Uttar Pradesh has the most number of seats 11 but the last-minute entry of Preeti Mahapatra as the 12th candidate has turned it into a keen contest. Mahapatra is the wife of an Odiya builder based in Mumbai.

The list of high profile candidates contesting the polls includes former law minister Kapil Sibal from Uttar Pradesh and two other former UPA ministers, Jairam Ramesh and Oscar Fernandes.

The fight for the lone seat in Uttarakhand also assumes significance as it will show if the Congress is able to keep its house in order after suffering a rebellion in the state. The wafer-thin majority of the ruling Congress in the hill state can come under pressure if the

BJP is able to break its rivals ranks and get its candidate a Rajya Sabha berth.

The arrest warrants against two congress legislators - Nirmala Devi and Devendra Singh has spiced up the scenario of the biennial election for two Rajya Sabha seats of Jharkhand in which the ruling and the opposition parties are locked in a see-saw battle.
The Supreme Court on Friday stayed a Bar Council of India (BCI) resolution requiring Advocates-on-Record (AoRs) to get their professional credentials checked as part of an ongoing verification drive to weed out fake lawyers.

An advocate can become an AoR only after clearing a qualifying examination conducted by the SC and is entitled sign petitions and documents filed in the apex court.

The BCI  which regulates legal profession and education in India -- had done away with a clause that exempted AoRs from filling up a verification form under the BCIs Certificate of Practice Rules, 2015.

AoRs opposed the BCI resolution mainly on the ground that they were made AoRs by the SC and their details were available on the top courts website.

No effect should be given to the (BCI) resolution. Let the matter be heard on June 30, a vacation bench of justice PC Ghose and justice Amitava Roy said. It allowed the Supreme Court Advocate-on-Record Association (SCAORA) to be a party to the ongoing proceedings on the issue.

The bench asked the BCI counsel as to how it was empowered to amend the rules framed under the law by simply passing a resolution. Can you (BCI) amend the rules by way of a resolution? it asked.

However, the bench left it to be decided after the summer vacation.

The BCIs verification drive has been challenged in various high courts across the country. The SCAORA had on Thursday moved the SC seeking urgent hearing of its plea that its members should not be subjected to the BCI verification drive as their records were already with the court. It contended the BCI had a practice not to subject designated senior advocates and AoRs to verification.

It said designated senior advocates and AORs were earlier exempted from the verification process but the BCI had last year amended rules and brought AORs within the purview of verification.

Last year, the BCI amended its rules for verification process to weed out fake advocates among over 15 lakh practising lawyers in India. BCI Certificate and Place of Practice (Verification) Rules 2015 make it mandatory for all lawyers to register afresh in a new format where they have to compulsorily submit all educational certificates.
A navy sailor and a civilian died from inhaling toxic gas that leaked during maintenance work on the INS Vikramaditya aircraft carrier at Karwar in Karnataka, a defence spokesperson said late on Friday.

Two others who also inhaled the gas were taken to the Naval Hospital and are stable, officials said, adding that inquiry had been ordered into the incident.

According to the navy, the mishap took place at about 5 pm on Friday while the Russian-made ship was undergoing repairs at Karwar.

Read | Navy may have itself to blame for series of recent accidents

Rakesh Kumar, Shipwright Artificer Class 4, and Mohandas Kolambkar, an employee of Royal Marine were the two who succumbed to the toxic fumes.

The next of kin of the deceased have been informed. The condition of the other two personnel is stable, a navy officer said.

Authorities have also taken action to ensure the compartment and area on the ship were safe.

Commissioned in 2013, INS Vikramaditya is Indias largest aircraft carrier and is equipped with a variety of integral weapons and sensors. It had been under maintenance repair since June 1.

The latest deaths adds to a series of accidents that have plagued the Navy in recent years. Such has been the spate that chief Admiral DK Joshi resigned from the top post in 2014 owing to moral responsibility.

Read | Was firm on taking responsibility for Navy mishaps

In 2013, one of the navys Russian-made diesel-powered submarines, the INS Sindhurakshak, caught fire after an explosion and sank at its home port in Mumbai, killing all 18 sailors on board.
The Bombay high court came down heavily on the censor board on Friday, saying it was overly critical of a controversial drug-themed film, but also asked its producers to delete a potentially offensive scene and tone down expletives.

A bench of judges SC Dharmadhikari and Shalini Phansalkar-Joshi observed that the Shahid Kapoor-starrer, Udta Punjab, did not prima facie appear to glorify drug abuse, one of the main contentions of the censor board seeking several cuts to the film co-produced by Bollywood showman Anurag Kashyap.

If the movie is glorifying use of drugs then ban the entire movie, the court said.

Read | Radical changes in film certification to be announced soon: Jaitley

The bench said it will pass an order on Monday on the other cuts suggested by the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) which has triggered a debate on creative freedom amid allegations of political interference.

Assembly elections are due in Punjab early next year and the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and Congress have accused the BJP of influencing the censor board to hide the menace of drug abuse that has allegedly crippled a generation in the state. The BJP is a partner of the Shiromani Akali Dal in Punjabs ruling alliance.

Anurag Kashyaps Phantom Pictures and Balaji Motion Pictures have co-produced Abhishek Choubeys Udta Punjab.

The controversy has seen almost all of Bollywood come out to oppose the notoriously sensitive censor board, which blocked the release of a toned-down version of Fifty Shades of Grey last year and deemed two James Bond kissing scenes unsuitable for an Indian audience.

Everybody has a choice. Let (the) people decide whether a movie is good or badHandover the remote to peoplelet them decide what to watch and when to switch off, whether it is television or cinema, the Bombay high court judges said.

If they (film producers) produce bad movies, they will suffer in the long run.

At the same time, the judges asked the producers Phantom Films to delete a scene showing the lead character urinating in public and also told him to tone down expletives and vulgar scenes.

Here is the complete list of cuts demanded by the CBFC (Reader discretion advised)

The court was critical of the CBFCs direction to delete any reference to Punjab, saying the crux of the film will be lost.

If the idea of the maker is to be critical of a place or person then that place or person will have to be shown, the bench said.

But the judges agreed with the boards suggestion of deleting a scene where a character is shown scratching a body part in a graphic manner.

Read | How can a Punjab signboard pose threat to India? Bombay HC asks CBFC

This need not be shown in any form. Similarly, for all the cuss words used, a disclaimer can be displayed. Is it really necessary for a creative person to rely on expletives? You have to tone it down a bit, justice Dharmadhikari said.

The judges also felt that movies do not attract crowds for their use of abusive language but the long lasting creative impact they make.

In this age only those movies having a strong content and script line do well and just using expletives will not work for the movie, and hence the CBFC need not be overly critical.
In June 1893, the then prime minister of the United Kingdom claimed that many in Punjab were addicted to opium and the habit wasnt considered degrading. In Punjab and other provinces, opium is consumed by the flower of the population. Many in those provinces say they cannot do without it, William Ewart Gladstone told the House of Commons.

Roughly 130 years have passed since but there is still little research on Punjabs drug problem to back its image as a state filled with addicts.

Read: A list of all 94 cuts CBFC demanded in Udta Punjab

As controversy rages over Shahid Kapoor-starrer Udta Punjab, experts say research on the subject is patchy and no study spells out the extent of the scourge or answers the crucial question: Why Punjabis take more drugs than others, if they do.

Most research is limited either by sample size, range of drugs considered or districts covered and the results are akin to the travails of the proverbial four blind men: A bit of the truth but not the whole truth.

Read | Sukhbir wrong: Punjab indeed has a drug problem, worse than India, world

One of the earliest posters of Udta Punjab. The film is co-produced by Ekta Kapoors Balaji Motion Pictures and Anurag Kashyaps Phantom Pictures.

So are the makers of Udta Punjab mistaken in saying 70% of the state is hooked onto drugs? The answer, it turns out, is fuzzy.

Read| How can a Punjab board pose threat to India: Bombay HC asks CBFC

Director Abhishek Chaubey and team arent the first to make the claim. In 2012, Congress Rahul Gandhi told an assembly poll rally that seven out of 10 young people in the state were addicts.

Anurag Kashyap during a press conference organised by IFTDA (Indian Film and Television Directors Association) on Udta Punjab in Mumbai. (AFP)

The ruling Shiromani Akali Dal pounced on the statement and demanded to see its source. But ironically, the trigger for Gandhis remarks may have been a botched state government affidavit.

In May 2009, the department of social security told the Punjab and Haryana high court that 67% of rural households in the state had at least one addict. The affidavit attributed the calculation to a 2006 study by RS Sandhu of Amritsars Guru Nanak Dev University.

Read | Punjabs struggle with drugs

But Sandhus study said something completely different, arguing that 73% of addicts were between 16 and 35 years. His sample size included 150 addicts each in Amritsar, Jalandhar, Bathinda and Patiala districts.

Shahid Kapoor plays a rockstar who is a drug addict in Udta Punjab.

In 2010, a government study found that a majority of drug abusers belonged to the 16-35 year age group (76%), including 3% from the 6-10 year age group.

The research was conducted in the border districts of Amritsar, Tarn Taran, Gurdaspur and Ferozpur, based on interviews with over 1,500 drug dependents, 40 peddlers, chemists and community leaders.

This year, a study by Delhis All India Institute of Medical Sciences attempted probably for the first time to find out the extent of the problem.

Watch Shahid Kapoor in the title track of Udta Punjab

The AIIMS study counted 230,000 opioid-dependent people in Punjab with most of the addicts in their 20s and early 30s. But the study was limited by the range of drugs covered.

Also read I Udta Punjab: Facts, figures and falsehoods of states drug problem

Follow @htPunjab on Twitter for more

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When Union home minister Rajnath Singh recently spoke about the end of BJPs 14-year-long exile from the state in 2017 at the Saharanpur rally, not many were convinced as they had witnessed the decimation of national parties by the two dominant regional forces in the assembly elections.

But the partys new game plan to present itself as the only alternative to the Samajwadi Party government, revealed by national president Amit Shah, seems to have worked. The BJP is back in reckoning and those who dismissed it as out of the race have now forecast a triangular contest between the SP, Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) and BJP. And the renewed belligerence has drowned voices demanding parties project a chief ministerial face, at least for now.

Political analyst Dr Badri Narain said, BJP has consolidated its position among non-Yadav OBCs and a section of MBCs. However, as of today, Mayawati remains a frontrunner. Senior politician Om Prakash Sharma from West UP and Rajesh Singh from the east agreed. Still, BJPs 267+ mission seems to be a tall task, considering the 47 seats it won in 2012.

Amidst rising political temperatures in the state, the partys multi-pronged strategy is clear. First, weaken the main rivals, SP and BSP, by highlighting their weaknesses. Placards at Saharanpur read, No goonda raj, no corruption in UP. And BJP has a different strategy for both the regional parties.

Chief minister Akhilesh Yadavs non-controversial image and focus on development had substantially improved the sagging image of a fiefdom-plagued government. The BJPs plan is to hammer on his sensitive nerve - law and order. So far, Mayawati, with an image of an iron lady, had been the only one to gain from SPs weakness.

On the other hand, BJP is striking at the very roots of the BSPs vote base by poaching Mayawatis Dalit vote bank. Besides winning over prominent Dalit faces from the BSP, the BJP leadership is also organising Dalit conventions. But, according to Dr Narain, it may not pay electoral dividends.

However, reports from west UP suggest the changing mood of young Dalits, who have been lured to RSS shakhas in a big way.

The second is the polarisation of the state on communal lines with separate labs operating in different regions, starting from an already polarised west UP, where the latest forensic report escalated the beef row with the Bisada panchayat giving a 20-day ultimatum to the state government to book Mohammad Ikhlaqs family.

Notwithstanding the academic debate on freedom to eat the food of choice, cow remains a soft spot in many Hindu homes in the countryside.

Moving from West to East, its Ayodhya .The temple cauldron is kept simmering by the BJP leadership, aiding in polarisation of the area often described as the Muslim belly of the state. Move ahead and one reaches communally sensitive Gorakhpur, where Mahant Adityanath is being projected as the Rama of UP as well as BJPs CM face. Political expert Rajesh Singh feels the BJP can turn the tables on BSP in its eastern stronghold by projecting Adityanath as the CM candidate.

BJPs other strategies include energising its own rank and file, stitching an alliance of non-aligned castes, and projecting PM Narendra Modis development model. For the first time, BJPs national convention will be held in Allahabad -- the citadel of Nehru-Gandhi - suiting their plan for a Congress-mukt India.

Apparently the BJP is banking on the support of the Dalits, Kurmis, Brahmins, Thakurs and Jats, reflected in the appointments of regional heads by UP chief Keshav Maurya.

As for the cadre, Shah has already started booth-level dialogues and by the time the partys parliamentary board meets to decide candidates, he would have interacted with more than a lakh booth-level workers.
The Uttarakhand government has sent a proposal to Union home ministry to withdraw picturesque Harshil along the India-China border from the protected-area regime, a move that is expected to boost tourist inflow.

Standing at an altitude of 2,620 meters in Uttarkashi district, this Himalayan town surrounded by snow-capped mountains attracts domestic and overseas tourists round the year. Known for its breathtaking beauty and apple orchards, it is also a favourite among mountaineers, hikers and trekkers.

Bollywood showman Raj Kapoor catapulted Harshil to national fame, shooting his 1985 blockbuster Ram Teri Ganga Maili in the areas faultless natural surroundings.

But because of the international boundary and a military cantonment in the area, people need an inner-line permit to go to the place.

Besides, movement of foreign tourists is restricted and they cannot stay overnight at the military area in Harshi town. There is no such restriction in the area under the civil administration.

(HT Photo)

The state government wants the restrictions limited to 50 metres from the cantonment so that foreigners get more leg room in Harshil. They cannot anyway enter or go too close to a defence post, according to a 1946 law.

State tourism principal secretary Umakant Panwar said this proposal was sent to the Centre.

Foreigners had unlimited access in Uttarkashi district until the 1962 India-China war that forced the government to put Harshil under the restricted areas list and seal another border area, Nelong valley whose magnificent landscape is strikingly similar to that of Ladakh.

Nelong valley was thrown open last year for Indians. But people can go there in limited numbers after acquiring an inner-line permit from the administration.

A senior BJP leader from Uttarkashi said locals were confused by the opaque policy on foreign tourists visiting Harshil.

We requested minister of state for home Kiren Rijjiu to remove Harshil from the protected zone. He agreed and this is how the official communication started, said Lokendra Bisht.

Opening the door for foreigners will boost tourism and international branding of the region.

(HT Photo)

Among its many haunts, a must-visit in Harshil is the cottage of Pahari Wilson or Raja Wilson  the endearing local name for British adventurer Frederick E

Wilson, an army deserter from the mid-19th century who introduced apples and timber trade to this sleepy Himalayan nook.

Additional district magistrate of Uttarkashi, Ashok Kumar Pande, said ground reports from intelligence units and tourism department favoured unrestricted

entry of foreigners into Harshil.

Also, there is a demand for removal of inner-line permits for Nelong valley but the idea was dropped considering the strategic importance of the place and proximity with the international border, he said on Thursday.

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Was an Indian home ministry delegation tricked and kept stranded in Pakistan as a suicide squad began its attack in Mumbai on the night of November 26, 2008?

A delegation led by then Union home secretary Madhukar Gupta went to Islamabad for home secretary-level talks with his counterpart as part of the bilateral composite dialogue process.

The talks were held on November 25, 2008. Gupta also wanted to meet Pakistans interior minister but was told that he was out of town and a meeting would be possible only on November 26. Thus, the trip was extended by a day. After Guptas meeting, the Pakistanis took the delegation to Murree in the evening where they learnt about the attack.

Read: India-Pak in touch? Basits suspension of talks may be false alarm

Former Intelligence Bureau special director Rajinder Kumar, who was part of the delegation, said it was quite possible that Pakistani did it deliberately. In hindsight, I can say it is quite possible, said Kumar.

According to Gupta, the bigger issue here is Pakistans duplicity.

The attack happened when an Indian delegation on their soil was trying to normalise relations between the two countries, he said, adding that he received and made many calls from Murree after learning about the terror strike. The delegation returned to India on November 27.
Indias Prime Minister is winning accolades abroad, the countrys decades-long nuclear outlier status might be about to end and a good monsoon is likely to boost the economy. But everyone is talking about a Bollywood movie.

The controversy surrounding Udta Punjab has dominated headlines since it was first leaked that the censor board was seeking multiple cuts in the film that revolves around the northern states drug problem.

In the days that have followed, many Bollywood stars have thrown their weight behind the makers of the film, the high court has got involved and the censor board appears to be losing the public perception game.

But two things are clear from the row that has even prompted finance minister Arun Jaitley to promise radical changes in the certification process.

One, over two years after PM Narendra Modis minimum government, maximum governance pledge, many things in India are still relics of the socialist-era bureaucratic red tape.

Read: Artists, industry veterans to Udta Punjabs defence

The row around Udta Punjab and the censor boards claims of the movie defaming Punjabis is reminiscent of the bans on movies such as Aandhi and Bandit Queen.

Such movies ran into trouble either for their violent content and expletives (Bandit Queen), alleged poor portrayal of powerful politicians (Aandhi) or blasphemous relationships (Fire).

One of the cornerstones of Modis electoral campaign that captivated the youth was a clean break from such arbitrary decision making, often at the behest of political masters.

The pledge of minimum government promised the administration will withdraw from private lives and keep itself occupied in critical areas of public policy and governance.

Read: Udta Punjab did not seem to be glorifying use of drugs: Bombay HC

But the experience of the last two years has indicated the government increasingly intruding into matters of food, and now culture.

In television interviews, censor board chief Pahlaj Nihalani said he is proud to be a chamcha of the prime minister and has asked for MP, MLA, election to be deleted  surely this is the kind of behavior a modern minimal government doesnt want projected?

The second inference from the Udta Punjab row is that the authorities are still painfully warped in a pre-internet age where the power to disseminate information was centralized.

The power of the web may be exploited by the PM and his ministers but evidently the censor board thinks a thousand uncut versions of Udta Punjab wont flood YouTube the moment the movie is sniped.

The social media era has democratized information sharing even erstwhile powerful media organisations  accustomed to making decisions about what gets read  have bowed to the reach of the internet. The decision is no longer about what people read but where they read it.

In such a milieu, it is foolhardy for Nihalani to think any cuts on Udta Punjab wont be vigorously contested or leaked online. Congress Amarinder Singh has already declared he will release uncut prints of the film  he may be the first of a few thousand YouTube videos and torrent links that will ensure no expletive will get bleeped.

The censor board probably understands this. Its arguments in the Bombay high court increasingly pivoted on how vulgar the scenes were, how offensive the songs and how defamatory the dialogues.

Read: How high is Punjab? No one really knows

But thanks to the boards efforts, tens of thousands of people now know the dialogues and details of every expletive the authorities wanted to bleep out  they may even become hip in a few months.

Clearly, little has been learnt from the botched censorship experiences in the past. Fire was first withdrawn and later re-released without cuts  and went on to become a landmark film in portraying lesbian relationships. The makers of last years Angry Indian Goddesses prompting released online every scene sniped by the board.

More famously, the audience of the controversial documentary, Indias Daughter, must have mushroomed manifold after the government banned it  ensuring everyone watched it when it was leaked online.

It is increasingly evident that any effort to choke movies almost inevitably results in ballooning interest. In that sense, the censor board has already lost the battle. In whichever form Udta Punjab releases, thousands will flock to the theatres and an equal number will watch it online. Moreover, what might have been a forgettable film will be guaranteed a place in posterity.

(The author tweets at @dhrubo127. Views expressed are personal)

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With as many as 11 people from Bengal attempting to summit Mount Everest and two more attempting Lhotse and Doulagiri, 2016 was set to become a memorable mountaineering year for the state.

Halfway through the year, 2016 has become memorable, but for all the wrong reasons.

Along with the number of successful summit attempts, the death rate has become an important statistic of the worlds highest mountain. And Bengal has already lost four of its mountaineers, with a very close call for a fifth.

Experienced climbers feel that the expedition has become about bragging rights and the overnight celebrity status for many who can afford the Rs 17-20 lakh it costs to conquer the summit.

Three of Bengals climbers died on the Everest and one on Dhaulagiri within a week last month. Those who managed to returned after summiting have been compelled to deeply introspect whats going wrong.

Read | On Everest expedition, three climbers from Bengal go missing

Subhas Pal, who managed to reach the summit, died on his way back. His body was retrieved after a long search. Gautam Ghosh and Paresh Nath were not that fortunate, and their bodies remain snowed in on the menacing face of the mountain.

Sunita Hazra was luckier than the three of them. Down on oxygen supply and suffering altitude sickness, Hazra was on the edge of losing consciousness when a British climber rescued her. Leslie Binns, a former serviceman, had given up on his Everest conquest to help Hazra down.

Read | Metres away from Mt Everest summit, Briton turns around to save Bengali woman

The circumstances, in general, are brutal, and experts climbers feel that these instances were entirely due to a lack of physical fitness.

Debasis Biswas, who has climbed Everest, Kanchenjunga, Dhaulagiri, Makalu and Manslu (all above 8000 m) and was present at the base camp during the mishap on Everest last month, said: Gautam, Subhash, Paresh and Sunita went to the Everest without preparing themselves before the expedition. Even two or three days before the expedition they were not sure if they would be able to gather enough funds. When they should have been engaged in physical fitness activities, they were busy collecting funds. This may be the one of the causes of their death.

Rudraprasad Halder, who climbed Everest on May 22, said the team of four climbers comprising Gautam, Sunita, Paresh and Subhas were very slow during their ascent from base camp. They even reached Camp I at least four hours later than the scheduled time. Throughout the ascent they were trailing behind, said Haldar.

Many climbers from Bengal point out that before the final ascent for the summit from base camp climbers must get acclimatized to the altitude.

The usual trail is something like this: People climb to Camp I and spend a day and again climb down to the base camp. On the next day, they climb to Camp 2 to store essential items such as tent, sleeping bag and oxygen cylinder. After spending a day, they again climb down to the base camp. On the next day they climb to Camp 3, stay there for a day and climb down to base camp.

The constant up and down climbing is meant to acclimatise one to the thin air and physical rigours, which ultimately ensure your reach the summit and back down. It also doubles up as a way to stock on vital gear and reserves.

But Gautam, Sunita, Paresh and Subhash went up to Camp 2 and climbed down to base camp. None of them were seen making any attempt to reach Camp 3 by crossing the deadly Khumbhu ice fall. They simply sat idle for 15 days at the base camp before leaving for the final climb, said Haldar.

As a result, the four climbers were found exhausted when they started for Camp 1 from the base camp during the final mission. They reached Camp 1 at least five hours late. During the climb from the Camp 4 to the summit, they were extremely exhausted. They had to spend 12 hours more at Camp 4 to take rest. This depleted their oxygen reserves.

Taking the right decision at the right moment is crucial while climbing at 8,000 meters. To be precise, taking the decision to quit at the right moment is the key to safe return. You have to keep track of oxygen supply in accordance with climbing speed. Many climbers do not quit even when they start running out of oxygen. They dont want to accept failure, said Debraj Dutta, who climbed the Everest on May 19.

Timing is also crucial. Subhash Pal reached the Everest summit at around 1.30 pm. He should have descended to Camp 4 by that time. This delay turned fatal. He lost a lot of energy while descending. He didnt even have the strength to stand up, said Debasis Biswas.

Lack of experience is another major factor leading to fatalities. Subhash, Gautam, Sunita and Paresh were aware of their poor physical condition when they left Camp 1. They had very little strength by the time they reached Camp 4. The delay exhausted their oxygen supply and they didnt have extra cylinders, said Haldar.

Rajib, on the other hand, wanted more oxygen after reaching Camp 3 on Dhaulagiri. He asked Tashi Sherpa to climb down to base camp and bring more cylinders. Tashi Sherpa returned after three days.

Spending three days in that altitude is suicidal. I dont know what Rajib ate. A vegetarian and light eater, Rajib was complaining of weakness. On the peak he became snow blind and eventually collapsed, said Biswas.

Experienced climbers now feel that only those who have summited mountains at 6,000m at least five times in the last five years should attempt to summit at 8,000m.

The West Bengal state government has also entrusted two experts to draw up a list of criteria for its state mountaineers to adhere to when attempting to scale any mountain above 8,000m.

Read | State govt clearance must for Bengal Everest climbers

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Resident doctors of seven medical colleges across the state called off their strike on Thursday evening after talks with health minister Rajendra Rathore.

The doctors were on strike since May 30 seeking cancellation of the practice to send exam papers outside the state for checking. Around 4,000 resident doctors of seven medical colleges in Jaipur, Jodhpur, Ajmer, Bikaner, Udaipur, Kota and Jhalawar had stayed away from work that had hit medical services and caused inconvenience to patients.

Jaipur Association of Resident Doctors (JARD) vice president Dr Akash Mathur told reporters: Today 20-point Programme (committee) vice-chairman Dr Digambar Singh mediated between the resident doctors and health minister Rajendra Rathore and cleared the communication gap. The talks were held in a healthy atmosphere after which we decided to call off the strike. All striking resident doctors of seven government medical colleges will join their duties from 8pm on Thursday.

There was a communication gap between the government and resident doctors, which has been clarified, Dr Singh told HT.

Acting tough on the agitating doctors, the state government on May 31 had asked medical colleges to suspend or terminate or relieve the resident doctors. A total 3,724 striking doctors were removed from their services, while 1,371 new doctors were given appointment. On June 3, the government formed a seven-member committee to hold talks with the striking doctors, but it remained inconclusive.
In the wake of a controversy over the Union environment ministrys nod to killing nilgais (blue bulls) in Bihar to save crops, the Bengal government has sought the Centres approval to catch wild elephants to protect farmlands and people.

This is to put a lid on the population of tuskers. According to our information, there are at least 500-600 elephants roaming free in different areas of Bengal. We are hopeful that the Centre will agree to our proposal, state forest minister Binay Krishna Barman said.

Elephants usually stray into heavily-populated areas in the state, damaging crops and claiming human lives. A few days ago, a tusker had walked inside the Burdwan University campus, though no lives were lost in the incident. Last year, an elephant had attacked people in Siliguri.

The Bengal governments move comes in the wake of a row over the Bihar government hiring professional hunters to gun down over 200 Nilgais in less than a week with the Union environment ministrys approval.

On Thursday, Union minister Maneka Gandhi, an animal welfare activist in her own right, came out all guns blazing against environment minister Prakash Javadekar, accusing him of indiscriminately killing wildlife.

In Bengal, they (environment ministry) have permitted the killing of elephants, in Himachal they have ordered killing of monkeys, and in Goa they gave permission to kill peacocks, Maneka said.

Javadekar said the permission to kill wildlife was targeted, scientifically safe and legal if requested by local authorities.
The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on Friday arrested rightwing group Sanatan Sanstha and Hindu Janjagriti Samiti activist Dr Virendra Tawade in connection with Narendra Dabholkar murder case, almost three years after the anti-superstition crusader was shot dead in Pune.

Tawade was arrested from his residence at Panvel at around 8.30pm, a CBI official said on request for anonymity. Tawade is one of the conspirator in the Dabholkar murder, the official said.

Dhabolkars son Hamid confirmed about the arrest saying the investigating agency informed him about the development in the night. The CBI officials have informed me about Tawades arrest, said Hamid.

Tawade will be produced in the local court at Pune on Saturday.

Read: CBI seeks Scotland Yard probe in killings of three rationalists

The arrest has come eight days after CBI searched the residences of Tawade and another Sanatan Sanstha activist Sarang Akolkar. During the arrest, CBI recovered certain documents and mobile numbers, emails, among other materials which were later scrutinized.

Sources said, CBI noticed that Tawade and Akolkar were in touch with each other through email. Akolkar, 35, has been absconding ever since his name cropped up in the Madgaon blasts in 2009. There were 11 suspects in the blasts, of which six were acquitted by a Goa court, while others, including Akolkar, remain absconding.

Dr Tawade resides in the vicinity of Sanatan ashram at Panvel and treats activists of rightwing group, sources said.

Read: Dabholkar, Pansare and Kalburgi shot with same gun?

Dabholkar, a rationalist and anti-superstition activist, was shot dead on August 20, 2013, while returning home from his morning walk by two unidentified persons on a bike in Pune.

Reacting to arrest, Hamid Dhabolkar welcomed the move but said had it happened earlier perhaps Govind Pansare and MM Kalburgis life could have been saved.

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Mumbai



Senior BJP leader Eknath Khadse, who quit last week as Maharashtras revenue minister over allegations of graft and conflict of interest, was in Delhi on Thursday and Friday hoping to meet the BJP brass and present his case.

He was back in Mumbai on Friday afternoon, having met Union minister Nitin Gadkari. He apparently also called on party senior LK Advani and met BJP national general secretary Ramlal, a former RSS pracharak, but there was no confirmation from Khadse.

Sources close to Khadse clarified that he had not sought any appointment to meet prime minister Narendra Modi or party president Amit Shah.

The senior leader from Maharashtra apparently wanted to put forward his version before the partys national executive in Allahabad and the state executive later in Pune.

Earlier, Gadkari had refused to intervene in Khadses resignation matter with the decision being taken by the top leadership following a report submitted by chief minister Devendra Fadnavis on the land deal in Bhosari (Pune) that involved the senior ministers immediate family. The RSS leadership in Nagpur had also refused to give Khadse an audience on the issue earlier.

Khadse, the partys Other Backward Class (OBC) face in Maharashtra, is hoping for a political comeback but rehabilitation looks tough. Much depends on the nature of inquiry promised by Fadnavis at Khadses insistence into charges against him as well as the upcoming cabinet reshuffle in Maharashtra.

If an inquiry is set up under the Commission of Inquiry Act as demanded by activists, Khadse may have to remain in political exile for a longer time.

Similarly, Fadnavis is expected to rejig his cabinet team in such a way as to push other younger OBC leaders to the fore, besides giving berths to leaders from Khadses home turf in North Maharashtra. For instance, minister of state for home (rural), Ram Shinde, also an OBC, is expected to get a promotion while North Maharashtra may get two ministerial berths.

Late in the evening, Khadse tweeted that his visit to Delhi was personal.

Visited Delhi yesterday, Agenda was personal and not official. I request all not to politicize it, he said on Twitter.

I Have trust and belief in ATS n NIA They will come up with the real truth, he added.

.
State industries minister Subhash Desai has ordered the Maharashtra Industrial Development Corporation (MIDC) to pull up its socks following media reports of two allegedly fraudulent attempts by relatives of high-profile government officials to buy land that it has already acquired. Admitting there are loopholes in MIDCs administrative procedures, Desai said he has ordered the corporation to quickly rectify lapses in the documentation of its properties.

Desai said the recent cases of suspected fraud, involving the wife and son-in-law of former BJP minister Eknath Khadse and the son of senior Indian Police Service (IPS) officer Dhananjay Kamlakar, were due to procedural loopholes. Alleged irregularities in the purchase of three acres of MIDC land in Bhosari by Khadses wife Mandakini and son-in-law Girish Chaudhry, and that of a 7.64-hectare plot in Ranjangaon by Kamalakars son and others, have exposed the large-scale misuse of MIDCs records. MIDC officials alleged that in both cases, unfair advantage was taken by private parties while selling the land MIDC had already acquired.

For instance, once MIDC acquires a private plot, it must make sure that the 7/12 extract, the official document to record ownership, reflects the MIDCs ownership. Currently, this isnt happening as swiftly as it should be, Desai said.

Officials in the industries department confirmed that a lack of coordination between MIDC and revenue department officials means that property records are often not updated even after the MIDC acquires a property, which gives land-grabbers a window of opportunity. Desai said, These people trying to grab our land are smart people and know of such loopholes. Hence, MIDC needs to start being more alert and review the paperwork for all acquired lands to check if they have been updated correctly.

Desai had earlier ordered a probe into the deal involving Kamlakars son in MIDC Ranjangaon. On Friday, he reiterated that prima facie, the transaction is completely illegal. He added, We had acquired it, paid compensation and even published the transaction in the gazette. How can anyone buy the land then?

MIDC regional manager Ajinkya Deshmukh said, We have asked our surveyors to check and update the records of plots in MIDCs possession. We want to ensure that MIDCs ownership is clearly indicated on 7/12 extracts to prevent them being used for illegal transactions.

Another MIDC official told HT that process of paying compensation will be expedited in the next few days to prevent the MIDCs land acquisitions from lapsing. According to a 1995 government resolution, if the owner of a plot is not compensated within two years, the acquisition is considered to have lapsed.

Once considered rich agricultural land, the area surrounding Pune has been earmarked for industrial use by the government. To set up industries there, MIDC acquired large tracts of land by paying compensation to their original owners.
BEIJING: China on Thursday dismissed reports that claimed Beijings polices on Pakistan had changed because the state media had telecast a National Geographic documentary series episode on the 2008 Mumbai attacks that killed 164 people and left over 300 injured.

Dubbed in Chinese, the episode from the documentary, Seconds from Disaster: Mumbai Massacre showed available television footage of the attack and voice-overs talking about the alleged involvement of Pakistanbased terror groups in the coordinated multiple assaults.

The telecast prompted reports from Hong Kong and Beijing that China had apparently publicly acknowledged the role of Pakistan  its all-weather ally  in the attack for the first time.

On Friday, the ministry said there was no change in its policies, dismissing the reports.

Government spokesperson Hong Lei said after doing a background check, the ministry had found the documentary was a Chinese-dubbed American documentary.

What it said does not represent the position of the Chinese government. Chinas position on the issue of counter-terrorism remains unchanged, Hong said.

Hong did not mention Pakistan in his statement but made it clear there was no connection between its policies and assertions made in the documentary.

On November 26, 2008, terrorists attacked two luxury hotels (one of them the famous Taj Mahal Hotel), a Jewish educational center, a cafe and a train station in Mumbai, killing 166 people. They also placed pipe bombs in two taxis, which killed the drivers while driving to a hotel, an introduction to the documentary says.

Five other episodes on other incidents were also telecast on Chinese state television, including two on the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan and the Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion and oil spill.

Officially, China says it is against all forms of terrorism and will internationally cooperation in counter-terrorism.

China is among Pakistans closest economic, strategic and military ally.

For one, the $46-billion ChinaPakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) is a high-profile part of President Xi Jinpings Belt and road initiative connecting Chinas Xinjiang to Pakistans Gwadar port.

China incidentally had earlier blocked Indias attempt to get a UN ban on LeT commander Zakiur-Rehman Lakhvi, the alleged mastermind of the Mumbai terror attack.

And in March, Beijing again put a technical hold on New Delhis bid to get the UN to ban Jaish-e-Muhammad chief Masood Azhar, accused of masterminding the Pathankot terrorist attack.
HYDERABAD: The announcement by India and the US to begin preparatory work on building six nuclear reactors in India has been hailed as a milestone in strengthening ties between the two nations.

But Tuesdays declaration during Prime Minister Narendra Modis visit to Washington has fanned a fresh bout of disquiet in Ranasthalam block of Srikakulam district in Andhra Pradesh where the six reactors with total capacity of 6,000 MW are to be built.

The reactors were originally planned to be built in Gujarat, but opposition by locals over land acquisition forced the authorities to relocate the project to Andhra Pradesh.

A similar protest is now brewing at the proposed new site that is dotted with coconut groves.

Villagers likely to be displaced are demanding higher compensation while those in adjoining areas are also seeking a payout in view of the potential nuclear hazards.

To be built by the Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited (NPCIL) in technical collaboration with the US-based Westinghouse Electric, the contractual agreements between the two are expected to be concluded by June 2017.

The first two reactors will come up in the next five years and thereafter, one reactor will be built every year, GV Ramesh, Chief Project Engineer of NPCIL, told HT.

Andhra Pradesh is a power surplus state and these reactors will go to augment the national grid. But Ranasthalam locals are wary of the nuclear project, saying it threatens their future. The reactors will require 2,071 acres of land and will displace 1,983 families in five villages: Kovvada, Ramachandrapuram, Gudem, Kotapalem and Tekkali.

As with every big development project, compensation for land is the issue that is agitating the locals. According to state revenue officials, the locals will be paid roughly ` 13-14 lakh per acre. But the villagers are demanding more.

The government has offered to pay Rs 25 lakh per acre to the people who are getting displaced by the international airport coming up at Bhogapuram in the adjacent Vizianagaram district, which is hardly 20 km away. Why cant we be given the same amount? asked Rama Rao, a local resident.

Ravi Kiran of Ramachandrapuram, who is likely to lose 20 acres, insists even ` 25 lakh is not good enough. My poultry farm in the area itself fetches me ` 24 lakh a year, besides another ` 3 lakh from coconut plantation in seven acres, he said.

Suri Babu, a far mer of Kovvada, feels helpless. I have no other means of livelihood, if they take away my land. They have to pay me good compensation, he said.

Thats not all. Residents of 42 villages within a five-km radius of the proposed plant are also seeking compensation and have threatened an agitation if their demands are not met.

In anticipation of the Washington announcement, local revenue officials completed the survey for land acquisition earlier this week.

Of the total extent of land, 1,470 acres belongs to the government but was assigned to local far mers. Another 600 acres belong to private individuals, Srikakulam revenue divisional officer B Dayanidhi told HT.

The land acquisition notification will be issued soon after the completion of the social impact assessment of the project, he said.

But acquiring land is going to be easier said than done. Antinuclear activists had been protesting ever since Ranasthalam was identified by the NPCIL as an ideal site for a nuclear power project a decade ago.

There are several issues such as extent of radioactive emissions, pollution to be caused by nuclear dust, and the impact of effluents on fish and groundwater, pointed out EAS Sarma, a former union energy secretary and an important voice against nuclear power.

With resentment high among locals, such voices of opposition are set to get louder.

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An armed squad of suspected Maoists killed a man for allegedly resisting two self-styled commanders of the banned outfit from raping his wife in Aurangabad district of Bihar on Thursday night.

Awadhesh Singh Bhokta was shot seven times by an AK-47 assault rifle at Gewal Bigha village in Madanpur police station area of the district. He died on the spot.

Bhoktas wife claimed that Maoist commanders Prasadji and Nawalji had been raping her for the last one month. This was opposed by her husband, who earned his living by picking wood and making baskets.

A dozen armed Maoists raided their house on Thursday, picked up Bhokta, took him to a secluded place and shot him dead, she said.

After killing Bhokta, the Maoists escaped to forest areas leaving some leaflets. The leaflets said Bhokta was killed for being a police informer, a charge denied by Aurangabad superintendent of police (SP) Baburam.

Maoists have killed an innocent person. Their claim that Bhokta was a police informer is baseless, the SP said.

The leaflets have also threatened to teach a lesson to Aurangabad MP Sushil Kumar Singh and MLC Rajen Kumar Singh.

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On a call given by farmers rights group Kisan Sangharsh Committee (KSU) for a state-wide stir, hundreds of farmers staged a protest outside deputy commissioner (DC) offices in Amritsar and Tarn Taran, seeking debt waiver.

The protesters started gathering outside Amritsar DCs office around 11.00 am and staged a dharna at 12.30 pm. The protest lasted for more than three hours. The agitators, holding placards and banners, raised slogans against the state and the central governments. The protesters held the governments responsible for the farmers mess.

While addressing the gathering, Sarwan Singh Pandher, senior vice-president of the KSC, said like in other states, farmers under debt are committing suicide on a daily basis across Punajb. He added that agriculture was no longer profitable for farmers reeling under debt burden.

The cost of living is increasing day-by-day, but the central government is not increasing the minimum support prize (MSP) to that extent. Due to this, the farmers have to borrow loans from banks. Those farmers, who dont have enough agrarian land, are not able to clear the loans. Such situations often force them to take such extreme steps. The governments policies are responsible behind farmers suicides, he said.

The state and central governments are funding private companies, but ignoring the plight of those growing foodgrains for the entire country, said Gurbachan Singh Chabba, district president, adding, The government must waive of the debts of farmers and also implement recommendations of Swaminathan commission, whiling fixing prizes of crops.

KSU state chief leads protest in Tarn Taran

KSC state president Satnam Singh Pannu led the dharna, which was staged outside the deputy commissioners office, in Tarn Taran.

The state, as well as the Centre, is not protecting the rights of farmers who are struggling for their survival. Insincerity and insensitivity of the SAD-BJP government have worsened the situation, said Pannu.

General secretary Swinder Singh Chutala, state press secretary Harpreet Singh and Tajinderpal Singh also addressed the protesters.

The protesters also included women in large number.

In both the districts, a memorandum has been handed over to the DCs.

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Scammed investors charged at Pearls Group chairman Nirmal Singh Bhangoo and three others outside the district courts on Friday here after a hearing.

Judicial magistrate (first class) Randeep Kumar remanded Rs 45,000-crore-Ponzi-scheme accused Bhangoo, Sukhdev Singh, Gurmeet Singh, and Subrata Bhattacharya in three days of police custody in a local cheating case after Bathinda police brought them on production warrants from Delhi state, which had even sent an escort team along.

Pearls Group chairman Nirmal Singh Bhangoo (left) in police custody at the Bathinda courts on Friday. (Sanjeev Kumar/HT Photo)

Bhangoo is chairman-cum-managing director of Pearls Golden Forest (PGF) and Pearls Agrotech Corporation Limited (PACL); while Sukhdev Singh is MD of PACL; and Gurmeet Singh and Bhattacharya are group directors.

Also read I Pearls Group CMD, 3 others remanded in judicial custody

As investors got wind of their coming to the Bathinda courts, many of them reached the complex. When police failed to keep them away, they tried to take the four through the Bakshikhana exit. This is when protesters ran towards the police vehicles and came within a few feet of Bhangoo, raising slogans against him and the Punjab government. Police fear similar trouble on Monday, when the four have another court appearance.

Bathinda senior superintendent of police (SSP) Swapan Sharma said the district police would interrogate them only in a local cheating case registered on the Punjab and Haryana high court direction, since the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) was already dealing with the Ponzi scheme case.

Faridkot investor Raj Kumar had move the high court, alleging that the Pearls Group management had not returned the money he put into the PACL. Groups investors from Punjab have long been agitating under the banner of Insaaf Di Awaaz (voice of justice) Organisation to recover their money.

The CBI had caught Bhangoo and the three others this January in the Ponzi-scam case in which the company is said to have cheated 5.5-crore investors. It had registered the case in 2014 on directions from the Supreme Court.

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In a clumsy attempt to get all 137 public toilets in the city operational after more than two years, the municipal corporations new electronic (online) tender stipulates that male attendants will be manning female toilet blocks also.

This follows directly from the operative part of terms and conditions of the said tender with MC executive engineer Gulshan Kumar who prepared the detailed notice inviting tenders (DNIT) telling HT that the rates offered were for only one attendant.

When queried on how a male attendant will operate and maintain female toilets block, he said, We will look into the issue. If required, we will deploy female attendants also.

He added that they had cleared technical criterion for two bidders and soon toilets would be handed over to them.

The tender conditions will, in all probability, also lead to a situation where the toilers will close at 5pm, when in fact the footfall in the market is at its peak.

Sample this: A tender condition states that the contractor is supposed to provide only one attendant in each toilet for 8 hours.

With a toilet opening at around 7am in the morning and closing at around 5pm, the toilets will serve only half the purpose.

UPSET COUNCILLORS

As expected, there has been outrage over the issue. Nominated councillor Major DS Sandhu (retd) said, It is strange that a male attendant will be taking care of female toilet block also. It is surprising that the contractor has been asked to provide only male attendant for both the units. Usually, two attendants maintain toilets in shifts. However, the MC seems to have no basic sense.

Former Congress mayor Poonam Sharma said, It seems the MC officials have lost their mind. How can they do this? I will take up the issue with the MC commissioner as we will not tolerate male attendants manning female toilets.

BJP councillor Rajinder Kaur Rattu said, It has never happened in history of Chandigarh that male attendant will man female toilets. The officers have not applied their mind before giving out the tender.

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Patiala

The Patiala police on Friday claimed to have busted two gangs of drug peddlers with the arrest of four suspects, including a Nigerian man, who were in the district to supply the contraband to students.

Addressing a press conference here on Friday, superintendent of police (SP, investigation) Harvinder Singh Virk said suspect Joseph James, a Nigerian citizen, and Rakesh Kumar Sharma, both residents of New Delhi, were arrested during the checking of vehicles near the Civil Lines Chowk in Patiala on Thursday.

Also read I Chitta ve? Study shows Punjabi songs driving youth towards drugs

Virk said a police team, led by assistant sub-inspector (ASI) Gurmej Singh, had set up the checkpoint following a tip-off. Police recovered 255 grams of heroin, worth `55 lakh, from their possession, said the SP. Their WagonR car (DL 9C AB 0564) was also impounded, he said.

Police also managed to nab Sanjeev Kumar of Patran town and Kuldeep Singh of Ghagga town at another checkpoint set up near the PRTC workshop on the Nabha road. The two were travelling in a Swift car (PB 11 BT 3704).

ASI Jaspal Singh recovered 260 grams of intoxicant powder from their possession, said Virk.

Two separate cases have been registered against them under Section 21/61/85 of the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act at the Patiala Civil Lines police station.

Virk said the drug peddlers were planning to supply the contraband to youngsters, especially students of schools and colleges in the district. He said investigations are on to trace their network and identify the customers.

Also read I Udta Punjab: Facts, figures and falsehoods of states drug problem

Local gang was ferrying smuggled drugs via Kashmir

While the Nigerian man and his accomplice were ferrying heroin from Delhi, the local gang was carrying contraband suspected to be smuggled from Pakistan through Kashmir. SP Harvinder Singh Virk said suspects Sanjeev Kumar and Kuldeep Singh had brought the intoxicant powder from Srinagar. Their dealer has been identified as one Mukhtiar Khan, who might have smuggled it from Pakistan, he said. Virk said the duo had delivered some drugs at Ludhiana on their way to Patiala.
The state government has declared the last intact Mughal Bridge of Punjab on the Old Grand Trunk Road as a protected monument, a notification for which was issued by principal secretary, department of tourism and cultural affairs Anjali Bhawra, on February 11.

Conservator Balwant Singh, who looks after monuments in Sirhind, confirmed the development. Though my office has not received any notification, senior officials have confirmed that the bridge has been declared protected in February, said Singh.

Made by Mughal emperor Jahangir more than 350 years ago, the bridge had been in continuous use. Earlier, it was on the Old Grand Truck Road, connecting Lahore and Delhi. However, after the construction of the New GT Road, it was a link between Fatehgarh Sahib and Sirhind. Experts say the centuries-old bridge needs conservation as it is bearing thousands of tonnes of loads every day.

If we ask a civil engineer, he will suggest that this centuriesold bridge still can take three times load of what its bearing today. But the situation will not be the same in future. It needs conservation or we will lose a monument of historical importance, said director, cultural resource conservative initiative (CRCI), Gurmeet Sangha Rai, who was here for inspection of old monuments, recently.

No one is taking care of its maintenance. Despite of its age, the administration is installing railing along the bridge which may prove harmful. We should not spoil its cultural and historic importance, she added.

THE BRIDGE AND ITS HISTORY

Constructed on the then Hansla River on Badshahi Sadak (Grand Truck Road), the 73.8-metre-long bridge is divided into three parts. Total spread of the bridge is 8 kanal and 15 marla. Situated in the heart of Fatehgarh Sahib, it connects Sirhind and Bassi Pathana. With due course of time, the GT Road was shifted more than two kilometres away and Hansla got converted into a drain (Sirhind choe).

The road on the bridge is under the jurisdiction of the public works department and the drain under the irrigation department and the ownership of the bridge remains with the provincial government. However, the responsibility to conserve it seems to be with no one.

The government should make a new bridge at a certain distance from it with advice from experts or we will definitely lose it any day, said Sangha. There were only three Mughal bridges in Punjab and the other two  one near Sultanpur Lodhi and another in Malhian of Jalandhar  were in a dilapidated condition.
Two years after the mysterious death of a watchman at the godown of a government foodgrain agency, the Punjab Police have failed to even register a first information report (FIR) despite constituting a special investigation team (SIT) to crack the case in September last year.

The deceased  Raj Kumar  had reportedly sounded the alarm over the alleged pilferage of the foodgrain stocks at the Mullapur godown of Punjab State Civil Supplies Corporation Limited (Punsup). His body with bruises and a head injury was found in a wasteland near the railway tracks in the nearby Bhanohar village on June 15, 2014.

Raj Kumars elderly and poor parents have since been running from pillar to post, calling on the top brass at the police headquarters here and approaching the media to seek justice.

Even additional director general of police (ADGP, crime) IPS Sahotas directions to inspector general of police (IG, crime) Vibhu Raj to look into the matter last year have failed to yield any result. Initially, suspecting it to be a mishap, the railway police had filed proceedings in the case under Section 174 of the criminal procedure code (CrPC).

However, after the victims family cried foul, the IG had formally handed over the inquiry to the then Ludhiana range deputy inspector general of police (DIG), SK Mittal, on September 9, 2015, who, in turn, formed a special investigation team (SIT) to solve the case.

The SIT headed by superintendent of police (SP, investigation) JS Sidhu has not even registered an FIR in the case so far. Sidhu said he had been quizzing the suspects named by the victims father, Chamal Lal, and had approached the Jagraon civil hospital, where the post-mortem examination was conducted, for a review of the medical report.

Chaman Lal, in his complaint, has pointed out that his deceased son was a whistleblower with regards to the illegal movement of foodgrain stocks from the Punsup godown, and was being harassed by the godown inspector and other staff members for opposing the alleged pilferage.

SIT member deputy superintendent of police (DSP) Ajay Raj Singh, who is posted at Dakha, had recorded Chaman Lals statement in January this year. The DSP told HT on phone that he was not fully aware of the case at this moment. The cop has been entrusted with the task of investigating the matter by summoning the suspects named by the complainant.

Ludhiana range DIG SK Kalia, who succeeded Mittal, said the investigating team was awaiting a fresh report from the board of medical team that was formed as part of the probe.

Its a matter of four to five days, and foul play, if any, will come on the surface soon, he said, adding that the FIR will be registered only after receiving the fresh medical report.

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President of local unit of Safai Sewak Union (SSU), Raj Kumar Raju, allegedly committed suicide by jumping in front of a moving train on Bathinda-Barnala track near SD College railway crossing on Thursday. Raju was also state vice-president of the union.

High drama prevailed following the incident as family and co-workers of the victim refused to cremate the body till the arrest of seven employees of municipal council (MC) who were named in the First Information Report (FIR) lodged by victims son, Akash Kumar. These seven persons were responsible for mental torture to Raju that led to his suicide, said Akash.

The victim succumbed to his injuries at Dhanaula, around 12 kilometers from here while being taken to Post Graduate Institute of Medical Education and Research (PGIMER) in Chandigarh.

When the safai sewaks heard the news of his death, they reportedly got provoked and injured MC executive officer (EO) Shakti Kaushal and ransacked his office.

Kaushal said, About 50 persons entered my office and started throwing chairs. I informed the SSP, DSP and the SHO. The police reached here after 20-25 minutes. Meanwhile, I got injuries on leg, arm and shoulder when a person out of protesters beat me up with a wooden stick.

Senior superintendent of police (SSP) Gurpreet Singh Toor said, As soon as I got the call, within seconds I alerted the police control room van. Police party immediately reached the MC office, evacuated the EO and rushed him to the civil hospital. The police were deployed in his office and residence in no time to avoid any eventuality.

Akash alleged, A slip has been found from my fathers pocket which names seven persons whose harassment led him to take this extreme step. A few days ago these persons had thrashed my father with an iron rod. He was under mental pressure since then.

A safai sewak Gulshan Kumar said, Raju was visibly perturbed by the threatening behaviour of the persons he mentioned in the slip.

The slip, with seven names mentioned in Punjabi, has been signed in Hindi. Except the names, nothing else has been written on the slip.

Deputy superintendent of police PS Cheema said, Since the incidence happened in the jurisdiction of government railways police (GRP), the case would be registered by them.

We have not received any written complaint from the EO so far, Cheema said.

SSU state general secretary Kuldeep Kumar said, Our main demands are arrest of the accused and a job for the victims son. We will not allow post mortem till our demands are met.

GRP head constable Karamjit Singh said, A case has been registered against seven personsDulla Singh, Kuldeep Singh alias Happy, Parkash Chand Pappy, Jawala, Sunil Kumar, Arun and Deepu under Section 306 (abetment to suicide) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) on the complaint of victims son Akash Kumar. All accused are employees of Barnala MC.
Meet Pujari. Pujari is a thief in the guise of a priest. Pujari is fond of flying to religious places, travelling on stolen money. He is a God-fearing man, and so after stealing enough money from Chandigarh and Panchkula, he went on religious trips to Shirdi, Amarnath, Ujjain, Chennai, Kailash Mansarovar and Vaishno Devi.

However, crime branch inspector Gurmukh Singh said Ravi alias Pujari stole Rs 35 lakh in cash from an ex-bureaucrat who resides in Sector 18. With this money, he opened a temple at his residence in Mahadev Colony, Ward No 2, Shivdi Kalan village near Surajpur, where he started practising as a priest. Not only that, Pujari also stole jewellery worth Rs 50 lakh, using it to construct a luxurious kothi. The police have filed an application in court for possession of the house.

Pujaris wife told officials that the family was also surprised at his growing wealth. To her queries, Pujari would say he had gathered followers who truly believed in his advice. She further said he initially constructed the temple saying this and later told her that his devotees were constructing a lavish house for him because they wanted him to reside in it. He would come home at around 7pm from that house and say that he had to go perform a puja somewhere.

TRAVELLED TO WASH OFF SINS

Police said he had taken training from Haridwar and Varanasi for a year to kickstart a career in astrology. They added he had travelled by luxury bus to those temples where it was not necessary to fly.

Read: Rs 38-lakh jewellery recovered from priest in Chandigarh
A 16-year-old youth of Salempur village in Hoshiarpur district reportedly drowned in the All-American Canal along the US-Mexico border in a bid to enter the US illegally.

Victim Ravinder Singh reportedly died in the last week of May. It was after the authorities concerned uploaded his pictures on the social media that one of his relatives in the US identified him and informed his family in Punjab.

My brother Malkit Singh saw the pictures and called us in the morning. There might have been other boys with Ravinder. We do not have other details, said the victims father, Gurpal Singh.

Viral video: Punjab youth in US cries about hardships of illegal migrants

Gurpal Singh said he had sent his son to Mexico through an agent of Nangli village. Ravinder had flown to Mexico on May 3. The agent had assured him a safe passage into the US. Had I known I was to lose my son forever, I would have never let him go, he said. The father, however, refused to tell how much money he had paid to the agent.

Ravinders mother, Daljit Kaur, said she had last spoken to her son on May 28. He was unapproachable all these days. We thought he must be in the transit, she said.
Mumbai-based media entrepreneur and former Star CEO Sameer Nair, co-producer of controversial movie Udta Punjab, has been associated with Arvind Kejriwals Aam Aadmi Party (AAP).

It emerged on Friday that Nair (51) had joined the AAP in October 2013 to bolster it Delhi assembly election campaign. Sameer Nair joins AAP. Helping us with our communications. Thank so much Sameer ji, Kejriwal had tweeted.

Also read: Artists, industry veterans to Udta Punjabs defence

The Shahid Kapoor-starrer themed on Punjabs drug menace and scheduled for June 17 release, has run into trouble with the film censor board, which has demanded 89 cuts, including all references to the state, besides dropping its name from the title. The matter is now in the Bombay high court but the movie trailer has triggered a war of words in Punjab over the drug issue. The ruling Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) accused the film of tarnishing the image of Punjab and Punjabis and even hinted that the AAP had funded the project with an eye on the state election due early next year.

Also read: Govt has nothing to do with censor decision on Udta Punjab: Sukhbir Badal

In the official trailer, Nair figures among seven producers. Quick to ferret out his past connection with the AAP, the SAD went ballistic, touting it as an irrefutable proof of the AAP hand in the movie. The cat is out of the bag, said Jangveer Singh, media adviser of deputy chief minister Sukhbir Singh Badal. Asking the Kejriwal outfit to come clean, Jangveer said: Politics is being played in the name of drugs. The AAPs contention that it has nothing to do with the film has fallen flat.

Contacted by HT, AAPs Punjab affairs in-charge Sanjay Singh denied his partys link with the movie. I know he (Sameer Nair) is one of the producers of Udta Punjab but he left the party after the 2014 Lok Sabha elections and is not working for us in any capacity, he said.

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Amid the controversy of film Udta Punjab, which is yet to be released as the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) has raised objections over the film, doctors, experts and counsellors dealing with drug-abuse problems in Amritsar on a daily basis, say the film should be released, but the message portrayed by the film-maker should be solution-based and not demean the reputation of Punjab and its community.

The experts say, Cinema can play a very important role in appraising youth about the drug problem, but at the same time glamorising sensitive issue like drugs can prove fatal for society.

The CBFC has asked the film-makers to remove the word Punjab from the title. The experts said that mentioning that 70% youth in Punjab is indulged in drugs in the movie was misleading.

Dr JPS Bhatia, who is supervising the first drug rehabilitation centre for women in Punjab and has cured thousands of addicts till date in his de-addiction and family rehab centre Hermitage, said, Cinema plays an effective role, but film-makers should be conscious while portraying sensitive issues like drugs. The film should not glamorise such grave problems, which has affected many lives in the state. Glamorising such issues will affect patients in a negative way. Directing films like these asks for a responsible behaviour, but if the film is solution oriented, then it should be cleared by the board.

On movie becoming a political battle, where the ruling government is denying that the drug problem exists to a level portrayed in the film, Bhatia said, Everybody knows that the problem of drugs exists in the state and the border belt is more vulnerable to it, but comparing the state with Mexico will defame its (Punjab) image.

Dr PD Garg, who is treatment in charge of Punjabs first drug-rehabilitation centre and heads the Swami Vivekanada Drug De-addiction Centre (SVDDC) at Guru Nanak Dev Hospital, emphasised, The Punjab Opioid Dependence Survey (PODS), conducted by the ministry of social justice and empowerment, states that out of 2-crore population (approximately) of Punjab, nearly 2.35 lakh are drug addicts, while an another survey states that drug abuse is amongst 15 lakh people, which makes it not more than 15%. Stating that 70% of the state population is affected by the menace is factually incorrect. The cinema should highlight social issues, but not by exaggerating facts. The figures should be checked and then shown in the film. Being a Punjabi, I will request the film-maker not to defame our community and our state by not checking the facts.

Garg added that the film should be released, but the focus should only be on the problem.

Fateh Foundation NGO head Anoop Singh Bhullar, who, with a team of 30 counsellors, is on a mission to sensitise people about ill-effects of drugs and motivate them to enrol for deaddiction in Bhikhiwind and Valtoha blocks of Tarn Taran district, said, Of course, the situation is alarming and if it was not, then why did the state government come up with rehabilitation centres. And also now Punjab is the first state to have a women rehab centre. Till date, in our mission, if we have covered 18,000 families, out of them 800 have confessed addiction and I can assure that 50% of youngsters, in both the blocks between the age group of 15 and 35 years, are into drug abuse. This belt is affected and every family has a story to say.

Meanwhile, a counsellor, Namrata Gupta, said, Cinema or any visual media creates an impact, but the impact should be positive. The film-maker of Udta Punjab can save many lives as the message can be spread out loud, wide and clear, but constructively should be applied and solution to the problem should be in the film.

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Pakistan on Friday told the US the drone strike that killed Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Akhtar Mansour was a violation of the countrys sovereignty and vitiated bilateral ties, reflecting the recent downturn in relations between the two countries.

According to the Foreign Office, Sartaj Aziz, adviser to the prime minister on foreign affairs, conveyed a strong message on the May 21 drone strike to a visiting high-level US delegation led by Richard Olson, the US special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, and Peter Lavoy, director for South Asian affairs at the National Security Council.

The US delegation arrived in Islamabad on Friday to discuss the drone strike in Balochistan province that killed the Afghan Taliban chief and to discuss ways to improve bilateral ties.

The drone strike added to tensions between the two sides as it came soon after American lawmakers blocked a subsidy for the sale of eight F-16 jets worth nearly $700 million because of concerns that Pakistan isnt doing enough to combat terrorism. The US is also set to withhold $300 million in military aid in Pakistan.

Aziz and foreign secretary Aizaz Ahmed Chaudhry held candid discussions on bilateral relations, the regional security situation and the Afghan peace process in the wake of the drone strike, the Foreign Office said in a statement.

Aziz said the drone strike was not only a violation of Pakistans sovereignty but also vitiated bilateral ties. The Pakistani side emphasised that any future drone strike in Pakistan will be detrimental to our common desire to strengthen relations.

The drone strike had seriously undermined efforts for Afghan peace and reconciliation process at a time when Pakistan and the members of the Quadrilateral Coordination Group were engaged in efforts to revive peace talks between the Afghan government and the Taliban.

In response to queries from the US delegation on safe havens for the Taliban, the Pakistani side it is pursuing its objective of eliminating all militants and terrorists from its soil. The statement added that Pakistan expects action by Afghan forces against Taliban operatives in Afghanistan.

Pakistan will have to safeguard its own security through better border management and early repatriation of Afghan refugees. These steps would also help to promote better relations between Afghanistan and Pakistan and reduce mistrust, the statement said.

Lavoy said President Barack Obama is committed to improving relations with Pakistan as he had emphasised during Prime Minister Nawaz Sharifs visit to Washington last October.

On Thursday, Aziz had called the US a selfish friend that always curried favour with Pakistan when self-interest pressed it and left it in the lurch after its interests had been served. He told a news conference that the growing US-India proximity is a cause of worry for Pakistan.
Unidentified attackers hacked a 62-year-old Hindu monastery worker to death in Bangladesh on Friday, police said, the latest in a series of such attacks on religious minorities in the mainly Muslim country.

Police said Nityaranjan Pande was taking his regular early morning walk when the attackers set upon him, killing him on the spot.

As a diabetic, everyday he walks early in the morning. Today as he was walking, several attackers hacked him in the neck... He died on the spot, local police station chief Abdullah Al-Hasan told AFP.

He had been working at the monastery for around 40 years. In recent years he was the head of its office staff, he said.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility.

But the head of police in the northwestern district of Pabna where the Shri Shri Thakur Anukulchandra Ashram is located said the killing bore the hallmarks of recent attacks by Islamist extremists on minorities and secular activists.

There was no eye-witness to the attack as it happened very early in the morning, Alamgir Kabir told AFP.

Bangladeshi author Taslima Nasreen reacted sharply over the incident.

Nityaranjan Pandey, working for Anukul Thakur asram in Pabna,Bangladesh was hacked to death on Friday morning. Islamists hate non-Muslims.  taslima nasreen (@taslimanasreen) June 10, 2016

Bangladesh is reeling from a wave of murders of secular and liberal activists and religious minorities that have left nearly 50 people dead in the last three years.

Most of the latest attacks have been claimed either by the Islamic State group or by a South Asian branch of al Qaeda.

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasinas government has however blamed homegrown Islamists for the attacks, rejecting claims of responsibility from IS and al Qaeda.

Experts say a government crackdown on opponents, including a ban on Bangladeshs largest Islamist party Jamaat-e-Islami following a protracted political crisis, has pushed many towards extremism.

Victims of the attacks by suspected Islamists have included secular bloggers, gay rights activists and followers of minority religions.

Although it is officially secular, around 90 percent of Bangladeshs 160 million-strong population is Muslim. Some eight percent of the population is Hindu.

Read: Hindu priest murdered in western Bangladesh, says police
Pakistans government met senior US officials on Friday to discuss the fallout from a May 21 drone attack that killed Taliban chief Mullah Akhtar Mansour, while the family of the taxi driver who died alongside Mansour demanded justice.

Peter Lavoy, head of Washingtons South Asia desk at the National Security Council and Richard Olson, the US Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, met with Pakistani civilian and military leaders in the first high level exchange since the drone strike, according to Pakistans foreign ministry.

In a statement following their meeting, Sartaj Aziz, Pakistans special adviser on foreign affairs, said the discussions were candid. According to the statement, the two sides restated their positions.

Pakistan affirmed that the drone strike breached its sovereignty and compromised an already stalled Afghan peace process, while the US reiterated its accusation that Pakistan is providing safe havens for the Taliban in Pakistan.

Read: DNA test confirms Mansours death in US drone attack: Pak

At the time of the drone attack, Mansour was travelling with a Pakistani passport and identity card, infuriating the US and Afghanistan who said this was proof of the ease with which Taliban fighters are travelling throughout Pakistan.

Mansours taxi driver, Mohammed Azam, was also killed in the attack. His family said they were outraged that they have not yet received an apology from the United States or recognition of Azams innocence. As a result, they have gone to the police, demanding justice.

In the police report, a copy of which AP acquired, his elder brother Qasim said Mohammad Azam was innocent of any crime. He said Mohammad was not aware of the identity of his passenger and demanded that the police and local Baluchistan provincial government officials conduct an investigation to identify the culprits. He called for justice.

The police complaint doesnt define what form that justice should take, but in a handwritten note at the bottom of the complaint one local official wrote that he had begun an investigation.

Read: Brother of slain Taliban chiefs driver presses charges against US

In a telephone interview with AP from his home in the town of Taftan, close to the Iranian border, Qasim said his 33-year-old brother had worked as a taxi driver for most of his adult life, earning roughly 20,000 rupees (about $200) a month.

It was just his bad luck that his final passenger turned out to be the Taliban chief, Qasim said.
A senior Indian diplomat on Friday visited a Hindu ashram in northwestern Bangladesh where an elderly worker was hacked to death by machete-wielding suspected Islamists, the second such murder of minority community member within a week in the country.

Nityaranjan Pandey, 60, who was working as a volunteer for the past 40 years at the Thakur Anukul Chandra Satsanga Paramtirtha Hemayetpurdham Ashram, was murdered on Friday morning in Pabnas Hemayetpur Upazila.

Local residents said the killers hit him on the head and neck with machetes and fled the scene. He died on the spot.

Assistant high commissioner Sandip Mitra of assistant high commission of India in Rajshahi city visited the ashram and spoke to officials and priests there.

The monastery, named after a famous Hindu saint, draws huge number of Hindu devotees from across Bangladesh and neighbouring India.

On Tuesday, the suspected Islamists hacked to death 70-year-old Hindu priest Ananda Gopal Ganguly in western Jhinaidah when he was going to a nearby temple.

Two officials from the Indian high commission in Dhaka had visited the home of the murdered priest in Koratipara village of Jhenaidah and met his family members on Wednesday.

First secretary (Political and information) Rajesh Uike and first secretary (consular) Ramakant Gupta at the time told reporters that they hoped police will bring the killers to justice.

Since May 1, Bangladesh has witnessed eight targeted murders in a series of brutal attacks on religious minorities and secular activists.
An Indian-origin teen has been charged with illegally purchasing a gun with a fake ID and allegedly plotting the murder of New York police officers, authorities have said.

Ranbir Singh Shergill, 18, was arrested this weekend and has been ordered held. An undated note was found on Shergills phone that appeared to be a plan to kill cops, a report in the New York Daily News said.

The incident within days of Indian-origin doctoral student Mainak Sarkar shooting dead his 39-year-old professor at UCLA and estranged wife Ashley Has before turning the gun on himself.

Shergill allegedly also threatened to kill members of his family last month with a gun he kept at the familys Queens neighbourhood home. FBI special agent Nicholas Olivero said in the report that a box containing a handgun, seven magazines, and 118 rounds of ammunition was found in Shergills bedroom.

Shergill admitted he had travelled to Ohio to buy the gun for $500 from a private owner, showed the seller a fake ID he had obtained on the internet and bought the ammunition in Pennsylvania.

According to a complaint filed in Brooklyn federal court, the phone note read, Do it during a snowstorm, use the snow to mask your presence. Go from dunkin donuts on van wyck (Expressway) after shooting and killing officers...And one will be male other female. Then try to kill other NYPD (New York police department) officers change clothes and go back to the crime scene or make false call.
Abu Marwan, his wife and his three children are among the very few Iraqi civilians to have escaped from the heart of the Islamic State groups besieged stronghold of Fallujah.

Most of the more than 20,000 people who have reached safety since Iraqi forces launched an offensive last month are from the outskirts of the city, which lies only 50 kilometres (30 miles) west of Baghdad.

The 49-year-old man and his family were able to leave Fallujah this week but tens of thousands more civilians remained trapped in the city by IS.

This is the account he gave AFP by telephone of life under the jihadists and how his family eventually got out:

We did not flee Fallujah when Daesh (IS) took over at the end of 2013, he said, referring to the start of a period of anti-government protests during which ISs previous incarnation gradually took over the city.

We expected the crisis would end within weeks or months. But the gunmen soon had the people on a tight leash, imposing new rules, issuing decrees, setting up barriers and planting bombs on the streets.

That continued through 2014 and 2015... We were already affected by this but our living conditions deteriorated abruptly at the beginning of this year.

My neighbour and I contacted somebody called Abu Omar, who is a Daesh member known as the wali (local chief) of southern Fallujah, to facilitate our exfiltration from the city in return for smuggling his wife with us, Abu Marwan said.

He had cut a deal for his wife to be taken to Kirkuk.

Daesh calls the wives of its members state women and women in the city who have not pledged allegiance to the movement are called common women, Abu Marwan explained.

Displaced Iraqi families, who fled their homes in and around Fallujah due to fighting between Iraqi government forces and the Islamic State (IS) group, queue for food rations and other emergency supplies at a camp run by the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) in the town of Amriyat al-Fallujah. (AFP)

Euphrates crossing

The deal was sealed with the wali in two days. Abu Marwan prepared his car and his family and Abu Omars wife all squeezed in.

We were stopped at many checkpoints but when we said Abu Omar sent us, they let us through. Then he appeared on a motorcycle and drove in front of us to open the way. He told us we should keep a distance of 100 metres.

Abu Marwan said they snaked their way down to an area called Zoba by the Euphrates.

There were many Daesh fighters along the way, heavily armed and hiding in various shelters, he said.

A senior commander in the operation to retake Fallujah, one of the jihadists most emblematic bastions, said up to 2,500 IS fighters were defending the city.

In Zoba, IS was out in numbers, controlling who left the area.

Some families had been there for four days, waiting to cross the river. Some were arguing with Daesh, Abu Marwan said.

I left my car with Daesh. After also arguing with them, we boarded a small boat with my family and Abu Omars wife but Daesh said the men should swim, he said.

According to the Norwegian Refugee Council, which runs most of the camps where the people displaced by the operation are housed, hundreds of families fled through Zoba in recent days.

Several people were shot by IS trying to cross the river while others drowned, according to several aid groups.

Sweets and water

After crossing the river, we walked a short distance and found the Iraqi army and the Hashed al-Shaabi paramilitary umbrella organisation, he said.

They welcomed us and handed out sweets, juice and water. Then they separated the men from the women, started conducting security checks and inspected our bags.

Abu Marwan said they were asked whether they had any information about IS leaders inside the city.

The security forces began releasing the older men... The middle-aged and young men were kept all night as they carried out checks on us with laptops.

I told them Abu Omars wife had been with us but I have no information on what happened to her, said Abu Marwan, who was eventually allowed to leave and join his family.
Japans first naked restaurant opens in Tokyo next month with draconian rules of entry -- podgy prospective diners will be weighed and ejected if found to be too fat.

Following the lead of establishments in London and Melbourne, The Amrita -- Sanskrit for immortality -- also has strict age restrictions, with only patrons between 18 and 60 allowed in, after they check in their clothes and put on paper underwear provided by the restaurant.

If you are more than 15 kilos (33 pounds) above the average weight for your height, we ask you refrain from making a reservation, a list of rules posted on the restaurants website states, explaining that patrons could be weighed if they do not appear to be within the correct weight range.

Guests found to be overweight will be refused entry to the restaurant, which opens on July 29, and will not be entitled to a refund, its website points out. All payments must be made in advance on an online booking page.

The list of rules asks visitors not to cause a nuisance to other guests by touching or talking to fellow diners. Tattooed customers are barred from entry.

Those who meet the restaurants entry requirements will be asked to lock away mobile phones and cameras in a table-top box.

The restaurant owners were not immediately available for comment when contacted by AFP.

Guests will fork out up to 80,000 yen ($750) for tickets entitling them to eat food served by muscle-bound men wearing g-strings and watch a dance show featuring male models.

Meal tickets, not including a show, will cost from 14,000 to 28,000 yen depending on choice of menu.
A national commission in Kenya has announced it has fired 302 police officers who refused to be vetted as part of reforms of the police force.

The reforms are aimed at restoring public confidence in an institution repeatedly implicated in endemic corruption and human rights abuses.

The National Police Service Commission said yesterday that the officers, most of them in the traffic department, will receive dismissal letters from police chief Joseph Boinnet, who is also a member of the commission.

The decision to dismiss the officers was reached at a board meeting held at the commissions offices on Tuesday, commission Chairman Johnston Kavuludi said.

Kenya is vetting all its police officers as part of a reform package the government agreed to undertake after adopting a new constitution in 2010. So far at least 3,000 officers have been vetted with close to 100 fired.

The adoption of the new constitution and police reforms were part of agreement that ended post-election violence following a flawed presidential poll in December 2007 that left more than 1,000 people dead. Kenyas police force was accused of taking sides during the violence.

The police force is the most corrupt institution in Kenya, according to global anti-corruption watchdog Transparency International.

Government spokesman Eric Kiraithe, who was previously a police spokesman, has said that corruption in the police force runs deep and wide.

The vetting of some 80,000 officers, which started in December 2013, has been criticized for overlooking the human rights records of senior police officers who have been accused of sanctioning and participating in extra-judicial killings of suspects.

A UN expert on extra-judicial, summary and arbitrary killings said Kenyan police are a law unto themselves and carry out carefully planned, systematic and widespread killings of individuals.

An investigation by The Associated Press last year found that many ordinary officers on the beat have turned into killers doling out death to terror suspects, civilians and even children.

The vetting panel has faced several death threats. In one case a severed head was sent to their office with a note warning them to tread carefully.
LeT chief, Hafiz Saeed, who has a $10 million US bounty on his head, led prayers at a mosque in Islamabad on Friday and called on his countrys military to shoot down any American drones entering Pakistani territory.

The anti-US rhetoric came as the US special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan visited Islamabad for the first time since last months killing of Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Akhtar Mansour in a drone strike in western Pakistan.

US and Pakistan relations have been strained by the strike, which Islamabad has protested against as a violation of its sovereignty.

Fridays public appearance by Saeed, whom the US and India accuse of masterminding a 2008 attack on Indias financial capital Mumbai that killed 166 people, was another reminder of the many sore points in the Pakistani-US relationship.

The United States has offered $10 million for information leading to Saeeds arrest and conviction, but he remains free.

He maintains a low profile for much of the time, meaning his occasional public appearances and pronouncements are closely watched.

The US stands with India in their enmity towards Pakistan, Saeed told a crowd of hundreds of people after leading Friday prayers at the Islamabad mosque.

We want to request the army chief and make the air chief realize that it is their duty to shoot down any drone that comes into Pakistan and respond to it in kind.

In response to the May 21 drone strike that killed Mansour, an Islamist charity Saeed heads, the Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD), has announced a series of anti-US protests in major cities, with Saeed expected to be a featured speaker.

Pakistans top foreign policy official and its powerful military chief met Richard Olson, the US special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, during a visit.

A statement from the military said chief of army staff General Raheel Sharif had expressed serious concern over the US drone strike. The US embassy in Islamabad said it had no statement on Olsons visit.
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said on Thursday he temporarily removed the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen from a UN blacklist for violating child rights because its supporters threatened to stop funding many UN programs.

Ban said he had to consider the very real prospect that millions of other children in the Palestinian territories, South Sudan, Syria, Yemen and many other places would suffer grievously if UN programs were de-funded.

This was one of the most painful and difficult decisions I have had to make, he said.

UN secretary-generals are always subject to pressure from the 193 member nations. But in a rare rebuke, Ban said in this case some unnamed countries had gone too far, declaring it is unacceptable for member states to exert undue pressure.

The secretary-general was responding to what he called the fierce reaction to his decision, which was denounced by human rights groups. They accused the UN chief of caving in to Saudi Arabia and said the US-backed coalition belongs on the list for its attacks on children, schools and hospitals.

Ban said he stands by his annual report on children and armed conflict, which describes horrors no child should have to face.

The report said the UN verified a total of 1,953 youngsters killed and injured in Yemen in 2015  a six-fold increase compared with 2014  and it attributed about 60 percent of those casualties to the coalition. The UN said it also verified 101 attacks on schools and hospitals last year, double the number in 2014, of which 48% were attributed to the coalition.

Ban said he decided to temporarily remove the Saudi-led coalition countries from the blacklist of governments and armed groups violating childrens rights pending a joint review of cases with the Saudis.

We will assess the complaints that have been made, but the content will not change, he said.

Ban did not say explicitly that the coalition could go back on the list after the review.

But the secretary-general did say that in response to concerns from Saudi Arabia and other governments the UN is considering if there is a better way to distinguish countries from terrorist and extremist groups who are now listed together on the blacklist.

Saudi Arabias UN ambassador Abdallah Al-Mouallimi told reporters shortly afterward that It is our firm belief that this de-listing is final, irreversible and unconditional, and when all the facts are in that will be further reconfirmed.

Al-Mouallimi denied that Saudi Arabia used threats or intimidation in its contacts with the secretary general saying it is not in our nature to conduct ourselves in any such aggressive style. Al-Mouallimi said the government pointed out that the Saudis were not contacted about the reports conclusions as required, and therefore only one side was reflected, which made its findings wrong.

We did say such listing and such unfair treatment of Saudi Arabia and the coalition forces would obviously have an impact on relations with the United Nations, Al-Mouallimi said.

But he denied talking about de-funding the UN agency for Palestinian refugees or anything else for that matter.

Al-Mouallimi said he wouldnt be surprised if tens of countries told the secretary-general that his listing of the coalition was unacceptable, citing statements from the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, the Arab League and the Gulf Cooperation Council criticizing the report.

UN spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said later that both the Yemenis and the Saudis were consulted in early March on the content of the report.

US state department spokesperson Mark Toner, speaking to reporters in Washington, said the United States agrees with the secretary general that the U N should be permitted to carry out its mandate, carry out its responsibilities, without fear of money being cut off.

He acknowledged that the U S in the past has withheld and threatened to keep funds from the U N, explaining that the administration believes that on issues such as protecting children the U.N. should be able to report objectively ... without fear of reprisal.
US and Iraqi officials fighting Islamic State said on Friday they could not confirm a report by an Iraqi TV channel that Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi had been wounded in an air strike in northern Iraq.

A spokesman for the US-led coalition fighting the radical Islamist militants, Colonel Chris Garver, said in an email that he had seen the reports but had nothing to confirm this at this time.

Kurdish and Arab security officials in northern Iraq said they also could not confirm the report.

Al Sumariya TV cited a local source in the northern province of Nineveh saying that Baghdadi and other Islamic State leaders were wounded on Thursday in a coalition air strike on one of the groups command headquarters close to the Syrian border.

The channel has good connections with Shiite politicians and Iraqi forces engaged in the battle against Islamic State.

There have been several reports in the past that Baghdadi, whose real name is Ibrahim al-Samarrai, was killed or wounded after proclaiming himself caliph of all Muslims two years ago.

The ultra-hardline Sunni group is under increased pressure in both Iraq and Syria, and the territory under its control has shrunk significantly since 2014, limiting the potential for its leaders to move around or seek shelter.

The US earlier this year announced an intensification of the war on Islamic State with more air strikes and more American troops on the ground to advise and assist allied forces.

The US-led coalition has regularly flown raids out of Erbil, the capital of Iraqs Kurdistan region, in operations aimed at killing and capturing Islamic State leaders.

A Kurdish intelligence official and an Arab from the Baaj area west of Mosul said the US-led coalition had conducted such a raid there earlier this week. The coalition did not confirm this raid.

Kurdish Peshmerga forces are positioned in an arc around the north and east of Mosul while the Iraqi army is trying to capture Falluja, the groups stronghold near Baghdad.

The Iraqi army is also massing tanks and troops south of Mosul, in preparation for an offensive planned later this year to retake the largest city under the control of the militants.

In Syria, Russian- and Iranian-backed Syrian government forces and US-backed Syrian opposition and Kurds are separately trying to advance on Raqqa, the groups capital in Syria.
A US admiral pleaded guilty on Thursday to lying about his relationship with a Singapore-based defence contractor at the centre of a massive bribery scandal that has tarnished top naval officers.

Rear admiral Robert Gilbeau -- the highest-ranking navy officer charged in the ongoing probe -- admitted before a federal judge in San Diego that he had lied when he told investigators that he had never received gifts from Leonard Francis, owner of Glenn Defence Marine Asia (GDMA).

Few admirals in the history of the US Navy have ever been convicted of a felony charge.

Gilbeau, 55, told the court that he had misled investigators when he told them he always paid his share when he and Francis dined together about three times a year over a period of several years.

He also admitted that he destroyed documents and deleted computer files when he became aware in September 2013 that Francis and others had been arrested in connection with the fraud and bribery probe.

Gilbeau, who was awarded the Bronze Star and Purple Heart during his 37-year career, is scheduled to be sentenced in the case on August 26.

His attorney David Benowitz told AFP that he would seek probation for his client while prosecutors have agreed to ask the judge that Gilbeau be sentenced to no more than 12 to 18 months in prison.

According to the plea deal, Gilbeau also agreed to pay $50,000 restitution to the Navy and a $100,000 fine. He will also perform 300 hours of community service.

Of those who wear our nations uniform in the service of our country, only a select few have been honoured to hold the rank of admiral -- and not a single one is above the law, prosecutor Laura Duffy said.

Admiral Gilbeau lied to federal agents investigating corruption and fraud, and then tried to cover up his deception by destroying documents and files.

Cuban cigars, Kobe beef

Francis admitted in January that his company, which provided port services, plied naval officers with cash, prostitutes, Cuban cigars and Kobe beef to ensure US Navy ships stopped at ports where GDMA operated.

The Malaysian businessman earned the nickname Fat Leonard in maritime circles because of his girth.

So far, a total of 14 people, including 11 current and former navy officials, have been charged in connection with the case.

Seven of them have already pleaded guilty and been sentenced to prison terms ranging from 27 months to six and a half years, accompanied by heavy fines.

One of those convicted, US Navy Captain Daniel Dusek, was sentenced in March to 46 months in prison for giving classified information to GDMA in exchange for prostitutes and lavish gifts.

In one instance, according to court records, Dusek arranged for the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln to stop at a port terminal in Malaysia owned by Francis.

The 2010 port visit cost the United States about $1.6 million, officials said.

As part of his guilty plea, Francis, who is awaiting sentencing, admitted he bilked the US military out of tens of millions of dollars by routinely over-billing for fuel, tugboat services and sewage disposal.

He agreed to forfeit $35 million that he made in the scheme and to repay the navy whatever amount the court decides.

Alex Wisidagama, another GDMA executive who has pleaded guilty in the case, was sentenced in March to five years and three months in prison and ordered to pay $34.8 million in restitution.

During his career in the navy, Gilbeau was promoted to several top positions, including that of supply officer on the USS Nimitz in 2003-2004, where he was responsible for procuring all goods and services needed to operate the ship.

He also headed the navys logistics response to the 2004 tsunami in Southeast Asia.

After being promoted to admiral, he assumed command in August 2010 of the Defence Contract Management Agency International, where he was responsible for critical defense contracts outside the United States.
A Kanawha Cavalryman

SUBMITTED BY PAUL E. HAMER OF NORTHBROOK, ILLINOIS

NAME: Junius Marion Jones

DATES: 1841 to 1880

ALLEGIANCE: Union

HIGHEST RANK: Corporal

UNIT: 2d West Virginia Cavalry, Company I

SERVICE RECORD: Enlisted in the 2d West Virginia Cavalry, Company I, onAugust 5, 1861, in Mason City, Virginia. Promoted to corporal on November 8.Captured on September 14, 1863, near Marion, Virginia, and sent to Belle IslePrison in Richmond. Transferred to Andersonville Prison in Georgia on March 21,1864. Exchanged on December 16. Mustered out in Annapolis, Maryland, onMarch 7, 1865.

The Civil War tore no state apart like it did Virginia. Citizens from the eastern part of the state sided with the South and voted to secede in April. Those in the westernmost counties, however, opposed secession and soon began to organize their own government. Though West Virginia would not become a state until June 1863, the men of the state-to-be immediately began enlisting in the Union army.

Junius Marion Jones joined this rush to arms on August 5, 1861, enlisting in the 2d West Virginia Cavalry, Company I, at Mason City. He was promoted to corporal on November 8, and his regiment soon got its first taste of war, skirmishing with Rebel guerrillas in the Kanawha River valley. For the next two years, the 2d West Virginia remained in and around the mountains of western Virginia, taking part in sporadic fighting against Confederates.

On September 4, 1863, Jones joined a cavalry detachment that had orders to destroy a critical Virginia & Tennessee Railroad bridge near Marion, Virginia, a bridge over which trains carried salt supplies from Saltville, 15 miles west of Marion, to the rest of the Confederacy. But the mission failed, and Jones and many of his compatriots were captured. Jones spent the next six months at Richmonds Belle Isle Prison. Then, on March 21, 1864, he was transferred to Georgias infamous Andersonville Prison, where he would remain until he was freed via prisoner exchange at Charleston, South Carolina, on December 16. Andersonville took a heavy toll on the formerly robust cavalryman. Gaunt and weak, he nearly collapsed as he boarded the ship that took him to Annapolis, Maryland. Back in Union territory, he spent three months recuperating before being mustered out on March 7, 1865.

Jones soon moved to southern Illinois, and in 1879, he traveled to Boone County, Nebraska, where he planted fruit trees on 60 acres of land. The next spring he went to the Dakota Territory, where the market for his trees was at its peak. In August 1880, he sent a postcard to his family back in Illinois, telling them he was coming home. But Jones apparently fell victim to Indians or highwaymen and was never heard from again. His two-wheeled cart was found in what is now Custer County, South Dakota.
Curtained by rain and lit by artillery shells arching above them through the night sky, the fresh troops of Major General Don Carlos Buells Army of the Ohio bobbed across the Tennessee River on wooden steamboats during the evening of April 6, 1862. On the western bank of the river, at Pittsburg Landing, an angry, confused and terrified mob of Union skulkers sought shelter alongside the bluffs that overlooked the river. That morning, many of these same troops had been routed from their campgrounds near the primitive Methodist meeting house called Shiloh, 2 1/2 miles southwest of the landing, by onrushing Confederate troops led by General Albert Sidney Johnstons onrushing Confederate troops, who were seeking to drive the Union invaders from their stronghold in southwestern Tennessee.

The ensuing battle, the bloodiest single day of fighting yet experienced on the North American continent, had settled by nightfall into an exhausted stalemate, with troops on both sides hunkering down for the night in the vine-choked gullies and brambles that gutted the battlefield. By then, Johnston himself was dead, having bled to death from a bullet wound to the knee, and the badly rattled Confederate high command was unsure what to do next. Some argued for an immediate retreat before the enemy could be reinforced; others wanted to renew the battle at dawn.

The Union commander, however, had no such doubts. Major General Ulysses S. Grant, although admittedly caught by surprise by the Rebels morning attack, did not envision retreating. With his back against the winding Tennessee River, such a retreat was not an option. Nor was Grant the sort of commander who spooked easily. When one of his staff members, Colonel James B. McPherson, suggested that they consider withdrawing, Grant immediately snapped, No, sir, I propose to attack at daylight and whip them. Already, reinforcements were on the way. Meanwhile, all they could do was wait. Grant tried to catch a few hours sleep in the shelter of a large oak tree near the landing. But the incessant rain, coupled with the steady throb of pain from his ankle, which had been injured shortly before the battle when his horse fell on it, made sleep an impossibility. The Union commander then relocated to a log cabin on the bluff above the river. But Union surgeons had taken over the cabin for battlefield operations, which consisted mainly of sawing off shattered arms and legs. The screams of the wounded were too much for Grant. The sight was more unendurable than encountering the enemys fire, Grant recalled in his Personal Memoirs, and I returned to my tree in the rain. It was there that his second-in-command, Maj. Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman, found him later that night, chewing on an ever-present cigar. Well, Grant, said Sherman, weve had the devils own day, havent we? Yes, Grant replied, lick em tomorrow, though.

Grants confidence was based in part on the steady arrival of Union reinforcements from Buells Army of the Ohio, which had been 20 miles away at Savannah, Tenn., when the battle opened. A series of delays having to do with the disposition of artillery pieces and the lack of a local guide had prevented Buells lead division, under Brig. Gen. William Nelson, from reaching the field in time to join in the first days fighting. Now, however, Nelsons men were busy piling onto two steamers for the nerve-wracking ride across the river.

Among the fresh troops in Nelsons division was a young sergeant in the 9th Indiana, Ambrose Bierce, who would later write vividly about Shiloh and other battles as a famous newspaper columnist and short story writer. In his reminiscence What I Saw of Shiloh, Bierce recalled sharing the ride across the river with a pretty young womansomeones wife, he guessedwho stood on the upper deck of the steamer holding a small, ivory-handled pistol in her hand for use if it came to the worst. I took my hat off to this little fool, Bierce recalled.

Bierce and the other Union reinforcements disembarked into a sea of Union skulkers and skedaddlers. Along the sheltered strip of beach between the river bank and the water was a confused mass of humanityseveral thousands of men, Bierce wrote. They were mostly unarmed; many were wounded; some dead. All the camp-following tribes were there; all the cowards; a few officers. Not one of them knew where his regiment was, nor if he had a regiment. Many had not. These men were defeated, beaten, cowed. They were deaf to duty and dead to shame. A more demented crew never drifted to the rear of broken battalions. They would have stood in their tracks and been shot down to a man by a provost-marshals guard, but they could not have been urged up that bank. An armys bravest men are its cowards. The death which they would not meet at the hands of the enemy they will meet at the hands of their officers, with never a flinching. Whenever a boat docked at the landing, provost guards had to keep back the mob of frightened fugitives with their bayonets. Some still jumped on board and were pushed off in midstream to drown one another in their own way. Others stood by and muttered when they saw U.S. Army Regulars among the reinforcements, Youll catch regular hell today.

Actually, no one would catch hell, regular or otherwise, until the next morning, when Grant intended to launch his counterattack. In the meantime, the new troops stumbled into line on the extreme Union left, just beyond the landing. The rain, the darkness and the eerie shadows from Spanish moss hanging on the tree branches above them unsettled even veteran soldiers like Bierce. Nor were their nerves improved by the constant flow of stretcher-bearers bringing the wounded to makeshift hospitals behind the lines. Bierce noted with a shudder that these tents were constantly receiving the wounded, yet were never full; they were constantly ejecting the dead, yet were never empty. It was as if the helpless had been carried in and murdered, that they might not hamper those whose business it was to fall tomorrow.

The Union army was pinned down in a semicircular line running 1,300 yards west from the Tennessee River, then turning north and running 1,000 yards to River Road. At 5:30 a.m. on April 7, Nelsons fresh division led the way for the Federal counterattack. The meadow the men crossed was dotted here and there with pools of blood. Broken trees, their trunks scarred to a height of 20 feet with bullet holes, drooped their branches toward the ground. Angular bits of twisted metal stuck out from shell holes in the muddy ground. Abandoned knapsacks, haversacks, canteens and blankets were strewn everywhere, clearly showing where the Union forces had retreated the night before. Dead and wounded soldiers were also strewn about, including one Union sergeant whom Bierce found lying face upward on the ground, taking his breath in convulsive, rattling snorts, and blowing it out in sputters of froth which crawled creamily down his cheeks, piling itself alongside his neck and ears. A bullet had clipped a groove in his skull, above the temple; from this the brain protruded in bosses, dropping off in flakes and strings.

Ahead of the Union line, Confederate scouts galloped out of rifle range, leading Bierce and the others to mistakenly believe that the main enemy line had fallen back during the night. Pushing up a slight incline across an open field, the attackers were soon disabused of their optimistic notion. As the Union troops emerged into the open, they were suddenly greeted by an enormous artillery barrage. The forest seemed all at once to flame up and disappear with a crash like that of a great wave upon the beach, wrote Bierce, a crash that expired in hot hissings, and the sickeningspat of lead against flesh. A dozen of my brave fellows tumbled over like ten-pins. Hastily retreating into the tree line, Bierce and his fellow infantrymen caught sight of a stunned officer who reported solemnly to Colonel William Hazen that the enemy is in force just beyond this field, siras though he had been the only one to notice.

Temporarily stymied by the Rebel defense, Nelson halted his attack and waited for Brig. Gen. Thomas B. Crittenden to bring his division into line on his right. Near the infamous Peach Orchard where Union forces had been slaughtered the day before, Nelson and Crittenden linked up, their line extending west past the so-called Hornets Nest. Despite the exhaustion and general disarray of the Confederates, their steady musket- and cannon-fire held the Federals in check. The entire Union counterattack was in danger of grinding to a complete halt.

Thinking quickly, Buell dispatched two sections of Regular Army artillery to Nelsons aid. Captain John Mendenhalls 4th U.S. Artillery swung into action, firing two 2-inchers and two 12-pounders to contest the Confederate artillery directly across the Peach Orchard and wheat field. At the same time, Captain William Terrills 5th U.S. Artillery began firing two 10-pounders and four 12-pounders to suppress the Rebels. While one section silenced the enemy battery, Terrill and his other two sections advanced to the front of the skirmish line, blasting a hole for the infantry to resume its attack. Meanwhile, the foot soldiers hunkered face-down on the wet ground, alternately showered by enemy shrapnel or deafened by the roar of their own guns.

One soldier in the front ranks, identified only as W, left behind an account of the fighting at the Peach Orchard. W, a member of the 1st Battalion, 15th U.S. Infantry, noted with a veterans quick discernment the swelling fire on the Union left and an officers grim command, Bring on the ambulances. At about 10 a.m., he recalled, the Union line was ordered to the ground just as a Confederate fusillade blasted over their heads, signaling an attack on Brig. Gen. Lovell Rousseaus right flank. Casualties were heavy from the blast, despite the mens prone positions. Confederate troops commanded by bishop-turned-general Leonidas Polk hurled themselves against Rousseaus brigade but were met by volleys from the Union ranks. Captain Peter Swain, commanding the 15th Infantry, recalled proudly that his cool, sturdy and obedient soldiersRegulars allscythed down the Rebels with their accurate fire and moved on across Tillmans Creek. Swain noted in particular the excellent conduct of Sgt. Maj. Gustavus Teubner and Lance Sgt. John Mars.

Once again, the sound of a bugle ordered Rousseaus men to lie down to avoid a second artillery fusillade. Again, however, casualties were severe. In the 15th alone, two captains, a lieutenant and two first sergeants were down. The 16th Infantry, another Regular unit, lost Lieutenant Edward Mitchell. Despite the losses, the Union line moved on. Sighting the cannons that had done so much damage to their leaders, the Regulars hastily fixed bayonets and charged the offending battery. W recalled a wounded Confederate artillery commander lying amid the wreckage of his battery. You have slain all my men and cattle and you take the battery and be damned, the dying Reb admonished.

By noon, the Confederate line had been forced back to a new position astride Hamburg-Purdy Road, after what Sherman himself called the severest artillery fire I ever heard. Confederate General P.G.T. Beauregard concurred, describing the unceasing, withering fire of the enemy as they drove forward line after line of fresh troops. Now, for a time, the battle quieted down, as the Confederates under Polk, Brig. Gen. John C. Breckinridge and Maj. Gen. William Hardee began massing for a counterattack. Rousseau, noting the ominous development, ordered Mendenhall and Terrill to return to their parent divisions. Three hundred yards east of Shiloh Church, the Rebels were seen to be massing in columns, doubled on the center, behind a stand of colors. It was obvious they intended to break the Union line beyond Rousseaus left flank.

About 2 p.m. the Confederates launched their attack, crashing through the brush and pounding over the landscape, summoning energy from their Rebel yell. The fury of the assault immediately put the Union gunners in jeopardy. Terrill had left his horses and caissons in the rear, protected from enemy fire by broken ground. Accordingly, his guns had been advanced by hand, using long ropes called prolongs. Now, dangerously exposed to severe musket fire, they had to be withdrawn the same way. Under the watchful eye of their commander, the gunners of the 5th Artillery retired in order, by section, hurling canister and spherical case at the enemy and covering each other as they withdrew. Terrill himself took a turn hauling and firing.

Just north of Bloody Pond, Mendenhalls battery fought the Confederates for 90 minutes, pouring case shot into the faces of the Southern attackers. The ebb and flow of the battle caused Mendenhalls gunners to fire both in enfilade and even in reverse as the line of battle swayed around them like rows of wheat. At last, Colonel Hazen, leading the charge on horseback, sent his brigade forward in support of the Union gunners, driving them three-quarters of a mile to the rear, through another line of Confederate artillerymen, one of whom was fatally stabbed by a bowie knife taken from a captured Rebel.

Ambrose Bierce, who was in Hazens 19th Brigade, watched as the Confederate attack faltered and then receded. The noise of the cannon fire from both sides was so loud that at one point it seemed somehow soundlessthe ear could take in no more, said Bierceand then the Rebel line fell apart in disarray. Lead had scored its old-time victory over steel, wrote Bierce, the heroic had broken its great heart against the commonplace. Ironically, Hazen became separated from his men during the final charge and was ever afterward haunted by accusations that he had abandoned his men under fire.

The fierceness of the Confederate onslaught caused the untested volunteers on the Regulars right flank to flee, but training and discipline paid off for the Regulars. Both Major S.D. Carpenter of the 19th Infantry and the ubiquitous W recorded that the Regular battalions on the Union right changed front forward, on left company and took the Rebel attack in flank like a swinging gate, checking its impetus. Nelson and Crittenden, on the left, did likewise, trapping the Confederates in a deadly three-way fire. As the Federals pounded the reeling Rebels, Colonel William Gibson advanced to support Rousseau, whose men had expended all their ammunition. Providentially, Brig. Gen. Alexander McCook had called earlier that morning for more ammunition, and his resupply arrived just in time to replenish the soldiers cartridge boxes.

Once their cartridges were replenished, the Regulars joined the push that swept the Rebels beyond the former camps of Grants army. Rousseaus brigade moved in splendid order, steadily to the front, sweeping everything before it, Sherman reported admiringly. Captain E.F. Townsend of the 16th Infantry heard the 19th Infantry cheering on his left as they recaptured two of the cannons taken earlier by the Confederates. As Buell, the commander of the Army of the Ohio, reported, By 4 p.m. the flag of the Union floated again upon the line from which it had been driven the previous day.

Suddenly, the battle was over. The Confederates withdrew toward Corinth, their initial success lost in a flurry of bad luck, bad weather and sheer Union stubbornness. Burial details took up the horrific business of interring the dead, including men from the 55th Illinois who had been caught and butchered in a deep ravine and then burned by a quick-moving blaze ignited by gunfire. The always observant Ambrose Bierce visited the ravine and found the charred remains of his brother soldiers in postures of agony that told of the tormenting flame. Their clothing was half burnt awaytheir hair and beard entirely.Some were swollen to double girth; others shriveled to manikins. According to degree of exposure, their faces were bloated and black or yellow and shrunken. The contraction of muscles which had given them claws for hands had cursed each countenance with a hideous grin.

Even for survivors of the battle, Shiloh exacted a heavy toll. The scenes of this field would have cured anybody of war, said Sherman. And future President James A. Garfield, then a Union field officer, wrote to his wife: The horrible sights that I have witnessed on this field I can never describe. No blaze of glory, that flashes around the magnificent triumphs of war, can ever atone for the unwritten and unutterable horrors of the scene. As if disgusted by the carnage, nature itself turned against the battlefield. Heavy rains soaked them all, the living and the dead, and as the great writer Herman Melville later observed, All [was] hushed at Shiloh.

This article was written by James B. Ronan II and originally appeared in the May 1996 issue of Americas Civil War magazine.

For more great articles be sure to subscribe to Americas Civil War magazine today!

For more articles on the battle of Shiloh along with summary information, see our Battle Of Shiloh theme page.
GENERAL DIFFERENCES

In the article The Great Railroad Raid (August 2000), the locomotive identified as the General in the illustration on page 37 shows the train has a horizontal cowcatcher, yet the modern-day photograph of the General on page 42 has a vertical cowcatcher. Which is correct?

Bob Cochran

Sentinel, Oklahoma

Editors reply: They are both correct. Confederates, fleeing Atlanta before William T. Sherman and his Union troops captured the city, sabotaged the General. After the Civil War ended, the locomotive received only minimal repairs until the early 1870s when the engine was completely rebuilt and the horizontal cowcatcher was replaced with the vertical cowcatcher seen on page 42.

URGENTLY NEEDED MEDICINE

In Blackbeards Revenge (August 2000), Lindley S. Butler discusses the incident in which Blackbeard blockaded the port of Charleston, South Carolina. History records that the infamous pirate demanded a chest of medicine in exchange for the ports release. The author, however, offers no explanation for Blackbeards unusual ransom. What reason would the eras most notorious criminal have for making such a surprisingly low demand?

In light of the fact that a urethral syringe used for treating syphilis was found among the artifacts exhumed from the ship believed to be Blackbeards Queen Annes Revenge, is it possible the pirate was seeking treatment for venereal disease? Blackbeards reputation for promiscuitysupported by his alleged marriages to 14 womenlends further credence to this theory. Could the pirates willingness to risk such a confrontation, in addition to the large amount of medication he demanded, indicate that numerous members of the Queen Annes Revenge may have been similarly afflicted?

Joe McElwee

Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania

Lindley S. Butler replies: Since there had been extensive illness on the French vessel Concorde (renamed Queen Annes Revenge by Blackbeard) prior to its capture by the pirates, the medicines on board would have been depleted. The ransom of a chest of medicine, while not high in value, was not easy to obtain. Charleston, the only port of any size south of Virginia, was the only place that Blackbeard could have found an array of drugs. The urethral syringe found on the wreck would have been a standard instrument in a physicians kit, but considering their lifestyle, it is likely that many of the pirates, including Blackbeard, were suffering from syphilis for which the accepted treatment was an injection of mercury in the urethra. Traces of mercury were found in the syringe recovered from the ship believed to be the Queen Annes Revenge.

WAITING FOR A HERO

The article on the Lindbergh Crate Museum (Museum Spotlight, August 2000) jogged my memory back to the time when I was 11 years old. I lived on Oxon Hill, Maryland, overlooking the Potomac River some 10 miles below Washington, D.C. I went with my mother and two brothers and a number of neighbors to old Fort Foote, which was located on a high bluff and offered an excellent view of the river.

We had heard that the cruiser Memphis, with Charles Lindbergh aboard, was expected to travel up the river that day, and many people wanted to see the event. We didnt see our hero, but the sight of the Memphis, possibly the largest ship ever to come up the river, was a worthy spectacle anyway.

Charles F. Janes

Greensburg, Pennsylvania

ORIGINALLY MISIDENTIFIED

In the Mailbox section of your October 2000 issue, you identified the Iwo Jima flag raisers in Joe Rosenthals famous photograph. I am submitting a copy of a tattered newspaper clipping from 1945 that also identifies the men from information given by one of the flag raisers, Rene Gagnon. The 1945 version shows Franklin Sousley standing at the extreme left of the photograph, with Ira Hayes standing in front of him, while your identification transposed those names. More importantly, you name the soldier bending down on the extreme right of the photograph as Harlon Block, but the 1945 news clipping identifies the man as Henry O. Hansen.

Leon Pasciak

Buffalo, New York

Editors reply: Private Rene Gagnon was the first of the flag raisers to return to the United States. Using an enlargement of the Rosenthal photograph, he identified the other men involved. He incorrectly identified Sousley as the man on the extreme left of the photograph. He also erroneously included Sergeant Hansen in their number. (Hansen was killed during the battle for Iwo Jima.) A year later Gagnon realized that the Marine he had thought was Hansenwho had taken part in the first Iwo Jima flag raisingwas actually Corporal Harlon Block.

Although the man at the base of the pole with his back to the camera had been publicly identified as Hansen, Harlon Blocks mother never wavered in her conviction that it was her son, who had been killed on Iwo Jima the week after Rosenthal took the photograph.
Gazing out through the trees and smoke, the Union officer knew that his weary fighters were in trouble and that the next Confederate attack would likely overwhelm his outnumbered command. What to do? He could not stay put. Retreat was unthinkable. A desperate charge seemed the only choice. Quickly, word was passed down the line: Fix bayonets and attack on command.

A final glance told him all was ready. With a great roar, the men rose and charged the enemy. Startled, the onrushing Confederates fired a scattered volley and broke. Those who fought back were either killed or captured. The daring attack by the soldiers of the 20th Maine Infantry Regiment was a stunning success.

Was it Colonel Joshua Chamberlain defending Little Round Top at Gettysburg? No, it was Lieutenant Holman Melcher leading a charge by Company F of the 20th Maine during the confused fighting in the Wilderness on May 5, 1864  just one example of the heroism that the saviors of Little Round Top repeatedly displayed long after the smoke had cleared from the battlefield at Gettysburg.

Five regiments did the hard fighting that saved Little Round Top for the Union: the 20th Maine, 83rd Pennsylvania, 44th New York, 16th Michigan and 140th New York. The first four made up Colonel Strong Vincents brigade in the V Corps 1st Division. The final unit was from Brig. Gen. Stephen Weeds brigade in the V Corps 2nd Division, which arrived in the nick of time to help in the Round Top fight due to the initiative of its commander, Colonel Patrick ORourke, and the armys chief engineer, Brig. Gen. Gouverneur Warren. Collectively, the units came to be called the Little Round Top Regiments.

The critical role the regiments played at Gettysburg has garnered them much attention, but the story of the Little Round Top Regiments does not end there. The same men fought in all the major battles leading up to General Robert E. Lees surrender at Appomattox Court House, Va., on April 9, 1865. Four of the five units made it to Appomattox under their original regimental designations. Re-enlisting veterans from the fifth unit, the 44th New York, were assimilated into the 140th and the 146th New York and marched into Appomattox under the flags of those regiments.

The Little Round Top Regiments brought their own unique identities to Gettysburg. Three of the five, the 83rd Pennsylvania, 44th New York and 16th Michigan, had been formed in September 1861, and they participated in all the subsequent major battles of the Eastern theater.

A well-drilled unit, the men of the 83rd Pennsylvania wore special French chasseur uniforms (each topped off by a tall shako sporting a green plume) awarded them by Maj. Gen. Fitz-John Porter in recognition of their marching precision. The 44th New York members were called Ellsworths Avengers in honor of Colonel Elmer Ellsworth, who was killed hauling down a Rebel flag in Alexandria, Va., early in the war. Every ward in New York contributed men to this regiment. Recruits had to be at least 5 feet 8 inches tall, single, under 30 and of good moral character. The New Yorkers developed a strong bond with the 83rd Pennsylvania after the Keystone troops shared dinner with the Avengers, who arrived in camp after a long march without provisions. They became known as the Butterfield Twins after their brigade commander, Brig. Gen. Dan Butterfield.

The final veteran Little Round Top Regiment was the 16th Michigan. Recruited from the Detroit area, the hard-fighting unit had just 263 soldiers by the time it climbed Little Round Top (the other Little Round Top Regiments went into Gettysburg averaging 380 men each).

By contrast, the 20th Maine and the 140th New York were relatively green outfits. The 140th New York, nicknamed the Rochester Racehorses, suffered its first battle casualties at Chancellorsville, two dead and six wounded. Quarantined behind the lines with a smallpox epidemic, the 20th Maine missed that battle entirely. The regiment had seen action at Fredericksburg and against some of Lees rear guard covering the Confederate retreat from Antietam.

July 2, 1863, found the troops in the crosshairs of history at Gettysburg. Although Lee had given the new Union commander, Maj. Gen. George Meade, a bloody nose the previous day, Meade had managed to concentrate his army along the hills and ridges south of town. Meades position looked formidable until an unauthorized advance by Maj. Gen. Dan Sickles III Corps unhinged Meades left flank. Southern Lt. Gen. James Longstreet eventually launched an attack against Sickles exposed troops.

In response to this crisis, Meade sent the V Corps and elements of the II and XII corps to Sickles assistance. Despite the flow of Union reinforcements to Meades left, the flanks anchor  Little Round Top  remained devoid of Federal troops when Brig. Gen. Evander Laws Alabama veterans began moving toward the hill. If Laws men secured Little Round Top, the hills cleared summit would provide a natural artillery platform enfilading the entire Union line. A devastating Federal defeat seemed merely minutes away.

Unfortunately for Law and the Southern cause, Gouverneur Warren also saw the problem and managed to intercept Vincents 1,300-man, four-regiment V Corps brigade as it marched to aid Sickles and reroute it to Little Round Top. These bluecoats arrived on the boulder-covered hillock scant minutes before 2,400 hard-charging Southerners arrived.

The initial Confederate assaults hit the Butterfield Twins in the center of Vincents line and were easily repelled. The 4th Alabama was particularly shot up as it came under cross-fire from the 83rd Pennsylvania and the 20th Maine.

Colonel William Oates brought his 15th Alabama and the 47th Alabama (whose colonel was skulking behind the lines) down the slopes of Big Round Top and attacked Colonel Joshua Chamberlains 20th Maine. Oates was initially repulsed, but then the tenacious colonel sent out a squad to outflank the Maine men. Ordering a difficult, rarely tried maneuver, Chamberlain successfully stretched his line, bending it back at right angles and frustrating Oates flanking attempt. Nearly out of ammunition, Chamberlain called for a bayonet attack. His men yelled as they charged down the hill and swept the surprised Confederates from the field. Chamberlains bold leadership had secured the brigades left.

Vincents right was a different story. Reinforced by the 48th Alabama, the 4th and 5th Texas renewed their attacks, concentrating on Vincents right flank regiment, the 16th Michigan. Climbing shelves and crevices to screen their advance up the rocky hill, a few of the Confederates were able to slide by their foes. Soon the Michigan men began receiving flank fire. As casualties mounted, panic grew.

Rebel pressure intensified until, suddenly, half the Michigan regiment broke in disorder toward the rear. Vincent climbed a rock to rally the men but toppled off, mortally wounded. The Michigan men held, but the Texans kept pressing on toward the summit.

At the very moment the Southerners believed they had triumphed, Colonel Patrick ORourkes 140th New York surged over the crest, racing toward the Confederate ranks. Commandeered by the frantic Warren, ORourkes men scrambled up the hill on Vincents right. As the Rochester Racehorses cleared the summit, ORourke shouted, Down this way, boys! A Confederate salvo killed ORourke but could not stop the charge of his 450 men. The Rebels pulled back to Big Round Top and settled down to a long-range firefight. There would be no more attacks on Little Round Top.

Whatever gains Lee made on July 1 and 2 were more than offset by the costly failure of Picketts Charge on July 3. The Souths second major offensive north of the Potomac River had failed.

Meade did not follow up his victory over Lee to President Abraham Lincolns complete satisfaction, and he was superseded by Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant in 1864. Although Meade retained nominal command of the Army of the Potomac, Grant, as general-in-chief, traveled with the army and directed its operations. The Little Round Top Regiments would play a major role in Grants ferocious final campaign.

Grant opened his advance by crossing the Rapidan River on May 4, 1864. The next day, Union pickets discovered Confederates moving down the Orange Turnpike to threaten the Federal march through a heavily wooded area known as the Wilderness. Grant thought the force was a decoy and ordered the V Corps  now commanded by Warren  to punish the intruders. In fact, most of Lt. Gen. Richard Ewells II Corps stood in the Federals path.

The 140th New York, freshly clad in new Zouave uniforms awarded them as recognition of superior service, headed across Saunders Field just to the right of the Orange Turnpike. Puffs of smoke from Southern muskets started to dot the woodline, and bodies in Zouave uniforms began to litter the ground. But the Rochester Racehorses had their blood up. Led by a hat-waving Colonel George Ryan (who had forgotten his sword), they sprinted across the field toward the fire-spitting tree line ahead. Crashing into the Confederates, the 140th drove the enemy back through the dense, woody tangle in a fierce hand-to-hand struggle.

As his troops moved deeper into the smoke-filled woods, Ryan  sensing gunfire to his flank and rear  sent out scouts who reported that the Confederates had overlapped his line. Even worse, the Rebels were moving in behind him. Aware that he was being cut off, Ryan immediately ordered a retreat. The Rochester Racehorses somehow disengaged and returned to the main Union line, losing 240 casualties in the brief but deadly excursion up and down Saunders Field.

Simultaneously with Ryans advance, Vincents old brigade, now commanded by Brig. Gen. Joseph Bartlett, moved forward to the left of the Orange Turnpike. After some initial success, Bartlett began taking heavy flank fire, and the Confederates overlapped his line as well. Casualties quickly mounted, including Colonel Orpheus Woodward, commanding the 83rd Pennsylvania, who took a bullet in the knee, which later required amputation. Sizing up the situation, Bartlett ordered an about-face, and the brigade fought its way back to Federal lines  all, that is, except Company F of the 20th Maine. At the end of the regimental front, screened by woods, they did not hear the command to retire.

Lieutenant Melcher learned of his predicament when he noticed Confederate soldiers crossing his rear. Figuring that the regiment had pulled back without him, Melcher realized he was surrounded. As soon as the Rebels knew he was there, his little band would be rounded up for a trip to Libby Prison. Desperate, Melcher told his 17 men that they were going to have to cut their way out. The men were to load rifles, fix bayonets and charge on signal. All were to pick a target and yell, Surrender! at the top of their lungs.

Screaming men suddenly charging out of thick, smoky woods startled the Confederates, whose ragged volley killed two of Melchers men and wounded a few others. Federal return fire dropped many more Rebels, as the rest scattered or surrendered. Company F returned to its lines with 32 prisoners.

Grant suffered a tactical defeat in the Wilderness, losing 18,000 men against only 11,000 Confederate losses. But unlike the Union defeat at Chancellorsville the previous year, Grant won the strategic victory. The Army of the Potomac maintained control of the Brock Road, giving the Federals a short, eight-mile march to Spotsylvania Court House, the exit from the Wilderness. By contrast, Lee would have to march 13 miles over worse roads to reach that point.

Spotsylvania was also astride the direct route to Richmond. Federal possession of the key hamlet would force Lee to fight Grant out in the open or risk being cut off from Richmond. Realizing this, Grant ordered Warrens V Corps march there just after dark on May 7.

Unknown to Grant, Lee had also ordered his I Corps, now commanded by Maj. Gen. Richard Anderson in place of Longstreet, who was wounded on May 6, to undertake a similar nocturnal movement. Aided by Maj. Gen. J.E.B. Stuarts delaying cavalry action against Warren, Anderson reached Spotsylvania the next morning, just ahead of the Federals. Anderson took up a strong defensive position across the Brock Road at Laurel Hill. Convinced that he still faced only cavalry, and frustrated by the slow pace of the all-night march, Warren ordered his tired troops forward without the benefit of reconnaissance or artillery support. Never mind cannon! Never mind bullets! Press on and clear this road! shouted Warren.

Taking picket and artillery fire the entire way, the V Corps charged up the hill in ragged formation, each regiment moving into line as it came up the Brock Road. Andersons men paused a few moments before unleashing solid infantry volleys, stunning the Federals. The attack quickly broke down.

The Butterfield Twins  the 44th New York and the 83rd Pennsylvania  made two of the more successful Union assaults. The New Yorkers halted 20 yards from the Confederate line, firing a series of volleys. Troops from the adjoining 83rd Pennsylvania penetrated the Confederate position and began fighting hand to hand. In the midst of swinging muskets and screaming men, the 83rds color-bearer, Corporal M.L. Vogus, planted the regimental flag on the enemy breastworks. But the collapse of the Union left-flank regiments doomed the Twins by opening their own flank to a devastating counterattack.

Hit by enemy fire from two directions, the twin regiments realized that they had to retreat. As he turned to move to the rear, Vogus was hit in the chest. Still, he managed to keep his hold on the 83rds colors. As he staggered and fell, he flung the banner to a comrade to prevent its capture. The last unwounded member of the color party ran a few yards with the flag before he, too, was wounded. Desperate to get the flag to safety, Vogus hailed a nearby 44th New York soldier to rescue the colors. Dodging bullets, the New Yorker scooped up the flag and carried it back to the regiment. The heroic Vogus would survive his wounds and receive a well-deserved promotion to sergeant.

Over the next several days, the V Corps made a series of attacks against Laurel Hill that accomplished nothing except to lengthen the Union casualty lists. One such casualty was James Rice, former commander of the 44th New York. Promoted to brigadier general and given command of a New York brigade in recognition of his services at Gettysburg, he was shot down on May 10. When told that his wound was mortal, he replied: Tell the 44th I am done fighting. Turn me over and let me die with my face to the enemy.

Locked in place across from Laurel Hill, the V Corps missed the horrific carnage resulting from the Unions partial penetration of the Confederate Mule Shoe salient on May 12. Lee was pushed to the brink by Grants attack, but he held on and the stalemate at Spotsylvania continued.

Grant continued sidling left, trying to gain Lees flank. The Little Round Top Regiments helped lead this effort, crossing the North Anna River at Jericho Mill Ford on May 23. A spirited Rebel attack routed several Union brigades, getting within 1,000 yards of the Federal pontoon bridges. Preparing to charge some Union artillery batteries  the only organized Federal defense remaining in front of the bridges  the Confederate right suddenly collapsed when Bartlett mounted a three-regiment flank attack. The 83rd Pennsylvania led the assault, driving off the 1st South Carolina (Orrs Rifles). During the charge, Pennsylvania Corporal Lewis Corbin collared the South Carolina brigade commander, Colonel Joseph Brown, yanking him back to Union lines as a prisoner.

With the North Anna fighting proving inconclusive, Grant once again slid left, reaching the vicinity of Cold Harbor on June 1. Stationed to the right at Bethesda Church, the V Corps was fortunate enough to miss Grants doomed Cold Harbor onslaught two days later.

The Little Round Top Regiments crossed the James River with the rest of the army in mid-June, participating in the subsequent assaults on Petersburg. The Federal soldiers were exhausted and worn from the month of maneuvering and battle, and only minimal gains resulted from these assaults as Warren, like other Union corps commanders, failed to drive his attacks home.

Colonel Joshua Chamberlain, former commander of the 20th Maine and now in charge of a V Corps infantry brigade, fell in action at Petersburg. Chamberlain had received orders to make an unsupported attack on a heavily defended part of the Confederate lines guarding the Jerusalem Plank Road. After lodging a fruitless protest with Meades headquarters, Chamberlain led his men forward. As the brigade emerged into open ground, it received a sharp volley that struck dozens of troops, including a color-bearer. Chamberlain grasped the flag and carried it toward the enemy lines. Forty yards into the maelstrom, Chamberlain took a bullet through his hips. The doctors pronounced the wound mortal, and it would, in fact, kill him  but not for another 50 years. In the meantime, Chamberlain was promoted to brigadier general, and upon his recovery the following spring, he returned to lead his brigade for the final, decisive stage of the campaign.

The nine-month siege of Petersburg was made up of several dozen battles and engagements, including a critical three-day fight that August for possession of the Weldon Railroad. Known as the Battle of Globe Tavern, the fierce contest exploded when Grant extended his lines west across the railroad. Once again, Warrens V Corps drew the tough assignment of spearheading the movement. When the smoke cleared, Warren was firmly astride the railroad, but only after some hard fighting.

The initial Union position extended west along a tree line before turning south at the railroad. The Confederate divisions of Maj. Gens. Henry Heth and William Mahone advanced unseen through the woods, hitting Warren hard. The 140th New York was in danger of being cut off and fought its way to the rear, where the Zouaves re-formed under cover of Union artillery. Ordered to make an immediate counterattack, the Zouaves reclaimed the lost ground, rescuing many captured comrades, including their brigade commander.

The Confederate attacks battered but did not break the Federal lines  the V Corps still maintained its hold on the railroad. Heth and Mahone now shifted their attacks to the southern portion of the Union line, which paralleled the railroad. This time the Rebel reconnaissance was poor, and the Confederates walked into a trap. As soon as they reached the middle of an open field, their ranks were shredded by a withering cross-fire exploding from the Union breastworks.

For the 20th Maine, it was payback time. One soldier wrote, Our men enjoyed it very much, for we remembered how often we had been obliged to charge upon their lines, and be shot down by the thousands, while they were screened from our fire, and we now rejoiced that for once the tables were turned, and that to our advantage.

Having lost the Weldon Railroad, Petersburgs last remaining lifeline was the Southside Railroad. Grant would continue his leftward sidle until that, too, fell under his control, dooming Petersburg and the Confederacy to their inevitable surrender.

One of the stepping stones to cutting the Southside Railroad was a battle called Peebles Farm. The Union V Corps again led the flanking push. Grant believed that Lees fortifications on the Confederates extreme right were incomplete and poorly manned. He was wrong.

On September 30, 1864, the V Corps came upon a line of Confederate breastworks supported by an artillery redoubt. The 16th Michigan, 83rd Pennsylvania and 32nd Massachusetts were told to capture the position. Unlike their fellow Little Round Top Regiments, the 16th Michigan had been under a cloud since Gettysburg. A portion of the regiment had given way under pressure, nearly losing Little Round Top. The regiments commander, Colonel Norval Welch, was among those who had pulled back during the confusion. Whether he lost his nerve or retreated up the hill in an attempt to rally his men remained a matter of controversy.

As Welch prepared his men to charge the Peebles Farm redoubt, he knew this would be his last battle. His enlistment had expired and no further fighting was required of him. Nonetheless, he decided to remain with his troops while awaiting his formal discharge. Perhaps he was looking for one final opportunity to erase the stigma of Gettysburg.

At last the order to advance was given, and the Union lines stepped forward. With Confederate artillery ripping holes in his lines, Welch led his men up to the walls of the Rebel fort. A commission to him who first mounts the parapet of that redoubt, called out Welch. Follow me! Sword in hand, Welch sprinted ahead of his men and leaped onto the walls of the redoubt. He climbed a few steps and then toppled backward with a bullet through his head.

Eager to avenge their colonels death, the Michigan men stormed over the forts walls, capturing 100 prisoners and a Rebel cannon. They spotted a second line of entrenchments and charged out, helping capture those works as well.

At the end of the day, Grant finally had a position from which he hoped he could launch an assault on the Southside Railroad. And at the cost of his life, Colonel Welch had forever redeemed his honor.

Despite the best efforts of the Army of the Potomac, however, Lee managed to prevent the capture of Petersburg throughout the winter of 1864-65. In the spring of 1865, Grant devised a plan to break the Petersburg deadlock. He ordered Warrens V Corps to move around the end of the Confederate lines, isolating Maj. Gen. George Picketts 10,000-man outpost from Lees main army three miles away. Meanwhile, Grant directed Maj. Gen. Philip Sheridan to sweep up the back roads with his cavalry and either cut the Southside Railroad or pounce on Pickett if he attempted to interfere.

Picketts job was to act as a mobile, detached force capable of blocking any Federal attempt on the railroad. Unknown to Pickett, he had been cut off from Lee as a result of Warrens victories at Lewis Farm and White Oak Road on March 29 and 31. Chamberlain, recovered from his Petersburg wound and now in command of a brigade in Brig. Gen. Charles Griffins V Corps division, played a decisive role in both battles.

Chamberlains brigade led the way at Lewis Farm, repulsing a vigorous Confederate counterattack. At White Oak Road, a determined Rebel attack routed two Union divisions before Warren personally ordered Chamberlain to rectify the situation. Chamberlainscounterattack repulsed the Confederates, gaining a lodgment across White Oak Road.

Meanwhile, Pickett won a small victory over Sheridans troopers at Dinwiddie Court House. Then, under Grants orders, Warren reached Sheridan on April 1, allowing Sheridan to launch a combined cavalry and infantry assault on Picketts troops at Five Forks later that day. The attack totally smashed Picketts force. The way to the Southside Railroad was open.

The war-torn V Corps fought well in the battle subsequently referred to as the Waterloo of the Civil War. Two men from the Little Round Top Regiments, Sergeant Robert Shipley of the 140th New York and Lieutenant Albert Fernald of the 20th Maine, received the Medal of Honor for capturing the 9th Virginia colors during a wild melee in the center of the Rebel line.

The commanding general also had praise for Chamberlain, whom he saw leading his men into the attack. Galloping over, Sheridan shouted: By God, thats what I want to see! General officers at the front! Warren, though, was a different matter. Angered over Warrens apparent slowness, Sheridan summarily sacked him, appointing Griffin to replace him as the V Corps commander.

The day after Picketts defeat at Five Forks, Lee abandoned his Petersburg lines and marched west, hoping to reach the rail lines that could take him to General Joseph Johnstons troops in North Carolina. Grant had other ideas, and eight days later, on Palm Sunday, the more numerous, better-supplied Army of the Potomac brought Lee to bay at Appomattox Court House. Out of options and surrounded on three sides, Lee reluctantly agreed to surrender his army.

With the war drawing to a close, the Little Round Top Regiments were given one final task. The evening of the day that Lee signed the surrender papers, Griffin informed Chamberlain that he would have the honor of receiving the surrender of weapons and flags from Lees entire army on April 12. That the honor should go to one of the heroes of Gettysburg  perhaps the Army of the Potomacs finest hour  was only just. Chamberlains brilliant performance at Little Round Top had been nearly duplicated in every subsequent engagement in which he fought.

Joshua Chamberlain was one among many candidates for the task. A major factor in his favor was that he was still alive and in the army  a not inconsiderable advantage over some of the other Gettysburg heroes. A quick roll call of the Little Round Top commanders is instructive. Colonel ORourke of the 140th New York, along with brigade commander Colonel Vincent, was killed during the famous engagement. The 83rd Pennsylvanias commanding officer, Colonel Woodward, lost a leg at the Wilderness, knocking him out of the war. Colonel  later General  Rice of the 44th New York died facing the enemy at Spotsylvania. And Colonel Welch of the 16th Michigan fell charging a redoubt at Peebles Farm. Many of the heroes were gone.

Chamberlain seemed to recognize the sacrifices of these other soldiers. Although his new command had fought well, it was a relatively recent addition to the Army of the Potomac. Chamberlain asked if he could be reunited with his old comrades  the 1st Divisions 3rd Brigade  for this one day. This was to be a crowning incident of history and I thought these veterans deserved this recognition, Chamberlain later wrote.

His request was approved. For a single day, Chamberlain was back among the soldiers of the 20th Maine, 83rd Pennsylvania and 16th Michigan. Chamberlain looked up old friends and prepared his former comrades for one last gesture of chivalry.

On the morning of the appointed day, Maj. Gen. John Gordon led the first group of Confederates up to the Surrender Triangle to lay down their arms and battle flags. Dejected, heads hanging low, Gordon and his men marched slowly forward. As they rounded the final turn, overcome by emotion and memories, oblivious to their surroundings, the sudden bark of a bugle pierced the air. Instantly the Federal troops lining the road snapped to carry arms. Gordon, wrenched from his thoughts as he recognized the significance of Chamberlains salute, wheeled his horse and then gracefully brought his sword point down to his boot toe. Gordon then ordered his own troops to carry arms, two honorable gestures signifying the respect those fellow Americans felt for each other.

So ended the last page in the heroic story of the Little Round Top Regiments. The men went back to their wives and sweethearts, their farms and fishing boats. They had been involved in a great enterprise and had succeeded. Many had died before the goal had been achieved, but in a way they had succeeded also. The Union was preserved  at a cost that the survivors of the Little Round Top Regiments knew all too well.

This article was written by Jim Heenehan and originally appeared in the September 1999 issue of Americas Civil War magazine. For more great articles be sure to subscribe to Americas Civil War magazine today!
The debate over the separation of church and state is all too often driven by extremists on both sides and distorted by overheated, sometimes vicious rhetoric. Jon Meacham, editor of Newsweek magazine and author of the bestselling book American Gospel: God, the Founding Fathers, and the Making of a Nation, talked with American History about how the Founders envisioned the role of religion in the nation and how Americans continue to interpret that vision.

You say that the Founding Fathers believed in a public religion. What does that mean?

Public religion is a phrase of Benjamin Franklins that goes back to 1749. His argument was that public religion was a necessary support for morality and the basic maintenance of a society. My sense is that for the Founders, public religion was a belief that there was a creator god who works in the world through providence, who cares for the United States, who weighs prayers and who will reward people in a future life for their conduct in this one.

And by religion, are you referring specifically to Christianity?

No. I think one of the great things about America is that weve been very careful, in our best moments, to avoid sectarian imagery and allusions. Thats true of President Washington. One of the great documents in American history is his letter to the Hebrew Congregation at Newport, in which he said the government of the United States shall give to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, and that every man shall sit in peace under his vine and fig tree, which is an image from the book of Micah.

I was surprised about how tolerant the Founding Fathers were. Its easy to think that they were just creating a nation for white Protestant Christians with some Catholics in Maryland. Theres a lot of talk in their papers about Jews, Mohamedansas they called Muslims thenand Hindus. Jefferson says that his act for religious freedom in Virginia was meant to comprehend within the mantle of its protection the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mahometan, the Hindoo and infidel of every denomination. That act was written in 1777.

In the debate today, the left is seen as being hostile to religion, and the right is seen as being intractable. You wrote in American Gospel: The right would like Jefferson to be a soldier of faith, the left an American Voltaire.He was both and neither. How do the right and the left use their perceptions of the Founders to promote their views?

I think both sides of the ideological divide in America seek historical benediction for the arguments they advance. Whats interesting about the Founders is, rather like the Bible, you can find a quotation to support nearly anything, sometimes within paragraphs of each other. So the reason I think we have to be careful about the utility of the Founders in contemporary arguments is that they were just as confused and just as complex and just as contradictory as we are. I think we have to be responsible stewards of history. We have to put ourselves in their shoes as much as we possibly can, accept the world as they saw it, and then we are able to judge what they did and its relevance to us.

In that sense, I think both extremes on the right and the left have it wrong. I dont think the Founders were entirely secularists, nor do I think they were all a bunch of evangelical Christians running around hoping to create a Christian nation. I think that it was much more complex, much more nuanced than that. Their dedication to religious liberty, to freedom of conscience, is arguably their great contribution to our time. For the first time in Western history, religion was taken out of a calculus for citizenship and ones civil rights.

Are we more polarized now on the issue of religion?

Yes, we are more divided because of the insertion of the abortion question into our national political life. When you have people who feel passionately about the definition of life, you raise the stakes and you raise the volume of that debate. I also think that for the left, you have a sense of frustration. Its been 40 years since the highwater mark of the Great Society, and the left feels its losing ground. The right feels its losing ground, and when you have two sides that feel theyre losing, that tends to exacerbate tensions. Thats my nickel theory.

Can the moderate center continue to hold against the extremes?

Yes, it can. I think that in the end what Madison was talking about in Federalist 10 will triumph, which is that we have a public square in which different forces can contend one against the other and where we have checked, if not the appearance of faction, we have checked its most extreme manifestations. Thats lost sometimes. The level of argument in the country today is quite ferocious. But the reality of political combat is not quite commensurate with the passion of the verbal argument.

Even when the president talks publicly about being in the midst of a Third Great Awakening?

I think thats an observation. I think that President Bush is no more overtly religious than many presidents in the past. I think hes fully within the mainstream of presidential public religion. Any reasonable person looking at the data could argue that this is a moment akin to the two Great Awakenings. Im not sure were in one, I hasten to add, but I dont think its a divisive or a dopey thing to argue. When he talks in those terms, Bush is no odder and no more outside the mainstream than George Washington was in his farewell address in 1797, when he said that religion was an essential support for morality.

The current debate seems rooted in the postWorld War II era, when several Supreme Court decisions put more distance between church and state. During the same time, many Americans were looking to religion for comfort in a time of godless communism, the nuclear threat and the upheaval engendered by the civil rights movement. What role do fear and social uncertainty play in this debate?

I think its enormous. As we were saying, you have two sides, both of whom feel that theyre losing. The right clearly believes that the courts and others have thrown God out of the schools or drummed God out of the public square. And you have liberals, or even moderates, who think that George Bush is driving the Trojan horse up outside the gates and all these evangelicals are going to come in and force a Gideon Bible on everyone. Both sides have this exaggerated view of the other that borders on the irrational. The first thing we all have to do is remove that caricature. Then you begin to see shades of gray where once you only saw black or white.

One interesting episode in the book was Franklin Roosevelts D-Day prayer. That sense of humility seems to be missing from the debate today.

Absolutely. I think we have to be humble because, as St. Paul said, For now we see through a glass darkly. Whether you are a ferocious secularist or a ferocious religious believer, the idea that you know the whole truth in all its detail and mystery, I think, is foolhardy. The atheist side is equally wrong by saying nothing exists. Well, you dont know that, with due respect. As Hamlet said, There are more things, Horatio, in this world than are dreamt of in your philosophy. So both sides could stand with saying we dont have all the answers.

We have been happiest and most prosperous and most peaceful when we have respected one anothers right to believe as one chooses, or not to believe, and we go about our business. And together we defend values on which we agreeliberty, the rule of law and fair play. Those are values rooted in both ancient pagan philosophy and in Judeo-Christian thinking. There is a secular basis and a biblical one. One would be foolhardy to deny the biblical side of things, but that doesnt mean that the Bible is somehow equal in our lives with the Constitution. Its not. But the idea of the individual worth of every human being is a very biblical idea, and it seems to me only intellectually honest to say the Greeks were on to this and they werent Christians. The Israelites were on to this, and they certainly werent Christians. But the Christians were on to it, too. Then, as the centuries fell away, people who continued in a more or less pagan, or secular, tradition helped to develop that thought. Lord knowsso to speakthat many of the French and Scottish thinkers on whom our Founders drew were by no means orthodox Christian or Christian at all.

Were supposed to argue in good faith and good will. Were not going to get an answer on this side of paradise. I think its important to debate these things, but to do so in a way that puts the religious element of any political or public controversy in perspective. Its one of many factors in our public lives that must, and arguably should, be dealt with. Youre not going to get rid of it. Its one of my frustrations with these very smart and interesting writers who write about atheism these daysSam Harris and Richard Dawkins and others. Theyre writing wonderful books, but theyre not going to change anybodys mind. When you start off saying anyone who believes is an idiot, youre being just as dogmatic in your way as Jerry Falwell who says if you dont believe youre going to hell. Why would you want to listen to the second sentence of anyone who said either one of those things? Then you end up with folks like me in the middle, sort of preaching the Rodney King gospelcant we all get alongwhich isnt as compelling, but I think its closer to the reality of things.

It should be pointed out that the Founders were living in a time when religious persecution was very real. Are Americans exempt from the sectarianism that has been so divisive and dangerous in other parts of the world?

I think we are a mighty long way, mercifully, from sectarian violence. An old teacher of mine asked this question: If you asked a majority of people living in America what they were, what would be the first word they said? When would have been the first time they said American, as opposed to Virginian or New Yorker or Christian or whatever? I think most people now, without hesitation, would say first that theyre American. Then they would probably refer to their job and then, and only then, I think, would their religiosity come into it. I think their state affiliation would come way down. Im just not as gloomy about this as some people. I dont want to be naive, but I think religion is like economics. Its about what people value. It shapes behavior in imperceptible but definitive ways. As a Christian, which I am, my argument is that wewe being Americans and people of any faith or no faithhave to respect the theological argument that coerced faith is no faith at all. Thats tyranny. And if God himself did not compel obedience, that is, if he created us with free will, then no man should try. Anyone who attempts to coerce belief, or even encourage conformity, is, in theological terms, committing a sin. Thats my personal view.

I think theres a disconnect between the reality of what many Christiansgiven that Christians are 80 percent of the countryfeel and believe and what people think they feel and believe. One of the great tragedies of our time is that people like Falwell and Pat Robertson have such large microphones and their voices carry much farther than they should. Its one of the reasons I wrote this book. Its one of the reasons that, though I dont agree with him on everything, I applaud former Senator John Danforth, a priest of the church, who says to knock off religious extremism. Lets not have our politics be tinged, inextricably colored by religion. Thats the great American insight: that religion is a part of our lives but should not dominate them. That was something the Founders got right, and we dont always appreciate how revolutionary that truly was in an era of established churches.
Ichiro Miyato, of the 27th Radar Squad (Southern Kyushu), returned to his radar screen after helping carry material for the new construction, which, when completed, would provide a more powerful and well-camouflaged radar installation intended to detect, at a great distance, the anticipated invasion by American forces.

Miyato, his tour scheduled to begin at 11 a.m., noticed the wall clock showing 10:45. He initialed the logbook under the date August 9, 1945. No sooner seated, he spotted a blip moving southward. He watched the radar make two more sweeps; still only the one blip appeared. Scanning frequencies, he found interference indicating the blip was using its own radar.

Looks like a lone B-San running radarId guess its mapping, he advised his command headquarters. Altitudeprobably 10,000 metersout of triple A and fighter range. After a couple more sweeps he plotted the vector and reported, Their course will take them over Nagasakiif you want to alert Civil Defense. Nagasaki lay 25 kilometers south of the radar station.

Miyato poured himself a cup of green tea. He knew Japanese fighter planes would not scramble. The Boeing B-29 was too high, and they couldnt afford to waste the fuel in a futile attempt to bring down the bomber.

Back on the line to headquarters 10 minutes later, he had just gotten the words out: They should be over Nagasaki now, when his screen went blank. A distant flash filled the room with light, and the walls of the radar shack shuddered.

Michie Hattori Bernstein was a 15-year-old schoolgirl when the bomb was dropped on Nagasaki. She never forgot that day.

I may not have been the brightest student in high school, but I was probably the most obedient. When the city sounded the air raid warning, I ran as fast as I could to the cave the government had dug into the side of a hill for us students. I always made it to the shelter ahead of the rest of my class. I say always because Nagasaki had been bombed five times before that day. Out at our school we heard the explosions or saw the sparklers coming down, but they never came near us. Even the sounds were muffled by the hills around our location.

We thought the warning on August 9 would be like the others. Thats why a lot of the girls just hung around the school. At that point, the government had not announced the atomic bombing of Hiroshima three days before. The teachers made us all leave the classrooms, telling us to run to the shelter. I did, but most of the others just stood around talking in the schoolyard. It was not that unusual to see B-San [Mr. B] flying over. Thats what most of us called a B-29. A single B-San had never caused trouble  just checking the weather or taking pictures of the coast, we assumed.

When the bomb exploded, it caught me standing in the entrance to the shelter, motioning for the pokey girls to come in. First came the light  the brightest light I have ever seen. It was an overcast day, and in an instant every object lost all color and blanched a brilliant white. My eyes couldnt cope, and for a little while I went blind.

A searing hot flash accompanied the light that blasted me. For a second I dimly saw it burn the girls standing in front of the cave. They appeared as bowling pins, falling in all directions, screaming and slapping at their burning school uniforms. I saw nothing for a while after that.

Immediately, a powerful wind struck me. It propelled me farther into the cave; then in an instant it threw me out the front entrance. I guess the shockwave hit the back of the cavern and bounced. It took me with it and others who had sought refuge in the shelter. We came tumbling out onto the ground.

What a terrible feeling! I could see nothing. My hands and face singed, intense pain gripped my body. I tried to walk a little and stumbled over a fallen tree. I lay there, not knowing for sure where I was or whether something else might happen to me.

When my senses, including my sight, began returning, I heard crying from the girls in front of the shelter. All, except one, were now standing and blowing on their skin. Looking at the one lying down, I saw her leg twisted at a crazy angle. To this day, we dont know how it became broken. The face and hands of the other girls quickly turned bright red. I guess my being partially inside the cave provided some protection because my stinging began to disappear before long.

We told Haruko, the girl with the broken leg, to lie still; we would go for help. Fires started all around us. Flames leaped from paper and wood scraps, some from collapsed structures. Thick smoke and dust filled the air. The fires gave the only real illumination. Even the noontime sunlight, filtering through the clouds, darkened. The word I kept hearing the girls say, jigoku, means hell. Thats the closest I ever want to come to jigoku.

Lets go back to the school. Its only a couple hundred meters, one of the classmates suggested. We traveled slowly because each step caused pain. Our thoughts were that a bomb must have gone off near the shelter and burned a short distance around us. We didnt even dream what devastation covered our entire city.

The route to the school seemed strangely flat and empty. Someone asked, Werent there houses here when we came to the shelter? The whole world appeared so surreal we just accepted that structures could disappear off the face of the earth. We were living a terrible nightmare.

My classmate Fumiko scampered about 50 meters ahead of us. When I looked up to see why she was calling, I saw her pointing to a large form on the ground.

Look over there, she shouted. It has escaped from the zoo. Its an alligator. It lay in our path to the school, so we approached with caution. Fumiko found a rock.

She drew back the rock above her head as she approached the creature. Then, Fumiko froze in her tracks, screaming hysterically. I ran to her side. The face looking up at us from the crawling creature was human. The shrieking in my ear kept me from hearing what the face was trying to say. I could just see it pleading for something  probably water. No clothes or hair were visible, just large, gray scalelike burns covering its head and body. The skin around its eyes had burned away, leaving the eyeballs, huge and terrifying. Whether male or female I never found out.

The head fell forward  face in the dirt. It didnt move after that. Fumiko crumbled to the ground and I dropped beside her.

We were both 15. The wartime schedule of year-round attendance would allow us to graduate in another month. We were lucky. At the end of spring, the Student Mobilization Order closed many of the other girls schools and moved the students to Yawata. Its a steel-mill town near Kokura where the girls worked all summer. The boys schools also closed. Those boys who had not enlisted in the military ended up working in the Nagasaki shipyard.

When we felt like standing up, we plodded on toward the schoolhouse. Fumiko and I encountered two or three groups of people. They appeared numbed, standing around victims who were on the ground. We saw nothing we could do to help, and we moved on.

Because of the dust and debris, we couldnt see the school building until we were almost upon it. It appeared to have remained sound, except the windows were blown out. We soon saw the other students who had stayed in the schoolyard. Fortunately for them, most were on the opposite side of the building from the blast.

Two girls wore makeshift bandages on their arms. Flying glass from the windows had caused their lacerations. Many of them displayed the bright red faces and hands, which I have come to know as characteristic of second-degree burns. The reinforced concrete-block building offered protection in case of additional explosions, we thought. So, we remained with the group for about half an hour.

It seems a little petty to me now, but I wanted to go into the building to retrieve my books and belongings. A student in our group said, I think one of the teachers is dead. Its funny how my books seemed so important, but my parents had purchased them from their meager income. I was determined to enter.

The blast knocked out our electricity, which added to my dread as I made my way along the hall. Only the dimmest light filtered through the thick dust and smoke. Though a little disoriented, I found room 1-Kumi, my homeroom. Glass littered the floor and lay on the desks, but my books were intact. I tucked them under my arm and retrieved my hat, pulling it tightly to my ears.

Once again in the hallway, I heard a persons voice. The door to 3-Kumi, the room next to mine, stood ajar. The voice from inside called, mizu, mizu  water, water. The door seemed stuck with his body lodged against it, so I pushed with all my might to get in. He screamed in agony when the door moved his body. I recognized Sakamoto Sensei  Teacher Sakamoto. He had wrapped his shirt around his bloody leg. Blood also oozed from the side of his neck. Lifting the crimson-soaked shirt, he motioned to his thigh by nodding his head.

The only sounds he made were gurgling grunts. I saw the wide, gaping slice in his leg. His thighbone showed white in the bloody pool. He looked up at me and mouthed the word mizu. I ran to my homeroom because I knew where cups and a full teapot sat. Returning, I held the cup for him to drink.

He emptied it and motioned with his head toward a pile of overturned desks. I missed the word he whispered. Holding my ear closer I barely heard him say, Tani.

Tani Sensei? He nodded. I walked behind the pile of desks and saw on the floor a womans body with a slab of broken window glass on her chest. I wrapped one of my books around the edge of the glass and attempted to move it. I probably screamed when I saw her head; I dont remember. The head had been virtually severed, but her eyes remained open. The sight of the inside of her windpipe haunts me to this day.

I filled Mr. Sakamotos teacup with more tea and left it for him. I could do nothing more for him or for Miss Tani.

Almost out the back door, I was nearly crushed by my classmates rushing into the building. Look at my arm, one said, showing it to me. I saw large dark wet spots. The rain is blacklarge drops and they hurt when they hit you.

Before I returned to the school from the shelter, four of the students who suffered the most painful burns had departed for the river. They planned to bathe their wounds in the cooling water. The explosion apparently knocked over the citys water towers, bringing the pressure to zero at our school. The Urakami River runs through the middle of the town and drains into Nagasaki Harbor. Our school was located a couple hundred meters from the river.

In such a state of shock I dont know if I made sense, but I attempted to tell the group about the fate of the teachers. I continued trying to get my story out when the four girls returned from the Urakami. All were crying. Two girls could only be described as hysterical. The others attempted to hug us and then quickly pulled away in pain from their burns.

They told us how they reached the river where hundreds of severely burned people were trying to cool their injuries in the water. The girls described many as looking like dead trees with their bark peeling off  skin hanging from their faces and hands. Along the shoreline floated bodies, some stacked two or three deep. A few still moved, lacking the strength to pull themselves out onto the bank.

The parents of several of the girls came to the school and escorted their daughters away. Mine did not. I fretted considerably about that fact. Had they been killed or injured? Trying to brace myself for whatever tragedy I might find at home I set out walking. Two classmates departed with a crutch made from a tree branch to help Haruko with her injured leg.I dutifully strapped my schoolbooks on my back and headed off from the others. On two occasions I found myself lost. The streets were covered with debris and most landmark structures had been demolished by the blast. A ridge of land, some 30 meters high, formed a wall between the river delta of our school and the district containing my home. Guiding on a saddleback in the ridge, I found the path that led to my neighborhood.

Coming off the ridge, however, a completely different world greeted me. No damage met my eyes, grass appeared green, a truck moved along a street. I stopped and asked myself if the past two hours had just been a terrible nightmare or were they real.

As I walked through my neighborhood I saw a number of people in the streets. Most knew something terrible had happened  they didnt know what. I didnt either. After relating to them a few of the scenes I had witnessed, I hurried on.Turning onto my street I saw my mother and dad coming out of the house. On their way to look for me, they had reached home only a few minutes before me. Both my parents worked at a small neighborhood factory assembling airplane parts. Those in the factory saw the flash and felt their building shake, but they put it down to an earthquake. Eventually the factory manager realized something more serious had occurred and released all of the employees.

That evening our civil defense block captain roused everyone in the area and formed rescue squads. We walked to the damaged sections. Initially, seeing the extent of the devastation stunned those in my group, but we all pitched in. That first evening chaos reigned, but over the next week we helped set up a makeshift morgue and treatment center.

I thought, only a week ago I would have been horrified at a paper cut on my finger. Now I found myself helping carry dead people whose skin was tearing off in my hands. I saw bodies where the blast had tattooed the pattern of their kimonos onto their skin.

I was assigned the task of keeping flies off of the injured. From nowhere, it seemed, a huge contingency of flies arrived. They swarmed around the wounded, attempting to lay their maggot eggs in the open wounds. Flies crawled under my makeshift bandages. At nightfall my parents would send me home to rest while they worked on.

People were telling us the war had ended  an event for which we had waited years, and yet it seemed insignificant in light of the efforts we were engaged in. By the end of August, victims were still dying of radiation sickness. We didnt know at the time what was killing them. Civilian groups and returning soldiers cleared most of the debris from the streets.

About that time we saw our first Americans. The citizens of Nagasaki didnt welcome them as I am told occurred in other cities. The universal horror experienced by those living in the atom-bombed areas could not be shaken off by even the promise of peace. We knew war is appalling and has few rules, but what the enemy did to our innocent civilians on a mass scale we felt to be outside the purview of a civilized nations warfare.

Was it the unseen hand of some providential power that directed the bombs ground zero squarely over the largest Christian church in Asia and its surrounding Christian neighborhood? Did that same hand spare the great Shinto shrine Suwa-jinja in the center of town? Are we to be pariahs the rest of our lives, disfigured and frightening others because of our radiation ailments? These were among the questions I heard my parents discussing with their friends.

Over the next few years such dark thoughts eroded away as Americas help rebuilt schools and encouraged businesses. I completed my education, majoring in English. When around Americans, I listened carefully to their pronunciation, trying to imitate each word. It worked out well for me. General [Douglas] MacArthurs headquarters hired me, and I moved to Tokyo.

I became quite fluent in English, working closely with American officers, translating documents and explaining Japanese customs and mores. My early life in Nagasaki, however, I kept to myself. For many years after the war no one understood radiation sickness and many feared those exposed might somehow transmit it to others around them. In addition, I couldnt bring myself to dredge up those awful memories people were sure to ask about. After all, Japan was becoming a different country.

Many months passed before I revealed the secrets even to my future husband, Raymond Bernstein. Serving as a civilian attorney employed by the War Crimes Commission, he frequently called on me to help with his cases. More than 500 war criminals stood trial, and lawyers called up close to 1,000 witnesses.

When we started dating, life became quite heady for this young girl. He escorted me to diplomatic functions, and we met with high-ranking judges and lawyers from many countries. More than once, newsreel cameras caught me standing by his side as he gave an interview.

Of course, I said yes when he asked me to marry him and move to America. However, I readied myself for months  maybe years  of red tape before we would actually say our vows. Ray just said, Ill pull a few strings, and in a short time we were on a plane headed to the United States. After living in Washington for two years, he took a job with the federal prosecutors office in Dallas.

His work took him all over Texas and to surrounding states. I found myself more and more left at home when he traveled. His circle of American friends seldom included me.

One day, after seven years of matrimony, he presented me with divorce papers, saying our marriage had been a mistake. He offered to pay my expenses back to Japan, but I felt this country offered better opportunities for a single woman.

A Japanese friend living in Fort Worth arranged a job for me with a loan company. Ray had converted me to his Jewish faith, but I guess you could say I reconverted to Christianity. The Baptist Church keeps me active. I remained with the loan company through a buyout by a mortgage business from which I retired in 1994. My plans call for my moving to Mississippi, where I understand the climate resembles that of southern Kyushu.

I have undergone an operation for cancer, but no one can determine if it is related to my ordeal in Nagasaki.

I have been reluctant to talk in any detail about my experience as a youth during the war. Now I believe the Lord has left the memories so vivid in my mind so that I may pass them on to other generations, instead of taking them to my grave.

Michie Hattori Bernstein moved to Mississippi and died in 2003. William L. Leary was trained in Japanese by the U.S. Army. After the war, he conducted interviews with civilians in Japan for the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey and continues to interview Japanese expatriates living in America. For further reading, see The Atomic Bomb: Voices from Hiroshima and Nagasaki, by Kyoko Seldon.

This article originally appeared in the July/August 2005 issue of World War II magazine. For more great articles subscribe to World War II magazine today!
On Christmas day 1863, tension and bitter politics invaded

the joyful serenity of a congregations worship.

BY PEGGY ROBBINS

December 25, 1863, was warmer than the Christmases Union soldiers in Vicksburg, Mississippi, remembered from up North. Still, it was chilly enough to fog a mans breath as worshipperscitizens of the Southern city and Union soldiers alikemade their way to Christ Episcopal Church for the morning service.

The members of Christ Church did not exactly roll out the red carpet for the Yankees. As far as they were concerned, it had been bad enough living under enemy rule for the six months since the Union army captured their city in July. They should not have to face their oppressors in their own church. But this Christmas day, sitting in the same pews as they were, singing the same hymns, and reciting the same prayers were soldiers in blue uniforms.

As the minutes ticked away and the service progressed, tension grabbed the Southerners in attendance. They knew the minister was about to make a critical decision. If he guessed wrong, tempers would surely erupt. If he guessed rightwell, maybe there was no guessing right.

The tension centered around the fast-approaching moment in the service when, according to the Book of Common Prayer, the minister was to offer a prayer for the president of the country. Since February 1861, when the Southern Confederacy, of which seceded Mississippi was a part, elected Jefferson Finis Davis as its first president, the minister had regularly asked that Gods guidance be generously bestowed on Davis. Now, however, Vicksburg was a conquered city, and this Christmas day had drawn some of the conquerors to Christ Church. Would the minister have the audacity to pray for Davis in the presence of Federal troops?

The pastor looked about his congregation for a moment. He noticed some agitation in a pew occupied by five young women: Kate and Ella Barnett, the daughters of a local judge; a Mrs. Moore, wife of a vestryman at the church; and two others named Laura Latham and Ellen Martin. There was more than one flush face among the women, who seemed to expect their pastor to say the wrong thing. Turning his head, the minister cleared his throat and met the eyes of some Union officers. They looked as empty of emotion as the women were full of it.

Taking a deep breath and releasing it in a sigh of resignation, the minister began his prayer: O Lord, our Heavenly Father, the high and mighty ruler of the universe, who dost from thy throne behold all the dwellers upon the earth, most heartedly we beseech Thee, with thy favor to behold and bless thy servant, the President of the United States and all others in authority.

Immediately upon the utterance of the words United States, the five restless young women stood up and, with a swishing of long skirts, left their pew. Chins held high, they marched noisily down the aisle, out the front door, and into the December morning air.

Inside the church, there was silence, but the Union soldiers were visibly enraged, and because their army controlled the city at the time, they would get the last laugh. Punishment of the defiant women was quick and harsh. It came on December 27 from Union Major General James Birdseye McPherson, commander of the Army of Tennessees XVII Corps, in the form of General Orders No. 52:

The following-named personsMiss Kate Barnett, Miss Ella Barnett, Miss Laura Latham, Miss Ellen Martin, and Mrs. Moorehaving acted disrespectfully toward the President and Government of the United States, and having insulted the officers, soldiers, and loyal citizens of the United States who had assembled at the Episcopal Church in Vicksburg on Christmas for divine service by abruptly leaving said church at that point in the services where the officiating minister prays for the welfare of the President of the United States and all others in authority, are hereby banished, and will leave the Federal lines within forty-eight hours, under penalty of imprisonment.

Hereafter, all persons, male or female, who, by word, deed, or implication, do insult or allow disrespect to the President, the Government, or flag of the United States, upon matters of a national character, shall be fined, banished, or imprisoned, according to the grossness of the offense.

The five women left Vicksburg as ordered, and a new, darker despair settled over a people already over-burdened by the war. Their friends and relatives were dying in a war the South was losing, but not even at home, not even in their own church, could Vicksburgs citizens find respite. Some members of Christ Church lost hope; some never forgave their minister; some refused to sit alongside the enemy in their own church. Whatever their personal reasons for avoiding church, many stayed away. It would be a long time before the pews of Christ Church were as full as they had been on Christmas day 1863.

Peggy Robbins is a longtime contributor to Civil War Times.
Barack Obama rode into the presidency on a wave partially propelled by revulsion against the Iraq War. In his June 4, 2009, speech in Cairo, called A New Beginning, he pledged to wind down Americas fighting presence in the Middle East. Events in Iraq have reminded America of the need to use diplomacy and build international consensus to resolve our problems whenever possible.

Yet a little more than four years later, in August 2013, President Obama came close to bombing Syria, where the regime of Bashar al-Assad was locked in a two-year civil war with insurgents. If the United Nations (as expected) had not sanctioned strikes, Obama seemed ready to act with the help of a few allies.

Peace presidents have changed to war presidents before in American history. They justify their change of heart by pleading changed circumstances. The change from peace-making to war-making is often fitful, however; old habits are hard to break.

The losers of the election of 1800, John Adams and the Federalists, had fought a naval war with revolutionary France and expanded the army in case the French invaded the United States. The winners, Thomas Jefferson and the first Republican Party, had run on a peace platform. They condemned both the fighting and military spending. James Madison, Jeffersons secretary of state, had even predicted that in a new world of republican governments there might be UNIVERSAL AND PERPETUAL PEACE (his emphasis), since only kings lusted for war. Jefferson, in his first inaugural address in March 1801, explained that America could be peaceful thanks to its geography: Kindly separated by nature and a wide ocean from the exterminating havoc of one quarter of the globe, we could look forward to peace, commerce and honest friendship with all nationsentangling alliances with none.

America was indeed entering a period of peace, thanks not to the prevalence of republican government or geography, but to diplomacy. At the end of his term Adams had managed to negotiate an end to his naval war with a treaty signed in September 1800. By the spring of 1802, peace had come to Europe: Revolutionary France, now led by Napoleon Bonaparte, and its monarchical enemies declared a time-out after a decade of conflict.

America and the Republican Party reaped a peace dividend. Military spending had meant high taxes; frugal Jefferson cut them. American merchants, meanwhile, got rich on the carrying trade between Europe and its colonies in the West Indies. As profits trickled down to crews, thousands of English sailors deserted their ships and enlisted on American vessels to partake of the bonanza.

Napoleon, it is true, intended to give us an unpleasant surprise: The Louisiana Territory, which he had acquired from Spain in 1800, was meant to be the foundation of a new French empire in North America. But when he decided to focus instead on Europe, he sold it to us for a mere $15 million.

Peace, prosperity and the Louisiana Purchase gave Jefferson a triumphant reelection in 1804.

The world, however, was already becoming a more dangerous place. The European powers went to war again in 1803, and the belligerents cared little for the neutral United States. In 1805 Britains High Court of Admiralty ruled that the British navy could seize American ships trading with France and its colonies. A year later Napoleon decreed that no ships, even neutral ones, sailing from Britain or its colonies could land in European ports.

Meanwhile, British captains stopped American ships on the high seas to search them for deserters. In 1807, cruising off the Virginia coast, the HMS Leopard asked to board the USS Chesapeake, an American frigate. When permission was denied, the Leopard poured three broadsides into the Chesapeake, forcing it to strike its colors. The British then came aboard and took off four suspected deserters; one would be hanged, the others imprisoned.

Americans raged at the Chesapeake affair. There was an anti-British riot in Norfolk, Va., and protest meetings in New York and Boston. Never since the Battle of Lexington, wrote Jefferson, have I seen this country in such a state of exasperation. Representative John Randolph called for instant retaliation.I would have invaded Canada and Nova Scotia, and made a descent on Jamaica.

Then, as now, it was hard for a political party to change direction. Jefferson himself had come to believe that the United States needed to take a firmer line, once the world war between Napoleon and his enemies resumed. There was an opinion in Europe, he wrote, that our government is entirely in Quaker principles, and will turn the left cheek when the right has been smitten. This opinion must be corrected. But how?

In 2013 Obama considered bombing Syria not because it attacked the United States, but because it attacked its own people. In August Assads forces used poison gas on a Damascus suburb, killing more than 1,400. Obamas ambassador to the U.N., Samantha Power, took the lead in expressing outrage: Reports devastating, she tweeted. 100s dead in streets, including kids killed by chem weapons.Perps must face justice. But could the administration retreat from its insistence on diplomacy over direct military action?

In 1807 Jefferson shrank from war. He let the anger over the Chesapeake affair burn itself out. For the next four years (1807-11) he and Madison, who succeeded him in the White House, tried to use commerce as a weapon, experimenting with a variety of policies that either kept American ships off the high seas altogether, or allowed them to trade only with countries that were not mistreating us at the moment. These policies confused and impoverished American merchants without producing any real change in British or French attitudes.

The Obama administration, after rounding up allies for a punitive strike on Syria, began to temporize. It sought congressional approval. Secretary of State John Kerry downplayed the scope of the actions it proposed to take, at one point calling them unbelievably small. When Russia offered a deal to disarm Syrias chemical weapons rather than pulverize them with air strikes, the administration grabbed it.

The presidency confers great power, as well as the temptation to use it. On the eve of Jeffersons first inauguration, his old rival Alexander Hamilton made a shrewd prediction: Despite the perception of Jefferson as a zealous opponent of strong central government, he would uphold the power of the presidency because, like the beneficiary of a will, he would want to come into a good estate. Once Jefferson became president he felt the sting of foreign bullying. But Mr. J., as Hamilton called him, was as likely as any man I knowto calculate what will be likely to promote his own reputation and advantage; and the probable result of such a temper is the preservation of systems.

When Barack Obama was a senator he opposed the Iraq War even though Saddam Hussein had gassed his own people. President Obama, after a full term in office, was pushing for military intervention in Syria for the same offense.

James Madison and Congress finally decided in 1811 that Britains behavior was insupportable, and they banned trade with England, but not with France. A year later Madison asked Congress to declare war, which it did.

As of early autumn 2013, the Obama administration was still relying on diplomacy and international consensus in the Middle East. Every president has his own temperament, which is not malleable, and his own record, which he likes to think is consistent. Even when circumstances change, it can take a long time for presidents and their parties to catch up, if they ever do.



Peace Presidents on a War Footing originally ran in the February 2014 issue of American History magazine.
Vicksburg 1863, by Winston Groom, Alfred A. Knopf

Winston Groom is a first-rate spinner of yarns, and like the tales of his most famous fictional character, Forrest Gump, his accounts seamlessly transport readers into the story. Vicksburg 1863 is Grooms second foray into Civil War history, and though he uncovers no new material in chronicling the lengthy campaign that ended with the fall of this critical Mississippi River stronghold city in July 1863all but tolling the death knell for the Confederacyhe more than substantiates his contention that the campaign was a hard and bloody road, rife with tenacity and indecisions, brilliance and stupidity, valor and arrogance, suffering and elation, victory and defeat.

In true yarn-spinner fashion, Groom takes his time getting to the heart of the matter. Before he even turns to Vicksburg, in fact, he provides intriguing anecdotes about the respective Union and Confederate strategies for waging the war in the West, Ulysses Grants February 1862 campaign against Forts Henry and Donelson in Tennessee, the April 1862 Battle of Shiloh, and the history of the city of New Orleans and its capitulation to David Farraguts Union flotilla the same month. Indeed, it is hard to think of a historical sidebar about the wars Western theater on which Groom doesnt wax eloquent in this book.

Likewise, Groom is at no loss for words when describing the regions captains of war, both blue and gray. Commenting on Grants failed careers before the war, Groom reminds the reader that the legendary general once owned a slave of his own, was personally tolerant of slavery and was probably a closet moderate since, fearing Southern secession and certain civil war, he didnt vote for Lincoln in 1860.

Groom also opines that Jefferson Davis can reasonably be considered a reluctant secessionist because he ardently counseled against growing sectional differences while a member of Congress. Grooms asserts that throughout Davis Senate career, the future Confederate president warned of the dire consequences likely to result from the sectionalism that seemed to be growing exponentially between North and South. Davis emerges as a failed compromiser over the issue of slavery, and Groom contends that he labored tirelessly to formulate logical arguments against abolitionism, some of them a stretch even for his usually rational mind.

It should be pointed out that Groom, an Alabama native, is more objective when he evaluates Davis as a war leader, but there is always the lingering aura of the tragic hero in his portrait of the Confederate helmsman.

Grooms flair for language and his proud Southern roots show clearly in his description of Vicksburg on the eve of war: Until the war came Vicksburg and its genteel environs were like a land in a storybook. Passengers aboard steamboats plying the Mississippi could look with awe and envy upon broad lawns and green pastures surrounding the elegant mansions that lined both sides of the river.

This is not to imply that Groom has imbibed too many mint juleps to be taken seriously. On the contrary, once he gets to the Vicksburg Campaign proper, his command of poignant historical details combined with a sound understanding of military tactics makes for an engaging read.

Of course, those who like their military history with fewer meanders than Old Man River himself might do well to consider Michael B. Ballards straightforward one-volume account of Vicksburg, or Terry Winschels two excellent volumes of related essays. But if youre the type who loves to tramp around the Mississippi bottomlands and paddle up its silt-laden bayous, you will be hard-pressed to find a more personable companion than Winston Groom, the consummate yarn-spinner.
If a contest had been staged to offer a prize for the most frustrated man in North America in the summer of 1813, United States Navy Master Commandant Oliver Hazard Perry would have won it hands down. In February the twenty-seven-year-old Rhode Islander had been ordered to the Northwest frontier to take command of a fleet that would hopefully give the United States control of Lake Erie. After a harrowing journey through the winter wilderness, he arrived at the tiny Pennsylvania town of Erie, then also known as Presque Isle, to discover that the fleet was nonexistent and not likely to appear anytime soon.

A patriotic local ship captain, Daniel Dobbins, had a few semifinished vessels on the stocks at an improvised shipyard. But his armament consisted of a single cannon. The only guards to protect these nautical skeletons against a British raid from across the frozen lake were a haphazard company of sixty dispirited militiamen without guns or ammunition. There was no rope for rigging, no canvas for sails. Perry had been told that fifty carpenters, caulkers, ship-joiners, and sawyers were awaiting him at Presque Isle. Not one had arrived. The town of seventy-six houses was semideserted. Many of its four hundred inhabitants had fled, fearful that the royal raiders from Canada would be accompanied by their Indian allies, scalping knives in hand.

Worsening Perrys woes was the haphazard command situation. His immediate superior was Commodore Isaac Chauncey, who was more than two hundred miles away in Sacketts Harbor, at the eastern end of Lake Ontario. A worrier rather than a fighter, Chauncey claimed to have his hands full trying to retain control of Ontario. He had commandeered 150 sailors that Perry had brought with him from Rhode Island  all personally trained and passionately loyal to him. Chauncey reacted to Perrys pleas for men, guns, and equipment with maddening silence.

Also in this dirty game was a fat, sloppy, Maryland-born navy officer named Jesse Duncan Elliott. Also a master commandant (the equivalent of a present-day commander), Elliot had won a victory of sorts at Fort Erie the previous fall, when he led a company of soldiers in a surprise attack on two ships guarding the British bastion at the southwestern end of the Niagara River. He captured both craft, but one became grounded and was burned. Elliott took not-so-silent umbrage when Perry was named commander on Lake Erie. Operating out of the Black Rock navy yard near Buffalo, the Marylander intercepted the few men Chauncey forwarded and sent the dregs to Perry.

All this made the thin-skinned Perry wonder if his naval career were not fatally jinxed. His father, Christopher Perry, had been a successful merchant ship captain who joined the U.S. Navy to fight in the Quasi-War against Revolutionary France that raged in the sea lanes off the Atlantic coast and in the Caribbean from 1798 to 1800. He had taken thirteen-year-old Oliver along as a midshipman. But the fathers naval career had been aborted by Thomas Jeffersons election in 1800. The pacific new president saw no need for a large navy; he considered it likely to embroil the United States in foreign wars. The number of warships was cut from forty-three to thirteen, and only nine captains and thirty-six lieutenants were retained on the rolls. Midshipmen shrank from 354 to 150. By sheer chance, it would seem, one of those retained was young Perry.

For the next decade, Perrys naval career was routine. He advanced in rank during cruises to the Mediterranean, where he took part in the spasmodic wars with the piratical Barbary states that eventually forced the Muslim dynasties along the North African seaboard to stop preying on American merchantmen. In 1809 he was given command of the schooner-rigged dispatch boat Revenge. The following year, during a night of heavy fog, Revenge grounded on Watch Hill Reef offshore from his native Rhode Island and was soon demolished by the pounding surf. Although Perry was exonerated in a court-martial (the pilot took the blame), losing his ship left a cloud over his name.

Thereafter Perry found himself commanding flotillas of small gunboats, each armed with a single cannon. These warships manqu would supposedly defend American ports and rivers against enemy attack. The gunboats were Jeffersons idea of a defensive navy. Every sailor knew the wallowing creatures were worthless, but the oblivious president had had 240 of them built. The British navy, meanwhile, continued to outrage the American public by searching and seizing U.S. merchant ships and impressing seamen as part of its worldwide blockade of Napoleonic France. Not even an unprovoked attack on the American frigate Chesapeake, killing three men and wounding eighteen, aroused the Sage of Monticellos fighting blood.

Jeffersons successor, James Madison, reversed the policy of nonresistance to British arrogance. A new generation of young politicians followed his lead, and soon congressional war hawks such as Henry Clay and John C. Calhoun were calling for a declaration of hostilities and an invasion of Canada. But the new president had inherited a shrunken, demoralized Regular Army and minuscule navy and had done nothing to repair the damage. The War Department consisted of eight clerks; the army did not have either a quartermaster or an ordnance department. Only four American frigates were seaworthy. The British already had a ship of the line and seven frigates off the Atlantic coast. Worse, the populous commercial states of New England regarded the war with distaste and declined to call out their militia. Worst of all, the army was led by a bevy of aged generals left over from the American Revolution. The result was a series of military disasters.

The most unnerving of these reversals took place at Fort Detroit in August 1812, when Battle of Saratoga veteran Brig. Gen. William Hull surrendered sixteen hundred men to a besieging British-Indian force of roughly equal numbers. With Detroit went the vast Michigan Territory  the current states of Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin  of which Hull was the governor. The British immediately began formulating plans for a client state in the heart of the American continent, led by the most gifted Indian warrior-statesman of the era, the Shawnee Chief Tecumseh. The whining Hulls chief excuse was British control of Lake Erie, which had enabled the enemy to transport cannons and an army to waylay him.

Only at sea did the Americans find anything to cheer about. Frigates such as United States and Constitution won ship-to-ship slugfests against British counterparts, while dozens of privateers took to the deep to wreak havoc on English merchantmen. But the British, with more than one thousand ships in their battle fleet, were confident that their overwhelming numbers would soon correct this spate of saltwater impudence.

The Northwest remained a crucial theater. As thousands of Indians joined their side, the British saw a chance to disable the entire American westward enterprise. Seeing what was at stake, hundreds of fighting men in Kentucky rushed to enlist. Major General William Henry Harrison, governor of Indiana Territory, who had defeated Tecumseh and his Indians at the Battle of Tippecanoe shortly before the war began, was given command of this new militia army. He soon found he was unable to advance because his long supply line was tenuous to the point of nonexistence. With the British in Detroit and in two other former American forts, King George IIIs men and Tecumsehs braves could strike at this lifeline at will.

When a thousand Kentuckians took it into their heads to lunge forward and capture the British fort near Frenchtown (present-day Monroe, Michigan) on the River Raisin, they were wiped out to a man by a British-Indian counterattack from the allies Lake Erie main base, Fort Malden. A similar attack on Fort Meigs on the Maumee River was beaten off only after desperate fighting. A chastened Harrison obeyed orders from Secretary of War John Armstrong to go on the defensive until Perry gained control of the lakes.

Perry was hard at work, exhorting, organizing, cajoling. He journeyed to Pittsburgh and befriended the naval agent there, who was soon shipping rope, canvas, lead (for keels), and cannons up the Allegheny River and French Creek. Perry found his fifty lost carpenters on this trip, cursing the government for shipping their tools separately over a route that took three times as long. He also persuaded the commander of the Pennsylvania militia to give him five hundred men to guard the Presque Isle shipyard.

Perry did everything in his power to cooperate with Commodore Chauncey when that timid leader asked for his assistance to attack Fort George, at the northwest end of the Niagara River. Sword in hand, Perry led marines in a crucial charge that carried the day. A grateful Chauncey wrote, He was present at every point where he could be useful, under showers of musketry, but fortunately escaped unhurt.

The victory prompted the British to abandon Fort Erie at the opposite end of the river, enabling Perry to reinforce his fleet with five small former merchant ships from the Black Rock navy yard. Perry, 250 sailors and soldiers, and teams of oxen had to drag the ships into Lake Erie against the Niagara Rivers formidable current. It took six days of what Perry called one of the hardest tasks I ever faced  the fatigue is almost incredible. Ill with fever and exhaustion, Perry led the virtually unarmed ships (they had only seven cannons between them) down the lake toward Presque Isle against a demoralizing headwind with three ships of the British Lake Erie fleet in close pursuit. At one point, a fog miraculously descended when the two fleets were only a half-mile apart. As Perry tacked into Presque Isles sheltered bay the sails of the British men-of-war appeared on the horizon.

These heroics did not persuade Commodore Chauncey to send Perry any sailors. As May dissolved into June and it into July, Perrys shipbuilding program was almost complete. He had constructed two 110-foot, five-hundred-ton brigs with twenty guns each, three gunboats, and a pilot boat. With extra cannons added to his five Black Rock ships, Perry had a fleet that outgunned the British. But he needed 740 sailors to man it  and he had only 120. Not a few of these were down with lake fever, a first cousin to typhus.

Letters arrived from the secretary of the navy and from General Harrison urging Perry to attack the enemy. Harrison reported that scouts had predicted another British foray against Fort Meigs. The mortified Perry could only report: I regret that the force under my command is not yet ready for service.As soon as the government forwards men, I shall sail.

In mid-July came news from the east that did nothing to raise Perrys morale. One of his closest navy friends, Captain James Lawrence, commanding the star-crossed Chesapeake, had been defeated and killed in a ship-to-ship action with HMS Shannon off Boston. Perry was deeply moved by Lawrences dying words, Dont give up the ship. He asked a sailmaker to embroider them on a strip of blue cloth, which he planned to use as a personal battle flag. He also named the brig he intended to make his flagship Lawrence. Its sister ship was christened Niagara.

The news of James Lawrences heroic though losing fight only intensified Perrys frustration at his immobility. Even more galling was the way the British fleet, now commanded by Captain Robert Heriot Barclay, a one-armed veteran of Trafalgar, sailed back and forth a few miles outside of Presque Isle Bay, taunting him. Perrys letters to Chauncey began to acquire a cutting edge. On July 20, he wrote: The enemys fleet of six sail are now off the bar of this harbor. What a golden opportunity should we have men.

On July 23, Perry grew even more vehement. For Gods sake and yours and mine, he wrote to Chauncey,send me men and officers  send on the commander, my dear sir, for the Niagara. She is a noble vessel  send me officers and men and honour is within our grasp. In his desperation, he urged the commodore to come to Lake Erie with men from his squadron and take charge. Perry said he would rejoice, whoever commands, to see this force on the lake.

A few days later, seventy men arrived from Black Rock in a ship commanded by Perrys cousin, Sailing Master Stephen Champlin. Many were African Americans, others militiamen. Few had ever been on a ship before. Perry told Chauncey they were a motley set but he had reached the point where he was pleased with anything in the shape of a man. At the end of July, another sixty men arrived. Most were too sick to stand. Others still trembled with the residue of lake fever. In desperation, Perry tried recruiting men from the militia in Presque Isle, but only a handful responded.

An ongoing worry was the possibility that during the darkness of night the British would send armed men in boats to destroy Perrys fleet. Perry pleaded with the Pennsylvania militiamen to stand guard aboard the unmanned ships. They refused. In a quotation that summed up why Regular Army and navy men despised the militia, the captain of one company told Perry, I told the boys to go  but the boys wont go.

Shortly before midnight on July 31, Perry was awakened by an aide with startling news: The British squadron had disappeared. Their porthole lights were no longer visible offshore. Perry hurried to the lakefront to see for himself. The British had vanished. What had happened? Perry suddenly recalled a rumor that Captain Barclay had been invited to a dinner honoring him and his officers at Port Dover, on the Canadian shore. He had apparently accepted, confident that Perry was never going to get his five- hundred-ton brigs across the shallow bar at the mouth of Presque Isles harbor.

We now know this was the case. At the dinner, the British veteran told his audience he expected to find the Yankee brigs hard and fast on the bar when I return, in which predicament it will be but a small job to destroy them. Barclay had a few veteran lake sailors in his fleet who knew the depth of the Presque Isle bar, and his experienced eye had no difficulty computing how much water a five-hundred-ton brig drew.

What Barclay did not compute was Perrys seafaring know-how and the technical skills of the shipbuilders he had accumulated at Presque Isle. By 4 a.m. on Sunday, August 1, Perry had his fleet in line at the mouth of the harbor and was soon at work on getting the brigs Lawrence and Niagara across the bar. At first it appeared impossible. Daniel Dobbins carefully sounded the bar and found that with an east wind blowing, in some places there was only 4 1/2 feet of water; at no place was there more than a fathom (six feet). The brigs drew nine feet.

Perry, however, had devices that Captain Barclay apparently thought were too sophisticated for the Americans to construct: camels. In the shipyard, appropriately named shipwright Sidney Wright had constructed four of these gadgets. Invented by the Dutch, they were essentially rectangular watertight pontoons. When water was pumped into them, they sank. They were lashed to the ship, water was pumped out, and they rose, theoretically lifting the ship with them.

Lawrence was the first to be cameled. The process turned out to be much more complicated in fact than the theorists expected. The first try lifted the brig only about three feet. Perry offloaded the cannons and stores. Men in small boats and some on foot in shallow water tugged heroically on cables, but Lawrence remained stuck in the muddy sand. A second try, with more camels, was made the following day. There was more desperate tugging from the sailors in the boats. The do-nothing Pennsylvania militiamen, inspired by the herculean challenge, volunteered their muscle power as well. On the morning of August 4, Lawrence slid into deep water, and the cannons were hastily returned on board.

Now it was Niagaras turn. By this time, Perry and the rest of his men were in their third day of continuous frantic effort, during which they got no more than snatches of sleep. On August 5, with Niagara stuck on the bar, about to be fitted with camels, the exhausted Americans were rattled by a cry: Sail ho! It was Barclay, back from his testimonial dinner. There was scarcely a man aboard Lawrence. The rest of Perrys fleet had crossed the bar, but they were pipsqueaks, from a firepower point of view.

If Barclay had attacked, it would have been a slaughter. But as the British fleet drew closer, the wind shifted to the west. Lawrences nose swung in their direction, and Niagaras followed suit, giving Captain Barclay the impression that Perry was coming out to fight him. To confirm the bluff, Perry ordered the 110-ton cutter Ariel and the even smaller schooner Scorpion to attack the enemy fleet. They headed toward the British and unleashed bold blasts from their long-range guns. Aboard Lawrence, the crew had hastily boarded and Perry ordered his drummer to beat to quarters. The shaken Barclay signaled his captains to put their helms over and headed for open water again.

Ironically, the British commander was as shorthanded as Perry. He had only fifty trained sailors in his fleet; the rest were Canadian militia and British army soldiers. Both he and the British army commander, General Henry Proctor, had pleaded with the high command to give them enough men to attack Erie. But the higher ranks stonewalled them, not unlike the way Chauncey had frustrated Perry. Men and supplies were shipped from east to west, and the intervening commanders clung to as many as they dared so they could maintain superiority on their own fronts.

On August 5, Barclay had an even better reason for retreating from Perrys pretended assault. Another large ship was about to be added to his fleet, a nineteen-gun brig that had been built at Malden. That was where the British commander headed  and was so impressed with the sturdy newcomer that he named it Detroit, in honor of the victory over Hull, and made it his flagship. On August 6, Perry, still shaky from exhaustion, led his fleet out on the lake but found no trace of the British. Back off Presque Isle, he provisioned his ships and discharged some militiamen who had volunteered for the brief voyage. While he was having dinner, Perry got unexpected good news from the east. Jesse Duncan Elliott was on his way with eighty-nine seamen, two acting lieutenants, eight midshipmen, and a masters mate. These reinforcements were soon in Presque Isle, and the delighted Perry gave Elliott command of Niagara.

The new arrivals demeanor toward Perry was noticeably cool; Elliott all but scoffed in his face when Perry spoke about his love of country and military glory. Without so much as a by-your-leave, Elliott took all the best men from the new draft for Niagara. Sailing Master William Taylor, who had served with Perry on Revenge, considered this a breach of courtesy and warned the captain that Elliott was not his friend. But Perry, delighted by the reinforcements, ignored him.

Perry was soon heading down the lake for a conference with General Harrison. The two men liked each other on sight. Perry had already characterized Harrison as the only American general in the war with any ability. Harrison suggested South Bass Islands sheltered harbor of Put-in-Bay, located about thirty miles from Malden, as an anchorage for Perrys ships while he waited for the British to emerge for a fight to the finish. The general also recruited 150 Kentucky riflemen to serve as marines aboard the fleet.

These reinforcements were diluted by an outbreak of lake fever that had half of Perrys men groaning in their hammocks. Perry, his younger brother Alexander, and the fleets three doctors were soon on the sick list. A decision to boil all drinking water helped slow the outbreak, and the application of mustard plasters got Perry back on his feet. But for the better part of a week, the Americans were in no shape to fight. Once more, Perrys luck held; Barclay was busy arming and rigging Detroit and made no attempt to challenge him.

On the evening of September 9, both fleets were ready for action. Perry summoned his officers to Lawrence for a final conference. He stressed that the Americans could only win if they closed with the enemy. Most of the cannons aboard Lawrence and Niagara were thirty-two-pounder carronades, which flung a tremendous weight of metal. But thesesmashers had a range of only 250 yards. Barclay had thirty-five long guns that could hit home at a mile. Perry also assigned specific ships in the enemy fleet to each of his captains. But he warned them that they might have to improvise. Again and again he stressed Admiral Horatio Nelsons advice: If you bring the enemy close alongside, you cannot be out of your plan.

At 5 a.m. the next day, Perry was still asleep in his cabin when a fist pounded on the door and someone shouted, Sail ho! He was soon on the quarterdeck, peering into the distance at the sails of the British fleet approaching Put-in-Bay. At 7 a.m. he ordered his fleet to get underway. The southwest breeze was distressingly light. Perry ordered out boats to tow Lawrence around the two islands that sheltered the bay. As the men strained at the oars, Perry glanced up at the blue sky. Above them hovered an eagle. He pointed out the national bird to nearby sailors as a good omen.

As they neared the open lake, Perrys prophecy about the eagle seemed to come true. The breeze abruptly shifted to the southeast, giving the American fleet the weather gauge  the ability to attack with the wind in their favor. On all nine ships the grim preparations for battle were in progress. The decks were sprinkled with sand, then sprayed with water to guarantee a footing when they became slippery with blood. Cutlasses for boarding parties were stacked in opportune places. Round shot, canister, and grapeshot were piled beside the guns.

The breeze remained light, in fact too light for Perrys battle plan. With the lake as calm as the proverbial millpond and Perrys ships moving at a bare two knots, the advantage lay with the British long guns. To counter this threat, Perry ordered the schooners Ariel and Scorpion, which had long guns, to take positions on Lawrences weather bow. But they were a weak response at best, with only five guns between them. Even more worrisome was the way the four U.S. gunboats  Somers, Tigress, Porcupine, and Trippe  had fallen a good two miles behind, a dolorous tribute to their former careers as plodding merchantmen.

Detroits long guns opened a murderous fire on the all-but-drifting Americans, with Lawrence its main target. The green wood and hasty construction of the Presque Isle shipyard soon became apparent. A musket ball could penetrate Lawrences sides, which were only two inches thick. Twelve- and twenty-four-pound shot ripped through the hull, tearing off arms and legs and flinging deadly splinters into mens bodies.

It was an agonizing ordeal to which Perrys carronades, still out of range, could make no reply. When he finally drew within seven hundred yards, Perry fired a broadside and was dismayed to see it made little impression on Detroit, whose planking was a foot thick and was reinforced by far more frames than Perrys ships.

While Perry piled on every yard of sail aboard his flagship to get closer to Detroit, Jesse Elliott in Niagara seemed content to keep his distance and bombard his assigned antagonist, Queen Charlotte, with his two long-range twelve-pounders. Since Charlotte was armed with twenty-four-pounder carronades, it could not return the fire. Its captain bore away and joined Detroit in the attack on Lawrence.

That was bad news for Perry. By the time he closed to three hundred yards and began blasting Detroit with his carronades, the devastatingly accurate fire of Barclays long guns had left many of his men dead or wounded. Two smaller British ships, Hunter and Chippeway, took on Ariel and Scorpion, depriving Lawrence of their support.

Why doesnt Niagara come to help us? more than one sailor asked Perry as he strode the deck, encouraging his men and directing their fire. It was a question very much on Perrys mind, as broadsides from Queen Charlotte began to wreak havoc on his ship. All Perry and his men could do was fight for their lives in a losing battle. For more than two hours Lawrence took fearful punishment from both ships, while Elliott made no attempt to join the fight.

Sailing Master William Taylor, who had warned Perry about Elliott, later wrote, The Lawrence alone received the fire of the whole British squadron  we were not supported as we ought to have been. By 2:30, Taylor reported, 22 men and officers lay dead on decks and 66 wounded, every gun dismounted, carriages knocked to pieces, every strand of rigging cut off, mast and spars shot and tottering overhead in just an unimaginable wreck.

Belowdecks, Surgeons Mate Usher Parsons struggled to help the wounded in the nine-by-ten-foot wardroom, which had become an improvised sickbay. Many were beyond hope. Lieutenant John Brooks, the commander of the marines, was struck in the thigh by a cannonball and horribly mangled. He was carried below, screaming in agony, begging Perry to kill him. The wardroom was no safer than the deck. During the action five cannonballs passed through the room, Parsons told his parents in a letter shortly after the battle. Seconds after he finished putting a tourniquet on a midshipmans arm, the young man was struck in the chest by a cannonball and instantly killed. A seaman with both arms fractured had both legs shattered by another hurtling twenty-four-pound projectile. He died within an hour.

The final shot from Lawrence was fired by Perry himself, manning the last intact gun. When that gun too was knocked out, defeat seemed inevitable. Only eighteen men were still on their feet. The British ships stopped firing, expecting Perry to strike his colors. No other choice seemed possible.

But Perrys eyes were on Niagara. The brig was performing a maneuver as strange as its previous actions. Pulling past Caledonia, Elliott came almost abeam Lawrence but he made no attempt to interpose his ship between the British and the stricken flagship. Caledonia was permitted to make this heroic gesture on its own.

One of Perrys wounded lieutenants, following the captains eyes, snarled through teeth gritted with pain: That brig will not help us. See how he keeps off and will not come to close action. Ill fetch him up, Perry said.

Gazing down the deck littered with dead and dying, Perry saw that his gig was still intact  another example of his incredible luck. He summoned two lieutenants and Sailing Master Taylor, all of them wounded, and left them in charge of Lawrence, with the authority to do whatever they judged necessary to save the lives of the wounded and the handful still unscathed. He ordered his personal battle flag, Dont Give Up The Ship, lowered from the mainmast. Many of the wounded on the deck wept and cried out in protest. They thought he was surrendering. So did the British.

Perry boarded the gig with four oarsmen and ordered them to pull for Niagara. Captain Barclay, with all his own small boats smashed, may have thought that Perry was coming to Detroit to surrender his sword. It took about five minutes for Perry to emerge from the shroud of battle smoke lying on the water and become visible to the British gunners. They opened up on him with every cannon still capable of firing. Round shot, canister, and grapeshot hissed around the boat. But Perrys luck made him and his boat crew inviolable. The oarsmen and the captain were drenched with spray, and one version has it that the oars were splintered and the boat was holed. But in fifteen minutes, Perry was within hailing distance of Niagara.

Grimy with powder, haggard with exhaustion, Perry came aboard to be greeted by Elliott with the most inane imaginable question: How is the day going?

Bad enough, Perry snarled. We have been cut all to pieces. He paused momentarily, and glanced toward Lawrence, drifting helplessly, then peered at the distant gunboats. Why are the gunboats so far astern?

Ill bring them up, Elliott said.

Do so, sir, was Perrys curt retort.

The unspoken part of this supposed conversation is far more significant. Elliott, obviously mortified to find Perry still alive, was anxious to get as far away from him as possible. Perry, still determined to win the battle, was even more inclined to give him no share in the victory. There was no reason to order Elliott, the second ranking American officer in the fleet, to bring the gunboats into the fray. A junior officer or a midshipman could have relayed the command. Their handful of cannons could not have much impact on the struggle. The mere fact that Elliott surrendered command of his ship is virtually de facto proof that he was ashamed of his treacherous performance and incapable of facing Perry, much less fighting beside him.

As Perry took charge of Niagara, his officers ordered Lawrences battle flag lowered. They were unable to mount further resistance. Aboard the British ships a cheer broke the silence. They thought they had won the battle.

Perry had other ideas. Niagara was virtually untouched. Only a handful of men had been wounded by long-range shots. Up the mainmast went Perrys motto flag and his captains pennant. At that moment, the breeze quickened. Perry laid on all available sail and bore down on the startled British. Captain Barclay attempted to bring the shot-up Detroit about so he could confront Perry with his starboard battery, which was relatively undamaged. At the same moment, Queen Charlotte, its captain dead, tried to maneuver into position for a broadside of its own. A shot from one of Niagaras long guns tore through its topsails, and Charlotte veered into Detroit, entangling its bowsprit in the flagships rigging.

Perry took deadly advantage of the accident. Shortening sail to check Niagaras speed, he waited until he was at right angles to both ships and hurled a blast from his thirty-two-pounders  round shot mixed with canister  across their decks, wreaking awful destruction. Simultaneously, the Kentucky sharpshooters in Niagaras rigging blazed away with their deadly rifles.

Perry had not forgotten the rest of the British fleet. Plowing past the stunned Detroit and Queen Charlotte, he ordered his port gunners to fire a broadside into the smaller Lady Prevost, Chippeway, and Little Belt.

Deftly backing his topsails to reduce his headway, Perry again blasted Queen Charlotte with his starboard guns, adding a new target, the ten-gun sloop Hunter, which had been lurking astern of Detroit, putting an occasional shot into Lawrence. His port guns again blasted Lady Prevost, leaving only one man alive on the deck, its dazed captain, shot in the face by a musket ball.

Coming about, Perry once again raked Detroit and Queen Charlotte with his murderous thirty-two-pounder carronades at pistol-shot range. By this time, Elliott had brought the gunboats into the fight, adding a few cannons that compounded the British sense of being overwhelmed. All resistance collapsed. An officer on Queen Charlotte frantically waved a white handkerchief stuck on a boarding pike.

On Detroit Captain Barclay had been wounded twice by grapeshot, first in the thigh, then in the shoulder. He was carried to the deck after being treated for the second wound. An officer told him the battle was lost, and Barclay, surveying his wrecked ship, agreed. He ordered the flag he had nailed to the mainmast hauled down. Since this would take time, a lieutenant ran to the rail and screamed We surrender! while a seaman hastily shimmied up the mast to tear loose the flag.

Hunter and Lady Prevost also surrendered. Small-fry Chippeway and Little Belt tried to flee but were soon overtaken by the schooner Scorpion and the gunboat Trippe.

It was over. In fifteen minutes, Perry had snatched victory from what looked like certain defeat. He turned to a midshipman and ordered him to row ashore with a message to General Harrison. Pulling an envelope from his coat, Perry ripped off the back and wrote: Dear Genl:  We have met the enemy and they are ours; two ships, two brigs, one schooner and one sloop. Yours with great respect and esteem, O.H. Perry.

The message went through the discouraged American people like a jolt of electricity, triggering celebrations in dozens of cities. Nowhere did it inspire greater exultation than in the ranks of Harrisons soldiers. For them it shifted the momentum of the war in their favor.

Among the fourteen thousand Indians that Tecumseh had marshaled at Fort Malden, the effect was closer to a bolt of destructive lightning. The Indian leader had assured his followers that the British big canoes would unquestionably defeat the American big canoes and retain royal supremacy on Lake Erie and its tributary rivers. When the bad news of the defeat of their One-Armed Father Barclay reached Malden, thousands of warriors and their wives and children fled. Within little more than a month, Harrisons army, backed by Perrys ships, had driven the British out of Forts Malden and Detroit and routed an outnumbered British and Indian army that made a desperate stand on the Thames River in Upper Canada. Among the dead in that ferocious battle was Tecumseh. With him died the hope of an Indian state in the Midwest. Michigan Territory, as well as parts of Indiana, Ohio, and northwestern Pennsylvania, returned permanently to American control.

Along with a renewed faith in Americas westward destiny came a less attractive byproduct of the Battle of Lake Erie: a public quarrel between the treacherous Jesse Duncan Elliott and Oliver Hazard Perry. Deciding that a condemnation of Elliotts conduct would blemish the victory, Perry had actually commended his second-in-commands characteristic bravery and judgment in his official report. Though he tried, Perry could not silence the seething anger of the officers and men in his fleet, and the story of Elliotts cowardly conduct soon became widespread. Deciding bravado was the best defense, Elliott obnoxiously declared himself dissatisfied with Perrys description of his services in the official report.

The quarrel dragged on for another five years. It ended in an exchange of letters that revealed the hidden part of the Perry-Elliott conversation aboard Niagara. I was once induced to write a letter in your favor, Perry wrote. Now he was forced to remind Elliott of the

abject condition in which I had previously found you  sick, or pretending to be sick in bed, in consequence of distress of mind, declaring that you had missed the fairest opportunity of distinguishing yourself that ever man had, and lamenting so piteously of the loss of your reputation, that I was prompted to make almost any effort to relieve you from the shame which seemed to overwhelm you.

Elliott called Perrys letter Epistolary blackguardism and challenged him to a duel. Perry declined, saying duels could only take place between gentlemen and he no longer considered Elliott one of that honorable fraternity. Instead, Perry requested a court-martial to settle the dispute and submitted a long list of charges against Elliott.

President James Monroe chose to do nothing about Perrys request. Instead, a year later, he asked Perry to take command of the frigate John Adams and the schooner Nonesuch for a diplomatic mission to Venezuela. During Venezuelas recent war for independence from Spain, the new nations privateers had seized a number of American ships. They were ready to make amends in friendly fashion. Perry executed this responsibility in his usual able style, but he contracted yellow fever and died on his thirty-fourth birthday during the return voyage down the Orinoco River.

President Monroe called Perrys death a national calamity  and decided to let his demand for a court-martial molder in the federal files. Jesse Elliott achieved the rank of captain and served until 1835, dying in command of the Philadelphia Navy Yard. He spent much of his time telling anyone who would listen that he was the real winner of the Battle of Lake Erie. To his chagrin, Perrys fame grew with every passing year. By the late 1830s, no less than thirty towns, mostly in the Midwest, had been named after him.

On September 10, 1860, the city of Cleveland erected a handsome statue to Perry and in the course of the celebration reenacted the battle on the waters of Lake Erie. Perrys son, Oliver Hazard Perry Jr., and some of the survivors of the victory were among the onlookers. On the statues base was Perrys historic victory message. There was no mention of Jesse Duncan Elliott.

This article was written by Thomas Fleming and was originally published in the Spring 2004 edition of MHQ.

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Englishman Percy Wyndham, colonel of the 1st New Jersey Cavalry, was excited by the prospects for impending battle in the Shenandoah Valley against the forces of Major General Thomas J. Stonewall Jackson early in June 1862. Jackson had at one point been only about 50 miles west of the Federal capital. Alarmed, President Abraham Lincoln ordered Major General Irwin McDowell to dispatch half of his men, including Brigadier General George Bayards cavalry brigade  which included Wyndhams horsemen  from Fredericksburg to the Valley, under the overall command of Major General James Shields. Another column under Major General John C. Fremont was heading into the valley from the west, and the plan was for the two forces to unite at Strasburg, trapping Jackson in the northern Valley. The troopers hard march took them to the Front Royal area by June 1, but Jackson had narrowly escaped.

Wyndham was the son of Englands Lord Leconfield, a captain in the Queens 5th Light Cavalry, and had exhibited an appetite for adventure at an early age. When he was only 15 he volunteered for the Student Corps in Paris. He subsequently obtained a commission in the French navy, followed by service with Englands Royal Artillery. In 1852 he left England to become an officer in the Austrian Lancers, where he served for two years before joining the hero of Italian unification, Giuseppe Garibaldi. Under Garibaldi he rose rapidly to the rank of lieutenant colonel and was knighted for bravery, thereafter bearing the title Sir Percy Wyndham.

The chance to help end slavery drew Wyndham to the New World when the American Civil War began in 1861, and he offered his services to the Union. Major General George McClellan, desperately short of experienced officers, assigned Wyndham to the colonelcy of the 1st New Jersey Cavalry, a woebegone outfit that had been nearly destroyed by the ineptitude of its previous commander.

On March 24, 1862, the regiment was ordered south of Alexandria, Va., where it remained during McClellans Peninsula campaign. Lack of action resulted in grousing among the drill-weary troopers. After getting their orders to move west, Wyndham and his men were eager to test their mettle. But Jackson slipped through the trap and continued retreating. His Army of the Valley passed through Harrisonburg on June 6 before turning eastward in the direction of Port Republic, a small town at the foot of the Blue Ridge Mountains.

Brigadier General Turner Ashbys cavalry was serving as Jacksons rear guard. As Jacksons infantry marched on to Port Republic, Ashby positioned his men to intercept an expected attack by the 1st New Jersey. Soon the Federals appeared and rashly attacked. Ashby launched a powerful counterattack that drove them back.

Ashby was killed, but his men captured a battle flag and more than 60 prisoners, including Wyndham. The Englishman had boasted he would get Ashby, and the turnabout capture caused quite a stir. Major Roberdeau Wheat of the Louisiana Tigers embraced the embarrassed captive, exclaiming, Percy, old boy! They had served together under Garibaldi.

Wyndhams capture was a matter of pride for Ashbys troopers, and after the war the incident generated a lot of press, as aging veterans argued over who should get credit for the deed. One fanciful account published in The New Series on May 18, 1880, claimed that Ashby himself had made the capture: On the retreat Ashby soon got in striking distance of Wyndham, and as he dashed up to him with his sabre drawn one would have expected him to strike his foe to the earth. But he did not and thus they rode, almost side by side for several hundred yards, Ashby holding his sabre high above his head, as if intending every moment to cut down his enemy.He did not strike, however, but sheathed his sabre and putting his hand on the shoulder of Wyndham, turned and led him away a prisoner.

Another view was offered by E.H. McDonald, a captain in the 12th Virginia Cavalry, the unit generally given credit for Wyndhams capture. In a letter to the editor of the Winchester Evening Star, McDonald wrote, When we crossed the road we saw the enemies cavalry formed on a hill 300 yards away, and as we approached them in our charge they began to break away from their line and ran, leaving only Wyndham and a few men to occupy the hill. Dismounting from his horse he came to meet us and when we reached him said: I will not command such cowards! I asked Holmes Conrad of Winchester, then a private in my command, to take his sword and carry him to the rear, which he did, and he still has the sword, the finest Damascus blade.

Toward the end of the 19th century, the controversy over Wyndhams capture accelerated. In response to an 1896 letter from Major Jed Hotchkiss, Conrad, who later became a major, claimed:

After proceeding about a hundred yards I discovered that the Federal officer [Wyndham] was continuing his advance at a rapid gait but entirely alone; his command remained where I had seen it from the top of the ridge. Then too I discovered for the first time that none of those who had been with me on the summit of the ridge had attended me in my charge. The sun was shining full on the advancing officer whose sabre, which he handled with a masters hand, shown like a circle of light. We each approached the narrow ravine between our respective ridges.A sunken rail fence about 3 rails high in the bottom of the ravine was between us.When each of us was about 8 or 10 feet from this place.I dropped my sabre from my hand and let it hang from the sword knot on my wrist and drawing my pistol held it down by my side. The officer had reached the fence which he for the first time saw and halted. The fore legs of his horse were over it. His sabre was held with the point down. He was peering over the horses head down at the fence which had impeded him. I gathered rein tightly in my left hand, stuck both spurs into my horse and in a moment had the muzzle of my pistol against the side of the big red nose of the fiercest looking cavalryman I ever confronted. He had an enormous tawny moustache that reached nearly to his ears; large eyes of the deepest blue and these were fastened upon me with a clear, strong gaze without the lease indication of fear. Unwilling to betray my own nervousness by a faltering voice I was content to return his stare for a minute in silence and then said to him Drop your saber! I did not tell him to return I was unwilling that the point of that formidable blade should be removed, even for a second from its earthward direction. He did not instantly obey. I said: If you dont drop it Ill shoot. He dropped it. I told him then to unbuckle his sabre belt and hand it to me. He did so. I buckled it around me with scabbard and pistol that were on it. I ordered him to dismount which he did and to hand me his sabre which I returned to its scabbard. I then took him back up the hill, he holding to my stirrup leather.

Volume II of Confederate Military History, published in 1899, contained a brief account of the June 6 action, with only a single sentence devoted to the capture of Wyndham: Sir Percy himself, in a remarkable personal encounter with Captain Conrad of Ashbys staff, and 63 of his men being taken prisoner.

Beginning in 1904, the Winchester Evening Star published a series of articles and letters that brought new life to the controversy over who captured Wyndham. On the occasion of a visit to Winchester by Wyndhams son Percy in May 1904, an article appeared that unequivocally identified Conrad as the colonels captor and noted Wyndhams sword was a prized possession on the wall of Conrads Winchester home.

On April 12, 1906, Major Robert W. Hunter, secretary of Military Records in Richmond, Va., wrote to the Richmond Times-Dispatch, noting that Wyndhams capture had been a subject of several recent communications in the Confederate column. He enclosed a letter from Conrad discussing Wyndhams capture, the details of which where essentially the same as those of the 1896 letter to Hotchkiss.

Early in 1910 the controversy took a new and interesting turn. Jacob Crisman, a Frederick County, Va., farmer and veteran of Ashbys cavalry, submitted his account of the capture to the Winchester Evening Star in a letter dated January 25, 1910: On June 6, 1862,as Colonel Wyndham was forming his men, preparing to whip us, and take Ashbys crown of laurels.Isuggested making a charge upon the enemy.

Throwing my revolver as far in the air as my right arm would permit I gave a yell and started. The Laurel Brigade, as it was called, followed me.I made for [Wyndham] and before he was aware of his enemy being so near, I was right by his side with my revolver pointing at his head, demanding him to surrender. At the second demand he gave me his equipments.As I returned after the conflict Lieutenant Wood, of Company C, met me in the field where the fight occurred and said to me, Jake, did you take that Colonel? My answer was I did. Crisman also claimed that Henry Huntsberry and Arch Pittman, comrades in the 12th Virginia Cavalry, remembered his capture of Wyndham.

On February 22, a letter by J.R. Crawford, who noted that he was a witness to the event, was carried by the Evening Star. Crawford noted that Maj. Holmes Conrad, of Gen. Ashbys staff, rode swiftly, and demanded his surrender; but Sir Percy at first defiantly twirled his sword as though he were ready for combat. But Major Conrad rode close to him, with his pistol ready to pull the trigger, and Wyndham, seeing that Conrad had the drop on him, said, I am your prisoner, and handed Conrad his handsome sword which Garibaldi had given him. Major Conrad holds that sword as evidence that he alone captured Col. Wyndham.

Charles F. Russell, identifying himself as a member of Company G, 7th Virginia Cavalry, submitted a letter to the Shepherdstown, W.Va., Register, on March 3. His account of the events of June 6 also identified Conrad as the trooper who captured Sir Percy.

Meanwhile, an irate Crisman fired off a scathing epistle to the Evening Star accusing J.R. Crawford of fabricating the story and opining that he must have been a member of that mighty army of Invisibles in the War, but who after the dangers of war had passed and the smoke of battle was cleared away, marched forth in all of the splendor of their mighty hosts, armed with goose-quill spear and paper shield, with a fiery banner bearing the inscription Discretion is the better part of Valor, and who have since endeavored to deprive certain good men of honors that rightfully belong to them.

As with so many incidents during wartime, the exact sequence of events that led to Wyndhems capture may never be known, but Conrads account appears to have the greatest merit. His tale appeared in 1896, significantly earlier than the others, and was substantiated in print by comrades who were present during the action. Following June 6, 1862, Conrad kept Wyndhams sword throughout the rest of his life, until he died in 1915, the same year as Crisman.

Wyndham was paroled shortly after his capture, but he was not exchanged until mid-August. At that point he rejoined the 1st New Jersey on its way to Manassas and the Second Battle of Bull Run. Over the winter of 1862-63, Wyndham and the 1st New Jersey were stationed at Fairfax Court House, Va., where he publicly referred to Confederate partisan John S. Mosbys men as a pack of horse thieves. Enraged, Mosby entered the heavily guarded town a little after 2 a.m. on March 9 to capture the colonel, but Wyndham had gone into Washington for the evening, so he was spared the humiliation of being captured for a second time. Instead, Mosby bagged the sleeping Brig. Gen. Edwin Stoughton, a number of Stoughtons men and 58 much-needed horses.

On June 9, Wyndham was boldly leading a charge at the Battle of Brandy Station when he suffered a leg wound. During his recovery, he was reassigned to duty in Washington, D.C., and he never returned to the unit. Late in 1863 he resigned his commission for undisclosed reasons.

Ever on the move, Wyndham took part in a number of ventures after the war. He relocated to Calcutta, India, and later to Rangoon, Burma. On February 3, 1879, his obituary appeared in the London Times. In part it read: News of a sad accident comes from Rangoon. Colonel Percy Wyndham, a gentleman well known in Calcutta and Rangoon, announced an ascent in a balloon of his own construction. After attaining a height of about 500 feet the balloon burst, and the unfortunate aeronaut fell into the Royal Lake, whence he was extricated quite dead.

Conrad was admitted to the Virginia bar in 1866. In 1878 he was elected to the Virginia legislature and so distinguished himself that President Grover Cleveland appointed him assistant attorney general and then solicitor general of the United States. Subsequently, Conrad joined the law faculty at Georgetown University in 1901, where he lectured on the history of English law. During the last 20 years of his life, he engaged in numerous legal appeals before the Supreme Court. Throughout his life, Conrad maintained his home in Winchester, where he married twice and fathered seven children. On September 4, 1915, the old trooper died at his residence.

This article was written by W. Cullen Sherwood and Ben Ritter and published in the November 2006 issue of Americas Civil War magazine.For more great articles be sure to subscribe to Americas Civil War magazine today!
The intermittent war between the United States and the Plains Indians that stretched across some three decades after the Civil War came to an end on December 29, 1890, at the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. The events leading up to its final act  the Wounded Knee Massacre  had been building since the late 1880s, when the son of a Paiute shaman named Wovoka had first introduced a series of new beliefs and practices to the Indian reservations of the West.

Fundamentally peaceful, Wovokas movement envisioned the coming of a new world populated solely by Indians living on the Great Plains where buffalo were again plentiful. Generation upon generation of Indians slain in combat would be reborn into this new world, and all  the living and the formerly dead  would live in bliss, peace and plenty. U.S. Indian authorities claimed that in the hands of the defeated and embittered leaders of the Teton Sioux  men like Short Bull, Kicking Bear and eventually Sitting Bull himself  Wovokas peaceful religion had taken on the militant overtones of a millennial uprising. Wovoka had created a ceremony called the Ghost Dance to invoke the spirits of the dead and facilitate their resurrection. The Sioux apostles of the Ghost Dance purportedly preached that it would bring about a day of deliverance  a day when they were strong enough again to wage all-out war against the whites. They had fashioned ghost shirts, which they claimed white bullets could not penetrate. In any case, Ghost Dancing had quickly become the rage of the Western reservations such as Pine Ridge and Rosebud.

Indians are dancing in the snow and are wild and crazy, an anxious Pine Ridge Reservation agent, Daniel F. Royer, telegraphed Washington in November 1890. We need protection and we need it now. The leaders should be arrested and confined at some military post until the matter is quieted, and this should be done at once.

The Indian Bureau in Washington quickly branded the Ghost Dancers fomenters of disturbances and ordered the Army to arrest them. On November 20, cavalry and infantry reinforcements arrived at the Pine Ridge and Rosebud reservations, but their arrival did not intimidate the Sioux followers of Short Bull and Kicking Bear. Quite the contrary, it seemed to galvanize their resolve. A former Indian agent, Dr. Valentine McGillycuddy, advised Washington to call off the troops: I should let the dance continue. The coming of the troops has frightened the Indians. If the Seventh-Day Adventists prepare their ascension robes for the second coming of the savior, the United States Army is not put in motion to prevent them. Why should the Indians not have the same privilege? If the troops remain, trouble is sure to come.

About 3,000 Indians had assembled on a plateau at the northwest corner of Pine Ridge in a nearly impregnable area that came to be called the Stronghold. Brigadier General John R. Brooke, commander of the Pine Ridge area, quickly dispatched emissaries to talk with the hostiles. Brookes commanding officer, hard-nosed Civil War veteran and Indian fighter Maj. Gen. Nelson A. Miles, did not approve of such parleys. He saw in them evidence of indecision, and, furthermore, believed the Indians would interpret talk as a sign of weakness. Miles decided to prosecute the campaign against the Ghost Dancers personally and transferred his headquarters to Rapid City, S.D.

While Miles was preparing this move, Sitting Bull  the most influential of all Sioux leaders  began actively celebrating the Ghost Dance and its doctrine at the Standing Rock Reservation that straddled the North and South Dakota border. The agent in charge there, James McLaughlin, weighed his options. He did not want to repeat the hysterical mistake of his colleague at Pine Ridge by telegraphing for soldiers. He decided instead to use reservation policemen  Indians  to effect the quiet arrest and removal of the old chief.

Unfortunately, General Miles would not accept it. For Miles, the arrest of Sitting Bull would be a momentous act in a great drama. It should not be left to Indians, and it should not be done secretively; if anything, it called for showmanship. Miles contacted the greatest showman the West had ever known: William Buffalo Bill Cody. As everybody in the country probably knew  Buffalo Bill had seen to that himself  he and Sitting Bull were friends, or, at least, Sitting Bull held Cody in high regard. Sitting Bull, after all, had been a star attraction in Buffalo Bills Wild West Show. If any white man could convince Sitting Bull to step down, it would be Buffalo Bill.

Agent McLaughlin was aghast at the notion of carting in the likes of Buffalo Bill Cody to carry out what should be done quietly and without publicity. He was convinced that Buffalo Bills presence would only inflame tempers and transform the proceedings into a circus or something worse. Accordingly, when Cody arrived at Standing Rock on November 27, McLaughlin saw to it that the celebrity was glad-handed and subtly shanghaied by the commanding officer of nearby Fort Yates, Lt. Col. William F. Drum. Drum entertained Cody all night at the officers club while McLaughlin worked feverishly behind Miles back to have the showmans authority rescinded. It was a desperate plan, and McLaughlin had missed one crucial fact: The man capable of drinking Buffalo Bill Cody under the table had yet to be born. Come morning, Cody was bright eyed and ready to set out for Sitting Bulls camp. McLaughlin hastily arranged for additional delays  just long enough for the arrival of orders canceling Codys mission. The old entertainer seethed but boarded the next train back to Chicago. He had not set eyes on Sitting Bull.

But the situation at Pine Ridge Reservation was heating up. Word reached McLaughlin that Short Bull and Kicking Bear had formally invited Sitting Bull to leave Standing Rock and join them and their people at the Stronghold on the reservation. The time had come to act. McLaughlin dispatched 43 reservation policemen on December 15 to arrest Sitting Bull before he set out for Pine Ridge. Officers surrounded the old chiefs cabin as Lieutenant Bull Head, Sergeant Red Tomahawk and Sergeant Shave Head entered it.

The chief awoke from slumber, and, seeing the men, asked, What do you want here?

You are my prisoner, said Bull Head. You must go to the agency.

Sitting Bull asked for a moment to put his clothes on. By the time the reservation police officers emerged with their prisoner, a crowd had gathered. A warrior named Catch-the-Bear called out, Let us protect our chief! and he leveled his rifle at Bull Head. He fired, hitting him in the side. The wounded policeman spun around with the force of the impact. His own weapon discharged, perhaps accidentally, perhaps intentionally. A round hit Sitting Bull, point blank, in the chest. Then policeman Red Tomahawk stepped into the fray and shot Sitting Bull in the back of the head.

McLaughlin had hoped to avoid a circus. As the reservation police officers scuffled with Sitting Bulls followers, the slain chiefs horse  which Buffalo Bill had presented to him back when he was part of the Wild West Show  was apparently stimulated by the familiar noise of a crowd, and performed his repertoire of circus tricks.

Miles had not intended that Sitting Bull be killed, but it had happened, and the general accepted it as he would any casualty in the fog of war. Just now he had yet another Ghost Dancer to arrest, and thats where he focused his attention. Chief Big Foot was leader of the Miniconjou Sioux, who lived on the Cheyenne River. Unknown to Miles, Big Foot had recently renounced the Ghost Dance religion, convinced that it offered nothing more than desperation and futility. Miles was also unaware that Chief Red Cloud, a Pine Ridge leader friendly to white authorities, had asked Big Foot to visit the reservation and use his influence to persuade the Stronghold party to surrender. All Miles knew  or thought he knew  was that Big Foot was on his way to the Stronghold, and it was up to the Army to prevent him from joining Short Bull, Kicking Bear and the others. Miles dispatched troops across the prairies and badlands to intercept any and all Miniconjous, especially Big Foot.

On December 28, 1890, a squadron of the 7th Cavalry located the chief and about 350 Miniconjous camped near a stream called Wounded Knee Creek. Big Foot was in his wagon, huddled against the bitter winter. He was feverish, sick with pneumonia. During the night of the 28th, additional soldiers moved into the area, so that by daybreak on the 29th, 500 soldiers, all under the command of Colonel James W. Forsyth, surrounded Big Foots camp. Four Hotchkiss guns, small cannons capable of rapid fire, were aimed at the camp from the hills around it. The mission was to disarm the Indians and march them to the railroad, where a waiting train would remove them from the zone of military operations.

As the Indians set up their tepees on the night of the 28th, they saw the Hotchkiss guns on the ridge above them. That evening I noticed that they were erecting cannons up [there], one of the Indians recalled, also hauling up quite a lot of ammunition. The guns were ominously trained on the Indian camp. A bugle call woke up the Indians the next morning. The sky was clear and very blue as the soldiers entered the camp. Surrounded by bluecoats on horses, the Indians were ordered to assemble front and center. The soldiers demanded their weapons. Outraged, medicine man Yellow Bird began dancing, urging his people to don their sacred shirts. The bullets will not hurt you, he told them. Next, Black Coyote, whom another Miniconjou called a crazy man, a young man of very bad influence and in fact a nobody, raised his Winchester above his head as the troopers approached him to collect it. He began shouting that he had paid much money for the rifle, that it belonged to him and that nobody was going to take it. The soldiers, annoyed, crowded in on him and then began spinning him around and generally roughing him up.

A shot rang out. Instantly, troopers began firing indiscriminately at the Indians. There were only about a hundred warriors, Black Elk reported. And there were nearly five hundred soldiers. The warriors rushed to where they had piled their guns and knives. Hand-to-hand fights broke out, and some of the Indians started to run. Then the Indians heard the awful roar of the Hotchkiss guns. Shells rained down, almost a round a second, mowing down men, women and children  each shell carrying a two-pound charge, each exploding into thousands of fragments. The smoke was thick as fog; the Indians were running blind. Louise Weasel Bear said, We tried to run, but they shot us like we were buffalo. Yellow Birds son, just 4 years old at the time, saw his father shot through the head: My father ran and fell down and the blood came out of his mouth. Those who fled the camp were chased down by soldiers. Rough Feathers wife remembered: I saw some of the other Indians running up the coulee so I ran with them, but the soldiers kept shooting at us and the bullets flew all around us. My father, my grandfather, my older brother and my younger brother were all killed. My son who was two years old was shot in the mouth that later caused his death. Black Elk added: Dead and wounded women and children and little babies were scattered all along there where they had been trying to run away. The soldiers had followed them along the gulch, as they ran, and murdered them in there. In one of the gulches, two little boys who had found guns were lying in ambush, and they had been killing soldiers all by themselves.

An hour later the guns stopped. The place was silent. Trails of blood trickled along the ground heading out of camp toward the gulches. Hundreds of Indians lay dead or dying on the frosted earth alongside a score of soldiers, hit mostly by the fire of their own Hotchkisses. Clouds filled the sky, and soon a heavy snow began to fall. Three days later, New Years Day 1891, after the blizzard had passed, a burial party was sent to pull the frozen Indians from beneath the blanket of snow and dump them in a long ditch, piled one upon another like so much cordwood, until the pit was full. Many of the corpses were naked because soldiers had stripped the ghost shirts from the dead to take home as souvenirs.

General Miles scrambled to distance himself from what public outrage there was over the massacre at Wounded Knee. He relieved Forsyth of command and convened a court of inquiry, which exonerated the colonel. Miles protested, but his immediate superior, General John M. Schofield, together with Secretary of War Redfield Proctor, eventually reinstated Forsyths command.

In the meantime, the massacre at Wounded Knee caused hostile and friendly Sioux factions to unite. Even though Chief Red Cloud protested and repudiated his peoples participation, on December 30, Sioux under Kicking Bear attacked the 7th Cavalry near the Pine Ridge Agency along White Clay Creek. At first it looked like it might be another Custer debacle, but black troopers of the 9th Cavalry rode to the rescue and drove off the Indians.

General Miles acted quickly to assemble a force of 8,000 troops, deploying them to surround the Sioux, who had returned to the Stronghold. This time Miles was careful, acting slowly and deliberately to contract the ring  almost gently  around the Indians. As he did this, he urged them to surrender, and he pledged good treatment. Whether anyone believed Miles or not, it had become clear that what the Ghost Dance foretold was a hope forlorn. The Sioux laid down their arms on January 15, 1891, bringing decades of war to an end. While lives were lost on both sides at White Clay Creek and in other skirmishes here and there, the massacre at Wounded Knee is generally considered to be the last major engagement of the Indian wars.

This article was written by Charles Phillips and originally published in the December 2005 issue of American History Magazine. For more great articles, subscribe to American History magazine today!
One all-female independent Ohio band was dropped from a New York music festival, along with those in other venues too.

Its drummer, Leslie Rasmussen, wrote a character letter that supported the Stanford University swimmer who has been convicted for assault of an unconscious woman.

The case has raised a storm, with a number of letters published online---the victim's, as well as his father's to the judge. Having been sentenced for only six months, Turner and even the judge have drawn a lot of criticism from all sides, so the support from his friend also did not go down well with the public.

Leslie Rasmussen explained in her letter that Brock Turner was "respectful and caring, talented, and smart enough to know better." Recalling that she had known him ever since she was in elementary school, she clarified that "he was not a monster."

"I don't think it's fair to base the fate of the next ten + years of his life on the decision of a girl who doesn't remember anything but the amount she drank to press charges against him," Rasmussen wrote. "I am not blaming her directly for this, because that isn't right."

Her letter was published online by New York Magazine on Monday. But it raised such a fury that the entire band deleted its Facebook, Instagram and Twitter pages. Rasmussen's punk-rock band had to pay the penalty, as it was dropped from Brooklyn's Northside Festival. Organizers announced "Due to recent information brought to our attention, Good English is no longer playing" at the event.

Good English was supposed to play on Saturday at Brooklyn's Industry City Distillery. Brooklyn's Bar Matchless too removed the band from its list.

"We did not want to be associated or even seen as passively approving the band or its viewpoints," Ronak Parikh, head of sales and operations at Industry City Distillery, said in an interview.

However, on Tuesday Rasmussen, 20, issued an apology on her Facebook page. She said that she understood why people would "misconstrue my ideas into a distortion that suggests I sympathize with sex offenses and those who commit them or that I blame the victim involved."

"Nothing could be farther from the truth, and I apologize for anything my statement has done to suggest that I don't feel enormous sympathy for the victim and her suffering," she said.

@ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Juan Pablo Culasso was born blind and could never have set his eyes on a bird. How then can he identify more than 3,000 different bird sounds, apart from differentiating over 720 species?

At one point, when he was a boy, he understood that he had "perfect, or absolute pitch." When he threw stones in a river, he could identify the note that every stone made when it impacted the pond.

Hence, he had the gift of "absolute pitch." This is a rare, unique skill of being able to hear a tone and understand immediately that it is a particular pitch, like a C-sharp. The ability is so rare that just one out of every 10,000 people is gifted with it, said Culasso.

And Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart shares this ability with him!

Later, Culasso's father read to him the names of birds from an encyclopedia that was accompanied with audio cassettes of their calls.

"That's when I realized that I could memorize birds by their sounds," Culasso said.

When he was a teenager, he joined an ornithologist on a 2003 field visit. He was drawn by his love for birds. Getting a recorded collection made him addicted to the profession.

"At that moment, I felt as if I had been doing this forever without knowing it. I fell in love with that task," he said.

Hence, Culasso wants to record and learn from nature's sounds. Recently, he finished a two-month journey to Antarctica and recorded sounds from there.

"I keep adding sounds to my list," he said. "In Antarctica, I recorded sea lions, seals and a melting iceberg."

Unfortunately, though he can differentiate between night and day, as he can make out light, he is not able to register shapes, forms, or even the colors of birds. He has managed to connect with the world mainly through his ears.

"Most blind people move within the confines of the blind world, and never leave that comfort zone, but I was never that way," he said.

Hence, he has been able to work in jobs that call for documentary soundtracks. He currently lives in his native Montevideo after spending a decade in Brazil studying bioacoustics and nature sounds.

In 2014, he won a top prize of $45,000 on a Nat Geo TV program. In the final test, he could identify the sounds of 15 birds from a group of 250.

Alicia Munyo, who heads the phonology department at Uruguay's Republica University, explains that "perfect pitch" has more to do with the brain than the ear.

"It's not that these people hear more, they hear the same as anyone else," said Munyo. "It's that their brain has a great capacity to interpret sounds and their nuances, much more than normal people do."

YouTube/BBC News

@ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
P eter Marino  known in his circles as Peter the Great  is one of the worlds most sought-after architects and the fashionistas favourite.

Hes designed hundreds of shops for super-brands  Chanel and Louis Vuitton among them. And this week he displays his creative genius in the transformation of two magnificent Georgian Mayfair townhouses that have become the House of Dior boutique.

With an undisclosed budget he has created retail heaven over four floors in a fabulous 20,000sq ft property, with wall to wall glamorous decor and furniture in shimmering, glittering shades of silver and ethereal white.

The boutique also unveils the Dior Home Collection, echoing the style that was used by Christian Dior to decorate his homes, in Paris, Milly-la-Foret and Chateau de La Colle Noire in Provence.

Shoppers will be able to buy crystal glassware embellished with a gold couture stitch, hand-embroidered bed linens and limited-edition pieces created exclusively for the boutique.

Glamour and grace: House of Dior in New Bond Street, W1, fills two Georgian townhouses with fashion and the new Dior Home Collection

GRAND

We meet in the evening wear salon, with its atmosphere of a grand Parisian townhouse. Marino, 66, married to costume designer Jane Trapnell, and with a grown-up daughter, is sporting his trademark black leathers.

He worked for two years creating this store. The project started as a single building but a year later, the adjoining house became available. I was told to stop everything and show them what I could do if I had the two, says Marino. And show them he did.

He emptied out the two buildings, allowing him to create volumes. Everything inside is newly structured. Just the facades remained. He magicked up a 23ft atrium with cast-glass pilasters; a huge conservatory with a roof of contemporised cannage  Diors emblematic crisscross motif  for the Home collection; plus private rooms, including three salons for VIP clients.

I like to be specific to the city in which Im building, he adds. The pilasters are a nod to the glamour of Claridges in the Thirties. And to make it very London, I didnt re-face the brown Georgian townhouse brick in the modern conservatory.

The room in which were sitting feels very French. Dior liked Louis XVI panelling and parquet de Versailles. The panelling in here is stucco and resin which we combed with a hair comb, he says, touching the ridged surface appreciatively.

We based it on combed paint, a technique from early Americana. And to keep the look relaxed, he didnt finish the floor. The parquet is like in an atelier, rather than Grandmas polished house.

It also boasts Robert Polidori photographs (interpretations of Versailles that sing to me) and Andre Dubreuil bespoke commodes  think 18th-century furniture meets 21st-century innovation.

Captivating: a Tony Cragg sculpture and the French limestone staircase with balustrade in polished stainless steel

BESPOKE

There are artworks and bespoke furniture throughout the store. We commissioned over 35 pieces of art, says Marino. Theres a whimsical Claude Lalanne circular bronze bench, fashioned as ginkgo leaves, in the atrium; a Tony Cragg sculpture near the accessories  its unique and encapsulates the spirit of this place British, silver, twirling like a woman in a gown; and in the perfume room is exquisite Beth Katleman 3D wallpaper, a witty ceramic interpretation of toile de jouy. The Barberini & Gunnell stainless steel bench is a fun commission, adds Marino. It offers thousands of reflections.

He has also used lots of glass and mirror in the scheme, including columns of scratched glass, feathered-look glass and artisan-produced glass ceilings that resemble elegant puddles. I like the way glass shines, he reveals. I think its glamorous and pretty.

Everywhere there are surfaces and textures begging to be touched. Walls of woven leather, stamped leather, panels of silvered leather  made by people who have stamped leather in Flemish castles for 300 years  and cast chrome. A Rado Kirov sculpture pours down the wall like molten metal in the shoe room. There are also nail head walls and one of anthracite dye on cork. Its inexpensive and in the ladies room, says Marino. He adds: Texture is our new thing.

EXPERIMENTAL

The texture theme continues in the fabrics. There are the luxurious likes of fur, artist woven cushions and sofas upholstered in tactile new synthetics. Plus silk with wool rugs to soften the stone floors, silk curtains amalgamated with contemporary carbon fibre materials, and sofas covered in velvet partially eaten by acid.

Very experimental. A lot of this stuff didnt exist before, he reveals. Its all very feminine, too.

The space also has to be hardworking, because its retail. The sofas are fragile and we can change them after three seasons. However, the floors and walls are sensible. The French limestone staircase will last. The balustrade has a French 18th-century look, but instead of black wrought iron we interpreted it in polished stainless steel, Marino divulges, a new materiality thatll last forever.

In the atrium theres a black slate cabochon floor. Its lasted in Notre Dame. But in this case, quirkily, its diagonally orientated. Where did he get that idea? I threw a dice and the way it landed, I said, Lets do it.

The proportions, volumes and heights in the boutique evoke those of a French townhouse. But Marinos work is edgy: beautiful with an unexpected twist. How does he describe it? Glamorous, modern but relaxed and with a dichotomy of old and new.

What would his erstwhile mentor and patron, Andy Warhol, have made of it? Hed love the Marc Quinn eyeball picture and handbag. He liked the artist doing the product. Marino pauses. You know, this place is the antithesis of internet shopping, really.

The House of Dior is now open at 160-162 New Bond Street, W1 (020 7758 9280).
T he Tube map is the essential guide for Londoners searching for a new home not too far from work and friends, and in a budget-friendly area.

Now, would-be buyers can see at a glance the average cost of homes, per square foot, within half a kilometre of each Tube stop.

Good-value areas with fast commutes

The data, compiled by Totallymoney.com, reveals that Bromley-by-Bow, in east London, is a good place to start if you're looking for a flat on a budget with an easy commute.

On the borders of Zones 2 and 3, the journey to Liverpool Street already takes less than 10 minutes on the District and Hammersmith and City lines.

Commutes across London will get even quicker when the high-speed Crossrail station opens at Whitechapel, four stops from Bromley-by-Bow.

Prices average about 358,000, or according to the research, 450 a square foot. Only a quarter of Tube stops offer similar value or less.

Prices of flats in west London's North Acton are similar. Also on the Zone 2/3 border, this Central line station will be just over a 10-minute walk from the Crossrail station at Acton mainline and property prices are tipped to rise in both areas.



Property prices per square foot at every London Tube station: click to open and enlarge the full map:

Source: asking prices of properties listed on Zoopla, May 2016. Map created by Totallymoney.com / totallymoney.com



Why measure average property prices per square foot?

"Many buyers tend to think of value in terms of number of bedrooms and total price," says Hamptons International's research director, Johnny Morris. "Measuring per square foot - the total price of a home divided by the floor area - gives a bit more transparency, after all, space can be flexible."

But it's not a perfect measure. Joe Gardiner, from Totallymoney.com, explains: "Across London we see smaller properties, such as flats, offering the worst value for money with an average price per square foot of 913. This is 22 per cent more than the average semi-detached home."

So, the comparison works best when you're comparing like with like.



The cheapest line

The research also reveals that the Metropolitan line has the cheapest average property prices, at about 500 a square foot.

But to find a flat for that price you'll have to head out to Northwick Park, in Zone 4, and beyond - the route stretches into Zone 9.

Predictably, prices are up to three times higher than this as the line hits Zone 1 and the City.

Morris says: "Londoners will generally pay more to live near a Tube station, whether theyre buying a house or renting. Generally, the closer to the station and better connected that stop the more people will pay to live there.

"But the rule doesnt always apply, particularly in outer London. The most expensive areas are a little way from the station, clustered around the best schools and the nicest streets."

The cheapest stop

At 294 per square foot, Loughton, in Zone 6, on the eastern section of the Central line has the cheapest asking prices on the entire Tube network.
News, events, history, and other mid-week tidbits.

Tuesday, October 25, 4:30  7 p.m.

Orr Area EMS Open House

Brats and burgers will be served. Event includes a new ambulance tour and blood pressure screenings. For more info: 218-780-3798.

Orr Fire Hall

4540 Lake St., Orr

Tuesday, October 25, 12  6 p.m.

Essentia Health Job Fair

Talent recruiters and department managers will be on-site at Essentia Health-Virginia. Candidates from all backgrounds are encouraged to attendnurses, nursing and clinical assistants, surgery technicians, radiology technicians, respiratory therapists, human resource professionals, and those interested in environmental services or nutrition services. Essentia staff will greet candidates, conduct an initial screening and filter them to appropriate hiring managers for interviews. Select candidates will be verbally offered a position before leaving. Candidates are asked to bring a resume, but its not required. Attire is business casual. For more info: www.essentiacareers.org.

901 9th St. N., Virginia
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The Air Jordan 10 City Pack will continue along this month with three new releases, including this pair dedicated to Michael Jordans Charlotte Hornets.

Following in the footsteps of the other City Pack releases the New York, Chicago and Los Angeles, the Charlotte pair features CHA on the upper ankle with Hornets flavored purple and teal accents throughout.

The summertime ready Air Jordan 10s are officially scheduled to release on June 18th with the standard $190 price tag.

In addition to the Charlotte colorway, a London Air Jordan 10 will also be dropping on the 18th as well- you can check out that sneaker right here.

Item #1
It was clear that underground Connecticut rapper Apathy was about to drop a dope album as soon he released the single Moses feat. Bun B and Twista. At last, Handshakes With Snakes has arrived in its entirety.

This album, to me, is all about preserving the tradition of Hip Hop, Apathy told The Source. People say shit like that all the time, but Im actually doing it. Hip hop is being altered and changed so far from what it was, that it aint the same shit anymore. Some say were old for thinking like that and that music is supposed to evolve, but theres also something to be said for tradition, and preserving the real shit.

He continued: The Handshakes With Snakes title is all about meeting phony ass fake people in this industryindustry heads and artists. Others such as myself are trying to carry on tradition.

Buy Handshakes With Snakes on iTunes and stream it below via Spotify.

Apathy
Troy Ave has been indicted on charges related to his role in the the May 25 Irving Plaza shooting that left his friend and bodyguard Ronald Banga McPhatter dead, New York Post reports.

Im filing a certificate of affirmative grand jury action, ADA Chistine Keenan said in Manhattan court on Thursday. Troy Ave was not present at the court hearing.

Troy was arrested on attempted murder and weapons charges after surveillance video showed him opening fire in a crowded room. The charges on which hes been indicted have not been revealed.

Troy rapped the intro to his new mixtape Free Troy Ave over the phone from Rikers Island, where he is currently being held without bail. Locked in the jail but Im gon get free, he rapped. I wear icy gold chains, cant no brass break me. Pussy nigga tried to assassinate me, I took the gun from him and turned the tables round like a G.

He is due back in court on July 7.

[via]

Troy Ave
Warp Records has just announced the release with an odd nod to old-fashioned magazine advertisements.

Aphex Twin a.k.a Richard D. James is well known for his eccentricities, so it comes as no surprise that the flyers he sent out to announce his EP would be just as strange.

The flyers act as a type of 50s style advertisement trying to promote a product.

The following is included as part of the product information: The Aphex Twin Cheetah EP uses digital sound generation techniques combined with wave sequencing technology to bring you sounds with movement and depth rarely found on records today.

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In laymans terms, the album will include seven new tracks and will be released on vinyl, CD, cassette, and as a digital download through Warp Records.

In 2014, James came out of a thirteen-year retirement with the release of the album Syro. He has released some music in the time since, but this will be the first major release hes produced in two years. It comes out in one month on July 8.
Is there any way Obama can do a third term? Pretty, pretty please?

With just 6 months left in the White House Office, Obama took the time to reflect and slow jam with Jimmy Fallon on his last 8 years as President of the Free World.

Accompanied by The Roots, interjected by Jimmy Fallon, Obama casually lists off his accomplishments over his presidency including economy growth, universal health care, clean energy and same-sex marriage. He also referred to the 2016 election, insinuating that he wants to pass the president baton to a certain Mrs. Hillary Clinton.

Perhaps it's a music career that awaits Barack Obama once his duties as President of the US are no more. We would buy that album.
The New York trio will bring their own brand of bluesy rock to Dublin this weekend.

The blues-blasting Daddy Long Legs will hit The Grand Social this Saturday night.

Having performed alongside The Sonics and The Flaming Groovies, this threesome know how to make the most reluctant of toes tap.

Armed with a harmonica and a whole lot of energy, the band's frontman (also Daddy Long Legs), is joined by Murat Akturk on slide guitar and Josh Styles the maraca man.

After Saturday's show, Daddy Long Legs will also perform at Cork's Crane Lane before heading to the UK.

The gig kicks off at 8pm and tickets are priced at 15.
The trio are headed their separate ways  but there's one more show in The Academy before they disappear

After five years and two albums, The Original Rudeboys have announced they are to call it a day.

The hip-pop trio have planned one last bash before they go their separate ways, and will hit The Academy for a 14+ show on August 27.

It's been an unbelievable last 5 years getting to make and play music in some of the most amazing places in the world with your best mates," said frontman Neddy Arkins. "We will continue to make music in some shape or form in the near future but for live shows The Academy on 27th August will be our final gig as The Original Rudeboys as you know us, we will put on our usual high energy show and would love to see a few familiar faces there from throughout the past 5 years for one final sing alongOVER & OUT"

Tickets, priced at 22.50, are on sale Thursday.
The controversial Aussie is working on the follow-up to the most successful independent film of all time

Actor and Director Mel Gibson, famous for his roles in Mad Max and Braveheart - as well as a few recored voice mails - is working on a sequel to the hugely popular Passion Of The Christmovie.

The follow-up will be directed by Gibson and the screenplay has been written by Randal Wallace. The film will reportedly tell the story of Jesus' resurrection. Randal admitted to the Hollywood Reporter that trying to keep the sequel under wraps has been a fruitless exercise.

"I always wanted to tell this story," Wallace said. "The Passion is the beginning and there's a lot more story to tell.

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"The evangelical community considers The Passion the biggest movie ever out of Hollywood, and they kept telling us that they think a sequel will be even bigger."

Passion received both critical accolades from critics and the Vatican for its honest depiction of 'events', however, it was also roundly condemned for its excessive graphic violence and anti-semitic undertones. The 2004 film, which cost $30 million, took in an estimated $600 million at the box-office, leading it to be dubbed "the most successful independent film of all time."
The Manchester veterans are taking to the road to celebrate 25 years of Stars

There's rarely a day goes by that HP isn't made to feel very, very old  and those teenage rapscallions about to play in the Euros really don't help  but it's slightly jarring to hear the fact that Simply Red's Stars is 25 years old.

In a reminder that you're as young as you feel, though, the band are hitting the road to mark the milestone in style, and have pencilled in a 3Arena date as part of a jaunt that sees them make ten stops across the UK and Ireland.

The show will see the album  which boasts sales figures topping 10 million  get a full run-out, as well as a lashing of Mick Hucknall and co.'s other hits in the second half.

Tickets, priced at 55.65, are on sale from Wednesday.
Another winsome cut from The Art of Happy Accidents

OK, so it may not be as sunny outside HP Towers as it's been for the past week  just in time for the weekend and all!  but that doesn't mean you can't enjoy a slice of summer soul this Friday.

It comes in the form of 'Keep on Giving It', the latest single from Zrazy. Taken from the band's The Art of Happy Accidents LP, it's an uptempo number that's sure to get toes tapping.

And the duo  with the help of a full band  will be doing just that in a live setting with some regularity. This evening they visit Brookbridge Arms Hotel, Thomastown, Co. Kilkenny, while July sees a pair of Cork stop-offs in De Barras, Clonakilty and Levis, Ballydehob; dates for those shows are yet to be confirmed.

August, meanwhile, sees shows at Peppers Club, Fishguard (12), Brecon Jazz Festival (14), and appearances in Sligo (26 & 27). And there's even the prospect of Electric Picnic and Cork Jazz Festival shows to look forward to!

But if all that seems too far away, then wrap your ears around 'Keep On Giving It' right now...
Luke Sharrett

KANSAS CITY, Mo. - The Obama administration's proposal to boost the amount of ethanol and other renewable fuels blended into gasoline produced at least one consensus Thursday during the matter's only public hearing: Few, if anyone, is entirely satisfied by the plan.

Ethanol advocates, largely from Midwest farming states, testified that the Environmental Protection Agency's target for biofuels next year again falls short of what Congress had in mind. Oil companies countered that the market, not the government, should dictate how much ethanol goes into gasoline, and that the target should be lowered.
Gawker Media, under pressure from a $140 million legal judgment in an invasion-of-privacy lawsuit by former wrestler Hulk Hogan, is putting itself up for sale, according to a person briefed on the plan.

The company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy Friday after a judge overseeing the suit against the company entered the full judgment and denied Gawkers request for a stay under terms the company could meet.

The company is beginning an auction, said the person, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the auction has not been announced. ZiffDavis, a digital media company, has submitted an opening bid of $90 million to $100 million, the person said.

The person said Gawker has filed for bankruptcy to protect jobs and ensure continued operations. The companys decision to sell itself came just weeks after it was revealed that Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel financially supported Hogans lawsuit. The company still plans to appeal the case.

Hogan, whose real name is Terry G. Bollea, sued Gawker Media in 2012 over the publication of a black-and-white sex tape that showed Bollea having sex with the wife of a friend of his at the time.

In March, after a two-week trial, a Florida jury awarded $115 million in damages to Bollea, a figure that exceeded the $100 million he had asked for. A jury later awarded $25 million in punitive damages, bringing the total to $140 million.

The company listed a $130 million claim from the litigation as disputed in its Chapter 11 petition, according to Bloomberg News.

In January, Gawker sold a minority stake in the company to an investment company, Columbus Nova Technology Partners, partly in preparation for the lawsuit by Bollea.
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Francesca's Holdings Corp. overcame lower customer traffic and depressed Easter sales to eke out a quarterly gain, but a drab outlook for consumer behavior throughout 2016 has lowered the company's expectations.

Still, the Houston-based women's jewelry and accessories retailer plans to continue opening stores during its second quarter and carrying out a long-term strategic plan it says ensures growth, officials said Thursday.

Francesca's reported earnings of 18 cents per diluted share, up from 17 cents one year ago. Net sales rose 12 percent to $106.1 million. Same-store sales rose 2 percent, helped along by more in-store and online transactions. However, promotions increased to help sell inventory. Online sales rose 38 percent to $5.2 million.

The company opened 22 boutiques and closed one. Francesca's now has 637 stores in 48 states.

Interim chairman, president and CEO Richard Kunes told investors during a morning conference call that Francesca's is experiencing the same kinds of in-store traffic declines that other retailers have reported, down 6 to 7 percent.

March sales were "difficult" around Easter, Kunes said.

Uncertain consumers

"There seems to be this uncertainty in the consumers' mind of whether or not they're going to shop," he said.

While sales improved for April, they continue to trend downward in the second quarter, Kunes said. Company officials reported being "encouraged" by Memorial Day sales.

The company continues to focus on long-term goals that include boosting its e-commerce and digital reach and reviewing its real estate properties.

Analysts expect such changes will provide a long-term payoff. The near-term costs involved with starting those changes could cause complications in the current "choppy" environment, analysts with Jefferies noted.

In a separate analysis, Stifel analysts said the challenge is when those changes could begin to produce results.

Francesca's expects second-quarter net sales between $106 million and $110 million, with a mid-single-digit decrease in same-store sales and diluted earnings per share between 16 and 19 cents. The company plans to open 15 to 20 new boutiques and close up to five. Closures mainly will be for stores at the end of their lease or with early exit clauses.

Forecast for year

For the year, Francesca's expects net sales of $460 million to $480 million, with flat to a low-single-digit decrease in same-store sales.

In May, the company's preliminary announcement that it was experiencing a softer-than-expected first quarter, coupled with the departure of Michael Barnes as CEO, sent the stock price tumbling 30 percent. Investors took Thursday's news more kindly. Stock ended trading at $10.63 per share, up 1.8 percent.

The search is underway for a new CEO.
A couple days ago, Chronicle columnist Ken Hoffman noticed that West University Place  a mossy, mansion-studded neighborhood next to Rice that is in fact its own municipality surrounded by Houston proper  has been designated by a finance website as the "richest town in Texas." The median household income there is a comfortable $207,429 a year, using an average of the five years between 2010 and 2014.

But it's not the richest town in Texas, if you use a slightly different methodology than 24/7WallStreet. And it's definitely not the richest neighborhood in Houston.
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While volunteering at the Menil Collection, Rebecca Rabinow discovered, in earnest, the ways artists communicate.

The Houston native, fresh from finishing her degree at Smith College in Massachusetts, spent the summer of 1988 in the museum's basement, transferring boxes of John and Dominique de Menils' correspondence into preservative Mylar sleeves.

"I couldn't help but read it," she said. "There were letters from Max Ernst, letters about their plans."

Whenever a letter mentioned a specific piece of art, Rabinow sought out the work in the galleries and spent time with it. That's when she began to appreciate the sense of time a painting can hold.

Twenty-eight years later, after a successful stint as a leading curator for New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, Rabinow is returning to Houston to lead the Menil.

She will take the helm in mid-July, president Janet Hobby announced Thursday. As the Menil approaches its 30th anniversary in 2017, the institution finds itself at a crossroads.

The Menil Drawing Institute, which Rabinow believes could change Houston's artistic culture, will open in 2017. Part of a $40 million project that is reshaping the Montrose campus' south side, the institute will be the first free-standing facility in the U.S. built for the conservation, study, exhibition and storage of works on paper.

Rabinow also sees an opportunity to preserve the legacy of the cherished institution founded by John and Dominique de Menil, who wanted encounters with the art they collected to be spontaneous and personal, without direction or context.

"It's a perfect time to talk about the Menil's history and the vision of its founders," Rabinow said.

She also sees a dynamic gaining steam across the city's arts scene, with the $350 million expansion of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston underway and Rice University's new $30 million Moody Center for the Arts under construction.

"Houston is about to enter an amazing moment for anyone interested in the arts," Rabinow said.

'Decisive moment'

She didn't intend to be this close to the developments.

Rabinow has been approached before by other museums but did not aspire to become a director. She agreed to speak with the Menil's search committee this spring, she said, because she wanted to share thoughts about a museum whose tightly-curated shows and permanent collections she has always loved.

Then, during their meetings, she felt something akin to what photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson called a "decisive moment:" She embraced the Menil's emphasis on the primacy of art.

"It's not about selling," Rabinow said. "It's a place where art is an integral part of the viewer experience. That is not the case everywhere."

Rabinow, 49, is coming off of a stellar 26-year run at the Met, where she has been the curator of modern art and curator-in-charge of the new Leonard A. Lauder Research Center for Modern Art.

For many years she was a colleague of another hometown prodigy, Gary Tinterow, who left the Met to direct the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston in 2012.

The international search to replace the much-admired Josef Helfenstein, who left the Menil in December to direct Switzerland's Kunstmuseum Basel, drew an unprecedented number of applicants, Hobby said. She praised interim director Tom Rhoads, who is returning to California where he previously worked at Los Angeles' J. Paul Getty Museum.

Rabinow quickly became the unanimous standout during interviews with seven "incredibly impressive" candidates because she has "the complete package" of curatorial and scholarly heft, vision, leadership skills and integrity, Hobby said. "The Menil values rigorous intellectual independence and humane values. She represents all that  and she's engaging and gracious."

Rabinow, who is married to music management professional Matt Ringel and has two teenage sons, organized many notable exhibitions at the Met, including the recent blockbusters "Cubism: The Leonard A. Lauder Collection" and "Matisse, In Search of True Painting." Also an active business leader, she served on the museum's financial oversight and exhibition committees and recently chaired a 230-member forum of curators, conservators and scientists.

Always interested in arts

Though she once considered becoming a doctor, Rabinow's interest in the arts has always been there, nurtured by the people in her life.

Years of traveling with her parents, Kathryn and Richard Rabinow, a former Exxon group president, instilled her love of museums. A teacher at St. John's School encouraged her love of art history. During a year abroad at the Sorbonne, she fell in love with artist books by Henri Matisse.

And, of course, there was that formative summer at the Menil. Although she settled in New York in 1990 and earned her advanced degrees there, Rabinow continued to visit the Menil whenever she came home.

"Menil shows are not bloated. They're really high caliber, and they always leave you inspired," she said.

Mark Wawro, who led the search committee, said Rabinow's passion for the Menil's core values resonated.

"She really understands what the de Menils were about when they thought about how art relates to the community," he said.

The founders, who were deeply committed to human rights, took culture to people in innovative ways, including a landmark exhibition at the DeLuxe Theater in the Fifth Ward in 1971 - one of the first racially integrated exhibitions of contemporary artists in the country. Dominique de Menil insisted on free admission to the museum, which she considered a gift to the people of Houston.

Along with modern and contemporary art, the heart of the Menil Collection includes a wealth of art from Africa, the Americas, the Pacific Northwest and the Pacific Islands.The Menil grounds are full of spaces where people can interact with art "on the fly" without entering the museum, Wawro noted. "It's not just a place you can come and contemplate. It affects how you look at life."

Fundraising a priority

Rabinow has an "electric" vision, he said, and the right experience to produce innovative, interesting programming inside and outside the museum's walls that will be "good for Houston in general."

Her energy dovetails with the board's desire to update the strategic plan it adopted in 2006. "A decade later we are a different place," Hobby said. "It's time to reassess."

Fundraising will also be a priority. The Menil is still nearly $20 million shy of finishing a $110 million capital campaign the board wants completed by the time the Drawing Institute opens. The Menil has a staff of 124 and an annual operating budget of $22.3 million.

Rabinow, who counts listening among her strengths, said she plans to seek input from the staff and the community. "Our goal is to make sure all of Houston knows the Menil is there for them, for free," she said.
What's in a "decisive moment?"

Intriguing answers abound in "Life Is Once, Forever: Henri Cartier-Bresson Photographs," a quietly compelling show of about 40 black-and-white prints at the Menil Collection.

The Frenchman Cartier-Bresson, the 20th century's most influential photographer, lived from 1908 to 2004 and wielded a hand-held 35 mm Leica for 40 productive years - from the 1930s to the 1970s. He worked on the run but never thoughtlessly, coining the "decisive moment" concept that still defines dynamics of a good candid image.

Making a photograph is about putting one head, one eye and one heart on the same axis, he wrote. "To take a photograph means to recognize, simultaneously and within a fraction of a second both the fact itself and the rigorous organization of visually perceived forms that give it meaning."

In other words, if the shutter had snapped a second earlier or later, the best thing about the image would have been lost forever - whether it was some lineup of elements in the composition or a subject's fleeting expression.

More Information 'Life Is Once, Forever: Henri Cartier-Bresson Photographs' When: 11 a.m.-7 p.m. Wednesdays-Sundays, through July 24 Where: The Menil Collection, 1533 Sul Ross Tickets: Free; 713-525-9400, menil.org See More Collapse

Cosmopolitan and well-read, Cartier-Bresson, came from a wealthy family of Parisian textile makers. He created more artsy, even erotic imagery early on, turning later to photojournalism so he wouldn't be pigeonholed with the Surrealists. Drawn to places in the midst of sweeping social and political change, he co-founded the cooperative agency Magnum Photos with noted photographers Robert Capa, David Seymour, William Vandivert and George Rodger to create the kind of work that filled the pages of big weekly news magazines before TV was mainstream.

Cartier-Bresson took hundreds of thousands of pictures, including portraits of many famous artists and writers.

Most of the Menil show is drawn from his rigorously edited Master Collection, an archive of 385 choice shots, compiled by Cartier-Bresson and printed by his Paris studio in 1972-73 at the urging of his friends John and Dominique de Menil. (Their museum holds one of four versions of the archive, along with more than 600 other Cartier-Bresson prints.)

The show's photographs range from the iconic - the famous 1932 image of a man leaping across a mirrorlike puddle - to the lesser known - a gripping, Freudian composition that would have appealed to the Surrealists - to the illuminating - a young Truman Capote looking as brooding as a hot-house flower.

Cartier found decisive moments to shoot, but they may not have always been matters of pure chance. Especially with portraits. He might talk to a subject two or three hours, sweep him or her into a conversation and wait for the moment to happen.

"He was a really out-in-the world guy, but he might have been more of an active participant in his compositions than we give him credit for," said Toby Kamps, curator of modern and contemporary art at the Menil Collection. "He famously disavowed and revised some early versions of images. They were smokescreens."

If you know your 20th-century world history, you may recognize that Cartier-Bresson was observing the rise of Communism in China, the division of India and Pakistan, the Cold War mood of the Soviet Union and the brash attitude of socialist Spain when he made some of these photographs.

But the titles of the images are vague, suggesting only the place and year they were taken. All these decades later, this lends the pictures an ironically timeless quality. Unfettered by context, they are open to interpretation. You sense tensions at play, but mostly you recognize Cartier-Bresson's mastery at distilling all these slices of complex time into something more intimate and simple.

Even when he was shooting a crowd, his decisive moments were usually decisive human moments, captured with humor or pathos, or both.

The picture that knocks me silly hangs just inside the gallery door, to the right. Not part of the Master Collection, "Alongside Interstate 45 Freeway - Boy With Mother" is from a series of Houston images the de Menils commissioned from Cartier-Bresson in 1957.

There's poignance in the tender way a mother reaches out to touch the neck of her young son, whose head looks focused toward the ground. Is he sad or afraid? Is she encouraging him or warning him? She holds a handkerchief in her other hand; has she been crying?

Both figures are impeccably dressed. She wears a crisp, brightly colored skirt. He's in a striped shirt and a cowboy hat, holding a little briefcase and shiny metal lunch box printed with a Wild West scene. They're a vision straight of out the midcentury American dream catalog, with a slight twist: The mother and son are African-American, and the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act have not yet been passed.

They are standing beside the feeder road along the new Gulf Freeway as if it were some mythical riverbank to the future. The bright air around them has that humid, blanched-out, hurricane-season look to it. The freeway glows, gray-white and wide open in the daylight, as invitingly ominous as a Wild West trail.

Perhaps it is the boy's first day of school. Perhaps they are waiting for a bus, although there's no proper bus-stop shelter. Traffic wasn't nearly as deadly then. Only two cars are visible on the freeway. But what in the world were this mother and son doing there?

There was a practical answer, I'm sure, but I don't need to know it now because the moment I see poses mysteries I could ponder all day.
GALVESTON  An animal rights group has filed a complaint alleging violations of the Animal Welfare Act by researchers at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston.

Stop Animal Exploitation Now! filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Agriculture alleging that UTMB researchers mixed up tags on sheep, causing a procedure to be done on the wrong sheep and invalidating the research. The alleged mistake violated the U.S. Animal Welfare Act, the animal rights group said.

UTMB questioned the accuracy of the claim, saying no surgeries were performed on sheep as alleged. "We are not going to comment until they clarify or retract this news release because it's not accurate," UTMB spokesman Raul Reyes said.

The complaint seeks the maximum fine of $10,000 for every violation of the Animal Welfare Act because UTMB is currently under investigation by the USDA for allegedly allowing monkeys to die painful deaths.

The alleged mistreatment was revealed in an audit last year that accused researchers of botching research by using improper standards.

Michael Budkie, executive director of Stop Animal Exploitation Now!, conceded that the procedures performed on the sheep may not have been surgeries, as stated in the group's news release, but stands by its claim that the procedures had been performed on the wrong sheep.

"Whether it was a surgical procedure or an invasive procedure is not really relevant," Budkie said.

The animal right group sent letters to the University of Texas vice chancellor for research and development, Patricia Hurn, to investigate UTMB researchers for allegedly bungling its research. The group also asked the executive editor of the Journal of Proceedings of the National Academy of Science to investigate the veracity of an article it published based on the research.
GALVESTON  The Brazos River had crested in most threatened areas in Brazoria County and was holding steady or receding, raising hopes that the worst was over unless another thunderstorm drenches the county.

"Everything is kind of holding," county emergency management spokeswoman Sharon Trower said. "We are seeing water recede in some areas throughout the county."

Although the flood was holding steady in most parts of the county, it was rising the Village of Jones Creek, with a population of about 2,000, said William Tidwell, village marshal.

"We still got a lot of water to the north of us that still has to come through here," Tidwill said.

Tidwill said about 10 houses in the village were flooded and that he expected more to flood.

The Brazos left its banks, came through a low pasture and into Jones Creek, he said. Tidwill said the creek has been rising about 2 inches per hour for the last two days in the village, a few miles southwest of Lake Jackson.

In Lake Jackson, the largest city in the 200-square-mile area threatened by floodwaters that have affected an estimated 100,000 people, workers were staving off flooding from Bastrop Bayou that endangered its northern neighborhoods.

"So far so good, although the Northwood subdivision is pretty precarious," Lake Jackson City Manager Bill Yenne said. "Levels have stabilized and begun an agonizingly slow fall."

Yenne said the river would remain high over the next several days and that another thunderstorm could cause the Brazos to rise again and send water into some homes.

"We dodged a bullet this afternoon because 8 miles south, Freeport got 2 inches of rain," Yenne said. "That would have just murdered us."

The Brazos River at Rosharon had fallen more than 2 feet by Thursday after cresting at 52.56 feet over the weekend.

No more evacuations were ordered Thursday.
For young immigrants living in America, life is all about dreaming.

"We dream for the opportunity to live a life with dignity, being able to go to work and to go to school without the fear of being detained; without the fear of coming home to find that our family has been deported".

That is how Adonias Arevalo describes the central aspirations of young, undocumented people like him. He and other members of United We Dream, the largest immigrant youth-led organization in the nation, are gathering in Houston, Friday through Sunday, for the United We Dream Congress 2016. More than 1,000 Dreamers from 23 states are expected to network, march and participate in workshops over the weekend.

Arevalo came to America from El Salvador with his family more than a decade ago, when he was 13. His family cannot return.

"I lost one of my family members, and we are afraid that going back to the country would be a death sentence for me and my family," Arevalo said. "El Salvador is the most violent country in the world".

Arevalo and about 1.4 million other young people who came to America without authorization when they were minors are eligible for work permits and relief from deportation under one of President Obamas executive orders, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA). Almost 700,000 have obtained the benefit so far, according to the Pew Research Center.

Estimates from the Migration Policy Institute show that close to 280,000 of young adults are eligible for DACA in Texas, including 68,000 in Harris County.

The United We Dream Congress 2016 is being held in Houston for specific reasons, says Cristina Jimenez, director of the national coalition.

Harris County detains and deports more people than almost any other county, Jimenez says. In a hearing before the U.S. Senate, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) confirmed that the top three counties for deportations in 2015 were Los Angeles County in California, Maricopa County in Arizona, and Harris County.

The Harris County Sheriff's Office is one of the few law enforcement agencies in the country that cooperates with ICE in a controversial program known as 287(g), which expires at the end of June and is currently being evaluated for renewal. Under the program, HSCO transfers undocumented people entering the county jail into the custody of ICE authorities.

Citlalli Alvarez, a Dreamer who was brought to Houston from Monterrey, Mexico, when she was four years old, says her cause is not about numbers but about lives. One of the activities she is most excited about this weekend is a rally and march planned for 1:30 p.m. Saturday, when the Dreamers will march from Discovery Green to the Sheriff's Office.

"We are going to be chanting, we are going to have theatrical plays, and we are going to have a pinata representing the 287(g) contract. We are going to break that pinata very hard!" says Alvarez, who graduated with an anthropology degree from Georgetown University last year.

The other reason the United We Dream Congress is being held in Houston is that Texas and several other states challenged DACA and the implementation of DAPA (Deferred Action for Parental Accountability), another executive order that would provide temporary relieve from deportation to undocumented parents of U.S. citizens. United States v. Texas is currently being reviewed by the U.S. Supreme Court, and a verdict is expected by the end of the month.

Texas has become a battleground for Dreamers, and DACA represents a milestone victory that is under attack. Several activities over the weekend involve training and workshops related to the impending Supreme Court decision.

For Jorge Ramos, the Noticias Univision (Univision News) anchor who will be the keynote speaker at the Congress, Dreamers are the people who have impressed him the most in his three decades as a journalist.

"They have changed history," Ramos said. "They convinced President Obama to approve DACA and their push for immigration changes is now going all the way to the top in the Supreme Court".

And something else.

"Their parents learned to be invisible to survive," Ramos explained. "The Dreamers have done exactly the opposite. They came to light, openly showing their undocumented condition. They are present, they are strong, they are fearless, and that is powerful."

Olivia.Tallet@chron.com; @oliviaptallet
It would be easy to miss the trailhead, marked only by a small sign off Cypresswood Drive in northwest Harris County. But Jim Robertson didn't need the sign to locate this spot.

He steered his red Toyota pickup truck off the road, bumping over the curb and parking on the grassy shoulder. We walked along a smooth, wide, concrete path into a patch of dense woods, slapping away mosquitoes. Soon we veered off the trail onto ground still squishy from recent rains, heading toward a glimmer of water we could glimpse through the trees.

As we approached this flood detention pond, I saw a profusion of birds soaring over it or foraging for food in its shallows. Egrets, blue herons, ducks - a little avian sanctuary in the midst of suburban subdivisions and roads thrumming with traffic.

This pond and surrounding woods are on Harris County Flood Control District land, protected from development, Robertson explained. But other tracts with the same potential for recreational amenities and wildlife habitat remain vulnerable as Robertson and others struggle to cobble together a public park and trail system along a 40-mile stretch of Cypress Creek from the Waller County line to its confluence with Spring Creek.

The Cypress Creek Greenway Project began in 1999; Robertson, a retired oil and gas geologist, got involved in 2004. The effort involves county agencies, the nonprofit Cypress Creek Flood Control Coalition, and some 60 municipal utility districts serving neighborhoods in the creek's watershed.

Robertson and his colleagues apply for grants, keep their eyes out for property coming on the market and try to persuade commercial developers that a trail system would provide valuable connections between their projects and potential customers in adjacent neighborhoods.

"I'm not anti-development," says Robertson, the chairman of the greenway project. "It's about balance."

The beauty of efforts like the Cypress Creek initiative, or the city's Bayou Greenways project, is that they simultaneously meet two pressing needs in the region: flood control and outdoor recreational amenities. Land that's protected from development can continue to absorb water, and the trails and other facilities built in these areas are designed to be cleaned up and re-used after floodwaters subside.

Many of the spots Robertson showed me along Cypress Creek were underwater during the floods in April and May. The lake in Cypress Creek Park rose so high on April 18 that it covered the trail and the parking lot and almost reached Eldridge Parkway. When we visited this week, people were running and biking again on the trail bordering the lake.

Compared to their counterparts in Houston, Robertson and his colleagues are working at a significant disadvantage. The $100 million in bond funds authorized by voters in 2012 for the Bayou Greenways initiative is limited to waterways within the city. The funds were part of a $166 million city parks bond proposal.

Leaders of the Cypress Creek effort have found other funding sources, however. Houston Endowment Inc., for example, provided a grant to obtain land for the Hundred-Acre Wood preserve, a county park at Jones Road and Texas 249 that opened in 2013. It includes nearly two miles of trails through forested terrain.

But the effort faces serious challenges. A similar project on Spring Creek got started sooner, and "got out ahead of development," Robertson says. Its leaders have made significant progress toward their goal of preserving and connecting up to 12,000 forested acres. But much of the Cypress Creek watershed east of U.S. 290 is already developed.

Preserving the remaining undeveloped tracts can be difficult. The flood control district has had discussions with the owner of a large, wooded tract on the creek, Robertson says, but the district can't offer the price the owner wants. It's tough for a government agency to compete with private investors in a rapidly growing area.

"This is the kind of place we would like to see preserved," Robertson said as we walked through the woods. "But (the owner) has visions of selling it for development."

It would be reasonable to wonder why anyone would want to develop land that's repeatedly inundated by floods, but people have surprisingly short memories. The government agencies and nonprofits working on initiatives like the one on Cypress Creek deserve all the tools and resources available to protect flood-prone land from development while enabling humans and other creatures to enjoy it in its natural state. That's what Jim Robertson calls balance.
A Houston man accused of gunning down his ex-girlfriend and her new boyfriend earlier this week has been charged with capital murder.

The charges against Darrell P. Mitchell, 28, were upgraded from murder after the second victim - the boyfriend - died in the hospital.

Lakiesha Lewis, 23, died at the scene and Johnel Francis, 24, died late Tuesday.

Court records show that Mitchell said he knocked on the door at his ex-girlfriend's home in the 6600 block of Hirsch about 3 a.m. Tuesday.

When her boyfriend answered, Mitchell said that "his mind went blank and he shot and killed them," according to the documents.

Mitchell surrendered to police Tuesday night after investigators released information about the shooting.

Mitchell made his initial court appearance Thursday in front of state District Judge Ryan Patrick, who ruled that he would be held without bond, a common condition in capital murder cases. Prosecutors have not indicated whether they will seek the death penalty.

In court, prosecutor Keri Fuller said a woman who was Lewis' best friend and knows Mitchell as Lewis' ex-boyfriend told police that Mitchell told her she would have to raise his children because he had killed Lewis and her new boyfriend.

Police have said Mitchell and Lewis had an on-again-off-again relationship and had recently broken up. Lewis was the mother of his three children, ages 5, 3 and 1. The children were not at the apartment at the time of the shooting.

Court records show Mitchell pleaded guilty to assaulting a family member after he hit Lewis in 2012.

He later was put on probation, which he successfully completed.

If convicted of capital murder, Mitchell could face the death penalty for intentionally killing two people. Whether to seek death is a decision made by the elected district attorney, Devon Anderson, generally after months of consultation.
Houston legislator Garnet Coleman has been honored as a "champion of transparency" by the Texas Press Association for his promotion of openness in government.

Coleman, a Democratic state representative since 1991, was given the award in recognition of his long-standing support of the public's right to know. During the 2015 legislative session, Coleman co-authored a bill that required police agencies from private universities to release their crime reports under the Texas Public Information Act.
Air traffic controllers at Hobby Airport on Thursday twice ordered the pilot of a small private plane to go around and make another attempt at a safe landing before it crashed into a nearby parking lot, killing the three people who were aboard.

The single-engine Cirrus SR-20 crashed shortly after 1 p.m., striking a car parked at an Ace Hardware store in the 6800 block of Telephone - about a mile northwest of the airport. The pilot and two passengers were killed on impact.

An investigator with the National Transportation Safety Board said the tower at Hobby Airport told the pilot the airplane was approaching the runway at too high an altitude.

"On the second approach, they were also too high. The air traffic controller again directed the aircraft to go around," said NTSB investigator Tom Latson.

As it was making a third attempt to land at Hobby,the airplane apparently stalled and lost power. Witnesses saw it dive nose-first toward the ground, Latson said.

The airplane collided with a car but narrowly missed nearby buildings, power lines and a propane tank. No other injuries were reported.

"That is remarkable," Latson said.

The airplane departed from the airport in Norman, Okla., about 10:15 a.m. for the flight to Houston. According to the Federal Aviation Administration, the airplane is owned by Safe Aviation LLC in Moore, Okla.

Latson did not identify the pilot or passengers, saying that would be up to the Harris County Institute of Forensic Sciences.

In a Facebook post on Thursday, the Thunder Valley Raceway Park in Noble, Okla., identified the victims as Tony Gray, his wife, Dana, and brother, Jerry.

"Everyone at (Thunder Valley Raceway Park) would like to extend our deepest sympathies to the Gray family. We have no words to describe the loss to the (Thunder Valley Raceway Park) family, as the Gray family have been long time racers, sponsors, and friends at the track," they said in the Facebook post. They ended it with: "Race in Peace."

FAA records also list a Dana Frances Gray from Moore, Okla., as having a license to be a private pilot. It wasn't immediately known Thursday whether she was at the controls during the fatal crash.

The airplane was equipped with a unique parachute system that is designed to prevent such crashes. If necessary, the pilot can pull a handle on the cockpit ceiling that will trigger the Cirrus Airframe Parachute System. It is designed to provide a crucial extra layer of safety.

When the handle is pulled, a rocket will shoot out and draw out a parachute. The force of the rocket also releases straps once connected to the fuselage that within seconds become part of the harness for the unfurling parachute.

"It appears the rocket motor deployed either immediately before or just after impact," Latson said. "The rocket motor did deploy (but) the parachute did not."

A spokesman for the Duluth, Minn.-based Cirrus Aircraft could not be reached for comment. Last year, a private plane with the same parachute system successfully set down in a neighborhood cul-de-sac in northwest Harris County after the pilot reported having engine problems. Company officials have said their system works when the plane is at least 500 feet above the ground and flying about 130 knots.

The investigation into the fatal crash will continue Friday. The manufacturer of the aircraft and the engine will be involved in the inquiry. After that, the aircraft will be taken to Dallas and stored in a secure facility until the investigation continues, Latson said.

Craig Hlavaty contributed to this report.
WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama told Bernie Sanders in an Oval Office meeting Thursday to channel the energy of his presidential campaign's millions of supporters behind Hillary Clinton, and said Sanders would play a central role in shaping the party agenda if he did.

Less than an hour and a half later, Obama, who had tried to remain neutral in the race between Sanders and Clinton, who had served in his Cabinet during his first term, formally endorsed her.

Moving swiftly to unite his party after a primary campaign that has left many of Sanders' supporters bitter and disillusioned, Obama, according to his aides, tried to mollify the maverick senator while prodding him to reorient his efforts against Clinton into a broader bid to boost Democrats in November.

The meeting was the set piece of a day of choreographed political theater in which Democrats treated Sanders to a visit only slightly less elaborate than that of a head of state.

The White House made sure cameras were positioned to capture the president and the vanquished Vermonter strolling animatedly along the White House colonnade to the Oval Office for their meeting. Later in the day, Sanders met with the Senate Democratic leadership before driving up Massachusetts Avenue for an audience with Vice President Joe Biden at his residence at the Naval Observatory.

Democrats were hoping that in giving time and space to Sanders, he would not cause trouble for them at their convention in Philadelphia, and would eventually endorse Clinton. But Sanders, who said he was not ready to end his bid, spent much of his day using back entrances and side doors and ducking into stairwells to avoid reporters' questions, clearly unwilling to talk in precise terms about his plans.

Clinton gathers support

The road ahead was clearer for Clinton, who spent the day collecting long-anticipated expressions of support from Democrats, from the president to Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, perhaps more of a favorite of the party's liberals than Sanders.

In a video posted on her campaign's Facebook page shortly after Sanders departed the White House grounds to visit the Capitol, Obama described Clinton as the most qualified candidate to seek the White House, and implored Democrats to come together to elect her.

Obama has made no secret of his desire to play a role in the race to succeed him.

"I'm with her, I am fired up, and I cannot wait to get out there to campaign for Hillary," Obama said in the video.

Clinton announced that she and the president would hold their first joint campaign appearance of the 2016 race Wednesday in Green Bay, Wis., the start of what White House officials said will be an intense campaign push for Obama that will culminate in near-daily appearances on the stump in the run-up to the November election.

Emerging from his meeting with the president, Sanders announced plans to meet soon with Clinton to discuss ways they could work together to defeat Donald Trump, the Republican presidential nominee.

But he stopped short of declaring his own bid over. He vowed to compete in Tuesday's District of Columbia primary and to take the ideas that animated his campaign - addressing poverty and income inequality, increasing Social Security benefits, and reducing the role of money in politics - to the Democratic convention next month.

Sanders' reforms

"We will continue doing everything that we can to oppose the drift which currently exists toward an oligarchic form of society, where a handful of billionaires exercise enormous power over our political, economic and media life," Sanders told scores of reporters as he left the West Wing, with his wife, Jane, beside him.

White House officials had been discussing the president's endorsement with Clinton's camp for days, but they kept the timing of the announcement under wraps, in part as a gesture of respect for Sanders and his highly motivated coalition of supporters.

Obama told Sanders in a phone call Sunday that the endorsement would come soon, according to people familiar with the conversation, and discussed the announcement with Clinton on Tuesday, the night she clinched the nomination.

The president had been circumspect about declaring the race finished, even after Clinton captured sufficient delegates in primaries Tuesday to clinch the Democratic nomination.

On Thursday, he congratulated her on "making history" and said he had witnessed her qualifications for the Oval Office.

Obama also praised Sanders for what he called an "incredible campaign." He said the Vermont senator's emphasis on addressing income inequality, reducing the influence of money in politics, and bringing young people into the political process would strengthen the party.
LOS ANGELES - Los Angeles County's former district attorney said he was troubled to learn new details about an infamous bloody glove that played a key role in the murder trial of O.J. Simpson.

A pair of bloody gloves was key evidence in the deaths of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman. One was found outside Brown Simpson's town house - the scene of the killings. The other was found at Simpson's home. DNA results showed genetic material consistent with both victims and Simpson on the gloves.

But during the trial, the gloves fit Simpson awkwardly, leading to defense attorney Johnnie Cochran's oft-quoted refrain: "If it doesn't fit, you must acquit."

On Oct. 3, 1995, a jury declared Simpson not guilty.

Speaking Thursday on "Good Morning America," Gil Garcetti, the district attorney at the time, said he learned new details about the glove from an ESPN documentary about the case.

"What we didn't know until I saw it on this film was that O.J. Simpson was taking arthritic medication for his hands and he was told if you stop taking this arthritic medication, your hands will swell. Your joints will stiffen. My God," Garcetti told "GMA."

"Did it tick me off - and I would use a different word? Yes, it did," Garcetti added. "But I can't say it's really crossing the line."

The Simpson case has been back in the news recently because of several factors.

A knife reportedly found Simpson's former home made headlines earlier this year, but the LAPD determined it was not connected to the 1994 slayings.

The Los Angeles Police Department performed a variety of forensic tests on the rusty 5-inch fixed-blade knife and compared it with the wounds inflicted on Brown Simpson and Goldman before ruling it out as the murder weapon, two sources familiar with the investigation said.

"That is not the knife," an LAPD source familiar with the investigation said. "There is no evidence related to the crime." The source said there was no blood on it.

Simpson is currently serving a 33-year term in Nevada on robbery-kidnapping charges. He is eligible for parole in 2017.
BEIRUT - U.S.-backed fighters in Syria converged from three sides on an Islamic State stronghold near the Turkish border Thursday, while Iraqi special forces pushed deeper into Fallujah, one of the last bastions of the militant group in western Iraq.

In Libya, IS militants were fleeing their stronghold of Sirte as forces loyal to a U.N.-brokered government advanced, with some fighters reportedly cutting off beards and long hair to blend in with civilians.

The anti-IS offensives posed a significant challenge to the extremist group as it tries to stave off multiple attacks across parts of Syria and Iraq, where it declared a so-called caliphate in 2014, and in more recently seized territory in chaotic Libya.

If the U.S.-backed Syria Democratic Forces capture Manbij, it will be the biggest strategic defeat for IS in Syria since July 2015, when it lost the border town of Tal Abyad, a major supply route to the militants' capital of Raqqa.

Manbij, which had a prewar population of 100,000, is one of the largest IS-held urban areas in northern Aleppo province and is a waypoint on an IS supply line between Raqqa and the Turkish frontier.

In a sign of the town's perceived significance, the SDF's advances were accompanied by intense airstrikes from the U.S.-led coalition battling the IS militants. The U.S. Central Command said the coalition has conducted more than 105 strikes in support of the battle to liberate Manbij.

Syrian journalist Mustafa Bali, who visited the front lines in Manbij, told The Associated Press the extremists didn't appear to be preparing to leave the town as they had from other areas. On Wednesday, black smoke covered Manbij as militants set tires ablaze in an apparent attempt to cut visibility from coalition warplanes, he said.

"Daesh is preparing for a battle inside the city," Bali said, using an Arabic acronym for the IS group. SDF official Nasser Haj Mansour said Wednesday about 15,000 civilians had fled.

A statement by the Military Council of the City of Manbij, which is part of the SDF, said all roads from the east, north and south have been cut. Its forces are now close enough to target IS militants inside the town, but they are holding off storming it to avoid civilian casualties, the statement added.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said SDF fighters are about 900 yards from the last main road linking Manbij with the city of Aleppo. At least 132 IS militants, 21 SDF fighters and 37 civilians have been killed since the SDF offensive began on May 31, the Observatory said.

In France, an official confirmed that French special forces are offering training and advice to SDF fighters. The French forces are with SDF fighters who are fighting IS, according to a French Defense Ministry official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

In Iraq, elite counterterrorism forces rolled into southern Fallujah on Wednesday under U.S.-led coalition airpower, the first time in more than two years that government troops have entered the IS-held city west of Baghdad. The militant group fired back with mortars and rockets.

Fallujah is one of the last IS strongholds in Iraq, and government forces last month began a large-scale operation to recapture it. Iraqi troops have slowly won back territory, although IS still controls parts of the north and west, as well as the second-largest city of Mosul.

An online statement from ISIS claimed responsibility for two suicide attacks in Iraq - one that killed 19 people and wounded 46 in a mostly Shiite neighborhood of Baghdad and another that killed 12 people and wounded 32 in the town north of the capital. The figures were confirmed by medical officials who spoke anonymously because they were not authorized to brief the media.
AUSTIN -- Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton's legal team filed a motion Thursday seeking to end the federal government's civil lawsuit accusing him of securities fraud.

The lawsuit, which was initiated in April by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, alleges that before he became attorney general, Paxton pressured friends to invest nearly $1 million in a Collin County technology startup called Servergy, Inc., without telling them that he was being paid to promote the company.

In a 38-page motion, Paxton's lawyers said the case should be dismissed, in part because, they said, he did not have an obligation to disclose that information.

The motion also argued the federal government did not accuse Paxton of making any false statements; that the federal government did not allege that any investors lost any money; and that Paxton himself was deceived by the founder of Servergy.

"The SEC's legal theory -- that Mr. Paxton failed to disclose certain information to investors -- has been repeatedly rejected by the U.S. Supreme Court for nearly 30 years," the legal team said in a news release.

The news release also announced that Paxton had hired former SEC official Matt Martens as his top lawyer to fight the civil lawsuit.

Experts said Paxton will have a hard time fighting the suit. Numbers show that when the SEC files a case alleging fraud, it almost never loses.

The allegations are nearly identical to those that Paxton is also fighting in the state criminal system. Paxton was indicted last year and has so far been unable to get the charges thrown out. Last month, an appeals court upheld the indictment.
Pop quiz: What's the oldest email in your inbox? What about the oldest text message on your phone?

If you don't know the answer, try asking the IRS, the FBI or your local police department. Government agencies can take a peek at online communications stored for longer than 180 days on a third-party server without needing a warrant. Unless you run your own email service, that probably means you. Don't like it? Blame the Electronic Communications Privacy Act.

That law was passed back in 1986, when the Commodore 64 was the hot buy and a single megabyte cost about $70. Today you can get 50,000 megabytes of storage on Apple's iCloud for 99 cents per month.

Given the high price of storing data 30 years ago, lawmakers assumed that anything left on a third-party server for longer than about six months had been abandoned by the original user, thus surrendering the Fourth Amendment right to privacy.

But technology has changed, and the law should follow. That's why Congress is working on a fix that will require law enforcement and other government agencies to get a warrant before looking at your emails.

This bill follows a legal trend of courts treating your digital files like the "papers" described in the Fourth Amendment, even if those files are technically stored at some far-flung server warehouse and not on your personal computer. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals ruled in the 2014 case, Texas v. Granville, that police need a warrant to search a person's cell phone - a decision later echoed by the U.S. Supreme Court. The 6th U.S. Court of Appeals held the 2010 case, U.S. v. Worshack, that police actually need a warrant to search your emails, essentially holding parts of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act unconstitutional. However, that ruling won't hold for the entire nation until the U.S. Supreme Court weighs in.

Rather than waiting, the House of Representatives passed its own fix back in April with an overwhelming 419-0 vote in approval. However, passage by the Senate has been bogged down by Texas' own U.S. Sen. John Cornyn. The Republican senator has been trying to attach an amendment that would allow the FBI to look at information about people's online activities without judicial oversight.

We don't doubt the senator's good intentions, and there may be merit to Cornyn's amendment, which he says is the FBI's top legislative priority. Nevertheless, he should let that policy stand on its own instead of attaching it to an unrelated bill. At a time when people increasingly doubt Congress' ability to do its job. Texas' senior senator should be promoting these sorts of popular bills instead of holding them back. This bill, S.356, does one thing well and there's no reason to mess with it.

Whether you're writing on parchment or email, the Bill of Rights doesn't expire after 180 days. It is time for Congress to put this fact into law.
Elizabeth Conley/Staff

The historic San Jacinto River is sick, but it doesn't have to be sick unto death. Like the Hudson, the Cuyahoga, the Monongahela and other industrial-use and abuse waterways that have been made cleaner and healthier in recent years, the Houston-area stream can be brought back to life, as well. As Chronicle reporter Matthew Tresaugue wrote recently, the sporadically beautiful river one of these days might even be safe for swimming, wading and kayaking again. The ingredients for that to happen are attention, resolve and, of course, money.

Fortunately, the West Fork Watersheds Partnership is providing the first two requirements, but the newly formed group can't go it alone. Because the river's pollution comes from numerous sources - bird waste, livestock, wildlife, industry, pets and people - the cleanup effort will require the cooperation of various agencies, organizations and individuals.
After soda tax, then what?

Regarding "Tax on surgary drinks weighed" (Page A10, Thursday), wouldn't imposing a soda tax create a "slippery slope?" What would be taxed next? Purchases at doughnut shops, bakeries and how about candy stores? To compound the problem, the Philadephia mayor would not use this new tax to combat obesity, but for prekindergarten, community schools and park improvements.

When does the government stop intervening in the personal lives of its constituents?

Robert M. Louie, Houston

Chill a bit longer

Regarding "Ceiling shattered" (Page A20, Wednesday), I hate to be a party-pooper, but before you actually open that bottle of champagne, someone should tell you that the super-delegates don't actually vote until July 25. With the scent of an indictment in the air, you might want to let that bottle just continue to chill a little while longer.

Tom Pellegrini, The Woodlands

Measuring achievement

Regarding "School Report Card" (Section N, Sunday), Children at Risk president Bob Sanborn said,"When 60 percent of the school kids in Texas are economically disadvantaged, we need to make sure we're sending them to good schools," he said. "Looking at our data, we're not sending most of them to good schools, and we need to be outraged by that."

The schools in the Houston Independent School District (HISD) that received high scores and would be called "good" by Sanborn, for the most part, have entrance requirements and select their students and would not accept most of the students who attend the "bad" schools. In addition, many of the schools that are labeled "F" accept non-English-speaking students who are required to be tested on the STAAR test the second year they are in the country, even though they have not acquired the English language.

Skills required of students in the 21st century are not those tested on STAAR. That senseless group of tests does not measure problem-solving, critical thinking, collaboration and creativity - all skills identified by business and industry leaders as requirements for success in the future. Our schools are frozen in time, and the STAAR test is a determent to the much-needed change in public education.

To those principals and teachers in the "F" schools, I say, keep your spirits high and keep fighting the good fight. There is so much more that indicates students' achievement than the STAAR tests

Bertie Simmons, principal, Furr High School, Houston

Political party bolters

Regarding "Dump the GOP for a Grand New Party" (Page A21, Wednesday), there are still plenty of us centrists, both right and left, who care about this country and who vote. But it's been a long time since we had a major political party candidate who wasn't at one end of the spectrum or the other. Perhaps the time has come for a new swing back to the middle.

And if anyone is looking back to find a precedent to this year's election, try 1884 with Republican candidate James G. Blaine and Democratic candidate Grover Cleveland's "Mugwumps."

Paul N. Spellman, Richmond
Harrowing tale

Regarding "Text alert" editorial (Page A13, Monday), thank you for the attention to the issues surrounding texting and driving and the fact that Texas is one of the four states not banning the practice. For those interested in a review of the issues and science, I suggest reading "A Deadly Wandering" by Matt Richtel, chronicling the story of Reggie Shaw, a young man in Utah whose experiences associated with texting and driving led to the initial bans of texting and driving. It is time to take action to make our streets safer for all - drivers, pedestrians and bicyclists alike.

The balance of individual interests and safety is clear. Stand on a busy traffic corner anywhere in Houston for 10 minutes and observe, study the statistics and read the science. If the state does not act, the city should.

Mary Cook, Houston

Safety first

Regarding "Texting and driving" letter (Page A20 Wednesday), the writer objects to regulations on texting while driving interfering with his personal freedom.

I understand not wanting government overseeing what we do in private; however, while most of us don't really care if he, while texting, runs off a cliff or into a telephone pole, we do not want him crashing into a family and wiping them out.

When your risky behavior endangers others, it trumps your freedom. Sorry.

Inga Vickers, Houston

Libertarian logic

The letter writer chooses to argue that proven facts are only opinions. When anyone makes science parenthetical we know we are in the land of denial.

Let's put aside the cognitive issues that arise from texting and look at physics. At 55 mph, a car travels 81 feet per second; at 75 mph, that distance becomes 103 fps.

If you are texting, you are not looking at traffic. If you are not looking at traffic, you are blind to what is happening.

So, by the writer's logic, if it is government interference to ban texting while driving, is it not logical that it is government interference to ban the blind from driving? Neither can see where they are when behind the wheel. The only question is how long they can't see the traffic picture.

This is where libertarian logic and making facts into opinions take us. Sorry, but public safety supersedes the personal "liberty" to put others at risk.

Bruce McAllister, Missouri City

Big difference

The writer compares our government banning texting while driving to government banning foods leading to obesity. A major difference is that foods leading to obesity primarily harm the individual who eats those foods, while texting often causes injury, death and property destruction to innocent, unrelated people in their vicinity.

Bett Hibbison, Huntsville
Moments after he won the Libertarian Party's presidential nomination, Gary Johnson, the former governor of New Mexico, was handed a peace offering - a replica of one of George Washington's pistols - by runner-up Austin Petersen.

"You have my sword, and my gun," said Petersen.

Cameras rolling, Johnson accepted the gift. Then he watched Petersen tell delegates to oppose Bill Weld, the former Massachusetts governor Johnson had enticed to run for vice president, whose past views against marijuana legalization are seen as a deal-breaker for many orthodox libertarians.

Johnson is not so much about orthodoxy. In a snit as he walked out, he tossed the gun in the garbage. For days afterward, a busy network of libertarian blogs investigated the story, and got a confession. Fox News even ran with it.

"It wasn't out of character," said Johnson. "Maybe, what was out of character was doing it in a public way, where I kind of, sort of knew that it would be seen. In character would have been to do that in private. But to me, hypocrisy" - endorsing Johnson but not his running mate - "is the unforgivable sin."

Johnson's interpretation of libertarianism, and his sometimes surprising pragmatism on issues and alliances, raise a key question in an election year with two of the most unpopular major-party nominees in memory. Who would be hurt more by Johnson's candidacy: Democrat Hillary Clinton, or Republican Donald Trump?

Johnson's support of legal pot and his opposition to deportations could endear him to the left. His promise to sign any bill that lowers taxes could do the opposite.

Polling is not definitive on the subject, but for Johnson, the bigger test is pulling support from anyone at all. One survey this week from Fox News gave him 12 percent of the vote in a three-way race with Clinton and Trump - a decent showing for a candidate that most voters don't know, or don't know is a former governor, or don't know is a presidential candidate. The key for Johnson is to continue to be included in national polls at all - and to move that number up to 15 percent, so he qualifies for the fall debates.

Johnson, hawk-nosed and aerodynamically coiffed, is one of the least obviously power-hungry men to run for president. But he is not a pushover. Born in 1953, he founded a construction company while he was still in college. After it grew into the aptly named Big J Enterprises, Johnson had enough money to self-fund a 1994 bid for governor - and win, in an oddball race where a third-party candidate got 10 percent of the vote. He promised to run the state "like a business." On the trail now, he mostly talks about his gubernatorial years to boast about his 739 vetoes.

"Every third Thursday of every month, I'd have an open-door policy - five minutes for anyone who wanted to call out waste, fraud, and abuse," said Johnson. "I'd do the same as president."

Decades later, Johnson's takeover of the Libertarian Party, and success in getting it to nominate Weld, was nearly as radical as Donald Trump's takeover of the GOP. The LP is a bastion of radical libertarianism, a home to people who would rather be pure than win an election. Just 12 years ago, the party handed its nomination to Michael Badnarik, a freelance constitutional lecturer who refuses to obtain a driver's license because that would mean using a Social Security number.

Johnson is an activist who imagines a Libertarian president - yes, seriously, he intends to win - using the executive branch to correct Congress's mistakes. Ron Paul, the former Texas congressman and 1988 LP candidate who might be the country's most famous libertarian, can hardly finish a paragraph without citing the Constitution.

Johnson refers to modern politics and the modern norms of presidential power. Asked how his presidency might begin, he starts by describing executive action, like reclassifying drugs (all of them) and ending the National Security Agency.

"The NSA was created by executive order," Johnson said. "Did you know that? By executive order, for a starting point, you could turn the satellites away from the United States." Johnson also sees no problem with "signing statements," the extra language the executive might use to explain which parts of legislation he would not enforce. "I don't imagine I would differ in that regard, given that it is a precedent."

Johnson's view of power, and the role of government, is not unique among libertarians. Since his first Libertarian bid, in 2012, he has described the party's platform as "taking the best from both parties," combining fiscal tightness with social liberalism. He has favored legal gay marriage since 2011; during the Libertarian contest this year, he criticized "religious liberty" laws that would have allowed merchants not to serve gays.

Nearly every Republican, including Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., opposed President Barack Obama's executive action to allow the children of immigrants to stay in the United States. Johnson supports it.

"I happen to agree with what he did," said Johnson, "though I don't know where executive orders stand in regard to the fact that he's broken up 3 million families. He has deported millions of people back to Mexico, and their families have stayed here. That's something I would not have engaged in."

Johnson's view on the issue is rooted, he said, in the obviously positive goal of allowing undocumented immigrants to work in the United States.

"Whether or not it was the right course of action or not, if it avoids deportation, yes," said Johnson. "As a president, you're talking about gridlock with Congress. Executive orders have a way of stimulating legislation. I kind of, sort of thought that was his goal - if you don't like this, pass a bill."

On policy after policy, Johnson comes off as more of a realist than the Republican nominee for president, Donald Trump, or the runner-up for the Democratic nomination, Sen. Bernie Sanders. Both of those men imagined a popular movement breaking through a gridlocked Congress to pass a president's agenda.

Johnson assumes that "libertarianism," as the oasis between the parties, is already popular. He knows, as pollsters know, that the two major parties have chosen candidates who are decidedly unpopular. When offered a slogan, or a swing-for-the-fences idea, Johnson suggests that a reality-based Libertarian president would find a solution.

In his interviews with the Washington Post - two hours, over which he chided himself for saying "at the end of the day" too often - Johnson responded to every idea by imagining what Congress might pass or an executive might get past it. The Federal Reserve, for example, could not be abolished the way many libertarians want; but it could be tacked in. He waved off the popular libertarian catch phrase "taxation is theft."

"It is theft, yes, but the reality is that we're not gonna abolish taxes," said Johnson. "I mean, if I'm elected president, you can expect me to sign anything that reduces taxes." Asked about the old libertarian idea of a "basic income" replacing the welfare state - an idea recently resuscitated by Charles Murray, the libertarian author and political scientist - Johnson said the same thing. "If that's legislation that gets passed - hey, I'm gonna look really seriously at signing it."

Conservatives, who at this point are more wary of Johnson than liberals, ask if he's simply too accommodating. The confidence that once inspired Johnson to walk around Zuccotti Park, seeking allies in the Occupy Wall Street movement, did not always lead to libertarian government in New Mexico. He vetoed as much spending as he claimed, but he also watched the state budget grow slightly faster than the national average.

In 2016, as a candidate, Johnson talks about balancing the budget but lacks the zeal of libertarians who think the state could be cut in half without consequence. He'd keep Social Security for current retirees. He wouldn't abolish the EPA, after learning in New Mexico how the government policed bad actors.

"In the libertarian view, without the EPA, you as an individual could sue under the law," said Johnson. "But not really. You don't have deep pockets to go up against Chevron."

Later, Johnson added that the government had its own mixed record. But the Libertarian Party platform focuses on the government, and only that, suggesting that the planet would be cleaner if the market would be allowed to work.

That thinking comes from a philosophical lack of faith in government that Johnson simply doesn't share. In his hunt for a libertarian center, he comes off as less angry about the state than many Republicans.

That cuts to the reason he might appeal to liberals. Asked if he, as president, would sign off on the killing of American citizens who join terror groups, Johnson responded with a horrified "no." The state might work better if Gary Johnson got to run it, but no president should be trusted to wage foreign adventures unchecked. Not since America's intervention in Bosnia, he said, had the country been right to get involved in war.

Johnson also said that the Islamic State is not an existential threat, noting that terrorism kills only 400 people per year.

"Microphones get put in politicians' mouths," said Johnson, "and the reporters frame questions like: 'These atrocities are happening in Libya. Are you going to stand by idly, and watch this happen?' The knee-jerk response is, 'of course I'm not,' without considering that by getting involved in Libya, the outcomes are going to be worse."
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ording to Jack Delosa, founder of entrepreneur educational institute The Entourage, employers can promote innovation through intrapreneurs: workers who take full ownership of their role and responsibilities while thinking creatively about their function and the value they bring to the firm.A traditional employee comes to work, watches the clock, gets their pay and is relatively disengaged, he said.An intrapreneur comes to work because they believe in the vision of what the organisation is trying to achieve. They come to work because they care about their customers or if theyre in HR they care about the people in the organisation.This group of workers can even share some of the risk-taking characteristics of entrepreneurs, Delosa added, although this may be limited by the structure of the organisation.There are certain political dynamics in play in any existing corporation so for me intrapreneurship is not necessarily about thinking like an entrepreneur  its thinking more innovatively about your role.Although intrapreneurs have a tendency to want to try new things without requiring prior data to back up their decision, they will need to do this within the guidelines of the organisation.This type of attitude is vital to bring innovation into a firm, Delosa said. However, most organisations will fail to achieve this because they use analogical reasoning: the belief that something will work in the future because it has worked in the past.The true entrepreneur and intrapreneur will instead use principle reasoning, examining what is true today and then expanding on those foundations. Elon Musk is one such example, he noted.Rather than looking at what was in place yesterday as a perimeter for whats possible tomorrow, people such as Elon Musk look at what was achieved yesterday and build out from that point.This doesnt mean making wild uncalculated guesses about the future, Delosa added.Great innovation is often the result of both good and bad judgment from the past which you only learn through experience.To foster this kind of creativity, Delosa said that firms can back up new ideas with praise and rewards.When you give people permission to think creatively and to behave creatively and truly back it up  thats when you start to see creativity flowing.If employees do make a mistake, dont jump down their throats but recognise this as an essential step along the path to learning more and innovating within the firm, he added.
le negative emotions such as anger are more likely to be associated with workers storming out of the workplace and handing in their resignations, a new study by the Cambridge Judge Business School suggests that there is something more intricate at play.Theory and research on affect in organisations has mostly approached emotions from a valence perspective, suggesting that positive emotions lead to positive outcomes and negative emotions to negative outcomes, the study began.The research, which was published in the Academy of Management Journal, found that work-related identifications have a major part in deciding whether an employee will quit or not regardless of their mood.For instance, an angry worker who identifies with his company is less likely to quit. Instead, he will stick it out and try to improve his situation within the firm.On the other hand, if a worker fails to identify with the company, emotions such as anger will be more likely to push them to leave.The researchers went on to say that corporate policies which broadly characterise specific emotions could actually harm the organisation.The study suggests that company policies that are designed to promote positive emotions or minimise negative emotions may in fact not have the intended effect, says Jochen Menges, university lecturer in organisational behaviour at Cambridge Judge Business School and professor of leadership at WHU  Otto Beisheim School of Management in Germany.So rather than seeking to suppress certain workplace emotions, companies should instead adopt practices that seek to encourage greater organisational identification.The study examined 135 people employed in the US and Europe at the same company over a period of one year. During this time, each worker was asked about their intentions to remain with or leave the firm. They were also asked about both general and specific organisational issues such as scheduling, pay, satisfaction and culture.Researchers then looked at staff turnover at the company six months after the final survey was done. They found a definite correlation between the amount of staff intending to leave and actual turnover.
lure to train staff on disability and diversity is a disaster waiting to happen, says one leading employment lawyer, after a hotel worker was slammed for calling a paralysed former Olympian a cripple.In an Instagram photo posted on Wednesday, six-time gold medallist Amy Van Dyken-Rouen wrote that she was being brought back to her room at the Gaylord Texan Resort by a hotel employee when another worker saw them and asked, "What's going on here? Escorting the cripples now?!"The swimmer, who was paralysed two years ago in an ATV accident, later received an apology from the resorts general manager which she happilyaccepted but employment lawyer Martin Sheard says incidents such as this pose a serious risk to employers.There is no legal responsibility to train your employees in regards to disability but there are a lot of reasons you might want to think about doing so, he told HRM.If you dont train them, its at your own peril because if your employee does something like that, you the employer are on the hook because theyre acting ostensibly  and probably actually  as your agent, he continued.Theyre wearing the uniform, theyve got the nametag, they represent the hotel and the hotel is the one thats going to get sued, he added.Bev Cassidy-Mackenzie, of Diversity Works NZ , told HRM that the slur isnt acceptable in any workplace.Its disappointing to see labels like this being used around the world and we would hope that in New Zealand that wouldnt be the case, she stressed.Cassidy-Mackenzie, who heads up New Zealands leading workplace diversity advisory service, says employees should be trained not to label anyone with a disability and to be aware of all types of impairment.Dont put labels on people  see the person not the disability, she stressed. Disability is an impairment that can be physical, cognitive, sensory, developmental or emotional.
Why charge a customer once when you can do it multiple times?

It's a question that Apple is grappling with as it looks to make up for slowing iPhone sales.

The tech giant is set to introduce a new model for apps that encourages developers to make products that can be had on a subscription basis, rather than for a one-time fee, Bloomberg reported Wednesday.

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The current arrangement sees Apple take a 30 per cent cut of apps sold in its App Store, according to The Verge.

The new model would see developers who make subscription-based apps take a bigger cut of the profits after one year  85 per cent, instead of 70 per cent.

Apple would also charge developers to give their apps prominent display in the App Store  not unlike the paid search results you see on Google.

It's an idea that comes as Apple sees major returns from gaming. As much as 75 per cent of revenue from the iOS app store came from games up to April 2016. Most of the App Store's top-selling products can be had for free, with in-app purchases made along the way.

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Apple had previously resisted the idea of doing search ads.

But Phil Schiller, the company's vice-president of worldwide marketing, told The Verge that the tech giant is looking to "carefully do it in a way that, first and foremost, customers will be happy with."

He said search ads would be designed so that they're "fair to developers, and fair for indie developers, too." As Bloomberg noted, developers would only have to pay when App Store users actually clicked the ads.

But these aren't the only innovations that Apple is bringing to the App Store.

The company is also reducing product review times so that half of the apps submitted only take 24 hours to approve, while 90 per cent take 48 hours to receive a thumbs-up.

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Reaction to Apple's plan was decidedly mixed. It drew some concern from Fraser Speirs, who works at the Scotland-based Cedars School of Excellence, an institution known as the home of the first "1:1 iPad programme."

Every student at the school has an iPad  and Speirs wonders whether Apple has considered the effects of its new arrangement on education.

I sincerely hope someone at Apple has thought about how all these subscription apps will deploy in schools. https://t.co/K8Y6PMkzcn  Fraser Speirs (@fraserspeirs) June 8, 2016

Others, such as programmer Miguel de Icaza, were more encouraged by the news.

Apple doing some announcements pre-WWDC, great news on subscription pricing for everyone: https://t.co/KOs1DkL2OZ  Miguel de Icaza (@migueldeicaza) June 9, 2016

The new system will be implemented starting June 13, on the first day of Apple's Worldwide Developer Conference, according to Bloomberg.

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CP/HO-Government of Alberta

The trial of two parents accused of killing their son has exposed how a lack of co-operation between provincial social service agencies can lead to at-risk children falling through the cracks.

Court documents show Alexandru Radita was briefly put in B.C. foster care as a kindergartner in 2003, after it was discovered he was suffering from malnutrition and untreated type one diabetes.

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He was returned to his family after a year.

After his family moved to Alberta in 2008, Radita didn't see a doctor for treatment for starvation and or diabetes. He was kept home and didn't attend school. He died in 2013 at home.

His parents Emil and Rodica Radita have pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder in the death of their 15-year-old son.

Parents can simply move to avoid social services

Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond, B.C.'s Representative For Children and Youth, says moving to another province is a strategy parents often employ to avoid social services, allowing vulnerable youth to fall off the radar.

"Where you have a database or information systems across the country that speak to each other where you can flag, 'This family, we've lost contact, please be on the lookout for them,'" Turpel-Lafond told CBC News.

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"We do not even have basic co-ordinating information systems."

Alexandru Radita, pictured at his birthday party shortly before his death. (Photo: CP/HO-Government of Alberta)

For Radita's B.C. kindergarten teacher, the news of his death came as a shock.

Retired teacher Sandy Wong remembered Radita as "impish," "chubby," and "chatty" when he was in her class, according to The Calgary Herald.

She was devastated to learn the details of his suffering at the trial. Doctors testified the 15-year-old weighed less than 37 pounds, was covered with sores and was suffering from scurvy.

Wong wrote a letter to the B.C. and Alberta Children's Ministries, as well as The Calgary Herald, calling for change:

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"I hope that Alex's tragic death will bring about necessary changes regarding follow-up and monitoring in serious cases of neglect, when once apprehended children are returned to their parents. His life story of suffering and premature death demands that greater, more open sharing of information between provinces be implemented. The most vulnerable must be protected!"

Since Radita's death, most of Canada's provinces and territories have adopted a protocol with the intent of strengthening communication between provinces.

However, Turpel-Lafond says federal legislation, not an informal document, is needed to keep children safe.

Its an informal protocol and frequently I find those protocols are not observed, she said to Global News.

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It seems some Conservatives aren't convinced that Liberal voters actually expected Canada's electoral system to change when they their cast ballots for the party last fall.

For months, Tories have risen in question period to demand that Liberals call a referendum on any proposals to reform the way Canadians vote. On Friday, Tory MP Alain Rayes seemed to question if Liberals have a mandate to alter the system at all.

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Conservative MP Alain Rayes rises in the House of Commons on April 18, 2016. (Photo: Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press)

Rayes targeted a talking point of Democratic Institutions Minister Maryam Monsef that 60 per cent of Canadians voted for electoral reform last October.

Liberals won 39.5 per cent of the vote in the October election on a platform of 219 promises. Among them included a pledge that "2015 will be the last federal election conducted under the first-past-the post voting system."

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New Democrats and the Greens  both parties that explicitly pledged to bring in proportional representation  won 19.7 and 3.5 per cent each.

"I don't know what math course (Monsef) took but let me give her the right figures," Rayes said, according to a French translator. "39.5 (per cent) voted for the Liberals. Nobody can have me believe that out of that 39.5 per cent, they voted for (all) those 219 resolutions including that one on voting systems."

Call for MP to 're-do his math'

Omar Alghabra, parliamentary secretary to the foreign affairs minister, promptly reminded Rayes that the Liberals weren't the only party to run on electoral reform.

"So, perhaps the honourable member can re-do his math," he said.

Alghabra added that the all-party committee  of which Liberals gave up majority control earlier this month in a compromise with New Democrats  will consult with experts, MPs, and Canadians.

"We will not proceed until we have the broad support of Canadians," he said.

But Rayes isn't the only Tory to question what really motivated the Liberal and NDP voters who did not support the Conservative party last fall.

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'Not really accurate'

In debate last week, Conservative MP Marilyn Gladu told the House she didn't buy the notion that 60 per cent of Canadians voted for parties that wanted to move away from first-past-the-post system.

"I think it is important to recognize that the NDP had 38 pages of promises in its policies, and the Liberals had more than 20," she said. "Therefore, I would say that it is not really accurate to assume that people voted specifically for those promises.

"From a fact and evidence point of view, we would have to take into account that in many of the other referendums that have happened in this area, people have not voted to abandon the first-past-the-post-system."

Mark Holland, parliamentary secretary to the minister of democratic institutions, said he didn't know "how to respond to the notion that people do not vote for the policies that the parties put forward."

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His constituents expect him to keep the promises he made on the campaign trail, he said.

"This was certainly a significant one in the last election."

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#HappyBirthdayYourMajesty Watch The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and Prince Harry arrive at St Paul's Cathedral for #Queenat90 Service of Thanksgiving.

A video posted by Kensington Palace (@kensingtonroyal) on Jun 10, 2016 at 3:33am PDT
The 17-year-old will receive her diploma from Washington, D.C.s Sidwell Friends School on Friday. While the milestone is meant to be a joyous occasion, Obama said last week that it was a moment hes been dreading.

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My daughter leaving me is just breaking my heart, he said during a speech at an Indiana high school. If there are any parents here, I hope you can give me some pointers on how not to cry too much at the ceremony and embarrass her.

A White House official told People that Malias graduation will be a private affair, with no press coverage.

Malia and her younger sister Sasha, 15, have grown up in the public eye. The girls were just 10 and seven years old, respectively, when their father became the 44th President of the United States.

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Recently, during an appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, Obama opened up about how his daughters have handled life in the limelight.

Theyve handled it so well. They are just wonderful girls, the President said on Thursday. Theyre smart and funny, but most importantly, theyre kind. They dont have an attitude. That was the thing me and Michelle were most worried about when we got there. But theyve just turned out to be incredible kids. I could not be prouder.

But now, after eight years in the White House, Obama admitted that his eldest daughter is very eager to get out.

Malia, who turns 18 on July 4, will be taking a gap year before she heads off to Harvard University in fall 2017. This is the same school that Obama and his wife, Michelle, also attended. It is still unknown what Malia will be doing during her year off.

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A good deed turned into a $175 fine for a Regina man.

Dane Rusk told CTV News he saw a man standing on the side of the road as he was driving away from a mall on Wednesday.

As I came up to the stop sign, I stopped and looked and I saw this homeless guy holding a sign, he said. I instantly felt sorry for him.

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Rusk said he unbuckled his seatbelt, gave the man $3 and went on his way.

'It's entrapment'

Then the cops showed up.

"The police officer came up behind me and pulled me over and told me I was getting a ticket for not wearing my seatbelt," Rusk told Global News.

The man Rusk thought was a panhandler turned out to be an undercover Regina Police Services officer. Insp. Evan Bray told the broadcaster the officer was part of the force's "intersection project," which nabs drivers committing traffic violations. It's a tactic that police have used before.

Bray says the officer Rusk saw was not soliciting any donations.

He was dressed in plain clothes and he did have a sign," he said. "The sign read Im not broke, Im not hungry, have a great day.'

Just a thought: what if the driver didn't have his seatbelt on at all? Does it change your view and your tweets? #takeit2court#always2sides  Regina Police (@reginapolice) June 10, 2016

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"We would not write a ticket to a person who took their seatbelt off to give money to someone that they thought was a panhandler," Bray told CJME, adding that there are more details to the story that will be revealed in court.

Rusk says he feels like "it's entrapment" and will be fighting the $175 fine he received.

Here I am getting in trouble because I took my seatbelt off for two seconds to pull change out of my pocket and reach out and give it to a guy, he told Global.

According to CJME, 40 people were ticketed on Wednesday in less than 90 minutes for seatbelt infractions or for using their cellphones while driving.

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Rhonda Steed via Getty Images Wedding in Waterton national parks

Location, location, location. As it is in real estate, so it is with weddings.

And there are plenty of beautiful ones around Alberta.

But if you're trying to think outside the box, it can be trickier to find a space that fits your and your partner's quirks.

Here are some unique spots around the province that will make your day extra memorable.

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If you're thinking of hosting an intimate wedding with a historical twist, look no further than Edmonton's High Level Bridge Streetcar.

The stunning streetcar line dates back to 1913 and is operated by a motorman. Just imagine the view guests would have overlooking the beautiful river valley as your ceremony takes place.

Plus, the streetcar runs right past the Alberta Arts Barn and the Strathcona Streetcar Museum  forget about booking transportation between the ceremony and reception!

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There may not be a more uniquely Alberta landscape than Dinosaur Provincial Park.

The sandstone cliffs and hoodoo spires would make a gorgeous backdrop for an outdoor ceremony.

The Theatre Junction GRAND is Calgary's oldest theatre, but if you're picturing a stuffy, historical building, think again.

The absolutely gorgeous century-old building has been transformed into a home for cutting-edge, contemporary productions. The theatre is an absolutely stunning building, with the original ceiling renovated with unique light fixtures to be transformed into a stunning piece of art.

A photo posted by Derek Currie (@derekc11) on Apr 14, 2016 at 9:02pm PDT

More of a fan of the stage than the screen? Calgary's Plaza Theatre hosts ceremonies that will make you feel like a classic Hollywood star. Also, take home bags of popcorn make for great favours.

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If you like the idea of a vineyard wedding but are looking for something a bit closer to home, consider hosting your reception at a brewery.

Your guests will love you, and you'll love the ease of planning an event where the catering and bartending is all included.

Edmonton's Yellowhead Brewery and Calgary's Wildrose Brewery both have great spaces (and brews).

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If you're thinking of eloping, there's no more secluded spot on which to wed than the top of a mountain.

Alpine Helicopters offers heli-weddings year-round at Mount Charles Stewart, 2,800 metres above sea level. The company's marriage commissioner will also act as your guide. Up to 15 people can join you for an intimate ceremony.

Edmonton's Union Bank Inn was built in the early 1900s when Edmonton was a bustling stop on the way to the gold rush further north.

Now, the stunning historic building has carried some of that glamour and excitement forward to become a boutique hotel with an award-winning restaurant and beautiful ballrooms for a reception or ceremony.

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Plus, it's located right near a gorgeous overlook of the river valley and a short drive away from the Muttart Conservatory. Perfect for wedding photos.

If you and your betrothed love travel, there's no better place to get hitched than the Aero Space Museum of Calgary.

The hangars are all located within a historic Second World War building. There's not much need to decorate, with the stunning backdrop of historic planes scattered around the hangars.

What better way to symbolize the adventure the two of you are about to go on than at Canada's first aviation museum?

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Canada got a taste of its first bachelorette on Thursday.

Not a surprise to anyone, Corus' choice for a leading lady was a beautiful white, blond woman named Jasmine Lorimer residing in Pemberton, B.C. -- the typical casting choice of the U.S. version of the show as well.

And while I wasn't expecting an Asian, black or any other person of colour to represent this country as a bachelorette for the very first time (maybe more diversity among the contestants?), it was a quote by the company that really just irked me.

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"She is delightful and beautiful, although I wouldn't call her diverse," Barb Williams, executive vice-president and chief operating officer of Corus told Toronto Star reporter Tony Wong after he questioned if the network missed the mark on diversity.

"It's entirely a possibility. We are watching the diversity issue just about explode. We should have been much more conscious and purposeful about this years ago. But we are finally coming to our senses about this and who our viewing population really is," she continued. "We should make sure they are reflected in every way, so certainly none of that stuff is off the table."

Explode? It's a little too late for that.

I've been up to something...  @w_network @bacheloretteca #bacheloretteCA A photo posted by Jasmine Lorimer (@jazlor1) on Jun 9, 2016 at 5:10pm PDT

For starters, I am not entirely sure what "watching the diversity issue just about explode" means exactly, but it's clear the show and franchise have a diversity problem. No person of colour has ever been cast as the bachelorette or bachelor in 32 seasons of the franchise's history, The Wrap notes. Minorities often don't even make up the supporting cast, and when Canada introduced the first bachelor in 2012, many of us were (or at least I was) holding our tongues for someone of colour (both Canadian bachelors have been white men).

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And it's great that Corus, one of the biggest specialty broadcasters in the country is watching "the diversity issue," but here's a heads up, it exploded a while ago.

What are the chances that a show like "The Bachelorette," one of the biggest shows on television, would cast a person who looks like me?

People of colour have always been here. We're here watching reality shows, we're here buying tickets to every big blockbuster and we're here bingeing every show on Netflix as well. We've "exploded" a long time ago and we're just used to not watching ourselves reflected on the big and mini screens.

I don't work in television production, but there's always the argument that "people of colour don't come out to casting calls." "I am sure this is true, but I think this has a lot to do with the effort to bring diversity to these shows as well. When people of colour don't see themselves in leading roles, and are reduced to dry stereotypes, it is not surprising to see interest from these communities waning.

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And witnessing the franchise's history -- attractive white blond and brunette men and women as the standard -- people of colour may not want to apply. What are the chances that a show like "The Bachelorette," one of the biggest shows on television, would cast a person who looks like me?

It's a cycle that happens in every industry. The effort to cast diverse people isn't there and in return, diverse people are not interested in being on these shows or watching it.

Last night when photos of hairstylist/model Lorimer circulated on my social media feeds, the only conversation I had with my friends (yes, a majority of colour), is how kickass it would've been for a Canadian production to finally break the mould and lead with a person of colour. How headlines across North America would applaud us, how new audiences would watch the show and how refreshing it would be to see a non-typical bachelorette for the first time.

Corus as a whole, a company that takes pride in shows I love to watch like the "Love It Or List It," series or "Property Brothers," could have stepped up as a leader in the industry right before the launch of a new series.

As Williams said to the Star, the company should have been "more conscious and purposeful" about this years ago. Even if they are finally coming to their senses of who their population really is, it's unfortunate we have another franchise of this show to fall under the same problem, right here in Canada of all places.

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ADRIAN WYLD/AP Former Prime Minister Paul Martin salutes the audience during a tribute to the former leader at the Liberal Leadership Convention Thursday, Nov. 30, 2006 in Montreal. (AP Photo/CP,Adrian Wyld)

Hitch hiking across Canada as a teen, Paul Martin took a summer job as a deckhand on a tug boat in Canada's far north, toiling elbow-to-elbow alongside Dene First Nation, Inuit and Metis crew. When the work was done, he'd talk with them late into the night. His mates were friendly and smart, but the young Martin saw a sense of hopelessness in them. Most had been crushed by years in residential schools.

That experience sparked a passion for aboriginal issues that never faded, even after Martin became Canada's 21st Prime Minister.

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After their time in office, most PMs have opted to resume lucrative careers, returning to successful businesses or law practices. Martin has chosen a different path. His life's mission is to create opportunities for indigenous youth through his own non-profit, the Martin Aboriginal Education Initiative (MAEI).

We've partnered with MAEI on a campaign called We Stand Together, promoting national reconciliation by educating young Canadians across the country about indigenous issues. Two weeks ago, we watched Martin choke up with emotion as he talked about indigenous issues with youth at an aboriginal cultural center in Montreal. We spoke to Martin about how Canadians can connect with and support First Nations, Inuit and Metis peoples.

Why do we all need to care about aboriginal issues?

Our values say that we give all Canadians an equal chance. We're not doing this with the aboriginal population. This is really a violation of all the values that we proclaim to the world.

How can average Canadians support indigenous communities?

Canadians should seek to understand how the problems have occurred, and what the challenges are in communities like Attawapiskat. And then, unequivocally, Canadians have to speak out for needed funding. None of us would be where we are if we hadn't received free public school education. And the fact is, the federal government underfunds aboriginal health care and education, and that's obviously going to have huge effects on communities like Attawapiskat.

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If there are [aboriginal] communities nearby, mentoring students in grade and high school is a huge benefit. And there are all kinds of programs that people could donate to.

What would you add to curriculum to better teach students about aboriginal people?

I wouldn't limit education to indigenous history or going into museums. Indigenous people don't live in museums. I would take [students] into communities and get them to sit down and meet young people their own age.

What books or films can help Canadians better understand aboriginal people?

Authors Joseph Boyden and Thomas King have written outstanding books. I would also recommend books by Rupert Ross (a former Ontario crown attorney) about his evolution from being a Canadian who didn't know very much about aboriginal issues, and over time really understanding them. For films, I'd recommend Atanarjuat (The Fast Runner). It's the first Inuktitut language feature film, and it won an award at the 2001 Cannes film festival. Another excellent one is Edmund Metatawabin's Up Ghost River, which is all about residential schools and abuse.

What are some must-see indigenous destinations for Canadians?

Ninstints is a small island off the west coast of Queen Charlotte Island. There are remains of houses with carved memorial poles that show the living culture of the Haida, and their relationship to the land and the sea.

How can Canada's 150th celebrations recognize indigenous contributions to our country?

The First Nations, the Inuit nations and the Metis people should be officially recognized as founding nations of Canada, along with the French and the English.

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This interview has been edited and abbreviated.

Brothers Craig and Marc Kielburger founded a platform for social change that includes the international charity, Free The Children, the social enterprise, Me to We, and the youth empowerment movement, We Day. Visit we.org for more information.
By David Dodge & Dylan Thompson

Prince Edward Island is the smallest province in Canada. It's known for Anne of Green Gables, mussels, lobster and some "bright red mud" as Stompin Tom Conners called it in his song Bud the Spud, about the red earth that grows one quarter of all the potatoes in Canada. But, perhaps less famous, for lack of a catchy theme song, is that Prince Edward Island (PEI) also has the highest proportion of wind power of any jurisdiction in North America.

"PEI actually is one of the leaders in wind in the world ... and 25 per cent of our electricity is produced by wind on Prince Edward Island," says Paul Biggar, Minister of Energy for PEI.

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The province lacks a suitable landscape for hydro-electric and has few non-renewable natural resources. So a decade ago, PEI was dependent on expensive diesel and oil powered generators for its on-island electricity production while the New Brunswick grid provided about 75 per cent of its total electricity needs via a pair of undersea cables.

Wind power in just one decade

When PEI's government crafted a plan to wean their grid off costly and carbon-intensive diesel, they turned to wind power, one renewable resource that the island has plenty of. A map of the wind potential of PEI glows red showing high potential for much of the island. As we write this 34 per cent of PEI's electricity is coming from the wind.

PEI began investing in wind generation in 2006 and today has 204 megawatts of wind capacity in a province that has an average demand of 200 megawatts and a winter peak of 260 megawatts.

The PEI Energy Corporation, a crown corporation, owns three wind farms and 73 megawatts of generating capacity. Engie, formerly known as GEF Suez, owns 108 megawatts of capacity and sells most of its power to New Brunswick through a contract. The Wind Energy Institute has 10.6 megawatts while the City of Summerside also has 12 a megawatt wind farm. Interestingly, almost half of PEI's wind is under contract to New Brunswick.

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Focus on wind power comes down to dollars and cents

"On Prince Edward Island, it costs us five cents per kilowatt hour to produce it (wind power), but we sell it off for eight cents per kilowatt hour," says Biggar. "So it is a revenue generator for our energy corporation. We take in about $20 million a year of revenue on our wind."

That's quite a contrast to diesel generation that costs up to 45 cents per kilowatt hour. That's also the reason PEI is pretty keen to find ways of integrating even more wind power. Since building out their capacity, PEI uses it's 200 MW of diesel facilities mostly for backup. These days only one per cent of PEI's electricity comes from on-island diesel generation.

However, PEI has reached a bottleneck with their undersea power cables to New Brunswick.

"We're right in the middle of installing a new cable, a 360 megawatt cable from New Brunswick to Prince Edward Island," says Kim Horrelt, CEO of PEI Energy Corporation.

The $140 million project will provide new baseload electricity capacity as demand grows in PEI and it will also allow the continued export of wind power from PEI.

How renewable will PEI go?

The province recently decided to delay building a new diesel plant while they seek public input for their new energy strategy. Some wonder if PEI has tapped out the potential of cheap wind energy. But a PEI Energy Commission report in 2012 said: "The potential to advance beyond 30 per cent contractual wind integration and utilize even more of the wind energy generated by all of the wind farms in Prince Edward Island can be realized through time-of-wind electricity consumption initiatives."

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PEI is looking closely at ways of using more wind power through energy storage. A smart grid program in Summerside shows good potential to expand the use of wind power. Meanwhile, Biggar says "The other area we're looking at is solar power and more biomass" along with "more energy efficiency programs."

Solar one more tool in the clean energy toolbox

The cost of solar is still higher than wind, but much lower than diesel so it may be another part of the puzzle since peak production for solar is midday and in the summer, whereas the wind blows strongest at night and in the winter."Whereas wind sometimes is generating in the overnight hours when the demand may not be there...solar is likely to be generating at those peak times of the day when the sun's still out and energy use is high," says Scott Harper CEO of the Wind Energy Institute of Canada, founded in 1981 in North Cape, PEI

PEI already has energy efficiency programs aimed at improving building efficiency and electric heating systems such as air source heat pumps, thermal electric furnaces and water heaters. Consultants advised the province that the cost of energy efficiency is much cheaper than any energy source available to PEI.

Energy efficient and electric-powered, air-source heat pumps, like the ones we've seen in net-zero homes are being installed across PEI including the motel I stayed at.

Integration the key

In a report to the PEI Government Dunksy Energy Consulting reported the costs of various energy solutions: Energy efficiency 4 cents/kWh, wind 6.8 cents/kWh, biomass 15 cents/kWh, solar 18.9 cents/kWh and tidal 30 cents/kWh. But it's not a simple matter of simply picking the cheapest solution. Different solutions provide different benefits and services to the grid. And PEI is already bending the curve through implementation of non-traditional energy storage solutions. The future is not clear, but one thing is certain: PEI appears motivated by early success to push the envelope further.

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"I think our end game is if we can get that capacity to store that wind, you would see at least 50 per cent and I think that's our ultimate goal," says Biggar. "How can we capitalize the most on our wind capacity here on Prince Edward Island? Because that is our greatest resource in terms of potential for electricity. That is the goal we're working towards."
In Guatemala, Luisa waters coffee plants all day, lugging heavy bottles on two-hour round trips through the fields. Are her beans sold in Canadian stores? Photo/World Vision

"It's horrible. But what can I do about it?" My friend Maggie's was wild with exasperation, her hands waving furiously in the air.

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We were talking about child labour. I don't mean children fetching water or firewood, or helping parents in the fields at harvest time.

I'm referring to the worst kinds of child labour: jobs that are dirty, dangerous and degrading. Work that beats children down physically, but also emotionally and psychologically. Work that robs them of the chance to go to school.

An estimated 85 million of the world's children suffer in these kinds of jobs. And both Maggie and I feel responsible.

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Albanian child workers collect chrome after blasters have done their work. Do stainless steel products sold in Canadian stories contain Albanian chromium? Photo/World Vision

Canadians complicit

Every time Maggie heads to the mall, she could be fueling child labour. She doesn't want to, and would do nearly anything to avoid it. But many companies importing into Canada have supply chains originating in countries where the incidence of child labour is high. There's the strong likelihood of a connection.

Maggie's not alone, according to a report released this week by World Vision Canada. Every Canadian is in her boat. We may also be supporting a practice known as 'forced labour.' An estimated 21 million people around the world are trapped, lured or coerced into jobs that they can't leave and 5.5 million of those are children.

Maggie has the will to help. What she's been missing is guidance as to how to respond. My friend is the main shopper in her family. She travels broadly, reads extensively and is dead-set against the practices of child and forced labour. Yet every time she heads to the mall in her minivan Maggie becomes part of the problem.

Report digs deeper

But what can Maggie do about it? Which companies are better at checking their chains for child and forced labour? And what are they doing to respond?

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World Vision's report helps answer many of these questions. By tracking supply chains of Canadian companies, the researchers identify which have a likelihood of being connected to child and forced labour.

Photo/World Vision

Companies not reporting

Among companies shown to be importing high-risk goods into Canada, more than half the companies reviewed in the report did not publicly report their efforts to reduce the risk of child or forced labour in their supply chains. They may indeed be taking steps, but Canadians have no way of knowing.

For the shopper, this can make every trip to the mall a moral minefield. Neither Maggie nor I want to dress our children in clothing made by children, or feed our families with products caught, grown or harvested through slave labour.

I've often asked store clerks whether children make their clothing. I've visited grocery chain websites, looking for their policies on child and forced labour. I've checked with managers in coffee shops, asking about the provenance of their beans.

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The report helps me understand why so few sources have had the answers I need.

Food industry least transparent

Based on the Canadian companies reviewed in the report, our food industry is the least transparent about their supply chains. This is painfully ironic, given that the agricultural sector has the highest rates of child labour. Sixty per cent of all child labourers work in jobs like farming and fishing.

Photo/World Vision

Forced into labour

The fishing challenge is very close to my heart. When travelling to Thailand with World Vision, I met children who work on fishing boats.

To this day, I think of Bounmy whenever I buy frozen fish. At an age when Canadian teenage boys are downloading songs on iTunes, Bounmy left his village in Laos to find work next door in Thailand. Like many of the boys who'd gone before him, Bounmy hoped to earn money to send home to his family.

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This type of fishing boat was Bounmy's prison, during his nine years at sea. Photo/World Vision

A friend led Bounmy to a 'broker' whom he paid to get him to Thailand. Once there, Bounmy found work on a fishing boat. Bounmy didn't know he would be kept at sea for nine years, with no chance to return to shore. He and the other boys often worked 24-hour shifts, with only a few hour's rest in between. When they slowed, they were beaten.

I have no way of knowing that my kids aren't eating fish caught by children like these. I would like to direct my dollars down supply chains which don't include child or forced labour, but I haven't known where to begin.

Canadians want to help

With nearly 3,000 Canadians taking part in World Vision's two-week Conscious Consumer Challenge in May, it's clear that consumers want to make ethical buying decisions. But the report shows that even the most proactive shoppers are unable to make informed ethical purchases.

Child and forced labour aren't just international issues, they are Canadian issues. And with this report we can start to take a stand against them right here at home.

You can help, starting today:

Read World Vision Canada's report

Take our Conscious Consumer Challenge

Learn more about the issues

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Paul Giamou via Getty Images Maple leaf flag flying in the wind.

One generation plants the trees, so that another will get the shade. The simple wisdom of this Chinese proverb perfectly describes the inheritance one generation accepts from those who came before. The Canada we enjoy today was forged by the men and women who came before us. Our connection to these people and to their time is the geography of the country we share, and the history and heritage of our nation.

This heritage is often expressed in the stories of our First Nations, our early builders and the gallant service of those who served and sacrificed for Canada. Beyond our oral and written histories, our heritage is also expressed through the symbols, artwork, poems and songs that connect our country with its past.

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The simplicity and elegance of the Chinese proverb seems to be lost on the Trudeau government with their attempt to change Canada's national anthem. After only seven months in office, this new government believes they have the right to unilaterally rewrite or recast the heritage they inherited.

Even more troubling is the way they are framing the debate about the change to our anthem.

After only seven months in office, this new government believes they have the right to unilaterally rewrite or recast the heritage they inherited.

First, they are rushing a private member's bill through the House with virtually no debate because of the serious illness of the MP who introduced the bill. All members have deep sympathy for our colleague and his family, but his illness is not a reason to eliminate the ability for Canadians to have their say on this issue. MP Belanger returned to the House of Commons today to continue his advocacy and I deeply respect the dedication of my friend even though I disagree with his Bill. I don't think he would want to see no debate on an issue like this.

Second, many of the advocates for this bill are suggesting that support for the present anthem amounts to discrimination against women. Of course that is as unfair as it is incorrect. The language "in all thy sons command" does not discriminate at all, but it is a reflection of language in poetry and verse from the period. The language seems old to use today because it is old. It is meant to be a connection to our past, and it does a disservice to our history to suggest an historic slight when none actually exists.

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The roots of O Canada go back to 1880 when it was commissioned by the Lieutenant Governor of Quebec to honour the important St. Jean Baptiste Day services in that province. The original French words of the song, composed by poet and judge Sir. Adolphe-Basile Routhier, were an attempt to rally citizens of a young nation and instill pride for their country.

Like most anthems, it is militaristic, nationalistic and uses allusions to the nation being on the side of right or the divine. It is nowhere near as militaristic as the national anthems of France or the United States of America with their descriptions of bloodied fields or bombs bursting in air, but anthems tend to be rooted in urging citizens to defend something greater than themselves.

If a country begins to tinker and parse the heritage of its official symbols generations after they were written or cast, where does this exercise stop?

Like the French or American anthems, "O Canada" was a patriotic song that brought people together within a young country to defend the nascent country, its people and ideals. "O Canada" became our official anthem in 1980, 100 years after it was first written. Similarly, "The Star Spangled Banner" did not become the official American anthem until 117 years after it was composed. A country and its citizens tend to embrace songs as their anthem long before politicians make them official. The French and English versions of "O Canada" and its recognition of the two founding nations of Canada led to it becoming the official anthem over the older, popular, but English-only song "The Maple Leaf Forever."

The original version of "O Canada," in French, has never changed. A variety of English translations or variations emerged in the decades after 1880, but the English version by Robert Stanley Weir emerged as the most true to themes of the original and became popular. Weir, also a Quebec judge and poet like Routhier, wrote his poem in 1908 and altered it slightly in 1913. The English version by Weir was never intended to be a literal translation of the French original, but tried to evoke the same passion through militaristic and patriotic themes.

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The change being proposed today is not a return to the original song as some are trying to suggest. It is similarly incorrect when people suggest it was changed to encourage enlistment in the Great War. Weir changed the language before the war and reports suggest he returned to one of his earlier versions of the words in that stanza. Since the Bill is being rushed through Parliament, the Heritage Committee was unable to hear from Weir's grandson to learn the true origins of the change. The one witness that was permitted to be heard for a few minutes, a historian, put to rest the suggestion that the language was intended to exclude.

Until the votes last week, I had never encountered anyone suggesting they were excluded from "O Canada."

If a country begins to tinker and parse the heritage of its official symbols generations after they were written or cast, where does this exercise stop? Some have already advocated for removing reference to "native land" in the English version given Canada's poor record on several First Nations issues since Confederation.

Others have suggested removing reference to God in the anthem because it was added later or because of the need for separation between church and state. Others have decried the anthem as being too militaristic. While it is normally only the English version of the anthem that is mentioned in these suggestions, the same issues are also found in the original French poem. It mentions the land of our forefathers and mixes divine references alongside a militaristic theme. Both versions use different words, but the same imagery which is rooted in the early days of a young nation.

Until the votes last week, I had never encountered anyone suggesting they were excluded from "O Canada." This includes the 12 years I spent serving alongside some exceptional women who saluted our anthem in uniform just like I did.

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Everyone who embraces what our country stands for and experiences the anthem with the glowing heart it is meant to evoke, is part of the Canadian experience. Our anthem is our connection with our history and our heritage and both should be understood when discussing the connection our anthem has to the country. Staying true to our heritage is not a defence of the social values or norms from that time, but a demonstration of our growth as a nation. I hope that our generation is confident enough to walk in the comfort afforded by the shade without pruning the limbs of the trees as we walk past.

You can watch my speech on preserving Canada's national anthem below.

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Hans-Peter Merten via Getty Images car production, Wolfsburg, Germany

Unifor's Auto Council made a momentous decision recently about the all-important contract talks to get underway this summer.

In two unanimous votes, the 120 delegates passed resolutions calling for each company to commit to bringing new products to Canada, and to specific investment mandates for Canada for assembly and powertrain operations.

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That means there will be no deals with GM, Ford or Fiat-Chrysler without specific commitments from each that we will have new products made right here in Canada.

For the sake of good jobs and their communities, it is vital that these workers took that stand.

That's because for a decade under Stephen Harper, we had a government that took its foot off the gas pedal and allowed our auto industry to flounder.

I have met with auto executives, and talked to them about the challenges they faced under Harper, and they told me the same thing: with Harper signing trade deals that gave imports such an advantage, it's less attractive to invest in Canada.

With other countries recognizing the importance of the auto industry to their economies and to the general prosperity of their people, why invest in a country that for 10 years refused to partner with the industry to create good jobs?

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Make no mistake, those advantages are great. Every job in an auto plant creates nine more across the rest of the economy. Jobs at the plants that supply parts to the automaker. Jobs at the contractors that come into the plants. Jobs at the shops and restaurants where the auto workers spend their wages.

There is also the taxes paid by auto workers, whether income tax, payroll taxes, sales taxes or property taxes. As we all know, these taxes go to pay for such important things as schools, hospitals and social programs. In short, all the things that make Canada such a great place to live.

That is why the auto council took a stand for new investments in Canada as the top priority for bargaining. Without products and specific investment mandates, there are no jobs, and none of the benefits that come from having those jobs in the community.

This is a stand taken by Unifor's Detroit Three bargaining committees for the future of their communities. These are men and women with families, and children that they hope will be able to find good jobs one day.

By making new products their top priority, these workers are looking beyond the life of the next collective agreement. They are looking years, and even decades, down the road to ensure continued long term prosperity for their communities.

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They are doing this because our federal government under Stephen Harper failed to do so. Where he failed to take action to build the auto industry in this country, the workers themselves are now taking up the task to bring new investment here.

This position in bargaining comes from the shop floor, where the workers recognize the importance of investment in maintaining and creating good jobs.

Auto Council, after all, is made up of Unifor Locals at Detroit Three auto plants across Ontario. They bring with them the bargaining priorities from each of those plants. Prior to meeting as a council, the locals from each of the Detroit Three companies met to discuss their main concerns. They then came together as Auto Council to set priorities for the industry as a whole.
Anadolu Agency via Getty Images KABUL, AFGHANISTAN - JUNE 06: This photograph taken on July 8, 2011, shows Anadolu Agency and National Public Radio (NRP) interpreter Zabihullah Tamanna as he films a report on the outskirts of Kabul. Anadolu Agency freelance reporter Zabihullah Tamanna and David Gilkey were killed in a Taliban attack in southern Afghanistan on Sunday, according to an Afghan military spokesman. (Photo by Haroon Sabawoon/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)

On a cold November morning -- actually, it was more the like the middle of the night -- on the roof of a hotel in Herat, a TV crew from Canada was huddled around a small camera, set up to capture the sunrise in this northwestern Afghan city.

As the dark sky began to lighten, it became clear that it might be too overcast to see anything coming up over the horizon. And that's when the lone Afghan in the group decided that coffee was required.

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The restaurant won't be open for another hour, I warned him as he started to head toward the elevators. He turned and said, don't worry, I'll get them to make some.

Don't worry, don't worry. That's the common refrain of the fixer in a place like Afghanistan. The traffic is horrible -- we will never make it to parliament in time for our interview. Don't worry, don't worry. This person I really need for my story hasn't called me back. Don't worry, don't worry. Is it safe to travel there? Don't worry, don't worry.

Zabihullah Tamanna must have repeated that refrain hundreds of times over the weeks I worked with him in 2015. He wrote it in his e-mails and said it in phone calls prior to our arrival. And by the time we started shooting our documentary, he no longer needed to voice it -- he conveyed his reassurance by just a nod. Don't worry.

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Zabi, Mellissa, and photojournalist Sat Nandlall, on assignment in Kabul for Global 16X9 in November 2015.

I wonder if that's what he said to NPR photographer David Gilkey when the convoy they were riding in last week came under attack in Helmand. I imagine that he told David the same thing, before their vehicle was destroyed and they were both lost to us forever. I imagine that Zabi, as he was known, was probably very worried, but that he wouldn't let on because he wouldn't want to alarm his colleague. He had a very calm way about him -- sometimes so calm it would border on exasperation, especially when I kept repeating the same questions.

He was calm because he was confident. He'd been doing this job -- working with foreign journalists -- for almost 15 years, and he was used to the rhythm and requirements of our work. He was astute, often one step ahead of us, and knew how to trouble-shoot a shoot if an element of a story fell through. There was always someone he knew or could call to help us out of a jam. There was always an element he thought would add to our narrative, a suggestion that would lift the story, a question we hadn't thought to ask at the end of an interview. His confidence carried and warmed our team during those cold and rainy November days of shooting.

His innate curiosity was what made him a splendid journalist. He asked as many questions of me as I did of him. What is Canada like? What is Washington like? Where did you go to school? Why don't you have children? It was a constant exchange of ideas, an earnest attempt to understand another culture; this was Zabi's true nature.

Without him, and other brave journalists like him, the rest of us would not be able to do our jobs.

He was a proud father, showing off pictures of his children on his old Android phone. He talked about moving his family to Canada someday; they might have a better life there, in a country where the randomness of death doesn't haunt civilians the same way it does in Afghanistan. It hurts to imagine the potential that will never be realized; the life Zabi could have lived with all the opportunity and freedom that a country like Canada would have offered.

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But for the moment, he loved what he was doing in his home country, despite the inherent dangers that come with being an Afghan working with foreigners. He was proud to be NPR's fixer; proud of the documentary we produced that winter. It was important, he told me, to help get Afghanistan's story out to the rest of the world, when the rest of the world was too war-weary to listen.

Zabi, Mellissa, Sat, and producer Claude Adams at Babaji high school in Herat, November 2015, talking to the principal about students being poisoned. Photo courtesy of David Lavery.

Long after I returned to Washington, he would still fill my inbox with story ideas "for the next time, dear" -- stories he knew would interest me, about the continuing struggle for women's rights, about setbacks and steps forward, to try to convince me to come back and keep telling Afghanistan's stories. I told him I would, and I was looking forward to working with him again. Without him, and other brave journalists like him, the rest of us would not be able to do our jobs.

Later on that cold November morning in Herat, true to his word, Zabi returned to the rooftop with steaming mugs of coffee. I was lamenting the clouds that refused to budge, ruining what we hoped would be a glorious sunrise. It's still a beautiful city, he said, maybe the most beautiful city in the whole country. Just wait until the light comes. Don't worry, don't worry.

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This article is going to end with a request that you sign a petition. The petition asks the government to publish Civil Service plans that outline how to deal with an exit from the European Union. If you'd like to sign the petition, please click here.

Anyone who's visited Hack Green Secret Nuclear Bunker near Nantwich will know that in amongst the very moving displays of the horrors of nuclear war, there is something darkly hysterical. Hack Green used to be one of 13 bunkers that were built up and down the country to protect the people who would govern Britain in the event of a nuclear war. There is an operations room at the heart of the bunker where each government department had a desk. If you visit the bunker today, you will see that one of the desks was for the Inland Revenue. Even after a nuclear war, the government planned to continue to collect taxes from whatever Walking Dead zombies were around post-Armageddon. As darkly funny as the idea is, it proves one thing; the business of government never stops.

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The Civil Service has contingency plans for almost every eventuality. As I've previously noted, there are currently plans circulating Whitehall that provide for Britain's orderly exit from the EU. Some people who follow me on Twitter have dismissed the idea as a conspiracy theory, and I find myself in the odd position of being regarded by some as a conspiracy nut, which is great research for my novels and screen work, but never a position I thought I'd find myself in as a reasonably well-educated, fairly average person. These plans exist, and it is extremely important that we put pressure on the government to publish them in advance of the referendum vote.

We seem to have forgotten that Britain is supposed to have an impartial Civil Service. One of the reasons for this is to protect us from the worst excesses of government and to act as a check on politicians who tend to get carried away with hyperbole and grand ideas. Whichever side of the campaign you support, there's one thing I think we can all agree on - the overall tone has been disgraceful. The government could have avoided this by commissioning two Civil Service teams to work up reports for release prior to the start of campaigning. One team would have been tasked to research the remain case, with all the facts and figures involved in that scenario, and the other would have worked up the leave case. This would have provided both campaigns with solid facts and figures, and more importantly a vision of what Britain might look like in either case.

That didn't happen. Instead, we've had a shouting match with each side wheeling out so-called experts, plucking figures, crying vested interest, and attacking character rather than educating and informing voters. One of the least edifying things I've ever seen was George Osborne out-and-out lying to Andrew Neil about the Treasury Select Committee's warning that no one from either side of the campaign should ever repeat the misrepresentative figures about the cost of leaving. I have to agree with Simon Heffer that this has been a campaign marred by disgraceful dishonesty. No wonder Conservatives have been ripping up their membership cards.

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This is not a General Election. We are not choosing a government. Vote Leave will have no say on policy. David Cameron, the current leader of the government, but also figurehead of the remain campaign, will be responsible for implementing the people's mandate. As I've previously noted, this gives him a terrible conflict of interest.

The last few polls have suggested a leave victory. Civil Service plans that outline how to cope with a leave vote exist and we need to see them. If, as I suspect, they show that Britain can exit from the European Union without any damage to its economy, then the plans will prove that David Cameron and George Osborne have been intentionally misleading us, and, like a pair of hucksters, have been trying to scare the British people into voting the way they want them to. If the plans show that there would be cost and chaos, as the remain campaign claims, I want to know that too, as I would not want to vote for something that would harm the interests of the British people.

With the majority of MPs and most of the government on the remain side, the government will resist publication of these plans with all its might. They will use purdah as an excuse, but given the ease with which a change in the voter registration deadline was effected, if we put enough pressure on them, these plans can be published. We, the people, deserve to know.

I tried to start a petition on the government's petitions website, but it was rejected supposedly because of the purdah rules. Having been through the rejected petition list, I can see that a number of other people have tried to start similar petitions since my article went live yesterday and they have all been rejected. Luckily for all of us, someone else had the good sense to start a petition which demands almost exactly the same thing before purdah - thank you, John Jorgensen. We must demand that we see these Civil Service plans. Without them, we are not being given a free and fair choice. If enough people agree with me that we have a right to see these plans before we vote, hopefully we can get the issue high enough up the agenda and put enough pressure on the government to force it to publish.

The government has three choices:

It can deny that there are any such Civil Service plans currently circulating Whitehall and hope that nobody remembers if we later discover that there were. It can refuse to publish the plans and thereby rob voters of valuable information they need to help inform their decision. Or it can publish the plans and tell the truth.

After having to endure such a disgraceful campaign, I believe we have earned the right to demand better from our politicians and would like to see them tell the truth.
As the UAE authorities tighten their grip on dissent, they are building an even closer political and military relationship with the UK.

For many around the world, the UAE conjures up images of tall futuristic buildings, seven star hotels and oversized shopping complexes.

However, behind the glamorous facade and expensive PR campaign, there lies an increasingly authoritarian police state that contrasts greatly the flamboyant image it likes to project. It is one that spends huge sums of money on weapons, while using its political and military relationships to legitimise its abuses.

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Last week, Emirate security forces were accused of operating a surveillance programme targeted at journalists, human rights activists and other critics of the regime. The programme has seen campaigners like Rori Donaghy, a journalist and founder of the Emirates Centre for Human Rights, being monitored and targeted by malicious spyware.

This attack on democracy is only the latest in a long campaign by Emirate authorities to silence critics and quash dissent.

In 2011 the 'Arab Spring' uprising fuelled an outbreak of protest. The street movements we associate with Egypt, Bahrain and Tunisia did not take place in UAE, but a number of important voices called for change.

The Emirate authorities refused to listen. A petition calling for reform was met with the dismantling of organisations that had supported it, the detainment of high profile signatories and a number of campaigners being stripped of their citizenship.

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2014 saw the introduction of new 'anti-terror' laws, further criminalising protest under the guise of fighting terrorism. Every act prohibited by the new laws is treated as a terrorist offence, which a number of advocacy groups, including Human Rights Watch, believe could lead to terror charges and extended prison sentences for peaceful protest.

The crackdown has gone hand in hand with new and far-reaching cybercrime laws, which have seen threats of deportation for those that have spoken out. One law in particular, which bans websites and communications that 'damage national unity', could give authorities carte blanche to suppress dissent.

The conditions in prison are terrible, with human rights group Reprieve finding that 75% of detainees report police torture. One high profile victim, UK national David Haigh, recently returned to the UK. Recounting his abuse, Haigh said "I was punched around, I was hit, I was tasered. People attempted to sexually abuse me. I now have a problem with my eyes. You are constantly kept in the dark...it damages your eyes."

Regardless of its abuses, the UAE government has focused on building its global brand and military partnerships. It has played a key role in the destructive Saudi-led bombardement of Yemen, which has killed over 6,400 people. It has also reinforced its ties to a number of Western countries, enjoying high-profile meetings with world leaders like David Cameron.

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The political relationship is underpinned by an equally cosy military one, fuelled by arms fairs and bloated military spending.

Throughout 2013, the UK government played a central role in lobbying for the Emirate military to buy Eurofighter jets. The campaign was unsuccessful, but it enjoyed the full support of Whitehall and included representations from David Cameron, Philip Hammond, and high-level civil servants.

Despite the short-term setback, relations have improved, with 172 million of arms sales in 2015 alone, and the UK supporting an arms fair targeted at the Dubai Police last October and the Dubai Airshow one month later.

There will always be a social and cultural relationship between the people of the UK and the UAE, not least because 100,000 UK nationals live in the Emirates. But that can not be used to justify the arms sales and uncritical political support that is given to the dictatorship.

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The constitution on which the UAE was founded commits it to becoming a "comprehensive, representative, democratic regime." Since then, Dubai may have become a global business hub and a playground for the rich and powerful, but the march to modernity has seen backwards steps in human rights.

Now more than ever, if the UK government really has any influence or leverage over the Emirate rulers, then it must use it to call for real and meaningful change, not to sell weapons and legitimise the further concentration of powers and erosion of human rights.
I put off writing this article for a long time. I've spent a good deal of the EU debate being confused: every time I think I have it sussed, another layer to the debate is peeled back to confound me again. I have friends I respect on both sides of the debate, some of whom will be disappointed, angry and, unfortunately, scathing about whatever I write. Above all it took me some time to figure out what I have to contribute to this huge and historic debate- what could I possibly write that hasn't been written a dozen times already? I decided honesty, about my own misgivings and the drawbacks of my position, whilst still arguing for a Remain vote might have some value to it. I have become convinced that, despite its flaws, inadequacies and at times immoral actions, the EU is far, far too important for us to leave. Why?

Firstly, whilst various figures have been touted, debated and abused (by both sides), the bulk of the evidence seems to suggest that the EU is what is best for Britain's economy. With only vague notions of 'trade deals with China' and saving on payments for EU membership (which dwindle to obscurity when all direct and indirect returns are added up) to counter numerous economic forecasts, Brexit has lost the debate on the economy. This is because those much maligned EU 'regulations', the bogeyman of Brexiters, often reduce barriers for businesses wishing to trade abroad, the opposite of what Boris and Farage would have you believe. Those that claim that we'll still easily be able to trade with Europe fail to grasp the fact that to do so will require compliance with these regulations, regulations we'd no longer have a role in shaping should we leave. All in all, we will have a more prosperous economy by remaining in the EU, and we should not be ashamed of the influence this has on us. 'The economy' does not always have to be code for the defence of austerity: here it means jobs, money in people's pockets and (potentially) increased public spending. Puritanically ignoring economic concerns might go down well on Marxism internet forums, but it doesn't help working class people one bit.

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Secondly, the EU has not only been a source of some of the strongest and most progressive human, workers and environmental rights and protections in the world, as well as another check on governments determined to mistreat people and planet, but it is uniquely placed to tackle global issues such as climate change and the growing power of the financial world. Borderless issues call for borderless responses, and whilst it has failed in some areas, the EU has world-leading policy on animal rights and environmental regulation, it has proposed the financial transactions tax (against the wishes of our government), ensured all citizens the right to study, work and retire anywhere in Europe, complemented the hard-won workers rights by unions and grassroots labour movements with additional legal protections and extra legislation and provided relief funding for many of the most disadvantaged areas on the continent. This is not to over-claim the role the EU has played (as some Remainers have) or belittle the work of the labour movement here in the UK- the report by the TUC highlights how these achievements build upon those won in the UK, in part through solidarity between unions throughout Europe.

The final point is perhaps the most important, and one historically we Brits have been pretty bad at: it fosters a psychological mind-set of cooperation. Despite the now common parlance, 'Brussels' doesn't do anything other than eat chips with mayonnaise and make pretty good waffles. What we refer to when we invoke the name of Belgium's capital is actually a collaborative process of 28 countries debating, compromising and conceding, a grouping that Britain has played a powerful role in over the decades. This is a deep psychological and political point that we, as a nation still in a hangover of empire, need to be able to come to terms with. Negotiation and compromise between countries, with robust mechanisms in place to ensure these are vital to reach internationally fair resolutions: the fact that we do not always get our own way is, in the grand scheme of things, a very good thing. The EU has given us some of the strongest human and environmental rights we have, more prosperous economies, a vehicle for conflict resolution between the countries of what was once the most divided continent on the planet and an added layer of protection from the failures of our own government: but it has also led to the mistreatment of Greece, the possibility of TTIP and a failing agricultural policy, amongst many other woes.

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Who can ignore my friends who describe the EU as a neoliberal despotism, especially in light of Greece's treatment? And whilst every single power-wielding institution in the EU is either directly elected by European citizens, composed of individuals elected in their own countries, or appointed by one of the other two groups (a very different picture to one the rhetoric often paints), this is still far too removed, opaque and unaccountable for any decent democrat to be content. None of this, however, offers fundamental rebuttals to the idea of the European Union. At its heart it is, as described above, an attempt at collaboration, at compromise, at working together for a better continent and maybe even a better world. It's lack of transparency and democracy, and its uglier policy decisions do not counter this anymore than the neoliberal, undemocratic decisions of my university dissuade me from pursuing my education: I am European, the EU is mine, and I'm going to fight to change it.

I often see Remainers asked why they don't trust Britain and its people to go it alone, to craft the society they want without the help of the EU, but the question could just as easily be reversed. Why do we not trust ourselves, the British people, to be able to fight the fight that needs to be had in Europe to ensure more transparency, more democracy and more justice? Why is this, the most important of fights, the appropriate one to walk away from? When did it become radical or progressive to give up? Walking away from all this wouldn't be walking away from a 'bosses club', or a neoliberal Death Star- it'd be walking away from ourselves, from our own problems and our own failures, from a bold attempt at international integration and cooperation, and from an important fight for justice, equality and peace.

I won't be voting for Remain on the 23rd but for Reform. It won't be a decision made lightly. I do so knowing that such a vote may well enable Merkel and crew to stranglehold the economies of countries like Greece, or callously reject desperate and vulnerable migrants from violence and chaos we have helped sow. I do so knowing that many of my friends will continue to feel disillusionment and distrust, and that the EU will in all probability continually fail to address this. I do so knowing that the EU has come to represent to some everything wrong with the modern, multicultural world and they will continue to feel alienated by the mind-set it travails. But these very thoughts that may yet cause my hand to waver at the ballot box are also the roadmap we need to follow on June 24th.
There are many reasons you might want to visit Barcelona, but one that continues to top the list is the awe-inspiring architecture of Antoni Gaudi.

Sagrada Familia by the author

His best-known work is the Sagrada Familia church, famously unfinished 90 years after the architect's death and whose spires are an icon of Barcelona's skyline.

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You can visit most of his most emblematic works using the "Barcelona Bus Touristic" to get around the city. This official hop-on/hop-off tourist bus provides an easy way to see just about everything on the tourist trail for 28. There are discounted rates for children and pensioners. In a single day you get a great overview of the city with time to explore the sites that really interest you.

There are three different routes, but we're interested in the blue route. There is also a night tour of Barcelona at weekends during the summer if you'd like to see some of Gaudi's works illuminated.

If you're staying in the city centre then Placa Catalunya provides a useful start point for the blue route.

Casa Batllo

On Passeig de Gracia there are two must-see Gaudi buildings. The first of these, Casa Batllo, is the stop after Placa Catalunya. It really shows off Gaudi's imaginative designs, with the roof said to represent the dragon from the legend of St George.

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The roof of Casa Batllo by Marcel Daems

While you may wonder why England's patron saint is represented in Catalonia, the reason is simple. Catalonia's Sant Jordi is one and the same as St George. You'll notice a red cross on a white background appears on many official emblems, including FC Barcelona's crest.

While many people see Casa Batllo from the outside only, it is worthwhile visiting to see Gaudi's interiors. The roof is interesting to see up close too.

Casa Batllo is located in the so-called Manzana de Discordia. Here you can also see buildings by Gaudi's contemporaries, Lluis Domenech i Montaner, Josep Puig i Cadafalch and Enric Sagnier.

La Pedrera

The next stop on Passeig de Gracia is Casa Mila, often known as La Pedrera. The latter means "the quarry" in Catalan, which it what the facade reminded locals of when constructed in the early 20 century.

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La Pedrera's chimneys by Peggy Marco

Here you can learn more about Gaudi's innovative design methods and go out onto the rooftop. It's chimneys are one of the most iconic images of Barcelona.

Sagrada Familia

The bus next stops at Sagrada Familia, the unfinished church in the Catalan architect's inimitable style.

Inside Sagrada Familia by Maria Michelle

Gaudi took over responsibility for the church after the original architect resigned. The original design was neo-gothic, but when a large donation was received Gaudi proposed an audacious new design using innovative construction methods.

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Although Gaudi died in 1926 when a fraction of the project was complete, work continued over the years that followed in fits and starts, as donations allowed. Today work continues at a tremendous pace and Sagrada Familia is scheduled for completion in 2026, a full century after Gaudi's death.

Extraordinary to look at from the outside, Sagrada Familia is definitely worth visiting inside. As well as the central nave, inspired by the branches of trees, you can take an lift up to the top of two of the towers. As you may have to queue for an hour or more for the lifts you may consider your time better off spend elsewhere, but a tour of the museum and Gaudi's workshops is recommended.

Park Guell

Two stops on from Sagrada Familia is Park Guell. It was conceived as a housing estate where the wealthy would benefit from the fresh air and get away from pollution in the city created by their smoky factories. But ultimately just two houses were constructed there and instead it opened as a public park in 1926.

Ceramic covered seating in Park Guell by Maria Michelle

Park Guell shows many of Gaudi's hallmarks, such as the organic looking support columns of the market, the broken ceramic "trencadis" used on seating, statues, ornamental fountains and the "gingerbread" pavilions inspired by Hansel and Gretel.

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One of the houses is now a museum devoted to Gaudi. Designed by Gaudi disciple Francesc d'Assis Berenguer i Mestres as a show house, Gaudi lived there from 1906 until his death, originally with his elderly father and frail niece.

As well as the museum it's worthwhile spending some time just wandering the paths before getting back on the bus and enjoying Barcelona's other sites.

You might want to hop off at Palau Reial though. Here you can see a wrought iron gate with a dragon design at the entrance of the Guell Pavilions, next Barcelona University's law faculty.

Palau Guell and Placa Reial

For our final stop on the Gaudi tour we're going to take things easy. If you finish at Placa Catalunya you can walk down the Ramblas towards the seafront. To cut down on the walk take the metro one stop to Liceu.

Walk 200 metres southeast towards the harbour until you see Carrer Nou de Rambla on your right. You don't need to walk far to find Palau Guell, a mansion built by Gaudi in the late nineteenth century.

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On the opposite side of the Ramblas is Placa Reial. One of Gaudi's first commissions was to design the lampposts for the square, distinctive for its tall palms.

Placa Reial by Evan Bench. Licensed under CC BY 2.0.

I'd recommend going here for a late night drink after a leisurely dinner but if you're feeling more energetic there are a number of music venues too. Sit at a table outside one of the bars to people watch. And as you sip something cool take a look at Gaudi's cast iron lampposts.
Today you can protest as you sip your latte. A Facebook friend may have forwarded you a Change.org petition about something they feel strongly about. Whatever the issue - from saving the Himalayan snow leopard to taxing Top Shop - you enter your name, adding a short comment, if you can spare the time. My preference is to only sign those that emphasise a 'result' - i.e. if 'we get 30,000 signatures David Cameron has to resign'.

But are these digital 'protests' becoming an alternative to leaving the coffee on the hob, putting your boots on and getting out in the streets?

My book, Left Field: the Memoir of a Lifelong Activist, is an account of a life spent with my boots on. I first protested as a member of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) in the 1960s, then at factory gates in the 70s, miners' pit villages in the 80s, at anti-war demonstrations in the 90s and more recently at Occupy gatherings and UK Uncut rallies.

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Were we successful? In retrospect the protests against the Vietnam war in the 1970s did bring that terrible war to an end. Watergate brought President Nixon down, but popular opposition to the war and near-insurrection in the US armed forces brought the troops home and closed the B52 bomb bays. Ten years ago the Stop the War Coalition failed to stop the UK's participation in the war and occupation in Iraq. But perhaps we stopped future wars and perhaps Tony Blair today faces calls to move to the Hague because of our actions on the street.

Sometimes we forget the effect popular demonstrations have on those we are called on to support. Haifa Zangana, who will be with me at The Southbank Centre to take part in a discussion about protesting in the digital age, will tell you that the Iraqi people were well aware of the international solidarity launched in their name and took comfort in the knowledge that people as far away as London and Perth, were aware of their suffering and that another world was possible. There are also effective protests on issues closer to home. The riots that stopped the poll tax and the junior doctors picket lines at each end of the last 25 years for example.

In any case, and in answer to what effect protests have, perhaps we should take account of Zhou Enlai's words when asked what had been the results of the French Revolution: "Perhaps" he answered, "it's too early to tell".

So what do I think of digital media as a part of political action? I use the internet as a resource for news and as a means to protest. The information I draw on is no longer taken from newsprint but from Facebook 'Friends' and radical websites, some of which I have written for.

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If you want to know what's going on in the world, check out the US site CounterPunch.org and here in the UK stopwar.org.uk, Waronwant.org and my personal favourite, thecanary.co. CounterPunch was founded by Alexander Cockburn, son of Claud Cockburn, who famously said, "Believe nothing until it has been officially denied." Claud reported for the Morning Star during the Spanish Civil War and I have no doubt he would have joined his son as a website reporter had he been alive today.

After recently visiting the Calais 'jungle' refugee camp, I wrote an article about the absence of NGOs there. The mainstream press wouldn't publish it, but it was enthusiastically received by Counterpunch. (You can read it here.) Because of internet communicators like them, I continue to be an optimist. I think the digital 'revolution' contributes to that. Despite the internet having been invented for military purposes, it has handed control of information toward the people. I use the word 'toward' and not 'to' because this is an unfinished process. The internet is a democratic means of alerting us to many of the issues we need to confront, but it is an addition to and not an alternative to direct action.

My presence on this web page is the result of online promotion. Left Field was crowd-funded by friends and strangers who became aware of the manuscript through the internet. Published by Unbound and now distributed by Penguin Books, it is not only a narrative about my life, but also a call to action to the younger generation.

So keep those boots by the front door and build up a network of Facebook friends who have their minds and hearts set on a better future. Don't forget Twitter and Instagram. Add your fingers to those already clicking across the world as we prepare to meet in the streets.
It's been over a year since the start of the recent conflict in Yemen, and life for children and their families is increasingly unbearable.

In March last year, the Saudi-led Coalition launched a military operation in support of the Government of Yemen against Houthi opposition forces who had overthrown President Hadi. Since then, the humanitarian situation has rapidly deteriorated with over 80% of the country now in need of assistance and millions without access to vital healthcare, food, water and fuel.

Armed violence is a daily feature in the lives of Yemenis. According to the UN, children represent one third of civilian casualties, and on average six children have been killed and injured every day since March last year. Children also experience sexual violence, are recruited in groups and abducted. And the death toll continues to increase.

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Even civilian places and infrastructure don't escape the conflict unscathed. Markets, schools and hospitals are being attacked. The conflict is leaving a painful scar across the country which will be felt for years to come.

Last week, the UN Secretary General published his annual report on Children and Armed Conflict. The report highlighted the terrible plight of children in this conflict. From January 2015 to April 2016, the UN verified 2,340 conflict-related child causalities in Yemen. Both the Saudis led coalition and the Houthis are to blame. Significantly, for the first time, the UN listed the Saudi-led Coalition for killing and injuring children and for attacks on schools and hospitals. According to UN data, 60% of child casualties and 48% of attacks on schools and hospitals in 2015 have been attributed to Saudi-led Coalition airstrikes. The Houthis, who have featured in the report's list the past several years, were also listed as well as being cited for their widespread recruitment of child soldiers.

Other armed groups who are listed for their appalling record of grave violations against children include Syrian and South Sudanese Government forces as well as Boko Harem and ISIL/Daesh. It is not illustrious company.

But in an unprecedented move on Monday night, the Secretary General temporarily removed the Saudi-led Coalition from the list after Saudi Arabia threatened to break relations with the UN. This sets a dangerous precedent that weakens the only mechanism we have for monitoring abuse against children and ensuring perpetrators are held accountable.

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In Parliament this week there was a debate on human rights and arms sales to Saudi Arabia, MPs across party lines raised concerns about the Saudi-led Coalition's conduct in Yemen, and the UK's involvement through its military support and arms sales.

It is time for the Government to concede to the overwhelming amount of evidence of violations of international humanitarian law.

Similar to the Justice Secretary's act of cancelling a contract with the Saudi Arabian prison system, we need the Foreign Secretary to use his influence and take robust action to ensure Yemeni children and their families are better protected. This is why I'm calling on the Government to urgently set up a full and proper independent investigation into alleged violations of international humanitarian law in Yemen; and to immediately suspend all arms sales to Saudi Arabia until evidence can be provided that UK arms are not being used in any such violations.

Children in Yemen need our help, and we cannot let them down.
I'm voting remain, and I think anyone voting to leave is a moron (that's A MORON). The arguments to remain have been comprehensively won. Yet vote leave has significant, I would say terrifying, momentum.

Why is this?

There is a principles of advertising and marketing used to persuade people to buy stuff that apply equally well to political campaigning. It's the reason why people enjoy watching particular films, TV programmes or listening to particular music.

It's about emotion.

Rational arguments might make you think about buying a particular bag of crisps, but an emotional argument will have you going into the newsagent to buy them. Rational arguments win debates, but emotional arguments promote action.

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Throughout this campaign we have been offered two alternatives.

First - vote leave. Boris, IDS, Grayling, Farage, Gove. Any of them, all of them. They talk about 'sovereignty', 'independence' and so on. These are emotive arguments divorced from practical arguments like the economy or jobs.

Second - vote remain. Numbers. Piles and piles of numbers. While those numbers may be right, or at least give a consensus, numbers are basically boring.

I don't say this with any satisfaction or pride. I took an A-level in maths and enjoyed the subject. I like numbers. But I'm in a minority, and even those who do like numbers can be distracted from them when there is an emotional argument at work.

Somewhere in the bowels of Numbers 10 and 11 Downing Street, some idea formed that said, "If we chuck numbers at people they will be persuaded."

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Wrong.

A barrage of numbers might win the argument, but might also provoke a migraine. A barrage of numbers will not produce action but the opposite. Apathy.

The leave campaign has done nothing right. Nonsensical, borderline racist at times, scaremongering. But it has been consistently emotional, even if that emotion is fear or an awkward kind of jingoism.

Weekly advertising bible Campaign this week won an amazing coup, with David Cameron putting the case for remain. Because the UK is the European centre for marketing and advertising, approximately the size of the rest of the EU's marketing and advertising sector put together, it's no surprise that the advertising industry is overwhelmingly in the remain camp anyway.

Isn't Cameron preaching to the converted? Wouldn't his comment work better to sway those intending to vote leave or wavering? Say in The Mail? It shows the dearth of analysis and competence at work in remain, and I'm terrified.

Last week we finally saw some of the posters developed by artists like Antony Gormley and Rankin to support remaining in the EU. They are mostly great. Some negative, most positive, but all emotional. Where are they? Why aren't they plastered on every bus stop and the side of every Tesco in the land?

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Whatever the result of the referendum, the complacent way in which the remain camp has fought sickens me. Cameron called this referendum, which I think we can all agree is pretty bloody important, but then failed to make the case for remain. He failed to make an emotional connection with the electorate.

While Cameron et al fiddle, London and the rest of the UK is on the verge of burning.

In the vacuum created by the remain campaign, some plucky brands have had a go. Ryanair produced a great poster which the Brexiters then called the police about (note to Grayling et al: you complain about an ad to the Advertising Standards Authority, not the police).

Perhaps the choice of agency is a problem. Remain chose M&C Saatchi, whose chairman Tim Duffy told Campaign that negative campaigning would, "not [be] fear mongering" and is actually the "right and appropriate thing to do".

Wrong again.

Negative campaigning has been shown to work... sometimes. Worked for the Tories against Kinnock in the 1980s, but more often leads to apathy. Apathy is a shortcut to disaster in this campaign which needs the young to get out and vote, not just watch the results on TV with disinterest.
Discussing mental health for the first time, or even the twentieth time isn't always easy. I've certainly had mixed experiences when it comes to speaking with health professionals about my mental health. As is often the case for some people I found it really difficult at first to even reach out and ask for help - it took me a very long time to finally seek professional support. I cannot tell you the number of self-diagnosis tools I used or mood evaluations I completed, the number of times I read the NHS website on depression, low mood and anxiety - or the amount of support websites and online resources I pretty much studied in the hope of somehow finding a 'cure' to how I was feeling. Like many other people I definitely hung up the phone a few times when trying to make that first point of contact with professional help. I was terrified to ask for help, yet for so long I was desperate for something, desperate for someone to just realise how much I was struggling, and for them to reach out and instantly, magically fix everything.

As a student there were many available options ready and waiting for me in terms of support - I just needed to make that first step. I'd registered with my university health services, and I was aware of the university counselling team and all the other options, yet I still couldn't bring myself to make that first point of contact. It wasn't until my final year, after a pretty bad panic attack one evening in London that I managed to bring myself to visit the drop in counselling services at my university. (My university was in Birmingham - so I'd had a three hour train journey that morning where I'd managed to talk myself in and out of going to the drop in session). It was a friend of mine who'd encouraged me to go, she was ready and waiting after the session, and I was able to just talk about how 'weird' I'd found it to finally attempt to 'face up' to what I was experiencing with the support of a counsellor. Then started my first round of counselling - yet at this point I'd still not had that first discussion with my GP.

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After meeting with a counsellor several times I finally decided to book an appointment with my GP to discuss my mental health. I was terrified - admittedly I still get very apprehensive now when it comes to speaking with my GP about mental health - there's various factors that unnerve me a little - back in October I moved GP surgeries and I haven't felt as comfortable at my new surgery in comparison to how at ease I felt discussing things at my previous surgery. My previous surgery - a medical practice that was in partnership with my university - was fantastic, and played such an important role in my recovery.

That first meeting with the GP was terrifying - not terrifying because of the fear of not being understood, but rather terrifying in the sense of - well the thought, the prospect of what I was doing. Part of me felt incredibly ashamed, weak, as if I was 'giving in' - I felt unable to control myself, and terrified that I'd come across as dramatic, and silly. That my friends is the result of mental health stigma. There's such a negative perspective of mental health - the impression of being weak minded, and unable to 'control' your emotions and your reactions - how can anybody else help you if you can't help yourself? You weren't made 'wrong', you're just weak. That's how I felt, weak and as though I was surrendering. Of course the GP would only pretend to care whilst I was in the room, in my appointment, then after he/she would go off and laugh at how weak and dramatic I was.

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All my preconceptions were wrong, so very wrong. My GP (or rather Advanced Nurse Practitioner) was fantastic. She didn't put words in my mouth, I didn't feel judged, and most importantly - I didn't feel as though I had to delve into an in-depth version of my life story (condensed to a fifteen minute appointment). I felt as though I was being listened to, and I felt as though I was still able to control and make informed decisions on what to do next in terms of my 'recovery.' It was a start, I didn't leave feeling weak, but of course I didn't leave feeling cured either. I still had - still have - a long way to go, but the support from my previous surgery was incredible. My counsellor contacted my GP (Advanced Nurse Practitioner ANP) in the form of a letter providing a brief overview as to triggers, symptoms and all that sort of stuff. That helped me a great deal because it was definitely useful feeling as though the nurse already had a sense of what was occurring - rather than asking me tonnes of intrusive questions in an attempt to make a diagnosis.

I was put on medication - which I wasn't too fond of, but I did, and do still feel comfortable (most of the time) with the medication. The medication has helped - I still have mixed feelings toward it, but I was comfortable that we'd made the right decision - everything was explained to me and I felt as though I was involved in the decision process. My relationship with my GP really turned out to be a huge blessing in disguise - it was very easy to access the doctors surgery - and I had contact with the same GP/ nurse while going through several changes to counselling (I had two separate counsellors before being referred to my Community Mental Health Team). My GP was key in getting me in contact and supporting me in terms of meeting with my CMHT.

Things became tricky when, after two years at the previous surgery I had to switch to a new medical centre - due to no longer being a student, as well as moving house. The trickiest part for me was switching from feeling incredibly supported to feeling as though I wasn't even able to discuss my mental health at my new surgery. After almost eight months as this new surgery I have still only discussed my mental health with them twice. I order my medication through a prescription request and all mental health related discussions are dealt with through my Community Mental Health Team. I did mention to the new GP one time about my mental health, but I felt as though the GP didn't understand me - which was a very unfamiliar, and discomforting experience. I've written before about how I felt my GP wasn't very helpful - in fact the new GP laughed at me when I was discussing my experience of dissociation - so naturally I've been terrified to even bring up mental health related matters at this new surgery. In fact, I really struggle to discuss mental health with my GP now, and I often become very anxious at the thought of discussing matters related to my treatment and so forth.

I've had fantastic - and awful experiences when it comes to discussing mental health with a GP - which is why I've been so pleased that the mental health charity Mind have launched their #findthewords campaign - alongside releasing a short film and guide on how to make the most out of talking to your GP about mental health. It's definitely encouraged me to open up more about my own experiences.
According to an ICM poll for the Fawcett Society, women are more than twice as likely to be undecided as to how they will vote on June 23rd. They are also less likely to state that either the 'Leave' or 'Remain' camp has addressed their concerns.

To many, this won't come as a surprise. The campaign trail on both sides has been dominated by men. There is hardly a woman in sight in the televised debates and interviews, with David Cameron, Boris Johnson, George Osborne, Nigel Farage and Michael Gove taking centre-stage.

The few attempts by the campaigns to engage women have centred on claims (and counter-claims) about the price of utilities and groceries, vulnerability to assault from migrants (this courtesy of Nigel Farage, though others in the official Leave camp have distanced themselves), and employment rights and protections.

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The argument around employment rights by the Remain camp is probably the most prominent (see for example the TUC's report). And it is in many respects a compelling one. Equal pay for equal work made its first appearance in the 1957 Treaty of Rome, though interestingly not because the founding fathers (and they were mainly men) of the EU were feminist but rather for economic reasons. Some countries - notably France - had adopted equal pay legislation and feared that countries without similar legislation would be at a comparative advantage due to lower wage costs. The equal pay principle set out in the Treaty of Rome became the basis of the 1975 European Equal Pay.

So while the advent of equal pay in the UK is often traced to the strike of the Dagenham machinists, in truth the UK legislation was narrow in scope providing equal pay only for the same work or for work of the same grade. It took action by the European Court of Justice in 1982 to gain acceptance of equal pay for work of equal value.

EU directives have also been responsible for a number of other key protections, including guaranteeing a minimum of 14-weeks maternity leave, health and safety protection for pregnant workers and paid time off for ante-natal appointments, equal pay for part-time workers (the majority of whom are female), and strengthened protection against dismissal while pregnant or on maternity leave.

But there are reasons to be cautious about reducing the EU question and its implications for women to one about employment protections. For a start, these are protections that some of the staunchest proponents in the Remain camp, including David Cameron and the business lobby, have sought actively to water down and may continue to, if the referendum goes their way.

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In addition, and perhaps more worryingly, Roberta Guerrina of the University of Surrey has warned that the focus on employment risks the 'ghettoisation' of gender concerns. She argues that the unintended gender effects of mainstream EU policies may, therefore, be overlooked. She goes on to state that "[t]here is clear evidence that traditionally 'gender-neutral' policies, e.g. economic and monetary policy as well as security and defence, have unintended (gender) consequences."

Guerrina's warnings are particularly prescient at a time when the EU and its member states continue to pursue an austerity politics that has had deeply gendered consequences. But it also relates to employment directly. As Ozlem Onaran of the University of Greenwich notes, the EU Commission and members states have encouraged wage moderation, "explicitly recommending real wage growth below productivity growth to increase the international competitiveness of the countries [in the EU]". Onaran argues that, over the course of three decades, this has led to increasing inequality, 'low road' labour policies, and fewer or worse jobs in the name of flexibility. Women, she argues, have borne the brunt of these developments. So while there may be explicit protections for women workers, it could be argued that women's position in the labour market has been weakened by the EU's approach to the labour market as a whole. Of course, it could also be argued that the pressure to pursue such 'low road' policies were global in nature and may have been felt in any case (and perhaps felt even more intensely in the UK, given our propensity to argue for labour market flexibility on the European stage).

So, what's the answer? For Onaran, it is still to remain in the EU because it provides greater political and economic opportunities for progressive change than isolationism. Moreover, others argue that the sheer prospect of the project job losses following Brexit, which no doubt will hit low paid workers (the majority of whom are women) hardest, is reason enough to stay. But there are also a number of prominent women, most notably the Green Party's sole representative in the House of Lords, Jenny Jones and Labour MP and Chair of Vote Leave, Gisela Stuart, who argue that the EU is beyond reform and far from delivering on a progressive political project. One thing is clear, the public debate could benefit from a greater diversity of voices.
When the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) were agreed last September, there was much expectation about how they could help get sustainability back on the development agenda, and push the international community to develop new approaches to development.

A declaration, covering both north and south, sought to identify a new era for development that was universal, indivisible and radical. No-one was to be 'left behind'. The old aid-focused, post-colonial Millennium Development Goals were a thing of the past, we hoped, and a new political space was to be opened up.

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Since then, the excitement has waned. There have been other things on the agenda: a migrant crisis in Europe, continued terror attacks around the world, and an economic slump leading to crises in commodity-dependent countries from Brazil to Zambia. Various SDG events now barely get a mention in the press. Meanwhile, many people seem to be spending a lot of time on the multiple goals and targets, and still bickering about what is in and out.

Politics and the global goals

Targets and indicators have their uses, but they're not everything. As I argued last September, the potential for the SDGs is less about the bureaucratic process of ticking boxes against targets, and more about the political opportunity to open up a discussion about the directions for development, and how sustainability and development can be realised together.

On Monday 13 June, the Independent Expert Group on Least Developed Countries, the STEPS Centre and International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) have convened a high-level dialogue in London to discuss progress on implementation of the SDGs, and to reinject some of the earlier excitement, urgency and political debate that motivated people to sign up in the first place.

Transformations to sustainability and development is mostly about politics, as we explored in a recent STEPS book on the politics of 'green transformations'. It means having searching debates about visions and directions, confronting incumbent power head on, and creating a transformative politics, rooted in alliances between players - across states, businesses, civil society and more. Transformations to sustainability will not emerge from goals and targets, but fundamental political change, combined with new thinking and wide mobilisation.

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How can the world's poorest countries benefit?

The Least Developed Countries (LDCs) are some of the poorest in the world. They have been subject to decades of underdevelopment, both in the colonial and development eras. Many are highly dependent on external support, and inequalities and deep poverty undermine opportunities for sustainable development.

But the SDGs can also offer hope. They offer a key moment for recasting the debate, providing what the event's keynote speaker, Dipak Gyawali, calls a 'toad's eye view' - one rooted in local conditions, contexts and coalitions.

The political space that has opened up with the SDGs for a new debate on sustainable development, must start with casting off the standard routines of development. It must avoid at all costs getting stuck in a techno-managerialist trap, one caught up in the audit culture of targets and goals, that so constrained the post Rio and MDG attempts at creating sustainable development.

Generating new futures

Instead, building from the ground up means generating new futures that are not stuck in the past.

In part because of the history of underdevelopment in LDCs, these countries can imagine new directions for development that are not so constrained by existing infrastructures and embedded patterns of consumption and development, as exist in the global north and the new 'rising powers'.

Instead, low carbon energy systems can be generated, for example, using the best of modern technology, such as in decentralised solar systems. Without carbon intensive infrastructures and political powerful industrial interests, LDCs can leapfrog, creating new development paths for a low carbon energy transition. The same can be the case for agriculture, water resources, housing and other forms of infrastructure - benefiting jobs, livelihoods and the environment.

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Reimagining development

Through the SDGs, development can be reimagined fundamentally, and LDCs can lead the way. But LDCs must not use 'developed' or 'rising power' countries as the model - this is failed, unsustainable development that must be rethought fundamentally.

Innovations for sustainable development must start afresh, and aid and development support completely rethought. A few years ago, the STEPS New Manifesto on innovation, sustainability and development offered some ideas on ways forward for opening up the SDGs to more radical, transformatory pathways for sustainable development. We must start now with an engaged political debate that discusses each of the 3Ds: Directions for development, the Distribution of benefits within and between countries, and the Diversity of choice in development options, technologies and infrastructures.

Our London meeting will begin to map out some of these ideas, with contributions from countries as diverse as Bangladesh, Gambia, Nepal and Zimbabwe. A clear message is that the SDGs need to become more political.
It's the line that just won't die.

Although the Rhodes Must Fall campaign has petered out in recent months and it's leader's Facebook posts have overtaken the movement in terms of media attention, critics of the movement continue to claim it designed to destroy history.

An Oxford Don has even compared the movement's desire to remove a statue honouring the father of Apartheid to "Isil's destruction of Antiquities".

This could not be further from the truth.

Read more...

The very purpose of the RMF campaign is not to distort history, but to put it in its proper context.

The campaign and its supporters argue that Britain and its educational institutions fail to adequately acknowledge the atrocities, brutalities and legacy of it's Imperial past.

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You may disagree with this, but it's hard to ignore the irony that students at Oxford studying this colonial legacy do so in a building honouring and memorialising a man who told the House of Assembly in Cape Town "The native is to be treated as a child and denied the franchise. We must adopt a system of despotism in our relations with the barbarians of South Africa".

The RMF movement believes that removing the Rhodes statue will force Oxford University to acknowledge and adequately address its colonial legacy and start to make amends.

This is nothing new: for hundreds of years formally subjugated people have been toppling the statues and symbols of those who once ruled them. It is a valuable part of the healing process. It does not eradicate the memory of the injustice committed, but removes the means through which that injustice was honoured. It was an important feature of de-Nazification and continues to be employed by Eastern European countries formally under the boot of the Soviet Union. Last year, a statue of Lenin in Ukraine was replaced with a statue of Darth Vader. This is obviously not part of an Ukrainian effort to wipe the oppression they suffered under the Soviet Union from history. What it is actually designed to do is symbolically remove power from those who once dominated them and it helps them to move on.

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Although the Rhodes statue in Oxford remains, in many ways the Rhodes Must Fall campaign have had a degree of success. A quick Google trends search makes it painfully clear that Cecil Rhodes was an almost unknown figure on few people's radar before the campaign kicked off. If you recognised the name, it was far more likely to be as a result of the Rhodes Scholarship than of his involvement in the establishment of apartheid. Despite being accused of attempting to wipe Cecil Rhodes from history, the campaign has actually dramatically boosted his profile.

There are plenty of issues you can take with the campaign. The movement as a whole is arguably too focused on identity politics. It's controversial figurehead Ntokozo Qwabe and his Facebook posts about making a waitress cry "white tears" are a tabloid journalist's wet dream. Many critics have argued that modern students are too reluctant to be offended. This argument was recently made by Oxford's first female vice-chancellor Louise Richardson on Desert Island Disks. Whilst this is debatable, it is arguably understandable as, unlike previous generations who were educated for free, millennial students are graduating with 45,000 of debt.
More Labour supporters than ever are choosing to vote 'Leave'.

One reason is surely because Labour people have seen multinational corporations jump to the defence of the EU, including JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs - and many other banks that crashed the economy. It is becoming clear that this EU referendum campaign is increasingly pitting the vested interests of big business against normal working people.

Why? Firstly, because the EU has helped big business pay lower wages. The free movement of people has allowed multinational companies to shift their labour-intensive operations, like manufacturing, to low-cost countries in the EU - or, more likely yet, bring in workers to the UK from elsewhere in the EU, like Romania and Bulgaria, who are willing to work for lower, and depressingly unfair, wages.

This has destroyed jobs for British people in industries like construction, manufacturing, and agricultural work. It has also surely contributed to poverty, as well as aided and abetted big business in taking advantage of desperate migrants who are often willing to work for wages that are almost impossible to live on.

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The EU has also helped big businesses avoid tax. The free movement of capital makes it easy for big corporations to easily relocate their headquarters and divert profits to countries with lower tax rates, like Luxembourg. It is no surprise to see multinational corporates like Amazon, Apple iTunes, and Skype locate their corporate headquarters in Luxembourg. In fact, this has become so obvious that it doesn't even so much raise an eyebrow anymore.

The result is that these big businesses likely benefit to the tune of billions of pounds, taking valuable tax income out of the British Treasury - and your hands. This money could have been invested in important public services to help our poorest people. In this open Europe, where companies can easily funnel profits to the country with the lowest tax rate, it has also created destructive tax competition between different countries, where EU countries compete with each other in a destructive race to the bottom to reduce their Corporation Tax rates.

Perhaps the answer is to change the organisation from within? But that is not possible. Big businesses are already too ingrained in the system.

The EU's size and complexity puts big businesses and international multinationals at an advantage because they have the power and resources to lobby in Brussels. From the outside, the EU can seem inaccessible. It is almost impossible for small businesses and working people to get their voices heard. Instead, you need whole teams of people whose only job is to lobby the EU, its unelected bureaucrats, and its countless connected organisations. Almost all of the big banks and multinationals have public relations firms in Brussels who are there to do this job.

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Big businesses are almost continuously lobbying the EU Commission to introduce more and more complicated and arcane rules and regulations. Day on day, the book of regulations that small businesses and workers have to obey grows larger. Big businesses are pushing for more rules because it becomes more and more costly for small business to follow them, gradually pushing them out of business or getting them tangled up in paperwork so they can't compete.

But what about the good regulations? Workers' right are critical to protect society's most vulnerable and disadvantaged people, but it is a misconception to think these come from the EU. The EU is more likely to introduce a complicated and arcane directive on the definition of a consumer or food product (like the Chocolate and Cocoa Directive), than bring in rules that actually protect workers. The majority of workers' rights existed in the UK before we joined the EU, such as equal pay, or our rules far exceed the EU's, such as the length of maternity leave.

The power that big business has to lobby the EU has been seen most recently in the TTIP deal. Discussions on this trade deal have been conducted largely behind closed doors, largely between unelected European Commissioners and big business chief executives. Because of this deal, there is now the real possibility that the EU could allow businesses to sue governments for lost profits, like they have done in Canada. This could potentially allow big businesses to force the government to privatise elements of the NHS.

This has scared Jeremy Corbyn so much that he has vowed to veto any deal. But as trade deals are decided by Qualified Majority Voting in the European Council, this isn't something he can truly promise. On top of that, many millions of pounds have been already poured into this deal, and they aren't going to walk away because Jeremy says so.
The days are ticking by and 23rd June cant come quickly enough. I'm getting pretty bored with the subject but I find it's addictive reading.

We've listened to both camps and maybe like me, you've been torn. I'm a true Fabian democrat and like to hear both sides of the argument. I'm naturally an IN person of course - cottage in Brittany, no delusions of grandeur about our colonialist past, French influence to my business, Italians counted amongst my best friends, many lovely European employees and (as you know) a penchant for jumping on the train to Paris for an impromptu day's shopping. BUT just like you (and you the UKIP voter), I see the thousands of refugees or economic migrants and I worry about our "green and pleasant land". Anyone who has visited China, India, Indonesia will know that we have plenty of space - space we like and selfishly want to keep. I also hate the EEC bureaucracy and waste, worry about our schools and NHS capacity as much as the next person.

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Whilst Londoners have voted for democracy in a socially inclusive society via their support of Sadiq Khan, we will also secretly hang on to the fact that we don't want to be overrun. Our house prices are ridiculous and our younger generation have no chance of getting on the ladder, so a price crash may be no bad thing.

So yes, I do listen to both sides of the argument. But I keep falling into the Stay In camp. For one thing, I don't believe we are as amazing as some British people brag. Alone on the edge of Europe we will yield little power and and be vulnerable. If we leave, Scotland will rekindle their independence obsession and maybe Northern Ireland too. So Great Britain may become England & Wales, which, without our Celtic warrior cousins is scarily small.

Then there is the fact that whilst we may be terrified by the swarming mass of young men heading this way, they are fired up with the power of needing to prove themselves. First generation immigrants want to work and send money home. They have twice the energy, passion and drive of most of our home grown boys. Don't underestimate what they can achieve for our economy. Plus immigration works both ways - have you forgotten how many of us have opted for retirement in the sun? Yes, over 1 million ageing Brits, dodgy-hearted through excesses of our beloved fish, chips and booze will no longer be able to afford their hedonistic lifestyle on the Costa del Retirement. The scary thing is that due to the over development of southern Spain, many will head home penniless refugees - looking for support from local councils and NHS trusts they long since abandoned. Returning old ex-pats will not boost the economy.

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In the meantime we should be congratulating ourselves that at least we won't have to offer refuge to those poor Syrian and Afghan refugees. But no - guess what, we may just have to keep the borders open anyway. Trade agreements have to be sorted, we will be on the back foot and need Europe more than they will want us. With the agreements may come the imposition of immigrants, bale-outs, financial support. We know how good we are in getting what we want from our negotiations - good work Cameron - not. We just don't know what we will have to agree to in order to secure our trade deals - but we have been warned they won't be friendly.

So all in all, I'm for Staying In, of course with reservations and if we vote to leave well, hey its not going to be Armageddon - we will survive and maybe in time we will prosper again. We know it will take 5, 10 or even 20 years to get things sorted and while we do, we will have commercial insecurity. Insecurity leads to lack of investment, lack of investment leads to recession, recession leads to redundancies and that's tough.

But please let's stay friends on this - I know I've been teasing the leavers, but it's done in jest. I do love a good-natured vicious argument but I will be the first to kiss and make up once the vote is counted. May the best camp win. The subject is now closed.
We are told a lot about body shape. Whether it was when Gok told us how to look good naked or when we are looking in fashion magazines that tell you what clothes will best suit you, knowing your body shape is apparently crucial to feeling good about yourself.

Tell you what though - my body shape changes. When I haven't eaten a meal in a few hours, I'm a more "rectangular" shape. When I feel like I've eaten for six, I'm a "round" shape. Apparently there is a "triangle" option which might also be me. I could be a "diamond" shape, though I'm not sure how that one works.

There's also those "fruit" body shapes to choose from, like pear and apple. Is that where "you are what you eat" comes from? Will I be a pear shape if I eat enough of them? Will I be a watermelon shape when I am pregnant? What's the deal?

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Maybe I should just give up this quest and say that my body is simply a "body" shape. Just Google image-searching "body shapes" is confusing and exhausting. There's a million different charts telling you different names for similar looking shapes.

And what's with this "boyish" shape nonsense anyway? Are we not supposed to be accepting of anyone and everyone, and let women (and men) be as feminine or masculine as they would like? I've never heard of "girlish" shape being used anywhere, and besides, that just sounds a little too pervy.

I like to think that body shapes are made up of many different shapes. My boobs are little triangles (I wouldn't get far in Hollywood). My fingers are bumpy rectangles. My face is an oval-ish shape (don't get me started on all that. I don't know my face shape and don't want to know because I'd rather cut my hair however I want it, thank you very much). My stomach and torso can be incredibly circular (thanks gluten) or a trapezoid (yes, I had to look that up).

I don't think labelling your body shape to a fruit or whatever is really that important. Sure, some clothes might suit you better if they flatter your specific shape - but what if you don't want to wear those clothes? What if you want to wear something just because it's a bit sparkly or a bit gothic, and that's just what you are in the mood to wear?

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Nobody else cares about it, so why should you? You're not going to be asked what your body shape is EVER - that would be such a bizarre and unnecessary question. If somebody actually wanted to know what your body shape was, they'd simply look at you, and depending on a few factors, it'll probably change a bit every time.

We're not characters from Mr Men - our shape isn't a core factor of our personality (it's very important for Mr Tickle, what with the long arms). Our bodies change too much to label them - just think about all those "X gains 4 stone" or "X loses weight fast!" titles that you see on the cover of magazines. Our appearance changes all the time!

I constantly compare myself to curvy ladies like Iskra Lawrence and of course the Kardashians, and think how can I possibly achieve such a lovely shape - I am a plank of wood compared to them. Sure I can tone myself more and gain a lot more muscle on my hips, thighs and bum, but even if I did achieve that shape I would probably still be comparing myself to a different shape; the new-in shape that everybody has started to lust over.

Accepting the shapes we are given is going to be a huge stress relief. No longer will we be wishing we were her - instead we'll be thinking about how to keep ourselves healthy and happy. Only we know what our body's normal shape is and consequently know when we feel that we are healthy.
This summer promises to be highly eventful; full of politically significant events that will help to shape the future of global security and international relations. In the U.S. in July, the Republican and Democratic National Conventions will lead into the peak of a very hotly contested presidential campaign season. Earlier that same month, another event will take place across the Atlantic, which should have considerable impact on how the next American President and his colleagues, both at home and abroad, formulate and exercise their Middle Eastern policy.

On July 9th, some 100,000 people are expected to gather in Paris for a convention and demonstration of global importance. The majority of participants will be Iranian expatriates who will be joined by top dignitaries and politicians from their various adoptive homes, including the U.S. and the European Union. They will represent a broad spectrum of political persuasions, but will all endorse the view that the Iranian regime, through its regional meddling and support of Islamic terrorism, is the root cause of many of the most pressing issues currently facing Europe and the world as a whole.

The gathering as a whole will serve to repudiate the current false narrative that is the foundation for mistakes in current Western policy toward Iran's Islamic Republic. Across Europe and the U.S., public opinion is being told that Iranian President Hassan Rouhani is the head of a "moderate" faction of Iranian politics, which is leading the country down a path of progress and international acceptability. This "change" is supposed to save us from the dangers of a nuclear armed Iran, to soothe regional conflicts fuelled by extremism, improve rights for Iranians within their own country and, of course, help Western companies to profit from newly reopened Iranian markets.

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We have had time to observe this narrative, gauge its validity and respond accordingly but reality clearly informs that the Iranian government's actions have shown all these hopes and promises to be both sad and tragic wishful thinking under-pinned by treachery.

At home, Rouhani has presided over 2,400 executions, making Iran the world's biggest executioner, with those executed being disproportionately religious and ethnic minorities, as well as political dissidents and human rights defenders. While Rouhani uses Western-oriented social media to encourage "the narrative of moderation", Iranians themselves are barred from using those same platforms of communication. Meanwhile, any deviation from the regime's traditional hard-line, reactionary ideology is harshly punished, as when 35 students who attended a gender-mixed graduation party in May receive 99 lashes each as punishment. While Iran's leaders often "talk the talk" regarding reform and moderation, their actions within the country portray an entirely different story.

Abroad too, Iranian actions have made claims of moderation ring hollow. Over 10,000 members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps' Qud's Force are either directly or indirectly involved in spreading violence and terror across the region, supporting Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Assad regime in Syria, and countless Shi'ite militias in Iraq and Houthi Rebels in Yemen. There has been little change in Iran's foreign intrusions; if anything, regional terror campaigns and destabilising intervention in internal affairs of regional countries have increased under Rouhani.

Weapons caches and operatives were even discovered in Bahrain and Kuwait, two countries where little Iranian influence was recognised prior to Rouhani's ascendency to the presidency.

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And what has become of Iran's nuclear weapons programme? We really do not know. Since the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action did not establish a truly rigorous inspections regime, we need to largely rely on the regime's cooperation. And with a long history of nuclear deception, that's worrying.

Rouhani himself was at one time in charge of negotiating with the West over the nuclear issue, and he openly bragged on state television about misleading international inspectors. In addition, Iran's development of ballistic missiles has continued unabated.

We are already facing consequences from all of this, and it makes Iran policy crucially important in the months ahead. Many of the refugees coming to Europe, as well as many of Europe's worst terror attacks have been an indirect consequence of Iran's regional actions. It was Iranian policies of sectarianism and brutality in Syria and Iraq that created a vacuum for ISIS and that continue to fuel that most barbaric of organisations.

This has spawned both an increase in attacks in Europe as well as an unprecedented refugee crisis that extends across the continent. Here, strategically inept bureaucrats and fresh-faced politicians with little or no worldly experience embrace a policy of indifference in the face of an evil that infringes what are (or should I say "used to be") Western values and moral consciousness and again run counter to the history lesson briefly learned from the Neville Chamberlain debacle of last century.

These threats and consequences are what bring together some 100,000 people in Paris this July. The National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) and its allies stand for more sensible policy and a "Free Iran". The coalition of Iranian opposition forces are led by a Muslim woman, Maryam Rajavi, who, for years, has strongly advocated and pressed for a tolerant interpretation of Islam as the antidote to Islamic extremism. Their message is clear, Iran has not moderated, and we cannot realistically expect to change Tehran's policies by making deals and ignoring reality.

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Dear United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon,

Millions of people heard you. I heard you.

This is what you said before the World Humanitarian Summit.

Our global landscape is still blighted with the brazen and brutal erosion of respect for international human rights and humanitarian law. Every day, civilians are deliberately or indiscriminately injured and killed. Air strikes rip families apart. ... The brutality of today's armed conflicts and the utter lack of respect for the fundamental rules of international humanitarian law on care for the wounded and sick, humane treatment and the distinction between civilians and combatants threaten to unravel 150 years of achievements and cause a regression to an era of war without limits. (UNSG Summit Report  46)

Flouting the most basic rules governing the conduct of war has become contagious ... We can, and we must, do better. ( 48). Remaining silent while serious violations of international law are unfolding is morally unacceptable [...] Our common humanity demands that we do everything we can to prevent and end violations and hold perpetrators accountable. ( 59).

Whenever serious violations of international humanitarian and human rights law occur, Governments, global leaders and other relevant individuals must systematically condemn them. Even where we may not be able to stop violence and suffering immediately, we have a minimum responsibility to speak [...] I have asked all United Nations senior officials to do so and I encourage all United Nations staff to act with moral courage in the face of early, serious and large-scale violations. I also exhort all relevant actors and stakeholders to end the double standard of condemning the violations of some but not of others. ( 62, emphasis added).

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Let us make the Summit in Istanbul the turning point that the world sorely needs and the beginning of the change ( 180).

Wow.

This is what you said after the World Humanitarian Summit:

State, civil society and humanitarian leaders repeatedly stated that international humanitarian and human rights law is more relevant than ever: it is the last protection against barbarity. We therefore must not take the easy way out and declare all civilians collateral damage. (Chair's Summary p. 3)

There was wide agreement that unless we hold perpetrators to account, there will be no stopping this downward spiral. (Chair's Summary p. 4).The World Humanitarian Summit has been a wake-up call for action for humanity. It has generated global momentum and political will to move forward on the Agenda for Humanity and the five core responsibilities to deliver better for people across the globe. (p. 7).

The Summit is a point of departure to act, but there must also be a destination ... Let us now turn the Agenda for Humanity into an instrument of global transformation. (p. 8)

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This is what you did earlier this week. You succumbed to political pressure and erased Saudi Arabia from the UN's blacklist of those violating the rights of children (due to their often indiscriminate bombing in Yemen).

Here is what others think you did earlier this week (click): Amnesty International, War Child, and Human Rights Watch (and 35 other organizations). Here is what I think you did earlier this week: I think you gutted the World Humanitarian Summit. Without a global recommitment to political responsibility, legal obligations and humanitarian ideals, the Summit births nothing more than a broad set of bureaucratic aid system reforms.

I have not yet understood why this move leaves me so sad and so angry. After all, as an example of politics and power trumping the norms and principles of humanity, it seems emblematic of the current state of affairs to the point of banality. It exemplifies well the shortcomings of the United Nations and, more generally, global leadership. Could it be that your words pierced my cynicism?Touched my humanity? Could it be that I felt hope? Yes.

If May's Summit functioned as a "wake-up call" then your actions this week signaled a death knell, clear notice that the most fundamental commitments to humanity were not reaffirmed, nor a new moral courage discovered. While I was never convinced the Summit was worth staging, I am certain it was not worth killing off so quickly.

Mr. Secretary General, this is the moment, a critical juncture for your World Humanitarian Summit and for your legacy. Stand up now. Put the Saudi-led coalition back on the list.

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Yours sincerely.
Which is more remarkable - that 77% of Swiss voters rejected proposals for a basic income in a referendum last weekend, or that 23% voted in favour? Admittedly the turnout was low, probably because there was little realistic chance of the proposal being passed, but the fact remains that nearly a quarter of the votes were in support of a radical, socially progressive idea of which nobody much was talking until very recently.

A well-executed basic income policy fixes so many socio-economic issues - both present and looming - that it's tempting to think not if, but when. The main barrier, however, may not be demonstrating effectiveness, or even affordability, but overcoming public perception. People are rightly wary of "something for nothing" offers, including the idea that people should be 'paid' without committing to 'work'.

Such perceptions matter, which is why 'paid' and 'work' are in inverted commas in the previous sentence. We assume that work comes first: once performed, it is valued and remunerated accordingly. In reality, however, money comes first: access to work is filtered through employers, who have the necessary money to invest in a workforce. This is why political rhetoric focuses so obsessively on businesses 'creating' jobs and people 'looking for' work.

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This need to 'find work', however, creates an artificial bottleneck that limits people's productive capacity. Like a litter of piglets crawling over each other to get hold of a nipple, people are only enabled to contribute economically if they can find a point of access to the money system.

If access to money is what makes economic activity possible, why make it so hard? That's the premise of the basic income, which solves the problem by giving everybody an allowance of the money in the system. This frees up their autonomous capacity to work, without being dependent on the system to fit them in.

Implicit in this is a reassessment of the way in which we measure economic value. The unpaid economy in the UK is well over half the size of the money economy, and probably much bigger than that in terms of its usefulness, since unpaid work that people choose to do is more likely to result in something that is genuinely wanted.

The Basic income acknowledges this by relegating money from the status of wealth to that of wealth-facilitator. After all, unpaid work also requires money: it needs tools, vehicles, materials, land, accommodation, etc., just as any work does. If the only route to that money is through payment, the amount of economic value that can be created through unpaid work is unnecessarily

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limited.

To put that in real terms: a person busy with paid work may be able to afford what is needed to cook wholesome meals, grow vegetables, look after their own children, write novels, learn a new skill, etc., but is unlikely to have the time. A person without work has the time, but may lack the financial resources unless somebody else is able to provide them.

If that busy worker is well paid, they will buy the meals, vegetables, childcare, etc. that they need. In the low wage, zero hours economy, however, paid work consumes valuable time without producing enough to buy the resources that are needed. Similarly, people required to search interminably for work in return for meagre state 'benefits' have neither time nor sufficient money to cater directly for their own needs.

Work, essentially, is exactly that - people catering for their own needs. Giving people access to money through the basic income will generate big increases in productive economic activity, but we won't know that unless we measure it. Currently we don't: GDP, which is our measure of economic success, is only interested in paid activity, so a large amount of useful work is systematically ignored.

Changing public perceptions about the basic income, therefore, depends upon changing our understanding of useful work and the way that we measure it. Since all of us do unpaid work, and none of us could survive without doing it, that ought not to be too hard.
Mural in Stokes Croft, Bristol

On the eve of my graduation from university as a French and German student, the British public is about to decide my future, and it feels terrifying.

It is hardly surprising that as someone who has devoted the last four years of their life studying the language and culture of two major European countries, I am a Europhile, and will be voting to stay in the EU.

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One of the ideals of studying a languages degree is that you will unlock new, exciting opportunities to live and work abroad, and yet just as it appears that I have unlocked this door, the referendum on 24th June could slam it shut in my face.

On my year abroad I witnessed the fruits of the EU first-hand. I spent 6 months studying at a French university as part of Erasmus, the EU funded student exchange.

I then moved to Berlin and worked for a further six months without any hassle, as friends and colleagues from outside the EU were swallowed up by the endless bureaucracy relating to residency permits and visas.

Throughout this wonderful year of new experiences and opportunities, I received a grant from the EU which enabled me to survive rather than having to worry about getting a part time job as well. Without the EU I simply wouldn't have managed all this.

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In Berlin in particular you could notice a prominent community of young Brits, who had moved there because they couldn't contemplate the prospect of being able to afford living in London.

This is only one side of the coin though, as university cities like Bristol where I study are thriving because of all the French, German and Spanish students living there.

Just as I embark into the terrifying world of adulthood and employment, the feeling of insecurity would increase tenfold if Britain left the EU.

Obviously Brexit wouldn't make living or working in Europe impossible, but it would certainly make it more difficult and complicated. It would also surely harm relations with our European neighbours.

A moral case for remain

When all kinds of speculative figures are being thrown around by both sides of the economic debate, I feel the ideological, moral case to stay in Europe has to be made.

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What irritates me about the Leave campaign is the arrogance behind the logic that we can leave the EU, and then immediately negotiate and get what we want just be we are Great Britain. What makes us so special? We already have certain privileges in the EU, so surely the patience of Brussels, and major leaders like Angela Merkel and Francois Hollande must have limits.

I find it baffling that so much of the British public does not understand the founding values of the European project: cooperation, solidarity and unity. Other countries realise that Europe is about the balance between give and take, but Brexiters seem to be obsessed with the latter.

In the face of problems like the refugee crisis, Europe must return to these founding values. If countries adopt the egotistical mentality of the Leave camp, then the major humanitarian crisis of our time will never be solved.

The EU is far from perfect, but surely it's better to keep Britain's place on the European stage and change things, rather than simply jump ship as soon as things get tough.

As the referendum debate paints a picture of a divided Britain, young people are the most likely to vote to remain, but are also among the least likely groups to turn out to vote.

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Try asking a recent University graduate in their early twenties if they've figured out what their purpose in life is and you might be met with a panicked look, heavy breathing, and sudden perspiration. At best, you might get a stammered response full of "maybes" before a swift change of subject. In fact, if you tried asking my fifty-three year old father that, you might get a similar response. The popular answer for a man of his age would be something along the lines of: "my purpose in my life is my children". But the truth is that most people need a purpose independent of those around them; something that is only theirs. And in a world driven by productivity, this often leads back to job satisfaction.

Now, I'm no graduate. I'm a long twelve or thirteen months away from my graduation. But according to a lot of people, this summer is when I need to begin preparing myself for that apparently nerve-shredding period of my life where I will leave the so-called 'comfortable' bubble of education that has formed not only the past three years, but my entire existence, and enter the working world. For a long time, my sole purpose was to get to University. Now that I'm here, where am I meant to go next? My plans are an odd agglomeration of skills I've acquired, pipe dreams from a time before I knew any better, and feasible ideas.

In a climate where young people are paying 9,000 a year to be educated to a degree level, the anxiety of making the wrong decision and invalidating your investment is equally as high. What if I pick the wrong graduate program? What if I decide I want to do a masters when it's too late? What if I'm unhappy later on? What if I don't have enough experience to get to where I want to be? What if I have no idea where that is?

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The primary alleviation from this anxiety links back to my aforementioned father. In September of 2015, my dear old dad became a fifty-two year-old undergraduate student at the University of East Anglia. He originally left school aged sixteen and worked as a gas engineer until a work-related accident forced him to stop in his mid-thirties. When my dad walked on to that campus late last year, he wasn't backtracking, or returning to something familiar, he was starting over.

His desire to find a new purpose has been an underlying current of my entire life, as I was only three months old when he stopped working, but I only noticed it as I got into my late teens. His decisive action was prompted by a single question, the one I frequently think that students looking towards graduation forget to ask themselves: What's the worst that could happen?

Say you choose the wrong graduate program. What next? You start over until you find the right path. In fact, don't fool yourself, you will probably be searching for 'the right path' for the rest of your life. A 2015 report by the London School of Business and Finance found that 47% of the UK work force would like to change their careers. Furthermore, a 2014 survey by the New College of Humanities reported that not only did a mere half of all UK students find work in a field related to their degree, but 96% had switched careers by the time they were 24.

While the loosely-named 'graduate season', which in fact lasts for several draining months, is frequently presented to those at the centre of it as a Monty Hall-esque probability puzzle in which only one of several doors have the evasive 'prize' of purpose behind it, the reality differs enormously. Once you have chosen which door you want opened, there will, in fact, be more on the other side. It might be twenty years before you get to the next door, or it might be three. When my dad first gripped the handle that would lead to his life as an undergraduate student, it was a realisation that this door was never closed, it was simply one that he had never tried to open before.

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In recent years, Qur'an, the holy book for Muslims, has come under increased scrutiny due to the widespread of Islamophobia and the growing threat of terrorism by certain extremist groups. It is considered by many as a book of hatred, anti-feminism, or even a 'manual' for terrorists. Some even went as far as planning to burn the book that is regarded as containing 'the words of God' by at least one billion people worldwide.

In midst of such extensive prejudice, it is perhaps not known widely that the sacred scripture is a source of comfort and relief for the disabled community. Long before the Convention of the Rights of Persons with Disabilities was enacted, the Qur'an provided guidelines on the issue of disability. It contains teachings and wisdom about how the disabled community should live their lives, and how society should view and treat those who were born a little different from them.

The basic premise that the Qur'an uplifts concerning disability is that there is no such thing as an imperfect being. All humans, regardless of their physical conditions, are considered the best of God's creations, as stated in chapter At Tin verse 4. Those with disabilities are not considered imperfect, or flawed. It asserts that everyone can reach a full measure of perfection by developing the positive, existing traits of which our individualities are composed. The concepts of perfection and imperfection in the physical sense, therefore, have little application in the Qur'anic view of human life. By extension, so too do the concepts of normalcy and abnormalcy. This is because, as stated in chapter Al Hujurat verse 13, the noblest human beings in the eyes of God are the most deeply conscious of him. God's measure of a human being's worth depends not on physical appearances or material belongings, but rather on spiritual maturity and manners.

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Moreover, the Qur'an elevates the principles of equality and justice. It is believed that human beings are created in two parts: body and soul. Our bodies may be created differently, some with disabilities and some without, some light skinned and some darker. However, our souls are identical. The soul has neither disability nor ethnicity. Through our souls, God teaches us equality, and through our bodies, God teaches us differences. Consequently, we learn that no matter how seem different we are on the outside, our most important component - the soul - is equally the same.

Unlike views that were widespread during pre-Islamic times, whereby a disability was regarded as a form of punishment, the Qur'an views disability as a test. The purpose of this test is to prove the level of one's faith (chapter Al Ankabut verses 2-3) and gratitude to God (chapter Al Insaan verse 2). These two aspects, namely faith and gratitude, reap equal rewards from the Almighty. This means that disability could be turned into a land of opportunity for someone to reap God's rewards as long as he is truly faithful that there is a wisdom behind his condition and is grateful for what God has given to him.

In addition, the Qur'an asserts that every burden given to human beings conforms to the person's ability to bear. This verse is a guarantee from God to disabled people that they do not need to be troubled by their disabilities; especially when it comes to carrying out the commandments of God. The Qur'an attempts to remove any stigma and barriers to full inclusion of disabled people. It offers relief from certain commands and requirements so as to address the difficulties that arise from specific conditions. In fact, the Qur'an speaks about giving special accommodations to the disabled community. For example, it discusses the issue of Jihad - striving in the path of God - in which the disabled are afforded special waivers. It is said in chapter At Taubah verse 91 that these individuals are given permission to abstain from participating.

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The Qur'an also states that "indeed, blindness is not in the eyes, but it is in the heart" (chapter Al Hajj verse 46). Through this verse, the Qur'an clearly reiterates that blindness from the perspective of Islam refers not to the physical eyes, but the heart. It is not concerned with an individual's physical condition, whether he or she has the ability to see or not; rather, the most important thing is that the person has a sharp vision from his heart. He is able to distinguish between right or wrong, based on careful consideration of the heart instead of the eyes.

However, it is important to note that the Qur'an can be viewed from a wider perspective. Even though this verse talks specifically about blindness, it can be interpreted more widely. Through this, God actually wants human beings to know that the real disability is not in the body, but in the heart. It is not about whether or not we have physical impairments; rather, it is about how much we can obey God's commandments and how well we treat those around us.

Even though today people with disabilities are often seen as objects of amusement, bullying, and mockery, the Qur'an clearly prohibits such behaviour for any reason. It is said that making fun of other people by laughing at them or calling them by inappropriate names is the hallmark of the wrongdoers and those who possess no feeling of humanity (chapter Al Hujurat verse 11). In this verse, God also says that those who are mocked may be better than those who mock. According to the Qur'an, the quality of an individual is not measured by his or her physical conditions, but by their faith and obedience to the Almighty. In this case, disabled people who do good to fellow human beings and follow God's commandments have a much loftier position in the eyes of God, compared with those who do otherwise even though they may be in good physical health.

The Qur'an even narrated the story of the Prophet Muhammad (upon whom be peace) when, one day, he paid little attention to a blind man, Abdullah Ibn Umm Maktoom, who came to him. Even though this could be seen as a minor act of discourtesy on the part of the Prophet towards an individual with disabilities, this caused a sharp Qur'anic rebuke in which the Prophet was strongly reprimanded by God (chapter Abasa verses 1-13). Here, it is clear that the Qur'an does not tolerate any unpleasant treatment towards those with disabilities. Giving rancid face in front of them is considered to have transgressed God's reasonableness, let alone mocking or belittling them. The historians reported that Ibn Umm Maktoom later became the symbol of inclusion in the Muslim community where he was appointed as the caller for prayer and was asked to lead the city of Madinah when the Prophet had to travel outside.

The widespread prejudice against the Qur'an in our time is due largely to the ignorance of the essential values and principles contained within it. This is very unfortunate as it has been proven that the Qur'an has become a source of comfort for many segments of society, including individuals with disabilities. It is time now for such ignorance to be eradicated because, in truth, the Qur'an is filled with wisdom and insights into humanity.
For the last couple of years I've worked alongside leading British interior designer, Kelly Hoppen MBE, presenting her live interior design shows on QVC, (the nations most loved shopping channel: broadcasting live 364 days a year, for 16 hours a day and accessible to 27 million homes in the UK. Oh and their turnover in 2014 reached a cool 450 million.) Kelly has built an incredibly strong brand with an equally rock solid philosophy behind it: great interiors are wonderful because of how they make you feel, first and foremost, rather than their aesthetic. The buzz of live TV is the best and I feel very honoured to be an ambassador for such an inspirational woman and her iconic brand.

Recently I've put some thought into how my work with the interior design world (and corresponding obsession with the look and feel of my own flat - yes my husband has come home to several wall colour changes and new pendant lighting installations, not to mention the steady flow of cushions/things to put on our walls that have caught my eye or even a total mix up when it comes to where certain pieces of furniture 'live' - I blame feng shui!) links with my other real passions - theology, philosophy and spirituality. *casual blend going on here.

Often during a debate in which individuals are disagreeing over theological or spiritual matters, the analogy of the elephant in the room is used. It goes a little something like this. A group of blind men, or men in the dark (or women *my own personal addition here), touch an elephant to learn what it is like. Each one feels a different part; the trunk, legs, tail, tusk etc. They compare notes to discover they're in complete disagreement. This parable, which originated in the Indian subcontinent, has filtered into many religious traditions and is beautifully simple in showcasing how we feel/go in search of/want to understand the elephant (life, death, the universe). Though we all have access to the same objective thing, subjectively we interpret, and get a piece of, very different things. *Side note - this is a great one to have up your sleeve if you're a natural harmonizer and diffuser of heated chat.

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The term that best encapsulates the dots I am trying to join up here - spirituality and home design - is well being: that is our 'elephant'. Whether it's the thread count of the Egyptian cotton sheets you're sleeping on, your newfound yoga addiction, or unquenchable prayer/meditation habit that keeps you sane, we're all essentially doing the same thing when it comes to these lifestyle choices. What is 'that thing'? It's a reaching for that Zen like feeling, one that nourishes and keeps you happy and content in life.

The distinctions between the spiritual and physical are more blurred now than ever. I recently filmed a short documentary at The Kabbalah Centre. During my visit, the leader of the centre noted that the gloriously high ceilings the centre boasts help those attending classes to feel a sense of spiritual height. Similarly, gorgeous aromas wafted through the adjoining rooms thanks to the unadulterated joy of scented candles and I happened to spot many an energy boosting crystal throughout my day there. What's going on externally clearly does have an impact on our internal lives. Get your interior design in check and you might just remodel the interiors of your mind.

Here are some surprising ways in which the interior design of our homes may reveal subconscious anxiety and fears.

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Artwork and mirrors hung too high = creation of a subconscious feeling that you can never measure up, manifesting in low self esteem or fear of success

An excessive amount of belongings = fear of uncertainty

Decor that hasn't been updated = fear of change

Evidence of procrastination and avoidance (think piles of paperwork and clothes, un-hung pictures etc.) = fear of failure

A super ordered home where anxiety is lurking behind the teensiest possibility of mess or broken house rules = fear of losing control

So what are the solutions? (In corresponding order, drum roll please...)

Artwork and mirrors should be at eyelevel to subconsciously reaffirm realistic expectations and boost self esteem

Remind yourself that true security can't be found in items you buy and that hoarding creates the subconscious message that you're in need - you don't want this to become a self-fulfilling prophecy!

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Move things around, even big pieces of furniture like your bed, desk or kitchen table. Making these changes will help keep your home fresh and remove a sense of stagnancy. Place your bed and desk so that your back doesn't face the door - you should feel empowered by being able to see who is entering, no surprises please!

Tackle the hardest thing on your to-do list first, (rip-off that plaster style) and enjoy the relief that comes from being clutter free - it will help you to see, literally and metaphorically, your successes and strengths

Chill out and go with the flow. Mess will happen but we all prefer a relaxed vibe to an uptight one...

In summary, your home is not just where you put your stuff, it's the place where you recharge, dream, grow, love and create memories. It's your safe haven.

With the sight of Buddha statues adorning the shop floors of John Lewis, the Eye of the Sun God, Ra - an ancient Egyptian symbol of spiritual protection - on the bed linen I lovingly stroked on QVC yesterday, and the irrepressible infatuation with crystals, incense sticks, candles and corresponding inspirational quotes filling our magazines and Instagram feeds now in 2016, there is an undeniable correlation between the interiors of the homes we create and the structural, internal walls of our minds, spirits, souls and general personhoods. Get busy.

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On Thursday 9 June 2016, California introduced an assisted dying law, allowing terminally ill, mentally competent adults the right to request life-ending medication from their doctor. This law will no doubt bring immeasurable comfort to thousands of dying people who, having had personal autonomy throughout their life, will finally have the fundamental rights of choice and control over their death.

If you believe the views of some opponents to assisted dying, however, a very different picture emerges. If their views are to be believed, by the weekend California will have become a quasi-death cult where people will eschew life for death.

Picture this, their arguments suggest: a state where thousands of disabled people will suddenly feel their lives are not worth living; where people will start to view their doctors as killers and no longer seek their help for pain or disease; where doctors, nurses and other clinicians will cease trying to help dying people, thinking it would just be easier to let them die by their own hand.

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You may think that this is a rather farcical interpretation of what opponents' concerns about assisted dying suggest, but in fact this is the logical conclusion to their misinformed, distorted arguments. Opponents say that assisted dying will fundamentally change society's view on life and death, create a climate where disabled people feel they should die, dangerously change the relationship between doctors and patients and lead to assisted dying being seen by doctors as preferable to treatment.

This is nonsense, of course, and California's legalisation will prove it. We will see 'live', as it were, that Californian society will remain largely unchanged, people will still trust their doctors to care for them, dying people will still want to live as full lives as they wish and disabled people will not suddenly feel that their lives are no longer worth living. It would simply mean that terminally ill Californians can take control of their imminent deaths, whilst many more will simply be comforted by knowing such an option was available.

This has already been proven many times over, with Oregon having had an assisted dying law in place for 19 years without any of the above scare stories materialising. But Oregon is a small state; so apparently, to opponents at least, it is irrelevant. In contrast California is a large, populous, diverse state that looks and feels more like the UK than Oregon does. Thirty-eight million Californians and 50 million Americans in total, across five states, are numbers the UK cannot ignore.

California also shows that while change is inevitable, it may not come overnight. Many attempts were made to change the law before reform actually occurred. It took the voice of 29 year old Brittany Maynard, a young, affable woman with terminal brain cancer whose story struck home for many Californians, before people where mobilised to action and put pressure on their politicians. Change became so inevitable that the Californian Medical Association dropped its longstanding opposition to assisted dying and the Governor of California Jerry Brown, a Catholic, signed it into law without equivocation.

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California will not stop opponents, however, who will find ever more spurious reasons to oppose it. They do not seem particularly troubled by being wrong or out of touch, the British Medical Association included. Earlier this week polling showed that the BMA's opposition to assisted dying is only supported by 7% of the public, with 84% thinking it should change. It is a position the BMA has arrived at without ever having surveyed the members it claims to represent (something that 54% of the public believe would better inform debate and that the Australian Medical Association is currently doing). Despite neither accurately representing the public nor its members, The BMA will continue to act as if it does, for the immediate future at least. "Brass neck" doesn't do it justice.
Young voters will determine the outcome of the EU referendum. Support for the EU is strongest amongst voters aged 14-25. Yet we are also the least likely to vote. How many of us turnout on June the 23rd will, therefore, be crucial.

Remain campaigners know this and spent last week trying to enthuse young voters, get them registered and, eventually, into voting booths. But their attempts to connect with my generation are failing; unless Remain rethinks its approach, they risk handing victory to the Brexiteers.

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Remain's appeals to young people have ranged from feeble to condescending. The "Votin" campaign, which launched last week, was quickly derided as "patronising" and "condescending" on Twitter. Sporting an obligatory hashtag, the the ad (below) urges the generation of "roamin", "sharin" and "ravin" to register to vote but comes off more like a video montage of someone's gap year than a pitch to a crucial section of the electorate.

According to Scott Towsin of venturethree, the ad agency who created the #Votin campaign, the video was going for an "'us and them', anti-establishment feel". This completely misunderstands the motivations of young voters. Our support for the EU is not the product of a cliche need to rebel against our elders (who are much more likely to vote in favour of Brexit).

Rather, young people are inclined to vote Remain because we are more comfortable being connected and interdependent with Europe (and the rest of the world). We also fret less about Britain giving up some sovereignty in order to cooperate with its European neighbours.

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Most of all, we are a more financially insecure than generations before us and are therefore more sensitive to the economic risks that Brexit carries with it. Our generation would have to forge careers, afford homes and raise families in the uncertain future that Brexit promises.

Most recently, the Remain campaign wheeled out Ed Miliband - credentialed as "down with the youf" by Russell Brand - to appeal to young voters. Whilst his contribution was more substantive (and significantly less condescending) than #Votin, his, "call to arms" for young voters was about as inspiring as, well, Ed Miliband.

Rethinkin

With the June 7th deadline for voter registration deadline looming, Remain's continued failure to engage one of the most pro-EU segments of society could undo its campaign. Campaigners need to change their strategy for engaging younger voters or risk turnout sinking below the level needed to ensure Brexit.

It would be worthwhile leaving the ad-agency gimmicks to one side. The Remain campaign clearly understands the need to make the referendum relevant for young voters but their approach has been to treat us all as teenagers, who need loud music and flashy visuals to hold our attention.

Young voters clearly understand that the EU referendum is important, so attempts to put a "fun" spin on it will always seem disingenuous. No amount of techno music or hashtags can change that. The Remain campaign should focus on making a serious, but streamlined case for remaining, focused on the economy and opportunities to work and study abroad offered by the EU.

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Moreover, we should get rid of the idea that young voters will only respond to a "positive" message about the EU. Focussing on the risks associated with Brexit has its weaknesses (cue cries of "Project Fear!"), but there is little reason to suggest that it is any less effective with young voters, beyond woolly notions of the "optimism" of youth.

Finally, the Remain campaign needs a frank message for young voters to jolt us into voting. Whilst Ed Miliband's speech alone is not going to encourage the young to get out of bed and down to the polling station on the 23rd, his message (if made more forcefully) might: "a decision not to vote is a decision to let someone else decide your future".
Thanks to The Young Women's Trust and the Good Youth Forum funded by Trust For London, I had the opportunity to have a tour of the Houses of Parliament in May and then a round table discussion with Labour MP's. It was part of a piece of work around the development of services for women and girls and why young people don't vote.

As I wandered around the lavish surroundings and listened to the guide proudly point out the gold leaf decoration and paintings and as big as a bus I was filled with such sadness. How can we justify this elaborate expense when people in my community are accessing food banks, having their benefits (lifeline) sanctioned and being evicted on a regular basis? Lords can claim 300 expenses for a few hours discussion but Job Seekers receive less than 60 for a week? I appreciate the historic value of the building but I can't see the social benefit in such expenditure. This was also noted by the youth forum representatives.

Having previously met with MP Gloria De Piero, the youth forum had this time done their research, prepared their questions and statements and were well equipped to make their point. Young people are not using their right to vote out of ignorance, there are multiple factors influencing this decision. Some of the MP's present listened intently and Gloria appeared to truly want to understand why young people weren't voting. I was very unimpressed with the dismissive input of a particular MP. If she didn't want to be there she shouldn't have bothered and if she didn't want to answer questions then her attendance wasn't necessary. She really did let their side down and didn't represent herself very well. She had young women in front of her who she could have inspired but instead she reinforced their negative opinions of politicians whilst Gloria did her best to retain her positive attitude.

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She tried her best to engage the young women into becoming politicians but as they explained 'we're youth workers, we don't want to be politicians!' And they are very good at what they do, their work is needed and valued and they make a real change to the lives of the people they work with. Each one has a powerful story to tell, has learned a lot through life experiences and has now gone on to share that learning to help others. They are a true testament to 'broken Britain'. They were representing the women and girls who feel they don't have a voice, who don't show up in many statistics because they're homeless, or not in receipt of JSA but unemployed, don't report social issues or crimes against them for fear of having their children removed, the vulnerable people who this government is failing.

The group wanted to ask questions such as, with huge cuts in government funding out statutory youth service has been demolished with the pressure falling in the voluntary sector, who will support and represent our vulnerable young people and how will you reach and inspire this group to vote? And, was the last discussion just a publicity stunt to show Labour trying to engage with young people? And with cuts to NHS funding who will support the increasing number of young people with mental health? They had prepared lots of interesting questions and statements but lack of structure and time made it difficult to decipher any clear answers or actions at all. Even a straight forward answer to a question posed to an MP asking if she had accessed housing benefit was deflected and went unanswered. This did not fill young women with inspiration or trust only reinforced the view that young women were angry, frustrated and needed something drastic to inspire them and others to engage in the political system.

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Other than this, I think the day was productive. The forum representatives are now inspired to develop this piece of work despite their lack of trust in politicians. But learning is good and knowledge is power. The conclusion the youth forum has come to and has been reinforced today is 'they do not want to vote for people, they want to vote for policies'. The people need to be truly passionate about what they stand for and they can be held accountable for their policies and subsequent practices. They're a pretty smart bunch of young women in my opinion!
The dust is just beginning to settle after the first ever World Humanitarian Summit (WHS) in Istanbul at the end of May.

The reaction to the Summit has been mixed - grandiose, did it achieve enough? How will the commitments made be held to account? Was it a valuable consultative process that reflected the views of the huge range of people involved in humanitarian aid (inclusive of the recipients of that aid) or was it an opportunity for the biggest players in the system - donor governments, UN agencies and International NGOs - to shore up the status quo?

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The Summit had ambitious and laudable goals. It was not meant to just 'tweak' the system - to improve the workings of the UN system and its (usually northern) INGO partners. It was meant to be more radical than that. Many hoped that it would be able to turn that system on its head - make aid effective, accountable, locally-led; streamline the great unwieldy beast that is the UN/INGO system; cut swathes through the mountains of paper created every year in service of 'donor accountability' and instead become accountable to the people we're trying to help. On that basis it is probably fair to say that, post-Summit, we still have a very long way to go.

Yet, we have not come home empty-handed. World leaders at the Summit clearly acknowledged the need to address conflict as the primary driver of crisis. It is no longer acceptable for humanitarians to address the symptoms of crisis without also helping tackle the root causes, using peace-building, conflict mitigation and governance programming. They also committed to new and better ways of helping those in need - including through the increased use of cash in emergencies, which my organisation Mercy Corps' experience has shown can be faster, more effective and more sustainable than handing out goods in many cases.

But, let's not ever forget that the Summit itself was conceived and designed to respond to an urgent life-and-death problem - that the world is facing levels of suffering not seen since the second world war. A world where over 1.5 billion people struggle to survive in states of chronic conflict and fragility and 60 million people have been forced from their homes by war, violence and oppression. In these ever more complex, protracted and challenging environments the current 'humanitarian system' has proven to be broken and unable to cope. Regardless of the failures and criticisms of the Summit, we must move forward to build on what was achieved.

But post-summit, as we all returned to our day jobs, we once again face a challenge to international aid. An online petition driven by a British newspaper has forced MPs to revisit the UK's historic commitment to aid which is barely a year old.

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On March 9th last year, I could not have been more proud to be British when we, the first G8 country, committed to spending 0.7% of our wealth on helping the poorest and most vulnerable around the world. A concrete and sustained commitment which secures our place at the forefront in ending poverty, violence and suffering around an increasingly interconnected world.

The UK's leadership is not limited to our financial contribution. Politicians, NGOs and people affected by crisis around the world consistently laud the reputation of the UK in terms of quality, innovation, efficiency and principled aid. We don't just give hand-outs and short-term fixes, we take on the problems of corruption, conflict, inequality and violence. It is not just NGOs and the Government that lead this work, we have some of the best think tanks and academic institutions in the world focusing on meeting these challenges, and some shining examples of the best contributions businesses can make to responding to crisis and disaster. Whether this is Coca-Cola, the Department for International Development and MasterCard working with us in Nigeria to provide girls with economic opportunities and a brighter future, or our partnership with Google providing information and options to refugees fleeing their war-torn countries for Europe.

Meeting urgent needs in complex and insecure environments is far from easy and, as I've previously written, we in the humanitarian sphere must do better in communicating the true costs and complexities of what we do, and we must keep getting better at what we do. We know the returns are worth it. As Ban Ki Moon highlighted at the World Humanitarian Summit, humanitarian aid globally costs the same as 1% of global military spend. We can afford our share; the returns are more than worth it. Over the last five years alone UK aid has helped over 13 million people with emergency food aid, and given nearly 63 million people access to water, sanitation and hygiene services. UK investment in immunisation and education saves a child's life every two minutes and ensures 11 million children go to school.

Ending the UK's commitment to spend just 7p out of every 10 of our national wealth on international aid is not the answer. This will send the wrong signal to both the countries we are asking to commit to the same spending, and importantly to the hundreds of millions of the world's poorest who we are supporting to lift out of poverty once and for all.
More and more Democrats flocked to endorse Hillary Clinton and now were worried Bernie Sanders will don a floppy conductors hat and sadly play with model trains in a basement for the next six months. Donald Trump earned himself a standing ovation at the Faith and Freedom Coalition's annual convention, no doubt due in part to his comments about flat-chested women on Howard Stern's radio show. And Mitch McConnell said it's pretty obvious Trump doesnt know much about the issues, so its a good thing that David French is going to be our next president. This is HUFFPOST HILL for Friday, June 10th, 2016:

TRUMP PLAYS NICE FOR THE EVANGELICALS - "Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump made a pointed but subdued appeal Friday to religious conservatives, a group he has struggled to win over in the past. Trump pledged during an address to the Faith and Freedom Coalitions annual Road to Majority conference to 'restore faith to its proper mantle' in U.S. society. 'Im with you 100 percent.' Trump told the crowd gathered at the Omni Shoreham hotel and convention center in Washington, D.C. 'We will respect and defend Christian Americans ' He added that he would work hard to advance 'our shared values.' Trump told the mostly evangelical attendees that he would pursue a conservative agenda if elected. The businessman expressed his opposition to abortion, support for Israel and his intention to nominate conservative judges to federal courts, as he generally stuck to themes familiar to the GOPs religious base. 'Marriage and family as building block of happiness and success,' he said." [HuffPost]

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Also, this: "Sen. David Perdue (R-Ga.) joked at a conservative Christian event on Friday that he prays President Barack Obamas 'days will be short.' The first-term senator began his opening statement at the Faith & Freedom Coalitions Road to Majority conference by telling attendees to pray for Obama. With a smirk, Perdue said, 'We should pray like Psalms 109:8 says. It says: Let his days be few and let another have his office.' The large crowd laughed. Perdue did not continue reciting the words, but Psalm 109 is a death wish for one of Davids enemies." [HuffPost's Amber Ferguson]

CHECKING IN WITH THE POLLS - Natalie Jackson: "Trumps decline could be due to struggling with his image  again  after disparaging a judge from Indiana for his Mexican heritage. His claim that the judge couldnt be impartial in the Trump University case has been unpopular with Republican leaders and voters. If thats the cause of his poll decline, expect a lot of volatility in the polls over the next few months  we all know Trump will continue to say dumb things. That also means we havent really seen the Democratic nomination bump yet. Polls in the coming days and weeks will likely show even larger Clinton leads now that President Barack Obama and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) have endorsed her. An endorsement or concession from her rival Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) would also trigger higher numbers for the presumptive nominee." [HuffPost]

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CLINTON MEETS WITH WARREN - God, this will only end with 500,000 emails in our inbox from Warren titled, "Need you now more than ever." Reuters: "Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton met on Friday with U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren, a leading progressive voice, to try to build party unity heading into her election campaign against Republican Donald Trump. The two held talks at Clintons Washington home a day after Warren endorsed Clintons White House bid, adding support from the Democrats liberal wing as Clinton seeks to move on from her protracted primary battle with Bernie Sanders. Former secretary of state Clinton earlier this week secured the delegates needed to win the party nomination for the Nov. 8 presidential election. Party leaders are hoping Sanders will soon drop his presidential run. The Warren meeting on Friday fueled speculation that the senator from Massachusetts might be under consideration as Clintons running mate." [Reuters]

MCCONNELL: TRUMP DOESN'T REALLY KNOW MUCH - This begs the question: how many people walk into a voting booth, intend to vote the Democratic line but don't because Mitch McConnell distanced himself from Donald Trump? Betsy Fischer Martin, Tammy Haddad and Steven T. Dennis: " In an extraordinarily frank interview with Bloomberg Politics' Masters in Politics podcast, McConnell, who is on a book tour touting his autobiography The Long Game, also expressed broader concerns about the presumptive Republican presidential nominee. 'He needs someone highly experienced and very knowledgeable because it's pretty obvious he doesn't know a lot about the issues,' McConnell said. 'You see that in the debates in which he's participated. It's why I have argued to him publicly and privately that he ought to use a script more oftenthere is nothing wrong with having prepared texts.'" [Bloomberg]

McConnell pointedly did not mention Trump during his address to the Faith and Freedom Coalition conference today, either. Ruh roh.

TED POE IS MORE THAN JUST A GUY IN CONGRESS WHO SQUINTS A LOT - He's also a perpetrator of unapologetic hypocrisy! Jen Bendery: "Rep. Ted Poe (R-Texas) complained this week that his district isnt getting enough federal grant money to combat the Zika virus from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention  the same agency hes repeatedly voted to underfund as it tries to prevent an outbreak. 'We are vulnerable to the threat of Zika virus for several reasons,' Poe said in a statement on Tuesday, referencing a letter he recently sent to the CDC. 'Both mosquito vectors that carry Zika virus are present in Harris County. Located on the Gulf Coast, we have experienced high flood waters in recent months. In addition, there are also areas of our community that are poverty stricken. Each of these factors create conditions that are ideal for mosquitoes to breed.' 'The CDC must work with our community both now and in the future to address this flawed grant system and help allocate federal dollars for Harris Countys public health response,' he added. But Poe was among those who voted last month to give the CDC just one-third of the $1.9 billion it requested to protect the public from a Zika outbreak. The bill he voted for, which came three months after the CDC asked for aid, also provided just one-fifth the amount the agency requested for its overall public health activities." [HuffPost]

And that's just the way it is.

GOP LAWMAKER TRIES TO GUT ETHICS OFFICE, BECAUSE OF COURSE - It's surprising we don't see more efforts to stack the Ethics Committee. Laura Barron-Lopez: "A vote to slash funding for the independent office that reviews and investigates allegations of misconduct by members of Congress and their staff failed in the House on Friday. Rep. Steve Pearce (R-N.M.) was originally pushing to completely defund the Office of Congressional Ethics, eliminating its roughly $1.4 million budget. He settled instead for a vote on an amendment to stop a $190,000 increase in OCE funding. That measure went down to defeat, 270 to 137. Last year, the ethics office looked into allegations of misconduct by one of Pearces staffers. That didnt sit well with the congressman, despite the fact that the charges were ultimately dismissed. When the ethics office dismisses allegations, they remain confidential, so no one likely would have known had Pearce not made them public in his attempts to restrict the agencys authority and cut its funding. Pearce said his amendment was meant to 'give notice to OCE that we are watching what youre doing.'" [HuffPost]

BECAUSE YOU'VE READ THIS FAR - Here's a dog bonding with a capybara.

GAWKER FILES FOR BANKRUPTCY - Liberals will get a brief respite when George Soros sues WorldNetDaily into submission. Sam Levine: "Gawker Media has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. The filing lists the companys assets as between $50 and $100 million and says its liabilities are between $100 million and $500 million. Gawker is currently appealing a $140 million verdict in favor of former professional wrestler Hulk Hogan, who sued the company for invasion of privacy. In 2012, Gawker published excerpts of a video showing Hogan, whose real name is Terry Bollea, having sex with the wife of his then-best friend. Last month it was revealed that Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel was personally financing Hogans lawsuit. In a statement Friday afternoon, Gawker said it had reached an asset purchase agreement with media company Ziff Davis, but other bidders can offer a higher price as the company goes through an auction supervised by a bankruptcy court. The Ziff Davis bid is reportedly between $90 to $100 million, according to The New York Times." [HuffPost]

COMFORT FOOD

- A deep analysis of "Face Off."

- High school dating contract is intense.

- Fire arrows were never really a thing.

TWITTERAMA

@7im: For the record:

Trump and his family members have had to step up to say he is:

Not a racist

Not a rapist

Not a groper

Not Hitler

@Emma_Dumain: Ppl staking out Elizabeth Warren meeting at HRC's house: If Warren doesn't talk to you on the Hill, why will she talk to you on the street?

@adamweinstein: Sanders: Your corporatism undermines our democracy

Clinton: Governance is a messy thing

Trump: POCAHONTAS PEE PEE POO POO FINE STEAKS

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(Photo credit: Lee-or Atsmon Fruin)

At age 25, Leila left her consulting job in NYC to launch Samasource, bringing her skill set in management consulting to the global development space. In Sanskrit, sama means equal. It's the essence of her social enterprise - fighting global poverty by providing people equal access to jobs. She is truly multicultural and she even speaks French fluently ;)



You are the Founder and CEO of Sama and Laxmi; two companies that share a common social mission to end global poverty by giving work to people in need. Tell me about your transition from working at a management consulting firm to fighting global poverty.



In 2005, I was working in India for an American management consulting firm at a large call center. One day, I met a young man who I learned commuted to the center from Dharavi, the infamous slum depicted in the film Slumdog Millionaire, and I was shocked. Here was someone capable of taking calls for British Airways who was living in a cholera-infested slum. I couldn't help but wonder how many more were like him?



At the time I was reading Tom Friedman's book, The World Is Flat, and I had an epiphany: if outsourcing could generate billions of dollars for a few Indian and Chinese entrepreneurs, why couldn't we use it to send a few dollars to the billions of poor people who need it most? Soon after that, I quit my New York consulting job, moved to Palo Alto, and I launched a social enterprise nonprofit called Samasource. It was September 2008, I was 25.

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You mentioned in an interview that a profound experience in Africa was what led you to pursue mission driven work. Can you share that experience with us?



I was 17 when I took my first trip to Africa. I was a high school senior living in southern California and, through a scholarship I earned through a big tobacco company - of all places - I traveled to Ghana to teach English as part of a student-volunteer program.



I taught in the village of Akuapem and quickly settled in with students from the area, whose ages ranged from 11 to 25 and many of whom were blind. Water and electricity were available only sporadically. People walked everywhere and a trip to the capital required a two-hour ride on a tro tro, a privately-owned minivan packed with people.



Despite all of these obstacles, my students managed to make it to school every day dressed in white pressed shirts. They were extremely motivated and eager to learn.

"In all of these programs, I care about only one thing: lifting people out of poverty. We spend so much money on charity and on these stopgaps like providing poor people with free stuff. What people need most is an income." Why do you believe giving work is the most powerful solution to ending global poverty? Why use technology and private sector methods?



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So many problems - from sex trafficking to infant mortality - are rooted in poverty. The only true solution to ending poverty is to give people income. The most popular theory around this is to give cash through mechanisms like universal basic income and cash transfers. Another option, and one that costs less, is to give work.



Samasource recently completed an analysis that proves that compared to cash transfers, giving work provides deeper, more sustained benefits to people and their families. Measured over a 4-year period, giving work resulted in a 184% increase in income relative to a 41% increase in giving cash. The analysis also looked at consumption patterns to understand the impact of income on the movement out of poverty. The findings indicate significant increases in savings (140%), and spend on food (100%) and education (71%).



This type of investment doesn't just affect the earner but also extends to their families and broader community. Giving work is really the long-game of poverty reduction.

Samaschool trains students in the US in high demand digital skills. What did you observe in the United States that drove you to launch Samaschool?



Samaschool is the training arm of Samasource and while it started in the US, it has since grown to reach people from around the world- namely through our online program.



We wanted to start something in the US because someone heard me speak on Samasource and challenged me, saying that we weren't doing anything to address poverty here in our own backyard. I actually invited him to share his ideas and after I talked to a few more people and secured a bit of funding to get it off the ground, we launched a pilot of the Samaschool program in 2013 in Merced, one of the most impoverished communities in California's Central Valley.



What we saw in the US was an opportunity gap: millions of jobs were being posted to online platforms, and unemployed people in communities like Merced couldn't access those types of jobs because they didn't possess the digital skills. Samaschool was created to bridge that gap and the program continues to grow and adapt to keep up with market driven skills and trends - like training for gig economy apps.



Samasource employed 7,605 workers since 2008; that's huge! How many workers do you project will be hired by 2018?



Under our current revenue plan, we expect to hire an additional 2,700 people by 2018.

"Sama" means "equal" in Sanskrit. Apart from your own initiatives, how do you hope to bring more "sama" in the world we live in today?



What I - and my team - spend a lot of time on now is thinking about how to make this idea of giving work mainstream.



For companies, that might mean taking our Give Work Pledge that will launch later this fall and committing to a 1% impact sourcing initiative such as hiring 1% of its workforce from marginalized backgrounds. For consumers - people like you and me - that might be purchasing more goods from fair trade or social enterprises that give work to low-income people.



Our hope is to create a movement around this and start viewing these people as producers and participants in our global economy vs. recipients of aid.

What is the greatest lesson you've learned so far as an entrepreneur?



There have been a lot of lessons along the way but a big one has been understanding the relationship between altruism and ego.



As a social entrepreneur, people often view me as a saint and incapable of flaws. This type of praise can certainly go to your head - and lead to what I call an "unchecked ego" - so I have to take a step back and remind myself of my smallness.



I do this by following a simple routine that grounds me when the work starts to feel overwhelming:



1. I meditate, usually for 5-20 minutes a day.

2. I read about "bigger-than-humanity" subjects like the intricacies of the ocean or deep space.

3. I exercise: Kitesurfing and dance remind me that I'm part of a larger community.

Finally, do you think by doing good, you're more successful?


Something quite remarkable happened last week. It happened quietly, in a remote corner of some administrative building probably, but it ought to be loudly disseminated across the Western world. Not to be overly dramatic, but Western civilization just might have saved itself--from itself.

For universities are the heart of that civilization, and last week, a university's student government suddenly remembered what the overall purpose of student governments is--which itself ought to remind universities of what their overall purpose is.

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The Judicial Board at Montreal's McGill University ruled last Tuesday that resolutions affirming the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel violate the Constitution and Equity Policy of its student government, the Students' Society of McGill University (SSMU). That means that McGill, whose campus has in the past 18 months endured three consecutive BDS campaigns and votes, all of which ultimately failed, will finally be able to return full-time to its proper business.

The reasoning in the decision is so clear that it's downright refreshing.

Reading through its mandate documents, the Judicial Board notes that SSMU's mission is to "facilitate communication and interaction between all students," to refrain from discrimination on the basis of "race, national or ethnic origin ... religion ...," and to create "an 'anti-oppressive' atmosphere where all of its membership feels included."

But then can the SSMU "take an authoritative, direct, and unambiguous stance" against a particular nation, as the recent BDS resolution demands that it do against Israel?

Unambiguously, no.

A university may well have students from both sides of any given conflict, and "by picking a side ... the government does not promote interactions ... but rather champions one's cause over another." Student governments must represent their members, but "it would be absurd for the government to claim that it is representing Israeli members as favorably as other nationals despite it supporting boycotts ... against Israel." Indeed, by "adopting official positions against certain nations ... SSMU would be placing members from those nations at a structural disadvantage within [the] community," failing to protect the rights of those minorities from "the tyranny of the majority," and in thus violating its "anti-oppression" mandate would be failing in "its obligations to its own members."

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Or to put it succinctly:

McGill is first and foremost a university, a place of knowledge and intellectual growth--a fact that is often forgotten....[Our student government] cannot be the venue for a proxy war.

Yes, one wants to respond, refreshed--and the same is true for any university and student government, whether or not they have a constitution explicitly spelling that out.

Obviously.

That all this is so obviously true--that anyone undertaking a neutral approach to designing student governments would concur--makes you wonder why (as the Judicial Board put it) it is so "often forgotten."

I have several hypotheses but will mention just one.

For any conflict, the scholar always recognizes that there are (at least) two sides. Any organization serving the scholarly mission of the university must always therefore ensure that all sides have equal opportunity to be heard.

The activist has no such constraint. The activist's goal is to "win," to change the status quo, to defeat the other side, to overturn it--to silence it.

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I believe that activism is wonderful, and to be encouraged. I would even propose that activism as we today understand it has naturally grown out of scholarship: that as the enlightenment led to intellectual liberty it led to the recognition of the value of diversity in every sense--which in turn leads to the activism that admirably promotes that diversity.

But in our zeal for activism we have forgotten that when a student government takes a side in a conflict, when it decides that there are not two sides after all, it thereby abandons its role in the scholarly mission of the institution for the activism. And as the Judicial Board noted, where a student government's objective should be to protect and promote the interests of minorities, including minority opinions, against the tyranny of the majority, when the government chooses one side it becomes the tyrannical majority instead.

That is the moment when the activism begotten by scholarship overthrows the scholarship--the moment when the university launches its own destruction.

Indeed, the last time this was put so clearly was perhaps all the way back in 1967, when the University of Chicago's Kalven Committee produced its famous "Report on the University's Role in Political and Social Action."

It is worth some extended quotes:

A university has a great and unique role to play in fostering the development of social and political values in a society. The role is defined by the distinctive mission of the university ... the discovery, improvement, and dissemination of knowledge. The instrument of dissent and criticism is the individual faculty member or ... student. The university is the home and sponsor of critics; it is not itself the critic.... To perform its mission in the society, a university must sustain an extraordinary environment of freedom of inquiry and maintain an independence from political fashions, passions, and pressures. A university, if it is to be true to its faith in intellectual inquiry, must embrace, be hospitable to, and encourage the widest diversity of views within its own community ... It is not a club, it is not a trade association, it is not a lobby. ...[It] is a community which cannot take collective action on the issues of the day without endangering the conditions for its existence and effectiveness. There is no mechanism by which it can reach a collective position without inhibiting that full freedom of dissent on which it thrives. It cannot insist that all of its members favor a given view of social policy; if it takes collective action, therefore, it does so at the price of censuring any minority who do not agree with the view adopted. In brief, it is a community which cannot resort to majority vote to reach positions on public issues. The neutrality of the university as an institution arises ... out of respect for free inquiry and the obligation to cherish a diversity of viewpoints ...

Of course, one wants to say. Intellectual inquiry requires intellectual liberty, and the freedom of speech. Don't we all agree on that? Doesn't every single fair-minded lover of knowledge, not seized by the hysteria of his own personal political agenda, agree with that?

But the "instrument" of that speech is the individual faculty member or student, and the groups they may form to promote their viewpoints. Let them have at it, with maximal freedom of inquiry and speech ringing throughout the institution.

But that most noble goal of intellectual liberty and diversity can be achieved only when the organs of the institution itself--the university, the faculty governing body, graduate student unions, the student government--are above the fray. To maximize the freedom of inquiry and speech of their members, they must not be hijacked for the political agendas even of the majority of their members.

In our zeal for activism, for the clarity of one side (at the expense of the other), we have somehow failed to observe what could not be more obvious: that the BDS movement as it is manifest on our campuses is an attack on the fundamental goals and values of the university as a whole.

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This is not about defending Israel. Criticize Israel all you want.

It is about defending the university.
The recent death of Harambe, a silverback gorilla at Cincinnati Zoo that was shot dead after a boy fell into the gorilla enclosure has triggered a fierce debate.



(Image courtesy of clucthmagazineonline.com)

Our reactions to this tragic incident has been very polarized. Some expressed fury at the zoo's decision to kill the gorilla and rallied behind the "justice for Harmabe" tag, while others called for charges against the three year old's mother. And in perhaps what is a reflection of the hypocrisy and intolerance hidden in us, many others trivialized the death of the 17 year old Gorilla.

"It's a Gorilla; Get Over it" read the title of one column, while another called the decision to shoot the gorilla an obvious one.

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Just a day after the incident, the child's mother took to social media to defend herself from criticism, but did not think Harambe deserved a word of condolence. To the prosecutor who refused to press charges against the child's mother, it didn't matter that Harmabe is a fellow primate with 98% genetic similarity with humans, he was still an animal.

So what if Harambe is "just" a gorilla? They are self-aware sentient beings that share many of our traits like having complex emotional feelings and a desire for social groups. Recent studies show that gorillas too make tools like our ancestors.

What justifies the superiority of humans over gorillas? Is it our better intelligence? But if we are going to value individuals based on their intelligence, we will be condoning the killings of intellectually disabled persons, something no civilized person would find acceptable.

It is also equally arguable that the life of an animal belonging to a critically endangered species, like a silverback gorilla is worth more than the life of a member of an overpopulated species.

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While we can endlessly argue the superiority of one species over the other, one thing is clear: our view as the superior species is based on prejudice. The prejudice that had led to us to believe in the superiority of one race over another in the not so distant past, the prejudice that fueled Alexander Stephen's infamous defense of slavery in the Cornerstone speech.

Ironically, those who mock the outpouring over the death of Harambe are the very same people fighting racial intolerance. "Black Lives Matter" activists who believe the protests over the shooting of the gorilla is misplaced because in their eyes the shooting of unarmed black men do not result in comparable protests are not only factually wrong but are unwittingly justifying the mentality that discriminates those different from us -- whether "those" belong to a different species or a different race.
[Gaurav Sishodia, who will be in charge of Korean Desk, explains about Indian government's investment policy at the 'Korea Caravan Forum' hosted by South Korea Embassy on Thursday in Hyderabad, Telangana, India./ Photographedby Ha Man-joo]

By Ha Man-joo, India correspondent, AsiaToday - The Indian central government will launch 'Korea Desk' in New Delhi on June 18. In addition, Telangana state government has chosen a government official for the Korea Desk to facilitate Korean investors. Gaurav Sishodia, who will be in charge of Korean Desk, told AsiaToday on Thursday, "The Korea Desk, which had been suggested by Indian PM Narendra Modi to President Park Geun-hye during his visit to Korea last May, will be launched in New Delhi with Joo Hyung-hwan, Korea's Trade, Industry and Energy Minister, and Nirmala Sitharaman, Indian Minister of State for Commerce & Industy, in attendance.

[Korean Ambassador to India Cho Hyun delivers a welcoming speech at the'Korea Caravan Forum' hosted by South Korea Embassy on Thursday in Hyderabad,Telangana, India./ Photographed by Ha Man-joo]

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The Korea Desk will be composed of five people, three public officials from the Indian Ministry of Commerce and two dispatched from Korea. Go Joon-seok, Manager of Korean Intellectual Property Office, and Cheong Beom-joo, deputy department head of Korea Trade-Investment Promotion Agency (KOTRA) will be dispatched.

Previously, Moon Jae-do, 2nd Vice Minister of Trade, Industry and Energy, visited New Delhi last January, and signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) on Korea plus installation with Indian government officials.

[Choi Dong-seok (right), KOTRA'sSouthwest Asia Director, and Arvind Kumar, secretary of Industries &Commerce and Energy Department of Telangana, exchange memorandum ofunderstanding (MOU) for cooperation between KOTRA and Telangana state's IndustrialInfrastructure Corporation./ Photographed by Ha Man-joo]

Sishodia said, "The Korea Desk will support Korean companies with a variety of permission, site selection, business partner selection, and meeting arrangement with Indian government officials which had been regarded as obstacles to investment in India. Through this, transparency in Indian investment by Korean companies will be raised. We have already arranged meetings between Korean companies that wish to invest in India with Indian government agencies. We look forward to seeing more Korean SMEs investing in India."

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[An official from Korean company introduces company products to an Indianbusinessman at the 'Korea Caravan Forum' hosted by South Korea Embassy onThursday in Hyderabad, Telangana, India./ Photographed by Ha Man-joo]

The Korea Desk - to be based in New Delhi - will provide support for India-bound investments of Korean companies. It will provide investment consultation, policy & regulation explanation, business site evaluation, business prospect analysis, subsidy explanation, market entering consultation, business site confirmation, permission acquirement support, business partner selection support, and more.

[India's "Perini Prakash" Dance Team dances traditional dancededicated to the Hindu god Shiva at the "Korea Caravan Night of Culture" hosted by South Korea Embassy on Thursday in Hyderabad,Telangana, India./ Photographed by Ha Man-joo]

Arvind Kumar, secretary of Industries & Commerce and Energy Department in Government of Telangana, attended the 'Korea Caravan Forum' and announced the appointment of an official to be responsible for Korean companies' investment and complaints.

He said, "Telangana has introduced a 'single window system', which handles licensing procedures online, last July. The system has received nearly 18,000 cases so far."

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[India's "Perini Prakash" Dance Team dances traditional dance ofTelugu region at the "Korea Caravan Night of Culture" hosted by SouthKorea Embassy on Thursday in Hyderabad, Telangana, India./ Photographed by HaMan-joo]

Hosted by South Korea Embassy, the Korea Caravan Forum was attended by Cho Hyun, Korean Ambassador to India; Sung Ki-woong, President of POSCO India; Ahn Young-jin, Chief Coordinator at Hyundai Motor India; Ahn Jin-hyun, Head of Samsung C&T India; Choi Dong-seok, Southwest Asia Director at KOTRA; Choi Joo-chul, Head of New Delhi Branch of Korea International Trade Association, and more.

[Jeju Island's Hana Art gives a traditional performance at the "KoreaCaravan Night of Culture" hosted by South Korea Embassy on Thursday in Hyderabad, Telangana, India./ Photographed by Ha Man-joo]

In addition, nearly 150 Indian businessmen and Telanga state officials including Azmeera Chandulal, Tourism and Tribal Welfare Minister of Telangana,and Papa Rao, Advisor to Telangana Government.
Imagine that you have enough money and a passport to travel abroad. You may be a businessman to follow your meetings or just a tourist hoping to practice new things during your trip in another country.

If you are a Turkish citizen, you should think twice.

It is not a secret that after Erdogan consolidated his power, Turkey has already turned into a dictatorship. The sources now reveal that Turkish Government has started another unlawful activity against his citizens. The Turkish Government cancels the passports of some journalists, businessmen and NGO representatives through some fabricated applications.

The first step of this conspiracy engineered by the Turkish Government is to fabricate 'a loss notice' in a newspaper on behalf of the targeted individual. Once the loss notice appears in a paper, the Government cancels the passport. The people find out this illegal cancelation only when they are about to go abroad at the airport venue. The police seize their passports and don't let them go out. But it may also happen when you are out of Turkey. Many people who are already out of Turkey face similar difficulties during the security check at the Customs. They are told that their passports are seen 'lost' in their system and advised to visit their Embassies or Consulates to solve the problem. However, when the people go to their Embassies, their passports are being seized without any explanation.

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Some aggrieved has already started legal term by means of their counselors. Those who face this conspiracy while they are abroad apply to Interpol and inform that their passports are not lost.

According to the claims, hundreds of Turkish businessmen, journalists, teachers, and bureaucrats were recorded by a team established by Police Intelligence Department and the National Intelligence Organization (MIT). Information about the names on the list prepared by these organizations are sent to the Passport Department. And the Passport units cancel the passports of the persons, whose names appear on the list.

The illegal practice was revealed when S. A., a person involved in business in Ankara applied to Ankara Directorate of Security, in order to extend the validity of his passport. The businessman went to the Passport department last month. He stated that he wants to extend the validity of his visa, because he wants to go abroad. But the personnel at the passport department told him that his passport was cancelled through a 'loss' notice, and that he might find the detailed information at Police Passport Department. Thereupon the businessman went to the Passport Department's campus in Ankara, he repeated again that he didn't issue such any loss notice for his passport. The officials rejected to provide any detailed information.

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A teacher working abroad also faced a similar problem. The teacher who went to the airport to go back to the country he worked after his vacation in Turkey found out at that his passport was cancelled at the passage. Even though the teacher never issued such a loss notice for his passport, the justification was the same.

The last aggrieved of the passport conspiracy was Mrs. Nevin Ipek, the wife of Mr. Akn Ipek, the President of Koza Ipek Holding which was taken over by President Erdogan last year. Ipek applied to Embassy of Turkey in London last week, to extend the validity of her passport. The Embassy officials seized Ipek's passport, stating that there is a 'loss notice' for her passport. Ipek told them that she never issued any loss notice on a newspaper in or abroad. Yet, she could not persuade the Embassy officials. Mr. Nazif Apak, a columnist for Turkish Yeni Hayat Daily, who first drew attention on the passport conspiracy of the Turkish Government in his article titled 'Who plays with the passport?' on April 23, wrote that a businessman, whose family has done trade for three generations faced a similar incident, too. He wrote that, when the businessman reacted 'How come! I came to your land with this passport and want to go to that country from here,' then the officials said that his passport is seen 'lost' in their system. When the businessman carries the case to Interpol, the respond was this: 'Unfortunately Turkey is forging on the documents and declares passports of many people lost,' Apak wrote.
My Instagram feed on Sunday mornings is always the same thing: an endless stream of gluttonous brunch shots interspersed with the occasional artsy photo of last night's artisanal cocktail. You know what I'm talking about: "food porn" (with some "beverage porn" throw in the mix). As Urban Dictionary defines it: "when people post close up pictures on their social networking sites (ex. Facebook, Myspace) of delicious food that looks like art." Aside from seeing this on my social media feeds, I see this in my real, physical life. More often than not, if I walk past a patio of people eating brunch, I'll see this digital food porn in the making. The food comes to the table and out come the smartphones to snap pictures of it, brandished so unconsciously it's as if the phones are just another necessary piece of cutlery for a meal. As of publishing, 196 million photos on Instagram are tagged as #food and nearly 64 million as #foodporn and around 50% of millennials share pictures of food on social media.

Like any social trend, this one has not occurred without its share of detractors. From a tacit association with the figure everyone loves to hate, the ubiquitous brunch-and-artisinal-cocktail-loving hipster, to comedian and actor Aziz Ansari's desire to banish the word "foodie" from the public lexicon, it's evident that not everyone is accepting of food porn culture and its implications.

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To dismiss the food porn trend outright, though, would be a mistake. To do so would ignore the positive influence of "the good food movement" (a growing community of people who are vocal about caring about where their food comes from as well as the food's impact on their health and the environment). Some claim that this is the movement that gave rise to food porn in the first place. In addition to the laudable elements of caring about food and where it came from, the sheer numbers of those obsessing over food make it clear that this trend cannot be discounted. According to a recent report entitled "Food + Drink Trends and Futures" published by the Innovation Group, millennials increasingly see food as an important part of their identity, with 74% agreeing that food is a major pastime of theirs and 81% seeing dining out as a cultural experience.

While some diners remain busy snapping photos of their greasy burgers or sugar-loaded donuts, those behind the good food movement are now working to harness these views and habits in order to shift the conversation and promote better eating. The standpoint of the good food movement is that consumers don't seem to know how best to prepare food, where most food comes from, or what goes into it--and food porn (with those burger and donut porn subsets) isn't helping.

This is where Foodstand, which is avaialble on IPhone, Android, and web, enters the picture. Their goal? To bring previously disparate groups of consumers together under the good food umbrella. It's something we often forget, but behind these millions of #food photos are individuals, and individuals on social media, at the end of the day, are using the media to forge social connections. It's Foodstand's goal to connect these food-lovers, makers, and growers.

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So, beyond the general aim, how does Foodstand work? Through the mobile app and companion website, disparate communities can connect virtually, to allow anyone across the world to easily access and understand what's happening in good food. "We are a community helping each other stay in the know about all things good food so more people can harness the power of the movement to shop, cook, and eat better," said founder Rachna Govani. So, instead of relying on your one friend who's a healthy, conscientious eater, you can turn to the virtual community. As Govani continued, "The digital platform helps us connect more people at scale. For example, everyone has a good food friend who they turn to; the digital community is thousands of those 'good food friends' at your fingertips."

As a daily user, you'd turn to the app as a place to share images of food that you'd otherwise share on Instagram or Facebook, along with reading or sharing articles relating to everything from what to do with watermelon radishes to information about food policy, to looking up recipes for any meal of the day, joining forum conversations on food-related topic, and even invitations to live events in major cities. As intimidating as articles on watermelon radishes may sound, the app is not just for serious food enthusiasts. Because of the wide range of content within the app, its open to the entire cross section of the food-loving community, including chefs, suppliers, bloggers, entrepreneurs, food enthusiasts, and those just looking to share good eating inspiration with others.

Govani says that she founded Foodstand (along with Purpose, a social benefit digital movement-building corporation) after realizing a few things:

The food system was broken in that the way in which we produce, distribute, and consume food is tied to growing, unhealthy global trends such as the confluence of malnutrition and obesity in the US, along with growing instances of diabetes in both adult and youth populations. Anyone who eats has the power to change the food system by simply voting with their forks. With a connected community, we can aggregate the power of consumer spend to support a better food system and really move the needle. In order to activate eaters to eat in line with their values, it needed to be easier for everyone to stay informed and connected in one place.

In light of these revelations, Govani founded Foodstand with the mission of democratizing good eating by creating a more informed and connected community of eaters and makers who are interested in seeing a better food future.

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One unique element that the app offers is the "Good Food Spotlight," which allows users to step out of the digital realm of Foodstand, and into the real world.

On a chilly evening in January, I got off of the subway at the G train Flushing stop in Brooklyn, New York. I exited the station and proceeded to walk three-quarters of the way around a huge building that spanned most of a block. As I strolled, I was lead along by printed signs with arrows drawn on them, pointing the way towards the event I had read about on the app, a recurring "Good Food Spotlight" event hosted by Foodstand and its collaborator Slow Money NYC.



I entered through the main set of doors of Brooklyn FoodWorks and went upstairs to the event. The room was a small and cozy space with somewhere around 70 people milling around. Against one wall was a spread of local food from the organization Local Roots NYC. Against another was a range of items from all over, including Ginjan, a West African ginger juice, an assortment of breads from Lancaster Food Co, which hires directly from their community in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, to help lower the poverty rate, a dairy-free coconut-based ice cream from Jawea, and Metabrew, a health-focused energy drink. Along the final wall was a large glass window, through which I could observe the large industrial kitchens that Brooklyn FoodWorks uses to prototype, launch, and grow innovative food businesses. I leaned against the wall, snacking on TK, and listened to presentations from food entrepreneurs and experts as they discussed their burgeoning "good food" businesses.

After these presentations, some of the audience began to trickle out, but many attendees remained to discuss business strategy and other food-related matters. As I wandered the venue, I overheard conversations like two companies working with Indian manufacturers who were considering a collaboration and a food distributor speaking with the head of an organic bread company about how they could use leftover bread to make breadcrumbs rather than wasting them.

Following the event, it was clear to me that Foodstand had many different elements, both in the virtual world and the real word. I asked Govani what her vision was for Foodstand going forward. She replied: "The future food system that we want to create is one in which good food is the default and the easier choice, instead of the exception." After reaching out to some of the app's users, it seems that her goal may be succeeding.

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Justin Aiello is the Farm Manager for Olivette Farm in Asheville, NC, who found out about Foodstand from a friend who was a food writer in Atlanta, GA. So how did Foodstand impact him? "As a farmer it is very important for me to keep up with upcoming food trends as well as new and exciting ways to use the vegetables that I grow," he told me. "The Foodstand app has been an awesome resource to not only see what people are eating and cooking, but it has also been a great place to ask lots of questions about what people are looking for from their farmer. In addition to that, the app has been a great tool for me to help educate people on new ways that I have discovered to use vegetables and it has also given me an opportunity to give people some more insight into the world of farming and where their food comes from." To him, the app feels like an intimate community of people who really care about food and just want to share everything they are learning about it.

On the northern end of the country, there's Jabber Al-Bihani, a Brooklyn-based civil engineer who works as a food experience creator and entrepreneur in his free time. He has been using Foodstand since the beta version of their app launched a bit over a year ago. He runs a startup called Komeeda, a platform for restaurants to create interactive dining events at their establishments and to get these events out to what they're calling the "kommunity". While Al-Bihani had initially valued the community aspect of Foodstand over the functionality of the app, itself, he's found that the newest release of the app has both community and functionality. "This version is the digital analogue of the real community and is something I use more frequently now because of its forum type platform and the more engaged user-base within the app," he told me. He uses the app to connect with local chefs, event coordinators, and artisan purveyors on Foodstand who want to collaborate and participate in Komeeda events.

Another New Yorker, Beth Reed is a food enthusiast who first heard about Foodstand at the Food Book Fair in Brooklyn last spring. "It seemed like a perfect match for me. I love food, I love technology and I love to share great recipes, ideas and basically talk about food all the time!" she shared. "It has been great to watch Foodstand grow, going from their Beta version, basic picture sharing, to more interactive features and now a true community where you can post, share, comment and engage in food related discussions. It's like you are at a coffee house chatting with the locals about all things foodie, except you do it from any and everywhere and at your own speed." While she first was drawn to Foodstand as a way to direct traffic to her blog, it soon became relevant for more than that. Now, she looks forward to the discoveries she makes on Foodstand and the food it inspires her to cook.

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Governor Bill Clinton and wife Hillary Clinton at a Texas campaign rally in 1992 on his final day of campaigning in McAllen, Texas

I voted for Bernie Sanders. I was one of the first Latinos to officially endorse him. And I made a pretty good argument (Spanish translation) for it, if I may say so myself. But I'm voting for Hillary Clinton come November. It would behoove Latinos to do the same.

Hear me out.

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Keep reading. Nobody reached out to me to write this. I come of my own accord.

I repudiated almost everything Hillary Clinton said and did. I do truly believe that the worst of Clinton is in the past and there are many reasons why unpardonable things were said and done. I'm aware of all of that. Information about it is easily found online. From campaigning for the gutting of much needed social services to mass incarceration, from unfortunate comments about sending children back to triggering ones about working hard to build a wall to keep "illegals" out, from the destabilization of Latin America through coups to implicitness in the murder of our human rights activists. Some of those comments are recent, but I don't believe it's fair to blame her for widespread suffering and corruption.

It's a different atmosphere today to blame her for the rest. I understand that. Lessons were learned and mistakes were admitted and apologized for. I pray she is really honest about it today. Even if she were not, she's a hell of a lot better than Donald Trump.

You've read that argument before. The lesser of two evils, right? Well, one of those evils will bring unimaginable pain and suffering to a great deal of us.

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I am not ready for women to have abortions with hangers and losing their lives.

I am not ready for our viejitos to eat cat food or choose between eating or medication.

I'm not ready for our needy to lose the few benefits they have.

I'm not ready for our children to starve.

I am not ready for the LGBT community to be hunted down more than what they are now.

I am not ready for rampant homelessness.

I am not ready for the threat of nuclear war and our premature demise.

I am not ready for more legally made abject poverty, disenfranchisement, discrimination, and all sorts of calamities that will surely come under a Donald Trump presidency and Republican-led government.

I'm mad, disappointed, and almost jaded it came down to this, but our most vulnerable can't afford our complacency. I'm mad our Latino representatives, celebrities, and media misled our people--or perhaps they didn't. I know of a lot of good and intelligent folks who were exposed to the same information as us and they still supported her. Their arguments are as valid as ours regardless of how you and I feel about them. They were in the right to call some of the vitriol aimed at Hillary sexist, ignorant, unfair. I, too, hated the sexism and ignorance. I found the comments made about her repulsive: her bathroom breaks during the debates, the mocking of her pantsuits, the arguments that she thinks she deserves the nomination because she's a woman, the talk about her hair and how much she spends on it, the dumb email and Benghazi "scandals," and anything to do with her gender or President Bill Clinton's alleged indiscretions. To be fair to the other side, the Bernie Bro and the privileged whiteness of the Bernie or Bust fraction were disgusting myths made up by her supporters.

The media and the DNC treated Bernie unfairly. So were his supporters. There were discrepancies and perhaps voter suppression during the election, but I can only go by what I've read from the media because a lot of independent sources can't be trusted either. She still won both the delegate and popular vote, though. She's three million ahead of him. We can't dismiss the will of the people--even if we think they were misinformed. I'm not arrogant enough to say millions of people who supported and voted for Hillary are dumb enough to fall for whatever tricks we think she and her team concocted. What I do know is that we face a bigger threat now, and like I said before, I am not ready for what will befall our people if we elect Donald Trump.

You might say that this nation needs a reset through a revolution because we didn't elect an honest man who seems to be built to care for others, so you will vote for Donald Trump to quicken it. I called him a distraction, a black hole, plenty of times before, even recently, but the threat is real. We can't have that happen. There's an apt Spanish phrase for this situation: "No es lo mismo llamar al Diablo que verlo venir" ("It's not the same to invoke the Devil than to see him come"). We might say in our crestfallen rage that we will vote for him just to spite and/or destroy the establishment, but are you willing to destroy yourself and everyone else while at it? Do you think it's fair we will leave the most vulnerable to their own devices under a Donald Trump presidency? I don't believe it. I don't think so. Deep down, you don't believe and think so either. I hope not.

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So please reconsider your stance. Don't vote for Donald Trump because you're blinded by your anger. Don't write Bernie Sanders in. He already won because his message was heard loud and clear. We are all in motion now to take our country back. He will not be president, however. The math is undeniable and there's nothing we can do about that at this point. We can't get to the White House with just the support of independents. I'm sorry, folks.

You are not obligated to vote for Hillary Clinton, but I am because she's our last hope from utter destruction. We can't have that. I care about the well-being of our people. It would behoove every Latino, every American, to do the same. We must rally behind Hillary Clinton.

This is not for Hillary Clinton or me. This is for us. This is for our people.

P.S. This was written before President Obama and Senator Warren's public endorsements of Hillary Clinton.

P.P.S. I'm not Cesar Vargas, the DREAMer, who is currently working on Bernie's campaign. So spare him the trolling, please.

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I scoff at myself after each presidential election cycle and vow to be a good little clergyman next time: I will embrace sentiment behind the first line of a March interview with my favorite Catholic priest, Father James Martin, S.J.: "I try to stay as far away from political commentary as possible."

I'll do it. It'll happen. I'll flee all Democrats, Republicans, Green Partiers and even pickled Whigs. I'll articulate my stances on vital issues but hide my vote in my secret box. I promise. Cross my heart and hope to die. I'd rather write about theology and spirituality anyway.

But the perennial dilemma rears its head with the next campaign: The GOP has morphed into the POB without shame. The devolution from the Grand Old Party to the Party Of Brats began in earnest with Richard Nixon's "Southern Strategy" and its thinly-veiled race baiting, which set the stage for Newt Gingrich's character assassinations, followed by Willie Horton ads and Swift Boat ads and rich draft-dodgers cross-examining the patriotism of medaled war veterans. Muck and mire and mud prevailed in 2008 along with Sarah Palin's ignorance-is-bliss politics, after which Mitt Romney flip-flopped like a fish out of water in 2012.

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Surprise-surprise and wonder of wonders: The supposedly respectable members of the "establishment" POB feign the shock of frock-coated Victorian gentry: They've been dumped on The Donald's doorstep. Who did this to us and why? They ask this even after purging their party of its former backbone, the Eisenhower-Rockefeller moderate-to-liberal, and cultivating the politics of fear, hatred, and xenophobia - disingenuously playing church organs to religious voters with their anti-abortion and "family values" stances.

A question to my fellow pro-lifers: Did the POB do anything about abortion when it had the chance?

The establishment POB members failed to grasp that they were writing the notes of a sour recital now performed by the brat par excellence: a foul-mouthed racist misogynist bigot wife-dumper huckster strip-club owner who closes businesses as rapidly as Popeye gulps spinach. Religious leaders like Jerry Falwell, Jr., dance with enthusiasm to his tune.

And there's the rub: If no one answers Falwell and others like him, the wider public will inevitably conclude that Donald Trump has the religious stamp of approval. Fleeing political commentary becomes a political gesture in itself.

What to do? Must I violate my pledge again? Will someone guide me?



Wisdom from nearby



Actually, Martin offers sage advice deeper into his interview, transcribed in the Fordham Political Review:

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Priests [and other clerics] are supposed to be non-partisan; the Church is supposed to be non-partisan. However, I also think it's important to proclaim the Gospel, and sometimes the Gospel message has political implications. So if you say that you need to care for the poor and the marginalized, and one party's doing that and one party is not, then so be it. Sometimes what one says has political implications, but that's not why I say it.



Martin is distinguishes between partisanship (the active support of a given political party) and politics, an Anglicized Greek word meaning, "of, for, or related to citizens." Retrieving the word's original meaning illuminates the obvious: Every social opinion has political implications. It also helps clerics grasp their civic role. We're more prophetic than partisan. We speak spiritual and moral truth to power, whatever party is in control. As Martin says:

There's definitely a duty to speak out - even in political matters. The great issues of our day are often political issues of the day, and the Church needs to be, and has always been, an active participant in the public square. That's part of our role. The boundary is advocating explicitly for one political party or another, or telling people what candidate to vote for.

But how do we avoid partisanship in the year of Donald Trump? One remedy is to criticize both major parties with equal vehemence, but that dilutes the Trump critique and gives the impression of moral equivalence. Clearly, Hillary Clinton is a flawed candidate and merits prophetic scrutiny - and, in my opinion, the Democrats deserve a tongue lashing over their abortion stance. But Trump is the US equivalent of a banana republic's thug. He is an existential threat to everything America stands for and a mockery to the label, "evangelical," which he claims. Worst of all, the flag-waving POB leaders are falling in line with their endorsements as if he were just another brat.

Wisdom from afar

Again, there is guidance, this time from history. In 1934, German church representatives met and issued The Theological Declaration of Barmen, which protested the Nazification of their piety and administration. They were specific. They did not fire salvos at the Social Democrats in the guise of false "fairness." Such criticism would have proven laughable. Hitler had banned the party and imprisoned many of its leaders.

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I'll come clean: I'm a registered, pro-life Democrat and I involved myself in local Democratic politics in the past, but I've since distanced myself from raw partisanship. It is almost always best for clergy to help shape the conscience of their church members (all Christians should be concerned about the poor and the helpless) and then leave policy details to voters and politicians (that nearly extinct species called the "moderate Republican" offered compelling, free-enterprise solutions that deserve a hearing). I should be extremely wary of branding one party with the cross.

I would steer clear of criticizing one candidate over another in normal election years, but this is not a normal election year - and the POB is no longer a "normal" political party. As Norman Ornstein and Thomas E. Mann have said, it is now an "outlier."
For the first time in our nation's history, a woman is a major political party's presumptive nominee for President of the United States. Whatever your feelings about Hillary Rodham Clinton, this moment is undeniably historic.

But Mrs. Clinton is not the only person changing the history books. Bernie Sanders, her opponent in the Democratic Party's nominating contest, is the first Jewish-American and democratic socialist to win even one primary. His victories in over 20 states are an epic achievement in its own right. And, of course, both of these distinctions follow the barrier-breaking presidency of the country's first black president, Barack Hussein Obama.

As the country moves closer to embodying its ideals of diversity, equality, and opportunity for all, there has never been a more exciting time to be an American.

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It is true that many of today's most urgent social challenges remain unresolved. Mr. Obama's presidency has done little to quash racism; the achievement of marriage equality has reinforced discriminatory laws directed against gay and transgendered people; and we face the worst income inequality since the founding of the republic.

But despite the problems we need to solve, this election is a symbol of hope. A decade ago, though sadly just as important and ever-present, racism was not in quite as stark a national spotlight as it is now; transgender issues were not much discussed either; marriage equality seemed like only a dream; and tax cuts flowed to the wealthy without check. Today, thanks in part to some historic candidates who have been moved to act by the outcries of the people, these issues, though highly contentious, are receiving the attention and forward-moving work that they deserve.
Did you see me? Did you hear me? And did anything that I said have any impact on your life? No matter where we come from, no matter where we are going, these are the three questions we unconsciously and incessantly ask our surrounding beings. Especially the ones that appeal to us the most.

Am I anything to you? Based on the answers we get, we trust, we reject, we guard or we flee. Based on them, we live. This is not a blog to condemn you on dependency and to urge you to look within and to magically transform to an autonomous creature.

Attention seeking is inextricably bound to validation famine. Am I important to you? Do I influence you in any way? Should I continue? Should I stop?

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We ask and ask again and based on these answers we move and we breathe, we rest and we run, we dare and we shrivel. Everything we are, our timidness, our audacity, our patience and our drive, is choreographed around the individuals fortunately found in our orbits.

Did you hear me? We are looking for affirmation. We are looking for authorization. We are looking for reinforcement. We ask. And we claim by avoiding open ended questions. We want to know. Yes or no? And when the answer is no, we either re-strategize or we collapse.

Holding on to social strings and fretting not to get caught up in them while trying to knit a shielding blanket for your breathing days, does not make you a marionette. It does not make you incapable. It only makes you human.

The problem with attention seeking is not that we ask for guidance. It is that sometimes, we overdo it. And in these occasions, this over zeal develops into too much thought and too much doubt.

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"Underwater swimmers" by my favorite Greek artist, Maria Filopoulou

When you find yourself oscillating between decisions, paralyzingly indecisive and feeling that you have lost your sense of self, try making minor attitude alterations that will eventually accumulate into a greater redemptive change.

When you find yourself regretting the past and overthinking the consequences of today, try seizing the moments of calmness that are already there. When you feel trapped between memory and anticipation and cannot feel the present, try recognizing the moments when you are resisting the least. Try appreciating the moments when you simply are.

Here is something that I have noticed about me: When I overthink -- and trust me, this happens a lot -- I many times realize that under a state of alertness and stress, my thoughts are rarely creative but are mostly repetitive and futile and most of the times cause even more anxiety. To step out of this vicious cycle, I assign my body with a calming strategy. I tie my shoelaces and I go out for endless walks, until I physically feel so tired that I cannot think anymore. And when though has subsided, I am present in the now, dropping the past and too exhausted to project in the future.

Besides physically draining oneself, I have found three questions that may help center you and make you self-reliant enough, to be able to defy anxiety and keep going.

Say you work in an environment where you feel like everyone judges you. Acknowledge how you feel and embrace it: accept it. You feel like everyone judges you. So in work per se, they paint a picture of you and they draw an outline in which you unfortunately find yourself in. They say you are unworthy and sometimes you believe them. But remember: this is who you are THERE. In the geographical location of your office. Use coordinates to your advantage. When you leave and threat is no longer tangible or seeable, ask yourself these three questions:

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1) Who are you in your room?

2) Who are you when you dive into the water and are still underwater?

3) Who are you when you are afraid for a split second, past-less and future-less, when the now only counts?

Then remember: it is in these past-less and purpose-less moments when you simply are. It is in the present moment that has been reduced to a byproduct or a means to an end, where you can find yourself and where you can simply be.
I've already cast my postal vote to stay part of the EU ahead of the upcoming referendum. It's an absolute no-brainer for me to ensure not only we're part of a bigger family of countries, but that by being part of it we can use our influence to improve LGBT rights in not just the UK, but the EU and, by example, the rest of the world.

As the MD and founder of travel company OutOfOffice.com that specialises in LGBT friendly tailor-made travel worldwide, I've made sure that every page on our company website includes up-to-date laws relating to LGBT people. It's a minefield and whilst marriage is allowed in some and adoption is legal in a few, we're still a long way from uniformity across Europe. But many of the laws that we benefit from today as an LGBT community are as a result of being part of the EU. An EU directive led to the UK ban on discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation in 2003.

Of course, if we choose Brexit then LGBT rights are unlikely to get worse in the UK, but we need to lead by example. If we leave, others will follow. Other countries will no longer be bound to offer equal rights to their citizens, as they are under many of the terms of EU membership. It's a staple of existing EU membership - you cannot become a member without offering protection to your citizens if they identify as LGBT.

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We need to use our collective power as part of the EU to ensure that those rights extend further. LGBT couples should be able to travel freely throughout the world without the fear of discrimination. But we have a long way to go.

We're still not at a stage where a same-sex marriage carried out in one EU territory receives the same recognition should that couple move to another EU state. The European Parliament is pushing for this recognition, but should we leave the EU we are by no means guaranteed to receive this benefit.

Imagine marrying the person you love and having to move abroad and your marriage effectively being worthless. That's a reality and that's something that we can only likely combat with EU membership. These arguments only add to those which I feel as someone running a travel business. The cost of travel will undoubtedly rise for all if we leave the EU. And that's before we even think about the negotiations and uncertainty that exists over what happens to reciprocal healthcare schemes, mobile roaming charges and a dip in the currency value.

I'm not naive. I worked as a television journalist for many years and visited the European Parliament on numerous occasions. It can be flabby, bureaucratic and complex. But the rights it affords LGBT citizens and the influence we have in the EU to continue to improve these rights not just for the UK but for the world is a vital reason we need to stay in the EU on June 23rd.

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The religious stigma surrounding divorce remains a powerful source of anguish for believers, but few congregations have ministries for people recovering from failed marriages, new studies find.

Forget what you might expect about shame and guilt over divorce being largely the relic of an earlier time before the culture became more accepting of a diversity of lifestyle choices, researchers state.

Feelings of personal failure and the perceived prejudices of others were pervasive even among young adult women in the U.S., one study revealed.

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And one place many of the women, both believers and non-believers, identified as a powerful source of stigma and judgment was religion.

"It's hard because I am Catholic so divorce is frowned upon," said a 28-year-old woman who finds herself slowly distancing herself from Catholicism.

Yet it is not just any one denomination that is falling short, the research suggests.

A separate in-depth study of 26 Indiana congregations across different Christian traditions found just three churches - two Catholic and one evangelical Protestant - had post-divorce programming.

The lack of pastoral care has not gone unnoticed.

In March, Pope Francis brought the issue of religion and divorce to international attention in an apostolic exhortation calling for less judgment and more compassionate care and support for divorced Catholics.

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Even those who remarry outside the church must be encouraged "not only to realize that they belong to the Church as the body of Christ, but also to know that they can have a joyful and fruitful experience in it," the pope said in Amoris Laetitia, the Joy of Love.

But research indicates faith communities still have a long way to go.

Alone in the crowd

A theme that runs through many of the studies on religion and divorce is just how much psychological damage divorce continues to inflict.

Eight of the nine participants in the in-depth study of young adult women spoke of identifying as failures after their divorce.

Divorce "has been a source of embarrassment for me and I'm not someone who is embarrassed by anything," one 27-year-old business professional admitted.

She is among many women who are fearful of revealing their divorced status on dating sites, at work or to all but their closest friends.

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"Feelings of failure and perceptions of blame pervaded the narratives of the women, confirming the underlying power of social expectations related to the sanctity of marriage," researchers from the University of Massachusetts reported in the Journal of Divorce & Remarriage.

A separate study focusing on 11 divorced Catholic women and men in Slovenia found each participant reported feelings of loneliness, rejection, unworthiness and insecurity.

What helped aid them in their recovery was a close personal relationship with a divinity they believed cared about them and would not leave their side.

"For two years now I have prayed to God to give me strength--I pray every morning to him to get strength, to give me strength," one divorced person said.

But the other leg associated with the relation of religion and positive mental health in many studies are social networks -- the access to friendship, support systems and feelings of being part of communities that validate the inherent worth of the individual in difficult times.

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And that type of outreach and support is missing in many congregations.

One four-year ethnographic study of 41 individuals across six faith traditions found even as divorced individuals turned to comforting rituals and worship services to ease their pain they experienced "a marked sense of aloneness, resulting from individual shame and congregational silence."

A black Baptist man active in the same church most of his life recalled a group of people who talked behind his back as he sat in his pew crying after his rst marriage ended.

A Reform Jewish woman did not reveal details of her separation to congregants for fear of gossip and harsh judgment. "You don't tell them everything, because they're all yentas; everybody's a yenta."

In a Unitarian Universalist congregation, there was a perceived taboo about discussing divorce.

Several divorced Catholics reported feeling like "lepers" listening to homily after homily about the sanctity of marriage while never hearing words of comfort in their direction.

"One might expect that I would nd heightened aloneness and silence in conservative congregations, where heterosexual marriage is highly valued and divorce openly discouraged, but lingering shame and silence around divorce was present for respondents in liberal congregations as well," sociologist Kathleen Jenkins of William & Mary reported.

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"The persistence of marriage and life partnerships as cultural ideals shaped feelings of shame for divorced congregants and fueled silence around discussion of divorce across religious traditions," she added.

Are you currently married, widowed, divorced, separated, or have you never been married?





General Social Survey 2014



Making congregations whole

What are the characteristics of congregations that provide support and outreach to individuals in troubled unions?

The Indiana study found the markers include a willingness to empower laypeople in these ministries and having clergy with a realistic sense of confidence of how they can help people in failing marriages.

It also required a delicate balance between upholding the value of lifelong marriage, while acknowledging the reality that sometimes marriages fail.

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"When congregations draw boundaries around the prohibition against divorce too tightly, either there will be no divorce in the congregation or pastors will not hear about it from congregants--either because divorced parishioners conceal their troubles or divorcees exit," sociologist Mary Ellen Konieczny of the University of Notre Dame said in the journal Sociology of Religion.

"On the other hand, where there is less clarity and more plurality around marriage models, such as in progressive churches of the mainline, divorce can become normalized--and then, similarly, couples do not approach pastors because divorce seems inevitable, and pastors feel that there is little that they can do besides accommodate divorce," she noted.

Either way, just giving up or, in the pope's words, simply applying moral laws "as if they were stones to throw at people's lives," the suffering of divorced individuals is only likely to increase, research indicates.



Test your knowledge of religion and singles with an engaging quiz and accompanying story.
Dark clouds gather as the UK will vote on whether to remain in the European Union on June 24th, 2016 - BREXIT

Since standing as a Conservative Parliamentary Candidate in 2010, I have worked with charities and social enterprises supporting some of the UK's most vulnerable people. These outstanding organisations help homeless people move into accommodation, employment, education and training, rehabilitate offenders, support people who have been long term unemployed into work and help children in care find their forever families. What's strikes me about the EU Referendum debate is how little has been talked about how the EU helps us be a kinder and stronger society and country.

Every year, the EU spends over 1.5 billion in the UK tackling disadvantage and spreading opportunity through the European Social Fund and the European Regional Development Fund targeting areas of deprivation and real need. This vital funding has created real social change; for example, between 2007 and 2015, 521,000 people who are long term unemployed have been helped into jobs and 533,000 disadvantaged young people have been helped to enter employment, education or training. In 2005, after the collapse of MG Rover, the EU helped fund an emergency job-finding taskforce for the 6,000 staff made redundant.

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Over the next five years, EU funding will help people into employment, support the disabled, ethnic minorities and ex-offenders and help people into apprenticeships. Examples of projects funded include the Bad Boys Bakery helping inmates in Brixton Prison become bakers when they are released around and Social Farming which is a rural project helping change the lives of people living with disabilities.

As employees, the EU has helped us too; it's given us the right to not work more than 48 hours a week, it's enabled men and women to have equal pay and it has ensured that workers have holiday pay.

Not only has the EU helped us build a kind and strong society at home, it helps us build friendships with countries who were once our enemies. Europe is historically the continent that has most been at war; virtually every decade before the EU was founded, a European country was at war with another. Winston Churchill said that our task was to "re-create the European Family, or as much of it as we can, and provide it with a structure under which it can dwell in peace, in safety and in freedom." Europe has been at peace for the last fifty years and the EU has also seen the end of dictatorships across Southern Europe, helping democracy and human rights flourish.

So, while those wanting us to leave have resorted to scaring us about immigration, let's remember what the EU has done to help us as a nation be kinder and stronger both at home and abroad and Vote Remain.
Donald Trump shamed himself and his party -- and flunked judicial ethics 101 -- with his flagrantly racist suggestion that an Indiana-born federal judge hearing a lawsuit against his sham Trump University had an "inherent conflict of interest" because he was "of Mexican heritage."

Putting aside Mr. Trump's noxious pronouncements (which also included a suggestion that a Muslim judge might be similarly biased), there are situations, unrelated to a judge's race, ethnicity, gender, or religion, when a genuine conflict of interest exists, and a judge's recusal is essential for preserving the appearance and reality of judicial fairness central to the nation's justice system.

Ruling in such a case on Thursday the Supreme Court, in Williams v. Pennsylvania, correctly overturned the death sentence of a Pennsylvania death row inmate named Terrance Williams because of a glaring, due process-denying conflict. In 2014, Mr. Williams's death sentence (for a brutal killing he committed at age 18) was upheld by members of Pennsylvania's Supreme Court, including then-Chief Justice Ronald Castille -- the same man who, as Philadelphia's district attorney years earlier, approved and oversaw Mr. Williams's prosecution and the state's post-trial defense of the death verdict.

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"Where a judge has had an earlier significant, personal involvement as a prosecutor in a critical decision in the defendant's case, the risk of actual bias in the judicial proceeding rises to an unconstitutional level," Justice Anthony Kennedy, the court's swing justice, wrote in the majority opinion this week, which was joined by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan. "The due process guarantee that 'no man can be a judge in his own case' would have little substance if it did not disqualify a former prosecutors from sitting in judgment of a prosecution in which he or she had made a critical decision," Justice Kennedy explained.

"Bias is easy to attribute to others and difficult to discern in oneself," Justice Kennedy observed, a point stressed in an amicus brief filed by colleagues of mine at the Brennan Center for Justice. The brief argued that recusal requests merit independent review and that decisions should not be left to the very same judges whose potential bias is under question.

Mr. Williams had been scheduled for execution in March 2015. His death was averted when Pennsylvania's Democratic governor, Tom Wolf, declared a death penalty moratorium.

Campaigning for election to Pennsylvania's highest court in 1993, Mr. Castille boasted of sending Mr. Williams and 44 other defendants to death row. Greatly compounding the apparent impartiality problem, the decision Mr. Castille was so determined to participant in directly implicated his own record as district attorney. The decision in question tossed out a lower court ruling that ordered a new sentencing hearing for Mr. Williams based on a finding of serious ethical misconduct by the trial prosecutor -- Mr. Castille's subordinate in the DA's office -- in intentionally hiding evidence that Mr. Williams had been sexually abused by his victim, which might have helped avoid the death sentence.

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Far from a convincing model of judicial neutrality, the situation "gave rise to an unacceptable risk of actual bias," Justice Kennedy and four of his colleagues sensibly concluded. It did not matter that Mr. Castille's vote was not decisive and the ruling upholding Mr. Williams' death sentence was unanimous. The participation of an interested member tainted the deliberative process and undermined public trust.

Justice Kennedy & Co. deserve praise for recognizing a severe affront to the Constitution's promise of due process of law. But by any reasonable reckoning, this was not a tough call. It is troubling that Chief Justice John Roberts, who should be leading the way on elevating judicial ethics, instead dissented. along with two other justices on the court's right flank, Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas.

The Chief Justice's dissenting opinion faulted the majority opinion for relying "on proverb rather than precedent." That glib critique ignores both the soundness of the legal maxim against acting as a judge in your own case and the Court's proud 2009 ruling, in Caperton v. A.T. Massey Coal Co., also authored by Justice Kennedy, which found "an unconstitutional potential for bias" in the refusal of a member of West Virginia's Supreme Court to recuse himself in a case involving someone who just spent $3 million to help elect him.

Chief Justice Roberts also dissented from that landmark victory for fair courts, which Justice Kennedy was able to cite for support in his Williams opinion.

This week's due process victory, although still a big win, was just 5-3, despite the egregiousness of the judicial conflict of interest. It should have been 8-0.
To paraphrase Einstein 'Passion without science is blind, and science without passion is lame'. The case for human expansion into the cosmos is often made with passion but involves little actual science. Here's what I mean.

Manifest Destiny V2.0

First of all, whether humans reach the stars, or even destinations in the outer solar system, is not a matter of technology at all, although it is often couched in these terms. Proponents love to invoke the 'If you build it they will come' and Human Manifest Destiny arguments for space travel at these scales. All you have to do is invest in the creation of the infrastructure for travel (rockets etc) and that alone will open up the universe to humanity. But in actuality, whether we decide as a Society to make the journey or not is not an engineering question at all .Instead, it is the result of answering the three questions human explorers have had to answer. Where should we go? What will we do when we get there? and How will it benefit folks back home?

For millions of years, human exploration has been on foot, and we have moved from place to place within a very lovely and nurturing biosphere. We have not had to drag along our own oxygen supply and food as we went. We have not had to live in pressurized spacesuits or confining habitats as we traveled from Africa to Northern Europe and the Americas. All we needed to do is to follow our migrating food supply and wear a bit of clothing. This has led to what is essentially the genetically-inherited notion that humans should, and can, always expand into new niches of the world with a little bit of ingenuity and a hungry stomach. In essence our Manifest Destiny of travel and exploration is literally an idea carried in our genes. Even most non-human species have this same notion, though they do not verbalize it as well as we humans. There is absolutely no penalty for acting upon this exploration meme, and no matter in what niche you end up on the face of Earth, you can always create a suitable set of technological solutions to help you adapt to the climate and hunt for food. In most cases, it costs next to nothing to set up these habitats as any Alaskan survivalist will be more than happy to tell you. All you need is an ax and a stand of trees. But as anyone will tell you, these are not the conditions that prevail in space.

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There is not a single destination in the solar system where humans can survive without a spacesuit and a confined, pressurized and sealed habitat. I am not making this up because I am a dour astronomer trying to crush your dreams of colonization. So already as humans accustomed to open spaces and the freedom of wearing light clothing most of the time, we are already out of our league when it comes to living on the easily accessible landscapes beyond Earth. What does Manifest Destiny look like under these conditions? Instead of it being supported by the inexpensive demands of walking around in our nurturing biosphere, it is now a socially--costly activity for those living on Earth with no prospects that more than a few hundred of the 7 billion humans will directly benefit from the journey. As any space economist will tell you, what is mined and created in space has to stay there. Again, it has nothing to do with the particular technology for getting there.

A bit of history.

Right now, it cost $150 billion to create the International Space Station in near-Earth orbit. This 6-person, cramped, rabbits-warren of tunnels is constantly re-supplied by cargo shuttles carrying oxygen, water and food to keep astronauts alive. The ISS is also close enough to Earth that, psychologically, the astronauts still feel connected to the lovely Blue Marble they see outside their windows. They can even Tweet and Skype! Physiologically, although we can stem the tide of muscular and skeletal degeneration, on long-term visits, the immune systems of astronauts get trashed. Keeping people in aseptic environments is the fastest way we know to weakening the immune system, but this is the assumed environment for space activities: No dirt allowed!

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No other major human expedition on Earth was launched for purely scientific reasons. They were always based upon a geopolitical (national pride) or economic ('There be gold in them thar hills!') argument whether it was Marco Polo, Leif Ericsson, Sir Francis Drake, or the NASA space program, which took us to the moon. For anyone to argue that 'striving to explore the unknown' is the primary reason, neither does not understand actual human history nor understands how human exploration has been carried out and for what reasons. It has always been for economic returns, or a demonstration of political prowess, or security.

So what do we do?
MINSK, BEALRUS - JUNE 8: (RUSSIA OUT) Russian President Vladimir Putin attends talks at the Presidential Palace on June 8, 2016 in Minsk, Belarus. Vladimir Putin is having a one-day visit to Minsk to attend the 3rd Regional Forum of Russia and Belarus (Photo by Mikhail Svetlov/Getty Images)

I write this from my hotel room overseeing the Russian Foreign Ministry's iconic main building, a gigantic Stalinist-style skyscraper that was built as one of Moscow's famous "Seven Sisters" between 1947 and 1953. Having witnessed the rise and fall of the Soviet empire, the building has recently re-emerged as a global power broker, particularly when it comes to the Middle East.

However, for an outsider, Moscow's foreign policy seems intensely confusing to say the least. For instance, Russia remains the only power in the world (aside from Iran) that backs Syria's dictatorship, a brutal regime that justifies its actions by claiming it is a victim of its anti-Israeli, anti-American position.

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Yet this Russian support did not prevent Moscow from giving a warm welcome recently to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who was visiting to mark the 25th anniversary of diplomatic relations between the two countries. This comes just weeks after announcing that Israel does not intend to ever return the Golan Heights - which it seized in 1967 - to Syria.

Another oxymoron, in which Russia may be similar to many Middle Eastern countries, is the awkward love / hate relationship with the United States. I must admit that upon visiting Moscow for the first time, the sight of the golden arches of McDonalds and other popular US brands almost everywhere was a real shocker.

It is not only Russia's history of communism that makes these sights awkward. It is the current, intense local media coverage of bilateral relations, which makes one feel like the two nations are still at war. Asked about Moscow's peculiar foreign policy, some local journalists and political analysts are full of praise, adding that it is pragmatism at its very best and ensures Russian interests are always served.

However, one expert candidly said these "Cold War tactics" ensured that people rally behind the flag and do not pay attention to the worsening economy since the collapse of the ruble in 2014.

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The dispute over SyriaA major battleground of this new Cold War is Syria, where Moscow and Washington - along with most Gulf states - back opposing sides. Ironically, despite Russia's military involvement, the average citizens you meet here are not able to locate Damascus on a map, let alone distinguish between regime loyalists, Al-Nusra and ISIS.

However, not everyone here is as detached. Almost a year ago, Russia's Orthodox Church controversially described Moscow's involvement in Syria as a "holy war," though it later claimed its position was distorted by the media.

Experts I spoke to say Russia's backing of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is a matter of principle, citing Moscow's concern for global stability and a lack of desire to see the Libyan debacle (for which they blame US involvement) being repeated in Syria.

If this is the case, one could safely deduce that Moscow would have no issue with Assad's removal if it is done in a way that preserves Syria, or what is left of it. At least this is what should be understood from the recent comments of the Foreign Ministry's official spokesperson Maria Zakharova. In March, she told the local Sputnik News agency that Russia backs a legitimate authority in Syria, "not Assad personally."

This was perceived as a positive sign by many in the Syrian opposition and among their Gulf backers. However, there seems to be conflicting views and more than one say in Moscow when it comes to this issue. Some advisors may feel this would be too much of a compromise, and a victory to the US-backed side. As such, more senior Russian officials have made it clear that it they won't force Assad to leave, particularly if he is reelected by his people (or what remains of them).

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Gulf states oppose any solution that does not guarantee the removal of the Iran-backed Assad, particularly following their massive financial, military and - most importantly - personal investment in this matter since 2011.

Yet things are changing, and there is a new, dynamic government in Saudi Arabia that is eager to move things forward. While Riyadh continues to maintain its position that Assad should be removed either by diplomatic or military means, we have seen unprecedented determination not to allow differences with Moscow on this matter to affect overall relations.

Close cooperation between Riyadh and Moscow cannot but be helpful, particularly when it comes to regional and oil-market stability. Most recently, Russia has proposed to mediate between the Saudis and Iranians.

Though neither Tehran nor Riyadh has jumped on the offer, the mere fact that Moscow made such a proposal is interesting. For its part, Saudi Arabia has repeatedly maintained that it wants good relations with Iran, but that it must stop meddling in its neighbors' internal affairs.

Russia also seems ready to play a bigger role in Israeli-Palestinian talks. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov reportedly brought up the Arab Peace Initiative during Netanyahu's recent visit. However, without reconciliation between Palestinian factions Hamas and Fatah, Israel will always have an excuse to stay away from the negotiating table.

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I leave Moscow with a much better grasp of its positions. However, given that I was there to participate in a media forum, I cannot but say that signing bilateral media agreements with the likes of the discredited Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) will not help clarify Russia's positions in the Middle East.

Regardless of whether it can convince the Arab street of its stance, Moscow would benefit much more from a stronger presence on mainstream and credible Arabic media outlets. This cannot be achieved by partnering with a state-owned news agency that has, in the midst of a civil war, reported that tourism is on the rise in Syria. The only thing on the rise in the country is terrorism; it is only by closer cooperation with the Gulf that this can be stopped.


Credit: Huffington Post images

As we all know, the plastic bouffant presidential candidate has made it beyond clear that he is really running on a single plank: Make America Male Again. To do that, he has assured us on regular occasion, requires only that you "have a young and beautiful piece of ass" beside you.

Sometimes the candidate gets it right even when he doesn't know it. Having a smart woman at your side may very well save your ass.

If there is much of a sane future for humans on this earth, it's clearer every day that it will be guided by the female half of the species. More than ever the world's population is coming to acknowledge that gender truth. The most striking study documenting our global shift toward women's leadership took place already four years ago. John Gerzema and Michael d'Antonio surveyed some 64 thousand men and women in nearly every possible orbit of the globe. Their core question addressed attitudes toward leadership and power.

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As Gerzema and D'Antonio reported in The Athena Doctrine, two-thirds of the people surveyed--41,000 people--agreed with the statement "the world would be a better place if men thought more like women."

So what does it mean to think like a woman? Clever researchers, Gerzema and D'Antonio did not pose that question directly. Instead, they asked half their subject to label 125 different behavioral traits--like selfless, trustworthy, rugged, generous, dynamic agile, understanding, curious and down-to-earth--as masculine or feminine or neither. They gave the the same list of traits to the other 32,000 study participants, but instead of asking them to categorize the traits as masculine or feminine, they asked the participants to rate the importance of each to certain values: leadership, success, morality, and happiness.

"By comparing the two samples," they wrote, "we could now statistically model how masculine and feminine traits relate to solving today's challenges." Regardless of age, gender, or culture, they found, "people around the world feel that feminine traits correlate more strongly with making the world a better place." In conclusion: "many of the qualities of an ideal modern leader are considered feminine."

Feminine, but not wealthy. While candidate Trump's appeal seems to have everything to do with his net worth (which might or might not be inflated), wealth did not rank high in leadership qualities. That may be why candidate Clinton has tried repeatedly to soft-pedal her own considerable net worth. Far more important in a leader, according to the study, were achieving happiness for their children and building vibrant local communities. Proving you know that "it takes a village to raise a child," apparently, suggests greater leadership potential than proving you know about dicking other people out of their money.

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Still: if two-thirds of the 64,000 people in Gerzema and D'Antonio's study identified "feminine values and characteristics" as better leadership qualities, what about the other third? Candidate Trump has focused almost exclusively on those who want leaders with penises in his unashamedly misogynistic insults to women in power--and in his unsubtle (and effective) efforts to emasculate his primary opponents. Trump's resounding success in channeling the anger and resentment of the one-third of mostly white males who feel themselves left behind by a changing world--an appeal to masculinist resentment that might also explain the improbable flourishing of the Bernie bro--voters' responses in this dark election year confirm just how much of the the American electorate would rather see the nation descend into chaos than submit to the inevitable victory of feminine wisdom over masculine assertion.

The increasing frenzy of gender chatter--be it about toilets, pay gaps or relative brain size and function--shows that the waning of masculine hegemony is a disturbing reality for those who harbor fixed ideas about what gender means. Not all such discontents are Trump supporters, Republicans, or even men. Many feminists, including apparently the icon Gloria Steinem, refuse to acknowledge the hard science on brain and gender fluidity, arguing that people born with XY chromosomes and testicles can never understand the social reality of growing up with double XXs, while the angry Trumpeters scream ever more loudly that relinquishing power to XXs betrays God's Laws and threatens their own ultimate emasculation.
This article first appeared on the blog of Intentional Insights, a nonprofit organization that empowers people to refine and reach their goals by providing research-based content to help improve thinking, feeling, and behavior patterns.

How do you live happily ever after when there's a love triangle?

Mary, an electrician, and Bob, an administrative assistant, are happily married, and have been for 5 years. They met in their high school ninth-grade math class, where they sat at the same desk. Bob began courting Mary two weeks after they met. By tenth grade, they had been going steady for 6 months. They got engaged at the end of eleventh grade, and married right after their high school graduation. They are widely known as a great couple, and get along with each other really well. One day, John was hired at Mary's electric company. John was handsome, outgoing, thoughtful, caring -- exactly Mary's type. Coincidentally, she was asked to train him. As a result, they spent a lot of time together, told each other about their lives, and got really close. Mary was really attracted to John, and wanted to have a romantic relationship with him, and he was happy to do so.

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How does this story continue? Let's imagine Scenario 1, where Mary and Bob are a traditional couple representative of the American mainstream. Mary really struggles with what to do. On the one hand, Bob is a great husband, and she loves him. On the other hand, she's head over heels for John, and wants to have a romantic relationship with him. Finally, she gives in to her passion. She cheats on Bob, sleeps with John, and feels terrible about it. But she can't stop herself from going forward with John. Eventually, Bob finds out. He's very hurt and outraged, and asks for a divorce. There is pain and suffering all around.

But does it have to be this way? Let's imagine Scenario 2. Mary and Bob are part of the growing movement, especially widespread among young people like themselves, called polyamory. Polyamory, often abbreviated as "poly," is the practice of having more than one romantic relationship at a time with the knowledge and consent of everyone involved. Mary goes to Bob and tells him in an open and straightforward fashion about her attraction to John. Bob is glad to accept Mary's desire to have a romantic relationship with John, and Mary and Bob discuss how to most effectively integrate her new relationship with their current one.

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Being open to new ways of thinking and feeling about romantic relationships is part of a broader intentional strategy of evaluating reality more clearly by re-examining our cached patterns. This term refers to habits of thought and feelings in our mind that we absorbed uncritically from the social environment around us, as opposed to conclusions we arrived at by our own intentional reasoning. So if we were creating the best ways to thinking about romantic relationships from scratch, would it not make a lot of sense to orient ourselves toward decreasing stress and suffering, and instead increasing transparency and openness? Thinking probabilistically, openness and acceptance of poly relationships as one among many mainstream relationship styles is going to be the most likely outcome of this reasoning process. Re-evaluating our cached patterns of thought and feeling enables us to see reality more clearly, make more effective decisions, and achieve our goals, thus helping us gain agency in romantic relationships and other life areas.
I think the one thing we can all agree on is that we've never seen an election cycle like this one before. I don't care what generation you are a part of, this is a whole new level of crazy.

Me, I've been keeping relatively quiet politically, both on social media and in my writing. Until now, that is. Maybe it's because my views surprise even me. Or maybe it's because I can't stand the hate-infused rhetoric from everyone on all sides and I don't want to be a part of it. It leaves me weary and losing hope in humanity as a whole and certainly, us as a country. And nothing could be further from who I am, or maybe who I've been up until now.

The thing is I was a Clinton supporter from the get-go in '92. I had faith that surpassed any doubt. I was certain. A true believer. I loved the charismatic governor from Hope and his wife. I was the one wearing the "Give 'em Health, Hillary" button in the 90's.

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I cheered when Hillary Clinton ran for the Senate seat from my home state of New York. I still have the banners tucked away in my closet. And in '08, I was Hillary all the way, until she conceded. And even then, I cried my little eyes out, because I wanted her to be president.

Then she became Madame Secretary, and I was thrilled. I could sleep nights, knowing she was the one representing the United States around the world.

I never doubted she would run for president again. And I never doubted that my allegiance would be to her campaign for the presidency. Never doubted it.

So what happened?

Fracking. And GMO's. And not an inkling of a shot at single payer healthcare. And plenty of talk of Wall Street and corporate backers. (The email thing always seemed like a bunch of hooey to me, so frankly, that never weighed into my opinion.)

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And why was it so damn hard to just come out one way or the other on issues, particularly when there is an obvious right way to go? (Hint - fracking is bad. Ask a scientist or ten.)

And maybe I wouldn't have veered off-course had there been no alternative, but along came Bernie Sanders, and I'll be honest with you - at first, I laughed.

My initial thought was he would last five minutes, push Hillary to the left, where she should have been to begin with, and then he'd be done. And her campaign and the Democratic Party would be the better for it.

But then I started listening to the curmudgeonly grandpa figure and I agreed with everything he said. And I didn't have to wonder where he stood on the issues. And his record supported his rhetoric. And he was willing to fight the fights that needed fighting, not just the ones he knew he could win. He wanted what I wanted, and his money wasn't coming from people whose interests were at odds with my own. His money was coming from me and people like me, who believed that we are truly all in this together.

So what of my twenty-four years of Clinton loyalty? Was it out the window, just like that?

It's not that I wasn't "with her" anymore. It's that I wasn't sure she was with me. I was feeling betrayed by someone I had supported my entire adult life. And no matter how much the media or the DNC wanted to ignore the fact that there was a viable alternative in Bernie Sanders, millions like me knew there was and made a point of voting that way.

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So here we are. Hillary is heir apparent in a country that was founded precisely on the premise of no one being heir apparent. And as pissed off as I am about that, we've got bigger fish to fry in this election.

So how do we reconcile what these past months have been in ugliness, and find a way to join together and embrace and support Hillary Clinton for president?

I have been giving this a tremendous amount of thought, and here's what I've come up with:

Hillary Rodham Clinton has been First Lady, Senator, and Secretary of State. She has been under attack for the entirety of her adult life, and not only has stayed the course, but kept her dignity amid the most intense scrutiny and some of the most gut-wrenching personal situations any of us would ever find ourselves in.

She has risen, time and time again, against false accusations and incessant criticism. I have to believe that, at this point, it would be much easier for her to be sipping a margarita on a beach somewhere and bouncing a grandchild on her lap than it would be to put herself through the endless barrage of stuff leveled against her daily, warranted or not. And because of the fresh kind of hell presidential elections are, I must believe that she knows she's still got some good left to do - for all of us. And that is her motivating factor.

She certainly doesn't need the money or the aggravation. So it must be that there is some good left to be done. And like President Obama, she knows that she can rise to the occasion in these very difficult and complex times and have something valuable to offer.

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I also think that if doubt has been cast about her trustworthiness, that we must entertain the possibility that someone paid a lot of money for us to think that way. And so the question must be asked: who benefits most from casting doubt? Who benefits if all the Democrats divide and fight and lose sight of what matters? Right, the Republicans.

So I've come full circle. I started with Hillary and I'm finishing with Hillary. And I think her candidacy and her presidency will be the better because my vote was hard won. And because we will be watching and asking and holding feet to the fire to make sure that the American people are whose interests are being represented.
FILE - In this undated file photo, the statues of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Teddy Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln are shown at Mount Rushmore in South Dakota. A 9-year-old Texas boy who's losing his vision will get the chance to fulfill his wish to see Mount Rushmore National Memorial in South Dakota. Ben Pierce's trip is an effort of South Dakota's Department of Tourism, businesses and attractions in the Black Hills, and celebrity chef and talk show host Rachel Ray, the Argus Leader newspaper reported. (AP Photo, File)

The voice of political populism rings loud and clear this election season. We hear it from both the Right and the Left. But we have heard it before, in the elegant cadences of the late nineteenth century: "You shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns; you shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold." This was William Jennings Bryan in 1896, running for president of the United States and addressing the Democratic National Convention that year.

Never mind the religious underlay of his words, or the economic debate behind them over the demerits of the gold standard for American coinage. Bryan's words stirred the hearts and minds of struggling Americans back then. They could now, too. Either of the energetic populists running for president today--Bernie Sanders or Donald Trump--could quote them effectively. Supporters would supply the meaning that fits our times.

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Perfect storms, rare as they are, do repeat. Bryan was speaking in the thick of America's so-called Gilded Age. What was happening back then? A perfect storm of political, economic, and demographic disorientation for working people. Huge corporations run by the super-wealthy manipulated politicians. Captains of industry (robber barons) abused the working classes. In those years, the richest 1% owned 47% of the nation's property. The base of the economy was shifting from agriculture to industry. Farmers struggled with railroads for reasonable rates to transport their goods. Within the shifting economy, old skills lost their use. Within a generation or two, the percent of American labor involved with agriculture and food supply dropped from 80% to 2%. Workers within the rising industrial economy lived meanly, labored long hours, had little access to education or chance - despite Horatio Alger stories - of advancing. Meantime, impoverished immigrants were pouring in from southern and eastern Europe, seeking opportunity and in many cases finding xenophobic unwelcome.

Sound familiar? It should. We're in another perfect storm of political, economic, and demographic reorientation. Only now the economic shift is from an industrial to an information base. And now the immigrants are from Mexico and Latin America. (Under more humanitarian guidelines, there could be many more from war-torn Syria.) The economic disparities are as dismal as back then. As Bernie Sanders repeatedly tells us, quoting the National Bureau of Economic Research, the top 0.1 percent - that's one tenth of one percent - of American families own 22 percent of the nation's wealth.

William Jennings Bryan lost the election of 1896 to William McKinley, who enjoyed Wall Street backing. But the story of the Gilded Age does not end there. And here is where history holds out hope for resolution of our own perfect storm. For within a few years of Bryan's defeat, a leader arose who implemented what the progressive voices of protest against the injustices of the day were demanding. It was Theodore Roosevelt, a Republican, and 26th president of the United States. Embodying the objectives of the Progressive movement, he enacted much of the legislation that Bryan advocated - breaking up huge corporations, limiting the power of campaign contributions, and protecting the average person from unregulated industry. Roosevelt's genius was to channel public frustration with government into positive political and economic change at a moment when the structure in both parties was fluid. He fought conservatives in his own party to push his agenda.

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Teddy Roosevelt initiated and oversaw an era of broad political and social reform. Under his leadership, Congress enacted legislation to break the industrial monopolies, improve food and drug safety, regulate railroad shipping rates, and stop direct political contributions from corporations and unions--a law overturned by the Supreme Court in 2010. In response to "muckraking" journalists exposing corruption, constitutional amendments passed that empowered the people to elect senators directly, the government to levy income tax, and women to vote. This was the beginning of presidential primaries, whose purpose was to wrest control of presidential politics from backroom deals.

In short, the Progressive movement empowered the people. In their protests against the economic abuses of capitalism, the Progressives did not kill it, but reformed and energized it--and made America great.

If American history in the early 21st century follows the example set by Roosevelt in the early 20th, we may all hope for a bright future. The stage is set but the action is unfinished, for our update of Teddy Roosevelt is still to come. Our perfect storm of economic disparity, party instability, and demographic shift is raging. And the populist voice of William Jennings Bryan is sounding again in the speeches of Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump. Millions have rallied around them. Just as in the Gilded Age of the late 1890s, Trump and Sanders defy the monied interests - whether they are called 1 percenters, oligarchs, party leaders, or the old fashioned fat cats -- and channel the input of We the People once again in American politics. In an improbable pairing, Sanders and Trump together are repeating the message of William Jennings Bryan.

A few quotations from their speeches make the point. From Sanders: "At a time when so few have so much, and so many have so little, we must reject the foundations of this contemporary economy as immoral and unsustainable." As though to right those moral wrongs, Trump speaks out for trade agreements that "will serve the interests of American workers - not Wall Street insiders that want to move U.S. manufacturing and investment offshore." Both candidates fault, as Bryan would have too, an ineffective Congress that has stalled on laws to help the common person. They denounce the tax advantages for the superrich, who use their wealth to buy elections.

Sadly, the xenophobia of Bryan's time is also repeating. Let's not forget that the immigrants of a century ago--Catholics from Ireland, Italy and Poland, and Jews from Germany, Hungary, Eastern Europe and Russia--helped build America into one of the most ethnically and religiously pluralistic nations on earth. Here we can correct for errors of the past. Xenophobia has been an American illness at various times. Let it not be one now. Immigrants are not stealing jobs, nor are they a threat. They are, in fact, powering the U.S. economy, not only by taking the jobs that many people won't do, but also by bringing in new energy and expertise. That has been true throughout American history. Most immigrant groups--whether Jews and Catholics a century ago, or Mexicans and Muslims today--have entered the U.S. under economic or political duress. Against the odds, they channeled their gifts into what became their new home. Thanks to immigration, America has become a model of how both democracy and capitalism can operate among a highly diverse people. And people everywhere, especially those suffering under totalitarian regimes, admire and long for this type of government for their countries.

In one way, the campaign of 1896 does differ markedly from today's campaign. The medium of the message has radically changed. Bryan did not have the Internet. And here is a paradox. The information technology that has propelled the campaigns--Twitter for Trump, smart phones for Sanders--are part of the industry that accounts for much of the job loss the candidates decry. For all that it promises, the age of information has taken a toll. Not enough of us have been trained for work in the new, digital economy. Educators worry over the social cost of new media addictions. The social media are conduits of much false, malignant, and damaging information. We don't hear so much about this from the candidates. And so to survey the full moral import of this election cycle, let's step back from it a bit.

This presidential campaign has raised hopes for a new moral leadership in America, unbeholden to moneyed interests. That is why I, as a religious leader and a Muslim at that, am writing now, to underscore the moral dimension to American political life. I believe there has always been a moral imperative in American politics. The notion that all of us are created equal with inalienable rights endowed by our creator, as Jefferson wrote and Lincoln so effectively adduced to reunite the nation, is always at work in this country.

This is a moral principle underlying not only my Islamic faith, but also Christianity and Judaism - all the Abrahamic faiths. All people are equal in the eyes of God. The party that embraces that goal will sustain and extend the greatness of America. And not just of America. For America at its best sends a global message of equality and fair play that attracts the imagination of people everywhere. It is this vision of equality that energizes the speeches of Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump.

We have at hand, in Trump and Sanders, the populist voice of William Jennings Bryan. We await our 21st century version of Theodore Roosevelt, who will consolidate and render effective the moral energies in play.
On March 4, 2016, I wrote about the Health Benefits of Taking a Vacation. These include reducing stress, keeping your heart healthy, and improving your mental health and relationships. But often, when we return from vacation we feel like someone doused us in proverbial cold water.

A WebMD article on how to bounce back after vacation describes post-vacation life this way: "The old routine may feel like the force of gravity after days of weightlessness -- a familiar burden that suddenly feels harder to bear."

To bring back that vacation feeling any time you need a little boost, consider these five "vacation-triggers."

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1) Choose a favorite vacation photo as the wallpaper on your computer, the lock screen image on your phone, or the screen saver on any electronic device. UK professor and founder of the European Centre for Environment and Human Health Michael Depledge launched a study in 2012 determining the effects of "blue space", or images of landscape that contained greenery and water. Depledge's team found that people who see water and green landscapes (or who live near the coast) have improved health and well being.

So changing the images on your electronics and gazing at the peaceful places you found serenity or joy will help you de-stress.

2) Bring home those little bottles of shampoo, body wash, and conditioner and hotel soaps. Our senses of smell are closely linked with memory. The Association for Psychological Science and others cite many publications and studies on this subject, and a popular Twenty One Pilots song even references this idea in their song Stressed Out("Sometimes a certain smell will take me back to when I was young...") Your brain will automatically associate the smell of the hotel soap and personal cleansing liquids with the vacation so all you have to do is breathe in the scent to feel waves of relaxation.

3) Listen to vacation-related music. Was your recent trip to Jamaica? Listen to some reggae. Did you car trip the American South? Florida Georgia Line, Lynard Skynard, or Alabama Shakes might be what you need to reminisce. Any time I want to be transported back to my wedding and honeymoon, I put on Cafe Tahiti's Bora Bora and feel myself transport to the turquoise waters and island rhythm.

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4) Read a book set in the location of your vacation. Find a local author whose writing gives you a definite sense of place. The book could be nonfiction or historical; poems celebrating life and love at that location; or a fictional story set in the country, city, or state. A new app called Squirl helps you find story locations. Relive your adventures and stumble across scenery where you can say, "I was there," with a knowing smile.

5) Watch a movie set in the location of your vacation. If you don't know of any movies filmed in Timbuktu or Detroit or wherever you last were, check out Movie Locations. The site lets you search by film title, actors, or by locations around the world. Did you know, for example, that the movie Fargo was filmed in both Minnesota and North Dakota, but not in Fargo itself?
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump is joined by his wife Melania, daughter Ivanka and son-in-law Jared Kushner as he speaks during a news conference at the Trump National Golf Club Westchester, Tuesday, June 7, 2016, in Briarcliff Manor, N.Y. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer)

Republican Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, who last week gave his support to Trump, said Tuesday that Trump's recent attack on U.S. District Court Judge Gonzalo Curiel was "the textbook definition of a racist comment." Textbook racism, said Ryan -- but he has yet to withdraw his support.

Trump has doubled down on the comments about Curiel, who is the presiding judge in lawsuits filed against him by former students of his Trump University. "I'm building the wall, I'm building the wall," Trump said. "I have a Mexican judge. He's of Mexican heritage. He should have recused himself, not only for that, for other things."

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Many have pointed out that Judge Curiel is a highly respected American jurist born in Indiana to parents of Mexican descent.

So the question becomes -- both for Paul Ryan and for all of us -- what should "the textbook definition" of racism mean for the election of the president of the United States?

Should Donald Trump's racist comments, since the inception of his campaign, be morally disqualifying for him to become the president of the United States? Should his racial bigotry (calling Mexicans rapists and murderers and attacking the birth certificate of the nation's first black president), religious bigotry (promising to ban all Muslims from entering America), and gender bigotry (unending negative comments and evaluations about women and their body parts) remove Donald Trump from moral and religious consideration for the presidency in 2016?

Lindsey Graham thinks so. The Republican senator from South Carolina said, "To suggest that a judge can't fairly decide a case because of where his parents were born is a new low in a campaign with plenty of lows."

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The senator went on to say, "If anybody was looking for an off-ramp, this is probably it ... I don't feel comfortable with what Mr. Trump is saying, not only about this judge, but the way he's campaigning, his policy positions regarding Muslims -- I just think Mr. Trump is taking the country and the party in the wrong direction, and I will be no part of it."

Mark Kirk, Republican senator from Illinois became the first Republican senator running for re-election to break with Mr. Trump, saying "After much consideration, I have concluded that Donald Trump has not demonstrated the temperament necessary to assume the greatest office in the world," or to control the nation's nuclear arsenal.

Republican Sen. Ben Sasse, from Nebraska, also spoke up: "Saying someone can't do a specific job because of his or her race is the literal definition of 'racism."

And Republican Sen. Jeff Flake of Arizona said that Trump's attacks on Curiel were "not just ill-informed or ignorant statements, but they suggest that when he's president after November, that perhaps he ought to go after that judge ... It's very disturbing."

Even conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer agreed, saying, "He's revealing who he is. This isn't some gaffe or accident." Of Republicans, said Krauthammer, "They have to ask themselves, morally, is this the man you want to be the leader of your party? That's what's at stake here."

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Trump has since broadened his argument, saying on CBS that it's possible a Muslim judge could treat him unfairly too, because of his proposed ban on Muslim immigration.

Racism is still deeply rooted in American society and in white culture. Donald Trump has repeatedly taken the racism that is often covert and made it overt, what is usually implicit and made it explicit. Trump has regularly turned racial "dog whistles" into bullhorns. I just watched the leader of a white nationalist organization gleefully report how Donald Trump has helped their cause.

Visiting and preaching in black churches over the last several months, I have never seen African Americans, especially older black Christians, feeling so afraid. I Corinthians 12:26 (as opposed to the "2 Corinthians" Donald Trump once tried to quote) says this about the church -- the body of Christ -- "If one part suffers, all the parts suffer with it, and if one part is honored, all the parts are glad."

Racism is an unequivocal gospel issue, and not just a political one. And Christians' response to racism is a faith issue, and not just a partisan one. Some Christians who can't bring themselves to support a Democratic presidential candidate on moral grounds over issues like abortion have decided they can't support Donald Trump's racism, and are experiencing a great dilemma.

Elections are always full of complex and difficult choices and much prayer will be called for in this electoral season. But I am hopeful to see Christians across political lines and with different convictions on other moral issues unifying against bigotry and racism. That is a good sign.

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For some reason, a lot of entrepreneurs just love the idea of being "self-made."

We love getting swept up in the romance of being the kind of people who pull themselves up by their bootstraps and hustle their way to the top, with no help from anyone else. It's an appealing idea, but it's a myth. Completely false.

When you take a look back at history, you'll find that the most influential people in the world never got there alone. Instead they were part of a community of friends, peers, and mentors who helped push them to become the people they were destined to be.

As an entrepreneur, you need to come to terms with the fact that we all need support, and surround yourself with a community of other entrepreneurs. No matter how talented you may be, you're not going to get very far without learning how to leverage the power of community.

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Here are 5 different ways you can start utilizing the power of community.

Knowledge



One of, if not the biggest reason you'd want to join an entrepreneurship community is the chance to learn from one another.

Joining a community of like-minded people means that you have an increased chance of meeting someone who's willing to take you under their wing and mentor you. Having a strong mentor who's willing to guide you and give you the benefit of their experience means that you can avoid making costly mistakes that could potentially derail your startup and your career. In fact, it's been proven that having a strong mentor can be the key difference between a failed and a successful entrepreneur.

"It's always good to have a helping hand at the start. No matter how incredibly smart you think you are, or how brilliant, disruptive or plain off-the-wall, your new concept might be, every start-up team needs at least one good mentor." - Richard Branson, founder and CEO of Virgin.

By immersing yourself in a community, you also give yourself a chance to learn from the overall group, mining the wisdom of several people and helping each other out along the way. You can also create a mastermind group of trusted peers who give each other the advice and feedback every entrepreneur needs, especially those just starting their journeys.

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Connections

Joining any community means that you have a chance to improve your professional and personal network.

In Porter Gale's book Your Network is your Net Worth, she explains how growing your network means you increase your chances of encountering positive opportunities through the relationships you develop. That could mean an opportunity to further your career, or meeting someone who is able to provide you with the help you need. You never know who you'll meet when you join a community, and how they can help you and vice versa.

When you integrate into a community, you're giving yourself the opportunity to connect with influencers and to raise your own profile. One of the most important things about networking is that you can get your name known by people who have the power to open doors for you. And ideally, you can return the favor for others.

Getting to know influencers who are willing to vouch for you can be all the social proof you need to raise your profile as an entrepreneur. Their recommendations can give you the credibility you need to solidify your own position as an influencer. Even better, having a whole group of entrepreneurs willing to vouch for you significantly raises your profile to other groups, such as potential investors.

Inspiration

One of the biggest threats to an entrepreneur's success is becoming isolated and losing their imagination. A fast way to failure in the startup world is never learning how to evolve and adapt, something that is very difficult to learn on your own. There are countless stories of people who thrive early on, but isolate themselves from others and stagnate creatively as a result.

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Communities, by their very nature, contain a diversity of opinion, ideas, and knowledge that you would never encounter alone. Just being in proximity of such a whirlwind of ideas means that you're constantly challenging yourself to think creatively and constantly reconsider what you know.

You might even encounter a solution to a problem that you would have never thought of by yourself.

You don't need to look any further in history than the "Vagabonds" for the perfect example of amazing people inspiring each other. The group consisted of notable industrialists like Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, and Harvey Firestone, who would often go on annual camping trips together. Everyone from US presidents to leading scientists would join them on these trips.

A large part of why these influential figures in history achieved all of the great things they did was because of their friendships with one another, and the rich exchange of ideas they cultivated. There are many comparable examples, from the French salons of the enlightenment to the Peripatetic gatherings of ancient Greek philosophers.

Resources

No matter how talented you may be, or how smart you are, it is literally impossible to know and do everything by yourself.

It's the reason why founding teams are more likely to succeed than startups with solo founders. The reason is that it's impossible to do everything by yourself. There will just be certain areas or skills that you don't have, or aren't good enough in, that will hold you back from achieving your goals.

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In order to combat this you're going to need to find people who have the expertise and skills in the areas that you lack. This is where leveraging the power of community comes in.

The most straightforward way to fill in your gaps of knowledge is to hire someone to do it for you. But this can be drain on your time, energy, and money.

On the other hand, when you make the effort to invest time and energy into building relationships within your community, you'll be surprised just how many of your peers are willing to help you with whatever problem you've encountered.

Who knows, you might even find your next business partner or cofounder within your community.

Support

Having a community to rely upon means that you're surrounded by people who know exactly what it is you're going through.

Entrepreneurship is said to be a lonely journey, and it often can be. It can feel like the weight of the world is on your shoulders when you have no one in your life to share your experiences with. It can feel isolating and, more often than not, most entrepreneurs give up because they just don't have the motivation to keep going.

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Let's be honest here, startup founders are a bit of a weird bunch. It can be hard to connect with other people because they're unable to see the way you view the world, or comprehend why you would be so passionate about something that it borders on obsession.

What a community of like-minded people provides, more than anything else, is a support network of people who are going through the exact same journey as you.

Even if they're at different stages of the journey, they'll understand what it is you're going through and be able to give you the support you need to keep going.
photo: Jonas Svensson, Swedish Armed Forces

On November 4th Americans will elect a new President. As for me, from the little country of Timor-Leste I am already invoking God and all Christian Saints and Animist Spirits to deliver to us Hillary Rodham Clinton. Timor-Leste owes much to William Jefferson Clinton, who as President in 1999 played a central role in getting the UN to authorize an international peace force to be deployed to our island, quelling the violence in our countryside and paving the way to our independence. In September, 2012, Hillary Rodham Clinton became the only US Secretary of State to have the sensitivity and caring to visit our young democracy.

With less drama and less fanfare, at some point in the autumn the UN Security Council and General Assembly will jointly select a new Secretary-General after 10 years with Ban Ki-moon. The selection process has become more transparent than in the past, with public hearings of the official candidates for the first time.

At the end of June, there is another election, that of non-permanent members of the UN Security Council. In the Western European and Other States Group (WEOG), Sweden is in the running, against Italy and the Netherlands, for two places. The candidates are in full campaign mode, but there is very little public discussion of their merits.

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According to the UN Charter, non-permanent members should be selected on the basis of their contribution to the "maintenance of international peace and security" and to the "other purposes of the Organization." Sweden has a unique identity in the United Nations and a stellar history of contribution. Rooted in its credibility as a small, militarily non-aligned country without a colonial past, it has given us UN leaders from Dag Hammarskjold and Folke Bernadotte to Hans Blix and the current Deputy Secretary-General Jan Eliasson.

It has certainly met and exceeded the criteria of contributing to international peace and security, with more than 80,000 people from a country with a population of 9.8 million having served in UN peace operations. Its important role in the Peacebuilding Commission has shown how Sweden builds trust by talking "with" countries rather than "at" countries. It has been a consistent voice for disarmament and a global leader on issues such as Climate Change and migration.

What sets Sweden apart most, however, is its solidarity with those less fortunate and those subject to oppression and inequity. Perhaps this is because Sweden itself has made the journey from poverty to wealth in just over one hundred years, or perhaps because of its egalitarian and socially inclusive society. It is one of only three countries to commit more than 1% of its gross national income to development assistance; it is the only current UNSC candidate to do so. It is one of the world's largest humanitarian donors and in fact is the UN's sixth largest contributor of assessed and voluntary contributions - in absolute terms.

Throughout its modern history, as exemplified by leaders such as Olof Palme, Sweden has stood in solidarity with those, such as my own country, fighting for independence and against repression, apartheid and inequality. Today it is the only Western European country to recognize Palestine.

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The UN Security Council is marred by a deficit of trust among the broader UN membership. Its credibility is damaged by the fact that the group of permanent members is not representative of today's world and that the P5 wield such disproportionate power. Equally important, the UNSC has been unable to find ways to listen to the broader UN membership, including troop contributors and countries on the UNSC agenda.

If elected, Sweden will take its seat at the UNSC table on the same day as a newly elected Secretary-General. With its integrity as a small, militarily non-aligned country acting in solidarity, Sweden would be perfectly suited to contribute to new important forms of dialogue.

Sweden would put particular focus on the vital issue of maritime resources and security and the so-called Blue Economy, which covers oceans, seas, coasts, lakes, rivers, and underground water. It comprises fisheries, aquaculture, tourism, transport, shipbuilding, energy, bio-prospecting, underwater mining and related activities such as fighting piracy and pollution, trafficking in drugs and human beings and, not least, enforcing respect for international law.

Peace and the fight against poverty and corruption are linked to the blue economy, as marine resources provide the opportunity to secure both food and energy supplies in the future. Currently just a few companies control the majority of global trade in fish and seafood. Thirteen companies control approximately 40 per cent of the planet's largest fish stocks. It is still the case that at least 15 per cent of catches throughout the world are illegal.

Sustainable use of domestic resources including marine resources gives nations means to build institutions for economic development and thus increased independence against bigger countries. Here again, Sweden has proven itself to be a leader, acting as a clear voice within the EU and the UN for sustainability in the marine arena, and contributing advanced technical know-how, innovations and encouragement of entrepreneurship in the areas of ecotourism and small-scale fishing.

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It has been a major contributor to the Green Climate Fund, and, together with Fiji, has taken initiative on the implementation of the UN Sustainable Development Goal on oceans, seas and marine resources, known as SDG 14.

Sweden has not served on the UNSC for nearly twenty years. Of the candidates, they have had the least representation on the Council over time. Yes, they are a comparatively small state. But it is small states that make up the majority of the UN membership, which makes their representation on the Security Council even more vital.
By Adele Charbonneau

The failure of many urban development initiatives has been attributed to a top-down approach. More recently, activists have called for impacted groups to be seen as stakeholders and decision-makers in the process to improve their conditions. Inputs from communities and affected groups will help to create more appropriate solutions that meet the needs on-the-ground and, importantly, be more sustainable, especially within city management. This article presents three experiences from Mexico, India and Brazil, where bottom-up input was integrated into decisions about the future of the city.

In Mexico, Maria Fernanda Carvallo discusses participatory budgeting, which emerged in 2010. The process starts with the IEDF (Distrito Federal Electoral Institute), which launches an open call to the Mexico City' residents for suggestions on social improvement projects through the borough offices. After the projects are reviewed, they are selected through the voting public consultation for the "Participatory Budget." In the same consultation, people also select the members of a representative body of the town called the "Neighborhood Committee." Although the participatory budget is a counterweight to the public administration, it is still in the process of strengthening its role. The challenge lies in the overwhelming participation of people with political ties that influence the neighborhood committee. Furthermore, in an ideal model, the public consultation and application of projects would have to take a backseat to the analysis of common needs through community development mechanisms, which later can culminate in a public vote.

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In India, Mukta Naik takes the example of Delhi, where elected representatives have held public meetings to seek citizen feedback. Combined with online platforms, feedback at public meetings is currently used by the state government's Public Grievances Monitoring Cell to inform everyday governance decisions. It is still early to bring out a report card on Delhi's participatory budgeting experiment, which is yet to achieve scale. Indeed, its full implementation is hampered by the failure of the government to bring into force the Swaraj Bill, a piece of legislation that formalizes the concept of participatory governance through the mechanism of the over 3,000 mohalla sabhas (local governing bodies) in the state. In the interim, the government is seeking ways to strengthen this institution. Yet, the government would do well to put metrics in place to monitor progress and demonstrate success in this critical "proof of concept" stage.

In recent years, according to Andrea Azambuja, the concept of "popular participation" has also changed in Brazil and particularly in Curitiba. The state capital's municipal government is trying to adapt and prove that not only is it open to dialogue, but values popular opinions and is willing to expand the connection. To this end, in 2013 the city's administrative board implemented what they called Deliberative Public Administration: a management model that proposes shared action between citizens and civil servants in solving collective problems. In this new phase, the process of training government employees and the decision-making power of citizens were rethought and reworked, and they now focus on notions of collaboration, confidence, and leadership. The number of civilian representatives has increased, and instances that were previously only advisory became decisive posts. Other forms of popular participation were through phone interactions, which now include an online chat room, and social networks with more than 443,000 hits for follow-up actions.

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Different possibilities exist to foster participation in city managements from participatory budget processes to the use of technology. Check out more of the discussion on urban poverty and bottom-up approaches on URB.im and contribute to the debate.
Divorce statistics are amazing.

If you look hard enough you can find statistics that supposedly show that you are more likely to divorce if you have girls rather than boys; if only you, but not your spouse, smokes; or if either you or your spouse gains 20% more than your body weight after marriage.

With all due respect to the social scientists and statisticians who have devoted their lives to generating this kind of "data," in my humble opinion, it is often hard to tell divorce facts from fiction.



What You Can Learn From Divorce Statistics

As someone who has worked as a divorce professional for decades, I learned a long time ago not to take divorce statistics too seriously.

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While researchers undoubtedly mean well, human relationships are so complicated that trying to predict what will lead to divorce is like trying to predict what the weather will be like in Chicago six weeks (or sometimes even six hours!) in advance.

Yet, in the interest of supporting "scientific research," as well as having a little fun, here is my slightly irreverent analysis of the divorce facts that the studies claim to reveal, and the lessons you can "learn" from them.

1. It is Better to Get Married Than Live Together. Couples who live together without marrying are less likely to stay together than couples who marry. The probability of a first marriage ending in separation or divorce within 5 years is 20%, but the probably of a cohabitation relationship breaking up within 5 years is 49%.



2. You Are More Likely to Get Divorced Than to Get Hit By a Car. There are approximately 100 divorces every hour in the U.S. Your chances of getting hit by a car are way less than that (... which is probably a good thing!)



3. If You Want to Be President, Stay Married. The only U.S. President to have been elected to office after being divorced was Ronald Reagan. (Does that mean that Donald Trump doesn't have a chance?)

4. Your Divorce Will Never Be This Expensive. The most expensive divorce in history is reportedly the divorce of the Russian billionaire Dmitry Rybolevlev, from his ex-wife, Elena. Their six year legal battle ended in an undisclosed settlement, after a $4.5 billion divorce judgment awarded to Ms. Rybolevlev by a Swiss court was overturned. (There's no word on how much either one of the Rybolevlevs spent on attorney's fees either!)



5. If You Don't Want to Divorce, Get Married on the Cheap! You are 3.5 times more likely to divorce if you spend more than $20,000 on your wedding than you are if you spend between $5,000 - $10,000.

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6. Sorry, but the United States is NOT Number 1! According to the United Nations, the country with the highest divorce rate is Maldives, with 10.97 divorces per 1,000 people per year. That is followed by Belarus, with 4.63 divorces per 1,000 people per year. The United States comes in third, with 4.34 divorces per 1,000 people per year.



7. Facebook is Bad for Your Marriage. According to a survey done by Divorce Online, a British legal service, Facebook was mentioned in 1/3 of all divorce fillings in 2011.

8. Beware of the Seven Year Itch! The average length of a first marriage that ends in divorce in the United States is just under 8 years.



9. Being a celebrity doesn't make you a good person. Phil Collins delivered the news to his second wife that he wanted a divorce via fax. Russell Brand told Katy Perry he wanted a divorce via text. Millionaire art collector Charles Saatchi bested both men. He didn't tell his wife, celebrity chef Nigella Lawson, that he wanted a divorce at all - he just announced it in a press release!

10. Karma Happens. 75% of people who marry their affair partners after divorcing their spouse end up divorcing their affair partner too.

11. Even a Nobel Prize Won't Help You Stay Married. Einstein's Nobel prize money went to his ex-wife as a divorce settlement.

12. For a Good Marriage, Work From Home. A Swedish researcher found that couples who spend more than 45 minutes commuting to work are 40% more likely to divorce.

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13. It's Better to Be a Runaway Bride Than a Bride With Cold Feet! Research shows that a bride with cold feet nearly doubles the chance of divorce.

14. 32 is the Charm! It's no secret that marrying young can cause divorce. But, if you haven't married by age 32, your risk of divorce actually starts increasing.

15. The Hottest Divorce Trend isn't What You Think! Americans over 50 are now twice as likely to get divorced as 50 year olds were 20 years ago. 25% of divorcing Americans are now over 50.

16. Losing Weight Can Be Great for Your Health, But Bad for Your Marriage. The divorce rate for people who have had bariatric surgery and lost a lot of weight, after being overweight or obese when they got married, is between 80 - 85%.



17. If You Want to Stay Married, Get a Degree. College graduates tend to get married slightly later and are 10 - 20% less likely to divorce.



18. Your Job Matters More Than You Think. According to a recent study, divorce rates are the highest for dancers (43.055), bartenders (38.43%), massage therapists (38.22%), gaming cage workers (34.66%), extruding machine operators (32.77%), gaming services operators (31.34%) and factory workers (29.78%). Divorce rates are lowest for media and communication equipment workers (0%), agricultural engineers (1.78%), optometrists (4.01%), transit and railroad police (5.26%), and clergy (5.61%).

19. To Avoid Divorce, Smile! People who frown in photos are 5 times more likely to divorce than people who smile.

20. You Might as Well Try to Get Along With Your Ex From the Start. Canadian research has shown that, within two years of a separation, the majority of parents establish polite (although not necessarily warm and fuzzy) communication with their ex. By that time, their children have usually adapted to their new living arrangement.

21. Marriage may not be forever, but neither is divorce. Approximately 6% of Americans marry, divorce, then remarry each other!

The Real Divorce Facts

When you are facing divorce, especially a divorce you didn't see coming, it's tempting to try to scour the internet to look for information that will help you figure out what happened.

You may think that maybe statistics will show that you were doomed from the start. Maybe you lived in the wrong place, or you hung out with the wrong friends, or you did something (like lose or gain weight) that you didn't know would doom your marriage.

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You are looking for answers, and for some comfort. You want to know that you are not alone. (You're not!) You want to know that you are not a failure. (You're not!)

Fortunately or unfortunately, statistics aren't going to help you much.

What you need to remember is that divorce happens. It happens to a lot of good people all over the world. It happens to people who never thought it would happen to them.

If it's happening to you, all you can do is deal with it. Just know one thing: you are much, much more than a divorce statistic.
Mary, the mother of one of Nigeria's kidnapped Chibok girls, speaks in Washington DC on Thursday, June 9, 2016.

Photo: Katherine Ruddy, Standwithnigeria.org

For the first time, one of the mothers of Nigeria's kidnapped Chibok schoolgirls is here in Washington DC, sharing her story firsthand and speaking out for the release of her daughter and the more than 200 other Chibok school girls who remain in captivity.

Last September I met with ten of the fathers of the kidnapped Chibok girls in Jos, Nigeria. Today, I spoke with one heartbroken mother.

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Her daughter's 18th birthday was yesterday, Mary* tells me. She never expected that it would be spent held in captivity by Boko Haram.

"I just want my baby girl back," Mary told me, her voice quivering with emotion. "For 26 months, day and night, I have been thinking about my baby, but she is nowhere to be found."

Brought to Washington DC by the 21st Century Wilberforce Initiative, Mary joined the launch of the group's new report, Nigeria: Fractured & Forgotten. The report addresses discrimination and violence along religious lines throughout Nigeria. Mary spoke on her own experiences as the mother of a kidnapped girl, and the ongoing heartbreak endured by the Chibok families. Due to security concerns, she concealed her identity while in front of the camera, wearing a hat and sunglasses throughout the duration of the event.

Since the return of Amina Ali, the first missing Chibok girl to emerge after the mass kidnapping, the parents of the girls are living in a new desperation, waiting to hear from Amina about her daughters' plight.

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According to Mary, one of the fathers of the Chibok girls, Yakubu Nkiki Maina, met with Amina and was able to learn some information on the whereabouts of the girls. Some have been forcibly married, according to Amina, while others are in the Sambisa Forest, reportedly living out in the elements.

The idea of her daughter living outside for 26 months, being subjected to abuse by militants of the world's deadliest terror group, brings Mary to tears.

"I want the global community to assist us," she pleads. "Please assist us."

Documenting the brutal onslaught of Boko Haram and the terror perpetrated by Fulani militants, the 21st Century Wilberforce Initiative report says that "what is unfolding in northern and central Nigeria is one of the gravest current humanitarian crises in the world."

When asked how the mothers of the girls are coping with the mass kidnapping two years later, Mary looks down.

"It is a great destruction, what the mothers are suffering," she says. "They have no strength. Most of the Chibok girls are [among the] last born in their families, and so their mothers are older. We have many parents on their sick bed."

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In the last two years, at least 18 of the parents of the Chibok girls have died.

Mary is among the younger parents of the kidnapped girls. She has four younger children - all of whom have suffered immensely after their older sister was taken by Boko Haram.

After the kidnapping of their sister, Mary says her younger children were terrified of going to school. The schools in the area all shut down, their closure fueled by fear of another mass kidnapping.

When the family moved to Abuja from Chibok, Mary says her children's fears over school began to dissipate. "By the grace of God, they are now in school," she says.

Every parent comes up with plans and ideas for their children, and Mary is no different. In fact, she told me, she has dreams for all of her children. One thing her dreams never included was her oldest daughter's kidnapping at the hands of a deadly terror group.

"I have a better plan for her but God has not fulfilled it for me yet," she says.

Mary's family is not alone in their dire challenges. Many of the Chibok families have endured intense trauma as a result of the kidnapping, their children are afraid to attend school, and many of the families still live in danger of regular attacks by Boko Haram.

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Open Doors works closely with the families of the Chibok girls in Nigeria, providing trauma counseling and practical support. We've recently launched an advocacy campaign, asking President Obama to visit Nigeria (in nearly two full terms, President Obama has not yet visited Nigeria). We're asking him to engage with Nigerian President Buhari on crucial human rights issues, including urging him to investigate claims that prominent politicians within the country are funneling money to Boko Haram.

Listening to Mary share her story, I'm hoping that more people will become aware of the tragic plight of the Chibok girls and their families - and take action to help them.

When I was in Nigeria meeting with the fathers of the Chibok girls several months ago, one father told me, "Sometimes, for a short time, I can feel okay, when I'm with my family or when I'm with my church." He paused, his voice breaking. "But when I'm alone, it all comes back."

As the hours, days, months, and years drag on, Mary clings to the hope that her missing daughter will be found.

"Please remember our girls," she pleads. "We really need your prayers that our girls will be found."


Karen Haberberg

Ellen Diamant is the Founder & Chief Creative Officer at Skip Hop--one of the fastest-growing global lifestyle brands for parents, babies and toddlers. Prior to launching Skip Hop in 2003, Ellen worked as a Creative Director, executing campaigns for Cigar Aficionado, Modern Bride, Wine Spectator, Remy Cointreau and Chef Daniel Boulud.

Ellen has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, New York Daily News, Bloomberg, Crain's New York Business, CNN Money and a number of other outlets. Along with her husband Michael, she was named an Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year finalist in both 2010 and 2011.

How has your life experience made you the leader you are today?

I'm a creative person who worked in the corporate world early in my career, and that experience helped me realize that I wanted to create a very different kind of atmosphere for my team at Skip Hop. In a corporate environment, there's a lot of hierarchy, and it's all about who has more experience, it's all very methodical. But when you're leading a creative team, there's a whole different set of rules-- the spark for something new can come from anywhere. Some of our best products have come from designers right out of school who may not have a lot of years of experience, but they have really fresh, creative ideas.

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People want to come work at our company because we have fewer layers and can move a lot faster. The discussions that take place are more heated, because everyone feels really passionate about what they're doing and saying. And it's given me the opportunity to listen. I always say, No ideas are bad, because they might spark something amazing.

What have the highlights and challenges been during your tenure at Skip Hop?

The highlight is whenever we create a new product that really works, and parents say to me, "Oh my gosh, where has this been all my life? You heard me and made me something I needed!" I love being able to impact their life with products that make their lives easier.

The biggest challenge was definitely in the early days, when we were teaching ourselves about manufacturing. Half the battle of designing is not only getting the product made, but getting it made safely and quickly, and of the best possible quality. You can have the greatest idea in the world, but if it's not manufactured properly, then it's not going to work. We have a great team on the ground now in China, but we didn't always, and it's a bit harder to control if you don't have feet on the ground.

What advice can you offer to women who want a career in your industry?

A lot of women tell me they have a great idea for a new product. But even if it's an amazing idea, there might not be a need in the market for it, or someone might already be doing the same thing. It's a very, very competitive business, and it's really important to vet your idea first with others, and you can't be insulted if it doesn't have legs. Use your friends and family as a sounding board to test your ideas, and put it in front of a local moms group--they will definitely tell you what they think! Explore the trade shows to see what other people are doing and to get an idea of how the industry works.

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What is the most important lesson you've learned in your career to date?

I've learned that if you want to build something on your own, you have to keep plowing through and have an open mind. If something doesn't work, you have to be able to pivot, and say, Okay, what can we do to make it better? We've entered some product categories that we haven't done very well in, but instead of giving up, we analyze them and say, How can we improve it?

How do you maintain a work/life balance?

It's difficult, because I work with my husband! In the beginning, especially, when you're a start-up and you're each doing the work of at least three people, you can get into a really bad habit of bringing your work home and letting it seep into your private life--it can be very easy to burn out quickly. But now we have an amazing team of 80 people in New York and 20 people in China, who we know we can count on. So I really try hard not to do work after work now. I spend that time doing personal things with my husband and 15-year-old son, traveling together, exploring great New York restaurants, or spending time out East on Long Island.

What do you think is the biggest issue for women in the workplace?

Our company is 70 percent female, and a good percentage of them are moms, so I really see how they struggle with wanting to do well at their career, but still sometimes worry they're missing out on things at home. We're a parenting company, so are very open to helping our employees find balance. We're open to flex-time if people need it, and we offer a good amount of personal days. If there's a school holiday and you need to bring your child to work for the day, that's fine, too.

How has mentorship made a difference in your professional and personal life?

The best mentors for me have actually been my peers--other women who own companies in the parenting business. In the beginning, when we were all getting our companies off the ground, we would meet and discuss different issues and really support each other. Now, a lot of women who are trying to start businesses come to me for advice. If somebody comes to me through a personal connection, and they feel genuine, and they have good ideas, I'll definitely find time to give them some advice on how to break into the industry.
As we watch the nightly television news or read the international section of any major newspaper or digital news, we see a world in disorder and turmoil.

While still the strongest and most prosperous nation in the world, the U.S. doesn't wield the same level of clout on the global stage that it once did. China is rising, Russia is asserting itself, the alignment of nations is in flux and disappointing results in Iraq and Afghanistan have sapped public support for strong U.S. leadership in the world.

No wonder, then, that crucial questions arise about that leadership. A few key principles should guide us.

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First, we should accept and embrace the United States leadership role in world affairs, and never stop trying to make our country and the world a better place.

Most of us like the idea of America as the world leader, but we are also ambivalent about it. We neither embrace nor abandon that role. We are disinclined to get involved, deeply concerned about the costs of nation building around the world and wary of foreign entanglements, and we have scant tolerance for casualties in far off places.

But we also take pride that the U.S. has contributed much to the peace, prosperity and security of the whole world and are confident we can fix much that is wrong. We know we have made mistakes along the way, and more than once displayed a touch of the arrogance of power, but we also know we have led the world toward decades of growth and improvement, and created the international mechanism for world order.

We have to have confidence that the world is a better place when the U.S. leads.

Second, America must have a razor-sharp clarity to our foreign policy. Our aim, of course, is to make America safer, stronger and richer. To achieve that we have to identify and rank our core interests, and the threats to them. Pundits often make a list of our interests and potential threats. They have a boundless vision of what we should do; they want us to stabilize every country, scale up our efforts everywhere. But hard choices have to be made to prioritize our efforts and precisely articulate our policy. Failure to say what we mean, and mean what we say, simply creates confusion, wastes valuable resources and diminishes America's leadership. And once formulated and articulated, that policy needs to be faithfully executed.

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Third, while we should be a leader in world affairs, we must be realistic about the world as it is and what we can, and cannot do. We cannot spread freedom everywhere, all the time. Realism means our resources and our political will must match our objectives.

A strong dose of realism is needed to overcome our tendency to overstate our foreign policy goals, ignore the amount of resources needed and recognize the limits of our power. Outstanding differences with China and Russia will not be easily resolved and other nations, acting in their own interests, will not be cowed by American power.

Fourth, we must be smart about using all the arsenal of available tools: aid, trade, development, military action, rhetoric, political and diplomatic efforts. Military action can be essential, and we must always deal from a position of strength, but we must not reach too quickly for the gun, using it only as a last resort.

The underlying societal and economic challenges around the world must be aggressively attacked through our diplomacy. Diplomacy can solve many challenges, but not all of them. Making peace means talking to our adversaries, as well as our friends. We must never negotiate out of fear, but never fear to negotiate, as President Kennedy reminded us.

With our friends and allies we must create a global architecture to address our challenges. The world's toughest problems, from health-related issues, to environmental concerns, to the fight against terrorism, to nuclear proliferation, to immigration, all share a common trait: they are too big for any one country to solve on its own.

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Fifth, in order to conduct an effective foreign policy, we need a strong domestic base. Indeed, our political and economic example may be our most effective tool in the execution of our foreign policy. The polarization, dysfunction, excessive partisanship and the failure to get our economic house in order that has come to characterize our politics in recent years -- and which has spilled over into the current presidential race -- weakens the country's global standing and puts our national interests at undue risk.

Finally, the president and Congress must provide a unity of effort, to advance the foreign policy interests of the nation. That unity has slipped in recent years. The president is the chief foreign policy actor but the Congress must provide support and counsel at takeoff, throughout the flight and during landing if the country is to chart a safe course. Close cooperation through consultation between the executive and legislatives branches of government is an essential ingredient of an effective foreign policy.
Japanese toilet

Much of the time, I think the internet is a horrible place. People are nasty and cruel. They spew filth and lies and bully one another. Take for instance, the Stanford male who assaulted an unconscious woman. People are jumping to his defense left and right. Despicable.

Or, in my home state of Ohio, all I've heard about is the gorilla incident at the Cincinnati Zoo. What a terrible situation -- a tragedy, to be sure. But I hear fewer voices mourning the loss of the gorilla and praising the rescue of the child and more voice accusing this person and that person, pointing fingers, using hateful and hurtful language. Disheartening.

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So, you see, I have very little faith in the people of the internet.

But I forgot that I have very good taste in picking out friends (romantic interests, not so much).

To understand this story, you should know that I've spent the last two years living with my best friend. It was lovely and perfect because we were like souls, my kids loved her, and we rented, so whenever anything broke, I called the repairman. Mike (yes, we were on a first name basis. I miss him terribly) came out on several occasions. My electric wiring was all messed up in the master bedroom, and he helped fix it. I shattered the bottom panel of glass in the refrigerator; Mike saved the day. Dishwasher backed up again -- Who you going to call? Mike!

My time with my best friend and roommate sadly came to an end one week ago, and I was forced ("happily chose" just doesn't convey the right tone) to move back into the marital residence that I'd been renting out the past three years (more about this in a later blog -- so. many. feelings.). So I lost my home for the past two years, my best friend (to Texas), and MIKE! I lost Mike.

Now, when things break, I'm responsible. You think that, at 30, I'd be okay with that. Nope! Not handling it well.

So, the first thing I noticed was the dishwasher had water pooled in the bottom. Yuck. I thought that if I restarted it, ran another cycle, maybe that would do a trick. It did not. It turns out that the dishwasher is an appliance, not a smart phone. My bad. I reached out to my internet friends, found a repairman, and he fixed it the next day. Well, that wasn't so bad. I can talk on the phone to people if it will fix my appliances.

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The next thing I noticed was the upstairs toilet seat and lid were coming off the toilet. It was a minor issue at first, but then my little tenants, as I've decided to refer to them, tried to stand on it to brush their teeth (note to self: buy some bathroom stools online after you've finished blogging). Broken.

I didn't know where to start. You may think I'm exaggerating, but I sincerely asked my mom if I needed to buy a whole new toilet (you can laugh here, I'll be okay). After my mother informed me that I could just buy the seat and lid, I left the kids with her and jetted off to the store. It was like a little vacation. I found the aisle I was looking for and guessed at the size of my toilet. I hesitantly made my purchase. But what if I couldn't follow through?

After dinner with my parents, I headed home and corralled my children into their room to get ready for bed. We put on jammies, read books, and said prayers. They were thirsty... and needed covers... and just one more hug and kiss. The usual. Then, I said, "Mommy's got work to do." This is usually code for "Mommy is going downstairs to watch Netflix and eat junk food you don't know about," but not this time. Mama had real work to do. And I got to it.

Let me tell you, working on a toilet is not glamorous. It doesn't matter how clean you are, it's still pretty gross, especially when you have to have your face in close proximity to it, as I did. The old seat and lid were so old that the screws and bolts had broken and would not come out by unscrewing them, so I had to use all my upper body strength (which is nothing to brag about) to break them off. Once everything was removed, I did some cleaning and reminded two little spectators to get back into bed. Then I had to install the new seat and lid, which was relatively easy.

I was so proud. It looked so pretty. I told my kids, and they didn't care. It pained me to see my hard work go unnoticed and unappreciated. So I decided to take a picture and share it with the people of the internet:

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I was blown away. I had written my post mostly trying to be witty, but people were so kind and encouraging. It was just lovely. Some days as a (single) parent are hard. You wonder if things will ever get easier. You wonder if you're equipped to handle all of these tasks alone. My cheerleaders tonight assured me that yes, in fact, I can and am handling it! And they proved that they will be there to cheer on my successes. What a wonderful feeling. The people of the internet have redeemed themselves today. At least, my friends on the internet.


Credit: Bebeto Matthews/AP

The media has covered Michelle Obama's final college commencement speech as First Lady, delivered last week at City College of New York, almost exclusively as a barely-veiled excoriation of Donald Trump. In the collective cheer for her pro-diversity, anti "wall" remarks, however, we seem to have missed a more telling possibility -- it might just be an opening salvo for her own, post-White House, senate election campaign.

This isn't a new idea. Theories have swirled in the past about the possibility of Michelle running for office after she and the president leave the White House, though nothing concrete has ever emerged. But that's because the media keeps asking about a run for president, instead of the more obvious alternative.

Both Mrs. Obama and her husband have said she will not run for president. She's said she dislikes living in the White House, constantly watched and examined under a figurative glass dome. She's said that her children still need her around. All reasons why some signs point to a run for Senate as the optimal choice for her, and last week's speech at City College of New York might be just such a sign.

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After all, Mrs. Obama has said repeatedly that her long term goals have always revolved around the public sector. Keep in mind, a president holds power for only eight years maximum, a drop in the historical bucket, while a Senator can get re-elected indefinitely. The impact on public policy that a Senator can make versus a president is direct and renewable, especially for someone like Michelle who has both relative youth (she'll be 53 when she leaves the White House) and guaranteed lifelong name recognition.

Whichever state the Obamas settle in, Michelle will have high approval ratings. She consistently has polled higher than the only other former First Lady-turned-Senator, both during and after the White House. She also has an impressive pre-First Lady resume, arguably more impressive than her husband's own pre-Senate resume. Her work experience is both tangible and reflective of experience in public affairs:

A Harvard law degree. Assistant to Chicago mayor Richard M. Daly, followed by a stint as Assistant commissioner of planning and development. Executive Director of Public Allies Chicago, named by President Bill Clinton as a model AmeriCorps program. University of Chicago Associate Dean of student services, followed by Executive Director of community affairs.

And then there's that City College commencement speech.

First, the rush to conclusion of it mostly being an anti-Donald speech -- which effectively would just make it a pro-Hillary speech -- is chump bait. Sure, the ubiquitous dog whistles were all there: "We don't build walls to keep people out;" "We're all in this together;" "They tell us to be afraid of those who are different."

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But that menu has been served up ad nauseam in this graduation season by all the usual suspects -- by the president himself, in his recent Rutgers commencement speech, as well as by Elizabeth Warren and John Kerry, among other notable Dems. So it's no surprise that Michelle's speech would be sprinkled with the same cliche Donald markers, pretty much a Democrat speechmaker's prerequisite in an election year.

Michelle, though, as much as she might dislike Trump, almost certainly dislikes Hillary more, and has never made much of a secret of it. Was she really going to waste her final First Lady moment, in front of a presumably textbook Democrat New York audience of college graduates, family and faculty, to give Hillary a leg up just by blasting Donald?

What was noticeably different about Michelle's speech is what she subtly included with many of those dog whistles:

Here in America, we don't give in to our fears...

Here in America, we don't let our differences tear us apart. Not here...

The greatness of America has never come from folks who climbed the ladder of success...

Because in this country, it's never been each person for themselves...

Funny, but there seems to an awful lot of "America this" and "America that" for a commencement speech. Most graduation speeches are about the students' accomplishments, not the country's. Or, as in Michelle's own past speeches, they're about the struggle toward success or building yourself up, or about the special merits of the school that educated them.

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Yet Michelle's last three graduation speeches have been different from her previous 20, and not just because they're anti-Donald.

In her April speech at Jackson State University, she urged graduates to register to vote, chastising them for a 2014 midterm turnout of African-American youth of only 20 percent. At the Santa Fe Indian School, she brought some listeners to tears as she chronicled her family's uniquely American genealogy, beginning with her great-great grandfather as a slave and culminating with her own Princeton and Harvard graduations.

Finally, last week at CCNY, while media observers almost unanimously called the speech aspirational and epic, and concentrated on the Trump swipes, they seemed to miss the point of why Michelle was there in the first place. She said she chose CCNY specifically for its diversity and history of inclusion, a notable tell for anyone looking to engage with Democrat voters.

"And, graduates, I really want you all to know that there is a reason why, of all of the colleges and universities in this country, I chose this particular school in this particular city for this special moment... You represent just about every possible background -- every color and culture, every faith and walk of life... And that is why I wanted to be here today... Because I know that there is no better way to celebrate this great country than being here with you."
My mother is of both Greek and German heritage, which could mean that my prejudices regarding the Greek debt imbroglio should be perfectly balanced. However, as I delved into economist James Galbraith's new book, Welcome to the Poisoned Chalice I became convinced of the impossibility and injustice of the situation in which Greece now finds itself, as the country negotiates its financial fate with the German government, the EU and the IMF. And as we draw nearer to Britain's vote to leave or stay in the European Union on June 23rd, what could go wrong in Europe this summer that could impact the global economy? We are very close to finding out.

Unless it is a work of fiction, I begin by reading the end of a book, and in this case I was particularly well rewarded. If absolutely everything does goes wrong, we all want to know, what is Plan B for Greece? Last summer, at the Ministry of Finance in Athens, Galbraith and his small team thought through the ramifications of Greece exiting the European Union, which they called Plan X. "The Plan X Memorandum" is an inside peek into what if? and the legal basis for a "Grexit". It contains details of necessary actions such as notifying telecommunications companies so that services would be maintained throughout the transition, and the challenges of printing of new paper money.

If Grexit is how things might end for the European Union, how did they evolve to this point? Galbraith explains how Greeks are being dispossessed of assets in order to pay debts that never benefited them in the first place. As he told the Institute for New Economic Thinking:

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The Greek people are being maneuvered into a position where they cannot pay their mortgages and are being dispossessed from their homes. For what? For debts that were incurred under previous governments for completely useless things where the benefits went to German construction companies and French arms firms. The notion that this debt should be paid is absurd.



The IMF believes that debt reduction or forgiveness is critical, but the European Central Bank and the Eurogroup do not. Negotiations are continuing on a framework for debt relief that would prevent Athens from defaulting on a major loan repayment in July. Before that deadline, Greece must also pass an additional tax amounting to 1% of GDP which then must be collected, another difficulty. Protests are likely; the Greek police say that there have been more than 27,000 demonstrations in the past five years.

So Galbraith's book, a series of essays, letters, and memos written during the heart of the Greek crisis in 2015, appears at a crossroads in modern Greek history. While our attention has been diverted by Brexit coming up on June 23rd, the clear and present danger to the Europe Union remains the failure of Greek debt restructuring. The European Stability Mechanism should give its approval on June 16th of next week, kicking the can down the road for now.

Galbraith explains how and why Greece's problems did not get resolved last summer.

'The situation in Greece, coupled with the pending vote by the UK this summer about whether or not to remain a member of the EU represent twin crises from which there might be no recovery.'



The book has two main protagonists, the author himself, an eminent economist at the University of Texas at Austin, and his friend and colleague Yanis Varoufakis. Varoufakis is also an economist and the former finance minister of Greece, and is currently touring the US with a book of his own, "And the Weak Suffer What They Must?". When Varoufakis became a member of the Greek government, he called upon Galbraith to help him understand the consequences of a possible default. Galbraith had a fascinating vantage point from inside the makeshift offices of a revolutionary Greek government.

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Galbraith's role in the unfolding drama of last summer brings to mind a long tradition of Yale-trained economists who have consulted and influenced foreign governments. Many do not realize that Yale economist Ma Yinchu for example, crafted China's one-child policy, and it is hard to be more influential than that. But Galbraith also reminds me of a Princeton economist, Arthur Nichols Young, who advised several governments in crisis in the mid-twentieth century.

Galbraith avoids the term "Grexit" throughout, calling it "an odious Goldman-Sachs coinage for Greek exit from the euro". His focus is on the human costs of payment terms that are unsustainable, based upon an imperfect and unsustainable union, which is effect a confederacy. In a lecture about his book, Galbraith summarizes his conclusion:

Since there is in Greece no longer a political outlet it will be that much more unpleasant as the fires burn. That's the price that both Greeks and Europe will bear from accepting a set of policy recommendations dictated by economists, driven by ideology and utterly disconnected from the reality of what it might take to restore a viable social and economic entity on that particular outskirt of Europe.

Galbraith has an interesting take on why this was allowed to happen. He claims banks, not the real economy, were the major target of the Greek rescue. Former IMF head Dominique Strauss-Kahn, with the French presidency then firmly in his sites, used the rescue to curry favor among his supporters, who also happened to be Greece's creditors.

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The situation has similarities with the Asian Financial Crisis in 1998, and the IMF's stance toward Korea which required major austerity measures. The difference was that South Korea had the ability to increase exchange rate flexibility, and Greece as a member of the European monetary union does not. As has been debated by economists but ignored by some policymakers, austerity can lead to desperate measures to raise short term liquidity, but in the long term this inflicts fatal blows on the economy. According to the Economist, sharp increases in business taxes (now 29%) have caused 200,000 businesses to close or leave the country, in a country of only ten million people. This would be the equivalent of six million businesses closing in the US. (Ironically, the Athens Stock Exchange has risen 42% in the last three months.)

Another issue is although Greek banks have done what has been asked of them, the current government has delayed a progress review of the third international bailout. Michalis Sallas, the chairman of Piraeus, Greece's biggest bank and three other banks met a November deadline to bring in an additional 14B euros of new capital, but infighting in the Tsipras government has resulted in a failure to complete negotiations with the EU and the IMF. Sallas sees this as threatening revitalization of Greece's private sector and international investment.

The situation in Greece, coupled with the pending vote by the UK this summer about whether or not to remain a member of the EU represent twin crises from which there might be no recovery. Galbraith is unsure if Greece will be the first to exit, citing battle fatigue, and thinks that perhaps another player such as Finland could be the first to leave. That would be a surprise. Greece is a small country, but the reason for concern is that the crisis symbolizes all that has gone wrong with the European experiment. Wolfgang Munchau writes in the Financial Times:



The cardinal mistake of our time was the decision to muddle through the Eurozone crisis. Europe's political leadership failed to generate the public support for what was needed: creating a political and economic union...

Economic history has shown time and again that efforts to muddle through financial crises never work-think of the Great Depression or Japan's lost decade. For the EU it was a catastrophic policy error. It has not only given us an economic depression from which many countries have not yet recovered. It has also destroyed public confidence in the EU and in the very idea of European integration.

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Galbraith frames the issue of institutional failure differently. He describes the current structure as inherently flawed and is not sanguine about the future of the European experiment:

Europe was a bright political project at the formation of the European Community and again when it expanded at the end of the Cold War. Its purpose was not so much power as peace: truly a noble vision. But that noble project was built on an end-of-history economics, on frozen-in-time free-market notions and on dogmatic monetarism linked to arbitrary criteria for deficits and public debt. In the wake of a global financial meltdown, these no longer serve. Unless they are abandoned soon, they will doom Europe as sure as communism doomed the empire of the East.
Teacher Helping Boy To Use Digital Tablet In Computer Class Having A Discussion

"If not forthe teachers that I had at PS 276 in Canarsie and Mark Twain Junior High Schoolin Coney Island, New York, I would not be alive today. Maybe Id be in jailtoday. But those teachers, they chose to invest in me and to see hope andpossibility. Folks could have said, Heres a young African-American, Latinomale student going to New York City Schools with a family in crisis. Whatchance does he have? They couldve given up on me, but they didnt. They choseto make school this place that was amazing and inspiring and engaging everyday. This is what you can bring to students . . . That sense ofpossibility, that sense of hope, that opportunity to be a child, thatopportunity to love and enjoy learning. That is the power that we have as educators,and I hope you will seize that moment. That you will see potential in each ofyour children."

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-Secretary of Education John B. King, Jr., speaking at the Childrens Defense Fund Freedom Schools National Training

The Childrens Defense Fund (CDF) has just completed a week of national training for nearly 2,000 college students and recent graduates preparing to teach in CDF Freedom Schools summer literacy programs across the country. Most come from the communities they serve and are role models for the children they serve. It is hard to dream of college and what you can be in the future if you dont see it and we are so proud of the young, energetic, hardworking and committed servant leaders who spend very long hours preparing to serve more than 11,000 lowincome children when they return home to 95 cities and communities in 27 states, the District of Columbia and the U.S. Virgin Islands. I hope many or most of them will become public school teachers who love, respect, and set high expectations for every child in their care. Since 1995 more than 17,000 collegeaged students, public school teachers and juvenile detention personnel have come to CDFAlex Haley Farm for training to teach in summer Freedom Schools. Many have gone on to become teachers, principals, administrators, college professors and more.

They are filling a great need. Secretary of Education John B. King, Jr. was among the extraordinary leaders who spoke to and inspired them this year. As our first Puerto Rican-African American Secretary of Education he spoke movingly of losing his mother at 8 and his father at 12 and how caring teachers saved his life and put him on the path to success. He graduated from Harvard University, Columbia Universitys Teachers College, and Yale Law School. He stressed the crucial importance of building a strong multiracial and multicultural teacher pipeline to inspire and guide all of our children  especially those who are poor and nonWhite. Students of color constitute a majority in our schools but teachers of color constitute only 18 percent of their faculties. Unless we are able to encourage many more talented students and teachers of color to enter and stay in the profession, this mismatch will only get worse. In a Washington Post OpEd Secretary King noted, We have strong evidence that students of color benefit from having teachers who are positive role models, as well as from the changes in classroom dynamics that result. Teachers of color often have higher expectations for students of color, are more likely to use culturally relevant teaching practices, are more likely to confront racism in their lessons and, yes, also serve as advocates.

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On May 6 Secretary King and the U.S. Department of Education held a National Summit on Teacher Diversity where education leaders, researchers, policymakers, teachers, and students spoke about the value of a diverse teaching force. Researchers noted that Black and Hispanic children in schools with high concentrations of Black and Hispanic teachers are less likely to be suspended, more likely to be recognized as better students and be placed in academically gifted classes, and more likely to graduate on time than those who attend schools with fewer diverse teachers.

Teachers and students shared personal examples of how having shared experiences could bolster child self-esteem and performance. Jahana Hayes, the National Teacher of the Year from Waterbury, Connecticut, grew up in poverty and became the first in her family to finish college and graduate school. She said her challenges ensured she will never give up on a student: People often give up at the point students need them the most.

Teachers of color are underrepresented compared to students of color in every state and a report released at the Summit by the Department of Education showed how the supply of teachers of color decreases at multiple points in the educator pipeline including enrollment in and completion of education programs, initial hiring, and retention. Seventy-eight percent of new teachers are White compared to 8 percent Black and 10 percent Hispanic. Only 2 percent of teachers are Black males. A strong case and call was made for getting students of color into the teacher pipeline, moving them through, and keeping them once they are in a school. The report noted that closing the completion rate between White and Black education majors could add another 300 Black bachelors degree completions for every 1,000 Black aspiring teachers.

Secretary King pointed out the invisible tax paid by teachers of color, especially males  often given extra tasks like planning cultural activities or mentoring or disciplining students of color. Adding these roles on top of standard responsibilities without extra support can lead to teacher burnout. Recent research by the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) found more teachers of color are being hired than in the past but they are leaving more quickly than White teachers. Making the educator workforce much more diverse would help everyone.
Why is the media so surprised and perplexed that Bernie refuses to give up? His agenda is as clear as day: he is refusing to let the Clintons triangulate their way to the Oval Office, and dumping progressive issues along the way.

For those who don't remember, or were too young to know, the term "triangulation" was coined by Bill Clinton's political Svengali Dick Morris. Basically it's a fancy word for compromise. Sometimes referred to as the "Third Way," it was the brainchild of Bill Clinton and it dominated a new brand of Democratic thinking championed by the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC).

Clinton, Morris and the DLC believed that to win, Democrats needed to shift away from left-leaning policies. Morris, especially, believe that the best way for Clinton to get re-elected in 1996 was to move to the center of the political spectrum for political expediency and tactical advantage, rather than for ideological reasons. Clinton adopted many Republican ideas to neutralize their criticism. Sometimes this meant jettisoning cherished liberal policies.

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Morris told the PBS program Frontline, in 2000, that:

"I didn't care at all [that the Republicans held Congress]. In fact, I feel that it was in many ways better for Bill Clinton if the Republicans did, because it permitted him to get rid of the craziness of the liberals in the Democratic Party and go with the centrist achievements that I think have worked so well for the country."

And Morris thought that Bill Clinton would get more from working with Republicans than with Democrats -- that Democrats would make him a "hostage:"

"I said [to Bill Clinton in 1994], 'They [the Democrats] will become your jailers. You won't be their candidate; you'll be their hostage. And you'll be spending every waking moment going around the liberal, Black, Hispanic caucuses, handing out goodies to try to round up the last Democratic vote, because you need them all to defeat the Republicans. Whereas, if you play it in the center, you'll get a good many Republican votes, and you'll be able to pass your bills.'"

What Triangulation Wrought



It's easy to imagine Bernie Sanders' reaction to the idea of getting "rid of the craziness of the Liberals."

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What we got for it was NAFTA, which he has railed against incessantly. It got us welfare reform, likewise criticized by progressives. It got us the Commodities Futures Modernization Act, which gutted Glass-Steagall and set the stage for the financial excesses that caused Great Recession. And let's not forget the smirking face of Democratic Sen. Sam Nunn as he emerged from the White House after negotiating the "Don't Ask Don't Tell" policy that slammed the closet door on gay military service members.

Those are the kinds of triangulation strategies that Sanders wants to block. And given that Hillary has waffled on Keystone and TPP and many other progressive priorities, his fear does not seem misplaced. Whether you agree with Sanders or not, Hillary is prone to centrist compromise almost more than her husband.

Triangulation Foretold

Way back in 2012, a conservative blogger foretold the return of triangulation, this time in the person of Hillary Clinton.

This blogger argued that a 2012 speech to the DNC by Bill Clinton "will eventually go down in political history as the most perfect triangulation strategy ever designed and implemented." He believed that Bill was setting up Hillary to run against a "failed" Obama presidency in 2016, in addition to running against the GOP nominee. There is plenty of evidence to refute the notion of a "failed" Obama presidency, but the idea of running against Obama by tacking rightward is harder to refute.

Back in March 2015, a Tufts University professor and blogger for the Washington Post, Daniel Drezner, saw just such a strategy taking shape. He said:

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"The more centrist she seems compared to Obama, the better for her campaign. And because for one reason or another there's no serious primary challenger in the Democratic camp, Clinton does not need to engage in the conservative policy outbidding that's currently taking place on the GOP side of the ledger. Will it work? It worked for Bill Clinton, but it's a different political time, and Hillary Clinton -- along with every other mortal -- is a less-skilled political candidate."

Bernie, the Socialist Firewall

Of course, that was before the Bernie juggernaut.

Now, Sanders is no fool. He knows he's no longer running for the nomination. But what he also know, with absolute certainty, is that he is the only thing standing between Hillary and a full-bore strategy of triangulation, in which she would jettison just as many cherished liberal policies (and accomplishments) as her husband - on foreign policy, economic policy, environmental policy and regulating the economic and political power of big corporations.

Sanders is a wily old guy who has been round the block many times. He saw the Clintonian writing on the wall and said, "Hell no."

And now his aim is to drag Hillary leftward: as far as possible, for as long as possible. He will give her not one inch of room to backpedal on the current progressive agenda. His message is: "Sorry lady you're not gonna triangulate your way out of this one."

He will be a force at the convention, and throughout the general, dogging her, nipping at her heels, goading her, and reminding her that she takes progressive support for granted at her own peril. It didn't cost her husband the White House, but he will do his best to ensure that it costs her dearly if she tries it this time around.

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Events this week in state politics inspired us to begin promotion of two Twitter hashtags: #doyourjob and #ilbudgetnow. We hope you'll join us in using these tags to send a message to Springfield.

A week that had started out with at least a glint of hope for progress on a state budget -- working groups of lawmakers said they were making progress behind the scenes -- rapidly devolved into sniping over blame for the budget crisis, a serious reprimand from two credit agencies and more sniping over who's to blame for the state's deteriorating credit rating.

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Lots of finger pointing today on Illinois credit rating downgrade. Let us agree that it was a team effort.  Mark Brown (@MarkBrownCST) June 9, 2016

This started Tuesday, when House Speaker Michael Madigan canceled the House's scheduled session on Wednesday because, he said, working groups of rank-and-file lawmakers were making progress on a temporary budget.

On Wednesday, as those groups were working in the Capitol, Gov. Bruce Rauner held a press conference in his office in which he accused Madigan and Senate President John Cullerton of trying to sandbag work on a budget to create a crisis. Rauner said the two top Democrats wanted a crisis in state government -- especially one that would arrive if there's no K-12 school budget within a month and schools can't open in the fall -- so they could use it as leverage to pass a tax increase without implementing any of Rauner's business or government reforms.

A few hours after Rauner met with reporters in Springfield, Cullerton did the same at the James R. Thompson Center in Chicago. He said he heard from Senate Democrats in the working group meetings that as they were trying to craft a stopgap budget based on the governor's own plan, they started seeing tweets on their phones from the governor's press conference.

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Cullerton said Rauner's campaign-style rhetoric is not helping the budget cause and urged Rauner to "take a break" and let the working groups work out a compromise.

Senate Pres John Cullerton begins presser by congratulating Rauner on winning election - 18 months ago pic.twitter.com/0AlIkOPg7a  Tony Arnold (@tonyjarnold) June 8, 2016

As if to remind Illinois taxpayers that their leaders' squabbling had real, adverse effects, Moody's Investors Service on Wednesday night downgraded the state's credit rating to two steps above junk status. On Thursday, S&P Global Ratings did the same.

Both ratings agencies said Illinois' leaders had all the tools to repair the state's broken finances but political gridlock was preventing them from getting to work.

It sounds so simple, right?

That's what we're talking about after a challenging week in state politics on this week's "Only in Illinois."

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On June 6, 2016, Helen Fabela Chavez, widow of union icon Cesar Chavez, passed away. Helen was born in Brawley, California in 1928. She grew into adulthood in the San Joaquin Valley near Delano.

Helen's parents were immigrants from Mexico after their involvement in the Mexican Revolution of 1910. Like so many Mexican immigrants, they became migrant farm workers, first in California's Imperial Valley and later in the San Joaquin Valley. Helen began working in the fields when she was seven. At 15, her father died. As the eldest child of six brothers and sisters, Helen dropped out of high school to help support her family. After Cesar Chavez returned from the Navy in 1945, he and Helen began spending time together. Having little money, they walked in the moonlight or perhaps went to a movie. In 1948, they married in a church in San Jose. While starting her own family, Helen continued to be the primary source of income for her siblings and mother. She and Cesar settled in Delano where over the following years the family grew to ten including eight children, Fernando, Sylvia, Linda, Eloise, Liz, Paul, Anna, and Anthony.

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From her parents' involvement in the Mexican Revolution, Helen was influenced from her youth to actively improve the lives of others. In the late 1950s, their local Catholic priest in San Jose introduced Helen and Cesar Chavez to Fred Ross, a Community Service (CSO) organizer. Fred Ross urged Cesar to organize for CSO. Cesar at first refused to work with Ross because he was an Anglo, but Helen persuaded Cesar to eventually become a full-time CSO organizer.

As a mother caring for and educating their children, and a wife, Helen focused on the home; most of the credit for the efforts of migrant farm workers to overcome the opposition and antagonism of agricultural employers, the growers, went to her husband. But Helen did far more than maintain the home. After her domestic chores at home were finished and the children were asleep, like many women behind the scenes, Helen worked long hours for CSO where she taught literacy classes for farm workers, assisted them in gaining US citizenship, and oversaw Cesar's daily handwritten CSO reports. After Cesar resigned from CSO in 1962 to start the farm workers union that became the National Farm Workers Association (NFWA), the family moved back to Delano. To help support the family, Helen returned to the field picking grapes for less than $2 a day and became the full-time administrator of the union's credit union. Helen felt she lacked the skills necessary to do the job but quickly learned bookkeeping and maintained a financial record of the new union for more than 20 years.

In 1965, the NFWA became the United Farm Workers Organization Committee (UFWOC). The efforts of Helen and Cesar Chavez became the foundation of La Causa (The Cause.) They followed nonviolent alternatives, including marches and fasts to obtain change. They struggled against the unfair labor practices. During the following years, Helen was involved in efforts for recognition of the union; she was arrested in 1966 for shouting Huelga ("Strike") at a San Joaquin Valley ranch. As the daughter of revolutionaries, Helen went beyond the traditional role of a woman involved in political struggles, assisting in the administrative parts of the process and staying out of the public eye, until she was arrested. While she has engaged in few acts of civil disobedience, by example she has encouraged others to undergo arrest when necessary to seek a greater good.

Helen's growing up, facing the daily hardships of working the fields became an invaluable part of the spirit of farm worker and La Causa movements. "Her involvement and passion for the cause became a huge motivator for other Latinos to join the union efforts. . . . Due to the existing sexual division of labor in the union and in society, few women are able or willing to relegate their personal lives or families to a secondary position in order to pursue union organizing. She still remained invisible -- unrecognized and unappreciated by union members and supporters."

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The morning after Helen Fabela Chavez passed on, Luis Valdez, the founder of Teatro Campesino that came to life in the early years of Cesar and Helen's efforts to create the farm workers union, posted a facebook piece. Luis told his friends:

"On behalf of the familia of El Teatro Campesino, I wish to express our deepest condolences to the entire Chavez family on the death of the great Helen Fabela Chavez. I had the privilege of knowing her and calling her my dear friend for over 50 years, and last saw her last March in Delano at the commemoration of the 1966 March to Sacramento. She was one of strong, determined founders of the farm workers movement, alongside her husband Cesar and Dolores Huerta. Regardless of how tough the fight became, she was always a believer in the struggle for social justice, and it was this faith and strength that undoubtedly fueled the creation of United Farm Workers of America. The daughter of a revolutionary general in the Mexican Revolution of 1910, she became the wife, mother, grandmother and great grand mother of an entire movement. Rest in peace, Helen, and may angels speed you to your place among the stars in heaven."



All of us who were fortunate enough to know Helen Chavez join in Luis Valdez's condolences to the Chavez family and feel the loss of a historic woman.
There's a new festival in town. "The Other Festival" founded and created by Dee Poke-Spaulding is the first all woman festival to take place this summer-sixteen, on June 11th in New York City. Dee Poke is also the CEO of WIE https://www.wienetwork.org a women's leadership network. WIE Network provides compelling conversations with notable industry figures designed to empower the next generation and equip them with the tools to succeed. Being the difference is in Dee's blood. A former Hollywood Exec she left that path and turned her dreams of motivating female leaders today into action. Catching up with Dee was like speaking with the mentor I didn't know, I needed. Our conversation about "The Other Festival" http://www.theotherfestival.co launching this weekend was phenomenal. Often times we have an idea but very seldom do we allow that idea to expand beyond us which, " The Other Festival" has beautifully curated. Thank you Dee Poku-Spaulding for your bravery!

MM: How did you go from having an innocuous thought last year at a festival you were attending thinking, "Hmm there is an endless array of all male bands and fried food, theres got to be another way let me launch The Other Festival" which is now a living breathing ladies save the date for June 11th event?

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DP: I know, I keep asking myself that question-- What am I doing? You know, it just stayed with me this idea. I already run a womans focused organization and so I already work in the space with supporting women and for gender equality. I never really thought about the music space in that way before and it just suddenly was brought home for me by having gone to a couple of these festivals last summer. I started just reading more about it and it occurred to me, when I think about the music business, I think about all these really empowered female artist like Rihanna, Beyonce and Taylor Swift and I am like wow, these woman are dominating. It's just not reflected, certainly not behind the scenes in the music business and it's certainly not reflected on the festival bracket. It was just invigorating much like a pair of shoes you just can't stop thinking about and I just kind of started to pick on it and then I started planning it and talking to friends in the business. I assembled a pretty great advisory board and it just took on legs and you know the concept evolved a little bit from trolling music to preaching something that was really useful which emerged into something more creative and that encompassed learning, workshops and other talks. I tend to do what I say I'm going to do so... here I am.

MM: I relate to you in that when I think of a shoes to a new hairstyle or work idea, I become relentless until it's done. Who is the first person you went to-- to say this is what I'm thinking. It feels right in my gut, can you assist me in executing this?

DP: There were two people actually. One is actually the chair of my advisory board her name is Jennifer Justice-- JJ. She was a senior level executive at Roc Nation and she is now the President of Corporate Development at Superfly and just a great supporter, so I ran the idea by her and she liked it. I also talked to my husband who is a big- big music lover and is always sort of discovering really cool interesting bands. They were the first two, they were pretty excited and it just really went from there.

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MM: I love your genuine and honest approach to helping women especially through the eyes of your own daily journey. Whether it's you using your own personal experiences such as your blog, which resonated with me regarding negotiating your rate. Reading, you having that inner cringe of "Oh I got sucked in again" and kicking yourself. Which, I 100% relate too-- time and time again. When did you first realize that reaching women in this manner is your gift, cause it is your gift -- I feel?

DP: I was working at Paramount and then I left to start my own business. I hadn't realized after leaving that job, how much my identity was just bound up in the "prestigious" job and how much that was intertwined with my confidence. When I went out on my own and started, I realized-- I'm fine for some reason, negotiating on behalf of someone else. It's negotiating on my own behalf where I'm crap.

MM: Same with me on taking my own advice. HaHa!

DP: Yea, I'll fight like a bulldog for you but for me, I can't do it. It was pretty humbling those first few years and I sold myself short again and again and again. There was just a moment where I pushed the envelope a little bit and it worked and I was like oh wow, it's possible. Cause you're always afraid, you're afraid you will lose that thing you are going after but when people really want you, they will meet you part of the way if not all of the way. That was certainly a real turning point for me and I just felt like, I really wanted to impart some of that knowledge on my journey and sort of support the women I'm around and that are in my network. And, within my organization because a lot of talks or negotiations are always on the table. Women in particular, I think you know we are nurtures we like everyone to feel good and be happy, but it can be to our detriment.

MM: Through your company WIE you aim to empower the next generation with the tools to succeed. I feel like that is something very needed. How in action do you go about doing that?

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DP: So with WIE, its like we are providing real world training basically. What I see when I look around and at most of the women who approach my events just among my contemporaries. We are all heart, we're ambitious, we're driven, resilient were doing all those things. We are passionate we're good at what we do. The missing link is there is that sort of invisible world of business that trip women up again and again and again. That, that can't be learnt. You can be a great writer, great journalist you can be all those things that comes from you. That invisible part though, it's an intangible something that you only learn through experience and hopefully, you still make it or you fail and you trip up. So what I am trying to do is to give women access to high achievers who have figured it out and can share that. We have very small posted workshops. We have masterclasses, we have a monthly talk series, conferences and we do networking dinners. It's just all about giving access to women who have done it to a different forum big and small-- training forum.

MM: To piggy back off that because it really struck something in me when you said, "you pushed the envelope and it worked" You realized its possible! Was that envelope pushed by believing in a specific rate, believing in your voice or not letting up? What did that push look and feel like?

DP: Well you know and I have to admit to it-- the trigger came from a male friend. Which is actually why we always have a lot of male speakers. I think its very interesting to get their perspective. How would a woman do it-- how would a man do it and given as such we live in a mans world its very good to kind of understand them. What happened was, I had reached out to a former colleague, one I was friendly with about my business and about potentially doing something together. I reached out a couple of times and I just got a blank and she was someone who had been fairly responsive. But.... when I was in my former world and it really hurt. It was one of those days that hit hard and I felt really crap about it and I had a dinner with a male friend of mine-- very, very, very successful business man. I told him what happened, and he looked so puzzled by what I was saying. He said, I am the opposite. When I am rejected, it just spurs me on to kind of prove them wrong. For him that gives him the impetus to succeed. It was such a different way of approaching things where as my impulse is just crawl away hide and lick my wounds. His is like, I'm going to prove you wrong watch me. That was kind of the beginning of that like trigger when I was like come on, what are you doing. It's just one person who says no, put yourself out there. It's not personal you know you believe in yourself. So it was his advice, we had a long conversation and it was just his approach that was so interesting to me and made me rethink my approach to things.

MM: Wow, I love that! I also love that you have an amazing roster of women and talent and entrepreneurs as well as musicians coming on Saturday. How did you curate all of these powerful people to participate?

DP: It's hard to really explain. People are always asking me that. How do you get them and whats the secret sauce and you know my mantra is " Don't underestimate the power of your networks" That's what I live by. Everything I have has been achieved through my network of friends and colleagues and business associates and I take that pretty seriously. I take all my relationships pretty seriously and so when I am thinking about a speaker I want-- you know generally, I invite people to speak who I am inspired by. I'll read something or see something and I will think wow, I love this person. I would love them to come speak and I start to think about how many degrees of separation there are between myself and them and how I can get to them. Over the years, you know I have managed to kind of reduce those degrees pretty significantly. So if you're flexible whats the easiest way to get to them beyond the plain cold call and then its like being really strategic. Like, I don't believe in just asking. You have to really think about that person. Whats in it for them and why they would do it. They need to feel like you've really thought about their involvement and what they can bring to the table and whats in it for them. Rather than just sending a standard cold letter. So, I really think very carefully about who I am approaching and how I'm approaching them so that all comes into play.

MM: Being an African woman in which you are and I am also an African woman. I was born in Zimbabwe, yet grew up in the states. I enjoyed what you said, in an interview that I read of yours where you stated there are huge opportunities for Africa. Our future plan is to change the perceptions of Africa. In your future plans have you thought as far as to bringing "The Other Festival to Africa?" I know you are so deep in planning this current NYC one, yet has that thought crossed your mind on planting that seed?

DP: Always! The diaspora is everything I do. That's my home, thats my roots. It's just part of me. Wouldn't that be awesome to have an amazing festival like this there? It would be unreal.

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MM: It would be delicious on so many levels.

DP: It would be unbelievable and also more for like the impact it would make on the woman there, you know it would just be life changing for me and certainly thats something thats on my radar. It would take a lot of planning, I've done a couple of conferences. One in Cape Town and one in Leggos. It's work and a whole different ball game but its very doable and the appetite is there. I was so, you know impressed by the caliber of women I have managed to get speak, so innovative and articulate, driven. Everything we see in the rest of the world but for some reason Africa is just viewed through a different lens. Everything we're seeing here is happening over there.

MM: What do you think its going to take, to tell our fellow Africans Stories in a positive light?

DP: I don't know if you know that amazing Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie who wrote her story? We have to tell our own stories, if we're not. Certainly on Africans in the diaspora, its up to us to tell their story so I take that responsibility quite seriously. I always have African speakers at my events and I am telling our stories from our point of view.



MM: What are the intentions and hopes you aim to feel at the end of "The Other Festival" within yourself and the participants attending?

DP: I want to feel two things. One is that everyone leaves feeling that they got their extra boost of confidence. There is a lot of entrepreneurs coming. It's a lonely place you know theres a lot of hard knocks and sometimes its hard to keep picking yourself up. So, I'm hoping that by hearing the people on stage and interacting with the people they do-- that people will get that little bit of extra oomph. I'm also hoping that they will have some questions answered by being there. Maybe if they have an obstacle or issue they are trying to figure out, we can provide some answers. If I can achieve a little bit of that, I'll feel amazing!

MM: How have you through this process of organizing "The Other Festival" learned to further embrace yourself?

DP: I think I have embraced myself by forgiving myself. I can be pretty hard on myself, maybe thats being a Virgo. I don't know what it is.

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MM: I'm a Virgo as well, that's what it is! haha

DP: Yeah! So, I forgive myself and know that I am doing my best at all times.

MM: Well, you did amazing with this interview. I thank you so much for your time. I really enjoyed our chat. Wishing you loads of success at "The Other Festival" this Saturday June 11th.

DP: Thank you, I really appreciate that!
WASHINGTON, DC - JUNE 10: Presumptive Republican Presidential nominee Donald Trump speaks during the Faith and Freedom Forum Coalition's 'Road to Majority' conference on June 10, 2016 in Washington, DC. Trump used a teleprompter to deliver his speech to the religious conference. (Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images)

Contrary to those in the media and elsewhere who claimed he was "far more accepting" on LGBT issues than other GOP candidates, Donald Trump is proving that he very much will be a force against LGBT equality if elected president. And he's doing it in a more insidious, under-the-radar way than any previous GOP presidential nominee.

Though he rarely raises his positions against LGBT rights on the campaign trail, Trump is making pacts with anti-LGBT forces. Today, Trump spoke at the Road to the Majority summit in Washington, an event attended by Christian right activists and sponsored by the Faith and Freedom Coalition and Concerned Women for America, both of which fight against LGBT rights. "I'm with you 100 percent," he said, and, knowing the event was televised live on the cable networks, he spoke with a dog whistle on LGBT rights, alluding to attacks on "marriage and family" and championing "religious freedom," which of course has been the term used by evangelicals to deny LGBT people of rights. The crowd roared with approval.

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And on June 21, in New York, Trump will have a private meeting with over 400 of the most bigoted, most homophobic and most influential anti-LGBT advocates in the United States -- from Family Research Council's Tony Perkins to James Dobson, founder of the Focus on the Family -- the bedrock of the religious right, which has been a prominent part of the base of the Republican Party for decades. Many of these groups, like Family Research Council, have been labeled as hate groups by the Southern Poverty Law Center. No GOP president in roughly five decades has been elected without the religious right turning out in big numbers. No GOP president has been elected in modern times without evangelical pastors railing from pulpits across the country, telling followers that the only way to save the country is to support the GOP presidential candidate. Ben Carson, who has taken a prominent role in Trump's campaign, will moderate the discussion between Trump and the hundreds of anti-LGBT activists, which is closed to the media and thus tightly controlled.

Trump had already quietly made pacts with some anti-LGBT forces, and promised to do what he can to overturn the Supreme Court's historic Obergefell ruling, which he called, "shocking." He promised he'd appoint justices to the Supreme Court who might do that, and certainly the list of extreme judges he provided recently shouldn't give LGBT people any comfort.

But Trump will also likely accept an endorsement from the Log Cabin Republicans (LCR), the gay GOP group that's been desperate to be validated by the GOP for years and is aching for a meeting with Trump -- publicly calling for one -- so they can get behind him. Already, LCR leader Gregory T. Angelo has called Trump "one of the best, if not the best, pro-gay Republican candidates to ever run for the presidency." As in the past, LCR will settle for very little. And the group will help Trump appear more moderate to suburban and independent voters while he quietly makes further pacts with those extremists on the right intent on rolling back LGBT rights or stopping advances -- pacts he will be bound to in return for getting evangelicals out to vote.

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How Angelo can even say what he said about Trump is because the bar of course is set very low for GOP candidates, and the media has only fed into this fiction about Trump. Though he opposes marriage equality and supports a bill in Congress that will allow religious exemptions for anti-gay individuals and businesses that don't want to provide services to LGBT people, The New York Times, for example, focused on Trump's sending a congratulations note to Elton John eleven years ago on his civil union as one among several weak examples that supposedly show him to be more gay-friendly.

Trump early on got the backing of Jerry Falwell Jr. of Liberty University and some other prominent religious right leaders, and evangelicals have helped him win primaries in several states, enough for him to bellow in Nevada, "I love the evangelicals!" But Trump has met with resistance from others, including from the Southern Baptist Convention's Russell Moore, because they don't trust his past positions supporting abortion rights and also because he has been divorced twice and is vulgar toward women and others, certainly not a paragon of Christian piety.

But make no mistake: Christian right leaders got behind Ronald Reagan, who was divorced, and George H. W. Bush, who formerly supported abortion rights, after they were romanced a bit and quietly forged pacts with the candidates, including regarding stopping advancement on gay rights. That process is happening right now with Trump. His campaign, and certainly Republican leaders, know he cannot win without motivating a large portion of evangelicals. And right now anti-LGBT laws and measures meant to blunt equality are animating religious conservatives in a big way, as a furious backlash to marriage equality plays out across the country. No matter what Trump has said in the past, or what the media or desperate gay Republicans may say now, there's no question that Trump must bow to an anti-LGBT agenda if he wants to win the presidency. That makes him a mortal danger to LGBT equality.
HADALAT, JORDAN - MAY 4: Syrian refugees arrive at the Jordanian military crossing point of Hadalat at the border with Syria after a long walk through the Syrian desert on May 4, 2016 in Hadalat, Jordan. Coming from the cities of Raqaa, Deir Al-Zor and Hama, roughly 300 hundred refugees crossed into Jordan at Hadalat on Wednesday, while over 5000 refugees crossed in the last four days coming from Aleppo. (Photo by Jordan Pix/ Getty Images)

Photo Courtesy of BBC

Last January, I traveled to Jordan and interviewed 40 Syrian refugee women living in Zaatari refugee camp and in various cities. Out of the 4.5 million Syrian refugees in Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey, Egypt, and Iraq, Jordan is the third largest host of Syrian refugees and has a history of taking in refugees from different countries. The women I met invited me into their homes and spaces and talked to me about their hardships, fears, and wishes. Through my various conversations and interactions with individuals who had been forced to flee their homes, I learned 5 important things about life and resilience that dispel many of the misconceptions about refugees.

1. The majority of refugees live in cities, not camps.

Urban refugees don't always make it onto the news, but they are suffering immensely. Over 650,000 Syrian refugees are living in Jordan and the majority lives in unfinished apartments and dilapidated buildings in the cities. Urban refugees struggle to pay for rent, food, heating oil, and utility bills. They are also often the first to have their aid cut. In 2014, the World Food Program (WFP) cut food vouchers for urban refugees in Jordan. Some refugees in the cities are still without food vouchers and some only receive 10 JD per person per month, which is equivalent to about 14 USD.

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The camps aren't glamorous by any means, but there are over 100 organizations providing aid to 80,000 refugees in Zaatari. Whereas in the cities, where 85% of refugees reside, organizations are overrun with requests and are underfunded and understaffed.

2. Don't judge a group by the actions of a few.

One of the women that I met, Shadia,* invited me into her home, prepared a traditional Syrian meal for her family and me, and told me about her experiences in Jordan. As we sat on worn mats on the floor eating with pita bread as utensils, we discussed the treatment of refugees by humanitarian aid providers. Shadia was grateful for all of the assistance she received, and she explained that she had generally been treated well by aid providers. For the instances when aid providers had not been so amiable, she stated, "Just like humanitarian aid providers who may not always be friendly, there are good Syrians and some bad ones, but the bad ones shouldn't represent the whole group and hide the good ones." Shadia's conviction is especially relevant to the hateful rhetoric that has been employed against Muslims and refugees. Her remarks remind us how imperative it is not to pass judgment on an entire group based on the actions of a few.

3. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger.

Fatima, another woman I spoke with in Zaatari, told me about the hardships she faced. She had 2 kids, and she worried about their futures, especially because the educational system in the camp was weak. She yearned to work or learn a skill, but vocational programming was limited and did not always lead to employment. Her efforts to provide for her children were also stifled by the limitations of living in the camp. She recounted an incident in which she carried her 8-year-old son who had a piece of glass stuck in his foot to a clinic at the opposite side of the 2-mile camp because none of the ambulances were available to take them.

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Despite these struggles, Fatima remained resilient. "What doesn't break the donkey's back makes it stronger," she stated. Refugee women know all too well that what doesn't kill you makes you stronger.

4. Hateful rhetoric in the West towards minorities is having far-reaching effects.

"Should we immigrate if we have the chance?" asked Mohammad, one of the women's husbands, while we sat in their caravan in Zaatari. Mohammad, his wife, and 5 children lived in cramped quarters in substandard conditions, and he was unable to find work to provide for his family. "We see on TV the American politicians speaking badly of Arabs and Muslims and the harm that refugees are facing all over Europe," he continued. Mohammad, like any parent, worried about the future and safety of his children. If given the chance of resettlement (which is very slim to begin with), Mohammad felt safer staying put in his difficult situation rather than traveling to a distant Western country where he had seen such negative responses towards Muslims and refugees.

After everything refugees have heard and seen on the news about Americans comparing Syrian refugees to "rabid dogs" and the praise of a twentieth century war general who dipped bullets in pigs blood and shot Muslims, can you blame them for being wary of resettlement, no matter how much they are suffering? The fact that refugees in a camp with extremely limited cable and Wi-Fi are able to see the negative actions and comments towards Muslims and refugees shows the far-reaching nature of the abominable speech that we should be actively condemning.

5. Despite their own hardships, refugees are still able to empathize with the suffering of others.

Ali, one of the men that I met, explained that he was fasting in solidarity with the residents of Madaya, Syria, a town that was under siege and cut off from humanitarian aid for months. Ali, his wife, and his 4 children all shared 2 caravans with a small open space in the middle covered by a tent. They had no running water and used a propane tank to stay warm. They also had been living in Jordan for 4 years with little prospect of returning to Syria in the near future; however, he was still able to empathize with others who were suffering. Ali's story is a clear example of the common humanity of refugees that so many politicians are trying to hide in order to restrict the movement and resettlement of refugees in the West.

Ali and his family used this propane tank with a cook top to stay warm and to cook.

We as a society have a responsibility to stop perpetuating negative images of refugees that have come out in full force throughout the last couple of years. Fleeing your home does not make you a terrorist, a "rabid dog," or a bad person. It should go without saying, but refugees are just trying to survive and support their families. We must stop fearing refugees, and instead, we should defend their right to seek safer lives for themselves and their families.

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Michelle conducted research in Jordan in January 2016 for her Senior Honors Thesis with the support of the Pardee School of Global Studies, the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program, the Institute for the Study of Muslim Societies & Civilizations, and the College of Arts and Sciences at Boston University.
"Everyone can be great, because everyone can serve." MLK

There is an old saying, "Only the good die young." The words in any other order would be simple and not very profound. But for many in the community of Hillcrest, these words are heart breaking and apply to one of kindest people you would ever hope to meet.

Every town has that one special bartender or server, you know the one; the person who cheers you up when you have that awful day or the person you want to share the news of good fortune or a job promotion; the one person who you know will have a smile on their face and cares about the people he meets at work or he encounters walking down the street; the guy who spends the last cash in his pocket to buy a sandwich for a homeless person or pay for a cab ride for a total stranger to make sure they get home safe.

For Hillcrest, that guy was Rob Benzon. He was the guy who everybody knew and you could not help but like. But, he broke their hearts when on June 5, 1999, on a vacation, he got caught in a rip tide in Mexico and drowned. When everybody's best friend dies unexpectedly it's disorienting because that guy was the guy who was always there, the guy who would give the shirt off his back.

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How does a community mourn the loss of purity? That is the moment when you feel your grief so profoundly you have to do something. That is the moment the foundation was born.

Grief is an odd emotion. it is a part of love. It is a symptom of loss, an empty feeling that yearns to be filled as quickly as possible. So, the community created a foundation that was true to Benzon -- the guy who gave the shirt off his back.

With this is mind, friends decided the best way to honor Rob was every gay pride to hold a fundraiser and with the money, "Provide unexpected help and hope to individuals in the San Diego community who are suffering from a personal catastrophic event not of their making who are in need of emergency support for actual expenses. "

When the community learned about the fundraiser the most amazing thing happened. Individuals and small business donated and made the dream a very sharp reality. Not every foundation or not for profit can make a claim like this, but they can, and they do it each and every year. So far they have donated $199,000 to the local community.

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In an interview with Dan Ferbal, President and Founding Board Member of the Rob Benzon Foundation, Dan explained, "We wanted something good to come from the tragedy of losing our dear friend, Rob. We also wanted Rob's name to live on. Initially, we thought whatever money we raised would go towards an annual scholarship for LGBTQ youth. What ended up happening was remarkable, thanks to a very generous community of supporters. Within two years of Rob's passing, we became a 501(c)3 non-profit charitable organization and over the past 17 years, the Rob Benzon Foundation has granted over $190,000 back to those in need in our community."

I wanted to share the story of the Rob Benzon Foundation with you. It's important for people to know that a small group of people can make a big difference when they come together for the greater good.

"We can do no great things; only small things with great love." Mother Teresa
Written by Hira Ismail

"You're an athlete. Expect to get hurt. But hopefully not by your friends."

Michelle, a dance teacher at the Mesa Arts Center, gently patted one of our students' arms, which was hurt because a boy had pulled it. I looked pointedly in his direction, scrunching my eyebrows sternly at him for deliberately hurting his classmate.

Fifteen minutes later, there was a terrorist on the loose in downtown Mesa, Arizona, a block or two away from us.

Our upbeat, vibrant dance class became an endangered place, despite all the sunshine floating in through the windows and the children's lively faces.

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What you have to understand is that the Mesa Arts Center is Mesa Downtown. We are centrally located, one of the first buildings you would consider as essential to the cultural makeup of the city.

Suddenly, as a teacher, my priorities went from teaching the class to preserving the class.

The older kids figured out something was wrong as soon as I told them we were going down the elevator instead of the stairs.

"Miss Hira, what's up with that?"

Unfortunately, earlier that week I'd declared there was no way they could ever, ever convince me to let them take the elevator. I was biting my tongue now as I ushered them on. Who knew something like this would come up? Something that would compel us to shelter the kids in any way we could while we took them down to lunch?

Expect to get hurt. But hopefully not by your neighbors.

The hardest part was steeling myself in front of the kids. I never knew that these days, becoming a teacher means becoming a soldier, a hardened soldier. After my supervisor had come upstairs to let me know six people had been shot already, I dropped everything and clasped my hands in prayer, desperate for grounding, asking for strength and protection. I turned away from the class, standing by the shoe rack, fervently praying.

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"Are you alright Miss Hira?"

"Yes, yes, get into your lines, show me your leaps." I hurried to the Michelle dance teacher I was aiding that day, a thought dawning on me. My sisters. They were supposed to be heading downtown, showing up to work the camp and festival with me. Were they--God forbid, God forbid. My thoughts were reeling as I took the teacher aside and told her through hiccups and tears that surprised me by their suddenness.

"Michelle be careful when you leave, I know you have to report to your second job and you HAVE to be careful."

"You be careful too, with that headscarf of yours. There are crazies out there."

"I need to call my family Michelle. Do you mind if I step out?"

"Please, please go."

I stepped out with my phone in hand. One ring to my Bhabhi, my sister-in-law--answer. My father--no answer. My mother--sleeping after a full night shift at the hospital--don't wake her. My brother--no answer. He always answers his phone, why didn't he? What if--God forbid, God forbid. Allah hifaazat de. My sister--please answer, please answer--

"Hello?"

Tears of relief and a struggle to quickly get out the news and to forbid her from coming to the area. We had no idea where he was going next.

"Can you come home?" she asked.

"I have to stay here. The kids Nahil, the kids--" It was overwhelming, terrifying. The light shifting in through the large windows across the brightly colored hall suddenly made me feel vulnerable instead of safe. I was easily visible out here.

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"I'm supposed to be there though, Hira."

"I know, but we have enough workers, some parents are taking their kids home. Is Bhabhi ok, is she ok?"

"I'm not sure, I'm not home yet."

A ringtone sounded and I jumped. My older brother was calling.

"It's Asim, Bhai, it's Asim, on the other line, wait I have to answer his phone!"

More tearful, hard-to-get-out words--is Bhabhi ok?

"Hira, Hira she's ok, she didn't feel well today so she called in sick."

Subhanallah. "Oh thank God, thank God." I told him the news, to stay home, shut the lights, the curtains, don't be conspicuous, don't attract attention, don't tell Mommy, let her sleep.

It's a good thing that it's only later I heard the terrorist had broken and shot into someone's apartment to escape the police. Even our houses weren't safe.

Where does a terrorist go with a gun in his hand? Where does he run, where does he hide, who does he hurt?

When the kids and I had gone downstairs for lunch, the teachers waited with bated breath for the police to catch him. The outdoor Spark Festival for creativity was going on halfheartedly, the musicians still defiantly playing. Even though my instincts told me we should all be quiet in case he's in the area, so he doesn't decide to target the one place that terrorists find so attractive--a center with school-age children--in a way, I was happy the music kept playing.

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Why should we let the terrorist win? Why should we let him shut down our daily lives, our yearning to live and celebrate art?

He was caught the same day, March 18, 2015, around 1:00pm after a four to five hour chase; two blocks away from my home, and across the street from my younger brother's bus stop.

It is a miracle that Mesa Public Schools was on Spring Break. I prayed thanks for that.

My younger sister, I heard after, had been walking home from the tram station at the same time I was talking to her on the phone, a few streets away from the terrorist's wayward run. I prayed thanks that everything had worked for my family but ached deeply for those who were hurt; the man who was in critical condition, and eventually died. The man shot in his own apartment. His neighbors waiting in fear inside their homes.

The whole valley's police departments were after him: Chandler, Mesa, Tempe, Phoenix, even Arizona State University's.

And how did they catch this armed man?

With a taser.

Back at the classroom, in whispered voices we teachers discussed our evacuation plans. My co-worker Lauren pointed to the door jarringly in front of us. I was supervisor that afternoon.

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"If he enters that door, in a commanding voice you get the children under the tables, and try to get them to crawl in the direction of that side door."

I stared at her weakly. In a commanding voice? I could do that, but would they listen? It was hard to get this range of 5-13 year-olds to line up for class and put away their games, let alone dive under a table because of an armed terrorist.

But I nodded anyway. We are naked against a gun. If he came in, other than hide and crawl, what could we do? I briefly imagined all of us under those heavy gray tables, counting quietly to three as we overturned them, hopefully knocking him over, or at least his gun. I imagined taking the chair I was seated in, using it as a shield, and then as a weapon, watched the chair sail in my mind's eye across the classroom to hit his head, his arm, his chest, anything to deter him.

What else could I do?

I looked at the note scrawled on the front desk, notes from morning supervisor to evening supervisor:

Armed bald man in gray shirt, 40's, Caucasian

It made me shiver.

A child came up to my desk, and I forced a smile onto my face, bracing myself for her question. Did she notice the whispers? Does she know that my co-worker Sunny is worried because the terrorist had attacked a Bistro across the street from EVIT, the technical college near her own Mesa Community College? Does she know Sunny worries that even though it's Spring Break, there are still teachers and students using facilities on campus? Does she know that my sister usually goes to MCC on odd days of the week and might have been walking the same streets as this terrorist? Does she know her hometown is being attacked?

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"Can you open this for me?"

A yogurt pack with bright lettering and pictures of fruit was pushed into my hands by the waiting child, and as I opened it, I wondered how anything so mundane could still be asked of me when it felt like the world was falling apart.

I guess I became part of a legacy. Peshawar, Pakistan: almost 150 school children and teachers shot and killed ruthlessly by terrorists. Within a month, the students and faculty were back at school, rebuilding their communities, their classrooms, their souls. How did those teachers feel? What decisions did they consider while trying to save their students? And there I was, standing in those brave teacher shoes, halfway across the world, considering strategies and procedures, how to get a large camp of students evacuated if I had to. Another Pakistani, soldiering to fight terrorism, this time in the United States.

The Mesa terrorist was caught eventually. So many things were wrong with the way the city reacted to it. The trams were still running, he could have escaped or terrorized the passengers on his way to the city, could have wreaked more havoc. And if you send most of the neighboring city's police departments to one place, what if the man escapes to another city? There would be no police left to catch him. He would have easy access to whoever he wants. This man wasn't just running, he was taking down people as he tried to escape. It's as if he wanted to raze as much and as many as he could before he was caught and carted to jail.

Ryan Giroux was his name.

When he was caught, there was a significant sigh of relief from all the teachers. I called my sister and let her know that it was her choice to come or stay at home, and I think she came for me, mostly. But I was bewildered by everyone's reactions.

How is everyone so calm?

Just because he was caught doesn't mean he doesn't have accomplices. There was a terrorist in Peoria, Arizona who was doing the same as we spoke, just an hour away for God's sake!

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Why wasn't anyone connecting the two terrorists? They must be working together, right? They must have a network of sleeper cells. Ryan Giroux had white supremacist tattoos on his neck and face, only one news station bothered to mention that. So where are his accomplices? Why weren't his parents, his family, his business acquaintances, anyone remotely related to him being carted off for questioning? Where was the FBI when you needed them? Why is it that a day after the attacks, the story was already petering from the news? That most of my friends and relatives in other states hadn't even heard about it until I told them? Not worthy of international news? Even though a white terrorist has cropped up in too many states by now, too many states for people to still be calling them "lone wolves."

Oh.

Oh.

I get it. Was it because his name wasn't Muhammad? Khan? Umar? Was it because he wasn't "Muslim" or Black or Colored?

If his name had been different, if he'd been bearded and robed, would I as a Muslim be allowed to mourn and fear and brace myself the same way I was that day? Or would I be looked at with suspicion, disgust, unease?

I didn't blink twice at my white co-workers, didn't question them. It was obvious to me they had nothing to do with the violence going on outside, no affiliation, and there was no reason to connect them to it.

Would they do me the same courtesy? Hopefully.

Would the world?
On Sunday, Governor Andrew Cuomo of New York signed an Executive Order that would prevent New York state funds from going to institutions or companies that support the global nonviolent "Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions" (BDS) movement.



I am signing an Executive Order that says very clearly we are against the BDS movement. If you boycott Israel, New York will boycott you.  Andrew Cuomo (@NYGovCuomo) June 5, 2016

By signing an Executive Order preventing state funds from being allocated to institutions that support BDS, New York is suppressing freedom of speech, expression, and association. On Sunday, Governor Cuomo prioritized the economic interests of a foreign ally over our Constitution's First Amendment.

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Numerous perspectives have been offered on this form of nonviolent advocacy -- stirring a national conversation and debate on the merits, motivations and effectiveness of BDS.

However, the debate over the BDS movement and what it stands for is arguably irrelevant when debating anti-BDS laws. The First Amendment allows individuals to protest Chick-Fil-A for its position on marriage equality. It protects individuals from boycotting Hobby Lobby for its position on women's health issues. It allows the Westboro Baptist Church to picket at veterans' funerals -- with hateful and painful language and imagery -- just as it protects counter-protesters from lining the funeral procession route with American flags as a show of support for veterans.

There are two primary arguments that demonstrate why Governor Cuomo's Executive Order is likely unconstitutional.

First, political speech is among the highest forms of First Amendment protected speech. Political boycotts, or boycotts that seek to bring about political, social or economic change, are considered political speech by the Supreme Court, and thus are protected under the First Amendment. In the 1982 decision in NAACP v. Claiborne Hardware Co., the Court held:

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While States have broad power to regulate economic activity, we do not find a comparable right to prohibit peaceful political activity such as that found in the boycott in this case. This Court has recognized that expression on public issues "has always rested on the highest rung of the hierarchy of First Amendment values." Carey v. Brown, 447 U. S. 455, 447 U. S. 467.

Second, the government cannot impose a condition on receiving a government benefit that would deprive an individual of a constitutional right unless a substantial and legitimate government interest exists. In this case, the benefit is state funding. As for the government interest, I have faith that the United States judiciary would not find supporting a foreign government's economic interest significant enough to limit one of the most sacred rights in American democracy -- the rights of its citizens to participate in political speech and expression.

Freedom of speech is not simply for ideas we agree with. The First Amendment was espoused for the very purpose that it was challenged on Sunday -- to prevent the government from suppressing speech it disagrees with.

BDS and attempts to suppress it will remain a hot topic across state legislatures in the 2016 election. Yet I posit that if you disagree with someone's political views, speech, expressive conduct, boycott, etc. the answer is never suppression -- It is always to increase speech. To support a free flowing marketplace of ideas.

The United States thrives or fails depending on the equal protection of the law and how we uphold the values and rights espoused in the Constitution.

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Half a millennium before Christopher Columbus sailed into the Americas, the largest expanse of ocean in the world was explored and settled by voyaging canoe.

Navigators of old turned what would seem to be an insurmountable barrier - 10 million square miles of vast blue ocean - into a highway connecting the great nation of Polynesia, the largest country of Island Earth. These navigators were the greatest explorers of Island Earth.

Over hundreds of years, the science and art of wayfinding and deep-sea voyaging experienced local extinction. In 1976, Hokulea became the first traditional Polynesian voyaging canoe built in more than 600 years, reviving the art and science of celestial navigation and deep-ocean voyaging, which lay dormant for those six centuries. Our heritage as wayfinders dates back thousands of years, to the greatest feats of navigation in the history of man.

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Ever since our first voyage in 1976, we have known that Hokulea has the power to connect and inspire people, bridging our ancient past with the hopes for our future. Hokulea and her crew have been crossing the deep ocean for 40 years, without the aid of modern instruments, committed to showing the world that old knowledge can be made new again, and that traditional ecological understanding holds the keys to solving some of Island Earth's greatest problems.

What we see as we travel around the world is that we, the people who are currently setting the course for our Island Earth, are between two sail plans.

There is the one we have been on, where we continue on this trajectory of degradation and compromise, destroying the Earth, leading to the collapse of our environment, quickly followed by the collapse of our economies and the loss of our cultures and way of life. But there is another sail plan, one where our communities are knowledgeable and stand strong in our dedication to and connection with our oceans, lands and people, where we come together to be active and intentional, to make that shift for the benefit of our children and our future.

This second sail plan is the one we hope the world will join Hokulea in achieving.

After 40 years, we left our home waters to bring Hokulea on her Worldwide Voyage, venturing into the world's oceans for the first time. Just as Hokulea is a beacon of hope born out of a place of unrest and controversy for Hawaiian people and the Pacific, we embarked on this Worldwide Voyage to share and find other stories of hope around the world during these challenging times - times when people all around the world are struggling to find solutions to issues related to our ocean and water, our land and air, our people, our history, and our future. We honor our teachers and ancestors - too many to name here but essential to bring to this conversation - as we sail to find the next great navigators who will steer this blue planet we call home to a better place than my generation has.

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To protect life on Earth, we have to protect the oceans; everything that we need to sustain ourselves on this tiny little island we call Earth - our air, our food, all living things - everything is protected by the world's oceans. As islanders we understand the gentle and fragile balance between our ocean and land, our people and our environment. As voyagers we travel the deep ocean, traversing from near-shore waters to the high seas.

Island Earth is a blue planet, 71 percent covered by water; the oceans make up 96 percent of that, with the high seas as two-thirds of the oceans. Work must be done simultaneously in protecting, preserving and restoring our near-shore and high seas environments in order for us to ensure a healthy world.

We have collected messages of hope and declarations from countries, cities and communities around the world that are committed to malama honua, to take care of Island Earth. We bring these declarations and stories of hope to the United Nations on this World Oceans Day, inspired by the message in a bottle given to us by Secretary General Ban Ki-moon last year. Over the past two years we have sailed 26,000 nautical miles and made stops in 14 countries, witnessing and experiencing both the challenges and triumphs in communities around the world as they work to better understand the impact we have and might have on our Island Earth.

We have sailed across oceans of time to reconnect with our ancestral pasts and with communities of people, finding that we are more alike than we are different, and that we are one people, who sail one ocean, and must learn to take care of our one Island Earth.

We are all part of this amazing voyage, to redesign a sail plan for humanity that celebrates our sacred home. This is the only island we have, and it is up to each and every one of us to malama this precious honua.

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Nainoa Thompson is the President of the Polynesian Voyaging Society and a master in the traditional Polynesian art of non-instrument navigating. He is master navigator for Hokule'a and an Ocean Elder.
In his recent rant against a 62-year-old Indiana-born Latino judge, Donald Trump reveals that he is more than anti-Mexican. He is un-American.

America, after all, is but an idea inhabited by immigrants and their descendant generations. With the obvious exception of the native population, everyone originated from elsewhere. As is often said, America is not about where you came from but where you are going. The American creed is not based on race, ethnicity or religion, but on a shared ideal of tolerance and freedom in the pursuit of happiness. Integrating immigrants as individuals and providing them with the means of upward mobility is what has distinguished America from the old world cultures of Europe. It is the foundation upon which America's celebrated aspirational culture has been built.

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To suggest otherwise in 2016 -- as Trump has done in questioning whether a U.S.-born judge of Mexican lineage can fairly try the case against Trump University -- is also to deny the mixed races and ethnicities that constitute America's makeup today. U.S. President Barack Obama, a self-described "mongrel" of mixed racial descent, is far more the face of America's future than Trump. America's largest state, California, already has more Latinos than whites, and when the growing Asian population is factored in, it is a "majority-minority" state.

As Howard Fineman points out in announcing that The Huffington Post will be starting up a new edition in Mexico City, "there are more immigrants in the U.S. now than at any time in more than a century -- and many more of them are from Mexico than from any other country." Trump aside, the U.S. is inching ever closer to what Jose Vasconcelos, Mexico's education minister in the post-revolutionary years, envisioned as "La Raza Cosmica." He believed the Americas would give birth to a new universal race of mixed blood from all over, just as was already the case in his country. In an interview, one of Mexico's leading historians, Enrique Krauze, discusses the "cultural homogeneity" of his country's mestizo makeup and how "cultures permeate each other."

Ironically, in light of Trump's take on Mexicans and Muslims, this week Americans across the board also mourned the death of Muhammad Ali, the great boxer who proudly and loudly lived and professed his Muslim faith. Muhamed Sacirbey -- a former Bosnian foreign minister who is also an American citizen -- writes that, "Muhammad Ali defined my assimilation as an American and growth as [a] global citizen."

Looking further south in Latin America beyond Mexico, Rafael Osio Cabrices says his country, Venezuela, "is about to explode." He warns that, "Venezuela could end up as a failed state" not unlike Somalia once was, but "in the Caribbean." Writing from Havana, dissident Miriam Leiva reports on a proposed new law in Cuba that will recognize private property as legitimate. "Private property," Leiva says, "will no longer be considered a capitalist disease." This striking photo essay takes you to Copacabana beach in Rio where an underwear protest against violence against women took place this week. On the political front, Brazil seems headed from bad to worse as the interim president, says Grasielle Castro, stumbles from crisis to crisis. "The longtime politician is considered a politically savvy ruler," she writes from Brasilia, "but he lacks the expertise of politics in a larger sense. He is accustomed to operating in small political circles and behind closed doors."

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An activist poses for picture during a protest by NGO Rio de Paz against rape and violence against women on Copacabana beach in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, June 6, 2016. (REUTERS/Sergio Moraes)

Writing from Beirut as Hillary Clinton clinched the Democratic nomination for the U.S. presidency, former MI6 agent Alastair Crooke sees her "liberal interventionist" policy advisers as lining up with the neocons who have stirred up chaos and war in the Middle East while clinging to the Saudi Arabian alliance as a way to sustain American power in the region. He slams a new policy document that blames all problems on Iran. "So the spread of cultural and militant Wahhabism has nothing to do with tension in the region?" he asks rhetorically. "Here we see that the crux of the joint neocon, liberal-interventionist foreign policy for the Middle East is to cast Iran as the source of all 'regional tensions.'" Jorrit Kamminga scores the strategy of decapitating the Taliban leadership in Afghanistan as a path to peace. "Drones may kill some symbols and symptoms of the current conflict in Afghanistan," he writes, "but to create a real breeding ground for peace in Afghanistan, we need to bring all the Taliban 'influentials' and regional players on board, instead of antagonizing them."

Betwa Sharma contrasts the high rhetoric about freedom of speech and religion in Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's speech to the U.S. Congress this week with what his political allies are saying back home. "While Modi was telling U.S. lawmakers that 'India lives as one, India grows as one; India celebrates as one,'" she writes from New Delhi, "Vishwa Hindu Parishad leader Sadhvi Prachi was openly calling for India to get rid of its Muslims."

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Laurent Leylekian applauds a German parliamentary vote recognizing the Armenian genocide as, "a way for Angela Merkel and her government to say 'stop' to Turkey's gradual shift toward autocracy." Writing from Spain, Juan Fernando Lopez Aguilar recalls Europe's bloody past born of nationalist aggression and says, "to prevent a similar tragedy, we need new Europeans who are committed to Europe in every election and every ballot box," including the upcoming Brexit vote in Britain. Writing from Paris, French philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy mocks the dogmatic posture of the once powerful General Confederation of Labor, which refuses to compromise over a new labor law proposed by French President Francois Hollande that would give more flexibility to employers in hiring and firing workers. Vytenis Andriukaitis calls out his fellow Europeans on the "immorality of food waste." Unconscionably, he writes, "88 million tonnes of food are wasted annually" by the European Union.

In this week's "Forgotten Fact," World Reporter Charlotte Alfred discusses the moral dilemmas faced as the EU works with African governments -- including dictators and autocrats -- to stem the flow of migrants across the Mediterranean. Writing from Singapore, Richard Javad Heydarian is concerned about the increasingly confrontational tone between the U.S. and China as expressed in the recent Shangri-La Dialogue which, he writes, "exposed the fracturing pan-regional security architecture and its potentially disastrous consequences for Asia. The South China Sea has become Asia's new battleground."

As globalization enters a new round of the division of labor, Eric Olander and Cobus van Staden look at how Africa has a chance to pick up some of the industrial production now leaving China. Sarah Grossman reports that billionaire tech titan Bill Gates this week announced his new initiative to fight extreme poverty particularly in West Africa -- providing 100,000 chickens to families living there in dire straits. Damon Beres and Andy Campbell report on how Apple and other smartphone companies are resisting proposed "right to repair" legislation. They quote a New York state senator who is proposing such an amendment: "In essence people are forced to buy new computers, new software and new technology on a regular basis because it's so expensive to have them repaired at the manufacturer. The landfills are filling up and they're a very difficult thing to recycle."

In this photo essay, 10 photographers post the "decisive moment" in their career images. Next Gen Scientist Aaron Pomerantz offers a glimpse of the curious sneezing iguanas he filmed recently while visiting the Galapagos islands. Finally, our Singularity series this week looks at a new project by Japanese entrepreneur Lena Okajima that will rain down an artificial meteor shower into our atmosphere from a satellite.

WHO WE ARE EDITORS: Nathan Gardels, Co-Founder and Executive Advisor to the Berggruen Institute, is the Editor-in-Chief of The WorldPost. Kathleen Miles is the Executive Editor of The WorldPost. Farah Mohamed is the Managing Editor of The WorldPost. Alex Gardels and Peter Mellgard are the Associate Editors of The WorldPost. Katie Nelson is the National Editor at the Huffington Post, overseeing The WorldPost and HuffPost's editorial coverage. Charlotte Alfred and Nick Robins-Early are World Reporters. Rowaida Abdelaziz is Social Media Editor. CORRESPONDENTS: Sophia Jones in Istanbul EDITORIAL BOARD: Nicolas Berggruen, Nathan Gardels, Arianna Huffington, Eric Schmidt (Google Inc.), Pierre Omidyar (First Look Media) Juan Luis Cebrian (El Pais/PRISA), Walter Isaacson (Aspen Institute/TIME-CNN), John Elkann (Corriere della Sera, La Stampa), Wadah Khanfar (Al Jazeera), Dileep Padgaonkar (Times of India) and Yoichi Funabashi (Asahi Shimbun). VICE PRESIDENT OF OPERATIONS: Dawn Nakagawa. CONTRIBUTING EDITORS: Moises Naim (former editor of Foreign Policy), Nayan Chanda (Yale/Global; Far Eastern Economic Review) and Katherine Keating (One-On-One). Sergio Munoz Bata and Parag Khanna are Contributing Editors-At-Large. The Asia Society and its ChinaFile, edited by Orville Schell, is our primary partner on Asia coverage. Eric X. Li and the Chunqiu Institute/Fudan University in Shanghai and Guancha.cn also provide first person voices from China. We also draw on the content of China Digital Times. Seung-yoon Lee is The WorldPost link in South Korea. Jared Cohen of Google Ideas provides regular commentary from young thinkers, leaders and activists around the globe. Bruce Mau provides regular columns from MassiveChangeNetwork.com on the "whole mind" way of thinking. Patrick Soon-Shiong is Contributing Editor for Health and Medicine. ADVISORY COUNCIL: Members of the Berggruen Institute's 21st Century Council and Council for the Future of Europe serve as the Advisory Council -- as well as regular contributors -- to the site. These include, Jacques Attali, Shaukat Aziz, Gordon Brown, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, Juan Luis Cebrian, Jack Dorsey, Mohamed El-Erian, Francis Fukuyama, Felipe Gonzalez, John Gray, Reid Hoffman, Fred Hu, Mo Ibrahim, Alexei Kudrin, Pascal Lamy, Kishore Mahbubani, Alain Minc, Dambisa Moyo, Laura Tyson, Elon Musk, Pierre Omidyar, Raghuram Rajan, Nouriel Roubini, Nicolas Sarkozy, Eric Schmidt, Gerhard Schroeder, Peter Schwartz, Amartya Sen, Jeff Skoll, Michael Spence, Joe Stiglitz, Larry Summers, Wu Jianmin, George Yeo, Fareed Zakaria, Ernesto Zedillo, Ahmed Zewail, and Zheng Bijian. From the Europe group, these include: Marek Belka, Tony Blair, Jacques Delors, Niall Ferguson, Anthony Giddens, Otmar Issing, Mario Monti, Robert Mundell, Peter Sutherland and Guy Verhofstadt.

MISSION STATEMENT

The WorldPost is a global media bridge that seeks to connect the world and connect the dots. Gathering together top editors and first person contributors from all corners of the planet, we aspire to be the one publication where the whole world meets.

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by Will Tucker



Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton in New York on Tuesday. (AP Photo/Julio Cortez)



Hillary Clinton has raised a higher percentage of her campaign funds from women than any major party presidential candidate in recent history. She's also raised a higher total in contributions from women than any other candidate at this point in the cycle.

And Donald Trump has the dubious honor of achieving the exact opposite: He has raised less from women than any other major party's nominee at this point in the presidential cycle since at least 1989 (which is as far back as our data goes). Women have also given his campaign less as a share of total contributions than any White House candidate.

The stark difference between the two presidential front-runners' fundraising bases highlights the role of gender in a race featuring both the country's first woman ever to be a major party's presumed nominee and a celebrity billionaire who repeatedly has made insulting comments about women.

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The data refers only to contributions of greater than $200, since campaigns aren't required to provide to the public details (including names) on donors of smaller amounts.

Still, the race dynamic makes for the largest gender gap in presidential fundraising history. Clinton has raised 53 percent of her campaign's contributions of more than $200 from women, a Center for Responsive Politics analysis shows, while the comparable figure for Trump is a mere 28 percent. The divide is nearly twice what it was in 2012, when President Barack Obama raised 44 percent of his funds from women versus former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney's 28 percent.

Clinton has raised $74 million from women who gave more than $200 -- almost $10 million more than she's raised from men in the same category. That's far more than Trump, who has done little in the way of broad fundraising and has received just $688,640 from women giving more than $200.

Trump aside, women have been breaking toward Democrats for some time. The Clinton-Trump face-off this year just accelerated a trend that began in 2004.

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In Congress, the picture isn't quite as dire for Republicans, where women donors haven't been abandoning the party quite as dramatically. Democrats, however, are growing the share of their total funds raised from women.

Super PAC contributions are a different matter entirely; men remain dominant when it comes to giving big political money. The Clinton-backing super PACs have raised 25 percent of their cash, or about $18 million of the $70 million raised, from women.
Co-Author Dr. Ruth D. Gates

Living in Hawaii, we are blessed to be surrounded by ocean. Most of the world considers the Hawaiian islands to be paradise, but over the last several decades a spectrum of human activities have taken their toll on the waters surrounding the island. This is reflected in vastly depleted fish stocks, degraded coral reefs, sediment run off and sewage pollution in waters adjacent to high human populations. The Hawaiian island chain is environmentally diverse, representing 27 of the Holdridge life zones, and supports immense biological diversity. The habitat-rich Hawaiian islands were once fully self-sufficient, with Hawaiians caring for the land, oceans and shorelines in sustainable ways and supporting a population of about 800,000. Today, the state imports ~ 90% of the food and energy that supports a resident population of 1.4 million and more than 8 million tourists a year who visit the island chain. There is increasing awareness and understanding about how human behavior influences our environment and will need to change in order to preserve and enrich, it so that it can sustain our growing population. But to get this right will involve a change in human behavior. We must support community and government efforts to balance our seafood and tourism demands while providing mechanisms and time for the replenishment of our natural resources.

Fortunately, there are success stories in this realm, examples of communities who have insisted on and support government efforts to ensure that oceans have capacity to support all life. National, state, and locally managed marine and coastline preservation efforts are prioritizing responsible resource management and nature is responding positively.

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A shining example of such action is the Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument, which is one of the largest marine conservation areas in the world. A U.S. Presidential Proclamation in 2006 declared the marine area northwest of the state of Hawaii to be a protected reserve and it protects the habitat of more than 7,000 marine species, 2,000 of which are found nowhere else on the planet. What is so striking about this National Monument is that it is also a mixed cultural and natural UNESCO World Heritage Site. The Hawaiian culture, like many indigenous cultures, considers malama 'aina, or care for the land, of paramount value. This recognition that our human culture is interdependent with our environment is not a new concept, but one that has been forgotten in our increasingly globalized world. Communities across Hawaii have realized that a systems approach to resource management helps enrich both the culture and the natural resources needed to live in a more self-sufficient way.

Another strong example of a community effort that resulted in protective legislation is the "Try Wait" campaign. The Kaupulehu Marine Life Advisory Committee was formed in 1995. Only last week, the Hawaii State Board of Land and Natural Resources approved a 10-year fishing moratorium on a stretch of the west side of the Big Island. Over the years, this group has worked with organizations like The Nature Conservancy to assess fish populations and understand the trade-offs required to ensure that there will be fish in the future, not only as a food source, but also as part of a healthy coral reef ecosystem that supports a strong tourism industry and that residents can use and appreciate. Successful community-based efforts help shift mindsets and reduce barriers between groups that feel they are being targeted by environmental legislations. Everyone can play a part in the stewardship of resources, from the consumer, to the commercial fisherman, to the resident or family visiting on vacation. Community-based efforts, with the support of local governance, ensure that everyone has a voice and that everyone shares in responsibility. Governments in turn can help ensure the success of such programs by providing enforcement for managed areas and by setting the standard of leadership to prioritize the well-being of both current and future constituencies. Too often, shorter-term corporate goals and political expediency are leveraged against the broader environmental considerations. We no longer have the luxury to silo public, private, and social sectors and must alter our systems to highlight transparency and accountability.

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Smaller community-based efforts have seen success in their mission to assess and restore their coastline, viewing them as natural, cultural, and economic assets. Similar to Costa Rica's success in deriving greater economic gains from reforestation efforts, coastal and near-ocean restoration offers this triple win. A group doing this at the local level in Hawaii with the goal of preserving the entire watershed is the Hanalei Watershed Hui. This group partners with Federal, State, County, NGOs, community organizations and residents to address issues raised by scientific assessment and the community. The Hanalei Watershed Hui supports a range of strategic efforts, taking a "mountain to the sea" approach, which is a key value of Hawaiian stewardship. The goals of the Hanalei Watershed Hui are to ensure that: "1) The natural resources of the Hanalei Watershed are healthy and preserved for the future. 2) The economy of the Hanalei Watershed is diversified and sustainable, and 3) Preservation of the culture and traditions of the Hanalei watershed guide planning and decisions." These simple, deeply impactful guidelines are universally relevant and could and can be applied globally.

In Hawaii, we have a saying, "I na malama 'oe i ke kai, malama no ke kai ia 'oe". ("If you care for the sea, the sea will care for you"). With communities coming together with awareness, patience, and respectful action, the oceans and the biodiversity that lives there will thrive and support the needs of humans in a sustained way.



Dr. Ruth D. Gates, Director and Research Professor, Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology, University of Hawaii at Manoa
When I saw the headline ("Republican Prays for Obama's Death"), I assumed the referenced Republican was a hard-right party chairman in a depopulated county at the end of nowhere. Nope.

As a Georgia voter, I apologize to the American people and to President Obama for the crass, mean-spirited speech given by Georgia United States Senator David Perdue to the Faith & Freedom Coalition's Road to Majority conference.

Regrettably, Sen. Perdue's words represent the now mainstream Republican rhetoric which made Donald Trump's ascent not only possible but inevitable. Trump has made public the winks, nods, codewords and dog-whistles that have long been the inside language of the Republican Party, even before Ronald Reagan went to Philadelphia, Mississippi to publicly launch the formerly GOP's "Southern Strategy."

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Faced with reporting of this latest travesty, Sen. Perdue had his office put out this statement:

"Senator Perdue said we are called to pray for our country, for our leaders, and for our president. He in no way wishes harm towards our president and everyone in the room understood that. However, we should add the media to our prayer list because they are pushing a narrative to create controversy and that is exactly what the American people are tired of."

This holier-than-thou press release is a dissembling, weasel-worded, who-me? response conjoined with the predictable, Trump-like effort to shift blame to the media for actually reporting what the Senator said and to whom. It is these kinds of statements from sanctimonious politicians of which "the American people are tired".
According to Webster's dictionary, to transcend something is to rise above or go beyond the limits of. When I hear anyone say that a Black person has transcended race, I cringe. With the aforementioned definition of transcend in mind, I wonder to myself what does one mean when they use the phrase transcend race? I am sure that one who uses the phrase may say that to transcend race is to rise above the consciousness of White Supremacy's creation - social construct, because there is no need to guilt trip whiteness. My retort to that is, why should a Black person have to be above what they had no hand in creating? Black folks certainly do not benefit from the construct of race in America. Race was put on Blacks as a tool for subjugation, so why then must they rise above it? Wouldn't it be incumbent on the creators and gatekeepers of race, and their benefactors, to rise above race? Or better yet, dispel the notion of race altogether? A marginalized group rising above their lower caste beyond the conditions that are systemically imposed upon them to finally be "accepted and celebrate" by the power structure is the convenient and justifiable narrative... one where it can be explained that the barbarian is worthy of citizenship.

Yet I come back to an original thought; when I think of the definition of transcend, I wonder if when one argues that a Black person has transcended race, do they believe that there are limits to one's blackness? Do people believe that being Black is limiting? Does such a thought have merit? My observations tell me that such a thought is a valid one. In the United States, if you are Black, you can be rich... but you're still Black. You can ask Oprah about that. In the United States, if you are Black, you can be President... but you're still Black. You can ask Obama about that. In the United States, if you are Black, you could be a child under the legal age... but you're still Black and that means you are a threat to Whites with biases and could be killed because of it. I would say you can ask Tamir Rice or Trayvon Martin, but they're dead. So must one go beyond their blackness, or a perception of blackness, in order to be beloved by the White consumer and rewarded by the white power structure? Does embracing one's blackness limit one from the fruits of American capitalism? Are the fruits of American capitalism the desire of Black people in America?

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I ask that final question because that is what we got when we integrated; we got American capitalism. We got the chance to make money and purchase a few luxuries when we integrated. Some Black activists became politicians and pawns. Some Black intellectuals became tenured professors and wrote some books. Some in the Black church stopped preaching about power and prayer to preach prosperity. We got nice houses and nice cars, but the rules changed so that things could stay the same before we integrated. We were excluded from some neighborhoods (redlining). We were redistricted so we could never see a majority in our representation (gerrymandering). Our schools remained segregated but without educators who knew us. Some got rich, others got famous and many were miseducated, but we're still Black. Thankfully, some never forgot it. Some understood that there is no transcending race.

Muhammad Ali never transcended race. He never tried. He was a Black man and that is who he wanted you to see. He could never go beyond being Black because being Black is who he was. He was a member of the Nation of Islam. He walked around wearing a FOI (Fruit of Islam) hat; the hat of the security force of the Nation of Islam. He may not have agreed with all Nation doctrine, however he did agree with the projection of power and self-esteem offered by the Nation to Black people, including himself. He was a Black man. His experiences as a Black man in the United States shaped him to his core. They shaped his sensibilities and coping mechanisms. Yet the students of racial transcendentalism argue that Ali graduated from his Blackness to become an ambassador of the American way. No longer was he quoting Elijah Muhammad, el-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz or Louis Farrakhan. He was now honored by George W. Bush with the Medal of Freedom. Those race transcending apologists have figuratively molded Ali after his career in the likeness of Joe Louis during his career - an American hero; safe for our admiration.

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What makes one a suicide bomber? Much has been written about it; and researchers continue to offer plausible theories and explanations. Religion is often used as a tool by terrorist organizations in recruiting and in seeking aid from abroad, but is not always the root cause.

It has been suggested that the widespread understanding of suicide bombers as insane or religious fanatics is incorrect. Studies have shown individual bombers are of sound mind, and their actions are motivated by a combination of achieving specific strategic goals, anger, humiliation, revenge and altruism. Some researchers are even arguing that individuals with existing suicidal tendencies are easily influenced by terrorist organizations to carry out their orders.

A journalist in Pakistan interviewed a young man (for a private TV network) who was all set for a suicide mission. The circumstances of his indoctrination are unclear. However, his terse, chilling explanations reveal much about the thought process of someone who is willing to die for a 'cause'.

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I am posting this interview for the readers here.

Who is this suicide bomber? Why did he go for training to Waziristan? What are his intentions now? What arguments do they have in light of Shariah? And what are their motives behind such acts?

Q: If you are released, will you still follow the same path?A: God Willing! (I will do so)

Q: Has there been no change in your thinking?A: No

Q: Will you do the same if you get the order?A: God Willing! (I will do so)

Q: Will you do it on your own, or you will do it on the orders of your leader?A: I will do it on the orders of my leader, because I have accepted him as my leader according to Shariah.

Q: Will you take revenge on all?A: Yes, I will, as much as I can--even if it includes my family. I am for suicide bombing, and I will blow myself up even if I see my family there.

Q: In suicide bombing, innocent Muslims, and even those who hate America, are killed. Therefore, are you not killing those for whom you are fighting?A: No, those who are not taking part in Jihad are not innocent. Only those are innocent who are taking part in the Jihad in Miramshah, etc.

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Q: Is there no one innocent in all of Pakistan?A: No. We have no repentance, no sorrow for killing. Even if our leader orders us to kill two people and a hundred are killed in the process, then we will do so.

Q: Sometimes, suicide bombing takes place in mosques, and even very young children are killed.A: Why do you consider these children to be innocent?

Interviewer: A child who is newly born may become like you when he grows up; you kill even him--so are you not killing the innocent?A: No. No one is innocent.

Q: Not even the young child?A: No.

Q: How many brothers and sisters do you have?A: Nine, including myself.

Q: Do they know about the path you are following?A: Yes. All praise to Allah.

Q: Have they granted you permission?A: No. Permission is not essential when Jihad becomes obligatory.

Q: The Taliban says that Jihad has become obligatory, but our religious scholars say that for Jihad, permission from Islamic State is essential.A: I accept neither the scholars of Pakistan nor the Government of Pakistan.

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Q: Do you have any fatwa about the legitimacy of suicide attacks?A: Yes.

Q: Which scholar?A: I do not know his name, but his verdict is there.

Q: Is there any justification from the Quran and Hadith?A: There is a book justifying suicide bombing by an Arab Scholar.

Q: The Quran says to not commit suicide.A: But there are many reasons for it.

Q: You say that you do it to seek Allah's blessings, but Muslim scholars like Maulana Hassan Jan and Mufti Sarfarz Naeemi have also been killed in suicide attacks.A: These scholars neither participate nor believe in Jihad. On the contrary, they condemn the Jihadi Taliban. Mufti Naeemi had issued a fatwa against the Taliban.

Q: Are you married?A: No.

Q: Do you wish to marry?A: No. Seventy-two virgins are waiting for me in Heaven. So why should I prefer only one here?

Q: Are virgins waiting for those who are killed at your hands?A: They will be treated as per their intentions. If they support the Government, then they will be answered accordingly. Our leader has told us that you are not responsible for the killing of those who are not your target. No one in Pakistan is innocent. Whoever is outside Waziristan is not innocent. They will be innocent if they go and support the Taliban in their fighting.
Typical of Yo Yo Ma: he hides behind the scenes. A prime mover of musical happenings, this world famous, prodigy cellist recedes into the backdrop, even when the event is about him, as in Morgan Neville's new documentary, The Music of Strangers. You expect an interview with the maestro about his life and work, some talking heads, and what you get is that, including an archival appearance on "Mister Rogers," and so much more: the story of the international musicians he works with on a global scene, often natives of war-torn countries, Afghanistan, Syria, and contemporary post-revolution Iran, so the film limns the political landscape of our time, and some unusual instruments, such as Kayhan Kalhor's kamancheh, making beautiful Persian music that transcends a tragic personal story.

At the screening, Yo Yo Ma greeted guests with hugs and exuberance. A haiku scribe, Lisa Markuson sent a three-liner from the Bowery Poetry Club,

wouldn't i be strings

if i could reverberate

shot like your arrow

More hugs from Yo Yo Ma.

Darlene Love, a central figure in Morgan Neville's Oscar winning Twenty Feet from Stardom, was a host of the special screening of The Music of Strangers, followed by a performance at the Lotos Club. Love's iconic American rock and roll seemed worlds away from Yo Yo Ma's Silk Road ensemble's native blends from across the globe. One featured performer from Galicia, Spain, Cristina Pato, for example, plays the bagpipes in the film. At the Lotos Club, accompanied by percussions, and Yo Yo Ma's cello, she played the pipe, for an audience that included Peter Cincotti, Gaby Hoffman, Oren Moverman, and Gay Talese Pato explained to me that in her country, the bagpipes are plentiful, but not often played by women. Darlene Love told me, even if she cannot participate in the music, "I can join in here," and gestured toward her heart.

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Paradigm Shifters is a series of interviews with a select group of women and men from eclectic walks of life. It will highlight unspoken, real-life insights on how they have been able to turn weakness into strength. A naked soul point of view of how their breakdowns were really a preparation for breakthroughs. They are your quintessential paradigm shifters; internal shifts converted into genuine change.

Everything I have ever done has been focused on this underlying theme of shifting the paradigm because, "What we think determines what we feel and what we feel determines what we do." Hence, why Empowered by You takes lingerie, which has traditionally been seen merely as a tool of seduction and redirected that energy as a tool of empowerment.

I hope from these stories you will look at your own situations, struggles and accomplishments through a different lens. At the very least you will be more equipped with real life tools to change your own paradigm. At the end of the day, we are our own Alchemist turning the silver we were born with into the gold we are destined to become.

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Jessica Seinfeld - Founder, GOOD+ Foundation (Photo Credit - Marsha Lebedev Bernstein)

Where did this desire of yours come from to start GOOD+?

My mom is a social worker, so I grew up volunteering with her and my family in homeless shelters.

Then in college, I had both paid and unpaid internships. I worked for the state's attorney's office, for the chief medical examiner's office--I was always involved with organizations that help people who are living in poverty or working really hard to just stay afloat.

Working to help others has always been the ethos in my family. Right after the birth of my first child, Sascha, I was struck by how expensive it is to buy equipment for a new baby and then how quickly they outgrow it. And here, in this great city, so many people have so much and so many have so little. Why would I not create a pipeline and link the two?

It happened very simply. I didn't have a one-year plan, nor a five-year plan, I just had many friends who wanted to give away their gear and clothing, too. What motivated me was knowing there were even more people who needed these items living in my own city.

We started with a weekend drive at Chelsea Market in New York City. The idea clearly resonated with a lot of people and we grew very quickly. People started hearing about us and organizations across the country started asking to be a part of what we were doing. I really wanted to grow strategically, not necessarily quickly. I first and foremost wanted to do a great job here at home in New York City, with the women we were helping. (I talk about women a lot because single mom-led families consist of the 63% of families in the U.S.)

Where are the families you're helping located and how do you select them?

Primarily, it's women and families living in poverty across the country. Some of our families have two working parents who have two and three jobs but can just barely keep their heads above water.

We have carefully selected about one hundred partner sites across the country who are doing amazing, transformational work for families. We work hand in hand with them, per family--making sure we take care of the needs of each family.

One of our favorite partners is the Nurse-Family Partnership, a program that provides in home nursing care for low-income mothers and their families. These heroic nurses teach pregnant women how to get ready for a baby, how to take care of themselves, and how to be a parent who creates a healthy and safe home for their baby. Before working with us, they had no tools to teach with. For example, with our resources, nurses bring along diapers to their in-home visit and teach a soon-to-be mom how to diaper a baby or how to give a newborn baby a bath. Our tools allow our nurses to be teachers instead of telling people what to do.

Early on, our idea was to give much needed basic necessities to women in need. It was the immediate reaction I had to having just given birth to my own child and wanting to make the financial stress easier on others.

But, soon into this venture, I started to really question the model. I wanted to shape the organization into something that helped families make effective changes in their own lives. What I realized is that you can help a baby, but if the parent(s) is struggling, there is only so much that will change in that baby's life. That's where my approach changed to being focused on the entire family.

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Is that part of the reason for changing the name from Baby Buggy to GOOD+?

I was so attached to the Baby Buggy name because, first of all my husband thought of the name. It was personal, and I am nostalgic about that time in my life when I had a brand new baby and I was able to turn the good fortune of having my own healthy baby into something that would grow to help so many other families.

But, truthfully we outgrew the name very early on. David Saltzman, my friend and the Executive Director of the Robin Hood Foundation, who had been my mentor in starting this organization, told me early on we were going to outgrow the name Baby Buggy. Since I had no big plans or idea of how big we would become, I kept the name that felt personal to us. I didn't know exactly what I was doing when I started but I knew I had to do it. I had unrelenting faith in the concept and I was buoyed by explosive support and growth since our first days. I almost liken our evolution to the growth of any baby. We are born as simple creatures, but we grow to be sophisticated thinkers and doers.

Over a short time my organization grew to be a sophisticated, strategic, established operation. We learned through our experiences and by staying laser focused on our mission and doing the hard work. The name GOOD+ comes from the essence of what we do. Our Goods plus the services and education of our partners moves families out of poverty. Our partners all say they retain clients at a rate of almost 100% because of the tools we provide them. Clients keep coming back to programs because they receive the items they need for their families- like strollers, cribs, and diapers.

Parents feel good about working hard to accomplish their goals - like getting their GED's, or learning parenting skills they never saw modeled by their own parents, and our social workers see real change in behaviors and drive in their clients. The formula works. We see people turning their lives around every day.

Given your vision of success, when will you be able to sit down and say, "I did it!" When is that moment?

That's so funny, yesterday was the moment for me.

One of our moms has been working towards getting her daycare license. But to do that, she had to work three jobs. She had an overnight job. In the morning, she would leave her night job and head straight to her day job, briefly sleeping on the floor until her morning had to start. She literally worked around the clock to accomplish her goal. She is a role model in how to change your life and propel yourself forward.

To celebrate getting her daycare license, we showered her with goods for her two babies. She looked at me and said, "I don't understand why you do this? Do you know how you've changed my life?" She was utterly baffled by all the gear, equipment and clothing she received from us. She could not comprehend that we, as an organization, are paying attention to hard working people who have it really tough in this country. Just knowing that we've made this extraordinary woman's life better, is why I do this every day. What more could I ever, ever ask for?

Another breakthrough moment was when I proposed a name change to my team. They were worried and skeptical about a sudden change to our identity, especially as a non-profit organization. How would we tell this story to the public and not lose momentum or support? I explained that we are not changing the work, nor people's perception, we instead have the opportunity to tell our whole story. It is the story of our growth and the hard won understanding of what low income families really need to improve their lives and their standing in the US.

Our story has changed from when I started this fifteen years ago and we owed it to ourselves to acknowledge the deeper more impactful way we work every day.

I don't know if the general public understands exactly what we're doing day to day, but changing our name at least signals that we are bigger and more effective than we seemed with our old name.

What was your breakdown to breakthrough moment?

As a normal person, it was a huge adjustment once I got married and became more of a public person, or married to a public person. That was a rough transition for me. It's taken me a long time to be comfortable with who I am, in whatever way the public sees me.

It's okay, because I will always have people who don't believe what I'm doing is real or have a perception that, because of who I'm married to, that I don't work hard. That's their projection of their own story on me. But it took time to understand that dynamic. I would consider the time I spent reading nasty things said about me and actually feeling sad about it a breakdown.

And then, a breakthrough would be growing up--even as an adult--and developing a thicker skin and not worrying what people think or say. What matters to me is having great purpose in life. I can't think of any other way to leave this planet one day than having people say, "She was a good person who tried to always do the right thing for her family, friends and the world at large."

So is that what you want your legacy to be?

There are more than a few people in my life who would say when at their lowest moment, I never left their side until they were okay again. I would like to be remembered as an authentic, loyal and hard working person who stayed true to her family values.

If your life were a book, what would the chapter title for 2015 be and what is the title of 2016?
It's an honor and pleasure to know Mr. Warren Buffett, a great philanthropist as well as the world's most sought-after oracle of financial wisdom. I hope I don't sound boastful when I say that I am also proud that when it comes to unconditional love, which is what we devote ourselves to here at GLIDE, Mr. Buffett has demonstrated his investment in unconditional love.

Seventeen years ago, Mr. Buffett's first wife, the compassionate angel and much missed Susan Buffett, who was then a member of our congregation, brought Warren to visit our diverse and all-inclusive community centered here in San Francisco's Tenderloin. Like so many others before and since, he was moved to join her and us in putting the concept of unconditional love into practice.

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So this is what Susie Buffett decided they would do. Knowing that there are many people with means who would very much like to bend Warren Buffett's ear and listen to his advice, she proposed that they auction off a lunch meeting with Warren at Smith & Wollensky, a favorite New York steakhouse, and give the proceeds to GLIDE.

This simple but powerful idea has brought in, over the past 17 years, an astonishing $20 million to fund the many programs GLIDE has put in place for more than fifty years to help those who are most vulnerable and marginalized among us. (Let me add that Smith & Wollensky's founder, Alan Stillman, has generously offered to host the lunch and has contributed to the cause with an annual donation to GLIDE of at least $10,000.)

Warren's brainstorm idea was to engage with eBay for Charity in 2003, which provides us with a global platform. Mr. Buffett has invested his time, energy and reputation to do something for the thousands of people GLIDE serves -- many of them homeless or insecurely housed; many looking for a warm meal; some for childcare; others for shelter for the night or from an abusive relationship; some needing medical attention or help with recovery from addiction. Many people come to GLIDE seeking a place to belong, to be accepted unconditionally without judgment and welcomed just as they are.

In the end, of course, that place of belonging is what we all seek. And in Mr. Buffett's annual power lunch auction, which is now live on eBay.com/glide until close of auction at 7:30 pm PDT today, there is more than the directing of much-needed funds to critical services; there is a powerful message of inclusion, as he calls attention to the humanity of those we might otherwise overlook.

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This is our idea of community, radically inclusive and unconditionally accepting, a place where the power of love materializes in transformed lives and, ultimately, a transformed society. It's worth recalling here that GLIDE's programs on behalf of the community started with a warm meal, back in the 1960s, as a potluck hosted by congregation members who brought what they had and shared it with people on the street.

Today, GLIDE's Daily Free Meals program serves upwards of 2000 meals each day. And because the folks that come to GLIDE share many of the same challenges, including poverty, substance abuse, physical and mental health concerns, criminal justice issues, unemployment, HIV/AIDS, and violence (including domestic violence), the Meals program also serves as a gateway to GLIDE's suite of comprehensive services. Every program is designed to meet people where they are, with compassion and respect, while supporting them on their journeys to stability and self-sufficiency--a journey that we find often begins with a warm meal.

Warren Buffett will tell you: That's a power lunch.

Reverend Cecil Williams is co-founder with Janice Mirikitani of the GLIDE Foundation.
Last week I went to Beckley, West Virginia to keynote Rise Up Southern West Virginia, a conference of about 200 leaders committed to fighting childhood poverty. I traveled there because I wanted to make two simple and basic points: No people or part of our country should be left behind as the nation seeks to move forward, and the path forward must start with the individuals in that room.

West Virginia has long lagged behind the rest of the nation by almost every measure but is now suffering at record levels. In just the past year, thousands upon thousands of coal jobs have disappeared. More and more families have lost loved ones to the scourge of a prescription drug epidemic. And vast teacher vacancies have left public schools ill-equipped and short-handed to prepare the next generation.

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This is part of West Virginia's reality, but only part of it.

I have been to West Virginia numerous times over the course of my career, and this trip left me more committed to the state than ever before. But it was my first-ever visit that came to shape my views of the people there and help propel me to launch what is now known as The Harwood Institute for Public Innovation.

Back in August 1985, a Union Carbide chemical plant in Institute, WV leaked toxic gases. Just months before, deadly gases had escaped at its sister plant in Bhopal, India, killing thousands of people. At the time, I was working for a non-profit in mid-town New York, and we were asked to come to Institute to help the community and the chemical industry figure out how best to respond.

The work was inspiring. Residents bravely sought ways to balance their urgent desire for safety and protection with a need to maintain jobs. They were deeply proud of their state and its history and culture. What I also remember, vividly, was the reaction of my friends and colleagues in New York City and elsewhere when they heard I was working in West Virginia. Their refrains were biting: "You can't get a good glass of wine there." "The people there are uneducated." "Why do West Virginians even support those chemical industry jobs, anyway?" And on and on it went.

I fear such attitudes still persist in our country about West Virginia and places like it. It's an attitude that says that some people are worth more than others and that some of us will be left to go it alone. It's one reason for the deep anger now permeating our political landscape. There's no room for such attitudes if we are to find more effective and inclusive paths for moving forward.

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I started The Harwood Institute because I believe every individual in America should have a fair shot at the American Dream. That each person should have the opportunity to fulfill their God-given potential. And that all people should be afforded dignity. As I said in West Virginia last week, I believe that in order to make progress, we must make community a common enterprise again, where each of us is a part of something larger than ourselves.

During the course of the presidential primaries, various candidates have gone to West Virginia to make pledges and promises to revitalize the state by bringing jobs back and fixing the education system, among other ideas. The people of West Virginia have heard such promises before, and little has come from them. Using the state as a convenient backdrop for campaigns only promotes more false hope and cynicism. My own read is that the people of West Virginia don't buy it.
Note: This article was based on the author's recent participation at the Shangri-La Dialogue, Singapore, which hosted the world's leading defense officials and experts.

Singapore - "The vast Pacific Ocean has enough space for two large countries like the United States and China," claimed Chinese President Xi Jinping during his intimate retreat in Sunnylands with his American counterpart, Barack Obama, back in 2013. Optimistic about a new era of cooperation, Xi espoused a "new model of great power relations." Three years on, the two superpowers are on a collision course in the South China Sea.

Four centuries after the publication of British jurist John Selden's "The Closed Sea," which made a (dubious and self-serving) case for great powers' exclusive sovereign control of international waters, China is inching closer to transforming the world's most important waterway --- hosting a third of global maritime trade, four times oil trade than Suez Canal, and a tenth of global fisheries resources --into a domestic lake.

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In direct rebuke of Hugo Grotius' call for "Open Seas" (Mare Liberum, published 1609), which served as the basis for the development of modern international maritime law, Selden argued:"The Sea, by the Law of Nature or Nations, is not common to all men, but capable of private Dominion or proprietie as well as the Land." No less than China, which calls the South China Sea its "blue national soil", has taken up the cudgels for Selden's doctrine of exclusive waters. And the whole Asian security architecture as well as the fate of $5 trillion in annual trade is at stake.

It is not a battle between China and America, but between benign status quo and dangerous revisionism. It is a contest between a giant revisionist power, China, and a whole host of smaller and outgunned littoral countries, from Malaysia to the Philippines. The South China Sea disputes and their global reverberations were well on display during the latest edition of the Asian Security Summit, better known as the Shangri-La Dialogue, which brought together the world's leading defense officials and experts in Singapore.

Though less strident than expected, the United States Secretary of Defense Ash Carter's speech was an attempt to provide unequivocal justification for America's growing military footprint in Asia and its deepening security alliances with a wide array of regional powers. He boasted about Washington's huge military qualitative edge, namely its new undersea drones, the Virginia-class submarines, and the new B-21 Long-Range Strike Bomber. Presenting America as a benign power, he lauded its willingness to share "most advanced capabilities to the Asia-Pacific" partners, particularly Japan and Australia.

His tone, however, shifted once theme of China and its regional ambitions came up. He openly accused China of taking "some expansive and unprecedented actions" that put into doubt its "strategic intentions." He warned, "if these actions continue," China would end up erecting a "Great Wall of self-isolation." Carter went so far as characterizing China's actions as "provocative, destabilizing and self-isolating".

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Defense ministers of other Western and regional powers, from France to India, Japan and Vietnam, also expressed their concerns with China's growing military footprint in the South China Sea. Over the past two years, China has reclaimed 3200 acres (1,295 hectares) of land across disputed waters, building humongous artificial islands that host dual-purpose (civilian and military) facilities. No other claimant country, including Vietnam, comes even close.

In recent months, China has deployed advanced military hardware to some of its islands in Paracel and Spratly chain of islands, ranging from high-frequency radars and surface-to-air-missiles to state-of-the-art fighter jets. The growing presence of Chinese fishermen-cum-militia forces is another source of concern. As China builds a sprawling network of military facilities in the area, there is growing fear that China may soon be in a position to establish an 'exclusion zone', denying freedom of overflight and navigation to regional and external military forces.

Safeguarding the Commons

Carter mentioned the word "principled" 38 times, trying to present China's activities in the South China Sea as a threat to international law and the interest of the broader international community, particularly when it comes to global commons such as freedom of navigation and overflight.

One theme that often appeared in the speeches of and exchanges among top defense officials was the Philippines' arbitration case against China. Beginning in 2013, few months after a dangerous standoff over the Scarborough Shoal, Manila filed a case against Beijing at an arbitral tribunal under the aegis of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS).

A final verdict is expected in coming weeks. Most experts anticipate an unfavorable outcome for China, which has boycotted the whole proceedings; questioned the jurisdiction and competence of arbitration bodies under UNCLOS to oversee the South China Sea disputes; and accused the Philippines of violating prior bilateral and multilateral agreements by initiating a compulsory arbitration case at The Hague.

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The Philippines' arbitration case, however, has gained momentum, overcoming both admissibility and jurisdictional hurdles. Anticipating a landmark verdict, the influential Group of Seven (G7) industrialized powers, Australia, and practically al relevant players in the region have either openly or indirectly expressed their support for the arbitration proceedings.

During the US-ASEAN meeting in Sunnyland earlier this year, both sides mentioned the centrality of international law, particularly UNCLOS, in resolving South China Sea disputes. The joint statement calls for "full respect for legal...processes" by concerned parties. To China's consternation, Southeast Asian powers such as Indonesia and Vietnam, which have closely followed the Philippines' legal maneuver against China, have also threatened similar actions.

Beijing Strikes Back

In response, China has sought to undermine the legitimacy of the arbitral body by setting up its own international arbitration bodies -- essentially an artificial, parallel international legal regime -- while rallying the support of up to 40 countries -- mostly poor, and many landlocked/continental -- to question the Philippines' arbitration case. Meanwhile, it has also reached out to the incoming Filipino President Rodrigo Duterte, who has expressed his willingness to reopen bilateral dialogue with China and even pursue a joint development agreement if necessary.

"We were not isolated in the past, we are not isolated and we will not be isolated," Chinese Admiral Sun Jianguo, deputy chief of general staff of the People's Liberation Army, asserted during his speech at the Shangri-La Dialogue. He began, in a rather composed manner, by providing a broad overview of China's contribution to international security and development, ranging from its peacekeeping operations in Africa to its generous development aid to and large-scale infrastructure investments in developing countries around the world.

Similar to Carter, Sun presented his country as a responsible global power. The Chinese admiral, however, shifted to a higher pitch, with a more pugnacious rhythm, once he discussed the South China Sea disputes. He singled out the Philippines, in particular. He accused, quite astonishingly, the Southeast Asian country of being "the first country to invade the South China Sea" and undermining regional peace by initiating an arbitration proceeding without securing China's consent.

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Claiming that China's (dubious) claim in the area is based on objective history, something that few non-Chinese experts will agree with, he warned that "Chinese people believe in truth, not heresy" and that "belligerence doesn't make peace". Admiral Sung went on accusing America and its allies of indulging in "cold war mentality and prejudice", warning that China is "not afraid of any trouble." Asserting that China bears no responsibility for rising tensions in the area, and that it holds no hegemonic ambitions, the Chinese official accused, albeit cryptically, America and its allies of engaging in "provocations" in pursuit of "their own selfish interests."

He also (credibly) claimed that China, as a major trading power, would never pose a threat to (civilian) freedom of navigation in any international waterway, especially the South China Sea.

The two most anticipated speeches, namely by Carter and Sung, underlined the depth of strategic faultlines in the region. Instead of providing reprieve, or facilitating a modus vivendi among concerned parties, the Shangri-La Dialogue simply exposed the fracturing pan-regional security architecture and its potentially disastrous consequences for Asia. The South China Sea has become Asia's new battlefield.
US Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton addresses the Planned Parenthood Action Fund in Washington, DC, on June 10, 2016. / AFP / CHRIS KLEPONIS (Photo credit should read CHRIS KLEPONIS/AFP/Getty Images)

If the last state primary elections didn't settle matters for some Democrats, Barack Obama's powerful endorsement certainly did. Hillary Clinton is without doubt the party's presumptive presidential candidate, whether Bernie Sanders and some of his sulking supporters like it or not. Elizabeth Warren's additional backing for Hillary may make them feel better.

Let's hope so, and hope that in November, they and most other American voters will choose the former secretary of state over the serial-lying, bullying swindler of a Republican candidate. But one factor that still stands in Mrs. Clinton's way is the possibility that she may be indicted by the Justice Department, based on the FBI investigation of her private email server.

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That investigation has been going on for nine months -- since last August.

Yet the last public word from FBI Director James Comey, which came a full month ago, is that he won't be rushed into making a decision on whether to recommend Mrs. Clinton's indictment -- something that could well decide who will be our next president. "I don't tether to any particular external deadline," Comey told reporters, "so I do feel the pressure to do it well and promptly, but as between the two, I always choose 'well'."

A month later, with Clinton's much-anticipated FBI interview still not even scheduled, that statement is thoroughly outdated. The president's enthusiastic endorsement, along with his plan to campaign with Mrs. Clinton and his statement that "I don't think there's ever been someone so qualified to hold this office," make it nearly impossible to believe that she's going to be charged with any crime.

After all, Attorney General Loretta Lynch is an Obama appointee and a Democrat who also served under President Clinton. If she and Director Comey, a Republican, had any thought of indicting Mrs. Clinton, the president would surely at least have known about it, and avoided enthusiastically supporting Clinton as his successor.

But the fact is the investigation is ongoing. What would happen if Mrs. Clinton were charged?

If she were indicted between now and the party's convention, beginning July 25, it would be devastating enough for the tens of millions of Democratic voters. Their party would be under extreme pressure to choose another candidate. Time would be short. But at least Democrats would have the advantage of a national convention to decide what to do and begin to reorganize.

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However, if she were indicted after becoming the party's official nominee, matters would be infinitely worse for the Dems. Choosing another candidate long-distance would be much more complicated and a lot less democratic, and chances of winning would be further reduced by even less time to reorganize and campaign.

A third possibility would be worse not only for Democrats but for all Americans. If Mrs. Clinton were indicted after being elected, the whole country might be embroiled in one of the bloodiest political battles in American history, as to whether a president-elect or president should resign over the charges.

Besides which, if she wasn't already gone, she'd have to leave office if convicted, and quite possibly abandon the White House for the jailhouse. If you think American government and politics are a polarized mess now, imagine those last two scenarios!

Not to mention the fact that any of the above occurrences would greatly increase the catastrophic possibility of Donald Trump in the White House. A man who's never held elective or other government office, he's one of the least qualified major-party presidential candidates in American history. Besides which, he's correctly described by conservative legal scholars as a bigot who doesn't understand world or domestic affairs and poses a serious threat to the First Amendment. And he's a businessman who defrauds customers and doesn't pay his bills.

A vastly increased chance of Trump's election, and one or more of the other dire possibilities mentioned earlier, are on the table if AG Lynch and the FBI's Comey don't decide in the six weeks before the Democratic convention whether or not to indict Clinton.

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Outside lawyers and scholars have weighed in with opinions on both sides, even though much of the evidence is unavailable to outsiders. The Libertarian Party's new vice presidential nominee, former Massachusetts governor William Weld, who once headed the Justice Department's criminal division, says there's no way prosecutors can prove criminal intent that he says is necessary to indict Clinton. But former attorney general Michael Mukasey argues she's almost certainly guilty at least of mishandling classified information and maybe also of gross negligence. That last could land her in jail for ten years.
by Trent Smith, Communications Professional focused on technology for education



While the educational and career path of Afia Owusu-Forfie has taken her to the United States, her heart has never strayed far from her native Ghana. Afia's dual masters degrees in Statistical Science and Operations Research were preceded by a double-majored undergraduate degree in Statistics and Computer Science from the University of Ghana.

With a projected shortfall of 190,000 big data and analytics professionals in the US by 2018*, she is well-positioned to seize rewarding jobs. In addition, while women represent 47.4 percent of the US labor force, they fill only 25 percent of science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) roles.

Countless opportunities exist for Afia. And as a proud Ghanaian, she is working to provide similar opportunities to the women of her home country.

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With the help of international organization Women Who Code, a non-profit that empowers career-aged women to excel in technology careers, local organizations and free analytics software, Afia is putting her fellow countrywomen on a path to rewarding careers.

Extraordinary cause, ordinary people

Afia launched a series of programming courses and networking events in Accra, Ghana's capital. But getting started wasn't easy. Afia recruited well-known business people and technologists to support her effort.

"I thought at the time that I needed to start this great idea with big names. That did not happen," said Afia.

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"One person led me to another and then another and the rest is history," said Afia. "It taught me that it is okay to start an extraordinary cause with ordinary people."



Afia, (left) joined by colleagues at the Women Who Code -Accra maiden event, a workshop on how to excel in your career

Creating tomorrow's coders, and teachers

Afia recruited women to be students, as well as fellow instructors. Students learned to apply a variety of analytics software to real-world problems. Working on a shoestring budget required Afia to find inexpensive software. However, it needed to be software that imparts skills that are valuable in the marketplace.

For example, Afia worked with analytics company SAS to give students and instructors access to SAS University Edition, free analytics software that gives learners experience with technology used by more than 80,000 business, government and university sites around the world. A massive study of 54 million employee profiles on PayScale.com found that the most valuable career skill was knowing how to use SAS. Other programming courses in Ghana have focused on Java, Python and PHP.

The reactions from the women have been remarkable, and reveal what a life-changing experience it was even when it comes to the simplest things. One networking event attendee marveled, "This is the first event I have attended where there was enough food to go around for everybody."

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Beyond basic needs, there were cultural aspects to overcome, according to Afia. "Even when we identify the best women to facilitate a programming class, they tend to be reserved and want to stay in their own corner." This led one promising instructor to consider resigning.

"Thankfully, this young woman hung in there," said Afia. "After leading her first class she said 'It was so much more fun than I thought it would be.'"

Afia added, "The participants are proud to help ensure the next generation of Ghanaian women have the requisite coding skills to seize incredible opportunities."



Afia (right) joins a panel discussion on the value of mentorship.



A community of support

Local organizations in Accra are providing space, Internet access and light snacks, and showing the women what it's like to work in a modern, professional environment. "Hosts such as University of Ghana Computing Systems, Impact Hub Accra and iSpace Ghana are helping to shape the imaginations of our members who are still in school. They come away knowing what a potential workplace may look like, post-graduation," explained Afia.

But the Accra network truly thrives because the women help each other. Whether it's imparting expertise in different programming languages, sharing news about job opportunities or just buoying the spirits of someone who is sick, the members support one another, and have grown close.

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"We are bonding so well. I feel that we are family," one member claimed.

Moving forward

Afia has more exciting networking and career workshops scheduled. The Accra chapter of Women Who Code is in development. Afia hopes to work with Women Who Code to identify others like herself, bridge builders who will leave comfortable lives in the developed world to embark on endeavors that benefit developing countries.

According to Afia, "Teaching these women has been the most rewarding and fulfilling experience."

Please visit the Women Who Code website to learn more about the organization and to find the network closest to you.
man with gun gangster focus...

Within the annals of twentieth century American organized crime there will forever be an elite, short-list of names with unmatched recognition. They are the sinister royalty, a collective brotherhood of infamy. Among this exclusive club are the individuals who - for better or worse - became the pop culture anti-heroes, the symbols of societal rebellion. On the flip side, they are the physical embodiments of gross disregard, be it law, order, morality or, as in many cases, human life. Their monikers and reputations splashed across headlines while their crimes burned into our psyches. Larger than life characters that conjured a mythical fascination, to the extent they've literally become household names.

To find out who these pop culture touchstones were I reached out to some true crime experts and aficionados. Men who live and breath organized crime, drug kingpins and inner-city crime lords. Pursuing and writing these stories with a passion. I introduce- Christian Cipollini, mob expert / Ron Chepesiuk, who writes books about Colombian cocaine kingpins / and George Hassett, Boston-based journalist . Knowledgable in the extreme these three historians are going to break it down to us, as to why John Gotti, Pablo Escobar and Whitey Bulger are three of the baddest gangsters ever in the chronicles of criminal underworld lore.

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John Gotti

Teflon Don Gambino Family Boss

New York City, Twentieth Century

Christian Cipollini- Gotti was what he was, a gangster. He oozed a shameless pride in it, and drew national attention by being nothing less than the real life version of a Hollywood mob character. Gotti tended to be a master of his own publicity, and in the "Teflon Don's" case that ability actually gained him a cult-like following. Here was the boss of a New York crime family who, with a spring in his step, entered a courtroom under indictment and then swaggered right back out. Free as a bird and to the dismay of those who sought to put him behind bars.

It was as if John Gotti always knew no charges would stick to his perfectly fitted attire, and the frenzied media swallowed such nuances up- spewing them back out as clever headlines. This confidence and cockiness certainly polarized New York, if not the entire news-watching nation during the early 1990's. Gotti was the "Teflon Don, America's Best Dressed Gangster," a hero to some, and a basic street thug to others. The law seemed to become as obsessed with Gotti as Gotti was with his own celebrity status. It was like the guy could '"charm the masses" into a state of awe, while investigators fumed over the cat and mouse game they were seemingly losing.

The romantic notion of gangster life was certainly given a shot of adrenaline when Gotti began making the news on a daily basis, but organized crime factions, collectively speaking, are not fans of "superstar" figures within their realm. Celebrity status means unwanted attention and Gotti's god-like presence, high powered defense attorneys and even the adulation (swarms of supporters adorned in "Free John Gotti" t-shirts) could not halt the inevitable and fateful natural course of criminal life. Eventually he was put behind bars and began the decline into death. Love him or hate him, John Gotti was one of, if not, gangland's most prolific.

Pablo Escobar

Cocaine Baron

Medellin Cartel Head Honcho

Colombia, Twentieth Century

Ron Chepesiuk- When the name of a gangster appears in the media today, few have the level of recognition that Pablo Escobar has. Capone might have it, but he's been around for a while. Gotti is another name that comes to mind, but the Teflon Don is essentially an American phenomena and really just a small-time hood when compared to Pablo. El Chapo Guzman is creeping toward that recognition, but I think it will diminish once he is extradited to the U.S. The Rodriguez-Orejuela brothers, godfathers of Colombia's Cali Cartel, were actually more powerful than Escobar and helped to take Escobar down, but they were low profile and didn't have the charisma that Escobar had.



For good or bad Pablo Escobar is an icon.Escobar is the "world's greatest outlaw", a Billy the Kid at the international level. He didn't just take on a cop, a police force, or a federal agency, he took on an entire country, mano-a-mano, in a life and death struggle that threw Colombia, a country into near anarchy for years. Colombia hit Escobar with everything it had to take him down. Escobar not only survived, he dictated the terms of his surrender. When El Chapo is finally extradited to the U.S., will Uncle Sam allow him to build the prison where he will be incarcerated? That's exactly what the government of Colombia did for Escobar. And can you believe it was called "la Catedral" because of its luxurious surroundings. Top that, Shorty!

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Another big reason for Escobar's enshrinement is the level of violence he perpetrated. No shoot out with the cops or gang banging. Escobar was so shockingly violent they had to invent a new term for what he did--narcoterrorism. He killed thousands of people--- presidential candidates, prosecutors, judges, cops, man and woman in the street, even priests. As a journalist I saw it firsthand.The sad fact- we've enshrined Pablo because the public loves outlaws who thumb their nose at authority. Look at the number of movies made about cowboys, mobsters and pirates. The public never gets tired of them. So Escobar's legend of being the "World's Greatest Outlaw" will only grow.





Whitey Bulger

Irish Godfather

Winter Hill Gang Top Boy

Boston, Twentieth Century

George Hassett- Whitey Bulger did what many gangsters thought was impossible- he corrupted the feds. After surviving Alcatraz (where he was a test subject for the effects of LSD) and a deadly Boston gang war, Bulger manipulated the FBI into a deal with the devil- becoming their top informant when he should have been their top target. With backing from the FBI (not to mention his powerful brother, state senator Bill Bulger) Whitey ruled his South Boston neighborhood with an iron fist- flooding it with drugs while maintaining an anti-drug, friendly neighborhood Godfather image. That image contrasted with reality- Bulger was a pint-sized bully who wore lifts in his shoes and followed no codes - he snitched, killed women and preyed on the weak.

In 1994, when his time at the top was done and he was about to be taken down by the FBI, he got one last tip from corrupt agent John Connolly and skipped town, evading justice for nearly two decades. When he was finally captured (he was number one on the FBI's Most Wanted List) in California in 2013, it closed the chapter on one of the ugliest street sagas anywhere - corruption at the highest levels, gangland murders and an entire city who had sold their soul to the myth of Whitey Bulger. In pop culture, Whitey looms large - having provided inspiration for two of the most accomplished actors of their time: Jack Nicholson in The Departed and Johnny Depp in Black Mass.

Bulger told friends he modeled himself after actor James Cagney, famous for portraying gangsters and tough guys in 1930s films. According to Whitey's fellow gang member John Martorano, his friends were amused by Whitey's comparison. In his memoir Hitman, Martorano wrote, "We used to laugh when he mentioned he modeled himself on Cagney. Because the first gangster movie that came to our minds when we thought about Whitey sure wasn't Public Enemy or The Roaring Twenties. We thought Whitey was Richard Widmark in Kiss of Death. You know, Tommy Udo - he's giggling as he pushes the old lady's wheelchair down the stairs. That's the kind of gangster that Whitey was."

If you like to read about gangsters, check out Gorilla Convict.
Ramadan date: 2016: evening June 6th - evening July 5th

Approximate dates 2017: May 27th - June25th

Is it possible for your business calendar and implementation schedule to be impacted by belief systems, philosophies and religions? It is not just possible, but probable.

As you read these words Ramadan (or Ramazan, Ramzan, Ramadhan, or Ramathan), the ninth month of the Islamic calendar, is being observed by Muslims worldwide. This month is honored by the fasting and abstinence of various activities to commemorate the first revelation of the Quran to the Prophet Muhammad. This annual observance is regarded as one of the Five Pillars of Islam. The month lasts 29-30 days and is determined by the visual sighting of the crescent moon, according to biographical accounts compiled in the hadiths. Muslims during this holy month fast from the first thread of light at dawn to sunset abstaining from all food and water. This is a time when giving in charity is heavily emphasized and charitable deeds, such as feeding the poor, is a part of a Muslim's obligation. Muslims also abstain from other habits such as smoking and there is an increase in attendance at local houses of worship called mosques or masjids.

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The Holy month of Ramadan impacts group as well as individual decision-making, especially within large companies, government and public sector organizations. Spending time virtuously, and respecting Islamic law is particularly important during Ramadan, resulting in reduced work hours, increased holidays, telecommuting, and a decline in business travel. As such, when key principals are out of the office or are working reduced hours, the decision-making process slows considerably.

For most government organizations and government linked companies, time for Muslim prayer will have a bearing on meeting time. In addition, during the fasting month of Ramadan, they tend to dislike a meeting in the afternoon.

~Executive, Malaysian Airlines

It is critical to understand and account for belief systems and their events in day-to-day business proceedings. Not doing so can result in millions of dollars lost as seen in the following example.

Case Study: A senior project manager for a U.S. tech company was concerned about whether his two-month implementation schedule should be modified to accommodate the holy month of Ramadan. Concerned with potential delay, his VP decided to proceed with "business as usual" and scheduled meetings and production nonetheless.

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The U.S. project team faced not only absent team members, but questions about their disrespect for Islam. The implementation was subsequently delayed three months, then six months. Numerous U.S. deadlines were missed, penalties were assessed, and promotions lost. How could this have been avoided?

Cross-Cultural Awareness:

Cultural Business Practices for Employers/Visitors:

1. Consider hosting a weekly Iftar for the workforce. This provides an opportunity for both Muslim and non-Muslim employees to get into the spirit of Ramadan. Iftar is the meal eaten by Muslims to break their fast after sunset every day of Ramadan. A company may also consider setting up a Ramadan donation system to feed the poor. Muslim countries have organizations which gather donations to package meals for the poor.

2.Schedule meetings outside of prayer times not only during Ramadan but whenever working within a Muslim country. In many Muslim countries, offices close for the prayer times that fall during business hours i.e. noon prayer and afternoon prayer. Islamic law impacts time as it relates to holidays and the traditional Muslim workweek, with the weekend falling on Thursday and Friday. In geographic locations where Friday remains a workday, many offices close at noon, as Muslims take a two-hour break for prayers at a local mosque. Many companies allow half days during Ramadan to allow their employees to spend time with their families during this holy month and to ease the burden of fasting during business hours. In years where Ramadan falls during the summer this is very necessary as fasting may be as long as 18 - 19 hours.

3.Remember that Muslims believe the past, present and future rest in God's hands. You are likely to frequently hear the phrase 'Insha'Allah', which means, God willing. Do not interpret this as a lack of commitment to your company's five year plan or project schedule, but do realize that your Muslim workers or business associates are deeply committed to the view that everything is on Allah (God's) time.

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When it comes to barbecue, Jamaica has only one trick up its sleeve. But, oh, what a trick. I'm talking, of course, about Jamaica's national dish--and cultural icon--jerk. Once you've tasted this fiery smoke-roasted pork, sweet with allspice, fragrant with island thyme, and above all, electrified with more Scotch bonnet chiles than you'd ever thought humanly possible to consume, well, a trick becomes a miracle and that sleeve a rich brocade.

Like so much West Indian cuisine, jerk represents a fusion of peoples and cultures: indigenous Caribbean ingredients, an ancient Taino Indian cooking technique, an African penchant for highly spiced foods, and even an act of political rebellion. The native ingredients include pimento (allspice) berries, Scotch bonnet chiles, and a local green onion called escallion. The cooking technique involves roasting meats on a spicewood grate over a low smoky fire. As for the political rebellion, the Maroons, runaway slaves in the mountains of Jamaica who became the first black freedom fighters in the western hemisphere, nourished their troops on this salty, smoky, fiery meat.

Jerk has very likely been on Jamaica's menu since before the arrival of the first European colonists. Here's how one seventeenth century visitor from England, Hans Sloane, described an early version: "Swine ... pierced through with lances, cut open, the Bones taken out, and the Flesh is gash'd on the inside into the Skin, fill'd with Salt and expos'd to the Sun, which is call'd jirking." The word jerk may come from the Quechua Indian term ch'arki, the origin of our word jerky, or it may have originated from the Jamaican patois, where jook means to stab or pierce.

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Today, you can buy jerk chicken, jerk fish, even jerk lobster, but the ur-jerk remains pork, more specifically, a whole hog, meticulously boned, butterflied, and cut into accordion pleats to maximize the surface area of the meat exposed to the spice and fire. In the 1930s the great Afro-American writer Zora Neale Hurston summed up jerk this way: "It is hard to imagine anything better than pork the way the Maroons jerk it." (And if you haven't read Hurston's fabulous novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, run, don't walk, to your local bookstore to pick up a copy.)

Adapted from Planet Barbecue!

SIGN UP for Steven Raichlen's UP IN SMOKE newsletter to learn more about barbecue!

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sen. hillary clinton speaks at ...

When Hillary Clinton clinched the Democratic presidential nomination on Tuesday, I cried. I'm not afraid to admit that.

Eight years ago, I cried when Barack Obama did the same thing (yes, by defeating Clinton). It's nothing short of remarkable that an African-American could be the Democrats' standard-bearer after this country was founded on slavery, on blacks being legally being three-fifths of a person in the Constitution. And not that many decades have passed since Jim Crow and KKK lynchings.

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And it's pretty damn important that a woman will now be the nominee for a major political party in America. Women haven't even had the right to vote for 100 years. For centuries, most of us couldn't own property or go to school. This final barrier must be broken.

I say this as a mother of a teenage girl who couldn't fathom why there were no presidents who looked like her on her old placemat. I say this as a mother of a tween boy who has never asked if a woman is up to the job of running the free world. He knows we are.

But I realized that I was crying mainly as a soon-to-be 40-year-old woman. I've been raped and abused. As a journalist and businesswoman, I've been stalked, sexually harassed and constantly belittled (one of my favorites is the legislator who suggested I shouldn't cover abortion legislation as I was a "Vagina-American.")

One of the advantages of being middle-aged and self-employed is that you're far better equipped to deal with crass chauvinism and lame attempts to hurt your bottom line. No one's gotten me to shut up yet, and I wouldn't hold my breath, boys.

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But I thought back to when I was roughly my daughter's age during Bill Clinton's first presidential bid in 1992. I remember being annoyed that Hillary wasn't running then. Sure, he had the charisma, but she was so damn smart. Why do so many women wait their turn? Why did she have to backtrack from her crack that she could have stayed home and "baked cookies and had teas" instead of being a badass children's rights lawyer? Why couldn't she have declared, "That's me, take it or leave it"?

That's the kind of woman I wanted to be. That's the kind of woman my friends wanted to be. We didn't want to be married to men running the world. We wanted to run it.

Hillary made a political calculation to wait, though. It was probably the right one. She was coming up in a world that frowned upon her keeping her own name, even though she'd accomplished so much as Hillary Rodham. She faced blowback after promising the American people they'd be getting "two for the price of one" in the White House, even though Eleanor Roosevelt, Nancy Reagan and Edith Wilson all filled that role behind the scenes.

The conventional wisdom was always that the first female president would be a Republican, our own Margaret Thatcher -- tough on national defense, with the uniquely American twist of an unwavering devotion to God to soften her edges in all the right ways.

Clinton decided to become the Iron Lady herself, first in her outward persona in the face of her husband's infidelity and impeachment and then in her carefully crafted defense hawk stance and moderate U.S. Senate platform. And finally, she rose above petty partisanship when Obama appointed her Secretary of State, giving her a powerful voice on the world stage.

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But she almost derailed herself along the way, emotionally lashing out at the media over her marriage. Her failed 2008 presidential campaign was marred by entitlement and fits of race-baiting by surrogates. Clinton had waited so long and was furious that her chance was being thwarted by an upstart. It showed.

It was a turnoff to me and millions of women. Obama was inspiring and stubbornly immune to tawdry controversies which have plagued the Clintons since their days in Arkansas. My anti-Clinton columns in 2008 (I once declared that she failed feminism) still get me dirty looks from some liberal women to this day.

So what changed for me? The first was covering her on the stump for Obama after their bitter primary. Clinton was utterly gracious and never made it about her, however personally devastated she almost certainly still was. Then there was her partnership with the president for four years. His "Team of Rivals" play worked and she was a far better asset in his cabinet than in the Senate.

And a lot has happened to me from ages 31 to 39. I'm now the mother of a boy. I've seen firsthand how insidious sexism can be, from casual remarks about who should do the dishes to rape jokes he hears in school. I worked my way up as a reporter only to hit the glass ceiling and get fired. I run two businesses now and still encounter men trying to put me in my place -- and even allegedly feminist women who still insist I must have a male partner running the show (I don't).

I have learned that if you are a woman who values herself, who wants to be heard, who wants to change the world, you need to take ownership of something. You can't settle for being your boss' work wife -- he'll almost certainly take you for granted. You'll be in the office working late so he can enjoy his daughter's softball game. You'll think you're building something together, but in the end, it's not your company. And you are always disposable.

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You need to be the boss. And that's something Clinton realized, too.

The truth is that it is exhausting being a woman. You are always judged differently, from your tone to your relationships to your shoes. And you can see that all over Hillary Clinton's face. Few people have taken as many blows as she has. And yet, she's still here. She's still fighting.

That's all any of us can do.

But the real game-changer for me was this revelation. When I was a teenager in 1992, the political climate was better for women than it is for my daughter today.

It was far easier to obtain an abortion than it is now with an explosion of anti-choice laws across the states. Equal pay was a bipartisan issue, with many Republicans as the (no-brainer) issue's biggest champions. Even birth control -- something 90 percent of Americans support -- is under attack from Congress.

What the hell? The promise of America is progress. And women today are being left behind.

Electing a woman president isn't a panacea. We have a record 20 women in the U.S. Senate right now and women's rights are still being rolled back.

But it's a strong message -- the strongest one possible -- that our rights matter and we deserve a seat at the table. What better way to convey that than having a woman -- and an immensely tough and qualified one at that -- behind the desk in the Oval Office?

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It's about damned time.
This article first appeared on the Job Talk blog. Read the original version here.

My first experience with the planet's largest book trade show, Book Expo America (BEA), held in Chicago in May, left me dazed and dazzled. Attended by 17,249 people and 1,000 exhibitors, authors, and publishers all clamoring for readers' shrinking attention, BEA brought home to me how daunting the process of sharing stories can actually be.

The realities of publishing a book today

Publishing a book today requires more than ambition. It means jumping into an ocean full of volumes, about 1.5 million every year, all clamoring to stay afloat in a vast market where most will drown.

Since the good old days when the Oxford comma ruled and legacy publishers waged bidding wars over unknown authors with a good story (that's what happened with my first book, a socio-theological study of the American Christian Shakers), the field of book publishing has exploded just like social media: messy, mixed, and democratic with a small d.

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How many books get made vs. how many make it

Here's how publishing looks today, by the numbers:

1,072,857 books worldwide have been published so far this year, according to Worldometers

250 copies a year, and only 3,000 in a book's lifetime, are all that are sold of the average nonfiction book, says Publisher's Weekly

1% is your book's chance of being stocked in a brick-and-mortar store

350,000 new titles are released each year

78 percent of these titles sell fewer than 99 copies

The most new-product introductions of any industry, says Out:Think

3X more American than in 1978 read zero books per year, laments The Atlantic

Self-publish or choose 1 of 63,000 publishers?

Even if you wanted to paddle against these odds, how would you choose whether to venture out on your own in self-publishing, or attempt to choose wisely among the 63,000 publishers in the U.S. alone?

If I'd faced these statistics alone, I never would have left my kitchen office. However, the MY JOB book project has been, from conception to publication, a unifying force for its narrators and my family, coworkers, and publisher.

The MY JOB book never was a solitary project

MY JOB was conceived in collaboration (see the story of my friend Steve Schwartz brainstorming over a bowl of Thai noodles) and materialized through three years of conversations with real human beings about their labors and lives. Each chapter conveys the unique voice of the architect, musician, technologist, or banker who essentially coauthored the book with me.

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Moreover, My Job: Real People at Work Around the World was adopted as a project of the Skees Family Foundation, a compassionate clan of thirty people across three generations (who happen to be my family) hoping to use this book to broadcast the voices of unsung working heroes and raise funds for job-creation programs to end poverty.

Then we began to build the MY JOB "dream team," with talented people from Boston to Green Bay to New York.

Our "dream team" joined forces at BEA

Our virtual team got to be physically together for a couple of days in Chicago at BEA, for the first time. I met my publisher, Tracy Ertl, in person and I was delighted to find that she was every bit the kind, driven, and determined businesswoman I had gotten to know through conference calls and emails. Tracy's company, TitleTown, publishes stories of survival -- soon to include those of our narrators in the MY JOB book! Petite and sweet, she has the spirit of a fighter.

Our amazing project manager Andrea Atkinson and I met with Tracy and the rest of our publishing team, which included the staff of Midpoint Trade and Distribution, who will be distributing MY JOB to booksellers around the country (and hopefully beyond!).

Powerful pros we met at the expo

We had the pleasure of meeting with some publishing powerhouses:

Laura Robinson , the no-nonsense head of sales who helped me get a grasp on the role of the author (promote, promote, and promote!) and laid heavy praise on the (soon to be revealed!) book cover;

, the no-nonsense head of sales who helped me get a grasp on the role of the author (promote, promote, and promote!) and laid heavy praise on the (soon to be revealed!) book cover; Megan Trank , our phenomenal editor, who confirmed my fears that she was going to be ruthless in cutting down the book length;

, our phenomenal editor, who confirmed my fears that she was going to be ruthless in cutting down the book length; Francesca Minerva , a force of nature who will also be looking at getting the book into the foreign market;

, a force of nature who will also be looking at getting the book into the foreign market; Bill Huhn , world-class marketer in charge of sales to airport stores (a prime location for international travelers looking for content like Wantay's chapter!); and last but not least,

, world-class marketer in charge of sales to airport stores (a prime location for international travelers looking for content like Wantay's chapter!); and last but not least, Eric Kampmann, CEO of Midpoint and genuinely kind man who has supported us from the beginning.

The meetings were highly educational. We learned how long a person looks at a book cover before making a purchasing decision (between 5-30 seconds), what a publisher looks for in an author (great content and the capacity to promote it), and how to create a pre-order campaign (coming on July 15 -- see here for more information).

Authors of all genres we discovered along the way

We shared deep-dish pizza with another TitleTown author, child prodigy Emily Rose Ross, who's working on her first young-adult novel Blue's Prophecy. We shared cabs with authors from radically different genres than ours -- raven-haired Mylo Carbia, queen of horror fiction, and soft-spoken Angela Thompson Howell, author of a book on meditation. We met a taxi driver with a Filipino accent who strained to see over the steering wheel and sway away from head-on collisions while she regaled us with her own unpublished story of how she single-handedly handed over Osama Bin Laden to the CIA. And our last sweet night in ChiTown, we loaded into a banged-up van with no suspension or seat belts to jolt across the entire city span for plates of the best rib-eye steaks and russet potatoes either side of the Mississippi.

Being an introvert in a crowd of 17,000

Traveling across the country to spend days packed in a warehouse jammed with signs and stimuli, reverberating with sounds of people clamoring for attention, is the last way this introverted author would ever choose to spend half a week. Yet the payoff was the chance to see how capable and creative our publishing and marketing team members are, and how excited they are to read the stories of MY JOB.

In good company, both online and on the shelf

And in the depths of the warehouse, I found some more optimistic numbers:

Amazon sells over 1 million e-books every day, most from small and indie publishers, according to the 2016 Author Earnings Report.

The U.S. has the largest publishing industry in the world (26 percent), bringing in $29 billion a year, according to the Association of American Publishers and Statista.

As Sir Tim Berners-Lee, credited with inventing the World Wide Web, told Publishers Weekly in a keynote address on the future of publishing, "There is a universality on the web. It can be used for any genre. You can browse. It's flexible... you're only limited by your own creativity."

If the MY JOB book can reach these numbers for audience and revenues, we can create serious impact with conversations about jobs and programs to build more of them. I think we'll not only stay afloat, we'll sail this book to places and people beyond any horizon we can currently perceive -- because we have each other onboard.
A couple of weeks ago President Obama visited Hiroshima, the site of the first atomic bomb dropped on a human settlement. During his visit, he said that "technological progress without an equivalent progress in human institutions can doom us," while adding that such technology "requires a moral revolution as well."

That got me to thinking about the moral revolution our world really needs.

We cant claim ignorance anymore. I wasnt alive during World War II, but as the reality of the hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths caused by the atomic bombs became known, I imagine conversations around dinner tables where familys said something like: "We really had no idea how damaging the bombs were going to be." In some sense, weve been saying the same thing ever since.

The separation between producer and consumer or between consumer and the sources of their consumption and the end places of their waste was a hallmark of the industrial revolution and the growth of capitalism. It allowed for growth and prosperity (in some parts of the world), but at the same time led us away from any sort of direct contact with the effects of our consumption. We could claim ignorance.

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At the same time, the crafters of the global free market economy assured us that growth was good for everyone. That wealth would trickle down; that our way of life would be happily adopted by everyone around the world. It wasnt all that different from Harry Truman and his advisors convincing the war-weary citizens of the U.S. that dropping the bomb was necessary to finally put an end to the world war.

The difference, of course, is that whereas very few people had any inkling of an idea of what the Manhattan Project was actually developing, the dark secrets of our how world economy are becoming more and more visible every day.

Ignorance is no longer bliss, or at least it shouldnt be. Information is out there for anyone with an internet connection and the truth is discoverable if we look for it with honesty. For many people this is the discomforting and upsetting because much of our moral discourse has been founded on the ease of distance and anonymity.

The issue of what we consider to be "financial" responsibility rests, I believe, on this comfortable reliance on ignorance. Lets say a young man just out of college takes some of his first earnings and invests in the stock market. He is "putting his money to work for him", we say, and we hold him up to be an exemplar of our society. The truth of the matter, however, is that this young man has absolutely NO idea where his money is being invested, nor does he have any inkling of an idea of the causes his investment truly has on communities directly affected by this investment.

It could be that he is investing in global "clean" energy, a supposedly ethical and green investment. What he doesnt see, however, is that some mega energy corporation has forcefully displaced thousands of indigenous people in the mountain of Guatemala or the rainforests of the Amazon. He doesnt see how the resistance movement towards these supposedly "green" mega projects is criminalized and how its leaders are targeted for assassination such as Berta Caceres.

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The problem lies in the fact that our moral or ethical standard isnt at all tied to the actual consequences of what our money does. Somehow, weve equated responsibility, and thus our ethic and moral standard, to the ability to multiply assets at whatever cost. We have thus coupled our ethics to the most basic principles of the growth economy. This definition of "responsibility" seems strangely Orwellian to me.

Merriam Webster defines responsibility as "the state of being the person who caused something to happen". The problem, of course, is that our global economy has produced such a remoteness of distance that most have us never have any idea of what our actions actually "cause to happen." Responsibility is thus freed from any sense of accountability and relegated to the sphere of individualism

Can an action be responsible if we have absolutely no connection to the effects or outcomes of that action? Responsibility should necessarily imply a certain proximity and closeness that allows us to understand what actually occurs. Another definition of responsibility is "the state or fact of being responsible, answerable, or accountable for something within one's power, control, or management." What we consume, how we invest our money and how our livelihoods affect the lives of others should be considered within our "power, control or management."

A friend of mine recently told me that he was considering investing a part of his meager savings into a local company that delivered health food around the Los Angeles area. He explained that he liked how the company offered job opportunities to young people in the area and provided healthy food options to people around the city. However, he ultimately decided not to invest in that company because the leader of the company, in order to cut costs, used the metro system without paying.

My friends personal moral compass is perhaps more strict than my own, but the fact that he was close enough to make an investment choice based on how that companys operation coincided or not with his ethical and moral beliefs was in itself an example of truly responsible and ethical consumption.

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What if we were to be close enough to see the Honduran peasants exploited by the banana company that sprays thousands of tons of dangerous chemicals and then demands them to go out and cut the bananas for $5 dollars a day? Would we feel responsible investing in a mining company that poisoned ground water with cyanide while lying to local farmers in order to buy up huge amounts of land to expand their mine?

More and more people are beginning to wake up from this ethical vacuum of blind consumption. From this nascent awareness that something is wrong with our completely anonymous and distant global economy, people are developing a desire to be ethical and moral in their consumer choices. The companies and businesses that depend on our ignorance, however, have picked up on this threat to the status quo, and have begun to bombard consumers with the promises of corporate social responsibility. We feel better when we see an ad on TV assuring us that some big corporation is investing ethically in saving the planet, or becoming a "green" company, whatever that means. Mining companies may assure us that theyre creating local jobs. What we dont see, however, is that those jobs are usually under paid and dont come anywhere close to offsetting the environmental and cultural disasters that come with implementing a mega mine in a formerly agrarian community.

We try to escape the real moral responsibility of knowing firsthand the direct effects of our consumption by passing that responsibility on to others. We trust in the yearly newsletter that the financial companies that manage our retirement plan sends us every year telling how they are investing in developing countries around the world to help spur economic growth to pull local people out of poverty.

We have no way to know if that is true or not, and more likely than not, "spurring economic growth" may very well entail investing in a mega-gold mining project that poisons water supplies and pushes the price of land out of reach of local farmers. The economic growth caused by the mine will most likely be concentrated in the hands of local elites and corrupt politicians as the actual residents of the place are forced to migrate in search of opportunities in other, less poisoned places.

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Trusting that our global economic system will be ethical is kind of like trusting that our housecat will ignore our daughters pet canary. Everything is good and fine until we come home one day and have to explain to our daughter that her canary had to go to a better place. Whats worse is that we know we cant really blame the cat because he was just acting according to his nature.

If we accept that the "nature" of our global economy is to continue to grow infinitely and without limits; and if we acknowledge that companies that operate under the rules of this global economy will try to increase profits before any other consideration, then this reality should push us to reconsider what is moral and ethical.

Returning to President Obamas admonition for our society to embark upon a moral revolution, I think that we need to define what that moral revolution would actually entail. I believe that true morality implies that we make the effort to know intimately and personally the effects of our actions. It should mean that we no longer rely on ignorance and anonymity as the cornerstones of our implied ethical standards. I think that a truly moral society would be one that tries to close the distance between consumers and the sources and end-places of their consumption.
By now, the phrase "miracle food" probably makes you roll your eyes at least a little bit. You hold a package of acai berries in the grocery store and side-eye them, wondering if they're really going to solve all your problems. And will this kale actually make your neighbor stop mowing his lawn at 5am?

But the miracle berry, as it's commonly known, really is different.

It doesn't claim to have wild health benefits. Instead, it physically changes the way you taste things for a brief period of time. Goat cheese tastes like cheesecake. Hot sauce tastes like donut glaze. But how does it work?

The basics of taste

If you've seen the tongue map, the one that says the front of the tongue picks up sour flavors and the back picks up bitterness, that's not accurate. Taste receptors are evenly distributed all over the tongue.

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But think of them like puzzle pieces--or charging ports. When you eat or drink something, the food molecules light off their matching receptors. Lemon juice molecules plug into the "sour" receptors. Maple syrup plugs into the "sweet" receptors."

The origin of the miracle berry

The "miracle berry" is a literal berry native to Western Africa. In 1725, a roving French explorer, the Chevalier des Marchais, noticed the locals eating the berry and documented its apparent use. Over centuries, it eventually made its way to the United States with the help of a botanist, and people started looking up and taking note.

The berry is properly known as Synsepalum dulcificum, and it contains a chemical called miraculin that briefly weirds your taste receptors (30 mins to 1 hour). This means that when you bite into a lemon, those "sour" molecules activate your "sweet" receptors instead, and everything tastes like a glorious sugary wonderland without the caloric intake.



Berry or tablet?

These berries have a cult-like underground following, so there are definitely ways to get your hands on the actual fruit. But assuming you don't have a plant in your backyard, it can get pretty expensive--a single berry can cost $2, and their shelf life is incredibly short.

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Some companies, like Mberry, have given the berry a second life in the form of a tablet, which takes away that whole "perishable" thing. Plus, you get far more bang for your buck, with a per-tablet price hovering around sixty cents.



How to get your own taste test going



Well, you won't be able to use the harmless berry as a miracle sweetener anytime soon, due to a mysterious ruling in 1974 by the FDA.

But in the meantime, people often throw flavor-tripping parties, in which the host provides the berries or tablets alongside an array of traditionally sour, bitter, or spicy food. After coating their tastebuds with the miraculin, guests are off to the races, ready to experience the culinary world in an entirely unexpected way.

Even our company, Desert Canvas, has jumped on bandwagon by hosting flavor tripping parties.

Conclusion
Donald Trump's criticism of Judge Gonzalo P. Curiel is only the latest of his positions decried by the Republican Party establishment. They've opposed him throughout his campaign for his protectionist stance on trade, his immigration policies and his hostility towards the First Amendment, among other things.

All of this has been decried as "not conservative" and contrary to the party's principles. Ironically, the so-called "Party of Lincoln" doesn't recognize in Trump's platform all the basic elements of Lincoln's.

Americans tend to see history as a struggle between heroes and villains. Lincoln has been placed firmly in the hero category because of his widely misunderstood Emancipation Proclamation and for winning the Civil War. But when you get past the slavery issue, what's left of Lincoln's politics sounds a lot like Trump's. They didn't change significantly from the time of Lincoln's first political speech:

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"Fellow-Citizens: I presume you all know who I am. I am humble Abraham Lincoln. I have been solicited by many friends to become a candidate for the Legislature. My politics are short and sweet, like the old woman's dance. I am in favor of a national bank. I am in favor of the internal improvement system, and a high protective tariff. These are my sentiments and political principles. If elected, I shall be thankful; if not it will be all the same."

Lincoln was then a member of the Whig Party and it was a coalition of former Whigs and abolitionists that formed the Republican Party in 1854. And while there is no reason to doubt Lincoln's personal opposition to slavery, it was Henry Clay's "American System," a repackaging of Alexander Hamilton's platform, that defined Lincoln's politics for most of his life.

Politically, the alliance with abolitionists allowed proponents of protectionism, internal improvements and a national bank to achieve the electoral success that had eluded them since 1800, when Jefferson's victory rang the death knell of the Federalist Party.

"Internal improvements" was the language of the time for what we now call "infrastructure." Prior to Lincoln's administration, most roads and other infrastructure were privately funded and built. Both the Federalists and the Whigs had lost elections for sixty years largely for promoting government infrastructure and high tariffs. With Lincoln's victory and the subsequent fifty-year dominance of the Republican Party, that trend completely reversed.

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Lincoln ran on and executed his plans to subsidize railroads and other infrastructure. Trump wants to do likewise. Lincoln ran on and executed his plans to raise tariffs significantly in order to protect domestic manufacturers from foreign competition. Trump also wants to do likewise.

Trump has been criticized as dangerous to the First Amendment because of his continual attack on the press and threats to "open up our libel laws" as president and sue reporters who criticize him. Lincoln had him beat; he threw reporters in jail, just as the Federalists did under the Sedition Act during the 1790s.

While the issue of a central bank has been settled since 1913, it is noteworthy that Trump has lined up with libertarians in supporting an audit of the Federal Reserve. But he has given no indication he opposes its existence.

But what of Trump's most controversial position, to deport 11 million illegal aliens? Certainly, Lincoln never supported anything like that, right?

Wrong. Until the day he died, Lincoln supported and actively sought to execute a rather bizarre plan by today's standards, but widely supported at the time, called "colonization." Promoted since the early 18 century, the idea was to free the slaves and then subsidize their emigration to Liberia (created for expressly that purpose), the West Indies or South America. Colonization was yet another Whig Plank Lincoln inherited from his political idol, Henry Clay. In Lincoln's own words,

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''I can hardly believe that the South and North can live in peace unless we get rid of the Negroes. Certainly they cannot, if we don't get rid of the Negroes whom we have armed and disciplined and who have fought with us, to the amount, I believe, of some 150,000 men. I believe that it would be better to export them all to some fertile country with a good climate, which they could have to themselves."

In fairness, Lincoln was a supporter of foreign immigrants, opposing the anti-immigrant Know Nothings. But on the charge of racism, Lincoln has far more to answer for than Trump. Trump has repeatedly separated his professed admiration for people of other races with his staunch opposition to illegal immigration. Lincoln made no bones about his view that black people were inferior.

The media and Republican Party leadership has characterized Trump's campaign as a departure from both the Republican Party's principles and conservatism itself. In reality, it's exactly the opposite. Trump's platform not only represents a return to the founding principles of the Republican Party, but to the long held positions of conservatives in the British-American tradition.

Laissez faire markets and open borders have always been positions traditional conservatives staunchly opposed as a threat to the order and stability their entire philosophy is centered around. The Republican Party was born advocating tariffs and higher government spending. It has never changed those policies in practice, despite free market rhetoric in recent decades.

Trump's success should come as no surprise. His economic ideas have had the support of truly conservative voters since the days of Alexander Hamilton. That's why it is a somewhat futile exercise to look for a "true Republican" or a "true conservative" who departs significantly from Trump and can win. Voters seeking free markets, small government and individual liberty should look to Gary Johnson and the Libertarian Party instead.
Our reliance on the internet might be undermining our people skills, such as hand-eye coordination beyond a mouse and a screen, our ability to think, stare into space, even to procrastinate, but it is still something we can inject with a degree of emotional intelligence. Clicking on an image brings film clips to life that would have played once on the evening news and which we can now order up 24/7. But the retina still dashes visual imagery back to the brain to interpret intent and meaning; of the kind that triggered much giggling, for example, at New Jersey Governor Chris Christie's bug-eyed support for Donald Trump at his rallies, and cringe-reflexes at Mrs. Christie's glancing mortification when Trump taunted Hillary Clinton for playing the woman's card.

So no amount of re-watching US House Speaker Paul D. Ryan can persuade us of his genuine endorsement of Donald Trump. Vacant eyes of veiled dishonesty try to assure us that he has spoken to the man he believes shares his Republican values. There was more belief in George W. Bush's declaration in 2001 that, when looking into the soul of Vladimir Putin, he saw a man he could trust; political naivete and/or wishful thinking maybe, but at least it was sincere.

A short year before, Bill Clinton forewarned that the Russian leader could get "squishy" on democracy. Well, now we have a home-grown, potential POTUS who is wishy-washy on the American constitution.

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Ryan's attempts to inject some purposeful sentiment, "You know, I didn't know the guy at all before the nomination", are designed to absolve himself of any previous association with the realtor. Fair enough, none of us knew the guy at all either and, now that we do, we are running a mile in the opposite direction. Ryan, hand on chin in reflective seriousness, endorses him instead for president of the most powerful country on the planet.

Every word here sounds like a lie, including "and", "for" and "but". Apparently, his mind has succeeded in reaching a "comfort level" with Trump, in contrast to his every visible body part that cries out discomfort -- his hand moves away from his chin awkwardly, his eyes don't know where to look and his neck slouches forward in false emphasis. He pauses with care and thought about the time (cue distracting emphasis) it took to reach his decision, as if lengthening the sentence adds legitimacy; how long does it take to judge the mental age of a bragging frat boy?

So disingenuous is the spectacle that it looks like a captive trying to communicate truths through eye ticks while mouthing "help".

Where is the dignity and, above all, the courage in sacrificing a nation for this? To throw Americans into the jaws of vile rhetoric, stupid understanding and dangerous threats because Ryan doesn't want "more Obama" is to force-feed voters with contempt for the political process.

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It is difficult to read the opinion pieces of New York Times columnist David Brooks and reconcile his clear, compassionate conservative thinking with what has become of the US Republican party. Real Republicans should once and for all lower the sprigs of fresh smelling posies and acknowledge the presence of pestilence in their midst. It is besides the point how many back room deals Trump will make with the party. The damage is done; to reputation, credibility and ability to lead, and it is irreparable.

In this context, the video circulating on social media of President Obama and Republican John Boehner, Paul Ryan's predecessor as speaker of the House, sharing popcorn, watching Toy Story and shootin' the breeze over what to do in "retirement", is startling. Why wasn't the camaraderie, the bantering, the mutual respect and acknowledgment of differing viewpoints, indeed the possibility of sitting within inches of each other, present ever in government, when it was needed most? The resulting legislative power vacuum has given rise to the creature whose hair, pursed lips and jabbing fingers have the appeal of jail food, halfway through a life sentence.
In Chronicle of a caged journalist, Egyptian war correspondent Yehia Ghanem tells the stories of those he's met while covering wars in Afghanistan, Bosnia and the Democratic Republic of Congo. This is the story of a young boy who grew up, was tortured and went to Afghanistan to fight.As I stood in that cage in an Egyptian courtroom, memories of a childhood friend kept returning to me. I shall call him by his initials, KL.

We lived next door to one another in our middle-class, tree-lined Cairo neighborhood, where we'd play hide-and-seek behind the brick walls that had been erected in front of the apartment buildings during the 1967 war with Israel.

With his fair hair and blue eyes, KL resembled a mythological Nordic god. And in a country where such features were a rarity, people, young and old, were drawn to KL. But it wasn't just his appearance that attracted them: Polite and meek, he was well-liked, and I was proud to consider him a friend.

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We attended the same schools from grammar to high school, parting only at college when he began to study commerce and I focused on journalism. We were in different faculties of the same university so would frequently bump into one another on campus.

Then, suddenly, a year before graduation, KL disappeared. For days, he didn't turn up for class. Nobody had seen him in the streets. After a while, we asked his brothers where he was, and they told us their suspicions: that he'd been picked up by one of the many intelligence bodies in Egypt.

It was shortly after the assassination of President Anwar Sadat and just attending the mosque could be enough to get you apprehended. KL's crime: simply being too punctual in his prayers.

Almost three years passed. Our lives moved on; I graduated, did a year of public service and became a radio journalist, but I never forgot KL. I talked often about him with friends. Others who'd been arrested spoke of the brutalities they'd experienced inside. We knew the same must be happening to him.

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Then KL was released. But he was a different person. He had been subjected to the most horrific torture, the details of which he never discussed with us. Although still polite and outwardly calm, KL had been reborn into an entirely different ideology.

His firm conviction that social and political change - something as basic as the freedom of expression we all craved - could be achieved through peaceful means was gone. He still wanted that change, however. But now he believed that violence was the way to attain it.

I remember one conversation as we stood on the street, talking and exchanging ideas. "Peaceful means are meaningless," he told me. That wasn't the KL I knew, but all peaceful avenues seemed blocked to him now.

It was hard to be surprised by the shift in him. For three years, he'd experienced nothing but violence and oppression himself.

He completed university and graduated. But then, a year after he was released, KL disappeared - again. It was 1984, and the Soviet war in Afghanistan had been raging for five years. Foreign fighters, the majority of whom were Arab, had been shoring up the ranks of the mujahideen, and KL had joined them.

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We heard stories about his activities there from other mujahideen who returned to visit their families. But what we heard was unbelievable: He had become a leading figure, not only as a fighter but as a planner.

More than a decade later, I too was in Afghanistan, covering the war between the Taliban and Northern Alliance. I wanted to find my old friend, who was still in the country - a foreign fighter aligned with the Taliban.

Eventually, I learned that he had became so important that it would be impossible to meet him for reasons of security.

For a little over two years, I reported first on the Taliban and then on the Northern Alliance, covering the war from both sides. Sometimes I was on the frontlines, sometimes interviewing prisoners of war or senior officials. Sometimes I ended up in a Taliban cell myself. But I always felt protected and suspected that on occasions, my old friend had been the one responsible for getting me out of there.

I still feel indebted to him, even though I haven't seen him since the 1980s.

He had graduated from Egypt's notorious prison system as someone who had internalised the violence perpetrated against him. There were tens of thousands of others just like him; once innocent young men who had been painfully and brutally broken down, only to be re-moulded as what the world might call "terrorists". They were human beings to be hunted.

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I would meet many, many others just like KL as I covered wars throughout the world - from Afghanistan to Bosnia to the Democratic Republic of Congo: young men embroiled in conflict and trapped in cages, both physical and mental.
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Ajay Verma / Reuters Students make a formation in the shape of a heart and a red ribbon during a HIV/AIDS awareness campaign on Valentine's Day in the northern Indian city of Chandigarh February 14, 2012. REUTERS/Ajay Verma (INDIA - Tags: TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY SOCIETY HEALTH)

NEW DELHI -- Health Minister J.P. Nadda recently informed the United Nations that deaths caused by AIDS have declined by nearly 55% in India over the past eight years, and the new HIV infections came down by 66 percent since 2000.

At the high-level meeting on AIDS, Nadda said that India had recorded 1,48,309 deaths in 2007, The Times of India reported today, and that figure came down to 67,600 in 2015.

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From 2000 and 2015, the new HIV infections dropped from 2.51 lakh to 86,000, TOIreported.

Globally, AIDS related death declined by 41 percent from 2005 to 2015, and new HIV infections dropped by 35 percent.

The United Nations proposes to eradicate the epidemic by 2030.
Adnan Abidi / Reuters India's Finance Minister Arun Jaitley speaks with the media in New Delhi November 23, 2015. India will sell shares in some state-run companies when market conditions improve, Jaitley said on Monday, as the government struggles to meet its asset sales target that is crucial to help plug its deficit. REUTERS/Adnan Abidi

As the debate rages on about the suggested cuts in 'Udta Punjab', a film that purportedly shows the latent opioid dependence problem among the state's youths, the Shyam Benegal Committee on Cinematograph Act/Rules is said to have recommended an 'Adult with Caution' category for certification of films with excessive adult content, according to an Indian Express report.

The move comes even as Information and Broadcasting Minister Arun Jaitley made all the right noises at the Indian of the Year Award hosted by CNN TV18 Group, calling for "radical changes" in certification and not censorship as the way forward. Jaitley's voice is a welcome change in the right wing, Bharatiya Janata Party-led government that has come under attack in recent times from civil society for trying to interfere in personal liberty.

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CERTIFICATION, NOT CENSORSHIP

Jaitley said film certification norms have to be liberal and some very radical changes will be announced over the next few days.

The Central Board of Film Certification had initially asked for 89 cuts in 'Udta Punjab', which was later brought down to 13. The filmmaker and the producers are battling the CBFC in court to release the film on time. On the specific issue of Udta Punjab, Jaitley remained non-committal -- "I won't say its overboard. I don't know this case because I have not seen this film in question" -- but said the existing system of film certification has to be changed.

There is a well documented report by Shyam Benegal, the first part which has come to me which is under consideration. Over the next few days we are going to announce some very radical changes in that.

"There is a well documented report by Shyam Benegal, the first part which has come to me which is under consideration. Over the next few days we are going to announce some very radical changes in that," he said.

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"You will probably have a system where you will have to have a certificate. The correct word is certification and not censorship. Certification norms will have to be liberal," he said.

WHAT WOULD AN A/C CATEGORY MEAN

The Benegal committee meanwhile suggested to Jaitley in April that films with 'A/C' category will have restricted viewing and cannot be screened at cinema halls and multiplexes located near residential areas, the Express report stated.

"We do not want to deny the filmmakers the right to screen their movies. When you do that, the movies go underground, Benegal told Express.

An A/C movie can be shown in red light districts or other non-residential areas.

"An A/C movie can be shown in red light districts or other non-residential areas," the veteran filmmaker said.

The 'Adult' category he said will have two sections -- the usual A and the A/C. He has also suggested U/A 12+ and U/A 15+ as part of the U category.

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The Bombay High Court meanwhile asked the Censor Board to explain why it is insisting on deletion of the Punjab signboard in the film even as the film body insisted that the 13 changes suggested by its Revising Committee were justified and proper.

A bench headed by Justice S C Dharmadhikari was hearing a petition filed by Phantom Films, producer of 'Udta Punjab', which is aggrieved by an order of the Revising Committee of the Board that suggested changes in the film before its release on June 17.

Justice Dharmadhikari compared drug-themed 'Udta Punjab' with another film released earlier titled 'Go, Goa, Gone' saying in that movie the state of Goa is shown as a place where people go to socialise in parties and also take banned drugs.

IF GOA CAN BE SHOWN AS PLACE OF DRUG ABUSE, WHY NOT PUNJAB

"If Goa can be shown as a place of drug abuse in that film, what is wrong if Punjab is shown in Udta Punjab?" asked the judge.

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The Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) lawyer argued that the order of the Revising Committee suggesting 13 changes in the film was not arbitrary and the committee had applied its mind while making these suggestions.

If Goa can be shown as a place of drug abuse in that film, what is wrong if Punjab is shown in Udta Punjab?

"We are objecting to the reference of Punjab and its people and the language used in the film", the lawyer argued.

Hearing the arguments, the court said that it was not satisfied with the first two suggestions made by the Censor Board in regard to the first two suggestions of the Committee about removing references to places in that state such as Chandigarh, Amritsar, Tarantaran, Jashanpura, Moga and Ludhiana.
Stringer India / Reuters Relatives of Mohammad Akhlaq mourn after he was killed by a mob on Monday night, at his residence in Dadri town, in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, India, September 29, 2015. A Hindu mob killed a Muslim man in India over rumours that he butchered a cow, unleashing violence that police on Wednesday blamed on tension fuelled by politicians who seek strict protection of an animal many Hindus consider sacred. Akhlaq, a blacksmith, died after being kicked and beaten with stones by at least 10 men in the town of Dadri, 50 km from the capital, New Delhi, on Monday night. Picture taken September 29, 2015. REUTERS/Stringer TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY

The case of Mohammad Akhlaq's lynching by a mob of Hindu men in Bisara village over allegations that he had eaten beef at his residence took a new turn yesterday. A group of men from Bisara moved court seeking the filing of an FIR for alleged cow slaughter against Akhlaq's family members.

The application to the Chief Judicial Magistrate of Gautam Budh Nagar was filed by some Bisara residents after a report issued by the forensic lab in Mathura on 1 June concluded that the meat found in Akhlaq's house was of "cow or its progeny".

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An earlier report issued in December 2015 had said that the meat found in deceased's house was mutton and not beef.

According to an NDTV report, the petition filed by Bisara residents also claims that one Prem Singh, who lives in Bisara, saw Akhlaq slitting the throat of an animal.

The report further states that on 26 September last year, two other men from Bisara, Ranvir and Jatan, saw Akhlaq and his son Danish beat up a calf and on questioning Akhlaq were told by him that the calf was attacking people and therefore he was going to tie up the animal at his brother, Jaan Mohammed's house.

At a mahapanchayat in Bisara last week, the villagers had given an ultimatum to police to file an FIR against Akhlaq's family members within 20 days, after the new forensic report was released.

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Akhlaq was dragged out of his home and lynched to death in Uttar Pradesh's Bisara village, about 45 kilometers from New Delhi, after a rumour spread that he and his family killed and ate a cow that had gone missing from the neighbourhood.

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Adnan Abidi / Reuters A man convicted for the gang rape of a Danish woman tries to hide his face as he is escorted by a policeman at a court in New Delhi, India, June 9, 2016. REUTERS/Adnan Abidi TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY

NEW DELHI -- Five Indians who raped a Danish tourist when she asked them for directions in New Delhi have been sentenced to life in prison for the attack that highlighted the plague of sexual violence in the country.

Judge Ramesh Kumar announced the court's verdict on Friday in the presence of all the convicts in the courtroom. They can appeal before the court.

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Police said the 51-year-old woman approached the five men, all vagabonds, to ask for directions back to her hotel near Connaught Place, a popular shopping area in the capital. They then took her to a secluded spot and raped her repeatedly at knifepoint.

Violence against women in India has caused increasing alarm since the fatal gang rape of a 23-year-old physiotherapy student in New Delhi in 2012.

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ASSOCIATED PRESS A stilt-walker dances as people wait for IKEA, the worldas leading home furnishings retailer. to open the doors of its first Miami-Dade store to customers, in Sweetwater, Fla., Wednesday, Aug. 27, 2014. The 416,000-square-foot IKEA Miami is located on 14.6 acres It is the Swedish companyas second store in South Florida, the fourth in the state, and the 39th in the United States .(AP Photo/J Pat Carter)

Swedish furniture giant Ikea is considering a production facility in India as part of its plans to target the mass market in India.

The planned local production facility will help it cut down on logistics costs  which are a big part of what would make Ikea furniture an affordable bet for the Indian market.

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Ikea, which plans to open its first store in Hyderabad next year, has also purchased land in Hyderabad and Mumbai, and is reportedly still hunting for sites in Delhi and Bengaluru. It plans to open 25 stores in nine Indian cities by 2025. Delhi is likely to see three to five stores because of its vastness.

Ikea has said could invest up to 1.5 billion in stores and distribution as part of its growth efforts, according to media reports. Each store is expected to receive an investment of 500 crore.

Peter Agnefjall, CEO, IKEA told The Hindu BusinessLine that it plans to double its sourcing efforts once it secures a retail footprint. The company's sourcing efforts could go beyond textile to include bulk products like mattress and sofas.

IKEA is for the many people. There is an appeal to the brand both in terms of price and functionality, Agnefjall said. We are not trying to compete with the local carpenter and neither are we looking to drive in the premium market.

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Ikea reportedly sources about a third of its global cotton requirements from India; it works with about four lakh farmers in India through local partners.

With PTI inputs

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Kartik Sharma

Kartik Sharma

Age: 28

Location: Mumbai

Profession: Recruitment Manager



When I came out to my mother, her first reaction was a long silence. After that she turned towards me and said to me loudly, "Don't you dare talk rubbish with me. Do you even know what you just said? I haven't given birth to something like this. You better curb yourself down before spitting venom."



Almost immediately she rushed into the bedroom and shut the door with a loud bang. It has been over five years now and whenever I try speaking to her about it, she thinks it's just a phase and that I'll be 'normal' soon. Even now, she hopes for the day when she can give away her old saris and jewellery to her 'daughter-in-law' and I wonder, would I ever find a partner who'd accept these as my mother's blessings. I hope my mother will eventually accept me for who I am, and tell me, "I am proud of you and I will always love you because you're my son."
Actor Shenaz Treasurywala decided to shoot a prank video. Following a format which has been experimented with by YouTubers in the West several times, Treasurywala, decided to ogle at men in public places and record their reaction.

These public places looked like swanky Mumbai cafes, where Treasurywala, looking pretty as a picture, stared at men till they got very uncomfortable and left.

She starts off by thanking people for watching her video despite the summer - apparently, surfing YouTube in this season is a challenging activity - and hopes that her video will 'make [us] cool'. So what's this cooling potion? She explains.

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"Some men, they are always staring. So today, I wanted to give them a taste of what they do to us," she declares.

The next few minutes involve her singling out two men over a period of time - one sitting beside her in a restaurant and one sitting in a cafe - and staring at them with a smiling face. She then moves closer and stares at them even more intently without uttering a word. The baffled men leave.
Bloomberg via Getty Images Vikas Jain, co-founder of Micromax Informatics Ltd., speaks during the Rise conference in Hong Kong, China, on Thursday, June 2, 2016. The conference runs through June 2. Photographer: Billy H.C. Kwok/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Micromax Informatics, Indias second largest smartphones maker, has plans to enter the air conditioner market in the coming weeks, as it tries to get a foothold in the consumer durables segment.

According to a Mint report, the Gurugram-based Micromax hopes durables will contribute to about 20 per cent of overall revenue in the next 12 months. It also has plans to sell a range of big ticket goods including washing machines in the second half of 2017, a senior Micromax executive told Mint.

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Micromax has plans to manufacture window and split ACs at its Uttarakhand facility that is set to receive the 200 crore investment, the Mint report said. Prices will range from Rs.20,000 to Rs.30,000. Micromax launched into the TV space two years ago, which currently contributes to about 12 per cent of its sales.

Micromax has been facing stiff competition in the smartphones market in India from Samsung and Chinese handset makers. It recently announced plans to begin selling smartphones in China as a way to generate more cash.

Handsets shipments into India have slowed in the last six months, according to research from IDC, signalling unsold inventory of many affordable-range handsets, according to the report.

Micromax grew its fortunes on the back of cheap handsets, a strategy that helped set it apart from expensive competition a few years ago. It doesn't appear that the prices of its ACs are targeting that same affordable segment.

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Everything Wrong With The Spotify/NMPA Settlement

Following the filing of a class action lawsuit against Spotify, the popular streaming service announced that it had reached a landmark deal with the NMPA which it quickly tried to get publishers and songwriters to sign on to, a deal which is rife with problems, says the respected Future Of Music Coalition.

_______________________________

Guest post from the Future Of Music Coalition

In December of 2015, musician and songwriter David Lowery filed a class action lawsuit against Spotify over unpaid mechanical royalties.

Though mechanical royalties are covered by a compulsory license, Lowery argues that Spotify did not live up to the terms of that license, failing both to inform him of the use of his music or to pay the government-set royalty required by federal statue. For its part, Spotify claims that it never intentionally played music without compensating songwriters and publishers, but was sometimes unable to determine what parties to pay.

Three months later, Spotify announced that it had reached a landmark deal with the National Music Publishers Association (NMPA)the trade industry group representing the interests of many publisherswould see the service paying $30 million dollars in unpaid royalties and damages. The two sides then wasted no time contacting songwriters and publishers to ask that they sign on to the deal.

However, this agreement has turned out to be anything but a slam dunk for the two sides, with its terms generating immediate criticism from a number of songwriters and independent publishers. Some of the strongest pushback came from Lowery himself, who when presented with the opportunity to settle, balked at the offer on his blog.

Nevertheless, songwriters and publishers have to decide whether or not to join this settlement (and waive their rights to join the other class action lawsuits against Spotify). Unfortunately, the concerns over the settlement are very serious and worth pondering before signing your name on the dotted line (or Survey Monkey form).

As such, here are the key concerns that are raised by the settlement and what they mean to those considering signing on.

1. Lack of Transparency

Likely the biggest issue with the settlement is that it was not brokered as part of a lawsuit but, instead, was a private deal between the NMPA, the Harry Fox Agency (HFA) and Spotify.

This is especially complicated because the NMPA founded and maintains close ties to HFAthe organization that receives plays data from Spotify in order to match master recording data to publisher members who would then receive their share of mechanical royalties for the underlying compositions. The structure of this agreement means that the agency that was unable to perform comprehensive matching and the company that had went live without maintaining its own systems to ensure licensing compliance brokered a deal along with a trade association with a history of enticing new members via settlement agreements only to carve up the monetary awards by market share.

Things are made more complicated by the fact that the NMPA is not a party to the settlement. This means it cannot hold its members to the settlement, only advise that they take it. This is even more true for songwriters, who arent actually members of NMPA at all, despite what the organizations leadership frequently implies.

Many songwriters are understandably unsure about taking a deal that was brokered privately between three parties that were responsible for unpaid royalties that doesnt actually enjoin one of the parties.

With no direct artist participation in the negotiations and no transparency, songwriters and composers have reason to be wary.

2. Does Not Address the Infringement

While the settlement aims to pay unpaid royalties, it doesnt address the fact that Spotify played many tracks without securing the proper licenses. This, according to the critics of the deal, means that Spotify committed copyright infringement that the settlement itself does nothing to resolve (though it does repordedly absolve Spotify from prior infringements via a separate oopsie-daisy fine of $5 million).

This was one of the issues that Jeff Price, former CEO of Tunecore and current boss at Audiam, raised when he was offered the settlement. Prices argument is that Spotify is doing nothing to atone for its infringing ways, but rather, is just paying the royalties they set aside. (Were not sure this is accurate, as we have heard many rumors of activity within the company to build in-house mechancial royalties tracking and matching capacity.)

The issue gets even worse because the settlement doesnt necessarily stop Spotifys practice of playing unlicensed tracks. It puts the onus on publishers and songwriters to devote additional efforts to establish systems for future payments and leaves the Harry Fox Agency in charge of handling a big chunk of Spotifys mechancal royalties obligations.

3. Unclear on the Money

While we know that Spotify is spending $30 million on the settlement and that $25 million is unpaid royalties plus a $5 milion penalty added on top, we dont know how much an individual songwriter is likely to receive.

The exact amount a songwriter should expect to get is unclear. Though the amount is supposedly proportional, theres just no way of knowing how much money an individual music creator will see from this.

Things did not become more clear when the HFA sent Lowery a check, supposedly as part of the settlement. The check did not stipulate which compositions it applied to or provide any indication of how the sum was calculated.

With so many questions about the how much this settlement will be worth to songwriters and how the funds will be calculated, the apprehension is understandable.

4. TuneCores Involvement

Artists who publish through services like TuneCore and CD Baby are among the most likely to have had their compositions used by Spotify without mechanical royalties being paid. Thats because they are the least likely to be in the HFA database.

However, TuneCore has been extremely aggressive in trying to get its members to agree to the deal, which seems odd, given the low likelihood of its members being accounted for in reconciliation.

In one form of outreach, TuneCore sent an email to songwriters who use its publishing administration service asking them to join the deal. However, the request directed songwriters to a Surveymonkey page that simply asks for an email address and composers name on top of some check boxes. Neither the email nor the form linked to the complete agreement, meaning it was encouraging its members to agree to the deal without knowing its terms.

5. Dilution of the Class

Finally, Spotify is currently facing two separate class action lawsuits, the second filed weeks after Lowerys. Though the complaints will likely be merged, both are seeking significantly more money than the currently NMPA settlement$150 million in the Lowerys case and $200 million in the more recent action.

However, for a songwriter to join the NMPA settlement, they must agree not to participate in any other class action lawsuit. This means that they will be ineligible to be part of either of the ongoing cases and will not be a counted in the class.

The smaller the class, the less damages would be awarded should the songwriters prevail. Class action lawsuits depend upon the idea of there being strength in numbers; by recruting songwriters and publishers into the NMPA settlement, Spotify is able to whittle down the numbers for the actual lawsuits against them.

Conclusions

In the end, every songwriter and publisher needs to make their own choices about whether or not to accept this settlement. However, there are plenty of reasons to be wary and not very many reasons to be comforted.

While this settlement may may turn out to be a good deal for many songwriters and composers, theres simply no way of knowing if thats true right now. Between the non-transparent way the agreement was reached, the opaque accounting methods employed and the heavy-handed methods to encourage songwriters to join, its tough to know whether its a potentially good option.

With so much uncertainty and so little representation of music creators at the negotiating table, these kinds of deals tend to further sour relationships between songwriters and publishers at a time when they should be pulling together. But a decision will have to be made if you are a songwriter who believes their music has been used without a license. We should know soon if the class action lawsuits are moving forward; songwriters have a month before a decision has to be made about joining the NMPA settlement.

Hopefully, more answers can be gleaned over the next month and, with it, more certainty about what songwriters and composers gain by signing on.

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Guy Hands Suddenly Drops $2.5 Billion EMI Citigroup Lawsuit

After 9 year, its over. Guy Hands, the UK financier whose ill-fated purchase and management of EMI effectively brought down the once major music group, has abandoned his $2.5 billion fraud claim against US bank Citigroup.

______________________________________

At a special court hearing on Friday morning, lawyers for Guy Hand's private equity fund Terra Firma announced that the case had been withdrawn. The unexpected shift comes 9 years after Citi had called in a $3.6 billion loan that it made to Hands to purchase the EMI music group. A New York jury had rejected Hands' claim against Citi in 2010.

In separate statements reported by The Guardian, all of the parties weighed in on today's action:

Judge Burton: Im sure this is the right result. Citi: "We have always maintained that the allegations made by Terra Firma were entirely baseless and that Citi, specifically David Wormsley, Michael Klein and Chad Leat, acted at all times with absolute honesty and professional integrity throughout the EMI transaction. Guy Hands: It has become evident that our documentation of the fast-moving and complex events, and memories of these events after nine years, are no longer sufficient to meet the high demands of proof required for a fraud claim in court. The matter is now closed.

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Fundamental Changes Still Needed

Geneva - The International Air Transport Association (IATA) welcomed the publication of Interpretative Guidelines on Regulation 261/2004 by the European Commission which brings greater clarity to the European Unions passenger rights regulation. This is an important stop-gap measure until critical reforms to EU 261/2004 are implemented.

A transparent and level playing field is important for passengers and airlines. Todays interpretative guidelines are an important step to ensure that EU 261 is applied with greater consistency across Europe. The industrys issues with EU 261, however, remain unsolved. Revisions to the regulation proposed in March 2013 would help to provide a better balance between passenger rights and airline obligations. But they are being held in limbo as a result of a deadlocked dispute between Spain and the UK over Gibraltar, said Tony Tyler, IATAs Director General and CEO.

From the start, EU 261 contained ambiguities which resulted in inconsistencies in how the regulation was applied across Europe. Several decisions of the European Court of Justice expanded the scope of the regulation and created further inconsistencies when applied. The interpretative guidelines make important clarifications in the following areas:

Conditions for compensation for delays at final destination

Conditions under which a diverted flight is considered as a cancellation

Confirmation that delays and cancellation are distinct events

While the interpretative guidelines will bring greater clarity for passengers and airlines, they are not a substitute for revisions proposed by the EC in March 2013 which will address some of the fundamental flaws in EU 261. These proposals include:

Time limitations on the provision of care and assistance in extraordinary circumstances beyond the control of the airline

The introduction of trigger times for delay compensation that vary by flight length

Everybody is frustrated when travel plans are disrupted. Passenger rights should be fair, simple, consistently applied and aligned with global standards. Todays guidelines will help with the consistent application. Thats an important step, but follow-up is needed. Many of the March 2013 proposals are welcome but on top of that, more dialogue is needed to address remaining fundamental problems with the regulation, said Tyler.

The industrys support and concerns with the March 2013 proposals were outlined in a press release. IATA, with a coalition of European regional airline associations, continues to work constructively with the EC, the European Parliament and the Council towards the much-needed revisions of Regulation 261 to serve better the interests of both passengers and airlines in alignment with global standards.

For more information, please contact:

Corporate Communications

Tel: +41 22 770 2967

Email: Corporate CommunicationsTel:Email: corpcomms@iata.org

Notes for Editors:
The chief executive of Lloyds of London says that the mutual insurance sector should not hide behind regulation as a reason not to innovate.Speaking at the Reinsurance Officials Meeting, held by the International Cooperative and Mutual Insurance Federation, Inga Beale said: The cooperative and mutual insurance market plays a vital role in covering people all over the world. Representing 27 per cent of the global insurance market it represents an amazing presence across the world.She warned that an estimated 43% of the worlds countries do not have mutual or cooperative law. Protectionism is not good for these countries.Beale also urged the wider insurance industry to recognize the shift in power from insurers to consumers as wearable tech and social media increasingly provides data for the industry.Global insurer Zurich has joined a partnership aimed at focusing expertise from private and public sectors to tackle cyber risks.The insurer will be a key industry consultant to the partnership, which also includes the University of Maryland and the National Institute of Standards and Technology.The knowledge gained will help provide benefactors such as government procurement agencies, insurance/reinsurance underwriting companies, financial institutions, and rating agencies with evidence-based guidance for securing their cyber supply chains, Sandor Boyson, research professor and Supply Chain Management Center co-director.The new project builds on an existing Cyber Risk Portal, administered through the University of Maryland, which collects data by allowing participating businesses to anonymously upload information to compare their cybersecurity capabilities to the existing NIST Framework, as well as to their peers and competitors.The level of customer satisfaction with homeowners insurance in Eastern Canada has improved but has declined in Western provinces.The latest report from J.D. Power shows that overall satisfaction in the Atlantic/Ontario region improves to 768 out of a possible 1000 in 2016 from 759 in 2015, while satisfaction in the Quebec region jumps to 797 from 777.In the Western region, satisfaction drops to 732 in 2016 from 745 a year ago. Price is the leading cause of the drop in satisfaction, suffering a 23-point year-over-year decline.The Western provinces have had some very severe events in recent years, like the current Fort McMurray wildfire, which have caused significant financial losses for insurers, said Valerie Monet, director of the insurance practice at J.D. Power. From a customer perspective, price satisfaction hasnt improved over the years, and data suggests that many insurers have not had time to focus their efforts on improving the customer experience after the upheaval these claims events have had on their business.
Directors and officers (D&O) liability insurance helps companies with any defense costs they might incur should legal action be taken against them. Alternatively, the amount of money a D&O policy reimburses can be used as basis for a settlement should the lawyers of the defending company and the plaintiffs agree to it.While already useful, some companies have sought to abuse their D&O policies to further avoid paying for costly lawsuitsand ended up with even bigger problems on their plates. A feature article on Reuters explores how two insurers allegedly lied about how much D&O insurance they carried, and the penalty they suffered years after the original case.In April 2015, AIG and CVS Caremark agreed to pay a combined total of $310 million (AIG paid $280 million, CVS $80 million) to settle a long-running class action which claimed that in 1999 one of the companies that would merge with CVS deceived plaintiffs lawyers about its D&O coverage during a shareholder fraud case.An Alabama state court class action purported that MedPartnersa company that later merged with Caremark, which then merged with CVSand AIG did not tell class counsel back in the 1999 case that the former had unlimited fraud insurance under a policy it had purchased from an affiliate of the latter.According to allegations in the recently-settled case, both AIG and MedPartners represented that the company carried only $50 million in coverage, managing to convince plaintiffs lawyers to accept $56 million to settle the suit in 1999. AIG and MedPartners lawyers supposedly kept silent when shareholder counsel told the judge in 1999 that they took the deal, seeing that it was all the company could seemingly afford.It was only much later on that suspicion over the AIG policy would surface. Law firm Hare Wynn Newell & Newtonwhich was one of the plaintiffs firms that split the fee award in the 1999 settlementhappened to represent a former MedPartners executive in a suit seeking reimbursement of his defense costs, only a couple of years later. During the case, MedPartners produced documents disclosing the terms of the AIG insurance policy. Upon discovering the truth of the policy, Hare Wynn partner John Haley realized that the shareholders in 1999 could have gotten much more.I went apoplectic, he remarked. Im not sure I could repeat exactly how I felt.It took more than 10 years to finally get AIG and CVS to settle for $310 million.AIG and CVS costly mistake serves as a harsh lesson for all companies with D&O policies. In the end, companies are better off letting their policies function as they intended.
Superior Court Briefs: May 31 - June 9

Cases heard before Judge John Agostini on Tuesday, May 31.

Ryan Garvey, 41, of Adams pleaded guilty to a single count of possession of heroin with intent to distribute.

Garvey was placed on one-year probation. The charge was in connection with the execution of a search warrant at his home on December 4, 2015.

Keith Larrabee, 22, of North Adams pleaded guilty to a single count of assault and battery by means of a dangerous weapon.

He was ordered to serve two and a half years at the Berkshire House of Correction. The charge stems from an incident in North Adams involving a 34-year-old man on April 24, 2015.

Shaun Letourneau, 34, of Dalton pleaded guilty to single counts of burning a building and burning wood or other property. He was ordered to serve concurrent two to three years at the Massachusetts Institution at Cedar Junction. Letourneau set fire to a storage shed and shrubbery in Dalton on September 12, 2015.

Cases heard before Judge John Agostini on Wednesday, June 1.

Lameek Thomas, 25, of Pittsfield pleaded guilty to two counts of possession of a firearm without a firearm identification card - his second offense - and single counts of possessions of cocaine with intent to distribute, possession of marijuana with intent to distribute, and improper storage of a firearm.

He was ordered to serve three to four years at the Massachusetts Correctional Institution at Cedar Junction on the possession of cocaine charge and given concurrent time at the Berkshire County House of Correction on the other charges.

The charges stem from an execution of a search warrant at a home on Dalton Avenue on November 4, 2014.

A single count of possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony was dismissed by the state.

Richard Holliman, 42, of Pittsfield pleaded guilty to two counts of conspiracy to violate drug laws, and single counts of possession of cocaine with intent to distribute, and possession of morphine with intent to distribute.

He was ordered to serve concurrent 609 days at the Berkshire County House of Correction. The charges stem from the execution of a search warrant on Hamlin Street in Pittsfield on October 1, 2014.

Cases heard before Judge John Agostini on Thursday, June 2.

Robert Brady III, 34, of Pittsfield had not guilty pleas entered on his behalf on single counts of possession of cocaine with intent to distribute - his second offense - and conspiracy to violate drug laws.

He was released on $500 bail. The charges stem from the execution of a search warrant on Burbank Street in Pittsfield on April 14, 2016.

Marcus James, 33, of Pittsfield had not guilty pleas entered on his behalf on single counts of possession of cocaine with intent to distribute - his second offense - and conspiracy to violate drug laws.

He was released on $1,000 bail. The charges stem from the execution of a search warrant on Burbank Street in Pittsfield on April 14, 2016.

Patrick Collins, 34, of Stamford, Vt. pleaded guilty to single counts of possession of suboxone - his second offense - and operating a motor vehicle with a suspended license - his second offense.

He was ordered to serve concurrent 90-day sentences at the Berkshire County House of Correction. The charges stem from a motor vehicle stop in North Adams on November 13, 2014.

A single count of conspiracy to violate drug laws was dismissed by the state.

Cases heard before Judge Maureen Hogan on Monday, June 6.

Joevany Santiago, 25, of Springfield had a not guilty plea entered on his behalf on a single count of manufacturing cocaine - his second offense.

He was ordered to be held at the Berkshire County House of Correction on $3,500 bail. The charge stems from the execution of a search warrant at 86 West Main Street in North Adams on April 15, 2016.

Cases heard before Judge Maureen Hogan on Wednesday, June 8.

Selvin Gonzalez-Castillo, 22, of Pittsfield had not guilty pleas entered on his behalf on single counts of armed assault with intent to murder and aggravated assault and battery by means of a dangerous weapon.

He was ordered to be held at the Berkshire County House of Correction on $50,000 bail. Gonzalez-Castillo is accused of stabbing a 29-year-old man in Pittsfield on April 23, 2016.

Cases heard before Judge Maureen Hogan on Thursday, June 9.

Michelle Weed, 38, of Pittsfield pleaded guilty to single counts of possession of heroin with intent to distribute, and operating a motor vehicle with a suspended license.

She was ordered to serve one and a half to two years in state prison on the possession of heroin charge and the other charge was placed on file. The charges stem from a motor vehicle stop in Pittsfield on January 11, 2016.
The plan is the third overall proposal for this site by Cafua Management, which first incurred some community backlash in September 2014 with its proposal to raze the St Mary's Sanctuary and supporting buildings to develop a Dunkin' Donuts.

Renewed Proposal For Dunkin Donuts At St. Mary's Site



The Zoning Board of Appeals is continuing a hearing on Cafua's plan for a Dunkin' Donuts drive-through on the former St. Mary's campus.

PITTSFIELD, Mass.  A crowd packed the tiny Meeting Room 203, but little was said during the latest installment of an ongoing saga between Cafua Management, the city of Pittsfield, and residents opposed to a plan to develop the former St. Mary the Morningstar campus into a drive-through doughnut shop.

The city's Zoning Board of Appeals opened up a public hearing on Wednesday on a zone extension that would be necessary to Cafua's reformulated plan for the proposed eatery, and will continue that public hearing to at least July to allow more time for questions to be answered.

James Scalise of SK Design said his client is seeking a zoning change that would grant a special extension of the commercial (B-G) zone farther into the adjacent residential (R-M) zone on Plunkett Street, in order to route the establishment's driveway through a portion of the residential side street.

"The only part of the proposed use that requires a special permit at all is the drive-through," clarified Scalise. "The restaurant itself is allowed by-right in the B-G zone, but the drive-through lane crosses the zone line."

The plan is the third overall proposal for this site by Cafua Management, which first incurred some community backlash in September 2014 with its proposal to raze the St Mary's Sanctuary and supporting buildings for the development, which would have placed the entire operation within the B-G zone. It withdrew this proposal in response, with an informal suggestion of potentially donating the church itself to the city. A subsequent application in August 2015 called for a subdivision of the property that would preserve the church building, while razing a combination of brick rectory and convent buildings built in the 1950s and '60s respectively.

When Cafua failed to provide the required research fees for its application by this March, the application was withdrawn, and re-submitted in April with the requested funds for third-party research into the impacts of the proposal.

The new application is essentially identical in narrative and site plan specifications, calling for a 2,100-square-foot Dunkin' Donuts hub with a drive-through on the western side of the building, with traffic accessing from Tyler Street and Plunkett Street. The 0.8-acre parcel would have about 185 feet of frontage on Tyler Street, and another 190 feet on Plunkett Street. The design calls for "new paved parking areas, outdoor seating, pedestrian walkways, landscaping," and will offer 29 parking spaces, almost twice that necessary for the capacity by city zoning requirements. The drive-through service area has also been designed to include twice as many queuing spaces as demanded by local ordinance, planning for a total of 12.

The results of the third-party research, conducted primarily by the firm John Mullin Associates, were not positive toward the development, however, indicating that the plan may not meet the criteria for an appeal under Pittsfield's zoning ordinance because of its projected neighborhood impact and inconsistency with the city Master Plan.

Mullin found that proposed use would be "detrimental to the neighborhood," citing "impacts to the existing retail pattern, which accommodates pedestrian use surrounding residential neighborhood, as well as the intensity of the proposed use, and the impact of altering a highly visible landmark in the landscape of the neighborhood."

On another criteria of the zoning appeal, Mullin found that the "use is not consistent with specific goals of the Master Plan" for that neighborhood "supporting walkable neighborhood centers, sustainable redevelopment practices, and revitalization of a historic urban neighborhood."

The consultant also found that the high volume of traffic could decrease pedestrian safety through the introduction of two new curb cuts in a block that has never had them.

The use could potentially also have excessive impact on city storm-water capacity because of the drastic alteration of the landscape, and another third-party reviewer, Trinity Engineering Technical Services, has requested additional information on storm-water drainage from the applicant.

Scalise said the research provided was still new to him, including the Mullins report that he'd only received at 3:59 p.m. that day, prompting the board to leave the public hearing on the application open, to give him a chance to respond at its July 20 meeting.

"I don't think engineering issues are really the pitfall with this particular development," Scalise stated. "I think the other findings, particularly related to character of the neighborhood, and consistency with the master plan, are probably the components that this project needs to revisit."

Other speakers on the proposal deferred to next month as well. From among a dozen members of the public who attended the hearing Wednesday, only Michael Ward spoke, calling the zoning alteration "a very troubling idea."

"This is a high-impact use," said Ward, urging the board not to extend the commercial zone to accommodate the drive-through project.

The former Ward 4 city councilor said the city must learn from its own experiences with Dunkin' Donuts drive-throughs, and "look at what works and what doesn't," comparing the proposed Tyler Street site with the current locations on Dalton Avenue and First Street, about which he heard many complaints about as a councilor, in contrast with a sister site on South Street near the Pittsfield/Lenox line.

"We have our own data, including our historical experience as a city with Dunkin' Donuts," said Ward. "It's not a good idea, it's not a good location for a drive-through."

The ZBA will reopen the public hearing to the applicant and any other parties who wish to speak for or against the zoning exception on Wednesday, July 20.
Alexander Ciccolo was back in U.S. Court on Thursday for a status conference hearing.

Judge Presses Government to Make Decision on Ciccolo Charges

SPRINGFIELD, Mass.  U.S. Magistrate Judge Katherine Robertson on Thursday pressed federal prosecutors to make a decision about whether to file a superseding indictment in the case of an Adams man suspected of terrorist affiliations.

Alexander Ciccolo was in federal court Thursday afternoon, alongside his attorney, Northampton's David Hoose, for a status conference in the case of the United States v. Alexander Ciccolo.

To date, Ciccolo only has been charged with a count of weapons possession and an alleged assault on a nurse committed in jail shortly after his July 4, 2015, arrest. But federal documents released last summer strongly point to Ciccolo's intention to use the weapons he acquired in an act of domestic terrorism.

On Thursday, Robertson questioned why it is taking the government so long to bring additional charges.

"I'm concerned about the amount of time it's taking for decisions to be made about whether the nature of this case is going to change," Robertson said. "I need to understand why it's in the interest of justice to continue this.

"We're moving up on a year, and it seems like a sufficient amount of time for the government to investigate and decide whether there should be a superseding indictment.

"I understand you don't control all the delay, but you're here as the representative for the government."

Assistant U.S. Attorney Deepika Shukla, the lone attorney at the prosecution table, asked for and received the opportunity to have a sidebar conference with Robertson. After speaking privately with Hoose and Shukla for about two minutes, Robertson resumed the hearing, asking Hoose to share his thoughts about the yearlong delay for the record.

"I guess what I'd say is this: There has always from Day 1 been the question of whether we would see other charges," Hoose said. "It's no secret the government is investigating that. It's also no secret Ms. Shukla is not the one making these decisions. It's happening several levels above her.

"It's frustrating to me that it's taken so long, and it's frustrating to Mr. Ciccolo.  Frankly, the conversations I've had with my client are we really don't have much of a choice."

Hoose said he thinks the government has a strong case on the weapons charge against Ciccolo, and he is concerned about what might happen if he presses for a speedy trial on the existing counts.

"If Mr. Ciccolo was found guilty of either charge, at that point we would lose all control over this," Hoose said. "Then the government could take as long as they want. I wouldn't want to see Mr. Ciccolo in federal prison for a couple of years and then they say, 'You know what, you're up for release, we're going to charge you now.'

"We have no feasible option but to go along with the delay."

Shukla noted that the government's time horizon is not infinite.

"Even relating to the possible superseding charges, the only restriction on the government is the statute of limitations for making terrorism-related charges," Shukla said.

Hoose told the judge that the 11 months since Ciccolo's arrest have not been "wasted time."

"The government has produced as significant amount of discovery," Hoose said.

"We're content to let this go to the next status date based on what I've heard from the government."

Robertson set another status conference for Wednesday, July 13, at 3 p.m., and decided to exclude the period between the last status conference and July 13 from the time frame stipulated under the Speedy Trial Act. The two sides agreed to the exclusion in a memo filed with the court on Tuesday.

Ciccolo could be seen chatting quietly with Hoose prior to Thursday's hearing and sat impassively while the the brief hearing took place. He arrived in beige prison garb and wearing a rounded skullcap common in Islamic cultures. His beard appeared to be a little longer than the one he wore in his last court appearance in July.

Hoose said there was no particular significance to his decision to have Ciccolo brought to court for Thursday's hearing.

"I hadn't seen him for a while, and I thought he should be there to hear what's going on," Hoose said as he headed to another courtroom after the hearing.
Wahconah Grad Earns Girl Scout Gold Award

PITTSFIELD, Mass.  Girl Scouts of Central and Western Massachusetts will honor Colleen Kiely of Pittsfield for her demonstrated leadership ability and dedication to serving her community.



Kiely has earned the Girl Scout Gold Award and will be among the guests of honor at a celebration at Mill One at Open Square in Holyoke on Tuesday, June 14, at 5:30 p.m. Annaka Paradis, current Smith College Student and 2015 Recipient of the Girl Scout Gold Award, will give the keynote address.



Kiely just graduated with the Class of 2016 from Wahconah Regional High School in Dalton and plans to attend UMass-Amherst in the fall to study biochemistry and molecular biology.



Her Gold Award project is "Protecting the Piping Plovers."



"My father and I have been members of Mass Audubon for 10 years and enjoy birdwatching and hiking at Pleasant Valley and Canoe Meadows, two beautiful sanctuaries in the Berkshires," Kiely told Mass Audubon. "Our experiences with Mass Audubon have inspired me to become an environmental activist and protect endangered birds and their habitats."


MCLA to Offer Violin Repair Workshops

NORTH ADAMS, Mass.  Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts once again will welcome violin repair expert Hans J. Nebel to campus as he presents four week-long workshops in June.



The workshops will include Introduction to Proper Violin Set-Up June 6-10, Tonal Improvements June 13-17, Fitting New Upper and Lower Block June 20-24, and Crack Repair and Crack Reinforcements June 27-July 1.



Nebel is the fourth generation of violin makers in his family, and a graduate of the Bavarian State School of Violinmaking in Mittenwald, Germany.



Nebel started his professional career at Rembert Wurlitzer, Inc., in New York City, where he worked for 18 years. He became a long-term disciple of Maestro S.F. Sacconi, the universally acknowledged dean and originator of modern repair technique and restoration. On the suggestion of Dario D'Attili and Maestro Sacconi, he was appointed head of the restoration department at Wurlitzer, a firm that was considered the Mecca of the violin business in the United States.
Williamstown Elementary Reserve Funds Running Low



Chairman Dan Caplinger engaged in dialogue with speakers during the public comment, breaking with tradition. The committee is trying to be more responsive to the community. WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass.  The elementary school district is on track to finish the fiscal year in the black  but not by much.

"We're pulling into the gas pumps on fumes in terms of the operation budget," Business Manager Nancy Rauscher told the School Committee at its monthly meeting on Wednesday.

If current budget projections hold the district hopes to close the books on fiscal 2016 later this summer with about $38,000 in its school-choice reserve account.

"To give you some perspective, in March, I gave you a range of zero to $57,000," Rauscher said of the reserve fund forecast. "In prior years, that number was several hundred thousand dollars. Ideally, it would be more like 3 percent of the budget."

For a district with a budget just north of $6 million, that means the reserve should be closer to $200,000 to cover unanticipated expenses, School Committee Chairman Dan Caplinger noted.

The problem the school district has had maintaining such a reserve is twofold, Rauscher noted.

"As the number of [resident students] has increased, the result is fewer school choice students are coming in," she said. "Revenue is going down, and there's a good reason for that. That's a very real trend we need to be conscious of and start to manage our expectations."

At the same time that school choice revenue has declined, the district is living with a practice of budgeting operating expenses against anticipated school choice revenues  the "non-appropriated" side of the budget, since it comes from funds not appropriated from town taxes.

Earlier this year in announcing a number of budget cuts at the elementary school, Superintendent Douglas Dias noted the need to end that practice and rebuild the reserve.

That  along with a spike in health insurance costs  is why the FY17 budget includes spending cuts despite actually seeking more property tax funds from the town.

"What we're trying to work toward is building it up," Rauscher said.

At Wednesday's meeting, the School Committee authorized Rauscher to make line item transfers in the FY16 over the summer to clean up any discrepancies that pop up between now and the committee's next scheduled meeting in September.

"The adjustments are true adjustments to the budget where we've spent less or more relative to what we budgeted and I'm making the adjustments," she said.

"For example, we're spending $5,000 more on substitute teachers than we expected but we have extra money available from staff development lines," Caplinger said.

The committee also gave Rauscher the authority to transfer up to $40,000 from the existing school choice reserves to cover anticipated and unanticipated expenses that may arise; the $40,000, if used, would put the district at about the $38,000 remainder, she projected.

If she needs to go beyond that $40,000, the School Committee asked her to consult with its newly created finance subcommittee.

The committee earlier this year decided to create a subcommittee modeled on a similar subgroup used by the neighboring Mount Greylock Regional School Committee. On Wednesday, during its annual reorganization, the School Committee named to its finance subcommittee the panel's newest member, Joe Bergeron, and is chairman, Dan Caplinger, who was re-elected chairman earlier in the meeting.

The plan is for the finance subcommittee to meet each month prior to the full committee's meeting so the subgroup can delve more deeply into the minutiae of the district's finances and make a report to the full group.

Finances and cost containment also came up Wednesday in the context of a burgeoning Northern Berkshire Shared Services Initiative, which Caplinger characterized as a byproduct of the Berkshire County Education Task Force.

The initiative aims, among other things to: "Explore opportunities to expand on shared services among our school districts while maintaining and enhancing high academic standards for all of our students. Explore opportunities to reduce current and anticipated future higher costs through shared services. [And identify] specific shared services for initial focus and other longer range collaborations."

Caplinger sought and received a vote of his committee to sign a memorandum of agreement for the shared services initiative. He emphasized that, at this point, the initiative is in the exploratory stage, and the vote did not commit the district to any specific cooperative arrangements.

"Basically, it's an expression of interest at this point," Caplinger said.

The initiative is looking for buy-in from the Adams-Cheshire, Lanesborough, Mount Greylock, North Adams, Northern Berkshire Vocational and Williamstown Elementary school districts along with the North Berkshire and Shaker Mountain school unions.

In other business, the School Committee discussed the outcome of last month's annual town meeting, where the school district's budget passed easily but only after voters approved an amendment to trim the budget by $27, one dollar for each year of the Side-By-Side special education prekindergarten program.

The reduction was a protest to the district's decision to change the preschool program for the 2016-17 school year, eliminating the full-day classroom offered in the past.

As has been the case since the change was announced this winter, the move was the focus of the meeting's public comment period. Steven Miller, who has frequently challenged the move, asked the committee three specific questions: 1. "Is it cheaper" to have two half-day classrooms or one full-day classroom? 2. Is a third half-day class (added just before town meeting) needed for special education students or was it added to serve more of their typically developing peers? 3. If the third half-day class is not for children on individualized education plans, why spend additional funds there rather than for some of the other items cut from the K-6 budget?

Miller also asked the committee to accept outside donations to pay for a full-day preschool.

"Fin Comm encouraged WES to seek funding beyond the taxpayers," he said. "Thirty-five thousand dollars was pledged by the community to support the program."

Caplinger pressed Miller on the last point, asking who the district could approach to talk about the donation and what kinds of strings would be attached to it. Miller said he did not know the best person to talk to about the $35,000 but would find out.

As for the final two questions, Dias again explained that the third half-day program is being added to ensure that everyone who signed up for the Side-By-Side lottery gets a spot. He said that while not all the children require IEPs, they may have unknown needs that could be served by the pre-K program.

"When it comes to preschool and the importance of early childhood education, there are other risk factors that we don't know about based on them just giving us their name," Dias said. "Rather than go through a process of who has need and who doesn't, we decided to take them all.

"Early childhood education is designed for those children with any challenges.  For some kids, it's a learning disability. For some kids, it's poverty. For some kids, it's involvement with the [state] Department of Children and Families. If preschool can alleviate some of that, I want the children to access that."

As for the "protest" vote at town meeting, the School Committee discussed whether it wanted to reopen the FY17 budget and direct the administration to reinstate the full-day Side-By-Side classroom but decided not to take any action.

Bergeron, who was one of four candidates running for a seat on the committee based at least partly on criticism of the Side-By-Side decision, said he hopes future discussions can be less acrimonious.

"I think the process is the only thing we can do better," Bergeron said. "Decisions are going to be decisions and they will be deliberated and eventually have to be respected as having been made through a thoughtful process.

"It might mean we have more meetings where there is open discussion between the School Committee and the public so we're out there and involved in the dialogue. Public comment is great, but dialogue with the public is the most important thing."



Members of Girl Scout Troop 12940 make a presentation to the School Committee on a 'buddy bench' to give to the school. Caplinger on Wednesday began moving in that direction, breaking the committee's practice of accepting public comment without response and inviting Miller back to the microphone for a give-and-take. Later in the meeting, he took comments from other residents and teachers outside the formally designated public comment period.

In addition to the committee's business on Wednesday, it heard a presentation from local Girl Scout Troop 12940 , which informed the committee of its efforts to give the school a "Buddy Bench" for the playground.

The buddy bench is designed to be a place where pupils can sit during recess if they feel they don't have anyone to play with. If a child sees someone on the bench, he or she is encouraged to invite the lone child to play.

The fourth-grade Girl Scout troop is dedicating the school's new bench to the memory of classmate Eve Claffey, who died just before the start of the 2015-16 school year.
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Press Release: IMF Staff Concludes Visit to Cabo Verde

End-of-Mission press releases include statements of IMF staff teams that convey preliminary findings after a visit to a country. The views expressed in this statement are those of the IMF staff and do not necessarily represent the views of the IMFs Executive Board. This mission will not result in a Board discussion.

Press Release No. 16/272

June 9, 2016

An International Monetary Fund (IMF) mission, led by Mr. Ulrich Jacoby, visited Cabo Verde from June 79, 2016, to hold introductory discussions with the new government which came into office in late April 2016. At the end of the visit, Mr. Jacoby issued the following statement:

Discussions centered around economic developments, the economic outlook for Cabo Verde, economic challenges and the governments policy priorities going forward. We also discussed the budget outline for 2016, as well as the preliminary considerations for the broad parameters of the medium-term economic and fiscal outlook. Further discussions will be held during a mission tentatively planned for early Fall 2016 to hold discussions on the Article IV consultation which has been delayed from last year.

The mission met with Prime Minister Ulisses Correia e Silva, Minister of Finance Olavo Correia, Central Bank Governor Joao Serra, other government officials, development partners, and the private sector.

The mission thanks the authorities for their openness, excellent cooperation and cordial hospitality, and looks forward to close cooperation in the period ahead.
Australian Man Fined for Not Wearing Seatbelt While Having Sex in a Moving Car
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If you were Mr Zhao, the artist whose 10,000 Lego statue was smashed to pieces unceremoniously by a four-year-old last month, you might suggest banning children from art exhibitions.

The statue of a character from Zootopia, which took Mr Zhao a reported three days to build, ended up as smithereens just an hour after going on display thanks to the toddlers enthusiasm for it at the Lego Expo in Ningbo, China.

The childs parents, who must have been mortified, apologised publicly and offered to pay for the damage. But the artist declined their offer, insisting: The child did not intend to break it. Not everyone would be quite so magnanimous.

Indeed, the debate over the appropriateness of allowing non-adults into the hallowed corridors of galleries that was sparked by professional controversialist Jake Chapman (brother of Dinos) when he said two years ago that taking them to galleries was a waste of time has been reopened thanks to a slew of unfortunate acts of kiddie vandalism.

Last month two toddlers were filmed bouncing around prestigious Chinese gallery the Shanghai Museum of Glass  their parents apparently unperturbed as their offspring had the time of their lives. Then, the inevitable happens: a child reaches out to feel the silvery, frailty of Angel Is Waiting by Shelly Xue. It falls back. It breaks.

The work, which took 27 months to construct and was dedicated to Xues newborn daughter, will never be the same again. The artist has apparently decided not to fix the damage and instead has renamed it Broken  there is now a screen beside it showing the footage of its destruction on loop.

Last August a 12-year-old Taiwanese boy slipped while examining a 350-year-old Paolo Porpora painting called Flowers, valued at $1.5m (1m), and put his hand through the canvas. Organisers of the Face of Leonardo: Images of a Genius exhibition in Taipei released footage showing the youngster holding a drink before stumbling into the painting in a move Charlie Chaplin would have been proud of.

But this triptych of destruction does not a watertight case against children in galleries make. After all, hundreds of thousands of pre-schoolers and schoolchildren traipse through public exhibition halls every year and plenty of galleries  many of which have invested heavily to attract families  are brilliantly set up to attract and accommodate kids.

But the hushed tones, the seriousness of being around valuable art, often in settings that could be mistaken for playgrounds were it not for a discreet velveteen rope, can be very stressful for parents and security staff.

Two years ago the couple behind fashion label All Saints, Kait Bolongaro and Stuart Trevor spoke out after a photo of their nine-year-old daughter, Sissi Belle, climbing on a multi-million-pound sculpture at Tate Modern in London was made public. Gallery owner Stephanie Theodore posted the picture on Twitter to shame the couple whom she branded horrible parents with horrible kids.

But the couple hit back describing it simply as a faux pas and adding that their daughter was anti-establishment but would never hurt anybody. They said their children, who had visited galleries around the globe with interest, had also previously clambered on the Henry Moore at Liverpool Street and the Diana memorial.

Who wouldnt want to climb a giant jewel-coloured ladder? And how do you explain to a child that the installation over there is interactive, but the one in the next room isnt?

Ive struggled through a Carsten Holler exhibition at the Hayward Gallery in London last year with my toddler on tow. Holler might have turned a swathe of visitors to Tate Moderns Turbine Hall into big kids in 2007 when he installed six huge helter-skelter twisty-turning slides for them to careen down. But taking an actual toddler to one of his installations, chock full of artfully abandoned detritus, piles of colourful pigment and tiny little choke-on-able objects was like inviting a bull into a china shop. Needless to sa, we bid a hasty retreat to the relief of the security staff.

It isnt just me. Social media gleans immediate comedy gold: a Facebook friend Sarah confesses: My youngest, who was being toilet trained at the time, did a big poo on the carpet of the William Morris gallery. I turned around and there she was in the corner doing the thousand yard stare. Mortified! The guy in there so obviously didn't have kids and was beside himself. I cleared it up (luckily it was a carpet with a busy Morris design).

While mother-of-two Pip recalled the time she was visiting the Albertina museum in Vienna. She was holding her seven-month-old daughter up to admire a valuable Monet when the infant projectile vomited  only narrowly missing the painting. Pip cannot imagine what would have happened had she not.

Another acquaintance, Farzana, took her son to the National Gallery when he was just five years old. We entered a room where there were a few nude portraits and he started shouting Theyre naked! repeatedly and laughing hysterically.

Others share tales of stern gallery staff, disapproving looks from others as their children tantrum on the tiles, positive tales of kids engaged, mesmerised even, by artwork. One mother, Penni, asked her daughter, seven, what the best thing about her school trip to the National Gallery was: The Turners. But mainly it was great because Alex and I made a funny game seeing how many naked people we could spot in paintings. Extra points for a bottom.

However, those who dont appreciate the value in terms of laughter and wide-eyed enjoyment that children at art galleries bring would be well advised to remember that it was an adult who tripped over his shoelace in 2006 at the Cambridge-based Fitzwilliam Museum and smashed three priceless Chinese vases. And it was a grown-up (and casino owner) who put his elbow through Picassos 1932 masterpiece Le Reve. The list of unwitting acts of vandalism by fully fledged adults is so far longer than the one attributed to toddlers. So watch out!
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The identity of elusive graffiti artist Banksy could finally be revealed at the South Bank Sky Arts Awards.

The Bristolian artist, who keeps his true identity secret, is set to attend the ceremony at The Savoy Hotel on Sunday afternoon after being nominated for his theme park Dismaland in the visual arts category.

The controversial attraction, which opened in a derelict lido in Weston-super-Mare in Somerset in August, featured migrant boats and an anarchist training camp and was later dismantled and sent to Calais to provide shelter for migrants.

Inside Banksy's Dismaland Show all 13 1 /13 Inside Banksy's Dismaland Inside Banksy's Dismaland A Look Inside Dismaland Bemusement Park "Seagull Attack" by Banksy sits near the entrance, proved to be a bit of a photo opportunity, a taxidermied seagull perches on the other side of the bench Reuters Inside Banksy's Dismaland A Look Inside Dismaland Bemusement Park The Bill Barminski - Cardboard security entrance, visitors must first get through security to enter the park. This can include being searched, emptying bags and even being instructed to touch your toes. Reuters Inside Banksy's Dismaland A Look Inside Dismaland Bemusement Park Dismaland opened to the general public this weekend and everyone seems to be talking about it. Many have speculated whether long queues and website crashing issues are purposeful in order to make Dismaland that little bit more dismal. Reuters Inside Banksy's Dismaland Dismaland19.jpg The Bill Barminski - Cardboard security entrance, visitors must first get through security to enter the park. This can include being searched, emptying bags and even being instructed to touch your toes. Reuters Inside Banksy's Dismaland A Look Inside Dismaland Bemusement Park Visitors are handed their very own guide to the park inside, featuring the names of the installations and show-times. On the front it brands Dismaland "the UK's most disappointing visitor attraction". Reuters Inside Banksy's Dismaland A Look Inside Dismaland Bemusement Park An overview of the park, set on the former site of Tropicana. Tropicana was closed in the 1990's and since then has had rumours of regeneration. The exhibition will be the first major event on site since its heyday as a seaside attraction. Reuters Inside Banksy's Dismaland A Look Inside Dismaland Bemusement Park "Topple the anvil and win the anvil" - just one of the many disappointing games visitors can try their hand at. Reuters Inside Banksy's Dismaland A Look Inside Dismaland Bemusement Park "What its really like to be a princess" the scene of Cinderella hanging lifeless outside her pumpkin carriage as paparazzi surround it inside the castle in the center of the park. A dark reference to the death of Princess Diana. Reuters Inside Banksy's Dismaland A Look Inside Dismaland Bemusement Park Mushroom Cloud made of Cotton by Artist Dietrich Wegner Reuters Inside Banksy's Dismaland A Look Inside Dismaland Bemusement Park A twist on theme park boating games the white cliffs of dover provide a backdrop to boats of migrants and faceless bodies float in the black water. Reuters Inside Banksy's Dismaland A Look Inside Dismaland Bemusement Park "Killer Whale jumping from a toilet" a piece by Banksy as a reference to the treatment of orca's in seaworld parks. Reuters Inside Banksy's Dismaland A Look Inside Dismaland Bemusement Park In classic Banksy style he applies his stencilling technique to a mural named "woman showering" when talking about the exhibition Banksy declared that he was aiming for something very different to street art. Reuters Inside Banksy's Dismaland A Look Inside Dismaland Bemusement Park Another piece by banksy looms above a lake referencing Jeffrey Archer Reuters

Dismaland Bemusement Park will compete against Cornelia Parker for Magna Carta (An Embroidery) at The British Library and Lynette Yiadom-Boakye: Verses After Dusk at the Serpentine Gallery.

Hosted by Lord Melvyn Bragg, the broad arts awards celebrate their 20th anniversary with a star-studded guest list that includes Sir Lenny Henry, Martin Freeman, Russell T Davies, Stormzy, Maxine Peake, Elaine Paige and Matthew Bourne.

The BBC's acclaimed TV adaptation of Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall will be hoping to complement the author's success in 2013 for her prequel Bring Up The Bodies.

 New Banksy appears in London

The historical epic which starred Mark Rylance as Thomas Cromwell and Damian Lewis as Henry VIII faces Channel 4's Humans and BBC One drama Doctor Foster, represented at the ceremony by Suranne Jones.

Academy Award nominee Charlotte Rampling will be hoping for success for 45 Years as it competes against visual effects Oscar winner Ex Machina and best picture nominee Brooklyn in the film category.

In a first for the awards, two nominees of the previously announced The Times Breakthrough Award have also been nominated for a South Bank Sky Arts Award in their respective categories.

Michaela Coel's E4 sitcom Chewing Gum has received a nod in the comedy category, while virtuoso clarinettist Mark Simpson is nominated for The Immortal in the classical music category.

Londoner Coel will battle it out with Sharon Horgan and Rob Delaney's Channel 4 series Catastrophe and BBC One hit Peter Kay's Car Share.

Composer Simpson will vie for his award with Stephen Hough's International Piano Series: Debussy and Chopin, Royal Festival Hall and City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra: Andris Nelsons' Farewell Concert, Symphony Hall.

Mercury Prize winner Benjamin Clementine and band Years & Years pit their debut albums against Sleaford Mods' eighth offering in the pop category, while British theatre, opera, literature and dance will also be celebrated.

Comedian Eddie Izzard will accept the already-announced outstanding achievement award for his lifetime contribution to arts. Previous winners include JK Rowling, Sir Richard Attenborough, The Who and Tracey Emin.

The South Bank Sky Arts Awards will be broadcast on Sky Arts on June 8.

Press Association
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Iron Maidens tour poster has been banned in Lithuania for giving children nightmares.

The heavy metal band are currently touring The Book of Souls around the world, with one poster showing their gory monster mascot Eddie the Head holding a bleeding heart in his claws and baring his yellow teeth.

Lithuania has taken exception to the promo material and ordered it to be removed from billboards because it scares children.

Live Nation spokesman Mindaugas Paukste told Russian website Delfi that the concert promotion company had received a letter stating that the poster violates the countrys child protection laws.

Right now we have to decide how to carry on forward but we must also immediately take down the posters, he said, adding that the outcry was surprising when the advertising has not caused problems anywhere else.

Iron Maiden will arrive to play Lithuanias 18,000 capacity Zalgiris Arena in Kaunas later this month. Local residents had complained about the poster to authorities, with some demanding that it also be pulled from websites and ticketing outlets advertising the gig.
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Over the last few weeks, the number of conflicting reports concerning the ongoing Rogue One: A Star Wars Story reshoots has been growing exponentially.

One detailed how 40% of the film is set to be redone, the tone being lightened to match The Force Awakens, while more defensive articles have asserted that the reshoots are merely standard practice.

In an interview with The Independent, actor Mads Mikkelsen spoke candidly about the reshoots, saying director Gareth Edwards is merely adding the final polish to the film.

He added that Disney is not particularly worried about the conflicting reports as it is free publicity for the film.

 Rogue One: A Star Wars Story - Trailer

Heres a segment of the conversation, part of Mikkelsens promotional efforts for the UK release of Men and Chicken.

Youre in Rogue One, apparently playing a semi-villain who is not a bad guy, is there anything you can tell me about the character?

Im not sure how much Im allowed to say without killing you. I play someone in the film, yes. So far, so good.

There is a lot of talk about the ongoing reshoots, are you involved with them?

I have one day. I cant remember when, in two weeks I think.

Its been very mixed in the press, with two sides; some sources are claiming the film will undergo big changes while others are saying it will be very minimal. Whats the feeling you have from being involved with the film?

Basically, all the big films I have done always have reshoots, it is part of their budget. Theyre either not super happy with a scene bit, the way we were acting, or maybe theres something they want to add. Its not a new thing, it happens with every film. Whether its bigger or less, I have no idea, I have nothing to compare with. Its the same film, its just adding little bits here and there to do the final polishing. Thats my feeling.

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Its interesting because, obviously, films get reshot all the time but, for this one, it has been talked about everywhere.

Thats also interesting, to make the right goal and all the rumours happening. [Disney] love that, its free publicity.

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In the same interview, Mikkelsen also spoke about Doctor Strange, the possibility of Hannibal season four, and why hes always the villain in America films. The full interview will be available in the near future.

Men and Chicken - a dark, Danish comedy starring Mikkelsen as a childlike character - reaches cinemas 15 July.
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The cast of Spider-Man: Homecoming continues to look increasingly impressive as The People vs. O.J. Simpsons Kenneth Choi joins the film.

He will star in the Marvel/Sony film alongside the likes of Tom Holland, Robert Downey Jr., Marisa Tomei and, according to recent reports Michael Keaton.

Sources revealed to Deadline that Choi will play Peter Parkers school principal, dismissing fans hopes Clark Greggs Phil Coulson would be watching over the superhero as his principal.

Notably, Choi has appeared in the Marvel Cinematic Universe before, playing James "Jim" Morita - a member of the Howling Commandoes - in Captain America: The First Avenger. The two characters will likely have no relation as Jim would theoretically be over 100 years old by the time Parker attends school.

33 Superhero films set for release between 2016 and 2020 Show all 34 1 /34 33 Superhero films set for release between 2016 and 2020 33 Superhero films set for release between 2016 and 2020 1. Captain America: Civil War Release date: 6 May 2016. Iron Man and Captain America are set to face off in this superhero blockbuster that will feature nearly all the Avengers but wont be an Avengers film. It will also mark the first time Spider-Man will feature in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, with Sony having made a deal with Marvel Studios. 33 Superhero films set for release between 2016 and 2020 2. X-Men: Apocalypse Release date: 27 May 2016. Following the success of Days of Future Past, Apocalypse will follow the young X-Men team as the battle against Oscar Isaacs titular villain as he gathers his four horsemen; Magneto (Fassbender), Angel (Hardy), Storm (Shipp), and Psylocke (Munn). Expect carnage and no Wolverine. 33 Superhero films set for release between 2016 and 2020 3. Suicide Squad Release date: 5 August 2016. The first supervillain film, Suicide Squad is also based in the DCEU (DC Extended Universe, where Batman and Superman live) and will introduce the world to Margot Robbies Harley Quinn and Jared Letos Joker. One of the more exciting upcoming DC films thats for sure. 33 Superhero films set for release between 2016 and 2020 4. Doctor Strange Release date: 4 November 2016. Benedict Cumberbatch will debut in the MCU (Marvel Cinematic Universe, where Captain America and Iron Man live) as the Sorcerer Supreme. The film already has an incredible cast, including Chiwetel Ejiofor, Rachael McAdams and Tilda Swinton. 33 Superhero films set for release between 2016 and 2020 5. Untitled Lego Batman film Release date: 20 February 2017. Kicking off 2017 is the Lego version of Batman, who will lead his own spin-off, having already featured in the amazing Lego Movie. Will Arnett voices the titular character, while Zach Garfianakis - from the Hangover - will voice The Joker. But will he better than Leto? 33 Superhero films set for release between 2016 and 2020 6. Untitled Wolverine film Release date: 3 March 2017. Having not starred in X-Men: Apocalypse, Wolverine will return to the big screen in a solo film which was recently made R-Rated following the success of Deadpool. It is expected to be Hugh Jackmans last outing as the titular character. Fox 33 Superhero films set for release between 2016 and 2020 7. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 Release date: 5 May 2017. Chris Pratt and the crew are returning to space in the sequel to the surprisingly successful Guardians of the Galaxy. According to director James Gunn, the film will not feature Thanos, even though he will to play a major role in phase MCU Phase 3. Cast includes newcomers Kurt Russell and Pom Klementieff, as well as, rumour has it, Sylvester Stallone. 33 Superhero films set for release between 2016 and 2020 8. Wonder Woman Release date: 23 June 2017. Gal Gadot is returning to the DCEU in her very own film, marking the first female-led superhero film on this list. Chris Pine is on board to play Wonder Womans love interest. 33 Superhero films set for release between 2016 and 2020 9. Untitled Spider-Man reboot Release date: 7 July 2017. Yes, it is another Spider-Man reboot, having previously been redone with Andrew Garfield as the lead. However, this time it is part of the MCU, with Tom Holland as the titular character, and a heavily rumoured cameo by Iron Man could be in the pipeline. We can dream. 33 Superhero films set for release between 2016 and 2020 10. Untitled Fox film Release date: 6 October 2017. In a strange announcement, Fox decided to withhold the release of Gambit until a future, as-yet unannounced date, which could be here, or this could be a completely separate project. Many suspect Deadpool 2 could nicely fit here, Fox capitalising on the success of the first film. 33 Superhero films set for release between 2016 and 2020 11. Thor: Ragnarok Release date: 3 November 2017. Chris Hemsworth will be returning as the Norse God in his third solo MCU film. Flight of the Conchords Taika Waititi is on board to direct, and promises a fun adventure that will likely lead into Marvels next project, Infinity War. 33 Superhero films set for release between 2016 and 2020 12. Justice League Part One Release date: 17 November 2017. Hot on the heals of Thor comes Justice League Part One, the first DCEU team-up flick which will see Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, The Flash, Aquaman and Cyborg work together to fight bad guys. 33 Superhero films set for release between 2016 and 2020 13: Untitled Fox film Release date: 12 January 2018. Kicking off 2018 will likely be the second Deadpool film, but then again, this could very well be another X-Men team-up. Theres also talk of an X-Force film, with Deadpool and other mutants teaming up to fight evil. 33 Superhero films set for release between 2016 and 2020 14. Black Panther Release date: 16 February 2018. The first non-white male-led superhero film in the MCU comes in the form of Black Panther, with Chadwick Boseman reprising the titular role, having also starred as the Panther in Civil War. Creeds Ryan Coogler is on to direct what could be a very exciting film. 33 Superhero films set for release between 2016 and 2020 15. The Flash Release date: 16 March 2018. The Flash will be the first DCEU film since Justice League, and sees Ezra Miller take the lead. Phil Lord and Chris Miller were supposed to pen the film before Disney snapped them up for the Han Solo-film, leaving Seth Grahame-Smith to take charge. 33 Superhero films set for release between 2016 and 2020 16. Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 Release date: 4 May 2018. And so, we finally get to the point of all these Infinity Stones! Thanos will be the big bad, with the Avengers needing to team up to defeat their biggest foe yet. It has previously been described as the end of the Avengers as we know it. 33 Superhero films set for release between 2016 and 2020 17. Ant-Man and The Wasp Release date: 6 July 2018. Peyton Reed will be back to direct this surprise sequel to one of the better received MCU films. While the name is ridiculous, at least Marvel are finally having a leading female superhero. 33 Superhero films set for release between 2016 and 2020 18. Untitled Fox film Release date: 13 July 2018. Again, not much word on this one except it is thought to be X-Men spin-off New Mutants, something Josh Boone has been hit up to write. 33 Superhero films set for release between 2016 and 2020 19. Animated Spider-Man Film Release date: 20 July 2018. Avi Arad, Matt Tolmach, and Amy Pascal - the team behind the live-action Spider-Man films - are producing this unrelated animated adaptation of the hero. Because you can never have too much Spider-Man, right? 33 Superhero films set for release between 2016 and 2020 20. Aquaman Release date: 27 July 2018. Another Justice League spin-off, Jason Momoa plays the leading man. Furious 7s James Wan is on to direct, but little else is known about the film. 33 Superhero films set for release between 2016 and 2020 21. Captain Marvel Release date: 8 March 2019. Weve hit 2019, and the first confirmed superhero film will be the first proper female-led MCU film. No-one is confirmed to be in the titular role of Carol Danvers just yet. 33 Superhero films set for release between 2016 and 2020 22. Shazam Release date: 5 April 2019. Dwayne Johnson stars as the villain in this DCEU film which will be somewhat separate to the other DC films. 33 Superhero films set for release between 2016 and 2020 23. Avengers: Infinity War Part 2. Release date: 3 May 2019. The conclusion to the long drawn MCU saga. Expect a big finish with at least a few planets being destroyed. 33 Superhero films set for release between 2016 and 2020 24. Justice League Part Two Release date: 14 June 2019. Soon after the Infinity War story reaches its conclusion, so will the Justice Leagues. Not much is known, except Darkseid will likely be the villain for at least one of the parts. 33 Superhero films set for release between 2016 and 2020 25. Inhumans Release date: 12 July 2019. The concept of Inhumans (or Marvels mutants) has already been introduced in TV, through Marvels Agents of Shield, yet the film is expected to introduce the Royal Family who have yet to be seen in the show. 33 Superhero films set for release between 2016 and 2020 26. Cyborg Release date: 3 April 2020. Having debuted in Justice League Part One three years previously, Cyborg will finally be making his own outing, with Ray Fisher as the titular character. 33 Superhero films set for release between 2016 and 2020 27. Untitled MCU film Release date: 1 May 2020. The first of three untitled Marvel films. There are a couple of contenders, the first is a likely sequel to Spider-Man with Sony, or a third Guardians of the Galaxy film, thus finishing the trilogy. 33 Superhero films set for release between 2016 and 2020 28. Green Lantern Corps. Release date: 19 June 2020. Before you start to worry, this has nothing to do with the Ryan Reynolds-starring flick that hit cinemas a little while ago. Instead, this will be another DCEU film that will likely spin-off from Justice League after the Green Lantern Corps cameo in one of the parts. 33 Superhero films set for release between 2016 and 2020 29. Untitled MCU film Release date: 10 July 2020. As well as Spider-Man or Guardians of the Galaxy sequels, a Doctor Strange or Black Panther one could fit in nicely here. Or perhaps Black Widow may finally get the solo-film she deserves. 33 Superhero films set for release between 2016 and 2020 30. Untitled MCU film Release date: 6 November 2020. Some speculators also think a Blade film could fit in here, marking over 20 years since the first Blade. But many believe the character may be better suited to a Netflix series, as with Daredevil and Jessica Jones. Theres also talk of a Runaways film reaching cinemas at some stage. 33 Superhero films set for release between 2016 and 2020 31. Untitled Ben Affleck Batman film Release date: TBA. Now were onto the TBA release dates, the first of which is a Batman solo film, written and directed by Ben Affleck. When this is due, no one is quite sure but expect it sooner rather than later if Batman v Superman is a success. 33 Superhero films set for release between 2016 and 2020 32. Suicide Squad 2 Release date: TBA (rumoured 2017). A sequel to Suicide Squad is expected to come in 2017 according to recent reports, but nothing has been confirmed. If the first is successful, it should come as no surprise for Warner Bros to rearrange their schedule to fit in this surefire hit. 33 Superhero films set for release between 2016 and 2020 33. Venom Release date: TBA. This is an odd one, as it has been confirmed Sony are wanting to release a Venom film completely unrelated to the upcoming Spider-Man reboot. Venom, as you may know, is a Spider-Man villain, intrinsically linked to Spider-Man, so it seems odd they would release a film unrelated to the rebooted project and not linked to the MCU. 33 Superhero films set for release between 2016 and 2020 Anything else? Well, now you mention it, theres also that sequel to Fantastic Four that has seemingly been dropped by Fox. Plus, theres the Gambit film which has been put on hold (but will likely fill an untitled Fox slot so we havent added it extra). Then again, it could be shoehorned in somehow Marvel

The film, which will be the second film to feature Tom Hollands Spider-Man following Captain America: Civil War, will be directed by Cop Cars Jon Watts and written by Vacation duo John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein.

Meanwhile, Kingpin actor Vincent DOnofrio has spoken candidly about wanting to appear in the film but revealed that he has yet to be asked.
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If you're stumped on what to get your dad for Father's Day, a grooming gift is usually a wise choice. Here, we've rounded up the presents which will keep him looking spick and span, from luxury beard maintenance sets to top-of-the-range scents.



1. Elemis The Gym Kit Collection for Him: 35.50, Elemis



If his skin is suffering from shaving, tiredness, screen time and the other demands of modern life, help him restore energy and lustre with this collection. Revive muscles and keep them supple with Instant Refreshing Gel and Aching Muscle Super Soak. Keep skin clean and vibrant with Deep Cleanse Facial Wash and Anti-Fatigue Day Cream. And kick start lacklustre mornings with Revitalising Shower Gel. The set also includes a great black and turquoise trim holdall bag for grooming on the go.



Buy now

2. Percy Nobleman Ultimate Grooming Box: 155, Percy Nobleman



Not since the 1960s and 70s have beards been so, well, beardy. But this time around the beard has its very own grooming regime. The creme de la creme of beard beautifying products, this Percy Nobleman set will have hirsute hipsters in a follicular frenzy. Handcrafted from African rosewood, the beautiful mirrored box contains five full-size products  beard conditioning oil, beard wash, beard balm, moustache wax and gentleman's styling wax  as well as beard and moustache scissors and beard comb.

Buy now

3. Dolce & Gabbana The One for Men Eau De Parfum: 55 for 50ml, Boots

D and G the one

Striking and charismatic, this is one of the most beautiful scents I have come across in a long while. Vibrant, sparkling top notes of grapefruit, coriander and basil settle into a warming heart of ginger and cardamom, balanced by sweet orange blossom. An intense tobacco accord and cedar wood base gives a lasting, intense masculinity. This is pure magnetism in a bottle.



Buy now

4. Lola James Harper The Woody Office of Daddy Candle: 34, Selfridges

Lola James Harper, a lifestyle brand founded by Rami Mekdachi, a former creative director for several major French perfume houses, has some very cool candles. There are 18 different scents in the range, drawing inspiration from his travels and background as a musician and producer. We particularly like this one, the Woody Office of Daddy, with its complex notes of sandalwood and mahogany. Perfect for Fathers Day.

Buy now

5. Atkinsons The Big Bad Cedar Eau de Parfum: 120 for 100ml, Harrods

Described by Atkinsons as a brooding, enigmatic, Heathcliffean fragrance, this is a powerful, masculine scent. Think wild Scottish Highlands, smoky peat fires and rumbling skies. Not for the faint-hearted, it blends cardamom, clary sage, Virginia cedar wood essence, moss and cashmere for an earthy fragrance hit.

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6. Clarins Men Grooming Essentials: 35, Clarins

Hell get four best-selling Clarins travel-size grooming essentials  Super Moisture Balm, Shampoo & Shower Gel, Smooth Shave and Active Face Wash  all packed into a chic navy canvas wash bag.

Available from 5 June

7. Jo Malone Black Cedarwood & Juniper: 42 for 30ml, Jo Malone

Arguably Jo Malone's most masculine scent to date, this seductive, modern cologne is fragrance at its most luxurious. It has top notes of cumin, a heart of juniper and a rich woody base of cedarwood.

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8. The Great British Grooming Company Beard Oil: 8.99 for 75ml, The Great British Grooming Company

The rise of the beard has seen a spate of beard oil launches, but this one is really rather good. And it won't break the bank if you're looking for an inexpensive gift. Nobody likes a spiky prickly beard, so soften his with this argan oil-packed, nourishing treat that softens and hydrates coarse hair.

Buy now

9. Refinery Body Wash: 30 for 500ml, Aromatherapy Associates

This is an uplifting, power-packed body wash infused with invigorating essential oils of sandalwood, pink pepper and bergamot. For the dad who doesn't do beauty or grooming products, a luxury shower gel is always a welcome gift.

Buy now

10. YSL L'Homme Ultime: 55 for 60ml, YSL Beauty

This is a dramatic scent  with an advertising campaign to match. Uplifting grapefruit and warming ginger and cardamom settle into a heart of damask rose, geranium and sensual clary sage, which dry down into rich woody notes of cedar oil and vetiver.

Buy now

11. Aveda Invati Men Nourishing Exfoliating Shampoo: 25.50 for 250ml, Aveda

For dads looking a little thin on top, Aveda has recently launched Invati Men Solutions for Thinning Hair. I've tried the original one for women and the results are excellent. If he's not sensitive about his once lustrous locks, then give him the gift of thickening. It's a two-step program: the shampoo strengthens the hair, energises and prepares the scalp for the Scalp Revitalizer (45 for 125ml), which helps to thicken hair.

Buy now

12. Foreo Luna 2 for Men: 115, Foreo

Dads who suffer from razor burn or breakouts will love this exfoliating, conditioning and cleansing tool. Even if he doesnt actually cleanse, encourage him to give it a go  the results are great. A deep cleanse takes just one minute and leaves skin prepped and ready for a closer, more comfortable shave  this reduces razor burn and increases the life of razor blades. The little silicon buffers lift away dead skin cells, dirt and oil and tighten the look of pores, if hes prone to blemishes it works wonders. There's also an anti-ageing mode that helps firm, tone and reduce the appearance of fine lines.

Buy now

13. Michael Kors Extreme Blue: 49 for 70ml, Boots

Heres a modern, dynamic eau de toilette. Crisp bergamot, spicy pink pepper, invigorating cardamom, herbal juniper and cypress, smooth velvety woods and earthy patchouli give this scent an initial zesty hit followed by a warm, rich dry-down.

Buy now

14. Oskia Micro Exfoliating Balm: 48 for 50ml, Oskia Skincare

An award-winning anti-ager, this exfoliator is perfect for men who want a one-hit, multi-tasking product  it cleanses, exfoliates and nourishes in one. Its packed with 10 vitamins, eight minerals and Omega 3, 6 and 9 to keep his skin in tip top condition. Exfoliating regularly will also help prevent stubble rash and in-growing hairs.

Buy now

15. Autograph The Fragrance Collection: 15, Marks & Spencer

This is a delightful trio of travel-size, gym bag-friendly aftershaves. From fresh, clean citrus and herbal notes in Harvard Blue Harbour, to zingy mandarin, grapefruit and mint in Autograph Homme and warming spicy cardamom, pepper and cedar wood in Collezione Nero. Theres a scent to suit everyone at a great price.

Buy now

16. Aramis Classic Father's Day Gift Set: 46, Debenhams

This is a classic, timeless scent for the traditional dad. Beautifully boxed in cream and gold, it includes strong, woody Aramis Eau de Toilette and the matching 24 Hour High Performance Antiperspirant spray.

Buy now

Verdict

If you want to splash out on dad, we love Percy Nobleman's Grooming Box. For something a little less pricey, the super-practical Elemis selection gives him a chance to try out some luxe skin savers as well as upgrade his travel washbag. Bonus.
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If youre heading to a festival this summer, be it for a day or a weekend-long line-up, youll need some beauty bits to keep you looking party-ready, even after a couple of nights camping.

Weve put together a list of products that will do just that. From the practical do-not-forgets to make-up that will jazz up any outfit  think lots of glitter and bright colours  its time to start ticking off products from your packing list.

1. NYX Professional Makeup Cosmic Metals Lip Cream: 7, Feel Unique

You might not be wearing this past festival season, but for an extremely reasonable price you can add some sparkle to any outfit with one of NYXs Metal Lip Creams. From pink and purple to green and grey, theres a large selection of colours to pick from. The cream looks like a lip gloss on application but isnt sticky and glides smoothly over your lips, covering them in one stroke. It gives an on-trend, metallic finish and has good staying power. Its also small enough to fit in your bum bag. And you can take it off easily using a face wipe  ideal for late night (or morning) make-up removal.

Buy now

2. Dr Bronners Organic Lavender Hand Sanitizer: 4.49, Bodykind

Whatever festival youre attending, youre going to have to take a trip or two to the toilet, so make sure that as well as some toilet paper, you pack a bum bag-friendly hand sanitizer to fight off the germs. We love family-owned business Dr Bronners version. The brand specialises in creating natural, organic products that stay clear of chemical nasties, so this sanitizer is skin-friendly too. It smells of fresh lavender but not in an overpowering way  its exactly what you need after using a portaloo. Wed suggest stocking up on a few bottles.

Buy now

3. Urban Decay After Dark Eye Shadow Palette: 39.50, Urban Decay

Dont bother packing any other eye shadow, as this palette has everything you need for that festival vibe. Whether you want to swirl the metallic blue and green shades together or opt for sunset tones of pink and gold, you can create a different look each day depending on your mood. Theres a brush and mirror too, making it ideal for application in a tent, and the compact case is strong enough to be mixed up with other bulkier items in your bag.

Buy now

4. Garnier Micellar Extra Gentle Cleansing Wipes: 2.30, Boots

Although ideally wed take our full skincare regime with us you need to pack light, so Garniers cleansing wipes are a great alternative for a couple of days. These do the same job as its Micellar Cleansing Water, which has built up a large fan base in the beauty world over the past few years. Soaked with micellar water, they will remove make-up, impurities and dirt from your skin, as well as cleansing and soothing, leaving you looking both fresh-faced and hydrated  exactly what you need after a couple of late nights.

Buy now

5. Bumble and Bumble Pret-a-Powder: 23, Feel Unique

Hair care brand Bumble and Bumble has you covered when it comes to coping with consecutive days of unwashed locks. This multipurpose product works as dry shampoo, volumiser and styler. So you can stop your hair from looking greasy while also boosting roots to give you a bedhead (in a good way) look. Its a compact bottle but a little powder goes a long way (and doesnt leave white marks), so this should last you way past festival season.

Buy now

6. Topshop Metallic Liner in Magnetic: 7.50, Topshop

Topshop has a great range of reasonably priced, festival-style make-up. Our pick is this metallic liner that comes out as silver on the eyelids. The thin brush creates a good sweeping line so its easy to apply using a small mirror, but it may take a few applications to build up enough colour. Wear on its own or over the top of a contrasting eye shadow to create the full Glastonbury-ready look.

Buy now

7. Liz Earle Instant Boost Skin Tonic Spritzer: 15, Feel Unique

This will be a lifesaver at any festival where the sun is out. Liz Earle is well established in the skincare world for its hard-working products and although this is a little bulky, its worth packing for its cooling, refreshing spray that brightens and soothes the skin. This tonic will give tired-looking skin a lift and the mixture of ingredients (sweet orange, lavender and geranium to name a few) gives it a floral scent that will certainly be welcome after a few shower-free days. Apply after youve removed make-up or just before you head out for a refreshing pick-me-up.

Buy now

8. Schwarzkopf Got2B Fresh It Up Volume Dry Shampoo: 8.95, Nelly

Your hair routine will go out the window at longer festivals, as washing it will be a major faff. So if youre not bothered about styling you hair and just want to keep it looking clean, stock up on dry shampoo. This bottle will save your locks from turning greasy and unmanageable for an extra couple of days. Simply spray at the roots and rub in. Theres no white residue and your hair will look instantly fresher. This is another do-not-forget item.

Buy now

9. Dr Paw Paw Original Multipurpose Balm: 6.95, Feel Unique

This multipurpose product works as lip balm, brow smoother and shaper, moisturiser, primer and relieves irritated or dry skin, as well as calming bites and stings  so you can see why we think it should be on your packing list. Made from paw paw, it is fragrance free and has a slightly sticky texture that requires a bit of rubbing in. But we found it was a welcome relief to our lips, skin and cuticles, keeping them smooth and hydrated.

Buy now

10. Lottie London Tools on Tour: 7.99, Feel Unique

You wont want to take any expensive make-up brushes to a festival  youre bound to lose one or two in your tent. But to save applying make-up with your fingers, pick up this budget-friendly mini brush set. Coming in a selection of bright colours, the set includes a brow brush, smudger brush, eye shadow brush and powder brush, covering everything you might need. The brushes are lightweight and do a good job of applying powder evenly to your face and eye lids. It also comes in a see-through pouch that you can use as a make-up bag.

Buy now

The Verdict: Festival beauty products

For skincare, pack some of Garniers cleansing wipes to keep your skin in good condition. And Dr Bronners hand sanitizer is a must for hygiene. But NYXs lip creams are our Best Buy because theyll instantly add some festival flair to any outfit.
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It doesn't have to cost a fortune to stock your cellar with red wines to impress your guests at summer barbecues this summer.

An Asda red wine priced at 4.37 has been named the best in the world in a blind tasting test with a panel of 240 experts at the world's largest and most influential wine competition.

La Moneda Reserva Malbec from Central Valley in Chile (2015) was awarded best in show in the best single-varietal red under 15 at this year's Decanter World Wine Awards, from 16,000 other entries.

 A bottle of wine a day is not bad for you and abstaining is worse than drinking, scientist claims

It was described as having "an excellent freshness" and a finish that was "full of energy". Judges praised the wine for flavours of "freshly crushed black fruit, creamy vanilla yoghurt and pepper spice" and noted its good value.

Ed Betts, wine buying manager at Asda, said they were expecting a run on the shelves for La Moneda Reserva Malbec with summer approaching.

"At just 5.75, the exclusive La Moneda Reserva Malbec is the perfect example of how we're able to offer shoppers exceptional quality at low prices. The La Moneda Reserva Malbec is also currently on rollback at 4.37, and as the perfect match to barbecued meats, we're expecting high demand in the coming weeks," Betts said.

La Moneda Reserva Malbec from Central Valley in Chile (2015) was awarded best in show in the best single-varietal red under 15 at this year's Decanter World Wine Awards (ASda)

The Malbec first beat 600 other Chilean wines to win its category before it was shortlisted and went on to win the title of best in show.

Most expensive bottles of wine in the world Show all 10 1 /10 Most expensive bottles of wine in the world Most expensive bottles of wine in the world 1. Domaine de la Romanee-Conti Romanee-Conti Grand Cru, Cote de Nuits, France, 8,310 The most expensive wine in the world is described as the perfect Burgundy. The price has been moving upwards over the past three years, so get it while you still can. Most expensive bottles of wine in the world 2. Henri Jayer Cros Parantoux, Vosne-Romanee Premier Cru, France, 4,894 Another Burgundy, this one is a collectors item. Its also quite popular in Asia. Most expensive bottles of wine in the world 3. Egon Muller-Scharzhof Scharzhofberger Riesling Trockenbeerenauslese, Germany, 4,577 The first German wine on the list, this Riesling is produced in the Rheingau vineyard. The 2010 vintage was given a perfect score  100 out of a 100  by a major wine critic. Most expensive bottles of wine in the world 4. Domaine Leflaive Montrachet Grand Cru, Cote de Beaune, France, 3,716 The highest priced white wine from Le Montrachet, this is also the fourth most highly rated white from the region. Most expensive bottles of wine in the world 5. Joh. Jos. Prum Wehlener Sonnenuhr Riesling Trockenbeerenauslese, Germany, 3,415 Another German wine comes in at number five, and critics have rated it as the best white in the region. It has an overall score of 98 on wine-searcher.com  not bad. Most expensive bottles of wine in the world 6. Domaine Leroy Musigny Grand Cru, Cote de Nuits, France, 3,379 Another red from the Cote de Nuits, were the Le Musigny vineyard plays a pivotal role in local life  so much so that the village of Chambolle changed its name to Chambolle-Musigny in 1882. Most expensive bottles of wine in the world 7. Domaine Georges & Christophe Roumier Musigny Grand Cru, Cote de Nuits, France, 3,202 How about that Cote de Nuits? Another entry from Le Musigny, this is the second highest priced wine from the vineyard. The 2012 vintage was given a score of 98 out of 100 by The Wine Advocate. Most expensive bottles of wine in the world 8. Domaine de la Romanee-Conti Montrachet Grand Cru, Cote de Beaune, France, 2,948 This wine has received more awards than any other white in the region. Its also the most sough after Le Montrachet wine, based on user searches. Most expensive bottles of wine in the world 9. Domaine Jean-Louis Chave Ermitage Cuvee Cathelin, Rhone, France 2,403 The Ermitage (or Hermitage) is a rich Syrah-based red wine from the Rhone Valley. Ermitage wine can be traced back to 17th century, when it was an official wine in the courts of King Louis XIII and his successor Louis XIV. Most expensive bottles of wine in the world 10. Henri Jayer Echezeaux Grand Cru, Cote de Nuits, France 2,196 Yet another Grand Cru from the Cote de Nuits. Interest in this wine has fallen in recent years, but its still popular enough to justify its extraordinary price.

The wine is currently sold out on the Asda wine shop but is still available at the grocery website.

Tesco meanwhile grabbed five silver medals for its own Tesco and Tesco Finest bottles.

English wines were praised, with 90 per cent of those tasted at the awards getting medals. Two were awarded platinum medals: Gusbourne, a Pinot Noir in the best red over 15 category and Kits Coty Estate, a Chardonnay from Chapel Down Estate in Kent in the best white over 15.
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Britains struggling supermarket chains, seeking ways to counter the rise of discounters, are stepping up efforts to draw the UKs 3 million Muslims into their stores during Ramadan.

UK market leader Tesco expects 30 million in extra sales during the month-long holiday, when Muslims cook feasts after daylight fasting ends. As the festival got under way this week, Wal-Mart Storess Asda said sales of Ramadan-related products were running 12 per cent ahead of last years pace.

Ramadan is one of the most significant events of the year for supermarkets and its a big opportunity to boost sales, David Gray, an analyst at Planet Retail, said by phone.

In the current deflationary climate, anything that brings shoppers into stores is a good thing.

Over the last five years, discounters Aldi and Lidl have upended the UK grocery sector, dragging the established rivals  Tesco, Asda, Sainsbury and Morrison aupermarkets into a price war thats squeezed profit margins and led to store closures and thousands of job losses.

Aldi and Lidl keep prices low by restricting their product ranges. Thats a disadvantage during religious holidays, when consumers seek specialized goods, and gives the established supermarkets a chance to fight back.

The UKs Muslim population, often ignored by other retailers, is an attractive market for the supermarkets because its been expanding by about 4 per cent annually since 2011.

France, Germany

Muslim populations are larger in France and Germany, where numbers have been boosted by an influx of migrants from the Middle East.

Carrefour of France, which did not respond to requests for comment, operates Halal meat counters and offers a range of products that appeal to Muslims year-round.

But continental European grocers have been more reluctant than some UK supermarket chains to publicly embrace Ramadan because of concern about anti-Muslim sentiment among other shoppers, analysts say.

During Ramadan the UK is streets ahead of some European markets, Bryan Roberts, an analyst at consultancy TCC Global, said by phone.

Its a massive open goal that has been consistently missed by retailers across the continent.

To draw Muslim shoppers into its supermarkets, Sainsbury is mailing out leaflets in ethnically diverse areas of the UK, advertising dozens of discounts on Ramadan-related groceries such as yogurt, cumin and coriander. Asda is advertising competing offers in newspapers with the slogan Together for Ramadan. Morrison has posted banners reading Ramadan Mubarak (Have a Blessed Ramadan) in its aisles.

Tesco introduced a line of private-label products aimed at Muslim shoppers  including Punjabi cookies and Nimbu Pani, a sweet lime water  in time for Ramadan, according to a company blog. Many retailers offer so-called world food ranges for Muslims and other ethnic and religious groups, but usually through outside labels, not their own brands.

Discount Vouchers

Tesco is using insights it gains on the shopping habits of Muslims from its Clubcard loyalty program to mail out personalized offers. Amjad Hussain, a 41-year-old accountant, said he had received discount vouchers for large bottles of cooking oil.

They are trying hard to keep their shoppers loyal, he said.

In pictures: The first day of Ramadan Show all 6 1 /6 In pictures: The first day of Ramadan In pictures: The first day of Ramadan ramadan1-AfPgt.jpg AFP/Getty Images In pictures: The first day of Ramadan ramadan5-EPA.jpg EPA In pictures: The first day of Ramadan ramadan2-AP.jpg AP In pictures: The first day of Ramadan ramadan4-AfPgt.jpg AFP/Getty Images In pictures: The first day of Ramadan ramadan6-AP.jpg AP In pictures: The first day of Ramadan ramadan3-AP.jpg AP

Targeting helps supermarkets like Tesco compete with Lidl and Aldi, which collect less data on individual customers shopping and dont issue discount vouchers to them.

Lidl said it is selling a limited stock of 13 relevant products, such as dried figs and chapatti flour.

We offer a range of products for our customers observing Ramadan and are always considering new ways to update our product range to best suit our customers needs, Aldi said in a statement, though it said it had no plans to introduce special items for Ramadan in the UK.

Ramadan is not really on Aldi and Lidls radar, Phil Dorrell, managing partner at consultancy Retail Remedy, said by phone.

They arent keen on stocking products where theres any doubt over whether they can sell it.

 2016 Bloomberg L.P
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Thomas Perkins, the co-founder of venture-capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers who provided early financing to technology giants such as Google, Amazon.com. and Sun Microsystems, has died. He was 84.

He died Tuesday at his home in Tiburon, California, following a long illness, the New York Times reported, citing an assistant to the executive who the newspaper didnt identify.

The Harvard Business School graduate left his job at Hewlett-Packard to establish Menlo Park, California-based Kleiner Perkins with Austrian-born engineer Eugene Kleiner in 1972.

Opening with $8 million and later joined by Frank Caufield and Brook Byers as partners, the firm invested in tech companies over the next two decades, leading to the Silicon Valley boom that ushered in the Internet Age.

Perkins coupled his investing with an active management role in the enterprises he helped to finance. He was an early supporter of the biotechnology industry, serving as chairman at Genentech for 15 years, and was on the board of Tandem Computers, Hewlett-Packard and Compaq Computer.

Entrepreneurial VC

Tom was a pioneer in the venture capital industry, Caufield and Byers said Thursday in an e-mailed statement. He defined what we know of today as entrepreneurial venture capital by going beyond just funding to helping entrepreneurs realize their visions with operating expertise.

Hewlett-Packard helped turn Northern Californias Silicon Valley into a major technology hub and remained a constant presence in Perkinss life.

He guided the company in the 1960s to the advent of minicomputers, refrigerator-size machines that began to take market share from larger mainframes; learned the venture-capital trade from co-founder David Packard; and joined the board after helping engineer its $18.9 billion purchase of Compaq in 2002.

After a years retirement, Perkins returned in 2005, only weeks before Chief Executive Officer Carly Fiorina was fired in a boardroom tussle over the companys post-merger strategy.

Board Games

In her 2006 memoir, Tough Choices, Fiorina described how she was appalled by the reemergence of Tom Perkins and the very active role he was clearly playing while her board colleagues displayed an irrational urgency to reinstate him.

I believed that I had been brought back to the board  the warhorse  to stiffen everyones resolve, and if Carly wouldnt budge on at least some of the changes the board sought, to take decisive action to find a new CEO, Perkins wrote in Valley Boy, his 2007 book.

Thomas James Perkins was born Jan. 7, 1932, in Oak Park, Illinois, to Harry and Elizabeth Perkins, according to Marquis Whos Who.

He earned a Bachelor of Science degree in electrical engineering and computer science at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1953, and an MBA at Harvard Business School four years later.

(Getty Images)

Laser Company

While working his way up the ranks at Hewlett-Packard in San Francisco, Perkins spent nights and weekends in nearby Berkeley to develop a laser company, University Laboratories, during the 1960s. He later guided it into a merger with Mountain View, California-based Spectra-Physics and then served on its board, according to a 2006 MIT alumni association article.

Perkins was general manager of Hewlett-Packards computer division from 1965 to 1970, and oversaw the development of the minicomputers that would become the companys core product.

Gadget and tech news: In pictures Show all 25 1 /25 Gadget and tech news: In pictures Gadget and tech news: In pictures Gun-toting humanoid robot sent into space Russia has launched a humanoid robot into space on a rocket bound for the International Space Station (ISS). The robot Fedor will spend 10 days aboard the ISS practising skills such as using tools to fix issues onboard. Russia's deputy prime minister Dmitry Rogozin has previously shared videos of Fedor handling and shooting guns at a firing range with deadly accuracy. Dmitry Rogozin/Twitter Gadget and tech news: In pictures Google turns 21 Google celebrates its 21st birthday on September 27. The The search engine was founded in September 1998 by two PhD students, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, in their dormitories at Californias Stanford University. Page and Brin chose the name google as it recalled the mathematic term 'googol', meaning 10 raised to the power of 100 Google Gadget and tech news: In pictures Hexa drone lifts off Chief engineer of LIFT aircraft Balazs Kerulo demonstrates the company's "Hexa" personal drone craft in Lago Vista, Texas on June 3 2019 Reuters Gadget and tech news: In pictures Project Scarlett to succeed Xbox One Microsoft announced Project Scarlett, the successor to the Xbox One, at E3 2019. The company said that the new console will be 4 times as powerful as the Xbox One and is slated for a release date of Christmas 2020 Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures First new iPod in four years Apple has announced the new iPod Touch, the first new iPod in four years. The device will have the option of adding more storage, up to 256GB Apple Gadget and tech news: In pictures Folding phone may flop Samsung will cancel orders of its Galaxy Fold phone at the end of May if the phone is not then ready for sale. The $2000 folding phone has been found to break easily with review copies being recalled after backlash PA Gadget and tech news: In pictures Charging mat non-starter Apple has cancelled its AirPower wireless charging mat, which was slated as a way to charge numerous apple products at once AFP/Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures "Super league" India shoots down satellite India has claimed status as part of a "super league" of nations after shooting down a live satellite in a test of new missile technology EPA Gadget and tech news: In pictures 5G incoming 5G wireless internet is expected to launch in 2019, with the potential to reach speeds of 50mb/s Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures Uber halts driverless testing after death Uber has halted testing of driverless vehicles after a woman was killed by one of their cars in Tempe, Arizona. March 19 2018 Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures A humanoid robot gestures during a demo at a stall in the Indian Machine Tools Expo, IMTEX/Tooltech 2017 held in Bangalore Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures A humanoid robot gestures during a demo at a stall in the Indian Machine Tools Expo, IMTEX/Tooltech 2017 held in Bangalore Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures Engineers test a four-metre-tall humanoid manned robot dubbed Method-2 in a lab of the Hankook Mirae Technology in Gunpo, south of Seoul, South Korea Jung Yeon-Je/AFP/Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures Engineers test a four-metre-tall humanoid manned robot dubbed Method-2 in a lab of the Hankook Mirae Technology in Gunpo, south of Seoul, South Korea Jung Yeon-Je/AFP/Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures The giant human-like robot bears a striking resemblance to the military robots starring in the movie 'Avatar' and is claimed as a world first by its creators from a South Korean robotic company Jung Yeon-Je/AFP/Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures Engineers test a four-metre-tall humanoid manned robot dubbed Method-2 in a lab of the Hankook Mirae Technology in Gunpo, south of Seoul, South Korea Jung Yeon-Je/AFP/Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures Waseda University's saxophonist robot WAS-5, developed by professor Atsuo Takanishi Rex Gadget and tech news: In pictures Waseda University's saxophonist robot WAS-5, developed by professor Atsuo Takanishi and Kaptain Rock playing one string light saber guitar perform jam session Rex Gadget and tech news: In pictures A test line of a new energy suspension railway resembling the giant panda is seen in Chengdu, Sichuan Province, China Reuters Gadget and tech news: In pictures A test line of a new energy suspension railway, resembling a giant panda, is seen in Chengdu, Sichuan Province, China Reuters Gadget and tech news: In pictures A concept car by Trumpchi from GAC Group is shown at the International Automobile Exhibition in Guangzhou, China Rex Gadget and tech news: In pictures A Mirai fuel cell vehicle by Toyota is displayed at the International Automobile Exhibition in Guangzhou, China Reuters Gadget and tech news: In pictures A visitor tries a Nissan VR experience at the International Automobile Exhibition in Guangzhou, China Reuters Gadget and tech news: In pictures A man looks at an exhibit entitled 'Mimus' a giant industrial robot which has been reprogrammed to interact with humans during a photocall at the new Design Museum in South Kensington, London Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures A new Israeli Da-Vinci unmanned aerial vehicle manufactured by Elbit Systems is displayed during the 4th International conference on Home Land Security and Cyber in the Israeli coastal city of Tel Aviv Getty

Ambitious and hard-driving, he was known to jump on desks when the phone rang, loudly counting out the rings to make sure someone answered it by the third one, according to Joe Schoendorf, later a venture capitalist at Accel Partners.

Perkins left Hewlett-Packards board in 2006, after charging Chairman Patricia Dunn with approving an investigation of alleged boardroom press leaks that included spying on reporters and executives phone records.

As a venture capitalist, Perkins was, at one point, chairman of 14 companies that Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers funded, including three listed on the New York Stock Exchange, MIT reported.

Romance Author

After two marriages, Perkins wrote the 2006 romance novel Sex and the Single Zillionaire about a New York financier struggling to cope with the death of his wife. Encouraged by his second wife, the best-selling author Danielle Steel, Perkins wrote the 288-page book in only 100 hours over 30 days, according to an article in the New York Times.

As owner of the 289-foot Maltese Falcon, the worlds largest clipper yacht, Perkins enjoyed an extravagant lifestyle and purchased a penthouse in the Millennium Tower overlooking San Francisco Bay in 2009.

Im not a billionaire, Im a multimillionaire, Perkins said in a January 2014 interview with Bloomberg Televisions Emily Chang. Ive created some billionaires, but I unfortunately am not one.

Forbes top 10 richest billionaires in the world Show all 10 1 /10 Forbes top 10 richest billionaires in the world Forbes top 10 richest billionaires in the world Bill Gates - $75 bn The creator of Microsoft is worth $78 billion. He has topped the list for 17 out of the past 22 years - though his net worth shrank by $4.2bn (3bn) to $75bn (53.7bn). Forbes top 10 richest billionaires in the world Amancio Ortega - $67 bn The Spanish business who set up the Zara chain of high-street shops is worth $67 billion. REUTERS/ AP Forbes top 10 richest billionaires in the world Warren Buffet - $60.8 bn Warren buffet is the world's most successful investor. Forbes rates him as being worth $60.8 billion. Getty Forbes top 10 richest billionaires in the world Carlos Slim Helu - $50 bn Carlos Slim, the Mexican telecom magnate, is this years biggest loser with a fortune of $50 billion, down from $77.1 billion last year. Getty Forbes top 10 richest billionaires in the world Jeff Bezos - $45.2 bn Amazons Jeff Bezos moved up to the fifth from the fifteenth spot last year; his net worth increased to $45.2 billion. Getty Forbes top 10 richest billionaires in the world Mark Zuckerberg - $44.6 bn The biggest gainer on the 2016 list is Mark Zuckerberg , whose fortune is up $11.2 billion for a total net worth of $44.6 billion. He is the sixth richest in the world. Getty Images Forbes top 10 richest billionaires in the world Larry Ellison - $43.6 bn The American entrepreneur has a fortune of $43.6 billion Bloomberg Forbes top 10 richest billionaires in the world Michael Bloomberg - $40 bn Michael Bloomberg, whose media and financial empire has created a personal fortune of $40 bn, is said to be willing to spend up to $1bn on a presidential campaign AP Forbes top 10 richest billionaires in the world Charles Koch and David Koch - $39.6 bn Charles Koch, along with brother David Koch of Koch Industries are joint sixth and are valued at $39.6 billion. Forbes top 10 richest billionaires in the world Liliane Bettencourt - $36.1 bn Liliane Bettencourt is the heir to the LOreal empire Getty Images

In January 2014, he caused an uproar after writing a letter published in the Wall Street Journal in which he compared the demonization of the wealthy 1 per cent of Americans to Nazi Germanys persecution of Jews.

Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, where he was a partner emeritus, distanced itself from the comments and said Perkins hadnt been involved with the firm in years.

With his first wife, the former Gerd Thune-Ellefsen, Perkins had a son, Tor Kristian, and a daughter, Elizabeth Siri. Thune-Ellefsen died in 1994. He married Steel in 1998 and divorced the following year, according to Marquis Whos Who.

 2016 Bloomberg L.P
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Patricia Clarkson has claimed Game of Thrones star Kit Harington should get over his complaints of double standards of Hollywood sexism towards male actors.

Last month, Harington, who plays Jon Snow in the hit series, said there is a double standard towards men in the film industry.

I like to think of myself as more than a head of hair or a set of looks, the 29-year-old told The Sunday Times magazine. 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 towards women and there is towards men as well. At some points during photoshoots when Im asked to strip down, I felt that.

Recommended Read more Kit Harington claims Hollywood is sexist towards men

Clarkson appeared to have little sympathy for Harringtons supposed plight when asked about the comments by the Guardian, saying: Hes a sex symbol. Get over it. You have an amazing career and youre on a hot show. Take your shirt off.

The Green Mile actress was discussing some gendered negative responses to the upcoming Ghostbusters all-female remake when she claimed white male actors dont have a leg to stand on when bemoaning anything in the film industry.

The actors fighting against sexism in Hollywood Show all 12 1 /12 The actors fighting against sexism in Hollywood The actors fighting against sexism in Hollywood Anne Hathaway The 32-year-old actress said she has already experiences job rejections because of her age. Now I'm in my early thirties and I'm like, 'Why did that 24-year-old get that part? I was that 24-year-old once. I can't be upset about it, it's the way things are, she told Glamour. EPA The actors fighting against sexism in Hollywood Helen Mirren On news that Maggie Gyllenhaal had been turned down for being too old, aged 37, to play a 55-year-old mans partner: Its f***ing outrageous. Its ridiculous. Honestly, its so annoying. And twas ever thus. We all watched James Bond as he got more and more geriatric, and his girlfriends got younger and younger. Its so annoying. Getty The actors fighting against sexism in Hollywood Maggie Gyllenhaal Gyllenhaal revealed she was told by a Hollywood producer that she was too old, aged 37, to play the love interest of a 55-year-old man. It was astonishing to me. It made me feel bad, and then it made feel angry, and then it made me laugh, she said at the time. Getty Images The actors fighting against sexism in Hollywood Meryl Streep Meryl Streep has helped fund an all-female screenwriters group called The Writers Lab to encourage more women to pen Hollywood scripts. She previously told Vogue in 2011: Once women pass childbearing age they could only be seen as grotesque on some level. Getty The actors fighting against sexism in Hollywood Emma Thompson The actress said she thought Hollywood is still completely s*** when it comes to treating women equally to men. When I was younger, I really did think we were on our way to a better world. And when I look at it now, it is in a worse state than I have known it, particularly for women, and I find that very disturbing and sad. EPA The actors fighting against sexism in Hollywood Elizabeth Banks Banks said she was driven from acting to directing due to the lack of roles for older women in Hollywood. "[Industry sexism] drove me to direct for sure. I definitely was feeling that I was unfulfilled and a little bit bored by the things that were coming across my desk. I mean look at Gwyneth Paltrow who has her Oscar [for Shakespeare in Love] and played fifth banana to Iron Man, she told Deadline. PA The actors fighting against sexism in Hollywood Viola Davis I had never seen a 49-year-old, dark-skinned woman who is not a size 2 be a sexualised role in TV or film. I'm a sexual woman, but nothing in my career has ever identified me as a sexualised woman. I was the prototype of the mommified role, she told The Hollywood Reporter. Getty The actors fighting against sexism in Hollywood Liv Tyler The Lord of the Rings actress said she only get cast in roles where she is treated as a second class citizen at the age of 38. When youre in your teens or twenties, there is an abundance of ingenue parts which are exciting to play. But at [my age], youre usually the wife or the girlfriend - a sort of second-class citizen. There are more interesting roles for women when they get a bit older, she told More magazine. Getty Images The actors fighting against sexism in Hollywood Cate Blanchett The actress famously called out sexism on the red carpet at the 2014 Screen Actors Guild Awards. When a camera operator scanned her up and down, she said: Do you do this to the guys? In her Oscar acceptance speech for Blue Jasmine, she reminded the film industry that movies with leading women can still be successful. And thank you to... those of us in the industry who are still foolishly clinging to the idea that female films, with women at the centre, are niche experiences. They are not -- audiences want to see them and, in fact, they earn money. The world is round, people. Gareth Cattermole/Getty The actors fighting against sexism in Hollywood Ellen Page Asked if she had ever encountered sexism in Hollywood, Page told The Guardian: Oh my God, yeah! It's constant! It's how you're treated, it's how you're looked at, how you're expected to look in a photoshoot, it's how you're expected to shut up and not have an opinion, it's how you... If you're a girl and you don't fit the very specific vision of what a girl should be, which is always from a man's perspective, then you're a little bit at a loss. Getty Images The actors fighting against sexism in Hollywood Zoe Saldana The actress says she refuses roles where she has to play the generic girlfriend, wife or sexy bombshell. "It's very hard being a woman in a man's world, and I recognised it was a man's world even when I was a kid. It's an inequality and injustice that drove me crazy, and which I always spoke out against  and I've always been outspoken, she told Manhattan magazine. Getty The actors fighting against sexism in Hollywood Charlize Theron The actress spoke to ELLE about negotiating equal pay for the Snow White and the Huntsman sequel: "This is a good time for us to bring this to a place of fairness, and girls need to know that being a feminist is a good thing. It doesn't mean that you hate men. It means equal rights. If you're doing the same job, you should be compensated and treated in the same way." Andreas Rentz/Getty Images

There are still so many movies made starring 50 men and one woman! A white male actor should never be allowed to complain about anything, the 56-year-old said. Shut up and sit in the corner. I mean, seriously!
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North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has been pictured smoking despite a national anti-smoking campaign being rolled out in the country.

The autocrat is known to be an avid smoker and is often pictured with a cigarette in hand or with an ashtray close by. However, since the middle of March he hasnt been pictured smoking, according to the Korea Herald.

A potential reason for the lack of photos was an anti-smoking initiative launched by the North Korean government to tackle the problem among the wider population..

Recommended Read more Defector reveals stark reality of life inside North Korea

However, this week, Kim himself was seen to be not adhering to the campaign himself. In a photo released by state media on 4 June, he can be seen holding a cigarette during a visit to the Mangyongdae childrens camp in the capital Pyongyang.

In 2014, the World Health Organisation reported 43 per cent of North Korean men smoked, compared to zero per cent of women. In the 1990s that figure for men was 90 per cent, while for women it was virtually zero, reports the Washington Post.

Inside the daily life in North Korea Show all 19 1 /19 Inside the daily life in North Korea Inside the daily life in North Korea People reading a newspaper at the metro station Inside the daily life in North Korea Thoughts of the leaders on the tram. They have about a dozen of these on every tram, all with different thoughts Inside the daily life in North Korea Young people training for a big upcoming festival Inside the daily life in North Korea People at the Pyongyang's annual marathon Inside the daily life in North Korea Many stars on one of the trolleys in Pyongyang Inside the daily life in North Korea An intimidating poster in a primary school in North Korea. Inside the daily life in North Korea Solar panels installed on a street lamp. Inside the daily life in North Korea A poster on the window next to one of the venues we visited in Pyongyang Inside the daily life in North Korea Kids playing football next to the Arch of Triumph. After a while tourists were allowed to join, so some of us did Inside the daily life in North Korea Class in an educational center in Pyongyang (where people over 17 years old can attend any classes they choose after school, for free) Inside the daily life in North Korea People waving at me during the Pyongyang marathon Inside the daily life in North Korea People having a great time dancing at a public park Inside the daily life in North Korea A metro driver in a metro station in Pyongyang Inside the daily life in North Korea Fireworks to mark the birthday of the Eternal President Kim Il Sung on our last night in Pyongyang Inside the daily life in North Korea My wonderful tour guide at a public park Inside the daily life in North Korea One of the parks in Pyongyang Inside the daily life in North Korea A person rowing some boats for the day at a river in Pyongyang Inside the daily life in North Korea The National War Museum Inside the daily life in North Korea Public park in Pyongyang

According to the Korea Herald, non-smoking research stations have been established in major cities in North Korea and the state is said to be working on more tobacco substitutes.

Anti-smoking messages have also been broadcast on state television showing women scolding male smokers by labelling them imbeciles who upset their surroundings, reports the BBC.
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Rabbi Michael Lerner completely went in on the mistreatment of Muslims in America and around the world while speaking on Friday at the funeral service for Muhammad Ali.

Sends your blessings to Muhammad Ali and send your blessings to those who mourn for him and the millions around the planet," he began.

Rabbi Lerner, who is the editor of the progressive Tikkun Magazine, said that he was representing American Jews at the service, and that they played an important role of solidarity in the struggles African-Americans face across the country, and that today they were standing with the Islamic community around the world.

We will not tolerate politicians, or anyone else, putting down Muslims and blaming Muslims for a few people, Rabbi Lerner said.

Rabbi Lerner also showed love to Palestinians by calling on the US government to stand up against the oppression Palestinians face from the Israel government.

Meanwhile, Fox News cold cut to a commercial within 30 seconds of Rabbi Lerners speech.

Watch his full speech at Muhammad Alis funeral service in the video above.
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Hundreds of fans and celebrities are in Louisville, Kentucky, to mourn the passing of Mohammad Ali, the famous boxer and one of the most-loved sportsmen in the country.

He died at the age of 74, after battling Parkinson's disease for more than 30 years.

His funeral is taking place in his hometown. Will Smith is a pallbearer, and Bill Clinton and Billy Crystal are to deliver eulogies.

The three-time heavyweight champion of the world was also an established figure in the civil rights movement, and he famously objected to serving in the Vietnam War.

You can watch the procession live below:

Thousands of people waited in line to get a ticket to attend the memorial service, but many came away empty-handed.

The ceremony will be carried out in respect of Islamic tradition, testament to one of the most high-profile Muslims in the country.

President Obama will not be present as he is attending his daugher's graduation, but he will be represented by his senior adviser Valerie Jarrett.
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Jerome S. Bruner, who was born blind and, after having his sight restored, spent the rest of his life trying to understand how the human mind perceives the world, leading to influential advances in education and the development of the field of cognitive psychology, died June 5 at his home in New York City. He was 100.

He had an aortic aneurysm several months ago, said his son, Whitley Bruner, but the exact cause of death was not known.

In the 1950s, when Dr Bruner was at Harvard University, he was a key figure in advancing the study of psychology beyond the behaviorist theories of B.F. Skinner, which held that people tended to act rationally and in accordance with well-defined rewards and punishments.

During a 70-year academic career, Dr Bruner was a restless researcher who constantly moved from one field to another. The basis of his work was the study of cognition, or what he called the great question of how you know anything. But he freely touched on fields as diverse as music, physics, literature, sociology and the law, drawing connections between cognitive perceptions and judicial decision-making.

He invaded and created new areas of psychology and the social sciences at the speed other people wrote papers, Howard Gardner, a psychologist and professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, said Tuesday in an interview. He was part of a generation of intellectual giants who roamed across the disciplinary terrain. Bruner and his colleagues gave us a language to see how we make sense of the world.

One of Dr Bruners early discoveries led to the New Look school of psychology, in which he showed that peoples perceptions of objects and events are often influenced by unseen social and cultural conditions. In one of his most famous experiments, poor children perceived the size of coins to be significantly larger than richer children did; the larger the monetary value of the coin, the bigger it was imagined to be.

That study helped lead Dr Bruner to conclude that human motivations are far more complex than previously assumed and are subject to emotions, imagination and cultural training. Two of his early books, A Study of Thinking (1956) and The Process of Education (1960), outlined his ideas and codified them in a system that could be used in teaching.

His notions came at a time when US officials, alarmed by the Soviet launch of the Sputnik satellite in 1957, feared that American students were falling behind in science. Dr Bruner thought scientific principles  or any ideas, for that matter  could be grasped by students of any age, provided they were presented in a way they could understand.

Any subject can be taught effectively in some intellectually honest form to any child, he wrote in The Process of Education, providing attention is paid to the psychological development of the child.

With George A. Miller, Dr Bruner established the Center for Cognitive Studies in 1960, and it soon became a leading incubator of ideas about psychology, education, language and other fields. Noam Chomsky, the linguistic theorist and social critic, was one of many scholars who began their careers at the center.

During the 1960s, Dr Bruner was a science adviser to presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, and his ideas about early education contributed to the development of Head Start. He went on to develop a spiral curriculum, in which complex subjects, including anthropology and science, are reintroduced to students year after year at ever-increasing levels of sophistication.

He drew on that idea to design a social science curriculum that was widely used in schools in the 1960s and 1970s before it encountered political opposition for its cross-cultural references and emphasis on the theory of evolution.

Many of Dr Bruners notions, such as the element of emotion in decision-making, reflect simple common sense, Gardner said. But it took years for academic psychologists to accept some of his ideas.

For the past 30 years, while teaching at New York Universitys law school, Dr Bruner explored the idea of storytelling as a fundamental way of understanding the nature of the world around us. He believed that the choices we make in telling stories become so habitual that they finally become recipes for structuring experience itself, for laying down routes into memory, he said in 1987.

This is a mode of cognition, Gardner said, at least as important as STEM  the science, technology, engineering and mathematics model of instruction that has gained currency in recent years.

He made narrative a form of thinking, Gardner added.

Jerome Seymour Bruner was born Oct. 1, 1915, in New York City to Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe. He was blind from cataracts at birth, but he underwent surgery at age 2 that gave him limited vision. He wore thick glasses throughout his life.

He was about 12 when his father, a watchmaker, died. But before his death, his father sold his business to Bulova, leaving the family well off.

Dr Bruner became interested in psychology at Duke University, from which he graduated in 1937. He received masters and doctoral degrees in psychology from Harvard in 1939 and 1941, respectively.

During World War II, he held jobs in military intelligence, using his training to examine propaganda. He joined the Harvard faculty in 1945, then left in 1972 to teach at the University of Oxford in England. (He sailed his boat across the Atlantic.)

He returned to the United States in 1980, teaching first at the New School in New York, then joining NYU. He continued to lead occasional seminars on cognitive theories behind the law until he was 98.

His books included On Knowing: Essays for the Left Hand (1962) about the importance of spontaneity and intuition in thinking; In Search of Mind: Essays in Autobiography (1983); and, with law professor Anthony G. Amsterdam, Minding the Law (2000), which examines legal thinking through storytelling and language.

His marriages to Katherine Frost and Blanche Ames Marshall ended in divorce. His third wife, Carol Feldman, died in 2006. Survivors include two children from his first marriage, Whitley Bruner of Vienna, Va., and Jane Mullane of Tewksbury, England; and three grandchildren.

Dr Bruner thought that a teachers primary task was what he called the mining of human intellectual potential. Too often, he said, that mission was undercut by well-meaning but poorly designed schools, churches and other institutions that did not understand the needs of children.

If you construct a classroom in which children must keep their seats, he said in 1987, you are assuring that there will be a hyperactivity syndrome.

The Washington Post
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The Queen will officially mark her 90th birthday this weekend, despite her actual birthday being in April.

A new portrait of the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh was released on Friday to make the occasion. It is the final picture in a series of six by iconic photographer Annie Leibowitz. The picture of the couple, who have been married for 68 years, was taken at Windsor Castle shortly after Easter.

On Friday and over the weekend, there will be a number of events to mark the Queen reaching 90.

Is it actually the Queens birthday this weekend?

For those who recall the Queens birthday already having happened this year, you are not mistaken. Queen Elizabeths actual milestone 90th birthday was on 21 April. However, being the Queen, she famously has two birthdays, her actual birthday and the traditional celebration.

She usually marks her actual birthday by going on a walkabout which she did this year in Windsor where she was presented with a birthday cake by Great British Bake Off winner Nadiya Hussain.

In actual fact, it is the Duke of Edinburghs 95th birthday on Friday.

Why does she have two birthdays?

The monarch celebrating two birthdays was started by George II in 1748. Traditionally, if the monarchs birthday is not in summer, a later celebration will be held in the summer months in a bid for sunny British weather.

During King Edward VIIIs reign, he would typically celebrate his birthday officially in May or June even though his official birth date was in November.

Queen Elizabeth II: Life in pictures Show all 62 1 /62 Queen Elizabeth II: Life in pictures Queen Elizabeth II: Life in pictures Queen Elizabeth II Queen Elizabeth II on a walk-about in Portsmouth during her Silver Jubilee tour of Great Britain, 1977 PA Queen Elizabeth II: Life in pictures Queen Elizabeth II The future Britain's Queen Elizabeth II (R) pictured with her younger sister Princess Margaret (L) in 1933 AFP/Getty Queen Elizabeth II: Life in pictures Queen Elizabeth II The 9-year-old Elizabeth attends an aristocratic wedding with her mother and younger sister. Later in that year with the death of her Grandfather and the Abdication of her Uncle Edward VIII she became first in line to the throne, 1936 Getty Queen Elizabeth II: Life in pictures Queen Elizabeth II The coronation of King George VI in 1937, Elizabeth aged 10 became the heir apparent to the throne Getty Queen Elizabeth II: Life in pictures Queen Elizabeth II Elizabeth and her sister arrive at Waterloo station to say goodbye to their parents as they leave to tour Canada. Elizabeth was thought too young to escort her parents on the tour and was described as "tearful" as they departed. She and her parents made the first ever transatlantic telephone call during their time away, 1939 Getty Queen Elizabeth II: Life in pictures Queen Elizabeth II The 13-year-old Elizabeth and her sister Margret address children who have been evacuated from the cities on BBC's 'The Chilrens Hour' She said "We are trying to do all we can to help our gallant sailors, soldiers and airmen, and we are trying, too, to bear our share of the danger and sadness of war. We know, every one of us, that in the end all will be well", 1940 Getty Queen Elizabeth II: Life in pictures Queen Elizabeth II Just before the end of the war Elizabeth took part in training to become an ATS officer. She is pictured learning to change a tire, 1945 AFP/Getty Queen Elizabeth II: Life in pictures Queen Elizabeth II The official announcement of Princess Elizabeth and Phillip Mountbatten's engagement. The pairing was incredibly controversial as Prince Phillip had no financial standing and he was foreign born, the prince of Denmark and Greece (though he served Britain in the war and was given British Citizenship), 1947 Getty Queen Elizabeth II: Life in pictures Queen Elizabeth II Queen Elizabeth II (in coach) and her husband Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh are cheered by the crowd after their wedding ceremony, on 20 November 1947, on their road to Buckingham Palace, London Getty Queen Elizabeth II: Life in pictures Queen Elizabeth II Elizabeth smiles at her first child, a month old Prince Charles. Charles was born on 14 November 1948 Corbis Queen Elizabeth II: Life in pictures Queen Elizabeth II The couples second child Princess Anne was born in 1950 Getty Queen Elizabeth II: Life in pictures Queen Elizabeth II Arriving back in England upon hearing the death of her father King George VI. The Kings health had been in decline for a number of years and Elizabeth had been filling in for him on an official visit to Australia by way of Kenya. As his heir Elizabeth became Queen aged 26 Getty Queen Elizabeth II: Life in pictures Queen Elizabeth II Queen Elizabeth's coronation took place on 2 June 1953. It was the first ever coronation to be aired live on television, being one of the most watched events in history with millions gathering around their TV sets to see the new monarch Queen Elizabeth II: Life in pictures Queen Elizabeth II Queen Elizabeth II standing next to her daughter Princess Anne, 1960 Getty Queen Elizabeth II: Life in pictures Queen Elizabeth II President Eisenhower (centre) with the British Royal family (L-R) Prince Philip, Princess Anne, HM Queen Elizabeth, Prince Charles and Captain John Eisenhower, at Balmoral Castle, Scotland, 1959 Getty Queen Elizabeth II: Life in pictures Queen Elizabeth II Queen Elizabeth II as she turns to smile and talk to an unidentified officer, during the Trooping of the Colour by the First Battalion of the Jamaica Regiment at Up-Park Camp, Kingston, Jamaica, 1966 Getty Queen Elizabeth II: Life in pictures Queen Elizabeth II Queen Elizabeth II walking cross country at the North of Scotland Gun Dog Association Open Stake Retreiver Trials in the grounds of Balmoral Castle in 1967 Getty Queen Elizabeth II: Life in pictures Queen Elizabeth II Queen Elizabeth II during her visit to the Chelsea Flower Show in London, a regular fixture in the royal calendar, 1971 PA Queen Elizabeth II: Life in pictures Queen Elizabeth II Queen Elizabeth II and the Duke of Edinburgh during their traditional summer break at Balmoral Castle. The highland retreat is one of the Queen's favourite places, each year, she heads off to Scotland for the summer. "It is rather nice to hibernate for a bit when one leads such a moveable life," she once said, 1976 Getty Queen Elizabeth II: Life in pictures Queen Elizabeth II Queen Elizabeth II during a walkabout in Muscat while visiting Oman, 1979 PA Queen Elizabeth II: Life in pictures Queen Elizabeth II Queen Elizabeth II with some of her corgis walking the Cross Country course during the second day of the Windsor Horse Trials. The monarch is responsible for introducing a new breed of dog known as the "dorgi" when her corgi Tiny was mated with a dachshund "sausage dog" called Pipkin which belonged to Princess Margaret, 1980 PA Queen Elizabeth II: Life in pictures Queen Elizabeth II (L-R) the Queen Mother, Queen Elizabeth II, Prince William, Prince Harry and the Prince and Princess of Wales after the christening ceremony of Prince Harry, 1984 PA Queen Elizabeth II: Life in pictures Queen Elizabeth II Queen Elizabeth II taking the salute of the Household Guards regiments during the Trooping of the Colour ceremony in London, 1985 PA Queen Elizabeth II: Life in pictures Queen Elizabeth II Diana, Princess of Wales and Queen Elizabeth II as they smile to well-wishers outside Clarence House in London, 1987 AP Queen Elizabeth II: Life in pictures Queen Elizabeth II Queen Elizabeth II, with Chief Instructor, Small Arms Corp LT Col George Harvey, firing the last shot on a standard SA 80 rifle when she attended the centenary of the Army Rifle Association at Bisley, 1993 PA Queen Elizabeth II: Life in pictures Queen Elizabeth II South Africa's President Nelson Mandela greets Queen Elizabeth II as she steps from the royal yacht Britannia in Cape Town at the 1995's official start of the her first visit to the country since 1947 PA Queen Elizabeth II: Life in pictures Queen Elizabeth II Queen Elizabeth II smiles as she visits Bowring Park in St. John's, Newfoundland, on the third day of a 10-day official visit to Canada, 1997 Getty Queen Elizabeth II: Life in pictures Queen Elizabeth II Queen accompanied by the Duke of Edinburgh make their way into St. George's Chapel at Windsor for the annual Garter ceremony, 1999 AFP/Getty Queen Elizabeth II: Life in pictures Queen Elizabeth II Queen Elizabeth II and Pope John Paul II as they meet at the Vatican, 2000 AP Queen Elizabeth II: Life in pictures Queen Elizabeth II Queen Elizabeth II and the Queen Mother leaving church by horse drawn carriage on the Sandringham Estate, Norfolk, 2000 PA Queen Elizabeth II: Life in pictures Queen Elizabeth II Queen Elizabeth rides her horse in the grounds of Windsor Castle, 2002 Queen Elizabeth II: Life in pictures Queen Elizabeth II Queen Elizabeth arrives for the world premiere of James Bond movie "Casino Royale" at the Odeon cinema in Leicester Square in London, 2006 Queen Elizabeth II: Life in pictures Queen Elizabeth II Queen Elizabeth boards a scheduled train at Kings Cross station in London, 2009 Queen Elizabeth II: Life in pictures Queen Elizabeth II Queen Elizabeth II planting a tree at Newmarket Animal Health Trust, during a royal visit which marked her 50th year as the charity's patron, 2009 Queen Elizabeth II: Life in pictures Queen Elizabeth II Queen Elizabeth II talking with Pope Benedict XVI during an audience in the Morning Drawing Room at the Palace of Holyroodhouse in Edinburgh during a four day visit by the Pope to the UK, 2010 Queen Elizabeth II: Life in pictures Queen Elizabeth II Queen Elizabeth II visiting the Sheikh Zayed Mosque in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, 2010 Queen Elizabeth II: Life in pictures Queen Elizabeth II Queen Elizabeth II receives flowers from the crowd during her visit to Federation Square in downtown Melbourne, 2011 Queen Elizabeth II: Life in pictures Queen Elizabeth II Queen Elizabeth watches a preview of her Christmas message wearing a pair of 3D glasses, studded with Swarovski crystals in the form of a "Q", at Buckingham Palace in central London, 2012 Queen Elizabeth II: Life in pictures Queen Elizabeth II Members of Britain's royal family (front L to R) Prince Philip, Queen Elizabeth and Prince Charles cheer as competitors participate in a sack race at the Braemar Gathering in Braemar, Scotland, 2012 Queen Elizabeth II: Life in pictures Queen Elizabeth II Britain's Prince Charles kisses the hand of his mother Queen Elizabeth at the end of her Diamond Jubilee concert in front of Buckingham Palace in London, 2012 Reuters Queen Elizabeth II: Life in pictures Queen Elizabeth II Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge laughs as Queen Elizabeth gestures during a visit to Vernon Park in Nottingham, 2012 Queen Elizabeth II: Life in pictures Queen Elizabeth II Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip attend a service for the Order of the British Empire at St Paul's Cathedral in London, 2012 Queen Elizabeth II: Life in pictures Queen Elizabeth II Queen Elizabeth II meets young people during an official visit to The Shard building in central London, 2013 Queen Elizabeth II: Life in pictures Queen Elizabeth II Actress Angelina Jolie is presented with the Insignia of an Honorary Dame Grand Cross of the Most Distinguished Order of St Michael and St George by Queen Elizabeth II in the 1844 Room at Buckingham Palace, London, 2014 Queen Elizabeth II: Life in pictures Queen Elizabeth II Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh visit the Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red evolving art installation at the Tower of London, 2014 Queen Elizabeth II: Life in pictures Queen Elizabeth II The Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh at the State Opening of Parliament, 2015 AFP/Getty Queen Elizabeth II: Life in pictures Queen Elizabeth II (L-R) Britain's Princess Anne, Princess Royal, Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, Prince Charles, Prince of Wales, Prince William, Duke of Cambridge holding his son Prince George of Cambridge, Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge, Queen Elizabeth II, Prince Harry (back), Prince Andrew, Duke of York (back), James, Viscount Severn (front), Princess Beatrice of York (back), Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh and Princess Eugenie of York (back) stand on the balcony of Buckingham Palace waiting to view the fly-past during the Queen's Birthday Parade, 'Trooping the Colour,' in London, 2015 Queen Elizabeth II: Life in pictures Queen Elizabeth II The Trooping of the Colour is an annual celebration marking the Queen's birthday, 2015 Getty Queen Elizabeth II: Life in pictures Queen Elizabeth II Britain's Queen Elizabeth II stands with Kate the Duchess of Cambridge whilst pushing Princess Charlotte in a pram as they leave after attending the Christening of Britain's Princess Charlotte at St. Mary Magdalene Church in Sandringham, 2015 AP Photo/Matt Dunham, Pool Queen Elizabeth II: Life in pictures Queen Elizabeth II Queen Elizabeth II arrives at the Broadway Theatre in Barking, 2015 Tim P. Whitby/Getty Images Queen Elizabeth II: Life in pictures Queen Elizabeth II Queen Elizabeth II greets wellwishers during a 'walkabout' on her 90th birthday in Windsor in 2016 AFP via Getty Images Queen Elizabeth II: Life in pictures Queen Elizabeth II Members of the Royal Family during trooping of the colour in 2017 AFP via Getty Images Queen Elizabeth II: Life in pictures Queen Elizabeth II The Queen waves at Prince Harry and Meghan after their wedding in 2018 POOL/AFP via Getty Images Queen Elizabeth II: Life in pictures Queen Elizabeth II Queen Elizabeth II and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex gesture during their visit to the Storyhouse in Chester, Cheshire in 2018 AFP via Getty Images Queen Elizabeth II: Life in pictures Queen Elizabeth II Prince Charles reacts as he sits with his mother Britain's Queen Elizabeth II during an event to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the D-Day landings, in Portsmouth in 2019 AFP via Getty Images Queen Elizabeth II: Life in pictures Queen Elizabeth II The Duke and Duchess of Sussex are joined by her mother, Doria Ragland, as they show their new son, Archie Harrison Mountbatten-Windsor, to the Queen Elizabeth II and the Duke of Edinburgh at Windsor Castle Chris Allerton/Sussex Royal/PA Queen Elizabeth II: Life in pictures Queen Elizabeth II Queen Elizabeth II reacts as she visits the Haig Housing Trust in Morden in 2019 POOL/AFP via Getty Images Queen Elizabeth II: Life in pictures Queen Elizabeth II Queen Elizabeth II takes her seat on the The Sovereign's Throne in the House of Lords next to Prince Charles, before reading the Queen's Speech during the State Opening of Parliament in 2019 POOL/AFP via Getty Images Queen Elizabeth II: Life in pictures Queen Elizabeth II Queen Elizabeth II looks at the coffin of Britain's Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh during his funeral service at St George's Chapel in Windsor Castle POOL/AFP via Getty Images Queen Elizabeth II: Life in pictures Queen Elizabeth II Queen Elizabeth II and Britain's Prince Charles, Prince of Wales pose alongside the tree which they planted to mark the start of the official planting season for the Queen's Green Canopy (QGC) at the Balmoral Cricket Pavilion, Balmoral Estate in Scotland POOL/AFP via Getty Images Queen Elizabeth II: Life in pictures Queen Elizabeth II Britain's Queen Elizabeth II cuts a cake to celebrate the start of the Platinum Jubilee during a reception in the Ballroom of Sandringham House, the Queen's Norfolk residence on February 5, 2022. - Queen Elizabeth II on Sunday will became the first British monarch to reign for seven decades, in a bittersweet landmark as she also marked the 70th anniversary of her father's death AFP/Getty Queen Elizabeth II: Life in pictures Queen Elizabeth II Queen Elizabeth II arrives in Westminster Abbey accompanied by Prince Andrew, Duke of York for the Service Of Thanksgiving For The Duke Of Edinburgh on March 29, 2022 in London Getty

What is Trooping the Colour?

Trooping the Colour is the annual birthday ceremony on Horse Guards Parade in London which will take place on Saturday.

Recommended Read more Nine surprising facts about Queen Elizabeth II

Broadcast live on the BBC, the event sees members of the royal family don traditional clothing and ride horses along with 1,4000 soldiers from regiments of the British and Commonwealth armies down the parade while the Queen and Duke follow in a carriage.

The procession involves around 200 horses, the Queen stopped riding a horse in the procession in 1987 and the Duke of Edinburgh rode one every year until he was 82.

The bands of the Household Cavalry and foot guards provide the music before the Royal Air Force stage a fly-past watched by members of the Royal Family from the balcony of Buckingham Palace.

What other celebrations are there?

On Friday there was a National Service of Thanksgiving at St Pauls Cathedral presented by the Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby. The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, Prince Harry, Princess Anne and other senior royals were in attendance as were David and Samantha Cameron. Sir David Attenborough read an account by Paddington creator Michael Bond, who was in attendance at the ceremony, which reflected on his 90 years of growing up.

The Queen and Duke, the Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cambridge then hosted a lunch at Buckingham Palace for visiting Governors-General.

Also involved in the jam-packed day was an after-service reception for 1,800 guests at Londons guildhall.

On Sunday, there will be a Patrons Lunch street party for 1,000 people in the Mall. The Queens eldest grandchild Peter Phillips organised the event and the Queen, Duke and other senior royals will attend.

Additional reporting by the Press Association.
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British astronaut Tim Peake set another record when he became the first person to be named in the Queen's Birthday Honours while in space.

The 44-year-old was aboard the International Space Station (ISS) when he received the call informing him of his recommendation for Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George.

Eight days before his return to Earth, he spoke of his delight, and dedicated the award to those who had made his mission possible.

Sending a message from the ISS, he said: "I am honoured to receive the first appointment to the Most Distinguished Order of St Michael and St George for extraordinary service beyond our planet.

"All of the training and preparation couldn't prepare me for looking down on our Earth from orbit.

"But this isn't an award for me.

"This is to recognise the hundreds of dedicated staff who have made my Principia mission possible, working together across national boundaries to build, operate and maintain our scientific outpost in space - the International Space Station.

"I am only one privileged person in a complex team of technicians, scientists, engineers, educators, trainers and flight directors, all working in pursuit of one of the greatest scientific and technical challenges of our time - exploring our Solar system for the benefit of people on Earth.

"This award is for them."

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.

Major Peake, who was recognised for services to space research and scientific education, became the first British person to walk in space on January 15.

He said the walk had been the highlight of his six-month mission, which began on December 15 last year.

The father-of-two graduated from Sandhurst in 1992 as an officer in the Army Air Corps and was selected for an exchange posting with the US Army, flying Apache helicopters at Fort Hood, Texas, from 1999 to 2002.

He returned to the UK and worked as an Apache helicopter instructor from 2002 to 2005, when he played a key role in introducing the Apache into service with the British Army.

On retirement from the Army in 2009, he was employed as a helicopter test pilot for AgustaWestland, flying Apache, Lynx, EH101 and A109 aircraft.

He was selected as a European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut in May 2009 and completed basic training in November 2010.


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Five British teenagers have been caught up in a gang-related shooting at a beachside bar in Bulgaria while on holiday to celebrate the end of secondary school.

Ross Warbeck, Nathan Smith, Joel Ewart, Jack Adams and Craig Pool were drinking at the 4 You restaurant in Sunny Beach, Burgas, when a gun battle broke out on Wednesday evening.

Ross, 17, told The Independent the group had been enticed into the bar with the promise of free beers, describing it as really nice with good music and friendly staff.

After about 15 minutes Nathan noticed about five men in masks running into the bar in a line and then people started shooting, he said.

The teenagers, seen around a table in the centre of the image, were photographed by staff at the 4 You restaurant shortly before the shooting on 8 June (Facebook)

At first we all thought plates had been dropped but then people came running out of the restaurant area with prams and stuff screaming.

We all ran out of the bar by jumping over the low wall surrounding the pub.

When we looked back we could see that about 10 more unmasked men outside shooting into the bar, and a gunfight happened for about a minute before they all ran off in different directions - the whole thing seemed well planned out.

The shooting left a notorious drug lord known as Mityo the Eyes in a critical condition with bullet wounds, while a 21-year-old man believed to be one of his bodyguards was killed.

The shocked teenagers, who were celebrating leaving the Langholm Academy in Dumfries and Galloway, were uninjured in the incident and decided to continue their holiday in the resort, which is the largest and most popular on Bulgarias Black Sea coastline.

The 4 You restaurant has a five-star rating on a popular reviews website and photos posted on its Facebook page shortly before the shooting showed the restaurant almost full of customers listening to live music.

One image showed the Scottish friends sat at a table in the centre of the outdoor terrace, smiling and chatting surrounded by other diners.

Ross said the photo was taken minutes before the carnage ensured, adding: Up until that point everything has been completely five stars.

Bulgarian police said the battle was between a gang led by notorious drug lord Dimitar Zhelyazkov, known as Mityo Ochite (Mityo the Eyes), and a rival group.

He entered the restaurant with a gang of 30 men, Balkan Insight reported, being welcomed by shots fired by around 10 gunmen.

The chief secretary of the interior ministry, Georgi Kostov, said the gun fight was provoked by a personal dispute, while local reports claimed Zhelyazkov was attempting to extort money.

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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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. 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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. 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In 2008 he was convicted of leading a gang involved in drug trafficking and prostitution but received a prison sentence of just four years.

At least 19 people have been arrested in connection with the shooting so far and police are continuing to appeal for information.

It has provoked a political row in Bulgaria, with Prime Minister Boyko Borissov criticising police for failing to prevent the shooting and letting gang members block the area around Burgas hospital and allegedly harass journalists.

The interior minister, who was summoned to parliament for questioning, said plans were being made for increased security measures and more stringent controls in the resort.

The Foreign and Commonwealth Office said it was aware of the incident but had not been asked to provide assistance.
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The British father of a toddler trapped in Iran without her parents has sung Happy Birthday to her via Skype and left a card and balloons for her at the Iranian embassy.

Richard Ratcliffes daughter Gabriella is currently staying with grandparents in Iran as she is unable to return to the UK without her mother to take her home.

Her mother, Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, was arrested on 3 April at an airport in Iran after visiting her family with her daughter and has been held in solitary confinement due to an unspecified issue of national security.

Mr Radcliffe, who is from north London, said his wife had been detained without charge by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard as she planned to fly back to London and was taken to an unknown location in Kerman Province, around 621 miles south of the capital Tehran.

He said she had been forced to sign a confession under duress despite not knowing what she was accused of, and it was three days before she was allowed to telephone her family to tell them what was going on.

Gabriella - who is a British citizen - is currently being cared for by grandparents, but has had her passport confiscated and can only leave the country if accompanied by her mother or father according to Iranian law.

Mr Ratcliffe has been advised not to go to Iran for his own safety.

Mr Ratcliffe with his wife and daughter. Nazanin has travelled in the country without problems in the past (Family Handout)

Speaking to his daughter via Skype outside the Iranian embassy he used her birthday to issue a fresh plea for the return of Nazanin and Gabriella.

A Change.org petition organised by the Free Nazanin campaign has gathered more than 760,000 signatures since its launch and urges David Cameron to intervene.

Mr Ratcliffe also tried to present a card and balloons to the embassy, asking them to pass it onto his daughter.

Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who works as a project-coordinator for the Thomson Reuters Foundation, has travelled in the country before without incident and her husband does not believe they was anything in her work or personal background which should provoke the suspicions of the Iranian authorities.

Mr Ratcliffe said he was going against the advice of the Foreign Office by speaking out because he hoped to could use public pressure to secure her release.

He said support from the public was really really powerful and helped him keep going.

"I look at all these lovely comments, and some of them are so beautiful they'll bring tears to my eyes: the energy and the love and the kindness that's out there.

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

"Today is quite a happy day. Her birthday is tomorrow - and that will be a sad day.

"Sometimes you speak to Gabriella and she just gets really upset and keeps asking for her mum, which is the most heartbreaking part."

A Foreign Office spokeswoman told the BBC: "We have been providing support to the family of a British-Iranian national since we were first informed of her arrest, and will continue to do so."

Additional reporting by PA
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There is a very real prospect that Britain will vote to leave the European Union, Labours Shadow Home Secretary Andy Burnham has said, as he criticised his party for failing to reach out to all its supporters.

His comments came as two more Labour MPs joined a small group within the party campaigning for Brexit. Bassetlaw MP John Mann predicted his Westminster colleagues would be shocked by how many Labour supporters back Brexit on polling day and said immigration was the key factor in his decision.

Mr Burnham told BBC Newsnight that Labour had been far too much Hampstead and not enough Hull in recent years.

Here we are two weeks away from the very real prospect that Britain will vote for isolation," he said.

"I think it would have a profound effect on our national life - the fragmentation that will come, the fear and the division.

"Those are all the things that the terrorists couldn't create with their bombs and yet we will have a situation where society becomes more divided."

Mr Burnham said his comments had not been a criticism of the Labour EU campaign, but a reflection on the partys direction since 1994.

But senior Labour figures are growing increasingly concerned about the response to the EU debate encountered among supporters on the doorstep.

Writing in The Sun, Mr Mann said that many Labour supporters and councillors would back Brexit, claiming that the speed of immigration from the EU was worsening inequality in the country and putting pressure on schools and the NHS.

I dont want to live in a country with 80-90 million people living in it. I dont want everything to be one big city. And the only way you can deal with that is by controlling borders, he said.

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

But former Labour leader Ed Miliband hit back, saying that it was wrong to use immigration as an alibi to explain problems in public services.

Pointing out that levels of patient satisfaction in the NHS were at record highs in 2011, shortly after the Coalition government came to power - and at a time of high immigration - he told BBC Radio 4s Today programme: I dont think its immigration causing problems in the NHS its Jeremy Hunt and David Cameron.

Labours official Remain campaign will today warn that Brexit could lead to 18 billion of further Government spending cuts as a consequence of the economic downturn most experts predict would follow a vote to Leave.

Deputy leader Tom Watson, will say: Working people across the UK face a double threat if we vote to Leave: a massive black hole in the public finances, and an unfair Tory Government that will make ordinary families pay for it through further cuts and tax rises.

Labour is clear that Britain is better off in Europe. It brings us jobs, growth and investment, protects British workers and consumers and helps keep us safe. Leaving would put that at risk.

People like Boris Johnson and Michael Gove might be able to afford that risk  but millions of working people across our country simply cant.
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Germanys finance minister has ruled out Britain having access to the European single market in the event of Brexit, directly contradicting the reassurances of Boris Johnson and the Leave campaign.

In an interview in a special edition of German weekly Der Spiegel, Wolfgang Schauble said that leaving the EU but staying in the single market would not work for the UK, saying: In is in. Out is out.

Some non-EU countries, most notably Norway, do have access to the single market, but must as a consequence allow freedom of movement for EU citizens. The Leave campaign has put controlling EU migration at the centre of its campaign, but also argued that Britain could still have access to the single market. Mr Schaubles comments appear to pour cold water on the prospects of any such compromise.

He told Der Spiegel: That wont work. It would require the country to abide by the rules of a club from which it currently wants to withdraw.

If the majority in Britain opts for Brexit, that would be a decision against the single market. In is in. Out is out. One has to respect the sovereignty of the British people.

Leave campaign figurehead Boris Johnson repeated the claim that Britain would have access to the single market after Brexit as recently as Friday nights ITV referendum debate.

In the interview, which will be published on Saturday, Mr Schauble said that in the event of Brexit, Europe could work without Britain.

German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schauble (AFP/Getty) (AFP/Getty Images)

At some point the British will realise they have taken the wrong decision, he added. And then we will accept them back one day if thats what they want.

However, he said that a vote to Leave would send shockwaves around the EU, and could encourage other member states to consider leaving the bloc. He said the EU would not necessarily respond to Brexit by integrating more quickly, but would consider reforms to address the concerns of Eurosceptic citizens.

How, for example, would the Netherlands react, as a country that has traditionally had very close ties to Britain? he asked. It is important for the EU to send the message that it has understood the vote and it is prepared to learn from it.

In response to Brexit, we couldnt simply call for more integration, he said. That would be crude; many would rightfully wonder whether we politicians still havent understood.

 What to believe about the EU referendum

Even a narrow vote in favour of Brexit would be a wake up call for Europe, he said, and the EU may respond by reducing bureaucracy.

The special Brexit-themed edition of Der Spiegel will be published in both German and English with the front cover headline: Please dont go!.

In an editorial, the magazine will say that it is unbelievable that British people do not see how much theyve shaped the continent, how much we value them here, how close we Germans feel to them".
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The British public have it wrong on immigrants and wrong on the EU.

According to their research by Ipsos MORI, British people think far more EU citizens live in the UK than actually do, that we pay far more money to the EU budget than is the case, and that we significantly overestimate the amount of benefits paid to EU migrants.

In a survey of 1,000 people, weighted to represent the nations demographic profile in terms of age, gender, ethnicity and other factors, respondents claimed that, on average, 15 per cent of the UK population are EU immigrants. That would be 10.5m people. The correct figure is 3.5m. Those who intend to vote Leave in the referendum put the figure at 20 per cent. Remainers put the figure at 10 per cent.

 EU Referendum: Latest Poll

One in seven people (15 per cent) believe at least one Euro-myth, including bans on barmaids showing too much cleavage, and the forcible renaming of Bombay Mix to Mumbai mix. Neither are real. 24 per cent of people believe overly bendy bananas are banned from import to the UK under EU law. (Malformed bananas are banned from export under an EU regulation.)

84 per cent of people think the UK is in the top three contributors to the EU budget. 23 per cent think it is the single biggest. In fact the UK is in fourth place, behind Germany, which pays 21 per cent, France (16 per cent) and Italy (12 per cent). The UK pays 11 per cent.

But the UK receives less money back than Germany, Italy, Spain and France, a fact not lost on 58 per cent of respondents.

David Camerons rebate did much to publicise the issue of child benefit payments to EU migrants, a fact that few people in the UK were even aware of. 14 per cent of people now think that 30 per cent of the UKs Child Benefit budget is sent to children living overseas. 23 per cent of people think that 13 per cent of it does. The correct figure is 0.3 per cent. It means that almost 49 per cent of the population overestimate the figure by more than 40 times.

Only 5 per cent of people were able to name an MEP representing their area.

The EU spends 6 per cent of its budget on administration. The average guess was 27 per cent. Were this the case, the spend would be 30bn a year, instead of around 6bn.

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

On the impact of the referendum the general public were similarly misguided. 63 per cent think that Brexit will reduce immigration, an assurance that the Leave camp have consistently failed to give. Only 25 per cent of people think it will reduce living standards.

 What to believe about the EU referendum

Professor Anand Menon, Director of the UK in a Changing Europe, who co-authored the study said:

There are obviously still high levels of ignorance about the EU, which is troubling so close to the referendum. However, it is not so surprising, given the lack of accurate information provided to the public, as well as the mistruths, exaggerations, and scaremongering that have taken place during this campaign. Its now more imperative than ever that the public can be provided with as much factual information about the EU as possible before they cast their vote
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Nicola Sturgeon has refused to rule out a second Scottish Independence referendum after she was labelled anti-democratic as a debate over Britains position in the EU turned to the subject of sovereignty.

Speaking in the ITV debate, ex-serviceman Len Chappell asked what sovereignty meant to the panel, an interesting subject for Ms Sturgeon who, while urging Britain to Remain, has made her wish for an independent Scotland clear.

The Scottish First Minister became visibly riled as Tory MP Andrea Leadsom, calling for Brexit, claimed Ms Sturgeon is "not a democrat" because she wants Scotland to leave the UK despite the result of the referendum.

In response an agitated Ms Sturgeon failed to rule out another Scottish referendum, saying she was "not here tonight to speculate about the results of a Brexit vote".

Former London mayor Boris Johnson, championing the Leave campaign, claimed Ms Sturgeon is "keener to be ruled by Brussels than by Westminster politicians".

Speaking of sovereignty he said we would increase our influence by coming out of the EU because it "tries to replace the UK's voice" in the world.

The EU "speaks for us", he said, "and when there is no EU voice there is no UK voice".

What's the European Parliament ever done for us? Show all 5 1 /5 What's the European Parliament ever done for us? What's the European Parliament ever done for us? A cap on the amount of hours an employer can make you work The Working Time directive provides legal standards to ensure the health and safety of employees in Europe. Among the many rules are a working week of a maximum 48 hours, including overtime, a daily rest period of 11 hours in every 24, a break if a person works for six hours or more, and one day off in every seven. It also includes provisions for paid annual leave of at least four weeks every year Getty Images What's the European Parliament ever done for us? Helping the people of Britain to avoid smoking In 2014 MEPs passed the Tobacco Products Directive strengthening existing rules on the manufacture, production and presentation of tobacco products. This includes things like reduced branding, restrictions on products containing flavoured tobacco, health warnings on cigarette packets and provisions for e-cigarettes to ensure they are safe What's the European Parliament ever done for us? Helping you to make the right choices with your food Thanks to the European Parliament, UK consumers have access to more information than ever about their food and drink. This includes amount of fat, and how much of it is saturated, carbohydrates, sugars, protein and so on. It also includes portion sizes and guideline daily amount information so people can make informed choices about their diet. All facts must be clear and easy to understand What's the European Parliament ever done for us? Two year guarantees and 14-day returns policy for all products Consumers across the EU have access to a number of rights, from things which are potentially very useful, to things which used to be annoying. For example, shoppers in the UK receive a two-year guarantee on all products, and a 14-day period to change their minds and return a purchase, these things are useful www.PeopleImages.com-licence restrictions apply What's the European Parliament ever done for us? Keeping your air nice and fresh (and safe) Believe it or not, although the situation is improving, some areas of the UK have appalling air quality. A report by the Royal College of Physicians released on 23 February says 40,000 deaths are caused by outdoor air pollution in the UK every year. Air pollution is linked to a number of illnesses and conditions, from Asthma to diabetes and dementia. The report estimates the costs to British business and the health service add up to 20 billion every year

Previously, Ms Sturgeon said while the UK is independent, there are "some big issues that no individual country can tackle alone", citing climate change and workers' rights.

Labours shadow First Secretary of State Angela Eagle, for Remain, said sovereignty means being able to protect Britains values in an international world, adding: "We can achieve more working together than we could do alone.

Mr Johnson however said the country would have "that influence and more if we come out of the EU".

Opinion polls suggest that a majority (54 per cent) of people in Scotland want to remain in the EU, with 32 per cent wanting to leave and 14 per cent saying dont know. If the UK voted to leave in the 23 June referendum, it would reopen the debate on whether Scotland should become independent.

In September 2014, Scotland agreed by 55 per cent to 45 per cent to remain part of the UK. The Scottish National Party says the Scottish Parliament should have the right to hold another referendum after a material change in the circumstances  such as Brexit against Scotlands wishes  or clear and sustained evidence that independence has become the preferred option of most Scots.
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The Labour Party brought Eddie Izzard into their campaign with the hope of energising young people and, in their defence, it at least wasnt one of them who shouted an exasperated Shut up! from out of the Question Time audience as his ongoing private squabbles with Nigel Farage made the programme close to unwatchable.

Izzard was first shouted down by a man in the crowd as he spoke over the Ukip leader - then a woman repeated the sentiment as Farage tried to interrupt Hilary Benn, the Shadow Foreign Secretary.

As the host, David Dimbleby, tried to move the debate on, Izzard, 54, continually harangued Farage, 52, who was conveniently placed to his immediate right, over his immigrant family.

"You wont explain to me why you, an immigrant family, are so anti-immigration, he said. "Everyone here would like to hear - the whole of the country would like to hear."

Nigel Farage has a German wife who is paid from the EU budget to work as his political secretary.

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

I think we should make you change seats if you go on like this, David Dimbleby said, before the rather more brisk interjection from the member of the audience in Folkestone, Kent.

Eventually, the pair were told by Mr Dimbleby: "Calm down because the audience will get so cross they'll walk out. They'll do a Brexit!"

To which Mr Benn added: "There's a bit of a problem controlling the panel this week..."
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An exclusive poll for The Independent has shown one in three voters believe immigration is a bigger issue in the EU Referendum than the economy.

The survey of 2,000 people by ORB gave the Brexit campaign a remarkable 10-point lead over the Remain camp.

But it found that when, considering how to vote, a third of people think mass immigration is a far more important factor than the effect on the economy - which has been the focus of the official Vote Leave campaign lead by Boris Johnson and Michael Gove.

The alternative Out camp, Leave.EU, lead by Ukip leader Nigel Farage has focused on immigration. It has been accused of racism and stoking up fears about sex attacks and terrorism.

Mr Farage was heavily criticised for comments in The Sunday Telegraph at the weekend where he said the mass sex attacks in Cologne over New Year could be the "nuclear bomb" of the campaign.

Meanwhile, two members of the Vote Leave campaign, Labour MP Khalid Mahmood and Tory backbencher Sarah Wollaston, revealed they would now join the Remain side due to the "racist" undertones of the Brexit campaign and its "post-truth" statements about the NHS.

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

Mr Mahmood told The Daily Telegraph he was "disappointed" by Mr Johnson's comments about Barack Obama's Kenyan father and the Vote Leave focus on the potential accession of Turkey.

In our latest poll, 55 per cent of respondents said the UK should the EU - a rise of four points since our last poll in April.

Take our EU referendum poll:

These figures are weighted to take account of people's likelihood to vote on 23 June.

The online poll, taken on Wednesday and Thursday, suggests the Out campaign has begun to pick up momentum following a series of TV debates.

Despite this, respondents are still all too aware of the impact their decision will have.

Just one in five voters said there was "no risk at all" if Britain voted to leave and 40 per cent agreed with the statement "whether we decide to leave the EU or to remain, the result won't have much impact on my daily life".

A further 69 per cent said the campaign was too negative.

But turnout is likely to remain key. The ORB poll found that 78 per cent of Leave supporters say they will definitely vote compared to only 66 per cent of Remain supporters.

The majority of those polled - 52 per cent - believe the Remain side is likely to win which could affect turnout if people believe the result is a foregone conclusion.
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Ukips leader Nigel Farage is to become the unlikely poster boy of the campaign to keep Britain in the European Union  because they think he is such a divisive figure that even Eurosceptic voters wont want to be associated with him.

Over the next two weeks Remain campaigners will ask voters whether they want to live in Nigels Britain  a country which is cut off from the world, anti-immigrant and backward looking.

Senior figures even looked at creating a poster with an image of a tiny Boris Johnson in Mr Farages pocket, in a take on the notorious Ed Miliband/Nicola Sturgeon election poster.

Instead they will today unveil an image of a cigar-smoking Mr Farage in a casino with Michael Gove and Boris Johnson under the strap line  "Dont let them gamble with your future".

The strategy is based on polling that suggests that while committed Leave voters admire Mr Farage, most undecided voters do not.

The campaign will also try and turn Vote Leaves strength on immigration into a negative by suggesting that it is slightly racist and not something people want to be associated with.

Boris Johnson and Michael Gove are now running a campaign based on blaming immigrants for all of Britains problems, said a senior Remain source.

 What to believe about the EU referendum

That is Nigels tune and we are going to pointing that out to people. You are going to be hearing a lot more about Nigel in the next two weeks.

A taste of the new strategy has been apparent in the last few days in the comments of senior Remain campaigners.

On Tuesday night George Osborne told Andrew Neil in an interview: "I do not want Nigel Farage's vision of Britain. It is mean, it is divisive, it is not who we are as a country."

David Cameron used a similar phrase at PMQs when he said: "What I want to see is not Nigel Farage's Little England, but a strong Britain in Europe."

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

Amber Rudd joined in during last night's ITV debate, attacking the Leavers and the "company they keep".

Even Vote Leave fear the strategy could be effective. He has been described by his own side as "divisive", "like Marmite" and "capable of knocking percentage points off our vote".

"He is an acquired taste, and most of his fans have acquired it by now," one pro-Brexit Tory MP told The Times.

Vote Leave have long tried to keep him away from their main campaign  and were furious when ITV agreed that he could "debate" with David Cameron in the first of their televised referendum programmes.
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The campaign to take Britain out of the EU has opened up a remarkable 10-point lead over the Remain camp, according to an exclusive poll for The Independent.

The survey of 2,000 people by ORB found that 55 per cent believe the UK should leave the EU (up four points since our last poll in April), while 45 per cent want it to remain (down four points). These figures are weighted to take account of peoples likelihood to vote. It is by far the biggest lead the Leave camp has enjoyed since ORB began polling the EU issue for The Independent a year ago, when it was Remain who enjoyed a 10-point lead. Now the tables have turned.

Even when the findings are not weighted for turnout, Leave is on 53 per cent (up three points since April) and Remain on 47 per cent (down three). The online poll, taken on Wednesday and Thursday, suggests the Out camp has achieved momentum at the critical time ahead of the 23 June referendum.

 David Cameron asked if he is 'finished as PM' after EU referendum

Differential turnout could prove crucial. ORB found that 78 per cent of Leave supporters say they will definitely vote  describing themselves as a 10 on a scale of 0-10, while only 66 per cent of Remain supporters say the same.

The results will heighten fears in the Remain campaign that it is losing ground among Labour supporters, who are seen as critical to securing victory for it. According to ORB, 56 per cent of people who voted for Labour at last years general election now back Remain when turnout is taken into account, but a dangerously high 44 per cent support Leave. Only 38 per cent of Tory voters endorse David Camerons stance by backing Remain, while 62 per cent support Leave.

Many people seem ready to vote for Brexit even though the poll shows they believe it involves some risk and think the economy is more important than immigration  widely seen as the Leave camps trump card.

The one crumb of comfort for the Remain camp is that when people were asked to predict the referendum result, the average figures were 52 per cent for Remain and 48 per cent for Leave. This wisdom of the crowd polling proved accurate during Irelands referendum on gay marriage last year.

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 ORB survey highlights the stark generational differences over the EU. Seven out of 10 people aged 18-24 back Remain and 30 per cent Leave. Support for Leave rises up the age scale to 64 per cent among those aged 55 and over (figures weighted for turnout). Crucially, just over half (56 per cent) of 18-24 year-olds say they will definitely vote, compared to more than 80 per cent of those aged 55 and over.

Support for EU membership is highest in Scotland, with 60 per cent backing Remain. But a majority of people in every other region of Great Britain favour withdrawal when turnout is taken into account. In London, seen as a strong area for the Remain campaign, only 44 per cent back staying in the EU and 56 per cent favour voting to leave. This is due to the turnout factor. Only 66 per cent of people in London say they will definitely vote, the lowest of any region.

Take our EU referendum poll:

However, warnings about the economic impact of Brexit appear to have hit home. According to ORB, eight out of 10 people  and of Conservative voters  think leaving the EU would pose some risk, and only 19 per cent think it would pose no risk at all. But a majority of both groups are still prepared to take the risk.

Similarly, 52 per cent of people agree with the statement that the economy is a bigger issue than immigration when considering how to vote in the referendum, while 37 per cent disagree.

Seven out of 10 people think the campaign has been too negative so far, while only 15 per cent disagree. The Leave camp will see this finding as a sign that what it has dubbed Remains Project Fear has not worked.

Four out of 10 people believe that whatever the referendum result, it will not have much impact on their everyday life, but more people (44 per cent) disagree with this statement.

Polling experts say the result is still too close to call, and that there has been a late swing to the status quo option in previous referendums, including the one on Scottish independence in 2014. They also point out that telephone polls consistently give Remain a higher rating than online surveys.



Should the UK remain a member of the EU or leave the EU?

Weighted for turnout Now April Remain 45 per cent 49 per cent Leave 55 per cent 51 per cent

Headline Figure (not weighted for turnout) Now April Remain 47 per cent 50 per cent Leave 53 per cent 50 per cent

What people think the result will be (average prediction)

Remain 52 per cent Leave 48 per cent

How much of a risk do you think leaving the EU would pose?

A great deal of risk 26 per cent Some risk 55 per cent No risk at all 19 per cent

When considering how to vote, the economy is a bigger issue than immigration

Agree 52 per cent Disagree 37 per cent Don't know 11 per cent

Whether we decide to leave the EU or to remain, the result won't have much impact on my daily life

Agree 40 per cent Disagree 44 per cent Don't know 17 per cent

I feel the campaign so far has been too negative

Agree 69 per cent Disagree 15 per cent Don't know 15 per cent

The EU referendum debate has so far been characterised by bias, distortion and exaggeration. So until 23 June we were running a series of question and answer features that explain the most important issues in a detailed, dispassionate way to help inform your decision.

What is Brexit and why are we having an EU referendum?

Will we gain or lose rights by leaving the European Union?

What will happen to immigration if there's Brexit?

Will Brexit make the UK more or less safe?

Will the UK benefit from being released from EU laws?

Will leaving the EU save taxpayers money and mean more money for the NHS?

What will Brexit do to UK trade?

How Brexit will affect British tourism

What will Brexit mean for British tourists booking holidays in the EU?

Will Brexit help or damage the environment?

Will Brexit mean that Europeans have to leave the UK?

What will Brexit mean for British expats?
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A student has attacked Nigel Farages claim that Britain is at risk from sex attacks by migrants during an EU debate.

Speaking with just weeks to go until the historic vote on the future of the UK's relationship with the EU, the Ukip leader said the issue could be the "nuclear bomb" of the EU referendum campaign.

Mr Farage made the comments in a Sunday Telegraph interview, in which he was asked about sex attacks in Cologne on New Year's Eve.

However, speaking at a Buzzfeed EU referendum debate on Facebook Live, audience member Dinah slammed Mr Farage's comments. She said that Britain already had a huge problem with sexual violence against women, and that the majority of the men accused of sexually assaulting and robbing over 1,000 women in the western German city were citizens rather than recent refugees.

And second, you say that like England isnt already in the top five for rape statistics in the world without those migrants coming in, she continued.

You cant blame it on the migrants when people get sexually harassed every single day in the streets.

If you ask every single woman here she could tell you about 100 incidents.

Mr Farage insisted his comments about migrant rape were taken out of context.

He said the Sunday Telegraph had asked him whether the attacks were the nuclear bomb of the campaign and he had said it could be.

I said it could be a nuclear bomb and it is an issue. Thats it. Thats all I said, he insisted It is a big issue in Germany and in Sweden but thankfully it is not a big deal here.

This is a big issue in Germany. Its a big issue in Sweden.

The mayors in northern Sweden say to women not to go out at night unaccompanied.

What's the European Parliament ever done for us? Show all 5 1 /5 What's the European Parliament ever done for us? What's the European Parliament ever done for us? A cap on the amount of hours an employer can make you work The Working Time directive provides legal standards to ensure the health and safety of employees in Europe. Among the many rules are a working week of a maximum 48 hours, including overtime, a daily rest period of 11 hours in every 24, a break if a person works for six hours or more, and one day off in every seven. It also includes provisions for paid annual leave of at least four weeks every year Getty Images What's the European Parliament ever done for us? Helping the people of Britain to avoid smoking In 2014 MEPs passed the Tobacco Products Directive strengthening existing rules on the manufacture, production and presentation of tobacco products. This includes things like reduced branding, restrictions on products containing flavoured tobacco, health warnings on cigarette packets and provisions for e-cigarettes to ensure they are safe What's the European Parliament ever done for us? Helping you to make the right choices with your food Thanks to the European Parliament, UK consumers have access to more information than ever about their food and drink. This includes amount of fat, and how much of it is saturated, carbohydrates, sugars, protein and so on. It also includes portion sizes and guideline daily amount information so people can make informed choices about their diet. All facts must be clear and easy to understand What's the European Parliament ever done for us? Two year guarantees and 14-day returns policy for all products Consumers across the EU have access to a number of rights, from things which are potentially very useful, to things which used to be annoying. For example, shoppers in the UK receive a two-year guarantee on all products, and a 14-day period to change their minds and return a purchase, these things are useful www.PeopleImages.com-licence restrictions apply What's the European Parliament ever done for us? Keeping your air nice and fresh (and safe) Believe it or not, although the situation is improving, some areas of the UK have appalling air quality. A report by the Royal College of Physicians released on 23 February says 40,000 deaths are caused by outdoor air pollution in the UK every year. Air pollution is linked to a number of illnesses and conditions, from Asthma to diabetes and dementia. The report estimates the costs to British business and the health service add up to 20 billion every year

These are big issues in those countries in Europe who have taken in a big influx of young, single, unaccompanied men who have come from countries where women arent even second class citizens.

He said it was not a major issue for the UK while it is not part of the Schengen area but could be in the future.

He believes the issue of migrant rape was something people will decide to vote on and claimed that it was about standing up to the Establishment as the single market is a big cartel that only benefits giant multinationals.

If Britain votes to leave on 23 June, Mr Farage claimed there will be a domino effect and the Dutch will vote for Dexit and the Netherlands will vote for Nexit.
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The clock struck 10. Julie Etchingham said her goodbyes, the doors swung open and in to the spin room they came, great big buckets of bullshit in each hand.

Spin is a word you hear a lot in politics. Some people will tell you its meaning is unclear. Its not. It just means bullshit. The job of the spinner is to throw it at journalists with such force that, unless it lands a direct hit on the targets axis of rotational symmetry, it will cause them literally to spin, becoming so dizzy that they will forget what they have just seen and heard with their own eyes and ears and simply repeat the bullshit they are now physically stained with.

Its a bit like Men in Black, only the suits are all crap, no one has even half an ounce of cool and rather than that memory-erasing flashbulb thing, theyve just got a series of angrily repeated lies.

Recommended Read more Boris accused of putting personal ambition ahead of national interest

In Iain Duncan Smith, calling it a slam dunk for leave.

In came Liz Truss: What is clear is that the Leave side dont have any arguments.

In came Priti Patel, doing her very best to remember what she'd just been told to say.

These are the people, dont forget, who have entrusted us all - and against our will - to make a decision of immense complexity and bewildering importance of which the consequences cannot possibly be known, and have equipped us to do it by placing us in the centre of a great blizzard of bullshit. And yet we cannot, of course, be capable of watching TV for a couple of hours and remembering what it is weve just seen.

If anyone did watch for the full two hours, what they were treated to was an extended game of Liars Swingball. There is not an original thought left in anyones head. There are no new points to be made. No new arguments. No new rebuttals. The heat is rising and the light is going out.

Youre going to hear a lot of nonsense from the leave campaign, said Angela Eagle in her opening remarks, and in her next breath claimed that the Conservatives want to curtail paid holiday. Does anyone believe the Conservatives actually want to do that?

David Cameron wanted to avoid televised blue on blue attacks throughout this campaign. It didnt happen. The only number Boris Johnson is interested in is Number 10, Amber Rudd said at the start, to whoops of delight from the audience. In her closing she said, Boris is the life and soul of the party but you wouldnt want him driving you home at the end of the night. Pre-planned, pre-scripted, these. Had the Prime Minister sanctioned this? Approved it? Requested it?

Im in politics. Amber is in politics. Boris is in politics, said Liz Truss. So thats clear.

Three times, the Remain side attacked Boris for wanting to be PM. Its hardly an unreasonable ambition of an elected politician. Though the charge, of course, is that he doesnt believe what he is saying.

The usual attack lines were there from him: Do you want to be ruled by an unelected elite? he asked, certain in the knowledge that, if he wins this referendum, that is precisely what he will become.

For a man who, by his own admission, ummed and arred and agonised for weeks if not months, quite possibly years, about what side he would come down on in this referendum, there is much to laugh about in his utter certainty now.

Things fall apart, the centre cannot hold, wrote Yeats at the end of the world. The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.

The very worst, you might argue, go from one to the other.

And there, of course, was Nicola Sturgeon. As sharp and articulate as ever, speaking up for the "rights of people all across the UK." The UK, of course, being the union that her entire life's work is dedicated to breaking. Not so much Brexit as Bruck-up.

Back and forth the same old points went. The economy here, migration there. What we need is 'Filipino nurses and 'Indian anaesthetists' said Boris, as if their kids don't take up the same school places as Polish plumbers.

To win this referendum, someone surely, has to change someone elses mind? But surely no one can be made to listen to this stuff for long enough for that to happen?

If, for any reason, you want my advice, just make up your mind now, and stick with it. It is only going to get worse.
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The United Kingdoms first designated maternity clinic for rape survivors will open in London next month.

The service, which will be available through the NHS at St Bartholomews Hospital, will ensure that women who have experienced sexual violence receive sensitive care tailor made for them.

A lot of women who didnt have children were telling me that they wanted to have children, but they werent because they were worried that all these tests and this whole maternity experience would bring up what had happened in the past with the assault, explained Pavan Amara, founder of the My Body Back Project, which will run the clinic.

That was really, really unfair because theres no reason why somebody who has done that to you should have control of your life so far down the line.

Ms Amara was raped as a teenager, which caused her to avoid seeking routine medical treatment for ten years.

I didnt go to the GP because it reminded me of forensic testing.

Eventually, after realising that other victims of sexual violence had been behaving similarly, she decided to act by launching the UKs first clinic dedicated to these women.

Since it opened last August, hundreds of women have received STI tests, cervical screenings and routine exams. But over the course of the year, Ms Amara recognised that a key service was missing  maternity care.

The most stunning photos that capture the beauty of birth Show all 15 1 /15 The most stunning photos that capture the beauty of birth The most stunning photos that capture the beauty of birth First Place Winner: Marijke Thoen (Geboortefotografie) Underwater birth, baby with gorgeous curly hair The most stunning photos that capture the beauty of birth Best In Category: Labor (Apple Blossom Families) The Surge The most stunning photos that capture the beauty of birth Best In Category: Delivery (Birth Blessings Photography & Childbirth Services) En-Caul Unassisted Twin Water Birth The most stunning photos that capture the beauty of birth Best In Category: Postpartum (Natalia Walth Photography) Where peace begins The most stunning photos that capture the beauty of birth Honorable Mention: 'Love' (Krista Evans Photography) It calls to her both loudly and softly in song The most stunning photos that capture the beauty of birth Honorable Mention: 'Untethered Beginning for The Birthing Woman' (Angela Gallo) Maternal Grace The most stunning photos that capture the beauty of birth Honorable Mention: (alexandra kayy photography) In between two worlds The most stunning photos that capture the beauty of birth 'Untethered Beginning for The Birthing Woman' (Angela Gallo) The most stunning photos that capture the beauty of birth 'Support' (Ashton Renee Photography) The most stunning photos that capture the beauty of birth 'Earthside' (Amy Lynn Photography & Design) Amy Lynn Photography & Design The most stunning photos that capture the beauty of birth 'The wait in silence and calmness' (Senhoritas Fotografia) The most stunning photos that capture the beauty of birth 'A calm and loving support' (Coastal Lifestyles Photography) Shea Michelle Long The most stunning photos that capture the beauty of birth 'The Journey' (Bonnie Hussey Photography) Bonnie Hussey Photography The most stunning photos that capture the beauty of birth 'We did it!' (Chanda Williams, photographer doula) The most stunning photos that capture the beauty of birth 'She's here!' (Blue Muse Photo)

After interviewing more than a dozen of the clinics patients, she realised that there was a need specifically for maternity care.

Women will be able to choose physically what positions they want to be in, the wording that they want clinicians to use, exactly how they want the birth to be.

There will be psychology support as well, in case they do experience flashbacks during labour, she added.

Ms Pavan announced the launch of the maternity clinic yesterday at a maternity conference in London, but the doors wont actually open until next month.

In the meantime, however, women can start making appointments via email or through the website.

There isnt anything like this, and I think that really speaks volumes. I dont know why  there should have been. Quite frankly, we shouldnt be doing this now, because this has been a problem for a very long time.
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Isis fighters fleeing their Libyan stronghold of Sirte are reportedly cutting of their beards and long hair to blend in with civilians as militias advance on the city.

Forces allied to the countrys new unity government pushed into the city in tanks and pickup trucks mounted with machine guns on Thursday, backed by air strikes and bombardment from ships in the Mediterranean.

A Libyan naval commander, Rida Issa, said the entire coastline around the city was under tight control, leaving up to 1,800 Isis fighters unable to escape by sea.

 Libya: UN-backed government forces make gains in Sirte

With Sirte mostly surrounded, there were reports that some militants were attempting to blend in with displaced civilians by ditching their distinctive clothing and facial hair.

Ahmed Hadiya, a media official based in Misrata, told the Associated Press that his forces found sinks full of shaved-off beards and long hair inside a school taken from Isis, as well as mobile phones and leaflets pledging allegiance to Isis leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

In a statement, the Tripoli-based Government of National Unity (GNA) said its forces were in control of a military barracks, roads and bridges leaving into Sirte, where specialists were clearing mines and booby-trapped vehicles.

Dozens of fighters have been killed and hundreds wounded in a month of fighting in surrounding the symbolic city, which was the hometown of deposed leader Muammar Gaddafi and the scene of his death in the last major battle of the Libyan civil war.

Isis took advantage of the ensuing chaos to expand into the country, seizing Sirte and 155 miles of surrounding coastline in late 2014 to construct its biggest stronghold outside Syria and Iraq.

In pictures: Isis' Libyan stronghold of Sirte Show all 10 1 /10 In pictures: Isis' Libyan stronghold of Sirte In pictures: Isis' Libyan stronghold of Sirte Isis in Sirte Isis fighters parade through in Sirte in 2015 In pictures: Isis' Libyan stronghold of Sirte Isis in Sirte Islamic State (IS) group jihadists on the outskirts of Libya's western city of Sirte AFP/Getty In pictures: Isis' Libyan stronghold of Sirte Isis in Sirte A photo of a billboard in Sirte, Libya, listing seven rules for women's clothing, saying they must be loose-fitting and undecorated HRW/social media In pictures: Isis' Libyan stronghold of Sirte Isis in Sirte Isis militants process down a street in the coastal city of Sirte in Libya this week; the group has heralded Libya as its strategic gateway to attack Europe AFP/Getty Images In pictures: Isis' Libyan stronghold of Sirte Isis in Sirte An Isis lecture on Sharia at the Ouagadougou complex in Sirte, Libya, in 2016. HRW/social media In pictures: Isis' Libyan stronghold of Sirte Isis in Sirte A sign reading "The city of Sirte, under the shadow of Sharia" as smoke rises in the background while forces aligned with Libya's new unity government advance on the eastern and southern outskirts of the Islamic State stronghold of Sirte on 9 June. Reuters In pictures: Isis' Libyan stronghold of Sirte Isis in Sirte Fighters loyal to Libya's GNA prepare to launch attacks against Isis as they continue their resistance on the outskirts of the western city of Sirte Getty In pictures: Isis' Libyan stronghold of Sirte Isis in Sirte Forces loyal to Libya's UN-backed unity government are seen during clashes with jihadists of the Islamic State (IS) on the western outskirts of Sirte on June 2, 2016. AFP/Getty Images In pictures: Isis' Libyan stronghold of Sirte Isis in Sirte Forces loyal to Libya's UN-backed unity government fire during clashes with Isis around 14 miles west of Sirte on June 2, 2016. AFP/Getty Images In pictures: Isis' Libyan stronghold of Sirte Isis in Libya

Civilians trapped by the terrorist group have reported unbearable atrocities, including regular public executions and corpses left hanging or crucified in the streets.

Brigades mainly composed of fighters from the western city of Misrata have advanced rapidly, driving the militants back along the coastal road west of Sirte before seizing strategic points on the edge of the city.

A separate militia that controls terminals in Libya's oil crescent, the Petroleum Facilities Guard (PFG), said it had advanced further from the east to reach the town of Harawa, about 40 miles away.

Fighting was underway at symbolic locations including the Ouagadougou conference complex, where Isis holds compulsory Sharia instruction seminars, and a roundabout where militants previously hung the bodies of executed enemies had been seized.

Mohamed al-Gasri, a military spokesperson based in Misrata, told Reuters: We think that Sirte will be liberated within days, not weeks.

Forces loyal to Libya's UN-backed unity government fire during clashes with Isis around 14 miles west of Sirte on June 2, 2016. (AFP/Getty Images)

"The Daesh (Isis) snipers are a concern to us because they shoot from long distances and that has hindered us in the battle inside the city."

Pro-government militias have been the main fighting force for the UN-brokered unity government formed in January after more than four years of bloodshed and chaos following Gaddafis death.

They are being supported by the UK and other nations including the US, which sending a second aircraft carrier and its strike group of guided-missile cruisers and destroyers to bolster operations Mediterranean.

The Ministry of Defence told The Independent it could not comment on reports that British special forces were supporting militias in Sirte, alongside American and Jordanian teams.

The assault on Sirte comes as US-backed fighters in Syria converge on the Isis stronghold of Manbij on three sides, while Iraqi special forces push into the Iraqi city of Fallujah.

The so-called Islamic State has suffered setbacks on several fronts in the region where it captured large swathes of territory two years ago, including the loss of the ancient Syrian city of Palmyra earlier this year.

Analysts have interpreted its recent wave of almost daily suicide bombings in Iraq, as well as propaganda hailing its expansion into Bangladesh and other areas of Asia, as an effort to re-gain momentum and publicity.
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One man was shot at Dallas Love Field Airport after a police officer reportedly responded to a domestic incident outside of the baggage claim area.

Recommended Read more Bomb threat made against plane at LAX airport

A Dallas Police spokesperson confirmed to reporters that the suspect was a black male who allegedly attacked a woman with a rock found at the scene. Police described the man as the father of the female victim's child or children, but could not confirm whether they arrived at the airport together.

According to police, after an officer responded to the disturbance, the man allegedly rushed him while holding the rock, resulting in multiple shots fired. The number times the man was struck by bullets is undetermined.

Present at the scene was a car with smashed windows, surrounded by large rocks, and luggage resting outside the vehicle.

Eyewitnesses say that a man failed to comply with officers orders before they opened fire on him.

Video captured by Bryan Armstrong begins just at least nine shots shots are heard. Authorities can be heard yelling Stay down as a woman screams and a man repeats Oh my god.

The suspect was taken to the hospital after being shot by the officer. He was reported as "conscious" at the time he was transported, but his condition is unknown.

Despite earlier reports, the police spokesman said that the airport itself was not put on lockdown. Frightened bystanders ran past the TSA screening area, he said, prompting the security agency to re-screen everybody in the terminal. The baggage claim area was still close pending police investigation.

A spokesperson for Dallas Love Field was not immediately available for comment.
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At the funeral, Jaspen Boothe introduced herself as Serina Vines sister.

She spoke of the deceaseds heroism as a World War II veteran. She bent down and pressed her lips to the top of the casket.

Yet Boothe, like the 200 or so others who came to pay their respects Tuesday morning, had never met Vine. She had first heard about Vine a week ago, when she received a call that the 91-year-old homeless veteran with no known relatives was going to be buried at Quantico National Cemetery with only four people in attendance.

To Boothe, herself a one-time homeless veteran, that was unacceptable.

She took to social media, posting in veterans groups, hoping to encourage a higher turnout for Vines funeral. She hoped she could get even 20 people to show up to give Vine the honorable goodbye she deserved.

Instead, when Boothe arrived at the cemetery, cars were backed up about a half a mile. She thought that there must be multiple events happening at that time. But no, they were all there for Vine.

It was like a pinnacle moment to show how veterans come together for veterans, Boothe said. We are connected through our service and through our sacrifice. Look around now, she has 200 or so family members. As long as youre a veteran you have friends and family everywhere and youre never alone.

Not a lot is known about Vines life. She lived in the Department of Veterans Affairs Community Living Center in Washington since 1995, when she was found homeless on the streets and suffering from dementia.

It was known that Vine served in the Navy from 1944 to 1946 doing radio intelligence. William Jones, a retired Marine who works at Quantico, helped fill in some of the blanks. He received a call a week ago from a colleague, Katie Bryan, who took care of Vines finances as her appointed legal custodian. She was organizing Vines funeral and asked Jones to come and make remarks.

I said, absolutely, but the problem is when I consider the dates she was on active duty, that makes her a World War II veteran,' he said.  We have to do a better job than this. 

He spent the weekend digging through census data, military records and the national archives for anything more he could find out about Vines life. He discovered census records with her name from 1930 and 1940 that showed she was born in 1924, and he found that she graduated from the University of California at Berkeley in 1954.

The caretakers at the home said she spoke three languages and loved dressing up for church on Sundays. But Jones could not find anything about her life between college and when she was found on the streets of Washington, D.C., 21 years ago.

Jones contacted Boothe, who runs a nonprofit group for homeless female veterans called Final Salute, to ask if she would also attend and say a few words.

It was only four days between when Jones learned of Vines death and the funeral, but word spread quickly in that short span. Veterans from every branch of the military, of different ranks, race and gender, came out.

For an hour, we all came together to pay respect to this woman who was homeless and served our country when there wasnt many women serving their country, Jones said.

A group of about 30 volunteers had arrived early to wave small American flags as Vines casket was carried from the hearse to her resting place. A Marine color guard did the 21-gun salute. A bugler showed up to play taps. The American flag draped over the casket was folded into the traditional triangle and presented to Bryan, who had taken care of Vine and made all the funeral arrangements but also had never met her.

Bryan said shell keep the flag for six months to see whether any of Vines relatives hear about the story and want to have it. If not, she plans to donate it to the Women in Military Service for America Memorial.

Members of the Navy honor guard watch over the casket of Serina Vine, a World War II veteran who was in the Navy from 1944 to 1946, during her funeral service June 7 at Quantico National Cemetery in Quantico, Va. Vine, 91, of Washington, D.C., died May 21. (Dave Ellis/Free Lance-Star via AP)

At the funeral, Bryan said she just kept looking around in awe at the crowd.

It was a beautiful sight to see for this person that no one knew, Bryan said. My whole intent was to give her the same time and respect that I would do for my own mother, from picking out a casket she would like with crosses on since she was an avid church goer. If this is my mother, this is how I want her to be treated.

Jones did say a few words at the funeral, borrowing, he said, a line from Boothe: In the military we do not serve alone, therefore we should not die alone.

But the official eulogy was given by Dwight Michael, another Quantico colleague and a pastor, who brought several people in the crowd of strangers to tears.

In his remarks, Jones said, Michael started listing off names of World War II heroes. Then he said those heroes would have to move one seat over and give Vine a seat at their table.

Boothe, an Army reservist, lost her home in Hurricane Katrina just before she was about to deploy Iraq, and was soon after honorably discharged when she was diagnosed with adenoidal cancer. She was jobless, homeless and a single mom. For Boothe, who has made her lifes work helping homeless female veterans, seeing Vine rightfully honored and not cast aside was incredible.

Homeless isnt a status. Shes a hero, Boothe said. She liked to go to church, and I hope she was smiling down knowing people did care and that shell be remembered. She wont be an unknown.

Copyright: Washington Post
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A major in the US army reserve has been arrested after allegedly threatening to kill Muslims and throwing two open packs of bacon at the door of a mosque during Ramadan.

Russell Thomas Langford, a major in the US army reserve, was accused of approaching a Muslim chaplain, showing him a gun and threatening to blow up the Masjid Al Madina mosque in Raeford, North Carolina.

Later that evening, he allegedly attempted to run over a group of people going into the mosque for evening prayer.

Recommended Read more Texas men train to shoot Muslims and dip bullets in pig blood

Mr Langford was taken into custody and charged with ethnic intimidation, assault with a deadly weapon, going armed to terror the public, communicating threats, stalking and disorderly conduct, according to a statement from the Hoke County Sheriff.

Several firearms, ammunition and "additional weapons" were discovered in his Chevrolet Tahoe.

He is being held in custody on bail for $60,000.

The two packs of bacon were reportedly intended as an insult as Muslims believe that pork is a forbidden food.

As reported by ABC News, parishioners are calling for the FBI to investigate what they say is a hate crime.

This is very sad, said a mosque official. We don't espouse that. We want to live in harmony. But this gentleman definitely has some issues and we hope that this is an isolated case.

The national communications director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, Ibrahim Hooper, said: We call on state law enforcement authorities and the FBI to investigate this incident as a possible hate crime. We also ask local police to step up patrols in the area of this and other North Carolina mosques, particularly during the nightly activities associated with the ongoing fast of Ramadan.

This week a Muslim activist, Omair Siddiqi, said a pickup truck driver threatened to kill him and drive him off the road in Dallas.

I'm gonna [expletive] kill you, the driver, whose truck had bumper stickers with extremist messages on them, allegedly yelled.

The CAIR chapter in Dallas gets three to five reports of potential hate crimes each week.

A group of men in Texas have also been practising to shoot Muslims, dipping the bullets in pigs blood, in case of an uprising.

In South Carolina, 42-year-old William Tore Tint was sentenced for lying to the FBI as they investigated him for plotting to kill residents of the Muslim community of Islamberg, Delaware, with the help of 10 other people.

The former marine was sentenced to three years probation.
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Graduates at a Texas high school stood in support of their valedictorian who, in her speech to the exiting seniors, revealed her status as an undocumented immigrant.

Larissa Martinez completed her tenure at McKinney Boyd High School having taken 17 advanced placement courses and boasting a 4.5 GPA - all the while living behind the shroud of her undocumented status.

I am one of the 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the shadows of the United States, Ms Martinez - who told a local ABC affiliate that she has a full-ride scholarship to Yale - admitted to the graduating class.

She explained the unexpected realities of migrating to the US in 2010, escaping an abusive, alcoholic father, and finding a safe haven in her school library. She took the opportunity to put a human face to undocumented immigrants in the US in the midst of heated political rhetoric used by the likes of GOP presumptive nominee Donald Trump.

Immigrants - undocumented or otherwise - are people, too, she said. People like me  who have become part of the American society and way of life, and who yearn to help make America great again without the construction of a wall built on hatred and prejudice.

That same day, Austin-area graduate made a similar admission on Twitter, exposing her undocumented status alongside a 4.5 GPA and full ride to the University of Texas, and immediately sparked a backlash.

Mayte Lara Ibarra/Twitter

Valedictorian, 4.5 GPA, full tuition paid for at UT, 13 cords/medals, nice legs, oh and Im undocumented, Mayte Lara Ibarra wrote in a 3 June tweet, after delivering her valedictorian speech.

While her speech did not address her immigration status, the tweet garnered significant criticism.

I have NEVER thought about deporting a child who graduated from a US high school and fought against the odds to be successful. Until this moment, wrote Hillary Shay Davis, whose daughter graduated from David Crocket High School with Ms Ibarra.

It is very obvious that she is taking advantage of the system and is proud of it.

She added: Something else that I have NEVER thought I would support until this moment is Trump and #buildthatwall.

Ms Ibarra has since deleted her Twitter account amid a barrage of harassment.

Despite the outcry against Ms Ibarra, the University of Texas has no plans to revoke her scholarship.

State law also does not distinguish between documented and undocumented graduates of Texas high schools in admissions and financial aid decisions, university spokesperson Gary Susswein told the New York Times. University policies reflect that law.

Legislation passed by Texas in 2001 allows for undocumented students to pay in-state tuition at state universities if they graduate high school or earn a GED, so long as they have lived in the state for at least three years.

Texas has the second largest undocumented population in the country with roughly 1.5m, according to the Migration Policy Institute. That is approximately half of Californias undocumented population.

But according to the MPIs data, some 80 per cent of the undocumented population in Texas have lived in the state for more than five years. Fifty-eight per cent have live in the US for more than 10 years.
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Hillary Clinton has received endorsements from President Barack Obama, Vice-President Joe Biden and Senator Elizabeth Warren  yet the most surprising support might come from one Republican senator.

Susan Collins, the senator of Maine who is pro-life and who voted against background checks at gun shows, said she will not only refuse to endorse Donald Trump as president but she hinted that she may also support Hillary Clinton instead.

The lifelong Republican said she was bothered by Mr Trumps comments about Mexican judge Gonzalo Curiel being biased and unfair towards him in a ruling about his now defunct Trump University because the candidate planned to build a wall between the US and Mexico.

Recommended Read more Hillary Clinton orders Donald Trump to delete his Twitter account

Ms Collins told the New Yorker that Mr Trump's comments were an order of magnitude more serious than anything else he has said, and she had not failed to notice his troubling insults towards individuals and his poorly-thought-out policy plan about banning Muslims from entering the country.

This is a difficult choice, and its one, like many of my colleagues, that I am struggling with, said Ms Collins, who is regarded as a more moderate Republican. Its not like we have perfect candidates from whom to choose in this election.

She added she worked very well with Ms Clinton when the latter was New York senator and then secretary of state.

But I do not anticipate voting for her this fall. Im not going to say never, because this has been such an unpredictable situation, to say the least, said Ms Collins.

Donald Trump's most controversial quotes Show all 14 1 /14 Donald Trump's most controversial quotes Donald Trump's most controversial quotes On Isis: "Some of the candidates, they went in and didnt know the air conditioner didnt work and sweated like dogs, and they didnt know the room was too big because they didnt have anybody there. How are they going to beat ISIS?" Getty Donald Trump's most controversial quotes On immigration: "I will build a great wall  and nobody builds walls better than me, believe me and Ill build them very inexpensively. I will build a great, great wall on our southern border, and I will make Mexico pay for that wall. Mark my words." Reuters Donald Trump's most controversial quotes On Free Trade: "Free trade is terrible. Free trade can be wonderful if you have smart people. But we have stupid people." PAUL J. RICHARDS | AFP | Getty Images Donald Trump's most controversial quotes On Mexicans: "When Mexico sends its people, theyre not sending their best. Theyre sending people that have lots of problems. Theyre bringing drugs. Theyre bringing crime. Theyre rapists." Getty Donald Trump's most controversial quotes On China: "I just sold an apartment for $15 million to somebody from China. Am I supposed to dislike them?... I love China. The biggest bank in the world is from China. You know where their United States headquarters is located? In this building, in Trump Tower." Getty Images Donald Trump's most controversial quotes On work: "If you're interested in 'balancing' work and pleasure, stop trying to balance them. Instead make your work more pleasurable." AP Donald Trump's most controversial quotes On success: "What separates the winners from the losers is how a person reacts to each new twist of fate." Donald Trump's most controversial quotes On life: "Everything in life is luck." AFP Donald Trump's most controversial quotes On ambition: "You have to think anyway, so why not think big?" Getty Images Donald Trump's most controversial quotes On his opponents: "Bush is totally in favour of Common Core. I don't see how he can possibly get the nomination. He's weak on immigration. He's in favour of Common Core. How the hell can you vote for this guy? You just can't do it." Reuters Donald Trump's most controversial quotes On Obamacare: "You have to be hit by a tractor, literally, a tractor, to use it, because the deductibles are so high. It's virtually useless. And remember the $5 billion web site?... I have so many web sites, I have them all over the place. I hire people, they do a web site. It costs me $3." Getty Images Donald Trump's most controversial quotes On Barack Obama: "Obama is going to be out playing golf. He might be on one of my courses. I would invite him. I have the best courses in the world. I have one right next to the White House." PA Donald Trump's most controversial quotes On himself: "Love him or hate him, Trump is a man who is certain about what he wants and sets out to get it, no holds barred. Women find his power almost as much of a turn-on as his money." Getty Images Donald Trump's most controversial quotes On America: "The American Dream is dead. But if I get elected president I will bring it back bigger and better and stronger than ever before and we will make America great again." GETTY

When pressed if there was a chance the lifelong Republican could back Ms Clinton over Donald Trump, Ms Collins replied: That is true. But I do want to qualify that by saying it is unlikely that I would choose to vote for the Democratic candidate.

She later insisted that voting for Ms Clinton was unlikely, but even considering voting for a Democrat is a first for a Republican senator during the 2016 election campaign.

Many Republicans have either made negative remarks about Mr Trump or have announced they will not back him, including Illinois Republican senator Mark Kirk  who is against de-funding Planned Parenthood  and Texas congressman Bill Flores.

I was incredibly angry to see Mr Trump question a judges motives because of his ethnicity, Mr Flores, who chairs the Republican Study Committee, said in a statement.

House speaker Paul Ryan, who decided to endorse Mr Trump this month, said the Republicans comments about Judge Curiel were the textbook definition of racism.
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Bernie Sanders lone supporter in the senate has acknowledged that the nominee is Hillary Clinton and he will support her.

When democratic senator of Oregon, Jeff Merkley, was asked on CNN whether he would endorse Ms Clinton as president and senator Elizabeth Warren as vice president, he replied: Im ready to say that Elizabeth Warren would make a great vice president.

The senator, who said he believed that Mr Sanders changed the conversation in America, was pushed as to whether he only supported the potential vice president nominee, Ms Warren, and not the presidential nominee, Ms Clinton.

Certainly Im going to be supporting our nominee and our nominee is secretary Clinton, but what I really want to see is success in November and that means bringing together the two halves of the party, he responded.

Ms Clinton clinched the number of delegates and superdelegates she needed to become the partys nominee after she swept to victory in the final round of state primaries on Tuesday.

Mr Merkley said he supports Mr Sanders big ideas to take on big challenges, including abolishing the system of corrupt campaign finance, tackling climate change and making college affordable.

Speaking two days earlier to NPR Radio, Mr Merkley said he hoped that Ms Clinton will take into account the huge resonance of the vision that Senator Sanders was putting forward.

This [Mr Sanders' campaign] has inspired millions of citizens - a style of campaign we've never seen before winning 22 states, extraordinary number of caucuses, he added.

Mr Merkley said he believes that Mr Sanders will step down after the final democratic primary in Washington DC on 14 June and support Ms Clinton.

Secretary Clinton has received endorsements from president Barack Obama, vice president Joe Biden and senator Warren.

Possible support may even come from the opposite party after Republican senator Susan Collins of Maine hinted she would never say never when it came to voting for Ms Clinton.

Mr Sanders, shortly after meeting president Obama at the White House on Thursday, said he wanted to work with Ms Clinton "to defeat" Mr Trump.
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Elizabeth Warren, the Massachusetts senator and darling of the liberal left, has offered her full-throated endorsement to Hillary Clinton and said she is ready to be the presumptive Democratic nominee's running mate.

Speaking to Rachel Maddow of MSNBC, Ms Warren said: Im ready. I am ready to get in this fight and work my heart out for Hillary Clinton to become the next president of the United States  and to make sure that Donald Trump never gets anyplace close to the White House.

Ms Warren, who is often mentioned as a potential running mate for Ms Clinton, has said she does not want the job of Vice President. But, asked by Ms Maddow whether she believed she would be up to the task if called upon, she replied: Yes, I do.

The Senator, a staunch critic of Wall Street, was once considered a potential primary challenger to Ms Clinton, and had declined to endorse either the former Secretary of State or her progressive challenger, Bernie Sanders, until now. She made her announcement on Thursday, the same day that President Barack Obama also endorsed Ms Clinton.

Recommended Read more President Barack Obama endorses Hillary Clinton

While she may have stayed out of the Democratic race, Ms Warren has been active in her opposition to Donald Trump, launching a series of Twitter sorties against the presumptive Republican nominee.

On Thursday, in a speech to the American Constitution Society, a liberal legal organisation, she described the billionaire reality TV star as a thin-skinned, racist bully who inherited a fortune and kept it rolling along by cheating people.

Ms Warren also attacked Mr Trump for his race-baiting regarding Gonzalo Curiel, the Indiana-born judge overseeing a fraud lawsuit against Trump University, whose impartiality Mr Trump has questioned due to Mr Curiels Mexican heritage.

The Massachusetts Senator said Mr Trumps comments were a total disgrace, adding: You shame yourself and you shame this great country.

Vice President Joe Biden also spoke at the same event, describing Mr Trumps remarks as reprehensible and racist. Mr Biden, who was himself almost a primary rival for Ms Clinton, offered his own endorsement of the former Secretary of State, saying: God willing, in my view, [the next president] will be Secretary Clinton.
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A Hindu monastery worker has been hacked to death in Bangladesh, in what is apparently the latest attack in a series of targeted killings on religious minorities and liberal-leaning activists.

Nityaranjan Pande, a resident of the Thakur Anukul Chandra Satsanga Paramtirtha Hemayetpurdham ashram, was murdered on Friday as he took his regular morning stroll in the northwestern district of Pabna.

As a diabetic, every day he walked early in the morning. Today as he was walking, several attackers hacked him in the neck... He died on the spot," Abdullah Al-Hasan, a local police station chief, told AFP news agency.

He lived here for a long time, Naresh Madhu, a local NGO worker, told bdnews24.com. He became one of us. He was a simple man. He had no enemies.

Police are still investigating the murder, which has not yet been confirmed as Islamist-related and no one has yet claimed responsibility.

Almost 50 people, ranging from Shia Muslims to gay rights activists, have been killed by suspected Islamist extremists in Bangladesh the last three years  many hacked to death.

Several days earlier, another Hindu was also murdered, in an attack which has been blamed on Islamist militants, in the Jhenaidah district. Ananda Gopal Ganguly, 70, a priest, was found almost decapitated in a field near his place of worship. Militant group Isis later claimed responsibility but the government later said domestic extremists were responsible for the attack.

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. 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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. 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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

Some have claimed the attacks are linked to local politics, rather than international terrorism, after disputes between local political parties have become more intense.

Bangladesh is a Muslim-majority country but Hindus compromise up to 10 per cent of the population.
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A Belgian man who is attracted to young men and adolescent boys wants to undergo euthanasia because he cannot live with his sexuality.

The 39-year-old engineer, speaking under the pseudonym Sebastian, said his sexual orientation was unbearable.

Its a permanent suffering, like being a prisoner in my own body, he told the BBC.

Not being able to go out, a constant sense of shame, feeling tired, being attracted to people you shouldnt be attracted to. Its the opposite of what I would have wanted.

Euthanasia has been legal in Belgium since 2002 and can be agreed in cases of constant and unbearable physical or mental suffering.

More than 1,807 cases of euthanasia were confirmed in 2013  a figure which rose to more than 2,000 in 2015, according to LExpress.

Both euthanasia, which is conducted by a doctor, and assisted suicide, the act of deliberately assisting or encouraging another person to kill themselves, are illegal in the UK.

Sebastian has begun the lengthy process towards euthanasia by lethal injection by obtaining one initial decision from a doctor. In psychiatric cases, three doctors must agree to the procedure, while two must give their consent in the instance of physical illness.

He said death had been a preoccupation from an early age.

My whole life has led to this. My mother had dementia, and I wasnt right, mentally, he said, adding that his family were strict Catholics and disapproved of homosexuality.

I was extremely lonely, extremely withdrawn, and very inhibited physically. I was scared to go out, scared of being seen all the time.

When he was 15, he met a boy of the same age with whom he fell in love. But he said he was not able to accept his sexuality, which he found unbearable.

Ive fallen in love twice afterwards: with an 18-year-old and a 22-year-old. However, Im relieved to see Im capable of falling in love with boys who are out of adolescence, he said.

Despite everything, this sexual orientation is unbearable for me. I cant bear it and will never be able to bear it.

Despite 17 years of therapy, he is still attracted to adolescents, he told 20 Minutes.

He admitted having viewed images of boys and young men online, but said he had never committed a sexual assault.

After a suicide attempt, he told doctors he thought he was a paedophile, but said they did not accept his self-diagnosis.

They told me: youre making things up. Move on with your life. They told me that I was not a danger to children, he said.

I spent four years in a psychiatric hospital. I saw eight psychologists, four psychiatrists, and a sexologist.

I even handed myself into the police in 2014 [...] they referred me to another psychologist

He said society didnt understand the suffering of paedophiles.

My aim has never been to harm children. I dont have that impulse, he said.

Recommended Read more Canada proposes law allowing assisted suicides for the terminally ill

Its more about love  but society is against these kinds of relationships, which is right. So, I dont want anything any more. Only hell awaits me.

Latifa Bennari, the founder of the French association L'Ange Blue, which offers help to paedophiles with the aim of preventing harm, said Sebastian had made contact with her by e-mail around six months ago.

She was moved by the subject line of the email, "help me to die", and by an animated cartoon he had later shared with her, Ms Bennari told The Independent.

But Ms Bennari said she hopes he can stay alive with the help of the association, instead of resorting to euthanasia.

"Paedophiles need an alternative structure that doesn't judge them," she said. "If that many psychologists couldn't help him, that's a real failure in their duties."

Last month, a Belgian victim of ten years of sex abuse was allowed to undergo euthanasia in her 20s due to incurable post-traumatic stress disorder, severe anorexia and chronic depression.

The doctors judged her to be totally competent and that there was no major depression or other mood disorder which affected her thinking.

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

And in 2014, the country became the first in the world to legalise euthanasia for children, permitting doctors to end the life of a terminally ill child in very rare cases.

The majority of euthanasia cases in Belgium are elderly people suffering from terminal illnesses.
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A new suspect has been arrested on accusations of "terrorist murders" during Isis's Brussels attacks as security services continue attempts to root out a European network of jihadists.

The man, named as 31-year-old Ali E H A by Belgium's federal prosecutor, was detained during a raid on a home in the suburb of Schaerbeek - the district where the three bombers prepared for their attack on 22 March.

He has been arrested on suspicion of participation in the activities of a terrorist group, terrorist murders and attempted terrorist murders.

 Belgians commemorate attack victims

Authorities did not stipulate whether he was as a perpetrator or accomplice in the bombings at Brussels Airport and Maelbeek Metro station and said no further information would be given.

Two men, Ibrahim el-Bakraoui and Najim Laachraoui, killed themselves and 16 other people in the airports departures hall before el-Bakraouis brother, Khalid, blew himself up on an underground train, killing 16 more.

Investigators are continuing the hunt for possible accomplices in the atrocity, as well as links to Isis supporters elsewhere in Europe and the cell that carried out the Paris attacks in November.

Mohamed Abrini, the man in the hat who fled Brussels Airport after his suitcase bomb failed to detonate, is accused of involvement in both plots.

He is currently in Belgian custody but could soon be extradited to France for questioning.

Brussels attacks: tributes are paid to the victims Show all 27 1 /27 Brussels attacks: tributes are paid to the victims Brussels attacks: tributes are paid to the victims Wreaths of flowers in front of an entrance of the Maalbeek subway station in Brussels in homage to the victims of a terrorist attack. Getty Images Brussels attacks: tributes are paid to the victims Wreaths of flowers in front of an entrance of the Maalbeek subway station in Brussels in homage to the victims of a terrorist attack. Getty Images Brussels attacks: tributes are paid to the victims A building illuminated with the Belgian flag colours and a heart in Brussels, two days after suicide bombing attacks of terrorists on March 22 in Zaventem airport and subway Maelbeek. Getty Images Brussels attacks: tributes are paid to the victims A picture taken on 24 March, 2016 on place de la Bourse in Brussels, shows drawings and a candle, two days after suicide bombing attacks of terrorists on March 22 in Zaventem airport and Brussels subway Maelbeek Getty Images Brussels attacks: tributes are paid to the victims Candles are displayed in tribute to the Brussels attacks victims on 24 March, 2016 on place de la Bourse in Brussels, two days after the suicide bombing attacks of terrorists on 22 March. Getty Images Brussels attacks: tributes are paid to the victims A mourner lights a candle in Trafalgar Square during a candlelit vigil in support of the victims of the recent terror attacks in Brussels. Getty Images Brussels attacks: tributes are paid to the victims Brussels airport workers pay tribute to the victims near Zaventem Getty Images Brussels attacks: tributes are paid to the victims Activists light candles and hold placards to condemn the terrorist attacks in Belgium, during a gathering in Manila, Philippines Brussels attacks: tributes are paid to the victims A banner for the victims of the bombings reads "I am Brussels" at the Place de la Bourse in the center of Brussels Brussels attacks: tributes are paid to the victims European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, left front center, stands with front row, left to right, French Prime Minister Manuel Valls, Belgium's King Philippe, Belgium's Queen Mathilde and Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel as well as members of the European Commission during a minute of silence at EU headquarters in Brussels Brussels attacks: tributes are paid to the victims People join hands in solidarity near the former stock exchange following the bomb attacks in Brussels Brussels attacks: tributes are paid to the victims Belgium flags ornate the facade of the Paris Town Hall Brussels attacks: tributes are paid to the victims A woman embraces her children at The Place de la Bourse as she pays her respects to victims of the terrorists attacks in Brussels Brussels attacks: tributes are paid to the victims Belgian and European Union flags fly at half mast following the bomb attacks in Brussels Brussels attacks: tributes are paid to the victims Candles in the colors of the Belgian national flag are lit inside the Belgian embassy in Madrid, a day after the deadly suicide attacks on the Brussels airport and its subway system Brussels attacks: tributes are paid to the victims Servicemen of Azov, Ukrainian volunteers battalion, hold torches in front of floral tributes during a ceremony in front of the Belgian embassy in Kiev, in tribute to the victims of Brussels attacks Brussels attacks: tributes are paid to the victims A refugee boy holds up a placard reading "Sorry for Brussels" at a refugee camp near the Greek-Macedonian border Brussels attacks: tributes are paid to the victims Brussels tributes People light candles in tribute to victims at a makeshift memorial at the Place de la Bourse in Brussels Getty Images Brussels attacks: tributes are paid to the victims Brussels tributes A woman holds a drawing by French cartoonist Plantu picturing a character made of a French flag consoling another made of the Belgian flag, in front of the Hotel de Ville in Paris Getty Images Brussels attacks: tributes are paid to the victims Brussels tributes The colours of the Belgian flag are projected on to (clockwise from top left) the Eiffel Tower in Paris, the town council building in Belgrade, Rome's Campidoglio and the Royal Palace at Dam Square in Amsterdam Getty Images Brussels attacks: tributes are paid to the victims Brussels tributes Candles are lit in tribute to the victims, at the Place de la Bourse in Brussels Getty Images Brussels attacks: tributes are paid to the victims Brussels tributes A woman holds a placard reading "Paris hearts Belgium, How much time will it take us to open our eyes and say STOP, Today our hearts are broken, Open your eyes to change the future" at the Place de la Republique in Paris Getty Images Brussels attacks: tributes are paid to the victims Brussels tributes People gather to pay a tribute to victims of terrorist attacks in Brussels Getty Images Brussels attacks: tributes are paid to the victims Brussels tributes People write messages on the ground at Place de la Bourse in Brussels Getty Images Brussels attacks: tributes are paid to the victims Brussels tributes A bouquet of flowers in the Belgian national colours with a card reading 'To our neighbours, to our friends, to our Belgian brothers - an indignant Parisian' is seen next to a French national flag at the fence of the Belgian embassy in Paris Getty Images Brussels attacks: tributes are paid to the victims Brussels tributes Solidarity messages are written in chalk outside the stock exchange in Brussels AP Brussels attacks: tributes are paid to the victims Brussels tributes Messages and floral tributes outside the Brussels stock exchange AP

The 31-year-old Belgian, of Moroccan descent, was caught on camera with fellow suspect Salah Abdeslam two days before the Paris attacks and went into hiding until the bombings in the Belgian capital.

They are believed to be the only surviving direct perpetrators of both attacks but several suspects have been detained on accusations of providing logistical support.

Mohamed Bakkali, 29, allegedly rented the Brussels apartment were suicide vests were manufactured, while Swedish jihadist Osama Krayem is also in custody accused of buying suitcases for the Brussels bombers and helping prepare for the Paris attacks.

Abid Aberkan, a relative of Abdeslam, a Ali O, 31, Abdoullah C, 30, Lazez Abraimi, 39, Bilal EM, 27, Herve BM, 31, Ibrahim F, 27 and Smail F, 31, have also been detained in connection with the plots.

Three other men - Aboubaker O, Yassine A and Mohamed B, remain in custody as part of a separate terror investigation.
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A public swimming pool in Germany has banned women from wearing burquinis or modest swimwear worn by some Muslim women, it has been reported.

The ban was introduced after a woman in Neutraubling attended a women-only swimming day wearing one of the swimming costumes. According to The Local, other women complained about the womans attire and town officials decided to ban the garment on the grounds it is non-typical swimwear.

The swimming costumes cover the torso, arms and legs and are worn by some Muslim women wishing to swim while covering most of their body.

Town mayor Heinz Kiechle reportedly said of the decision: Why the burqini as a full-body suit would be necessary to wear during a womens swim day is for me incomprehensible. This also contradicts the fundamental ideas of integration and mutual understanding, which is always being discussed in many towns.

Local media has said the woman has not returned to the pool since the ban was introduced.

World news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 World news in pictures World news in pictures 30 September 2020 Pope Francis prays with priests at the end of a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 29 September 2020 A girl's silhouette is seen from behind a fabric in a tent along a beach by Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 September 2020 A Chinese woman takes a photo of herself in front of a flower display dedicated to frontline health care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic in Beijing, China. China will celebrate national day marking the founding of the People's Republic of China on October 1st Getty World news in pictures 27 September 2020 The Glass Mountain Inn burns as the Glass Fire moves through the area in St. Helena, California. The fast moving Glass fire has burned over 1,000 acres and has destroyed homes Getty World news in pictures 26 September 2020 A villager along with a child offers prayers next to a carcass of a wild elephant that officials say was electrocuted in Rani Reserve Forest on the outskirts of Guwahati, India AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 September 2020 The casket of late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is seen in Statuary Hall in the US Capitol to lie in state in Washington, DC AFP via Getty World news in pictures 24 September 2020 An anti-government protester holds up an image of a pro-democracy commemorative plaque at a rally outside Thailand's parliament in Bangkok, as activists gathered to demand a new constitution AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 September 2020 A whale stranded on a beach in Macquarie Harbour on the rugged west coast of Tasmania, as hundreds of pilot whales have died in a mass stranding in southern Australia despite efforts to save them, with rescuers racing to free a few dozen survivors The Mercury/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 22 September 2020 State civil employee candidates wearing face masks and shields take a test in Surabaya AFP via Getty World news in pictures 21 September 2020 A man sweeps at the Taj Mahal monument on the day of its reopening after being closed for more than six months due to the coronavirus pandemic AP World news in pictures 20 September 2020 A deer looks for food in a burnt area, caused by the Bobcat fire, in Pearblossom, California EPA World news in pictures 19 September 2020 Anti-government protesters hold their mobile phones aloft as they take part in a pro-democracy rally in Bangkok. Tens of thousands of pro-democracy protesters massed close to Thailand's royal palace, in a huge rally calling for PM Prayut Chan-O-Cha to step down and demanding reforms to the monarchy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 September 2020 Supporters of Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr maintain social distancing as they attend Friday prayers after the coronavirus disease restrictions were eased, in Kufa mosque, near Najaf, Iraq Reuters World news in pictures 17 September 2020 A protester climbs on The Triumph of the Republic at 'the Place de la Nation' as thousands of protesters take part in a demonstration during a national day strike called by labor unions asking for better salary and against jobs cut in Paris, France EPA World news in pictures 16 September 2020 A fire raging near the Lazzaretto of Ancona in Italy. The huge blaze broke out overnight at the port of Ancona. Firefighters have brought the fire under control but they expected to keep working through the day EPA World news in pictures 15 September 2020 Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny posing for a selfie with his family at Berlin's Charite hospital. In an Instagram post he said he could now breathe independently following his suspected poisoning last month Alexei Navalny/Instagram/AFP World news in pictures 14 September 2020 Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, former Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba and former Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida celebrate after Suga was elected as new head of the ruling party at the Liberal Democratic Party's leadership election in Tokyo Reuters World news in pictures 13 September 2020 A man stands behind a burning barricade during the fifth straight day of protests against police brutality in Bogota AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 September 2020 Police officers block and detain protesters during an opposition rally to protest the official presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus. Daily protests calling for the authoritarian president's resignation are now in their second month AP World news in pictures 11 September 2020 Members of 'Omnium Cultural' celebrate the 20th 'Festa per la llibertat' ('Fiesta for the freedom') to mark the Day of Catalonia in Barcelona. Omnion Cultural fights for the independence of Catalonia EPA World news in pictures 10 September 2020 The Moria refugee camp, two days after Greece's biggest migrant camp, was destroyed by fire. Thousands of asylum seekers on the island of Lesbos are now homeless AFP via Getty World news in pictures 9 September 2020 Pope Francis takes off his face mask as he arrives by car to hold a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 8 September 2020 A home is engulfed in flames during the "Creek Fire" in the Tollhouse area of California AFP via Getty World news in pictures 7 September 2020 A couple take photos along a sea wall of the waves brought by Typhoon Haishen in the eastern port city of Sokcho AFP via Getty World news in pictures 6 September 2020 Novak Djokovic and a tournament official tends to a linesperson who was struck with a ball by Djokovic during his match against Pablo Carreno Busta at the US Open USA Today Sports/Reuters World news in pictures 5 September 2020 Protesters confront police at the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne, Australia, during an anti-lockdown rally AFP via Getty World news in pictures 4 September 2020 A woman looks on from a rooftop as rescue workers dig through the rubble of a damaged building in Beirut. A search began for possible survivors after a scanner detected a pulse one month after the mega-blast at the adjacent port AFP via Getty World news in pictures 3 September 2020 A full moon next to the Virgen del Panecillo statue in Quito, Ecuador EPA World news in pictures 2 September 2020 A Palestinian woman reacts as Israeli forces demolish her animal shed near Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank Reuters World news in pictures 1 September 2020 Students protest against presidential elections results in Minsk TUT.BY/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 31 August 2020 The pack rides during the 3rd stage of the Tour de France between Nice and Sisteron AFP via Getty World news in pictures 30 August 2020 Law enforcement officers block a street during a rally of opposition supporters protesting against presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus Reuters World news in pictures 29 August 2020 A woman holding a placard reading "Stop Censorship - Yes to the Freedom of Expression" shouts in a megaphone during a protest against the mandatory wearing of face masks in Paris. Masks, which were already compulsory on public transport, in enclosed public spaces, and outdoors in Paris in certain high-congestion areas around tourist sites, were made mandatory outdoors citywide on August 28 to fight the rising coronavirus infections AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 August 2020 Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe bows to the national flag at the start of a press conference at the prime minister official residence in Tokyo. Abe announced he will resign over health problems, in a bombshell development that kicks off a leadership contest in the world's third-largest economy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 27 August 2020 Residents take cover behind a tree trunk from rubber bullets fired by South African Police Service (SAPS) in Eldorado Park, near Johannesburg, during a protest by community members after a 16-year old boy was reported dead AFP via Getty World news in pictures 26 August 2020 People scatter rose petals on a statue of Mother Teresa marking her 110th birth anniversary in Ahmedabad AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 August 2020 An aerial view shows beach-goers standing on salt formations in the Dead Sea near Ein Bokeq, Israel Reuters World news in pictures 24 August 2020 Health workers use a fingertip pulse oximeter and check the body temperature of a fisherwoman inside the Dharavi slum during a door-to-door Covid-19 coronavirus screening in Mumbai AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 August 2020 People carry an idol of the Hindu god Ganesh, the deity of prosperity, to immerse it off the coast of the Arabian sea during the Ganesh Chaturthi festival in Mumbai, India Reuters World news in pictures 22 August 2020 Firefighters watch as flames from the LNU Lightning Complex fires approach a home in Napa County, California AP World news in pictures 21 August 2020 Members of the Israeli security forces arrest a Palestinian demonstrator during a rally to protest against Israel's plan to annex parts of the occupied West Bank AFP via Getty World news in pictures 20 August 2020 A man pushes his bicycle through a deserted road after prohibitory orders were imposed by district officials for a week to contain the spread of the Covid-19 in Kathmandu AFP via Getty World news in pictures 19 August 2020 A car burns while parked at a residence in Vacaville, California. Dozens of fires are burning out of control throughout Northern California as fire resources are spread thin AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 August 2020 Students use their mobile phones as flashlights at an anti-government rally at Mahidol University in Nakhon Pathom. Thailand has seen near-daily protests in recent weeks by students demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha AFP via Getty World news in pictures 17 August 2020 Members of the Kayapo tribe block the BR163 highway during a protest outside Novo Progresso in Para state, Brazil. Indigenous protesters blocked a major transamazonian highway to protest against the lack of governmental support during the COVID-19 novel coronavirus pandemic and illegal deforestation in and around their territories AFP via Getty World news in pictures 16 August 2020 Lightning forks over the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge as a storm passes over Oakland AP World news in pictures 15 August 2020 Belarus opposition supporters gather near the Pushkinskaya metro station where Alexander Taraikovsky, a 34-year-old protester died on August 10, during their protest rally in central Minsk AFP via Getty World news in pictures 14 August 2020 AlphaTauri's driver Daniil Kvyat takes part in the second practice session at the Circuit de Catalunya in Montmelo near Barcelona ahead of the Spanish F1 Grand Prix AFP via Getty World news in pictures 13 August 2020 Soldiers of the Brazilian Armed Forces during a disinfection of the Christ The Redeemer statue at the Corcovado mountain prior to the opening of the touristic attraction in Rio AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 August 2020 Young elephant bulls tussle playfully on World Elephant Day at the Amboseli National Park in Kenya AFP via Getty

The councils decision has provoked backlash throughout Germany, with campaigners arguing it is a restriction on personal choice and self-expression. In a statement, the Green Youth party denounced it as a blow to humanity and tolerance.

Germany has the second largest Muslim population of any European country, with an estimated four million Muslim inhabitants amounting to five per cent of the countrys total population.
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A refugee extradited to Italy on accusations of being one of the worlds most wanted people smugglers has told police they arrested the wrong person.

British police and intelligence agencies were part of the operation to capture Medhanie Yehdego Mered, who is accused of sending thousands of migrants across the Mediterranean and being responsible for a refugee boat sinking in 2013.

But lawyers of the man arrested say he is a different person - Medhanie Tesfamariam Berhe - a 27-year-old refugee allegedly detained in a case of mistaken identity.

Medhanie Mered, a 35-year-old Eritrean man accused of heading a prolific people smuggling operation (NCA)

Italian magistrates interviewed the Eritrean suspect for the first time on Friday, with legal representation.

My client has denied all the allegations and says he is not the person in question, lawyer Michele Calantropo told reporters outside a prison in Rome. He is another man...and doesn't understand the meaning of this arrest.

He called for his clients immediate release, saying magistrates needed to urgently investigate the question of his identity.

It comes a day after relatives and friends of Mr Berhe told The Independent they were shocked to see him in footage of the extradition.

A relative in Khartoum, who did not want to be named, said: You can see by his hair, his appearance, by everything that he is someone different (to the smuggler).

For two weeks we didnt know where he was and then we saw the news on the televisionwe want help.

If confirmed to be a case of mistaken identity, the error would be a huge embarrassment for British and Italian authorities, who hailed the supposed extradition of Mered, nicknamed the General, as a rare victory in the struggle against people smuggling.

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.

A legal source told Reuters that Italian and British investigators, who used information gained by GCHQ, had given the Sudanese authorities precise information about the mobile phone Mered was using and believed the arrested man had the phone.

But European authorities did not have any access to the arrested man in Sudan following the arrest.

The National Crime Agency (NCA) hailed the capture of 35-year-old Mered earlier this week, saying he was a criminal mastermind responsible for hundreds of refugee deaths in the Mediterranean Sea, but people watching footage of the handcuffed suspect being led off a plane recognised him as Berhe.

Five of Mr Berhes family members and friends told The Independent they recognised him on the news on Wednesday after weeks of desperate attempts to find out where he had been taken.

A man claiming to be his housemate said police raided their home in Khartoum and detained his friend without explanation a fortnight ago.

They took him without any warning, without saying anything  we didnt know anything, Ermias said.

We didnt know where he was but then we saw on the internet he is in Italy.

He said he recognised his housemate immediately when he saw photos of the arrested suspect in news footage.

 Sudan extradites an alleged human trafficking kingpin to Italy

Hes not a smuggler, he doesnt even work, his family have to send him money, Ermias said.

Hes a kind person, hes not a criminal. They have the wrong person - the smuggler is still out there.

Mr Berhes brother, Fassahaye, said his brother escaped Eritrea in 2014 and travelled to Sudan via Ethiopia, arriving last year, and had never been to Libya.

You can see by their faces that they dont even look similar, he added. Its just a big mistake.

A spokesperson for the NCA said it was aware of the claims of mistaken identity.

This is a complex multi-partner operation and it is too soon to speculate about these claims, he added. "The NCA is confident in its intelligence gathering process."
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A refugee centre in Germany has been burnt down following a dispute among residents over Ramadan meals.

The blaze ripped through accommodation that was home to hundreds of asylum seekers on the site of Dusseldorf trade fair, causing around 130 people to be evacuated and leaving 24 suffering from smoke inhalation.

Footage showed flames rising hundreds of feet into the air, sending a huge column of black smoke into the sky. Authorities are now tearing down the burnt-out hall amid fears the structure was in danger of collapsing.

Excavators tear down a burnt down hall at Messe Duesseldorf, Germany, 8 June 2016. (EPA)

Ralf Herrenbruck, a senior public prosecutor in the city, said there had been disputes among Muslims living in the home over how to mark Ramadan before the fire broke out on Tuesday.

There are two groups - one group wants to follow it strictly and so only eat when it's dark while the other group wants to eat at normal times - for example because there are also pregnant women there, he said.

Pregnancy is one of the many exceptions to daylight fasting stipulated in the Quran, as well as illness or for people travelling.

Mr Herrenbruck said the Red Cross, which is running the home, had decided to provide a basic lunch and only distribute warm food after sunset, to objections from residents who did not want to follow Ramadan strictly.

They threatened that they would do something if this didn't change and when there was no warm food at lunchtime again on Tuesday, the arson happened, he added.

Local reports said Christians living at the shelter were also opposed to the arrangement, with some feeling that Muslims were being prioritised with plans for dinner at 10pm.

Refugees settle in Germany Show all 12 1 /12 Refugees settle in Germany Refugees settle in Germany Germany Mohamed Zayat, a refugee from Syria, plays with his daughter Ranim, who is nearly 3, in the one room they and Mohamed's wife Laloosh call home at an asylum-seekers' shelter in Vossberg village on October 9, 2015 in Letschin, Germany. The Zayats arrived approximately two months ago after trekking through Turkey, Greece and the Balkans and are now waiting for local authorities to process their asylum application, after which they will be allowed to live independently and settle elsewhere in Germany. Approximately 60 asylum-seekers, mostly from Syria, Chechnya and Somalia, live at the Vossberg shelter, which is run by the Arbeiter-Samariter Bund (ASB) charity 2015 Getty Images Refugees settle in Germany Germany A refugee child Amnat Musayeva points to a star with her photo and name that decorates the door to her classroom as teacher Martina Fischer looks on at the local kindergarten Amnat and her siblings attend on October 9, 2015 in Letschin, Germany. The children live with their family at an asylum-seekers' shelter in nearby Vossberg village and are waiting for local authorities to process their asylum applications. Approximately 60 asylum-seekers, mostly from Syria, Chechnya and Somalia, live at the Vossberg shelter, which is run by the Arbeiter-Samariter Bund (ASB) charity Getty Images Refugees settle in Germany Germany Kurdish Syrian asylum-applicant Mohamed Ali Hussein (R), 19, and fellow applicant Autur, from Latvia, load benches onto a truckbed while performing community service, for which they receive a small allowance, in Wilhelmsaue village on October 9, 2015 near Letschin, Germany. Mohamed and Autur live at an asylum-applicants' shelter in nearby Vossberg village. Approximately 60 asylum-seekers, mostly from Syria, Chechnya and Somalia, live at the Vossberg shelter, which is run by the Arbeiter-Samariter Bund (ASB) charity Getty Images Refugees settle in Germany Germany Mohamed Ali Hussein ((L), 19, and his cousin Sinjar Hussein, 34, sweep leaves at a cemetery in Gieshof village, for which they receive a small allowance, near Letschin Getty Images Refugees settle in Germany Germany Mohamed Zayat, a refugee from Syria, looks among donated clothing in the basement of the asylum-seekers' shelter that is home to Mohamed, his wife Laloosh and their daughter Ranim as residents' laundry dries behind in Vossberg village on October 9, 2015 in Letschin, Germany. The Zayats arrived approximately two months ago after trekking through Turkey, Greece and the Balkans and are now waiting for local authorities to process their asylum application, after which they will be allowed to live independently and settle elsewhere in Germany Getty Images Refugees settle in Germany Germany Asya Sugaipova (L), Mohza Mukayeva and Khadra Zhukova prepare food in the communal kitchen at the asylum-seekers' shelter that is their home in Vossberg village in Letschin Getty Images Refugees settle in Germany Germany Efrah Abdullahi Ahmed looks down from the communal kitchen window at her daughter Sumaya, 10, who had just returned from school, at the asylum-seekers' shelter that is their home in Vossberg Getty Images Refugees settle in Germany Germany Asylum-applicants, including Syrians Mohamed Ali Hussein (C-R, in black jacket) and Fadi Almasalmeh (C), return from grocery shopping with other refugees to the asylum-applicants' shelter that is their home in Vossberg village in Letschin Getty Images Refugees settle in Germany Germany Mohamed Zayat (2nd from L), a refugee from Syria, smokes a cigarette after shopping for groceries with his daughter Ranim, who is nearly 3, and fellow-Syrian refugees Mohamed Ali Hussein (C) and Fadi Almasalmeh (L) at a local supermarket on October 9, 2015 in Letschin, Germany. All of them live at an asylum-seekers' shelter in nearby Vossberg village and are waiting for local authorities to process their asylum applications, after which they will be allowed to live independently and settle elsewhere in Germany 2015 Getty Images Refugees settle in Germany Germany Kurdish Syrian refugees Leila, 9, carries her sister Avin, 1, in the backyard at the asylum-seekers' shelter that is home to them and their family in Vossberg village in Letschin Getty Images Refugees settle in Germany Germany Somali refugees and husband and wife Said Ahmed Gure (R) and Ayaan Gure pose with their infant son Muzammili, who was born in Germany, in the room they share at an asylum-seekers' shelter in Vossberg village on October 9, 2015 in Letschin, Germany. Approximately 60 asylum-seekers, mostly from Syria, Chechnya and Somalia, live at the Vossberg shelter, which is run by the Arbeiter-Samariter Bund (ASB) charity, and are waiting for authorities to process their application for asylum 2015 Getty Images Refugees settle in Germany Germany German Chancellor Angela Merkel pauses for a selfie with a refugee after she visited the AWO Refugium Askanierring shelter for refugees in Berlin Getty Images

One of the suspects told Express he and others started the fire out of frustration over living conditions, saying: We want our rights, we want to live better.

The newspaper reported that another fire had been started three weeks ago and that fights between Arab residents and Iranians and Afghans happened regularly.

A mattress is believed to have been doused with alcohol and then set on fire with a lighter, starting a blaze that spread through the shelter destroying beds and belongings.

Dusseldorf Police said several suspects had been arrested. The two main suspects, both 26-year-old men from North Africa, are accused of arson.

A 24-year-old Syrian man, two Moroccans aged 18 and 26 and two Algerian men aged 16 and 26 are also being investigated.

Police said several of the men had been living in the accommodation under false names and having given false birth dates and countries of origin. A 36-member investigation body has been assigned to the case.

A Pegida march in Cologne in January attracted 1,700 people (Getty Images)

More than a million asylum seekers arrived in Germany last year and while they were initially welcomed, public attitudes have shifted following the Cologne sexual assaults and concerns about immigration.

Support has risen for the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party and anti-Islam groups like Pegida, while the German interior ministry said the refugee crisis was the main cause of a record year for political violence in 2015.

Attacks on asylum seekers have been reported, as well as efforts by vigilante mobs to clean up Cologne after a string of sexual assaults and robberies on New Year's Eve stoked tensions.

As the number of homes for asylum-seekers have swelled, so too have crimes targeting them, which more than quadrupled to 1,031 last year, including four attempted murders, eight explosives offences, 60 assaults and 94 arsons.

Vandalism including the spraying of swastikas and racist and neo-Nazi slogans on migrant accommodation has also been reported, with only a quarter of the crimes being solved so far.



Additional reporting by Reuters
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Israeli authorities have sealed off the West Bank and Gaza strip to stop Palestinians entering Israel as military operations continue following a terror attack in Tel Aviv.

A spokesperson for the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) said the shutdown would be in place until midnight on Sunday, preventing crossings in all but medical and humanitarian cases.

Thousands of Palestinians holding special permits to pray in Jerusalem were exempt from the ban, according to the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (Cogat).

 Israel ups security

The Israeli military body had already revoked travel permits for around 83,000 Palestinians in a move the United Nations said could amount to collective punishment.

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Zeid Raad al-Hussein, condemned the shooting attack that left four Israelis dead and several injured on Wednesday, in what was the most deadly single attack in an eight-month wave of violence.

We are also deeply concerned at the response of the Israeli authorities, which includes measures that may amount to prohibited collective punishment and will only increase the sense of injustice and frustration felt by Palestinians in this very tense time, spokesperson Ravina Shamdasani said.

Israel has a human rights obligation to bring those responsible to account for their crimes. And this it is doing.

However the measures taken against the broader population punish not the perpetrators of the crime, but tens - maybe hundreds - of thousands of innocent Palestinians.

The home village of the two Palestinian attackers  Yatta - has been completely sealed off since Wednesday, with an unknown number of people arrested in military raids.

An Israeli soldier keeps watch as Palestinians sit nearby after the army blockaded the village of Yatta in the West Bank on 9 June, 2016 (AFP/Getty Images)

Cogat also suspended all permits for family visits for Ramadan, affecting 83,000 Palestinians, as well as banning travel to Israel for 204 relatives of the Tel Aviv attackers.

Two additional IDF battalions were also being deployed in the West Bank in accordance with situation assessments, including hundreds of infantry troops and elite reconnaissance units.

Recommended Read more Authorities ban Palestinians from travelling into Israel after attack

The closure of the Occupied Palestinian Territories, which were seized from Jordan and Egypt in the 1967 war, means that those working in Israel or with family there will be unable to travel.

A spokesperson for the Israeli Embassy in London told The Independent: There will be no entrances to Israel until Sunday night, but despite the terror attack and high state of alert, permit holders are being allowed in for prayers in Jerusalem.

Israels heavily militarised border crossings were previously closed for two days in May during Remembrance Day and Independence Day commemorations and the measure is frequently imposed over Jewish holidays.

The new restrictions came on the first Friday of Ramadan, when thousands of Muslims were expected to converge for prayers at the al-Aqsa Mosque, which is the third-holiest site in Islam.

Palestinian women from the West Bank make their way through Qalandia checkpoint into East Jerusalem to attend the first Friday prayers of Ramadan at Al-Aqsa Mosque (EPA)

Palestinians with permits to pray in Jerusalem will have to return home after worship, while entry to the al-Aqsa compound, which sits on the Jewish holy site of Temple Mount was restricted to permit holders, men above the age of 45 and women, Maan News Agency reported.

There are 101 different permits governing the movement of Palestinians, Haaretz reports, with the most common allowing them to work in Israel and others allowing travel for clerics, medical staff, farming and even funerals.

Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli Prime Minister, announced the introduction of a range of offensive and defensive steps after meeting with security officials on Thursday.

There will be intensive action by the police, the army and other security services, not just to catch every accomplice to this murder but also to prevent further incidents, he added.

In what he said was a deterrent measure, the new Israeli defence minister Avigdor Lieberman also ordered that the bodies of Palestinians killed while carrying out attacks would no longer be returned to their families for burial.

Hamas, the Islamist group that controls Gaza, praised the Tel Aviv murders and claimed they were a natural response to the Israeli occupations crimes against Palestinians and the constant Israeli desecration of al-Aqsa Mosque and Muslim sanctities.

Spokesperson Sami Abu Zuhri said: This operation proves that the occupation and the Palestinian Authority failed to stop the intifada.

The IsraeliPalestinian conflict intensifies Show all 10 1 /10 The IsraeliPalestinian conflict intensifies The IsraeliPalestinian conflict intensifies Medics evacuate a wounded man from the scene of an attack in Jerusalem. A Palestinian rammed a vehicle into a bus stop then got out and started stabbing people before he was shot dead AP The IsraeliPalestinian conflict intensifies Israeli ZAKA emergency response members carry the body of an Israeli at the scene of a shooting attack in Jerusalem. A pair of Palestinian men boarded a bus in Jerusalem and began shooting and stabbing passengers, while another assailant rammed a car into a bus station before stabbing bystanders, in near-simultaneous attacks that escalated a month long wave of violence AP The IsraeliPalestinian conflict intensifies Getty Images The IsraeliPalestinian conflict intensifies Palestinians throw molotov cocktail during clashes with Israeli troops near Ramallah, West Bank. Recent days have seen a series of stabbing attacks in Israel and the West Bank that have wounded several Israelis AP The IsraeliPalestinian conflict intensifies Women cry during the funeral of Palestinian teenager Ahmad Sharaka, 13, who was shot dead by Israeli forces during clashes at a checkpoint near Ramallah, at the family house in the Palestinian West Bank refugee camp of Jalazoun, Ramallah AP The IsraeliPalestinian conflict intensifies A wounded Palestinian boy and his father hold hands at a hospital after their house was brought down by an Israeli air strike in Gaza Reuters The IsraeliPalestinian conflict intensifies Palestinians look on after a protester is shot by Israelis soldiers during clashes at the Howara checkpoint near the West Bank city of Nablus EPA The IsraeliPalestinian conflict intensifies A lawyer wearing his official robes kicks a tear gas canister back toward Israeli soldiers during a demonstration by scores of Palestinian lawyers called for by the Palestinian Bar Association in solidarity with protesters at the Al-Aqsa mosque compound in Jerusalem's Old City, near Ramallah, West Bank AP The IsraeliPalestinian conflict intensifies Undercover Israeli soldiers detain a Palestinian in Ramallah Reuters The IsraeliPalestinian conflict intensifies Palestinian youth burn tyres during clashes with Israeli soldiers close to the Jewish settlement of Bet El, in the West Bank city of Ramallah, after Israel barred Palestinians from Jerusalem's Old City as tensions mounted following attacks that killed two Israelis and wounded a child

On one of its official Twitter accounts, Hamas said its followers would target Lieberman's bravado and threatened further attacks, claiming Ramadan will be a disaster for Israeli leaders and the security forces.

Hamas also distanced itself from the Palestinian Authority, whose President, Mahmoud Abbas, condemned all attacks on civilians but did not explicitly mention the Tel Aviv shootings.

A statement from his office said it stands against attacks on civilians, regardless of its sources and justifications.

The UN Security Council called for the perpetrators to be brought to justice and said its 15 members "reiterated that any acts of terrorism are criminal and unjustifiable".

Travel restrictions and increased security checks are routinely brought in after attacks in Israel and the West Bank, which have seen 32 Israelis and two Americans killed in stabbings, shootings, bombings and car rammings over the last eight months.

About 200 Palestinians have been killed during that time by the Israeli security forces, who said the majority were attempting or carrying out attacks, although others were shot during protests and clashes.
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The United Nations Secretary General excised the Saudi-led coalition fighting in Yemen from an annual UN register of childrens rights violators, after the middle-eastern country and its coalition partners threatened to cut off crucial funding to the world body.

Ban Ki-Moon said the removal of Saudi Arabia from the list was one of the most painful and difficult decisions he has had to make as Secretary General, describing the pressure the Arab nation had exerted on the UN as unacceptable.

His admission came after the coalition  which comprises the Saudis, UAE, Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Senegal and Sudan  was cut from the appendix of the UNs annual Children and Armed Conflict report, to the dismay of human rights groups.

The appendix lists those countries that have violated childrens rights over the preceding 12 months. UN Investigators found that the Saudi coalition was to blame for the deaths of more than half of the 510 children killed in the conflict in Yemen last year.

The Arab coalition began its campaign in Yemen in March 2015, against Iranian-backed Houthi rebels and supporters of the countrys former President, Ali Abdullah Saleh. The UN claims around 6,000 people have died in the conflict to date.

Mr Ban suggested Saudi Arabia, which is one of the biggest donors to the international organisations humanitarian efforts, had threatened to cancel its funding to the UN unless it was removed from the list of rights violators.

The Saudis pushed back against the accusations. We did not use threats or intimidation and we did not talk about funding, the kingdoms UN ambassador, Abdallah Al-Mouallimi, told reporters, adding: It is not in our style, it is not in our genes, it is not in our culture to use threats and intimidation. We have the greatest respect for the United Nations institution.

A displaced boy plays at a camp near Sanaa. More than 500 children have been killed during the conflict in Yemen since March 2015 (AP) ((AP))

The international advocacy group, Human Rights Watch, said in an open letter to the Secretary General that it was shocked by the decision to cut Saudi Arabia from the reprorts list of shame. But Mr Ban said he was forced to consider the very real prospect that millions of other children would suffer grievously if, as was suggested to me, countries would defund many UN programs.

Without naming Saudi Arabia specifically, Mr Ban said children in Palestine, South Sudan, Yemen and so many other places stood to be affected if such programmes had to be cut. It is unacceptable for member states to exert undue pressure, he went on. Scrutiny is a natural and necessary part of the work of the United Nations.
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The Government may have shot itself in the foot when it comes to the upcoming referendum. Its policy of including international students in net migration targets - despite the fact they are only here temporarily - has stoked sensitivity towards immigration, which risks playing a major part in the nations decision on our membership of the EU.

Recommended Read more Inquiry announced into Home Office treatment of overseas students

The reality, though, is that non-EU students are an easy target for the Government when it comes to trying to meet their pledge to cut net migration to the tens of thousands. Students have seen visa regulations constantly tightened, the removal of the post-study work visa in 2012, and been subjected to a draconian regime that saw nearly 30,000 students deported or refused entry since 2014 by the Home Office for supposedly cheating on English tests. This last decision has recently been criticised by the Home Affairs Committee for relying on questionable or insufficient evidence.

This crackdown is justified by the Government, quoting questionable data that suggests many international students illegally overstay their visas. The reality is that entry to the UK as an international student is becoming increasingly difficult, to the extent that those looking to illegally settle in the UK would be mad to try the costly and lengthy student visa method.

Overseas students come here to gain an education, and an expensive one at that. Not benefits. Ironically, there is mounting evidence the data used by the Government to estimate net numbers of students supposedly remaining in the UK may have been systematically overestimated, and a report on this is due to be published in the near future.

Inevitably, Government policy has had a negative impact on the reputation of the UK as a leading international education destination. The most recent ONS migration statistics have revealed long-term immigration to the UK for study is at its lowest since December 2007. This is despite the fact that, according to a study from strategy consultancy, Parthenon-EY, global demand for HE has grown by over 60 per cent in the same period.

Whilst competitors, such as Australia, have launched a ten-year strategy for increasing international student enrolment - with the aim of attracting 720,000 enrollees by 2025 - the UKs ambitions are looking decidedly slack. Last Autumn, Chancellor George Osborne announced plans to recruit an additional 55,000 students by 2020. However, the Government has yet to demonstrate how it will achieve this unambitious target.

Further research from Parthenon-EY suggests the total cost to the economy of declining international student numbers over the last five years - as a direct result of Government policy - is a huge 9 billion. It is also estimated that for every 1,000 international students, 600 local jobs, in both academia and the local economy, are supported - jobs that are now at risk from declining student numbers.

Clearly, international students bring enormous benefits to the economy and their local communities, not to mention the social and soft power gains resulting from educating future foreign leaders of industry and business. Our competitors, from Australia to Canada and the US, have recognised their value and are taking measures to compete in the increasingly crowded global market. Canada actually overtook the UK as an undergraduate destination last year, and Australia is predicted to do the same within a decade.

A new all-party parliamentary group for international students was formed last month to promote the international student agenda, and the Government would do well to heed its recommendations. Whether we leave or remain within the EU, the Government has to wake up to the damage its policy and rhetoric is doing to our 17.5 billion education export industry - the fifth largest services export sector, and the second largest contributor to our balance of payments.

James Pitman is managing director of higher education UK and Europe at Study Group
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Get your bearings

Nice is small enough for you to feel at home within a few days. Much of the action is along Promenade des Anglais, where pastel-painted buildings overlook the Mediterranean. Many tourists spend most of their time in the narrow streets of Le Vieux Nice (the Old Town), plunging into its atmospheric restaurants and boutiques. However, to do so would be to ignore some of the city's more up-and-coming neighbourhoods.

In the east, for example, the port has been the focus of big investment over the past few years, with new restaurants emerging in the streets overlooking the super-yachts. To the north, elevated Cimiez shows off fanciful-yet-faded buildings and an ornate 16th-century Franciscan monastery that makes the walk up the hill worthwhile. Bringing it all together in the centre is the Promenade du Paillon parkland, which was inaugurated in 2013 after a 40m development that replaced an old bus station with playgrounds, water features and trees.

The main tourist office is at 5 Promenade des Anglais (en.nicetourisme.com).

Touch down

Nice-Cote dAzur airport is four miles west of the city centre. Bus 98 takes you from here to various city-centre stops in 30 minutes (6 one-way). Bus 99 stops only at the railway station for the same fare. You can connect to any other bus within the city to complete your journey. A taxi costs 25.

Take a hike

Stroll along the Quai des Etats-Unis, taking in the edge of the Old Town to your right. Enter through one of the tiny arches to arrive at the Cours Saleya flower market (closed Monday). Take in the rows of stalls lined with vibrant displays of geraniums, fuchsias and dahlias, before ascending the steps at the back of the square.

From here, you can see a tall ochre townhouse to your right at 1 Place Charles Felix, which Henri Matisse rented in the 1920s and 1930s. Admire the patchwork of striped market stalls from above, then head back down the steps and out towards the sea. You can walk the length of the Promenade des Anglais from here, pausing at one of the sea-level restaurants, such as Galion Plage (00 33 4 93 88 17 23) if you need a break.

Lunch on the run

At 20 Avenue St-Jean-Baptiste, Lou Balico (loubalico.com) is a Nice institution whose food joins 24 other restaurants in bearing the official Cuisine Nissarde label (bit.ly/24Nissard), signifying authentic Nicoise cuisine. Try the fried courgette flowers for 12.

Window shopping

Among the Old Towns tangle on Rue Jules Gilly is the Italian-style deli, cafe and gourmet shop, LEpicerie Georges, at No 1 (00 33 4 93 85 88 92), which is run by a Frenchman, an Italian and a Croat.

A couple of doors down at No 4, another new addition is the library and concept store La Briqueterie (00 33 4 93 85 77 79). On Rue de la Prefecture, pick up handmade jewellery from Les Delices de Candice at No 16 (lesdelicesdecandice.com), then drop in to Mere et Filles next door at No 15 (00 33 4 93 85 17 91) for chic womens clothing.

An aperitif

Start your evening on Rue Bonaparte. This formerly humdrum street now bristles with stylish bistros and bars after the owners of Gossip (00 33 4 83 45 72 15) moved in with the intention of creating Le Petite Marais five years ago  a district named after Pariss bohemian quarter. Soak up the atmosphere at Chez Fabien on the Place du Pin (00 33 4 93 79 06 56).

Dine with the locals

Restaurant Jan is run by a South African chef who worked as Elle magazines food editor for 15 years before moving to Nice. His sensational four-course set menu touches on both his real and his adopted homelands, starting with grilled sardines and aoili and ending with malva pudding, the traditional sponge-style South African dessert (restaurantjan.com).

Cultural afternoon

Housed in a russet-red Genoese mansion, the Musee Matisse (musee-matisse-nice.org; closed Tuesday; entry 10) was funded by the artist himself. Afterwards, make your way down Boulevard Cimiez to reach the Musee Chagall at 36 Avenue Docteur Menard (bit.ly/MuseeChagall; closed Tuesday; 9).

Icing on the cake

In the Old Town, aim for artisan chocolatier Lac (patisserie-lac.com) on Rue de la Prefecture, which sells boxes of macarons or marshmallows for 6/9.75.

Additional research by Francesca Street
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Paul and Elizabeth Njoroge's farm in central Kenya is a fertile five acres on a steep slope where crops flourish enough that the family should be relatively wealthy.

Instead, Mr Njoroge, 53, occasionally needs food hand-outs, and often struggles to pay the costs of his children's education.

The reason for his impoverishment is a problem that will soon surpass poaching as the greatest threat to Africa's elephants: what conservationists call 'human-wildlife conflict'.

Elephants from a wildlife conservancy whose boundary lies less than a mile from the Njoroges' land regularly roam into their fields looking for food. Entire harvests can be lost in one night of such 'crop raids'.

Villagers angered at the elephants' incursions injure or occasionally kill them as they chase them away. In this area of Kenya, penniless farmers together lose crops worth more than 700,000 each year from a daily average of 10 incidences of human-elephant conflict.

A simple solution began to be put in place on Friday, however: a three-foot high fence that will eventually stretch for close to 100 miles past farms like the Njoroges', pulsing 7,000 volts along its length to deter elephants from crossing from their land into farmland.

The West Laikipia Elephant Fence is the first project to launch with funds pledged at the inaugural Giants Club Summit that Kenya's president Uhuru Kenyatta hosted six weeks ago.

It raised more than 3.5 million for new elephant-protection projects in Kenya, Botswana, Uganda, and Gabon, the founding members of the Giants Club, whose patron is Evgeny Lebedev, the owner of independent.co.uk.

The Laikipia Plateau has Kenya's second-highest density of elephants, with more than 6,300 individuals sharing 4,000 fertile square miles with an increasing human population needing ever more land to farm. It faces perhaps the worst human-elephant conflict in East Africa.

We dont hate the elephants, but their activities are making us poor, said Mr Njoroge. I have this big farm but yet sometimes I have to go for food handouts from the government. He has lost 3,000 of maize, sugarcane, and avocados in less than two years. The fence, he says, will make an enormous difference to his family's situation. What it means is no more lost crops, a better income, and a better chance to pay for important things like school for my children, he said.

Max Graham, CEO of Space for Giants, a Kenyan conservation charity helping to finance and build the new West Laikipia Elephant Fence, said farmers like the Njoroges were "on the frontline" between agriculture and conservation.

"While the elephant poaching crisis is a massive emergency problem, human-elephant conflict over the long term is going to be the single biggest issue for elephant conservation in Africa," he said.

"The big challenge here is smallholder farmers in this area can't support elephant conservation if they are losing crops to elephants. If we dont stop that, we will never have support of the local communities.

Space for Giants, the British Army Training Unit in Kenya (Batuk), the Governor of Laikpia County, the Leopardess Foundation, and Laikipia-based partners together officially launched the construction of the new $1 million fence on Friday.

"Poaching is a problem, yes, but the biggest challenge we face in terms of wildlife conservation is finding space for wildlife," said Judi Wakhungu, Kenya's environment and natural resources cabinet secretary.

"As our human population grows, there's a lot of pressure to develop facilities and infrastructure, and we're losing space for wildlife. I think projects such as this that we're launching today help to assure Kenyans that we have enough space in this country for our population growth, and we also have enough space for wildlife."

The British Army has a historic agreement with Kenya allowing it to pay to use areas of Laikipia for major exercises. The British Army Training Unit in Kenya (Batuk) trains around 10,000 British soldiers each year in the region. A key part of their partnership with Kenya is to help implement community projects like the new fence, to which Britain gave 150,000, said Col. Tom Vallings, Batuk's Commander.

"It really is a win-win-win situation," said Col. Vallings. "It's a win for the elephants, it's a win for the communities, and it's a win for Batuk because we help cement our relationship with the communities. In helping to protect the elephants, we're protecting our training areas."

The new fence follows the line of a previous one built several years ago that swiftly fell into disrepair owing to damage by both elephants and people. Its replacement is a completely different design.

Its posts stand only three feet high, meaning they are too short for elephants to lever out of the ground. They carry far higher voltages of electricity than before: up to 7,000 volts at low current pulses that give a sharp shock to the elephant but do no lasting harm.

They use low-level 'outriggers', three-feet-long wire antennas sprouting from the fence-line at a 45-degree angle that deliver shocks to the elephant's chest before it can reach the posts with its trunk or tusks.
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Normally anybody who criticises Jeremy Corbyn is guaranteed knee-jerk support by the British media which apparently feels that it does not even have to pretend to be non-partisan when it comes to the Labour leader. The only political figure similarly subjected to automatic demonisation is Tony Blair, so when he fiercely attacked Corbyn last week for supposedly focusing on the politics of protest at the expense of the politics of power it was interesting to see which man would be targeted.

Almost without exception, critics from Nigel Farage to Michael Moore denounced Blair as the root of all evil in the Middle East and beyond. Some claimed that he was so discredited that his views were no longer worth listening to, and others suspected that he was carrying out a pre-emptive strike before the publication of the report of the Chilcot inquiry, which is expected to criticise him severely for his actions in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

 Tony Blair responds to war criminal claims with astonishing attack on Jeremy Corbyn

Ignored in these denunciations was the fact that Blairs policy of foreign intervention did not end when he ceased to be prime minister but continues up the present day. David Cameron intervened militarily in Libya in 2011 with results that were just as disastrous as anything that Blair had been responsible for eight years earlier, and the Prime Minister has repeatedly expressed regret that he was thwarted by the House of Commons in his plan for airstrikes in Syria in 2013.

Blairs periodic eruptions are so useful because he openly reveals that, like the Bourbons, he has learned nothing and forgotten nothing since the start of the Iraq war, while other western leaders pretend the opposite but in practice do much as he would have done. It is worth quoting his jibe at Corbyn  that jibe which generated so many headlines  because it perfectly encapsulates not just his own misjudgements about the politics of power in the Middle East, but the misconceptions of successive British governments. He said he was accused of being a war criminal for removing Saddam Hussein  who, by the way, was a war criminal  and yet Jeremy is seen as a progressive icon as we stand by and watch the people of Syria being barrel-bombed, beaten and starved into submission and do nothing.

Recommended Read more Blair is entitled to defend himself if Corbyn calls him a war criminal

In other words, Blair still favours foreign interventionism and believes it is effective and beneficial despite all the evidence to the contrary from Iraq, Libya and Afghanistan over the last 15 years. But it would be a mistake to think that here he is expressing an isolated opinion of his own because, for all his pariah status, much of the British media and a significant minority of his own party supported British participation in the US-led air campaign against Isis in Syria.

Cameron claimed that Corbyns opposition to airstrikes showed he was a terrorist sympathiser and the Shadow Foreign Secretary Hilary Benn made a much-lauded speech full of bombast about supporting British airstrikes against Isis in Syria as being equivalent of battling Franco in Spain in 1936 and Hitler in 1940. The degree to which this was phony posturing on the part of Cameron and Benn is highlighted by the fact that neither has shown concern that the RAFs actions against Isis in Syria in the six months since the famous House of Commons vote have been very limited. Out of 3,787 airstrikes by the US-led coalition of air powers in Syria up to 1 June, only 237 were carried out by non-US aircraft.

Blair is an extreme and self-interested example, but there is still very little understanding among Western leaders about what happened in Afghanistan after 2001 and in Iraq after 2003. Whatever the humanitarian justifications for foreign intervention there, the wars rapidly transmuted into neo-imperial ventures not much different from those undertaken during the high days of imperialism in the 19th century. Even supposing that Blair is sincere in his oft-stated claim that the motive for the war in Iraq in 2003 was to overthrow Saddam Hussein, this is a simple-minded and misleading explanation of what really happened and what went wrong. Had the removal of Saddam and his non-existent WMDs been the real aim, and the US and British forces had immediately withdrawn once it was accomplished, then President George W Bush and Tony Blair might even have got away with it.

Recommended Read more Blair hints he could reject Chilcot Inquiry findings

Debate about what happened commonly treats two crucial events as a single development when in fact they were separate: one was the invasion of Iraq and the other was the subsequent occupation of the country. The first objective was theoretically attainable had the invading powers been at any time honest about what they were planning to do, but once they had occupied Iraq and sought to rule it directly or through compliant proxies then they were bound to fail disastrously. By the summer of 2004, the US and its allies in Iraq fully controlled only islands of territory and were facing full-scale rebellions by both Sunni and Shia Iraqis. Once they occupied Iraq with large land armies and sought to become the predominant power there and in the region, it was clear that they could never succeed.

Much of this was obvious at the time for anybody on the ground in Iraq. I remember Hoshyar Zebari, the long-serving Iraqi foreign minister, saying to me then that the most important political fact was that none of Iraqs neighbours agreed with the occupation or were prepared to accept it. A captain in British military intelligence in Basra told me that he kept vainly trying to explain to his superiors that the great difference between the British counter-insurgency campaigns in Malaya and Northern Ireland and the one in Basra was that in Iraq we have no real allies.

Fast forward 13 years and there is the same slack grip on reality when it comes to the continuing war in Syria and Iraq, and the same willingness to present a fantasy picture of the multiple conflicts there.

Blair is useful because he still believes that the removal of Saddam Hussein should have brought peace and plenty to Iraqis had there better reconstruction and pre-war planning after the invasion and if it had it not been for the malign intervention of Iran and Syria. He never takes on board that the US and Britain were seen as imperial occupiers by most Iraqis and that they were plugging themselves into sectarian, ethnic and regional conflicts which they could only make worse. He does not see how, among the many horrendous consequences of the war he helped start and has not stopped to this day, has been a vastly strengthened al-Qaeda and the establishment of Isis.

Blair is often criticised for his close commercial and political relations with Saudi Arabia and the Gulf monarchies but what he does is no different, even if it is more blatant, than other Western politicians. The struggle to defeat Isis is taking so long because the US, Britain, France and others are trying to overcome the extreme Islamists without damaging their strategic alliance with the autocracies of the Middle East.
British Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn and his deputy, Tom Watson, at a meeting in the Guru Har Rai Gurdwara Sahib temple in West Bromwich yesterday during his partys pro-EU campaign

Ireland, Luxembourg, Malta, and Cyprus are on the frontline of economies susceptible to any trade and migratory aftershocks from a Brexit, Standard & Poor's has warned.

The ratings agency said there could be "significant reverberations" for the Irish economy if British voters opt to pull out of the European Union.

Opinion polls in Britain show the rival "remain" and "leave" camps in the referendum almost neck and neck with just over two weeks to go.

"At the least, were the UK to vote to leave the EU on June 23, the uncertainty regarding its new trade and migratory agreements with Europe would take its toll on merchandise, services and human capital, along the Republic of Ireland's 499km border with the UK," the report by S&P said.

"Ireland's financial sector exposure to the UK is also important, reflecting the size of Irish banking subsidiaries operating in the UK."

But the agency said it would expect the "highly flexible" Irish economy to be able to reorient trade towards larger trading partners, such as the remaining EU and US, in the "unlikely" event that an exited UK would not be able to reach new terms on trade with EU negotiators.

"We also think Ireland would be well placed to attract some of the FDI displaced out of a Brexited UK into its own substantial financial services hub, should UK-based financial subsidiaries and branches lose coveted EU passporting rights, which currently enable them to on-sell financial services into the EU market."

Ireland is ranked 3.5 on the sensitivity index, which is well above the 0.8 average.

S&P said the second rank of highly exposed countries include small financial centres Malta and Cyprus.

But it also said that a Brexit could create "headwinds" for the recovering Cypriot economy given the importance of migratory, export and financial links between the two countries.

Belgium and the Netherlands make up the third group of economies, with an average sensitivity index reading of 1.6 versus the 0.8 median.

"In the case of the larger Benelux states, the high score reflects very sizeable export and FDI exposures," he said.

"For the Netherlands, export exposures may be overstated due to high re-exports and royalty payments, however, these also indicate that the highly open Dutch economy, with its large transport and maritime sectors, is far more exposed to a possible Brexit, than large, less open European economies such as France and Germany."

A Dutch government economic forecaster said its exposure to a possible Brexit will be greater than for other members of the bloc, and could trim 1.2pc off the economy by 2030.

The Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis (CPB) said the Dutch economy was tied more closely to Britain due to greater trade. "A Brexit will have a relatively severe effect on the economy of the Netherlands," the CPB warned.

Meanwhile, over half of Irish chief financial officers believe Brexit would negatively impact their business, according to the latest European cfo survey from Deloitte. Just 6pc of Irish respondents believe a Brexit would have a positive impact on their businesses, while 23pc feel it will have little or no impact.

Despite these uncertainties, Irish cfos remain optimistic about the prospects of their own companies with 45pc optimistic than they were six months ago.

Separately, Blackrock, the world's largest asset manager, said financial markets, particularly equities, may be under-pricing the risk of Brexit.

Meanwhile, Virgin Atlantic Airways fears it will suffer a slump in demand if Britain exits the EU as international businesses desert London for major cities still inside the 28-nation bloc, according to Craig Kreeger, the UK carrier's American ceo.

Transatlantic flights, which account for 70pc of Virgin's total capacity, could see bookings slide as US firms favour locations such as Paris and Frankfurt, which it doesn't serve. "Most travel-intensive businesses - consulting, banking, technology - can make a pretty good argument that London right now is the centre of Europe," he said. "If Brexit has a risk that's easy to understand, it's the possibility that that centre would move east."
Take note company bosses - shoppers are prepared to fork out more money for a product from a firm that has a strong reputation, a new survey suggests.

And if you end up in a crisis, don't dither. A quick response impresses customers, and, surprisingly, a public apology isn't all that important.

But whatever you do, don't lie. And don't bother hiring a PR firm to manage the fallout.

Just 14 out of 1,000 people surveyed by the PSG Group study found this to be necessary. And eight out of ten of those surveyed said they wouldn't forgive companies that mislead them. The study asked consumers various questions to do with reputation and branding.

Alan Tyrell, PSG Plus director, said company bosses need to get their act together quickly if they have problems.

"Interestingly, 45pc of consumers expect an organisation to immediately launch an investigation into how the crisis occurred," Mr Tyrell said.

He added that "39pc of consumers will seek facts from regulatory bodies, with another 30pc going to traditional media. Organisations now have a very short window of time to inform, communicate and manage crises effectively".

If a crisis occurs, consumers believe, unsurprisingly, that the senior management team and chief executive are responsible for solving it. They generally don't want to see the ceo fired.

Other key findings included:

* 76pc believe that the reputation of a company is important when deciding whether to buy its products or services.

* 52pc say they would be prepared to pay more for a product from a company that has a strong reputation.

* 78pc said they would trust a company that responded quickly to a crisis.

* 80pc said they wouldn't buy from a company that had misled them.

* 74pc said poor treatment of employees would put a customer off from doing business with a company.

Less than half of those surveyed trusted Irish indigenous firms more than multinationals. Just over 40pc said they weren't sure, and close to a fifth suggested they would trust multinationals more.

And just a quarter of those surveyed said they had faith in Irish SMEs over larger Irish companies.

"The fact that 41pc of consumers are unsure if they would trust Irish companies over multinationals in the event of a crisis suggests that wearing a 'green jersey' won't necessarily save you," Mr Tyrell added. "The challenge for Irish companies is that, unlike multinationals, they cannot trade experience or best practice in managing a crisis. Irish companies can however compensate by closely watching consumer sentiment, which will allow them to better predict, prepare and respond to a crisis before it becomes a catastrophe."

The survey also quizzed around 40 company bosses to gauge their views on the same questions. And their responses are a little different.

For example, to the 'if your company faces a crisis' question, a tiny fraction of consumers believed hiring a PR company is required. But more than half of bosses disagree. And in a crisis, bosses believe the buck stops overwhelmingly with the chief executive and the senior management team.

About 55pc of business figures surveyed said they had a crisis in the last two years.

Some 40pc had a crisis plan to activate, while a fifth consulted the internal communications manager and 28pc consulted a PR firm.
A NATIONAL strategy is needed if the Government is serious about cutting the 84pc unemployment rate among Travellers.

That's according to a national seminar held by the National Traveller Women's Forum and the Irish Traveller Movement, who yesterday urged the Government to help communities rekindle a spirit of enterprise.

"During the years of the recession, unemployment rates of around 13pc and 14pc were called a crisis," said Maria Joyce, National Traveller Women's Forum. "What do we call the figures for Travellers? Out of a total labour for of almost 10,000, 87pc of men are unemployed. That number is 81pc for women.

"There are lots of very interested people both Travellers and others who want to develop enterprise ideas but what we are missing is an overall Traveller enterprise and employment strategy," Ms Joyce said.
Simon Coveney's housing strategy will include a special emphasis on increasing the supply of "starter homes" for first-time buyers in Dublin.

Local councils will be sidelined in a new move to speed up house-building nationwide and tackle the country's housing crisis.

Housing Minister Simon Coveney will set up a new Special Delivery Unit in the department, with project managers appointed to drive specific house building projects from start to finish. He is also considering further bypassing councils by fast-tracking big building projects to An Bord Pleanala, to speed up decisions and minimise delays through procedures and objections.

This process is similar to the strategic infrastructure projects, like roads and bridges, which go straight to the planning board for a slimmed-down assessment process.

Mr Coveney said he would publish his housing strategy late next month - ahead of the target of 100 days in office.

The housing strategy will include a special emphasis on increasing the supply of "starter homes" for first-time buyers in Dublin.

He said current prices meant no house in the Dublin area could be bought for less than 300,000.

"It means that 40pc of people are locked out of the mortgage market. That is a big issue."

But Mr Coveney signalled he would make no attempt to interfere in a Central Bank review of its tough rules on deposits for homebuyers, which have been controversial.

He said he had no power to tell the Central Bank what to do.

It comes after the Government conceded the housing system - across renting, buying and social accommodation - was totally broken.

The admission, during a Dail housing debate, came as a new report showed that Dublin rents are back at boom-time rates and rents across the country continue to grow.

Education Minister Richard Bruton said housing was the biggest problem facing the Government.

"There is no system more broken than the system of housing in this country. The system is completely broken and needs to be rebuilt," he said.

Building levels in Ireland continue to lag well behind the level needed to meet housing needs.

Figures published yesterday by the CSO show construction output in Ireland increased by 13.6pc in the first quarter of this year, compared with the same period in 2015. However, the CSO added the increases were being measured against "an unprecedented low base".

Construction Industry Federation director general Tom Parlon said more needed to be done to ensure supply met demand. "We want to see this momentum continue throughout the year and call on the Government and the new Minister for Housing to support our industry via increased infrastructural investment and related policies."

Last night, Mr Coveney vowed to deliver 25,000 houses per year - well ahead of the 2020 target set out in the Programme for Government agreed last month.

A mix of initiatives would be deployed to boost building of starter homes. Mr Coveney said 27,000 planning permissions are currently granted in Dublin but only 4,400 of those are being used.

The minister said a special infrastructure fund would be set up to speed up projects like roads, bridges or power supplies, which may be delaying building.

Mr Coveney said more public land must be availed of for building starter homes, as a site for a 300,000 house in Dublin costs almost 60,000 at present. He pledged to look at a reduction in levies and other tax costs for building.

"Ultimately, we will need 35,000 houses to be built every year for the next 10 years to make up for the absence of building over the last decade. I believe that target can be reached once we get over initial blockages," he said.
Deputy governor Sharon Donnery told a conference in Dublin the rules, which were introduced last year, would be regularly reviewed, but that this should not indicate that they will be changed. Photo: Jason Clarke Photography

The Central Bank is maintaining a tough stance on retaining its mortgage deposit rules as it detailed an eight-week public consultation examining their impact.

Deputy governor Sharon Donnery told a conference in Dublin the rules, which were introduced last year, would be regularly reviewed, but that this should not indicate that they will be changed.

Ms Donnery said that had the so-called macro prudential measures been in place 15 years ago, the scale of the financial crisis experienced in Ireland would have been more limited.

"This time, our measures have been introduced early in the cyclical recovery in the market to prevent the recovery from becoming destabilised by excessive leverage being taken on by households," Ms Donnery said. She added that the review later this year would bring together an in-depth analysis on the performance of the rules.
Singapore's sovereign wealth fund GIC is to spend up to 230m on shares in the State's largest telco Eir.

GIC, which is one of the world's largest global investors, intends to buy the shares at a price of 232 per share from existing shareholders.

Eir said it understands the acquisition of the shares will be arranged so that shareholders with smaller percentage holdings will be given an opportunity to participate in the sale, as to facilitate a liquidity event for those holders.

The deal is set to be subject to approval of certain matters by shareholders at an extraordinary general meeting at Eircom Holdco, the holding company of the group.

The EGM is expected to be held at the end of June.

Following the deal Anchorage Capital Group will remain as Eir's largest shareholder, holding over 35pc of the group's shares.

Eir said Anchorage welcomes GIC as a new long-term shareholder.
Filmmaker Michael Moore has sparked controversy on social media with his latest tweet.

The Oscar-winning documentary filmmaker is heading to the UK and Ireland for the premiere of his latest movie, Where to Invade Next.

He took to Twitter to announce the details of his upcoming trip but caused some controversy with his tongue-in-cheek tweet, regarding Britain's EU referendum and Northern Ireland.

"Heading 2 UK & Ireland 4 premiere of my film! Hope Britain'll still be in Europe by time I land! I know they'll still be in Ireland. Hahaha," he wrote.

Heading 2 UK & Ireland 4 premiere of my film! Hope Britain'll still be in Europe by time I land! I know they'll still be in Ireland. Hahaha.  Michael Moore (@MMFlint) June 8, 2016

One user didn't take kindly to the tweet and reacted by saying: "looking forward to your movie Mike but that's a crap joke about 'Britain still in Ireland'".

Another added: "I don't see how this is supposed to be a "joke". I don't see the funny side at all."

Expand Close Oscar-winning documentary film-maker Michael Moore meeting WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange (WikiLeaks/PA) / Facebook

Twitter

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Whatsapp Oscar-winning documentary film-maker Michael Moore meeting WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange (WikiLeaks/PA)

However, some users were quick to defend his comments, with one fan empathising with the outspoken director: "In fairness, I doubt he thinks it's funny. It's a pointed comment. The haha designed to neutralise the controversy".

While another chimed in with: "You're very bold altogether but call in for a cuppa and we'll discuss our 'glorious' past."

Moore arrived in London today where he took time out from promoting his new film to meet WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

The American has been a supporter of Mr Assange for years but they had never met in person.

Moore paid a visit to the Ecuadorian embassy in London, where Mr Assange is living as he seeks to avoid extradition to Sweden, where he is wanted for questioning over a sex allegation, which he has always denied.

He believes that if he travels to Sweden he will be taken to the United States to be quizzed about the activities of WikiLeaks.

Video of the Day

Mr Assange will have been inside the embassy for four years on June 19.

A number of cities around the world, including Paris, Berlin and New York, will hold special events to mark the anniversary.

Patti Smith and PJ Harvey will play live at two venues.

In Moore's new film, Where To Invade Next, he examines how Europeans view work, education, healthcare, sex, equality and other issues.
A young woman was left mortified after a Starbucks barista wrote virgin on her coffee cup instead of her name.

Rosie Anderson (22) was outraged and hurt when she noticed the scribble on her coffee cup.

I was so angry, they may as well have written 'troll' on my cup - that's how it made me feel, she told the Daily Mail.

I can laugh about it now, but what if the staff are doing that to every girl who goes in on their own? It could really upset them, especially if they're really insecure.

Rosie who is a dental nurse from Kent visited the Starbucks shop in London on May 18, Daily Mail reports.

After ordering her drink, she was asked her name by a male barista so her drink could be identified.

I said Rosie and I thought I spelled it out to them. There's no way they could mistake Rosie with virgin, she said.

She said she was so angry when she noticed on the bus to Manchester what had been written on the cup, and she took a photo.

Her parents told her she should take it as a compliment because she looked classy.

They thought it meant that the two male staff members behind the counter thought I was classy  but I thought they meant ugly, she said.

She emailed a photo of the cup to Starbucks complaints department and hoped for an apology. She received an automated response and after complaining again, she received a letter in the post with two drinks vouchers.

Rosie said shell never return to Starbucks again because she doesnt feel like shes had an apology.

Video of the Day

A Starbucks spokesman said: We are disappointed to learn of this incident and would like to sincerely apologise to our customer for her experience.

We strive to provide an inclusive and positive experience for all and this is not representative of the service we know our customers expect."
The Who lead singer Roger Daltrey has had a special champagne named after him

The Who are to give the first public tasting of their own brand of limited edition champagne ahead of their headline slot at the Isle of Wight Festival.

The bubbly, named Champagne Cuvee Roger Daltrey, has been produced by Eminent Life to toast the band's 50th anniversary and will sell for 95 for a 75cl bottle.

A contribution from the sale will go towards the Teenage Cancer Trust.

Daltrey said: "I am very excited to have this opportunity to express my passion for champagne through this limited edition cuvee. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do."

A festival spokeswoman said: "This will be the first time the champagne has been tasted by anyone other than the winemaker and Roger Daltrey."

Along with the champagne, a signed ice bucket has been produced in a limited run of 499 to sell at 650 each.

Meanwhile, festival-goers have partied through a few light rain showers during the afternoon which has seen Busted and Everything Everything take to the main stage.

During her act, Jess Glynne performed a tribute to Prince by singing his song "I Feel For You" which was made famous by Chaka Khan.

One festival-goer, Jason Hargraves, 51, from Norwich, surprised his wife Juliet for her 50th birthday with 'glamping' tickets to see Queen.

Jason, a father of two girls, said: "It's both of our first time at any big festival - it was an ambition to be here."

Mrs Hargraves said: "I had no idea I was coming here so it was a great surprise. A lovely surprise."

DJ Lemon, from Southsea, Hampshire, who will perform as Its a Sin in the Hipshaker tent on Sunday, said: "The atmosphere was insane in there last night, Rythym of the 90s was huge, just crazy vibes."

Video of the Day

The Friday headline slot is being shared by Welsh-rockers Stereophonics followed by Faithless ahead of Richard Ashcroft performing tracks from his new album These People as "special guest" to The Who on Saturday night.

The festival, held at Seaclose Park, Newport, will be concluded by Queen on Sunday night.

Original Queen members Brian May and Roger Taylor, who are celebrating the 40th anniversary of Bohemian Rhapsody, will perform for their only UK show of the year alongside American vocalist Adam Lambert who has sold 2.5 million albums worldwide after coming runner up of American Idol in 2009.

Thousands of music fans travelled by ferry across to the island for the festival and filled up both the general campsites as well as the various glamping options which include tents in the shape of playing cards and giant cubes offered by Tangerine Fields.

Since the Isle of Wight Festival relaunched in 2002, it has featured headline acts from some of the world's biggest stars including David Bowie, Coldplay, The Rolling Stones, Sir Paul McCartney, Blur, Fleetwood Mac and the Foo Fighters.
Cllr Barry Saul with members of the Morgan family. Photo: Twitter/ @dlrcc

A plaque commemorating the beloved Father Ted star Dermot Morgan was unveiled in Dublin yesterday evening.

The plaque was erected by Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council to pay tribute to the actor, writer, iconoclast and satirist.

Its located in Morgans hometown of Mount Merrion, at McGuires Mount Merrion Stores on Deerpark Road.

Cllr Barry Saul said that the location for the plaque is very fitting as Morgan spent much time reading newspapers in the McGuires stores and in the local pub.

Its a very fitting tribute to highlight the significance of Morgan not just locally but nationally and internationally.

People have already come to the area just to take selfies with the plaque, said Saul.

The unveiling ceremony was attended by the actors sons and his baby grandson, Dermot.

Dermot Morgan who is most known for his role as Father Ted passed away in 1998 after suffering a heart attack. Co-star Frank Kelly, who played Father Jack, died in February 2016, 18 years to the day after Morgans passing.
A care worker who stole more than 11,000 from the life savings of two of her elderly patients has been given a nine-month sentence.

Danielle McDermott (25) targeted the 89-year-old and 75-year-old in what Judge Philip Babington told Londonderry Crown Court was among the lowest form of offending he had seen in several years.

McDermott, whose address cannot be made public because of an existing death threat against her partner, admitted committing the thefts on various dates between August 2013 and May 2014.

The daughter of McDermott's first victim, Dinah Porter (89), had suspected the care worker of being behind her mother's money shortage. On the morning of one of McDermott's twice-daily visits, Mrs Porter's daughter, Laura, placed marked bank notes in her mother's purse and noted their serial numbers.

She then placed her mobile phone in her mother's bedroom, with the camera recording McDermott's visit.

Read More

In footage captured by the phone, the defendant was seen taking notes from the elderly woman's purse.

A total of 240 had been placed in the purse, but after McDermott's visit, only 40 was left behind.

The theft was reported to the PSNI, who informed McDermott's employers, the Western Health And Social Care Trust.

The defendant was then suspended from her job, and a senior trust officer carried out an immediate review of her other clients. In conjunction with the police investigation, the probe revealed that another of McDermott's patients, who was suffering the onset of dementia, had seen the money in her bank account dwindle from 11,195 to just 474.

A closer examination of the that victim's account showed 29 withdrawals.

A prosecution barrister said McDermott had used the stolen money to fund a lavish lifestyle for her and her partner.

That included regular holidays abroad, overnight stays in hotels, meals in restaurants and expensive spa treatments. In total, McDermott spent 2,000 on flights abroad alone.

McDermott also used the stolen money to pay for car insurance and obtain loans.

Judge Babington said it seemed the defendant was a regular user of cocaine at the time of her offending, but she no longer used the drug.

He added it was not insignificant that she got engaged in March 2014 to a partner who was allegedly emotionally abusive to her. Despite that, the relationship is continuing.

Judge Babington told the court one of McDermott's victims was "confused and upset" while the other "really did not know what was happening".

"The case in many ways is even more serious because of that," he added. "It is clear that both injured parties were taken advantage of because they were vulnerable and the defendant was in a relationship of trust with them.

"Unfortunately, as people live longer, more and more people need the assistance of carers to enable them to live in their own homes."

McDermott, who showed no emotion as she was jailed, will serve half of the nine-month sentence in prison and the remainder on licence after being released from custody.
Judge Dave Riordan was told by Det Sgt Clodagh OSullivan that ODriscoll was charged with 38 counts of theft and 42 counts of deception following an investigation into financial matters surrounding the operations of Tusla, the childcare agency, and the HSE. Stock photo: Getty

Youngsters who were never in care ended up on a HSE Children at Risk register as a consequence of a 96,000 theft by a social worker.

It emerged care worker Jennifer O'Driscoll (38) deliberately overpaid unwitting foster carers, sometimes for children that were never in care, so she could then claim the excess money back from them in cash.

Some foster carers would offer to allow the overpayment to be deducted from their future HSE and Tusla payments. But O'Driscoll insisted that the money had to be repaid in cash because another foster carer was already waiting for it.

O'Driscoll, of St John's Terrace, World's End, Kinsale, appeared before Cork Circuit Criminal Court having pleaded guilty to 80 charges in relation to offences which left the Health Service Executive (HSE) and Tusla facing a 96,962 loss.

Deception

Judge Dave Riordan was told by Det Sgt Clodagh O'Sullivan that O'Driscoll was charged with 38 counts of theft and 42 counts of deception following an investigation into financial matters surrounding the operations of Tusla, the childcare agency, and the HSE.

The investigation found that O'Driscoll's actions between May 29, 2008 and January 1, 2013 had left the HSE and Tusla facing a 96,000 loss.

The offences all related to the North Lee social work department in Blackpool, Cork.

Judge Riordan was told that O'Driscoll would arrange for overpayments to be made to foster carers for children that weren't in their care.

A total of nine foster carers and 23 children were involved. None were aware of what O'Driscoll was doing.

O'Driscoll would then personally contact the foster carers, blame the overpayment on a staff error and then demand the repayment of the money in cash.

Dismissed

The investigation was launched as a consequence of an internal disciplinary matter within the HSE and Tusla.

Judge Riordan was told that O'Driscoll, who has two children aged six and 16 years, has since been dismissed from her job as a social worker.

Defence counsel Sinead Behan BL applied for sentencing to be adjourned to allow the defendant further time to raise compensation.

She pointed out that O'Driscoll had brought 18,000 to be lodged in court.

Ms Behan said that O'Driscoll is further examining the possibility of raising funds based on equity involving her home.

She also said that the court would benefit from a detailed psychiatric report on her client, which is currently being prepared.

Judge Riordan agreed to adjourn sentencing until October 25 next after being told the State had no objection.

O'Driscoll was remanded on continuing bail to appear before Cork Circuit Criminal Court in four months.
A middle-aged man publicly apologised to his sister-in-law after attempting to blackmail 10,000 from her with false claims her husband was having an affair with a pornographic model.

Pat O'Dwyer (52) had hatched the bizarre blackmail scheme in an apparent bid to save his own marriage.

He received a three-year suspended prison sentence before Cork Circuit Criminal Court after a judge warned that his offences had "doubly-victimised" his innocent sister-in-law, Ria Burgoyne, and her devoted husband.

O'Dwyer received the sentence after using a sock in an attempt to hide his fingerprints when collecting 10,000 in blackmail money from Mrs Burgoyne in an isolated Cork farm shed.

The father of two, from Wolfe Tone Place, Thurles, Co Tipperary, had also pleaded guilty to demanding money, namely 10,000, with menaces from his sister-in-law between October 20 and 23 last.

Sentencing on that more serious charge was adjourned by Judge Dave Riordan until October 26 to allow for further psychiatric evaluation of O'Dwyer.

The court heard that O'Dwyer sent a package to the woman who was stunned, on opening it, to discover explicit photos of a pornographic actress.

Det Sergeant Leahy said the package also contained a note which falsely claimed the woman's husband was having an affair with the model depicted in the photos - and further falsely claimed that some of her husband's underwear and semen samples were in the writer's possession.

Immediately on receipt of the package, Mrs Burgoyne contacted gardai. She was advised to wait until the individual made contact again.

O'Dwyer was arrested at the farm shed nominated for the blackmail payment.

Yesterday, Judge Riordan queried whether O'Dwyer had anything to say to his sister-in-law and her husband.

"I am sorry for what happened," O'Dwyer said.

Judge Riordan noted that Mr and Mrs Burgoyne had been "doubly victimised" - firstly by the offence itself and secondly by details of it having been aired publicly.

He noted that O'Dwyer was described as having "narcissistic" tendencies with one psychiatrist saying he needed further evaluation for possible chronic psychotic disorder.

The judge described the offence as being at the mid to upper range.

Judge Riordan was told by Det Sergeant Sean Leahy that O'Dwyer apparently blamed his sister-in-law for his recent marriage failure.

He also hoped that if he managed to get 10,000 it might help save his marriage.

Judge Riordan described the victim impact statement of Mrs Burgoyne as "harrowing" .
Lidl has announced plans to open another 20 stores by the end of the year

A 36-year-old student, who claimed she was called a liar by a cashier after she was given wrong change, has lost a 75,000 damages claim for defamation in the Circuit Civil Court.

Solange Bakonsa told the court that in May 2015, she had bought items worth 5.62 at Lidl, Whitestown Way, Tallaght, Dublin and had given the cashier 21, to get 15.38 back.

Judge Karen Fergus heard the cashier, Margaret Kieley, had given Bakonsa 38 cents change, leaving her short of 15. Bakonsa claimed that Kieley called her a liar when she told her she had been given the wrong change.

Kieley today told barrister Conor Kearney, counsel for Lidl, that she never called Ms Bakonsa a liar. She said she had initially thought that she had given her the right change but had then told her that the matter would be investigated straightaway.

Mr Kearney said that Ms Bakonsa then called her husband, who later came to the shop and was very aggressive towards the cashier, calling her a fucking bitch.

Store manager Syed Hussain said that after counting Kieleys till, they realised she had given the wrong change. Hussain had apologised to Ms Bakonsa, giving her the missing 15.

Ms Bakonsa, of Russell Crescent, Russell Square, Tallaght, claimed she had been embarrassed and ashamed in front of customers. She sued Lidl Supermarkets GmbH, Great Connell Road, Newbridge, Co Kildare.

Mr Kearney, who appeared with Mason Hayes & Curran solicitors, told the court that Ms Bakonsa had refused to fill in a customer complaint form and had told Hussain that she would instruct her solicitor.

Judge Fergus, dismissing Bakonsas claim and awarding legal costs against her, said she was satisfied that Kieley, an experienced cashier, would not have boldly called her a liar.
Spanish police officers are flying to Dublin to meet senior Gardai to review strategies against the international crime cartel run by Dubliner Christy Kinahan from his base on the Costa del Sol.

Kinahan's associates have been blamed for murdering six of the seven victims of the vicious feud between his organisation and the Hutch gang since last September.

Gardai announced earlier this month that they intend to resume sending crime investigators to Spain - a tactic employed very successfully during Operation Shovel, which was aimed at the Kinahan outfit.

But this is not likely to take place in the short term, according to senior officers.

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However, Assistant Commissioner John O'Mahony, who is in charge of the force's crime and security section, revealed yesterday that Spanish officers will arrive here in the next few weeks.

Although Shovel resulted in the seizure of millions of euro worth of drugs and confiscations of a large property portfolio, it failed to lead to criminal charges against the suspected top members of the Kinahan organisation.

The Dublin crime summit will focus on an agenda that will be dominated by the activities of that gang.

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Garda Commissioner Noirin O'Sullivan said she was satisfied that one garda liaison officer, based Madrid, was sufficient at the moment but they were looking again at deployments for the future.

Mr O'Mahony said the Garda had an excellent relationship with the Spanish, particularly in the Costa del Sol, where several leading Irish criminals have been based in recent years, and he pointed out that officers attached to the liaison section here kept in regular contact with their counterparts.
Many Catholic primary schools are still treating homosexuality and gender issues as a taboo subject, a conference on bullying will hear today. Photo: PA

Many Catholic primary schools are still treating homosexuality and gender issues as a taboo subject, a conference on bullying will hear today.

While there has been a raft of guidelines for schools on dealing with homophobia and transphobia, their focus is on anti-bullying, rather than broader education.

It can lead to a situation where, while the bullying behaviour is dealt with, the problem that underpins that behaviour goes unaddressed, according to teacher Susan Bailey.

Ms Bailey, who is speaking at a conference in Dublin City University (DCU), says the guidelines have been introduced into an education system where 90pc of schools are under the control of a church that views homosexuality and transsexuality as sinful.

So, she says, it is entirely possible for a school to deal with bullying behaviour while also allowing the beliefs that feed it to go unchallenged.

Teaching about sexuality takes place within a school's Relationship and Sexuality Education (RSE) programme and what is taught is negotiable at the level of the individual school.

The instruction from the Catholic Primary School Management Association (CPSMA) to its schools is to have a clearly articulated policy for RSE, rooted in the school's Catholic ethos.

Ms Bailey says that for things to really change for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) primary pupils, the scope of the RSE programme needs to be broadened.

She says despite a recommendation in 2003 for RSE programmes to be assessed in relation to their representation of different sexual orientations, most continued to teach about sexuality exclusively in relation to heterosexual relationships.

"Other sexualities and genders remain invisible and taboo within this teaching, and such invisibility, it could be argued, often cast them as deviant and abnormal", says Ms Bailey, who teaches in Dublin and is completing a doctorate on ethical education.

She believes while guidelines were a solution to a bullying problem, they need to be seen in the context of a system where most schools saw heterosexuality as the only sexual orientation or only norm. Ms Bailey says rather than viewing transphobic and homophobic bullying as the educational problem that needs to be dealt with, the transphobia and homophobia that underpins this behaviour needs to be addressed.

The same conference heard warnings about sexting among Irish teens, following which forensic psychologist, Dr Maureen Griffin, said the worrying phenomenon had become so accepted that Irish schoolchildren now saw it as a normal aspect of flirting or dating.

Dr Griffin has researched child sexting trends in Ireland and visited hundreds of schools to highlight the dangers of certain social media interaction. She found sexting was now commonplace among second-level students, and had even spread to primary school children here.

"It's a part of normal life for them now. Some students have said to me it's a part of flirting, which is quite scary. This is the new thing, if you like somebody that's just what you do," said Dr Griffin, who carries out social media workshops in schools.

"Secondary schoolchildren will openly admit it is an issue; they mightn't admit that they themselves send these images but they all know somebody who has sent it or they have all received one at some stage. It's something we need to educate them on. Education is key here," she said.
The Leaving Certificate Maths Higher Level Paper 1 continued a trend where they have become more and more accessible to the large number of extra students sitting the honours exam, according to teacher Aidan Roantree of the Institute of Education Dublin.

Mr Roantree said Section A would have been completely accessible to most students, although he said, on Question 5, the phrase Pythagorean Triple might have confused some students, as it does not appear in the textbooks.

He recalled that it did appear, along with its definition, on the 2014 examination paper.

Mr Roantree said that despite so many predictions to the contrary, financial maths was conspicuous by its absence: Financial maths is a major topic on the new syllabus, and its omission is unexpected. Its absence will have disappointed many students, who would have invested a lot of time and energy on it.

Mr Roantree said Section B questions contained an interesting mix of algebra, calculus and sequences and series.

Most students would have found most questions manageable,  but there were a couple of interesting, challenging parts. For example, Question 9 B, about the male bees and the ancestors of male bees.

Jean Kelly, also of the Institute of Education, said ,overall, students would have been be very pleased with the Ordinary Level, and it would give them confidence going in to Paper 2.

Unlike last year, the wording of the questions was clear and straight forward, said Ms Kelly

She said financial maths featured heavily throughout the paper .

However, she said for a course with a wide range of topics, and a large amount of material to learn, very few topics came up in any great detail: Algebra, which is a significant part of the syllabus, only appeared in a short question.
Students Niall Casey, David Grant OSullivan and Peter OBrien outside Presentation College in Cork after English Paper 2. Photo: Daragh McSweeney

Leaving Cert English Paper Two was hailed by Cork students as both accessible and relatively straightforward.

However, pupils at Presentation Brothers College (PBC) in Cork admitted that some might have been thrown by the lack of any questions about poet William Butler Yeats. "I think some students might have predicted Yeats would crop up because of all the Easter 1916 centenary ceremonies," Niall Casey (18) said.

"But the poets that did come up were Durcan and Bishop."

David Grant-O'Sullivan said the overall paper was quite accessible and lacked any obvious problem questions.

"There certainly didn't seem to be any major pitfalls in it," he said.

Peter O'Brien (19) added that the questions about William Shakespeare's 'King Lear' were as good as students could have hoped for.

PBC deputy principal and English teacher, Aidan Twomey, said English Paper Two continues an interesting trend over recent years in the Leaving Cert.

"I think the papers have been moving over recent years more and more towards what opinions a student has about the material rather than simply about how much they know," he said.
LC English Higher P2

If Leaving Certificate English Higher Level candidates were disappointed not to see Yeats on Paper 2 in the centenary of 1916, the widely anticipated appearance of poet Paul Durcan brought "huge sighs of relief", according to teacher Liz Farrell.

"Most kids will have covered Durcan and they all enjoy him," said another teacher, Barry Hazel of Drimnagh Castle secondary school, Dublin and the ASTI.

It was a well-received paper generally, and Mr Hazel described the 'King Lear' questions as "brilliant" and "really inclusive", although he thought the Cultural Context question was "a little bit tricky".

Ms Farrell, of Colaiste Eoin, Hacketstown, Co Carlow and the TUI, described it as an "accessible and engaging paper with plenty of opportunity to answer enthusiastically".

She felt the only issue might have been the unseen poem, which, while it was a "lovely poem", she thought students would have found it challenging. Jim Lusby of the Institute of Education, Dublin, said while nothing unexpected appeared in terms of content, the paper contained remarkably specific and detailed questions.

He thought it challenged candidates to display not only a wide knowledge of the prescribed texts, but also an ability to give more or less equal treatment to a variety of aspects.

Mr Lusby said the character of the paper was best illustrated by the question set on Durcan, which required candidates to discuss three distinct aspects: 'narrative approach', 'a variety of issues' and 'great emotional honesty'. He questioned whether this approach was "asking too much of 1,000-word essays written in 50 or 60 minutes".

LC English Ordinary P2

The second Leaving Certificate English paper often causes a bit of student anxiety.

At three hours 20 minutes, it's a long exam, and students also agonise over what poets are going to come up, but, in the event, teachers agreed that candidates should have been happy when they sat down yesterday.

Teacher Liz Farrell, of Colaiste Eoin, Hacketstown, Co Carlow and the TUI, was pleased that two female poets, Emily Dickinson and Elizabeth Bishop, came up in the prescribed poetry section.

It was unusual, but welcome, she said, "not to have just a token woman".

Ms Farrell said that overall the paper was lovely: "The language was very nice, it was well pitched to these students and there was nothing contentious."

Barry Hazel of Drimnagh Castle secondary school, Dublin, agreed, describing it as a "very accessible paper".

Similarly, Jim Lusby of the Institute of Education regarded it as "a comfortable exam paper for the well-prepared student, without confusion or surprises".

He said the questions in all sections were well thought out and clearly phrased.

It was, he said, "all as it should be for an eminently fair assessment of Ordinary Level candidates".

LC Engineering

There was more praise for the contemporary approach taken by examiners when setting papers; this time for a question on 3D printing on the Leaving Certificate Engineering Higher Level paper.

Teacher Eamonn Dennehy of Heywood Community School, Ballinakill, Laois, and the ASTI, was happy with both the higher and ordinary level papers, describing them as "student friendly".

With projects and practicals already out of the way, only 50pc of the marks were up for grabs in the higher level written paper, and 40pc at ordinary level.

Mr Dennehy said the higher level paper was well structured and followed the usual format.

But, he said, "students would have had to draw from their own experience and apply their learning to solve some of the problems posed".

He was impressed with the way the papers have evolved to reflect new technologies, noting the question on 3D printing at higher level.

"This is of growing importance in manufacturing methods, including for prosthetics, and this was referred to in the question on materials testing," he said.

Mr Dennehy said there was a good choice of questions on both papers and he praised the use of diagrams and graphics, which, he said, would help students put questions in context.

JC Irish

It was a challenging start to the day for Junior Cert Higher Level candidates with the first Irish paper, according to teachers.

Robbie Cronin of Marian College, Ballsbridge, Dublin and the ASTI, said students should have been happy enough with the essay choices, "although those who prefer to write about an incident that happened would probably be unhappy as it was more confined than normal".

He thought the language in the comprehension was very challenging and said one word in the listening comprehension (iobairt, which means sacrifice) was very difficult.

David Duffy of the TUI described Paper 1 as "an honours paper set for an honours student". While he regarded the grammar section as "more pro-student than in some previous years, the change in format, though well-intended, may have surprised some students".

He thought the afternoon paper was "student friendly". Mr Cronin said the most challenging part of a "fair" Paper 2 was the unseen prose about "Meath Vampires". However, the questions were reasonable and gave the students a fair chance of answering, he said.

Mr Duffy described the ordinary level paper as "fair".

Today's papers

Leaving Cert:

Geography (9.30am) and Maths Paper 1 (2pm)

Junior Cert:

Geography (9.30am) and Maths Paper 1 (2pm)
The schoolbag belonging to 13 year old schoolboy Philip Cairns in a laneway near his home on Ballyroan Road, Rathfarnham

Detective Sergeant, Tom Doyle, of Rathfarnham Garda Station holding the schoolbag belonging to Philip Cairns who has been missing since October 23, 1986. Photo: Damien Eagers

Gardai believe they may have solved the mystery of the disappearance of Dublin schoolboy Philip Cairns after they questioned paedophile Eamon 'Captain' Cooke just weeks before he died.

Independent.ie understands a woman approached gardai in May and named Cooke as the killer of the Rathfarnham schoolboy. Philip was just 13 when he disappeared without a trace on October 23rd in 1986.

Cooke (79), a DJ and pirate radio operator, died earlier this month.

"A person came forward in May. It took an awful lot of courage for this person to come forward," a source said.

"They nominated Cooke as a suspect. This case was still under active investigation when Cooke died.

"It is still under active investigation now."

A number of aspects to the woman's story have been corroborated already and it is believed that Cooke verified some of the information.

There are two main aspects that gardai are now looking to corroborate.

One aspect relates to Philip's schoolbag and the DNA found on it. That bag has been in storage in Rathfarnham Garda Station since his disappearance.

Philip Cairns had been a first-year student at his school for just over a month. His schoolbag was found dumped in a laneway close to his home some six days later.

Expand Close The lane between Ann Devlin Road and Ann Devlin Drive in Rathfarnham where the schoolbag belonging to Philip Cairns was found. / Facebook

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The woman came forward to gardai in Terenure last month.

She told gardai that she had seen Cooke in his radio studios with the schoolboy in and around the time he disappeared.

Gardai are believed to be treating the woman's story as credible.

On foot of this information, they spoke to Cooke shortly before his death.

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Whatsapp The schoolbag belonging to 13 year old schoolboy Philip Cairns in a laneway near his home on Ballyroan Road, Rathfarnham

It is believed that Cooke told gardai he had met the schoolboy.

It is not known if he verified other aspects of the woman's story.

Tonight, Dublin TD John Lahart, who grew up in Rathfarnham, said: "Everyone in Ballyroan remembers the disappearance of Philip Cairns.

" Ballyroan is a wonderful, tightly-knit parish, a great place to live and grow up in and Philips disappearance shocked, dazed and bewildered the community.

"The news tonight will be met with a mixture of terrible shock and confirmation of a community's worst fears, even after all this time.

"His mother Alice and his late father Philip Snr, carried the burden of his disappearance during the passing years with such great dignity, stoicism and grace.

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Whatsapp Detective Sergeant, Tom Doyle, of Rathfarnham Garda Station holding the schoolbag belonging to Philip Cairns who has been missing since October 23, 1986. Photo: Damien Eagers

" My personal thoughts, and I know the thoughts of all Ballyroan people will be with Alice, Eoin and the wider Cairns family today.

"I want to pay particular tribute to, a few generations of Gardai at this stage, for their enduring persistence in trying to solve Philip's disappearance. It is hugely appreciated by Ballyroan people and by the wider Rathfarnham community."

A garda spokesperson confirmed this evening: "As part of the ongoing investigation into the case of Philip Cairns missing person in 1986, a 25-year appeal was circulated in 2011. As a result of this appeal a member of the public came forward and in May of this year gave a statement to the investigating Gardai at Rathfarnham Garda Station."

"Aspects of this statement were corroborated which opened new lines of inquiry. These lines of inquiry include interviewing people and cross referencing DNA profiles with those on items recovered as part of this investigation."

"At this point in time these new lines of inquiry have not yielded positive results, however the investigation is very much active and ongoing."

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Last October, Detective Sergeant Tom Doyle said he believes advances in science and forensic technology could make the bag a vital clue once again.

"At the time it was found in 1986 DNA profiling was a limited concept. There was a danger that testing the bag might produce a mixed profile because the bag could have been handled by many people," Det Sgt Doyle told the Herald.

"The key is being able to separate-out the profiles of any DNA found on the bag, and technology is increasingly moving in that direction, so I am convinced this school bag holds the answers as to what happened to Philip," he added.

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Philip's mother Alice and his siblings also said in October in an interview with the Herald newspaper that they continue to hold out hope of finding him. Alice frequently uses the long narrow concrete laneway where his school bag was found, often on her way to Ballyroan church to pray for him.

"I always look down at the spot beside the lamppost were his bag was left, and I always wonder. It's very sad," she said.

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"The day he went missing was the one day that I didn't stand at the gate and watch him walk up the road towards the school. I had an appointment with one of my daughter's in the dental hospital that afternoon and so I wasn't at home when Philip left the house," Alice said.

Det Sgt Doyle said in October that he hoped that the mystery could be solved, referring to a case in 2002 when former Army sergeant John Crerar was convicted of the murder of Kildare woman Phyllis Murphy almost 23 years after he killed her.

In that case a detective had kept a blood sample collected years earlier, and advances in DNA science meant it could be tested in greater detail against other evidence, and despite the passage of time a conviction was secured.

The extensive file on Philip has been open and active, and around 10 snippets of information a year have been given to gardai, especially around the time of the anniversary and public appeals for information.

Speaking to Ryan Tubridy on RTE Radio One last year, Philip's younger brother Eoin said he was prepared for the worst.

"Anyone in our situation would hope that he comes back. But really, after 29 years we would just like to know where is he, or where he remains.

"If he is alive, I hope he's well. I'd love if he contacted us. I would love to see him again. But deep down, I know that the likelihood of that happening is very remote," he said.

"You have to hope for the best and prepare for the worst. More than likely there will not be a happy ending. We will more than likely find him rather than him find us."
Health Minister Simon Harris has said he was deeply upset by the case of a woman who was forced to go to the UK to terminate her pregnancy after discovering the foetus had a fatal abnormality.

However, he ruled out any intervention by the Government on the issue ahead of a Citizens Assembly debate.

His comments came after the United Nations Human Rights Committee found Amanda Mellet was forced to choose between carrying her baby to term, knowing it would not survive, or travelling abroad for a termination.

The Geneva-based body hit out at the Government for putting Ms Mellet through financial and emotional suffering.

She was 21 weeks' pregnant in November 2011 when doctors told her the foetus would die in her womb or shortly after birth.

She travelled to the UK for an abortion but had to return home 12 hours after the procedure as she could not afford to stay longer.

The hospital where she was treated did not provide any options regarding the foetus's remains and she had to leave them behind.

Three weeks later the ashes were unexpectedly delivered to her by courier.

The UN body found she was discriminated against by being denied bereavement counselling and medical care available to women who miscarry.

Mr Harris said he had read the report and found Ms Mellet's experience "deeply upsetting".

"I have met with families who have been through the trauma of knowing their baby will not survive and I have been very moved by hearing their experiences."

Mr Harris said he believed attempting to develop a consensus approach through a Citizen's Assembly was the best way forward and the UN committee findings would form part of that process.

Junior Health Minister Finian McGrath said he could not say for certain when the assembly would begin, but expected it to be some time in the autumn.

The right to life of the unborn is protected under the eighth amendment to the Constitution.

Although the Protection of Life During Pregnancy Act 2013 allowed for abortion when there is a real and substantial risk to a woman's life, such as the threat of suicide, terminations are still not allowed in cases of rape, incest, inevitable miscarriage or fatal foetal abnormality.

Pro-choice groups said the report showed substantial legislative and constitutional changes were needed to make Ireland compliant with international human rights obligations.

However, the Pro Life Campaign criticised the report, saying the UN committee was "100pc partisan in favour of abortion".
Seamus Farrell of the Irish Housing Network outside the Regency Hotel. Photo: Tony Gavin

Neta Teba, Aoife Kavanagh, Rolf Lolisson, Francis Murphy and Philip O'Brien of the Grangegorman squat show solidarity with the evicted families outside the Regency Hotel. Photo: Tony Gavin 10/6/2016

A standoff between Dublin City Council and a family evicted from emergency accommodation in the Regency Hotel is expected to end by this evening.

Aidan OConnell and Lauren Rice slept outside the premises on Thursday night after being removed from their room.

The couple, who lived there for three months, say they were forced out following an argument with hotel management after complaining about mould in their room.

They were then contacted by DCC, who said their booking with the hotel had been cancelled.

Expand Close Neta Teba, Aoife Kavanagh, Rolf Lolisson, Francis Murphy and Philip O'Brien of the Grangegorman squat show solidarity with the evicted families outside the Regency Hotel. Photo: Tony Gavin 10/6/2016 / Facebook

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Whatsapp Neta Teba, Aoife Kavanagh, Rolf Lolisson, Francis Murphy and Philip O'Brien of the Grangegorman squat show solidarity with the evicted families outside the Regency Hotel. Photo: Tony Gavin 10/6/2016

Aidan (20) told the Herald that he first raised the complaint when one of the children developed respiratory problems from black mould in the room.

We brought her to the doctor and the doctor said bring her to Temple Street, he said.

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She ended up in hospital, he added. I stayed in hospital that night with her.

We got a letter from the hospital saying the child needs to be in a clean environment, a room that has no black mould and they wouldnt move us out of the room.

Lauren (23) said she wanted to speak out about her experience to encourage others to challenge poor standards in accommodation.

It will happen to someone elses child if we dont speak up, she said.

The other families are all saying Fair play to you, but theyre too afraid to speak up, she added.

Seamus Farrell, a spokesperson for the Irish Housing Network said the family drew attention to the conditions in the room about two or three weeks ago.

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Black mould had begun to spread around the room, causing the children to develop respiratory problems.

"Eventually they got so sick that they had to go to Temple Street Children's Hospital," he told the Herald.

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Family representatives contacted the media, and the hotel management moved to evict them from the accommodation.

"Dublin City Council closes at 5pm," he continued. "It was the end of the day, and they were meant to be given 48 hours notice."

Mr Farrell also claimed the hotel wiped the family's key cards to the room, meaning they can no longer access their belongings.

The family then had no choice but to sleep in tents outside the hotel.

While the family are meeting with Dublin city Council this morning, the Irish Housing Network says the local authority has "definitely messed up".

"They have a key worker on site who is meant to be referred to if there are any problems. That wasn't followed," Mr Farrell said.

"We also got calls from Focus Ireland to say the eviction should not have happened," he added.

Asked to comment on the eviction, a spokesperson for hotel management said it had not taken the decision to evict the family.

In a statement, Dublin City Council said the eviction was a result of an incident which gave rise to substantial health and safety concerns for staff providing accommodation for families in the hotel.

DCC and the DRHE is very mindful that the experience of homelessness can lead to stressful circumstances, however the health and safety of staff is also a factor which we must have regard for, it continued.

DCC added that its Homeless Central Placement Service had given the family numerous offers of alternative accommodation in the past.
DRIVERS were forced to bring their trains to an emergency stop 20 times last year after incidents at railway crossings.

In one case, a lady pushing a pram was struck by a barrier as it closed, while in another, a drunk pedestrian was spotted on the tracks after ignoring a signal warning of an approaching train.

New figures from Iarnrod Eireann show there were 89 incidents last year which resulted in a vehicle, person or property being struck by a train or barrier. In 20 cases, the driver was forced to apply the emergency brakes, which are classed as category 1 incidents.

Of the 89 incidents, 61 involved vehicles and five pedestrians.

The company said of particular concern were incidents of unsafe behaviour at 149 unattended level crossings across the State.

A online information video called RSA  Unattended level crossing video has been uploaded to YouTube to advise road users.

In one year alone, there were almost 90 near misses at level crossings around the country, director of infrastructure at Iarnrod Eireann, Don Cunningham, said.

These incidents could have had very serious consequences for the person involved, the train and its passengers, and other road-users. People simply should not take risks at level crossings.

Unattended level crossings also pose a serious risk so it is important that road-users take responsibility for opening and closing the gates properly when passing through. If the gates are left open, another road-user might think that it is safe to cross without due care and the consequences could be very serious.

RSA chief executive Moyagh Murdock added that the rule of thumb was to always expect a train.

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The safety at level crossings awareness campaign also includes a national and local radio advertising campaign which will begin on Monday. A booklet, Safety at Level Crossings, can be downloaded from the RSA website.
Taoiseach Enda Kenny now says he would be willing to meet US Presidential hopeful Donald Trump.

Just days after his spokesman said there was no plans for a meeting, Mr Kenny told reporters that he will consider any request from Mr Trump.

And the Fine Gael leader insisted he would tell Mr Trump why he believes some of his views are racist and dangerous.

Meanwhile, Mr Kenny batted away questions about when he intends to pass over the leadership.

He said he has a full Programme for Government to implement and that this is his priority .

Meanwhile, Mr Kenny said he will meet Prime Minister David Cameron next Friday as part of the Brexit referendum campaign.
A Fine Gael TD who felt compelled to speak out against what she sees as a gender imbalance in Enda Kenny's ministerial appointments has been left isolated by her colleagues.

Dublin Bay South TD Kate O'Connell heavily criticised the Taoiseach's selection of ministers and said a bias towards male Seanad nominees was the "final nail in the female coffin".

However, several other high-profile women in the party have failed to back up her view, insisting they are happy with Mr Kenny's appointments.

New Health Promotion Minister Marcella Corcoran Kennedy, who previously complained at a Fine Gael meeting about the lack of opportunities for women in the party, told the Irish Independent she couldn't fault the new line-up of ministers.

Senator Catherine Noone who once accused Fine Gael of "talking the talk but not walking the walk when it came" to gender equality in politics also failed to criticised the Taoiseach on this occasion.

And new TDs Maria Bailey and Josepha Madigan, who were overlooked for office by Mr Kenny, said they believed in people getting positions on merit, not gender.

Ms O'Connell said she was "absolutely shocked" by the lack of women promoted in recent weeks and described the fact just three out of 18 junior ministers are female as "outrageous".

However, Ms Corcoran Kennedy said the promotion of herself, Helen McEntee and Catherine Byrne to jobs relating to health was "a very good thing".

"There are only so many places. There are a ton of very talented men as well that were left disappointed. It's a numbers game and you can only achieve what you can," she said.

"Clearly I would like to see more female representation but we're in a much better place than we were in the past."

Ms Noone said she hoped the "good work previously in the area of gender quotas in Fine Gael will continue and I look forward to Fine Gael women continuing to lead the party forward".

"I'd like to see more women promoted on merit," she added.

Dun Laoghaire TD Maria Bailey, whose constituency colleague Mary Mitchell O'Connor is now Jobs Minister, said each appointment was warranted.

She noted that the Taoiseach moved specifically to put people in charge of health promotion and mental health.

"He listened to people and has taken on board what they have said. I'm about people being promoted on merit. The Taoiseach has listened to what the issues are in recent years.

"I couldn't argue with any of the appointments," she said.

And Josepha Madigan, who represents Dublin Rathdown, said: "As a woman in politics I always want to see women being promoted to senior roles but I believe in a meritocracy above all."
General secretary John Jacob said that while they welcomed the programme, there could be no positive reform in the organisation until gardai were paid appropriately for the job. Photo: Keith Heneghan

Major plans to modernise the garda have been cast in doubt by officers locked in an ongoing dispute about pay.

As revealed in yesterday's Irish Independent, CCTV cameras with facial recognition capabilities are to be rolled out across the country as part of a major 200m overhaul of how gardai tackle crime.

And there will be new onboard computers for Garda cars to allow better surveillance and identification of suspects.

They are among a series of initiatives outlined yesterday by Garda Commissioner Noirin O'Sullivan and her senior management team as they published a five-year modernisation and renewal programme.

But within hours of its publication, the programme encountered its first opposition from officers who remain disgruntled over pay.

The Association of Garda Sergeants and Inspectors announced that its membership would not co-operate with any reform programme until a satisfactory conclusion had been reached on long-running pay issues.

General secretary John Jacob said that while they welcomed the programme, there could be no positive reform in the organisation until gardai were paid appropriately for the job.

He said the announcement would include at least 100 reforms, which would add greatly to his members' workload.

But it is understood that major reforms will still be able to progress on a national level.

Ms O'Sullivan said: "We need to make sure that the Garda is a beacon of 21st century policing and that other police forces will come here to look at what we do.

"We have taken a lot of hits in recent times for having what was described as an insular and defensive culture. We have to change that culture.".

As part of the fight against cyber crime, a new national cyber security desk will be created at Garda headquarters to boost co-operation with international partners such as Europol, Interpol, and other security and police organisations.

The gardai are developing a broader strategy with key partners to block attempts by rogue states and crime gangs to target this country for a major on-line assault.

Dedicated

The computer crime investigation unit is also being restructured and put under the control of a dedicated detective superintendent and two inspectors.

One of its first tasks will be to eliminate a backlog of cases that build up through a "lack of investment in technology and resources".

Regional computer crime investigation units are being set up to provide computer forensic services locally.

It is intended that every garda on street beats and mobile patrols will have access to crucial information with over 200m secured to invest in advanced IT systems.

Gardai admit that many of their IT systems in the past are 20 years out of date.
A Fianna Fail TD has told how she will oppose any proposed changes to the Eighth Amendment, saying "no doctor" could predict how long a baby would live.

Margaret Murphy O'Mahony believes Ireland's abortion laws should be maintained despite a United Nations ruling that Ireland subjected a woman carrying a foetus with a fatal abnormality to cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment which violated her human rights.

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The Cork South West TD told Independent.ie's 'Floating Voter' podcast that she is "very, very pro-life" and it is "probably a red-line issue for me".

"I think that everyone is entitled to a life. I know there are a lot of crisis pregnancies, etc. Nobody expects anybody to bring up a child that they can't bring up or they feel they are not able to. But there are so many childless couples waiting for children," she said.

"My own two sons are adopted so I would have come through a lot of personal issues around all of that, so I'm totally pro-life."

Ms Murphy O'Mahony, who adopted her two boys from Romania and Russia, said she would never seek to force her views on anybody. But she may campaign against the repeal of the Eighth Amendment which gives equal rights to a mother and her unborn child if there is a referendum in the future.

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Asked whether she would offer any lee-way in cases of fatal foetal abnormality, she replied: "But who can tell how long a baby is going to live? No doctor."

The TD said adopting her two sons had helped formed her view on the issue.

"It really opened my eyes to childlessness which is an issue that never comes up in the abortion debate," she said.

In the Dail yesterday, Independent TD Clare Daly said the UN's finding was "a groundbreaking international decision" against this country.

Galway West Independent TD Catherine Connolly said the UN had called on Ireland to change the law on pregnancies involving fatal foetal abnormalities.

"It is important the voices of women are heard in this chamber," she added.

Education Minister Richard Bruton said he did not know how the Government would respond to the United Nations ruling.

But he noted the Programme for Government contains a commitment to set up a citizens' assembly within six months to consider all the issues involved.

Get the latest episodes of the Floating Voter every week by subscribing on iTunes.
Belfast man Freddie Scappaticci was named as the British agent Stakeknife by the media in 2003 - an allegation he has always denied

Chief Constable George Hamilton has confirmed that the investigation into the alleged activities of the IRA double agent known as Stakeknife will be conducted by officers outside the PSNI.

Freddie Scappaticci is alleged to have been the most high ranking British agent within the Provisional IRA who was given the codename 'Stakeknife'.

Mr Scappaticci has always denied the allegations. He left Northern Ireland when identified by the media as Stakeknife, in 2003.

He is believed to have led the IRA's internal security unit, known as 'the nutting squad,' which was responsible for identifying and interrogating suspected informers.

Stakeknife has been linked to over 50 murders.

Last year the Director of Public Prosecutions Barra McGrory called for a police investigation into the agent's activities.

On Friday - after delaying his announcement to allow for the publication of the Loughinisland report - Chief Constable Geroge Hamilton said the investigation will be led by Chief Constable Jon Boutcher, from Bedfordshire Police.

The investigation has been named Operation Kenova and is expected to last around five years and will cost around 35million.

It will be based in London and staffed with officers with no connection to Northern Ireland police, the security services or the Army.

Making the announcement, Chief Constable George Hamilton said: After taking a number of issues into consideration, I have decided that a team resourced with external officers and staff funded by the PSNI is the most appropriate way forward, given the size, scale and complexity of the investigation.

"Chief Constable Boutcher will have the delegated authority of me as the Chief Constable of the PSNI. He will appoint a Senior Investigating Officer and a team of detectives from other UK law enforcement agencies to progress this investigation.

I believe this option contributes towards community confidence and reduces the impact on the PSNIs ability to provide a policing service today."

He continued: "I have every confidence in Chief Constable Boutcher and I have no doubt his previous experience when it comes to dealing with highly complex and sensitive investigations will be of great benefit to him as this investigation progresses.

The focus of the investigation will be:

Whether there is evidence of the commission of criminal offences by the alleged agent known as Stakeknife, including but not limited to, murders, attempted murders and unlawful imprisonments.

Whether there is evidence of criminal offences having been committed by members of the British Army, the Security Services or other Government agencies, in respect of the cases connected to the alleged agent known as Stakeknife.

Whether there is evidence of criminal offences having been committed by any other individual, in respect of the cases connected to the alleged agent.

Whether there is evidence of the commission of criminal offences by any persons in respect of allegations of perjury connected to the alleged agent.

If the team identifies matters which indicate that former or current police officers may have committed criminal or misconduct offences, they will be formally and expeditiously referred to the Deputy Chief Constable of the PSNI who will refer the matter to the Office of the Police Ombudsman.

Any other matters falling outside the parameters of the investigation will be brought to the attention of the Chief Constable of the PSNI by Chief Constable Boutcher for consideration. The Chief Constable of the Police Service of Northern Ireland will, if necessary, consult with the Director of Public Prosecutions or the Police Ombudsman as to the appropriate basis on which to address these additional matters.

Chief Constable Jon Boutcher, from Bedfordshire Police, has 31 years of police service, most of it spent as a top-level detective.

He added: I am humbled to have been asked to lead such a critically important and complex investigation.

I do not underestimate the huge task of establishing the circumstances behind how and why these murders occurred during those dark days.

My principle aim in taking responsibility for this investigation is to bring those responsible for these awful crimes, in whatever capacity they were involved, to justice.

The recruitment process for the investigation team will begin immediately, this will require time and I ask for a degree of patience as I do this.

As soon as officers and staff are in place the investigation team will begin reaching out to victims, victims families and all interested parties to receive information.

"Updates regarding this will be provided on the Op Kenova investigation website.

I am committed to doing all I can to find the truth for the victims and their families. It is them who we should be thinking of throughout.

It must be extremely hard to have listened to various commentaries within the community and the media about how and why their loved ones died. I hope this investigation ultimately addresses the uncertainties and rumours. All I can promise is an absolute commitment to pursuing the truth.

The recruitment process will begin shortly for the team which will be based in secure accommodation in London and will carry out enquiries in Northern Ireland as necessary.

The investigation team will not include personnel who are serving in or have previously served in the RUC, PSNI, Ministry of Defence or Security Services. The PSNI will not have any investigative responsibility but will have the discretion to support any investigative requirement of Chief Constable Boutcher in Northern Ireland.

The Chief Constable of the PSNI will ensure that mechanisms are in place to update the Director of Public Prosecutions as to the progress of the investigation. Once the investigation has concluded, a report will be provided to the Chief Constable of the PSNI including any recommendations for the consideration of the DPP.

Chief Constable Boutcher will report to the Chief Constable of the PSNI who will be accountable to the Policing Board for the investigation. It is envisaged that Chief Constable Boutcher will accompany senior officers from the PSNI to brief Policing Board members as appropriate on governance and logistical issues.
A WELL-KNOWN pub in Dublin's Temple Bar has broken its silence amid allegations that a number of students were denied entry last Sunday because of the colour of their skin.

Its alleged the South African students were refused admission by a security guard on the door of Busker's Bar, who allegedly said there were no blacks allowed.

Anathi Phela and Ezile Mhlambiso say they were refused entry on Sunday evening and were shocked to hear a security guard say that there were no blacks allowed.

He was dead serious. We spoke to him to see if he was being serious or if maybe there was a language problem, but it was not a joke, not at all, Anathi told RTE Radio Ones Liveline earlier this week

Anathi Phela, who received a prestigious scholarship to study at International Criminal Law and Criminology at UCD, said he was disappointed nobody spoke out. "

There were people going in and out, and we had to keep moving to the side to let people go through, he said.

While he described Irish people as very nice and friendly, he was disappointed that nobody stood up for them during the incident.

The bar has now released a statement on its Facebook page confirming a probe into the alleged incident:

"Buskers Bar (Temple Bar, Dublin) confirms that an investigation is underway into alleged discrimination in respect of three students who were declined admission on Sunday, 5th June last.

"Buskers Bar abhors unlawful discrimination of any sort and welcomes an international and multicultural clientele of every gender, race, colour and creed. It is this diversity that contributes to the success and appeal of Buskers Bar and whereas management reserves the right to decline admission that flexibility can never extend to unlawful discrimination of any sort.

"Buskers Bar is treating this allegation of unlawful discrimination very seriously and an investigation is currently underway. Management has also established contact with the students who were declined admission and has invited the students to share their first-hand accounts of their experience.

"With respect to the rights of all parties involved, Buskers Bar cannot comment further whilst the investigation is ongoing."

The two students immediately headed to the Garda station, and were asked to return on Tuesday to make a statement.

Anathi Phela holds a Bachelor of Law and a Master of Laws from two South African universities and was offered a scholarship at UCD to complete an ERASMUS Mundus programme.
Dublin's commuter-belt counties have seen a resurgence in popularity among buyers priced out of the capital and Louth is no different.

Carlinn Hall in Dundalk has the added benefit of being located just a few minutes' drive to the M1 motorway to the capital, offering a straightforward commute for buyers willing to exchange distance in return for more bang for their buck.

Indeed, the seven homes available in Carlinn Hall's latest phase offer plenty of space at a relatively affordable price: one is a four-bed detached property costing from 280,000, two are four-bed semi-detached dwellings priced from 250,000, and there are four three-bed semi-detached homes with a price tag of 205,000 apiece. The exteriors of the properties are a mix of red brick, cutstone cladding and white plaster.

Carlinn Hall is a former ghost estate off Dundalk's Mullaharlin Road that was designed to be the country's largest ever sustainable energy community. A key feature of the development when it was unveiled in 2007 was the installation of a community biomass boiler, capable of heating every house in the development, by burning pellets made from willow trees. The new A3-rated properties still benefit from this efficient source of energy. A new phase was added to Carlinn Hall last year.

Residents can access the M1 at Junction 16. Dundalk also has a train station and an express bus service to Dublin and Belfast.

Enquiries to: Sherry FitzGerald Carroll (042) 9332173
High flying: Ettore Bilottas new uniform for Etihad Airways cabin crew, pictured by Vogue and Vanity Fair photographer Norman Jean Roy in Abu Dhabis Liwa desert

Etihad Airways, the national airline of the United Arab Emirates, is recruiting cabin crew in Dublin this month.

Fancy working a route network that ranges from Sydney to New York, Paris to Dublin, and Seoul to South Africa? With a tax-free salary to boot?

Abu Dhabi-based Etihad is seeking applicants for cabin crew, food and beverage managers and in-flight chefs at Dublin's Morrison Hotel on June 13.

Interested candidates are invited to drop their CVs to the hotel, situated on Lower Ormond Quay, next Monday between 8am and 6pm. Applicants that meet the airlines criteria will be invited back for assessment on Tuesday, June 14.

Etihad currently employs over 200 Irish staff, and is seeking talented individuals with the right passion and flair for hospitality to join its expanding network.

Here are some of its cabin crew requirements:

Expand Close High flying: Ettore Bilottas new uniform for Etihad Airways cabin crew, pictured by Vogue and Vanity Fair photographer Norman Jean Roy in Abu Dhabis Liwa desert / Facebook

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Minimum High School certification or any higher education

Fluent English verbal and written comprehension; another language is a benefit

Must be at least 21 years old on the date of joining

Confident in water and able to swim with the aid of a flotation device

Able to reach 210cms without shoes

No tattoos nor body piercing (except for one earring in the lower lobe of each ear for females only... bandages and cosmetic coverings are not permitted)

No criminal record

Excellent personal presentation, style and image

Willing to comply with visa, medical and health screening requirements

We are on the lookout for talented individuals with a passion for hospitality and those who share our commitment to excellence in customer experience, said Jennifer Mangan, a Recruitment Officer for Etihad, who is originally from Dublin.

In recent years applications from Ireland have been especially strong across the board, Mangan said, adding that candidates should submit two copies of their CV along with contact details, two passport photos and an application form available on the airlines website, careers.etihad.com.

Etihad isn't the only airline hiring in Ireland.

Dalmac is recruiting Ryanair cabin crew in Dublin on June 21 and Cork on June 24, while Emirates is hosting open days for potential flight attendants in Dublin on June 25, in Waterford on July 16 and in Cork on July 20.

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Air Canada rouge is to commence the only direct flights between Dublin and Canada's west coast today.

The non-stop flights from Dublin to Vancouver will run from June 10 to October 9 - with the inaugural trip departing at 11.35am this morning.

The service will be operated three times weekly by Air Canadas leisure airline, with flights on a Boeing 767-300ER lasting 10 hours.

Return fares were available from 577 in June as we publish.

Flight times have been scheduled to optimise connectivity to/from its western hub, Air Canada rouge has said, with both premium and economy seats available.

In recent years, connectivity between Ireland and Canada has mushroomed - with 29 direct services per week to Halifax, Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver.

The new route has been warmly welcomed by Tourism Ireland.

"As an island destination, the importance of convenient, direct, non-stop flights cannot be overstated," said its CEO, Niall Gibbons.

"They are absolutely critical to achieving growth in inbound tourism."

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Tom Curran, partner of the late 'right-to-die' campaigner, Marie Fleming, has stepped up his campaign to have assisted suicide legalised in this and other countries.

In a lengthy interview with the 'Irish Examiner' on Monday, he revealed that he helped Marie - who was in the advanced stages of multiple sclerosis - to kill herself. He also revealed that he has helped around 200 people in Ireland, in Britain, and in various other parts of Europe to plan their own suicides. He said he doesn't know what subsequently happened to many of these people.

The admission that he has given this sort of advice to around 200 people is absolutely remarkable. It means that Curran has made himself a freelance administrator of suicide advice, thereby condoning the act of suicide in certain circumstances. At the same time, we are trying to reduce our suicide rates.

Tom Curran is a leading member of an organisation that campaigns for legalised euthanasia, and which freely dispenses advice on how to kill yourself, namely Exit International.

It was founded in Australia by a Dr Philip Nitschke. Go to its website and see for yourself what it is all about. It's an eye-opener. It basically advocates euthanasia-on-demand.

The website says: "At Exit, we believe that it is a fundamental human right for every adult of sound mind, to be able to plan for the end of their life in a way that is reliable, peaceful and at a time of their choosing."

Note the only two limitations on the 'right to die': you must be an adult, and of "sound" mind. You do not have to be terminally ill or in extreme pain.

Exit International is doing its best to bring about this vision, including through selling products that allow people to kill themselves.

Nitschke, for his part, seems proud of the title some of the press have given him, that is, 'Dr Death'.

To the public, Tom Curran is presented by the media as the heroic partner of Marie Fleming, who cared for her as her condition worsened and then helped her to fight for the 'right to die'.

Tom Curran was indubitably a hero to Marie. He did look after her heroically. By its own lights, his and her campaign to win the 'right to die' was brave and the risk he runs of being prosecuted is also brave.

It is brave in the same way as pro-life campaigners sometimes have to be brave in countries where abortion is legal. In Sweden, for example, there is a nurse currently fighting for her career because, on conscience grounds, she does not want to perform abortions. She has lost her job as a result.

She is being represented in her fight by the tremendously brave Ruth Nordstrom, of Scandinavian Human Rights Lawyers. In Sweden, you have to be courageous to oppose abortion.

But the difference between this nurse - Ellinor Grimmark - and Tom Curran is that one is fighting for the right to life and the other for the right to take life, if needs be at the hands of a doctor or family member.

Curran said in his interview that he turns down many people who come to him for help because he thinks they have remedies for what ails them other than suicide.

He said he was "extremely careful about who I help . . . these would be people who are irrationally suicidal".

The word "irrationally" is carefully chosen by him. It fits in with Exit's overarching philosophy that you must be of 'sound mind' if you want to kill yourself.

But immediately this shows us how subjective the whole thing is. Curran has taken it on himself to judge who is making a 'rational' choice and who is not, and then come up with a suicide plan or not as the case may be.

Curran will say that if assisted suicide was legal, then the experts could step in. But the process of deciding who lives and who dies would still be highly subjective, unless you insist the person must be terminally ill. That is not to say assisted suicide should be allowed in these cases either.

Once you permit assisted suicide, you are condoning suicide. There is no way of getting away from this.

You are also telling people with illnesses that will eventually kill them (think of Muhammad Ali with Parkinson's disease), that it is OK for them to kill themselves.

There is a movie currently playing in cinemas called 'Me Before You'. It is ostensibly a romance, but really it is an ad for assisted suicide. The main character is a quadriplegic who wants to die. What is this telling other quadriplegics?

The Netherlands and Belgium both permit euthanasia and assisted suicide. The grounds for both keep widening. Children can now avail of 'help with dying', as can those who are not dying but find life 'unbearable'.

In the Netherlands last year, there were more than 5,500 deaths by euthanasia. That is up almost 300pc compared with 2006.

In the Marie Fleming case, the High Court accepted that the law in Belgium and the Netherlands is being abused.

It is obvious that the debate about assisted suicide is the next big thing. The people who must step up to defeat attempts to legalise it here are disabled people who know such a law will make them more vulnerable than ever, and doctors who work in palliative care.

One such person is Dr Tony O'Brien, who appeared on RTE's 'Prime Time' on Tuesday night to argue very ably against assisted suicide.

Those who can win the most public sympathy will ultimately win this debate.
While Cameron and the Remain advocates have won the economic argument, the tragedy is that people are more motivated by emotive issues, such as immigration (Stock picture)

As polls narrow in favour of a Brexit and the prospect looms of seismic political disruption on these islands, is it time to panic? It is certainly time for some serious interventions by people of influence.

Former British prime minister John Major's entry into the fray was timely and helpful. He was right to call out those on the Leave side, particularly in his own party, for their tactics of deliberately misleading the public for political gain. But more of the same is needed over the next critical two weeks if disaster is to be averted. Maybe an eve-of-poll speech by the Queen? What can be more reassuring for those fretting about sovereignty than a nod from the Sovereign? It would have to be her own decision of course, but it would be a game-changer, particularly for senior citizens.

The trouble is that the directional dial in favour of a Leave vote has been steady and there may not be enough time to reverse it by polling day. While Cameron and the 'Remain' advocates have won the economic argument, the tragedy is that people are more motivated by emotive issues, such as immigration and a perceived loss of control and independence.

Under the misleading guise of 'uncontrolled migration', fear and prejudice has been fomented. In recent exchanges, Nigel Farage of Ukip forecast that if immigration continues at present levels into the UK, the population will be 80 million by 2040. He went on to gloat to the European Parliament that a Brexit will herald the breakup of the entire European project. Never mind the truth, feel the fear.

The elderly, who are more likely to vote, are firm leavers, while the young, who have the greatest stake in the outcome, are less likely to turn out. Mindful of harvesting the youth vote, the deadline to register this week was extended for 36 hours when the online register crashed. The Irish Government has done as much as is diplomatically appropriate to get out the Irish Remain vote. Ministers and diplomats have campaigned against Brexit, saying it would be detrimental to Ireland's strategic national interests.

The campaign in the UK has been extraordinary in many ways. The characters on the Leave side, like Farage and the bombastic Boris Johnson, are colourful, and if it wasn't so serious, have at times bordered on the comical. Tory males have dominated the debate, eclipsing the perspective of women. The Labour campaign, despite the efforts of Gordon Brown, Tony Blair and Neil Kinnock, has been ineffectual. In a poll, more than 40pc of Labour voters were unsure what the party position was. This must be addressed in the final weeks by Jeremy Corbyn, whose efforts have been lacklustre.

Vox pops are worryingly consistent. While the politicians slug it out, respectively trading doom-laden economic and migration predictions, ordinary people appear either firmly in the Leave camp, with strong views, or "undecided and unsure".

For example, there seems scant realisation among the population, even those on the Leave side, that a Brexit would probably trigger the break-up of the United Kingdom, with all the political upheaval such a development would involve. Nor is there any clarity about how the government of the day can minimise or frame the extent of the Brexit by legislation in the Commons.

Meanwhile, in Northern Ireland the DUP, while aligned with the Leave side, by instinct and conservativism, is not as voluble as might be expected. There is quiet satisfaction that the majority of voters in Northern Ireland will vote to remain in the EU, for compelling economic and trade reasons. Farmers, in particular, know full well the extent to which their livelihoods depend on being in the EU. It would be a regrettable step back in time, psychologically and politically, to have a border with the Republic reinstated.

Apart from ending the conflict, an economic dividend of the Good Friday Agreement and the peace process was to blur the border and to stimulate north-south trade without border controls and tariffs, both of which would be inevitable in the event of a Brexit.

Politics has become more normalised now that the UUP, SDLP and the Alliance Party have taken up opposition to the Northern Ireland Executive, comprised of the DUP and Sinn Fein. This is a welcome sign of maturity; it would be a backward step and divisive to have the disruption of a Brexit.

British Prime Minister David Cameron is fighting for his political life. He is regularly accused of being elitist, out of touch with ordinary people and an insider. Adversaries, particularly in his own party, are pandering to the worst fears of disaffected and anti-establishment voters.

This anti-establishment sentiment and demagoguery is fuelling Euroscepticism in Europe. And a similar phenomenon has emerged in the United States which threatens to upend traditional American values.

Donald Trump's controversial and at times unhinged persona and political rhetoric has trounced all comers and won him the presidential nomination for the Republican Party. The ultimate contest between Trump and Hillary Clinton is set to be the most vicious and personal in US political history.

It appears the forces of ignorance and anti-intellectualism have been unleashed into democratic politics. Decorum and ethics have been jettisoned even before the presidential race proper kicks off. Clinton's historic achievement of being the first female Democratic nominee for the presidency has been hard won.

But when it comes to showing courage under fire, the doggedly impressive Bernie Sanders has brought out the best in her. The prospect of Trump winning the presidential election is enough to induce head-hanging despair. But I am assured by a seasoned Democrat number cruncher that a Trump victory is unlikely in November, given it is estimated that Clinton will win more electoral college votes. Those votes are allocated on the basis of population; so, if Clinton wins those key large states as predicted, the maths will deliver the victory.

Yet qualms persist; a period of toxic politics lies ahead. In the UK, there is a feeling that anything could happen. In the US, it is a similar story of unknown outcomes. We in Ireland, who are so entwined with both countries, can but watch and worry.
Julian Assange will have been inside the Ecuadorian embassy for four years on June 19

Oscar-winning documentary film-maker Michael Moore has taken time out from promoting his new film to meet WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

The American has been a supporter of Mr Assange for years but they had never met in person.

Moore paid a visit to the Ecuadorian embassy in London, where Mr Assange is living as he seeks to avoid extradition to Sweden, where he is wanted for questioning over a sex allegation, which he has always denied.

He believes that if he travels to Sweden he will be taken to the United States to be quizzed about the activities of WikiLeaks.

Mr Assange will have been inside the embassy for four years on June 19.

A number of cities around the world, including Paris, Berlin and New York, will hold special events to mark the anniversary.

Patti Smith and PJ Harvey will play live at two venues.

In Moore's new film, Where To Invade Next, he examines how Europeans view work, education, healthcare, sex, equality and other issues.

He is visiting a number of European countries for the film, but not the UK.
Justin Bieber is the first act to reach 100 million streams in the Official Charts in the UK with Sorry

Justin Bieber has become the first act in Official Charts history to reach 100 million streams of a song in the UK.

The Canadian megastar made history with his hit Sorry, which has not left the UK top 40 in 33 weeks since its release and hit the top spot for two of those.

It was the second of three singles from his album Purpose which, together with Love Yourself and What Do You Mean?, helped Bieber become the first act to hold positions one, two and three simultaneously in the singles chart earlier this year.

Official Charts Company chief executive Martin Talbot said: "It has been an extraordinary few months for Justin Bieber and this new streaming landmark really tops the lot.

"For Sorry to become the first track in Official Chart history to pass the 100m mark is a record which can never be taken away from Justin - it is, perhaps, the four-minute mile of music streaming.

"A remarkable feat, a first which will be Justin's record forever."

Both What Do You Mean? and Love Yourself are also a whisker away from the 100 million streams milestone on 98.6 and 94.3 million streams respectively and are expected to cross the line in the coming weeks.

The count is based on audio streams from chart-reporting services including Spotify, Google Play, Deezer, Apple Music, Tidal and Napster.

Now the most-streamed song in Britain, Sorry was co-written by the 22-year-old, with Skrillex and Blood producing.
Comedian Kevin Hart has revealed the touching story behind his first car when growing up in poverty in Philadelphia.

The Central Intelligence actor will appear on Top Gear on Sunday to tackle the Stars in a Rally Cross Car challenge and he explained that his first car was a gift from his older brother Robert that he knew his single mother Nancy could never afford.

He said: "My first car, my mum couldn't afford to get me a car. This was when my Dad wasn't really in my life as much as he should have been.

"So my brother, he went and mustered up some money and bought me the car.

"At the time, it wasn't new, it didn't start all the time but, you know, it was my baby. It was my first car."

He said he has since returned the favour.

He added: "I've gotten my brother some cars to date, but nothing is ever going to surpass what he did for me."

Hart's competitive spirit comes out when he is pitted against boxer Anthony Joshua in the rubber-burning motoring challenge.

Speaking about his time on the famous Top Gear track, Hart told host Chris Evans: "Ate that track up, yeah, that's what I did! I made the track my b****."

Noticeably absent from the latest episode will be the infamous footage of Matt LeBlanc and racing driver Ken Block performing stunts around the Cenotaph, which Evans branded "disrespectful" and said he would not want aired.

Video of the Day

A BBC spokeswoman confirmed that the footage will not appear, saying: "The Cenotaph was never intended to feature in the programme and therefore will not appear in the final film."

Viewers will be able to see the rest of LeBlanc's tour of London in Block's "Hoonicorn", Evans' struggle to keep his lunch down as he rides with Sabine Schmitz in the new Audi R8, Rory Reid test the new Ford Focus RS, and Chris Harris attempt to tackle Ferrari's F12 TDF.

Top Gear airs on BBC Two on Sunday at 8pm.
Photo shoots, exam stress and jealous classmates - it's not easy being a model while doing your Leaving Cert.

Some 60,000 students around Ireland are taking their exams this month, but models Vivienne Mulvey (18), Abby Mahon (18) and Raiane Borges (18) also have their careers in front of the camera to worry about.

The girls - who are represented by top agencies Assets and Morgan The Agency - insist they have their priorities in the right order ahead of exam season.

"I'm doing higher-level maths. It's so stressful. I almost failed in the mocks, but I didn't so I'm keeping that in mind. I've been going to grinds since fifth year," Blackrock native Vivienne said.

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The brunette, who attends Colaiste Iosagain in Stillorgan, said some classmates weren't too keen on her career in front of the camera.

"Some people bring it up sometimes out of jealousy. When people are studying and I'm not, they're like, 'Well, not all of us have our looks to fall back on.'

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"I'm still going to do the Leaving Cert, I'm still in the same boat as them."

Templeogue native Abby has previously taken time off from her school - Yeats College in Waterford - to attend modelling jobs, but said teachers didn't mind.

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"I know education comes first, but I think keeping the balance between fun and torture is important," she said.

"I don't think they understand what I do. I don't tend to tell them. I just say I have something to do and they don't really question it. In a grinds school, they treat you more like adults, they're not going to say anything."

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With the start of the exams behind her, Raiane admitted she's not too stressed about the coming weeks.

"I'm most nervous about geography and maths. They are both on the same day and there's so much content.

"I want to go to college but I might defer for a year and do modelling, because I think it might be a better idea than trying to have to juggle both," she said.
Actor Michael Jace appears at his sentencing hearing at Clara Shortridge Foltz Criminal Justice Center in Los Angeles, California on June 10. Reuters/Frederick M. Brown/Pool

Actor Michael Jace has been ordered to spend 40 years to life in prison for murdering his wife.

The former The Shield star, who also appeared in Planet of the Apes, Boogie Nights, and Forrest Gump, shot and killed his wife during an argument at the couple's Hyde Park, Los Angeles home in 2014, just feet away from their two young children.

He was found guilty of second-degree murder last month (May16) and on Friday (10Jun16), he was handed the lengthy sentence.

During the hearing, Jace broke his silence over his conviction and issued an apology for his actions.

"There is no justification for my actions on that night at all," he said. "I am profoundly sorry for the pain that I have caused everyone - everyone who knew April and loved April. There is no replacing April."

His statement prompted his estranged mother-in-law, Kay Henry, to storm out of the court room in disgust, reports the New York Daily News.

During last month's hearing, Jace's defence attorney, Jamon Hicks, conceded that the 53-year-old shot his wife once in the back and twice in the legs, but insisted his client would not have premeditated the shooting knowing that the children would be there, and therefore called for a voluntary manslaughter verdict.

The couple's 10-year-old son, Nehemiah, testified in May (16), and told the court he saw his father drag his mother into a hallway near his bedroom, where she fell down.

The boy heard his father tell her, "If you like running, run to heaven", before he shot her.

However, Deputy District Attorney Tannaz Mokayef argued the words "show premeditation", adding, "Who is going to argue this is not an intent to kill?"

Mokayef also told jurors Jace was "obsessed" with his wife, April, who was seeking a divorce to end their marriage. The prosecutors also revealed the actor believed his wife was having an affair.
Democratic U.S. presidential candidate Hillary Clinton reacts before speaking to supporters at her California primary night rally held in the Brooklyn borough of New York, U.S., June 7, 2016. REUTERS/Lucas Jackson

After Barack Obama endorsed Hillary Clinton hours after a meeting with Bernie Sanders, Donald Trump couldnt resist having his say.

The boisterous billionaire called the Democratic presidential nomination crooked in a tweet shared and liked by thousands of Twitter users.

Obama just endorsed Crooked Hillary. He wants four more years of Obamabut nobody else does!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 9, 2016

He added: Crooked Hillary Clinton will be a disaster on jobs, the economy, trade, healthcare, the military, guns and just about all else. Obama plus!

In a tweet shared and liked by more than 400,000 users, becoming her most retweeted post ever, Clinton simply replied: 'Delete your account'.

Not one to shirk from a fight. Trump replied with: "How long did it take your staff of 823 people to think that up--and where are your 33,000 emails that you deleted?"

Obama endorsed Clinton in a video:

How long did it take your staff of 823 people to think that up--and where are your 33,000 emails that you deleted? https://t.co/gECLNtQizQ  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 9, 2016

"Look, I know how hard this job can be, that's why I know Hillary will be so good at it. In fact I don't think there's ever been someone so qualified to hold this office. She's got the courage, the compassion and the heart to get the job done.

"I have seen her judgement, I have seen her toughness, I've seen her commitment to our values up close.

"I'm with her, and I cannot wait to get out there and campaign for Hillary."

Here's what Mr Obama has to say about Bernie Sanders:

"There are millions of Americans, not just Democrats, who've cast their ballots for the very first time. And a lot of that is thanks to Senator Bernie Sanders, who has run an incredible campaign. I had a great meeting with him this week and I thanked him for shining a spotlight on issues like economic inequality, on the outsized influence of money on our politics, and bringing young people into the process."

Mr Obama also turned his attention to the need for unity in the Democratic Party:

"Secretary Clinton and Senator Sanders may have been rivals during this primary, but they're both patriots who love this country, and they share a vision the America we all believe in. An America that's hopeful, an America that's big-hearted. An America that's strong and fair and gives every child the same chance that we had. Those are the values that united us as Democrats. Those are the values that make America great. Those are the values that are going to be tested in this elected. And if we all come together in common effort, I'm convinced we won't just win in November, we'll build on the progress we've made and we will win a brighter future for this country that we love."
In this March 29, 2016 file photo, a bus tour ticket seller, center, walks through a group of costumed characters in Times Square in New York

Iron Man, the Hulk and Anna from Frozen were arrested for accosting tourists in New York City's Times Square, demanding cash and refusing to give them change.

The street performers were held just hours after the city began to paint rectangles in pedestrian plazas to confine costumed characters.

The colour-coded Designated Activity Zones are meant to rein in the pushy panhandlers who have flooded the area, in some cases harassing passers-by to take photos with them in exchange for tips.

Police said on Thursday, a man and a woman from Iowa took photos with the Anna character, who took 10 dollar (7) as a tip. The tourists demanded change and Anna handed back 3 dollars (2) and walked off.

The out-of-towners also gave 10 dollars to Iron Man and 10 dollars to the Hulk, who refused to give them change. There is no set tip amount, but tips are expected.

A police spokesman said charges against the three characters are pending.

Under a law signed by city mayor Bill de Blasio in April, street performers and costumed characters can be issued summonses or face arrest if they are caught operating outside the eight designated rectangles. Each area is painted teal and measures 8ft by 50ft.

Some lawyers and performers say the new rules infringe performers' First Amendment rights.

"The legislation has created a no-free-expression zone in the quintessential public space, the Crossroads of the World," lawyer Norman Siegel said.

But lawyer Linda Steinman, representing the Times Square Alliance business group, said the new rules are consistent with case law permitting restrictions on the time, place and manner of speech.

"It's not a ban on anything," she said.

Yamil Morales, who dresses as the Mad Hatter from Alice And Wonderland, said the new rules "are against the Constitution and against the understanding we have with this area".

He added, "There could be a lot of arrests, which is bad because these people have families that they are supporting."

Some of the conflict has been over the expectation of tipping after the performers take pictures with tourists.

Times Square Alliance president Tim Tompkins said that in the past a lot of tourists did not realise a tip was expected and the performers were often "aggressive about insisting on a tip".

The organisation originally handed out fliers to tourists reminding them that tipping is optional.

But as the new zones go into effect starting on June 21, the alliance will be posting signs with the message: "If you take a photo with an entertainer, please note tipping is expected."

A team of 10 city workers will begin an education blitz next week to inform the performers and the public about the new rules.
US President Barack Obama endorsed fellow Democrat Hillary Clinton for president yesterday, saying he did not think there had ever been a nominee so qualified for the White House.

"I'm with her. I am fired up, and I cannot wait to get out there and campaign for Hillary," Obama said in a video released by the Clinton campaign.

Clinton welcomed his support. "It just means so much to have a strong, substantive endorsement from the president. Obviously, I value his opinion a great deal, personally," Clinton said in an interview. "It's just such a treat because over the years of knowing each other, we've gone from fierce competitors to true friends."

The two will appear together in Green Bay, Wisconsin, next Wednesday, the Clinton campaign said. "I want to be out there with him and have a chance to campaign with him," she said.

"The president has said he thought his job was to remind the American people what a serious responsibility the presidency was. We're choosing a president and commander-in-chief and he's uniquely able to talk to the American people about the knowledge, experience and temperament that the presidency requires."

The endorsement increases pressure on Clinton's rival, Bernie Sanders, to concede the Democrat race so the party can focus on campaigning against Donald Trump, the Republican Party's presumptive nominee for the November 8 election.

Obama had been expected to support Clinton since she won enough delegates this week to become the first woman to lead a major US party as its presidential nominee.

Sanders, who met with Obama at the White House earlier yesterday, said afterwards he would work with Clinton to defeat Trump. Sanders said, however, that he would stay in the race to compete in the final Democratic primary vote in Washington DC on June 14.

Earlier, Obama said he expects Democrats to unify soon behind Clinton, and that her divisive primary contest with Sanders was healthy for the party.

"My hope is that over the next couple of weeks we're able to pull things together," he told 'Tonight Show' host Jimmy Fallon on Wednesday, according to excerpts released by NBC.

The full interview was due to be broadcast last night.
Prominent advocates of keeping Britain in the bloc will be alarmed by the evidence that they are in fact encouraging people to back the rival camp.

Voters are twice as likely to have been persuaded to vote to leave the EU by listening to David Cameron than convinced to remain, according to a new poll.

Research for the Electoral Reform Society (ERS) suggested most people were entirely unmoved by interventions from leading political figures.

But the Prime Minister and other prominent advocates of keeping Britain in the bloc will be alarmed by the evidence that they are in fact encouraging people to back the rival camp.

Pollsters BMG quizzed a representative sample of 1,638 UK adults online between May 20-25 about how influenced they had been by various high-profile individuals.

They found that while 15% of people said they were more likely to support Remain on the back of what they had heard from the Prime Minister, another 29% had been swung towards Brexit, including 33% of Conservative supporters.

Some 56% had not had their opinion changed at all by the welter of warnings being issued by the PM.

Some of those he unwittingly pushed in the wrong direction may have been won back to the pro-EU cause by his bitter referendum rival Boris Johnson.

A quarter said the Vote Leave figurehead had pushed them further towards divorce with Brussels but one in five reported the opposite.

Ukip leader Nigel Farage encouraged 22% towards Leave and 17% towards Remain.

The figures appeared to back the case of those complaining Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has not been sufficiently vocal, with the verdict of more than two thirds (68%) not shifted either way by him.

Some 19% said they were more likely to vote Leave as a result of what they had heard from him - with 13% becoming more pro-EU.

The poll backed previous findings that US President Barack Obama's stark warnings about the UK being at the "back of the queue" for a trade deal post-Brexit may have misfired - with 24% saying he'd made them more likely to vote out to 16% in.

His potential White House successor Donald Trump however was more successful, pushing 19% towards Leave and 11% towards Remain. Some 70% denied the billionaire had any impact on their decision.

ERS chief executive Katie Ghose said: "These surprising findings show that the public are completely switched off by the 'big names' of the EU referendum debate.

"Voters are tired of personality politics, and it's driving them away from engaging with the referendum, with the public seeing it as a battle within parties and Westminster rather than the crucial decision for Britain's future that it is.

"Almost all interventions from heavy-hitting Leave and Remain figures have made people more likely to vote to Leave or had no impact.

"Hearing only from polarising or controversial figures could be making voters turn away from the arguments they are hearing, which strengthens the need for the public to have their own mediated debates in communities across the UK, something the ERS and university partners are enabling through our Better Referendum initiative."
Students protest in New Delhi over the recent rise in rapes File picture

Five Indian men were sentenced to life in prison for raping a Danish tourist in the heart of New Delhi's tourist district in 2014, in a case that reignited worries about sexual violence against women in India.

The men, all in their twenties, were found guilty by a Delhi court on Monday for robbing and raping the 52-year old Dane at a secluded spot close to New Delhi railway station.

"All the five convicts have been sentenced to rigorous life imprisonment for their offences," additional public prosecutor Atul Shrivastava, told Reuters at the court.

The Dane was walking through an area of narrow lanes near Delhi's Paharganj district, a tourist area packed with backpacker hotels, on the evening of Jan. 14, 2014, when she asked a group of men for directions to her hotel.

The men then lured the woman to an area near New Delhi railway station where they raped her and robbed her at knife-point, the prosecution said in its chargesheet.

India was shaken into deep soul-searching about entrenched violence against women after the fatal gang-rape in December 2012 of a female student on a bus in New Delhi.

The crime, which sent thousands of Indians onto the streets in protest against what many saw as the failure of authorities to protect women, encouraged the government to enact tougher jail sentences for rapists.

Police accused nine men of attacking the Danish woman in 2014. Three are juveniles being tried in a separate court while a fourth died during the trial.

Lawyer D.K. Sharma, representing the five convicted men, said his clients would appeal against the verdict.
Vladimir Putin must be stopped now or Russian forces will advance to the "border with Poland or Germany", according to the war heroine turned politician described as Ukraine's "Joan of Arc".

Nadia Savchenko was released from a Russian prison only two weeks ago. The female pilot - who was the first woman to fly a Ukrainian helicopter gunship and the first to graduate from the country's Air Force Academy - was captured while fighting pro-Russian rebels in the east in June 2014.

After being consigned to a Russian jail, Ms Savchenko was elected to Ukraine's parliament from her cell. She used her trial to heap scorn on the judge, the prosecutor and Mr Putin in particular, labelling them variously as "criminals" and "idiots".

Ms Savchenko, pictured below, made a triumphant return to Ukraine after being freed in a prisoner exchange on May 25. Hailed in the local press as her country's Joan of Arc, she took her seat in parliament in the capital, Kiev, and is already regarded as a possible future president.

In her first interview with the foreign media since leaving prison, Ms Savchenko delivered a robust message to Western powers. "They should have clearer positions and show Russia they will stop its impudence and appetite sooner or later," she told the 'Daily Telegraph'.

"It might be uncomfortable for Europe or even America for some time. But they need to understand that if they don't stop Russia on the border of Ukraine, next time it will be on the border with Poland or the border with Germany."

As Ukrainian forces confront separatist rebels - reinforced by regular Russian troops and tanks - in the eastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, Ms Savchenko's comrades on the frontline are often outgunned and outnumbered.

But Europe and America have declined to supply Ukraine with weapons, fearing this would only escalate the confrontation with Russia. "You should be very careful with that because if you make some sharp steps, it could lead to a big war," she said.

Ms Savchenko said the West should provide only "defensive" weapons, like anti-aircraft systems. "If we are talking about other ground equipment, then you might get involved in this war and nobody wants a Third World War," she added.

Even as it fights Russian invaders, Ukraine's threadbare army often relies on local civilians to donate food and uniforms. As the war reached its peak in August 2014, the evidence in the Panama Papers shows that Petro Poroshenko, the billionaire president, was establishing an offshore fund for his assets.

Ms Savchenko (35) sees herself as the voice of the soldiers; earlier this week, she returned to visit the war zone in the east.

But does she regard herself as a future president? "I see myself as a pilot - I love this job," she replied. "But at the moment I have a great debt to the Ukrainian people and I am ready to work repay that debt.

"Everything depends on the Ukrainian people - they will show me the direction. I'm ready to work anywhere that will make Ukraine stronger. If I need to become president for that, then I will become president. But I have no ambition just for power. It will depend on the people."

Ms Savchenko was elected to parliament in the party of Yulia Tymoshenko, an ex-prime minister with whom she is now in an uneasy alliance.

While the Russian media vilifies her as a "killer in a skirt", Ms Savchenko sees herself as a peacemaker. "I've been a soldier for 12 years: it's my profession," she said. "But if a soldier doesn't want peace in his soul, then he's not a soldier any more - he's a killer. A soldier fights for peace."

Telegraph Media Group Limited [2022]
Eritreans in Sudan said a man extradited to Italy and accused of being a kingpin in an international people-smuggling ring was actually one of their friends and police had arrested the wrong man.

Italian and British officials said on Wednesday they had worked together to secure the arrest of Medhanie Yehdego Mered, nicknamed "the General", in Sudan and hailed his extradition as a rare victory in the struggle against human trafficking.

Italian police released a video of the man they said was Mered arriving at an airport in Rome, but two Eritreans who live in Sudan said yesterday it was a case of mistaken identity.

Instead, the man is Medhanie Tesfamariam Berhe, an Eritrean refugee who wanted to emigrate to Europe, the two friends said.

Other Eritrean witnesses in Sudan told the 'Guardian' newspaper the same thing.

"I know personally the man arrested and extradited to Italy and he is the wrong person. He came to Sudan recently and still cannot speak Arabic, but his first name is the same as Medhane," Haile, a 45-year-old Eritrean refugee in Sudan, said.

A second Eritrean man, Tisfai, said: "For sure the person who was arrested is not the General . . . It is difficult to capture the General because he is like a ghost, moving from one place to another."

Both men declined to give their full names for fear of reprisal by gangs or Sudanese authorities, they said.

Britain's National Crime Agency (NCA) said on Wednesday it helped track down Mered in Sudan.

In response to the 'Guardian' article, an NCA spokesperson said: "This is a complex multi-partner operation and it is too soon to speculate about these claims."

Palermo prosecutors are scheduled to hold a first interview with the alleged smuggler today in Rome, where he is being held.

Because they have numerous recordings of Mered in telephone conversations, prosecutors are considering the use of voice recognition software to help determine whether they got the smuggler or someone else, judicial sources said.

The court's chief prosecutor, Francesco Lo Voi, said he had no comment at this time, but Italy's Ansa news agency quoted Lo Voi saying "the arrest, delivery and extradition to Italy were officially communicated by the National Crime Agency and Sudan authorities through Interpol."

Two lawyers have been named to defend the Eritrean man held in Rome.
Nitya Ranjan Pandey was the second Hindu to be killed in Bangladesh this week

Locals surround the body of a Hindu holy man after assailants hacked him to death in Pabna (AP)

Assailants have hacked a Hindu holy man to death in northern Bangladesh in the latest act of violence by suspected Islamist militants targeting the country's secular writers, gay rights activists and religious minorities.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the killing of 60-year-old Nitya Ranjan Pandey while he was taking a walk at dawn in Pabna, about 170 miles from Dhaka, local police chief Abdullah Al Hasan said.

Mr Pandey was the second Hindu to be killed in Bangladesh this week, after motorbike-riding assailants shot and hacked a Hindu priest to death on Tuesday in south-western Bangladesh.

Two days before that, assailants killed a Christian man inside his grocery in the north west, and the Islamic State group claimed responsibility.

Mr Al Hasan said evidence indicated the latest killing mirrored other recent attacks by gangs of machete-yielding youths who targeted their victims on the street. Authorities believe the killing was carried out by more than one assailant, and they chose dawn as the time of the attack so they could easily escape.

"No-one saw the killing or the killers, but people from nearby places later found the body lying in a pool of blood," Mr Al Hasan said.

Pabna district police chief Alamgir Kabir said radical Islamists are suspected of carrying out the attack near the Thakur Anukul Chandra Satsanga Ashram.

Police said this week they were stepping up efforts to stamp out militant activity across the country, after the wife of a senior police official who led campaigns against Islamist radicals was shot and hacked to death on Sunday.

While IS or the al Qaida affiliate in south Asia have claimed most of the dozens of attacks carried out in recent years, the government of prime minister Sheikh Hasina denies that either has a presence in the country.

Instead, it says homegrown groups carried out the attacks to create chaos.
These Syrian newborns were evacuated by medical staff from a childrens hospital in the rebel-held eastern Aleppo. Photo: AFP/Getty Images

US-backed forces got within firing distance of a key Isil stronghold in northern Syria yesterday, as the Assad regime continued to bombard the city of Aleppo.

The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a largely Kurdish fighting coalition with Western backing, said they had reached the last main road into Isil-held Manbij, in Aleppo province.

The town, dubbed "Little London", is a vital funnel for Isil to transport foreign fighters from Turkey into the group's de facto Syrian capital of Raqqa.

As the multi-sided battle for Aleppo province heats up, forces loyal to Mr Assad have also intensified their bombardment of rebel-held areas in the provincial capital.

Frantic

Three of Aleppo city's medical facilities were destroyed on Wednesday, including its only remaining children's hospital, forcing the frantic evacuation of nine newborn babies to safety in a basement.

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Photographs from the hospital showed infants lying prone on a bed as bombs continued to fall outside.

The Independent Doctors Association (IDA), which funds the facility, said the hospital had relocated on several occasions, fearing aerial attacks.

War planes and helicopters continued to pummel its rebel-held eastern suburbs yesterday, bringing the total number of strikes to over 100 in just 24 hours.

Syria's brutal conflict has killed almost half a million people and seen hospitals destroyed across the country.

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Newborn babies had to be taken from their incubators into the basement of the hospital during the bombardment.

Peter Salama, Unicef's regional director for the Middle East and North Africa, condemned the latest attacks on Aleppo, saying they should "shake the moral compass of the world".

"Everyone must question their humanity when babies have to be taken out of incubators because of attacks on hospitals," he said. "How long will we allow the children of Syria to suffer like this?"

According to IDA, there are now only 18 incubators in the whole of east Aleppo.

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Growing

France said it had deployed special forces in northern Syria to advise the operation to retake Manbij, joining a growing contingent of American ground forces.

As pressure mounts on Manbij, Isil fighters have melted away from several nearby villages, allowing rebel fighters to reopen a key supply route between the towns of Marea and Azaz.

Sources in the area said Isil appeared to have pulled a skeleton force back to defend Manbij, while others had retreated west to the town of al-Bab, one of the group's final strongholds in northern Syria. Meanwhile, it has also been reported how increasing numbers of disenchanted Western Isil fighters are appealing to their governments for help to return home, diplomats have reported.

As fighting around Isil's strongholds intensifies and the group loses vast swathes of territory, foreign jihadists are trying to defect in record numbers.

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More than 150 from six countries have in the last few months contacted their missions in Turkey, which neighbours the Islamist group's territory in Syria and Iraq,

Western diplomats said they had received hushed phone calls from inside Raqqa - Isil's self-styled capital - and even messages requesting help smuggled out on scraps of paper, according to the 'Wall Street Journal'.

Concern

It is thought up to 1,700 French jihadists have returned home from fighting in Syria and Iraq since 2012.

Britain and Germany have seen roughly the same number of 800, which is a major cause for concern for the European intelligence agencies.

"There are a lot of French people who are coming back," France's national intelligence coordinator, Didier le Bret, said at a recent security conference. "They've got a feeling it's not going that well."

Most of the Paris attackers had trained in Syria and managed to return to Europe by posing as refugees.

Until Turkey closed its once-porous border with Syria earlier this year, foreign fighters had been able to move in and out of its territory with relative ease.

Crossing is now much more difficult.

Telegraph Media Group Limited [2022]
Six airlines have won permission to resume scheduled commercial air service from the US to Cuba for the first time in more than five decades.

The move marks another milestone in President Barack Obama's campaign to normalise relations between the two countries.

The airlines - American, Frontier, JetBlue, Silver Airways, Southwest and Sun Country - were approved by the Department of Transportation for a total of 155 round-trip flights per week. They will fly from five US cities to nine cities in Cuba other than Havana.

The airlines must begin service within 90 days, although they can request an extension if they need more time. Some of the airlines have been working for months on logistics and have told the department they could start flying in as few as 60 days. Other airlines have indicated they may need as much as four months to get ready.

Approval is still required by the Cuban government, but the carriers say they plan to start selling tickets in the next few weeks while they wait for sign-off from Cuba.

More than a year ago, Mr Obama announced it was time to "begin a new journey" with Cuba. "Today we are delivering on his promise," said transportation secretary Anthony Foxx.

As it considers opening routes to Havana, the department's selection process has been complicated because airlines have requested far more routes than are available under the US agreement with Cuba. A decision on Havana routes is expected later this summer.

The agreed routes were not contested because there was less interest among US airlines in flying to Cuban locations other than the capital.

All flights currently operating between the two countries are charters, but the agreement the administration signed with Cuba in February allows for up to 110 additional flights - more than five times the current charter operations.

American Airlines has been the most aggressive in its approach, requesting more than half the possible slots to Havana plus service to five smaller Cuban cities. The airline has a large hub in Miami, home to the largest Cuban-American population. The Texas-based airline has also been flying aircraft on behalf of charter companies for the longest time, since 1991.

US airlines have been working to establish relationships with Cuban authorities. For instance, American had a number of meetings this week in Havana with Cuban aviation and banking officials.

"We have been working for months on this plan," Galo Beltran, Cuba country manager for American Airlines said this week during the trip to Havana. "For us, it is going to be fairly easy because of the experience we have."

Cuba already has seen startling growth in aviation. Last year, it saw 18% more passengers than in 2014, according to government aviation officials.

Currently, 46 airlines fly to Cuba, including Air France, Aeromexico, KLM, Air Canada, Areoflot and Iberia.

Cuban aviation officials say they are ready for the extra flights but that questions remain, especially at Havana's airport, about where the additional planes will park.

There has been plenty of interest by Americans in visiting Cuba since relations between the two nations started to thaw in December 2014. Nearly 160,000 US leisure travellers flew to Cuba last year, along with hundreds of thousands of Cuban-Americans visiting family.

Most Americans still cannot legally visit Cuba, but the Obama administration has eased rules to the point where travellers are free to design their own "people-to-people" cultural exchange tours with very little oversight.

The routes are set to run from Miami, Chicago, Philadelphia, Minneapolis and Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

The Cuban cities are Camaguey, Cayo Coco, Cayo Largo, Cienfuegos, Holguin, Manzanillo, Matanzas, Santa Clara and Santiago de Cuba.
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School is out, and it's time to think about keeping children healthy for the summer. Each summer, children wait for the last bell of the school year. Summer is an exciting time for children to enjoy playtime with friends, a week at camp, a family vacation, or time at the pool. However, for many children who receive free and reduced-price meals at school, summer can mean hunger. Just as learning doesn't end when school lets out, neither does a child's need for good nutrition.

Three county library branches will be serving free meals to children during the summer. The meals are provided by the School District of Oconee County's food services department.

This summer, meals will be served on weekdays from June 15 through July 29. Closed on July 4.

Time and locations are as follows:

11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.: Seneca Library

11 a.m. until noon: Walhalla Library

12:30 p.m. to 1:30 p.m.: Westminster Library

Any child 18 years old and under can get a free nutritious lunch. There are no income requirements or registration. Only one meal per child per day and child must be present to receive meal. No carry-outs allowed. For more information, contact youth services librarian Stacie Powell at spowell@oconeesc.com or the school district at 864.886.4400 ext. 6179. For more information about the national Summer Food Service Program, visit http://www.fns.usda.gov/cnd/summer.
SC superintendent race: business donors, teacher's movement, fate of public schools

Millions have flowed into SC's superintendent race where a teachers' movement is up against a network of politicians and business owners
By Mike Eads of the Independent Mail

There is a growing demand for Clemson Area Transit buses in Pendleton, but without full funding there could be service cutbacks in the next budget year, according to CAT Director Al Babinicz.

"Pendleton, for sure, needs more service because it's growing and demand is exceeding supply," Babinicz told the Independent Mail Thursday, referring to the fact that 58,875 of CAT trips started or ended in Pendleton in 2015.

Nonetheless, Pendleton officials are looking for ways to make up a possible $25,000 budget shortfall for the CAT route, which has several stops within the town limits. Babinicz said the route would cost $195,000 for the new budget year starting July 1.

The Villages at Town Creek had a 25 percent occupancy spike after committing $30,000 to get Pendleton's CAT route extended to its location at Lebanon and Westinghouse roads, but its new owners are dropping that support to $15,000 for next year. Tri-County Technical College has opted not to contribute at all to next year's budget, after chipping in $10,000 for the current year. The rest of this year's bill for the Pendleton route was covered by the town, Clemson University and CAT itself.

Pendleton Mayor Frank Crenshaw said Thursday getting the route fully funded for the coming year is one of the council's top priorities, but he admitted that they have yet to come up with a way to do it.

Babinicz said the Pendleton service would have to be cut back in some way, should there only be $170,000 available for it in the new budget year. Limiting or eliminating the Pendleton service during Clemson University's summer break is one possibility, but Babinicz declined to say for certain what might happen without full funding for the route.

"I don't know  it would very difficult to cut that route back because so many people use it," he said.

Service along U.S. 76 that links to Electric City Transit's Tri-County Tech to Anderson route would be safe because Anderson County and the college have already committed to paying for it next year.

Over two million trips per year are taken on CAT buses, which serve parts of Oconee, Pickens and Anderson counties. Clemson University students and employees going back and forth to campus use the service the most, according to Babinicz. It's also popular with millennials who don't want the expense of car payments, insurance and gas, as well as seniors who rely on it for grocery shopping, doctor's appointments and other errands.

"That could be two million extra car trips every year  imagine how much worse traffic would be," Babinicz said.
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By Vince Jackson

TALLULAH GORGE, Ga.  Tallulah Gorge State Park recently got some unexpected avian news.

Wildlife biologist Nathan Klaus confirmed that a crow-sized bird discovered by rock climbers in the gorge is an adult peregrine falcon. Jessica James, assistant park manager, said in a news release the bird divebombed the climbers as they unknowingly approached its nest inside the gorge. After some study with a spotting telescope, two young chicks were found. Klaus said it was the first confirmed peregrine falcon nest in Georgia in a natural setting in nearly 80 years.

They were hiding in plain sight, said Klaus, who works with Department of Natural Resources nongame division.

Rock climbing is temporarily suspended and falcon watching is in vogue at the park, officials said.

We are thrilled to discover this amazing bird inside Tallulah Gorge, said park Manager Danny Tatum. Peregrines themselves are a rare sighting, but discovering a natural nest in the park makes it even more exciting.

The last known natural peregrine nest, or aerie, in Georgia was at Cloudland Canyon in 1936 in extreme northwest Georgia. The falcons have been known to nest in downtown Atlanta on tall buildings, such as the 50-story Sun Trust Plaza, since 1997. But a natural nest site is exciting to those who have watched the peregrine come back from the edge of extinction. In the 1960s, the pesticide DDT is said to have thinned the eggshells of hawks, such as the peregrine, causing severe population declines.

In the 1980s peregrines were reintroduced at several north Georgia and Upstate South Carolina mountain sites, including Tallulah Gorge and Caesars Head/Table Rock. Peregrine falcons at Caesars Head in South Carolina have held their own and can be seen year-round from the park overlook, while those at Tallulah Gorge moved on. Falcon experts say the goal of reintroduction is to have stable wild populations. The Tallulah Gorge birds could be the offspring of falcons that have nested in South Carolina, some experts say.

Anyone who visits Tallulah Gorge or the Upstate sites is advised to bring binoculars and check at the interpretive center for viewing tips. Visit www.georgiawildlife.com/falconcam to view the Sun Trust nest site online. The young birds are actively moving around the top of the building.
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By Kirk Brown and Nikie Mayo

Are you a would-be political pundit? Are you an amateur campaign analyst when you have your morning coffee?

This week, the Independent Mail is asking readers to submit their predictions about who will win three high-profile primaries in this part of the Upstate.

Tell us who you believe will win the race for the Anderson County sheriff post, the contest for 10th Judicial Circuit solicitor, and the state Senate race between incumbent Kevin Bryant and former Pendleton mayor Carol Burdette. With your predictions, include percentages of votes you believe will be cast for each candidate.

Submit your predictions to digital@independentmail.com or post them on the Independent Mail's Facebook page. Entries must be received by 5 p.m. Monday. We won't be responsible for misdirected emails or those that get caught in the junk mail universe.

Of the entries we receive, we'll give the winner(s) bragging rights. We'll publish the winners' names and predictions in next week's Political Pulse.

Moore says campaign signs vandalized

Eddie Moore, the former Anderson County Council member who is trying to reclaim his seat, says someone has been vandalizing his campaign signs in District 3. The district covers parts of Belton, Starr and Iva. Some of Moore's signs in the district appear to have suffered damage around his name.

"What it looks like is that people are hitting my signs with white paint, maybe from a paintball gun or something," Moore said this week. "I think I've lost eight or nine big signs and maybe 300 small signs from vandals. When I find one hit with paint, I wash it off with Windex, but when it takes the paint off, it takes part of my name off, too. It's just annoying that someone would do that."

Tucker Hipps' mom endorses Campbell

Cindy Hipps, the mother of former Clemson University student Tucker Hipps, has endorsed Rame Campbell in the 10th Judicial Circuit solicitor's race.

Tucker Hipps was president of the Sigma Phi Epsilon fraternity's 2014 pledge class when he went on a pre-dawn run with 26 other pledges and several fraternity members on Sept. 22. They ran along S.C. 93. His body was found in Lake Hartwell several hours later. No criminal charges have been filed in the case. His family has filed a lawsuit and believes that hazing contributed to his death.

Cindy Hipps endorsed Campbell, a former assistant solicitor who says he had no involvement in reviewing the Tucker Hipps case.

"Our family and friends living in Anderson and Oconee county are in support of Mr. Campbell for solicitor," Cindy Hipps wrote in a Facebook post this week. "We believe he will prosecute cases the current folks have avoided and pled out. Please go vote on June 14th. We need your voice!!"

Graham slams Trump, again

This week U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham accused Donald Trump of engaging in "demagoguery at its worst." Graham was upset that Trump claimed that Judge Gonzalo Curiel's "Mexican heritage" make the judge unfit to preside over lawsuits against the presumptive GOP presidential nominee.

"You may not think it's racist; I do," Graham told CNN on Tuesday. He also told The New York Times that Trump's comments about the judge are "the most un-American thing from a politician since Joe McCarthy."

Trump said Tuesday afternoon that his remarks about the judge overseeing lawsuits against Trump University were "misconstrued" and that he would have no further comments on the matter.

Before dropping out of the Republican presidential race in December, Graham called Trump a "race-baiting, xenophobic, religious bigot" who should "go to hell."

Back in July, Trump described Graham as a "lightweight" and "idiot" and then gave out Graham's phone number at a rally in South Carolina. Graham responded by taping a humorous video depicting ways to wreck a cellphone.

Voters' guide coming Sunday

Look for the 2016 Voters' Guide in Sunday's edition of the Independent Mail. The guide will offer information about area candidates who face opponents in Tuesday's Republican and Democratic primaries. It also includes sample ballots and locations of polling places.

Written by Independent Mail reporters Nikie Mayo and Kirk Brown. Follow them on Twitter @NikieMayo and @KirkBrown_AIM

Email them with tips at mayon@independentmail.com or kirk.brown@independentmail.com.
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By Ray Chandler, Special to Independent Mail

SENECA  It remains uncertain whether a charter school will take root in Salem.

Zach Eikenberry, founder and chief executive officer of the NEXT High School in Greenville, said Thursday that the NEXT school board of directors will determine the school's fate before the end of June.

South Carolina Public Charter School District trustees in May approved an amendment to the NEXT school's charter to include an Oconee County campus for grades 6-12, but the approval came with conditions, such as a minimum enrollment of 215 students.

"The board will look at where we stand on meeting the conditions and decide whether to recommend we go forward," Eikenberry said.

The Salem school, he said, was "more than halfway there" in meeting the minimum enrollment requirement.

Eikenberry, an entrepreneur who relocated to the Greenville area from Indiana, outlined the program of the NEXT school and what his group hopes will be the Eagle Ridge campus in Salem on Thursday to the Oconee Alliance business forum. The event in Seneca was a monthly gathering for civic and government leaders.

The conventional modern education system, Eikenberry said, "is dying by pilot programs."

The NEXT school concept, he said, focuses on a project-based learning that taps into the students's interests to drive them toward learning.

The core ideas stemmed, he said, from a situation he had once observed where a crime scene had been duplicated to illustrate and teach crime-solving techniques.

"It occurred to me that all disciplines are used. Physics, biology, language skills to report findings," he said. "You have to develop and use every area of learning to carry it out."

Some learning projects, he said, actually involve students starting businesses, and continuing to refine the projects.

"We teach that it's OK to fail, but it's not OK to quit," he said.

The school would not have conventional classrooms, Eikenberry said, though there are times when students all meet with the teachers.

He emphasized that as a public school, the Eagle Ridge school ould be open to any student, and that it was a different school from the recently closed Tamassee-Salem Middle and High Schools. Rosemary Bailes, a member of the School District of Oconee County Board of Trustees and an attendee of the Oconee Alliance forum Thursday, said she wished to NEXT school luck but had heard nothing in the charter schools plans concerning any provisions for students with special needs.

"Special needs students are students we have to provide for at the school district," she said.
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Thai Prime Minister Prayut Chan-ocha said his government will establish assistance funds for farmers, rather than stockpiling rice.

The Thai PM made the statement at a ceremony honouring outstanding farmers at the Governments Office on the occasion of the national Farmers Day.

He also called on Thai farmers to change their mindset, focusing on growing high-quality rice.

According to Director of the Foreign Trade Department under the Ministry of Commerce Duangporn Rodphaya, the government will sell 2.24 million tonnes of reserved rice to take advantage of the rising price from falling supply as a result of natural disasters and drought.

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KYC is one time exercise while dealing in securities markets - once KYC is done through a SEBI registered intermediary (broker, DP, Mutual Fund etc.), you need not undergo the same process again when you approach another intermediary.

No need to issue cheques by investors while subscribing to IPO. Just write the bank account number and sign in the application form to authorise your bank to make payment in case of allotment. No worries for refund as the money remains in investor's account."

www.indiainfoline.com is part of the IIFL Group, a leading financial services player and a diversified NBFC. The site provides comprehensive and real time information on Indian corporates, sectors, financial markets and economy. On the site we feature industry and political leaders, entrepreneurs, and trend setters. The research, personal finance and market tutorial sections are widely followed by students, academia, corporates and investors among others.
Manish Goel, Managing Director, Shilpi Cable Technologies Limited

joined the company in 2005 and since has earned robust hands on experience in business management. He holds Bachelor's Degree in Business Management from Rai University (Institute of Learning and Management) and represents the future of Shilpi Group of Companies.

Shilpi Cable Technologies Limited,

a separate wing of three decades old Shilpi Group was founded in the year 2006. Starting with a project to manufacture RF cables, Shilpi Cables has become a specialist across the varieties of cables widely used in telecom, automotive and energy segment. An ISO 9001:2000 certified company Shilpi Cable's success in a very short span is a result of its desire to use best technology, become leader in execution excellence and partner its customer in meeting their evolving needs. Shilpi believes in providing its customers the best quality products at the most reasonable prices. Its organization to organization contact policy, impeccable innovation and technological advancements help it to understand the requirements of its clients and serve them better. Shilpi Cables is evolving as dependable brand name in the sector and more companies are willing to work with it. The company's reign has traversed beyond the regional limits to attain newer heights.

Speaking with Yash Ved of IIFL, Manish Goel says, "We are in line with our vision of being a billion dollar company by 2020."

Brief us about your Financials?

For the quarter ended March 31, 2016, revenues were up by 20% to Rs. 1085.96 crore in Q4FY16 as against Rs. 902.44 crore in Q4FY15.

PAT stood at Rs. 46.53 crore for Q4FY16 as against Rs.42.28 crore for Q4FY15.

For FY16, revenues were up by 21% to Rs.3895.53 crore in FY16 as against Rs.3212.93 crore in FY15, while PAT stood at Rs.165.64 crore for FY16 as against Rs. 159.98 crore for FY15.

How was the quarter as a whole?

FY 2015-2016, has been yet another successful year for Shilpi Cables. Our Q4FY16 results have been in line with our expectations. This quarter, we have posted 10.1% profit growth on consolidated basis and 103% on standalone basis. During this year, we have grown as a company by entering in JV with Eyecom Telecommunication Equipments, venturing into the next generation technology of Radio Frequency (RF) cables and foraying into the B2C segment through our brand SAFE.

What is your outlook for the coming quarters?

We have seen good traction for our products and we are hopeful that we will maintain the consistent performance, going forward.

What is the advantage of Make in India campaign?

With the growth in the manufacturing sector and the Make in India push by the government along with other pet projects like digital India & smart India, we are hopeful that the industry and the company will grow and continue to post growth oriented results in the upcoming quarters.

What is your vision?

We are in line with our vision of being a billion dollar company by 2020.

Comment on your Capex plans?

We are planning to invest Rs. 50 crore for the current fiscal.

Brief us about the business highlights for the quarter?

The company is planning to set up a project at Abu Dhabi, UAE through its subsidiary, with a capacity of 60,000 MT for manufacturing of copper products, with an investment of 150 million US Dollar. Out of this amount, 50 million US Dollar will be invested through equity and the balance 100 million US Dollar will be through debt.

The board also approved acquisition of 100% share of Shilpi Worldwide PTE Ltd, Singapore which is presently a step down, wholly owned subsidiary of the company. The company shall buy 100% the shares of Shilpi Worldwide PTE Ltd, Singapore from companys direct wholly owned subsidiary -Shilpi Worldwide DMCC at the value of USD 5,303,947. 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 approval(s).

What will be your focus area, going forward?

We are getting good response from RF cables business. We will be also focusing on four wheeler market and will be getting contract from Tata Motors.

We will also be focusing on B2C segment.

The company is planning to venture into LED lighting vertical.
An IPO generally creates a great deal of interest among investors and in general, IPO is the only time when the share value of a business is fixed.



Many companies did IPOs in India for 2016. As per market experts, 2016 is expected to see nearly Rs.50,000 crore raised through IPOs. Latest is the Bangalore-based Quess Corp, which filed DRHP with Sebi for a Rs. 400 crore IPO. Besides, L&T Infotech aims to raise Rs. 2,000 crore, Matrimony.com (Rs. 1,500 crore), International Tractors (Rs. 1,200 crore), Nihilent Tech (Rs. 613 crore), Paranjape Scheme (Rs. 600 crore), SA Apparels (Rs. 450 crore), VCCL (Rs. 400 crore), and Balaji Wafers (Rs. 300 crore).



So, here are some tips for IPO investment.

Companys performance

Assess the companys performance and analyse the companys growth over the past year before the IPO issue. If the company has outperformed the industry, then the stock could be a good pick, as the companys fast growth trajectory will sustain in all likelihood. Obviously, situational awareness is essential while investing in the stock market. One has to monitor every development and accordingly make adjustments in the portfolio.

Objective of the IPO

Knowing the purpose of an IPO is an important step because it gives you an idea how the current issue money of the IPO would get utilized and how the company would grow.

Refer the companys IPO prospectus

Read the IPO prospectus carefully before investing your money and get an understanding of the objectives toward going for an IPO and the risks associated.

Future prospectus of the company

Along with the current prospectus, it is important to consider how the future prospectus of the company looks like. Try to get an understanding of the competition that faces the company and its sector. This will give you a rough idea about potential disruptors and other key aspects such as downward pricing pressures and so on.

Look at the issue price

Compare to know whether the issue is under priced or over-priced. If an investor is paying a higher price than peers, the price may drop after the company lists on the exchanges. So, weigh all your pros and cons and accordingly formulate a strategy.

Rating by industry experts

The companies that have plans to launch an IPO are rated by various rating agencies. Ratings are indicators that help you make up your mind on whether you want to invest your money or not. For example, IPOs with 3+ ratings indicate good fundamentals. So, you can go ahead and invest.
Following a subdued session at the Wall Street overnight, Asian stocks too reacted negatively as global bond yields tumbled to new lows. Investors opted to pumping in safe-heaven amid concerns about Britain's referendum on European Union membership on June 23.Moreover, the equities suffered a setback ahead of the crucial meets of the US Federal Reserve and Bank of Japan (BoJ) next week.Meanwhile, the WTI crude was quoted 0.24% down at US$ 50.44/bbl, while the Brent crude in London was quoted at US$ 51.88/bbl, down 0.13%.Japans 10-year government bond yield slipped to a record low of minus 0.140%, which dragged the benchmark index Nikkei 225 to 16,587 points, down by 0.49%.Among other major Asian stock markets, Singapores Straits Times is currently trading at 2,849.47 points (-0.51%), Hong Kongs Hang Seng at 21,150.75 points (-0.70%), South Koreas Kospi index at 2,017.53 points (-0.33%), and Singapore Nifty at 8,210.50 points (-0.18%).Chinese and Taiwanese stock markets are closed for the Dragon Boat Festival.
Visa Steel hit 20% upper circuit to Rs.16.38. The company reportedly said it will seek shareholders approval for the merger of its joint venture firm Visa Bao (VBL). VBL is a joint venture between VSL and Baosteel of China, with VSL holding 65 per cent stake and Baosteel the remaining.



Tilaknagar Industries dropped 2.5% to Rs.15.85. The company reported a net loss of Rs.104 crore on sales of Rs.90 crore in the January-March quarter.



Yes Bank gained 1.4% to Rs.1,055. The bank said it has subscribed 8% stake in Receivables Exchange of India Limited (RXIL).



Jindal Stainless climbed 2.3% to Rs.15.65. The company said a sub-committee of its board will meet on June 15 to consider number of shares to be issued to Jindal Stainless (Hisar) Ltd (JSHL).



NTPC Ltd stock was up by 1% at Rs.151. The company has signed an agreement with South Western Railway for doubling of the Hotgi-Kudgi section under the Customer Funding Concession scheme, says report.



Sadbhav Infrastructure Ltd stock was higher by 7% at Rs.104.The company has informed BSE regarding receipt of provisional completion certificate for 86 km. out of total 87.25 km. and start of toll collection in Bhilwara-Rajsamand Tollway Private Limited.



Central Bank of India rallied 2% to Rs.89.60. The bank is planning to raise up to Rs.3,000 crore from the public offering, including the rights issue. The bank will seek shareholders nod for this at Annual General Meeting (AGM) to be held on June 30, 2016.



GVK Power & Infrastructure zoomed 7% to Rs.5.18. The company has sought shareholders approval for increasing the maximum limit of loans and guarantees that can be given to other entities to Rs.15,000 crore.



Motherson Sumi Systems gained 0.60% to Rs.291.60. The company said its subsidiary Samvardhana Motherson Automotive Systems Group will raise $300 million (around Rs.2,000 crore) through issue of notes due in December 2021 to repay debt and general corporate purposes.



KCP Ltd soared 5.3% to Rs.92. The company has decided to expand the production Capacity of its Cement Unit located at Muktyala, Krishna District Andhra Pradesh, from 1.8 MTPA to 3.5 MTPA with an expected outlay of Rs. 400 crores (approximately).



Minda Industries gained 1.6% to Rs.1190. The company will replace Sterlite Technologies in S&P BSE 500 index from June 15.

Dalmia Bharat stock was up by 1% at Rs. 973. Dalmia Bharat, Shree Cement, along with Ramco are in race for LafargeHolcim's Sri Lankan operations, according to reports.
With an aim to attract more foreign investment, the government is mulling a proposal to relax foreign direct investment (FDI) norms in existing pharmaceutical companies, according to reports.FDI up to 49% should be allowed through the automatic route and anything beyond through approval of the Foreign Investment Promotion Board (FIPB), According to a proposal of the Finance Ministry.The Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP) and the Finance Ministry are discussing the proposal.Currently, overseas funding in brownfield companies is permitted through FIPB approval, while FDI up to 100% is permitted in new projects in the pharmaceutical sector.DIPP has already commissioned a study to assess the impact of foreign direct investment in existing pharmaceutical companies amid concerns over mergers and acquisitions of domestic drug manufacturers.
Moody's Investors Service says that the weak earnings outlook for India's public sector banks highlights their high level of external capital needs and their capitalisation profiles will further deteriorate unless the government provides additional capital support."Furthermore, the bank's asset quality will remain under pressure over the next 12 months, as they continue to recognize non-performing loans (NPLs) from some of the larger leveraged corporate groups, particularly in the steel and power sectors," says Alka Anbarasu, a Moody's Vice President and Senior Analyst."As a result, elevated provisioning expenses will continue to constrain profitability and limit internal capital generation," adds Anbarasu.Moody's conclusions were contained in a recently-released report on India's public sector banks, "Indian Public Sector Banks: Weak Financial Performance Highlights the Banks' High External Capital Needs".In view of their results for the fiscal year ended March 2016 (FY2016), Moody's analysis suggests capital requirements of about INR1.2 trillion for its 11 rated public sector banks, far higher than the remaining INR450 billion included in the government's budget for capital distribution to the banks until 2020.Furthermore, the fact that most bank shares are currently trading below book value constrains their ability to use public offerings to raise capital.Moody's analysis of the rated-public sector banks' capital needs assumes that: (1) they will see an average net new NPL recognition rate of 1.3% between FY2017 and FY2019, including slippages from their restructured loans; (2) credit costs will remain fairly high, at an average of 1.6% over FY2017-FY2019; and (3) they will raise their loan loss coverage by more than 70% by FY2019.Moody's scenario analysis also assumes a gradual pick-up in credit growth from 10% in FY2017 to 15% in FY2019, driven by both the retail segment and an uptick in corporate loan demand.However, capital levels have also improved recently on the back of new Reserve Bank of India (RBI) rules that have broadened the banks' capital base. The rules, amended in March 2016, allow the banks to recognize revaluation reserves, deferred tax assets and foreign currency reserves as common equity tier 1 (CET1) capital, in turn resulting in a one-off boost to capital levels.Specifically, the new rules allow the banks to recognize 45% of their property revaluation reserves, 75% of their foreign exchange translation reserves, and certain deferred tax assets as comprising up to 10% of CET1 capital, in line with the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision guidelines.The improvement occurs even though the asset quality review mandated by the RBI in the second half of FY2016 -- in an effort to clean up the banks' balance sheets -- has adversely affected profitability.In particular, the review resulted in higher NPL ratios and increased loan loss provisioning expenses. Eight of the 11 public sector banks that we rate posted a net loss for the full year, and the other three reported a significant decline in their profitability.
The Indian stock market closed lower for second consecutive session. After opening on a flat note, indices moved higher surging past the 8250 mark, however it was short lived as selling pressure in the realty, auto, industrials stocks. On the other hand, power and utilities stocks ended with marginal gains. Investors also remained cautious ahead of IIP data for April which is scheduled to be released later in the day.Among the 51-stocks of Nifty, Hindalco, Yes Bank, BHEL, ACC, Ambuja Cement, Power Grid, Lupin and Tech Mahindra were among the gainers on NSE, whereas Tata Motors DVR, Tata Steel, GAIL, Tata Motors, Coal India and Bank of Baroda were among the losers today.Finally, the BSE Sensex ended with a loss of 128 points at 26,636. The BSE Sensex opened at 26,723 touched an intra-day high of 26,972 and low of 26,621.The NSE Nifty closed with a loss of 33 points at 8,170. The NSE Nifty opened at 8,180 hitting a high of 8,266 and low of 8,163.The India VIX (Volatility) index was up 3.50% at 15.6725.Out of 1,439 stocks traded on the NSE, 770 declined and 616 advanced today. The BSE Midcap index and the Smallcap index closed lower.The rupee was trading down 13 paise at 66.83 per US dollar.On the global front, Asian stocks closed on mixed note as weak. Chinese and Taiwanese stock markets are closed for the Dragon Boat Festival. Nikkei 225 and Hang Send closed in red.European shares slipped for a third straight day with weaker commodities prices putting further pressure on mining and energy stocks. The FTSE 100 was trading down 1.64%. DAX and the CAC 40 are down 2% respectively.Crude oil declined from a 10-month high in New York, as a stronger dollar countered a rally driven by tightening global supplies.Solar Industries India zoomed 3% to Rs.3,178 after company bagged an order from Singareni Collieries Company Limited (SCCL) for the supply of 163911.20 MT Explosives worth Rs.443.44 crore for the financial year 2016-17 and 2017-18.Visa Steel hit 20% upper circuit to Rs.16.38. The company reportedly said it will seek shareholders approval for the merger of its joint venture firm Visa Bao (VBL). VBL is a joint venture between VSL and Baosteel of China, with VSL holding 65 per cent stake and Baosteel the remaining.Tilaknagar Industries dropped 2.8% to Rs.15.80. The company reported a net loss of Rs.104 crore on sales of Rs.90 crore in the January-March quarter.Yes Bank climbed 2.1% to Rs.1,062. The bank said it subscribed 8% stake in Receivables Exchange of India Limited (RXIL).NTPC gained 0.50% to Rs.151 on BSE. The company has signed an agreement with South Western Railway for doubling of the Hotgi-Kudgi section under the Customer Funding Concession scheme, says report.Sadbhav Infrastructure rallied 3% to Rs.101.15.The company informed BSE regarding receipt of provisional completion certificate for 86 km. out of total 87.25 km. and start of toll collection in Bhilwara-Rajsamand Tollway Private Limited.GVK Power zoomed 15.9% to Rs.5.61. The company sought shareholders approval for increasing the maximum limit of loans and guarantees that can be given to other entities to Rs.15,000 crore.KCP Ltd soared 5.3% to Rs.92. The company decided to expand the production Capacity of its Cement Unit located at Muktyala, Krishna District Andhra Pradesh, from 1.8 MTPA to 3.5 MTPA with an expected outlay of Rs. 400 crores (approximately).A total of 47 stocks registered a fresh 52-week high in trades today, whereas 25 stocks touched a new 52-week low on the NSE.Aegis Logistics Limited, The Andhra Sugars Limited, Automotive Stampings and Assemblies Limited, Balrampur Chini Mills Limited, Bannari Amman Sugars Limited, Blue Coast Hotels Limited, CCL Products (India) Limited, City Union Bank Limited, Dalmia Bharat Limited, Deccan Cements Limited, Dhampur Sugar Mills Limited, Dwarikesh Sugar Industries Limited, Edelweiss Financial Services Limited, Finolex Industries Limited, Firstsource Solutions Limited Gokaldas Exports Limited, Goldstone Technologies Limited, HeidelbergCement India Limited, Hinduja Foundries Limited, JM Financial Limited, JSW Steel Limited, Kajaria Ceramics Limited, Kiri Industries Limited, KPIT Technologies Limited, Lumax Industries Limited, Manappuram Finance Limited, Mangalam Cement Limited, Mercator Limited, Nagarjuna Oil Refinery Limited, Nahar Industrial Enterprises Limited, NTPC Limited, The Oudh Sugar Mills Limited, Power Grid Corporation of India Limited, Rajshree Sugars & Chemicals Limited, Rushil Decor Limited, Shriram Pistons & Rings Limited, Supreme Petrochem Limited, Tata Metaliks Limited, The Tinplate Company of India Limited, Triveni Engineering & Industries Limited, UFLEX Limited, The Ugar Sugar Works Limited, Upper Ganges Sugar & Industries Limited, Uttam Sugar Mills Limited, Vardhman Special Steels Limited, V.S.T Tillers Tractors Limited, Welspun India were some of the prominent stocks to log a fresh 52-week high during intra-day.Ankit Metal & Power Limited, Austral Coke & Projects Limited, Birla Cotsyn (India) Limited, DB (International) Stock Brokers Limited, Farmax India Limited, GEI Industrial Systems Limited, Impex Ferro Tech Limited,Karma Energy Limited, KSS Limited, Malwa Cotton Spg. Mills Limited, Metkore Alloys & Industries Limited, Paras Petrofils Limited, Pudumjee Industries Limited, Prakash Steelage Limited, Rainbow Papers Limited, Raj Rayon Industries Limited, Rasoya Proteins Limited, Rei Agro Limited, Rohit Ferro-Tech Limited, Sujana Universal Industries Limited, SVOGL OIL GAS AND ENERGY LIMITED, Tantia Constructions Limited, Tamilnadu Telecommunication Limited, Vidhi Dyestuffs Manufacturing Limited, Visesh Infotecnics were some of the notable stocks to record new 52-week low during the day.
Closing Bell:

The Indian stock market closed lower for third consecutive session. The market moved higher past mid morning, bouncing back strongly from a weak start.Domestic sentiment dampened due to circumspect behaviour from marketmen ahead of the Brexit vote.



Finally, the BSE Sensex ended with a loss of 128 points at 26,636. The BSE Sensex opened at 26,723 touched an intra-day high of 26,972 and low of 26,621.



The NSE Nifty closed with a loss of 31 points at 8,172. The NSE Nifty opened at 8,180 hitting a high of 8,266 and low of 8,163.



Live market:



At 3:08 PM, the S&P BSE Sensex is trading at 26,634 down 130 points, while NSE Nifty is trading at 8,169 down 34 points.



The BSE Mid-cap Index is trading down 0.20% at 11,399, whereas BSE Small-cap Index is trading down 0.05% at 11,380.



BHEL, Lupin, Bharti Airtel, Adani Ports, M&M and NTPC are among the gainers, whereas Tata Steel, Tata Motors, Coal India and Asian Paints are losing sheen on BSE.



Some buying activity is seen in power, telecom, utilities and basic materials sectors, while realty, auto, industrial, banking and finance are showing weakness on BSE.



The INDIA VIX is up 2.74% at 16.1025. Out of 1,807 stocks traded on the NSE, 782 declined, 750 advanced and 275 remained unchanged today.



A total of 39 stocks registered a fresh 52-week high in trades today, while 24 stocks touched a new 52-week low on the NSE.



The Indian rupee opened lower by nine paise at 66.80/$ against US Dollar on Friday as against the previous close of 66.71/$. On the economy front, the government will today announce Import & export data and April industrial production data.



Solar Industries India Ltd has informed BSE that the company has bagged an order from Singareni Collieries Company Limited (SCCL) for the supply of 163911.20 MT Explosives worth Rs.443.44 crore for the financial year 2016-17 and 2017-18.



Visa Steel hit 20% upper circuit to Rs.16.38. The company reportedly said it will seek shareholders approval for the merger of its joint venture firm Visa Bao (VBL). VBL is a joint venture between VSL and Baosteel of China, with VSL holding 65 per cent stake and Baosteel the remaining.



Tilaknagar Industries dropped 2.5% to Rs.15.85. The company reported a net loss of Rs.104 crore on sales of Rs.90 crore in the January-March quarter. The Indian stock market closed lower for third consecutive session. The market moved higher past mid morning, bouncing back strongly from a weak start.Domestic sentiment dampened due to circumspect behaviour from marketmen ahead of the Brexit vote.Finally, the BSE Sensex ended with a loss of 128 points at 26,636. The BSE Sensex opened at 26,723 touched an intra-day high of 26,972 and low of 26,621.The NSE Nifty closed with a loss of 31 points at 8,172. The NSE Nifty opened at 8,180 hitting a high of 8,266 and low of 8,163.At 3:08 PM, the S&P BSE Sensex is trading at 26,634 down 130 points, while NSE Nifty is trading at 8,169 down 34 points.The BSE Mid-cap Index is trading down 0.20% at 11,399, whereas BSE Small-cap Index is trading down 0.05% at 11,380.BHEL, Lupin, Bharti Airtel, Adani Ports, M&M and NTPC are among the gainers, whereas Tata Steel, Tata Motors, Coal India and Asian Paints are losing sheen on BSE.Some buying activity is seen in power, telecom, utilities and basic materials sectors, while realty, auto, industrial, banking and finance are showing weakness on BSE.The INDIA VIX is up 2.74% at 16.1025. Out of 1,807 stocks traded on the NSE, 782 declined, 750 advanced and 275 remained unchanged today.A total of 39 stocks registered a fresh 52-week high in trades today, while 24 stocks touched a new 52-week low on the NSE.The Indian rupee opened lower by nine paise at 66.80/$ against US Dollar on Friday as against the previous close of 66.71/$. On the economy front, the government will today announce Import & export data and April industrial production data.Solar Industries India Ltd has informed BSE that the company has bagged an order from Singareni Collieries Company Limited (SCCL) for the supply of 163911.20 MT Explosives worth Rs.443.44 crore for the financial year 2016-17 and 2017-18.Visa Steel hit 20% upper circuit to Rs.16.38. The company reportedly said it will seek shareholders approval for the merger of its joint venture firm Visa Bao (VBL). VBL is a joint venture between VSL and Baosteel of China, with VSL holding 65 per cent stake and Baosteel the remaining.Tilaknagar Industries dropped 2.5% to Rs.15.85. The company reported a net loss of Rs.104 crore on sales of Rs.90 crore in the January-March quarter.

The Indian rupee opened lower by nine paise at 66.80/$ against US Dollar on Friday as against the previous close of 66.71/$. On the economy front, the government will today announce Import & export data and April industrial production data.Yes Bank gained 1.4% to Rs.1,055. The bank said it has subscribed 8% stake in Receivables Exchange of India Limited (RXIL).Jindal Stainless climbed 2.3% to Rs.15.65. The company said a sub-committee of its board will meet on June 15 to consider number of shares to be issued to Jindal Stainless (Hisar) Ltd (JSHL).NTPC Ltd stock was up by 1% at Rs.151. The company has signed an agreement with South Western Railway for doubling of the Hotgi-Kudgi section under the Customer Funding Concession scheme, says report.Sadbhav Infrastructure Ltd stock was higher by 7% at Rs.104.The company has informed BSE regarding receipt of provisional completion certificate for 86 km. out of total 87.25 km. and start of toll collection in Bhilwara-Rajsamand Tollway Private Limited.Central Bank of India rallied 2% to Rs.89.60. The bank is planning to raise up to Rs.3,000 crore from the public offering, including the rights issue. The bank will seek shareholders nod for this at Annual General Meeting (AGM) to be held on June 30, 2016.GVK Power & Infrastructure zoomed 7% to Rs.5.18. The company has sought shareholders approval for increasing the maximum limit of loans and guarantees that can be given to other entities to Rs.15,000 crore.Motherson Sumi Systems gained 0.60% to Rs.291.60. The company said its subsidiary Samvardhana Motherson Automotive Systems Group will raise $300 million (around Rs.2,000 crore) through issue of notes due in December 2021 to repay debt and general corporate purposes.Great Eastern Shipping slips 1.1% to Rs.309 on BSE.KCP Ltd soared 5.3% to Rs.92. The company has decided to expand the production Capacity of its Cement Unit located at Muktyala, Krishna District Andhra Pradesh, from 1.8 MTPA to 3.5 MTPA with an expected outlay of Rs. 400 crores (approximately).Minda Industries gained 1.6% to Rs.1190. The company will replace Sterlite Technologies in S&P BSE 500 index from June 15.Dalmia Bharat stock was up by 1% at Rs. 973. Dalmia Bharat, Shree Cement, along with Ramco are in race for LafargeHolcim's Sri Lankan operations, according to reports.Following a subdued session at the Wall Street overnight, Asian stocks too reacted negatively as global bond yields tumbled to new lows. Investors opted to pumping in safe-heaven amid concerns about Britain's referendum on European Union membership on June 23.Moreover, the equities suffered a setback ahead of the crucial meets of the US Federal Reserve and Bank of Japan (BoJ) next week.Meanwhile, the WTI crude was quoted 0.24% down at US$ 50.44/bbl, while the Brent crude in London was quoted at US$ 51.88/bbl, down 0.13%.Japans 10-year government bond yield slipped to a record low of minus 0.140%, which dragged the benchmark index Nikkei 225 to 16,587 points, down by 0.49%.Among other major Asian stock markets, Singapores Straits Times is currently trading at 2,849.47 points (-0.51%), Hong Kongs Hang Seng at 21,150.75 points (-0.70%), South Koreas Kospi index at 2,017.53 points (-0.33%), and Singapore Nifty at 8,210.50 points (-0.18%).Chinese and Taiwanese stock markets are closed for the Dragon Boat Festival.
With a view to attracting investments from Qatar under the umbrella of NIIF, the National Investment and Infrastructure Fund (NIIF) Ltd. entered into an Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Qatar Investment Authority (QIA) on 5th June, 2016 during the visit of the Prime Minister of India to Doha on June 4th and 5th, 2016. The MoU was signed by Abdullah Bin Mohamed Al Thani, CEO of Qatar Investment Authority (QIA) and Amar Sinha, Secretary (Economic Relations), Ministry of External Affairs on behalf of NIIF Ltd.The objective of the MoU is to facilitate QIA to study investment opportunities in the infrastructure sector in India and develop a framework for exchange of information with regard to such investments opportunities, in order to enable both sides to decide on joint investments. It will remain in effect for twelve (12) months during which period, both parties will discuss and agree on the terms, principles, criteria for such investments. The NIIF shall share with QIA a pipeline of investment opportunities available in the infrastructure sector in IndiaQatar Investment Authority (QIA) is the sovereign wealth fund of the State of Qatar. They are long-term investors and access investment opportunities across all geographical areas, sectors and asset classes. The majority of their investments are outside Qatar with assets spanning a wide range of sectors and spread across asset classes. The fund deploys a wide range of investment strategies and invests through a carefully selected network of top-tier fund managers.The Government had earlier approved the creation of National Investment and Infrastructure Fund (NIIF) with the aim to attract investment from both domestic and international sources for maximizing economic impact mainly through infrastructure development in commercially viable projects, both greenfield and brownfield, including stalled projects.
State Bank of India (SBI), India's largest bank and CaixaBank, the leading bank in Spain by market share and one of the Eurozones largest banks by market capitalisation have signed a Memorandum of Agreement (MoU) to enhance business synergies between both banks, thanks to the collaboration in different projects.

The MoU outlines a plan between CaixaBank, chaired by Isidro Faine and with Gonzalo Gortazar as CEO and SBI, headed by Arundhati Bhattacharya, to expand the banks guarantee transaction businesses by jointly providing credit to Indian-Spanish joint ventures and Indian local enterprises.The banks will also cooperate through introduction of business opportunities and partnering on possible infrastructure funds.

The agreement, signed by CaixaBanks Executive Vice-President International Banking, Victoria Matia, and SBIs Chief General Manager Sujit Kumar Varma, establishes the framework to collaborate in areas of mutual interest including Syndicated Loan Business, Guarantee Transactions, Trade Finance and Export Credit Agency Finance, Infrastructure Finance, networking services among others.

Through this agreement, both SBI and CaixaBank will gain direct access to their respective markets of operation. Both banks clients will be able to use the vast combined network to expand their businesses abroad.

We are delighted to sign this agreement with Indias leading financial institution which will help to facilitate the growth of Spanish companies operating in this market, said CaixaBanks Victoria Matia. India is increasingly making its global presence felt across various landscapes. Partnering with an organisation like SBI is strategically important to us, and we look forward to contributing to SBIs growth through our market expertise and established relationships.

CaixaBank established its representative office, currently headed by Pradeep Bhargava, in New Delhi, India, in 2011 with a view to improving communication with local financial institutions and supporting Indian and Spanish clients with regards to foreign trade and investment. The branch offers business counselling and helps Spanish companies to develop their business in the South Asian region and Indian companies with interest in Spain.

SBI is the only Indian bank among the Fortune 500 list of companies and has an extensive international network across 37 countries with over 198 offices spread across all continents with over 1386 employees.
Ultra Comfort, Ultra Style & Ultra Performance

Tata Motors, among the Top 10 global truck and bus manufacturers, has launched its next-generation range of ULTRA Business Utility Vehicles, addressing customer requirements in the light commercial vehicle segment.The Tata ULTRA is designed keeping in mind changing customer needs, for a commercial vehicle based on superior performance, with a comfortable world-class cabin, heavy-duty aggregates and multiple load-body configurations, offering customers the Tata Motors advantage of increased productivity and longer life.Be it for large captive users, transporters or owner-drivers, the Tata ULTRA offers the lowest overall cost of ownership, safety and offers multiple features, setting new performance benchmarks in the light commercial vehicle segment in Kenya. The Tata ULTRA can cater to payloads ranging 4 to 11 tonnes and engine capacities from 125 HP to 180 HP.At Tata Motors, the core philosophy behind the launch of every new commercial vehicle is an endeavor to contribute to modernize the market we cater to. The Tata ULTRA launched today, is a result of extensive feedback from customers and an immersive study into the lives of drivers to better understand their expectations, and is thereby designed to fast-track their businesses with superior all-round performance. As a major player, we are committed to shaping the industry here, with the latest global technologies, giving the Kenyan customer competitive business advantages with the trusted credentials of the Tata Motors brand.With Tata ULTRA, Tata Motors has taken another step forward in its transformation journey, reaffirming the companys customer centric approach of offering next-generation commercial vehicles solutions to its customers especially in Middle East and African markets. Having successfully launched Tata Prima range of trucks in East Africa and South Africa last year, we hope to repeat the same with ULTRA. We are very excited with the buzz Tata Ultra has created during the trials in Kenya. An important product from the Tata Motors commercial vehicle portfolio, with ULTRA we hope to consolidate our position in the light-duty commercial vehicle space here in Kenya.The Tata ULTRA is a true Business Utility vehicle in every sense and is an important milestone in Tata Africas continued expansion in Kenya and the East Africa region. Tata ULTRA will help us to address a larger commercial vehicle base and also enable customers upgrade to a new-age truck with new-age global specification.The ULTRA offers faster turnaround time and enhanced profitability for any goods carrying business, making it an ideal work horse for movement of materials across distances. The driveline of Tata ULTRA launched today has Tatas proven engine technology  TATA 497 TCIC engine, with an output of 125 HP. A new-generation transmission with aluminum casing  the G-550 six-speed gear-box with overdrive, with cable-shift mechanism (a first-of-its-kind in Kenya) and axle technology, with reduced weight, offering superior performance and greater fuel efficiency for varied payloads.The new generation cabin of Tata ULTRA offers completely new stylized interiors, with a focus on driver comfort and safety. Besides the mechanics of the vehicle, the uniqueness of the Tata ULTRA is that its cockpit is both functional and attractive.The smartly designed dashboard offers features like Driving Economy Indicator and Water in Fuel Indicator. The gear lever is dashboard mounted, a unique feature in this class of commercial vehicles. The cabin has ample amount of space for the occupant, including a 3-way adjustable drivers seat with arm rests, an adjustable power steering system, for best possible control in all conditions, provisions for the fitment of various accessories including a music system, air conditioning and Global Positioning System (GPS) tracking. The design of the cabin helps give the driver benchmark levels of visibility, safety and driving comfort.The trucks get 3 years or 2 lakh km warranty  whichever is earlier  and come in 3 colours  Arctic White, Arizona Blue and Sardinia Red.
Reserve Bank of India Governor Raghuram Rajan reportedly said technological progress is making the middle class anxious about job security globally.

"The emerging threat is it's not the guy in Bengaluru but the robot next door who's going to take your job. This creates anxiety in middle class and you can see it expressed in the political dialogue that is taking place both in the US as well as in the run up to Brexit in Britain,"Rajan reportedly said speaking at the launch of a book - 'World 2050' - here on Thursday evening.

Rajan added that there's flexible manufacturing, big data, connectivity and robotics that are changing the entire landscape.

"There's a sense that middle class jobs are disappearing either because of technology or globalisation and as a result, something has to be done, Rajan reported.

This technological change is also leading to concerns among exporting countries like India and Vietnam, Rajan was quoted as saying.
The Indianapolis Urban League will host their 14th Annual Equal Opportunity Day workshop and luncheon on Tuesday, June 14th at the Indiana Convention Center in the 500 Ballroom. The events annual luncheon will feature respected labor economist, noted author, and colorful commentator, Dr. Julianne Malveaux as the keynote speaker and Gerry Dick, current host of Inside INdiana Business, will serve as the master of ceremonies.

Equal Opportunity Day, the signature event of the Indianapolis Urban League, recognizes corporations, individuals and organizations that champion the principles of equal opportunity, civil rights and social justice, while simultaneously raising money to support the organizations mission, programs and services. IUL Project Ready students and IUL New Beginnings workforce development program participants will be recognized for their scholastic achievements and progress towards employment and self-sufficiency, respectively.

Prior to the luncheon, Charlotte Westerhaus-Renfrow, Clinical Assistant Professor of Management and Business Law at the Kelley School of Business, Indiana University-Indianapolis, will lead the Equal Opportunity Day workshop. The workshop entitled How to Bridge and Manage the Generational Gap in the Workplace will explore methods for achieving inclusivity among the five generations that exist within todays workplace. The workshop will also provide solutions for effectively addressing common challenges employees face while working within multi-generational workplaces and offer effective strategies for communication among members of each generation.

The workshop begins promptly at 10:00 am with registration beginning at 9:30 am. The cost is $125 per person. The luncheon is sold out. To learn more about Equal Opportunity Day or other programs and services of the Indianapolis Urban League contact 317-693-7603 or visit www.indplsul.org.
Imagine a beautiful place on a sunny day with a clear blue sky. Now imagine that you are having a very romantic picnic with your better half, enjoying the beauty of nature with birds chirping in the distance. Doesnt that sound like a perfect romantic getaway? You might think that this only happens in books, but here's the good news. You can actually enjoy all this and more if you plan to go for a holiday to South Australia with your partner. Still not convinced and want more reasons to visit this picturesque place? Here you go:

1. Visit Adelaide For Its Natural Beauty

Planetware

Even before you land, youll get a glimpse of how exquisite this island looks from the sky. It just gets better once you land!

2. Visit This Place For Its Luxury Lodges

Australia.com

South Australia, with its luxury lodges and quaint cottages, is a dream getaway for every couple. Stay alongside some of Australias famous white sandy beaches at Kangaroo Island, which is a key tourist destination.

3. Visit Adelaide For Its Festive Spirit

Watoday

Don't forget to head to the Adelaide Fringe and WOMADelaide, which are two of Australias biggest art and music festivals.

4. Visit Kangaroo Island To Find Solitude And Peaceful Moments

South Australian Tourism

Adelaides natural beauty is what you need if you are planning to spend a few romantic days and rekindle your love. How romantic!

5. Visit Seal Bay To Enjoy Its Lively Beaches

South Australian Tourism

Soak in some sun on famous beaches such as Seal Bay and Kangaroo Island. Spend some time on the pristine white sand, dense national parks and beautiful marine life.

6. Visit Adelaide For Its Delicious Food

Insidesouthaustralia

Now you can get to dine Masterchef style. Adelaide is rightly called the food capital with multiple stalls, restaurants and markets that offer its local cuisine. If you want something more quirky, visit the pop-up bars and food trucks that serve world cuisine.

7. Visit Barossa To Get A Crash Course In Wine

Southaustralia

If you are interested to learn more about wine, then this is the place to be. Make sure to take a trip Barossa which is the birthplace of some of Australia's finest wines. You can blend your own wine or opt for a wine that matches your birth year or anniversary. Isn't that interesting?

Doesn't this make you want to book flight tickets for South Australia right away? If you want to know more about this magical place, visit to www.southaustralia.com.
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The entire controversy and hue-and-cry over Udta Punjab is "obnoxious" - that's what Bombay High Court has said!

"There shouldn't be a hue and cry over mature people wanting to see some realistic movies. We should avoid this as responsible people. Present generation wants something more mature. But you say no."

The big case of Udta Punjab vs CBFC, has been submitted to the Bombay High Court, and it is hogging headlines everywhere. Now, the court has directed the Censor Board to justify the numerous 'cuts' suggested by its Revising Committee to the makers. The court directions came after it noted all legal grounds cited by the CBFC to justify the cuts.

twitter

Here's what the Bombay High Court questioned CBFC about.

1. Explain CBFC's insistence for deleting "Punjab" signboard in the drug-themed film. What is the logical reasoning? Is it provocative and are you suggesting it is offensive?

2. How will the use of the words 'Punjab' 'Elections' etc. adversely affect the sovereignty and integrity of the nation.

3. If Goa can be shown as a place of drug abuse in that film, what is wrong if Punjab is shown in Udta Punjab?

4. The title of the film has Punjab. It depicts a story of the state and the people. For one visual, you cannot delete an entire scene It is a dutyto expose the problem.

5. It is not that nobody has made a reference to this in the past and that the drug menace has not been a subject matter of any celluloid film.

6. Removing words such as election, MLA and MP did not make sense. "In our times, there were names with these words in it like Aaj Ka MLA Ram Avatar."

7. Explain the deletion of names of eight cities including Chandigarh, Tarn Taran and Amritsar, and the state's name  Punjab  anywhere in the film and words like "Parliament".

Here is the complete list of cuts demanded by the CBFC.

hindustantimes

As the hearing continues, the Bombay High Court continues to assert that "Punjab is an integral part of the concept and cannot be deleted from the film."

(Also read: Nihalani's Days Numbered? I&B Minister Arun Jaitley Promises Radical Changes In Censor Board)
One thing that the Udta Punjab controversy has done is it's united the entire Bollywood industry. From veteran filmmakers to A-list actors, everyone is coming out in the open and expressing their rising concerns over the 'archaic' and 'anarchic' nature of the country's Censor Board. And adding to the list of celebs who are supporting the film and its producer Anurag Kashyap over his fight against the CBFC, is actress Priyanka Chopra.

Priyanka, who was in Patna for an event, spoke in depth about the entire issue and the way Bollywood has been fighting against the autocracy of the board. Her last Hindi film Jai Gangaajal had also faced the hammer of the Censor Board. Here are the excerpts from what she said.

yashnews

1. PC said creativity should not be stopped in democracy.

"Our forefathers achieved freedom of speech and expression for us after a long struggle Creativity should not be stopped in democracy."

2. She called the CBFC a "certification body and not censor".

"In a democracy, you cannot dictate what one should eat or watch a movie on a social issue."

3. Priyanka felt removing a word in the title of a movie was not justified.

"Title is the creativity of every producer and director. So, how can it be changed?"

deccanchronicle

Bollywood biggies including Aamir Khan, Kangana Ranaut, SS Rajamouli, Anupam Kher, Sonakshi Sinha, Shyam Benegal, Mahesh Bhatt, Zoya Akhtar and Sudhir Mishra have already expressed support to Udta Punjab. Aamir said:

"This kind of thing reflects very badly on the CBFC. It's a social film which talks about the drug addiction issue of Punjab's youth. It has a good social message. I don't think there's anything that should be cut or not shown to the audience. It's very important that filmmakers have a voice which is not throttled. In any society, the voice of the artiste should be free to speak what he wants to speak." - Aamir Khan

(Also read: Film Directors Blast Censor Board's Cuts On Udta Punjab & Pahlaj Nihalani. Here's What Went Down)

Udta Punjab found itself in the middle of fire due to its subject - drug abuse in the state of Punjab. The film's cast including actors Shahid Kapoor, Alia Bhatt and Diljit Dosanjh have already justified why the nation needs to watch this film, and co-actress Kareena Kapoor Khan also supported her team. In an interview, she said being a Punjabi she feels drugs are a menace in Punjab.

celebsandcinema

"That's the reason I chose to do the film. I have done many films in the past where I have played pivotal roles but I chose to be a part of this film because it is important that this message gets told which am sure is going to come on screen." - Kareena Kapoor Khan

Kashyap has already taken the matter to the Bombay High Court which has in its hearing questioned the CBFC about the 94 cuts it levied on Udta Punjab. While the hearing continues, we hope the matter is resolved before its scheduled release date on June 17.

(Also read: 6 Things The Bombay High Court Asked The Censor Board About The 'Udta Punjab' Row)
1. The Bombay High Court adjourned the hearing of Udta Punjab till Monday.

As the legal battle between the makers of Udta Punjab and the Censor Board intensified, the Bombay Hugh Court questioned the CBFC about the 94 cuts it has ordered in the film. The court came down heavily on the board accusing it for maintaining 'double standards' while certifying films. The hearing has been adjourned and the court will pronounce its judgement on Monday. Priyanka Chopra was the latest one to join the list of top filmmakers and actors who have outrightly supported the film and opposed the ruthlessness of the CBFC.

2. Anushka Sharma came down to Delhi to spend time with Virat Kohli's parents.

The actress, after completing the last leg of Sultan shooting in Budapest, flew back to India and headed to capital Delhi, but this time to meet her rumoured beau Virat's family. The star couple then left for an undisclosed location, reportedly for their long pending vacation.

3. Priyanka Chopra said she felt 'awful' after her grandmother was denied a burial at a Kerala Church.

Finally speaking about the entire episode, PC said it was 'awful' that her granny couldn't be buried at her childhood church, which was her last wish. The Kerala Church had denied the rights to Mary John Akhouri citing that she had married a Hindu and never practiced Christianity after that.

4. Alia Bhatt opened up about her past relationships and how the break-ups helped her focus on her career.

Alia, known for keeping her personal life under wraps, spoke about her break-ups and it was a learning experience for her. She said "Failed relationships help one to grow. I have also had one and I moved away from it because I wanted to achieve something with my career. And somehow that enabled me to focus on my work." She even spoke about rumoured boyfriend Sidharth Malhotra.

5. Shah Rukh Khan throws a dinner party for Iranian superstar Mohammad Reza Golzar.

Golzar, who was in Mumbai to shoot for the first Indo-Iranian film Salaam Mumbai, got the best reception from Bollywood King Khan. The invitees included the Iranian star along with the entire cast and crew. SRK is known for hosting several celebrities at his residence. He had recently invited Apple CEO Tim Cook to his house and hosted a grand party calling all his film industry friends.
Whether you take the following claims seriously or just shrug it off as nonsense is totally up to you, but a U.S politician just said in a statement that it wasn't Steve Jobs who invented the iPhone.

businessinsider

Umm, what?

As odd as it may sound, House Minority leader district California, Nancy Pelosi made a public statement at the Democratic National Convention Platform in Washington claiming it was never the visionary Jobs or the Apple team who came up with the iPhone, but the federal government!

buzzpo.com

"Anybody here have a smartphone?"

That's what Pelosi asked the audience. Holding up her iPhone, she said, "In this smartphone, almost everything came from federal investments in research. Pelosi, according to Free Beacon also went on to point out the government's contribution to research that resulted in making iPhone's various components and functionalities. The list goes on and on. If you want to learn more, look at the Association for the Advancement of Science in America, and they have the full list, Pelosi said. They say Steve Jobs did a good idea designing it and putting it together. Federal research invented it, she added.

Do you guys take Nancy Pelosi's words to be the truth? Have your say in the comments section.
Deaths caused by AIDS declined nearly 55% in India in the past eight years, whereas new HIV infections came down by 66% since 2000.

Reuters

In 2007, India had recorded 1,48,309 such deaths; in 2015, the figure stood at just 67,600, according to latest statistics presented by health minister J P Nadda at an ongoing high-level United Nations meeting in New York. The conclave is evaluating the implementation of the UN AIDS control programme. Globally, such deaths declined 41% between 2005 to 2015.

Between 2000 and 2015, new HIV infections in India dropped from 2.51 lakh to 86,000 - compared with a global fall of just 35%.

The UN General Assembly has proposed to fast-track implementation of AIDS control strategies to end the epidemic across the world by 2030. Endorsing the proposal, Nadda said countries must adopt the target and collaboratively work to achieve it.

bccl

Highlighting the importance of affordable medicines to tackle the prevalence of AIDS and India's role in making such drugs available worldwide, Nadda asked the UN to ensure global access to affordable medicines.

India, which faced the spectre of disastrous consequences on account of AIDS epidemic 15 years back, has been able to manage the challenge effectively," Nadda told the UN meeting.

"Targeted interventions based on close collaboration and empowerment of communities and civil society with appropriate funding from the government have helped deliver key life saving services to the affected population" Nadda said.

Seeking higher investment from international public health agencies to end the epidemic, Nadda said, "The role of international assistance and cooperation cannot be underestimated. This is the time for developed countries to do more, not less, and enhance their commitments. We cannot afford to give the epidemic a chance to rebound."

Reuters

The National AIDS Control Programme has been walking a tightrope with international funds drying up over the last three years. This has led to fears about recurrence of new HIV cases. Estimates show a reduction of almost 90% in funding from various multilateral, bilateral and philanthropic donor organisations over the last three years. The government is, therefore, trying hard to seek continuous funding for the programme as it is currently at a critical juncture.

Indian firms like Cipla and Dr Reddy's Laboratories supply 80% of the generic drugs used worldwide for treatment of AIDS. However, many of them have been facing tough regulations in several countries because of patent litigations.

Read Also: India And AIDS: Latest Development To Control AIDS
1. Five Convicts In The 2014 Gangrape Of A Danish Woman Handed Down Life Imprisonment

A court in Delhi has sentenced five men to life imprisonment for the gangrape of a Danish tourist in January 2014.

The prosecution had sought maximum punishment to the convicts, imprisonment till remainder of natural life, terming their actions 'a barbaric act'. Read more here

2. Indian Woman Working For An NGO In Afghanistan Abducted Late Last Night From Kabul

An Indian woman identified as Judith D'Souza, who was working with an NGO, Agha Khan Network, was abducted by unidentified men from capital Kabul, Afghan security officials have confirmed.

40-year-old D'Souza, a native of Kolkata was abducted late on thursday night. Read more here

3. RBI Governor Raghuram Rajan Has 'Planted A Timebomb In The Financial System' Says Subramanian Swamy

The Subramanian Swamy-Raghuram Rajan saga over the latter's second term as Reserve Bank of India Governor, has taken another ugly turn.The firebrand BJP MP who was hell-bent on making sure that the acclaimed economist doesn't get a second run as the governor of RBI, has now accused Rajan of planting a time bomb in the financial system.

"R3 (Raghuram Rajan) planted a time bomb in our financial system in 2013. It is timed for December 2016. The redeemable $24 billion in f.e. (foreign exchange) to be paid out by banks," he tweeted. Read more here

4. 1993 Bombay Blast Accused Mustafa Dossa Is Running A Gang From Inside The Jail

Arthur Road jail authorities suspect gangster and key conspirator in the '93 serial bomb blast case - Mustafa Dossa - of running a gang at Arthur Road jail, where he's been lodged for 14 years.

When a brawl broke out on May 30 between five under-trials, Dossa's name cropped as the controlling force. Read more here

5. I&B Minister Arun Jaitley Promises Radical Changes In Censor Board

Film certification norms will have to be liberal and "some very radical changes" will be announced over the next few days, Information and Broadcasting minister Arun Jaitley has said.

Stating that he was "not satisfied" with the existing system of film certification, Jaitley said some changes were about to be made. Read more here

6. Now You Can Upload Your 'Selfie With Daughter' On This Website Launched To Take The Campaign Forward

Almost a year after Prime Minister Narendra Modi praised his idea of 'selfie with daughter,' the former sarpanch of a village in Jind, Sunil Jaglan, has got a website developed for an online museum with a capacity of 10 lakh selfies.

The website http://selfiewithdaughter.world - launched by Haryana health minister Anil Vij - got a good response, with more than 13,000 visitors in just a few hours of it going online on Thursday. Read more here

7. AIDS Related Deaths In India Have Come Down By 55% In The Last Eight Years

Deaths caused by AIDS declined nearly 55% in India in the past eight years, whereas new HIV infections came down by 66% since 2000. In 2007, India had recorded 1,48,309 such deaths; in 2015, the figure stood at just 67,600, according to latest statistics presented by health minister J P Nadda at an ongoing high-level United Nations meeting in New York.

The conclave is evaluating the implementation of the UN AIDS control programme. Globally, such deaths declined 41% between 2005 to 2015. Read more here
A court in Delhi has sentenced five men to life imprisonment for the gangrape of a Danish tourist in January 2014.

PTI

The prosecution had sought maximum punishment to the convicts, imprisonment till remainder of natural life, terming their actions 'a barbaric act'.

The convicts, Mahendra alias Ganja (27), Mohd Raja (23), Raju (24), Arjun (22), Raju Chakka (23) had pleaded for leniency citing their age and their poor background.

The sixth accused in the case died in February this year and three others who were juveniles are being inquired by the Juvenile Justice Board on charges of attack.

PTI

The incident happened on January 14, 2014. The victim, a 56-year-old Danish citizen who was touring India alone had come to Delhi earlier that month. After a brief stay in Agra, she had returned to Delhi on January 13 and was staying in a hotel.

She had approached the one of the accused men after she lost the way to her hotel in Delhi. The men looted and gangraped her at knife-point.
An Indian woman identified as Judith D'Souza, who was working with an NGO, Agha Khan Network, was abducted by unidentified men from capital Kabul, Afghan security officials have confirmed.

40-year-old D'Souza, a native of Kolkata was abducted late on thursday night.

Facebook

Confirming the development, external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj said all efforts are being made to rescue her.

I have spoken to the sister of Judith D' Souza. We will spare no efforts to rescue her. @VohraManpreet  Sushma Swaraj (@SushmaSwaraj) June 10, 2016

Indian authorities are also reportedly in touch with officials in Afghanistan to trace her whereabouts.

However Afghan media reports suggest that there has no significant progress in tracking D'Souza, as no groups have claimed the abduction nor any ransom demands have been made yet.

Tolonews/ Representative Image

The incident happened a month after the Indian Embassy in Kabul issued a security alert earlier to the Indian citizens residing in Afghanistan and travelling to the country, warning regarding the persistent volatile situation of the country.

All Indians residing in Afghanistan and Indian travellers to Afghanistan are advised that the security situation in Afghanistan remains highly volatile. Terrorist attacks have taken place in many parts of the country against a variety of targets including foreigners and are expected to continue. There is also the risk of kidnapping and hostage taking throughout the Afghanistan, the statement said.
Almost a year after Prime Minister Narendra Modi praised his idea of 'selfie with daughter,' the former sarpanch of a village in Jind, Sunil Jaglan, has got a website developed for an online museum with a capacity of 10 lakh selfies.

selfiewithdaughter,world

The website http://selfiewithdaughter.world - launched by Haryana health minister Anil Vij - got a good response, with more than 13,000 visitors in just a few hours of it going online on Thursday, while the union ministry of women and child development is sharing its link on social media.

selfiewithdaughter.world

Vij posted a selfie with his niece Bharti on the website, which is being stated as the world's first such online museum for selfies with daughters. Jaglan had organised a 'selfie with daughter' contest in June 2015, when he was heading the village panchayat of Jind's Bibipur village.

According to the former sarpanch, the contest was conducted in the same month, but he is still receiving 'selfies with daughter' on his WhatsApp account.

"The craze for the campaign can be estimated from the fact that I have received as many as 8,000 selfies in the past one year. Many of these came from abroad, including USA and Germany," says Jaglan.

selfiewithdaughter.world

According to the sarpanch, there will be an option of clicking on the website page for a print of the selfie. "The user will be able to find a print of the selfie, automatically signed by the state health minister for the initial three days.

selfiewithdaughter.world

Later, there will be automatic signatures of other prominent personalities, including women boxers from Haryana on the print," says the former sarpanch, who is engaged with 'Save the girl child' campaign for the past five years.

selfiewithdaughter.world

Jaglan (33) says that the concept of 'selfie with daughter' was launched to motivate parents to feel proud of their daughters in a gender-biased society. He had first come in the limelight when he succeeded in bringing leaders of over 100 khaps on one platform in July 2012 to take a pledge for fighting female foeticide.
If everything goes as planned, soon you could take a 'flying boat' though Yamuna from Delhi, the next time you visit Agra.

mygola

Union transport minister Nitin Gadkari said the government will soon introduce seaplane service between the two cities.

Terming it a move that will rewrite the country's maritime history, Gadkari said,

"The 'fly boat' project will start in the next three months. We have also been in discussions with the Airport Authority of India (AAI) in order to frame rules and regulations needed to introduce seaplanes on this route."

He also said that the Centre plans to operate hovercraft and seabuses in not just Yamuna but across all waterways in the country.

travelnewsdigest/ representative image

A seaplane is an aircraft that has skis instead of wheels, and can take off from and land on water.

The minister said that Canadian and Russian companies had expressed interest in supplying seaplanes to the country.

keralaeditor/ representative image

The seaplane was first introduced in Kerala last year as a tourism promotion. However it is yet to be fully operationalised. Neighboring state of Karnataka and Telangana have also proposed similar service.
Every year millions of people from different states migrate to other metropolitan cities in search of education, work and a better life. Most of them remain homeless and have to sleep on the footpath. This is not the story of just India, but many countries across the world that have a similar problem where there is not enough space for everyone to stay. Most of the people are out-of-town labourers who work during the day but have nowhere to sleep at night. Nowhere but the street.

YouTube

It's hard to believe but when the world goes to rest, these poor people start trying to find a spot on the pavement and roads to sleep. Some of them pray for the day to never end so that they don't have to face the night, because it is not easy to sleep on a bed of rocks.

YouTube

But this mattresses company called Master MoltyFoam from Pakistan has come up with a unique campaign in order to give such hard-working people a good night's sleep. They designed the world's first billbed, a simple billboard that advertises the company during the day and, with a flip, turns into a bed at night.

YouTube

Since last year, the company has set up more than 150 billbeds across Pakistan, providing more than 50,000 people a peaceful night. And they continue to add more billbeds across the country.

YouTube

Well, when will this brilliant idea be adapted in India? Think about it!
China is all set to take things to another level by designing and building a manned deep-sea lab to hunt for minerals in the South China Sea. The oceanic "space station" will also double up as a military station in the disputed waters.

To be located 3,000 meters (9,800 ft) below the surface, the project was mentioned in China's five-year economic plan released back in March. It is also number two on the list of the top 100 science and technology priorities. A station like this hasn't been attempted this deep in the sea before. According to experts, manned submersibles have gone to such depths for almost 50 years now but the real challenge would be to sustain operations for months at a time.

twitter

This has led the U.S to send ships.

The United States has also started sending ships from its Seventh Fleet to ensure the freedom of passage through an area that witnesses about $5.3 trillion of global trade every year. Last month, president Xi Jinping speaking at a national science conference said, "The deep sea contains treasures that remain undiscovered and undeveloped, and in order to obtain these treasures we have to control key technologies in getting into the deep sea, discovering the deep sea, and developing the deep sea."

Although natural resources remain the intention behind building such a massive station in the sea, the platform will also apparently be movable and be used for military purposes when deemed necessary. China has even proposed to build an "Underwater Great Wall Project" to detect Russian and U.S submarines.

redorbit.com

Why is this a big deal?

Analysts believe the South China Sea holds huge potential for oil and gas reserves. In fact, the U.S Energy Information Administration says the area has proved and probable reserves of approximately 11 billion barrels of oil and 190 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. China, on the other hand, believes the number is a lot higher, with 125 billion barrels of oil and 500 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.

artstation.com

The roadblocks

The frequency of typhoons in the depth of the waters remains one of the main concerns for the Chinese. To build such a technologically advanced station that will host dozens of crew members for months at a stretch makes it more of a challenge to overcome.

coolvibe.com

Expensive is the word

Needless to say, this humungous station will cost China a bomb. They have been planning this for a decade now and it is key for China as they plan to become a global technology superpower by 2030. Building something like this would get them at par with the U.S., Japan, France and Russia on underwater technology.
Is Hillary Clinton A Psychopath?

Hillary Clinton Laughs While Discussing Defense of Child Rapist



Video



Who is the real Hillary Clinton? The former First Lady and Secretary of State has touted her history as a champion of womens rights, but unearthed tapes (below) tell another story.



June 09, 2016 - Originally Published Jun, 2014

Full Audio Tape

Hillary Clinton Laughs While Discussing Defense of Child Rapist

The facts are these. In 1975, before she married Bill Clinton, Hillary Rodham defended a child rapist in Arkansas court. She was not a public defender. No one ordered her to take the case. An ambitious young lawyer, she was asked by a friend if she would represent the accused, and she agreed. And her defense was successful. Attacking the credibility of the 12-year-old victim on the one hand, and questioning the chain of evidence on another, Clinton got a plea-bargain for her client. He served ten months in prison, and died in 1992. The victim, now 52, has had her life irrevocably alteredfor the worse.

Sometime in the mid-1980s, for an Esquire profile of rising political stars, Hillary Clinton and her husband agreed to a series of interviews with the Arkansas journalist Roy Reed. Reed and Hillary Clinton discussed at some length her defense of the child rapist, and in the course of that discussion she bragged and laughed about the case, implied she had known her client was guilty, and said her faith in polygraphs was forever destroyed when she saw that her client had taken one and passed. Reeds article was never published. His tapes of the interviews were later donated to the University of Arkansas. Where they remained, gathering dust.

Contrary to what you may have heard over the past week, Clintons successful defense of the rapist Thomas Alfred Taylor is not old news. On the contrary: For a CV that has been scrutinized so closely, references to the rape case in the public record have been rather thin. One of those references came from Clinton herself. In 2003, when she was a senator from New York, and published her first memoir, Living History, Clinton included a brief mention of the case, mainly as a way to take credit for Arkansas first rape crisis hotline. And in 2008, Glenn Thrushthen at Newsdaywrote a lengthy article on the subject.

Dont remember it? Theres a reason. My then-editor appended a meaningless intro to the story, delayed and buried it because, in his words, It might have an impact, Thrush said in a June 15 tweet. Well, the editor got his way. It didnt have an impact.

The occasion for Thrushs tweet was The Hillary Tapes by the Washington Free Beacons Alana Goodman, who obtained the Reed interview and made it public for the first time. Goodman is careful to quote a source saying that, once an attorney takes on a client, he is required to provide that client with the strongest possible defense. Yet the same source also noted that Hillary Clintons subsequent narrative of the casespecifically, her implication to Reed that her client had been guilty all alongraised serious questions regarding attorney-client privilege. And Goodman also notes the casual and complacent manner in which Clinton treats such a morally fraught episode, as well as the parallels between the tactics Clinton employed to defend Taylor and the tactics she, her husband, and their allies have used to defend themselves against accusations of wrongdoing over the course of their three decades in public life. Pretty newsworthy, it seems to me.

And yet, looking over the treatment of Goodmans scoop over the past week, I cant help thinking that the reaction to The Hillary Tapes is just as newsworthy as the tapes themselves. That reaction has been decidedly mixed. Not long ago, in 2012, the Washington Post ran an extensive investigation into the troubling incidents of Mitt Romneys prep-school days, whereupon the media devoted hour after hour to the all-important discussion of whether Willard M. Romney had been something of a child bully. Here, though, we have a newly unearthed recording of Hillary Clinton laughing out loud over her defense of a child rapistand plenty of outlets have ignored the story altogether. The difference? As the Newsday editor said: It might have an impact.

No matter your view of Hillary Clinton, no matter your position on legal ethics, the recording of the Reed interview is news. It tells us something we did not already know. It tells us that, when her guard was down, Clinton found the whole disturbing incident a trifling and joking matter. And the fact that so many supposedly sophisticated and au courant journalists and writers have dismissed the story as nothing more than an attorney doing her job is, I think, equally disturbing. Dana Bash to the contrary notwithstanding, Hillary Clinton was not forced to take on Taylor as a client. It was her choiceand not, for her, a hard one. Certainly that complicates our understanding of the former first lady as an unrelenting defender and advocate of women and girls.

Lets even concede that Clinton was just doing her job. What makes that job exempt from inquiry and skepticism and criticism? Yes, Mumia, Bill Ayers, and child rapists have the right to legal representation. But that does not give the lawyers who represent them the rightthe entitlementto public office. If it is fair to attack a candidate because he used to travel with the family dog on the roof of his car, because he may have forcibly subjected a fellow student to a haircut, then it is entirely fair, it is more than fair, to attack a candidate for defending the rapist of a 12-year-old girl, and for laughing about it a decade later.

Lawyers I can handle. Librarians? Theyre trouble. I did not expect, when I arrived at the office Wednesday, to find a letter from a dean of the University of Arkansas sitting on my desk, informing me that the Free Beacons research privileges had been suspended because we failed to fill out a permission slip, that we were in violation of the University of Arkansas intellectual property rights, and demanding that we remove the audio of the Hillary tapes from our website. (Both the letter from Dean Allen and the response of the Free Beacons lawyers can be read below.)

Now, we obtained these materials without having to fill out any forms and without being provided a copy of any university policy. The university has yet to prove that it owns the copyright to the Reed audio. Nor has it explained how, exactly, that audio does not fall under fair use. And remember, too, that the institution protesting our story is a librarywhich ostensibly exists for the sole purpose of spreading knowledge and literacy and information and print and audio and visual media. That is what libraries are for, isnt it?

Puzzling. Less puzzling, though, when I discovered that the author of the letter, Dean Carolyn Henderson Allen, was a donor to Hillary Clintons 2008 campaign, and that the University of Arkansas Chancellor, David Gearhart, is a former student of the Clintons, and that his brother, Van Gearhart, worked at the same legal aid clinic as Clinton at the time of the Taylor case.

One would expect the media to rally behind potential violations of a publications First Amendment rightsbut, with the exception of this Politico story, the University of Arkansas attempt to suppress the Hillary tapes has yet to be the subject of extensive coverage.

I wonder why.

Defending even a child rapist as vigorously as possible might be a plus if she were running to lead the American Bar Association, wrote Melinda Henneberger, in one of the few stories about the Hillary tapes to appear in the mainstream media. But wouldnt her apparent willingness to attack a sixth-grader compromise a presidential run?

Indeed, I think it would. Which is why the reaction to Alana Goodmans scoop has been so muted and unusual. And why Hillarys people must be wondering: Whats next?

Read the University of Arkansas letter and the Free Beacon response here:

University of Arkansas letter to WFB

WFB reply to University of Arkansas

Hillary Clinton on Gaddafi: We came, we saw, he died

Fact Check - Hillary Clinton Rape Defense Meme

Hillary Clinton's role in a 40-year-old rape case became the focal point of a viral meme in 2016, but the claims were only partially accurate. http://www.snopes.com/hillary-clinton-freed-child-rapist-laughed-about-it/

See also

War criminal endorses war criminal: Obama Endorses First Candidate In History Under FBI Criminal Investigation : Obama didn't just endorse the first woman in history, he endorsed the first woman in history to run under an active FBI criminal investigation. The corruption is unreal
Wake Up, America! By Judge Andrew P. Napolitano June 09, 2016 " Information Clearing House " - While Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders are battling in their final round in the Democratic primaries and Donald Trump is arguing that Clinton should be in prison for failing to safeguard state secrets while she was secretary of state, the same FBI that is diligently investigating her is quietly and perniciously seeking to cut more holes in the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution. That amendment  which requires the government to obtain a search warrant issued by a judge based upon some evidence of criminal wrongdoing, called probable cause, before the government can search persons, houses, papers or effects  is the linchpin of the right to privacy, famously referred to by Justice Louis Brandeis as the right to be let alone. The Fourth Amendment has a painful yet unambiguous history. The essence of that history is the well-documented and nearly universal Colonial revulsion to the British use of general warrants. General warrants, which were usually issued in secret in London, permitted British soldiers and agents in America to search wherever they wished and seize whatever they found. General warrants were not based upon any individualized suspicion, much less any probable cause. Their stated purpose was the need to enforce the Stamp Act, a totalitarian measure that cost more to enforce than it generated in revenue. The Stamp Act required all colonists to purchase and affix stamps to all legal, financial, political, personal and public documents. It was billed as a revenue-gathering measure, but it truly was used as an excuse to humiliate the colonists by permitting soldiers and agents to enter their homes ostensibly looking for the stamps. They were really looking for evidence of revolutionary ideas and plans against the king. After Americans won the Revolution and wrote the Constitution, they did so with the determination never to permit the new government here to do to Americans what the pre-Revolutionary British government had done to the colonists. Their chosen instrument of that prevention was the Fourth Amendment. But the feds have been wearing away at the right to privacy for generations. The Right to Financial Privacy Act (which has nothing to do with protecting privacy) permits federal agents to obtain certain bank records with search warrants issued by other federal agents  as opposed to judges  as long as they are looking for mobsters or drug dealers. The Patriot Act (which has nothing to do with patriotism) enables FBI agents to issue search warrants to other FBI agents for certain business records  including doctors and lawyers offices, car and jewelry dealers, and the post office  as long as they are looking for threats to national security. And the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (which interferes with the privacy of almost all electronic communications) permits FBI agents to access certain metadata (the who, where and when of emails, but not their contents), as long as one FBI agent issues the warrant to another and as long as the recipient uses it for national security purposes. Now the FBI wants access to everyones internet browser history, as long as its agents are looking for spies or terrorists; and again, it proposes that rather than present probable cause to a judge and seek a warrant as the Fourth Amendment requires, one FBI agent be authorized to issue a search warrant to another. The federal governments antipathy to the Fourth Amendment is palpable and well-known  notwithstanding that everyone who works for the feds has taken an oath to uphold the Constitution, not evade or avoid it. Last week, FBI Director James Comey effectively told the Senate committee that is writing this damnable new legislation that complying with the Fourth Amendment is a pain in the neck and his agents could operate more efficiently without it. Wake up, America. The Fourth Amendment is supposed to be a pain in the neck for the government. The Fourth Amendment was expressly written to protect our individual right to privacy from the voracious and insatiable appetite of government to assault it. It was also written to ensure that government can seek evidence against bad guys, but it was meant to force the government to target them based on real evidence, not to let it sweep them up in a suspicionless net along with the innocent. When Edward Snowden revealed the nature and extent of domestic spying on everyone in America three years ago, he revealed a secret that somehow 60,000 federal agents and contractors were able to keep. That secret was a novel and perverse interpretation of certain federal statutes so as to use them to justify spying on innocents. But what we have here with this FBI request to access our browsing history  which reveals deeply personal, political, medical, legal and intimate data about us  is coming about openly through our elected representatives. It is not only the FBI that secretly wants this but also members of Congress who are on the verge of openly approving it. And dont expect your internet service provider to tell you that the FBI has come calling, as this legislation would prohibit the service provider from telling you that your records have been accessed. This provision violates the First Amendment to the Constitution, which states that "Congress shall make no law  abridging the freedom of speech." Wake up, America. How many congressional assaults on the Constitution will we tolerate? Since the government obviously does not take its obligation to uphold the Constitution seriously, why bother with requiring one FBI agent to authorize another? Why not let any FBI agent search wherever he or she wants, break down any door, seize any records and invade anyones privacy, lest compliance with the Constitution be a pain in the neck. Wake up, America. The Constitution has become a pain in the neck to our personal liberties, because as a safeguard of them, it obviously no longer works. Judge Andrew P. Napolitano is the youngest life-tenured Superior Court judge in the history of the State of New Jersey. He sat on the bench from 1987 to 1995, during which time he presided over 150 jury trials and thousands of motions, sentencings and hearings. He taught constitutional law at Seton Hall Law School for 11 years, and he returned to private practice in 1995. Creators Syndicate, Inc.  2016
Israeli Minister Wants To Annex Half Of West Bank and Kick Out The Palestinians



By William Booth June 09, 2016 " Information Clearing House " - " WP " - JERUSALEM  A top Israeli minister said he wants the government to take complete control of more than half of the West Bank and remove the Palestinian residents of the territory. While traveling with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on a state visit to Russia on Tuesday, Agriculture Minister Uri Ariel told the Times of Israel that the world should forget about a Palestinian state. We have to aspire to the annexation of Area C; these are areas where there are no Arabs at all, Ariel said. We would remove a few thousand, who do not constitute a significant numerical factor. According to the Oslo Accords, the West Bank is divided into three areas. Area C comprises more than 60 percent of the West Bank and is under complete Israeli military control, both for security and civil affairs. Estimates of the Palestinian population in Area C are a subject of mystery and debate. The United Nations agency that provides aid to Palestinians reported that there were 297,500 Palestinians in Area C in 2014. An Israeli human rights group, Bimkom, estimates that 150,000 to 180,000 Palestinians live there. The Israeli military division that controls Area C gives an estimate of 50,000 Palestinians. Area C  which covers about 1,300 square miles spread throughout the West Bank  is where the Jewish settlements are located. More than 350,000 Israelis live on 125 settlements and about 100 outposts. The international community calls the settlements illegal; the United States views them as illegitimate and obstacles to peace; the Israeli government disputes this characterization. Ariel is a longtime advocate for the settler movement and lives in a settlement, Kfar Adumim, east of Jerusalem. The Times of Israel did not reveal Ariels thinking on the method of transfer of Palestinians from Area C. Ariel did not specify how those Palestinians would be removed, or where they would be relocated, the media outlet reported. This is not the first time that Ariel has advocated annexing Area C. He has done so repeatedly. In January, Ariel said it was time to take full possession of the land. If someone asks about Areas A and B, then their time will come. When, we will see, Ariel said. For now, lets agree on Area C. There is more than 60 percent of the territory, with 50,000 Arabs. They do not pose a problem to the state of Israel. Ariel is a leader of the hard-right faction in the Jewish Home party, which is a member of the government. Other Jewish Home leaders, such as Education Minister Naftali Bennett, also have urged annexing Area C but have not advocated the mass transfer of Palestinians out of the area. Depending on the annexation plan, the Palestinians would be offered Israeli citizenship or residency or be made the responsibility of Jordan, Bennett has said. These are not lone voices. Israels ambassador to the United Nations, Danny Danon, supports annexation. Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked wants to apply Israeli law to Area C, a step toward annexation. Ariels comments come as Netanyahu, the leader of the governing coalition, has been stressing that he supports a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The Palestinians blasted Ariels comments. Jamal Dajani, a spokesman in the office of the Palestinian Authority prime minister, called the proposal "incitement" as well as demeaning, racist and dehumanizing.
Democrats Are Now the Aggressive War Party



For nearly a half century  since late in the Vietnam War  the Democrats have been the less warlike of the two parties, but that has flipped with the choice of war hawk Hillary Clinton.



By Robert Parry June 09, 2016 " Information Clearing House " - The Democratic Party has moved from being what you might call a reluctant war party to an aggressive war party with its selection of Hillary Clinton as its presumptive presidential nominee. With minimal debate, this historic change brings full circle the arc of the partys anti-war attitudes that began in 1968 and have now ended in 2016. Since the Vietnam War, the Democrats have been viewed as the more peaceful of the two major parties, with the Republicans often attacking Democratic candidates as soft regarding use of military force. But former Secretary of State Clinton has made it clear that she is eager to use military force to achieve regime change in countries that get in the way of U.S. desires. She abides by neoconservative strategies of violent interventions especially in the Middle East and she strikes a belligerent posture as well toward nuclear-armed Russia and, to a lesser extent, China. Amid the celebrations about picking the first woman as a major partys presumptive nominee, Democrats appear to have given little thought to the fact that they have abandoned a near half-century standing as the party more skeptical about the use of military force. Clinton is an unabashed war hawk who has shown no inclination to rethink her pro-war attitudes. As a U.S. senator from New York, Clinton voted for and avidly supported the Iraq War, only cooling her enthusiasm in 2006 when it became clear that the Democratic base had turned decisively against the war and her hawkish position endangered her chances for the 2008 presidential nomination, which she lost to Barack Obama, an Iraq War opponent. However, to ease tensions with the Clinton wing of the party, Obama selected Clinton to be his Secretary of State, one of the first and most fateful decisions of his presidency. He also kept on George W. Bushs Defense Secretary Robert Gates and neocon members of the military high command, such as Gen. David Petraeus. This Team of Rivals  named after Abraham Lincolns initial Civil War cabinet  ensured a powerful bloc of pro-war sentiment, which pushed Obama toward more militaristic solutions than he otherwise favored, notably the wasteful counterinsurgency surge in Afghanistan in 2009 which did little beyond get another 1,000 U.S. soldiers killed and many more Afghans. Clinton was a strong supporter of that surge  and Gates reported in his memoir that she acknowledged only opposing the Iraq War surge in 2007 for political reasons. Inside Obamas foreign policy councils, Clinton routinely took the most neoconservative positions, such as defending a 2009 coup in Honduras that ousted a progressive president. Clinton also sabotaged early efforts to work out an agreement in which Iran surrendered much of its low-enriched uranium, including an initiative in 2010 organized at Obamas request by the leaders of Brazil and Turkey. Clinton sank that deal and escalated tensions with Iran along the lines favored by Israels right-wing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a Clinton favorite. Pumping for War in Libya In 2011, Clinton successfully lobbied Obama to go to war against Libya to achieve another regime change, albeit cloaked in the more modest goal of establishing only a no-fly zone to protect civilians. Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi had claimed he was battling jihadists and terrorists who were building strongholds around Benghazi, but Clinton and her State Department underlings accused him of slaughtering civilians and (in one of the more colorful lies used to justify the war) distributing Viagra to his troops so they could rape more women. Despite resistance from Russia and China, the United Nations Security Council fell for the deception about protecting civilians. Russia and China agreed to abstain from the vote, giving Clinton her no-fly zone. Once that was secured, however, the Obama administration and several European allies unveiled their real plan, to destroy the Libyan army and pave the way for the violent overthrow of Gaddafi. Privately, Clintons senior aides viewed the Libyan regime change as a chance to establish what they called the Clinton Doctrine  on using smart power with plans for Clinton to rush to the fore and claim credit once Gaddafi was ousted. But that scheme failed when President Obama grabbed the limelight after Gaddafis government collapsed. But Clinton would not be denied her second opportunity to claim the glory when jihadist rebels captured Gaddafi on Oct. 20, 2011, sodomized him with a knife and then murdered him. Hearing of Gaddafis demise, Clinton went into a network interview and declared , we came, we saw, he died and clapped her hands in glee. Clintons glee was short-lived, however. Libya soon descended into chaos with Islamic extremists gaining control of large swaths of the country. On Sept. 11, 2012, jihadists attacked the U.S. consulate in Benghazi killing Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other American personnel. It turned out Gaddafi had been right about the nature of his enemies. Undaunted by the mess in Libya, Clinton made similar plans for Syria where again she marched in lock-step with the neocons and their liberal interventionist sidekicks in support of another violent regime change, ousting the Assad dynasty, a top neocon/Israeli goal since the 1990s . Clinton pressed Obama to escalate weapons shipments and training for anti-government rebels who were deemed moderate but in reality collaborated closely with radical Islamic forces, including Al Nusra Front (Al Qaedas Syrian franchise) and some even more extreme jihadists (who coalesced into the Islamic State). Again, Clintons war plans were cloaked in humanitarian language, such as the need to create a safe zone inside Syria to save civilians. But her plans would have required a major U.S. invasion of a sovereign country, the destruction of its air force and much of its military, and the creation of conditions for another regime change. In the case of Syria, however, Obama resisted the pressure from Clinton and other hawks inside his own administration. The President did approve some covert assistance to the rebels and allowed Saudi Arabia, Turkey and the Gulf states to do much more, but he did not agree to an outright U.S.-led invasion to Clintons disappointment. Parting Ways Clinton finally left the Obama administration at the start of his second term in 2013, some say voluntarily and others say in line with Obamas desire to finally move ahead with serious negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program and to apply more pressure on Israel to reach a long-delayed peace settlement with the Palestinians. Secretary of State John Kerry was willing to do some of the politically risky work that Clinton was not. Many on the Left deride Obama as Obomber and mock his hypocritical acceptance of the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009. And there is no doubt that Obama has waged war his entire presidency, bombing at least seven countries by his own count. But the truth is that he has generally been among the most dovish members of his administration, advocating a realistic (or restrained) application of American power. By contrast, Clinton was among the most hawkish senior officials. A major testing moment for Obama came in August 2013 after a sarin gas attack outside Damascus, Syria, that killed hundreds of Syrians and that the State Department and the mainstream U.S. media immediately blamed on the forces of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. There was almost universal pressure inside Official Washington to militarily enforce Obamas red line against Assad using chemical weapons. Amid this intense momentum toward war, it was widely assumed that Obama would order a harsh retaliatory strike against the Syrian military. But U.S. intelligence and key figures in the U.S. military smelled a rat, a provocation carried out by Islamic extremists to draw the United States into the Syrian war on their side. At the last minute and at great political cost to himself, Obama listened to the doubts of his intelligence advisers and called off the attack, referring the issue to the U.S. Congress and then accepting a Russian-brokered deal in which Assad surrendered all his chemical weapons though continuing to deny a role in the sarin attack. Eventually, the sarin case against Assad would collapse . Only one rocket was found to have carried sarin and it had a very limited range placing its firing position likely within rebel-controlled territory. But Official Washingtons conventional wisdom never budged. To this day, politicians and pundits denounce Obama for not enforcing his red line. Theres little doubt, however, what Hillary Clinton would have done. She has been eager for a much more aggressive U.S. military role in Syria since the civil war began in 2011. Much as she used propaganda and deception to achieve regime change in Libya, she surely would have done the same in Syria, embracing the pretext of the sarin attack  killing innocent children  to destroy the Syrian military even if the rebels were the guilty parties. Still Lusting for War Indeed, during the 2016 campaign  in those few moments that have touched on foreign policy  Clinton declared that as President she would order the U.S. military to invade Syria. Yes, I do still support a no-fly zone, she said during the April 14 debate. She also wants a safe zone that would require seizing territory inside Syria. But no one should be gullible enough to believe that Clintons invasion of Syria would stop at a safe zone. As with Libya, once the camels nose was into the tent, pretty soon the animal would be filling up the whole tent. Perhaps even scarier is what a President Clinton would do regarding Iran and Ukraine, two countries where belligerent U.S. behavior could start much bigger wars. For instance, would President Hillary Clinton push the Iranians so hard  in line with what Netanyahu favors  that they would renounce the nuclear deal and give Clinton an excuse to bomb-bomb-bomb Iran? In Ukraine, would Clinton escalate U.S. military support for the post-coup anti-Russian Ukrainian government, encouraging its forces to annihilate the ethnic Russian rebels in eastern Ukraine and to liberate the people of Crimea from Russian aggression (though they voted by 96 percent to leave the failed Ukrainian state and rejoin Russia)? Would President Clinton expect the Russians to stand down and accept these massacres? Would she take matters to the next level to demonstrate how tough she can be against Russian President Vladimir Putin whom she has compared to Hitler? Might she buy into the latest neocon dream of achieving regime change in Moscow? Would she be wise enough to recognize how dangerous such instability could be? Of course, one would expect that all of Clintons actions would be clothed in the crocodile tears of humanitarian warfare, starting wars to save the children or to stop the evil enemy from raping defenseless girls. The truth of such emotional allegations would be left for the post-war historians to try to sort out. In the meantime, President Clinton would have her wars. Having covered Washington for nearly four decades, I always marvel at how selective concerns for human rights can be. When friendly civilians are dying, we are told that we have a responsibility to protect, but when pro-U.S. forces are slaughtering civilians of an adversary country or movement, reports of those atrocities are dismissed as enemy propaganda or ignored altogether. Clinton is among the most cynical in this regard. Trading Places But the larger picture for the Democrats is that they have just adopted an extraordinary historical reversal whether they understand it or not. They have replaced the Republicans as the party of aggressive war, though clearly many Republicans still dance to the neocon drummer just as Clinton and liberal interventionists do. Still, Donald Trump, for all his faults, has adopted a relatively peaceful point of view, especially in the Mideast and with Russia. While today many Democrats are congratulating themselves for becoming the first major party to make a woman the presumptive nominee, they may soon have to decide whether that distinction justifies putting an aggressive war hawk in the White House. In a way, the issue is an old one for Democrats, whether identity politics or anti-war policies are more important. At least since 1968 and the chaotic Democratic convention in Chicago, the party has advanced, sometimes haltingly, those two agendas, pushing for broader rights for all and seeking to restrain the nations militaristic impulses. In the 1970s, Democrats largely repudiated the Vietnam War while the Republicans waved the flag and equated anti-war positions with treason. By the 1980s and early 1990s, Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush were making war fun again  Grenada, Afghanistan, Panama and the Persian Gulf, all relatively low-cost conflicts with victorious conclusions. By the 1990s, Bill Clinton (along with Hillary Clinton) saw militarism as just another issue to be triangulated. With the Soviet Unions collapse, the Clinton-42 administration saw the opportunity for more low-cost tough-guy/gal-ism  continuing a harsh embargo and periodic air strikes against Iraq (causing the deaths of a U.N.-estimated half million children); blasting Serbia into submission over Kosovo; and expanding NATO to the east toward Russias borders. But Bill Clinton did balk at the more extreme neocon ideas, such as the one from the Project for the New American Century for a militarily enforced regime change in Iraq. That had to wait for George W. Bush in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. As a New York senator, Hillary Clinton made sure she was onboard for war on Iraq just as she sided with Israels pummeling of Lebanon and the Palestinians in Gaza. Hillary Clinton was taking triangulation to an even more acute angle as she sided with virtually every position of the Netanyahu government in Israel and moved in tandem with the neocons as they cemented their control of Washingtons foreign policy establishment. Her only brief flirtation with an anti-war position came in 2006 when her political advisers informed her that her continued support for Bushs Iraq War would doom her in the Democratic presidential race. But she let her hawkish plumage show again as Obamas Secretary of State from 2009 to 2013  and once she felt she had the 2016 Democratic race in hand (after her success in the southern primaries) she pivoted back to her hard-line positions in full support of Israel and in a full-throated defense of her war on Libya, which she still wont view as a failure. The smarter neocons are already lining up to endorse Clinton, especially given Donald Trumps hostile takeover of the Republican Party and his disdain for neocon strategies that he views as simply spreading chaos around the globe. As The New York Times has reported , Clinton is the vessel into which many interventionists are pouring their hopes. Robert Kagan, a co-founder of the neocon Project for the new American Century, has endorsed Clinton, saying I feel comfortable with her on foreign policy. If she pursues a policy which we think she will pursue its something that might have been called neocon, but clearly her supporters are not going to call it that; they are going to call it something else. [See Consortiumnews.coms  Yes, Hillary Clinton Is a Neocon. ] So, by selecting Clinton, the Democrats have made a full 360-degree swing back to the pre-1968 days of the Vietnam War. After nearly a half century of favoring a more peaceful foreign policy  and somewhat less weapons spending  than the Republicans, the Democrats are Americas new aggressive war party. [For more on this topic, see Consortiumnews.coms  Would a Clinton Win Mean More Wars? ] Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest book, Americas Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com ).
Where Do Matters Stand? By Paul Craig Roberts June 09, 2016 " Information Clearing House " - On the eve of World War II the United States was still mired in the Great Depression and found itself facing war on two fronts with Japan and Germany. However bleak the outlook, it was nothing compared to the outlook today. Has anyone in Washington, the presstitute Western media, the EU, or NATO ever considered the consequences of constant military and propaganda provocations against Russia? Is there anyone in any responsible position anywhere in the Western world who has enough sense to ask: What if the Russians believe us? What if we convince Russia that we are going to attack her? The same can be asked about China. The recklessness of the White House Fool and the media whores has gone far beyond mere danger. What do the Russians think when they see that the Democratic Party intends to elect Hillary Clinton president of the US? Hillary is a person so crazed that she declared the president of Russia to be the new Hitler and organized through her underling, neocon monster Victoria Nuland, the overthrow of the democratically elected government of Ukraine. Nuland installed Washingtons puppet government in a former Russian province that until about 20 years ago was part of Russia for centuries. I would bet that this tells even the naive pro-western part of the Russian government and population that the United States intends war with Russia. Ever since Russia stood up to Obama over Syria, the Russians have been experiencing hostile propaganda and military operations on their borders. These provocations are justified by Washington and its NATO vassals as a response to Russian aggression. Russian aggression consists of nothing but obviously false assertions that Russia is about to invade the Baltics, Poland, and Romania and recreate the Soviet Empire, the Eastern European part of which, together with the former Russian provinces of Georgia and Ukraine, now belong to the American Empire. The Russians know that the propaganda about Russian aggression is a lie. What is the purpose of the lie other than to prepare the Western peoples for war with Russia? There is no other explanation. Even morons such as Obama, Merkel, Hollande, and Cameron should be capable of understanding that it is extremely dangerous to convince a major military power that you are going to attack. To simultaneously also convince China doubles the danger. Clearly, the West is incapable of producing leadership capable of preserving life on earth. What can be done when the entire West demonstrates a death wish for Planet Earth? Until the criminal regimes of Clinton, George W. Bush, and Obama, American presidents from John F. Kennedy forward worked to reduce tensions with the Soviets. Kennedy worked with Khrushchev to reduce tensions caused by US missiles in Turkey and Soviet missiles in Cuba. President Nixon negotiated SALT I (the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty) and the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. President Carter negotiated SALT II, which was never ratified by the US Senate but was observed by the executive branch. President Reagan negotiated with Soviet leader Gorbachev the end of the Cold War. President George H.W. Bush in exchange for Gorbachevs agreement to the reunification of Germany promised that NATO would not move one inch to the East. All of these achievements were thrown away by the neoconized Clinton, George W. Bush, and Obama regimes, each a criminal regime on par with Nazi Germany. Today life on Planet Earth is far less secure than during the darkest days of the Cold War. Whatever threat global warming poses, it is miniscule compared to the threat of nuclear winter. If the evil that is concentrated in Washington and its vassals perpetrates nuclear war, cockroaches will inherit the earth. I have been warning about the growing danger of a nuclear war resulting from the arrogance, hubris, ignorance, and evil personified by Washington. Recently, four knowledgable Russian-Americans spelled out the likely consequences of trying to drive Russia to submission with war threats: http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2016/06/03/41522/ See also: http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2016/05/28/as-our-past-wars-are-glorified-this-memorial-day-weekend-give-some-thought-to-our-prospects-against-the-russians-and-chinese-in-world-war-iii/ Dont expect the brainwashed American population to have the moral conscience and fortitude to prevent nuclear war or even the intelligence to prevent their own vaporization. In a recent article in the Wall Street Journal Scott Sagan and Benjamin Valentino report that 59% of the US population support attacking Iran with nuclear weapons in the event that Iran sank one US Navy ship: http://www.wsj.com/articles/would-the-u-s-drop-the-bomb-again-1463682867 Republicans were much more likely than Democrats to approve attacking Iran with nuclear weapons with 81% of Republicans approving nuclear war compared to 47% of Democrats. Yet, the Democrats are behind Hillary who would be the first to use nuclear weapons. After all, a feminized woman has to prove how tough she is, just as Margaret Thatcher was the Iron Lady. Before it it too late for Americans and all of humanity, arrogant Americans need to recall that those who live by the sword, die by the sword. The economic picture is equally dismal and unpromising. The latest payroll jobs report was even more awful than reported. Hardly any new jobs were created, but what largely escaped reporting is the fact that the economy actually lost 59,000 full-time jobs. Increasingly the US economy consists of part-time jobs that cannot support an independent existence. Thus, more Americans age 19-34 live at home with parents than independently with spouses or partners. Fully half of 25-year old Americans live in their childhood rooms in their parents homes. This is the New Economy that the filthy lying neoliberal economists promised would be reward for the American work force giving up their manufacturing and professional skill jobs to foreigners. What a monstrous lie the neoliberal economists told so that corporate executives and shareholders could put into their own pockets the living wage of the American work force. These neoliberal economists, and, alas, libertarian free market ones, have not been held accountable for their impoverishment of the American work force deeply buried in debt with no future prospects. Those few Americans who have any awareness are beginning to realize that the One Percent and the western governments that serve them are re-establishing feudalism. The brilliant and learned economist, Michael Hudson, has labeled our era the era of neo-feudalism. He is correct. The majority of young Americans come out of university heavily indebted, primed for debtor prison. When half of 25-year olds cannot marry and form households, how can anyone believe that housing sales and prices are rising except as a result of speculative investors banking on rental income from a population that cannot even pay its student loans. The United States is the sickest place on earth. There is no public or political discussion of any important issue or of the multiple crises that confront America or the crises that America brings to the world. The American people are so stupid and unaware that they are capable of electing a criminal and a warmonger like Hillary president of the United States and be proud of it. These tough Americans are so frightened of hoax dangers, such as Muslim terrorists and Russian aggression that they willingly sacrificed their depleted pocketbooks, the Constitution of the United Statesan act of treason on the part of the American people who utterly failed their responsibility to protect the Constitutionand their own liberty to a universal police state that has all power over them. It is extraordinary that once-proud, once-great European peoples look for leadership from a country of moronic non-entities who have pissed away the liberty, security, and prosperity that their Founding Fathers gave to them. Fellow Americans, if you care to avoid vaporization and, assuming we do avoid it, live a life other than serfdom, you must wake up and realize that your most deadly enemy is Washington, not the hoax of Russian aggression, not the hoax of Muslim terrorism, not the hoax of domestic extremism, not the hoax of welfare bankrupting America, not the hoax of democracy voting away your wealth, which Wall Street and the corporations have already stolen and stuck in their pockets. If you cannot wake up and escape The Matrix, your doom will bring the doom of the planet. Dr. Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. He was columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, and Creators Syndicate. He has had many university appointments. His internet columns have attracted a worldwide following. Roberts' latest books are The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and Economic Dissolution of the West , How America Was Lost , and The Neoconservative Threat to World Order .
Fallujah: A Symbol of US War Crimes By James Cogan June 09, 2016 " Information Clearing House " - " WSWS " - No city in Iraq is more symbolic of the criminal consequences of the US invasion of Iraq than Fallujah. Prior to 2003, the 300,000-strong, prosperous, predominantly Sunni Muslim community on the Euphrates River, one of humanitys oldest continuous urban settlements, was known as the city of mosques. After 13 years of destruction at the hands of the US military and its client state in Baghdad, it is today a labyrinth of ruins, a city of the dead. Following weeks of air strikes by US, British and Australian bombers, a combination of Iraqi government forces and Shiite militias is reportedly on the verge of a final offensive to seize back Fallujah from some 500 fighters of the Sunni-extremist Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), which took control of the city in early 2014. Iraqi special forces units are accompanied by elite troops of the US, British and Australian militaries, who direct air strikes and ground artillery bombardments and provide tactical advice to Iraqi commanders. UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNHCR) Zeid Raad al Hussein has issued urgent appeals concerning the fate of the estimated 50,000 civilians who are trapped in Fallujah, without food or water. Civilian deaths caused by the offensive have been justified in advance by the US-backed Iraqi government with allegations that the occupiers are using the population as human shields. ISIS is accused of murdering dozens of people who have attempted to flee. Men and teenagers who do escape are being detained by Iraqi government and militia units. According to the UNHCR, they are being subjected to physical violations and other forms of abuse, apparently in order to elicit forced confessions of being ISIS members or supporters. The UNHCR has received unconfirmed accounts of at least 21 summary executions. In the media coverage, the question as to how and why ISIS was able to gain control of the city two years ago is largely ignored. To the extent it is raised, the explanation given is Sunni resentment over the sectarian and discriminatory policies of the Shiite-dominated government after the withdrawal of American troops in 2011. The Iraqi people as a whole are generally portrayed as incurably divided along Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish lines, incapable of living in harmony together and inherently attracted to extremist ethno-sectarian ideologies. A review of the tortured history of Fallujah since 2003 makes clear that this narrative is a lie. The current situation in Iraq and neighbouring Syria is the outcome and continuation of the deliberate stoking of sectarian conflict by the American occupation for the purpose of dividing the Iraqi masses and cementing the US grip over the oil-rich Middle East. After the illegal invasion of Iraq and overthrow of the Baathist regime of Saddam Hussein, Fallujah was the scene of one of the first widely reported crimes by American troops against Iraqi civilians. Two hundred youth demanding the reopening of their school were fired on by troops of the US 82nd Airborne Division. Seventeen were murdered and over 70 wounded. Over the following months, Fallujah emerged as a centre of Iraqi resistance to the US occupation. By early 2004, the city was effectively controlled by armed groups overwhelmingly made up of former members of the Iraqi Army and local Sunni tribes. Religious-based extremists, such as the small grouping calling itself Al Qaeda in Iraq, had only a minor presence. The killing of four Blackwater mercenaries in Fallujah in March 2004 triggered a massive American military response. Across Iraq, the defiance of the people of Fallujah became a clarion call for resistance. In the first week of April, the stand in the city against the occupation was joined by an uprising of tens of thousands of Shiite working class youth in Baghdad and cities across southern Iraq. The armed insurgency against the US forces spread to predominantly Sunni cities such as Ramadi, Tikrit and Mosul. The dominant feature of the anti-occupation resistance in Iraq in 2004 was that it objectively unified Iraqis of all backgrounds who opposed the US occupation and its local collaborators. However, it lacked any coherent perspective or strategy. In city after city, Iraqi fighters were overwhelmed by the superior firepower of the US military, including in Fallujah in November 2004. After a months-long siege, the city was left depopulated and in rubble. Of its 200 mosques, 60 were destroyed or damaged, along with some 39,000 homes and other buildings. The other central feature of the US occupation in 2004 was the deployment of US-trained Shiite death squads, such as the Wolf Brigade, against the Sunni population. Thousands of people were murdered. At the same time, Al Qaeda in Iraq escalated sinister bombings of Shiite civilians, which assisted the US occupation in driving a wedge between the two communities. By 2006, US policy had provoked a full-scale sectarian civil war that forced hundreds of thousands of people to flee for safety into areas controlled by the militias of their religious denomination. The origins of the present savage sectarianism in Iraq lie in the manner by which US imperialism stabilised Iraq under the control of its Shiite-dominated puppet state, using the criminal methods of divide-and-rule, mass killings and mass dislocation. In 2011, as it withdrew its forces from Iraq, Washington launched a regime-change war in Libya and began sponsoring a regime-change operation in Syria using the same methods that had triggered civil war in Iraq. In Syria, however, the CIA and US military worked through Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states to arm Sunni-based groupings to overthrow the Russian- and Iranian-backed Shiite-dominated government of Bashar al-Assad. One of the main groupings that benefited from the flow of arms was the remnants of Al Qaeda in Iraq, which sent fighters into Syria and soon emerged as a dominant force in the civil war. In April 2013, strengthened by a flood of foreign Islamist fighters who were permitted to enter Syria from Turkey, it renamed itself the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). The ISIS fighters who entered Fallujah in late 2013 and claimed control over the city in January 2014 had been financed, equipped and armed as part of the US intrigues in Syria. ISIS seized other areas of Sunni-dominated western and northern Iraq, most dramatically the city of Mosul, in July 2014. To the extent the Islamist movement received support, it was because it pledged to defend the Sunni population from the consequences of the US invasion, including the depredations and abuses of the US-backed government in Baghdad. Both materially and ideologically, ISIS is the by-product of US policy. The current onslaught on Fallujah is only the latest chapter in the catastrophe that US imperialism has inflicted on the peoples of Iraq and the Middle East as a whole. It can be ended only through the building of a mass international anti-war movement based on the working class and the fight for socialism. Copyright  1998-2016 World Socialist Web Site - All rights reserved
To help you kick start the fun this weekend, INFORMATION NIGERIA brings you 13 hilarious tweets that show many Nigerian have no love for the Nigerian police.

1.When police become your personal secretary

Na DSS and army dey do police work for Naija. Police are fully engaged in more important things like checking your phone for bank alerts!  Tersoo Abaagu (@TersooT_Rexx) June 10, 2016

2.And some people are even willing to disown their blood if they join police

The curses dt wil b constantly following naija policemen Ehn tufiaaaa. If my bro joins d police, we r no more family. Disgusting bunch.  Mo (@switmode) June 5, 2016

3. When the reason to love the police is blatantly missing

Theres really no visible reason to like the Nigerian Police. None.  Papa Bear (@_Kaelo_) May 31, 2016

4. When you wonder why they act the way they do

I wonder if Nigerian Police attended School..

Or the brain they are using is Backward.  #King Lekksite (@Lekksite) May 31, 2016

5. OK, lets stop having a police force already kind of person

Lets Kuku Disband The Nigerian police Force As It Appears That They Are Good For Nothing.  Chief Fuji (@MONSIEURBLAC) May 31, 2016

6.When police becomes your mechanic

How can a police officer be removing plate number when i park my car..naija sha  mayowa john (@lovlymayur) May 30, 2016

7.When bribery is in their blood

Honestly I dont think anyone, yes any human being, can stop the Naija Police from requesting, demanding or extorting bribes. Endemic Kwarap  Norbert Zongo (@Shehu_III) May 29, 2016

8. When they become team Fast and Furious

Naija police will do a high speed chase with you just to collect 1000 naira . It will be looking like GTA  D-O (@PrettyboyD_O) May 25, 2016

9.There favourite slogan

Naija police and oga anything for the boys ? pic.twitter.com/Em21lKbkVA  OG 2TONE (@jcooltee) May 21, 2016

10. When they create their own fuel scarcity

Police chase for over 2 hours. Nigerian Police cant even chase criminal from Ojodu to Berger! #NoFuelhttps://t.co/CFCkrdHbfQ  Mr. Crane (@Damochi) May 30, 2016

11.When iPhone makes you an automatic yahoo boy

Shame on all those Nigerian Police that sees iPhone with you, and immediately tag you as Yahoo-Boy.  BRANDPROMOTER (@MC_PATODIN) May 30, 2016

12. Whats fair is fair

Men in uniform who collect Egunje at gun point are armed robbers.  Rosanwo (@rosanwo) May 30, 2016

13. How they swiftly solve crime
Governor Seriake Dickson of Bayelsa State has ordered the immediate payment of 50 per cent of the salaries of workers in the state.

It would be recalled that workers in the state last month embarked on strike over five months of unpaid salaries but had to call off after three days following an agreement between representatives of the state government and leadership of Nigeria Labour Congress, NLC and Trade Union Congress, TUC, that government will pay 50 per cent of monthly salaries with effect from February 2016.

It was in fulfilment of this agreement that Dickson directed the state Finance Committee in Yenagoa, the Bayelsa State capital after a meeting yesterday, to commencement the payment of half salaries.

A statement by the Governors Chief Press Secretary, Mr. Daniel Iworiso-Markson, said that payment would commence with the Ministries and Departments that have turned in the reports of their verification exercise.

It also urged others, especially those in the education sector yet to turn in their verification reports, to do so as soon as possible.

The statement quoted Mr. Dickson as commending workers in the state for their patience and understanding, adding that the government will always strive hard to ensure that it meets its obligation to the workers and called for the cooperation of all Bayelsans.
The driver of this vehicle narrowly escaped death yesterday after he lost control and crushed on blockade at Roysambu under pass along Thika Road, Kenya. An eyewitness reports that he was over speeding right before he lost control.

The lucky driver was immediately rushed to the nearby located Neema Hospital, Roysambu in critical condition and was later transferred to Kenyatta National Hospital for specialized treatment. Doctors at Neema hospital reportedly say that the man suffered deep cuts and also lost some teeth.

Source: Kenyan Daily Post
The Minister of Finance, Kemi Adeosun, has dropped the hint that the total budgetary spending on 2016 capital expenditure may be reduced by the federal government amid the disclosure that the budget would not be fully implemented.

The minister gave the hint in London while addressing international investors.

Our correspondent reports that the capital expenditure in the Appropriation Bill passed by the National Assembly and signed by President Muhammadu Buhari is N1.59 trillion  15 per cent lower than the N1.86 trillion proposed by the Executive in the Medium Term Expenditure Framework.

The figure (N1.59b) represents 26 per cent of the N6.06 trillion 2016 budget signed by the president.

Though Mrs. Adeosun was not specific on the expected amount to be yanked off the 2016 budget or any capital expenditure head to be affected, a source at the Budget Office claimed that over 50 per cent of the capital expenditure budget would not be implemented. This means only the sum of N795 billion would be available for spending on capital projects in the fiscal year.

According to the minister, who spoke while addressing international investors, the decision to reduce capital expenditure spending was favoured against an option of increased borrowing to plug the increasing revenue gap.

Recall that the 2016 budget has a deficit of N2.21 trillion or 2.14 per cent of GDP, which the Executive said will be sourced from domestic and foreign borrowings with the promise that it will be applied strictly to financing capital expenditure.

Speaking further, the Budget Office source, who spoke under the condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to speak to the press, said the unimplemented portions of the 2016 budget would be transferred to next years.

Although Adeosun said the government would not want to increase its debt to GDP ratio in 2016, she hinted that the ratio would eventually go up over the next three years to about 20 per cent from current 13 per cent.

This means that the current administration plans to borrow annually throughout the span of its first four years.

Meanwhile, the minister stated that the Treasury Single Account, TSA, which was N2.9 trillion in March, has witnessed significant increase to N3.3 trillion in May.

She further noted that the finance ministry was continuing to discover pockets of revenue that had escaped its net, including visa fees, airport landing charges and shipping levies.
The Minister of Power, Works and Housing, Babatunde Fashola, Thursday in Abuja declared that he was not buckling under the weight of heading three key infrastructure-providing ministries.

The minister made this assertion at the inaugural Buharimeter Town Hall Meeting, organised by the Centre for Democracy and Development.

The Ministries of Power; Works; Housing and Urban Development were merged by President Muhammadu Buhari, who appointed Mr. Fashola, a two-term governor of Lagos State, to oversee it.

The minister, who was responding to questions from the audience during the town hall meeting, said in terms of size, the ministry was not bigger than the ministries he superintended as Lagos State governor.

I am very grounded on that level, he said. There are almost 30 ministries in Lagos and about 57 parastatals and I was involved on a day-to-day basis.

He, however, acknowledged a difference in both situations as he is still getting to know everybody under his ministry.

What is different this time is that I am working with a team that I have just met, so it is taking time to understand everybody. We are having regular meetings. I need to know everybody on beat by name and by face, Fashola stated.

He also said he had a capable hand as minister of state in the ministry, experienced permanent secretary and reliable members of staff.

Mr. Fashola assured that the ministry under his watch would deliver on its mandate of provision of electricity, good roads and affordable houses.

Speaking on the score card of the ministry in the last one year, the minister said he adopted three stages of incremental, steady and uninterrupted supply in the power sector.

He said the energy mix to be adopted in realising the three would be unveiled in a weeks time at the meeting of National Council on Power.

He said the country attained 5,000 megawatts electricity generation in February before the new wave of attacks on gas pipelines and oil infrastructure in the Niger Delta.

The minister noted that 23 of 26 power generation plants in the country were gas-powered and the challenge of assessing gas was responsible for the drop in electricity.

He said the administration was putting measures in place to resolve the problem.

Mr. Fashola said the administration had successfully stabilized the hitherto bad Jebba  Ilorin road and contractors would return to site of Lagos-Ibadan expressway in a weeks time.

He also said that the ministry was working on affordable housing project.

(NAN)
The Ogun State Command of the Nigerian Security and Civil Defence Corps, (NSCDC) on Friday arrested two pipeline vandals in a village in Obafemi Owode Local Government Area of Ogun State.

According to the NSCDC, the men were vandalising a pipeline of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, (NNPC) with some other suspects who escaped.

Items found at the site include, nine vehicles, seven motorcycles and scores of jerry can loaded with substance suspected to be Premium Motor Spirit

They will be made to face the consequences of their action, State Commandant of the NSCDC, Mr Akinwande Abulowaye said.
Human rights advocate, Chief Mike Ozekhome (SAN) has disclosed that recommendations contained in the report of the 2014 National Conference, if implemented, will go a long way in resolving some of the nagging issues on the front burner in the country.

The Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), who stated this yesterday in Benin, the Edo State capital when South South journalists decorated him as the Patron of the association, urged President Muhammadu Buhari to look beyond the convener of the conference and implement some of the recommendations.

I believe that Nigeria is an ongoing project. It is like clay waiting to be moulded into a good shape. I believe in true fiscal federalism. Regions should be allowed to develop according to their pace and culture, rather than the current system we are operating, Ozekhome said.

The lawyer argued that the current system of government vests too much power in the central government, urging a devolution of powers from the centre.

We have a central government that is too powerful. We are looking at the devolution of powers from the centre to the component units. All the issues coming up in the polity were discussed extensively during the 2014 National Conference.

These days, nobody looks forward to the centre to survive. Every state in Nigeria has something to bring to the table. It is injustice for the Federal Government to insist that all mineral resources belong to it.

The way out is to go back to true fiscal federalism. It is either we merge all the states together into regional blocs or make them truly independent. It will be such that what each state produces, 70 per cent will be given back to them. The structure we are operating is not working.

I am appealing to Buhari to drop the mindset where he said he has not even looked at the content of the National Conference Mr. Ozekhome said in apparent reference to a comment credited to the president that the report will be sent to the archives, where according to him, it rightly belongs.

President Buhari, who was speaking with select newspaper publishers in the country to mark his first anniversary in office last month, said despite the persuasion by former President Goodluck Jonathan, he had not read the confab report or even asked for a briefing on it.

But the eminent lawyer pleaded with the president to look at the report instead of the convener, saying doing otherwise will amount to throwing away the baby with the bath water.

I appeal to him to dust up the report of the National Conference. He will be surprised that all the issues in the country are well captured in the report. He should go back to the report.

Many Nigerians do not believe in the Nigerian project. That is why the country is still advocating for nationhood. The current constitution of Nigeria is illegal. It was formulated by the military. The constitution itself is unconstitutional, Ozekhome asserted.
When President Barack Obama leaves office, he will be remembered for a slew of accomplishments- we would however remember him most fondly as the coolest President ever! Sorry Justin Trudeau, youre second to Obeezy.

SEE ALSO: Barack Obama Endorses Hillary Clinton

On the Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon and his last appearance on the show as President, Obama teamed up with The Roots and the host to produce a surprisingly enjoyable performance. Of course you know when theres Obama, there is a healthy chance of a good dig at Donald Trump- spoiler alert!
The Muslim Rights Concern, MURIC, has rejected the June 13 date fixed for the commencement of the National Youth Service Corps 2016/17 Batch A (Stream II) orientation course nationwide, saying the date coincides with the Ramadan fasting.

MURIC, in a statement Thursday by its Director, Ishaq Akintola, said It is illegal, unlawful and unconstitutional for NYSC to hold camp at a time when its Muslim members will be deprived of their freedom of worship and the liberty to practice their creed without fear.

This planned camp is exclusive, discriminatory and parochial, MURIC said.

The new date for the Batch A (Stream II) orientation course was announced earlier this week after several postponements and cancellations, prompting rumours that the programme had been scrapped.

But the NYSC in a statement said the date was fixed after President Muhammadu Buhari approved and released funds for the orientation programme, which would run from June 13 to June 29 nationwide.

Faulting the announcement, MURIC said that any Nigerian institution dealing with schedules and programmes, is expected to consider the dates and periods of important festivals, rituals and religious practices.

This should form the core of its logistics. It is our humble opinion that NYSC headquarters has failed in its strategic planning by allowing its next camp to clash with the Ramadan period, said Mr. Akintola, a professor.

What happened to 21st May, 2016, which was the date earlier picked for the orientation?

We do not want to believe that the shift was deliberately planned to coincide with the Ramadan season with a view to excluding prospective Muslim corpers.

MURIC is not trying to indulge Muslim youths. Fasting is no joke and it certainly cannot be combined with the physical challenges which characterize the NYSC camp.

MURIC also noted that eligible Muslim graduates would want to be part of the service but the obstacles standing in their way are gargantuan.

Firstly, morning drills in NYSC camps are known to be rigorous and the soldiers in charge will not take excuses, it said.

Dehydration sets in later in the day particularly in the hotter regions of Nigeria. Ramadan period is therefore not the best time to hold NYSC orientation camp.

Secondly, adequate sahuur (early morning meal taken approximately between 4 am and 5.15 am) cannot be guaranteed in the NYSC camp. Neither can the futuur (meal taken at sunset to break fast ) be timely as camp schedules are bound to ignore and subsume this very important period.

Thirdly, attending orientation camp and partaking in the energy-sapping activities on empty stomach is an indubitable invitation to health crisis. NYSC may therefore be inviting Muslim corpers to step on landmines in the planned orientation camp if it holds as presently scheduled.

The fourth issue, Mr. Akintola, pointed out, is the spiritual angle.

According to him, fasting is compulsory for every Muslim adult and any obstacle put in the way of Muslims to make it impossible for them to fast is an encroachment on their fundamental human right and a flagrant violation of Nigerian Constitution.

There is more to Ramadan than ordinary fasting, he said.

That is on the surface. The whole month of Ramadan is a period of spiritual dedication. There are so many other spiritual exercises in which Muslims engage, the tafsiir (exegesis of the Quran) session, the taraawih (late evening supererogatory prayers) and nawaafil (night supererogatory prayers).

Only the deep can call to the deep. All these cannot be possible in the NYSC camp, the MURIC director said.
People across the world are all talking about the sentencing of 20-year-old Brock Allen Turner. In January 2015, Brock Turner sexually assaulted a 23 year old student who had passed out behind a dumpster and was only stopped from going further by two passers by who stopped him and turned him in.

After a grueling trial, a jury found Brock Turner guilty of sexually assault but then curiously sentenced him to six months in county jail and probation which many have seen as far too lenient considering the crime.

The judge contended that a more harsher sentence could have a severe impact on Brock Turner who was a member of the Team USA swimming team in 2014.

Turners victim read made an address to the court on Thursday after the judgement was delivered.

Your Honor, if it is all right, for the majority of this statement I would like to address the defendant directly.

You dont know me, but youve been inside me, and thats why were here today.

On January 17th, 2015, it was a quiet Saturday night at home. My dad made some dinner and I sat at the table with my younger sister who was visiting for the weekend. I was working full time and it was approaching my bed time. I planned to stay at home by myself, watch some TV and read, while she went to a party with her friends. Then, I decided it was my only night with her, I had nothing better to do, so why not, theres a dumb party ten minutes from my house, I would go, dance like a fool, and embarrass my younger sister. On the way there, I joked that undergrad guys would have braces. My sister teased me for wearing a beige cardigan to a frat party like a librarian. I called myself big mama, because I knew Id be the oldest one there. I made silly faces, let my guard down, and drank liquor too fast not factoring in that my tolerance had significantly lowered since college.

The next thing I remember I was in a gurney in a hallway. I had dried blood and bandages on the backs of my hands and elbow. I thought maybe I had fallen and was in an admin office on campus. I was very calm and wondering where my sister was. A deputy explained I had been assaulted. I still remained calm, assured he was speaking to the wrong person. I knew no one at this party. When I was finally allowed to use the restroom, I pulled down the hospital pants they had given me, went to pull down my underwear, and felt nothing. I still remember the feeling of my hands touching my skin and grabbing nothing. I looked down and there was nothing. The thin piece of fabric, the only thing between my vagina and anything else, was missing and everything inside me was silenced. I still dont have words for that feeling. In order to keep breathing, I thought maybe the policemen used scissors to cut them off for evidence.

Then, I felt pine needles scratching the back of my neck and started pulling them out my hair. I thought maybe, the pine needles had fallen from a tree onto my head. My brain was talking my gut into not collapsing. Because my gut was saying, help me, help me.

I shuffled from room to room with a blanket wrapped around me, pine needles trailing behind me, I left a little pile in every room I sat in. I was asked to sign papers that said Rape Victim and I thought something has really happened. My clothes were confiscated and I stood naked while the nurses held a ruler to various abrasions on my body and photographed them. The three of us worked to comb the pine needles out of my hair, six hands to fill one paper bag. To calm me down, they said its just the flora and fauna, flora and fauna. I had multiple swabs inserted into my vagina and anus, needles for shots, pills, had a Nikon pointed right into my spread legs. I had long, pointed beaks inside me and had my vagina smeared with cold, blue paint to check for abrasions.

After a few hours of this, they let me shower. I stood there examining my body beneath the stream of water and decided, I dont want my body anymore. I was terrified of it, I didnt know what had been in it, if it had been contaminated, who had touched it. I wanted to take off my body like a jacket and leave it at the hospital with everything else.

On that morning, all that I was told was that I had been found behind a dumpster, potentially penetrated by a stranger, and that I should get retested for HIV because results dont always show up immediately. But for now, I should go home and get back to my normal life. Imagine stepping back into the world with only that information. They gave me huge hugs and I walked out of the hospital into the parking lot wearing the new sweatshirt and sweatpants they provided me, as they had only allowed me to keep my necklace and shoes.

My sister picked me up, face wet from tears and contorted in anguish. Instinctively and immediately, I wanted to take away her pain. I smiled at her, I told her to look at me, Im right here, Im okay, everythings okay, Im right here. My hair is washed and clean, they gave me the strangest shampoo, calm down, and look at me. Look at these funny new sweatpants and sweatshirt, I look like a P.E. teacher, lets go home, lets eat something. She did not know that beneath my sweatsuit, I had scratches and bandages on my skin, my vagina was sore and had become a strange, dark color from all the prodding, my underwear was missing, and I felt too empty to continue to speak. That I was also afraid, that I was also devastated. That day we drove home and for hours in silence my younger sister held me.

My boyfriend did not know what happened, but called that day and said, I was really worried about you last night, you scared me, did you make it home okay? I was horrified. Thats when I learned I had called him that night in my blackout, left an incomprehensible voicemail, that we had also spoken on the phone, but I was slurring so heavily he was scared for me, that he repeatedly told me to go find [my sister]. Again, he asked me, What happened last night? Did you make it home okay? I said yes, and hung up to cry.

I was not ready to tell my boyfriend or parents that actually, I may have been raped behind a dumpster, but I dont know by who or when or how. If I told them, I would see the fear on their faces, and mine would multiply by tenfold, so instead I pretended the whole thing wasnt real.

I tried to push it out of my mind, but it was so heavy I didnt talk, I didnt eat, I didnt sleep, I didnt interact with anyone. After work, I would drive to a secluded place to scream. I didnt talk, I didnt eat, I didnt sleep, I didnt interact with anyone, and I became isolated from the ones I loved most. For over a week after the incident, I didnt get any calls or updates about that night or what happened to me. The only symbol that proved that it hadnt just been a bad dream, was the sweatshirt from the hospital in my drawer.

One day, I was at work, scrolling through the news on my phone, and came across an article. In it, I read and learned for the first time about how I was found unconscious, with my hair disheveled, long necklace wrapped around my neck, bra pulled out of my dress, dress pulled off over my shoulders and pulled up above my waist, that I was butt naked all the way down to my boots, legs spread apart, and had been penetrated by a foreign object by someone I did not recognize. This was how I learned what happened to me, sitting at my desk reading the news at work. I learned what happened to me the same time everyone else in the world learned what happened to me. Thats when the pine needles in my hair made sense, they didnt fall from a tree. He had taken off my underwear, his fingers had been inside of me. I dont even know this person. I still dont know this person. When I read about me like this, I said, this cant be me, this cant be me. I could not digest or accept any of this information. I could not imagine my family having to read about this online. I kept reading. In the next paragraph, I read something that I will never forgive; I read that according to him, I liked it. I liked it. Again, I do not have words for these feelings.

Its like if you were to read an article where a car was hit, and found dented, in a ditch. But maybe the car enjoyed being hit. Maybe the other car didnt mean to hit it, just bump it up a little bit. Cars get in accidents all the time, people arent always paying attention, can we really say whos at fault.

And then, at the bottom of the article, after I learned about the graphic details of my own sexual assault, the article listed his swimming times. She was found breathing, unresponsive with her underwear six inches away from her bare stomach curled in fetal position. By the way, hes really good at swimming. Throw in my mile time if thats what were doing. Im good at cooking, put that in there, I think the end is where you list your extracurriculars to cancel out all the sickening things thatve happened.

The night the news came out I sat my parents down and told them that I had been assaulted, to not look at the news because its upsetting, just know that Im okay, Im right here, and Im okay. But halfway through telling them, my mom had to hold me because I could no longer stand up.

The night after it happened, he said he didnt know my name, said he wouldnt be able to identify my face in a lineup, didnt mention any dialogue between us, no words, only dancing and kissing. Dancing is a cute term; was it snapping fingers and twirling dancing, or just bodies grinding up against each other in a crowded room? I wonder if kissing was just faces sloppily pressed up against each other? When the detective asked if he had planned on taking me back to his dorm, he said no. When the detective asked how we ended up behind the dumpster, he said he didnt know. He admitted to kissing other girls at that party, one of whom was my own sister who pushed him away. He admitted to wanting to hook up with someone. I was the wounded antelope of the herd, completely alone and vulnerable, physically unable to fend for myself, and he chose me. Sometimes I think, if I hadnt gone, then this never wouldve happened. But then I realized, it would have happened, just to somebody else. You were about to enter four years of access to drunk girls and parties, and if this is the foot you started off on, then it is right you did not continue. The night after it happened, he said he thought I liked it because I rubbed his back. A back rub.

Never mentioned me voicing consent, never mentioned us even speaking, a back rub. One more time, in public news, I learned that my ass and vagina were completely exposed outside, my breasts had been groped, fingers had been jabbed inside me along with pine needles and debris, my bare skin and head had been rubbing against the ground behind a dumpster, while an erect freshman was humping my half naked, unconscious body. But I dont remember, so how do I prove I didnt like it.

I thought theres no way this is going to trial; there were witnesses, there was dirt in my body, he ran but was caught. Hes going to settle, formally apologize, and we will both move on. Instead, I was told he hired a powerful attorney, expert witnesses, private investigators who were going to try and find details about my personal life to use against me, find loopholes in my story to invalidate me and my sister, in order to show that this sexual assault was in fact a misunderstanding. That he was going to go to any length to convince the world he had simply been confused.

I was not only told that I was assaulted, I was told that because I couldnt remember, I technically could not prove it was unwanted. And that distorted me, damaged me, almost broke me. It is the saddest type of confusion to be told I was assaulted and nearly raped, blatantly out in the open, but we dont know if it counts as assault yet. I had to fight for an entire year to make it clear that there was something wrong with this situation.

When I was told to be prepared in case we didnt win, I said, I cant prepare for that. He was guilty the minute I woke up. No one can talk me out of the hurt he caused me. Worst of all, I was warned, because he now knows you dont remember, he is going to get to write the script. He can say whatever he wants and no one can contest it. I had no power, I had no voice, I was defenseless. My memory loss would be used against me. My testimony was weak, was incomplete, and I was made to believe that perhaps, I am not enough to win this. His attorney constantly reminded the jury, the only one we can believe is Brock, because she doesnt remember. That helplessness was traumatizing.

Instead of taking time to heal, I was taking time to recall the night in excruciating detail, in order to prepare for the attorneys questions that would be invasive, aggressive, and designed to steer me off course, to contradict myself, my sister, phrased in ways to manipulate my answers. Instead of his attorney saying, Did you notice any abrasions? He said, You didnt notice any abrasions, right? This was a game of strategy, as if I could be tricked out of my own worth. The sexual assault had been so clear, but instead, here I was at the trial, answering questions like:

How old are you? How much do you weigh? What did you eat that day? Well what did you have for dinner? Who made dinner? Did you drink with dinner? No, not even water? When did you drink? How much did you drink? What container did you drink out of? Who gave you the drink? How much do you usually drink? Who dropped you off at this party? At what time? But where exactly? What were you wearing? Why were you going to this party? What d you do when you got there? Are you sure you did that? But what time did you do that? What does this text mean? Who were you texting? When did you urinate? Where did you urinate? With whom did you urinate outside? Was your phone on silent when your sister called? Do you remember silencing it? Really because on page 53 Id like to point out that you said it was set to ring. Did you drink in college? You said you were a party animal? How many times did you black out? Did you party at frats? Are you serious with your boyfriend? Are you sexually active with him? When did you start dating? Would you ever cheat? Do you have a history of cheating? What do you mean when you said you wanted to reward him? Do you remember what time you woke up? Were you wearing your cardigan? What color was your cardigan? Do you remember any more from that night? No? Okay, well, well let Brock fill it in.

I was pummeled with narrowed, pointed questions that dissected my personal life, love life, past life, family life, inane questions, accumulating trivial details to try and find an excuse for this guy who had me half naked before even bothering to ask for my name. After a physical assault, I was assaulted with questions designed to attack me, to say see, her facts dont line up, shes out of her mind, shes practically an alcoholic, she probably wanted to hook up, hes like an athlete right, they were both drunk, whatever, the hospital stuff she remembers is after the fact, why take it into account, Brock has a lot at stake so hes having a really hard time right now.

And then it came time for him to testify and I learned what it meant to be revictimized. I want to remind you, the night after it happened he said he never planned to take me back to his dorm. He said he didnt know why we were behind a dumpster. He got up to leave because he wasnt feeling well when he was suddenly chased and attacked. Then he learned I could not remember.

So one year later, as predicted, a new dialogue emerged. Brock had a strange new story, almost sounded like a poorly written young adult novel with kissing and dancing and hand holding and lovingly tumbling onto the ground, and most importantly in this new story, there was suddenly consent. One year after the incident, he remembered, oh yeah, by the way she actually said yes, to everything, so.

He said he had asked if I wanted to dance. Apparently I said yes. Hed asked if I wanted to go to his dorm, I said yes. Then he asked if he could finger me and I said yes. Most guys dont ask, can I finger you? Usually theres a natural progression of things, unfolding consensually, not a Q and A. But apparently I granted full permission. Hes in the clear. Even in his story, I only said a total of three words, yes yes yes, before he had me half naked on the ground. Future reference, if you are confused about whether a girl can consent, see if she can speak an entire sentence. You couldnt even do that. Just one coherent string of words. Where was the confusion? This is common sense, human decency.

According to him, the only reason we were on the ground was because I fell down. Note; if a girl falls down help her get back up. If she is too drunk to even walk and falls down, do not mount her, hump her, take off her underwear, and insert your hand inside her vagina. If a girl falls down help her up. If she is wearing a cardigan over her dress dont take it off so that you can touch her breasts. Maybe she is cold, maybe thats why she wore the cardigan.

Next in the story, two Swedes on bicycles approached you and you ran. When they tackled you why didnt say, Stop! Everythings okay, go ask her, shes right over there, shell tell you. I mean you had just asked for my consent, right? I was awake, right? When the policeman arrived and interviewed the evil Swede who tackled you, he was crying so hard he couldnt speak because of what hed seen.

Your attorney has repeatedly pointed out, well we dont know exactly when she became unconscious. And youre right, maybe I was still fluttering my eyes and wasnt completely limp yet. That was never the point. I was too drunk to speak English, too drunk to consent way before I was on the ground. I should have never been touched in the first place. Brock stated, At no time did I see that she was not responding. If at any time I thought she was not responding, I would have stopped immediately. Heres the thing; if your plan was to stop only when I became unresponsive, then you still do not understand. You didnt even stop when I was unconscious anyway! Someone else stopped you. Two guys on bikes noticed I wasnt moving in the dark and had to tackle you. How did you not notice while on top of me?

You said, you would have stopped and gotten help. You say that, but I want you to explain how you wouldve helped me, step by step, walk me through this. I want to know, if those evil Swedes had not found me, how the night would have played out. I am asking you; Would you have pulled my underwear back on over my boots? Untangled the necklace wrapped around my neck? Closed my legs, covered me? Pick the pine needles from my hair? Asked if the abrasions on my neck and bottom hurt? Would you then go find a friend and say, Will you help me get her somewhere warm and soft? I dont sleep when I think about the way it could have gone if the two guys had never come. What would have happened to me? Thats what youll never have a good answer for, thats what you cant explain even after a year.

On top of all this, he claimed that I orgasmed after one minute of digital penetration. The nurse said there had been abrasions, lacerations, and dirt in my genitalia. Was that before or after I came?

To sit under oath and inform all of us, that yes I wanted it, yes I permitted it, and that you are the true victim attacked by Swedes for reasons unknown to you is appalling, is demented, is selfish, is damaging. It is enough to be suffering. It is another thing to have someone ruthlessly working to diminish the gravity of validity of this suffering.

My family had to see pictures of my head strapped to a gurney full of pine needles, of my body in the dirt with my eyes closed, hair messed up, limbs bent, and dress hiked up. And even after that, my family had to listen to your attorney say the pictures were after the fact, we can dismiss them. To say, yes her nurse confirmed there was redness and abrasions inside her, significant trauma to her genitalia, but thats what happens when you finger someone, and hes already admitted to that. To listen to your attorney attempt to paint a picture of me, the face of girls gone wild, as if somehow that would make it so that I had this coming for me. To listen to him say I sounded drunk on the phone because Im silly and thats my goofy way of speaking. To point out that in the voicemail, I said I would reward my boyfriend and we all know what I was thinking. I assure you my rewards program is non transferable, especially to any nameless man that approaches me.
A suspect who was arrested by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) over allegations of fraud, has died after spending six hours in EFCC custody.

The suspect Desmond Nunugwo, was taken into custody on Thursday, but died a few hours later, according to EFCC spokesman, Wilson Uwujaren.

The late Nunugwu allegedly fraudulently obtained N91m from an acquaintance after he tricked her into believing that he had high net worth business associates in Dubai, United Arab Emirates who were at the verge of buying Nicon Insurance and convinced her of their disposition to help her stock fish business, Uwujaren said in a statement.

Consequently, she wired N91m into Nunugwos nominated account (Mainagge General Merchants) in Diamond Bank. After the transfer of the funds, Nunugwo became evasive forcing the complainant to report the transaction to the EFCC.

Consequently, Nunugwo was arrested in Utako, Abuja at about 5:33pm on Thursday, June 9, 2016. His statement was taken, where he admitted receiving the money from the complainant, with the additional information that he transferred N30m of the said money to Norway. But he could not explain the whereabouts of the balance of N61m.

The suspect was detained at about 7:30pm, in the absence of anybody to take him on bail.

Six hours later, he suddenly complained of discomfort and was rushed to the hospital where he was pronounced dead, Uwujaren said.

The EFCC spokesperson added that the incident had already been reported at Wuse police station in Abuja.
Former Governor of Akwa Ibom State now Senate Minority Leader, Godswill Akpabio, has alleged that the South West is the only peaceful area in the country because it sends mercenaries to other regions of the country to fight.

The minority leader made the claim in his contribution to the debate at the celebration of one year of the 8th Senate yesterday.

Speaking on the general state of affairs in the country, Akpabio warned that if something urgent was not done, Nigeria would be plunged into major crisis.

He said: In the South-South, people have abandoned their homes because of activities of Niger Delta Avengers. The North is in turmoil; the South-East is boiling because of agitation. The South-West is the only peaceful area, but they still send mercenaries to other areas to fight.

Senator Akpabio, however, failed to mention which areas the South-West mercenaries are sent and the nature of fight they partake in.

Curiously, none of the senators from the South-West challenged the former Akwa Ibom governor on this claim, our correspondent reports.

Meanwhile, the senator has challenged the All Progressives Congress-led federal government to market the country in a positive light, saying no serious investor will put his money in a country that has already been described as full of criminals by its leaders.

I want to urge the APC to market this country very well. The way the APC is saying the country is full of criminals, investors will not come here to invest. They must change the way they talk about Nigeria. Things need to change, he stated.
On this day in 2014, suspected Boko Haram sect members invaded two villages in Borno, killing at least five people and carting away food items and livestock.

Residents said some armed men believed to be Boko Haram members, stormed Tohya and Wurojene villages which are about 14 kilometres away from Chibok, where over 200 schoolgirls were abducted almost two months ago.

The attackers reportedly opened fire on the villagers at about 7p.m.on the fateful day, killing at least five people, revealed a resident of Chibok, who spoke to Vanguard newspaper.

He said
Troops of the Nigerian Army have in the last 48 hours carried out raids of various Boko Haram camps in Borno State, during which three insurgents were reportedly killed as soldiers rescued dozens of abducted civilians.

The clearance operations, which took place mostly in the northern flank of Borno, led to the recovery of over 300 vehicles, cache of arms and other terror enhancing devices.

The Acting Director, Army Public Relations, Sani Usman, said in a statement on Thursday that the operations were carried out by troops of 26 Battalion, 151 Task Force Battalion, 155 Task Force Battalion and some elements of 21 Brigade of the Counterinsurgency Operation Lafiya Dole.

Usman, a colonel, said many camps were on Friday cleared in villages like Kircha Goniye, Wujjah Alkelu, Kita Jiddum, Jameri, Geri Gana, Gere Kura and Jabe were all purged.

The statement reads in part:

Other villages cleared by the troops were Hasana Jere and Chachile. During the operation, own troops came in contact with elements of the terrorists group during which 2 of the terrorists were killed. The troops further recovered 5 Dane guns, 2 mobile telephone handsets, 3 Boko Haram terrorists flags and a Generator as well as several vehicles.

In a related development, troops of 22 Brigade Garrison on blocking position also encountered a convoy of Boko Haram terrorists on motorcycles same day in which they killed 1 Boko Haram terrorist and recovered 3 motorcycles, 1 bag containing cash sum of Four Hundred and Sixty Six Thousand Naira (N466,000.00). In addition, the troops also rescued 8 abducted persons made up of 2 women, 2 female teenagers, 3 male children and a minor who unfortunately sustained injury and is receiving treatment at the units medical facility.

Information gathered from the rescued persons revealed that they were abducted from Ngoshe Bara village, Gwoza Local Government Area by the Boko Haram terrorists and taken to Sambisa forest in 2015 and married off to Boko Haram terrorists group fighters. They however relocated to Lake Chad general area prior to their rescue by troops. Interestingly, one of the women, Fatima Mohammed already a mother of 2 children, lamented that her husband, Mallam Mustapha, a retired District Court Judge in Gwoza, was killed by the terrorists before her abduction. The rescued persons are further being screened to further ascertain their status.

As part of their contribution to the wellbeing of the Internally Displaced Persons, 22 Brigade Field Ambulance has been carrying out medical outreach at the Dikwa Internally Displaced Persons Camp in which quite a number of persons benefitted from the exercise where they were diagnosed and treated for various ailments most if which ranged from various degrees of body wounds to trauma.

Some elements of Boko Haram elements made an attempt to attack 122 Task Force Battalion location at Yamteke from Galthani and Balangaje general area which successfully repelled as quite a number of the attackers were killed.

Troops of 117 Task Force Battalion of 28 Task Force Brigade conveyed 40 Internally Displaced Persons from Madagali to Burnt Bricks IDP camp for proper rehabilitation after thorough screening and profiling.

Similarly, early Wednesday morning troops of 114 Task Force Battalion, intercepted and rescued another 15 IDPs suspected to have come from Madube. The IDPs Comprised of 7 women and 8 children. All the rescued are being screened and profiled.
The Senate, yesterday, vowed to hold everyone appointed by President Muhammadu Buhari to help him address the nations economic problems, accountable.

Speaking at the celebration of one year of the 8th Senate, Senate President Bukola Saraki sought the support and co-operation of the President to discharge this oversight task. He also implored the President to look beyond his party, All Progressives Party, APC, to get the best brains to help him run the economy.

We are confident that one year after, the President must by now have better clarity on the capacity of his appointees. The Senate would not hesitate to hold any appointee accountable for the work he has accepted to do.

We would like to seek Mr. Presidents support and co-operation to enable us discharge this oversight task.

We have failed to take the necessary steps in policy and legislation that would set us on the path to developing the kind of economy we desire, Saraki admitted.
Lenovo's new Phab2 Pro brings Google's Tango augmented reality (AR) to smartphone screens without the need for a headset. The first Tango device, it will be available in September for $499 without a contract.

The device, which has a 6.4-inch screen, pushes smartphone functionality to new heights. The giant display presents a wealth of information that changes how people interact with the physical world around them.

[ Android is now ready for real usage in the enterprise. Read InfoWorld's in-depth guide on how to make Android a serious part of your business. | Get the best office apps for your Android device. ]

It's loaded with cutting-edge sensors, cameras, and a Snapdragon 652 processor from Qualcomm. These sensors enable location and contextual awareness by understanding the device's position, plus motion, images, and location.

The back of the smartphone has a motion-tracking sensor, a fish-eye camera, a depth sensor, and a regular RGB camera, which can provide a broad 150-degree view. The smartphone also has a 5-megapixel front camera.

The device can be used to measure distances, recognize items, map locations, and provide real-time indoor navigation.

By integrating Tango in the Phab2 Pro, Lenovo "can provide enhancements to everyday user experiences that will be so valuable that it's almost second nature," said Jeff Meredith, vice president and general manager of Android and Chrome Computing at Lenovo.

Google said Phab2 Pro is the first Tango device, and many more will come.

"With a Tango-enabled phone, you also have a toybox, a solar system, and a pet shop in your pocket. You can play with a huge set of dominoes, explore the planets, defend yourself from invading aliens, or feed your virtual dog all through your phone," Google said.

One goal with Phab2 Pro is to enhance indoor navigation, where GPS typically does not work well. In a museum, for example, the smartphone could guide a user to a specific painting and display information about the artist and the work.

The smartphone could also guide a person to a specific booth in a convention center, something conventional navigation systems can't do.

Gaming will reach new heights on the Tango smartphone, Meredith said. Users can play augmented reality games by superimposing graphics on real-world backgrounds. Imagine playing a shooter game with the world around you as the background.

Someone remodeling their kitchen could superimpose pictures of furniture and cabinets, in different colors, onto an image of the actual room. The Phab2 Pro then previews what the new kitchen would look like.

Lenovo is partnering with home improvement retailers Lowe's and Wayfair. With Wayfair's app, for instance, you could use the Phab2 Pro to preview new furniture for your living room.

The smartphone was announced earlier this year at CES by Lenovo and Google, but specifications weren't finalized at the time. The companies started collaborating on Project Tango in mid-2015, and they plan to bring computer vision to devices like virtual reality headsets, Meredith said.

Lenovo is encouraging the development of apps for Project Tango devices. There are seven to eight apps written that it helped fund as part of the Project Tango App Incubator program, but more should follow. More than 100 Tango apps are also available on the Tango website, a Google representative said.

For example, Project Tango devices could guide a user to the right platform in a subway station using contextual and positional awareness, Meredith said.

Google has suggested Project Tango could be used in stores -- devices could guide users through aisles to specific products, and then to cashiers by mapping check out signs.

Google has said Project Tango devices will also be able to map out entire homes and offices.

Lenovo also announced the Phab2 Plus, which has a 6.4-inch full high-definition screen. It runs on a MediaTek quad-core processor, has 32GB of storage, and 3GB of RAM. It has a 13-megapixel rear camera and 8-megapixel front camera. It will ship in September starting at $299.

Lenovo also announced the $199 Phab2, which has a 6.4-inch screen and 16GB of storage. It too will ship in September.
Oracle's stewardship of Java is under fire -- again.

This time, the company's development of Java EE (Enterprise Edition) has become a sore spot for devotees of the platform, including Java creator James Gosling and a former Java evangelist who left Oracle in March.

Called Java EE Guardians, the group launched a petition about the matter on change.org on Thursday, said Reza Rahman, former EE evangelist at Oracle and a leader of Java Guardians. Gosling's name sits at the top of the membership page. The petition asks where Oracle stands on the planned Java EE 8 release, requests that the company maintain its commitment to the release, and claims that if Oracle is unwilling to do the work on Java EE, it should cede control to others, such as IBM or Red Hat.

While professing to lack insight into what's going on inside Oracle, Gosling said Thursday that the "tidbits" he has heard were "pretty disturbing." He left Oracle not long after the company acquired original Java owner Sun Microsystems in 2010, under acrimonious terms. "It's not so much that Oracle is backing off on EE, but that it's backing off on cooperating with the community," Gosling said. "Taking it proprietary', going for the 'roach motel' model of non-standard standards -- 'customers check in, but they don't check out.'"

The Java EE Guardians website emphasizes concerns about commitment. "Our purpose is advocacy, raising awareness, finding solutions, collaboration and mutual support. We believe that together -- including Oracle -- we can prove that this is the dawn of a new era for an ever brighter future for Java, Java EE, and server-side computing."

Oracle was accused of de-emphasizing Java last year after it dismissed or reassigned evangelists, thereby raising questions about its commitment to the platform's openness. Still, the company shortly thereafter held its annual JavaOne conference devoted to Java.

Another participant in Java Guardians, blogger Peter Pilgrim, describes Java EE 8 as being "in crisis." There is an unease about the future, he said, though he admitted he doesn't know if Oracle in fact has backed off its commitment to Java EE because the company has been silent. "Oracle has not made any public announcement about the Java EE reduction of commits and progress," he noted.

Java Guardians emphasizes the importance of Java EE, pointing out that hundreds of thousands of applications have been written with it and that many frameworks depend on it.

Version 8, which will emphasize cloud capabilities as well as HTML5 and HTTP 2.0, is due in the first half of 2017, but Rahman questions this timeline. He describes work on Java EE 8 as "lackluster from the start," with activity having been stopped, and he described the open source GlassFish application server, which has been the reference implementation of Java EE, as "very much a dead project." He acknowledged GlassFish has competed with Oracle's own commercially available Java application servers.

Rahman said he left Oracle after questioning the company's commitment to Java EE himself, wondering, "How could I be evangelizing a platform that Oracle is clearly not investing in?" He now works as a consultant at Captech Consulting. Asked if Oracle wants the community to take over development of Java EE, Rahman responded, "It's impossible to determine what Oracle wants because they have not even acknowledged yet that there is a problem." Specification leads from Oracle, who are in charge of improvements planned for enterprise Java, have not been responsive to input, according to Rahman.

Leaving Oracle, Rahman said, gave him the bandwidth to do what needed to be done as far as promoting development of Java EE. The platform, he stressed, is fundamental because of its execution on servers. "Most work happens on servers, even with microservices, even on the cloud." One benefit of the current situation around enterprise Java is it could result in less control over Java EE by steward in charge, which now is Oracle. "Oracle and Sun have always had an unhealthy amount of influence."

Oracle could not be reached for comment Thursday on the efforts of Java EE Guardians.
Many approaches are being tried in the race to develop a working quantum computer, but Google this week reported using a combination of techniques with particularly promising results.

In a paper published Wednesday in the journal Nature, a team of researchers from Google and several academic institutions describe a method that they call "quantum annealing with a digital twist." Essentially, they combined the quantum annealing approach with the "gate" model of quantum computing and found that they could get the best of both worlds.

[ See what hardware, software, development tools, and cloud services came out on top in the InfoWorld 2016 Technology of the Year Awards. | Cut to the key news in tech with the InfoWorld Daily newsletter, our summary of the top tech happenings. ]

Quantum capabilities are widely anticipated for the giant gains they're expected to deliver in performance and efficiency. Much of that derives from what's known as superposition. While the bits used by traditional computers represent data as 0s or 1s, superposition allows qubits -- the quantum equivalent of a bits -- to be both 0 and 1 at once.

IBM is one of the best-known companies associated with quantum computing today, not least because of its big announcement a few weeks ago of the 5-qubit quantum processor it's developed and plans to make available via the cloud. To create that technology, IBM used the gate model in which qubits are linked together to form circuits. One of the key advantages of that approach is that it includes error correction.

A competing model, used by quantum specialist D-Wave, uses quantum annealing. Known also as the adiabatic approach, this method focuses on finding and maintaining the lowest energy state in a gradually evolving quantum system.

Now, in the researchers' combined approach, they essentially take the adiabatic approach and add the error-correction capabilities of the gate model. In their experiment, they tested it out on a simulated system using nine qubits in which each is connected to its neighbor and individually controlled. It's depicted in the video above, which shows the qubits as yellow crosses that turn blue when they interact.

"The crucial advantage for the future is that this digital implementation is fully compatible with known quantum error correction techniques, and can therefore be protected from the effects of noise," Rami Barends and Alireza Shabani, quantum electronics engineers with Google, wrote in a blog post.

The result is "a general-purpose algorithm which can be scaled to an arbitrarily large quantum computer," they said.
The Chart of the Day belongs to the software company A 10 Networks (ATEN). I found the stock by sorting the Russell 3000 Index stocks first by the most frequent number of new highs in the last month and having a Trend Spotter buy signal then used the Flipchart feature...

Read More
Theres perhaps no bigger climate-related challenge than the trillions in clean energy and sustainability investments needed in developing countries. How can private philanthropy possibly make a dent?

While reducing greenhouse gas emissions to curb climate change is a global challenge, in many ways, the energy futures of two countries, China and India, will shape the course of the planet.

India has a goal of bringing energy to more than 300 million people, a quarter of its population that currently lives in the dark. Meanwhile, China is urbanizing at breakneck speed, with its cities expected to house one in eight people on the planet by 2030. That kind of rapid development could translate either to a global expansion of clean energy or hundreds of new coal plants pumping carbon into the atmosphere.

The cost of choosing the right path is huge. For perspective, one analysis found the developing world will need $3.5 trillion to implement its pledges from the U.N. Paris Climate Agreement by 2030. Overall sustainable development needs are much larger.

As both a practical and moral issuethe West has already burned more than its fair share of fossil fuels, after allwealthy nations need to shovel funds to developing countries to raise living standards while still reducing emissions.

Private philanthropy cant pick up that bill (consider combined assets of the top 100 foundations in the U.S. are around $300 billion), but as the climate conversation is increasingly concerned with how we finance and roll out clean energy, some U.S. funders are trying to point the way forward.

Related: Sorry, Bill Gates, But Billions for Energy Research Is Not How to Win the Climate Battle

One recent initiative came about during Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modis state visit to the U.S., during which a series of joint climate-related announcements were made. As one result, four of the countrys largest climate funders, Packard, MacArthur, Hewlett and Grantham foundations, will make much larger investments in Indias clean energy market.

The funders are putting up $30 million, matched by the Indian government, for two projects. The first will work to make solar power projects finance-ready, basically clearing red tape in the form of feasibility studies, land surveys, and due diligence, so that large finance institutions can jump right in and bypass obstacles slowing progress. The second component will seed financing for such projects, acting as a kind of insurance that will reduce the risk that might otherwise scare off the global investment community. Together, the two projects are projected to catalyze up to $1.4 billion in investment.

One area of investment they hope to advance is so-called minigrids, or small-scale clean energy systems in rural and remote areas, disconnected from the countrys central power grids. Getting India to embrace minigrids fueled by solar energy would be a huge step toward demonstrating to the world that theres a way to bring electricity to poor, rural areas that doesnt involve the familiar path of firing up massive coal plants.

While technology has come a long way, whether minigrids take off has a lot to do with drawing funding from development investors, which can be scared off by uncertainty and logistics of them, such as having to vet several small projects at once. This investment mechanism could help get the ball rolling.

The second recent big news on this front comes from a group of U.S. funders and nonprofits, and Chinese banking and energy outfits, who put together a series of reports similarly urging green finance for cities in China.

The reportscommissioned by Bloomberg Philanthropies, with other partners including the Paulson Institute and Energy Foundation Chinafound that in just the next five years, about $1 trillion in investments will be needed for transportation, buildings, and energy so China can develop low carbon cities.

By 2030, more than 1 billion people are expected to live in Chinese cities, so much like Indias electrification, the global ramifications of how that unfolds are huge. The report is recommending public-private partnerships and a mix of public and private financing to sustainably advance that kind of urbanization.

Bloomberg Philanthropies has been a big champion of developing more climate finance opportunities, backing efforts like the Finance for Resilience (FiRe) initiative and the Global Innovation Lab for Climate Finance.

Another major U.S. funder working in this space is the Rockefeller Foundation, launching its own Innovative Finance program that seeks creative private investment mechanisms to fill the gap between aid and philanthropy budgets and sustainable development needs. Rockefeller has also been engaging in impact investing for clean energy in India, and has a goal of electrifying 1,000 rural villages in the country with a $75 million commitment.

Related:Smart Power: Rockefeller Steps Up Its Fight Against "Energy Poverty" in India

While overall investment needs may be more than foundations can cover by a longshot, that doesnt mean they cant throw their weight around to knock loose the kind of funds that can make a difference.

As Hewlett Program Officer Matt Baker stated in a blog post following the new India initiative:
The James Dyson Award is a cool platform for elevating inventive young minds. But Dysons giving extends to other STEM efforts, like a new university facility thats more like a makerspace than a classroom.

James Dyson, in the U.S. at least, is probably best known for a few thingsfancy vacuums, those fans shaped like rings, and the really powerful hand dryers in upscale bathrooms. Oh, and the annual James Dyson Award, which provides great fodder for tech news coverage as each round of young inventors reliably comes up with amazing creations. Past winners include a compact printer to create prototype circuit boards, a low-cost incubator for premature infants, and a robotic exoskeleton arm. See, fun.

Related: The 2015 Dyson Award is on, and the Real Prize is Exposure

James Dyson is also a major figure when it comes to promoting engineering, the artistic side of STEM, and the need to draw a diverse pool of young people to the field. Hes most active in the U.K., where his name is on multiple university buildings, and hes even a knight. But his foundation also provides workshops, scholarships, and free curriculum here in the States.

Dyson's latest large philanthropic endeavor, via the James Dyson Foundation, is the Dyson Centre for Engineering Design at the University of Cambridge. A donation equivalent to around $12 million, paired with government support, backed the construction of a new building for postgraduate students and research, and the Dyson Centre, a space for 1,200 students to prototype engineering and design projects.

The facility sounds pretty cool, with a makerspace-influenced collaborative layout offering 3D printers, scanners, laser cutters, and machine tooling equipment. The idea is to provide a place where students can actually bring their ideas to reality, and team up with others who are working on something totally different. Its brand new, but already home to a solar race car, quadcopters, and helium balloon spacecraft.

That kind of mad scientist sense of adventure is something Dysons philanthropy tends to reward, trying to draw young people to the engineering field (the U.S. isnt the only country with STEM workforce problems) by emphasizing creativity and artistic expression. Dyson himself originally studied the arts before stumbling into engineering. This approach to reminding students that science isnt formulaic drudgery has also become popular here in the States, under the acronym STEAM.

Related:

Dysons made some pretty hefty U.K. university gifts similar to the Cambridge center in the past, including around $17 million to set up an engineering school at Imperial College London in 2015. In 2013, the Dyson Building at the Royal College of Art opened, backed with $8 million from the James Dyson Foundation.

Having launched the U.S. version of the foundation in 2011, the funder also supports education in smaller individual amounts, providing scholarships worldwide, including the JDF Scholars at Northwestern University. Dysons US offices are located nearby in Chicago.

The Dyson website cites more than a million in annual support to schools and universities, and a growing scholarship program. The foundation also provides in-kind support in the form of large workshops around the US and free curriculum and educational kits available at its website.

Dyson's giving is still centered primarily on the UK, but he's selling a lot of vaccum cleaners and hand driers. With the engineer worth around $4 billion, and the company making about $2 billion in annual sales, there's a good chance this funder's profile will expand here in the United States and beyond.
Social media has been powerfully leveraged by recent movements like Arab Spring, Occupy Wall Street, and Black Lives Matter. When the events of Ferguson, Missouri were unraveling last year, my first instinct wasn't to turn on CNN, but rather log on to Twitter and Facebook. These platforms felt like the primary source. Everything else felt secondary, at a distance.

Jack Dorsey recently linked up with civil rights activist DeRay McKesson to talk about how social media influences poltical causes, and not long ago Mark Zuckerberg scolded employees for altering Black Lives Matter messaging. It certainly makes sense that the creators of these platforms would be influenced by the voices using them.

This brings us to Instagram co-founder Mike Krieger and his wife Kaitlyn. The young couple, only in their early thirties, are worth some $100 million, and are already making philanthropic moves. In late 2015, Krieger and Kaitlyn established Future Justice Fund (FJF), whose first focus area is criminal justice reform in the U.S., with an "emphasis on ending mass incarceration and creating safer, stronger communities."

For now, the effort is still in its formative stages. Kaitlyn, who serves as president of FJF, tells me that they've made a few grants, but are still figuring their way through this layered space, refining their focus areas, and possibly adding additional ones. In the coming months, Inside Philanthropy aims to keep in touch with FJF and provide an update.

The Kriegers are following in the footsteps of several other philanthropic couples who entered the criminal justice space in recent years. As we've reported, John and Laura Arnold have made this area a big priority, as have Bill and Karen Ackman. Through their foundation, Good Ventures, Dustin Moskovitz and Cari Tuna are also focusing on criminal justice, bringing millions of dollars in new money to a cause that many funders see as a spot where progress is possible.

Speaking of Cari Tuna, after meeting with her, the Kriegers committed to working with GiveWell and the Open Philanthropy Project. Open Philanthropy Project, a collaboration between Good Ventures (which Tuna leads) and GiveWell, focuses on such a range of policy areas.

Krieger and Kaitlyn have committed $750,000 over the next two years and Kaitlyn will also spend around two days a week at GiveWell, which shares offices with Good Ventures in San Francisco. What kinds of projects will the couple's funds help support? It's hard to say precisely. But in Kaityln's blog she lays out the couple's philanthropic mission statement:

We believe that all people deserve a free, vibrant, and productive life. To support this vision, we identify and champion forward-thinking ideas, and help scale solutions that work. To create significant, sustainable change, we are committed to systems-level thinking and rigorous analysis. We advocate collaboration and transparency to engage a broader community and magnify our impact.

The Kriegers are the first outside donors to hook up with the Open Philanthropy Project in a major way. While this initiative has largely functioned so far as an arm of Good Ventures, Cari Tuna has told us that the long-term goal here is to build a platform that is useful to a range of funders looking to expand their giving and deepen their learning. Certainly there is no shortage of such folks in the Bay Area right now. And it's interesting to watch as Tuna, who is still a relative newcomer herself to philanthropy, emerges as a leader in helping other tech givers get up to speed.

Kaitlyn also mentioned other things the couple are interested in, including the arts, education, and supporting the Bay Area. Mike and Kaitlyn have been involved with SFMOMA and SFJAZZ, as well as after-school programs like Little Opera. Kaitlyn was once a trustee of the San Francisco Awesome Foundation, which gives monthly $1000 microgrants to projects that bring "fresh conversation and general awesomeness to the Bay Area." Kaitlyn, however, left the board to dedicate more time to FJF.

This is definitely a couple to watch carefully in the coming years. As Kaitlyn puts it, "Mike and I are committed to giving away a lot of our wealth during the course of our lifetime. Its very early days, so one of our biggest goals is educating ourselves about the landscape and and context of philanthropy today."

Stay tuned.

Related: Mike Krieger Profile
Insatiable demand for sovereign debt drove German, U.K., Japanese and Swiss ten-year securities to all-time-low yields this morning. A flight to safety, spurred by Brexit fears and massive buying by the European Central Bank and Bank of Japan combined with expectations that the Federal Reserve will refrain from raising rates next week, has made investors willing to scoop up the ten-year paper at ever-higher prices. Janus bond guru Bill Gross yesterday joined a chorus of concerned observers worried that the slightest rise in yields could spark a rush for the exits, with more than $10 trillion in global sovereign debt currently held that was purchased at negative yields. For now, however, the flow of capital into debt markets appears unstoppable, with Jefferies quantitative research group estimating that nearly $8 billion in fresh money poured into global bond funds last week, the second-largest inflow in 14 months.

Moodys cuts Illinois. On Thursday, Moodys Investors Service lowered its credit ranking for debt issued by the state of Illinois from Baa1 to Baa2, shortly followed by a downgrade by rival S&P Global Ratings. The downgrades comes as the state begins its second year without a budget, paralyzed by gridlock between the states Republican governor, Bruce Rauner, and Democratic-controlled legislature. According to data compiled by Bloomberg, this marks the lowest rating for a U.S. state in over a decade.

BP divests Norwegian fields. On Friday, oil giant BP announced a sale of oil-field operations in Norway to a newly formed company controlled by Kjell Inge Roekke in a primarily stock transaction valued at more than $1 billion. BP will maintain 30 percent ownership in the new entity, named Aker BP. The cash payment of $140 million puts a small dent in the $3 billion in asset sales targeted for 2016 by BP.

Line IPO to raise more than $1 billion in fresh capital. Regulatory filings on Friday confirmed that Japanese message app giant Line Corp. plans to raise more than $1 billion in an initial public offering to be listed in both Tokyo and New York. Line, a subsidiary of Koreas Naver Corp., attempted an IPO at a higher valuation in 2014 before withdrawing because of weak market conditions.

Puerto Rico bill passes house. On Thursday, a bill designed to provide debt relief for the territory of Puerto Rico passed by a wide margin in the House of Representatives, sending the legislation to the Senate. In advance of a July 1 deadline for a major debt payment, many political analysts anticipate that the Senate will embrace the bill without tinkering with the terms. One sticking point with GOP lawmakers may be the seniority of pension obligations over that of outside creditors.
International hedge fund Caisse de depot et placement du Quebec (CDPQ) has acquired a 44% stake in Australian insurer Greenstone, it has been announced.The Canadian hedge fund revealed the investment in a statement and confirmed that co-founders of the business, Richard Enthoven and Gavin Donnelly will remain with the company as majority shareholders.The deal is said to be worth close to $500 million, according to The Australian, as Greenstone will look to build on the challenger brand Real Insurance.Enthoven, executive chairman of Greenstone, said that the deal outs an end to a long search for a partner.We have been looking for a long-term partner keen on contributing to the Companys ongoing development and growth, Enthoven said.CDPQs solid reputation of investing in high-performing companies and its considerable expertise in our industry ensures this partnership will continue to strengthen our business.Roland Lescure, executive vice-president and chief investment officer of CDPQ, said that the investment in Greenstone will provide more than capital.The investment in Greenstone is aligned with our objective to further the development of businesses that are industry leaders and stand out through innovation, Lescure said.With this transaction, we will once again team up with high-quality partners in Australia, one of our priority markets.We're planning to contribute both capital and global industry know-how.Greenstone hit the headlines earlier this year as they withdrew plans to list the business on the ASX.
QBE has announced a key appointment for their broker-based business.The insurer has announced that James McCauley has been appointed as the new regional manager Victoria and Tasmania for QBEs broker distribution business.McCauley will replace Andrew Borden who was recently appointed general manager of workers compensation for the insurer. With more than 30 years experience across underwriting and broking, McCauley joined QBE six years ago and was most recently national relationship manager for the business.Jason Clarke, QBE Australias executive general manager, Intermediary Distribution, said that the decision to move McCauley to his new role was due to his relationships with brokers.James has an excellent reputation in the broker market and we are fortunate to have him take up this key role in our Broker Distribution business, Clarke said.James has invaluable experience on both sides of the insurance table and will be able to use this unique perspective to ensure we continue to seek innovative solutions for our customers.McCauley, who will be based in QBEs Melbourne office, said that he is excited to build on strong existing links with the broker market.Im excited to be taking on the role of Regional Manager Victoria and Tasmania in the Broker Distribution business and Im looking forward to working with a world class team to develop QBEs already distinguished reputation within the broker community.
Chinese internet giant Baidu has announced that it has signed a deal with a leading insurer to set up a joint venture to sell car insurance.Baidu will partner with China Pacific Insurance Co (CPIC) on the new JV which will see both companies combine the strengths of both companies to become a major player in the Chinese market.Upon completion of the Investment, the integration of competitive resources of the Company and Baidu will enhance the professional operation and business innovation capabilities of the property insurance business of CPIC Property, a joint statement from Baidu and China Pacific said.The establishment of the Target Company will benefit the Company and CPIC Property by improving its digital innovation capability, accelerating business transformation and enhancing overall competitiveness.President of Baidu, Zhang Yaqin, told The South China Morning Post that the business will look at new, innovative insurance options for customers.The company will explore new models for auto insurance products design, risk control and operations, Yaqin said.Chairman and president of China Pacific Property Insurance, Gu Yue, said the partnership will marry technology with tradition.We look forward to the successful integration of technology and traditional insurance business through this cooperation, Yue said.This is not the first time Baidu have dipped their toes in the insurance market after a joint venture was signed with Allianz
Specialist insurer Ansvar Insurance has conducted an interfaith arson forum in Geelong to educate communities on how to mitigate the risk of arson and deal with arsons emotional consequences.The forum was held in response to the recent spate of church fires in the area, and in partnership with Catholic Church Insurance, Victoria Police, The Country Fire Authority, and the Victorian Council of Churches.The group of panellists assembled by Ansvar shared valuable information on how to protect faith properties, including protective measures, early detection, fire suppression, as well as some insight into the behaviour of arsonists.Stuart Stuart, CEO of the Victorian Council of Churches, also spoke about the psychological impacts of arson and the counselling and support services available to arson victims.It is unfortunate that there is a need for such forums, but the collective information presented from the panel of experts will help members of all faith communities be more vigilant, active participants in the risk mitigation process of their respective houses of worship, said Warren Hutcheon , CEO of Ansvar Insurance.Arsonists do not discriminate, and the effect of a fire at a house of worship, whether a church, synagogue or mosque, is a devastating event. In addition to damaging the physical property, these events also have a traumatic effect on the community. It was important for us to conduct this forum with all members of the faith community to arm them with the knowledge they need to help mitigate the risk of arson and also help deal with the emotional side effects.As an insurer we naturally focus the majority of our attention on the financial losses suffered as a result of arson. It was important for us that this forum address the emotional consequences so we were conscious of inviting experts on the panel who were able to address the psychological reactions to traumatic community events, said Hutcheon.The forum was attended by over 100 participants, including customers and community members. Aon Group President Stephen McGill CBE has been awarded the prestigious Corporate Social Responsibility Business Award during the annual Corporate Citizenship Awards on June 8, 2016.McGill was honoured by BritishAmerican Business in recognition of his exceptional commitment and approaches to corporate responsibility.Commented McGill: It is a great honor to receive the BritishAmerican Business Corporate Citizenship Award and to accept it on behalf of Aons 72,000 colleagues around the world. I am tremendously proud to receive this Award and I am delighted to be joining the very impressive list of BritishAmerican Business Award alumni.A member of the International Advisory Board of BritishAmerican Business, McGill is also a chartered insurance practitioner, former president of the Insurance Institute of London, and trustee of a charity group Find A Better Way. In 2014, McGill was made a Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (CBE), one of the UKs top civilian honors, in recognition of his services to the insurance industry and his humanitarian services.Other CSR business awardees are Peter Grauer, Chairman of Bloomberg, and Xavier Rolet KBE, CEO of the London Stock Exchange Group.BritishAmerican Business is a transatlantic business network composed of a select group of international businesses, small to large, startups and established institutions.International Air Transport Association (IATA) chief says protecting against cyber-attacks is a growing challenge for the aviation industry, according to a News24 Wire report.In IATAs 72Annual General Meeting held in Dublin last week, IATA Director General and CEO Tony Tyler said, Our electronically connected world is vulnerable to hackers bent on causing chaos.We are vulnerable and there is no guaranteed way to stay a step ahead.According to experts, cyber security breaches resulted to an estimated US$500 million in losses in 2015. Experts also say that 94 per cent of global companies have experienced cyber-attacks and that 13 per cent of people still click on phishing attacks.General Linda Urrutia-Varhall of the US Department of Defence said that aviation remains a central focus for terrorists and criminals.Kurt Pipal of the FBI explained that airline companies are of interest for industrial espionage because of the huge amounts of data they possess.To counter cybercrime, Tyler stressed the importance of real-time collaboration and information exchange between the aviation industry and governments.Make no mistake. We face real threats, Tyler said.Government and industry must be nimble, share information, use global standards, and keep a risk-based mindset when developing counter-measures.Businesses are also cautioned to be very careful of subcontractors, and to share intelligence information in the industry. Suggested Pipa: Build awareness and do not have a silo approach. Identify your vulnerabilities and make the assumption that you are going to be hacked. Participate in a 24/7 securities operation centre.Occasionally, you could even use a so-called dark agent  a hacker to test your system. Companies do fire drills, so why do they not do cyber security drills, too?
Vermont State Police are launching a summer-long campaign to crack down on speeding and aggressive driving. The effort comes as traffic fatalities year-to-date have more than doubled over last year.

State police say Vermont had seen 30 traffic accident deaths through the end of May. Meanwhile, a chart on the state police website shows the first five months of 2015 saw fewer than 15 traffic fatalities.

Lt. John Flannigan, the agencys traffic operations commander, says many of the collisions state police are seeing involve drivers creating hazards through speeding, lack of seat belt use, distracted or impaired driving.

Col. Matthew Birmingham, the state police director, says public safety is the responsibility both of police and of individual drivers. He says most if not all crashes are preventable.

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Topics Law Enforcement Vermont
Zurich Insurance AGs new chief executive officer, Mario Greco, is shaking up the largest Swiss insurer after an unexpected jump in claims last year forced it to abandon a takeover and prompted his predecessors exit.

Zurich is merging its biggest units, global life and general insurance, and reorganizing along geographical lines. The four regional heads  for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, North America, Latin America and Asia Pacific  will report directly to Greco. The companys business with its global corporate clients with remain in a separate division.

This structure is more efficient than the previous one, Greco, 56, said on a conference call with reporters on Friday. There will be a contribution to cost savings, but we need to quantify that precisely and were not ready to do that today.

Greco took over at Zurich in March after three years running Italys largest insurer, Assicurazioni Generali SpA. Martin Senn, who beat out Greco for the top job at Zurich in 2012, stepped down in December after unexpectedly high claims in the general-insurance unit led the company to scrap a takeover bid for RSA Insurance Group Plc. Senn committed suicide last month.

Zurich shares fell 0.7 percent to 226 Swiss francs ($234.27) as of 11:03 a.m., compared with a percent decline in the Stoxx 600 Insurance index. The stock dropped 15 percent in the past year, versus a 14 percent slump in the index.

Savings Targets

Zurich, along with European rivals, has struggled to improve profitability amid lackluster economic growth, stricter regulatory requirements, record-low interest rates and subdued prices in some markets. The companys complex and opaque structure has been criticized by analysts as an impediment to improving efficiency and earnings.

The insurer will provide an update on savings in coming months, while confirming the existing targets for now, Greco said. Zurich previously said it plans to cut costs by more than $300 million this year.

The revamp absolutely makes sense, said Stefan Schuermann, a Vontobel analyst with a hold rating on the stock. We expect Zurich to overachieve on its costs savings targets and improve its sales dynamics.

Too Complex

The insurer also appointed Kristof Terryn to the new role of chief operating officer. Robert Dickie, chief operations and technology officer, will leave in the coming months after a transition period, the company said. Terryn was previously head of the general insurance business.

During Grecos tenure at Generali, he cut costs, revamped businesses, reduced debt and sold units to focus on the companys main business. He raised about 4 billion euros ($4.5 billion) selling assets, including a U.S. reinsurer and Swiss private bank BSI Group.

This is similar to what he did at Generali, simplifying the structure, said Rene Locher, an analyst at MainFirst in Zurich. Of course it also opens the door to get some costs out. Zurich has grown way too complex over the years.

With assistance from Sonia Sirletti.

Related:

Copyright 2022 Bloomberg.
Wisconsin insurance industry leaders are worried a potential state move toward self-insurance is already on its way to a done deal.

At a Wisconsin Health News panel, panelists and audience members critiqued the possible change, which would reshape health insurance for nearly 250,000 state workers, retirees and family members and could weaken competition across the states insurance market. Under a self-insurance model, the state would pay for benefits directly instead of purchasing insurance from 17 HMOs.

State officials at the panel emphasized the coming months will provide more detail and guidance on whether the state should switch over, but some in the industry think its a foregone conclusion.

I think there are a number of ways that things have been phrased and said that would give the perception that its further down the road than a lot of people want to believe, said Group Health Cooperative of Eau Claire CEO Pete Farrow, a panelist at the event.

Republican Gov. Scott Walker highlighted the possible switch to a self-insurance plan in his State of the State address this year, pointing to the potential savings as a way to fund education initiatives.

State consultants have estimated the financial impact could range anywhere from $42 million in savings each year to $100 million more in costs per year. State officials hope to get a better picture from a request for proposals the Group Insurance Board authorized in February.

State Deputy Insurance Commissioner J.P. Wieske repeatedly said the state needs to see where that process goes before drawing conclusions about how the move would impact Wisconsins health insurance market or consumers.

I dont necessarily think the sky is falling, as I keep hearing here, Wieske said.

The states Group Health Insurance Program makes up 14 percent of the entire commercial health insurance market, according to the Wisconsin Association of Health Plans, which opposes the plan and represents Group Health Cooperative and other HMOs. A move to a self-insurance model would mean those HMOs would lose state business.

Farrow raised concerns that the process wont thoroughly assess the options and would weaken competition. A 2011 Kaiser Family Foundation analysis found Wisconsin had the most competitive health insurance market in the country for individuals and families.

Wisconsin is totally like any other state from a health insurance perspective, Farrow said.

The average annual cost increase for the program over the past five years has been 2.5 percent, compared to 5 to 7 percent nationally, said Lisa Ellinger, Director of the Office of Strategic Health Policy at the Department of Employee Trust Funds.

Ellinger said the department has been discussing the self-insurance concept since at least 2012. Nationally, 46 states partially or total self-insure, according to a memo she sent to the Group Insurance Board.

Since our program is financed by the taxpayers, we also have a responsibility to explore and evaluate whether alternatives to our current structure are more cost effective, Ellinger said.

She said the request for proposals is the best way to get more information on a host of possible changes to the program. The department plans to put out a full draft of the request this week so stakeholders can provide input. It will solicit full responses by September.

Legislators have expressed reservations about the move, questioning what it would do to the rest of the states insurance market. Walker signed a bill in December giving the Legislatures budget committee oversight of any contract moving public workers to the new system.

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Topics Market Wisconsin
Medical errors in U.S. hospitals kill tens of thousands of patients each year, and even more suffer injury because of mistakes by doctors or nurses. Not every case of harm is avoidablepatients may get an infection even if doctors do everything they should. But when hospitals are at fault, most of the time they never tell you.

Afraid of getting sued, they deny wrongdoing, hide information from patients or families, and exclude them from internal investigations. Hospital staff review the events in private conferences. Sometimes they send reports to third-party safety groups, but those, too, are privileged. This means attorneys for the injured or the families of patients who died cant get them.

Patients usually get compensated only if they can persuade a lawyer their case is good enough to take. Then comes the arduous, expensive, and emotional fight to prove the medical professionals, despite what the Hippocratic oath says, did some harm. If the hospitals lawyers see too much risk, they settle. If not, they go to trial.

This is how it works now. For years, a few doctors and hospital leaders have been trying to change this by bypassing the judicial system. They contend honesty in the event of mistakes can reduce hospital liability and improve safety by throwing light on an opaque internal process. Recently, the federal government threw its weight behind the idea, publishing detailed guidelines for hospitals that want to adopt this more open way of dealing with medical errors.

What Went Wrong

The new approach promoted by the federal Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) is explicitly aimed at saving hospitals money on malpractice litigation while encouraging more robust scrutiny of what went wrong. It also aims to support patients, families, and clinicians after an event that can be traumatic for all involved. Its called Communication and Optimal Resolution, or Candor for short, and was developed with a $23 million federal research grant and tested at 14 hospitals in three health systems.

Under Candor, when a case involving patient harm is identified, trained hospital staff tell victims or their families what happened within one hour. At the same time, they reach out to caregivers. The hospital stays in touch with patients and relatives as the event is investigated and interviews them about what happened. It also pauses its billing process so injured patients or grieving families arent dealing with the cost of care received, an emotionally fraught experience when that care injured or killed a loved one.

Hospitals are supposed to complete the investigation within about two months and share the findings with the patients. At that time, theyll discuss how to prevent future incidents. If the inquiry determines the harm resulted from a breach in the standard of care, something a lawyer might call negligence, the hospital and patient will negotiate financial compensation.

Patients should have attorneys with them to help negotiate a fair deal, said Steve Kraman, a doctor who pioneered the approach in 1987 at the Lexington, Ky., VA Medical Center.

Without Candor, what normally is done is people meet behind closed doors and talk about it with no names, Kraman said. The process discourages people from reporting mistakes, making it harder to improve. This process by which medical professionals shut out everyone else while looking for answers isnt optimal, he said. It becomes very difficult to fix problems when secrecy is that important.

The Candor process doesnt limit patients power to sue if they think a hospitals offer of compensation is unfair. And it offers potential resolution for people who might never be able to convince a lawyer working on contingency to take their case. I cant tell you how many patients I turn down where I think there probably is clear negligence involved, said Laura Sharp, a partner at The Sharp Firm in Austin, who used to defend health care providers before switching sides to represent injured patients.

Good for Hospitals

Sharp and other plaintiffs attorneys have reservations about the Candor approach. The information hospitals gather during an investigation may remain privileged from legal discovery, the exchange of evidence before trial. They swoop in immediately and gather all the documents, Sharp said, after reviewing the Candor protocol. If a patient doesnt reach a negotiated agreement with the hospital, that could make it harder to bring a lawsuit. She was also concerned that patients offered compensation for an injury might not be advised to have an attorney evaluate the offer.

Lawrence Schlachter, a former surgeon who became a malpractice attorney, cautioned that Candors end run around the courts may allow hospitals to dodge accountability that might come from an outside investigation. If the hospital is investigating patient safety glitches, who is supervising them in their internal investigation? he said.

Even proponents worry that some hospitals might adopt Candor only when it suits themlike in a case they would expect to lose. My concern is that people might cherry-pick, said Kraman. We didnt. We took every single case.

Say Youre Sorry

Beyond the obvious financial incentives for hospitals, the program gives many would-be plaintiffs something simple: A frank acknowledgement that something went wrong. Sometimes thats all they really want.

Their number one complaint is, I wish they had just said they felt bad or theyre sorry,' Sharp said.

Helen Haskells son died from a medication error after a routine elective surgery in 2000. Now a patient advocate and founder of Mothers Against Medical Error, she said she had hoped we could do more in terms of improvement by not filing a lawsuit. It took about a year to reach a settlement. The hospital kept sending bills while she waited.

We took our child in for elective surgery. He just died through utter negligence, Haskell said. And they were billing me? Until we settled with them, the bills kept coming. It went to collections.

The biggest barrier to hospitals being more transparent is their legal departments, she said. These are people who are very vested in this process, she said. When [Candor is] implemented well, hospitals save tons of money and what theyre saving on is defense.

Haskell said ending hospital secrecy is a prerequisite to making them safer for patients. Without disclosure, without accountability it never gets fixed, she said.

Candor has its roots in that idea. Kraman was newly appointed chief of staff at the Lexington VA when an internal review indicated that a patients death weeks before had been caused by a medication error. The family had no idea. We decided that we could put it together in a dossier and hide it, and hope they never come back. We didnt feel comfortable doing that, he said.

Instead, they called the family, advised them to bring an attorney, and told them what happened. Then they negotiated a settlement. It didnt excessively punish the hospital or excessively compensate the family, said Kraman, now a professor at University of Kentucky College of Medicine. It was fair all around. In 1999, he published an analysis that suggested such extreme honesty, in addition to being more humane for patients, could also reduce hospitals legal expenses.

Conventional Wisdom

Rick Boothman, an attorney who defended doctors and hospitals in malpractice suits, formalized the Candor approach at the University of Michigan Health System when he joined in 2001. The great fear at the time was if youre honest, the sky was going to fall in financially, said Boothman, now the health systems chief risk officer. We have decades of conventional wisdom that says we cant afford to be honest.

In practice, Boothman said, hospitals need to normalize honesty to improve patient safety. When he was defending hospitals at trial, nobody ever said, What should we have learned from the cases you handled?' he said. Those things are changing.

This is a lot of culture change for people, said Seth Krevat, assistant vice president for Safety at MedStar Health, a 10-hospital system in Maryland that helped test and develop the Candor protocols. Typically, the aftermath of patient harm is to reprimand an individual. You blame one person, you move on. You havent fixed the system problem, he said.

Instead, such events warrant the kind of rigorous investigation that follows an airplane crash. These events are like plane crashes for patients and families, Krevat said.

One of the challenges is working with insurance companies  to educate them around the benefits not only for patients but for physicians as well, said Linda Ubaldi, a top patient safety official with Dignity Health in Sacramento. The 39-hospital health system based in California tested Candor in four hospitals and is now deploying it more widely.

Some malpractice insurers support the approach. Robin Diamond, senior vice president of patient safety and risk management at malpractice insurer The Doctors Company, advised on the development of the Candor process. A patient whos satisfied with their physician and believes their physician is as honest as possible is less likely to sue, she said.

Copyright 2022 Bloomberg.

Topics Lawsuits Medical Professional Liability
When a 400-pound gorilla grabbed a 3-year-old boy at the Cincinnati Zoo, the sharpshooter who killed the ape wasnt from the police. Instead, the shooter was a specially trained zoo staffer on one of the many dangerous-animal emergency squads at animal parks nationwide.

The teams train at firing ranges, stash rifles and shotguns around the grounds, and rank the most hazardous species in their care. Members train in elaborate drills for situations like what unfolded in Cincinnati, when the child fell into the gorillas enclosure Saturday. The staffer who fired hasnt been publicly identified.

Its a weighty commitment for people who work among animals they might one day have to kill. But team members understand the need to do it if a human life is in danger.

We all know, every day that we go to work, that we are responsible for the safety of not only the animals in our care, but our co-workers and the visiting public, said Denise Wagner, a member of the response team at the Phoenix Zoo, where shes a senior primate keeper focused on orangutans. We take that responsibility very seriously.

The Cincinnati gorillas death has created crosscurrents of outrage over the vigilance of both the zoo and the childs mother. But it also has highlighted the unusual work of zoos emergency-response teams.

The federal Animal Welfare Act, which regulates zoos, doesnt require such teams. But many animal parks establish them as part of gaining accreditation.

Staffers Play Animals

The Phoenix Zoos dangerous animals response team  or DART  takes annual marksmanship tests, trains at the firing range three additional times a year, and practices loading and unloading firearms, Wagner said. The group also simulates an escape or incursion several times a year, with plastic guns and the animal played by a staffer well versed in that species behavior.

The roughly 30-member team of zookeepers and operations staffers hasnt had to respond to an actual emergency in at least 12 years, Wagner said. But members regularly serve as extra protection when a code red animal  the most dangerous species, such as big cats  is going to the veterinarian after being tranquilized.

While some DART teams encompass staffers ranging from maintenance workers to veterinarians to security staffers, the Brookfield Zoo near Chicago has its own police force trained to take down an animal.

When to shoot comes down to whether an animal is a danger to someone, whether its moving toward the zoos boundaries and whether it could be stopped by a tranquilizer, said Bill Zeigler, a senior vice president. Zoos also tell dangerous-animal teams to consider whether they can fire without hitting other people.

The Cincinnati Zoo has said tranquilizers wouldnt have worked quickly enough to end the danger to the boy, who suffered scrapes but was rescued.

Rare Force

Zoos say the use of lethal force is rare, and there are only a few examples over the past couple of decades of animals being shot to death. One incident came a week before the Cincinnati case in Santiago, Chile, when zookeepers shot and killed two lions after they severely mauled a man who stripped naked and entered their enclosure in an apparent suicide attempt.

The zoo director said no fast-acting tranquilizers were available to stop the lions from mauling the man.

While it is unfortunate that incidents such as this one unpredictably occur, human safety must come first, the World Association of Zoos and Aquariums said, calling such events incredibly rare.

Tranquilizers, in addition to being slow-acting, arent a guaranteed alternative to deadly force. In March, Cincinnatis team used tranquilizer darts on two polar bears that wandered from their den into a service hallway after two doors were left open. One bear required a second dart after the first one detached, according to a review by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which enforces the Animal Welfare Act.

Local Police

Some animal parks, especially in cities, turn to local police.

But thats not feasible for some zoos in rural areas police cant quickly reach, such as the North Carolina Zoo, outside Asheboro. It relies instead on a roughly 15-person weapons team, said member Jennifer Ireland, a mammals curator. Qualifications include gun-loading skills and twice-annual target-shooting tests; a drill might entail pretending a lion on the loose has injured people.

Ireland manages the care of animals including polar bears and chimpanzees, which the zoo classifies as potentially deadly (gorillas are deemed only dangerous because theyre less likely to attack people). Being on the weapons team is an expectation of her job, but not an easy one.

I have relationships with these animals, and to think that I might have to go out there and shoot them someday to save someones life really kind of stinks, she said. But we all accept that.

The North Carolina Zoos team includes only senior animal-care staffers because of their knowledge of animal behavior, Ireland said.

But at the Columbus Zoo in Ohio, animal care workers could join an initial response but wouldnt be asked to shoot an animal because of the emotions involved, said Doug Warmolts, a vice president.

His zoos special response team includes about two dozen security staffers and other employees. Their arsenal features not only firearms, but also paintball guns, noisemakers and even fire extinguishers to scare an animal away.

To People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, the fact that zoos feel the need for sharpshooting teams is yet more proof of how dangerous and unnatural a captive environment is for animals, said Brittany Peet, a deputy director of the animal rights groups foundation.

Zoos stress that killing an animal is a last resort.

(Jennifer Peltz reported from New York; John Seewer reported from Toledo, Ohio. Associated Press writers Dan Sewell in Cincinnati and Andrew Welsh-Huggins in Columbus, Ohio, contributed to this report.)

Copyright 2016 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Related:

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Topics Law Enforcement Ohio
A Kentucky judge has issued a temporary injunction blocking Gov. Matt Bevins executive order that abolished the Workers Compensation Nominating Commission and recreated a new one.

The Lexington Herald-Leader reports Franklin Circuit Judge Phillip Shepherd issued the order Wednesday and said it will remain in effect until he issues a final ruling.

Bevins press secretary, Amanda Stamper, said the governors office believes the ruling is wrong and is considering legal options, including possible appeal.

The commission nominates administrative law judges to be appointed by the governor and who decide if and how much employers have to pay workers who were hurt on the job. Last month Bevin abolished that commission, rewrote the law that governed it and then re-created it with new members, all by executive order.

Two labor unions and four injured workers filed a lawsuit challenging the move.

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Topics Legislation Workers' Compensation Kentucky
Atlanta, GA, June 10, 2016  Alan Lewis has joined Breckenridge Insurance Services wholesale brokerage division as a vice president, broker. Lewis last led the Epic Intermediaries Inc. Chicago-area office and brings nearly 14 years of experience to Breckenridge.

Lewis specializes in public entity insurance, excess workers compensation, education and healthcare. He is charged with further developing Breckenridge agent relationships by way of ready access to leading carriers internationally. Lewis offers significant risk management expertise having held senior underwriting positions at C.V. Starr, ACE USA and General Reinsurance Corporation Subsidiary (Genesis Underwriting Management Co.).

Alan is a great addition to our team as an expert insurance professional, stated Robert Matamoros, executive vice president of the brokerage division. His dedication to his clients and ongoing industry leadership are exemplary and his skills will be appreciated by those he works with and for at Breckenridge, he added.

Lewis was past president of the Chartered Property Casualty Underwriters Society Board of Directors for the Chicago chapter and held varied leadership and committee positions for the National CPCU Society and is a member of PRIMA. He holds an MBA from Walden University in Risk Management and Finance and a B.S. in Accountancy from Case Western Reserve having achieved honors throughout his studies. Lewis also was an Officer Candidate for the United Sates Marine Corp.

Lewis is located in the Chicago area and can be reached at alewis@breckis.com or 312.945.6231.

About Breckenridge Insurance Services:Breckenridge Insurance Services is a national wholesale commercial insurance brokerage firm with more than three decades of experience in supporting agents and their clients. Focused on building long-term partnerships, the experienced brokerage group offers consultative services and quality carrier relationships and binding authorities for a variety of standard and hard-to-place specialty coverages. Breckenridge Insurance Services has eight offices across the United States and continues to strategically expand its team and presence to serve diverse markets with top-rated domestic and international carrier partners.

About Breckenridge Insurance Group:Breckenridge Insurance Group, headquartered in Atlanta, Ga., is an international specialty wholesale insurance broker, program manager, managing general agent (MGA) and insurance services provider. The company offers access to diverse range of commercial insurance and financial services products to businesses and professional services firms in a variety of industries. The company serves independent insurance agents, brokers and legal and financial institutions throughout North America by way of Blue River Underwriters, OSC, Breckenridge Insurance Services, Breckenridge Elevation Authorities contract binding group and InSpecialty innovative insurance solutions. For more information, please visit www.breckgrp.com or call 630.945.3878. CA Insurance License #0G13592

Topics Agencies
Pillar two will change the international tax system forever. Here Christian Kaeser, global head of tax at Siemens, looks at how businesses and tax administrations can simplify pillar two compliance.
Un ottobre da sogno per Antonio Conte: lex ct della Nazionale italiana, attualmente alla guida del Chelsea, nelle ultime quattro gare di Premier League ha collezionato solo successi, conditi da 11 reti segnate e addirittura nessuna incassata. Numeri da record che non sono certo passati inosservati alla Federazione inglese, la quale ha conferito al tecnico leccese lambito premio di Manager del mese.

Unavventura oltremanica iniziata in sordina, quella di Conte, pur a fronte di tre vittorie nelle prime tre gare di campionato. A far vacillare, anche se solo per un momento, le certezze del patron del club londinese, Roman Abramovich, i risultati conseguiti tra la 4a e la 6a giornata, coincisi con un pareggio sul campo dello Swansea City e, soprattutto, con le due pesanti sconfitte subite dal Liverpool, sul terreno casalingo di Stamford Bridge, e dallArsenal. In particolare, la debacle interna coi Reds, aveva irritato non poco il numero uno russo, poiche occorsa proprio nel giorno della sua 250esima partita da presidente della societa.

Come detto, solo un momento. Dopo lincontro dellEmirates, il tecnico salentino cambia modulo, adottando un piu equilibrato 3-4-3 e inserendo elementi di corsa come lo spagnolo Pedro. Una svolta totale perche, di li in poi, il Chelsea inanellera solo e soltanto vittorie: 2 gol allHull City e al Southampton in trasferta, 3 ai campioni dInghilterra del Leicester e 4 allo United in casa, con un meraviglioso numero zero nella casella delle reti subite. Un fantastico poker, ottenuto tra l1 e il 29 ottobre. Un cambio di marcia sbalorditivo, confermato dal 5 a 0 rifilato ai toffees dellEverton nel primo match di novembre, e una scalata che, man mano, ha portato i blues al secondo posto in classifica, a soli 2 punti dal Liverpool capolista.

E allora, non poteva mancare il riconoscimento di migliore allenatore del mese, ottenuto surclassando tecnici del calibro di Jurgen Klopp (Liverpool), Arsene Wenger (Arsenal) e Mark Hughes (Southampton). Tanta, ovviamente, la soddisfazione: E un grande onore e voglio condividerlo con i giocatori e con la societa  ha dichiarato Conte sul sito ufficiale della Premier League -. E la prima volta che lavoro in un altro Paese, con una cultura diversa, e portare la propria filosofia non e facile, ma ora sono contento di questa scelta.

A completare la festa, la premiazione del fantasista belga, Eden Hazard, come miglior giocatore di ottobre. Due risultati importanti per il club, ottimo incentivo per la rincorsa al trono dei campioni, occupato dal Leicester di Ranieri. Il prossimo appuntamento per l11 di Conte sara al Riverside Stadium, tana del Middlesborough neopromosso. Il tempo di festeggiare e gia finito.
What's the first thing that comes to mind when you think about the largest companies in Silicon Valley? There's probably a good chance that some of the world's most popular tech, computer, and digital giants pop up, like Apple, Alphabet, and Meta, formerly Facebook, are the first that come to mind. But did you know that there are a host of other successful public companies within Silicon Valley that aren't part of the technology sector?

If you do, you can count Wells Fargo, Visa, and Chevron as major multinational corporations that are all headquartered in the Valley. And they aren't part of the Big Tech world. Let's look at the big six companies of Silicon Valley, incorporating three public tech companies and three that aren't. All data is current as of Feb. 5, 2022.

Key Takeaways Silicon Valley is generally known to be a technology hub because of the large concentration of tech companies.

The area is also home to all sorts of corporate giants, including financial services and big energy.

The six largest Silicon Valley firms consist of three tech firmsApple, Alphabet (Google), and Meta (formerly Facebook)

Visa, Wells Fargo, and Chevron are three of the largest non-tech companies in the region.

Apple is the proverbial king with the largest market cap of them all.

1:05 What is Silicon Valley?

1. Apple

Apple (AAPL) is one of the most successful companies on the planet and makes its headquarters in Cupertino, Santa Clara County, right in the heart of Silicon Valley. The company has a market capitalization of $2.81 trillion and was the first American company whose market cap reached $1 trillion in August 2018. Its price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio was 28.7.

Apple designs, manufactures, and sells mobile devices, personal computers, and digital music players. It also sells related software, services, networking solutions, and digital content and applications.

The company's main products include the iPhone, iPad, and Mac computersalong with the operating system software and application software to run them. It became a player in the financial services field after launching the Apple Card in 2019. And in 2021, the company introduced the fifth generation of its entertainment streaming services Apple TV+.

2. Alphabet/Google

Alphabet (GOOGL) is the holding company of Google, the world's most widely used internet search engine. It is headquartered in Mountain View, in Santa Clara County. It has a market cap of $1.83 trillion, giving the company a P/E ratio of 25.5.

Since its inception, the company reached success on a massive scale and has business units that go beyond its search engine capabilities. It now offers a range of products and services across multiple screens and device types, from browsers like Chrome to phones like Android to the G Suite of cloud-based word-processing apps.

The company's biggest moneymaker is its offering of brand advertising and performance advertising. Google offers a self-serve platform for advertisers, agencies, and publishers, allowing them to power their digital marketing across desktop display, mobile, and video.

The name for Silicon Valley was first used in the 1970s. It was named after the silicon transistor, which is used in the manufacturing of all microprocessors.

3. Meta

Meta (META) is arguably the world's original social networking company and certainly one of the most successful. Based in Menlo Park, in San Mateo County (often known as the geographic center of the Valley), the company has a market cap of $645.4 billion and a P/E ratio of 17.2.

Facebook was launched in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg as a college social networking website, but it has since expanded to allow any person above the age of 13 to create a social profile. The company boasts billions of users, connecting them through posts, messages, status updates, photo and video sharing, and notification updates.

The company's massive scale allows it to offer highly targeted advertising, resulting in billions of dollars in annual revenue and, of late, some controversy.

4. Wells Fargo

Wells Fargo (WFC) breaks the Silicon Valley mold in a couple of ways. For one thing, it wasn't born around the turn of the 21st century or even the 20th century. For another, its field isn't a technology company but a financial services firm.

Headquartered in San Francisco, Wells Fargo was founded in 1852two years after California became a state. After a series of mergers with other regional banks on both coasts, it is now the third-largest bank in the United States in terms of assets. It is one of the largest U.S. banks by market cap, currently $218.9 billion. Its P/E ratio is 11.08.

Wells Fargo is technically a holding company that consists of four banking and financial services subsidiaries: consumer banking and lending, commercial banking, corporate and investment banking, and wealth and investment management.

Although plagued by a series of consumer abuse scandals throughout the 2010s, resulting in billions in penalties, the financial institution still clocked $72 billion in revenues on its 2020 annual income statement.

$2.5 trillion The combined net worth of Silicon Valley's billionaires.

5. Visa

Known for its ubiquitous credit cards, Visa (V) is another multinational financial services company based in Silicon Valley. Its headquarters are in the San Francisco Bay Area. Its market cap is $478.7 billion, and its current P/E ratio is 39.24.

Contrary to what most people think, Visa doesn't issue cards or extend lines of credit. Instead, it provides banks, credit unions, and other financial institutions with products (i.e., credit or debit cards) that they can offer to their customers. Technically speaking, it's a retail electronic payment network specializing in facilitating funds transfers through its credit card and debit card services.

6. Chevron

Chevron (CVX) is a bit of an outlier in our group, both figuratively (it's the only energy company) and literally, where its headquarters are in San Ramon, in Contra Costa County (a bit north of the Valley proper). The company has a market cap of $261.9 billion and a current P/E ratio of 16.5.

Like Wells Fargo, Chevron's roots trace back to the 19th century. Incorporated in 1906, it has grown from a small oil refiner into a multinational energy giant. Also, like Wells Fargo, Chevron is technically a holding company made up of upstream and downstream segments.

Upstream deals with crude oil and natural gas exploration and production. On the other hand, downstream involves the refining of crude oil into petroleum products and the subsequent marketing of them. These segments combine to give Chevron control of the entire supply chain of energy.

What Is the Biggest Company in Silicon Valley? Apple is the largest company in Silicon Valley. The corporation has a market capitalization of almost $3 trillion and was the first American company whose market cap hit $1 trillion in August 2018.

What Is the Largest Industry in Silicon Valley? Electronics and big tech is the largest industry in Silicon Valley. But it is also home to some other types of businesses, including big energy and financial services.

What Is Silicon Valley Known for? Silicon Valley is known as being a hub for technology. Some of the most popular tech companies got their start there and still call it home. This includes companies like Meta, Apple, and Alphabet. The area is also home to some of the world's richest people, most notably tech billionaires.
AT&T Inc. (T), whose origins date back to 1876 with the invention of the telephone by Alexander Graham Bell, is one of the largest telecommunications companies in the world. AT&T operates as a holding company with subsidiaries and affiliates that operate globally in the telecommunications, media, and technology industries. It offers wireless network services, video and voice communications services, and produces and distributes feature films, television, and other content, and advertising services.

The top shareholders of AT&T are Randall L. Stephenson, John J. Stephens, William A. Blase, Vanguard Group Inc., BlackRock Inc. (BLK), and State Street Corp. (STT).

AT&T's 12-month trailing net income and revenue are $14.4 billion and $179.1 billion, respectively. The company's market cap is about $215.6 billion. These financial data are as of July 17, 2020.

Below, we look in more detail at AT&T's top six shareholders.

"Insider" refers to people in senior management positions and members of the board of directors, as well as people or entities that own more than 10% of the company's stock. In this context, it has nothing to do with insider trading.

Top 3 Individual Insider Shareholders

Randall L. Stephenson

Randall L. Stephenson owns a total of 1,410,637 AT&T shares, representing 0.02% of the company's total shares outstanding. Mr. Stephenson is AT&T's Executive Chair of the Board of Directors and recently stepped down as Chief Executive Officer (CEO), a position he held since 2007.

During his 13-year tenure as CEO, Stephenson reshaped AT&T and significantly diversified the company through a series of major acquisitions, including DirecTV in 2015 and Time Warner in 2018. He made a failed attempt to buy T-Mobile in 2011. Since 2007, AT&T has steadily increased its dividend payouts to shareholders.

Prior to becoming CEO, Mr. Stephenson held a number of positions at Southwestern Bell Telephone Co. (later renamed SBC Communications), an AT&T subsidiary, which he joined in 1982. From 2001 to 2004, he served as Southwestern Bell's Senior Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer (CFO), and as chief operating officer (COO) from 2004 to 2007. He joined AT&T's Board in 2005. He is expected to retire as Executive Chair in January 2021.

John J. Stephens

John J. Stephens owns a total of 553,457 AT&T shares, representing 0.01% of the company's total shares outstanding. Mr. Stephens, who first joined AT&T in 1992, serving in key positions during AT&T's period of dramatic growth in size. He has served as Senior Executive Vice President and CFO since 2011. Mr. Stephens previously held numerous financial and tax-related positions, such as Senior Vice President and Controller, which included responsibility as CFO for AT&T's Diversified Services business unit, Vice President (Taxes), and Managing Director-Taxes. Before joining AT&T, he was a tax senior manager at Ernst & Young LLP.

William A. Blase

William A. Blase owns a total of 246,839 AT&T shares, representing less than 0.01% of the company's total shares outstanding. Mr. Blase has served as AT&T's Senior Executive Vice President-Human Resources since 2007. Between 2005 and 2007, he served as Executive Vice President-Labor Relations.

Mr. Blase started his career in 1979 with Southwestern Bell Telephone Co., which was later renamed SBC Communications. He held numerous roles at SBC, including President and CEO of SBC Southwest and President and CEO of SBC SNET.

Top 3 Institutional Shareholders

Institutional investors hold just over half of AT&T's shares at about 54% to 56% of total shares outstanding. 

Vanguard Group Inc.

Vanguard Group owns 596.4 million shares of AT&T, representing 8.4% of total shares outstanding, according to the company's 13F filing for the period ending March 31, 2020. The company is primarily a mutual fund and ETF management company with about $6.2 trillion in global assets under management (AUM). The Vanguard S&P 500 ETF (VOO) is one of the company's largest exchange-traded funds (ETFs) with about $154 billion in AUM. AT&T comprises 0.84% of VOO's holdings.

BlackRock Inc.

BlackRock owns 493.7 million shares of AT&T, representing 6.9% of total shares outstanding, according to the company's 13F filing for the period ending March 31, 2020. The company is primarily a mutual fund and ETF management company with approximately $6.47 trillion in AUM.

The iShares Core S&P 500 ETF (IVV) is one of BlackRock's largest ETFs with approximately $203 billion in AUM. AT&T comprises 0.80% of IVV's holdings.

State Street Corp.

State Street owns 296.0 million shares of AT&T, representing 4.2% of total shares outstanding, according to the company's 13F filing for the period ending March 31, 2020. The company is primarily a manager of mutual funds, ETFs, and other assets with approximately $3.1 trillion in AUM. The SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust (SPY) is one of State Street's largest ETFs with approximately $288 billion in AUM. AT&T comprises 0.81% of SPY's holdings.

Diversity & Inclusiveness of AT&T

As part of our effort to improve the awareness of the importance of diversity in companies, we offer investors a glimpse into the transparency of more than just who are the shareholders at AT&T. We highlight the company's commitment to diversity, inclusiveness, and social responsibility as a whole. Find out how AT&T reports the diversity of its management and workforce. The  shows if AT&T discloses its data about the diversity of its board of directors, C-Suite, general management, and employees overall across a variety of markets.
Comparison of States With No Income Tax No-Tax State Total Tax Burden (% of income) Total Tax Burden Rank (1=lowest) Affordability (1=best) Best State to Live in (1=best) Alaska 5.10% 1 47 45 Tennessee 5.74% 2 17 29 Wyoming 6.14% 3 33 35 New Hampshire 6.84% 5 38 4 Florida 6.97% 6 31 10 South Dakota 7.37% 8 14 15 Texas 8.19% 19 22 31 Nevada 8.23% 22 41 37 Washington 8.34% 26 44 1

Sources: WalletHub Tax Burden by State, U.S. News & World Report Affordability, and U.S. News & World Report Best States to Live In rankings

1. Alaska

Total Tax Burden: 5.10%

Alaska has no state income or sales tax. The total state and local tax burden on Alaskans, including income, property, sales, and excise taxes, is just 5.10% of personal income, the lowest of all 50 states.

All residents of Alaska receive an annual payment from the Alaska Permanent Fund Corp. made up of revenue and investment earnings from mineral lease rentals and royalties. The per citizen dividend payment for 2021 was $1,114.

The cost of living in Alaska is high, though, mostly due to the states remote location. Alaska also levies the second-highest beer tax of any state in the union at $1.07 per gallon, bested only by Tennessee. The state ranks 47 out of 50 in affordability and 45 out of 50 on the U.S. News & World Report list of Best States to Live In.

Alaska has one of the highest and fastest-rising healthcare costs of any state in the U.S. That said, at $11,064 per capita in 2014the most recent year the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Office of the Actuary reported statisticsit also spent the most on healthcare, excluding the District of Columbia.

At $18,394 per pupil, it also spent the most on education of any state in the Western U.S. in 2019. In 2017, Alaskas infrastructure received a grade of C- from the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE).

2. Florida

Total Tax Burden: 6.97%

This popular snowbird state features warm temperatures and a large population of retirees. Sales and excise taxes in Florida are above the national average, but the total tax burden is just 6.97%the sixth-lowest in the country.

Florida ranks 31st in affordability due to its higher-than-average housing costs. Still, Florida came in at 10 on the U.S. News & World Report Best States to Live In list.

In 2019, Florida was one of the lowest states in terms of school system spending, at $9,645 per pupil. In 2021 the ASCE gave Florida a C grade for its infrastructure. Six years earlier, Florida received the same grade from the Education Law Center for the fairness of its state school funding distribution. In 2014, its healthcare spending per capita was $8,076, $31 more than the national average.

3. Nevada

Total Tax Burden: 8.23%

Nevada relies heavily on revenue from high sales taxes on everything from groceries to clothes, sin taxes on alcohol and gambling, and taxes on casinos and hotels. This results in a state-imposed total tax burden of 8.23% of personal income for Nevadans, the second-highest on this list. However, it still ranks a very respectable 22 out of 50 when compared with all states.

That said, the high costs of living and housing put Nevada near the bottom (41) when it comes to affordability. The state ranks 37th on the U.S. News & World Report Best States to Live In list.

Nevadas spending on education in 2019 was $9,344 per pupil, the fourth-lowest in the western region of the U.S. One year earlier, in 2018, the ASCE gave Nevada a grade of C for its infrastructure.

In addition to receiving an F grade from the Education Law Center in 2015, Nevada was also the worst state overall in terms of the fairness of its state school funding distribution. Nevadas healthcare spending in 2014 was $6,714 per capita, the lowest on this list and the fourth-lowest nationally.

4. South Dakota

Total Tax Burden: 7.37%

Like many states with no income tax, South Dakota rakes in revenue through other forms of taxation, including taxes on cigarettes and alcohol. The home of the Lakota Sioux and the Black Hills has one of the highest sales tax rates in the country and above-average property tax rates. South Dakotas position as home to several major companies in the credit card industry, in addition to higher property and sales tax rates, helps to keep the states residents free from income tax, according to reporting by The Atlantic.

South Dakotans pay just 7.37% of their personal income in taxes, according to WalletHub, ranking the state eighth in terms of the total tax burden. The state ranks 14th in affordability and 15th on the U.S. News & World Report Best States lists.

South Dakota spent $8,933 per capita on healthcare in 2014, the 14th highest in the nation. Although it spent more money on education, at $10,139 per pupil in 2019, it spent less than any other neighboring Midwestern state. Additionally, it received a grade of F for its school funding distribution.

South Dakota hasnt received an official letter grade from the ASCE, though much of its infrastructure is notably deteriorated, with 17% of bridges rated structurally deficient and 90 dams considered to have high hazard potential.

5. Texas

Total Tax Burden: 8.19%

The Lone Star State loathes personal income taxes so much that it decided to forbid them in the states constitution. Still, because infrastructure and services must be paid for somehow, Texas relies on income from sales and excise taxes to foot the bill.

Sales tax can be as high as 8.25% in some jurisdictions. Property taxes are also higher than in most states, the net result of which is a total tax burden of 8.19% of personal income. Nevertheless, Texans overall tax bite is still one of the lowest in the U.S., with the state ranking 19th. Texas is average for affordability at 22nd in the nation, but it was ranked 31st by U.S. News & World Report on the Best States to Live In list.

Texas spent $9,827 per pupil on education in 2019, ranking it below average among the 17 Southern states, and it received a D grade for its school funding distribution in 2015. In 2021 the ASCE awarded it a grade of C for its infrastructure. Texas spent $6,998 per capita on healthcare in 2014, the seventh-lowest amount in the U.S.

One advantage of living in a no-tax state is that the $10,000 cap on state and local tax (SALT) deductions imposed by the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act will likely not have as great an impact as it does on residents of high-tax states, such as California and New York.

6. Washington

Total Tax Burden: 8.34%

Washington hosts a young population, with only 15.9% of its residents over age 65, and many major employers, thanks to the lack of state-mandated corporate income tax (note that high-income earners are subject to state capital gains tax). Residents do pay high sales and excise taxes, and gasoline is more expensive in Washington than in most other states. The state comes in at 26 out of 50, with a total tax burden of 8.34%.

Unusually higher-than-average living and housing costs hurt Washingtonians, putting the state at 44th in terms of affordability. For some residents that might not matter, however, because their state was ranked by U.S. News & World Report as the overall best state to live in once again for 2021.

Washington spent $7,913 per capita on healthcare in 2014, $132 below the national average. Conversely, at $14,223 per pupil, it spent more on education than most in 2019, though it received a C grade for its school funding distribution four years earlier. In 2019, Washington earned the same grade for its infrastructure from the ASCE.

7. Wyoming

Total Tax Burden: 6.14%

With an estimated six people per square mile, Wyoming is the second least densely populated state, bested only by Alaska, which has roughly one human being for every square mile. Citizens pay no personal or corporate state income taxes, no retirement income taxes, and enjoy low sales tax rates. The total tax burdenincluding property, income, sales, and excise taxes as a percentage of personal incomeis 6.14%, ranking the state third lowest.

Like Alaska, Wyoming taxes natural resources, primarily oil, to make up for the lack of a personal income tax, according to reporting in the Cowboy State Daily. The state ranks an average 33rd in affordability and 35th on the U.S. News & World Report list of Best States to Live In.

In 2019, at $16,304 per pupil, Wyoming was one of the highest spenders on education in the western U.S., second only to Alaska. It also earned a grade of A for its school funding distribution in 2015, the best on this list.

Wyomings healthcare spending in 2014 was more moderate by comparison, at $8,320 per capita. Although Wyoming hasnt received an official letter grade for its infrastructure yet, the ASCE found that 6.9% of its bridges are structurally deficient and 99 of its dams have a high hazard potential.

8. Tennessee

Total Tax Burden: 5.74%

Before 2016, Tennessee taxed income from investments, including most interest and dividends but not wages. Legislation passed in 2016 included a plan to lower taxes on unearned income by 1% per year until the tax was eliminated at the start of 2021. To make up for the shortfall, Tennessee levies high sales taxes and the highest beer tax of any state in the union at $1.29 per gallon.

With full implementation of the new legislation, Tennessee expects to attract retirees who depend heavily on investment income. The states total tax burden is 5.74%, the second-lowest in the nation. In the affordability category, Tennessee ranks 17th overall, and on the U.S. News & World Report Best States to Live In list, it ranks 29th.

In 2019, at $9,868 per pupil, Tennessee ranked just above Texas in terms of education spending in the southern U.S. It also did a better job of fairly distributing its school funding than the Lone Star State did, earning the Equality State a C in 2015.

At $7,372 per capita, Tennessee ranked 39th in terms of healthcare spending in 2014. The state hasnt received an official letter grade for its infrastructure yet, although the ASCE did note that 4.4% of its bridges are structurally deficient and 276 of its dams have a high hazard potential.

9. New Hampshire

Total Tax Burden: 6.84%

New Hampshire does not tax earned income but does tax dividends and interest. New Hampshires Senate passed legislation to phase out the investment income tax by 1% per year over five years, with full implementation by 2027. The state has no state sales tax but does levy excise taxes, including taxes on alcohol, and its average property tax rate of 1.86% of property values is the third highest in the country.

Even so, New Hampshires total tax burden is just 6.84%, according to WalletHub, ranking the state fifth in the nation. The state ranks fourth on the U.S. News & World Report list of Best States to Live In and 38th in the nation for affordability.

Although New Hampshire spent more on education than any other state on this list at $17,462 per pupil in 2019, its outlay was among the lowest in the northeastern region of the U.S. Additionally, in 2015 it earned a grade of D from the Education Law Center for its school funding distribution.

New Hampshire received a marginally better grade of C- for its infrastructure in 2017. At $9,589 per capita in 2014, its healthcare spending is the ninth highest in the nation.

Which Are the Tax-Free States? As of 2022, Alaska, Florida, Nevada, New Hampshire, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Washington, and Wyoming are the only states that do not levy a state income tax. Note that Washington does levy a state capital gains tax on certain high earners.

Why Do States Charge a State Tax? Following the adoption of the U.S. Constitution, the federal government was granted the authority to impose taxes on its citizens. Each state also retained the right to impose what kind of tax it wanted, excluding any that are forbidden by the U.S. Constitution as well as its own state constitution. These states fund their governments through tax collection, fees, and licenses.

Which States Dont Tax Retirement Distributions? Twelve states do not tax retirement distributions. Illinois, Mississippi, and Pennsylvania dont tax distributions from 401(k) plans, individual retirement accounts (IRAs), and pensions. The remaining nine states that dont levy a state tax at all are Alaska, Florida, Nevada, New Hampshire, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Washington, and Wyoming. Alabama and Hawaii also dont tax pensions but they do tax distributions from 401(k) plans and IRAs.

Which States Tax Social Security Benefits? There are only 12 U.S. states that tax Social Security benefits: Colorado, Connecticut, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico, Rhode Island, Utah, Vermont, and West Virginia.

The Bottom Line

Despite the challenges no-tax states face, some seem to find a balance among low taxes, affordability, and providing a great place to live. Others struggle. One thing is clear: Low taxes alone do not provide a complete picture of the cost of living for any state.
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Japanese website Mac Otakara has been informed by its reliable Chinese supplier that Apple will be phasing out the Space Gray color with the launch of the iPhone 7. Instead, the company will be offering the handset in a new Deep Blue color.

Apple offers the Space Gray color on all its iOS devices, so it will be a bit strange if the company decides to not offer it anymore for the iPhone 7. Apple debuted the Space Gray color with the launch of the iPhone 5s in 2013, and has since expanded it to its iPad and MacBook lineup.

Mac Otakara also claims that Apple will be using the same LCD glass surface on the iPhone 7 as the iPhone 6s. Rumors and reports have pointed to Apple not upgrading the display on the iPhone 7 this time around, and this report is inline with them. Instead, the Cupertino company is expected to make the switch to OLED screens with the iPhone that will be launched in 2017, with the Plus variant switching to a bigger 5.8-inch display.

Apple is all set to announce the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus in September. The handsets will feature the same design as their predecessors, though the rear will be slightly tweaked to better conceal the antenna lines. They will also be dust and water-resistant. The bigger Plus variant will also feature dual camera modules at its rear for better camera performance. The handsets are expected to ditch the 3.5mm audio jack in favor of the Lightning port doing its duty instead.

[Via Mac Otakara
James Feeley and his wife Sarah Feeley (nee Liberty) are the perfect Irish immigrant story. Both born in County Tipperary, they met after immigrating to the US in the years of the Great Hunger and built a successful life for themselves on the Baltimore and Ohio railroad.

From the time James set sail on May 8, 1848 to make a new life for himself in the US, he climbed the railroad ladder from lowly laborer to boilermaker, one of the highest roles of engine mechanics in the B&O railroad at the time, by the time he retired.

Sarah also contributed to the family's success, doing laundry for the workers in the railyard, which was just a block down from their house at 18 Lemmon St, Baltimore. Their two sons followed James into the railways.

The pair were married in the nearby St. Peter the Apostle Church and frequented a nearby Irish pub. The church building and the pub are both still standing.

In fact, almost every aspect of James and Sarahs life can still be witnessed and explored with thanks to the Baltimore Irish Railroad Workers Museum and their remarkable restoration on the Feeley family home.

Baltimore was the third largest port city for Irish immigrants at that time [when the railroad was becoming established in Baltimore in the 1840s] so there are a lot of Irish Americans here who have Irish ancestors, said Michael Mellett, President of the Board of the Directors of the Irish Railroad Workers Museum in the City of Baltimore.

We're definitely a museum with all very verified researched history, but we're also a shrine, he added, noting the memorial wall tribute to the Famine Irish in the backyard of the Lemmon Street Five. The "Five" are the row of houses in the Hollins Market area of Baltimore theyve restored as part of the Irish Railroad Workers Museum.

Where the homes are is essentially just a block north of the birthplace of American railroad, which is the B&O railroad which started in 1828, to complete with canals starting to be built throughout US, said Mellett.

Read more: The surprising Irish origins of Baltimore, Maryland

The houses are located along one of the little alley-like streets connecting the larger streets in the city's grid system. They were built in the 1840s in the style of the more ornate townhouses to accommodate the laboring classes of mostly Irish and German immigrants.

These houses were built in 1848, Mellett continued, and as the railroad pushed west in the late 1800s, into the 1900s, other railyards became more important.

As the railwork pushed out over time this railyard [in Hollins Market] went into decline.

By the time the houses were rediscovered, when the neighborhood underwent a rejuvenation in the 1990s, they had stood empty for over 35 years. With an enormous pile of luck, however, all the original features were preserved.

Once local man Bill Adler, well-known for preserving and renovating homes in the area, had a look at the small row of houses, they knew they had something special on their hands.

This house still had original features inside, original floors and such, Mellett explained.

It's just unheard of because, over time, these houses get knocked down. Working class homes never make it but just by sheer luck this row was still here.

With groups already joining forces by 1997 to save the houses from demolition at the hands of Baltimore Housing Authority, research then revealed the story of the Feeley family, who moved into the house at 18 Lemmon St (now 918 Lemmon St) in the 1860s and invitations were sent out to local Irish groups to join fight.

Even with the help of a local retired judge and ex-City Councilman, Tom Ward, the fight to save the area still took four years, with an ever present threat that the houses would be knocked down.

Once this battle was won, the real work began. Although the newly established Railroad Historical District Corporation initially only had plans to make the houses secure, the project manifested into the current railroad workers museum, officially opened on June 17, 2002 by then Baltimore Mayor Martin O'Malley and Governor William Donald Schaefer.

The houses almost tell the story, the historical story, said Mellett, who arrived on the scene in 2008, moving from one of the voluntary docent roles to his current role as Board President.

Heres where the working class lived by the railroad; here's where the mid-level management lived, and here's the guys who ran the show, he continued, noting that even the Irish pub still in the district has been run by the same family since the 1840s.

Even the local church was built by the Irish, who donated their time and labor at the weekends so they would have a place of worship.

Not only does the museum act as a shrine to the Irish in the area through its Second Saturday events, and local Irish heritage walk, but it serves as a trip down memory lane for those whose families were involved in the great start to the American railways.

Interestingly, you get people in their 70s and obviously, theyre still a long way from mid-1800s, but inevitably many people who come and visit us have a railroad connection because there were thousands and thousands of jobs over the years, said Mellett.

A lot of the folks who come through here are nostalgic about the railroads: 'Oh yeah, my grandfather worked with the railroads, and he was with the Pennsylvania railroad; he was with the NY Central and look at that old railroad! We have displays that bring back a lot of memories for older people from when they were children.

Although the museum currently only opens on weekends, it is completely free and is staffed and maintained almost completely by those volunteering on its board.

There are plans to expand, however, as word spreads of their exhibition house and museum, with an aim of starting large-scale fundraising to get it up and running.

This Saturday, in fact, the museum will hold a large event combined with their normal Second Saturday events, as a group of the Ancient Order of Hibernians gather to fundraise and honor the work of Sean Pender, Dan Dennehy and Ralph Day.

Read more: The impact of the Irish on the American railway system

Out of all the houses that we could have found that could have continued through all circumstances to stay upright, this was the house that was here, Mellett states, still not believing their luck.

We're proud because we're not just a museum celebrating the resilience of the Irish people coming into Baltimore, but of all railroad workers as well.

You can find out more about the Irish Railroad Workers museum here.
On this day, Aug 3, 1823, General Brigadier Thomas Francis Meagher was born in Waterford in southeast Ireland. In honor of his birthday, we look at the astounding biography of the American Civil War hero and leader of the Irish Brigade.

Although he lived only a short 44 years, Thomas Francis Meagher, who was born in Waterford in 1823, played a pivotal part in two of the most important movements in the histories of Ireland and the United States.

Yet today, to many Americans and Irish alike, Meagher is a distant landmark of history, the Civil War hero who, early in the war, guided the Fightin 69th and following their success was asked to form the famed Irish Brigade.

New York Times Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Timothy Egan knew nothing of Meagher when he literally stumbled upon him. Quite by accident, Egan confessed to IrishCentral. After a visit to Ireland in 2009 with my family, I was looking for a way to tell an Irish American story. And then I found Meagher. I bumped into him, sort ofthe statue outside the Montana capitol, in Helena. Id never heard of Meagher until I saw the statue, and that started me down a curious road.

But the story of Meagher starts long before the American Civil War. It begins in Waterford, Ireland where he was born into privilege in 1823. Well educated in both Ireland and England by his politically-connected father, Meagher was appalled at what he saw the English doing to Ireland.

On the first page of the "The Immortal Irishman," Egan writes: You would not think in Irish, so the logic went if you were not allowed to speak in Irish. The English stripped the Irish of their culturethen introduced famine. Today, said Egan, we would call it ethnic cleansing. Its also close to apartheid. Basically, the English did everything they could to strip away the basic dignity of a people. They took religion, language, sport, property, even music. And all it did was make the Irish more defiant. They clung to their religion, they made the harp a national symbol, they even started a hurling club in the first British colony, in Newfoundlandall as a way for a conquered people to remain Irish.

Meagher grew up during one of the most interesting periods in Irish history. One of the treats of "The Immortal Irishman" is Egans wonderful description of the Young Ireland movement of the 1840s. First, there was OConnells emancipation of the Catholics; then the Young Ireland movement with Thomas Davis, John Mitchel, William Smith OBrien, and Oscar Wildes mother, Speranzaand Meagher knew all of them personally (Meagher and Speranza were even thought to be lovers).

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IrishCentral asked Egan how great was the influence of the Young Irelanders, not only on Meagher but on the Fenians of 1867 and the rebels of 1916? Meagher and Young Ireland influenced both the Fenians and the Easter Rising rebels, replied Egan. You can see his influence in a book Arthur Griffith wrote about the time of the Rising, praising Meagher, and resurrecting his words. The Young Ireland sloganIreland for the Irishwas basically the same as the young rebels used in 1916.

The thing that galvanized Meagher and the Young Irelanders was the Famine, which devastated Ireland during the 1840s, cutting the islands population almost in half. Egan takes a good look at Charles Trevelyan, the man put in charge of famine relief. Trevelyan, a fine Christian man, thought the famine was sent from God, as a means of ridding the English of the lazy Irisha selfish, perverse and turbulent people according to Trevelyanalways looking for a handout. Being altogether beyond the power of man, Trevelyan said, the cure has been applied by the direct stroke of an all-wise Providence.

When reminded that we still hear this type of stuff out of American politicians during election cycles as they cite the need to cut food stamps to the poorpitting the givers against the takersEgan said, Yeah, I actually wrote a New York Times column on this. I was in the middle of researching the famine and Paul Ryans comments came to mind. It started a pretty vigorous discussion in Irish America magazine as well.

Meagher also was close to John Mitchel, one of the weirdest Irish nationalists to ever breathea true political schizophrenic. In Ireland he was for freedom; in America, he was for slavery, and against blacks, and, especially, against President Lincoln. (Mitchel considered the slaves an innately inferior people. He also described President Lincoln as an ignoramus and a boor.)

Meagher was fiercely anti-slavery and a personal friend of Lincoln. A very strange relationship, said Egan of the Meagher-Mitchel friendship. They were very tight in Ireland; Mitchel had Meaghers back. Meagher was the voice; Mitchel the pen. Then they reunited in both Tasmania and America. But things got dicey in the U.S. Mitchel was a white supremacist, and he ended up losing (I think) two sons, who fought on the side of the slaveholding Confederacy. As I recall, one of the Mitchel boys was on the other side of Maryes Heights wall when Meaghers Irish Brigade charged.

The Rebellion of 1848 was really a skirmish in County Tipperary, but it was cited by Patrick Pearse (six times during the past three hundred years they have asserted it in arms Pearse wrote in the 1916 Proclamation) as one of the times that the Irish had risen up in arms against the British. Betrayed by an informer, it also cost Meagher his freedom when he was convicted of sedition, although he wasnt even present at the Battle of Ballingarry. His death sentence was commuted and he was exiled to Tasmania.

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Life down-under wasnt too bad for Meagher because his family had money. He lived well and found a wife. (They were to have one child, which Meagher would never meet because of his banishment from Ireland.) But he longed for freedom. As other convicts had done, under harrowing circumstance, he escaped to America. America was a fascinating mess his friend Richard OGorman told Meagher on Meaghers arrival in New York. There was the problem of all the new immigrants and the nativist backlash of the Know-Nothings.

Things havent changed a lot in over 150 years, have they? If you exchanged the Irish for the Latinos its just about the same policy. So true, agrees Egan. A point I try to make. It shows that, even though were a nation of immigrants, this anti-immigrant nativist streak comes and goes; its never far from the surface.

The Know-Nothings went after Irish Catholics with a ferocity that America would not see until the civil rights battles of the 1960s. They terrorized the Irish in such cities as Philadelphia and Boston, burning churches to the ground, but did not succeed in New York principally because of the stand taken by Dagger John Hughes, the County Tyrone-born, toupee-wearing archbishop, the man who started building St. Patricks Cathedral.

Yet as the Civil War and the military draft took center stage the moral compass of Hughes was compromised and in the case of John Mitchel, utterly destroyed. Meagher stood strong, backing the Union and remaining strongly anti-slavery. Meagher originally was an agnostic on slavery, says Egan. But he changed his view, and changed rather dramatically, after all the sacrifices the Irish Brigade made on behalf of the Union causewhich was, after all, the cause for liberation of black men. Once he came to that conclusion he was all in. And you saw, in the draft riots, that it would have cost him his life at the hands of fellow Irish had he been in New York when the rioting broke out.

The heroicsand sacrificesof Meaghers men at places like Bull Run, Richmond, Antietam and Fredericksburg was instrumental in allowing the Irish to be accepted as Americans. They were amazing warriors, says Egan, and no one thought theyd be able to fight at the start of the war. But they also kept their cultural traditions intact; they essentially took them to warthe horse races, the feasts, the masses, the plays, the poetry readings, and music.

"The Immortal Irishman" is Egans seventh book and took him three years to write. His previous books include "The Big Burn," "Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher" and "The Worst Hard Time," for which he won a National Book Award. There are many colorful charactersMeagher himself, OConnell, Thomas Davis, Mitchel, Smith OBrien, Dagger John, General Sherman, Lincoln, etc. in "The Immortal Irishman."

Did Egan ever think of making the book a novel? No, he replies definitively. Here was a case where truth was much better than fiction. If you made up the dozen lives of the period no one would believe you.

Meagher received his generals commission directly from President Lincoln. Lincoln liked Meagher and vice versa, says Egan, even though they were in different political parties. Lincoln made time to see Meagher even when he saw no one else. Lincoln shrewdly named Meagher a general as a way to win over the Irish masses to the Union cause.

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After his first wifes death, Meagher remarried in New York and after the Civil War, the couple were sent to the Montana territory by President Andrew Johnson where Meagher soon found himself the Acting Governor. There was a lot of lawlessness out there and Meagher fought the battle on the side of the angels. It may have caused his death because Egan believes, Meagher was murdered by his opponents. I do. And I think thats the emerging consensus view of historians in Montana whove looked at him in the last ten years or so. The earlier story of his death was bullshit.

One of the things that strikes the reader of "The Immortal Irishman" is the similarity between Meagher and another IrishmanJohn F. Kennedy. Both were born into privilege; Meagher came from Waterford and Kennedys people came from the next county north, Wexford; both were extraordinarily handsome with keen intellects; both were the greatest orators of their day; both were war heroes; both were heroes of the civil rights movements of their time; and both were murdered in their middle-40s.

Did these similarities occur to Egan? They did. And Im glad you noticed. I only picked this up when I was looking for an ending and starting going through stories of JFKs family, and the trip to Ireland. Many, many similaritiesthe charisma, the speechifying gift, the warrior heroism, the love of verse.

Thomas Francis Meagher, a man not only for his time, but an Irishman for all time.

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*Dermot McEvoy is the author of the "The 13th Apostle: A Novel of a Dublin Family, Michael Collins, and the Irish Uprising and Irish Miscellany" (Skyhorse Publishing). He may be reached at dermotmcevoy50@gmail.com. Follow him at www.dermotmcevoy.com. Follow The 13th Apostle on Facebook.

* Originally published in 2017, updated in 2022.
At least 30 Ethiopian troops have been killed in an attack on a base for African Union peacekeepers in central Somalia, a Somali military official said.

A suicide bomber detonated his explosives-laden vehicle early on Thursday at the gates of the Ethiopian military base there before gunmen entered the base, said Mohamed Mohamud, a military officer in the town of Halgan, where the attack happened.

The death toll is likely to rise, he said.

The Islamic extremist group al-Shabab claimed it had killed 43 Ethiopian soldiers in the attack.

But the Ethiopian Communications Minister Getachew Reda said that the assault was repelled and that more than 100 of the attackers were killed. He did not say how many Ethiopians were killed or injured.

Ethiopian troops are pursuing the militants who fled during the firefight, he said.

The African Union peacekeeping mission in Somalia, known as AMISOM, said on Twitter that there had been attempted attack on a base run jointly by the Somali national army and African Union peacekeepers. The attackers were "successfully repulsed" and some of their weapons seized, it said.

Al-Shabab, which has ties with al Qaida, is fighting to impose a strict version of Islam in this Horn of Africa nation. Despite losing a lot of ground in recent years, the armed group continues to carry out lethal attacks in many parts of the country, including near the seat of government in the capital Mogadishu.

African Union peacekeepers are trying to prevent al-Shabab from threatening the authority of the weak, Western-backed federal government in Mogadishu. Some recent attacks by al-Shabab, which opposes the presence of foreign troops in Somalia, have targeted peacekeepers.
JCD Group, the commercial property company owned by developer John Cleary, is awaiting planning permission to develop the 32-acre site at the former Mitsui Denman plant in Little Island.

The development will create 150 permanent jobs and hundreds more during construction with the first phase of the project set to deliver three separate data centres.

Demand for the 25,550 sq m site has been strong to date, according to a JCD spokesperson.

 Subject to receiving satisfactory planning permission we intend commencing site works immediately with a view to delivering the first data centre by mid-2017, he said.

The developers have access to a 60MW electrical grid connection to the adjoining substation in Little Island, for delivery in 2017 which will provide enough power to support the proposed data centres while maintaining additional capacity to support future expansion.

The proposed campus represents another part of the citys modern infrastructure jigsaw after its connectivity was substantially improved as a result of the Hibernia Network subsea cable which landing in Cork last year.

As a result of the cable, Cork can offer the shortest data transfer delay, or latency, between the EU and US east coast.

It also has a proven pool of IT talent and long track record of supporting significant global tech companies such as Apple, EMC and Intel.

The delivery of the subsea cable which has opened the region up to new sectors utilising cloud-based technology is already acting as a catalyst for other developments across the region as evidenced by JCDs plans, according to Cork Chamber chief executive Conor Healy.

Corks infrastructure will be significantly enhanced as a result of this planned development and will position this region in particular to grow the information and communications technology, financial services and digital sectors for years to come.

Data centre provision in Cork is required to underpin the continued growth of the tech market and to meet demands, which continue to grow exponentially, Mr Healy said.

The Mitsui site was sold by agents Rob Coughlan and Brian Olden of Cohalan Downing for KPMG earlier this year.

The price paid is thought to be close to 100,000 per acre although JCD has not commented on the site cost.
The economies of Ireland, along with Luxembourg, Malta and Cyprus, are in the frontline to face the aftershock of a Brexit vote, said S&P Global  the new name for Standard & Poors .

The warning comes as European shares suffered a sharp sell-off yesterday, partly reflecting the increased risk that the UK will vote to exit the EU in its referendum on June 23.

S&P said its new Brexit Sensitivity Index shows Ireland would be buffeted because of its strong trading connections across the Irish Sea.

The results for Ireland imply significant reverberations to the Irish economy should the UK leave the EU, depending on the new economic relationship it can forge with its most important trading partner, say credit analysts Frank Gill and Aarti Sakjuja at S&P.

At the least, were the UK to vote to leave the EU on June 23, the uncertainty regarding its new trade and migratory agreements with Europe would take its toll on flow of merchandise services and human capital, along with the Republic of Irelands 499km border with the UK, they say.

Nonetheless, S&P believes the Republic would in time re-orientate trade in the unlikely event the UK fails to strike some sort of new trading accord with the reduced EU bloc, in a post-Brexit world. S&P believes historical links forged with the financial centres in Malta and Cyprus make the island nations the second most vulnerable to a Brexit vote.

Transactions routed through Luxembourg to the City of London also exposes the Benelux country to potential fallout, says S&P in its research called, Who has the most to lose from Brexit?

The ratings firm says its index does not take account of potential political aftershocks. Many economists here have highlighted the political fallout in the North should the UK reimpose a hard border of customs controls between Derry and Newry.

Sterling could fall again sharply against the euro on June 24, if the UK votes to leave. A weak pound is seen as a drag on firms in the Republic exporting into Britain. Sterling fell yesterday 0.4% to $1.44. Its down 1.9% against the US currency this year.

European shares also fell sharply. Reuters reported gold sales in London had increased in recent weeks as sterling investors sought to protect the value of their assets against the risk of a sharp fall in the value of sterling, the day after the referendum, in the event of a Leave vote passing.

The confidence that has been built up this week seems to be ebbing away today, with investors once more heading for the reliable havens in the face of a sharp pullback in European stock markets, said Joshua Mahony, market analyst at IG. There is a feeling that despite recent gains, the upside benefit could be outweighed by the risk of another sell-off, especially considering the potential implications of a Brexit, Mr Mahony said.

In Dublin, Mark OByrne, research director at GoldCore Ireland, said it has seen an increase in the number of accounts opened this year by UK clients who are seeking to buy gold amid increased risks of a Brexit vote and terrorist attacks in mainland Europe. Gold has risen over 14% to 1,117 an ounce since this year, he said.
The sale announced by Ulster Bank last month sparked concern among farmers, small business owners and distressed mortgage borrowers all of which have loans in the 300m loan sale.

Ulster Bank defended the move, arguing it would strengthen the bank but Fianna Fail finance spokesperson Michael McGrath called for the sale to be urgently frozen until the Dail has a chance to review it. Mr Creed is now set to thrash out farmers concerns in a meeting with Ulster Bank chief executive Gerry Mallon in three weeks.
Operating a full-time base in Ireland since 2010, Yara now employs eight people here, including a sales agronomist and a grassland agronomist, to support customers in the better use of fertiliser and analytical tools and services.

It has a 50-year relationship with Irish clients, having evolved from different names such as Fisons, Norsk Hydro via Hydro Agri to Yara Ireland.
And just like Foreman back in 1974, this week on our farms we have all been finding the going a little tough.

Its like a jungle out there with the heat and humidity. It has been extremely difficult to work the land, with many choosing the evening and night time hours to do their chores.

One man I spoke to at the start of the week said that he had to endure the rumbling of silage trailers passing his door at two in the morning on the previous night. And while this is a bit extreme, if not a tad inconsiderate, few would argue it hasnt been a knockout of a week for weather.

And so, on that sunny note, we will pick ourselves up off the ground and take a look at the mart trade.

If you talk to cattle farmers this summer, particularly those who are selling cattle, most will agree that while there has been a notable pick up in the trade since the price drop in April, the price rise has benefited quality cattle more than plainer stock. And this is certainly the case with regard to the Friesian. The lighter Friesian is the bargain beast at the moment.

At his lowest, I have seen Friesian stores of about 300kg selling for 150 with their weight. But of course having said that, you will also find Friesians hitting the magic 2/kg at times.

Talking to Thurles mart manager Martin Ryan on Tuesday evening about the plight of the Friesian, he had this interesting observation to add. Looking at the Friesian bullock, one aspect of the present trade I find interesting is that, regardless of the weight of the Friesian bullock the price per kg remains relatively the same (shown below in a chart courtesy of Martin Ryan and Thurles Mart). Whereas if you look at the continental bullock or Hereford or Angus, you will see a variation in price per kg over a range of weights.

Then going on to report in general on Mondays cattle sale in Thurles, Martin added: Forward stores were in demand here on Monday despite it being a bank holiday. Cull cow numbers were down but met with strong demand. Calf numbers here were back on Monday with quality having a huge reflection on the price.

Thurles

Monday

2 Lm steers 322kg 760

2 AA steers 295kg 700

6 Fr steers 297kg 600

2 Hr steers 262kg 700

1 Lm heifer 400kg 1060

2 AA heifers 357kg 840

1 Lm cow 485kg 840

And whatever of the plain animal being hit harder than Foreman in Zaire, in Corrin on Tuesday, Mourneabby farmer Maurice Kelly had little to complain about.

I was very happy with the price I got for my cattle, Maurice told me, fresh from selling his stock. One lot, a Simmental-cross bullock born in March 2015 weighing 470kg made 970, while another two Aberdeen Angus bullocks weighing 527kg made 1,160. The good weights were achieved by feeding beet and ration to his bunch of 20 stores over the long winter. They cost me 300 a piece as calves, and I put another 300 each into them since.

Maurice believes strongly in buying a quality animal. I think when you buy calves you should buy quality, with the Simmental in my view the best for thriving.

In Corrin on Tuesday, store bullocks sold from 200 to 510 over the kilo, with beef bullocks making up to 850 over the kilo.

Store heifers in Corrin made from 260 to 560 over the kilo with butcher types making up to 735 over the kilo. Dry cows, mart manager Sean Leahy told me, were scarce, with all types meeting a strong demand. And in Corrin on Tuesday dry cows sold from 600 to 1,420.

Corrin

Tuesday

No Breed Sex Weight 

4 Lm steers 525kg 1245

6 Hr steers 370kg 880

4 Hr heifers 490kg 1105

1 Lm heifer 505kg 1240

4 AA heifers 280kg 695

1 Hr cow 885kg 1420

1 Fr cow 780kg 1160

And the trade for dry cows was good in Kanturk mart on Tuesday also, as mart manager Seamus OKeeffe told us in his report.

We had a smaller sale today, with 520 animals including 293 calves on offer. There was certainly a flying trade all round with calves and dry cows achieving exceptional prices. Dry cows here on Tuesday made from 250 to 600 with their weight.

Kanturk

Tuesday

No Breed Sex Weight 

2 Lm steers 595kg 1210

1 Fr steer 575kg 1140

2 AA steers 372kg 800

7 Fr steers 360kg 780

4 Lm heifers 200kg 660

1 Ch cow 705kg 1200

1 Fr cow 810kg 1270

We had over 1,200 cattle, including 600 calves, on offer here on Monday, Denis Kirby of Kilmallock mart told me after the cattle sale. Mart prices in all rings reached new heights, with buyers from every corner of the country here to purchase stock. In the suckler cow ring for example, a four-year-old purebred Limousin and her bull calf made 2,800. In the calf ring, good strong beef breeds made up to 615 each.

An entry of some Friesian heifer calves hit 400 in the dairy ring, while calved stock sold for up to 1,220.

Bullocks in Kilmallock on Monday sold for up to 2.78 per kg, while weanlings hit 2.76 per kg. Heifers sold to a high of 2.70 per kg. Dry cows went to a high of 2.35 per kg.

Kilmallock

Monday

No Breed Sex Weight 

7 AA steers 398kg 1105

2 Ch steers 363kg 950

4 Hr steers 345kg 855

2 Ch heifers 450kg 1200

1 Sim heifer 610kg 1290

1 BB cow 540kg 1270

1 Fr cow 415kg 725

Next we turn to Macroom mart on Saturday, and to mart manager John OMahony, who gave us the following report. We had a smaller sale of cattle here on Saturday with a great trade for all types of stock across the board.

On Saturday, dry cows sold from 50 under to 695 over the kilo. Hereford and Aberdeen bullocks sold from 280 to 685 over their weight. Continental bullocks made from 325 to 725 over their weight. Heifers in Macroom mart sold from 300 to 610 over the kilo.

Macroom

Saturday

No Breed Sex Weight 

3 Lm steers 560kg 1280

3 Ch steers 470kg 1135

5 Hr steers 380kg 880

5 AA steers 300kg 760

1 Ch heifer 360kg 885

1 Hr cow 820kg 1515

1 Fr cow 715kg 1115

Dungarvan

Monday

No Breed Sex Weight 

2 Fr steers 702kg 1340

2 Fr steers 637kg 1355

1 AA steer 700kg 1620

1 AA steer 640kg 1310

3 Ch heifers 486kg 1125

6 Ch heifers 423kg 1015

1 Fr cow 785kg 1370

In Dungarvan on Monday last, suckler cows with calves at foot sold from 1,100 to 1,680.

And finally for this week, in Skibbereen on Friday, dry cows sold from 55 to 780 with the kilo. Continental bullocks made from 365 to 765 with their weight.

Aberdeen Angus and Hereford bullocks sold from 310 to 620 with the kilo.

Skibbereen

Friday

No Breed Sex Weight 

1 Ch steer 450kg 1160

2 Lm steers 450kg 1100

2 Hr steers 377kg 870

4 Fr steers 436kg 740

1 Ch heifer 590kg 1380

1 Lm cow 690kg 1470

1 Ch cow 755kg 1330

Friesian bullocks sold from 180 to 305 with their weight.

Heifers in Skibbereen made from 305 to 790, with suckler cows selling from 1,000 to 1,400 each.
Amanda Mellet from Dublin did not appear in public to respond to the landmark ruling from the UNs Human Rights Committee. Her submission to the committee says that she still suffers from complicated grief and unresolved trauma.

In a statement, however, she said: With todays decision in hand, I wish to finally leave behind these painful memories, and hearing the committees findings today does help in my own healing.

But my most sincere hope is that it may assist Irelands government in finding the courage to make the necessary changes in law.

I hope the day will soon come when women in Ireland will be able to access the health services they need in our own country, where we can be with our loved ones, with our own medical team, and where we have our own familiar bed to go home and cry in. Subjecting women to so much additional pain and trauma must not continue.

Those were sentiments understood only too well by Gaye and Gerry Edwards, who hoped the ruling would bring a level of comfort and solidarity for distraught parents that was absent when they lost their first child to a fatal foetal abnormality 15 years ago.

It will help to remove the stigma, said Gaye, who remembers all too clearly the pain of making arrangements to travel to Belfast to terminate their much-wanted pregnancy.

It may help to remove some of the isolation. We believed we were the only people that this had ever happened to.

The couple, from Kilcoole, Co Wicklow, were among the earliest members of TFMR Ireland (Terminations for Medical Reasons), and welcomed the UNs ruling, although Gerry said it may increase the frustration of couples with newly diagnosed fatal foetal impairments in the short term.

There will be the difficulty of being denied treatment which the UN has said they should be entitled to but at least they will know that the abuse they are feeling is real and not a figment of their imagination, that theyre not doing anything wrong, said Gerry.

Its a very damaging experience, having a pregnancy that youve been celebrating, that everybody knows about and that suddenly is over. Theres no baby, theres no funeral, its just disappeared and the suggestion is that its disappeared under a cloud with the implication that maybe you didnt want the baby.

Gerry called on the Government to lift the cloud without delay. If there was genuine political will, they could have a bill through the Dail in six months.

In the meantime, he called for the immediate repeal of the Regulation of Information Act 1995 which has left medics walking a tightrope between providing information about abortion without being viewed in any way as promoting it.

Its a cynical and punitive piece of legislation. Getting rid of it is a small step that can be taken immediately.
Social Welfare Minister Leo Varadkar has said he is considering an automatic pension fund contributory charge for workers, styled on similar ones in Britain or Australia.

The move is to counter the situation where only one in three private sector workers are contributing to a personal pension fund amid fears of a pensions timebomb.

The minister also said he favoured an SSIA-styled private pension saving scheme, where the State also made contributions, where contributors could also dip into later in life for other reasons beyond retirement. This included if they needed access to funds for doing up a home.

Asked about the possibility of a compulsory pensions scheme for people, the Fine Gael minister said there was already payments going into state pensions and that PRSI was compulsory.

However, it is estimated only a third of workers in the private sector are paying into their pension pot, which is separate from the state pension. Mr Varadkar said this was higher as people got older and they were reluctant to pay in their 20s or 30s.

What I would like to do is establish a personal future fund, that is similar to what happens in other countries, where it is not compulsory but people are enrolled automatically paying into their own saving fund.

In some countries it is compulsory, in others you can opt out or opt in. What they have done in Britain, which I think is quite good, is auto enrolment with opt out. So you are auto-enrolled into a state pension scheme. This is in addition to your state pension.

He said now that the the economic crisis is over we can actually start to do these things.

The newly appointed minister pointed out a system in Australia, which recently experienced a boom, where amounts for personal pension funds are deducted from pay rises.

What they did in Australia is they agreed to forego part of the pay increase every other year in return for some of their money being put into their personal pension fund.

Similar pay rises are now expected in Ireland for workers following the recession, especially as the economy recovers.

Elsewhere, the minister said a process of extending social benefits to self- employed workers would begin over the summer. A public consultation will begin to try to bring in changes and some protections for the self-employed by the end of the year.

Many self-employed people get no protections or welfare payments if they become sick or get injured or have to leave work.

Obviously, linked to increased benefits would be increased contributions. I would have to consult widely on that first, said the minister.
Ruling on a case taken by a Dublin woman forced to travel to England to terminate her pregnancy after a diagnosis of fatal foetal abnormality, the UN Human Rights Committee said the State had subjected her to intense physical and mental suffering, to shame and stigma, breach of privacy and discrimination.

Amanda Mellets treatment amounted to multiple violations of international human rights laws to which Ireland was a signatory, it said, adding that the State was obliged to prevent similar violations occuring in the future through legislation and/or a referendum.

A six-month deadline has been set for the Government to respond with an offer of compensation for Ms Mellet and details of the measures taken to reform the law.

Indications last night, however, were that there would be no budging from the Programme for Government plan to establish a citizens assembly to make recommendations on constitutional changes. Under the plan, it could take six months just to set up such a forum.

Minister for Health Simon Harris said he found Ms Mellets experiences deeply upsetting and wanted to see the issue addressed but he added: The Governments commitment to develop a consensus approach with a citizens assembly is the way forward.

Simon Harris

The Pro Life Campaign criticised the ruling and accused the UN Human Rights Committee of becoming a lobby group for abortion.

Spokesperson Cora Sherlock said: This UN committee is adding hugely to the distress of families whose child had a life-limiting condition before birth, as the committee is without question saying these children are unworthy of any legal protections and therefore have no inherent value.

Tracey Harkin of Every Life Counts also claimed the UN was pushing abortion.

The ruling was warmly welcomed by pro choice groups, including the Centre for Reproductive Rights which helped Ms Mellet take her case, Amnesty International, the National Womens Council, Irish Famly Planning Association, Irish Council for Civil Liberties and Coalition to Repeal the Eighth Amendment.

Coalition convenor Ailbhe Smith said the Government must not attempt to hide behind a citizens assembly. The Government today has received its marching orders. It needs to hold a referendum, she said.

Colm OGorman of Amnesty Ireland said a citizens assembly might be useful but not if it delayed legislative action. What we need is legislators legislating, he said. It must not be a cynical kicking the can down the road sort of exercise.

In its ruling, the Human Rights Committee said Ms Mellet was in a vulnerable position after her diagnosis and entitled to the same care as women with stillbirths.

It agreed her pain was exacerbated by having to travel, separation from family, returning while not fully recovered, the expense incurred, denial of post-abortion and bereavement care and the stigma of abortion being a criminal offence in Ireland.

Many of the described negative experiences she went through could have been avoided if [she] had not been prohibited from terminating her pregnancy in the familiar environment of her own country and under the care of the health professionals whom she knew and trusted, it said.

While her case centred on fatal foetal abnormality, the committee did not limit its comments to abortion in specific circumstances.

In its defence to Ms Mellets claims, the State had insisted that the constitutional and legislative approach to abortion was nuanced and proportionate.

Ireland can not be forced to comply with the ruling but Mr OGorman said to fail to do so would see us branded a rogue nation.
With figures showing the average rent in the capital is now 1,454 a month, the Dail heard calls for more supports for tenants and concerns over how families cant save for a home if renting.

Sinn Fein deputy leader Mary Lou McDonald said that the average rent in Dublin, according to new figures this week, is a staggering 17,500 per year.

How are working families expected to pay these rents and save for a deposit on their own home at the same time? asked the Dublin Central TD.

With scores of families every night forced to sleep in emergency accommodation because of spiralling rents, the TD asked would rent certainty be part of its housing strategy when published in August.

Responding during Leaders Questions, Education Minister Richard Bruton said the housing crisis is the biggest issue for the Government.

He refused to say if rent certainty would form part of the action plan and instead pointed to the two-year rent freeze introduced by the last government.

Those provisions are in place and will be monitored in terms of policy in this area, he said.

The Government would look at all suggestions, including the Dails housing committee report which will be published next week.

But the minister said the real problem was supply.

Elsewhere, Fianna Fail TD Michael Moynihan raised the plight of elderly people waiting up to six months for home help services.
We hope he understands that he committed a personal assault and has caused physical and psychological suffering, tourists Claudio Schenardi, 38, and Elisa Malaspina, 27, said in their victim impact report. He has also partially ruined our good memories of Cork and caused damage also to the image of his country.

Kenneth Casey, aged 26, of 35 Courtown Drive, Knocknaheeny, Cork was in Cork Circuit Criminal Court for sentencing.
For ordinary-level students, poems by Bishop, Dickinson, Greg Delanty, and Percy Bysshe Shelley were the choices.

Teachers Union of Ireland English spokeswoman Liz Farrell said the large numbers of higher-level students hoping to see Durcans name on their second English paper were pleased, but that all the prescribed poetry questions were nice.

They allowed students adapt what they had learned and show off their knowledge, although elements of some questions might have been slightly difficult.

She thought a King Lear question was lovely, allowing students argue against the point raised and offer their own stance, rather than spitting out a formulaic answer. Apart from quite a challenging unseen poem, And Yet the Books by Czeslaw Milosz, she considered it a very accessible exam.

Association of Secondary Teachers Ireland subject representative Barry Hazel considered the same poem nice, and the subject interesting.

He was pleased that, as a living poet, Durcan was one of those in the studied poetry section. But he thought the level of detailed observation required in the question on Bishop made it a bit tricky.

Mr Hazel thought one of the cultural context questions was challenging, as the theme of power it asked about might not be applicable to many of the 20 works which students would have focused on over the past two years.

For ordinary-level students, Mr Hazel said Paper 2 featured extremely accessible single text questions and approachable comparative questions on relationships and social setting.

He thought the poems chosen from studied poets were a bit challenging, with the exception of Cork-born Greg Delantys After Viewing The Bowling Match at Castlemary, Cloyne 1847.

Ms Farrell said there were no standout issues on the ordinary-level paper, and the language used meant students should understand everything that was required.

In the morning, most of the 5,500 Leaving Certificate students who took engineering exams took the three-hour higher-level paper. According to Asti subject spokesman Eamon Dennehy, various diagrams and other graphics should have helped understanding of the questions.

Students would have also done well if they had a general interest in all things technological and engineering. Students had to draw from their own experience and apply their learning to solve some problems, said Mr Dennehy.

The special topic this year was 3D printing and a question on material testing referenced prosthetics, one area where the technology can be used. Questions on heat treatment and material testing required the generation of graphs from tables of data and their interpretation to solve various problems.

Mr Dennehy said the ordinary-level paper also had a feel of modernising with the times, featuring a lot of recent technologies.

Turn classroom Irish into a class career
Natasha Kavanagh, aged 24, pleaded guilty to assault causing harm at Lamb Alley, Dublin, on July 13, 2014.

Kavanagh, of La Rochelle Apartments, Lamb Ally, struck Catriona Traynor with a hammer after getting into a row with the victim and her friend Karen Carter, Dublin Circuit Criminal Court heard.

The victims had arrived at the apartment block at 8am after a night partying. Ms Carter began calling up to the window of her boyfriends apartment to wake him up.

Kavanagh stuck her head out of her window and told the women to shut up. The women began shouting and abusing each other and Kavanagh threw a carton of milk down on Ms Carter.

When the shouting continued, Kavanagh and her then-boyfriend walked down to the women. A scuffle ensued. The boyfriend, who is before the court, had a hammer in his hand, and handed it to Kavanagh, Ms Carter told gardai. Kavanagh then hit Ms Traynor twice on the head.
Waxy OConnors, trading as Waxys Bar, Marlboro St, Cork, was convicted in the District Court of letting the 17-year-old to be supplied with beer in April 2006, contrary to the Intoxicating Liquor Acts 1988 and 2000.

Waxys claimed she had produced an age card with a fuzzy photo to try to gain entry and was refused by a doorman. He did allow her in when she produced a passport and drivers licence, both of which, it turned out, did not belong to her.
The Castletownbere-based Spanish skipper and his Irish crewmate were plucked to safety from a life raft by the crew of Castletownbere RNLI lifeboat near Dursey Island just before 6am.

Paul Stevens, Castletownbere RNLI, said weather conditions were favourable and the crew were able to quickly transfer the fishermen to the lifeboat: Both are safe and well. They did the right thing and raised the alarm when they got into difficulty.

The volunteer lifeboat crew was tasked to launch their all-weather craft at 4.45am after reports a fishing vessel was sinking 11 miles south-west of Dursey Island. The lifeboat, under coxswain Brian ODriscoll and with six crew on board, was under way by 4.55am.

Weather was described as good with a force 3-4 wind and good visibility. Naval vessel LE Orla and the Irish Coast Guards Rescue 115 helicopter were also tasked, but the helicopter was not needed. Merchant vessel Wilson Weber also responded to the distress call.

The lifeboat arrived on scene of the stricken craft at 5.50am and found the two fishermen in a life raft. Both men were taken aboard the lifeboat and reported to be safe and well. Their fishing vessel sank moments later.

The LE Orla monitored the area for pollution risk. The lifeboat arrived back to Castletownbere at around 8am and both men spent the day recovering from their ordeal.

The rescue came as the RNLI launched a hard-hitting campaign aimed at preventing drowning, highlighting the potentially lethal danger posed by cold water.

The Respect the Water campaign, which will run throughout the summer, includes posters, social media messages, and graphic videos, urging people to watch out for key dangers in or near water, including cold water, and unexpected entry into the water. It is mainly aimed at males aged 16-39, but an RNLI spokesman said the advice is relevant to everyone visiting the coast.

RNLI figures show an average of 23 people die through accidental drowning around the coast each year. The RNLI, Irish Water Safety, and the School of Psychology at NUI Galway have developed a database of drowning fatalities, which found 70 people died through accidental drowning between 2010 and 2013.

Joe Moore, RNLI community incident reduction manager, said they want everyone to enjoy the water: However, it is powerful and unpredictable and people need to treat it with respect.

Each year RNLI lifeboat crews rescue hundreds of people around Ireland but sadly, not everyone can be saved. The real tragedy is that many of these deaths could have been prevented. Cold water is a real killer. People often dont realise how cold our waters can be  even in summer months the water temperature rarely exceeds 12 degrees, which is cold enough to trigger cold water shock.

He said entering cold water can cause uncontrolled gasping which draws water into your lungs: The coldness also numbs you, leaving you helpless  unable to swim or shout for help.

Half of those who drown around our coast each year either slip or are swept in by waves.

A young girl watched in horror as her dad drowned in the river Lee, it emerged yesterday.

An eyewitness to Wednesday nights tragedy in Ballincollig Regional Park said she tried to comfort the young girl on the river bank as bystanders performed CPR and battled to save the fathers life.

However, despite their efforts and the efforts of paramedics who arrived later, the victim, named locally as Michael ODriscoll, 45, from Killeens, was pronounced dead in Cork University Hospital a short time later.

Eyewitness, Melanie ODriscoll was enjoying a picnic in the park with her husband Paul and their daughter when the alarm was raised around 7pm.

She told the Opinion Line on Corks 96FM yesterday that Mr ODriscoll jumped into the river from the parks weir and got into difficulty.

People shouted to him to stay on his back, as others including her husband Paul tried to reach him, but couldnt, she said.

The victim was swept away by strong currents before he was eventually retrieved unconscious from the water by onlookers.

Ms ODriscoll said two nurses and a healthcare worker began CPR on the casualty on the riverbank, and the emergency services were alerted.

But she then discovered that the drowning victims daughter had watched the whole tragedy unfold.

I tried to console the mans daughter, I was trying to comfort her. But she kept saying thats my dad, please help him, please help him. It was horrible to see. It was heartbreaking."

She said the people who tried to help were absolutely heroic.

Everybody did their best to help the man. We tried our best to get to him, we just couldnt, she said.

Gardai are preparing a file on the incident for the coroners court.
Sandra Murphy, who ran The Rising Tide seafood bar and restaurant in Glounthaune, on the eastern outskirts of Cork City, said it was one of the hardest decisions she has ever had to make.

Ms Murphy said she and her family had done everything they could to save the business, but it had been unable to survive the recession.

She announced the closure yesterday, a day after breaking the news to her 20 or so staff. It is understood that a receiver has been appointed to the business.

The hardest post I have ever had to write. Thank you to everyone for being part of our journey @Risingtidebar pic.twitter.com/6s1acAY05q  Sandra Murphy (@sandramurphy999) June 9, 2016

It is with a very heavy, sad, and emotional heart that we are announcing that The Rising Tide has closed for business, said Ms Murphy.

After over 11 years in business, we had some truly wonderful and memorable moments but unfortunately, we were unable to survive during these difficult economic times.

We would like to thank our suppliers, our truly wonderful customers and most importantly, the lifeblood of the business  our staff.

We will sincerely miss each and every one of you.

The Facebook post was signed by Ms Murphy, and on behalf of her parents, Phil and Ted, who ran the business with her.

Ms Murphy, who has a background in HR management with the Jurys Doyle Hotel Group and Dunnes Stores, and who is a panellist on TV3s Midday and a columnist with RSVP magazine, took over the business with her family just over a decade ago. The premises is perched on an idyllic riverside location in scenic Glounthaune village.

With Ms Murphy front of house, they developed it over the years into one of the regions most critically acclaimed dining venues.

Renowned for its award-winning chowder and seafood, it was recommended by the late Paolo Tullios Taste of Ireland, Georgina Campbell guides, Lucinda OSullivans Great Places to Eat, in the Good Food Ireland guide, The Michelin Guide, and by the fisheries development board, BIM.
Anne OLeary, 44, from Ballinlough in Cork, who was forced on medical grounds to retire from teaching last year, also recorded a music video with them to increase awareness of the dangers of exposure to ultra-violet (UV) radiation from the sun.

The sun is a good thing but UV rays are what can cause damage, and what we need to be aware of, she said.
QUESTION: My wife and I cant seem to find time for sex. In the mornings I leave early and in the evenings we are both ready to fall asleep by the time we have put the children to bed. At the weekend its an endless runaround of family, children, and friends. It feels like we are falling out of the habit. Weve both agreed to make an effort to change, but we are not sure of the best way to improve the situation.

ANSWER: We spend our lives looking for the perfect partner  and then when weve found them, we are too exhausted by the constraints of work, the stress of debt, the demands of parenting, and the relentless drudge of modern life to find enough time to have sex.

In 2013, the third National Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles found that sexual frequency in Britain fell by 20% between 2000 and 2010. Dr John Bancroft, of the Kinsey Institute, blames the fact that we live in an age where there is little unfilled leisure time, and in the past sex used to fill that gap.

He has a point, but does that really explain the rise in sexlessness? Research by Georgia State University estimates that 15% of married couples in the US have not had sex in the past year. And in Britain psychotherapist Professor Brett Kahr conducted a study which found that 21% of women and 15% of men dont have sex at all, and a further 32% have sex less than once a month.

Growing awareness of the problem means that not a day goes by without the publication of yet another helpful article on how to relight the fire.

Easy to write harder to do. Sexual desire is a delicate flame. It burns brightest in an intimate space, where two people can flicker from intense to playful and back again. But expose that flame to criticism, anxiety, stress, depression or the pitter-patter of tiny feet, and it is snuffed out in an instant.

If your relationship is otherwise healthy, simple changes such as going to bed at the same time as each other, banning laptops, phones, and TV in the bedroom, showering at night, sleeping naked, locking the door, and having a tidy bedroom with clean sheets can make a difference.

If you feel your relationship is struggling, scheduling is an option, but being honest with each other about what is going on is the solution.

Too busy and too tired is a real excuse for all sorts of things, but if you and your wife were as committed to your emotional and physical relationship as you are to other interests and responsibilities, you would find the time and the energy to have sex.

Meaningful sex will take about 30 minutes or less, yet according to Ofcom, adults spend 3 hours and 52 minutes watching TV each day. Priorities?

You admit that your lives are governed by your jobs, your kids, your family, and your friends, but if you want your marriage to thrive, you need to make your relationship with each other just as important as your other commitments. It is easy to justify the importance of working late to bring home the bacon, or helicopter parenting to give your child the best start in life.

It is less easy to justify paying a babysitter so that you can go to a restaurant around the corner, get drunk, talk affectionately, and then stumble home to have sex on the sofa.

Long term, though, paying the babysitter yields disproportionate dividends, because having sex is the best way to stay married.

It is a harsh truth, but once couples stop having sex, they increase the risk that one, or both of them, will eventually have sex with someone else. And we all know how that plays

Send your questions to suzigodson@mac.com
YouTuber Meghan McCarthy (hemeeyahello13) was on hand to demonstrate the technology. First she took a fairly standard-looking smartphone and wrapped it around her wrist. That should put an end to wondering where we left our phone. And then she took a tablet, bent it in half, and showed how it easily transforms into a device more suited to taking calls.

Lenovos Peter Hortensius told the crowd that not only do these devices have a bendable display, but they have bendable internal components too.
The first instinct is to protect your children, but you also have to be realistic. How much information do you give, how much do they need to know, will they end up looking like eejits in the playground, or is ignorance indeed bliss?

In our house, weve not yet had any discussion on how it is that men can behave with such sickening violence towards women; how they get into rages, and get jealous, and always blame the woman and the drink and that such things happen all the time. I can imagine the chat and trying to explain to someone  new to the concept  how such depraved acts happen regularly. I can also imagine the disbelief from my two daughters upon hearing of how the punishment so frequently does not fit these crime.

Recent days have seen the internet almost explode with the Stanford University case, in which a young unconscious woman was savagely sexually assaulted on campus by student Brock Turner, who was was found unanimously guilty of three charges, yet sentenced to a mere six months in county jail. The womans powerful victim impact statement, read by millions, spoke out against many things involving her attack and how such cases are tried, not least the male privilege involved.

Her statement would make you want to weep. I found myself enraged by what I read, just as I had been only a few days previously by a case in Dublin. It involved an Italian man who viciously beat his ex-girlfriend.

The woman, who had met the man while on holidays in Italy, was attacked on the day of their childs christening. They were no longer a couple but had gone shopping together ahead of the baptism. Back at her house in Dublin the man, Davide Sanfillipo, saw a message from another man on her mobile.

Again I imagine explaining this scenario to someone unfamiliar with gender-based violence of how, afterwards, these two people got into the car, where their child was strapped into its seat in the back. As she was driving, he began punching the woman repeatedly to the back of the head, dragging her head from side to side. The Dublin Circuit Criminal Court heard last month that the man said he would kill her and she believed him.

She managed to escape the car and flag down a passing motorist, who took her and the child to a nearby Garda station. She had a swollen and bloody face and was holding clumps of her own hair.

Afterwards Sanfillipo, who had an address in Drumcondra, told gardai the woman had played with his patience and he had made a mistake. His counsel said Sanfillipo accepted that it was a cowardly and violent assault.

So what price, you might wonder, did Sanfillipo, pay for this mistake? Well as it happens the princely sum of 3,000 and a suspended two-year sentence.

Judge Martin Nolan called it a cowardly attack but said he had decided with some hesitation not to send him to jail because he would have a difficult time in prison due to his lack of English. What struck me rather forcibly about this, was that while Sanfillipo may have been hampered by a lack of talent on the linguistics front, the man had no difficulty whatsoever with the universal language of violence. At the time, I imagined there would have to be some sort of furore over the lack of prison time, but apart from a bit of social media action (sparked by myself), the case caused no outcry.

A further case that haunts my memory took place in March this year. It involved Dean Maughan of Innishannagh Park, Newcastle, Galway. He used repeated violence against his young wife, who had just turned 16 at the time of their arranged marriage the previous year. At one point he gave her the option of having a belt put around her neck or having her arm burned with a poker. The court heard that his victim opted for the burning because she feared for her life.

Theirs was an arranged marriage and they had a son. After the burning, the teenage girl told the court she was in a lot of pain but her attacker would not allow her go to a doctor or get any treatment for her injuries.

The details were truly heartbreaking. The girls sister, who had special needs, had died and when she came back from the funeral he gave her a very bad beating. Maughan, who was 19 at the time he married in 2013, denied the charges of assault.

Judge Mary Fahy sentenced Maughan to six months in prison for the first assault and imposed a consecutive six-month sentence on him for the second attack. She commended the gardai for treating the case seriously and bringing charges.

We hear, all through our society, and not just in relation to the Travelling community  its in all strata of society  that women are assaulted and abused and in some instances, its treated by the Garda as just domestic violence, but in this case thankfully, the gardai treated it as seriously as possible and brought charges, the judge said.

Roll forward to this week. We read of how Michael Lynch poured boiling sugared water on the legs of his then pregnant girlfriend Tara Byrd at their home on Old Youghal Rd, Cork, in July last year. Cork Circuit Criminal Court heard Ms Byrd recall how Lynch had told her he would kill her and bury her body in the woods if she cheated on him.

He said he was going to boil a kettle of water with sugar in it and pour it on me, she said. Then he said that if I screamed, he would hit me over the head with an iron bar.

He carried out the threat, and then would not allow her to go to the hospital for treatment for the burns. Through his lawyer, Lynch claimed that it was a cup of tea that he had made for his girlfriend that had spilled over her legs. What these guys lack in intelligence, they do make up for in sheer neck.

Ms Byrd, who was, we must remember, four and a half months pregnant at that time, spent 10 days in hospital with third degree burns to her lower leg and later had to receive a skin graft. Lynch denied the charge of assault causing harm in July 2015, but was found guilty by a jury, who also found him not guilty of threatening to kill his girlfriend on the same date.

Judge David Riordan sentenced Lynch to two and a half years. Unsurprisingly, Ms Byrd said afterwards she believed the 30- month sentence was light. I couldnt agree with her more.

These cases are just a tiny sample of what pass through our court system. There are many thousands more which never move beyond the kitchen, bedroom, or indeed car, where the enraged and/or jealous man decides to beat up, burn, strangle, rape, smother, or whatever else might tickle his fancy, the woman in his life or, as in the Stanford case, a vulnerable female stranger.

When the time does eventually comes, Ill have no choice but to tell my daughters that, with the way the world currently works, women simply have to suck it up.
I dont think there has ever been someone so qualified to hold this office, Mr Obama said in a video for the Clinton campaign.

Im with her, Im fired up and I cannot wait to get out there and campaign with Hillary.

Mr Obama and Ms Clinton were rivals during the 2008 Democratic primary that Obama won.

Ms Clinton went on to serve as Mr Obamas secretary of state during his first term in office.

Shortly before news of the endorsement was released, Ms Clinton told NPRs Tamara Keith: Im thrilled that the president has endorsed me. We started off as fierce competitors. Weve ended up as true friends.

"Shes got the courage, the compassion, and the heart to get the job done."



Watch President Obama endorse Hillary.https://t.co/DzKgMFgdmP  Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) June 9, 2016

The endorsement came the same day as Mr Obama met Vermont senator Bernie Sanders, Ms Clintons chief rival for the Democratic nomination. The two talked for about an hour in the Oval Office.

Afterward, Mr Sanders thanked Mr Obama and vice- president Joe Biden for their impartiality during the primary process, but he did not concede or endorse Ms Clinton.

Mr Sanders said Ms Clinton had run a strong campaign and that he looked forward to meeting her in the near future to see how they can work together to defeat Donald Trump and create a government that doesnt just fight for 1%.

Next Wednesday, Mr Obama and Ms Clinton will make their first joint campaign stop appear together in Green Bay, Wisconsin, where she lost the Democratic primary to Mr Sanders.

I want to be out there with him and have a chance to campaign with him, she said. It just means so much to have a strong, substantive endorsement from the president. Obviously I value his opinion a great deal personally.

Meanwhile, US senator Elizabeth Warren has considered the idea of serving as Ms Clintons running mate but sees obstacles to that choice as she prepares to endorse the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, several people familiar with Ms Warrens thinking told Reuters.

Ms Warren has concerns about joining a Clinton ticket, including whether running two women would give the Democrats the best shot at defeating Republican Donald Trump.

Advisers to Ms Warren, a fiery critic of Wall Street and a popular figure among progressive Democrats, have been in close contact with Ms Clintons campaign team and the conversations have increased in frequency in recent weeks, the sources said.

Ms Warren has signalled to people close to her that she is intrigued by the possibility of being Ms Clintons number two but has not discussed the role with Ms Clinton, 68, or anyone else from her campaign, said sources.

Ms Warren, 66, has been one of the Democrats most outspoken critics of Mr Trump, 69, and her priority is helping to defeat the presumptive Republican nominee in the November 8 presidential election, the sources said.

Ms Warren is also committed to advancing her own political agenda, which they described as more progressive than Ms Clintons more centrist positions.
Italian police announced on Wednesday that Medhane Yehdego Mered, a prime suspect in the trafficking investigation, was in their custody, and released a video of a man they said was Mered being escorted off a plane in Rome from Sudan, where he was arrested two weeks ago.

Authorities said he was involved in smuggling migrants from sub-Saharan Africa via lawless Libya and across the Mediterranean to Europe.

But Meron Estefanos, a Sweden-based Eritrean broadcaster who said she has interviewed Mered in the past, told The Associated Press the man in the video was not Mered, but Medhanie Tesfamariam Kidane, an Eritrean refugee living in Sudan.

I realised it was two different people, said Estefanos, who is well known in the Eritrean diaspora. Many people started calling me saying this is the wrong person.

There is all kinds of evidence that this is the wrong person, so sooner or later they will have to release him, Estefanos said.

One of Kidanes sisters said her brother was living a normal life in Sudan and had nothing to do with human smuggling. She found out about the arrest from another sister in Sudan.

Im shocked. My brother is innocent. He hasnt done anything, Hiweet Berhe Tesfamarian Kidane, said, speaking by phone from Oslo, Norway, where she lives. She said her brother is 27 years old, whereas Italian police say Medhane Yehdego Mered is 35.

Chief Prosecutor Francesco Lo Voi in Palermo, Italy, said his office was checking the reports that authorities had mistaken the identity of the suspect.

We are undertaking the necessary checks, but this seems unusual, he said.

Prosecutor Maurizio Scalia, who had joined Lo Voi at the press conference announcing the arrest on Wednesday, had no comment.

Britains National Crime Agency, which was also involved in the investigation, said it was aware of a report that the wrong man was arrested but that it was too soon to speculate.

On Wednesday, Italian authorities said the suspect played a key role in a human smuggling network moving millions of euros, and called him a character without scruples and without any respect for human life.

So far this year, nearly 48,000 migrants saved at sea from smugglers boats have been brought to Italy, Premier Matteo Renzi said on Wednesday, compared with 51,000 the same time last year.

More than 2,800 lives have been lost, most on the route to Italy, with most disappearing at sea, according to the International Organisation for Migration.
The shooting, carried out by two West Bank Palestinians, targeted a crowded tourist and restaurant district in the heart of Tel Aviv and was among the deadliest and most brazen attacks in a nine-month wave of violence. The area is located across the street from the Israeli militarys headquarters.

As prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu prepared to meet his security cabinet to discuss further responses, the Israeli military announced that it was deploying two additional battalions to the West Bank in accordance with situation assessments.

The deployment, involving hundreds of troops, includes soldiers from infantry and special forces units.

Among the participants in the Security Cabinet meeting was Israels new defence minister, Avigdor Lieberman, the leader of an ultranationalist party known for his hardline views toward the Palestinians.

Before the meeting, Lieberman visited the site of the shooting and had a cup of coffee in a local cafe.

I do not intend to speak and detail the steps we intend to take, but I am sure that I have no intention to stop at words, he said.

Earlier, defence officials suspended tens of thousands of special permits given to Palestinians to visit Israel during the current Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

COGAT, an Israeli defence body, said 83,000 permits for Palestinians in the West Bank to visit relatives in Israel had been frozen.

Special Ramadan permits were also suspended for Palestinians in the Gaza Strip to visit relatives in Israel, travel abroad and attend prayers at the al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, COGAT said.

Israel considers the Ramadan permits a goodwill gesture toward Palestinians.

In addition, the military said it had frozen Israeli work permits for 204 of the attackers relatives, and was preventing Palestinians from leaving and entering the West Bank village of Yatta, the attackers home village. COGAT said that entering or leaving will only be permitted for humanitarian and medical cases.

The military was also making preparations to demolish the family home of one of the attackers.

Israel often responds to attacks by demolishing the homes of the assailants or their relatives  a tactic that is criticised by the Palestinians and human rights groups as collective punishment.

In Tel Aviv, extra police units were mobilised, mainly around the citys central bus station and train stations, said police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld.

The Sarona compound, the scene of Wednesdays shooting, quickly reopened.

In the attack, two Palestinians dressed in black suits opened fire at the Max Brenner restaurant in Sarona, killing four Israelis and wounding nine others.
The former adversaries shared a platform at the Ulster Universitys Magee campus in Derry, and warned that Brexit could lead to the break-up of the UK.

Mr Major warned that the wrong outcome on June 23 could tear apart the UK. He added: If we throw the pieces of the constitutional jigsaw up in to the air, no one can be certain where they might land.

Mr Blair hit out at the Leave campaign, claiming it puts an ideological fixation with Brexit ahead of the damage it would cause. I say, dont take a punt on these people. Dont let them take risks with Northern Irelands future. Dont let them undermine our United Kingdom.

He also spoke of the potential damage to British-Irish relations if the UK withdrew from Europe.

Mr Blair made a connection between Britains membership of the EU, and its relationship with Ireland.

Of course there are differences that remain but I remember being the first [British] prime minister to go and address the Dail. I remember working closely with Bertie Ahern to bring about the Good Friday Agreement...

We did it by working together.

We came together as two countries, not just as politicians negotiating that agreement, and we did so with the very spirit that I think is the very spirit that should inform our thinking when we come to decide this question on Europe.

Because, for all its faults, it represents, since my fathers generation, an enormous coming together of people, a belief that in working together we can advance our individual interests in a more profound and more effective way.

And the very spirit that brought us together in making peace in Northern Ireland is the very spirit that we need to reflect upon as we come to make this decision.

It is a sizeable decision. It is a decision of immense importance to the whole of the country and I think it is of particular importance to the people of Northern Ireland.

Both former leaders had integral roles in the peace process. In 1993, Taoiseach Albert Reynolds and prime minister John Major delivered the Downing Street Declaration which argued for self-determination on the basis of consent, and paved the way for the IRA ceasefires the following year.

Five years later, in 1998, the British and Irish governments concluded the historic Good Friday Agreement which laid the foundations for the devolved power-sharing Stormont Executive.

Meanwhile, former US president Bill Clinton, whose 1995 visit was seen as a crucial moment in the peace process, said he was worried about the potential impact of Brexit on the province.

Writing in the New Statesman magazine, Mr Clinton said: I was honoured to support the peace process in Northern Ireland. It has benefited from the UKs membership in the European Union, and I worry that the future prosperity and peace of Northern Ireland could be jeopardised if Britain withdraws.
The court fined the company 800,000 and fined regional Uber executive Pierre-Dimitry Gore-Coty 30,000, and Ubers France general manager Thibaud Simphal 20,000. Half of all the fines were suspended.

The court did not hand down prison terms, and rejected a prosecutors request that the two executives be barred from running any company for five years.
Asia Resistance to India Joining Nuclear Suppliers Group Softens

A US-led push for India to join a group of countries controlling access to sensitive nuclear technology has made some headway, but China remained defiant.

VIENNA  A US-led push for India to join a club of countries controlling access to sensitive nuclear technology made some headway on Thursday as several opponents appeared more willing to work toward a compromise, but China remained defiant.

The 48-nation Nuclear Suppliers Group aims to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons by restricting the sale of items that can be used to make those arms. It was set up in response to Indias first nuclear test in 1974.

India already enjoys most of the benefits of membership under a 2008 exemption to NSG rules granted to support its nuclear cooperation deal with Washington, even though India has developed atomic weapons and never signed the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), the main global arms control pact.

But China on Thursday maintained its position that the Non-Proliferation Treaty is central to the NSG, diplomats said.

The handful of other nations resisting Indias admission to the group, including South Africa, New Zealand and Turkey, softened their stance somewhat, opening the door to a process under which non-NPT states such as India might join, diplomats said.

Theres movement, including toward a process, but wed have to see what that process would look like, one diplomat said after the closed-door talks on Thursday aimed at preparing for an annual NSG plenary meeting in Seoul later this month.

Opponents argue that granting India membership would further undermine efforts to prevent proliferation. It would also infuriate Indias rival Pakistan, an ally of Chinas, which has responded to Indias membership bid with one of its own.

Pakistan joining would be unacceptable to many, given its track record. The father of its nuclear weapons programme ran an illicit network for years that sold nuclear secrets to countries including North Korea and Iran.

By bringing India on board, its a slap in the face of the entire non-proliferation regime, a diplomatic source from a country resisting Indias bid said on condition of anonymity.

Washington has been pressuring hold-outs, and Thursdays meeting was a chance to see how strong opposition is.

US Secretary of State John Kerry wrote to members asking them not to block consensus on Indian admission to the NSG in a letter seen by Reuters and dated Friday.

Most of the hold-outs argue that if India is to be admitted, it should be under criteria that apply equally to all states rather than under a tailor-made solution for a US ally.

Mexicos president said on Wednesday his country now backs Indias membership bid. One Vienna-based diplomat said it had softened its stance but still opposed the idea of India joining under conditions that did not apply equally to all.
Burma BBC Journalist to Appeal Conviction

After being sentenced to hard labor for allegedly striking a police officer, BBC reporter Nay Myo Lin seeks an acquittal or lighter sentence on appeal.

RANGOON  A Mandalay-based journalist working for the BBCs Burmese-language news service, who was sentenced to three months imprisonment with hard labor on police assault charges, plans to file an appeal next week, according to his lawyer.

Forty-year-old reporter Nay Myo Lin was convicted under Article 332 of Burmas Penal Code, which covers voluntarily causing harm to deter [a] public servant from carrying out his duty, at Mandalays Chanmyathazi Township court on Monday after a year-long trial.

The initial complaint was submitted by Lance Corporal Ba Maw over an alleged altercation between the policeman and the journalist during a demonstration in Mandalay last year. The 2015 protest was held by several dozen Mandalay-based students and activists demanding the release of those arrested in the Letpadan crackdown that saw students imprisoned in Pegu Division for demonstrating against Burmas controversial National Education Law.

Nay Myo Lins defense lawyer, Thein Than Oo, told The Irrawaddy that the appeal would be submitted to Mandalay district court next week once the Chanmyathazi Township courthouse finishes its legal procedures.

We will try our best to get an acquittal or a more lenient sentence [at the appeal], he said.

He also stressed that the three-month jail term was an unexpected punishment as the court could have chosen to impose a monetary penalty instead.

Nay Myo Lin is the husband of Zarni Mann, a Mandalay-based reporter for The Irrawaddy who is also currently pregnant.

Zarni Mann claimed that the whole process of testimony by the trial judge was questionable, adding that the judge did not review the altercation clearly.

I think the sentence was too heavy for such a minor injury, she said. The injury was so insignificant it was hardly noticeable, she said.

According to the police, the authorities tried to stop protesters on motorbikes and caused several drivers to fall. The reporter Nay Myo Lin was among those who were caught up in the accident, after which he allegedly hit one of the officers on his left temple.

He [the judge] said he wanted to protect civil servants. But he didnt think about other people, Zarni Mann told The Irrawaddy, referring to the protesters who fell from motorbikes because of the attempts of the police officer to stop them.

She also questioned the new governments commitment to reform the judiciary and called on the government to review the verdict.

The BBC issued a statement after the verdict that the organization would work with the lawyer to support his appeal.

Both the Foreign Correspondents Club of Myanmar (FCCM) and the Southeast Asian Press Alliance (SEAPA) said in press releases on Tuesday that the verdict was harsh as the incident was not intentional and had occurred during a scuffle.

We believe that such a harsh sentence meted out against a journalist could tarnish the image of the new civilian government that espousesdemocracy and reforms, FCCM said in their statement.

SEAPA described both the charges and sentence as an attempt to diminish blame on the police, whose own actions at the demonstration had not been reviewed in the context of their legality.

Burma News International said in a statement on Thursday that the case against Nay Myo Lin deeply saddened Burmese journalists, as they are working with the new government to create a better media environment in the country.

We believe it would be appropriate for officials from the judiciary department together with government agencies to review reporter Nay Myo Lins case in accordance with the legal procedures of the News Media Law rather than the Penal Code, the statement said.
Burma Burmas Gender Issues to Take Center Stage in Geneva

Burmas government and NGOs will present reports on womens issues at a UN conference in Switzerland in July.

RANGOON  Burmas new government will present a report on the countrys implementation of gender equality and womens rights to the UNs Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women on July 6, when the committee will also hear shadow reports from womens rights advocates.

Burma ratified the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) in 1997, making the country legally bound to put its provisions into practice and to submit national reports at least every four years.

Burmas government submitted its first periodic report in 1999, followed by its second and third periodic reports in 2007 and a combined report of the fourth and fifth periods in January 2015, according to UN Women.

Khin May Kyi from UN Women said the CEDAW committee will hear the Burmese governments report for fourth and fifth period, covering 2008-2015 at its coming session to be held in Geneva, Switzerland in July. They will also hear comments from NGOs and give recommendations on how to improve gender equality.

The government established the National Strategic Plan for the Advancement of Women for 2013-2022 but, according to UN Women, it has not yet been effectively implemented.

At the session, we will talk about which laws need to be amended or drafted to best protect womens rights and stop discrimination, Khin May Kyi said. And the respective ministries are expected to implement those policy recommendations.

The government has been working hard on the advancement of women and to end to discrimination and violence against them, Win Myat Aye, minister of Social Welfare, Relief and Resettlement, said at the opening of the session of the CEDAW Mock Review in Naypyidaw on Thursday.

We need to use this opportunity to gather as much data as possible to showcase our good work and also work together to address whatever constraints we have faced in achieving gender equality, the minister said.

The Womens Organizations Network (WON), Gender Equality Network, CEDAW Action Myanmar, the Womens League of Burma and the Women Peace Network  Arakan also submitted their shadow reports to the CEDAW committee, which will be heard in the session.

An official from WON told The Irrawaddy they have been researching and preparing their shadow report for two years.

In the report, we are not criticizing the government, but instead we are giving comments on issues that still need to be addressed, said the WON official, declining to be named before the report has been reviewed.

This will be the first time that local womens organizations inside the country will have submitted shadow reports alongside the governments report on implementation of CEDAW, even though some organizations had prepared them in the past.
Burma China Backs Out of Project, Irrawaddy Irrigation Dept Steeped in Financial Woes

Irrawaddy Divisions irrigation department racks up multi-million dollar debt after China fails to deliver on an Irrawaddy River tunnel project.

RANGOON  Irrawaddy Divisions Department of Irrigation is 5.5 billion kyats (US$4.6 million) in debt after the Chinese government refused to give money to construct a tunnel across the Irrawaddy Rivera project the Chinese leadership had previously agreed to fund.

The Department of Irrigation in Irrawaddy Divisions Hinthada Township constructed a tunnel across the Irrawaddy River in Zalun Township, with the knowledge that China would provide funds for the project. But China never delivered once the project was completed.

During a goodwill visit to China in September by former President Thein Sein, Chinese President Xi Jinping agreed to provide disaster prevention and relief funds to Burma. The national government, in turn, decided to start building the tunnel with the understanding that Chinas proposed development aid would be delivered at a later time. In the meantime, 2 billion kyats ($1.67 million) were borrowed from the National Disaster Management Committee and were to be repaid to the committee once Chinas aid was received.

However, the money never came, and Hinthadas irrigation department has since been beleaguered by financial difficulties and an inability to repay contractors, Tharyar, the departments assistant director, told The Irrawaddy.

We implemented this project with the knowledge that China would assist us. They also inspected the project while it was already in the process of being implemented. [But then] China said, citing its policy, that it would not give [financial assistance] for ongoing and completed projects, only for new projects, Tharyar said.

We had no budget allotted for this project from the national budget or from funds [from the Disaster Management Central Committee]. We have no idea how to solve this, he added.

The 5.25 mile-long tunnel was designed to divert the flow of the Irrawaddy River near Zalun Township to prevent bank erosion in a number of townships, including Zalun, Hinthada, Laymyatnar, Ingapu and Myanaung townships, according to the department.

Construction began in February of this year, and by April about 90 percent of the project had been completed. The total cost has amounted to 7.5 billion kyats ($6.26 million): 0.7 billion kyats ($585,074) in land compensation, 4.8 billion kyats ($40,119) in tunnel construction and 2 billion kyats ($1.67 million) in bank retainment and construction, the department said.

Hinthadas irrigation department sought help from the director-general of Naypyidaws irrigation department and received 2 billion kyats in special funds, allowing the department to repay materials suppliers and subcontractors. However, the department still owes 3.5 billion kyats ($2.9 million) to contractors and companies.

And we still have to pay back 2 billion kyats [borrowed from] the Natural Disaster Management Committee. So our debt is 5.5 billion kyats, said Tharyar.

For the time being, contractors have not yet asked to be repaid, said Phyo Myint, director of Irrawaddy Divisions irrigation department.

They understand us, that we cant pay back the money. Higher-level authorities will have to take care of the situation, Phyo Myint said.

Former President Thein Sein instructed that Hinthadas embankments along the Ngawun River be raised by some five feet after the township experienced serious flooding last year.

Union-level authorities should consider submitting a proposal to Parliament and allotting money from next years budget. Because if the Ngawun River dyke collapses, hundreds of thousands of people will be in trouble. That tunnel is meant to divert water flow to avoid collapse, Tharyar said.

According to the irrigation department, the Ngawun River dyke runs for 17 miles in Hinthada, 19 miles in Laymyatnar, 22 miles in Yekyi and 15 miles in Thabaung, totaling over 73 miles. It prevents the flooding of over 300,000 acres of farmland.

Translated from Burmese by Thet Ko Ko
Burma Ethnic Armed Groups Look to Bring Peace Talks to Their Turf

Three allied armed organizations are calling on the national governments new envoy to convene initial peace talks in the remote areas under ethnic control.

RANGOON  Three ethnic armed groupsthe Arakan Army (AA), the Taang National Liberation Army (TNLA) and the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA)have called on the national governments new peace envoy to convene initial peace talks in the remote areas under ethnic control, said Col. Nyo Twan Awng of the AA.

Although a meeting date has not yet been set, it is likely to take place in the next week. The three groups have suggested three options for the meeting location: in Panghsang , the capital of the Wa Special Region in northeastern Shan State; the Mongla area, in the eastern part of Shan State; or Ruili, a Sino-Burmese border town. However, a government representative said that meeting in Ruili would be impossible.

Perhaps we could meet in the Mongla or in the Wa region, since weve already requested that Wa and Mongla help host the meeting. But first the government wants to hold an informal meeting with two representatives from each armed group, Col. Nyo Twan Awng said.

Zaw Htay, spokesperson for the President Offices, confirmed to The Irrawaddy over the phone that the governments peace body will meet with the three armed groups but he declined to offer any details.

Col. Nyo Twan Awng said that the groupswho were excluded by the previous government from signing a 2015 nationwide ceasefire agreement (NCA)are willing to collaborate with the National League for Democracy (NLD)-led peace committee and subcommittee.

However, he also cautioned that if the new government is serious about facilitating peace and national reconciliation, certain policies on the part of the Burma Armys commander-in-chief, Min Aung Hlaing, should be reviewed. He pointed out that some powerful ethnic armed groups hesitated to sign off on the NCA under former President Thein Seins government because the Burma Army aggressively pushed a disarmament policy for ethnic armed groups.

Col. Nyo Twan Awng claimed that the AA, MNDAA and TNLA have found common ground by consistently working together as a dual political and military alliance and that they already agree on some points of the NCA, whose negotiation process they were a part of.

While the new government has taken steps to reinvigorate Burmas peace process, even since the NLD took the mantle of political leadership in April fighting has continued in ethnic regions, particularly in Arakan, Kachin and Shan states. On Sunday, for instance, AA and Burma Army troops reportedly clashed in Arakan States Rathedaung Township.

Col. Nyo Twan Awng confirmed that more fighting between the two camps erupted on Thursday near Nwar Yon Taung village in Buthidaung Township. It reportedly took 20 minutes for the fighting to cease, and at least three soldiers were wounded.

Fighting will intensify if the government army continues its operations, he said.
Burma Ethnic Peace Delegation Reviews Political Dialogue Framework

Ethnic armed organizations and a government delegation that included Burma Army officials met in Rangoon to further discuss the peace dialogue process.

RANGOON  Leaders of ethnic armed organizations that signed 2015s so-called nationwide ceasefire agreement (NCA) and a government delegation that included Burma Army officials held a meeting in Rangoon to further discuss the peace dialogue process.

The meeting took place at a branch office of the National Reconciliation and Peace Center (NRPC) this week in order to prepare for State Counselor Aung San Suu Kyis 21st Century Panglong Conference. Modeled after a 1947 summit hosted by Suu Kyis father and independence leader Gen Aung San, the upcoming conference hopes to invoke the spirit of inclusion and interethnic cooperation of the original Panglong.

Burma Army official Lt-Gen Yar Pyae, who chairs one of two government sub-committees tasked with making preparations for the upcoming peace conference, attended the meeting with seven ethnic representatives from NCA-signatory groups.

The attendees reviewed the framework for political dialogue, offered suggestions for amendments and discussed how to include NCA non-signatory groups in the talks.

Kwe Htoo Win, secretary general of the NCA-signatory Karen National Union (KNU), said the delegation agreed to negotiate with NCA non-signatories, and to hold a meeting with non-signatories prior to the conference, which is scheduled for July or August.

If they [NCA non-signatories] want to particpate in reviewing the framework, they will need to join our group. We will review the framework for political dialogue and if we all agree, we will submit it. That will lead to an official review. Now, this is just an informal review, said Kwe Htoo Win.

Hla Maung Shwe, a member of the conference preparation sub-committee and senior advisor to the Myanmar Peace Center, which oversaw the NCA, posted on Facebook that the framework for political dialogue would be amended in advance of the upcoming peace conference.

He said the amended framework would be based on the NCA while also attemping to include NCA non-signatories, especially those who are members of the United Nationalities Federal Council (UNFC), an ethnic armed group alliance.

Dr. Tin Myo Win, longstanding personal physician of Suu Kyi and newly appointed government peace negotiator, met with NCA non-signatory groups in Chiang Mai, Thailand, last week and officially invited them to join the framework meeting.

The Irrawaddy reporter Kyaw Kha also contributed into this story.
Burma First Parliamentary Session Closes

The first session of Parliament closes after enacting nine new bills but leaving numerous issues up for debate when the legislature returns in July.

The first session of Parliament under the new National League for Democracy (NLD) government ended on Friday, with sixteen bills introduced, dozens of motions discussed and hundreds of questions raised by parliamentarians.

Over a four-month period, Parliament was in session for more than 40 days, during which nine bills were amended and enacted, while seven remain up for debate.

Lower House Speaker Win Myint told parliamentarians at the last session, to work harder for constituents during the break. The second session is scheduled to resume in mid-July.

He thanked constituents and lawmakers for endorsing the appointment of the house speakers, President Htin Kyaw and the cabinet members. Parliament formed four standing committees and fifteen other committees to work on issues related to civic and economic rights, peace, ethnic groups, finance and investment.

Among the approved bills was the new State Counselor Law, creating a new position for de-facto leader and head of the National League for Democracy (NLD) Aung San Suu Kyi, despite initial objections from military appointees.

Other key amendments to existing laws including the revocation of the 1975 State Protection Lawwhich was used to oppress political activists under military regimesand amendments to the Peoples Council and State Council Laws, which were both enacted in 1974.

Another significant hurdle for lawmakers was an attempt to amend the mandatory reporting of overnight guests under the Ward or Village Tract Administration Law. Amendments are still under discussion for this law, as well as for the Peaceful Assembly Law.

Sai Thiha Kyaw, a re-elected ethnic Shan lawmaker representing the Shan Nationalities League for Democracy (SNLD), said he thinks the parliamentary session was a success, despite problems left over from the previous administration.

Because the first session focused mainly on appointments of speakers and executives, he added that there was less time to focus on ethnic affairs, particularly the protection of civilians in conflict areas.

During the session, there were complaints from lawmakers, especially those representing ethnic minority parties, that they could not speak freely.

Lawmakers said they were given instructions to stay in accordance with parliamentary laws and bylaws, which stated that they could not speak to the media unless their questions or motions were listed for discussion on the session agenda.

When Arakanese lawmaker Khin Saw Wai spoke to the media before her motion was debated, the house speaker cut the lawmaker off while she was giving background on the conflict in western Burma between the Arakan Army (AA) and the Burma Army.

Some lawmakers who wanted to speak on the condition of anonymity said there remains too much control in Parliament and they have become concerned about how the Parliament will use its checks and balances.

But Sai Thiha Kyaw said that the parliamentary affairs committee had not performed any checks and balances yet, because most of the issues that lawmakers faced have been inherited from the former military-backed government. He added that lawmakers difficulties would be eased after gaining experience and a better understanding of parliamentary procedures.

Speaker Win Myint told reporters at his first press conference after Fridays session that his parliament is free from the control of State Counselor Daw Aung San Suu Kyiwho is very disciplined and who always asks permission to come to Parliament, even for work related reasons.

Win Myint assured the public that his actions were for the benefit of the people, notably his comments to the Minister of Electric Power and Energy regarding a blackout; last month, he urged the minister to take the electricity issue seriously and to take immediate action.

Lawmakers and voters have also been closely watching former political activists turned lawmakers speak on the issues of charter reforms, gender quotas in politics and ethnic peace.

Shan lawmakers hoped for charter reforms, which would guarantee ethnic rights, federalism and equality through official channels. But it has not yet happened and Sai Thiha Kyaw said, such amendments must be initiated by either majority NLD lawmakers or military appointees because the SNLD represents such a small number.

For now, women politicians are waiting to raise the issue of gender quotas in Parliament, as it could be easily rejected by male-dominated lawmakers who see a quota to increase the number of women in political leadership as unnecessary.

Prominent women rights advocate and lawmaker Shwe Shwe Sein Latt told The Irrawaddy that more awareness needs to be raised before this issue can be addressed, since the country has faced gender discrimination for decades.
Burma Government Polls the Public on Betel Nut

After launching a tough new policy to curb Burmas betel nut habit, the government has opened an online poll to consult the public.

RANGOON  The Presidents Office opened an online poll on Wednesday night to collect the publics thoughts on reducing betel nut chewing and spitting in government offices and public places.

On May 27, the Burmese government launched a new anti-betel policy, which includes educational programs about the diseases resulting from betel nut chewing, and the enforcement of an ban on chewing, spitting or selling betel nut in or near government offices, schools and hospitals.

This policy, seemingly more strident than that espoused by previous governments, would have to contend with what is a highly ingrained habit among men and women in Burma.

Critics have since contended that the government should instead prioritize ridding drugs, alcohol and gambling from urban spaces, since these are far more injurious to public healthfor the youth in particularand are leading contributors to criminality. Critics have also pointed to the welfare of Burmas many betel quid sellers, who could be deprived of a livelihood.

At 4 p.m. on Thursday, 2,284 out of 4,804 (47.5 percent) stated that gambling, drugs and alcohol should be targeted in tandem with betel nut. The second largest percentage group agreed with the policy aims but disagreed with the implementation strategies. The next largest group totally agreed with the governments plan. Only 120 disagreed with the plan outright.

We conducted this poll because we wanted to know the public reactions to the policy, positive or not, President Offices spokesperson Zaw Htay told The Irrawaddy. He expected the poll would continue for five more days, but this has not been confirmed.

Zaw Htay said that individual government departments would also conduct non-online polls in select parts of the country, to check for variant reactions.

Under the previous military-backed government under President Thein Sein, an online poll was conducted only once, to gauge the publics opinion on increasing civil servants salaries. The betel nut poll is the first to be conducted by the new democratically elected government.

Zaw Htay said that the polls results would be considered when state and divisional governments across Burma implement the policy.

Though the government issued the policy, it needs to be acceptable to the public, so that they may follow it. We need a positive reaction to be able to successfully implement it, he said.

We are also working against drugs, illegal medicines and bad food hygiene. But for these, we dont need to conduct a poll, since the publics opinion is already clear, President Offices spokesperson said, responding to criticism that the government should be prioritizing the control of drugs and alcohol rather than targeting low-income betel nut sellers.

In most cities in Burma, drug and alcohol addiction is of great concern to the public. In recent years, police across the country have been seizing record quantities of illicit drugs. In February, police in Rangoon seized over 260,000 methamphetamine pills worth over 1.3 billion kyats (around US$ 1 million) that had been abandoned in Mingaladon Township.
Burma Lawmakers Highlight Shortcomings in Ethnic Language Teaching

Ethnic minority parliamentarians have criticized the apparent sidelining of minority language instruction in government schools.

RANGOON  Ethnic minority lawmakers from different parties have criticized government policy on the teaching of minority languages in schools, citing the failure to incorporate it into normal school hours and the rock-bottom salaries paid to ethnic language teachers.

Min Kyi Win, a lawmaker for the Mon National Party in the Mon State parliament, told The Irrawaddy that the teaching of the Mon language only took place after conventional school closing times.

Our state parliament has discussed it already, said Min Kyi Win, adding that they had resolved to request that the Union government facilitate minority language teaching during normal school hours.

Nang Than Than Lwin, a female lawmaker from the ruling National League for Democracy (NLD) in the Lower House of Parliament, complained of the same thing to The Irrawaddy, regarding the instruction of her Karen mother tongue in Karen State; there has been similar dissatisfaction reported on the teaching of the ethnic Shan language in this capacity as well.

However, Nang Than Than Lwin said she was hopeful that effective cooperation between the Karen State government and the Ministry of Education would resolve the matter in her region.

Minister of Education Dr. Myo Thein Gyi told Parliament today that state and divisional governments are responsible for implementing the plan. We [at the Ministry of Education] will continue to provide what they need, he said.

Regarding Karen State, Myo Thein Gyi said the ministry had been providing free ethnic minority language textbooks to schools in ethnic Karen, Mon and Pa-O communities. This would continue through the 2016-2017 academic year.

Ethnic lawmakers also expressed dissatisfaction with the 30,000 kyats (US$25) per month salary that has been paid by the government to teachers of ethnic minority languages since September. This is conspicuously lower than the 50,000 kyats (US$40) per month paid to teachers at monastery schools, according to Min Kyi Win, the Mon National Party lawmaker.

They 30,000 kyats provided by the government is very low. The government should pay more, he said.

Under previous military-controlled governments, ethnic minority languages were banned on school premises and in all educational curricula. The teaching of ethnic minority languages in government schools began under the previous government in Mon State in 2014, after a bill was passed to allow the teaching of Mon, Karen and Pa-O in local schools.

The practice has since spread, but has yet to reach all of Burmas states where ethnic minorities predominate. It does not cover the teaching of other subjects in minority language mediums; all other classes remain in Burmese. It remains to be seen how the NLD government will extend the policy.
Burma Muslim Lawyers Association Launches

In wake of violence against Muslims in Burma, a group of lawyers in Rangoon has formed a new organization to fight for justice for practitioners of Islam.

RANGOON  Burmas first Muslim lawyers association launched in Rangoon with 70 attorneys on June 4, according to the group.

The Myanmar Muslim Lawyers Association Chairman Kyaw Nyein told The Irrawaddy that Burma is a diverse country with many different races and religions, and the group intends to advocate for equal rights, freedom and justice for all Muslims in the country.

We formed this association to work within the rule of law to find a way to maintain community unity while still practicing religious diversity, said Kyaw Nyein.

The new group will work together with other lawyers and will still operate under the umbrella of the Myanmar Lawyers Network, he said.

Some lawyers are worried about the formation of the new group and have criticized the move, which they say will create divisions among lawyers, according to Kyi Myint, founder of the Myanmar Lawyers Network.

There are lawyers who are Hindu, Muslim, Christian, and Buddhist [in the Myanmar Lawyers Network], said Kyi Myint. We are worried there will be divisions among lawyers or even among the people. What if Muslims only trust Muslim lawyers?

Burma saw deadly outbreaks of anti-Muslim violence during the rule of former President Thein Seins government from 2011-16, causing some Muslims to feel their rights were not fully protected.

Many Muslims in Arakan State, who are still living in camps outside of their hometowns after violence broke out in the region in 2012, have repeatedly asked the Burmese government to resettle them back home, to no avail.

We will work to protect our human rights, to stop discrimination against the Muslim community, and we will cooperate with anyone who has similar goals, said Kyaw Nyein.

The Myanmar Muslim Lawyers Association will open its first office in Rangoons Botahtaung Township this month and it plans to apply for official registration soon.

This article was translated from Burmese by Lawi Weng.
Burma Peace, Reconciliation Key to Constitutional Change: Win Myint

The speaker of the Lower House says the Constitution can be amended only after peace and reconciliation are achieved throughout the country.

NAYPYIDAW  Amending the Constitution will not be possible unless national reconciliation and peace are achieved despite the efforts of the National League for Democracy (NLD), said Win Myint, speaker of the Lower House, on Friday.

The speaker stressed the need for national reconciliation to amend the military-drafted 2008 Constitution as he met the press after the first regular session of Parliament came to an end.

This process [of Constitutional reform] may be successful only with greater mutual understanding, trust and respect, for which national reconciliation and internal peace must be achieved, Win Myint told the reporters.

Win Myint restated the NLDs campaign slogan from Burmas 2015 election, saying that amendment of the 2008 Constitution would follow after the establishment of the rule of law and internal peace.

We would like to amend [the Constitution] during this term. We will amend it as soon as we possibly can. I understand that the faster it can be done, the greater it will benefit our country, said Win Myint.

Burma Army chief Sen-Gen Min Aung Hlaing has said in interviews that he is willing to cooperate with the NLD government. But political analysts have pointed out that the military head and State Counselor Aung San Suu Kyi have not met since February.

Following the NLDs electoral victory, Suu Kyi met Min Aung Hlaing in December 2015, and in January and February of 2016 to discuss a peaceful power transfer. But they have not met officially since the NLD assumed power on March 30.

Two months into the NLDs administration, the National Defence and Security Council, of which Suu Kyi is a member as the foreign affairs minister, also has yet to meet.

The council, which has extensive powers over defense and security issues, comprises 11 members with the military holding six posts to the NLDs five.

We want to change the Constitution so much that our chairperson [Suu Kyi] traveled across the country calling for its amendment. But we just cant do as we wish, said Win Myint. How can we try to achieve a goal [prematurely] that we know will fail?

Translated from Burmese by Thet Ko Ko.
Burma Rohingya Reject New Citizenship Verification Cards

Stateless Rohingya villagers have rejected new cards that omit information on ethnicity and religion, partially postponing a citizenship verification drive.

RANGOON  A citizenship verification exercise aimed at stateless Muslims in Arakan State, which resumed last month, has been temporarily suspended in Ponnagyun Township, where residents of a small Rohingya village have refused to cooperate.

The Rohingya Muslim residents of Tarle village have refused to accept National Verification Certificates (NVCs) being handed out because the bearers ethnicity and religion is not stated on the cards, according to San Hla, commanding officer of a police station in Thaetap village. The process has been suspended for a week in the township.

NVCs are being handed out automatically to those who will be scrutinized for eligibility for citizenship under the 1982 Citizenship Law at a later stage in the process.

San Hla said the Muslim villagers had refused the NVCs even after officials explained their immediate advantages, which reportedly includes greater freedom of travel.

The Irrawaddy spoke with Maung Ne, the Rohingya headman of Tarle village, who confirmed the refusal: They told officials that they wouldnt agree [to accept the new cards] unless you first put our race and religion [Rohingya Muslim] on the cards. The officials responded that there are no Rohingya in Arakan State and soon left the village.

We are Rohingya, but this is not mentioned on the cards, Maung Ne said.

The government is currently implementing citizenship verification only in Kyaukphyu, Myebon and Ponnagyun townships of Arakan State. In Kyaukphyu and Myebon, those targeted reside in Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camps, where they were relocated from elsewhere in Arakan State after anti-Muslim violence in 2012 and 2013.

In Kyaukphyu and Myebon townships, the process is proceeding as planned, without any reported problems.

Aung Kyi, a Kyaukphyu Township Immigration officer, told The Irrawaddy on Thursday that 1,192 people have been registered so far in the township, with NVCs handed to 140. On Friday morning, the number of NVCs disbursed had reached 484, according to Thawta Thwin, assistant director of the township Immigration office.

Phyu Chay, a Muslim resident of an IDP camp in Kyaukphyu, said on Thursday that around 75 percent of camp residents had been enrolled in the process. Phyu Chay reported that Arakan State Director of Immigration and National Registration Win Lwin had told camp residents that they could travel freely with the cards in hand.

I am very happy about the NVCs. We believe that the National League for Democracy government will help us to become citizens under the 1982 Citizenship Law, Phyu Chay told The Irrawaddy.

Aung Lwin who lives in a displaced persons camp in Myebon, said that NVCs had been issued to 126 people there on Wednesday.

The citizenship verification program is part of the Rakhine State Action Plan, unveiled under the former government in 2014 in response to the violence of 2012 and 2013. As originally conceived, the scheme only permitted the states Rohingya population to apply for citizenship on the condition that they self-identify as Bengali. The status of this provision has yet to be clarified by the new government installed in April.

A pilot citizenship verification program was carried out in displaced persons camps in Myebon Township in 2014. Out of the 1,094 Muslims applicants, 209 were declared eligible for citizenship in September 2014although most were reportedly Kaman, a recognized Muslim minority group, and 169 qualified only for naturalized citizenship, which contains fewer rights than full citizenship, and can be revoked.

After an outcry from Arakanese Buddhist residents in Myebon and the state capital Sittwe, the program was swiftly suspended. It resumed only last month.

The 1982 Myanmar Citizenship Law, enacted under the military-socialist regime of Ne Win, narrowed eligibility for citizenship along ethnic lines. Those not included within 135 recognized ethnic groups must demonstrate that all four grandparents made Burma their home, and that both themselves and their parents were born in Burma. However, since the vast majority of people in Burma went without documents prior to rules requiring registration introduced in 1951, this remains very difficult for most to prove.
Burma Thai-Burmese Border Dispute Holds Up Trading Post

Burma has postponed opening a trading post on a disputed border, fearing that it would legitimize Thai encroachment into what it considers Burmese territory.

RANGOON  A long-delayed border trading post at Three Pagodas Pass between Burma and Thailand will not open until a dispute over border demarcation is finally resolved between the two countries, Minister of Commerce Than Myint told Burmas Lower House of Parliament on Thursday.

Responding to a question raised by lawmaker Saw Tin Win of Kyainseikgyi Township in Karen State, where the disputed border is situated, minister Than Myint explained that the border had not yet been demarcated accurately in line with international law.

Than Myint said that proceeding with the border post would amount to Burma accepting the current line of control, and therefore losing parts of its territory to Thailand.

Non-state armed groups have previously held the vicinity of Three Pagodas Pass in the Karen hills, but it is now under the control of the Burmese government. However, Thailand had already constructed buildings as well as a highway in what the Burmese government firmly considers its own territory.

Thailand had proposed building a trading post and upgrading the border gate to purportedly stimulate trade and development, but the Burmese government rejected the proposal, the state-owned New Light of Myanmar reported on Friday.

Lawmaker Saw Tin Win confirmed that 36 miles of highway had been constructed by Thailand up to its present line of control.

The border trading post has been suspended since 2007 due to the dispute. The foreign minister re-examined the situation in 2013 and [cited no breakthroughs]. But, on Monday the [New Light of Myanmar] reported that the trading post is now expected to be open in 2020, Saw Tin Win told The Irrawaddy.

Although the vicinity of the pass is now under Burmese government control, non-state ethnic armed groups including the Karen National Union, the Democratic Karen Benevolent Army and the New Mon State Party still control large areas to the north and south, in Karen and Mon states.

Dr. Soe Tun, chairman of the Automobile Dealers Association, said that illegal trade would continue to flourish in the area of Three Pagodas Pass in the absence of government officialswho regulate border trade in the town of Myawaddy, also in Karen State, which is the biggest official trading point between Thailand and Burma.

Actually, said Soe Tun, it doesnt matter much if the Three Pagodas Pass trading post is delayed further, because trade flow through that area is still lower than in Myawaddy or Muse [on the Sino-Burmese border in northern Shan State].

According to the Minister of Commerce, Burma currently has 16 border trading posts, four of which border Thailand. Negotiations are currently underway to open another Thailand-Burma post in Mese Township of Karenni State.

Additional reporting by Htet Naing Zaw
MYITKYINA, Kachin State  All Aike Yoon wants is to go home. But he cant. The 40-year-old is currently living in Thagara Monastery, which serves as a makeshift internally displaced persons (IDP) camp in Waingmaw Township, Kachin State. He has six children and hails from the village of Sam Paing, 40 miles from the Kachin State capital, Myitkyina. Sam Paing once was home to some 40 households, and every villager owned both buffalos and farmlands. But in 2011, when war broke out between the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) and the Burma Army, Sam Paing and four other nearby villages were caught in the crossfire and burned. Thursday marked the fifth anniversary of the outbreak of fighting that ended nearly two decades of relative peace. Aike Yoon has been living for five years in Thagara camp like the other 480 IDPs residing on the monastery grounds. It is not easy to visit his village, but sometimes he goes back to clear trees and bushes around his house. First, he needs to get the approval of the IDP camp management committee. Then, he needs the go ahead from the Burma Armys commander to enter that area. [caption id="attachment_112015" align="aligncenter" width="610"]Internally displaced persons (IDP) camps throughout Kachin State, photographed between June 2 and 6, 2016. There are more than 100,000 IDPs currently living in the state, according to a joint statement released by more than 100 civil society organizations. (Photos: Moe Myint / The Irrawaddy)[/caption] The military command post is based in the middle of Aike Yoons village, and any villager returning is watched closely the whole time they are back home. There are many military checkpoints between the camp and his village, and signs warn of landmines beside the highway between Myitkyina and Bhamo. While his home is now a burned out husk, he still would prefer to return and repair it rather than live elsewhere. In the camp, Aike Yoon remains unhappy because his familys current living quarters are cramped and uncomfortable, and they have to abide by the camps rules and regulations. If there was no fighting, I would like to return home because I have farmland and cattle, said Aike Yoon. But there are landmines around the village, so even if there is no fighting, we still wouldnt feel safe. [caption id="attachment_112017" align="aligncenter" width="610"]Internally displaced persons (IDP) camps throughout Kachin State, photographed between June 2 and 6, 2016. There are more than 100,000 IDPs currently living in the state, according to a joint statement released by more than 100 civil society organizations. (Photos: Moe Myint / The Irrawaddy)[/caption]United Nations (UN) agencies and international relief organizations provided rice and cooking oil as well other essential supplies to Kachins IDPs for the last four years. But all of that changed in January. The UN and other organizations started giving only financial assistance instead of rice. Now the relief organizations give 300 kyats (US$0.25) per day to each IDP, which is not enough to buy the amount of rice the UN and other organizations had been providing. Additionally, they have to buy cooking oil, salt and fish paste to make their food. What can we do with such a small amount? said Aike Yoon. We have to take what they give us whether we like it or not. [caption id="attachment_112018" align="aligncenter" width="610"]Internally displaced persons (IDP) camps throughout Kachin State, photographed between June 2 and 6, 2016. There are more than 100,000 IDPs currently living in the state, according to a joint statement released by more than 100 civil society organizations. (Photos: Moe Myint / The Irrawaddy)[/caption] Aike Yoons family is surviving by earning a small income from making amber handicrafts and decreasing their daily expenditures. His three sons are attending middle school but they are not sure if they will be able to keep their children in school because the aid cuts have had a major impact on the family. The Irrawaddy contacted the World Food Program, which had been the main supporter of many of the Kachin-based IDP camps, but a representative in Rangoon declined to answer questions about the funding cutbacks. [caption id="attachment_112020" align="aligncenter" width="610"]Internally displaced persons (IDP) camps throughout Kachin State, photographed between June 2 and 6, 2016. There are more than 100,000 IDPs currently living in the state, according to a joint statement released by more than 100 civil society organizations. (Photos: Moe Myint / The Irrawaddy)[/caption]La Roi, the Program Director for the Kachin Baptist Convention (KBC) Bhamo, a local relief organization, said he was told by some aid agencies the financial cuts were not just targeted at Burma, but have also affected programs worldwide. When will the IDPs return home? some international non-governmental organizations asked me, La Roi said. There is no fighting now, so the IDPs can go back home now.Dangers remain, however, leaving many IDPs reluctant to return home. The KBC director said that an IDP was killed by a landmine after returning home earlier this year. And fear of the Burma Army runs deep. An IDP living at Robert Church, Inn Khu Nam, said, I have known many young Kachin girls who were raped by Burmese soldiers. I am scared of them. I will never return until they withdraw from our village. [caption id="attachment_112022" align="aligncenter" width="610"]Internally displaced persons (IDP) camps throughout Kachin State, photographed between June 2 and 6, 2016. There are more than 100,000 IDPs currently living in the state, according to a joint statement released by more than 100 civil society organizations. (Photos: Moe Myint / The Irrawaddy)[/caption]The KBC in Bhamo, 100 miles southwest of Myitkyina, has delivered over US$6 million to 12 IDP camps home to more than 10,000 people. In partnership with UN agencies, the KBC distributed food, built shelters and provided healthcare to the camps. But some IDPs do not even have the luxury of living in a UN-supported camp. Robert Church in Bhamo houses 3,600 people, with whole families squeezed into 60-square-foot rooms. [caption id="attachment_112023" align="aligncenter" width="610"]Internally displaced persons (IDP) camps throughout Kachin State, photographed between June 2 and 6, 2016. There are more than 100,000 IDPs currently living in the state, according to a joint statement released by more than 100 civil society organizations. (Photos: Moe Myint / The Irrawaddy)[/caption] The KBCs La Roi said many problems have arisen recently, and the financial cuts have exacerbated the situation. Some middle and high school students have dropped out and are working at construction sites, phone service shops, restaurants, hotels or tea shops to help support their families. Some have even gone further afoot, with the promise of higher-paid jobs in factories and on banana plantations inducing them to cross the border to China illegally. La Roi said, This is becoming a more significant problem. [caption id="attachment_112024" align="aligncenter" width="610"]Internally displaced persons (IDP) camps throughout Kachin State, photographed between June 2 and 6, 2016. There are more than 100,000 IDPs currently living in the state, according to a joint statement released by more than 100 civil society organizations. (Photos: Moe Myint / The Irrawaddy)[/caption] During the day, the IDP camp on the Robert Church grounds is virtually devoid of men, most of whom have gone off to work in jade mines or on construction sites. But the IDPs struggles do not end in the camps. Often, they face discrimination from local communities. Even at the government-run school, some teachers have reportedly made a separate classroom for IDP children and sometimes the teachers do not allow IDP students to use the same bathroom as the local students. This discrimination is yet another factor encouraging the students to drop out of school. Some people say we Kachin people are lazy and have adopted the behavior of beggars, said La Roi. I get really upset when I hear things like that. [caption id="attachment_112026" align="aligncenter" width="610"]Internally displaced persons (IDP) camps throughout Kachin State, photographed between June 2 and 6, 2016. There are more than 100,000 IDPs currently living in the state, according to a joint statement released by more than 100 civil society organizations. (Photos: Moe Myint / The Irrawaddy)[/caption]Khat Cho, one of the IDP camps in the Kachin States Waingmaw Township, has been home to approximately 500 IDPs since the conflict started. Fighting has been intense in Waingmaw due to the presence of natural resources like amber and gold. While it is widely assumed that the IDPs are all ethnic Kachins, there are actually many Shan, Burman and Arakanese people who were working in mines when the fighting forced them from their homes. Htwe Htwe Myint is Burman and a mother of two currently living in Khat Cho camp. Her family receives 36,000 kyats a month from World Vision, a US-based Christian charity, but that is not enough to cover daily expenses. Meanwhile, her husband has struggled to find work on construction sites or rubber plantations. [caption id="attachment_112014" align="aligncenter" width="610"]Internally displaced persons (IDP) camps throughout Kachin State, photographed between June 2 and 6, 2016. There are more than 100,000 IDPs currently living in the state, according to a joint statement released by more than 100 civil society organizations. (Photos: Moe Myint / The Irrawaddy)[/caption] We are now dependent on the extra income we earn [in addition to the aid], she said. If we cant earn any more money we will be in trouble. The price of rice is going up. Htwe Htwe Myints family makes beads, necklaces, bracelets and rings with colorful amber stones, work that requires them to buy raw materials from a nearby amber-rich region. Htwe Htwe Myint and other craftspeople sell their products to shops in the cities Waingmaw or Myitkyina. The families earn some money from their handicrafts, but the products prices have been dropping over the past few months. The artisans claim the shop owners pay them low prices for their wares, despite the fact that they export the amber products to China illegally and make sizeable profits. Of Khat Cho IDP camps 90 households, almost 80 percent make amber handicrafts, said Khin Maung Shwe, leader of the management committee for the camp. [caption id="attachment_112016" align="aligncenter" width="610"]Internally displaced persons (IDP) camps throughout Kachin State, photographed between June 2 and 6, 2016. There are more than 100,000 IDPs currently living in the state, according to a joint statement released by more than 100 civil society organizations. (Photos: Moe Myint / The Irrawaddy)[/caption] Livelihood programs are run by the WFP, Oxfam, International Committee for the Red Cross and World Vision, but there are limitations. The IDPs have to create a business of four to five families and focus on jobs like livestock raising, food vending or tailoring. They also are required to submit a detailed business plan to the relief organizations. If the business plan is approved, each family would receive around 50,000-60,000 kyats (US$42-$50).According to the KBC, 32 camps are located in Waingmaw and Myitkyina townships, serving more than 14,000 people. Khong Dau, the head of Maina IDP camp, the largest camp in Waingmaw Township, acknowledged that international aid dropped off in early 2016, and described some of the new aid programs as complicated and ineffective. The decreased financial aid and change in payment method has had a negative impact on the IDPs, he said, adding that human trafficking, drug dealing and other social problems would appear at the camp if the international relief organizations keep limiting aid. More than 2,000 people from 30 different villages live in Maina camp. They became homeless after their houses were burned down during fighting in 2011. Lu Mai, a resident of Maina, said, We would like to get rice and cooking oil instead of cash. [caption id="attachment_112019" align="aligncenter" width="610"]Internally displaced persons (IDP) camps throughout Kachin State, photographed between June 2 and 6, 2016. There are more than 100,000 IDPs currently living in the state, according to a joint statement released by more than 100 civil society organizations. (Photos: Moe Myint / The Irrawaddy)[/caption]The Irrawaddy also visited Mai Kaung IDP camp of Man Si Township, located so close to the conflict zone that sometimes the residents can hear explosions from the blue-hued mountains only a few miles away. La Byart Khun, a 50-year-old mother of five children, is currently living in Mai Kaung IDP camp. Reflecting the sentiments of many people living in the camps, she said requesting food and cash from the organizations is humiliating. We would not ask for aid from them if we could safely return home, she said. Im waiting for that moment. Naw Maing, an IDP who is head of the management committee for Mai Kaung camp, said they frequently hear about peace talks but see no results. Fighting between the KIA and government troops is still intermittent around the nearby Mt. La Htaw Phone. I have heard that the government peace negotiator didnt answer the questions posed by the KIAs official, Gen Gun Maw, he said, referring to last weeks meeting between the National League for Democracy peace envoy, Dr. Tin Myo Win, and representatives from ethnic armed groups in Chiang Mai, Thailand. So I dont think well have peace. Naw Maing urged both sides to prioritize removing landmines and withdrawing their forces from the villages. We are scared of both sides, he said. They have weapons, but we are empty-handed. While almost every IDP dreams fervently of going home, one 71-year-old widow has accepted what she expects to be her fate. Inn Khu Nam has already decided that she will spend her last hours at Robert Church if the Burma Army soldiers never withdraw from her village. She said she has been spent almost five years in a tiny room, but at least she can find peace at the church. Dying in a churchyard is much more honorable than dying in a war-torn place, she said.
During the company's annual meeting on Wednesday, June 8, executive chairman Eric Schmidt told shareholders that Google parent Alphabet is working to develop a cheaper wireless technology that will allow providing ultra high-speed Internet.

According to 9News, on Tuesday, June 7, Schmidt said that he had a meeting with Chief Financial Officer Ruth Porat and Alphabet CEO Larry Page to discuss the technology. He added that, due to the improvements in semiconductors, they have in consideration point to point wireless solutions that are now inexpensive.

Google Fiber is already experimenting with this type of point to point wireless technology in Kansas City. By the year's end they plan to have a test wireless network running. The point to point wireless network is a solution that replaces the need of laying fiber-optic cables.

The company is working on wireless technologies with the aim to increase the availability of high-speed Internet and to reduce the cost. Schmidt said that the technological breakthrough consists in the fact that it can be achieved a gigabit performance with the wireless solutions.

This would be similar with the one gigabit per second Internet speed delivered already by Google Fiber in a handful of cities through fiber-optic cables. However, the advantage is that the wireless solutions provide ultra high-speed internet without the high cost or disruptive construction.

Craig Barratt, Access CEO who oversees Fiber, told Recode earlier in April that wireless internet technologies allow reaching users and houses located in lower density settings, where the use of optic fibers would be too expensive. Using some new and cheaper wireless technologies in order to provide internet services helps accelerating company's deployments.

PulseHeadlines reports that Alphabet fixed wireless internet connection works by linking to physical places wirelessly either using radio frequencies or a laser bridge. The wireless connection replaces the need of using fiber cables or copper.

The point to point signal transmission travels from on antenna to another through the air. Several types of radio antennas support different bandwidth and sort out long distances and weather conditions.
Lenovo's Tech World just wrapped up in San Francisco, where the company unveiled three new smartphone options for their customers - the Phab2, Phab2 Plus and Phab2 Pro, which all come in 6.4 inch screens. In the Phab2 Pro, Lenovo has introduced the use of Tango, a Google's camera system that is able to detect objects as three-dimensional items.

How it works, as reported by BBC, is that the Phab2 Pro's sensors are able to make sense of the objects as well as near spaces. The Tango technology is also capable of depth-sensing and motion-tracking, which is added to both the front and back cameras of the Phab2 Pro.

However, as the publication notes, the stage demonstration of the Tango technology proved to be a little difficult. It took several tries before the software locked onto the object. The items in motion also froze midway throughout the demonstration.

Lenovo stands by its decision to incorporate this technology, as it believes that it will open up several possibilities in gaming and design. Particularly for games, the company argues that characters can be superimposed over a view of a certain room. As for interior design, it would prove practical as users can theoretically see and move 3D models of furniture over an area of a home.

The items are to go on sale this September, so Lenovo still has some time to fix these areas for improvement.

According to GSM Arena, the Phab2 and Phab2 Plus do not come with Tango, but are still compelling items, especially in the affordable smartphone market.

The Phab2 has a 720p IPS screen, a quad-core MediaTek 8735 CPU paired with 3GB of RAM and 32GB of internal storage, with the option of extending via a microSD card and an 13MP camera. On the other hand, the Phab2 Plus is slightly better with its 1080 IPS screen, a quad-core MediaTek 8793 CPU.

The Phab2 Plus also comes with a dual camera setup for changing backgrouns, refocusing after images are shot, laser autofocus sensor and a rear mounted fingerprint scanner.
The Lamborghini Aventador Superveloce is an incredible, expansive and exotic supercar that can run up to 200+mph. This luxurious supercar is the new subject of Vitesse AuDessus, a team of US-based specialists of exotic materials known as Savile Row, which provides carbon fiber treatment for supercars.

After McLaren unveiled its carbon fiber finished MSO Carbon Series LT, Lamborghini announced that its Aventador LP 750-4 Superveloce Roadster will have the same naked carbon-fiber treatment, according to The Malay Mail Online.

In its decision to provide a carbon fiber makeover to the already carbon fiber-trimmed supercar, Lamborghini CEO Stefany Sanchez stated, "There is no doubt that the Superveloce is an absolutely stunning supercar. One of the car's few aesthetic failings lies in the use of highly visible plastic bodywork. Several SV owners approached us seeking a carbon fiber option for these parts, namely the lower front bumper, side skirts, rear diffuser and mirrors."

Nevertheless, the company also announced the availability of carbon fiber wheels and carbon roof in different styles. Sanchez explained, "Our wheels are the lightest and strongest wheels available on the market today. By shedding more than 25kg of unsprung weight, our wheels markedly improve acceleration, handling and fuel economy."

In related news, CarBuzz rumors that the Maryland-based Vitesse AuDessus provides their carbon fiber aesthetic services depending on preferences and budget available. Those who are looking to save money to upgrade their supercar can select the available Essentials Carbon Package that costs $1,750, and which adds new wing mirrors, front splitter and rear diffuser.

Also offered is the Extended Carbon Package that integrates an exposed carbon fiber hood which lets you add another $6,750. The most expensive offering of Vitesse AuDessus is the Veneno-inspired carbon fiber wheels which amount to $25,000. The carbon fiber themed wheels are supposedly 55 pounds lighter and weights lesser than the standard wheels equipped on the standard Lamborgini Aventador SV.
The CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform is a Dropbox-like system for synchronising and sharing files that runs inside the firewall and also provides NAS-style access.

Data can be stored within the data centre using equipment from EMC, HPE, NetApp and others, or in the cloud using providers such as AWS, Azure and Softlayer.

It can therefore be used to replace Windows filers, NetApp appliances at remote offices, and remote secure storage facilities such as Iron Mountain, senior vice-president of marketing Jeff Denworth told iTWire.

The latest updates include enhanced data-loss prevention capabilities such as domain-based file sharing controls, and providing watermarked preview-only access.

The CTERA Mobile app has been redesigned for speed and the ability to store files and photos directly into CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform.

CTERA Endpoint Backup now includes self-service migration between operating systems (eg, Windows to OS X), with contacts, calendars, email accounts, and other data being placed in the appropriate locations on the new machine.

CTERA's OS X software now includes Spotlight integration to easily locate files, right-click backup and file sharing options, and the display of CTERA Agent notifications displayed in the Notification Centre.

The company has been in Australia for around two years, Denworth told iTWire. The primary focus has been on the government sector (the NSW Government is a customer), but he expects a more even balance with enterprise customers in the future.

CTERA appeals to two main types of customer, he said; those with a traditional IT stack that want to simplify file services and data protection, and very large organisations looking for private file management and collaboration.

Savings can be as much as 70 or 80% when CTERA is used to replace edge storage, and around 50% compared with Box and similar sync/share services.

Moving users' home directories from NAS to object storage via CTERA can be the biggest win for enterprise-scale organisations, Denworth told iTWire.

Typical CTERA customers have at least 1000 employees or operate at multiple locations.

Smaller organisations are addressed by a number of managed service providers that use CTERA's product. This mode of delivery is relevant to those who want or need to ensure that their data is kept onshore but that do not require complete control over the system, he explained.
An iTWire article appears to have resulted in Linux Australia seeing the folly of not having proper arrangements in place for hosting its website.

Further, a member of Linux Australia has suggested the office-bearers should resign en masse for not anticipating a breakdown in hosting the organisation's website recently.

Linux Australia secretary, Sae Ra Germaine, posted to the Linux-aus mailing list in April to explain why the organisation experienced server downtime, ultimately because the team charged with managing this task, while recognising a risk of disruption, did not engage with the University hosting the server instead choosing only to liaise with ex-employees, and discontinued searching for a new host between December 2015 and March 2016.

Consequently, and one might suggest predictably, the organisation experienced an outage and scrambled to secure new hosting and migrate data and restore backups.

Given Linux Australia is a profit-generating organisation, essentially serving no other visible purpose than to run the Linux.Conf.Au conference each year, and reported a profit of $143K last year it must be asked why the organisation makes the curious decision to rely on donated hosting rather than simply pay for robust, and importantly SLA-backed, hosting. It is not due to financial considerations because it made the decision to purchase and own its server hardware, going for CapEx over OpEx.

Without a change in mindset, I suggested this would not be the last time Linux Australia suffered such an outage.

Predictably, a vocal minority of Linux Australia members chose to read into this either a total criticism of the organisation, or an aggression towards volunteer workers, or indeed to close their ears and just say "that journalist has no integrity" as if this made the issue at hand disappear.

Rational members steered the topic back to the actual problem of hosting, and whether my argument had a basis.

"The core point regarding hosting is a reasonable observation ... It does seem strange that L[inux] A[ustralia] would rely on donated hosting ..." stated Phillip Smith.

Noel Butler agreed. "The wrong decision to keep expecting an org like this with a healthy bank account to get free hosting. When you don't pay for it you are of course at the mercy of someone else's generosity. When you pay for it, you end up with SLAs," he stated.

Butler continued, "the fact no one took ownership and worked day in day out to move it after being given notice reflects poorly upon that team, and the fact nobody did squat till it was too late, that entire team should be asked to resign."

Butler is blunt in his message, but he reflects reality, further adding "in the real world out there ... do you think your employers would give you that option [of offering up your own resignation] if you did it to them? No, they'd have security escort you off premises so fast you'd be wondering what just happened."

Butler is right in the fundamental heart of his message, though it is a difficult line because Linux Australia is staffed by unpaid volunteers.

Nevertheless, while it is important to recognise the vital and good work of volunteers there is still an onus of responsibility in a volunteer position.

The issue remains that the outage was predictable and preventable. The issue remains that once risks were identified and Linux Australia sought to find new hosting it left this project dormant for three months.

I previously commented on the team's apparent lack of willingness to actually engage with those who held the server hosting's future in their hands, choosing instead to only deal with ex-, or soon-to-be ex-staff, and by placing a sticker on a server. This is a level of communication akin to Mr Bean's artistic appreciation of Whistler's Mother being "nice frame."

In a similar fashion, this team chose to remain silent and not act. It may be they were busy with work and with life, and being volunteers they absolutely have that right. Yet, as responsible adults, there is a reasonable expectation to make their inability to focus on, and action, re-hosting known to others.

Even Russell Coker, who lambasted much of my previous writing as rubbish, acknowledged "In retrospect it would have been a better idea for L[inux] A[ustralia] to work with people from LUV [Victorian Linux User Group] in arranging these things."

Hugh Blemings, the president of Linux Australia, made an articulate case to put this matter in perspective.

"I was, frankly, a bit annoyed that our infrastructure went offline precipitously," he states, "... but the thing that really allowed me, for want of a better term, to find peace with the situation was the realisation that actually  it didn't really matter."

"Nobody died, no one lost revenue, no LA events were dramatically impacted" he stated.

Blemings goes on to say "What we do is fantastic, important and useful, but it isn't (and probably shouldn't) be mission critical."

Blemings is right, and he correctly calls upon Linux Australia members to act with civility to each other (and towards technology journos, right?).

Yet, as much as the work and time constraints of volunteers can be appreciated, Blemings simultaneously notes, "this is not to say for a moment that we shouldn't take our responsibilities or the work undertaken seriously".

Although Blemings intervened to quell some rising hostility in the members' discussion, in a way he intervened too soon. The organisation was beginning to acknowledge there must be a better way of managing server hosting than to buy a server for an upfront cost, then ask mates to stick it in their server rack for free, and hope nobody notices when they leave the organisation because nobody really wants to have to talk to anyone.

The discussion commenced, and then with a stroke reminding people to be civil, concluded without resolution.

The issues remain, and sadly until the proper discussion has taken place with decisions made and actioned, Linux Australia can continue to expect to endure outages.

After all, insanity is doing the same thing over and over again but expecting different results.
This Week in Review

A weekly review of the best and most popular stories published in the Imperial Valley Press. Also, featured upcoming events, new movies at local theaters, the week in photos and much more.
What is a Jew? Israeli museum attempts an answer

JERUSALEMI was on a short visit to Israel and spent time with a friend with whom I have been engaged in a 30-year argument. Elli...

When anti-Semitism rears its head, we must be ready to fight it

Anti-Semitism is a force that is persistent as well as pernicious. When it occurs, it must be fought both by being confronted in real time...
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A proposed $55 million 27-story apartment tower for Milwaukee's east side has been rejected by the Common Council.

The council on Tuesday voted 10-5 to support the project, falling two votes short of the supermajority needed for approval. The zoning change needed 12 votes because a protest petition was signed by enough adjacent property owners, said Ald. Ashanti Hamilton, council president.

The opponents were Ald. Robert Bauman, whose district includes the site, along with aldermen Cavalier Johnson, Mark Borkowski, Jose Perez and Tony Zielinski.
Markable Inc. raises $1.9 million in equity funding Markable Inc., a Madison fashion technology company, has raised $1.9 million of a proposed $2.8 million equity funding round, according to a filing with federal securities regulators. Markable has an app that helps users instantly buy fashion items they see online or on the street. The app analyzes a photo and finds instantly a shopping site and best matches for the item. The company was co-founded in 2014 by Joy Tang and Fiona Wang. Tang, chief executive officer, has an undergraduate degree in math and economice from MIT and was a 2002 China Math Olympic Gold Medalist. Wang, a vice president, has a graduate degree in finance from Illinois Institute of Technology. Both executives work in Chicago and Madison.

Gearbox Express raises $1.5 million Gearbox Express LLC, a Mukwonago wind turbine service company, has raised $1.5 million to fund future growth, the company said Thursday. Privately-held Gearbox Express was founded in 2011 to remanufacture wind energy gearboxes and have them ready for utilities to install when their wind turbine gearboxes wear out or fail. The money raised was all equity, according to a filing with federal securities regulators. "Our growth is exceeding our expectations and the additional capital will fund more inventory and new products so we can better serve our customers," said Bruce Neumiller, chief executive officer.

FluGen begins clinical trial on universal influenza vaccine FluGen Inc., a Madison biotechnology company that is developing flu vaccines, said Wednesday it has begun a clinical trial of its RedeeFlu universal influenza vaccine. The trial involves 96 healthy adult subjects between the ages of 18 and 49. It will evaluate the safety of the vaccine and the antibody and T-cell responses it prompts. The vaccine has in animals induced robust antibody and cellular immune responses without producing any infectious virus particles, the company says. "We believe that Redeeflu could be the first influenza vaccine to show robust protection from drifted or mismatched flu strains," said Paul Radspinner, the company's president and chief executive officer.

Simple gizmos come from complex journeys The thing looks simple  a gadget that holds small items tightly to a bicycle frame using industrial-grade rubber bands. But behind the "SuperBand," the latest product from a little Mequon firm called BiKASE, stands a complex mix of inspiration, doubt, sweat and trial-and-error. "These products, even though they don't look like much, they can be quite costly to develop," BiKASE owner Chad Buchanan said.

Madison pharmaceutical company raises $3 million from investors Madison pharmaceutical technology company Invenra has raised another $3 million from 27 investors, according to a filing with securities regulators Wednesday. Invenra has a proprietary platform that allows for rapid screening of potential new drug candidates without using living cells. The new money will be used for "research and development and general corporate purposes," the company said in the filing.

Chamber launches HealthTech Capitol website to promote Madison area The Greater Madison Chamber of Commerce announced Friday the launch of the HealthTech Capitol website healthtechcapitol.com as part of an initiative dedicated to establishing Madison as a leader for health innovation by allowing companies to leverage talent, capital and mentoring. "With a robust ecosystem of world-class research, the market leader in electronic medical records, entrepreneurs and a strong network of payers and providers, Greater Madison is already a leader in health innovation," said Chamber President Zach Brandon. "HealthTech Capitol will help build on these strengths by supporting companies and talent in our region and building an infrastructure that will amplify our health discoveries to the world." HealthTech Capitol represents efforts begun in 2012 by entrepreneurs to make greater Madison the best place to start and grow a health technology company. The effort brought together a group of emerging health tech companies and providers from the Madison area, including HealthX Ventures, Moxe, Healthfinch, Forward Health Group and Wellbe. HealthTech Capitol is sponsored by the Godfrey and Kahn law firm, with support from UW Health and CUNA Mutual Group.

Xemex attracts attention from angel investors Xemex, a soon-to-be company that has developed an adhesive mixing nozzle with no moving parts, has attracted interest from four angel investing groups, a University of Wisconsin-Madison official said Tuesday. Xemex is one of seven projects that recently emerged from a program aimed at turning university research into commercial endeavors, said John Biondi, director of Discovery to Product, or D2P. D2P was formed as a partnership between UW-Madison and the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation in 2014. It has produced 12 start-ups so far, Biondi said.

Neenah entrepreneur to appear on West Texas Investors Club James Oliver, a Neenah entrepreneur, will appear Tuesday night on CNBC's "West Texas Investors Club." In the episode, Oliver pitches his company, WeMontage Inc., to Rooster McConaughey and Butch Gilliam. The self-made Texas multimillionaires invest in those they view as promising entrepreneurs, but only on their turf and their terms. WeMontage has an online service that turns photos into large, removable wallpaper panels. The company raised $310,000 from angel investors in 2013.

Madison chamber leader touts Wisconsins high-tech Third Wave Starting with his very first interview for the job of president of the Greater Madison Chamber of Commerce, Zach Brandon made it clear: His was not a traditional plan. Rather than focus solely on established businesses, Brandon wanted to embrace start-ups, the "scalable and salable" companies, as he called them. Some called it a flash-in-the-pan strategy. They criticized how he never even mentioned major local employer Oscar Mayer in his vision statement.

Wisconsin got more venture capital deals in 2015, but amount invested fell At least 128 state companies raised more than $209 million of angel and venture capital in 2015, with the results indicating what the president of the Wisconsin Technology Council described as a generally improving picture for early-stage financing. "I think most of the trends here are quite good," said Tom Still of the council, which puts together the annual accounting. Angel and venture financing marks an important measure of how well a state is doing at growing high-potential companies, and Wisconsin's record has been mediocre at best.

WMC launches contest to find 'coolest thing' made in Wisconsin To drum up interest in manufacturing and engage young people, Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce is holding a contest to determine the "coolest thing" made in the state. The Coolest Thing Made in Wisconsin contest will accept nominations through Aug. 31, organizers said. "We want manufacturers and Wisconsin residents to start nominating products on our website, and we want people, especially young people, to start a conversation about manufacturing and participate in voting in September," said Kurt R. Bauer, president and CEO of WMC, a major business lobbying organization that says it represents 3,800 employers in the state.

Jendusa donates $1 million to UWM for entrepreneur-in-residence program Jerry Jendusa, co-founder of aerospace products maker Emteq LLC, has donated $1 million to the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee to fund an entrepreneur-in-residence program, the school said Wednesday. The Lubar Center for Entrepreneurship , which was establishged in 2015 with a $10 million gift from Marianne and Sheldon Lubar, is constructing a new building on UWM's campus. "I am proud to support entrepreneurs in residence, who will bring real-world experience to the classroom and introduce students to innovators who are shaping Milwaukee and our region," Jendusa said. "Big entrepreneurial ideas start as a dream, and I want to encourage students to chase their dreams."

WISC Partners raises $8.2 million WISC Partners LP, a venture capital fund with an unusual, consulting-driven business model, has raised $8.2 million, according to a filing with federal securities regulators. The fund raised the money from 29 investors, the filing said. This brings to $9.2 million the total amount the fund has raised, according to www.formds.com. WISC Partners in April said it had, with Capital Midwest Fund of Mequon, led a $1.2 million funding of Pegasus Sustainability Solutions, a Fitchburg company that is building an online marketplace for buyers and sellers in markets such as hazardous waste, medical waste and environmental remediation.

IDAvatars merges with Colorado company IDAvatars, a Mequon start-up that develops health care apps featuring an avatar, or animated character, has merged with CodeBaby, a company based in Colorado Springs, Colo., that develops so-called virtual assistants. The two companies, which combined will employ about 35 people and 10 contractors, have complementary technologies, said Norrie Daroga, the founder and chief executive officer of iDAvatars. CodeBaby, which also has an office in Edmonton, Canada, has focused on developing products for websites, while iDAvatars has focused on developing mobile applications.
Pulse News and notes on health, medicine and fitness SHARE

By of the

The Medical College of Wisconsin's Advancing a Healthier Wisconsin endowment has awarded almost $750,000 to two programs: one aimed at improving access to food, the other designed to train students in life-saving CPR.

The larger of the two awards, $491,269, will go to a statewide program that will train high school students in CPR.

At least 350 schools across the state will begin annual CPR training as a result. The two-year CPR program will involve a collaboration between the Cooperative Educational Services Agency, the American Heart Association and E. Brooke Lerner, of MCW's emergency medicine department.

The second award, $251,134, will go to a coalition of partners creating community-based food hubs. The two-year program is designed to bring fresh, local food to residents in need. The plan aims to align fragmented food systems and provide a diverse range of healthy foods to underserved communities across Wisconsin.
Cookie Johnson is among the stars of China Test Girls. Credit: Frankie Latina

Mary Louise Schumacher Art City An online journal about visual art, the urban landscape and design. Mary Louise Schumacher, the Journal Sentinel's art and architecture critic, leads the discussion and a community of writers contribute to the dialogue. SHARE Marooned, by Maggie Sasso, is part of the Nohl Fellowship Exhibition. Frankie Latina on Set of China Test Girls. Jon Horvath is working on a conceptual art project that explores ideas about American idealism and that's focused on a small Idaho town called Bliss. Horvath skips rocks across the nearby Snake River, where stuntman Evel Knievel famously failed a canyon jump in a rocket.

Jon Horvath was heavy-hearted three years ago. He was driving cross country alone with a lot on his mind, carting artworks from an exhibit in Oregon back to Milwaukee.

Somewhere in the Idaho desert between Boise and Twin Falls a sign for the town of Bliss caught his eye. It seemed incongruous and oddly personal, enough to prompt a detour.

Horvath, a photographer and conceptual artist, pulled off the road and introduced himself to a man watering a corn patch in his yard. The conversation lasted for hours and included lots of lore about the little town.

Bliss, Horvath learned, has about 300 residents, a school, a church, two bars, two gas stations with diners attached to them and little else. The town has been steadily shrinking since the interstate went in, taking travelers around the city rather than through it.

That first visit turned into several and an art project called "This is Bliss," an exploration of happiness, American idealism and a particular place. Horvath is presenting aspects of his still-ongoing project as part of the Mary L. Nohl Fellowship Exhibition at the Haggerty Museum of Art.

Horvath is one of only two established artists, along with filmmaker Frankie Latina, to receive $20,000 this year. The most prestigious regional award for individual artists, the Mary L. Nohl Fellowship became even more reputable and lucrative after the decision last year that more funds would be given to fewer artists, making the prize both harder to get and a bigger get.

Horvath and Latina are both fascinating and at times wonderfully confounding artists who admirably push the boundaries of their capabilities to their limits. Both, too, are at critical moments in their careers, where a fuller expression of their art forms seems imminently at hand.

When I saw Horvath's installation, some days before it was complete, cardboard boxes filled with dozens of Dollar Store plastic flowers lined the floor, large-scale photographs were propped against the walls and portraits of the roads leading into Bliss were laid out on the floor.

Horvath showed me the glass slipper he had made from the first beer he ever drank  in a Bliss saloon  and talked about a highly redacted version of J.D. Salinger's "Catcher in the Rye." The latter is related to the legend of an athlete and businessman from Bliss named Holden Bowler who some say served as the namesake for Salinger's Holden Caulfield.

The project, like some of Horvath's earlier projects, strikes me as complex, literary, deeply personal, somehow about broader universal themes  and in need of a little editing.

Latina brings Milwaukee to the screen

Latina included a telling excerpt of a memoir, written in a matter-of-fact, hard-boiled style with Mark Borchardt (of "American Movie"), in the exhibition catalog. It's a tale of detours and travails, too, of monsoons, mosquito nets, telenovelas watching with a housekeeper and a failed film project in Colombia, in South America.

Mostly, it's a story about an artist who just wants to do great work, which is palpably true of Latina.

"Sometimes big dreams are a hard pill to swallow ...," writes Latina, who made a name for himself nationally in 2009 with the cult exploitation film "Modus Operandi" (now streaming on Netflix and Amazon).

For Latina, the fellowship comes on the heels of a big hit, a big bust and lots of interest in what he'll do next.

His current project, "China Test Girls," is a stylish, '70s-era crime flick about a depressed fashion photographer and a misplaced roll of film that documents a terrible crime. Shot in 16-millimeter, Latina has to shell out $400 for every 12 minutes of processed film, so the $20,000 fellowship prize came in handy.

I got a peek at the still-in-the-works film, in what Latina describes as a rough-cut state, though he's actively trying to get it into festivals. I'll reserve judgment on the narrative since Latina is still fussing over it and plans to do additional shooting, but I will say this: It's visually and compositionally exquisite, a gorgeous, crafted and knowing portrait of Milwaukee's built environment.

There is a putty-gray Pacer that is, unto itself, a wonderfully comedic object. It seems native to the post-industrial landscape featuring the downtown Milwaukee post office (a stand-in for the airport), empty streets near Rockwell Automation (the former Allen-Bradley headquarters) and the dusty Inner Harbor, among other Latina haunts.

The film stars Cade Carradine, Cookie Johnson, Randy Russell, Danny Trejo and Borchardt, and locals will relish a shootout atop the Gas Light Building, scenes in beloved watering holes like Foundation Tiki Bar and chase scenes with vintage cars through back streets we know so well.

I was personally fond of the murderous henchman posing as an art critic and the delicious art world-critique embedded within the film, including scenes shot at the Museum of Wisconsin Art and a cameo of its famous, weird history painting, "The Flagellants."

It's always tricky for filmmakers to create an installation for the Nohl show, the culminating event for all of the fellows, including winners in the emerging category.

Not surprisingly, Latina went subversive. In addition to a few clips from the film, he had art props from his films and amateur paintings he's found installed in the gallery, giving them what he considers a much-deserved museum show.

"I collect outsider art whenever I am at a thrift store or at a garage sale," Latina said, interviewed from Los Angeles, where he goes for odd film production jobs every few months to finance his projects. Sometimes he makes trades to snag artworks, too, he said.

Across from the wall of amateurs and outsiders is a portrait of Mary Boone, nude, by Milwaukee artist Kirsten Schmid, which is featured in "China Test Girls." Boone more or less ruled New York's commercial art world in the `80s, and her namesake gallery is still a force.

"I really appreciate the people that don't always get the shot," said Latina, speaking of the outsiders and amateurs, who typically wouldn't end up in a museum, he said.

"And I just like the juxtaposition: What would it be like if she walked in and saw herself," he said of the Boone nude. "Now she's in the museum with the people who are not accepted."

In addition to installations for Horvath and Latina, the show includes presentations of the work of the fellows in the emerging category, who each win a $10,000 prize, including Ben Balcom, Zach Hill and Maggie Sasso.

Balcom is an experimental filmmaker and programmer and the co-founder of Microlights, a pop-up cinema. Hill is a founding member of the artist collective After School Special. He created an installation "multimedia narrative mapping the physical and psychological journey of a young nonconformist" for the show. Sasso is a conceptual artist who created, among other works, a textile sculpture of the Milwaukee Breakwater Lighthouse, a visible but inaccessible local landmark, exploring its allegorical presence.

The Mary L. Nohl Fellowship Exhibition will be on view through July 31 at the Haggerty Museum of Art, N. 13th and W. Clybourn streets. For more information: www.marquette.edu/ haggerty.

Mary Louise Schumacher is the Journal Sentinel's art critic. Follow her on Twitter (@artcity), Facebook (www.facebook.com/artcity) and Instagram (marylouises).
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A piece of music doesn't need to deliberately represent an event to reflect the turbulence and emotions of the time in which it was written.

Friday morning's Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra concert opened with Ralph Vaughan Williams' Symphony No. 6, written between 1944 and 1947. Constructed of four vivid movements played without pause, the piece struck its first audiences as a programmatic work, depicting events from the war, particularly the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Although depiction of events was never Vaughan Williams' intent, it's easy to understand, even 70 years after the war's end, how audiences in postwar Britain heard the wrenching piece's most dramatic, jarring sounds as depictions of the horrors they had just survived.

Guest conductor Carlos Kalmar and the MSO filled the program's first half with an intense, dynamic performance of the Vaughan Williams, marking the first time the MSO performed the composition.

From bold, aggressive passages, to gently rocking, lyrical ones and dark, foreboding murmurs, Kalmar and the orchestra made stirring music. Their delivery ranged from well-balanced playing, in which one heard hints of jazz harmonies and rhythms, to angst-filled, driving lines, an intimate quartet featuring the principals of the cello, viola and two violins sections, and impassioned abandon in the piece's biggest moments.

The program's second half was filled by a wonderfully mercurial performance of Beethoven's Symphony No. 3 ("Eroica").

Each movement was constructed of expressive contrasts. The first movement moved from lilting, flowing melodies to emphatic bursts of sound and energy. Opening the second movement with gravitas, Kalmar and the players ranged from delicate, intimate moments to extroverted swells.

A bright, light opening to the third movement gave way to absolute passion, followed by a fourth movement in which beautifully shaped phrases, restrained dynamics and thoughtful layering of voices eventually gave way to thrilling musical abandon.

Kalmar spoke briefly to the audience before the concert began, giving a few thoughtful, articulate comments on both the Vaughan Williams and the Beethoven.

This MSO program will be repeated at 8 p.m. Saturday at the Marcus Center, 929 N. Water St. For ticket information visit www.mso.org or call (414) 273-7206.
SHARE Violinist Rachel Barton Pine will perform at North Shore Congregational Church in Fox Point on June 17. Lisa-Marie Mazzucco

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Some things in this life are just meant to be.

Take the upcoming Great Lakes Baroque concert featuring internationally renowned, wildly versatile violinist Rachel Barton Pine and harpsichordist Jory Vinikour, artistic director of the GLB series, who also happens to be an internationally renowned performer and conductor.

The two musicians, both of whom make their homes in Chicago, are friends who have not, until this summer, had the opportunity to play a concert together.

Both Pine and Vinikour say they were delighted when they received an invitation to perform a July 19 duo recital in Indianapolis. But for Vinikour, the invitation presented an opportunity.

"We wanted to have her here at Great Lakes Baroque," Vinikour explained recently. "But I thought we have to wait two, three or maybe four years because of her schedule."

"As it turned out, she was enthusiastic about the possibility of getting to do the program twice," Vinikour said. "I went to the board (of Great Lakes Baroque) and explained that I had this extraordinary situation."

The result is that Pine and Vinikour will also play their all-Bach duo recital June 17 at the North Shore Congregational Church in Fox Point.

"I think the last I concert I did in Milwaukee was the Bruch Scottish Fantasy with the Milwaukee Symphony," Pine said during a recent phone interview.

Although Pine spends most of her professional time performing with symphony orchestras, she is also in great demand as a performer of early and Baroque music, playing Baroque violin, viola d'amore, Renaissance violin and rebec.

"Soloing with an orchestra is what I love best," she said. "But for me that's like eating the same meal every night of your life."

"I discovered period instrument playing at 14," she said, explaining that when she was in grade school, her principal recommended that her parents home school her so that she could devote more time to the violin.

"Home schooling, ironically, made my life more 'normal.' I was able to study and practice during the day and play with friends after school like a normal kid. It also freed me up to pursue different musical interests."

"Different" is definitely the word for her musical interests. She loves jam nights at Chicago's only Scottish bar and spent several years playing electric violin with the now-defunct thrash/doom metal band Earthen Grave  including performances at Milwaukee's also now-defunct "Days of the Doomed" Fest.

Describing her electric violin as a "six-string, flying-V style instrument that covers all of the violin range, the viola range and a little of cello range," she said it's, "strapped to your body so you can really head bang while you play." (Check out a video clip at bit.ly/1U7CSLI.)

On the other extreme of musical interests stands her profoundly expressive new recording of Bach's works for violin, "Testament." (Take a peek at one of the recording sessions: bit.ly/1OdtYx7.)

"My interests are actually very narrow," Pine said. "If it has to do with the violin, I'm interested. If it doesn't, well...."

Vinikour, too, has a wide range of harpsichord interests, which include frequent collaborations with some of the finest early musicians in Europe and North America, including a performance this past season with Anne Sofie von Otter and Andreas Scholl, conducted by Nicholas McGegan.

But Vinikour, known for his interpretations of music from the glory days of the harpsichord, including Bach, is also attracted to modern pieces for the instrument, such as this Harold Meltzer "Toccata":bit.ly/1UfATq4.

In Milwaukee, Pine and Vinikour will present two of Bach's sonatas for violin and harpsichord. Pine, who will play her 1770 Gagliano violin for the concert, will also perform Bach's Partita for violin in D minor; Vinikour will perform the composer's Partita for harpsichord in D major.

IF YOU GO

Pine and Vinikour's Great Lakes Baroque concert will take place at 7 p.m. June 17, at North Shore Congregational Church, 7330 N. Santa Monica Blvd., Fox Point. For ticket info, visit www.greatlakesbaroque.org/
SHARE Barkskins: A Novel. By Annie Proulx. Scribner. 736 pages. $32.

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Early in "Barkskins," her three-century saga about two North American families involved in deforesting the world, Annie Proulx describes a man who "felt himself caught in the sweeping current of events he was powerless to escape."

I know the feeling, having slogged through this hugely disappointing and seemingly interminable novel, populated by hundreds of nearly indistinguishable characters. They come and go faster than the trees, whose death by a thousand cuts is continually decried.

Here's Proulx's narrator in the first chapter, already sermonizing away in the first of countless scenes in which we'll see sharp steel meet wood, with predictable consequences:

"As he cut, the wildness of the world receded, the vast invisible web of filaments that connected human life to animals, trees to flesh and bones to grass shivered as each tree fell and one by one the web strands snapped."

There'll be plenty more of the same in "Barkskins," par for the course with a writer who has recently castigated the "the usual white-man capitalist attitude toward the natural world of North America."

"The newcomers did not care to understand the strange new country beyond taking whatever turned a profit," we're told several hundred pages later. "When the great onslaught on tropical forests began, they were in the van, taking all they could," we're told a few hundred pages after that.

And so it goes, often in embarrassingly overwritten prose, light years removed from Proulx's spellbinding "The Shipping News" (1993).

"The days were short and the setting sun was snarled in rags of flying storm cloud. The snow turned lurid, hurling away like cast blood," one passage reads. "There was the sense of an implacable, even malevolent, force bending the meteorite-streaked night," reads another.

Moving beyond its initial New England and eastern Canadian settings, "Barkskins" includes a layover in Detroit, an extended stay in Chicago and jaunts to China, Europe, New Zealand and Brazil.

Along the way, one of Proulx's two founding French families becomes evil timber barons; the other family intermarries with the indigenous population to become noble natives, continually lamenting paradise lost. Characters suggestive of soap opera are mechanically shuffled on and off stage to feed the plot and complete the family trees included in the appendix.

Meanwhile, as Proulx accurately writes of a book giving particularly short shrift to the past century, "the years slid by distinguished only by accidents, injuries, wildfire and strange events."

Characters disappear or are murdered. They're killed in bizarre accidents, fires and drowning. One dies from an infection caused by a nail in a new shoe. Many die while logging; it's through descriptions of these "barkskins" at work that Proulx comes closest to creating a believable world, involving hardscrabble lives.

But none of the characters in "Barkskins" talk like actual people; many are freighted with clunky, research-laden exposition allowing Proulx to squeeze in yet one more superfluous factoid. Characters experience stunning volte-faces, like this:

"Why had he come back? What had changed him, he who cared for nothing but himself, who acted on fleeting impulse?"

Who knows? And who cares?

Having spent too little time with this character to realize he was flawed in these ways, the answers provided by his relative are equally terse and unpersuasive: "Sometimes good men start out very bad. I was bad like that."

Proulx's efforts to add flesh to her stick figures are formulaic: "Good" characters are given an offsetting "bad" trait, and vice versa. One of her more interesting characters  a German preservationist who becomes a logging entrepreneur  provides an illustrative example; we're told he's conflicted, but that struggle is neither internalized nor dramatized.

Instead we relentlessly roll on; intent on showing us the whole forest, Proulx doesn't make time for its individual trees, compromising her view  and ours  of the big picture. "The forest was a distant smudge," one character reflects. He could have been describing "Barkskins" itself.
By of the

Calvin Sidey, the aged cowboy in Larry Watson's new novel, "As Good As Gone" (Algonquin Books), has a problem-solving approach akin to Clint Eastwood's character in "Gran Torino."

After the neighbors' unruly dog Queenie overturns garbage cans, Calvin lets them know he'll handle any repeat offenses by shooting her. His wide-eyed grandson later asks if he'd really do that.

"I don't say I'll do a thing if I'm not willing to follow through. Which is the way everyone should live," Calvin responds.

That's an understandable approach for a movie cowboy, but a more problematic, even potentially fatal, one in 1960s America, a conflict Watson explores in "As Good As Gone." For a long time, Watson called this novel "Cowboy in the Basement," referring literally to the room where Calvin stays while temporarily minding his teen and tween grandchildren  and, figuratively, evoking the way this archetype continues to influence American culture, sometimes destructively.

Watson will celebrate publication of "As Good As Gone" at 7 p.m. June 21 at Boswell Books, 2559 N. Downer Ave., via a public conversation with Mitch Teich of WUWM-FM's "Lake Effect." A North Dakota native, Watson taught at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point for 25 years (his students included fantasy novelist Patrick Rothfuss) before joining the Marquette University English faculty in 2003.

Many folks will recognize Watson as the author of "Montana 1948" (1993), a powerful tale of conflict between family loyalty and the duty to serve justice  and a popular choice for both book groups and schools. Most of his fiction is set in a time and place we could call Watsonia  sparsely populated Montana, North Dakota and western Minnesota between the late 1940s and early 1960s.

The Wisconsin Library Association has given Watson its literary book of the year award three times: for "Montana 1948" in 1994; "Orchard," his only novel set in Wisconsin, in 2004; and "American Boy" in 2014.

As a boy, Watson loved Western movies, particular Lash LaRue's. His grandfather had been a real cowboy, but not one who romanticized cowpunching.

"I don't think he thought of that time in his life as particularly glorious," Watson said, noting that his grandfather was prouder of his homesteading and community-building years.

In "As Good As Gone," Calvin doesn't romanticize the cowboy way, either. But he escapes back into that loner life after the accidental death of his French wife, a World War II bride. After years of estrangement from his grown son, he's called on to mind the grandchildren during their mother's operation. During Calvin's interregnum, people attracted by teenage Ann's beauty bring trouble to the family, and meet with trouble from the cowboy. In a novel dominated by the archetype of the strong, silent type, some of this trouble comes from people who don't speak up when they need to.

Calvin becomes involved with the widow next door, Beverly Lodge, who offers a sharp and delightful contrast to his laconic ways. She sees Calvin for who he is  including his tendency to approach every interaction as a fight  but responds with genuine desire for an honest connection, even eliciting a few vulnerable moments from this stony man. After Calvin makes a self-critical remark about his treatment of his son, she brightly replies, "My, my, Mr. Sidey. Is that a cotton shirt you're wearing? Or a hair shirt?"

So why hasn't one of Wisconsin's leading novelists written more about Wisconsin? "Because I live in Wisconsin," Watson said. "It's too close."

He set "Orchard," a story of art and erotic obsession, in Door County, but only after he and his wife, Susan, sold the place they had owned there: "My wife said, as soon as we leave a place, then it's going to be fair game for my fiction."

Watson feels "pretty good" about reading culture today. "A lot of people are reading, mostly women. And they buy books," he said. "There are so many good books out there, I don't think anybody is really dominating the conversation either about what kinds of books are best or which books must be read.

"Maybe that's a good thing. It's like a lot of other things in the culture. We don't listen to the same music, we don't watch the same movies. We don't read the same books."

SUMMER READING

100 suggestions for reading this summer: bit.ly/1tcRFeR.

IF YOU GO

Larry Watson will speak in conversation with Mitch Teich of WUWM-FM's "Lake Effect" at 7p.m. June 21 at Boswell Book Company, 2559 N. Downer Ave.

Watson also will speak at 7 p.m. June 22 at Books & Company, 1039 Summit Ave., Oconomowoc.
Antonio M. Smith is charged with killing a man, executing a 17-year-old girl who witnessed the slaying and trying to arrange for to eliminate another witness. Credit: Milwaukee County Sheriff's Office

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By of the

A major trial highlighting the growing problem of witness intimidation in Milwaukee's criminal justice system is set to unfold in July, after a hearing Thursday.

Antonio Smith, 34, is charged with killing a man, executing a 17-year-old girl who witnessed the slaying and trying to arrange to eliminate another witness.

Smith is scheduled to go on trial with his nephew, Shaheem M. Smith, who is charged in the plot to kill the witness.

Antonio Smith's attorney, Tom Erickson, said Thursday that he was having difficulty getting time to meet with his client, who is being held in a state prison because of a previous conviction. He is in segregation limiting the time that Erickson said he can meet with Smith to go over thousands of pages of reports and 300 hours of recorded calls.

Assistant District Attorney Karl Hayes said Smith must stay in segregation because he has used other inmates' calling cards to try to secretly communicate threats.

Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge J.D. Watts made it clear that the trial would go on in July.

All the people who were charged with Antonio Smith, with the exception of his nephew, have now pleaded guilty and are expected to testify against him in a trial.

Smith was wheeled into court Thursday strapped to a wheelchair with a stun belt across his chest.

Smith is charged with killing Breanna Eskridge in July  just eight days after Eskridge had witnessed her boyfriend, Eddie Powe, being shot to death, also allegedly by Smith.

Smith, who is known as "Tone," also is charged with directing a plot to murder John Spivey, another witness of the Powe homicide. Law enforcement interceded, scooping up Spivey as the alleged killers were closing in.

Spivey was in jail on an unrelated charge. Smith directed his girlfriend, nephew and a friend to pay Spivey's bail and wait to get him outside the jail for him, according to court documents.

The Smith trial is among a series of high-profile cases where witnesses have been threatened or executed so they could not testify.
Cathy Sandeen, shown in her inauguration last year as chancellor of the UW Colleges and UW Extension, touted plans Thursday for a degree program through the Extension. Credit: Journal Sentinel files

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The Board of Regents Education Committee approved plans Thursday to develop the University of Wisconsin Extension's bachelor of science in business administration.

If approved by the full Board of Regents on Friday, this would be the first degree offered by UW Extension after the board voted to change the mission of the extension in September to allow the institution to award degrees.

Nevertheless, the committee questioned the value of the degree because the UW Extension, the system's adult education and outreach institution, is unaccredited.

Chancellor Cathy Sandeen and Dean David Schejbal appeared before the committee at the UW-Milwaukee campus to advocate for the proposal.

According to the National Center for Education Statistics, a bachelor's degree in business administration is currently the most in-demand postsecondary major. Sandeen said 50% of inquiries that the UW Extension received for its Flexible Option program are students interested in business administration degrees.

The Flexible Option program, which will administer the curriculum, allows students to take self-paced, competency-based courses online. This targets working adults who do not have the time to pursue a traditional two-year business administration degree.

"We believe that this new degree will fill an important gap in the postsecondary ecosystem in the state of Wisconsin," Sandeen said.

Because the Higher Learning Commission has not yet accredited UW Extension as a degree-granting institution, members of the Education Committee raised concerns over the degree's usefulness. There was uncertainty about how employers would view the degree and whether MBA programs would accept it as a legitimate bachelor's degree.

"Why would students be motivated to seek a degree that's unaccredited?" Regent James A. Langnes III asked.

Sandeen acknowledged the concern and noted ongoing efforts to get the UW Extension accredited, which would take two to four years.

She argued that the robust content of the program would satisfy students and employers, noting that students will master 111 specific competencies such as financial accounting and marketing.

Lack of accreditation also raises problems with financial aid. The Department of Education only provides federal financial aid to students at accredited institutions. For at least the first two years, then, students would not receive federal help with tuition.

Even with their reservations, the committee unanimously approved the proposal. Chairman Gerald Whitburn then quipped, "Do not fail."
Students hold up a sign about rape at White Plaza during New Student Orientation on the Stanford University campus in Stanford, Calif., in September. Credit: Associated Press

By now, you've likely heard something about the horrific Stanford rape case, the absurdly light sentence handed down to the perpetrator, maybe even details of the case itself. My stomach has been in knots over almost every aspect of it.

To wit: A young woman was brutally raped while unconscious by a Stanford freshman by the name of Brock Turner. The attack was only stopped when two Swedish graduate students happened across the horrific scene and intervened, tackling the young man and holding him until police arrived.

Turner, meanwhile, was given a meager six-month sentence for the attack and rape, because the judge in the case, Aaron Persky, decided that "a prison sentence will have a severe impact on him." Turner, it should be noted, was an All-American swimmer in high school and a member of Stanford's varsity team. I bring this up because his status as an elite swimmer was used as a reason that the whole thing was just a terrible misunderstanding, and that he should be spared the full consequences of his actions.

The woman in question was drunk, after all. She has no memory of what happened, and so Turner was free to invent a story that brought her credibility into question and rewrote the events of that night to his benefit. Both he and his father pleaded for leniency, shifting blame and failing utterly to take responsibility for what had happened.

Major media outlets used smiling, wholesome images of the young man in articles about the case  the benefits of being a clean cut white man in America, apparently  and framed the whole thing as a story predominantly about a promising athlete's unfortunate fall from grace.

The correct phrasing, however, should be "rapist who happened to be a good swimmer." Because make no mistake about it, Brock Turner is a rapist. Plain and simple. He took advantage of an incapacitated person for sexual gratification, leaving her physically and emotionally scarred for life.

You can, and should, read the survivor's letter that she read aloud to Turner at his sentencing. It includes all the details of what she endured the night of the attack and the ridiculous crucible she's been through since. It's powerful, gut-wrenching stuff. It also paints a startlingly clear picture of how broken our justice system is when it comes to sexual assault cases, and how toxic our culture is in relation to how we do or don't teach respect and personal boundaries.

I've read some pretty awful responses to this case and to others like it, from men and women alike, and it all serves as a painful reminder of just how much work remains to be done to undo the stain of rape culture. Because we absolutely live in a world where victims are still doubted and even vilified, and where perpetrators are too often left unpunished or underpunished by a system that favors already privileged classes.

This case has at least inspired a great deal of discussion that I hope will lead to action. The judge now faces the very real possibility of a recall election (and given that he also showed leniency in a previous gang rape case, he absolutely deserves it). Turner, though he will spend a paltry six months in jail, has at least had his face and name thoroughly spread in the media and public consciousness, his father also highlighting the absolute wrong way to raise a young man.

We need to do everything in our power to fix a system that puts survivors through every conceivable wringer on the way to seeking justice, and makes it so difficult for them to even come forward in the first place.

We also need to work hard to raise future generations who understand that there is no excuse for rape or sexual assault, ever  that what someone is wearing, how much they've had to drink, where they're from, what their background is, or any other factor, will never make it even a little bit OK to take advantage of them. If someone is drunk or otherwise incapacitated, they cannot give consent, no matter how much a person might wish it otherwise. No one is owed access to anyone's body or mind.

There are some silver linings in this otherwise horrific and infuriating story: the knowledge that there are still people out there willing to step in and stop bad things when they see them happening. And the knowledge that, even after being put through absolute hell, there are survivors out there  men and women  willing to fight the hardest fight in order to help prevent similar things from happening to others in the future.

Emily Mills is a freelance writer who lives in Madison. Twitter: @millbot; Email: emily.mills@outlook.com
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Walker wrong on roads

Gov. Scott Walker feels our state infrastructure is fine and the people are satisfied with his statement: "I'm not going to add to the overall tax burden of the hardworking people of this state" ("Walker opposes raising fees, gasoline tax," June 3).

Well, let me say this, the infrastructure in our state is in horrible condition. Every time I drive anywhere in this state I feel my vehicle is at risk of a breakdown. A very close relative of mine, while driving at night, hit a pothole recently and had to have two tires and rims replaced at a cost of over $700. Not to mention the inconvenience of having to find a repair shop and be without a vehicle.

This happens not only in our state but all over the country. The roads and bridges will not improve over time. More people will have damage done to their vehicles and be inconvenienced and lose time at work because their vehicle was damaged due to bad roads.

If Walker thinks the people of this state are fine with the way our infrastructure is, well we're not! I for one am one of the "hard working people of this state" he mentions who is fed up with him from keeping our state moving forward. Postponing the rebuilding of our infrastructure will not only create more damage to the roads and bridges, but cost more the longer we wait.

What is the governor waiting for, another horrible incident such as the bridge collapse in Minnesota where a number of people were killed and maimed before action is taken? Walker should stop being penny wise and dollar foolish and get our roads and bridges up to date. Let's do what's right by making the roads that lead into our state an example for the rest of the country.

Stuart Schenk

South Milwaukee



For potholes, contact DPW

The imaginary world where nature creates a pothole, and then nature fills it right back up, just doesn't exist.

It's time to learn the steps for getting potholes repaired, and the process doesn't involve relying on the next guy to take care of it. If a pothole is in your path daily, and goes unfilled, you can do something about it. Simply contact you city's Department of Public Works.

Every municipality has its own contact information. Just call or go online to report the pothole and its location. I've done this dozens of times  they know me by name  and within days the holes are filled in. I don't drive every street that you do, so take it upon yourself to let the DPW know where these problems are.

It could save you or someone else hundreds of dollars in car repairs.

Dave Brill

Milwaukee



Need target for debt reduction

Will Rogers, the popular humorist of the 1920s and '30s, observed, "Everyone talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it." That could apply to common complaints about United States government debt being too high, now at $14 trillion, or $43,000 per person. That's almost $175,000 for a family of four.

How much should the debt be? Without a target, no real reduction discussion is taking place. Presidential candidate Donald Trump says it should be nothing. He would pay it all off in eight years, which equals $20,000 per family per year. But for security, every country needs some national debt. Pension funds, insurance companies, mortgage banks, even smaller governments all rely on interest-bearing U.S. Treasury bonds as a secure depository for part of their obligatory cash reserves. One-third of U.S. government debt is held by foreign governments, not counting amounts held by foreign citizens and businesses.

Wisconsin forbids its local governments from borrowing more than 5% of local taxable property value. The state sets no limit on itself. The U.S. sets a dollar limit for itself, but, after the usual bluster, unfailingly raises it each time it is reached.

Debt-level comparisons between nations invariably use "Percent of GDP-Gross Domestic Product" as a proxy for tax base. The United States is in the middle range at 73.6%, with Japan the highest at 227.9% and China lowest at 16.7%. Germany is 71.7% and UK Britain is 90.6%.

The worry comes that the U.S. was only at about 60% as recently as 2001. By that measure, if current debt were reduced back to the 60% GDP ratio, we would need to lop off about 20% of current debt, or $3 trillion of our $14 trillion. How should we best do that?

Russell Knetzger

Shorewood
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Madison The state elections board Friday left the candidate challenging Paul Ryan for his 1st Congressional District seat on the ballot for the August primary, but voted to remove a Libertarian candidate in the 7th Congressional District.

Conservative activist Orville Seymer alleged that all nomination papers and signatures submitted by Paul Nehlen, a Republican businessman, were invalid because Nehlen's address was listed incorrectly in their headers. The Government Accountability Board unanimously rejected the complaint filed against Nehlen, who will face Ryan in the Aug. 9 primary.

What Seymer condemned in his filing errors as "fatal defects," the elections board staff report called "minor discrepancies" that "do not warrant disqualification from the ballot."

Others remaining on the ballot after challenges were reviewed include: Republican Donald Raihala, who is seeking to unseat GOP incumbent U.S. Rep. Sean Duffy in the primary; Republican Eric Wimberger, a lawyer challenging Sen. Dave Hansen (D-Green Bay) for his seat; Democrat Jacob Wischmeier, who is running against Rep. Lisa Subeck (D-Madison); Republican Zachary Marshall, running against Rep. Daniel Riemer (D-Milwaukee); and incumbents Rep. Leon D. Young (D-Milwaukee) and Rep. Mary Czaja (R-Irma).

In addition, after reviewing two complaints filed against Libertarian Robert Burke, the board agreed with the staff recommendation to strike dozens of signatures nominating him. The signatures were obtained from individuals who don't live in the 7th Congressional District and striking them left Burke short of the 1,000 signatures needed to appear on the ballot.

Burke, who sought to challenge Duffy, did not respond to the complaints or appear at the hearing.

The board voted to keep Libertarian Jade Thomson and independent David Aguayo off the ballot. Thomson wants to run against Rep. Amanda Stuck (D-Appleton) and David Aguayo was seeking the seat of Chris Taylor (D-Madison).

Before the meeting, complaints were withdrawn that sought to bump incumbent Rep. Christine Sinicki (D-Milwaukee) and Fitchburg Ald. Tony Hartmann, a Democrat who is running for the seat of outgoing state Rep. Robb Kahl (D-Monona).
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Under pressure from advocates for the elderly and disabled, Gov. Scott Walker's administration is dropping its plans for now to remake the state's two largest long-term care programs by contracting with private health insurers.

In a letter to the Joint Finance Committee, Kitty Rhoades, secretary of the Department of Health Services, said the administration is no longer seeking the budget panel's approval for the plan that would affect the Family Care and IRIS programs.

About 55,000 people who are disabled or elderly receive services or financial support through the two programs designed to enable them to remain in their homes in place of nursing homes.

The two programs account for about $2 billion of the $3.4 billion that the state and federal government will spend on long-term care this fiscal year in Wisconsin.

The Walker administration had proposed contracting with private insurance companies to oversee both medical and long-term care for people in the Family Care and IRIS programs.

Contracting with one entity to oversee both medical care and long-term care is an emerging trend nationally and could improve the coordination and quality of care while lowering costs.

But most states have started with pilot programs, testing the model first. In contrast, the Department of Health Services' plan was to put the new system in place statewide in a single stroke.

That worried families and advocates who contended that the plan was too vague and underestimated the potential disruption and problems.

The Department of Health Services made a good-faith effort to respond to questions, said Lynn Breedlove, co-chair of the Wisconsin Long-Term Care Coalition, a group that formed in response to the Walker administration's proposal.

"But some of those responses were not particularly reassuring to stakeholders or legislators," Breedlove said.

The state's proposal to combine long-term and medical care also was projected to generate minimal savings in the short term: $301.3 million, or 1.7%, of the $17.8 billion in projected spending over six years on medical care and long-term care for people in the two programs.

The potential savings would increase over time. And the state's estimate included only the potential savings for people covered solely by Medicaid  about 11,000 of the 55,000 in the Family Care and IRIS programs.

Most of the people in the two programs are covered by Medicare and Medicaid. People covered only by Medicaid typically were born with severe disabilities and haven't worked long enough to qualify for Medicare.

Democrats and Republican senators on the Joint Finance Committee had echoed concerns from advocates that the administration has not yet made a compelling case for the changes.

The Walker administration's proposal was approved in principle last year as part of the state budget but require the Joint Finance Committee to approve specific plans.

Since April 1, the proposal has been sitting in the committee.

Family Care and IRIS both are designed to provide long-term care but operate differently:

Family Care contracts with eight regional managed-care organizations that oversee the program and that in turn contract with agencies and nonprofit organizations for personal-care workers and other services needed to keep people in their homes.

IRIS  an acronym for Include, Respect, I Self-Direct  gives adults and families a set amount of money, based on a person's needs, that they can determine how to spend with the approval of a financial counselor.

It was not immediately clear if the Walker administration might bring the proposal back in modified form in the governor's 2017-'19 budget bill next year.

But in her letter to the Joint Finance Committee, Rhoades said she remains committed to the goal of an integrated model for medical and long-term care.

"I look forward to working with members of the Legislature, advocates and stakeholders to continue to make progress toward this goal and improve the quality, coordination and cost effectiveness of Medicaid services," Rhoades wrote.

Tom Frazier, co-chair of the Wisconsin Long-Term Care Coalition, said: "I don't think it's over. There will be more to come."

But he said he hopes the Walker administration and the Department of Health Services will consider other approaches that could achieve their goals and will work with the coalition and other stakeholders.

"That's what Kitty Rhoades says in her letter," Frazier said. "We are ready to do that."
Freya Neumann, citizenship coordinator at Voces de La Frontera, speaks during a news conference in which the group denounced Donald Trumps criticisms of Judge Gonzalo Curiel and Sen. Ron Johnsons role in blocking hearings on President Barack Obamas nominee to the Supreme Court. Credit: Aaron Mak

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Leaders of Wisconsin's Latino rights movement on Friday denounced Donald Trump's criticisms of Judge Gonzalo Curiel and Sen. Ron Johnson's role in blocking hearings on President Barack Obama's nominee to the Supreme Court.

Over the past three weeks, Trump has repeatedly asserted that Curiel's Mexican-American heritage compromises his impartiality in overseeing an ongoing fraud case against Trump University.

At a news conference in Milwaukee, speakers said the presumptive GOP presidential nominee's attacks on the judge underscore the importance of mobilizing Wisconsin's Latinos to vote in the fall and ensuring that the next Supreme Court nominee is not a Trump pick.

"Trump's racist comments against Judge Curiel expose the true character of the man. He is both a bully and a fraud," said Christine Neumann-Ortiz, executive director of the group Voces de La Frontera.

Wisconsin Republican leaders Johnson, House Speaker Paul Ryan and Gov. Scott Walker also came under fire for failing to withdraw their support for Trump.

Johnson's opposition to holding a hearing and vote for Obama's Supreme Court nominee, Merrick Garland, drew criticism.

"Senator Johnson needs to support a fair process for Judge Garland, or else he stands in solidarity with Trump's racist attacks on our judiciary," said Michael Keegan, president of the progressive advocacy group People for the American Way.

Johnson has said the next president should select the next member of the court to succeed the late Justice Antonin Scalia. He also called for Trump to retract his comments about Curiel.

Freya Neumann of Voces de la Frontera noted that she has seen an influx of Wisconsin Latinos coming to citizenship classes with an eye toward voting in the upcoming elections.

State Rep. JoCasta Zamarripa (D-Milwaukee) emphasized the importance of building on this momentum to harness the power of Latino voters in the state. Others called for a door-to-door effort to engage this voting bloc.

"There are over 100,000 eligible voters who are Latino Wisconsinites," Zamarripa said. "It is a crucial part of the electorate."
Rodgers says it could be time to 'crack the whip' on Packers' sluggish offense
No verdict reached after first few hours of deliberations in Darrell Brooks trial

Jurors began deliberating in the trial of Darrell Brooks Jr., accused in the 2021 Waukesha Christmas Parade attack that killed six and injured dozens more.
06/10/2016

Northeast Alabama Regional Medical Center hopes 80 percent of its registered nurses will have a Bachelor of Science in Nursing (BSN) by the year 2020. Now, thanks to a new partnership with Jacksonville State University, that goal just became more attainable.

Beginning this fall, RMCs registered nurses will receive a 25 percent reduction in tuition for JSUs online RN to BSN program  bringing the cost down from $362 dollars per credit hour to $271.50. While it cannot be applied retroactively, RMC nurses currently pursuing a BSN degree at JSU will be eligible for the discount for the remainder of their course of study.

In 2010, a landmark report was published by the Health and Medicine Division of the National Academies of Sciences (formerly the Institute of Health) calling for an 80 percent increase in the number of nurses with BSN degrees by the year 2020. Referred to as the 80 by 20 or BSN in 10 initiative, the national push for more BSN educated nurses is endorsed by the US Department of Health and Human Services. Its centered on studies revealing that hospitals with a majority of BSN nurses have better patient outcomes.

To make it easier for RNs to obtain their bachelors degrees, the JSU College of Nursing established the Strategic Teaching for Enhanced Professional Preparation (STEP) RN to BSN program. Designed with the working RN in mind, the program enables nurses to complete their BSN entirely online within one calendar year. Theres no waiting list and students are admitted each semester. The flexible and convenient program is now even more affordable for RMC nurses, thanks to the new agreement with JSU.

We have partnered with RMC on several efforts, said Phyllis Waits, JSU associate professor of nursing and director of the STEP program. We feel this is a win-win for both RMC and JSU. RMC will come closer to meeting the 80 by 20 recommendation and JSU will have more students.

For more information on the STEP program, contact Phyllis Waits at 256-782-5421 or pwaits@jsu.edu or Tammy Johnson at 256-782-8489 or tjohnson@jsu.edu.
06/10/2016

The Alabama Commission on Higher Education cleared the way today for Jacksonville State University to offer its second doctoral degree, the Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP).

This degree option will allow students to seamlessly progress from the Bachelor of Science in Nursing (BSN) degree to the DNP. Students may obtain the DNP through several different pathways: the Family Nurse Practitioner, Adult Gerontological Acute Care Nurse Practitioner, and the post-Master's degree option.

For years, students, alumni and other community partners have requested that JSU consider offering a nurse practitioner option, explained Christie Shelton, dean of the College of Nursing. Given that the preparation of nurse practitioners is moving to the doctoral level, the administration at JSU decided to set the BSN-DNP as the goal.

The national need for nurse practitioners is expected to greatly increase over the next decade. In 2010, a landmark report published by the Health and Medicine Division of the National Academies of Sciences called for the medical community to double the number of nurse practitioners by 2020.

The ACHE approval of JSU's new DNP program is a prime example of our commitment to serving the critical needs of our region and represents continued progress in enhancing our academic stature statewide and nationally, said JSU President John M. Beehler.

The DNP becomes the second doctoral program offered by Jacksonville State. In 2010, the university was approved to offer its first doctorate degree, the Doctor of Science in emergency management. JSU conferred its first doctoral degree in emergency management to Michael Kenneth Ryan of Tampa, Fla. in April.

The JSU College of Nursing has been successfully preparing nurses at the master's program level for 16 years with more than 212 MSN graduates. With the addition of the doctoral program, JSU will be able to offer these graduates the highest level of preparation to function as advanced nurse leaders, clinicians and educators.

The college will begin accepting applications for the doctoral program in January 2017, and the official launch is planned for August 2017.
06/09/2016





The JSU College of Nursing has been awarded a $38K grant by the Stringfellow Health Fund of the Community Foundation of Northeast Alabama. The funds will be used to purchase a pediatric simulator for the universitys new Simulation Center.

Due to the shortage of hospital sites available for pediatric rotations, students need exposure to a high fidelity pediatric simulator to gain experience and build confidence for pediatric related situations, said Christie Shelton, dean of the college.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, individuals under the age of 18 make up 22.8 percent of Calhoun Countys population and 23.8 percent of Alabamas. The College of Nursing is incorporating the use of pediatric simulation within its Bachelor of Science in Nursing curriculum to enhance the critical thinking and psychomotor skills needed to care for children.

Our goal is to prepare our students to provide exemplary nursing care to all individuals and families in our communities, said Betsy Gulledge, associate dean. This includes children, who often represent some of our most vulnerable population groups.

In January, the college opened its state-of-the-art Simulation Center in Brookstone Medical Center in Jacksonville. The 3,600-square-foot mock medical clinic is designed to give JSU nursing students the opportunity to practice procedures in a controlled environment. The new pediatric simulator joins a lab of six computerized, anatomically correct Human Patient Simulators equipped with a number of features that enable them to simulate illness and injury and respond to care: from seizures and pneumonia to childbirth and trauma.

With two bachelors and three master's degree options, the JSU College of Nursing delivers evidence based teaching and learning programs to develop quality nurses prepared to engage within the global health care environment with an emphasis on practice, service and scholarship. For more information, please click here.

Photo: JSU's Bill Nash and Dr. Betsy Gulledge (both center) accepting the grant from the Community Foundation of Northeast Alabama (courtesy Community Foundation of Northeast Alabama).
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By Dale Whittington | (The Conversation) |  

The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, or GERD, under construction on the Blue Nile near the Ethiopian-Sudanese border, is now approximately 50% complete. Initial filling will start this year and will begin in earnest in 2017.

The idea of a dam on the Nile in Ethiopia  and the threat this would pose for Egypt  has been on the minds of the people of the Nile basin for centuries. Ethiopia has long claimed a right to use Nile waters, but it was only in 2011 that Meles Zenawi, the Prime Minister of Ethiopia, announced that Ethiopia would begin construction of a large dam on the Blue Nile, near its border with Sudan.

The advantages of storing water in the Blue Nile gorge for hydropower generation and flood control have been recognised for decades. But until recently Ethiopia did not have the political or financial strength to pursue this economic development strategy.

The GERD will have a height of 145m  compared with 110m for the Aswan High Dam in Egypt and 101m for the Three Gorges Dam in China. It will have nearly three times the installed hydropower generation capacity (6,000MW) of the Aswan High Dam (2,100MW), and will be the largest hydroelectric power facility in Africa.

When the GERD is finished, Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia, as well as the other Nile riparian countries, will face a new situation in the management of a large international river. There will be two very large dams, the GERD and Egypts Aswan High Dam, on the same river, but in different countries. Both will be able to store a volume of water greater than the annual flow of the river at the site. And both will be in a river basin subject to severe droughts, and one in which future demands for water for irrigation far exceed the available water supply even in normal years.

No agreement yet

To date there is no agreement between Ethiopia, Sudan and Egypt on the filling policy for the GERD reservoir. Nor is there agreement on the coordination of the operations of the GERD, the Aswan High Dam and dams in Sudan. Agreements on both issues are needed to achieve the full benefits of the GERD and to prevent significant harm to Egypt during periods of prolonged drought.

Most of the economic benefits from the GERD will be from hydropower generation, which is essentially a non-consumptive use of water. After the GERDs filling period  which could be five to 15 years, depending on the sequence of high and low flows that occur and the amount of water Ethiopia releases  it should be possible for Ethiopia to operate the GERD in such a way that Egypt suffers relatively little harm.

Sudan will benefit because the GERD will smooth variations in the Nile flow. This will result in increased water availability during the low-flow summer months, more hydropower generation from Sudanese dams at Sennar, Roseires and Merowe, and reduced flood damages. But during a multi-year drought and during the filling of the GERD, Egypt and Sudan need confidence that water will be released from the GERD to meet their basic requirements and prevent significant harm.

The hard work is just beginning

On March 23 2015, the leaders of Ethiopia, Egypt and Sudan signed a Declaration of Principles in Khartoum. It moved their countries closer to cooperation on the sharing of Nile waters. Consensus was reached on ten general principles. This declaration was essentially a commitment to find common ground on what had become an increasingly acrimonious dispute over Ethiopias decision in 2011 to build the GERD. But the hard negotiations over the specifics of filling the GERDs reservoir and coordinating the operations of the dam and the Aswan High Dam are only beginning.

Coordinating releases from the GERD and the Aswan High Dam requires careful advanced planning in order to ensure that Egypt and Sudan receive the water they need for irrigation, municipal and other uses. It needs proper infrastructure for monitoring flows, quality assurance protocols for data, and close and trusted communications between reservoir managers.

Negotiating and drafting an agreement will be difficult and take time. There is little shared understanding among water professionals, political leaders and civil society in the Nile basin about how joint operating strategies, increased upstream water withdrawals, and hydrological events affect Egypt, Ethiopia and Sudan.

Technicalities

The GERD can be operated to cause relatively little harm to Egypt and Sudan during normal hydrological conditions. But this is not a reason for complacency. During filling and times of drought, the level of the Aswan High Dam reservoir will fall. It may reach levels at which Egypt will have to reduce its releases downstream. Certainly hydropower generation from the Aswan High Dam will be reduced.

During negotiations, Egypt is expected to argue that Ethiopia should release more water from the GERD as the level of Aswan High Dam reservoir falls. In contrast, Ethiopia would likely argue that Egypt should reduce its downstream releases, perhaps even before a water shortage becomes severe. Ethiopias objective here is not to be difficult, but simply to maximise its hydropower generation.

The sale of the GERDs hydropower is a key component of these negotiations. Ethiopia cannot use all the electricity generated from the GERD in the short to medium term because its domestic market for electricity is too small and it has other hydropower projects under construction. Total demand for electricity in Ethiopia at present is some 2,000MW while there is installed capacity exceeding 4,000MW following the recent completion of the 1,870MW Gibe 3 project. Ethiopia must sell to its neighbours, most likely Sudan and Kenya.

Kenya is a relatively small market for electricity sales, with a total national demand of only 1,512MW in 2015, much of which is supplied by domestic hydropower projects. Ethiopia has reached an agreement with Kenya to sell some 400MW to the country. The funding comes from the World Bank, the French Development Agency and the African Development Bank.

The GERD itself must be connected to the Sudan power grid by a new high capacity interconnector before it would be possible to sell power from the GERD on to Sudan.

The financial success of the GERD for Ethiopia very much depends on its ability to sell this hydropower as soon as possible and at a reasonable price. But there has been no public announcement of a power trade agreement negotiated between Ethiopia and Sudan. Nor are there sufficiently large transmission lines being built from the GERD to the Sudanese or Kenyan power grids for the power.

The existing transmission line linking Ethiopia and Sudan was completed three to four years ago. It has a capacity to transfer 100MW and is not much use for exporting hydropower from the GERD. If there are no high capacity transmission lines from the GERD to Sudan, there is a very strong financial argument for Ethiopia to hold back as much water as possible in the GERDs reservoir until it can sell the hydropower. And that is when problems between the countries may arise. It is in Egypt and Sudans interests, as well as Ethiopias, that the construction of these transmission lines from the GERD to Sudan commence as soon as possible.

Perceptions of fairness and trust matter in such negotiations, and they need to be carefully cultivated before crises arrive. Policymakers in Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia have not yet adequately explained to civil society in their countries the inter-related factors that will affect water availability throughout the basin. They must explain the effects of large infrastructure development, irrigation developments and climate change so that people will know the risks and rewards of cooperating with their neighbours.

Egypts biggest concern should be increased irrigation withdrawals in Sudan, which the GERD will facilitate by making more water available during the low-flow summer months. Increased irrigation withdrawals in Sudan will mean less water flows into the Aswan High Dam reservoir. Because there is little understanding in civil society of how the Nile river system behaves, the reasons for water shortages and falling reservoir levels may be misunderstood. Passions could be become inflamed and difficult to control. In such an environment, mistakes can happen.

The international community can help in three ways. The first is the mobilisation of global expertise and experience on the coordinated operation of multiple reservoirs on large river systems. The second is to provide an adjudication mechanism for helping to resolve disputes among the Nile riparians. The Nile riparians and the international community urgently need serious technical discussions to commence. The third is to provide financing for high capacity transmission lines from the GERD to Sudan.

Dale Whittington, Professor of Environmental Sciences & Engineering, City & Regional Planning, University of North Carolina  Chapel Hill

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.



Related video added by Juan Cole:

CCTV Africa from last winter: Egypt, Ethiopia & Sudan reach consensus on Renaissance Dam
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By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) |  

The 2016 Global Peace Index has been released, with the bad news that the world is slightly more violent this year than last. But much of the increase of violence happened in the greater Middle East, in Syria, Libya, Turkey, etc. If you subtracted the Middle East, in most of the world there was more peace, not less.

Country-wise, 81 countries became more peaceful while 79 became more violent. Libya, Turkey, Bahrain, Ukraine and Yemen were the top five in the got worse category. But Sri Lanka, which has emerged from a period of nasty dictatorship to become more democratic and inclusive, improved, as did Thailand, Panama, South Africa and Mauritania (these 5 were most improved).



h/t GPI

Violence is deadly to the economy, and was quite costly to the world last year, to the tune of trillions of dollars.

Regionally, the most improvement came in the Caribbean, Central America and Latin America.

From the end of World War II until 2005 or so, despite the Korean and Vietnam Wars, violence actually declined substantially throughout the world. But in the past 10 years it has gradually increased, reversing the earlier secular trend. In these ten years, battlefield deaths, deaths from terrorism, and displacement of people by conflict have all increased. Last year the number of refugees created, 60 million, was the highest since the world was in the midst of WW II.

The averages are skewed, however, by the Middle East, and especially by Syria, the most violent country in the world last year. The US invasion and occupation of Iraq kicked off massive violence there and in neighboring countries (ISIL would not own part of Syria if its parent organization hadnt been formed in 2003 to fight the US occupation of Iraq).

If you subtracted the Middle East, the rest of the globe actually got slightly more peaceful last year.

One bright spot is that world spending on UN peacekeeping is way up.

Europe is the most peaceful place in the world, with no violence to speak of. Last year that peace was interrupted by some major terrorist attacks. But they seem so shocking and bulk so large because the continents norm is so placid.

A lot of the increase in violence has been in the Muslim Middle East. But, of the 20 most violent countries, it is important to note that many have a Christian background South Sudan, Central African Republic, Ukraine, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Russia, Colombia and Venezuela. One is Communist/ Confucianist (North Korea); and one is Jewish/Muslim/ Christian (Israel).

The Global Peace Index thinks there are 8 correlates of increased peace:

Equitable distribution of resources

Acceptance of the rights of others

Low levels of corruption

Well-functioning government

Free flow of information

Good relations with neighbors

High levels of human capital

Sound business environment

As for my own country, it sees to me obvious that it is deteriorating along a number of these criteria. Distribution of resources, including education and even clean water, is becoming less equitable. One of our two major presidential candidates has built his campaign on refusing to accept the rights of others. Corruption in Wall Street and US politics seems endemic. Self-censorship and interruption of information flows have increased because of the Snowden revelations of government surveillance (a form of corruption and a threat to free information all rolled up together). If the GPI is right about what produces peace, youd have to conclude that the US is heading toward increased violence.

-

Related video:

RECTV: India ranked 141 in Global Peace Index
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By Mark Wilkerson | ( Tomdispatch.com ) |  

Memorial Day is over. You had your barbeque. Now, you can stop thinking about Americas wars and the casualties from them for another year. As for me, I only wish it were so.

Its been Memorial Day for me ever since I first met Tomas Young. And in truth, it should have felt that way from the moment I hunkered down in Somalia in 1993 and the firing began. After all, weve been at war across the Greater Middle East ever since. But somehow it was Tomas who, in 2013, first brought my own experience in the U.S. military home to me in ways I hadnt been able to do on my own.

That gravely wounded, living, breathing casualty of our second war in Iraq who wouldnt let go of life or stop thinking and critiquing Americas never-ending warscape brought me so much closer to myself, so bear with me for a moment while I return to Mogadishu, the Somalian capital, and bring you  and me  closer to him.

Boom!

In that spring of 1993, I was a 22-year-old Army sergeant, newly married, and had just been dropped into a famine-ridden, war-torn Third World country on the other side of the planet, a place I hadnt previously given a thought. I didnt know what hit me. I couldnt begin to take it in. That first day I remember sitting on my cot with a wet t-shirt draped over my head, chugging a bottle of water to counter the oppressive heat.

Id trained for this  a real mission  for more than five years. I was a Black Hawk helicopter crew chief. Still, I had no idea what I was in for.

So much happened in Somalia in that Black Hawk Down year that foreshadowed Americas fruitless wars of the twenty-first century across the Greater Middle East and parts of Africa, but you wouldnt have known it by me. That first day, sitting in a tent on the old Somali Air Force base in Baledogle, a couple of hours inland from the capital city of Mogadishu, I had a face-to-face encounter with a poisonous black mamba snake. Somehow it didnt register. Not really.

This is real, I kept telling myself in the six months I spent there, but in a way it wasnt or didnt seem to be.

After about a month, my unit moved to the airport in Mogadishu  away from the snakes, scorpions, and bugs that infested Baledogle, but closer to dangers of a more human sort. Within a few weeks, I became used to the nightly rat-tat-tat of machine gun fire coming at us from the city. I watched the tracers streak by as we crouched behind our sandbagged fighting positions. We would return from missions to find bullet holes in the skin or rotor blades of our Black Hawk helicopters, or in one case a beer-can-sized hole that a rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) round punched cleanly through the rear stabilizer without  mercifully  detonating.

And yet none of it felt like it was quite happening to me. I remember lying on my cot late at night, not far from the flight line full of Black Hawks and Cobras, hearing the drone of low-flying American AC-130 gunships firing overhead for hours on end. The first boom would come from the seaward side of the field as the gunship fired its M102 howitzer. A few seconds later, another boom would mark the rounds arrival at its target across town, sometimes with secondary explosions as ammunition stores went up. Lying there, I remember thinking that those werent the routine training rounds Id heard a hundred times as they hit some random target in a desolate training area. They were landing on real targets, actual people.

Two other memorable booms come to mind  one as we waited in the back of a sun-baked supply truck, heading out on a volunteer mission to give inoculations to kids at a Somali orphanage. Boom. The ground shook to the sound of one of our Humvees and the four Army soldiers in it being blown apart by the sort of remote-controlled bomb that would become a commonplace of insurgents in Americas twenty-first century wars. And a second, the loudest during my six months there, as a generator perhaps 20 feet from our tent exploded into flames from an incoming RPG round that found its target in the middle of the night.

This is real. I kept saying that to myself, but truthfully the more accurate word would have been surreal. The care packages I was receiving, the Tootsie Rolls and Cracker Jacks and letters from my wife back home telling me how much she missed me might as well have been from another planet.

Our helicopters flew daily reconnaissance missions (Eyes over Mog we called them) above the Somali capital. We did battle damage assessments, checking out pockmarked buildings the AC-130s had targeted the night before, or the shot-up safe house that Somali warlord Mohamed Aidid  our operations target (just as the U.S. would target Saddam Hussein, Muammar Gaddafi, and the leaders of various terror groups)  had reportedly been using as a control center. Once a beautiful mansion, it was now riddled with thousands of bullet holes and TOW missile craters.

We flew over Mogadishus bustling marketplace, sometimes so low that the corrugated metal roofs of the stalls would blow off from our rotor wash. We were always looking for what we called technicals  pick-up trucks with machine guns mounted in their beds  to take out. Viewing that crowded marketplace through the sight of a ready-to-rock M-60 machine gun helped reinforce the message that all of this was beyond surreal.

Lives were ending violently here every day, and my own life, too, could have ended at any moment. Yet it was just about impossible to believe that all of a sudden I was in the middle of a violent set of incidents in a third-world hellhole, the sort of thing you might read about in the paper, or more likely, would never hear about at all. Youd never know about our near-nightly scrambles to our fighting positions behind a pile of sandbags, as the AK-47s cracked and the tracers flew overhead. It wouldnt even register as a blip in the news back home. In some bizarre way, I was there and it still wasnt registering.

A Soldier Just Like Me

Just days after returning home from Somalia, I (like so many others) watched the footage of dead American soldiers  at least one a Black Hawk crew chief  being dragged through the streets of Mogadishu by cheering Somalis. For the first time, I found myself filled with a sense of dread, a profound that-could-have-been-me feeling. I imagined my mother looking at such a photo of me, of her dead sons body  as someones mother was undoubtedly doing.

If my interior landscape was beginning to shift in unsettling ways, if the war, my war, was finally starting to come home, I remained only minimally aware of it. My wife and I started a family, I got a civilian job, went to college in the evening using the GI Bill, and wrote a couple of books about music  my refuge.

Still, after Somalia, I found myself drawn to stories about war. I reread Stephen Ambroses blow-by-blow account of the D-Day landings, picked up Ron Kovics Vietnam memoir, Born On The Fourth Of July, for the first time, and even read All Quiet On The Western Front. And all of them somehow floored me. But it wasnt until I watched Body of War, Phil Donahues 2008 documentary about Iraq war veteran and antiwar activist Tomas Young, that something seemed truly different, that I simply couldnt shake the feeling it could have been me.

Tomas was a kid who had limited options  just like me. He signed up for the military, at least in part, because he wanted to go to college  just like me. Yes, just like so many other kids, too  but above all, just like me.

He, too, was deployed to one of Americas misbegotten wars in a later hellhole, and thats where our stories began to differ. Five days after his unit arrived in Iraq  a place he deployed to grudgingly, never understanding why he was being sent there and not Afghanistan  Tomas was shot, his spinal cord severed, and most of his body paralyzed. When he came home at age 24, he fought the natural urge to suffer in silence and instead spoke out against the war in Iraq. Body of War chronicled his first full year of very partial recovery and the blossoming of his antiwar activism.

Just a few weeks after the films release, however, it all came crashing down. He suffered a pulmonary embolism and sank into a coma, awakening to find that hed suffered a brain injury and lost much of the use of his hands and his ability to speak clearly. The ensuing years were filled with pain and debilitating health setbacks. By early 2013, he was in hospice care, suffering excruciating abdominal pain, without his colon, and on a feeding tube and a pain pump. Gaunt, withered, exhausted, he continued to agitate against Americas never-ending war on terror from his bed, and finally wrote a last letter to former President George W. Bush and former Vice President Dick Cheney, airing his grievances, which got significant media attention.

When I read it, I felt that he might have been me if I hadnt lucked out in Mogadishu two decades earlier. Maybe thats what made me reach out to him that April and tell him I wanted to learn more about what had happened to him in the years between Body of War and his last letter, about what it meant to go from being an antiwar agitator in a manual wheelchair to a bedridden quadriplegic on a feeding tube and under hospice care, planning to soon end his own life.

A Map of the Ravages of War

When I finally met Tomas, I realized how much he and I had in common: the same taste in music and books, the same urge to be a writer. We were both quick with the smart-ass comment and never made to be model soldiers because we liked to question things.

Each moment we spent together only connected us more deeply and brought me closer to the self that war had created in me, the self I had kept at such a distance all these years. I began writing his story because I felt compelled to show other Americans someone no different from them who had had his life, his reality, upended by one of our military adventures abroad, by deployment to a country so distant that its an abstraction to most of us who, in these days of the All-Volunteer Army, dont have a personal connection either to the U.S. military or to the wars it so regularly fights.

A historically low percentage of our population  less than half a percent  actually serves in the military. Compare that to around 9% during the Vietnam War, and 12% during World War II. Remarkably few of us ever see combat, ever even know anyone who was in combat, ever get to hear firsthand stories of what went on or witness what life is like for such a returning veteran. Not surprisingly, Americas wars now largely go on without us. There is no personal connection. Here in the homeland  despite the overblown fears of terrorism  it remains peacetime. As a consequence, few of us are engaged by veterans issues or the prospect  essentially, the guarantee  of more war in the American future.

Tomas understood the importance of sharing the brutal fullness of his story. For him, there were to be no pulled punches. When I told him I wanted others to learn of his harrowing tale, of his version of the human cost of war, that I wanted to help him to tell that story, he responded that he had indeed wanted to write his own book. Hed scrapped the project because he could no longer write, and even Dragon voice-to-text software wouldnt work because his speech had become so degraded after the embolism struck.

Instead, he shared everything. Tomas and his wife, Claudia, opened their lives to me. I slept in their basement. During my periodic visits, he introduced me to an expansive mind in a shrunken world, a mind that wanted to range widely in a body mostly confined to a hospital bed, surrounded by books, magazines, and an array of tubing that delivered medications and removed bodily wastes in a darkened bedroom.

I need to be fed, he said to me one day. Do you want to see what thats like? Then, he lifted his shirt and showed me the maze of tubing and scars on his body. It was a map of the ravages of war.

He was unflinchingly honest, sensing the importance of his story in a country where such experiences have become uncommon fare. Like his comic book heroes Batman and the Punisher, he wanted to make sure that no one would have to endure what hed gone through.

An All-Too-Real Life and Surreal Wars

Tomas Youngs war ended on the night before Veterans Day 2014 when he passed away quietly in his sleep. His pain finally came to an end.

The bullets that hit him in the streets of Baghdad in 2004 brought on more than a decade of agony and hardship, not only for him, but for his mother, his siblings, and his wife. Their suffering has yet to end.

Stories of the reality of war and its impact on this country are more crucial now than ever as Americas wars seem only to multiply. Among us are more than 2.5 million veterans of our recent conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. We owe it to them to read their accounts  and an increasing number of them are out there  and do our best to understand what theyve been through, and what they continue to go through. Then perhaps we can use that knowledge not only to properly address their needs, but to properly debate and possibly  like Tomas Young  even protest Americas ongoing wars.

It would have been perfectly understandable for Tomas to have faced the pain, frustration, and failing health of his final years privately and in silence, but that wasnt him. Instead, he made his story part of our American record.

Mark Wilkerson spent eight years in the U.S. Army as an AH-1 Cobra and UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter crew chief with the 3rd Infantry and 101st Airborne Divisions. He was deployed with the 101st to Somalia for six months in 1993. He is the author of Who Are You: The Life of Pete Townshend and co-wrote Pearl Jam Twenty. He has three children: Alex, Nick, and Sam. He lives in Louisville, Kentucky, with his wife, Melissa. His latest book is Tomas Youngs War (Haymarket Books).

Follow TomDispatch on Twitter and join us on Facebook. Check out the newest Dispatch Book, Nick Turses Next Time Theyll Come to Count the Dead, and Tom Engelhardts latest book, Shadow Government: Surveillance, Secret Wars, and a Global Security State in a Single-Superpower World.

Copyright 2016 Mark Wilkerson

Via Tomdispatch.com



Related video added by Juan Cole:

Democracy Now!: Iraq War Veteran on Protesting Trump: We Do Not Want to Be Used as Props for Hate
Vancouver, British Columbia (FSCwire) - Scandium International Mining Corp. (TSX: SCY) (the Company) is pleased to announce that its 2016 annual general meeting (the AGM) was held on June 8, 2016.

At the AGM all resolutions put to the shareholders were passed. Shareholders approved the re-appointment of Davidson & Company LLP, Chartered Accountants as the Companys auditor. The number of directors was set at seven, with George F. Putnam, William B. Harris, Willem P.C. Duyvesteyn, Barry Davies, Warren Davis, James Rothwell and Andrew C. Greig being re-elected as directors of the Company. The shareholders also approved, on an advisory basis, of the compensation awarded by the Company to the Named Executive Officers as described in the management proxy statement and as required by the rules of the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Pursuant to the policies of the Toronto Stock Exchange, the Company is required to disclose a summary of voting results for the election of directors. The voting results are as follows:

Name of Nominee Votes For % of Votes Cast Votes Withheld % of Votes Cast George F. Putnam 82,889,349 99.94% 51,499 0.06% William B. Harris 81,611,149 98.40% 1,329,699 1.60% Willem P.C. Duyvesteyn 82,876,849 99.92% 63,999 0.08% Barry Davis 82,873,149 99.92% 67,699 0.08% Warren Davis 82,849,349 99.89% 91,499 0.11% James Rothwell 82,853,149 99.89% 87,699 0.11% Andrew Greig 82,879,349 99.93% 61,499 0.07%

About Scandium International Mining Corp.

The Company is focused on developing the Nyngan Scandium Project into the worlds first scandium-only producing mine. The Company owns an 80% interest in both the Nyngan Scandium Project, and the adjacent Honeybugle Scandium Property, in New South Wales, Australia, and is manager of both projects. Our joint venture partner, Scandium Investments LLC, owns the remaining 20% in both projects, along with an option to convert those direct project interests into SCY common shares, based on market values, prior to construction.

In addition to the two lateritic scandium properties in Australia, SCY owns a 100% interest in the Trdal Scandium/REE property in southern Norway, where we continue our exploration efforts, specifically for scandium and REE minerals.

For further information, please contact:

George Putnam, President and CEO.

Tel: 925-208-1775

Email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
VANCOUVER, BC--(Marketwired - June 10, 2016) - First Point Minerals Corp. (TSX: FPX) ("First Point" or the "Company") announces that Trevor Rabb, P. Geo., is stepping down as the Company's Vice-President of Exploration in order to focus on other opportunities. Mr. Rabb will remain as an advisor to First Point on an ongoing basis.

The Company further announces that it will pursue a voluntary delisting of its common shares from the Toronto Stock Exchange and will be submitting an application for a concurrent listing of the Company's common shares on the TSX Venture Exchange (TSX-V). The transition to the listing on the TSX-V is expected to occur within the next 90 days. There will be no interruption in trading of the Company's common shares.

The decision to move to the TSX-V was made in order to reduce annual administrative costs.

About First Point

First Point Minerals Corp. is focused on the exploration and development of the Decar Nickel-Iron Alloy Project, located in central British Columbia, and other occurrences of the same unique style of naturally occurring nickel-iron alloy mineralization known as awaruite. For more information, please view the Company's website at www.firstpointminerals.com or contact Martin Turenne, President and CEO, at (604) 681-8600.

On behalf of First Point Minerals Corp.

"Martin Turenne"

Martin Turenne, President and CEO

Forward-Looking Statements

Certain of the statements made and information contained herein is considered "forward-looking information" within the meaning of applicable Canadian securities laws. These statements address future events and conditions and so involve inherent risks and uncertainties, as disclosed in the Company's periodic filings with Canadian securities regulators. Actual results could differ from those currently projected. The Company does not assume the obligation to update any forward-looking statement.

Neither the Toronto Stock Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.
VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA / June 10, 2016 / MGX Minerals Inc. (MGX or the Company) (CSE: XMG / FKT: 1MG) is pleased to announce the Company has acquired, on a trial basis with an option to purchase, a full-scale pilot plant mill (the Mill) from CMC Metals Ltd. (TSX.V: CMB).

The Mill equipment includes a jaw crusher, ball mill, flotation cells, cyclone dewatering equipment and a tailings filtration and thickener system. The Mill is currently on care and maintenance in the Yukon. MGX has dispatched a contractor to transport all equipment, inclusive of five tractor trailers, to the stock pile location of the Companys recently completed bulk sample (see press release dated June 9, 2016). The Company expects that bulk sample material will arrive and be made available within one week.

The Mill was previously utilized to process polymetallic concentrate. The Company intends to use the Mill to process bulk sample material through reverse flotation to produce two potentially saleable products- a high purity magnesite tailing and byproduct silica sand float.

Stated MGX President and CEO Mr. Jared Lazerson: MGX looks forward to commencing the pilot plant phase at Driftwood Creek and to begin producing representative and potentially saleable material.

Driftwood Creek Magnesium

MGX Minerals has the right to acquire a 100% interest in the Driftwood Creek magnesium project. The Company has conducted a Phase I and Phase II drill program at Driftwood Creek and has now completed a 100-tonne bulk sample program. MGX received a 20-year Mining Lease for Driftwood Creek in January (see press release dated January 11, 2016).

Qualified Person

This press release was prepared under the supervision and review of Andris Kikauka, P. Geo. and Vice President of Exploration for MGX Minerals. Mr. Kikauka is a non-independent Qualified Person within the meaning of National Instrument (N.I.) 43-101 Standards.

About MGX Minerals

MGX Minerals (CSE: XMG) is a diversified Canadian mining company engaged in the acquisition and development of industrial mineral deposits in western Canada that offer near-term production potential, minimal barriers to entry and low initial capital expenditures. The Company operates lithium, magnesium and silicon projects throughout British Columbia and Alberta. For further information, please visit the Companys website at www.mgxminerals.com.

Contact Information

Jared Lazerson

President and CEO

Tel: 604.681.7735

Email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Neither the Canadian Securities Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the Canadian Securities Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains forward-looking information or forward-looking statements (collectively "forward-looking information") within the meaning of applicable securities laws. Forward-looking information is typically identified by words such as: "believe", "expect", "anticipate", "intend", "estimate", "potentially" and similar expressions, or are those, which, by their nature, refer to future events. The Company cautions investors that any forward-looking information provided by the Company 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. The reader is referred to the Company's public filings for a more complete discussion of such risk factors and their potential effects which may be accessed through the Company's profile on SEDAR at www.sedar.com.
[JURIST] A group of five doctors and the American Academy of Medical Ethics (AAME) [advocacy website] filed suit [application, PDF] Wednesday challenging a physician-assisted suicide law. The End of Life Option Act would allow terminally-ill patients, an individual who, determined within reasonable medical certainty, is going to die in 60 days due to an incurable disease, to be given a prescription for a lethal dose of aid-in-dying drugs. Those challenging the legislation argue that, [t]he Act violates the equal protection and due process guarantees of the California Constitution in that it fails to make rational distinctions between [terminally ill citizens] , and the vast majority of Californians not covered by the Act. They argue that the term terminally ill is unconstitutionally vague and for that reason the law would deprive[] individuals the protection of previously-existing California laws against assisted suicide by unconstitutionally creating a class of persons again based on arbitrary, unreasonable, and irrational distinctions. Finally, they argue that the legislature lacked constitutional authority to legislate on the matter of physician-assisted suicide during an extraordinary legislative session.

The aid-in-dying movement has garnered substantial legal debate around the world in the past few years. In the US, four states currently have legislation that allow physicians to prescribe life-ending medication to some patients: California, Oregon, Washington and Vermont. In Montana the states highest court has ruled that assisted suicide is not explicitly banned [JURIST report] by state law or public policy, meaning consent could be raised as a defense in a potential prosecution of a physician. In July California lawmakers ended a previous legislative effort [JURIST report] to enact the End of Life Option Act, as the former right-to-die bill had been amended several times over the previous year. The law was hotly debated when 29-year-old Brittany Maynard [CNN backgrounder] moved from San Francisco to Oregon, which allows physician-assisted suicide, so that she could die on her own terms after being diagnosed with brain cancer. Last June the European Court of Human Rights [official website] upheld [JURIST report] a French courts decision allowing Vincent Lambert the right to die, stating it did not violate article 2 of European Convention on Human Rights. In May 2015 a Dutch court acquitted [JURIST report] a man of all criminal charges for assisting his 99-year-old mother in committing suicide. Also that month, an 84-year old attorney, businessman and political candidate filed a lawsuit [JURIST report] in Tennessee, challenging a law that makes it a felony for a doctor or another person to help someone commit suicide.
[JURIST] A US magistrate judge issued an order [text, PDF] on Thursday requiring California prisons to provide transgender inmates who identify as female access to female-oriented items to which inmates have access in womens correctional facilities. The order lists pajamas, robes, sandals, scarves, chains, necklaces, pumice stones and emery boards as items which are appropriate to give to such individuals. Not all items available in female correctional facilities were included in the order, as the judge found that bracelets, earrings, hair brushes and hair clips could pose significant safety and security concerns. The order arose in the case in Shiloh Quine, who reached a settlement [JURIST report] with California prison officials last August in which the state agreed to pay for her sex reassignment surgery.

Discrimination based on gender identity has been a controversial issue in the US and internationally. In May the Canadian Prime Minister proposed legislation[JURIST report] that would ban discrimination against transgender people. In April a labor arbitration panel in China heard [JURIST report] the first transgender job discrimination suit in the country. In March Arkansas Attorney General Leslie Rutledge filed a notice of appeal [JURIST report] of a judge s decision upholding an ordinance that protects members of the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community from discrimination. A day earlier North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper stated that he would not defend [JURIST report] House Bill 2 [materials], which he considers to be discriminatory against the LGBT community.
Bleu Copas and Caleb Laieski filed a lawsuit [complaint, PDF] in the Chancery Court for Anderson County on Tuesday, challenging a Tennessee law [SB 1556, PDF] that protects counselors who refuse to provide services to individuals based on their religious beliefs. Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam [official website], who is named in the lawsuit, signed the bill [press release] into law in April. The bill shields counselors and therapists that refuse to treat clients who conflict with the sincerely held principles of the counselor. The men claim the law violates both state and federal grants of equal protection. The law mandates that a professional refusing to serve a client on these grounds must refer the client to another professional who will provide the service. Copas and Laieski maintain that the LGBT community was thesole target [Reuters report] of the legislation.

The intersection of religious liberty, sexual orientation and gender identity has been a controversial issue in the US. In April Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards signed [JURIST report] an executive order creating a new anti-discrimination law intended to protect members of the LGBT community. Prior to signing the executive order, there was no state law in Louisiana protecting LGBT individuals from employment discrimination. Shortly before Georgia Governor Nathan Deal said that he would veto [JURIST report] a religious freedom bill that critics claim would sanction discrimination against LGBT individuals. Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe also vetoed [press release] a similar bill in March. North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper stated [JURIST report] during a press conference that he would not defend House Bill 2, which he considers to be discriminatory against the LGBT community. That legislation specifically prohibits [JURIST report] local municipalities from enacting anti-discrimination ordinances.
[JURIST] The International Criminal Court (ICC) and the UN Security Council [official websites] have been conspicuous[ly] silent in response to the prosecutor offices calls to arrest Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, said [report] ICC Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda on Thursday. She stated that despite countless appeals to [the UN Security Council] to address the persistent failure Sudan to comply with its international obligations, the calls have gone unheeded by both the Council and the ICC. She argues that this failure has only been amplified by the fact that Sudans president has been documented to have traveled across international borders, despite having two arrest warrants against him. Several States, including some signatories of the Rome Statute [materials, PDF], have assisted Bashirs travel. The non-execution of the arrest warrants, along with lack of access to Sudans territory [and] resource constraints have significantly hampered investigation [UN News Centre] into the situation in Darfur. Bensouda stated that this Council must no longer tolerate the continuing deteriorating humanitarian situation in Darfur, where there has been an increase in aerial bombings, ground warfare, and sexual crimes.

In September the ICC requested [JURIST report] that South Africa provide an explanation for the countrys failure to arrest Bashir when he was in the country last June. During Bashirs visit a judge for South Africas high court issued an order [JURIST report] barring him from leaving the country. In March of last year the ICC requested assistance [JURIST report] from the Security Council in affecting the arrest of Bashir. In asking the Council to take necessary measures to force Sudan to comply with the ICC investigation, the court noted that without such assistance, the Councils decision to request investigation into Bashir in 2005 would never achieve its ultimate goal. In February 2015 African leaders urged [JURIST report] the ICC to drop cases against Bashir and Kenyan Deputy President William Ruto or suspend the charges until African concerns are considered by the court. In December 2014 Bensouda told the Security Council that her office was dropping further investigation [JURIST report] into the situation in Darfur.
[JURIST] The UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) [official website] on Friday condemned [press briefing] a recent string of rocket and mortar attacks against residential areas and markets in Taizz, Yemen, from June 3 to June 8. The attacks, perpetrated just weeks before Ramadan, killed 18 civilians and injured 68 others. While there is no official record of from whom and where the attacks came, it is believed that attacks were directed by the Popular Committees associated with the Houthis and other groups loyal to former president Ali Abdullah Saleh [BBC profile], who are currently in control of Tabat Al-Sofitel hill. The attacks continued in the Al Taiziyah and Al-Qahirah districts from June 4 to June 6, and later culminated in the shelling of Al-Thawrah hospital, where five people were killed on June 8. The hospital had been sheltering individuals attempting to find safety from the recent violence. The press briefing later went on to discuss recent killing of four Israelis in Tel Aviv.

The rapidly deteriorating situation in Yemen has sparked significant international concern. In March UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Raad Al Hussein criticized [JURIST report] the Saudi Arabian coalition forces in Yemen for the more than 3,000 civilian casualties resulting from the conflict in just the past year. Also in March UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon warned [JURIST report] that the use of cluster bombs by the Saudi-led coalition against neighborhoods in Yemen may amount to a war crime. The UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights said [JURIST report] that the civilian death toll in Yemen had reached nearly 2,800. In January the UN World Food Programme appealed to all the parties involved in the Yemen conflict to allow the safe passage of food [JURIST report] to the city of Taiz. In October Amnesty International called for [JURIST report] an independent investigation into possible war crimes surrounding the destruction of a hospital run by Doctors Without Borders in Yemen.
[JURIST] Members of the US House of Representatives approved bi-partisan legislation to relieve financial pressure on Puerto Rico on Thursday. The statute, entitled the Puerto Rico Oversight, Management and Economic Stability Act of 2016 (PROMESA) [text, PDF], creates a financial oversight board and will restructure a portion of Puerto Ricos $70 billion debt. Deemed as an unfortunate, but necessary consequence to rescuing the territory from its financial crisis, the minimum wage for young workers has been reduced as well. The implications of this bill are wide-reaching, especially in light of the recent Supreme Court decision in Puerto Rico v. Sanchez Valle [JURIST report] and the pending Supreme Court decision in Puerto Rico v. Franklin California Tax-Free Trust [JURIST reports], which affirm that Puerto Rico does not have complete sovereignty. The oversight board, which would be unelected, has been as cause for concern [The Atlantic report] by some. Raul Grijalva, the ranking Democrat on the House Natural Resources Committee, made it known that he believes this bill is yet another infringement on the sovereignty of the people of Puerto Rico, in particular the lack of Puerto Rico representation on the board oversight board and, most importantly, the continued distinction between Puerto Rico and states.This legal distinction strips from Puerto Rico the ability to use bankruptcy to restructure its debt, a method available to all US states.

The Puerto Rico legislature passed a bill [JURIST report] this April, marking its first step towards debt moratorium. At the end of 2015, Puerto Rico was $70 billion dollars in debt. The governor anticipated a government default [Bloomberg report] in 2016, which came to fruition [NYT report] on January 4. The territory has been suffering from a massive recession [BBC report] since 2006, nearly a decade before the governor announced that Puerto Rico was unable to pay its debts. However, the Puerto Rico Electronic Power Authority, a major player in the economic crisis, reached a deal [Bloomberg report] to restructure its debt in December. This deal is the first of many restructuring plans to alleviate the governments debt. In February, the Puerto Rico Legislature passed a bill [text, PDF, in Spanish] that would restructure the islands estimated $9 billion debt [JURIST report].
[JURIST] In an opinion issued on Friday, the Venice Commission announced that it believes Polands current surveillance powers are too broad [press release] and need to be checked. The opinion focuses on sections 19 and 20c of the Police Act [text, PDF], dealing with classical surveillance and the collection of metadata respectively. The Commission believes that certain metadata, such as web-logs, are so extremely sensitive that judicial authorization should be required to obtain them. For other, less sensitive metadata, the commission suggested creating a independent oversight body to monitor the specific metadata operations, as opposed to the current, inefficient generalized reporting which is required every six months. The Commission also called for the prevention of surveillance violating lawyer-client communications, limiting the duration of metadata monitoring, and requiring police to keep formal records so as to aid in the future monitoring operations.

Surveillance and data collection have been a worldwide topic of discussion, particularly after Edward Snowden leaked top-secret [JURIST report] US National Security Agency (NSA) documents in 2013. Last month a UN rights groups criticized [JURIST report] the Investigatory Powers Bill, stating it could threaten freedom of expression and association. In December China passed a new anti-terrorism law [JURIST report] that requires technology companies to provide information to the government obtained from their products and make information systems secure and controllable. In October the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit denied [JURIST report] a motion by the American Civil Liberties Union to halt the bulk collection of phone records by the NSA. The court ruled that Congress intended for the agency to continue its data collection over the transition period, and the new legislation was to take effect November 29. In June the French Parliament adopted [JURIST report] a new surveillance bill that would give French intelligence serves the authority to monitor Internet use metadata. In February the UK Investigatory Powers Tribunal ruled [JURIST report] that the UKs mass surveillance of citizens Internet use violates human rights law. In July 2014 civil liberties groups sued [JURIST report] the UKs Secret Intelligence Service known as MI6, alleging that the agency accesses data from undersea cables in violation of the rights to private life and freedom of expression.
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Dallas, TX, USA, 06/10/2016 /SubmitPressRelease123/

Lets say that you and your spouse or you and your boyfriend/girlfriend get into an argument, and the police are called because someone claims there has been some kind of violence. Usually, the police will arrest one of the two parties in order to prevent further violence and to give everyone a chance to cool off, says John Helms an experienced Dallas based lawyer who deals with domestic violence cases. Obviously, many, if not most, claims of domestic violence are true, but I see a lot in which the person making the allegation made up some or all of it in a fit of anger, exaggerated the other persons conduct or their own alleged injuries, or failed to admit to what they did that may have caused the other person to have to use force in self-defense.

If what was reported to the police in the heat of the moment was not the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, people sometimes decide they do not want their significant other to be prosecuted. This usually happens in the light of day (these incidents almost always happen at night), and after the significant other has been arrested and spent the night in jail. By that time, things have probably cooled off.

When this happens, the alleged victim may contact the police or the district attorneys office (or be contacted by them), and explain that they do not want to press charges. In this situation, they may be given what is called an affidavit of non-prosecution, prepared by the district attorneys office, that says that they do not want their significant other to be prosecuted. After they sign this, they may think everything is fine and that the case is over. This is rarely the case. In fact, they may be surprised to learn that their significant other is charged with domestic violence and prosecuted as if they had never signed the affidavit in the first place. If you have been accused of domestic violence, and your significant other has signed this kind of affidavit, YOU may be surprised that the case is not dropped, too.

How can this happen? The answer is that a crime victim does not get to decide whether a district attorneys office prosecutes a crime or not. That is up to the district attorneys office. They do not represent the alleged victim. Instead, they represent the public, such as the State of Texas. That is why cases are always called State of Texas (or other state) v. John Doe, Defendant. The public has an interest in punishing people who commit crimes, even if the victim does not want them charged. For example, consider a gang member who fires shots into a house with innocent men, women, and children, who threatens to kill anyone who goes to the police. The public wants that person punished because he or she is a danger to everyone, even if the victims are too afraid to press charges.

Now, back to the affidavit of non-prosecution. The kinds of affidavits that district attorneys offices usually have someone sign just say that the person does not want the accused to be charged with a crime for what they did. Some affidavits may actually imply or say that the accused did, in fact, commit the crime. But the alleged victims desire is only one factor that prosecutors consider. In domestic violence cases, especially, the alleged victims desire may have very little influence, because prosecutors believe that domestic violence victims typically want to protect their abusers because of threats or emotions. So these affidavits may mean very little and might even commit the alleged victim to testifying that the accused is guilty.

Even worse, by the time the accused hires a domestic violence lawyer who finds out that the affidavit of non-prosecution will not help, it may be too late to try to stop an indictment. As we say, at that point, the train will have left the station.

An effective affidavit of non-prosecution will set out specific facts showing that the accused is not guilty. This kind of affidavit is most helpful early in the process BEFORE an indictment. I will do a separate blog entry on effective affidavits of non-prosecution, but for now, keep in mind that you should never rely on an affidavit of non-prosecution prepared by a district attorneys office. Instead, hire a skilled and experienced domestic violence lawyer to investigate and prepare one as soon as possible after the incident.

source: http://johnhelms.attorney/domestic-violence-cases-dallas-learn-facts-dallas-criminal-defense-lawyer/

Social Media Tags:Domestic Violence, Dallas, Criminal Defense Lawyer, John Helms

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When Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton face each other in the fall, it will be nothing less than a battle for Americas racial soul.

During the primary campaign, Trump was asked by a reporter whether he would disavow the support of former KKK leader David Duke and white supremacist groups in general. Trump sidestepped the question, saying I know nothing about David Duke; I know nothing about white supremacists.

As criticism to his response mounted, Trump said he did actually disavow Duke and blamed his earlier non-committal statement on a bad earpiece. Because of the equipment malfunction, Trump said, I could hardly hear what hes saying.

For American voters, what really matters is not what Trump could or could not hear during a television interview, but what Duke heard by listening to Trump. Duke explained that he supported Trump for president because he believes that Trump is a leader who will break-up Jewish dominated lobbies and ensure that white Americans are allowed to preserve and promote their heritage and interests.

Why does Duke feel so certain that Trump shares his hate-filled vision of America? Because so much of Trumps appeal is based on racial code words and turning back the clock on civil rights progress since World War II.

When Trump entered the presidential race, he launched his campaign by impugning an entire population. Mexicans coming into the United States, according to Trump, might include a few good people, but far too many were rapists and criminals. He proposed keeping Muslims from coming to America, at least on a temporary basis.

When asked about the problem of the use of excessive force by police against minorities, Trump responded that police are absolutely mistreated and misunderstood. Trump shows frighteningly little concern for minority victims of police brutality. To Trump, the primary solution is giving power back to the police, because crime is rampant.

Modern-day candidates like Trump always deny using racial code words. Trump confidently declares I have a great relationship with the blacks and the Hispanics love me. The best way to tell, however, that a racial dog whistle is being used, is when racists like Duke come racing over in support.

The Republicans have not addressed this problem with any adequate response.

Clinton, though, will be both willing and able to confront Trumps race-baiting directly. Her campaign has embraced the slogan break down the barriers championing opportunities for poor and excluded communities and vowing to destroy obstacles of equality in the economic, education, racial, gender and LGBT arenas. In speeches, debates and policy papers, Clinton made clear that racial inequality throughout American society must be addressed.

Clinton observed that the issues raised by the recent deaths of so many black victims as a result of actions by law enforcement personnel highlight the need for reformed police practices. While Clinton recognizes that body cameras on every police officer will help, she emphasizes economic solutions as well. As Clinton explained to a civil rights group in February, whats needed to provide economic opportunity is, better educational chances for young people, and more support for families so they can do the best jobs they are capable of doing to help support their own children.

Most recently, disputes between the candidates over issues of race have spilled over to their supporters. At a Trump event in Cleveland in mid-March, a Black Lives Matter supporter was told to go back to Africa, and at a canceled Trump rally in Chicago later that same week, an African-American protester was punched by a white Trump supporter who later suggested if the protester returned, we might have to kill him.

When asked about the incident, Trump responded that he was looking into paying the supporters legal fees. In contrast, Clinton accused Trump of pitting Americans against each other and later vowed to work against Trumps hateful rhetoric.

Clintons articulation of the problems and commitment to implementing solutions that could unify Americans will create a sharp contrast with Trumps racial innuendos and divisive language. The stakes of this election are indeed high, with Americas racial soul up for grabs.

Michael Higginbotham is the author of Ghosts of Jim Crow: Ending Racism in Post-Racial America and is the Joseph Curtis Professor of Law at the University of Baltimore School of Law.
Jenn Fraser kayaks in Deep Cove in North Vancouver, B.C., Thursday, June, 9, 2016. More than 10 years ago, Fraser looked into her future and saw an image of herself in a wheelchair, the likely result of rapidly progressing multiple sclerosis that was swiftly stealing her ability to walk, blurring her vision and wracking parts of her body with numbness and pain. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jonathan Hayward
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The news media is hooked on the opioid prescription drug abuse story. Every day, it seems, I read a new announcement:

The CDC has issued guidelines for prescribing opioids for chronic pain.

The FDA has announced immediate-release pain medications will need to have black box warning labels about the risk of addiction, abuse, overdosing and even death.

The White House has requested $1.1 billion in its 2017 budget to combat opioid abuse.

Some are quick to blame the medical community for opioid prescription drug abuse. People need to know that good physicians, like me, followed medical education in chasing the pain scale and high opioid prescriptions. Now we have the much harder task of re-educating the medical community from what has been wrongly taught.

San Diego County, with about 1 percent of the U.S. population, has been ravaged with prescription deaths for decades, similar to the rest of our nation. Physicians can benefit what we learned in San Diego to fight this crisis.

In 2008, San Diego County established a prescription drug abuse task force. The medical examiner routinely provided data on these deaths, alerting us that prescription drug abuse was the number one cause of non-natural deaths in our community. More people were dying from prescription drug abuse than were dying from car accidents, suicides, homicides, or the use of firearms.

In 2013, I joined the task force and brought in the medical community to do our share. What I learned changed how I practice medicine.

Physicians need data to change. Our doctors know their patient satisfaction scores, but do they know their death score? Dr. Jonathan Lucas, our medical examiner, in cooperation with the California CURES office, provided us the data to create change.

The data told us the story. It showed that in 2013, 254 people died unintentionally of a prescription overdose. Some 186 people, ages 14 to 73, received over 4,000 prescriptions before they died.

The average age of death was 46.5, and the majority were men. The drugs they used varied, but hydrocodone was number one, and oxycodone was number two. Ambien, Xanax, Klonopin, and Soma were up there, as well. We found that 80 percent of those who died had used a combination of medications. If they died from a single medication, it most often was methadone.

Our study also looked at mixing pain medications with anxiety medication (such as Vicodin plus Xanax). Both these medications depress a patients nervous system. As a doctor practicing in a hospital, I need special credentialing and have people hooked up to all sorts of monitors before I can give such these medications together. Yet for our San Diegans who died from prescriptions, over 50 percent were prescribed this mixture and 20 percent died with this mixture in their system.

We also identified another danger area. The overwhelming majority of people who died were chronic users, meaning they were on the same medication for three consecutive months or more. That is a warning. If a patient needs pain or anxiety medications for more than three months, there are risks and responsibilities physicians need to discuss with the patient.

Surprisingly, the doctor shoppers we hear so much about were a minority of those who died; however, it is not so surprising that they consumed the majority of all the drugs. As a medical community, our standard should not even get to doctor shopping. All patients who need pain medications and anxiety medication  medications that can kill  should have their medications coordinated by one doctor and one pharmacy.

Who were the doctors that were prescribing medications that contributed to these deaths? Of the 713 physicians who prescribed the medications, 54 percent were primary care physicians, 20 percent were emergency medicine and urgent care physicians, 11 percent were psychiatrists, 8 percent were surgeons, 4 percent were dentists, and 3 percent were pain management doctors. I know these physicians. They are good doctors, but they were the ones who did not check the electronic database and to this day have no idea that their prescriptions may have ended in death instead of health.

My colleagues often state, If patients followed directions of the prescriptions, they would not die.

We answered that statement. We found that of 254 people, 100 people died of the same exact medication they were prescribed within two months of death. That number went down to 42 if we excluded those who died with alcohol or drugs and those who were doctor shopping. It is true that few people die of prescriptions if they were taking only what was prescribed; however, many of our patients who died received medications that were intended for good, but resulted in bad.

My job is to keep people alive, so it was very morbid looking at medication report after medication report of people who died. I termed these reports The Death Diaries. One diary entry told the story of a 59-year-old woman who was going to different doctors. She received pain medication from one, anxiety medications from another, and kept increasing the dosage until she ended up in the morgue just before her 60th birthday.

Not only did the death diaries change my perspective, but actually meeting parents who lost their children from well-meaning prescriptions made me realize that these are the voices I need to guide my medical practice  not the patient screaming at me for drugs or threatening to get me fired or to hurt my satisfaction scores.

Both the medical community and patients can work together to significantly reduce deaths from prescriptions. Physicians can take the following steps:

Make certain there is coordinated care. Use the CURES electronic system. Check for allergies before prescribing antibiotics and check CURES before giving controlled substances. Use a medication agreement for patients who are chronic users and follow the CDC guidelines for prescribing. Avoid opioid and benzodiazepine combinations. Give naloxone prescriptions to patients who on are higher than 50 morphine milligram equivalents per day.

The death diaries changed how I take care of patients. Now when I see a patient in the emergency department who wants prescription medication for pain, I review their CURES or medication history. And sometimes I find myself telling the patient, Your medications read like someone I read about who ended up a statistic. I dont want that to happen to you.

Roneet Lev is director of operations, Scripps Mercy Hospital Emergency Department, San Diego, California, and a member of SanDiegoSafePrescribing.org.

Image credit: Shutterstock.com
Whether youre traveling for business or for pleasure, youre probably spending a lot. So why not get a little extra something for yourself at no cost? Many hotel freebies can be found in plain sight in your room. Others you might have to ask for, but theyre there for the taking. A smile and a polite request can be all thats needed to enjoy them.

Just dont go overboard. Johnny Jet, a frequent traveler who runs travel website JohnnyJet.com (opens in new tab), says certain items are fine for guests to take home  think logo pens and tiny bottles of shampoo  but other items are off-limits.

Anything that is clearly hotel property and would be considered stealing are things including lamps, artwork, TVs, radios, blankets, sheets, hangers, towels, etc., are definitely no-nos, says Jet. If its not common sense to you, then ask the front desk what is appropriate to take.

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And remember, the hotel has your credit card on file.

Oftentimes, guests fall in love with the luxurious bathrobes, says Jet. But beware: If you take it home with you, most hotels will automatically charge your credit card for it  and it might be a few hundred dollars.

Have a look at some of our favorite hotel freebies:

Free bikes. Some hotels are getting hip to the growing interest in bike-sharing. Kimpton Hotels, for one, is making complimentary bikes available for guests to explore the area where they are staying. San Diego and Washington, D.C., are two cities on Kimptons roster of hotels with bicycles to borrow free of charge.

Free bottled water. Its often on a desk or in the minibar, just make sure you read any tags attached to the bottle first. On a recent stay at a Marriott, there were two bottles in my room: One was labeled free; the other, $5. Ouch. Heres another tip: Check the fitness center. Even if you dont plan to work, it might be stocked with bottled water for the guests who do.

Free breakfast. For those of us who have traveled for business over the years, free and breakfast have become synonymous. However, Im finding it increasingly rare. The best bets for complimentary breakfast are budget chains such as Hampton Inn, Residence Inn and Comfort Inn. A Priceline search found 28,550 hotels touting free breakfast.

Free butler service. OK, we admit this is an uncommon hotel perk, but stay at the Taj Boston, part of the Taj Resorts Hotels and Palaces luxury chain, and complimentary butlers will help you with everything. A Fireplace Butler will tend your flames, a Technology Butler will assist with the in-room gadgets (and maybe your iPhone, too), and a Bath Butler will, well, you get the picture.

Free coffee and tea. Room service? No. In-your-room service. Its not unusual to find a coffeemaker in the room. Even if youd rather head to Starbucks, why leave the packets of tea and coffee behind? Theyre meant for your consumption. Consume at will, at home.

Free fruit. Big bowls of apples in the lobby have become a common sight at many trendy hotels. But even some budget hotels are jumping on the healthy bandwagon. In your room, beware the minibar rip-off. Look for a price list before you partake.

Free happy hour. On several trips to Baltimore, we stayed at the boutique Hotel Monaco. The experience was buoyed by two hours of free wine and hors doeuvres every night. Money! Embassy Suites hosts evening receptions, as they call it, with complimentary drinks and a wide array of hot snacks and veggies. Sheratons Four Points chain offers two free local craft beers (opens in new tab) for each night of a stay.

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Free laundry bags. Theyre usually meant for the hotel laundry or to be shipped off to a local dry-cleaners if youre staying long and need a fresh pressing for your suit or dress. But, hello, a bag for your dirty laundry bags for the return home? Indeed. Note that were talking about plastic laundry bags. Leave the fancy mesh and fabric laundry bags for the next guest.

Free newspapers. There was a time when a fresh copy of USA Today outside your door was a given, but hotels arent handing them out as freely as they used to  if at all. You might have to head down to the lobby early enough to pick one up. Look for local newspapers, too, which can offer valuable information about whats going on around town. Staying at one of the Trump Hotels? If so you can get complimentary digital access (opens in new tab) to the Wall Street Journal and New York Times.

Free parking. This is an increasingly difficult perk to come by at hotels in big urban areas. Priceline turned up 33,731 locations with free parking, but in my travels, Ive been finding even hotels in smaller cities are looking to cash in on your ride. At roadside and suburban hotels, parking is almost always free. At hotels that do charge, try asking the front desk to waive the parking fee. You never know.

Free pens and notepads. Never leave either alone in my presence for one second. Im a serial snatcher of pens, pencils with cool logos on them, and notepads of any kind. These go directly into my pocket or luggage. Both always come in handy around the house.

Free room upgrade. I have to admit, I learned this one from a recent Kiplinger story  and successfully deployed this tactic on a recent spur-of-the-moment weekend getaway. Be very polite to the person checking you in. Ask if you could have a free room upgrade. When I smiled politely and asked, the clerk checked with her manager. We were switched to a room on a higher floor with a much better view than the room we were initially booked in at an Alexandria, Va., hotel.

Free shoeshine and sewing kits. When its finally time to put a shine on your kicks, theres nothing like reaching for that free shoeshine kit you got from the hotel. Ditto with a sewing kit. My sewing skills have become rusty of late  I usually only need them when a button goes missing  but I know someone who is excellent at sewing. I can help by retrieving the free kit we got at the hotel.

Free toiletries. The soap, lotion, shampoo and conditioner you find in the hotel bathroom are yours for the taking. A call to the front desk might also score you a host of other grooming supplies including a toothbrush, toothpaste, razor and shaving cream. Kimpton Hotels will even send up dental floss, deodorant, mouthwash and hair spray free of charge (opens in new tab).

Free Wi-Fi. A Priceline.com search found 334,758 hotels worldwide that offer free Internet access. Know that some hotels, though, will try to gouge you. If you cant get a wireless signal in your room for free, try the hotels lobby or business center, where Wi-Fi is often gratis for guests. Free Wi-Fi can also come as a perk of joining a hotels loyalty program. If all else fails, request free access when checking in. Hey, it cant hurt.
Source: Special to The Gold Report (6/9/16)

https://www.streetwisereports.com/pub/na/five-junior-mining-companies-creating-value-through-exploration

The drill bit is essential to junior mining companies. Only through active exploration can investors separate the companies with potential from those without. Mick Carew of Haywood Securities discusses five companies on track to create value through the drill bit.



Source: TerraX Minerals Inc. Corporate Presentation

High-Grade Gold Camps in Canada

The Gold Report: You follow a large number of junior mining companies. Would you tell us about a few that you expect to create value through the drill bit?

Mick Carew: I'll start with TerraX Minerals Inc. (TXR:TSX.V; Not Rated), which has the Yellowknife City Gold Project (YCGP) in the Northwest Territories. YCGP is located in one of the six major high-grade gold camps in Canada, the Yellowknife greenstone belt, which hosts the past-producing Con and Giant gold mines. Both deposits are situated along several shear zones, with numerous historical gold showings and high-grade drill results that have been the focus of TerraX's exploration program to date. YCGP exhibits a number of similarities to the Timmins gold camp, including timing of gold mineralization and the deposition of temporally associated sedimentary host rocks.

Owing to its proximity to Yellowknife, the project is readily accessible via an all-season road and is close to infrastructure, including hydroelectric power, and a skilled workforce. Osisko Gold Royalties Ltd. (OR:TSX; Buy; $19/share Target Price) is a 16% shareholder, after investing in the company in June 2015.

TGR: TerraX recently released drill results. What do you make of them?

MC: TerraX released assay results from six drill holes at its Homer Lake target within YCGP. The intersection of gold mineralization along the north-south-trending structure at Homer Lake confirms earlier rock-chip and trench sampling results collected in 2014 and 2015. Additional intersections of lower grade and/or narrower intersections of gold and silver mineralization indicate that multiple subparallel structures could be present.

This week, TerraX also released results from its Mispickel target, where drilling has defined a series of high-grade gold zones within a wider zone of lower-grade mineralization associated with a north- to north-northwest-trending subvertical shear zone. Higher-grade gold intersections include 8.00 meters (8.00m) grading 60.60 grams per tonne (60.60 g/t) gold, including 2.25m grading 212.48 g/t gold.

The latest drill results were part of a 7,000m drill program, which is now completed. The results from Mispickel were definitely a highlight, and will likely be a key focus for the company during a summer drill program that should commence in the next couple of months.

TGR: You cover a number of companies active in Canada. Would you talk about another one?

MC: Pure Gold Mining Inc. (PGM:TSX.V; Not Rated) owns a land package, the Madsen gold project, comprising approximately 45 square kilometers of ground within the Red Lake district in northwestern Ontario, making it the third largest landowner in the area. A new interpretation of the role of ultramafic contacts and structural controls has resulted in multiple discoveries in the Red Lake district.

The geological environment and gold mineralization at Madsen's 8 Zone are similar to other recent high-grade gold discoveries in the district. The 10-kilometer-long ultramafic contact is highly prospective for additional high-grade discoveries, and Pure Gold believes the Madsen project has the potential to host the next multimillion-ounce gold deposit in the Red Lake district.

Pure Gold released additional drill results from the McVeigh Horizon, part of the Madsen gold project. The latest results are part of an ongoing drill program that continues to support the interpretation that McVeigh is the fold continuation of the Austin Horizon. The McVeigh Horizon remains open at depth and drilling continues to test the downward plunge of these high-grade gold shoots.

TGR: There are historical results at Madsen. How does that affect the upside?

MC: The Austin Horizon alone was responsible for approximately 2 million ounces (2 Moz) of gold production. Historic results and production combined with recent results provides confidence that the current resource estimate at Madsen could grow significantly. This, in turn, could provide plenty of upside to the preliminary economic assessment (PEA) recently released, which defined a project with a 1.5-year payback period over a mine life of 6.5 years, and an upfront capital cost estimate of $20.1 million (utilizing existing mining, milling and tailings management infrastructure).

This week, Pure Gold increased its 2016 drill program to 51,000m. An additional 30,000m has been set aside for McVeigh, where two drill rigs are currently active. A further 5,000m will also be completed at the company's Russet South target.

TGR: The market seems to have responded well to drill results put out by Balmoral Resources Ltd. (BAR:TSX; BALMF:OTCQX; Not Rated). Can you give us your thoughts?

MC: Balmoral has been drilling on its Bug Lake Gold Trend, part of the broader Martiniere Property in Quebec. The initial three holes were drilled along the southern portion of Bug Lake, where previous drilling in 2014 encountered high-grade gold intercepts within widely spaced drill holes; the latest results suggest these high-grade gold zones are continuous down dip and along strike.

In addition to Bug Lake, two holes were drilled on the Grasset property to confirm the presence of a gold-bearing shear zone in the hanging wall to the Grasset Nickel Deposit. Both holes returned gold mineralized intersections over 6m. More drilling is required to determine the extent and distribution of higher-grade gold mineralization at Grasset. The gold-bearing zone is located ~1,700m east of Balmoral's Grasset nickel deposit.

The latest results from Balmoral demonstrate the continuity of high-grade gold mineralization within the southern Bug Lake Zone. The results from Grasset also demonstrate the potential for high-grade gold mineralization elsewhere within Balmoral's land package. Results from eight drill holes are expected over the next month. Balmoral is also preparing to follow up these encouraging results with a fully funded, $4 million (20,000m) drill program scheduled to commence within the next month.

TGR: The companies you've discussed so far are all working in Canada. What about companies in other countries?

MC: SilverCrest Metals Inc. (SIL:TSX.V; Not Rated) is active in Mexico. It was spun out from SilverCrest Mines Inc. when that company was acquired by First Majestic Silver Corp. (FR-T, Not Rated) last year for $154 million. Through the same management team and board of directors, the company's focus remains in Mexico on several legacy properties not included in the First Majestic acquisition/merger.

The company's flagship project, Las Chispas, is a historical mine in Sonora first discovered in the 1600s, and renowned for its world-class silver mineral specimens, many of which are on display in a number of museums around the world.

The Las Chispas property is situated along the Santa Elena Trend. Some 14 epithermal veins were the focus of historical production, of which two have been mined out; the remaining 12, plus an additional five veins identified elsewhere in the property, are the focus of exploration efforts this year.

SilverCrest's rehabilitation program at Las Chispas is progressing as scheduled, with 2km of the estimated 6km of underground workings now completed. The latest channel sampling results continue to confirm the high-grade silver potential and continuity of mineralization within a low-to-intermediate-sulphidation epithermal vein system at Las Chispas, and suggest a similar geochemical signature to the Santa Elena deposit.

As SilverCrest continues to undertake its channel sampling program, a surface drill program has commenced that will further aid in determining the continuity of the mineralized veins, as well as identify extensions to mineralization; the company also has an underground drilling application submitted that is awaiting approval.

TGR: Would you talk about one more company that is active with the drill bit?

MC: Cordoba Minerals Corp. (CDB:TSX.V; Not Rated) is an exploration company focused on the San Matias porphyry copper-gold project in Colombia. The company has tied up a significant land package along the northern extension of the Mid Cauca Gold Belt.

Last year, Cordoba achieved a couple of important milestones, including a joint venture agreement with High Power Exploration Inc. (HPX), a private mineral exploration company indirectly controlled by Robert Friedland; exploration work at San Matias is fully funded by High Power. Cordoba also signed an option agreement with Sociedad Ordinaria de Minas Omni (OMNI) for the Alacran deposit. Cordoba has just completed a 3,000m drill program at Alacran in conjunction with High Power, and a new program is currently being planned. Drill results from Alacran include: Hole ACD006A (109m grading 0.95% copper and 0.35 g/t gold) and ASA051 (111m grading 1.01% copper and 0.38 g/t gold). Note that Hole ASA051 was initially drilled by the former operator, but was never assayed.

A Typhoon (deep-penetrating induced polarization) geophysical survey is underway. This work will be followed by an initial resource estimate for Alacran in early H2/16, while drill testing a number of targets defined by the Typhoon program is expected to also commence in H2/16.

TGR: Thanks for sharing your insights.

Mick Carew is a research analyst with Haywood Securities. Carew has mineral exploration experience on three continents, Asia, Australia and North America, with specific expertise in a variety of uranium, base and precious metal ore deposits. He also brings extensive technical experience in the evaluation of potential targets and geological properties. Carew holds an Honors Bachelor of Science degree from Monash University of Melbourne and a Ph.D. from James Cook University.

Email: info@streetwisereports.com
In much of what was once called the free world, governments and economies are in the throes of self-destruction. Before long, we shall witness revolution in several of these countries.

The revolutions may prove to be violent, or they may prove to be soft revolutions  major changes in the political structure. They may vary anywhere from mere changes in the rhetoric of political hopefuls, to changes in the actual structure of governments.

One incorrect assumption about revolution is that it took place because the entire population had become dissatisfied. Not so. Most every revolution occurs as a result of a fraction of the population (sometimes a tenth, sometimes a third or more) taking action significant enough to bring about the desired changes.

This is an important point, as it serves as a reminder that revolution frequently comes about as the result of a minority dissatisfaction. The revolution may then succeed if the minority can pull off a coup. And revolutions are not necessarily morally right or wrong, theyre just successful bids for change. In many such cases, all that changes is the faces, not the fundamentals of governance.

But, assuming that the objectives are clearly-stated objectives (as opposed to vague proclamations such as, Were not gonna take it anymore, we can examine, whether, in hindsight, the stated objectives of the revolution have been realised.

The Ghost of Revolution Past

Lets have a brief look at the American and French Revolutions, which occurred at roughly the same time. Each aimed at the overthrow of a monarchy that was regarded as oppressive in its rule. The American Revolution was highly successful in that, by championing the rights of the individual, it opened up America to a highly productive future that lasted for quite some time. However, the French Revolution, which had similar stated objectives (the motto was, Liberty, Equality, Fraternity), did not succeed in its stated objectives. It devolved fairly quickly into vengefulness, pillaging of the property of the Second Estate (the nobility) and demands for entitlements and political favours. Consequently, it failed to revitalise France; it did not result in an era of great freedom and productivity; it devolved into corruption and socialism.

A glimpse into why greater productivity (as a bi-product of greater individual freedom) did not occur is evident in Frances Declaration of the Rights of Man, a parallel document to the then-new American Bill of Rights. The clauses were somewhat similar, but, on inspection, the eventual abuse of rights was baked in the cake right from the outset. Two examples:

XIII. A common contribution being necessary for the support of the public force, and for defraying the other expenses of government, it ought to be divided equally among the members of the community, according to their abilities.

Here we have a clause that was clearly written by a committee. The original author could have been a French Jefferson or Madison, as it states that taxation should be divided equally, yet an amendment was added - according to their abilities. Well, unfortunately, that tosses equal out the window, and allows for future legislators to add as many socialistic regulations as they see fit. Equal has a clear meaning, whilst according to their abilities is vague enough to allow any level of inequality future legislators might desire. Clearly, in putting this clause through committee, there were French founding fathers who had no intention of honouring liberty and equality, but had a more entitlement-centred France in mind.

XVIII. The right to property being inviolable and sacred, no one ought to be deprived of it, except in cases of evident public necessity.

Here we go, again. A firm statement as to the rights of the individual, watered down (again, presumably in committee) with the rider, except in cases of evident public necessity, to allow the state the authority to violate that right as it sees fit.

A declaration of rights that negates itself is no declaration of rights at all. Noted English pamphleteer Thomas Paine (who had assisted in providing verbal focus to the American Revolution), said, in discussing the French declaration at the time,

[G]overnment is governed by no principle whateverit can make evil good and good evil, just as it pleases. In short,government is arbitrary power.

Exactly soand a memorable observation with regard to any government.

The Ghost of Revolution Present

Argentina was once a thriving country, but has been plagued, since the Perons in the 1940s, with socialistic regimes. They have just elected a new president - Mauricio Macri, who has promised to save the collapsing economy through conservative measures. To most people outside Argentina, this appears to be a soft revolution; a promise for a revitalised Argentina. However, for those closer to the situation, the revolution may be pre-ordained to failure. Across the river in Uruguay, prior to the recent election, my neighbour Marcelo shrugged his shoulders and said to me,

Most Argentines receive entitlements, but as Cristina ruins the economy further, the entitlements get smaller and smaller. So, theyre angry and, this time, theyll vote for a conservative for president this time. Argentina will become more fiscally responsible for two or three years, then the people will demand a return to the socialism that they had before. The majority dont care about a healthy economy. They only want conservatism long enough to stabilise the country, so that they can get their entitlements back. Its always the same.

Hes correct that in Argentina, the cycle has repeated over and over. Until now, no lesson was learned by the majority of voters. So, this time around, have they figured out that entitlements are counter-productive to a vibrant economy and begin a period of prosperity for Argentina, or will they give the new president a few years to stabilize the economy, then once again begin demands for entitlements? Time will tell.

The Ghost of Revolution Future

Many in The US talk of revolution. Most hope for a soft revolution, in which their country would go back to the good old days of traditional values, hard work, the rights of the individual and a productive society.

Not likely to happen, Im afraid. The first American revolution resulted in that very outcome, but that was (in my opinion) because the colonists had no entitlement society to begin with. They went to America as pioneers and each was his own champion. They therefore accepted hard work, self-reliance and treasured individual rights. After the revolution, the US went into a long, highly productive period, because the great majority of Americans shared this view.

Unfortunately, thats no longer true in America. Freedom is a concept that sounds good to all, but, with it come great responsibilities  responsibilities that a majority of citizens are unlikely to accept after the revolution. Just as in France, they will want to be assured that, although they want their own freedom, they want to limit the freedom of others; so that others be forced to contribute to the greater good.

Once the concept that your neighbour is obligated to sacrifice his freedom to satisfy your needs or desires is ingrained in a people, its virtually impossible to remove. If we seek true change, were only likely to find it in locations that are truly starting over, without the baggage of an entitled population to mire the rebirth of the new regime.

Jeff Thomas

email: jeff.thomas1066@gmail.com
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By Larry Little

As we approach Father's Day 2016, a reflection on fathers in the public eye seems appropriate.

As a father, grandfather (and quasi-grandfather from time to time) I am aware of the contradictory feelings many Americans have about the male figures in their family that assume or fail to assume a positive fatherly role.

For those old enough to have watched him for years on the television, weighing heavily on our aspirational image of fatherhood is the ongoing tragedy of Bill Cosby. His downfall from a wonderful TV role model to an alleged abuser is perhaps the most tragic social event of recent years. In a sense, reality sometimes really overtakes and kicks fiction right where it really hurts  and also in the heart! Now we have another father and grandfather very much in the news  in fact, in your face virtually every hour.

While I have never met Donald Trump nor watched "The Apprentice," I have watched virtually all of the presidential debates, Democrat and Republican, and have tried to follow the news from multiple sources. So far, my overall impression of the man is quite negative. His shoot-from-the-hip language is often clearly demeaning, obviously outrageous and seemingly racist. He appears so self-centered and driven that he is an archetype for the worst of the business robber barons of the past and present. He seems to be a horrible role model and not a moral leader, just exactly what our country, especially at this moment of moral confusion, doesn't need.

However, there is perhaps another side to this man who would not so long ago have been called a snake oil salesman. At the moment I see three characteristics of Mr. Trump that appear positive, and are worth further observation.

The first is a favorable impression of Trump as a father.

While an article in People magazine published on Oct. 4, 2015 may well be fluff, many of its contentions about Trump as a father match what I have seen in the public comments from his sons and daughters. In that article one of his daughters is quoted to say, "He was tough, firm, but always available to us." One of his sons noted, "He's been protecting us from the public eye for a long time  When we were kids, we'd be sitting in a boardroom while he was negotiating a deal, and if we were playing with trucks, making noise, it didn't matter."

The second is that apparently Trump's relationship with his two ex-wives is not only decent, the level of cooperation between Trump and both of them has had a significantly positive affect on the children, and now the grandchildren. If these accounts are true, Trump's example  while not one to emulate regarding his divorces in general  is perhaps a helpful example for those couples with children who despite their best efforts, find themselves divorced.

The third possibly positive characteristic of Trump does not involve his private side, but rather the public phenomenon he has engendered. It's not in my mind what he says, but by making outrageous statements he is "exercising" and arguably protecting the First Amendment, helping to address political correctness and bringing new people into the political process. This is what I call the Trump revolution. It's rough and tumble, and crude, but it has positive as well as negative aspects.

On the other side of the aisle, Hillary Clinton may well be a good mother and appears to have a significant temperamental advantage over Trump.

I don't know who I will support in the election  on the most basic level, both candidates look very unfavorable  but I'm digging deeper, while keeping as open a mind as possible.

I suggest paying attention to what Mary Barra, the CEO of General Motors, said when asked by Time magazine who he'll support: "I really have not made up my mind yet. We aren't even through officially knowing who are the two candidates running."

As we approach Father's Day, it is a time for we fathers or grandfathers to reassess and improve; if we are lucky to have a good relationship with our father (living or dead) we should be grateful; and if we need to work on that relationship, now is the time to do so.

And following Mary Barra's advice, we should keep an open mind about our choice of leaders until the time to choose, and especially for the office of the President of the United States, consider asking the tough questions to get at the true character of the candidates. Then as tough as it might be  we have to vote.
News.com.au reports:

A PUBLIC pool that maintains female-only hours so that Hasidic Jewish women can swim with no men present has sparked debate in the US.

For several hours a week, the Metropolitan Pool on Bedford Avenue in Williamsburg, Brooklyn bars men from entering, allowing local Orthodox Jewish women and girls to swim while maintaining their modesty.

The popular recreational centre in New York Citys thriving neighbourhood, just a few blocks from a predominantly Orthodox Jewish community, has kept women-only pool hours since the 1990s. But the practice only came to the attention of the wider public recently after complaints to the citys Commission on Human Rights.

Commission spokesman Seth Hoy said they received an anonymous complaint a few months back that the indoor pool  one of NYCs oldest  might be violating the citys human rights law, which bans gender discrimination in public accommodations.

Jewish law forbids women to bathe in front of men and, according to New York State Assemblyman Dov Hikind, a politician who represents the Orthodox Jewish district in Brooklyn, many Hasidic women were very distraught after learning the female-only pool hours might be discontinued.
Stuff reported:

Prominent Maori leader and former National vice president Sir Graham Latimer has died, aged 90, after suffering from Parkinsons disease.

Sir Graham Stanley Latimers leadership was key in progressing Maori rights and addressing historic grievances.

He was involved with the New Zealand Maori Council for nearly 40 years, much of his tenure was as president, and he was one of the first three members of the Waitangi Tribunal. 

Shane Jones, now Ambassador for Pacific Economic Development, described Latimer as a mentor for our generation.

He was steadfast to a global Maori view about the trajectory that we should follow, but more importantly he was extremely patriotic to his country that he served in the second world war.

He was a pragmatist, very few people would know that. He agreed to help push for the decriminalisation of marijuana.

Latimers litigation and broadcasting leadership helped Maori to flourish, said Jones: His efforts changed the face of New Zealand.

Jones would remember Latimers restlessness to achieve, and his words: Dont stand around son, holding the shovel at the hangi pit. Get out and find fresh prey.
The Herald reports:

A protest organiser in Masterton has welcomed uniformed members of a right wing group wanting to march against child abuse in the town.

Mother-of-five Liz Rikiti and Amanda Dette have arranged a Justice for Moko march in Masterton on Monday June 27, the same day as the Rotorua High Court sentencing of Tania Shailer and David William Haerewa, a couple who pleaded guilty to the manslaughter of Moko Rangitoheriri, a 3-year-old in their care tortured to death over a two-month period.

Masterton scrap worker Vaughan Tocker, who heads the Right Wing Resistance in Australia and New Zealand and claims to hold the rank of lieutenant-general, said his group planned to stand shoulder to shoulder with child abuse protestors later this month and march against child abuse   as well as Islamisation.
A missing 18-year-old was found on the other state with the body of a young woman.

As they wait for a coroner to positively identify the woman, loved ones fear it's the teen's ex-girlfriend, who had broken up with him right before they both went missing.

The family of 18-year-old Ashley Doolittle called authorities Thursday night after she failed to return home at the expected 7:30 p.m. time. Her vehicle was found in the area of Lon Hagler Reservoir, southwest of Loveland, but she was nowhere to be seen.

Through interviews with relatives, the Larimer County Sheriff's Office says it learned Doolittle had recently ended a year-long relationship with Tanner Flores. Flores, who was said to be distraught over the breakup, had not been seen since 3:30 Thursday afternoon.

Flores was found Mesa County Friday, nearly 300 miles from home, after someone noticed his truck.

He is currently being held in the Mesa County Jail while the coroner's office tries to identify the woman found with him, and her cause of death.

The Larimer County sheriff took to Facebook after Flores' arrest.
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photos by PAUL EFIRD/NEWS SENTINEL Misty Mills of Merelli's Italian Cuisine is pictured in the courtyard of the soon-to-open restaurant Friday, June 10, 2016, in Bearden. Mills, co-owner of the restaurant with Rocky Davis, said they are shooting for a soft opening probably in late July.

SHARE Merelli's Italian Cuisine is pictured Friday, June 10, 2016, in Bearden. Misty Mills, co-owner of the restaurant with Rocky Davis, said they shooting for a soft opening probably in late July.

By Ed Marcum of the Knoxville News Sentinel

An upscale Italian restaurant will be joining Knoxville's dining lineup when Merelli's Italian Cuisine opens in Bearden later this summer.

Misty Mills said Friday that she and co-owner Rocky Davis, are shooting for a soft opening of the establishment, probably in late July. Executive Chef Tom Porter, whose cooking experience includes Mediterranean- and Portuguese-style in restaurants in New England and on yachts in Europe, said Merelli's will be a fine dining restaurant with a focus on authentic Italian cuisine.

"Most restaurant people that come to town, they look around to see what is successful and they try to copy it, instead of just coming in and doing what you do," he said. "We are not here to copy anybody, we're just here to bring authentic Italian food to Knoxville."

Merelli's will open at 4884 Chambliss Ave., which was the site of different restaurants over the years  the last being La Rumba  but has been empty about three years, Porter said. It will front on Kingston Pike at the corner of Carr Street.

Dishes served at Merelli's will favor seafood, chicken and pork, because these are traditional to authentic Italian food, Porter said. Sauces will be made Italian-style and not pureed as in most American restaurants that do Italian food, he said. Beef and steak selections will be minimal.

Pasta will either be made at the restaurant or brought in from local sources that supply it fresh, Porter said.

The restaurant, which has about 6,500 square feet, will have two kitchens, including an "eat-at pizza bar," where guests may watch pizzas being made on a brick oven kiln.

"And we will be doing low-carb and gluten-free pizzas," Mills said.

Along with authentic Italian dishes, Merelli's will offer a selection of Old World wines with meals and will have a climate-controlled wine room able to hold about 1,500 bottles.

"We will primarily do Italian wines by the different regions," Porter said. "There will also be some from Southern France, Turkey and elsewhere, but primarily European, focused on Italian."

Merelli's will have one room devoted to a unique salad and sausage bar, Mills said. Instead of salad ingredients and sausages set out so guests may put together their own dishes, patrons will sit at tables and be served by the wait staff, she said.

The building, which Porter said was originally built to be an antique mall, has about three rooms and areas that can be reserved for private functions.

Merelli's likely will open in phases, Porter said.

"For a few weeks, it will be inside, dinner only," he said.

Patio dining will be added, probably in August, then near the end of August lunch will be added.

"Then into the fall, sometime in September, we are going to bring in brunch,"Porter said.

Updates will be posted at www.merellis.com, Mills said.
BOB FOWLER/NEWS SENTINEL The company that wants to convert the old Oak Ridge Mall into Main Street Oak Ridge wants to make sure 17 acres in front of the American Museum of Science and Energy, owned by the U.S. Department of Energy and across Tulane Avenue from the mall, won't become available to a competitor.

SHARE This property in front of the American Museum of Science and Energy is across Tulane Avenue from the old Oak Ridge Mall, and the developer that wants to convert the mall into Main Street Oak Ridge is seeking to make sure no competitor buys that land and derails its development plans. (BOB FOWLER/NEWS SENTINEL)

By Bob Fowler of the Knoxville News Sentinel

OAK RIDGE  After months of preparations, an executive with the would-be redeveloper of the Oak Ridge Mall property said his company is ready to buy the tract by month's end and immediately begin construction of its Main Street Oak Ridge project there.

But there's a loose end that needs to be tied up, a last hurdle before RealtyLink LLC begins the multimillion dollar overhaul, company executive Neil Wilson says in a letter to City Manager Mark Watson.

The Greenville, S.C., company wants to make sure it gets first dibs on land across the street that's now part of the Department of Energy's American Museum of Science and Energy tract should it ever become available.

"Any redevelopment of that property that competes with Main Street either directly or indirectly will be devastating to our efforts," Wilson's letter states. "We must be able to control the redevelopment of that property."

According to Wilson, "time is truly of the essence in resolving this final issue."

In response, City Council during Monday's meeting will consider a resolution asking DOE, through its agent, the federal General Services Administration, for the right of first option on the museum property should DOE decide to dispose of it.

If the property is transferred to the city, RealtyLink would then get first rights to buy the tract, according to the resolution.

Since 2006, every would-be developer of the old mall has been "concerned about what could happen across the street" on the museum property, said Ray Evans, an economic development consultant for the city. Evans said the Main Street Oak Ridge project is "so thin financially for these developers."

He said proposed lease rates for Main Street Oak Ridge tenants aren't as pricey as they would be in Farragut or many other locations. "The margin is so very thin for these guys (RealtyLink) they have to minimize their risk," he said.

There's reportedly no immediate plan by DOE to divest itself of the museum's front yard. But the museum for years has had an uncertain future, with concerns that DOE funds shouldn't be used to operate such a facility. The department now spends $1.5 million a year to keep the museum afloat.

City Manager Mark Watson in a memo to City Council said that with the city being named part of the Manhattan Project National Historical Park, the museum's front yard could be used "to help secure a path forward for their mission of public education and public outreach."

David Keim, spokesman for Oak Ridge National Laboratory, which operates the museum for DOE, said Friday there's no move afoot to use the museum's front yard to boost the national park.

But Watson noted the museum property is part of a 20-year Tax Increment Financing District that's crucial for the Main Street Oak Ridge project. Over those 20 years, "something could happen to that property," Watson said. "We need to be prepared and hedge our bets."

A proposal to obtain most of the museum's property  which fronts busy Illinois Avenue  for commercial development was kicked around several years ago but then discarded.

Oak Ridge Mayor Warren Gooch in a speech in early May announced the first four stores that have signed lease agreements to locate in Main Street Oak Ridge: Dick's Sporting Goods, Ulta Beauty, T.J. Maxx and PetSmart.

The only two current tenants in Oak Ridge Mall, Belk and J.C. Penney, are renewing their leases, Gooch told members of the Oak Ridge League of Women Voters.

For a decade, the mall's future has been uncertain and the subject of concern by city officials. Chattanooga developer Steve Arnsdorff bought the mall in 2003 from Crown American for a reported $6 million, but his redevelopment plans, envisioned as Oak Ridge City Center, floundered.

A new developer, Crosland Southeast of Charlotte, N.C., was chosen in 2013 by Arnsdorff and partners to take over the mail redevelopment but abruptly  and mysteriously  abandoned its efforts last year.

That's when RealtyLink stepped into the picture.
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By Mary Cornatzer, The News & Observer (Raleigh, N.C.) (TNS)

Randy Johnson's "Grandfather Mountain: The History and Guide to an Appalachian Icon" looks like coffee-table eye candy  a big, heavy volume of beautiful photos.

Remember: You can't judge a book by its cover.

Yes, many of the photos inside are breathtaking, capturing the beauty of the mountain and its surrounding environs. But the book truly lives up to its title. Here you'll learn about the geological formation of Grandfather, the first scientific forays into the area, the early explorers of the region and the stories of those who have long called the area home.

But don't think of this as some dry academic tome. This deeply researched book often reads like a novel as Johnson's passion for his subject shines. His association with the mountain began in the 1970s when he first hiked it as a college student, and he cut short his graduate career to reopen Grandfather's trails, operating as bushwhacker, ranger and promoter.

He's still an unapologetic fan of Grandfather, arguing that it's the original face of the Appalachians and delighting in tales of visitors like naturalist John Muir who broke into song when reaching its peak.

But Johnson doesn't shy away from writing about its dangers. One particularly affecting story is that of Worth "Buzz" Weller, who first visited the mountain with other junior scientists with the Cincinnati Museum of Natural History in 1930, where he found an undescribed species of salamander and a girlfriend, Margaret "Maggie" Talbert. The next year he was back, and, anxious for his salamander search, he rushed out alone on the first day in camp. A storm came up, and it was four days before his body was found in the bottom of a gorge after he apparently walked off a cliff.

Johnson was able to talk to Talbert in 2012, when she was 97. She still recalled her young sweetheart, telling Johnson, "We never even kissed. But I thought him the most wonderful person I'd ever met. He had the most marvelous mind, and was absolutely aflame with love for science."

Those stories, which are scattered in little insets throughout the book, give added dimension to the book, offering mini-profiles of many of the people associated with the mountain and voices from the community.

Most people associate Grandfather Mountain with the Mile High Swinging Bridge and, if you're of a certain age, Mildred the Bear. Both of those attractions were the doing of Hugh Morton, the longtime owner of the mountain and Johnson's employer for many years. But you're 128 pages into the book before you really meet Morton, grandson of Hugh MacRae, who bought Grandfather Mountain in 1889 from Civil War veteran Walter Lenoir. Morton's uncle, Nelson MacRae, built the mountain's first tourist attraction  Observation Point, a vista just above MacRae Meadows.

Many of the early practices at Grandfather Mountain  building the road to the top, allowing visitors to pose with the bears and feed them peanuts and marshmallows  would be frowned upon in later years. Johnson, obviously a friend of the mountain, writes about them through the lens of the times, and notes that as the times changed, so did Grandfather.

He also writes candidly about Morton's fight with the National Park Service over routes for the Blue Ridge Parkway and Morton's influence with politicians.

But his true passion is the mountain itself, the challenge it poses for hikers and preserving its trails for the future. His fellow hikers will appreciate the last section of the book, where he describes Grandfather's trails, rating them from easy to very strenuous.
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By Amy Greene, Chapter16.org

Stephen King's 55th novel, "End of Watch," represents, to this constant reader, a full-circle moment: it's possible to see in this final volume of his Bill Hodges trilogy a writer's evolution and his return to form, both in one. "End of Watch" begins as a detective novel with a noir feel and an authorial voice I might not have recognized back in the 1980s, as a 12-year-old devouring the horror master's every written word.

During the early years of his career, King grappled again and again with the battle between good and evil in such novels as "Salem's Lot," "The Stand" and "It," but his preoccupation with monsters and ghosts seems to have given way to more earthly concerns. But with "End of Watch," King combines detective fiction and the supernatural suspense of his early career to great effect in the forms of mind control, body-swapping, and telekinesis, a la "Carrie" and "Firestarter."

The conclusion of the Bill Hodges trilogy brings back Brady Hartsfield, the psychopathic perpetrator of the Mercedes Massacre, who deliberately drove into a crowd of thousands of employment-seekers standing in line at a job fair. For five years, Hartsfield has been locked, unresponsive, in a clinic for victims of traumatic brain injury, unlikely to recover. But retired police detective Bill Hodges begins to suspect that Hartsfield is awake after all, and in possession of deadly new powers.

When Bill and his former partner, Holly, are called to a murder-suicide with ties to the Mercedes Massacre, they find themselves dealing with a kind of murderer they haven't encountered before, and one they can't quite believe in. Hodges's logical mind tells him Hartsfield can't be awake and aware  "Whatever happened," he thinks, "it can have nothing to do with Brady Hartsfield, because Holly literally bashed his brains out"  but his instincts are telling a different truth: "Still . . .his stomach gives a warning twinge."

Hodges is an unlikely hero, on the cusp of 70 and in poor health. As I read, I couldn't help wondering if Stephen King might be addressing his own mortality through this same-age protagonist, a man working at the top of his game until the end. As his protagonist reflects, "End of watch is what they call it, but Hodges himself has found it impossible to give up watching."

Not to suggest that King is anywhere near the end of his own nocturnal watch: as one who has devoured all 55 of his books, from "Carrie" to this latest, I'm hoping for at least 55 more. King has continued to be prolific at a time when another author in his place might consider resting on his laurels. Back in 2002, he did tell the Los Angeles Times he was thinking about retirement. He has a few more projects to complete, he said, but "Then that's it. I'm done." I'm grateful he changed his mind. King appears to have a compulsion to tell stories, a drive that won't allow him to stop. King is a man who hasn't wasted the magic juice he has been allotted. He continues to milk every drop.

This, as much as the product of his literary labors, is what I admire about him. He has honored his gift. He recognizes the privilege it is to connect with readers. There is a demand, perhaps even a psychological need, for the scary dreams he produces. I can tell you what he gave me, a strange child who lived on stories: a safe way of looking into the dark. And I'll tell you what he's shown a 40-year-old writer who wonders sometimes if the passion to create dies with age: it might change, but it won't go away. It lasts until the end of the watch.

For more local book coverage, please visit http://chapter16.org/, an online publication of Humanities Tennessee.
Photos by Davie Hinshaw/Charlotte Observer/TNS Tiffany Terrell is overjoyed as she shows her new smile following dental surgery on May 66.

SHARE Tiffany Terrell just before her dental implant surgery.

By Karen Garloch, The Charlotte Observer (TNS)

CHARLOTTE, N.C.  Tiffany Terrell can't explain exactly how it happened.

"A cavity here, and a cavity there," and pretty soon, she'd lost half the teeth in her mouth. Those that remained were decayed or broken.

At 38 and single, Terrell had become embarrassed to smile. When she did, three discolored, misshapen teeth showed prominently in front.

Although naturally outgoing, she cut herself off from friends and avoided going out to eat. Without molars, chewing was impossible. She was thankful that her banking job didn't involve dealing with the public.

Then late one night in March, while browsing Facebook, she saw an offer that seemed sent by God.

Dr. Amir Marashi, a Charlotte-based oral surgeon, was giving away dental implant surgery  a $50,000 value that is not typically covered by insurance  through a program he called "Second Chance."

Terrell typed in an entry, describing how her damaged teeth had stolen her confidence. Of 200 applicants, she was one of 50 chosen for in-person interviews. She quickly reached the top 10, who were called back for a second round.

"She touched my heart," Marashi said. "The goodness oozes out of her."

As a dentist and a medical doctor who has specialized in oral surgery in Charlotte for 15 years, Marashi said he created the program because he wanted to give back to the community. He plans to offer it annually. "We all need a second chance sometime."

LIFE GOT TOO BUSY

Terrell and her family landed in Charlotte by chance. She was 19 when her father, a United Methodist minister, died in 1998. She said she and her family  mother Linda and three siblings  got in the car, left their home in Virginia and settled in Charlotte when they "got tired of driving."

In her 20s and 30s, Terrell held jobs as a bank teller and office manager for a car dealership, and she had dental insurance. But her teeth had started going bad in college. And her insurance never covered all the work that needed to be done. The total cost might be $3,000, but her plan covered only $1,200. Sometimes she would pay out-of-pocket to get a tooth filled or have one pulled.

Because she didn't have toothaches, she didn't think of it as a major problem. Before long, instead of the standard 32 teeth, she had only 17.

"The next thing you know, you don't have hardly any teeth in your mouth," Terrell said. "Life got busier. I don't really remember."

From 2011 to 2014, she had a job at a call center that again offered dental insurance. But a root canal and an extraction used up the coverage in the first six months. Then in September 2014, she got laid off. She worked temporary jobs until she got hired last November by Citibank in Fort Mill, where she works in the consumer business support unit.

At one time, Terrell dreamed of becoming a chef. But that no longer seemed like an option. The decline in her dental health left her self-conscious and insecure. Plus, she couldn't eat anything but soft foods. Nothing crunchy.

"I don't remember the last time I truly bit into any food," she said in April, a few weeks before she was scheduled to have her surgery.

The timing was good. She'd recently begun waking up in the middle of the night with horrible headaches. She could feel pain moving up her left jaw. Things appeared to be getting worse.

GETTING READY

Before the surgery, Terrell met with Marashi several times at Greater Charlotte Oral & Facial Surgery offices. He took CT scans of her jaw that gave him an exact map of her mouth.

As part of his evaluation, Marashi determined that Terrell would be a good candidate for implants. Unlike dentures, which can be removed, implants are false teeth that are attached to posts in the gums and remain permanently.

Implants, she learned, would not only allow her to chew again and have a pretty smile; they would help preserve her facial structure, preventing bone deterioration that occurs when teeth are missing.

Using those CT images, Marashi plotted surgery down to the millimeter. He worked with Drs. Bruce Miller and Sarah Jafari-Namin, of Charlotte Prosthodontics, who volunteered to install the implants free.

SURGERY FOR 7 HOURS

On May 6, Tiffany Terrell arrived at the Steele Creek office at about 6:45 a.m. with her mother, Linda Terrell, and her sister, Tahren Brandon.

Tiffany was both excited and nervous. She hadn't slept much, but she said, "I'll get plenty of sleep in a little bit."

At 7 a.m., nurses took Tiffany to the back of Marashi's office to one of two operating rooms.

She talked about music with the nurse anesthetist, who administered a sedative that quickly put her to sleep. Nurses covered her body, her forehead and hair with sterile blue papery drapes. Marashi began injecting her gums to numb her mouth.

Then Marashi began removing her damaged teeth, gums and bone. Into her jawbone, he implanted eight titanium posts  four in the upper part of her mouth, four in the lower.

In the final part of the surgery, the prosthodontists, Miller and Jafari-Namin, attached temporary sets of upper and lower teeth onto the implants. These will stay in place for about six to nine months, while the bones and implants heal and the swelling goes down. Then the doctors will attach permanent dentures.

The surgery lasted more than seven hours.

As Tiffany began waking up, someone held a mirror to her face. Still drowsy, she smiled, and when she saw her teeth for the first time, she began to cry.

'BRAND-NEW START'

In the waiting room, Tiffany's mother sat checking messages on her phone and chatting with the staff. For years, she said, she'd been concerned about her daughter's dental health.

"I know that it's kind of held her back," Linda Terrell said.

Education is prized in the Terrell family, she said. Tiffany's sister Tahren is working on her third master's degree. Tiffany finished two years at Pensacola Christian College but didn't get a degree.

Even without good teeth, Tiffany is "a beauty inside and out," Linda Terrell said. "She has what we call the 'it' factor. She has what it takes to really go far.

"She just was so low in her confidence and her appearance. I know  all of us know  that this is a brand-new start."

WORTH THE WAIT

It was about 2:30 p.m. when the doctors and nurses helped Tiffany to her feet and walked her down the hall to the waiting room. When Tiffany saw her own smile in the big round mirror on the wall, she began to cry again.

She and her mother embraced, and they both sobbed. Tiffany wasn't able to speak. But she gave everyone a thumbs-up before she walked out for the ride home.

Over the next few days, she said she barely took any of the painkillers she had been prescribed. She said she felt "no pain, no discomfort, just a lisp."

Having a full set of teeth felt so unusual she couldn't speak clearly. "I know it will fade as my tongue adjusts to the crowding," Tiffany said.

There are other adjustments. One day after surgery, when she smiled at a colleague, Tiffany instinctively covered her mouth and looked down. But the colleague, who knew about her surgery, said: "Smile, honey. You don't have to hide anymore."

"That was just really nice," Tiffany said. "I really didn't realize how withdrawn I had become."
Ukrainian pastor Gennadiy Mokhnenko is the subject of the documentary "Almost Holy."

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By Robert Abele, Los Angeles Times

Though colorful fantasies of lone-wolf vigilantism dominate movie screens in the form of super-powered comic book heroes, Steve Hoover's documentary "Almost Holy" paints a picture of everyday avenging in the grim here-and-now. Its subject is Ukrainian pastor Gennadiy Mokhnenko, for nearly 15 years a crusader against child homelessness whose messy tactics  abducting street kids, confronting abusers and predators, shaming inactive bureaucrats  are to his mind the only answer in a corrupt post-Soviet society ill-equipped to help its neediest.

Though Mokhnenko's Pilgrim Republic rehab facility is the largest of its kind in the former Soviet Union, his aggressive ways  Hoover's cameras are there for raids and roundups  and frequent media appearances have branded him as a lawless fame-seeker. The portrait "Almost Holy" offers, though, is of a complicated do-gooder whose Samaritan side is tender, philosophical and charming, and whose bad side you don't want to be on.

The film, executive produced by Terrence Malick, boasts a mix of verite filmmaking and moody stylishness (deliberately smeary images, Atticus Ross' industrial-tinged horror film score) that doesn't always work. But in its episodic ups and downs  Mokhnenko pulling a sexually abused, illiterate deaf girl out of a hovel, challenging a pharmacy known to sell to dealers, worrying about the country's civil war reaching their city  "Almost Holy" captures something meaningfully urgent in the brutal day-to-day of tough love amid a world of tougher indifference.
Greta Gerwig, left, and Ethan Hawke star in "Maggie's Plan."

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By Steven Rea, The Philadelphia Inquirer

Columbia University should give Julianne Moore tenure. In "Still Alice," for which she deservedly won the best actress Oscar in 2015, Moore was a linguistics professor on the upper-Manhattan campus. And now, in Rebecca Miller's wily screwball romance "Maggie's Plan," the actress  deploying a frighteningly droll Danish accent  is a Columbia anthropologist with her name, Georgette Harding, on the department door.

By comparison, her husband, John, played with a scruffy charm by Ethan Hawke, is but a lowly adjunct at NYU. His specialty is fictocritical anthropology, he is the author of the hefty "Rituals of Commodity Fetishism," and he is about to embark on an affair with Maggie (Greta Gerwig), a single woman with two master's degrees and a closet of decidedly unfashionable togs. Penny loafers. Cardigans. Blouses buttoned to the neck.

Maggie and John's relationship begins innocently, with walk-and-talks through Washington Square, but soon he is sharing pages of the novel he is writing, and sharing his frustrations about living with Georgette. ("She is wonderful, but she is kind of destroying my life.") John and Georgette have two children, who attend a fancy Danish-American school. Dinners are awkward.

One night, John comes running to Maggie's little apartment, slumps to his knees, and announces, breathlessly, "I'm in love with you."

It was not Maggie's plan to fall in love  she had a different agenda, having recruited an artisanal pickle maker in Brooklyn to donate his sperm so she can have a child. The motherhood thing and the John Harding thing dovetail, though, and soon John has left Georgette, and Maggie is learning how to be a mom  and a stepmom, too.

The plan of the title comes midway through Miller's disarmingly shambling comedy. (This is not the rat-tat-tat screwball of Howard Hawks or Preston Sturges.) John and Maggie have settled into a life together, but he seems to be taking her for granted. Maggie complains to her friend (Maya Rudolph) who listens and then responds: "Too bad you can't give him back to his ex-wife."

A lightbulb goes on over Maggie's head, and soon she is meeting with the frosty Dane. Wary and watchful, Georgette takes her time warming to the idea, but she does  and the plot thickens.

Although it's set in the highbrow spheres of academe, "Maggie's Plan" is really very down-to-earth. Moore goes at the critical Scandinavian-intellectual thing with hilarious results  she's tightly wound (with a tight bun of a 'do) and just this side of camp. Hawke is comfortably convincing as the bright but busily self-absorbed writer/philosopher. At the center of things, Gerwig stands her ground, making observations that are smart and soul-baring and true.
By Jamie Satterfield of the Knoxville News Sentinel

Szuhsiung "Allen" Ho isn't a Chinese nuclear spy. He isn't even Chinese.

So says defense attorney Peter Zeidenberg in nuclear engineer Ho's first shot at the government's nuclear espionage conspiracy case against him in U.S. District Court in Knoxville.

Ho, his firm, Energy Technology International, and a Chinese nuclear power plant, China General Nuclear Power, are accused in the April indictment of plotting to lure nuclear experts in the U.S. into providing information to allow China to develop and produce nuclear material based on American technology and under the radar of the U.S. government.

The indictment came after former TVA senior manager Ching Ning Guey struck a secret deal more than a year ago to plead guilty to development of special nuclear material outside the U.S. and admitted Ho and the Chinese government paid him to provide technical expertise. Guey's plea deal was unsealed after Ho's arrest.

At least five other engineers at U.S. power companies across the country also were paid to consult, court records filed by Assistant U.S. Attorney Charles Atchley Jr. state. Their names have not been disclosed, nor is it clear whether they face prosecution.

Ho is jailed pending trial, but Zeidenberg wants him freed. He filed this week a 14-page motion in which he not only argues Ho isn't a flight risk but attacks the government's case as flawed.

The indictment identifies Ho as a Chinese citizen. Zeidenberg says Ho was born in Taiwan in 1950, received his Ph.D. in nuclear engineering from the University of Illinois in 1980 and, three years later, became a naturalized U.S. citizen.

"Dr. Ho and his wife have resided in Wilmington, Delaware, since 1988," the attorney wrote. "While Dr. Ho travels and spends significant time in China, his permanent residence is a home in Wilmington."

After working for several U.S. power companies, Ho launched ETI in 1996. His client list included firms in the U.S., Taiwan, Japan and China, the attorney stated.

"Dr. Ho's typical clients were public utilities that operated commercial nuclear power plants and sought Dr. Ho's assistance to assure that the plants were operating safety and efficiently," the motion stated. "Dr. Ho has no expertise or experience in the development or production of 'special nuclear material' (which can be used in nuclear weapons)."

Zeidenberg contends Ho twice sought permission from the U.S. Department of Energy to provide consulting services under a special provision of nuclear regulations. He was told his work didn't fall under that provision, so he pressed on, unaware the DOE had notified the Justice Department, the motion stated.

According to the motion, the case involving Ho is the first use of this particular category of espionage-related crimes in the U.S. in 50 years.

"Apparently recognizing that Dr. Ho's conduct did not constitute espionage  the government has tried to shoehorn Dr. Ho's commercial work  into a statute that has never been employed in its prior half-century of existence," the motion stated. "These were not military, weaponized reactors; they are, instead, commercial nuclear power plants that generate electricity."

Atchley has not yet filed a response.
AMY SMOTHERMAN BURGESS/NEWS SENTINEL Former Knox County Trustee Mike Lowe, left, attends a hearing along with his lawyer, Greg Isaacs, to determine restitution Thursday, June 9, 2016, in Knox County Criminal Court. Lowe pleaded guilty last year to two counts of felony theft for pilfering hundreds of thousands of dollars from county coffers.

By Jamie Satterfield of the Knoxville News Sentinel

A prosecutor on Thursday proved one thing  former Knox County Trustee Mike Lowe was swimming in cash when indicted for stealing taxpayer money.

But the same records Assistant District Attorney General Bill Bright used to show Lowe could have easily paid restitution before he went to jail last year also supported Lowe's defense on the issue of payback for his crimes  he spent it all.

"It will be clear Mr. Lowe had the money," Bright told Criminal Court Judge Steve Sword at a hearing Thursday over whether Lowe should fork over more than already ordered to shell out for restitution.

"I spent that money," Lowe countered. "If I could, I would crawl up here (to Sword's bench) and give you the money if I had it.  There wasn't a lot of cash left when I was in jail. If we could have gotten this settled in 2012, I would have been glad to give whatever I could."

Sword has already ordered Lowe to pay $1,850 monthly toward the $200,000 restitution Knox County District Attorney General Charme Allen agreed to when brokering a plea deal with defense attorney Gregory P. Isaacs. Lowe hasn't missed a payment since the order went down in November.

Allen's office continues to insist Lowe is hiding money and should pay more. But after months of delay, prosecutors still cannot prove that assertion.

"The problem is, you can't unring the bell," Isaacs told the judge. "Here's somebody who is paying more restitution (per month) than any client I've had. This is an individual who has done his jail time, and he's paying."

Bright argued the banking records showed Lowe began converting assets to cash soon after he became a target of a Tennessee Bureau of Investigation probe for using the trustee's office like a piggy bank for himself and his friends and that he pulled out at least $165,000 in unaccounted-for cash from 2010 until he went to jail last year.

"The only other place he would have that cash available is if he's holding that money," Bright said.

But Lowe detailed a lifestyle of pricey family vacations, shopping excursions and gambling in the roughly three years and nine months at issue. When Bright suggested a claim of frivolously spending $53,000 a year was absurd for a then-unemployed Lowe, the ex-trustee responded, "Not if you gamble $25,000 to $30,000 at a time."

As part of a plea deal, Lowe was sentenced to one year in jail and nine on probation. With jail credits, he was free in less than seven months. The plea also capped his restitution at $200,000, with how much and when he must pay left up to the judge.

The two sides have been fighting about that figure for months now. Sword said he would issue a written ruling on whether he will stick with the monthly amount he already set or order more.
SHARE Randy Heidle

By Bob Fowler of the Knoxville News Sentinel

HARRIMAN  Police Chief Randy Heidle was placed on paid administrative leave Thursday afternoon, sending shock waves through the city and leaving city officials tight-lipped about the circumstances.

City Attorney Allison Rehn confirmed the chief's change of status, saying the decision to place Heidle on leave was City Manager Kevin Helms' move, "with my advice and input as city attorney."

Helms on Friday didn't return repeated calls seeking comment. Heidle didn't answer his cellphone. Mayor Chris Mason didn't respond to a voice-mail message.

Rehn said the decision to place Heidle on leave came in response to allegations that have been filed against the chief, but she would not elaborate.

She said city officials are "still determining how to move forward" in terms of naming an interim chief while a city investigation proceeds.

An anonymous letter obtained by the News Sentinel  sent from Harriman City Hall and copied to Helms, Mayor Chris Mason and City Council members  outlines 19 allegations against the chief. The letter was reportedly sent early last week.

The letter, complete with photos and documents, levels several accusations, ranging from gripes that the chief "yells and belittles employees on a regular basis," to claims of Heidle's personal use of city property, to his allegedly taking parts from city cars and reselling them.

"I hope they (the allegations) are not true, both for his (Heidle's) sake and for the sake of the city," Vice Mayor Wayne Best said.

Ninth Judicial District Attorney General Russell Johnson said he hadn't seen the allegations but was aware of them. He said he understood that Helms and Rehn "are reviewing this information by way of an internal investigation."

Johnson said the city officials "will be in touch with me regarding their findings to see if there is anything that our office needs to review or have investigated further."
SHARE Asante Devon Harris Asante Devon Harris

Suspect considered armed and dangerous

By News Sentinel Staff

The Knoxville Police Department is searching for a man they say rammed a vehicle carrying multiple occupants and then threatened to kill all of them last week and is wanted on several warrants.

Authorities said on Thursday about 6 p.m., members of the Repeat Offender Squad along with the West District patrol officers attempted to locate and arrest 24-year-old Asante Devon Harris, known as "Grip," on multiple outstanding felony warrants. Harris fled in a vehicle then on foot into a wooded area near Lonas Drive and Timbercrest Trail in West Knoxville.

He is considered armed and dangerous.

According to KPD, on June 1, Harris allegedly rammed a vehicle carrying multiple occupants while it was traveling on Greenbriar Ridge road. After hitting the car, Harris exited his vehicle and approached the victims armed with a handgun and threatened to kill everyone inside the vehicle. The victims were able to quickly drive away and flee from Harris.

Harris is wanted on seven aggravated assault warrants, two failure to appear warrants and a vandalism warrant. He was last seen wearing a red bandanna and white shirt and has multiple tattoos.

If anyone has information on his whereabouts, they are asked to contact the Knoxville Police Department's crime information line at 865-215-7212. Callers can remain anonymous.
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A Thanksgiving dinner in June will be held Sunday to raise money to preserve Isaac Dockery's masterpiece  the oldest standing building in Sevierville.

Dockery was a black brickmaker and builder from Sevier County. In the latter half of the 1800s, Dockery made the bricks for notable county landmarks such as the Murphy College Building, the Sevier County Courthouse and the New Salem Baptist Church.

The church, built in 1886, is the oldest building in Sevierville and is listed on the National Registry of Historic Places, as well as on East Tennessee's Endangered Heritage List.

The Isaac Dockery Day Dinner and Silent Auction, now in its fifth year, aims to restore the historic church.

"This is really important to us," said Shedenna Dockery, co-chair of the New Salem Renovation Task Force and great-great-granddaughter of Isaac Dockery. "We want to preserve his history in Sevier County, and that's why we want to renovate this building."

Dockery's descendants will prepare and serve a traditional Thanksgiving dinner at the Sevierville Civic Center, 200 Gary Wade Blvd., on Sunday at 3 p.m.

On the menu will be turkey and gravy, dressing, ham, mac 'n cheese, mashed potatoes and more.

Musical guests Melinda Holt, Taryn Hood and Sidney Matlock will perform, and one of Dockery's great-great-grandsons, activist Segun Idowu, will speak.

The silent auction will run concurrently.

Tickets for the dinner are $25 and can be purchased by calling Alverrene Bridgeforth, 865-919-6557, or Shedenna Dockery, 423-248-8916. Proceeds will benefit the New Salem Renovation Task Force.
SHARE Karns Volunteer Fire Department Capt. Jerry Braddom shows a Lucas2 automated CPR device on Tuesday, June 7, 2016. The Lucas2 is a battery-operated machine that automatically measures the proper pressure to exert and performs chest compressions. The agency bought the $15,000 device with money provided last year by Knox County. (DON JACOBS/NEWS SENTINEL)

By Don Jacobs of the Knoxville News Sentinel

Officials with the Karns Volunteer Fire Department, which started 38 years ago in an open bay of a service station, announced Thursday its fire rating had improved from a Class 7 to a Class 4.

"I've been trying to get our ISO (Insurance Services Office) rating better since I began here," KVFD Chief Daron Long said. Long, 40, started with the department when he was 16 and has been chief for three years.

The new rating, Long said, is effective Aug. 1. The improved rating by the organization that provides information to insurance companies could mean savings for homeowners and businesses.

Long said some insurance companies no longer determine costs for fire insurance based on ISO ratings, but use other factors. Long said the 40,000 residents and business operators in the four communities served by KVFD should contact their insurance agent for possible rate reductions.

To put the Karns department fire rating in perspective, ISO this year also upgraded Rural/Metro Fire Department in Knox County from a Class 5 to a Class 3. The Knoxville Fire Department's fire rating this year went from a Class 3 to a Class 2.

Both those departments pay their firefighters. Karns is considered a combination department with 15 paid employees and 28 volunteers. The Karns department began paying some firefighters in 2001.

While improvements in firefighting training, equipment, facilities and resources are a major factor for the ISO in assigning fire class ratings, other items are considered. Long said utility systems and communications offered by the Knox County E-911 Center also are graded.

"So, it's not just the fire department, but it's the whole community," the chief said.

Long signaled out West Knox Utility District, Hallsdale-Powell Utilities and Knoxville Utilities Board as helping improve the overall fire rating.

While those agencies provide fire hydrants that supply water to battle fires, hydrant location isn't what ISO reviewed. Long said the size of water lines and the utilities' maintenance of those resources is important in the fire rating.

"Basically, they graded us on our ability to transport water to the scene," the chief said. "Regardless if you live within 1,000 feet of a fire hydrant or two miles from a fire hydrant, you'll still be a 4."

The Karns department has four stations serving 65 square miles in Northwest Knox County. The service area includes the communities of Karns, Ball Camp, Hardin Valley and Solway.

While firefighting can be expensive, battling flames is a small part of the service Karns VFD provides.

In 2015, the agency responded to 13 structure fires and 20 other blazes, including vehicle and brush fires. That was about 2 percent of all the department's activity, according to information provided by Long.

About 57 percent of all calls involved rescue and emergency medical service incidents, based on Long's data. As first responders, vehicle crashes and medical distress calls consume the majority of the department's time.

Between medical, rescue, hazardous materials calls and providing mutual aid to other agencies, Karns VFD employees in 2015 responded to 2,075 incidents.

That wide spectrum of responsibilities requires extensive training and equipment. Long said last year Knox County officials gave the department $50,000  a hefty gift for an agency that isn't annually funded by the county.

Long used the windfall to buy a $15,000 Lucas2 automated CPR device. The lifesaving equipment is strapped around a distressed patient and measures the pressure required to perform CPR and continues with battery-powered compressions long beyond what an emergency responder could perform before becoming exhausted.

The remainder bought the Karns department vehicle extrication tools.

In 2010, Karns VFD could no longer sustain its voluntary donations business model. The new fire engine purchased last year cost $540,000, annual insurance is about $70,000 and it costs about $14,000 to train and outfit each firefighter, Long said.

The department's 11-member board opted to charge residents 8 cents per square foot based on data in the county tax assessor's office. Long said the coverage area includes 13,028 residences and 541 commercial structures. Of that total, he said 6,875, or 50.7 percent, customers pay the annual subscription fee.

That means 49.3 percent of the homes and businesses in the service area are subject to paying thousands of dollars in firefighting costs if a fire erupts. The first hour of firefighting cost $2,000 and $1,000 each additional hour.

First responder services to a vehicle crash with no entrapment costs $200, while an extrication from a crash runs $2,000.

Long said nonsubscribers often are shocked to learn their insurance coverage does not include paying those fees.

While residents daily expect emergency services from their 911 call, Long said it's increasingly difficult to find people willing to volunteer to undergo the training required to provide those services.

"Volunteerism is dying," Long said.

"We can run an academy class of 16 people and 18 months later, we have two left. People aren't growing up in our communities anymore. They're moving into the community and don't have the roots.

"It's constant training. There's so much regulatory stuff for safety that people have to learn, it's tough."

Despite all the financial and volunteer issues facing the Karns VFD, Long still looks to the future. His most pressing need now is a ladder truck to enable firefighters access to the four-story apartment buildings springing up in the area. That kind of firefighting apparatus carries a price tag of up to $1.25 million.
Hamblen County emergency vehicles are parked at the scene of a search for a possible drowning victim Wednesday, June 8, 2016, at Panther Creek State Park. Authorities says a local man reportedly entered Cherokee Lake and did not surface on Monday. (AMY SMOTHERMAN BURGESS/NEWS SENTINEL)

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By News Sentinel Staff

A fisherman discovered a body floating on the surface of Cherokee Lake early Friday presumed to be that of missing hiker Geoffrey Hannah, 21, who had been the focus of a four-day search by emergency crews, authorities said.

Hannah's body was found about 6 a.m. in the same cove of Cherokee Lake at Panther Creek State Park where the search has been concentrated, said Hamblen County Sheriff Esco Jarnagin.

Hamblen County Coroner Eddie Davis said Hannah's body floated to the service, near where he was reported last seen.

"The water was very murky in that area, and there was a lot of clutter  trees and stuff  on the bottom," Davis said. "It would have been hard (for the divers) to see his body."

The search was launched Monday after a man about 21 years old was hiking in the area with his girlfriend when he decided to jump into the lake. He did not surface.

The sheriff said Hannah's relatives have been at the scene throughout the search.

"The good thing is it will give closure to the family," Jarnagin said. "They have been up there every day. It's tragic, but it's closure."

Jarnagin noted the cove is a popular spot for crappie fishing, and fishermen often toss old tires and trees into the water to attract the fish.

"But that really hampers recovery efforts," he said. "Our equipment kept pulling that stuff up."

The sheriff also thanked the numerous people involved in the search, which included personnel with the Hamblen County Sheriff's Office, the Hamblen County Rescue Squad, the Hamblen County Emergency Management Agency and the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency.

Hannah's body will be sent to the Regional Forensic Center in Knoxville for autopsy, Davis said.
FILE - Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam, here delivering his State of the State Address Monday, Feb. 1, 2016, in Nashville. (AP Photo/Mark Humphrey)

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By Joel Ebert, USA TODAY NETWORK, The Tennessean

Republican officials to take issue with Donald Trumps comments, which many have said are racist remarks, about a federal judge.

Last week, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee said Gonzalo Curiel, the federal judge presiding over a case involving Trump University, had a conflict of interest because of his Mexican heritage.

Trump said the criticism of Curiel, who was born in Indiana to Mexican immigrants, is relevant because of his plans to build a wall on the southern border of the United States.

In recent days, Trumps statements about Curiel have been criticized by countless Republicans ranging from former presidential candidate Lindsey Graham to House Speaker Paul Ryan. On Tuesday, Trump stopped short of apologizing for his comments, adding, I do not feel that ones heritage makes them incapable of being impartial."

Continue reading at The Tennessean.
Lt. Col. David Presley of the Tennessee State Guard waits to give the invocation during the Remote Area Medical commemoration of the 72nd anniversary of D-Day Saturday, June 4, 2016, at Knoxville Downtown Island Airport. (PAUL EFIRD/NEWS SENTINEL)

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I want to thank Stan Brock and Remote Area Medical for a wonderful D-Day celebration.

As a 94-year-old World War II veteran, I was thrilled to be at the Knoxville Downtown Island Airport hangar, sitting beneath the C-47 airplane. As Knox County Mayor Tim Burchett gave the welcome and Brock delivered a stirring tribute, the years rolled away, and I was once again a flight engineer and crew chief on a battered old C-47 in the Mediterranean. When I wasn't rebuilding damaged B-25 bombers for the 12th Air Force, I was waiting for someone to call me to start the engines. The color guard reminded me of when I was picked for the honor guard for Gen. Jimmy Doolittle, who traveled from Japan to North Africa to take over the Army Air Force, with the band playing marches. Then the piper took me back to North Africa when a Scottish regiment was stationed near our base and paraded every day with bagpipes and drums. Then I was brought back to England to a pub in Nottingham called The Tri, with my arm around an English girl, singing those wonderful old wartime songs, and at the end standing at attention for "God save the King."

The kindness and respect shown to us veterans by Brock, his staff, friends and the people of Knoxville will remain with us forever.

But wait, there's more!

Amanda of Brock's staff and her family provided me transportation that day and took me to the McClung Museum for its outstanding dinosaur exhibit. The years rolled away again and I was with my young bride many years ago, stopping at Como Bluff in Wyoming to dig for dinosaur bones on our way to Yellowstone.

All in all, it was a magnificent day, thanks to Brock, his staff and friends from Knoxville.

Although my sweetheart and old friends have already gone ahead and are waiting for me, my old body tells me I am nearing the end of that long trail of marvelous adventures on four continents, several islands and Knoxville. I am sustained by joy in these words written a century ago:

"The years may come, the years may go

But still the hands of memory weave

The blissful dreams of long ago."

Jules W. Bernard lives in Knoxville.
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In the late 1970s, I had just gotten the advertising account for Hardwick Stoves in Cleveland, Tennessee. Hardwick was one of the first to manufacture microwave ovens. Since this was a new concept in cooking, we felt we needed to introduce the product on national TV, so we made a trip to New York to shoot a commercial for "Good Morning America."

So my wife, Dot, and I along with Hardwick's advertising manager and his wife flew to New York. The next morning, the four of us went to the Plaza for breakfast. As we were leaving the dining room, lo and behold, at a table near us sat Muhammad Ali. It looked as if he had finished his meal, so I asked Paul if he'd like to meet Ali and began walking over to Ali's table. (I was just young and dumb and trying to make a good impression on my client.)

I had noticed four exceptionally large gentlemen sitting with Ali, and as I got closer to the table, two of them rose. As I got really close, the other two rose. By now all four were staring me down, but I wasn't about to miss this opportunity. I walked on up to the table, introduced Paul and myself, and told Ali what a big fan I was and that I just wanted to shake his hand. After what seemed like an awfully long minute to me, Ali stood up, smiled that great big smile of his, said, "Well, all right," and stuck out that huge hand that completely engulfed mine.

I just remember how gracious Ali was to two East Tennessee strangers.

Some things you just don't forget.

Jim Reed, Knoxville
KCHD encourages parents to kick off summer with a healthy start





As summer break commences, the Knox County Health Department (KCHD) is reminding parents that now is the time to make sure their childs vaccinations are up to date. All students entering preschool, kindergarten or seventh grade and those entering a Tennessee school for the first time should receive state-required immunizations. Before the first day of school, parents must also provide their childs school with a state immunization certificate, which documents receipt of the vaccinations.



In the past, hundreds waited until August to get their childs vaccinations, said KCHD Director Dr. Martha Buchanan. Whether its with us or their childs pediatrician, we encourage parents to schedule an appointment today. By August, theyll be pleased they have this out of the way.



Those who wish to have their child vaccinated at the health department, should call 865-215-5070 to schedule an appointment. Prior to the appointment, parents may complete the registration paperwork online via an online registration form, which should be a time-saver for them. At the appointment, parents should have their photo ID, insurance card if applicable, and their childs vaccination record if they have it. The health department is open Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Appointments are available at all three locations: Downtown Knoxville, 140 Dameron Ave.; North Knox County, 405 Dante School Road; and West Knox County, 1028 Old Cedar Bluff Road.



Both immunizations and the immunization certificates are available at pediatrician offices or at any KCHD location. Parents may contact their childs pediatrician or the KCHD Immunization Program, 865-215-5150, to determine if their child has received the required vaccinations. More information, including a list of the state-required vaccinations by grade level, is on KCHDs website at knoxcounty.org/health.



Tennessees vaccine requirements follow recommendations from the national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Childhood immunizations are vital in protecting children from potentially serious diseases. The CDC estimates vaccinations will prevent more than 21 million hospitalizations and 732,000 deaths among children born in the last 20 years. In addition, vaccines are widely considered one of the most well-researched and safe medical interventions available. In fact, data show that the current U.S. vaccine supply is the safest in history.



For more information, visit www.knoxcounty.org/health.

Published June 10, 2016
Women's Work Festival at Oconaluftee Visitor Center, June 18



Examples of food prepared by mountain women in the late 19th and early 20th century. Image courtesy of GSMNP.





Great Smoky Mountains National Park is hosting its annual Womens Work Festival at the Mountain Farm Museum on Saturday, June 18. This festival honors the vast contributions made by the women of Southern Appalachian and showcases lifeways that women used to keep their families going in the late 19th and early 20th century. The event is from 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. and all activities are free.



Visitors will enjoy demonstrations of hearth cooking, soap making, cornshuck crafts, and sewing. Exhibits of artifacts and historic photographs will also provide a glimpse into the many and varied roles of rural women. The Davis-Queen house will be open for visitors to walk through with an audio exhibit featuring the last child born in the house. This event provides families with a chance not only to see into the past, but also participate, through hands-on activities of traditional southern Appalachia.



In addition to the Women's Work Festival activities, visitors will also be treated to a music jam session on the porch of the Oconaluftee Visitor Center. Music jam sessions are held every first and third Saturday of the month on the porch from 1:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m.



All activities are free to the public. The Mountain Farm Museum is located on Newfound Gap Road adjacent to the Oconaluftee Visitor Center, 2 miles north of Cherokee, North Carolina. Published June 10, 2016






Watts Bar Unit 2 produces electricity for the first time







Reactor Operator Eric Silvers monitors the Unit 2 Control Room screen displaying 49 megawatts of electric output. Image courtesy of TVA..

KNOXVILLE  The Tennessee Valley Authoritys Watts Bar nuclear Unit 2 generated electricity onto its power grid for the first time on Friday, June 3.



Watts Bar Unit 2 is officially synced to the grid and licensed reactor operators have begun an initial test run of generation equipment. The team is using this run to collect data to be sure generating equipment is prepared for continuous full-power operation later this summer.



This is another major step in fully integrating Watts Bar Unit 2 as the seventh operating unit in TVAs nuclear fleet, said TVA Chief Nuclear Officer Joe Grimes. It is rewarding to see TVA taking the lead on delivering the first new nuclear unit of the 21st century and providing safe, affordable and reliable electricity to those we serve.



The next step is full-plant testing of systems and controls at increasing reactor power levels up to 100 percent power. These tests will be repeated multiple times to ensure the plant operates safely as designed.



Watts Bar Unit 2, like Unit 1, produces electricity using controlled nuclear fission to generate heat, which is used to produce steam to turn turbines and a single, large generator. More information about this process can be found on TVAs Watts Bar webpage.



Once all power ascension tests have been completed successfully, Watts Bar Unit 2 will provide up to 1,150 megawatts of safe, low-cost, carbon-free electricity to the Tennessee Valley. Combined with Watts Bar Unit 1, the plant will supply power to roughly 1.3 million homes in the TVA service area. Published June 10, 2016
By Choi Sung-jin



Amid growing calls for the protection of U.S. domestic industries, Korea needs to maximize its interests through strategic approaches, a state-run agency says.



In a report released Thursday, the Korea Trade-Investment Promotion Agency (KOTRA) said: "The Korean government and businesses should keep their eyes on the anti-free trade sentiments prevailing in the United States in the run-up to presidential and congressional elections."



Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican candidate, is pledging to reexamine all the free trade agreements the U.S. has concluded. In a Bloomberg survey in March, respondents who approved of import restraints to protect domestic industries overwhelmed those who disapproved 65 to 22, the KOTRA report said.



According to Third Way, a middle-of-the-road think tank, the U.S. deficit in trade with Korea has grown most rapidly among the 17 countries with which the world's largest economy has signed trade agreements. As a result, public opinion in America is rapidly aggravating over the outcome of the Korea-U.S. FTA, it said.



It was also against this backdrop that Korea has been drawn into the U.S.-China war over the steel trade, KOTRA said. The American Iron and Steel Institute said that not only China but also Korea are supplying steel products at low prices because of government subsidies and overproduction, and that Korean companies are processing Chinese steel and re-exporting it to the U.S.



The U.S. is investigating 11 Korean export products to decide whether to impose antidumping or countervailing duties on them.



To deal with growing U.S. trade pressure more effectively, the KOTRA report said: "The government and business officials need to publicize more actively the positive effects the Korean companies' investments have on job creation in the United States, as well as the U.S. surplus in services trade with Korea, as the benevolent outcomes of the bilateral FTA for the U.S. side."



The report cited the example of Japan. "Since the Japanese automobile industry emerged as a stumbling block to Tokyo joining the U.S.-led free trade regime of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the Japanese government has released reports every year which emphasize the contribution the Japanese auto industry makes to the U.S. economy," it said.



The state-run agency also stressed the need to "cooperate with the U.S. to a certain extent in their efforts to increase its exports to Korea as well as to attract more Korean investment in America."



Korean exporters, for their part, need to break away from the present model of simply exporting merchandise and shift toward a higher value-added, project-type pattern of combining goods, services and design in one export item.



Commenting on the global steel glut, the report noted that discussions are continuing at multilateral organizations such as the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the Word Trade Organization and G7, advising Korean makers to "join international efforts to prevent it from developing into a bilateral trade dispute."



"Amid global economic setbacks, protectionist sentiments are spreading widely in major trade partners by, for instance, erecting various nontariff barriers," said Yun Won-seok, chief of KOTRA's information and trade support headquarters. "The Korean export industry should keep a close watch particularly on the policy changes in the United States as the world's largest consumer market, and take a more strategic approach to maximize the nation's practical interests."




Prosecutors raided the headquarters of South Korea's retail giant Lotte Group, as well as its seven affiliates, on Friday over allegations of embezzlement and malpractice.

The Seoul Central District Prosecutors' Office said it sent some 200 investigators to 17 places, including the group's headquarters in central Seoul, its major affiliates and the homes of some executives.

Hotel Lotte Co., TV channel Lotte Homeshopping and its key retail unit Lotte Shopping Co. were all raided.

Prosecutors said they confiscated computer hard drives, accounting books and other documents in their asset transactions.

Travel bans have been put out for some of the company's senior officials, according to prosecutors. Some of the executives are accused of making secret funds by exaggerating unit prices in contracts with their subcontractors.

Prosecutors also suspect the group created slush funds while making transactions between its affiliates.

The conglomerate, which has sprawling businesses in both South Korea and Japan, has been riddled with a series of scandals from last year, including a high-profile fight between brothers for managerial control and the recent prosecutor's probe into the group's duty-free business unit.

Hotel Lotte Co., which has been preparing to list its shares later this month, postponed the proposed initial public offering (IPO) to next month as its senior officials have come under investigation over alleged bribery.

Prosecutors raided the hotel unit and the house of Shin Young-ja, the head of Lotte Foundation and daughter of group founder Shin Kyuk-ho, on allegations of bribery last week.

The 74-year-old Shin and other company officials are suspected of receiving kickbacks from Jung Woon-ho, chief of the scandal-ridden cosmetics brand Nature Republic, in return for favorable space in Lotte's duty-free shops. Both Shin and Hotel Lotte flatly denied the allegations.

The listing of Hotel Lotte is one of the reform pledges that Lotte Group Chairman Shin Dong-bin has made as part of his efforts to improve its corporate image overall.

The prolonged family feud has virtually come to an end as the founder's second son and incumbent chief won shareholder support in March to tighten his grip on the nation's fifth-largest conglomerate. (Yonhap)
Naver says time is ripe' for public listing of LINE



By Kim Yoo-chul





After a delay of more than two years, global messaging application LINE, owned by Korea's dominant web portal Naver, will go public in Japan and the U.S.



"LINE will be listed in Tokyo on July 15 and New York on July 14," a company spokesman said. "We would sell 13 million new shares in Japan and 22 million shares overseas for an indicative price of 2,800 yen each."

LINE, which is regarded as the Asian version of Facebook, plans to raise up to $1 billion from the dual listing, valuing the portal at about $5 billion.

The listing will be the world's largest initial public offering (IPO) this year. Given LINE's relatively weak profile in the United States, unlike its strong foothold in Asia and Europe, Naver hopes to receive more than half the money from investors in the U.S.

Naver officials rejected claims the IPO plan is a bit too late, saying the delay is in line with its strategy to maximize shareholder value.

"The time is ripe," a Naver official said. "We don't think we are too late."

Naver's shares ended at 720,000 won on the Seoul bourse, Friday.

LINE filed an application to list on Tokyo in July 2014, when the mobile messaging application company was valued at 10 trillion won, or some $9.2 billion.

Critics said the problem with LINE is slower growth in monthly active users, which has stagnated around 200 million, according to analysts.

In a filing to the Korea Exchange, LINE's net profit last year was 767 million won from 125 billion won it generated a year earlier, raising questions about the company's sustainability.

Mixed outlook

Analysts are mixed on whether LINE's IPO plan will be successful because the landscape in the messaging application business has changed.

"We are positive about the timing and the confirmation by Naver of the dual IPO plan, which will cut uncertainty; therefore, our buy' rating on Naver hasn't been changed," analyst Kim Chang-kwon at Mirae Asset Securities said, adding the brokerage maintains 700,000 won as its target on the web portal.

Kim said the listing will help Naver invest more in new businesses.

"Naver is doing very well operating the online-to-offline (O2O) platform business as major local department stores and outlet channels have joined with the portal," Kim said. "Other O2O services based on location-based searching content will roll out as planned. This will be a boon for the portal to diversify its revenue streams."

But LINE should tackle losing momentum in some of its sub-businesses and has been urged to release "localized content" to appeal more to consumers in its target markets.

LINE depends heavily on Japan, Taiwan, Thailand and Indonesia, countries where the popularity of K-Pop and related content is solid. The countries account for about 70 percent of monthly active users.

Meanwhile, LINE's key rivals  Facebook, WeChat and TenCent  are enhancing their services as "lifestyle business platforms."

LINE generates most of its sales by selling stickers and in-application games. Recently, LINE accelerated efforts to combine its existing single content into a platform that will be helpful in the daily lives of users.

"These efforts will be very time consuming," said a local fund manager who has invested millions of dollars in Naver stock.

For example, Naver closed the MixRadio service early this year after buying it from Microsoft, losing about 115 billion won.

The LINE BIZ Plus service suffered a 11.8 billion won net loss last year, while Naver dropped its "LINE MALL" business  an open-market application aimed at expanding its presence in Japan's e-commerce sector  three years after the service's launch.
By Nam Hyun-woo



Hyundai Merchant Marine (HMM) said Friday that it agreed with its global ship owners to cut rental coasts, the key condition set by its creditors for debt rescheduling and its rehabilitation program.



The Korea Development Bank (KDB), the leading creditor of HMM, said Hyundai Merchant and five international container ship owners have agreed on a 20 to 21 percent cut in charter fees. Also, 17 bulk carrier owners have consented in a 25 percent cut in the charter rate.



This will help the shipper save some 530 billion won. The company was set to pay 2.5 trillion won for three and a half years, and 530 billion of the amount will be paid to ship owners through new shares and long-term bonds.



The government, which owns 100 percent stake of KDB, initially set a 28.4 percent cut as the target, but the bank said the 20 percent cut was "acceptable."



Creditor banks have said that the shipper will be put under court receivership if it fails to reach an agreement to cut its charter costs.



"Creditors believe the charter fee talks have accomplished their initial purpose," the bank said in a statement.



The company signed rental contracts in the early 2010s with the ship owners, but the protracted slump in the global shipping industry made HMM pay rental costs some 60 percent higher than market price.



The government earlier said a charter fee cut is the utmost precondition for HMM's debt rescheduling and the company would have fallen under court receivership should it have failed to reduce its costs of leasing ships.



It took some 110 days for the HMM to get a reduction in rental costs. Since February the company has sent its officials to the ship owners for negotiations, but had been unsuccessful as its target rate was leaked while the U.K. based ship owner, Zodiac Maritime, was resistant to the cut in charter fees. The company failed to meet the initial deadline at the end of May.



The last and decisive pitch was made by Hyundai Group Chairwoman Hyun Jeong-eun.



According to HMM officials, Hyun sent an e-mail to Zodiac Maritime Chairman Yeal Ofer privately late last month, writing, "Zodiac has been a friend extending a hand to HMM whenever the company was suffering," asking the company to "help HMM."



"We did not know Hyun had sent the e-mail," said an HMM official. "But the letter appears to have served a critical role in Zodiac changing its stance."



The only remaining step before HMM can normalize its business is joining an alliance among global shippers. HMM had been a member of the G6 shipping alliance, but wasn't included in THE Alliance, which was formed by members of the G6 and CKYHE Alliance.



According to the company, it has received agreements from four out of six members of THE Alliance and will likely join the alliance as late as September.



If HMM finishes its self-rescue programs, creditors will make a debt-equity swap worth 684 billion won to lower its debt ratio to some 220 percent by the end of this year. As of March, the company's debt ratio hovers around 5,300 percent.




By Choi Sung-jin



One of the most pressing tasks in dealing with North Korea is to dissolve the isolationist regime's antagonism to the international community, including the United States, South Korea and Japan, a Chinese expert said Thursday.



"(The North's) nuclear weapons impose grave threats of course, but these threats become even more serious when a country that has such weapons harbors strong antagonism toward specific countries or the international community as a whole," said Professor Jin Jingyi of Peking University.



At a workshop to celebrate the first inter-Korean summit on June 15, 2000, the Chinese expert on North Korea said: "Currently, sanctions on North Korea are overpowering everything, but the only way of resolving North Korea's hostile awareness is to assimilate the reclusive state into the international community through economic exchanges."



Professor Jin, while noting that the Chinese government's calls for turning the armistice into a peace treaty should be seen as part of Beijing's attempts to dismantle the Cold War structure, said: "The Beijing government's shift to parallel pushes for denuclearization and a peace treaty since the North's fourth nuclear test is aimed at sending the ball to the U.S. court, calling for the latter to take the initiative in solving the North Korean nuclear issue fundamentally."



Korean experts showed similar views.



"The United States and South Korea, while calling for China's cooperation, are pursuing unilaterally hard-line policies against the North, making it hard for Beijing to cooperate with them," Professor Kim Yon-cheol of Inje University said. "This shows why the international politics behind sanctions on North Korea are self-contradictory and ineffective."



Kim said China's provincial governments in Jilin and Liaoning cannot help but remain passive in sanctioning North Korea. "Some cities along the Sino-Korean border, including Dandung, Hunchun and Helong, are promoting to build a frontier economic district jointly with North Korea because they need a cheap and stable supply of North Korean labor," he said.



Rep. Chung Dong-young of the People's Party said the National Assembly enacted a law for developing inter-Korean relations in 2005, obligating the executive branch to make plans and report them to the parliament every five years. But governments have not fulfilled their duty over the past eight years. "The Chinese government's proposal for simultaneous pursuit of the six-party talks and peace treaty can be a realistic alternative," Chung said.



Other opposition legislators also agreed. Rep. Hong Ik-pyo of the Minjoo Party of Korea emphasized sanctions on the North should be used as "tools for making the North return to the dialogue table." Rep. Roh Hoe-chan of the Justice Party called for the shaping of a "united front of three opposition parties to reopen the closed Gaeseong Industrial Complex."




South Korea and the United Nations Command (UNC) sent in troops Friday to crack down on illegal Chinese fishing boats in neutral waters around the mouth of the Han River between the two Koreas.

The military operation marks the first of its kind to have taken place in the estuary region, where the Han River meets the Yellow Sea, after its designation as a no man's land in the armistice agreement following the 1950-53 Korean War.

Seoul recently formed a 24-strong military police team with four speed boats to combat an increasing number of Chinese vessels illegally coming to and fishing in the neutral waters, a military buffer zone, said an official at the defense ministry.

"The troops carried out their first crackdown operation in the estuary area earlier in the day," a military official told reporters.

He said the operation marks the first time South Korea and the United States-led UNC stationed in the country have taken joint action to drive out foreign vessels in the military buffer zone.

Illegal Chinese fishing has soared in the area since last year.

Until 2014, illegal Chinese fishing in the area was scarce, with only two to three incidents being reported every year. This number shot up to about 120 last year, and in the first five months of 2016 Chinese fishing boats have already been detected on around 520 occasions, the ministry official said.
By Kim Bo-eun

As part of efforts to promote gender equality, the government said Friday that it would beef up education on the subject at schools and better monitor gender-insensitive content in mass media.

The government announced the set of measures after a gender equality committee meeting in Seoul, presided over by Prime Minister Hwang Kyo-ahn.

The government will develop and distribute textbooks on gender equality to all children at elementary, middle and high schools. Up until now, the courses were only offered to upper grade students in elementary schools.

To reduce gender discrimination in mass media, the government will make clear guidelines for broadcasters so that they can avoid gender discriminatory content and more appropriately address issues of sexual violence, harassment and prostitution.

In addition, it will help people gain access to information on paternity leave and open 380 additional state-run daycare centers in an effort to create a friendlier environment for working parents.

The government aims to raise the percentage of men taking paternity leave, among the total number of parents taking childcare leave, from 5.6 percent last year to 6.7 percent this year.

In an effort to promote equality in employment, the government will assist in training women and provide 5 billion in subsidies to 10 universities across the nation to cultivate female scientists and engineers.

The government will also conduct a nationwide survey on gender equality, which is the first of its kind.
By Jun Ji-hye



North Korea has offered to hold a nationwide rally with South Korea to discuss ways to bring about unification on the Korean Peninsula, its state media said, Friday.



According to the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), the North said anyone from the two Koreas who hopes for unification, including government officials, members of political parties and civic groups, can participate.



The offer was the latest in a series of dialogue proposals to Seoul since the high-profile ruling Workers' Party congress ended on May 9.



"We propose opening a nationwide grand meeting for reunification on the occasion of the 71st anniversary of Korea's liberation, prompted by the ardent desire ... (of) improving inter-Korean relations and accomplishing the cause of national reunification by the concerted efforts of all Koreans," the KCNA said in an appeal addressed to "all Koreans."



The state-run media said the appeal was adopted during a joint conference of government and party officials in Pyongyang the previous day.



"Now is the crucial time for all Koreans to turn out as one and dynamically advance to pull down the barrier of hostility and confrontation and bring on the bright day of reunification as soon as possible," the appeal read. "We ardently call upon all Koreans in the North, the South and abroad once again to turn out as one in the sacred struggle to fling open the gate of the reunified power."



Since the seventh party congress, during which North Korean leader Kim Jong-un mentioned the need for inter-Korean military talks, the authoritarian state has repeated offers for dialogue, which the regime claimed were aimed at easing heightened tensions on the peninsula.



But the South Korean government downplayed the North's offer, claiming the proposals were merely propaganda with no sincerity because it spoke of inter-Korean dialogue while continuing to develop a nuclear arsenal.



The latest offer was also immediately turned down by the Ministry of Unification.



"It's only an obsolete propaganda offensive and a repeat of its previous demands to suspend joint South Korea-U.S. military exercises, which came without any attitude change in the nuclear weapons issue, the most critical obstacle to peace and reunification of the Korean Peninsula," spokesman Jeong Joon-hee said.



Jeong noted that Pyongyang should first declare denuclearization and follow it with action if the country wants to improve ties and reunite with Seoul.



Experts said the isolated state's switch to a charm offensive toward Seoul was apparently designed to break away from deepening isolation following harsher sanctions from the international community for conducting its fourth nuclear test in January and a long-range rocket launch in February.



"The North is expected to continue to propose talks for the time being," said Kim Yong-hyun, a professor of North Korean Studies at Dongguk University. "The North could then blame Seoul for not showing willingness to ease tensions."




The entrance of Lotte Group's headquarters in central Seoul is seen, Friday. Prosecutors raided the building as well as other group affiliates and residences of key executives to collect evidence of the group's alleged slush funds and illegal lobbying activities. / Korea Times photo by Bae Woo-han



By Kim Bo-eun

The prosecution raided Lotte Group's headquarters in central Seoul, as well as the group's affiliates and the homes of key executives, Friday, searching for evidence of slush funds and illegal lobbying of government officials to earn approval for construction of the skyscraper Lotte World Tower.

Some 200 investigators of the Seoul Central District Prosecutors' Office confiscated computer hard drives and accounting books from 17 raided sites including the offices and residences of Lotte Group Chairman Shin Dong-bin and founder Shin Kyuk-ho.

The offices of seven affiliates including Lotte Hotel, Lotte Shopping, Lotte Homeshopping, Lotte Data Communication and Lotte Cinema were also included in the raid.

Many group executives had their homes raided and were also banned from overseas travel.

The prosecution suspects the nation's fifth-largest conglomerate created slush funds through transactions among its affiliates, as well as through deals with subcontractors.

"We are looking into high-profile Lotte officials' alleged embezzlement and breach of trust," a prosecutor said.












A joint force, comprised of Korean military and maritime police as well as United Nations Command Military Armistice Commission, conducts an operation to crack down on illegal fishing by Chinese fishing boats in neutral waters around the estuary of the Han River, Friday. / Courtesy of Joint Chiefs of Staff



Navy, Marines mobilization may cause conflict with NK

By Jun Ji-hye

The South Korean military began operations, Friday, in cooperation with the United Nations Command (UNC) to crack down on illegal fishing by Chinese fishing boats in neutral waters around the estuary of the Han River between the two Koreas.

Though the operation targets Chinese boats, it may cause resistance from North Korea, given that military tensions in the area, which is near the inter-Korean Northern Limit Line (NLL) in the West Sea, have remained high since the armistice agreement ended hostilities in the 1950-53 Korean War.

To carry out the operation, the ROK military and the UNC recently formed a 24-member military police team with four rigid-inflatable boats (RIBs) to combat an increasing number of Chinese boats in the crab-rich military buffer zone, according to the Ministry of National Defense.

"The first crackdown operation took place in the estuary at 10 a.m. and was finished at 3:40 p.m. at ebb tide," a ministry official said on condition of anonymity. "Some 10 Chinese boats were conducting illegal fishing when the operation was launched. Following our broadcast warning messages, the boats escaped to the northern side."

The official said the military will dispatch the military police again at high tide today.

It marks the first time that South Korea and the U.S.-led UNC have taken joint action to drive foreign vessels out of the estuary where the Han River meets the West Sea, since the demilitarized state of the area was acknowledged in the armistice agreement.

The operation comes amid concerns about the growing influx of Chinese fishing boats in the area, which has depleted resources in South Korean waters and caused serious consequences to local fishermen.

Illegal fishing by the Chinese in this sensitive area has also raised concerns over the possibility of accidental clashes between the two Koreas, given that the two sides have confronted each other across the waters for decades.

The Han River Estuary has been controlled by the UNC Military Armistice Commission (UNCMAC) in accordance with the armistice agreement.

"UNC Commander Gen. Vincent K. Brooks has authorized the operation to enforce restrictions on fishermen in the Han River Estuary," the UNC said in a statement.

The joint team is comprised of the South Korean Navy, the Marine Corps and coast guard officers as well as UNCMAC representatives and translators. Their boats carry UNC flags in accordance with the armistice agreement.












United Nations (U.N.) Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon speaks to journalists during a press conference at the U.N. headquarters in New York, Thursday. / Xinhua-Yonhap



By Kim Hyo-jin



United Nations (U.N.) Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon Thursday stepped in to check growing rumors about his possible presidential bid, vowing to focus on his duties as secretary-general until his term expires.



The ambiguous stance on his presidential aspirations came weeks after Ban had put himself in the conversation as a presidential hopeful following his visit to the home country.



Ban's second five-year term as the U.N. chief expires at the end of the year and the presidential election will be held in December 2017.



"I would like to make one thing clear again today. As I have been for nine plus years, this is my last year as secretary-general, I have made it quite clear on many occasions that I will never be distracted from my mandate as secretary-general of the United Nations entrusted by the member states," Ban told reporters at the U.N. headquarters.



"I will exert all my efforts and time as secretary-general of the United Nations until the very last minute of my mandate. That's my answer and this is my firm conviction."



His visit to Korea late last month ignited rumors that he may be shaping his intention to launch a presidential bid.



While attending a forum on Jeju Island, Ban said he would contemplate what he would do once he finishes his term and returns home  the clearest indication yet of his presidential ambitions.



In addition, his itinerary was focused on meeting loyalists of President Park Geun-hye, raising speculation he may run in the election with the ruling Saenuri Party, which is struggling to field a competitive candidate after some of its presidential hopefuls lost in the April 13 general election.



However, amid growing rumors about his possible bid for Cheong Wa Dae, Ban attempted to put them rest ahead of his return to the U.N., saying that his remarks were somewhat exaggerated and blown up.



Asked about a criticism that possible interest in running for president could make him unable to do his best as U.N. chief, Ban said it is an "undue" and "unreasonable" criticism.



In contrast to Ban's ambiguous stance, Kim Jong-pil, a former prime minister, was quoted as saying Thursday that Ban "appeared to be resolute" to run for president.



During his visit, Ban met with Kim, who is based in the Chungcheong region and still an influential figure in political circles.



Given that Ban is also a Chungcheong native, their meeting spiked rumors that Ban is gearing up to gain further momentum for presidential bid.



"No wonder Ban stressed his commitment to his duties as U.N. chief. He appears to be appeasing criticism toward him," said Choi Chang-ryol, a politics professor at Yongin University.



"What drew my attention is that he did not deny that he will not engage in a political move. Focusing on his duty during the term could also mean that after the term he could seek his share in the domestic sphere."



On Friday, Ban topped the list of potential presidential candidates.



In a Gallup Korea poll, 26 percent of 1,002 respondents supported Ban, while 16 percent favored Moon Jae-in, a former chairman of the main opposition Minjoo Party of Korea (MPK).



Ahn Cheol-soo, co-chairman of the minor opposition People's Party, rounded out the top three with 10 percent.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has focused on economy-related public activities since the conclusion of a rare party congress in early May, Seoul officials said Friday.

The North's leader has conducted so-called field guidance on 13 occasions since the ruling party's congress ended on May 9, according to Seoul's unification ministry and the North's media.

His inspections mainly focused on economy-related areas including visits to a tree nursery and saltern, as the North's leader has stressed the need to boost its fragile economy on the principle of self-reliance.

On the other hand, Kim has not conducted inspections of military or defense installations since early May, noticeably different from April when he visited military units and raised tensions on the divided peninsula.

Since the U.N. Security Council slapped tougher sanctions against the North in March, North Korea had ratcheted up its bellicose rhetoric against Seoul and Washington in an apparent show of defiance against the sanctions.

"North Korea appears to focus on the economic sector to stabilize its regime in the short term and defy the international sanctions regime," said Chang Yong-seok, a researcher at Seoul National University's Institute for Peace and Unification Studies.

He said that as North Korea has no intention to give up its nuclear and missile programs, the country will continue to secretly develop them.

At the party congress, the North's young leader called his country a "responsible" nuclear state, saying that he will "permanently" defend the pursuit of his signature policy of developing nuclear weapons and boosting the country's moribund economy.

Since the party gathering, Jo Yong-won, a senior official of the Workers' Party of Korea (WPK), has accompanied the country's leader on his inspections most often, followed by Choe Ryong-hae, a vice chairman of the party's central committee. (Yonhap)
By Fabian Schnorer

Ranked in the worlds top 15 countries regarding GDP, South Korea is unarguably one of the world's major economic players. The country's economy and culture thrives, but its global sense of responsibility regrettably lags behind.

In 2015 Korea opened the door to a total of 4,265 asylum seekers (excluding North Korean defectors). For comparison, that is half the number of refugees that came to Germany in one single day during the peak of refugee crisis in the autumn of 2015.

And the door was so narrowly opened in Korea that only 106 of the asylum seekers actually gained official refugee status according to the 1951 U.N. Refugee Convention. This convention was signed by Korea in 1994 and obliges it "to protect and provide refugees with basic rights and social services." But with the number cited above, Korea's "refugee acceptance rate stands at 3.7 percent, far lower than the U.N. average of 38 percent."

Did the Korean government remember that it signed the Refugee Convention when the country accepted 200 Syrian refugees last November? It is an infinitesimally small number considering the 13.5 million Syrians who are in urgent need of humanitarian assistance according to the UN.

South Korea has undisputedly become one of the worlds leading industrial nations. But it seems to forget the flipside to that coin, which is that a certain global responsibility that goes along with it.

Last year the country provided $35.45 million of humanitarian aid for Syria. This is considerable financial support, although it leaves a slightly sour taste because while the money is appreciated, what refugees really need are safe places. Despite obstacles Korea can play a role here.

Of course there is the geographical aspect to consider. The UN points out that nine out of ten refugees are being hosted by neighboring countries. But with the example of Syria it become obvious that those neighboring countries  often also challenged in terms of economics or environmental issues  get highly overburdened. Especially, beneficiaries of globalization, like South Korea, need to take action: A globalized world does not only mean sharing the benefits of the global market but to also share the global burdens.

Additionally a high number of refugees strive to head towards other countries anyway. The cost for a Syrian refugee to go to Europe is estimated to be around $3,000. Most of the money ends up in the hands of smugglers. But with that amount of money one could easily buy a plane ticket to Incheon international Airport, if Korea would hang up a welcoming sign on its door.

The action I'm suggesting is unique  that South Korea be pro-active in deepening their commitment to the 1951 Convention. There are hundreds of thousands of refugees in Turkey, for example, that live in uncertainty about their future whereabouts. The South Korean embassy in Ankara is well poised to help those really in need by organizing direct emigration of Syrian asylum seekers from Turkey to Korea.

A role model for such an endeavor could certainly be Canada. Showing global maturity the country welcomed 26,600 Syrian refugees by the end of March 2016, with the prospect of accepting 16,000 more. Acknowledging their global responsibility the country also saw the beneficial aspect of that Welcome Refugees-policy: A UN survey made in Greece amongst Syrian refugees points out that 86 percent of them "had secondary or university educations".

Korea is a leader in flat screen TVs, microchips and girl pop bands. If Korea really wants to be a global leader in a meaningful way, they need to play the role they are capable of.

Fabian Schnorer is a German exchange student enrolled in the English Department at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies (HUFS), South Korea. He is part of an exchange program HUFS has with his home university in Wurzburg, Germany. Write to fabian.schnoerer@gmx.de.
By Shlomo Ben Ami

TEL AVIV  France's initiative to hold an international conference to re-launch direct talks between Israelis and Palestinians, aimed at the ever elusive "two-state solution," is the child of a resilient fantasy. But after decades of failed negotiations, it's time to start thinking like adults.

Neither Israeli nor Palestinian society is primed for compromise. On the contrary, in Israel, surging nationalism has become a major obstacle to any negotiation. With Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu catering to ultra-nationalist elements, there is no possibility that he will produce the kinds of peace proposals pursued by his predecessors, Ehud Barak and Ehud Olmert. As for Palestine, its fragmented polity undermines any possibility of effective negotiation.

But even beyond the current circumstances, there are more fundamental reasons why the Israel-Palestine peace process has never worked. The role of history and religion in the conflict, together with the small size of territory over which the parties are fighting, leaves too little room for accommodation.

There is another vital reason: The Palestinian interlocutor is not a state, but an unpredictable movement. It is a movement that is institutionally invertebrate and split between Islamists, who dream of a borderless Arab nation, and ineffective secular nationalists who four times (1937, 1947, 2000, and 2008) rejected offers for the creation of a Palestinian state.

When negotiating with Arab states, Israel was far more forthcoming than it ever was in the case of the Palestinian national movement. In the early 1990s, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin promised Syria's then-president, Hafez al-Assad, a return to the 1967 borders without so much as a meeting. In 1979, Egypt got back 100% of the land that Israel captured from it in the 1967 Six Day War.

Of course, Israel also began as a movement. But almost from its inception, the Zionist project was driven by a unifying sense of purpose in building an independent nation-state. At every crossroads throughout the years leading to Israel's creation, the movement's leaders made the pragmatic, rather than the fanciful, choice.

Palestinian nationalism, by contrast, was never focused on state-building. Fueled by the tragedy of expulsion and disinheritance, it focused on the dream of restitution. The failure and eventual sacking in 2013 of Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad  whose professed intention was to emulate Zionism through a laborious policy of state-building  is revealing.

But there is an alternative to the two-state solution that accounts for these factors: The West Bank could revert to Jordan, which would then become a kind of Jordanian-Palestinian confederation. In essence, this option represents a return to the parameters of the 1991 Madrid Peace Conference, at which a Jordanian-Palestinian delegation represented the Palestinian cause.

Israel, in this scenario, would benefit from gaining an interlocutor that is an orderly state with a tradition of  and interest in  negotiation and compliance with agreements. This should be enough to impel Israeli leaders at least to consider the option, and behave less deceitfully than they have in direct negotiations with the Palestinians.

With Israel no longer able to use Palestinian institutional weakness as a justification for its continued occupation of the West Bank, Palestine would stand to benefit. Moreover, Israel could not, as it attempted to do in the past, annex strategic areas of the West Bank and return the rest to Jordan; instead, it would have to withdraw to the 1967 borders, with agreed modifications and land swaps.

Palestinians seem to recognize these benefits. In 2013, according to polls conducted by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, 55% of Palestinians supported the Jordanian option  a 10% increase from five years earlier.

Perhaps the biggest obstacle is Jordan, which currently is not interested in getting involved. That will change only if it faces a threat to its own security, stemming, say, from the spillover of Palestinian instability from the West Bank.

Paradoxically, one potential trigger of such a security risk could be apparent progress toward a two-state solution. The late King Hussein feared that an independent Palestinian state could become a radical irredentist entity, and his own 1988 decision to waive Jordan's claim on the West Bank, taken under pressure from the Arab League, was never ratified in parliament, and is still regarded by many as unconstitutional.

Fear of Palestinian instability also drove two former Jordanian prime ministers, Abdel Salam Majali and Taher al-Masri, to advocate a Jordanian-Palestinian confederation. Majali remains a staunch champion of the idea, as he made clear in a recent meeting in Amman with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. His elaborate 2007 plan, undoubtedly shared with King Abdullah's consent, was spurred by the prospect of chaos should an Israeli government decide to secure Israel's survival as a Jewish state through unilateral withdrawal from much of the West Bank. That chaos, Jordan's government feared, could spread to the East Bank, potentially dealing a fatal blow to the Kingdom.

The international community is about to embark, yet again, on a peace process aimed at creating an orderly and viable independent Palestinian state in the West Bank. That would be the most just outcome. Unfortunately, it is highly unlikely, leaving a Jordanian-Palestinian confederation as the last remaining hope for Palestinian statehood.
Fleets of Chinese boats go virtually unpunished for routinely trespassing into South Korean waters in the West Sea, making a great haul of the crabs in the area. Korean fishermen are seeing their catch reduced by two-thirds at the height of crab season, and their consumer prices are rising because of it.



Therefore, Friday's joint operation under the flag of the United Nations Command (UNC) to crack down on Chinese fishing boats near the mouth of the Han River was quite appropriate



It involved naval vessels, marines and maritime police in the first such operation since the armistice agreement was signed in 1953, responding to public calls for forceful action.



Fisherman are so frustrated that recently some of them took matters into their own hands and commandeered two Chinese boats that were illegally fishing in Korean waters. But this has failed to stop the Chinese from fishing in South Korean waters and that's nothing short of piracy.



The sheer numbers of Chinese fishing boats are overwhelming. An aggregate number of 29,600 Chinese boats "invaded" the West Sea during key fishing periods last year, twice that of the year before. It means a daily number of 256 last year; 200 in 2014 and 155 in 2013. This year, the situation is not improving. The government has repeatedly petitioned the Chinese government to intervene, to little effect. Now artificial reefs are being built to tear down the dragnets of the Chinese fishermen, but they are too few to be effective. Six police patrol boats are in place, but they can't deal with the Chinese fleets. Owners of the Chinese boats are said to organize private insurance policies among themselves so, when one is caught, a penalty of 200 million won, or $173,000, is paid from it.



Other countries are forceful in protecting their fishing waters. Indonesia uses extreme measures when it catches a foreign illegal fishing boat by using guns to subdue it, and then blow it up. Russia, Argentina, Vietnam and the Philippines are also stringent in protecting their fishing resources against "piracy."



Second, cooperation with North Korea should be sought. The waters the Chinese frequent are part of the West Sea near the northern limit line (NLL), the virtual maritime border between the two Koreas. Chinese boats often dart across the NLL into North Korea and take refuge there when pursued by Korean patrol boats, only to return when the patrols are gone to continue fishing. Some NGOs are suggesting drawing up inter-Korean joint fishing areas and conducting crackdowns on the Chinese together. Although South-North relations are frozen, the suggestions are worth studying since they serve common interests.




Actor Song Seung-heon, left, and actress Lee Young-ae attend a press conference in Gangneung, Gangwon

Province, on Nov. 30, 2015, to promote SBS TV's new drama, "Saimdang, Diary of Light." / Yonhap



By Kim Ji-soo

Top hallyu actors Lee Young-ae and Song Seung-heon will return to the small screen in October, as the network SBS has scheduled "Saimdang, Diary of Light" to air in October.

Lee and Song have concluded filming for the much-anticipated drama about Shin Saimdang (1504-1551). Shin is a respected painter and mother of the renowned Confucian scholar Lee Yul-gok of the Joseon Kingdom (1392-1910).

The drama will air under the new Korean title "Saimdang, Diary of Light" from its tentative title "Saimdang, the Herstory." In the drama, Lee, 45, plays a double role as Shin Saimdang and the modern-day Seo Ji-yoon who stumbles upon the diary of Saimdang.

Lee has starred in numerous Korean dramas and films including the world-wide hit "Jewel in the Palace" (2003). Song will play the artist Lee Gyeom. Song also has an array of work under his belt, his most recent project being the film "The Third Love" with his girlfriend, the Chinese actress Liu Yifei.
LINE Corp., the Japanese arm of South Korea's internet giant Naver Corp., is to hold a board meeting here and in Japan Friday to decide on its initial public offering (IPO), an informed source said.



"A board meeting on the IPO is imminent. Board members will meet both in South Korea and Japan Friday to make a decision," said the source familiar with the matter.



Naver, South Korea's largest internet portal, owns 100 percent of LINE, which is based in Japan and operates a mobile messenger of the same name that is extremely popular in Japan, Thailand, Taiwan and Indonesia. The number of LINE's monthly active users came to 215 billion as of December last year.



Naver Chairman Lee Hae-jin, who doubles as chief of LINE, is expected to attend the board meeting to seek approval for the company's listing from other board members, the source said.



Early this month Japan's Nihon Keizai reported that LINE will likely list its shares in the U.S. and Japan as early as July. Reuters later reported an investor relations session for the envisioned IPO will be held on Friday.



Naver reputed the reports, saying "no decision has been made."



But market watchers consider LINE's IPO as a foregone conclusion. Naver will reportedly hire Nomura, Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan as advisers, list LINE shares on the Japanese stock market and issue American depositary receipts in the New York bourse.



Japan's public broadcaster NHK and other media reported that the Tokyo Stock Exchange will give the go-ahead to LINE's listing, predicting its market value to reach some 6.5 trillion won.



LINE has been engulfed in speculation over its listing in the United States since July 2014. The company has insisted that it is considering such an option but nothing specific has been decided.



Naver has been faced with bad optics on the issue with some suspecting the primary purpose of the IPO is to enable top managers and its employees to exercise their stock options for a profit.



Of LINE's 175 million outstanding shares, 14.6 percent have been granted to its senior managers and staff members in stock options since 2012, which could be exercised only when the company is listed. Stock options give holders the right to sell shares at an agreed-upon price within a certain period or on a specific date. (Yonhap)




Newly elected Philippines president Rodrigo Duterte pledged to execute all criminals within six months of his election. / Courtesy of Twitter



By Lee Han-soo

Philippine drug cartels are planning to assassinate newly elected president Rodrigo Duterte, according to Ronald dela Rosa, the police commissioner nominee.

Duterte, who begins his presidency on June 30, is nicknamed "The Punisher" for his hard-line stance on crime. He has pledged to execute all criminals within six months of his election.

"There is a plot to assassinate soon-to-be president Duterte and myself," dela Rosa told GMA news, a Philippine news station.

Dela Rosa said the cartel had put a $1 million bounty on the president-elect's head, increasing it from $214,000 after failing to find a hit man.

He told the Manila Bulletin on Friday that drug lords in Bilibid prison had initiated the plot.

The move is believed to be in response to Duterte's aggressive tactics on drug-dealing. He recently encouraged people to kill drug dealers, promising to reward those who did.

"If the suspect resists, shoot them," said Duterte, who promised $108,219 for drug lords killed and $108,133 for those brought in alive.
The SLFP does not condone the continuation of the Emergency Regulations (The Public Security Ordinance) more than a day necessary

Read more
This article appears in the June 10, 2016 issue of Executive Intelligence Review.

What Obama Really Said at Hiroshima

by Rachel Brinkley, LaRouche PAC Policy Committee, Boston

[PDF version of this article]

June 6While media reports about President Barack Obamas speech in Hiroshima may have noted that Obama did not apologize for the United States having dropped two atomic bombs on Japan in 1945, none of those reports came close to accurately covering what he actually said there.

The important point is not that he didnt apologize, but that he put forth an argument consciously designed to dishearten mankind about itself, so that any future act of war would not be resisted by a demoralized population. In so doing, he prepared the way for the nuclear war that he is provoking. From far down below, Bertrand Russell is gloating over this U.S. Presidents adherence to his own Satanic doctrine, put forward at the beginning of the last century.

UN

Listen to Obamas actual words at Hiroshima:

It is not the fact of war that sets Hiroshima apart. Artifacts tell us that violent conflict appeared with the very first man. Our early ancestors, having learned to make blades from flint and spears from wood, used these tools not just for hunting, but against their own kind. On every continent, the history of civilization is filled with war, whether driven by scarcity of grain or hunger for gold, compelled by nationalist fervor or religious zeal. . . . The world war that reached its brutal end in Hiroshima and Nagasaki was fought among the wealthiest and most powerful of nations. Their civilizations had given the world great cities and magnificent art. Their thinkers had advanced ideas of justice and harmony and truth. And yet 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 proclaims that mankind is programmed to kill, and then repeats the Russellite dogma that science, rather than being an integral part of a developing mankind, has resulted simply in the ability to kill larger numbers of people all at once.

He lies blatantly on the issue of his own nuclear weapons policy, saying, But among those nations like my own that hold nuclear stockpiles, we must have the courage to escape the logic of fear and pursue a world without them. This, while the United States is upgrading its own nuclear arsenal to the tune of $1 trillion, including supplying a new B61-12 tail-kit that allows existing bombs to be directed hundreds of miles further into enemy territory, essentially creating an entirely new class of thermonuclear weapons.

creative commons/Ari Levinson

The Necessity of Killing

Obamas belief that power lies in killing, was clearly revealed by his own speech writer, Ben Rhodes, in a recent New York Times Magazine article. Rhodes declared that Obamas drone policy is a result of his childhood in Indonesia, which put him in close proximity to the 1965-66 massacre of a half million to a million Indonesianswhen his interaction at that time with power was very intimate. Obamas policy, he said, is one which understands the hard and at times absolute necessity of killing, unlike other American leaders.

The truth about what Obama actually said in Hiroshima, was further underscored last week when the Indonesian Defense Minister, Gen. Ryamizard Ryacudu, cited Obamas words as justification for that Indonesian massacre itself. After noting that Obama had not apologized, Gen. Ryacudu explained that Millions of people died because of the bomb, and that was war, and then perpetuated the lie that those killed in the 1960s massacre had mounted an uprising, so that the victims deserved to die.

Lets be clear: Dropping the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was an unnecessary massacre of innocent civilians, as the Japanese had been successfully hemmed in and cut off from their supply lines by Gen. MacArthur, and were already negotiating to surrender. Not only does Obama not regret such senseless acts of murder, but he narcissistically believes that they are necessary and justified. Obama is a killer. He is killing now, and he will kill again. He must be removed from office before the next kill occurs, which could end the human race in a few hours.

Lyndon LaRouche emphasized, to an audience in Manhattan on June 4, what must be done:

The first thing you have to do is get rid of Obama. Thats a good starting point: throw him out. Throw him out of all offices. Look, the guys a madman; hes a mass murderer. He has been on record, a man who killed people in great numbers, on Tuesdays. And is probably still doing it. Everything about Obama is Satanic, and those who worship and support Obama, such as we have with a couple of Presidential candidates heretheyre not qualified to function, that is, for any social purposes, and thats the point.

The year 2017 is much too late. Act now or there might not be another chanceObama must be thrown out.
This petition appears in the June 10, 2016 issue of Executive Intelligence Review.

PETITION

The Warsaw Summit Prepares for War,

Its Time To Leave NATO Now!

[PDF version of this article]

May 30The following appeal is being circulated internationally, including on the websites of the international LaRouche movement.

The upcoming NATO summit in Warsaw on July 8-9, is expected to be yet another provocation against Russia. By signing this call, we say stop this nuclear escalation, before the irreparable occurs!

The hour is grave. A new missile crisis is building, in a mirror image of that which led the Soviet Union in 1962 to deploy nuclear warheads in Cuba, at the doorstep of the United States. Today, the situation is the reverse. At the time, NATO was fighting the Warsaw Pact; today, it is organizing a summit in Warsaw!

We the undersigned observe that NATO is carrying out a provocative policy of encirclement:

1. The continuous eastward expansion of NATO towards the borders of Russia, despite the guarantees given by the West to Gorbachov in 1989 that this would not happen;

2. The deployment of the Aegis anti-missile defense system in Romania, Poland, Turkey, and Spain. These weapons, equipped with MK41 launchers, can be used for defensive missions (air, land, sea), but also for offensive attacks with nuclear weapons;

3. The planned permanent rotational deployment in the Baltic States, Poland, and Romania, of four battalions of 1,000 troops each, and heavy military equipment;

4. The creation of a Nordic Front against Russia, comprising an alliance of NATO members Denmark, Iceland, and Norway, and of NATOs Partnership for Peace (Sweden and Finland);

5. The modernization of nuclear weapons, in particular the B61-12 bomb and the Long Range Standoff (LRSO) Cruise Missiles, based in Germany. U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein said of these weapons: The so-called improvements to this weapon seemed to be designed . . . to make it more usable, to help us fight and win a limited nuclear war.

To put an end to this threat, we demand:

That our government adopt a policy of the empty chair (boycott) at the next NATO summit in Warsaw; That our government announce its intention to leave NATO, which no longer has any raison detre.

To escape the current countdown to nuclear war, we also call on our government to create without delay the conditions for a new global peace and security architecture, based on the win-win cooperation proposed by the BRICS, cooperation which Europe and the United States, in their own interests, should join in.

The vast efforts we deployed in the 20th Century for war, must be mobilized today for peace and mutual development!

Sign here:

https://larouchepac.com/20160530/petition-warsaw-summit-prepares-war-its-time-leave-nato-now
This article appears in the June 10, 2016 issue of Executive Intelligence Review.

EDITORIAL

What Is Science?

[PDF version of this article]

June 2Man is making history before our eyes today, from day to day and even hour to hour, as all the various mutual links between Russia, China, and India become ever closer and ever more numerous, drawing in 70 or more nations comprising well over half of humanity, as Helga Zepp-LaRouche said in her May 31 TASS interview. Its like a chained ring of magnets pulling themselves into ever-closer alignment. Think of the new revival of interest in the Kra Canal linking the South China Sea with the Indian Ocean (through the Gulf of Thailand and the Andaman Sea). In its current incarnation, this is a Lyndon LaRouche and a Japanese project. It will link India with Southeast Asia and China; it will revolutionize these waters. Lyndon LaRouche said it will be one of the greatest achievements in modern history.

On May 31, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang told Asian editors that, If China and India work together and forge synergy, it will deliver benefits not only to the Chinese and Indian people, but also to Asia and beyond. Referring to Indias recent announcement of a trade corridor deal with Iran and Afghanistan, through Irans Chabahar Port, Li said that China welcomes it.

India and China are for the first time cooperating in regard to Tibet, where in the past China has viewed India with particular sensitivity, given the Dalai Lamas presence in India and a sizeable Tibetan community there.

Also on May 31, former Chinese Ambassador to Russia Li Fenglin was speaking at a two-day conference on China-Russia relations in Moscow. He said that the bilateral relationship is at a 400-year high, but China wants an even higher level of trust with Russia.

I have a feeling that Putin and Xi have a conceptual understanding of how we should work together, but there are problems of understanding in the mid-level, said Ambassador Li, who spoke perfect and idiomatic Russian. It does not matter that we have different approaches. Its a normal thing for such big and different countries to have different approaches. The main thing is that they do not lead to contradictions.

All this calls to mind why it was that LaRouche PAC leader Kesha Rogers of Houston wisely chose the figure of the late German-American space pioneer Krafft Ehricke to keynote her fight for the revival of the space program. Ehrickes approach is just like that of Lyndon LaRouche, in that it is not the least bit practical, yet it is extremely effective, as has been demonstrated beyond doubt. Ehricke was one of those leaders of space exploration like Konstantin Tsiolkovsky and Hermann Oberth earlier, whose courage and intellect has brought man to new worlds, beyond even what Christopher Columbus did.

Ehricke was a scientist, but his is real science, not the disgusting mathematical substitute for science which is taught in our schools, and which is represented by Obamas degenerate Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter. Carters phony version of science brought us the F-35 airplane, at probably $200 million apiece, which doesnt work, and will never work.

Krafft, on the other hand, among many other bold feats of science, forecast precisely the 1970 Apollo 13 mission, in a paper written in 1948. Typically for him, his 1948 paper said that it had been written in 2400, looking back 350 years to the first manned Mars mission in 2050, called Expedition Ares. Terence Norton, the leader of that mission, had had to answer the objection that the limitations on the technologies available in 2050, principally the availability of only chemical propulsion for space travel, increased the likelihood of a departure from the normal schedule, and with it the failure of the mission and even the death of its crew. What was his answer? To cancel the mission? In his report to the Space Board, he wrote:

In considering the problem from any viewpoint, the question may arise: In what way may the challenge offered by a departure from the normal schedule be met with the technical resources at hand? Does such not improbable situation offer some chances to bring home the amazing results of human courage; or does a failure to cope with the situation mean certain death somewhere in the depths of space, to all on board?

A study of the following pages will show that the technical group has increased the safety factor to a figure far higher than that which was considered the maximum when the project was established. The rest can be left to the character and spirit of the party. It is frankly admitted that possible dangers exist which cannot be anticipated, but the group is firmly convinced that courage, resource, and the scientific attainments of those selected to make the voyage, will meet successfully the challenge of space travel. (See 21st Century Science and Technology, Spring 2003, p. 34)

Another factor was realistic, thorough, and diverse training, training, training, much of it in space. Note that most of the redundancy built into Expedition Ares was identical to that found in the Apollo missions: namely, the clustering of different independently survivable modules, each one both tailored to a specific purpose, but at the same time general-purpose.

And just like Apollo 13, Expedition Ares suffered a mishap and a departure from normal schedule. Like Apollo 13, the mission had to be aborted, but as with Apollo 13, every one of the crewmen was rescued, and made it back alive to Earth.

Kesha Rogers certainly knows what shes talking about.
PRESS RELEASE

NATO Is About To Make the Biggest Mistake in Its History; Warnings against the Drive into World War III

June 9, 2016 (EIRNS)With its plans for stationing missile defense systems in Romania and Poland, NATO "is probably about to make the biggest mistake in its history," Jochen Bittner writes in his blogs in Die Zeit. The Russian response may be the cancellation of the entire INF Treaty, of all agreements banning and limiting missile systems in Europe, and that cancellation may occur right at the time of the NATO summit in Warsaw. That would be detrimental to European security, and therefore the question must be posed whether stationing a system that cannot neutralize multi-warhead modern Russian missiles anyway, is worth the loss of the INF Treaty, Bittner writes.

In an article similarly looking at NATOs expansion eastwards and the massive increase of military exercises, Roland Barazon, longtime editor in chief of the Austrian Salzburger Nachrichten daily, writes that against this background, the conduct of the governments in Warsaw and Kiev is a big provocation of Russia. All of that is coordinated with the respective defense paragraphs in the EUs Lisbon Treaty, Barazon charges. But a new world war will likely not begin in the east of Europe, Barazon believe. In his view, the situation in Southwest Asia is much more worrisome, with three leading regional powersTurkey, Saudi Arabia, and Iranat odds with each other, and their respective backing by the United States or Russia might sooner or later pull the nuclear superpowers into bigger regional conflicts and thus trigger World War III.
PRESS RELEASE

Chinas Xinhua Gives Prominant Coverage to Butch Valdes and Kit TatadCancel Hague Arbitration, Cancel EDCA

June 9, 2016 (EIRNS)Under the title "Philippine politicians, experts, opinion leaders call for independent foreign policy, bilateral talks with China on South China Sea issue," the Global Times ran a story from Xinhua quoting from Philippines LaRouche Society head Butch Valdes and former Senator Kit Tatad, calling for the new Philippines government of Rodrigo Duterte, which takes office June 30, to simply withdraw from the Hague Arbitration Court case, which outgoing president Noynoy Aquino initiated at Obamas behest. They also call for it to to cancel the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA), which Aquino imposed as an executive action, thus turning the countrys military bases over to the US for a war on China.

At a meeting in Manila to celebrate the 41st anniversary of the establishment of bilateral relations between the Philippines and China, Kit Tatad said:

"What we should control at all times is our national interest. Let us remember that the maritime disputes were there when the Philippines and China decided to establish diplomatic relations."

Tatad called on the Philippines to follow Indias example, said Xinhua"to negotiate with China and talk about ways to improve the two countries economic relations." Tatad reminded the audience that it was the Philippines, not China, which first began reclamation activities such as building airstrips in the South China Sea.

Alberto Encomienda, former secretary-general of Maritime and Ocean Affairs Center at the Philippine Department of Foreign Affairs, told Xinhua after the gathering,

"You dont have to finish that arbitration. Nobody even knows when it will be finished.... China has been for the negotiations all along, but from the beginning we are not."

Butch Valdes, identified as the former undersecretary of the Department of Education,

"told Xinhua that the Philippines will not have actual benefits even if the tribunal rules in favor of the country. He stressed that the situation will be worse, because a ruling from an international tribunal will only escalate tension in the South China Sea."

Aileen Baviera, a professor at the University of the Philippines, called the beginning of talks with China "an avenue for resuming the confidence-building process" between the two countries, by assuring China that there is no intention to use arbitration, and there is no intention to harm Chinas security interests.

Butch Valdes, Xinhua reported, called for the Duterte government to review the EDCA, saying the Aquino administration imposed it in an "underhanded manner," rather than sending it to the Senate for ratification as a treaty. Valdes added: "In the past three to four years, they (the U.S.) have made the country into a U.S. military base."
I was a daisy-fresh girl and look what youve done to me.

 Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita

The Girls is gorgeous, disquieting, and really, really good.

Set mostly in the Bay Area at the tail end of the 1960s, the novel follows Evie Boyd through the endless, formless summer before she goes off to boarding school. Evie is 14 and contemptuous (a redundant phrase, to be sure), sick of her suburban towns ranch houses and sun-scorched crosswalks, her predictable best friend, Connie, and her mother, Jean, wandering through her own summer of discontent. Evies parents have recently divorced. Her father is remote, off with his new girlfriend, while Jean cycles through all the self-improvement schemes the era so amply provided: incense, astrology, sensory deprivation tanks. She searched until there was only searching left, Cline writes.

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Bored, aimless and a little bit anxious, Evie isnt searching so much as waiting, more than ready for some new thing to come along and shake up her life. When she spots a group of girls in the park, looking like royalty in exile, glamorous in their carelessness, shes instantly drawn to them, especially Suzanne, the black-haired girl at the center. Soon, Evie will follow Suzanne and the other girls to the ranch, a rickety commune gathered around its sexually charismatic leader, Russell.

Modeled on Charles Manson, Russells a wannabe rock star, a two-bit philosopher, and a serious horndog. Just like the real-life Manson family, Russell has managed to attract an assortment of young women to make his food, share his bed and worship him. Suzanne and the other girls take turns sleeping with Russell, and they flirt with the other men who drift and in and out of the ranch, but its their relationships with each other that fascinate Evie; she admires how the group members [love] one another indiscriminately, with the purity and optimism of children. Only later, as Russells paranoia becomes more evident and the ranchs dangers more obvious, does Evie begin to see that the girls have let themselves become less childlike than childish, malleable and easily led  in this case, to violence.

The book begins in the present, with an aging Evie thinking back to the murders Russells family carried out that August. As in Helter Skelter, the book Manson prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi wrote about the actual crimes, Cline paints the picture of a warm summer night, a dark neighborhood, a gate still strung with Christmas lights. Bugliosis opening chapter goes on to describe the crime scene in gruesome detail  including cries from the neighbor who was the first to see behind the door: Murder, death, bodies, blood!

Cline writes with greater literary skill and restraint than Bugliosi; her prose conveys a kind of atmospheric dread, punctuated by slyly distilled observation, not unlike the early cinematic style of Roman Polanski, whose wife, actress Sharon Tate, was killed by the Manson family. That deliberate tone remains throughout, though its somewhat less successful in the sections set in the present.

Like her younger self, middle-aged Evie is by turns wry and clinical, wary and direct. Staying alone at a friends beach house, her solitary sojourn is interrupted by the homeowners college-aged son, his girlfriend and a drug dealer. By turns vapid and menacing, these young people seem like they could have ended up at Russells ranch just as easily as Evie had decades earlier, yet its not clear what they add to the book, really, except to demonstrate that Evie is damaged, and afraid, but it would be shocking if she werent.

[Evie and Connie] licked batteries to feel a metallic jolt on the tongue, rumored to be one-eighteenth of an orgasm.  Emma Cline

By far the strongest writing comes when Cline limns the nearly exquisite boredom and anticipation of early adolescence. Evie lies by the pool and drinks her parents liquor. She and Connie pore over the beauty magazines, following directions and absorbing rituals; they follow teen folk wisdom, licked batteries to feel a metallic jolt on the tongue, rumored to be one-eighteenth of an orgasm. They pay more attention to boys sexual urges than their own, though; already adjusting themselves to react more than act. That was part of being a girl, Cline writes, The only thing you could do was smile from the corner theyd backed you into.

Everyone who has been a 14-year-old girl knows the way ones own sexual desire remains unspoken but a boys (or mans) is unavoidably loud, a set of messages were meant to hear and usually forced to respond to in one way or another. As readers and viewers, were all familiar with the male perspective on teenage girls as sexual beings  whether its jail-bait pornography or Nabokovs Lolita, girls are presented as objects, not subjects of their own stories. Yet theres an uncomfortable and usually unwritten corollary that former 14-year-old girls will also recognize.

When Humbert Humbert, a narrator both unreliable and unsavory, describes Lolita as a little deadly demon among the wholesome children; she stands unrecognized by them and unconscious herself of her fantastic power, hes lying, but theres something true there too. Its a deeply uncomfortable thing to remember, and harder to write about than it looks. What Cline does in The Girls is to examine, even dissect, these shifts between power and powerlessness that characterize a girls coming of age. When Evie notices older men desiring her, shes equal parts frightened, revolted and pleased  its like learning to use a tool thats uncomfortable, not always effective, but all youve got at hand.

What Cline does in The Girls is to examine, even dissect, these shifts between power and powerlessness that characterize a girls coming of age.

Like spies behind enemy lines, Evie and Connie study the boys. We were like conspiracy theorists, seeing portent and intention in every detail, wishing desperately enough that we mattered enough to be the object of planning and speculation. But they were just boys. Silly and young and straightforward; they werent hiding anything. Suzanne and the other ranch girls watch Russell the same way. As a character, Russell himself is not particularly vivid  there have always been guys like him, at least in a minor key. What Cline is more interested in is the hold he has on these girls, who seize on him as a way to escape their own unsatisfying lives. As their summer moves implacably toward August, and murder, its impossible not to wonder what would happen if the girls could grab their own power.

Notions of sexual awakening, guilt and innocence are nothing new in literature  especially not when starring a young woman named Eve!  but what Cline has done here feels urgent and fresh. It would have been so easy to get this wrong. Fiction based on historical events  especially one as frequently retold as the Manson family murders  can easily slip into second-hand banality, a kind of nostalgia of horror. But here Cline, born years after the events she explores, brings a fresh and discerning eye to both the specific, horrific crime at her books center, one firmly located in a time and place, and the timeless, slow-motion tragedy of a typical American girlhood.

Tuttle is a book critic and freelance writer whose work appears regularly in the Boston Globe.

::

The Girls

Emma Cline

Random House: 368 pp., $27

::

It was a big risk -- two big risks, in fact. A year apart at book fairs in two different countries, two 25-year-old women landed 7-figure book deals for their first novels. Seven figures means were talking millions, and plenty of eyebrows were raised about the substantial amounts, the untested writers, the potential for it all to go down the drain. Waves of barely-suppressed envy swelled through the literary world. But as those two books hit shelves this summer, its clear that sometimes publishing gets it right. This week, Steph Cha reviews Homegoing, Yaa Gyasis intergenerational novel of two branches of an African family split by slavery, and Kate Tuttle reviews Emma Clines Manson family novel The Girls, which has already been optioned for film; they explain why these are some of your best summer reading bets.
Terry Tempest Williams would like it very much if everyone could just take a deep breath.

Our national parks are breathing spaces, in a time when were all holding our breath, the author and environmentalist says. In her new book, The Hour of Land: A Personal Topography of Americas National Parks, Tempest Williams considers the meaning and role of the parks in 12 eloquent personal essays.

In the book, Tempest Williams speaks softly but carries a big walking stick as she wanders, and wonders about, some of Americas most visited and hallowed sites.

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If we can learn to listen to the land, we can learn to listen to each other.  Terry Tempest Williams

I wasnt writing about the national parks, I was writing about America, she explained by phone from New Hampshire, where the Utah native is a visiting professor at Dartmouth College. It became clear that our national parks may not just be our best idea, but an evolving idea.

Neither travelogue nor tour guide, her descriptions of these places  which reference biology, history, archaeology, anthropology, folklore, zoology, ornithology, politics, geology and geography  resonate because she frames topics and issues among the storied settings that are part of our shared legacy.

The national parks are a microcosm for the challenges of a rapidly changing society, Tempest Williams explains. Our parks have become a hologram for the problems we are facing, she says, citing climate change, fracking, de-listing of endangered species, population growth, economics and social divisions.

At Gettysburg National Battlefield, she encounters Civil War re-enactors who reveal that their sympathies lie with the South. Its a moment that exposes just how polarized these United States can be, long after the North vanquished the Confederacy.

At Big Bend National Park in Texas she ponders the disastrous effects a wall between Mexico and the United States would inflict upon the wildlife of the hard country along the Rio Grande, the largest preserve of Chihuahuan desert in the United States.

In the chapter about Gates of the Arctic National Park, she turns inward, contemplating the wilderness as metaphor as she meditates on a fracture in her relationship with her brother. Wilderness is not my leisure or my recreation. It is my sanity, she writes.

Its a recurring theme: Wide open spaces promote wide open thoughts. Panorama promotes perspective. If we can learn to listen to the land, she says, we can learn to listen to each other.

The Hour of Land is handsomely illustrated with black-and-white photographs by Ansel Adams, Richard Avedon, Lee Friedlander, Sally Mann and many others. The photographs selected for the book are not literal representations of the places Tempest Williams writes about but a nod to the men and women who drew attention to the parks through their pictures. National parks would never be what they are had the photographers not advocated for them, she says.

Tempest Williams has been connected to the land all her life. She was raised in Utah, where her familys traditions include a deep and abiding appreciation of the natural world. In her essay about Grand Teton National Park, which she revisits with her father, Tempest Williams describes generations of Tempests before her gathering there, returning summer after summer to replenish their souls.

See the most-read in Life & Style this hour 

But the parks and monuments are much more than vacation destinations meant to be driven to on interstate highways and through on roads paved by the National Park Service that Edward Abbey decried in Desert Solitaire: A Season in the Wilderness. Referencing Abbey, she says, I love that Ed called it industrial tourism.

Last year you were just inches  back to back  with other people in the Yellowstone basin, she says. But a visit to a national park in Texas with her husband proved quite different. The other side is, you look at a park like Big Bend and there were days Brooke and I saw two people.

Now, Tempest Williams says, we have arrived at a tipping point where people and governmental agencies must redouble efforts to preserve and protect the wild. She put her money where her mouth is earlier this year by purchasing energy leases for more than 1,000 acres of wilderness near her home in Castle Valley, Utah. The parcels, she says, are scraps that attracted no bidders during a Bureau of Land Management auction. So she purchased them post-auction.

Tempest Williams and her husband paid $1.50 per acre to lease the property for 10 years. In news reports about the transaction, after being asked by a BLM official whether the couples motivation in buying the leases was in fact for energy exploration, Tempest Williams famously answered, Yes. You cant define what energy is for us. Our energy development is fueling a movement. Keep it in the ground.

Not long after she had taken out the leases, the ground shifted under Tempest Williams feet during contract negotiations with the University of Utah, where she had founded and taught in the Environmental Humanities graduate program. In April, she resigned from the university rather than take her teaching about the environment, which had been conducted in the field, into the classroom.

When asked whether her BLM auction action had anything to do with the universitys stance during the contract discussions, Tempest Williams demurs. In an email she writes, It can be described best in one word: Politics.

Not one to stand still for too long, Tempest Williams has been on the move lately between Castle Valley, New Hampshire and Colorado, where she was a speaker at the 8th World Ranger Congress in Rocky Mountains National Park. Nearly 400 rangers from parks and preserves all over the world attended the conference, sharing tales of triumphs and challenges they face in protecting the wild.

The women moved me deeply, Tempest Williams says, describing the extreme dangers and difficulties park personnel face in other parts of the world, including rebel factions and lions. A woman ranger from Cameroon who had made a vow to protect wildlife with her life was nearly beaten to death by poachers.

The National Park Service officially marks its centennial on Aug. 25; Tempest Williams will be visiting one. She encourages everyone else to find their national park  what she calls the open spaces of our democracy -- to take part in the celebration. There are a total of 58 national parks across 29 states, with an additional 120 national monuments across the nation.

Writing this book has allowed me to fall in love with our country again  whats the best in us, she says quietly.

-----------

FOR THE RECORD

June 10, 2:00 p.m.: An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that there are national parks in every U.S. state.

-----------

::

The Hour of Land: A Personal Topography of Americas National Parks

Terry Tempest Williams

Farrar, Straus and Giroux: 396 pp., $27
If youve been paying any attention to pop culture, youve probably noticed an uptick in slavery narratives, particularly in Hollywood. The most recent is the History channels remake of Roots, the iconic 1970s miniseries based on Alex Haleys book; the fall will see the publication of Colson Whiteheads novel The Underground Railroad. This is a thick, thorny topic, in part because black representations are so limited that the subgenre has become strangely dominant with just a handful of titles.

But I also wonder why there arent major works about slavery all the time  somehow World War II stories appear more central to our national narrative (its almost like we find white people more interesting than black people). Slavery is not only fundamental to American history, its the terrible direct inheritance of an entire population.

In her debut novel Homegoing, Yaa Gyasi explores the damaging effect of the slave trade on a family split between the U.S. and the Gold Coast of Ghana across 200 years. With a few exceptions, even the most extravagant multigenerational novels seem to top out at three or four generations, capturing characters whose lifetimes overlap, who have time to get to know and interact with one another. Homegoing covers seven generations in 300 pages and is, for the most part, a blazing success.

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Of course, there are reasons most novels dont follow 14 point-of-view characters scattered across modern history. Aside from sheer technical difficulty, this structure demands a great deal of sacrifice from the individual characters, who are allotted only 20 to 30 pages apiece. Homegoing is, in essence, a novel in short stories, so each chapter is forced to stand on its own, and inevitably, some chapters fare better than others.

But the same can be said of Jennifer Egans A Visit From the Goon Squad and Elizabeth Strouts Olive Kitteridge, both of which won Pulitzers  these novels can work, despite structural limitations. The sum of Homegoings parts is remarkable, a panoramic portrait of the slave trade and its reverberations, told through the travails of one family that carries the scars of that legacy.

It all starts with Effia and Esi, daughters of Maame, both born in what is now Ghana in the mid-18th century, when the Gold Coast slave trade was in full swing.

[W]hen you study history, you must always ask yourself, Whose story am I missing? Whose voice was suppressed so that this voice could come forth?  Yaa Gyasi

Effia is the product of rape  Maame, an Asante woman, was a slave to her Fante father, and on the night of Effias birth, Maame set fire to his compound and fled, leaving her daughter for Asanteland, where she married and gave birth to Esi. Maames escape sets the entire novel in motion, making the rape a sort of original sin. Effias father knew then that the memory of the fire that burned, then fled, would haunt him, his children, and his childrens children for as long as the line continued.

Without it, Effia wouldnt have married the British governor of the Cape Coast Castle; her half-sister  entirely unknown to her  wouldnt have been captured and imprisoned in the castles dungeon while she lived upstairs in relative comfort. While Effia stays on in Africa, Esi is sold into slavery and shipped to America, and both lines of their family become embroiled in the filth of history, their lives determined by the sins of individuals, of peoples, of nations. As one great-great-granddaughter tells her son, Evil begets evil. It grows. It transmutes, so that sometimes you cannot see that the evil in the world began as the evil in your own home.

Homegoing is not a book that flatters white people, but neither is it a book about sweet, virtuous black people at the mercy of a racist world. As one of Effias descendants, who leaves his slave trading family to become a farmer, explains to his fellow villagers, Asante traders would bring in their captives. Fante, Ewe, or Ga middlemen would hold them, then sell them to the British or the Dutch or whoever was paying the most at the time. Everyone was responsible. We all were  we all are.

Homegoing is not a book that flatters white people, but neither is it a book about sweet, virtuous black people at the mercy of a racist world.

The characters are, by necessity, representatives for entire eras of African and black American history, and while this means some of them embody a few shortcuts (a budding writer pens an on-the-nose poem; a PhD student works on his research; one poor soul is burdened with portraying every topic pertinent to Harlem in the 1960s), they are not ciphers. Gyasi infuses them with individuality and allows them to breathe, flaws and all. In one of my favorite moments in the book, a character visits his mother for the first time in decades, never having forgiven her for the (truly awful) event that caused their separation. She kneels before him, and he knew she was crying by the wetness of his feet.

Mothers and sons, husbands and wives, brothers and sisters  they all tend to lose each other in Homegoing. Theyre separated both by history  war, slavery, imprisonment  and the tragic stuff of individual life  abandonment, resentment, heroin.

These losses are more pronounced for the U.S. branch of the family, where enslaved children are sold away from their parents. Over the course of just a few generations, we see Esis line become slaves, then black Americans with no way to know their roots lie in Ghana. Meanwhile, Effias descendants remain in Ghana until theyre good and ready to come to the States on their own terms  200 years after Esi, presumably by plane.

When her black high school teacher asks her to talk about what it means to her to be African American, Marjorie  like Gyasi, born in Ghana but raised in Alabama  responds, But Im not African American. As a recent immigrant, she feels the gap between her and her black classmates: [They] were different from Ghanaians, too long gone from the mother continent to continue calling it the mother continent. Marjorie is in more or less full possession of her history, as well as of a highly symbolic black stone pendant  one of two passed down from Maame, one given to each daughter. Esis pendant remains buried in the dungeon of Cape Coast Castle.

In a lecture on the idea that History Is Storytelling (another shortcut, for sure, but an effective one), Yaw, a teacher tells his students, [W]hen you study history, you must always ask yourself, Whose story am I missing? Whose voice was suppressed so that this voice could come forth? Once you have figured that out, you must find that story too. Gyasis characters may be fictional, but their stories are representative of a range of experience that is all too real and difficult to uncover. Terrible things happen to them; theyre constantly cleaved apart, and in the process, cut off from their own stories. In her ambitious and sweeping novel, Gyasi has made these lost stories a little more visible.

Cha is the author, most recently, of the novel Dead Soon Enough.

::

Homegoing

Yaa Gyasi

Knopf: 320 pp., $26.95

It was a big risk -- two big risks, in fact. A year apart at book fairs in two different countries, two 25-year-old women landed 7-figure book deals for their first novels. Seven figures means were talking millions, and plenty of eyebrows were raised about the substantial amounts, the untested writers, the potential for it all to go down the drain. Waves of barely-suppressed envy swelled through the literary world. But as those two books hit shelves this summer, its clear that sometimes publishing gets it right. This week, Steph Cha reviews Homegoing, Yaa Gyasis intergenerational novel of two branches of an African family split by slavery, and Kate Tuttle reviews The Girls, Emma Clines Manson family novel, which has already been optioned for film; they explain why these are some of your best summer reading bets.
Former Community and The Soup star Joel McHale likes his brew -- but not just any brew will do. It has to be Pliny the Elder.

On a recent weekday morning we joined the actor for a beer run, covering half the city in search of the elusive Pliny, a brand of Russian River suds that is only sold in select dispensaries and only on an as-available basis.

We made the journey in an ICON FJ-43, a custom-crafted version of the classic 1970 Toyota Land Cruiser, built in Chatsworth. The rare, burly beauties retail from $127,000 and are a wild way to get around town.

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 Actor and comedian Joel McHale likes his Pliny the Elder beer, and hell search the city in his ICON FJ Land Cruiser to find it.

The cheerful, smart-alecky McHale admits that hes no car guy. (Dont ask him about his ICONs horsepower or torque. He doesnt know. For the record, his vehicle makes 450 horsepower and 440 pound-feet of torque.) But hes a very good car consumer. In his garage are a Porsche Turbo S and a Tesla Model X, falcon-wing doors and all.

Thats a lot of auto, and a long way from the elderly Toyota and Volvo that he and his wife drove when they moved from Seattle to L.A. in 1990.

He loves his ICON, but he really loves his Tesla. This is the future, he says. And what about the specifications on the Porsche?

I have no idea, McHale said. I just told them, I want the one thats easiest to drive and goes the fastest.

Driving at sensible speeds, we set out from McHales Hollywood home and headed into Griffith Park. Following a route similar to one where McHale and his wife jog, we drove up Western Canyon Road, around the back side of the Griffith Observatory, past the Greek Theatre and down Vermont Canyon to Los Feliz.

In search of Pliny, we hit a liquor store in Atwater, a beer bar in Burbank and a Whole Foods in Glendale before finally scoring a four-pack of the precious brew at McHales favorite local spot -- the Oaks Gourmet Market on North Bronson Avenue.

The ICON is a brawny brute, a spare, stripped-down beast that rides high on big tires and is capable of climbing almost any off-road wall. McHale said he had never taken his into the dirt  because that would mean getting it dirty  but he certainly knows how to make it go. At one point in the drive, McHale demonstrated the ICONs ability to accelerate to freeway speed, using all that torque and horsepower to good effect.

With The Soup and his stand-up work, McHale has made a career of poking fun at celebrities. On the drive, he poked a little fun at himself. Taking a call from one of his agents, he learned that the band Imagine Dragons had just sent him an early copy of its new record.

It pays to know people! he said. Its great to be a celebrity!

The actor said hed be expanding on that theme in a new book. Titled Thanks for the Money, he said, it would feature chapters on how to capitalize on being famous and how to get free stuff.

A few seasons after Community was canceled by NBC, and then reappeared and disappeared again from Yahoo, McHale will shortly be back in prime time. His CBS comedy The Great Indoors debuts this fall.

But dont look for McHale to be driving or jogging around Griffith Park. He and his wife and two children have recently swapped the Hollywood Hills home for a big San Fernando Valley spread.

Where we went: Los Feliz to Atwater to Glendale to Burbank to Hollywood

What we drove: ICON FJ-43

What to see: Griffith Park, Griffith Observatory, Hyperion Bridge

Where to shop: The Oaks Gourmet Market, 1915 N. Bronson Ave., Los Angeles; Bills Liquor Store, 3150 Glendale Blvd., Atwater; Tonys Darts Away, 1710 W. Magnolia Blvd, Burbank; Whole Foods, 331 N. Glendale Ave, Glendale.

Total drive distance: About 30 miles

Total driving and shopping time: Two hours

charles.fleming@latimes.com

Follow me on Twitter @misterfleming
Were familiar with the Uber that talked about responding to bad publicity by digging up dirt on reporters following the company. Also the Uber that allegedly stalked passengers using its service, following their travel routes for the amusement of its party-goers. And the Uber that moves heaven and earth to avoid performing thorough background checks on its drivers.

What about the Uber that secretly investigated a lawyer representing an adversary in a lawsuit, and then lied about it? Thats the Uber that Federal Judge Jed S. Rakoff of New York wants to hear a lot more about. On Thursday he ordered Uber to turn over to the other side a pile of documents related to the investigation. Ubers activities, he ruled, raise a serious risk of perverting the processes of justice before this court. Weve asked Uber for comment, but havent heard back.

Rakoff is presiding over an antitrust lawsuit brought by an Uber customer alleging price-fixing by the companys co-founder and CEO, Travis Kalanick, in collusion with Uber drivers. After the case was filed, a lawyer for plaintiff Spencer Meyer discovered that someone was snooping around, asking questions about him. The snooper explained his interest in the lawyer by saying he was merely compiling a profile of up-and-coming labor lawyers in the United States, Rakoff related.

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[Ubers behavior raises] a serious risk of perverting the processes of justice before this court.  U.S. District Judge Jed S. Rakoff

When the plaintiffs lawyers asked Kalanicks attorneys about this, they replied, Whoever is behind these calls, it is not us.

As it turns out, it was them. Uber confessed in February that it had hired the security firm Ergo to investigate Mayer and his lawyers. In fact, Meyers lawyers say Ergos investigative report was circulating in Ubers offices and may have been in the hands of the companys general counsel, Salle Yoo, on January 20, the very day the companys lawyers were saying it is not us.

Rakoff, who is known as the quintessential no-nonsense judge, is predictably indignant about all this. On Thursday he ordered documents related to Ubers employment of Ergo turned over to Meyers lawyers so they can begin taking depositions from five Uber and Ergo employees and executives. In doing so he rejected Ubers assertion that the documents were protected by attorney-client privilege.

That was a dubious claim from the start, Rakoff noted; Uber originally claimed that it hired Ergo because it had reason to fear that the lawsuit, which named Kalanick personally, posed a safety issue for Mr. Kalanick. The judge observed, Uber communications regarding Kalanicks safety do not involve legal advice and so are not shielded by the attorney-client privilege.

In any event, Ergos own lawyers admitted in Rakoffs courtroom that the firm had been hired for the purpose of gathering intelligence about the motivations of this particular plaintiff and why he was bringing this particular litigation. Evidence that an Ergo employee misrepresented himself during his investigation, Rakoff found, provides a reasonable basis to suspect that a fraud occurred and that Ubers communications may have been in furtherance of it. Fraud is another exception to attorney-client protection.

Ergo, for its part, presents itself as a high-class security outfit. Its CEO, R.P. Eddy, is a former White House national security official, and among its managing partners is former CIA official Todd Egeland. Its advisory board bristles with prominent names, including former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson.

But the court record suggests that its not above throwing an operative under the bus. Both Uber and Ergo have insisted that no one was authorized to make any misrepresentations in the course of the investigation and, as Rakoff related, any such misrepresentations were the fault of a misguided Ergo employee. (We know all about this misguided employee, and so do you. Hes a first cousin of the disgruntled or rogue employee whos usually blamed when a company gets caught doing something indefensible.)

The lying about Ergos contract, however, was all on Ubers side, and put Rakoff on the alert. When Uber tried to head off disclosure of its documents by assuring the judge that it had no clue about the Ergo employees misrepresentations, Rakoff shot back that its own earlier untruths underscore why the fact-finding process cannot merely be replaced by Ubers representation.

Uber has been accustomed to getting its way by badgering and blustering. As anyone who has practiced before Rakoff could have told the company, that doesnt work in his house. Hes become very curious about what Uber has been up to, and hes likely to find out.

Keep up to date with Michael Hiltzik. Follow @hiltzikm on Twitter, see his Facebook page, or email michael.hiltzik@latimes.com.

Return to Michael Hiltziks blog.
Bank workers are routinely pressured to open more and often unneeded accounts for customers as they try to meet strict sales goals, according to a report set to be released Friday by two labor advocacy groups.

The report, authored by the National Employment Law Project, rebukes banks that use sales quotas, saying they encourage unethical behavior and harm workers and consumers.

Anastasia Christman, a deputy program director at the NELP, said sales goals put workers in the impossible position of choosing between their own well-being  by keeping their jobs or earning sales bonuses  and the well-being of their customers.

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They have a choice between getting that pay or alerting a customer who is depending on them that theyre about to enter into a product or service that might be dangerous to them, said Christman, who wrote the report.

The NELP report was commissioned by the Committee for Better Banks, an offshoot of the Communications Workers of America labor union, which is organizing bank workers to push for better pay, more job security and an end to sales quotas.

The 15-page document, based on interviews with 75 workers, alleges that sales quotas encourage bank workers to hit their goals by pushing customers into accounts they dont need and that workers sometimes open accounts without customers knowledge, leading to unexpected fees and other problems.

Many of the claims mirror findings of a 2013 Times investigation that uncovered widespread complaints about fake accounts and high-pressure sales quotas at banking giant Wells Fargo.

The San Francisco institution prides itself on selling multiple services  including checking accounts, savings accounts, credit cards and mortgage loans  to its customers. But the Times investigation found that employees, facing strict quotas and fearing for their jobs, sometimes opened unneeded accounts for customers, forged clients signatures and pleaded with family members to open accounts.

Following that investigation, Los Angeles City Atty. Mike Feuer last year sued Wells Fargo, saying the banks sales goals had encouraged unfair, unlawful and fraudulent conduct. The case is still pending.

Wells Fargo executives have denied Feuers allegations and said the banks sales culture is not overbearing. The bank has fired workers who opened fraudulent accounts or participated in other unethical practices, but said such conduct is not widespread.

After reviewing the NELP report, which mentions the Times investigation and Feuers suit, Wells Fargo spokeswoman Mary Eshet said the banks sales goals are achievable and that the bank is focused on providing consumers with only the products and services they want and value.

Other banks are cited in the report, including Bank of America, SunTrust and U.S. Bank. Representatives of those institutions declined to comment.

Christman said her interviews with bank workers showed that sales tactics varied from bank to bank, and even from branch to branch. But the report concluded that pressure to open more accounts is widespread and that workers feel compelled to sell new products to customers, regardless of whether they need them.

The report quotes a Bank of America employee  who, like all bank workers who were quoted in the report, was unnamed  in Rhode Island who commonly encouraged customers to get new credit card accounts.

If someones getting married, tell them to get a credit card, the employee said. Any life event that happened, you were supposed to say, Get a credit card for it. If you heard kids in the background, the answer was a credit card.

The report details some of the techniques that bank workers use to meet sales goals, including opening additional accounts without customers knowledge or without properly completed paperwork. Other alleged practices including opening accounts for family members and closing then reopening accounts so they appear new.

A Florida bank teller quoted in the report said she opened a credit card for her sister, who quickly racked up debt on the card.

She maxed it out, and she still has that maxed-out credit card 10 years later, the teller said.

The report also describes the stress that sales quotas put on bank workers, recounting complaints about harassment from managers and fear that failing to meet quotas will result in being fired.

You could be subjected to ridicule for not meeting goals, one worker said.

Bert Ely, a banking consultant in Alexandria, Va., said the kinds of complaints covered in the report are not surprising, noting that workers have grumbled about sales quotas for as long as quotas have existed.

In banking, there certainly has been longstanding pressure to make loans, to bring in more business, Ely said. Employees whose performance and pay are being judged oftentimes dont like it. But theres nothing unique to banking in this regard.

But Christman argues that selling banking accounts and other financial products is different, with sales quotas putting bank employees in the position of selling potentially harmful products such as credit cards to unwitting consumers.

Whats more, Christman said, customers expect bank employees to understand the products theyre selling and to provide sound advice  expectations consumers might not have for other salespeople.

I dont expect a grocery store worker to be an expert on nutrition, Christman said. In banking, theres a higher level of expectation. The stakes are higher with a checking account than with a banana.

james.koren@latimes.com

Twitter: @jrkoren
Home to one of Los Angeles most beloved parks, ground zero for Southland hipster culture and a neighborhood with a proud working-class tradition, Echo Park is simultaneously one of L.A.s oldest and most historically significant residential districts and one of its most dynamic.

Echo Park has always been popular: connected by trolleys, and later by freeways, to nearby downtown, the area has drawn an eclectic mix of homeowners and residents in the 125 years since the first subdivided lots were put up for sale near what was then known as Reservoir #4.

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That reservoir, like Silver Lakes, provided the neighborhood with a focal point and a name when the city took control of it and incorporated it into a beautifully landscaped park in the 1890s. Echo Park, with its fountains, lotus beds and stupendous views of the downtown skyline, is still the heart of the neighborhood.

Scenic beauty isnt the only natural resource Echo Park was able to leverage. Oil was discovered on the southern edge of the neighborhood around the same time that the park was dedicated to the public. The Echo Park pool now sits on the site of the first oil well, a gusher that helped make the Doheny family fortune and set off the L.A. oil boom.

The area was also home to early motion picture industry pioneers, with Walt Disney and Mack Sennett building studios in the Edendale area of the district, and with many early films being shot on the streets of the neighborhood.

The variety of homes on offer  from cozy cottages in the flats to massive Victorian homes in Angelino Heights  and its central location made Echo Park a destination neighborhood for prominent intellectuals as well as hard-working newcomers to America, including Latinos, Filipinos and the Chinese, a tradition that carries on to today.

Although the revitalization of the Sunset Boulevard corridor and the growing influx of hip, young Angelenos searching for an urban lifestyle has raised concerns about gentrification, Echo Park remains economically and racially mixed, and the feel of the neighborhood is still that of a solid working-class neighborhood that also has bars with extensive craft brew lists.

Neighborhood highlights

On the shores of Echo Park: One of L.A.s most scenic neighborhood parks, Echo Park offers killer views, pedal boats and a laid-back vibe.

Eat, drink and watch live music: With diverse cuisines, plenty of neighborhood watering holes and live music venues, theres always something to do.

In the heart of the city: Densely built and close to downtown, Silver Lake, Los Feliz, Koreatown and Hollywood, Echo Park is a thriving urban neighborhood in the center of it all.

Neighborhood challenges

Rough edges: Echo Parks authentic air comes with some of the urban ills you might expect, but overall, crime is lower than Silver Lake and Downtown.

Expert insight

Alex Lozano, a Realtor at John Aaroe Group, said he sees a balance between modernization and history in Echo Park.

I see the old and the new coming together comfortably here, Lozano said, a vibrant and growing community that treasures its past but is not stuck in time.

The marriage of cultures has spurred progressive developments such as Blackbirds, a small-lot subdivision that was completed last year. Designed by architect Barbara Bestor, the 18-unit housing project replaced five single-family homes occupying less than an acre.

Market snapshot

Portions of the 90003, 90012, 90026 and 90039 ZIP Codes overlap the Echo Park area.

In the 90003 ZIP Code, based on 19 sales, the median price for single-family homes in April was $275,000. In the 90012 ZIP Code, the median price was $433,000 based on 5 sales; in the 90026 ZIP Code, the median price was $974,000 based on 13 sales; and in the 90039 ZIP, 11 sales resulted in a median price of $975,000.

Report card

Within the boundaries of Echo Park is Gabriella Charter, which scored 892 out of 1,000 in the 2013 Academic Performance Index. Clifford Street Elementary had a score of 861, and Elysian Heights Elementary scored 820. Betty Plasencia Elementary scored 786; Mayberry Street Elementary scored 780; and Logan Street Elementary came in at 745. School for the Visual Arts and Humanities scored 685.

hotproperty@latimes.com
Thomas J. Perkins, whose investments fueled the growth of tech firms including America Online Inc., Amazon.com and Google Inc., died Tuesday. He was 84.

He died of natural causes, according to a statement from venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers.

Through his venture capital firm, Perkins was among the first to fund tech companies that have come to be Silicon Valley giants.

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He co-founded the fund with Eugene Kleiner in 1972 with a then-record $8 million and quickly became one of the best-known investors in technology. Frank Caufield and Brook Byers later joined as partners. Kleiner died in 2003 of heart failure at age 80.

Perkins set a new standard for venture capitalists and had great investment judgment and foresight, said investment banker Sandy Robertson, who takes credit for bringing Perkins and Kleiner together to start a joint fund.

Perkins engineering background endeared him to entrepreneurs, Robertson said. He took active roles on corporate boards and was willing to step in operationally to help make a company hum, a tactic that made him stand apart from other venture capitalists.

Born Jan. 7, 1932, Perkins was a graduate of MIT in electronic engineering and Harvard University in business administration. Prior to forming the venture capital firm, he was the first general manager of Hewlett-Packard Co.s computer divisions. He served as the chairman of Genentech from 1976 to 1990.

Kleiner Perkins Caulfield and Byers remains one of the most prominent venture capital firms in Silicon Valley today, with recent investments in Uber, Snapchat, Twitter and Waze. The firm drew attention last year when its former employee Ellen Pao brought against it a high-profile gender discrimination lawsuit, which spotlighted the lack of diversity in the venture capital world. Kleiner Perkins won the case.

Perkins was married to Gerd Thune-Ellefsen, with whom he had two children. She died in 1994. His second marriage to romance novelist Danielle Steel ended in divorce in 2002. In 2006, Perkins published the romance novel Sex and the Single Zillionaire.

That year, Perkins resigned from the HP board after accusing board members of engaging in illegal tactics to determine the source of press leaks.

He was widely criticized in 2014 after he compared the progressive war on the American one percent, namely the rich, to Nazi Germanys war on Jews in a letter published in the Wall Street Journal. Perkins apologized for the letter, but not before Kleiner Perkins Caulfield and Byers distanced itself from its co-founder.

tracey.lien@latimes.com

Twitter: @traceylien
The suspense over the Tony Awards is usually about which show will win for best musical, the prize with the most lucrative consequences. But this year we all know that Hamilton, nominated for a record-breaking 16 Tonys, has that award in the bag.

The question generating excitement among Broadway observers is whether Hamilton can equal or surpass The Producers record of 12 Tony wins for a musical. There is a path to 13, but it will require an upset win in the lead actress in a musical category and a sweep of the design awards  something that could happen if Tony voters consciously cast their ballots in favor of history.

Twelve, while still a stretch, is more feasible. Its hard to see Hamilton not winning for best musical, book, original score, lead actor in a musical, featured actor and featured actress in a musical, direction and orchestration. Thats eight straight off the bat, with lead actor in a musical the only one of these contests with even a smidgen of uncertainty.

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Lin-Manuel Miranda, the creator of Hamilton, is competing in this category against his thrilling costar Leslie Odom Jr., leaving the outside possibility of a split between them. If this happens, dark horse Danny Burstein, the affecting Tevye of Bartlett Shers revival of Fiddler on the Roof, could find himself hoisting a statuette  unlikely but something no Broadway connoisseur would mind. How about a three-way tie?

Heres an opinionated look at how some of the other key races might play out.

Best play

Eclipsed by Danai Gurira

The Father by Florian Zeller

The Humans by Stephen Karam

King Charles III by Mike Bartlett

In an election year when the status quo has the masses raising pitchforks, The Humans, Karams family drama about the disappearance of the American dream, has channeled the discontented zeitgeist to a clear and deserved victory.

Best revival of a play

Arthur Millers The Crucible

Arthur Millers A View From the Bridge

Blackbird

Long Days Journey Into Night

Noises Off

Ivo van Hoves production of A View From the Bridge (which is coming to the Ahmanson Theatre next season) featured the years boldest direction, but The Crucible, also directed by van Hove, is the better play. Id be happy to see either win, but I fear Jonathan Kents uneven staging of Long Days Journey Into Night may luck out simply because the van Hove productions are so audacious, Blackbird is so intensely unsettling and Noises Off is, well, so gosh-darn funny.

Best revival of a musical

The Color Purple

Fiddler on the Roof

She Loves Me

Spring Awakening

This may be the most competitive category of all. These are all splendid productions and theres a special place in my heart for Los Angeles-based Deaf West Theatres innovative staging of Spring Awakening. But John Doyles revelatory revival of The Color Purple did something I didnt think possible: It made me fall in love with a musical I found saccharine and generically commercial in its original Broadway production.

Best performance by an actor in a leading role in a play

Gabriel Byrne, Long Days Journey Into Night

Jeff Daniels, Blackbird

Frank Langella, The Father

Tim Pigott-Smith, King Charles III

Mark Strong, A View From the Bridge

The award should go to either Daniels or Strong, but Langella has a few advantages: Not only is he portraying a character with dementia (award committees can never resist a harrowing medical condition), but A View From the Bridge has closed and Blackbird can be off-putting for delicate sensibilities.

Best performance by an actress in a leading role in a play

Jessica Lange, Long Days Journey Into Night

Laurie Metcalf, Misery

Lupita Nyongo, Eclipsed

Sophie Okonedo, The Crucible

Michelle Williams, Blackbird

Jessica Lange, one of the supplest film actresses of her generation, is the heavy favorite to win her first Tony. But my choice would be Michelle Williams, whose unnerving portrayal of a young woman confronting the man who sexually abused her when she was a girl was the most daring feat of acting Ive seen on Broadway in ages.

Best performance by an actress in a leading role in a musical

Laura Benanti, She Loves Me

Carmen Cusack, Bright Star

Cynthia Erivo, The Color Purple

Jessie Mueller, Waitress

Phillipa Soo, Hamilton

An embarrassment of riches, but the performance of the year is by Cynthia Erivo, the British actress making an astonishing Broadway debut.

Best performance by an actor in a featured role in a play

Reed Birney, The Humans

Bill Camp, The Crucible

David Furr, Noises Off

Richard Goulding, King Charles III

Michael Shannon, Long Days Journey Into Night

Birney, an off-Broadway veteran who adds nuance and grit to whatever role hes in, richly deserves this win on the basis of both this performance and a career of superlative ensemble work.

Best performance by an actress in a featured role in a play

Pascale Armand, Eclipsed

Megan Hilty, Noises Off

Jayne Houdyshell, The Humans

Andrea Martin, Noises Off

Saycon Sengbloh, Eclipsed

Houdyshell, another acting great of modest profile, makes her company shine all the brighter for her fine-grained realism infused with sneaky humor and subtle pathos. She should and likely will win.

Best direction of a play

Rupert Goold, King Charles III

Jonathan Kent, Long Days Journey Into Night

Joe Mantello, The Humans

Liesl Tommy, Eclipsed

Ivo van Hove, A View From the Bridge

My vote would be for van Hove, though Id be happy to see Mantellos ensemble excellence rewarded. If Kent wins, as some pundits predict he might, I may demand a recount.

Best choreography

Andy Blankenbuehler, Hamilton

Savion Glover, Shuffle Along, Or the Making of the Musical Sensation of 1921 and All That Followed

Hofesh Shechter, Fiddler on the Roof

Randy Skinner, Dames at Sea

Sergio Trujillo, On Your Feet! The Story of Emilio and Gloria Estefan

Watch this category. If it goes to Savion Glover, who would be my pick, Hamilton will have a hard time equaling the Tony record. But Blankenbuehlers dynamic choreography will likely edge out the competition in a year that rightfully belongs to Hamilton.

The 70th Annual Tony Awards

Where: CBS

When: 8 p.m. Sunday

Rating: Not rated

charles.mcnulty@latimes.com
The line between political reporting and parody is blurrier than ever these days, especially since Donald Trump launched his presidential run. Its not always obvious whether a headline comes from the Los Angeles Times or the Onion.

The straight and spoof news organizations might as well have switched roles: The newspapers can be so unintentionally hilarious and outrageous, so full of biting social satire, that we must turn to our satirists for the facts.

The Second City Hollywoods new show, In Trump We Trust  a musical  portrays the Donalds career as the accidental outcome of goofy political machinations. While it is funny, it also makes a surprising amount of sense.

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This clear-eyed, rough-and-ready satire is the brainchild of its writer and director, Dave Colan, who also stars as Trump. A master of his subjects smirk and verbal tics, and appropriately equipped with orange makeup and a lusciously tousled ash-blond wig, Colan is so much larger than Trump physically that his inflated appearance comes across as the consequence of our attention. The more we watch, the bigger he grows. (Trumps insecurity about his small hands becomes particularly absurd when they are enormous.)

Some of Colans best material is lifted straight from reality. But routines this taut and satisfying require firm guidance. Dan Wessels music and lyrics are sprightly and to the point. (He accompanies the cast live on the keyboard.) With no set to speak of and minimal costumes, the show, although scripted, gives off the whimsical, anything-goes air of improv.

Colan occasionally swats at low-hanging fruit (its hard to avoid), and some of the supporting characters are more effective than others. Mirage Thrams Dennis Rodman, who plays an unexpectedly integral role in the plot, outstays his welcome. (Thrams is more entertaining as Ben Carson.) Christa Nannos as Ivanka is poised and radiant, but her role is a bit too thin for its stage time. Allison Bills, who plays Ted Cruz and Hillary Clinton, among other roles, proves a secret weapon, capturing her characters off-putting qualities while making them endearing.

Still, In Trump We Trust is unlikely to appeal to Trump supporters. (Its title pays ironic homage to a book that Ann Coulter is reportedly writing.) Yet, in spite of the many flaws this Trump displays, we cant help but, well, kind of like him.

This show was hard to write, Colan said at the curtain call, because we had to make Trump human, so that people would want to spend time with him. But dont be fooled. Hes a monster, and he shouldnt be president.

Parody may not be an effective tool for Colan to fight this monster. He seems to feed on it. But for audiences, its irresistible.

-----------

In Trump We Trust, the Second City Hollywood Studio Theatre, 6560 Hollywood Blvd., Los Angeles. 9 p.m. Saturdays. Ends Aug. 13. $12. (323) 464-8542 or second city.com. Running time: 1 hour.

Follow The Times arts team @culturemonster.
Battle for control of Viacom flared up with the Sumner Redstone family working to line up prospective new board members, and Viacom executives countering that the clans recent actions  including efforts to scuttle a sale of nearly half of Paramount Pictures  could harm other investors.

The Redstone family investment vehicle, National Amusements, holds nearly 80% of the voting stock in Viacom and CBS Corp., giving the Redstone family extraordinary sway over the affairs of the two companies.

Sumner Redstones daughter, Shari Redstone, is not a fan of Viacoms management, particularly Viacom Chief Executive Philippe Dauman, and she has been taking steps to shake up the company that has seen its share price fall more than 40% in the last two years.

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Shari Redstone ultimately would like to recombine CBS and Viacom into one media company  should CBS Chief Executive Leslie Moonves agree to the plan, according to a person familiar with the situation who asked not to be identified discussing the internal conversations.

A spokesperson for Shari Redstone could not be immediately reached Friday morning.

Earlier this week, the Redstones Massachusetts-based National Amusements voted to change Viacoms bylaws to require a majority vote for any sale of a stake in Paramount Pictures, the beleaguered Melrose Avenue movie studio.

Viacom, in a regulatory filing on Friday, said those changes  which the company contends are illegitimate  threaten to hobble the companys efforts to do business and serve shareholders other than the Redstone family.

The company had hoped to sell as much as 49% of Paramount Pictures to a Chinese company or a large technology firm. The Paramount sale was Daumans first major initiative after becoming Viacoms chairman in February after the mogul stepped down due to his deteriorating health.

Viacom executives had been hoping that such a sale would bring in billions of dollars  and serve to boost the companys stock price.

But the Viacom bylaw alterations, announced Monday, appear to scuttle that effort  at least for now  because the changes mandate a unanimous vote of Viacom board members for any Paramount transaction. Sumner Redstone is adamantly opposed to any such deal.

The 93-year-old bought Paramount in a hard-fought battle in 1994 and has long considered the Hollywood studio his baby, according to court documents. He becomes tearful when the issue of a Paramount sale comes up, according to a geriatric psychiatrist who examined Redstone twice last month.

The boardroom battle is becoming increasingly untenable for Viacoms management.

The constraint imposed by the purported bylaw amendments could  have a significant adverse effect on the Companys share price, Viacom said Friday morning in a regulatory filing to document the bylaw change  and its opposition.

Meanwhile, the New York Times reported that National Amusements has been putting together a list of potential new Viacom board members that would change the balance of power on the board and serve as a prelude to an ouster of the embattled Dauman.

New board members would be independent and not have an allegiance to Redstone  or Dauman. Corporate governance experts in the past have criticized Viacoms board for not being accountable to other shareholders. Viacom shares declined 2% to around $43.50 in early Friday trading.

Among the list of potential new board members are venture capitalist Kenneth Lerer, co-founder of the Huffington Post and chairman of the popular news site Buzzfeed; former top Sony Corp. executive Nicole Seligman; Judith McHale, a former Discovery Communications executive; and Thomas J. May, the chairman of Eversource Energy.

Representatives of National Amusements, Sumner Redstone and Shari Redstone declined to comment on that effort.

MORE REDSTONE NEWS:

Sumner Redstone says Philippe Dauman has done a bad job running Viacom

Keryn Redstone to join legal battle along with Viacom CEO Philippe Dauman

Shari Redstone has no desire to run Viacom, says spokesperson

Drama, Sex and Millions at Stake: Key players in the Sumner Redstone Saga

Sumner Redstone says his former girlfriends received $150 million from him

meg.james@latimes.com

@MegJamesLAT
In the latest Joel and Ethan Coen movie, Hail, Caesar!, a comedic ode to the Golden Age of Hollywood filmmaking, hundreds of extras dressed as Roman soldiers led by George Clooney (playing a movie star playing a general) march across the screen, their presence marked with a striking shade of crimson bedazzling the ornamentation on their helmets and the capes that hang on their backs.

How that particular shade of red became the red for the Roman epic  one of several movies-within-the-movie  illustrates the happenstance that occasionally influences the filmmaking process. Two years ago, the brothers Coen were with their longtime costume designer Mary Zophres when she excitedly shared an image of a helmet from 1959s Ben-Hur. Fresh off Zophres home printer, the photos depiction of the helmets red thistle brush immediately besotted the brothers, who declared it the exact hue that would serve as a primary visual motif for the film. In an industry where color is finely calibrated, it was the pigment equivalent of plucking a starlet from the soda counter at Schwabs drugstore.

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Newly available on Blu-ray, DVD and other digital formats, Hail, Caesar! stars Josh Brolin as mid-20th century studio fixer Eddie Mannix, loosely based on the legendary MGM executive. Responsible for maintaining order among the fictional Capitol Pictures productions and assets, Mannix chiefly watches over its sometimes wayward stars, including those played by Clooney, Scarlett Johansson, Alden Ehrenreich and Channing Tatum. The meta-movie nature of Hail, Caesar! and its buffet of genres  an aquatic spectacle, a western, a sailor musical and a parlor drama, in addition to the sword-and-sandal saga with which it shares its title  offered a particularly delightful challenge for designer Zophres, who started with the Coens on 1994s The Hudsucker Proxy and has been lead costume designer for all 12 of their features since Fargo.

To prepare, Zophres spent months watching classic movies and looking at books and magazines for inspiration. I love old Hollywood films, said the designer, who grew up watching them with her mom in South Florida. Though Zophres did not set out to be a costume designer when she studied art history and studio art at Vassar, life prepared her well for the job. In thinking back on it now, my comfort level with clothing and in costumes is because my parents owned a clothing store when I was a kid.

Adding to the inevitability of her working on Hail, Caesar! is the breadth of Zophres non-Coen assignments, such as modern comedies, period drama, action-adventure and science fiction, including multiple films for the Farrelly brothers, Steven Spielberg and Jon Favreau, as well as Christopher Nolans Interstellar.

One thing Zophres does not like to do is repeat herself. Three years earlier, she worked with Brolin on Gangster Squad, set in 1949, and she wanted him to have a completely different look in Hail,Caesar! Brolin was stockier than hed been and Zophres instructed him not to lose any weight, resulting in a squarer silhouette, giving Mannix the necessary gravitas.

Since the films action takes place over a couple of days, Mannix spends most of his time in a double-breasted mauve-brown suit that Zophres found at Western Costume. To further distinguish Mannix, Zophres asked that Brolin grow a mustache, one that was inspired by Walt Disney, and let his hair go a little gray. The actor was also given a perm to add some wave. Zophres selected a homburg for Mannixs hat.

For Tilda Swinton, who plays the dueling twin gossip columnists Thora and Thessaly Thacker, Joel Coen told Zophres, This is the person that you should spend the money on. Though inspired by the rivalry of Hedda Hopper and Louella Parsons, the Coens and Zophres wanted the characters to have a bold visual effect. The sisters cut a decidedly stylish swath through the film, differentiated from one another by the direction the feather in their hats points.

Another big set piece was the Esther Williams-style water spectacle starring Scarlett Johansson. The Coens wanted a mermaid so Zophres had to design a suit that Johansson could swim in. After much research and debate over fabrics, she originally planned for one sequined, beaded suit, but ended up using four separate suits, gobbling up much of her budget. We really didnt have a ton of money for this movie, she said. For how lavish and expensive it looks, we had to pinch every penny.

One day, while shooting a test for the synchronized swimmers costumes with a single swimmer wearing tubes of yellow and orange fabric front and back  not even a proper swimsuit  another happy accident occurred. The swimmer did a flip with the yellow in front turning into the orange in back that was so spectacular, Zophres told the Coens, We have to make that part of the choreography! When those girls make that flip from the front side to the back side  its like a kaleidoscope.

MORE:

Coen brothers Hail, Caesar! is helping boost L.A. film production

Review: Love them or hate them, the Coen brothers will leave you laughing with Hail, Caesar!

Swimming troupe Aqualillies is making a splash in Hollywood with Coen brothers Hail, Caesar!
The Israeli director Eran Kolirin shook up the 2007 Cannes Film Festival with The Bands Visit, a movie that earned some of the best reviews of the year by examining the intercultural lives of everyday Egyptians and Israelis. The film was so intercultural, in fact, that its mix of Arabic, Hebrew and English languages disqualified it, controversially, from foreign-language consideration at the Oscars.

At Cannes this year, Kolirin was back with a new and equally complex movie. Unlike The Bands Visit, however, the film, Beyond the Mountains and Hills, was interested less in bordertown commingling than in an ordinary Israeli family making a series of questionable choices.

The family, the Greenbaums, suffers the tension between conscience and self-justification in its private behavior "Were not bad people, patriarch David (Alon Pdut) says, after some moves that might suggest otherwise. Its a clear metaphor for a country that should, the film argues, undertake a more ardent self-reckoning.

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For years I had a lot of trouble with Israeli-ness, Kolirin said in an interview. I loved and hated it. Its a place I come from and its a horrible place, the only place that speaks your language and a place of contradictions. I wanted to look at all of that. This is a country, he added, speaking generally, that refuses to look in the mirror.

Kolirins creative transition is representative of a larger cinematic shift. For years, a large portion of the countrys film culture  one of the most prolific in the Middle East  was focused on a host of external realities. Movies such as Lebanon, Ajami and Waltz With Bashir examined Israels tensions with neighboring countries and the occupied Palestinian territories.

Many Israeli productions still focus on those realms and, as the deadly shooting attacks in Tel Aviv on Wednesday underscored, terrorism and politics remain timely subjects. But just as often the nations cinema is turning the lens on itself. Whether its a generational evolution, a fatigue with the headlines or other factors, theres a noticeable uptick in films about these topics, which include immigration, womens rights, minority assimilation and inter-generational conflict.

At Cannes this year that reached a crescendo of sorts, with Beyond the Mountains and another film, the Israeli-American Asaph Polonskys One Week and a Day, a black comedy about a family in a Tel Aviv suburb enduring the aftermath of a personal tragedy. There was also a picture by the publicly financed Israel Film Fund, Maha Hajs Personal Affairs, that looked specifically at an extended Palestinian family.

The movies signal a kind of cinematic awakening, a sign of a country that has been more willing to focus on social issues and its own policies, often critically.

From the many submissions we get, the projects that deal with political situations and the main conflict are not that many anymore, said Katriel Schory, the longtime head of the Israel Film Fund. We get a lot more on social issues--religious-secular

subjects, minorities, immigrants. The main issues in this country are about solidarity and tribalism, and a lot of the scripts are about that, he added.

A recent study by the newspaper Haaretz found that in the past five years the number of films focused on domestic affairs has risen to nearly 50%. Though its the political situation that grabs the most headlines, as with many cultures, the questions that preoccupy inhabitants run deeper and wider.

Paradoxically, thoiugh, the flowering comes at a moment of more scrutiny from some of the gatekeepers who make Israeli film possible, raising long-term doubts about the mediums ability to keep posing these questions.

Beyond the Mountains is the most self-critical, as the Greenbaums become a kind of symbol of a country at a crossroads  particularly with David, whose inability to find his footing after leaving a long career in the army casts a skeptical eye on the central place of the military in Israeli civilian life.

One Week and a Day, which won a prize in the Critics Week section at Cannes, centers on a middle-aged couple in the wake of the death, from illness, of their 25-year-old son. The film centers on the more businesslike approach taken by wife Vicky (Evgenia Dodina), and devil-may-care flippancy of husband Eyal (Shai Avivi), and is interested in human instead of national psychology.

I wanted to see how two people deal with this difficult situation, their different approaches to what happens when, after a made-up reality, they have to face the real one, Polonsky told The Times.

The increase in the number and quality of films in Israel can be traced to the passage of the so-called cinema law a little more than 15 years ago. The legislation ensured that a self-sustained Israeli film culture, with an annual disbursement fund  now about $20 million -- financing these movies. More than 200 pictures have resulted, including the influential family drama Late Marriage and, more recently, genre movies such as the horror tale Big Bad Wolves, a breakout in 2013.

But some of that business is also now under threat, many filmmakers say. The creative community has lately been at odds with Miri Regev, the polarizing minister of culture and sport, who was appointed to the job after the sweeping victory of Benjamin Netanyahus Likud Party last year.

The official, known for her outspoken right-wing views, has said that shed like to limit the number of movies she thinks speak against the state and instead focus on films that center on a Zionist, Israeli, Jewish and societal viewpoint. Last year, Regev also revoked funding for the Jerusalem Film Festival after the gathering wanted to screen a documentary about Yigal Amir, the assassin of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.

At Cannes this year, Regev opened Israels first-ever pavilion, as the festival calls its tented gathering places for various national film businesses. It was a pointed riposte to the filmmaker-driven Israel Film Fund, led by its longtime head Katriel Schory, whose stand has long been set up in the Cannes market.

The creative community has expressed concern with Regevs actions, saying that criticism is part of the role of filmmakers and comes with the free-speech spirit of a democracy. It worries me very much, Kolirin said. The main thing for me is personal films and personal points of view and of course [the ministry] tries to suppress that.

The government says it has neither the interest nor ability to influence the tenor of films.

The minister has said she does not like movies against the state but she cant force anyone to change, said Etti Cohen, head of the film desk at the Ministry of Culture, in an interview at the Israel Pavilion at Cannes, as she cited the independent status of the Israel Film Fund, a non-governmental organization.

The pavilion was simply a way of advertising the nations film output and location advantages, she said. A pluralistic mind set, she added, still prevailed.

There are many more films in Israel than there used to be about Arabs, about the ultra-Orthodox, about immigrants. Every [Israeli viewer] sees something they can identify with, Cohen said.

For his part, Schory has said that, though he took some solace in the fact that the current budget for the film fund was assured through 2018, he had reason to fear for the sovereignty of filmmakers beyond and even before that.

We are very, very concerned. We see the government interfering with broadcasters an the board of directors there. They think all of us in the arts are too independent, and they dont like it, he said.

While he has received calls from lobbyists and special-interests groups, he said he has never heard a complaint from the ministry of a member of parliament. Theres no concrete action, only talk, he noted. But, he added, you never know when talk can turn into action. At the moment we dont feel it, but I dont know what next year will bring, or next month.

Filmmakers say they can only continue working. Movies about a variety of social topics, such as Asaf Kormans mental-illness drama Next to Her, or Efrat Corems class-themed Ben Zaken, have recently come out to some acclaim. Creators say they hope to continue examining issues in Israeli society without interference.

That can be easier said than done.

While Kolirin maintains that he was aiming a skeptical lens at Israeli society, some saw matters differently. Varietys reviewer called out Kolirin for letting Israel off the hook, saying the storys imbalance distracts from the very issues it addresses.

The filmmaker took a harsh line toward that assessment. These are people who think they understand Israeli society because they read a piece in the New Yorker, the director said acidly, noting that some of the reactions appalled him. Of course the film is being ironic, being critical, he added. These are people who dont understand the reality of Israel because theyve never lived there. Casting a critical eye, it turns out, is even harder than it looks.

@ZeitchikLAT

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When John Williams, composer of such classic movie scores as E.T., Indiana Jones and Superman, accepted the American Film Institutes Life Achievement Award on Thursday night, he confessed a slight misunderstanding on one of his signature films, Star Wars.

For the first film I wrote a quite heated love theme, with a melody  and a torrid climax, thinking that Luke and Leia were lovers, Williams said, during a witty and self-effacing speech from the stage at the Dolby Theater in Hollywood. I found out two years later that they were brother and sister.

Despite the minor mixup, Williams managed to create the most indelible film music of a generation, a theme that recurred, like a superheros fanfare, in speeches throughout the evening.

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George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, Tom Hanks, JJ Abrams, Harrison Ford, Drew Barrymore, Kobe Bryant, Bryce Dallas Howard and Seth MacFarlane paid tribute to the composer, who has 50 Academy Award nominations, the most of any living person

The AFI Achievement Award Gala will be broadcast on TNT on Wednesday, followed by an encore presentation on TCM Sept. 12 during a night of programming dedicated to Williams.

Music was, rightly, front and center, as Idina Menzel sang an operatic rendition of Williams atonal Close Encounters of the Third Kind theme from the audience and Gustavo Dudamel conducted a youth orchestra through an emotional medley from Schindlers List.

Williams, 84, is the first composer to receive the honor in AFIs 44 years of giving it, and he was quick to point out predecessors who had been deserving, such as Alfred Newman and Bernard Herrmann.

I am enormously grateful to film for giving [composers] the broadest possible audience worldwide that any composer has ever enjoyed, Williams said. Certainly Beethoven would have shunned [Hollywood], but Wagner would have had his own studio out there in Burbank with a water tower with a big W on it.

Williams, who was born in Queens, N.Y., and began his career as a jazz pianist, is still working, with a score for Spielbergs The BFG out this summer, and music due on the 2017 Star Wars film.

JJ, baby, dare we reference the Force theme here? Abrams said, imitating Williams affectionate, jazzy speaking style.

To illustrate how Williams music elevates his films, Spielberg played the scene from E.T. where Elliot bicycles into the sky as it sounded without the soaring score -- the only audio some dialogue and a trundling dolly.

Without John Williams, bikes dont really fly, Spielberg said. John, you breathe belief into every film.

The director also described the first time he heard Williams unforgettable Jaws theme at the composers piano. I thought he was joking, and he wasnt, Spielberg said.

MacFarlane, who performed with the composer at the Hollywood Bowl, described Williams low-tech style as a dying art in Hollywood, for his reliance on real orchestras and musicianship over electronically assembled players.

Film music in Hollywood today is endangered, MacFarlane said.

Bryant shared how he relied on Williams scores as his own hype music, playing the Imperial March from Star Wars to psyche himself up before games.

Over the course of the evening, many speakers mentioned the enduring nature of Williams scores.

I had so many ideas for other movies, but I never got to them because you ensured Star Wars would go on forever, Lucas said.

In talking about the Indiana Jones theme that played as he took the stage, Harrison Ford was more direct. That damn music follows me everywhere, Ford said. It was playing in the operating room when I went in for a colonoscopy.

Follow me on Twitter @thatrebecca.

AFI Life Achievement Award: A Tribute to John Williams

Where: TNT

When: 10 p.m. Wednesday

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You knew him as Ross of Friends, the voice of the neurotic giraffe from the Madagascar series and, more recently, as a Kardashian (Robert, not Kim) in The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story miniseries. Now David Schwimmer is embarking on his first recurring television role in over a decade with AMCs gritty new series Feed the Beast.

A crime drama set in the Bronx, Schwimmer plays a widowed father and former restaurant owner/wine sommelier whos suddenly caught in the middle of an organized crime ring. His life and his sons are dependent on erecting a new establishment thats a financial success, though he must first overcome his own painful history.

Schwimmer, 49, spoke with The Times about returning to series TV, becoming a father and the soft spot he now has for Robert Kardashian.

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What made you want to take on the role of a grieving, alcoholic single father in Feed the Beast?

Really, my heart just went out to the guy. Tommys a single parent raising a mixed race, 11 year-old boy, and they both survived this horrible tragedy of losing the love of his life and his boys mother. The boy hasnt spoken in a year since witnessing his mother being killed. I was attracted to the role of being a father because now I am one. I havent really had the opportunity to play a dad since Ive become one, except very briefly as Kardashian in the O.J. thing, but this explores that in much more depth.

AMC is now synonymous with two of the decades most celebrated series: Mad Men and Breaking Bad. The bar is pretty high. Any pressure?

While this show is quite unique because of the whole cooking aspect and getting a restaurant on its feet, it is a one-hour drama in the traditional sense of Mad Men and Breaking Bad. It is character driven, theres a crime aspect, and dark comedy comes out of it. Its just going to be a question of getting eyeballs on it, because theres so much to choose from now.

Are you a foodie?

I actually just had this conversation with a writer from Food & Wine. I asked her what qualifies a person to be a foodie? I told her pointedly, I am not a person who will fly to a city or country just to try a restaurant, so if thats the definition of a foodie then I cant say that I am one. She then asked, Once you arrive in a city, do you immediately seek out the most interesting restaurant in the city? I said yeah, and then she said, Youre a foodie. Thats was proof, I guess, I am a foodie.

Are you surprised about the impact that The People v. O.J. had?

Yes. And I was thrilled that it became a kind of water-cooler show. I wasnt sure those existed anymore because everyone can stream an entire season now, so the whole thing of waiting a week to find out what was going to happen next -- the fact it really became something like that was incredibly rewarding.

What were the challenges of playing Kardashian, or at least playing him empathetically?

I tried not to have any preconceptions about who he was. I was trying to excavate who this man was. All I knew when I was watching the trial, it was always like, who is this white guy sitting next to O.J. the entire time? He was on the defense team but I didnt get what he did -- I mean, he wasnt cross-examining anyone. And all the other egos in the room overshadowed him. The attention was on the flashier players. Kardashian seemed to be this private, modest, quiet player that I wanted to know more about.

He was a notoriously private guy, so how did you study his character?

I watched interviews, particularly the Barbara Walters one after the trial. I spoke with Kris Jenner about him. I began to get a picture of a man who I felt great sympathy for. Knowing he died a few short years after of throat cancer, I felt there was something quite sad about what he went through.

Since Friends ended in 2004, youve done film, theater, TV cameos and directed. Where do you feel most at home?

I feel equally comfortable on stage as I do in television or film. I dont really have a strategy. Maybe if I did Id be a much bigger film actor or star, I dont know. I go with my gut when I read material  sometimes its a film, a play, a cameo, a television series. Ive always thought of this career as a very, very long one. I hope to be doing it until I can no longer see, walk, whatever. Maybe even then Ill be able to take a role  Scent of a Woman 2.

The success of Friends has been a blessing and a curse.

Its a paradox for sure. On one hand, Im typecast, or there is the danger of being seen or believed as that one character. On the other hand, it was a piece of pop culture and television history and it provided financial security. For any actor or artist, financial stability is a huge blessing. It gives you the freedom to choose and not have to take a job because you have to pay the rent or pay health insurance. Theres not a day that goes by that Im not grateful.

On one hand, Im typecast ... . On the other hand, [Friends] was a piece of pop culture and television history and it provided financial security.  David Schwimmer

Have you noticed that since Friends was released on Netflix its now resonating with millennials?

Ive noticed. Its really lovely to think its appealing to a new generation. My daughters 5 so Im wondering -- will it still appeal in a decade? Im sure my daughter or her friends will be more than happy to tell me when they get there.

Feed the Beast is your first return to a TV series since Friends.

Yes. The O.J. thing was a limited series. This, if its picked up, could keep going.

So you once again get to develop a character with a potentially long arc.

Right, fingers crossed the show is picked up for another season. Ive always been fascinated by the job of a wine sommelier. Like what kind of person becomes a somme? What I learned from one of my close friends here in the city who is a top somme is that there is no one path. It was fun to invent Tommys backstory and figure out what his journey was from the streets of Queens to this job.

Hes so troubled, its impossible to reconcile with the voice of Melman the goofy giraffe from Madagascar.

First, Im really thrilled to hear that, and I hope others have a similar experience where they can watch this new guy that Im trying to create. Im also highly aware that there will be some people who will not be able to distinguish that this is a different character. Its OK. Its happened my entire career. Even when I did Band of Brothers, or The Iceman, its like Oh, thats Ross in World War II! Or whatever they want to say.
Aww, yeah.

In an appearance on The Tonight Show on Thursday, President Obama slow-jammed the news with Jimmy Fallon.

The bit, which preceded a lengthy interview with the host, was a look back at Obamas time in office, set to a sultry R&B rhythm. The president noted the accomplishments under his watch, including the Affordable Care Act, same-sex marriage, economic recovery and action on climate change.

But with a presidential election heating up, he also took aim at Republican candidate Donald Trump  more than once.

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The American people face an important decision this fall, Obama said. The entire world is watching and they look to us for stability and leadership. Now, I know some of the presidential candidates have been critical of my foreign policy. I dont want to name any names.

Thats when Black Thought of the Roots chimed in: Hes talking about Donald Trump.

The tawny-maned former reality TV star also came up in a question posed by Fallon: Now, Mr. President, since youre here, I gotta ask: Have you been watching all the election coverage this week about Donald Trump?

No, Obama replied, but I have been watching my new favorite show, Orange Is Not the New Black.

Thursday marked Obamas first visit to The Tonight Show since Fallon took over the desk in 2015.

But it wasnt Obamas first turn at the mike: During his re-election campaign in 2012, the president (or, as Fallon called him, the preezy of the United Steezy) slow-jammed on an episode of Late Night filmed at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Other politicians, including Republicans Chris Christie, Mitt Romney and Jeb Bush, have participated in the bit. Whether presumptive nominees Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump follow suit remains to be seen.

Follow me @MeredithBlake
Hannah Simone is best known for her role as Cece Parekh on the hit sitcom New Girl, playing a somewhat sardonic but good-natured model-turned-bartender. Of Indo-European descent, Simone has lived around the world, has worked for the United Nations and lives on the same Los Angeles street as the rest of her family, with whom she regularly gets together for lively dinners cooked in her open-plan kitchen. She shares her home with two cats and assists the Adopt a Shelter Cat movement, which revs up its efforts every June. Simone also recently executive produced an independent film, Miss India America, which is available on VOD platforms. When theres a lull in her work schedule, she likes to do something unexpected -- like spend a month in Bhutan.

A hit sitcom means long days on set. Then theres your love of travel and your other projects. How do you stay healthy?

I grew up in cultures where we walked a lot, so I still do that here. If I had a Fitbit Id be clocking 50,000 steps a day. If you see a girl walking in L.A., its me. I dont do it for fitness or health. I just like it. I also like to go to Shape House in Larchmont Village, just to sweat. I highly recommend it. Its good to lie down for an hour without your phone or any distractions. And I love spin classes, being in a dark room, surrounded by a community of people and going for a ride. Once or twice I year I like to do the Clean Program by Dr. [Alejandro] Junger. Its a great way to detox and reset. Its incredible how much better your body feels when youre nourishing it properly. In the beginning I might miss having a cup of coffee in the morning or a glass of red wine at dinner. But all the things you think you cant do without  you can get through it just fine.

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Youve had an unusual upbringing, living in so many different countries. How has that shaped your outlook on life?

I was born in England, lived in Canada, moved to Saudi Arabia, left during the war, went to Cyprus, lived in India. I worked for the United Nations, based in London and Switzerland. I was a human rights and refugee officer and developed programs for youth. I like to treat the entire world like its my neighborhood. People look at my resume and think Im all over the place. ... But to me it all feels very linear. Its part of the same world. Because of New Girl now I have a great platform which allows me to do something that gives back to this planet. Im involved with Free the Children, a charity out of Canada. I really believe in travel and exploring new cultures and seeing how other people live.

Cooking is a big part of your life. What kinds of cuisines do you like to experiment with?

On a day-to-day basis, I love cooking. Because growing up we moved countries every few years, my cathartic thing now is to go to the grocery store and see what Im in the mood for. It might be Indian or Italian or Cypriot. My comfort place in my home is the kitchen. My family all live on the same street, so everyone comes over and I cook and we all sit around and eat, mezze style. Ill throw some halloumi cheese on the grill, and well make my moms salad and we eat as we go. Its not very formal. Everything is healthy and fresh and has lots of spice and flavor. And because we made it in my own kitchen, nobody has to worry about the other things that could be slipped in there.

And when you go out to eat?

The greatest thing about living in Los Angeles is that almost every restaurant now has healthy options. Were so spoiled out here. Its really not that difficult to eat great, healthy, delicious, fresh food that you can feel good about. The one big downfall is when I go back to Canada and I want poutine, which is basically cheese, gravy and French fries. Its my weakness. Thankfully there arent a ton of poutine places in L.A.

How do you keep a calm state of mind in such a tough and unpredictable industry?

I believe that the more things you can love and enjoy, the better your life is. People show up in L.A. and tell me they want to be an actor and ask my advice, and I will always say the same thing: Love a lot of things. Enjoy and get fulfilled from different things. Dont have all your eggs in one basket. In five years, I could be working for an NGO or doing theater for myself. Im now happy being paid to be on a great show like New Girl. If youre an actor, you can always act. There are community theaters everywhere, and if you really love to act, do that. If youre an artist, you can paint by a lake or in a park, and thats art. We have to genuinely find happiness in the things we love doing, whether were getting paid for it or not.

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In a show of support for transgender people, the Los Angeles City Council has introduced a motion aimed at amending an ordinance that would allow transgender people to use city park bathrooms that match their gender identity.

Written by Councilman Mitch OFarrell and co-written by council members Mike Bonin and Nury Martinez, the councils action on Wednesday was the first step in expanding bathroom access rights for the transgender community in Los Angeles, beginning with park facilities.

The motion comes in observance of LGBT Heritage Month, which recognizes the contributions of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community. It also comes ahead of this weekends annual L.A. Pride festival in West Hollywood.

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Our federal and state leaders have acted to create a safe and nondiscriminatory environment for our transgender community, OFarrell said. With this motion, we will continue on Los Angeles progressive path of protecting those who are historically among the most marginalized in society.

City officials say their action was also in response to a state bill that would require single-use bathrooms in any business, public space or government agency to become gender neutral. The legislation, known as AB 1732, was introduced by Assemblyman Phil Ting (D-San Francisco) and passed in the Assembly last month. It is awaiting approval in the Senate.

According to Wednesdays motion, the city attorney will have 60 days to review and recommend changes to a municipal code that regulates bathroom use at parks. While the focus is on the citys park facilities, officials also directed the city attorney to review all of the citys municipal codes for similar violations that may require changing.

It is incredibly important that we update our laws to ensure that state and federal protection for the transgender community are enshrined in the city code, said Bonin. Our laws should reflect our values, and Los Angeles is a tolerant and welcoming city.

Our recent past has shown us how segregation created different classes of people, said Martinez. We need to have a discussion on how we can amend our laws in the city of Los Angeles so that we can teach future generations how to be a more respectful, caring and accepting society that does not devalue another human.

The motion is part of an ongoing national debate about bathroom access rights for transgender people.

Some states have proposed gender-neutral measures to address the issue such as New York and Vermont, and an ordinance was adopted by the city of West Hollywood in January.

For more Southern California news, follow @latvives
A 5.2 magnitude earthquake early Friday occurred on one of Southern Californias most active faults and triggered hundreds of aftershocks, but caused no major damage, experts and public safety officials said.

The quake occurred near Borrego Springs in San Diego County in a sparsely populated area. Still, the 1:04 a.m. quake was felt from San Diego to parts of L.A. and beyond.

Its the biggest one for a while, said Egill Hauksson, a research professor of geophysics at Caltech.

The last notable quake in Southern California was in 2014 when a 5.1 magnitude quake hit La Habra. But that occurred on a different fault.

Deadly but little-known: Why scientists are so afraid of the San Jacinto fault 

Fridays temblor occurred on the San Jacinto fault, the most active in the region, Hauksson said. More than 450 aftershocks have been reported since the initial quake.

The fault is characterized by less compression between its plates compared to the San Andreas or Newport-Inglewood faults, which means when there is slippage and a quake occurs, its less severe, Hauksson said.

But the fault is also remarkably long, which may explain why Friday mornings quake was reportedly felt by people from Santa Barbara to the Mexican border, Hauksson said.

Reflexively, hundreds of people turned to social media to share their experience and also verify that the quake really happened.

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741185855939739648

Read more: The rolling motion starts a beeline to Twitter 

Ron and Teri Walker were inside their hotel in Palm Springs when the room began to shake. "We held each other, not sure what the next step was. What do we do?" Teri Walker told KNBC-TV Channel 4. A Downey woman called KNX-AM (1070) and said it struck with "a soft roll," then later "hit again stronger." A caller from Costa Mesa described a "back and forth" sensation. According to the U.S. Geological Survey, the epicenter was 16 miles from La Quinta, 19 miles from Palm Desert and 20 miles from Rancho Mirage.

Aftershocks included a magnitude 3.3 jolt 13 miles from Anza at 1:46 a.m. at a depth of 6.8 miles. Anza is in southern Riverside County.

Seismologist Lucy Jones reported dozens of aftershocks on her Twitter feed.

There were at least four magnitude 3.0 aftershocks and a fifth recorded as a magnitude 3.3, Jones tweeted.

A telltale sign that a quake is going to be large is how long it lasts, she said.

741189519739879424

Video posted to YouTube shows cars in a driveway rocking for several seconds while a second video shows a chandelier swaying from the temblor. The California Highway Patrol reported that boulders had fallen onto California 74 between Palm Desert and Pinyon, KESQ reported. The San Jacinto fault stretches for 130 miles, from the Cajon Pass in San Bernardino County southeast toward the Mexican border. The 1987 Superstition Hills earthquakes, which hit about 90 miles east of San Diego, topped out at magnitudes 6.5 and 6.7, and caused $3 million in damage in Imperial County. According to the USGS, a quake on the fault in 1918 caused significant damage and one death in San Jacinto. There have been 19 quakes of 5.0 magnitude or larger on the fault since 1937, Hauksson said. The largest was a 6.6. magnitude quake in 1968 south of Fridays temblor. Others included a 5.3 magnitude quake in 1980 and a 5.4 magnitude quake in July 2010, Hauksson said. Most of the time when you have an earthquake in Southern California, its on the San Jacinto fault, he said. The last time Southern California experienced a quake larger than Friday's on any fault was in 2012, when Brawley in the Imperial Valley was shaken by 5.3 and 5.4 magnitude quakes, Hauksson said.

Borrego Springs is a community of about 3,000 people in eastern San Diego County, near the Imperial County line.

In the last 10 days, there have been two earthquakes of magnitude 3.0 or greater centered nearby.

Read more about Southern California earthquakes.

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Will California stop police from taking people's property without a criminal conviction?

For breaking California news, follow @JosephSerna on Twitter.

UPDATES:

10:19 a.m.: This article was updated with more information about the San Jacinto fault and with comments from experts.

6:36 a.m.: This article was updated with comments from social media.

3:07 a.m.: This article was updated with comments from seismologist Lucy Jones.

2:21 a.m.: This article was updated with news about an aftershock near Anza.

1:31 a.m.: This article was updated to increase the magnitude of the earthquake to 5.2.

This article was originally published at 1:09 a.m.
The 5.2 magnitude earthquake that hit the desert southeast of Los Angeles on Friday was centered along the San Jacinto fault, which is one of the regions most active and potentially dangerous fault lines.

The fault runs through populated areas such as San Bernardino, Colton, Moreno Valley, Redlands, Loma Linda, Hemet and San Jacinto, as well as near Riverside, Rialto and Fontana. The epicenter of Fridays quake was in a more isolated area near Borrego Springs in eastern San Diego County.

The quake, which struck at 1:04 a.m., triggered more than 450 aftershocks but caused no major damage.

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Experts have been warning for some time, however, that the San Jacinto fault  while less well known than the San Andreas  poses a major threat to the region.

What are the odds of dying in an earthquake? 

Because the San Jacinto fault cuts into the middle of the Inland Empire  instead of the edge of the desert  it cuts through a lot more people, Julian Lozos, a Cal State Northridge professor of geophysics, told The Times in March. Theres just more people directly living on this fault.

One big concern is San Bernardino  a city of 215,000 people that fell into bankruptcy in 2012 and suffers from one of the highest poverty rates among the nations largest urban areas. San Bernardino has one of the largest concentrations of earthquake-vulnerable brick buildings in a location with a high risk of intense shaking.

The San Jacinto fault is also remarkably long, spanning 130 miles, which may explain why Fridays temblor reportedly was felt from Santa Barbara to the Mexican border, said Egill Hauksson, a research professor of geophysics at Caltech.

A Downey woman told KNX-AM (1070) that the quake struck with a soft roll, then later hit again stronger. A caller from Costa Mesa described a back and forth sensation.

Ron and Teri Walker were inside their hotel room in Palm Springs when the room began to shake.

We held each other, not sure what the next step was, Teri Walker told KNBC-TV Channel 4.

The San Jacinto fault is characterized by less compression between its plates compared with the San Andreas fault, which means when slippage occurs, the ensuing quake is less severe, Hauksson said.

But the fault, which runs from the Cajon Pass in San Bernardino County southeast toward the Mexican border, is one of the regions most active. The 1987 Superstition Hills earthquakes, which hit about 90 miles east of San Diego, topped out at magnitudes 6.5 and 6.7, and caused $3 million in damage in Imperial County.

Most of the time when you have an earthquake in Southern California, its on the San Jacinto fault, Hauksson said.

In an unnerving scenario, both the San Jacinto and San Andreas faults could rupture together in a 7.5-magnitude earthquake, according to one study.

The study, which Lozos wrote as a researcher at Stanford University and at the U.S. Geological Survey, looked at whether a massive 1812 quake in Southern California was the result of shaking on both fault lines.

ALSO:

The rolling motion starts a beeline to Twitter

5.2 quake near Borrego Springs gives the Southland a jolt

Is this booming Northwest land a paradise or disaster waiting to happen?

UPDATES:

12:38 p.m.: This article was updated with more details about the fault and San Bernardinos vulnerabilities.

This article was originally published at 7:40 a.m.
A Navy admiral pleaded guilty Thursday to lying to investigators about his relationship with a Malaysian contractor. He is the highest-ranking Naval officer to face criminal charges in the Fat Leonard bribery and fraud scandal that has rocked the service.

Rear Adm. Robert Gilbeau, 55, admitted he lied to investigators for nearly a year from late 2012 to 2013 about his relationship with Leonard Glenn Francis and his company, Glenn Defense Marine Asia, and what he received from the contractor over the years.

The plea agreement said that when Gilbeau learned in September 2013 that Francis had been arrested in San Diego for orchestrating a years-long bribery scheme, he destroyed computer files and other documents presumably showing his connection to the businessman.

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Unlike other, lower-ranking Navy officers and sailors who have been charged or indicted in the investigation, Gilbeau was not charged with bribery, conspiracy or fraud.

Court documents shed little light on what, exactly, Gilbeau took from Francis and what he gave the voluble businessman in return.

So far, 14 people have been charged in the case, including 11 current or former service members. In the previous cases, prosecutors described in some detail the bevy of gifts  cash payments, the services of prostitutes hired by Francis, all-expenses paid stays at lavish hotels, fancy dinners at exotic ports of call  that each defendant received.

They also described what Francis got: classified information on ship schedules and the assistance of officers to influence Navy decisions to steer ships to ports in Asia that Francis company controlled  and which allowed him to bilk and overbill the Navy to the tune of at least $34 million.

Outside court, Assistant U.S. Atty. Mark Pletcher said Gilbeau admitted to lying to investigators in a premeditated effort to distance himself from Leonard Francis, and GDMA. He said Gilbeaus rank was not a factor.

Hes being treated like everyone else is being treated, Pletcher said.

Gilbeau, who has been in the Navy 37 years, declined to comment. His attorney, Dave Benowitz, said in a statement that his client accepts responsibility for the decisions he made and for his conduct.

The plea agreement said that on a disclosure questionnaire submitted to the Naval Criminal Investigative Service in November 2012, Gilbeau lied when he wrote he had never received any gifts from Francis or his company.

At the time, GDMA was already under scrutiny by the Navy for overbilling and fraud.

In an interview with agents the following February, Gilbeau said he met with Francis three times a year, but that he always paid for his half of dinner.

Then in October, a month after he had destroyed the documents and computer files, Gilbeau was again interviewed by agents for the Defense Criminal Investigative Service, and he again misrepresented and misstated the nature of his relationship with and his receipt of things of value over the course of years from Francis and GDMA, court documents say.

The plea agreement requires Gilbeau to pay restitution of $50,000 to the government, although it is unclear if that is the amount of gifts he received, the loss to the government or a combination of both.

Gilbeaus guilty plea may signal that the long-running investigation is working up the chain of command to the top levels of the service. So far, the Navy has censured three admirals for their connections to Francis, but those were not criminal charges.

Francis has pleaded guilty and is awaiting sentencing.

greg.moran@sduniontribune.com

Moran writes for the San Diego Union-Tribune.
The best interests of a 6-year-old Native American girl who was removed from her longtime foster parents in Santa Clarita earlier this year were debated by attorneys Friday during oral arguments in a state appellate court.

A three-judge panel of the 2nd District Court of Appeal in downtown Los Angeles heard the complicated details of the lengthy tribal custody case that has garnered international attention.

In March, Los Angeles County social workers, carrying out a court order, removed the child from foster parents Rusty and Summer Page before a bevy of weeping protesters and news cameras so she could be relocated to live with extended family members in Utah.

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Because the girl is 1/64th Choctaw and her father is an enrolled member of the Oklahoma-based tribe, the federal Indian Child Welfare Act  intended to limit the breakup of Native American families through adoption or foster care placement  applies to her case.

The Pages have fought the girls removal, and she remained with them and their three children for years as appeals dragged on and as the California appeals court identified mistakes by the lower courts.

At question in the case is whether the amount of time in which the young girl has lived with and bonded with her foster family  more than four years  has made removal so traumatic for her that she should stay with them.

On Friday, Presiding Justice Paul Turner said the foster family did not object to hearing dates and delays while the girl was in their care because she got to stay with them during that time.

They did this because they thought that this was right, because they love the child, Turner said.

The girl went to live with the Page family in December 2011, around the time the eventual caregivers emerged, according to court documents. Her father, who has an extensive criminal background, discontinued efforts to regain custody in 2012, and social workers initiated work to transfer her to Utah, court records show.

The Choctaw tribe preferred the Utah family for placement for the girl partly because a sibling lives in the home and another lives nearby.

Lori Alvino McGill, the Pages attorney, told the judges Friday that the girl had flourished under her clients care and that it was in her best interest for her to stay with them.

Its utterly undisputed that this child has viewed these people as her parents and this family as her own, Alvino McGill said. She became a person with an entire world and relationships that this court cannot ignore.

Christopher Blake, a court-appointed attorney representing the child, said the Pages knew full well that if reunification with the girls father failed then she would be placed with her out-of-state relatives.

The girl, Blake said, has always known she was a foster child and had regular visits and Skype conversations with the Utah family. An expert agreed upon by all parties determined that she was capable of making the transfer, he said.

The long-term benefits of placement with her extended relatives far outweigh the difficulty of moving her, Blake said.

The girl has been doing well in Utah, he said.

Kim Nemoy, an attorney representing the L.A. County Department of Children and Family Services, said the girl only stayed and bonded with the Pages for so long only because of ongoing litigation and that she could have been moved much sooner.

We told them repeatedly, This child is in your temporary care, Nemoy said of the Pages.

The extended relatives are not Native American, but her siblings are and can pass on their story and heritage to the child, said Melissa Middleton, an attorney for the Choctaw tribe.

The girl, Middleton said, is a citizen of the Choctaw Nation and has a right to learn what it means to her to be a Choctaw.

A decision in the case is expected within the next 60 days, according to Alvino McGill. The Pages, she said, are prepared to fight all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court if they have to.

Speaking to reporters outside the L.A. courtroom, Rusty Page said he and his family have not had any contact with the girl since her removal.

We repeatedly asked to speak with [her] and have been cruelly denied, Page said. Why? Because we spoke out. Because we promised [her] we would fight with everything we could to bring her home.

For 81 days, he said, the girl has missed being tucked into bed by mommy and me. ... She has missed my butterfly kisses after bedtime prayers and silly best wishes for the days to come.

With news cameras watching, Page cried as he spoke.

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hailey.branson@latimes.com

Twitter: @haileybranson
A 20-year-old man was killed and another person was injured when gunfire erupted inside a Long Beach home on Thursday morning, police said.

Wylee Pritchett, of nearby Lakewood, was pronounced dead at the scene shortly after 4 a.m., according to a news release issued by the Long Beach Police Department.

Officers found Pritchett and another man suffering from gunshot wounds to the torso when they responded to a report of gunfire in the 6400 block of Coronado Avenue near Ramona Park, police said. Pritchett was pronounced dead by Long Beach firefighters a short time later, and the other man was taken to a hospital in stable condition.

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Police did not offer information about a motive in the slaying, but investigators do not believe the shooting was gang-related.

Outside the yellow home on Coronado Avenue on Thursday afternoon, there were no signs that a shooting had taken place hours earlier except for three candles placed on a curb.

A note read, May God grant you peace! We love you. Tell Geron we said Hi! And we love him!

A Long Beach police spokesman declined to say if the victims knew each other or answer additional questions about the shooting.

Follow @JamesQueallyLAT and @nicolesantacruz for crime and police news in California.
There was no trace left of Steve Hernandez in his familys Rancho Cucamonga home after his father abducted him in 1995.

While his girlfriend was at work, Valentin Hernandez absconded with their 18-month-old son, taking the boys clothes, family photos and even the ultrasound image of the developing child in his mothers womb.

Maria Mancia reported her son missing, searched and waited  her hope fading with each passing year.

To never see the child and to be reunited after 21 years: It was just an amazing, amazing moment.  Karen Cragg

She clung to the only image of him that she had: a grainy photograph that she had once mailed to relatives in El Salvador. Her family sent the photo back to California after the boy was kidnapped.

See the most-read stories this hour 

On Thursday, after more than two decades, Maria Mancia finally embraced her now 22-year-old son after he was escorted across the border from Tijuana by investigators with the San Bernardino County district attorneys office.

To never see the child and to be reunited after 21 years: It was just an amazing, amazing moment, said Karen Cragg, a senior investigator with the district attorneys office. She had never given up after all these years, but had accepted the fact that she may never know her son.

For years, San Bernardino County authorities tried to locate the boy. Leads poured in from across the U.S., with several pointing to the boy being in Oregon. Each time, the tip didnt pan out and the trail grew cold.

Steve Hernandez, in an undated photo -- the only photo his mother had of him since he was abducted. (Handout) (Handout )

In February, Cragg and other investigators got a very credible tip that Steve Hernandez was in Puebla, Mexico, about 80 miles southeast of Mexico City.

Investigators received information that Valentin Hernandez had disappeared and likely died, Cragg said. Authorities still have not been able to confirm his passing.

We weren't positive we located the right person," Cragg said. "So we used a ruse and told Steve we were conducting an investigation related to the disappearance of his father.

After talking with him, they realized the account of his past overlapped with that of the missing boy. He knew he had been abducted, but he did not know the circumstances; he believed his mother had abandoned him, Cragg said.

To confirm the match, investigators sought a DNA sample, telling him it would help them to eventually identify his father. Mexican government officials and the U.S. Department of Justice helped to obtain the sample.

The DNA was compared to Maria Mancias, and after Cragg persuaded the lab to expedite the processing, the match was confirmed on May 31.

Cragg and her colleague Michelle Faxon hastily drove to Maria Mancias home in Rialto, asked her to sit down and broke the news.

To convince her that they werent lying, Cragg showed her the DNA test results, saying, This is him. We promise.

Her tears poured out: Her son was alive.

Its a moment I cannot describe to you, said Cragg, calling the case a highlight in her 31 years of working as a police officer. Im a mother myself. I just couldnt let this go.

Interested in the stories shaping California? Sign up for the free Essential California newsletter >>

Investigators now believe that Valentin Hernandez took his son to Mexico shortly after abducting him.

To bring Steve back to the U.S., investigators tracked down a copy of the boys birth certificate.

Although he is an American citizen, he did not have a passport. The Department of Justice arranged for him to easily walk through the immigration checkpoint in Tijuana, Cragg said.

At their reunion Thursday in San Bernardino, Steve Hernandez stood a few inches taller than his mother -- no longer the toddler she last saw 21 years before.

As she held his hips and cried, he dabbed her eyes.

ALSO

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Will California stop police from taking people's property without a criminal conviction?

matt.hamilton@latimes.com
Some jurors are refusing to serve in the courtroom of Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge Aaron Persky, citing his decision to sentence Stanford University swimmer Brock Turner to only six months in jail in a sexual assault case.

I cant believe what you did, one prospective told the judge this week in declining to serve on a jury in one case, according to the San Jose Mercury News.

Its unclear how many people have refused to serve, but some media reports in the Bay Area said it was more than 10 over the course of the week.

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KPIX-TV said court officials were surprised at the defiance but that Persky was able eventually to seat a jury in the case.

Column: If a judge sentences a convicted sexual predator to just six months in jail, does he really belong on the bench? 

Turner could be released as early as September after serving only three months of his six-month jail sentence for sexually assaulting an unconscious woman behind a dumpster near campus.

Turner, 20, was booked into custody on June 2 and is scheduled to be released Sept. 2, according to Santa Clara County Sheriffs Department inmate records.

Inmates in Santa Clara County serve only 50% of their sentences under California Penal Code Section 4019(a)(6). For every two days served, they receive two days credit and another two days for maintaining good conduct and a clean record in custody. The result is that inmates serve half of their sentence, according to a California Courts felony sentencing report.

Sheriffs spokesman James Jensen said the court sets Turners release date. Deputies, he said, are then responsible for making sure the inmate is safe and protected.

Turner was convicted in March of three felony counts: assault with the intent to commit rape of an unconscious person, sexual penetration of an unconscious person and sexual penetration of an intoxicated person.

He was facing a maximum sentence of 14 years in prison, but prosecutors asked Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge Aaron Persky to sentence him to six years.

Persky instead sentenced Turner last week to six months in county jail and three years probation.

The jail sentence has sparked outrage from critics who say Persky was too lenient on Turner. Others have launched a campaign to recall the judge from the bench.

Turner is housed in protective custody in the sheriffs department main jail, Jensen said. He is one of 90 inmates in protective custody in that unit.

Column: The dangerous irony of rape accusation culture 

There are 3,600 inmates in custody in the sheriffs departments jails, and 1,100 of those are in protective custody, Jensen said. Inmates deemed to be high risk are placed in the unit, including those who have been sentenced in sexual assault and sex crime cases, former gang members and members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community.

In protective custody, Turner must wear a brown shirt and pants and is allowed supervised visits. He is allowed to roam the units open, common space for seven to 10 hours per week and is monitored by cameras. Inmates in protective custody are assigned to one- or two-person cells.

Jailers conduct periodic welfare checks on the inmates.

So far, it appears that Turner hasnt been involved in any major jail disputes, according to Jensen.

For breaking news in California, follow VeronicaRochaLA on Twitter.

MORE ON STANFORD RAPE CASE

Victim in Stanford sexual assault was not given dignity, attorney general says

I made a mistake: Two women apologize for letters supporting Stanford rapist Brock Turner

Former Stanford swimmer blames party culture and risk-taking behavior for sex assault
Six years after President Obama signed the Affordable Care Act, the health reform law has gained acceptance from a majority of California voters, but the cost of getting healthcare remains a major concern, eclipsing worries about having insurance, according to a new USC Dornsife/Los Angeles Times poll.

The widespread worry about costs indicates a potential shift in the debate over healthcare, at least in this heavily Democratic state.

Nationally, the political debate has been stuck for most of the last six years on Republican efforts to block Obamacare, but that gridlock could lessen after the election. In both parties, lawmakers increasingly have been hearing complaints from their constituents about the cost of care, and polls have found that prescription drug prices, surprise medical bills and other pocketbook issues concern voters more than the future of the health law.

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Echoing that national trend, almost two-thirds of voters in the USC/Times survey say they worry very much about rising health costs, with only 10% saying that is not something they worry about.

Just slightly more than half say that lack of insurance is something they worry about a lot, and roughly three in 10 say they were not worried about it.

Latinos, however, were an exception, reporting equal levels of unease about cost and having insurance  three-quarters said they were very worried about each.

Cost concerns were most widespread among those in their 50s and early 60s. Indeed, that age group consistently showed the highest levels of anxiety on a series of healthcare concerns. By contrast, those over age 65, most of whom are covered by Medicare, were the least likely to express worry about healthcare issues.

For a significant number of voters, the healthcare law itself takes blame for rising costs. Just over half of those surveyed said they believed that costs for average Americans have gone up a lot because of the law, compared with roughly one-third who said that the law had not caused that to happen.

As with many aspects of the healthcare debate, partisanship plays a big role in shaping beliefs about rising costs: Republicans by overwhelming margins blame the law, while Democrats were split closely on whether its responsible.

Most Americans have been forced to confront increased costs for health coverage for years  a trend that began long before the passage of the reform law. Employers have continued to shift costs to their workers, mostly in the form of higher deductibles and co-payments. Although those higher costs may not have been caused by the new law, many blame it.

The USC Dornsife/Los Angeles Times poll 

The law clearly has raised costs for one relatively small slice of Americans  mostly healthy, self-employed people with middle-class or higher incomes who were previously able to buy low-cost policies on the private market.

The new law requires those people to buy more comprehensive policies, which provide greater coverage, but at a higher price. Covering sicker customers who used to be denied insurance has also led insurers to raise some premiums.

Low- and middle-income Americans get subsidies under the law that lower their monthly premiums, but higher-income Americans do not.

More than three-quarters of California voters acknowledge the biggest effect the law has had  reducing the number of Americans who lack health coverage. By 77% to 15%, voters said that the law had achieved that goal.

Since the new laws coverage expansion began in 2014, some 20 million previously uninsured Americans have gained coverage, and the share of American adults under age 65 who are uninsured has dropped from one in five to about one in eight, according to numerous private and government surveys.

But on that point, too, partisanship colors perceptions. Among Republicans, 28% in the current survey said that the new law had not led to more people having insurance. Among Republicans who identify with the tea party, 48% took that view, compared with 31% who said the law had reduced the number of uninsured.

The publics view remains split on another of the laws major accomplishments, as well  ending the ability of insurers to deny health coverage because of preexisting health conditions. The poll found 59% of voters saying that coverage could no longer be denied, while 21% said that had not happened.

On that question, the division did not appear primarily partisan. Instead, some of the groups whom the new law was designed to help most appeared least aware of one of its central elements.

Latinos, those younger than 30 and people with incomes under $30,000 were all less aware of the change regarding preexisting health conditions than whites and those who were older or more affluent. Among Latinos, for example, though 48% said the law had accomplished that goal, 30% said it had not.

That lack of awareness of one of the laws main achievements marks a messaging failure by the laws supporters, said Anna Greenberg, the Democratic pollster whose firm forms one half of the bipartisan team that produced the survey for USC and The Times.

The White House and its allies have struggled at times to convey a message about the law, in part because for many Americans, it remains an abstraction.

Just over half of those surveyed said the law had no effect on themselves or their families. Thats by design: The law was written to cover the uninsured while minimizing the effect on people who get coverage through their jobs, as most working-age Americans do.

That has cost Obama politically. The views that most Americans have of the law have been shaped less by direct experience than by partisanship, according to Drew Altman, the president of the Kaiser Family Foundation, which has carefully tracked opinion about the health law.

Only about four in 10 of those who supported the law in the poll also said it had made their own families healthcare better.

Overall, 53% of the states voters favor the law, with 31% favoring it strongly. An additional 12% said they opposed it because it did not go far enough, while 27% said they opposed it because it went too far.

Complete text of poll questions and results 

Those who said the law did not go far enough do not consistently back liberal views on how to replace it. Only 40%, for example, supported a single-payer system  the sort of healthcare solution advocated by Sen. Bernie Sanders in his campaign for president.

By contrast, those who support the law backed the single-payer idea 69% to 10%. Overall, just over half of the states voters supported it, with about one-quarter opposed.

The states voters divided evenly on the question of whether to repeal the laws requirement that people have insurance. Opinion on that question split along predictable partisan lines with one significant exception  Latinos, who generally back the law, also supported repeal of the mandate, by 57%-37%.

Most California voters have a positive view of their own healthcare and a somewhat positive view of healthcare in the state, the poll found. Seven in 10 rated their own healthcare as excellent or good while just under three in 10 called their care fair or poor.

Ratings were highest among those earning more than $100,000 a year and among those aged 65 and older, which reflects the generally positive view that Americans have of Medicare.

Asked about the state of healthcare in California, 44% called it excellent or good, while 34% said fair and 14% poor. Ratings were gloomier about healthcare nationwide, with only 30% calling it either excellent or good, 39% fair and 25% poor.

The poll for the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences and the Los Angeles Times was conducted jointly by the Democratic firm Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research and the Republican firm American Viewpoint. It questioned 1,500 registered California voters from May 19-31. The margin of sampling error is 2.9 points in either direction for the full sample.

David.Lauter@latimes.com

For more on Politics and Policy, follow me @DavidLauter

ALSO:

Poll finds Californians are strongly in favor of states minimum wage increase

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Sanders is defiant and unpredictable as his revolution reaches a crossroads
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

The Gloves Are Off (Were They Ever On?)

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Bernie Sanders is still moving onward to the D.C. primary, but the big battle lines are drawn. He and other Democrats made it clear they are out to stop Donald Trump. That meant, in short order: an endorsement for Hillary Clinton from President Obama, attacks from Elizabeth Warren and Joe Biden on Trump, and a good old-fashioned Twitter fight. Obama just endorsed Crooked Hillary. He wants four more years of Obama  but nobody else does! tweeted Trump. Clintons response: Delete your account.

More From the Campaign Trail

-- Meet one of Clintons biggest donors in California. They hardly ever talk politics.

-- There are more than 2.5 million uncounted ballots left from Tuesdays statewide primary.

-- Clinton or Sanders? This map details how every neighborhood in L.A. County voted.

No Right to Tote

Want to carry a concealed firearm in public? Youll need some ammunition, figuratively speaking. In a 7-4 ruling, a federal appeals court said the 2nd Amendment does not give people the right to carry a concealed gun. Instead, owners must show good cause if they want to do so. Of course, counties define good cause differently. And the state already has banned the open carrying of firearms. Read on to see what gun advocates next legal challenge may be.

A Cloud at Occidental College Begins to Lift

Three years ago, about 50 students and faculty members at Occidental College filed federal complaints that administrators had fostered a hostile environment for sexual assault victims. The findings: Though some complaints werent addressed promptly, the school didnt otherwise violate civil rights laws. It also agreed to reforms, such as training and conducting campus surveys on sexual misconduct.

Why American Samoans Cant Vote

American Samoa has been a U.S. territory for more than a century. But American Samoans dont have the same rights as U.S. citizens  to vote, serve as military officers or hold top government posts. Instead, they are nationals. Now, an L.A.-based group has asked the Supreme Court to intervene. Read on to see why the U.S. and American Samoan governments both urged the high court to ignore it.

Roar! Youre on Candid Camera

Theyre known as camera trappers  professional and amateur wildlife photographers who capture their prey in still and moving images. In Southern California, theyve made a celebrity out of P-22, the mountain lion whos been spotted in Griffith Park and in front of the Hollywood sign. Whats it like on the hunt? Spend a day with Robert Martinez, a grocery store worker whose videos have drawn nearly 1.4 million views on YouTube.

CALIFORNIA

-- A surfer gangs beach fort must be torn down or get a permit, the state says, but Palos Verdes Estates has been slow to act.

-- Gov. Jerry Brown and lawmakers strike a state budget deal that adds money for housing and child care.

-- Will the state stop police from taking peoples property without a criminal conviction?

-- A new USC Dornsife/Los Angeles Times poll finds strong support for the states minimum wage increase to $15.

NATION-WORLD

-- My God: New details about O.J. Simpson and the bloody glove trouble former Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti.

-- The Supreme Court says judges must step aside from cases they once prosecuted.

-- A gruesome hot springs death highlights the problem of tourists breaking the rules at Yellowstone.

-- Beijing vows to ignore a tribunals ruling on the South China Sea. But can it?

-- Alberto Fujimoris dark legacy lingers as Peruvians reject his daughters bid for president.

HOLLYWOOD AND THE ARTS

-- How writer-director Andrew Stanton found Dory 13 years after Finding Nemo.

-- From the mouth of the man himself, De Palma examines his evolution and obsession.

-- For director Duncan Jones, Warcraft is a fantasy film that reflects a personal reality.

-- ESPN makes its O.J. Simpson series available for binge-watching.

-- Video: Richard Dreyfuss says he was made to play Bernie Madoff on TV.

-- A new downtown L.A. park gets a design team, but there are still some issues to work out.

-- The Tony Awards are Sunday. Is Hamilton the top Broadway musical of all time? Not necessarily, this expert says.

BUSINESS

-- $80 versus $15: Even if you have health insurance, you may want to pay cash.

-- Regulators are looking at reports of suspension problems with the Tesla Model S.

SPORTS

-- The San Jose Sharks won Game 5 of their Stanley Cup Finals series with the Pittsburgh Penguins. Game 6 is Sunday.

-- Muhammad Alis funeral is today. His pallbearers will include Will Smith and Lennox Lewis.

-- Duke star Brandon Ingram meets the Lakers brass  and plans to gain weight.

OPINION

-- Stanford sexual assault case: When is it right for voters to oust a judge?

-- David Horsey: Trump bigotry has shameless defenders, from GOP pols to CNN shills.

WHAT OUR EDITORS ARE READING

-- The National Cathedral will remove the Confederate flag from its stained-glass windows but keep images of generals, for now. (Religion News Service)

-- Mc, Nh, Og and Ts: Here are the names for four new elements. (Ars Technica)

-- A starchitect envisions a network of drone airports across Africa. (Hyperallergic)

ONLY IN CALIFORNIA

El Nino has left the building. After endless predictions of a Godzilla El Nino that might wreak havoc, Southern California had little to show for it. Now, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has declared it to be over in dramatic fashion. Were sticking a fork in this El Nino and calling it done, NOAA said in a statement. The king is dead!

Please send comments and ideas to Davan Maharaj.
In a welcome boost for those who believe that guns should be strictly regulated, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Thursday in Peruta vs. County of San Diego that the 2nd Amendment does not confer a right to carry a concealed weapon outside the home and that California sheriffs and police chiefs can require people to show good cause before issuing them concealed-carry permits.

Californias gun laws bar people from openly carrying firearms and, in the case of concealed weapons, leave it up to sheriffs and police chiefs to set the criteria for what clears that good cause hurdle. In San Diego and Yolo counties, where the Peruta lawsuit was brought, concealed-carry permits are generally issued only to people under documented threat of attack (such as people who have restraining orders against an abuser) or whose occupation puts them at risk (such as business owners who carry large amounts of cash). Other counties, including Los Angeles, have similar restrictions.

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This decision is a good one that affirms the rights of states and municipalities to impose reasonable gun control laws. The Supreme Court is not expected to accept an appeal.

In recent years, the Supreme Court has had a mixed record on gun control issues. In 2008, it ruled in District of Columbia et al. vs. Heller that Americans have a 2nd Amendment right to keep guns in their homes for self-protection. That decision improperly upended the longstanding interpretation of the 2nd Amendment well-regulated militia clause that limited the right to keep and bear arms to organized military units. But the court also ruled that the right to bear arms was not absolute and that government could regulate firearms.

Thursdays appellate court ruling overturns a 2-1 decision by a three-judge panel that the good cause requirement unconstitutionally restricts a law-abiding citizens right to bear arms. But the 9th Circuit said the issue here is more focused and that there is nothing in the 2nd Amendment to suggest a right to walk around with a hidden weapon. Theyll get no dissent on that from us.

Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinion and Facebook
Hundreds of thousands of people have signed petitions calling for the removal of Santa Clara Superior Court Judge Aaron Persky because of his disturbingly light six-month sentence of Stanford student Brock Turner for the 2015 sexual assault of an unconscious woman. The American political system is set up to encourage that kind of public outcry  and the American judicial system is crafted to protect judges like Persky from it. Judges should be able to make their rulings based on the law and the evidence that are before them, and not on the heated debate that takes place outside the courthouse walls.

The judicial independence that is generally celebrated in theory is often publicly ridiculed or lamented when its exercised, as in Perskys recent sentencing decision. In fact there is and necessarily must be some cracks in the wall that insulates the judicial world from the political one. Politics and popular opinion affect the justice system in many ways, including the election of the governor who does the appointing and the lawmakers who write the bills that define crimes and set sentence lengths. In California the people, too, have a direct hand in writing the laws through the initiative process.

But they also vote for judges and have the power to remove them, and its fair to ask why they have that power if they are never supposed to use it.

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The question poses a quandary for the Times editorial page, which has long supported Californias system of judicial elections but generally supports sitting judges in the name of judicial independence. The last time the Times supported a challenge to a judge seeking re-election was in 1992  in the case of Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Joyce Karlin after she sentenced Korean grocer Soon Ja Du to probation, with no prison time, in the killing of African American teenager Latasha Harlins. The Times said then that the sentence showed Karlin incapable of rendering a fair decision.

Persky was up for re-election this year and drew no opponents, so his name didnt even appear on the ballot, but he still could be forced onto the November ballot if a proposed write-in campaign against him qualifies. And he could also be the subject of a recall election, as in the similar case last year of Orange County Superior Court Judge M. Marc Kelly.

Kelly imposed a 10-year sentence for the rape of a 3-year-old girl  less than the 25 years to life provided for by law. The judge explained that he believed the law was unconstitutional.

The sentence has been appealed, and that serves as a reminder of the proper remedy for sentences that dont comply with the law: appeal to a higher court.

Some of Perskys critics have called for action from the Commission on Judicial Performance, the discipline panel that is empowered to remove a judge for corruption, ethical lapses or incapacity. But the commission does not have power  nor should it  to remove a judge because of rulings that outrage the public.

As public officials, judges can be impeached by the Legislature in a process analogous to impeachment of federal officials. As the 1998 impeachment of President Bill Clinton demonstrated, though, impeachments are political by nature. Thats fine for political offices, but impeachment of judges should be discouraged.

That leaves the voters. But if we argue, as we do, that voters should not oust a judge because of a single ruling, what should they do? There is already too little information for voters to make informed decisions on judicial elections, so it would be asking a lot to expect them to identify the judges who repeatedly make bad decisions and target them for removal.

Critics of judicial elections call for California to adopt a federal-type system of lifetime appointments, but its hard for us to see state lawmakers as similar in stature or ability to the U.S. Senate, which confirms federal judicial appointees. In the tug-of-war between judges independence and accountability, though, its also increasingly difficult to muster the arguments for continuing to elect them.

Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinionand Facebook
What should Californias Bernie Brigades do now? How should they proceed with the revolution once the Democratic convention formally bestows its nomination on Hillary Clinton?

If Sanders backers (or, for that matter, Clinton supporters) want to involve themselves in politics, there are a number of elections right here in California in which a keystone issue of the socialists campaign  breaking the hold that big money has on our system  is effectively on the ballot.

For even as Sanders was thundering against the corrosive role of money in politics and Clinton was condemning the plutocratic consequences of the Supreme Courts Citizens United decision, corporate money was carving an ever larger role for itself in California politics  California Democratic politics.

FOR THE RECORD

California primary: A June 10 op-ed article on primary results said that Assemblyman Henry Perea of Fresno resigned to take a government relations job with Chevron. Perea went to work for the pharmaceutical industry.

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Over the past two years, oil companies and education reform billionaires have been funding campaigns for obliging Democratic candidates running against their more progressive co-partisans under the states top-two election process. In this weeks primary, independent committees spent at least $24 million, with most of that money flowing to Democrats who opposed Gov. Jerry Browns effort to halve motorists use of fossil fuels by 2030, and a substantial sum going to Democrats who support expanding charter schools.

Six years ago, according to the Associated Press, just one legislative primary race had more than $1 million in outside spending, and four had more than $500,000. This year, eight races saw more than $1 million in such spending, and 15 more than $500,000.

In a heavily Democratic district outside Sacramento, a November state Senate runoff will pit Democratic Assemblyman Bill Dodd, who opposed Browns legislation, against former Democratic Assemblywoman Mariko Yamada. Dodd has already benefited from one independent campaign funded by Chevron and other energy companies to the tune of more than $270,000, and from an education reform campaign funded by charter school proponents such as billionaire Eli Broad in the amount of $1.68 million.

The combination of [a] top-two election system with free-flowing outside spending has given rise to a new birth of corporate power in Sacramento.

In a nearby overwhelmingly Democratic assembly district, two Democratic candidates with strong environmental credentials lost out in this weeks primary to a Republican and a Democrat who benefited from more than $1.2 million from charter school advocates and an additional $650,000 from Chevron, Tesoro, Valero and other oil companies.

A similar dynamic has shaped a San Bernardino Assembly contest in which Democratic incumbent Cheryl Brown has been bolstered by major oil company expenditures in her race against Democrat Eloise Reyes.

These contests reflect the new reality of California politics. Businesses that previously would have backed Republicans  oil companies and real estate investors in particular  have responded to the GOPs electoral eclipse by shifting their contributions to malleable, more conservative Democrats. These Democrats would not prevail in a closed primary system, but have a better chance than Republicans in a general election because theyre not associated with that toxic  to Californians  brand. (They appeal to some Democratic voters and to some Republican ones, who have no better choice.) In this sense, the top-two system helps corporate interests like Chevron.

In some races, unions and such wealthy environmentalists as Tom Steyer have answered the flood of corporate money with a torrent of their own, but the balance remains heavily weighted toward business.

The combination of this top-two election system with free-flowing outside spending has given rise to a new birth of corporate power in Sacramento, in the form of the self-proclaimed Moderate Caucus of Democrats. Aligning themselves with their Republican colleagues, caucus members have blocked a range of environmental and pro-worker reforms. Late last year, Assemblyman Henry Perea of Fresno, whod headed the caucus since 2012, resigned to take a government relations job with Chevron.

So whats a California Bernie bro  or for that matter, a Hillary sis  to do? Joining together (because the environmental and liberal groups that backed Clinton oppose the Moderate Caucus handiwork as much as the Sanderistas do), they should support the progressive legislative candidates whom the oil companies and charter school advocates seek to defeat. They should work to repeal the top-two primary, through which organized money has increased its clout in Sacramento. And they should work to elect a presidential candidate  her name is Clinton  who will appoint justices who will overturn Citizens United.

You say you want a revolution? This would be a good place to start.

Harold Meyerson is executive editor of the American Prospect. He is a contributing writer to Opinion.

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Donald Trump has attracted widespread and bipartisan scorn for suggesting that a Mexican judge presiding over a lawsuit involving Trump University is biased because of his ancestry. (U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel was born in Indiana.) But if its absurd to suggest that a judge should disqualify himself because of his ancestry, and everyone but Trump seems to agree that it is, when should a judge recuse himself?

The Supreme Court on Thursday offered one answer: When a judge hearing a convicted murderers appeal was, in his earlier life, the prosecutor who approved seeking the death penalty for that defendant.

In 1986, Philadelphia Dist. Atty. Ron Castille accepted a subordinates recommendation that the state seek the death penalty for Terrance Williams in the murder of Amos Norwood, a middle-aged man who had offered the 18-year-old Williams and a friend a lift.

Almost three decades later, Williams challenged his death sentence, claiming that prosecutors had suppressed evidence that Norwood was sexually involved with boys of Williams age, information that could have supported Williams claim that the older man had abused him. Castille, by then the chief justice of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, joined his colleagues in rejecting the appeal.

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On Thursday the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5 to 3 that Castille shouldnt have taken part in that decision and that Williams is entitled to a new hearing. It was the right call.

Writing for the court, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy said Castilles participation in the case violated the due process clause of the 14th Amendment because there is an impermissible risk of actual bias when a judge earlier had significant, personal involvement as a prosecutor in a critical decision regarding the defendants case.

Kennedy based that conclusion on the maxim that no man can be a judge in this own case.

That might seem obvious, but the justice argued among themselves about whether this really was Castilles case.

The Philadelphia district attorneys office is a large one, and Castille didnt prosecute Williams himself. Also, as Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. suggested in his dissent, Castille wouldnt have been aware when he authorized his staff to seek the death penalty of the issues that would be raised in a later appeal. Justice Clarence Thomas, who also dissented, called the Pennsylvania Supreme Courts consideration of that appeal a separate proceeding.

Even so, the majority was right to construe Castilles long-ago endorsement of the death penalty for Williams as significant, personal involvement requiring him to step aside. Kennedy noted that when Castille ran for election to the Supreme Court, multiple news outlets reported his statement that he sent 45 people to death rows as district attorney.

Nor did it matter that Castilles colleagues reached the same conclusion about the weakness of Williams appeal. Kennedy wrote that it is neither possible nor productive to inquire whether the jurist in question might have influenced the views of his or her colleagues during the decision-making process. But the court clearly thought that was a possibility.

Even if this was a close case, judges who used to be prosecutors are on notice that they should withdraw from hearing cases in which they had significant prior involvement. Thats especially vital when, as in this case, its a matter of life and death.
The flurry of outrage surrounding the Stanford rape case produced one of this weeks most engaging reads: Rebecca Makkais article in the New Yorker about her own experience penning a statement to the court as a survivor of sexual assault. It led the list of opinion pieces that grabbed our attention.

Makkai notes, as so many have, the power and eloquence of the letter the survivor wrote in the Stanford case.* At the time she wrote her own victim-impact statement, Makkai was a 16-year-old whod been sexually assaulted multiple times between the ages of 7 and 13; shes now 38 and an acclaimed author. Makkai writes about being accused of plagiarism by the defense attorney in her case:

For the record: A previous version of this piece incorrectly stated that Rebecca Makkais vicitim-impact statement detailed incidents of rape. It detailed incidents of sexual assault.

He knew teen-agers, he said. He had a teen-age daughter, he had a teen-age nephew. And his teen-age acquaintances could not write that well.

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The implications broadened from there. If I had fudged this statement, what else might I have fabricated? Even though the guy had already pleaded guilty, even though this was a statement of emotional impact, not my actual testimony, the victim was not to be trusted.

Though Makkai was excoriated in the courtroom for the strength of her prose, the survivor in the Stanford rape case is being nationally lauded for the same. One of the many reasons that the majority of survivors dont go public with their stories is because of the inconsistent response to their testimonies; who ever knows how theyre about to be treated?

In the United States, a person is raped every two minutes. A tiny but incalculable fraction  we cant confidently track what is untracked, making rape statistics notoriously hard to pin down  of those rapes are reported, and a smaller fraction of those go to trial. Even so, there are thousands upon thousands of men and women who have written such impact statements. So why was it this statement that animated the countrys attention? Why was this the one that has been read more than 13 million times (at last count)?

When we are moved to action only by language that seizes us, we tip the scales of justice in favor of the eloquent and place an undue burden on survivors.

Because the writing was gorgeous, strong and persuasive. Because the Stanford survivor said the things that survivors and their friends and families have yearned to say or hear expressed. Take this section in which she directly addresses her attacker, for instance:

Heres the thing; if your plan was to stop only when I became unresponsive, then you still do not understand. You didnt even stop when I was unconscious anyway! Someone else stopped you. Two guys on bikes noticed I wasnt moving in the dark and had to tackle you. How did you not notice while on top of me?

You said, you would have stopped and gotten help. You say that, but I want you to explain how you wouldve helped me, step by step, walk me through this. I want to know, if those evil Swedes had not found me, how the night would have played out. I am asking you; Would you have pulled my underwear back on over my boots? Untangled the necklace wrapped around my neck? Closed my legs, covered me? Pick the pine needles from my hair? Asked if the abrasions on my neck and bottom hurt? Would you then go find a friend and say, Will you help me get her somewhere warm and soft? I dont sleep when I think about the way it could have gone if the two guys had never come. What would have happened to me? Thats what youll never have a good answer for, thats what you cant explain even after a year.

Both Makkai and the Stanford survivor write generously about their experiences. So, instead of dialoguing with their words, let me add a thought about how we might consider impact statements more generally.

The Stanford survivors letter was incredibly powerful, but it shouldnt have had to be in order to get our attention. The hard facts should have been enough to do that work. When we are moved to action only by language that seizes us, we tip the scales of justice in favor of the articulate and place an undue burden on survivors  the burden not only to communicate their trauma, but to do so exhaustively, lucidly, compellingly. Those who are at a different point in their recovery or less gifted with language deserve the same response. I hope that in the future all survivors who are denied justice will receive the very volume of indignation that has led nearly a million people to protest the light sentence handed down on the Stanford survivors assailant.

We owe every survivor the support they deserve in their pursuit of justice. But that support should be grounded in moral outrage  in a sense that rape is an act that has no place on our planet. We should not be animated solely by those cases in which the survivor is able to and chooses to communicate their experience in such striking language.

So much was going on in the news this week. The Times editorial board weighed in on Californias right-to-die legislation, how criminal sentencing decisions should be made, the deal with the devil Republican party leaders made in endorsing Donald Trump, why its time for Bernie Sanders to log off, and more. Our opinion contributors wrote about everything from the value of history education to gluten-free diets to taxing the rich.

That didnt leave us with too much time to catch other views, but we loved Henry Louis Gates Jr. for the New York Times on Muhammad Alis poetic verse, Jamelle Bouie for Slate on how America should resist a fascist, Charles Lane for the Washington Post on the virtues of superdelegates, and Ryan Kearney for the New Republic on how overrated Radiohead lyrics are.

In times like these, humor helps keep the wheels turning. Thanks to Andy Borowitz for his brilliant New Yorker article Sanders vows to keep fighting for nomination even if Hillary is elected President, which I revisited more times than Id like to admit. And I was positively charmed (forgive the pun) to see that hundreds of witches banded together to put a hex on the Stanford rapist. Lets see what Hecate, the goddess of life and death, decides to do with him.

*A note on my use of language, because the impact of language is what Makkai wrote about, and what I elaborate on. I prefer to refer to the sorts of crime perpetrated on the young woman on the Stanford campus as rape  we dont deserve the clinical distance or ambiguity the term sexual assault affords. In 2014, the Department of Justice updated the criminal definition of rape to be [p]enetration, no matter how slight, of the vagina or anus with any body part or object, or oral penetration by a sex organ of another person, without the consent of the victim. But thats the language of federal prosecutors, and under state law, the perpetrator at issue was convicted of sexual assault, not rape. Additionally, I deviate from the legal systems usage of the word victim and instead use the term survivor where I have the latitude to do so, as the term is widely preferred and used by those who belong to such a category.
To the editor: The fathers comments about a steep price for 20 minutes of action certainly did not make the judges sentencing decision for convicted sex offender Brock Turner, the Stanford student who assaulted an unconscious woman, any easier. However, your editorial is absolutely correct: Justice in any individual case isnt put to a public vote. (Criminal sentencing decisions belong to judges, not the outraged public  even in the Stanford sexual assault case, editorial, June 8)

The public can second-guess a judges sentence all it wants. But at the end of the day, it is solely the judges burden to attempt to balance all of the mitigating and aggravating factors of a case, many of which are incorporated in the probation report, and determine what form of justice should be meted out to the individual before him or her.

Dennis Sakai, Laguna Beach

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..

To the editor: If the discretion of a trained and experienced judge is to be considered just, training should include university courses in psychology and attendance of therapy groups for rape, sexual assault and child molestation victims before being appointed to the bench.

Following these courses, and after witnessing the anguish of the survivors in these groups, only then should a judges discretion be respected.

Barbara Lorenz, La Jolla

..

To the editor: The juxtaposition of Turners light sentence with that of another star athlete, Cory Batey of Vanderbilt University, is jarring. Turner received six months in county jail, while Batey  like Turner, convicted of sexually assaulting an intoxicated female student  is serving 15 to 25 years in state prison.

Of course, Turner is white; Batey is black.

Eric Forster, Beverly Hills

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With two Democrats on the ballot for the U.S. Senate for the first time in state history, Californias House Democrats are attempting to minimize the awkwardness that could come with the intra-party fight.

Lawmakers who serve with Orange County Rep. Loretta Sanchez are split on who to back in the race to replace Sen. Barbara Boxer: their longtime colleague or Atty. Gen. Kamala D. Harris, who won 40% of the vote to the congresswomans 19% in Tuesday's primary.

According to the campaigns, 17 of Californias 39 House Democrats have endorsed Sanchez and nine have endorsed Harris. The other 12 are sitting it out so far, as are Sen. Dianne Feinstein and Boxer.

Who won in your Congressional District? 

Rep. Mike Thompson (D-St. Helena) said Wednesday hes worked with Harris on gun violence prevention, an issue that's dear to him.

I was impressed with her. I think shes smart, I think she would make a good U.S. senator, Thompson said.

He said he was concerned that Sanchez told the combined editorial boards of McClatchys California newspapers in April that everything, including changes to the Endangered Species Act, should be on the table to address the states water needs. Thompson said he and Sanchez spoke about it.

She said that was her position, and I explained to her that if it were I couldn't be with her, Thompson said. I like Loretta, were friends. But in my district the Endangered Species Act is life or death.

Rep. Jared Huffman (D-San Rafael) has known Harris since she was a district attorney in San Fransisco. He endorsed her in January 2015 within seconds of finding out she was getting in the race, he said.

I just think she is the complete package. Shes got the intellect, she got the values, shes got the political skills, she has a compelling personal story, Huffman said. Shes a terrific candidate and shes going to be a great U.S. senator.

Huffman said he and Sanchez have talked about why he backs Harris.

Its always a little awkward when you have a colleague running against someone that you think very highly of, but this is a huge, high-stakes long-term proposition, who is going to be our second U.S. senator. Weve got to get it right, he said.

Huffman said the Democrats in Californias delegation dont spend much time talking about the race.

We know that within the delegation there are some fault lines that make it a little bit awkward, and so, to each his own, or her own, he said.

Rep. Juan Vargas (D-San Diego) has been campaigning for her in Southern California.

I strongly believe Loretta would be a fantastic senator and Im happy to try to help her in any way. Thats in no way deprecating to Kamala, Vargas said. Its an embarrassment of riches. We have two people who are just absolutely fantastic people  but I think Lorettas the better candidate.

As two Democrats, they should try to keep the contest from becoming bitter, he said.

I hope there isnt a nasty fight between the both of them, I hope they keep it on the issues, that would be good for everybody, Vargas said.

Rep. Mark Takano (D-Riverside) campaigned for Sanchez when she won the seat over Rep. Bob Dornan in 1996.

Takano said other lawmakers ask him about Sanchezs chances and path forward.

Republicans and independents, I think, are up for grabs. Where do they go? Takano said. There is, I think, a very plausible scenario under which the race is going to be close.

The dozen members who have stayed out of the race entirely are in a tough spot.

Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Hillsborough) said shes still thinking about it. Its who you think is going to be the best representative, who is going to be the most persuasive and articulate and able to fulfill the responsibilities, she said.

Rep. Julia Brownley (D-Westlake Village) said Harris and Sanchez each have strengths. She wants to take a close look at how her district voted in the primary before making a choice.

We have two good candidates running and I think its going to really narrow in the general. I think that Loretta has a very good chance of winning, I think Kamala has a good chance, I just havent made a decision, Brownley said.

Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Burbank) said he tries to stay out of contests between Democrats.

Most of us hate when we get in between two good Democrats running for the same office, and so I havent gotten involved yet, said Schiff, who may one day seek higher office in California. Ive done my best to remain neutral, but thats hard when you have friends running against friends.

California Democratic Caucus Chairwoman Zoe Lofgren said as head of the state's Democrats its better for her to stay on the sidelines.

My delegation is split, so I've so far just decided to see what all my members are doing, Lofgren said. Its all in good faith, its all friendly, but Im just thinking, do I need to be divisive in my delegation?

sarah.wire@latimes.com

Follow @sarahdwire on Twitter

Read more about the 55 members of California's delegation at latimes.com/politics

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UPDATES:

11:39 a.m.: This article was updated with additional details.

This article was originally published at 8:04 a.m.
Almost a year after California lawmakers rejected legislation that would restrict police departments ability to take cars, cash, homes and other property from suspected criminals without a conviction, the bills author is trying again as similar efforts succeed across the country.

The practice, known as civil asset forfeiture, gained currency during the height of the drug war in the 1980s as a way for law enforcement to financially cripple drug lords and fund anti-narcotics operations. But advocates for reforming the laws say too often police officers ensnare innocent residents who are poor and have few resources to ensure their property is returned.

A bill from state Sen. Holly Mitchell (D-Los Angeles) would require state and local police to get a criminal conviction before taking peoples money or other assets.

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There are some innocent people whose assets have been forfeited, and there are some of us who feel thats unacceptable, Mitchell said.

Lawmakers in Maryland, Nebraska, New Mexico and Washington, D.C., have already taken similarly strong steps to rein in civil forfeiture in recent years, along with a number of other states that have tightened their own guidelines. Behind these efforts is an unlikely coalition of supporters including labor and civil rights groups as well as conservative and libertarian organizations concerned about property rights.

Mitchell, considered one of the most liberal members of the Legislature, said she couldnt think of another issue that aligned her with billionaire Republican donor Charles Koch, who is an opponent of asset forfeiture.

At its core, SB 443 sends basically a message to drug dealers that the cost of doing business has gone down.  Gregory Totten, Ventura County district attorney

On the other side of Mitchells push are law enforcement groups who are sounding an alarm about their ability to target high-level drug dealers should the bill pass. After sailing through the state Senate and the Assemblys public safety and appropriations committees, Mitchells bill landed with a thud on the Assembly floor last September, falling 17 votes short of passage.

Before that vote, nearly every district attorney in the state signed a letter against the measure. Numerous police chiefs and sheriffs did the same.

Now, Mitchell is bringing back the bill for another try in the Assembly with few substantive changes, arguing that requiring a criminal conviction before an asset gets taken is the right policy. Law enforcement opposition to the bill, SB 443, remains just as strong as last year.

At its core, SB 443 sends basically a message to drug dealers that the cost of doing business has gone down, Ventura County Dist. Atty. Gregory Totten said.

Last month, the state chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union released a report that included stories of Californians who said they had a few thousand dollars or cars seized while they were leaving work, or when they bought a car from a friend. The Drug Policy Alliance, a nonprofit that advocates for decriminalization of drugs, hired a pollster who found that 10% of residents in Los Angeles, Riverside and San Bernardino counties knew someone who had lost property to law enforcement without first being convicted of a crime.

By contrast, law enforcement groups say the practice is an essential tool in combating drug trafficking. When police arrest low-level cartel members with large sums of money in their cars, the driver isnt the primary target, Totten said.

In many, many narcotics trafficking cases, were not able to actually identify some of the higher-ups in the organization whose money were seizing, he said. Thats just the nature of illicit drug trafficking.

David Hadley, a Republican assemblyman from Manhattan Beach and a coauthor of Mitchells bill, said law enforcement is fighting hard against changes to the civil forfeiture process because of the hit to their budgets. Its on the Legislature, he said, to boost funding for public safety so that police dont have to rely on taking peoples property to pay for what they need.

When you get outside of [the Capitol] you get a general consensus that something like this in its broad form should not be happening in the United States, Hadley said.

No one disputes, however, that civil forfeiture provides significant money to police budgets.

In 2015, California police departments received $86 million in civil forfeiture dollars from the federal government, which distributes 80% of the proceeds from joint task forces involving federal agents and state and local police back to localities.

Mitchells bill primarily goes after California police departments ability to get money from the federal government, which allows state and local law enforcement to conduct forfeitures. Currently, federal officials dont require a conviction to take a persons assets, only a civil case with a lower burden of proof.

Federal officials have told state law enforcement groups that since the federal government doesnt track criminal convictions, California police might no longer be able to get paid for participating in task forces, which could effectively end them.

Mitchells office said it had received assurances from the Justice Department that the bill would not conflict with federal guidelines. The federal governments current regulations, Mitchell said, are no reason to continue the current situation.

Thats like the IRS saying we dont have the computer-based system to return your tax return, Ms. Mitchell, so we dont have to, she said. The Department of Justice is going to have to figure it out. Thats ridiculous.

A Justice Department spokesman declined to comment on Mitchells bill, but said the agency had no plans to change its rules should the measure pass.

Mitchell wont say when she plans to bring her bill up for another vote before the Legislature adjourns on Aug. 31.

Were coming up against pretty big guns, figuratively and literally, she said. And Im acutely aware of that.

liam.dillon@latimes.com

Follow @dillonliam on Twitter

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SeaPort Airlines, a Portland, Ore.-based carrier with routes in eight U.S. states and Baja, Calif., in Mexico, announced Friday that it would discontinue all scheduled service to destinations in California and Mexico by the end of that day, and to destinations in Kansas and Missouri by the end of the day this past Saturday.

The cancellations impact service at nine destinations, including Burbanks Bob Hope Airport, and airfields in four other California cities  Sacramento, Visalia, San Diego and Imperial. Customers will be issued a full refund for unused tickets.

The company was forced to take this action because of the impact on SeaPorts business and operations following the effects of the shortage of airline pilots in the United States, according to the announcement.

The airline also halted service in San Felipe in Baja, Calif., and in Salina and Great Bend in Kansas as well as in Kansas City, Mo.

Meanwhile, service in Oregon, Washington, Arkansas, Tennessee and Texas will be unaffected, according to the announcement.

Denis Carvill, Bob Hope Airports deputy executive director for engineering, maintenance, operations and airline relations, notified Burbank-Glendale-Pasadena Airport Authority members of the service cancellation during a meeting of the authority board Tuesday.

We all know that theres a shortage of pilots out there, Carvill said, adding that the situation has led larger carriers to suck those pilots up the pilot scale.

A U.S. Government Accountability Office report in February 2014 found mixed evidence regarding the extent of a shortage of airline pilots, though it said regional airlines had reported difficulty finding enough qualified entry-level pilots during the prior year. Larger carriers, which hire from the ranks of experienced pilots, did not report similar concerns, according to the report.

The report also stated that pilot schools reported fewer new students seeking training due to concerns over the high costs of education and low entry-level pay at regional airlines.

Airport Authority President Frank Quintero, one of Glendales commissioners, said he had attended an industry panel on the issue.

Its almost impossible to pay off your student debt, he said.

SeaPort started offering service from Burbank to Imperial in early 2013, followed by flights to San Diego International Airport in October 2014. It began service to Visalia Municipal Airport last February.

The regional carrier, which relies on federal subsidies to provide air service connecting rural airports to nearby hubs, operates nine-passenger Cessna Caravan aircraft and needs to maintain certain passenger traffic volumes to meet federally enforced per-passenger subsidy caps.
During the early 1970s, photography wasnt commonly accepted as fine art. Laguna Beach, even then known as an artists colony, was devoid of photography laboratories producing color and black and white prints.

But some, like photographers Mark Chamberlain and Jerry Burchfield, fought back against the idea.

Artist friends tried to discourage the two from opening a photography business and gallery in the coastal town, but Chamberlain and Burchfield were set on creating a studio that would meet the needs of their artwork and vision.

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And 43 years later, BC Space, the nondescript gallery off Forest Avenue that never relied on advertising  other than a listing in the phone book  is still attracting audiences to its innovative shows and exhibitions, which often depict political, social and environmental issues.

That cultural unease and rebellion runs through the gallerys current collection, Amerikan Krazy: Life Out of Balance. The assembled art  not just photographs  of more than 20 Southland artists was named after author and arts curator Henry James Korns latest book, Amerikan Krazy.

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Korn, former arts and culture program development specialist for the Orange County Great Park in Irvine, wrote about the meaning of power in post-modern America and the conditions of contemporary life.

The exhibition, which features artists Jeff Gillette, Tom Lamb and Stephen Anderson, among others, spoofs theme parks, fast food restaurants and development.

Jacques Garniers black and white photograph Ode to Failure is a snapshot of a highway overpass.

Glenn Brooks Good Meds Bad Meds is an actual miniature bookcase  not a photo or a painting  that holds pill containers and a mask of a lifeless face.

Lynn Kubaseks Flag of My Brother is a similar sort of artifact, in this case a replica of a flag made out of a striped military jacket.

A lot of this is questioning American values, corporate power and abuse, Chamberlain said. War has been a constant theme, because its the most uncivilized and inhumane activity we can do.

Chamberlain, a native of Dubuque, Iowa, earned a bachelors degree in political science and a masters degree in business administration from the University of Iowa. Two days after receiving his masters, he was drafted into the Army.

His one-year tour of duty in South Korea during the Vietnam War would change his life.

While stationed overseas, Chamberlain picked up photography as a creative outlet. He took Korean language classes and met a photography instructor in the military crafts program who told him to capture deeper meanings when photographing subjects, landscapes and lifestyles.

When he returned home, Chamberlain wanted to open a photography gallery, so he headed to Los Angeles. He relocated to Laguna Beach when he learned that his brother-in-law was studying at UC Irvine.

When inquiring about submissions for the Laguna Beach Winter Festival of Arts, Chamberlain met Burchfield, and the two became the first to submit photographs for the festival.

Two years later, the friends formed a business partnership and opened BC Space.

The gallery, which can only be entered through a discreet steel door, is a former Masonic Lodge. When the artists took it over, the 900-square-foot studio quickly became a place for dialogue during contentious times locally and nationally.

In 1980, Chamberlain and Burchfield began to photographically document Laguna Canyon Road, to help preserve it and draw attention to the routes importance. Over 30 years, at the beginning of each decade, the two took photographs of the length of the road, day and night.

With the help of artists, they created The Tell photomural and installed the giant work across from the Irvine Co.'s proposed Laguna Laurel Housing Project.

The statement of environmental destruction received coverage from CNN and Life magazine and attracted over 11,000 demonstrators. The land was released for public acquisition and is now part of the Laguna Wildnerness Park. The Tell was disassembled for storage after most sections were destroyed in the massive 1993 Laguna wildfire, which destroyed or severely damaged 441 homes and scorched thosands of acres.

Burchfield split from the business partnership in 1987. He and Chamberlain remained friends and collaborated on art projects together up until Burchfields death in 2009.

Chamberlain, the sole owner of BC Space, has since expanded the gallerys exhibitions and said he continues to explore current art trends and mentor other artists.

We just kept evolving, Chamberlain said. And I am very proud of that.

--

What: Amerikan Krazy: Life Out of Balance

Where: BC Space, 235 Forest Ave., Laguna Beach

When: Runs until June 24; gallery hours by arrangement

Information: (949) 497-1880; bcspace.com

--

Kathleen Luppi, kathleen.luppi@latimes.com

Twitter: @KathleenLuppi

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When patrons of Avilas El Ranchito sit down to eat, theyre handed a menu bearing a picture of Margarita Mama" Avila.

The matriarch of the Mexican food restaurant group is standing by stacks of plates. Her face beams. The photograph suggests that happiness surrounds the making and eating of food from recipes passed down through generations.

Family lore says the beloved Mama didnt pose for the picture. It just sort of happened.

It was a fleeting moment, captured nearly 50 years ago in the days following the November 1966 grand opening of the first Avilas El Ranchito in Huntington Park. In an era before ubiquitous smartphone cameras and flooded Instagram accounts, it was a spontaneous action, since memorialized on all menus in the 13-restaurant restaurant group.

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On a recent afternoon, Maria Elena Avila, daughter of Mama Avila, sat at a table inside the Westside Costa Mesa Avilas restaurant, which she owns. She held a menu bearing the image of her mother from long ago.

1 / 3 Maria Elena Avila, center, stands with her sister Margarita Avila, right, and her daughter Lisa Avila Brussard, left, as she addresses family and friends during a 50th anniversary celebration for Avilas El Ranchito restaurant. In 1966 Avilas parents opened the first branch in Huntington Park. (Kevin Chang / Daily Pilot) 2 / 3 Photos of Salvador Avila and his wife Margarita, left, and another of the couple with daughter Maria Elena Avila are placed at the entrance of Avilas El Ranchito restaurant in Costa Mesa during the 50th-anniversary party for the company Thursday. (Kevin Chang / Daily Pilot) 3 / 3 Mariachi performers entertain guests at Avilas El Ranchito restaurant in Costa Mesa. (Kevin Chang / Daily Pilot)

Mama Avila lives in Corona del Mar with her husband of 70 years, Salvador. Its said that the 91-year-old Mama is a local celebrity. If the Avilas restaurant group had a headquarters, it is her home on Point Sur Drive. With no central office to speak of, decisions are made in the house by family.

It sounds so basic, but its what has given us that staying power for 50 years, Maria Elena said.

Margarita, now in a wheelchair, remains ever the matriarch, particularly when it comes to her own kitchen. She directs what occurs there.

Maria Elena looked again at her mothers picture, remarking that the family couldnt have orchestrated a better one if they tried.

Look at that smile, she said. Its a Kodak moment.

Celebrating the journey

Maria Elena is thinking a lot about her mother these days and the rest of her family. This year marks the 50th anniversary of the restaurant group.

At the Costa Mesa restaurant on Thursday, the Avilas hosted a private party, starting what will become a summer-long celebration of the milestone at all 13 El Ranchitos.

The first public party is at the Costa Mesa restaurant this weekend.

Afterward, each location will have food and drink specials on a scheduled Thursday, as well as raffles and other giveaways.

But on this Thursday, it was a time to reflect on family history over margaritas, wine, tacos, tortillas and mariachi. Employees wore 50th anniversary T-shirts and nametags with the year they started working for the company.

Most of the people there were family friends and Latino community leaders. As the guests walked into the restaurant, they saw rows of Avila family photos, including one taken in April of Margarita and Salvador on their 70th wedding anniversary.

The couple met in their native state of Guanajuato, Mexico. In 1958, they immigrated to the United States and in 1966 founded Avilas El Ranchito in Huntington Park, a working-class suburb south of Los Angeles.

Sergio Avila, one of Salvador and Margaritas sons, owns three of the family restaurants: those in Corona del Mar and Huntington Beach and on the Balboa Peninsula.

But he started as a dishwasher, he noted, alongside his Grandpa Poldo. He was 12.

Initially, everybody had to chip in, Sergio said.

He recalled the story of how Salvador came to be a restaurant owner. A distant relative came over to the Avila home one night with a business opportunity. He wanted to sell a restaurant.

Salvador, with a $2,000 investment, agreed to take on the challenge. In effect, he became a restaurateur on a whim. The whole business was set up in a matter of weeks, guided by Mama Avilas time-honored family recipes. It started with five tables.

Its just a fate of God, Sergio said. We fell into it.

Margarita Avila, another of the elderly couples children, recalled that working in the family restaurant helped her overcome her youthful shyness. Still, she added, it was hard work. She would go to Avilas after school, sometimes laboring while still wearing her school uniform.

Elyse Avila Smith shared a different story. She opened an Avilas in Seal Beach last August. As the third generation of Avilas in the family business, her first official job was at the Corona del Mar location as a busgirl and hostess.

Smith used to cook with her grandma, but now after starting her own location, the two share another bond. On tough days after running the Seal Beach location, Smith knows that Mama Avila understands. Shes been there too.

Its been a dream of mine since I was a little girl, Smith said of running an El Ranchito. Im living my dream right now.

Gaddi Vasquez recalled being at Avilas El Ranchitos 25th anniversary party. The former Orange County supervisor, former director of the Peace Corps and former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Agencies for Food and Agriculture is a family friend.

The Orange resident called the Avilas restaurant group one of the most admired companies in Orange County.

They are amazing people who really respect all that is good about hard work - ethical people who have dreams and hope for their children, Vasquez said.

They are amazing people who really respect all that is good about hard work, ethical people who have dreams and hope for their children.  Gaddi Vasquez

A heartfelt story

While sitting on her restaurant patio, Maria Elena was approached by a Cub Scout. She recognized him instantly, though the young Scout has changed quite a bit.

When Maria Elena first saw him, he was 5 days old, the son of a customer. She hasnt forgotten holding him in her arms.

An hour earlier, Maria Elena had given a speech about the restaurant groups continuing success. She stood behind a banner that read, Celebrating 50 years. Muchas gracias. - La familia Avila.

She told the crowd that Avilas humble beginnings were not just a story we made up.

Its a heartfelt story, she added. I cant even express it in words, what my parents gave us.

Jesse Miranda, who has a Hispanic leadership center and teaches theology and ministry at Vanguard University in Costa Mesa, gave a blessing.

I know one thing: God has blessed El Ranchito and the parents, Miranda said.

Maria Elena later commented that it was shame her parents couldnt be there that night.

Theyre here in spirit, she said.

--

The 13 Avilas El Ranchitos and when they will celebrate the restaurant groups 50th anniversary:

Friday through Sunday

Costa Mesa, 2101 Placentia Ave. Opened in 1977.

June 16

Laguna Niguel, 27941 La Paz Road. Opened in 2006.

Laguna Beach, 1305 S. Coast Hwy. Opened in 2006.

June 23

Huntington Park, 6703 Santa Fe Ave. Opened in 1966.

June 30

Foothill Ranch, 26771 Portola Parkway. Opened in 2016.

July 7

Lake Forest, 24406 Muirlands Blvd. Opened in 1998.

July 14

Huntington Beach, 318 Main St. Opened in 1999.

July 21

Corona del Mar, 2515 E. Coast Hwy. Opened in 1996.

Aug. 4

Santa Ana, 2201 E. First St. Opened in 1983.

Aug. 11

Newport Beach, 2800 Newport Blvd. Opened in 1975.

Aug. 18

Seal Beach, 209 Main St. Opened in 2015.

Aug. 25

Orange, 182 S. Orange St. Opened in 2011.

Sept. 1

San Clemente, 204 Avenida Del Mar. Opened in 2003.

--

Bradley Zint, bradley.zint@latimes.com

Twitter: @BradleyZint

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For those who feel theyre over the club scene but still want to dress up, have a bite to eat and go out for cocktails, a new club in Newport Beach may have the right mix.

Envy Lounge is taking its cues from the 1920s, with a speakeasy vibe and Great Gatsby"-inspired touches. The craft cocktails have names such as Bonnie and Clyde, Flapper and 1205, a nod to Dec. 5, 1933, the day Prohibition ended.

Were excited to bring a different concept for O.C., said Envy co-owner Sammy Lakhany, who opened the club last month with co-owner Ali Hojat.

Hojat also owns EnVus Motorsports, an exotic-car rental business with showrooms in Costa Mesa, Los Angeles and San Diego.

The 4,000-square-foot venue at 4647 MacArthur Blvd., near John Wayne Airport, replaces Ten Nightclub.

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The idea behind this is a social lounge for people to come and mingle, Hojat said, standing below one of the clubs many chandeliers. Were an awesome first-date spot. I dont think you can do a better first-date spot than here.

The idea behind this is a social lounge for people to come and mingle ... Were an awesome first-date spot. I dont think you can do a better first-date spot than here.  Envy Lounge co-owner Ali Hojat

Behind him, Some Like It Hot  the 1959 Marilyn Monroe comedy  was showing on one of the flat-screen televisions behind the bar. Big band standards like Sing, Sing, Sing (With a Swing) played in the background.

One of the walls features a 3-D foam model of the Chicago skyline, with video projected on it.

The clubs small-plate, appetizer-style menu includes a shredded beef tongue sandwich, oysters Rockefeller and a pomegranate and chipotle guacamole.

Chef Tyler Nix, formerly of Pueblo in Costa Mesa and the Big Canyon Country Club in Newport Beach, said his menu was inspired by classic American hors doeuvres and finger foods from cocktail parties of the Gatsby era.

Were reverting back to our history, Nix said as a Ray Charles tune played in the club. History repeats itself in fashion, food and style.

Envy Lounge wont have live music, but it does have a DJ playing period tunes and more modern fare. Hojat said the club doesnt have a dedicated dance floor, but patrons are welcome to dance, as they did on the clubs opening weekend.

The venue has no cover charge. It has open seating, but private tables are available.

Drinks run between $10 and $15. Food and dessert plates are about $9 to $15.

Envy Lounge is open from 5 p.m. to midnight Tuesdays through Thursdays and 5 p.m. to 2 a.m. Fridays and Saturdays.

For more information, visit envyloungeoc.com.

--

Bradley Zint, bradley.zint@latimes.com

Twitter: @BradleyZint

------------

FOR THE RECORD

2:48 p.m.: A previous caption for a photo in this story misidentified two people. The picture showed, from right, Sammy Lakhany, Ali Hojat and chef Tyler Nix.

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A possibly record-breaking El Nino may be bringing more than winter rainstorms to Southern California.

The periodic ocean pattern characterized by unusually warm water in the eastern Pacific could cause heavy rain as it heats the atmosphere and changes circulation patterns, according to forecasters. But experts say it already has attracted dozens of great white sharks as their food sources migrate from more tropical areas, and now several hammerhead sharks have been seen off the coast.

On Sept. 6, a group trying to catch yellowtail fish off Sunset Beach encountered a 10-foot hammerhead that was attracted by chum the group was using. The day before, a kayaker was bitten on a leg by a hammerhead near Malibu.

Cal State Long Beach marine biology professor Chris Lowe said hammerheads have been known to visit Southern California waters during an El Nino year. He saw them in 1997, and said some have been found as far north as Central California.

Hammerheads have been reported off Southern California the past two summers, but their numbers have increased because warm water draws them and their food supply, mainly yellowtail and tuna, up from Central America and Baja California, , Lowe said.

Youve got a whole tropical food chain thats moved into our neighborhood, he said. That warm water is bringing that food up here, and that food is being followed by its predators. Thats how we get that subtropical food web that we normally dont have showing up here.

Lowe, director of Cal State Long Beachs Shark Lab, has been studying sharks for more than 25 years. He said the warm water has attracted other non-indigenous marine life, such as a whale shark seen off Dana Point, manta rays spotted near Huntington Beach and thousands of tiny pelagic red crabs that washed ashore in Newport Beach.

Its a different ocean that weve been used to for the last 40 or 50 years, he said. Big predators are coming back, and that includes seals, sea lions, sharks and all the things we never had to share the waves with. Now theyre coming back and were going to learn to share.

The Seal Beach Marine Safety Department, which uses a small drone to look for sharks once a week, hasnt seen any hammerheads in the area, Marine Safety Chief Joe Bailey said. It hasnt spotted any great whites in the past two weeks, he said.

Lowe said he and his students have been tracking the movements of six juvenile great white sharks near Surfside in Seal Beach and Sunset Beach in Huntington Beach. They hope to sail out to tag some hammerheads for identification, he said.
When Sarah Pressman was an undergraduate at Mount Allison University in New Brunswick, Canada, she kept getting sick with the kinds of illnesses that often plague college students: mononucleosis, strep throat, colds that wouldnt go away.

She knew from her studies in biopsychology of the well-documented negative consequences of stress on health. But as Pressman moved forward in her academic career, eventually earning her Ph.D at Carnegie Mellon University, she became particularly intrigued by the idea of finding ways to protect ourselves against the physical damage wrought by stress.

Her studies led her to seek answers to key questions about the role that positive emotions and social relationships play in influencing stress and health outcomes.

In short, Pressman wanted to know whether happiness can make us healthier.

Now an associate professor of psychology and social behavior at UC Irvine, Pressman is garnering worldwide attention with her groundbreaking studies on the happiness-health connection. Her work has been featured on CBS News, and in the Wall Street Journal, U.S. News & World Report, Psychology Today and Time magazine. Even comedian Steven Colbert mentioned her research on his former show, The Colbert Report.

As for that big question, about whether being happy can have a positive effect on health and stress levels? The answer, Pressman has found, is yes, absolutely it can.

It might seem a strange question to ask in the first place. We tend to think of happiness as an elusive, unmeasurable quality not given to scientific analysis. But it turns out that isnt really true. Indeed, Pressmans academic acumen has been demonstrated in her ability to tease out ways to define and study happiness and its health consequences.

A lot of people say, How do you measure something as magical and intangible as happiness? she told me in a recent interview. Its actually very tangible.

Of course, one way is to just ask people. Researchers often utilize questionnaires that pose direct questions about happiness, and indirect ones that are designed to zero in on the perceptions, traits, behaviors, and support systems that are indicative of happiness.

There are other methods as well, such as studying facial coding, writing samples and social interactions for clues about subjects psychological states. Signals such as the number of positive words that are used are examined.

Once these happiness levels are identified, researchers can then look at physiological processes, such as stress-hormone reactivity, cardiovascular response and immune system change, as well as behaviors linked to health like sleeping, exercise and certain leisure activities.

Through these studies, Pressman has consistently found a positive link between happiness and health. And its not just the case that healthier people are happier because they are, well, healthy. In one study, for instance, in which subjects were exposed to a cold virus, the people who were deemed happier also got sick less and recovered faster.

Were proving to people that this is real. Its not just fluffy scientific ideals, she said.

Interestingly, Pressmans findings directly counter a study released last year that the media pounced upon, which reputed to show that happy people did not live longer than sad people. But she argues that the research in question controlled for  that is, eliminated  the positive effects of many of the qualities associated with happiness, such as good sleeping and exercising patterns.

The particular research led by Pressman that has been generating the greatest buzz recently is her studies associated with smiling. She wanted to know whether the simple act of smiling, even if its forced, can have a positive effect on health  a scientific take on the old, Smile, youll feel better adage.

Pressman constructed tests, for instance, that called for subjects to hold chopsticks in their mouths in such a way that they appeared to be smiling. Then they were subjected to stressful situations, such as having their hands held in buckets of ice, or instructed to complete extremely difficult dexterity tests with low success rates. After these tasks, the people with the fake smiles recovered objectively faster  their heart rates lowered more quickly, for example  than those who were not smiling.

Another study found that people who fake-smiled while receiving shots reported feeling less pain.

The tantalizing theory arising from such research is that the brain might actually be capable of being tricked, in a sense, into happier, more positive thoughts. Taken a step further, it raises the possibility that happiness isnt just some predetermined quality that people either possess or not, but that it can be taught.

Why does this matter? Pressman has become increasingly convinced that happiness should be considered in all standard medical evaluations. She believes that the medical establishment should train doctors to question their patients about their emotional well-being, beyond the perfunctory nod to the negative effects of stress, and to find ways to intervene if necessary to help patients achieve higher levels of happiness.

Many people are taking note of what Pressman is saying. In a talk she gave last year, she told her audience that happy people live longer, are generally healthier, feel less pain and have better survival rates even when they are stricken by disease. These findings are consistent across cultures and national boundaries.

Happiness matters a great deal in your health, she said. Thats not just wishful thinking. Its science.

PATRICE APODACA is a former Newport-Mesa public school parent and former Los Angeles Times staff writer. She lives in Newport Beach.
Mayor Diane Dixon, after initially supporting the political campaign reforms proposed by Councilman Keith Curry, flip-flopped and opposed considering these reforms, prior to the passage of another election.

In addition, Dixon voted in favor of the removal of Councilman Curry as chairman of the Finance Committee because, in my opinion, he highlighted in the press some of her own campaign finance tactics. Mayor Dixons call to delay until after the next election considering these issues is both disingenuous and illogical.

What Dixon has not done, and should do now, is tell the voters exactly where she stands on the issues. The first reform is to make minor revisions to the wording of our campaign contribution limitation ordinance so that it can be enforced by the city attorney.

For 21 years and 10 election cycles, all candidates, winners and losers, challengers and incumbents, have scrupulously followed this law. Not until 2014, with Councilmen Peotter and Marshall Duffield, were violations of this ordinance reported.

Does the City Council really need a committee to tell it that the city should be able to enforce its own ordinances? Should we have another election cycle where there is ambiguity as to the enforceability of a law that could result in removal from office? The mayor should tell the voters whether she even supports this law.

Dixons proposed delay in considering the banning of fundraising more than a year before an election is even more illogical since the proposed reform does not affect candidates running in 2016. It applies to current council members, like Dixon, future candidates who are raising thousands of dollars from people and businesses currently transacting business with the city. This gives sitting council members an overwhelming fundraising advantage in the 2018 election.

I would like Dixon to explain to the voters the reasons for her opposition to closing the slate mail loophole to the campaign contribution limits, a loophole from which she and Team Newport greatly benefited.

Last, I would like Dixon to explain why she opposes the formal disclosure of the identity of the parties who employ lobbyists generally, the identity of the lobbyists so employed, and, who specifically, employs Team Newport campaign consultants to lobby the City Council.

The residents and voters of Newport Beach deserve a mayor who demonstrates integrity and leadership in resolving these issues and ensuring the fundamental fairness of our political system. The least that Dixon can do is tell the public where she stands on these important issues.

Kristin M. Cano

Corona del Mar

..

Religious practice: Give and you will receive

When I was in college, I had a particularly hard time with one of my math courses. As I struggled through this class, one day I happened to meet my professor in the hall and told him the trouble I was having. I was expecting that he would make an effort to help me in some way so that I could more easily grasp the concepts and be able to use them.

But he didnt take the bait.

Instead, he told me that when he was going through the same class he too found it difficult. Like me, he also reached out to his professor, and his professor told him he needed to buckle down, study more and make sure to do all of the homework. By doing so, the professor had said, he would experience a breakthrough and finally achieve understanding. And he did.

The message was clear. I had to buckle down, study more and do all my homework!

Perhaps its also a message that needs to be heard in religious circles in our current society, since a recent Pew Research Center Report on Religion and Public Health concluded that, Highly religious Americans are happier and more involved with family but are no more likely to exercise, recycle, or make socially conscious choices.

What this study suggests is that there is little difference between those who regularly attend worship services and practice religion and those who do not, when it comes to making outward lifestyle choices. And so it makes sense to me that religious attendance and practice is declining in every age group, education level, region, and gender in the US.

What Ive found true over the years  just like with my math class  is that I need to study and actually live the spiritual truths that I find and understand. As I make these spiritual truths an integral part of every aspect of my life, my religion becomes vibrant and alive  and then a necessary part of my life. Over 100 years ago, author Mary Baker Eddy and the founder of Christian Science wrote, Mind-science teaches that mortals need not be weary in well doing. It dissipates fatigue in doing good. Giving does not impoverish us in the service of our Maker, neither does withholding enrich us.

Less weariness is not all that comes about from giving instead of withholding. The power of living itself can be upheld by constantly searching for spiritual truth. For instance, a CNN poll authored by Corina Storrs found that women nurses who attended religious services regularly had a death rate 33% lower than non church-going women. And there are those who are finding ways to encourage this spiritual search. In their book, Essential, Thom and Sam Rainer strongly recommend that churches not water down Scripture and instead search for ways to be relevant by making the Gospel messages applicable to present culture.

The words and works of Jesus are indeed relevant to todays world, because the gospel message of Gods love for all is as timeless as our need for healing. And thats why it is possible, perhaps inevitable, that the seemingly downward trend in current religious practice can be reversed  because the deepest life satisfaction comes through learning the value of what Eddy calls the power of being magnanimous.

Or, as Jesus put it: Dont hold back  give freely, and youll have plenty poured back into your lap  a good measure, pressed down, shaken together, brimming over. Youll receive in the same measure you give.

Don Ingwerson

Laguna Beach

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The City Council on Tuesday signed off on plans to construct a four-story medical-office building on Colorado Street, one of the first projects to gain approval since the last of a series of mixed-use developments in downtown.

Slated to be built on the site of a carpet store at 500 E. Colorado St. and a surface parking lot, the council voted 4-0 to demolish properties on the project site to make way for the 27,000-square-foot structure.

NEWSLETTER: Stay up to date with whats going on in your community >>

The project lies within the borders of the Downtown Specific Plan zone, which requires all proposals to head to the council for review instead of commissions such as the Design Review Board. The plan, adopted in 2006, allowed for construction of large-scale projects to create a more prominent downtown.

Councilman Ara Najarian voted against nearly all major mixed-use development projects, such as the 494-unit Next on Lex and 235-unit Modera, because he thought downtown was getting too crowded. However, he felt the medical-office building would be a good fit and praised the projects use of glass throughout the building.

What we are seeing, especially with our three hospitals continuing to grow and diversify, is a need for additional medical-office space in town.  Glendale City Manager Scott Ochoa

I usually dont like the modern style. I think the use of glass makes it very unique  Colorado is one of our signature streets. I think this street is where this type of structure belongs.

Councilman Zareh Sinanyan agreed, saying the glass walls are a welcome change from the types of designs hes seen in other parts of downtown.

"[The project] is not massive. Its not like these panels of concrete which all of the new buildings were building in Glendale have, he said. Theyre supposed to be modern buildings, but they really arent. Theyre heavy-looking buildings.

Sinanyan added that the medical-office buildings design was not oppressive.

The structure will have an L-shape that allows for open space on the street frontage, even more space than zoning code requires.

The surface lot will remain, and there will also be a subterranean parking lot built underneath it. The two combined will have 156 parking spaces, according to a planning staff report.

There will also be room for ground-floor retail. The building will be operated by the company ProHealth.

City Manager Scott Ochoa told council members he felt the proposal on the table would further economic activity in Glendale.

What we are seeing, especially with our three hospitals continuing to grow and diversify, is a need for additional medical-office space in town, he said.

--

Arin Mikailian, arin.mikailian@latimes.com

Twitter: @ArinMikailian

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Its the best free show in Las Vegas, and its happening early Tuesday. After a nine-year gap, a once-famous resort along the Strip is about to come tumbling down.

The 24-story Monaco Tower at the Riviera, which closed last spring, will vanish within a minute or two after explosives are detonated about 2 a.m. Tuesday.

A second tower, the Monte Carlo (not to be confused with the hotel-casino resort of the same name), is slated for implosion sometime in August.

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The building is located at 2901 Las Vegas Blvd. If you want to watch, know that police make sure visitors and locals are kept at a safe distance from the implosion.

The Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority, which now owns the historic hotel, says Riviera Drive and a portion of Las Vegas Boulevard will be blocked off.

Guests at the SpringHill Suites Las Vegas Convention Center, which faces the Strip, will have a birds-eye view of the implosion. Located at Riviera Drive and Paradise Road, the hotel is directly east of the Riviera.

A recent check of the hotels website revealed that high-floor, king-bed suites priced at $139 are still available for Tuesday.

Some guests at the Westgate resort, the former the Las Vegas Hilton also along Paradise Road, also may have a good view.

The practice of imploding hotels instead of demolishing them started in 1993 with the demise of the north tower at the Dunes, where the Bellagio is now located.

In 2007, the Stardust and the New Frontier were brought down using explosive charges.

The Riviera, which opened in 1955, regularly hosted some of the biggest names in show biz. The visitors bureau intends to use the land to expand the citys convention center.

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Heres a ticket to Hong Kong from LAX that will cost you less than a round-trip fare to New York, but you must buy it by June 15: $464 round trip, including all taxes and fees, on Air China. It is for travel from Sept. 1 to Dec. 8. It does not have a minimum stay, but you may not stay longer than six months. You must buy your ticket at least 30 days in advance of your trip, and the fare is subject to availability.

Info: Air China, (800) 882-8122, www.airchina.us

Source: Airfarewatchdog.com

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Political turmoil, civil unrest and food insecurity are among the myriad challenges burdening Africa, creating a sometimes uninviting environment for foreign investment, political partnerships and travel.

In her role as assistant secretary of State leading the Bureau of African Affairs, Linda Thomas-Greenfield has to navigate a minefield of tough issues. But with more than three decades as a career foreign service officer that has included an ambassadorship to Liberia, and postings in Kenya, Gambia and Nigeria, she remains optimistic about the continents future.

Africa is on the rise. Africa has extraordinary potential, Thomas-Greenfield during a recent interview with The Times, in which she shared some of her views on U.S.-Africa relations and her vision for the continent.

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The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

To what extent is the U.S. playing catch-up when it comes to trade and investment in Africa?

I absolutely disagree that were playing catch-up. We have been on the African continent since the beginning. In many countries we were among the first countries to recognize the independence of African countries and American companies were there at the start. I would argue just the opposite, that other countries are playing catch-up and they are playing catch-up at full speed. But we have always been engaged in Africa. Weve been investing in Africa and we have been committed to Africa.

Why exactly should American businesspeople want to invest in Africa given the many challenges that exist on the continent?

They should invest in Africa because there are missed opportunities. Why do businesses invest? They invest to make money. There are opportunities to make money in Africa. [The continent] has tremendous resources. The greatest resource is the people, but they also have natural resources that companies should be interested in investing in and producing.

How important is the continents powerhouse, Nigeria, to the United States and how do you define the partnership between the two countries?

We have a very close and deliberate partnership with Nigeria. Why? Nigeria is the largest country on the continent, the largest population, they have the largest economy on the continent and Nigeria is a leader. We want to partner and engage with Nigeria, not just to work with them on issues that are important to Nigeria, but to work with them on issues that are important to the region. Nigeria is an example to the rest of the continent. The recent election said everything to Africa and the world that Nigeria was ready to play at the top of its game.

How specifically is the U.S. helping Nigeria in terms of combating terrorism and extremism?

We are working very closely with them on this issue. We have directly provided training to battalions of their soldiers to help them in preparing to fight [the Islamist militant group] Boko Haram. We have been providing information sharing ... on intel related to Boko Haram. We have provided equipment and capacity building. We are also working in the humanitarian sector to ensure that people who are in need are getting the necessities for maintaining a standard of living.

To what extent does the U.S. link its assistance to Nigeria to the governments human rights record?

Human rights are for us a core value. It plays in everything we do on the continent of Africa. So we have worked very closely with the government to ensure that they are aware of our concerns about allegations of human rights violations by their military and by other members of their government. We will not train any military units that have allegations of human rights violations connected to them. And we look very closely at the equipment that we are providing to ensure that it cannot be used in a way that will harm communities.

A year ago the Nigerian government had requested Cobras [attack helicopters] and we decided that we would not provide them. So we are conscious about human rights. But we also know that we have to work with the Nigerians because they are dealing with a devastating terrorist organization.

Corruption permeates every level of Nigerian society. How is the U.S. holding Nigerias feet to the fire when it comes to tackling corruption?

President [Muhammadu] Buhari [of Nigeria], when he was elected last year, announced that he had three major priorities at the start. One was to address the issues of the economy, the second was to address the issue of terrorism, and the third was to deal with corruption. And he has been very aggressive in his approach to corruption, and we have been equally aggressive in stating that we will not accept, or in any way allow for, corrupt officials to get support from the U.S. government. So for us, corruption is at the top of our agenda.

But I will say that corruption is not synonymous with Africa. Corruption exists in other countries in the world and it has the same devastating impact.

Supporters celebrate after the May 2015 inauguration of Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari in Abuja, the capital. (Pius Utomi Ekpei / AFP/Getty Images )

How big a priority is the resettlement of African refugees for the Obama administration?

We have a very generous program to bring African refugees to the United States. And many of those refugees within the second generation are in the middle class. They do quite well in the United States. So its been extraordinarily sad for me to hear all the negative press were hearing about refugees. The program is well-organized. Refugees are vetted thoroughly. And refugees, when they come to the United States, contribute to our society and we need to continue to recognize that part of our refugee program, whether its African refugees or refugees from other parts of the world.

Whats your long-term prognosis for Africa?

I am an eternal optimist. You see all the signs. And the biggest sign in Africa are their young people, who are extraordinarily ambitious. They are engaged and they want to see their continent improve.

We have a program in the U.S. government, the Young African Leaders Initiative  where a thousand young Africans come to the United States and spend five weeks of intense leadership training. And every time I meet those young people my optimism rises for Africa.

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As Bangladeshi police began a week-long offensive against suspected Islamist militants, an elderly Hindu man was hacked to death Friday in the countrys northwest in the latest killing to be blamed on extremists.

The victim, Nityaranjan Pandey, 62, was attacked while on his morning walk in Pabna district, where he has volunteered at a Hindu ashram for the past 40 years, residents said.

The acting general secretary of the ashram, Sri Jugol Kishore Ghosh, said he could not understand why Pandey was targeted shortly before 7 a.m. outside a mental hospital.

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We are yet to understand why they killed a person like Pandey who is such a gentle man, but weak from diabetes, Ghosh said.

Pandey was the fourth person in the past week to be killed in a series of targeted attacks by machete-wielding assailants against religious minorities, secularists, foreigners, gay rights activists and others that began more than a year ago but has accelerated in recent months. Three days earlier, a 69-year-old Hindu priest was hacked to death in the southwestern district of Jhenaidah.

Islamic State said it had carried out that killing, one of many that the militant organization has claimed in recent months. Al Qaedas branch in the Indian subcontinent has also claimed several killings, raising the specter of international jihadism in this predominantly Muslim nation of 160 million people.

But Bangladeshs government has rejected any allegation that international terror groups are active in the country and blamed the attacks on political rivals.

Prime Minister Sheik Hasina told a news conference this week that she had evidence that political parties were behind the killings. While she did not specify names, in the past she and members of her government have blamed the Jamaat-e-Islami, the countrys leading Islamist party, for carrying out or sponsoring the attacks, which Jamaat has denied.

A day earlier, police announced they would begin a seven-day crackdown against Islamist militants across the country. News reports said police detained several hundred people, including members of Jamaat-e-Islami and its student wing, Islami Chatra Shibir, from various parts of the country.

On Sunday, the wife of a senior police official who had conducted raids against militant groups was killed in the port city of Chittagong. Since then, police have conducted raids and engaged in shootouts with suspected militants, reportedly killing at least nine people.

At least seven of those killed were members of Jamaatul Mujahidin Bangladesh, or JMB, a banned militant group, the independent Bangladesh Pratidin newspaper reported.

Security analysts had warned that attacks could increase during Ramadan, the Muslim holy month that began this week, as militants seek to make a statement.

But as Hasina, the head of the secular Awami League party, has clamped down on free speech in recent months, experts worry that the police crackdown could offer another pretext for her government to target its political opponents, including Jamaat-e-Islami.

Authorities until now have made scant arrests in the killings, saying some suspects have left the country, and appear powerless to stop further attacks.

The official response is increasingly unsettling to Bangladeshs allies, including the United States, which views the country as an ally against counter-terrorism and has refrained from criticizing Hasinas government publicly.

A Christian man was also killed in the northern district of Natore earlier this week.

Binoy Jyoti Kundu, general secretary in Pabna for the Bangladesh Hindu Buddhist Christian Unity Council, a group that advocates for the rights of religious minorities, said the attacks were a plan to destabilize our country. Hindus are the largest religious minority in Bangladesh, with slightly less than 9% of the population, according to a 2011 census.

A police official in Pabna, Abdullah al Hassan, said Pandeys body was handed over to ashram authorities after a post-mortem.

Special correspondent Khan reported from Dhaka and staff writer Bengali from Mumbai, India.

shashank.bengali@latimes.com

Follow @SBengali on Twitter for more news from South Asia
Hillary Clinton earned plenty of banner headlines in the United States this week for becoming the first woman to clinch a major partys nomination for president.

That achievement was hailed in some parts of the world, though viewed as less-than-remarkable elsewhere; America, after all, would not be the first major country to have a female leader. In Britain, which elected Margaret Thatcher as prime minister in the 1970s, an online poll from the Guardian newspaper asked readers if Clinton had finally helped women shatter the glass ceiling. The query received 75% no votes.

British-born media personality Tina Brown urged Clinton to avoid likability and instead imitate the Iron Lady Thatcher.

See the most-read stories this hour >>

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Mrs. Thatcher had no likability quotient, Brown, former editor of the New Yorker, said on an interview on BBC Radio 4. Likability does matter but I think authenticity matters more.

In other nations, some were wary of Clintons hawkish record, while others fretted more about a Donald Trump presidency.

In Germany, Clinton is being welcomed as a strong competitor to defeat Trump, who is widely disliked there.

I feel sick whenever I think that Trump could become president and in control of the nuclear codes, columnist Franz Josef Wagner wrote in Germanys biggest-selling newspaper, Bild. Hillary Clinton, please save us from this man. Please save America. By saving America youll save the world. What a wonderful thought to think that the fate of the world could end up in the hands of a woman.

One March poll found that 78% of Germans would vote for Democrat Clinton compared with 6% for Republican standard-bearer Trump.

Clinton is seen in Germany as someone who would have a steady hand, Thomas Jaeger, a political scientist at Cologne University, said in an interview. No matter who you talk to in Germany in any of the parties, most people say they hope the hell that Clinton beats Trump in November.

Mexico City residents were similarly looking forward to Clintons matchup with Trump in November.

Hillarys candidacy gives Mexicans a breather after the craziness of Donald Trump, said Guillermo Garcia, a 40-year-old engineer. All the hate he is generating against Mexicans is very worrisome. I believe that Hillary brings hope.

Of course its good news, said Rosalia Sandoval, a 21-year-old law student, who worries she wont be able to study in the U.S. if Trump is elected. Shes an intelligent woman and knows Mexico, and it appears that she supports immigration.

Federico Lopez, a 45-year-old merchant, said he hoped the senora beats Trump.

A Trump win would not suit our countrymen there, Lopez said of Mexican immigrants in the U.S. Theyre very worried about getting deported and are putting their hope in the senora. I hope she wins the elections and becomes president of her country for the good of all Mexicans there.

The mood was more divided in the Middle East. Clintons victory dominated coverage on Israeli radio, Internet and television, with most media noting the historic moment in American politics.

The Clinton brand is very strong in Israel, said Stephen Miller, an Israeli American pollster and political strategist, noting that she is seen as strongly pro-Israel and as a leader who would be tough on terrorism. She is someone who is very familiar with the maps and the leaders of the region  and has received very positive coverage in Israel.

Surveys show that a plurality of Israelis favor Clinton over Trump.

With Clinton, people feel secure that we know what she is about. Shes not going to pull anything on us, said Tal Schneider, an Israeli political analyst and blogger. Referring to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, he added, Bibi knows her and she knows Bibi. And even if there are some bumps, we know what to expect.

Not surprisingly, theres much less enthusiasm toward Clinton among Palestinians, who see her approach to the conflict with Israel as a continuation of previous administrations and their perceived bias favoring Israel.

I dont think theres any excitement. The reception is generally negative, first of all because of her statements during the campaign, which have been negative toward the Palestinians, said Ghassan Khatib, the vice president at Birzeit University in the West Bank.

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When she was secretary of State she wasnt balanced -- which is the case for any U.S. presidential candidate, Khatib said. The impression among Palestinians is that Hillary is going to be as biased against the Palestinians as all previous American presidents.

In Pakistan, Huma Baqai, a Karachi-based political analyst and expert on international affairs, was similarly cool toward a Clinton presidency.

She will adopt stricter policies towards Pakistan as she is very close to the Zionist lobby, Baqai said. Whats more, because of Trump, the playing fields in this election are already tilted against Muslims and Pakistan, Baqai added.

The mood was also tepid among Syrian rebels, who have been hoping for more support from Washington in their struggle against the government of President Bashar Assad. Col. Mohammad Ahmad of the Levant Front, said the U.S. had been stalling with its policies on Syria.

Hillary says shell change things as an election promotion, nothing more, Ahmad said.

God could bring about good even through a mangy goat, but with regards to the Americans, the policy of the country is drawn up beforehand, and the president is only the executor, said Maj. Bilal Harba, official spokesman of the Homs Liberation rebel faction. We hope Clintons policy will be more responsible and decisive than that of Obamas, but I expect shell continue in the same path -- but with a bit more firmness.

matt.pearce@latimes.com

Pearce reported from Los Angeles. Times staff writer Shashank Bengali contributed from Islamabad. Special correspondents Christina Boyle contributed from London; Nabih Bulos from Amman, Jordan; Erik Kirschbaum from Berlin; Joshua Mitnick from Tel Aviv; and Cecilia Sanchez from Mexico City.

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The excitement in the spokeswomans voice was palpable even over the shaky phone connection.

We are entering Duma now, Khawla Mattar reported Friday from war-torn Syria, where she works for the United Nations envoy there. Its the first time weve been there since 2014.

The Damascus suburb, under siege by government troops, was finally receiving badly needed food aid. A day earlier, U.N. and Syrian Red Crescent convoys delivered food to the nearby suburb of Daraya, which is held by rebels but had been cut off by government troops since 2012.

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These are breakthroughs, Mattar said.

Sieges have been an important tactic in the five-year Syrian crisis, used primarily by forces loyal to President Bashar Assad but also by rebels vowing to end his rule.

Typically, troops set up roadblocks and checkpoints to control the movement of people and goods in the area. Massive shortages of food and other items have resulted, along with the rise of smuggling operations and profiteers who prey on desperate local populations.

In May, the International Syria Support Group, a 20-nation coalition working to end the war in Syria, vowed to start air drops by June 1 if the government did not allow humanitarian supplies to enter freely.

On Thursday, U.N. mediator Staffan de Mistura said at a news conference in Geneva that the U.N. had approval to enter 15 out of 17 besieged areas. Mattar said that permission had also been granted for deliveries to a 16th area, the suburb of Waer in Homs province.

The convoy to Daraya consisted of nine trucks that delivered medicine, hygiene kits and a months supply of food for 2,400 people, the U.N. said. The food came in individual parcels, each containing rice, lentils, chickpeas, sugar, bulgur wheat and cooking oil.

The U.N. World Food Program said it had also delivered wheat flour bags to feed the entire population for a month.

A once vibrant town of roughly 78,000 people and the supposed site of the apostle Pauls epiphany on his way to Damascus, Daraya has witnessed some of the heaviest fighting in the Syrian war. The U.N. estimates that only 4,000 people remain there, though activists say there are twice that many.

The assistance is not enough, Malak Rifaii, an activist on the anti-government Local Council of Daraya, said in a phone interview Friday. It wont be possible to give a food parcel for every person here, so well have to distribute less to the families to it can be enough for everyone.

For the person who in the last period has only had soup they will find it great, he said. Its not a quantum leap but its definitely a good first step.

By U.N. calculations, the food deliveries covered only 60% of Darayas needs. Mattar said the Syrian government promised that whatever we had brought in last night we would be able to top up before the end of Ramadan.

But in a sign of the fragility of the arrangement, the U.N. reported that government forces shelled Daraya even as the aid convoy entered the town.

The shelling started and we had to intervene with the coordination center, Russia and the Americans, Mattar said. The U.S. and Russia have a joint operation for monitoring the war.

Rifaii said that clashes continued Friday, with government forces dropping barrel bombs and firing missiles on the town.

Bulos is a special correspondent.
All material is subject to strictly enforced copyright terms & conditions and cannot be repurposed or reproduced.  19882022 Latin American Financial Publications Inc.
In a TV interview broadcast on 9 June Brazils suspended president, Dilma Rousseff, said that the people would have to be consulted about her mandate in the event of her surviving an impending impeachment trial in the federal senate.

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The U.S. House of Representatives passed the PROMESA Act, which addresses Puerto Rico's debt crisis, but in the process also allows the commonwealth's minimum wage to drop to $4.25.

PROMESA: What's in the House Bill?

Members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus (CHC) were prepared for a lengthy Thursday as the Puerto Rico Oversight, Management, and Economic Stability Act (PROMESA) (H.R. 5278) was scheduled for a vote. The bill, also would allow the creation of an oversight board of Puerto Rico's debt and allow the commonwealth to restructure its debt, which has climbed over $70 billion. The aforementioned oversight board will be responsible in approving the governor's fiscal plan, annual budgets and enforce budgets.

PROMESA also includes a provision affecting the island's minimum wage, specifically for Puerto Ricans -- who are U.S. citizens -- at 25 years old and younger.

Lowest Minimum Wage in the U.S.

One of the controversial PROMESA provisions in the bill would make the commonwealth the home to the cheapest labor across the United States. The federal minimum wage is $7.25, but PROMESA will allow the island's wage to dip to $4.25, for at least four years, but, important to note, only for people 25 years old and younger.

Could the minimum wage increase?

The minimum wage can increase higher from $4.25 through the island's governor, but only if approved by the oversight board.

U.S. Rep. Norma Torres, D-Calif, a member of the CHC, introduced an amendment to PROMESA on early Thursday evening, which would eliminate the lowered minimum wage provision.

In a statement prior to the amendment's vote, Torres said, "The minimum wage provision in this bill is bad for young workers, and it's bad for Puerto Rico. It does not fix the island's problems and in the long run, may make them worse. The island is already experiencing a mass exodus of young people. Lowering wages will only compel more young people to leave and will have a detrimental impact on Puerto Rico's current and future workforce, its tax base, and ultimately its ability to repay its debt."

Torres added that it's understandable that sacrifices must occur, but it shouldn't happen to hard-working Puerto Rican youths.

The California congresswoman's amendment failed, 225-196. All 225 opposition votes came from Republicans. As a result, the lowered minimum wage provision will remain in the bill as it will proceed into the U.S. Senate.

Bipartisan Support But Split Among Latino Lawmakers

Throughout Thursday, lawmakers, from both major political parties spoke about PROMESA. While there was bipartisan support, including from House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wisc.; House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.; and CHC Chair Linda Sanchez, D-Calif., there were also opposition from prominent Latinos such as House Democratic Chair Xavier Becerra, D-Calif., and Rep. Luis Gutierrez, D-Ill.

Prior to the vote, Sanchez explained that PROMESA is not a perfect bill, explicitly acknowledging her opposition to the minimum wage, overtime protections and retirement pension benefits provisions.

"As I have done throughout my career, and throughout this process, I will continue to press for an increased minimum wage, expanded overtime protections, and adequate pension funding for all workers," Sanchez said in a statement, who also shared concern about the structure and function of the oversight board.

Despite the aforementioned concerns, Sanchez supported H.R. 5278, otherwise the commonwealth could encounter further financial issues.

Gutierrez opposed PROMESA. Gutierrez said the people of Puerto Rico deserve better and had urged fellow Democrats to oppose the structure of the oversight board. Speaking in Spanish, he said, "Esta no es mi promesa; mi promesa es que el pueblo de Puerto Rico se respete y que no se trate como si fueran colonizados esclavos."

Translated into English, Gutierrez said, and added, "This is not my promise; my promise is that the people of Puerto Rico be respected, that we don't treat them as if they were colonized slaves, I reject this bill. Let me tell you that my promise is clear; to continue my work to defend Puerto Rico. As it is said by the Puerto Rican people: 'Precious, it does not matter what tyrant treats you with bad intentions, precious you'll be.'"

In the end, PROMESA passed that House with 297-127 -- with 159 Democrats and 139 Republicans voting in favor.

Following the vote, Rep. Raul Grijalva, D-Ariz., ranking member of the House Natural Resources Committee, said he's relieved PROMESA passed with bipartisan support but acknowledged H.R. 5278 is not the bill he or fellow Democrats would have written.

Grijalva said, "I still think the bill fails to provide enough material assistance to the people of Puerto Rico, the Oversight Board is too powerful and the provisions undermining minimum wage and the overtime rules don't belong in the bill. Like many of my colleagues, I had to accept that there was no other avenue available to address the debt crisis in Puerto Rico. Compromises had to be made to get the bill through a Congress we do not control."

"We overcame a major hurdle today," Grijalva said on Thursday.

The White House commended the House of Representatives for passing PROMESA, although also noting it's not a perfect bill but highlighted the bipartisan efforts. The White House called on the Senate to "act expeditiously" in reviewing and voting on the bill so President Barack Obama can sign before a July 1 debt payment deadline.

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For the latest updates, follow Latin Post's Michael Oleaga on Twitter: @EditorMikeO or contact via email: m.oleaga@latinpost.com.

Update: Article amended to correct title of Speaker of the House Paul Ryan.
Latino lawmakers from the Congressional Hispanic Caucus (CHC) took aim at Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump on Friday morning over his inquiry of a Hispanic judge's ethnicity and unfounded bias in the Trump University alleged fraud case.

"Blatantly Racist," "Wrong," "Terrible"

U.S. Rep. Filemon Vela, D-Texas, who represents the state's 34th Congressional District, said the idea for a presidential candidate to make a "blatantly racist" attack on an American citizen is unfathomable.

Vela is referring to Judge Gonzalo Curiel, who is presiding over the alleged fraud case concerning Trump's Trump University program. Trump has questioned Curiel's fairness due to being "Mexican." Trump has been criticized for acknowledging Curiel's ethnicity, when in fact Curiel was born in Indiana from Mexican parents.

Trump insisted that his comments about Curiel were misconstrued, but Vela acknowledged that the presidential candidate has yet to apologize or retract his statements, which has also been called racist by Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, R-Wisc.

"What I believe is that Speaker Ryan needs to get Donald Trump to apologize and retract those statements or he ought to withdraw his support -- his endorsement -- for Donald Trump to be president," said Vela during press call.

U.S. Rep. Juan Vargas, D-Calif., representing the Golden State's 51st Congressional District, which borders the southern U.S. and Mexico border, referred to Trump as the "Republican Messiah." He said Trump seems to have "poisoned the well" for many of Republican colleagues who now want to follow the New York businessman.

Vargas, who has known Curiel for more than 25 years, also called on Ryan to speak to Trump about the ethnic remarks of Curiel, and "hopefully it will stop the onslaught-related attacks on Latinos, those of us of Mexican descent and from other Latin American countries."

Vargas said Curiel does take his job seriously and is role model for anyone who wants to serve in the legal field. According to the San Diegan, to see a presidential candidate attack a judge like Curiel is "wrong" and "terrible."

"I wish people get to know the judge -- everyone to know him, literally everyone respects him deeply. He's a very integral guy, very good human being and a person that has lots and lots of integrity. Again, I'm very saddened to see him being attacked this way."

U.S. Rep. Luis Gutierrez, D-Ill., spoke about the increased levels of citizenship application rates and voter registration within the Latino community and how Trump has played a role in such growth.

"Every time he opens his mouth, when he says something about Latinos, he digs a deeper hole, not only for himself -- he digs a bigger whole for Republicans," said Gutierrez, adding that Trump's words have consequences and, that come Election Day in November, the increased and new voters will not be voting for Republicans.

Trump's Clarification & Defense

On June 7, Trump issued a lengthy statement about Curiel and the Trump University case.

"It is unfortunate that my comments have been misconstrued as a categorical attack against people of Mexican heritage," Trump said. "I am friends with and employ thousands of people of Mexican and Hispanic descent. The American justice system relies on fair and impartial judges. All judges should be held to that standard."

Trump added that he doesn't think an individual's heritage would make him or her impartial, but evidence in the case made him confident in questioning Curiel.

"I do not feel that one's heritage makes them incapable of being impartial, but, based on the rulings that I have received in the Trump University civil case, I feel justified in questioning whether I am receiving a fair trial," said Trump.

Trump added that the media made inaccuracies about the Trump University case, and still called for the case to be dismissed.

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For the latest updates, follow Latin Post's Michael Oleaga on Twitter: @EditorMikeO or contact via email: m.oleaga@latinpost.com.
[4:25 p.m. UPDATE:] In a release, LBPD adds that the decedent was Wylee Prichett, 20, of Lakewood. Although a motive for the shooting is still under investigation, LBPD indicates it is not believed to be gang related. [end update]

LBPD overnight Watch Commander Lt. Greg Schirmer tells LBREPORT.com (caveat: initial information) officers responded to a shots call at about 4:00 a.m. in the area of 64th St./Coronado Ave and found two shooting victims; one was transported to a hospital and is currently in stable condition; the other victim was deceased at the scene. No immediate suspect information; LBPD Homicide detectives are on-scene.

It's the sixth shooting -- of which three were fatal -- in various parts of NLB's 9th Council district since May 3.

May 30: Man (adult) shot, 100 block Gordon St. (southern tip Coolidge Triangle, 9th dist.)

May 25: Drive-by shooting, man hit, Orange Ave./61st St. (9th dist.)

May 21: 900 block E. Artesia: Gunfire exchanged between two suspects, one is hit (9th dist.)

May 15: Man is shot/killed area Orange Ave./61st St. (9th dist.)

May 3: 3300 block E. 65th (near Ramona Park), 16 year is shot/killed (9th dist.)

During this same roughly five week time period, Central LB had five shootings: three in the 6th district, one on the border of the 6th/2nd districts, and one at the western end of the 4th district (total includes two shootings with vehicles damaged but persons not hit.)
LOS ANGELESFree Speech Coalition has released a statement regarding the decision earlier this week from the Third Circuit Court of Appeals regarding the federal record-keeping and labeling law, 18 U.S.C. 2257, in which the Coalition is the lead plaintiff:

A three judge panel from the federal Third Circuit Court of Appeals sided with the adult industry this week, declaring that the 2257 record-keeping regulations, Reagan-era protocols that were expanded by the Bush Administration to harass legitimate adult producers, are a likely government restraint on free speech, and as such require the application of strict scrutinyan incredibly high bar for the government to overcome.

The Third Circuit took into consideration recent First and Fourth Amendment cases from the U.S. Supreme Court and has now directed a lower court on how to apply them with respect to our long-running challenge to 2257, said Reed Lee, an attorney and Free Speech Coalition board member. It is now very likely that FSCs First Amendment claims will succeed at last.

Eric Paul Leue, Executive Director of the Free Speech Coalition, said the ruling was a huge victory for the Coalitions members, connecting it to Februarys defeat of Cal/OSHAs newly proposed, and highly restrictive, condom-and-goggle regulations.

This is a huge victory for free speech, and our second major victory this year. This year marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of the founding of the Free Speech Coalition, and as then, we face major battles on multiple fronts. But our strength and vigor are still unparalleled, and the FSC will continue to fight for the rights, well-being and growth of the entire adult industry. When we stand united, we stand strong.

Jeffrey Douglas, FSC Board Chair, and Chairman Emeritus of the First Amendment Lawyers Association, said the regulations have harmed adult producers and performers.

The 2257 regulations have cost our industry millions of dollars in unjustified, pointless paperwork, endangering performers through unnecessary distribution of personal identification documents, all for no good reason. FSC has been fighting against this dreadful regulatory scheme for over twenty years. We are extremely grateful to our attorneys, Michael Murray and Lorraine Baumgardner for their extraordinary efforts and financial sacrifice for principle.

In a statement earlier this year, the Free Speech Coalition explained why it was so intent on fighting the regulations:

This isnt about keeping minors out of adult film. The industry is already incredibly stringent about age-verification, as the production of child pornography is not only morally and ethically despicable, it also carries a mandatory minimum of fifteen years in prison. A record-keeping requirement means nothing to a child pornographer. But for legitimate producers, the burdensome and byzantine requirements create numerous ways for producers to be prosecuted and harassed by law enforcement, that have nothing to do with the age of performers.

With 2257, if a form isnt complete, or youve misfiled, or you arent available when an inspector arrives, you can be prosecuted, and the stakes are incredibly high: any violation can result in a felony conviction with a prison term of up to five years."

The statement also included what was, at that time, the law's onerous Fourth Amendment search-and-seizure violations:

Whats more, 2257 allows the FBI the ability to arrive at your place of business without a warrant and demand access to your records at almost any time. The producer has no choice but to let the agents into their studio, office, or home, and to allow them to sift through the personal information contained in the records, for hours. In one case, the FBI visited a producer over two dozen times.

Even before Wednesdays decision, the Third Circuit panel had sharply limited the statutory inspection regime. In light of a new Supreme Court decision, yesterdays panel decision went even further in restricting those inspections. And as for the statute as a whole, yesterdays decision backs Section 2257 into the tightest corner known to American constitutional law.

Until any final ruling on the constitutionality of 2257, producers should continue to comply with the regulations. Anyone with questions about the regulations or compliance should contact Free Speech Coalition directly at [email protected].

Were tremendously encouraged by the success of the appeal, said Leue. Well be following up with members on how this benefits them directly.

Donations to Free Speech Coaltion may be made online here.
SACRAMENTOFree Speech Coalition has issued the following press release regarding Wednesday's hearing before the Arts and Labor Committee of the California legislature regarding the California Safer Sex in the Adult Film Industry Act, a ballot initiative which is sponsored by AIDS Healthcare Foundation and which is scheduled to appear on the November ballot:

Dozens of adult performers from across the state descended on the California State Capitol Wednesday to speak out against a new ballot initiative that would allow any private citizen to sue an adult performer anytime a condom is not visible in an adult film.

At an informational hearing with the state legislature, performers called for the ballot initiative to be pulled all together. Many such as Ela Darling of APAC spoke passionately about their own experiences with stalkers and harassers, detailing how the enforcement provision of the law would empower those who wished to harm them.

This initiative is a disaster for the safety and well-being of performers and other industry workers, said Eric Paul Leue, Executive Director of the Free Speech Coalition. The proponents of this initiative can no longer pretend to not know the real effects this would have on performers lives, including the LGBTQ members of our community. We ask that the proponents pull the initiative before any performers or other workers are harmed.

Representatives of Michael Weinstein, the controversial proponent of the legislation, confirmed that performers could indeed be sued under the initiative.

That led legislators to raise other concerns, including the possibility that the initiative would spur a cottage industry of for-profit lawsuits against performers. Because the initiative contains a rebuttable presumption that a condom was not used any time one can not be seen, there exists the possibility of multiple lawsuits against each adult film made in California.

This initiative creates liabilities for every part of the production and distribution chain, from performers and producers to cable companies and hotel networks, said Karen Tynan, an attorney for numerous adult clients, who spoke at the joint hearing. Were talking about tens of thousands of frivolous lawsuits. It is a legal nightmare for California.

The ballot initiative has been opposed by a wide variety of individuals and organizations, including the Adult Performer Advocacy Committee (APAC), AIDS Project Los Angeles, the San Francisco AIDS Foundation, the Free Speech Coalition, the San Francisco Democratic County Central Committee, the California Republican Party, and the Valley Industry and Commerce Association (VICA). The Los Angeles Commission on HIV has also recommended as part of its legislative slate that the LA Board of Supervisors oppose the measure. At the May 31 Board of Supervisors meeting, adult industry workers implored the Supervisors to follow that recommendation.

For further information, contact Mike Stabile, Communications Director, Free Speech Coalition, either by email at [email protected] or by phone at 818-650-1973.
Jun 10, 2016, 2:37pm ET

Hyundai delays Genesis brand's European introduction

European buyers will have to wait until at least 2020 to buy a Genesis.

Hyundai won't introduce its newly formed Genesis luxury division into the European market until early next decade, the South Korean automaker has revealed.

Hyundai will begin the roll-out of its new Genesis luxury brand in North America, China, the Middle East and South Korea later this year. However, it will be at least until 2020 until Europeans get a chance to buy a car from the Genesis brand.

According to Hyundai Europe Chief Operating Officer Thomas Schmid, the European delay is due to a powertrain issue. Genesis is presumably waiting for diesel engines to come online before it tries to conquer the European brands on their own turf.

"To launch a premium brand in Europe is a challenge and it's an even bigger challenge if you don't have the products you need for the market," Schmid told the Automotive News Europe. "Europe won't see it before 2019. The main reason is we need different powertrains.

Hyundai is also believed to be working on plug-in and electric drivetrains for the Genesis brands, which could substitute for diesels. Once Genesis has the requisite powertrains for Europe, it plans on introducing five distinct models there.

Live photo by Brian Williams.
NEW YORK CITYAward-winning adult star Adriana Chechik is returning to the Sapphire NYC main stage. For the first time in nearly eight months, the feature dance agency The Lee Network presents the popular performer in New York City on Saturday, June 11.

I always enjoy coming to Sapphire NYC, stated Adriana Chechik. Not only do I love seeing the regulars who come out, but its amazing when I get to make new fans. Sapphire is the classiest club, and everyone there treats me and all their feature dancers so well.

For one night only, fans will get to see Chechiks brand new act featuring her signature dance moves, sexy costumes, playful antics, and lots of surprises. Chechik will be available for lap dances, fan photos, and autographs between performances.

Adriana is always a big hit with Sapphire NYC audiences, said Tony Lee of The Lee Network. The clubs upscale look, classy clientele, and amazing amenities make it the ideal place to enjoy a world-class performer like Adriana Chechik.

Having joined the adult industry in 2013, the 24-year-old Pennsylvania native quickly earned the attention of adult studios and fans. The seven-time award-winners accomplishments include AVNs Best Anal Sex Scene and Most Outrageous Sex Scene awards and a NightMoves' Award for Best Body.

Chechik is represented by The Lee Network for feature dance appearances. Click here for a complete list of adult star talent represented by The Lee Network.

For more information about Chechiks appearance at Sapphire NYC, the clubs VIP amenities, including, dinner, and a private limo ride with the adult star, click here or call (212) 421-3600.
After a decade of neglect, the burned-out Bethlehem Silk Mill buildings should soon be coming down.

Michael Perrucci's Peron Development recently purchased the property and has plans to transform it into an $8.4 million, 88-unit apartment complex.

The project has been marked by many stops and starts after a 2006 arson gutted plans for Moravian College apartments on the site, just four months before the $15 million to $20 million redevelopment wrapped up.

The prior owner had full land development approval for the project. Peron plans to largely stay true to those plans.

The developer is proposing one less apartment unit and wants to change the facade of the buildings from all brick and flat roofed, said John Callahan, former Bethlehem mayor and director of business development for Florio Perrucci Steinhardt and Fader.

The Bethlehem Planning Commission on Thursday endorsed small changes to the project's facade.

Plans call for tearing down the existing buildings because they are too damaged. The original plan was to build one new building and retrofit the other but years of neglect make that impossible, Callahan has said.

Resident Ellen Marx, whose Fairview Street home abuts the property, urged the commission to get the high weeds cleaned up and make Peron deliver on the past promise that residents would get to park in the lots.

Callahan agreed that the property is in disgraceful shape, but noted that Peron recently took ownership of the site. The developer is working with the city to get some abandoned cars removed that are impeding work, he said.

"We're going to move very quickly on demoing the building," Callahan said.

He expects them to be pulling demolition permits shortly and that work on the site should begin in the coming weeks.

City Planning Director Darlene Heller assured Marx that nearby residents, who have permit parking, will be able to park in the lots.

The developer is billing the project as the Silk Mill Apartments at Moravian College and targeting graduate students and millenials who want high-end living close to the downtown.

Peron has had discussions with the Bethlehem college about its housing needs but there's no affiliation.

There are already 61 apartments at adjacent 238 W. Goepp St., units redeveloped by Abraham Atiyeh, who has since sold the building and undeveloped land.

Atiyeh bought the five-building complex in 2008. In 2012, he sold the 61 apartments to a real estate company and sold the remaining land where 90 more units were planned to former business partner Ramzi Haddad and two of his business partners.

But Haddad did not complete the work before a December 2015 deadline set by the authority.

Haddad is ensnared in Allentown's pay-to-play scandal and pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit bribery in September.

Sara K. Satullo may be reached at ssatullo@lehighvalleylive.com.com. Follow her on Twitter @sarasatullo. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.
A Bethlehem church has asked a Northampton County judge to prevent a hostile takeover by the Presbyterian Church USA.

According to the injunction request and lawsuit filed Friday, the First Presbyterian Church of Bethlehem at 2344 Center St. is in the process of trying to separate from the national group and from the Lehigh Presbytery.

The suit says a recent poll indicates members favor realigning with a different Presbyterian denomination.

The lawsuit doesn't specify why the local church wants to split from the regional and national group, but a letter to the editor suggests the dispute centers on acceptance of same-sex marriage and the ordination of LGBT persons by Presbyterian Church USA.

The national organization amended its Book of Order over the last five years to permit both practices.

Representatives of the local church and national organization didn't immediately return calls for comment. A woman at the First Presbyterian Church of Bethlehem said a news release would be posted shortly on the church website.

Rev. David J. Duquette of the Lehigh Presbytery said he just obtained a copy of the lawsuit but hasn't had a chance to review it.

He said the dispute is largely due to differing opinions on same-sex marriage and LGBT ministers. He said a significant minority of First Presbyterian Church of Bethlehem wants to stay with Presbyterian Church USA, and the Lehigh Presbytery wants to do what it can to maintain its long affiliation with the Bethlehem church.

The lawsuit says locals have held the deed for the First Presbyterian Church of Bethlehem since 1952. Local church leaders have maintained the church and surrounding 50 acres since then, the suit says.

The local church fears the Presbyterian Church USA will throw out elected leaders and lock the doors until a pro-national group of leaders can assume control of the church.

The lawsuit says the national group would rely on a "self-written spiritual rulebook" as the basis for taking control even though the deed is held by the current leadership.

The lawsuit asks a judge to prevent outside leadership from wresting control of the the church from its elected local leaders.

Rudy Miller may be reached at rmiller@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @RudyMillerLV. Find Easton area news on Facebook.
A New Jersey man was arrested Thursday, accused of being one of two perpetrators of a gunpoint robbery Feb. 28 in Bethlehem.

Bethlehem police said they arrested one suspect, a 23-year-old from New Jersey, in a Feb. 28, 2016, robbery after tracking the car used in the incident. (Lehighvalleylive.com file photo)

Nathan D. Bragg-Jones, 23, of Bloomfield, Essex County, and his accomplice allegedly pulled up in a car about 10:45 p.m. that Sunday alongside the two victims, who were in a vehicle parked in the 400 block of Carlton Avenue on South Side.

One of them asked for marijuana from the victims, who said they didn't have any, before the assailants exited their silver Nissan Altima and walked up to the victims' car, according to Bethlehem police.

One assailant pointed a handgun at the face of the male victim, who was with his girlfriend, and demanded, "Give me all you got," according to court records.

Both victims turned over their iPhone 6 Plus phones, one colored rose and the other golden, along with the male victims' wallet.

As the assailants headed back to the Altima and fled, the victims observed one was wearing a blue hooded sweatshirt and the other, a red hooded sweatshirt, and they memorized part of the car's license plate.

Bethlehem police searched the letters and digits provided for the plate on any Altima within 35 miles of Bethlehem and found a match registered to two residents in Saylorsburg, Monroe County, according to court records.

One of the owners told police she had lent the Altima to Bragg-Jones and a second male, known to her only as A.J., about 7:30 or 8 p.m. Feb. 28, records say. They were wearing blue and red hooded sweatshirts, respectively, at the time, according to police. Upon returning the car about 5 a.m. Feb. 29, Bragg-Jones told the car's owner he had robbed a couple on South Side Bethlehem of their phones, credit cards and driver's licenses and showed her the iPhones, police said.

Police got a warrant May 9 for Bragg-Jones' arrest, and he was arraigned Thursday morning before District Judge Jacqueline Taschner on two counts each of robbery, conspiracy and simple assault. He was sent to Northampton County Prison in lieu of $150,000 bail with a preliminary hearing tentatively scheduled June 23 before District Nancy Matos Gonzalez in her South Side Bethlehem courtroom.

Court records do not identify Bragg-Jones' alleged accomplice or indicate charges were filed against anyone else in connection with the investigation.

Kurt Bresswein may be reached at kbresswein@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @KurtBresswein. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.
CHATSWORTH, Calif.Beautiful Layla Sin has signed another one-year exclusive contract with Penthouse that will keep her shooting for Penthouse only and send her around the world as the companys Brand Ambassador.

She was the August 2014 Penthouse Pet and went on to become the 2015 Penthouse Pet of the Year. The company has released several popular movies starring Layla and they keep her busy travelling the world for shoots and promoting the brand.

Shes just back from Hungary where she was shooting features for Penthouse directed by Stuart Canterbury. Later this month she will be off to Israel for a series of events with the Penthouse team.

Im super stoked to be sticking with Penthouse exclusively for another year, Layla said. I have had so many great experiences with the company and seen so many incredible places, there is nowhere else I would want to be. I feel at home at Penthouse and am grateful for the opportunities that have come with it.

For Easter this year Penthouse did a virtual reality shoot to present to potential buyers at the MIPTV broadcast trade show in Cannes. As Penthouses 2016 spokesmodel, Layla was in the center of the action that also included Pets Marica Hase and Christiana Cinn, Aidra Fox and many others15 in all.

The shoot went so well that Penthouse CEO Kelly Holland declared the company fully committed to VR.

These advances are absolutely amazing, Layla said. Its hard to believe that we have gone from fast-forwarding bulky VHS tapes to DVDs to digital to VR. Its a very exciting time to be in the adult industry.

See the story about Penthouses first virtual reality shoot on page 60 in June issue of AVN.

New DVDs starring Layla include Seduction (Penthouse), which features her with Jenna Sativa, and Hot & Horny Sorority Girls, which has a hot Layla/Jessa Rhodes scene.

To contact Layla about a directing a scene, email [email protected].

Fans may follow her on Twitter and Instagram, and may write to her at [email protected].
A Hellertown man previously convicted of possession of child pornography is now charged with the sexual abuse of a girl.

Jeffery T. Copeman, of the 500 block of Tobias Drive in Hellertown, is charged with sexual abuse of a child. He allegedly videotaped the abuse. He is also charged with six other related offenses.

According to court records, Hellertown Police Department Investigator Michael Dattilio began an investigation in April 2015 regarding allegations of sexual abuse of a child victim, now 14.

Dattilio learned in an interview with the victim that she and Copeman were acquainted, court records say.

When the victim was between the ages of seven and eight, records say, she frequently slept over at Copeman's residence. There, he would provide her with a white pill which intoxicated her in some form, records say.

On one occasion, the victim reports she woke up and saw herself naked on a nearby television in real time, Dattilio reported this in court records.

During another instance, court records say the victim reported sexual contact between Copeman and herself.

Records show Dattilio interviewed the son of the defendant and that the son reported seeing his father and the victim during a sexual encounter in one instance.

Copeman's wife told police Copeman gave a prescription sedative to the victim on multiple occasions, records say. She also reported he owned video-recording equipment, according to court documents.

In 2010, federal agents searched Copeman's home and found child pornography, records say. He was later convicted and sentenced to a minimum of five years in federal prison. He served at a federal correctional facility in Hopewell, Virginia.

Copeman was still incarcerated there when Dattilio filed charges in connection with the sexual assault on Jan. 20, 2016.

Copeman was released from the federal prison Tuesday, where officers from Riverside Regional Jail picked up Copeman, records show.

They held Copeman in their facility before he was retrieved by Hellertown Police Thursday, according to Lt. Buck Vargo from the sheriff's office in Prince George County, where the regional facility is located.

Copeman was arraigned Thursday before District Judge Daniel Corpora.

He set bail at $250,000, which Copeman was unable to post. He was sent to Northampton County Prison.

Copeman's other charges include unlawful sexual contact with a minor, corrupting a minor, endangering the welfare of a child, indecent assault of a person less than 13 years of age, indecent assault of a person substantially impaired and indecent exposure.

Ashleigh Albert is lehighvalleylive.com's Russell J. Flanagan Memorial news intern. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.
Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf visited Bethlehem on Friday, looking for answers to the state's heroin and opioid-painkiller crisis.

He met with the Lehigh Valley's coroners, some of the area's elected and law enforcement officials and those on the front lines of drug and alcohol treatment.

Sober since Dec. 20, 2013, Bangor area native and recovering heroin addict Nicholas Labar flew up Friday morning from his home in Florida to take part, and was joined by parent advocate Donna Jacobsen, whose 26-year-old daughter is in long-term recovery from heroin addiction.

"My main goal for coming is to really give people hope and to let people know you can get sober, even at a young age," said Labar, whose addiction began with prescribed painkillers for an injury at age 14 and raged until his 14th treatment center at age 21.

Wolf touted his proposal to spend $34 million during the fiscal year beginning July 1, matching an $18 million federal grant, to open 50 treatment centers designed to help re-integrate recovering addicts into society.

"This is not only an epidemic. At some of these roundtables, people have referred to this as a plague," Wolf said during the discussion hosted by Northampton Community College at the Fowler Family Southside Center.

Participants touched on the need to educate children about the dangers of opioid painkillers, the predominant route to heroin addiction, before they reach high school -- beginning with family talks and in elementary school. They also addressed the stigma of addiction and even of treatment centers, which neighborhoods including in Bethlehem have shunned.

Wolf likened addiction to typhus in the Middle Ages, when people considered the disease the mark of God, stymying treatment.

"This is as scary as typhus was," the governor said.

Northampton County Coroner Zachary Lysek said he has confirmed 42 drug overdoses in 2016 though late May. Lehigh County has seen 46 through May, Coroner Scott Grim said.

The ranks of overdose survivors far outpace those who die. Lehigh County alone has been averaging 450 confirmed drug overdoses a month at its six emergency departments, said Layne Turner, the county's administrator for drug and alcohol treatment.

Naloxone, sold under the brand name Narcan, has proved to be a useful tool in reviving those who overdose on opioid painkillers and heroin. Law enforcement, EMS and schools have gotten their supply without any tax dollars spent, Wolf said.

But the antidote has also given users confidence that they can be brought back, leading to "frequent flyers" that law enforcement, ambulance personnel and hospitals see, Bethlehem police Chief Mark DiLuzio said.

Lehigh County District Attorney Jim Martin reminded Wolf that while treatment is necessary, the crimes with which users feed their addiction demand punishment.

"We cannot ignore the fact that there are some really bad people out there preying on these victims," Wolf acknowledged.

Friday marked the second forum on opioid and heroin addiction hosted by Northampton Community College in eight days, following a discussion organized by state Rep. Marcia Hahn, R-Northampton, last week at the main campus in Bethlehem Township. State Rep. Dan McNeill, D-Lehigh, hosted two similar forums earlier this year, and both were in attendance Friday.

Wolf, a first-term Democrat, said there's bipartisan support in Harrisburg to tackle the problem and do more to address a scourge affecting the spectrum of ages and socioeconomic backgrounds.

State Sen. Lisa Boscola, D-Lehigh/Northampton, called on those in attendance to continue brainstorming and call her or state representatives with ideas.

"And I hope that it's not just about the $34 million at the post end of this problem," she said. "We always talk about the back-end solutions. We really need a front-end solution to this and how to prevent these kids from getting into opioid abuse to begin with.

"And I know the prescription drug companies probably won't like us too much, but too bad."

Kurt Bresswein may be reached at kbresswein@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @KurtBresswein. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.
Frances Garcia

Enrique Garcia, left, and Frances Garcia Enrique Garcia, 49, and Frances Garcia, 45, of Reading, shortly before 3:30 a.m. Monday, Feb. 16, 2016 were found by police gambling inside the Sands at 77 Sands Blvd. Police said the couple left two children locked inside a 2002 Honda Accord in the parking lot with the engine turned off. All the children had to keep warm were jackets, police said. 2. Pamela Sroka-Holzmann 3. Pamela Sroka-Holzmann Bethlehem PA 484-280-7586 pholzmann@lehighvalleylive.com

(Courtesy photos)

A Reading couple was put on probation Thursday for leaving two children outside in a freezing car while the gambled in a casino.

Enrique Garcia, 49, and Frances Garcia, 45, each was sentenced to a year of probation for the incident at Sands Casino Resort Bethlehem.

They left a 10-year-old girl and a 16-year-old girl in a car in the parking lot at 12:33 p.m. Feb. 15.

It was 11 degrees outside with a wind-chill factor of 1 degree and the girls only had jackets to keep them warm.

The Garcias checked on them at 1:35 a.m. and 2:35 a.m. before they were arrested at 3:21 a.m. They did not turn on the car or the heater for the girls.

The Garcias each pleaded guilty to recklessly endangering another person and were sentenced Thursday by Northampton County Senior Judge Leonard Zito.

Rudy Miller may be reached at rmiller@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @RudyMillerLV. Find Easton area news on Facebook.
An attorney for a murder suspect told a Northampton County judge he plans to ask for permission to hire an expert to verify the county coroner's determination that the death was a homicide.

Attorney James Brose maintains there's no way to prove 76-year-old Carrie Smith of Wilson Borough died in March 2012 as a result of the heart attack she suffered during a robbery on Jan. 15, 2012.

He told Judge Paula Roscioli on Friday he'll file court papers in about two weeks to request permission to hire the expert to clear Quadir S. "Avon" Taylor, 29, of Easton.

Taylor is the fourth suspect in the homicide.

Smith's granddaughter, Rebecca Johnson, and her boyfriend, Roger "Rogel" Suero, were each convicted of Johnson's murder and sentenced to life in prison.

The getaway driver, David Bechtold, was sentenced to one to two years in prison.

Taylor evaded charges until Johnson told police in May 2014 about his participation. Police said the group planned to use $35,000 in cash and $18,000 worth of jewelry taken from Smith to finance a massive marijuana purchase in Colorado.

Rudy Miller may be reached at rmiller@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @RudyMillerLV. Find Easton area news on Facebook.
Easton Area student hurt in fall, possibly a jump, from school bus

Authorities respond Thursday, June 9, 2016, to the 200 block of West Berwick Street on South Side Easton after a 14-year-old girl was hurt in a fall from the rear door of a school bus. Authorities were investigating whether she had jumped deliberately. (Courtesy photo | For lehighvalleylive.com)

UPDATE: Condition improves for girl in fall, possible jump, from bus

The 14-year-old Easton Area Middle School student who apparently jumped Thursday afternoon from the back of school bus was being treated for a head injury at Lehigh Valley Hospital in Salisbury Township, a school district official said.

Easton Area School District Director of Safe Schools and police Chief John Remaley said he didn't have a condition on the teenager who hasn't been named, but hoped to get more information when he talked again to her parents.

Doctors are taking all proper precautions in treating a head injury, Remaley said.

"Her condition is concerning," he said.

The teen was hurt about 12:20 p.m. when she went out the rear of the bus in the 200 block of West Berwick Street in Easton, authorities said.

The stunt apparently is a tradition on the last day of school, Remaley said. There was another report about the same time of other students doing the same thing at a different location, he said. In the other case, there "were no adverse effects," he added.

There appeared to be "a good deal of youthful indiscretion" on Thursday as the summer began for students, he said.

As for the leaps, "That's not a tradition the Easton Area School District supports," he said.

And as for the incident that resulted in injuries, "Hopefully the students will learn from this," Remaley said.

The Easton police portion of the investigation is continuing, Capt. Scott Casterline said. School district Superintendent John Reinhart said he was waiting on information on the girl's condition.

Tony Rhodin may be reached at arhodin@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @TonyRhodin. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.
For two years, Jamie Myers worked and took care of his two boys while the children's mother was incarcerated.

But last August, Myers had to work and didn't have any child care, his attorney said Friday.

Not wanting to ask for help, Myers took the two boys, then ages 4 and 6, with him to work at the Home Depot Distribution Center at 8500 Willard Drive in Upper Macungie Township.

The boys were found alone the afternoon of Aug. 17 in a parked sedan with its windows down in 92-degree heat, township police said.

The boys were not injured, prosecutors said, but Myers was charged and the boys were placed with the county's children and youth division.

On Friday, Judge James Anthony said jail wasn't appropriate in the case, and sentenced Myers to three years of probation for child endangerment.

"I think he loves his kids. Thank God they weren't hurt," the judge said. "You were doing the best you could to raise your children."

Assistant District Attorney Sarah Heimbach said while Myers has been cooperative and forthcoming with prosecutors, including pleading guilty in the case, he may not fully appreciate the severity of what happened.

"It could have been a tragedy," she said.

The 37-year-old Myers only had a single summary charge on his criminal record, and has a "solid" work history, attorney Irene Chiavaroli-Johns said. Heimbach added that Myers' supervisor at The Home Depot warehouse said he was one of the company's best employees.

Myers, who lives in Bethlehem Township, has not been able to see the boys as a condition of his case, but now that the case is resolved he can begin visitation. They have been placed with the director of a day care center; their mother remains in prison.

"He's going to have to jump some severe and serious hoops to get custody of his children," Chiavaroli-Johns said.

Sarah Cassi may be reached at scassi@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow her on Twitter @SarahCassi. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.
A 32-year-old woman and a 33-year-old man from Berwick, Pennsylvania, face drug charges after a traffic stop at 9:50 p.m. Wednesday on Route 100 near Industrial Boulevard in Upper Macungie Township, police report.

Tiffany Potter was pulled over because the vehicle had a suspended registration, township police said. Her driver's license was suspended as well, police said.

Potter appeared to be intoxicated and was placed under arrest due to suspicion of DUI, police said. As the investigation continued, 162 packets of heroin were found as well as drug paraphernalia, police said.

A packet of heroin costs about $10 in the Lehigh Valley, authorities have said.

Potter told troopers the couple make bi-weekly trips to Philadelphia to purchase $700 worth heroin, state police said. In this incident, the pair used several bags of the drugs while traveling to Philly, troopers said.

Potter's fiance, Lewis Mellor Jr., who was sitting in the passenger seat, was taken into custody as well, police said.

Potter was arraigned Thursday morning before District Judge Ronald S. Manescu on charges of possession with intent to deliver drugs, conspiracy to do the same, DUI controlled substance, DUI general impairment, possession of heroin and paraphernalia and two traffic violations, court papers say.

Mellor was arraigned Thursday morning before Manescu on charges of possession with intent to deliver drugs, conspiracy, possession of drugs and paraphernalia, court papers say.

Both were sent to Lehigh County jail in lieu of $25,000 bail, court papers say. They remained there on Friday morning, online records show.

Tony Rhodin may be reached at arhodin@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @TonyRhodin. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.
A 45-year-old man is accused of a stealing spree at Lehigh Valley Home Depot stores.

Matthew Casciole is accused of making fake returns, as well as stealing merchandise using receipts for items previously purchased, police said.

Casciole -- police have not verified an address for him -- was arraigned Friday on 20 charges, including eight counts of retail theft and four counts of theft by deception. He was sent to Northampton County Prison in lieu of $50,000 bail.

More charges may be coming. Police said Casciole is also a suspect in thefts from Wal-Mart and Lowe's. Two men are accused of helping Casciole with the thefts, but they had not been charged as of Friday afternoon.

From Dec. 26 through May 27, Casciole and his accomplices stole $3,000 in store credit and materials from Home Depot stores in Bethlehem Township, Whitehall Township and Allentown, Bethlehem Township police said.

In some instances, Casciole or one of his accomplices would load up shopping carts with merchandise, such as bags of grass seed and five-gallon buckets of paint, and make fake returns, police said.

Other times, the trio would make purchases, then use the receipts to steal the exact same merchandise, police said. An accomplice or Casciole would walk out of the store with the legally purchased items, while one of the other men would grab an identical product and walk out of Home Depot flashing the receipt for the legally purchased item, investigators said.

Township police said the thefts were all caught on surveillance video at the stores.

Casciole was also charged with retail theft and receiving stolen property for stealing a TV stand, microwave oven and two cotton blankets about 5:45 p.m. May 29 from Target at 912 Airport Center Drive in Hanover Township, Lehigh County, according to Pennsylvania State Police at Bethlehem.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Police initially provided an address for Casciole but later said it could not be verified, so it has been removed from this post.

Sarah Cassi may be reached at scassi@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow her on Twitter @SarahCassi. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.
David Dippre Courtnie Blystone.jpeg

David Alan Dipper, 32, of Long Pond, Pennsylvania, and Courtney Blystone, 24, of East Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania, were arrested June 9, 2016, in the Paramount Hotel in Middle Smithfield Township, Pennsylvania, and charged with drug crimes. (Courtesy photos | For lehighyvalleylive.com)

A Monroe County man, who was packaging a large amount of heroin he'd bought the night before in Allentown, was arrested early Thursday in a Monroe County Drug Task Force raid at a hotel in Middle Smithfield Township, the county district attorney's office reports.

A controlled buy of methamphetamine was done on Wednesday, the district attorney's office said. The informant related that David Alan Dippre, 32, of Long Pond, Pennsylvania, told him to "send me more customers, I have heroin, meth, suboxone and marijuana for sale."

Detectives from the district attorney's office, Stroud Regional police, the Pennsylvania Game Commission and Pennsylvania State Police raided Dippre's room at 6:05 a.m. Thursday in the Paramount Hotel, the district attorney's office said in a news release.

A "large amount of heroin," about a gram of meth, $1,144 in cash, 12 cellphones and drug paraphernalia were recovered, the district attorney's office said.

Dippre admitted to heroin and meth sales and said he was up all night packaging the Allentown heroin for sale, the district attorney's office said.

Courtnie Blystone, 24, of East Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania, was lying in bed when detectives entered the hotel room, the district attorney's office said. She admitted that she knew Dippre was selling "large quantities" of drugs from the hotel room, the district attorney's office said. She told authorities she'd been staying with Dippre for two days and he'd been giving her heroin, the district attorney's office said.

Dippre was arraigned before District Judge Michael Muth on charges of possession with intent to deliver heroin and methamphetamine and three counts of possession of drugs, the district attorney's office and court records said.

Blystone was arraigned on charges of possession with intent to deliver heroin and methamphetamine, two counts of possessing drugs and two counts of possession of drug paraphernalia, the district attorney's office and court records said.

Dippre was sent to Monroe County jail in lieu of $10,000 bail, while Blystone was sent there in lieu of $1,000 bail. Both remained jailed on Friday morning, online records says.

Tony Rhodin may be reached at arhodin@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @TonyRhodin. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.
The crew of a solar-powered plane making a run at history is hoping the weather's right Friday night as it tries to move from the Lehigh Valley.

Solar Impulse 2 has been at Lehigh Valley International Airport since May 25, after completing the 13th leg of its bid to make the first solely solar-powered flight around the world.

Pilots Andre Borschberg and Bertrand Piccard, along with their mission control in Monaco, France, have been waiting for the right weather conditions to fly on to New York City.

Borschberg is to take the controls of the single-seater for takeoff scheduled 11 p.m. Friday.

The 14th leg of the global hop is planned to include a 2 a.m. Saturday flyby of the Statue of Liberty en route to JFK International Airport. From there, the flight plan is to cross the Atlantic Ocean toward Europe or northern Africa, depending on where conditions are most favorable.

The goal is a return to Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates, where the flight began in March 2015.

Lehigh Northampton Airport Authority officials welcomed the plane last month, and it's been stored in a temporary hangar ever since. A maintenance flight Monday night went as planned, but takeoff for New York that night was postponed due to worsening weather conditions.

Wider than a Boeing 747 and weighing about as much as an SUV, Solar Impulse 2 is powered exclusively by 17,248 solar cells that energize batteries that permit flight once the sun goes down.

Visit solarimpulse.com for updates on the flight Friday night.

Kurt Bresswein may be reached at kbresswein@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @KurtBresswein. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.
CHATSWORTH, Calif.The Diamond Products family of brandsPipedream Products, Jimmyjane and Sir Richards Condomsare in Birmingham, England, for the annual ETO Show.

Each of the companies will unveil new products during the show.

"UK customers are very familiar with our products, Diamond brands are already best-sellers there, said Pipedream's Vice President of Sales Steve Sav. Were very excited to return to the ETO Show, where well be able to continue to offer direct U.K. customer support and make new relationships.

Diamond Products has received six nominations for the 2016 ETO Awards. Pipedream is represented in four categories, including Best New Product Rage (for King Cock), Best Fetish Products Brand (Fetish Fantasy Series), and Best Pleasure Products Brand and Most Innovative Brand (Pipedream), while Jimmyjane has been nominated for Best Luxury Brand and Best New Product Range (for the Live Sexy line of Intro vibrators).

2016 has already been a very successful year for Pipedream, Jimmyjane and Sir Richards, said Diamond Products Chairman and CEO Nick Orlandino. The Dream Team is very excited to return to the ETO Show to display our top-selling brands and give our U.K. customers the edge they need for continued success.

The ETO Show takes okay June 12-13 at the NEC Pavilion in Birmingham, England.

For more information, visit ETOShow.com.
The driver of a car that rolled over Thursday afternoon on Interstate 78 East in Williams Township suffered minor injuries, Pennsylvania State Police at Belfast said.

Lynette Thompson, 30, of Easton, faces a citation for careless driving in the crash at mile-marker 73 of I-78, two miles east of the Route 33 interchange, police said.

Thompson was headed east in a Chevrolet Cobalt just after 2 p.m. when she lost control and drove onto the right shoulder of the highway, where the car rolled over, according to police.

Thompson was wearing a seat belt, and police did not indicate she required medical attention. The Cobalt had to be towed.

The crash slowed traffic in the area before it was cleared about 2:45 p.m., according to the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation.

CLEARED: Accident on I-78 eastbound between Exit 71 - PA 33 North/To US 22 and Mile Post: 73.5.  511PA Allentown (@511PAAllentown) June 9, 2016

Kurt Bresswein may be reached at kbresswein@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @KurtBresswein. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.
More car parking spaces look likely to be lost from Naas.

There are tentative plans to take the spaces from the Kilcullen Road area.

A precise proposal has not yet come before Kildare County Council but the Leader understands that the National Transport Authority is seeking to create cycle lanes along the Kilcullen Road from the edge of the town to the roundabout on the approach to the education campus at Pipers Hill.

The news comes after Naas Municipal District councillors voted by 6-3 to accept a 3m revamp of Poplar Square, which will mean the loss of approximately 20 car park spaces.

That plan was opposed by business people in the area.

It follows the loss of car parking spaces elsewhere around Naas  over a longer period of time.

Fine Gael councillor Darren Scully  who voted against the Poplar Square plan  is also against this new proposal.

He believes that the number of car park spaces lost could be as many as 20.

Local councillors have received a briefing from the NTA.

The plan is to put in bicycle lanes from Esmondale all the way down the Kilcullen Road.

All spaces past the Maxol station and shop as far as Fairgreen and along the opposite side of the road will go, Cllr Scully told the Leader.

He said that the NTA have addressed the issue of parking spaces lost by pointing to alternative spaces like the nearby SuperValu store and behind Finans shop opposite.

They believe these will take up the slack but these are privately owned and what they are removing is public spaces.

SuperValu is for store customers and elsewhere some private car park owners clamp vehicles. Businesses like Swans and Gouldings could also be affected.

Cllr Scully says everything about this is wrong because were again putting the cart before the horse.

He added: Lets not take away a lot of parking spaces and then not replace them.

There is a pressing need to complete the Naas ring road linking the motorway turn off at the big ball with the Blessington road before the spaces are removed.

He accepts that the concept is to recreate a European model here to make urban areas more friendly for cyclists and pedestrians but in Europe there is ample car parking and a variety of public transport options which we dont have here yet; at least the ring road should be completed.

A costing for this work is not yet available but it would be between 500,000 and 750,000.

There is little support for this among local businesses, he claimed.

Traders in Naas are objecting to this and they are on their knees.

He said: Its happening in Dublin city and greater Dublin; the idea is to do away with cars, pedestrianise urban centres and have large footpaths and bicycle lanes. Theres no problem with this - so long as everything else in place, like town centre parking people can drive to.
The Athy, Castlemitchell and Monasterevin branches of the Kildare South Labour Party have formed a petition seeking the restoration of the Kildare South electoral areas allocated to Laois for the last general Election back to Kildare South.

The decision follows a large number of requests from constituents in the voting areas of Kilberry, Monasterevin, Ballybrackan Kildangan, Churchtown and Harristown after up to 7,500 voters were moved into the Laois Constituency.

There has been a widespread demand from so many people to do something about what a lot of people feel was an injustice, said Cllr Mark Wall.

I along with a number of my colleagues have been approached to explain why some committee based in Dublin decided that 7,500 Kildare people should now vote in County Laois. The petition is as a direct result of these requests and it is available online.

Members of the Kildare South Labour Party will also be in the areas involved with a paper petition to allow those wishing to avail of the petition in this way.

This request has come from those across the political spectrum in the areas involved, those that have signed the petition to date state in the main , they live in Kildare - they want to vote in Kildare, he added.

Kildare town cllr Suzanne Doyle said she would be behind getting the areas back, especially Monasterevin.

I support it in principle. To be in an area that is under one county council and another constituency is not very sensible to me, she said.

It is terrible to be on the periphery. It also encourages disengagement from politics.

The people living in these communities would also like to see it back in the constituency .

We have very little say around it and they have to find the numbers but I support it in principle.
It breaks my heart every time I go by it. I was there for 32 years and I loved it. It took me a year to get over it.

Next month, in July, it will be 10 years since Margaret Brereton, and most of the rest of the staff of Donnelly Mirrors finally left.

It would take approximately another year before it was fully wound down, with only a skeleton staff present to tie up loose ends.

On June 17 an estimated 300 former staff members will meet in Toughers for a reunion, to recall all the good times at the place they all worked, a place they all say was the best place they ever worked.

The Donnelly Mirrors plant on the Dublin Road in Naas was opened in 1968, destined to be the European presence for the Donnelly Corporation from the small city of Holland in the US state of Michigan.

The company was started by Irish American John Donnelly and his famly retained control of it until it was sold to Magna, an enormous Canadian car parts manufacturer, in 2002.

The Donnelly Corporation was a world leader in the field of mirrors for the auto industry, producing at one point two thirds of the worlds inside car mirrors.

Even today, in older Renault, Peugeot and Citreon cars, if you look at the back of the black plastic casing around the rear view mirror, you'll see the word Donnelly.

The Naas plant served the European car manufacturers, providing either the complete mirror (with plastic casing) or just the mirror itself to household-name French, German and Italian manufacturers.

At its height, the Naas facility had in excess of 400 employees.

When it arrived first, it was like nothing we had seen before, Margaret explains.

It was very new and Americanised. Their approach to people was very different compared to other companies of the time.

There was never a Mr So and So or a boss  everyone on first names terms, from the MD to the president of the company in America, and that was a new thing in this country.

They were very caring to employees. They used to pay your VHI, sick leave, pension contributions and all kinds of things.

And they had very good schemes, which were very much envied by others.

For instance, they provided scholarships to the children of employees to go to college. Children of employees also used to get a fortnights work-experience in the summer once they were in their late teens.

This reporter was the recipient of same, with the pay being 100 a week  significantly more than youd get on the dole at the time!

It was very family oriented, Margaret continues. There were lots of brothers and sisters there, or the children of employees. There were a lot of marriages through Donnellys.

They were one of the best paying companies certainly in the country.

There was a wonderful social club there (which employees made a contribution to) which ran field days and Christmas Parties for the kids with presents from Santa Claus.

Donnellys always entered a float in the Easter Parade  and they took that every seriously!

Margaret recalls that the founder John Donnelly wanted the company to be like a big family.

Kerry man Jim OSullivan remembers that in his interview to join the company he was referring to the man who was interviewing him as Mr Thorbury.

We've dispensed with all that, you can call me Art, was the response, and his introduction, August of 1968, to the informality of the companys culture.

Jim started work on the factory floor and moved eventually into supervisory roles and management and eventually into personnel administration.

It really was the influence of the Donnelly family on the business. With John Donnelly senior, in particular, people we would have a relationship throughout our tenure with the company.

He was focused on a participative management style  he encouraged to bring their heads to work as well as their hands, that was a saying of his.

According to Jim, Donnelly had a thoughtful approach to management.

He explained that while there are some management styles that see workers almost as automatons who just did as they were told, there are others who recognise that humans are social animals, and respond to being encouraged.

So he recognised that aspect of their humanity, he explained.

He felt that people would feel like they had been properly compensated and remunerated for their work, although we had our own internal conflicts in that time.

But the most striking thing for me was that for all the internal arguments and disputes, Donnelly people were very clannish in a family sense.

There were several incidences where people would have gone through hard times or traumatic times, and people rallied around. They would pledge support, and often that was in the form of some money.

People would often have given their monthly bonus towards the needs of colleagues. People just did it. Like you would do a family member who needs a dig out.

For me that sums up an awful lots of the inter relationships of people.

Margaret Brereton says she joined the company in the early 1970s and was heartbroken when it closed.

It took me a year or more to get over it. Even today when I drive past it, its very sad.

There was always a great pride in the company and in the premises, and to see it looking like that, is terrible.

Her memories from the factory, on a day-to-day basis, involves great camarderie and craic, and playing cards.

Oh they were very serious altogether. If you put down the wrong card, my God youd be afraid of your life, you wouldnt show your face around for a few days!

She has a great memory of happening to mention to Donnelly, when he was on an Irish visit, that she was planning on attending a wedding in Pittsburgh.

By way of conversations, she enquired if this was far from Michigan. The following morning she was told that shed be visiting the plant in Michigan during her trip to the US, at the companys expense.

They had somebody waiting at the airport for me, they had a hotel for me, brought me out to dinner, gave me a big clap when I arrived into one of their meetings  and then John Donnelly called for me and we had coffee together.

Jayney it was like being a VIP! It was incredible!

In the 10 years that have passed the connections are intact. Theres still contact there. The bonds have not been broken.

These days, the bonds are renewed at funerals of employees.

Those who are left say that it is a bittersweet way to renew acquaintances  and the reunion will likely be a more pleasant experience for them.

And the factory, once a bustling place with people working there 24 hours a day, is now eerily silent.

The building and the land around it has been sold twice in the meantime, with rumours abounding that more money was made from that than had been made in profit by the company.

And the building has been subject to extensive vandalism, with a fire having been set there at one stage.

The Donnelly Corporation is no more, having been subsumed into the enormous Magna clongomerate.

And its believed that the jobs went to plants in Slovakia and Spain, from whence our car mirrors now hail.

Weve had a huge reaction to the reunion. Theres already 250 to 300 people looking for tickets, Margaret says.

But its not just a reunion  its also a fundraiser for the Little Way Cancer Support Centre in Clane.

A former employer used the centre when she was ill. She eventually passed away and, according to Margaret, some funds left over from the Social Club fund was donated to the centre. This lead to the creation of the Donnelly Room at the centre.
Some days at Naas Post Office the queue snakes around the thick rope and stanchions in the middle of the public area, almost forming a w, giving rise to a few mild mutterings.

Occasionally a customer on the way in sees the number of people, halts and bails out, to return later.

The truth is the queues look like they will take longer to move than they ever actually do.

Naas Post Office is one of the great institutions of the county town.

Its centrally located slap bang in the middle of the town, beside the bus stop and most of the time both sets of automatic doors are wide open.

Across the street in the Bank of Ireland or the AIB there are two sets of security doors set up so that only one can open at a time. (If security is the reason for this carry-on then why arent the post office and Naas Credit Union thus concerned ?)

There are few staff in the banks and some of those who are there simply direct customers to a machine or a telephone (thanks, but we dont need to visit the bank to make a phone call).

Kildare County Council is in the process of making adjustments to one of its public areas - the housing section - where there have been complaints about the facilities provided for visitors.

The post office staff are familiar to us and its reassuring that many have been there for a while because they bring invaluable experience to the job. Often times there are five working.

And its a varied job these days. You dont just buy stamps and save money at the post office.

It handles an array of social welfare payments, providing these in a way as unfussy as you can imagine to people who depend on them.

You can pay bills there, apply for a passport, buy a phone and take out insurance on a car or a house with an insurance company, which is effectively part of the post office.

Theres something else about it though apart from the convenience.

Its that youre made to feel welcome; not in an overly back-slapping-hail-fellow-well-met way, but in the way the staff work,

unrushed and having time to chat to people who want to talk.

The post office has become a vital one stop shop for many people and it hasnt been decentralised to Burnfoot.

Its there six days a week (a half day on Saturday) for the people to avail of the services it offers.

There have been criticisms elsewhere of the closure of smaller post offices.

And you can see how this has an impact on a small rural community where the age profile is high and many of the customers dont have cars and are not tech savvy.

Its also clear that the closure of Naas Post Office - an impossible scenario given the business it does and the number using it - would have devastating consequences for the community, including the many people who live from week to week.

Youll meet all manner of people in the post office and its surely the busiest place in town.

Just think of all those human interactions that take place every day and you see for certain that it helps to knit at least part of the community of Naas together.

Its also clear that online communication has not killed off the hardy beast that is the post office.

As Elizabeth Windsor might say in a different context altogether God bless her and all who sail in her.
SAN FRANCISCO, CA  FalconStudios.com has released the world premiere of the debut scene from the Falcon Edge release Ultra Sex, featuring A-Team Exclusive Sebastian Kross and fan favorite Derek Bolt. The scene from Ultra Sex, directed by Nick Foxx, will debut on FalconStudios.com Friday, June 10.

Ultra Sex was Derek Bolt's first scene, and what better partner to put him with than Sebastian Kross? Their muscled bodies looked amazing grinding up against one another, states director Nick Foxx. Once Sebastian found out Derek's nipples were wired, all bets were off. He had him moaning in ecstasy the rest of the filming. Derek Bolt definitely made a splash on set. I have a new porn-star crush on him. He's one to watch out for, because he's going to take after Sebastian and blow up on the scene!

FalconStudios.com, featuring over 2,500 gay adult scenes, and the World Premiere of the Ultra Sex scene from Falcon Edge starring A-Team Sebastian Kross and power-bottom Derek Bolt, is available for promotion through the Buddy Profits affiliate program.

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Investigation Finds Donald Trump Doesn't Always Pay His Bills

Trending News: Donald Trump Just Got Himself Into Another Scandal

Why Is This Important?

Because it doesn't look like Trump lives by the "Lannisters always pay their debts" philosophy.

Long Story Short

Donald Trump has gotten himself caught up in another scandal courtesy of a USA Today investigation into 3,500 lawsuits Trump or his companies have been involved in over the years. The investigation and those interviewed in the story allege that on hundreds of occasions Trump didn't pay all he owed for the work performed including unpaid overtime and dishonored contracts.

Long Story

One thing that comes with the territory of being your party's presumptive nominee is that every aspect of your life will be held under the microscope, which is exactly what's happening with Donald Trump as we get closer to the official election season. And being in the public eye for so many decades means that there's a lot to gawk at in Trump's closet.

The latest scandal to take aim at the loudmouth Republican nominee is allegations that he might not be as good of a businessman as he says he is, or at least as honest of a businessman. The USA Today investigation combed through 3,500 lawsuits the Trump corporation was involved in and discovered hundreds of lawsuits relating to unpaid work and contract not paid in full.

The cases range decades and across Trump's various properties including casinos, hotels and skyscrapers and come from a diverse group of workers from painters to plumbers to lawyers to dishwashers. In the case of the dishwasher, unpaid overtime led to a settlement of $7,500 from Trump.

The investigation focuses the light on one business in particular, a cabinetry business that did work at Harrah's at Trump Plaza. The owners of the small business allege that Trump shorted the company $83,600 for the work performed, which put the business enough in the hole that it had to shutter its doors.

In response to the allegations, Trump and his daughter Ivanka, who handles a chunk of Trump's real estate affairs, alluded to that they don't pay people fully if they did bad work  a clear violation of the law, but which, as you'd expect, Trump doesn't care about.

Lets say that they do a job thats not good, or a job that they didnt finish, or a job that was way late. Ill deduct from their contract, absolutely, Trump said to USA Today. Thats what the country should be doing.

We have hundreds of millions of dollars of construction projects underway. And we have, for the most part, exceptional contractors on them who get paid, and get paid quickly, added Ivanka. But it would be irresponsible if my father paid contractors who did lousy work. And he doesnt do that.

But weirdly enough, if businesses that were shorted, like the small cabinetry business, did such a poor job, why would Trump ask them to work on another job? The story says there were multiple instances where Trump didn't pay for all the work, but wanted the company back for future work. Fishy.

Will this scandal knock the wheels off of Trump's incredible rise? No, absolutely not. The Trump train has gained far too much steam for that.

And while this sucks for those workers who spent undoubtedly tons of money trying to win a hopeless battle against the Trump empire and its team of lawyers, Trump's response sort of says what he's been spewing at his rallies throughout the campaign. He doesn't like the current system, he doesn't care about the rules and he's willing to do whatever it takes to win and make America (you know the rest).

But when the stakes are higher, like at international meetings, and Trump breaks deals, like he's allegedly done so many times in the past, the repercussions may mean far more than cases his lawyers can handle blindfolded. It might mean war.

Own The Conversation

Ask The Big Question

Is Trump acting as a dishonest businessman by not paying these workers their due?

Disrupt Your Feed

This is not the guy we want as our commander-in-chief folks.

Drop This Fact

Trump says he's worth in the billions, but fellow billionaire Mark Cuban claims he's probably more in the millions territory.
This is a speech I gave recently at a debate on the European Union at Selwyn College, Cambridge.

I want to tell you why Europe matters. Why it matters to me, to all of us, and our families.

I was born in the Caribbean after Hurricane Hattie, with the windows still broken in the hospital. We know extreme weather events are now more common elsewhere too.

But for our planet, and a greener future, Europe is taking the lead in the global effort to halt climate change. To prevent rising sea levels, and cut greenhouse gases. Our fragile, flood-ridden region, here in Cambridgeshire, needs that protection and forward thinking.

I grew up in Nigeria under a dictatorship. I saw division and bloodshed following the Biafran war. Burnt-out cars lay by the roadside. Roadblocks where soldiers had guns as likely to go off in their own face as mine.

THATS WHY I VALUE THE EUROPEAN PROJECT OF PEACE AND I WANT IT TO BE THERE FOR OTHERS TOO.

My work is on civil liberties and protection of the vulnerable. Especially migrant populations, trafficked women, and abused children. Its why I feel that the EU, which funds programmes and refuges that protect women and young people from violence, is necessary.

Its why I am grateful for the European Arrest Warrant. It means that thousands of criminals are no longer on our streets because our police can share information.

Now, I live with a vet and Ive seen the impact of disease through intensive farming. Not only is animal welfare very important to us as a family. But as a mother, the safety of the food I feed my family matters.

So I am glad that EU food safety watches over all stages of food production. From animal feed, plants and crops, to the movement of animals. To ensure food across Europe is safe for us to eat.

And safer goods too. Because Europe gives us better consumer protection. Take standardization  people often laugh at Brussels for it. But it means that manufacture costs are lower and it ensures safer, better quality goods.

More than two thousand faulty items are banned each year  from Chinese rubber ducks to suspect tattoo chemicals from the USA. It means we can make informed choices.

And it means that we dont have to face some terrible ones. As the control of hazardous chemicals  THIRTY THOUSAND of them, like dioxin, is done by the EU.

The benefit of living in a European Union is that health care is improved. The Medicines Agency ensures the scientific evaluation of drugs. With standards across Europe for screening and diagnosis.

I dont want to go back to the old days of the expense, and FEAR, of falling ill abroad, and having to pay a fortune for treatment. That only happens OUTSIDE Europe.

And when our 4 children do fall ill, they are cured with drugs that rely on large trials across Europe because drug development is seldom done by one country on its own, but on a continental scale.

My children have grown up having the benefit of cheaper goods, everything from phone tariffs to cheap flights, because of European co-operation.

I care passionately about Europe because I believe in equal treatment between women and men. It was a founding principle of the EU in 1957 when the Treaty of Rome laid down the Principle of Equal Pay.

Since then, European laws expanded our choices and improved ALL our lives. These include paid annual leave, protection from harassment at work, and parental leave. Maternity rights are especially important so you cant be sacked for being pregnant.

I campaigned for 20 years for rights the European Social Chapter gave us. I am not about to give them up now.

Rights matter. Gay, straight, bi, trans the EU makes ALL equal before the law.

I believe we can only meet the challenges of the future in a strong and open Europe. The decision we take will shape the integrity of our country, and our union for a long time.

Its a decision we take at a time of real fear and insecurity. Fear of terrorism, and violence, and extremism.

And it is our choice. Do we cast ourselves adrift? Condemning ourselves to irrelevance, and Europe to division and weakness?

Or do we reaffirm our commitment to Europe, and boost our continent in a dangerous world.

Ive seen the painful cost of a dis-united country.

I dont want a dis-united country in a dis-united Europe.

This choice is about the values we hold dear.

The values, not of fear, but of human dignity, and freedom. Not of supremacy, but of democracy & equality.

Not of judgement and blame, but of justice & respect for human rights.

And of the belief that in this wonderful European continent of ours,

With Britain in the lead we can create a great, and peaceful, sustainable and strong Europe,

With a strong United Kingdom at the heart of it.

Please. Vote with me to stay IN the European Union.

* Belinda Brooks-Gordon was #3 on the EU list in 2014, was a Cambridgeshire County Councillor, and is now an elected member of ALDE Council.
In the late forties and fifties, when men and women had returned from war, babies boomed. The boomers were born in free NHS hospitals. Secondary education had been improved for them. Fees in the grammar schools had been abolished. There were jobs and apprenticeships for school-leavers. A few went to college free of tuition fees and with a healthy maintenance grant. The austerity of the post-war years slowly passed and rationing was abolished. Peace was maintained by a nuclear standoff between Soviet Russia and the Western powers. The boomers were lucky. Now they are retired, many on index linked pensions.

I was born in the thirties. I lived through the War. As a child, I vividly remember sheltering under the staircase at my home in Llangollen, listening to the rhythmic growl of German bombers passing overhead towards Liverpool. I heard bombs falling on a decoy airstrip in the mountains nearby. Britain standing alone meant dangerous isolation.

Later, there were Americans camped in the town. Free French forces were stationed near my school. Polish airmen were training on Spitfires at Borras nearby. There were detachments of Indian troops. Planes of many countries marked with the three white stripes for D Day, flew overhead. A huge combined effort of free peoples won the war.

But Europe was in ruins. Britain helped them rebuild and get back on their feet. When in 1951, France and West Germany got together to form the European Coal and Steel Community to integrate their coal and steel industries, the British initially stood off: we beat them, why on earth should we join them? The boomers grew up with the world map marked with red swathes of the British Empire. Brits were unstoppable.

Other countries like Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg, all scarred by war, saw the advantages of co-operation and joined up to the European Common Market. By the sixties, when Britain realised the growing power and prosperity of the new Europe and saw our dominions and colonies break away to seek their own independent destiny, there were some feelings of resentment. It turned to anger when De Gaulle in 1967 issued Le Grand Non and vetoed our tentative attempts to sign up ourselves. The public mood was How dare he? We rescued them all.

Britain was finally allowed to join the club in 1973. In the 1975 referendum, the swinging boomers were uninterested in voting  38% of the boomers, 18  25, failed to vote, a higher proportion than any other age bracket. They were busy being turned on, tuned in and dropping out. The referendum was carried overwhelmingly by the age group that had fought, had endured, and had suffered post-war austerity. It was they who welcomed a prosperous Europe at peace.

But that generation has largely gone. Now, if the opinion polls are anywhere near right, the boomers, the 55+ cohort, do want to vote and a majority seem to want to vote Leave. One gave as his reason the other day My father fought in the war. Thats rather odd, when you think about it. Why fight for peace and abandon the very organisation which has kept us in peace and growing prosperity? Why strive to save Europe and then drift away into isolation?

Young people in todays Britain feel European. They enjoy the excitement of travel, the chance of new horizons, the possibility of good jobs in a community of 500 million people. It is their future. Why would you stand in their way?

* Martin Thomas is a Liberal Democrat member of the House of Lords and the party's Shadow Attorney General
Whenever Ive tired during this long referendum campaign Ive thought about how I will feel as I watch the results come in during the small hours of 24th June. Fear of losing, especially if not by much, has driven me to throw myself into the campaign.

And one of the benefits of a truly national election is that there are no safe seats or swing seats. Every vote genuinely counts as much as any other. Its given me the freedom to get out and about as I campaign. It means that last weekend I was in Bournemouth, the week before in Liskeard, and this Saturday Ill be at home in Plymouth (feel free to come along).

I wanted to do even more though, so my partner and I set up a Facebook group as somewhere to try out ideas and see if anyone thought they were any good. We called it Campaign to Remain  keep Britain in Europe.

We didnt expect much. At first we thought it would be a niche little thing where wed be breaking open the champagne if a post ever got over 10 likes. But weve been really lucky.

On our third day of posting stuff, we put up this graphic  we called it muscly Putin stickman  and went out for a coffee. Wed played around with the design a bit, picking and choosing different groups to illustrate, and were very happy with the end product. To be honest, wed made it to amuse ourselves but hoped that others would like it too.

It really took off even before the caffeine had had a chance to kick in. As I type, the graphic has been shared over 10,500 times, liked 37,000 times (once Facebook has counted all the likes on the shares too) and appeared on the feed of over 1.5 million people.

What lessons have we learned from our three months of running the page? Well, people clearly enjoy poking fun at the opposition  like mocking Boris for his nonsense about EU rules against large bunches of bananas.

But there is also clearly an appetite for information thats getting less attention because of the media focus on the open, blue-on-blue warfare in the Tory party. Workers rights, for example. Our posting of this colourful graphic from trade union Usdaw has been shared 1,400 times, liked 3,700 times and reached over 184,000 people.

As the 23rd approaches, its getting busy. Weve topped 5,500 likes for the page (in just three months) and in only the last seven days our posts have appeared in front of 559,000 pairs of eyes. We realise social media has its limits and its flaws, but getting over half a million people to see at least of our posts during the course of one week has to be worth something.

My partner and I are going to miss checking in now and then to see how the latest posts are going, fending off hordes of Brexit trolls trying to fill the page with stuff about the EUSSR, and having an outlet for our ideas  like turning #projectfear into #projectfearless. But I just hope all the effort that everyone has put in will be worth it.

Whether it was donning an Im IN T-shirt in St Austell, Truro, Taunton or Yeovil  or creating a weird, merged face out of Boris Johnson and Vicky Pollard  I just hope that the effort put in by all of us will tip the balance with enough people. Well know soon enough.

* Stuart Bonar was the Liberal Democrat parliamentary candidate in Plymouth Moor View.
So far in the main referendum campaigns we have heard the same arguments on repeat from the same people. Economics has dominated discussions, trade is becoming the nations most used word and pound signs are flying all over billboards, news sites and buses.

Out on the campaign trail, voters seem to be getting increasingly confused, tired and frustrated with the campaigns. Theyre after something different.

A couple of weeks ago, David Cameron tried bringing morality into the debate by describing a vote for Brexit as immoral. He was quickly shot down by his Eurosceptic colleagues, Iain Duncan Smith describing it as not an honest assessment but a deeply biased view of the future.

Have morals really got anything to do with it?

Through my work with the Liberal Democrat Christian Forum (LDCF), Ive been talking to hundreds of Christians up and down the country about the referendum. Ive noticed a yearning amongst the Christian community for a bigger picture debate about what this referendum will mean for the kind of world we want to live in and what impact the vote will have on others; a moral case for Brexit and remain.

The Lib Dems positive and hopeful message on remaining in the EU begins to satisfy this yearning. It takes voters beyond the question of what is in it for me? to what the impact of the vote will be on future generations and others across the world. But questioning the morality of the vote takes us back to the question of whether the EU itself is a moral entity.

THEOS think tank have argued that the EU started off with a strong moral basis but has since become an economic union that needs taking back to its moral roots. Other Brexiters have argued that this stray towards an economic union was always the intention of the EU founders.

To delve deeper into this discussion, LDCF is hosting Dr Julie Smith (Baroness Smith of Newnham) in the 2016 LDCF Gladstone Lecture on Monday evening (13th June). She will be discussing The European Union: a question of faith, morality or pragmatism?

Julie Smith is by far one of the biggest EU experts in the Lib Dems and, in fact, the UK! She lectures on it at Cambridge University and worked on it at Chatham House. She also has an active Christian faith, regularly attending a Catholic Church. Julie has been a Liberal Democrat since she was 12. Her first campaigning experience was campaigning with Shirley Williams in Crosby and shes been active ever since.

Her faith perspective combined with her expert knowledge will provide an interesting discussion to counter the self-interested economic arguments being batted left, right and centre.

If youre after a more inspiring, alternative case for remaining (or if you know people who are!), you should come along. There might even be a drink for you when you get there.

Tickets available here: http://www.ldcf.org/gladstone_lecture_2016.

Where: St Matthews Church, Westminster, SW1P 2BU

When: Monday 13th June, 6:30pm
THE newly appointed chairperson of Limerick Civic Trust wants the voluntary organisation to play a bigger role in improving Limericks heritage and environment for the benefit of its citizens and tourists.

Brian McLoghlin, a company director, mediator and lawyer, said that his focus and that of its chief executive David OBrien, formerly of the Milk Market, for the year ahead will be on attracting more contributing members and patrons.

Mr McLoghlin said this is crucial for the financial support of the organisation to allow it to embark on and complete more than 50 restoration and heritage improvement projects it has earmarked.

There are hugely exciting and ambitious plans for Limerick in train at the moment what with the 2030 Limerick Economic and Spatial Plan and the European City of Culture bid.

"I believe Limerick Civic Trust will have a large role in supporting the delivery of these initiatives. Already the projects we undertake serve to enhance the image of our city amongst its citizens and to boost tourism, such as our street-a-week street cleaning campaign, walking tours, open spaces and cemetery maintenance, canal bank pathways, restoration projects like the Mortuary Chapel at Mount Saint Lawrences Cemetery, erection of historical plaques and so forth. The Trust has the ambition and potential to breathe new life into many more areas of our city and county.

The Trust was recently granted a licence to develop Castle Green, the derelict area opposite King Johns Castle.

Living in Limerick since 1985, Mr McLoghlin has worked with the European Commission, then served as Chief Legal Officer and Company Secretary of GPA, then the worlds largest aircraft leasing company.
CRECHE staff at Westbury are continuing their sit in protest, as they wait for their redundancy payments to bemade to lodged in their accounts.

Seventeen staff at Tic Toc nursery in Westbury on the outskirts of Limerick city were left shocked on Friday after being told the facility  which opened a decade ago  would cease trading. A liquidator is expected to be appointed to the company shortly.

Parents in Westbury and the surrounding area have also been plunged into chaos by the closure, with many being forced to take unscheduled time off, and reshcedule important meetings.

Most parents have laid the blame for the closure firmly at the door of company representative Peter Keogh, of Keogh Somers Chartered Accountants.

In a letter sent to some staff  although not all, many workers say  the secretary of Tic Toc nursery wrote: We have completed a review of the future income and unfortunately even though numbers of children are going up with the introduction of the extended pre-school year, the income is projected to go down.

They said that an international fund was administering the debt owed on the property, and the company was told it does not have a mandate to support the business into the future, and they informed us they were not able to fund the business in the very difficult summer period.

In a bid to guarantee redundancy payments, workers commenced a sit-in on Friday morning, and have remained in the purpose-built creche for the best part of a week, bedding down in the facilitys former dining room.

Staff spokesperson Rose ODonnell from Westbury confirmed two sets of payments equivalent to their final weeks payment hit their accounts.

But they are still awaiting a visit from a representative of Deloitte, which is expected to be appointed liquidator to TicToc.

The firm is preparing paperwork to finalise the paperwork, and release redundancy funds.

Until this happens, Ms ODonnell said workers lives are at a standstill.

We do not have our P45 forms or our RP50s, so it is hard to move on and try and find other jobs, or courses, she confirmed.

The Tic Toc letter said of the Westbury facility: The local market does not have a need for full time creche places which makes the creche unviable.

This claim was described as ridiculous by Ms ODonnell, who has nine years service with the business.

Not only do we service Westbury, which is one of the biggest estates in Munster, we also serve Shannon Banks, Parteen, Clonlara, and Broadford, and many other places, she said.

While 17 staff have maintained a constant vigil at the Westbury centre, many parents and their children have joined them in solidarity.

One of these, Sarah Kieran, from Westbury, said: Obviously, it is a very emotional upheaval because of the fact I have three children there who are nine, eight and three, and they have all been with Tic Toc since I went back to work after maternity leave. I viewed the women in Tic Toc as helping me rear my children, and to have that just pulled out from me overnight is a big shock.

She has since managed to find an alternative creche for her youngest child.

Meanwhile, the former Tic Toc nursery at the Riverpoint complex in the city centre re-opened on Tuesday morning under a new name.Although Tic Toc signs were clearly visible at the entrance to the complex on the banks of the Shannon, it is understood a new name will be sought, and made public in the coming days.A source has indicated it could be known as Rainbow Child Academy. A handful of children and two staff were on duty at the site this Wednesday afternoon.Representative of Tic Toc, Peter Keogh, confirmed to the Limerick Leader on Monday that the creche at Riverpoint was open under new auspices.He has been unavailable for further comment since.It is unclear how many staff will be employed at the complex, although it is understood many workers were of a temporary nature, and had reached the end of 38-week contracts which reflect the school year.Around eight or nine staff had worked for TicToc in the Riverpoint previously.What is also unclear is how many children the centre is caring for now.The Newcastle West branch of Tic Toc, at Killeline, has been taken over by a new operator, who had originally stepped in on a temporary basis, agreeing to cover to the facility on its licence for 30 days.Minister of State Patrick ODonovan led talks between the owners and lenders, and confirmed the new operator would run the creche for a fixed period of 30 days, to see if a longer-term solution can be put in place.I want to thank the staff for their help today and also to thank the parents reps who I kept in touch with throughout the day, he added. Around 70 families are understood to be reliant on Tic Toc creche.TLC co-owner, Shaun Hester, confirmed the Newcastle West creche will now continue in operation as a TLC creche and all the former Tic Toc staff have been retained.
A MODERN twist on a magical past is promised as the Doolin Folk Festival takes place this weekend.

The boutique music festival in Clare, running from Friday to Sunday, will see the Hothouse Flowers, Jerry Fish, Finbar Furey, Luka Bloom, Freddie White and many more gather in the village with the big heart.

Taking inspiration from the great festivals of the 70s and 80s like Lisdoonvarna, the event returns for a third outing this summer, offering a musical journey through folk time, style and culture, its organisers believe.

The noted home of traditional Irish music will have a more modern folk twist over the course of the weekend as 3,000 revellers flock from near and far for a three-day festival across two stages.

Festival organiser and Hotel Doolin manager, Donal Minihane explains: Doolin is one of the most remarkable places that you can get in Ireland. It draws people in and few who come here leave with anything on their mind but to return.

Its the scenery, the sound, the music, the atmosphere. All of that is rolled up brilliantly in the Doolin Folk Festival.

We have a fantastic line-up, our best yet, and its being reflected in ticket and room sales. It looks like its going to be our biggest festival yet. Its a special event in a very special place, he added.

See www.doolinfolkfestival.com for more details and to book tickets.
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Engineers have taken a tip from Medusa, it seems. They have stared down the pesky greenhouse gas carbon dioxide and turned it to stone.

The process they used was not as easy as simply eyeballing the gas, though. Essentially, they relied on a sped-up version of natural processes to take the carbon dioxide (CO2) spewed from a power plant in Iceland and transform the gas into a solid.

This ability to capture carbon dioxide and store it indefinitely may help curb the levels of heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere and stem global warming, the researchers noted. [Changing Earth: 7 Ideas to Geoengineer Our Planet]

"We need to deal with rising carbon emissions," lead study author Juerg Matter, now an associate professor of geoengineering at the University of Southampton in the United Kingdom, said in a statement. "This is the ultimate permanent storage  turn them back to stone."

Natural carbon storage

Human-caused global warming occurs mostly because of greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide and methane, that get poured into the air by humans burning fossil fuels for energy and other processes. These gases trap heat before it can escape out into space. Carbon dioxide is the biggest factor in this warming, scientists have said, because billions of tons of the gas are released every year and it stays in the atmosphere for long periods of time.

Ordinarily, this gas is drawn out of the atmosphere by plants, which use it for photosynthesis, and a chemical process called weathering of rocks. This process happens when carbon dioxide and other gases that dissolve in water form weak acids that then chemically react with minerals in rocks to form other solids, like clays. However, both of those uptake processes are relatively slow, and they can't keep up with human output, the study researchers noted. [The Reality of Climate Change: 10 Myths Busted]

As such, engineers and other scientists have been working on several efforts to somehow inject the carbon dioxide into the ground. For instance, carbon dioxide is pumped into the tiny holes, or pores, in sedimentary rock  the kind laid down by layers of sand, for example, on the ocean floor.

The problem is that the carbon dioxide is a gas, and tends to rise. To keep it underground requires a placing a layer of less porous rock on top of the porous rock where the gas is stored. The carbon dioxide will eventually react with the porous rock and turn into a solid, carbonate compound, but that process can take centuries, if not millennia, according to study co-authorSigurdur Gislason, research professor at the University of Iceland in Reykjavik.

A new way to hide CO2

The team, led by Juerg Matter, now an associate professor of geoengineering at the University of Southampton, tried something different. The researchers took the carbon dioxide emitted by a power plant in Iceland, pressurized it to 25 atmospheres. They then pumped the CO2 into a borehole that was filled with water, dissolving the gas and making something like seltzer water. The mixture was then pumped into a layer of porous, volcanic rock located some 1,640 feet (500 meters) below the surface of the ground. The rock reacted with the mixture and formed carbonate compounds.

Study co-author Sandra Snaebjornsdottir holds a sample of volcanic rock that is loaded with solidified carbonate, formed when the researchers pumped carbon dioxide into the rock. (Image credit: Kevin Krajick/Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory)

Essentially, the researchers sped up the weathering of rocks, Gislason told Live Science. Here's how it works: The carbon dioxide in the water forms carbonic acid, which dissolves the basalts and makes them more porous. Meanwhile, the carbon and oxygen from the CO2 make new compounds, largely magnesium, iron and calcium carbonates, which are solids that can't go anywhere. "Calcium, iron, magnesium can all form carbonates," Gislason said.

The process is very like what happens naturally, except that when stone  either as mountains or stone buildings  weathers, it happens as it rains, and rainwater only converts a small amount of carbon at a time. In addition, because the CO2 added to the water is under a lot more pressure than it is in the atmosphere, the concentration of carbonic acid is many times higher than in rainwater, or even in the carbonated water that people drink.

The study was conducted over a two-year period, noted study co-author Martin Stute, a research scientist at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in New York. In that time, the team monitored the water as it percolated through the rock using monitoring stations placed some distance from the injection site. They detected no CO2.

Even though the process requires a lot of water initially, that water can be recycled, because the other elements in it  the carbon dioxide and the compounds in the rock  are all removed in the reactions that form the carbonates, said Stute. He added that another advantage is that the water needn't be fresh; seawater should work just as well, though that hasn't been tried yet.

The next steps will be conducting more experiments and scaling up, the researchers said.

Both Gislason and Stute noted that the carbon dioxide would need to be transported to pumping sites if projects like this were built commercially, so the technique probably lends itself best to power plants that are close to areas with porous basaltic rock. Gislason said that describes many areas with power plants. "There are opportunities for this in Indonesia, or Japan," he said.

Still, the method offers a possible way to get rid of carbon dioxide quickly and cleanly, he said. "In a sense, you just mimic nature," Gislason said. "Just speeding up the process."

The study is detailed in the June 10 issue of the journal Science.

Original article on Live Science.
The Riverbend festival begins Friday night and the Chattanooga Police Department and the City of Chattanooga remind festival goers and community members of the following information.

Traffic Plan



The Festival site, Riverside Drive/Riverfront Parkway from Aquarium Way to Molly Lane, the southbound off ramp from Veterans Bridge, Power Alley from Aquarium Way to Riverfront Parkway, and Chestnut Street from Aquarium Way to Riverfront Parkway will remain closed to traffic through Monday, June 20.

From 3:30 p.m. until midnight on event nights from June 10 - June 18, Riverside Drive's closure will extend from Lindsay Street to Molly Lane. Also, Aquarium Way from Walnut Street to Riverside Drive, Lookout Street from East 3rd Street to Riverside Drive, and Walnut Street from Aquarium Way to the walking bridge will be closed to traffic.



Parking and Transit Options



If it is not a legal parking spot, dont park there. This includes:

Entrance or exit ramps of highways

Unauthorized use of disabled parking

Private property

Roadway medians

Note: Private property owners have the right to, and traditionally will, have an unlawfully parked vehicle towed.



Parking locations: http://www. downtownchattanooga.org/map_ copy.htm?prkn=pr



Park and take the Shuttle - CARTA: There is a Riverbend Shuttle at the CARTA station at the Choo Choo. You can park in this parking garage and take the shuttle to the event. Additionally the Carta Downtown Shuttles are free. For more details visit: http://www.gocarta.org/# shuttle



Park and ride a bike - Bike Chattanooga (bicycle transit system): Bike Chattanooga is a bicycle transit system featuring hundreds of bikes at over 33 stations located throughout Chattanooga and available for use 24/7, 365 days a year. Each station has a touchscreen kiosk, system and neighborhood map, and docking points which release bikes using a member key or ride code. You must be 16 years or older to ride Bike Chattanooga. The station map can be found here: http://www.bikechattanooga. com/stations



Get a driver - Taxi and Uber service is available in the City of Chattanooga.



Walk it out - The downtown area has block to block sidewalks and is ADA compliant. Park your car a few blocks away, and walk down to the festival.



Alcohol Consumption



If you are 21 years of age or older you must get a wristband each night to purchase and drink alcohol.

A valid driver's license verifying 21 years of age or older must be shown when acquiring your wristband.

Age verification wristbands are required for all alcoholic beverage purchases and consumption.

Wristbands are available at all token and beer locations.

Anyone violating Riverbend regulations, public law, or assisting others to do so will be removed from the festival and/or charged accordingly.

There will be officers out looking for intoxicated driving so officials strongly encourage anyone drinking to drink responsibly. Walk, take a taxi, ride the bus or call an Uber.



Medical Services



First AID services are provided by Hamilton County Emergency Services and located throughout the festival site. If you cannot locate First AID services, ask an officer or volunteer for help. If it is a medical emergency, call 911 immediately.

More Riverbend Details



More details, inculding frequently asked questions, about the event can be found at: http://www.riverbendfestival. com/info--faq

Remember



If you SEE something, SAY something. Alert an officer if anything seems out of place or concerning. If you can't find an officer, alert a volunteer, and they will make contact with police. If it is an emergency, dial 911.


Four berths in Singapore to be leased and operated under the JV and CMA CGM and its liner shipping affiliates will be granted exclusive access

CMA CGM is set to form a joint venture company with PSA Singapore to operate and lease four container terminals.

The joint venture, in which PSA Singapore will hold a 51% majority stake and CMA CGM 49%, will sub-lease the dedicated box berths from PSA Corp, who will provide the pair with both ancillary facilities and the procurement of container-handing equipment.

CMA CGM and its affiliated lines will be given exclusive access to the terminals held under the joint venture, which a PSA corporate spokesperson told Lloyds List are located at the Pasir Panjang terminal to the east of the port.

News of the venture comes shortly after the announcement from CMA CGM that it had launched an all-cash voluntary conditional general offer for the Singaporean line NOL, which owns ocean carrier APL, after obtaining approvals by the relevant regulatory authorities in the European Union and China.

NOLs majority shareholder Temasek Holdings and related companies own a 66.78% share and will tender these in acceptance of the offer, but Temasek is also the sole owner of PSA Singapore.

According to Alphaliner, the move to set up the terminal venture with CMA CGM is part of the Singapore Governments plan to wrest back some of the transhipment volumes that have been lost to the competing Malaysian ports of Port Kelang, which the French carrier currently uses as its transhipment base in Southeast Asia, and Tanjung Pelepas.

PSAs share of the Southeast Asia (or Straits) container transhipment volume has fallen from 89% in the year 2000 to only 62% in 2015, said Alphaliner.

Singapores overall container throughput has fallen by -7.8% in the first four months of this year, following a -8.7% loss last year, whereas its key competitors gained ground.

In addition to its venture with CMA CGM, PSA Singapore is also set to gain further transhipment traffic from Port Kelang from 2017, with China Cosco agreeing to switch its current two-berth joint venture terminal to a new three-berth facility at the new Phase 3/4 modules of PSAs Pasir Panjang Terminal, said Alphaliner.

China Cosco currently uses Singapore as the main hub for Cosco volumes, while China Shipping Container Lines, which merged with Cosco on March 1, uses Port Kelangs Westports as its main Southeast Asia hub, it added.

With CMA CGM and Cosco set to join forces with OOCL, which already uses Singapore as its main Straits hub and Evergreen under the banner of the Ocean Alliance next year, Alphaliner says the Taiwanese line is PSAs next target.

"Ocean Alliance is to start operations next April and PSAs success in establishing joint ventures with two of the carrier groups core members, Cosco and CMA CGM, will likely result in Singapore being used as the alliances main hub in the region, it said.

The new CMA CGM-PSA joint venture could prove to be a major coup for Singapore, as bringing CMA CGM and its new alliance partners back to PSAs fold could finally reverse a long-term structural decline.

As part of the agreement between CMA CGM and PSA Singapore, PSA Terminals Management will provide berth management services to the company, which in turn willl provide long-term terminal services to CMA CGM and its shipping line affiliates, pursuant to a long-term terminal service agreement.

The joint venture company is still subject to the receipt of relevant regulatory approvals.
Salvation Army caseworkers are distributing free box fans and water to low-income individuals and families affected by the heat. The Salvation Army also has its Day Center open for the homeless and is providing a hydration station outside for those who need a cool drink of water.If you or someone you know is in need of a fan, call 423-305-6200. Those in need of a cool drink of water may visit the hydration station located at 800 McCallie Ave. Passersby will be able to quench their thirst from 9 a.m.-5 p.m.every day that the temperature exceeds 90 degrees. Every day next week, temperatures are expected to be over 90 degrees.Overwhelmingly, the most requests The Salvation Army receives in the summer time are requests for relief from the hot temperatures, says Director of Marketing Kimberly George. To meet these needs, The Salvation Army asks for new box fans and monetary support to provide utility assistance for low-income families.Monetary gifts for box fans and utility bill assistance should be marked Beat the Heat and mailed to 822 McCallie Ave., Chattanooga, Tn. 37403. Donations are also accepted online at www.csarmy.org or by calling 1-800-SAL-ARMY. For more information about The Chattanooga Salvation Army, visit www.csarmy.org , Facebook, and Twitter.
Irish Water came in for renewed criticism last week, this time over its protracted attempts to replace a troublesome water mains in Edgeworthstown.

The topic was one which generated plenty of frustration among councillors at Ballymahon's Municipal District meeting last week.

Much of that dismay came after it emerged Longford County Council cannot carry out resurfacing worksin the mid Longford town until the public utility meets its own obligations.

Cllr Paul Ross, said the section of road, which stretches from Kane's Garage to the Park House Hotel was so bad incensed locals were contacting him on an almost daily basis.

It's become an absolute joke at this stage, he said in reference to the state of the road surface.

I drive a jeep and to be honest it's like driving a tractor on it, it's absolutely cat.

But when the meeting was told the Council was waiting for Irish Water to carry out its own repairs, Cllr Ross was quick to hit back.

Look, we can't be left in limbo on this one, he snapped.

Waiting for Irish Water to invest in something like this is like waiting for your Lotto ticket to come in.

It (state of road) is a constant annoyance for people in the town.

Either we (Council) write to them or we bite the bullet.

Fianna Fail's Mick Cahill was equally exasparated, saying the state of the roadway was not doing any of us any good.

Fine Gael Cllr Colm Murray followed suit by asking senior executive engineer Alan Slattery for a traffic island to be removed from the area.

I understand you don't want to spend money doing up the road until the water mains is replaced but I think the removal of that traffic island is a matter of urgency, he contended.

For his part, Mr Slattery defended the Council's role in relation to works carried out in Edgeworthstown.

He said 40,000 had been spent by the local authority last year on Pound Streetwith regular contact being kept up with Tidy Towns officials over other undertakings.
A pair of Tennessee Fish and Wildlife Committee meetings will be held June 16-17 (Thursday-Friday) at the Nashville office of the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency.

The TFWC Retention and Recruitment Committee will meet on June 16 beginning at 1 p.m. The committee will review the agencys programs which inform the public about hunting and fishing in Tennessee.

On June 17, the TFWC Budget Committee will meet and TWRA staff will present information about current revenue and expenditures. The 2017-18 budgeting process will also be reviewed.

Both committee meetings will be held in the main conference room of the Nashville office. The meetings are open to the public.
The Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency is reporting that there were no boating-related fatalities over the 2016 Memorial Day holiday weekend.

During the period from May 27-30, there were four injury accidents and two property damage incidents. TWRA Boating and Law Enforcement officers issued 447 citations and 410 warnings. Among the citations, 21 boating under the influence (BUI) arrests were made. Officers inspected 9,065 boats during the weekend.

This marks the second straight year there were no boating related fatalities during the Memorial Day holiday weekend.

The number of BUI arrests was an increase from 12 during the 2015 holiday weekend.
Closing Falling Water Elementary School has caused a new formulation on who qualifies for the federal government's Community Eligibility Provision (CEP) that provides free lunches and breakfasts to all students at designated lower-income schools.

Carolyn Childs, who heads the child nutrition program for the county schools, said that caused seven schools to no longer be eligible starting with the upcoming school year.

They are Allen Elementary, Hixson High, Lookout Valley Middle/High, North Hamilton Elementary, Sequoyah High, Snow Hill Elementary and Soddy Daisy Middle.

Falling Water was a CEP school. The old school has been closed and merged with Ganns Middle Valley. The combined school is called Middle Valley Elementary.

Dr. Lee McDade, assistant superintendent, said the program has been a boon to the county schools, proving over half a million meals since it started in 2014 and also paying for much-needed cafeteria equipment.

Ms. Childs said the CEP schools see higher student participation in the meal program. She noted there is no stigma involved when everyone is free.

However, board member Greg Martin said he has problems when the government provides free meals "to a student whose parents make $100,000 and who live in a $250,000 house."

Rhonda Thurman, board member whose district includes many schools losing CEP status, said, "This is why I hate these kinds of program." She said families begin to depend on the programs, then they are suddenly taken away. She said, "Many parents may not have it in their budgets to start paying for meals for 3-4 kids."

She said a lot of food was wasted at CEP schools and a lot of meals were handed out "that were not needed."

Dr. McDade said it is expected that the eligibility standards are going to be made even stricter for schools that qualify for CEP.

Schools still in CEP are Alpine Crest, Barger, Battle, Bess T. Shepherd, Brainerd High, Brown Middle, Calvin Donaldson, Clifton Hills, Daisy, Dalewood Middle, Dupont, East Brainerd, East Lake Elementary and Middle, East Ridge Elementary, Middle and High, Hardy, Harrison, Hillcrest, Hixson Elementary and Middle, Lakeside, Lookout Valley Elementary, Orchard Knob Elementary and Middle, Red Bank Elementary, Middle and High, Rivermont, Soddy Elementary, Spring Creek, Howard, Brown Academy, Tyner Middle and Academy, Wolftever and Woodmore.



The program is part of the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010 "that allows schools and local educational agencies (LEAs) with high poverty rates to provide free breakfast and lunch to all students. CEP eliminates the burden of collecting household applications to determine eligibility for school meals, relying instead on information from other means-tested programs such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families."
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.
Tennessee single-family home sales rose five percent in May 2016 over the previous May (from 6,821 to 7,163), while the median price rose 5.4 percent (from $185,000 to $195,000), and inventory dropped 28.2 percent (from 33,110 to 23,781), according to numbers compiled by the Tennessee Association of Realtors.

Meanwhile, condominium sales held steady (672 vs. 671) and the median condo price inched up one percent (from $150,000 to $165,000), while condo inventory dropped by 38 percent (from 2,785 to 1,728).

In both categories, a continuing squeeze in inventory helped to boost median prices statewide.

Year to date (Jan.-May), Tennessee home sales were up 7.5 percent, and the median price rose 7.3 percent over the same period in 2015.

Buoyed by a strong economy and Tennessees continuing popularity as a destination for businesses and new residents, sales and median prices remain on the rise while the number of homes available for purchase has tightened, said Chattanooga broker Randy Durham, 2016 TAR president.

Weighing all factors, especially the growth mindset and vibrancy we see in every corner of the state, this remains an excellent time to buy or sell a home in Tennessee, Mr. Durham said.

A breakdown of Mays numbers by the states three Grand Divisions (West, Middle and East) illustrates each regions distinctiveness. For example:

Single-family home sales grew the most in East Tennessee; they were +10.2% in East (from 1,888 to 2,081), +3.3% in West (from 1,306 to 1,349), and +2.9% in Middle (from 3,627 to 3,733).

The median price of a single-family home grew the most in Middle Tennessee; it was +6.4% in Middle (from $211,900 to $225,500), +5.8% in East (from $165,268 to $174,900), and +2.7% in West (from $146,000 to $149,900).

Inventory of single-family homes dropped the most in Middle Tennessee; it was -34.3% in Middle (from 14,035 to 9,214), -25.3% in East (from 12,533 to 9,361), and -20.4% in West (from 6,542 to 5,206).
Dali Exhibit at Two Rodeo Drive - The first & largest show in US



Persistence of Memory: Dalinian time is not rigid, but rather fluid. The unexpected softness of the watch represents the psychological fact that speed of time, while precise in scientific use, is widely variable in human perception.

Dalinian time is not rigid, but rather fluid. The unexpected softness of the watch represents the psychological fact that speed of time, while precise in scientific use, is widely variable in human perception.

Saint George and the Dragon: Saint George, guardian angel of Aragon and celebrated saint of chivalry in medieval Europe, battles against heresy and evil.

Saint George, guardian angel of Aragon and celebrated saint of chivalry in medieval Europe, battles against heresy and evil.

The Unicorn : The mythical creature, a symbol of purity. The sensual nature of the piece is created with the portrayal the unicorn as a phallic figure with the out-stretched woman at its hooves.

: The mythical creature, a symbol of purity. The sensual nature of the piece is created with the portrayal the unicorn as a phallic figure with the out-stretched woman at its hooves.

Woman Aflame: A woman's mystery is her true beauty,' as idealised with Dali's use of the flames and drawers that convey the hidden intensity of unconscious desire and the mystery of hidden secrets.





Dance of Time I: Dalinian time is perpetual, dancing on, stopping for no man, history or the cosmos. The sculpture exemplifies Dali's relationship with time, his perception of its constricting limitations and the importance he believed to be inherent in memory.

Dalinian time is perpetual, dancing on, stopping for no man, history or the cosmos. The sculpture exemplifies Dali's relationship with time, his perception of its constricting limitations and the importance he believed to be inherent in memory.

Dance of Time II: The fluidity and space of time is represented through constant movement and dancing in sync to the beat of the universe.

The fluidity and space of time is represented through constant movement and dancing in sync to the beat of the universe.

Horse Saddled with Time:  Man believes he is in control of the voyage, but it is time who is the ultimate rider.' This famous Dalinian image of the horse saddled with Dalinian time, time that controls all of man's passage.

Man believes he is in control of the voyage, but it is time who is the ultimate rider.' This famous Dalinian image of the horse saddled with Dalinian time, time that controls all of man's passage.

Triumphant Angel: The beautiful Dalian angel trumpets his divine music, wings spread, head thrown back, sending his jubilant message to all who will listen.

The beautiful Dalian angel trumpets his divine music, wings spread, head thrown back, sending his jubilant message to all who will listen.

Triumphant Elephant: Exemplifies every individual's hope for abundance and good fortune in the future.

Exemplifies every individual's hope for abundance and good fortune in the future.

Snail and the Angel: A place in the Dalinian universe intimately connected with the artist's encounter with Sigmund Freud, who Dali regarded as his spiritual father.

A place in the Dalinian universe intimately connected with the artist's encounter with Sigmund Freud, who Dali regarded as his spiritual father.

Surrealist Piano: Dali animates the instrument into an animated and joyous musical piano that can dance with its legs from a woman as well as play.

Dali animates the instrument into an animated and joyous musical piano that can dance with its legs from a woman as well as play.

Surrealist Warrior: Roman warrior representing all victories - real and ethereal, spiritual and physical.



This world class exhibition of 12 iconic Salvador Dali sculptures is presented by Two Rodeo Drive and Galerie Michael, with a sponsorship from Beverly Hills Conference & Visitors Bureau. Drawing visitors locally and internationally, the collection will be free to the public and on display at Two Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills from June 16, 2016 to September 23, 2016.The exhibit highlights Dali's three-dimensional bronze monumental sculptures that are up to 12 feet tall as well as museum-sized sculptures that range in size from four to nine feet. Loaned from The Stratton Institute which possesses the world's largest collection of Dali's monumental sculptures, the exhibit offers the rare opportunity to view Dali's surreal sculptures in an open environment outside of a museum or gallery setting. Each sculpture highlights Dali's untamed imagination, offering onlookers a surreal and unique experience.The following are descriptions of the pieces that will be on display this summer:Dali Exhibit at Two Rodeo Drive was organized collaboratively by Beniamino Levi, President of The Stratton Institute and Michael Schwartz owner of Galerie Michael, both who had personal relationships with Dali. Over the duration of the exhibition, Galerie Michael will offer complimentary docent tours of the collection on weekends at 10am, 12pm, 2pm and 4pm. The tours will begin on Saturday, June 25.The exhibit has also partnered with Operation Smile, an international non-profit medical organization dedicated to improving the health and lives of children in developing countries with access to surgical care for those born with cleft lip, cleft palate or other facial deformities. Donations raised during the exhibition as well as a percentage of sales from purchased sculptures will benefit Operation Smile. Galerie Michael is proud to support the children of Operation Smile through this promotion.Two Rodeo Drive is home to 30 luxury and fashion boutiques including Galerie Michael, Jimmy Choo, Versace, Lanvin, Porsche Design, Brunello Cucinelli, Stefano Ricci, Breguet, Richard Mille, Etro, Philipp Plein and 208 Rodeo and Urasawa restaurants. Two Rodeo Drive's latest additions include Audemars Piguet and Carolina Herrera. Two Rodeo Drive is instantly recognizable as an iconic symbol of the prestigious and distinctive city of Beverly Hills and America's most celebrated shopping district. Two Rodeo Drive is located at the corner of Rodeo Drive and Wilshire Boulevard.For more information on Dali Exhibit at Two Rodeo Drive please visit: www.tworodeo.com
European Waterways Announces Three Family-Themed Charter Cruises

The company also offers $300 off for guests under 18, providing an excellent opportunity for small families to take advantage of their family-friendly itineraries in different regions of France. The three hotel barges participating in this offer are L'Art de Vivre for its August 7departure, Anjodi for its August 14departure, and Panache for its departure on August 21st.We understand how challenging it is for many family members to plan vacation time together, said Derek Banks, managing director of European Waterways. A hotel barge cruise can be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for a family and a chance to enjoy quality time together. A family as small as three people, booking a minimum of two cabins, can be confident that on the date they booked, their hotel barge  which can accommodate 8 or 12 guests  will be waiting for them. They will enjoy all the usual amenities from an attentive crew whether all the other cabins are booked or not.The eight-passengerfamily-themed cruise departs August 7. Cruising through the scenic Burgundy countryside, the vessel's itinerary includes a visit to Cardoland prehistoric World of Dinosaurs, canoe trips, and a tour of the Caves of Ancy sur Cure, a major site for Palaeolithic cave paintings.The August 14departure of the 8-passengerbased on the Canal du Midi, includes a visit to Aqualand Cap D'Agde, a popular family water park. The itinerary also includes a tour of the Oppidum d'Enserune Roman settlement and the prehistoric Grotte de Limousis prehistoric caves.The August 21departure on the 12-passengerwhich cruises the Alsace-Lorraine region of France, includes a visit to the Centre Aquatique Sarrebourg water park as well as the Alpine Luge at Lutzelbourg  a 1,640-foot high-speed rail ride down a mountainside. There is also a visit to the Saint Croix Animal Park and the Chocolate Museum in Strasbourg.Prices for these 6-night family-themed cruises start at $4,450 per person, based on double occupancy, and are all-inclusive, including admission to all the family attractions on the itineraries. For more information, visit www.gobarging.com or call Toll Free 1-877-879-8808.
Four Seasons Resort Nevis Offers Unforgettable Montserrat Trip

Four Seasons Resort Nevis and Olveston House of Montserrat announce Peaks of Perfection, an itinerary that combines exclusive experiences under dormant Nevis Peak volcano and Montserrats Soufriere Hills volcano into one unforgettable day. On Peaks of Perfection, guests will have the rare opportunity to enter Montserrats Exclusion Zone with a certified guide and walk atop more than 15 ft. of hardened pyroclastic flow, which has covered capital-city Plymouth and the southern half of the island. The exciting day concludes with a unique, cleansing Essence of the Peaks spa ritual at the Resort, which utilizes special volcanic sand to exfoliate and rejuvenate from head to toe.Starting early in the morning, guests are equipped with a boxed breakfast to prepare for a grand, personalized excursion. A one-hour, chartered flight aboard Caribbean Helicopters will fly guests from Nevis to Montserrat for breathtaking aerial views of entombed Plymouth and surrounding towns. Caribbean Helicopters have been supporting the scientific staff at the Montserrat Volcano Observatory since 2005 and boasts an accident-free safety record for the 21 years since the companys incorporation.Guests will then land in Montserrat and be welcomed by their personal tour guide, who will escort them to landmarks of the Emerald Isle of the Caribbean, including the Montserrat Volcano Observatory to learn about the events that led to this cataclysmic natural phenomenon from scientists that monitor the still-active volcano. Once equipped with an appreciation of Mother Natures awesome power, guests will enter the Exclusion Zone and have an opportunity to walk around and witness the devastation firsthand. This activity is truly unique, as all travel into the Exclusion Zone was prohibited after the 1995 Soufriere Hills volcano eruption, and only recently have restrictions been loosened to allow a few visitors.Following the awe-inspiring excursion into the Exclusion Zone, guests will continue on to Olveston House, where they will tour the historic home of the late Sir George Martin, long-time producer for The Beatles and owner of the AIR STUDIO Montserrat recording studio. Guests will see a collection of Gold and Platinum records throughout Olveston House, along with a gallery of black and white photos autographed by Linda McCartney. Guests will then enjoy a Montserratian lunch on the veranda and take in the natural serenity and beauty of the unaffected parts of the island.After lunch, guests will return to Four Seasons Resort Nevis, where the Resorts Spa therapists await to welcome guests for the new Essence of the Peaks ritual. Rejuvenating weary bodies from the days activities, Essence of the Peaks utilizes traditional Swedish techniques and incorporates a special blend of mineral-rich volcanic sand and lavender therapeutic oils to exfoliate dry, dead skin and dispel accumulated body tension. Following the treatment, guests can relax under the Spas Sala deck and enjoy the Japanese-inspired cold-plunge pool, overlooking verdant Nevis Peak, and recount the most special adventure.The Peaks of Perfection extraordinary experience is available on select days. For more intensity, guests also can add a guided climb of Nevis Peak and enjoy spectacular, panoramic vistas of the Caribbean Sea, including Montserrat to the south.Four Seasons Resort Nevis is situated along the golden sands of Pinneys Beach, located on the western coast of the island of Nevis, minutes from museums, plantation homes and historic churches dating to the 1600s. As the only Four Seasons Resort in the Caribbean, the property delivers superior service in a breathtaking setting, offering an intimate, well-appointed haven for the experiential traveler in search of authenticity and adventure. Consistently ranked by travelers and travel experts as one of the top resorts in the world, Four Seasons Resort Nevis has received numerous accolades, including the AAA Five Diamond Award. Follow the Resort on social media at @FSNevis. For more information, please visit
Las Alcobas, a Luxury Collection Hotel, Napa Valley to Open Fall 2016

The hotel's spacious guest rooms, spa and wellness center, on-site restaurant and event barn will appeal to local residents, leisure travelers, corporate retreats, couples seeking a romantic escape, and those in search of a unique venue for an intimate private event. Each aspect of the hotel is inspired by the beauty and authenticity of the region with subtle nods to the Las Alcobas brand's Latin American heritage.The hotel's 68 guestrooms and suites, all with fireplace-adorned outdoor terraces, overlook the tranquil neighboring vineyards or winery, including 10 rooms featuring outdoor soaking tubs situated on private balconies. Gracious interiors designed by award-winning international design firm Yabu Pushelberg are appointed with custom furniture, Rivolta Carmignani linens, and oversized spa-like bathrooms with soaking tubs and showers. The light, airy guestrooms feature headboards upholstered in linen and flanked by custom bedside tables. Clean and modern finishes in natural tones, as well as the use of warm, organic materials like oak and woven jute, promote a fresh, relaxing feeling. Paying homage to the heritage of Las Alcobas, guestrooms will also feature a selection of handmade soaps and in-room amenities such as market bags crafted in Mexico City, where the brand's award-winning flagship hotel resides.The serenity of the surrounding landscape is emulated at the 3,500 square foot Atrio spa, a wellness center where treatments include ancient healing, artisanal handmade products, and an apothecary-style aromatherapy blending bar. This blending system is designed by a world-renowned clinical aromatherapist, teacher, author and herbologist and is offered as part of all massage experiences. The curated treatment menu consists of traditional massage and mind techniques from across the world, many dating back over 2,000 years. Signature treatments incorporate organic and locally sourced products and ingredients to highlight the best that Napa has to offer. Atrio offers Naturopathica, natural botanical skincare products inspired by nature and drawing from traditional healing practices.The spa will feature four single treatment rooms, a co-ed steam room, a couple's treatment suite with a private steam room, men's and women's locker rooms, and indoor and outdoor relaxation areas. The hotel's corresponding fitness center will offer state-of-the-art equipment, Beringer estate views, and a dedicated studio for yoga, breath-work and meditation classes. The cabana-lined outdoor pool will also serve as a place for guests seeking relaxation and rejuvenation throughout their stay.The resort's signature restaurant, Acacia House, will be led by celebrated chef Chris Cosentino together with business partner Oliver Wharton of San Francisco's acclaimed Cockscomb restaurant. Set in a historic property dating back to 1907, Acacia House  the building's original name  reflects the rustic and bustling atmosphere of the former inn, updated with modern elements to showcase Cosentino's renowned combination of bold and balanced flavors. The menu at Acacia House captures the prevailing seasonal sensibility of California's wine country with a selection of small and larger plates designed to complement a diverse Napa Valley wine list celebrating both established and emerging brands. Cosentino and Wharton will oversee the food and beverage components at Las Alcobas including an on-site artisan bread program; breakfast, pool, lounge and room service; banquets and catering; as well as picnic baskets and musette bags for cyclists. Service elements, executed by the pedigreed hotelier team from Las Alcobas, will be characterized by a warm, intuitive approach for a reimagined and holistic Napa Valley dining experience.Vaulted wooden ceilings and sliding barn doors provide an airy sense of space in the 2,200 square foot event barn, available for private events for up to 100 people. The venue is equipped with an interactive demonstration kitchen and built-in AV, and is dividable by two full-size soundproof walls. Outside, a smaller event lawn can be reserved for intimate wedding ceremonies and events, and on the Acacia House Verandah, small groups can enjoy a unique private outdoor dining space.Las Alcobas, a Luxury Collection Hotel, Napa Valley is located at 1915 Main Street in St. Helena, CA, and is currently offering special opening rates starting at $695 for fall and beyond. For more information, please visit
Park Hyatt New York Introduces The Onyx Wedding

Encompassing the finest Park Hyatt New York has to offer, this curated compilation of services, amenities and added perquisites ensures the evening is truly seamless and unforgettable for both the wedding couple as well as their guests. Set within one of New York's most iconic ballrooms, the Onyx Room, which was designed to mimic an illuminated jewel box with back-lit white Onyx-lined walls, the Onyx Wedding provides an unprecedented backdrop to a customizable celebration reflecting the couples' personal preferences and interests.This unparalleled package was meticulously crafted by our seasoned events team at Park Hyatt New York to offer couples a coherent solution to their wedding needs, stated Leah Hoos, Director of Social Events at Park Hyatt New York. Based on decades of experience in creating the region's most elegant occasions, the Onyx Wedding incorporates the elevated experience discerning couples desire matched with the hotels' attentive and distinguished service.Park Hyatt New York's Onyx Wedding includes: An event for up to 100 guests Preferred rates for overnight accommodations (including 50,000 Hyatt Gold Passport Rewards Points which are redeemable for free stays at Hyatt locations worldwide) A complimentary Bridal Suite and groomsmen dressing room for day use One-hour cocktail reception in the Onyx Foyer equipped with an open premium bar and selection of six hors d'oeuvres to be passed out by butlers A four-hour dinner dance in the Onyx Room, with use of hotel inventory, featuring a three-course dinner, wine pairings, Prosecco toast and open premium bar A custom designed wedding cake by Ron Ben Israel On-site photography by Hechler Photographers A dedicated Event Director to ensure the day runs smoothly DJ Music by More than Music accompanied with pin spot lighting by Fusion Productions Floral arrangements designed by Ovando Design and Production A 60-minute couples massage in the luxurious Spa Nalai to ease post-wedding stressThe Onyx Wedding is available for new weddings that are booked after June 10, 2016 that take place prior to December 30, 2016 with a starting rate of $55,000 inclusive of tax and service charge. For more information or questions about availability please contact Park Hyatt New York's Director of Social Events, Leah Hoos, at leah.hoos@hyatt.com.Park Hyatt New York is the flagship hotel of the globally recognized luxury Park Hyatt brand. Designed by Pritzker Prize-winning architect Christian de Portzamparc and with YabuPushelberg at the helm of its interior design, the hotel's 210 luxurious guestrooms offer a slight nod to the past, evoking an eclectic, residential aesthetic. Park Hyatt New York guests benefit from the hotel's prime location across from Carnegie Hall and within walking distance to Central Park. The hotel allows the best local New York artists, chefs, interior and fashion designers, musicians and collectors to showcase their specialties, providing the ultimate guest experience. New Yorkers and worldwide travelers alike will enjoy an exquisite bar, The Living Room; gourmet culinary offerings at The Back Room at One57; the phenomenal Spa Nalai; a 24/7fitness center, and a stunning indoor swimming pool.Visit website:
Washington : The US President Barack Obama today endorsed Hillary Clinton as the Democratic partys presidential nominee, praising his former secretary of states experience and grit, even as a subdued Bernie Sanders vowed to foster party unity to take on Republican nominee DonaldTrump. "I dont think theres ever been someone so qualified to hold this office. Shes got the courage, the compassion, and the heart to get the job done... I have seen her judgement," Obama said in an email and a web video circulated by the Clinton campaign.

"Ive seen her toughness. Ive seen her commitment to our values up close.

The Clinton campaign also announced their first joint appearance with Obama on the campaign trail next week in Green Bay, Wisconsin.

Obamas endorsement of Clinton came moments after he met Senator Sanders of Vermont at the White House. Although, Sanders stopped short of endorsing Clinton, but he vowed to work with Clinton to defeat Trump. "Needless to say, I am going to do everything in my power and I will work as hard as I can to make sure that Trump does not become president of the United States," he said.

Clinton has reached the magical figure of having enough delegates to clinch the nomination of the Democratic Party.

Sanders, however, refused to end his presidential campaign. "I will, of course, be competing in the D.C. primary which will be held next Tuesday. This is the last primary of the Democratic nominating process," he said. But he did indicate that he is looking forward to working with Clinton to defeat Trump. "I look forward to meeting with her in the near future to see how we can work together to defeat Trump and create a government which represents all of us and not just the one percent," Sanders said.

PTI
A U.S. Navy rear admiral pleaded guilty on Thursday to a charge of lying to federal investigators, making him the highest-ranking officer to be convicted in the expanding "Fat Leonard" bribery case.



Robert Gilbeau, 55, a special assistant to the chief of the Navy Supply Corps, appeared in U.S. District Court in San Diego late Thursday afternoon, accompanied by his lawyer and a fluffy white dog he said helped him monitor his health.



Prosecutors said Gilbeau lied when he told investigators that he had not accepted gifts from Leonard Glenn Francis, whose contracts to clean, stock and maintain U.S. Pacific Fleet ships are at the center of the $30 million bribery case.



"He lied to federal investigators to conceal his illicit years-long relationship with Leonard Glenn Francis," Assistant U.S. Attorney Mark Pletcher told reporters after the hearing.



Neither Gilbeau nor his attorney agreed to comment on the case.



Guilbeau's guilty plea brings to 14 the number of people charged in the Singapore-based case, including Francis, the former chief executive of Glenn Defense Marine Asia. The Malaysian businessman also known as "Fat Leonard" pleaded guilty last year to bribery charges. Nine of the 13 previously charged have pleaded guilty.



Last month, a federal judge in San Diego sentenced U.S. Navy Captain Daniel Dusek, 49, to 46 months in prison in the case.



Dusek pleaded guilty last year to a charge of conspiracy to commit bribery after admitting he accepted services from prostitutes, luxury hotel stays, alcohol and other gifts in exchange for giving classified information to the company.



Three current and former U.S. Navy officers were charged with participating in the scheme on May 27, the U.S. Justice Department said.



In a plea agreement with prosecutors, Gilbeau agreed to pay $50,000 in restitution to the Navy as well as a $100,000 fine, said Kelly Thornton, spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney's office in San Diego.



He also faces up to five years in prison, although prosecutors have agreed to seek a sentence of 12 to 18 months, she said.



He was released Thursday on $75,000 bail and his sentencing date was set for Aug. 26.







Reporting by Marty Graham
Dr Grahaeme Henderson, President of the UK Chamber of Shipping has called on government, in Scotland and in Whitehall to provide further support to the UK maritime sector to ensure that jobs and businesses are able to face the challenges presented by current market conditions.

In a keynote speech to industry leaders and Scottish government representatives at the UK Chambers inaugural Summer Lunch in Edinburgh, Dr Henderson said: The Scottish maritime industry contributes nearly 2 billion to the economy, and the productivity of the maritime workforce is 10% higher than the economy-wide average.

However, we must be clear and honest as to the challenges the industry faces. Global market conditions have had a significant impact on jobs in the offshore sector  a sector that has helped drive prosperity, not just in Scotland but across the UK too.

The industry has always had its ups and downs, but there is justifiable concern that the numbers of British seafarers based in Aberdeen and elsewhere are in decline.

The skills required to work in the offshore sector are highly specialised, but with the right support they can be transferred into other areas of shipping; and government must act to provide support and funding to help seafarers re-skill and get back to sea.

Dr Henderson also added: Scotland is the home of world class maritime training facilities, which demonstrate the ambitions for its students, for the shipping industry, for its national economy, and its standing as a maritime world leader.

The UK Governments 15 million SMarT funding has helped to ensure that a new generation can go to sea. However we face international competition for seafarer training, often from countries who can do it far cheaper than we can.

The UK Chamber is therefore calling on government to implement a SMarT Plus option and increase funding to incentivise companies to train more seafarers  who in return will commit to giving cadets their first job, ensuring the government sees a return on its investment.

Scotlands Minister for Transport and the Islands Mr Humza Yousaf MSP, who took up the position following the election in May, commented: The Scottish Government and the shipping industry can work together to increase efforts to promote the positive contribution the shipping sector makes to the wider economy  as a renowned centre of excellence in the shipping industry, Scotland is a great place to do business, and we should publicise that throughout Europe and beyond.

"The maritime sector is an absolutely crucial part of sustaining and creating new quality jobs in Scotland. Building on these partnerships and collaboration will help ensure maritime growth.
1854 - The first formal graduation exercises are held at the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis, Md. Previous classes graduated without a ceremony. Rear Adm. Thomas O. Selfridge and Rear Adm. Joseph N. Miller are two of the six graduates that year.



1896 - Authorization is given for the first experimental ship model basin, which was under the supervision of Chief Constructor of the Navy, Capt. David W. Taylor. The basin, in Building 70 at the Washington Navy Yard, Washington, D.C., is used by the Navy to monitor new hull designs.



1944 - USS Glennon (DD 620) capsizes and sinks that evening off the Normandy coast, killing 25 crew members, while USS Rich (DD 695), while rescuing USS Glennons crew, loses 90 crew members after striking two mines.



1944 - USS Bangust (DE 739) sinks the Japanese submarine (RO 42), 70 miles northeast of Kwajalein, while USS Taylor (DD 468) sinks Japanese submarine RO 111, 210 miles north-northwest of Kavieng, New Ireland.



1945 - USS Skate (SS 305) sinks Japanese submarine (I 122) in the Sea of Japan.



1952 - USS Evansville (PF 70) is fired on by shore batteries in Songjin Harbor. She avoids damage by maneuvering while USS Endicott (DMS 35) and USS Thomason (DE 203) fire on and silence enemy guns.



1960 - Helicopters from USS Yorktown (CVS 10) rescue 54 crewmen of British SS Shunlee, grounded on Pratus Reef in South China Sea.



1995 - USS Firebolt (PC 10) is commissioned. The coastal patrol boat is the 10th of the Cyclone-class and currently homeported in Manama, Bahrain.



2006 - USS Farragut (DDG 99) is commissioned at Mayport, Fla., her homeport. The 49th Arleigh Burke-class destroyer is the fifth Navy ship named for Adm. David Farragut.





(Source: Naval History and Heritage Command, Communication and Outreach Division)
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Peru has become the latest country to accede to the International Maritime Organization (IMO) Ballast Water Management Convention (BWM Convention), a treaty designed to counter the threat to marine ecosystems by potentially invasive species transported in ships ballast water.

On June 10, Ambassador of Peru to the United Kingdom, Claudio de la Puente Ribeyro, met IMO Secretary-General Kitack Lim at IMO headquarters in London to hand over the instrument of accession.

With the addition of Peru, the number of states that have acceded to the BWM Convention stands at 51, representing 34.87 percent of the world's merchant fleet tonnage.

Lim has reiterated his request to countries that have not already done so, to ratify the BWM Convention as soon as possible in order to establish a certain date for entry into force, which will facilitate the work to make any necessary.
Managing Director for Monjasa DMCC, Mikkel Jacobsen, proudly received the Dubai Multi Commodities Centre (DMCC) Award for Best Maritime Company 2016.

The DMCC counts +12,000 leading businesses in Dubai and the judging panel emphasised several years of successful growth and Monajsas approach to quality and risk management as main reasons for the acknowledgment.

Mikkel Jacobsen, Managing Director for Monjasa DMCC, comments: I am truly honoured to receive this DMCC Award for Best Martime Company 2016 on behalf of Monjasa. In particular, since some of the worlds greatest maritime and shipping companies are also part of the DMCC. However, this award is not for me but for all my colleagues on land and at sea who play an important role in advancing sea trade in the U.A.E. and West Africa."

He added: "Two colleagues started up Monjasa DMCC exactly 10 years ago and since then, we have grown considerably in both size and financial strength. Today, we are an ISO and OHSAS certified company with 150 colleagues and operating 25 ships on a daily basis. We have always felt the support and warm hospitality from the local authorities and I can promise that Monjasa will remain a long-term community partner in Dubai.

This is what the judging panel said about Monjasas achievements: Founded in 2006, Monjasa DMCCs staff and fleet size has increased year on year in Dubai, operating throughout the Arabian Gulf and West Africa. Monjasas commitment to compliance and risk management makes the company part of an exclusive club of Bureau Veritas certified bunker suppliers.
U.S. Labor Secretary Perez and Cuyahoga County Executive Armond Budish visit The Great Lakes Towing Company headquarters and Great Lakes Shipyard; tour and discussion at The Great Lakes Towing Company focused on federal fundings impact and the importance of employer involvement in workforce training programs

U.S. Secretary of Labor Thomas E. Perez traveled to Cleveland on Monday, June 6, to meet with Cuyahoga County Executive Armond Budish, Chairman Ronald Rasmus of The Great Lakes Towing Company and members of the Cleveland-Cuyahoga County Workforce Investment Board to discuss the crucial role that sector strategic partnerships play in equipping workers with the skills they need to compete in todays labor market. Sector strategies are employer-driven partnerships of industry, education and training, and other stakeholders that focus on the workforce needs of key industries in a regional labor market.

Secretary Perez and County Executive Budish toured Great Lakes Shipyard  a full-service shipyard for new vessel construction, ship maintenance and repairs, and custom fabrication  that used its sector partnerships to grow their business and train their workers.

During the visit, Secretary Perez announced the availability of approximately $100 million in Americas Promise Job-Driven Grants to develop and grow regional partnerships between workforce agencies, education and training providers and employers in a variety of industries such as information technology, healthcare, advanced manufacturing, financial services and educational services. The Americas Promise grant competition is designed to:

Increase opportunities for all Americans through tuition-free training for middle-to high-skilled occupations and industries.

Expand employer involvement in the design and delivery of training programs.

Utilize evidence-based sector strategies to increase employability, employment earnings and outcomes of job seekers.

Leverage additional public, private and foundation resources to scale and sustain proven strategies.

These grants are part of the Obama administrations commitment to redesigning a modern skills infrastructure in America that engages employers as never before, said U.S. Secretary of Labor Thomas Perez during his visit at The Great Lakes Towing Company headquarters. Workforce partnerships built around the industry-specific needs of multiple employers are helping to expand opportunity for American workers, while also strengthening local communities and building a U.S. economy poised for growth.

In 2015, the Department of Labor awarded a $7 million Sector Partnership National Emergency Grant to the State of Ohio to support a variety of sector partnerships across the state. The State awarded $2.1 million of that grant to the Cleveland-Cuyahoga County Workforce Investment Board for partnerships focused on manufacturing, healthcare, and information technology careers. For the past two years Great Lakes Shipyard participated in the Medina County Workforce Development internship program sponsored by Ohio Means Jobs and the Make it in America Grant. The grant was made available to Northeast Ohio welding students through the educational leadership of Cuyahoga Community College.

Great Lakes Shipyard partnered with Cuyahoga Community Colleges (Tri-C) Fast Track Welding Program to recruit interns to be trained in the Shipyard. The Tri-C Fast Track Welding Program is a ten-week program which offers hands-on training in Welding Blueprint reading, Stick welding, MIG welding, and TIG welding. At the end of each class, the students submit test pieces for AWS evaluation by Element Materials Technologies, and receive certification for qualified submissions. Admission to the program requires the student to have a high school diploma or GED, they must pass the ACT WorkKeys assessment test, and successfully complete a background check and drug test. The Company also used resources provided by The Manufacturing Advocacy and Growth Network (MAGNET) to create a structured on-the-job training plan for the interns. Representatives from MAGNET along with the Shipyard staff worked together to develop a training program to ensure each intern receives standardized and comprehensive training in all facets of the job here at Great Lakes Shipyard.

Rasmus shared details on the Workforce Pipeline that The Great Lakes Towing Company and Great Lakes Shipyard created to provide internship and on-the-job training opportunities for local students at three Cleveland schools: Cuyahoga Community College (Tri-C), Max S. Hayes High School and Saint Martin de Porres High School. Rasmus believes that these scholastic partnerships support skilled trades by continuing their legacy through Clevelands future employees. As a Cleveland business with 116 years of expertise in the maritime industry, The Towing Company has always known the significance of training and developing our youth in preparation for real-world, good paying careers in the trades. Exposing students to the Shipyard and teaching them interpersonal skills, not only increases their growth but allows us to create a talent pool for us to tap into as we expand our manufacturing business.
South Korea and the U.N. Command, which overseas the Korean War armistice, said on Friday they had begun a joint operation to keep Chinese fishing vessels from operating illegally off the west coast.



The move comes after South Korean fishermen, frustrated with incursions by Chinese fishing boats in defiance of coast guard warnings, used rope to impound two Chinese trawlers this month and handed them over to authorities.



South Korea's navy and coast guard joined with the U.N. Command to patrol the approximately 60 km (40 mile) stretch of waters in the Han River estuary that runs between the coasts of the rival Koreas, a Defence Ministry official told Reuters.



"Our navy, coast guard and U.N. Command set up a military police to enter into an operation to expel Chinese fishing vessels," said the official.



North Korea had been notified of the team's operation as a safety precaution, an official at the Joint Chiefs of Staff said separately.



North and South Korea are technically still at war because their 1950-53 conflict ended in the armistice, not a peace treaty.



There were more than 10 Chinese boats fishing in the estuary on Friday but they fled to areas near North Korea's shore after the South Korean-U.N. operation began, the Joint Chiefs of Staff official said.



There was no immediate comment from the Chinese Foreign Ministry when contacted by phone.



The waters are near the Northern Limit Line, the maritime border disputed by the North which has been the scene of deadly naval clashes between the rival Koreas and violent confrontation between South Korea's coast guard and Chinese fishing vessels.



South Korea has repeated its complaint to China about illegal fishing by Chinese trawlers since the capture of the two vessels. South Korean Foreign Ministry spokesman Cho Joon-hyuk urged Beijing on Thursday to help come up with a permanent solution.





By Ju-min Park
On receiving the distress call motor tanker MV Infinity I around 20 nautical miles from Goa on Wednesday evening, the Indian Coast Guard (ICG) salvaged the vessel, its cargo and rescued 14 crew by dispatching ships from Goa.

MV Infinity I reported water ingress and continuous listing (nautical term for tilting) to starboard (right side of the ship). The vessel had reported that the list is increasing despite ship's de-watering efforts. Such emergencies can lead to the sinking of the ship.

The 83 m long MT Infinity-1 is an oil/asphalt carrier and was on coastal passage from Kandla port in Gujarat to Karwar in Karnataka with a 14-member Indian crew. She was carrying approximately 1750 tonnes of Asphalt.

Indian Naval Ship Trikand from Western Naval Command immediately responded to the call. Despite heavy seas the ship responded immediately (at about 9:00 PM on 08 June 16) by sending team of 4 personnel including 2 officers and high speed de-watering pumps. Maritime Rescue Coordination Center was also informed.

Coast Guard Ships Amal and Shoor and a tug from Goa were also dispatched for assistance and another naval ship INS Kondul was placed on standby. Helicopters were also prepared for immediate evacuations should the situation deteriorate.

MV Infinity I was anchored off Goa coast last night and provided with additional pumps by INS Trikand and CG Ships.

The Panama-flagged Infinity 1 (ex name Heng Hui) is a 3300 dwt asphalt / bitument tanker; she was owned by Wuhan Datong Industry until 2012, when she was sold to a Singaporean firm, then transferred last year to Prime Tankers of Dubai, UAE, according to Equasis.
Frances CMA CGM now holds over 78 percent of the shares in Neptune Orient Lines (NOL), bringing it closer to taking the Singapore company private.

CMA CGM currently owns approximately 78.07% of all NOL shares, and does not intend to preserve the listing status of NOL.

Further to the Offer Implementation Agreement, this change in control results in a change in the composition of NOL's Board of Directors.

Consequently, a reconstituted Board of Directors, comprising ten members, has been appointed with effect from 9 June.

The members of the reconstituted Board of Directors are Mr. Rodolphe Saade (Chairman), Nicolas Sartini, Lars Kastrup, Serge Corbel, Ziad Tabet, Mrs. Mathilde Lemoine, Ng Yat Chung, Kwa Chong Seng, Quek See Tiat and Tan Puay Chiang.

We are supportive of this transaction as it presents NOL with an opportunity to join a leading player with an extensive global presence and solid operational track record. The combination of NOL and CMA CGM will create a leading shipping company that delivers reliable and efficient service to its customers, said Temaseks Joint Head, Portfolio Management Group, Tan Chong Lee.

Their complementary strengths will yield mutually beneficial results. We also note and welcome the commitment of CMA CGM to enhance Singapores position as a key maritime hub and grow Singapores container throughput volumes, Tan said.

The takeover offer, which received regulatory clearance from China last month, marks CMA CGM's biggest ever acquisition and comes as container lines seek to cope with a severe market downturn through greater scale.
The Russian Foreign ministry said Moscow would respond to a U.S. naval ship's entry into the Black Sea with unspecified measures, saying it and other deployments were designed to ratchet up tensions ahead of a NATO summit, the RIA news agency reported.

Russian state media reported that the USS Porter, a U.S. naval destroyer, entered the Black Sea a few days ago on a routine deployment, a move it said raised hackles in Moscow because it had recently been fitted with a new missile system.

U.S. Navy officials told reporters on Wednesday the U.S. military would also have two aircraft carriers in the Mediterranean this month ahead of a July NATO summit in Warsaw as Washington sought to balance Russian military activities.

"Of course, this does not meet with our approval and will undoubtedly lead to response measures," RIA cited Andrei Kelin, a senior Foreign Ministry official, as saying about the USS Porter's movements.

He also said the deployment of U.S. aircraft carriers in the Mediterranean was a show of force which in his view deepened a chill in ties between Moscow and Washington caused by Russia's actions in Ukraine and Syria.

"As regards the overall situation of course there is a definite increase and stoking of tensions in our relations," he was quoted as saying.

"It is all being done on the eve of the Warsaw NATO summit. It is a show of force."



(Reporting by Andrew Osborn and Jack Stubbs; Editing by Alexander Winning)
Piraeus Port shareholders approved a new concession agreement with Chinese shipping giant COSCO on Friday, bringing Greece a step closer to concluding the sale of a majority stake in the port.



Greece agreed in April to sell a 67 percent stake in the port to COSCO for 368.5 million euros. With the concession agreement approved, the deal now needs the green light from parliament and the competition watchdog to go through.



Privatisations have been significant elements in Greece's succession of bailouts since 2010 but have reaped poor revenues due to political resistance, union protests and bureaucracy.



Under its third international bailout, Athens also plans to sell a majority stake in its second largest port in the northern Greek city of Thessaloniki later this year.



Last week, Piraeus Port shareholders met at an Athens hotel to clear the concession agreement, which specifies how COSCO will operate the port, and the removal of workers representatives from the board, but the meeting was interrupted due to protests by striking port workers.



They have been on 48-hour rolling strikes since late May, opposing the sales of the ports and demanding their labour status be protected under the privatisation deals, including the concession agreement with COSCO.



On Friday, they gathered again outside the Athens stock exchange where Piraeus shareholders met under the presence of about 300 police officers.



The port workers have refused to return to work until they get written assurances from the government that their rights will be secure.



"We don't have any basic assurances for the future of the workers both at Piraeus and Thessaloniki ports," the head of port workers union George Georgakopoulos told Reuters. "We will continue our fight and we will scale it up until the end."



Dozens of state workers blocked the entrance to offices of Greece's privatisation agency in Athens earlier on Friday to protest against the port sell-offs.



The port strike has disrupted cargo operations and services provided to cruise ships. Cruise operators have warned they will shun Piraeus in favour of other ports if the action continues.





Reporting by Angeliki Koutantou
Hong Kong's crucial shipping trade is hoping China's overseas infrastructure plan and closer business ties with Iran will enable the city to tackle the downturn in the seaborne sector and tougher competition, officials said.

The global container sector, which transports everything from bananas to iPhones, as well as the dry bulk shipping market hauling commodities including iron ore and coal, is struggling with a glut of ships, a faltering global economy and weaker consumer demand - pressuring freight companies as well as ports that handle the volumes.

Hong Kong, one of the world's biggest container ports, expects to benefit from China's new silk road initiative aimed at developing trade and transport links across Asia and beyond.

"You have a lot of building materials that will need to be transported. That will have demand for shipping," said Jenny Koo with the Hong Kong Trade Development Council (HKTDC).

"For Hong Kong, our priority markets will be Asia and the Middle East," she told Reuters during Greece's Posidonia shipping week in Athens.

The plan to build land, sea and air routes also known as the "One Belt, One Road" was announced by Chinese President Xi Jinping in 2013 with the aim of boosting trade by $2.5 trillion in the next decade. As China's economic growth slows, Beijing is encouraging its companies to win new markets overseas.

"There are a lot of new projects especially in the context that there is the 'One Belt, One Road' initiative being pushed out," David Cheng, of the Hong Kong Maritime and Port Board, said separately.

"We have a very strong shipping cluster and we have to attract more people in the industry to make Hong Kong as one of their operating bases."

Hong Kong handled over 20 million TEUs (20-foot equivalent container units) last year.

The HKTDC's Koo said global container throughput via Hong Kong was estimated to grow this year by 4.1 percent and intra-Asia trade by 4.4 percent.

Trading and logistics account for 23 percent of Hong Kong's gross domestic product and the city is targeting more shipping trade with Middle Eastern countries including Iran after international sanctions on Tehran were lifted earlier this year.

Hong Kong officials said freight activity with Iran was expected to include multiple areas such as food products and consumer goods.

"A lot of people have been dealing with Iran through third parties," said Stephen Wong of the HKTDC. "Now that sanctions are taken away, Hong Kong will benefit ... I'm sure that the trade will grow."

(By Jonathan Saul; Editing by David Evans)
Sri Lankas Ministry of Ports and Shipping has issued guidance on the implementation of the SOLAS VI Regulation 2 amendment that requires the verification of gross mass in packed containers (Container Weight Verification) with effect from 1 July 2016.



In its Merchant Shipping Notice MSN 21/2016 dated 6 June 2016, the Ministry advises that the amendment places a requirement on the shipper of packed containers to verify and provide the containers gross mass to the carrier and terminal representative prior to it being loaded onto a ship. The vessel operator and the terminal operator are required to use verified container weights in vessel stowage plans and are prohibited from loading a packed container aboard a vessel for export if the container does not have a verified container weight.



Unless specified, the requirements to verify the gross mass of a packed container apply to all containers to which the CSC applies, and which are to be stowed onto any ship for the purpose of exporting goods from Sri Lanka. The gross mass of inbound containers will have either been verified in the country of loading or through prior agreement between shipper and carrier.



The provisions of SOLAS Chapter VI, Part A, Regulation 2 do not apply to:



i. A packed container on a chassis or trailer to be driven on a ro-ro ship which is engaged on short international voyages.



ii. Cargo items tendered by a shipper to the master for packing into a container already on board the ship.



iii. "Offshore containers" to which the CSC, according to the Guidelines for the approval of offshore containers handled in open seas and the Revised recommendations on harmonized interpretation and implementation of the International Convention for Safe Containers, 1972, as amended (CSC.1/Circ.138/Rev.1).




Dozens of demonstrators blocked the entrance to Greece's privatisation agency offices in central Athens on Friday and planned more protests during the day against the sale of the country's two biggest ports.



Privatisations have been a key plank of Greece's succession of bailouts since 2010 but have reaped poor revenues due to political resistance, union protests and bureaucracy.



Greece has agreed the sale of a 67 percent stake in Piraeus Port to COSCO for 368.5 million euros. Under its third international bailout, Athens also plans to sell a majority stake in its second largest port in the northern Greek city of Thessaloniki later this year.



About 80 state workers and members of communist-affiliated groups rallied early in the morning outside the headquarters of the privatisation agency, which manages the sales. Piraeus Port employs 1,100 people and Thessaloniki port about 400.



More protesters started rallying outside the Athens stock exchange building where Piraeus Port shareholders were expected to meet at 0800 GMT to approve the port's sale. About 300 police officers were deployed outside the building.



Last week shareholders met at a central Athens hotel to approve the sale, but the meeting was interrupted after to the protests.



Port workers have been on 48-hour rolling strikes since late May demanding that their current labour status is protected under the privatisation deals, including the 36-year concession agreement with COSCO.



The strike has disrupted cargo operations and services provided to cruise ships. Cruise ship operators have warned that cruise lines will shun Piraeus for other ports if the labour action continues.

Reporting by Angeliki Koutantou
Capt. Jason Grimes, an AH-1Z Cobra pilot with Marine Light Attack Squadron 369 and a Hibbing, Minnesota native, is the first pilot to complete the two-month Aviator Immersion Program in Bridgeport, California.



As part of the program, Marine Aircraft Group 39 sends pilots to Bridgeport to train alongside infantry battalions so they may gain a better understanding of the units operation.



The end state is to have a closer integration between the [Marine Air Ground Task Force], in particular with the aviation combat element and the ground combat element, said Col. Michael Borgshulte, the commanding officer of MAG-39. One of the ways we get to that end state is through four lines of effort.



Borgshulte emphasized that the number one priority is to partner MAG-39 units with GCE units and conduct professional military education and training in order to build lasting relationships that would lead to more symbiotic training evolutions.



The second line of effort would be what Im calling the Aviator Immersion Program, so what Ill do is take the pilots, and Ill put them with normally a battalion for 45 to 60 days to get a better appreciation of what the GCE is doing, said Borgshulte. The third line of effort is a medium scale exercise, and [this involves us] using the synergy of all the aviation assets and ground assets in a grass root-led exercise, whether it be a [tactic recovery of aircraft and personnel] package [or some other contingency mission].



Lastly, Borgshulte explained the fourth line of effort is the simulation portion, linking simulators between Marine Corps Air Stations Miramar, Yuma and Camp Pendleton. Following that, GCE Marines fill requirements in joint tactical air control, the fire support coordination center and the Marine Air Control Squadrons command and control system.



As part of the AIP, Grimes filled the role of the air officer for three different training evolutions during his time with the infantry battalions.

He worked with 2nd Battalion, 4th Marine Regiment, during a Marine Corps Combat Readiness Evaluation, which helped the Marines improve combat readiness and prepare for combat scenarios. He also trained with 2nd Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment, in Mountain Warfare, which taught Marines mountain climate survival and assault climber techniques, and a Fire Support Coordination Exercise, which gave Marines the training they needed to effectively call in artillery or air support.



The main point of this program is to get more pilots over to the infantry units so they can have a better understanding of how they operate on a company or battalion level, and they can build relationships with the company and platoon commanders, said Grimes.



According to Grimes, its paramount to correspond effectively between the air and ground combat elements.



As a Cobra pilot, my goal is to support those Marines on the ground, said Grimes. If all my training to support them is so disconnected that I never communicate or work with them, I think that kind of fails the whole [Marine Air Ground Task Force] idea.



From Grimes observation, working so close with a ground unit was unlike working with his air unit.



There is a different mindset, said Grimes. The concerns of a battalion are going to be different than the concerns of the air unit as far as a threat goes. It was a great experience to see how the ground unit thinks through a situation and being able to explain to them how we might think through a situation on the air side.


Get ready to race into a new career.

The Martinsville-Henry County Chamber of Commerce will host a job fair for area residents from 9 a.m. to noon Tuesday at Martinsville Speedway, off U.S. 220 Business (Greensboro Road) just south of the city.

More than 40 employers  some from as far away as Rocky Mount and nearby places in North Carolina  will be discussing and interviewing for more than 1,500 jobs they have available, chamber President Amanda Witt told the organizations board Thursday.

"Jobs are out there," Witt said. "We just need for people to show up" at the fair to get them.

Job-seekers are encouraged to "dress to impress," bring updated resumes and be prepared to be interviewed on site, chamber officials said.

Robbie Knight, the chambers business services manager, is spearheading the fair.

Board member John Parkinson, chief executive officer of Drake Extrusion, commended Knight for doing an "absolutely phenomenal" job of organizing a recent job fair for the company. He indicated that he thinks Knight also will do an excellent job with the event at the speedway.

Also Thursday, the board approved seven new chamber members and cast 13 off the membership rolls.

New members are Business Solutions, Kare Pharmacy and Compounding, Main Street Scrubs, Martinsville Plumbing Heating & Air, State Farm Insurance/T.J. Davis, Turn Key Kitchen & Bath and Wimmer Optical.

Dropped members include Aarons, Brock Services, coolknobsandpulls.com, First Pharmacy of Martinsville, Raymond Mallinak DDS, Martinsville Family Pharmacy, Medi Home Healthcare, Mount Sinai Church, Piedmont Mechanical Systems, Rescare/Community Alternatives, Soular Development, Wellington Manor Apartments and Wendys Old-Fashioned Hamburgers.

"Its that time of the year where were cleaning up our books," Witt said, and purging from them members who have not been reached recently and/or showed no interest in renewing memberships.

Currently, the chamber has 631 members.

Seven new board members were approved, along with board officers for the new fiscal year that will start July 1.

New members are Lori Cauly of ValleyStar Credit Union, Brian Cecil of Nilit, Ron Haley of River Community Bank, Teddy Martin of The Results Companies, Tonja Martin of ATM Motors, Dennis Sparks of Debbies Catering and Charles Whitfield of Charis Transportation Services.

New and re-elected officers are Jason Davis, chairman; Pat Caldarera, vice chairman of organizational improvement; Ron Haley, vice chairman of government affairs; John Parkinson, vice chairman of economic development; Victor Correa, vice chairman of membership services; Tommy Harris, secretary/treasurer; and Karen Parker, immediate past chairwoman.

Outgoing board members Jason Muehleck, Mary Nester, Jermaine Shelton, Kim Smith-Glisson, Donna White and Jerry Wood were presented plaques recognizing their service.

The board also learned that:

The Integrated Centers for Science and Medicine (ICSM), which aims to establish the College of Henricopolis School of Medicine in uptown Martinsville, plans to launch a nine-month Premedical Academy in January.

ICSM Director Dr. Noel Boaz said the academy will give students aiming to become doctors a basic foundation of what they can expect in medical school. He said it also will prepare them to take the Medical College Admissions Test (MCAT), which medical schools use to assess prospective students skills, he said.

Employers are being sought to participate in the 2016 SOVA Career Choice Youth Expo, to be held Oct. 5-6 at the Olde Dominion Agricultural Center in Chatham.

More than 4,000 middle and high school students from Martinsville and Henry County, as well as Danville and Pittsylvania, Patrick and Halifax counties, are anticipated to attend to learn about numerous career opportunities available for them in Southern Virginia.

Employers interested in participating can contact Julie Brown, director of advanced learning for the Institute for Advanced Learning and Research in Danville, at (434) 766-6711 or julie.brown@ialr.org.
Less than two days after clinching the Democratic Party nomination for President, Hillary Clinton got another vote of support, this time from southern Virginia. Martinsville Vice Mayor Jennifer Bowles announced her endorsement of Clinton in the general election. Bowles said she felt it was important to recognize the historical significance of Clintons nomination.

"Its not about politics, Im just pro-woman," Bowles said. "Hillary Clinton is the first woman to be nominated as a major political partys candidate for president. Thats important."

Bowles acknowledged that plenty of people dislike Clinton as a candidate, but said regardless of how someone feels about the person, she believes the nomination could end up helping to inspire members of the Martinsville community.

"It gives young women hope," Bowles said. "They realize that they dont have to feel hindered by their gender. If theres a goal they want to achieve, they can work hard and do it."

In terms of policy, Bowles said theres several things she hopes that Clinton, if she wins the presidency, could do. She hopes that Clinton would provide more tax breaks, especially to small businesses.

"We need more jobs, more opportunities for our children," Bowles said. There are ways the federal government can help us secure economic development in Martinsville."

The endorsement comes as Clinton also received support from the White House Thursday, with President Obama issuing a declaration. In a video released by the Clinton campaign, Obama said that "I dont think theres ever been someone so qualified to hold this office. Shes got the courage, the compassion and the heart to get the job done."

While Clinton may be the first woman to be nominated by the Democratic or Republican parties, shes not actually the first woman to run for president in a general election. That goes to Victoria Woodhull, who in 1872 ran as a candidate for the Equal Rights Party, with Fredrick Douglass as her running mate. Woodhull, who ran on a platform of equal rights, the right to marry without government interference and the right for women to vote, also served as editor of the Woodhull and Claflins Weekly newspaper. Days before the election, she was arrested on obscenity charges, after reporting about an affair between a clergyman named Henry Ward Beecher and Elizabeth Tilton. Beecher had opposed Woodhulls stance on equal rights and the right to marry without government interference. Beecher would later go to trial himself for that same case of adultery in 1875, a case which ended in a hung jury.

Woodhull would finish last in that years race, which went to Ulysses Grant, who won a second term in office.
A Woman Was Sexually Assaulted While Riding Her Bike In Bridgeport, Police Warn

By Stephen Gossett in News on Jun 9, 2016 9:54PM



Chicagoist Flickr User Vonderau Visuals

The Chicago Police Department released a community alert Thursday morning following a sexual assault in Bridgeport.

The incident occurred shortly after midnight Saturday, June 4 in an alley near 3200 North Wells Street. The victim was riding her bike in the alley when the offender, described as possibly Hispanic or Middle Eastern, attempted to pull her from her bicycle while exposing himself, according to police. He fled in a red/maroon four-door sedan, possibly with a rear spoiler.

Area residents are advised to look out for a light-complected 508 male, 185 lbs., with brown eyes, a black crew cut, and thin beard. He was wearing a dark-colored tank top and knee-length shorts.
The Kroger Co. on Wednesday announced that associates working at 41 stores in the Mid-Atlantic Division have ratified a new labor agreement with Local 400.

The agreement covers 5,100 associates in Virginia from Bristol east to Appomattox; from Martinsville north to Harrisonburg; three stores in Kingsport/Johnson City, Tennessee; and two stores in the Bluefield, West Virginia, area.

"We are pleased to reach an agreement that is good for our associates," said Joe Fey, president of the Mid-Atlantic Division. "This new contract provides wage increases, affordable health care and ongoing investment in our associates pension fund to support their retirement.

"This agreement comes after thoughtful and productive work by both the company and the union bargaining committees," said Fey. "I appreciate our associates for supporting the agreement and for the excellent service they provide our customers every day."

Overall, the Mid-Atlantic Division includes 120 stores in Virginia, West Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky and Ohio.
The renewable strike movement, which has been launched in several key sectors of the economy over the past three weeks, has had the immediate effect of intensifying the media propaganda campaign aimed at the anti-labour law mobilization since the beginning of March

Photo: CGTThe extreme aggressiveness of this propaganda, which is orchestrated at the highest levels of the state and the bosses, reflects the hatred and fear experienced by the latter in the face of such mobilizations by refinery and port workers. And for good reason: by paralyzing important sectors of the economy, the renewable strikes showed the way to a possible victory against the labour law. As we noted at the beginning of March, only the development of a renewable strike encompassing a growing number of economic sectors is likely to make the government back down.

At the same time, the renewable strikes [the continuation of which is put to the vote on a daily or weekly basis] have shown the enormous power of the working class. Not a wheel turns and not a light bulb shines without the kind permission of the workers. This truth is unbearable for the capitalists because it has revolutionary implications. Indeed, if it is the workers that make possible all the critical activities of the countrys economy, why shouldnt they be its masters? Why leave the economy and the state in the hands of a handful of giant parasites - the bosses of the CAC 40 companies and their right-wing, or left-wing, politicians?

Our opponents have posed that question themselves, in a way, when they continuously repeated the words of Prime Minister Manuel Valls: The CGT [trade union confederation] does not make the law in this country. This is true; its Medef (the main employers association) who makes the law in this country at the moment. But the present movement emphasizes the enormous potential power of the labour movement. The workers of the EDF electric company reminded Medef President Pierre Gattaz of this by cutting power to his holiday home, while switching more than one million homes to cheaper off-peak rates. Therefore, if it really was the labour movement that made the law instead of big business, wouldnt things go better for the mass of the population? These are the kinds of questions that the statement of Manuel Valls has aroused in the minds of a number of workers. In seeking to turn public opinion against the CGT and workers in struggle, the Prime Minister has given material for political discussions on this crucial question: who should run society? Who should make the law: a minority of profit-hungry big capitalists, who are destroying the economy - or the mass of workers, who produce all the wealth?

Encouraged by government statements and Pierre Gattaz, journalists and columnists of the major capitalist media have thrown aside their last trappings of objectivity and joined the great reactionary chorus. The problem in France, you see, is the CGT, the blockades, the population being taken hostage by a minority of radicalized strikers - and so on, around the clock, in all major media. Le Point director Franz-Olivier Giesbert has managed the difficult task of outpacing even infamous columnist Eric Zemmour in his inflammatory rhetoric, by putting the CGT and the Islamic State group in the same pot. But then, you must treat the CGT like IS! In one sentence, Giesbert revealed the real purpose of the state of emergency and anti-democratic measures adopted in the wake of attacks in January and November 2015. All these measures are aimed not at terrorists of IS but our democratic rights, the democratic rights of the labour movement - including the terrorists and thugs of the CGT, to quote the president of Medef. This is another important political lesson that has escaped from the pen of a bourgeois reporter.

By pushing our opponents into making such political pronouncements against the strikers and their organizations, renewable strikes have had the effect of politicizing the debate. Lets take another example. The CGT is accused, on every television channel and radio frequency, of making a mockery of democracy. How? By rejecting the authority of Parliament and the President of the Republic elected by the people in 2012. The democratic institutions are threatened by a minority of radicalized unionists. But again, the argument turns against its authors. First of all, the use of the decree powers of article 49-3 on May 10 in order to bypass Parliament showed the attitude of the government itself towards the democratic institutions. And, as the mobilized workers now say, the strike is our 49-3.

Second, President Francois Hollande did not campaign in 2012 on a commitment to destroy the Labour Code. Rather he named finance as his enemy and promised to improve the lot of workers, youth, the unemployed and pensioners. But once in power, his policy was driven by the interests of finance and big business in general, at the expense of the rest of the population. And they want the workers - a majority of whom voted for Hollande in 2012  to peacefully let themselves be stripped of their rights after being betrayed, once again, by the leadership of the Socialist Party?

No, Holland and Valls do not represent the majority of the people; they represent and serve a handful of billionaires, while they languish in the depths of unpopularity. In contrast, the activists of the CGT in struggle defend the interests of the entire working population. The real democratic majority is on the side of the strikers and their unions, not on the side of the Elysee Palace, the Parliament and the MEDEF. This is how a great many workers understand the situation. The bourgeois (and corrupt) democratic institutions come out more discredited than they were already.

A problem of leadership

In the first instance, the media offensive against strikes and the CGT has not affected the massive support enjoyed by the movement. This is not only what the polls show, but also the great success of the strike fund launched by info'com-CGT [the unions ICT workers branch]: over 260,000 euros collected to date. If the national leadership of the CGT had organized a serious financial campaign of solidarity with the strikers, the figure would undoubtedly be much higher.

Support for the movement is therefore strong. But that can change. If blockages and renewable strikes do not develop significantly, if they do not rapidly spread to new sectors of the economy, it is unlikely that the government will back down. So, for lack of a perspective for victory, the movement could lose public support. This is the objective of Valls and Holland. The main danger is not anti-union propaganda of the government, but the relative isolation of the mobilized sectors.

Above all, workers engaged in a renewable strike cannot hold out indefinitely. By its very nature, the extension of the movement must be fast. From this point of view, we must recognize that the situation is mixed. The garbage and waste treatment workers have entered the movement. The strike is still solid in strongholds such as the Compagnie Industrielle Maritime oil terminal at Le Havre harbour. Every day, blocking actions and roadblocks, among other things, are organized around the country, including notably the initiative of electricity and gas workers. On 7 June, a CGT statement announced strikes in 3 of the 4 Amazon sites in France - where working conditions are notoriously bad - and "renewable actions in many food companies (Nestle 56, Haribo Perrier 30, Jacquet 63, Tabac Le Havre...), engineering factories (LME 59 Iveco 07 Annonay, Peugeot Mulhouse...), commerce (Intermarche, Leclerc 31), and glass (Verralia...)". All these strikes are very significant. They show enormous potential. But at the same time, the movement is receding in the refineries, while they were all on strike on 24 May. The owners of several refineries are engaged in intense manoeuvring to break the strike, holding "consultations" over the heads of the workers assemblies. Most road transport workers have returned to work. The strike on the SNCF railways is not solid enough to paralyze traffic. No significant disturbance is visible on the RATP (Paris transport) network.

The dynamic is therefore contradictory. And once again, the government will not back down easily: firstly, because the Labour Code is a very important counter-reform from the standpoint of big business; secondly, because the government fears that a victory for the workers will encourage new mobilizations. This is what the CGT leadership should explain, instead of simply welcoming the mobilization - ignoring its weaknesses - and sowing illusions about the potential impact of the day of action on June 14 (which was set for far too long after the beginning of the renewable strikes). In itself, the day of action on June 14 - even if it is powerful - will not force Hollande and Valls to back down. Remember that in the autumn of 2010, Sarkozy and Fillon conceded nothing in the face of three days of action, each bringing more than 3 million people onto the streets of the country. Unless it forms part of a phase of expansion of the renewable strikes, the day of action on June 14 will change nothing.

There are limits to striking by proxy against the labour law, [in which some key sections of workers bear the brunt of the action while others offer more passive support]. In the absence of a generalized movement, the workers on strike will attempt to wrest guarantees from their own employers before returning to work. The government is manoeuvring to encourage this scenario, as we have seen with the road transport workers who obtained guarantees and as we are currently witnessing with the railway and airport workers among others. It would be absurd to blame the workers of these sectors. The responsibility for this situation falls on the national leadership of the unions involved in this movement who do not sufficiently take into account the real dynamic of the struggle and call yet again to continue and amplify the mobilization in all of its forms, when the only form of mobilization that can lead to victory at the current moment is the rapid spreading of renewable strike action to the maximum number of sectors of the economy.



Lastly, the CGT continues to call for mobilizations in order to obtain the withdrawal of the labour law... and to win new rights with a labour code for the 21st century. The withdrawal of the labour law is obviously the main demand and should remain so. We must push back against the attacks of the government. But many workers  most notably public service workers  do not feel immediately threatened by this law, which on paper does not directly affect them (although in reality any step back in the private sector is a step back in the public sector). Conversely, in the private sector, a great number of employees are already faced with provisions contained in the labour law. This is why positive and offensive demands should be incorporated into the platform of the movement  for example on wages or working time  capable of bringing new layers of workers into action. In this respect, new rights with a labour code for the 21st century is a formulation that is far too vague without any real concrete content. This cannot convince anyone to enter the struggle.



After years of counter reforms and austerity, employees are willing to fight: this is clearly shown by the current movement. But against opponents as determined as Valls, Hollande and Gattaz, the movement needs a leadership that is determined to fight until the end, with an offensive strategy that corresponds to the real balance of power and the actual dynamic of the struggle. If the leadership is lacking at the top of the trade unions, workers and trade unionists who are active on the ground should take things into their own hands. The general assemblies of the workers must be linked at the local, regional and national levels through elected and recallable delegates in order to give the movement a democratic structure able to fully express the militancy of the workers, develop the movement and go on the offensive. The demonstration of June 14th in Paris could be the opportune moment to organize a meeting of delegates from general assemblies of active areas all over the country. There is no time to lose!
Man Arrested On Murder Charges Shortly After Announcing Lawsuit Against City

By Stephen Gossett in News on Jun 9, 2016 8:24PM



Crime scene tape (Photo by LukaTDB via Shutterstock) We told you yesterday about Dominiq Greer, the 25-year-old man who is suing the city of Chicago for alleged excessive force over a 2014 incident in which he was shot seven times by police. In a dramatic, only in Chicago twist, that same man was then arrested on murder charges mere moments after his news conference announced the $15 million lawsuit, according to USA Today. He was detained outside the office of his attorney, Eugene Hollander, while waiting for his Uber.

The murder charge is for the May 27 shooting death of Hyde Park man Kevin Larry, 22, near 56th Street and Wabash Avenue, in Washington Park. (A warrant for Greer's arrest was issued on May 29.) "Upon learning of the press conference, CPD dispatched a team of officers to apprehend him in connection with the murder," spokesman Anthony Guglielmi was quoted in USA Today. He was taken into custody without incident.

Even if only coincidental, the timing is beyond bizarre. Greer and Hollander had just spent nearly an hour with media detailing the lawsuit. During the 2014 encounter with police, Greer was initially armed, they acknowledged. While being pursued, he then fell while trying to throw out his gun, which police say fired when hitting the ground. Officer Lawrence Cosban then shot three Greer times, Holland said, then another four more times at close range, at which point Greer was unarmed. The responding officers were both subsequently cleared of wrongdoing by the Independent Police Review, the much-maligned oversight body that Mayor Rahm Emanuel seeks to disband. Greer was charged with unlawful use of a weapon and was out on bail awaiting trial.

The encounter was caught on video but only released Wednesday by Hollanders office. It was not included in last Fridays massive data dump of police-involved shootingsa bid for transparency that has drawn criticism from the Fraternal Order of Police for not presenting enough context.

Police department spokespeople did not further comment about the timing of the arrest since charges are still pending. Hollander was unavailable for immediate comment.
Store Aimed At Adult Babies, Tykables, Opens In Mount Prospect

By Mae Rice in Arts & Entertainment on Jun 9, 2016 7:42PM



Photo via Facebook

Some adults have to wear diapers. Hence, Depends. But other adults wear diapers, not out of practical necessity, but because they like to role-play as babies. A new store has opened in Mount Prospect to cater to the AB/DL (Adult Baby/Diaper Lover) community, as it's termed online: Tykables, located at 512 W. Northwest Highway.

The store opened in early April, and owner John-Michael Williams, 30who lives in Mount Prospect and identifies as part of the adult baby communitytold Chicagoist that the store is first and foremost an office for Tykables' online business. Tykables has existed as a web store, primarily for adult-sized baby diapers, since 2014. Their signature diapers, titled "Overnights," are "thick adult diaper[s]" that are "functional enough to wear throughout the day while still being absorbent enough for overnight use," according to the Tykables site. (Price: $25 for 10 diapers, though prices are lower for bulk purchases.)

On their own, these diapers were groundbreaking. Williams said Tykables was the first adult-baby gear company to adorn its diapers with designs inked with "fade when wet" ink, a common feature of baby pullups. Now, Tykables is even more groundbreaking: to Williams' knowledge, it's the first physical facility for adult-baby gear anywhere.

It's not a traditional store, exactly. It's an office and a pick-up center, where locals can pick up gear they've ordered online or over the phone. It's also a warehouse for some pretty eye-catching pieces: an adult-sized crib, high chair and rocking horse. These are "pieces that we bring with us to trade shows," Williams explained, "that we use in product photos and things like that."

Guests can only visit by appointment, and must be 18 years old or older to go inside. Williams said he stressed to the Village of Mount Prospect, before opening the store, that "there are a large portion of our customers who use our products for a sexual need or a sexual fetish." Though there's no legal reason minors couldn't enter the store, Williams has chosen to adopt the same age cutoff that applies to sex toy sales at stores like Early to Bed.

"We are treating it as if it were something of a sexual nature," Williams said. (Though not everyone in the AB/DL community sees role-playing as a baby as a sexual act, many do.)

At Tykables, they don't allow people to stay and play on the props, either, though customers picking up items are welcome to take photos of (or selfies with) the gear. "You can't come in and stay all day and play," Williams said. He also noted that, as in all other stores, "customers are required to keep their clothes on."

Though WGN spoke to one neighbor who called the store "weird," Williams told Chicagoist that he hasn't gotten any negative feedback. '[Our neighbors] haven't approached us saying 'Welcome to the neighborhood,' but they haven't been negative either," he said. "I don't think they really care that much."

Mount Prospect, Williams noted, isn't a particular hub for adult babies. He just opened the Tykables store in Mount Propsect because he lives there. However, he said the Chicagoland arealike most big citieshas a substantial adult baby community. And internationally, Tykables has been a hit. WIlliams says their web store has attracted customers from Japan, the Netherlands, and beyond. "We are still a small to midsize business," he said, "but we have been very successful."

The next step for Tykables? A clothing line, coming soon. Williams said it will feature baby-like clothing in adult sizes, including adult onesies, underwear and jeans.
Rahm Tries To Buy Off Friends Of The Parks With, Obvi, Parks

By Mae Rice in News on Jun 10, 2016 3:56PM



Designs for the Lucas Museum (Lucas Museum of Narrative Art)

Mayor Rahm Emanuelalong with Star Wars creator George Lucas, his wife and like every museum director in Chicagowants to just start building the Lucas Museum already. This requires getting community organization Friends of the Parks on board with the project, and Rahm has a new plan to do just that, the Sun-Times reports. He's allegedly proposing a trade: They support the Lucas Museum, and he offers support for copious new parks specifically, FOTP's ambitious Last Four Miles plan, first floated in 2009.

On Thursday, the Sun-Times reported that FOTP was divided on whether to take the deal; Friday, the Sun-Times' Michael Sneed reported that FOTP has voted to move forward on Lucas Museum negotiations. But Friends of the Parks Board President Lauren Moltz and Executive Director Juanita Irizarry denied these claims in a statement to Chicagoist Friday morning:





Contrary to recent reports, our board remains fully united on the preservation of our lakefront and ensuring that the public trust doctrine is not ignored. We do believe that the Lucas Museum has a place in Chicago for all to enjoy, but not at the expense of one our most precious public resources. We have always said we were open to discussions. Anything else you hear is rumor and speculation. We are not dropping the lawsuit.

Some background on the Last Four Miles project: the effort would restore public access to four miles of lakefront that are currently reserved for private use, according to FOTP's website on the project. In their words:

These privately-controlled gaps in the citys chain of lakefront parks deprive several city neighborhoods of convenient access to the lake while functioning as barriers to the completion of a bike and pedestrian trail that would span the entire shoreline from Chicagos northern to southern city limits.

The plan would also add two miles of park on the far north and far south ends of the lakefront. This would have cost between $350 and $450 million in 2009, according to FOTP estimates. It would cost even more now, the Sun-Times reports, and between negotiating public use with private land owners, environmental assessments and construction, it could take 20 years to complete.

Rahm's support is no small thing, though. The gigantic endeavor is much more likely to move forward with his support than without it. (You can say a lot about Rahm, but he can sure ram through some park plans.)

This deal is just the latest in the borderline-eternal saga of the Lucas Museum, which has lasted more than two years now. Rahm really wants the museumthe kabillion-dollar silver blob rendered abovein Chicago. Friends of the Parks, a park-loving community organization, has continually blocked the project, though, with lawsuits and claims that the proposed museum site, currently a lakefront parking lot, could someday become a public park and therefore should never be built on.


World Naked Bike Ride Is Back On Chicago's Streets This Weekend

By Rachel Cromidas in News on Jun 10, 2016 3:49PM



World Naked Bike Ride Chicago, photo by Aaron Cynic/Chicagoist

Chicago's nudists with an environmentalist streak are hitting the road again this weekend for the annual World Naked Bike Ride.

The celebrated event, in which Chicagoans decked out in glitter, costumes and not much actual clothing gather at a semi-secret spot and then bike through the streets, halting traffic and calling for an end to the city's reliance on cars, is in its 13th year. In past years, the Chicago Police Department's policy has been to refrain from ticketing the riders for nudity, but to ticket riders or make arrests for illegal activity. Police also have bike cops stationed along the route, which ride organizers do not revealing to the public until the evening of the event.

"This is an annual event and poses no public safety threat," CPD said in a statement to Chicagoist. "Chicago Police will monitor the event to ensure the well-being of participants, onlookers and citizens in general. As needed, officers will monitor traffic conditions along the planned bike route in order to facilitate efficient flow of vehicular and pedestrian traffic."

World Naked Bike Ride takes place in cities around the worldin the northern hemisphere, the event is always on the second Saturday of June. You don't have to be naked, and you don't even technically have to be on a bike to ridejust make sure you're operating a "person-powered vehicle" (as opposed to motor-powered) and you "bare-as-you-dare." In some cities, that means streaking at your own risk; thankfully, Chicago is a bit more lax about nudity in this case, and you can always take a page out of other, veteran riders' books and make strategic use of body paint and pasties.

The ride drew over 2,000 participants in 2014, and organizers say they expect it to be bigger this year. The gathering usually begins around 6 p.m.; the ride takes off before sundown.

To comply with the law, ride organizers have laid out some rules for riders, including no drugs or alcohol and leaving no trash or litter lying around.

If you join the ride, don't forget the unofficial slogan: "Less gas, more ass." Here's a (yes, NSFW) video of last year's festivities:


Superintendent Tim Johnson said the program is starting after a long discussion.

"Having a dynamic media arts program that is similar to the afterschool MAPS program is an idea that has been batted around for approximately two years," Johnson said. "The first month I was on the job, July 2014, I met with Peter Rosten, founder of the MAPS program. We talked about the MAPS program and I was an instant supporter."

Johnson said that when he was a teacher, he ran a similar program called "Capture 20.20."

By MICHELLE McCONNAHA Ravalli Republic

Full Story: http://ravallirepublic.com/news/local/article_285d8044-2d2d-11e6-a7b8-8bd3ab81f742.html
How many of you spend as much time in and along the river fly-fishing as you do out? If so, youve probably entertained the idea of becoming a fishing guide  and youre not alone. Blackfoot River Outfitters https://blackfootriver.com/ owner John Herzer hears it all the time and says there is a need.

"The popularity of the Missoula area and the Missoula fisheries are much more popular than they were 15 years ago. It used to be all Yellowstone kind of based, and now Missoula has as much force in that, so theres a distinct need for more guides market here," he explained.

By Russ Thomas

Full Story:http://www.kpax.com/story/32185423/fly-fishing-guide-school-opens-in-missoula
One of the topics discussed by most residents is the towns issues with traffic and layout.

By Kaitlin Bane

Full Story: http://www.abcfoxmontana.com/story/32189666/bozeman-residents-discuss-citys-strategic-plan
The pool of certified teachers in Idaho has dwindled since 2010  and districts throughout the state are feeling the effects.

"I would not say its a teacher shortage we are experiencing  its a teacher famine," said Madison School District assistant superintendent Randy Lords.

Experts and data suggest that teachers are leaving the profession not only because of pay, but because of rising health care costs, low morale and declines in the number of out-of-state personnel seeking Idaho teaching certificates.

Devin Bodkin

Full Story: http://www.idahoednews.org/news/teacher-shortage-east-idaho-called-famine/
Les membres du gouvernement ont pris note que le Electricity Act 2005 et le Central Electricity Board (Amendment) Act 2020 seront promulgue et effectif le 10 juin 2022, aussi celui de Land Surveyors (Diplomas) (Amendment) Regulations 2022 ainsi que celui Reporting Council (Rotation of Audit Firm Exemption) Regulations 2022 tout comme le Medical Council (Medical Institutions) (Amendment) Regulations 2022 entre autres.

1. Cabinet has agreed to the proclamation of the Electricity Act 2005 and the Central Electricity Board (Amendment) Act 2020, effective as from 10 June 2022. The following Regulations are being promulgated under the Electricity Act 2005, namely:

(a) the Electricity (Safety, Quality and Continuity) Regulations 2022 to ensure the continuity of a safe electricity supply, as per established standards;

(b) the Electricity (Metering, Billing and Collection) Regulations 2022 to regulate these activities of the Central Electricity Board;

(c) the Electricity (Licensing, Registration and Fees) Regulations 2022 which concern the licensing activity of the Utility Regulatory Authority once it would start its operations; and

(d) the Electricity (Transitional Licence) Regulations 2022 to regulate the transitional phase, pending full compliance of the requirements of the legislation by the existing Independent Power Producers and Central Electricity Board.

2. Cabinet has taken note that the Land Surveyors (Diplomas) (Amendment) Regulations 2022 would be promulgated to include in the Schedule the following qualifications in order to enable a person holding these qualifications to be eligible to act as land surveyor in Mauritius:

(a) Degree of Bachelor of Science in Surveying and Mapping Science awarded by the University of Newcastle; and

(b) BSc (Hons) in Geomatics awarded by the University of Mauritius

3. Cabinet has taken note that the Financial Reporting Council (Rotation of Audit Firm Exemption) Regulations 2022 would be promulgated. Section 41 of the Financial Reporting Act was amended to provide for the rotation of auditors of a listed company, whereby, no audit firm shall, within a period of 10 years from its appointment as an auditor of a listed company, audit the accounts of that company for an aggregate period of more than 7 years. This provision is applicable to all companies listed on the local stock market even though the primary listing of the company is not in Mauritius.

Cabinet has also taken note that the companies, which are listed on the Stock Exchange of Mauritius and having their primary listing outside Mauritius, would be exempted from the application of section 41A of the Financial Reporting Act, subject to certain conditions.

4. Cabinet has taken note that the Medical Council (Medical Institutions) (Amendment) Regulations 2022 would be promulgated under the Medical Council Act to include the Universite de la Reunion in the recognised list of institutions.

5. Cabinet has agreed to pilgrims proceeding on the Hadj 2022 pilgrimage being exempted from the payment of local airport taxes, namely the Terminal Expansion Fee and the Passenger Solidarity Fee in addition to the Passenger Service Charge and the Passenger Fee.

Cabinet has also taken note that a Hadj Mission led by Mr A. Sairally, Chairperson of the Islamic Cultural Centre has been constituted. The objectives of the Hadj Mission are mainly to oversee, in close collaboration with Ambassador S. Soodhun, GCSK, Hadj operations in Saudi Arabia and ensure that Mauritian pilgrims perform the Hadj pilgrimage in the best possible conditions.

6. Cabinet has agreed, in principle, to the introduction of a Technology Education Stream at secondary level for students at Grades 10 and 11. The objectives behind the introduction of Technology Education are:

(a) to diversify the educational offerings at Grades 10 and 11;

(b) to promote learner achievement; and

(c) to provide a solid foundation for building up future higher-level skills.

Technology Education is necessary to ensure a strong base for programmes offered by the Polytechnics and the Institute of Technical Education and Technology. The Ministry of Education, Tertiary Education, Science and Technology was working on the details of the project and would come forward with a Strategy Paper on the proposed Technology Education Stream, incorporating a roadmap for its implementation.

7. Cabinet has agreed to Mauritius joining and signing the Roadmap for Global Food Security-Call to Action on the invitation of the United States of America. The Roadmap was issued following the conclusion of the Global Food SecurityCall to Action Ministerial Meeting convened by the United States from 18 to 19 May 2022, at the United Nations Headquarters in New York.

The Roadmap outlines the principal steps which UN Member States could take to respond to the food crisis. It calls for actions which include assisting key humanitarian organisations providing immediate life-saving humanitarian assistance, keeping food and agricultural markets open, boosting fertilizer production and strengthening long-term agricultural resilience.

8. Cabinet has agreed to the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding between the National Cooperative College and the Vaikunth Mehta National Institute of Cooperative Management of India. The general principles of collaboration and the areas of cooperation have been defined as follows:

(a) short-term courses and long-term programmes where Officials from both organisations, might participate such as Certificate, Diploma, Masters, PhD;

(b) collaboration in joint research of mutual benefit whereby the findings of such research would be disseminated to relevant co-operatives;

(c) exchange of information, materials, publications, expertise and other related matters on subject of common interest;

(d) officials would be provided with a basic knowledge of the principles and methods used in designing and implementing training programmes for cooperative leaders; and

(e) attachment programmes, study visits and strategic alliances in the areas of training and any other area of knowledge-based activities.

9. Cabinet has taken note of the activities being organised by the Prime Ministers Office, in collaboration with other stakeholders, to commemorate the International Day Against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking, observed on 26 June, namely:

(a) on 26 June 2022, the National Drug Secretariat, in collaboration with the Ministry of Youth Empowerment, Sports and Recreation and the Mauritius Sports Council, would organise sensitisation programme and activities against drug under the Line Up Live Up Programme together with land base and water base activities at Pointe Jerome Outdoor Centre for around 200 youths aged 14 to 17 years from various regions;

(b) on 27 June 2022, the National Drug Secretariat, in collaboration with the Ministry of Education, Tertiary Education, Science and Technology, would organise a series of organise a series of activities related to the fight against drug abuse in all primary and secondary schools; activities related to the fight against drug abuse in all primary and secondary schools;

(c) on 28 June 2022, the Forensic Science Laboratory, in collaboration with the University of Mauritius, the Anti-Drug and Smuggling Unit and the Mauritius Revenue Authority, would carry out activities to raise awareness on drug trafficking;

(d) on 29 June 2022, a training workshop would be held with educational social workers of the Ministry of Education, Tertiary Education, Science and Technology and coaches of the Mauritius Sports Council who interact directly with vulnerable youths;

(e) on 30 June 2022, the Prime Ministers Office, in collaboration with the Ministry of Education, Tertiary Education, Science and Technology, would commemorate the International Day Against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking at the University of Technology, Mauritius.

The theme for this year is Addressing drug challenges in health and humanitarian crises.

10. Cabinet has taken note that the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) would organise a four-week training on Port Security for Port Mathurin as from 18 to 29 July 2022 and from 02 August to 16 August 2022 for Port Louis, with a view to making the world safer from drugs, crime and terrorism.

The objectives of the training courses are to assist the ports in the following manners:

(a) enhancing communications between different port agencies to fight crime in ports;

(b) sharing of ideas and experiences on countering crime in ports;

(c) helping port officials to organise, prepare and respond to emergencies;

(d) improving port protection against waterborne terrorist attacks; and

(e) ensuring crimes at ports get prosecuted.

The UNODC would also conduct an end of training debrief and inter-agency workshop for national level stakeholders on Port Security on 17 August 2022 in Port Louis.

11. Cabinet has taken note of the establishment of Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) and Tools for the Identification and Care of Victims of Trafficking in Persons (TIP) in Mauritius. A Consultant was appointed by the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) to develop the SOPs to improve the identification and the referral of victims of trafficking. The SOPs set out the steps to be followed for critical stages in the management of the cases of victims of trafficking.

The Consultant has also proposed Guidance Tools for the implementation of the SOPs. Upon the establishment of the SOPs, all relevant stakeholders would be trained on the different stages of their involvement in the case management of Trafficking in Persons through the IOM under the project.

12. Cabinet has taken note of the outcome of the 8th round of the technical negotiations between the European Union and Eastern and Southern Africa States (ESA-5: Comoros, Madagascar, Mauritius, Seychelles and Zimbabwe) on the deepening of the Interim Economic Partnership Agreement (iEPA), held recently in hybrid virtual mode.

Progress was made in several areas, namely Sanitary and Phyto-sanitary Measures (SPS); Customs and Trade Facilitation; Technical Barriers to Trade; Rules of Origin; Trade in Services, Investment Liberalisation and Digital Trade; Intellectual Property Rights; Dispute Settlement and Institutional Provisions; Transparency in Public Procurement, Competition, Agriculture; and Economic Development Cooperation.

The next round of technical negotiations has been scheduled for September 2022.

13. Cabinet has taken note of the outcome of the National Conference on Circular Economy, organised by the Ministry of Environment, Solid Waste Management and Climate Change, in collaboration with the United Nations Environment Programme held recently. The programme comprised nine main sessions with 37 high-profile speakers at local, regional and international levels. They shared best practices, lessons learnt as well as avenues and opportunities to leverage circularity as a key approach to offering systemic solutions for a new economic model.

The Conference brought valuable insights on regional and international initiatives towards paving the way to bring circularity in economic sectors such as the European Union Circular Economy Action Plan and the Africa Circular Economy Alliance. The event also served as a networking platform for stakeholders to engage in discussions towards advancing circular economy initiatives at various levels and to bring a revolutionary transition to a more sustainable, low carbon, inclusive and circular economy.

14. Cabinet has taken note that a Mauritian delegation of 40 members, including 29 athletes and 11 officials are presently participating in the African Senior Athletics Championships in Mauritius. As at 09 June 2022, Mr Jeremie Lararaudeuse, Mauritian athlete, has won one silver medal in the 110m Hurdles.

15. Cabinet has taken note of the activities being organised by the Ministry of Health and Wellness during the month of June to mark World Blood Donor Day, celebrated on 14 June. The slogan for World Blood Donor Day 2022 is Donating blood is an act of solidarity. Join the effort and save lives,

A workshop would be held on 15 June 2022 targeting blood donation campaign organisers, NGOs and technical staff, to develop appropriate strategies for encouraging the young generation to become blood donors so as to overcome the drop in blood donation brought about by ageing blood donors and also to develop a Roadmap in situations of pandemic or other crisis.

The Blood Donors Association would organise, inter alia, the following activities:

(a) sensitising the population at large on the need for blood donation. Awareness campaigns would be conducted on television and radios during the whole month of June;

(b) conducting health check-ups, Drawing and Quiz Competitions for Youths and blood donation in the region of Flacq; and

(c) organising blood drives (blood collection points) dedicated to dialysis patients at four different sites, namely Grand Baie, Cap Tamarin, Belle Rose and Plaisance.

16. Cabinet has taken note of the situation of the COVID-19 pandemic prevailing across the world. Some 538.3 million cases have been reported globally, of which 511.5 million persons have been successfully treated.

With regard to Mauritius, as at 08 June 2022, there were 114 active cases of COVID-19, out of which nine were admitted at the New ENT Hospital. Over the period 02 to 08 June 2022, three deaths were attributed to COVID-19.

Cabinet has also taken note of progress in the COVID-19 Vaccination Programme, including the administration of the booster dose and paediatric dose in the Republic of Mauritius.

17. Cabinet has taken note that the test results for the suspected cases of Monkeypox were received on 04 June 2022 and were all negative. Regulations have been made under the Quarantine Act to include Monkeypox as a notifiable disease.

Cabinet has also taken note that the Ministry of Health and Wellness had already ordered primers for PCR tests for Monkeypox.

18. Cabinet has taken note that in the wake of the implementation of the Metro Express Project Phase 2C from Phoenix to Curepipe, major works would be carried out along Swami Sivananda Avenue from the Roundabout at Leclezio Street up to Malartic Street near the upcoming Curepipe Central Metro Station. The left lane on Swami Sivananda Street would be closed to traffic from its junction at the Leclezio Roundabout up to the exit of the Curepipe Central Metro Station as from 11 June 2022.

The following traffic scheme would be implemented:

(i) traffic coming from the Manhattan Roundabout, along the left lane of Swami Sivananda Avenue, would be allowed to left turn only onto Chasteauneuf Street at the junction with Leclezio Roundabout to proceed towards Curepipe Centre; and

(ii) only the traffic coming on the right lane of Swami Sivananda Avenue from Manhattan Roundabout would be allowed to proceed straight on Swami Sivananda Avenue at the junction with Leclezio Roundabout.

The necessary traffic signs would be set up to inform and guide road users.

19. Cabinet has taken note of the introduction of MAUSHIELD, a digital platform aiming at facilitating cyber threat information sharing in Mauritius, developed by the Computer Emergency Response Team Mauritius (CERT-MU).

MAUSHIELD is an open source platform that would be a national system for sharing cyber threat intelligence in real-time and in a secured and confidential manner. The platform would help public and private sector organisations to improve their cyber defence capabilities and stay ahead of emerging trends and cyber threats. It would also allow various authorities/organisations to conduct cyber threat situational analysis in Mauritius. The system is expected to go live by end of June 2022.

20. Cabinet has taken note of the outcome of the recent official visit of the Minister of National Infrastructure and Community Development to Rodrigues. The main purpose of the visit was to sign a Memorandum of Understanding with respect to a framework for collaboration and mutual cooperation between the Road Development Authority and the Commission for Public Infrastructure, Housing, Transport and Water Resources of the Rodrigues Regional Assembly and also to review progress of ongoing drain and road projects being implemented in Rodrigues.

The Minister paid a courtesy call on the Chief Commissioner of Rodrigues. Visits were carried out at various sites of road and drain projects being implemented by the National Development Unit and the Rodriguan authorities, namely at Anse Ally, Port Sud Est and Baie Malgache.

21. Cabinet has taken note of the outcome of the recent official visit of the Attorney General, Minister of Agro-Industry and Food Security to Rodrigues. A meeting was held with the Commissioner of Agriculture, the Rodrigues Regional Assembly, the Agricultural Marketing Board, the Agricultural Research and Extension Services and the Mauritius Shipping Corporation Limited to discuss shipment of fruits and vegetables from Rodrigues to Mauritius. The Official Ceremony for the Educational Achiever Award Scheme and the Farmers Family Fun Day were organised by the Small Farmers Welfare Fund. The launching of the Public Relation Unit/Food Agricultural Research and Extension Institute/Small Farmers Welfare Fund Office at Citronelle was also held. The new office in Rodrigues would enable the effective extension of the welfare schemes and activities of the Small Farmers Welfare Fund to registered farmers.

The issue of fruit fly was raised during discussions and the Entomology Division of the Ministry of Agro-Industry and Food Security would undertake a comprehensive Fruit Fly Control Programme in Rodrigues.

22. Cabinet has taken note of the recent participation of the Minister of Information Technology, Communication and Innovation as Speaker in the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) Forum 2022 Ministerial Round Table co-organised in a virtual mode by the International Telecommunication Union, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation, the United Nations Development Programme and the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development. The theme for this year was ICTs for Well -Being, Inclusion and Resilience: WSIS Cooperation for Accelerating Progress on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

The Ministerial Round Table was a unique opportunity to build on the lessons learned from previous initiatives of Member States around the above-mentioned topic, enabling Ministers to look into the future by developing a vision of WSIS beyond 2025, especially by leveraging the synergies and complementarities with other UN processes.

23. Cabinet has taken note of the reconstitution of the Executive Committee of the National Youth Council with Ms Keshikah Sohan as part-time Chairperson.

24. Cabinet has taken note of the constitution of the Board of the Mauritius Recreation Council with Mr Marie Pierrot Stephane Rock as part-time Chairperson.

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Residents of Taiwan celebrated Dragon Boat Festival on Thursday with cultural events and races of the traditional longboats as their four-day holiday began.

Dragon Boat Festival is observed on the fifth day of the fifth month of the Chinese lunar calendar, June 9 this year. Dragon boat racing originated from the fishermen who tried to save Qu Yuan, an ancient Chinese poet who committed suicide in the Miluo River in central China, and has become the centerpiece celebration of the festival nowadays.

A race held on Thursday in a park along the Keelung River in Taipei attracted 212 teams and more than 5,000 people.

"Dragon boat racing is a Chinese custom, which makes us feel heart to heart and that we are one family," said Jeffrey Lu, a member of one racing team. "We should pass down the tradition."

The event attracted a large audience, including children accompanied by parents. "It is the third time we have come to watch the annual event," said a man surnamed Huang from New Taipei City, next to Taipei. Huang and his wife brought their two kids to watch the race.

In another area of the park, families played a game that involves trying to balance painted eggs on their ends. Locals believe successfully doing so at noon on this day will bring them good luck.

Dance performances and free tasting of zongzi, pyramid-shaped glutinous rice dumplings wrapped in reed leaves, were held elsewhere in Taiwan.

Taipei Zoo has opened a special exhibition of snakes, scorpions, centipedes, toads, spiders and geckos -- animals traditionally, and often erroneously, considered poisonous in China. There is a Dragon Boat Festival custom of hanging aromatic herbs on doors and window frames to keep them away.

The annual exhibition is designed to raise awareness that these animals are not as dangerous as people might think, said a keeper.
With the help of DNA test, police in north China's Hebei province have managed to find parents for six children who were abducted more than 20 years ago, local sources said.

They were among the 23 children identified with the technology since 2015, when police in Hebei launched a campaign to give DNA tests to those who were suspected of abduction, said Chen Yuan, a police officer in charge of human trafficking in the Public Security Department of Hebei.

Children were always too young when they were abducted to give a detailed description of their homes, Chen said. While they were growing up, their appearances and accents changed a lot, making it harder for police to find their families of origin.

In 2009, a DNA database of the missing children was established by China's Ministry of Public Security.

Last year the Public Security Department of Hebei ordered local police bureaus to collect DNA samples for the children who came for household registration but certain documents were missing or faked, and check the database to make sure if they were among the missing.
If I could only share one piece of advice with the youth of today, it would be this: Dont climb power poles at night.

It should go without saying, but I saw someone do just that and, as a semi-popular columnist with a regular readership estimated in the high double digits, I feel it is my duty to spread the word that climbing power poles at night is a bad idea.

It was shortly before 11 p.m. on a Friday as I walked back to my car on a city sidewalk. Suddenly, a figure darted from the patio of a drinking establishment, leapt onto a power pole and shimmied to the top. He was a bearded hipster, early 20s, cut-off shorts, no shoes and what I assumed was an ironic T-shirt.

He stopped just below the lines and shook the pole a bit as his companions back at the table on the patio expressed both admiration and mild concern.

Dude, yeah, dude.

Be careful, man, some of those lines are probably live.

The second guy may have been studying electrical engineering.

I said nothing and continued to walk to my car. Later I feared I had passed up a teachable moment. In retrospect, I wish the following exchange had occurred:

Son, climb down off that pole this moment.

No way, old man. Youre killing my buzz, daddy-o. Now scram.

Cut out your hip lingo and get your drunk &$$ off that pole.

OK, Im down old man. You want to make something of it? Ill give you a knuckle sandwich and send you back to Squaresville.

Theres no need for hostility, son. I just want to talk to you and explain why you shouldnt climb power poles at night. You see, I was young once, too.

You were young?

Yes, and I was a lot like you, except I more often than not wore shoes in public. I, too, visited drinking establishments from time to time with my friends, just like yours there at the table -- the guy who looks like a serial killer, the other guy who looks like a serial killer and the girl who just belched loudly.

Thats Zane, Atticus and Nico.

Uh-huh. And I made some poor decisions. I have had concussions and contusions and there are certain places in Florida I can no longer visit, but I learned from my mistakes. And one thing I know for sure, no one should climb a power pole at night.

Because I could get electrocuted?

Exactly. And it would probably be past the newspapers deadline.

What?

More than likely, it would not make the morning paper. With consolidated printing and production, something happening at 11 p.m., such as an idiot climbing a power pole in the middle of the city, latching onto a live wire and bursting into flames, would not make the morning edition because of increasingly earlier deadlines. At best, it would be a hastily compiled story with sketchy details  An unidentified man climbed a power pole, grabbed a live wire and burst into flames Friday night, knocking out electricity to several hundred customers  leaving readers with unanswered questions. Who was the idiot? Why did he climb the pole? When is my power coming back on?

Oh, I never thought of that.

Son, do the newspaper industry a favor. If you are going to do something stupid that has the potential to make news, do it earlier in the day. Give the reporters ample time to work on the story, get it right and get it in the paper. Were not TV. We just cant make stuff up. Sure, we have our websites for 24/7 news, but who the hell is making any money off those? Am I right?

Thanks, mister. You have really opened my eyes to the error of my ways.

Youre welcome, son. Now go put on some shoes.

Scott Hollifield is editor/GM of The McDowell News in Marion, N.C. and a humor columnist. Contact him at rhollifield@mcdowellnews.com.
 Flash

The United States has designated the Syrian group Yarmouk Martyrs Brigade (YMB) as a terrorist organization, the State Department said Thursday.

As a result of this designation, all property subject to U.S. jurisdiction in which the YMB has any interest is blocked and U.S. persons are generally prohibited from engaging in any transactions with the YMB.

The YMB was formed in August 2012 in Deraa, Syria and has staged attacks throughout southern Syria, particularly along the Israeli and Jordanian borders, the State Department said in a statement.

The group distinguished itself from other groups in Syria through kidnapping operations targeting UN personnel, including the March 2013 abduction of 21 Filipino UN peacekeepers and the May 2013 capture of another four Filipino peacekeepers from the Golan Heights, it added.

The YMB cooperated closely with al-Nusrah Front through 2014, but it has since pledged allegiance to the Islamic State group.
 Flash

U.S. President Barack Obama formally threw his support behind presumptive Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton in a web video Thursday.

"I don't think there's ever been someone so qualified to hold this office," said Obama in the video posted on Clinton's Facebook page.

"I'm with her. I'm fired up and I cannot wait to get out there and campaign with Hillary," Obama said.

According to White House spokesman Josh Earnest, the first joint appearance of Obama and Clinton will take place next Wednesday in Wisconsin, one of the crucial swing states in the general election.

Obama's endorsement came just moments after his meeting with Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, Clinton's rival in the nomination race, and according to Earnest, Sanders "was not surprised" by Obama's endorsement.

Although he still declined to endorse Clinton at the moment, Sanders told reporters after the meeting that he would do everything "to make sure Donald Trump does not become president of the United States."

As the Democratic primary season was all but over, the notion of party unity had become a crucial topic in the Democratic field.

So far, Sanders had offered mixed response as to what his next step would be after being mathematically eliminated from the race.

Sanders had earlier pledged to continue the fight into the national convention in July when party nomination would be formally announced. However, he later indicated that he would "assess" his path to victory in the wake of California's primary which was held on Tuesday.

Clinton notched an easy victory by two-digit lead in California.

Despite the urgency to unite the party, the White House said on Thursday it was up to Sanders to make the decision as to when and how he ends the campaign.

"Senator Sanders has more than earned the right to make his own decision on his own timeframe about the future of his campaign and the president certainly respects the important work that Senator Sanders has done on the campaign trail," said Earnest in the daily briefing on Thursday.
Chicken will be the best-positioned protein due to its low price position in times of pressure on consumer spending power but rises in production costs and the long-term impact of COVID-19 threaten to disrupt the sector, according to Rabobank.
by Laurie Sullivan , Staff Writer @lauriesullivan, June 10, 2016

During an off-the-cuff conversation about what Apple might announce this coming week at its developers conference, Fluent CMO Jordan Cohen said he hopes to hear about flying cars. "I've always wanted one," he said. During an off-the-cuff conversation about what Apple might announce this coming week at its developers conference, Fluent CMO Jordan Cohen said he hopes to hear about flying cars. "I've always wanted one," he said.

Well, Cohen might get his wish. Apple is not behind the technology, but rather Google co-founder Larry Page. Let's make this clear. Citing two people familiar with the firms, Bloomberg reports that Page is privately funding two flying-car companies -- Zee.Aero with about 150 employees, and a smaller startup called Kitty Hawk that is developing its own design for a flying car. The two companies are not connected with Google in any way other than the Google co-founder funding the projects.

Zee.Aero is one part of Pages plan to usher in an age of personalized air travel, free from gridlocked streets and the cramped indignities of modern flight, per Bloomberg. Similar to Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk, as the article points out, Page will use his personal fortune to build the future of his childhood dreams of which he shares with others like Cohen.

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Zee.Aero has a handful of searchable patent applications and pending with the U.S. patent office. Most are related to personal aircraft and "a lift fan mechanism" that can lift the vehicle off the ground like a helicopter, rather than a plane.

Page, Google co-founder and Zee.Aero fiancee, might be the only connection linking the two companies, but that's enough when you think about the integration of artificial intelligence and mapping technology that the Alphabet companies offers.

Sir Richard Branson

, who had previously founded Virgin Atlantic airlines, took to the stage April 1, at CES and asked for volunteers to go to Mars. It was prior to announcing Virgin Galactic. He had plans to build a manned rocket and charge consumers for commercial flights to go beyond the Earth's atmosphere.

As I told Cohen on the phone, his mention of flying cars reminded me of the time
by Adam Buckman , Featured Columnist, June 10, 2016

Are my eyes deceiving me? I think I see David Letterman and Jay Leno!

I do see them! And theyre both reemerging next week out of the mists of TV history to return to the tube -- Letterman for a rare interview and Leno three days later for the second season of his CNBC series Jay Lenos Garage.

Letterman is up first, with an interview airing Sunday night on NBC as part of the NBC News magazine series called On Assignment. This is a show few people ever heard of until this week, when they started to publicize this Letterman interview conducted by Tom Brokaw.

How did this interview come about? My guess is that Brokaw, 76, saw an opportunity for a scoop in a possible interview with Letterman, 69, who he has known for decades. Among other things, the two share a love for Montana, where they both own homes. So Brokaw asked his pal for an interview and received a yes.

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The interview was conducted in and around Indianapolis on Memorial Day weekend. In the portions NBC released in advance of this Sundays airdate, the two talked about late-night TV and the current political season. On the subject of the presidential race, Letterman called Donald Trump despicable.

I understand that hes repugnant to people, Letterman says of Trump. But you tell me, the men putting together the Constitution, witnessing this election, wouldnt they have just said, Thats part of the way we set it up. Good luck?  Theres nothing illegal going on. Its just [that] hes despicable.

Letterman, who retired from late-night TV after his final Late Show on May 20, 2015, tells Brokaw he couldnt care less about late-night television.

And he complains that CBS didnt hire a woman to replace him. There should be more women, says Letterman, who is still wearing the bushy beard that makes you wonder if hes trying out for Duck Dynasty or applying for jobs as a department store Santa. I dont know why they didnt give my show to a woman. That would have been fine, says the bearded one.

While interviews with Letterman are rare, theyre not unheard of. And while he often portrays himself as retired from show business, hes due to turn up next season on National Geographic Channel as a guest correspondent on the returning series called Years of Living Dangerously. Letterman traveled to India earlier this year to film the show.

Meanwhile, Lettermans long-time late-night competitor, Jay Leno, 66, returns to TV next Wednesday at the wheel of various expensive cars in Season Two of Jay Lenos Garage.

It has been more than two years now since Lenos last Tonight Show on Feb. 6, 2014, and Jimmy Fallons first Tonight Show 11 days later on Feb. 17, 2014 (otherwise known as the day late-night died).

Leno is not retired, of course. In addition to this CNBC show built around his passion for cars, he maintains a busy schedule of stand-up comedy performances. And hes also seen in commercials for Shell Oil.

In the second-season premiere of Jay Lenos Garage next week, the theme is supercars -- a showcase of the fastest, sleekest, most expensive high-performance cars ever made such as Porsches, Lamborghinis and at least one McLaren described as the greatest car of the 20th century.

Among the famous faces who turn up in the show are Robert Herjavec, who is one of the sharks seen in the ABC series Shark Tank whose reruns air on CNBC; and entertainer Nick Cannon, host of Americas Got Talent on NBC, which is also part of the same parent company as CNBC -- NBCUniversal.

If exotic cars interest and excite you, then youll love Jay Lenos Garage, which, to give the show its due, was a huge hit for CNBC in its first season last year. Itll probably do just as well in its second go-round too.

Did Letterman purposely plan somehow to precede Leno on the air this week with an eye toward possibly undermining Jays return? Probably not. But as a result of this Letterman interview looming on Sunday, the publicity surrounding the return of Jay Lenos Garage could be diluted since some TV bloggers and columnists might be tempted to combine Dave and Jay in single columns instead of separate pieces, and post side-by-side photos of the two so readers can compare what they look like now.

It will be interesting to see if anybody does that.

Season Two of Jay Lenos Garage starts Wednesday (June 15) at 10 p.m. Eastern on CNBC. NBCs David Letterman interview will be seen on On Assignment, airing this Sunday night (June 12) at 7 Eastern on NBC.
by Thom Forbes @tforbes, June 10, 2016

Thomas Perkins, a venture capitalist whose firm was an early backer of Silicon Valley disrupters such as Netscape, America Online, Sun Microsystems, Amazon and Google, died yesterday in Marin County, Calif. He was 84.

Perkins was born in White Plains, N.Y., in 1932 and graduated from MIT and Harvard Business School. He eventually went to work for Hewlett-Packard in the 1960s and became the first general manager of its computer division. In 1972, he founded Menlo Park, Calif.-based Kleiner Perkins with engineer Eugene Kleiner. He left the firm nearly 30 years ago.

Opening with $8 million and later joined by Frank Caufield and Brook Byers as partners, the firm invested in tech companies over the next two decades, leading to the Silicon Valley boom that ushered in the Internet Age, writesBloomberg Technologys David Henry.

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Perkins and his partners popularized a model of investment that involved putting small amounts of money into promising young start-ups in return for a stake in the companies, giving them advice and counsel to spur their growth, writes Pui-Wing Tam for the New York Times.

The firms success transformed Silicon Valley and the technology and biotechnology industries, leading to a proliferation of venture firms in the region and creating an ecosystem of investment in start-ups that today remains unrivaled in any other part of the world, Tam continues.

"He was there at the start of the biotech industry and the computer revolution. Tom was our partner and friend, and we will miss him," Frank Caufield and Brook Byers, co-founders of Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers, said in a statement.

He was an early supporter of the biotechnology industry, serving as chairman at Genentech Inc. for 15 years, and was on the board of Tandem Computers Inc., Hewlett-Packard and Compaq Computer Corp., Bloombergs Henry reports.

Known as a colorful and dynamic personality, Perkins married romance novelist Danielle Steel, his second wife, in March 1998. After the brief marriage, Perkins himself wrote a novel: Sex and the Single Zillionaire, published in 2006, reports Reuters Heather Somerville.

It was not as successful as many of his other endeavors from either a literary or sales perspective.

In 2006, Perkins famously quit the Hewlett-Packard board in protest of the company's secret spying on board members' phone records. His accusations cost chairwoman Patricia Dunn her job and led to criminal charges against her, which were later dropped, reports Marisa Kendall for the San Jose Mercury News.

Though not quite a zillionaire, Perkins was also notably outspoken  and unabashed  about the wealth he accumulated.

Perhaps nothing captures Perkins' outsized ambition more than the Maltese Falcon, a $130-million square-rigged yacht that was the subject of the 2007 book Mine's Biggerby David Kaplan, writes Jon Swartz for USA Today. Designed to be the perfect yacht that could even sail itself, the Falcon crystallized Perkins' quest for perfection via high-stakes risk, a characteristic that was on display during his tech investing heyday.

Wrote Kaplan: He wasn't only a financier and talent scout for start-up companies  nor just a confidant to dozens of CEOs and market-movers on Wall Street and beyond. Tom Perkins was a behind-the-scenes powerbroker, negotiator, and at times a deus ex machina in countless deals.

Two years ago, his predilection for speaking his mind stirred up a different kind of controversy, writes Richard Waters in Financial Times. In a letter to the Wall Street Journal, he claimed that Americas rich were being subjected to a form of class warfare that bore comparison to Kristallnacht and the persecution of Jews in Nazi Germany. Waters adds that the letter was widely condemned in Silicon Valley, including by Kleiner Perkins.

Perkins later told Bloomberg's Emily Chang that he sent the Journal the letter because of a San Francisco Chronicle article that poked fun at his ex-wife, the romance novelist Danielle Steel, reports Noah Kulwin for Recode. That same year, Perkins suggested in another interview that the votes of the 1 percent should count more because they pay more in taxes.

Despite his controversies, Mr. Perkins left a lasting impression on investors and entrepreneurs who met him, Jessica Floum writes on SFGate.

It was this strange combination of sage and the enthusiasm of a child, Allegis Capital managing partner Bob Ackerman tells Floum. It was this wide-eyed enthusiasm for new ideas, new things and new challenges, and then behind that a lot of wisdom based on experience.
 Flash

An aerial photo taken on Sept. 25, 2015 from a seaplane of Hainan Maritime Safety Administration shows cruise vessel Haixun 1103 heading to the Yacheng 13-1 drilling rig during a patrol insouth China Sea. [Xinhua]

Senior officials from China and the ASEAN nations vowed on Thursday to fully and effectively implement the Declaration on Conducts of the Parties in the South China Sea (DOC).

The 12th Senior Officials' Meeting on the Implementation of the DOC, co-chaired by Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Liu Zhenmin and Singapore's Permanent Secretary of Foreign Ministry Chee Wee Kiong, was held in Vietnam's northern Halong City.

All parties vowed to continue to fully and effectively implement the DOC, deepen practical maritime cooperation and jointly safeguard peace and stability in the South China Sea.

The officials discussed the proposal that foreign ministers of China and the ASEAN nations issue a joint statement on the full and effective implementation of the DOC, and agreed to strive to reach a consensus at an early date.

On the consultations of the Code of Conduct in the South China Sea (COC), the 11 parties promised to implement relevant early harvest measures as soon as possible and speed up the formulation of a guideline for the Hotline Platform among senior officials of ministries of foreign affairs between China and ASEAN nations in response to maritime emergencies.

They also discussed the better use of the Code for Unplanned Encounters at Sea in the South China Sea.

All parties reaffirmed their aspirations for an early conclusion of the COC on the basis of consensus, and vowed to boost maritime cooperation, enhance mutual trust, and jointly safeguard peace and stability in the South China Sea as well as prosperity and development in the region.
by Tobi Elkin , Staff Writer @tobielkin, June 10, 2016

This was a banner week for media news coming from Canada. Earlier this week, AOL announced a partnership with Rogers Media to form a programmatic TV (PTV) marketplace in Canada. And also this week, Bell Media announced it will use Videologys PTV technology to enhance planning capabilities across its entire TV and digital video portfolio. The Bell deal will offer enhanced targeting capabilities by using first- and third-party data. The technology provides the ability to execute single campaigns across multiple devices and inventory channels holistically.

And thats not all. Videology said it will integrate Rogers Medias linear TV inventory into the companys DETV software, allowing for programmatic access and the ability to use data for advanced targeting capabilities. Through that partnership, Videology will be able to overlay advertiser data on top of Rogers Medias proprietary household and subscriber data sets. Videologys platform will then build custom linear TV advertising plans in real time focusing on shows, dayparts and networks that index highly against the advertisers target audience. Videlology says plans will be based on advertising objectives, including optimized reach, concentration or frequency.

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These developments are significant, as they demonstrate the TV industrys embrace of technology in advertising. As TV and digital video advertising converge, marketers are looking for new ways to manage campaigns holistically and bring digitals precision to their linear TV campaigns. Our partnership with Rogers Media brings their linear inventory into a programmatic environment, which allows for enhanced data use and a much deeper level of addressability in targeting, Ryan Ladisa, managing director, Videology Canada, told RTBlog via email.

The advantages for Bell are that it will now have a platform that connects its linear and digital inventory. This will allow for cross-platform reach and better reach and frequency management holistically. This is something advertisers are demanding given media fragmentation and how people are consuming content. The goal is to reduce waste and increase efficiency.

Of the benefits, Stuart Garvie, president, Bell Media Sales, shared with RTBlog via email: As consumers continue to shift their content consumption across a variety of devices, its important the TV ecosystem evolve to bring advanced advertising solutions with data, measurement, cross-platform reach and addressability. Working with Videology, were able to offer strategies that address the new consumer journey, regardless of the platform or device.

As for the Rogers deal, by making a large swath of its inventory available programmatically, the company shows its embracing technology platforms to help it deliver higher yield. The deal will allow advertisers to apply data to their linear TV campaigns, which makes them more focused on specific consumers. Better targeting will presumably mean that the right messages get to the right consumers.

"Agencies and clients have been asking us for more automation around the TV ecosystem. We've mastered it in digital, and now it's time to unleash the power of data in the decisioning process, and this new relationship with Videology allows us to do that, Al Dark, senior vice president, sales, Rogers Media, told RTBlog via email.
by Erik Sass , Staff Writer @eriksass1, June 10, 2016

As declarations of war go, it was nice and concise: after President Obama endorsed Hillary Clinton as his successor, causing Republican frontrunner Donald Trump to bring forth the standard snarky takedown on Twitter (Obama just endorsed Crooked Hillary. He wants four more years of Obama  but nobody else does!) Clintons campaign hit back at the Donald with some blunt advice: Delete your account.

A common riposte in social media feuds, Delete your account is a perfect comeback because it pithily combines a brutal takedown with what I can only describe as a sardonic sense of pity, as if the original comment was so embarrassingly off base that theyre genuinely concerned about the reputational damage the other person is causing himself.

On that note, NSA leaker turned talking head Edward Snowden deployed the three obliterating words after Jeb Bush tweeted a photo of a gun with his name on it with the cryptic caption America. The response is almost like a desperate plea: no, really, just stop, because you clearly have no idea how bad this looks.

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Needless to say, like everything on social media the insult is a bit of a gamble: Trump is a ferocious combatant online as elsewhere, and his supporters (or people who just dont like Clinton, of which there are, of course, plenty) were quick to note that she might not want to throw the word delete around, considering her own ongoing email scandal.

But its probably a fair assumption that all of this ammunition will get fired sooner or later anyway  its not like Trump, having bequeathed the nickname Crooked Hillary on his opponent, is going to hold back  and now that Clinton has locked up the Democratic nomination, we can pretty much expect both candidates to hurl the kitchen sink at each other on a daily basis.

That seems to be the message behind Clintons tweet, giving it a sort of shot heard round the world vibe. The ugliest game on earth is afoot: prepare for lots of kitchen sinks whizzing overhead.
by Ben Frederick @mp_benfred, June 10, 2016

Medialets, a mobile ad-serving platform, announced the expansion of its scope as it opened Asia-Pacific headquarters in Singapore and hired new executives in North America and Europe.

Our clients demand global solutions for their mobile challenges," stated Medialets CEO Richy Glassberg. We've expanded our team to meet our clients' needs in their local markets."

Andrew Dryden, a Medialets VP for six years, will be heading up the new Singapore office, overseeing sales, operations, and account management. Dryden has previously worked for Publicitas and the United Nations.

John Ruvulo joined Medialets as SVP of Sales in North America, and in London, Kiran Kaur joined as director of agency sales for Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Ruvulo previously worked for CurtCo Media, and Kaur joins from Conversant.

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"Over the past year, Medialets has signed global partnership agreements with agency holding companies like Dentsu, programmatic partners like Light Reaction, The Trade Desk and AppNexus, and location partners like PlaceIQ," stated Glassberg. "With this expansion, we will continue building our global relationships while partnering with local market experts."

"We're continuing our growth around the world because of the overwhelming demand for mobile measurement and attribution solutions, stated Medialets SVP of global sales James O'Connor.

Medialets was acquired by WPP in April of last year, and has since doubled down on viewability and expansion.
by Erik Sass , Staff Writer @eriksass1, June 10, 2016

While a number of financially distressed publications and media companies have been sold for the symbolic price of $1, none has been offered up as the prize in an essay contest -- until now. The publisher of a small community newspaper in Vermont is offering to give the newspaper away -- offices and all -- to the author of the best essay explaining why s[he) wants to become the next publisher.

Ross Connelly, the editor and publisher of the 127-year-old weekly Hardwick Gazette, is planning to retire after three decades owning and operating the sole news publication serving the town of 3,000 in northern Vermont. Unable to find a buyer for the tiny newspaper, this week he announced a giveaway contest for aspiring local news entrepreneurs.

Entrants just have to submit an essay up to 400 words long, along with a $175 entry fee, for a chance to win possession of the newspaper. Connelly has stipulated that he must receive at least 700 essays (and no more than 1,889, in reference to the year it was founded) for the contest to go forward. The giveaway does not include a printing press, as the newspaper is printed at a regional press.

Connelly acquired the newspaper with his wife Susan Jarzyn in 1986; Jarzyn passed away in 2011.

The incumbent publisher doesnt necessarily approve of broader trends in media consumption, as he explained in the online news release announcing the contest: We want to hear from people who can hold up a mirror in which local citizens can see themselves and gain insights into the lives within their communities. We want to hear from people with a passion for local stories that are important, even in the absence of scandal and sensationalism. We want to hear from people who recognize social media is not the same as a local newspaper.

He went on: The winner of his contest will demonstrate this is a business that employs local people, that keeps the money we earn in the communities we cover, that is here week after week because the people who live here are important.

Amen!
In an effort to identify a simple, reliable way to track the course of nasal polyps in chronic sinus disease, Johns Hopkins Medicine researchers say they've linked rising levels of immune system white blood cells, called eosinophils, with regrowth of polyps removed by surgery. The findings, they say, reported online in the International Forum of Allergy & Rhinology, could lead to the development of a simple blood test to screen for early growth of polyps in sinus disease, track disease progression, and develop and monitor treatments for a common, often troublesome condition, called chronic rhinosinusitis with nasal polyposis.

"Unlike other airway diseases, like asthma, doctors don't have a single test or biomarker for detecting and tracking sinus-related diseases," says Jean Kim, M.D., Ph.D., associate professor of otolaryngology-head and neck surgery at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. "A simple blood test would provide an additional way to monitor disease progression, in addition to endoscopies and CT scans for people with symptoms that may enable the ability to screen for sinus disease with nasal polyposis at a primary care facility."

Ultimately, she says, a specialist would need to confirm the presence of nasal and sinus polyps using a nasal endoscopy and/or CT scan. Kim cautions that the new research, conducted with a small number of patients, does not determine whether rising numbers of eosinophils can actually predict the size of nasal polyps.

An estimated 29 million people in the U.S. suffer from chronic rhinosinusitis, a chronic state of inflammation and swelling of the sinus and nasal passages, which normally conduct air flow and fluids. Over time, a subset of patients will develop teardrop-shaped growths of unhealthy sinus and nasal tissue, called polyps, in the passages, leading to severe inflammation, congestion, drippy postnasal discharge and excessive mucus. Oftentimes, this will lead to worsening of asthma or asthma-like symptoms.

Physicians may recommend removing polyps to ease breathing, but the polyps often grow back. The ability to detect regrowth by a blood test would facilitate diagnosis for these patients.

For the study, Kim and her team studied 61 male and female patients ages 18 to 77 with chronic sinusitis and nasal polyps who were scheduled to have surgery to remove the polyps. Fifty-eight of the patients also had asthma.

The investigators took blood samples and analyzed CT scans from patients prior to surgery. Then, these patients were followed after surgery with another blood sample and nasal endoscopy, which uses a scope to directly view the polyps in the nose. Nasal polyp size was measured and determined by nasal endoscopy.

The patients were then followed after surgery with additional blood tests and nasal endoscopies over the course of three to 12 months to see if the polyps regrew.

Nasal polyps contain several biological components associated with inflammation, including eosinophils, mast cells and immunoglobin proteins. Because eosinophils increase inflammation and collect in the airway of people with asthma, the researchers focused on whether eosinophil levels outside of the polyps in the circulating blood tracked with the growth of nasal polyps.

Using the blood samples, the researchers measured, on average, 807 eosinophils per cubic millimeter in patients before their sinus surgery, a level that dropped to an average of 200 one to two months after the polyps were removed. Over the next nine months, the physicians observed the eosinophils rise again to a high average of 338, presumably due to the regrowth of the nasal polyps. Kim cautions that the number of eosinophils from one patient to another can vary greatly and that the absolute number isn't so important, but the change in levels with respect to the presence of polyps is key.

Nasal polyp size was measure and determined by a 4-point scale for each nostril after endoscopy: 0 for no polyp and 4 for complete obstruction. Each person could thus have a maximum score of 8 if both nostrils were completely blocked by polyps. Prior to surgery, the patients had an average score of 5, which dropped to 0.1 one to two months after surgery. From three to 12 months following surgery, the average score rose to 1.5.

Then, Kim's team compared the eosinophil levels with the nasal polyp size to determine if there was a direct mathematical correlation. They found that for every time eosinophil number decreased by 100 counts after surgery, the nasal endoscopy score dropped by 1.6 units. And, as the eosinophil levels rose again by 100 counts, the nasal endoscopy score also increased by 1.2 units

"The rising levels of eosinophils tracked closely with the regrowth of the polyps," says Kim. "However, we still need more studies to further determine if eosinophils levels will be a reliable predictor of actual polyp size in the regrowth process." Kim says it is unknown whether the presence of eosinophils causes the polyps to regrow or if they are simply a byproduct of inflammation. More studies are needed to specifically address the cause-effect relationship between eosinophils and nasal polyps.

The study was funded by the Flight Attendant Medical Research Institute.
Researchers report in PLOS Biology the mechanism by which streptomycin, one of the oldest and most widely used antibiotics, penetrates into bacterial cells. The study performed by scientists at UT Southwestern Medical Center and their colleagues also reveals a potential way for developing new drugs to treat drug-resistant infections.

The co-lead authors are Robin Wray and Dr Irene Iscla, and co-corresponding authors are Drs Paul Blount and Junmei Wang, all from UT Southwestern Medical Center. The work was in collaboration with Dr Hua Li and Ya Gao from the School of Pharmacy at Tongji Medical College at Huazhong University of Science and Technology in China.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), antibiotic and antimicrobial resistance is an increasingly serious threat to global public health. In this context, the group led by Dr Blount set out to identify compounds that would inhibit bacterial growth by altering the properties of the bacterial 'emergency release valve' - the mechanosensitive channel MscL. MscL, a transmembrane protein with a pore, is found in the vast majority of bacterial species where it helps the cell to tolerate sudden decreases in external osmolarity by releasing solutes from inside the cell. Previous studies had shown that mutations in MscL, which led to a pore that opens more easily, were detrimental to bacterial growth. Surprisingly, Dr Blount and his colleagues found that the expression of MscL increased the potency of a variant of streptomycin, dihydrostreptomycin. These results were published in Nature Communications.

Because MscL is a channel and dihydrostreptomycin increase the flux of solutes when MscL was expressed, Dr Blount and his collaboration followed the hypothesis that dihydrostreptomycin could bind and open MscL.

In the current study, using a combination of biochemical, molecular, and computational approaches, the researchers found that dihydrostreptomycin binds to a specific site of MscL and modifies its conformation, allowing the flux of solutes out of, and, surprisingly, of dihydrostreptomycin into the cell. This discovery is quite remarkable.

Streptomycin has been studied for decades, and it is firmly established that it kills bacteria mostly by interfering with protein synthesis. However, the mechanisms by which this large, bulky, and charged antibiotic accesses the inside of the bacterial cell had remained unknown until now.

Although dihydrostreptomycin channel activation is insufficient by itself to effect slowed growth or cell death in bacterial cells resistant to streptomycin's activity on protein synthesis, it is clear that the drug does directly bind and modify the MscL channel pore. In addition to solving old mysteries, the study holds promise for the discovery of new antibiotics that target the MscL channel.

Dihydrostreptomycin now serves as the first definitive example where the direct and specific binding of a compound to the MscL channel can cause at least partial, if not full opening of the MscL channel pore. If a compound could be identified that led to the more complete opening of the MscL channel or held it open for longer periods of time, it would be a worthy antibacterial candidate.

The work was supported by Grant I-1420 of the Welch Foundation, Grant RP100146 from the Cancer Prevention & Research Institute of Texas, and GM061028 from the National Institutes of Health. II is supported by Grant 12SDG8740012 from the National American Heart Association. HL is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China Grant No. 81473254. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.

The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Article: Dihydrostreptomycin Directly Binds to, Modulates, and Passes through the MscL Channel Pore, Wray R, Iscla I, Gao Y, Li H, Wang J, Blount P, PLOS Biology, doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.1002473, published 9 June 2016.
Measuring intestinal calcium absorption may help to identify individuals who are prone to develop kidney stones, according to a study appearing in an upcoming issue of the Clinical Journal of the American Society of Nephrology (CJASN).

Individuals with hypercalciuria have kidneys that put out higher levels of calcium in urine than normal, which increases their risk of developing kidney stones. Only a portion of hypercalciuric individuals will develop stones, however, and there are no criteria to distinguish them from those who remain free of stones.

To look for such distinguishing factors, Giuseppe Vezzoli, MD (San Raffaele Scientific Institute, in Milan, Italy) and his colleagues evaluated absorption of calcium in the first part of the small intestine as well as urinary excretion of calcium in 172 hypercalciuric stone formers and 36 hypercalciuric patients without a history of kidney stones.

The researchers found that both absorption and excretion of calcium were faster in hypercalciuric stone formers than in hypercalciuric patients without a history of stones.

"To our knowledge this is the first study comparing calcium metabolism in hypercalciuric patients with or without calcium stones," said Dr. Vezzoli. "Its findings identify a characteristic of calcium metabolism that may predispose hypercalciuric patients to calcium stone formation, and highlight the role of intestinal absorption in stone formation."

The study was supported by grants from the Italian Ministry of University and Scientific Research and from the San Raffaele Scientific Institute.

Article: Intestinal Calcium Absorption among Hypercalciuric Patients with or without Calcium Kidney Stones, Clinical Journal of the American Society of Nephrology, doi:10.2215/CJN.10360915, published online 9 June 2016.
Research conducted at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health and Public Health Solutions examined the reasons why men who have had sex with both men and women choose not to disclose their sexual orientation - particularly to their wives and girlfriends. Results show that men wanted to avoid the stigma and homophobia they felt certain would lead to strong negative emotional reactions and profound changes in their relationships. Findings are published online in the journal Archives of Sexual Behavior.

Using a large, ethnically diverse sample, the researchers examined the reasons these behaviorally bisexual men offered for why they had not told - and frequently never planned to tell - their friends, family, and female partners about their sexual orientation. In-depth interviews were conducted with 203 behaviorally bisexual men in New York City who had never disclosed their same-sex behavior to their female sexual partners. To be eligible, men had to be at least 18 years of age; not self-identify as gay; and report having had sex with a man and sex with a woman in the past year. Men were recruited from Internet websites, print ads, and nonparticipant referrals.

"Our results clearly identify the need for public education campaigns to dispel myths about bisexual men - that bisexual men are not gay, do not have HIV, and are not necessarily non-monogamous," said Eric W. Schrimshaw, PhD, associate professor of Sociomedical Sciences at the Mailman School of Public Health. "Further, the anticipated negative reactions from female partners suggest the need for strategies to assist behaviorally bisexual men disclose their sexual history in ways that minimize negative reactions and work with the couple to preserve the relationship."

The men consistently reported anticipating stigma for having sex with men and specified a number of reasons for non-disclosure, including anticipation of negative emotional reactions; anticipation of negative changes in relationships; belief that their family, friends, and female partners held stigmatizing attitudes toward homosexuality; and prior experience with negative reactions to disclosure.

Men in the study did not report a heterosexual identity, identity uncertainty, or other identity issues as reasons for non-disclosure. "Rather our findings suggested that non-disclosure of sexual orientation among behaviorally bisexual men is often used as a strategy to avoid anticipated stigmatizing responses from their social network such as ridicule, rejection, and victimization," said Schrimshaw.

Perhaps the most novel reason identified for non-disclosure was that all men commonly viewed the religious and/or cultural background of their friends, family, and female partners as a barrier to disclosure because they believed it contributed to the anticipation of rejecting reactions. Theories on disclosure of sexual orientation among gay men are conflicting. "While some research suggests that disclosure of sexual orientation is part of identity development and that disclosure occurs after they become more confident and self-accepting of their sexual identity, this was not our finding," said Martin J. Downing, Jr. of Public Health Solutions.

The researchers say their findings show that bisexual men may be more likely than gay men to anticipate stigmatizing reactions from others. However, they caution that their research did not compare bisexual men's reasons to those of gay men, and therefore it is still unclear whether gay men perceive less sigma (and therefore are more likely to disclose) or if gay and bisexual men experience similar levels of stigma perceptions prior to disclosure. "Such research is critical to understanding the potential causal order between stigma and disclosure among both gay and bisexual men," noted Dowling.

Earlier research by Schrimshaw suggested that high levels of emotional distress among behaviorally bisexual men are a result of concealment of their sexual orientation. "Thus the current findings provide new insights into why non-disclosure could result in greater emotional distress," said Schrimshaw.

The research was supported by a grant from the National Institute of Mental Health (R01-MH076680). Daniel J. Cohn of Cornell University is a co-author.

Article: Reasons for Non-Disclosure of Sexual Orientation Among Behaviorally Bisexual Men: Non-Disclosure as Stigma Management, Eric W. Schrimshaw , Martin J. DowningJr., Daniel J. Cohn, Archives of Sexual Behavior, doi: 10.1007/s10508-016-0762-y, published online 8 June 2016.
Northwestern Medicine and University of Wisconsin-Madison (UW) scientists have identified a gene that causes severe glaucoma in children. The finding, published in The Journal of Clinical Investigation, validates a similar discovery made by the scientists in mice two years ago and suggests a target for future therapies to treat the devastating eye disease that currently has no cure.

"This work shows us how a genetic mutation causes a severe form of glaucoma called primary congenital glaucoma, which afflicts a significant portion of children enrolled in institutions for the blind worldwide," said principal investigator Dr. Susan Quaggin, chief of nephrology and hypertension at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and Northwestern Memorial Hospital.

The gene, TEK, is involved in the development of a vessel in the eye called Schlemm's canal, which drains fluid from the anterior portion of the eye. In glaucoma, this vessel can be defective or missing, creating pressure buildup that can damage the optic nerve and cause vision loss. In previous research, Quaggin's lab showed that deleting the gene in mouse models led to glaucoma, but the scientists didn't know how mutations impairing the gene affected humans.

After publishing that research, Quaggin met Dr. Terri Young, a pediatric ophthalmologist and chair of Opthalmology at the UW. Young had identified mutations in TEK in some of her patients, but didn't know the significance.

"It was more than coincidental," Quaggin said. "Our meeting led to collaborations with ophthalmologists and geneticists from around the world who identified more mutations in this gene in children with this form of glaucoma. It was one of those eureka moments that sometimes happens in science."

Altogether, the team found TEK mutations in 10 unrelated families with children who have primary congenital glaucoma. All of these children did not have mutations in other genes known to cause glaucoma.

The scientists then demonstrated that the TEK mutations identified in children impair the vascular signaling pathway important in Schlemm's canal formation - the same way they do in mice. Findings made in animal models do not always translate to patients, but it appears that this important eye vessel functions very similarly in mice and humans.

"We don't know how other genes associated with glaucoma cause this disease," Quaggin said. "With TEK, we know exactly what's going wrong, which means we've identified a pathway that could be a great new therapeutic target for severe glaucoma and even more common forms of the disease."

In ongoing research, Quaggin's group is developing an eye drop that repairs the TEK pathway to fix the faulty vessel. The scientists are also exploring whether TEK pathway mutations play a role in adult-onset glaucoma.

Quaggin is also the Charles Horace Mayo Professor of Medicine and director of the Feinberg Cardiovascular Research Institute (FCVRI).

This study was funded by National Institutes of Health (NIH) grants R01 HL124120, R01 EY014685 and EY11721, the Research to Prevent Blindness Inc. Lew R. Wasserman Award, the Duke-National University of Singapore Core Grant, the University of Wisconsin Centennial Scholars Award and NIH Career Development Award K12 1K23EY020554. This work was also supported by grants from the March of Dimes Foundation, Howard Hughes Medical Center, Ophthalmic Research Institute of Australia, Channel Seven Children's Research Foundation, Department of Innovation, Industry, Science and Research, and the National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia.

Article: Angiopoietin receptor TEK mutations underlie primary congenital glaucoma with variable expressivity, Tomokazu Souma, Stuart W. Tompson, Benjamin R. Thomson, Owen M. Siggs, Krishnakumar Kizhatil, Shinji Yamaguchi, Liang Feng, Vachiranee Limviphuvadh, Kristina N. Whisenhunt, Sebastian Maurer-Stroh, Tammy L. Yanovitch, Luba Kalaydjieva, Dimitar N. Azmanov, Simone Finzi, Lucia Mauri, Shahrbanou Javadiyan, Emmanuelle Souzeau, Tiger Zhou, Alex W. Hewitt, Bethany Kloss, Kathryn P. Burdon, David A. Mackey, Keri F. Allen, Jonathan B. Ruddle, Sing-Hui Lim, Steve Rozen, Khanh-Nhat Tran-Viet, Xiaorong Liu, Simon John, Janey L. Wiggs, Francesca Pasutto, Jamie E. Craig, Jing Jin, Susan E. Quaggin, and Terri L. Young, The Journal of Clinical Investigation, doi:10.1172/JCI85830, published 6 June 2016.
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At its peak in 2014, Ebola sparked anxiety about a possible global pandemic and led some governments to threaten or unilaterally enforce travel bans to and from the worst-affected countries  Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea.Guinea was declared Ebola-free by the World Health Organization on June 1 and Sierra Leone on March 17.Previous declarations announcing the end of Ebola flare-ups in West Africa have been followed however by the emergence of new cases.Liberia was until now monitoring for new cases after a woman died of Ebola in the capital of Monrovia on March 31 after arriving from Guinea.Two of her three children, aged five and two, subsequently tested positive for the virus.In all, the virus affected 10 countries, including the United States and Spain, with more than 28,000 cases reported.The Liberian health ministry called on people to remain vigilant in order to avoid another outbreak in the future."We have been carrying on a sensitisation campaign. This campaign will continue, and we will still be in readiness to contain any eventual outbreak," George said.The risk of infection lasts beyond the 42-day period because the virus can survive in certain bodily fluids of survivors, particularly sperm, where it can linger up to a year, according to experts.In Paynesville, the Monrovia suburb where the most recent spate of cases were registered, residents were glad to be moving on."It is good to hear that Ebola is gone again, but from what we saw recently we remain resilient in our preventive measures. We don't want our neighbourhood's name to be attached to the outbreak," said Bubakar Sanor, 56."We are happy that our health workers are now up to the task, containing the virus with bravery and professionalism," he told AFP.Source: AFP
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The researchers then linked the healthcare-related emissions to specific environmental and health outcomes, including global warming; ozone depletion; respiratory disease from air pollutants; cancer from chemical exposure; and the environmental effects of acid rain, among others.Among their findings, the researchers estimated that greenhouse gas emissions from the healthcare sector grew 30% over the past decade, accounting for 9.8% of the national total in 2013. "Were it a country, the sector would rank 'ahead of the entire United Kingdom' in emissions," said Sherman.The research team also reported significant national percentages of non-greenhouse gas effects attributable to the healthcare sector, including acidification (12%), smog formation (10%), and respiratory disease from particulate matter (9%)."It's a big contributor to our nation's environmental impacts," said Eckelman, "commensurate with its economic impacts."In addition, the researchers calculated the public health impact of healthcare emissions. For the year 2013, they estimated health damages from the pollutants at 470,000 'disability adjusted life years' (DALYs) - a measure of years lost due to ill health, disability, or early death.That health burden, the researchers said, is comparable to lives lost each year to preventable medical errors first reported by the Institute of Medicine in 1999, sparking national attention on patient safety. "It's on the same order of magnitude, and we ought to pay attention to it," Sherman noted.Also detailed in the study are recent efforts to 'green' the healthcare system, such as the Healthier Hospitals Initiative. These initiatives, designed to make the healthcare sector more sustainable and reduce pollution, can also improve public health and patient safety, the researchers said."While some pollution is currently inevitable in our efforts to safely care for patients, there is a tremendous amount of waste in our healthcare system," said Sherman. "People are trying to reduce waste from a cost perspective. But there is a public health perspective as well that is important. Protecting public health is also an issue of patient safety."Source: Eurekalert
In February 2016, German police arrested Malik Fndy, a Syrian-born Ph.D. student at the Technical University of Darmstadt, who had posted several videos on his private YouTube account proclaiming his support of ISIS. Fndy had also made numerous pro-ISIS posts on his Facebook account. The arrest followed a MEMRI TV clip[1] in which Fndy explained why he supported ISIS and justified the terrorist organization's burning of Jordanian pilot Muath al-Kasasbeh, as well as its practice of stoning women accused of adultery.

Following the initial investigation, Fndy posted another YouTube video in which he complained about "a distortion campaign by some German and American journalists" and thanked the German police for its "just treatment" of him.[2] At that point, Fndy halted his Facebook activity.



January 2016 video: "This Is Why I Support the Islamic State"

On May 19, Fndy resumed his activity on Facebook. "This is my new account," he wrote, "after my old account was disabled by Facebook... The Islamic Caliphate State is here to stay and to expand, whether the infidels, the [Shi'ite] Rafidites, the apostates, the hypocrites, and the traitors like it or not. I hope that this account will be a platform for stating Truth and vanquishing Falsehood... Your brother, Malik Fndy."[3] Since then, he has made numerous posts praising ISIS and attacking its enemies. He also posted a description of an exchange he had with one of his German interrogators.

The following are details:



June 2, 2016 Facebook post

Fndy posted an image from the ISIS film documenting the immolation of pilot Al-Kasasbeh, and wrote: "Whenever I watch the old and new publications of the Islamic State, I am filled with great pride of my support of this state, which raises the banner of my religion, whether the infidels and apostates like it or not, and defends my honor and blood of my folk from the aggressor pigs."[4]



Fndy's YouTube page (accessed June 8, 2016)

In his new account, Fndy has posted numerous attacks on Saudi Arabia's royal family and on the Shi'ites. He has reiterated his support of ISIS in many posts and has promoted ISIS-related content and social media accounts. On May 23, he posted a picture of German journalist Tobias Huch holding a weapon during his visit to the Peshmerga, and wrote: "The person in the picture is the German journalist Tobias Hoch [sic], who assisted in my arrest by the German authorities two months ago by distorting my image in cooperation with the Jewish Washington-based MEMRI institution, under the pretext that I support the Islamic State, after I had posted the video on YouTube."[5] Fndy wrote that the Peshmerga is an illegal organization in Germany and called upon the authorities to deal with Huch.



Fndy's Facebook page (accessed June 8, 2016)

On May 23, Fndy commented on the terror attacks in Tartus and Jableh in Syria, in which scores of civilians were killed. The attacks, he wrote in a Facebook post, were carried out by the "heroes of the Islamic State." In the Jableh attack, a suicide bomber helped carry the wounded from the first bombing into a hospital, where he blew himself up. Fndy commented on this incident: "By Allah, you will wish for a natural death, oh Alawites. As long as the mujahideen of the Islamic State maintain this mindset and these actions, you will enjoy nothing but the body parts of your children and your relatives. Thus you will learn the punishment of anyone fighting those who implement the law of Allah."[6]

Then, on June 6, he extended holiday greetings for the first day of the month of Ramadan to the ISIS leader: "I would like to congratulate the revered sheikh Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi Al-Quraishi, the Caliph of the Muslims, on the beginning of the blessed month of Ramadan in the land of the Islamic State. I pray that Allah will bless him and make him a thorn in the throats of the infidels, the apostates, and those who lead people astray. We congratulate our brothers on the frontiers of the glory and triumph of Islam. I pray for Allah to grant the Islamic State victory, domination, direction, and guidance."[7]

Police Interrogation

Fndy posted an account of his interrogation by the German police on Facebook, under the title "My Story with a German Interrogator":

"A few days ago, I had a date with a German interrogator in the German city of Darmstadt, where I was arrested some three months ago, in order to collect my stuff, 'most of' which is still held by them. After I finished the process, one of my interrogators came in. Anger was written all over his face. When the process of collecting my stuff was over, he said to me in a very loud voice (as if I was facing an Arab interrogator): The 'shit' you post on your Facebook account was all translated and you must delete it. You live in Germany, and if you want to live here, [know] that what you write is inappropriate for Germany. Or else go to Syria and there you can write whatever you like.' He also said that the fact that I am currently out of prison does not mean that they would not appeal a higher court to send me back in jail. He added in derision: 'This is Germany. We don't have stoning of women here. This is what you are calling for.'

"I tried to interrupt him, but he said to me out of arrogance and hatred: 'Get out of here... Out... Out'.

"Naturally, I could not care less about what he told me. He who bears the truth does not care about the tyranny of the oppressive ill-wishers. I said to him calmly: 'I want to speak,' and he screamed: 'Speak!'

"I said to him: 'First of all, I am writing for the people of my country, not for Germany. This is my right. With regard to the issue of stoning - this is basic and substantiated in our Islamic religion.' At this point, he screamed to the point that the entire police station quaked, issuing a fatwa: There is no stoning in Islam. Then he added: 'Get out of here... Get out of here... Get out of here...'

"After that, I didn't pay any attention to him anymore. I turned to the person who gave me my stuff, and he [the interrogator] left the office in anger, closing the door behind him.

"My message to you, extraordinary interrogator, is:

"1. When you ask for a fatwa, turn to a Muslim, not someone who pretends to be a Muslim;

"2. Come and talk to me when you cut your ties with the Salul regime in Saudi Arabia, where the constitution allows stoning, which has been implemented several times;

"3. Since the German government supports the PKK politically and with weapons even though it deems this [organization] illegal, you should realize who is hallucinating and writing 'shit';

"4. When you leave our land, and stop fighting and bombing us, rest assured that I will leave your land, even though all I do is write, while you are killing openly, and covertly support Al-Assad and his helpers. The fact that you joined the American-led international coalition is the best proof of that;

"5. In our religion, oh interrogator, there are things that make me stand up to you and not fear you. The good thing that will become of me was decreed by Allah, and what Allah has written is also good.

"So don't think you can scream at me once again because, simply put, I am a Muslim and the believers stand behind me."

"May Allah bestow plenty upon you, oh Islamic State. The thrones quake upon hearing your name."

Endnotes:
On June 7, 2016, the day before the shooting attack in Tel Aviv in which four were killed and several wounded, Hamas's military wing, the 'Izz Al-Din Al-Qassam Brigades, published an article on its website encouraging jihad and martyrdom during the month of Ramadan, which began this week. The article, titled "Ramadan - The Month of Jihad, Fighting and Victory over the Enemies," noted that throughout the ages Ramadan had been the time of the greatest Muslim victories, beginning from the days of the Prophet Muhammad. Allah, it said, had commanded, and urged, the Muslims to wage jihad, for it is the pinnacle of Islam. The article stressed that Muslims' sad situation today is due to their abandonment of jihad, and called on them to follow the example set out in their glorious, jihad-saturated history.

The following are excerpts from the article:[1]



Image that accompanied the article

"Ramadan is the month of jihad, fighting, and fasting. Therefore, after the jihad fighter dedicates himself to the study of Islam by day he sets forth to defend his homeland, Palestine, by night. This month has seen the actualization of exceptional Islamic victories. Today, the ummah is bleeding in many countries, and none care about the deep wound of Palestine and the oppressive siege on the Gaza Strip.

"About a year ago, the Palestinian resistance, chiefly the Al-Qassam Brigades, fought the most impressive battles of heroism and martyrdom. Al-Qassam's jihad fighters, as they were fasting, dealt the enemy fatal blows in the eastern parts of the Gaza Strip, as part of Operation Eaten Straw [the 2015 Gaza war], and Allah helped them achieve such a great number of victories that they [shattered] the myth of the undefeatable [Israeli] army, expelling it, defeated, from the Gaza Strip.

"Jihad for the sake of Allah is the pinnacle of Islam. By this means, honor is acquired in this world and in the world to come. It is one of the best and most noble deeds. The Muslims became inferior only when they abandoned jihad and pinned their hopes on this world [and not on the world to come]; that is when the enemies fell upon them...'

"The mention of jihad during this blessed month is a mention of a glorious past, whose [example] we must follow in order to emerge from a crisis that has lasted so long that we now lag behind all nations, and despite our large number, have become as worthless as scum upon water. Allah removed our enemies' fear [of us] and placed weakness in our hearts [that is embodied by] a love of this world and a hatred of death.

"Mentioning the past should lead [us] to learn its lessons and benefit from it as we create our present and outline a glorious course for our future. This is because Allah the Almighty commanded us to wage jihad, urged us to do so, and wanted it so much that he named anyone sacrificing their life for Him as having sold their soul to Allah - and what a pleasant transaction this is[2] ...

"The blessed month of Ramadan is the month of jihad, and saw the two most important battles in the life of the Prophet [Muhammad]. The first is the great Battle of Badr [624 CE], which was the divine proof by means of which Allah distinguished truth from lie, and which led to Muslim honor and steadfastness. The second is the Conquest of Mecca, by virtue of which the first renunciation of Islam was defeated, the banners of paganism in the holy city [of Mecca] fell, and Islam became invincible throughout in the Arabian Peninsula.

"However, [despite] the life of humiliation that our Arab world is living today, since it abandoned jihad, there is still hope. [As a hadith attributed to the Prophet Muhammad states:] 'A group from among my ummah still fights and stands for truth until the Day of Judgement.'

"Likewise, Ramadan is a way station for educating and comprehensively training and preparing the soul to enter the vortex of jihad. For the jihad fighters excel during this month, and make [this month] a school and a way station in order to fill in the cracks in their weakness and reinforce their means, so as to become closer to Allah and heed the calls of jihad."

Endnotes:
Introduction

The following is a review of an Urdu-language book on the Islamic shari'a practices required of Muslims with regard to mobile phones and social media such as Facebook and WhatsApp. The book's cover introduces it as "A valuable collection of more than 100 fiqhi [juristic] and shari'a issues regarding mobile [phones] and telephones."

The book, titled "Mobile Phone ke Zaroori Masayel" or "Essential Problems of The Mobile Phone," is by Muhammad Tufail Ahmed Misbahi, an Islamic cleric who is also subeditor for a magazine called Mahnama Ashrafiya - a monthly published from the town of Mubarakpur in Azamgarh district of the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. The 190-page book is published by the Falah Research Foundation. Both author and publisher belong to the Barelvi school of Sunni Islam. It was published as an e-book in December 2014 or early 2015. Mubarakpur is a seat of learning for the Barelvi school of Sunni Islam in northern India.

The book includes many chapters devoted to different aspects of the Internet, notably: Koranic predictions of the emergence of mobile phones; Islamic guidelines about the business and repair of mobile phones; the Islamic way of speaking on mobile phones; the use of mobile phones by Muslim women; mobile phone ringtones and etiquette and respect for the mosque; the shari'a order regarding games on mobile phones; offering prayers without silencing or turning off the phone; the problem of Nikah (Islamic marriage) through messaging, search engines, Internet chat, and social network accounts; the shari'a order regarding Facebook; the shari'a order regarding WhatsApp; and so on.

"Mobile Phones And The Internet Have Declared War On Human Villages... The Mobile Phone Has Attacked The Moral Tenets And Religious Traditions Of Humans"

Introducing the book, Mufti Muhammad Matiur Rehman Razvi, an Islamic cleric at the Jamia Ashrafia (a Barelvi madrassa in the town of Mubarakpur), states: "As a Muslim, the way a Muslim should use everything is in the light of Islamic principles and laws; likewise, the Islamic principles and laws regarding the use of mobile phones should be before them." Introductory comments are also provided by Allama Muhammad Faroghul Qadri of the World Islamic Mission, U.K., who is also introduced as "the preacher of Asia and Europe." Qadri notes that the modern scientific discoveries prove Islam's claim 1,500 years ago as "truth," adding: "This honor is available only to Islam, which has solutions for all problems emerging in the future."

In the book, author Muhammad Tufail Ahmed Misbahi, notes that the 18th century was the beginning of the Industrial Revolution and that the mobile phone is an example of this, "an important scientific invention" of the modern era that has shrunk the world to fit in the palm of one's hand. Misbahi goes on to argue that the Koran predicts mobile phone, citing Verse 6:59: "And no grain is there within the darknesses of the earth and no moist or dry (thing) but that it is (written) in a clear record [in the Koran]." Verse 54:53 is also cited: "And every small and great (thing) is inscribed [in the Koran]." Misbahi cites Abdullah bin Abbas, a companion of the Prophet Muhammad, as having said: "If the string of my camel is lost, I will be able to search for it in the Koran."

The book argues that these verses and this saying are proof that mobile phones were predicted by the Koran, and also cites Verse 81:4: "And when full-term she-camels are neglected." This, it says, means that camels would no longer be needed, because railways, cars, and planes would be invented. It also cites additional verses saying that Allah created the male and female of a species, and that humans will move from stage to stage (as if in interplanetary travel), as an argument that that the Koran is basically a treasure trove of science and that therefore the discovery of mobile phones is also predicted by the Koran. Discussing a wide range of benefits of mobile phones, such as video conferencing and mobile banking, the author's argument throughout the book is that Muslims should use it according to the tenets of shari'a.

Author Misbahi writes, "The biggest religious benefit of mobile phones is that today, due to mobile phones, religious work is being carried out on a large scale," and adds: "The disadvantages of mobile phones are greater than its advantages." In the author's opinion, because of mobile phones, happiness has disappeared, women's dignity has vanished, etiquette and civility have been buried; mosques are no longer venerated, the new generation becomes adult before its time, the snake of love and flirtation is dancing around, the path to rape is cleared, music and singing have reached a peak, women who are strangers and na-mahram (i.e. not relatives) are contacted and teased, religious tenets and Eastern traditions have been suffocated, and so on.

The author makes the case that Muslims must not take mobile phones into the mosque, because prayers are affected when they phones are not turned off. He adds: "This is the saddest aspect of the damage done by the mobile phone, and its satanic role." Due to mobile phones, he notes, the new generation is awash in illicit sex and rape. He notes: "You read every other day in newspapers that some girl eloped with her lover," and recommends: "Parents should be aware and pay special attention to their adult daughters, and keep a stern eye on their activities, and, insofar as possible, do not permit their girls to use mobile phones." He writes that "mental" and "spiritual" diseases are emerging and that "due to mobile phones, fights break out between wife and husband."

"Mobile phones and the Internet have declared war on human villages. Or, let's say that the mobile phone has attacked the moral tenets and religious traditions of humans," Misbahi notes. Advising Muslim women to recite Koranic verses during pregnancy, the author notes: "A dangerous aspect of mobile phone is that its very bad impact registers on a pregnant woman and the health and morality of the child growing in her belly." He declares mobile phones a fad and states: "The 21st century is a link in the era of Jahiliyya [pre-Islamic ignorance]. The things that were done openly during the Jahiliyya are nowadays done in the name of individual freedom and fashion."

"Since It Is Kufr [Unbelief] To Respectfully Salute A Dhimmi Kafir [Non-Muslim Living Under Muslim Rule], Respectfully Saluting A Kafir Harabi Of Hindustan [Hindu Infidel In India] Will Be Kufr Of The First Order"

Misbahi criticizes girls for using mobile phones, saying: "Like the (male) children of Adam, the daughters of Eve are also not behind anyone in the fashion of using mobile phones. They too are engaged in the disease of mobile phones. Like the boys, girls too are openly seen talking on mobile phones in open markets, streets and parks. Forget about criticizing others, Muslim girls too are engaging in such activities; and it is disconcerting to see them wearing fashionable niqab [veils] and roaming around in open markets and on the highways. The voice of a woman is woman, i.e. something to be hidden. But it is sad that our mothers and sisters do not practice this."

The author then goes on to argue: "The solution of all problems to emerge till the Day of Judgment is present in the Islamic laws." Since the author belongs to the Barelvi school, which follows the 8th century Islamic jurist Imam Abu Hanifa, he notes: "[With regard to] the issues and problems that can emerge in the next 100 years, clear orders [solutions] for them are present in Hanafi jurisprudence." It is unclear why the author mentions only the "next 100 years." The author then moves on to the business of buying, selling, and repairing mobile phones. Quoting several hadiths (traditions) of the Prophet Muhammad, he stresses that nothing haram - i.e. forbidden by shari'a - should be carried out in the business of cell phones.

An interesting point mentioned by Misbahi is that just as when selling a pregnant beast the unborn young is also part of the sale, according to shari'a, the seller of a mobile phone must also provide the battery, charger, and earbuds. He added that in the same way, buying and selling a phone for 1,000 rupees payable on the spot and buying the same phone for 1,100 rupees on time is also legitimate according to shari'a - and that "this is not interest/usury." Quoting Fatawa Rizwiya - a book of fatwas belonging to the Barelvi school - he argues that a seller is entitled to sell his product at whatever price he wishes - for example, he can sell a mobile phone worth 1,000 rupees for 5,000 rupees, provided he does not mislead the buyer into thinking that it was initially purchased for that inflated price.

Underlining how Islam controls almost every aspect of daily life, the author discussed who should be the one to utter the greeting first in a phone call, citing a hadith according to which the Prophet Muhammad said that the one who is mounted, say, on a camel, should greet the one who is on foot, and the one on foot should greet the one who is seated. By citing this hadith and others, he said that the caller should be the first to do so. "It is against the Islamic tenets to say 'Hello' before Salaam [the Islamic word for greeting]," he notes.

Misbahi also observed that saying Salaam is a form of prayer and therefore may not be said to non-Muslims, adding: "The prayer for forgiveness and wellbeing in favor of Kuffar [infidels] and Mushrikeen [idolaters] is illegitimate and haram. Therefore, saying Salaam on a mobile phone to a non-Muslim is extremely illegitimate and haram and extreme haram." He cited Radd Al-Muhtar, a celebrated 18th-century work of jurisprudence, as stating: "If a Muslim respectfully salutes a dhimmi kafir, then he will become a kafir because respecting a kafir is kufr [unbelief]." In his own words, the author explained: "Since it is kufr [unbelief] to respectfully salute a dhimmi [non-Muslim living under Muslim rule] kafir [infidel], respectfully saluting a kafir harabi of Hindustan [i.e. Hindus of India] will be the kufr of the first order. Therefore, do not salute/say salaam to the infidels and idolaters of here [India]." Hindustan means India; harabi refers to a resident of Dar-ul-Harb, or the land of war, as opposed to the Islamic world, which is seen as Dar-ul-Islam.

The author quoted several learned Islamic scholars of yore and books of fatwas to argue that for reasons of expedience, it is okay to greet an infidel and that in such a case it will not be considered as an act of kufr (unbelief). He arrived at several conclusions, one of which is that "to greet a kafir is not only haram, but kufr [an act that makes you an infidel]." He then moved on to discuss spoken manners on the mobile phone, citing hadiths on how to introduce oneself when making a call, and discussed in detail when to make a call and when not to do so.

The Prophet Muhammad Said: "Do Not Teach Women To Write"; Fatwa By Founder Of Barelvi Islam Ahmed Raza Barelvi: "It Is Forbidden For Women And Girls To Read And Write"

Misbahi asked: "Is it right or wrong as per shari'a for Muslim women and Muslim girls to use mobile phones?" He noted that the readers might get offended by such a question but nevertheless goes on to stress that this is a good question to ask. Misbahi went on to quote the Prophet Muhammad as saying: "Do not teach women to write." For this hadith, he cited Al-Mustadrak Lil-Hakim, a book of Islamic jurisprudence published by Darul Kutb Al-Ilmiyya, Beirut. He noted two other books of hadiths certifying this hadith: Shoab-ul-Iman and Sahih Ibn Habban (phonetics).

Misbahi quoted a fatwa of Ahmed Raza Barelvi, the founder of the Barelvi school of Sunni Islam, which states: "It is forbidden for women and girls to read and write." The same fatwa further states: "[Such an act of teaching women] will open the doors of mischief... And Allah says mischief is worse than murder." Misbahi observed: "Teaching writing to women is illegitimate and forbidden" and that doing so would lead to obscenity in society. Justifying this, he quoted the Prophet Muhammad as saying: "A time will come near the Day of Judgement when women will be without clothes despite wearing clothes. They will be inclined towards others and will get others inclined towards them."

Noting that when women learn to write they will open the floodgates of mischief, Misbahi observed that Ahmed Raza Barelvi's fatwa against teaching women clarifies that mobile phones cannot be allowed for women under shari'a. Having delivered his moral judgement on the use of mobile phones by Muslim women, he then added a disclaimer that the muftis (jurists who deliver fatwas) should weigh in on this matter, but also noted that while married women can use mobile phones to talk to "mahram" (related and permissible) men, it is better for unmarried women not to use mobile phones, and for any conversation between men and women to be per shari'a. The author goes on to bar ringtones playing music, songs or anything Islamic.

Regarding taking photos with phones, Misbahi observed that this is "totally illegitimate and haram [forbidden by Islam]... The [shari'a] order for making a statue and taking a photo of a living being is the same [haram]." He cited several fatwas to argue that both taking a photograph and being photographed are forbidden, and another, from Sahih Bukhari, according to which Muhammad said: "On the Day of Judgment, the most extreme form of punishment will be given by Allah for those who take photos." A second hadith is also cited: "On the Day of Judgment, photographers will be punished and will be ordered to inject life into the photograph they took." He notes that it is haram to have a picture of living being on a phone, but that photos of inanimate objects are allowed.

Regarding songs on mobile phones, the author declared: "To hear songs is haram and extremely illegitimate. Whether one hears songs from a tape recorder or a DJ or a mobile, listening to songs by every means is illegitimate." He cites several Islamic jurists and the Prophet Muhammad in support of this. He also stated that like photography, videography too is banned. However, he noted that some religious scholars have permitted filming of their conferences for the propagation of Islam, but that it is better not to do so. He added that mobile phones cannot have ringtones that are songs, but that certain Islamic songs such as naats (poems in praise of Prophet Muhammad) are acceptable.

Declaring that marking April Fool's Day is haram, the author observed: "Due to the popular use and availability of mobile phones, the practice of observing April Fool's Day too is becoming common among Muslims." He derided non-Muslim practices being followed by Muslims, stating: "Nowadays, Jews and Christians celebrate 'New Year [Eve] Night', Muslims too have started celebrating New Year's. There is a tradition of celebrating Valentine's Day among Jews and Christians; Muslims too have begun celebrating Valentine's Day. Similarly, Jews and Christians have been celebrating April Fool for a long time, and Muslims too have begun marking April Fool, following Jews and Christians." Misbahi recommended that Muslims celebrate April 20 instead of April Fool, because it was on April 20, 571 CE that the Prophet Muhammad was born. He also cited Islamic traditions to prove that mobile phone games are against the Islamic shari'a.

"Transferring Songs Or Videos (Such As Films Etc.) From One Mobile Phone To Another Via Bluetooth Is Not Legitimate"

"Watching illegitimate videos and films on mobile phones is haram, haram and extremely haram. Similarly, watching movies in cinemas or on television is also haram, illegitimate and a sin," the author declared. He added: "Transferring songs or videos (such as films etc.) from one mobile phone to another mobile via Bluetooth is not legitimate." He cited shari'a-based rulings for such injunctions regarding songs and videos. Citing Fatawa Alamgiri, a 30-volume corpus of Islamic edicts issued by 500 Islamic clerics from across the world during the reign of the 17th century Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb, Misbahi also rejected music and singing at Sufi shrines. It should be noted here that this view of Misbahi is in contradiction with other Barelvi clerics who usually approve Sufism and its syncretic practices.

"The Sufis have allowed singing and qawwali [a form of singing with music] as legitimate and have derived arguments in its favor from the acts of predecessor mystics, but this argument is invalid because there is a big difference between the acts of predecessor mystics and activities and acts of present-day Sufis," he notes. He cited fatwas from a seminar titled "The Shari'a Order for Animation," on the subject of animation and cartoons held in the town of Mubarakpur in January 2011. Mubarakpur is the Barelvi seat of learning where the author is based. He underlined the jurists' conclusions at the seminar, i.e. that animation and cartoons are like photography and videography, and therefore not allowed by shari'a when they depict living beings, but that photographs can be allowed as necessary for passports and the like.

Misbahi also discussed the need to turn off mobile phones during prayer, or once a person is inside the mosque. He said that the founder of the Barelvi school, Ahmed Raza Barelvi, had declared ceiling fans in mosques illegitimate because their sound interferes with concentration during prayer. Similarly, the phones must be switched off inside mosques. The author also prohibited Muslims from stealing electricity from mosques, and described a likely future situation in which the azan (call to prayer) is given by phone, not by a person, and concluded that such a step would not be legitimate according to shari'a. He also discussed whether the Koran downloaded on mobile phones is actually the Koran but concluded that it is indeed.

He called text messaging a valid mode of Nikah - i.e. Islamic marriage. "Nikah can be contracted through messaging. The Nikah organized through messaging is legitimate and correct as per shari'a," he said, adding that the Shari'a Council of India, which is based in Bareilly, the headquarters of Barelvi Islam, has ruled the following: "Writings by Fax, Email and SMS are in the list of letters and books. Nikah will be correct if the messages are read out and listened to [by the couple] or their theme is explained and they accept in a sitting [and there are two witnesses even though the couple might be in two different countries]." Similarly, with regard to divorce, he noted that the presence of the wife is not necessary for a husband to divorce her, and that Talaq (divorce) through messaging on mobile phones is valid.

Misbahi also discussed search engines and social media networks. He devoted a chapter to on Facebook and WhatsApp, writing, "By itself, Facebook is a means of connecting, which can perform legitimate and illegitimate work for the users. If Facebook is used without any discomfiture with regard to shari'a, then it is legitimate, otherwise illegitimate," he noted.

A key argument running throughout the book is that the Internet, search engines, and social media can be used by Muslims both in compliance with shari'a, and in order to promote Islamic teachings.

* Tufail Ahmad is Director of the MEMRI South Asia Studies Project. He is the author of Jihadist Threat to India: The Case for Islamic Reformation by an Indian Muslim.
The following are some of this week's reports from the MEMRI Jihad and Terrorism Threat Monitor (JTTM) Project, which translates and analyzes content from sources monitored around the clock, among them the most important jihadi websites and blogs. (To view these reports in full, you must be a paying member of the JTTM; for membership information, send an email to [email protected] with "Membership" in the subject line.)

Note to media and government: For a full copy of these reports, send an email with the title of the report in the subject line to [email protected]. Please include your name, title, and organization in your email.

EXCLUSIVE: In Essay, ISIS Supporter Legitimizes Killing Of Women And Children

The question of the legitimacy of killing noncombatants among non-Muslims, especially women, children, and the elderly, comes up often in the discourse of Islamist circles, particularly following large-scale and high-profile attacks in major cities. In the wake of such attacks, Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State (ISIS) have been condemned by Muslim religious leaders and institutions for their indiscriminate targeting of civilians and noncombatants, which the latter say runs counter to Islamic law. Senior ISIS leader Abu Muhammad Al-'Adnani's recent call to the group's loyalists in the West to carry out attacks in their countries has again raised this issue among ISIS supporters and detractors in the Islamist camp.

EXCLUSIVE: Al-Qaeda In The Indian Subcontinent (AQIS) Emir Asim Umar: 'Mujahideen Across The World Have This Manhaj [Target], That Is, America Is Their First Priority'

Al-Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS) has released an audio speech in which its emir, Maulana Asim Umar, addresses jihadi fighters. The date of the recording is unknown but Asim Umar warns that America is a first priority target of Al-Qaeda fighters, as it is necessary to harm the morale of the enemy.

EXCLUSIVE: American ISIS Supporters Active On Facebook

Western ISIS supporters often form tightly knit cliques on Facebook, exchanging ideas, materials, and support. Usually, members of such close communities are prudent and take security precautions, trying not to reveal their exact locations. However, many do indicate their nationality by taking names such as "Amreeki" for "American" or "Britani" for "British."

EXCLUSIVE: Chechen ISIS Member Tears Up Passport, Posts Video On Instagram

Click here to view this clip on MEMRI TV

EXCLUSIVE: In New Video, German Salafi Preacher Pierre Vogel Responds To ISIS Threats And Criticizes Its Understanding Of Jihad And Attacks In The West

A video published June 1, 2016, features a speech by German Salafi preacher Pierre Vogel criticizing ISIS's understanding of Jihad, as well as their call for assassinating indiscriminate killing of civilians living in the West. The speech, which is approximately ten minutes long, is titled "ISIS's Understanding of Jihad" and was published on Vogel's Facebook page and on YouTube in response to recent ISIS publications declaring Vogel to be an apostate and stating that he was a legitimate target for assassination.

EXCLUSIVE: Jabhat Al-Nusra Senior Cleric Calls On Muslims In Syria To Wage All-Out War Against 'Alawis, Cites Clerics Who Ruled That Syria Must Be Cleansed Of Them

On June 3, 2016, the Al-Basira media company, which is associated with Jabhat Al-Nusra (JN), published a 10-minute video featuring the organization's senior cleric, Dr. Sami Al-'Uraidi. The video is part of JN's "Month of Conquests" promotional campaign, which covers the organization's da'wa activities during Ramadan.

EXCLUSIVE: Indian In Northern Syria Documents Life In Rebel-Held Territories On Facebook, Twitter, And Telegram

An Indian in northern Syria who appears to be a Jabhat Al-Nusra and Jaysh Al-Fath sympathizer shares photos and videos from Aleppo and Idlib, along with updates, on Facebook, Twitter, and Telegram.

EXCLUSIVE: Jihadi Writer To ISIS: Establish Media Institutes To Improve Propaganda Machine

On June 6, 2016, an article posted on Shumoukh Al-Islam, the leading online jihadi forum affiliated with the Islamic State (ISIS) suggested that the group establish media institutes offering classes in journalism, communication skills, production, design, and translation, as well as English, to improve the group's propaganda machine.

U.S.-Born Media Activist Interviews British Jihadi In Syria

On May 31, 2016, a U.S.-born media activist in Syria shared an installment in the series of video news reports called "Face the Truth," which is a production of On The Ground News. In this video, he interviews a British fighter, who has fought primarily in Syria with Jabhat Al-Nusra.

ISIS Mourns Death Of Top Al-Barakah Province Media Official Who Rejoined Group After Moving To Kyrgyzstan With Family

On June 7, 2016, the Islamic State (ISIS) published an article in its weekly newspaper Al-Naba' mourning the death of Khaled Ismael aka Abu Gulaibib Al-Qamishly, a top media official in the Al-Barakah province and a former member of Pro-ISIS jihadi forums who died in an airstrike. The article, which was published in issue 34 of the newspaper, also commended the sacrifices and bravery of Abu Gulaibib, who rejoined the group after leaving for Kyrgyzstan with his family.

ISIS Supporters Continue To Use Hashtag Describing Al-Qaeda As 'Jews Of Jihad'

Supporters of the Islamic State (ISIS) on Twitter have continued to use the hashtag "the Jews Of Jihad," a derogatory term used to describe Al-Qaeda, which is based on their belief that the rival group has the same negative characteristics as the Jews.

On Telegram, Pro-ISIS Hacking Groups Post 'Kill List' Featuring U.S., Australian, Canadian Citizens

On June 7, 2016, the pro-ISIS hacking groups Caliphate Cyber Army and its affiliates United Cyber Caliphate and Ghosts Caliphate posted a list of hundreds of names of citizens of the U.S., Australia, and Canada. Accompanying the list was a graphic image that read "Caliphate 'Ghosts' Caliphate Cyber Army/ All World Can't Stop Islamic State/ You are gathered against us./ 'We will kill you all (together).'"

Pro-ISIS Hacking Group Releases List And Satellite Images Of U.S. Military Bases

On June 7, 2016, the pro-ISIS hacking groups Caliphate Cyber Army and its affiliates United Cyber Caliphate and Ghosts Caliphate posted a list of U.S. air force bases along with several satellite images on their Telegram channels.

ISIS Releases Infographic Highlighting Its Military Successes Against Russian Forces

The 34th issue of Islamic State's news weekly Al-Naba, published on June 7, 2016, features an infographic detailing "the most prominent operations of the Islamic State against the Russian Crusade" i.e., alleged military successes against Russian forces in Dagestan and in Syria.

ISIS Destroys Temple Of Nabu In Mosul, Iraq; Vows To Blow Up Egypt's Pyramids

On June 6, 2016, the media office of the Islamic State (ISIS) in Ninawa, Iraq, released a video showing the destruction of the Temple of Nabu in the city of Mosul in Northern Iraq.

JTTM subscribers click here to view this clip on MEMRI TV

ISIS Claims Responsibility For Assassination Of Afghan Lawmaker Sher Wali Wardak

The Islamic State (ISIS) in Khorasan has issued a statement claiming responsibility for the assassination of Afghan lawmaker Sher Wali Wardak in Kabul on Sunday evening.

Report: UNIFIL Warns Its Personnel To Avoid Crowded Areas, Fearing Attacks

According to the Lebanese news website almustaqbal.com, the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) issued a warning to its personnel, urging caution and advising them to stay away from government agencies and crowded areas for fear of possible terrorist attacks.

140 Fighters Pledge Loyalty To ISIS In Manbij, Syria

On June 4, 2016, Al-A'maq, the official news agency of the Islamic State (ISIS), released a two-minute video in which 140 young men swear loyalty to ISIS in the city of Manbij near Aleppo in Syria.
Kunwar Damodar Singh Rathore, who was awarded Indira Priyadarshini Vriksh Mitra Award in 2000 for planting almost a crore saplings, breathed his last at the age of 91 in Pithoragarh on Wednesday. He was admitted to the district hospital of Pithoragarh on May 25 after he fell ill when he went to douse a forest fire at his village in Bhanora in Didihat tehsil.

In the last days of his life, Rathore faced severe breathing problems and had difficulty speaking, but until the end he did not part from his "friends" - the saplings - and carried many plants from his nursery to his hospital room. According to locals, three days before his death, the physically weak but determined green soldier marched on and distributed 4,000 saplings to schoolkids who paid him a visit at the hospital.

Rathore embarked on his singular mission to plant crores of trees in the 1960s. The tall man carrying a small, faded bag soon became a common sight for the villagers of Bhanora and neighbouring areas. The bag, which contained a small spade and some saplings, was inseparable from Rathore, gradually becoming a part of his identity.

In his lifetime, he managed to plant over 160 species in and around his village. Vast swathes of land in Bhanora, which now boast of a lush green cover, is his lasting legacy.

 Thinkstock Photos/Getty Images

B D Kasniyal, senior journalist and long-time friend of Rathore, said, "His death is a great loss to the environment. He worked tirelessly for development of biodiversity and its preservation. He distributed lakhs of saplings every year and planted oak seeds on barren lands, which he nurtured for years to come."

Rathore's work was not limited to his own village. He also formed the Himalayan Green Brigade, an organization which recruited volunteers to plant saplings in their respective areas, in Pithoragarh.

He also planted saplings in plains of Kashipur, Dehradun, and Haridwar. He experimented with various varieties, planting trees which not only provide fodder, but are also able to contain moisture and prevent landslides.

On his deathbed, Rathore had just one worry, according to his family. "What will happen to the saplings I have planted? Who will take care of them?" he said as the last breath left his body.

(This article originally appeared in The Times Of India)
Gerald L. Zimmerman

Gerald Lee Jerry Zimmerman Ph.D., 73, of Menomonie passed away Monday, June 6, 2016, at Mayo Clinic Health System-Red Cedar in Menomonie.

Gerald was born and raised in Compton, Ill., on the family farm, where his love of animals was originally developed. Born Aug. 14, 1942, the only child of Urban Zimmerman and Valaria (Mahaffey), Gerald enjoyed taking care of the Herefords, hogs, and other animals, and exploring the natural wildlife of the Illinois prairie. Active throughout his youth in organizations like 4-H and FFA, he graduated from Mendota High School in Mendota, Ill., in 1960. He went on to earn a bachelors in animal science, followed by a masters in meat science and food technology and a PhD in biochemistry, all from Iowa State University. A country boy at heart, Gerald maintained a small farm in the countryside of Menomonie, while spending 23 years teaching chemistry, food chemistry, and biochemistry at the University of Wisconsin-Stout. Gerald enjoyed teaching and learning, starting out teaching Sunday school at Immanuel Lutheran Church in Mendota, and assisting in retirement with editing and oversight of academic writing projects.

Geralds notoriously sharp wit and intellect stayed with him to the very end, rattling off the answers to crossword puzzles and trivia questions with a breadth and speed that awed even his well-educated family, during many hospital visits. His encyclopedic knowledge of topics like World War II, Churchill, Lincoln, birds and other wildlife, science, and math was well-known, providing stimulating conversation with friends and family, and plenty of help in school for his children and grandchildren.

Gerald married Karen Wright Aug. 28, 1966, and they moved to Menomonie in 1973, to teach at Stout. They had two children, Kathryn and Robert. Gerald was very proud of his children and their accomplishments in school and beyond. He spent a lot of time interacting with his grandchildren, whom he loved dearly and fought to enjoy for as long as he could.

Gerald is survived by his wife, Karen; his daughter, Kathryn; his son, Robert; four grandchildren, Josh Richter, Lilia Zimmerman, Eleanor Zimmerman and Sadie Zimmerman; He is also survived by numerous cousins, and other relatives and friends.

He was preceded in death by his parents, Urban and Valaria Zimmerman.

Funeral services will be held at 11 a.m. Saturday, June 11, at Christ Lutheran Church in Menomonie, with Pastor Jeanne Warner officiating. There will be visitation one hour prior to the service at the church. Burial will be in Christ Lutheran-Halvorson Cemetery in Menomonie.

Anyone wishing to memorialize Gerald may do so through a donation to the American Cancer Society or the St. Labre Indian School, which he donated to for many years.
Foreign Minister Nikos Kotzias will meet at 11:00 on Saturday, 18 June, at the Foreign Ministry, with UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, on the occasion of the latters visit to Greece.
JOURNALIST: Good morning, good morning.



N. KOTZIAS: Good morning. I say, as I said, the day is also beautiful without me, because we are in Greece, a beautiful country.



JOURNALIST: But arent we paying a little dearly for that? Isnt it one of the reasons for our countrys impoverishment?



N. KOTZIAS: I think that Greece, like all countries, has its positives and negatives. But Greece has beauties, which certain people want to use in a different way. For example, the gods gave us 1,200 beautiful islands. There are many who look at them, and in some of them they see grey zones. Certain traffickers, refugee traffickers, are trying to bring those people here. Life is always contradictory. It has its good and difficult sides. The job of politics is to make these sides as good a possible, and you, as journalists, have the job of pointing out the difficulties.



JOURNALIST: Our morning is starting out very philosophically, my dear Minister. As always, of course, but everyone who has known you for years would say that. But I, having had this conversation of ours in mind since this morning, I say, I will tell him, I will begin, I go back 35 or 40 years, and the young guide, with a sparkle in his eye, comes to the party organization to carry out the enlightenment. And Ill ask him the question: Comrade Nikos, what does Turkey want from us?



N. KOTZIAS: I think Turkey is currently a country very much on edge. It has many problems. It has a problem with its neighbours, problems with Russia, with Armenia, with Israel, difficult relations with Egypt. It has the wars in Iraq and Syria. This puts it on edge.



The second thing is, domestically we see a realignment of the power bloc, as we call it. Erdogan, a very powerful personality, remains, but at the same time the army is returning to the agenda, because it is carrying out four wars. Dont forget that it is carrying out a war against the Gulen supporters, a second against the Kurds, domestically, and two external wars, in Iraq and Syria. Consequently, there has been a de facto strengthening of the militarys role.



Third, the Erdogan system wants to transform the  formally  prime minister-centered Turkey into a political system where the President has many, many powers. To achieve this, he has to isolate the extreme right or integrate it, adopting its slogans. Included in these are nationalist slogans against Greece. At the same time, he has to exert pressure on the Kurdish issue, calling it a terrorist problem that must be dealt with correspondingly. I think that Turkey is a neighbouring country on edge. Foreign policy has no other job to do than to ensure that, despite Turkeys being on edge, there wont be tensions or that the tensions in the region wont multiply.



JOURNALIST: Are we achieving this in foreign policy? That is, through traditional diplomacy? Is this goal being achieved?



N. KOTZIAS: I would say that we are experiencing one of the greatest paradoxes: a government of the left not objecting to NATOs participating in deterring or controlling the refugee flows, and the Turkish government not wanting it. First, its not wanting the extension of NATOs actions to the third and fourth region; that is, the Dodecanese, Ikaria, Samos. Second, its not wanting helicopters to be used because it is afraid Greece will create an acquis in the airspace. Third, it essentially wants the mission to end. I think that, at the NATO summit meeting in Warsaw, Turkey will likely ask for the complete withdrawal of NATO from the region, calling the mission successful to get it to leave. This means, in other words, that the tools with which they once exerted pressure on us are now irritating our neighbours.



JOURNALIST: But why is Turkey doing this? Does this perhaps have to do with what you raised on your own at the beginning of our conversation, the geostrategic importance of Greeces islands? Grey zones. Does Greece perhaps want to play its own game?



N. KOTZIAS: We have this amazing situation: We have a neighbour who is on edge and to whom we explain  and they need to understand  that we are the best possible neighbours, despite our problems. We are not Iraq or Syria, we are not at war and we cannot allow our relations to evolve in that direction. We are making proposals to them on a number of issues; proposals to which we do not yet have responses, and at the same time we are creating major infrastructure, such as: the Agreement Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras made in Izmir on connecting Istanbul with Thessaloniki via high-speed rail, as well as the linking of Izmir, by high-speed rail, cargo and passenger, with Thessaloniki. That is, there are major projects. We have a million Turkish tourists in our country. That is the positive side. We have a Turkish leadership that, over the past twelve years, has not provoked a heated incident. We have to acknowledge this. That is, despite the problems we have, it isnt like the old days, when the seculars provoked a heated incident from time to time. On the other hand, however, we have a Turkey on edge; a Turkey that, if it doesnt contain society itself, domestically, may go onto other paths.



Let me say something about the grey zones, too. The grey zones have a very great absurdity. There are those who think that the Turks have declared as grey zones some islands adjacent to their shores. But one of the islands they have identified as a grey zone is Gavdos, which, as I explain to all of my international collocutors, is not just below Crete, but is also in the western part of Crete. That is, it is the side that looks towards Europe, not the side that looks towards Anatolia and the Middle East.



JOURNALIST: Now they are adding Farmakonisi, Oinousses.



N. KOTZIAS: They have added a number of islands. They tried to characterize Oinousses as a grey zone. In fact, some Turkish admirals wanted to say that the maritime areas around Oinousses are also Turkish, but these arguments did not stand in the international organizations. We didnt give Turkey the opportunity to take such a game further.



JOURNALIST: You know what impresses me? Although you are very tolerant when you talk about Turkey  that is, you recognize that the Turkey of Erdogan, despite being on edge, hasnt provoked a heated incident over at least the past twenty years  I have learned that you were very concerned at Turkeys latest posturing, and mainly Oinousses. That is, during Holy Week 



N. KOTZIAS: You are very well informed 



JOURNALIST:  it was your concern that made the whole government concerned.



N. KOTZIAS: That wasnt bad. First of all, I have say that a Foreign Minister doesnt sleep soundly  the little time he can sleep  because foreign policy and the Foreign Ministry itself is like a heart. It beats twenty-four hours a day. When other people go to bed, my conversation starts with our Embassy at the UN, my conversation with our Embassy in Washington, or with our Consulates in the western U.S. You know, there is as much as a ten-hour time difference, and as a result one cannot be calm geographically either, but has to be concerned and study everyones moves carefully. You are absolutely right, and you have grasped my state of mind. At the same time, in the manner in which one negotiates, the manner you discuss things with foreigners, you have to show calm and sobriety. And I would say that one of the elements that shows the weakness of the current opposition is that it reacts without sobriety, without calm and composure, to whatever happens. And I want to tell you that foreign policy needs a plan, poise, and for one to be prudent. That is, one has to think three times before opening ones mouth. As you know, that is why I rarely give interviews.



JOURNALIST: We saw that yesterday. For example, with the issue of Hagia Sophia. And I would like your political assessment: why, essentially, the Office of the Prime Minister, of Erdogan, under which this new religious control department falls, converted Hagia Sophia into a mosque, if only for the days of Ramadan? Because they essentially converted it into a mosque.



N. KOTZIAS: As you saw, yesterday we issued a new announcement. We said that Turkey should have the pleasure, have the satisfaction that, for historical reasons, major monuments of global culture are on its territory right now. It doesnt see this, though, and it handles these cultural wonders in an uncultured manner. By extension, it sometimes shows that its as if certain sectors of its public administration, as we say in yesterdays announcement, havent reached the 21st century.



I think there are some people in Turkey who want to make a show, domestically, of being good and faithful Muslims, and they convert every sacred site into a mosque. Others want to show internationally that they do whatever they want in their country.



But to me this shows insecurity and not self-confidence. When you feel secure, you honor the great cultural monuments, heritage, that history has brought to your territory, and you dont treat them in an uncultured manner.



JOURNALIST: Were you bothered by the Koran reading in Hagia Sophia?



N. KOTZIAS: I think I knew that this decision was to be implemented for thirty days. I have to say, sincerely, Mr. Verikios, that in our initial announcements we were cautious because we wanted, first of all, to see if what we were learning from other sources was really going to happen. In fact, our Consul in Istanbul was in the area at three oclock in the morning so that we could have a witness to what was happening. After that we toughened our stance.



JOURNALIST: So there was displeasure at all of this.



N. KOTZIAS: The mindset of not respecting culture causes displeasure.



JOURNALIST: Is it just that?



N. KOTZIAS: Listen, it isnt a bilateral problem. It is international. They dont have respect for an international cultural monument, which UNESCO and all of the international players respect. A monument for which Turkey had shown respect, at least since the days of Kemal Ataturk.



JOURNALIST: Is it perhaps the case that Erdogan, through this move, is demolishing or, rather, trying to demolish the whole strategy of Kemal Ataturk and to turn Turkey and convert it into a purely theocratic state, as another Ayatollah?



N. KOTZIAS: First of all, I have to say that we had certain positive points from Turkey. You know that these things arent always passed on by the news media, and, as Foreign Minister, I have a duty to be balanced. We have, for example, for the first time in a very long time, masses being said in Izmir. We had the throwing of the cross for the first time, at the beginning of the year.



Moreover, the Patriarch and other Metropolitans of the Ecumenical Patriarchate were allowed to say mass in certain abandoned churches on Turkish territory, and faithful were allowed to travel from Greece. So we had these positive steps.



We also had, for the first time, a policy that allowed the junior high school and, prospectively, the high school on Imbros to reopen. I think it is a great success on our part that the Greeks of Imbros can go back, live there again with a church and a school, when at one time they were systematically pushed out. You know, at one time they opened prisons on Imbros, and the prisoners were let out at night to terrorize 



So we have these positive developments. Next to these positive developments, we have the negative ones, Hagia Sophia  we explained the reason a few minutes ago  which shows contradictoriness of the uneasy power of Turkey. And I want to explain uneasy power. Uneasy power comes as a political analytical tool for explaining the conduct of Germany after Bismarck, one and two decades before the First World War. It doesnt serve to characterize whether it is a good or bad thing. It serves to show that it is contradictory, holding risks as well as potential for understanding.



JOURNALIST: Right. We also had corresponding exasperation from Albania; that is, you had a warm welcome. Do you connect what is happening in Turkey with what happened in Albania, with what was said, that is?



N. KOTZIAS: I havent said anything about Albania yet, to make a connection. I would say that we have an interesting development in Albania. It is a country that is a very important neighbour for us, with which we have friendly relations as a country  Im not talking about the governments; Ill come to that. Moreover, we have the pleasure and good fortune to have 650,000 Albanian fellow citizens, in a sense, in our country. With the experience we have, I would say, in fact, that these people show that they are, in their great majority, people who can be integrated into Greek society.



JOURNALIST: They have integrated.



N. KOTZIAS: And they learn Greek, there children carry the Greek flag 



JOURNALIST: They get into Greek universities.



N. KOTZIAS: I had students at the University of Piraeus who are teachers now in Albania, and I feel proud. We have a good relationship. But in this good relationship there are historical problems. And we have an Albania that had two characteristics: the one was that it drew closer to Turkey very quickly in the previous decade  Turkey tried to make Albania a part, shall we say, of the old Ottoman empire, the Ottoman alliance today  and second, a nationalism that was reborn through the dynamism of expansion of what we call the Albanian factor. So, in life, again, we again have two sides. I think we have these positive developments: that Albania isnt tied to the Turkish chariot, that the Albanians, even their religious leaders, and look into this, have been frustrated by the Turkish leaderships conduct towards them.



JOURNALIST: What youre saying is very important.



N. KOTZIAS: You know, it is important that the religious leaders  and I certainly dont mean Archbishop Anastasios, this holy and wise man, I mean of the other religions  are deeply disturbed. Dont forget that Gulen built a number of successful schools and foundations in Albania, which are attended by a large portion of Albanias elite class. Luckily, there are also some Greek schools, such as Arsakeio, in Albania. These elite were frustrated, along with the religious leaders, at the all-out nature of the battle of the majority of Turkeys elite with the Gulen supporters, with whom they had formed a connection. But I dont want to analyze Albania. We have certain new phenomena in our relations. The disconnection of the close Albanian-Turkish ties is a very interesting development that Greek foreign policy needs to bear in mind. We are also bearing in mind that neo-nationalism is appearing and that a portion of foreign policy, the people who deal with foreign policy  and I dont mean just diplomats, but mainly politicians  are watching domestic developments in Albania, the elections coming up next year. The elections are scheduled for the summer, but they may be held earlier, in January or February.



JOURNALIST: What is your understanding of the situation, now that youve been and talked with them? Will they continue to raise the Cham issue?



N. KOTZIAS: Ill tell you. What does Greek foreign policy need to do? One thing is to denounce the bad sides of relations with Albania, and these bad sides exist. The other is to sit down and say, proudly, that we have the good sides that we have achieved. I am a fan of proactive foreign policy. That is, I go and fight to improve relations and resolve problems. Because in Tirana, at both the press conference and the university where I went to speak, I said this: Do we have problems? We have problems. Foreign policy has to help to resolve the problems and not be afraid in case the problems are resolved and we lose another aspect of our job. And I ask you to note this: The Greek Foreign Minister spoke with all the channels, live, and I was able to send my messages to the Albanian people; messages I had to send in a friendly and clear manner. And not in a way that would create enemies, giving vent to the frustrations of some people here in Athens.



So I went to solve the problems. In a difficult situation, because my visit was preceded by the conference of the Cham party, at which the tone was raised on this issue, and while the Greek press, four newspapers, asked, Where are you going Kotzias?. So, as I said, it isnt foreign policy to say, dont go and solve any problems, because what will we have to say then?.



I have two things to say with regard to the Cham issue. First: The Foreign Minister of Albania said four times, publicly, during the press conference and at the University of Tirana, with all of the cameras on him, that Cham Epirus and such nonsense does not exist. That Albania is part of the system of the Helsinki Final Act, and no one can ask for or dream of a change in borders. The basic demand of this Cham party died, right in front of me. The question isnt whether or not I should have gone. The question is whether my going paid off.



The second: Mr. Rama himself  when I met with him, and who states his opinion, have no doubt  didnt raise this issue with me at all.



JOURNALIST: Thats important too.



N. KOTZIAS: I was asked about this issue by the reporters. And I responded as a prudent foreign minister should, in my opinion. That is: We have Chams who were in Greece. We have Cham Albanians who came from Albania during the German occupation and formed the Cham units, particularly in Thesprotia, and they tried in Corfu as well. And we have the large mass of Chams  the Chams, you know, are Islamized Christians, Islamized mainly between 1611 and 1630  who always lived in the region of Albania and in the state of Albania, never came to Greece and had nothing to do with the Second World War. The silliest thing I could have done would have been to fuel this Albanian nationalist propaganda that is trying to portray the issue of the Chams of Epirus, mainly of Thesprotia, as an issue that concerns all 200,000 Chams, who have never seen Greece. So I explained that the Cham problem isnt the Chams who were born, grew up and lived their whole lives, from generation to generation, for four hundred years, in Albania. Nor are the Greek Chams currently living in Thesprotia and integrated into society a problem. The problem is the Chams of Thesprotia and the rest of Epirus who collaborated with the German invader, committed terrible, heinous crimes, attempted to seize the property of Greek citizens, committed acts of murder, as you correctly said, and who, with the liberation of our country, knowing that they would be condemned, even to death, as happened to some of them, fled to Albania.



These people werent expelled. They left under the weight of their crimes. These people cannot be the object of nationalism from the rest of the Chams, who never lived in Greece or came to Greece with the German conqueror, and nor can they be the ones who will determine the relations between Greece and Albania.



So these people gathered outside the Albanian Foreign Ministry and were kept off to the left side, 200 meters from the entrance. A journalist  and I wont give his name, because he is otherwise a good journalist  who wasnt there, who was in Greece, wrote an article on a website, saying that they tried to block me from entering. And he wasnt even there. He lied and created this whole fuss.



And the Albanian students at the university asked me about this, and they asked me in Greek. As you know, the University of Tirana has a wonderful Greek Literature school, with 250 students who speak excellent Greek. Not the Greeks of the indigenous Minority, but children who grew up in Greece, with their parents, and returned to Albania due to the crisis. But they love our country, and now they want to study Greek culture.



These children asked me, Did the Chams bother you, those fanatics demonstrating there? Some, in fact, told me that they also have some sort of relationship with Turkey. I dont know about that, I cant confirm or deny it. But what I wanted to say is this: I responded to them that I have demonstrated many more times in my life, with stronger slogans than those. Its just that I continue to believe that I demonstrated for better, more correct and more just reasons than theirs.



JOURNALIST: You are a torrent. That is why we will put this whole conversation on the stations website and we will advertise it so that young listeners, friends, citizens can understand the panorama of foreign policy, how this puzzle in our neighbourhood is completed through your words.



N. KOTZIAS: I thank you and I hope the day stays as beautiful as it began.
The search by the Menomonie Fire Department for a young man missing in the Red Cedar River has been scaled back. After searching unsuccessfully until dark Tuesday night and for another eight hours on Wednesday, MFD Chief Jack Baus said the department turned the operation over to the Dunn County Sheriffs Office and the Department of Natural Resources.

On Thursday, Chief Deputy Marshall Multhauf said several officers spent some time in a boat checking the area and would probably do the same on Friday.

I dont know how long well do that, Multhauf said. It all depends on the weather  and chemistry.

Baus said local Department of Natural Resources staff indicated that they would also be making periodic checks.

Called to the scene

Around 5:33 p.m. on Tuesday, the Dunn County Emergency Communications Center received a report of a man falling out of a boat into the river. The Dunn County Sheriffs Office, Menomonie Fire Department, Colfax Rescue and Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources were dispatched to the scene.

When rescue crews arrived on the scene, they learned that the man was not in a boat but was actually walking on the edge of the river near the area known as the Russian Slough, northeast of where the river feeds into Tainter Lake. It seems language barrier issues caused some miscommunication about the circumstances surrounding the accident.

When the man, believed to be in his early 20s, slipped and fell into the Red Cedar, one of his companions attempted to rescue him, but the current was moving too quickly.

Multhauf said the man had only been in the area for about a week and was walking along the river with three other friends or family members he was visiting who work at a dairy farm a few miles away.

One of the men drove to his employer Justin Albrichts farm to get help and led him to the Russian Slough, where Albricht made the 911 call.

Search but no rescue

According to the Dunn County Sheriffs Office, the recent rains made the search difficult due to high water. Baus said that not only is the area around the Russian Slough landing smaller because of the elevated water level, it is also heavily wooded which made searching from the shoreline difficult.

Baus pointed out that when searching on a lake, the engine can be turned off so that the two or three people in the boat can do a more thorough scan of the immediate area.

In this case, it was a full-time job keeping the boat in position and out of trouble because the water was flowing so fast and its so dangerous, Baus said. It looks like its boiling in spots. Its hard to say whats underneath  shoreline, rocks, snags.

On Tuesday evening, the owner of a private helicopter flew up and down the river trying to spot the man who was wearing a white shirt and black pants. Mayo One helicopter also searched for a short time on Wednesday.

Further complicating the search was the fork in the search area as well as multiple inlets and bays. By 4 p.m. on Wednesday, Baus said he was told that at least a couple of the MFD crews had been down as far as the Red Cedars entrance into Tainter Lake.

Further downstream, the river is shallower, giving hope that perhaps the man may have been able to climb ashore. On Thursday morning, while still hoping for closure, Baus noted, Were coming up on 48 hours. ... If he would have been walking, he should have gotten somewhere by now. I hate to be the one who says theres no hope anymore, but it certainly seems slim at best at this point.

On Thursday afternoon, Multhauf said the man had not yet been identified and he was unsure whether his family has been notified: Our focus has been on the search and recovery, he concluded.
NEW AUBURN  Greg Gilbertson didnt get an answer to his simple question.

After listening to PurFrac, LLCs plans to fill in an acre of wetland to build a double-track loop to continuously handle a train with up to 150 cars, Gilbertson asked: Why should we get behind this?

He added: There has to be a benefit for us. Why should we like it?

He was told at the DNR hearing in New Auburn on Wednesday that question would be covered on another day.

About the closest anyone attempted to answer Gilbertsons question came from Bruce Durand, one the the projects developers. He said PurFrac, a frac sand company, is trying to minimize the impact of the inter-modal proposal and to create jobs.

About 30 people attended the informational session on PurFracs proposal to fill in an acre of wetland adjacent to Duncan Creek, which downstream has the areas prime places to trout fish.

The northbound train would approach from the south, going from the Union Pacific mainline to a spur that crosses County SS. The train would then go around in a circle. It would not have to unhitch or move back and forth, saving time and reducing noise.

PurFrac would then buy credits from the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, which would use the money to start a wetland on another site. The new wetland would be larger than the lost acre on PurFracs property.

We want to minimize the impact this is going to have, said Charles Buck Sweeney, a Madison attorney representing PurFrac.

The companys plan was opposed by Dr. Ron Koshoshek, a retired University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire professor. His work in drafting the town of Howards agreement with EOG Resources for a sand mine serves as a model for other towns in Wisconsin.

Koshoshek said as a boy he used to skinny dip into Duncan Creek, and later, as an adult, he did fly fishing there.

I have been told the stream has lost of lot of flow in the last 10 to 15 years, he said.

Koshoshek said the DNRs buy-a-credit system reduces the loss of a resource to a real estate transaction. He said the concept of mitigating destruction is a contrary term.

What Im concerned about now is theres no enforcement by the DNR, said Eleanor Wolf of Eau Claire. She said the state agency doesnt have the staff to enforce environmental regulations.

She said the DNR should not give out permits until it has enforcement capability and oversight.

Patricia Popple of Chippewa Falls, a critic of sand mining, asked what will happen to the property when the processing plant is no longer needed. She asked if PurFrac is bought by another company, will the public be assured the same constraints placed on PurFrac will be also be placed on the new owner.

Jim Devlin, DNR stormwater specialist, said PurFrac has minimized the impact on wetlands with the project. He said the one acre that would be filled in represents 0.01 percent of the watersheds wetlands.

We dont expect any thermal impact on this site, he said.

Written statements about PurFracs plans will be accepted until Saturday, June 18. They may be mailed to: Jim Devlin, DNR, 890 Spruce St., Baldwin, Wis. 54002.
MADISON  The Republican co-chair of the Legislatures budget committee intimated last week that its not conservative Republican to overload the states credit card to pay for road construction  which is true (at least in theory).

Its also not very conservative Republican to raise taxes, though. Nor has it been very conservative Republican to support alternative modes of transport  say, high-speed rail  and limits on fossil fuel use that might mitigate the need for borrowing or hiking taxes to pay for roads in the first place.

Looks like conservative Republicanism might be of little help to the conservative Republicans who control the levers of power in Wisconsin and are faced with finding a way to shore up funding for state roads, 71 percent of which have been deemed in poor or mediocre condition by federal transportation officials.

In a statement, budget committee co-chair Rep. John Nygren, R-Marinette, said hed never seen a conservative platform against mass transit or other forms. I think where most conservatives draw the line is whether or not it should be subsidized with taxpayer dollars.

Conservatives including me tend to support all-of-the-above options of oil, coal, natural gas, etc., he continued, but until we have a real alternative to gas-powered transportation, is it even a relevant discussion when discussing road funding?

Nygren left the door open last week to raising taxes or fees to pay for roads, as did Assembly Speaker Robin Vos. In fact, Vos chastised the Republican-appointed state transportation secretary for saying he would not ask for any major new road funding in the 2017-19 budget. Vos suggested the secretary take a look at a 2013 bipartisan report that offers a range of options for raising money for roads.

Thats a bit of a turn-around given that when the report was released, Vos and the then-Assembly majority leader issued a statement saying, We will not support raising the gas tax or instituting mileage-based registration fees as a means to fund our roads.

Vos office did not respond to messages seeking comment on whether hes changed his position, or on whether he supports some options for increasing revenues, but not others.

Wisconsin wouldnt be too far out of line in forcing drivers to pay more for the privilege of having enough non-crumbling asphalt and concrete surfaces to drive upon.

The states registration and title fees are maybe a little higher than those in the four states it shares a border with, according to data from the National Conference of State Legislatures. Using figures from the American Petroleum Institute, the Tax Foundation ranked Wisconsin as 15th highest among the states in state gas taxes. But that still means Wisconsin has lower state gas taxes than Illinois, Indiana and Michigan.

Wisconsin is also a toll-free island in a sea of toll-road states, such as Illinois, Minnesota, Indiana and Ohio, according to the NCSL.

With the exception of a meaningless five-and-a-half-month span in 2012 when Democrats controlled the Senate, Republicans have had full control of the Legislature and governors office for five years now.

And yet theyve still not been able to coalesce around anything but massive borrowing as a solution for closing a long-running shortfall in state road funding.

Contrast that to the time its taken for top party officials to coalesce around a certain New York billionaire and reality TV star formerly despised by the partys establishment and known for his conservative Republicanism about as much as for his honesty, reserve and compassion for Latinos. First Gov. Scott Walker got on board the Trump train, then Janesville native and U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan.

Republican state party spokesman Pat Garrett said in a statement last week that our state party constitution has no mechanism for an official endorsement but there is no question we are working to elect Donald Trump just as we were Mitt Romney in 2012.

I guess party unity in the name of winning elections trumps (so to speak) party unity in the name of decent roads.
Gregory Walker, 45; Lillian Roberts, 43; and 26-year-old Earnest Coleman all are charged with murder, unlawful imprisonment, kidnapping, torture and gun crime, Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy said.

Walker is accused of choking Deontae Mitchell to death with help from Roberts and Coleman. Coleman had been charged with kidnapping last weekend. All three will be arraigned this afternoon.

"This whole thing is hard to believe," Worthy said at a news conference. "This case shocked us all. There's not a whole lot that shocks seasoned prosecutors, but there are some things you just cannot explain."

A cousin told police that Deontae picked up some money dropped by a man outside of an eastside market May 31. Surveillance video shows Deontae being pursued by a man, who grabbed his arm and forced him into a car.

Deontae's body was found a week ago in a vacant lot in Detroit. A cause of death is being investigated.

It wasn't immediately clear whether the three had attorneys in this case.

Walker was arrested in Ohio, extradited to Detroit and pleaded guilty Wednesday to violating probation and other crimes stemming from a 2013 case.
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.
A director at the Veterans of Foreign Wars doesn't know if Congress will pass legislation aimed at fixing the VA appeals claims backlog before or after the November presidential election.

But given the problem has been growing for several years -- and a roughly 18-month implementation window, Gerald Manar is comfortable saying his organization "certainly supports addressing this problem and getting it done sooner rather than later."

In an interview Thursday with Military.com, the national services director for the VFW added, "but the problem is, this is a major election year."

With all 435 members of the House and 34 senators -- about a third of the Senate -- seeking re-election in the fall, there is little time to get a proposed appeals reform bill through the two congressional veterans' affairs committees and out to the two chambers for votes.

"The VA is pushing very hard to get both committees to do something this year," he said. "Whether it happens before July [when Congress goes into recess] or in the lame duck session, they understand that if it doesn't get done this year, it'll be another year before it gets done."

Manar also noted even if the bill is approved by Congress, about a year and a half will pass before the Department of Veterans Affairs can actually begin implementing it.

"I think 18 months is a realistic amount of time to gear up to take on the new claims processing initiative," he said. There will be changes required to VA information technology systems and a host of other modifications to the process, he said.

"We saw with the Choice Act that if you rush it, you don't do a good job," Manar said. He was referring to legislation intended to give veterans greater choice and more opportunities to go outside the the department for care. But the bill translated into different types of agreements for different providers, and thus problems for veterans trying to get treatment.

"The VA got burned on that once; they don't want to rush [this]." Manar said.

A key sticking point with the reform package the VA proposed to Congress is that it would not grandfather the 450,000 veterans with pending appeals.

Sen. Johnny Isakson, a Republican from Georgia and chairman of the the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee who sponsored a related bipartisan bill along with ranking member Sen. Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat from Connecticut, said Congress still needs to know "what we do with the 450,000 [veterans] that are waiting."

The bipartisan Veterans First Act already includes a pilot program for fast-tracking new appeals using a fully developed claim system. Here, veterans would submit all pertinent medical and health records at the time of their claim, certifying they have no further evidence to include. This would allow for a speedier disposition of the claim, they say.

But those who filed under the existing system cannot simply be moved into a new system.

The VFW and other veterans' service organizations, including The American Legion, have been meeting regularly with VA officials and lawmakers to come up with the reform package.

The initiative before Congress would modify the current appeals system by establishing three options for veterans dissatisfied with a claims decision.

Currently, a veteran may file an appeal that must wait with 450,000 others in the system. The advantage is the veteran may continue to add evidence to the claim along the way. The disadvantage is the time required for processing.

VA officials have testified that, on average, a claim adjudicated by the appeals board in 2015 had been in the system for three years, though at least one appeals claim has been in the system for 25 years.

The plan now being pushed by the department and drafted with the help of veterans' service organizations would add two new appeal options, or what some backers call lanes.

Lou Celli, national director of veterans affairs and rehabilitation at The American Legion, likens the proposed options to off ramps, getting the veteran off the crowded current lane and into faster ones.

One new lane would give veterans challenging a decision the option to have it looked at by a different reviewer simply based on the argument the initial decision was wrong. The second new path would allow the veteran to appeal directly to the court with only the information submitted already -- nothing added to it.

"The advantage to [these lanes] is the lines are very short and you can get a decision in a very short time," he said.

In both cases, the new paths preclude adding more evidence to the case file as it goes forward, something veterans have always valued.

Celli said the Legion is "100 percent behind the appeals modernization" being proposed. Along with other organizations, he said, they helped write it. Under the proposal being offered, veterans lose no rights and the VA is able to process claims in an expeditious manner, he said.

"We in good faith and in consultation with other VSOs and stakeholders sat down with [the Board of Veterans Affairs] and the Veterans Benefits Administration and went into closed-door meetings for three solid days about three months ago and been working together ever since," he said, "to hammer out details to make sure the final product is good for veterans."

-- Bryant Jordan can be reached at Bryant.jordan@military.com. Follow him on Twitter at@BryantJordan.
President Barack Obama has lifted the ban on U.S. airstrikes against the Taliban in support of the Afghan National Security Forces, Defense Secretary Ashton Carter said Friday.

U.S. airstrikes against the Taliban had previously been limited to "self-defense" strikes when U.S. troops came under attack, but Carter said that Army Gen. John Nicholson, commander of U.S. Forces-Afghanistan, would now have the authority to order "pro-active" close air support strikes for Afghan forces in the field.

"The president made a decision to enable the commander there to have some additional authority to act pro-actively -- that is to anticipate the situation in which the Afghan security forces would benefit from our support," Carter said in response to questions at the Defense One Tech Summit in Washington, D.C.

"This makes good sense," he said of the change to the rules of engagement. "Obviously, our mission is the same" to support the Afghans in a non-combat role, but "this will enable our commander there to do this in a more effective way."

The secretary said Obama made the change after discussions with himself and Joint Chiefs Chairman Marine Gen. Joseph Dunford. "This was pursuant to Gen. Dunford's and my discussions with him [Obama]," Carter said. "It's a good move."

The decision was one the Afghans have been pressing for since they took the lead role in the fight against the Taliban in early 2015 after most international troops were withdrawn.

"Our army is capable of fighting, the only thing we need is air support," Afghan defense ministry spokesman Dawlat Waziri told The Associated Press. "We welcome this decision from America and it will boost the morale of the Afghan army."

U.S. airstrikes have been strictly limited since the troop withdrawals of 2014, when the U.S. and NATO formally ended their combat role, but there were exceptions for "counter-terror" strikes against al-Qaida and "self-defense" strikes in support of U.S. trainers and advisers who came under attack.

Earlier this year, Obama authorized airstrikes against the Afghan affiliate of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria in southeastern Afghanistan. At the same time, the U.S. has been building up the Afghans' ability to provide their own close air support by supplying them this year with A-29 Super Tucano ground attack aircraft. Currently, there are eight A-29s in Afghanistan.

The decision to expand the airstrikes came as Obama neared a decision on whether to continue with U.S. troop withdrawals from Afghanistan this year. Currently, there are about 9,800 U.S. troops in Afghanistan, and the original plan was to draw that number down to 5,500 by the end of December.

However, Obama said he would await the recommendations of Nicholson, who took over from Army Gen. John Campbell earlier this year.

Army Brig Gen. Charles Cleveland, the main spokesman for U.S. Forces-Afghanistan, said in a briefing to the Pentagon last week that Nicholson had completed his report and it was being sent up the chain of command for action.

-- Richard Sisk can be reached at Richard.Sisk@Military.com.
In the wake of the death of a recruit and the related firing of the two top leaders of Recruit Training Regiment at the Marines' East Coast boot camp, officers are undergoing new training on rules and procedures to head off future problems.

A spokesman for Marine Corps Recruit Depot Parris Island, South Carolina, Capt. Gregory Carroll, said the March 18 death of 20-year-old recruit Raheel Siddiqui prompted a review of policies and procedures and spurred retraining of Parris Island personnel.

Col. Paul Cucinotta, the commanding officer of Recruit Training Regiment, and Sgt. Maj. Nicholas Dabreau, the units top enlisted leader, were both relieved June 6. Officials said the two leaders were removed when an investigation related to Siddiquis death revealed that policies and procedures were not being properly followed.

"Leadership aboard Parris Island has engaged the officers and enlisted assigned to Recruit Training Regiment through various means to re-emphasize the importance for understanding and following established policies and procedures, Carroll told Military.com. "These engagements have included but are not limited to group discussions, additional training and further evaluation of Marines entrusted with transforming recruits."

Recruit Training Regiment oversees all four recruit battalions at Parris Island, which trains half the men who enlist in the Marine Corps, and all the women.

The death of Siddiqui, a Muslim American from Taylor, Michigan, spurred a congressional inquiry from Michigan Congresswoman Debbie Dingell, a Democrat, over concerns that hazing was involved.

A June 6 response from Brig. Gen. David Furness, legislative assistant to the Corps' commandant, Gen. Robert Neller, had no details about the cause of Siddiquis death as it remained under investigation, but pledged to "carefully investigate" any indication of hazing.

Siddiqui reportedly fell 40 feet to his death from a barracks building. Naval Criminal Investigative Service officials told media outlets following the incident that foul play was not suspected.

Nabih Ayad, a Detroit-based lawyer representing Siddiquis family, told the Parris Island Packet that NCIS agents met with the late recruit's parents this week to discuss his mental health history. Ayad told the paper that Siddiqui fainted prior to his fall after being ordered to run back and forth repeatedly by a drill instructor. Ayad did not immediately return a call from Military.com.

The June 6 reliefs were the second set of firings to rock Parris Island in the span of three months. On March 31, the commander of 3rd Recruit Training Battalion, Lt. Col. Joshua Kissoon, was relieved in connection with a separate investigation. That investigation is also ongoing, and no further information has been released.

The current retraining initiatives come as Parris Island completes another leadership shake-up. Today, the recruit depot commander, Brig. Gen. Terry Williams, is scheduled to relinquish command to Brig. Gen. Austin Renforth in a scheduled rotation. Williams is set to go to the Pentagon as the assistant deputy commandant for Installations and Logistics. Officials with Marine Corps Manpower and Reserve Affairs said those plans have remained unchanged following the other reliefs.

Amid the shake-ups and investigations, recruit training continues at Parris Island.

"As always, Parris Island remains dedicated to professionally transforming recruits into United States Marines," Carroll said.

-- Hope Hodge Seck can be reached at hope.seck@military.com. Follow her on Twitter at@HopeSeck.
Russia grounded its entire fleet of Sukhoi-27 fighter jets Thursday after an apparent technical glitch caused one of the aircraft to crash near Moscow, killing the pilot.

Russia is believed to have more than 300 of the jets in service. One of the aircraft flew within 100 feet of a U.S. surveillance plane over the Baltic Sea in April, a senior U.S. defense official told Fox News.

Viktor Bondarev, the head of Russia's air force, ordered all Su-27s to be grounded Thursday until investigators could determine the specific cause of the crash, Reuters reported, citing Russian news agencies.

The plane involved in the crash was part of the "Russian Knights," an aerobatic demonstration team.

Russia's defense ministry was quoted as saying that the pilot didn't have time to eject because he decided to steer the aircraft away from a populated area before the crash.
DETROIT - Tesla Motors has taken some heat from the top vehicle federal safety regulator in the U.S. after a "goodwill agreement" for a repair to the suspension of one its Model S electric cars surfaced.

The owner of a Tesla Model S with more than 70,000 miles on it has been posting correspondence with the company after suspension components on the car rusted and broke.

The California company concurred that the the issue was "not normal," according to the automotive blog Daily Kanban, which first reported Tesla owners' claims of the goodwill agreements.

The report says Tesla initially refused to pay for the fix on the 70,000-plus-mile Model S, as it was out of warranty, but then agreed to pay for half of the $3,100 bill in exchange for a goodwill agreement that, in part, asked for confidentiality.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has rebuked what it sees as a nondisclosure agreement that could prevent customers from reporting safety issues to the agency.

"The agency immediately informed Tesla that any language implying that consumers should not contact the agency regarding safety concerns is unacceptable, and NHTSA expects Tesla to eliminate any such language," a NHTSA spokesman told Automotive News.

MLive left a message seeking comment with NHTSA Friday morning.

On Thursday night, Tesla responded to the growing reports of alleged suspension safety concerns on its blog, saying "there is no safety defect with the suspensions in either the Model S or Model X."

Tesla said NHTSA has not opened an investigation, nor has it even begun a "preliminary evaluation," which is the lowest form of investigatory work the agency would perform.

The electric carmaker confirmed that NHTSA contacted it in April, but said the agency called it a "routine screening," in which NHTSA informally asked Tesla to provide information on its suspensions.

Tesla said it did so, and NHTSA has told the company it has fully cooperated with its request.

"Neither before nor after this information was provided has NHTSA identified any safety issue with Tesla's suspensions," the company said.

As to the goodwill agreement signed by the customer, Tesla said the "basic point" of such an agreement is to shield it from legal action seeking further gain after it performs a service. The company noted that NHTSA is not mentioned anywhere in the agreement.



"Tesla has never and would never ask a customer to sign a document to prevent them from talking to NHTSA or any other government agency," Tesla said. "That is preposterous."

David Muller is the automotive and business reporter for MLive Media Group in Detroit. Email him at dmuller@mlive.com, follow him on Twitter or find him on Facebook.
BROOKLYN, MI - The Michigan Infield Pub Crawl is not the average pub crawl. To start, there's no alcohol for sale.

But the concept is the same. Drinking, hopping from place to place and meeting new people is the goal of the new event.

While the nearly 20 campsites hosting the event at 7 p.m. Friday and Saturday, June 10-11, can't sell alcohol, that doesn't stop campers from building a bar.

A 14-foot U-shaped wooden bar sits under a makeshift tent - constructed from fence posting and strung-up tarps. The site, known as The Camel Toe, is run by Phil Smith, who's been coming to MIS twice a year since 2004. Smith said The Camel Toe is a place to come out and have fun.

"There's apple pie, there's spiked cherries, there's music, there's a stripper pole, there's lights, sounds," Smith said. "There's dirty nasty Barbie and Ken dolls. And we've got a plethora of squawking chickens."

The Camel Toe has even made an appearance at a wedding for a couple that met at MIS and wanted the infield experience at their reception. For the pub crawl, Smith has a plan to make sure The Camel Toe leaves its mark in the infield.

"We've got little rubber stamps, so when people come visit here, we'll stamp their hand or their map, so they can say they've been to each of the quote unquote bars," Smith said. "Again, these are just everyone's camp sites."

Smith arrived in the infield on Wednesday, although there were some race fans that showed up when the infield opened Monday night. The track typically opens the infield Thursday night, but opened it early this year.

Included in the pub crawl is a roaming bar called The Eagles Nest, which is a bar hooked to the back of a bicycle.

Doug Crabill, who's been to every NASCAR race at MIS since 1997, has his own bar set up called The Infield Oasis. The Carl Edwards fan from Fremont, Ohio will be part of the pub crawl, and said it's just one of the activities that makes the infield a fun place on race weekend.

"This is absolutely one of the most fun places to be this time of year and you can't meet a better crowd of people," Crabill said.

Despite the thousands of race fans packed into the infield with campers packed in, Smith said there's a family atmosphere.

"We're not just here for the races, we're here for the camping and the fellowship," he said. "It's like a family down here. We know everybody. They come here for a beer, you go over to their campsite and they've got beer, so you don't have to carry too much around."

The pub crawl has a website and Facebook event with maps of each site for June and August.
On this week's Ag Report on

, Angel Jenio, communications director at the

, gives an update on corn planting across the state.

"Corn farmers had some early-season delays, thanks to wet weather, but more than 90 percent of our corn crop was planted by Memorial Day," she says. "In recent years, the use of new technology has increased yields, but there are always questions from year to year that depend on the weather."

When it comes to early season rain, history might be on our side. Jenio says a look at past decades has shown our record yields came in years where we had perfect weather - with temperatures in the low 80's, good moisture and timely rains, throughout the entire growing season and especially during August and early September. In many of those years, planting was delayed due to springtime weather.

"Research is also important when it comes to increasing yields and becoming more resilient to weather events," she says. "Research led by the Corn Marketing Program of Michigan is continuing to put new tools in farmers' hands, and grow more corn even when the weather is challenging."

You can hear this week's report here.

The Ag Report on

is brought to you by the

. It airs weekly on

and features voices from Michigan's growing agriculture sector.
Clean water is plentiful in Hudsonville.

Abraham Rapphun, 13, can drink from a fountain anytime he wants to during the day when he's at Hudsonville Christian Middle School. He can see the lawn sprinklers running during the summer in his Georgetown Shores neighborhood, take a shower any time he wants, or swim in the lake in front of his home.

It wasn't always like that. Abraham was born in Liberia, on the east coast of Africa. After his parents died, he and his sister, Jacey, lived at a boarding school. Each day, Abraham, Jacey and other students made a two-hour trek to a well to get water for the day's needs.

Abraham, now a seventh-grader, and Jacey, a third-grader, were adopted five years ago by Trent and Tammy Rapphun, of Hudsonville, but Abraham remembers what it was like to be without water.

Last year, when Abraham heard at church about an organization called 20 Liters, which helps organize walk for water events, he knew he wanted to help. He participated in a Grand Rapids walk for water and raised $2,400.

"Last year was unbelievable," Abraham said. "We (20 Liters) raised enough money to give 420 people clean water for 10 years," (about $11,000). This year, he wanted to do more and organized a Hudsonville walk for water.

Abraham worked with 20 Liters to organize his walk. He then wrote a story about his experiences and put it on a special Facebook page. Personal e-mail and a mailing from 20 Liters helped swell the ranks of those willing to walk. On May 21, people came to walk a route around Abraham's neighborhood, backed by pledges and donations.

Chip Kragt, with 20 Liters, said, "When we walk for water, we show solidarity with the nearly one billion people who must walk every day to collect the water they need to survive."

"I still have many memories from living in Africa," Abraham said. "I wanted to talk to people about it." He walked in front, carrying the 20-liter jerry can on his head. "I think it went pretty good."

Abraham's walk raised $5,743. The total for the 20 Liter walk was $11,971.

The funding provides filtration systems so the water from lakes or wells will be clean. Water must still be carried, Kragt said, and the walks make a lasting impression on people that access to clean water is an ongoing need in Africa and Asia. The Rapphuns said they hope to make the walk an annual event in Hudsonville.

See Abraham's video at http://20liters.org/supportabraham. For information on organizing a walk, or participating in a walk, visit www.20liters.org.
ANN ARBOR, MI -- A one-mile stretch of the Border-to-Border Trail in Ann Arbor will close starting July 5 for a three-month reconstruction project.

The portion of the trail passing through Gallup Park -- from the parking lot west of Huron Parkway to the Geddes Dam at Dixboro Road -- is expected to remain closed through September while crews replace and widen the pathway, a popular route for cyclists and pedestrians.

The City Council this week approved a cost-sharing agreement for the project, which has an estimated total budget of $862,308.

The city is receiving $447,500 in federal transportation grant funds, with another $414,808 expected to come from the city's parks millage.

A city staff memo provided to the City Council this week showed just under $700,000 in estimated construction costs as part of the larger overall budget, though a press release from the city later indicated construction costs would be under $650,000. City officials were unable to clarify the discrepancy.

City officials have determined the asphalt pathway is in poor condition and in need of repair and widening from 8 to 10 feet to meet American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials standards.

The pathway through Gallup Park is heavily used by pedestrians and cyclists and is part of the Border-to-Border Trail and the state of Michigan's Iron Belle Trail that runs through the city along the Huron River. The Gallup pathway is one of the most popular segments of the Border-to-Border Trail in Washtenaw County, as it serves as both a recreational and commuter route.

"Due to the heavy volume of usage, we apologize for the inconvenience of the trail closure, but appreciate everyone's understanding as to the necessity of the project. Expanding the trail will improve its safety for all users and add to the trail's usefulness," said Colin Smith, the city's parks manager.

Because the one-mile section of trail will be closed this summer, commuters must seek alternate routes. Signs have been placed along the trail to notify users of the upcoming closure and the need to seek alternate routes.

For those relying on the trail to commute from Ypsilanti, the suggested alternate route is to continue north on Dixboro, west on Geddes, north on Earhart and west on Glacier Way. Go to the city's online bike map to view bike routes.

A staff memo provided to the City Council indicates the project consists of the removal and replacement of the trail, including barrier-free access from the parking lot to the trail, bicycle parking, culvert improvement, restoration, permanent signage and pavement marking at the parking lot.

The City Council also voted this week to accept and appropriate $300,000 in state grant funds for a universal-access playground at Gallup Park. Funding for the project includes the $300,000 from the state, at least $350,000 from the Rotary Club of Ann Arbor and $150,000 from city's parks millage.

Construction on the universal-access playground is expected to start in spring 2017.

"Obviously this is a major park project and an improvement worth acknowledging," said Council Member Jane Lumm, an independent from the 2nd Ward, thanking the Rotary Club for helping to fund it.

Ryan Stanton covers the city beat for The Ann Arbor News. Reach him at ryanstanton@mlive.com.
Strong Hall 4686.JPG

Opened in 1957, Eastern Michigan's Strong Hall will see its first significant improvements in nearly 60 years after EMU received authorization on its $30 million in state funding, which was approved by both the Michigan House and Senate on June 8. In total, the 80,713 square foot structure houses more than 25 percent of the university's STEM lab classrooms. Photo provided/EMU

YPSILANTI, MI - As the home to many of Eastern Michigan University's STEM laboratories and classrooms, administrators are excited they'll be able to provide much-needed facelift to Strong Hall.

Opened in 1957, the facility will see its first significant improvements in nearly 60 years after EMU received authorization on its $30 million in state funding, which was approved by both the Michigan House and Senate on June 8.

Strong Hall is part of Eastern's Science Complex, and currently houses key science programs including the Mars Computer Weather Simulation Lab, Plasma Physics Lab, Laser Physics Lab, Modern Optics Lab, Environmental Sciences and the departments of astronomy and physics and geology and geography.

In total, the 80,713-square-foot structure houses more than 25 percent of the university's STEM lab classrooms -- an acronym for science, technology, engineering and mathematics disciplines. All renovations would meet LEED Silver Criteria and comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act.

"This is a very exciting moment in Eastern Michigan's long history, and we are gratified and most grateful," EMU Board of Regents Chairman Mike Morris said. "We appreciate the many discussions we've had with Michigan's leaders about the benefits of renovating Strong Hall, along with the long hours and tough decisions that went into finalizing the budget. I also would like to acknowledge our outstanding faculty who are taking the lead in making Eastern a hub for STEM education and research."

Strong Hall had been EMU's top state capital outlay project request since 2010, university spokesman Geoff Larcom said. Eastern Michigan hopes to begin renovations to the building in January 2017 and be ready for students when classes start up in September 2018.

The project will involve renovation of the entire structure, including modernizing classrooms and labs, lecture halls, student commons areas and faculty offices, along with creating flexible use spaces for research and instruction and updating of architectural, structural, mechanical and electrical systems.

The estimated cost to renovate Strong Hall is $39.5 million. At a funding mix of 75 percent from the state and 25 percent from the university, Eastern's cost share will be $9.9 million.

The renovation of Strong Hall represents the third aspect of renovations to EMU's Science Complex, Larcom said.

Eastern invested $90 million in the renovation of the adjacent Mark Jefferson building and construction of 80,000 square feet of new academic facilities, including a planetarium, connecting both to make up Eastern's Science Complex.

The Science Complex project, the largest and most costly in Eastern's history, underscores the University's broad effort to educate students in science-related disciplines. Eastern has experienced an 11 percent increase in enrollment for STEM fields of study since the completed renovation of Mark Jefferson Hall.

"The renovation of Strong Hall holds tremendous significance for many future students who will come to EMU for science-related education and career preparation," said James Smith, incoming EMU president. "The project aligns with the state of Michigan's well-articulated goal of preparing more students for STEM careers that contribute to the state's economy."

Martin Slagter covers higher education for The Ann Arbor News. Reach him at mslagter@mlive.com or on Twitter.
State Sen. Mike Green, R-Mayville, speaks with Gov. Rick Snyder on the Senate Floor in Lansing after a bridge bill he authored passed the House and Senate. Snyder is expected to sign the bill in the next two weeks.

BAY CITY, MI -- It was in March 2013 when state Sen. Mike Green introduced a bill that he said could pump some serious dollars back into Bay City's street repairs budget.

At the time, the Mayville Republican said, "I'm not sure how easy the process is going to be. I'm going to work it hard, though, because I believe this is fair to everybody."

The bill, which would ultimately die and be re-introduced two more times over the next three years, would see the state pick up the operational costs for moveable bridges across 10 Michigan towns. For Bay City, which currently uses about one-third of its state funding for local road repairs to operate two of its four bascule bridges (the other two are operated by the state), the bill means between $500,000-$600,000 reimbursed each year toward fixing local roads.

In other words, "It would be a huge win for Bay City," Green said.

Independence Bridge in Bay City.

After years of work in Lansing, the end is in sight and it's looking very good for Bay City, Green said. The bill on Thursday, June 9, was voted out of the state House and Senate and sent to Gov. Rick Snyder's desk where it's expected to be signed within 14 days.

"I'm elated," Green said this week. "It has taken every piece of political capital I've ever had, but we got this done for Bay City."

To ensure the bill passed through all of its stages, Green worked with state Rep. Charles Brunner, D-Bay City, on the other side of the political aisle.

"Mike deserves a lot of credit for this," Brunner said. "This is one of those things where he worked it very hard. I'm glad I could help and I think that's why this bill was passed almost unanimously."

It's unclear how soon the money would be available after Snyder signs the bill, but if it's ready for the 2016-2017 fiscal year, the city would have $572,635 -- the amount it has budgeted for the operations of Liberty and Independence bridges -- to put toward local street repairs.

The appropriation could occur in one of two ways. It would either automatically be funded beginning in the 2017-2018 fiscal year as it would be required by statute, or it would be added to the 2016-2017 fiscal year budget through a supplemental appropriation, said Emily Carney, Green's chief of staff.

Bill Bohlen

Bill Bohlen, the city's public works director, said he's "really happy" with the progress of the bill and is "anxiously awaiting" the governor's signature on it.

"We're mandated by the state to staff these bridges from April 1 to Dec. 31, 24 hours a day," he said. "With this bill passing, it shores up an inequity for us and these other communities."

Other municipalities benefitting from the bill include Alpena, Alanson, Manistee, Menominee, Port Huron, South Haven, Wayne County, Detroit and Dearborn. In total, the state is reimbursing about $5 million in transportation dollars as part of the bill.

Bay City's 2016-17 budget

For the 2016-2017 fiscal year, Bay City is actually budgeting less money for local roads. For the past few years, the city has been allocating about 1.5-mills worth of money -- or about $600,000 -- from its general fund for local street repairs, mostly because a large portion of its state money goes toward bridge operations and not street repairs.

This year, however, the city removed 0.5 mills, or about $200,000, to subsidize some increasing costs in the general fund budget, said City Manager Rick Finn.

"Health care was the big one," he said.

According to the proposed budget, employee health insurance expenses are going to increase by $735,000.

Finn said he remains committed to using city funds to supplement state money.

"It's something we're going to keep looking closely at so we can restore that (amount of city money) back to what it was," he said.

Beginning in October, Bay City is going to receive quarterly payments from new Act 51 dollars that was part of a roads package passed in Lansing last year. For Bay City, it means an additional $500,000, bringing its amount of state funding from $2.1 million to $2.6 million each year.

"We're flushed right now, but that should make us whole again and actually experience an uptick in revenue for roads," Bohlen said.

The city has been busy this year with several resurfacing projects, including a major downtown project and a six-block project in the Johnson Street Business District.

The Johnson Street project cost about $230,000, Bohlen said, meaning the money realized from the bridge bill would allow the city to do two more projects of similar size throughout the city each year.

More transportation legislation

Another bill out of Lansing on Thursday is also expected to have a positive outcome for Bay City, Brunner said. Senate Bill 563 would eliminate a requirement for cities of more than 25,000 people, like Bay City, to pay a percentage for state roadway projects.

Beginning in 2020, Lafayette Bridge is going to be closed for a year and a half as part of a $45 million reconstruction project. Under current state law, Bay City would be responsible for 8.75 percent of that project, Brunner said, or nearly $4 million.

That bill was also sent to the governor's desk on Thursday.

"All of this is great for the city of Bay City," Brunner said. "With this extra road money, I hope the city can now get into the residential neighborhoods and start fixing those streets because that's what I've been hearing: 'Don't forget about me when planning road projects.'"
BAY COUNTY, MI -- Things are looking up for Bay County Animal Control of late, as the agency is taking in fewer potential pets, but adopting out more.

According to the agency's statistics, the shelter received 955 dogs and 1,434 cats in 2015, and 433 dogs and 345 cats found new homes. That's compared to 1,068 dogs and 2,020 cats the agency received in 2014, of which 372 dogs and 272 cats were adopted.

"I think our work with rescue organizations, in particular Shelter Angels, is in large measure what can be credited with the decrease," said Michael Halstead, director of Bay County Animal Control at 800 Livingston St. in Bay City. Shelter Angels Inc. is a Bay County-based group that obtains sponsorships for animals housed at the shelter to help get them adopted at reduced costs.

What's more, since 2010, the percentage of cats euthanized has consistently declined, from 90 percent to 66 percent. The percentage of euthanized dogs has shown more of a fluctuation, from 55 percent in 2010, down to 12 percent in 2012, back up to 29 percent in 2013, then dipping back to 17 percent in 2015.

Across species, this is the third year in a row the percentage of euthanized animals has dropped -- from 58 percent in 2013, to 55 percent in 2014, to 46 percent in 2015.

Euthanasia is performed via sodium pentobarbital injections. Owner-requested euthanasia costs $66 with disposal and $47 without disposal.

A look at euthanasia rates at Bay County Animal Control.

For dogs, the main reason for euthanasia is aggression. Cats are more frequently euthanized due to health issues they often face and feral behavior preventing them from being adopted.

"We at one point (in 2014) had 100 cats at the same time necessitating the expansion of where we keep cats and the number of cages," Halstead said. "The problem with that ... you get one cat sick amongst 100 of them, you have to be concerned about the rapid spread of sickness."

Upper respiratory infections are a particular bane among the shelter's cat population, which can spread like wildfire in part due to the building's design, with the cats and dogs housed immediately next to one another.

"Space is a key, as far as stress," Halstead said. "With the dogs barking, the stress levels for the cats go up and their immune systems are weakened. And being an open-admissions shelter, we have no idea about the general condition of cats. They can look healthy when they're admitted, then the next day be sick."

The shelter has 26 cages for large dogs, 12 cages for small dogs, and 75 cages plus a common room for cats.

"Before we expanded our capacity, we had fewer cages and it was necessary to have multiple numbers of cats in the same cage," Halstead said.

"Basically, what we did is we expanded out by losing a visiting room, we lost a cat quarantine room, and we lost a dog quarantine room," added Animal Control Officer Lee Zielinski. "Space is key, as far as cats' stress."

There is something akin to a balancing act when it comes to space and illness, Zielinski said.

"We're never really in a spot where we're euthanizing (specifically) for space, but the flipside of that is if we get full of cats, they're going to be sick," he said. "We've put 120 cats in here and we're kind of euthanizing for space, but we're pulling the ones we can save."

Animals that arrive at the shelter without a collar or identification must be held for a minimum of four work days; those that arrive with identification must be held at least seven work days. The shelter does not have a deadline for how long an animal can be kept, however.

"Space permitted, we've kept dogs and cats that we thought were perfectly adoptable for a long time," Halstead said. "We determined they were perfectly social in their behavior and nature, just unfortunately, nobody chose to adopt them."

The influence of rescue groups

Of the 2,389 cats and dogs taken in by the shelter in 2015, 315 were returned to their owners. For owners to reclaim their pets, there is a $41 fee, plus a $13 daily fee for housing, Halstead said. Also of that larger figure, 164 were transferred to other shelters or rescue groups.

"We've done really well of late, as there are so many niche rescue groups that will pull a 15-year-old dog," Zielinski said.

"There are breed-specific rescue groups ... and we have been successful in getting dogs out to those groups," Halstead added.

The shelter typically receives most cats in the spring and summer, the breeding season for strays. Halstead said the drastically reduced amount of 1,434 cats taken in in 2015 compared to 2,020 in 2014 -- a difference of 586 felines -- is likely due to the Humane Society of Bay County's trap-neuter-return program.

As the name implies, the program involves trapping and sterilizing cats, then returning them to the community.

"We want people who are caring for these community cats to continue caring for them, as it's very hard to relocate cats," said Jeannie-Wolicki Nichols, HSBC's president. "When people tell us they're taking care of a community of cats, we help trap them, take in our transports to Warren where we have them sterilized and given rabies vaccinations, and the tip of one ear is clipped as a symbol that it's been sterilized. It's done so we can stop the birth of these community cats.

"The odds of a feral cat getting out of Animal Control is slim," she continued. "The problem with just trapping them and killing them is more cats just move in. This way, they're sterilized so those cats are staying in that area and they'll just live out their lives as an outside cat that's not reproducing 100 more kittens for us to take care of. This will definitely in time affect the number of cats coming into Animal Control."

Wolicki-Nichols added that the program saw about 500 cats sterilized in 2015.

"Think of the number of kittens those unsterilized cats would have produced," she said. "Over time, it will keep getting better and better."

In addition, the Humane Society adopted out 407 cats and 74 dogs in 2015 through its foster programs.

"A lot of those are hard-to-place dogs," Wolicki-Nichols said. "Most have health or medical issues that would have made them very unlikely to get adopted."

2010 Species Received Adopted/Sold Returned to owner Transferred Euthanized Percent euthanized Dog 1,327 319 N/A 0 734 55% Cat 2,017 177 N/A 0 1,806 90% Total 3,344 496 N/A 0 2,540 76% 2011 Dog 1,323 475 389 0 525 40% Cat 2,069 231 45 0 1,780 86% Total 3,392 706 434 0 2,305 68% 2012 Dog 1,296 440 457 138 157 12% Cat 2,091 289 89 0 1,699 81% Total 3,387 729 546 138 1,856 55% 2013 Dog 971 495 351 177 282 29% Cat 1,625 338 35 89 1,231 76% Total 2,596 833 386 266 1,513 58% 2014 Dog 1,068 372 351 171 174 16% Cat 2,020 272 81 136 1,531 76% Total 3,088 644 432 307 1,705 55% 2015 Dog 955 433 245 119 158 17% Cat 1,434 345 70 45 951 66% Total 2,389 778 315 164 1,109 46%

In November 2014, the HSBC announced plans to open a no-kill animal shelter, though that is still in development.

"We're still interested in having a future place where we can have animals for adoption," Wolicki-Nichols said. "We're kind of struggling, but we're looking at what other communities are doing and we have to have more than just a building with cages of animals. We're trying to see how to create something that's different than if you went into a normal shelter with just cages."

Wolicki-Nichols mentioned cat cafes, which have recently opened in Ann Arbor and Ferndale, as possible models to emulate. The HSBC is also working on a partnership with Soldan's Feeds & Pet Supplies, 4140 Wilder Road, to put in a cattery.

"It would be four glass banks with cat condos and perches," she said. "That would be another avenue, versus having just a shelter, to get these animals out in the community. We'd love more community input and for people to share their ideas with us and to help us."

Adoption fees at the shelter are $27 for those in Bay County and $18 for those located elsewhere. New owners must also prepay for sterilization and vaccination before the animal is released into their care, though Animal Control offers a rebate of $35 for a cat and $50 for a dog once the new owner provides proof of the prepaid procedures.

Through Shelter Angels, new pet owners also receive a certificate for a free rabies vaccination.

Formed in January 2014, Shelter Angels obtains sponsorship for cats and dogs at Animal Control to take care of their sterilization and vaccination costs, thereby leaving potential owners with only the $27 adoption fees. In 2015, the group obtained sponsorship for 38 cats and 22 dogs and fostered then adopted out 82 cats and 21 dogs.

Recently, the group partnered with PetSmart at 3431 Tittabawassee Road in Saginaw Township to help get some Bay County cats adopted.

"The manager, Becky Bauer, came to me and asked me to fill out a form to become an adoption partner ... and said, 'We really need cats here,'" said Kathleen Hacker, one of Shelter Angels' founders. "We have the potential have up to 10 cats in the store for three-week intervals. If at end three weeks they're still available, we bring them back to the shelter and give them a rest, but they can go back to PetSmart. I took the first two kitties in on Monday (June 6) evening and already (potential adopters) are putting in applications for them. This has the potential to give them more exposure and give them more adoptions."

All of the shelter cats going to PetSmart are sterilized and vaccinated, Hacker said. She added Shelter Angels recently entered into a similar agreement with Passion for Paws Pet Boutique & Grooming Salon at 7375 Midland Road in Freeland.

"The owner, Michelle Rankin, who is an animal control officer in Ionia County, is going to allow us to have kittens in her shop, up to six of them," Hacker said. Between the two agreements, there is the potential for 16 adoptable cats being out of the shelter at a given time.

Shelter Angels is also looking to acquire more people to foster animals at the shelter.

"We have you fill out an application and we do home checks," Hacker said. "If we feel that it's a safe place for the pet, then we go ahead and accept them as fosters. We provide care, food, litter and they provide the home and the love for the time they have them."

Interested fosterers can contact Shelter Angels via a direct message on their Facebook page.

Coming up, the shelter is participating in the Just One Day event on Saturday, June 11. The event is part of a national movement calling for shelters to suspend euthanasia for a 24-hour period.

"There are many, many days we're not doing euthanasia at all, but this draws attention to it," Halstead said.

Also on Saturday, June 25, the shelter is waiving all adoption fees, though adopters would still need to obtain sterilization and vaccinations. The agency is also waiving the adoption fees on Saturday, Sept. 10, as part of its second annual Paws in the Park event held at the Bay County Fairgrounds, located next to the shelter.

Currently, Animal Control is housing 12 dogs, about 65 cats, two ferrets, and two Guinea pigs. The Guinea pigs were found by a Bay City woman, eating vegetation on her property. They can be adopted with just a donation. The ferrets, Molly and Bandit, were owner-surrendered and need rabies vaccinations before they are adopted.
The early stages of a multi-color paint job on Rudy's Red Lion Diner in downtown Bay City.

BAY CITY, MI -- The corner of Saginaw Street and Center Avenue in downtown Bay City is about to become extra colorful.

Crews from Bay City-based Mark Miller Painting have been busy at Rudy's Red Lion Diner, 201 Center Ave., putting a fresh coat on the building's walls. On Thursday, June 10, a light shade of gray was painted over the brick red and navy blue facade, but that was only the primer.

On Friday morning, the three-man paint team opened up the color palette on the building. Teals, browns, oranges, purples -- in total, there are going to be nine different colors painted in even squares from top to bottom and on both sides of the building.

A manager at the restaurant declined to talk about the paint job. The Times was unable to reach the restaurant owner for comment.

Mark Miller, of the paint company, said he hopes to have the project done by end of day Sunday, June 12.

"I think it's going to look really nice," he said. "It's all about standing out."

Miller said the owner wants the building to look similar to a paint job he saw in Chicago. He offered up this photo as an example:

Andrew Dodson is a journalist for The Bay City Times and MLive. Follow him on Twitter @AndrewDodson and on Facebook.
DETROIT -- U.S. Attorney Barbara L. McQuade's office this week announced that victims of a Michigan doctor convicted of giving patients unnecessary cancer treatment may begin filing for their share of restitution funds.

Nearly $11.7 million in restitution has been set aside to be divvied between victims in more than 500 cases.

Dr. Farid Fata pleaded guilty in September 2014 to 13 counts of health care fraud, two money laundering counts and one count of conspiracy to pay or receive kickbacks.

He was sentenced to 45 years in prison after a week of court testimony from victims and family members of deceased for patients.

Fata was accused of boosting billings by putting hundreds of people through harmful and unnecessary cancer treatments in which patients were terminal, in remission or misdiagnosed.

Victim notifications were sent via U.S. mail to those the court has identified. The letter contains a claim form and provides directions for filing.

Eligible victims who did not receive the claim form or directions may call 877-202-3282 or visit the claim website.

Fata, who is currently living in a Salters, S.C. prison, would be 88 on his earliest possible release date, according to Bureau of Prisons online records.

He is appealing his sentence.

Fata agreed to forfeit $9.1 million from 15 different bank accounts, a Clarkston home worth $1.4 million, an Acura SUV, two life insurance policies and his interests in 11 different business entities.

He ran clinics in the Detroit area and Lapeer County before tips to federal investigators from an office manager led to Fata's arrest in 2013.
Waterford pit bull ban.png

Detroit Dog Rescue image

WATERFORD, MI -- The law and a viral photo could separate a Waterford man and his beloved new canine companion.

Waterford Township has an ordinance banning ownership of pit bulls, and they enforce it, Waterford Police Sgt. William Dolehanty says.

Update:

It all began when Detroit Dog Rescue, a pet rescue that specializes in saving stray pit bulls or pit bull mixes, posted an image showing Dan Tillery, a Waterford man, and his newly adopted dog, an American bulldog, according to Detroit Dog Rescue.

According to Detroit Dog Rescue, the dog -- called Sir Wiggleton by Detroit Dog Rescue and renamed Diggy by his new owner -- spent 100 days in a shelter before being adopted.

Waterford police threaten to remove an American bulldog from his new home based on a ordinance banning pit bulls.

As of Friday morning, the post showing the dog and his new master had been shared more than 6,000 times with 27,000-plus "likes."

While the Internet cheered the union, Waterford Township police did not.

"Approximately around 3:30 p.m. on Thursday, June 9, the Waterford Township Police came to the home of Dan Tillery asking to see his rescue dog Sir Wiggleton - who was pictured in a photograph with his new master as the smiling dog happy to be adopted that went viral on Facebook and nationally from Good Morning America, Yahoo, People Magazine and ABC News, as a result of phone calls alleging the dog is a Pit Bull and therefore violates city ordinance and is prohibited by Waterford Township," Detroit Dog Rescue said in a statement issued early Friday.

"Waterford Township Police Officers Jack Sutherland and Dwayne Warner were dispatched to Dan Tillery's home to investigate and determine if Sir Wiggleton was a pit bull, and based on their visual inspection they concluded he was a pit bull."

As of Friday morning, Dolehanty said he was looking into the case and had received multiple calls from media.

"Sounds like whatever this incident on the dog at least having part pit, it went viral," he said. "I'm anticipating several more phone calls."

Dolehanty wasn't immediately sure how the situation would be handled, but said the township has enforced removal of dogs before under its pit bull ordinance.

Detroit Dog Rescue was planning a press conference to discuss the issue Friday afternoon. The owner of the dog in question is expected to attend.

The Waterford ordinance says that because of "increased urbanization and population density," it's necessary to protect citizens from certain animals, including pit bulls, which the law says were bred for "fighting or baiting."

Many pit bull lovers vehemently dispute that perception of the breed, but it's the law in Waterford.

The definition of a pit bull is a vague one, but the township defines a pit bull using a set of physical characteristics provided by the American Kennel Club.

While Diggy and the American bulldog breed may have traits that fit the township's definition, Detroit Dog Rescue disagrees on the classification.

"Mr. Tillery, who earlier this week had registered and obtained a proper license from Waterford Township, explained Sir Wiggleton is an American Bulldog and not a pit bull with supporting adoption papers from Detroit Dog Rescue, City of Detroit Animal Control & Welfare and their veterinarian, who all confirm Sir Wiggleton's breed," Detroit Dog Rescue says.

Waterford police did not have a figure for how many times they've enforced removal of a dog under the pit bull ban. The ban has been in place several years, Dolehanty says.

Waterford pit bull ban:
FLINT, MI -- Halo Burger is joining the food truck movement.

Chance Richie said Halo Burger's food truck will start hitting community events in July, with plans to be at the Back to the Bricks Festival in downtown Flint.

Richie said the food truck will make its first stop at an area wedding.

"I'd just seen other food trucks at other events and it just looks like a lot of fun," he said. "I want to work the truck and get out to events and meet people."

Richie, who is CEO of the holding company Halo Country LLC, bought the 15 locations from Grand Blanc-based Dortch Enterprises.

Patrons can expect the traditional Halo Burger favorites to be available at its food truck.

"I think people are really going to like it," Richie said. "The food's going to be great."

Currently, Halo Burger has fifteen locations total; six in Flint, two in Grand Blanc and one each in Burton, Mt. Morris, Fenton, Birch Run, Brighton, Novi and East Lansing.

Halo Burger also has a concession spot at the Palace in Auburn Hills.

Halo Burger started in Flint in 1923 as Kewpee Hotel Hamburgers in Flint around 1923 and was taken over by Bill Thomas in the late 1960s.

Thomas turned the restaurant chain into Halo Burger -- as it is still known around Flint and Genesee County today.

In 2010, Thomas sold the business to Dortch Enterprises, which also operates Subway restaurants in Genesee County and the Detroit area, according to The Flint Journal's archives.

Dominic Adams is a reporter for The Flint Journal. Contact him at dadams5@mlive.com or 810-241-8803. Follow him on Twitter, Facebook or Google+.
Henry Conner

FLINT, MI - A plea agreement has been reached for a Flint man accused of killing his girlfriend and driving her body at least 100 miles with her children in the car before leaving her in a drainage ditch near the Ohio border.

Henry Anthony Conner pleaded no contest Friday, June 10, to second-degree murder and first-degree criminal sexual conduct for the 2013 murder of Tanisha Colton.

A no contest plea is not an admission of guilt, but is treated as such during sentencing.

"It's a fair resolution to several tragic events," Leyton said. "This was a bad crime."

Colton, 27, of Flint, was found dead around 5:30 p.m. March 25, in Monroe County's Ash Township after being reported missing March 13 -- the same day a coworker saw her leaving Flint Township Heritage Manor HealthCare Center with Conner.

Cyndi Klucharich, administrator at Heritage, previously said she was walking out as Colton was leaving work with her boyfriend. She said she couldn't hear the pair, but said the two were having an "animated conversation" with Colton waving her hands while talking.

It was the last time Klucharich would see Colton alive.

Colton failed to show up at work the next day. When she didn't show up for her weekend shift, employees became worried, she said.

Friends, family and even strangers began passing out flyers and going door to door in an exhaustive search to find Colton in the days after she was reported missing.

Leyton said previously that Conner met Colton at her job around the time she was expected to finish for the day. The prosecutor added that Colton told co-workers that she wasn't happy with Conner showing up at her place of work but agreed to leave with him nonetheless.

Conner, 31, and Colton left in Colton's car and returned home where authorities believe they continued arguing. Leyton said Conner broke Colton's cellphone and that the argument may have involved accusations Colton made against Conner.

Leyton said Colton reported Conner to child protective services for allegedly sexually assaulting one of their children. Court records show he was accused by one of the kids of sexual abuse in December 2012, although there was no physical evidence found.

The prosecutor said he believed Conner knew it was Colton who reported him to CPS.

Leyton said Conner had a history of beating Colton.

Colton eventually went to sleep and that's when authorities believe Conner killed her.

Leyton said autopsy reports showed that her death was a homicide and that asphyxiation and suffocation could not be ruled out. When authorities searched the home, Leyton said, they found the bed stripped and covered in bleach in attempt to conceal evidence.

The next day, Leyton said authorities believe Conner put the three children and Colton's body into Colton's vehicle. Police said that the children never saw Colton's body in the vehicle.

Leyton said investigators discovered that Conner drove to a hotel in Toledo, Ohio, where he attempted to use Colton's bank card to rent a room for he and the children.

When the hotel clerk told Conner that he and the children wouldn't be allowed in the room unless Colton signed for the room, Leyton said Conner told the clerk that Colton was eight months pregnant and asleep in the car and couldn't sign for the room.

Leyton said Colton was not pregnant at the time of her death.

After being refused a room, Conner allegedly slept in Colton's car, Leyton said.

At some point during the Toledo trip, Leyton said one of the children told police that they were forced to drink a "yucky green liquid." Investigators later discovered that Conner purchased NyQuil and sleeping pills in an attempt to put the children to sleep so he could dispose of Colton's body without their knowledge.

But, authorities said at least one of the children may have been awake when Colton's body was left in the drainage ditch.

Leyton said one of the children remembered stopping in an area that "looks like Africa" and had many flags. The prosecutor said the area in Monroe County where Colton's body was discovered was near an office building with several flags.

Conner and the children then returned to Flint.

Leyton said numerous issues could have arisen during a potential trial in the case, particularly stemming from the fact the crime was committed in multiple counties and states.

The criminal sexual conduct conviction carries a mandatory minimum of at least 25 years in prison. The murder charge carries a potential sentence of up to life in prison.

Sentencing is scheduled for June 27 in front of Genesee Circuit Judge Archie Hayman.

Conner's attorney, Major White, could not be reached for comment on the plea agreement.
GRAND RAPIDS, MI -- Air quality levels are improving at a Grand Rapids building impacted by a chemical contamination from a former dry cleaning business, but the Environmental Protection Agency says it is testing more homes to determine the swath of impact.

Tenants from two apartments and employees of two nonprofits were evacuated from a connected building that houses 401 Hall St. SE, and 1168 and 1170 Madison Ave. SE when test results on May 19 showed an air contamination of tetrachloroethylene (PERC). Those forced out have not been allowed to return. No others properties were evacuated.

Tests showed air vapor levels in the building were 4 to 8 times the acceptable level for the manufactured chemical, which is used for dry cleaning and degreasing. Studies say it might cause cancer with long-term exposure. Other health issues include headaches and dizziness.

The 28 people who were evacuated are not expected to experience significant or prolonged health problems, authorities said.

There's more work to be done, but EPA on-scene coordinator Betsy Nightingale said vapor intrusion at the evacuated building is reaching safer levels. Responders plan to complete more testing at that building as well as 60 properties in the area. Nightingale hopes the agency's efforts will wrap up by the end of June, if not sooner.

The hazardous fumes come from contaminated soil and contaminated water that sits underneath the building. The odorless and colorless vapor can seep into properties through poorly sealed basements.

The affected building is next door to 413 Hall St. SE, the site that operated as a dry cleaner from the 1950s to 1995. The former business was torn down and replaced by an apartment building, which included construction measures to prevent the gas from entering the building.

The EPA held an open house in the neighborhood Thursday with the goal of connecting with residents who live in the target zone for vapor intrusion testing. Staff need property owners to sign access agreements to enter their homes.

Small sampling ports will be installed in basements on Monday, June 13. Responders are hoping to knock out the bulk of the testing June 20, when a bus laboratory will be on-hand to analyze sub-slab samples in real time. Residents will be able to step onto the RV-like bus and see testing results from their home analyzed in 15 minutes.

Responders with the EPA and Michigan Department of Environmental Quality have installed a filtration and treatment system at the evacuated building. They plan to add a depressurization system that will remove contaminated air from below the basement and around the walls and discharge it from the top of the building. Then they'll seal the walls and the floors, Nightingale said.

"The EPA has had a lot of success using those methods at most sites," she said. "Evidence from around the country shows that these methods will be effective."

Preliminary testing at two other nearby buildings showed indoor air was safe.

Once testing concludes, Kent County Health Department officials will determine when the apartment tenants and employees for nonprofits Red Project or Seeds of Promise can return to the affected building at the corner of Hall Street and Madison Avenue.

The MDEQ said residents at the apartment building built on the contaminated site aren't impacted because a vapor barrier was installed to prevent chemicals from rising up through the floor. Nightingale said staff are addressing the contaminated site to decrease the flow of the chemical to the adjacent property.

The MDEQ was alerted to the issue during the property transaction for the redevelopment of the former dry cleaner site in 2013 and 2014. A report indicated the presence of contaminated ground water, soil and soil gas around the building. MDEQ staff requested funding to assess the contamination, leading to the May discovery of elevated chemical levels.

Officials said the groundwater contamination isn't expected to harm drinking water, as the vast majority of properties receive city water from Lake Michigan and not a well.

Nightingale hosts office hours 4-7 p.m. Tuesdays in a trailer outside the LINC Co-Work Office, 1167 Madison Ave. SE. Residents with questions may also reach her at the work station outside of those hours. For more contact information, click here.
GRAND RAPIDS, MI - Three city swimming pools re-opened Friday for an 80-day season being funded partly by a voter-approved parks tax.

Pools at Briggs, Martin Luther King, Jr. and Richmond parks will continue to open daily through Sunday, Aug. 28 - with the only scheduled closing on Monday, July 4.

A year ago, the pools had more than 50,000 admissions when businessman Bob Sullivan subsidized free swimming for kids. That was a sharp increase in swimmers compared to 2014, when the city counted about 29,000 swimmers, and slightly higher than the last time pool admission for kids was free in 2010.

Pool admission this summer for Grand Rapids residents costs $2 for adults and $1 for children ages 1-17. Non-city residents age 1 and up pay $4. All children under age 1 are free.

In 2015, Richmond Park attracted the most swimmers with more than 25,000 admissions. Briggs Park had about 16,000 admissions and Martin Luther King, Jr. Park had about 10,000 admissions.



Grand Rapids also used to operate swimming pools at Campau, Highland and Lincoln, but use of those pools ceased in 2009.

Since then, Richmond Park's pool has always been the most popular, averaging about 18,000 admissions per summer. Briggs Park's pool has averaged about 10,000 admissions per year, and Martin Luther King, Jr. Park's pool has averaged about 5,000 admissions per year.

Grand Rapids administrators promised to keep three pools open for a 12-week swimming season if voters would pass a 0.98-mill property tax for parks. Voters in 2013 gave 60-percent approval of that levy, which costs the owner of a $100,000 house $49 a year.

Matt Vande Bunte writes about government and other issues on MLive. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook.
HAMILTON, MI -- Classmates and teachers of a high school senior killed in a crash on the last day of school are remembering her "shining spirit" and caring personality.

Nickie Naber, 17, of Holland, was set to complete two final exams Friday and graduate from Pioneer Tech High School in Hamilton, where she was well-liked.

"Nickie was a talented, gentle and kind young woman who gave her utmost to each and every thing that was a part of her life," Hamilton Community Schools said in a statement. "She had an innate curiosity for new learning and was an active participant in so many areas of life."

She and Jordan Gillespie, 22, of Holland, died when their 1999 Hyundai Elantra struck a tree on Stanton Road, just west of 120th Avenue, about 12:30 a.m. Friday in Olive Township.

Police have not been able to determine who was driving the car because of the extent of damage. The crash impact was enough to sheer off a small tree about 12 inches in diameter. The car ended up in pieces.

High speed is believed to be a factor. Ottawa County Undersheriff Steve Kempker said investigators were still doing calculations Friday to determine how fast the Elantra was traveling when it crashed.

Kempker said the crash should serve as a reminder for other young people to drive responsibly.

"Here two young people who had their entire lives ahead of them are gone. To have something tragic like this happen is terrible," he said.

Police identified the female victim as Nichole Rector, but Hamilton Schools Superintendent Dave Tebo said she went by Nickie Naber.

Naber challenged herself to learn new skills and recently completed the EMT program at the Careerline Tech Center, the district said. She participated and competed in HOSA-Future Health Professionals, a national student organization.

Naber's peers and teachers said she dedicated time and energy to leaving a positive impact on others. When an art teacher she was close with at Zeeland East High School died in 2015, Naber contributed a piece of her artwork to a silent auction that funded a memorial scholarship.

"Honestly, I do not like to take credit," Naber wrote for a Hamilton schools newsletter. "I love to give and make others happy and do good. The best gift is knowing I did something good and made someone smile. That is thank you enough."

Angie Jackson covers crime and breaking news for MLive. Email her at ajackso3@mlive.com, and follow her on Twitter.
WYOMING, MI -- An 18-month-old child is hospitalized with serious injuries Friday after being ejected from a car in Wyoming.

The toddler was transported to a hospital on the highest medical priority following the two-car crash that occurred about 2 p.m. on South Division Avenue south of 54th Street. At this point, police believe the child's injuries are not life-threatening, Wyoming Police Capt. Kim Koster said.

The child's mother was also transported to the hospital. Her condition was not immediately known.

Koster said the woman was exiting the Big Lots parking lot, at 5450 S. Division Ave., and attempted to drive west across traffic to the Goodwill parking lot on the other side of South Division Avenue. A northbound driver had stopped to let her pull out.

The Saturn was hit in the rear passenger side by a landscaping truck that was traveling south in the curb lane. Koster said driver of the truck had just turned from 54th Street.

Police are investigating whether the toddler was properly restrained.

The driver of the truck was not injured.

Kentwood police officers assisted at the scene.

Angie Jackson covers crime and breaking news for MLive. Email her at ajackso3@mlive.com, and follow her on Twitter.
By Jacob Wheeler

About two years ago, Cathy Justice stood before Judge Charles Pope of Ypsilanti's 14B District Court fully expecting to be sent back to jail. She even wore an extra layer of socks and clothing to the court hearing.

On probation, Justice had relapsed and failed a drug test two weeks earlier. She was a crack cocaine addict who had prostituted herself, on and off, for a decade to pay for her addiction. Her dealer threatened that he needed to be paid back immediately, and coerced her to rent a hotel room and turn tricks for fast cash, so she could continue using. As a result, Justice said, she was a familiar presence at the Washtenaw County jail, jailed variously on drug and solicitation offenses.

"Who would have thought that when I was in third grade I would have raised my hand and told the class that I'd become a crack smoker and prostitute?" she told Bridge Magazine of her history.

But as she stood before Judge Pope in 2014, Justice would not be treated as another prostitute with a drug habit. For this was the Washtenaw County Human Trafficking Court -- the first of its kind in Michigan.

The court is an initiative of the University of Michigan Law School's Human Trafficking Clinic, with the goal of "treating victims as victims and not as criminals," said Elizabeth Campbell, a clinical assistant professor at the clinic.

"The idea is to slow things down and assess whether people engaged in commercial sex could be victims of human trafficking," Campbell said.

"The most powerful message we can send is who we choose to prosecute."

Judge Charles Pope said that an alternative program for human trafficking victims has been successful because it addresses the drug, mental health or other problems that can lead some women into the sex trade.

A surprising sentence

The court provides free legal services to people, like Justice, who come before it -- almost all of whom, Judge Pope said, have problems with substance abuse, mental health, housing, jobs and childcare.

To Justice's great surprise, Pope didn't send her back to jail. He didn't even show her a look of disappointment, she recalled. Instead, he beckoned her to the courtroom podium and asked what happened, why she had relapsed and failed a drug test.

"I gave him a generic answer that every addict gives," remembered Justice. "What I should have said was, 'I don't know what I did, I don't know who I am. Some people like their eggs cooked over-easy, but I don't even know how I like my eggs. Because I don't know who I am'."

"He told me, 'Cathy, you came to me and asked for help. I want to help you. By the guidelines of the court, you have to do X, X and X and not Y. But because you chose to come to court today, I'm going to release you. You're obviously making some progress. ... I can't promise you'll get your life back, but if you have an open mind, great things will come, and you'll meet a new person you've never known. You might actually like her'."

"I promised him that when I walked out of that courtroom I would take this program 110 percent serious," said Justice.

By all accounts, she has. She worked with Judge Pope and court social worker Toni Malone, who provides 12-step group and individual therapy sessions and tries to create a safe environment that encourages the women to open up about their life in the sex trade and what, or who, may be keeping them in it.

Giving women a new perspective

The trafficking court has worked with 18 people and in each case, Malone said, she must break down a wall to identify women who may be a victim of others. "At first, not a single one acknowledges that anyone is profiting off of them."

In order to create a therapeutic environment, Malone decorates her walls with color and artwork. "You wouldn't think you're in a courthouse," she laughed. "Courthouses tend to be sterile. I've created a warm and inviting space."

Her office walls sport inspirational and positive messages such as "take it one day at a time" and "enjoy the little things in life". She has couches. On another wall is a collage of pictures from magazines that her subjects cut out to show how trauma has affected their lives.

"When women feel physically more comfortable, they feel emotionally more comfortable," said Malone. "They can open up and do the important work with trauma."

Malone said she is proud of the impact her therapy sessions and the Washtenaw County Human Trafficking Court have had.

"The individuals actively participating in the program have had zero additional interactions with law enforcement," said Malone. "The majority of them are working. Instead of being incarcerated on our dime, they are paying taxes. Many are volunteering in the recovery world."

New life, renewed prospects

Cathy Justice said she has been clean since March 28, 2014. Last September, Judge Pope announced to the courtroom that she had graduated from the court's alternative program for women like Justice. Instead of a relatively easy 23 days in county jail, she had completed the long and difficult 18-month recovery program.

"This group have all suffered significant trauma in their lives," Pope told Bridge. "I'm careful with them, protective of them. This type of work is measured person-to-person. We deal with each individual and hope that we can help one person succeed."

She later returned to the judge and asked for help finding a job. "You are worth more than running a cash register," the judge told her. He suggested she take a training course and become a peer support specialist for the Human Trafficking Court.

Justice passed her test on her second try in last July and three months later became employed by the court as a certified drug recovery specialist who mentors other women working with the court to turn their life around. "The first thing I do with them is to share my own story. There's nothing they can't tell me that I don't already understand."



Cops in the know

Campbell, of UM, said police as well as courts need to reconsider how they view prostitutes with drug or other problems. Too often, they see a lawbreaker instead of a victim of trafficking who was coerced or tricked into the sex trade by a dealer, a pimp, or even an abusive family member.

"Michigan has gotten better about being victim centered, but has not gone far enough," said Campbell. "There are prosecutors out there who still see a reason to prosecute them for prostitution."

Campbell sees improvement in police officers recognizing that an otherwise run-of-the-mill prostitution or drug case could involve human trafficking, but not all officers receive training to identify trafficking.

"What's frustrating for me is when I am asked to come in and facilitate a training," said Campbell. "Officers will come to me afterward and say 'I didn't know what else to do except arrest them.' Until we give (officers) a different set of tools, we can't be upset with law enforcement."

Michigan now requires state police officers to take trafficking training. Many city and municipal police detectives also take training. The course teaches police to identify indicators of trafficking, ask the right questions of people in a vehicle, and work together with local, state and federal law enforcement, said State Police Sgt. Edward Price, who travels the state to teach courses.

The training, part of a partnership between the Michigan State Police and the Washington, D.C.-based International Association of Chiefs of Police, includes discussion around six video trafficking scenarios, including a traffic stop, a domestic violence call, a high school scenario, a hospital scene, and a hotel loud noise complaint.

Looking for evidence

Price talked about some of the indicators of trafficking that police should look for. "Is the hotel room in (the woman's) name or another name? If there's an ad (on BackPage.com), is there more than one woman associated with the ad? Is there a guy's clothing in the room? Does she have tattoos in the pimp's name? Does she have bruises?"

Price said most officers who take the course have an open mind on finding some element or coercion in an otherwise routine call, but that it will take time to convince all police to not assume that a prostitute is acting on her own free will and should be arrested for breaking the law.

"Like domestic violence, it took a while for the mindset to change," said Price. "With trafficking, people are slowly being educated. Once they have the training, I'd say 99.9 percent of the officers get it. Some raise their hand in class and say, 'I wish I knew this. I came across a victim a year ago.'"

Being on guard for signs of trafficking is credited for the arrest last year in Leelanau County of a Grand Rapids man, who was prosecuted for supplying two heroin addicts with drugs and forcing them into prostitution.



"This was the first trafficking incident in Leelanau County history," said Sheriff Mike Borkovich. "It's a very infrequent thing up here. Still we are making our deputies aware of it."

While training is mandatory for state police, Price conceded that many city or municipal law enforcement officers have not received it.

Jane White at the Michigan Human Trafficking Task Force estimates that 65 percent of Michigan police officers have not received trafficking training. And specialized training for prosecutors and judges has been largely unavailable.

The Washtenaw County Human Trafficking Court stands virtually alone in counseling victims and helping them get back on their feet.
GRAYLING, MI -- Sigh. It was probably inevitable.

This week, the Department of Environmental Quality announced a tiny invasive snail has gained a foothold in another of Michigan's iconic trout streams.

University sampling found New Zealand mud snails in the lower part of the Au Sable River's east branch, downstream of the fish hatchery near Grayling.

"It's another one of those unfortunate discoveries," said Sarah LeSage, the aquatic invasive species coordinator at the DEQ.

The snails are tiny, about an eighth of an inch, and could easily be mistaken for a speck of mud or sand on waders. The resilient hitchhiker can close its shell opening and survive in cool, damp environments for up to 26 days, as well as survive exposure to toxins like bleach, ammonia and alcohol.

Like zebra and quagga mussels, they cluster in high densities and reproduce quickly. The snails compete with native snails and other macro-invertebrates for food in waterways they invade. They have no nutritional value for fish.

Last August, LeSage found the mud snails in the Pere Marquette River downstream of Gleason's Landing near Baldwin. Subsequent sampling found the snails in other downstream spots in a popular stretch of river.

It's unknown whether the snails migrated to the AuSable from the Pere Marquette, or were there before last year's discovery.

"We don't really have a way to track that kind of thing," she said. "They are so small, it's pretty easy for them to go undetected."

Mark Luttenton, a biology professor at Grand Valley State University's Annis Water Resources Institute, discovered the snails in samples of macro-invertebrates collected from different branches of the AuSable River this spring.

State agencies, universities and volunteer organizations plan to increase sampling of nearby waterways this summer. Because one single snail can spawn a new population, they are essentially impossible to eradicate.

According to the U.S. Geological Survey, the snails are established in Lake Ontario, Lake Erie, Lake Michigan and most likely in Lake Superior. The snails reach densities as high as 5,600 per square meter in some spots.

Genetic testing of the snails discovered in Michigan last year reveal they are of a clone type that's been spreading through rivers in western U.S. states like Montana, Utah, Idaho, Oregon, California and as far east as Wisconsin. The first U.S. snail was first discovered in Idaho's Snake River in 1987.

The state plans to install more wader-wash stations and increase outreach to fishermen through signage and literature reminding anglers and boaters to properly scrub gear between use in different lakes, streams and rivers.

Michigan law requires boaters remove aquatic plants before launching and drain live wells, bilges and all water before leaving an access site. Although it can be onerous, boaters and anglers are strongly encouraged to clean boats and gear, including waders, with 120-degree water or a diluted bleach solution. They should dry for at least five days before reusing.

"This is a broader problem than just New Zealand mud snail," LeSage said. "Those 'clean, drain, dry' steps can help address all types of aquatic invasive species -- especially small things you can't see."

Garret Ellison covers government, environment & the Great Lakes for MLive Media Group. Email him at gellison@mlive.com or follow on Twitter & Instagram
lawmakers

Senators left for an in-district work period without addressing medical marijuana changes or an energy overhaul. Both issues are slated for the Fall, Senate Majority Leader Arlan Meekhof, R-West Olive, said.

(Emily Lawler | MLive.com)

LANSING, MI -- Lawmakers Thursday night headed back to their districts for the start of an in-district work period, leaving an energy overhaul and medical marijuana legislation untouched.

Energy legislation has been pending in Sen. Mike Nofs' Senate Energy and Technology Committee since last year, but Senate Majority Leader Arlan Meekhof said there was more work to do with stakeholders.

"Senator Nofs was very near some things with a number of interest groups today but they're not ready to sign on. So he has some more work to do," Meekhof said.

Last week a broad array of interest groups -- from those supporting energy choice to those pushing for more renewables -- held an event to say the Senate bills weren't yet ready for prime time.

Utilities, meanwhile, have been pushing for legislation to ensure reliability as they retire legacy coal plants.

"Michigan lawmakers have a responsibility to act now on Senate Bills 437 and 438 as they are a fair blueprint for energy providers to responsibly replace power lost due to closing plants. New generation cannot be built overnight," said Kelly Rossman-McKinney, spokesperson for the utility-supported Citizens for Michigan's Energy Future.

Gov. Rick Snyder had also said in December he would like to see energy reforms in the first half of 2016 -- a now-unattainable deadline, with the legislature on break.

There is another version of an energy overhaul pending in the House.

'More work' on Marijuana dispensaries

Bills to legalize and regulate medical marijuana dispensaries, bringing them out of a legal grey area, were slated for consideration in the Senate but ultimately not taken up Thursday.

If that sounds familiar, the changes were shelved late in 2015.

"We are deeply disappointed that the Michigan Senate failed to pass this landmark legislation that would allow the medical marijuana industry in Michigan to spark small business development, promote job growth and generate much-needed revenue for both the state and local communities," said Willie Rochon, Michigan Cannabis Development Association vice president and spokesperson.

One bill in the package would also allow non-smokable forms of medical marijuana.

Meekhof said there was more work to do on the package.

"I think it's something that we still need to understand for our cities and communities where they can have the ability with local control to do a lot of these things and help do their best to keep it out of the hands of kids and make sure it's done in the right way," Meekhof said.

Sen. Rick Jones, R-Grand Ledge, championed the bills in the Senate and was disappointed they didn't move

"I'm disappointed because I want law and order, I want licensing, I want people to have safe medicine," Jones said.

The issue isn't dead, Jones said, but is pushed to the Fall.

Lawmakers are slated to return in September to work on these and other issues.

Emily Lawler is a Capitol reporter on MLive's statewide Impact Team. You can reach her at elawler@mlive.com, subscribe to her on Facebook or follow her on Twitter: @emilyjanelawler.
GRASS LAKE, MI -- Michigan farmers with disabilities could get some help from inventions created by third-, fourth- and fifth-graders in Grass Lake.

Students at George Long Elementary School presented their final projects in a program that came up with solutions while teaching them STEM subjects on Thursday, June 9.

Mike Arbuckle teaches STEM - science, technology, engineering, math - subjects to the students. He partnered with AgrAbility, a company that helps enhance the quality of life for farmers with disabilities.

AgrAbility provided 11 case studies of Michigan farmers with various disabilities. The students researched the disabilities and the limitations the farmer has and then created a model to improve the farmers quality of life.

Approximately 300 students created 110 projects. Cost of producing the solutions they came up with ranged from $20 to $20,000, Arbuckle said.

The goal of the program was to educate students on disabilities, empathy and designing a tool to assist a farmer with a disability.
A Myanmar delegation is heading to Indonesia this week to negotiate the release of 16,000 tonnes of rice that have been held at the Port of Surabaya for more than two months, and to discuss a US$1.8 million fine imposed on the exporter for its failure to follow regulations.





The shipment was sent as part of a government-to-government agreement signed in 2013 allowing Myanmar to export rice to Indonesia. But weaknesses in high-level negotiations and communication failures have led to major losses, said U Nay Lin Zin, joint secretary general of the Myanmar Rice Federation.

Myanmar Agribusiness Public Corporation (MAPCO) sent the rice to Surabaya Port at the end of March, but it was not unloaded because the shipment failed to comply with new Indonesian food safety regulations.

The new Indonesian regulations were announced in mid-2015, but we heard about it in early 2016  through a trader, said U Aung Naing Oo, director at the Plant Protection Division under the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Irrigation.

Imported rice must now be tested by a laboratory approved by the Indonesian government, in the country of origin, he said. The PPD is the only lab in Myanmar registered with the Indonesian government.

More than two months later, the rice is still at the port, and MAPCO has been asked to pay a demurrage charge of around $1.8 million for keeping its cargo there beyond the allotted time. Harryansah Khairul, counsellor at the Indonesian embassy in Yangon, said the company has since been negotiating with Indonesian authorities to reduce the fine.

The shipment is worth $5.3 million and the demurrage charges are quite high now, so MAPCO has asked us to reduce the penalty, he said. The fine was due to rise to $2.3 million as delays continued, but Indonesia has offered a 30 percent discount, he said.





We will forward the matter to the Indonesian government after proper tests are completed. In the meantime the rice has still not been unloaded. It must be moved and stored somewhere else in the port, he said.

A Myanmar delegation will travel to Indonesia this week to settle the matter. It will meet with Indonesias state-run Bureau of Logistics, or Bulog, which had agreed to buy the rice, and will demand immediate payment, Mr Khairul said.

U Chit Khaing, president of MAPCO, said yesterday that he hoped a compromise could be reached.

We have been asked to pay $1.8 million, but we are going to ask for a 70pc discount or more, as we have suffered a big loss. This is a government-to-government agreement; we are just trying to carry it out as well as we can, he said. We want high-level officials from the ministries of commerce and agriculture to come with us to Indonesia and help us to negotiate.

According to Mr Khairul, the new restrictions on imports were explained to the Myanmar government last year, but the message was not passed on. I think the problem might have arisen because Myanmar authorities forgot to tell the companies. We are not blaming the government. This is just a miscommunication, he said. When I spoke with MAPCO managing director U Ye Min Aung he said he had not received any information [about the new regulations]. The communication problems may have happened because of the political transition.

Because the company was not aware of the new regulations, it arranged for the rice to be tested in a third country. This is the main reason why the shipment has been barred, Mr Khairul said.

He stressed that exporters should test rice in Myanmar. Sometimes Thailand and Vietnam accept payment to issue a certificate, even if the rice is not up to standard, he said.

Some Myanmar companies neglect the rules and regulations, even they understand them, said PPD director U Aung Naing Oo.

In the past, the PPD sometimes had to issue certificates after a shipment had been sent, if companies did not secure proper certification in advance, he said. MAPCO blamed our division for delays, but we are supporting them as much as we can. In the future, we will issue certificates according to the procedures.

For U Nay Lin Zin, the fault lies with the government. Instead of dreaming up ambitious long-term plans, it should be dealing quickly with day-to-day problems, he said. MAPCO was not the only one hurt. The entire supply chain involved in the shipment lost out.

Another 34,000 tonnes of rice are due to be shipped to Indonesia under the same government agreement, Mr Khairul said, adding that he hoped both sides would learn from the experience. We must monitor the regulations from time to time, he said.
The European Commission is planning to start negotiations with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations on an aviation agreement soon, having received a mandate from EU transport ministers earlier this week.





The EU is hoping to create new airline routes and new business opportunities for European firms through bilateral agreements with ASEAN and countries like Turkey and Qatar. The moves are part of an EU aviation strategy published in December last year.

Myanmar, meanwhile, is still in the process of adapting to a more liberalised ASEAN aviation sector, which has raised concerns about how the countrys fledgling airline industry will fare against more foreign competition.

An ASEAN-EU agreement would aim to provide more direct flights between the two blocs, and create business opportunities for airlines by reducing restrictions on access to the EU and ASEAN markets. Such an agreement would bring almost 8 billion euros (US$9 billion) in economic benefits during the first seven years, according to EU estimates.

The EU already has an open skies system, where any European carrier can operate a flight between any two EU countries, and has been assisting ASEANs efforts to create its own single aviation market. The ASEAN Air Transport Integration Project (AATIP) was launched by the EU in 2012 to help ASEAN create common regulations, safety standards and build regional institutions.

An AATIP seminar in Yangon last week was held with the aim of helping Myanmar and its airlines understand the impact of aviation liberalisation, including fifth freedom air traffic rights, and to identify barriers to competition in Myanmar.

Fifth freedom rights allow an airline to fly between two foreign countries as long as the flight originates or ends in its home country. Although the ASEAN Open Skies policy, which came into effect in 2015, allows for fifth freedom rights, they are not well defined.





Alan Tan, a professor at the National University of Singapore Law School specialising in aviation law, believes that Myanmars carriers, because of their current size, would not benefit as much as other larger carriers from ASEAN from fifth freedom rights in the region. But there would be net benefits to Myanmar from more tourism and foreign investment, he said.

Officials in Myanmars airline industry have expressed concern about competition from other ASEAN carriers, most of which are larger and more established, and often benefit from a more favourable tax regime in their home country.
With brolly burglary on the rise, victim Sean Gleeson tells his shocking story.





Dear Fellow Economic Migrants of Yangon,

I am an old-fashioned man of old-fashioned sensibilities. I am much more of a mind to spend my evenings building model frigates in antique glassware and composing sonnets about lustrous meadows than to waste my handsome years watching The Throne Game or other similarly degenerate pursuits. Most importantly, I am a man of old-fashioned manners. I do not believe that upon surrendering an umbrella at the entrance to, say, a gentlemans club, said umbrella becomes part of the commons to be used and abused at will. I shall never, never succumb to such a conceit, for the right to private property is the right that underpins all others granted to us by Providence. When this right is casually disregarded, it is a recipe for nothing short of destruction, war, pestilence, death and civilisational decline. As the famous elucidation of chaos theory goes: an umbrella callously stolen by uncouth hooligans in Yangon on a Monday, an extinction-mass comet landing in the Gulf of Aden and wiping out all life on earth on a Tuesday.

Sadly, the crooked timber of mankind has yet wrought nothing straight, and the lessons of the transformational premiership of Baroness Thatcher have been ill-heeded by the younger generations of entitled you have to pay me a salary if you want me to work for you millenarians.

I have publicly expounded at length about the moral wickedness of umbrella theft. For my troubles I have been shunned, cast out of restaurants and taunted with the most malicious of barbs including please stop shrieking and youre scaring my young children. Despite my efforts, Yangon remains the ASEAN capital of umbrella-related dacoitery. Now, in the cruellest irony since Icarus fall to earth, my umbrella is the latest to have been purloined. I have no doubt that there is an organised and insidious group of neer-do-wells, working in teams of five or six to case the downtown streets and identify premium umbrellas for sale on the umbrella black market. The police are powerless to stop them  perhaps they are in the pockets of the thieves themselves!

She is a beautiful thing, with a faux-wood hook handle and blue awnings. She disappeared in the late hours of Saturday evening, somewhere in Botahtaung. I last remembered her tight grasp at the 7th Joint Reggae Bar and Brasserie, when I saw an unkempt young man yelling the words to what I later learned was It Is My Life by composer Jon Bon Jovi (C minor) while swinging his shirt aloft in a counter-clockwise fashion. I recall identifying him as a possible physical threat and repositioning myself in a combat stance, umbrella unsheathed. Fortunately, swords were not crossed that evening, but a moments negligence later on saw her slip from my grasp. By the time I had realised, it was late the next afternoon  she never even had a chance to shield me from the rain.

Today, I draw a line in the sand. I will give 10 US dollarydoos in kyat equivalent to whoever returns her to her rightful master. Please send me three photographs so that I may confirm her identity. I will give a further 10 US dollarydoos to whoever furnishes information that leads to the arrest and apprehension of the person(s) who stole her, in line with the 10 charges I have filed at the Bohtahtaung Township Police Station under the Burma Penal Code (107  Abetment; 124(a)  Sedition; 130  Libel against foreign powers; 147  Rioting; 159  Affray; 287  Negligent conduct with respect to machinery; 294  Obscene acts; 378  Theft; 505(b) Incitement with intent to cause public mischief in contravention of public tranquillity; 508  Act caused by inducing person to believe that he will be rendered an object of Divine displeasure). For all others, your prayers and thoughts are appreciated in this time of great personal distress.

Something on your mind? Talk it out this Weekend! Write to us at [email protected]
Easier online access has opened the door to cyber bullies and internet trolls  and the law offers little protection.





The arrival of mobile internet and social media in Myanmar has created jobs, boosted foreign investment and connected millions of people. It has opened up a formerly closed nation to a world of information, and introduced millions of young people to such worldly concepts as the selfie and the internet meme. But it has also brought with it a dark underbelly of cyber bullying and harassment  problems that the country remains unprepared to tackle.

Just two years ago, the World Wide Web was out of reach for most people in Myanmar. SIM cards were given out through a lottery system in limited numbers and could cost thousands of dollars, and Myanma Posts and Telecommunications (MPT) ruled the roost as the only telecoms operator in the market.

Things changed in 2014 with the launch of two foreign telcos, Ooredoo and Telenor, which injected competition into the industry and  along with the incumbent  brought cheap connectivity to the masses.

While this development has been hailed internationally as a positive step for the country, it has also created problems for nascent users, some of whom have experienced bulling online.

The number of Myanmar netizens has grown exponentially, and it is inevitable that such growth will bring along with it opportunities for bullies, trolls and stalkers to engage in harassment and other forms of cyber bullying, said Cheah Swee Gim, Yangon director of law firm Kelvin Chia.

Though she said it would be difficult to know how pervasive threats were in Myanmar, Cheah Swee Gim said the countrys speedy technological transformation could lead it into danger.

Myanmar is leapfrogging in business, commerce, economy and technology, she said. This may have an unsettling effect on its social infrastructure, which could translate in part into unhealthy aggressive conduct over social media.





In a 2015 report, the Myanmar Centre for Responsible Business (MCRB) said cyber bullying referred to deliberate bullying that occurs over electronic technology, and could encompass threats, insults or rumours.

And while the internet is still a novelty for many, some have already made it a platform for attacking others.

When prominent Myanmar photographer Ko Kaung Htet of The Myanmar Times got married in December 2015, a picture of the happy occasion  a Buddhist traditional ceremony  posted online resulted in a barrage of malicious comments. Ko Kaung Htet says that, although both he and the bride were born to Buddhist Myanmar parents, he was targeted because he has a beard, and was called a kalar  a derogatory term used to refer to South Asians and Muslims.

There were a lot of comments with swearing under the photos, he told The Myanmar Times. There were already more than 1000 likes and 400 shares of the photo by the time I noticed.

Ko Kaung Htet says it started with a stranger on Facebook with whom he shared a mutual friend. His friend told the perpetrator to take the post down but by then it was too late.

One comment addressed Ko Kaung Htets bride: Hey woman! Is it so rare to find a husband that you choose this kalar to marry?

Ko Kaung Htet said that those targeted by online bullies shouldnt feel ashamed.

[Its] those working to find people to judge online that should be ashamed, he said.

Another young man  who wished to remain anonymous  was bullied online but says that, although he could have tracked his attacker himself using the bullys IP address, he was concerned that this would be against the law.

While the 20-year-old was away on a trip, a Facebook user with a fake account spread a screenshot of the young mans profile around the social media site, and called him a liar.

My reputation was greatly affected, he said. By the time I noticed, it had already done the damage.

He moved to clear his name online, saying he would take legal action if necessary  but said that tracking the bullys IP address would directly violate the law, and we cannot present that [evidence] in court.

The authorities need to take action against these cyber crimes, he continued, adding that, in the past, people who spread negative messages about the government were tracked and caught. Authorities should be more considerate about the matters of citizens, he said.

Section 34(d) of the Electronic Transaction Law provides for punishment for anyone sending any information to disturb or insult a person or association, as previously reported by The Myanmar Times.

Myanmar has laws relating to defamation, criminal intimidation and criminal insult which causes someone to breach the peace, but such laws are outdated, narrowly defined and were not enacted with the cyber world in mind, said Cheah Swee Gim.

Meanwhile Myanmars police may not yet have a handle on cyber bullying, as calls to several police officers in Yangon revealed some on the force were not aware of it.

An official from Sanchaung police station said there have been four cases reported in the last month under section 66(d) of the Telecommunications Law, which deals with defamation and threats over a telecoms network.

If one person insults another person or company by name, then it is regarded as cyber crime, he said. But if the person just keeps saying bad things as he wishes without mentioning any names, we cannot take action in most cases.

If an offender is anonymous, the case gets trickier. The police work with a cyber crime department to find the criminal as best they can, he said, not clarifying how this is done.

To combat cyber bullying, there would have to be effective and specific laws put in place rendering [it] a criminal offence and affording netizens a right to seek civil remedies, including allowing victims to apply for restraining orders, said Cheah Swee Gim, adding there should also be measures to help identify anonymous bullies.

But a balance is required, she said, so that freedom of expression is not restricted unreasonably.

Myanmar has opened itself up to the World Wide Web and all of its possibilities. And when the dark side of the internet reveals itself, says Cheah Swee Gim, the consequences can be devastating.

There is no accounting for the amount of emotional and psychological damage that may be suffered or incurred from being victimised on the internet, she said
Today  day 73 of the governments 100-day initiative  members of parliament are taking a break. In session since February 1, Pyithu Hluttaw will pause, said U Hla Moe, secretary of the bodys Hluttaw Rights Committee.





Though no firm date has yet been fixed for the return, the pause is expected to last for about a month. MPs will receive a summons about three weeks before the next session.

Its been a long session, so I think the pause will allow MPs to fulfil the needs of their constituencies, U Hla Moe said yesterday. Though MPs have not been given instructions for the parliamentary break, they are expected to touch base with their voters.

All the MPs are happy because they are going to reunite with the public, said U Min Thein, who represents Ngazun township, Mandalay Region.

The first-ever session of a parliament elected by democratic vote had not been ineffective, as some had claimed, said U Hla Moe. We believe parliament has performed well, he said.

He singled out a bill meant to promote local democracy, the Ward or Village-tract Administration Law, which has yet to be finally adopted by the Pyidaungsu Hluttaw.

Parliament has revoked the 1975 State Protection Act, also known as the Law to Safeguard the State against the Dangers of Those Desiring to Cause Subversive Acts, which was seemingly drafted by the military junta with the intention of imprisoning activists and politicians. The Peaceful Assembly and Peaceful Procession Law has also been scrapped, and the majority National League for Democracy says it will be replaced with a law guaranteeing full rights of citizenship.

Pyinmana township business owner U Nay Soe, however, said he had hoped to see more legislation promoting commerce and boosting the economy. Ive watched parliamentary meetings with interest. I saw this new parliament gave more priority to issues like human rights and citizenship rights. But I havent seen much action to improve the economy, such as the 5 percent commercial tax for mobile phones, he said.





Translation by Zar Zar Soe
Marking five years since the resumption of fighting in Kachin State, about 130 civil society groups urged the president and the state counsellor to immediately grant humanitarian agencies universal and unrestricted access to all affected areas.





During a ceremony yesterday in Yangon, the groups pushed for the provision of safe, sustained and unhindered access to all areas where populations have been affected. The CSOs said the authorisation is necessary so that much-needed help and support can finally be provided.

We call upon the government and military to end the war in Kachin State, said Maran Jaw Gun from the Kachin Peace Network. The military should distribute flowers instead of fighting, and distribute books instead of bullets.

Through a photo exhibition and speeches by three IDPs living in camps in Kachin State, the groups emphasised the needs of the displaced and their wishes for the countrys future.

A woman from Za Raung camp near the Myanmar-China border said that she did not want to have to attend a ceremony marking the sixth anniversary of the war next year, but hopes instead to be celebrating the return of all IDPs.

We want to return to our homes. Our country has a new government. We believe that IDPs lives will change. A government that loves the people wont neglect the people, she said.

In Pictures: Kachin IDP's see in fourth year in camps

A Joint Strategy Team comprised of nine organisations coordinating humanitarian response in Kachin and Shan states also urged an immediate cessation of hostilities as concerns about the humanitarian situation were high. They also released a separate statement demanding humanitarian access.





Gum Sha Awng from Metta Foundation, which is part of the team, said that there are a lot of challenges, such as funding shortages, social issues, protection, and fears of premature return and resettlement.

Some camps are located near the border with China. Some IDPs work in China to improve their lives but there are a lot of risks. I mean human trafficking. That is one of the major challenges, he said.

The strategy team called on the international community to increase funding to meet urgent humanitarian needs and demanded that the humanitarian response should continue in IDP camps until safe return and resettlement take place.

Aid should be sufficiently funded in order to guarantee the fulfillment of the minimum humanitarian standards, the JST said in its statement.

The war in Kachin State started again on June 9, 2011, when a 17-year ceasefire with the government broke down. Tens of thousands of people have since been displaced by the fighting, with over 100,000 still unable to return home in Kachin and Shan States, according to the Office of the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA).

The Kachin Independence Army was not among the eight groups to sign the nationwide ceasefire agreement last October.
Myanmar seems willing to give peace a chance, according to a new study.





The 2016 Global Peace Index ranked Myanmar as the 115th most peaceful state or territory out of the 163 analysed.

Although it sits between the troubled African countries of Republic of the Congo and Guinea-Bissau, the new ranking represents a rise from 130th in 2015, 136th in 2014 and 140th in 2013.

The Institute for Economics and Peace, an international think tank, published the rankings based on 23 indicators, including terrorism, military expenditure and conflicts being fought.

Following the successful completion of peaceful elections, Myanmar made significant progress in reducing political instability, this years edition of the report stated.

Furthermore, the signing of a multiparty ceasefire in October 2015 means that the risk of conflict is now more contained in smaller parts of the countrys border areas.

This was contrasted with neighbouring Cambodia, where political instability has hampered peace.

Regionally, it cited heightened tensions in the South China Sea as continuing to impact external relations between the three main nations concerned: China, Vietnam and the Philippines.





Iceland was found to be the worlds most peaceful country, followed by Denmark and Austria.

Syria was ranked least peaceful, followed by South Sudan, Iraq, Afghanistan and Somalia.

Panama, Thailand and Sri Lanka showed the greatest improvements in peace, while Yemen, Ukraine and Turkey suffered the greatest deteriorations.

The report also made special mention of Brazil, where a 15 percent increase in political instability coupled with deteriorations in both incarceration and police rates presents a worrying trend just months before the start of the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro.

Overall, the world became less peaceful in the past 12 months, re-inforcing an underlying decade-long deterioration in world peacefulness.

Terrorism is at an all-time high, battle deaths from conflict are at a 25-year high, and the number of refugees and displaced people are at a level not seen in 60 years.

However, the majority of terrorist activity is highly concentrated in five countries: Syria, Iraq, Nigeria, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The founder and executive chair of the Institute for Economics and Peace, Steve Killelea, said increased worldwide peace would result in a major economic boom.

Addressing the global disparity in peace and achieving an overall 10pc decrease in the economic impact of violence would produce a peace dividend of US$1.36 trillion, Mr Killelea said. This is approximately equivalent to the size of world food exports.
The Committee for the Protection of Nationality and Religion, better known as Ma Ba Tha, has stepped into the controversy surrounding the attempts by a senior Buddhist cleric, Myaing Gyi Ngu Sayadaw, to build a pagoda in the grounds of a Baptist church. Members of the nationalist group have spoken out in defence of the stupa-building spree.





The dispute flared up last year as the then-government appeared ready to get involved in the dispute, in Mi Zine village, Hpa-an township, Kayin State. In the event, neither the government nor state Buddhist organisations have been able to resolve the matter.

Ma Ba Tha secretary Mya Zaydi Sayadaw, or U Vimala Buddhi, raised the matter at the organisations third anniversary conference on June 4 and 5.

He sought to justify attempts to build the pagoda on the grounds that Buddhism appeared to be expanding in the state, even in formerly Christian villages. He cited the emergence of the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army, as a separate force from the ethnic Karen National Union. Now, he claimed, it was time to reclaim what had been a Buddhist heritage in the state from the Christian influence of the KNU.

The stupa that the sayadaw wants to build would stand above an ancient pagoda, he said.

Last year, the Myanmar Baptist Convention, which is objecting to the planned construction, acquired an unlikely ally in the form of prominent Ma Ba Tha member U Wirathu, a monk known for his outspokenness on hard-line Buddhist matters. He appeared to urge Myaing Gyi Ngu Sayadaw not to proceed with the construction.

Ma Ba Tha has been hit with a series of high-level resignations, including the departure this week of U Parmaukkha, also known as Magwe Sayadaw, who criticised the organisation for supporting the former Union Solidarity and Development Party in last years elections.

Attempts by the State Sangha Maha Nayaka Committee (Ma Ha Na) and the Kayin Sangha Nayaka committee to resolve the issue had failed, a committee member who requested anonymity said yesterday.





There remains a possibility of placing the matter before the current Minister for Religion and Culture Thura U Aung Ko.
Another civil society group has joined the mounting campaign against dams planned along the Thanlwin River, also known as the Salween, ahead of an upcoming energy meeting between Thailand and Myanmar.





A statement by the Network of People in Salween Basin was released after the permanent secretary of the Ministry of Energy and Electric Power revealed that the bilateral meeting would be taking place on June 10.

The local network called on the state counsellor, who is set to visit Thailand from June 23 to 25, to consider the importance of the Thanlwin River as the home of ethnic minority peoples and as an invaluable source of biodiversity and natural resources.

The network also demanded the suspension of any dams until communities have been consulted.

Its criticism focuses mainly on the 7110 megawatt Mong Ton dam, the largest of six proposed dams that would be built in Shan, Kayin and Kayah states by companies from China, Thailand and Myanmar. Most of its power will go to neighbouring China and Thailand, with only 10 percent reserved for domestic use.

More than 300,000 people live in the area that would be affected by the dam, though many have fled conflict or forced relocation and now live in Thailand, waiting to return.

Construction of the dam in the area would permanently inundate the lands of this displaced population, leaving many landless and stateless, read the statement. The Mong Ton Dam would be located only 70 kilometres from the border district Chiang Dao in Chiang Mai province.

Continuing with the projects at a time of peace-building would be an opportunistic and exploitative act, according to the network.





Lieutenant General Yawd Serk, chair of the Restoration Council of Shan State/Shan State Army (RCSS/SSA), agreed with the groups statement.

Without the peoples consent, none of the projects should be continued. Natural resources arent any governments or organisations property. They belong to the people, he said.

Local residents have spray-painted graffiti along the banks of the river reading The Salween is not for sale. A group of 122 local civil society organisations launched a Save the Salween campaign in July 2015.
Heavy rain inundated Kawlin township in the heart of Sagaing Region yesterday, leaving at least two dead and thousands of households stranded.





Aid workers anticipated that 95 percent of the township was under up to 8 feet (2.4 metres) of water at the peak of yesterdays flooding.

There are 15 village tracts suffering from the flooding, U Mya Aung, a member of the city development committee, told The Myanmar Times. The water came in at high speed but is also dropping fast, so on the eastern side of the city there is now just 3 or 4 feet of water left.

In the course of the early monsoon downpour yesterday, trees were uprooted, bridges collapsed and even the hospital was under several feet of water. The scene was all too common for the city, which is located between two streams, the Daung Yuu and the Shwe Lan, and was slammed with intense flooding last year.

Residents said yesterdays onslaught began in the early morning after a night of heavy rain. Normally the water takes about four hours to arrive at our city, but this time it was fast. It took just two hours, U Mya Aung said.

Villages in Pinlebu and Wuntho townships were also affected.

Firefighters found two unidentified bodies in the water yesterday between the border of Wuntho and Kawlin townships.





Two men, aged 18 and 19, died. We took them to the hospital to determine a cause of death, said U Kyaw Moe Thu, head of the Wuntho township Myanmar Fire Services. He added that although the city floods annually, it was caught off guard by yesterdays storm.

The water suddenly increased around 4am on June 9. The water reached the centre of the township and some merchants lost their rice as the flood came suddenly, he said.

By mid-afternoon, the water level had receded to about 1 foot in much of the township, though between 4500 and 5000 homes were still flooded, according to the Myanmar Fire Services in Kawlin township.

People will not need to leave their homes. Our staff and other associated organisations are trying to conduct rescue missions and help those in the flooded area. Transportation is difficult, said an official from the fire services department.

Ko Aung Myo Tun, a secretary for the Kawlin Development Parahita Network, said food supplies have already been delivered to victims. What we need is drinking water, he said.

In previous floods, tablets have been donated and distributed to purify the flood water, but he said better methods are needed. We cant properly clean the water with only the tablets. After the flooding, we always have to repair the wells that have been damaged or polluted, he said.

Pinlebu local and retired teacher Daw Win said that her city did not need to worry as much as Kawlin about flooding. Even if the downpour goes on the whole day, our city doesnt really flood, she said. But Kawlin is between streams. Though our city is near the Muu River, it is far enough away.

More heavy rain is forecast through this evening in upper Sagaing, Magwe, Bago, Yangon and Ayeyarwady regions, as well as in Chin, Kachin and Mon states. U Kyaw Lwin Oo, director of the Department of Meteorology and Hydrology, said the Pinlebu weather station recorded 3.42 inches (8.7 centimetres) of rainfall yesterday.

U Kyaw Kyaw from the Myanmar Red Cross Society said that the damage to Kawlin township would not be too severe if the additional rain does not bring fresh flooding.

If the rain stops, the water will recede the next day. But if heavy rain continues, the flood will happen again, he said, adding that supplies are being distributed by local charity groups.

U Kyaw Lwin Oo said the monsoon will be kicking in with a strong start throughout the country until June 13.

The monsoon is very strong. Rough seas and the weather condition will need to be monitored in the coastal areas. Fishermen, marine transportation and airlines should take caution of the weather, he said.
A group tasked with preparing for the 21st-century Panglong Conference met in Yangon yesterday to collect ideas for reforming the political dialogue framework.





U Hla Maung Shwe, a peace aide to the government, said the meetings focus was to brainstorm improvements for the existing framework.

There were some proposals, suggestions and official records which we will endorse to be a part of the peace process. Since the signing of the nationwide ceasefire agreement last October 15, we could not deal with those things, U Hla Maung Shwe said.

He added that a more formal review meeting for the framework will be held at the end of June, or, if non-signatory groups are not ready by then, in early July.

Amendments are to be made before the 21st-century Panglong Conference is held, he said.

The government peace negotiators have previously said that they intend to hold the peace conference at the end of July. The government is scheduled to meet with the National Democratic Alliance Army, aka the Mongla, and the United Wa State Army in the coming weeks. U Hla Maung Shwe said the meetings are still being arranged.
The Ministry of Health has confirmed that six children have died from diphtheria in Yangon and Ayeyarwady regions this year.





According to the Public Health Regional Report for diphtheria, a contagious bacterial disease, cases have been discovered in Yangon, Ayeyarwady and Magwe regions.

Five children died in Yangon and one child succumbed to the disease in Ayeyarwady Region, U Than Tun Aung, deputy director of the public health department, told The Myanmar Times. Ten cases, out of which five were deadly, were discovered in the Shwe Pyi Thar nunnery in Yangon.

Diphtheria predominantly affects children under the age of 15 and most cases are caused by the Corynebacterium diphtheria bacterium. The disease is usually spread person-to-person through sneezing or coughing. Symptoms start two to five days after exposure and often include a sore throat and fever.

Without medical treatment, patients can die from the infection within two days, according to U Than Tun Aung.

Diphtheria occurs annually in 20 and 60 patients every year in Myanmar. Last year saw a spike with 84 people diagnosed with the disease. Ten children did not survive that outbreak, U Than Tun Aung added.

Most of these children are ethnic minorities who come from areas where vaccines are not available, like conflict areas or places where transportation is difficult, he said.

Continuous prevention programs in the form of vaccinations are organised by the government, both in and outside of Yangon.





Yangon should be a primary area because there is a lot of migration, U Than Tun Aung said.

In Shan, Rakhine and Chin states, there is a lower uptake of booster vaccines, though public health data shows 90 percent of children have been covered in vaccine programs.
Across the world, populists are attracting votes with their promises to protect ordinary people from the harsh realities of globalisation. The democratic establishment, they assert, cannot be trusted to fulfill this purpose, as it is too busy protecting the wealthy  a habit that globalisation has only intensified.





For decades, globalisation promised to bring benefits to all. On an international scale, it facilitated the rise of the Asian tigers and the BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa), produced rapid growth across Africa, and facilitated the boom in developed countries through 2007. It also created new opportunities and augmented growth within countries. But since the 2008 crash, many rich countries have been locked into austerity; the Asian economies have been slowing; the BRICS progress has been stalling; and many African countries have fallen back into debt.

All of this has contributed to rising inequality, which is now fuelling discontent. Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman calculate that in the United States, the wealth gap is already wider than at any time since the Great Depression, with the richest 1 percent of households now holding almost half the countrys wealth.

In the United Kingdom, the Office for National Statistics reports that in the period from 2012 to 2014, the wealthiest 10pc of households owned 45pc of total aggregate household wealth. Since July 2010, the top deciles wealth has increased three times faster than that of the bottom 50pc of the population.

In Nigeria, astonishing economic growth, averaging 7pc per year since 2000, may well have reduced poverty in the southwest of the country; but in the northeast (where the extremist group Boko Haram is most active), shocking levels of wealth inequality and poverty have emerged. Similar trends are apparent from China to Egypt to Greece.

Alongside inequality, declining public trust fuels the revolt against globalisation and democracy. Across the developed and developing worlds, many suspect that the rich are getting richer because they are not held to the same rules as everyone else.

Its not hard to see why. As the global economy slows, breaches of trust by those at the top become more apparent. In the United Kingdom, Amazon, Starbucks and Google attracted public outrage in 2013 for using loopholes to pay almost no tax, prompting the UK government to lead a G8 tax announcement aimed at reducing tax evasion and avoidance. In 2015, an audit of the state-owned Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation revealed that about US$20 billion in revenue was never remitted to the authorities under the previous administration.

And the problem appears to be systemic. This year, the Panama Papers exposed how the global rich create secretive offshore companies, permitting them to avoid financial scrutiny and taxation. And the worlds largest banks have faced unprecedented fines in recent years for brazen violations of the law.





But, despite the negative publicity generated by such cases, the public has seen virtually no one held to account. Almost a decade after the global financial crisis of 2008, only one bank executive has gone to prison. Many bankers instead followed a path similar to Fred Goodwin, the head of Britains Royal Bank of Scotland, who racked up 24.1 billion ($34.2 billion) in losses, then resigned with a huge pension. Ordinary people  like the father of three who was imprisoned in the UK in September 2015 for accumulating 500,000 in gambling debts  do not enjoy such impunity.

All of this helps explain why anti-establishment movements are gaining momentum around the world. These movements share a sense of disenfranchisement  a sense that the establishment is failing to give ordinary citizens a fair shake. They point to election results bought by special interests, and to arcane legal and regulatory frameworks that seem rigged to benefit the rich, such as banking regulations that only large institutions can navigate and investment treaties negotiated in secret.

Governments have permitted globalisation  and peripatetic wealth-holders  to outpace them. Globalisation requires regulation and management. It requires responsible business leaders. And it requires deep and effective global cooperation. When governments failed to cooperate in the 1930s, globalisation came to a crashing halt.

It took a series of careful, highly managed efforts after World War II to open up the world economy and permit globalisation to take off again. Still, while many countries liberalised trade, capital controls ensured that hot money could not race in and out of their economies. Meanwhile, governments invested the returns on growth in high-quality education, healthcare and welfare systems that benefited the many. As the business of government grew, so did the resources put into it.

By the 1970s, wealthy countries leaders in both government and business had become complacent. They took on faith the promise of self-equilibrating, self-restraining markets that would deliver continued growth. By the time this new orthodoxy spread to the leveraged financial sector, the world was on a crash course. Unfortunately, many governments had already lost the capacity to manage the forces they had unleashed, and business leaders had lost their sense of responsibility for the welfare of the societies within which they were flourishing.

In 2016, we are re-learning that, politically, globalisation needs to be managed not just to permit the winners to win, but also to ensure that they do not cheat or neglect their responsibilities to their societies. There is no place for corrupt politicians pandering to corrupt business leaders.

Restoring confidence will be difficult. Business leaders will need to secure a licence to operate from society at large, and contribute visibly to sustaining the conditions that support their prosperity. They can start by paying their taxes.

Governments will need to distance themselves from the companies that fail to do their part. Moreover, they must overhaul their own operations, to prove their impartiality. Robust regulation will require significant investment in government capacity and the legal services that support it.

Finally, global cooperation will be crucial. Globalisation cannot be undone. But with a strong, shared commitment, it can be managed.

 Project Syndicate

Ngaire Woods is dean of the Blavatnik School of Government and director of the Global Economic Governance Program at the University of Oxford.
Who profits from the oil, gas and mining industries? And how do citizens benefit from resource extraction? Myanmar has made significant progress toward addressing these questions since joining the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI), a global effort to make information from the natural resource sector publicly available. The initiative is anchored in the belief that more complete information can promote accountable management of countries natural resources.





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Myanmars recently released first EITI report, covering the 2013-14 fiscal year, includes previously undisclosed data on resource production, revenue flows, licences and company ownership.

The information has shed light on Myanmars historically opaque extractive sector, and helped to build a case for further transparency in areas where knowledge remains lacking. But even the most intrepid reader will balk at the prospect of wading through a 144-page technical report and its annexes. With such a flood of data, most Myanmar citizens cannot utilise these findings or understand their stake in the disclosure process.

In brief, heres what the average person needs to know:

 Myanmars first EITI report covers just over K3 trillion (approximately US$3.1 billion) in extractive industry revenues. Per person, this means that the government collected approximately K58,500 from oil, gas and mining companies in 2013-14.Thats equivalent to roughly three weeks worth of salary for a Myanmar citizen working at minimum wage.

 The money collected from natural resources can benefit the public by funding needed services like health and education. But less than half of the money received from oil, gas and mining companies made it into the Union budget. Since 2012, the state-owned economic enterprises that collect many natural resource revenues have been allowed to keep some revenues in separate accounts with limited oversight. How the enterprises manage these funds is not disclosed to Myanmar citizens, or to their elected representatives. As a result, the government only received K28,500 per citizen (K30,000 less than the anticipated amount) in 2013-14.

 Myanmars EITI report also shows that industries contributions to the national budget have been highly unequal. Of the total K58,500 per person in extractive revenues collected by Myanmars government, roughly K50,000 (or 85 percent) came from oil and natural gas. Gems and precious stones contributed approximately K7500 per person while other minerals only generated K1000 per person in revenues.





The production value of gemstones and minerals is not as insignificant as these numbers suggest. The low value is partly the result of the EITI reports limited scope, which only covers 53pc of gemstone companies selling at the annual emporium. It also reflects widespread illegal activity in the mining sector, which prevents the government from collecting taxes.

There is evidence to suggest that mining revenues, especially from gemstones, could be even greater than those from oil and gas if taxes were effectively levied. China reported importing $11.8 billion worth of precious stones from Myanmar in 2014. This trade alone should have generated more than K67,500 per person in additional revenues if it were subjected to Myanmars 30pc commercial tax on gemstone exports. Even without taking into account other important forms of taxation such as the corporate income tax, that sum is greater than reported oil, gas and mining revenues combined.

 For the first time, Myanmars EITI report allows stakeholders to know which companies hold many oil, gas and mining licences. Data available via the EITI website includes the licenced companys name, its legal owners, the type of licence, the commodity being extracted, the licenced area, and the date of award and expiration.

On the other hand, the terms of the licences and contracts have not been disclosed  meaning that the arrangements and obligations under which oil, gas and mining companies operate remain secret. Moreover, while legal owners are listed in the EITI report, it is often the case that the persons who ultimately profit from natural resource companies remain hidden.

One example is Myanmar Imperial Jade. The company is listed as the holder of 428 out of 1258 (or approximately 34pc) gemstone licences covered by the EITI report. Myanmar Imperial Jade is legally owned by United Myanmar Economic Holdings Limited (UMEHL), a military enterprise. However, the identities of Myanmar Imperial Jades beneficial owners  the individuals who ultimately benefit from the company and its gemstone activities  have not been made public. In other cases, the person listed as the legal owner of a company may serve as an intermediary (proxy) for a spouse, friend or relative who ultimately exercises control and benefits from the entity.

Although areas for improvement remain, Myanmars first EITI report allows stakeholders unprecedented insight into the natural resource sector. EITI data can support advocacy for reformed and responsible governance of oil, gas and mining  such as improved accountability for state-owned economic enterprise revenues, greater oversight of the gemstone sector, or stronger rules regarding disclosure of contracts and beneficial owners. While working to address remaining knowledge gaps in its next EITI report, Myanmars new government should also focus on putting this powerful information into the hands of stakeholders and citizens.

Paul Shortell is a visiting fellow with the Natural Resource Governance Institute (NRGI) in Yangon.
I want to start with a tale of dastardly doings in a lift. It occurred on one of my very first days travelling in Southeast Asia, while leaving a hostel in central Kuala Lumpur. I was proudly dressed in a floor-length skirt and loose-fitting, full-sleeved blouse.





I was en route to the wilds of West Sumatra in Indonesia and determined to be dressed in an appropriate fashion for the cultural sensitivities of the Muslim villagers I was off to meet.

My new garb made me feel like a different person  as if Id just changed my hair colour, or donned a mask for a ball, or made some other physical alteration that allowed me to explore a different character.

However, I soon reverted to type when the only other occupant in the lift  a young man who had just informed me he thought I was very nice  reached forward and grabbed my left breast, the swathes of loose-fitting cotton beneath which it was draped having failed entirely to render its location secret.

He soon discovered I wasnt really very nice at all. As the lift doors opened, we exited with me still grasping the arm to which his offending hand was attached and berating him on the evils of treating a visitor to his country in such a way, while proffering terrible curses of what would befall him if he ever did that to another woman.

The point of this story is that I received a letter in response to last weeks column which recounted a sorry tale of sexual harassment on the Bangkok BTS. It was a low-level incident, but that was the point of writing about it: to raise awareness of the slow-drip, lasting impact harassment can have, and that no one should have to accept it politely as a fact of life.

However, the correspondent wrote to tell me not that he was offended by the act of an older man harassing two very young women, but that the girls subjected to this treatment had been asking for trouble because they were barefoot  something, he said (while pointing out he was not Asian himself), was culturally insensitive.





He may have had a point about cultural insensitivity, but the implication that sexual harassment can ever be deserved or justified is extremely worrying.

As we corresponded it became clear the writer did not consider himself sexist and was adamant he did not condone sexual harassment.

However, he continued to insist that women could avoid such unwanted attention. He also indicated he believed there was an issue of modesty.

As my earlier tale illustrates, modesty is no guard against sexual predators.

But there are a great many things wrong with the argument that women can avoid harassment by modifying their behaviour.

The issue of victim blaming is of huge importance. Countless women across the world are too frightened to seek justice  even sometimes health services  for sexual violence because they worry they will be shamed and accused of bringing the assault upon themselves.

The same rule that applies to those situations applies to all situations of sexual abuse including verbal harassment. It is not the victims fault.

In particular, sexuality or gender should not be used as a weapon to punish or constrain women. If the man on the BTS genuinely had an issue with the barefoot girls cultural insensitivity he could have raised that with them in many effective ways that didnt involve demeaning them.

The wonderful on-point Caitlin Moran offers a guide to working out when some sexism is happening. She simply asks: Would it happen to a man?

I can pretty much guarantee that a man would not have picked on two young guys half his age for their alternative dress sense in a way that involved degradation and harassment unless he was drunk and looking for a fight  or perhaps if the young men also happened to be members of a group which, for religious, ethnic, sexual or other social reasons, made them less powerful in his eyes.

Because ultimately, as I pointed out last week, sexual harassment is an act of bullying.

Which is why we need to ensure that young women have the support and encouragement they need to know they have the right and the skills to stand up against such abuses.

My correspondent made other questionable claims I could also address here, but I will tackle just one more. He suggested that the incident I described was much ado about nothing and said the girls involved would forget about it and no damage would be done.

I wonder how he knows that. I wonder how he would feel if every time he went out he had to face the possibility that someone might say something offensive or intrude on his privacy or right to respect  not because of what he was wearing, not because he was culturally insensitive, but just because he happens to be a man.

And I wonder what he thinks about the fact that in describing an incident as much ado about nothing he is actively contributing to a culture that says women just have to live with that possibility of sexual harassment as a fact of life.

Does he really still believe he is not condoning attitudes that allow harassment to flourish?
[June 10, 2016] Palmera Communications Group, Eutelsat Americas and Newcom Partner to Provide Emergency Humanitarian Satcoms in Ecuador

Palmera Communications Group (PCG), a US provider of rapid-reaction communications solutions to disaster, war zone and crisis areas, announced the successful deployment of emergency communications using capacity on Eutelsat (News - Alert) Communications' (NYSE Euronext Paris: ETL) EUTELSAT 115 West B satellite to facilitate the relief effort in the earthquake zone in Ecuador. NewCom International, a SpeedCast (News - Alert) Group company that specializes in satellite communications for Latin America, facilitated PCG's emergency communications systems through its teleport in Lima, Peru. This Smart News Release features multimedia. View the full release here: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160610005797/en/ Palmera Communications VSAT in Pedernales, Ecuador. (Photo: Business Wire) Shortly after the 7.8-magnitude earthquake struck Ecuador's central coast on 16 April, PCG quickly sent a team and VSAT earth station to Manta, Ecuador, in coordination with the Ecuadoran Air Force. The PCG team and its donated communications equipment flew from California to Manta, Ecuador, on a Citation CJ4 business jet provided courtesy of Estrella Aviation in Phoenix, Arizona. From Manta, PCG traveled overland with the Ecuadoran Air Force to Pedernales, where PCG installed and activated a 1.2-meter VSAT system using an iDirect (News - Alert) platform, on the EUTELSAT 115 West B satellite. The VSAT is located at the Air Operations Control Center, from which the Ecuadoran Air Force coordinates all earthquake relief operations in the area. Eutelsat Americas' supply of capacity for dedicated Internet bandwidth is facilitating the Ecuadoran Air Force's relief coordination and communications for at least three mnths.



"It was our honor and privilege to provide this necessary communications equipment and service to the Ecuadoran Air Force as they work tirelessly to provide urgent relief to those affected most by this devastating earthquake," said Mike Labriola, founder of PCG. "My personal connection to Ecuador began in my teens, when I spent a summer in Cuenca. I will never forget the genuine kindness and generosity of the Ecuadoran people." "By enabling communications networks to be immediately restored, satellites are literally a vital technology in the event of natural disasters. We didn't think twice about making satellite capacity available to Palmera for relief operations in the aftermath of the devastating earthquake that hit Ecuador," said Patricio Northland, CEO of Eutelsat Americas.

"Our entire team was very pleased to be able to help Ecuador during these hard times," notes NewCom CEO Jaime Dickinson. "This project was close to our hearts because I lived in Ecuador during my teenage years and have many friends there who were affected. Knowing that we were able to facilitate PCG's rapid-response emergency communications solution with our Peru teleport and technology was very important to us." About Palmera Communications Group Palmera Communications Group (PCG) specializes in the rapid deployment of satellite and wireless communications solutions to government and enterprise customers in remote, crisis and disaster areas, whether natural or man-made, anywhere in the world. PCG was founded and is managed by the same experienced team behind TigrisNet (www.tigrisnet.net), Iraq's premiere wireless and satellite communications provider since 2003. PCG and TigrisNet were modeled after a highly successful communications project conceived and developed by the same team during and after the war in Kosovo. That project grew to become Kosovo's premier communications company. For more about PCG please visit www.palmeracomms.com About NewCom International NewCom International, a SpeedCast Group Company, is a global satellite and terrestrial communications provider and engineering firm headquartered in Miami, Florida, with world-class teleports in Miami and Lima, Peru, and offices in Peru, Colombia, Mexico and Africa. We specialize in the design, implementation, operation and management of critical integrated voice, video, data, content and security solutions for government agencies, financial institutions, oil and gas, mining companies, the maritime industry, ISPs, broadcasters and other business sectors. NewCom's vast services portfolio includes turnkey education, telemedicine, public safety, and disaster recovery solutions for rural government projects, high capacity/low cost satellite solutions for the mining, oil and gas sectors, cellular backhaul solutions, content distribution solutions, SCADA, and ATM primary and contingency solutions. For more information, please visit: www.newcominternational.com. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160610005797/en/

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10.06.2016 LISTEN

Some may consider me a critic of the NDC government. There is a kernel of truth to that. I also criticize the NPP from time to time. My basic problem is that the flood in Accra that has beset the capital city this rainy season (June-August) is not new. The city was flooded last year (2015) and unfortunately some of the citizens drown and many died through electrocution because a gas station caught fire. Precious lives were destroyed and thousands of hawkers were displaced. It came to light that a loan had been provided by an American company to construct gutters and redirect the water in the event of severe rainfall. When the casualties of the dead became the concern of the nation, President Mahama came and gave all kinds of promises.

However, as the issue died down, nothing was done to prevent the same problem from happening. Well as fate would have it the flood has returned. The sad thing I read last year was one of the NDC members justified their inability to do something about the flood by saying that even the city of Houston in Texas also flooded. I was disappointed with that statement because flood is a natural disaster that happens. However, the point is that what do you learn from it when it happens? Yes, some people died in Houston, Texas but it was not the fault of the city council managers, the Mayor, or the governor. The state has done something about it. However, in the case of Accra which is the capital city of Ghana, where the president lives, they do nothing to provide safety networks in the event of flood. Therefore, the same event keeps happening repeatedly without anything being done to prevent disaster.

What does the NDC government and the mayor of Accra do to protect the people of Accra? What do they do with the unabated loans they take from IMF, China, and other nations?

These are some of the reasons I think that Ghana needs another president and political party that will take the nation in a new and better direction. Currently, nothing in Ghana is working because of ineffective and incompetent leadership. Therefore, let's pray for divine intervention for Ghana. I wish and pray for safety for all the residents of the city of Accra.
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The Ghana Water Company Limited (GWCL) has warned residents of Weija of massive flooding following the opening of floodgates of the Weija Dam.

The company argued this has been necessitated by the onset of the rains which have kept the level of the dam rising.

Communications Manager of GWCL, Stanley Matey said the only way to safeguard the dam from possible collapse is for it to be drained of excess water.

So we have started minimal spillage and weve just opened one gate at a very low level somewhere around three inches, he said.

He, however, disclosed that the level of the water in the dam is rising steadily necessitating an increase in the number of spill gates.

This, the company believes will affect residents near the dam if they are not advised to take appropriate steps to secure their safety.

So we want to let them know that we are increasing spillage, he said adding They will have to take heed and evacuate the area before any eventuality.

Some of the communities that are likely to be affected when the flood gates are opened are Tetegu, Oblogo, Pambros Salt, Lower Mc Carthy Hill, Weija, Bojo Beach, Ada Kopey and other surrounding communities.

Structures near the dam:

Meanwhile, the company has over the years been working with the local Authorities to have unauthorized structures near the dam removed but there has not been much success.

Mr Matey admitted, It hasnt been successful at all.

This he said is attributable to the non-cooperation of the Municipal Assembly, companies sited in the area and residents.

We keep reminding the Municipal Assembly that people keep putting up structures along the banks of the river which is dangerous but as to whether they are taking action or not I cant really tell but the situation hasnt changed, he lamented.

We have informed NADMO, we have informed the Municipal Chief Executive and the Municipal Assembly itself, and all the industries around including the inhabitants that live around that area hoping something will change in the coming days, he added.
Over 300 key New Media players -Nigerian brand custodians, agency representatives, social media influencers, celebrities, and subject matter experts participated in the 2nd edition of the New Media Conference organized by Tosin Ajibade  Olorisupergal which held on May 27th, 2016 at Four Points by Sheraton, Lekki.

The conference themed Business Unusual: Nurturing a more Vibrant New Media industry in Nigeria included well moderated sessions, brand exhibitions and key takeaways. In-depth conversations were facilitated around new media practice in Nigeria while highlighting the numerous opportunities for growth for new media practitioners  bloggers, digital strategists, agencies, government institutions, non-governmental organizations.

"This year's conference is particularly important," said conference organizer, Ms. Tosin Ajibade we converged to articulate interests and inputs from stakeholders in the Nigerian online/digital media space and seek to turn the results of that conversation to real-world uses."

The key note speaker for the conference, Lola Masha; Country Manager for OLX Niger ia pointed out that a key element of organizational growth is good use of social media platforms New media has given brands a fundamental quality boost with added details and a better reach. She reiterated.

Speaking on regulating social media, Femi Falodun Team Lead at ID Africa said government needs to have a proper understanding of the dynamics of social media in order for it to be properly regulated.

Seyi Sowunmi and Toke Bright were the two best participants of NMC Showcase, each of them got a scholarship worth three hundred thousand naira from Orange Academy.

Olushola Aromokun of Digify Bytes took a session on Content Marketing.

The conference was hosted by Oscar Oyinsan and Vimbai Munithiri.

The conference featured other industry experts such as: Adaora Mbelu-Dania, Ono Bello, Aibee Abidoye, Remi Ogunkoya, Subomi Plumptre, Jumoke Okikiolu, Chinedu Abili-Mordi, Femi Falodun, Okechukwu Ofili, Joy Isi Bewaji, Seun Onigbinde, Mohini Ufeli, Bankole Femi, Chinedu Azodoh, Adenike Akinsemolu, Segun Adaju, Kayikunmi Stefan, Bankole Temitayo and Olubunmi Ayodele.

The conference had five different panels and were moderated by Tolu Balogun, Bolanle Olukanni, Abolade Owoeye, Sanusi Ismaila and Princess Abumere.

The New Media Conference is a platform for aggregating the views of key New Media players and stakeholders in order to chart growth in marketing and advertising standards in the Nigerian online/digital media space.

The conference had NEST Digital Agency as its official digital partner; it was proudly supported by: Samsung Nigeria, OLX Nigeria, Bella Naija, HotSauce, Orange Academy. Other partners include Design Hub, World Bay Tech, Information Nigeria, Helen Events Blog, Naija Loaded, Guardian Life, Pulse NG, Y!Naija, Hip TV, Goldmyne TV, Onobello.com, Alleb Media, Naij.com, Sesema PR, NewsWireNGR, TheTrentOnline, Jiji.ng, Royal Roots TV, Ebonylife TV, Expoze Mag & PR.

The New Media Conference was powered by Olorisupergal.
File Photo

10.06.2016 LISTEN

In the wake of another accident on the Volta Lake resulting in the death of at least twenty-five (25) people, it is high time we pooled thoughts and might to reduce the incidence drastically.

Vehicular accidents have lived with humankind since time immemorial. Thus, it will be unrealistic to suggest that they can be brought to an end. Having said that, it has to be said  and those in direct charge of marine transport have to admit that our efforts so far to nip this in the bud do not indicate any sense of responsibility and urgency. Thus far, we have only paid lip-service to the perennial carnage by reporting, criticising and promising what we are not willing to deliver.

On Sunday, May 29, 2016, reports came in from the PruDistrict of the Brong-Ahafo Region about the death of over 25 people who drowned and died on the Volta Lake when a boat they were travelling on from Yeji to Nantwekope capsized after reportedly hitting a tree stump. The immediate cause of the accident is not known. However, survivors and eyewitnesses have attributed it to overloading of the boat with people and goods. In clear terms, the boat carried more people and goods than its capacity. This, regrettably, is a very common practice on the lake. We have only God Almighty to thank for not recording many more of such accidents, considering the prevalence of the underlying causes.

Before now, the Minister of Transport and officers of the Ghana Maritime Authority had loquaciously given us several talks of hope about what they were doing and will do to prevent future accidents on the Volta Lake.

Among them are efforts to:

1. Prosecute boat owners and operators who fall foul of standard health and safety practices

2. Intensify patrol on the Volta Lake by marine police and navy

3. Inspect existing boats in operation and retire those not seaworthy

4. Train boat owners on marine transport operations

5. Supply modern and seaworthy boats to ease pressure on existing limited facilities

6. Move the pontoons used during the Adomi Bridge repairs to be used on the other side of the Volta Lake.

Apart from the last promise which the President has since fulfilled following the opening of the AdomiBridge to traffic, there is arguably no evidence anywhere that the other five promises have been delivered.

It is ,therefore, plausible to argue that the latest accident should be laid at the doorsteps of government and its agencies. They have failed us and should take the flak for it. The era of paying lip-service to serious security issues should be killed and buried. We cannot perform our duties with such perfunctoriness and expect to draw salaries and allowances from the sweating masses' coffers with impunity.

So what is the way forward?

I suggest the following:

1. Government must immediately commission an interagency committee to investigate the incidence of boat disaster on the Volta Lake and other lakes and other waters with similar history.

2. The Ministry of Transport in collaboration with relevant institutions deploy the navy and marine police on the Volta Lake to do a daily monitoring, inspection and ensure enforcement of regulations governing marine transport

3. The local authorities should begin a gradual and sustained process of clearing the stumps in the lake to ensure smooth sailing

4. Ministry of Transport must organise professional training for operators of boats on the lake and their apprentices and partners

5. Boat owners found to be involved in recent disasters and their operators must be arrested and prosecuted

6. Families of those who have died in the accident as well as injured survivors must be compensated by government and boat owners

7. NADMO must procure and distribute Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) to passengers on the lake as the absence of that is a rcause of the death of those who drowned

8. Transport ministry in collaboration with relevant agencies must immediately clear out old and ramshackle boats that are in operation on the lake that are not seaworthy.

Individually, patrons of that means of transport have to put their destinies in their own hands by insisting on standard operating procedures before boarding boats. It makes no sense for the traders who use the service tolose their lives to avoidable accidents in the name of earning a living. The few Cedis that one seeks to make by travelling across the lake in such life-threatening circumstances is not worth the while.

If we all place premium on our lives and ensure that the right things are done with regard to marine transport, the incidence of boats capsizing and people dying will be drastically reduced as is elsewhere in the world. People who fail to comply with SOPs should be reported to law enforcers without fear or favour. Hopefully, they will act on their prompts.

I cannot end this without giving Mr. Samuel NuamahDonkor and his management at State Transport Company (STC) thumps up for conceiving and working to introduce hovercraft services on the sea and lakes. If this is realised, it will play a major role in achieving an accident free marine transport services in the country. Of course the ease and comfort it will bring to many commuters and travellers cannot be understated.
Washington (AFP) - Want to end extreme poverty? Technology hyper-billionaire Bill Gates says the answer is chickens. And that's not the name of new Microsoft software.

Gates, the founder of the world's largest software company, says the best thing to improve the lives of the world's poorest is not computers or the Internet but raising a few roosters and hens.

"It's pretty clear to me that just about anyone who's living in extreme poverty is better off if they have chickens," he said this week on his website GatesNotes.com.

The world's richest person, who made his $75 billion fortune pushing for a Microsoft computer in every home, said his Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has just partnered with the global development group Heifer International to donate some 100,000 chickens to families in sub-Saharan Africa living on less than $2 a day.

The goal, he said, is to get 30 percent of the rural families in the region to raise improved breeds of vaccinated chickens, compared with the current five percent.

The return is better than other solutions, he said: Chickens cost little to take care of, they multiply fast and eggs and chicken meat can boost family nutrition.

They also empower women, he said.

"Because chickens are small and typically stay close to home, many cultures regard them as a woman's animal, in contrast to larger livestock like goats or cows. Women who sell chickens are likely to reinvest the profits in their families."
10.06.2016 LISTEN

From Inusa Musah, Tema

Workers of the Tema PSC Shipyard and Drydock Corporation have pleaded with President Mahama to implement the recommendation by the Chris Ackumey Committee's report. According to the said report, the proposal by workers of the Shipyard that GPHA should take over the running and management of the shipyard was worth considering.

Raising eight significant reasons that, to them, the Ghana Ports and Harbours Authority (GPHA) have what it takes to upgrade and turnaround the shipyard, the Tema Shipyard workers predicted that the company could collapse in a year's time should the government fail to allow GPHA to take over the 'dead' company.

Addressing a section of the media in Tema, Christian Dogbe, Acting Chairman of the Senior Staff Association of the Tema PSC Shipyard and Drydock Corporation, said the workers were making a strong case for the GPHA takeover because, in 2011 when the Government of Ghana (GoG) bought back 60 percent shareholding interest from the Malaysians at a cost of $6.36 million, the GPHA paid that money because of their strong financial muscle.

Christian Dogbe established the fact the Tema Shipyard, which he described as a sleeping giant in the marine industry, has the GPHA as its landlord, explaining that the handling of income and outgoing vessels at the Tema Shipyard is under the ambit of the GPHA.

Power distribution at the Dock II and its operational areas are still under the control of the GPHA, he added.

The workers expressed shock at the sharp U-turn by the General Secretary of the Maritime and Dock workers' Union (MDU), Daniel Owusu-Koranteng, who had recommended that the Shipyard needed a consortium of GPHA, Social Security and National Investment Trust (SSNIT) and Ghana National Petroleum Company (GNPC).

On August 15, 2013, the MDU General Secretary, on a TV3 late news platform, made a strong case for the GPHA to man the Shipyard, and going by his stance, which was stated in Number 179 of the Chris Ackumey Committee's report that said the proposal by workers of the Shipyard that GPHA should take over the running and management of the shipyard is worth considering, the workers said they could not understand what might have pricked Daniel Owusu-Koranteng's U-turn.

Questioning what either the GNPC or SSNIT would bring onboard, Charles Dogbe requested the MDU General Secretary and the District Executive to answer why, in 2013, they vehemently rejected Tullow Oil Ghana Limited's project of investing between $25 million to $30 million to partly upgrade the Shipyard, which was a GNPC-GoG sponsored project.

The objective of GNPC at that time was to use the Shipyard as a fabrication enclave for some of the components of the FPSO Atta Mills for the Tweneboah-Enyenra-Ntomme (TEN) Complex Project and other projects beyond the TEN.

The total cost of rehabilitation and staff training for the project was to be recovered from GoG and Tullow Oil Ghana Limited accounts, as part of the total development cost of the TEN Project.

'One may ask whether it is now that the MDU Executives are awakening to know that the GNPC can equally contribute to the development of the Shipyard after refusing the same company's 2013 objective. This clearly shows that the MDU lacks knowledge about the Shipyard they claim they superintendent over.

Christian Dogbe and the Shipyard workers believed that in order for the Shipyard to achieve the vision of the founder of the Ports of Ghana, Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, as per the original master plan of the Tema Port, the President should task GPHA as the best strategic investor that has the requisite capital and expertise to turn the Shipyard around.

They strongly kicked against releasing the Shipyard to a foreign investor, especially after the Malaysian investors had shown how incapable they were in making the Shipyard work, due to bad leadership and management practice.
10.06.2016 LISTEN

On Monday, this week, the Public Utility Workers Union (PUWU) organised a news conference to deny the claim by the Public Utility Regulation Commission (PURC) that the software the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) is using to bill its customers is not operating normally. PUWU contended that there was nothing wrong with the software and went ahead to give the PURC, a seven day ultimatum to withdraw the order they have given to the ECG to suspend the software, else their front line staff would go on strike.

PUWU also reiterated what is already in the public domain that, government departments and agencies owe the ECG millions of Ghana cedis and that if the debt is not redeemed before the end of the month (June), the workers will carry out mass disconnection exercise at these government agencies and departments.

Following this threat from the workers, Joy FM reported on Tuesday, this week, that the Deputy Minister of Power, John Jinapor, had met the workers union to dialogue over their threat to cut power supply to the affected government institutions. The Chronicle is happy that John Jinapor did not sit in his office unconcerned for the ECG workers to disconnect the government institutions before moving in to resolve the problem.

His decision to meet the workers' leadership to us, therefore, is timely. This is what we expect all our ministers to do, instead of sitting in their cosy offices when danger is glaringly starring them in the face. Surely this is a proactive action and The Chronicle commends him for that.

We, however, disagree if the Joy FM report is true, that the Power Ministry after giving the road map for the payment of the huge debt during the meeting with the PUWU members has also softened its stance on the directive to the power distributor to suspend its current billing system. After the PUWU press conference, the PURC came out to state clearly that they did not lie to the public that the software the ECG is using is faulty.

In fact, Nana Yaa Jantuah, the spokesperson, insisted on radio that they have evidence to back what they have already put in the public domain. The PURC insisted that bills being submitted to some of the ECG customers cannot be justified and that they would insist the right thing must be done.

Since both parties have taken entrenched positions on the subject matter, the best thing for Mr. Jinapor to do is to invite a third party to study all the allegations and the refutations from the ECG and come out with an independent report. The auditing giant, KPMG, could easily do this when approached and their report, we can confidently say, would be accepted by all the parties.

In the midst of the protestations from the electricity consumers, who think they are being short changed, it would be wrong for the Power Ministry to soften its stance just because the ECG workers have threatened to disconnect government agencies and departments.

The Chronicle does not have any evidence that ECG is indeed cheating its customers; neither are we disputing the information that had been out in the public domain by the PURC. For now, the paper does not know which of the parties is telling the truth and that is why we thing a third party investigation is the answer to the problem.

Any attempt by the Power Ministry to soften its stance would be interpreted to mean that the government has connived with the ECG to steal their money and that could be dangerous if the anger of the consumers explode.

The Chronicle is also advising the government to review the taxes it has imposed on electricity to give consumers an economic breathing space. If it is established that the ECG software is even faulty hence the abnormal bills consumers are receiving, the taxes are still high and something must be done about it now.
President John Mahamas advisor on governance and corruption, Daniel Batidam, has been re-elected to chair African Union (AU)s Advisory Board on corruption.

Dr Batidams re-appointment was announced Friday, June 10, in a communique issued by the continental body in Arusha, Tanzania.

His re-election is in accordance with provisions of the Unions Convention on Preventing and Combating Corruption and the Rules of Procedure.

The former head of the Ghana Integrity Initiative (GII)  the local chapter of Transparency International  will be assisted by Florence Ziyambi as Vice-Chairperson and John Kithome Tuta as Rapporteur.

The 19th Ordinary Session of the AUs Advisory on Corruption Board which was held between June 6 and June 10, 2016 discussed, among other things, the implementation of the African Union Convention against Corruption and considered the views of various stakeholders on diverse issues touching on the fight against corruption in Africa, generally, and the mandate of the Advisory Board.

Discussions during the session centred on the leaked Panama Papers and the public discourse that has ensued, in Africa and elsewhere across the world on the subject of corruption.

The Board particularly appreciates the Statement issued by H.E. Thabo Mbeki, former President of South Africa, and Chairperson of the African Union-United Nations High-Level Panel on Illicit Financial Flows from Africa (HLP-IFF), the communique said.

The Advisory Board, while counseling itself that the presumption of innocence should be afforded to all persons mentioned in the Panama Papers and that each individual case must be examined and investigated, however, notes that the said Panama Papers have reignited debate on possible abuse of office by high-ranking public officials. This debate must be taken to its logical conclusion," it said.

"We reiterate that each individual case ought to be thoroughly investigated by the relevant competent national, regional or international agencies, to establish whether it is legitimate or not. In this regard, the Board will be liaising with the national anti-corruption authorities, under the aegis of the African Association of Anti-Corruption Agencies (AAACA), with a view to ensuring that the allegations raised in the Panama Papers are investigated and the culprits brought to book, the statement adds.

Read the full communique below:

1. The Africa Union Advisory Board on Corruption (the Board) held its 19th Ordinary Session at the Arusha International Conference Centre (AICC) in Arusha, the United Republic of Tanzania, from 6th to 10th June, 2016.

2. In accordance with the provisions of the African Union Convention on Preventing and Combating Corruption and the Rules of Procedure of the Board, on 6th June, 2016, the Board carried out an election of its Bureau, as a result of which the following members were re-elected:-

a) Hon. Daniel BATIDAM - Chairperson - Ghana

b) Hon. (Ms) Florence ZIYAMBI - Vice- Chairperson - Zimbabwe

c) Hon. John Kithome TUTA - Rapporteur - Kenya

3. The Board welcomed the newly appointed Executive Secretary of the Board, Ms. Charity Hanene Nchimunya (of Zambia), and expressed optimism in having a cordial working relationship between the Board and the Secretariat.

4. The Board discussed, among other things, the implementation of the African Union Convention against Corruption (the Convention) and considered the views of various stakeholders on diverse issues touching on the fight against corruption in Africa, generally, and the mandate of the Advisory Board in particular.

5. The Board deliberated on various issues touching on its work, including but not limited to: the activity report of the Board for the period October 2015 to June, 2016; the revision of the Strategic Plan of the Board for the period 2016-2020; the capacity needs of the Secretariat of the Board; the draft 8th Report of the Board to the Executive Council of the African Union; partnership with Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) in monitoring the implementation of the Convention; opportunities for partnerships with various stakeholders such as the African Development Bank (AfDB); Deutsche GesellschaftfurInternationaleZusammenarbeit (GIZ); the European Union (EU); and Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), among others; the draft Terms of Reference (TORs) for a review mechanism on the implementation of the Convention; country missions to various countries that have not signed or ratified the Convention; proposed African Anti-Corruption Day and African Year of Anti-Corruption, 2018, and priority activities for the Board for 2016.

6. The Board received the views of Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) on possible areas of co-operation in the fight against corruption in Africa generally and the review of the implementation of the Convention, in particular, during an open session held for CSOs on 8th June, 2016. During the session, the Board received presentations from representatives of the Pan-African Lawyers Union (PALU), and the Open Society Foundations Africa Regional Office (OSF/AfRO).

7. The Board recalled its Communique issued at the conclusion of its 18th Session on 9th October, 2015, and reiterated its commitment to the execution of its mandate as per Article 22 of the Convention.

8. The Board took note of recent initiatives in the fight against corruption, such as the 6th Commonwealth Review Meeting of Heads of Anti-Corruption Agencies in Africa, held in Swakopmund, Namibia (31 May-4 June, 2016), and the Global Declaration Against Corruption issued on 12th May, 2016, after the International Anti-Corruption Summit held in London, United Kingdom, both of which underscore the importance of zero tolerance for corruption and the need to support victims of corruption, among others.

9. The Board deliberated on a number of issues that require urgent intervention or action lest they undermine the fight against corruption in Africa, compromise the enjoyment of the rights and freedoms provided for under the African Charter on Human and Peoples Rights, and militate against the realization of the AU Agenda 2063 vision. Consequently, the Board states as follows:-

(a) The Board appreciates that the African Union has declared 2016 to be the Year of Human Rights with a special focus on the Rights of Women in Africa. This places an obligation on all of us to reflect on the disproportionately high impact that corruption inflicts on the women and children of Africa, especially in terms of denial of social and economic rights, and the interface of corruption with conflict, terrorism and fundamentalism of various kinds. It further behooves on us to take all possible measures, within the framework of existing laws, policies, institutions and mechanisms, to combat corruption, in order to enhance the protection and promotion of the rights of the women and children of Africa.

(b) The Board welcomes the publication of the Panama Papers and the robust public discourse that has ensued, in Africa and elsewhere across the world on the subject of corruption. The Board particularly appreciates the Statement issued by H.E. Thabo Mbeki, former President of South Africa, and Chairperson of the African Union-United Nations High-Level Panel on Illicit Financial Flows from Africa (HLP-IFF).

(c) The Advisory Board, while counseling itself that the presumption of innocence should be afforded to all persons mentioned in the Panama Papers and that each individual case must be examined and investigated, however, notes that the said Panama Papers have reignited debate on possible abuse of office by high-ranking public officials. This debate must be taken to its logical conclusion. We reiterate that each individual case ought to be thoroughly investigated by the relevant competent national, regional or international agencies, to establish whether it is legitimate or not. In this regard, the Board will be liaising with the national anti-corruption authorities, under the aegis of the African Association of Anti-Corruption Agencies (AAACA), with a view to ensuring that the allegations raised in the Panama Papers are investigated and the culprits brought to book.

(d) The Board also notes that discourse on the Panama Papers takes us back to the Report and Recommendations of the African Union-United Nations High-level Panel on Illicit Financial Flows from Africa (HLP-IFF), led by H.E. Thabo Mbeki. It acknowledges that the Assembly of Heads of State and Government of the African Union (AU), the highest decision-making body on the African continent, adopted the said Report and directed that its recommendations be implemented. The Board is conscious that, by virtue of the mandate bestowed upon it under Article 22 of the Convention, the Board is one of the key institutions obligated to implement the recommendations. In this regard, the Board will confer with the African Union, the High-Level Panel, African Governments and African civil society organizations with a view to strengthening partnerships for robust implementation of the said recommendations.

(e) In particular, the Board will consider and consult on whether, and how, it should amend its Questionnaire for State reporting under the Convention to include questions that will distill the issues related to, as well as best practices in preventing and combating illicit financial flows (IFFs) from Africa.

(f) The Board took note of the convening of an International Anti-Corruption Summit by British Prime Minister, David Cameron, in London, on 12th May 2016 and has taken particular note of the Global Declaration against Corruption, emanating from that Summit. The Board congratulates the six countries (Afghanistan, Britain, France, Kenya, the Netherlands, and Nigeria) which agreed to publish registers of beneficial ownership, i.e. registers available to the public regarding who really owns companies in their territories. We reiterate the call of Prime Minister Cameron that this is the gold standard which every country should be working towards.

(g) The Advisory Board recalls its statement issued at the conclusion of its 18th Session in October, 2015 and acknowledges the words of H.E. President Buhari of Nigeria in his statement to the United Nations General Assembly in September, 2015 to the effect that, You encourage corruption by providing safe havens for stolen funds. In that regard, the Board calls upon countries that harbor stolen assets from Africa to endeavour to repatriate those assets to the victim states and that, countries that receive such assets should manage them in a transparent and accountable manner, for the benefit of their people.

(h) The Board endorses the words of Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos at the UK Summit, that the Panama Papers show how corruption is scared of the spotlight. The Board echoes his call for new protection for whistleblowers, who are under great danger in many countries and calls for robust prosecution of offenders, which will be the only way African states can show our peoples that they are serious about combating corruption, as opposed to appearing to be fighting corruption.

(i) The Board further welcomes the on-going development of a new, continental Multi-Sectoral Working Group against corruption (MSWG) championed by, amongst others, the Pan-African Lawyers Union (PALU) and the Open Society Foundation Africa Regional Office (OSF-AfRO). The Board further welcomes the proposal of these organizations to convene an annual Civil Society Forum on the margins of one of the sessions of the Board, and directs its Secretariat to liaise with the organizers of that forum to ensure that they deliver tangible results for the betterment of the African continent and its peoples.

(j) The Board reiterates that it is well aware of the obligations placed on States Parties by Article 12 and the obligations placed on the Board itself by Article 22(5) of the Convention respectively, to build effective partnerships with civil society and the media, in combating corruption.

(k) The Board also appreciates the steady development of the African Governance Architecture (AGA) and the institutionalization of the African Governance Platform (AGP). The Board is conscious of the leadership role that it is required to play in AGA/AGP, and especially in the Governance cluster therein, which seeks to promote the strengthening of institutions of public service delivery, including, but not limited to, decentralization and accountability. The Board is particularly keen on its obligations to animate the sub-clusters on anti-corruption and accountability, and on natural resource management. In this regard, the Board will continue to collaborate and to confer with other AGP Member Institutions and with all other stakeholders, with a view to ensuring that measurable outcomes are achieved in the said Cluster and sub-clusters.

(l) The Board encourages Member States to domesticate and implement the provisions of the AU Convention, especially the requirement on States Parties to establish, maintain and strengthen independent national anti-corruption agencies (Article 5(3)); to adopt legislative and other measures to protect informants and witnesses in corruption and related offences, including protection of their identities (Article 5(5)); to require all or designated public officials to declare their assets at the time of assumption of office, during, and at the end of their term of office in public service (Article 7(1)); to enact Access to Information laws (Article 9); and to regulate political party funding (Article 10).

(m) The Board further seeks the support of the Assembly of Heads of State and Government, the Executive Council, the Permanent Representatives Committee (PRC), the African Union Commission and other members of the African Governance Platform (AGP) to revise the Convention, and extend the mandate of the Board, from two years to five years, thus aligning it with other sister Organs, and with established African Union policy and culture, so as to give the Board enough time to conceptualize and oversee the implementation of high-impact anti-corruption programmes and activities.

(n) The Advisory Board encourages States Parties to the Convention to ensure that the fight against corruption is undertaken without fear or favour and predicated upon the principles of the rule of law, constitutionalism and human rights.

(o) It further encourages States Parties to make provision for legal aid so as to facilitate access to justice for the marginalized and indigent persons.

(p) The Board acknowledges the success and the best practices learnt from the United Nations Convention against Corruption (UNCAC) Implementation Review Mechanism and looks forward to benchmarking with the UNCAC review mechanism, and partnering with the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), for purposes of improving the review of the implementation of the AU Convention on Preventing and Combating Corruption.

10. In line with its Strategic Plan, Rules of Procedure and 2016 Work Plan, the Board will be holding three more sessions in August, October, and December, 2016 and will also be holding a number of other activities in collaboration with other stakeholders, in line with the Boards mandate.

11. The Board urges the AU to demonstrate real political will to the fight against corruption by putting at the disposal of the Board adequate human and financial resources to carry out its mandate effectively.

12. The Board takes note that a number of African states will be holding their general elections in 2016 and calls upon election management bodies, national anti-corruption agencies/authorities, the electorate and other stakeholders in the concerned countries to bar persons who have unresolved integrity issues from assuming leadership positions.

13. The Advisory Board commends H.E. President Ernest BaiKoroma of Sierra Leone for appointing Hon. Joseph Fitzgerald Kamara, a Member of the Board and former Commissioner of the Sierra Leone Anti-Corruption Commission, as the Attorney General and Minister of Justice of the Republic of Sierra Leone in December, 2015, and calls upon other African Heads of State and Government to emulate the Sierra Leone example by appointing men and women of integrity in various leadership positions.

14. The Board recommends that the 11th of July be declared the African Anti-Corruption Day, being the day the AU Convention on Preventing and Combating Corruption was adopted in Maputo, Mozambique, in order to raise awareness and marshall national, regional and continental efforts towards preventing and combating corruption. Further, the Board recommends that the AU General Assembly declares 2018 as the African Anti-Corruption Year.

15. In conclusion, the Board expresses its appreciation and gratitude to the Government and the people of the United Republic of Tanzania for their warm hospitality and for the diplomatic and administrative support usually accorded the Board whenever it holds its Ordinary Sessions at the Boards Headquarters in Arusha, Tanzania.

Story by Ghana | Myjoyonline.com | GN
Rome (AFP) - An Eritrean man extradited from Sudan to Italy on suspicion of being the head of a migrant trafficking ring has told investigators he is not the man they want, his lawyer said Friday.

The suspect, identified by Italian authorities as Medhanie Yehdego Mered, 35, is accused of shipping thousands of people to Europe and sending some to their deaths in the Mediterranean.

Dubbed 'the general' for his control over a vast area and number of 'troops', and described as "cynical and unscrupulous", Mered has been described as a people smuggling kingpin.

But Italian prosecutors admitted on Thursday that they were checking his identity after reports claimed he was the victim of a case of mistaken identity, and a woman claiming to be his half-sister said he was just a simple carpenter.

Lawyer Michele Calantropo told AFP his client "denied being the suspect and also denied being linked in any way to a trafficking network" when questioned by Italian magistrates.

Sudan's interior ministry, Italian police and Britain's National Crime Agency (NCA) had made much of Mered's arrest in Khartoum at the end of May and his deportation to Italy this week.

But family and friends soon came forward to say the man pictured being dragged off a plane in Rome was not 'the general', identifying him as someone with a different name.

Calantropo was hired by a woman claiming to be the sister of the detainee, a man she named as Mered Tesfamariam.

Segem Tasfamariam Berhe, who said she had recognised her 27-year-old brother in the footage, told Italian media he had nothing to do with human trafficking.

"I want to tell Italian police my brother is innocent, he is not the man they are looking for. Please, investigators, release my brother," she was quoted as saying from Khartoum by Italy's Rai News.

- 'An innocent man' -

From Eritrea's capital of Asmara, a woman claiming to be his stepsister, Saliem Kesete, told the Italian broadcaster that Mered Tesfamariam "was a carpenter, with a family", describing him as an "innocent man" who had "wanted to go to the US".

"Europe was his second choice," she said.

Key suspect Mered, who has been wanted on smuggling charges since 2015, is accused of packing migrants onto a boat that sank in 2013 off the Italian island of Lampedusa, claiming at least 360 lives in one of the worst disasters in the Mediterranean.

He reportedly described the sinking as "Allah's will" and is accused of organising the smuggling of up to 8,000 people a year.

Wiretaps of his conversations show him having contact with traffickers in northern Europe, particularly in the Netherlands and Scandinavia, and he held a "senior position in a criminal network operating in several continents", Italian police said.

In phonecalls with his family, he sounded loving, making several references to leaving Libya and moving to Sweden to be with his wife, but by contrast, had showed "utter disregard for the lives of the migrants", Italian police said.

His capture was hailed by officials as a significant blow to the people smuggling business as Europe moves to stem the flow of migrants across the Mediterranean.

According to the UN's refugee agency (UNHCR), over 49,600 people have arrived in Italy by boat so far this year.

More than 10,000 people have died crossing the Mediterranean to Europe since 2014.
Geneva (AFP) - Unabated attacks by Boko Haram in Cameroon have sparked soaring food insecurity and driven 190,000 people from their homes, creating fertile ground for recruitment by the jihadists, the UN warned.

Nigeria-based Boko Haram fighters have in recent months carried out fewer spectacular attacks and suicide bombings in neighbouring Cameroon.

But the UN humanitarian coordinator for the country Najat Rochdi said the jihadists were attacking villages and burning homes and fields across northern Cameroon on a daily basis.

"The impact of the violence by Boko Haram is not over, and we have to remain vigilant," she told AFP this week.

While the current attacks are less eye-catching, they have a more devastating effect, Rochdi said.

She said that in the last six months alone, the number of Cameroonians displaced within their own country had jumped from 60,000 to 190,000.

In addition, Cameroon is hosting 60,000 refugees from Nigeria and another 312,000 from the Central African Republic, amounting to more than 500,000 displaced people in all.

The number at risk of going hungry, she said, has meanwhile soared from 900,000 to 2.4 million since January, as Boko Haram fighters have continued to attack fields and food supply routes.

"It is a kind of silent crisis, which is really the danger," Rochdi said, warning that if humanitarian needs are not addressed in Cameroon, "we will see a radicalisation" of young people in the country.

"If people are not left with some hope, the only alternative for them is Boko Haram," she cautioned.

She said the problem was communicating what truly is at stake to international donors, with only 30 percent of the requested $280 million (248-million-euro) humanitarian aid budget for Cameroon this year funded so far.

"The gap in terms of humanitarian assistance is just dramatic," she said, insisting that providing desperately need assistance in the country was not just about saving lives.

"It is also about making sure that there is no fertile ground for recruitment by Boko Haram."

Boko Haram's insurgency is one of the world's most brutal conflicts, leaving at least 20,000 people dead since it began in 2009, with more than 2.6 million others displaced.

A multinational force from Nigeria, Niger, Chad, Benin and Cameroon has since last year significantly weakened the group but have been unable to vanquish the Islamists entirely.

Rochdi acknowledged that Boko Haram had been more successful in recruiting inside Cameroon last year, but said that could quickly change.

Some 250 children recruited or abducted by Boko Haram have meanwhile managed to escape over the past nine months or so, she said, adding most of them were "in very bad shape".

"Some of them were little girls who came with their babies. They were raped every day," she said.
10.06.2016 LISTEN

The idea was one that even my parents did not want to buy into, Mabel Simpson recounted as the shared the success story of mSimps.

With a startup capital of 200 and a sewing machine she got from her grandmother, Mabel started her line of business that would turn her into one of the most celebrated creative entrepreneurs in Ghana.

She had no business plans but today, mSimps is one of the biggest brands in Ghanas fashion industry.

From her garage, she produces handmade accessories which include handbags, purses, slippers, loafers and Ipad cases made with a touch of African fabric.

Mabel studied Communication Design at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) and started mSimps at 25. That was two years after school. She was working for a marketing company in Accra when the idea came to her.

Mabels passion is to promote products made in Ghana. I want to see people believe in Ghana again, she told Daryl Kwawu on the JOY BUSINESS VAN

Mabel Simpson has carved a niche for herself over the years. She is sought after at exhibitions both home and abroad. Her accessories are sold in the US, Australia, Nigeria and South Africa.

Its a tough business environment but Mabel sticks to the principles of time management, efficiency, loyalty and trust. She currently employs six workers but has created indirect employment for many as she sources 80 percent of her raw materials locally.

Mabel is entrepreneurial at heart and plans to train more young people, especially young women to be like her.

Currently, we have one young lady we are assisting in growing her brand she revealed.

Story by Ghana| Myjoyonline.com | Daryl Kwawu | Joy Business
11.06.2016 LISTEN

Being security knowledgeable myself, and having the greatest love for all Ghanaians and humanity in general, with ever growing aspiration to be of service to my nation and people, especially the downtrodden masses, I shall suggest to the police the following.

In their quest and appeal to the public to volunteer information leading to arresting the notorious armed robbers terrorising the good and innocent people of Ghana, especially the citizens of Ashanti region, my place of birth, I shall not hesitate a second to allow them avail themselves of my overflowing fountain of wisdom, intelligence and expertise.

 Are some of the police personnel not established or perceived to be armed robbers themselves, or liaising with criminals hence divulging any intelligence information, thus, tip-offs, about the criminals to them in secret and in advance?

 How comfortable, safe and secure will the supposed informants be, passing on information about the identities and the hideouts of suspected criminals, or armed robbers to be precise, to the police, if some of the police are themselves working for, or with, the armed robbers?

 Was there not an instance, a few years ago, of a nocturnal highwayman, an armed robber of course, turning out to be an active serving policeman at Effiduase in the Ashanti region when he was arrested between Akotosu and Wonoo on the Effiduase  Kumawu road? Has it not recently been announced to the whole nation that one sacked policeman of northern extraction has turned into a dangerous armed robber?

 For the police tarnishing their own image and reputation by being overtly corrupt, taking bribes and involving in criminal activities as hereby specified, how can the public approach them in confidence and in secret to pass on any tip-offs about notorious criminals?

 Do our court judges also not accept bribes of all sorts to set these criminals free when arraigned before them? With all these, how can we overpower for good these criminals turned into callous armed robbers who are ever increasingly ready to not only steal from, but also, maim and kill, their victims?

1) I suggest that the telephone lines/numbers providers are obliged to unanimously dedicate a number that one will key in before dialling any dedicated phone number or line assigned for anonymously informing on criminals or armed robbers. This will hide the callers (informers) identity from the police or whoever he/she is calling to. With this, it can boost the confidence of informants of never having their identities revealed to the criminals they are informing on by whomever.

2) The police must have about two or three centres where any information passed on to them will instantly be registered. This will make it difficult for whoever (the policeman) receiving the information to not act on it or to rather tip off the suspect instead of going after him or her. This is because it will not be only one officer or centre having knowledge of the tip-off.

3) In the absence of having a nationally-assigned phone number e.g. 141 as in the United Kingdom, the government can relax its stringent rule of obliging all mobile phone SIM cards to be registered to the buyers details  name, home address, and date of birth and upon provision of an identity card. The said number as in the case of the United Kingdom as cited above, will hide the phone number of the caller from the receiver. This, when used in good faith, can encourage more informants to secretly pass on information to the police about the identity, location and movements of an armed robber or any other notorious criminal, in the total belief that their identity will never be known to, or be revealed to the armed robber on whom they have reported.

4) Every calling number is traceable in the extreme of cases but the amount of money (expenditure) involved in tracing an unknown number is great hence does not worth the bother doing it except the damage caused is immense and worth spending whatever sum of money is needed to investigate it than letting it go.

5) There must be constant public radio education on the need and greater benefits of exposing criminals within our midst. This will sensitize the public to come out with information anonymously on suspected criminals in the society.

6) Anyone known to be way out leaving beyond their means, moving out from their homes in awkward times of the day, must be secretly reported to the police or soldiers or the BNI.

7) The police must publish the names and pictures of all wanted suspects in the media; newspapers, television, online news portals and on the social media. This will help make it difficult for the armed robbers to come out to operate in the daring way they are currently noted for.

8) All communities are to form Vigilante groups, using honest compatriots who are bold men and women, to help protect lives, properties and prevent crimes from being committed in the first place.

To conclude, it will take all Ghanaians or people in a community acting concertedly, to remove that ongoing canker of armed robbery from our midst. Let us report any police officer when they are acting criminally; taking bribes from drivers or involving themselves in other crimes. Let us report judges when they are seen to be taking bribes to set the criminals free.

How do we report these enforcers of the law when they are themselves breaking the laws, one may ask? Phone into a radio station, withhold your number if my suggestion above is accepted and becomes practically operational, and mention their names and what they have done provided the radio presenter will allow it.

Radio presenters, please allow people to inform the public of the names of people committing crimes against the people and the State.

I shall be back on this same subject.

Rockson Adofo
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business Buy Motherson Sumi Systems, says Prakash Diwan Prakash Diwan of prakashdiwan.in is of the view that Motherson Sumi is a great buy at the current level.
Telstra Corporation Ltd [ASX:TLS] was slightly down today by -0.09% in early afternoon trading; however, TSL fared much better than the ASX 200.

What happened to the TLS share price?

Telstra Corporation Ltd [ASX:TLS] was slightly down today by -0.09% in early afternoon trading; however, TSL fared much better than the ASX 200. Following a sharp reversal in the oil price over night, world markets retreated in sync. Telstra correlates with the market strongly and naturally pulled back as well.

Why did TLS shares do this?

Telstra has achieved a similar level of gain as the index over the last six months, between 05%. Investors need to remember that Telstra is one of the largest market-cap companies in Australia. It moves with the index  and it moves the index. This is also where a lot of fund money stays at. So when you own Telstra, you are more or less after a beta strategy (index strategy) or low risk strategy.

Many say Telstra is for long term investors, which is true. Due to the large-cap nature of the stock, it moves slowly in line with the index. This means it takes longer for you to create bigger returns. For example, the stock basically achieved the index return over a one year period, but it did splendidly over a five year period, returning over 80%.

The question is, should you invest and hold onto Telstra for the future? For the dividend, yes; the stock pays a dividend yield at 5.67%.

How about for the capital gain? It is hard to say. In fact, it is reasonable to believe a company this big cannot grow at an ultra-fast speed.

Fundamentally, there are a lot of challengers to Telstras dominant market share, such as TPG [ASX:TPM] and Vocus Communications [ASX:VOC]. Mind you, these two companies are both growth companies with a lot of momentum. They are high-return, high-risk stocks.

What now for TLS?

Coming back to Telstra, I believe the company will book moderate growth in a tougher, more competitive environment. That would be the average scenario I expect over the coming years. I expect the stock to more or less track and move with the index.

It will still be a sought-after stock for institutional investors, and it is a good beta strategy candidate. The dividend is fully franked, which is great. So if you are a long term investor aiming at a beta strategy, and youre on the lookout for a great dividend payer, Telstra is definitely a good choice.

Ken Wangdong+

Emerging Market Analyst, New Frontier Investor
[Content Warning: Rape, rape culture, violence, assault, and examples of everyday misogyny.]

If youve been avoiding the news for the past week, then you might have missed the latest misogynistic update out of beautiful sunny California. Warning: maximum feminist anger straight ahead

In January 2015, swimming star athlete Brock Turner was caught by two witnesses in the act of rape outside of a Stanford fraternity. Almost a year and a half later, Turner was found guilty of 3 different counts of rape and assault by a jury of his peers. Despite the prosecution requesting a 6 year minimum sentencing, the judge, Aaron Persky, sentenced Turner to only 6 months in a local jail (3 months potential release for good behaviour), showcasing a sweeping example of rape culture and white privilege in the courtroom. As if the case couldnt get worse, the guilty rapists father released a response to the verdict stating his sons sentencing was a steep price to pay for 20 minutes of action.

Translation: The rapists potential future is ruined for his minor actions, but no acknowledgement or remorse was uttered for the potential future of the victim.

This, right here, is a golden example of Rape Culture.

Your bloods already boiling, so lets get to the heart of the issue: rape culture exists and is deeply entrenched in our society. In an attempt to maybe make this horrible situation into a learning experience, Ive compiled a guide on how I think rape culture could be prevented in years to come.

Teaching Consent. Early.

Consent: (verb) to agree to do or allow something: to give permission for something to happen or be done (Merriam Webster definition)

Consent is easy to understand, but seems to be a difficult thing for some adults to wrap their heads around. However, parents can teach their kids as early as possible about consent.

Now consent doesnt always need to be taught solely in relation to sexual encounters. Consent can also be applied to things like hugs from relatives and friends, sampling food from a siblings plate, or even consenting to sharing a secret with someone. Consent is everywhere, and learning to draw boundaries and establish bodily autonomy is an important developmental step for children.

Next time an aunt demands a hug from a child, parents can ask their child if theyre comfortable with it. It can be established early on that they have the right to say no, and that they should feel comfortable saying it. A parent should never pressure their child into doing something theyre not comfortable with. Remember: no does not mean convince me.

(Bonus) Teaching Consent alongside Healthy Sexuality to teenagers.

My case may have been unique, but when I was in high school I learned nothing about my bodily autonomy and consent. This could be because I went to a predominantly Mormon high school, and the fact that some Christian sects see sexuality as a sin means it is often not taught.

Despite what any religious individuals may believe regarding sexuality, it is still vital to teach consent and healthy sexuality in sex education classes and during the sex talk. Otherwise the only source of reference for teenagers is pop culture and its embedded rape culture. Which results in more cycles of violence, victim blaming, and misinformation.

If state and national curriculums begin to place a greater emphasis on sexual assault awareness and education, its very possible that our next generation of college students would be less likely to commit or facilitate rape on campus.

So to make a difference in your own community, take matters into your own hands  if you are comfortable enough doing it  and host the discussion with any teenagers in your life. Make sure you get consent from the teenagers and their parents to talk about it, and make sure they are completely comfortable asking you questions.

Acknowledging the damaging effects of Rape.

Rape jokes are not funny. Period. Rape is a serious issue that affects far too many people in the world. Making light of rape in any way feeds into rape culture, further harming victims, and devaluing their experiences. So Never. Make. Rape. Jokes. As its been said before on Mookychick, rape culture is never funny.

Also, when there is a male victim of rape, their status as victims should never be discredited. Even if the 15 year old boy was having sex with the hot teacher, there is some serious psychological damage going on between the two (power dynamics are in play between the older perpetrator and victim, and victims can be confused on the meaning and application of consent). Statements like I bet he liked it or Nice score, dude! are dangerous because male victims of rape are just as likely to suffer and require counselling as female victims. There is no such thing as a lucky victim of rape, nor are men immune to falling victim to sexual violence.

(image courtesy of University of New England: Is Domestic Violence A Bigger Problem than We Realize?)

No matter the gender of the victim, survivors of rape are highly susceptible to suffering from PTSD. A recent convention at Bradley University focused on Neurocounseling and Brain Trauma hosted a discussion with researcher Laura Jones, who found that women were twice as likely to suffer from PTSD as men.

No one should ever take rape lightly, and we should call out others (if we can) for making light of a very harmful action.

Watching your Language.

The all-too-common phrase boys will be boys leads directly into rape culture territory. Teaching young men that their behaviour is simply a product of their gender further instills in them the idea that their actions are without consequence. In reverse, by telling young girls not to act like a flirt or cover up teaches them that they are to blame for others sexualising their body.

Dont see the correlation? When girls wear tank tops in school, but are told to cover their shoulders because it might be distracting to boys, it teaches them that they are at fault. The boys may be distracted, but boys will be boys, right? Wrong. Boys can be taught to control themselves and girls can be taught that their comfort matters and isnt dependent on mens convenience.

Even further, women should not be told to adjust their behaviour to prevent their own rape. The painful phrases What did she expect? Look at her outfit! or She was drinking! can translate so easily to She deserved it. All women should be protected from the damaging effects of rape, no matter what their appearance or intoxication level is.

(courtesy of Twitter user @itsmotherswork)

Always Believe the Victim.

The hardest struggle I face in terms of fighting rape culture in my own life is believing the victim. The idea that women lie about rape or seek attention over victimisation is so heavily established in rape culture, that its something that has taken me years to overcome. I know its not an easy pill to swallow, but its important to constantly remind yourself: no person wants to endure the backlash that our society gives to victims when they come out about their rape.

Reading the comments on the reports of rapist Brock Turner is a prime example of the level of disbelief people have for victims of rape. Even when a rapist is found guilty, caught by two eyewitnesses, and sent to jail, people will still say that the victim was probably lying or exaggerating.

The truth of the matter is staggering in comparison to common conceptions on victims of rape. Although it is impossible to determine the exact percentage of false rape accusations, the common belief is that somewhere between 2-10% are false. This is only of reported assaults, too.

Most rapes are never reported to the authorities for a multitude of reasons; whether victims are close to their rapist and fear for their life, or they suffer from severe PTSD, or they may even fear that police will not handle their case seriously and they will be exposed to public ridicule. If a rape is reported, there are then months of waiting for trial and reliving the experience with only a minimal chance of conviction and justice served.

(image courtesy of RAINN: The Criminal Justice System: Statistics)

(Bonus) Do not Blame Victims for Not Reporting their Rapist.

There are many reasons why survivors might not report their rape to the authorities. We should never hold it against them for trying to protect themselves after a traumatic event. Emotional trauma is different for everyone. They should never be outed as a victim, and should never receive anger if they decide to confide in someone they trust. Always listen, offer comfort, and be a support system for those that need it.

(Ultra-Bonus) Create a Safe Community for Victims and Call Out known Rapists in your Community.

We can do our part in informing people in our community of dangerous outed rapists. (Outed rapists are ones that victims have given consent to name, even if the victims prefer to remain anonymous.) Let everyone you know that they can confide in you if theyve been attacked.

We can aim to create a community that protects all victims of assault.

We should never give out a victims name without their consent. Not on social media or anywhere else.

As a society we can host consent workshops for rapists that are willing to learn and are apologetic for their actions. Its important to acknowledge that some rapes happen due to a lack of knowledge. For the people that fall into this trap and become rapists (but are not prosecuted), there is the option of proceeding through an accountability process. They must avoid places that are deemed safe for victims of assault, take classes that teach them the importance of consent, and follow through with what the community has agreed is a viable path for accountability. This does not excuse their injustices, but it is a start to try to better what happened.

Rape culture is everywhere, and fighting it can be exhausting, but we must never give up in dismantling this damaging structure. No matter what the outcome, we must protect, honor, and believe the victim of any case of rape or assault. Sometimes standing up for those in need is the most powerful thing a community can accomplish.

The victim in the Stanford trial concluded in her court statement:

And finally, to girls everywhere, I am with you. On nights when you feel alone, I am with you. When people doubt you or dismiss you, I am with you. I fought every day for you. So never stop fighting, I believe you. As the author Anne Lamott once wrote, Lighthouses dont go running all over an island looking for boats to save; they just stand there shining. Although I cant save every boat, I hope that by speaking today, you absorbed a small amount of light, a small knowing that you cant be silenced, a small satisfaction that justice was served, a small assurance that we are getting somewhere, and a big, big knowing that you are important, unquestionably, you are untouchable, you are beautiful, you are to be valued, respected, undeniably, every minute of every day, you are powerful and nobody can take that away from you. To girls everywhere, I am with you. Thank you.

Main photo credit: CMCarterSS
Local hula group inspires global connections When the pandemic ushered everyone indoors, Moorpark resident and longtime dancer Lisa Rauschenberger decided to get people back outsidesocially distanced, of course. She began to hold weekly hula lessons at...

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Sometimes, in the mortgage industry as well as in other areas in life, we suffer from an illusion of complexity. We think that, just because something is more complicated that it is necessarily more sophisticated. We're impressed by the college professor that talks "over our heads," or by the journalist who used big words in the articles she writes. But does more complicated necessarily mean better?

On the June 6 episode of my Lykken on Lending podcast, we had the opportunity to interview Bill Isaac, former chairman of the FDIC and author of the 2012 best-selling book Senseless Panic. During our conversation, we talked about the several thousands of pages included in the Dodd-Frank Act. The ensuing regulation over the last decade has led to countless ambiguities about what is and is not required in the mortgage industry. According to Bill, the final result of Dodd-Frank was "gobbledygook," a meaningless mess of legislation lacking any cohesive meaning. Perhaps complicated isn't always better...

As leaders in the mortgage industry, we should take a lesson from this. When we're trying to convey a message to our team, our investors, or our customers, it's usually better to keep it simple. It's more important that they get the message than that we look smart. Besides, as Albert Einstein is credited with saying, "If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough."
Donald Trump, taking steps to mobilize a fundraising operation to support his presidential bid, said he planned to meet over lunch in Manhattan Wednesday with a group of friends and supporters from the New York real-estate world.



Trump called the group "the biggest real estate people in the country" during an interview at Trump Tower before the meeting. Those expected to attend included the billionaire Richard LeFrak and Howard Lorber, both of whom Trump has known for decades and has called his closest friends. Others included Steve Roth and Michael Fascitelli, the current and former chief executives of Vornado Realty Trust, and Steve Witkoff, who once worked for a law firm that represented Trump and later started his own real-estate company.



Trump is starting to raise funds for a general election contest against Hillary Clinton after mostly relying on media attention and his own fortune to prevail in the Republican primary. Trump held his first fundraising event in California last week, and is planning gatherings in Texas, New York and elsewhere over the coming days.



Clinton, for her part, has been assembling her fundraising infrastructure for more than a year. Just in the past three weeks, the main super-political action committee supporting her spent $5.7 million on advertising attacking Trump.



Several groups of Trump supporters are advancing plans for super-PACs, which can accept donations of as much as $1 million or more, but none has yet emerged as the dominant vehicle.



Trump, who had earlier pegged the cost of a presidential bid at $1 billion, said in the interview that he now sees no reason to raise even half that amount, because he can continue to rely on free media.



Like Trump himself, the real-estate executives he invited to today's meeting aren't staunchly partisan in their political giving. Over the years, Lefrak, Lorber, and Fascitelli, the biggest spenders of the bunch, have each given between $200,000 and $400,000 to federal races, according to Federal Election Commission records. Each gave at least a quarter of his money to Democrats. None of the five had donated to Trump as of April 30, the last day for which campaign contributions have been disclosed. None of the five returned phone calls or emails today.



LeFrak actually donated to a different candidate during the Republican primary -- Governor John Kasich of Ohio.



Bloomberg News


After a two-day sting, six men were arrested over the weekend on second-degree felony charges for online solicitation of a minor. The multi-agency undercover investigation was conducted by Texas DPS agents, Midland County Sheriff's Office, SWAT, Midland County District Attorney's Office, Andrews Police Department, Odessa Police Department, FBI and Homeland Security Investigations.

Those who were arrested Saturday and Sunday are Jeremiah Jordan Easley, 27, of Midland; Lyle Joseph Heinzman, 23, of Midland; Matthew Holman, 35, of Odessa; Fabian Ray Galindo, 20, of Odessa; Chad Alan Potts, 46, of Odessa and James Shannon Dyche, 41, of Grandfalls.

We will do our very best to ensure that these defendants receive the type of sentence that is appropriate for this sort of crime, Midland County District Attorney Teresa Clingman said at a press conference on Thursday. In each of these cases it was clear that whoever would have been getting online with our agents that the person they were dealing with was underage and it was always the perpetrator that brought up any type of sexual activity.

Holman was a youth pastor at Westwood Baptist Church in Odessa, according to the churchs website. The church did not respond to phone calls from the Reporter-Telegram to confirm this.

Since November, there have been 26 individuals arrested on similar charges in the Permian Basin, said Carey Matthews, commander for DPS Region 4.

Midland County Sheriff Gary Painter emphasized the importance of parents monitoring their childs use of technology.

Take control of your kids computers, watch what theyre doing, look at the people theyre talking to, Painter said at the press conference. Im very encouraged by the work that was put on by these law enforcement agencies and the DAs office to prevent this kind of trash from happening in our community. We just want to encourage parents to take control of their kids computers and watch their kids. Im thankful we got these people off the streets.

The two-day investigation, during which special agents posed as minors online, is part of Homeland Security Investigations Operation Predator. Operation Predator is one of Homeland Securitys top priority investigations, said Jeremy Garnett, resident agent in charge of Online Security Investigations in Midland.

This was a good sweep they did on this sting, Painter said. We know its going on, we know that kids are being solicited online and they never know who theyre talking to. Just like these guys, they didnt know who they were talking to (agents). So, its a major problem. Were doing everything we can to alert the minor to the problem for one, and to alert the predators were there and were gonna put their butt in jail.
Summer is often a childs favorite season -- no school, no homework, only fun. But for many Permian Basin children, summer means hunger.

The highest need for food bank services is throughout the summer, said Libby Campbell, executive director of the West Texas Food Bank. We have a lot of kids that depend on the school nutrition program to eat the free breakfast and lunch or the (Food 2 Kids) backpack programs for the weekends are running so they have stuff over the weekend. But all that kind of stops in the summer.

The need is particularly great this summer. The combination of the oil downturn with the regular need that arises during summer has left many Midland families scrambling.

Last year during the month of May the WTFB served close to 700 individuals. This May the WTFB served close to 1,000 individuals, according to a press release.

The face of hunger has definitely changed, Campbell said. Now what were seeing a lot of is people who have been here for years and were established and are now struggling. Were seeing people who have never needed help before.

Most of those people are children 18 and under. By the end of this past school year, 49 percent of Midland ISD students were signed up for the free lunch program, according to statistics from MISDs Child Nutrition Services.

For a community as prosperous as ours, you wouldnt think that, but there are a lot of people who have a lot of stuff and a lot of people who dont have anything, said Michelle Helms, director of CNS. When we started the year we were at 47 percent. Toward the end of school some of those people that maybe had good jobs maybe got laid off so we started to see about two or three parents a day filling out an application (for the Free and Reduced Price Meal Program).

To continue to serve this population over the summer, MISD has various sites throughout the city that serve breakfast and lunch. Students are not required to be registered for the free and reduced meal program to get food at these locations.

For many, the added costs of summer keep them from making ends meet when it comes to food.

Its really a time where you probably spend the most money on your kids, especially if you work in the summer, because when your kids go to school all day you dont really have to do day care or get a nanny or a baby sitter, Campbell said. Right now in our economy thats tough. A lot of people have lost hours, or their pay has been cut, or theyre now just working minimums. So people are having to readjust their budgets.

The Jubilee Center, one of the several food pantries in Midland that serves throughout the summer, has seen a significant increase of new families requiring their services, said Director Greg Clark. They average about 300 to 320 families a month at their two large food pantries on the second and fourth Saturday of each month, Clark said.

Jubilee also does emergency food distributions and about 95 percent of the people using those services are families who have never come to their food pantry before, Clark said.

Probably in the last year new families tripled, Clark said. Were seeing over 100 new people that weve never seen before each month. Weve seen a dramatic increase in our kids. We track kids 17 and under in the households that we serve and we used to run about 30 to 35 percent children a couple years ago, and now were right at 50 percent. Half of all the people we serve food to are children 17 and under.

Those families usually have similar stories, Clark said. He sees them every day and they often share their stories with him, he said.

Theyve been laid off, they cant find work, Clark said. We see more men than we ever have which is kind of unusual. I just got through feeding a family (where the father) applied everywhere, hes got four kids at home, eldest is 13 or so, and he said, Im trying to get a job doing anything, doesnt make any difference what I do. He had worked in the oil field. So thats kind of what you see a lot right now.

Often, the new families Clark is seeing have come to Midland in the past few years for the work and are hoping theyll be able to get their jobs again once the price of oil returns.

A lot of their employers -- because theyre good workers -- have told them hold on and stick around because the oils gonna go back up and they say theyll bring them back on, Clark said. Well no one knows when its gonna go up again -- youd be the richest man if you did. So theyre holding out for that good job again and they dont have a lot of jobs opportunities back home either. Well, after four or five months, you dont have no money, especially here with the rent rates still fairly high. And thats what we see is theyve waited and theyre down to, I can hardly pay my rent, never mind buy groceries for my kids too. So theyre stuck.

Resources (all are free with no registration or ID required):

West Texas Food Bank:

Location: 411 S. Pagewood Ave., Odessa

Contact: Phone: (432) 580-NEED (6333)

Hours: Mon - Fri, 9:00 a.m - 12:00 p.m. and 1:00 p.m. - 4:00 p.m.

To donate: https://www.wtxfoodbank.org/get-involved/donate-money/

Jubilee Center: Food pantries on the second and fourth Saturdays of the month from 9:30 a.m. to noon. Emergency food distribution daily from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m.

Location: 3311 Andrews Highway

Contact: 432-520-0671

Breaking Bread Soup Kitchen: Serves dinner Monday through Friday from 5 p.m. to 6:30 p.m.

Location: 410 E. Florida Ave.

Contact: 432-689-2339

Casa de Amigos: Emergency Food Pantry open from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday. If youd like to donate, Casa de Amigos needs non-perishable items such as: peanut butter; jelly; canned meals (ravioli, chili, beef stew, soup); canned fruits, canned vegetables; tuna and meat (canned or frozen); beans (dried or canned); pasta, canned spaghetti sauce, mac and cheese; Rice (1 or 2 pounds); bread; cereal and oatmeal.

Cash donations and grocery gift cards of any amount are always accepted.

Location: 1101 Garden Lane

Contact: 432-682-9701 or Judith.motyka@casadeamigosmidland.org

Area Mission Outreach Services: Food pantries from 9 a.m. to noon daily.

Location: 908 S. Loraine St.

Contact: 432-687-2667

Midland Baptist Crisis Center: Food pantry from 9 a.m. to noon daily.

Location: 806 S. Baird St.

Contact: 432-685-1467

MISD Summer Food Service Program (all sites closed July 4):

Contact: 432-240-1840 or visit midlandisd.net (click Parent Tab then click on Meals)

Crockett Elementary: Serves lunch Monday through Friday from 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. through Aug. 21.

Location: 401 E. Parker

Rusk Elementary (opens Monday): Serves breakfast from 7:30-8:15 a.m. and lunch from 11:20 a.m. to 12:20 p.m. Monday through Thursday through July 21.

Location: 2601 Wedgewood

South Elementary: Serves breakfast from 7:30-8:15 a.m. and lunch from 11:00 a.m. to 12:40 p.m. Monday through Friday through July 1.

Location: 200 W. Dakota

Casa de Amigos (opens Monday): Serves lunch from 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Monday through Friday through Aug. 5.

Location: 1101 E. Garden Lane

Greater Ideal Baptist Church: Serves breakfast from 7-8 a.m. and lunch from noon to 1 p.m. Monday through Friday through Aug. 12.

Location: 411 S. Tyler St.

Coventry Pointe Apartments: Serves lunch from 11 a.m. to 1 pm Monday through Friday through Aug. 12

Location: 3329 W. Wadley Ave.

Ranchland Apartments (opens Monday): Serves lunch from noon to 1 p.m. Monday through Friday through Aug. 12

Location: 1212 E. Wadley Ave.

MLK Jr. Park Pavilion: Serves lunch from 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Monday through Friday through Aug. 5.

Location: 2300 Butternut Lane
1:45 p.m.

Police say an officer has shot a man outside the Dallas airport while responding to a domestic disturbance.

Assistant Dallas Police Chief Randall Blankenbaker says a man was using rocks to attack a woman in a car at Dallas Love Field on Friday afternoon when an officer responded to the incident.

Blankenbaker says the man rushed the officer. He says the officer was able to get away before he was rushed again by the man. Blankenbaker says the officer then fired his weapon at the man several times. He says the man was taken to a local hospital, but that his condition wasn't immediately released.

---

1:30 p.m.

Television footage shows a police presence at Dallas Love Field airport following reports of shots fired outside a baggage claim.
"If it requires removing all cabinet ...
Florida Republicans have moved in recent days to distance themselves from one of their own, Attorney General Pam Bondi. The moves come amid allegations she may have acted improperly after accepting a campaign contribution from presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump.

Bondi chose not to investigate Trump University consumer complaints

Bondi accepted $25,000 contribution from Bondi's political committee

Timing of contribution and decision raises questions for Democrats

Trump's $25,000 contribution to Bondi's political committee came as the attorney general's office was receiving consumer complaints charging that Trump University, a now-defunct real estate training program, had defrauded them. Bondi chose not to launch an investigation of Trump University, saying an investigation would have been without merit, but that Democrats charge her decision was motivated by Trump's check.



"The job and role of the Attorney General is to be an advocate for the people of the state," Sen. Dwight Bullard (D-Miami) wrote in a Wednesday letter requesting that U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch convene a federal corruption investigation. "If the Attorney General is not conducting the people's business, that calls into question her true agenda.



Far from coming to Bondi's aid, top-level Republicans have been largely silent about the unfolding scandal. Bondi's most vocal defender, in fact, is former Democratic Attorney General Bob Butterworth, who says his successor was simply operating within the confines of Florida's campaign finance system in accepting Trump's contribution.



Coming in the midst of an unpredictable election year that has many Republicans concerned about Trump's effect on the GOP brand, the scandal could be politically toxic for down-ticket Republican candidates. Some political strategists believe that explains the party's muted reaction.



Beyond the political ramifications, however, government watchdog groups argue the issue deserves attention as an exhibit in the effort to reform the role of money in politics.



"Overall, this whole thing illustrates the corrupt nature of our campaign finance system and calls into question decisions made by public officials when they have a relationship through campaign contributions with a donor," said Ben Wilcox of Integrity Florida.
New details are surfacing in the case surrounding a man arrested after he was holed up in a home in St. Cloud, which burned to the ground Thursday.

Samuel Fertic is charged with battery and sexual battery

Osceola deputies tried to serve him with a warrant Thursday

His home in St. Cloud later burned to the ground

Samuel Fertic, 45, sat in a Osceola County cell while making his first court appearance Friday, when he was ordered held on no bond.

It was a stark contrast to a day earlier, when deputies went to his St. Cloud home to serve him with a warrant on battery charges.

Fertic allegedly refused to come out, and moments after Osceola deputies arrived, the home went up in flames.

Fertic was officially charged with battery and sexual battery.

"The court is highly concerned about the safety of the community as well as mental health issues," Ninth Circuit Court Judge Carol Draper said.

Fertic is no stranger to the law. He served a 10-year prison sentence in Texas for aggravated assault. He also was a suspect in the death of his wife but was charged with a lesser charge.

In an Osceola County Sheriff's charging affidavit (below), Fertic's girlfriend, who News 13 will not name because of our crime guidelines, went to his home asking for money. The battery victim told deputies that Fertic became abusive and told her, "You need to die. You remind me of my ex-wife, and I am going to kill you."

Fertic is being held on the sexual battery charge, but he is not being charged with setting the home on fire, which he owns in St. Cloud. However, fire officials are investigating whether the blaze was purposely set.

"It appears as though he may have set that fire at that residence. That's something the state fire marshal is looking into. If that is the case, he would also be charged with arson," Osceola County Sheriff's Office spokeswoman Twis Lizasuain said.

The judge in this case ordered a full evidentiary hearing on Fertic's mental health. The date for that hearing has not been released.





Osceola County deputies tried to serve a warrant for sexual battery to 45-year-old Samuel Keith Fertic on Thursday, June 9, 2016. After barricading himself in his St. Cloud home, it burned. (Sky 13)
There were three reported shootings during the overnight in Pine Hills that deputies believe are related.

Two gunshot victims from two separate incidents went to hospital for treatment

Woman driving her car was targeted in random shooting she tells deputies

Deputies believe all three shooting incidents are related

It started around 11:16 p.m. Thursday, when Orange County Sheriffs deputies met a 27-year-old gunshot victim at 4915 Cortez Rd.

The male victim was suffering from non-life threatening wounds and Orange County Fire & Rescue Department transported the man to a local hospital for further treatment, deputies stated in a media report.

But while responding to that scene, deputies noticed that a vehicle on Cortez Drive and North Pine Hills Road had several bullet holes in it. The 24-year-old woman driving the vehicle told deputies that while she was driving her vehicle it was targeted in a random shooting when an unknown white vehicle drove passed her and shot her vehicle several times, the report stated.

At around 11:29 p.m., a second gunshot victim arrived at a local hospital with non-life threatening wounds, deputies stated.

The 24-year-old man only told deputies that he was somewhere near North Pine Hills Road when he was shot, but he refused to give any further information, deputies explained.

There is no suspect information at this time, but deputies stated that as they continue their investigation they believe all three shootings are related.
The House on Thursday overwhelmingly passed a rescue package for debt-stricken Puerto Rico, clearing a major hurdle in the ongoing effort to bring relief to the U.S. territory of 3.5 million Americans.

House passes bill to restructure Puerto Rico's $70 billion debt

Creates a financial control board, temporarily lowers minimum wage

Bill now goes to the Senate

The strong bipartisan vote was 297-127 for the legislation that would create a financial control board and allow restructuring of some of Puerto Rico's $70 billion debt. The measure heads to the Senate just three weeks before the territory must make a $2 billion payment.

In a rare display of bipartisanship, the bill had the strong support of President Barack Obama, House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., and Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.

"The Puerto Rican people are our fellow Americans. They pay our taxes, they fight in our wars. We cannot allow this to happen," Ryan said in imploring lawmakers, especially reluctant conservatives in the GOP caucus, to back the bill during debate.

The legislation would allow the seven-member control board to oversee negotiations with creditors and the courts over reducing some debt. It does not provide any taxpayer funds to reduce that debt.

It would also require the territory to create a fiscal plan. Among other requirements, the plan would have to provide "adequate" funds for public pensions, which the government has underfunded by more than $40 billion.

Hours before the vote, the White House strongly endorsed the bill, saying that failing to act could result in an "economic and humanitarian crisis" in the U.S. territory beyond what the island is already facing.

Puerto Rico has missed several payments to creditors and faces the $2 billion installment on July 1. A lengthy recession has forced businesses to close, driven up the unemployment rate and sparked an exodus of hundreds of thousands of people to the U.S. mainland. Some schools on the island lack proper electricity and some hospitals have said they can't provide adequate drugs or care.

The island's only active air ambulance company announced this week that it has suspended its services.

"It is regrettable we have reached this point, but it is reality," said Pedro Pierluisi, Puerto Rico's representative in Congress.

Despite leadership support, the measure faced opposition from some in the ranks of both parties, as some bondholders, unions and Puerto Rican officials have lobbied against it. Some conservatives said it would cheat bondholders, while some Democrats argued the control board has colonial overtones.

Democrats and labor unions have also opposed a provision in the bill that would allow the Puerto Rican government to temporarily lower the minimum wage for some younger workers. A Democratic amendment that would have deleted that provision was rejected, 225-196.

Still, Pelosi said the bill will provide the people of Puerto Rico with the tools they need to overcome the crisis and move forward.

"Today, more than 3 million of our fellow American citizens in Puerto Rico are facing a fiscal and public debt emergency that threatens their economy, their communities and their families," Pelosi said.

In a push to get the bill passed, Obama summoned House Democrats with ties to Puerto Rico to a meeting in the Oval Office on Wednesday, including supporters and opponents of the measure.

Ahead of the vote, some bondholder groups tried to pick off conservatives with the argument that the bill is unfair to creditors and tantamount to a bailout for the territory.

Some conservatives strongly opposed the bill, expressing concern that it could set a precedent for financially-strapped states.

"If Congress is willing to undermine a territory's constitutionally guaranteed bonds today, there is every reason to believe it would be willing to undermine a state's guarantee tomorrow," said Rep. Tom McClintock, R-Calif.

Others are supporting it. Idaho Rep. Raul Labrador, a Republican born in Puerto Rico who is a member of the House Freedom Caucus, helped negotiate the legislation and has worked to sell it to colleagues.

Rep. Sean Duffy of Wisconsin, a Republican who sponsored the bill, fought back against the idea that the legislation is a bailout of any sort.

"The bottom line is, this bill doesn't spend any taxpayer money bailing anybody out," Duffy said.

The Senate has not yet acted, but senators said this week that they are watching the House vote. Texas Sen. John Cornyn, the No. 2 Senate Republican, says that it's likely that the Senate will take up the House version of the bill if it passes the House.
A new clinic in Seminole County is helping veterans who need free legal advice. Several veterans took advantage of the legal assistance Thursday afternoon at the public library in Casselberry.

Seminole County Bar Association Legal Aid Society provides free legal advice for vets

Session happens every second Thursday of the month at Casselberry library

During 20 years of military service, even during a tour in Afghanistan, Jonathan Steele managed to be there for the births of all four of his children.

I was actually one of the few folks to see all four of those, so I consider myself very blessed, said Steele.

But now retired from the military, Jonathan is battling a budget. So when a legal matter came up, he didnt know what to do.

Theres six of us, said Steele. We get by, but theres not a lot of money to throw around like for legal aid.

The Seminole County Bar Association Legal Aid Society was able to help veterans before with legal advice, but those veterans had to have specific qualifications, like for example make a certain amount of money.

But now, thanks to attorneys being willing to donate their time and the public library in Casselberry being willing to donate their meeting space, the society doesnt have to turn any veterans away.

We are able to reach veterans, and its not something where you have to be turned away, or have to go in a circle for legal assistance, said Kayla Meyer, the pro bono coordinator for SCBALAS.

Steele was one of several veterans who stopped by the library in Casselberry to get free legal advice on Thursday.

He says when his family moved out of an apartment recently, they werent able to get several hundred dollars from a security deposit back. Steele says thats money the family could definitely use. Hes hoping an attorney at the clinic will be able to show him if its worth going after that money legally, without losing more money in the process.

Id like to get a professional opinion to say based on what I have or havent done and what they have or havent done, do I have a case here to go forward, said Steele.

Veterans can get the legal advice at the public library in Casselberry. Its offered every second Thursday of the month from one to five in the afternoon.
GET OUR APP Our Spectrum News app is the most convenient way to get the stories that matter to you. Download it here.
It is nearly time to celebrate Fathers Day. How will you celebrate your father? You must bring him to the center for lunch this week.

I happen to know exactly what every dad wants for his special day  a meal ticket, of course! The center offers a $60 meal ticket for 10 meals with the 11th meal free. Now, that is a bargain.

Stopping by the Senior Citizens Center this week should be tops on your list. Why? So you can check out the Texas-shaped domino clock Mark Wegscheid made and donated for a raffle prize. It is sharp! Drawing will be held at the 42 tournament. Tickets are $1 each or 6 for $5. Race over here and get yours soon!

There is still time to sign up for the 42 domino tournament scheduled for Saturday, June 25, from 10 a.m.-4 p.m., with a lunch break. Cost is $12 per person, and lunch will be provided. Trophies will be awarded to 1st and 2nd place winners. Please RSVP by Wednesday, June 22. Recreational, social, or seasoned players are invited to participate. If you love to play 42 and enjoy the fellowship and competition, this is for you. Join us for a boatload of fun!

Prairie House Living Center is scheduled to provide blood pressure screenings from 11:30 a.m.-noon Tuesday.

Dont miss out on our devotional program at 11 a.m. Friday. It may be just what you need to inspire or encourage you. What a wonderful way to wind down the week.

If you have not been in to see us in a while, come over this week. We can ketchup.

Make the center your home away from home!

Menu

Monday, June 13

Sausage, cabbage & potato soup, green beans, tossed salad, cornbread, cake

Tuesday, June 14

King Ranch chicken, red beans, tossed salad, cornbread, chocolate cake

Wednesday, June 15

Chicken pot pie, mixed veggies, tossed salad, biscuit, cake

Thursday, June 16

Meatloaf, sweet peas, tossed salad, biscuit, cake

Friday, June 17

Stuffed bell pepper, carrots, tossed salad, biscuit, cake

Norma Casanova is director of Hale County Senior Citizens Center.

806-296-5201
MERIDEN  Canberra Industries Inc., a developer and manufacturer of radiation detection solutions, will move its high-end detector production to Oak Ridge, Tennessee beginning in January 2017.



The move was prompted in part by what one company official called a challenging state business climate.



Company management notified its 300 employees this week that the plant at 800 Research Parkway will no longer manufacture germanium-detectors and related instruments. The move affects about 120 employees, said Bud Sielaff, Canberra vice president of global marketing. Some will relocate to Oak Ridge, others will transfer within the Canberra operation and some will be terminated. The move begins in January and should be concluded by June 2017.



The production move will leave behind Canberras corporate offices and administrative functions at the 171,057-square-foot headquarters.



We want all our employees to be on board to help support the move, said Sielaff.



Improving efficiencies was one reason for the production shift. Canberra also wanted to be closer to Tennessees technology hub, and away from a challenging state business climate. Sielaff pointed at the states corporate business taxes, personal property taxes and other demands on businesses as factors in the decision.



Canberra announced a $1.2 million expansion at its Oak Ridge facility in 2011 when it announced it was moving its safeguards and military product development and manufacturing to the new plant, according to the Oakridger.com. The expansion promised 45 additional jobs in the Oak Ridge region.



Oak Ridge Community Development Director Kathryn Baldwin said Friday she was told Canberra would be expanding its facility on the existing site, but no plans had been filed in her office.



I knew something was in the works, Baldwin said.



City Economic Development Director Juliet Burdelski was aware of Canberras plan, but because the company has given itself a year to relocate its production operations there is no deal yet to fill the remaining space.



Canberra is also closing on a sale from its former parent Areva to Mirion Technologies. Sielaff said the acquisition has no short term bearing on the relocation.



mgodin@record-journal.com (203) 317-2255 Twitter: @Cconnbiz














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CINCINNATI  The As have made a flurry of moves since losing their fifth straight game Wednesday, and pitcher Daniel Mengden will benefit by making his major-league debut when he starts Saturday against the Reds.

Dream come true, Mengden said in the As clubhouse before Friday nights series opener. Everything I wanted since I was a little kid.

Mengden, 23, who was acquired from Houston in Julys Scott Kazmir trade, had a 1.19 combined ERA with Double-A Midland and Triple-A Nashville. His parents, Joe and Beth, plan to see his son pitch, coming in from Houston.

With Rich Hill going on the disabled list Thursday and Jesse Hahn optioned to Nashville Friday, the As had rotation openings, and nobody seemed to be dominating hitters like Mengden, who was 2-0 with a 0.78 ERA in four starts for Midland and 3-1 with a 1.39 ERA in seven starts for Nashville.

I asked Mengden what the key for him has been.

It really started in the offseason. This was the first offseason I was allowed to work out fully, he said, noting he had a stress fracture in his back when drafted out of Texas A&M by the Astros in the fourth round in 2014. I rested my first offseason. But this past one, I was able to lift some weights and gain some good weight, and I felt really good coming into spring training.

In the Kazmir trade, the As also got catcher Jacob Nottingham and shipped him to the Brewers in the Khris Davis deal.

When I was with the Astros, they were making a push and we knew there were going to make some moves, Mengden said. But some guys on the team were always joking that I might have a little safety blanked over me because I was from Houston. But its a business, and we never know where were going to be. If you would have told me in spring training Id be in the big leagues at this time of year, I probably wouldve told you you were crazy.

In other moves since Wednesday, the As traded Chris Coghlan to the Cubs and recalled pitcher Zach Neal and infielder-outfielder Max Muncy.

John Shea is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: jshea@sfchronicle.com Twitter: JohnSheaHey
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Sometimes the story comes through the find. On a recent flea market visit, I found a brochure about Yosemite National Park, with beautiful photo-lithographic images. Although undated, you can tell that it was published in the 1920's. I also found three photos that were dated December 24, 1914, and someone's personal photo album from a trip to Yosemite in the 1940's.

The National Parks Service is preparing to mark its 100th anniversary this summer. But one of the system's crowned jewels - Yosemite - was a tourist mecca long before 1916. A recent trip to the flea market landed me a brochure that dates back the earlier days of tourist exploration in and around the park.

Although undated, you can tell that it was published in the 1920's. I also found three photos that were dated December 24, 1914, and someone's personal photo album from a trip to Yosemite in the 1940's. I've included the ones I found interesting in the slideshow above.

The park lies near the crest of the Sierra Nevada, with peaks rising above 13,000 feet. While the park covers an area 36 by 48 miles, many of its most spectacular sights are grouped together and viewed from a remarkably small area, the Yosemite Valley.

The photo collection hits many of the famed attractions, but also includes a number of backcountry treasures. The park itself predates the photos. Yosemite became a national park in 1890. The federal agency tasked with managing the parks would not be formed for another 26 years.

As reported in the San Francisco Chronicle this year, there was a dispute over the rights to the names of some of the landmarks, set off when one of the parks contractors lost control of the properties.

The National Park Service lists 60 properties that are on the National Register of historical landmarks, including the Ahwahnee Hotel, LeConte Memorial Lodge and the Wawona Hotel. For thousands of years before Europeans arrived in the mid-1800's, the area was home to the Ahwahneechee Village of Miwok people.

Bob Bragman is a producer for SFGATE. His writing reflects his love of the Bay Area, in addition to his passion for vintage pop culture, ephemera and vernacular photographs. To see more of his content, please click here.
Three San Antonio startup companies are splitting $20,000 in seed funding from insurance giant The Hartford after a Venture Challenge SA competition this week at Cafe Commerce, a city resource center operated by LiftFund.

The startups and their owners are Kelley Slagle from The Vinegar Joint, which got $10,000; Morgan Weidinger from Ratio, which received $5,000; and Stella Bustos from Thera Pillow, which got $5,000. The companies were selected from among seven competitors who presented 90-second pitches to Venture Challenge SA judges.
A 52-year-old Palo Alto man is facing hate crime, strong-arm robbery and hit-and-run charges after he lost his temper over a parking dispute with an Indian taxi driver and started yelling racial slurs at the man, police announced Thursday.

The incident took place May 27, when David Charles Cirner parked his black 2015 Toyota Camry in two spaces at a parking lot on Urban Lane, just south of University Circle in Palo Alto, police stated in a news release.

The victim, who police described as a man in his 40s from India, pulled up behind Cirner in a 2005 Ford Crown Victoria taxi cab and asked Cirner to move his car into one spot so he could park.

Thats when Cirner shouted racial epithets and the man returned to his cab. Then Cirner got out of his car and tried to punch the victim from the passenger side door of the taxi while continuing to shout slurs, authorities said.

The victim took out his phone to take a picture of his attacker, prompting Cirner to move to the drivers side window and punch the man in the jaw, police said.

Then he snatched the phone out of the victims hand and threw the device at the mans head, cracking the screen. Authorities said Cirner went back into his car and backed twice into the cab while trying to reverse out of the spot before jumping a curb and driving west on University Circle.

Two witnesses saw the incident, and authorities said one of them called police.

Cirner was found a short time later, police said.

The victim did not need medical attention, but police said he complained of jaw pain. Both cars had minor damage from the incident, authorities said.

Cirner was booked into Santa Clara County Main Jail on suspicion of felony robbery for taking the victims phone. He was also booked on suspicion of two misdemeanor counts of hate crimes for the physical assault and damaging the personal property, along with misdemeanor hit-and-run.

Jenna Lyons is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: jlyons@sfchronicle.com Twitter: JennaJourno
Photo: CDCR / /

A Death Row inmate housed at San Quentin State Prison slipped out of handcuffs Thursday evening and used his shackles to attack a correctional officer, officials said.

Jesse Manzo, a 27-year-old gang member, was being escorted to his cell after a shower around 5 p.m. when he somehow got loose from his handcuffs and used them as a weapon, said officials from the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.
Photo: Michael Parmelee/CBS 2016 CBS Broadcasting, Inc. All Rights Reserved, Photographer / Photo: Michael Parmelee/CBS 2016 CBS Broadcasting, Inc. All Rights Reserved

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If you find whats happening during this presidential election year as scary as it is wacky, try a few doses of the new political satire BrainDead. It could be the perfect TV antidote.

Thats how one of its stars, Tony Shalhoub of Monk fame, views it. He characterized BrainDead as a refreshing summer cocktail, a kind of release from the saturation weve been hit with this particular election cycle.

BrainDead debuts at 9 p.m. Monday on CBS.

Comparing the series to an octopus, because there are so many arms to it, he called it a mashup of The West Wing and Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

It has a little something for everyone: political junkies, people who want to laugh, those who like thrillers and sci-fi, said Shalhoub, who plays a dogged Republican senator in the series.

It comes from Robert and Michelle King, the creators of longtime political TV hit The Good Wife, and sci-fi impresario Ridley Scott. The backdrop is the current presidential campaigns and the media furor that surrounds them.

There are a lot of flat-screen TVs showing CNN, Fox News, mentioning Trump, Hillary, Bernie, all the characters, Shalhoub said.

The Body Snatchers aspect? Alien bugs from a meteor crawl into peoples ears and infect their brains. It doesnt take long for the insects to make their way to Washington, D.C., and into the heads of members of Congress and Capitol Hill staffers.

The result: People get more extreme in any direction they initially are leaning, Shalhoub said.

The results are funny as well as creepy.

You could say our show is in competition with the comedy thats actually happening on the political stage right now, Shalhoub said.

The story begins when a young documentary filmmaker, Laurel Healy (Mary Elizabeth Winstead, 10 Cloverfield Lane), comes to Capitol Hill to visit her political dynasty family. In spite of her resistance, her dad persuades her to stay and work for her brother Luke (Danny Pino, Cold Case), a Democratic senator.

It doesnt take long for her to notice something sinister is happening. She begins hearing about people who arent acting like themselves anymore. Even ickier, there have been instances of exploding heads. In one of the grosser scenes, Laurel experiences one mans bloody, brain-bursting demise first-hand.

She also notices swarms of antlike creatures crawling around offices. And why are people playing the same song, You Might Think by the Cars, over and over?

Meanwhile, Laurel becomes unlikely friends with Gareth (Aaron Tveit, Grease: Live), the manipulative legislative director to a prominent Republican, Sen. Red Wheatus (Shalhoub). Other allies include Gustav (Johnny Ray Gill, Underground), an eccentric genius who is one of the first to recognize that something is attacking the Capitol, and Rochelle (Nikki M. James, The Good Wife), a medical resident whose father is the first infestation fatality.

Together, they work to identify these otherworldly beings, stop their infiltration and perhaps save the world.

Some of BrainDeads more memorable moments of initial episodes are spent with Shalhoubs Sen. Wheatus.

When we first meet Red, hes kind of a guy whos let himself go, Shalhoub said. Hes been beaten down by the system  a lush who drinks a lot and chases women.

While passed out on his couch one night, the bugs find their way into his ear and nibble at his brain.

Nightmarish, Shalhoub said. However, he doesnt see his infection as a bad thing. He feels like its revived him. He gets sober, cleans up his act. He becomes uncompromising, a real hardliner. Stronger than he was, he goes on the attack.

Yes, sort of Trumplike, he acknowledged.

However, Shalhoub sees Red as an amalgam of several politicos, including Texas Ted Cruz. Hes a political kind of shark, a certain level of smugness to him.

Theres also a Jeb Bush aspect, he said, in that hes everybodys buddy, that Southern buddy thing.

The role is certainly a departure from his sympathetic sleuthing character, Adrian Monk, whom he played for eight years.

Its nice to explore other aspects of our personal neuroses, Shalhoub said. And I get to work with amazing actors and writers who give us great material  a fun ride.

Judging by what Ive seen so far, BrainDead could be just what the doctor ordered in a TV summer thats top heavy with reality and short on laughs.

The hour can get horrific, yes, but its also smart, sassy and stocked with gags that might help you smile through the pain of this political season.

Jeanne Jakles column appears Wednesdays and Sundays in mySA, and she writes online at mySA.com/Jakle.. Email her at jjakle@express-news.net.
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KLRN-TV is mourning the loss of Joanne Winik, longtime president of the station and a true public television force.

Winik, 77, died earlier today, KLRN reported.

According to a release, Winik's career at the station spanned 37 years. She served 20 years as its president and general manager.

"Joanne Winik was devoted to KLRN and was loved by her team," said Arthur Rojas Emerson, current president and CEO of the station. "Her memory and her many accomplishments will continue to live and impact, not only with all of us at the station but with all who grew intellectually by watching programs that only KLRN delivers."

Winik, who was born in Pleasant Prairie, Wisc., first came to San Antonio in 1967 to handle special events for HemisFair '68.

She began her career at KLRN in 1972 as its auction manager, and was soon promoted to director of development and station operations.

Winik was described as a mentor to every young person who crossed her path.

She became president of KLRN in 1987, and oversaw the station's growth from leased space at the Institute of Texan Cultures to its own headquarters at 501 Broadway in downtown San Antonio.

According to KLRN, she served the community with distinction and devotion, and was active on numerous boards such as The Chamber, the United Way, the World Affairs Council, the Association of Public Television Stations, Luby's and the Public Broadcasting System.

Prior to working for KLRN, she worked at KONO radio as director of public service.

Services for Winik are pending.

jjakle@express-news.net
Submitted to the Tribune

HARBOR BEACH  Zion Lutheran is hosting a Colorpalooza event from 6 to 10 p.m. Saturday in Lincoln Park.

The event includes inflatables, lawn games, Knockerball, Lions food truck, face painting with glow in the dark paint, and a color run for kids up to 13 years old: under 7 run just under half a mile and 7-13 run about 1.2 miles. This is not a timed run  its just for fun. Corn starch colored powder will be thrown, and a glow dance/night dance will immediately follow the run.

The cost is $25 per runner, and includes shirt, sunglasses (to wear during the run and to keep), glow necklaces/bracelets, stickers in goody bag, all events. If a child does not want to run, he or she can purchase a bracelet for $10 to enjoy all of the events except the run.

The cost is $15 for an adult T-shirt if a parent would like to run with their child/children.

Proceeds from Colorpalooza will go into a discretionary fund for Zion Lutheran School.

The event is available for all children under age 13 in the area.
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SAN ANTONIO  Father Virgilio Elizondo "clutched" a brown-beaded rosary in his left hand as he shot himself in the right temple in his home in March, according to an autopsy report released Friday.

Elizondo, a renowned religious scholar and former rector of San Fernando Cathedral, was found dead just after noon at his West Side home at 2027 W. French Place on March 14.

Elizondo's death was ruled a suicide by one self-inflicted gunshot wound to the right temple, according to the autopsy conducted by the Bexar County Medical Examiner.

The bullet Elizondo fired was never recovered and Elizondo had $12 cash and two blood-soaked handkerchiefs in his pants pockets, the report said.

MORE: Father Virgilio Elizondo asks for forgiveness and mercy in his suicide note

Elizondo, 80, had been living under a cloud of suspicion after a lawsuit filed in Bexar County last year accused him of sexually abusing an unidentified boy more than 30 years ago  a charge he vehemently denied.

He did not mention the accusations in a typewritten suicide note found at the scene in which he called himself a sinner and asked for forgiveness.

RELATED: Two San Antonio priests accused of sexual assault of child in lawsuit

The young boy, now an adult identified as John Doe, filed suit last year against Elizondo; a former priest, Jesus Armando Dominguez, who he accused of molesting him for years; the Archdiocese of San Antonio; and other church officials.

The lawsuit alleges that when John Doe reported the abuse by Dominguez to Elizondo, Elizondo kissed and fondled the boy and that no one did anything to help the boy.

SEE ALSO: Ex-priest says hes not guilty in death of McAllen teacher

Staff Writers Elaine Ayala and Mark D. Wilson contributed to this report.

kparker@mysa.com

Twitter: @KoltenParker
To the very end, Helen M. Smith displayed a delightful wit and abiding faith, as was clear to everyone who cared for her during her last hospital stay.

She kept the doctors and nurses in stitches, recalled her son Tim Smith.

When one of the doctors asked her, Have you been under any undue stress lately? she answered, Im so upset over Baylor firing Art Briles, and that darned Donald Trump! he said.

Afterward, we joked about having to add to her grave marker: Sent to an early grave by Donald Trump and Kenneth Starr, he added.

Smith, 88, died Tuesday in San Antonio from complications of a stroke.

Born here on Nov. 9, 1927, she graduated from Thomas Jefferson High School in 1945 and went on to earn a degree in education and English from Baylor University.

More Information Helen Mansfield Smith Born: Nov. 9, 1927, San Antonio Died: June 7, 2016, San Antonio Preceded by: Parents Barney and Louine Mansfield; husband G. Bert Smith Jr.; and sister Eleanor Hailey. Survived by: Brother Barney Jr.; daughter Sunny Smith; sons Tim and Dan Smith; seven grandchildren; and one great-grandchild. Services: Memorial service at 2 p.m. Saturday at Woodland Baptist Church, 15315 Huebner Road. See More Collapse

Smith taught school and immersed herself in volunteer organizations and associations, including the Daughters of the American Revolution.

She was also active at Trinity Baptist Church, where her parents were founding members, and worked in the registrars office at Trinity University.

She was very religious and had a real good sense of humor. She had to. She was married to a lawyer, said her brother-in-law Bill Hailey, 93, also a lawyer.

Her private passion was genealogy and exploring her rich ancestry.

On some of her trips to Europe, shed go and sit in libraries in London, looking for connections, her son said.

Im real proud of my heritage. My great-great-great-grandfather Moses Hanes fought in the Revolutionary War, she wrote in a family history book.

Another ancestor, Christopher Columbus Gannaway, fought for the Confederacy and is buried at the Civil War section of the Texas State Cemetery. Yet another, George Childress, was the author of the Texas Declaration of Independence.

Even her father, Barney Mansfield, had a date with history on July 9, 1918.

He was one of the sailors who survived the sinking of the USS San Diego, the only U.S. ship sunk in World War I. It went down about 50 miles off of New York City, said Tim Smith.

Smith called upon her uncommon faith at the hospital when she refused to let doctors insert a stomach feeding tube.

She said, Hey, Tim, Im going to laugh all the way to heaven, and what she meant was that she was ready to go to heaven, he said.

She had told the doctors that morning: No tubes, no machines, Jesus is taking care of me. Jesus will handle it.

jmaccormack@express-news.net
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A South Texas woman pleaded guilty to a sexual exploitation charge Wednesday after she was indicted in May for allegedly recording numerous sexual assaults of children as young as two.

Rosa Linda Ganceres, 53, pleaded guilty in a Corpus Christi court to recording her boyfriend Daniel Benson Billman Junior, a convicted sex offender, engaging in sexual acts with a toddler and child that Ganceres babysat, according to court documents.

The incident came to light in August 2015 after a single mother of three kids reported to authorities that her 7-year-old daughter told her she had been sexually assaulted at a motel, Ganceres' apartment and her Ford Explorer, the document said.

RELATED: Odessa teen charged with sexual assault of child after admitting to raping relative

Ganceres had advertised her childcare services on Craigslist, and the Aransas Pass mother responded to the ad, according to the criminal complaint.

Police interviewed Ganceres shortly after the mother of the 7-year-old went to authorities, and Ganceres told authorities she was aware the child had been sexually assaulted.

According to documents, Ganceres went outside to smoke a cigarette and came back into her apartment to find Billman pulling up his pants while the child sat on the day bed with her sibling.

RELATED: BCSO: San Antonio Catholic Youth Organization coach arrested for continuous sexual assault of child

Ganceres told police she thought her boyfriend wanted her to continue babysitting the kids so he could continue sexually assaulting them.

After Ganceres' interview with police, Billman was arrested and authorities confiscated his cellphone, which yielded numerous pornographic images of children, as well as videos of sexual assault, the document said.

One of the videos displayed Billman sexually assaulting a two-year-old. A complaint against Ganceres said the video captured the assault of a "visibly upset and trembling" two-year-old on a blanket on the floor of Ganceres' apartment.

RELATED: Ex-NEISD coach gets probation in indecency with a child case

Billman, who has 14 previous criminal convictions, according to a report from the Dallas Morning News, can be heard asking "Film it. Can you see it?" and Ganceres responding "yes."

Authorities contacted the parents of the second victim who said they stumbled upon the same Craigslist childcare ad the 7-year-old's mother had found, and left her daughter with Ganceres once overnight in July of 2015.

Ganceres told authorities she made no effort to stop the assaults of the children, and faces up to 30 years in prison.

Billman was sentenced to 50 years in prison.

MMedina@mySA.com

Twitter: @MariahMedinaaa
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An associate of the Sinaloa Cartel who was arrested while vacationing in San Antonio in 2014 pleaded guilty Friday to a money laundering charge.

Jorge Martin Torres, 39, admitted using a communication facility in furtherance of drug trafficking, thus helping associates launder money between Chicago and Mexico and faciliating the purchase of aircraft and high-end luxury vehicles in the United States to be transported and used in Mexico.

Among his actions were a series of wire transfers totaling $300,000 in drug proceeds that helped the sons of cartel leader Joaquin El Chapo Guzman purchase, refurbish, and transfer from Ohio to Mexico a 1982 Cessna Turbo 210 plane. The plane was shipped to a business in El Paso before being taken to Mexico, a U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agent testified in San Antonios federal court during Torres bail hearing two years ago.

RELATED: These photos with cartel ties were banned from social media

Torres was part of a network of money launderers who transferred narcotics proceeds through multiple means, including structured bank deposits, bulk cash smuggling, and international wires, to obfuscate the source and origin of the funds, according to the plea deal.

These funds were then used to cover expenses incurred in the course of the drug distribution conspiracy and to purchase items through straw intermediaries to hide the fact that they were purchased with drug proceeds and ultimately bound for members of the conspiracy in Mexico, the document states.

Torres lawyer, Albert Flores of San Antonio, downplayed his clients association with the cartel, but confirmed his client admitted guilt for his actions. Torres faces a maximum of four years in prison, Flores said.

Its a guilty plea to a reduced telephone wire fraud charge, Flores said. He facilitated the purchase of a plane and helped in the movement of money to transport the plane to Mexico.

Torres was arrested as he and his wife arrived Oct. 28, 2014, at San Antonio International Airport. He was shipped to Chicago to face charges by prosecutors who still have a pending case against Guzman, his sons and others in the cartel.

RELATED: The rising Mexican drug cartel figures that could replace Joaquin 'El Chapo' Guzman

The DEA agent, Patrick Curran, also testified evidence was recovered during the Chicago investigation showing a list of several exotic cars believed to have been acquired with help from Torres for Guzmans sons.

There were letters (listing) luxury, high end vehicles, their values and who is responsible for each vehicle, Curran testified. The letters indicate Lamborghinis, Maseratis, several BMWs, Porsches, Mercedes.

gcontreras@express-news.net
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A West Texas churchs former youth minister was arrested along with five other men in a two-day sexual predator sting last weekend in West Texas.

The men, ranging in age from 20 to 46, face a felony charge of online solicitation of a minor.

RELATED: Sextet of alleged child predators arrested in Central Texas sting operation near Fort Hood

Matthew Holman was a youth minister at Westwood Baptist Church in Odessa, according to the churchs Facebook page.

"It is with great sadness that we have to address this issue," Pastor Weeks DuBose said in a statement. "Matthew Holman, who has been in the employ of the church as youth minister since mid-January, was dismissed from this position as of Sunday morning June 5th. The privileges of church membership were withdrawn from Matthew, as well. There have been no reports or questions of impropriety regarding Matthew from anyone."

DuBose told CBS 7 News in West Texas that Holman showed no signs that would make them suspect him of such behavior.

Never, never, never, we never found anything in his background that would indicate this, DuBose told the TV station.

RELATED: Florida sex predator sting that nabbed 101 suspects involved Disney World, SeaWorld employees

During the two-day investigation, special agents posed as minors online and chatted with the suspects, according to the Midland Reporter-Telegram. During those interactions with the officers, the suspects allegedly brought up sexual content as a topic of discussion.

Midland County Sheriff Gary Painter said in an interview with mySA.com that this is a wake-up call for the city and hes glad investigators were able to get these men off the streets.

I think theyre sick and depraved, he said. Its very sad that they would try to attract children into a sexual encounter.

Painter confirmed that six people were arrested in the sting, but since 2013 there have been 26 people arrested on the same charge of online solicitation of a minor. Since the suspects used electronic devices and the internet to allegedly commit the crime, they could face federal charges, Painter said.

The suspects include: James Shannon Dyche, 41, of Grandfalls; Jeremiah Jordan Easley, 27, of Midland; Fabian Ray Galindo, 20, of Odessa; Lyle Joseph Heinzman, 23, of Midland; Matthew Holman, 35, of Odessa; and Chad Alan Potts, 46, of Odessa, the Midland Reporter-Telegram reports.

RELATED: 17 arrested in Texas in national underage sex sting

twhite@mysa.com

Twitter: @tylerlwhite
Jesse Rodriguez was a busy man.

Active for more than 50 years in the West Side Lions Club, which he helped establish, Rodriguez also belonged to the Alamo Council of the Navy League and was an avid genealogist, researching his own family, and that of his late wife, and writing a book in both English and Spanish to help others get started in discovering their roots.

We used to go to lunch with him on Thursdays, if he could pencil us in, his longtime friend and fellow genealogist Yolanda Patino said. He had a full schedule.

Rodriguez died June 6 at 95.

A 1937 graduate of Jefferson High School, Rodriguez studied business at St. Marys University, joining the Navy after graduating in 1941.

Stationed in San Diego when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, Rodriguez and his fellow seamen remained on alert for three days in anticipation of a coastal attack that never occurred.

More Information Jesse Rodriguez Born: Jan. 2, 1921, San Antonio Died: June 6, 2016, San Antonio Preceded by: Wife Wilma Wilson Thomas Rodriguez; parents Leonides Valdez and James Rodriguez. Survived by: Daughter Elizabeth Jenkerson and son-in-law Steve; sons Jim Rodriguez and daughter-in-law Mary, and Bill Rodriguez; five grandchildren, and three great-grandchildren. Services: Visitation at 5:30 p.m., rosary at 7 p.m., Monday at Angelus Funeral Home, 1119 N. St. Mary's St. Mass at 11:30 a.m. Tuesday at St. Pius X Catholic Church, 3907 Harry Wurzbach, followed by burial at Fort Sam Houston National Cemetery. See More Collapse

After attending midshipman school at Northwestern University, Rodriguez was commissioned as an ensign.

He was assigned down in Corpus Christi in  May of 1942, put in charge of a patrol boat, his son Jim Rodriguez said. They were off Port Aransas looking for German U-boats.

Rodriguez was commanding a supply ship in the Pacific Theater in 1944 when he was injured in a fall and sent to the Mare Island Naval Hospital in California.

It was there he met his future wife, a Naval officer in administration.

As the commander of his ship, Rodriguez had created and signed his own paperwork to be hospitalized.

My mother  wanted to know who this guy was who signed his own orders, Jim Rodriguez said. She was involved in trying to straighten that out.

Marrying in 1947  Rodriguez received a medical discharge in 1946  the couple settled in San Antonio, starting a family right away.

After working at his familys business, Rodriguez Bros. Memorials, for several years, Rodriguez started a 22-year career at Kelly AFB in 1963, working as an inventory unit supervisor.

It wasnt until retiring in 1985 that he became interested in genealogy.

He got slowly involved in it, his son said. His relatives had related some of their previous research to him.

Becoming a fixture at both the San Antonio Genealogical and Historical Society and Los Bexarenos Genealogical and Historical Society, Rodriguez gained a reputation for his generosity.

He was a mentor to a lot of us, longtime friend and fellow genealogist Dennis Moreno said. Most of the people who joined normally were beginners, like I was; anything he tackled, he worked on it until it was perfect.

mheidbrink@express-news.net
Donald Trump wants the judge in the Trump University case to recuse himself because he is Hispanic. The judge was born in Indiana to Mexican-American parents.

Robert Maldonado, president of the Hispanic National Bar Association, says there is no conflict of interest, and Trump has no evidence to support his accusation. The judge is a public servant who merely opened one of 3,000 cases filed against Trump and his business associates.

I doubt Trump has used this excuse in any other case against him. It is offensive to all Hispanics to suggest we would treat people differently because of their race. It is offensive to blacks that we might treat people differently because of their skin color. It is offensive to the LGBT community that we might treat people differently because of their sexual orientation.

It should be offensive to all Americans that Trump is a candidate for president.

Adam Castillo

Burden of loyalty

Tell me who you hang around with and Ill tell you who you are.

The backing by Republican Party leaders of Donald Trump is a signal to voters. These leaders, due to party loyalty, are having to admit they have the same viewpoints, understanding, feelings and beliefs as their candidate. Party loyalty is not always the way to vote for the most qualified candidate.

Adolfo S. Gomez

Scent of racism

Pop quiz: He is the big Limburger cheese of his party. Stinks to high heaven, but his party has no choice but hold its nose and eat it, anyway, just to have a meal. Otherwise, the party will be starved of power for another eight years.

Who could this be? If you guess right, you have license to call him The Big Limburger Cheese as we stand in awe, unable to get upwind of the fumes. Racism by any other name would smell the same.

George Cooper, Boerne

Save water now

We are fortunate in San Antonio to have the Edwards Aquifer. Our fortune continues with the abundant recent rains.

Unfortunately, with summer heat around the corner, the Edwards will be subjected to substantial drawdowns when residents water to retain their beautiful green lawns spawned by that rain.

I urge SAWS to institute watering restrictions earlier rather than later to preserve the aquifer level. Please be smart. Consider this proposal.

Ron Bird, Helotes
Lets talk a bit about false equivalencies.

The other day, U.S. Rep. Filemon Vela, a Brownsville Democrat, wrote this in an open letter to Donald Trump about his proposed border wall: Take your border wall and shove it up your ass.

This sparked a bit of harumphing. Just because Trump is down in the gutter, theres no need for others to get down there with him. Or so the theory goes.

But pundits go there to show you how fair we can be. If were going to call Trump out on his speech, were going to call out everyone. And this is a false equivalency that, no matter how couched, neglects frequency and level of provocation.

Lets see, which of the two, Vela or Trump, more frequently uses incendiary speech? And is it reasonable that people whose cultures have been maligned  not just once, but for months  should be perpetually unperturbed? As in, the proper reply being, See here, sir. We will be having none of that.

That unsunny place is precisely where that border wall belongs.

Trumps ascendancy has been helped along by just the kind of caution, milquetoast rebuke and general timidity that this false equivalency suggests is appropriate for those not named Trump. The result: The guy named Trump is the GOPs presumptive nominee, his reward for hateful trash talk that makes barroom and locker-room chatter seem like genteel conversation at high tea.

Look, Im not talking about donning the Trump persona nonstop. Marco Rubio tried that. It was laughable. Im talking about talking plain in understandable, unmistakable language when the provocation warrants. Vela did that, no matter the imagery.

Vela is not some fount of gutter talk. He is not known for being a firebrand. He is a lawyer turned congressman whose father was a federal judge. He is a law-and-order guy.

He is also Latino, folks purposely targeted by Trump. And it was even more personal for Vela. By implication, Trump questioned the ability of Velas father to have been a fair judge. That happened when Trump questioned whether federal Judge Gonzalo Curiel  a Mexican, according to Trump, though Curiel was born in Indiana  can fairly hear the Trump University case.

So, lets look at how others have reacted to Trumps antics lo these many months  more importantly, today. Well, before they supported him, they loathed him, but not all of them openly or forthrightly. No matter; they are lining up to back him now, even as they acknowledge that he spews racist, non-factual tripe.

So, we have House Speaker Paul Ryan saying he will back the nominee though he has also said that what Trump said of Curiel is a textbook example of racism. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is there with him in backing Trump, as is Texas Sen. John Cornyn and most other GOP luminaries.

Cmon. Trumps pronouncements do not represent differences akin to whether youre for or against a carbon tax. These latter-day friends of Trump have placed party over national interest. This craven behavior should haunt them the remainder of their political days. These are people positioned to have stopped a Trump nomination. They didnt. That, too, should haunt them.

Or they are people who said forthright things once upon a time but, now? Oh, never mind, we were just joshin. Looking at you, Rick Perry and Rubio.

Who ever thought Id write this, but Sen. Ted Cruz seems the most principled of the lot. He, as of this writing, has not backed Trump, though this likely has more to do with bruised feelings and whether Trump is a true conservative. OK, thats still a principle.

Trump is slated to visit San Antonio on Friday for a private fundraising luncheon. We can likely expect protests. I hope there are  peaceful ones. Violence falls right into Trumps designs. But silence cannot be an option when it comes to Trump. Thats gone on too long.

Speaking of false equivalencies, party victory is not the same as principle. And, Rep. Vela, you will sorely disappoint a whole lot of folks if you end up apologizing.

o.ricardo.pimentel@express-news.net

Twitter: @oricardopimente
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President Obama and other leading Democrats moved quickly Thursday to back Hillary Clinton as their partys nominee for president, signaling to Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders that its time to end his surprisingly effective insurgent campaign.

Look, I know how hard this job can be, Obama said in a 90-second video released by the Clinton campaign. Thats why I know Hillary will be so good at it. In fact, I dont think theres ever been someone so qualified to hold this office.

Obamas enthusiastic endorsement of his former secretary of state came just hours after a White House meeting between Sanders and the president.

While White House spokesman Josh Earnest would only describe the meeting as a friendly conversation that was focused on the future, the president probably gave Sanders a heads-up about the endorsement and the need for a united Democratic effort against Republican Donald Trump in the fall.

Sanders is putting the party in a very delicate situation, said David Caputo, president emeritus and a political science professor at Pace University in New York. From the partys standpoint, they would much rather have him gone, but they also want to turn his millions of young supporters to Clinton in November.

Deference to Sanders

That means Democrats are handling Sanders with kid gloves. At her Brooklyn victory celebration Tuesday night, Clinton praised the senator for the extraordinary campaign he has run, which she said was very good for the Democratic Party and for America. In the same video in which he endorsed Clinton, the president gave his thanks to Sanders, for shining a spotlight on issues like economic inequality.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., also met with Sanders Thursday and said, Im not pushing him to do anything, adding that the senator needs a little time to decide what to do.

Sanders seemed to recognize the changing political landscape. While his fiery speech in San Diego Tuesday night after losing the California primary to Clinton was anything but conciliatory, his tone had changed when he spoke with reporters after meeting with Obama.

While saying that he would compete in the final Democratic primary, in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday, and take his favored issues to the Democratic National Convention in July, Sanders didnt talk about trying to flip Clintons superdelegates or challenge her nomination.

Focus on Trump

I spoke briefly to Secretary Clinton on Tuesday night and I congratulated her on her very strong campaign, Sanders said. I look forward to meeting with her in the near future to see how we can work together to defeat Donald Trump.

But Sanders backers, many of them young people in their first foray into politics, may not be quick to jump on Clintons bandwagon.

Robert Hirsch, a 62-year-old attorney living in San Franciscos Haight neighborhood, said in an email that not all Sanders supporters feel the same way about Clinton.

Of the Sanders backers he knows who are 30 years old and older, almost every one of them is going to support Hillary, he said. No one supports her with the enthusiasm he/she had for Bernie, but Trump scares the s out of all these folks.

Its different for some younger people, Hirsch said.

I also know a couple of young voters (in their 20s) who have trashed Hillary on social media and say they will not support her, Hirsch said. Neither (of them) will vote for Trump, or so they say now.

Its going to be hard for many of Sanders most progressive supporters to switch their backing to Clinton, whom they believe doesnt share the burning concerns that brought them to Sanders, said RoseAnn DeMoro, executive director of the National Nurses United union and one of the senators most visible backers.

Concerns about Clinton

Bernie has spent a year educating the country on economic and political injustice, and he shouldnt stop now, she said. With him gone, it will give (Clinton) a mandate to move to the right.

But another progressive leader, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, endorsed Clinton on MSNBCs The Rachel Maddow Show Thursday night. Former Maryland Gov. Martin OMalley, an early dropout from the Democratic presidential race, and Vice President Joe Biden also said theyre supporting the former first lady.

Weve seen this show before, said Larry Gerston, a former political science professor at San Jose State University. Typically, most of the (opponents)  some grudgingly  come over from the other side.

Very, very few of Sanders supporters are likely to defect to Trump, even though he shares the senators outsider image, he added.

The contest in the fall will be between two very different candidates, Gerston said. Its not shades of gray, but night and day.

Gerston said he expects Sanders to endorse Clinton well before the Philadelphia convention, but his support wont come for free.

He will try and negotiate for something, such as a say on the vice presidential choice to ensure the No. 2 pick is as close to his values as possible, he said. But (presidential) candidates are usually more agreeable to having changes in the party platform, since no one reads that anyway.

Sanders already has indicated he wants his progressive crusade to continue, even if he leaves the presidential race.

Building a movement

Our campaign is about building a movement, which brings working people and young people into the political process to create a government which represents all of us, he said after his meeting with Obama.

Sanders has begun endorsing candidates and urging his supporters to contribute to their campaigns. In recent days, he announced his support for Russ Feingold, a Wisconsin Democrat looking to reclaim the Senate seat he lost six years ago. He also backed Democratic congressional candidates in New York and Michigan, which gave both men a much-needed surge of financial support.

Those endorsements have even extended to local races, such as his support for San Francisco Supervisor Jane Kim in her run for state Senate against fellow Supervisor Scott Wiener.

Peoples Summit

Progressive groups, many of which backed Sanders, are going to meet in a Peoples Summit next week in Chicago in an effort to build on the push the senator started.

Even if Bernie was president, wed need a movement independent of him, one that speaks with its own voice, said DeMoro, one of the events organizers.

The groups will discuss ways to keep the pressure on Congress to support social, political and economic change in the country, she added, which means supporting candidates running for offices up and down the ballot.

Well have a permanent relationship with Bernie Sanders, DeMoro said. Hes an icon now.

John Wildermuth is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: jwildermuth@sfchronicle.com Twitter: jfwildermuth
Posted on 06/10/2016, 9:00 am, by Farmscape.Ca

Last month the National Pork Board launched a new marketing campaign designed to heighten consumer awareness of the versatility of pork on the grill and increase demand for pork during the barbecue season.

Ceci Snyder, the Vice President of Consumer Marketing with the National Pork Board, told those on hand yesterday for World Pork Expo, the Talking Grill campaign targets the creative cook, consumers who enjoy cooking, who love pork and like meat in general and like to cook for family and friends.

The campaign is a fun effort to show consumers here in the U.S. how to enjoy pork on the grill. Our consumer call to action, our main headline for consumers is Grill for It meaning to be very positive, action oriented, to buy pork and have some fun on the grill. The campaign is a little nit different from past work. We are actually featuring two spokes-grills. They are literally grills that do the talking and tell consumers how to cook pork and their level of pork on the grill. The messages are about porks versatility and the fun that you can have with pork. We have a variety, in fact eight different recipes throughout the summer, everything from country style ribs to pork burgers, ground pork, we have a porterhouse chop with an Asian spice rub on it so theres a real versatility in all of the recipes. Well be talking those recipes throughout the summer, how to connect them to fun and family. We have a whole Spanish language effort tied into that. Its all about celebrating that level of pork throughout the whole season. ~ Ceci Snyder  National Pork Board

Snyder notes the campaign was launched May 9 and runs through Labor Day.

She says anyone interested can view the Talking Grill videos and check out the variety of pork recipes by visiting porkbeinspired.com or any of the popular social media websites.
LONDON  Several European retailers took the stage this week at the NACS Insight Convenience Summit  Europe to offer event participants from around the world a look at their respective companys innovation, strategies and goals within the convenience landscape.

Alimentation Couche-Tard Inc.

Jacob Schram, group president, European operations at Alimentation Couche-Tard, touched on the companys aspiration to become the worlds preferred destination for convenience and fuel, a goal the company set out to create with its new global convenience brand Circle K, launched September 22, 2015, to replace existing Circle K, Statoil, Macs and Kangaroo Express branding on stores and service stations across Canada, the United States, Scandinavia and Central and Eastern Europe.

Schram described the two-year process as highly emotional, with the blood, sweat and tears leading to a new and refreshed Circle K brand and a new brand competence, Lets make it easy. He also shared the companys platform moving forward: whats our dream, whats our business idea, whats in our DNA, and what do we want to be famous for?

Our dream is to be world destination for convenience and fuelthats what everyone knows; its motivating, he said, noting that his companys DNA is based in its pride, people, results, improvement, development and entrepreneurship. If you have common DNA, youre on family of merchants, Schram said. The business idea, he said, is the mission: If its shared with the customer, its a mission, he added, noting that the company is in the process of protecting the golden minutes consumers want to spend in Circle K stores to relax, refresh and refuel.

Euro Garages

Euro Garages, one of the U.K.s fastest growing forecourt operators, is poised to expand in Europe, following its deal with London-based private equity firm, TDR Capital, in 2015. Ilyas Munshi, commercial director at Euro Garages, said TDRs investment gave it access to 1,100 forecourt sites across France and Benelux. Our aspiration of becoming an international player has become a step nearer, he said. We have a train set from Europe that we can play with now. He said plans were in place to merge the U.K. and continental operations next year and to roll out its unique model of partnering with major fuel, foodservice and convenience brands, which include BP, Shell, Esso, Starbucks, Subway, Burger King, Spar and Greggs.

Accepting the 2016 NACS Insight International Convenience Leader of the Year Award, Mohsin Issa, co-CEO Euro Garages, said the business was entering an exciting new phase of development. We plan to build on what we have successfully executed at a UK level and take that to a global scale, he commented, adding, Nobody does this true branded proposition on an international scale. The international brands will travel and we will bring in local brands to fill in the missing pieces.

Issa revealed how Euro Garages strategy for asset transformation, aggressive partnerships and a focus on people had driven the companys success. The companys focus was to create destination locations, which customers will visit for more than one shopper mission. This ambition is aided by time-starved shoppers, the consumer trend to shop little and often at smaller stores, ample car parking, plus 24-hour access.

In terms of foodservice, Issa said Euro Garages was not a brand but an ambassador for leading global brands and it aimed to outperform those brands. Customers should not recognize Euro Garages is running those brands, he said. Success is when a customer has an experience that is equally as good, if not better than the brand owners.

A strong focus on people has been a cornerstone to Euro Garages growth journey and will continue in future. This includes developing home grown talent, as well as attracting the best people through the companys vision and fresh international strategy. One employee that runs Euro Garages Starbucks business today started as a night time cashier, for instance. People have got to positions they never thought theyd get to, said Issa. We also need to attract a few more people to deliver future international growth, but Im sure we will find them along the way.

Musgrave

Ray Kelly, marketing director at Musgrave Retail Partners, shared a case study about its Centra convenience store brand, and how the company is striving to be the No. 1. brand in Irelands convenience market.

Kelly talked specifically about the remodeling of a Centra store on OConnell Street in Limerick. The store is redefining the convenience store offer in Ireland with foodservice innovations, a massive rebranding strategy and its focus on health and wellness in a country that struggles with obesity, yet has an emerging health-focused population.

Perception in Ireland is that convenience stores are not a destination for healthy options, making Centras offer less relevant to the emerging health-conscious consumers. Kelly outlined the companys four quadrant approach to building the brand at Centra:

Its People: They only do what they believe, and they only believe what they discover, said Kelly, noting that the company embarked on intense training to help Centra employees excel at foodservice and new offers inside the store. Products & Services: Centra brought more healthful and relevant offers to its product mix that cater to different dayparts, as well as the stores enhanced coffee offer. Selections include salads, a reworked deli offer with healthier options at breakfast and hot take-home meal solutions for dinner. Communication: Consumers experience the fresh and modern colors and branding inside the store, along with new food photography highlighting the offers and clear signage that is quick and direct. Environment: Increasing the size of the store is driving more foot traffic. Grocery space was cut in half, but sales actually went up 30% for grocery items. Digital signage and menu boards change throughout the different dayparts, and the updated seating area goes hand-in-hand with the high-quality food and coffee offers.

The results? Customer traffic has increased by 30%, more females are now shopping the store and total sales are up by more than 40%. As for whats next for the Centra brand, Kelly said Musgrave is taking the OConnell store format to more sites across its convenience offer.

The 2016 NACS Insight Convenience Summit  Europe wrapped up on June 9 with an evening reception and the awarding of the International Convenience Retailer of the Year Award. Look for full coverage of the event in the August issue of NACS Magazine.
MEXICO CITY  Pemex, owned by the Mexican government, now has competition after energy reforms approved two years ago lifted restrictions in the retail sector to other companies, the Tulsa World reports.

This week, a re-branded Pemex station run by Grupo Hidrosina started welcoming customers in Mexico City under its own brand. A second Mexican business, La Gas, has two branded stations that will sell Pemex fuel, one Campeche and one in Merida.

With the collaboration of Pemex we signed an agreement to use a different brand and test the success that may or may not work for the clientele, said Victor Ruiz Iriarte, director of operations for Grupo Hidrosina. Since 1992, Hidrosina has operated as a concessionaire around three dozen gas stations under the Pemex name. This is the first test we want to do with 20 stations this year and next year in Mexico City, he added.

Other companies will be joining Hidrosina and La Gas in Mexico. Between June and July, Gulf Oil, a U.S. company, will open four gasoline stations, with more on the horizon.
By Lambert Strether of Corrente.

Readers, Ill add a little bit more on our exciting election in a bit! Later: Done. lambert

TPP/TTIP/TISA

Singaporean Foreign Minister Vivian Balakrishnan was in Washington this week to convince lawmakers of the importance of the Trans-Pacific Partnership. His message: Failure on the part of the U.S. to ratify the deal could be very dangerous to Americas standing in the Asia-Pacific region [Politico]. What is at stake is American credibility [as in, for example, Vietnam], and there are many leaders in Asia that have gone out on a limb to support the TPP, he said Thursday afternoon at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. If having marched everybody up the hill, you march down now, it would have been better if you never even started on this journey. Getting it passed now is absolutely crucial.' More from BalakrishanL

[BALAKRISHNAN:] Frankly, my sense of it is at an intellectual level everyone knows it makes sense, it ought to be done. No one seriously argues with me against it at an intellectual level, he said. Yet I know as a politician this is one of those things that people hope gets done but without their fingerprints on it, without having to pay a political price for it. But in life everything meaningful, everything significant does require effort and there is a price to be paid.

Obama, as a lame duck, doesnt have to pay the price, and in fact can cash in, assuming grateful leaders in Asia will pimp their local oligarchs for contributions to Obamas Presidential Library (an inherently corrupt institution that should be outlawed and replaced by public archives at the Library of Congress, IMSNHO). Or possibly other reputation laundering efforts.

2016

Policy

UPDATE Fresh Intelligence: America Expands Its Role in Afghanistan, But Obama Thinks Hillary Can Handle It [New York Magazine]. To war-war is always better than to jaw-jaw. Not Winston Churchill. And then theres this: As readers know, generally URLs are generated from a post title written by the reporter, and when an editor changes the post title, the URL generally remains the same. Here we have a case of that, and an interesting insight into the hive mind of what Thomas Frank calls the 10%: (1) More troops in Afghanistan is in no way problematic, (2) and Clinton (Hillary) is, as we used to call Bush, a war-time President. Its also worth noting that the editor just made up the Obama Thinks Hillary Can Handle It part. Its pure pom-pom waving. Theres nothing in New York Magazines abstract of the Reuters exclusive that suggests this, and Reuters doesnt even mention her. Churchill also said In wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies, but we might ask ourself what war is really being fought here, and who is the her being protected by lies. The future of Sanders political movement [Defend Democracy]. Very focused on process. As readers know, I think a critical issue is not process but platform, and the policy details matter less than universality, and everybody (as it were) singing from the same page in the hymnal, albeit with complex harmonies. In fact, the left should have a song, an anthem. A singing congregation cannot be beaten, as Martin Luther knew. And IIRC, the French had one, post-1789. Why Hillary Clinton and Obamacare Will Not Solve the Health Care Crisis [Truth-out]. The Clinton campaign, prompted by Sanders strong showing and her relationship with the drug and insurance industries, declared war against single-payer this year. Her allies  establishment economists and so-called left-leaning (industry-supported) think tanks  promptly followed her lead. These efforts, as Adam Gaffney explains in the New Republic, were attempts to kill the dream of single-payer, a cherished policy goal of the left. There is more that divides liberals and the left than unites them. Where Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton stand on 2016s key issues [Guardian]. Genre piece

Our Famously Free Press

It was yet another election day slap in the face for Californians on Tuesday: Hours before voters were to cast ballots that one presidential candidate promised would upend the race, the media declared that the race was actually over [Los Angeles Times]. Anecdotes from voters on APs election eve call. APs Clinton Victory Story Breaches Journalism Ethics and Public Trust  [Common Dreams]. UPDATE I didnt run this video, which was making the rounds on Twitter, because I wasnt sure of the provenance. Now the provenance looks good, so here it is:

The images in this Clinton email are labeled "secret win." pic.twitter.com/YR4uCdQTZv  Christina Bellantoni (@cbellantoni) June 7, 2016 Secret win. Well, er. Snopes concludes: It is true that the Twitter videos claims checked out. The campaigns e-mail was sent out after the 6 June 2016 call by Associated Press, and the embedded image was ambiguously titled secret-win-V2-060416c_02.png But V2 implied at least two versions of the graphic existed, another of which might have shown an entirely different outcome to the 7 June 2016 primaries. (Yves ran a link to a story from Wall Street on Parade about this in Links, but Id like to get this completely on the record). Without knowing APs internal file naming conventions, its impossible to know whether this shows collusion between the Clinton campaign and AP, or not. If I were running a deadline-driven news organization, it would be worth it to me to prepare graphics for multiple possible outcomes, and in that case V2 might indeed be a Clinton win, and V1 a Sanders win. Its a pretty sloppy naming convention, though, because its not self-documenting, and its also prone to a fat thumb typing 2 for 1. Readers, just on the off chance: Have any of you ever worked for AP, and do you know what the file naming conventions are?

The Voters

Krugman: [L]ike it or not, horizontal inequality, racial inequality above all, will define the general election [Paul Krugman, New York Times].  [R]ace-based political mobilization cuts both ways. Black and Hispanic support for Democrats makes obvious sense, given the fact that these are relatively low-income groups that benefit disproportionately from progressive policies. I never thought Id hear a progressive call for race-based political mobilization as a strategy before, but this has been a wonderfully clarifying election. In a way, one might see Krugmans horizontal inequality as the reactionary backlash of a panicked and corrupt political class to Occupys 1% vs. 99% vertical framing. Black voters and the 2016 primaries, Part 3: Turnout for what [Carl Beijer].  If a majority or even a plurality [of Black voters] voted for [Clinton] in the primaries, it might make sense to argue that this indicates some kind of significant mandate. As it stands, only a tiny handful of black Americans are voting either way. This could say more about things like barriers to participation in the primaries than it says about what black Americans want, though other polling suggests that they, like most Americans, simply have little confidence or interest in national politics  or that they want even more from their candidates than either Sanders or Clinton were prepared to offer. This month, after the primaries are all over, some Sanders supporters will try to answer the question of whats next at an event called the Peoples Summit in Chicago. The mission of this gathering: to figure out how to turn Mr. Sanderss momentum into lasting change. One of the attendees will be a digital strategist named Winnie Wong. After working with the Occupy Wall Street movement, she helped start the grass-roots group People for Bernie, and has been credited with coining the hashtag #FeelTheBern. She said she saw a connection between the Occupy movement and the Sanders campaign [New York Times].

The Trail

Ive seen Obama looking happier: Hillary Clintons team is moving to shore up an area where she urgently needs help  the campaign has hired Bernie Sanders director of student organizing to serve as her national campus and student organizing director [Politico]. Not clear how this fits with race-based political mobilization. Perhaps they could be asked. For better or worse, Clintons running on Obamas economy [MarketWatch]. Clinton herself has said things arent so hot. She said earlier this year that if elected, shed put Bill Clinton in charge of revitalizing the economy. You mean it needs a jumpstart? After eight years of the guy whose endorsement shes been dying to get?  Bottom line: this is still her election to lose. Demographics, the electoral college, 4.7% unemployment and $2.40 gas all work in her favor. The election will likely come down to seven swing states  Florida, Ohio, Virginia, Colorado, Iowa, Nevada and New Hampshire. Obama won all of them four years ago and will campaign heavily for her now. But his 2012 margins were often razor-thin. Lambert here: 2012 was dull as ditchwater because the body language of the Obama campaign showed he was never behind. But we often forget that Obama struggled to put McCain  McCain!  away in 2008, until the collapse of Lehman put him over the top. We can argue about whose election this is to lose, but well know soon enough. I think what is clear is that there are more imponderables this year than at any time since Since I dont know when, and I doubt very much that history has stopped throwing us curveballs. Massive gaslighting (as in Bushs 2004 election), election fraud (as in Florida 2000, Ohio 2004, and the 2008 Texas Democratic caucuses), and an October Surprise (playing to Clintons putative strength in foreign policy): All these are possible, even likely, leaving aside the dogwhistling and scandals. And thats before we get to the fragility of a European system where political and financial risk are very closely coupled, and an increasingly crappy economy here. Predicting election outcomes at this pointwith all the variables aheadcan be a losers game. But prediction markets at the moment tilt heavily toward Mrs. Clinton winning in November. One site, PredictWise, which amalgamates a wide array of datafrom betting sides to polling averagesnow gives a 73% likelihood to the Democratic candidate prevailing in the fall [Wall Street Journal, Hillary Clinton v. Donald Trump: A Look at the Numbers]. Its easy for Democrats to attack Mr. Trump, Turner said. ;You dont get any brownie points from me and other progressives for getting into a Twitter war with Mr. Donald Trump. Thats easy.' [The Hill]. All the times Warren served as Clintons attack dog [Politico]. Warren wasnt looking for brownie points from Turner, however. The latest Clinton endorsement? Joe Biden (sort of) [Los Angeles Times]. Republican Senator Susan Collins Says She Might Support Hillary Clinton [New Yorker]. As Ive been saying, Clinton wants moderate Republican votes. A Republicans praise for Hillary Clintons nomination [AL.com]. Will I be voting for Hillary? No way. Will I get home tonight and talk to my daughter about her? Yes. US election campaign key dates  via @hunterschwarz @INJO pic.twitter.com/9i4afqnbm5  Tom McIlroy (@TomMcIlroy) June 9, 2016

California

A lot of the California votes arent counted. Heres a chart: Official: 2.6 million ballots uncounted in #CAPrimary including 700k(!!!!) provisional ballots pic.twitter.com/Qv540qXIpC  Bugei Nyaosi (@bnyaosi) June 10, 2016 And heres an image: These are Vote by Mail ballots that still need to be counted in Santa Clara Co. Plus whatever comes by Fri #KTVU pic.twitter.com/CSSK2xxpHv  Janine De la Vega (@JanineKTVU) June 8, 2016 (Those are mail-in ballots.) UPDATE Finally today, the L.A. County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk Dean Logan offers us response to concerns about the seemingly huge number of Provisional Ballots cast during Tuesdays primary [Bradblog]. A summary, and you can listen to the podcast.

Voter Suppression, Election Fixing, and Fraud

New section. Readers, charges of election fraud are often the first to be hurled by partisans after a close loss, even though they are most incendiary charges that can be made in a democracy, since they discourage political engagement by voters, leading ulitimately to a death spiral. However, as I wrote yesterday, the pattern of voter suppression in the Democratic primaries just past, using low-tech, opportunistic methods at the precinct level, is so pervasive that I think we have to consider the possibility that there may be even worse going on, or to come. So Im starting this section with some trepidation. I ask you to keep the quality of commentary and links Naked Capitalism-excellent, and that means staying focused, providing lots of sourcing, using your critical thinking skills, proffering no digital evidence without clear provenance and a chain of custody, and not citing to sources that would make the blog look bad (to, say, a Democrat oppo researcher [*** cough *** Alex Jones *** cough *** and suchlike]). Dont say watch the video; thats assigning work; give a quote or a ideally a transcript. If youre speculating, label your speculations as just that. And if I violate these best practices, you call me out. lambert [Los Angeles] Its not some grand conspiracy, but its grand theft nonetheless. Sen. Bernie Sanders voters will lose their ballots, their rights, by the tens of thousands [Greg Palast] . There are a mind-blowing 4.2 million voters in California registered NPP [No Party Preference]  and they share a love for sunshine and Bernie Sanders. According to the reliable Golden State poll, among NPP voters, Sen. Sanders whoops Sec. Hillary Clinton by a stunning 40 percentage points. And this is important: The Sanders campaign was spending time talking policy at giant rallies instead of educating their voters on how to vote. In the rat maze called the American voting system, the painfully amateur Sanders campaign never provided a vote-guiding map. Google searches for Hillary Clinton yield favorable autocomplete results, report shows [MarketWatch]. For example, SourceFed noted in a video on Googles own YouTube service that typing Hillary Clinton cri on Yahoo and Microsofts Bing suggest phrases that link Hillary Clinton to crime. Similarly, typing Hillary Clinton ind on Yahoo and Bing suggest phrases that link Hillary Clinton to the possibility of being indicted as a result of her email records. On Google, however, typing Hillary Clinton cri results in suggestions for Hillary Clinton crime reform and Hillary Clinton crisis. Similarly, a search for Hillary Clinton ind brings up suggestions on Hillary Clinton and Indiana, independents and India, and not indictment.

At this point, the foily among us will remember that Googles Eric Schmidt has funded a stealthy startup working on Clintons behalf (The Groundwork). Here is Voxs debunking of the SourceFed video.

Stats Watch

Consumer Sentiment, June 2016 (preliminary): Consumer sentiment is holding on to its big surge [Econoday]. And theres acceleration this month in the current conditions component. Expectations, the second component of the report, did slip but not severely, down 1.7 points to 83.2 which outside of May is still the best reading since August last year. Strength here points to strength in income expectations, especially the outlook for the jobs market. And: Better than expected [Econintersect].

ETFs: Buffett has said that investing is simple, but not easy. He has also said that the most important quality for an investor is temperament, not intellect. By that he meant the ability to stay disciplined, ignore recent events and returns, and adhere to your well-thought-out plan' (FDR, then, like Keynes, would have made a fine investor) [ETF.com] For investors to be successful, they must understand that, in the market, even 10 years is a relatively brief period. No more proof is required than the -1.0% per year return to the S&P 500 Index over the first decade of this century. The policy implication is that investing for retirement as public policy a scam; the time frame is simply too long, unless youre lucky. Now, investing for dynastic purposes is another thing; Buffets father, after all, was also an investor.

Employment Situation: Forecasters have sharply lowered their expectations for job growth in the coming year That is the third consecutive month of lowered expectations for the jobs outlook If their forecast proves correct, it would be the worst year for job growth since 2010 2010? Is this a recession call? [Wall Street Journal, WSJ Survey: Economists Sharply Lower Estimates of Job Growth in the Next Year]. The economy right now is navigating this period where theres going to be lower growth overall and lower profit margins, said Brian Bethune, an economist at Tufts University. Whenever you hear the economy, ask whose economy? In most cases, the answer will be Not yours. However, theres always a silver lining: Jobs for economists wont be going away any time soon; theyve invested too much in their credentials for that.

Shipping: Week 22 of 2016 shows same week total rail traffic (from same week one year ago) contracted according to the Association of American Railroads (AAR) traffic data. The improvement seen last week evaporated, and was likely due to the a holiday falling into different weeks between years [Econintersect]. Oops.

Shipping: Giant warehouses are springing up across the country as surging online sales send retailers scrambling to find space to house products destined for delivery to customers homes. Much of the construction is happening in the South, where land and labor are cheap. New warehouses can top one million square feet and contain hundreds of thousands of different types of items (with handy map, sadly not at the county level) [Wall Street Journal, Where Are the Warehouses?].

The Fed, a rare comment from the blogger: This Bloomberg article highlights the problem with the Feds communications strategy. The concept of transparency made some sense at the height of the financial crisis when we first visited the zero bound. Nearly eight years later the FOMC would do markets a favor if it did not tell us what it is doing and just let markets figure out what policy actually is. This would make for more prudent risk taking and would lesson the possibility of bubbles [Across the Curve]. Also, we have the I Ching, haruspication, etc., all of which are cheaper and just as effective!

Todays Fear & Greed Index: 69, Greed (previous close: 79, Extreme Greed) [CNN]. One week ago: 77 (Extreme Greed). (0 is Extreme Fear; 100 is Extreme Greed). Last updated Jun 9 at 12:54pm. Huge drop!

Corruption

A Beginners Guide to the Many Investigations Involving Mayor Bill de Blasio [New York Magazine].

A California public water district that earned a rare federal penalty over what it described as a little Enron accounting loaned one of its executives $1.4 million to buy a riverfront home, and the loan remains unpaid nine years later although the official has left the agency, according to records and interviews [Los Angeles Times].

A negative culture almost always organizes itself around secrets that must not be revealed. When that culture is deeply entrenched, trying to reveal whats hidden can be like taking your life in your hands. The shocking demise of New Yorks Healing Arts Initiative emphasizes the need for nonprofit boards and executives to reinforce the inherent culture of their organizations and consciously build habits of integrity and vigilance that become part of that culture [Nonprofit Quarterly].

Big Brother Is Watching You Watch

The FBI has ramped up its use of sting operations in terrorism cases, dispatching undercover agents to pose as jihadists and ensnare Americans suspected of backing the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL [Business Insider]. ritics say that the FBIs tactics only serve to entrap individuals who would never have committed any violence without the governments instigation. Theyre manufacturing terrorism cases, Michael German, a former undercover agent with the FBI who now researches national security law at New York Universitys Brennan Center for Justice. Remember: The first one to propose violence is always the cop. And if I were foily, Id remember that weve already seen how Nevada journalist Jon Ralston manufactured a story that Sanders supporters were violent, and put that in the context of the hive mind of our political class preparing future sting operations, say in Philly and/or Cleveland.

Gaia

But power prices in California fell to their lowest level since at least 2001 last year, and in 2016 so far are trading even lower. The low price of natural gas, thanks to the fracking boom, is largely responsible. But renewables also depress spot prices because those prices are determined by the cost of the fuel source, which for wind and solar is zero [Reuters].

Class Warfare

Inspired by Genius: How a Mathematician Found His Way [Scientific American].

the spirit of Ramanujan does not require finding the next Ramanujan. We would be super lucky to do that, but if we make opportunities for 30 talented people around the world who are presently working in an intellectual desert, or are subjected to inelastic educational systems where theyre not allowed to flourishor if we can provide an opportunity for someone to work with a scientist who could be their G.H. Hardythen this initiative will be successful.

This is a beautiful interview, well worth a read.

News of the Wired

Two leaded bronze artifacts found in northwestern Alaska are the first evidence that metal from Asia reached prehistoric North America prior to contact with Europeans, according to new Purdue University research [EurekAlert].

* * *

Readers, feel free to contact me with (a) links, and even better (b) sources I should curate regularly, and (c) to find out how to send me images of plants (600px minimum, please). Vegetables are fine! Fungi are deemed to be honorary plants! See the previous Water Cooler (with plant) here. And heres todays plant (Diptherio):

Readers, Im running out of plants! Whether your intentions are artistic and/or documentary and/or amusing, you know what to do. Ive liked the creativity of plant videos, fungi, stumps, triptyches, and so on, but if your tomatoes are doing well, send them along too!

* * *
Spice gull: seabird turns orange after falling into vat of curry Guardian (Richard Smith)

Rescue for orphaned bear cub hiding in apple tree Siberian Times (guurst). Many cute photos.

New Fossils Hint Hobbit Humans Are Older Than Thought National Geographic (furzy)

Archaeologists discover massive Petra monument that could be 2,150 years old Guardian

Massive sinkhole engulfs street and causes gas leak in Canadas capital, Ottawa Independent (Chuck L)

What About this War on Meat? Big Picture Agriculture (km)

Natural Gas Is Already Losing To Renewables OilPrice

Ransomware and the New Economics of Cybercrime Atlantic (resic)

CBS and its (new?) Matrix trick OffGuaridan (margarita f)

The world lost more than $13 trillion last year because of war Washington Post (furzy). I am sure resilc would have something tart to say about this.Update: He obliged by e-mail: But the number of new Teslas and designer olive oil shoppes in DC has expanded greatly.

China?

The use of ECB liquidity Bruegel

Flat-pack policies: new Podemos manifesto in style of Ikea catalogue Guardian (YY)

Ireland Abortion Ban Violated Womans Human Rights, U.N. Panel Says New York Times

Brexit?

Syraqistan

The Way to the Spring is a sobering look at Palestinian life and resistance in the West Bank Los Angeles Times (Judy B)

Big Brother is Watching You Watch

Clinton E-mail Tar Baby

2016

How It Begins PA Progress. Martha r: Rallying cry. Good quotes from MLKing toward the end.

Democrats Will Learn All the Wrong Lessons From Brush With Bernie Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone

Bernie Sanders White House Driveway Remarks CSPAN. It sounds as if he will stump very hard v. Trump, which means for Hillary.

Whats Next After Sanders? Seeds of Political Movement Building teleSUR (martha r)

Where are the Missing California Primary Votes? Counterpunch (martha r)

Was there a Secret Win conspiracy between AP and Clintons team? Sure looks like it. Pam Martens and Russ Martens

Elizabeth Warrens Facebook Fans on Clinton Endorsement: Noooooooooooo! Mother Jones (furzy). A guy in the gym who reads NC pulled me aside in the gym last evening to say how bothered he was by Warren selling out and he was afraid Sanders would do the same.

Elizabeth Warren on Donald Trump  Secretary of Shade Doesnt Need VP Rumors Charles Pierce, Esquire (resilc)

Bill Clinton May Have Encouraged Donald Trump to Run for President Vanity Fair

Why dont more women like Hillary Clinton? Financial Times. Im offended by the identity politics, that I should support women because they are women, particularly when Clinton herself has done no such thing. Im stunned that older women support her as a professional who supposedly broke barriers, when she rode Bills coattails. See Identity Politics and Interest Ian Welsh (martha r). Being gay, or female or colored is a really strong asset when dealing with most modern left-wing types because they tend to assume clustering, discount sell-outs and not understand that their assumptions are being used against them by con-artists.

Hillary Clintons Truth Problem Atlantic (resilc)

Hillary Clintons State Department Gave South Sudans Military a Pass for Its Child Soldiers Intercept (resilc)

Donald Trumps own lawyer donated maximum amount to Hillary Clinton campaign Independent. YY: I think the weirdest part of this business is that the lawyer is allowing the client to publicly dis the judge presiding over his case. This is close to nuzzoid if not just pure brazen idiotic but fun behavior. Doesnt the judge need to approve any settlements?

Trumps Business Tactics Left a Trail of Unpaid Bills Wall Street Journal

Anarchists for Donald TrumpLet the Empire Burn Daily Beast (furzy)

Leftists for Trump: What Is to Be Done About These Insufferable Nihilists? Slate (resilc). Doubles down on the Clinton campaign tactic of belittling those who find Clintons political positions unacceptable. And the bit about catharsis is pure projection. The out of tune Clinton version of I am woman, hear me roar earlier this week was about trying to give women a catharsis! Hello!

There Are More White Voters Than People Think. Thats Good News for Trump New York Times. MS: Also a lot of Latinos self identify as white. A top political scientist has said for a while to me privately that the identity politics strategy that Clinton has embraced would win in the primaries but lose in the general.

Trumps Fundraising Plan Puts RNC in Control Wall Street Journal. So this is how the party hopes to bring Trump to heel, by controlling the checkbook. But will it work?
Yves here. The TSA is a perfect target for privatization, since even at the best of times, it is not well liked. Who wants to be subjected to security theater like taking your shoes off? But this article provides an important overview of how various government functions are made incompetent by cutting their budgets without reducing their duties. That plays into the popular narrative that of course the private sector would be more efficient when the evidence is strongly supports the view that private sector contractors treat privatization as an opportunity for looting (contracting in the Iraq War was an extreme case, but there are plent of others, such as privatization of parking meters in Chicago and toll roads).

By Michael Arria, an associate editor at AlterNet and the author of Medium Blue: The Politics of MSNBC. Follow @MichaelArria on Twitter. Originally published at Alternet

The Transportation Security Administration currently employs about 42,000 officers, down by 5,000 since 2013. However, the number of air passengers has risen 15 percent in that time, from 643 million to 740 million, and that number is projected to crack 800 million in 2016.

It seems clear that theres a natural connection between these statistics and the recent plethora of horror stories regarding massive security checkpoint lines. Many Americans are now beginning to view the TSA as a bloated symbol of government waste and any confidence in it has seemingly eroded. The organization seems to realize as much; in a recent interview, TSA administrator Peter V. Neffenger referred to it as an organization in crisis.

Now, with the TSA in economic disarray and pleading for congressional funding, many are calling for the privatization of airport security. But the intellectual framework for allowing private companies to run the organization has already been laid, as certain individuals have been promoting the policy for years.

Noam Chomsky once described what he considered to be the standard technique of privatization: defund, make sure things dont work, people get angry, you hand it over to private capital. Writing about the fight against TSA unionization in 2011, Mark Ames and Yasha Levine cited Scott Walkers battle against Wisconsin workers as a valuable insight into how airline fights would go down:

1) Manufacture a fake budget crisis in order to frighten the states residents; 2) PR the false-crisis hard enough until it breaks out of the right-wing/libertarian pipeline and into the mainstream media; 3) Blame the fake crisis on a fake villaingreedy state employee unionsthereby pitting the public against state workers. That way, when Republicans pass new laws destroying teachers and firefighters unions, theyll come off as heroes defending the public from greedy unions, rather than as sleazy mercenaries carrying out their corporate sponsors dirty work.

To many, it seems thats the blueprint currently at work. On May 26, CNN ran an op-ed California Representative Darrell Issa calling for the privatization of the TSA. Issa wrote that:

Ultimately, allowing private companies to take over administration of our airports security, under the TSAs guidelines, would unleash the markets power of innovation to improve customer service and undo years of bureaucracy that has squandered billions of dollars dedicated to airport security and done much to make traveling more miserable.

Issas op-ed was praised by Chris Edwards, author of a Cato report on TSA privatization. Edwards referred to Issas proposals as excellent and identified them as Cato-style aviation reforms.

Edwards is certainly correct. His report calls for abolition of the TSA and open competitive bidding from private firms for control of the organization. As for the TSA charge that such an arrangement would actually cost more money, Edwards cites a House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure report which found that privatizing the TSA would save money.

The report was released while the chairman of that committee was John Mica, a Republican representative from Florida, who has long been a fierce advocate of transportation privatization. In 2011, Mica fought to privatize Amtraks rail service in the Northeast, which he referred to as a Soviet-style train system. The ranking Democrat on the committee at the time, U.S. Rep. Corrine Brown, insisted that Micas quest for privatization was predicated on the destruction of the transportation service. While Congressman Mica refuses to focus on critical infrastructure issues, said Brown, he is bent on destroying Amtrak.

This year, Mica took aim at Washington, D.C.s Metrorail system. When Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority chairman Jack Evans asked for federal funding at a congressional hearing, Mica began shouting at Evans: I am not going to support bailing out the District of Columbia. Virginia needs to step up to the plate, Maryland needs to step up to the plate, and D.C. with that huge surplus needs to step up to the plate!

Evans explained that D.C. city government budget was separate from the Metros, but it didnt seem to phase Micas disdain for the proposal.

In June 2011, while Congress was considering the Department of Homeland Securitys FY 2012 Appropriations bill, Mica introduced a Pro-Private Screener Amendment that cut the TSA budget by $270 million with the savings going toward the Screening Partnership Program. SPP is a program that allows airports to opt out of using TSA personnel if theyre able to prove that they get the same results from private workers at a cheaper rate.

The FAA Modernization and Reform Act of 2012 was another victory for pro-privatization forces, as it required the TSA to approve private applications, provided it didnt raise associated costs. Less than six months after that legislation, Robert Poole, co-founder of the libertarian Reason Foundation, testified about the benefits of TSA privatization in Congress, citing the same Transportation & Infrastructure Committee report Chris Edwards did.

Poole was the author of his own report, in 2006, for the Heritage Foundation. Four years of experience have taught that the U.S. government cannot do the job any better than the private sector, it reads. This should come as no surprise.

Poole, and Reason, have actually claimed that Poole coined the term privatization. This is disputed, but no one doubts the fact that Pooles thinking has had a major impact on policy, not just in the United States, but throughout the world. A former adviser to Margaret Thatcher explained how Pooles writings from the 1970s supplied a blueprint for wresting control from the government:

The intellectual case for contracting out came from an American MIT-trained engineer turned policy wonk, Bob Poole, head of the Reason Foundation in Santa Barbara and author of a little book called Cutting Back City Hall. In this book he explained how all you needed to run a city was a CEO, a lawyer to review contracts and a secretary. Everythingliterally everythingcould be outsourced and he littered his book with examples and figures.[Thatcher adviser Michael Forsyth] translated Pooles work into an English context and, led by the Westminster City Council, contracting out spread like a contagious disease throughout the country.

Pooles connection to the U.S government is well-documented. His own bio identifies him as an adviser to Reagan, H.W. Bush, Clinton, and W. Bush administrations. Hes advised the Federal Highway Administration, the Federal Transit Administration, the White House Office of Policy Development, National Economic Council, and Government Accountability Office. His 1988 policy paper proposing privately financed toll lanes inspired Californias landmark private tollway law, and for his efforts, he was appointed to the Californias Commission on Transportation Investment by Gov. Pete Wilson.

As for the airline industry, Poole has advised the Federal Aviation Administration and is a member of the Government Accountability Offices National Aviation Studies Advisory Panel. Hes testified in Congress on the airlines numerous times, and in 1996, Canada implemented a version of the commercialized airline concept he has been pushing for years.

The idea that federal TSA jobs should be handed over to corporations has worked itself into the Republican Partys actual platform.

In March 2015, Rep. Mica presented a bill to the House aviation subcommittee that would create a private corporation to control U.S. air travel. The time to stop talking is now, Mica declared. Poole was there, to advocate for the plan and supply further information to the subcommittee. The Washington Post points out that he also provided recommendations: separate the air traffic control system, shift some user fees from the federal government to the new entity and make airlines and other stakeholdersincluding airports and passengersthe overseers of the system.

Another lawmaker who spoke in support of the shift was Republican Pennsylvania Rep. Bill Shuster. Shuster became chairman of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure when Micas reign ended in 2013. Shuster explained how TSA spending had led to little benefit and listened to the testimony of Douglas Parker, chief executive of American Airlines, who testified on behalf of the trade group Airlines for America. Parker cited many others that have separated regulatory and air traffic control functions, while privatizing the jobs of their controllers. Transformation, not renovation, is required, said Parker.

Less than a month later, Shuster admitted to having a romantic relationship with Shelley Rubino, vice president for global government affairs at Airlines for America. Shuster drafted a document, in 2014, stating that Rubino could not lobby him or his staff, but as Politico notes, This does not prevent Rubino from lobbying the other 50 members of the committee, and their aides.

In February of this year, Shuster proposed a bill called the Aviation Innovation, Reform and Reauthorization Act, which would break up the FAA and potentially put air traffic control jobs under corporations. Shuster fast-tracked the 270-page bill, which actually received support from the air traffic controllers union, which identified the lack of funding and dated equipment as the reason behind its backing.

At the end of March, Shuster expressed hope for the bill and alluded to a possible bipartisan alliance. Theres certainly Democratic opposition, Shuster said, but Ive talked to a handful of Democratic senators that are very, very interested in what we are trying to do, and I think may be supportive of it.

It seems clear that the TSA is without funds, things arent working and people are angry. Theres only one part of the process left.
Yves here. While I agree with the general point of this piece, some further observations are in order. First, MBA programs have become more finance focused as a result of the financialization of the economy. When I went to Harvard Business School (early 1980s) about 40% of the class had engineering as their undergraduate major, and about 40% had worked in manufacturing before going to business school (a Venn diagram would show a large overlap between those two groups). Only about 10% of the class went to Wall Street. A much large proportion went into consulting, with the idea that it was no-lose. Either theyd become a partner, or theyd exit into Corporate America at a more senior level than if theyd been hired out of B-school. The really hot employer my year was Atari. I would argue the programs, when they were focused on real economy issues, were a lot less problematic than now.

A second adverse development has been the explosion in the number of MBA programs seen as reasonably high caliber. Again, when I was young, it was Harvard, Stanford, Wharton, Chicago, Columbia and (only if you were interested in finance, and even then it was still not as well regarded) NYU. Now you have a proliferation of MBA programs, and the graduates have colonized areas where employing MBAs in any sort of really important position would have been unthinkable, or at best unusual, like not-for-profits and universities. The result, as Roy Poses has documented with hospitals, has been an explosion of adminisphere size and costs, a reorientation of priorities, almost always to the detriment of historical missions and standards, and a dismissive attitude toward the knowledge and skills of people in front-line positions, many of whom are highly skilled (doctors, nurses, professors, etc).

By Rana Foroohar, an assistant managing editor at Time and the magazines economics columnist. Follow her on Twitter: @RanaForoohar. Adapted from Makers & Takers: The Rise of Finance and the Fall of American Business. Originally published at Evonomics

After the financial crisis of 2008, many people predicted that there would be a crisis of capitalism. The best and the brightest would forgo careers filled with financial ledgers and become teachers or engineers, or start small businesses. Needless to say, that didnt happen. In fact, getting an MBA has never been a more popular career path. The number of MBAs graduating from Americas business schools has skyrocketed since the 1980s. But over that time, the health of American business has decreased by many metrics: corporate R&D spending, new business creation, productivity, and the level of public trust in business in general.

There are many reasons for this, but one key factor is that the basic training that future business leaders in this country receive is dictated not by the needs of Main Street but by those of Wall Street. With very few exceptions, MBA education today is basically an education in finance, not businessa major distinction. So its no wonder that business leaders make many of the finance-friendly decisions. MBA programs dont churn out innovators well prepared to cope with a fast-changing world, or leaders who can stand up to the Street and put the long-term health of their company (not to mention their customers) first; they churn out followers who learn how to run firms by the numbers. Despite the financial crisis of 2008, most top MBA programs in the United States still teach standard markets know best efficiency theory and preach that share price is the best representation of a firms underlying value, glossing over the fact that the markets tend to brutalize firms for long-term investment and reward them for short-term paybacks to investors. (Consider that the year Apple debuted the iPod, its stock price fell roughly 25 percent, yet it rises every time the company hands cash back to shareholders.)

This dysfunction is reflected at both a philosophical and a practical level. Business schools by and large teach an extremely limited notion of value, and of who corporate stakeholders are. Many courses offer a pretense of data-driven knowledge without a rigorous understanding and analysis of on-the-ground facts. Students are given little practical experience but lots of high-altitude postulating. They learn complex mathematical models and ratios, but these are in many cases skills that are becoming somewhat devalued. As Nitin Nohria, dean of the Harvard Business School, admits, anyone can teach you how to read a P&L [profit-and-loss statement] or value a derivative; those kinds of things have become commoditized. The bigger challenge is to teach Americas future business leaders how to be curious, humane, and moral; how to think outside the box about problems like funding the research for a new blockbuster drug. And how to be strong enough to stand up to Wall Street when it demands the opposite.

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Sadly, most business schools in America arent doing that. Whats more, unlike those in many other countries, they arent so much teaching the specifics of the industries students want to enter, or even broader ideas about growth and innovation, as they are training future executives to manage P&Ls. It is very telling that Finance 101 is always a mandatory MBA course, while most others are not. But finance isnt taught in a way that is rigorous, or truly representative of the real world. Financial risk modeling, one of the basic concepts taught in business schools, is an inexact science at best; many people feel its more like rune reading. After all, it involves throwing thousands of variables about all the bad things that could happen into a black box, shaking them up with the millions of positions taken daily by banks, and extrapolating it all into a simple, easy-to-understand number about how much is likely to be lost if things go belly-up. What could possibly go wrong, especially when youre relying on past assumptions (the sovereign debts of the United States and Europe will never be downgraded!) and dont account for the fact that market-moving events often create their own momentum? Yet the notion that financial models can reveal truth is still taken as fact in most business schoolsthat was, of course, one of the key factors that fueled the great financial crisis of 2008. The premise of financial theory [taught in MBA programs] is bogus, says Robert Johnson, an economist and former quantitative trader for George Soross Quantum fund who now heads the Institute for New Economic Thinking, an influential group that, among other things, is trying to broaden the nature of economics and business education. Thats why we end up living with very thin margins of safetybecause of the pretense of knowledge and precision about the future which does not exist.

Meanwhile, the social, moral, and even larger macroeconomic consequences of corporate actions are largely ignored in the case studies students pore over. Even after the financial crisis, a survey of the worlds one hundred top business schools (most of them in the United States) found that only half of all MBA programs make ethics a required course, and only 6 percent deal with issues of sustainability in their core curriculum, despite the fact that a large body of research shows that firms that focus on these issues actually have higher longer-term performance. Instead, students are taught that what matters most is maximizing profits and bolstering a companys share price. Its something they carry straight with them to corporate America.

People do keep heading to business school, thoughin large part because business, and in particular the business of finance, is where the money is. A full quarter of American graduate students earn a masters degree in business, more than the combined share of masters degrees sought in the legal, health, and computer science fields (business is also far and away the most popular undergraduate degree). The greatest percentage of those who receive an MBA degree end up not in industry, but in some area of finance. Although figures have dropped somewhat since the financial crisis of 2008, the financial conglomeratebanking, insurance, hedge funds, investment management, and consulting firmsis still the largest single block of MBA employers, along with the accounting and finance departments of Fortune 500 companies. Given that the quickest path to being a CEO these days is through a finance track, many of the top decision makers in the largest and most powerful firms not only have an MBA, but come from one of a handful of elite programs, like Harvard, Chicago, Columbia, and Wharton. [Within] the first three months of your MBA program, youre surrounded by people in suits, says one 2015 graduate of Columbia Business School. Its not peer pressure, but theres definitely a social element to feeling like you want to revert back to mainstream [areas of employment] with job security. She, like most of her peers, is planning to work for a consulting firm, an investment bank, or a private equity shop upon graduation. Given the six-figure cost of an MBA education, thats not so much a choice for many students as it is a financial necessity.

Yet ironically, many business leaders, even those who have MBAs themselves, have begun to question the value of these programs. I went to business school before I knew any better, kind of like sailors get tattoos, jokes former GM vice chairman Bob Lutz, whose book Car Guys vs. Bean Counters decries the rise of the MBAs. The problem with business education, according to him, is that students are taught not what happens in real businesswhich tends to be unpredictable and messybut a series of techniques and questions that should take them to the right answers, no matter what the problem is. The techniques, if you read the Harvard Business School cases, they are all about finding efficiencies, cost optimization, reducing your [product] assortment, buying out competitors, improving logistics, getting rid of too many warehouses, or putting in more warehouses. Its all words, and then theres a sea of numbers, and you read it all and analyze your way through this batch of charts and numbers, and then you figure out the silver bullet: the problem is X. And youre then considered brilliant. The real problem, says Lutz, is that the case studies are staticthey dont reflect the messy, emotional, dynamic world of business as it is. In these studies, annual sales are never in question. Ive never seen a Harvard Business School case study that says, Hey, our sales are going down and we dont know why. Now what?

Lutz believes this kind of approach was one of the things that tanked the American automobile industry and manufacturing in general from the 1970s onward. Hes not alone. Many of Americas iconic business leaders believe an MBA degree makes you less equipped to run a business well for the long term, particularly in high-growth, innovation-driven industries like pharmaceuticals or technology, which depend on leaders who are willing to invest in the future.

MBAs are everywhere, yet the industries where you find fewer of them tend to be the most successful. Americas shining technology and innovation hubSilicon Valleyis relatively light on MBAs and heavy on engineers. MBAs had almost nothing to do with the two major developments in the American business landscape over the last forty years: the Japanese-style quality revolution in manufacturing and the digital revolution. Indeed, the top-down, hierarchical, financially driven management style typically taught in business schools is useless in flat, nimble start-up companies that create the majority of jobs in the country. Moreover, when that style is imposed on Silicon Valley firms, they typically falter (think of John Sculley, the Wharton MBA who made the ill-fated decision to oust Steve Jobs after his first tenure at Apple, or the reign of Carly Fiorina at HP, during which that companys stock lost half its value). One of the scariest trends in business these days is the increased movement of MBAs and finance types into the technology industry. They now are bringing their focus on financial engineering and balance sheet manipulation to firms such as Google, Apple, Facebook, Yahoo, and Snapchata shift that, if history is any indicator, doesnt bode well for the future of such firms.

Why has business education failed business? Why has it fallen so much in love with finance and the ideas it espouses? Its a problem with deep roots, which have been spreading for decades. It encompasses issues like the rise of neoliberal economic views as a challenge to the postwar threat of socialism. Its about an academic inferiority complex that propelled business educators to try to emulate hard sciences like physics rather than take lessons from biology or the humanities. It dovetails with the growth of computing power that enabled complex financial modeling. The bottom line, though, is that far from empowering business, MBA education has fostered the sort of short-term, balance-sheet-oriented thinking that is threatening the economic competitiveness of the country as a whole. If you wonder why most businesses still think of shareholders as their main priority or treat skilled labor as a cost rather than an assetor why 80 percent of CEOs surveyed in one study said theyd pass up making an investment that would fuel a decades worth of innovation if it meant theyd miss a quarter of earnings results its because thats exactly what they are being educated to do.
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By Laura Layden of the Naples Daily News

The Florida Supreme Court has dealt another blow to small business, rejecting another piece of the state's workers' compensation law.

On Thursday the court ruled against a part of the law that put a two-year limit on an injured worker's rights to collect temporary total disability payments. Workers receive the temporary payments when they have not fully healed and can't work but don't yet qualify for permanent benefits.

The law the court ruled unconstitutional cut off temporary payments after 104 weeks.

The ruling in the Westphal v. City of St. Petersburg case came less than two months after the same court struck down a law that capped attorneys' fees in workers' compensation insurance cases.

After the Supreme Court's earlier decision, insurers requested a 17 percent hike in workers' compensation rates from state regulators, which they directly attributed to the legal opinion.

A decision on the rate increase is still pending, but employers fear the back-to-back court rulings will put Florida's workers' compensation rates back on the path toward the record levels they hit in the early 2000s, which triggered comprehensive reforms.

In a statement, Mark Wilson, the Florida Chamber of Commerce president and CEO, said it's clear Florida's workers' compensation system is "under attack." His group is calling for a legislative fix.

"A legislative solution for both cases will help bring certainty back to Florida's job creators and injured workers that Florida's workers' comp system is working," Wilson said.

For more than a decade the Florida Chamber  the state's largest federation of businesses, chambers and associations  has led efforts to lower workers' compensation rates, which have been cut by nearly 60 percent as a result of legislative changes. In 2003 the state had the second highest rates in the country before major reforms.

"It was a real crisis, mostly a small-business issue," Wilson said in a recent meeting with the Naples Daily News editorial board.

The state chamber has created a task force that's exploring ways to deal with the unraveling of the state's workers' compensation system, which includes looking at what other states are doing to control insurance costs for businesses, he said.

Todd Yates, founder and chairman of Gates, a construction management, general contracting and design-build firm headquartered in Bonita Springs, said anything that jeopardizes the livelihood of small businesses and their employees "makes no sense." Higher insurance costs for employers will only mean higher costs for their customers, he said.

"Right now the workers' comp rates, they keep creeping up and creeping up," Gates said. "But if what is proposed goes through it will be astronomical. It will be completely unfair to everyone  small businesses and employees. It affects everybody."

The Florida chapter of the National Federation of Independent Business and the Property Casualty Insurers Association of America also issued statements Thursday about how the Supreme Court's latest ruling could harm the state's small businesses.

The recent rulings are seen as a victory for labor groups and injured workers' attorneys, who have argued the Legislature overstepped it bounds when it took aggressive steps to control insurance costs for businesses.

In Castellanos v. Next Door Co., the Supreme Court ruled the state's mandatory attorneys' fee schedule for workers' compensation case violated due process.

In that case Marvin Castellanos, an injured worker, sued his employer and its insurance company, Amerisure. The attorney's fees for his case came out to $1.53 per hour for a little over 107 hours of work based on the state's payment schedule. His attorney sought $350 per hour.

In Westphal v. City of St. Petersburg, the court ruled 5-2 in favor of Bradley Westphal, a former firefighter who was injured on the job in 2009. When his temporary benefits were cut off after two years as he continued to get treatment and heal, the law created what the Supreme Court called a "coverage gap" that left him without any benefits.

In the court's opinion, Justice Barbara Pariente wrote that cutting off the benefits was a "denial of the right of access to courts." She said the decision revived a law that allowed workers to get temporary total disability benefits for up to five years.

In a written opinion of his own, Justice R. Fred Lewis said he had his own thoughts about how to remedy the problem, saying that reviving the old law wasn't any real solution.

"I have a full appreciation for the judicial attempts to save the workers' compensation statute from total disaster," he wrote. "Florida needs a valid workers' compensation program, but the charade is over. Enough is enough, and Florida workers deserve better."
SHARE The new sign on the Hertz Global Headquarters on Williams Road and US 41 in Estero, Florida on Tuesday, June 23, 2015. Calvin Mattheis/Staff)

By Casey Logan  The News-Press

Hertz Global Holdings has returned to the Fortune 500, a list of the top businesses in the nation as measured by revenue.

The Estero-based company, according to the ranking by Forbes magazine, had $10.535 billion in revenues in 2015 and 30,000 employees.

Its listing reads: Hertzs return owes less to robust performance than a 2014 accounting debacle that stalled the car rental company from filing with the SEC. This year, Hertz returns at No. 269 with a 5% decline in revenue in 2015.

In July 2015, Hertz had to restate its earnings results for 2012 and 2013, as well as some results for 2011. The accounting mess cost Hertz its spot on the list.

Publix Super Markets ranked highest among Florida-based companies, coming in at No. 87 with $32.6 billion in revenues. A sampling of others from the state: Auto Nation (No. 136), Office Depot (No. 196) and Lennar (No. 301). New to the list this year among Florida-based businesses is Raymond James Financial (No. 482).

Looking beyond the top 500, Fort Myers-based Chicos FAS ranked No. 807, with $2.642 billion in revenues.

McLean, Va.-based Gannett, parent company of The News-Press and the Naples Daily News, ranked No. 752, with $2.885 billion in revenues.

Walmart ranked first in the listing, with $482 billion in revenues, followed by Exxon Mobil and Apple.

Hertz Global Holdings operates the Hertz, Dollar, Thrifty and Firefly car rental brands in 9,980 corporate and licensee locations throughout 150 countries.

Hertz Rental Car Holding Co. said Monday that its long-anticipated plan to split off its equipment-rental business as a separate company will take effect June 30.

Hertz Equipment Rental Corp. (Herc) is based in Bonita Springs. It will trade on NYSE under the symbol HRI. Hercs equipment-rental business serves companies in energy, construction, manufacturing, civil infrastructure and other industries. Its businesses had revenue of about $1.7 billion in 2015.

Were proud to help represent Southwest Florida in the 2016 Fortune 500 and further demonstrate that this is a great region for business," said Bill Masterson, vice president of strategic communications. "The upcoming separation of our equipment rental business as a new stand-alone company  Herc Holdings Inc.  adds to the development of a stronger year-around economy in the region, and were pleased to contribute to that.
Like most rooms of the historic Boomer House, the dining room is a hodgepodge of furnishings from multiple eras. Laura Gates/Banner Correspondent

SHARE Over the mantle at the 1917 Boomer Home hangs a portrait of Lucius Boomer, the son of a Koreshan Unity founding member who grew up to become a hotel tycoon, co-owning the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel with Thomas DuPont. Laura Gates/Banner Correspondent This side view of the Boomer House greets visitors at the end of a long drive off U.S. 41; however, the historic home was built to front the Estero River. Laura Gates/Banner Correspondent A cradle, probably used by George Boomer, sits in the attic of the 1917 Boomer Home. Laura Gates/Banner Correspondent Nola Boomer (in blue) poses with Peggy Phillips, Katy Errington and Eileen Galvin during the Estero Historical Society Annual Luncheon April 23. Laura Gates/Banner Correspondent

By Laura Gates, Banner Correspondent

If houses could talk, the Boomer Home would have many tales to tell  of faith, of loss, of retreat and of adventures from the past 100 years.

This historic manor fronts the Estero River and sits on about 25 acres at the southwest corner of U.S. 41 and Broadway Avenue. Additional Boomer family land was purchased by the state's Florida Forever conservation program and Lee County's Conservation 20/20 program in 2004, but the home remains a private residence for Nola Boomer, whose late husband, George, was the grandson of original Koreshan Unity member Berthaldine "Bertha" Sterling Boomer. George's father, hotel magnate Lucius M. Boomer, built the house for Bertha in 1916.

Nola has guarded the home's privacy but recently granted a rare tour for members of the Estero Historic Preservation Citizens Committee. As they walked the expansive grounds and admired the eclectic furnishings, many speculated on the future of this historic property, called "Mirasol Grove" by the Boomer family. It will become part of the Koreshan State Historic Site holdings upon Nola's passing.

"The Boomer House is a historical treasure for the Village of Estero," said committee chair Charles Dauray. "I am delighted that the home is in great shape. Also, the archival material within is significant and well preserved."

Estero Councilwoman Katy Errington said she envisions a footbridge over the Estero River connecting Koreshan park to the Boomer House, with walking trails along the river's edge.

"This could be phenomenal," she said.

Park Manager Rick Argo shares a vision with longtime Mirasol caretaker Eric Wilson to hold weddings on the picturesque grounds of the Boomer Home. As for Nola, she leaves it up to the state to decide but says she hopes this Old Florida manor will be opened for tours, much like the Koreshan buildings across the river.

"I feel honored to be a part of this amazing history," she said by phone. Nola was unable to host the May 11 open house due to a medical issue, so she entrusted Wilson with conducting the tour. He's been taking care of the property for 19 years.

Nola recalled the first time George took her to Mirasol to get away from the bustle of their daily lives in Manhattan.

"It was breathtaking," said Nola, speaking in her characteristic eloquence. "The day George and I were leaving Florida, he would go down to the river and have a little cry just because he loved it so much and was sad to leave it."

George's father built the home for his grandmother after the death of Koreshan Unity founder Cyrus Teed. Bertha had been one of Teed's first devotees, following "Master Koresh" from Chicago into the mosquito-infested, subtropic jungle that was Estero in the late 1800s.

"That Cyrus Teed  I don't know what I think of him," said Nola in her candid, witty way. "He was definitely charismatic. He got five wealthy women who subsidized him and his dream."

Bertha was dubbed "matrona" by Teed and was one of the elite Ladies of the Planetary Court, who governed daily operations on the Koreshan settlement, founded in 1894. Although she took a vow of celibacy, she was married and had four children before following Teed to his New Jerusalem in Estero.

Her eldest son, Lucius (also known as Louis), commissioned a Koreshan builder to construct the house in 1916, where his mother and sister lived until Bertha's death in 1935. Lucius was never a member of the Koreshan Unity but helped conduct a geodetic experiment on the beach in Naples, according to Koreshan records. After his father's death in 1897, he entered hotel management, eventually becoming president of the famed Waldorf-Astoria.

He traveled widely, with many souvenirs and relics still present in the Boomer Home today. George grew up in the Waldorf Towers, running about like the fictional character Eloise and learning to cook from the hotel chef. Like his father, George excelled in business, traveled often and liked to entertain.

"He was truly a charming gentleman," said Nola, who married George in 1985 long after his parents' deaths. "He was very proud of his roots."

Mirasol has welcomed numerous guests over the years, including inventor Thomas Edison, who is reported to have attended social functions at the Boomer Home, Wilson said. While the manor hasn't seen many guests in recent years, Nola said she plans to offer more tours this fall.

Most attendees of the May tour had never seen the Boomer House before and marveled at the majesty hidden by old growth forests along U.S. 41.

"This is the only thing left of Old Estero," said Marlene Fernandez, archivist with the Estero Historical Society.

"This has to be something you enjoy, you talk about and open to the public," added Peggy Phillips, master naturalist with College of Life Foundation.

Councilwoman Errington organized the tour and frequently talks with Nola about preserving Mirasol's rich history. The Florida Department of Environmental Protection is updating its 10-year plan for Koreshan State Historic Site this month, and Errington said she would like to see public access for the Boomer House added to priorities.

While discussion of the Boomer property may take place at the public hearing June 29, it is unlikely the Boomer property will be added to the long-range plan while Nola is living, Argos said. His No. 1 priority is improving the boat ramp and adding a separate launch area for nonmotorized crafts.

He also wants to add concessions for canoes and kayaks so more people can enjoy paddling the Estero River  and catch a glimpse of majestic Mirasol Grove from its grandest viewpoint.

Check out other proposals for Koreshan park's future in the draft of the DEP's Unit Management Plan at www.fldepnet.org/public-notices.

IF YOU GO

Public meeting on the 10-year unit management plan for Koreshan State Historic Site

When: 5 p.m. June 29

Where: Art Hall at Koreshan State Historic Site, 3800 Corkscrew Road, Estero

Information: Check out the proposed plan online at fldepnet.org/public-notices
James "Son Ford" Thomas, an outsider artist and musician, with Hedges. Thomas' unfired sculptures were made of clay dug out of the banks of the Yazoo River in Mississippi.

SHARE Outsider potter Marie Rogers in her Georgia studio in 1991. Outsider artist Charles Simmons' "Moses with the Commandments." (1996) Artist Lonnie Holly at the well-known landmark of another outsider artist, Finster's Paradise Garden, in Summerville, Georgia.

By Harriet Howard Heithaus of the Naples Daily News

James "Jimmy" Hedges III appears largely in Naples in the family name on the star-roofed nature center in a midtown preserve. He appears in American art, however, as a prophet.

Hedges was a passionate, persistent patron of African-American "outsider" art  that is, work created by artists with little or no training, formal shows or mentorship. (Florida's Highwaymen art, recently featured in a major exhibition at the von Liebig Art Center, is part of that American grass roots movement.)

Hedges, who died in 2014 at age 71, didn't just collect art made by the Highwaymen and other outsiders. He sold it, befriended its artists and championed them to galleries and museums.

Even better for history, he cataloged everything he saw. He photographed artists, their work spaces and families; he held onto bills of sale, letters and exhibition agreements along with their art  an outsider archivist of sorts.

In March, his son, part-time Naples resident James Hedges IV, donated to the Smithsonian Archives of American Art what its representative called "a treasure trove"  35 boxes of his father's papers, photographs and records.

"I thought, 'My God, this is amazing," declared Annette Leddy, New York collector for the Smithsonian Archives, when his son showed it to her. Her comments likened it to finding a good handful of pieces to complete the puzzle of American art history.

Kate Haw, director of the Archives, issued a statement calling it "the largest collection on outsider art in the Archives' holdings."

For James Hedges IV, it's his father's gift to the world.

Legacy of words, photos

"He had two women who helped him with his stuff," James Hedges IV said in a recent phone interview. "And one of these women told me, 'You know, he knew this archive was going to be his greatest legacy.'"

The son went through his holdings, seven buildings' worth on his father's 500-acre estate on Lookout Mountain, Georgia. His father didn't spend much time there, his son said.

"He was voracious, unbendingly committed to travel," said the younger Hedges. His father's real home may have been his Chevrolet Suburban. "We used to laugh because all his cars had over 200,000 miles on them.

"He drove everywhere. Everywhere. And what he would do is he created all these travelogues, these address books, these journals  all this data documenting who he was seeing. He'd photograph the artists, their artwork, their working environment, them in the process of making art."

And then, he said, his father "loved to build bridges connecting people."

"He produced fliers on hundreds of artists. He would create materials to promote them. He would bring artists to New York to the Outsider Art Fair." Jimmy Hedges, his son continued, would talk to galleries on the East Coast to pique their interest, and negotiate to sell them art. To get their names out, he would even buy the art and give it to nonprofit centers and folk art museums: "He'd say 'You need to have this in your collection.' And he'd give it away."

"Jimmy Hedges probably never made a profit in his entire art career," he reflected during a recent phone conversation. "He would buy a work and then sell it for 5 cents more." His mission was to get these artists' work before buyers.

He was a dealer only "accidentally," James Hedges IV said. "First and foremost, my father was an artist. Being an artist allowed him to go out as an individual who was interested in getting together with other artists, unlike a curator or a gallery owner or a collector who have a very different agenda."

An art world bridge

The son of one of Tennessee's original industrialist families, Hedges had the privilege to follow his heart's pursuits as a woodcarver. And when he talked to artists like Lonnie Holley, it was with an understanding and a hope to learn from their frustrations, inspirations and philosophies.

Among the archive photos are a number of Jimmy Hedges with artists like Mose Tolliver and James "Son Ford" Thomas. The senior Hedges is in what his son remembers as his uniform: an art-printed white tee and khaki shorts. He was often shod in hiking boots.

"My dad was like an old shoe. He was super low-key," his son said. "But he could spend the afternoon in Overtown, hanging out with Purvis (artist Purvis Young), then go get himself showered and have dinner in Hobe Sound or Port Royal.

"He had a charm and a sweetness that just made everybody crazy about him."

"Jimmy's sense of humor, his generosity, his compassion for the artist and their art, his own sculpture is amazing," agreed fellow outsider artist Alison Spiesman. "He was a consummate southern gentleman and gracious host, classy  a great story teller."

Hedges took a special interest in Young, who was on dialysis: "My dad bought out his studio probably three times  probably hundreds of works  because he wanted to help him financially"

James Hedges IV also remembers reading in this father's archives the letter he fired off to the chairman of Hilton when Young was ordered out of one of the Hilton's Atlanta restaurants.

"First of all none of this should happen in your hotel," he read from the letter. "Secondly, this is somebody of very important national substance, accomplishment and recognition, and you have treated him like a vagrant Negro . in a way that simply is not done today."

Jimmy Hedges opened the guesthouses at his mountain home for respites and artist sabbaticals. Hedges' son remembers his father's friendship with Holley, whose name has become a known commodity in contemporary art. Holley's children, all 13 of them, spent a summer at the Hedges retreat, he recalled.

"He was that kind of guy. You would go out to his farm and there would be six kids, from 5 to 15, in the swimming pool and you're like 'Who the hell are these people?'" he recalled, laughing.

But he respects his late father's choices.

"He used his privilege to help educate, and uplift and support and grow people's appreciation of these artists and how they lived their lives," he concluded.

A world archive

Jimmy Hedges died, unfortunately, in a drowning accident. The outsider art he was holding at the time of his death has been moved to storage, and its disposition still hasn't been determined by the family. That would doubtlessly include much of his own inventory, from the small birds he once carved to the large, chain saw wood statuary of figures famous, humorous or intriguing.

But his photos, letters and materials are eventually going to be open to the world under a program of digitization by the Smithsonian Archive of American Art. Belying the old movie joke of the priceless lost Ark of the Covenant being lost in an institutional warehouse, the Smithsonian plans to puts all its archival holdings online. Every page  front and back  is being scanned.

"There are people in India who are doing their dissertations on the (totally digitized) Betty Parsons gallery and they've never been there," Leddy said. (To see those archives, go to www.aaa.si.edu/collections/online.)

There are two obstacles.

"We have a very efficient staff," Leddy said. "It's mainly a question of financial resources."

Further, there's a queue of archives yet to be digitized. If someone steps forward to pay for digitizing of a particular archive, it will get priority.

But either way, "the hope is they'll eventually be digitized, " Leddy emphasized. "It's our mission to make this available to anyone who wants to do research on these outsider artists."
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A snail kite and an evening bat were among the 64 animals admitted to the von Arx Wildlife Hospital at the Conservancy of Southwest Florida last week. Other admissions include a barred owl, two loggerhead shrikes and a gopher tortoise.

The snail kite was found on the ground in the Lakewood community after it was reportedly dive bombed by songbirds. Conservancy Volunteer Critter Courier, Scott Dorris, retrieved the bird from a resident who had contained the kite under a laundry basket in his garage.

The young kite was bright, alert and responsive but very weak, emaciated and stressed. After receiving a physical exam and subcutaneous electrolytes, the kite was placed in an animal intensive care unit to rest. The following morning the kite was trying to stand and vocalized when handled. Due to being emaciated, the kite was slowly rehydrated over two days by receiving oral electrolytes and vitamin and nutritional supplements. By the third day the kite was offered a skinned mouse which was eagerly eaten.

Snail kites are an endangered species. In Florida they are found living by freshwater lakes, canals and marshes in areas with few shrubs or trees. The loss of wetlands has negatively affected populations of both the kite and the large apple snail which the snail kite primarily feeds upon. Since hospital staff could not find a supplier of unprocessed snails to feed the kite, the bird has been offered, and is eating, small rodents.

Currently the snail kite is recovering and gaining strength in an outdoor flight enclosure.

The young evening bat was found on a sidewalk at a local country club by wildlife hospital volunteer and Conservancy board member Lois Kelley. Lois knew exactly how to safely contain the bat for transport to the wildlife hospital.

Upon admission the bat was active and alert but his right wing was swollen and bruised. Unfortunately the bat's condition deteriorated and the wing injury proved fatal.

Various species of bats are common in our area so any bat admission provides the opportunity to educate on the importance of people keeping themselves safe when attempting to help wildlife in distress.

Bats, as well as bobcats, raccoons, foxes, otters and many other animals have the potential to carry the rabies virus meaning they are rabies vector species (RVS). Bats are considered a high risk RVS and no one should attempt to handle one. If you encounter a RVS please call the wildlife hospital for advice before taking action. Human safety has to be the main priority when attempting to help an animal in need.

Special Thanks

Hospital staff would like to thank local wood worker Bill Wachtel for constructing a jungle gym for the young raccoons we rehabilitate. Baby raccoons need practice climbing before being moved to larger outside recovery enclosures. The new jungle gym is sturdy, easy to clean and provides the raccoons the opportunity to climb and gain muscle strength.

Baby Shower Success

Thank you to everyone who contributed to make our annual Wildlife Baby Shower a smashing success. It was wonderful to see some many members of the community visit the Conservancy and donate needed items from our wish list. The event was awe inspiring. Approximately $1,700 in monetary donations and more than $3,300 worth of items from the wish list, which included medical supplies, towels, cleaning products, food items and office supplies, were donated and will go directly toward caring for the injured, sick, and orphaned wildlife we care for at the von Arx Wildlife Hospital.

Thank you so much to the many families that participated and showed how much they value our native wildlife. Your belief in our work inspires us to continue to provide quality, individualized care to each patient.

Recent Releases

A blue jay, a mourning dove, a Virginia opossum, three eastern screech owls, a Florida box turtle, three eastern cottontails, a northern cardinal, a burrowing owl, six northern mockingbirds, a Florida red-bellied turtle, two green herons, two common grackles, a red-tailed hawk, two brown thrashers and a killdeer were released last week.

Under Construction

Our outdoor wildlife viewing area is temporarily closed to the public while our new outdoor animal recovery enclosures and guest education areas are constructed. Visitors to the Conservancy can continue to experience the nursery viewing window and wildlife rehabilitation exhibits throughout the Nature Center. Thank you for your understanding and patience while we improve our patients' recovery areas.

Opportunities to Help

Please visit the Conservancy website at www.conservancy.org to view all of the amazing volunteer opportunities at the Conservancy of Southwest Florida.

Your volunteer time, memberships and donations are vital in helping us continue our work to protect Southwest Florida's water, land, wildlife and future.

Joanna Fitzgerald is director of the von Arx Wildlife Hospital at the Conservancy of Southwest Florida. Call 239-262-2273 or see conservancy.org.
A Bonita Springs man babysitting a couple of his relatives was arrested Friday and charged with molesting a girl and her younger brother while he was naked.

Nicholas Paul Lacombe, 21, of the 2700 block of Driftwood Drive, was charged with two counts of lewd and lascivious molestation on a child younger than 12 years old by a person older than 18 years old. He remained Monday in Lee County Jail pending posting of a total of $100,000 in bonds.

According to a Lee County Sheriff's Office report:

A doctor notified authorities Thursday of the suspected molestation after seeing the girl, 6, who was complaining of pain in her vaginal area. According to reports, the girl said she was touched by Lacombe while he babysat her and her sibling. Her parents, she said, were out on a date when the incident occurred. She described it as occurring more than once, but could not recall specific dates.

The girl said 'Nick likes to sneak up on her and is mean to her and her brother,' according to the report.

She said the children were in her parents' bedroom watching a movie when Lacombe came into the room naked, pulled down her and her brother's pants and fondled them.

She said Lacombe told her not to say anything or she would get spanked.

Her brother was interviewed and could distinguish colors and animal names, but 'appeared uncomfortable when questioned about being touched.'
SHARE Bovaphanh Phomphakdy . (Courtesy CCSO)

By Annika Hammerschlag of the Naples Daily News

When a 21-year-old woman bought a Groupon last year for a massage at Enta Thai Spa on Tamiami Trail in Naples, she expected to leave relaxed and pain-free.

Instead, the college student, who was home for summer break, said she felt "disgusted," "taken advantage of," and "violated."

Bovaphanh Phomphakdy, the woman's masseur who also owns the spa, was arrested Tuesday on a charge of sexual battery without serious injury. He is accused of penetrating the woman. Phomphakdy, also known by his nickname Enta, was released Wednesday on a $25,000 bond.

The Naples Daily News does not identify sexual assault victims.

"It was one of the worst experiences of my entire life," she explained. "I felt like I was just a piece of meat."

Her frustrations didn't end with the assault. Though she immediately reported the incident to the Collier County Sheriff's Office and underwent rape testing the same day, an arrest wasn't made until Tuesday  nearly a full year after the assault occurred.

It took the Florida Department of Law Enforcement nearly seven months to determine the presence of male DNA inside the victim and send the report to the sheriff's office. Once the report was received by the sheriff's office, another two months passed before a warrant to obtain Phomphakdy's DNA was sought. It then took at least five more weeks before those results were returned to the sheriff's office.

According to police reports, the woman told deputies Phomphakdy inched his hands into her underwear before she felt something penetrate her.

"At one point while she was on her side and the male was standing behind her, she felt something warm enter her vagina more than an inch," the police report states. "She immediately told the male to stop and ended the massage."

"I'd never had a Thai massage before so I didn't know," she explained in an interview. "I thought he just needed to get lower on my back. I thought he knew what he was doing, so I trusted him."

She was unsure whether he used his fingers or genitalia, according to the report.

"It really upset me how he denied it immediately. He's an absolute scumbag," she said. "I never thought that could happen to me."

Phomphakdy, who co-owns the spa with his wife, denied the allegations when deputies interviewed him, saying it's possible the woman felt a bottle of oil he carries on his belt enter her, according to the report.

"There's no way that Bovaphanh Phomphakdy, who worked so very hard to establish this successful massage parlor, would jeopardize that business for a solitary fleeting moment of gratification," said John Musca, Phomphakdy's attorney. "He's an intelligent man. There's no way."

Phomphakdy's wife, Vanina Phomphakdy, agreed. She said in an interview that her husband's DNA could have been found in the woman if she touched herself after he massaged her hands.

When the young victim received a call from Collier Sheriff's Detective Scott Peterson notifying her of Phomphakdy's arrest on Tuesday, she broke down.

"I just burst into tears. I was a mess, but a happy mess," she said.

She hadn't heard from Peterson or anyone else working on the case since August. "I was absolutely shocked. I didn't even know other DNA had been found."

Part of the delay was the result of ongoing problems at FDLE.

"Our turnaround times are a result of an extensive loss of trained analysts and a huge influx of sexual assault kits that had previously been unsubmitted," said Steve Arthur, an agency spokesman.

Peterson also cited a heavy workload as a reason for the delay in seeking a warrant. "It took around two months because we're always in backlog," he said. "That's just how it works."

The warrant was issued on the same day Peterson completed it, according to the arrest report.

It typically takes four-to-six months for rape kits to be processed, according to Project Help, a nonprofit in Collier County that provides counseling for victims of sexual assault and administered the victim's rape kit. However, starting July 1, all kits must be tested within 120 days of their submission.

"Seven months is a long time to wait, there's no excuse for it," said Eileen Wesley, the Executive Director of Project Help, referring to the length of time it took for the victim's kit to be processed. "Hopefully this new law will give victims less stress in the process going forward."
Hodges University

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By Thyrie Bland, The News-Press

Hodges University is reviewing its academic offerings and could suspend some programs with low enrollment, officials said Friday.

"If these programs are not in demand by the students, then it tells us something," said Keith Arnold, a Hodges board member. "It tells us we are missing the marketplace. We are not serving the local needs of both traditional and nontraditional students as well as we could. ..."

Hodges is a not-for-profit, private school that offers 11 associate, 17 bachelor's and nine master's degree programs. The school serves more than 1,900 students on its campuses in Fort Myers and Naples.

Hodges President Donald Wortham said he plans to have discussions with the school's deans, faculty members and department chairs to identify the programs that are no longer of interest to students and employers. The plan is to have the review of programs finished by mid-July.

Wortham said if the process determines there are programs that should be suspended, the students enrolled in those programs will be allowed to finish.

"Many institutions do this sort of thing every year where they review their program portfolio and what is of high need and what's not getting demand in the marketplace," he said.

The review process also is taking other things under consideration, including what programs Hodges should add to its degree offerings and how can the school streamline the services delivered at its two campuses.

Hodges is planning to expand its offerings in the health care field. Its board decided Friday to add a certified nursing assistant program to the school's offerings.

The program will be offered to students when school starts in the fall.

"We believe that just generally allied health is an area that there is... demand for educational programs, and we believe it's an area that we need to expand our offerings, our curriculum to meet the needs of a growing allied health workforce in southwest Florida," Arnold said.

Hodges also is trying to figure out if it needs to continue to offer duplicate service at its two campuses, Arnold said.

"Some of that is overly duplicative," Arnold said. "It's just not necessary."

He said the question that has to be asked is what is the most efficient way to operate two campuses that are roughly 30 minutes apart.

"The marketplace is driving some of these changes," Arnold said. "Students now take more courses online than they ever have before. Traditional educational facilities across America are having to respond to the reality that classroom space is not needed nearly as much as it used to be because of online education."
An example of a black bear. Getty Images/iStockphoto

By Eric Staats of the Naples Daily News

Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission biologists recommended Friday that the state hold another bear hunt in 2016 but with new restrictions.

In a news release late Friday afternoon announcing the recommendation, the FWC said the 2016 hunt would be "more conservative and accountable" than a 2015 hunt that drew rounds of protests  and even a lawsuit  from environmental advocates.

Critics said not enough was known about the effect a hunt would have on Florida's population of black bears, which were removed from the state's list of threatened species in 2012. But hunt backers said it was a proper way to manage a growing bear population that increasingly is in conflict with humans.

Biologists estimate that more than 4,300 bears are roaming Florida, where their numbers dropped to between 300 and 500 in the 1970s.

Under Friday's recommendation, set for a June 22 vote by the FWC board, the state would reduce the area open to bear hunting to match areas where human-bear conflicts  bear attacks, roadkill and nuisance bear complaints  are most common. Bear hunting would be allowed in Collier, Lee and Hendry counties as well as in North and Central Florida.

New rules also would prohibit hunting a bear with any other bear present, including cubs; further restrict hunting near game feeding stations; limit the number of bear permits; and improve enforcement by requiring hunters to tag bears immediately.

The FWC did not release more specifics Friday about the new proposed number of permits or about whether the state would reduce the number of bears that could be killed.

Instead of all the hunters being allowed to hunt for the length of the season, hunters would be divided into three hunt periods from Oct. 21-24, Oct. 26-29 and Oct. 31- Nov. 3 as a way to spread out the hunting pressure on the bear population. Hunters also would be allowed to hunt in only one hunt zone.

In 2015, the state sold bear permits to almost 3,800 people. The FWC set a "harvest objective" of 320 bears, but the weeklong hunt was shut down after two days as the number of bears killed approached 300. The final tally was 304. Hunters exceeded the maximum number of bears to be killed in two of the state's four bear hunting zones.

Other options proposed but not recommended for 2016 were to repeat the bear hunt under the 2015 rules, postpone the next bear hunt until 2017, and drop bear hunting altogether.

Defenders of Wildlife Florida program director Elizabeth Fleming said Florida should take a one-year hiatus from bear hunting to more thoroughly evaluate bear populations and the 2015 hunt.

"I think they could try to rebuild the public trust that really suffered a blow with the last hunt," she said.

Florida Wildlife Federation President Manley Fuller said bear hunting should be allowed in 2016 only in parts of the state where the FWC is able to complete a more detailed bear population sustainability analysis.

"We think with the high degree of public interest in Florida, that analysis is warranted," he said. "We believe they should have that level of detail."
The Cape Romano dome home attracts a lot of visitors. The 10,000 Islands present an unrivaled venue to escape from civilization. Lance Shearer/Eagle Correspondent

SHARE Renderings from Turrell, Hall & Associates depict the dome homes as a reef. Renderings from Turrell, Hall & Associates depict the dome homes as a reef. An aerial view of the dome home off of Cape Romano on Thursday, July 24, 2014. Scott McIntyre/Staff A popular stop for boaters in the Marco Island/Goodland area is Cape Romano, where a dome home still stands. Once a residence, the home is now falling into the sea, the result of storms and beach erosion that has changed and shifted the tip of the island southeast of Marco. Eric Strachan/Staff 2003

By Kristine Gill of the Naples Daily News

First they were homes. Then they were uninhabitable; graffitied space-ship like fixtures on the Cape Romano seascape.

Now a Naples-based nonprofit is hoping to turn the dome homes into a reef, taking the property off the hands of its Boston owner and preserving them in a way before rising waters overtake them.

"Eventually they're going to be all the way in the sea," said Wayne Hasson, founder and president of the Naples-based nonprofit Oceans for Youth. "Now's the best time to get these things moved. They're useless where they are."

Hasson started Oceans for Youth in Naples in 1999 and it has since expanded nationally. The group's aim is to educate children about marine life and ecosystems. With the help of a Naples attorney, the group is trying to raise $2.2 million to remove and sink the dome homes somewhere off the coast of Collier County.

They hope to raise the money in a year through PlumFund.com, a crowdfunding site. As of Friday they had raised $210 toward the goal.

Naples resident Lisa Fleming helped to spearhead the project by reaching out to both the property owner John Tosto and Oceans for Youth. The plan, she said, is to donate the three acres of land belonging to Tosto to the nonprofit for education. Once the money is raised, the homes will be moved onto barges then relocated beneath the sea.

Built by Bob and Margaret Lee in 1980, the dome home had solar panels and a water cistern for rain. The family lived there for two years before selling the property. After changing hands a few more times, John Tosto bought the property 2005 with plans to restore the home and live in there. But when the county deemed it uninhabitable in 2007, they started piling fines, saying it had to be brought up to code or removed.

The county has fined Tosto $250 a day for the past 3,144 days for a total of $786,000. If the home is donated for this reef project, Collier County spokeswoman Kate Albers said commissioners could vote to waive the fines.

Attempts to reach Tosto for comment were unsuccessful, but attorney Timothy Cotter has been working with him since he bought the property.

"I'm not too familiar with the status of how title sits," Cotter said. "But I wouldn't say this is a way for John to get it off his plate. I think he realized with the shift in the land that it's the best use for those homes and it would be kind of cool to restore them in a different light."

The county began sinking concrete last year as part of a large-scale reef project with 36 sites about 10 to 28 miles off shore, spanning from off Cape Romano to between Gordon Pass and Doctors Pass. Officials believe that project will have an economic impact of $30 million a year  between tourism dollars, and the jobs created surrounding the reef  once complete.

While they have yet to designate a spot for the reef, Hasson hopes to have them placed offshore an equal distance from Naples and Marco Island. How many miles will have be determined through talks with officials. Hasson said the homes will become a magnet for tourists and fish alike.

"It's gonna be magic," he said.

Tim Hall, a marine engineer with Turrell, Hall & Associates, began working on the property when Tosto bought it.

They finally secured permits to move the homes up along the beach when Hurricane Wilma came through, he said. The storm eroded too much of the beach to make relocation possible, he said. Tosto, he said, has had his hands tied since.

Hall, a Naples native, remembers seeing the domes being built as a kid. He admits it will be somewhat sad to see them disappear from view.

"I know for some of the eco-tourists groups it's kind of a landmark for them," he said. "When you go down that part of the coast, that's always one of the things you look for."

But Hasson said the structures have become an eyesore.

"I don't think anybody's gonna miss them," he said. "It's a piece of trash on the beach."

To donate, visit http://www.plumfund.com/fundraising/create-a-reef.
Brett Raymer, left and Wayde King, of Acrylic Tank Manufacturing, stand in front of their aquarium at Imaginarium Museum which will be on the Animal Planet TV show "Tanked." The guys from "Tanked" built the museum's new aquarium inspired by the sinking of the Coast Guard cutter Mohawk.

SHARE Imaginarium museum is going to be on the Animal Planet TV show "Tanked." The guys from "Tanked" built the museum's new aquarium inspired by the sinking of the Coast Guard cutter Mohawk. (Submitted photo)

By Charles Runnells, The News-Press

The guys from the television show "Tanked" didn't have it easy installing an aquarium at the Imaginarium Science Center.

The 3,200-gallon aquarium got scratched and gouged during its cross-country trip from Las Vegas to Fort Myers in an 18-wheeler truck. The 20 species of saltwater fish had to be flown to Miami instead of Southwest Florida International Airport, thanks to weight and size restrictions. And a forklift ended up damaging a pillar inside the science center.

"It was really tight quarters," said Wayde King, who stars with fellow aquarium builder Brett Raymer on the popular Animal Planet reality show. "There were a lot of hiccups."

But, somehow, King and Raymer managed to pull it off.

"We got it in," King said. "We got it done. It was a great feeling."

The resulting aquarium makes its national debut Friday at 10 p.m. on an episode of "Tanked."

Shelby Baucom, interim director for the Imaginarium, can't wait to see the science center and its new aquarium on national television, although she admits she's not particularly thrilled to be on camera. "I'm more of a behind-the-scenes person," she said and smiles.

Still, it's great for the Imaginarium and Fort Myers to get that kind of exposure, she said. It could attract more people to visit the museum and the area.

"It's incredibly exciting," Baucom said.

The project started at the Imaginarium more than three years ago as a way to highlight artificial reefs in the Gulf of Mexico. That eventually turned into an aquarium recreating the Mohawk Veterans Memorial Reef, an artificial reef created when the World War II warship USS Mohawk was sunk 30 miles off the coast of Sanibel Island in 2012.

The Imaginarium planned to build the aquarium by itself. But then they realized a board member's cousin worked with a producer of "Tanked," Baucom said. So they sent off a letter pitching the idea.

The "Tanked" team loved it. And three years and several production delays later, they finally arrived in mid-April to build the aquarium.

King said he loved meeting the museum staff and sharing their excitement for the project.

"We've done 10,000 tanks worldwide," he said. "And the gratitude you get from people and from the kids all seeing it is probably the best feeling in the world.

"Some jobs are headaches. But this was fun. It was fun working with everybody."

The 12,000 pound, 15-foot long aquarium features a replica of the Mohawk constructed from Styrofoam and coated with an epoxy to recreate the warship's metal exterior. Real metal would rust in the saltwater, Baucom said.

"They really wanted to keep it as accurate as possible," she said. "It's pretty amazing."

The tank boasts about 80 fish, including spiny lobsters, bamboo sharks, angelfish, tang, scat, purple-spined urchins and a particularly playful and colorful fellow called a clown triggerfish.

Those fish aren't from the Gulf of Mexico, though, and Baucom said the museum will eventually replace them with native fish. That will amplify the educational nature of the exhibit, which includes two 65-inch computer touchscreens allowing visitors to take a "virtual dive" to the real USS Mohawk.

King said they chose Pacific Ocean fish mostly because of their size and availability. Besides, it adds more interest for locals. These are fish they likely haven't experienced before, he said. "Sometimes when you do your local ones, people are like, 'Oh, I already saw that before.'"
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By Alexandra Glorioso of the Naples Daily News

Collier County candidates ranging from school board to U.S. Congress fielded questions Thursday evening from hundreds of citizens, including some with wine in hand, who moved from table to table in a Naples Hilton Hotel ballroom to talk politics and policy.

"Do you like Trump?" Edward Smith, of Lely, asked Rep. Matt Hudson who is now running for Sen. Garrett Richter's open seat.

"As a matter of fact, I do," Hudson said.

"Good," Smith said as he took a pamphlet and was on his way.

Sanibel Councilman Chauncey Goss, who is running for U.S. Rep. Curt Clawson's open seat, said most people in the room were single-issuers, looking to test the candidates on where they stand regarding Republican presumptive presidential nominee Donald Trump, Common Core, right to life and the Second Amendment. The event was sponsored by 92.5-Fox-News.

"Sometimes you pass, sometimes you don't and sometimes you never find out if you had the right answer," Goss said, clad in the standard blue sport coat with red tie, hands in his pockets, chuckling. He was clearly amused.

"These are real people. You get to hear what's on their minds. And they'll tell you," he said. "It's like a poll but polls are expensive and this is free."

School board candidate Stephanie Lucarelli stood in the corner, deep in conversation with Lorita Pardue, who is originally from North Carolina but has retired to Naples. They were discussing the merits of turning down federal funding in an attempt to get rid of certain school programs mandated by the government.

"If we say no to federal funding, we still have to provide those programs," Lucarelli said."The [school] district is running close to bare bones already."

Her two younger daughters came in from the hallway and stood by the table, waiting.

"I like that she has kids in school," Pardue said. Ultimately, however, she wasn't convinced Lucarelli had the facts straight on the budget and was looking for a candidate who will support Erika Donalds and Kelly Lichter, two members often voting in the minority.

Lucarelli said she liked the event because it gives people the chance to ask one-on-one questions but doesn't find the nature of questions so different from ones that pop up at forums, which are usually put on by different organizations that have their own priorities. She noted the biggest difference when interacting with citizens as opposed to activists is that citizens don't understand which positions are at-large and which are designated to a district.

"I tell them, 'If it's on your ballot, then you can vote for it,'" she said.

Richard Daly of Naples handed state House candidate Joe Davidow a card on fluoride and asked, "What do you think about it?"

"I think it's horrible," Davidow said, taking it and looking it over.

"Would you like to see it outlawed?" he asked.

Without answering the question, Davidow unpacked Daly's argument, which is that fluoride isn't regulated enough, and that it's "medicating people" in varying levels because they drink different volumes of water over the day.

"I'm all bottled water all the time," Davidow said, putting the card in his pocket.

Daly realized only afterward that he couldn't vote for Davidow if he wanted to because he was in District 106, which runs from Naples to Marco Island, and Davidow is running for District 80, which covers Northwest Collier and runs into Hendry.

"I'm kind of informed," he said. "But not that informed."

Davidow said he wished more people came to the event, given how many candidates were there.

"This room should be packed," he said. "It shows a kind of apathy."
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Anton Selkowitz, Naples

Information source

Responding to the recent letter, "Tired canards"  I have no doubt that the previous letter writers, and the writer of that letter, watch Fox "news."

Some surveys have indicated that Fox viewers are the least informed, and Fox has been identified as the network with the most factual errors and misinformation of all the networks. The writer's views reflect Fox propaganda.

It is notable that the writer didn't comment on the Democratic Socialist countries that I mentioned because the facts speak for themselves. Single-payer health care works better and costs less than the system we have now.

It is true that we pay into Social Security, but it is nevertheless a socialist system. As far as my daughter being born in Canada, what I meant by saying it "didn't cost me a dime" was that I had no out-of-pocket expenses.

Obviously, the medical care is paid for by taxes, but when you compare the taxes Canadians pay, and what we pay in taxes, and what we pay in medical care, the Canadian system is superior, and costs less.

If the writer is so concerned about fiscal common sense, he should support "socialist" single-payer health care. If the writer is on Medicare, he too should get off it so he wouldn't be a hypocrite.
SHARE Judy Clayton Sanchez Director of Public Affairs U.S. Sugar

By Judy Clayton Sanchez, Director of Public Affairs U.S. Sugar Clewiston

U.S. Sugar is committed to getting the facts out about the complexity of our water system and the fresh water discharges that are unfortunately happening more often than any of us would like.

We believe the facts in our ads, all of which are independently sourced, should speak for themselves.

But a recent guest commentary by Everglades Coalition's Cara Capp and Michael Baldwin completely mischaracterizes our company's position and attempts to mislead readers by ignoring critical details. This cherry picking of information and deliberate distortion of certain facts are the exact reasons we decided to run a science-based ad campaign.

For all of their talk about science, Capp and Baldwin easily dismiss the most knowledgeable scientists monitoring water quantity and quality: the scientists and engineers at the South Florida Water Management District (SFWMD). As noted, the data clearly shows that less than 5 percent of the water and phosphorous is flowing into Lake Okeechobee from the south  meaning the remaining 95-plus percent is coming from lands north, east and west of Lake Okeechobee. If we cannot agree on the legitimacy of the data being shared by the SFWMD, how will we ever agree on solutions to fix the problem?

Critics claim our ads ignore "the consensus of expert opinion" that more storage, treatment, and conveyance south of Lake Okeechobee is needed, but we believe these may be needed in the future.

That will not be known until after currently planned projects are built and operated. However, there is ample land already in public ownership south of the lake (120,000 acres) to maximize storage without acquiring additional land. Secondly, outside of environmental activist organizations, which receive millions from anti- sugar cane farming special interests, there is near-unanimous consensus that water storage and treatment projects should be built in the area where the bulk of the water and pollution is originating  to the north, east and west.

Most importantly, there is no "consensus" on buying additional land south of the lake. Both the SFWMD and the Florida Legislature decided not to exercise the option to purchase 47,000 acres from U.S. Sugar in 2015. The SFWMD recently said in a release on the land buy that "the U.S. Sugar land is in the wrong place  (it was) a great deal for U.S. Sugar but a raw deal for Florida taxpayers."

The SFWMD release also noted that buying the land would result in "cannibalizing money to buy land actually needed for Everglades restoration."

The Everglades Coalition and affiliated groups are perpetuating a myth that buying additional farm land will enable more water to be sent south. More water can be sent south when there is capacity during dry or average years like 2015. But during wet times, more land does not equal more flow south. That is the biggest myth, fallacy or outright lie that is being bandied about by the activist groups.

During these wet events, water conservation areas south of Lake Okeechobee have been hundreds of thousands of acre feet above federal regulation schedules. As evidenced by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' actions recently, not one drop of water from Lake Okeechobee could have been sent south into an already flooded southern system. If you build more storage south of the lake, that storage would be utilized to reduce flooding in the conservation areas, not to reduce discharges to the coastal estuaries.

In addition, there is a complex network of water conservation areas and other canals and structures that are involved in moving water south. There are also complex environmental issues and regulations creating the bottleneck, not the residents and businesses that are south of Lake Okeechobee.

As noted by the SFWMD, constraints include endangered species such as the Cape Sable Seaside Sparrow, Everglades water quality standards, and the levee around the Everglades that constricts the amount of water that can be stored.

Finally, it's laughable to characterize these environmental activist groups as anything other than special interests. Raising money from out-of-state donors at high-dollar dinners at the exclusive Breakers resort is the very definition of special interests. The most active groups are raising money from wealthy individuals with a financial stake in putting Florida companies like U.S. Sugar out of business.

U.S. Sugar's farmers share in a commitment to restore the Everglades, improve water quality, and remain good stewards of our land and water resources.

We are willing to work with all stakeholders who share our goals and pledge to keep our information campaign on a scientific and factual basis.

__ Sanchez is the senior director of corporation communication and public affairs for U.S. Sugar.

__ This is in response to the Everglades Coalition's guest commentary, which was published recently in the News-Press and yesterday by the Daily News.
Wonder Years Preschool at 9751 Bonita Beach Rd, Bonita Springs was established in 1996 and is a church supported outreach ministry of First Presbyterian Church of Bonita Springs. We aim to provide a nurturing and loving Christian environment which will enrich the lives of children and support their families through preschool activities. We reach out to the whole community including the at home parents by having a Mom's Morning Out, PK3 and VPK programs with days and hours that could meet their schedule.

Ms. Nancy Bolognese who has been a lifelong resident of Bonita Springs came in last year to fill the Preschool Administrator position. Ms. Bolognese received her BS from Florida SouthWestern State College in Elementary Education with Reading and English as a Second Language Endorsement. She is also certified in Education of Students with Exceptionalities. She owned her own preschool right here in Bonita Springs for 5 years.

Wonder Years Preschool has the capacity for 110 students, but Ms. Bolognese would like to see this grow. She is looking to the future to possibly grow the school to include Kindergarten and then further down the road expand through 5th grade as a potential goal. Along with this growth would also be the potential hiring of more teachers. Wonder Years Preschool currently has 12 dedicated teachers/assistants.

You can reach Ms. Nancy Bolognese at 239-948-6677
Tammy Garrett: Betty Jane France Humanitarian Award finalist Meet Tammy Garrett and her cause, Rapahope Children's Retreat Foundation. Tammy is one of four finalists chosen for the Betty Jane France Humanitarian award for her dedication to helping children.
When bankers are asked how they plan to boost fee income, they typically name a few usual suspects: wealth management, insurance  even overdraft protection, if they are feeling bold.

But when David Turner, the chief financial officer at Regions Financial in Birmingham, Ala., got the question at an industry conference last week, he gave a surprising answer: syndication of low-income housing tax credits.

His brief comments on the subject  which the bank declined to elaborate on  got a lot of people's attention. Not only did they shine a spotlight on an increasingly competitive niche market and spur some M&A chatter, but they illustrated banks' thirst for incremental revenue growth.

Investing in low-income housing provides banks with a range of regulatory and financial benefits. Still, it is typically not thought of as a big driver of revenue. Instead, it is a topic that most frequently comes up as part of splashy philanthropic initiatives, or glossy, end-of-the-year social impact reports.

But when you're regional bank in need of revenue, you have to take what you can get. "Every little bit counts," Stephen Scouton, an analyst with Sandler O'Neill.

Over the past few years, Regions  like many of its competitors  has been under pressure to drum up more noninterest income as rates remain low.

Fee revenue at the $125 billion-asset company hit a turning point in the first quarter, after remaining mostly flat last year, Scouton said.

Noninterest income jumped 8% from a year earlier, to $506 million, including boosts in the company's wealth management business and ATM fees.

Many in the affordable housing community have long suspected that Regions wants to get into tax-credit syndication, but Turner's comments last week marked the first time that Regions has pointed to it as a potential driver of fee revenue in the future, analysts said.

"Low-income housing syndication  we would like to improve our capabilities there," Turner said at a conference sponsored by Deutsche Bank in New York.

Those remarks "were something new," said Peer Winter, an analyst with Sterne Agee CRT.

Syndication involves organizing smaller investors into a larger fund, and providing a range of compliance services. All those activities can generate fees. Other syndicators in the market include PNC Financial in Pittsburgh and U.S. Bancorp in Minneapolis.

Turner's expression of interest has sparked a wave of speculation. Observers said that the bank is currently in the market to buy a nonbank syndication firm. One company that was mentioned was First Sterling, a nonbank syndication firm in Great Neck, N.Y.

The firm has a portfolio of 700 low-income properties, valued at over $4.2 billion, according to its website. A First Sterling executive was not immediately available to comment Thursday.

Regions declined to comment on the potential acquisition. In January, however, Chief Executive Grayson Hall said that Regions was on the lookout for "bolt-on acquisitions in the nonbank space."

Like most big banks, Regions has been an investor in low-income housing tax credits for years.

The tax credit program was established in 1986, and is widely described as one of the primary ways that the federal government encourages the development of affordable housing.

It works like this: Each year, the Internal Revenue Service allocates a predetermined amount in federal credits to state housing agencies. Those agencies award credits to developers through a competitive process.

To finance the multifamily projects, developers then sell the credits to private companies  in most cases to banks. The developers then use the equity to finance the project.

"Taking on less debt allows the developer to rent at lower rates," said Thomas Giblin, an attorney at Nixon & Peabody.

From a bank's perspective, investing in credits has a range of benefits. They allow the banks to lower their annual tax liabilities and deduct certain expenses. They also provide the bank with credit towards its compliance with the Community Reinvestment Act.

Regions has been a direct investor in the credits for years, observers said. Notably, the bank received a downgrade in its CRA rating in February.

"CRA is the lifeblood of the housing credit market," said Fred Copeman, a principal at CohnReznick.

Over the past few years, the market for low-income credits has grown more competitive as banks seek out ways to maintain their CRA compliance.

Private companies invested about $13 billion in low-income housing projects last year, according to Copeman.

Growing demand for the credits has pushed up the price of the credits, while the yields  a measure of the total tax benefits  have declined. Over the past year, yields have fallen by 257 basis points, to 4.66%, according to data from CohnReznick.

In addition to the tax benefits, Regions has earned some fee-based income on the investments, by selling a portion of its investment interests to other banks.

The investments have also allowed Regions to build relationships in the commercial real estate industry, Giblin said.

Expanding into the syndication business also would provide the business with various opportunities to charge fees, including for asset management, said Ted Hickey, an attorney with Holland & Knight.

Given the drastic supply shortage in affordable housing, it is unlikely that competition in the market will abate anytime soon. Some estimates of the housing shortage for low-income renters are as high as 8 million units, according to Copeman.

"The demand for this type of housing has become so extraordinary," Copeman said. The irony of the situation is that the shortage makes the low-income credits a "very, very safe investment."
ICBA Mortgage has expanded its relationship with DH Corp. to offer Independent Community Bankers of America members access to the MortgageBot loan origination system.

With the addition of MortgagebotLOS, ICBA members now have access to the company's full Mortgagebot suite of services. ICBA has offered MortgagebotPOS, a point-of-sale system, to members since 2005.

"DH's Mortgagebot solution has helped hundreds of our members improve their competitive footing, reduce costs and meet compliance requirements," ICBA Mortgage Executive Vice President Ron Haynie said in a news release Thursday.

The two technologies will now support retail, wholesale and correspondent mortgage lending on an end-to-end basis.
When guests visit the new fourth building at the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force, most will not realize that 100 percent of the $40.8 million building construction costs were privately funded through the fundraising activities, business operations, and investments of the Air Force Museum Foundation, Inc.

The Foundations sole purpose is to raise funds and awareness to help support the mission of the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force, stated Michael Imhoff, Executive Director of the Air Force Museum Foundation. He continued, Its truly a collaborative team effort. We have a remarkable staff here at the Foundation that works hand in hand with the amazing museum guests and generous corporate supporters on a daily basis.

Two-thirds of the required funding came from contributions from individuals, members of Friends of the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force and generous support from businesses and corporations. The remaining one-third came from the revenue generated by business operations of the Air Force Museum Store, Air Force Museum Attractions, like the six-story digital theatre and virtual reality experiences, and the Valkyrie and newly-remodeled Refueling Cafes.

Every Airmans story deserves a permanent home so future generations will be able to hear their story. Were honored to help the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force in their mission to provide that home, shared Colonel Mona R.M. Vollmer, USAF (Ret), Chief Development Officer of the Air Force Museum Foundation. We were able to provide the private funding for the museums fourth building because of the generosity of many individuals, companies, foundations, and community partners. Were extremely excited about the Grand Weekend Celebration June 11 and 12 and we hope everyone that visits will enjoy the festivities.

Platinum partner for the Grand Weekend Celebration is Dayton International Airport. Gold partners are Dayton Development Coalition, Dayton Power & Light and Stowers Machinery Corporation. Silver partners include Dayton.com, Pulseworks LLC, AM 1290 and News 95.7 WHIO and WHIO-TV. Bronze partners are Dayton/Montgomery County CVB, Deloitte, General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, Key Ads, Inc. and Orbit Movers & Erectors, Inc.

About the Air Force Museum Foundation

The Air Force Museum Foundation, Inc. was established in 1960 as a philanthropic, nonprofit organization to assist the Air Force in the development and expansion of the facilities of the National Museum of the United States Air Force and to undertake and advance programs and activities supporting the museum. For more information on the Air Force Museum Foundation, visit www.airforcemuseum.com.





About the National Museum of the United States Air Force

The National Museum of the United States Air Force, located at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base near Dayton, Ohio, is the worlds largest military aviation museum. With free admission and parking, the museum features more than 360 aerospace vehicles and missiles and thousands of artifacts amid more than 19 acres of indoor exhibit space. Each year about one million visitors from around the world come to the museum. For more information, visit www.nationalmuseum.af.mil

.
(NaturalNews) On just about any given day you can Google the termand find at least a couple of articles criticizing modernity and bemoaning the end of the world as we know it.Meteorologists are increasingly entering this doom-and-gloom fray as well, though the Canadian government has just announced that its own staff meteorologists should put the kibosh on the climate-change rhetoric. The idea is that meteorologists are not climatologists; just because someone understands short-term weather does not mean that they understand long-term climate trends.According to, the Canadian government has made it clear that none of the meteorologists on the taxpayer's dime ought to be talking about climate change, per a new report. While it is not clear how long the rule has been in place, Environment Canada, the government entity which shares weather and meteorological data publicly, explained its position to the website."Our Weather Preparedness Meteorologists are experts in their field of severe weather and speak to this subject. Questions about climate change or long-term trends would be directed to a climatologist or other applicable authority," wrote Danny Kingsberry, a spokesman for Environment Canada.As you might imagine, some scientists -- especially the true believers -- are not very happy about the rule."It's all very scary," said Chris Metcalfe, who is director of the Institute for Watershed Science at Trent University. "It's all about controlling the message. In my estimation, the government doesn't want the work of environmentalists running counter to their official policies."Or, how about this -- running counter to the fact that, other than climate "prediction" and "models," there is simplydue to "climate change." In fact, it hasn't since 1997, according to a "quietly released" scientific report from the British Meteorological Office almost two years ago.And speaking of "scary," isn't that a tactic that climate changers employ often -- "the world will soon end in floods and fire!" -- to "convince" us to buy into their argument?Well, according to, Environment Canada would not answer any additional questions, but Metcalfe said the rules regarding the referencing of climate change are part of a wider effort by the Canadian government to muzzle scientists whose messaging contradicts with key "industries." Think of the energy industry, for one.And he says some of his peers in the government are quitting in protest of abiding by what he called Prime Minister Stephen Harper's language police."Several scientists are choosing to retire over their unhappiness with the present situation," Metcalfe said.In the past, Canada has developed a reputation for being quite progressive (read) on a number of matters, the website observed."Most Canadians don't realize they are lagging behind most of the rest of the world. They come in 27 of the 27 richest countries in environment," Owen Barder, a Europe-based economist who helped produce the Center for Global Development's "The Commitment to Development Index" study, said. "I don't think most Canadians would see themselves that way."He added that the country's low ranking is partially the result of lax gasoline taxes, high fish subsidies and emissions of greenhouse gases.Nearly all climate-change believers oppose any and all development of fossil fuels, which includes Canada's development of its oil sands in the Alberta province and the building of the Keystone XL pipeline, which President Obama has yet to approve. And they usually oppose these measures while driving or flying to some protest event (or to work every morning).But as the British Met Office reported a couple of years ago, climate change is a "science" that is just not established fact, contrary to what the changers assert. As reported by Britain'snewspaper, which broke the story of the Met Office data:Deeply flawed -- as in, every one of them beingFor the record, this is the same University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit that is guilty of manipulating and suppressing climate data to suit their warmist claims. Read for yourself here:
(NaturalNews) To be clear: There are no similarities between the brutal leadership of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria -- known more simply as the "Islamic State" (IS) -- and the government and people of California. That said, the connection between California's recent drought and the manner in which the Islamic State is use scarce water resources as a weapon of coercion to control its population is worth examining.In recent weeks, as the IS has consolidated its control over the parts of Syria and Iraq that the militant group has captured over the course of the past year, reports have surfaced that IS fighters and administrators "are increasingly using water as a weapon, cutting off supplies to villages that resist their rule and pressing to expand their control over the country's water infrastructure,"reports.Indeed, the paper said, the threat has now reached such a critical stage that American forces are targeting IS militants who have taken up positions near the Mosul and Haditha dams -- Iraq's largest -- nearly on a daily basis. That said, the Islamist extremists nevertheless continue to threaten both of those facilities, clashing often with Iraqi forces guarding them.Thereport continued:Gaining control over the country's dams is vital -- they serve as the primary sources of irrigation for Iraq's vast wheat fields. They also provide millions of Iraqis with electricity. But the Islamic State has used its control over water facilities -- which includes four dams along the Tigris and Euphrates rivers -- to uproot entire communities or deprive them of precious water supplies.The Islamic State "understands how powerful water is as a tool, and they are not afraid to use it," Michael Stephens, a Middle East expert at the Royal United Services Institute, a London-based security studies think tank, told the. "A lot of effort has been expended to control resources in Iraq in a way not seen in other conflicts."Draconian measures -- such as moving people out of certain areas -- are actively being suggested in California, meanwhile. With more than 58 percent of the state suffering "Exceptional Drought" conditions -- which result in widespread crop and farmland losses as well as shortages of water in reservoirs, streams and wells -- some climatologists and other experts believe that it may come down to shifting communities into areas where there are better water resources."Civilizations in the past have had to migrate out of areas of drought," Lynn Wilson, the academic chair at Kaplan University who serves on the climate change delegation in the United Nations, told CNBC in July . "We may have to migrate people out of California."She added that every option -- including the importation of water into the state -- would be considered first. But, she maintained, "migration can't be taken off the table."Already, California has depleted most of its surface water; one more third of the remaining amount will be used this year. That has forced the state to turn to groundwater -- for consumption, for crop irrigation and other uses. Already, several communities have limited water usage, imposing strict rules and levying fines, while encouraging residents to tattle on anyone caught violating the rules As for using water as a weapon in general, the Allies bombed German dams during World War II, and later, in Saddam Hussein's Iraq, the dictator drained the country's southern marshes in an attempt to punish citizens for a rebellion, thereported.
Peace Colombia funding could be jeopardized in retaliation

Big Pharma a threat to world peace?

(NaturalNews) The Colombian government recently announced that it plans to override the patent held by Novartis AG on a popular cancer medication and open it up for generic drug makers unless the pharmaceutical firm agrees to a price cut.Colombia says its universal healthcare system's budget is under severe strain, and issuing the compulsory license can be considered an allowable exception to patent rules on the grounds that it is a matter of public interest.The drug, imatinib, is marketed as Glivec and is used for leukemia and gastrointestinal tumors. Glivec was the top-selling drug for Novartis last year, bringing in $4.7 billion for the firm. However, the firm is now facing the prospect of declining sales after a cheaper generic version hit the U.S. market in February.The drug has been sold in Colombia for more than a decade, and more than 2,000 patients are currently using it. For much of this time it was not protected by a patent, and generic drug makers sold their own version for around half the cost. However, the Colombian courts granted a patent to Novartis in 2012 that will be in effect until the middle of 2018.The cost of a year's supply of the drug is more than $15,000 there, which is double the income of the average Colombian. A generic version that was recently launched in India should cost almost a third less than the brand-name version, which means significant savings could be made for those in need.The actual cost for a one-year supply of the drug is estimated to be just $159 . Colombia is not the only place where patients pay inflated prices for it; it cost Americans more than $106,000 and Brits more than $30,000 for a one-year supply in 2015, according to the findings of British researchers.Now, leaked letters show that a staffer from the Senate Finance Committee led by Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, warned that Colombia would suffer repercussions if the country moves ahead with its plan to approve the generic drug.Peace Colombia is a new initiative to which the Obama administration pledged $450 million to bring the country's government and rebels together to put an end to decades of deadly fighting and civil unrest. Part of the funds would be utilized to help remove landmines from the country, which is second only to Afghanistan in the number of landmine fatalities.In a series of letters written in late April, the Deputy Chief of Mission for the Colombian Embassy in Washington D.C., Andres Florez, voiced his concerns in writing to Maria Angela Holguin of the Colombian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, stating that congressional retaliation was possible over the drug's compulsory licensing. Florez said that he was particularly concerned that the case could adversely affect the approval of the financing of Peace Colombia. The letters were leaked to Colombian news outletsandThis behavior is not too surprising coming from Hatch, considering that pharmaceutical and health firms are the second largest group of donors to his campaigns.reports that the pharmaceutical trade association Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America shelled out $750,000 to fund a nonprofit that backed the senator's re-election in 2012, employed his son Scott as a lobbyist and donated to his family charity.The case illustrates just how far the reach of Big Pharma truly extends. The pharmaceutical industry is so powerful that it can essentially force Colombia to choose between public health and peace. It is becoming more obvious every day that drug companies are a lot more interested in the health of their bank accounts than they are in the health of patients around the world. Big Pharma has long been a threat to public health, and now it appears that it can flex its muscles in matters of world peace as well.
Do celestial bodies emit sounds? Apparently, they do.

Researchers from the University of Birmingham detected some "acoustic oscillations" or sounds emanating from a cluster of the oldest Milky Way stars about 13 billion years old. The researchers used a technique called asteroseismology to listen to the "stellar music" from the stars.

"These oscillations lead to miniscule changes or pulses in brightness, and are caused by sound trapped inside the stars," said the University of Birmingham in a press release. The sounds, although not as musical at it could be, were considered ominous. And according to the researchers, listening to the sound of the oldest stars is like immersing oneself in the galaxy's early history.

The research published in the journal of the Royal Astronomical Society detected resonant acoustic oscillations of the 'M4' stars, the oldest known cluster in the galaxy. Researchers analyzed the data obtained by the Kepler telescope and NASA's K2 Mission.

The oscillation happens when pulses in brightness were trapped inside the stars. This process can possibly determine the age of stars and identify the older ones, just like how ancient artifacts are helping archaeologists study the past on Earth.

"The stars we have studied really are living fossils from the time of the formation of our Galaxy, and we now hope be able to unlock the secrets of how spiral galaxies, like our own, formed and evolved," said Dr. Andrea Miglio, lead author of the study in a statement published by ScienceDaily.

Experts say that the sound of old stars and the process used to determine them are useful in studying the history of the galaxy. Before this research, most of the studies are focused on young stars, but thanks to the new technology, researchers were allowed to listen to the sound of the stars. The technology allows stars as old as 13 billion years can be identified.

The sound of the oldest stars will serve as a guide for scientists to go back in time and study the galaxy.
Mankind is about to conquer Mars, but the bad news is, whoever gets to the planet first has no way out.

The one-way ticket to Mars is a project by the Dutch company Mars One. The company claims that it will establish the first permanent human settlement on Mars and is searching for the best candidates to fulfill the mission.

According to Mars One, the launching of the company's manned mission to Mars will be in 2020 and the chosen crew will depart for their one-way ticket to the red planet in 2026. After that, an additional group of people will follow every 26 months. This way, the steady growth of the man-made Martian settlement can be assured.

The company revealed the last remaining 100 candidates will undergo further testing to see if they are fit to live, and eventually die, on Mars. After testing, Mars One will cut down the number to the final 40. But only 26 lucky candidates will be sent to the Martian colony.

It may look exciting, but the tests are based on life preservation.

"As they will not be returning to Earth, those selected must be capable of living in small groups, finding water, producing oxygen and growing their own food," according to Mars One in a press release published by DailyMail.

The idea might sound absurd to some, but more than 200,000 applicants signed up to get a one-way ticket to Mars. People have their own dreams and preferences, which explains why some find the idea of dying on Mars appalling, why some will give their best to be chosen.

"I really want to go out there, I really want to experience it for myself," said Zacary Gallegos, one of the candidates, in a statement.

NASA is preparing for their own Journey to Mars in 2030. In comparison, Elon Musk said he intends to send people to Mars in 2024. But Musk also admitted that his 2024 mission is another one-way ticket to the red planet since his space shuttles still don't have what it takes to go back to Earth after reaching the planet.

The Mars One project is partially funded by a reality show. Although men might indeed land on Mars in this lifetime, how will Mars One carry men to Mars? This is where SpaceX gets in the picture.

Elon Musk's company recently announced that for a minimum of $62 million, it will offer cargo service to Mars for anyone who needs to bring any amount of payload to the red planet and it might just make Mars One's dreams possible.
Former NASA employee, James Oberg, who later turned into a space journalist and historian, is interested why a lot of people believe in UFOs. He was particularly interested in videos of abnormal lights flooding the internet, claiming the lights were from extra-terrestrial origins. He spent decades studying them.

Being an employee of the top space agency of the United States has its perks and sometimes, it can give a person access to the world's most controversial secret. Just like this ex-NASA employee who recently told the truth about UFOs based on inside information from the time he was still affiliated with the agency. But it is not what conspiracy theorists would expect.

Oberg worked with NASA in the 90s and later on picked up a hobby, which is explaining every UFO sighting there is. He usually appears on UFO sighting websites commenting that what was in the videos weren't really UFOs but "space dandruff."

Space dandruff can be caused by blasts just like the 1996 NASA STS-75 incident. A tether attached to a satellite broke causing a cloud of ice crystals to float around. Many who witnessed the lights from the sky initially took it as UFOs. That is one UFO sighting explained.

Oberg spent too much time analyzing data from UFO sightings and cross-referencing them to mission logs to try and explain every video sighting he chanced upon. Because of his perseverance and after decades of doing this, he finally came up with a finding that the human senses are trained to identify slow-moving objects and a specific or pre-calculated speed and conditions and when presented with a different set of setting, confusions follow.

"Our sensory system is functioning absolutely perfectly for Earth conditions," says James Oberg, former NASA employee in an interview with Atlas Obscura. "But we're still a local civilization. Moving beyond our neighborhood has been visually confusing," Oberg added.

He also doesn't believe that the agency is hiding the truth about UFOs to believers and conspiracy theorists. According to Oberg, it is just a result of watching too much sci-fi movies.

"I've had enough experience with real spaceflight to realise that what's being seen in many videos is nothing beyond the 'norm' from fully mundane phenomena occurring in unearthly settings," said Oberg in a statement.

But believers shouldn't hate on Oberg, unlike other debunkers," he is more concerned about possibly explaining UFO sightings and why people react to it the way they do, not just in disproving every UFO sighting captured on video.
Brock Turner, the former Stanford swimmer who was convicted of sexually assaulting an unconscious woman behind a campus dumpster, may have taken photos of his victim during the assault and sent them to friends, according to prosecutors.

Court documents state that after Turner was arrested in January 2015, detectives saw a notification on the disgraced swimmer's cell phone that read "WHOS T-- IS THAT" (sic). The notification was from a GroupMe messaging app, and according to court documents, the sender was identified as a fellow Stanford swimmer.

Prosecutors believe based on time stamps that Turner photographed the victims breasts during the attack, in which he sexually assaulted a 23-year-old woman near a dumpster. Two good Samaritans spotted Turner assaulting the woman and restrained him until police arrived.

A search warrant issued for Turner's phone failed to turn up any photos of his victim, but detectives cautioned that third-party messaging applications allow for members of a group chat to delete messages. Photos taken with the third-party apps are not typically stored on cell phones, making them hard to retrieve and trace.

"Detectives were unable to locate the text from the "Group me" application or any photos related to the text," prosecutors wrote in the People's Sentencing Memorandum.

Turner's cell phone records have been making waves for text and picture exchanges that show a history of marijuana use and references to ecstasy. Those records are in contrast to what the Ohio native told the judge about his party habits.

Turner was sentenced to 6 months in county jail for his crimes. More than 1 million people have signed petitions calling for the judge who handed down that decision to be removed, alleging that he showed unfair bias in favor of Turner.
Former Stanford swimmer Brock Turner, whose six-month jail sentence for sexually assaulting an unconscious woman sparked international outrage, will never be able to swim for USA's national team.

A representative for USA swimming said Turner, 20, was not a member of the organization when the attack occurred in January 2015 and had let his membership lapse in 2014. Spokesman Scott Leightman said Turner would be unsuccessful should he ever re-apply to the organization.

USA Today was first to report Turner's ineligibility.

USA Swimming events include the Olympic Trials and other nationally sponsored competitions.

"USA Swimming condemns the crime and actions committed by Brock Turner, and all acts of sexual misconduct," Leightman said. "Brock Turner is not a member of USA Swimming and is not eligible for membership, now or in the future, given his conviction for a crime involving sexual misconduct."

Leightman said Turner would have been subject to "severe penalties, including a permanent ban of membership," had he been a member of USA Swimming at the time of the attack.

Turner's six-month jail sentence, which a county parole board recommended, ushered the case to the forefront of a growing conversation about sexual assaults on college campuses.

There have been more than a million signatures on a petition calling for the ousting of the judge who issued the sentence, although he has retained support from both the prosecution and defense.

The victim wrote a searing 12-page account of the attack and its aftermath, which has been shared thousands of times on social media.

"My damage was internal, unseen, I carry it with me," wrote the victim. "You took away my worth, my privacy, my energy, my time, my safety, my intimacy, my confidence, my own voice, until today."

The letter, which has been heralded for its bravery, will also be read aloud next week at Congress. Vice President Joe Biden penned an open letter praising the victim for her courage.

"You were failed by a culture on our college campuses where one in five women is sexually assaultedyear after year after year," Biden wrote. "A culture that promotes passivity. That encourages young men and women on campuses to simply turn a blind eye."

Since the sentencing hearing, Turner's father has come under fire for a letter defending his son in which he referred to Turner's crime as "20 minutes of action." Meanwhile, a high school guidance counselor and family friend have apologized for writing a letter supporting Turner.

Turner, who is likely to serve three months of his sentence, is appealing his conviction. He will have to register as a sex offender for the rest of his life.
A group of women and their allies have organized a community event in Oakland to gather complaint forms to unseat Judge Aaron Persky.

Persky is under fire for giving ex-Stanford swimmer Brock Turner a six-month sentence for sexually assaulting an unconscious woman. Turner, 20, is expected to complete only half of that time; he was booked on June 2 and is scheduled to be released on Sept. 2.

Prosecutors had sought a six-year sentence in the case.

"For Her" will take place at 645 W. Grand Ave. 7 to 10 p.m. on June 15.

Vice President Joe Biden called the 23-year-old victim, whose note to her attacker went viral, a "warrior" on Thursday.
Congresswoman Jackie Speier is working on several pieces of legislation to help survivors of sexual assault and harassment.

The announcement was made Thursday morning on the House floor after Speier read an excerpt from an emotional 7,000-word statement from a sexual assault victim at Stanford University.

Our system must become better than this. Our educational system must become better than this, Speier said. People must understand that rape is one of the most violent crimes a person can commit.

Speier began her speech describing the scene of the Stanford crime and asking for a change in mindset when dealing with sexual assault cases.

Today I read part of the Stanford rape survivor statement on the House floor: https://t.co/vpL1lLBN13 #BrockTurnerisaRapist  Jackie Speier (@RepSpeier) June 9, 2016

A jury in March found Brock Turner guilty of three felony sexual assault counts for the January 2015 attack at Stanford, which was interrupted by two graduate students who said they saw him assaulting a partially clothed woman behind a trash bin. Turner tried to flee, but the students tackled and pinned him down until police arrived and arrested him.

Turner was sentenced to six months in county jail and is expected to only serve three.

Why? Because the judge said a longer sentence would have a severe impact on Turner. What a travesty, Speier said.

Speier then proceeded to read excerpts from the survivors statement.

Regretting drinking is not the same as regretting sexual assault. We were both drunk, Speier read aloud. The difference is I did not take off your pants and underwear, touch you inappropriately and run away. Thats the difference. How fast Brock swims does not lessen the severity of what happened to me, and should not lessen the severity of his punishment.

One of the projects Speier is working on to help survivors of sexual assault and harassment include HALT, a Campus Sexual Violence Act. She hopes to strengthen prevention and enforcement on campuses.

Several people have shown their support for the sexual assault survivor in the Stanford case.

Lena Dunham and the cast of television show "Girls" dedicated a video to the Stanford survivor where they discussed the issues around sexual assault cases. Together they stood in support and solidarity for those who have been assaulted.

I dedicate this to the brave survivor in the Stanford case who has given so much to change the conversation, Dunham tweeted Wednesday morning.

The cast of "Girls" were not the only ones to express support.

On Thursday morning, Vice President Joe Biden wrote an open letter to the Stanford survivor calling her a "courageous young woman."

The statistics on college sexual assault havent gone down in the past two decades, Biden wrote. Its obscene, and its a failure that lies at all our feet.
A day after news broke that Oakland's police chief was leaving his post after 19 years in the department, Mayor Libby Schaaf on Friday made it formal: Sean Whent no longer has a job as the city's top cop.

She confirmed what also emerged Thursday night, that BART Police Chief Ben Fairow will serve as interim chief. Reporters from the East Bay Express tweeted that Schaaf was poised to fire Whent, although Schaaf refused to specifically answer that question or any other reason for Whent's reason for leaving at a news conference Friday.

Chief Whents decision to resign was a personal choice which we respect, was all Schaaf would say.

City Councilman Larry Reid does not buy the reasoning given for Whent leaving his post.

"If that's the spin they want to put on it, so be it," Reid said.

Reid said he talked to Whent late Thursday and said the chief was upset, alluding Whent was forced out.

"He wasn't ready to leave," Reid said. "I mean this is a man who takes great pride in servicing the people of Oakland and being the head of our police department."

Whent's departure comes just weeks after Greg Suhr stepped down as police chief in San Francisco. And last fall, San Jose Police Chief Larry Esquivel left his department after being asked to lead Tracy's police department.

Whent's departure also comes at a time when the historically troubled Oakland department is investigating allegations that several officers had sex with an underage girl. Four officers were put on leave because of the investigation. Two of those officers have since resigned.

The Alameda County district attorneys office still is reviewing the police departments initial investigation of the sexual misconduct allegations, Schaaf said Friday.

Federal courts have appointed outside monitors charged with overseeing reforms at Oaklands police department since 2003, after repeated corruption scandals in the force. Monitors have faulted the departments management and internal investigators with failing to hold Oakland police accountable for misconduct.

Whent, who didn't attend the news conference, said he is proud to have served Oakland over the course of two decades.

When I took this job three years ago as interim chief, I vowed to help move the department forward and make Oakland safer by forging a stronger relationship with members of this diverse community," he said in a statement. "I am proud to have done that. I know that the vast majority of the men and women who work for the Oakland Police Department share this commitment and will continue to demonstrate it with every call for service.

On Friday, Councilman Noel Gallo said he was surprised, and guessed it might have been because of the "pressure he was under."

Late Thursday night, Councilwoman Lynette Gibson McElhaney, echoed her shock.

"I'm grateful for the chief's service and am sorry to see him leave the Oakland Police Department," she said. "I think this chief was committed to making structural changes. I think it is a loss for our city."

Gibson McElhaney said she hopes Whent's replacement "will continue the good work he has done" but she worries "this could be a setback."

The new interim chief was sued last year by the widow of the late BART detective Sgt. Thomas "Tommy" Smith Jr., who alleged that BART chiefs routinely send officers into high-risk search areas without properly trained SWAT officers. Smith was killed accidentally by a colleague during an apartment search of a robbery suspect in Dublin.

Groups such as the Anti-Police Terror Project, cheered the sudden announcement about Whent's departure.

On its Facebook page, the group wrote that this is a "victory the people should claim."

NBC Bay Area staff and the Associated Press contributed to this report.
Oakland police Chief Sean Whent is leaving his post after 19 years with the department, Mayor Libby Schaaf announced late Thursday night.

Schaaf and City Administrator Sabrina Landreth announced the resignation of Whent and the appointment of BART Police Chief Ben Fairow as interim chief in a statement released Thursday. More details about the transition will be revealed at a news conference Friday at 9 a.m. No official reason has been given for the sudden departure. Reporters from the East Bay Express tweeted that Schaaf was poised to fire Whent.

Fairow was sued last year by the widow of the late detective Sgt. Thomas "Tommy" Smith Jr., alleging that BART chiefs routinely send officers into high-risk search areas without properly trained SWAT officers. Smith was killed accidentally by a colleague during an apartment search of a robbery suspect in Dublin.

The mayor didn't acknowledge any of that in her prepared statement.

Sabrina and I are grateful to Chief Whent for his dedication and service, Schaaf said in the statement. Chief Whents decision to resign was a personal choice which we respect.

Whent said he is proud to have served Oakland over the course of two decades.

When I took this job three years ago as interim chief, I vowed to help move the department forward and make Oakland safer by forging a stronger relationship with members of this diverse community," he said in a statement. "I am proud to have done that. I know that the vast majority of the men and women who work for the Oakland Police Department share this commitment and will continue to demonstrate it with every call for service.

City Councilwoman Lynette Gibson McElhaney said she was shocked.

"I'm grateful for the Chief's service and am sorry to see him leave the Oakland Police Department," she said. "I think this chief was committed to making structural changes. I think it is a loss for our city."

Gibson McElhaney said she hopes Whent's replacement "will continue the good work he has done" but she worries "this could be a setback."

Whent's departure comes just weeks after Greg Suhr stepped down as police chief in San Francisco.

Groups such as the Anti-Police Terror Project, however, cheered the sudden announcement. On its Facebook page, the group wrote that this is a "victory the people should claim." They cited an internal sexual misconduct investigation into officers with an underage girl, among the shootings of black suspects, as two of the reasons they are happy to see him go.
On the heels of a crushing defeat in California, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders shuttered his Oakland campaign office.

Sanders had campaigned in Oakland and other Bay Area cities doggedly ahead of the California primary, which he lost by 13 points to presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton on Tuesday.

His supporters have vowed to keep on fighting for the "political revolution" that the senator started. They are now focused on ensuring that his issues make it into the democratic platform at the Philadelphia convention in July.

Joy Newhart, a Sanders supporter, said she would continue to support the senator and doubted that his campaign's momentum would die out any time soon.

"Now, it's moving to see what kind of message the Democratic National Committee heard from what Bernie was making obvious," she said. "This is a political revolution and it's not stopping."

After meeting with President Barack Obama on Thursday, Sanders said he would "of course" be sticking it out in the race until the Washington D.C. primary held next Tuesday, and hinted that a collaboration with Clinton was in the offing.

"I look forward to meeting with her in the near future to see how we can work together to defeat Donald Trump and create a government that represents all of us," the senator said.

Obama endorsed Clinton shortly after his meeting with Sanders.

Meanwhile, the senator's supporters are reconciling themselves to the primary loss and are looking ahead to the future.

"I think you have a small cross section of people who will choose not to vote as a political standing, but I think the majority will turn over and vote for Hillary because a Trump presidency is a horrific reality," said Sanders supporter Katherine Duckworth.

13:16 Cleaning up packing up making sure the landlord still likes us"

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Bernie Sanders volunteers are closing up shop....preparing to shut down Sanders Oakland campaign office as the race winds down...

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(1:40) I will of course be competing in the DC primary held next Tuesday.

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Today Sanders vowed to stay in the race through early next week....but after meeting with President Obama who endorsed Hillary Clinton today, Sanders also hinted he too may soon join the Clinton camp.

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(2:31) I look forward to meeting with her in the near future to see how we can work together to defeat Donald Trunp and create a government that represents all of us.

------

(4:46) it hasn't really sunk in yet

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Sanders supporters....who helped rally huge crowds in the Bay Area over the past several weeks, say they're doing a lot of soul searching right now as they figure out where to go from here....

------

(3:38) I think you have a small cross section of people who will choose not to vote as a political standing but I think the majority will turn over and vote for Hillary because a Trump presidency is a horrific reality.

(13:23) now it's moving to see what kind of message the Democratic National Committe heard from what Bernie was making obvious.

(2:00) this is a political revolution and it's not stopping. ]]
Following the Brock Turner sentencing controversy, Stanford activist groups are rallying to force the university to release the names of students found responsible for sexual misconduct on campus.

The Stanford Survivor Solidarity Network started a Change.org petition on Thursday, calling for the school to release the names of those students who have violated Title IX policies related to sexual assault and misconduct.

The petition creator has pointed to the number of sexual assaults as reason to release the names. The university reported 26 on-campus rapes in the years 2012, 2013 and 2014, according to data from the U.S. Department of Education.

One student is sexually assaulted every two weeks at Stanford, wrote the petition creator. Im afraid for my safety, knowing how many of my friends have suffered from sexual violence and coercion at the hands of my classmates.

The creator continued: What happens in the cases of sexual assault and sexual misconduct that do not result in expulsion?

A list of Title IV violators living on campus is typically not released to the student body. A spokesperson for Stanford told NBC Bay Area that the school is unaware of any other college that releases a list, and said it could potentially threaten student safety.

If a student poses a threat they will face discipline including expulsion, the spokesperson told NBC Bay Area. As with other universities, Stanfords process for all student discipline matters provides for confidentiality of student identities and outcomes.

Activist groups outside the Stanford community have also called on the elite college to improve its response to sexual assault.

Ultraviolet, a feminist organization that submitted a petition Friday to have the judge in the Turner case ousted from the bench, will be at the Stanford commencement on Sunday to protest the school and Santa Clara County's handling of the case.

In addition two three large bicycle billboards, the group has commissioned a plane to fly over the university stadium ahead of commencement with the banner "Protect Survivors. Not Rapists. #PerskyMustGo."

Stanford law professor Michele Dauber, who is also an outspoken activist fighting against college rape culture, tweeted out the petition to her thousands of followers. NBC has reached out to Dauber for comment.
A woman who was fatally struck near San Francisco's St. Mary's Cathedral Thursday morning by a paratransit bus driver was identified as 86-year-old Lurilla Harris.

Harris, a San Francisco resident, was identified by the medical examiner's office as the woman hit as she crossed Franklin Street at Geary Boulevard at 10:48 a.m. Thursday after exiting a paratransit bus.

The driver of the bus who police said accelerated and struck Harris was a "veteran" paratransit operator who had just returned to work, according to the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency.

The SFMTA board approved on May 3 a $142.9 million five-year contract with Transdev Services, Inc. -- the company the driver was employed through -- for paratransit brokerage and transportation services, according to the SFMTA.

The driver was detained at the scene but was not arrested. Police are investigating the case, which occurred alongside two other vehicle-versus-pedestrian incidents Thursday.

Around 45 minutes before, there was a woman who was struck and suffered a broken leg immediately following a burglary in the 1800 block of Divisadero Street, according to police reports.

Additionally, at about 3 p.m. the same day, a pedestrian was hospitalized after a vehicle backed up into him near Turk and Hyde streets, according to police.

The driver fled in both of these incidents.

There were also several pedestrians struck by vehicles in the city last month, including a 77-year-old Daly City man who was killed the night of May 10 when an electric motorcycle struck him.

Mayor Ed Lee and other city officials made a pledge in 2014 to work toward Vision Zero, a goal to eliminate traffic-related deaths in the city by 2024.

In addressing the most recent fatal incident on Thursday afternoon, SFMTA board Chairman Tom Nolan expressed condolences and said city leaders "remain fully committed to pedestrian safety and our Vision Zero

goal."
The daughter of Chicago anti-violence activist Andrew Holmes was killed in a shootout between rival rappers in Indianapolis, prosecutors said.

Tamara Sword was fatally shot in August when police say Kenneth Ken-Ken James, 28, opened fire with an assault rifle at rapper Devan D-Bo Dumes and his entourage outside an Indianapolis nightclub, the Chicago Sun-Times is reporting.

James and Michael Mike Eazy B Edwards, 32, were ordered held without bail on charges of murder and attempted murder Thursday by a judge in Marion County, Indiana.

She was just an innocent girl that got caught in the crossfire, said Swords father, Andrew Holmes, a community activist who for years has been a fixture at shooting scenes across the citys south side. She didnt even know these guys.

The gunfire that claimed Swords life broke out after a brawl inside Suite 38, a nightclub on the west side of Indianapolis, a fracas that was touched off by Edwards taunting Dumes and a dozen friends from the stage, according to documents filed along with the charges against James and Edwards.

Surveillance video from the nightclub shows the rival groups throwing bottles and chairs at each other, a melee that erupted after Edwards took to the microphone and mocked Dumes and his friends, then pantomimed shooting at Dumes crew. Dumes group responded by throwing bottles at the stage from their seats in the VIP area.

A friend of Dumes, identified in court records as DR, said Dumes had assembled a crew of about a dozen friends in anticipation of a confrontation. Dumes had beefed with Edwards two weeks earlier at the club, and had taken a beating.

As bottles and punches flew, security staff shut down the club, forcing patrons  and the brawl  into the parking lot. After driving off, DR met Sword and her friend, who arrived as the club was shutting down. The two women drove with members of Dumes group to a gas station adjacent to the Suite 38.

As they mingled at the gas station lot, DR said he heard gunshots and the group scattered. DR said he could see the muzzle flash from an assault weapon James was firing from about 20 yards away and that Edwards was standing beside James.

Surveillance video from the gas station shows Sword grimacing as she pulls open the passenger door to her friends car. Autopsy results show she was struck in the upper torso, and died of internal bleeding, the affidavit states. Joshua Riggins, a member of Dumes entourage, crouched in front of the car to avoid the gunfire, and was run over and killed when Swords friend attempted to drive off. Police found dozens of shell casings scattered around the crime scene.

In the weeks after the shooting, Dumes friends agreed not to talk with police and planned to retaliate against Edwards and James.

As he has done hundreds of times in Chicago, Holmes said he canvassed the neighborhood where his daughter was shot looking for witnesses or evidence. In his grant-funded role as a crisis responder, Holmes said he visits as many as 50 shooting scenes across Chicago in a given week. After his daughter was killed, Holmes added biweekly trips to Indianapolis, where he tried to cajole witnesses to come forward.

DR came forward to police in late March and identified James and Edwards in a photo array, the court records state.
Home security cameras can catch a lot of crazy things, but some Chicago residents were surprised to find that thieves caught on their surveillance footage were after their flowers.

The theft happened at a home near E 115th St and S Ewing Ave in the city's East Side neighborhood, residents say. Footage shows someone pulling up to the house in what appears to be a mini-van, then exiting the vehicle. The person walks up to the house, looks around, and quickly steals two hanging plants before jumping back into the van and taking off.

Residents are puzzled as to why thieves would target them in that way. The resident of the home, Leonor Rios, told NBC 5 in Spanish that she felt concerned and mad when she saw the video, captured in two separate angles of her porch.

Rios said a friend posted the video to a Facebook page for East Chicago, prompting several comments about other, similar thefts in the area.

Somebody keeps coming and stealing all of our plants." said neighbor Mary Sigg. "We work hard to buy these things and somebody keeps taking them all and we dont know why.

Rios did not file a police report, but is hoping neighbors will help identify the person who committed the crime.

"I am glad they did capture it on camera," said neighbor Leslie Martinez. "and hopefully this person does get caught."
Credit card thieves are targeting one suburb, and police and victims alike are warning the public to be on high alert.

Nancy Hipps, of Minooka, suffered one of several credit and debit card fraud cases in the southwest suburb that Minooka Police are aware of.

"I got an email this morning from Chase credit card that said, 'Did you make these four purchases?' The first three I did, the fourth one I did not," Hipps told NBC 5. "It was for $105.95 at Meijer in Elgin."

She said she's just one of many victims, and police confirmed they are investigating a string of similar cases.

"We've had 10 now within the last nine days," said Minooka Police Chief Justin Meyer.

The credit card numbers have been used as far as Chicago, Elgin and Elk Grove.

Hipps said she filed a police report and got her card reissued since the hack, but she's warning others to take extra precautions that she did not.

"I had another friend tell me, 'Do not use your card outside, go inside to the place.' And what did I do? I used it outside because I was in hurry to get home," Hipps said, telling NBC 5 she believes that her card was compromised with a skimming device at a local BP gas station.

"We've gone to our local gas stations to open up gas pumps to look for internal skimming," Meyer said, adding that authorities are reaching out to third-party vendors to see if there's a common denominator.

Police are also looking at surveillance video and checking the local Wendy's, McDonald's, and Casey's General Store to see if there's a particular place where the criminals have gotten their information.

"Whether it's through the gas pumps at local gas stations through the skimming devices, or a worker at a fast food restaurant using a skimming device when they're taking their credit card," Meyer added, urging victims to report incidents to police right away, so they can further investigate these allegations and stop whoever is responsible.
Gov. Bruce Rauners chief of staff Mike Zolnierowicz is leaving the governors administration to serve as the Illinois Republican Partys chief political strategist.

[Zolnierowicz] is a tremendous leader and a great Chief of Staff. He has done an amazing job leading our team through some very difficult circumstances, Gov. Rauner said in a statement. I am grateful that he will remain a close ally and adviser. I look forward to continuing to work with [Zolnierowicz] in the months and years ahead.

Zolnierowicz will now serve as a key force in the lead-up to Novembers general election, as Republicans attempt to chip away at the Democratic supermajorities in both houses of the states General Assembly.

According to Capitol Fax, Zolnierowicz isnt expected return to Rauners administration after the general election, but will instead move to Rauners reelection campaign.

Rich Goldberg, who served as Rauners deputy chief of staff for legislative affairs, will replace Zolnierowicz. Goldberg, who has recently participated in budget discussion between top lawmakers, has frequently battled with Democratic lawmakers throughout Rauners administration.

No one will work harder to fix the State than Richard. He is extremely smart, loyal and relentless, Rauner said. Richard has my full support and trust. I know he will do a great job in his role.

Director of the Department of the Lottery B.R. Lane also tendered her resignation Friday, citing a serious medical condition and complications from a recent surgery. Rauner has asked Deputy Director of Government Transformation & Metrics Tim McDevitt to serve as the department's acting director until a replacement is found.
A Lake County Sheriffs officer was injured in a crash in northwest Indiana Friday morning.

According to the sheriffs office, the police-involved crash took place near the intersection of Columbia and Gostlin in Hammond.

One officer was injured in the crash.

Images from the scene indicate the crash involved a marked trooper car and a white pickup truck.

Lake County officials say the officer is listed in stable condition, but it was not immediately clear if there were any other injuries.

Police said the Lake County Sheriffs Department CSI is investigating.
A man has died following an apparent kidnapping Thursday from a gas station on the south end of Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport, police say.

D/FW Airport Police said a 42-year-old man was at the Shell gas station at the intersection of Rental Car Drive and International Parkway when he witnessed several people breaking into his car about 2 p.m.

"The man was fueling his car and was inside the convenience store when he saw the car being broken into," said D/FW Airport spokesman David Magana. "So he came out from the store and was confronted by several suspects who then put him into their car and drove off."

Police say they believe the incident was not random, and the man was likely followed to the gas station from a location off airport property.

A man has died following an apparent kidnapping Thursday from a gas station on the south end of Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport, police say.

"All I saw was the guy hanging out the back door on the driver's side, like he was hanging on for dear life," witness Robert Headspeth said.

"The guy was speeding around approximately 40 miles an hour, trying to shake the guy out off the back of the car," witness Eric Moore told NBC 5. "The whole time the driver was going back and forth, trying to shake him out."

The man was found unconscious about two miles away, in the 4300 block of West Northgate Drive, in Irving.[[382415581,R]]

The man, whose identity has not been released, was pronounced dead after he was rushed to Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas.

The cause of the man's death has not been released.

The airport gas station is generally considered a safe place to stop, and is a popular place to fill up a rental car with gas before returning it.

"Youve got D/FW PD in and out of here on a fairly regular basis," said taxi driver Charlie Ondrasek. "As much traffic is in and through here and everything, there aint nobody thats going to slip through here and not be seen or noticed."

D/FW Airport Police brought in a police dog to help search a wooded area behind the gas station Thursday evening, but the focus of the search was not revealed by officials.

The FBI is assisting in the investigation, and anyone with information that could help the case is asked to call police at 972-973-3210.
The Connecticut Department of Revenue Services has reached a deal with Airbnb to start collecting and remitting taxes.

Connecticut is the first state in the tri-state region to do so, but joins a growing list of states and cities internationally with similar agreements.

From Wooster Square, to East Rock, to the area around Yale Universitys campus, there are more than 300 listings for New Haven on the popular online marketplace for short term home sharing rentals.

The more visitors we get to the state the better, Connecticut Lodging Association Director of Marketing Barbara Malmberg said, we got to make sure that we have everyone playing at the same level.

The states tax agreement with Airbnb helps achieve that goal, Malmberg said.

We applaud the efforts of the Department of Revenue Services, she said, this was a big undertaking.

Connecticuts hotel occupancy tax rate of 15 percent is the highest of any state.

This is a relative very modest impact in terms of additional state revenue, DRS Director Kevin Sullivan told NBC Connecticut on the phone. But its the principle and its the fairness.

Over the past year, Airbnb says more than 1,800 active hosts in the state earned $3.5 million.

For people across the state of Connecticut, Airbnb is making it possible to make ends meet, pay the bills and stay in their homes, Airbnb regional public policy director Josh Meltzer said. "Thanks to the leadership of Connecticut officials, our community can now contribute new tax revenue to their communities and continue to bring new revenue and visitors to hundreds of Connecticut local businesses.

The new tax plan with Airbnb kicks in on July 1.

There are more and more examples of folks who do exactly the same business through an online connection as somebody else does down on the street without an online connection, Sullivan said.

Sullivan added he hopes the deal with Airbnb can serve as a model for taxing other businesses based online.

We as a department have a particular obligation to be sure that the state is collecting all of the taxes that are due, Sullivan said.
NBC Connecticut Troubleshooters are examining the number of school threats tracked in recent years throughout the state.

The state's Department of Education tracks threats that are met with police response. Threats are defined as verbal, written or electronic threats by someone to bomb, shoot or use other substances and devices to explode, burn or cause damage to a school building, property or harm to students and staff.

In this day and age, school threats come in by different ways: spoken, written, texted, phoned in or posted on social media.

NBC Connecticut Troubleshooters obtained the number of threats tracked at schools over a five year period ending with the most recent numbers available for the 2014-2015 school years.

The trend reveals the amount of school related threats are, for the most part, declining.

Starting in 2010-2011 that school year shows 88 school and bomb threats total.

The next year has the only increase in this period, with 90 reported threats altogether. The third year shows a 20 percent decline of reported threats, capping off at 72 threats. Followed by a significant drop in the 2013-2014 school years, at 39 school threats reported. And the most recent school year, 2014-2015, with just 35 school threats-bomb threats total.

State officials said school districts have not yet reported threat totals for the current academic year, but so far NBC Connecticut has covered at least 17 threats this academic year.

The school district with the highest number of threats in a single year was Shelton with 10 reports in the 2010-2011 year.

A State Department of Education spokeswoman, Abbe Smith tells the NBC Connecticut Troubleshooters, "Student safety and well-being are a top priority for schools and it is critical that districts have strong protocols in place for responding to threats and emergencies. While we are pleased that the number of threats has trended downward in recent years, we must remain vigilant and ready to respond smartly and swiftly when incidents happen."
A bartender and two members of a French club in Wallingford have been arrested after an investigation into drugs deals at the club, according to police.

Police said the investigation was into narcotics sales at the St. Pierre Social Club, on Maple Avenue, which is also known as the French Club.

"What can you say? I think every bar in America has a drug problem," said an employee who did not want to be identified.

On Thursday, authorities raided the club, which is located on a dead-end street in a residential neighborhood.

Kathryn Vanlinter, of Wallingford, a 47-year-old bartender who was tending bar at the time of the raid, had around a dozen bags of cocaine packaged for sale and more than $1,200 in cash, police said.

She was the only person in charge of the establishment, officers said.

Vanlinter was charged with possession of narcotics with intent to sell, possession of narcotics and criminal attempt at sales of narcotics. She was released on a $10,000 bond and is scheduled to appear in Meriden Superior Court on June 23.

Police said they also seized her car.

A member of the club, 49-year-old Edmund Wambolt, of Wallingford, had crack cocaine and heroin and was charged with two counts of possession of narcotics, police said.

He was released on a promise to appear and is scheduled to appear in Meriden Superior Court on June 23.

Another club member, Debra Mercurio, 52, of Wallingford, has several bags of cocaine and was charged with possession of narcotics and criminal attempt to possess narcotics, police said.

She was released on a promise to appear and is scheduled to appear in Meriden Superior Court on June 23.

Employees at the social club said it will be open for business tonight.

Ken Buffa contributed to this report.
New Havens Long Wharf area is set to get a big boost after the city secured a nearly million dollar grant from the state.

Economic development, better accessibility to the waterfront and improvements to shoreline infrastructure are areas where Mayor Toni Harp said the city plans to invest the $935,000 grant.

We dont have county government here in Connecticut, so we look to the state often for things we cant afford to do ourselves, Harp told NBC Connecticut.

Interstate-95 sits between downtown New Haven and Long Wharf.

One of the things we are trying to do is to assure the residents, the people who live here and the people who come here, have access to Long Wharf, Harp said.

Coastal infrastructure improvements will help protect the highway and Union Station, a major transportation hub for both the state and the region, Harp said.

Its really important that its protected from any weather events that we have because if we lost any of that track it would impact the whole line going up the entire East Coast, she said.

The mayor said construction on a new boathouse for New Haven harbor should begin in the fall.

Visit New Haven, the citys tourism bureau, is excited about the re-opening of a new visitors center at Long Wharf.

Another way for businesses downtown and in the region to get all the information out to the people who are on the highways and need a place to stop, Visit New Haven director of marketing, Barbara Malmberg said.

Investments from this grant could attract developers to create new homes with waterfront views.

Its always been the vision, Harp said. We could add a little more height to that area and add an opportunity for people who want to come and live on the sound to come live on Long Wharf.

Just last weekend, the city hosted its second annual Food Truck Festival at Long Wharf and first Dragon Boat Regatta.
A 10-year-old girl was hit by a stray bullet when a man shot a 19-year-old woman Thursday in Springfield, Massachusetts, police say.

According to Springfield Police, a man got out of a car near the corner of Belmont Avenue and Euclid Avenue. He got into an argument with a group of people and shot the teen in the buttocks.

The child was struck in the leg by a stray bullet.

The girl's mother got to the scene started taking her to Bay State Medical Center, calling 911 on the way. An ambulance met them at the intersection of Chestnut Street and Mattoon Street, and the girl was treated on the scene and taken by the ambulance to the hospital.

Both victims' injuries are described by police as superficial. The teenager, however, is not cooperating, police say.

The suspect is described as a man in his early 30s with a mohawk. He was wearing a neon green traffic vest and his Honda Civic has Massachusetts plates.

Anyone with information is asked to call Springfield Police.
A teacher in Hartford is being praised for her actions during a lockdown at Prince Technical High School.

Cellphone video shows the teach armed with what appears to be a plastic pole, ready to strike the intuder.

The lockdown was prompted by a threat that ended up being a hoax.

A mother of one of Paula Butterfield's students is thanking the teacher for her heroic actions.

Shamikia Pitts said Butterfield, a biology teacher, did an excellent job.

"Thank you. I really appreciate everything you've done for children! And mine of course," Pitts said.

"She's a hero. She's really, really awesome. She did a good job!" Pitts added.

Butterfield is seen on a quick cell phone video shot by Pitts' daughter. Right in the middle of a lock down at A.I. Prince Technical High School in Hartford Thursday morning.

State and local police swarmed the school after a threat was made on social media about shooting up the school lunch room.

Shamikia Pitts told NBC Connecticut, "When I asked Camani (daughter) she said the teacher grabbed a pole that was inside a plastic thing in a closet. And she came out, stood at that door and whatever she heard at that door she was gunna swing at it. Whatever would've came her way, she would've gotten them!"

Shamikia said she got a frantic phone call from her 10th grader Camani Bell Thursday morning, who was inside that classroom along with 15 other teenagers.

Superintendent Dr. Nivea Torres told NBC Connecticut, "The safety of our students is always our top priority. The example of Mrs. Butterfield demonstrates the commitment of all Prince Tech educators and how seriously we take that responsibility. We are also very grateful for our partners with the State Police who responded quickly and determined that there was not a threat."

There have not been any arrests following yesterdays incident and State Troopers tell us this is the fifth school threat they've responded to this academic school year.
Town council members in Wolcott put off voting on the town budget because they were waiting to see what happened with the state budget, but they will vote this afternoon.

The vote comes a day after Gov. Dannel Malloy proposed $20 million in cuts to cities and towns.

He said the cuts are necessary because his criminal justice reform bill failed to pass in the House of Representatives and he has to come up with the money somehow.

State Republicans are calling for a veto override of the governors proposal and said it will hurt people by raising property taxes and cutting services.

Democrats, however, said the Republican budget was out of balance and avoided making tough cuts.

The Republican-American reports that the Wolcott town council decided to cut $100,000 from the town budget and $150,000 from the school budget to help absorb the loss of nearly $500,000 they will be losing in state assistance.

The town council will be meeting at 12:30 p.m.
Vice President Joe Biden says he is furious about the sexual assault at Stanford that's sparked national outrage after the assailant got a six-month sentence, and calls the woman who wrote about her trauma a warrior "with a solid steel spine."

"I do not know your name  but your words are forever seared on my soul. Words that should be required reading for men and women of all ages," Biden says in his letter, sent to BuzzFeed on Thursday and confirmed with the vice president's office by NBC News.

Brock Turner, a 20-year-old ex-Stanford swimmer was found guilty of three counts of sexual assault of a Stanford graduate student. His six-month sentence in county jail and probation has outraged many who claim it is too lenient for the crime; documents indicate he will be released sooner.

The woman wrote a 12-page letter explaining what happened to her and how it affected her. She read it in court and it was shared by the Santa Clara County District Attorney, though the woman's name hasn't been released to maintain her privacy.

In his letter in response to hers, titled "An Open Letter to a Courageous Young Woman," Biden says he is "filled with furious anger  both that this happened to you and that our culture is still so broken that you were ever put in the position of defending your own worth.

Biden authored the 1994 Violence Against Women Act, which created a "rape shield law" that prevents victims' past sexual conduct from being used against them in a rape trial, and has been a key figure in the White House's recent It's on Us Campaign to preventing sexual assault on college campuses.

Saying one in five women is sexually assaulted on college campuses, Biden writes that statements like the survivor's are critical in encouraging people to intervene.

"If everyone who shared your letter on social media, or who had a private conversation in their own homes with their daughters and sons, draws upon the passion, the outrage, and the commitment they feel right now the next time there is a choice between intervening and walking away  then I believe you will have helped to change the world for the better."

The woman's letter has been shared over 13 million times on BuzzFeed's website alone.

Biden also commends the two bystanders who came to the woman's rescue and those who have voiced their support for the survivor: "I join your global chorus of supporters, because we can never say enough to survivors: I believe you. It is not your fault."

Read Biden's full letter on BuzzFeed.
Democratic presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders will hold a rally this afternoon in Southeast D.C., hours after meeting with the president and days before the final Democratic primary.

Sanders is scheduled to speak in Lot 3 of RFK Stadium, near the Stadium-Armory Metro station, at 7 p.m., with doors opening at 4 p.m. The event is free and open to the public, but attendees are asked to RSVP online.

"With the D.C. primary coming up on June 14, Bernie will be holding a conversation about the issues that matter to him: making college tuition-free, getting big money out of politics, combating climate change and much more," a statement from the Vermont senator's campaign said.

A huge crowd of people lined up to attend the rally, with some people arriving near dawn. The crowd was upbeat.

Sanders met with President Barack Obama in the Oval Office Thursday morning. Obama was expected to talk about ways Sanders can keep up the fight for his policy agenda, but not his bid for the presidency. The White House said Sanders requested the meeting.

Sanders faces questions about whether he will back Clinton and when he may end his bid for president. He lost four of six contests in primary elections Tuesday, and Hillary Clinton is now the Democrats' presumptive nominee.

But Sanders has vowed to campaign through Tuesday's final primary in D.C. and pursue a contested Democratic convention in Philadelphia.

Obama formally endorsed Hillary Clinton shortly after the meeting with Sanders. His endorsement added to a growing chorus of Democratic leaders pushing Sanders to step aside so the party can focus on taking on Republican Donald Trump.

Ever the everyman, Sanders stopped for coffee and a scone at a Peet's coffee shop across from the White House before he arrived at the White House.
Police said they need the public's help finding an 82-year-old man who went missing in Dallas Thursday afternoon. [[382458831,C]]

Dallas police said Choice Johnson was last seen leaving his home in the 1100 block of South High Hill Place at about noon.

Johnson was described as 6 feet 1 inch tall and 175 pounds with gray hair and brown eyes. He was wearing a red flannel shirt, tan pants and black suspenders.

Police said Johnson was driving a red 1998 Mercury Mountaineer SUV with the Texas license plate BCJ5518 possibly toward Fannin County.

Dallas police asked anyone with information about Johnson's disappearance call them at 214-671-4268 or 911.
The cause of a fast-moving, three-alarm fire that heavily damaged a North Dallas house Thursday has not yet been determined, fire officials say.

The fire appeared to begin in the garage of the large two-story home on the 10 block of Collinway Place, near Hillcrest Road and Interstate 635, just after 4:30 p.m.[[382414871,R]]

Officials said there were two people home when the fire began, a husband and wife, and the man was taken to a hospital for treatment after he was exposed to the fire. His condition was not known Thursday evening.

Nearly five dozen firefighters worked for more than two hours to extinguish the flames, Dallas-Fire Rescue said in a press release.

Part of the effort to fight the fire involved cutting a hole in the roof to reach the attic.

Thick smoke could be seen for miles while firefighters worked to get the fire under control.

The home is valued at more than $1 million, according to records, and it sustained severe  if not total  damage, along with three cars inside the garage where the fire began.
School is out for summer, but for dozens of Trimble Tech High School students they are still waking up early to head to campus.

Chef Natasha Bruton, who teaches the Culinary Arts program at Fort Worth Independent School District's Trimble Tech, opens the kitchen at 3 a.m. Mondays through Saturdays. Her culinary students arrive at 4 a.m. to prep for breakfast and dinner.

The students cook 220 meals for the JROTC Leadership Camp in Azle. Breakfast consist of frittatas, bacon, sausage, cut potatoes, fresh fruit, 189 biscuits and orange juice. The students also work in shifts to prepare dinner.

The kitchen is like a classroom here, Bruton said. They are learning about Italian cuisine, French, Japanese and, of course, American, but they are also learning about leadership skills, time management and teamwork.

The motto in the kitchen is Team One, Dream One, meaning the students work together and support each others dream of being successful.

We are a family here," Bruton said. "You kind of have to be to motive teens to get up at 3 to be here at school by 4 a.m. They take it seriously and they are utilizing what they are learning here, to plan for their futures. Im so proud of them."
Two students living out dreams to be at the prestigious Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, New York, returned to Fort Worth to check in with the culinary community that continues to support them.

Being at CIA is amazing, said Xavier Thompson, a 2015 graduate of North Side High School. I have no regrets or doubts about going there. When I was looking for colleges, it was either CIA, Stanford or Duke, and CIA was number one.

Its beautiful. I walk along the Hudson River all the time, said 2015 Trimble Tech graduate Camron Sanders. Every morning, I get up to go for breakfast at The Egg (the student restaurant on campus). And I'm like, Oh my gosh, this campus is beautiful.

Its neat watching both of the students come back. They're about halfway, said Russell Kirkpatrick, general manager at Reata Restaurant and co-founder of the Fort Worth Food and Wine Festival and its nonprofit foundation that supports the young men.

One of the three goals for the festival was to give back, said Kirkpatrick. And our way of giving back through the hard work of putting on the festival was to create a scholarship fund for local culinary students looking to further their education.

Sanders and Thompson got scholarships in 2015 and each hopes the support continues as they enter their second year at CIA.

Sanders will graduate in March 2017 with an Associate in Occupational Studies (AOS) in Culinary Arts degree. And while he still hopes to become a chef, that is no longer his only pursuit.

I try to pursue the education of being of chef. It's good enough for some people, but for my personality it does not fit, said Sanders. It's something I will pursue but not keep going on with. I've been thinking about being a teacher and teaching restaurant management and hospitality.

Thompson also believes his best work will come outside of a restaurant. Once he earns his AOS, he wants to return to CIA for a bachelors degree in culinary science and pursue work in research and development.

Working for Welch's or Dole or Campbell's or a company like that that's gonna help me get into the food and beverage business, something that's gonna be very hands on, not just in the kitchen area, but behind the scenes with processing and how things are made and created, explained Thompson. I know that if I get into a field like that, then every day, I'm going to be affecting a family.

Its been a blessing to help these kids out and watch them have that journey through culinary school, said Kirkpatrick.

I want them to know I'm very grateful that theres actually people out there willing to take their time to help someone like me, said Sanders.
A Texas high school valedictorian who described herself as "undocumented" in a tweet touting her academic accomplishments said she didn't intend to cause offense.

"My tweet wasn't made to mock anyone. I just wanted to show that no matter what barriers you have in front of you, you can still succeed," Mayte Lara told the Austin American-Statesman on Wednesday.

Lara graduated June 3 from Crockett High School in Austin. The 17-year-old's tweet read: "Valedictorian, 4.5GPA, full tuition paid for at UT, 13 cords/medals, nice legs, oh and I'm undocumented."

The tweet went viral and generated a barrage of negative comments online, most calling for her to leave the country and expressing anger at her University of Texas scholarship.

Lara said she was unprepared for the backlash and decided to deactivate her account "in attempts to ignore the harmful comments," she said.

Lara has Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, status, which protects certain youths from deportation if they were brought into the U.S. illegally as children. It allows them to legally work and study in the U.S. The status is initially granted for two years and then can be renewed.

Lara, who has lived in the U.S. most of her life, told the newspaper that one of her greatest hardships is overcoming "the stereotype of people like me."

Lara said she wants to become a resident and then a citizen and adds that she's grateful for the opportunities the United States has given her.

UT spokesman Gary Susswein said privacy laws prevent the university from discussing individual students, but that under state law Texas universities have for decades granted two-semester tuition waivers to valedictorians of Texas public high school without regard to residency status. He noted state law also doesn't distinguish between documented and undocumented graduates of Texas high schools in admissions and financial aid decisions.

Meanwhile, a valedictorian in North Texas got a standing ovation last week when she revealed her undocumented status during her graduation speech from Boyd High School in McKinney. Larissa Martinez, who left Mexico with her family in 2010, told WFAA-TV, "We just flew over here with luggage and a lot of dreams."

Martinez, who had a 4.95 GPA, told WFAA that she has a scholarship to Yale University.
Filled with heartache and anger, the father of a 13-year-old boy who nearly drowned at a Riverside County school pool is demanding answers about how teen lifeguards and other supervisors handled the situation.

Rodriquez Pierce, father of seventh grader Alex Pierce, questioned the actions of high school lifeguards, including why the boy wasn't immediately given CPR, after witnesses said his son had been submerged underwater for about 90 seconds.

"I don't know their policy as far as why they use student lifeguards, but I know it needs to be reviewed," Rodriquez Pierce said.

On June 3, Alex was attending an end-of-the-year school party at the Vista Murrieta High School pool, when classmates noticed his lifeless body floating underwater at the bottom of the pool.

Witnesses told NBC4 that the teen lifeguards ignored their cries for help when Alex was spotted. When two classmates brought him up, police said no one performed CPR until paramedics arrived four minutes later.

"It's just so painful that my son is lying on the ground with no help," said Rodriquez Pierce. "It's unbelievable that all these people could stand around and not do anything."

Alex Pierce is in a coma on a ventilator at Loma Linda University Medical Center and his parents hope he will eventually wake up.

"I wouldn't wish this on anyone," Rodriquez Pierce said, "It's so heartbreaking."

Police are investigating this incident for possible criminal negligence.

NBC4 reached out to the Murrieta Valley School District for information about their lifeguard certifications but a response has not yet been made available.

Those who wish to contribute to a GoFundMe to help pay for Alex's medical expenses can find the link here.
A judge on Thursday approved a $100,000 settlement to benefit the 14-month-old son of a AAA tow truck driver stabbed to death last year in Pico Rivera while helping the mother of his alleged killer.

Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Teresa Sanchez-Gordon's action resolves the part of the case the victim's fiancee filed on behalf of herself and her son last September against Cynthia Avila and three relatives of the decedent, Raymond Zabala III.

Stephanie Almanza gave birth to their son less than three months before his father's June 2, 2015, murder.

Avila's son, Tobias Ruben Cabrera, a 40-year-old transient, has pleaded not guilty to murdering Zabala, who was attacked in the 8400 block of Buhman Avenue while working on a car belonging to Avila.

Cabrera allegedly walked up to the 35-year-old tow truck driver and asked what was going on before stabbing him in the neck, then rode away on a bicycle. Zabala went to a neighboring home to seek help, but died near the crime scene, and his alleged killer was arrested three days later.

Almanza's suit alleges Avila failed to warn Zabala of her son's dangerous and violent disposition. Cabrera, who also is a defendant in the case, was convicted of corporal injury with great bodily injury to a spouse/cohabitant/child's parent in 2001 and possession for sale of a controlled substance in 2011, according to court papers in the criminal case.

Almanza, 28, appeared in court Thursday with her son, Raymond Zabala IV, and told the judge she approved of the plan to keep the money in a trust for the toddler until he is 18 years old. After the hearing, Almanza, who also has an 8-year-old son from a previous relationship, told City News Service that she was pleased with the settlement.

Thursday's action comes two days after Almanza was sued for libel by her late fiance's parents, Raymond Zabala Jr. and Michele Zabala; and his sister, Amanda Zabala. The three allege Almanza falsely accused them, via a Facebook post, of stealing money raised for her and her son, and they are seeking unspecified compensatory and punitive damages.

Tamar Arminak, an attorney for Almanza, criticized the Zabala lawsuit.

"Someone should explain to this family that truth is an absolute defense to libel or slander claims, and my client looks forward to proving that her allegations are protected by the First Amendment and are absolutely true," Arminak said.

According to the Zabala lawsuit, Michele and Amanda Zabala created a GoFundMe account shortly after the victim's death. About $16,000 in donations was raised, and all parties agreed the money should be put into a trust account for his son, who was 2 months old when his father died, the Zabala lawsuit states.

Last July 2, for reasons unknown to the Zabalas, Almanza posted a Facebook message critical of the family, the Zabala lawsuit states.

"They are using their own son/brother Raymond III and grandson Baby Ray for Fraud," the Almanza post stated. "Ray the father has also screwed his own son over with money in the past, I always gave his father the benefit of the doubt, but now realize his true side, all he is after is all the money that is coming in."

Almanza also stated in her posting that Zabala III did not have a good relationship with his parents and that he was raised by his grandparents.

After the posting, several donors requested and received refunds from the GoFundMe account, "significantly diminishing the amount donated," the Zabala suit states.

The Zabalas are willing to provide the donated money to Almanza and her son, but she has refused to accept it, according to their lawsuit.

But in her lawsuit, Almanza  who names as defendants the three Zabala family members as well as Avila and Cabrera  tells a different story.

"As if the horror of Raymond's sudden death was not enough for (Almanza) and her children, Raymond's family compounded the pain and suffering by stealing funds raised for Stephanie" as well as her son with Zabala, the Almanza suit states.

Although Zabala's parents and sister were estranged from him at the time of his death, they acted as if they were loving relatives as they held a comedy night fund-raising event, the Almanza suit says.

"Not a penny of what defendants ... raised was turned over to plaintiffs, despite Stephanie Almanza's repeated requests," her suit alleges.

Zabala's funeral and burial was paid for by the state and his employer, AAA, according to the lawsuit. Amanda Zabala withdrew more than $12,700 from the GoFundMe account in June 2015 and deposited the money in her mother's account, the Almanza suit alleges.

The Zabalas also tried to claim death benefits from the state and AAA by saying they were the decedent's lawful heirs rather than his son, Almanza alleges.

Almanza's suit alleges wrongful death, theft, negligence, both intentional and negligent representation, intentional and negligent infliction of emotional distress. She is seeking unspecified damages.

The portion of the Almanza case against the Zabalas will go forward, according to Arminak.
Michael Jace, an actor who portrayed a police officer on the TV series "The Shield," was sentenced to 40 years to life in prison Friday for fatally shooting his wife in front of their two young children in their Los Angeles home.

Before the sentence was handed down, Jace spoke for the first time in court, saying there was "no justification for my actions that night at all, and I am profoundly sorry for the pain I have caused everyone ... There is no replacing April."

The woman's mother, Kay Henry, quickly walked out of court after Jace maintained that "there was no premeditated anything."

"I realize it doesn't bring her back," Jace said, turning to tell her family members, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry."

Jace was convicted of second-degree murder last week by a jury of six women and six men that deliberated for about two hours before finding the 53-year-old guilty in the killing of April Jace on May 19, 2014. He was also convicted on a special allegation charge that he used a handgun.

During the trial, the couple's 10-year-old son testified that he saw his father bring his mother into a hallway, where she fell down. "Then my dad said, 'If you like running, run to heaven, and then he shot her," the boy told jurors.

According to prosecutors, the actor was upset his wife wanted a divorce and was obsessed with the belief that she was seeing someone else.

Jace waited in their Hyde Park home in the 5400 block of Brynhurst Avenue and when his wife arrived, he shot her once in the back, according to the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office.

The defense memo requested the minimum sentence prescribed by law.

"Outside of this tragic killing, Mr. Jace has been a law-abiding citizen who has never been convicted or even arrested for a crime," defense attorney Jamon Hicks stated in a sentencing memorandum. "This was truly an anomaly for Mr. Jace."

The defense said there was no evidence that Jace was brewing and plotting the demise of his wife of nine years, and that the prosecution had "oversold this case" by pursuing a first-degree murder conviction.

One of Jace's attorneys, Jamon Hicks, conceded that Jace shot his wife once in the back and then twice in the legs. But he questioned whether the actor would have premeditated the shooting knowing that the children would be there.

Jace is best known for his role as Los Angeles police Officer Julien Lowe in "The Shield." He has also appeared in such films as "Forrest Gump," "Boogie Nights" and "Planet of the Apes."
A Broward Sheriff's Office sergeant facing more than two dozen charges of child pornography and illicit sexual conduct was ordered held on $250,000 bond during his first court appearance Friday.

Sgt. Kreg Costa, 43, is facing 29 charges including possessing or viewing a depiction of child sexual conduct, sexual assault, lewd or lascivious conduct, using a computer to lure a child and using or allowing a child to engage in sex following his arrest Thursday, BSO officials said.

During Friday's court hearing, Costa's attorneys argued for a $50,000 bond, saying his family, which includes his wife and five kids, couldn't afford anything higher.

Prosecutors asked for a $345,000 bond but the judge settled on $250,000. If he posts bond Costa won't be allowed any contact with children and will only be allowed supervised visits with his kids. Costa will also have to wear a GPS monitor, will not be allowed to use any wireless technology including cell phones or computers, must stay 1,000 feet away from schools and will not be allowed to leave the tri-county area.

"I think they feel a little bit betrayed that a law enforcement officer could be charged with something like that," Costa's attorney, Daniel Aaronson, said after the hearing. "I think it's wrong, I think it's unfair."

Costa, who has been with the BSO since 1999, was arrested following a two-month investigation by the BSO's public corruption unit, officials said. He has been suspended without pay.

The investigation began after staff at the Weston district, where Costa worked as a road patrol supervisor, noticed he was staying in his office during his night shift with the lights off and his uniform belt and gun belt removed, officials said.

When detectives looked at a computer usage report of Costa's work-issued laptop from January through March, they found he was viewing hardcore pornography including incest-related and bondage websites while he was at work, officials said.

Detectives monitored Costa's internet activity and found he was engaging in sexually explicit exchanges with a 16-year-old California girl through email, Twitter and videos, officials said.

Costa instructed the teen to record herself while engaging in sex acts with herself, officials said. The teen told investigators she told Costa she was 15 years old when she first started communicating with him.

Aaronson was asked about Costa's mood in jail.

"How he's doing, his mood, his demeanor, I don't think that's something for me to talk about," he said.

Investigators said they believe there may be more victims and are asking anyone with more information to call 954-321-1100.
Police say a Florida man who sexually assaulted a woman and then called 911 to turn himself in told them he wanted to go to prison to get even with a person who killed his son.

The Palm Beach Post reports that 49-year-old Joel Jones was sentenced Thursday to 25 years in prison on a conviction of armed sexual battery. The newspaper reports that the victim told authorities Jones attacked her in August 2014 as he was showing her an office building she would be cleaning. She said he let her go after the attack, and she heard him calling 911 as she left.

According to an arrest report, Jones said he wanted to go to prison to get even with the person who killed his 14-year-old son.
A fired Florida police officer has pleaded not guilty to charges related to the fatal shooting of a legally armed black musician who was waiting for a tow truck.

The Palm Beach Post reported Friday that 38-year-old Nouman Raja has entered a written plea of not guilty to one charge each of attempted murder and manslaughter by culpable negligence.

Raja was charged earlier this month in the Oct. 18 death of Corey Jones.

Jones' SUV had broken down on an Interstate 95 offramp before dawn. He had gotten out and called for a tow truck when Raja pulled up in an unmarked car, wearing civilian clothes.

Raja is of South Asian descent.

Jones and Raja apparently pulled guns on each other. Raja fired six shots, hitting Jones three times. Jones never fired.
Carnival's new Fathom brand cruises to Cuba and the Dominican Republic, launched in May, appear to be experiencing growing pains.

Both offerings are different than anything else in the industry: The Cuba trips are the first U.S. cruises to the island nation in 40 years, and initially generated tremendous excitement. But travelers are giving them mixed reviews, complaining of confusion over how the tours are organized.

The cruises to the Dominican Republic, meanwhile, which invite passengers to volunteer on projects like reforestation and teaching English, are proving to be a hard sell and have been steeply discounted, with the initial $1,540 ticket price cut to as low as $249. "People don't know why they would want go and pay to work somewhere," said travel agent Gloria Hanson. "People want a vacation."

Hanson sailed Fathom's other itinerary to Havana in May and said that while it was a fascinating experience, that trip was different from standard cruises too. "This cruise is not for everybody," she said. "It's a tiring cruise. You're walking, walking, walking. You're not coming back to the ship to have drinks and party. It's not that kind of a cruise."

Even Fathom's ship, Adonia, is different from the glitzy megaships that have become standard in the U.S. cruise industry. Adonia is smaller than many ships, carrying just over 700 passengers. It also has no casino and doesn't offer the comedy clubs and Broadway-style productions that cruise passengers have come to expect.

Tara Russell, who heads the Fathom brand and has been on several of the cruises, says she's not worried.

"We are pioneering two products the world has never seen," said Russell in an interview. She said bookings have increased daily, many passengers have booked second trips, and the company is expanding marketing efforts, especially for the voluntourism trips, by reaching out to faith-based and alumni groups.

But travel agents say Fathom's reception has been lukewarm. "Fathom seems to be having a slow start and the agent members of CruiseCompete are not 100 percent certain the ship will ever sell out," said Heidi Allison-Shane, editor-at-large for CruiseCompete.com. She said CruiseCompete has had a number of requests for information about Fathom, "but very few bookings."

Hanson said passengers to Cuba were confused about how the tours are organized. Many signed up for excursions organized by the ship, not realizing they could have created their own itineraries without violating U.S. rules that limit Americans visiting Cuba to certain types of activities like cultural exchanges.

"I was under the impression you had to do everything with the cruise line," Hanson said. "That part was very confusing." In addition, Fathom randomly assigned passengers to visit museums, historic sites or performance venues without giving them a choice. And while Hanson raved about a meal she had in an excellent private restaurant in Cuba, other passengers had mediocre food in state-run eateries.

The Cuba cruise Hanson took also lacked "crucial talks about the ports you're going to. Every cruise I've ever gone on always had a seminar talking about tomorrow's port and the things to do." Hanson said that type of information is especially important for Cuba because Americans have been cut off from the country for so long.

Russell said Fathom has already tweaked some programs with additional changes coming to give passengers more information, flexibility and customization in tour options. Some tour guides are also being given more training to upgrade their skills.

Russell added that because U.S. policies on Cuba "are changing every day," the company had a hard time adjusting programs to keep pace. "It would be crazy to think that everything would have gone perfectly. We were negotiating policy last minute," she said.

Sharon Kenny, a writer for Porthole Cruise Magazine, took Fathom to Cuba and the Dominican Republic and said both experiences were worthwhile. But she said travelers need to understand that this is "not the traditional cruise in that you're not going to be drinking hard, you're not going to be in a bathing suit."

Kenny recalled crowds in Havana greeting them with shouts and high-fives, and said she still gets teary remembering a woman who told her: "We're so glad you're here. We've been waiting for you so long."

Kenny's experience in the Dominican Republic was also meaningful. "I have volunteered on other worthy causes before, but I'm often left wondering if what I did really mattered," she said. But she was certain that the work her Fathom group did, replacing a dirt floor in a family's home with concrete, made an impact. Others who volunteered with Fathom in the Dominican Republic agreed, speaking glowingly of their experiences planting trees, teaching English and sorting cocoa beans in a chocolate factory.

Colleen McDaniel, managing editor of CruiseCritic.com, was on the first sailing to the Dominican Republic and said "it's a radically different idea."

"They've launched a brand new product nobody's ever attempted before," she said. "They are still fine-tuning and doing some tweaking and they'll be the first to tell you that. They're very open to feedback. After every excursion you are given a survey to give your immediate feedback, what did you think of this and how would you make improvements. They're really listening and trying to make changes."

Russell acknowledged that "Fathom is not for everyone." But she added: "We're very pleased with the progress we're making."
A Hollywood man accused of killing his wife and setting their apartment on fire before he was injured in a police-involved shooting told a 911 operator he killed her for being disloyal, an arrest affidavit said.

Michael Kai James, 27, was shot multiple times during the Wednesday morning confrontation near his home in the 1300 block of N. 72nd Avenue, according to the report released by Hollywood Police Thursday.

James is facing premeditated murder and arson charges in the incident, which ended in the death of wife Latoya A. James, the report said. It's unknown if he's hired an attorney.

According to the report, Michael James called 911 and told the dispatcher he had shot and killed his wife and would shoot anyone who approached the house. He also said he was wearing a blood covered shirt and had "killed his wife for not being loyal," the report said.

Police set up a perimeter around the house and found James pacing around the front porch. At one point, James began walking toward an officer then started charging the officer, who fired multiple gunshots at James while a police sergeant opened fire with a rifle, the report said.

James was shot multiple times and collapsed. He was taken to Memorial Regional Hospital in stable condition. None of the officers were injured.

When officers asked James if anyone was still inside the home, he said "No it was just me and my dead wife," the report said. When they asked about a gun he replied "There is no gun I stabbed her," the report said.

A SWAT team entered the apartment and found smoke coming from a bedroom, where they found Latoya James stabbed to death on a bed, the report said. The small fire was quickly extinguished.
The man at the center of a child abuse case that drew widespread headlines made a rare appearance Thursday. For the first time in five years, Jorge Barahona stepped inside a courtroom.

Barahona, 48, listened to his lawyer and the prosecutor discuss combining the case against him in Palm Beach County with the charges against him in Miami-Dade County.

"Consolidation, I think, to some extent is a good thing for the defense. I don't think it's gonna help much from what I know of the case, but at least you give the state only one bite of the apple," said Alex Michaels, attorney.

Michaels has no connection to the Barahona case. He questions, though, whether Barahona can get a fair trial in Miami.

This case is hugely notorious. Nubia Barahona was murdered and Victor Barahona was tortured, allegedly at the hands of husband and wife, Jorge and Carmen Barahona.

"I don't think he'll get a fair trial here in Miami," Michaels expressed. "Too much notoriety, too much publicity. People are outraged over the fact of this case. You mention the name Barahona, everyone knows what it's all about."

Back in 2011, a road ranger found Jorge Barahona sprawled on the grass next to his truck on I-95 in West Palm Beach, with Nubia's body in the back and Victor covered in toxic chemicals.

Authorities in Palm Beach County charged Barahona with attempted murder, Miami-Dade prosecutors charged him with the murder of Nubia and child abuse.

Now it appears all charges will be heard in one trial in Miami. Jorge Barahona has opted not to attend the courtroom hearings between now and his trial.

"I understand why he doesn't want to be here. I understand because he's hated by almost everybody in this community and the more he appears on TV, the less chance of getting a fair trial," Michaels said.

Barahona's next court date is scheduled for August. Meanwhile, Carmen Barahona faces a murder charge in Miami-Dade.
Parents are paying the price for troubled teens. The parents of three boys who allegedly threatened a victim with a gun and then fled from police, faced a judge on behalf of their children Thursday.

A judge found probable cause for the teen who led police on a pursuit that lasted at least 30 minutes.

"The court believes it to be appropriate for him to remain in secure detention. Your son will remain in secure detention," Judge Orlando Prescott said during the hearing.

The 16-year-old who led police on an off-road chase in Southwest Miami-Dade will spend at least two more weeks in a juvenile detention center.

The arrest report shows the incident began at South Dade Park when three teens confronted a male. It states one of them brandished a firearm and all three then fled on ATVs after a witness called 911.

"These are the allegations made, that your son intentionally crashed his ATV into the police car," Judge Prescott said.

The two ATV riders who were arrested a short time after allegedly fleeing from the park will be released on home detention. The judge scheduled a probable cause hearing and said he needs more information on the specific actions both took.

An arrest affidavit from the Homestead Police Department shows the teen who led police on the pursuit faces the most charges. According to the form, he was riding a stolen ATV and was already on probation for armed robbery.

On June 29, the state will review the case to determine whether the teens will be charged in adult court.

In the meantime, the teens have been ordered to stay away from the victim they're accused of threatening.
Outrage is growing in Paterson, as new records obtained by the I-Team seem to show even more overtime billed by city employees while they were doing private jobs for the mayor.

Over the last two months, the I-Team has released exclusive video showing Paterson workers doing private jobs for Mayor Jose "Joey" Torres, both at his home and at his nephews beer business on East 15th Street, while charging overtime to taxpayers. In some cases, the workers were in uniform. And in some cases, they arrived in city vehicles.

Now, new time sheets seem to show at least three more instances of employees doing private work for the mayor at his nephews business while on the clock for the city.

On March 24, 2015, Department of Public Works employee Tim Hanlon is seen on video working at the warehouse after 6 p.m., drinking from a bottle and carrying a ladder. But Hanlons time sheets for that day show that he billed six hours of overtime that day, from 4 p.m. to 10 p.m.

On that same day, DPW Supervisor Joseph Mania is seen on video talking to the mayor at the warehouse around 6:15 p.m., even though his time sheets appear to show he billed taxpayers for five hours of work that day, from about 4 p.m. to 9 p.m.

Two days later, city carpenter Jorge Makdissi is seen on video loading equipment onto a truck at about 4:30 p.m. Records show he billed taxpayers for about six hours of work at that same time, from about 4 p.m. to 10 p.m.

The videos also show Torres at the site repeatedly arriving in his city-issued suburban. At times he is seen walking around the site with various workers. Once, he is seen delivering what appears to be beer to workers at the site.

On Friday, a spokeswoman for Mayor Torres referred the I-Team to the citys lawyer. Domenick Stampone, Patersons corporation counsel, said city officials are aware of the state attorney generals investigation into the matter and they have complied with all requests for information. He said he could not comment further because of the ongoing investigation.

The workers shown in the videos have not responded to repeated requests for comment about the newest videos by the I-Team.

Meanwhile, Paterson City Council members expressed concern about the widening probe.

Its very disturbing, said Maritza Davila, a Paterson councilwoman who chairs the Department of Public Works Committee. Referring to the I-Team report, she said, "A lot of people were looking at something that doesnt look right."

When the I-Team met with Hanlon in March, he told the I-Team he never billed taxpayers overtime for side projects. Asked about his work at the warehouse, he said he did the work for free as a chance to spend time with the citys mayor and share some beers with colleagues. He has not returned calls from the I-Team in recent days.

After the I-Teams initial report in March, the New Jersey attorney generals office announced it would investigate. At the time, Torres denied that he had ever asked city workers to do personal jobs for him while they were on the clock.

In a Paterson Press newspaper report about the I-Teams story, Torres told the newspaper that in one case, one or two city employees worked at his property to build four bookshelves in his daughters bedroom in the past year. He said the job was done on the employees own time, and that he paid for the supplies and gave the employees $50 for the work.

Former FBI official J.J. Klaver said the behavior documented on tape and in city records appears to be improper.

If youre the mayor of a city and youre using public employees for your personal benefit, or to benefit your friends, your neighbors, your business associates, that could potentially be charged as a federal crime, Klaver said.

On Friday, Viomedes Miaaya, who volunteered on Torress campaign some years ago, said he is troubled by the allegations.

"In Paterson, the taxes are raising like crazy, and people are tired of the situation happening in Paterson," Miaaya said.

Questions about the employees seen at the mayors home come amid a budget crisis in Paterson. At recent City Council meetings, angry residents have complained about rising taxes and failing city services. The City Council finally passed a budget this spring after an earlier budget rejection forced employees to stay home for a day without pay, and closed Patersons libraries, senior services and after-school recreation programs.
Police are looking for a man who allegedly tried to rape a woman inside an elevator in the Bronx Wednesday.

The 33-year-old woman was riding the elevator in her apartment building in the area of East 162nd Street and Sheraton Avenue in Concourse at about 10:15 p.m. when a man in the elevator tried to engage her in conversation, according to police.

When the woman got off the elevator, the suspect followed her and approached her from behind with his pants down and grabbed her buttocks, police said. He tried to pull the woman away from her door but ran away when another resident came to the door.

The suspect is described as about 5 feet 8 inches and 160 pounds, last seen wearing a striped hooded sweatshirt and gray sweatpants.
What to Know The mayor and deputy mayor of Hackensack, New Jersey leave the Republican party in protest of Donald Trump

They say they're fed up with the presumptive presidential nominee's rhetoric

Hackensack has a roughly 40 percent Hispanic population

The mayor and deputy mayor of a New Jersey city have ditched their Republican party affiliation, fed up with what they call racist comments by Donald Trump, the party's presumptive presidential nominee.

"It's crossing the line now. We're getting to the point where you can't be doing that," said Hackensack Mayor John Labrosse.

"This was not a decision we made lightly," said Deputy Mayor Kathleen Canestrino.

Labrosse and Canestrino ended their party affiliation Thursday and now consider themselves independents. They did not vote for Trump in the New Jersey primaries this past Tuesday.

Trump has been criticized for racially charged comments about Mexicans and Muslims, and drew backlash from many in the Republican party last week after implying an American-born judge presiding over a Trump University lawsuit may not be impartial because of his Mexican heritage.

With a roughly 40 percent Latino population in Hackensack, Labrosse and Canestrino said they owed it to their citizens to distance themselves from Trump.

"It was important for us to say to anyone who's listening that this is not anything we're fond or anything we'll tolerate in our city," said Canestrino.

Ben Rivero, a Republican and owner of Casual Habana Cafe on Hackensack's Main Street said he, too, is disillusioned by the election.

"I'm very happy to hear that the mayor stands behind the Latin community," he said, but added, "I'm not going to vote for Hillary Clinton, that's for sure."

Despite their break with the GOP, Labrosse and Canestrino also say Clinton doesn't have their vote just yet.

"I've voted for Democrats in the past and Republicans in the past, and I'm gonna vote for whoever I think is the best person at the time," said Labrosse.

The mayor and deputy mayor say the city council is a non-partisan voting body so their change won't have any effect on how it is governed.

They say Trump could win their votes for November if he changes his rhetoric.
What to Know A man armed with a handgun is robbing businesses in the Bronx.

Police say the man robbed a 7-Eleven and a KFC in May and tried to rob a Subway last Saturday.

A surveillance camera captured the suspect as he entered the Subway.

Police are searching for a man who has held up at least three Bronx businesses at gunpoint over the past month.

The robber first struck on the morning of May 7, when he targeted a 7-Eleven on University Avenue in Morris Heights. The man walked up to an employee, took out a handgun and demanded money. The employee handed him $250 and he took off.

Less than an hour later, the man robbed a KFC on Southern Boulevard in Crotona Park East. Once again, he went up to an employee, took out a handgun and demanded cash. The employee handed him $300.

It wasnt until about a month later that the robber struck again, according to police. This time it was a Subway eatery on East Avenue in Parkchester that was targeted. The robber walked into the Subway last Saturday and took out a gun. He demanded cash from an employee, but fled after the employee said he didnt have access to the safe.

Police say the suspect is in his mid-to-late 20s. He's seen in surveillance video wearing a gray hoodie and black pants, and carrying an umbrella.

The NYPD asks anyone with information to call Crime Stoppers at 800-577-TIPS.
Police are searching for the man and woman who forced their way into a Bronx apartment near the Grand Concourse and then pummeled and robbed a man inside.

The duo was captured on surveillance video standing outside the 59-year-old victim's apartment at Sheridan Avenue and East 163rd Street moments before the robbery late last month. The woman casually knocks on the door as the man stands and waits nearby.

When the victim opened the door, the two robbers forced their way inside. The male robber took out a gun and hit the man in his head over and over while demanding cash, police said. He then pushed the man into a bathroom.

All the while, the female robber grabbed a pair of sunglasses, a cell phone and an unknown amount of cash.

The victim suffered a laceration on the back of his head, a burn mark on the left side of his torso, and cuts to his fingers. He was taken to Bronx-Lebanon Hospital Center with non-life-threatening injuries.

Police said the male suspect had a thin mustache and the female suspect had braces on her teeth.

The NYPD asks anyone with information to call Crime Stoppers at 800-577-TIPS.
What to Know A flaming bottle was thrown into First Central Baptist Church on Staten Island in an apparent attempt to set the building on fire

The historic St. Paul's Episcopal Church a few blocks away was similarly targeted over the weekend

The NYPD believes the fires are connected, and the hate crimes task force is investigating

Police are urging Staten Island church leaders to safeguard their houses of worship as they investigate fire-bombing attacks at two churches, now classified as hate crimes.

St. Paul's Espicopal Church was targeted last weekend when someone threw a flaming bottle into the building, and then on Wednesday, the First Central Baptist Church just blocks away was hit.

Police had stepped up patrols at Staten Island's 200 churches after the incident at St. Paul's, and NYPD officers Jimmy Ramirez and Michael Koniarski were stationed outside First Central Baptist Church when they saw flames coming from the awning.

Worried clergy members from across Staten Island met with the NYPD Friday. Father Demetrius Carolina of First Central Baptist Church said they wanted to "bridge the gap and as people of faith, come together in a meaningful fashion."

"We are saddened by the attack, but we are praying for the perpetrator," said Carolina.

No one was hurt but people in the community are finding it hard to comprehend the hatred.

"It was painful, very painful. I just can't understand," said Fr. Tom Devery of Our Lady Star of Sea.

Police have released surveillance video of the suspect.
A man who used landscaping rocks to smash car windows and threaten the mother of his children was shot several times outside Dallas Love Field Airport Friday afternoon after lunging at a police officer, police say. Police added that he is being charged with two counts of assault.

NBC 5 News

The incident started as a domestic disturbance outside baggage claim between the woman and man, according to Randall Blakenbaker, assistant police chief of the Dallas Police Department's Special Investigation Unit.

Police identified the man as 29-year-old Shawn Nicholas Diamond, of Edgewood, Maryland.

WARNING: The surveillance video below is graphic and may be disturbing to some viewers. Viewer discretion is advised.

Diamond had left his job in Maryland on Monday and flown to Dallas to visit his ex-girlfriend. He was arrested Tuesday in the Dallas suburb of Carrollton and charged with criminal mischief after destroying city-owned trees valued at $3,700 by driving recklessly, Carrollton police spokeswoman Jolene DeVito said. Diamond was booked into Denton County Jail and released on bond Friday.

Diamond and his ex-girlfriend arrived to Love Field a short time later, surveillance video showed. While the woman is removing bags from the vehicle, Diamond is seen using a traffic cone to smash the back windshield of the car. He then grabs a large rock from nearby landscaping and smashes more of the car's windows.

A police officer shot and wounded a man Friday outside Dallas Love Field Airport after the man attacked a woman believed to be the mother of his children and then threatened the officer with large rocks, police said.

When an officer intervenes, Diamond lunges at him with a large rock in each hand, police said. That's when the officer fires at Diamond, striking him four times, according to Blakenbaker. The officer then told Diamond to stay down. But, according to Dallas Police Chief David Brown, Diamond got back up, with rocks still in each hand and lunged towards the officer again. The officer responded by firing additional shots at Diamond, Brown said.

"There doesn't appear to be any other weapon present than the rock," Blankenbaker said.

Diamond was conscious when transported to Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas, where he was in stable condition Friday evening, Brown said. Dallas Police said Diamond is being charged with Assault Family Violence and Aggrevated Assault of a Public Servant.

Blankenbaker said no children were present during the disturbance and the woman wasn't injured.

Video recorded from witness Bryan Armstrong showed the chaotic scene unfold as travelers screamed and scrambled for cover outside the upper-level baggage claim area.

As many as nine gunshots can be heard in Armstrong's video before a police officer is seen holding a gun on an unseen individual, telling that person to stay down and get back.

Dallas Police Chief David Brown updates the investigation into an officer-involved shooting at Love Field.

The officer who shot Diamond has been removed from patrol duty pending an internal review of the shooting, Brown said. However, "the video is pretty telling," the chief said.

Hundreds of Love Field passengers needed to be screened again Friday afternoon, along with people showing up for their flights, creating a massive line at the checkpoint.

Traveler and videographer Bryan Armstrong talks about recording and witnessing an officer-involved shooting outside Dallas Love Field Airport, June 10, 2016.

Departing flights were stopped for a time. At least eight inbound flights operated by Southwest Airlines and one by Virgin America were diverted to other airports from El Paso to St. Louis, according to the tracking service flightaware.com.

By late Friday afternoon, nearly 100 flights at Love Field had been delayed.

"There were some folks in the security line who were startled, so they went through the security line without being checked. So the airport has had to pull everybody back out of the secure area and recheck them for security purposes," Blankenbaker said.

Massive crowds, delays and flight cancellations following an officer involved shooting at Dallas Love Field left some passengers feeling frustrated. NBC 5 talked to one traveler who had a unique perspective. Her own emergency last year is what had her in Dallas Friday afternoon.

Southwest Airlines released the following statement Friday afternoon:

As the investigation into todays shooting outside Dallas Love Field continues, Southwest confirms all of our Employees and Customers are safe, and that were working with local and federal authorities to fully restore our operation at the airport. Vehicular traffic is being routed around the active investigation scene by local police. Customers traveling to and from Dallas Love Field today should consult Southwest.com for the latest information regarding specific flights, and flexibility to change travel plans that involve Dallas today. Were working with air traffic controllers nationwide to manage inbound air traffic. The airfield remains open and the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is working to secure all areas of the building and screen a backlog of people and baggage created by the incident. Flights already bound for Dallas will be able to land, taxi to a gate, and our Customers will be able to deplane into the terminal.

Flights at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport were not impacted, according to the Federal Aviation Administration.

Was just in Dallas love airport and a shooting occurred in the baggage claim. I hid and ran with others. All safe now  Scotty Rodgers (@ScottyRodg42) June 10, 2016

NBC 5's Scott Gordon and Frank Heinz contributed to this report.
Philadelphia wants to avoid a repeat of 2000 when it arrested more than 400 protesters at the Republican National Convention, only to see most cases end in acquittals.

Less than two months before the Democratic National Convention comes to town, a City Council committee has passed legislation letting police issue $100 civil fines rather than make criminal arrests for many nuisance crimes.

The offenses include disorderly conduct, blocking a street and failing to heed a request to disperse.

Police say it's mainly an effort to realign penalties for minor offenses in the wake of the city's decriminalization of possessing small amounts of marijuana.

But an adviser to the police commissioner told The Philadelphia Inquirer that one department concern was also how unruly protesters would be handled outside the DNC.
A bus full of passengers were stranded on Interstate 95 in Bucks County after their driver was arrested for allegedly driving under the influence, Pennsylvania State Police said.

The bus, packed with 55 passengers, was headed for New York City from Philadelphia's Chinatown late Saturday night when passengers forced the driver to pull over on the interstate for driving erratically, police said.

Pennsylvania State Police and Lower Makefield Police both responded and the driver was taken into custody, police said. DUI charges are pending against the 37-year-old driver, state police said.

Jeremy Walker, the bus company's owner, tells NBC10 the driver has been fired, but would not provide additional comment.

In a Yelp! post to a profile for bus operator Focus Travel, a woman called the trip "near death experience."

The woman, posting under the handle Daniella T., said the driver nearly crashed the bus three times before passengers forced the driver to stop. They then called police for help, according to the message.

"Everyone thought we would die because the bus nearly tipped over," she wrote.

The woman did not immediately respond to a message left by NBC10. Police have not confirmed the woman's account.

Police said they gave the passengers rides off the highway.

Focus Travel and related company Yep Tours have had troubles with drivers in the past.

Last August, a bus was involved in a hit-and-run near Philadelphia Police headquarters. The driver continued on a trip to Washington, D.C. and said he didn't know he hit anyone.

Earlier that summer, a driver was fired after passengers recorded him texting while driving.
An argument inside a Montgomery County gas station ended with one man dead in an adjacent McDonald's drive-thru and another behind bars on murder charges.

The deadly incident played out late Tuesday night along W Main Street near U.S. Route 202 in Norristown, Pennsylvania.

Marquis Johnson, 24, and Jonathan Walker, 22, got into an argument while inside a BP Gas Station. Moments later they both left the gas station and Walker opened fire 11 times, leaving Johnson dead of multiple gunshot wounds, said the Montgomery County District Attorney's Office.

Johnson's body wound up in the drive-thru lane of the fast-food restaurant.

On Friday, DA Kevin Steele announced first-degree murder, third-degree murder and weapons charges. Walker was held without bail ahead of a June 23 preliminary hearing.

The McDonald's opened for business after police cleared the scene Wednesday morning.

"The security and safety of our customers and employees is always our top priority," said McDonalds owner/operator Jonathan Chong in a statement. "Wed like to thank the local police department and our employees who responded swiftly and professionally. Given this is an ongoing police investigation, please contact the local Norristown police department for questions regarding the incident."
Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf joined a chorus of local lawmakers asking the military to pay for nearly 70,000 blood tests for people exposed to contaminated water on and around local military bases.

Wolf sent a letter to the U.S. Navy and U.S. Air Force asking them to pitch in on costs related to biomonitoring and blood testing for 69,987 people who drank water from both private public wells contaminated by chemicals used in firefighting foam. The foam was used extensively at the defunct Willow Grove Naval Air Station and Horsham Guard Station in Horsham as well as the Naval Air Warfare Center in Warminster.

Concern about water safety has existed for years in those communities, and nearby Warrington, but a new sense of urgency developed last month when the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued a more stringent guideline for what's considered an acceptable level of exposure to the chemicals.

Known mostly by the acronyms PFOA/PFOS, water is now acceptable to consume if perfluorooctanoic and perfluorooctanesulfonic acid levels are 70 parts per trillion (0.07). The previous levels were 0.2 and 0.4 parts per trillion, depending on the chemical.

"This level is determined by testing water; there is no known advisory level for blood. However, we believe blood testing is critical to addressing the concerns of private citizens who may have been exposed," Wolf wrote in his letter, which was signed by state senator Stewart Greenleaf, and state representatives Bernie O'Neill, Todd Stephens and Katherine Watson.

Pennsylvania's Department of Health estimates if half the population gets tested, it'll cost $7 million. Wolf says with the state already facing a deficit of upward of $2 billion, it can't commit to covering the costs. He's also asking the Navy and Air Force to pay for carbon filters on all remaining wells.

Approximately 140 private residential wells in Horsham and Warrington were taken out of service due to the new health advisory. Several public wells that supply a portion of the water to those communities were also affected.

The Navy has been reluctant to pay for blood testing.

"Well at this point in time, we're not prepared to test people's blood," Greg Preston, director of the Navy's Base Closure Program Management Office, told NBC10 in May during an open house session to address community concerns about the water. "There are studies that are out there that have addressed those issues, and frankly they have not found a whole lot of value in doing it at this point in time, because we, the experts, are not really sure what to do with those results at this time -- what they really mean or how they translate."

In Hoosick Falls, New York, more than 2,000 people have had their blood tested for PFOA levels. Water contamination there is connected to two manufacturing plants -- Saint-Gobain and Honeywell International -- where PFOA was used to make Teflon and other non-stick materials.

Folks in Hoosick Falls just this week began getting their blood test results. They were told the geometric mean for everyone tested was 23.5 parts per billion. That's nearly 12 times higher than the national average.

Attorneys with Weitz and Luxenberg, a law firm working with consumer advocate Erin Brockovich, is investigating water contamination in Hoosick Falls as well as Horsham, Warrington and Warminster. A team of attorneys from the firm will visit Montgomery County, possibly in the next two weeks, to talk with interested community members.

"Meeting people in person really means a lot," said attorney Robin Greenwald, explaining that while investigations often result in a lawsuit, there's a lot more they need to learn.

"You'd be surprised at the information we gather from these community events," Greenwald said.

A growing number of people who worked on the bases and lived nearby suspect their cancers and other illnesses are connected to the chemicals.

Human studies show exposure to increased levels of PFOA puts people at risk for high cholesterol levels, hormone issues, autoimmune diseases, kidney and testicular cancers as well as reproductive complications. No one really knows the impact of long-term exposure.
The former Stanford University swimmer convicted of sexually assaulting an unconscious woman on campus misled the court about his past, documents reveal.

Brock Turner wrote in a letter to the judge he was from a small town in Ohio and didn't have much experience partying. He told the judge a culture of drinking and drug use contributed his behavior the night of the assault and said he was taking cues from older members of the swim team.

"The swim team set no limits on partying or drinking, and I saw the guys take full advantage of these circumstances, while I was shown to do the same," Turner wrote in the letter. "I witnessed countless times the guys that I looked up to go to parties, meet girls and take the girl they just met back with them."

Other students were skeptical of Turner's claims.

"There are plenty of people on campus who drink who don't rape other students," said Stanford student Elisabeth Dee. "There are plenty of students on the Stanford campus who are sexually active that don't rape other students."

In court documents obtained by NBC Bay Area, investigators cite multiple text messages indicating Turner used drugs both at Stanford and in high school. The documents mention messages about taking acid, smoking weed and drinking.

"Oh dude I did acid with [redacted] last week," he texted one friend, according to the documents.

"Do you think I could buy some wax so we can do some dabs?" he allegedly texted another, referencing a highly concentrated marijuana oil.

His attorneys have not commented publicly on the allegations that Turner lied.

Turner had also been arrested on campus before, the documents indicate. He was allegedly caught drinking while underage and using a fake ID, the "Today" show reports.

Turner was sentenced last week to six months in county jail and three years' probation for sexually assaulting an intoxicated, unconscious woman after a fraternity party in January 2015. He faced up to 10 years in prison.

"I had hoped for more time. We fought for more time," Santa Clara County Deputy District Attorney Alaleh Kianerci told the "Today" show. "The victim deserved more time."

Many have decried the sentence as too lenient, and a petition to remove Judge Aaron Persky from the bench has garnered more than 800,000 signatures. Persky has also received threats against him and his family, NBC News reported, but retains support from both prosecutors and the defense.

Brock Turner's Letter to Judge Aaron Persky.

Stanford sexual assault victim's statement which she read out in court.

Brock Turner's father's letter to Judge Aaron Persky.

Brock Turner sentencing court documents.
A photo of a Maine teenager sitting by herself at her birthday party is going viral and prompting people to send her cards.

The photo of 18-year-old Hallee Sorenson was shared on Facebook by her cousin, Rebecca Guildford of Oxford, Massachusetts, who wrote that Hallee has autism.

"Hallee is funny, sweet, caring, smart, an athlete, a jigsaw puzzle champion, a wonderful student, and a best friend to all. Hallee is an amazing person  a person I am proud to be related to," she wrote. "She is also a person who just happens to have Autism. She has never let that small detail define who she is as a person  which is why I refuse to use it as something to describe her."

She described the heartbreaking scene at Sorenson's last birthday party  the teen had sent invitations to classmates and other friends, and was excited to go bowling with them.

"Hallee sat at her party anxiously waiting for her friends to arrive so they could have fun," Guildford wrote. "But Hallee's friends would never arrive. Not a single one."

It was Sorenson's 18th birthday. What should have been a milestone of adulthood was instead painful and lonely, Guildford wrote.

"My cousin is a beautiful young woman who will always have the mind of a child," she wrote. "She was heartbroken and beyond sad. She was hurt."

Guildford wants her cousin's next birthday, in July, to be special. She is asking people reading her Facebook post to send birthday cards.

As of Friday morning, the post had been shared more than 136,000 times and received dozens comments from people pledging to send cards.

When Guildford first posted the photo, she hoped she would convince 50 to 100 of her friends to send cards to Hallee. Now she has been deluged with emails, including ones from Ireland, Italy and France.

"This has blown up to something I couldn't have even thought of in my wildest dreams," she said. "It's overwhelming, but in a good way. I definitely never saw this coming."

If people take one message from the photo, she hopes it is to be kind to one another, she said. Hallee still remembers her disappointment last year, she said.

"I'm hoping that with all of this that we're able to replace those negative memories with some really good, strong, awesome memories of what a birthday really should be like," Guildford said.

Guildford noted that many people have been asking about sending gifts, and that while her family appreciates the sentiment, "gifts truly aren't necessary. A nice card would be just fine!!!"

People who wish to send cards may direct them here:

Hallee Sorenson

34 Wellesley Way

Bangor, ME 04401

"Hal loves getting mail  this would be the best birthday gift she could ask for," Guildford wrote.
The former San Diego daycare provider charged with shaking and killing an 11-month-old baby in his care was sentenced to 29 years and eight months behind bars Thursday.

James Nemeth argued against the charges in court this week, trying to convince San Diego County Superior Court Judge Joan Weber to change his plea from guilty to not-guilty. The judge denied the request after a day and a half of witness testimony that included audio from jail phone calls between Nemeth and his wife.

In addition to the time behind bars, Judge Weber ordered Nemeth to pay more than $5,000 in restitution to the family of baby Louis Lou Oliver.

In 2014, Nemeth was arrested and charged with murder and assault in the May 2012 death of Lou Oliver. At that time Nemeth entered a plea of not guilty.

Nemeth changed that plea to guilty in January, admitting to a total of seven charges, according to the plea deal. The plea included him admitting he abused two of his own sons.

This week Nemeth represented himself in the change of plea and sentencing hearings arguing he did not fully understand the charges he was admitting to and that he was not properly advised by his former attorney.

Watch below to see Nemeth plead his case before Judge Weber.

Nemeth represented himself in the change of plea and sentencing hearings before Judge Weber this week. He argued that he did not understand the charges he had admitted to and wasnt properly advised by his former attorney.

For hours Wednesday, the judge, prosecutor, and family members of Lou Oliver and Nemeth listened to testimony from witnesses.

Before the change of plea hearing began Nemeth said he was shooting blind and asked the judge to appoint him new counsel. Judge Weber denied the request saying the court is not obligated to keep appointing new counsel.

Nemeth called several witnesses to the stand including his brother, wife and sister. He asked them about what his former attorney told them the plea would include, specifically if the plea would allow him family visits, enrollment in possible programs to reduce his sentence and an ability to appeal if new evidence was found.

The prosecutor called Nemeths former attorney to the witness stand and played two jail phone calls between Nemeth and his wife.

Judge Weber said these two calls critical evidence in the request for a change of plea. The calls were the first two made immediately after Nemeth agreed to the plea deal, according to the prosecutor.

During the calls, each about 30 minutes in length, Nemeth and his wife discussed the following:

The terms of the plea deal and why Nemeth was admitting to the charges. He tells his wife there are a lot of people in jail that innocent and that he had no choice after the extra charges were added.

Nemeth talks about his former attorney and said letters he sent were ignored. (The former attorney told the court he does not send sensitive information to inmates through the mail.)

The different prison options and visitation options that may be available to Nemeth.

Nemeth said, I cant believe I got four years for a pink bellly. A reference to the charges against him for punching his son in the stomach, according to prosecutors.

How Nemeths family reacted to finding out he pleaded guilty, including the fact that his grandfather, who according to Nemeth can barely walk was there to show his support.

How much the two of them loved one another and were planning on getting married.

Nemeth instructed his wife to gather all of his evidence and said reviewing the case files after he serves his time behind bars would help him heal.

Watch below to hear a section of one of the calls.

After hearing the phone calls and listening to witnesses for a day and a half, Judge Weber immediately ruled on Nemeths request to change his plea. She denied the request and said the phone calls show Nemeth knowingly entered into the plea. The Judge also said his former attorney properly advised Nemeth and there is no evidence of him coercing Nemeth to take the plea.

Nemeths sentencing began with eight people, family and friends of Lou Oiliver, sharing their feelings of anger toward Nemeth and loss of an 11-month-old.

Watch below to hear some of the comments made by family and friends.

Baby Oliver was killed in 2014. Thursday, his family spoke in court when the man responsible for his death was sentenced.

Two months after Lou Oliver passed, the Department of Social Services, the agency responsible for licensing and regulating home daycares, suspended Nemeth's daycare license.

The agency determined there was "an immediate risk to the children in care at the Nemeth James family childcare."

Last year, NBC 7 Investigates reported that before Lou Olivers death, Nemeth had a lengthy history of serious violations, including allegations that he was physically rough with his own child.

NBC 7 Investigates also found it was very difficult for parents to review files on what happens to their children while in the care of individual day cares. After the stories aired,state lawmakers changed the way parents can access information about daycares in California, making the information available online, instead of only in person by appointment.

Click here to see the complete investigation.
San Diego County Sheriff's Detective Chris Johnson, who played a key role in the Chelsea King murder case, worked his last shift Thursday night.

He spoke exclusively with NBC 7 about the case and his career as a detective.

Six years ago, it was Johnson's unfortunate duty as a detective to inform the King family that Chelsea's body had been found near Lake Hodges in Rancho Bernardo.

He spent 10 days -- 20 hours a day with the family.

He was a protector, confidant, friend and a shoulder to cry on through the family's darkest hours.

For the first time, he shared his feelings about the case that broke the hearts of parents across the country, including him.

From the missing persons report, to the search and the discovery of Chelsea's body, to her funeral where he was Pallbearer, Johnson stood by the King family's side.

"They wanted us to bring Chelsea back to them," Johnson said.

Chelsea went missing in 2010 after she went for a run after school at Rancho Bernardo Community Park. Her disappearance led to a massive search effort in the San Diego community.

She was murdered by convicted sex offender John Gardner.

Her body was found beaten to death and buried in a shallow grave.

[[85768782,C]]

We spoke to Chelsea's mom Kelly and dad Brent King over the phone from their home in Chicago.

Kelly says during that time, Detective Johnson was the only one that could make her feel safe.

"He held my hand when we had to go through crowds. I knew that no one, no one in my family could come to further harm, " she said.

Brent says during the search, there was this moment where he asked Detective Johnson to tell him first, if his daughter was found dead.

"He said, 'Do you want to hit somebody? Do you want to hurt somebody? Do whatever you want to do. Do it to me. I'll be here for you, whatever you need,'" Brent told NBC 7.

"I said the sheriff's on his way over, then I hugged him and cried," Detective Johnson said.

Images: The Chelsea King Memorial

It seems appropriate that Detective Johnson's last official duty was providing security for graduation night at Chelsea's alma matar, Poway High School.

The King case was only 10 days of his 29-year career in law enforcement but it was the hardest and at the same time, the most rewarding assignment.

"Undoubtedly, absolutely positively, yes. And I would do it again, " Johnson said.

He told NBC 7, he became a detective to help steer young offenders back to a positive path.

In his retirement, he intends to continue to work with at-risk kids through the county's Start Smart program for teenage drivers.
In California, an appellate court ruling upheld the status quo - applicants who want a license to carry a concealed weapon must show good cause.

An 11-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said law enforcement officials can require applicants for a concealed weapons permit to show they are in immediate danger or have another good reason for a permit beyond self-defense.

Hailed as a victory by gun control advocates, the ruling said people do not have a right to carry concealed weapons in public under the Second Amendment.

In San Diego County, the sheriff required applicants to show supporting documents such as restraining orders against possible attackers to show good cause for a permit. The requirement prompted a lawsuit by residents who were denied a permit.

"Good cause requires more than just saying I want a concealed weapon for self-defense, said Robert Faigin, legal advisor for San Diego County Sheriff Bill Gore.

Applicants must establish they have been threatened through a restraining order, for example.

There has to be some type of circumstances that are different from the mainstream that establish the necessity to carry a concealed weapon, Faigin said.

Licenses can also be given to some businesses where people carry a large amount of money.

Paul Neuharth, the attorney for the San Diego man who filed the case, said there is no uniformed definition of good cause statewide.

He also said if the courts can not infringe upon guaranteed rights like free speech and freedom of religion, why is the Second Amendment different.

"It should be given the strength of all the other amendments," Neuharth said.

Gun rights advocates were disappointed by the ruling.

Ari Belkin from the Gun Range San Diego said this it creates an open invitation to criminals who aren't going to abide by the law anyway.

There's only one way to stop a bad guy with a gun and that's a good guy with a gun, Belkin said.

California generally prohibits people from carrying handguns in public without such a permit. State law requires applicants to show good moral character, have good cause and take a training course.

Plaintiffs are hoping to take the case to the United States Supreme Court.
A San Diego woman was in custody Thursday, accused of setting a man on fire in Bay Terraces, San Diego Police said.

The victim, identified by police as a 56-year-old man, knew the suspect according to investigators but they have not determined a motive for the attack.

Investigators say the man had serious burns on the right side of his body on his arms and torso.

The woman, 32, told police she was in the vehicle with the man when he sexually assaulted her. She claims she set the fire in self-defense, police said.

It appears there is a relationship between the male and the female, said SDPD Lt. Andra Brown. Our sex crimes unit in involved as well as the MAST unit because it was an intentional vehicle fire.

The vehicle was parked in an apartment complex parking lot on South Meadowbrook when the incident happened at 7:30 a.m.

Police have not released information on how exactly the fire started, other than it was intentional. They say the man and woman immediately got out of the car when the fire started.

They say it is still too early to say what the charges will be due to the complexity of the case.

The incident occurred in the Bay Terraces community just north of the junction between State Routes 54 and 125.
A San Diego-based geology expert said that while Fridays 5.2-magnitude earthquake near Borrego Springs may be part of an interesting series of seismic movements, the event was a common Southern California quake.

This is your classic fault movement, followed by a number of smaller ones that will likely die off, Patrick Abbott, Ph.D, and Professor Emeritus of Geology at San Diego State University (SDSU), told NBC 7.

Abbott said theres a slight chance the earthquake may have been a foreshock but he estimates the likelihood of this  and of a larger quake striking soon in the region  is 2 to 4 percent.

The quake, which was felt throughout Southern California, including in San Diego County, struck at 1:05 a.m. The United States Geological Survey (USGS) said its epicenter was 13.7 miles northwest of Borrego Springs, a community located about 90 miles northeast of downtown San Diego.

Abbott told NBC 7 the quake happened along the San Jacinto Fault Zone, the most active zone in Southern California in the 21st Century.

[Its the] least surprising source of earthquakes to Southern California, he added.

He said the quake was the result of a six-mile-deep, two-mile-long section of earth rupturing and moving, shoving energy northward. Abbott described the tear as moving much "like a zipper."

As of 8:10 a.m., at least eight smaller aftershocks had hit the region, including 3.5-magnitude quake at 4:14 a.m., according to the USGS.

Abbott said the series of aftershocks are standard for a quake of this size and the strongest aftershocks linger for about 72 hours.

You never have just one earthquake, he explained. An earthquake is actually a series of movements along a fault that can take place for weeks and months.

Abbott said geology experts have zero ability to tell the day or even year when The Big One might strike. In this case, he said its possible a quake in the 6 or 7-magnitude range could follow, but its unlikely.

He said he sees no pattern whatsoever with this quake.

Abbott said, in geological terms, a 5.2-magnitude earthquake like Fridays event could be considered to be in the fun zone.

Everybody gets to feel it and learn from the experience, but we don't really have damages or injuries or anything of that sort, he explained.

Abbott said the earthquake struck on the west side of the Santa Rosa Mountains, away from homes. He said the energy from the waves had to travel to reach more populated areas, which impacted the way it was felt by those across different parts of Southern California.

He said that when energy is released from an earthquake, seismic waves come out at different frequencies. Being close to the epicenter, residents in Borrego Springs likely felt those waves strongly.

Not everyone feels the same effects, Abbott told NBC 7. A lot of other factors either magnify or reduce the energy people feel [from an earthquake].

Many NBC 7 viewers reported feeling the earthquake across their communities including Ramona, La Mesa, Escondido, Poway, Tierrasanta, Santee, Mission Valley, Mira Mesa, Valley Center, Ocean Beach, Chula Vista, El Cajon, Carlsbad and Vista.

The County of San Diego Office of Emergency Services (OES) said Fridays earthquake is a reminder for residents to prepare themselves for possible natural disasters by making a plan, building an emergency kit and staying informed.

OES director Holly Crawford said there are several easy and inexpensive things people can do in preparation for emergencies such as earthquakes. This includes assembling an emergency kit that includes water, food, a flashlight, important documents, a first aid kit, a radio and batteries.

Residents should also map out an emergency plan that includes a meet-up point for your family in case youre separated when a quake hits.

The OES preparedness website, Ready San Diego, offers additional tips. The information is also available in Spanish here. Residents can also sign up for AlertSanDiego, the regions mass notification system to get updates from authorities during emergencies.

In case of a quake, Abbott said its important to remember this: Earthquakes dont kill  buildings do.

He said you should never run during an earthquake, as shifting objects could hurt you.

[If you run], youre a moving target. You dont want to be running, you want to be under something so when things fall, they cant hurt you, he explained. Where are you running to?

Abbott said overnight hours  such as this 1:05 a.m. incident  is a good time for a quake to strike, as most people are asleep under the covers, without shelves or bigger pieces of furniture hanging over them.

The safest place in the world for you to experience an earthquake is lying in bed, said Abbott. The only problem you could have is if you put something close enough to you, it could fall on you.
What to Know Employee was subjected to random check at 7:15 a.m. Thursday.

He had a .22-caliber revolver and at least five bullets.

He is charged with carrying a pistol without a license.

A U.S. Department of Homeland Security employee took a handgun into headquarters in northwest Washington Thursday morning, according to DHS.

Jonathan Wienke, 46, who works in Homeland Security's Office of Intelligence, was subjected to a random check when he arrived at work about 7:15 a.m. Thursday, according to the police report. He had a .22-caliber revolver and at least five bullets.

He was detained, then turned over to the Metropolitan Police Department and arrested. He is charged with carrying a pistol without a license.

Homeland Security is considering its own disciplinary action, a spokeswoman said.

Wienkes lawyer declined to comment.
What to Know Police arrested a suspect in 22-year-old Shakkan Elliot-Tibbs' murder.

Rashad Lonzell Adkins, 21, of Alexandria, is being held without bond in an Alexandria detention center.

The arrest marks the last remaining homicide of 2015 for the Alexandria Police Department.

The Alexandria Police Department closed its last open homicide case from 2015, said Chief Earl Cook.

Police arrested Rashad Lonzell Adkins, 21, of Alexandria, Virginia, in the slaying of 22-year-old Shakkan Elliot-Tibbs, of Woodbridge, who died in a shooting on N. Fayette Street in July.

Elliot-Tibbs was on his way to meet his mom at the Springfield Metro station when he was shot. He later died in the hospital.

Our detectives continue to show their commitment to the safety of Alexandria by their persistence in removing violent suspects from our community, Cook said.

Adkins faces charges of murder, possession of a firearm by a convicted felon and use of a firearm in the commission of a felony. He is being held without bond at a detention center in Alexandria.

Those with information about the Elliot-Tibbs case should call 703-746-6689.
What to Know In an apparent road rage incident, a man assaulted a woman and bit her finger, drawing blood, before driving away, police said.

Dubois was arrested on charges of malicious wounding, assault and battery and driving under the influence. He is being held without bond.

A man assaulted a woman and bit her finger in an apparent road rage incident Wednesday evening, police said.

Markeater Holyroyd was driving down S. 15th Street with her son when Timothy Dubois 55, of Arlington, Virginia, drove up behind her and started shouting, Youre in the wrong lane, police said. He threw something at her car, but Holyroyd kept driving.

"The guy just was, you know, putting his middle finger up and he was trying to drive me off, you know, like, cut me off," Holyroyd told News4.

When she stopped down the road, police said Dubois came up to the driver's side window and assaulted her. Holyroyd opened the door in an attempt to push him away and ended up exiting her car. Dubois continued attacking her and bit her finger, drawing blood, before driving away.

"He put my finger in his mouth and he was just biting me," Holyroyd said.

Officers responding to reports of a fight found Dubois with a picture a witness took of his license plate.

Police arrested Dubois at his house on charges of malicious wounding, assault and battery, and driving under the influence. He is being held without bond.

Medics treated the Holyroyd at the scene, police said.
Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan still won't say if he'll vote for Donald Trump.

Hogan was asked three times at a news conference Thursday about the presumptive GOP nominee. He says: "I'm not interested in talking about Donald Trump any further.''

He also declined to say whether he thought the billionaire was fit to be president.

Hogan is a Republican governor in a state where Democrats outnumber Republicans 2-1.

In a March interview with The Associated Press, Hogan said he didn't think Trump should be the nominee and had "no idea who I'm going to vote for.'' He also said he has no plans to attend the Republican National Convention next month.

Hogan says he believes he's talked about the issue "ad nauseam,'' and his thoughts haven't changed.
Officials told NBC News Thursday that the Obama administration is considering a plan to allow the U.S. military to strike more targets with fewer restrictions in Afghanistan.

Strikes may now only be carried out in self-defense to protect Afghan forces believed to be in danger, or to target al-Qaida and ISIS. But active discussions are underway to give forces the authority to strike Taliban fighters simply for being part of the Taliban, according to a senior U.S. official.

The military has been advocating to expand the mandate, saying the Taliban has made advances in the last year. Striking Taliban assets can help Afghan forces take back territory, according to the official.

The discussion is related to the pending decision on how many troops the Obama administration will keep in the country after 2016. There are 9,800 U.S. troops there, but that should drop to 5,500 by the end of the year.
Police in Tilton, New Hampshire, are searching for an "armed and dangerous" gang member in connection with a robbery that occurred on Thursday night.

Tilton Police said they received a 911 call reporting an armed robbery at the Tilton Shop Express at 622 Laconia Rd., at 7:25 p.m. Thursday. A male suspect dressed in black, wearing a black ball cap, allegedly pointed a black handgun at the clerk and demanded all of the cash in the register.

When police arrived, the suspect was already gone, but they were able to determine his identity using store security cameras.

Arrest warrants were issued Friday morning for Ryan Cheney, 40, of Laconia, charging him with armed robbery. He was already wanted before the robbery on unrelated arrest warrants.

Police said Cheney is a member of the Latin Kings Gang and should be considered armed and dangerous.

The vehicle used in the robbery - a red 2001 Ford Expedition - has been recovered by police and is being processed.

Anyone with information about Cheney's whereabouts is asked to call Tilton Police at 603-286-4442.
Police in Hudson, New Hampshire, were on scene Friday morning after a car crashed into a Dunkin' Donuts.

According to police, the car crashed into the store located at 223 Lowell Road in Hudson, New Hampshire, around 7:30 a.m.

The driver, Jennifer McComas, age 43, of Hudson, New Hampshire, crashed into the building in her 2005 Toyota Sienna minivan.

She told officers that while she was making a backing maneuver she thought the vehicle was in reverse but it was in drive.

Neither the driver nor the occupants or people in the store were injured.

Katherine Underwood/necn

After further investigation the Hudson Fire Department determined the building was unsafe to open for business.

In addition, the entire pastry display was thrown away because it was showered with debris.

There are no charges pending at this time.
Charges have been dropped against a Bridgeport, Connecticut, man in connection to a grave robbery at a cemetery in Worcester, Massachusetts.

Felix Delgado, who says he is a Santeria priest, was arrested on Feb. 2 as authorities investigated human remains that had been stolen from mausoleums at Hope Cemetery.

Delgado was the second Santeria priest from Connecticut to be arrested in the case - Amador Medina of Hartford has pleaded not guilty after police say he broke into a mausoleum to steal bones.

The bones investigators were examining in the case against Delgado are not consistent with the ones taken from Hope Cemetery, according to the Worcester County District Attorney's Office. Because the source of those bones is still not known, the office says the information learned was passed back to Connecticut authorities.

Delgado has outstanding warrants in Springfield, Massachusetts, and was released into the custody of police in that city, the DA's office said.

Medina remains held on $100,000 bail. He is due back at Worcester Superior Court on June 28.
A man suspected of at least one assault in a Boston park has been held on $25,000 bail.

Massachusetts State Police say 51-year-old Michael Bruzzese faces several charges, including assault and battery, robbery and larceny. He appeared in court Friday morning.

Bruzzese is currently charged with the June 1 assault of a man inside the Belle Isle Marsh Reservation in East Boston. State police say the charges are not connected to the May 29 injuries that led to 83-year-old East Boston resident Daniel Pepe's death.

Pepe's death is still under investigation.

Bruzzese is described as temporarily living in Cambridge, with a former address in Hingham.
A man was killed and a woman was badly injured in a highway crash Thursday afternoon in Blandford, Massachusetts, police confirm.

According to state police, a 36-year-old Agawam woman was driving east on I-90 with a 34-year-old man from Ludlow in the car when she hit a message board in the median around 1:40 p.m.

Neither person was wearing a seat belt, and both were ejected. The passenger was pronounced dead at the scene.

The driver sustained life-threatening injuries and was taken to Baystate Medical Center.

The victims' identities have not been released.
Police say a four-hour standoff at a Burlington, Vermont, apartment house where a woman had holed up after threatening neighbors with a bat has ended safely.

Authorities arrived at the building just after 6 p.m. Thursday. Police say a woman was refusing to come out of her apartment after she reportedly said she'd go after others in the building with the bat.

The incident ended after 10:30 p.m. with police officers, negotiators and mental-health professionals at the scene.

Police say officers were able to gain entry into the apartment and safely take her into custody. She wasn't injured.

Chief Brandon Del Pozo says she will be getting some medical treatment and an evaluation.

Some of the units were evacuated.
An animal control officer's report obtained by the Portland Press Herald said the pit bull that killed a 7-year-old Maine boy had a previous history of violent attacks.

The dog bite report says the dog had attacked its previous owner's other dog "several times" in the past. It also details how Hunter Bragg died, saying he was killed when the dog bit him in the throat.

Bragg was playing in the yard at 207 Moody's Mill Road in Corinna, Maine, at 5:15 p.m. on June 4 with two other children when the dog attacked him. The boy was already dead when first responders arrived at the scene. No one else was injured.

Hunter's father, 35-year-old Jason Bragg of Bangor, was in the residence at the time. The dog's owner, Gary Merchant, 45, of Corinna, was also inside.

The boy's death remains under investigation. The pit bull has since been euthanized at its owner's request.
A Boston teenager who survived a shooting Wednesday in the city's Dorchester neighborhood is speaking exclusively to necn about his cousin, who was killed in the incident.

Eric McKoy was with Raekwon Brown when someone opened fire near Jeremiah E. Burke High School. The shooting left Brown dead.

McKoy, a 17-year-old from Dorchester, was just released from Boston Medical Center. He says he and two cousins, including Brown, were outside after a fire alarm went off ins the school. When they heard gunfire, he started running down a dead end street, not knowing his cousin was lying on the ground.

"I got shot," McKoy said. "My cousin got shot and my other cousin is dead."

McKoy does not remember much about what happened in the moments after the shots were fired. He said he did not even realize he was shot until he was a few blocks away asking for help.

"We ran behind somebody's house on a dead end street," he said. "There were fences back there, but I couldn't hop it because my leg, my leg was

shot."

When McKoy got to the hospital, he learned Brown did not make it. But before he died, McKoy said, Brown helped save the life of an elderly woman who was grazed by a bullet.

"She got caught in the cross-fire," McKoy said. "Raekwon pushed her out of the way."

McKoy still has two bullets in the lower half of his body and fragments in his stomach. He said he does not plan on returning to Burke High School.

"I'm not concerned about who did it. I'm not concerned about why they did it," McKoy said. "But I did what I was supposed to do. I was there for my family."

McKoy said he wants justice, but in the meantime, he is focused on a music project that he plans on dedicating to his cousin.

The loss, he says, is just starting to sink in.

"I was with him the day before that. The day before that. The day before that," McKoy said of his cousin. "And I won't be able to be with him anymore."
The search for a suspect who fatally shot a teenager and wounded three others near a school in Boston's Dorchester neighborhood continues, and the mayor addressed the violence at the school's graduation.

The community and those who knew 17-year-old Raekwon Brown are mourning the loss of this young man.

Dozens of people showed that grief at a vigil Thursday night at the spot where Raekwon was killed, in front of a store on Washington Street, just steps away from the Jeremiah Burke High School where Brown was a junior.

Despite the tragedy, Friday was a day of celebration for the graduates.

In his commencement speech, Boston Mayor Marty Walsh said he wanted to keep the focus on the 121 graduates, but he could not ignore the devastating attack.

"To some of you, he was a close friend. To all of you he was a warm presence," Walsh said of Brown. "Some of you grew up with him. Some of you saw him in the hallways and the neighborhood. Some of you shared jokes and smiled with him or some of you even danced with him. You are grieving for him and his family right now. You're sad, you're angry, you're upset. You have every right to be, because I am as well."

Brown's family says he leaves behind eight brothers and sisters, who say he was the baby of the family and was like a teddy bear.

Investigators are considering several motives, including the possibility the shooting was gang-related, but say few witnesses are coming forward.

Staff at the school says Brown wasn't known for getting in trouble and that he was loved and will be missed.
In his book The Gorilla Game, management consultant Geoffrey Moore identifies a tendency for some technology sectors to develop winner-take-all outcomes. The Internet of Things (IoT) market looks like a textbook example, as many industrial customers (original equipment manufacturers) are looking to consolidate around a single platform, a slice of enabling technology. It is surprising, therefore, that no IoT gorilla has yet emerged from the mist.

+ More on Network World: Most powerful Internet of Things companies +

IoT is an enabling technology that many OEMs will rely on, but they will likely not want to develop themselves. Its complex: The components of an IoT platform span several disciplines requiring close integration. And not only are there economies of scale, but theres a network effect: Customers will be drawn to the most popular platforms, making them even more successful. All of these factors favor the emergence of a gorilla IoT platform.

Components of an IoT platform

An IoT platform consists of sensor-control modules in things connected via the internet to a cloud service that collects their sensor data and transmits control signals. The cloud service then provides interfaces to mobile apps for consumer products, or it provides analytics engines and management dashboards for enterprises.

For example, consumers wishing to unlock their front door will use a mobile app connecting to the IoT cloud service, which in turn queries the sensor-control module in the door lock. There is no direct connection to the lock; all messages transit the IoT cloud service. It is inevitable that many enterprise IoT systems will follow the same architecture: We will become accustomed to over-the-top cloud services in what have, up until now, been inside-the-firewall enterprise networks.

Thus an IoT platform includes a number of components.

First, the sensor-control module, using one or more of a menu of wireless standards (Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Z-wave, ZigBee, cellular data). It should be easily incorporated into appliances and devices: A complete solution will include both off-the-shelf modules and hardware-software reference designs, as a refrigerator design engineer doesnt want to learn IoT but would rather drop in a module and link the control and sense lines.

Second, the cloud platform must be scalable and distributed to support millions of sensor modules. Development and maintenance of this software is a considerable effort. Security mustof coursebe designed in, and customers traffic must be segregated. APIs from the cloud allow analytics engines to pull and crunch data, and a simple analytics dashboard should be built in.

Third, the complete platform offering includes templated management functions for standard IoT modules and development kits for mobile apps, as IoT customers may not have expertise in this area.

Why no IoT platform standards?

One could ask, very sensibly, why the industry cannot establish standards that allow IoT platforms to be dismembered into their components with recognized interfaces between them. If this were the case, sensor-control modules could be built separately from cloud services, and analytics engines or mobile apps could be easily connected to multiple services.

There are two answers:

First, so many layers of protocols are required that even standards-of-standards bodies cannot help the industry agree on a limited combination. Today, systems integrators omnibus IoT architecture charts attempt to list all combinations, and they show so many protocols that no one can understand them.

Second, many of the large players see the potential to become a gorilla in this market and have developed proprietary twists and subjugated standards forums to protect their ecosystems.

The complexity of the system, and the tight integration between components, coupled with the lack of generally adopted standards are driving IoT vendors towards comprehensive, wide-ranging, semi-proprietary platforms. These platforms will not easily interoperate: A sensor module or mobile app built for one platform will not work on another. But they offer the convenience of a ready-made system with properly defined interfaces. OEMs and sensor application specialists with limited resources will be drawn to these established platforms rather than building a complete system from scratch.

No real path to IoT domination

The platform specialists are making progress. But the path to domination of IoT by a small number of winning platforms is not inevitable. While the architecture described abovemodule to cloud service to analytics-control-management APIs and appsis universal, there are fault lines through wireless technologies, data patterns and equipment segments.

For instance, some of the most successful IoT platforms to date connect cars over cellular data networks, while others have focused on home security over Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. IoT covers such broad markets that each segment may develop specialist leaders.

Time will tell whether IoT platform providers grow into a large, fragmented group of chimps or a smaller group with a leader for each market segmentor whether a single gorilla platform emerges. When many powerful players see the same opportunity, several years before the market takes off, they can compete with one another to a stalemate. It is most likely that, with standards-of-standards work in gridlock, the IoT market will spawn a broad range of semi-proprietary platforms with a leader for each wireless technology and end-product segment, but no dominant gorilla.
NASAs highly successful Kepler space telescope has had more than its share of near fatal experiences.

The latest happened in April when the spacecraft went into Emergency Mode which among other things allows for priority access to ground-based communications via NASAs Deep Space Network. NASA noted at the time that the spacecraft is nearly 75 million miles from Earth, making the communication slow. Even at the speed of light, it takes 13 minutes for a signal to travel to the spacecraft and back.

The spacecraft has since returned to normal function.

+More on Network World: +

While NASA hasnt fully examined all the issues from that emergency it did say this week that all the signs are pointing towards a single bit that changed state in the memory of an electronic chip that controls the internal command and data bus onboard the spacecraft.

From NASA: The memory was designed to be highly resistant to upset but if a high-energy cosmic ray hit in just the wrong place or at the wrong time in a write cycle an upset can occur. In this case, the upset caused a disruption in the internal data stream, passing invalid data sets to the flight computer, setting off several fault responses including the shutdown of critical heaters on the spacecraft. After a couple of hours, propellant froze in the propulsion system effectively disabling pointing control. Without pointing control, the spacecraft slowly drifted until the sun got too close to a forbidden zone around the optical axis of the telescope, causing the Emergency Mode to kick in and protect the telescope. While we have an excellent fault protection system onboard, no amount of pre-planning is going to work if we get multiple, random faults, which is why we have the Emergency Mode in the first place.

You may recall that in May of 2013, Kepler was out of commission and thought to be kaput because of an equipment failure. But the space agency came up with a way to make use of the Sun and Kepler's orbit around it to stabilize the craft and let it start taking images of space again. The Kepler verified planet count currently stands at 2,327.

While Kepler has survived and thrived it will come to an end. NASA announced said this week that Kepler is to continue science operations through the end of the FY19, by which time the on-board fuel is expected to be depleted.

How many more planets will it spot by then?

Check out these other hot stories:

National Intelligence office wants to perfect the art of security deception

US intelligence unit to advance management of virtual desktop security, systems

Cisco: IP traffic will surpass the zettabyte level in 2016

OpenSwitch finds critical home at Linux Foundation

FBI: Extortion e-mail, tech support scam-bags turning up the heat

DARPA wants to find the vital limitations of machine learning
Who is The Daily News Athlete of the Week? Here are the 7 nominees.

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Today

Some clouds in the morning will give way to mainly sunny skies for the afternoon. High 56F. Winds NW at 10 to 20 mph..

Tonight

A few clouds overnight. Low 34F. Winds light and variable.
Early findings by researchers at the University of Cincinnati (UC) College of Medicine suggest that the use of a second generation cancer drug, carfilzomib, may provide an improved approach for the reduction of antibodies in potential kidney transplant candidates. The research team includes members from UC Transplant Clinical Research, UC's Division of Hematology Oncology and the Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center's Biomedical Informatics division.

This pre-transplant drug therapy approach is aimed at reducing antibodies in kidney transplant candidates with greater success than with traditional methods and with reduced side effects.

Antibodies are Y-shaped proteins that in most instances are good because they help fight infection, but people can also make antibodies that work against other humans, which is often a major barrier to transplantation.

"Carfilzomib has been well tolerated by the first group of six study patients who experienced antibody reductions between 31 to 100 percent," says the study's lead author Simon Tremblay, PharmD, research associate in the UC College of Medicine's transplant research programs.

The study's preliminary findings will be presented at the annual American Transplant Congress on June 13, in Boston, Mass., where Tremblay will be awarded the American Transplant Society's Young Investigator award.

Since 2008, the UC research team has been developing therapies that target plasma cellsthe cells that make antibodies. The first generation of drug therapy studied was the cancer drug bortezomib, a proteasome inhibitor that, like carfilzomib, is already approved by the Food and Drug Administration for treatment of multiple myeloma. In that 50 person study, which was published in 2015, a significant decrease in antibodies was observed. Furthermore, transplanted patients had low rejection rates and the chances of developing a new antibody against their kidney was also low. In addition, in some patients, antibodies remained suppressed for several monthssomething that has not previously been described with other approaches.

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In the same scientific session, James Driscoll, MD, PhD, assistant professor in the UC College of Medicine's Division of Hematology Oncology, will present the results of translational research studies in the carfilzomib-treated patients. Driscoll will present new genomic data on plasma cells isolated from patients prior to and after receiving carfilzomib therapy.

"Our gene expression profiling studies in normal human plasma cells are giving us a detailed, comprehensive view of how plasma cells survive and avoid the death inducing effects of carfilzomib," says Driscoll. These studies, he says, were performed in collaboration with Bruce Aronow, PhD, at Cincinnati Children's.

Carfilzomib is one of four new regimensdescribed as "second-generation plasma cell targeted therapies that are being evaluated by the UC transplant Clinical Research Team, " says the principal investigator on both studies, E. Steve Woodle, MD, UC Health transplant surgeon and director of the division of transplantation at the UC College of Medicine.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration, in partnership with international regulatory and law enforcement agencies, announced that it took action this week against 4,402 websites that illegally sell potentially dangerous, unapproved prescription drugs to U.S. consumers. This effort was part of Operation Pangea IX, the Ninth Annual International Internet Week of Action (IIWA), a global cooperative effort, led by INTERPOL, to combat the unlawful sale and distribution of illegal and potentially counterfeit medical products on the internet.

"Preventing illegal internet sales of dangerous unapproved drugs is critical to protecting consumers' health," said George Karavetsos, director of the FDA's Office of Criminal Investigations. "Operation Pangea IX demonstrates the FDA's continuing commitment to stand united with our international partners to protect consumers in the United States and throughout the world from criminals who put profit above the health and safety of consumers."

The goal of Operation Pangea IX was to identify the makers and distributors of illegal prescription drug products and to remove these products from the supply chain.

The FDA's Office of Criminal Investigations, Office of Regulatory Affairs, and Center for Drug Evaluation and Research participated in the enforcement action, which ran from May 31 to June 7, 2016. The FDA conducted extensive inspections at International Mail Facilities (IMFs) in coordination with U.S. Customs and Border Protection, and sent formal complaints to domain registrars requesting the suspension of the 4,402 websites. Included are 110 websites that sell the chemical 2,4-Dinitrophenol (DNP) as a weight-loss product. DNP is most often used as a dye, wood preserver, and herbicide and has never been approved by the FDA for use as a drug.

A recent FDA task force investigation into the distribution of DNP resulted in a May 9, 2016 guilty plea from Adam Alden of Bakersfield, California, for introducing an unapproved drug into interstate commerce. A Rhode Island customer who purchased DNP via the internet from Alden, among other sources, died in October 2013 as a result of DNP ingestion.

During the IIWA, the FDA, in addition to requesting the suspension of 4,402 websites, issued warning letters to the operators of 53 websites illegally offering unapproved and misbranded prescription drug products for sale to U.S. consumers. FDA inspectors, in collaboration with other federal agencies, screened and seized illegal drug products received through IMFs in San Francisco, Chicago, and New York. These screenings resulted in the detention of 797 parcels which, if found in violation of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, will be refused entry into the country and destroyed.

Preliminary findings from drug products screened at the IMFs show that U.S. consumers had purchased certain unapproved drug products from abroad to treat depression, narcolepsy, high cholesterol, glaucoma, and asthma, among other diseases. Consumers should be cautious when buying prescription drugs online. For tips on how to identify an illegal pharmacy website and advice on how to find a safe online pharmacy go to BeSafeRx: Know Your Online Pharmacy .
By Lucy Piper

Intensifying current transplant conditioning to remove rather than suppress immune cells ahead of autologous haematopoietic stem cell transplantation (aHSCT) may result in long-term remission of multiple sclerosis (MS), phase II trial findings show.

Among 24 patients with aggressive treatment-refractory MS, 69.6% were alive and free of MS activity 3 years after undergoing immunoablation with busulfan, cyclophosphamide and rabbit anti-thymocyte globulin followed by transplantation of CD34-selected aHSCs.

Being free of MS activity included having no relapses, no new lesions on magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans and a sustained stabilisation of Expanded Disability Status Scale (EDSS) score. All this in the absence of disease-modifying drugs, note the researchers.

Led by Harold Atkins (The Ottawa Hospital, Ontario, Canada), they add in The Lancet that over the median follow-up of 6.7 years, in nine patients "whole brain atrophy slowed to a rate associated with normal aging".

The researchers note, however, that the 70% success rate despite the lack of further inflammatory activity and lesions was primarily due to continuing progression of disability in seven patients.

These patients "lacked detectable clinical and MRI evidence of inflammatory activity, suggesting dissociation of the process responsible for advancing disability from ongoing focal inflammatory lesions," they write.

"Optimally stopping further progression requires targeting patients when they still have active [central nervous system] inflammation."

In a related comment, Jan Dor (Charite-Universitatsmedizin Berlin, Germany) describes the findings as "impressive" and says that they "seem to outbalance any other available treatment for multiple sclerosis".

Before transplantation, the patients had experienced a total of 167 relapses over 140 patient-years and all had progressive loss of neurological function.

But afterwards, none of the 23 surviving patients experienced a relapse over 179 patient-years of follow-up and 70% had no further EDSS progression, while EDSS improvement was seen in 40% after 7.5 years. After 3.0 years, 37% of patients were able to return to work or school having previously received disability benefits. The one patient who died did so from transplantation-related hepatic necrosis and sepsis and 33% of patients had a moderate toxic effect as a result of treatment.

Atkins stresses the need for caution before widespread adoption of this type of treatment, given that their study sample was small and there was no control group.

"Achieving the best outcomes for autologous haematopoietic stem-cell transplantation requires experience for patient selection and specialised care to minimise procedural risks," he says.

Dor agrees that this study is unlikely to change the approach to MS treatment in the short term; "mainly because the mortality rate will still be considered unacceptably high", he says.

"Over the longer term, however, and in view of the increasing popularity of using early aggressive treatment, there may be support for considering aHSCT less as a rescue therapy and more as a general treatment option, provided the different protocols are harmonised and optimised, the tolerability and safety profile can be further improved, and prognostic markers become available to identify patients at risk of poor prognosis in whom a potentially more hazardous treatment might be justified."

Licensed from medwireNews with permission from Springer Healthcare Ltd. Springer Healthcare Ltd. All rights reserved. Neither of these parties endorse or recommend any commercial products, services, or equipment.
Research conducted at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health and Public Health Solutions examined the reasons why men who have had sex with both men and women choose not to disclose their sexual orientation -- particularly to their wives and girlfriends. Results show that men wanted to avoid the stigma and homophobia they felt certain would lead to strong negative emotional reactions and profound changes in their relationships. Findings are published online in the journal Archives of Sexual Behavior.

Using a large, ethnically diverse sample, the researchers examined the reasons these behaviorally bisexual men offered for why they had not told --a nd frequently never planned to tell -- their friends, family, and female partners about their sexual orientation. In-depth interviews were conducted with 203 behaviorally bisexual men in New York City who had never disclosed their same-sex behavior to their female sexual partners. To be eligible, men had to be at least 18 years of age; not self-identify as gay; and report having had sex with a man and sex with a woman in the past year. Men were recruited from Internet websites, print ads, and nonparticipant referrals.

"Our results clearly identify the need for public education campaigns to dispel myths about bisexual men--that bisexual men are not gay, do not have HIV, and are not necessarily non-monogamous," said Eric W. Schrimshaw, PhD, associate professor of Sociomedical Sciences at the Mailman School of Public Health. "Further, the anticipated negative reactions from female partners suggest the need for strategies to assist behaviorally bisexual men disclose their sexual history in ways that minimize negative reactions and work with the couple to preserve the relationship."

The men consistently reported anticipating stigma for having sex with men and specified a number of reasons for non-disclosure, including anticipation of negative emotional reactions; anticipation of negative changes in relationships; belief that their family, friends, and female partners held stigmatizing attitudes toward homosexuality; and prior experience with negative reactions to disclosure.

Men in the study did not report a heterosexual identity, identity uncertainty, or other identity issues as reasons for non-disclosure. "Rather our findings suggested that non-disclosure of sexual orientation among behaviorally bisexual men is often used as a strategy to avoid anticipated stigmatizing responses from their social network such as ridicule, rejection, and victimization," said Schrimshaw.

Perhaps the most novel reason identified for non-disclosure was that all men commonly viewed the religious and/or cultural background of their friends, family, and female partners as a barrier to disclosure because they believed it contributed to the anticipation of rejecting reactions. Theories on disclosure of sexual orientation among gay men are conflicting. "While some research suggests that disclosure of sexual orientation is part of identity development and that disclosure occurs after they become more confident and self-accepting of their sexual identity, this was not our finding," said Martin J. Downing, Jr. of Public Health Solutions.

The researchers say their findings show that bisexual men may be more likely than gay men to anticipate stigmatizing reactions from others. However, they caution that their research did not compare bisexual men's reasons to those of gay men, and therefore it is still unclear whether gay men perceive less sigma (and therefore are more likely to disclose) or if gay and bisexual men experience similar levels of stigma perceptions prior to disclosure. "Such research is critical to understanding the potential causal order between stigma and disclosure among both gay and bisexual men," noted Dowling.

Earlier research by Schrimshaw suggested that high levels of emotional distress among behaviorally bisexual men are a result of concealment of their sexual orientation. "Thus the current findings provide new insights into why non-disclosure could result in greater emotional distress," said Schrimshaw.
Netflix binge-watching versus a hike in the woods. A cheeseburger versus kale salad. Fentanyl versus Tylenol. New UC research from the University California, Berkeley, suggests our brain activity could be influenced to make the healthier choice.

In recording moment-by-moment deliberations by macaque monkeys over which option is likely to yield the most fruit juice, UC Berkeley scientists have captured the dynamics of decision-making down to millisecond changes in neurons in the brain's orbitofrontal cortex.

The findings, reported this week in the journal Nature Neuroscience, shed new light on internal decision-making processes -- particularly with regard to habitual behaviors -- and help target the brain circuitry for implants to treat such neuropsychiatric disorders as anxiety, depression and addiction.

"If we can measure a decision in real time, we can potentially also manipulate it," said study senior author Jonathan Wallis, a UC Berkeley neuroscientist and professor of psychology. "For example, a device could be created that detects when an addict is about to choose a drug and instead bias their brain activity towards a healthier choice."

Located behind the eyes, the orbitofrontal cortex plays a key role in decision-making and, when damaged, can lead to poor choices and impulsivity.

While previous studies have linked activity in the orbitofrontal cortex to making final decisions, this is the first to track the neural changes that occur during deliberations between different options.

"We can now see a decision unfold in real time and make predictions about choices," Wallis said.

Measuring the signals from electrodes implanted in the monkeys' brains, Wallis and fellow researchers tracked the primates' neural activity as they weighed the pros and cons of images that delivered different amounts of juice.

A computational algorithm tracked the monkeys' orbitofrontal activity as they looked from one image to another, determining which picture would yield the greater reward. The shifting brain patterns enabled researchers to predict which image the monkey would settle on.

For the experiment, they presented a monkey with a series of four different images of abstract shapes, each of which delivered to the monkey a different amount of juice. They used a pattern-recognition algorithm known as linear discriminant analysis to identify, from the pattern of neural activity, which picture the monkey was looking at.

Next, they presented the monkey with two of those same images, and watched the neural patterns switch back and forth to the point where the researchers could predict which image the monkey would choose based on the length of time that the monkey stared at the picture.

"Effectively we could now see the decision unfold and make predictions about the animal's choice," Wallis said.

The more the monkey needed to think about the options, particularly when there was not much difference between the amounts of juice offered, the more the neural patterns would switch back and forth.

"Now that we can see when the brain is considering a particular choice, we could potentially use that signal to electrically stimulate the neural circuits involved in the decision and change the final choice," Wallis said.
The results of a study involving more than 9,000 patients, presented today at the European League Against Rheumatism Annual Congress (EULAR 2016) showed that Type 1 diabetes occurs significantly more frequently in patients with Juvenile Inflammatory Arthritis (JIA) than in the general population. A better understanding of this link between diabetes and JIA may lead to new preventative and therapeutic interventions in both these diseases.

JIA is the most common chronic rheumatic disease of childhood, affecting between 20 and 150 children per 100,000 at any one time. It is defined as chronic inflammation of the synovial joints, with unknown cause, which may start in children even as young as one year old, and persists for at least six weeks. JIA causes pain, swelling and stiffness of the joints, and sometimes rash and fever. Despite advances in treatment, JIA can cause many children to miss time off school and find it difficult to take part in physical activities.

In the past few years, important advances have been made in understanding the so-called 'susceptibility' genes, which contribute to different autoimmune diseases. It is becoming clear that, despite the apparent clinical differences between autoimmune diseases, they share a number of genetic risk factors. Children and adolescents with JIA are therefore likely to develop other autoimmune diseases.

"We know that there is a clear increase in the prevalence of Juvenile Inflammatory Arthritis in young people with Type 1 diabetes compared with the general paediatric population," said Dr Kirsten Minden from the Rheumatism Research Centre, Berlin, Germany. "However, this study shows the reverse correlation that Type 1 diabetes occurs more commonly in patients with JIA. The next step is to explore in detail the factors and mechanisms that link the two diseases, and confirm that these findings are applicable to other geographic areas, where different environmental and genetic factors are at play. By better understanding this link, we may be able to develop new preventative and therapeutic interventions," Dr Minden concluded.

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The study included 9,359 JIA patients with a mean age of 12 years and a mean disease duration of 4.5 years, recorded in the German national paediatric rheumatologic database (NPRD ) in 2012 and 2013. Type 1 diabetes was diagnosed in 50 of these children, equivalent to a diabetes prevalence of 0.5%. Compared to an age and sex matched sample of the general population, the diabetes prevalence in JIA patients was significantly increased, with approximately double the prevalence ratio for diabetes in JIA patients compared to controls (1.92 for girls and 2.04 for boys).

More than half of the patients (58%) developed diabetes before JIA. The onset of diabetes was on average five years before the onset of JIA. Patients with JIA before Type 1 diabetes developed their diabetes on average nearly three years after the onset of JIA. The majority of these patients had not received any disease modifying anti-rheumatic drugs (DMARDs) before the onset of their diabetes. Patients with Type 1 diabetes did not differ significantly in the severity spectrum of their JIA compared to those without diabetes.
When new AIDS virus particles bud from an infected cell, an enzyme named protease activates to help the viruses mature and infect more cells. That's why modern AIDS drugs control the disease by inhibiting protease.

Now, University of Utah researchers found a way to turn protease into a double-edged sword: They showed that if they delay the budding of new HIV particles, protease itself will destroy the virus instead of helping it spread. They say that might lead, in about a decade, to new kinds of AIDS drugs with fewer side effects.

"We could use the power of the protease itself to destroy the virus," says virologist Saveez Saffarian, an associate professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Utah and senior author of the study released today by PLOS Pathogens, an online journal published by the Public Library of Science.

So-called cocktails or mixtures of protease inhibitors emerged in the 1990s and turned acquired immune deficiency syndrome into a chronic, manageable disease for people who can afford the medicines. But side effects include fat redistribution in the body, diarrhea, nausea, rash, stomach pain, liver toxicity, headache, diabetes and fever.

"They have secondary effects that hurt patients," says Mourad Bendjennat, a research assistant professor of physics and astronomy and the study's first author. "And the virus becomes resistant to the inhibitors. That's why they use cocktails."

Bendjennat adds that by discovering the molecular mechanism in which protease interacts with HIV, "we are developing a new approach that we believe may be very efficient in treating the spread of HIV."

However, he and Saffarian emphasize the research is basic, and that it will be a decade before more research might develop the approach into news AIDS treatments.

Figuring out the role of protease in HIV budding

Inside a cell infected by HIV, new virus particles are constructed largely with a protein named Gag. Protease enzymes are incorporated into new viral particles as they are built, and are thought to be activated after the new particles "bud" out of infected cell and then break off from it.

The particles start to bud from the host cell in a saclike container called a vesicle, the neck of which eventually separates from the outer membrane of the infected cell. "Once the particles are released, the proteases are activated and the particles transform into mature HIV, which is infectious," Saffarian says.

"There is an internal mechanism that dictates activation of the protease, which is not well understood," he adds. "We found that if we slow the budding process, the protease activates while the HIV particle is still connected to the outer membrane of host [infected] cell. As a result, it chews out all the proteins inside the budding HIV particle, and those essential enzymes and proteins leak back into the host cell. The particle continues to bud out and release from the cell, but it is not infectious anymore because it doesn't have the enzymes it needs to mature."

Budding HIV needs ESCRTs

The scientists found they could slow HIV particles from budding out of cells by interfering with how they interact with proteins named ESCRTs (pronounced "escorts"), or "endosomal sorting complexes required for transport."

ESCRTs are involved in helping pinch off budding HIV particles - essentially cutting them from the infected host cell.

Saffarian says scientific dogma long has held "that messing up the interactions of the virus with ESCRTs results in budding HIV particles permanently getting stuck on the host cell membrane instead of releasing." Bendjennat says several studies in recent years indicated that the particles do get released, casting some doubt on the long held dogma.

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The new study's significance "is about the molecular mechanism: When the ESCRT machinery is altered, there is production of viruslike particles that are noninfectious," he says. "This study explains the molecular mechanism of that."

"We found HIV still releases even when early ESCRT interactions are intentionally compromised, however, with a delay," Saffarian says. "They are stuck for a while and then they release. And by being stuck for a while, they lose their internal enzymes due to early protease activation and lose their infectivity."

Bendjennat says by delaying virus budding and speeding "when the protease gets activated, we are now capable of using it to make new released viruses noninfectious"

How the research was done

The experiments used human skin cells grown in tissue culture. It already was known that new HIV particles assemble the same way whether the infected host cell is a skin cell, certain other cells or the T-cell white blood cell infected by the virus to cause AIDS. The experiments involved both live HIV and so-called viruslike particles.

Bendjennat and Saffarian genetically engineered mutant Gag proteins. A single HIV particle is made of some 2,000 Gag proteins and 120 copies of proteins known as Gag-Pol, as well as genetic information in the form of RNA. Pol includes protease, reverse transcriptase and integrase - the proteins HIV uses to replicate.

The mutant Gag proteins were designed to interact abnormally with two different ESCRT proteins, named ALIX and Tsg101.

A new HIV particle normally takes five minutes to release from an infected cell.

When the researchers interfered with ALIX, release was delayed 75 minutes, reducing by half the infectivity of the new virus particle. When the scientists interfered with Tsg101, release was delayed 10 hours and new HIV particles were not infectious.

The scientists also showed that how fast an HIV particle releases from an infected cell depends on how much enzyme cargo it carries in the form of Pol proteins. By interfering with ESCRT proteins during virus-release experiments with viruslike particles made only of Gag protein but none of the normal Pol enzymes, the 75-minute delay shrank to only 20 minutes, and the 10-hour delay shrank to only 50 minutes.

"When the cargo is large, the virus particle needs more help from the ESCRTs to release on a timely fashion," Saffarian says.

Because HIV carries a large cargo, it depends on ESCRTs to release from an infected cell, so ESCRTs are good targets for drugs to delay release and let HIV proteases leak back into the host cell, making new HIV particles noninfectious, he says.

Bendjennat says other researchers already are looking for drugs to block ESCRT proteins in a way that would prevent the "neck" of the budding HIV particle from pinching off or closing, thus keeping it connected to the infected cell. But he says the same ESCRTs are needed for cell survival, so such drugs would be toxic.

Instead, the new study suggests the right approach is to use low-potency ESCRT-inhibiting drugs that delay HIV release instead of blocking it, rendering it noninfectious with fewer toxic side effects, he adds.
New Delhi: Two people were killed and and two others injured in a toxic gas leak on board the aircraft carrier INS Vikramaditya on Friday.



One sailor and one civilian were killed in the leak that happened in the sewage treatment plant while the ship was undergoing maintenance repairs at Karwar.



The dead have been identified as Shipwright Artificer Rakesh Kumar and Mohandas Kolambkar, an employee of M/s Royal Marine.



The condition of the other two personnel is stable. The Navy has ordered an inquiry into the incident and action has been taken to render the compartment and area on the ship safe.



INS Vikramaditya is India's largest aircraft carrier with an overall length of about 284 metres and a maximum beam of about 60 metres. The ship has a total of 22 decks and can carry 1,600 personnel.








All five convicts in the Danish woman gangrape case have been sentenced to life imprisonment after they were convicted on Monday.



Delhi's Tis Hazari court on Friday announced the quantum of sentence in the 2014 case and sent all the five adult convicts -- Mahendra alias Ganja (24), Mohd Raja (22), Raju (23), Arjun (21) and Raju Chakka (22) -- to jail for life.



According to the prosecution, the nine accused, all vagabonds, had allegedly robbed and gangraped the Danish tourist at knife-point on the night of January 14, 2014.



The crime was committed after the woman was taken to a secluded spot close to the Divisional Railway Officers' Club near New Delhi Railway Station.



All nine accused were arrested. The five adult accused - Mahendra alias Ganja (26), Mohd Raja (22), Raju (23), Arjun 21), Raju Chakka (22) - were in kept in judicial custody.



One of the accused 55-year-old Shyam Lal, who was in judicial custody, died in February. Proceedings against Lal were abated following his death,

Three other accused were juveniles against whom inquiry before the Juvenile Justice Board is in progress.
New Delhi: Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Thursday said courts cannot perform the functions of executive and the independence of the two will have to strictly maintained.



Jaitley said if executive fails to perform its function, courts can direct it to do so but it cannot take over the executive function.



Speaking at the 'Indian of the Year 2015' awards of CNN News 18, he said if the judiciary fails to act, the executive cannot take up that role on the plea that there are mounting pending cases. Similarly, courts also cannot take over executive function.



"Let's first of all be clear about two basic facts. Fact one, independence of judiciary is certainly required and must be maintained at all cost. Fact two, judiciary unquestionably has the power of judicial review. I don't think anybody has power to dispute that. It is essential for democracy," he said.







Stating that the argument that judiciary steps in when executive does not act was a "questionable proposition", he said, "when the executive does not act judiciary can tell and direct the executive to act. But the judiciary cannot perform executive function. Executive function has to be performed by executives".



Jaitley, who also holds the charge of Information and Broadcasting Ministry, said just as independence of judiciary was essential, so was separation of powers.



"The Parliamentary function has to be performed by Parliament, nobody else can pass or approve a Budget. The executive function has to be performed by the executives. Courts cannot perform an executive function. It can direct the executive to perform its function, if it is not acting," he said.



Jaitley's comments came close on the heels of Chief Justice of India TS Thakur asserting that judiciary intervened only when the executive failed in its constitutional duties.



The CJI had also said, "the government should do its job instead of hurling accusations and that the people turn to the courts only after they are let down by the executive."
Here are some important reports from the biggest newspapers of India.



1. Bar on RSS, Jamaat men in govt service set to go



The government is set to repeal a 1966 law, reiterated subsequently in 1975 and 1980, requiring those joining government service to declare that they are not affiliated to either Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) or Jamaat-e-Islami.



The department of personnel and training now plans to hold consultations with the home ministry on the need to do away with this unreasonable and absurd norm, with a senior government functionary pointing out how RSS had always maintained that it is a cultural and non-political organisation. This will be part of the government's drive to repeal defunct and archaic laws.



2. Punjabs war on drugs: Untold toll, one death in custody every four days



There is at least one man or woman dying in custody, either in a police station or a prison, every four days over the last two years  thats the staggering human and social cost of Punjabs skewed crackdown on drugs.



This is the finding of an investigation by The Indian Express of data obtained under the Right to Information Act and analysis of police and jail records.



3. Consume alcohol, but up to limit, Gujarat minister tells tribal parents



Gujarat Minister of State for Tribal Development, Kanti Gamit, courted controversy at a Shala Praveshotsav in the tribal district of Chhota Udaipur on Wednesday, when he suggested parents of wards to consume alcohol in limits.



Pointing towards the tribal practice of consuming palm wine (Tadi) and alcohol regularly, Gamit said that he had no intention of asking to give up alcohol, but urged the parents to ensure that they are not in an inebriated state through out the day. The Minister said that festivals and weddings should be a definite excuse for day long revelry.



4. Will Rajnath be BJP's face in UP elections?



With just three days to go for BJP's national executive in Allahabad, speculation escalated on Thursday that home minister Rajnath Singh could play the lead role in the party's campaign for next year's UP polls.



Though BJP has steadfastly refrained from spelling out if it plans to project anyone as its CM candidate, there has been insistent buzz that the brass may consider giving Singh, a former UP CM, a prominent role in the campaign even if it does not necessarily declare him to be its choice for the top political office in the state. The party will tread cautiously in UP because of the caste divisions which define the poll equations.



5. Bill Gates to Donate 100,000 Chicks to Fight Poverty



Billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates, speaking in front of chickens pecking and clucking in a New York City skyscraper, announced plans on Wednesday to donate 100,000 chicks to poor nations in an effort to end extreme poverty.



The chicks will go to rural areas in two dozen countries from Burkina Faso to Bolivia, where the Heifer International charity manages breeding operations and distribution, according to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Raising and selling chickens can lift families out of poverty, and a farmer breeding 250 chickens a year could make $1,250, said the Foundation, which is partnering with the Heifer International. There's no investment that has a return percentage anything like being able to breed chickens, said Gates.



6. 68 years ago, Air India first went international



Thursday marked the 68th anniversary of Air India's first internation al flight touching down at London. The historic 24-hour trip from Mumbai to London by the Malabar Princess, a 40 seater Lockheed L-749 Constellation, was marked by refuelling stops at Cairo and Geneva. The propeller-driven four-engine aircraft, registered as VT-CQS, was piloted by Captain K R Guzdar on its maiden voyage.



The aircraft carried 35 passengers including luminaries such as Maharaja Duleepsinhji, who was looking forward to watching the Ashes, his highness the Jam Saheb of Nawanagar, the Rajpramukh of Saurashtra, JRD Tata the father of Indian aviation and Indian cyclists H B Malcolm and R R Noble, who were to represent India at the Olympic Games at Wembley.



7. Goldman Sachs axes Japan girl over porn past



A former Japanese pornstar who had secured a job at Goldman Sachs found herself dropped from the job after the banking major discovered her past, Daily Mail said.



Adult actress Shizuka Minamoto, who had featured in dozens of porn movies, had secured a job at the bank's Tokyo arm after her graduation. However, her would-be employers terminated the contract citing violation of the bank's code of ethics.



8. 1.46 lakh lives lost on Indian roads last year



An official report, released by Union Road Transport and Highways Minister Nitin Gadkari on Thursday, said 1.46 lakh people were killed in road accidents in India in 2015  an increase of five per cent from 2014.



Road accidents as a whole rose 2.5 per cent during 2015 to 5.01 lakh or 374 accidents every day, claiming 400 lives, the report said.



9. Sexual harassment law likely to be amended



The Centre is contemplating an amendment to the rules on dealing with sexual harassment cases to make the committee on sexual harassment share its findings with the complainant in cases where no action is recommended or contemplated against the accused.



The panel will not only have to provide a copy of its report to the complainant but would also have to consider any representation against its findings as an appeal before completing its report. In a circular, the Department of Personnel directed all Ministries and departments to notify the change to stakeholders and get their views by June 21.



10. Most employees in India prefer to work from home



A substantial number of employees are interested in working from home with the preference more prevalent among those aged above 45 years, says a survey.



HR services provider Randstad said on Thursday that almost an equal number of men and women opined that they would like telecommuting.



53 per cent of the respondents from India said they prefer telecommuting, while 47 per cent prefer to work from the office every day, it said, citing the results of a survey on workplace flexibility. The findings are based on a survey of around 7,500 employees from India.




New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi returned home on Friday after a five-nation tour whose highlight was his meeting with US President Barack Obama and address to US Congress in Washington.



During his six-day tour, Modi also visited Afghanistan, Qatar, Switzerland and Mexico with an aim to bolster ties.



He returned home early on Sunday morning from Mexico which was the last stoppage of his trip.



Before leaving for home, Modi had tweeted, "Thank you Mexico. A new era in India-Mexico ties has begun and this relationship is going to benefit our people and the entire world."



"Five days, five countries! After a productive visit to Mexico, the last leg of his journey, PM departs for Delhi," External Affairs Minister Vikas Swarup had tweeted.



Besides addressing a joint sitting of the US Congress, Modi received the backing of two key Nuclear Suppliers Group members - Switzerland and Mexico - for its bid to secure the membership of the 48-nation bloc.



He also held wide-ranging talks with President Obama at the White House following which the US recognised India as a "major defence partner".
Mumbai: Two people are feared drowned off the popular Juhu beach in Mumbai on Friday evening, while three others have been rescued.



A group of five friends, all residents of Juhu Koliwada area, went to the famous beach at around 12:30 PM for swimming, a official from Santa Cruz Police Station said.



On-duty lifeguards and Fire Brigade personnel warned them against entering into the sea, Chief Fire Officer Prabhat Rahangadale said.







The youngsters, however, went to a different spot away from the main beach front and ventured into the sea. They soon started drowning, he said.



Three of them were promptly rescued by lifeguards and Fire Brigade personnel, while the other two were yet to be traced, Rahangadale said.



According to police, the duo feared drowned was identified as Rajendra Chowdhury (20) and Sameer Sheikh (18).



(With inputs from PTI)
Sydney: Boys who show empathy are more likely to attract girlfriends than their low empathy counterparts, a new study has found, suggesting that adolescent males and females select empathic classmates as friends.



The findings showed that boys high in cognitive empathy attracted an average of 1.8 more girl friendships than low empathy counterparts.



Also, girls are more likely to nominate empathic boys as friends.



In contrast, girls with empathetic qualities 'did not attract a greater number of opposite sex friends', the researchers said.



"Friends are essential to positive adolescent development. It's well established that in addition to providing companionship, close friendships promote the development of interpersonal skills, learning, and growth. Having friends has also been linked with lower rates of depression and, to people feeling good about themselves," said Joseph Ciarrochi, Professor, at Australian Catholic University.



For the study, published in the Journal of Personality, the team analysed 1,970 students in Queensland and New South Wales with average age of 15.7 years.



The researchers defined cognitive empathy as the capacity to comprehend the emotions of another person.



They asked students to nominate up to five of their closest male and five closest female friends in the same year.



The more friendship nominations a boy received from either boys or girls, the more they felt supported by their friends; the number of friendship nominations received by girls, in contrast, had no effect on their felt support by friends.



Regardless of the quantity of friendship nominations, empathy was linked to more supportive friendships for both males and females," Ciarrochi added.



"This research suggests it is critical to identify and teach young people the skills they need to develop supportive friendships. To that end, our study provides a contextual understanding of the role of empathy in selecting and maintaining friendships," Ciarrochi noted.


The Bombay High Court, on Friday, came down heavily on the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) for the cuts ordered in the movie 'Udta Punjab' and observed that the board's job is to certify films and not censor them.



In a scathing observation, the court asked CBFC that if it thinks the movie glorifies drugs, then why is it not banning the whole movie. Mincing no words in its observation, the court categorically told the CBFC, that whether its TV or cinema, the board should leave it to the people to decide whether the film is defaming a state.







During the hearing, the CBFC argued that the vulgar words and scenes from the movie must be removed. Claiming that the dog in the movie which is named after Jackie Chan is contemptuous, the board tried to justify its decision for the cut. The arguments in the case have concluded and the order will be passed on June 13.







Anurag Kashyap, who the producer of the film, had earlier accused CBFC chief Pahlaj Nihalani of bullying and purposely not certifying the film. The CBFC has demanded 89 cuts in the film that features Shahid Kapoor, Kareena Kapoor, Alia Bhatt and Diljit Dosanjh. Directed by Abhishek Chaubey, the film is scheduled to release in theatres on June 17.



Meanwhile, the makers have agreed to cut one scene, where Shahid Kapoor's character is seen urinating in front of the public in the song 'Chitta Ve'. The cut was one of the numerous scenes that CBFC demanded be changed.






Patna Bollywood diva Priyanka Chopra today came out in support of Anurag Kashyap's 'Udta Punjab' and said creativity should not be stopped in democracy.



"Our forefathers achieved freedom of speech and expression for us after a long struggle... Creativity should not be stopped in democracy," Chopra told reporters here. In reply to a question regarding the action on 'Udta Punjab' by the censor board, which had raised objection to her film 'Jai Gangaajal', Priyanka said it was a "Certification body and not censor".



"In democracy you cannot dictate what one should eat or watch a movie on a social issue," said Priyanka, who was recently awarded the Padam Shri and has now ventured into Hollywood. In a reply to another query on whether removal of a word in the title of a movie was justified, she said, "Title is the creativity of every producer and director. So, how can it be changed?"



The leading Bollywood star was here to promote Bhojpuri film 'Bum Bum Bol Raha hai Kashi' produced by her. She was accompanied by her mother Madhu Chopra, who is a co-producer of the film.



'Bum Bum Bol Raha hai Kashi' will be released in cinema halls tomorrow. The film's script is written and directed by Santosh Mishra and has Dinesh Lal Yadav 'Niruaha' in the lead role. Amrapali Dubey and Antra Banerjee are the female cast in the film.



Asked why she chose to produce a Bhojpuri film as her first venture, Priyanka said, "Bhojpuri is my mom's mother tongue. Besides, regional movies should be encouraged." Priyanka's family hails from Gumla near Jamshedpur which was part of undivided Bihar till 2000, when Jharkhand was carved out of it.



The film promotion was held at P & M Mall owned by filmmaker Prakash Jha.
Kejriwal uses Govt money for full page Ad in Punjab on Punjabi Teachers



And-Delhi suffers strikes by GovtServants on non payment of salary  Ajay Maken (@ajaymaken) June 10, 2016

Money spent on Govt Ad for Kejriwal publicity is more than to implement the announcement of hiring Punjabi teachers!

Waste of Taxpayer money  Ajay Maken (@ajaymaken) June 10, 2016

With Punjab Assembly Polls in mind, Aam Aadmi Party is pulling out all stops to ensure better performance in the State.Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal's Delhi Government is reaching out to the Punjabi speaking population in the capital.Delhi government has mandated schools in the capital to have at least one Punjabi teacher. The government has also increased salaries of Punjabi teachers. They are projecting the decision as a move to encourage Punjabi language.Congress leader Ajay Maken hit out at the Delhi CM for giving a full page advertisement on a leading daily.117 seats of the upcoming Punjab Assembly will go to polls in 2017.
'This skeleton' says a lot about the misplaced priorities of Congress party in India. pic.twitter.com/YZkXa7SIeS  Satish Acharya (@satishacharya) June 9, 2016

The ruling Congress party in Karnataka has taken censorship a bit too far. A cartoon hoarding by noted cartoonist Satish Acharya has been removed by the Municipality of Kundapura in Udupi district of Karnataka.Satish Acharya, who works from his home in Kundapura, has a fixed hoarding named Cartoon Corner and displays some of his best works there.Recently, he had displayed a cartoon in which Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi was hiding behind Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah to escape from Prime Minister Narendra Modi who is seen menacingly rushing towards him.Speaking to News18.com Satish Acharya said, "I draw cartoons on all political parties. I use cartoon corner hoarding to display some of them. In the past nobody troubled me. After I had put this cartoon up, a local Congress leader called me up to suggest that I should remove it as it is offensive.""The very next day, Kundapura municipality removed it on the pretext of clearing the city of billboards. The Congress should be worried about the challenges before the party. It should not be afraid of a harmless cartoon," he added.Reacting to the development, Karnataka Congress president Dr G Parameshwara said he was not aware of any such developments and the Congress had nothing to do with it.Kundapura municipality defended the action saying that they have removed all hoardings and billboards to beautify the town.Acharya said he had sent a message to AICC media incharge Ajay Maken but he is yet to get a reply.
Priyanka Vadra will in all probability take a direct plunge into electoral politics in the 2019 general elections from Amethi, and, as a first step, aggressively campaign across Uttar Pradesh in next years Assembly elections, according to top functionaries familiar with the Gandhi familys thinking.



Now regarded as the partys sole remaining Brahmastra, Priyanka, 44, has so far restricted herself to campaigning in the family pocketboroughs of Amethi and Rae Bareli, represented by her brother Rahul Gandhi and mother Sonia Gandhi respectively. She has resisted repeated entreaties over the years by Congress leaders and workers to lead the party.



But with the Congress facing what many political experts view as a crisis of survival  its strength in the Lok Sabha is at an all-time low and has seen state after state slip away from its grasp  Priyanka has all but decided to take a more active political role, the sources said.







A large part of her decision is also personal. The BJPs relentless attacks on her husband Robert Vadra accusing him of financial wrongdoings have also forced her to decide to take the plunge, the sources added.



Several options are being worked out for Priyanka's more expansive political role, which is expected to complement her brother Rahuls taking charge of the Congress partys reins.



One option is to use her extensively for campaigning across Uttar Pradesh. In fact, Prashant Kishor, the one-time Modi political strategist now engaged by the Congress to manage its campaign in UP and Punjab, has even suggested that Priyanka should be projected as the partys face in UP.



But the sources said the Gandhi family was wary of projecting her as its face for just UP and wants to unleash her for the more crucial 2019 general elections.



The thinking now is that Priyanka could contest from Amethi, the Lok Sabha seat represented by her brother Rahul, who could shift to Rae Bareli. It is felt that she would be better poised to take on the BJPs likely candidate, Human Resources Minister Smriti Irani.



Between the Gandhi siblings, Priyanka has always been seen as the more aggressive and combative of the two, a trait that will come in handy while taking on the feisty Irani. Also, having a woman take on another will be politically prudent too, sparing Rahul Gandhi the risk of getting bogged down in a campaign in which he will have to tread very carefully.







A more active role by Priyanka, Congress insiders believe, will help cement the familys primacy in the party and energise the rank and file, most of whom have greater faith in her pugnaciousness than her brother. Her resemblance to her late grandmother and Congress icon Indira Gandhi, especially on the stump when she dresses up in cotton sarees, has been cited by many as a big perception asset.



Until now, Priyanka, a psychology graduate from Delhis Jesus & Mary College, has only campaigned for Sonia Gandhi and Rahul, taking care of their constituencies while they travelled across the country as the partys star campaigners. A mother of two, she has always held that she prefers to bring up her children and look after the family than get into active politics.



However, sources said the BJPs decision to aggressively go after Robert Vadra has left her with little alternative but to go for broke, given that the attacks on him and the Gandhi family are only likely to increase from here.



Priyanka has in the past too demonstrated pugnaciousness and an ability to take the battle into her opponents camps. When her mother was attacked for being an Italian in the 2004 elections, she retaliated by saying men are scared of women of substance



More recently, when BJP figures called Congress an ageing party, she lashed back tauntingly asking them if she looked old.
Allahabad: Poster war over probable chief ministerial nominee for 2017 Assembly Elections in Uttar Pradesh have gained momentum in the wake of BJP's national executive committee meeting scheduled to take place in Allahabad on June 12.



In some of the prominent intersections in Allahabad, posters were put up in which BJP workers advised the party to declare Varun Gandhi as party's chief minister candidate over Union HRD Minister, Smriti Irani.



Party insiders claimed that Varun Gandhi and his followers are trying to give a signal that he is ready to be the face of the BJP.



However, top BJP leaders are reportedly not in favour of Varun to project him as a chief ministerial nominee for the state.



There are also speculations that Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh and Yogi Adityanath could be named as BJP's chief ministerial candidate for state elections.



Meanwhile, BJP played down the buzz over Home Minister Rajnath Singh as its face for Uttar Pradesh assembly election, saying he has been a lead campaigner in most recent state elections and its ranks were full of capable leaders.



Party spokesperson Sudhanshu Trivedi told a press conference, "We have many capable leaders," parrying questions over the issue.



"Whenever a decision is taken, parliamentary board will convey it to you," he said.



The party's comments came on a day when Rajnath Singh also insisted that there is no dearth of capable people in the party as he chose to downplay talks about him.







Party President Amit Shah had recently said it was yet to decide whether a chief ministerial candidate should be projected or not.



Singh in the past has said he was not keen on returning to state politics. What is though almost certain he will play a prominent role during the campaign.



(With inputs from PTI)
New Delhi: Congress is finally going to send Priyanka Vadra to the electoral battlefield. She is likely to take a plunge into electoral politics in the 2019 general elections from Amethi.



While the Congress remained guarded in its response, the BJP called Rahul Gandhi a disappointment.



Congress spokesperson Manish Tewari said the party has its own strategy for Uttar Pradesh and when time comes the strategy will be unveiled.



Another Congress leader Akhilesh Pratap Singh said, "It is upto the party and family to decide whether Priyanka will come in active politics. Workers and leaders have been demanding this for a long time."



But Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Vijay Bahadur Pathak claimed that Congress workers are disappointed with party vice president Rahul Gandhi and people in Uttar Pradesh want to see Priyanka.



Priyanka will aggressively campaign across Uttar Pradesh in 2017s Assembly elections.







Several options are being worked out for Priyanka's more expansive political role, which is expected to complement her brother Rahuls taking charge of the Congress partys reins.



A more active role by Priyanka, Congress insiders believe, will help cement the familys primacy in the party and energise the rank and file, most of whom have greater faith in her pugnaciousness than her brother.



Her resemblance to her late grandmother and Congress icon Indira Gandhi, especially on the stump when she dresses up in cotton sarees, has been cited by many as a big perception asset.
A meandering Ganga appears to have stencilled perfect esses across beige planes baked by a searing and unabating heat. It has been an abnormally hot summer. The 72-seater short-haul aircraft we are in takes a slow U-turn as a crackling voice asks passengers to fasten their seat belts for landing. The temperature outside is 43 degrees Celsius.Bamrauli airport is as elementary as it gets. Only Air India flies to Allahabad - a daily flight which returns to Delhi after a brief stopover.BJP leader Sidharth Nath Singh, the local lad, is travelling with us a day ahead of the arrival of party president Amit Shah. Civil Aviation ministry will soon install a conveyor belt at the airport, he claims, as we wait for our luggage to be manually delivered at the exit gate.Over the next two days, the entire top BJP brass including Prime Minister Narendra Modi will descend on the erstwhile capital of the pre-independence United Provinces at the confluence of the Ganga, Yamuna and the mythological Saraswati. The show of strength and deliberations in Allahabad are strategically aimed to provide the requisite impetus to the campaign ahead of the Uttar Pradesh polls next year.Right at the exit of the airport, two huge hoardings of BJP MP from Sultanpur, Varun Gandhi, greet the executive members. They are strategically positioned to immediately draw ones attention. Interesting though, in all billboards, Varun Gandhi is seen sharing space with others including both PM Modi and party president Amit Shah.Driving down to the tony Civil Lines at the heart of the city, the frequency and size of the hoardings, if anything, grow quite steadily. 'Mission 265', proclaim some, would be achieved in 2017 to catapult BJP to power in UP.Giving Varun a close fight in this poster war is the state BJP president Keshav Prasad Maurya. The OBC leader is an MP from the adjoining Phulpur constituency. He's been hand-picked by the party to consolidate non-Yadav backward castes. Coming from the VHP stock, he is aggressive, both in his politics and rhetoric.At an intersection close to the conclave venue, former BJP general secretary Sanjay Joshi, a friend-turned-foe of PM Modi and later banished by the party, makes a surprise appearance in a billboard along with Shatrughan Sinha. The same Bihari Babu who pricked BJP no end during the Bihar elections last year. Allahabad has a sizeable Kayastha population, and who knows some local leader wants to encash on his popularity here as well!Amid this riot of saffron and green, UP CM Akilesh Yadav makes his presence felt at important roundabouts. Holding on to some of the available advertising space, the 'umeedon ka pradesh' tagline dots key junctions with large footfalls.By evening, key party functionaries have reached the Kayastha Patshala or KP College where huge tents have been pegged to create a massive pavillion to accommodate 270-odd members of the national executive.Sidharth Nath Singh, national secretary Srikant Sharma along with Joint General Secretary Shiv Kumar are personally monitoring preparations at the venue.Visibly peeved at the poster war, Singh says "Posters are not a sign of anyone's popularity".It is well past sunset, and the sweltering heat and humidity continues unabated. Both political and weather conditions in Allahabad are hotting up ahead of the party executive.
Washington: Describing the just concluded US visit of Prime Minister Narendra Modi as "historic", the Obama administration has christened his vision of Indo-US ties that has overcome the "hesitations of history" and working for the betterment of the global good as "Modi Doctrine".



"The most important outcome in my mind of the visit this week and of the years of effort that preceded it is the clear and compelling vision that was laid out by Prime Minister Modi before joint session of the US Congress," Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asia Nisha Desai Biswal said.



"This vision which I have come to call 'The Modi Doctrine' laid out a foreign policy that overcomes the hesitations of history and embraces the convergence between our two countries and our shared interests," Biswal, the Obama Administration's point person for South and Central Asia, told a Washington audience.



"Modi in his speech furthered his bold vision of India-US partnership that can anchor peace, prosperity and stability from Asia to Africa, from the Indian Ocean to the Pacific and help ensure the security of the sea lanes of commerce and freedom of navigation on the seas. This Modi Doctrine notes that the absence of an agreed security architecture creates uncertainty in Asia and reiterates India's adherence to and calls for others support for international laws and norms," Biswal said.



In his remarks, US Ambassador to India Richard Verma said the US welcomes and shares the Prime Ministers vision. "We have made a clear and strategic choice to support India's transition to become, as Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar has articulated, a leading power. Our actions, as security partners in every sense of the word, speak to this endeavor," he said.



"We envision India as a leading power that can uphold international norms and support what Defence Secretary Carter called last week a 'principled security network' in Asia. A leading power that can grow its economy while at the same time demonstrating global leadership on clean energy and climate," he said.



"And a leading power that joins likeminded partners to safeguard the global commons. Realising this vision will require diligent work on part of the bureaucracies in both Washington and Delhi and resilience to overcome obstacles that may arise," Verma said.



Indian Ambassador to the US Arun K Singh described the Prime Minister's visit as "historic".



"There is a need step-by-step to build confidence and to build the habit of working together. That calls for regular meetings including at the highest levels," Singh said.



Singh said the two countries have recognised that clean energy would be an important area of partnership. These remarks were followed by a panel discussion by G Parthasarthy, former Indian diplomat, Baijayant Panda, Member of Parliament; Vice Admiral (rtd) Shekhar Sinha; Sadanand Dhume, resident fellow, American Enterprise Institute and Ashley J Tellis, from Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.



Panda said some senior people from the US State Department have described the Prime Minister's speech and his vision of India-US relationship as 'Modi doctrine'.



"This is not a coinage from the Indian side. This is a coinage from the American side, which I think is a very important way to describe it. So clearly it is historic shifting of gears," he said.
The application process is now open, and the administration says the forms should take five minutes to complete. Get more info on that and more recent business news here.
Virginia Forge Co., a steel processing plant in Buchanan, is planning to cease operations by the end of the year.

Mayor Larry Hall said he received word this week that the factory  one of the largest employers in the Botetourt County town of about 1,200  will merge with a sister company in Pennsylvania.

Calls to the plant on Main Street were not returned this week. An official with MFC Group, which operates Virginia Forge, Meadville Forging Co. and a second Pennsylvania plant in Cambridge Springs, declined to comment.

About 70 people were employed by the plant as recently as last year, when officials said they planned to hire another 38 workers as part of a $4.6 million expansion.

It was not clear if work on the expansion ever began. As part of a performance agreement with Botetourt County, the company was required to make a progress report by Dec. 31, 2015, before it could begin to receive about $66,000 in incentives.

No report was ever made, county spokesman Cody Sexton said.

As a result, the countys Economic Development Authority made no payments to the company, which would have come in the form of offsets to the real estate and machinery and tools taxes on the new investments, for a total of no more than $66,607 over the next four years.

The plant forges steel into automotive wheel hubs and assemblies, among other things. An expansion would have helped the business compete for new contracts, the Botetourt County Board of Supervisors was told last April when it approved the performance agreement.

Buchanan Town Manager Mary Zirkle said that if the Virginia Forge building goes on the market, the town will work to find another industry or business to fill the space.

The riverfront town has seen several new restaurants and businesses open in the past year, and town officials say a grocery store or micro-brewery would be a good fit.

We are really hoping that we can fill the space and move right along, Hall said.
Short on protocol, heavy on pie.

Thats the picture Sweet Briar President Phillip Stone painted of his earliest days in office last summer during a morning speech to the Lynchburg Regional Society for Human Resource Management on Thursday.

To frequent laughter, he told a story of unusual hiring practices carried out during a time so busy he felt he couldnt break to look for food.

People started bringing me care packages  really good care packages, like cobbler, pie, even an occasional fruit he said. It wasnt the most balanced meals Ive had, but boy was it good.

In his remarks, Stone emphasized for every other corner cut in time of calamity or predicament, empathy cant be sacrificed.

He said he saw that characteristic in Career Services director Barbara Watts, who stepped in to head human resources for the college last summer while continuing her work of setting up employment for students on campus.

Nicole Whitehead, the new director of human resources and community engagement has it too, he said. Both women accompanied him to the gathering.

About 70 people attended the event, Virginia SHRM Council Foundation Director Bruce Christian estimated, up from the typical 30 to 35 people who attend a monthly meeting of the local group.

Reacting after Stones remarks, Christian said often human resources leaders struggle for a seat at the table in leadership at their organizations when they shouldnt because employees are typically both an organizations largest expense and the chief way it can stand out from competitors.

As Phil said, its how you treat people, he said.

Christian added he thought human resource managers could learn from Stones discussion about working to bring people on the Sweet Briar campus together despite lingering hurt feelings and grudges related to the events surrounding the closure attempt.

You have to be able to help people understand that we are not all going to think the same, but we can still all work together, he said.

Stones speech was entitled Leading Through Crisis, referencing, in Stones case, suddenly becoming the president of a college yanked back from the brink of extinction.

On March 3, 2015, Sweet Briars then-leaders announced they would close the college, citing what they saw as insurmountable financial challenges. That announcement brought shock and anger from many alumnae and their allies, who rallied to save the school.

Stone gave his take on last springs legal fight over the future of the college, before getting to the meat of his speech  what it was like to take over the college.

He had about two weeks from the announcement the college would stay open to taking over July 2. He was a complete outsider, he said, who didnt know anyone on campus and who didnt feel he had any part in some of the bitter personal feelings stirred up by the closure announcement

Then June 30, just days before Stone took office, he said, the schools human resources department sent a letter to the majority of the campuses employees telling them they were unemployed, in keeping with plans made before the closure of the college was reversed.

The action left him at a loss, despite explanations the move was supposed to be helpful to him.

I thought it lacked a little touch of empathy, he said.

He posted a web announcement to the 200 or so people that hed hired them back. At the same time, the episode made him realize for all the help he needed, some kinds of help were not the kind of help he was looking for. His early days involved some conversations suggesting some people might better serve elsewhere.

The college had no choice but to be ready to operate in the fall, but even with those committed to stay, Stone didnt have enough faculty and staff to successfully operate the college.

One of his first moves, even before he officially took over as president, was to talk the head of the schools engineering department out of his plans to leave for another school. He in turn, had another hire in mind, a newly minted engineering PhD from the University of California Santa Cruz and a 2009 Sweet Briar graduate. That quickly ran into a snag, Stone said, when she ran out of time to give her decision on another job offer just as Stone was about to take his seat.

Stones solution: ask the director to dig out his own contract and write her up one based on that template. Thus, Sweet Briar had an engineering department again.

Another spitballed solution came when Stone was hunting for an interim dean. He asked for recommendations and had several people suggest the same person.

Stone though, was afraid to interview her, because he felt if he did and didnt choose her for the position, he could hurt feelings at a time he couldnt afford to do so.

Then, she nominated somebody else for the job, giving Stone an opening.

He invited her to sit down with him and explain in detail what qualities she thought were important in a dean, on the pretext she was selling him on her nominee.

It was a job interview and she didnt know it, he said, I said, When can you start?
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Vicky Boodram sent to St Anns

The order was made by Senior Magistrate Nanette Forde- John yesterday when Boodram, 38, re-appeared in the San Fernando Magistrates Courts to answer 40 charges, laid in March, when she was arrested outside the said courthouse.

Boodram of Siparia has over a 100 fraud charges pending in the San Fernando, Port-of-Spain and Siparia Magistrates courts including alleged money laundering.

She remains incarcerated at the Womens Prison in Arouca, having been denied bail by retired Deputy Chief Magistrate Mark Wellington, before whom she appeared in March.

The charges stemmed from tickets sold to hundreds of persons in Trinidad and Tobago, from a travel agency for a North-Atlantic cruise which never materialised. Charges relating to alleged money laundering involve the purchase of a Mercedes Benz sedan and property in Palmiste. The latest charges against Boodram, laid in March while she was before the courts on earlier charges, involve a concert starring a top actor from India.

She is also alleged to have defrauded one of her own attorneys who represented her in 77 fraud charges. Yesterday, she had another attorney, Jason Jackson appearing for her as the case was called before Magistrate Forde- John.

Jackson told the magistrate that based on a medical document dated 2012 from the Siparia District Medical Office and his interactions with Boodram, he was of the view that the accused should be evaluated by a psychiatric institution.

Jackson said that he held discussions with Boodrams relatives and he was of the opinion that before he proceeds further with the matters, he wants to be satisfied that proper instructions could be taken from the accused. The case was postponed to June 23, after Magistrate Forde-John ordered that Boodram be evaluated at the St Anns Psychiatric Hospital.
PMS TIRED GUARDS

Tired Special Branch police officers detailed to guard the life of Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley have complained to the Police Social Welfare Association (PSWA) of being overworked for no extra pay.

They say the hours on the job requires them to work from 6 am to 6 am the following day. The officers are allotted two days off after working the 24 hour shift.

The officers believe these hours could be altered to give them an opportunity to spend quality time with their families and allow them some night rest. Newsday understands there are three shifts assigned to the PMs security detail and those officers work a 24 hour shift. They are then replaced by another shift, and then a third.

The 34 officers assigned to the Prime Minister also include those who work at the entrance of the PMs official residence in St Anns and those who work at the Office of the Prime Minister in St Clair.

Two Special Branch officers are required to be in the official vehicle of the Prime Minister whenever he is mobile. Sources said Special Branch officers sought guidance from the PSWA on their working hours resulting in Association President Inspector Anand Ramesar writing to Ag Police Commissioner Stephen Williams to relate the officers concerns.

The letter, obtained by Newsday states: Reports coming to the Association are that from May 9, 2016 to todays date, the Prime Minsters Security detail has been working on a 24/14 basis. A calculation of hours worked by this department is estimated at 430 hours worked. To say the least, this working arrangement has violated the basic compensation package of police officers which is pegged at a 40 hour work week. Ramesar said that to date this arrangement has been allowed to continue without any communication to the PSWA with a view of providing compensation to the affected officers.

Ramesar noted in his letter that the Association remains the only voice for these officers who are fearful of victimisation if they speak out.

The PSWA called on Commissioner Williams to urgently meet and address this issue so as to ensure officers who protect the life of the leader of the government dont become disenchanted. Until proper compensation is secured for these officers, the Association calls for an immediate discontinuation of a 24/24 work routine for officers assigned to the Prime Ministers escort, Ramesars letter concluded.

However, former Minister of National Security Gary Griffith disagreed with the PSWAs position saying the working hours of officers detailed to guard the Prime Minister and President has been a 24-hour duty shift for the past 50 years and is in line with that of officers guarding the US President, the PM of Great Britain and every other Head of State.
Recall of Sleep

Apnea Device

Is Not Going Well
China rebuffed a Japanese warning on Thursday. Japan had declared its vow to protect its region after it found a Chinese naval vessel close to its Senkaku Islands. But the Chinese defense minister declared that these are the Diaoyu islands that belong to China, and added that the Chinese navy has "every right" to sail there.

A Japanese foreign ministry statement was issued. The Japanese vice foreign minister Akitaka Saiki called China's ambassador, Cheng Yonghua, at 2 a.m to talk about their "serious concern" and show their protest.

Japan will safeguard its islands "by any means" and the Chinese frigate outside Japanese territorial waters is a grave matter and "behavior unilaterally escalating tensions," Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga told reporters in Tokyo.

China's patrol ships, from time to time, are spotted as close to or even as having entered waters which Japan considers its own. However, Thursday's event is probably the first time that a naval vessel entered this controversial region.

Japanese officials explain that Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has given instructions to his government to collaborate with the United States as well as other countries to deal with the issue.

A Japanese Maritime Self Defense Force guided-missile destroyer, Setogiri, also agreed that the ship from China came into the protected area just northeast of Kuba island, which was in the Senkakus. The ship stayed for two-and-a-half hours, confirmed Japan's defense ministry. Even three Russian battleships sailed close to the area.

"We're investigating and analyzing whether the two incidents are related," said Suga.

The Senkaku islands and rocks are located in vital shipping lanes and fishing grounds near significant oil and gas reserves.

U.S. forces will be forced to come to the aid of the Japanese in keeping with a mutual security pact, if the disputed islands are subjected to attack, confirms the Obama government.
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London :

Jonny Bairstow rode his luck to again rescue England from a top-order collapse with a century on the first day of the third Test against Sri Lanka at Lords.

At stumps, England were 279 for six, having been 84 for four when Bairstow (107 not out) came to the crease. It had been a similar story when Bairstow revived England from the depths of 83 for five in the first Test with a superb 140 on his Headingley home ground in a match England eventually won by an innings and 88 runs.

Rather than scoring a maiden Test century at Lords, Bairstow should have been out for 11 on Thursday when he clipped Nuwan Pradeep firmly off his pads straight to mid-wicket only for Shaminda Eranga to drop the catch.

The Yorkshireman had another break when Eranga, selected despite having his action reported in Englands series-clinching nine-wicket win in the second Test at the Riverside, reviewed a rejected lbw appeal when the batsman had made 56.

Replays showed the ball hitting leg stump, but not enough, according to the Decision Review System, to overturn Indian umpire S Ravis original not out decision.

Apart from Bairstow, only England captain Alastair Cook (85), who won the toss in sunny conditions ideal for batting, passed fifty on Thursday, with Chris Woakes 23 not out at stumps.

Sri Lanka performed admirably with the ball, albeit they were again sloppy in the field, on a good pitch where there was a touch of seam movement. Suranga Lakmal and Nuwan Pradeep shared four wickets while impressive left-arm spinner Rangana Herath rook an economical two for 45 in 21 overs.

England had already won this three-Test series at 2-0 up. Cook insisted in the build-up to this match that England were determined to correct their habit of losing dead Tests in series theyd already won following heavy defeats at the end of victorious campaigns at home to Australia in 2015 and away to South Africa earlier this year.

Cook, presented with a commemorative bat before play to mark his achievement in becoming the first England batsman to score 10,000 Test runs, a landmark he reached at the Riverside, and fellow opener Alex Hales compiled a 50-run stand in 74 balls.

By his own admission, Nick Compton was playing for his Test place. But Englands number three, on his Middlesex home ground, fell for one when he was caught behind off a gentle Lakmal away-swinger.

Lakmal struck again when he had Joe Root (three) lbw, hitting across the line. Pradeep got in on the act by bowling James Vince for 10 and England were now 84 for fourthe fifth time in their last seven Test innings they had lost four wickets before reaching 100.

Left-handed opener Cook was closing in on his 29th Test century when, shortly before tea, he was plumb lbw to Pradeep, bowling from around the wicket. Cook faced 173 balls, including nine fours.

Moeen Ali, fresh from his Test-best 155 not out at the Riverside, followed Hales in falling to the Herath/Mathews combination for 25.

Bairstow, strong off his pads and on the drive, cut Pradeep for four to go to 94. He then equalled his previous Test-best at Lords of 95, made against South Africa in 2012 before a single off Herath saw him to a 160-ball century.
Washington:

The US has asked Pakistan to ensure that its territory is not used for planning attacks in India, after Prime Minister Narendra Modi said terrorism is being incubated in Indias neighbourhood. This is one of the steps that the US is encouraging Pakistan to do for the improvement of its relations with India, a State Department spokesman.

We believe that Pakistan and India stand to benefit from practical cooperation and encourage direct dialogue aimed at increasing cooperation and reducing tensions, State Department Deputy Spokesman Mark Toner said.

And that includes steps by Pakistan to ensure that its territory is not used to plan attacks in India and that Pakistan takes steps to address or to go after, I think, all the terrorist groups that are currently using its territory, Toner said.

That continues to be an area of collaboration and cooperation that we pursue with Pakistan is its counterterrorism operations, he said in response to a question.

Responding to a question, Toner said Pakistan was one of the issues discussed between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and US President Barack Obama.

Certainly that was one of the discussions, frankly, that was raised at the or one of the issues, frankly, that was raised in discussions with Prime Minister Modi. They talked about a wide range of regional issues, in fact, he said.

Our bilateral relations with India and Pakistan are separate and stand on their own merits, and so I dont think we its not prudent for us to view our security cooperation in the region in kind of a zero-sum game or zero-sum terms, rather.

I think its important for the countries of the region that they all have constructive security relationships with each other. And thats Pakistan, thats India, and its also Afghanistan, Toner said.

In his address to the joint sitting of US Congress, Modi had said terrorism has to be fought with one voice as he commended the American Parliament for sending out a clear message by refusing to reward those who preach and practice terrorism for political gains, an apparent reference to the blocking of sale of 8 F-16 fighter jets to Pakistan.

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New Delhi:

In a move to expedite probe of some high-profile cases, CBI today formed a Special Investigation Team (SIT) headed by an Additional Director which will exclusively investigate important cases like VVIP chopper scam and alleged loan fraud by beleaguered businessman Vijay Mallya.

The SIT will be headed by Additional Director Rakesh Asthanaa, a 1984 batch IPS officer of Gujarat cadre, who headed the state SIT that went into the burning of Sabarmati Express train at Godhra in February 2002. He was also associated with the Fodder Scam probe.

The VVIP helicopter bribery scandal was earlier being probed by the Anti-Corruption Unit (ACU) of the agency under the supervision of Additional Director Y C Modi, a 1984-batch IPS officer of Assam-Meghalaya cadre.

The Bank, Securities and Fraud Cell (BSFC) of CBIs Mumbai branch, under the supervision of Special Director R K Dutta, a 1981-batch IPS officer of Karnataka cadre, was investigating the alleged loan fraud by Mallya.

The Joint Directors of ACU and BSFC will now report to Asthana about the progress made in the cases and follow his directions, CBI sources said.

The sources said both the probes will be monitored by CBI Director Anil Sinha. More experts and investigators will be working on these cases in a focused manner, the sources siad.

Asked if the SIT will be probing only these two cases, the sources replied in the negative. The agency had registered a case against former IAF Chief S P Tyagi and 12 others, including his three cousins and five foreign nationals, in connection with the VVIP chopper scam.

The allegation against the former Air Chief was that he had reduced flying ceiling of the helicopter from 6,000m to 4,500m (15,000 ft) so that AgustaWestland could be included in the bids.

Tyagi had, however, denied the allegations, saying the decision was taken in consultation with the officials of Special Protection Group and the Prime Ministers Office.

The case against Mallya is related the alleged default in repayment of over Rs 900 crore loan from IDBI bank and diversion of these funds.

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New Delhi:

Four persons have been arrested for allegedly hatching a plan to kill gangster Chhota Rajan, presently lodged in Tihar jail, at the behest of his arch rival and fugitive don Dawood Ibrahims confidant Chhota Shakeel. The four alleged contract killers, identified as Robinson, Junaid, Yunus and Manish, were arrested on June 3 following which they were sent to police remand and interrogated for five days.

Later, they were produced in a court which sent them to judicial custody, a senior police official said today. Investigation is underway, Special Commissioner of Police (Special Cell) Arvind Deep said.

Delhi Polices Special Cell zeroed down on the four through telephone intercepts. The accused were in constant touch with Shakeel, police claimed.

Once identified, the four were picked up from their residences in Rohini in Outer Delhi, Seelampur in northeast Delhi, Ghaziabad and Noida, the official said.

Police also claimed have recovered a pistol and live cartridges from possession of one of the accused. They had allegedly planned to eliminate Rajan while the don is taken to court for hearing.

The four accused are also lodged in Tihar jail, where Rajan is in a high-security ward, the official added.

Rajan (55), who was on a run for around 27 years, was arrested from Bali in Indonesia, based on a tip-off from Australian Federal Police, and brought to India in November last year.

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Amritsar:

In a blistering attack over SAD-BJP govt, Punjab Pradesh Congress Committee (PPCC) president Capt Amarinder Singh announced that he would release uncensored copies of the movie Udta Punjab in Majitha in Amritsar district on June 17. Majitha is the constituency of senior Shiromani Akali Dal leader and Punjab revenue minister Bikram Singh Majithia, who has been accused by political rivals of aiding the illicit drug trade.

Amarinder Singh, accused the revenue minister and said, Since Majitha, like Mexico, is the epicentre of drug trade in Punjab, it was decided to release the movie there.

Capt Amarinder has written to the producers of the movie, Anurag Kashyap and Ekta Kapoor, urging them to provide the uncensored CDs so that he can release it on the scheduled date to coincide with the worldwide premier of the movie on June 17.

He has also clarified to the producers that all the legal onus of releasing the uncensored CDs of the movie will be on him only. At the same time he took a dig at censor board chairman Pahlaj Nihalani for his unfailing devotion towards the BJP with his irrational attitude and utterances.

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Kabul:

An Indian woman has been abducted from Taimani area of Kabul and Afghan authorities are trying to secure her release, official sources said today. The woman from Kolkata was working for Aga Khan Foundation, Afghanistan. She was abducted last night.

The Indian embassy is in touch with Afghan authorities to ensure her safe release, the sources said.

The government is in contact with the womans family in Kolkata, they said.

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Dhaka:

An elderly Hindu ashram worker was today hacked to death by suspected Islamists in Bangladesh, becoming the fourth person from the minority community to be killed in a series of brutal attacks on secular activists in the Muslim-majority nation. Nityaranjan Pandey, 60, who was working as a volunteer for the past 40 years at the Thakur Anukul Chandra Satsanga Paramtirtha Hemayetpurdham Ashram, was murdered this morning in Pabnas Hemayetpur Upazila.

Pandey was taking his routine morning walk when several machete-wielding attackers hacked him in the neck, killing him on the spot only 200 yards away from the ashram, Pabnas police superintendent Alamgir Kabir told PTI over phone.

It appears, he said, the same group which carried out the recent clandestine attacks on secular and liberal activists and religious minorities killed Pandey.

Residents in the neighbourhood said the killers hit him on the head and neck with machetes and fled the scene.

He was the most devoted worker of our ashram...to our understanding he never developed personal enmity with anyone during his stay here for the past three decades, a member of the monasterys managing committee told newsmen at the scene.

The monastery, named after a famous Hindu saint, draws large number of Hindu devotees from across Bangladesh and neighbouring India.

Pandeys murder comes within a week of killings of a Hindu priest, a Christian grocer and wife of an anti-terror police officer.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the murder. The ISIS and al-Qaeda in Indian Peninsula have claimed responsibility for some of the recent attacks although the government denies their presence in Bangladesh.

The latest attack came just hours after police said they launched a nationwide anti-militancy week-long crackdown also engaging elite anti-crime Rapid Action Battalion and paramilitary Border Guard Bangladesh.

TV reports suggested the authorities detained over 100 people and 47 of them were detained alone from Jhinaidah, the scene of the murder of Hindu priest Sunil Ganguly on Sunday.

The security clampdown was launched a day after Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina promised to intensify a nationwide anti-terror security clampdown.

If they (militants) think they could turn Bangladesh upside down, they are wrong...they will be exposed to justice in the soil of Bangladesh and their patrons will also not be spared, she told the parliament.

In February, militants stabbed to death a Hindu priest at a temple and shot and wounded a devotee who went to his aid.

In April, a liberal professor was brutally hacked to death in Rajshahi city. In the same month, a Hindu tailor was hacked to death in his shop and Bangladeshs first gay magazine editor was brutally murdered along with a friend in his flat in Dhaka by Islamists.

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Mumbai:

Actress Kareena Kapoor, who will be seen in upcoming film Udta Punjab, has dismissed rumours about her pregnancy. Some of the actresss pictures had recently sparked rumours that she is pregnant.



When asked if the news of motherhood is true, Kareena said, God willing hopefully. I am a woman. But right now there is nothing to say about it.



When prodded further if the news of her pregnancy was false, the Ki and Ka actress said, The fact that you all are talking about it is making me super excited.



Kareena will be seen next in Udta Punjab alongside Shahid Kapoor, Alia Bhatt and Diljit Dosanjh. The film is mired in controversy with the Censor Board for its content and language. The Abhishek Chaubey-directed film is scheduled to release on June 17.

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Lucknow:

BJP today cited a purported sting operation to fire a fresh salvo at the Samajwadi Party government in Uttar Pradesh, alleging it has exposed the ruling partys collusion with Mathuras Jawahar Bag encroachers. The party also asked the state government to immediately recommed for a CBI inquiry so that truth could come out.

The sting has exposed Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav and his government. He had blamed officers for the violence. Now it has emerged that over 80 intelligence inputs were sent to the government but it did not act because it was in collusion with land mafia, BJP national secretary Shrikant Sharma claimed.

The sting operation purportedly showed intelligence officials saying they had informed the Uttar Pradesh government about threats posed by the well-armed encroachers, who were also part of a sect.

The government has been making efforts to cover up its crime but BJP will continue with its agitation till all those involved are exposed, he alleged.

Sharma said Yadav should apologise to officials for blaming them for the killing of cops and demanded that the chief minister should not take action against the officials shown in the sting video.

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New Delhi:

Five men were today sentenced to life imprisonment by a Delhi court for gangraping a 52-year-old Danish woman at knife-point near the New Delhi railway station two years ago. Additional Sessions Judge Ramesh Kumar awarded the jail term to convicts Mahender alias Ganja (25), Mohd Raja (25), Raju (23), Arjun (21) and Raju Chakka (30).

For the offence of section 376 D IPC, all the convicts are sentenced to life imprisonment, the judge said while pronouncing the order.

The court also imposed a fine of Rs 83,000 each on Raju and Raju Chakka, Rs 93,000 each on Mahender and Mohd Raja and Rs 1,03,000 on Arjun respectively.

The court has held these five men guilty for the offences under IPC sections 376 (D) (gang rape), 395 (dacoity), 366 (kidnapping), 342 (wrongful confinement), 506 (criminal intimidation) and 34 (common intention).

Besides sentencing these convicts for the offence of gangrape, the court also awarded varying jail terms to them for other offences for which they were held guilty.

According to the police, the nine persons, all vagabonds, had robbed and gangraped the Danish tourist at knife-point on the night of January 14, 2014, after leading her to a secluded spot close to the Divisional Railway Officers Club near the railway station.

The sixth accused, 56-year-old Shyam Lal had died in February this year and proceedings against him were abated.

Three other accused in the case are juveniles and inquiry against them is in progress before the Juvenile Justice Board.

Before commencement of proceedings today, the convicts were taken out of the courtroom and were frisked by the police on the direction of the judge.

Special Public Prosecutor Atul Shrivastava had sought maximum punishment for the convicts ie. imprisonment till the remainder of natural life, saying the crime was committed in a barbaric and inhuman manner.

Legal aid counsel Dinesh Sharma, who represented the convicts, had sought leniency for them saying they belong to poor background.

The victim had come here on January 1, 2014, and stayed for a couple of days before leaving for Agra. After visiting several places, she returned to Delhi on January 13, 2014, and stayed in a hotel in Paharganj near the station.

The next day when she was returning to her hotel, she lost her way and had asked one of the accused for directions when the men waylaid and gangraped her. During the trial, the accused had claimed innocence.

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Washington:

Large animals hunted for their parts - such as elephant ivory and shark fins - are in double jeopardy of extinction due to their large body size and high value, according to a new study. The study shows underappreciated risk to marine species similar to that of iconic terrestrial species, but elevated by key differences in the sea.



We typically assume that if a species is reduced to low numbers, individuals will be hard to find, hunters will stop hunting, and populations will be given a chance to recover, said Loren McClenachan of Colby College in the US.



But the extreme values of these species mean that without significant conservation intervention, they will be hunted to extinction, said McClenachan.



McClenachan, along with Andrew Cooper and Nicholas Dulvy from Simon Fraser University in Canada, identified a taxonomically diverse group of more than 100 large marine and terrestrial species that are targeted for international luxury markets.



They estimated the value of these species across three points of sale and explored the relationships among extinction risk, value and body size. They also quantified the effects of two mitigating factors: poaching fines and geographic range size.



The analysis showed a threshold above which economic value is the key driver of extinction risk. Although lower-value species are influenced primarily by their biology, the most valuable species are at high risk of extinction no matter their size.



Once mean product values are greater than USD 12,557 per kilogramme, body size no longer drives risk, the report shows. Researchers also uncovered important differences between marine and terrestrial species that point to elevated risk in the sea: although marine products are generally less valuable on a per kilogramme basis, individual animals are still just as valuable as the most valuable terrestrial species.



An individual whale shark, for example, is about as valuable as the most valuable terrestrial species: rhinoceroses and tigers. Hunters dont kill kilogrammes, they kill individuals, so we need to pay attention to these high values of individual animals, McClenachan said.



The risk to marine species is not reduced for species with larger ranges as it is on land, either. The study was published in the journal Current Biology.



The assumption that large ranges protect species from extinction is based on conservation science done on land - where animals found in multiple countries have a higher chance of protection in at least one location - and appears not to apply to marine species, where widespread and little-policed hunting contrasts with tighter controls on land, McClenachan said.



The study points to the importance of considering trade of marine animals and differences between terrestrial and marine animals when it comes to conservation.

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New Delhi:

In an attempt to vanish Islamic State members from area near Syria and Iraq border, the US-led coalition airstrikes severely injured the terrorist group leader Abu Bakr Baghdadi.



According to few reports by Arabic media, it has been confirmed that Baghdadi and other leaders in the Islamist group were wounded on Thursday in a coalition bombing raid on one of the ISIS command headquarters close to the Syrian border.



The planes of the international coalition yesterday bombed a location where there is a base of Isis members along the border area between Iraq and Syria, 65 kilometres west of Nineveh, the Iraqi source was quoted in a news channel.



Coalition spokesman Colonel Chris Garver said he was aware of the reports, but added that he had "nothing to confirm this at this time", according to a Reuters report.



In recent few months, there have been several reports claiming Baghdadi's injuries and even deaths but sadly, none of the report managed to get an official confirmation.

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Mumbai:

Noted scriptwriter Salim Khan is happy to see the film industry coming together in support of Udta Punjab which is caught up in a censorship battle.



Produced by Phantom films and Balaji Motion Pictures, the Abhishek Chaubey-directed film that delves into the drug menace in the state of Punjab, faced troubles with Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) which demanded 89 cuts in the film. It also included removal of the word Punjab from the movie as well its title.



The 80-year-old Sholay writer took to Twitter to praise the film fraternity for its united stand on the issue.



This is the 1st time the industry is united. Else the producer fought his battle alone against the whims and outdated morality of the censors. Keep it up. The winning post though far but can be seen, Salim wrote.



Udta Punjab starring Shahid Kapoor, Alia Bhatt, Kareena Kapoor Khan and Diljit Dosanjh is scheduled for release on June 17.



Amitabh Bachchan, Aamir Khan, Karan Johar, Shekhar Kapur, Mahesh Bhatt, Mukesh Bhatt among other noted film personalities have come out in support of the film.

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New York:

In a bizarre case, a US school has been allowed to give detention to a 11-year-old boy for bullying another student by telling him that vegetarians are idiots.



New Jersey education officials said the school was allowed to give detention to the sixth-grader after the case climbed up the legal ladder. The state Commissioner of Educations office ruled that the Montgomery school district can give detention to the student who told another sixth-grader that vegetarians are idiots, the Asbury Park Press reported.



The case rose to the commissioners office because the students parent contested the districts finding that the remarks about vegetarianism constituted bullying, a finding that was later backed by a state administrative law judge.



The case began on October 30, 2014, when the two 11-year-old sixth-graders were having lunch in the cafeteria of Montgomerys Lower Middle School. One of the students, identified in court papers as C C, made the comments to another student, K S, about his decision not to eat meat.



The investigation by the schools anti-bullying specialist, guidance counsellor Lesley Haas, found that C C told K S that its not good to not eat meat and that he should eat meat because hed be smarter and have bigger brains, according to court papers.



C C also admitted that he told K S that vegetarians are idiots. Haas concluded that C Cs comments met the legal definition of harassment, intimidation and bullying under state law because they targeted a students distinguishing characteristic and substantially interfered with the rights of K S and had the effect of insulting or demeaning him.



Superintendent of Schools Stephanie Gartenberg agreed with Haas conclusion. C C was then given five lunch-time detentions where he was given the opportunity to speak with staffers about his remarks. No other disciplinary actions were imposed.



C Cs parent then requested a hearing before the school board, an option under state law. During the hearing in February, 2015, the attorney was permitted to question Haas. Following the hearing, the school board agreed with Gartenbergs decision and again the parents were notified of the outcome.Four months later, C Cs parent filed an appeal with the state Commissioner of Education, asking that the school boards finding be overturned.



The case then went before Administrative Law Judge John S Kennedy, who ruled in March that K Ss vegetarianism was a distinguishing characteristic based on previous bullying cases and that C Cs comments were insults.

For all the Latest World News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
New Delhi:

JNU students union president Kanhaiya Kumar, along with 42 others, were today detained by police at Bihar Bhawan in Chanakyapuri here for protesting against the alleged attack on students in hunger strike at the College of Arts and Crafts in Patna.



The demonstration started around 3.30 PM, following which Kumar and 42 others were put inside a bus and detained at Parliament Street Police Station here. The protesters were detained considering law and order issues, DCP (New Delhi) Jatin Narwal said.



The protesters also demanded extension of the date of Bihar Public Service Commission (BPSC) main exams so that the dates do not clash with that of UPSC prelims.



The condition of education in Bihar is continuously deteriorating. The government is not taking the demands of students regarding quality education seriously. And those who are fighting for this significant and relevant cause are facing violence and imprisonment, Kumar said.



He further said, from the last few days, whenever there is a protest, Delhi Police detains us in five minutes. Throughout India, students are being attacked and whenever they protest, which is an elemental right, they are not allowed to do so. It is an attack on democracy.



Earlier this week, seven students of College of Arts and Crafts under Patna University sustained injuries in an attack allegedly carried out by some miscreants while they were protesting against the conduct of the administration.



The protesters were demanding that the corrupt principal of the college be sacked when they were shot at by the guards of the vice chancellor of the University. The goons and police trashed them, and when others went for protest against these actions, they were detained. We demand their immediate release, Kumar said.



We will keep the struggle alive and if needed we shall go to Patna, he added.

For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
New Delhi:

Amid a raging row over film Udta Punjab, Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi will lead a dharna in Jalandhar on June 13 to highlight rampant drug abuse and collapse of law and order in the state.



Will join the mass protest in Jalandhar on Monday, 13th June, to highlight rampant drug abuse and collapse of law & order in Punjab, Gandhi said on Twitter.



Gandhi had raised the issue of rampant drug abuse among youths in Punjab way back in 2012 when he was subjected to ridicule and abuse by the SAD-BJP government.



Besides Gandhi, all senior party leaders and workers from the state will take part in the dharna, Congress MLA Rana Gurjeet Singh said, adding eradication of drug misuse from Punjab is the top priority of Congress.



Two days ago, Gandhi had made a strong pitch for release of film Udta Punjab which focuses on substance abuse, noting that the state has a crippling drug problem and censoring the movie would not fix it.



Congress has alleged Prime Minister Narendra Modi has covertly ensured that the film is banned or at least neutered to hide the scale of the drug problem in Punjab.



Congress has been insisting that BJP is a coalition partner of Akali Dal and is equally culpable for the inaction of the Punjab government on the drug menace.



Assembly polls in Punjab are scheduled next year.

For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
New Delhi:

In a bid to make himself heard in the Delhi Assembly, BJP MLA Vijender Gupta stood on his bench to make allegations over alleged water scam in the national capital. Vijender Gupta was protesting against the Speaker for allegedly not letting him speak when the assembly session was on.



Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and deputy CM Manish Sisodia were caught laughing during the incident; other member started shooting it on mobile phones.



Arvind Kejriwal, reacted to the incident on Twitter and wrote: Shocking.



He also blamed saffron party for it and said, BJP has no respect for democratic institutions like Legislative Assembly. Look at BJPs Leader of Oppositions conduct.

WATCH: BJP's Vijender Gupta stand on a bench to protest against Delhi Govt inside State Assemblyhttps://t.co/fY9FQyEzI0  ANI (@ANI_news) June 10, 2016

For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
Vienna:

Indias membership of the Nuclear Suppliers Group is expected to be deliberated upon by the atomic trading club at its plenary later this month in Seoul as a meeting here on Indias bid remained inconclusive.



Though the US was strongly pushing Indias case and most member countries supported it, it was China which opposed it arguing that the NSG should not relax specific criteria for new applicants. The NSG controls access to sensitive nuclear technology.



A number of countries, which were initially opposed to Indias bid on the ground that it was yet to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), eased their positions and were ready to work out a compromise. However, China stuck to its position.



In the meeting, China did not openly oppose Indias membership directly but linked it to signing of NPT.



The NSG works under the principle of unanimity and even one countrys vote against India will scuttle Indias bid.



Besides China, the member countries in the 48-nation group which were opposed to Indias membership were New Zealand, Ireland, Turkey, South Africa and Austria.



Sources here said chair of the NSG has taken note of views expressed by member countries and will list the matter for further discussion at NSG pleanary scheduled to be held in Seoul on June 24.



It is understood India was hopeful of getting support from China as it had supported Indias case in 2008 when India got a waiver from the NSG to allow US nuclear trade with India.



India has asserted that being a signatory to the NPT was not essential for joining the NSG as there has been a precedent in this regard, citing the case of France.



Mexico yesterday backed Indias NSG bid during the visit of Prime Minister Narendra Modi there. The Mexican support followed that of the US and Switzerland. Japan too has expressed its support for Indias inclusion in the grouping.



The NSG looks after critical issues relating to nuclear sector and its members are allowed to trade in and export nuclear technology. Membership of the grouping will help India significantly expand its atomic energy sector.



The US has been pushing for Indias membership.



Ahead of the meeting here, US Secretary of State John Kerry had written a letter to the NSG member countries which are not supportive of Indias bid, saying they should agree not to block consensus on Indian admission.



A joint statement issued after talks between Modi and Obama said the US called on NSG participating governments to support Indias application when it comes up at the NSG Plenary later this month.

For all the Latest World News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
Kansas government kidnaps veterans children for planning to legally use marijuana to treat Americas wounded warriors

Since President Obama has shirked his constitutional duty to take care that all laws of the United States are enforced, especially its drug laws, it is incumbent upon Congress to clear up the lingering confusion and frustration regarding marijuana use. Thats because by not enforcing the federal prohibitions against pot use, states have been allowed to enact a patchwork of their own laws that not only conflict with federal statutes but also rules governing state and federal agencies as they pertain to drug use among the population.

One of the most recent victims of this mess is Raymond Schwab, a Kansas father and veteran who had been given a prescription for medical marijuana from neighboring Colorado, where its legal.

People who dont understand the medical value of cannabis are tearing my family apart, he told The Guardian.

Last spring Schwab attempted to move his family to Colorado to grow medical marijuana for fellow needy vets, but while he and his wife were preparing to make the move the state moved in and took five of their children, ages 5 to 16, for suspicion of child endangerment, ensnaring his family in interstate marijuana politics, the paper reported in online editions.

Such cases have become major causes for pot activists and confused courts, family attorneys and Child Protective Services divisions who are all unsure about where legal lines regarding pot use are drawn now that some states have approved it for recreational use (Colorado and Washington, among them).

Theres still a stigma against parents who use medical marijuana, Jennifer Ani, a family law attorney, told The Guardian. She stated that she sees about five cases a month, 95 percent of which there is no child endangerment whatsoever. As much as marijuana is a moving target throughout the nation, with Child Protective Services its even more so.

Ani added that concerns regarding contact-highs for kids or children chomping down on raw cannabis are the most oft-cited concerns by courts and agencies. However, she said, those are not scientifically sound arguments that a child is most definitely in any danger. She says that contact highs are largely mythical; as for cannabis, it has to be cooked before it can get you high.

The Guardian reported further:

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services declined to comment on the Schwab case but pointed us to their guide Parental Drug Use As Child Abuse, which says that exposing children to the manufacture, possession, or distribution of illegal drugs is considered child endangerment in 11 States [including Kansas] and the Federal Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act requires states to have policies and procedures in place to notify child protective services agencies of substance-exposed newborns.

But what about states that have legalized the drug? Isnt there some leeway there? Cant state and federal agencies decide, as our president has done, which rules they want to enforce and which ones they want to ignore? No, they cant  only a president whom Congress refuses to hold responsible gets to arbitrarily enforce (or ignore) laws.

And through his actions (and inactions), Obama has also strained relations between states, especially those that border Colorado who have a) not legalized pot for recreational use; and b) whose state agencies are bound by state law (and federal statutes) to act in certain ways when pot is unlawfully consumed inside their borders.

In fact last year, The Guardian reported, sheriffs from Nebraska, Oklahoma and Kansas filed a lawsuit against Colorado for its marijuana laws, saying it only increased trafficking. This month the Kansas attorney general sent out a survey to 500 county and district attorneys seeking input as to how Colorado pot is affecting their caseloads.

As for Schwab, a U.S. Navy vet who served during the Gulf War, he said that he uses a cannabis butter he makes at home to treat his post-traumatic stress disorder, and for chronic pain. Before then, he says he went years without a diagnosis, becoming addicted to pain medications and then heroin. He said he got sober after a rehab stint in 2011.

He arranged in early 2015 for his job with the Department of Veterans Affairs to be transferred from Kansas to Colorado; while preparing for the move, he and his wife arranged for the five kids to stay with relatives. One day, after driving 60 miles from home, they received a call that said they must appear that day before an emergency hearing because their kids had been taken into state custody. He said one of the relatives  he did not give a name  took his kids to a police station saying their parents had abandoned them to go work on a pot farm in Colorado.

Sources:

The Guardian

The Washington Post

ABC News

Science.NaturalNews.com

Submit a correction >>
DANBURY - A black bear that climbed a backyard tree to escape a city police officer Friday morning was tranquilized and captured at 1 p.m., Mayor Mark Boughton said.

The bear could have escaped capture by simply leaving the neighborhood when a police officer was shooing him out of the neighborhood.
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...
TORONTO, June 9, 2016 /CNW/ - 01 Communique Laboratory Inc. (ONE:TSX-V) today announced results for its second quarter fiscal 2016, which ended April 30, 2016. The loss and comprehensive loss for the second quarter was $216,006 (2015 - $370,873). The adjusted loss, which excludes non-cash expenses for stock-based compensation and depreciation, was $79,883 (2015 - $296,358). The Company completed the period with $267,003 of cash and cash equivalents.

"Our plan is to continue operations as well as pursue the matter with Citrix Systems Inc. ("Citrix") until its conclusion," said Andrew Cheung, President and CEO for 01 Communique. "We have significantly reduced our operating expenses in an effort to conserve our cash as we work through this process. With respect to the lawsuit with Citrix, we filed post-trial motions with the District Court that presided over the trial. These included motions for renewed judgment as a matter of law and for a new trial. All briefs with respect to these motions have been filed and we are now waiting for a decision by the District Court and then an appeal to the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit can be taken, if needed."

An Update on the Company's Operations follows:

In addition to moving forward with the appeal process in its patent lawsuit against Citrix the Company plans to continue and work with Hitachi as well as approach other companies with a goal for them to license the Company's products and technology. Substantially all development work has been completed on the products that the Company is looking to license and with respect to the appeal process the Company relies on its lawyers and hence minimal internal resources are expected. Accordingly, the Company has reduced operating expenses significantly as it works through the appeal process. To assist in achieving this expense reduction the Company's executive management and board of directors are not drawing a salary.

Operating expenses for second quarter 2016 were $189,328 (2015 - $212,598). Excluding non cash expenses for stock based compensation and depreciation the cash operating expenses for second quarter 2016 were $103,831 (2015 - $338,514) a reduction of $234,683. After taking into account the expense reductions that took place earlier this year the cash operating expenses for the third quarter 2016 are expected to be approximately $50,000.

Background on the Company's patent lawsuit against Citrix:

In February 2006, the Company commenced a lawsuit in the United States District Court, Northern District of Ohio, Eastern Division, against Citrix alleging infringement by their GoToMyPC product line of the '479 Patent. On January 11, 2016 a jury trial commenced in the lawsuit with the jury reaching and returning a unanimous verdict on January 19, 2016. The Court entered Judgment as follows:

Defendants Citrix have not infringed claims 24 or 45 of 01 Communique's patent (United States Patent No. 6,928,479); Claims 24 and 45 of United States Patent No. 6,928,479 are not invalid; Plaintiff 01 Communique takes no damages from Citrix; Except as set forth above or adjudicated through Summary Judgment, all other claims and counterclaims in this matter were dismissed; Each party retains its right to, and does not waive its right to, file timely motions for renewed judgment as a matter of law, for new trial, for the award of attorneys' fees, for the award of costs, and to prosecute an appeal from any aspect of the case to the extent allowed by statute, the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, and/or this Court.

On March 7, 2016 the Company filed post-trial motions with the District Court that presided over the trial. These included motions for renewed judgment as a matter of law and for a new trial. Citrix's opposition brief to these motions was filed and the Company's reply brief was filed on April 28, 2016. Now that all briefs are filed we are waiting for a decision by the District Court on this matter and then an appeal to the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit can be taken, if needed.

Neither TSX Venture Exchange ("TSX-V") 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.

About 01 Communique

Established in 1992, 01 Communique Laboratory Inc. (TSX-V:ONE) offers a suite of remote access services designed for small-medium sized business, mobile professionals and IT service providers. 01's software as a service offerings are deployed on-demand and include functionality enabling on-line meetings, remote computing and IT support. 01's suite of products includes its remote access offering I'm InTouch (www.imintouch.com), its online meeting offering (www.imintouchmeeting.com) and its remote support offering I'm OnCall (www.imoncall.com ) products are protected in the U.S.A. by its patents #6,928,479 / #6,938,076 / #8,234,701 and in Canada by its patents #2,309,398 / #2,524,039 and Japan by its patent #4,875,094. For more information, visit http://www.01com.comor call (905) 795-888 or (800) 668-2185 (North America only).

Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-looking Statements.

Certain statements in this news release may constitute "forward-looking" statements which involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors which may cause the actual results, performance or achievements of the company, or industry results, to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. When used in this news release, such statements use such words as "may", "will", "expect", "believe", "plan", "intend", "are confident" and other similar terminology. These statements reflect current expectations regarding future events and operating performance and speak only as of the date of this news release. Forward-looking statements involve significant risks and uncertainties, should not be read as guarantees of future performance or results, and will not necessarily be accurate indications of whether or not such results will be achieved. A number of factors could cause actual results to differ materially from the results discussed in the forward-looking statements, including, but not limited to, the factors discussed under "Risk Factors" in the company's Annual Information Form filed on SEDAR. Although the forward-looking statements contained in this news release are based upon what management of the Company believes are reasonable assumptions, the company cannot assure investors that actual results will be consistent with these forward looking statements. These forward-looking statements are made as of the date of this news release, and the company assumes no obligation to update or revise them to reflect new events or circumstances.

01 Communique Laboratory Inc. SELECTED FINANCIAL INFORMATION

Consolidated Statements of Financial Position Unaudited















30-Apr-16 31-Oct-15





Assets



Current assets



Cash and cash equivalents $267,003 $551,205 Accounts receivable 31,880 112,034 Prepaid expenses and other assets 86,101 21,618

384,984 684,857





Property and equipment 6,373 8,596

$ 391,357 $ 693,453





Liabilities and Shareholders' Equity









Current liabilities



Accounts payable and accrued liabilities $ 511,162 $ 549,499 Deferred revenue 15,033 15,081

526,195 564,580





Liability portion of Debenture 366,824 359,714

893,019 924,294 Shareholders' equity



Share capital 40,832,777 40,628,777 Equity portion of Debenture 47,111 47,111 Contributed surplus 5,233,687 5,036,997 Deficit (46,615,237) (45,943,726)

(501,662) (230,841)

$ 391,357 $ 693,453











01 Communique Laboratory Inc. SELECTED FINANCIAL INFORMATION Consolidated Statements of Operations and Comprehensive Income For the 3 and 6 month periods ended April 30, 2016 and 2015

Unaudited















for the 3 months ending



for the 6 months ending





30-Apr-16 30-Apr-15

30-Apr-16 30-Apr-15















Revenue $ 37,509 $ 42,185

$ 47,003 $ 53,293















Expenses (income):











Selling, general and administrative 189,328 212,598

453,089 413,696

Patent litigation & re-examination expenses - -

- 6,658

Research and development 50,625 200,431

239,078 396,155

Interest (59) (841)

(763) (1,414)



239,894 412,188

691,404 815,095

Loss before interest and accretion on liability











component of debenture $ (202,385) $ (370,003)

$ (644,401) $ (761,802)















Interest on debenture 10,000 650

20,000 650

Accretion on liability portion of debenture 3,620 220

7,110 220















Loss for the period and comprehensive loss $ (216,005) $ (370,873)

$ (671,511) $ (762,672)















Loss per common share











Basic $ (0.003) $ (0.01)

$ (0.010) $ (0.01)

Diluted $ (0.003) $ (0.01)

$ (0.010) $ (0.01)















Weighted average number of common shares







Basic 66,543,807 65,743,807

66,443,807 65,743,807





Diluted 66,543,807 65,743,807

66,443,807 65,743,807







01 Communique Laboratory Inc. SELECTED FINANCIAL INFORMATION Consolidated Statements of Cash Flows For the 3 and 6 month periods ended April 30, 2016 and 2015



three months ending



six months ending



30-Apr-16 30-Apr-15

30-Apr-16 30-Apr-15 Cash provided by (used in):





















Operating activities:









Loss for the period $ (216,005) $ (370,873)

$ (671,511) $ (762,672) Adjustments to reconcile the loss for the period to net cash flows from operating activities









Depreciation 1,322 1,529

2,877 3,327 Stock-based compensation 134,800 72,986

277,690 118,070 Accretion on liability portion of debenture 3,620 220

7,110 220 Interest paid on debenture 10,000 -

20,000 - Interest income (59) (841)

(763) (1,414) Change in non-cash working capital (35,519) (31,548)

(22,713) (205,297)

(101,841) (328,527)

(387,310) (847,766) Interest income received 59 841

763 1,414

(101,782) (327,686)

(386,547) (846,352)











Financing activities:









Issue of common shares - -

123,000 - Issue of debenture - 400,000

- 400,000 Interest paid on debenture (10,000)



(20,000)

Investing activities:









Purchase of capital assets - (60)

(655) (742) Increase (decrease) in cash (111,782) 72,254

(284,202) (447,093)











Cash and cash equivalents, beginning of period 378,785 851,466

551,205 1,370,813 Cash and cash equivalents, end of period $ 267,003 $ 923,720

$ 267,003 $ 923,720

SOURCE 01 Communique Laboratory Inc.

For further information: INVESTOR CONTACT: Brian Stringer, Chief Financial Officer, 01 Communique, (905) 795-2888 x204, [email protected]
FORT MCMURRAY, AB, June 9, 2016 /CNW/ - G4S Canada provides security at two of the largest oil sands locations in the area and quickly became heavily involved in the evacuation process. And at peak times, hundreds of G4S employees and many G4S vehicles have been deployed around the city, helping to secure abandoned homes, businesses and other critical infrastructure.



"Nearly 3,000 evacuees arrived at the work camp site, and our team worked closely with our client's security management team to ensure their safety and that they had sufficient food and shelter for several days," explained Dennis Ellahi, Vice President, Western Region, who oversaw the G4S operation.



"As well as looking after the general health and safety of the evacuees, we were also charged with controlling the traffic entering the camp and crowd management  essentially helping to make sure everything remained calm and organized during a very stressful situation."



On May 3, as the wildfires reached Fort McMurray itself, the energy company operating the camp decided to send non-essential employees home to make room for additional evacuees.



"I received a call late that night asking if we could deploy personnel to the client's airports hangars in Calgary and Edmonton, to assist their staff arriving by plane," said Dennis.

"Within two hours, we'd dispatched full crews to the hangars, and for the next few days they worked round the clock as flights arrived from the oil sands operation."

"The G4S leadership team there is comprised of former senior law enforcement and military personnel, and we were called on to provide leadership and direction during the evacuation. Our team helped make sure all the workers were evacuated onto flights back to Calgary and Edmonton."

As the fires began to subside in Fort McMurray towards the end of May, G4S was tasked with re-entering the city to assist the cleanup operation and ready the way for evacuees to return to their homes.

At peak times, hundreds of G4S employees and many G4S vehicles have been deployed around the city, helping to secure abandoned homes, businesses and other critical infrastructure.

The G4S team is securing and providing access to critical points within the city, controlling access to areas deemed safe to return to and preventing access to those deemed unsafe for entry.

Dennis explained: "Within that access control function, our tasks include fire watch  which is reporting hot spots or new fires to the emergency services  and general observe-and-report functions."

There have been constant reminders of the ever-present threat from the wildfires still raging in the area.

One major problem facing emergency workers and potentially even returning evacuees is the influx of wildlife from the surrounding forests  attracted by the food left behind by residents, shops and restaurants during the evacuation.

"Fort McMurray is a city in the middle of the forest," said Dennis. "Much wildlife died in the fires and the rest fled, but as the flames moved away the animals made their way back and began to search for food.

"The deserted city has become a favourite spot for everything from birds and foxes to bears."

Another of the responsibilities of the G4S team in Fort McMurray has been to secure a number of checkpoints in and out of the city, monitoring and reporting the activities of wildlife.

Dennis revealed: "We've had one or two encounters with wildlife, such as when a deer jumped in front of a patrol vehicle, but our colleagues have been through wildlife awareness training and are equipped to manage the situation."

The region faces a long road to recovery in the aftermath of the fire. G4S, which has an office in Fort McMurray and has a long traditional of providing security services to the region, will remain engaged in helping the residents and its various customers in and around northern Alberta for the short and long-term.

About G4S Canada

G4S is a leading provider of security solutions in Canada. G4S offers a unique combination of corporate risk services, secure systems integration, screening services, cash management solutions, and security personnel. G4S employs thousands of Canadians and operates in offices across the country. For more information, visit www.g4s.ca

About G4S

G4S is the world's leading global, integrated security company specializing in the delivery of security and related services to customers across six continents.

The group is active in more than 100 countries, and is the largest employer quoted on the London Stock Exchange with over 610,000 employees and has a secondary stock exchange listing in Copenhagen. For more information on G4S, visit www.g4s.com.

SOURCE G4S Canada

Image with caption: "Many G4S vehicles have been deployed around the city, helping to secure abandoned homes, businesses and other critical infrastructure. (CNW Group/G4S Canada)". Image available at: http://photos.newswire.ca/images/download/20160609_C4126_PHOTO_EN_710372.jpg

For further information: Katie McLeod (Communications): 647-678-5111, [email protected]
TORONTO, June 9, 2016 /CNW/ - The Institute for Catastrophic Loss Reduction (ICLR) supports the announcement made today in Dawson City by the Canadian Council of Forest Ministers reaffirming the Council's commitment to the Canadian Wildland Fire Strategy. Paul Kovacs, Executive Director of ICLR said, "This is a thoughtful plan to address the growing risk to Canadians from wildfire. Our research shows that the approach set out in the Strategy, with a focus on prevention, mitigation, and preparedness, holds great potential to reduce the risk of loss across Canada from wildfire."

Through the remainder of this century, research by the Institute predicts that millions of Canadians are expected to choose to live, work, and play in or near Canada's forests. Over this period, wildfire experts predict that the area burned in Canada will double due to climate change. More people exposed to wildfire combined with more fire is a dangerous combination. Unless action is taken there will be an increase in devastating wildfire losses, like those experienced in Kelowna, Slave Lake, and Fort McMurray. In our opinion, the Canadian Wildland Fire Strategy sets out an innovative and welcome approach to confront this growing challenge.

The Canadian Council of Forest Ministers issued a Canadian Wildland Fire Strategy Declaration in 2005. Over the past decade, the provincial and territorial governments have invested in programs to implement important aspects of the Strategy. These investments are well advanced, although the size of the problem warns that the provincial and territorial governments need to do more. The federal government did not implement the 2005 strategy. Indeed, in several areas, like research, federal efforts have been reduced despite the growing threat. A formal commitment between the federal government and the provincial and territorial governments is required if the Strategy is to become a truly national initiative.

The Institute urges the federal, provincial, and territorial governments to invest in implementation of the Canadian Wildland Fire Strategy as announced today. The Strategy sets out a comprehensive, national approach to reducing the risk of loss from the growing threat of wildfire.

* * * *

Established in 1998 by Canada's property and casualty insurers, ICLR is an independent, not-for-profit research institute based in Toronto and at Western University in London, Canada. ICLR is a centre of excellence for disaster loss prevention research and education. ICLR's research staff is internationally recognized for pioneering work in a number of fields including wind and seismic engineering, atmospheric sciences, water resources engineering and economics. Multi-disciplined research is a foundation for ICLR's work to build communities more resilient to disasters.

SOURCE Institute for Catastrophic Loss Reduction

For further information: Media contact: Glenn McGillivray, Managing Director, ICLR, tel. 416-364-8677, ext. 3216, cell 416-277-5827, [email protected]
OTTAWA, June 9, 2016 /CNW Telbec/ - Please be advised that Northwest Territories Premier Bob McLeod, Chair of the Aboriginal Affairs Working Group (AAWG), and the Honourable Carolyn Bennett, Minister of Indigenous and Northern Affairs, will co-host a media availability following the inaugural Federal-Provincial-Territorial-Indigenous Forum (FPTIF). The FPTIF meeting will include federal, provincial and territorial Ministers responsible for Indigenous/Aboriginal Affairs, and the leaders of the Assembly of First Nations (AFN), Metis National Council (MNC), Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami (ITK), Congress of Aboriginal Peoples (CAP), and Native Women's Association of Canada (NWAC).

Provincial and territorial Ministers and Leaders of the five National Indigenous Organizations will be available for the media availability.

Out of town media may participate by teleconference at the following number:

Toll-free line: 1-866-969-8429

Conference ID: 7007230

Please note this availability is subject to change without notice.

Date:

Friday June 10, 2016

Time:

3:00 p.m. (EDT)

Where:

Hotel Delta Ottawa

Ball Room A

101, Lyon Street

Ottawa (Ontario)

Follow us on Twitter: @AANDCanada (https://twitter.com/AANDCanada)

SOURCE Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada

For further information: Andrew Livingstone, Senior Cabinet Communications Advisor, Department of the Executive Government of the Northwest Territories, (867) 767-9140 ext. 11091, [email protected]; INAC Media Relations, (819) 953-1160, [email protected]
Amnesty International on Friday claimed the Nigerian military shot dead unarmed civilians before a march to mark the anniversary of the 19...





Amnesty International on Friday claimed the Nigerian military shot dead unarmed civilians before a march to mark the anniversary of the 1967 Biafran declaration of independence.Police have said at least 10 people were killed  five in the town of Onitsha, Anambra state, and five in Asaba, in neighbouring Delta state  in violence linked to the commemoration on May 30.The Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) movement, which has revived calls for an independent homeland for the Igbo people in southeast Nigeria, claimed at least 35 were killed.Amnesty said it was unclear exactly how many people lost their lives, as soldiers  who the army says acted in self-defence  took away the dead and injured.But it stated that based on visits to hospitals and mortuaries at least 17 were killed and nearly 50 injured in Onitsha alone.The real number is likely to be higher, it added in a statement, saying some of the dead and injured seen by researchers had been shot in the back, indicating they were fleeing at the time.Opening fire on peaceful IPOB supporters and bystanders, who clearly posed no threat to anyone is an outrageous use of unnecessary and excessive force and resulted in multiple deaths and injuries, said Amnestys Nigeria director, MK Ibrahim.One person was shot dead as they slept, he added.
Mr Emmanuel Olokpo, the 41 years old man who was allegedly stabbed by a mob believed to be Muslim youths last Tuesday for not fasting in...

Mr Emmanuel Olokpo, the 41 years old man who was allegedly stabbed by a mob believed to be Muslim youths last Tuesday for not fasting in Kakuri, Kaduna has said that he is alive and recuperating. Olokpo, who is recuperating at St. Gerald Hospital, told newsmenI am alive, and I am getting better, Nobody should worry over me. Im being taken care of very well. And by the grace of Christ, I shall leave here very soon, he added.Kakuri, is one of the few areas where Christians and Muslims still co-habit in Kaduna.
The Department of Sate Services (DSS) has arrested five persons involved in the creation of sleeper Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS)...

The Department of Sate Services (DSS) has arrested five persons involved in the creation of sleeper Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) training cells in the state.According to Abdullahi Chiranchi, state director of the DSS, the suspects were arrested on their way to Libya and some African countries.Though the secret police boss failed to disclose the identities of the suspects, he said those arrested were from Kogi stateChiranchi described the arrest as a significant breakthrough in blocking every possible move to make Kano a training ground for ISIS.He also said a nine-man international cattle rustling, armed robbery, kidnapping and car-snatching gang was arrested.He said the gang had been terrorising Kano, Kaduna and residents of Niger Republic.According to him, those who arrested include some persons who broke into the house of Mukthar Mohammed, a former national security adviser.
The West Ham attacker scored a late stunner to earn the three points after Bogdan Stancu's second-half penalty had cancelled out Giro...

Dimitri Payet was France's hero on Friday as his stunning late strike earned the hosts a 2-1 victory over Romania in their Euro 2016 opener.Les Bleus were staring down the barrel of a frustrating draw in the Group A contest at the Stade de France with Bogdan Stancu's penalty cancelling out Olivier Giroud's 57th-minute opener.But with the clock winding down, West Ham star Payet - France's outstanding player on the night - curled in a brilliant left-footed effort from 25 yards to seal all three points.It was a deserved win for Didier Deschamps' team and Payet was at the heart of all their best attacking play, the 29-year-old having also provided the assist for Olivier Giroud to head home an eighth goal in his past six international starts.France's margin of victory could have been greater with Giroud at times wasteful and Antoine Griezmann hitting the post in the first half.But Didier Deschamps will be thrilled with the victory, as well as Payet's dazzling performance.For all the attacking talent at France's disposal, concerns over their defence have been highlighted in the build-up to the tournament.And those worries were evident in the fourth minute when Nicolae Stanciu's corner was flicked to the back post where Stancu was denied inside the six-yard box by a stunning save from Hugo Lloris.France survived the shaky start and Giroud should have done better with a header from eight yards that he put past the left-hand post following good work from Payet.Griezmann then went even closer, the Atletico Madrid forward nodding against the right post after Bacary Sagna's teasing delivery bounced off Vlad Chiriches.Les Bleus were frustrated again 10 minutes before the break when Payet's fizzed cross was met by Griezmann only for a crucial touch from Cristian Sapunaru to take the ball wide.The missed chances almost proved costly early in the second half as Stanciu clipped a delicious ball into Stancu, who could only volley wide when unmarked in the area.France again found their rhythm, though, and the superb Payet bamboozled the Romania defence with a clever dummy before teeing up the unusually subdued Paul Pogba to volley at Ciprian Tatarusanu from the edge of the box.From the resulting corner France finally went ahead. Payet received a short one to cross from the right and Giroud bravely headed into the left-hand corner under pressure from Tatarusanu.The lead lasted just eight minutes, though, as Patrice Evra was penalised for a clumsy barge on Stanciu in the area and Stancu coolly converted the penalty low to his right.Giroud saw tentative penalty claims of his own for a tug from Chiriches waved away by referee Viktor Kassai, but France were not to be denied.With just one minute of normal time remaining, Payet picked up the ball on the right and bent an unstoppable effort past Tatarusanu into the top left-hand corner, before weeping tears of joy as he was replaced late on.
A carpenter, Mr. Francis Emmanuel, who was attacked in Kakuri area of the metropolis by some Muslim youths allegedly for failing to observ...

A carpenter, Mr. Francis Emmanuel, who was attacked in Kakuri area of the metropolis by some Muslim youths allegedly for failing to observe the current Ramadan fast has recounted his ordeal.The incident, which occurred around 2.30pm last Tuesday on Sokoto Road, prompted good Samaritans to rush him to the St. Gerald Catholic Hospital, Kakuri for medical treatment.Emmanuel, who almost lost his sight, told journalists on Thursday that he was taking his lunch when the boys numbering about six descended on him querying why he was not fasting.His words: I went to buy wood to do some work, when I came back, I bought food to eat. As I was eating, about six Hausa boys came and asked me whether I was a Muslim or a Christian. I did not answer them. They asked me why was I not fasting with them? I told them that I am not a Muslim.Before I knew it, one of them slapped me. As I stood up, the rest came and surrounded me and started attacking me with knives. I dont know them. Nobody could come to my aid because of the type of dangerous knives they were carrying.They used cutlasses, scissors and knives on me until I became unconscious, I dont even know who brought me to the hospital, he said.Meanwhile, Kaduna State Governor, Mallam Nasir el-Rufai, has asked the states police commissioner to fish out those responsible for the dastardly act.
Ibrahim Babangida, former military president, returned to the country on Friday after a three week medical trip to a German Hospital. ...

Ibrahim Babangida, former military president, returned to the country on Friday after a three week medical trip to a German Hospital.He was received at the Minna International Airport around 3:30pm by friends and close associates.Commenting on the return of the elder statesman, Abubakar Bello, governor of Niger state, said Nigeria still needs Babangida around.He said the wise counsel of leaders, who have weathered the storm and distinguished themselves, are needed to bail the country out from the woods.General Ibrahim Babangida remain one of the few leaders in this country that we still need around to tap from their wealth of experience and knowledge and we are grateful he is back and kicking like the old soldier he is, he said.There were rumours about his death, but Bello said God preserved IBB, as he is fondly called, to prove those behind the fake report to shame.Despite unfounded rumour about the life of our national icon, General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida, we are grateful that it pleases Allah (SWT) to preserve his life and bring him back safely and healthier to continue in the good work of nation building, he said.Your safe return has finally put a lie to the rumour and the evil machinations of those who are playing God. We are grateful to Allah (SWT) that He has silence them.It is high time media practitioners, especially those in the social media refrain from broadcasting or publishing falsehood. Aside from questioning the integrity of the media, it portend danger for the society that the media cannot be trusted.The media should be guided by the ethics of the profession. If you are not sure, dont share. The social media purported death of General Babangida was reckless, unethical and unwarranted.
A Federal High Court sitting in Abuja has berated the National Hospital, Abuja, over the transfer of PDP Spokesman Olisa Metuh to a Lagos ...





A Federal High Court sitting in Abuja has berated the National Hospital, Abuja, over the transfer of PDP Spokesman Olisa Metuh to a Lagos hospital.The judge, Justice Okon Abang, berated the hospital when he ruled in an application for adjournment brought by Metuhs Counsel, Emeka Etaiba (SAN) in Abuja on Friday. Abang said that the matter was first adjourned on account of a medical report from the National Hospital, Abuja.He said thought the National Hospital report did not states the bed rest duration, the hospital should have informed the court that the defendant had been transferred to another hospital.The judge said, it was on the strength of the National Hospital report that the case was last adjourned He decried the action of National Hospital, and threatened that because the court was treated with levity, it might not be incline to receive any medical report from the hospital.If I ordered investigation into the activities of the National Hospital regarding to Metuhs medical report many heads will roll.I have authority over the management of the hospital because they are under my jurisdiction. The management is not above this court and the law.  They cannot treat this court with levity; National Hospital has a duty to explain to the court what led to the transfer of Metuh from National Hospital, Abuja, to another hospital in Lagos.In any event, I have another medical report issued by Dr Olufemi Bankole from Lagos University Teaching Hospital that Metuh is on bed rest over back pains which he claim. Abang said the medical report did not disclose the location of the hospital in Lagos.The case is hereby adjourned till July 7 for continuation of trial.Metuh was arraigned by EFCC on allegations of receiving N400 million meant for fighting insurgency in the North-East from the office of former National Security Adviser retired Col. Sambo Dasuki.
The Nigerian Labour Congress, NLC, has commended the Minister of Labour and Employment, Dr. Chris Ngige and the National Assembly for thei...

The Nigerian Labour Congress, NLC, has commended the Minister of Labour and Employment, Dr. Chris Ngige and the National Assembly for their intervention in the recent retrenchment of workers in the banking sector.This was as it decried the gale of sack by the nations commercial banks, saying the development puts the economy at a greater risk.This was contained in a statement issued in Kaduna yesterday by a council member of the NLC and chairman, Industrial Global Union Sub-Saharan Africa, Issa Aremu.The statement reads, Banks who see workers as dispensable items during temporary economic shock even when they treat same workers as slaves during times of boom ought not to be in business and indeed should have their licences legitimately revoked.At a time all the states and market actors in Nigerian economy are working hard to address the crisis of unemployment, mass sack in banks that are still posting prohibitive profits can be likened to economic sabotage.Aremu also commended the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, on measures to ensure stability in the financial sector and the economy, urging the apex bank to intervene on the side of job retention in the financial sector.The labour leader particularly lauded the activist development financing role of the Godwin Emefiele-led apex bank, which according to him, had promoted job creation in critical sectors such as agriculture, energy and textile.
The Muslim Rights Concern (MURIC) has faulted the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) for fixing its orientation camp during the month of ...

The Muslim Rights Concern (MURIC) has faulted the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) for fixing its orientation camp during the month of Ramadan.Prospective corps members of batch A stream II are expected to report to camps across the nation on Monday.But MURIC described the decision to open the camp at this period as unconstitutional, calling on the authorities to postpone the programme.Accusing the NYSC of discrimination, MURIC said religious crisis is common in Nigeria due to the overzealousness and insensitivity of some government officials.We reject this date because Muslim corpers will still be fasting at that time. It is illegal, unlawful and unconstitutional for NYSC to hold camp at a time when its Muslim members will be deprived of their freedom of worship and the liberty to practice their creed without fear. This planned camp is exclusive, discriminatory and parochial, MURIC said in a statement signed by Ishaq Akintola, its director.Official policies in this country often fail to take our cultural and religious plurality into consideration.Any Nigerian institution dealing with schedules and programmes particularly the NYSC whose programmes are of such magnitude is expected to consider the dates and periods of important festivals, rituals and religious practices. This should form the core of its logistics. It is our humble opinion that NYSC headquarters has failed in its strategic planning by allowing its next camp to clash with the Ramadan period.MURIC said allowing the camp to go on as planned would leave Muslim corps members at a disadvantage, explaining that those observing Ramadan will find it very difficult to adapt to the rigours in camp.The body wondered why the NYSC did not stick to the initial date scheduled for the exercise.What happened to 21st May, 2016 which was the date earlier picked for the orientation? We do not want to believe that the shift was deliberately planned to coincide with the Ramadan season with a view to excluding prospective Muslim corpers, the statement read.MURIC is not trying to indulge Muslim youths. Fasting is no joke and it certainly cannot be combined with the physical challenges which characterize the NYSC camp. Eligible Muslim graduates will definitely want to be part of the service but the obstacles standing in their way are gargantuan.Unlike the Islamophobic climate expected in an NYSC camp organized in Ramadan, what happens during Ramadan in Muslim-friendly environments is that both primary and secondary schools close for the day around 2 pm. Lectures in tertiary institutions stop from 3 pm while civil servants also leave their offices by 2 pm. If Muslims are not asking the Nigerian government to do this, its agencies should not become blatant tools of oppression.The clear message we are sending to NYSC officials here is that the camp planned to begin constitutes a serious impediment to the religious observation of Muslims. It is exclusive, sectional and parochial. The planned camp should be put in abeyance for now in the interest of peace. A stitch in time saves nine.Muslim youths throughout the country are bitter and furious at the thought of being disallowed to fast in the month of Ramadan. The best which NYSC headquarters can do for Nigeria now is to postpone the camp till the end of Ramadan. This country needs peace and stability to develop. We have had enough religious crises. NYSC should not stoke another.
Falmata, the 24 year old mother of the baby born from Geidam Local Government of Yobe State with her heart organ outside the chest wall ...

Falmata, the 24 year old mother of the baby born from Geidam Local Government of Yobe State with her heart organ outside the chest wall thought she had given birth to twins when she saw the heart pulping outside the chest of her new born daughter.Falmata who is now at the University Teaching Hospital Maiduguri having left Geidam on referral informed our correspondent at the hospital that she only realized that it was not a second baby when they got to the General Hospital at Geidam in Yobe State from their village Gonigori.According to her, she never felt any difference of the nine months she was carrying the baby from the other three children she has already had.She has also informed that she never heard of what is called ante natal services giving to women during pregnancy in her life, just as the baby was delivered at home with the help of traditional birth attendants.But her husband said their wives reject ante natal because they are scared of what the men will do to them when he was asked whether he knows anything about ante natal care.Asked if there is any medical facility close to their village, Mustapha replied that the only medical facility close to their village is about 10km but there are no personal nor drugs, so people have to travel hundreds of killomtres to Geidam General Hospital.Mustapha, a farmer said himself and the wife make an average of 10 to 15 bags of grains per annum which they use for sale and domestic consumption. An income that wouldnt obviously sponsor an operation of N3 million.
There is an alleged plan by the Presidency to clamp down on Governor Fayose's aides and lawmakers of the Ekiti State Assembly accord...

#ALERT!

The Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami is now coordinating a plot to charge Gov Fayose's Chief of Staff, Barrister Dipo Anisulowo; Spokesperson, Lere Olayinka; House of Assembly members; Samuel Omotoso, Segun Adewumi and Gboyega Aribisogan to court for TREASON.

The plot is to first arrest the five men and keep them in detention for not less than one month after which they will be charged to court and denied bail so as to keep them out of circulation.

This is another of the FG plot to destabilise the govt of Ekiti State and silence Gov Fayose so that the opposition will no longer have any voice in Nigeria.

Their offence is that they submitted a letter on behalf of the governor at the Chinese Embassy, Abuja seeking the stoppage of the $2 billion loan sought by the FG.

Has AGF Malami forgotten that while in opposition, APC petitioned the US Govt and other world powers not to sell arms to the PDP govt of Jonathan to fight Boko Haram, alleging human rights abuses?

All these efforts to silence Fayose won't work because before President Buhari, there was opposition in Nigeria, now that Buhari is the President, there must be opposition and after Buhari's tenure, there will be opposition.

Gov Fayose cannot be silenced. He will continue to talk for the betterment of Nigeria and its people

This is coming a few days after Ekiti state governor, Ayodele Fayose, raised alarm that he was one of the targets of the Federal Government travel ban to be placed on two serving governors.Fayose's media aide, Lere Olayinka also raised an alarm on social media concerning the alleged plans to 'arrest and charge him and others for treason'A source who spoke with newsmen in Abuja revealed that Chief of Staff to the Ekiti State governor, Barrister Dipo Anisulowo, Deputy Speaker of the Ekiti State House of Assembly, Segun Adewumi; the Chairman of the House Committee on Information, Gboyega Aribisogan; the Chairman of the House Committee on Health, Dr. Samuel Omotosho; and the Special Assistant to the Governor on Public Communications and New Media, Lere Olayinka, may be invited to explain their role in the letter addressed to President Xi Jinping of China, asking the latter to halt a loan of $2 billion to Nigeria ahead of President Muhammadu Buhari visit to China last April.The Chief of Staff to the Ekiti State governor, Barrister Dipo Anisulowo, had led the delegation to Abuja to deliver governor Fayoses letter to the Chinese Ambassador to Nigeria, Gu Xiaojie.In the April 12, 2016 letter with reference number EK/GOV/28/10, the Ekiti state governor had written to the Chinese Government, seeking the stoppage of the $2bn loan for railway projects in the country.Fayose in his letter to President Xi Jinping said Nigerians were totally opposed to increment of the countrys debt burden, which is already being serviced with 25 per cent of the Federal Government annual budget.He further said that the government of China should be mindful of the fact that Nigerians, irrespective of their political and religious affiliations, are totally opposed to increment of the countrys debt burden, which is already being serviced with 25 per cent of the Federal Government annual budget.Governor Fayose reportedly stormed China same month while President Buhari was still the guest of his Chinese counterpart.Speaking with journalists the source argued that the Presidency was embarrassed by the role played by governor Fayose and his aides.Since Fayose cant be arrested or invited for questioning, the plot is to arrest and detain, indefinitely and without administratively bail all the officials who conveyed his letter to the Chinese Ambassador to Nigeria, Gu Xiaojie.It was gathered that Ekiti State House of Assembly had earlier petitioned the National Human Rights Commission, (NHRC) National Assembly, Amnesty International, Embassies of the United States and the United Kingdom over the alleged plot by the Federal Government to prevent Governor Fayose from travelling outside Nigeria without getting clearance from the DSS.
Residents of Nze community in Udi Local Government Area of Enugu State, yesterday gathered at the Ibute Nze Community square where they ex...

Residents of Nze community in Udi Local Government Area of Enugu State, yesterday gathered at the Ibute Nze Community square where they expressed sadness over persistent attack on the community by suspected Fulani herdsmen.During the protest, which coincided with the donation of relief materials to the community by Enugu State Association, Japan, hundreds of women in the community said they have had enough of rape and destruction of their farmlands by the herdsmen.They disclosed that the herdsmen invaded their farmlands three times within the week, chased farmers away and fed their cows on the crops.One of the victims, Mrs. Caroline Eze told journalists that, I was in the farm working with my daughter on Wednesday when they came, I pleaded with them not to enter my farm; they warned me to leave or I would lose my life; at that point, I ran away with my daughter.The next day, one of our relations went to the farm and discovered that the entire cassava farm was gone; the herdsmen were also here on Tuesday, and on Wednesday they returned and finished what was left.As I speak with you, all my sufferings have ended in vain; I have nothing left with which to feed; how long shall government allow us to continue suffering in the hands of these people?The women, who later broke into songs of anger, maintained that Fulani herdsmen should leave us; they have raped us and our daughters enough; they have brought poverty to us.Meanwhile, the traditional ruler of the community, Igwe Nodilim Onwukwe Nze, while speaking to journalists said he was deeply pained by the development.The Royal Father said it was shocking that while efforts were still being made to resolve issues arising from previous attacks, the herdsmen returned with their cows and finished what was left in the farms.He recalled that, they have been here causing problem for a very long time; we have been managing them, but since last year that Buhari took over as President, things became worst.Two weeks after Nimbo incident, we got information from two of our people who are very close to the herdsmen that they were coming to attack us. Our people fled their homes, people returned from the cities and collected their residents. But the Governor later came; the leaders of the herdsmen were also here and assurances were given to our people that they would not be attacked.Initially they denied making the threat, but we went to service providers and the whole thing was clear; we are still waiting for the police to take action.We have told the Governor that they should leave our place for now, but they are still here even as at yesterday destroying farm lands. They up-root cassava, vegetable and other farm crops and feed their cows on them.The most painful part of is that most of these women borrowed money to cultivate those crops; all these have been destroyed; how would they pay back? How would they pay back?Igwe Onwukwe, however, vowed that his people would no longer fold their hands, stressing that, it is now going to be like Nimbo where security was entrusted into the hands of the police but they failed; we are going to mobilize our youths to secure our people. All we are asking the State government is to give us the necessary support. We are no longer going to take it.
The Chairman, Presidential Advisory Committee Against Corruption, Prof. Itse Sagay, has said the proposal by a former National Publicity ...

The Chairman, Presidential Advisory Committee Against Corruption, Prof. Itse Sagay, has said the proposal by a former National Publicity Secretary of the Peoples Democratic Party, Chief Olisa Metuh, to return N400m is not enough to quash his case.Metuhs lead defence counsel, Dr. Onyechi Ikpeazu (SAN), had said his client had told the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission that he was willing to return the N400m he allegedly received from the Office of the National Security Adviser in November, 2014.Metuh is currently being prosecuted by the EFCC for allegedly receiving the money, which the prosecution alleged was collected from the $2.1bn arms funds allegedly diverted by the former NSAs office to other purposes aside from buying arms to fight insurgency.Speaking with newsmen on Thursday, however, Sagay said once a criminal matter had been brought to court and the accused person brought up a negotiation, there must be some form of punishment.The Senior Advocate of Nigeria explained that plea bargain in Nigerian law was for the purpose of saving the state the time and resources from prosecuting a case over a long period of time and still end up not achieving a conviction.The anti-corruption committee chairman maintained that plea bargain should come in when the prosecution could not state categorically that it would succeed and the defence made an offer to be charged with a lesser offence and punished for that offence or be given a lesser sanction than would normally apply if the particular person was given full punishment for that offence.He added, So, the point I want to make is that once a case has been taken to court, there can be no negotiation of return of money without punishment. That is impossible and can never happen because if that happens, then it is breach of the law.It would have been a different thing if the man had not been charged and maybe he was being interrogated and he quickly brought out the money during investigations. He can return the money and negotiate his way out although morally, it should not be but it is not illegal.
Striking civil servants in Ondo State on Thursday blocked the main gate to Government House in Akure, preventing Governor Olusegun Mimik...

The workers commenced the industrial action last week Wednesday to protest the non-payment of their five-month salaries.The governor, who was forced to come down from his vehicle to address the protesters, pleaded with them to suspend the strike, saying the state did not have enough money to pay the accumulated salary arrears.The protesting workers, led by the State Joint Negotiation Council chairman, Sunday Adeleye; the state Chairman of the Nigeria Labour Congress, Bosede Daramola; and her Trade Union Congress counterpart, Soladoye Ekundayo, rejected the governors plea.Mimiko said the government was ready to pay health and local government workers and teachers, to enable it to inject some money into the state economy, adding that when health workers resumed work, they would be able to meet the medical challenges of the people.The governor noted that his administration was considerate and not insensitive to the plight of the workers.Mimiko appealed to them to call off the one-week old strike and considered his commitment not to retrench any worker in spite of the dwindling resources.While saying the continuation of the strike would only retard the economic growth of the state, the governor charged the people of the state to see the present situation in the country as a collective challenge that we must face and proffer solutions to.He added, We are in a very difficult time in Nigeria and I have absolutely nothing against your protest. I cant imagine somebody working diligently or not too diligently but worked for five months without pay, especially in an economy that depends mainly on salary.Your protest has been peaceful and that is what democracy is all about. People must be able to ventilate their feelings just like you are ventilating yours. But it is important for us to know the truth because it is the truth that can set us free.But the governor effort to convince the workers fell into deaf ears as some of them continued to shout no salary, no work, intermittently.Responding to the governors address, the state chairman of JNC, Adeleye, declared that if the workers had no signal that the state government was ready to pay their salary arrears, the indefinite strike would continue.Apart from the Government House, the workers also stormed major roads in Akure, the state capital, to continue the protest.During the protest that lasted for over four hours, the workers carried placards with different inscriptions such asIt was learnt that the Ondo State Council of Obas, led by the Osemawe of Ondo, Oba Victor Kiladejo, had intervened in the industrial dispute as the traditional rulers were meeting with the leadership of the workers unions as of the time of filing this report.Government offices, schools and hospitals were still under lock and key on Thursday as a result of the strike while the leadership of the labour unions in the state were moving from one office to the other to monitor the compliance with the stay-at-home order.Meanwhile, following the failure of the workers to suspend the strike, the state governor and some members of the state executive council moved to the streets of Akure on Thursday to evacuate refuse by the roadside.The governor said his action was to prevent an outbreak of disease in the town.
BERLIN -- As the investigation into an attack last month on a jogger continues, the borough's police chief released a statement Friday in hopes of updating the community on the unsolved incident.

In his statement released via social media, Berlin police Chief Michael DeLorenzo writes that the reported attack near New Freedom Road and Park Drive at Berlin Park "is still actively under investigation."

"As chief, I understand the feeling of frustration with not having specific or pertinent information on the investigation and a suspect description," DeLorenzo said. "I can assure you that the Berlin Police Department Detective Bureau and the Camden County Prosecutor's Office investigators are utilizing every resource available."

It was the morning of May 19 when the female victim in her 20s reporting being "attacked" from behind by an unknown white male. She managed to escape from the attack and locked herself in her vehicle until police arrived, authorities said at the time.

"Please be assured that attacks like this within the Borough of Berlin are extremely rare," DeLorenzo said. "Until further information is obtained regarding this investigation, I ask that you be mindful of your surroundings and remain in a group of two or more while venturing into any secluded area."

DeLorenzo adds that borough police and the Camden County Park Ambassadors will continue "periodically patrolling" the park and surrounding areas.

"As always, residents are always urged to keep vigilant by reporting any suspicious activity," DeLorenzo said.

Greg Adomaitis may be reached at gadomaitis@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @GregAdomaitis. Find NJ.com on Facebook.
NEWARK -- A Union City man will spend nine years in jail after admitting that he bilked the state out of hundreds of thousands of dollars via an unemployment scam.

Ricardo Santiago, who is also known as Arcadio, was sentenced Friday after pleading guilty to second degree theft by deception on Dec. 21, 2015, Acting Essex County Prosecutor Carolyn A. Murray announced in a release.

According to authorities, Santiago schemed the state out of $219,424 from January 2013 to February 2015 by filing numerous phony unemployment insurance claims with the New Jersey Department of Labor and Workforce Development. The claims, officials said, were on behalf of purported employees of two New Jersey-based businesses, and were backed up by false documents, pay stubs, and W2 forms that he manufactured.

Santiago also submitted documentation on "bogus wages" to the state, and had unemployment payments deposited into bank accounts that were opened in other names, but that he controlled, authorities said.

"The New Jersey unemployment insurance program is intended to act as a financial safety net for workers who have a legitimate need for those benefits," said Assistant Prosecutor Deborah Freier, who handled the case.

"Every dollar stolen by people like the defendant threatens the viability of these important programs. It is our hope that this case will send a clear message that individuals who defraud state benefit systems will face significant prison sentences."

In addition to the nine years, Santiago was ordered to pay back the money, officials said.

The prosecutor's office, U.S. Department of Labor, Office of Inspector General, and the NJLWD conducted the investigation into the scheme.

Jessica Mazzola may be reached at jmazzola@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @JessMazzola. Find NJ.com on Facebook.
NEWARK -- Essex County authorities on Friday announced a reward of up to $10,000 for information in the slaying of an animal control officer in the city.

Alvis G. Carrington, 43, who served for 16 years with Associated Humane Societies in Newark, was shot in front of a residence on Wainwright Street shortly before midnight May 31, according to the Essex County Prosecutor's Office. He died a short time later at University Hospital.

The reward, provided through Essex County Sheriff Armando Fontoura's Crime Stoppers Program, was offered for information leading to an arrest and conviction in the case.

Authorities have not disclosed a motive in Carrington's death. Law enforcement sources with knowledge of the probe said the preliminary investigation suggested the killing was not random.

Fellow animal control officers and staff at the shelter remembered Carrington as a family man and dedicated colleague.

"I've known him for 16 years," said John Bergmann, a member of the Associated Humane Society's Board of Directors. "He was one of the good guys. Always pleasant, always caring about the animals."

Carrington would make regular trips down to Forked River, where Bergmann worked at a second New Jersey chapter of the Associated Humane Society to bring supplies and transfer dogs, Bergmann added.

Another former colleague, Lovey McCloud, 44, of Newark, told NJ Advance Media Carrington was on-call the night he was gunned down.

McCloud said he showed up for work the morning after the shooting and learned his friend had been killed.

"I came in the next day and they say he had been shot," McCloud added. "I couldn't take that in. I was heartbroken."

We are very saddened to post that AHS-Newark lost one of our own last night. Our Animal Control Officer, Alvis... Posted by AHS-Newark Branch on Wednesday, June 1, 2016

McCloud, who has worked at the Evergreen Avenue shelter since 1998, said Carrington leaves behind three children and three stepchildren.

An online fundraiser was also setup for Carrington's family at GoFundMe.com.

Anyone with information was urged to call the Essex County Prosecutor's Office Homicide/Major Crimes Task Force tips line at 1-877-TIPS-4EC or 1-877-847-7432.

Luke Nozicka and Katie Park contributed reporting

Noah Cohen may be reached at ncohen@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @noahyc. Find NJ.com on Facebook.
BAYONNE -- In his state of the city address earlier tonight, Mayor Jimmy Davis honed in on development as being key to the city's survival, going so far as to say Bayonne will "die" without it.

While touching on a wide range of issues in his 45-minute speech before an audience of dozens at the Knights of Columbus, the mayor was at his most emphatic when talking about development.

"Whether it's nature, whether it's business, whether it's life, you either adapt or you die," Davis said, pointing to the city's economic decline in recent decades in his first of three references to Bayonne's potential death.

Halfway through his tenure as mayor, Davis sought to frame the city's development, which has not gone uncontested by residents, as a matter of bringing the past into the future rather than erasing it.

The retired police captain cited SilkLofts -- an old Maidenform factory tied with Bayonne's industrial roots that has been converted into a luxury apartment complex -- as an example of development that preserves the past.

"We need to take our past to build our future," Davis said.

The mayor said development is also the key to continuing to chip away at one of the city's biggest challenges: an inherited structural deficit that has dropped about $5 million since 2014 but remains at around $19.5 million.

Davis' address came amid an ongoing recall effort against him led by three residents who have criticized his administration for giving developers tax abatements while raising the city's property taxes, among other things.

The mayor has responded to the recall effort by saying it serves "the political interests of the very few who would rather see Bayonne move backwards."

Davis' speech was also made amid efforts by Bayonne officials to close, by the end of June, a $15 million revenue hole that unexpectedly opened up in this year's city budget after the budget was introduced in March.

While the mayor didn't mention the hole in his speech, he has previously expressed confidence that it will be filled by June 30.

At the event organized by the Bayonne Chamber of Commerce tonight, Davis also said he is proud of his administration's continued "open door policy," where anyone can come and meet with him to discuss their concerns.

In addition, he highlighted his efforts to upgrade the city's parks, noting the importance of beautifying Bayonne in order to make it a place where people want to live, work, play and bond with others in their community.

Note: This report has been updated since its initial publication to reflect additional information.

Jonathan Lin may be reached at jlin@jjournal.com. Follow him on Twitter @jlin_jj. Find The Jersey Journal on Facebook.
Where do you want New Orleans' next nonstop international flight to go?
The Louisiana 4th Circuit Court of Appeal has overturned a 2013 decision by former NOPD Superintendent Ronal Serpas to dismiss NOPD Officer Jamal Kendrick, who admitted disposing of a trace amount of suspected marijuana residue during a domestic violence arrest.
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.
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EVANSTON, Ill. --- Northwestern Universitys Marco Gallio has been selected as a Pew Scholar in the Biomedical Sciences by the Pew Charitable Trusts. The neuroscientist is one of 22 Pew Scholars named this year nationwide.

Gallio uses the tiny fruit fly -- the size of a pinhead -- as a fantastic model in which to study how the brain controls behavior, helping scientists better understand how sensory circuits work in human brains.

The 2016 class of Pew biomedical scholars is drawn from prestigious institutions across the country, with each early-career scientist receiving four years of flexible funding to pursue foundational, innovative research.

I am humbled by this award -- a lot of the scientists I look up to as role models have been recipients of this award in years past, said Gallio, assistant professor of neurobiology in Northwesterns Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences. This is fantastic encouragement for a junior principal investigator and pushes us to dare attacking more and more challenging scientific questions.

Among the 22 scholars, five, including Gallio, were selected for their dedication to studying the human brain as it ages. Research conducted by these scholars will improve scientific understanding of health challenges connected with the inevitable process of growing older.

Gallios goal is to understand how the external world is represented within the brain during decision-making and how this representation translates into behaviors such as attraction and rejection. His lab has reduced this problem by tackling it in a simpler system: the fruit fly brain. Made up of 100 thousand neurons rather than the nearly 100 billion in the human brain, the fruit fly brain is still capable of very sophisticated computation and can produce complex behaviors such as in-flight navigational control and courtship songs.

The Pew funding will allow us to step up our game when it comes to innovative technology applied to the study of the fruit fly brain, Gallio said. We are planning to build a virtual reality environment where we can challenge flies with different sensory stimuli and, at the same time, look at the activity of neuronal ensembles, in real time, as the fly brain processes decisions and produces appropriate behavior.

Pews 2016 biomedical scholars become part of a community of scientists dedicated to collaboration and mentorship; each year, scholars meet to discuss their research among peers, explore different areas of biomedical science and spark ideas.
National Rugby League respects and honours the Traditional Custodians of the land and pay our respects to their Elders past, present and future. We acknowledge the stories, traditions and living cultures of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples on the lands we meet, gather and play on.
Reference ID Created Released Classification Origin 10PARIS207 2010-02-22 14:02 2010-12-06 21:09 CONFIDENTIAL//NOFORN Embassy Paris VZCZCXRO2986 PP RUEHDBU RUEHFL RUEHKW RUEHLA RUEHNP RUEHROV RUEHSL RUEHSR DE RUEHFR #0207/01 0531431 ZNY CCCCC ZZH P 221431Z FEB 10 ZDK FM AMEMBASSY PARIS TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC PRIORITY 8368 INFO RUEHZL/EUROPEAN POLITICAL COLLECTIVE PRIORITY C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 04 PARIS 000207 NOFORN SIPDIS E.O. 12958: DECL: 02/11/2020 TAGS: PGOV PREL RS GG SR BK AF IR AM FR SUBJECT: FRENCH MFA ON RUSSIA, BALKANS, AFGHANISTAN, IRAN, CAUCASUS Classified By: Political Counselor Andrew R. Young, Reasons 1.4 (b), (d). 1. (C/NF) SUMMARY: During separate discussions with OSD Assistant Secretary for International Security Affairs Alexander Vershbow and EUR Deputy Assistant Secretary Spencer Boyer in early February, Roland Galharague, MFA A/S-equivalent for Continental Europe, adopted a defensive posture about the potential sale of Mistral class ships to Russia; expressed skepticism about the depth and durability of Russia's support for sanctions against Iran; acknowledged Putin's dominance in Russia while proposing, as a means to strengthen Medvedev, that we respond positively to his proposals for reforming European security and holding an OSCE summit; asserted that Serbia cannot win back Kosovo and also win entry into the EU; expressed pessimism about the future of Nagorno-Karabakh negotiations and about the impact of instability in Iran on Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, and Armenia; and claimed that Bosnia and Afghanistan could become difficult issues for trans-Atlantic relations this year because of the USG's alleged disengagement from Bosnia and its alleged failure to consult adequately with European NATO allies on strategy in Afghanistan. END SUMMARY. ----------------------------------------- MISTRAL: FRENCH ADOPT A DEFENSIVE POSTURE ----------------------------------------- 2. (C/NF) When asked about the potential sale of Mistral class ships to Russia, Galharague inquired as to why the USG seems to be singling out France for criticism on this issue. "I recently spoke to my Dutch counterpart," he reported, "and he said you have not approached him on this subject" despite recent Dutch (and Spanish) efforts to make similar sales. Furthermore, the Mistral is not "top end" military equipment, Galharague argued, describing it instead as a combination between "a truck and an oil ship" with some helpful navigation tools. It will not contribute significantly to Russian military capabilities. Russian leaders have been over-selling the military significance of the Mistral in order to quell domestic opposition to its purchase from abroad. Some Russians consider the sale a harbinger of the end of shipbuilding in their country, and claim the ship could be built at home but would simply take longer. The production and sale of armaments is a major industry in Russia, possibly second only to oil and gas. In his February 10 press conference, the Chairman of Russia's National Security Council, Nikolai Patrushev, seemed "very reticent" about the possible sale, according to Galharague. 4. (C/NF) Asked about Georgia's reaction to the possible sale, Galharague insisted that France has maintained "very good" relations with Tbilisi. The GOF "strategy" for Georgia to recover its lost territory is to persuade the Tblisi government to engage with the leaders of the secessionist territories and to continue on their path toward EU accession. The demands of accession -- such as internal democratic reforms and good relations with their neighbors -- will serve Georgia and the region well. Nonetheless, Galharague acknowledged that Tbilisi has good reason to fear Russia, given their recent history. This ship will not, however, affect their strategic situation, Galharague argued: "The Russians have already invaded Georgia without the ship." 5. (C/NF) While acknowledging that Georgia and the Baltic countries feel threatened by Russia -- with reason -- Galharague concluded that Russia is not a threat to us and there is no reason we should not sell equipment to them which does not fall into the realm of restricted armaments. The Mistral class ship does not contain high end or sensitive technology, he insisted. ------------------------------------------- RUSSIA'S COMPLICATED RELATIONSHIP WITH IRAN ------------------------------------------- 6. (C/NF) The Russians are currently benefiting from their helpful statements on Iran while realizing full well that China will water down any sanctions proposals, Galharague asserted. When praising Russia's new stance, he argued, we should be cognizant of their complicated relationship with Iran. Russians have an interest in strong ties with Tehran, especially because Iran is still a primary market for Russian arms sales. On the other hand, were Iran to normalize its relations with western governments, it could develop into a major Russian rival for gas sales to the European market. To balance various and competing elements of its relationship with Iran, Russia has an interest in serving as a "go-between" in the conflict between Iran and the west. In fact, Galharague claimed, Russian leaders were furious when Turkey recently started to seize that mantel. --------------------- MEDVEDEV VERSUS PUTIN --------------------- 7. (C/NF) When discussing the comparative influence of President Medvedev and Prime Minister Putin, Galharague claimed that Medvedev, whose initial gut reactions to events clearly differ from those of Putin, is trying to assemble his own power bases independent of the former President. In the meantime, "power still rests with Putin," Galharague assessed. Putin, not Medvedev, constantly juggles and balances competing domestic interests in Russia. As a case in point, Galharague cited the Russian government's reaction to the financial crisis. After the government painstakingly established a mechanism for determining how to divide stimulus funds among various economic sectors and private interests, Putin simply decided unilaterally who would receive state support. In general, Galharague observed, Putin much prefers to focus on domestic issues rather than foreign policy. Putin prefers cutting deals in the murky Russian business world to delving into the complexities of international politics. --------------------------------------------- ------------- STRENGTHEN MEDVEDEV BY RESPONDING TO HIS SECURITY PROPOSAL --------------------------------------------- ------------- 8. (C/NF) Galharague described the long-standing French effort to strengthen Medvedev by respecting his official role as president of Russia, regardless of Putin's competing power and influence. "We treat Medvedev as president and address presidential issues with him." They also seek to validate Medvedev's initiatives, regardless of the substantive content, in order to reward his efforts to put new ideas forward. As an important example, Galharague mentioned Medvedev's proposal for revamping European security architecture. Medvedev invested a lot of political capital in this effort, Galharague argued, and we should provide a positive response, even if we do not accept the proposals. For this reason, President Sarkozy sent Medvedev a letter of acknowledgment after receiving the proposal. Tying this approach to USG policy toward Russia, Galharague several times asked how the USG plans to measure the success of the "reset" with Russia? The French, he said, would like to know whether the USG has established benchmarks for progress, and they wonder how START negotiations might fit into this equation. ------------------------------------------- EUROPEAN SECURITY: GOF SUPPORTS OSCE SUMMIT ------------------------------------------- 9. (C/NF) Galharague stated that the French largely agree with us about how to address questions of European security, except in one area: they support the idea of an OSCE summit. While Paris concurs with the USG analysis that the Russian proposals for reforming Europe's security institutions contain a number of "unacceptable" elements, he argued that we must understand that "we're playing a game of judo  we do not want to give the Russians a pretext to claim they're being ignored." He added that the Russians are adept at manipulation. "We constantly feel like we have a better hand but they're playing a better game -- it's the same in business and economic arenas." Claims of disrespect by western nations resonate in Russian domestic politics, to our detriment, he warned. Therefore, we must emphasize the positive elements of the Russian proposal and communicate a sincere willingness to engage. An OSCE summit can help with these aims, Galharague argued, and at the same time support the Corfu process. A summit would need to involve at least a minimum number of substantive issues, such as regional conflicts or the status of conventional forces in Europe, but by agreeing to move ahead with the summit we would put the onus back on Russia. --------------------------------------------- ----- BALKANS: SERBS CAN'T WIN IN BOTH KOSOVO AND THE EU --------------------------------------------- ----- 10. (C/NF) Galharague asked that the USG work together with the EU to discourage the Serbians from proposing a new U.N. resolution on Kosovo, stating that Serbian Foreign Minister Jeremic "seems to believe Serbia can win on Kosovo and win EU entry. We need to let him know this is not true." Right now, Galharague reported, "the Serbs are furious with us (the French)" in response to the demarche the GOF delivered in Belgrade in early February (reftel) about Serbia's possible plans for a U.N. resolution. "We delivered the message in very forceful terms." In fact, the Serbs interpreted the demarche as a major change in position, Galharague reported. The EU had thus far maintained the position that the issues of Kosovo and Serbian entry into the EU were not formally linked. "There was no formal conditionality," Galharague said, adding that the Serbs now understand that to be a member of the EU they must eventually recognize Kosovo. "We told them we do not want another Cyprus," he explained, referring to Cyprus' controversial EU accession in 2004 as a divided island where EU legislation remains partly "suspended" in the northern part of the island which is outside of the government in Nicosia's control. Nonetheless, Galharague predicted the Serbs will likely go ahead with the U.N. resolution in any case, and the USG and the EU will be forced to oppose it. 11. (C/NF) Furthermore, Galharague asserted, before the Serbs join the EU, they will need to resolve key issues with Kosovo in the fields of justice, police, customs, transport, griculture, and also any differences over names and terminology. The best way for Serbia to address issues related to Kosovo is by working with the European Union Rule of Law Mission in Kosovo (EULEX). "At the end of the day, though," he reiterated, "Serbia must recognize Kosovo if it wants to join the EU." ------------------------------ PESSIMISTIC ABOUT THE CAUCASUS ------------------------------ 12. (C/NF) The Nagorno-Karabakh negotiations appear to be at a "dead end," Galharague averred, adding that "Minsk (The Minsk Group) is going nowhere fast." He noted that the French government is not in a position to push the Armenians at the moment because French citizens of Armenian origin "represent about 500,000 votes" and French regional elections will take place in March. Other actors may soon impact the Caucasus region, he warned, such as instability in Iran. Azerbaijan, Armenia, and Turkmenistan all have important trade and energy ties with Iran and they could be immediately affected by the Iran sanctions bill currently making its way through the U.S. Congress. At the same time, the effort to impose harsher U.N. sanctions may offer us an opportunity to further engage with those three countries about their approach to Iran. --------------------------------------------- ---- FUTURE USG-EU FLASHPOINTS: BOSNIA AND AFGHANISTAN --------------------------------------------- ---- 13. (C/NF) When assessing potential issue areas where the USG and EU may differ during 2010, Galharague focused first on Bosnia. He said the French are disappointed that the USG appears to have put all plans and actions on hold pending the elections in October. Indeed, he implied that U.S. and EU officials have differing assessments of the need for continual engagement with the conflicting parties in Bosnia. Bosnian parties will not make progress without unity between the U.S. and the EU. When the Americans disengage, even temporarily, Galharague claimed the Bosnians perceive it immediately and react accordingly: "The Americans are giving up, so why should we do this (make compromises)?" The USG, the Spanish EU presidency, and High Representative Ashton should lead the charge in engaging this year -- "we need U.S. backing now," he urged. As a lever to press the Bosnians forward on constitutional issues, the EU may be able to use the ruling by the European Court of Human Rights, which declared that the Bosnian Constitution does not conform with European human rights standards. 14. (C/NF) Galharague described Afghanistan as the second potential trans-Atlantic flashpoint in 2010: "There is an emerging feeling the war is not jointly owned and managed." President Obama waited eight months to make a decision and, during that period, at no point did European opinion factor into his deliberations, according to Galharague. DAS Boyer firmly disagreed, citing USG consultations and discussions with French officials in Paris and in Washington, DC. Galharague acknowledged these discussions took place, but claimed the question Americans posed to their European NATO allies was not "What do you think?" but "How many troops can you put on the ground?". More recently, he said, the USG has begun contemplating engagement with elements of the Taliban without consulting European NATO allies. The French would like to know, for instance, what this engagement might mean for our future relations with Pakistan and India. 15. (C/NF) In purely political terms, Galharague explained that Afghanistan has developed into a difficult issue, especially in France. With the French death toll in Afghanistan having reached 40, he noted, local politicians have found themselves increasingly faced with grieving families, to whom they must explain the purpose of the war. "The perception is that we're there because the Americans are there," he said. "We're not sure where we're going and we're not being asked or consulted." Initially, the majority of Europeans supported the war in Afghanistan, invoking Article Five of the NATO Charter and committing a "fairly high" amount of troops and resources. But now "no one knows the purpose" of the war. "Perhaps the French government should have made a better show of the consultations" that did take place, Galharague admitted, "but to display them you have to have them." 16. (C/NF) EMBASSY COMMENT: Galharague is not ultimately responsible for the Afghanistan-Pakistan region, which is handled by a separate cell within the MFA, so his comments may not reflect the views of those who regularly engage with the USG on this issue. Notably, when discussing public and official perceptions of the war in Afghanistan, he made no mention of SRAP Holbrooke's two visits to Paris in the last three months, or post's constant exchanges about Afghanistan with French officials at the senior and working levels. Galharague focused on a perception of minimal consultation, which he admitted could persist regardless of reality. END COMMENT. 17. (U) ASD Vershbow and DAS Boyer have cleared this cable.RIVKIN
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump's remarks about Mexico and a Hoosier with Mexican heritage are a good springboard for a discussion of relations between the United States and Mexico. The situation was, in a word, tense.

Trump has been talking about building a wall on the Mexican border and making Mexico pay for it, though he hasn't explained how this could happen. And he has had harsh words against U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel, an East Chicago native with Mexican ancestry, who is presiding over a class-action case against Trump University.

A century ago, though, the Region was signing up troops and preparing them for war against Mexico, which was itself in the midst of a revolutionary war.

World War I had already broken out in Europe, although the United States hadn't become involved yet.

On June 2, 1916, The Lake County Times headline shouted, "BIG NAVAL BATTLE, MANY SHIPS SUNK." The Battle of Jutland, as it became known, was a colossal battle between German and Allied ships. Nearly 10,000 men died in that confrontation. Fourteen British ships and 11 German vessels were sunk.

"GIANT BATTLE OF ARMADAS GREATEST IN WORLD HISTORY," said the headline the following day.

Even as the war in Europe heated up, however, the situation in Mexico was, too.

The United States was pursuing Mexican revolutionary leader Francisco "Pancho" Villa following his attack on Columbus, New Mexico, in March 1916.

On June 5, The Lake County Times reported President Wilson began drafting a reply to a Mexico's demand that American troops withdraw from Mexican soil or that Wilson explain why they would remain.

The war of words had begun.

On June 19, Wilson gave his reply. "WAR WITH MEXICO DRAWS VERY NEAR," the headline in The Lake County Times shouted. The Gary militia was ordered to mobilize, and the governor was preparing for war. Recruits were being sought.

The next day, on June 20, 1916, The Lake County Times reported that Wilson warned Mexican leader Venustiano Carranza that further raids along the U.S. border would plunge the two nations into war.

The same day, a headline proclaimed, "GARY'S CRACK MILITIA LISTENS FOR FINAL ORDERS." Recruits were signing up, ready to take the fight to Mexico.

Howard Clark Jr., 23, of East Chicago, was called to active duty. He was editor-in-chief of the Indiana Daily Student and had just graduated less than a week before. Clark was to become a trumpeter.

Yes, this was back when trumpet players led the battle charge and sent other signals to troops.

On Wednesday, June 21, the main art on the front page was a map showing the latest developments in the Mexican-Texas border war that was developing.

But Gen. John "Black Jack" Pershing, who later led U.S. troops against German in World War I, sent scouting parties that didn't find Mexicans.

"They are running around in circles bragging about what they are going to do," Major General Frederick Funston said.

But then the first skirmish began.

"U.S. TROOPS LOSE HEAVILY IN FIRST BATTLE WITH MEXICO," the Thursday, June 22, headline said. Above the masthead was a bold banner, "WAR AT OUR GATES."

The Lake County Times reported Pershing was killed and that American troops were ambushed Mexicans with machine guns.

"2 TROOPS OF U.S. CAVALRY WIPED OUT?" said the Friday, June 23, headline. "PERSHING SILENT ON DISASTER," the subhead said, an apparent acknowledgement that reports of Pershing's death were premature.

Gary's volunteers, "90 strong," were headed to Fort Harrison to prepare for war. Hammond had signed up 17 volunteers "first crack out of box," the newspaper reported.

Saturday, June 24, revealed Gary said "good-bye to the boys" and Hammond was rapidly gaining volunteers. More important was the news that War Secretary Newton Baker was anxiously waiting for Pershing's final report. "War or not depends on message," the subhead said.

Two days later, on Monday, June 26, the war was the big news, other than the presidential election.

"Your country needs you! Here's how you can enlist," said a helpful headline on the front page. The story gave the requirements for enlistees.

A charming story told of Ralph Ross Jr., 10, of Hammond, who wanted to enlist. He badgered his mother until she finally said if the governor gave his consent to the boy's enlistment, so would she. Fortunately, Gov. Ralston showed the good judgment she hoped and thanked the boy for his patriotism but declined to send him to war.

Another story was a list of donors for the company flag to be used by Hammond troops headed to the war in Mexico.

My favorite story told of the arrival of Gary Co. F at Michigan City:

"The Gary boys were all husky fellows and looked every inch the soldier. One of the boys, who seemed to be the life of the company, stood at the foot of his car and gave three cheers for Michigan City, its company and its wonderful exhibition of patriotism. For his pretty speech a girl kissed him and this set the fashion. Before the fellow was rescued a dozen or more girls had done the Hobson act, much to the pleasure of the handsome soldier. He surely thinks Michigan City girls are patriotic."

June 1916 saw the tensions continue, with Mexico's Carrizal threatening to kill U.S. prisoners held at Chihuahua City, according to the June 28, 1916 issue of The Lake County Times.

Troops from Indiana, including the Region, were boarding trains, preparing to take the fight to Mexico.

U.S. troops weren't successful in capturing Pancho Villa. Until February 1917, U.S. troops remained in Mexico to encourage Carranza's government forces to pursue Villa.

In January 1917, German Foreign Secretary Arthur Zimmerman used a coded telegram to try to lure the United States into war with Mexico, but the telegram that sought an alliance between Germany and Mexico was repudiated by Mexico. The United States fought Germany instead.

With Trump's sabre-rattling as a prompt, you now have a history lesson of how poor U.S.-Mexican relations were a century ago, compared to the peace we have enjoyed since then.
Indiana had the biggest drop in insurance rates on the Obamacare marketplace between 2015 and 2016, a new study has found, though many Northwest Indiana residents experienced an increase.

The Urban Institute determined that rates on the lowest-cost silver plan on the Indiana exchange fell this year by 12.1 percent.

Indiana had fairly significant competition. A lot of insurers participate in the state in pretty much every market, said Eric Wengle, a research associate at the Washington, D.C., public policy think tank.

Additionally, there are a lot of former Medicaid-only plans that participate in the state, which, across the country, correlates with keeping rates down.

Rates in Lake County went up slightly in 2016, likely because residents had only four of the states nine insurers to choose from, said Will Glaros, an employee benefits specialist in Schererville.

That lack of participation is probably due to the countys high risk pool, he said. If it were profitable, why wouldnt they be here? he added.

Valparaiso insurance broker Sara Pender Morales said rates mostly went up in Porter County as well.

While five insurers sold on the marketplace in that county, she said the only ones with adequate provider networks were Anthem and UnitedHealthcare (that insurer, the only to contract with Chicago hospitals, is exiting the exchange in 2017).

The other insurance companies solely sold managed care plans that strictly limit which doctors patients can see. The narrowing of provider choice, though, is one reason prices went down across the state.

I see more and more doctors leaving networks. They say they dont get paid, Pender Morales said. Its all a mess, and its only getting worse.

Wengle, of the Urban Institute, noted that Indiana had relatively high rates in 2015, so 2016 may have been a regression to the mean. The average plan fell to $264 in 2016 from $300 in 2015. By comparison, Illinois saw an 8.1 percent increase to $247 this year from $229 last year (the national average was $289).

Indiana is likely looking at increased rates next year. Most of the insurers selling on the exchange are asking the state for significant increases for 2017. For instance, Anthem, one of the states largest insurers, is requesting a 29 percent hike.

Anthem spokesman Tony Felts said the company is anticipating a further increase in drug prices and use of medical services, as well as the end of the laws reinsurance program, which was used to help stabilize prices during the first three years of the marketplace.

MDWise and Celtic (the parent company of Ambetter from MHS), which also sell plans across Northwest Indiana, are asking for an 11.5 percent increase and 5.3 percent decrease, respectively. The state has until Aug. 23 to approve 2017 rates.
EAST CHICAGO  A 30-year-old man is accused of masturbating in front of patrons at a McDonald's, according to court records.

Jontae D. Phillips, of East Chicago, was charged Thursday with sexual conduct in the presence of a minor, a Level 6 felony, and public nudity, a Class C misdemeanor.

East Chicago police were dispatched at 2:57 p.m. June 2 to the McDonald's in the 4700 block of Indianapolis Boulevard.

Witnesses told police that Phillips was inside the restaurant when he pulled his penis from his shorts and began masturbating, according to the affidavit. He appeared to be staring at a restaurant employee who was bent over while taking out the trash.

There were about six to seven people, including children, who were inside the restaurant when the incident allegedly happened. One woman screamed after seeing what was going on and asked workers to call police. She said Phillips then ran out of the restaurant.

One witness told police she recognized the man as Phillips, because she previously saw his photo in a sex offender registry for her neighborhood, according to the affidavit.

A detective who viewed surveillance video from the restaurant said it corroborated what witnesses told police, though Phillips' genitals aren't seen and his face wasn't clear in the images, according to the affidavit.

Phillips has been registered as a sex offender since 2012 after he pleaded guilty to performing sexual conduct in the presence of a minor, according to court records.
CROWN POINT  A Gary man was sentenced to four years in prison after admitting to taking items from three homes, according to court records.

Thomas J. Askew, 28, pleaded guilty to four counts of theft in three separate cases. Lake Criminal Judge Diane Boswell on Thursday sentenced Askew to four years in prison followed by two years on probation, which was the sentence outlined in the plea agreement.

In one incident, Askew admitted that on Aug. 20, 2015, he took a television, laptops, tablets, a purse and jewelry that had been stolen from a home on Gary's west side, according to the agreement.

Askew admitted to pawning a laptop on Jan. 21, 2015, that had been stolen from a woman's home in the 4100 block of Pennsylvania Street in Gary, according to the agreement.

On Feb. 17, 2015, he took television sets that had been stolen from a home on Georgia Street, according to court records. Police said the televisions were sold, but they were traced by their serial numbers.

He was ordered to pay a total of $3,615 in restitution to the victims.
CROWN POINT  A Griffith man was sentenced Thursday to six years in prison after he pleaded guilty in four criminal cases.

In total, Mohammed I. Amara, 25, pleaded guilty to robbery, two counts of forgery and auto theft. Lake Criminal Judge Diane Boswell handed down the six-year sentence, which was outlined in the terms of his plea agreement.

In the first case, Amara admitted that on Feb. 10, 2013, he forcefully took car keys from a woman near U.S. 41 and 67th Avenue in Schererville, according to the agreement. After the woman got out of the car, Amara drove off.

In two of the cases, he is accused of using his brother's checkbook to write checks, according to the agreement. In one case from Sept. 27, 2015, Amara admitted to writing out a check for $120 to a couple he purchased an iPhone from after making arrangements via Facebook.

When the couple tried to cash the check, they learned the check was written from a closed account, according to the agreement.

During another incident, Amara on Aug. 30, 2015, used the stolen checkbook to write a $1,250 check to pay for a car he had purchased.

Sabri Amara told Boswell his brother took his checkbook while he was out celebrating a religious holiday. He said his brother later threatened to post photos from his phone on social media if he didn't drop the charges.

In the last case, Mohammed Amara admitted that on Oct. 5, 2015, he took a black 2010 Toyota Corolla from a man, according to the agreement.

Defense attorneys John Cantrell and R. Brian Woodward asked for their client to be placed in therapeutic community in prison, arguing the crimes were tied to alcohol and drug addictions.

Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Maureen Koonce said she didn't believe the crimes were tied to a drug problem. She said the crimes were "of the heart."

Mohammed Amara did not say anything during the hearing, but he did write a letter to Boswell before the sentencing.
GARY  A man now charged with burglary and theft in the citys downtown area made the mistake of giving his name and identification to a pawn shop hours later when selling the stolen goods.

Kenneth James Talbert, 28, is accused of breaking into a womans apartment April 29 in the 1600 block of West Fifth Ave in Gary to steal her childs Xbox One system and games, according to a Lake County probable cause affidavit dated Wednesday.

Talbert has been charged with burglary and theft. The stolen items are estimated to be worth $1,000.

A neighbor, according to police, heard a loud noise the morning of April 29 and saw a man wearing a puffy coat, now believed to be Talbert, kicking in her neighbors door.

According to the affidavit, Detective Sgt. Mario Gonzalez matched the serial number of the Xbox gaming system taken from the apartment to one sold hours later at Cash Indiana Pawn Shop, 855 Central Ave. in Lake Station.

The person who sold the gaming system and video games to the pawn shop identified himself at the time as Kenneth Talbert, according to the affidavit. Surveillance footage also showed Talbert in the store appearing to wear a black puffy vest over a sweater.

Security camera footage, coupled with witness accounts that day, aided police in confirming Talberts description and involvement in the crime.
PORTAGE  Two teens are facing charges after they allegedly admitted to police they shot a rabbit because they were bored.

A 16-year-old girl was charged with criminal recklessness with a deadly weapon and transported to the Porter County Juvenile Detention Center following the incident. Charges also were filed against Cameron Coylette for contributing to the delinquency of a minor. He was released.

According to a police report, police were called shortly after 7 p.m. Thursday to the 2600 block of Hamstrom Road.

A witness told police he saw someone in a dark blue Jeep shooting a weapon from the vehicle in the area. Police spotted the Jeep and stopped it at the corner of Central Avenue and Airport Road.

According to police, Colyette, 18, told officers he and the girl had gone to a friend's house to engage in target practice. He told police they "got bored" and decided to drive home. On the way home, they spotted a wild rabbit in the area of Hamstrom Road and Defiance Avenue.

Colyette told police he stopped the Jeep and he and the girl loaded a pellet rifle. He said he handed the rifle to the girl, who then aimed the rifle out of the window and shot the rabbit.

According to police, the girl said she shot the rabbit.

Police later found the rabbit dead on the northwest corner of Hamstrom and Defiance "in a small pool of blood with obvious wounds to its head."
Courtney Baker wants expectant parents to know life isn't over after your unborn child gets a diagnosis of Down syndrome. Your life  or the child's.

But she believes our society too readily accepts that such kids should be aborted. She experienced it firsthand.

At her 12-week ultrasound, the 1990 graduate of Chesterton High School found out something was wrong her baby. She went to see a prenatal specialist, who said it was Down syndrome. The specialist referred Baker and her husband to a genetic counselor to discuss their options.

"We said there were no options to discuss, we were going to keep her," Baker recalled in a phone interview from her home in Sanford, Florida. "Because of our faith, it had just never entered our mind.

"He seemed shocked. He told us how low our quality of life would be, how low her quality of life would be. He strongly asked us to reconsider."

Baker herself wasn't shocked. She expected that reaction. It disappointed her nonetheless.

Particularly now that 15-month-old Emersyn is here.

"She's doing great," said Baker, a home-school teacher to her two older children. "She's up to par, hitting all her milestones. She's delayed physically as far as not walking yet. But she says words. She's very smart."

So Baker decided to pen a letter to the specialist who tried to persuade her to get an abortion. She wishes doctors in that position would give expectant parents other resources, such as information on support groups and what to plan for when you're having a child with Down syndrome.

She posted the letter to Facebook, hoping to be a beacon of light to other parents in her situation. The post has since been shared thousands of times.

"I want moms out there to understand it's not the end of their life," she said. "If they're hearing this diagnosis, just know their life just started. Their baby is going to be awesome."
An Indiana law prohibiting local government employees from holding an elected position with the government they work for passes constitutional muster, the federal appeals court in Chicago ruled Friday.

In its 3-0 decision, the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected claims by five Northwest Indiana individuals affected by the 2012 law, and affirmed Hammond-based U.S. District Judge Philip Simons 2015 decision upholding the statute.

The challengers claimed the law, which automatically terminates a persons government job when he or she is sworn in as an officeholder for that locality, violates the U.S. Constitution by limiting voter choice and unfairly treating government employees different from government contractors, who are not prohibited from holding office.

Judge Joel Flaum, writing for the appellate panel, determined the Indiana law is less restrictive than similar statutes in other states  which already have been upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court  where individuals are required to resign their government employment prior even to running for office.

Unlike the resigntorun laws that have been deemed constitutional, the Indiana law allows a candidate to remain employed while taking a chance on the electoral process, Flaum said.

As such, the laws chilling effect on candidacy, and thus voters exercise of the franchise, is lessened.

Moreover, Flaum said, the state has a genuine and compelling interest in avoiding corruption and selfdealing and the appearance of such things.

The law satisfies that interest by preventing conflicts of interest, particularly on spending matters, through the exclusion of individuals with a direct financial stake in the outcome from votes on government salaries or department appropriations, Flaum said.

He rejected the argument, however, that local government contractors also should be barred from holding elected office, because state law already requires extensive disclosure from contractors that reduces the risk of self-dealing.

Republican Attorney General Greg Zoeller, who defended the statute, said he was pleased the appellate court affirmed its constitutionality.

We respect those who work in municipal government, especially in public safety, and it is an honor to serve as an elected council member; but the Legislature in its policy-making authority decided that a person cannot serve in more than one position in the same municipality at a time, because of the potential for conflict, Zoeller said.

Dyer attorney Adam Sedia could not be reached for comment.

He challenged the law on behalf of Hobart Councilman Matthew Claussen; New Chicago Councilwoman Susan Pelfrey; Hammond Councilmen Michael Opinker and Scott Rakos, who recently retired from the citys fire department; and East Chicago Councilman Juda Parks.

A separate challenge to the law on state constitutional grounds is set to be heard June 28 by Lake Superior Judge William Davis.

Enforcement of the statute is on hold while that lawsuit is pending.
CROWN POINT  Jeffery Spicer has been sworn in as the Crown Point Police Departments newest officer.

Mayor David Uran administered the oath of office to Spicer, 29, a graduate of Hebron High School and Indiana State University.

Jefferys hiring brings the total number of current police officers to 45, the most weve ever had, said Police Chief Pete Land. He is a certified instructor by the state of Indiana and currently teaches emergency vehicle operations.

During another ceremony at the Board of Public Works and Safety meeting Wednesday, state Sen. Ed Charbonneau, R-Valparaiso, helped present a check for $1,000 from the Indiana Finance Authority as part of a wastewater infrastructure grant.

I thoroughly enjoy coming to Crown Point. Something new is always going on here, Charbonneau said.

The grant is expected to be used for a new laptop computer. The public works department will use it to collect data on wastewater treatment.

The Board of Public Works and Safety also welcomed its newest member, James Crook, who is president of Eco-Block in Gary.

In other business, the board approved an amendment to the 125th Avenue and Grant Street intersection improvement project.

Eric Wolverton, senior project manager with Highland-based American Structurepoint, told the board that new funding available through the Northwestern Indiana Regional Planning Commission will enable 12 more properties to be added for right of way negotiations. Previously there were eight parcels.

Of the $58, 500 in additional funds approved Wednesday by the board, only 10 percent would be paid by Crown Point. The remainder comes from federal funds, Wolverton said.

The board also agreed to continue a study of the drainage ditch behind the home of Chris and Heather Boettger in the 1000 block of George Ade Court.
LOWELL  For Hannah Casillas and her classmates, time spent in Brad Docter's marketing class at Lowell High School got more interesting this year.

"Our marketing class is normally just PowerPoint presentations. This is a lot better. This is something we can actually put on a resume," said Casillas, an 18-year-old senior.

Casillas is talking about the Lowell Chamber of Commerce-sponsored Student Run Farmers Market, which debuts at its new location Saturday fronting Ind. 2 on the south side of Lowell High School.

It continues from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. the second Saturday of each month through October.

High school students in marketing, Kevin Garling's horticulture classes, and Joe Delgado's graphic design classes have joined forces to operate the farmers market with the chamber.

Casillas, who wants to manage and market artists, and Emily Rose, an 18-year-old senior with corporate event planning as her goal, are graduating, but they plan to stay with the market through the summer. Rose said the hands-on experience is invaluable.

Tri-Creek Superintendent Debra Howe sees it that way, too.

As a member of the Lowell Chamber board of directors, Howe and her chamber colleagues saw it as a win-win situation. The previous location had suffered for lack of parking and ample volunteers. It was run by a private committee, not the chamber. The high school's prime location at the town's east entry and plenty of parking and available students to operate the market made it an easy sell.

More importantly, however, the market is a perfect fit for Tri-Creek's emphasis on project-based learning. "It fit in with all the standards. It is very authentic...This is what project-based learning is. It connects us with the community," Howe said.

The students prepared the market's physical layout, researched and established vendor fees and approached businesses directly.

"I know the kids have been reaching out to local farmers, Deann Sutton, chamber president, said. Those who had operated the farmers market in downtown Lowell were "looking to change things up," and approached the chamber. The partnership with the school system is a natural, she said.

Delgado's students have designed the market's logo and are handling advertising, while Garling's students will operate the market and sell plants they've grown.

"The students are doing an outstanding job," Howe said. Likewise, she said she appreciates the teachers' coordination of it all.

Sutton said those interested in participating in the farmer's market can contact the chamber at (219) 696-0231. They can also go online to farmersmarket@tricreek.k12.in.us. Vendor fees are $20 for a 5-foot by 5-foot space and $40 for a 12 by 12 space. Add a $5 charge for electricity. Discounts are available for those booking all five dates and/or multiple spaces.
A killer has invaded the Indiana Dunes.

The black swallow-wort, also known as the black dog strangling vine, an invasive species, was discovered recently at Ogden Dunes.

This plant not only drives out native species, but when Monarch butterflies lay their eggs on it and their larvae hatch and begin to eat the plant, the butterflies die, said Susan Mihalo, conservation coordinator with the Nature Conservancy.

The Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore is working as a part of the Indiana Coastal Invasive Plant Network with the Nature Conservancy, Save the Dunes, the Indiana Department of Natural Resources, Shirley Heinze Land Trust, Coffee Creek Watershed Preserve and the Wildlife Habitat Council to make sure that invasive species, like the black swallow-wort, stay out of their parks.

There will be a hands-on event on from 9 to 11 a.m. Saturday at the Paul H. Douglas Center for Environmental Education at 100 N. Lake St., Gary, where volunteers will be trained on how to spot invasive species when they see them.

We want to spruce up our trails, said J.P. Anderson, an Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore ranger. Participants will learn how to adopt a trail, and the responsibilities of walking through monthly to see what maintenance is needed. If volunteers want to learn how to do some maintenance, they can also be trained to do that as well.

In addition, they will learn how to identify the top 10 invasive species in the area. Once they know what species to look for, they will be trained to use www.eddmaps.org/Indiana and the free Great Lakes Early Detection Network application so they will be able to report invasive species easily, with their GPS location. The Nature Conservancy has created lists of the species in the area. The early detection of invasive specifies is important because it makes care for the trails ultimately easier, and less costly to remove, Mihalo said.

We really ask that folks are able to use their cellphones and be a little tech savvy, Anderson said.

Its important because the national areas we have here are very special, Mihalo said. When invasive species take over you lose so much.
CRESTON  Creston Fire Department recently received potentially life-saving grain bin rescue equipment through a donation from Farm Credit Services of America.

A grain bin rescue exercise followed to train firefighters in the use of the specialized equipment.

The fire department received a 10-panel system, slide hammer and other accessories manufactured by Minnesota-based Outstate Data. The equipment is designed by rescuers specifically for grain bin entrapments.

Even as the overall rate of serious injuries and fatalities on farms has fallen, the number of grain bin entrapments remains steady, in part because the countrys high grain production has led to more bins that require more workers.

Grain can engulf and bury a worker in less than 30 seconds.

Creston is among 96 rural and mostly volunteer fire departments receiving grain bin rescue equipment and training this year through Farm Credit Services of America. Most of the recipient departments are part of mutual aid agreements that allow multiple communities to use and benefit from the equipment.

Supporting programs that help protect farmers and farm workers is one way that we can make an impact in the rural communities that we serve," said Amy Blomenberg, vice president of retail operations at the local Farm Credit Services of America office.
VALPARAISO  Something is in the water around the 800 block of Monroe Street near Valparaiso University, and some of the residents, including a local councilwoman, don't like what it is.

Several residents recently met with city utility officials to address an ongoing water issue.

"The water quality has fluctuated greatly for several months," said Richard Gross, who lives on the 800 block of Monroe Street.

Five customers have complained about discolored water, and up to 12 residents in the area may be affected, officials said.

Gross said Wednesday the water came out of the faucet smelling like dirty pond water.

"I mean, it's rancid," Gross said. "The water has been anywhere from tasting metallic or rusty."

Gross said at times the water has resembled tea or weak coffee. His father, Will Gross, who owns the building his son lives in, said they installed a new toilet there a few months ago and now because of the water it looks like it's 20 years old or a "bus station toilet."

The water coming out of Richard Gross' bathroom faucet looks normal at first, but soon the sink is filled with what looks like a yellow liquid. His shower wall and tub, also new, are stained yellow as if from years of use and neglect.

Will and Richard Gross were at the meeting with utility officials, from whom the father and son claim they haven't gotten a fair shake.

"The only thing proved at that meeting was that there is a big problem and they finally admitted to it," Will Gross said.

Utilities Director Steve Poulos said the issues began after the city replaced some old piping and old water mains in the area last summer.

"Were trying to improve the system out there, but when you improve one part of the system it might have a collateral effect on other, older pipes in the area," he said. "So thats what were trying to resolve."

The reconfiguration is part of the city's capital improvement projects in continually trying to upgrade aging infrastructure, Poulos said.

Poulos said they've been trying to find out the cause of the water problem. He said when replacing water mains or reconfiguring the flow of water, sometimes it causes those older mains to scour.

"Its typically the iron thats built up over the years," he said. "Its why they have that discolored water."

Poulos said they've been flushing the hydrants consistently within that area to clear that out. Because it's an old part of the city, Poulos said they are trying to make sure that there arent any buried valves within the system that are pinched or closed.

Poulos said the residents' water problem doesn't happen often "but at times it does."

"And of course, no resident wants to see discolored water," he said.

Poulos said some of the water mains in that area reach a dead end where water can sit and stagnate. If nothing else works, city utilities will propose installing an auto-flusher that opens on a regular basis to allow the water to flow and not become stagnant.

"These are things we deal with every now and then," he said. "I know its frustrated (the residents) because theyve been dealing with it for a few months. Were looking at it every day at this point and were also following up with the residents to see how their water quality has changed. At this point its just starting it at point No. 1 and going through the checklist in trying to resolve it. Im confident well resolve it."

Councilwoman Diana Reed, who lives in the area, said for some time now she noticed a discoloration and odor coming from her water.

"We hadn't given it a great deal of thought until we were contacted by neighbors to the east of us," she said. "While their problems have been much greater than ours, we began to realize that we weren't imagining things."

Reed said in her home the water has a metallic odor and unusual taste.

"The bottoms of our toilet bowls are blackened with some form of sediment," she said. "Showers, sinks and toilets have become increasingly difficult to clean. Additionally, our white/light clothing has become dingy gray in coloring.

"We're hoping that the water problem is resolved quickly and that the quality returns to what we have come to know and expect in Valparaiso."
VALPARAISO  The city is going to explore amending its ordinance allowing backyard chickens.

The current ordinance does not allow for chickens unless the property owner has 5 or more contiguous acres. During its regular meeting on Monday, the City Council will have a first reading on an amendment to allow chickens on parcels consisting of less than 5 acres.

The issue came into play in April when a homeowner just south of downtown Valparaiso received a letter from the city about its current ordinance stating that if their chickens weren't removed the family would face fines and legal action.

The four chickens are being raised with the help of two little sisters whose mother, Liz Welter, purchased as chicks four years ago after she moved to the city from Michigan.

Admitting to not knowing the city's rules on chickens, Welter said she "went for it."

Welter said they treat the chickens as pets and take great care of them.

"We compost our food for them, they are not loud and you don't even know they're here," Welter told The Times in April.

City Administrator Bill Oeding told code enforcement to hold off on any actions against the Welters until the city could address the issue. Amending the ordinance was one of the possibilities, and the first step in doing that will be taken on Monday at City Hall.
HAMMOND  Nicholas Robles Jr. didn't even know his elbow was dislocated.

The 13-year-old had fallen during a skateboarding competition and tried to catch himself on the way down.

But when he rolled up his shirt sleeve, he could tell his joint was out of the socket. He felt a shocking sensation. His arm burned.

At the hospital, he learned he'd also fractured a bone in his arm. He had to undergo surgery. His blossoming skating career would have to be put on hold.

The Hammond middle-schooler is now speaking out about the importance of skateboarding safety. If he had been donning protective gear on that April day in Wisconsin, he acknowledges, he could have avoided a lot of pain and suffering.

"Wear pads. Watch videos of how to fall. Do only what you can can do. Start little by little. Don't jump into anything too fast," Nicholas said, in between practicing tricks the other day at Hammond's Pulaski Park.

Dr. Robert Wysocki, the hand, wrist and elbow specialist at Midwest Orthopaedics at Rush in Munster who repaired Nicholas's fracture, has recently noticed an uptick in the number of skateboarders he's been treating.

So his practice started a campaign, Skate Safe, to teach skateboarding safety in the Chicagoland area and Northwest Indiana. It partnered with Munster Parks and Recreation to put up a sign with safety tips at Community Park and host a free safety program there next week.

"Skateboarding is increasing in popularity, and more and more skate parks are going up," Wysocki said. "Along with that, the number of injuries is increasing." Skateboard-related injuries in kids under age 15 jumped by nearly 25 percent between 2013 and 2015, according to the Consumer Product Safety Commission.

Midwest Orthopaedics at Rush sees about a half dozen skateboarders a month when the weather is warm. And because the falls tend to be high in velocity, the injuries are often serious.

"A fair percentage are surgical," Wysocki said. "There's always that risk of having permanent problems. Surgical fractures or dislocations can lead to permanent discomfort, stiffness, arthritis"

He suggests skateboarders wear helmets and other protective gear, know their limits and use only officially sanctioned parks, as the equipment is regularly maintained.

Greg Vitale, director of Munster Parks and Recreation, noted that at parks there are also usually people around who can come to a skateboarder's aid after a fall. His department wants to spread the word that there's nothing hip about getting injured.

"We're trying to get rid of that stigma that it's not cool to wear safety gear," he said.

While Wysocki recommended that Nicholas avoid skating until he was fully healed, the teen couldn't stay off his board. He returned to skateboarding just a week after his injury. But he says he's definitely been more cautious.

He wears wrist guards and elbow and knee pads. He tries (even harder than before) not to fall. If he feels himself falling, he doesn't try to catch himself; instead, he lands on his bottom.

Nicholas has only been skating for a year but has already placed high in competitions. Now that it's summer, he practices from sun up to sun down. He hopes to one day turn pro.

"He's been focusing on doing good things, skateboarding, staying out of trouble," said his dad, Nicholas Robles Sr. "He's helping to promote safety, making better choices when you do dangerous stunts, planning out what you're going to do. He's a role model to all these other kids."
New color-coded zones are being painted in Times Square to regulate all the costumed characters that seek tips. The changes even include new "chill zones"  areas where people can simply relax and take it all in. Michael Herzenberg has the story.

Oscar Rodriguez has been working all across the Times Square area five years, posing for pictures and seeking tips in return. But starting on June 21, he'll be limited to one of eight teal blue painted zones while he's painted. Cops say they're not joking.

Captain Robert O'Hare of the NYPD was resolute in upholding the new rules: We gotta hope for voluntary compliance. If not, there's civil ramifications, and ultimately if someone doesn't comply, there's also criminal ramifications.

It's not just the costumed characters that have to comply. The partially nude painted ladies, people selling tickets to bus tours and comedy shows and even the naked cowboy will have to stand in the blue to ask for people's green.

Most we spoke with like the new changes ... which include these new white lines creating new "express lanes" for people to walk briskly, and what the Department of Transportation calls "chill zones" for people to quote "sit, nosh, meditate" and "literally watch the world go by."

You don't really want people coming up to you all the time so it's nice to like walk by them without them asking you do you want tickets for this or a picture with that or anything, said one pedestrian.

Another said, Anything to keep people moving along the better.

The DOT says the pedestrian zones won't be enforced, but the solicitation activity will be.

The City Council passed a law mandating the change after years of complaints about these characters, complaints that grew louder once barely dressed women began posing for photos, too.

Oscar Rodriguez is not happy with the changes. This is the jail in the United States, he complained

Rodriguez vows he's going to find another job, but he doesn't know what yet. Other Times Square regulars doubt the new rules can be enforced. Good luck trying to keep all the Elmo's behind the line, said one pedestrian.

The Department of Transportation will finish painting the boxes by the end of the week. Police plan an education campaign before enforcement begins later this month.
Observers of the State Capitol have modest expectations for what bills may pass in next week's final week of the legislative session. A once-robust agenda has boiled down to just a small handful of priorities. But as State House Reporter Zack Fink explains, some lawmakers are pushing legislation to test for elevated levels of lead in schools across the state.

Albany's legislative session is expected to come to a close next week with more of a whimper than a bang. But there is quiet bipartisan support growing for a bill that would establish acceptable standards for lead in drinking water at schools across the state and provide resources to conduct testing.

State Assembly Member Deborah Glick was miffed that this was even an issue: "It's sort of a surprise that we need to have legislation, and everybody has to come together and we have to set standards. I think most people assumed that that was the case."

Lead has damaging effects on cognitive abilities when ingested, particularly by children. Concern about lead in drinking water was heightened earlier this year after it was learned that drinking water in the small upstate town of Hoosick Falls was contaminated with PFOA, a potentially hazardous chemical. Separately, preliminary tests have shown elevated levels of lead in schools throughout New York State.

State Senator Tom OMara remarked, "We are living right now with the number one issue in this state of Hoosick Falls and PFOA in people's drinking water and concerns over that. We know that the lead levels are high in many of our schools."

State Senator Kathy Marchione agreed, saying, "I have been living and breathing issues with water over many months now. And I can tell you when action began in Hoosick Falls, the first areas that we looked at was our school."

Governor Cuomo was in Niagara Falls Thursday where he was asked whether there is enough time left in the Albany session for the legislature to get all of his priorities done.

Cuomo responded, We've been talking about these issues for months. They can do what they want to do. The question is, what do they want to do? It is not a question of time.

It's always a crapshoot at the end of session what bills get passed and which bills fall by the wayside due to lack of agreement. But insiders say this particularly true this year since so much work was done to establish a comprehensive paid family leave program and a $15 minimum wage in parts of the state.
Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum: On the Line: Intrepid and the Vietnam War (through Sept. 1) Visitors familiar with this museum are likely to be well aware of its flight deck, perhaps even some of its wartime history. During the Vietnam War, the Intrepid served three tours overseas between 1966 and 1969. Now, in an exhibition set in the space where the crew members lived and worked, the museum tells their stories with artifacts, film clips and photographs. Pier 86, 46th Street and 12th Avenue, Clinton, 877-957-7447, intrepidmuseum.org.

New York Public Library for the Performing Arts: Magical Designs for Mozarts Magic Flute (through Aug. 27) Mozarts 1791 singspiel Die Zauberflote (The Magic Flute)  a fantasy about a princes efforts to rescue the abducted daughter of the Queen of the Night  has long been an opportunity for imaginative directors and set designers to shine. Alumni from the operas production history include Marc Chagall, Julie Taymor and William Kentridge, who in recent years has also made artistic spectacles of other strange works like Shostakovichs The Nose and Bergs Lulu. In this exhibition, their designs, set models and costumes are on view in a visual history of one of the worlds most beloved operas in repertory. 111 Amsterdam Avenue, at 65th Street, Lincoln Center, 917-275-6975, nypl.org/events/programs/lpa.

Queens Museum: Hey! Ho! Lets Go: Ramones and the Birth of Punk (through July 31) Forty years ago, the Ramones introduced their self-titled album to the world and began a legacy that influenced music, fashion and film, among other arts. All this from a group of punks in Queens. This exhibition goes back to the groups roots to put its personality and success in context, using videos and posters, as well as artworks inspired by the Ramones music. Flushing Meadows-Corona Park, 718-592-9700, queensmuseum.org.

Rubin Museum of Art: Sacred Spaces (through Oct. 17) This exhibitions premise is a question: What is a sacred space? It could be the museums Tibetan Buddhist Shrine Room, an immersive look at a traditional space for prayer and meditation. Or it could be a panoramic vista among the Himalayas. It could even be a video installation about Jain devotional rituals. All are on view in this exploration of veneration and its venues. 150 West 17th Street, Chelsea, 212-620-5000, rubinmuseum.org.

Events

Big Apple Barbecue Block Party (Saturday and Sunday) Its the time of year when Madison Square Park, for one weekend, emanates a smoky scent and lively music. More than a dozen chefs and barbecue experts offer their favorite creations, as they have since the restaurateur Danny Meyers hospitality group started this annual cookout in 2002. And, on a stage near Shake Shack in the park, bands will perform from 2:30 to 5 p.m. each day. The lineup and list of participating vendors is at bigapplebbq.org. From 11 a.m. to 6 p.m., 23rd Street between Madison and Fifth Avenues, 212-661-6640; admission is free, but dishes cost $10 each.
World Oceans Weekend

If you think New York City has a varied population, just consider its surrounding waters. According to Jon Forrest Dohlin, vice president of the Wildlife Conservation Society and director of the New York Aquarium in Brooklyn, more than 300 species of fish inhabit those depths. Diving offshore is like plunging into an aquatic Queens.

One of the things that makes New York waters so diverse is that were a migratory corridor up and down the coast, Mr. Dohlin said. It adds up to a great opportunity for kids to understand that issues of marine conservation are not just important around the world, but theyre important close to home.

The aquarium will deliver that message, along with fun and surprises, on Saturday and Sunday, when it presents World Oceans Weekend. An extension of World Oceans Day  June 8  the celebration will comprise seven activity stations from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., including one outdoors, Sea Life at the Beach, which will let young visitors handle materials like skate egg cases, real shark teeth and skull models, and shells.
The new composition by Mr. Abrams, called Float Rumble Rest, is an instrumental work a little longer than eight minutes long. Mr. Abrams plays keyboards and Mr. James guitar on the piece, being released Friday by sonaBLAST! Records, a local label. All proceeds from the recording are to benefit the Ali Center, a museum dedicated to preserving Alis legacy and promoting respect, hope and understanding.

As a Louisvillian and a musician, I wanted to offer an artistic tribute to the legendary figure that has inspired, influenced and captivated humanity in the modern era, Mr. Abrams said in a statement.

Some of the ideas in Float Rumble Rest will probably inform next seasons orchestral work  which is to fuse many styles, including jazz and rap, and to include Alis own words. The work will be a centerpiece of the orchestras new Festival of American Music in April.
Juan Atkins, one of the elders of Detroit techno, and Moritz Von Oswald, long important to the techno scene in Berlin, have collaborated recently on a project called Juan Atkins and Moritz von Oswald Present Borderland; the duos new album is Transport, and they performed over Memorial Day weekend at Detroits Movement festival. As the critic Piotr Orlov pointed out in a recent Times article, Transport not only represents a link between the two cities  one that may become stronger if Berlins techno entrepreneurs continue to develop their business interests in Detroit  but the sound of aging and classicism in a genre that has long been about youth and the future.

On this weeks Popcast, Mr. Orlov and Mike Rubin  both of whom have been writing about techno for decades  discuss the new project, the history of techno in Berlin and Detroit (including the tale of the elusive Rik Davis), and technos dual identity as youth music and heritage culture.

Related article

Techno Elders, Aging Gracefully in a Youth-Oriented Genre
I had enough. I proclaimed on Twitter that I would be leaving it behind  along with my 35,000 followers.

The racists, anti-Semites and broader world of so-called White Nationalists protest that any move to censor their hate would be an assault on free speech (orchestrated by Jewish overlords, they add for good measure). But that argument holds no water on Twitter, which is a private company, not a public forum  and one that has explicit rules.

Few read them, of course, but Twitter users agree to the companys terms of service, and those terms are explicit on this matter:

Hateful conduct: You may not promote violence against or directly attack or threaten other people on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability, or disease. We also do not allow accounts whose primary purpose is inciting harm towards others on the basis of these categories.

And there is this:

Harassment: You may not incite or engage in the targeted abuse or harassment of others. Some of the factors that we may consider when evaluating abusive behavior include: if a primary purpose of the reported account is to harass or send abusive messages to others; if the reported behavior is one-sided or includes threats; if the reported account is inciting others to harass another account; and if the reported account is sending harassing messages to an account from multiple accounts.

It is not a close call when a user named Holololocaust tweets out beautiful women in Nazi uniforms, Honorary Aryan broadcasts portraits of Adolf Hitler, Cato Maior pursues his agenda under a confederate flag, and NSRevolution (presumably for National Socialist) uses a swastika as his logo.

Other things I have learned on Twitter: Taylor Swift has been adopted as the patron saint of the White Nationalists, apparently an icon of Aryan purity; racists and anti-Semites are obsessed with something called the 14 Words  We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children  and are particularly fond of holding Jews responsible for their own historical misfortunes, perpetually demanding that I explain why, throughout the history of the diaspora, the Jews keep getting exiled, brutalized and nearly annihilated. Message: We brought it on ourselves.

But Twitter appears determined to ignore its own terms of service, which also include a blanket prohibition on pornography. I can assure you that this, too, is flouted, since Trutherbot Spawn sent me a lovely and explicit GIF to illustrate his opinion of my behavior.
For more than a decade, John Giuca has been fighting a verdict that declared him guilty of murdering a college student in 2003 at a party at his familys house in Brooklyn. But after several court hearings and the filing of numerous legal briefs, a judge on Thursday turned down his request for a new trial.

Mr. Giuca, 32, was convicted in 2005 of killing Mark S. Fisher, a Fairfield University student whose body was found a few blocks from Mr. Giucas house in the Prospect Park South neighborhood. At a closely watched trial, prosecutors argued that Mr. Giuca was a member of a fledgling gang who had gone after Mr. Fisher to gain street credibility. They also said he had been jealous over a woman with whom Mr. Fisher was flirting and had been angry at him for drunkenly sitting on his parents table.

From the moment of his conviction, Mr. Giuca and his family have tried to overturn it, occasionally through unconventional measures. After the trial, his mother, Doreen Giuliano, assumed a false identity and struck up friendships with the jurors, hoping to discover evidence of misconduct. More recently, his lawyer, Mark A. Bederow, filed papers claiming that a jailhouse informer who implicated Mr. Giuca had since recanted and that prosecutors had withheld exculpatory evidence.

In his ruling, Justice Danny K. Chun said that while the informer, John Avito, had indeed changed his statement, the recantation should not be trusted because Mr. Avito had lied so often. Justice Chun also ruled that the prosecution had no obligation to obtain and disclose Mr. Avitos psychiatric records, which Mr. Bederow discovered only after the trial.
It will be necessary to examine the bill for loopholes, and to see how well it will withstand any free-speech challenge. This plan may well join the long list of reform promises Mr. Cuomo has made, largely without effect, since he took office in 2011.

But the principle of cracking down on collusion is a good one. It has been made forcefully by good-government groups, like the Brennan Center for Justice, and by Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont, who has sponsored a bill making similar suggestions. Senate Democrats on Thursday proposed a package of campaign reforms targeting Citizens United as well.

But there is, of course, an ethical elephant-in-the-room. It doesnt take a cynic to notice that the governor has long failed to deliver on a full slate of ethics reforms. There are spending loopholes to close and outside incomes to limit and corrupt pols pensions to seize. But much of this legislation is stalled, and the governor has been ineffective and indifferent in fighting for it.

Albany remains deeply uninterested in fixing itself, even in this year of years, when the two men who once ruled the Legislature, Sheldon Silver and Dean Skelos, have been sentenced to long prison terms for corruption.
By shielding schools from liability when they defraud or deceive students, these mandatory arbitration clauses are an invitation to shady business practices. The Department of Education, which is expected to issue rules on this matter soon, should ban the clauses outright.

The case for doing so is laid out in a study of enrollment contracts at 271 schools published this spring by the Century Foundation, a nonpartisan research group. The study found that arbitration clauses and other measures that limited the legal rights of students were rarely used in traditional nonprofit colleges or even for-profit schools that do not receive federal funds. But they are frequently placed in enrollment contracts by for-profit schools that participate in the federal financial aid program.

Forced arbitration isnt the only restriction, however. Go-it-alone clauses forbid students from joining with other people in group or class actions. Gag clauses bar students or former students from telling others about the complaint resolution process or the specifics of any final ruling. And internal process requirements prohibit students from taking their complaints public without first going through the schools own process. In some cases, schools try to bar people from taking complaints elsewhere  even if the internal process yields no relief.

The language may vary, but the restrictions have a specific purpose: to smother scandal and protect schools from financial liability when they are accused of using fraudulent or deceptive practices. To bring greater transparency to the for-profit sector, the Education Department needs to ban these restrictions in schools that receive federal aid.
The nations leading coal companies are increasingly filing for bankruptcy, leaving behind enormous tracts of scarred terrain and rising doubts that they will ever meet their legal commitments to repair the earth. Concern is growing that the companies and their debtors will use Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection to force the costs of mine reclamation onto taxpayers, despite the industrys standing obligations to pay.

The profits of Big Coal have been plummeting in a shifting energy market. Abundant supplies of cleaner natural gas have replaced coal as the fuel of choice in an increasing number of power plants, while the industry has been disappointed in its plans to expand overseas into China and other markets. Jobs have disappeared, a major topic on the campaign trail. Also at stake in the more than three dozen bankruptcies declared in the last three years are hundreds of millions of dollars in cleanup obligations, primarily in the Appalachian coal fields.

Companies insist they will not shirk their reclamation duties. Unfortunately, their track record is not good in West Virginia, where the mining method called mountaintop removal  the systematic dynamiting of summits to get at underlying coal seams  has devastated the Appalachian landscape, polluted waterways and driven entire hamlets into retreat. Lipstick on a corpse, was how Ken Hechler, a former West Virginia congressman, described the industrys cosmetic repairs to the states mesa-like remains of mountains.

The court fights are focusing on a loophole, called self-bonding, in the 1977 federal surface mining control law. This allowed state regulators to recklessly let companies, in profitable times, offer a mere promise to cover reclamation costs instead of requiring that they purchase bonds as insurance. The fear is the industry will use bankruptcy to see their obligations to banks and hedge funds paid first, leaving little for environmental cleanups.
MID-ATLANTIC

Pennsylvania: Legislators Pressured By Church on Sex-Abuse Measure

Roman Catholic legislators say they have been publicly shamed during Mass and disinvited from parish events as the Philadelphia Archdiocese campaigns against a bill that would give victims of child sexual abuse more time to sue the church. State Representative Nick Miccarelli said he was shocked to learn that the weekly bulletin at his church targeted him. Under the headline Just So You Are Aware, the announcement read, State Representative Miccarelli voted in favor of House Bill 1947, which states that private institutions can be sued as far as 40 years ago for millions of dollars, while public institutions may not be sued for any crimes. Last weekend, a letter by Archbishop Charles J. Chaput was given to all 219 archdiocese parishes urging parishioners to ask their state senators to vote against the bill. Archbishop Chaput wrote that potential lawsuits would unfairly affect schools and parishes that had nothing to do with the long-ago abuse. He also said the financial ramifications could cripple the ministry. The House overwhelmingly approved the bill in April, and it is being considered by the Senate. (AP)

MIDWEST

Michigan: Charges in Deaths of Cyclists

A prosecutor filed murder charges on Thursday against the driver of a pickup truck that struck a group of bicyclists, killing five of them and seriously injuring four others. The prosecutor, Jeffrey Getting of Kalamzoo County, charged the driver, Charles Pickett Jr., 50, of Battle Creek, with five counts of second-degree murder and four of reckless driving in the crash Tuesday in Cooper Township, north of Kalamazoo. The bicyclists ranged in age from 40 to 74 and were part of a group that called itself the Chain Gang. The cyclists were five miles into a weekly 30-mile ride when they were struck from behind on a road in the western Michigan countryside. The police said that officers had received complaints about a pickup being driven erratically and were searching for it minutes before the crash. (AP)
WASHINGTON  Federal prosecutors on Thursday charged that a former bank teller in the Washington suburbs joined the Islamic State in Syria in December, received religious training for months and pledged to become a suicide bomber.

Nearly 90 people in the United States have been prosecuted in the last two years in connection with support for the Islamic State, but the case against Mohamad Jamal Khweis, 26, of Alexandria, Va., is among the most unusual.

While more than three dozen Americans have been accused of trying to go to the Middle East to join the Islamic State, Mr. Khweis is one of a small number thought to have actually made it. And he is the only one who appears to have surrendered in a battle zone after changing his mind.

After his apprehension in Syria in March, Mr. Khweis told an F.B.I. agent that he was first inspired to join the Islamic State last year because he was drawn to its mission of establishing a caliphate in the Middle East, according to a criminal complaint filed against him in United States District Court in Alexandria.
I dont think a revolution ends with a certain number of delegates, she said. Its crucial he keeps going until the end. His impact is really obvious in a lot of ways aside from just being president. It would kind of be giving into the system that he is trying to reject if he did drop out at this point.

Ms. Jaime also said, however, that if Mrs. Clinton were the nominee she would vote for her, because she was the lesser of two evils alongside Donald J. Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee.

Her mother, Hedy Howard, a psychiatrist, agreed and said that although she did not trust Mrs. Clintons commitment to environmental issues, she would grudgingly vote for her if Mr. Sanders dropped out.

Id certainly want to see a woman up for president, but I wouldnt vote for somebody because what their gender is anymore than what their race is or what their religion is, Ms. Howard said. I think all of the things that she does is about making herself great and making herself have a place in history, but I dont trust that what she would do is about making things better for people or for our planet.

Andrew Oetman, 34, an environmental protection specialist, echoed that sentiment, saying that as a resident of Washington, he wanted the right to vote for Mr. Sanders, in part because the District of Columbia doesnt have official representation in Congress. He added that Mr. Obama and Ms. Warren were crumbing to the establishment hierarchy of political power.

Its super frustrating that President Obama has made the decision to support a candidate before the convention, he said. Its frustrating to see Elizabeth Warren, who essentially has got the same values as Bernie Sanders and has held the same values as Bernie Sanders for her entire time in political office, to automatically degrade herself and the work that she has done by going down a step to a candidate that often votes opposite of the way she votes and does not support the main principles that she has.

Mr. Oetman said he would not vote for Mrs. Clinton in the general election but had not decided what he would do if Mr. Sanders did not make it to the November ballot.
The spokesman for Representative Mac Thornberry of Texas, the Republican chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said that the Pentagon had waited far too long to send its proposals to Congress. The House has already passed the major legislation that will govern the Defense Department in 2017, and the Senate is expected to follow soon.

That could limit our ability to act on these proposals until 2018 regardless of their merit, said the spokesman, Claude Chafin.

Todd Harrison, a military budget expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said that legislative proposals from the administration were almost always sent to the House and Senate Armed Services Committees in February. He said that with many members of Congress back home running for re-election this fall, it was unlikely that personnel legislation would be passed this year.

How Times reporters cover politics. We rely on our journalists to be independent observers. So while Times staff members may vote, they are not allowed to endorse or campaign for candidates or political causes. This includes participating in marches or rallies in support of a movement or giving money to, or raising money for, any political candidate or election cause. Learn more about our process.

It sure doesnt seem like this was one of Carters top priorities, Mr. Harrison said. If he was serious about it, he would have sent it up there no later than February.

But Peter Cook, the Pentagon press secretary, said that some of the initiatives had already been included in the Senate legislation, and that the Defense Department hoped that other proposals could be added in conference between the House and the Senate.
WASHINGTON  Now that Senator Bernie Sanders is all but out of the race, Democrats can unite to take aim at Donald J. Trump. Their new sledgehammer is Senator Elizabeth Warren.

In her day job, Ms. Warren cuts an imperious swath through the Capitol, striding down hallways, her jewel-toned jacket swaying behind her, refusing to speak to or even make eye contact with reporters. Small talk with elevator operators and other staff? Not her style. And the Democrat from Massachusetts is rarely front and center pushing major legislation.

But beyond Mr. Sanders, no one captivates the aggrieved, angry left the way Ms. Warren does.

What she is doing right now, focusing on the outrageousness of Donald Trump is really important, said Senator Tammy Baldwin, Democrat of Wisconsin. In the universal sense I am always saying, Go, Elizabeth, go!

Ms. Warren officially endorsed Hillary Clinton on Thursday. Im ready to jump in this fight and make sure that Hillary Clinton is the next president of the United States and be sure that Donald Trump gets nowhere near the White House, Ms. Warren told The Boston Globe.
Donald J. Trump convened the first meeting of his national finance team on Thursday amid persistent Republican concerns that a shortfall in fund-raising efforts and a lack of discipline were imperiling his presidential bid.

During the gathering at the Four Seasons Hotel in Midtown Manhattan, Mr. Trump dwelled little on his recent controversies, including his comments about the Mexican heritage of the judge presiding in a lawsuit filed by former students of Trump University.

But a top Trump surrogate, Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, did allude to the recent bumpiness of the campaign, said an attendee, John A. Catsimatidis, a New York investor and grocery magnate.

People make mistakes, Mr. Christie said, according to Mr. Catsimatidis, and they take it back.

A spokesman for Mr. Christie referred questions to the Trump campaign.
CAIRO  Libyan fighters aligned with the United Nations-backed unity government on Thursday battled their way toward the center of Surt, the Islamic States coastal stronghold, in a rapid offensive that has confounded expectations and upended Western strategic calculations.

Only a few months ago, American generals were touting a plan to dislodge the Islamic State from Surt with a campaign of airstrikes. Yet the three-week-old Libyan ground offensive, led by a brigade from the nearby city of Misurata, has gradually closed in from the west and south, capturing an airfield, military bases and a traffic junction where the Islamic State has hanged dozens of people.

The swiftness and extent of these successes and the seeming inability of the Islamic State to hold on to territory has surprised observers inside and outside Libya.

Clashes continued on Thursday as the Islamic State, whose force in the city is estimated to be in the low thousands, fought back with suicide bombings and sniper fire. Mohamed al-Ghassri, a spokesman for the Misuratan force, said 110 fighters from his side had been killed and more than 500 wounded since the operation started.
LIMA, Peru  A former Wall Street banker and finance minister declared himself the winner of the presidential contest in Peru on Thursday after narrowly edging out the daughter of an imprisoned former president.

The former banker, Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, 77, appeared to have prevailed against Keiko Fujimori, 41, after a second-round contest on Sunday whose result remained in suspension for much of the week because of a near-even split between the two candidates.

Thank you, Peru, Mr. Kuczynski exclaimed on Twitter on Thursday afternoon. Its time to work for the future of our country.

While the election authorities still had not certified a winner, officials said Thursday that 99.7 percent of the ballots had been counted. It appeared unlikely that Ms. Fujimori could surpass her rival with the few outstanding votes despite a first-place finish in the first round and a lead in polls before the vote. The winner will take office July 28.
WASHINGTON  Six years after his mysterious death in a Moscow prison cell, Sergei L. Magnitsky has become a byword for brutality in President Vladimir V. Putins Russia. Now, a documentary film that paints Mr. Magnitsky as an accomplice rather than a victim is generating a furor, with critics trying to block a screening of it next week in Washington.

Screenings of the film, The Magnitsky Act  Behind the Scenes, have been canceled in Europe after threats of libel suits from William F. Browder, an American-born financier who fell afoul of the Russian government and hired Mr. Magnitsky, a lawyer and auditor, to investigate a vast tax fraud scheme after the government seized three of his Russian subsidiaries.

The Magnitsky Act is to be screened on Monday at the Newseum, a private museum dedicated to the news industry. Lawyers for Mr. Browder and Mr. Magnitskys mother, Natalia Magnitskaya, sent a letter to the Newseum this week demanding that it call off the event. After a conference call on Thursday, the museums management refused.

We stand for free speech and free expression, said Scott Williams, the chief operating officer of the Newseum. Were not going to allow them not to show the film. He noted that the museum was not sponsoring the screening, but merely renting out its theater. We often have people renting for events that other people would love not to have happen, he said.
GENEVA  As artillery shells and airstrikes shook several Syrian towns and cities, a United Nations mediator said Thursday that although the time was not right for new talks between the warring parties, it was urgent that they resume by early August.

The United Nations special envoy for Syria, Staffan de Mistura, told reporters in Geneva that the next round of peace talks needed to produce concrete steps toward a political transition to end the war. He said Aug. 1 was the target date for resuming negotiations.

That date represents a step back from a deadline, set in March by the 17-nation International Syria Support group, for achieving agreement on a political transition in Syria by the start of August. But prospects for achieving even the amended goal looked uncertain, with the conflict moving back to all-out war on fronts in the north, east and south of Syria and around Damascus, the capital.

Russian and Syrian government airstrikes have resumed with increasing intensity on the rebel-held eastern side of Aleppo, producing dozens of casualties each day this week, according to residents, rescue workers and antigovernment activists.
Benjamin Millepieds L.A. Dance Project has formed a three-year partnership with the Luma Foundation in Arles, France, the foundation announced Friday.

The partnership will offer the nine-member company a continuing residency and performance space in the foundations Parc des Ateliers, a former rail yard of about 25 acres that contains several 19th-century industrial buildings, currently being restored by Selldorf Architects. The architect Frank Gehry is building a central cultural resource building for the campus, to be completed in 2018.

The ambitious project is headed by Maja Hoffmann, an heir to the Hoffmann-La Roche pharmaceutical empire, who founded the Luma Foundation in 2004. In an interview with Ms. Hoffmann and Mr. Millepied in May at the London headquarters of the foundation, Ms. Hoffmann emphasized that her goal was not to create a museum, but a place of creation and collaborative exchange.

She said that renovation on the building that will eventually house the dancers would begin in October, and include the creation of studio space, therapy rooms and accommodation. The L.A Dance Project will begin its residency in July, however, in a newly opened building, La Mecanique Generale, a structure that will also house a photographic exhibition during the summer. The company will give performances of work by Merce Cunningham, Justin Peck and Mr. Millepied from July 7 to 13, and Sept. 23 to 25.
PHILADELPHIA  Ballet, for many people, has never gone further than the creations of George Balanchine. So we could argue about the title of Pennsylvania Ballets new quadruple bill, Balanchine and Beyond. Yet on this occasion, we dont need to. This program ends with The Four Temperaments, Balanchines 1946 classic of radical modernism, staged by Elyse Borne. Whats evident from the other three works, all by living choreographers, is that each proceeds down avenues that Balanchine never explored.

Temperaments, still extraordinary and overwhelming, was well performed  much better than the Pennsylvanias accounts of Balanchines Concerto Barocco and Serenade earlier in the 2015-16 season. Ian Hussey (Melancholic), Amy Aldridge and Craig Wasserman (Sanguinic), and Jermel Johnson (Phlegmatic) were all remarkably well suited to their roles. (In Choleric, however, Mayara Pineiro shows an un-Balanchinean way of descending heavily from point.) The choreography was made lucid and arresting, with handsomely varied dynamics and cool objectivity of manner; the Hindemith score was played with exceptional elan (conducted by Michael Pratt, with Martha Koeneman as the piano soloist and with sensitive phrasing by the strings). The masterpiece was alive.

The whole evening showed the Pennsylvania dancers performing with belief and commitment. Its remarkable to watch Trisha Browns o zlozony / o composite (2004, made for the Paris Opera Ballet), an extended trio  two men, one woman, dressed in informal white by Elizabeth Cannon, against a starlit sky designed for the original production by Vija Celmins and lighted here by Colman Rupp (assistant to the works original lighting designer, Jennifer Tipton)  in which Ms. Brown, a founding figure of postmodern dance, shows near-improvisatory experiments occurring before your eyes. Ms. Brown, a world-class choreographer for decades, has not choreographed  for health reasons  since 2011; her company now performs only intermittently. Her works are still danced, as in the Stephen Petronio Dance Companys recent revival of Glacial Decoy, but theyre not widespread.
SHANGHAI  As the 19th Shanghai International Film Festival gets underway Saturday, much of the focus among participants is on the 14 contenders for the Golden Goblet, the top prize at the event that runs through June 19. From the Philippines to Denmark, Iran to Japan, the films origins cover the globe.

But among them, one region stands out. The rugged terrain of Chinas Tibetan areas forms the backdrop for two of the countrys three competitors: De Lan, by the director Liu Jie, and Soul on a String, by Zhang Yang.

Together, the films highlight a shift in the cinematic depiction of Chinas ethnic minorities, especially of Tibetans.

Before, Tibet was usually portrayed in Chinese films in several ways, said Wu Jueren, who oversees the Chinese-language programming for the festival. There were the socialist propaganda films, that were meant to show ethnic harmony and national unity, and the commercial films, which often portrayed Tibet as a kind of mythical healing land where people would go to escape.
OJAI, Calif.  Always a bit low key about its high ambitions, the Ojai Music Festival barely made reference at its opening events on Thursday to the most striking element of this years four-day program: Nearly all of the work is by women.

Other organizations would have screamed that from the rooftops. (The Lucerne Festival, coming up in August in Switzerland, has branded itself Women on the Podium.) But Ojai, its vibe as luxuriantly relaxed as its sunny, secluded hometown, talks quietly. At 70, as dependable a source of new, intriguing music as any annual event in America, Ojai never seems to sell itself too hard.

Its reliability is something of a paradox, since each year the festival changes music directors. Over the past few years, the post has gone from a choreographer (Mark Morris) to a pianist (Jeremy Denk) to a percussionist (Steven Schick); this year, the leader is the stage director Peter Sellars. (A constant, for over a decade, has been the artistic director, Thomas W. Morris, who shares the planning.)

Mr. Sellars first made his name in the 1980s with vividly updated productions of Mozart operas, including The Marriage of Figaro set, yes, in Trump Tower. But he has pared down his aesthetic in recent years to more timeless stylizations, like the spare Bach St. Matthew Passion that the Berlin Philharmonic brought to New York in 2014. He has long been John Adamss key partner on both librettos and stagings, and has also been a frequent collaborator with Kaija Saariaho, whose LAmour de Loin arrives at the Metropolitan Opera this fall.
In Chicago, the improv scene draws his attention.

Comic hopefuls have been forcing their friends to see shows on these stages since the days of Alan Arkin, he says in true travel-show style. Local characters also get his attention, including a legendary hot dog artisan, whose death Mr. Ray describes thus: At least he died doing what he loved: clutching his chest and asking God for more time.

Various guest stars turn up in hilarious cameos of all sorts as Mr. Ray does his best to ensure that hell probably never be hired to do a real travel show. Although, frankly, he would liven up virtually any of the drab conventional series on the air.

If Mr. Ray gives us fake hidden sides of cities and attractions we thought we knew, a series coming up on Discovery Family does that for real. The show, Secrets of Americas Favorite Places, begins July 3 with an episode on  what else?  the Statue of Liberty. It relates the always interesting story of how the statue came to be but also examines less-well-known aspects of the great landmark, like what that tablet Lady Liberty is holding was originally supposed to be and whether Masonic symbols are lurking on the statue.

Later episodes give the same treatment to Mount Rushmore (July 17), Grand Central Terminal (Aug. 7  ever notice all the acorns in the architecture?) and other often-visited sites. The show makes a dandy accompaniment for a family trip to any of them.

Then theres the new series thats sort of a travel show, sort of a motorcycle-worshiping show. Its Ride With Norman Reedus, and it begins Sunday on AMC, where Mr. Reedus is already a familiar presence: He plays Daryl Dixon, the motorcycle-riding hunter, on The Walking Dead.
WASHINGTON  The Obama administration on Friday authorized six American airlines to begin direct flights to Cuba as soon as fall, paving the way for the resumption of scheduled air travel between the United States and Cuba after more than 50 years.

The Department of Transportation said it had approved applications from American Airlines, Frontier Airlines, JetBlue Airways, Silver Airways, Southwest Airlines and Sun Country Airlines to begin flying to Cuba from Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Chicago, Philadelphia and Minneapolis-St. Paul.

The action was the latest piece of President Obamas push to normalize relations between Cuba and the United States after more than half a century of hostility. In place of American efforts to isolate Cuba, an island nation 90 miles south of Florida, the new policy encourages Americans to travel there.

The service approved on Friday will fly to nine Cuban cities, including Cayo Largo, Cienfuegos, Matanzas and Santiago de Cuba. The Transportation Department said it would announce routes to Havana, the capital, this summer. Those could include service from New York, Washington and Boston, for which several major carriers have applied.
As it looks to navigate a period of more modest energy prices, BP said on Friday that it would merge its oil and gas operations in Norway with Det norske, a Norwegian exploration and development company.

The deal, with the much smaller oil company controlled by the Norwegian industrial giant Aker, appears to be a way for BP to slim down while keeping a hand in Norway, a major oil and gas producing nation. The new company, to be called Aker BP, will also use its heft to take advantage of a weak energy environment to make targeted acquisitions.

BP needs, in this hypercompetitive world, to think about different commercial models in different places, Robert Dudley, the British companys chief executive, told analysts on Friday during a conference call.

BP operates five oil and gas fields in Norwegian waters. There is the potential to expand some of these fields and extend their lives by finding new, usually smaller, oil and gas deposits around them and by tying them into existing platforms.
Viacoms chief executive, Philippe P. Dauman, proving he may be the worlds highest-paid indentured servant, is defying his boss.

At an investor conference, Mr. Dauman said Viacom, the American media company, is moving ahead with plans to sell 49 percent of its movie studio, Paramount Pictures, over the objections of Viacoms controlling shareholder, Sumner Redstone. Abrupt changes to Viacoms bylaws directly related to the auction underscore how acrimonious the drama has become. The dispute is a red flag for any buyer considering wading into the morass.

Mr. Dauman was replaced last month as a trustee overseeing Mr. Redstones business interests when Mr. Redstone, the 93-year-old chairman emeritus of Viacom, dies. Mr. Redstone cited the Paramount sale as one reason for the decision. He bested his rival, the media mogul Barry Diller, in a $10 billion battle for Paramount two decades ago. Granted, the mental state of Mr. Redstone is unclear. A transcript from his court testimony in May suggested an ailing man, at turns fiery and grasping for responses.

Mr. Dauman, in speaking to investors, has acknowledged his long history with Mr. Redstone  he referred to him as his great friend  and the sensitivities involving the studio. (He has been paid richly for his tenure of 30 years, making $54 million in compensation last year.) Partnering, however, with a Hollywood-minded investor could strengthen distribution and, he argues, unlock a $4 billion windfall, worth $10 a share, for the company, which also operates the MTV and Nickelodeon cable channels.
HONG KONG  Line, the Japanese messaging mobile app service, may want to rethink its bear mascot. A bull might be more appropriate.

The company, which is famous across Asia for its use of cute, animated emoticons it calls stickers, is seeking to raise about $1 billion in listings in New York and Tokyo next month, according to a filing on Friday. That would value Line at more than $5 billion, which could make it the biggest market debut for a technology company so far this year.

Line, which is owned by the South Korean online portal Naver, will be tapping capital markets at a time when tech start-ups have had increasing difficulty raising funds from investors. But with more than $300 million in revenue, and the backing of a major South Korean internet company, Line stands out from private start-ups that may seek to raise funds by listing in the coming years.

Line also lets people share images and make voice calls. It makes money by selling stickers of characters like Brown, its poker-faced ursine mascot, and through video games and conventional advertising.
Since its founding in 2002, Gawker has espoused a conversational tone that came to be mimicked across the internet and on social platforms like Twitter. Gawker and its affiliated sites  including the sports-focused Deadspin and Jezebel, which is aimed at women  have relentlessly and gleefully chronicled the lives of the powerful, and often delivered attention-grabbing, exclusive stories, some of them too over-the-edge for other publications. The company was also an incubator of talent: Employees went on to found websites like The Awl and work at publications like The New Yorker and Time.

Gawker also had many detractors, who said it often went too far and published items with little news value that aimed to embarrass individuals. But over the last year Gawker.com has been going through something of a cultural transformation. Mr. Denton has vowed to make the site nicer and Gawker has shifted to politics and away from coverage of the New York media world and celebrity gossip.

The decision to file for bankruptcy and put itself up for sale is the latest development for a company that has faced a seemingly unending barrage of bad news in the last year. There was the maelstrom last summer after Gawker published, and then removed, an article about a married male media executive who sought to hire a gay escort. That decision led to the resignations of two top editors. More recently, there was the lawsuit by Mr. Hogan, whose real name is Terry G. Bollea, which has roiled the company and raised questions about its path forward.

It really was an incredibly bad year, said Hamilton Nolan, a writer who has worked at Gawker for eight years. I think theyll study this in journalism schools one day as being the single worst year in media company history.

In Gawkers new offices in Manhattan on Friday, the mood was somber. Around noon, Mr. Denton and Heather Dietrick, the companys president and general counsel, held a meeting to inform employees of the companys plans and provide reassurance that Gawker would operate as usual during the sale process.
They have self-published dozens of e-books, with titles like Tortured in America and My Life Changed Forever. In hundreds of YouTube videos they offer testimonials and try to document evidence of their stalking, even confronting unsuspecting strangers.

They wanted to basically destroy me, and they did, a young mother in Phoenix says in one video, choking back tears. She lost custody of her daughter and was sent to a behavioral health hospital, says the woman, whose name is being withheld to protect her privacy. But I am going to fight back for the rest of my life.

She adds, And guess what, Im not crazy.

Dr. Sheridans study, written with Dr. David James, a forensic psychiatrist, examined 128 cases of reported gang-stalking. It found all the subjects were most likely delusional.

One has to think of the T.I. phenomenon in terms of people with paranoid symptoms who have hit upon the gang-stalking idea as an explanation of what is happening to them, Dr. James said.

A mishmash of conspiracy theories

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the community is divided over the contours of the conspiracy. Some believe the financial elite is behind it. Others blame aliens, their neighbors, Freemasons or some combination.

The movements most prominent voices, however, tend to believe the surveillance is part of a mind-control field test done in preparation for global domination. The military establishment, the theory goes, never gave up on the ambitions of MK Ultra, the C.I.A.s infamous program to control the mind in the 1950s and 60s.

A leading proponent of that view is an anesthesiologist from San Antonio named John Hall.
The Zika virus is transmitted by the Aedes aegypti mosquito  a bug that in the United States is found mostly in the South and Southwest, though its range can spread in the summer. No one has been infected with Zika by a mosquito in the continental United States, but health experts expect it to happen.

The health experts do not expect an explosive Zika virus transmission like the recent one in Brazil because many homes in the United States are air-conditioned and keep their windows closed. Many also have screened windows that keep mosquitoes out. The United States is much less densely populated than the areas of Brazil where the Zika outbreak occurred, a hindrance to transmission given that the Aedes aegypti mosquito rarely flies more than a block in its lifetime.

Many health experts worry, however, that a Zika outbreak could be difficult to fight because 80 percent of the people infected with it experience no symptoms.

If we have a homegrown case, thats a game changer, Dr. Thomas E. Dobbs III, Mississippis epidemiologist, said in a telephone interview.
The Museum of Modern Art has acknowledged it wrongly canceled the New York debut of Under the Sun, a documentary about North Korea that has been criticized by that country and Russia.

A slyly subversive look at the reclusive state by the Russian filmmaker Vitaly Mansky, the film had been scheduled to be shown at the museums 2016 Doc Fortnight festival on Feb. 19-29. But an email exchange provided by the films German producer to The New York Times shows that a festival organizer, Sally Berger, an assistant curator at MoMA, expressed concern in late January about screening the film after reading an article suggesting that any organization that did so risked retribution from North Korea.

In the emails, Ms. Berger referred to a major hacking attack on Sony Pictures that the United States has described as retaliation by North Korea for a 2014 film satire of the country, The Interview.

She followed up a few days later to tell the documentarys distributor that it would not be included in the festival. It just simply came in too late to review all the possible ramifications of showing it here at MoMA, she wrote.
The judge announced his verdicts without any explanation, in a courtroom packed with correction officers  including several of the defendants who had learned their fate Tuesday  and their supporters. Mr. Lightfoot sat in the back row, and watched the proceedings intensely but did not express any emotion.

Afterward, Mr. Lightfoot said the verdicts would send a message to correction officers that abusing inmates would not be tolerated.

It happens all the time at Rikers Island, he said. Its just that people dont speak about it.

The judges verdicts bring to a close a criminal trial that lasted more than two months and served as a scathing indictment of the citys long troubled main jail complex, which has about 8,000 inmates. Critics, including Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, have called for Rikers to be closed.

The outcome was a victory for the Bronx district attorney, Darcel D. Clark, and other law enforcement officials who have struggled to successfully prosecute correction officers accused of brutality, in part because of negative perceptions and credibility problems with victims who are in jails and prisons. Ms. Clark has made prosecuting crimes committed at Rikers a priority.

The Lightfoot case was particularly significant because of the large number and the high rank of some of the officers involved. Prosecutors said that Eliseo Perez Jr., a former assistant chief for security, and Mr. Vaughn, a former captain, ordered five members of an elite correction squad to beat Mr. Lightfoot after he caught Mr. Perezs eye during a search of inmates for weapons. They said that Mr. Perez thought the inmate was a tough guy and told the officers to kick his teeth in.
To the Editor:

Re Outrage Over Sentencing in Rape Case at Stanford (news article, June 7):

The decision to sentence a former Stanford University student, Brock Turner, to six months in jail for three felony counts of sexual assault, lest prison have a severe impact on his future, is a prima facie example of the way our culture understates and devalues the horror of sexual violence.

While the actions of two brave people who intervened and the groundswell of support for the survivor are bright spots in the horribly bleak landscape of this case, the unjustly light sentence speaks volumes about privilege and criminal justice. Until we stop putting the health, well-being and future prospects of the perpetrator ahead of the survivor, we re-victimize survivors and diminish the chances that women and men will come forward.

In the words of the Santa Clara County district attorney: Campus rape is no different than off-campus rape. Rape is rape. It is incumbent on all of us  in and outside of higher education  to create a culture in which sexual violence is intolerable, a culture of respect.

KEVIN KRUGER

ALLISON TOMBROS KORMAN

Washington

Mr. Kruger is president of NASPA  Students Affairs Administrators in Higher Education. Ms. Tombros Korman is senior director of one of its programs, Culture of Respect.
In this era of global warming, when there is extreme weather like the recent heavy rains that led to flooding in Paris and other parts of France and Germany, the question inevitably comes up: Did climate change play a role?

Not too long ago, the immediate response from most climate scientists would be that while it is generally accepted that global warming will lead to more rain because warmer air can hold more moisture, it is difficult to attribute any one event to climate change. A more detailed answer, perhaps with a definitive conclusion, would come months or years later in a paper published in a peer-reviewed journal.
A researcher at the University of Pittsburgh contracted the Zika virus after accidentally sticking herself with a needle, becoming what appeared to be the first known case of an infection in a lab, officials said.

The Allegheny County Health Department said the infection was unusual because the woman had not contracted the virus after traveling to an affected area or through sexual transmission. The unidentified researcher stuck herself on May 23, developing symptoms, including a fever, about a week later, said Joe Miksch, a university spokesman.

The presence of the virus was confirmed in a blood sample, Mr. Miksch said, and the researcher returned to work on June 6. She has to wear long sleeves and pants, and use insect repellent for three weeks, Mr. Miksch said, to minimize the chance that a mosquito would get the virus from her and spread it to others.
MONTCLAIR, N.J.  If theater to you is sustenance, if you are the sort of person who savors the daring and the visionary, then head to New Jersey, where the Italian avant-garde director Romeo Castellucci and his company, Societas Raffaello Sanzio, are offering a thrilling repast at Montclair State University  but only through Sunday.

The production, Go down, Moses, part of the invaluable Peak Performances series at the Alexander Kasser Theater, is intended as a contemporary transfiguration of the Moses story, but dont expect an updated version of Exodus. Mr. Castellucci, whose work has often been seen in Montclair but, mystifyingly, is never seen in New York City, is engaging with Moses mostly on an abstract level.

Yet this largely wordless series of tableaus tells a story of abandonment, and the baby in the bulrushes isnt the only injured party.

Mr. Castellucci places the action at a distance from us, behind a softening scrim that flattens the dimensions, making stage images into canvases that come alive. Noise is the most immediate sensation, like the whimpering of a woman (Rascia Darwish), blood-soaked and alone on the floor of a single-occupancy public bathroom. We hear her agonized weeping as she tries to stanch the hemorrhaging and stop the baby she doesnt want from coming out of her.
When Mayte Lara Ibarra, the valedictorian of her high schools graduating class, revealed her plans to attend the University of Texas at Austin on a scholarship, she did what any graduate would do: She shared her excitement on social media.

Ms. Lara also declared, proudly, that she is undocumented.

Valedictorian, 4.5GPA, full tuition paid for at UT, 13 cords/medals, nice legs, oh and Im undocumented, she wrote in a tweet posted last week, hours after she gave her valedictory speech to fellow graduates at David Crockett High School in Austin.

In an era where the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, Donald J. Trump, has vowed to build a wall to keep out undocumented immigrants and many Latinos are rushing to seek citizenship to vote against him, others are finding ways to raise their voices or step out of the shadows.

Ms. Lara, whose path to the United States was not immediately clear and who didnt mention her undocumented status in her speech, chose instead to talk about AP tests, proms and pep rallies. But on the same day, a few hours north in McKinney, Tex., another valedictorian, Larissa Martinez, did.
A letter that John F. Kennedy purportedly wrote but never sent to a woman believed to be his lover will be auctioned this month, offering a glimpse into the former presidents private life shortly before he was assassinated.

R.R. Auction, based in Boston, said the letter, written on White House stationery, was meant for Mary Pinchot Meyer, a family friend who was thought to be romantically linked to Kennedy. The top of the stationery was cut off, but a faded watermark is visible under bright light.

The letter reads in full:

Why dont you leave suburbia for once  come and see me  either here  or at the Cape next week or in Boston the 19th. I know it is unwise, irrational, and that you may hate it  on the other hand you may not  and I will love it. You say that it is good for me not to get what I want. After all of these years  you should give me a more loving answer than that. Why dont you just say yes.

The letter is undated, but R.R. Auction said it is believed to be from October 1963, the month before the president was assassinated.
WASHINGTON  After George W. Bush twice carried the New Hampshire county that includes vote-rich Manchester and Nashua, President Obama turned the tables and won it in both his elections by similar margins.

Mr. Bush handily captured the Ohio county that includes Cincinnati and its mostly white suburbs in 2004, while Mr. Obama won there running away in 2012. Colorado and Virginia went for Mr. Bush, then flipped to Mr. Obama.

Now that Mr. Obama has endorsed Hillary Clinton, her advisers are eager to use his political touch in those and other battleground states and extend the Democratic streak there this fall. They see Mr. Obama as a one-of-a-kind resource  a popular sitting president  in the looming campaign to defeat Donald J. Trump.

Political strategists at the White House and in Mrs. Clintons campaign are just beginning to determine a specific stump-speech schedule for the president after his endorsement on Thursday of his former secretary of state. Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton will appear together on Wednesday for the first time since she secured the Democratic nomination, and they have chosen Green Bay, Wis., another city where Mr. Obama lifted Democratic fortunes.
The Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, would not rule out the possibility of rescinding his endorsement of Donald J. Trumps presidential bid down the road, and he described the candidate as lacking knowledge in a number of areas in an interview released on Friday.

The comments from Mr. McConnell, in an interview with the Masters in Politics podcast on Bloomberg Politics, came as Republicans down the ballot continue to face questions about Mr. Trumps criticism of the Indiana-born federal judge overseeing a case against Trump University as Mexican. Mr. McConnell has been pointed in his criticism of those remarks.

It was the first time, though, that Mr. McConnell offered anything less than an ironclad response of sticking with Mr. Trump, despite the numerous controversies that the presumptive Republican nominee has instigated.

Asked if there was a line that Mr. Trump could cross that would prompt Mr. McConnell to rescind his endorsement, Mr. McConnell demurred.
Theres no shortage of full-throated Republican endorsements of Donald J. Trump. But there are several Republican leaders who havent exactly swooned when describing their support of the presumptive presidential nominee.

Those who are more hesitant speak loudly through their softer statements. They share a few common sentiments: No matter their opinions of Mr. Trump, they believe that Hillary Clinton, the presumptive Democratic nominee, would be much, much worse. Some said they would support the Republican nominee no matter what. Some said they would support but not endorse Mr. Trump.

Heres a collection of some of the verbal contortions and justifications this year, when it became clear Mr. Trump was on his way to locking up the nomination.

Rick Perry, former Texas governor, May 5:

He is not a perfect man. But what I do believe is that he loves this country, and he will surround himself with capable, experienced people and he will listen to them. He wasnt my first choice, wasnt my second choice, but he is the peoples choice.

Peter King, Representative from New York, May 6:

This is a close call, but I feel to stay within the party, and to have a role to play, and to try to frame the policies, I have to endorse the nominee of the party, but its not with enthusiasm.

Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, May 5:

I have committed to supporting the nominee chosen by Republican voters, and Donald Trump, the presumptive nominee, is now on the verge of clinching that nomination.

Paul D. Ryan, speaker of the House, June 2:

Its no secret that he and I have our differences. I wont pretend otherwise. And when I feel the need to, Ill continue to speak my mind. But the reality is, on the issues that make up our agenda, we have more common ground than disagreement.

Tim Pawlenty, former Minnesota governor, May 4:

Im going to support the nominee; it is going to be Donald Trump. I certainly dont agree with everything that Donald Trump says or the way that he says it, but Im going to support the nominee.

Nikki Haley, South Carolina governor, May 4:

I have great respect for the will of the people, and as I have always said, I will support the Republican nominee for president.

Brian Sandoval, Nevada governor, May 4:

I have a tremendous amount of respect for Gov. [John] Kasich and believe he would have been a great President. Now that he has dropped out of the race, I plan to vote for the presumptive nominee, although it is no secret that we do not agree on every issue. Elections are about making choices and the Democratic nominee is simply not an option.

Asa Hutchinson, Arkansas governor, May 4:

I do not agree with everything Mr. Trump has said nor have I endorsed every policy hes announced, but I do believe the Republican Partys fiscally conservative approach to government and the values we stand for are far greater than what the other side has to offer the American people.

Shelley Moore Capito, United States senator from West Virginia, May 12:

I would express concern about some of the tone and some of the remarks that he has made in the past and how important it is in this time of seeking unity that we speak with one voice and we show respect to all segments of the population. Im going to support the Republican nominee, absolutely  for the major reason that I believe party unity is really important.

Jon Huntsman, former Utah governor, Feb. 22:

If hes the nominee, Im a Republican, and I tend to gravitate toward whomever the nominee is.

Trent Lott, former U.S. Senator, May 4:

He is going to become a much better candidate than expected.

Tom Cole, United States representative from Oklahoma, June 9,
Iraq, which began in 2003 as a classic movement of state-versus-state warfare with tanks and a big invading force, evolved into another counterinsurgency campaign. Today American forces are fighting yet another counterinsurgency against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.

All of us, from the Army to the Navy to the Marine Corps, we fought well and courageously for 15 years against a tough foe, said Gen. Robert B. Neller, the commandant of the Marine Corps. But now we think about who might the next fight be.

It will probably be, he said, somebody whos got electronic warfare, armored vehicles and the ability to maneuver.

On the recent morning at Twentynine Palms, General Neller was joined by Adm. John M. Richardson, the chief of naval operations, to watch the training exercise  the first time a Navy chief had traveled to the Marine base to do so. Defense officials say the changing nature of war calls for closer cooperation between the services.

When you look at this return of great power competition, one of the things that we have to pay more attention to, think harder about, is not only power projection, which is what weve been doing, but also sea control, Admiral Richardson said. Naval combat at sea. Work our way, fight our way in, from further out in the ocean.
DHAKA, Bangladesh  A Hindu man was hacked to death in northern Bangladesh on Friday, the latest in a string of such killings in the country.

The victim, Nityaranjan Pandey, a volunteer at a Hindu ashram in the district of Pabna, was taking a walk early Friday morning when he was attacked by unknown assailants, said Abdullah Al Hassan, the officer in charge of the Pabna Sadar police station.
WASHINGTON  As the United States braces for an especially bloody summer fighting season in Afghanistan, President Obama inched closer this week to allowing American forces to once again directly battle the Taliban, loosening restrictions on airstrikes and on ground combat in support of Afghan forces, the administration said on Friday.

The presidents decision to expand the militarys mission just seven months before he leaves office signaled just how far the United States remains from achieving his goal of ending the American military role in Afghanistan.

Under the new rules, airstrikes will no longer have to be justified as necessary to defend American troops. United States commanders will now be allowed to use air power against the Taliban when they see fit, Pentagon and administration officials said. American forces will also be permitted to accompany regular Afghan troops into combat against the Taliban.
LONDON  A British judge ruled on Friday in favor of six Lithuanian migrant workers who said they had been lured to Britain with the promise of decent employment but ended up in conditions resembling servitude, catching chickens without adequate pay or access to facilities where they could bathe, rest, eat or drink.

The judge, Justice Michael Supperstone of the High Court of Justice, found that the men were owed compensation because, among other reasons, they had not been paid the minimum wage for agricultural workers, had been charged illegal fees and had had wages improperly withheld.

The case has been closely watched in Britain. Parliament last year adopted the Modern Slavery Act to crack down on the trafficking and exploitation of migrant workers and other laborers. Immigration has been a contentious and central issue in the debate leading up to a referendum, scheduled for June 23, on whether the country should remain in the European Union.
BERLIN  The German authorities are investigating a fire that destroyed a warehouse used as a refugee shelter in the western city of Dusseldorf this week. The fire broke out after a dispute over a decision to scale back the midday meal during the month of Ramadan, when many Muslims fast during the day.

The police say five male shelter residents are suspected of setting the fire, which broke out on Tuesday after the afternoon meal service was reduced in consideration for Muslim residents. All of the approximately 130 residents were able to escape the fire, but several suffered injuries related to smoke inhalation.

Residents have complained for months about conditions in the shelter, which used temporary walls to divide the separate living areas but did not afford migrants full privacy, Ralf Herrenbruck, a spokesman for prosecutors in Dusseldorf, said Friday. After the fire, most migrants were transferred to temporary shelters set up in public gymnasiums.
Mr. Kaspersky and his company find themselves at the forefront of the battle against cybergangs, one of the largest emerging threats, for two rather simple reasons, he said: Russian software engineers are the best; unfortunately Russian cybercriminals are the best, as well.

Hacking methods developed in the Russian-speaking world are going global, suggesting a thriving black market in malicious code. They dont just hack the victims, they trade the technology to other gangs, he said. Now there are hundreds of victims, in the United States and Asia.

One gang alone is believed to have stolen up to $1 billion from banks, mainly in Russia, in 2013 and 2014. And this month, Kaspersky Lab experts helped Russia catch its largest hacking gang yet  50 people were arrested and accused of stealing $45 million since 2011. Investigators now believe the North Korean government hacked an international financial messaging system in February in an effort to drain $1 billion from the central bank of Bangladesh. They managed to get $81 million before the Federal Reserve Bank of New York became suspicious and cut off the transaction.

After banks, commodities are a big new target. Hackers manipulate supply records, disguising surpluses to sell. We now have reports that it is massive, it is everywhere, said Mr. Kaspersky, who speaks colorful English with a Russian accent.

Mr. Kaspersky is something of an anomaly in Russia, a businessman who built a global brand from scratch, using brains and persistence. His firm is among the most successful international computer security operations in the world, with offices in 32 countries, about 400 million people using its software (by its own estimate) and high-profile advertising campaigns, like its sponsorship of Ferraris Formula One team.
OSLO  As maritime fender-benders go, this one couldnt help attracting attention: Noahs ark crashed into a Norwegian Coast Guard patrol boat in the Port of Oslo on Friday morning.

It was not, of course, the actual ark, but one of two reconstructions that a Dutch carpenter named Johan Huibers painstakingly built over seven years, based on the biblical description. More than a million people have visited the replicas to see domesticated animals like llamas, ponies and rabbits, and to hear, as Mr. Huibers intended, a message of Gods love.

The smaller of the arks was being towed on Friday when the crew lost control, which led to the collision. No animals were on board and no one was injured, but the arks wooden cladding was damaged. A small crane on the patrol boat was also damaged, Lt. Rune Svartsund, a coast guard spokesman, said.

Ole Herman Kjernsby, the head of travel at Stena Line, a ferry company based in Oslo, said his staff members did not witness the accident but could see the damage to the ark afterward, including what he called a huge rift in the side.
There is perhaps no lost-treasure mystery more seductive than that of the priceless Amber Room of Peter the Great, which disappeared in the chaotic closing hours of World War II. Now Bartlomiej Plebanczyk, an unassuming historian and museum director in northeastern Poland, believes he has found it.

Elderly villagers told Mr. Plebanczyk that they had seen a German convoy unloading big crates into a secret chamber in a stark, moss-covered Nazi bunker near the Russian border in early 1945. So the Mamerki Museum, whichhe leads, recently completed a ground-penetrating radar scan of the derelict bunker that he said confirmed the existence of a hidden chamber.

This is the perfect place to hide something if you have to move it quickly out of eastern Prussia, Mr. Plebanczyk said.

Poles are used to hearing extravagant tales of lost war loot, and also to hearing the tales debunked. Last year, two men claimed to have found a buried train containing Nazi gold, but an investigation found no such thing. Despite that, war-treasure hunting is such a popular pastime in Poland that enthusiasts have their own web forum.
Addiction can begin with a simple request for something to stop back pain, she said. But even starting on low doses of opioids can quickly turn into abuse. Why? There are two factors for aging adults: drug tolerance that builds with time, and the bodys slowing metabolism, which gives drugs a bigger effect.

By 10 days of usage, you can be addicted, Dr. Cidambi said. You dont think of affluent, well-put-together women as addicts. But I see this happening constantly. Its out of the box.

Caregivers and doctors rarely notice the problem at its early stages. Few doctors screen for addiction, said R. Corey Waller, an addiction, pain and emergency medicine specialist and senior medical director for education and policy at the Camden Coalition of Healthcare Providers in New Jersey. Its not built into treatment yet, and adding that step takes lots of time. Also, patients are usually offended when asked.

So an addiction is often discovered only after a bad fall, confusion or even an accidental overdose, Dr. Garbely said. And even then it can sometimes be difficult to detect since signs of addiction can often be dismissed as symptoms of aging, such as confusion, shaky hands and mood swings.

Dr. Garbely remembers one wealthy woman whose addiction was masked. She lived on a huge estate and had many staff members who cared for her. They continued buying alcohol and prescription drugs for her even though her memory was fading.

Her helpers were bathing her, changing her clothes and enabling her, he said. Substances take their toll.

Finally, her son, who discovered her in horrible condition, broke through her human fortress. And the woman was checked into a Caron centers senior unit for three months. Her cognition was fully restored, Dr. Garbely said. It brought tears to my eyes.
The center opened just as photography was gaining stature in the art world, yet it proceeded on a course parallel to the museum world  one in which subject matter took precedence over artistic intent. Its first show was the work of Henri Cartier-Bresson, an appropriate choice given Mr. Capas relationship to Magnum  his brother, Robert, was a co-founder, along with Cartier-Bresson. All three were exemplars of bedrock photojournalism.

Willis E. Hartshorn, Mr. Lubells predecessor, was executive director from 1994 to 2012, and sharpened the centers goals. Upon his retirement, Mr. Hartshorn said he had aimed for greater awareness about how pictures create meaning and an understanding of the impact that they have on us. You know, visual literacy. To that end, in the last decade the centers curatorial program stood at the front of the art worlds dialogue about photography. A Different Kind of Order, its fourth Triennial, in 2013, featured a roster of contemporary artists, including Mishka Henner, Trevor Paglen and Walid Raad, who have a substantial influence on the making of photographic art today.

The question now is whether it can keep a clear eye on what the medium is becoming without losing sight of its history. The exhibition inaugurating the new Bowery space, Public, Private, Secret, is organized by Charlotte Cotton, the centers first curator in residence. It explores the ways in which self-identity is intertwined with public visibility. At the same time, technology is yielding new breeds of photography, and artists are exploiting the mediums surveillance capabilities or identifying visual patterns in social media networks.

Visitors will confront their reflections in mirrored partitions meant to suggest our selfie culture; Closed Circuit Television cameras will document museumgoers with live feeds projected as pixelated patterns of color on a wall in the public space. The idea here is to pay attention to the visual language of machines, something we are all being conditioned to read.
Guys Elizabeth is deliciously human. Helpless before marzipan, she is greedy, temperamental, afraid of the dark, prone to black moods, black humor, black teeth (all that marzipan), vain, vindictive, an inveterate snob. She goes in for trashy Italian novellas and garish haute couture. Unpredictable even to those who know her best, she keeps her court guessing  then changes her mind. She does not hesitate to dole out grisly punishments: She orders a young Jesuit, found guilty of treason, to be removed from the gallows and disemboweled while still conscious. She is ferociously eloquent. A champion multitasker, she manages to handwrite one letter, dictate another and talk all at the same time.

This leaves plenty of time for foot-stamping and tantrum-throwing. In Guys account Elizabeth rants, thunders, rails and rages. The word tetchy hovers over these pages as ominously as the Spanish Armada. A great deal of sulking goes on at court as a consequence. Elizabeth is at once more fragile and more monumental than she has generally seemed; without a crown on her head, she could pass for the class bully. Slightly pockmarked, bald from an early age, she has by her 60s lost so many teeth that she is difficult to understand. She battles recurring digestive ailments, chest and throat infections. She has bad dreams. She holds fast, however, to her triple mandate, in itself sufficient to make any late-16th-century English monarch tetchy: Elizabeth means to offer her people justice in the law courts, to defend the Church of England and to defend her realm from foreign invasion.

While she believed herself a queen first and a woman second, few others did. That tension animates the life. Guy is exquisitely attuned to the backwards-and-in-heels nature of Elizabeths reign. Confined to the company of women in her chambers  she even employed a female fool  she necessarily operated at a remove from her advisers. She had no choice but to dress for a meeting, an obligation her father had been spared. That was a painstaking production for any monarch; Elizabeths toilette occupied her chamberwomen for a solid two hours. A Royal Navy ship, joked the wags, could be rigged in less time.

Billing herself as the Virgin Queen, she also appreciated a fine-looking man at her side. She did not react well when that consort pursued his passions elsewhere or, for that matter, when a female attendant took it upon herself to marry. (Elizabeth assaulted and injured one young bride. An alternate tale had to be concocted, involving a wayward candlestick.) As one diplomat noted, Elizabeth was angry with any love. She nimbly wriggled out of marriage plans and meted out affections. She knew when to bestow a pet nickname or a portrait of herself, which could leave a grown man swooning.

For all the flirtations, for all the manipulations, the later years distinguish themselves mostly for the betrayals. At court, she is surrounded by a slippery cast of moles, spies and turncoats who busily conspire, as much against one another as against the common enemy. The perfidy all around is startling. It is one thing for Elizabeths great ally, the king of France, to convert to Catholicism without alerting her. That defection is worth a great deal. For far lower stakes, Elizabeths military commanders deviate from instructions. Sir Francis Drake defies her. Sir Walter Ralegh disobeys her. Her closest adviser enters into clandestine negotiations with the Spanish. Elizabeth would appear to have had one of the broadest backs in history, given the number of people plotting  or reported to be plotting  behind it.
Worse, Rieff worries that memory could not just spark violence, but prolong it. In order to end a war, or get a dictator to yield power to democrats, its often necessary to negotiate with murderous leaders who will demand their own amnesty  blotting out their own past cruelties to assure future peace. (Nuremberg, the preferred precedent of human rights lawyers, is almost always the wrong example. It was only after a hard-won unconditional victory that the Allies could put Nazi Germanys rulers on trial, but most wars dont end so decisively.) While Rieff would prosecute war criminals whenever feasible, he rejects the legalistic absolutism of those human rights activists who insist on justice above peace or other worthwhile political goals. He prudently warns that Chiles return to democracy could have been scuttled by a Spanish warrant for the arrest of the military dictator Augusto Pinochet. And in Bosnia, he convincingly argues that the injustice of a Dayton peace agreement that spared the bloodstained Slobodan Milosevic was still far better than continuing a ruinous war.

Rieff makes a powerful case for reconciliation and compromise, and exposes how politicized our nationalist histories are. Lucidly deploying historical examples and literary references, he himself seems to have forgotten nothing. But in a book packed with pugnacious argument, he only implicitly offers rules for when to remember and when to forget. Its a delicate matter asking victimized peoples to turn their backs on their grievances; Japanese rightists only further offend Koreans by proclaiming that they need to get over their wartime suffering. And the pursuit of justice, while risky, doesnt always derail peace processes: The Dayton peace deal proceeded even though a United Nations war crimes tribunal had indicted the Bosnian Serb leaders Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic.

No absolutist himself, Rieff isnt against all remembrance. He believes that we are morally obligated to remember the Holocaust, and praises war crimes trials and truth commissions in Europe, Latin America and South Africa. He vigorously argues that there is a duty to debunk whitewashing about the Armenian genocide, British and French colonial massacres, Imperial Japans sexual enslavement of women from Korea and other Asian nations, and the Srebrenica massacre. (The fact that Ken Livingstone, the former mayor of London, is defiantly promoting the crackpot slur that Hitler was somehow a kind of Zionist before he went mad and ended up killing six million Jews demonstrates that some history lessons are still necessary.)

Its one thing for people to settle and move on; its another to get them to forget. Although Mao Zedongs regime worked to normalize Chinas relationship with postwar Japan, including discreetly fixing the blame for World War II on a small clique of militarists, todays Chinese leadership has had little difficulty in whipping up a broader popular rage against Japan. After Croat fascists slaughtered Serbs and Jews in World War II, Yugoslavias postwar Communist dictatorship nevertheless promoted an amnesiac brotherhood and unity. Yet the bad old memories lingered long enough to provide nationalist tinder for Milosevic to exploit in the 1990s. Not all of us have the grace of Keiko Utsumi.

Rieffs book feels painfully relevant for todays sour populist mood. As powerful leaders in China, Russia, India, Japan and elsewhere are energetically promoting their own fractured takes on their history, he punctures their pretensions. Donald J. Trumps chest-thumping version of Americas 20th-century experience  We saved the world and then we saved the world again  is unusual only in its brainlessness. This rich book provides a field guide to a more decent politics of forgiveness, in which Trump and Trumpism may one day be mercifully forgotten too.
On Homecoming

To the Editor:

Matthew B. Crawfords review of Sebastian Jungers Tribe (May 29) includes the misleading statement that with the help of a little medication the traits that make a soldier a good fighter wither. In fact, veterans are extremely likely to be prescribed a great deal of psychiatric medication that has no effect on such traits, occasionally helps somewhat, but far more often causes a wide array of kinds of harm.

Crawford distorts Jungers argument by accepting the criticism that he romanticizes tribal people. Junger actually argues that the way the wider community  not the mental health system  deals with people who have been through hell has enormous impact on whether they heal from trauma.

Crawford takes Junger to task for leaving out intellectual history and political philosophy, a criticism that may come from the same source as the skepticism people express when they hear about Welcome Johnny and Jane Home, a project in which nonveterans who are not therapists simply listen with 100 percent of their attention and their whole hearts to whatever a veteran wishes to say. In this highly psychiatrized world, people turn to intellectualizing, theory and science for answers, and find it hard to believe that simply connecting with a respectful member of ones community can be helpful; but our Harvard Kennedy School study and other research prove that it nearly always is.

PAULA J. CAPLAN

CAMBRIDGE, MASS.

The writer, an associate of the Hutchins Center at Harvard, is the author of When Johnny and Jane Come Marching Home and the founder and director of Welcome Johnny and Jane Home.
Maxwell Perkins is the rare book editor who achieved lasting fame. His nurture of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway and Thomas Wolfe made him something like the Platonic ideal of mentorship. A new movie, Genius, is centered on his relationship with Wolfe and the massive edits that preceded the publication of Wolfes novel Look Homeward, Angel.

The first interest in turning A. Scott Bergs National Book Award-winning biography of Perkins into a movie came in the spring of 1978, just before the book was published. In a recent phone interview, Berg said Universal Studios was developing it at the time, until it landed on a particular executives desk. I was told that he got to Page 3 and said: Wait a minute, this is a movie about a book editor? Were not making this movie. 

Sixteen years ago, Bergs friend the playwright and screenwriter John Logan expressed interest in adapting it. They agreed that showing too much of the act of writing on-screen was a no-no, though if any writer had a cinematic process, it was the 6-foot-6 Wolfe. He used to stand at the refrigerator and throw pages into crates, Berg said. Its almost like Jackson Pollock. Its action writing. And every now and then hed bring the crates into Max Perkins and say, Is it a book? 
THE NEW ARAB WARS

Uprisings and Anarchy in the Middle East

By Marc Lynch

284 pp. PublicAffairs. $26.99.

Its hard to pinpoint the moment that the Muslim world cracked, provoking credible talk of a third world war. It may have been in December 2010, when a Tunisian fruit seller set himself on fire, igniting first a peoples rebellion and hope around the Arab world, then violent counterreaction and armed conflict.

It may have been March 2003, when American tanks cranked north toward Baghdad, starting a war that was not well thought out and helping to spawn an insurgency that consumed first Iraq, then Syria. It is not a stretch to say the Iraq war has now reached Paris and Brussels. But the date is less important than the dynamic, ever widening.

Local wars in Iraq, Syria, Libya and Yemen became proxies for larger conflicts: Saudi Arabia versus Iran (with Qatar and Turkey thrown in, and Israel still eyeing Iran). Shia fought Sunni. Britain, France and a reluctant America fired shots in Libya. Russia showily shored up the president of a Syria torn apart, probably forever, like the colonial borders that created the countries of the region after World War I.
The vise appears to be tightening at the for-profit education giant ITT Educational Services. Its profits are collapsing, its stock is below $2, and last Monday the company got bad news from the Education Department in Washington, a main overseer.

ITT, which operates 138 campuses in 39 states, said it had received a letter from the government demanding $44 million to cover potential obligations that might arise, such as student refunds. The department cited increased risks at ITT as the reason for the demand.

A call for $44 million may not sound like a death knell. But it was just the latest in a series of setbacks at ITT. And if the past is prologue, the companys woes could have dire consequences for its current and former students. The situation has uncanny echoes of a collapse of a for-profit educational institution about two decades ago.

According to its most recent financial statement, ITT provides career-oriented programs to 43,000 students at ITT Technical Institute and Daniel Webster College locations.
Unlike most refugees, I wasnt scared when I came to this country from Ethiopia many years ago. I was confused. But early on, I understood that the first thing you need to do is survive. After a couple of months in Buffalo, I moved to Houston. For three years, I worked as a waitress and did odd jobs, and then I began volunteering at a refugee center in Hillcroft, one of the most crowded places in the city, filled with social-service organizations, apartments and grocery stores and restaurants that sell food from around the world. The refugee center hired me as its program manager, and I received formal training from the state to do medical interpretation.

One morning, I was occupied with a client from Congo who was pregnant and was having difficulty getting through the application process for Medicaid. Just then, the receptionist buzzed me. A local doctor, Dr.R., was on the line. I need a favor, he said. I have this Amharic-speaking gentleman. He has limited English. Can you come now to help with interpretation?

I told Dr.R. that I could be free in 30 minutes. When I was sure my client understood what she had to do, I let her go and walked to his office three buildings away. (The Hillcroft area is one of the few places in Houston where you see people walking. Thats because many people there dont have cars.) Once I reached Dr.R.s clinic, he appeared almost immediately, in his lab coat and stethoscope. He looked relieved to see me.

I followed him into the examination room, where the patient sat on a chair. An older man with gray hair, he appeared to be in his late 60s and seemed quite fit  perhaps he was a farmer in Ethiopia. He greeted me with a smile, making me feel as if I were the girl next door.
RE: ROCK N ROLL

In an adaptation from his new book, But What if Were Wrong? Cluck Klosterman ponders who future historians will remember from the 20th centurys most popular musical genre.

The mistake in discussing who will last in rock n roll is to assume that what rocks your world is what is likely to stand for all time. Its all context and perception, and I think Klosterman nailed it in the line everybody who was around for punk and disco is dead and buried, and no one is left to contradict how that moment felt. Right: You had to be there. But be where, exactly? Everything is relative to myriad cultural, psychological and historical factors.

What Klosterman leaves out of the discussion is the primordial soup out of which the genre grew. Thats where, from a white perspective, the real transgression lay, in rhythm and blues, race music, black vocal groups, gospel, blues and even in early country and western and hillbilly music.
When Superman made his debut in Action Comics No. 1 in 1938, he had to wait until the next year to take part in the Macys Thanksgiving Day Parade. The new Puerto Rican heroine La Borinquena, who is secretly a college student named Marisol Rios De La Luz, will have a float in the National Puerto Rican Day Parade on Sunday, despite having made her first appearance at a news conference just last month. Her comic doesnt even come out until October.

La Borinquena is the creation of the graphic designer Edgardo Miranda-Rodriguez, who is a community activist and a comic book fan. Mr. Miranda-Rodriguez, whose family is from Puerto Rico and who grew up in the South Bronx, has always found the diversity of heroes lacking. Latinos are underrepresented in all forms of media, he said. If we dont tell our own stories, no one else will.

Comic book publishers have been striving to change. At DC Comics, the lesbian Batwoman will be fighting alongside Batman starting this month, while Cyborg, who is black, will star in a new series in September. Marvel has had success with its Muslim-American Ms. Marvel, the Korean-American Hulk and the female Thor. But its biggest coup may have been enlisting Ta-Nehisi Coates, who won the National Book Award for Between the World and Me, to reimagine the Black Panther.
On the night of June 6, Michelle Marks, who was 23 years old and lived in the Albany Houses in Crown Heights, was leaving her job at Fornino, a pizzeria a few miles away in Brooklyn Bridge Park, when she was shot in the head and killed. The day before she died, Ms. Marks had filed a report with the police alleging that her former boyfriend, a man with a criminal record who was three decades her senior, had assaulted her at the Albany Houses, trying to grab her groceries. This was the third domestic incident report involving the couple within the course of a few weeks. On May 16, the police said, Ms. Marks had called 911 after she opened the door to her apartment to find the man, Lamont Wright, lurking in the hallway outside.

Shortly after the shooting, Mr. Wright was taken into police custody and charged with assaulting and stalking Ms. Marks on the day before the killing. Mr. Wright has not been charged in the shooting, but Capt. Sergio Centa, the commanding officer of the 84th Precinct, which includes Brooklyn Bridge Park, sent an email to community leaders in the wealthy neighborhood telling them about the case, one he said the police believed had resulted from a continuing domestic dispute. There was no reason to think, he continued, that what had happened was related to any of the issues we have had in the park this year such as overcrowding and/or unruly crowds. The vexing tone of reassurance reaffirmed the conventional notion that although random violence warrants our apprehension, the presumption that it was a violent former consort who killed a young woman should permit us to abandon our anxieties. The park remained safe for the walking of cockapoos and consumption of rose.

Over the past several years, the issue of campus sexual assault has managed to sustain American attention in a way that few issues regarding the welfare of women, or the welfare of anything, have managed. This was made clear again last week in the outpouring of rage over the lenient sentencing of Brock Turner, a Stanford student convicted of sexual assault. There were calls for the judge, Aaron Persky of Santa Clara County Superior Court, to be removed from the bench, and an old friend of Mr. Turners who had written a letter to the courts in his support found that her band was suddenly the object of a boycott in Brooklyn.

The statistic that one in five women will be sexually assaulted is surpassed by the figure that one in four women will experience domestic violence in the course of her lifetime, according to data supplied by Safe Horizon, a victims services group. Yet there remains a distinct disparity in our collective interest. Sexual assault has come up during the presidential debates (and during the last Oscars ceremony); domestic violence did not. There are these moments around incidents like Ray Rice, Liz Roberts, the deputy chairwoman of Safe Horizon, said, referring to the former N.F.L. running back who was videotaped punching his fiancee, and then there is a fading away.
The pikliz was what brought Tara Pierre Louis, who doesnt get much Haitian cooking where shes living nowadays, in Manassas, Va. She and her sister-in-law, Natacha Pierre Louis of Canarsie, were part of the party of six on the patio, which was adorned with metalwork and strings of twinkling lights.

With the exception of a few dishes that could be found at any trendy Brooklyn restaurant, La Cayes menu hews to traditional Haitian cuisine: grilled conch, Creole-style broiled red snapper, stewed goat and pen patat, a sweet potato bread pudding with a rum-raisin sauce.

It tastes like home, said Tara, whose parents emigrated from Haiti. It was fitting, she added, because la caye in Haitian Creole means home.

Behind the bar was the manager, Joshua Jagmohan, his forearm tattooed with a quotation he attributed to the Brazilian writer Paulo Coelho. He prepared cocktails that required some creativity, because the restaurant serves only beer and wine. Instead of rum, its mojito is made with sake and if someone is in the mood, a dash of passion fruit, pomegranate or lychee along with the usual mint and lime.
When I asked Harold Jaffe, the owner of Harolds New York Deli Restaurant in Edison, how much one of his pastrami sandwiches weighed, he said 13 ounces.

I lied, he admitted quickly. Its really 20 ounces, but I didnt want to scare you.

The sandwich arrived speared with an American flag toothpick. This wasnt just to hold the sandwich together but also, I suspected, evidence that something this huge might become a United States territory.

Harolds is one of the few places in New Jersey where you can still get a decent hot pastrami sandwich. For all the talk of authentic Jewish delis going extinct, I found a few that still took great pride in their pastrami. (We can debate hand-sliced versus thin-sliced another day.)

If the 32-ounce, nine-inch-high, extra-large pastrami at Harolds seems daunting, dont order the triple-decker, which weighs in at 3  pounds. I always tell customers to order the least amount, Mr. Jaffe said. If they want more, weve got good service and can get food to you in two minutes.
After three visits to Village Social Kitchen and Bar in Mount Kisco, I found myself looking for a fair-minded way to say that the sometimes excellent food there doesnt quite square with the borderline bedlam that can prevail at peak hours.

On our first visit, noting the clamor in the dining room, we asked for a table in the bar, hoping that a more adult crowd might hold sway there. But lo and behold, five feet from where we sat, two preschoolers were eating pasta with their fingers; in slow motion, one stood up on his chair, flattened his hands against the plate-glass window and, as his parents gazed elsewhere, blithely swiped them down the pane.

Its as if the co-owner, Joe Bueti, in a bid to accommodate families with young children, had been met with too much success. Unless you like to watch a parade of little girls and boys heading to and from the restrooms, go after 7 p.m., at which hour parents stuff leftover pizza into waiting boxes and join the general exodus of loosely supervised charges and their guardians. Thats also the hour when the bar crowd starts to fill in, and another kind of fun begins.

Image Pizza with English peas. Credit... Gregg Vigliotti for The New York Times

Or should I have opened with this: that the executive chef and the other co-owner, Mogan Anthony, has created a broadly appealing menu and a rotating roster of market-driven specials that make me wish I had discovered his cooking in 2011, when he first took over what was then a lackluster kitchen? (Mr. Bueti and Mr. Anthony are also partners in Locali, in New Canaan.)
Musicals come  and then most musicals go.

Yet a handful of them are so replete with passion and the human experience  so superbly conceived, structured, composed and choreographed  that they never lose their punch.

West Side Story falls easily into this category. A lyrical fusion of memorable songs, affecting story and dynamic choreography, the classic musical has returned to Paper Mill Playhouse after a 25-year hiatus. The current revival in Millburn is aptly timed: The theater is the states pre-eminent house for musicals, and it was just recognized with the 2016 Tony Award given to regional theaters.

The director Mark S. Hoebee, who is also Paper Mills producing artistic director, lovingly gives West Side Story a traditional staging that is performed very well by a talented company. His fine revival is driven by Alex Sanchezs faithful replication of those famously high-flying dances created by Jerome Robbins, the original director-choreographer, who is credited with coming up with the idea for the 1957 musical.

Mr. Hoebee fleetly paces the timeless Romeo and Juliet narrative about young lovers divided by their warring clans, which the librettist Arthur Laurents tautly updated to a murderous rivalry among teenage gangs in 1950s New York City. Augmenting the speedy flow of the show, Mr. Hoebees designers and stage management team sharply achieve the storys swift transitions in location, such as when the dance at the gym suddenly materializes seemingly out of nowhere.
Though not nearly as famous as the beautiful orange and black monarch butterfly, the Eastern tiger swallowtail is a spectacular butterfly to look for throughout New York City. With sharply patterned, swallow-tailed wings nearly five inches wide, the insects often outshine the flowers they service. By contrast to the well-traveled monarch, the Eastern swallowtail is a homebody, spending its several weeks as a winged adult flitting through a few flowery summer acres  if nothing eats it first. Unlike the monarch, birds find the tiger delicious.

The tiger swallowtail (Papilio glaucus) can be abundant wherever deciduous woods include red maple, black cherry, spicebush, sassafras, tulip poplar or other suitable foods for its caterpillars. With this many local host plants, it is no mystery that the butterfly is seen so regularly.

It ranks high on my personal list of the oddest places for wildlife sightings. I can recall thinking as I watched one flit past a traffic jam on the Bruckner Expressway that crossing the Bronx is not nearly as challenging on pretty yellow wings. I have also been inches away from another sipping nectar from a flower growing from the brickwork of the interminable Gowanus Expressway. On a whale watch, one fluttered past over the open Atlantic; still another lapped up something leaching from behind a portable toilet in eastern Queens.

Fortunately, I have also had far more classic encounters, enjoying these insects up close as they nectared in parks from Van Cortlandt in the Bronx to the Conference House in southernmost Staten Island.
But the reality is that Republican lawmakers have been put in this position because Mr. Trump was more popular among Republicans than anyone else in the race. He took the lead in the national polls in July 2015 and pretty much never lost it. Those of us who oppose Mr. Trump need to acknowledge that his European-style ethnic nationalism, which relies on stoking grievances, resentments and fear of the other  Mexicans, Muslims, Syrian refugees, the Chinese, etc. has a powerful sway in the Republican Party today. To be clear, not all of Mr. Trumps supporters are drawn to his ethnic nationalism. But all of his supporters are willing to accept it.

This is not the conservatism of William F. Buckley Jr. or Ronald Reagan or Jack Kemp; it is blood-and-soil conservatism primarily aimed at alienated white voters who believe they have lost the country they once knew. Trumpism also includes a heavy dose of conspiracy theories. It is no coincidence that Mr. Trump burst onto the national political scene in 2011 by claiming that Barack Obama, our first black president, was not a natural-born American citizen but rather was born in Kenya.

Mr. Trump knows his target audience, which explains why, beginning the morning of the Indiana primary on May 3 (the day he became the de facto nominee), he has  among other in-the-gutter moments  implied that Senator Ted Cruzs father was implicated in the assassination of President Kennedy; insinuated that Vince Foster, a friend of the Clintons who was White House deputy counsel, was murdered (five official investigations determined that Mr. Foster committed suicide); engaged in a racially tinged attack on Gonzalo Curiel, a district court judge presiding over a fraud lawsuit against Trump University; and expressed doubt that a Muslim judge could remain neutral in the case. This is conspiratorial craziness and rank racism  and all of it has happened after we were told Mr. Trump would raise his game.

The surprise is that so many Republicans are now expressing consternation at what Mr. Trump is doing. Has any recent presidential candidate ever advertised quite as openly as Mr. Trump the kind of vicious attacks hed engage in? We were warned in neon lights what was coming. The idea that he will now engage in a course correction  that he will flip a switch and transform himself into a decent and dignified man  is laughable. Mr. Trump has repeatedly stated that he wont change his approach. (You win the pennant and now youre in the World Series  you gonna change?) In this one area, Republicans should take him at his word.

When a narcissist like Mr. Trump is victorious, as he was in the Republican primary, and when he has done it on his terms, hes not going to listen to outside counsel from people who think they can change the patterns of a lifetime. Republicans have not changed Mr. Trump for the better; he has changed them for the worse.

So here we are, with Republicans who lined up behind Mr. Trump now afraid of being led off a high cliff. If the prospect of a November shellacking isnt enough to unnerve these Republicans, theres also this to factor in: What we are talking about is potential generational damage to the Republican Party.

Consider this historical comparison: In 1956 the Republican nominee, Dwight D. Eisenhower, won nearly 40 percent of the black vote. In 1960, Richard Nixon won nearly a third. Yet in 1964, in large part because of his opposition to the Civil Rights Act, Barry Goldwater (who was no racist) won only 6 percent. More than a half-century later, that figure has remained low. Mr. Trump  through his attacks against Hispanics that began the day he announced his candidacy  is doing with Hispanics today what Senator Goldwater did with black voters in the early 1960s.
CRUISES

The polar cruise specialists Poseidon Expeditions is offering trips to Franz Josef Land this summer and next. The remote archipelago of volcanic, glaciated islands is part of the Russian Arctic National Park and accessible only a few weeks each summer when the ice breaks up. The trips leave from Longyearbyen in the Norwegian region of Svalbard, itself an Arctic attraction known for its concentration of polar bears. The excursions include chances to kayak among the icebergs, hike where polar pioneers explored, and learn from a professional photographer while shooting glaciers, bird colonies, walrus and whales. The company has two ships, the 114-passenger Sea Spirit and the 128-passenger 50 Years of Victory, and 14-day trips start at $7,295 a person in July and August, set to repeat in 2017.

ELAINE GLUSAC

TOURS

If youre looking for an insiders perspective on Bhutan, Geringer Global Travel is offering a trip that qualifies. Lhatu Wangchuk, Bhutans former ambassador to the United Nations, under whose leadership the United Nations said that happiness was a fundamental human goal, will conduct a 13-day tour, departing Oct. 31. Stops range from the cultural to the natural, and include a drive to the statue of the sitting Buddha at Kuenselphodrang; a visit to the Royal Textile Academy of Bhutan; and a trek to Paro Takstang, known as the Tigers Nest Monastery, where a temple complex clings to a cliff above the Paro Valley. Mr. Wangchuk also will host a traditional dinner at his home. Prices begin at $4,960 per person, based on double occupancy.

DIANE DANIEL

MUSEUMS

Seine History in Normandy

There was a time when the town of Caudebec-en-Caux, along the Seine River in the heart of Normandy, was famous for le mascaret: a massive equinox wave that rolled with fury along the river and could splash water up to 30 feet high into the quay. The mascaret was tamed when a sea wall was built in the 1960s, but the Seine still determines everyday life.

After eight years of planning, Museoseine, a small, charming museum devoted to the Seine, opened in April. Among the highlights: vestiges from ancient Gallo-Roman, Viking and medieval eras; a collection of boats; videos that evoke the rivers traditions as a working water highway to the ocean; and footage of the mascaret in 1947. Visitors can watch the boats go up and down the river from a balcony built on a gribane  a flat-bottomed wooden barge.
Every morning, an electric-powered vehicle owned by the nonprofit restaurant Instock crisscrosses Amsterdam to pick up food that would otherwise be tossed, including produce, meat, fish, tofu and chocolate. Some items might be overstocked, while others have aesthetic flaws or are nearing expiration. By noon, the chef Lucas Jeffries and his staff have pulled together a three-course menu that is posted several hours later on a chalkboard.

On our visit, an enthusiastic server told us how the restaurant was started as a pop-up in 2014 by four workers at the Dutch supermarket chain Albert Heijn, an attempt to combat the food waste they witnessed. With support from the grocer, it became a restaurant last year, serving breakfast, lunch and dinner in a cheery setting.

We started with delicious day-old brown bread, olive oil (one of the few items Instock buys, along with dairy) and a plate of perfectly pickled beets. The rotating wine list comes from discontinued lines or bottles with damaged labels, while beer made with bread is bought from a Belgian brewery.

Our soup combined a sweet-and-sour orange base with add-ons of raw radish and brussels sprouts leaves, and a topping of the best onion rings Ive tasted  small, crisp and not greasy.
Californias legal smoking age rose Thursday from 18 to 21 in a quickly rolled out change that public health officials said would save lives and health care dollars.

Last month, Gov. Jerry Brown signed legislation that gave California the strictest smoking law in the nation, along with Hawaii. Electronic cigarettes, which experts describe as a gateway to traditional cigarettes, now have the same restrictions on who can purchase them and where they can be used, or vaped.

Roughly 3.4 million Californians smoke or vape and on Thursday, 240,000 of them, ages 18 to 20, lost their ability to legally do so. Nearly 90 percent of current smokers started before age 18 when developing brains are more susceptible to addiction, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Every year we successfully delay a young person from becoming addicted to nicotine increases the likelihood of that person never becoming addicted at all, Dr. Karen Smith, director of the state Department of Public Health, said Thursday.

Smith noted that this was the first time the states legal smoking age had been changed since it was set by law in 1872.

The law changed faster than the state could distribute new tobacco signs for display, but employees at local smoke and vape shops said customers were well aware of the age restriction.

At AM Tobacco in Santa Ana, a handwritten sign affixed to the door read, Must be 21 of age to enter store. At Hickory Smoke Shop, also in Santa Ana, a printed sign showed 18 blacked out with a marker and replaced with 21.

In the days leading up to Thursday, Tony Sanchez, who works at E & S Smoke Shop in Santa Ana, told his small number of 18-, 19-, and 20-year-old customers that change was coming.

Im sorry, man, I have to ask for ID, he recounted.

Personally, he said, hes glad he quit smoking 15 years ago and that his two young adult children never started. But he thinks the law will do little to deter those already hooked.

If youre going to smoke, youre going to smoke, Sanchez said. Its not going to change anything.

About 2,800 Orange County retailers are licensed to sell tobacco. More than 70 percent of the states 34,000 tobacco retailers also sell alcohol and Smith said the change will streamline their process of tracking age. Businesses are expected to receive new signs from the state later this month.

Also Thursday, the CDC announced that smoking among high school students nationally dropped to the lowest level in nearly 25 years. But while cigarette usage dropped from 28 percent in 1991 to 11 percent in 2015, 24 percent of teens reported using e-cigarettes in the last 30 days.

Neil Jasso, owner of South County Vapors in Tustin, used pliers Thursday afternoon to remove a custom sign that said customers must be 18 to purchase or try products. The night before, hed posted a decal created by a vaping association that said, Age to vape 21. We check ID.

Jasso, who exhaled a vapor cloud from a Fried Twinkie-flavored, low-nicotine juice, said he made many calls to Browns office, urging him to veto the bill. But now that the law has changed, hes ready to comply, although most of his customers are in their 30s, he said.

Everybody that looks under 21, as soon as they come in the door, we need to see their ID, Jasso said. If theyre under age, we dont want to give them any information. That could give the industry a bad image.

But by 5 p.m. Thursday, Jasso hadnt had to card anyone.

At an Arco station across the street, a white board of tasks for employees included a reminder that the legal age to buy cigarettes had gone up.

Cashier Jose Villejas said he had expected customers under 21 to stock up before Thursday but didnt notice extra sales earlier in the week.

We dont have too many young people coming in to buy cigarettes, he said. Eighteen, I think, is a little young to be buying cigarettes but thats probably because I dont smoke.

State officials said help to quit smoking is available at nobutts.org or by calling 800-NO BUTTS.

Contact the writer: cperkes@ocregister.com 714-796-3686
ISTANBUL  A Kurdish rebel group has claimed responsibility for a suicide car bombing at a police station in southeastern Turkey.

The outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, issued a statement on Thursday identifying the bomber as Dirok Amed.

The attack in the town of Midyat on Wednesday killed three police officers and three civilians.

Turkish officials also suspect the PKK  considered by Ankara and its allies to be a terrorist group  was behind a Tuesday car bomb attack in Istanbul. That attack targeted a police vehicle during morning rush hour and killed 11 people.

Turkey is suffering from a surge of violence since last summer when a fragile truce with the Kurdish rebels collapsed.

The PKK has fought the Turkish state for decades in a conflict that has claimed thousands of lives.
Two Southern California doctors who were convicted of crimes have reached disciplinary settlements with the state medical board, according to documents released this week.

Dr. Scott Richard Miller, a Cerritos psychiatrist who had sex with a patient, must refrain from treating females for two years as part of his seven years of California Medical Board probation. He pleaded no contest in 2014 to a misdemeanor count of unlawful sexual exploitation of a patient.

Dr. Richard Michael Rucker, a Los Alamitos internist who was convicted of drunken driving in 2013, is barred from drinking alcohol or using controlled substances during his four years of board probation.

Board legal documents give the following accounts:

Miller was treating an unidentified female patient in Culver City for depression and post traumatic stress disorder. After a few appointments, Miller and the patient began exchanging sexually explicit text messages. Later, they met for sex, the board documents say.

He was sentenced to three years of informal probation after his conviction.

His attorney, Peter Osinoff of Los Angeles, said Miller will not engage in such behavior again.

This is the only blemish on his record in his 15 years of practice, Osinoff said. Hes been very remorseful about his conduct.

In the board settlement with Rucker, documents show he was arrested on suspicion of drunken driving after crashing his car into a parked vehicle in Long Beach in 2012. He pleaded guilty to driving under the influence and was sentenced to three years probation, community labor and drug and alcohol education.

This case in no way affected his medical practice or the quality of medical care that he has delivered to his patients, said his Marina del Rey attorney, Joseph Furman.

Contact the writer: cperkes@ocregister.com 714-796-3686
PALOS VERDES ESTATES  A Southern California city told the state Coastal Commission it wont meet a deadline to tear down an illegal beach structure used by territorial surfers accused of harassing anyone else who tries to ride the waves in a local bay.

The commission this week told Palos Verdes Estates it has until July 6 to develop a plan to tear down the crudely built covered deck that sits on public land. If it doesnt, the commission said, the city must make the structure open to non-locals.

Coastal Commission Enforcement Officer Jordan Sanchez wrote in his original report about Lunada Bay access problems that the city should make a plan that clearly identifies, through signage at major streets, at the coastline, and on trail maps, the structure as a public amenity and open to all.

But city manager Anton Dahlerbruch instead promised only a beach cleanup and said he hoped to develop a preliminary plan for the deck by September  seven months after the coastal commission first raised the issue, and two months past the states deadline, the Los Angeles Times reported Thursday.

Noaki Schwartz, a spokeswoman for the commission, said the agency had no immediate response to Dahlerbruchs letter of non-compliance.

A class-action lawsuit filed in March asks a federal judge to prevent the group of surfers known as the Lunada Bay Boys from congregating at beaches in the wealthy city south of Los Angeles. The suit also targets the city, asking a judge to require officials to investigate and prosecute any crimes committed by the group of surfers.

Authorities have been accused of looking the other way as the gang threatened non-local surfers, tossed rocks at them and vandalized their cars  sometimes coordinating the attacks with walkie-talkies.
A state audit revealed last week that female employees with the county of Orange earn an average of 27 percent less than their male counterparts.

The audit, as reported by the Register, was conducted by the California State Auditor and looked at four large California county governments, finding the gender pay gap in Orange County ranked worst for average total compensation of female workers as a percentage of total compensation for male workers.

Confirming what longtime county workers have known, the report found top-paying positions were overwhelmingly held by men, while lower-level positions were more often filled by women. In addition, the report discovered men were paid slightly more for similar work here than women, also contributing to the gap.

These troubling results should not come as a surprise to anyone who has paid attention to the evolution of political dialogue in Orange County over the past 10 years.

Decades ago, the public generally recognized the role of municipal workers in keeping our communities safe, healthy and functioning. So back then, if the county was having trouble recruiting and retaining social workers, who protect abused children, or public health nurses, who stop the spread of infectious disease, or sheriffs dispatchers, who answer 911 calls and keep first responders updated as emergencies unfold, the county would have acted quickly to address the issues causing the trouble.

But for the past 10 years, political power brokers here and in ideologically driven pockets throughout our country have unleashed unrelenting attacks on the economic security of the municipal workforce. Nearly every political campaign during the past decade has included commitments from opportunistic extremists to shrink pay or reduce retirement security or health care for public workers.

In Orange County, the political pressure created a climate of fear and intimidation, where actively challenging discriminatory pay practices was discouraged. In some cases, attempting to focus attention on inadequate and unfair pay practices invited retaliation and negative political consequences for workers and others who tried.

So today we are left with the reality that many county jobs predominately performed by women pay much less than county jobs predominately performed by men.

Achieving greater levels of pay equality depends not only on men and women earning equal amounts in the same classification; it also requires men and women to occupy equally both lower and more highly compensated positions, the audit report states.

This is not because the jobs predominately staffed by men are any more difficult or more dangerous or require more education than the jobs women do. Try telling that to a psychologist who works with mentally ill and homeless veterans or a social worker who handles a caseload of teens who have been exposed to violence and drug use their entire lives.

A positive shift in the county culture is long overdue. This year, under new county leadership, that shift appears to be moving in the right direction. Now is the time to take meaningful action to make clear to social workers, nurses, dispatchers and others that the county governments culture will continue to evolve by fulfilling the moral imperative to make equal pay and equal treatment the rule, rather than the exception.

Jennifer Muir is general manager, Orange County Employees Association.
COSTA MESA Residents will get two more chances next week to have a say in how the city makes the switch from the current election system to voting districts.

The city has been holding town hall meetings where residents can ask questions and help slice the city into five districts on sample maps. The next two meetings are on Wednesday and Saturday, June 18.

Dave Ely, owner of Compass Demographics, the company hired by the city to create the districts should voters approve the switch on a November ballot, discussed the elements of the complicated process at a June 2 meeting at the Neighborhood Community Center.

What I try and do is to get people to focus on (their) neighborhoods, he told the 30 people in attendance. If they can focus on that and focus on how the neighborhoods work together or dont work together, that provides a good basis for doing this.

In April, the City Council agreed to let voters decide whether to switch from at-large elections, where residents can vote for any candidate, to voting for candidates in their districts, after being threatened with litigation in a letter from Kevin Shenkman, an attorney representing Eloisa Rangel and the Southwest Voter Registration Education Project, a Latino voter participation organization.

The letter said Costa Mesas at-large voting system violated the California Voting Rights Act and impaired minority voters from having a voice.

The city has never had a Latino on its five-member council, even though Latinos account for 36 percent of Costa Mesas population.

Jessica Bravo, 21, who lives in the Mesa Verde neighborhood, said switching to voting districts would open up doors for residents who feel their concerns are not being addressed.

Being a Latina, I for sure think there could be more representation in our council, she said. Im definitely interested in seeing the changes that districts could have in our community.

Resident Greg Ridge said voting districts would good for the city.

Youre going to have people who are much more vested in the local neighborhood, he said.

The proposed districts must be roughly equal in population. Other factors are geography, topography, cohesiveness and communities of interest, defined as areas that share similar interest or concerns, Ely said.

The council has until Aug. 12 to approve the measure and a map to get it on the November ballot. Sample district maps are available for viewing on the citys website.

If the districts are approved, they would be used for the 2018 elections. If voters dont pass the measure, Shenkmans clients could sue the city and ask a court to impose voting districts.

The next meetings are 7 p.m. Wednesday at St. Joachim Catholic Church, 1964 Orange Ave., and 10 a.m. Saturday, June 18 at the Balearic Community Center, 1975 Balearic Drive.

Contact the writer: 714-796-2478 or lcasiano@ocregister.com
SAN JUAN CAPISTRANO  The 377 students enrolled at Stoneybrooke Christian Schools are hoping to find out in six to eight weeks if a string of paper dolls stretching 5.3 miles will propel them into the record books.

The kindergarten through eighth grade students spent six weeks cutting out paper dolls in an effort to make their way into the Guinness Book of World Records.

On Wednesday, the school laid out a string of what Superintendent Sherry Worel said was 75,160 paper dolls across the gymnasium floor. It stretched out 8,526 meters.

According to guinnessworldrecords.com, the current longest chain of paper dolls is 7,718 meters, created in 2014 by the Sign Club Co. in Hendersonville, Tennessee.

The kids cheered, Worel said, describing the scene when the last row of dolls hit the floor.

Two witnesses documented the effort to submit to the Guinness Book of World Records.

Worel said she got the idea in 2014 during a visit to a school in Afghanistan, when she was board chairman for the Network of International Christian Schools. A school in Kabul was doing a chain of paper dolls as a team-building effort.

Worel decided to try it at Stoneybrooke after the school sold its Ladera Ranch campus earlier this year, as a way to unite the students on the single campus in San Juan.

I thought it would be a great team-building thing, she said. It proved to be very much that.

On Thursday the dolls were removed from the gym so students could use it again for physical education.

We saved a portion as mementoes, Worel said about the dolls. We will have a permanent display here at school.

Contact the writer: fswegles@ocregister.com or 949-492-5127
SANTA ANA  A 46-year-old man who pimped two women, threatening to withhold contact with their children if they didnt meet strict earnings quotas, was sentenced in Superior Court in Santa Ana Thursday to 14 years in state prison.

Johnny Lee Guyton of Henderson, Nev., had been found guilty on May 17 of single felony counts of human trafficking and pimping and two felony counts of pandering, according to Roxi Fyad of the Orange County District Attorneys Office.

Besides the prison term, Guytons sentencing terms also require him to register as a sex offender for the rest of his life.

Prosecutors said he pimped and pandered one woman and attempted to pimp another, while threatening both, Fyad said.

The defendant received nearly $50,000 from the trafficking of one of the victims, Fyad said.

Guyton had been charged on April 21, 2015, with two felony counts each of human trafficking, pimping and pandering, she said.

Guyton was accused of pimping and pandering the victims, originally contacting them via social media, between August 2014 and April 2015, before one of the women reported her plight to a family member who then contacted Anaheim police, Fyad said.

During that time, Guyton filmed himself attempting to pimp and verbally threatening Jane Doe 1 in Orange County, and sent the videos to associates to brag about pimping the victim, Fyad said, adding that Guyton forced the woman to work seven days a week, even during her menstrual cycle, and only allowed her to see her child three or four times a week, depending on her progress toward an earnings quota.

During that time, Guyton received between $30,000 and $50,000 from the victim, Fyad said.

Guyton required Jane Doe 2  who he lured from South Dakota  to earn $1,000 before she could stop working Fyad said.

The defendant deprived Jane Doe 2 of her liberty by making false promises and threatening to keep her child from her if she did not meet the quotas that he set, according to Fyad.

The crimes took place in Nevada and Orange County, including Anaheim and Santa Ana, and the case was prosecuted by Deputy District Attorney Bryan Clavecilla, Fyad said.
DUBLIN  Irelands abortion ban subjects women to discriminatory, cruel and degrading treatment and should be ended immediately for cases involving fatal fetal abnormalities, U.N. human rights experts said Thursday.

The 29-page report from the Geneva-based U.N. Human Rights Committee accepted a complaint filed by Amanda Mellet, a Dublin woman who was denied a 2011 abortion in Ireland after doctors informed her that her fetus had a heart defect and could not survive outside the womb.

Ireland permits abortions only in cases where the womans own life is endangered by continued pregnancy. Its ban on abortion in all other circumstances requires women to carry a physiologically doomed fetus until birth or its death in the womb. The only other option is to travel abroad for abortions, usually to England, where thousands of Irish citizens have abortions annually.

The Human Rights Committee, composed of experts from 17 nations led by Fabian Salvioli of Argentina, found that Irelands abortion law violates the U.N. International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and called for widespread reform.

The panel wields no power to compel change from Ireland, a predominantly Roman Catholic nation that maintains the strictest laws on abortion in the 28-nation EU.

In Dublin, Mellet said she hoped the government would find the courage to make necessary changes in law.

I hope the day will soon come when women in Ireland will be able to access the health services they need in our own country, where we can be with our loved ones, with our own medical team, and where we have our own familiar bed to go home and cry in, she said in a statement. Subjecting women to so much additional pain and trauma simply must not continue.

Irelands health minister, Simon Harris, said the government understood the plight of women in Mellets position and was open to reforming law on the matter. But he said the process could take years, requiring first a citizens forum to build public consensus followed by a referendum to amend Irelands constitutional ban on abortion.

I have met with families who have been through the trauma of knowing their baby will not survive and I have been very moved by hearing of their experiences. I want to see this issue addressed, Harris said.

Rights watchdogs said Ireland needed to move faster, noting that it had taken the country more than two decades to legalize abortions deemed necessary to save a pregnant womans life. That move happened after the 2012 death in an Irish hospital of an Indian woman, Savita Halappanavar, who suffered lethal blood poisoning after doctors refused to terminate her dying fetus.

Mark Kelly, director of the Irish Council for Civil Liberties, said the U.N. criticism joins a chorus of expert voices reminding Ireland that its abortion regime is wildly out of kilter with abortion law and practice in the family of civilized nations.

The Irish government must take its head out of the sand and see that it has to tackle this issue, said Colm OGorman, Amnesty Internationals director in Ireland.

Opinion polls since 2013 have recorded majority support in Ireland for extending abortions to cases involving fatal defects and pregnancies caused by rape or incest, but anti-abortion activists argue that further exceptions to the ban would lead eventually to the legalization of abortion.

An Irish group opposed to abortion, the Pro Life Campaign, denounced the U.N. as a pro-abortion lobby group. Its leader, Cora Sherlock, argued that Mellets fetus should have been given the chance to survive, regardless of medical opinion.

Sherlock said all fetuses should be carried to full term to ensure their right to life is vindicated. She said U.N. experts were wrong to treat unborn children with fatal abnormalities as unworthy of any legal protections.

The U.N. report said Irelands law made the rights of inviable fetuses superior to the rights of women and this arbitrary imbalance cannot be justified, because in such cases the unborn childs life cannot be saved. It said Irelands restrictions on providing clear advice and state-supported medical care to women who receive abortions overseas caused Mellet intense suffering and her experience amounted to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.

The experts also found that Irelands underlying criminal law on abortion was discriminatory because it places the burden of criminal liability primarily on the pregnant woman.

Mellet testified that Dublin doctors informed her during scans that her child was likely to die inside the womb but could not be aborted, only removed after it perished. After three weeks, she checked with doctors to see if her now 24-week-old fetus still had a heartbeat and, when told it was still alive, traveled with her husband to the English city of Liverpool. There, doctors induced a 36-hour labor that ended in a stillborn baby girl.

Mellet was denied any access to state-funded bereavement counseling in Ireland because Irish maternity hospitals are permitted to provide such services only to women who agree to carry their fetuses to birth or miscarriage.

Her legal complaint was accompanied by expert opinions from a Trinity College Dublin professor in midwifery and a clinical psychologist who found that Irelands restrictions inflict unnecessary long-term trauma on women carrying fetuses likely to die.

Mellet told the U.N. panel she had wanted to take her stillborn daughters remains back with her to Ireland on the plane but the hospital said it had no way to facilitate this.

She received the ashes, unexpectedly, three weeks later by courier, which deeply upset her, the report said.
DANA POINT  Measure H, a grassroots effort to require voter approval on any development changes to a 2008 plan for the downtown Lantern District, appears to have bested a rival, city-approved measure.

Both initiatives focused on the renovation plan for the Lantern District, which seeks to transform Dana Point from a sleepy, beachside town into a contender for tourism dollars with neighboring Laguna Beach and San Clemente.

In recent weeks, conflicts between supporters on both sides divided the community, leading to allegations of bullying, boycotts and threats.

On Thursday, election results from the Orange County Registrar of Voters showed that Measure H was passing by 8.1 percent and Measure I, which contended that Measure H would halt development and likely result in lawsuits, was failing by 9.9 percent. Absentee and provisional ballots are still being counted, said Registrar Neal Kelley.

Debra Lewis, who was among a small group of Measure H authors, said she couldnt stop smiling Wednesday morning after the results were announced.

It was just us people on the street corners talking to voters and reaching out about what were doing, Lewis said. It gives you faith in democracy.

Measure H supporters say they favor development in the downtown district but not at the expense of its small-town charm. They want developers to stick with the 2008 plan approved by the City Council that put restrictions on building heights and density and included parking lots within walking distance of shops, restaurants and homes.

Mike Powers, chairman of the Lantern District Alliance and a Measure I supporter, said he was disappointed with the outcome.

We had no idea how it would come out, Powers said. When we saw the absentee results, we knew it was over. We thought we were doing the right thing for the city but the residents didnt seem to agree.

About 41 percent of Dana Points registered 20,212 voters turned out, according to Kelley.

As of Thursday, 59.1 percent of Dana Point voters supported a Yes on Measure H and 41 percent voted Yes on Measure I. An initiative needs to exceed 51 percent to win.

The battle over the two initiatives was a source of controversey at recent City Council meetings.

Measure I supporters accused Measure H advocates of pushing for boycotts of businesses that put out No on H, yes on I signs.

There were also allegations of bullying on social media and protests on Del Prado. A video on YouTube likened Dana Point Mayor Jim Tomlinson to Adolf Hitler.

If a business chooses to pick a side in a highly-charged political fight, it runs the risk of alienating a portion of its customer base, Lewis said.

On the other hand, Lewis said Measure H supporters were told that it will not go well for them when they need city approvals.

Powers said he wonders what effect Measure H might have on projects in the works for the Lantern District.

One is for 109 residential units and 32,500 square feet of retail space on Del Prado. The project, once known as the Majestic Housing & Development and planned with condominiums, has changed hands. The current plan by Laguna Niguel developer Raintree Partners now calls for apartments.

Approved by the council in 2014, the project was to be built in three phases over seven lots. Demolition of structures on those lots was done earlier this year.

If this project comes to a halt, that could be devastating to Dana Point, Powers said.

Lewis pointed to that project as a catalyst for Measure H because it was a departure from the 2008 plan. The city allowed the developer to add a fourth story to the project when the original plan limited buildings to three stories and changed parking requirements.

Dozens of residents voiced opposition to the plan at Planning Commission meetings. The commission rejected the project and it went for an appeal to the City Council, where it was approved.

This project wasnt consistent with the small town village atmosphere that the 2008 plan upheld, Lewis said. We told them then, youre ignoring the will of the people and youre doing it at your own peril.

Lewis has sent a letter to City Hall asking the council to declare the vote by the June 21 meeting at the latest.

Contact the writer: 714-796-2254 or eritchie@ocregister.com or on Twitter:@lagunaini
Gov. Jerry Brown has advised lawmakers to expect a slowdown in tax revenue, a warning he issued weeks after he signed into law a bill raising the states minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2022. Maybe he should consider that theres a connection.

When Brown signed the minimum wage hike, he said, Economically, minimum wages may not make sense. But morally, socially and politically, they make every sense. He should have stopped at economically. Minimum wages are indisputably economically unwise. Whenever  and wherever  they are raised, they act as an overbearing tax on businesses and consequently have a harmful effect on jobs.

Of course, increasing the pay of those in the bottom tier of earners sounds compassionate. But its not that simple. First, not every worker earning the minimum wage is from a low-income family or is a familys sole source of income. Quite often, minimum-wage employees are teens from middle- and upper-class families working for extra cash. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that 19 percent of Americans earning the federal minimum wage or less are 16-19 years old.

Second, and more importantly, forcing businesses to pay more for labor destroys career opportunities and jobs. It is an act of cruelty toward the very people it is intended to help, says George Mason University economics professor Donald Boudreaux.

When presented with the mandate to increase their labor costs through minimum-wage hikes, businesses inevitably have to cut jobs. The amount of money a business can spend on labor doesnt magically increase when the minimum wage is moved upward. To stay within a budget that allows it to make a profit and remain in business, a company will be forced to let some workers go. A business that can afford to employ 10 workers at $10 an hour  the current minimum wage in California  will be able to afford only six or seven on its payroll at $15 an hour.

To replace lost workers, businesses are sure to automate.

With government driving up the cost of labor, its driving down the number of jobs, Carls Jr. and Hardees CEO Andy Puzder told Business Insider in a March story about rising minimum wages. Youre going to see automation not just in airports and grocery stores, but in restaurants.

We will also see lost opportunities for advancement, especially for those whose skills are worth less than the minimum wage. If an employer has no choice but to pay $15 an hour, he or she will likely hire more productive, higher-skilled workers, leaving the less-skilled to collect unemployment. Workers who are supposed to receive the greatest benefits from the law will actually take the hardest hit.

Larger companies also have another option: They can outsource their work to foreign countries.

In any event, the end result of the higher minimum wage is fewer Californians working. The American Action Forum says as many as 700,000 jobs will be lost under a $15-an-hour minimum wage.

While thats a projection, this is a fact: Seattle lost more than 10,000 jobs from the beginning of September 2015 to the end of November, just months after the first phase of a minimum-wage hike took effect April 1. The job losses from April 1 to the end of December, American Enterprise Institute economist Mark Perry tells us, represented the biggest drop in employment in Seattle in any nine-month period since 2009. Over that time, the citys unemployment rate grew a full percentage point.

Furthermore, according to Perry, the full increase, from $9.32 to $15 an hour  a 61 percent jump  will eventually swell businesses annual labor costs by a whopping $11,300 per full-time, minimum-wage worker. Those that cant afford the escalating costs will have to drop workers  or leave California altogether.

Either way, there will be fewer workers paying state income taxes, making the revenue downturn the Brown administration is projecting even worse, and providing lawmakers with a handy excuse to raise taxes.

The minimum-wage issue isnt about lost government revenue, though. Indeed, Sacramento should get by with fewer taxpayer dollars and be less of a burden on the private sector. The issue is a governor and group of lawmakers who dont appreciate the harm they are doing to this state. Until they start enacting policies that makes economic sense, Californias hole will only grow deeper.

Kerry Jackson is a Fellow in California Studies at the Pacific Research Institute.
PLACENTIA  A Las Vegas high-roller, an attempted wire transfer of hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of city funds to a casino and claims of a fictitious, multimillion-dollar municipal film project led to the downfall of a former financial services manager accused of embezzling nearly $5 million from Placentia, investigators allege in court filings.

As the amount of money Michael Minh Nguyen is suspected of embezzling from the financially precarious city beginning in January 2014 continues to grow, a probable cause statement recently filed by an Orange County District Attorneys Office investigator provides the most complete narrative yet for how suspicious casino employees and an IRS investigator tipped Placentia city officials to the financial irregularities.

In mid-April, Nguyen, 34, was arrested and charged with 17 felony counts of misappropriation of city funds. City officials say they have recovered about $2.7 million of the approximately $4.9 million that they suspect Nguyen of embezzling.

Placentian city officials declined to comment on the probable cause statement because of the ongoing investigation.

While seeking search warrants of Nguyens bank accounts, apartment and vehicle, D.A. Investigator Craig Koki submitted to the Orange County Superior Court an outline of what led authorities to Nguyen.

According to Kokis statement, the investigation began when a high-roller gambler named Michael McDonald tried to persuade employees at the Westgate Las Vegas Resort & Casino to accept a wire transfer from the city of Placentia.

McDonald said he was working with the city on a film project and the money was for production costs, Koki wrote. The high-roller indicated to employees that he was ultimately expecting to receive between $3 million and $5.4 million from the city, the investigator added.

When questioned by the casino employees, McDonald apparently changed his mind and said he would return with a cashiers check, according to the statement. The casino photocopied but refused to cash the $200,000 check he later produced, Koki wrote.

A compliance officer at Westgate reported the casinos contact with McDonald to federal officials. On April 12, IRS Criminal Investigator Mike Dye spoke by phone to Placentia Director of Adminstrative Services Steve Pischel. Nguyen was initially part of the call, until the investigator told Pischel to take Nguyen off the speaker phone, Koki wrote.

Dye told Pischel that he had confirmed that hundreds of thousands of dollars in city funds had been sent to McDonald by wire transfer, according to the court record. Pischel confirmed that the city had no film projects underway and no business with McDonald, the investigator indicated.

After the call, Nguyen allegedly asked Pischel what was going on. Pischel responded by telling Nguyen about the suspicious wire transfers.

Nguyen got a look on his face that told Pischel something was wrong and told Pischel he never intended to steal from the city, Koki wrote in the probable cause statement. In a subsequent conversation, Nguyen told Pischel he initiated a handful of wire transfers from the citys bank account, but he always paid the money back.

Later that night, the D.A. investigator wrote, Nguyen texted Matthew Reynolds, a management analyst for the city, and asked if they could talk really quick. Reynolds was busy counseling students that evening, but the next day agreed to make a recorded phone call to Nguyen.

According to the D.A. investigator, Nguyen asked Reynolds to reverse two wire transfers, one for $300,000, the other for $1.5 million, that were not related to city business. Nguyen was nervous about talking on a city phone line, Koki wrote, and asked Reynolds to call him back on his cell.

Nguyen told him he had been using the citys wiring service to do things on the side, such as investments, but it fell apart because the person to whom he had wired money immediately obtained a cashiers check and tried to cash it at a casino, Koki wrote. Nguyen estimated the total of those wire transfers at approximately $3 million and he had not paid any of that money back.

A closer review of the citys daily bank account summaries ultimately turned up more than $4 million in suspicious wire transfers to McDonald, as well as Herbert Trotter, Talaton Group LLC and a company called Fairway Solutions between April 22, 2015, and April 14, 2016, Koki wrote.

Apparently, none of those people or businesses were city vendors, but it isnt clear from court records what they were paid to do or what, if any, tie they had to Nguyen.

The Talaton Group is a Beverly Hills financial company that helps people raise capital to start or grow their businesses and who need an influx of cash. The Talaton Group collects a fee in return.

Trotter, a managing partner for the Talaton Group, told the Register that Nguyen came to the company three years ago to help raise money. Among the investments Nguyen told Trotter he was working on were about 20 nail salons Nguyens aunt wanted to open. Most recently, Nguyen told him he was eyeing a potential real estate deal in Las Vegas.

Talaton did not know of any potential wrongdoing by Nguyen, Trotter said. The company helps raise money for clients legally, but doesnt track how that money is spent once clients receive it, he said.

The probable cause statement offered no further identifying information on McDonald, such as his age or city of residence; nor was any identifying information listed about Fairway Solutions, such as where its based and who owns it. The D.A.s Office declined to elaborate on the statement.

According to search warrants, investigators seized a computer, a cellphone, three debit cards from two banks and three credit cards from two banks from Nguyens Irvine apartment and his car. The investigators also reported finding documents tied to a bankruptcy and a credit card with another hotel-casinos brand.

In one warrant, the D.A. investigators seized records from local branches of Citibank, Wells Fargo, Bank of America, E Trade and TD Ameritrade tied to Nguyen, McDonald, Trotter, the Talaton Group and Fairway Solutions.

Nguyens attorney did not respond Thursday to requests for comment.

Authorities have not commented on a potential motive. But federal court records show that Nguyen had pledged to pay the equivalent of most of his salary to help his parents, who were in bankruptcy proceedings

The parents filed for Chapter 13 bankruptcy protection in January 2015, listing debts of nearly $700,000 and assets of just more than $500,000, almost entirely from an Anaheim home.

Nguyen has pleaded not guilty, and is being held in lieu of $4.3 million bail. He is scheduled to return to court for a pretrial hearing on June 17.

Contact the writer: semery@ocregister.com
Secret notes kept by Orange County sheriffs deputies on jailhouse informants appear to contradict testimony given by deputies during legal hearings for confessed Seal Beach mass murderer Scott Dekraai, prosecutors said late Thursday.

The Orange County District Attorneys Office also said it is scouring the 1,157 pages of notes received last month from the Sheriffs Department for evidence that should have been turned over to defense lawyers in other criminal cases. Its unclear how many cases might be affected.

Prosecutors and sheriffs administrators said Thursday that they initially were surprised by the existence of the computerized notes, which cover the period from September 2008 to January 2013.

In a legal brief delivered Thursday to Superior Court Judge Thomas Goethals, Assistant District Attorney Dan Wagner wrote: The OCDA believes it must correct the record by providing the log to the court.

The notes could support Goethals contention that at least two deputies lied or deliberately withheld material evidence under oath in hearings during the Dekraai case. Goethals ended the March 2015 hearings by removing the Orange County District Attorneys Office from the Dekraai case and turning it over to state Attorney General Kamala Harris.

Since then, at least five sheriffs deputies have declined to testify in other criminal cases, citing their right not to incriminate themselves.

The secret logs also could fuel accusations by Assistant Public Defender Scott Sanders that local police and prosecutors cultivated a team of jailhouse informants to get confessions illegally and then hid evidence from the defense.

Prosecutors handed the notes over to Goethals on Thursday under a temporary seal and asked for permission to give the documents to Sanders, who is defending Dekraai in the penalty phase of his murder trial.

The notes also were turned over to Harris office, which is conducting a criminal investigation into the District Attorneys Offices use of jailhouse informants and alleged dishonesty by deputies.

Sheriff Sandra Hutchens issued a statement Thursday saying that all jail personnel were being retrained in proper record-keeping procedures.

As your sheriff, I take this issue seriously, Hutchens said. It is important for the public to know that we have been responsive to all subpoenas, discovery requests and legal mandates based on our knowledge at the time.

Over the past month, the logs were released intermittently from the sheriffs deputies, surprising sheriffs administrators as well as county prosecutors.

Existence of the records first became public in February, during an unrelated hearing, when a deputy produced personal notes he had taken while handling jailhouse informants. The Sheriffs Department notified employees that such note keeping violates policy and should be turned in immediately. Soon, hundreds of notes began pouring in. Some referred to ongoing criminal investigations and high-profile defendants in other cases, using terms like capers, plans and operations, and to internal probes with names like Operation Okie Doke.

The documents also refer to a specific informant used by prosecutors in the Dekraai case. Fernando Perez, according to the notes, met with handling deputies on June 14, 2010, and the meeting was recorded. The tapes and notes from that meeting were never turned over to defense attorneys.

Contact the writer: tsaavedra@ocregister.com
The polls in Orange County have been closed for nearly 48 hours now but the (unsightly and now outdated) debris of political signage that popped up like weeds alongside Orange County roadways these past weeks remains.

When are the volunteers and campaign staffs that were so eager to exercise their First Amendment rights to support candidates and causes going to exercise their civic responsibility to clean up the visual pollution they created?

The primary duty of every campaign should be to clean up its signs after every election. It is past time for local governments to begin strictly enforcing anti-littering laws once the polls have closed.

Phil Seifert

Irvine

A test of truth

Re: Why U.S. needs to lead again, and how we can do it [Opinion, June 9]: Republican Speaker of the House Paul Ryan in a recent opinion column asserted, our allies no longer trust us, and our adversaries no longer fear us.

Outside the conservative bubble, however, in research-based reality, the nonpartisan Pew Research Center poll across 40 countries shows they [foreign countries] have confidence in Obama to do the right thing in world affairs. According to Pew, Obama remains much more popular globally than his predecessor, George W. Bush. Only with Russia and Israel are Obamas ratings lower based on conflicts that have arisen during his administration.

Another reputable fact finder, Politifact.com, has disputed Fox News assertions that the world has lower regard for the United States now under Obama than under Bush, citing BBC and Gallup polls as evidence to the contrary.

Republicans are backing Donald Trump. Their candidate has the highest unfavorable ratings of any presidential candidate. A BBC World News headline states, Europe hates Trump. On Factcheck.org, and Politifact.com, the volume of Mr. Trumps untruthful statements is astounding.

If Republicans want their glory back, they need to start by a little truth-telling. And by selecting better candidates to lead us.

Judith A. Lewis

Huntington Beach
A few of the oddities from Tuesdays election made the front page, but there were plenty more to debunk convention wisdom  some that reflect the rapidly evolving political landscape of Orange County.

Here are five that caught my eye:

1. More Democrats cast ballots than Republicans in Orange County for the first time in recent history  and possibly ever. Also, more ballots were cast here for Democratic presidential candidates than for Republican ones.

Republicans traditionally have a higher propensity to vote in primaries, but Democrats were more motivated to turn out this year. Thats because Donald Trump had sewn up the GOP nomination before mail ballots went out while Democrats were engaged in a impassioned battle between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders. Also, Trump rubs some Republicans the wrong way and that didnt help GOP turnout.

The other part of the equation is that the GOPs advantage in the countys voter registration has shrunken to less than 7 percentage points  close enough for Democrats to catch up with a strong showing at the polls.

2. As of Friday evening, Sanders was doing slightly better in conservative Orange County (44.6 percent) than statewide (43.2 percent).

3. Rohrabacher beats Baugh.

Theres been talk about the possibility of former county GOP Chairman Scott Baugh challenging longtime friend Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Costa Mesa, in 2016. But did you know Rohrabachers wife got more votes than Baugh on Tuesday?

The race was for six seats on the O.C. GOPs governing Central Committee representing the 74th Assembly District. Rhonda Rohrabacher came in first with 22,347 and Baugh came in second with 20,295 (as of Friday evenings tallies).

Those results show the strength of the incumbents name in the area  and why some think Baugh is unlikely to challenge the congressman. The belief is that Baugh is simply gearing up for Rohrabachers retirement, which some  including Baugh  expect in two years, with Rohrabacher endorsing an even closer pal, county Supervisor Michelle Steel.

4. First-term incumbent Rep. Mimi Walters was tapped as freshman House members representative in GOP leadership, but she pulled in a just 42 percent of the vote in the primary.

Thats enough for the Laguna Beach Republican to advance to November, where shell likely waltz to victory over Democrat Ron Varasteh thanks to Republicans 12-percentage point edge in the districts voter registration. But its noteworthy that the majority of voters preferred someone else, including 19 percent who cast votes for another Republican, retired Marine Corps Col. Greg Raths. Varasteh got 27 percent and Democrat Max Gouron garnered 12 percent, as of Fridays tallies.

In June 2012, Walters faced Raths and two Democrats in her maiden bid for Congress and got 44 percent.

5. Theres been a surge of Asian American candidates in state legislative districts in north Orange County, and Asians currently hold two Assembly seats there. But in the race for the tri-county state Senate district being vacated by termed-out Sen. Bob Huff, R-Diamond Bar, two of the three candidates are Asian  and that may have helped create an opening for the sole white candidate.

Democrat Josh Newman, the director of a non-profit for veterans, raised just $91,000 (most of it thanks to a $81,000 loan), but was running ahead of Democratic former Irvine Mayor Sukhee Kang, who raised $552,000 (including a $10,000 loan), 29 percent to 25 percent.

Leading the pack was the sole Republican, Assemblywoman Ling Ling Chang, who raised $765,000 (including a $120,000 loan). Among voting age citizens, the district is roughly one quarter Asian, one quarter Latino and half white.

Newman, a community activist who had success with tech startups before launching the non-profit, spent his bankroll in novel ways  a blimp that read Newman for State Senate and hitting the streets in a bear suit with a campaign sign.

For my money, we could use more candidates dressed up as animals.

Contact the writer: mwisckol@ocregister.com
SAN FRANCISCO  A group of California lawmakers joined womens rights advocates Friday in urging a California agency to take action against the judge who sentenced a former Stanford University swimmer to six months in jail for sexually assaulting an unconscious woman.

Eleven Democratic state lawmakers asked the Commission on Judicial Performance to investigate and discipline Santa Clara County Judge Aaron Persky, alleging he may have engaged in misconduct in sentencing Brock Turner, 20, to jail time and three years probation.

The punishment for the Dayton, Ohio, native ignited intense outcry as too lenient. Persky said in court last week that he followed a recommendation from the countys probation department and cited Turners clean criminal record and the effect the conviction will have on his life.

Also Friday, womens group UltraViolet plans to submit hundreds of thousands of signatures to the agency that investigates complaints of judicial misconduct and disciplines judges in a symbolic effort urging Perskys removal from the bench. But to recall the judge, organizers would need to collect signatures from 58,634 registered county voters.

After a complaint is received by the commission, which meets every six to eight weeks, it will open an investigation within 60 days, agency attorney Victoria Henley said.

Prosecutors had argued Turner be sentenced to six years in prison for crimes that could have sent him away for 10 years. But the countys district attorney has said Persky should not lose his job because of the ruling.

The lawmakers also want District Attorney Jeff Rosen to ask an appeals court to overturn the sentence. But prosecutors said this week that they dont think Perskys decision can be appealed because it was authorized by law and was made by applying the correct standards.

The judges decision confirms what women already knew: That rape culture blames us for being vulnerable when crimes are committed against us, but treats the same factors  drinking, in particular  as reasons to be exceedingly lenient with rapists, Assemblywoman Susan Talamantes Eggman of Stockton said.

Online records show Turner is expected to be released from jail after three months. County jail inmates serve 50 percent of their sentences if they keep a clean disciplinary record. Turner is being segregated from the general jail population, which is standard for high-profile inmates who could be targets.

Stanford University law professor Michele Dauber launched a campaign to remove Persky from the bench and plans to speak at a rally outside the commission Friday.

His statements during the sentencing show that he does not understand sexual violence. He does not understand violence against women, she told The Associated Press on Thursday. And so we are going to recall him, and were going to replace him with someone who does.

Lawyers who have appeared in Perskys court have called him a fair and respected judge. He has no record of judicial discipline and previously worked as a Santa Clara County prosecutor responsible for keeping sexual predators locked up.

Several prospective jurors who opposed Perskys decision refused to serve on a jury this week in an unrelated case he is handling. They were dismissed from service after coming forward with their complaints.

A court spokesman has said Persky is barred from commenting on the case because Turner is appealing his conviction on felony assault and attempted rape charges.

Stephanie Pham, a Stanford student who co-founded the Association of Students for Sexual Assault Prevention, said the sentence stirred anger and frustration on campus.

When the sentencing came out, people lost faith in the legal system, she said. Survivors felt alienated and silenced by the fact that someone found guilty is still going to be given a lenient sentence.
LOS ANGELES The parents of one of five people killed in Ontario in December after an out-of-control car drove off the 10 Freeway in Ontario and hit another vehicle near an offramp are suing Toyota and Avis, alleging the rental car went out of control due to sudden acceleration.

Donald and Maureen Pusateri, the father and mother of 29-year-old Matthew Pusateri of Mission Viejo, filed the wrongful death/products liability suit Thursday in Los Angeles Superior Court. Donald Pusateri lives in Mission Viejo and Maureen Pusateri resides in Hemet.

The suit seeks unspecified damages.

A Toyota spokesman previously issued a statement regarding other incidents involving their cars and sudden-acceleration problems, saying the company has made fundamental changes to become a more responsive and customer-focused organization and we are committed to continued improvements.

An Avis representative did not immediately reply to an email seeking comment.

According to the lawsuit, Berta Orellana, who also is a defendant, rented a 2015 Toyota Yaris from an Avis location in Northridge Dec. 31 so that she could take a family trip to Las Vegas.

About 7 p.m. that day, the Yaris began to accelerate uncontrollably while Orellana was driving east on the freeway, the CHP said previously. Orellana drove off the freeway at the Vineyard Avenue exit and struck the second car, a Toyota Solara being driven north on Vineyard, according to the CHP.

Killed in the Solara along with Matthew Pusateri were Jeffrey Willey, 29, of Huntington Beach; and Monica Flores, 37, of Arcadia; and Anthony Flores, 30, of Hemet.

Michael Pineda, Orellanas 7-year-old grandson who was riding with her in the Yaris, died later at a hospital.

Orellana, along with a 16-year-old boy and 12-year-old girl who were her other passengers, survived the crash with injuries.

Toyota was aware the Yaris had a propensity for sudden acceleration and/or loss of control without the ability to stop by the user, the suit states.

Avis was notified of the problems with the Yaris cars, but failed to correct, change or warn of the known problems with the vehicle prior to (Orellanas) use thereof, the suit states.

The suit also attributes the crash to Orellanas alleged negligent driving of the Yaris.

In March 2014, Toyota agreed to pay $1.2 billion in the largest criminal penalty ever imposed on a car company in U.S. history. The Justice Department found Toyota lied to regulators, Congress and the public for years about the sudden acceleration of its vehicles.

In March, Pusateris 9-year-old filed a separate suit.
On one particularly hot Saturday morning in August 1985, the evil apparition known as the Night Stalker became nothing more than a man, a beaten and bloody man who needed the cops to save his life.

A new movie, The Night Stalker starring Lou Diamond Phillips, will premiere at the Frida Cinema in Santa Ana on Friday, June 10 at 7:30 p.m. with some of the cast, crew and those involved in the arrest of Richard Ramirez expected to attend. The film is a fictional account of an attorneys attempt to get the serial killer to confess to crimes he may have committed in Texas before his murder spree in California in the mid-1980s.

One of the flashback scenes in the film shows Ramirez, then 25, in his last moments of sadistic freedom when he was confronted by an angry mob in East Los Angeles.

The cops who arrested him will never forget their encounter. In interviews with the Orange County Register over the past month, they described being in the presence of pure evil and compared him to one of the scariest movies of all time.

A NAME AND A FACE

Before that morning, the Night Stalker was a nameless, mythical figure, whose nickname had been upgraded from the Walk-in Killer and then the Valley Intruder, terrorizing California from San Francisco to Orange County. He swooped into homes through open doors and windows in the middle of the night to commit his heinous acts. He made some of his victims pray to Satan. He eventually was convicted of 13 murder counts among many other felonies.

In a summer of record-breaking heat, many residents statewide slept lightly in fear with their doors and windows locked.

Ramirez died of lymphoma three years ago this week in prison. He was 53. He had been on death row awaiting execution for more than two decades.

RELATED STORIES:

 The Night Stalker: The attack that never happened

 After 3 bullets in the head, he still cant escape the Night Stalker

On Aug. 31, 1985, newspapers reported for the first time the infamous suspect had a name and a face. Ramirez was free for only a couple of hours after his name was released.

Without knowing that his name had hit the front pages, Ramirez took a bus to visit his brother in Tucson, Ariz., on Aug. 30. His brother wasnt home. So Ramirez, wearing a black, Jack Daniels T-shirt, boarded another bus and headed back to Los Angeles. The move confused police, who were looking for someone who was fleeing L.A.

When he got to L.A.s Greyhound bus depot about 7:30 a.m. on Aug. 31, Ramirez walked past LAPD task force members who were monitoring outbound buses. Ramirez stopped at a liquor store and saw his picture on the cover of La Opinion with a headline calling him Invasor Nocturno (Night Invader). A woman in the store called out: El maton  the killer. He had been recognized.

WRONG PLACE TO STEAL A CAR

Thats when he started running. He cut across I-5, dodging cars as he headed toward Boyle Heights.

Ramirez jumped into the drivers seat of an unlocked Mustang and tried to get it started, but he was pulled out by an angry resident named Faustino Pinon. Then Ramirez ran across the street and tried to take car keys from a woman named Angelina De La Torre. He threatened her, saying he had a gun.

That womans husband, Manuel De La Torre, grabbed a pipe that was used to hold his chain link gate and beat the would-be car thief over the head. A mob formed and chased the man in the Jack Daniels T-shirt down the street.

My brother and my dad and about 10 other guys were chasing him down Hubbard, said Julio Burgoin, who lived on the block.

The mob caught him and forced him to the ground.

He tried to get up but me and my brother pushed him down again, Burgoin said. He kept saying, Hey, let me go. He came to the wrong place to steal a car.

ARRESTING A SERIAL KILLER

It was just after 8 a.m. when L.A. County sheriffs Deputy Andy Ramirez, alone in his patrol car, stopped to get a cup of coffee on Whittier Boulevard. He sipped coffee in his car, unit 24, when his radio squawked.

East Los Angeles unit 22. The call was not for Andy Ramirez. But unit 22 didnt answer. The call was a 415 (disturbance), with few details. Men fighting, possible gun or knife in the 3700 block of Hubbard Street.

He was only 30 seconds away from the disturbance, so he became the primary responder. Andy Ramirez arrived on Hubbard Street and drove slowly in the morning sun. He saw four or five men waving for him to stop.

One man on the sidewalk was holding a 3-foot metal pipe dripping blood.

Julio Burgoin displays the type of metal rod that was used to hit Richard Ramirez on the head during the Night Stalkers capture in a Boyle Heights neighborhood on Aug. 31, 1985. BILL ALKOFER, STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

The focus of the attention on the block was a man sitting on the sidewalk with a gash in his head. Ramirez had no idea how close to a serial killer he was about to be. (When it was all over, Andy Ramirez called his parents to ask if there was any way they were related to Richard Ramirez. He was told no.)

The 25-year-old fourth-year deputy called for a paramedic to address the bleeding man on the sidewalk.

First, it was Andy Ramirezs job to jot down notes about what had happened, and it was clear the man on the sidewalk had aroused the ire of the people on the street. Andy Ramirez patted down the man and found him unarmed.

He was bleeding, Andy Ramirez said. He was drenched in sweat. He was taking deep breaths.

Thats when Andy Ramirez handcuffed the suspect and asked him his name.

Ricardo, he said.

Ricardo what?

Ricardo Ramirez, he said.

Still, Andy Ramirez didnt think Night Stalker.

A paramedic wrapped a bandage around Richard Ramirezs head and under his chin. Andy Ramirez guided him to the back seat of his patrol car.

As he watched a larger crowd forming on Hubbard Street, Andy Ramirez could see he was about to have a major problem. The crowd wanted blood.

GET HIM. SHOOT HIM

Bystanders approached Andy Ramirez and asked, Did you get him?

A unit from the LAPD arrived on the scene, including officer Jim Kaiser, who said he had been chasing reports of the Night Stalker in this neighborhood.

Thats when Andy Ramirez realized the gravity of his situation.

The tone of the crowd changed, he said. You could see the anger. They were getting closer and closer to where Richard Ramirez was seated. I thought, if I lose control of this crowd, theyre going to take him from this car. Richard Ramirezs safety was in jeopardy.

Kaiser heard someone in the crowd shout: Get him. Shoot him.

Kaiser took Richard Ramirez out of Andy Ramirezs car, and transported him to the Hollenbeck police station. The move was controversial because the arrest had taken place in the Sheriffs Department jurisdiction. But Andy Ramirez said he felt he needed to stay on Hubbard Street to secure the crime scene and deal with the unruly crowd, which had grown to several hundred people.

Kaiser drove Ramirez away from the mob that wanted to kill him.

All the fight was out of him, Kaiser said.

Ramirez started talking in the backseat. Im going to be blamed for all the murders, he said.

Over the radio, Kaiser said, Bingo, we got him.

I LOOKED STRAIGHT IN THE EYE OF ABSOLUTE EVIL

When Kaiser stopped at the Hollenbeck station. He opened the patrol car door, and Ramirez threw up in the parking lot.

It was green, like The Exorcist, Kaiser said, referencing the 1973 movie where the devil spews pea soupish vomit. This guy is really evil.

Kaiser tightened Ramirezs handcuffs over and over again.

I didnt know what he was capable of, Kaiser said. I looked straight in the eye of absolute evil. He had cold, black eyes. He was the ultimate manifestation of absolute evil.

Ramirez asked Kaiser for a favor. Put a bullet in my head, Ramirez pleaded. Lets end it.

HE WAS DRAWING PENTAGRAMS

Gil Carrillo, the lead sheriffs homicide detective who had been on the Night Stalkers trail for months, walked into the LAPD building just before 10 a.m. He was joined by his partner, Frank Salerno. It was a party-like atmosphere. The two detectives stopped the party immediately.

Gil Carrillo was one of the lead Sheriffs detectives assigned to the Night Stalker case in 1985. BILL ALKOFER, STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

Ramirez, who had been reading about himself in the newspapers, knew the names of both detectives without being introduced. Carrillo sat across from Ramirez in a second-floor interview room.

Uncuff him, Carrillo said.

Carrillo called him Rich. Rich was calm and called himself the Night Stalker.

He asked Carrillo a question: Why do you think I did what I did? Carrillo thought for a second. Rich, if I had the answer, I would be a doctor making a lot of money.

He was the most vicious and vile person I had ever come in contact with, Carrillo said.

During the interview, Carrillo noticed Ramirez was tracing circles and lines on the table with his finger.

He was drawing pentagrams, Carrillo said.

Register Staff Photographer Bill Alkofer contributed to this article.
Although it came as little surprise to those who genuinely understand the nature of the Iranian regime, it was recently revealed that widely disseminated American narratives about Irans sudden moderation were merely convenient lies dispensed to the American people and to gullible policymakers and the media in order to drum up support for the 2015 Iran nuclear deal.

In interviews for a New York Times Magazine profile, White House foreign policy adviser Ben Rhodes recently admitted that bilateral talks over the future of the Iranian nuclear program actually began while hardline Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was still in power. Still, when his successor, Hassan Rouhani, took the post in 2013, Rhodes branded it as a victory for moderation rationalizing nuclear talks.

This notion of moderation was the primary justification for a deal regarded by many commentators and some direct participants in the negotiations as a series of concessions to the Iranian regime, offered in exchange for very few assurances that the regime would not continue to pursue a nuclear weapon.

Critics concerns were buried under simplistic platitudes and  as we now know  outright falsehoods, in order to convince just enough Western policymakers and citizens that they were facing a choice between negotiations and war.

The Obama administrations detractors were quick to discount these notions, and few of them did so with as much conviction and moral authority as the National Council of Resistance of Iran, which exposed the regimes clandestine program in 2002.

The opposition has always maintained that Rouhanis background leaves no doubt that he is a regime insider who has maintained allegiance to the ideology of the supreme leader throughout the decades.

Rouhani has overseen a sharp increase in executions, with nearly 2,700 executed during his tenure. At the same time, there have been mass arrests of journalists and activists, as well as escalating censorship and control over Iranians internet access.

All of these facts were inconvenient to the narrative supporting the nuclear agreement, and so they were downplayed or dismissed, and crucially important voices, like those of the NCRI, were suppressed. Last summer, a rally in Paris drew more than 100,000 Iranian expatriates and their supporters, including politicians, military figures and policy experts from the U.S. Britain, and a range of other Western countries.

The event certainly reached some policymakers with the message of the lack of prospects for moderation within the regime, and the weakness of the nuclear agreement. But that message would have reached many more if not for the fact that the media was largely deaf to it.

In his New York Times profile, Rhodes boasted of the ease with which the administration was able to shape the narrative, noting that todays young journalists literally know nothing and derive their understanding of foreign affairs from whatever is told to them by the policymakers they interview. Apparently those journalists didnt consider that those very same policymakers would simply lie to them to achieve their ends.

But now the media and the public in general have a better grasp on that fact in light of the Ben Rhodes controversy. As such, it is time for us in the West to listen to those who have experienced the Iranian regimes abuses firsthand and who could never find reasons to lie in order to make that regime look better than it is.

Nasser Sharif is president of the California Society for Democracy in Iran.
Long before there was a Mission San Juan Capistrano, there was the Acjachemen native village of Putuidem.

Circular huts occupied a natural setting beside the merger of two creeks, a mile north of where Father Junipero Serra established a Catholic mission in 1776, intent on converting the local populace to Christianity.

Some 1,200 Acjachemen descendants, known today as the Juaneno Band of Mission Indians, consider Putuidem to be their mother village. The site is poised to become a San Juan Capistrano city park where displays and re-creations will tell the tribal story  a story so important to the descendants that a group united a year ago, setting aside decades of infighting, to help the city plan the park.

The city asked for Juaneno participation, said Jerry Nieblas, 67, a San Juan Acjachemen who traces his ancestry to Putuidem. They asked us to come together, which we did. Once we came into this project, the barriers were down, they were gone.

The Juanenos had split into three factions during a decades-long effort to secure federal recognition of the tribe as a sovereign nation. There were disputes over leadership, elections, the tribal constitution and a potential casino once recognition was achieved.

People started coming out of the woodworks, claiming they were Juaneno, which caused genealogy chaos, Nieblas said.

In 2007, the fragmented tribes requests for federal recognition were denied.

Meanwhile, through decades of development, the onetime domain of the hunter/gatherer Acjachemen became urbanized. On a patch of remaining open space, where Putuidem once stood, a $3 million park will re-create a small model village.

There will be kiicha huts, a discovery trail, story boards, ramadas, a picnic area and a rustic amphitheater suitable not just for educating school children and tourists but for private tribal ceremonies, weddings and memorial services  for the Acjachemen, a place of their own.

Their desire for such a sacred place hit home in 2015, a year after David Belardes, onetime Juaneno chief and later leader of one of the three factions, died at age 67. There was no official recognized native place to hold a traditional ceremony to end a year of mourning.

We didnt have a site to get away and have some sense of privacy, said Stephen Rios, 66, who traces his ancestry to a Spanish soldier who built a now-landmark San Juan home in 1794 and married an Acjachemen.

Rios is looking to the Putuidem site to fill that ceremonial role.

This, he said will be an example of things we can do here.

The city, intent on saving open space from being gobbled up by urban development, passed a $20 million bond election in 1990 to purchase vacant land, including 2.5 acres along Camino Capistrano northwest of Junipero Serra Road. It presently includes equestrian facilities and a dog park. When the city began planning other amenities, the initial focus was an active venue, plus a cultural element.

In June 2015, Councilwoman Kerry Ferguson asked Nathan Banda, an Acjachemen who serves on the citys Cultural Heritage Committee, to put together a committee with broad-based Juaneno representation.

I said I want everyone to be included, Ferguson said.

Bob Cardoza, a landscape architect who serves on the citys Design Review Committee, advised City Council members that an active park would cause too much disturbance to the sensitive native site. He suggested expanding the parks cultural aspect.

The city had in mind a small area, he said. Now its reversed. Now the cultural area is the predominant thing. The size has increased 300 to 400 percent.

Also on the committee was Matt Belardes, tribal chairman and son of the late Chief David Belardes. The park, he said, will present a village setting that will redefine the history of San Juan.

Youre going to get a pre-contact site, said Belardes, 47. It will allow us to tell the beginning story of San Juan. Chapter 2  the next page  is the mission.

Our people go back 12,000 years, said Rebecca Robles, a San Clemente Acjachemen who also has championed the preservation of Panhe, a tribal site along San Mateo Creek at San Clementes southern boundary.

Ferguson said the Putuidem plan, approved May 3 by the City Council, is fully funded, and she hopes to see a groundbreaking by years end.

We just have one opportunity to get this right, she said.

Pat Martz, an archaeologist who served on the committee, said school children who explore the Mission each year also will be able to visit the ancestral grounds of San Juans first people.

There will be replica houses and ramadas and artifacts to show them, storyboards and signs talking about how the chief came out here because his population grew and he didnt have enough food to take care of them, Martz said.

The wanderers entered what is now the Capistrano Valley and found an ideal water source, and the chief chose it for the village of Putuidem.

He left his daughter there, Martz said, and she became chief. He went back to his people. Once they settled here, they became the Acjachemen.

That was around the year 1200, Nieblas said. When Spanish explorers first approached in 1769, the first contact was in the hills behind what is now San Clemente.

Nieblas said his ancestor, Maria Bernarda Chigilia, was 14, residing in Putuidem, when the 1776 Serra expedition arrived.

She was born and raised here, saw the coming of the Mission and was baptized two years after its founding when she was 16, he said.

Gigi Nieblas, Jerry Nieblas and Rios are cousins, all descended from Chigilia. Gigi Nieblas, 60, said she sees the park at Putuidem as a place she can visit to weave baskets, attend ceremonies or just pray.

This is where my people are from, she said. Its really comforting, the connection you feel when you come here.

For me its even deeper, Jerry Nieblas said. Weve come full circle. As Juaneno people we were removed from that land. We had to go within the boundaries of the Mission.

In the 1800s, when the Missions were secularized, the Juanenos again were displaced, Nieblas said, deprived of their sense of place.

We believe in the sacred circle, he said. We lost our home. We have it back. We have Putuidem.

Contact the writer: fswegles@ocregister.com or 949-492-5127
SANTA ANA  About 50 anti-deportation protesters blocked Civic Center Drive in front of Orange County Superior Court Friday afternoon, diverting traffic and chanting for an end to the Sheriffs Departments cooperation with federal immigration officials.

About a dozen Santa Ana police officers looked on, standing next to their patrol cars, as the protesters yelled, Si se puede! and Whose streets? Our streets.

The protest was been peaceful.

Police diverted traffic, so motorists were not blocked.

The protesters want Sheriff Sandra Hutchens to end a contract with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, known as ICE, in which the Sheriffs Department transfers undocumented immigrants who have been arrested to ICE.

Deportation is not the sheriffs job, said Carlos Perea, the protests organizer, and a member of the activist group ICE Out of California Coalition. This is just the beginning.

In the past, the Sheriffs Department has defended the program, saying only those convicted of felonies or major crime are handed over  those the department believes pose a threat to public safety.

The protest began at Latino Health Access, a nonprofit that combats health problems, at its headquarters at 450 W. Fourth St., in Santa Ana around 1:15 p.m.

The group marched to the courthouse and blocked Civic Center Drive at Parton Street about 15 minutes later. An hour later, they got out of the street and onto the sidewalk  and walked back to Latino Health Access.

It did not appear anyone was cited, and no one was arrested.

We dont want to get anyone arrested, Perea said.

Contact the writer: 714-796-6979 or chaire@ocregister.com
IRVINE  UC Irvine police are attempting to identify a man suspected of breaking into a campus apartment Wednesday night and exposing himself to a student.

Shortly before 10 p.m., a UCI student reported that a man had broken in through a locked screen door, campus police said in a statement.

The student, who was in a bedroom, heard noises in the living room. The intruder then entered the bedroom and exposed himself to the student, who chased him out of the apartment. The student was able to capture a photograph of the man as he fled.

UCI police officers searched the area, but could not find the man.

The intruder is described as an Asian man in his 20s with black hair, about 5-feet, 5-inches tall, weighing about 150 pounds, clean-shaven and wearing a royal blue long-sleeved shirt and dark pants.

Anyone with additional information or who may be able to identify the man is asked to call Detective Sergeant Charles Chon or Officer Ray Keith at 949-824-5223.

Contact the writer: 714-796-7767 sschwebke@ocregister.com Twitter: @thechalkoutline
Re: More in GOP scold Trump [News, June 7]: If liberal Hillary Clinton is the face of the Democratic Party, then racist Donald Trump is the face of the GOP.

If you dont believe me, heres what House Speaker Paul Ryan said Tuesday when he disavowed Trumps comments about Judge Gonzalo Curiel: Claiming a person cant do their job because of their race is sort of like the textbook definition of a racist comment.  Its absolutely unacceptable.

So, to my Republican friends I say, Is a racist presidential candidate the image you want voters to see?

Denny Freidenrich

Laguna Beach

  

I believe Donald Trump should clarify his comments about Judge Gonzalo Curiel and why the said jurist should not sit in judgment of his actions in the world of business. We will also note that there is not a Hispanic race, as some class-warriors would wish to claim.

Trump should point out, and hopefully our nations mainstream media will broadcast and print, the facts on why Judge Curiel should not sit in judgment on any violations of law of which Trump is accused. In clarifying why Judge Curiel should recuse himself, Trump should mention the following:

 That, while Curiel is not a member of the National Council of La Raza, which advocates that the American Southwest was stolen from Mexico and should be returned, the law organization he belongs to, the La Raza Lawyers of San Diego, does have links to the first organization;

 Curiel supports awarding illegal immigrants with college scholarships, and he might not view favorably a man who wants to deport those scholarship recipients;

 Curiel accidentally released court records which provided the media with the names, locations and contact information of plaintiffs and witnesses in the case dealing with Trump University, which fueled the media narrative;

 Curiel is a member of the Hispanic National Bar Association, which said it intends to target Donald Trumps business interests.

If these facts are not enough to disqualify Curiel from sitting in judgment Donald Trumps management of the former Trump University, then I ask, what is?

Michael Hitchens

Santa Ana
WASHINGTON  The morning after, the nation awakes asking: What have we done?

Both parties seem intent on throwing the election away. The Democrats, running against a man with highest-ever negatives, are poised to nominate a candidate with the second-highest-ever negatives. Hillary Clinton started with every possible advantage  money, experience, name recognition, residual goodwill from her husbands successful 1990s  yet until this week could not put away an obscure, fringy, socialist backbencher in a country uniquely allergic to socialism.

Bernie Sanders did have one advantage. He had something to say. She had nuthin. Her Tuesday victory speech was a pudding without a theme for a campaign without a cause. After 14 months, she still cant get past the famous question asked of Ted Kennedy in 1979: Why do you want to be president?

So whom do the Republicans put up? They had 17 candidates. Any of a dozen could have taken down the near-fatally weak Clinton, unloved, untrusted, living under the shadow of an FBI investigation.

Instead, they nominate Donald Trump  conspiracy theorist (from Barack Obamas Kenyan birth to Ted Cruzs fathers involvement with Lee Harvey Oswald), fabulist (from his own invented opposition to the Iraq War and the Libya intervention to the thousands and thousands of New Jersey Muslims celebrating 9/11), admirer of strongmen (from Vladimir Putin to the butchers of Tiananmen).

His outrageous provocations have been brilliantly sequenced so that the shock of the new extinguishes the memory of the last. Though perhaps not his most recent  his gratuitous attack on a Mexican federal judge (born and bred in Indiana) for inherent bias because of his ethnicity. Textbook racism, averred Speaker Paul Ryan. Even Trump acolyte and possible running mate Newt Gingrich called it inexcusable.

Trump promptly doubled down, expanding the universe of the not-to-be-trusted among us by adding American Muslims to the list of those who might be inherently biased.

Yet Trump is the partys chosen. He won the primary contest fair and square. The people have spoken. What to do?

I sympathize with the dilemma of Republican leaders reluctant to affirm. Many are as appalled as I am by Trump, but they dont have the freedom I do to say, as I have publicly, that I cannot imagine ever voting for him. They have unique party and institutional responsibilities.

Which brings us to the matter of Paul Ryan, now being excoriated by many conservatives for having said he would vote for Trump.

Yet what was surprising was not Ryans ever-so-tepid semi-endorsement, which was always inevitable and unavoidable  can the highest elected GOP official be at war during a general election with the partys democratically chosen presidential candidate?  but his initial refusal to endorse Trump when, after the Indiana primary, nearly everyone around him was falling mindlessly, some shamelessly, into line.

That was surprising. Which is why Ryans refusal to immediately follow suit created such a sensation. It also created, deliberately, the time and space for non-Trumpites to hold the line. Ryan was legitimizing resistance to the new regime, giving it safe harbor in the House, even as resisters were being relentlessly accused of treason for electing Hillary.

In the end, Ryan called an armistice. What was he to do? Oppose and resign? And then what? What would remain of conservative leadership in the GOP? And if he created a permanent split in the party, hed be setting up the GOPs entire conservative wing as scapegoat if Trump loses in November.

Ryan had no good options. He chose the one he felt was least damaging to the conservative cause to which he has devoted his entire adult life.

I wouldnt have done it, but Im not House speaker. He is a practicing politician who has to calculate the consequences of what he does. That deserves at least some understanding.

One day, we shall all have to account for what we did and what we said in this scoundrel year. For now, we each have our conscience to attend to.
A 41-year-old transient woman pleaded not guilty Thursday to two charges of arson, after authorities say she set fires in two stores while she stole cartfuls of goods, authorities said.

Erika Rubi Hernandez Valerianos bail was set at $150,000, according to prosecutors and she was set to return to court June 17.

The first incident happened on Oct. 4, 2015 at a Walmart at 3600 W. McFadden Ave. and the second was on May 30 at an El Super Market at 2445 S. Bristol St., according to the Orange County Fire Authority.

In both instances, there were several people in the stores at the time of the crimes.

The theft at Walmart was caught on surveillance footage and released to the public. The video shows a woman entering the store, loading up her cart and setting a fire in an aisle.

After the fire is discovered, while employees attempt to extinguish it, she uses the distraction to exit the store with a shopping cart filled with stolen merchandise, said OCFA Capt. Larry Kurtz.

Authorities searched for months for the woman, who used different names and changed locations several times, making her hard to find, Kurtz said.

The May 30 fire at El Super  which was done the same way  resulted in more surveillance footage. The surveillance videos resulted in a tip from the public.

There was a lot of hard work that went into this case, but the arrest would not have been possible without the tip we received that followed the broadcast of the video, Kurtz said. She was arrested Tuesday.

Investigators are looking for any other similar crimes to determine if they are related. Anyone with information is asked to call the OCFA Invsetigation Tip Line at 714-573-6720 or Crime Stoppers at 855-847-6227.

City News Service contributed to this report.

Contact the writer: 714-796-7865 or afausto@ocregister.com
It was a killing all the more horrific for the family ties that bound murderer and victim.

Zeenat Rafiq, 17, was tricked by her mother to return home this week after Zeenat had eloped and married her boyfriend without her familys permission. Upon her arrival, Zeenats mother threw gasoline on her and set her on fire. Unashamed of her crime, the mother loudly proclaimed that her daughter was killed because she had dishonored her family.

It is worth adding that the Rafiqs are Punjabi, and Zeenats new husband, Hassan Khan, is a Pashtun. Hassan and Zeenat were married only four days when her mothers promise of a proper wedding ceremony and assurances from a trusted uncle induced the young bride to return home.

She had been right to be fearful.

The honor killing has gained international notoriety. Four months ago, Pakistans Prime Minister, Nawaz Sharif, promised to change a law which permits family members to forgive a killer, effectively denying the state the ability to prosecute. If the family agrees that the girl has brought shame on the family, then the case is effectively dismissed. Sharif was attempting to deflect negative publicity that his country was receiving from the Oscar-winning documentary, A Girl in the River, which drew attention to Pakistani honor killings.

The law remains on the books and in effect today, despite Sharifs promise.

Interestingly, Zeenats family does not live in a distant rural village far from the accoutrements of modern life. They live in a suburb of Lahore, the second-largest city in Pakistan and the countrys cultural capital.

Several hundred Pakistani girls are slain by their families each year in honor killings. Zeenats murder was the third incident that received national attention in recent months. Last week, a 19-year-old was lynched and set on fire for refusing a marriage proposal; and, last month, a 16-year-old was killed for helping another girl elope.

In the latter case, the death sentence was handed down by a local tribal council, which believed that the elopement had damaged the villages reputation. Shortly after the story made national headlines, 15 members of the council were arrested, as were the girls mother and brother.

With the forgiveness loophole still part of Pakistani law, many honor killings will continue to go unprosecuted. The difficulty that Sharif faces in attempting to repeal the loophole is that it stems from Shariah law and is supported by conservative religious groups in the country. Despite this, Sharif declared the loophole was totally against Islam. These remarks have struck some observers as off-key for the prime minister, since he has championed strict Shariah law in the past.

At a time when Islamic State has attracted so much attention for their particularly gruesome methods in dealing with apostates, domestic incidents of violence such as the Pakistani honor killings may seem somewhat parochial by comparison. But the more one exams these incidents in Pakistan and across South Asia, the more one is haunted by the idea that these concepts of honor and retribution harken back to societal insecurities that we in the West have left behind centuries ago.

Here, we wrestle over which school restroom a transgender child can use. There, if you disagree with a parent about your choice of life partner, you could be face a death sentence carried out by someone who, until that point, you thought loved you and would protect you from harm.

We have spent a great deal of time recently wrestling with the atrocities conducted by radical Islamic extremists and trying to construct a response that makes sense in the context of modern concepts of proportionality and tolerance. Perhaps we should spend a little more time thinking about the much more awkward idea that just because we all have smartphones and Facebook accounts, we are not all inhabiting the same 21st century.

Honor killings are not unique to contemporary Pakistan. It would be hard to find a country that does not have a history of bloody reprisals exacted from unfortunate individuals who have exceed some societal consensus. The more pressing discussion to have, though, is why have so much of Europe and America moved beyond these brutal reckonings, while they remain so prevalent in countries such as Pakistan?

The death of Zeenat Rafiq is a horrible stain on Pakistans reputation. Tough questions should be asked about why this epidemic of honor killings seems to continue unabated in this country. Then, Prime Minister Sharifs government will have to answer one of the most pressing questions:

What more could they be doing to prevents such a needless loss of life?

Orange County writer and attorney Timothy Spangler hosts The Bigger Picture with Timothy Spangler, Sundays, 10 p.m.-midnight on KRLA 870 AM. Twitter: @timothyspangler
Justin Salas was only 14 when he lost his sight almost completely and was declared legally blind. Now 22, the ambitious young man is a living example that nothing is impossible  even though he cant see, Justin is a professional photographer and skilled rock climber.

Justins blindness wasnt the result of an unfortunate accident or a sudden occurrence where he woke up one morning to find that he couldnt see anymore. His eyesight had always been poor and he started wearing glasses when he was 5-years-old. But it wasnt until his freshman year of high-school that his vision started deteriorating at a rapid pace. His glasses no longer helped and tests revealed that his optic nerves were dying, although the cause was a mystery for all the doctors hed seen.

Photo: Justin Salas/Facebook

A doctor at the Dean McGee Eye Institute in Oklahoma City, one of the best eye clinics in the country, told Justins parents that the condition was psychological and he should just go home and relax. After a whole year of scans and blood tests, doctors gave him the ambiguous diagnosis of optic neuropathy of unknown origin and shattered his world when they told him it was incurable. Without the ability to do the things he most enjoyed, the young boy pulled away from the world. Some days he didnt speak at all. He just stood in front of an oversized computer screen, because if he leaned very close, he could still make out the blurry outlines of familiar shapes and letters.

But one day, his close friend Beau Johnson asked him if he wanted to ride a bike. Salas peripheral vision was still intact and what he couldnt see in front of him, Johnson alerted him about. Justins family called him his seeing-eye person, because he let the blind boy know about approaching cars and obstacles in his path, giving him enough time to swerve.

Photo: Justin Salas/Facebook

Then, another friend invited Justin to a rock climbing gym, telling him that You dont have to see to climb, you only have to feel. The boy took him up on the offer, and he has been climbing ever since. Some of the boulders are as high as 50 feet, and in case of falls  of which there are many  Salas can only rely on a couple of mattresses positioned strategically bellow and spotters who make sure climbers dont hit their head or fall of the mats.

How does Justin Salas know where to grab on to the boulders and position his feet during a climb? Well, thats what friends are for. They call out beta information like Handhold one oclock, Justin! One oclock from down below, which is the only thing he can really count on, apart from his own memory. The process is feeling all the holds and having someone tell me where the holds are, Salas says. Then I feel every shape of the hold, which direction it goes. I start memorizing and putting pieces together and memorizing how my body feels when Im in certain positions so I know, whenever I go back to do it again, how it feels. And then I do the route over and over again, even if it takes falling dozens and dozens of times.

Photo: Justin Salas/Facebook

Its been working pretty well, though, as Salas has scaled many high-level boulders during his short career, and even landed several sponsorships, including from chalk company Friction Labs.

Although he doesnt hide his blindness, Justin never brings it up either. I dont think Ive ever heard him tell one person hes blind, climbing partner Cory Hayes told The Washington Post. He doesnt come across blind. He does things like  when youre talking to him, hell look you directly in the eye on purpose so you wont know hes blind. To his friends, hes just another one of the guys.

Photo: Justin Salas/Facebook

But rock climbing is not the only extraordinary thing Justin Salas does. He is also a professional photographer and has his own freelance photography business, specializing in adventure shots, brand photography and landscapes. He claims this new passion gave him a way to see through my vision loss. To frame his shots properly, Justin his other still working senses  the sound of his subjects voices, the warmth and angle of the sun on his body and his memory from when his eyes actually worked.

Even though he cant see what he shoots, a 27-inch computer screen allows him to pixelate his photos to the point where he can decipher the contrast of light and dark. Looking at some of his shots, you could probably never guess that the photographer is legally blind.

Photo: Justin Salas/Facebook

Justin Salas photography website
Dont you hate it when youre using your smartphone on public transportation and notice strangers looking at it over your shoulder? Those people are the worst! But thanks to Celal Goger special glasses, you wont have to deal with them ever again.

Goger, a 42-year-old mobile phone repairman from the Turkish town of Bismil, Diyarbakr province, has invented special glasses that interact with a smartphones screen so that only the wearer can see it. He said he came up with the idea for the glasses four months ago, when, while checking his emails on the local tram, he noticed people on the packed vehicle were staring at the screen of his phone. He realized it was a serious privacy issue that surely other people were facing on a daily basis. So he went back to his phone repair shop and started working on a solution.

Photo: Hurriyet

The experienced repairman, who has been fixing phones since 1999, came up with a system that turns the screen of any phone, tablet or laptop completely white for everyone looking at it, unless they are wearing a special pair of glasses that allows them to see the screen normally. The exact details of how his invention works are not very clear, as the story has not yet been covered by western media, but from what I could make out from Turkish websites, Celal programmed a small chip to turn the display white and installed it on the smartphone. He also came up with another chip that can be mounted on any pair of glasses and connect to the chip on the phone via Blutooth, to bypass the white screen.

Photo: Hurriyet

The best part about Celal Goger invention is that he claims it only costs around $10, including the Bluetooth system which switches the mechanism on and off. He adds that his privacy protection system works on any electronic display, even television sets. For example, if you want to watch a program, but dont want anyone else knowing what youre watching, you just put on the glasses, flip a switch and the screen goes white for everyone but yourself.

Photo: Hurriyet

The Turkish inventor says he first tested the effectiveness of his system in a cafe, and people started asking him if he was ok, because to them, he was just a guy staring at a white screen. It was only after lending them the galsses that they realized his genius.

Celal Goger is currently trying to get his invention patented, after which he plans on focusing on various options to mass produce it. If correct, the price will likely not be an issue, nor, I suspect, will demand.

Source: Hurryiet, Teknokulis
Every year, hundreds of millions of Monarch Butterflies from Canada and the United States journey as far as 2,500 miles to the forests of Michoacan, Mexico in what is known as the worlds largest insect migration. Countless butterflies cluster together both on the trees and on the ground, covering large areas into carpets of orange and black. Its a breathtaking sight to behold, but as always, human greed is threatening to destroy it.

The great monarch migration is one of natures most fascinating mysteries. Tiny butterflies from places like Toronto, Winnipeg or Detroit embark on this epic transcontinental journey and somehow make it all the way to central Mexico. Nobody knows exactly how they do it, but some experts believe they are guided by celestial navigation and magnetic fields.

The Monarch butterflies start to arrive in Michoacan in late October to make their winter home in the trees high up in the mountains of the natural reserve. Once here, they will spend the next five months clustering together in large masses made up of thousands of tiny bodies that often look like colorful beehives. Often times, these clusters become so heavy that they cause tree branches to bend or even snap. But theres a purpose to all these clustering  it allows the monarchs to survive in the low nighttime temperatures at these high altitudes.

Photo: Pablo Leautaud

The Michoacan Monarch Butterfly Sanctuary is most impressive during the months of February and March, just before the winged insects begin their long journey home. Temperatures are still chilly at night, but during the day, the suns warmth causes the living clusters to break apart as the butterflies begin their mating rituals. In the cool of the morning, they dry their wings, turning the entire landscape black and orange, and as the dew dries, they take to the air, the sound of millions of fluttering wings more powerful that youd ever thought possible. Then, as the sun begin to set, the monarchs take to the ground, covering virtually every available surface.

Photo: Mel Patterson

Mexicos Butterfly Forest is a sanctuary protected by law, and one of the countrys most popular tourist attractions, but that hasnt stopped people from slowly but steadily destroying it in the name of greed.

Photo: Tarnya Hall

Illegal logging right in the in the heart of the Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve has been a longstanding problem, but perpetrators are rarely brought to justice. In November 2015, denounced the presence of logging crews in the Sierra Chincua Sanctuary, a central area of the biosphere, where they managed to clear nine hectares of forest before locals took matters into their own hands and stopped the loggers themselves. After turning them over to the public prosecutors office, the people learned that the loggers were released on bail mere hours later.

Photo: Pablo Leautaud

The government should enforce the law, said Eliseo Valdez Cruz, a member of the local environmental militia. How is it possible that they [alleged woodcutters] were detained, taken to the prosecutor, and then released on bail? This is a protected area. The law says that anyone caught felling trees should get five to eight years in jail. We demand more soldiers to put an end to this, or that [the authorities] grant us more power to take care of the forest ourselves. 

Photo: Luna sin Estrellas

Just last month, an even greater threat has risen in Michoacans butterfly haven. Grupo Mexico, the countrys largest mining corporation, has been awarded a concession to reopen an old mine in Angangueo, a town in the heart of the monarch reserve that was closed 25 years ago. The company now intends to mine copper, zinc, lead, silver and gold. Experts believe that if the mine is reopened, it will likely spell the end of this magical place.

And as if all this wasnt bad enough, the increasing use of herbicides on genetically engineered corn and soybean crops in the American corn belt has led to the depletion of milkweed, a plant essential to the monarchs development from egg into butterfly.

Faced with so many threats, we can only hope that the great monarch migration will continue for many years to come, but the signs are unfortunately not very encouraging.
The Southampton Press said June 9 that Westhampton Beachs settlement with the East End Eruv Assn. ends the lawsuits but lawyers said it can be invalidated because of flaws.

SH Press made the settlement its top story, saying eruv litigation over in a subhead. SH Press has editorialized in favor of WHB accepting the eruv Jewish boundary, saying it is invisible and should be of no concern to residents.

Jewish People for the Betterment of WHB countered that, despite court decisions coming to the same conclusion, eruvim in WHB and elsewhere are highly visible on Synagogue websites. EEEA supposedly has permission to put religious symbols permanently on 46 utility poles on WHB property.

The May 30 New York Times showed the map of the WHB eruv in color. The image was not only in about one million printed copies of NYT but is permanently archived on the NYT website. It has appeared on odwyerpr.com several times.

ODwyer Co. lawyers say the WHB agreement has the false statement that it is not a recognition or endorsement of any religious boundary when that is what the agreement claims.

Another flaw, they say, is that no WHB elected official signed it. The only person signing it is Brian Sokoloff, who is outside legal counsel to WHB. Southampton Town Supervisor Anna Throne-Holst signed for SHs agreement with EEEA.

Mayor Maria Moore has been emailed a question of why she did not sign in but she has not responded.

No Claims About Being Constitutional

Critics also note that the WHB deal, unlike SHs, makes no claim that the erection of the eruv is not an unconstitutional establishment of religion under the First Amendment.

That is because an eruv is a violation of the First Amendment, say critics.

The First Amendment: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or of the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for redress of grievances.

The website Teaching Tolerance, quoting the Amendment, says religious symbols can be used as instructional aids, not as permanent display or decoration.

George Washington: No Clergy in Government

The just-published 288-page book, The Curious Case of Kiryas Joel, The Rise of a Village Theocracy and the Battle to Defend the Separation of Church and State, has this quote by George Washington at the start of a chapter:

The United States of America should have a foundation free from the influence of the clergy.

Another chapter is headed by this quote by Justice Tom C. Clark in Everson v. Board of Education:

The First Amendments purpose was to create a complete and permanent separation of the spheres of religious activity and civil authority by comprehensively forbidding every form of public aid or support for religion.

Public Comment Evaded

Critics also say that the Moore administration has evaded public comment and discussion on the eruv issue, never calling a town hall or press conference.

Attempts by this reporter to speak at the monthly meetings of the WHB board have been shut down by WHB lawyers at the five-minute mark. The board has refused to put us on the agenda although the ODwyer website has done extensive research on eruvim, currently showing more than 1,500 such entries since 2008.

This writer posted the letter below on the SH Press and 27east.com story dated June 9.





This is reporter Jack ODwyer who finds some flaws in Erin McKinleys article.

For one, I am not a local blogger but the owner and editor of the 48-year-old ODwyer Co. whose website is picked up throughout the U.S. and in as many as 170 foreign countries in a month. Unique visitors average 50,000 to 60,000 monthly.



Our monthly magazine published 692 pages last year and our May 2016 issue had 96 pages. We publish the only printed directory in all of public relations, the 328-page ODwyers Directory of PR Firms. Both the New York Times and Washington Post have referred to the company as the bible of PR.



So treating us dismissively is not accurate. We have covered the eruv dispute in detail since 2008 partly because we have owned a home in WHB since 1987 and are a registered voter. Our website, searchable to 2001, lists more than 1,600 stories and documents under eruv.



We have hundreds of pages of legal and other documents on eruvim but no SH Press editor will go over these with us. Normally, reporters are all eyes and ears on anything to do with a story they are covering.



Erins story says Mayor Maria Moore would sign the agreement but it was only signed by outside attorney Brian Sokoloff.



The WHB agreement carries the false statement that it is not a recognition or endorsement of any religious boundary when that is exactly what it does.



The WHB agreement, unlike the SH agreement, does not say that the eruv is not an unconstitutional establishment of religion under the First Amendment because that would be false. McCreary County vs. ACLU of Kentucky in 2005 barred permanent religious symbols on public property, in an opinion written by Justice David Souter.



It is a brazen trampling on the U.S. Constitution and its commitment to separation of church and state. I do not believe it is a valid agreement.



As for the oft-cited threat of millions of fines and fees that might be dumped on WHB, I say Baloney with a capital B. Nothing from the other side is to be believed.

Sincerely,

Jack ODwyer
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Cabelas retail stores might not be worth as much to investors if the companys lucrative Worlds Foremost Bank is split off from the rest of the company, according to a recent analysis by financial publication Barrons.

The analysis found that without $200 million in marketing fees Cabelas credit-card division paid its retail arm, the retail business would have had a 2015 operating loss.

Federal regulators rapped Cabelas for goosing the retail divisions profits with fees from the credit-card division. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in April settled with Cabelas for a $1 million fine. Its chief financial officer, Ralph Castner, paid a $50,000 fine personally. Neither admitted wrongdoing.

The payments essentially boosted profit margins. The SEC charged that the practice was a deliberate violation of generally accepted accounting principles.

Cabelas declined to discuss the issue with Barrons. The company cooperated fully with the SEC throughout the investigation, Cabelas said in a prepared statement at the time; Castner and other company officials declined to comment.

Barrons estimated that the marketing fees amounted to about $200 million last year. Without them, Cabelas would have had an operating loss on its $3.5 billion merchandise sales, its analysis concluded.

If the credit-card operation were to sell  as activist investor Elliott Management has suggested could be a possibility  the new owner might not continue with the marketing fee agreement, meaning the retail stores would lose out on the income.

The story might have perked the ears of investors who were hoping the retail stores might sell for a premium because of the pressure exerted by Elliott, the activist hedge fund that declared an 11 percent stake in Cabelas in October last year.

Since the story ran on Saturday, the companys stock,  which traded at more than $52 a share a week ago, has fallen to just above $50  not a huge move, but possibly related to the Barrons coverage, as the broader stock market has gained over the past week.

Shareholders should seriously consider taking profits at recent price levels, Barrons writer Bill Alpert suggested to readers.

Contact the writer: 402-444-1414, paige.yowell@owh.com
Tesla said Thursday it is selling a cheaper version of its Model S car to make its electric vehicles more affordable. The new version, the Model S 60, starts at $66,000. The current Model S 90D starts at $89,500. Tesla said that tax incentives and gas savings bring the effective cost of the Model S 60 to about $50,000. The company said the Model S 60 can travel 200 miles per charge.

Applications for jobless aid decline

Fewer Americans sought unemployment benefits last week, a sign employers are hanging on to workers despite a sluggish economy. The Labor Department said Thursday that weekly applications for unemployment aid fell by 4,000 to a seasonally adjusted 264,000. The four-week average dropped by 7,500 to 269,500. Weekly jobless claims have been below 300,000 for 66 straight weeks, the longest streak since 1973.

Wholesale inventories growth picks up pace

Stockpiles held by U.S. wholesale companies rose in April by 0.6 percent, the fastest pace in 10 months, the Commerce Department reported Thursday. Sales at the wholesale level rose 1 percent following a 0.6 percent increase in March and was the biggest increase since April 2015. A slowdown in restocking inventories has depressed economic growth.

Mortgage rates fall in wake of jobs report

Long-term U.S. mortgage rates fell this week after three straight weeks of increases and followed a surprisingly weak employment report. Mortgage buyer Freddie Mac said the average 30-year fixed-rate mortgage slipped to 3.60 percent from 3.66 percent. The average rate on 15-year fixed-rate mortgages fell to 2.87 percent from 2.92 percent.
WASHINGTON (AP)  The Federal Aviation Administration has ruled out requiring psychological testing for airline pilots, despite an air crash last year in which a German pilot deliberately flew an airliner full of passengers into a mountainside, agency administrator Michael Huerta said Thursday.

Psychological tests are ineffective because they reveal a pilots mental health for only a moment in time without providing insight into whether the pilot will suffer problems later, Huerta said at a press conference. Instead, he announced several steps the FAA is taking to encourage greater voluntary self-reporting by pilots about mental health problems.

Michael Berry, the FAAs deputy flight surgeon, drew a distinction between testing and evaluation. Currently no psychological testing is required of airline pilots, but they are routinely evaluated on how they handle stress during tests of their flying skills.

New smartphone knows its way around a room

SAN FRANCISCO  A Lenovo smartphone unveiled Thursday will be clever enough to grasp your physical surroundings  such as the rooms size and the presence of other people  and potentially transform how we interact with e-commerce, education and gaming.

Todays smartphones track location through GPS and cell towers, but that does little more than tell apps where you are. Tapping Googles 3-year-old Project Tango, the new phone will use software and sensors to track motions and map building interiors, including the location of doors and windows.

Thats a crucial step in the promising new frontier in augmented reality, or the digital projection of lifelike images and data into a real-life environment.

Lenovo says the Phab2 Pro phone will sell for $500 when it begins shipping in the U.S. in August. The device is expected to be on store shelves by mid-September, in advance of Apples anticipated release of the iPhone 7.

Company rejects pledge to add women to board

Shareholders of Restaurant Brands International Inc., owner of Burger King and Tim Hortons, on Thursday rejected a proposal that would require a clear plan to add women to the companys all-male board.

OceanRock Investments Inc.s motion was defeated at the companys annual meeting in Oakville, Ontario, according to the Canadian Press. The Vancouver-based investor became a shareholder when Miami-based Burger King acquired the Canadian doughnut chain Tim Hortons in 2014 for about $11 billion. The combined company is based in Canada.

Before the tie-up, Tim Hortons had three female directors. Restaurant Brands has said that while it has changed its guidelines to make diversity considerations more apparent, a specific pledge to add women might hamper the flexibility to pick the best candidates.
AMES, Iowa (AP)  Breaking with Gov. Terry Branstad, the head of the board that governs Iowas public universities backed a last-minute tuition increase Thursday that would affect tens of thousands of students this fall.

Bruce Rastetter, the Board of Regents president, said he would support a $300 increase  4.4 percent for resident undergraduate students at the University of Iowa, Iowa State University and the University of Northern Iowa.

Students at the University of Iowa in business and engineering schools and students from other states would face steeper increases.

Weeks ago, state lawmakers voted to provide about $14 million less than the universities requested for their general operating budgets.

The increase Rastetter backed would offset that by generating $21.2 million in new revenue.

Regents discussed the plan during a meeting in Ames and are expected to vote on it formally next month.

Student leaders from Iowa State and UNI told the regents they would reluctantly support the increase but warned of the impact it would have on cash-strapped students and families. Student leaders from the University of Iowa suggested what they called a compromise, an increase of just $200 for all students on that campus.

The governor said last week that he believed the increase was too much. He called on his appointees on the nine-member board to carefully consider the effect it would have on students and families. The hike, he noted, would hit just weeks before the school year begins, a point student leaders underlined Thursday.

How are students expected to plan for the future and budget their money when they are hit with a tuition increase a few weeks before they get their first bill? UI student body president Rachel Zuckerman said.

Rastetter said Thursday that he wasnt happy to be discussing tuition increases but that he believed them necessary to maintain educational quality.

He suggested the three universities have even greater needs today than when they requested a $20 million increase in state funds from lawmakers last year. He said UNI has longstanding budget challenges, Iowa State faces a booming enrollment and the University of Iowa is struggling to retain faculty and improve programs.

We have a responsibility to make sure the quality of these institutions does not go backward, Rastetter said.

A split is unusual between Branstad and Rastetter, who is one of the governors top campaign donors.

Branstad spokesman Ben Hammes downplayed the rift, noting that the regents are an independent board that sets tuition rates.

Governor Branstad understands the regents have to balance the needs of universities and hopes that any increase in student tuition would be modest and minimal to lessen the financial impact on students and their families, he said.

Regent Larry McKibben, of Marshalltown, said the proposal was the hardest decision hes faced in 2 years on the board and said he had yet to make up his mind.

The next few weeks are going to be painful, he said.
GRAND ISLAND, Neb. - Boer goat owners and breeders of all ages from across the country are in Grand Island, Nebraska, this week for the annual American Boer Goat Association National Show and Junior National Show.

Vicki Stich of New Albin, Iowa, national ABGA show chairwoman, said this is the third year the national and junior national shows have been in Grand Island. They will return next year.

We have people from all over the United States here, Stich said.

Nearly 30 states are represented. There are about 450 juniors showing at this years event and about 1,110 goats for the two shows.

With the show happening earlier this year, the number of participants is down a little as some of the junior members are still in school. Others, such as those from Texas, have been hampered by the weather. Texas is the nations leading meat-goat-producing state.

For both the Junior ABGA and ABGA shows, Stich said, there will be more than 1,000 participants.

She said Grand Island is well-situated in the center of the country, and the Nebraska State Fair livestock facilities make for smooth show operations.

Producing one of the most popular food animals in the world, the meat goat industry continues to grow in the U.S., especially with more immigrants from parts of the world where meat goats are popular.

According to the ABGA, the development of the Boer goat in the early 1900s can be traced to the Dutch farmers of South Africa. Boer is a Dutch word meaning farmer. With meat production setting the selection criteria, the Dutch farmers developed the Boer goat as a unique breed. It has a rapid growth rate, excellent carcass qualities and is highly adapted to different environments.

The first full-blood Boer goats were brought to the United States in 1993, the same year the American Boer Goat Association was formed.

It is growing every day, and our numbers keep going up, Stich said about the U.S. Boer goat industry.

With the junior show, this is the first year since Ive been associated with the show that I have seen a lot of new people and a lot of first-timers, she said. When I see new faces and they tell me that this is their first show or first nationals, then we must be doing something right.

Trevor Clemens of What Cheer, Iowa, is the JABGA president.

Kids from throughout the country are here, and it is really nice to have them come together and meet one another, Clemens said.

Clemens, like many of participants in the JABGA show, started out raising meat goats as a 4-H project. Now hes headed off to college to study small ruminant reproduction and become a veterinarian. He also visited Ethiopia last summer to study small ruminants.

I have always been a farm kid, he said. It (raising goats) started out as a learning responsibility.

Along with goats, Clemens family farm has a 1,500-head farrow-to-finish swine operation.

He said there will always be a market for meat goats as more Americans discover the health benefits.

It is one of the healthiest red meats out there, Clemens said.

Goat meat is a healthy alternative to beef and chicken because of its lower calorie, fat and cholesterol totals.

Michigan State University Extension reports that approximately 75 percent of the worlds population eats goat meat.

According to MSU Extension, American producers are struggling to keep up with the growing demand for a product that was virtually unheard of 15 years ago. In addition to the ethnic population that regularly consumes goat meat, many Americans are discovering the benefits of eating goat, too.

Clemens said many of the kids who were showing their goats at Fonner Park on Tuesday have been raised in this industry, and it is all they know and all they really want to know.

Also, he said there are a lot of misconceptions about raising goats, whether it is a meat goat, dairy goat or a fiber goat.

We always hear the comment that it is just a goat and goats eat anything, but it is much more than that, Clemens said.

ABGA Chief Executive Officer Lary Duncan of San Angelo, Texas, said the meat goat industry is the only growing segment in agriculture and livestock.

The number of goats is increasing every year, and demand cant be met because of the nations growing ethnic population, Duncan said.

To meet the growing demand for goat meat, he said, the U.S. has to turn to exports from foreign countries, such as Australia, New Zealand and Mexico.

As the demand for meat goats grows, Duncan said, the ABGA is gaining members all the time.

For many of our youth, it is their future, he said.
A day of U-turns: What led to Karnataka govt, accepting former DSP Anupama's resignation

Bengaluru

oi-Vicky

Bengaluru, June 10: Yesterday was a day of u-turns. Former DSP, Anupama Shenoy who has turned into a Facebook warrior returned to her home only to tell the waiting media that she is not even aware of what Facebook is. Chief Minister of Karnataka, Siddaramaiah who had tried convincing her to reconsider her resignation finally ended up accepting it.

All this in a day and the drama that ensued was so in your face, that even former Chief Minister B S Yeddyurappa said, " when a chief minister has asked her to resume work, she should do so and not be stubborn.

An in your face drama:

Anupama Shenoy who has had several run ins with Labour Minister, Parameshwar Naik put in her resignation last week. Since then she had been untraceable. She had left Ballari and was residing her at relatives place in Bhatkal.

During that period she had posted several messages on Facebook threatening to release CDs relating to Naik. The CDs are still not out as yet.

The government first took a reconciliatory note and decided to persuade her. Upon her return to Ballari she had told the media that she would meet with the Superintendent of Police R Chethan. Later on she said that she would not meet with anyone and insisted that she was firm on resigning.

The entire situation was being monitored from Bengaluru at the highest level. The SP, DGP, Dy. SP, ADGP among others tried to get in touch with her. She refused to take any calls. This led to the SP writing to the government that she was talking with the press but not the officers.

The DGP who cannot accept her resignation since she is a gazetted officer wrote to the government recommending that her resignation be accepted.

This led to a meeting of the CM and the Home Minister and it was decided that the resignation would be accepted.

It was discussed during that meeting that withholding her resignation would cause more damage. Moreover, the government had also the backing of Yeddyurappa's statement in which he had stated that she should not be stubborn.

The Facebook mystery:

There have been a flurry of messages on her Facebook profile. Although she has claimed that it had been hacked, many officers insist that the profile is being updated by her.

Currently Anupama whose only intention was to expose Naik finds herself standing alone. The updates on her Facebook indicate that.

Nobody is trying to understand me. The channels only want the news, officers want power and people want to achieve her challenges, but I have to save my life.

Anupama in an earlier post had even set a deadline of June 7 for Naik to resign. She had said that she would release a CD if he did not. It has been three days since that post. Naik has not resigned and neither has the CD been released.

The question is that will her allegations remain allegations or will the government at least probe it?

OneIndia News

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Story first published: Friday, June 10, 2016, 15:41 [IST]
Before Modi, this Indian leader was also given drive by a foreign head of govt

Bengaluru

oi-Shubham

Bengaluru, June 10: Prime Minister Narendra Modi had a special experience towards the end of his eventful five-nation tour when he visited Mexico---the final country in the itinerary.

Enrique Pena Nieto, the president of the North American country, drove Prime Minister Narendra Modi to a restaurant for a vegetarian dinner himself. [Modi's 6-nation visits in May & June: A brief look]

Ministry of External Affairs sporkesperson Vikas Swarup tweeted a photograph showing Modi sitting beside the 49-year-old Nieto driving the car. [A glance at stories on Modi's visit to US]

While Modi's car had a left-hand drive, Didi got ride in a rigt-hand drive car

Modi, however, is not the first Indian leader to get a lift from a foreign leader while paying a visit.

In October last year, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee had a similar experience during her visit to Bhutan. [Bhutan trip an "amazing experience", says Mamata]

The Bhutanese prime minister, Tshering Togbay, personally drove Banerjee to her hotel. In fact, Togbay did not care about the protocol and met Banerjee as many as four times and also praised her for leading a simplistic life.

Modi and Banerjee might be fierce competitors at home but their reputation as leaders is something that has earned recognition across the world. The head of the governments' personal catering to them makes the point explicit.

Oneindia News
6/1334

Weightlifter Achinta Sheuli won Indias third gold medal at the Birmingham Commonwealth Games 2022. However, it would not have been possible without his brother Alok,, who gave up his own sports career and worked as a labour to support family and Achinta's dream.

Weightlifter Achinta Sheuli won Indias third gold medal at the Birmingham Commonwealth Games 2022. However, it would not have been possible without his brother Alok,, who gave up his own sports career and worked as a labour to...
2 Hindus killed in 3 days- Why India needs to act tough on Bangladesh right now

Feature

oi-Vicky

By Vicky

In a span of three days two Hindus have been killed by Islamic extremists in Bangladesh. It is suspected that the killings may be the handiwork of the ISIS or a group which subscribes to the outfit.

On June 7, a Hindu priest was killed and today it was a Hindu Ashram worker. The killings have a pattern to it and one must not also forget that in the past secular bloggers and Christians too have been killed. There is a general message in these killings and that is Bangladesh has to move towards the law of Sharia, establish the Caliphate and make it a Muslim only country. However in these killings India has to wake up and take notice considering that there is a desperate attempt on part of the ISIS and its affiliates to spread the menace into India.

India cannot be a mute spectator:

There has been a tussle on within Bangladesh to ensure that the Sheikh Hasina regime is overthrown. She has been particularly hard on the extremists and it was expected that there would be a retaliation. India first saw this message loud and clear in Burdhwan when a bunch of operatives of the Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen, Bangladesh were preparing bombs. These bombs were meant to be transported to Bangladesh and a series of explosions were to be carried out.

Intelligence Bureau officials say that there is no doubt that the JMB would align with the ISIS if it helps them achieve their goal of overthrowing Hasina. The ISIS on the other hand is making a desperate attempt to religiously polarise the whole of Bangladesh. The killing of Hindu religious persons is aimed at sending a very strong message to persons both in India as well as Bangladesh.

The ISIS feels that such killings would impress many in India who in turn would leave for Bangladesh. The ISIS may well be planning a major module like they have in Syria or Iraq. Moreover the ISIS had made several calls to Indian Muslims to join them either in Afghanistan or Bangladesh. Those ISIS aspirants would find it easier to join the outfit in these countries rather than travel to Syria or Iraq.

An Indian Intelligence Bureau official tells OneIndia that the situation is turning dangerous. Such killings of Hindus is bound to have an impact in India. States such as Assam or West Bengal will be extremely vulnerable if such acts go unchecked, the officer also says.

For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications

Story first published: Friday, June 10, 2016, 11:25 [IST]
Rs 350 crore AgustaWestland transaction, 5 lakh transactions of Mallya under SIT scanner

Feature

oi-Vicky

By Vicky

Chasing a money trail of Rs 350 crore in the AgustaWestland case and scrutinising 5 lakh transactions made in connection with the Vijay Mallya case are the top priorities for the Special Investigation Team of the Central Bureau of Investigation. An SIT had been set up to probe the two cases as it required a dedicated team considering a major money trail and also the fact that both probes required dealing with international agencies.

The SIT which will be headed by Rakesh Asthana has its task cut out. In both these investigations it is absolutely crucial to find the exact money trail. Mere allegations regarding bribe takers or laundering will not help the investigation. It is absolutely important to find the exact money trail if a conviction is to be secured in a court of law.

Kickbacks to laundering:

The specific brief for the SIT would be to probe into the money trail regarding the AgustaWestland deal. The SIT would take this case forward based on the findings of the Italian investigators who had established that a bribe of Rs 350 crore had been paid.

For the SIT, the job now would be to establish the money trail. The entire amount of Rs 350 crore had come into India from various countries. Each penny was paid to the high and mighty who helped swing the chopper deal in favour of AgustaWestland. The probe would begin with how and where the money came in from to whom it was given to. If this trail is established then the case would be a water tight one, the CBI says. The CBI has already sent out Letters Rogatorys to Switzerland, United Kingdom, UAE, Mauritius, Singapore, British Virgin Islands and Tunisia. So far only Italy has been responsive.

The SIT which will also probe into the Mallya case has decided to expand its ambit. The probe by the CBI which initially began with the scrutiny of just one bank loan default case has now expanded its ambit. The SIT apart from probing the Rs 900 bank default case relating to the IDBI bank would now scrutinise nearly 5 lakh transactions allegedly made. This is a case relating to money laundering and hence the 5 lakh odd transactions become extremely important to scrutinise.
Trump is convinced Russia didnt interfere in 2016 polls; blames US for sour ties with Moscow

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US Presidential elections: Why California is important for the Democrats?

Feature

oi-Pallavi

By Pallavi

Hillary Clinton had a thumping success inthe California primaries on June 7, 2016. She defeated fellow contestant Bernie Sanders by about 14 points.

A totalof 475 pledged delegates were at stake, which is more than any other state. California, a Democratic-inclined state has had a long history of preferring Democrats over the Republicans. While there were no primaries held for the Democratic party from the state, Hillary Clinton had made her mark again in 2008 primaries here.

In fact, she won over Barack Obama 52 to 43%. In a way, this has become Clinton's home ground.

However, there are more than one reasons why California is important for the Democrats, especially when we are weighing the chances of winning against the business tycoon Donald Trump who is representing the Republicans.

[Read: Sanders vows to prevent Trump being elected US President]

1. California delegate haul represented about 20 percent of the 2,383 delegates needed to secure the Democratic nomination and almost 12 percent of the 4,038 pledged delegates up for grabs in 2016.

2. On June 2, California super delegates have expressed their backing for Hillary Clinton

3. Visa vie Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump had only 172 pledged delegates

4. California is expected to have 548 delegates at the 2016 Democratic National Convention, of which 475 are pledged delegates. The unpledged delegates account for 13.3%, which means just 73.

[Read: Obama endorses Hillary Clinton for president]

5. California has a total of 73 superdelegates who vouch for Hillary Clinton. Till now, close to 52 superdelegates were known to have expressed their support for Hillary Clinton, while the support of 21 superdelegates was unknown.

6. 6. As compared to Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump has lesser support from within his own party members. For instance, Marco Rubio was among other Republican candidates who shows hesitance in supporting Trump over Clinton.

For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications

Story first published: Friday, June 10, 2016, 12:19 [IST]
What US Media talked during PM Narendra Modis US Trip

Feature

oi-Lisa

By Lisa

Last was PM Narendra Modi's fourth trip to the US in two years since he became the Prime Minister of India. The first visit was in September 2014. The second one was in September 2015. The third one was in March 2015.

Since he became PM Mr. Modi has met Barack Obama six times and has countless phone conversations with him. This as per a senior US official shows the significance that both the leaders place on the natural alliance between the oldest democracy and the largest democracy.

It will be interesting to find out how US talked about Narendra Modi as he visited their country fourth time as PM:

The Wall Street Journal in a blog published yesterday mentioned that, "The trip produced deals on energy and educational exchanges, but final terms were not reached on the biggest pending projects-significantly, a plan to have Westinghouse help build nuclear reactors in India advanced but isn't complete; also still pending is an accord allowing the U.S. and India to use each other's military facilities for refueling and repairs."



USA Today talked about how a bipartisan group of 18 House Members Led by Representative Trent Franks wrote to Speaker Ryan and urged him to prioritise religious freedom in India during his meeting with Prime Minister Modi. The lawmakers cited ongoing violence and harassment against religious minorities, including Muslims, Christians, Buddhists, and Sikhs.

Representative Frank had written, "As we consider the shared values of the United States and India, due attention to the fundamental human right of religious freedom is of the utmost importance. Religious minority communities in India have endured incidents of harassment, discrimination, intimidation and violent attacks for decades, often with little hope for justice. It is my sincere hope that every person in India will experience true freedom of faith, regardless of religion."



New York Times published an article by Gardiner Harris where he talked about the friendship that both the leaders are trying to forge. He quoted Raymond E Vickery, a former US assistant secretary of commerce who has met Mr. Modi. Mr. Vickery said that both the leaders have grown up as outsiders and valued frankness. He had this to say about Mr. Modi:

"Modi is a really down-to-earth guy who tries to answer your questions and doesn't just go to talking points."

Gardiner Harris in his piece also quotes Kanti Prasad Bajpai, a professor of Asian studies at the National University of Singapore who said that Mr. Modi is part of a class of populist, electable, narcissistic right-wing autocrats whose appeal is that they pander to majoritarian anger. He said that, "Obama is the opposite of that, so it is hard to see how close they can be".



Christi Parsons wrote for LA Times that Modi brought his own to-do list, and achieved at least some of his goals. He wanted the Obama administration to push China to allow India, a regional rival, to join the Nuclear Suppliers Group, a multinational organisation that seeks to stop nuclear proliferation by controlling export and transfer of nuclear materials.



Karoun Demirjian interviewed for The Washington Post and various senators about PM Modi's US visit. Sen. Kelly Ayotte said, "One thing I'd love to hear him address, that I've been deeply troubled by, is what has happened over the last several years in his country when it comes to women and rape and how that's been treated. They need to really address their criminal justice system."

Sen. David Perdue (R-Ga.), a member of the Foreign Relations Committee, said, "Even though they don't have a major role play in that today, India should be one of the major players in a global effort to deal with the refugee crisis. They could even be a contributor to this entire radical Islam issue, over time."



Pamela Constable wrote for The Washington Post that, "Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi will address a joint meeting of Congress on Wednesday, a rare honour that contrasts sharply with the affront he faced more than a decade ago when he was denied a US visa after Hindu riots killed more than 1,000 people in the state he then governed."

She quotes John Prabhudoss, President of the Federation of Indian American Christian Organisations say that, "We welcomed Mr. Modi when he was elected, but he has driven the country into religious polarisation. He took oath to protect the constitution and all the people, but he has failed to uphold it."



Andrew Taylor for Washington Post wrote about the rules that were to be followed by lawmakers and staff aides who were to meet PM Modi during his US visit. The first rule was no selfies. The message from House Foreign Affairs Committee protocol aide Elizabeth Heng for the lawmakers and their aides was that, "First and foremost - NO SELFIES!! Taking selfies with a visiting Head of State is incredibly inappropriate and tactless. Make sure your boss does not do this."

The other thing that they were asked to be mindful was that it is not cool "to give cattle product to a practicing Hindu".

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Story first published: Friday, June 10, 2016, 15:44 [IST]
Why Bernie Sanders is a winner even after losing

Feature

oi-Pallavi

By Pallavi

A lot depends on Bernie Sanders now if Hillary Clinton has to nail the Presidential elections this year. Sanders may be tailing behind Hillary Clinton, but he has announced that he would fight till the end of the Democratic National convention in Philadelphia in late July.

Clinton by then would have won a majority of pledged delegates, but not an absolute majority of overall delegates. This means that if Sanders can persuade a huge number of superdelegates to back him, he could become the nominee.

Call it blessing in disguise, but Bernie is already a winner even if he lost.

In a press meeting, Sanders once said, "She has received obviously a whole lot of superdelegate support, no question about that. A lot more than I have. But superdelegates don't vote until they're on the floor of the Democratic convention. That's when they vote."

Could be a strategy well played

Bernie Sanders met Obama yesterday in the White House and he was also quoted as saying that he would stop Trump from winning anyhow. So does that mean that he will draw his supporters till the convention and then withdraw, convincing that Hillary is the best option they have? However unlikely, this still remains a possibility.

[Read: US Presidential elections: Why California is important for the Democrats? ]

Bernie travelled a long way to the Senate

Right from being an independent candidate to winning the tough third-party campaign to be elected mayor of Burlington. In 1988, Sanders later won a seat in the US House of Representatives.

But once in Congress, Sanders settled into a comfort zone when the party stopped running candidates against him even when they differed in ideologies. In 2006, when a Senate seat opened up in Vermont, the party's national leaders - everyone from Nancy Pelosi to Chuck Schumer - cleared the field for him so he could win the Democratic nomination unopposed. Having won it, he then officially declined it in order to run as an independent in a race with no Democratic nominee.

[Read: Sanders vows to prevent Trump being elected US President ]

He then entered the Senate and joined the party Caucus and now serves as the ranking member of the Budget Committee. Now, if the Democrats win the Senate this NOvember, he will either be chief of that committee or the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee. If Clinton wins in November, he'll have influence over executive branch appointments and a good chance to chair an important committee and shape legislation.

For the time being, there is no other way but to pin hopes on Sanders...for good.

[Read: Sanders not surprised by Obama endorsing Clinton: WH ]

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Story first published: Friday, June 10, 2016, 13:26 [IST]
Why Pakistan and Congress are failing to tackle Narendra Modi

Feature

oi-Shubham

By Shubham

Prime Minister Narendra Modi's making an extra effort to bolster relations with Pakistan's neighbours and the US has put Islamabad in a spot for obvious reasons.

The external enemy is rattled

India's signing pact with Iran to develop the strategic Chabahar Port, inaugurating the Friendship Dam in Afghanistan and extracting support from the US and other western countries on matters of joining the NSG and MTCR have caused enough discomfort for the neighbouring country since each of these diplomatic ventures have shrunk its space in international politics. [Why India is becoming a global darling today while Pakistan is losing out]

The internal enemy is in shambles

Modi's internal enemy---the Congress---too is worried. Since Modi's third straight victory in Gujarat Assembly election in 2012 end, the Congress has only experienced repeated electoral reverses.

Barring the victories in Himachal Pradesh in 2012 end, in Karnataka and Meghalaya in 2013, finishing as a part of the winning alliance in Bihar in 2015 and coming to power in Puducherry in 2016, the Congress has not tasted any success.

On the contrary, it lost several states like Rajasthan, Delhi, Maharashtra, Haryana, Jammu and Kashmir (the alliance between the ruling National Conference and Congress though was broken before the poll), Kerala and Assam besides the big one---the Lok Sabha election. The grand-old party is now deeply concerned about the upcoming UP polls.

Both of Modi's foes---external and internal---are facing existential crisis. Is it the Modi factor which has pushed both Pakistan and Congress to the corner? Or is there some other factor responsible for such outcome which has made Modi's supporters elated?

Both Pakistan & Congress are fast losing relevance because they are not keeping pace with changing times

Both Pakistan and Congress have one similarity in their stories and it is that similarity which has seen them failing to match Modi. It is about their anachronistic identity. Pakistan has kept itself a prisoner of the past and refused to rise through the ranks as the post-liberalisation India has done in the last 25 years.

Pakistan hasn't seen beyond its army

Dominated by the army for the most part of history, it has not looked beyond nuclear armament and missiles and devoted all its energy on the military aspects that continued since the era of the Cold War when it enjoyed the patronage of the US to prevent the spread of the Soviet influence in southern Asia.

The lack of a democratic growth in Pakistan also saw it failing in civilian fields. The name of Pakistan is taken with the Taliban and terrorism at best.

Congress hasn't thought beyond the Gandhis

The Congress, similarly hasn't grown beyond the stature of the Gandhis. It has not changed its outlook even as India has changed post liberalisation. Plagued by a stagnant leadership devoid of any fresh thinking, the Congress has found no answer to Modi's Blitzkrieg which is powered by the popular support for the prime minister.

Being reduced to the worst-ever size in Parliament and with the Gandhis becoming weaker, the Congress is a toothless entity today which has shown signs of implosion.

Both Pakistan and the Congress need to come of age in their thinking if they aim to compete with Modi who is cruising at the moment.

Pak needs to rediscover its worth; Congress needs to rethink its approach

While Islamabad needs to look at asserting itself as a soft power with thrust on issues like trade, energy and knowledge-driven economy, the Congress needs to align its approach and thinking with the aspirations of the new India.

None of them have actually updated themselves to the new realities of the 21st century and hence failing to erase the lead that a wiser Modi has taken over them.
'Kantara' box office collection: Rishab's flick to join $1-million club in US; check day-wise collection

Solar eclipse to be sighted in Bengaluru for 45 minutes: Report

Raising anti-RSS slogans, three men attack Hindu youth with stones in Shivamogga

2 killed onboard INS Vikramaditya due to toxic leak

India

oi-Oneindia

By OneIndia Defence Desk

Bengaluru, June 10: An incident of toxic leak is being reported onboard aircraft carrier INS Vikramaditya.

According to initial reports, two causalities have been reported. A sailor and a civilian is said to have been killed in the incident.

The two deceased are Rakesh Kumar, a Shipwright Artificer Class 4 and Mohandas Kolambkar, of Royal Marine.

Navy says both succumbed due to gas inhalation. The relatives of both have been been informed and the Navy has ordered an inquiry as well.

"All efforts have been taken to render the compartment and area on the ship safe," says a Navy spokesperson.

The incident happened in the Sewage Treatment Plant (STP) onboard INS Vikramaditya.

The ship has been anchored at Karwar base in Karnataka for a refit for the last 10 days.

Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar had hosted US Defence Secretary Ashton Carter onboard the ship in April.

More details are awaited.

OneIndia News
Shocking! Actress found living on Delhi streets after being evicted out of home

India

oi-Mukul

New Delhi, June 10: One may not have forgotten popular model Gitanjali Nagpal, whose riches to rags story hit the headlines in 2007. A similar case has come to light again. Reportedly, a small time Bollywood actress Alisa Khan was found living on the streets of Greater Kailash, Delhi.

Shocking! High-profile sex racket busted in Mumbai; 'Savdhaan India' actress arrested

Most shocking thing is that her own family members kicked her out from the home. Reports say that actress' family members were unhappy with her after they came to know about a sleazy video with her ex-boy friend.

As per India Today, Khan who earlier worked in couple of music videos is the co-star of Imran Hashmi. Both will be seen in soon to be released film Aaina.

Earlier, Alisha Khan, a resident of Ghaziabad also acted in recently released film My Husband's Wife.

Gitanjali Nagpal memory comes alive; another actor found begging on streets

When asked about the news reports, model turned actress admitted that she was thrown out of her house by mother and brother. Model said that she faced their fury after she complained about her ex-boy friend to Mumbai police.

Reportedly, Boyfriend had captured their intimate moment in camera and had uploaded video on Youtube. Later, video was taken down by the Mumbai Police.

OneIndia News
Rajnath Singh to launch website enabling citizens to contribute to welfare fund for martyrs' families

Be quiet or else I'll slap you", Rajnath Singh warns unruly crowd in UP

India

oi-Mukul

New Delhi, June 10: Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh recently lost his cool while addressing a rally in Uttar Pradesh's Mau district. Reportedly, Singh told an unruly crowd to shut their mouth, else he will slap them.

Rajnath Singh was addressing people in the wake of next year Assembly elections in the State.

According to News 18 report, Minister got angry after a crowd of people started hooting against him during the live speech. "Be quiet, be quiet or else I'll slap you," Rajnath warned people who were gathered there to listen him.

In the rally, Rajnath also trained his guns on Akhilesh led SP Government for recent violence in Mathura in which 28 peole were killed.

Making an announcement that Centre is ready for a probe in the case, Minister further said, "Thousands of people had grabbed land in Mathura and the state government was unaware".

OneIndia News

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Story first published: Friday, June 10, 2016, 17:09 [IST]
George Fernandes' colleagues pitch for Bharat Ratna for him

India

oi-PTI

New Delhi, Jun 10: Calling him one of the "greatest and bravest" fighters for civil rights during the Emergency era, friends and supporters of George Fernandes have pitched for awarding Bharat Ratna to the veteran socialist leader.

"On his 86th birthday this June 3, celebrations were held across the country from Patna to Muzaffarpur, Mumbai and Delhi and resolutions were passed seeking Bharat Ratna for George," said Fernandes' 76-year-old colleague Vijay Narain.

Narain and others along with Fernandes were arrested on June 10, 1976 in Kolkata and tried in the infamous Baroda Dynamite Case, in which they were also charged with waging war against the state to overthrow the government.

"Today marks the 40th anniversary of his arrest during the Emergency. He was champion of civil rights, and struggled for the poor, the weak, the downtrodden and the farmers. And, we think he deserves to be given Bharat Ratna," he said.

Narain said, however, we will not approach the government for the award, but raise the consciousness among the people, whose leader he was, and let the demand come from the masses.

"We will only popularise his ideals, his struggles and pitch for it (Bharat Ratna), but he is anyway beyond this award.

We only want this for him so that the future generation will remember him," he said. 86-year-old Fernandes, who rose to prominence after the 1973 railway strike, had staunchly opposed the imposition of Emergency.

He and several of his colleagues went under hiding during this period and continued to oppose the Emergency. After remaining in disguise and operating out of hideouts, Fernandes, Narain and their other colleagues were arrested from St Paul's Church in Kolkata.

"George was flown the same night to Delhi, while I was kept in police custody and interrogated for about a fortnight in Kolkata by the police's intelligence bureau. We all were later lodged in Delhi's Tihar Jail and the case was tried in Tees Hazari court," he recalled.

"Several ambassadors of foreign countries used to meet him in jail and even tried to seek his release. George was a hero for many," Narain said. He also alleged that the "BJP-ruled government, driven by RSS is trying to impose one-party rule in the country, which is more dangerous than the Emergency which we had faced back then."

Emergency was in effect from 25 June, 1975 until its withdrawal in March 1977. Fernandes fought the 1977 Lok Sabha election from Muzaffarpur while in jail as an undertrial in the case.

He swept the polls with his supporters campaigning with his photo. After coming to power, Janata Party withdrew the case in 1977 and all the accused were released.

PTI
Gulberg massacre: Sentencing date to be decided on Monday

India

oi-Vicky

New Delhi, June 10: A special court in Ahmedabad will on Monday fix a date to announce the quantum of the sentence in connection with the Gulberg massacre case. Today arguments on the sentencing continued before the court.

Gulberg massacre: 14-year battle for justice

After arguments concluded the Court adjourned the matter to Monday. The court informed that it would fix a date on which the quantum of the sentence would be awarded.

The court had convicted 24 persons and acquitted 36 in connection with the Gulbarg massacre case in which 69 persons were killed. The special court while delivering its verdict convicted 11 out of the 24 persons for murder.

The verdict came 14 years after a mob of nearly 20,000 attacked the Gulbarg society comprising 29 bungalows and 10 apartments in which 69 were killed.

Bipin Patel, a corporator of the BJP who was accused of being part of the mob had been acquitted.

The others to be acquitted are police inspector K G Erda, Atul Vaidya a VHP leader among others. In the case there were a total of 338 witnesses who testified. The trial went on for 6 years.

This is one of the nine cases in the infamous 2002 Gujarat riots case. The Supreme Court had appointed a Special Investigating Team to probe all the nine cases.

The SIT while probing the case named 66 persons in all of which 9 are still in jail while the rest obtained bail. The Supreme Court which is monitoring the probe had ordered the special court to give its verdict soon.

The SIT had said in court that 39 charred bodies had been found which is an indication that they had been burnt alive. The SIT further submitted that it had found petrol cans, swords and lathis at the site.

OneIndia News
IRCTC: 89 trains cancelled on Oct 26 including some in Maharashtra, UP; check complete list

Two arrested for firing at a person in north Delhi

Hurry! Limited period offer: IndiGo offers flight tickets starting Rs 709 for domestic flyers

India

oi-Reetu

New Delhi, June 10: After IndiGo offered tickets at an all-inclusive fare of Rs 806 on certain domestic routes few days back, now it has rolled out yet another offer.

If you want to travel between July 1 and September 30, Indigo is offering you tickets with fares starting at just Rs 709 all inclusive.

IndiGo's earlier offerered tickets starting at just Rs 829 and before that it had an offer which was open till May 19. It was applicable on travel between July 4 and September 30.

Before that SpiceJet had also announced a discount sale to mark its 11th anniversary with fares at Rs 511 for domestic and Rs 2111 for international routes.

Budget carrier AirAsia India also had announced 50 percent discount in fare on return flights till May 18, for travel from August 1 to November 30, to mark the airline flying 2.5 million passengers since launching its operations in June 2014.

OneIndia News

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Story first published: Friday, June 10, 2016, 19:21 [IST]
IGNOU to offer courses in RTI soon

India

oi-PTI

New Delhi, Jun 10: In order to encourage people to understand societal relevance of the Right to Information Act and its nuances, the Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU) has decided to introduce certificate and diploma courses in the subject.

The Central Information Commission (CIC) has extended its support to the university to work out the courses, which will form compulsory part of the training module for all Central Government employees.

"We gauged that though people understand the importance of RTI, it is not widely known how to go about it, what are the technicalities, how to frame the questions, how and where to make further appeals and much more," a senior university official said.

"That is why we decided to introduced the course and approached CIC for their support in content generation and other similar issues," he added.

The Faculty of Public Administration at IGNOU's School of Social Sciences is brainstorming with experts from CIC on the content and curriculum of the course.

PTI
Indian woman's abduction in Kabul a month after security advisory was issued

India

oi-Vicky

New Delhi, June 10: As unknown gunmen abducted an Indian female aid worker in Afghanistan, hectic efforts are on to trace her. New Delhi is in constant touch with Kabul following this development. Highly placed sources in New Delhi say that there is not much information at the moment, but Kabul has assured us that the lady will be traced.

Ironically the abduction of Judith D'souza, a 40 year old Indian aid worker comes a month after an advisory had been issued by the Embassy of India in Kabul.

There have been attempts made by terrorist outfits to target Indian interests in Afghanistan. This is largely because many are opposed to the idea of India helping in a rebuilding exercise of Afghanistan.

Abduction a month after the advisory:

Last month the Embassy of India had issued a security alert to all Indian citizens residing in Afghanistan. It had also warned Indians travelling to Afghanistan warning that a persistent volatile situation exists in the country.

All Indians residing in Afghanistan and Indian travellers to Afghanistan are advised that the security situation in Afghanistan remains highly volatile.

"Terrorist attacks have taken place in many parts of the country against a variety of targets including foreigners and are expected to continue. There is also the risk of kidnapping and hostage taking throughout the Afghanistan," the advisory further read.

Attempts on to trace Judith:

Delhi says that no stone will be left unturned to ensure that the abducted lady is traced. We are in touch with officials in Kabul as well as those in the Indian mission. We are hopeful of her release, an official informed informed OneIndia.

The Indian embassy in Kabul is also in touch with the local officials and also family members of Judith.

Judith was abducted by unknown gunmen at Kabul. The abduction took place near the Qala-e-Fatullah area which has witnessed abductions in the past as well.

No one has claimed responsibility for the incident so far. Officials say that it is hard to tell what exactly the motive could be. However, there has been an attempt to target Indian interests and missions in Afghanistan, officials also pointed out.

OneIndia News
Ahmedabad-Mumbai Tejas Express services to be suspended from today due to COVID-19 rise

Delivered 13,319 tonnes of liquid medical oxygen to states so far: Railways

Indian railways revenue in 2019 to 2021: Here's how much it generated from sale of tickets, platform tickets

Railway Minister dedicates six railway facilities in Bihar

India

oi-PTI

Motihari, Jun 10: Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu today inaugurated six rail facilities in Bihar including flagging off the weekly Motihari-Anand Vihar Champaran Satyagrah Express.

Prabhu flagged off the weekly Champaran Satyagrah Express at a function organised at M S College ground here through remote and dedicated three Road Over Bridges (ROBs) at Danapur (Patna), Motihari and Begusarai railway stations.

He, accompanied by Union Agriculture Minister and local MP Radha Mohan Singh, also inaugurated the broad guage conversion work of Banmankhi-Purnea rail section, besides converting Piprahan station into a crossing station.

Speaking on the occasion, Prabhu said the Narendra Modi government has done more work within a short of span of two years what the UPA could not do in its regime.

Citing examples, the minister said the Railways had carried out 1,477 km of guage conversion between 2004-10 and 1,528 km between 2009-14, whereas the NDA government has already carried out 2,828 km of guage conversion.

Around 2,500 unmanned level crossing gates have been converted into manned ones, he said adding, Motihari railway station would be developed in a way that it would showcase the glimpse of Satyagrah movement.

On the demand of a superfast train between Motihari and Delhi and Bagaha and Patliputra, Prabhu assured it would be done on a priority basis.

Referring to Sheohar MP Rama Devi pointing out paucity of funds for land acquisition for the Motihari-Sitamarhi via Sheohar link, he said funds would not be a problem for land acquisition.

Prabhu said two MOUs have already been signed for Rs 40,000 crore projects for setting up Diesel and Electric locomotive factories at Marhaura (Saran) and Madhepura, respectively.

Agriculture Minister Radha Mohan Singh was all praise for the Modi government's initiatives taken for Railway's development and growth in the country.

"Had Suresh Prabhu not been the Railway Minister, Railways' conditions would have been in shambles like the Bihar State Road Transport Corporation," Singh added.

PTI
JNU students union president Kanhaiya Kumar detained in Delhi

India

oi-PTI

New Delhi, June 10: JNU students union president Kanhaiya Kumar, along with 42 others, were today detained by police at Bihar Bhawan in Chanakyapuri here for protesting against the alleged attack on students in hunger strike at the College of Arts and Crafts in Patna.

The demonstration started around 3.30 PM, following which Kumar and 42 others were put inside a bus and detained at Parliament Street Police Station here. "The protesters were detained considering law and order issues," DCP (New Delhi) Jatin Narwal said.

The protesters also demanded extension of the date of Bihar Public Service Commission (BPSC) main exams so that the dates do not clash with that of UPSC prelims. "The condition of education in Bihar is continuously deteriorating.

The government is not taking the demands of students regarding quality education seriously.

And those who are fighting for this significant and relevant cause are facing violence and imprisonment," Kumar said. He further said, "from the last few days, whenever there is a protest, Delhi Police detains us in five minutes.Throughout India, students are being attacked and whenever they protest, which is an elemental right, they are not allowed to do so. It is an attack on democracy".

Earlier this week, seven students of College of Arts and Crafts under Patna University sustained injuries in an attack allegedly carried out by some miscreants while they were protesting against the conduct of the administration.

"The protesters were demanding that the corrupt principal of the college be sacked when they were shot at by the guards of the vice chancellor of the University."

The goons and police trashed them, and when others went for protest against these actions, they were detained. We demand their immediate release," Kumar said. "We will keep the struggle alive and if needed we shall go to Patna," he added.

PTI
IRCTC: 89 trains cancelled on Oct 26 including some in Maharashtra, UP; check complete list

Two arrested for firing at a person in north Delhi

News Flash: Delhi Govt is at fault, says Kiren Rijiju

India

oi-Oneindia

By Oneindia Staff Writer

New Delhi, June 10: Prime Minister Narendra Modi arrived in Delhi after completion of his 5-nation visit.

Get all the latest national and international news updates of Friday, June 10 here:

11.46 pm: I can understand Pak's dispute of J&K just for understanding, but I didn't understand the reason for Mumbai attacks, says Manohar Parrikar.

11.45 pm: Toxic gas leak a painful thing,nothing to link with Vikramaditya's war potential; asked for inquiry, says Manohar Parrikar.

10.54 pm: India's Vikas Krishan Yadav to take on Kenya's Nickson Abaka in a AIBA pro boxing bout in Delhi tomorrow.

9.08 pm: Two dead in a toxic gas leak onboard INS Vikramaditya.

8.55 pm: EAM reaffirmed India's interest in development and stability in Nepal: Vikas Swarup,MEA.

8.24 pm: USA: The funeral procession is carrying #MuhammadAli's casket through the streets of Louisville,Kentucky.

8.21 pm: Legendary boxer #MuhammadAli 's funeral procession underway in his hometown of Louisville,Kentucky(USA).

8.07 pm: As I belong to both fraternities (politics and films), I would not like to comment, Kirron Kher.

7.53 pm: Congress to support JMM candidate in Jharkhand Rajya Sabha election.

7.52 pm: Doordarshan vigilance & CBI joint team conducts surprise checks in Shimla Doordarshan premises in alleged financial irregularities case today.

7.46 pm: BJP's one candidate wins and one loses in UP MLC polls.

7.45 pm: Samajwadi Party's all 8 candidates in UP MLC polls win; two from BSP & one from Congress also win.

7.21 pm: Magician PC Sorcar submits papers in Kolkata CBI office today. CBI sought his support in CBI investigation in Tower group of chit fund case.

7.02 pm: Fire brigade team continues with search operation of 2 other boys.

7.00 pm: 5 people drowned in the sea at Juhu beach (Mumbai), 3 people were rescued by locals before fire brigade team reached.

6.45 pm: Its sad MCD members have to come to us with their pain. It is clear that Delhi Govt is at fault, says Kiren Rijiju.

6.32 pm: Filed a defamation case against 'Saamna' for running false campaign against me and my wife, says Kirit Somaiya,BJP MP.

6.30 pm: IIP For the Mining, Manufacturing and Electricity sectors for the month of April 2016 stand at 123.6, 182.6 and 203.0 respectively.

6.19 pm: Sushma Swaraj meets Nepal Deputy PM Kamal Thapa

6.00 pm: The General Index for the month of April 2016 stands at 176.4, which is 0.8 percent lower as compared to the level in the month of April '15.

5.45 pm: Sadhvi Pragya's bail application matter in Special NIA Court: hearing to continue on Monday.

5.36 pm: CBI to soon question Virbhadra Singh's family members in disproportionate assets case. Questioning still underway.

5.25 pm: People who were arrested have been let off as we didnt wanna aggravate the situation, says Kiren Rijiju on protesters outside Manipur Bhavan.

5.00 pm: Our effort is to ensure more and more countries should support our entry in NSG, with push from PM this is being sorted out, says Manohar Parrikar.

4.30 pm: A case against Sonia Gandhi and others had been registered on June 8 by a construction firm in Kerala over non payment of dues.

4.15 pm: Civil case filed against Sonia Gandhi and other state Congress leaders has been settled out of court in Kerala

4.00 pm: Just want Govt to bring my daughter back safely, says Mother of Judith D' Souza (Indian abducted in Kabul)

3.45 pm: As far as the USA is concerned, in last 2 years there has been no new idea in Indo-US relations, says Congress.

3.15 pm: JNUSU President Kanhaiya Kumar and others were protesting against alleged brutality of Bihar Police against Patna arts college students.

3.00 pm: JNUSU President Kanhaiya Kumar and other protesters detained by Delhi Police outside Bihar Bhawan.

2.30 pm: Matter is in court, we will not comment on it. Let court decide, says Pahlaj Nihalani,CBFC chief on Udta Punjab row.

2.15 pm: Court convicted Kobad Ghandy for cheating and forgery and sentenced him for the period which he has already undergone in jail.

2.00 pm: Maoist ideologue Kobad Ghandy was acquitted under section 20 & 38 of UAPA but convicted him of cheating,forgery and impersonation under IPC.

1:48 pm: Hearing on Udta Punjab adjourned to Monday, the judgement will be pronounced then.

1:40 pm: Undta Paunjab row: Your job is to certify films not censor them: Bombay HC to CBFC.

1:25 pm: Charge sheet filed against five alleged Al Qaeda operatives in a Delhi court.

1:15 pm: Office of CBFC has been reduced to role of a puppet controlled by BJP & Akali Dal: Raghav Chaddha, AAP.

1:10 pm: If you claim Udta Punjab glorifies drugs, then why don't you ban the film? Asks HC to CBFC.

12:51 pm: Gulbarg massacre: Verdict case hearing adjourned; Date of sentencing to be announced on Monday.

12:40 pm: 20-year old UP girl beaten to death in Gurgaon. 3 arrested in the case.

12:31 pm: Udta Punjab row: The dialogue "zameen banjar to aulaad kanjar" is also very abusive, says CBFC lawyer to court.

12.16 pm: Words used in the songs are very offensive: CBFC lawyer to court on Udta Punjab row.

12.10 pm: Udta Punjab: Hearing begins in Bombay High Court.

12.00 noon: Keeping in view Centre's performance, UP people feel it is important that there is a BJP Govt with clear majority in the state, says Rajnath Singh.

11.50 am: Rajnath Singh on being BJP's face in UP poll: "UP mein netaon ki kami nhi hai"

11.40 am: Two died, one injured after they jumped off a building while trying to escape dog attack in Vizag.

11.10 am: Kidney racket case: One more arrest made in this connection. Total 12 arrests have been made so far.

11.05 am: Himachal Pradesh CM Virbhadra Singh arrives at CBI headquarter for questioning in connection with DA case.

10.55 am: Gaya road rage: CM Nitish Kumar meets family of the victim Aditya Sachdeva.

10.40 am: Afghanistan authorities trying to secure early release of Indian woman abducted in Kabul: Sources, ANI

10.30 am: First Shimla-Gaggal flight flagged off, Himachal Urban Development Minister was among passengers of 9-seater aircraft

10.25 am: Fire breaks out at a call centre in Sector 64, Noida; six fire tenders rush to the spot.

10.02 am: A 6.3 magnitude earthquake strikes near Solomon Islands: USGS

10.00 am: Federal alliance,coalition of Madhesi front and othr parties start relay hunger strike against Nepal Constitution in Kathmandu.

9.40 am: Congress free India is new slogan of the nation, says Ram Madhav.

9.25 am: Hindu monastery worker hacked to death in Bangladesh, reported ANI citing AFP

9.20 am: Water tankers being used to fill up watering holes in Jim Corbett National Park to fulfill the needs of wildlife.

9.00 am: BJP MLA Rajendra Dadu, his personal assistant and driver died in road accident on their way from Indore to Bhopal on Thursday.

8.45 am: A 20-foot long pythonrescued' by villagers and a forest official in West Bengal's Jalpaiguri on Thursday. The python killed a goat.

8.30 am: Kidney scam: 20 illegal surgeries performed in 18 months in Apollo Hospital in Delhi

8.20 am: Contract killers who were working for Chhota Shakeel to kill Chhota Rajan nabbed by Delhi police.

8.10 am: Fire break out near Venkateswara Temple in Tirumala (Tirupati) in Andhra Pradesh, 3 fire tenders trying to douse the flame.

8.05 am: President Barack Obama endorses Hillary Clinton, says: "I don't think there's ever been someone so qualified to hold this office.": AP

8.00 am: 8 Naxals surrendered before police in Malkangiri district of Odisha,

7.55 am: Prime Minister Narendra Modi arrived in Delhi after completion of his 5-nation visit. Supporters welcome him at the airport.

PM Narendra Modi arrives in Delhi after completion of his 5-nation visit pic.twitter.com/3aX0YzHXdY  ANI (@ANI_news) June 10, 2016

OneIndia News
Modi in Nepal again in December: Hindutva, strategic reasons on agenda

 Sabka Saath Sabka Vikas  slogan is baseless, says BJP MLA from UP

UP: Moustache allowance for cops see hike by 400%

Rajnath Singh likely to be chief ministerial candidate for UP polls: Reports

India

oi-Jagriti

New Delhi, June 10: Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh likely to become as chief ministerial candidate of the BJP for the upcoming UP Assembly election.

The final decision about chief ministerial candidate is expected to be announced at the two-day national executive meeting of the party scheduled to be held in Allahabad from Sunday.

According to reports, if not CM face, Rajnath Singh is likely to be assigned with key responsibilities of the campaign committee in the poll bound state.

Rajnath Singh previously served as the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh from October 2000 to March 2002 and as a Cabinet Minister in the Vajpayee Government.

Know Constituencies of UP Assembly polls 2017: AURAIYA

Names of Union HRD Minister Smriti Irani, MP Varun Gandhi and Yogi Adityanath are already doing rounds for the BJP's chief ministerial candidate for crucial UP poll.

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.

OneIndia News

For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications

Story first published: Friday, June 10, 2016, 11:02 [IST]
RS polls: Cong MLAs to vote for Anand in Haryana

India

oi-PTI

New Delhi, June 10: Ending speculation, Congress today decided to vote for noted lawyer R K Anand who is pitted against BJP-sponsored independent candidate and media baron Subhash Chandra in the election to Rajya Sabha from Haryana. Polling for the biennial election to the Upper House will be held tomorrow.

Of the two seats from Haryana, Union minister Birender Singh is set to win from one seat while INLD-backed independent Anand and Chandra are vying for the second.

"Haryana Congress leaders at a meeting today authorised the Congress President to take a decision on voting in the Rajya Sabha polls. Congress then decided to vote against the BJP-sponsored Chandra and in favour of R K Anand," said AICC General Secretary and in-charge of party affairs in Haryana B K Hariprasad.

The meeting was attended by party MLAs from Haryana including former Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda, besides state unit chief Ashok Tanwar.

Anand today sprang a surprise by turning up at the Congress meeting and expressing his faith in the leadership. "I have full faith in Congress' policies and full faith in leadership and policies of Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi. I will support Congress on the floor of the House.

I have always fought against RSS' policies and it will continue in the future also," Anand said. At the AICC briefing, Congress spokesperson Manish Tewari said Anand reached out to the party leadership and promised to work for the Congress both inside and outside Parliament. Congress has not put up its own candidate.

In the absense of its own candidate, the party was in a dilemma as in case it chose to vote it will have to side with a candidate backed by either BJP or INLD and if it abstains, it will provide a clear advantage to the BJP-backed Chandra.

BJP has 47 MLAs in the 90-member Assembly, INLD 19, Congress 17 (Kuldeep Bishnoi's two-member HJC merged with Congress recently), BSP one, SAD one and there are five Independents. Chandra had said that he was in touch with individual MLAs in the Assembly and exuded confidence that he will have a comfortable victory.

PTI
Nancy Mae Shannon

Nancy Mae Shannon, 81, passed away on June 5, 2016. She was preceded in death by her husband, Bob Shannon. Nancy was the daughter of the late John and Inez Waller of Asheville, NC. She had one brother, Ed Waller of Mt. Laurel, NC and three children: Karen Shannon, Kevin Shannon and Brian Shannon. Nancy also had three grandchildren: Daniel Shannon, Michael Shannon and Mackenzie Shannon.

Born in Asheville, NC, Nancy graduated from Presbyterian School of Nursing in Charlotte. She enjoyed her nursing career and being a military wife. Nancy retired from Carlisle Hospital and was involved in her church and busy with crafts such as quilting, soap making and sewing.

She will be forever known for her strong faith, kindness and love of her family.

A Memorial Mass of Christian Burial, honoring Nancys life, will be held Monday, June 20, 2016 at 10:30 AM at St. Patrick Catholic Church, 85 Marsh Dr., Carlisle, PA 17015 with the Very Rev. William C. Forrey as Celebrant. She will be interred at Indiantown Gap National Cemetery.

The family requests donations be sent to: Alzheimers Association, GA Chapter,

41 Perimeter Center East, Suite 550, Atlanta, GA 30346. Please designate

One on one counseling on the check. (This goes directly to those with Alzheimers) Arrangements are being handled by the Hollinger Funeral Home and Crematory, Inc. Online condolences to the family may be made to www.hollingerfuneralhome.com.
Why India is still not ready for Google's Street View

India

oi-Vicky

New Delhi, June 10: India declined to give security clearance to Google's Street View. The Defence Ministry and the Intelligence Bureau objected to the proposal by Google which had planned on giving a 360 degree image of a place.

It is very hard to regulate it said a Home Ministry official to OneIndia while also adding that the Defence Ministry too had raised concerns about this project.

During the two major attacks in recent times, the 26/11 Mumbai and Pathankot attacks, the terrorists had relied extensively on Google Maps to understand the topography. The maps had helped the terrorists find precise locations, the official added.

India not ready for Google Street view:

While terrorist attacks is one concern, the other relates to privacy. Although Google had told the government of India that the purpose of Street View was to aid in disaster management and tourism, officials felt that there was a bigger chance of misuse.

The Defence Ministry had felt that terrorists and spies could use the Street View for better imageries of sensitive installations. Monitoring it would be extremely difficult both the IB and the Defence Ministry had pointed out. Moreover the investigations into the Pathankot attack had found that terrorists had extensively used Google Maps to locate the air base and also move around before reaching it.

The other concern that was raised was regarding privacy. Countries such as the United Kingdom, Greece, Switzerland, Germany and Poland too had raised similar concerns in the past. India too felt that there are no data protection measures and hence the same cannot be allowed.

The issue had been debated since April 2015 when Google made its first presentation to the Ministry of Home Affairs. It had been red flagged immediately by the IB. Although Google did inform that it could be helpful for tourism purposes, the IB pointed out that even tourist spots are hot on the radar of terrorist organisations.

OneIndia News

For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications

Story first published: Friday, June 10, 2016, 8:57 [IST]
2 Hindu temples vandalised in Malaysia

International

oi-PTI

Kuala Lumpur, June 10: A Hindu temple was on Friday, June 10 vandalised in Malaysia's Penang state by unidentified persons who damaged the deities, a top state official said, less than a week after a similiar incident in the area.

The Sri Dharma Munisverar temple was reported to have been damaged in today's incident though the extent of the damage was yet to be ascertained, Deputy Chief Minister Dr P Ramasamy said.

This is the second such incident involving a Hindu temple in Butterworth town. The Munisverar temple is located about one km away from the Muthumariamman Temple in Penanti Estate, Ara Kuda which was reportedly vandalised last Saturday, he said.

A police report was lodged by the temple authorities. Malaysia's 28 million population comprises eight per cent ethnic Indians mostly Hindu Tamils.

Last week, two statues of deities were vandalised in Ara Kuda, prompting the temple committee to look into installing closed-circuit television (CCTV) cameras for security purposes.

The attack was believed to be a hate crime as no items were stolen from the temple. Ramasamy said he had written to Inspector-General of Police Khalid Abu Bakar urging the police to investigate the incident last week.

PTI
Will the EU move to curb Chinese investments?

Video: Why Chinas former president was escorted out from stage

'Don't allow differences to become disputes: China envoy's parting shots

China in denial mode: 26/11 Mumbai attacks documentary doesn't represent China's stand

International

oi-IANS

By Ians English

Beijing, June 10: China has vindicated its stand over a documentary based on the Mumbai 26/11 terror attacks, alleging Pakistani involvement in the brazen attack.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry said in its weekly briefing that the documentary aired by state broadcaster China Central Television "does not represent the position of China's government".

Ministry spokesperson Hong Lei said the documentary was translated into Chinese from a US production. "China's stance against terrorism is unchanged," Hong said, without elaborating.

The documentary naming Lashker-e-Toiba for the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks showed footage containing confessions of Ajmal Kasab, the lone Pakistani terrorist caught alive during the 26/11 carnage.

The footage was first aired by the state-run Shanghai Television and was subsequently shown by another state-run Chinese television channel.

China holds Pakistan sponsored LeT responsible for Mumbai terror attacks

It came as a surprise because China has earlier blocked India's bid to secure a UN ban on LeT operational commander Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi, the presumed mastermind of the Mumbai attack.

China had put a technical hold when India sought a ban on him after he was released from prison.

In March, China had also put a technical hold again on attempt to get UN ban on Jaish-e-Muhammad chief Masood Azhar, accused of masterminding of the January Pathankot terrorist attack.

IANS

For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications

Story first published: Friday, June 10, 2016, 9:37 [IST]
Are you awake?: EAM Jaishankar recalls when he got a call from PM Modi at midnight

Afghan mosque blast kills 3, injures over 50

International

oi-IANS

By Ians English

Kabul, June 10: At least three persons were killed and 55 injured after a bomb went off during Friday,June 10 prayers in Afghanistan's Nangarhar province, officials said.

"An improvised explosive device planted inside a mosque in Rodat district went off at around 1.30 p.m, killing three and injuring 55 others," a news agency quoted an official as saying.

Several hundreds of worshippers were attending the Friday prayers when the incident took place, the official said.

"The number of casualties may go up as many of the wounded were in critical condition," the official added.

IANS


Ban Ki-Moon welcomes PM's call for early implementation of Paris deal

International

oi-PTI

United Nations, Jun 10: UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has welcomed Prime Minister Narendra Modi's support for early implementation of the Paris climate agreement during his just-concluded US visit.

Ban said a record-number of UN member states had signed the Paris Agreement on Climate Change in April and now the countries need to bring the agreement into force this year.

"I welcome the announcement two days ago by Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India that he will join this effort," Ban told reporters here yesterday.

Ban said that to help advance the process, he will convene an event during the September high-level week of the General Assembly for countries to deposit their instruments of ratification.

In a joint statement, Modi and US President Barack Obama said that both India and the US recognised the urgency of climate change and share the goal of enabling entry into force of the Paris agreement as early as possible.

Following the announcement, Ban had encouraged all countries to accelerate their domestic processes to join or ratify it.

"The Secretary-General welcomes the domestic steps being undertaken by both countries to join the Paris Agreement as soon as possible, including in 2016, and their collaborative efforts to address climate change," a statement issued by Ban's spokesperson had said.

The Paris Agreement was adopted by all 196 Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change at the UN climate change conference in Paris last December, where all countries agreed to work to limit global temperature rise to well below 2 degrees Celsius, and to strive for 1.5 degrees Celsius.

In April, 175 countries signed the agreement, which according to the UN was by far the largest number of countries ever to sign an international agreement in one single day.

For it to enter into force, 55 countries accounting for 55 per cent of global greenhouse emissions need to implement the accord at the national level. As of today, 177 parties have signed, and 17 have ratified it.

Ban had said that he is encouraged by the resolve of India and the US to pursue low greenhouse gas emission development strategies and successful outcomes this year to reduce greenhouse gas emissions through the Montreal Protocol, the International Civil Aviation Organisation Assembly, and the G20," the statement added, noting that the joint announcement by India and the US also follows on the heels of the G7 Ise-Shima Leaders' Declaration.

During his three-day visit to Washington at the invitation of Obama, climate change was one of the major topics of discussion between the two leaders.

During the meeting at the White House, Obama and Modi had reiterated their commitment to pursue low greenhouse gas emission development strategies in the pre-2020 period and to develop long-term low greenhouse gas emission development strategies.

PTI
What does the US actually want in Syria?

Clinton says female senator qualified to be her VP

International

oi-IANS

By Ians English

Washington, June 10: US Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton said Senator Elizabeth Warren, a leader of the progressive wing in the Democratic Party, was qualified to be her running mate.

"I think she (Warren) is an incredible public servant, eminently qualified for any role," said Clinton in an interview with US daily Politico, reports Xinhua news agency.

"I look forward to working with her on behalf of not only the campaign and her very effective critique of Trump, but also on the issues that she and I both care about," said Clinton.

Politico reported that when asked if her rival Bernie Sanders had earned a place on the ticket, Clinton disagreed.

"His passion for the issues that he promoted has been good for the Democratic party and for the country," said Clinton.

"I look forward to talking with him when our campaigns can find a time that works with both our schedules."

Barack Obama congratulates Hillary Clinton for creating history

As the darling of the progressive wing of the party, Warren's endorsement, which was among the most sought-after ones in this Democratic primary season that had so far prioritized progressive agenda, was yet to be granted to any candidate.

However, Warren is scheduled to come off the sidelines and formally endorse Clinton.

US President Barack Obama also formally threw his support behind Clinton for president early on Thursday, declaring that he did not think there's "ever been someone so qualified to hold this office".

IANS
North Korea threatens to use nukes if provoked

Kim Jong Un caught smoking during anti-smoking drive in North Korea

International

oi-Jagriti

Pyongyang, June 10: Kim Jong Un, the Supreme leader of North Korea was caught smoking during an anti-smoking drive in North Korea, media reported on Friday.

This has come as embarrassment for North Korea as its supreme leader failed to practice what his government is preaching.

North Korea's state media published a photograph this week of Kim holding a cigarette in his hand -- with smoke permeating from the tip -- in the middle of a North Korea anti-smoking drive.

He was caught doing so while providing field guidance to the remodeled Mangyongdae Children's Camp," in the capital Pyongyang, CNN reported citing KCNA news agency.

Funeral, wedding banned in North Korea: Here is why

The anti-smoking campaign was first reported by KCNA in May.

Kim Jong-Un earlier banned his aides and officials from smoking foreign cigarettes because they are unpatriotic.

OneIndia News
Maldives jails ex-VP for plotting to kill president

International

oi-PTI

Male, June 10: Former Maldives deputy leader Ahmed Adeeb has been jailed for 15 years for plotting to assassinate the president, the latest in a string of prosecutions of senior politicians and opposition figures in the troubled island nation.

Adeeb was convicted late yesterday of attempting to kill President Abdulla Yameen by setting off a bomb on his speedboat last September, his lawyer said.

Two of the vice president's military bodyguards were also convicted after the trial, which was held behind closed doors.

The verdicts mean almost all of Yameen's key rivals are in jail or exiled from the Maldives, a popular honeymoon destination that has been rocked by political turmoil in recent years. They come weeks after Mohamed Nasheed, the country's first democratically elected president, was granted asylum in Britain.

Nasheed, whose legal team includes high-profile human rights lawyer Amal Clooney, was sentenced to 13 years in prison on controversial terrorism charges last year but was allowed to travel to Britain for surgery in January and was granted political asylum last month. Adeeb, 34, was considered a close confidant of Yameen until he was dramatically impeached in November following allegations he was trying to topple the president.

Yameen escaped the blast unscathed, but his wife and two others were slightly injured. The FBI was called in to investigate the incident, but found no evidence the blast was caused by a bomb. Reporters were barred from attending the trial after the court invoked national security concerns and said it would not make the hearings or verdict public.

Adeeb's lawyer, Moosa Siraj, told the Maldives Independent website he would appeal. "The Criminal Court has barred me from calling the trial unfair, but we have concerns and intend to launch an appeal immediately," Siraj said.

Another lawyer who declined to be named said Adeeb's two bodyguards were also convicted yesterday, sentenced to 10 years each in jail.

The same court tried former prosecutor general Muhthaz Muhsin of conspiracy to kidnap the President by arranging a fake arrest warrant in February and sentenced him Thursday to 17 years in jail, his lawyer Husnu Al Suood said.

Adeeb, who enjoyed a meteoric rise until his impeachment, was given a separate 10-year sentence on Sunday on a terrorism charge relating to his role in cracking down on an anti-government protest in May 2015.

Opposition activists in the Indian ocean archipelago say dissidents risk arrest or exile under Yameen, the half brother of former strongman Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, who ruled the archipelago for 30 straight years until he was defeated in the first democratic election in 2008.

IANS
New debris images examined by MH370 search team

International

oi-PTI

Sydney, Jun 10: Images of three new pieces of debris are being examined by Australian search teams looking for missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, they said today. One of the items washed up on remote Kangaroo Island off Australia's south coast, while the other two were reportedly found in Madagascar.

"The ATSB has been advised and has received photos of the item (on Kangaroo Island)," a spokesman for the Australian Transport Safety Bureau, which is coordinating the search for the plane, told AFP.

"It needs to be examined before coming to any conclusion." He added that images of other pieces of debris found in Madagascar were also being studied.

"We have seen the photos and governments are being consulted on how best to have that examined," he added. The fate of the passenger jet, which is presumed to have crashed at sea after disappearing en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 passengers and crew on board in March 2014, remains a mystery.

So far eight pieces of debris, excluding the most recent finds, have been discovered thousands of kilometres (miles) from the current search zone far off the west Australian coast. They are presumed to have drifted there with five of the parts identified as definitely or probably from the Boeing 777, while three others are still being examined.

The piece found on Kangaroo Island among seaweed and driftwood resembles part of a plane, with the words "Caution No Step" visible, according to footage on Channel Seven. Whether it is from MH370 remains unclear, with the broadcaster saying another possibility was that it came from a Cessna that went down several kilometres off the island's coast in 2002.

One of the items found on the Madagascan island of Nosy Boraha resembled an airplane seat part while another appeared to be a cover panel on a plane wing, the BBC reported. The first concrete evidence that MH370 likely met a tragic end was when a two-metre-long (almost seven foot) wing part known as a flaperon washed up in the French overseas territory of La Reunion in July last year.

Australian authorities have since said two pieces of debris found in Mozambique were "almost certainly from MH370" and two fragments that came ashore in South Africa and Mauritius were also likely to be from the jet.

Australia is leading the painstaking search for MH370 in the remote Indian Ocean, but wild weather has not allowed the three ships involved to make any progress in recent weeks.

So far 105,000 square kilometres (40,500 square miles) of the designated 120,000-square-kilometre seafloor search zone has been covered without success.

If nothing turns up once the area is fully scoured, the search will be abandoned, Australia, Malaysia and China -- the countries that most of the passengers came from -- have jointly said.

AFP
'India won't listen to anyone': Anurag Thakur gives strong reply to PCB

Pakistan off the FATFs grey List: What this means

Pakistan expresses concern over growing India-US ties

International

oi-IANS

By Ians English

Islamabad, June 10: Pakistan has expressed concern over "growing strategic ties" between India and the US, with a top official accusing Washington of using Islamabad "whenever it needs it".

The outburst by Sartaj Aziz, the Advisor to the Prime Minister on Foreign Affairs, came after the US strongly backed India's bid for membership to the NSG.

The US backing came at a meeting between Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Barack Obama in Washington on Tuesday during which the two sides also inked agreements to boost security and defence cooperation.

Addressing the media here, Aziz said: "The US approaches Pakistan whenever it needs it and abandons it when it does not need Islamabad.

"Pakistan will convey its concerns to US over the latest issues in the bilateral ties," Aziz said, adding that a high-level meeting was planned between Pakistan and US officials on June 10 in Islamabad.

"We firmly conveyed to the US that maintaining effective nuclear deterrence is critical for Pakistan's security and only Islamabad can determine how it should respond to growing strategic imbalance in South Asia."

Aziz maintained that Islamabad was ready for cordial relations with other countries including India.

Aziz's statement comes as Islamabad stepped up its diplomatic outreach among members of the Nuclear Suppliers Group in a bid to stall New Delhi's chances of gaining membership to the NSG.

'Yeh dosti hum na todenge', India-US's sholay moment

The Pakistan foreign ministry's UN Desk on Wednesday held a briefing in Islamabad for diplomatic missions of NSG member-countries to put forward its argument against India's membership and to push for its own entry to the elite group.

At the meeting, Pakistan warned that country-specific exemptions could negatively impact strategic stability in South Asia.

Both Pakistan and India have applied to be members of the 48-member NSG that regulates global nuclear commerce.

India is being backed in its bid by several major NSG members, including the US.

However, China is backing Pakistan. Beijing maintains that if India, a non-signatory to the Nuclear non-Proliferation Treaty, is given membership, then Pakistan too should be taken on board.

IANS

For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications

Story first published: Friday, June 10, 2016, 8:37 [IST]
Alexander Fox Person is the CEO and founder of Right to Health Medical Center.

He hopes to open a medical marijuana dispensary in Middletown. He presented his proposal to Middletown Borough Council members Monday night.

The meeting went great, Person said. I pretty much got overwhelming support from the Middletown residents that were in attendance, and the council members seemed very open to a medical marijuana dispensary in Middletown.

The Gettysburg native and Air Force veteran is finishing up his human rights degree at Columbia University in New York. He hopes to move to Middletown next year to open the dispensary.

I picked Middletown for the economic development that is going on, he said. I think it would really coincide with what they are trying to do here. I also picked Middletown because of the local hospital communities. Within a 15-minute radius there is over 1,100 beds, there is also a number of senior communities and VA clinics nearby, and (I) think this is a community that I would love to serve.

As he waits for the Department of Health to iron out the application process, he says he is getting everything in line to apply.

Theres a thousand things to get done, one of which is finding a staff of pharmacists, finding investors, securing a location, having a connection with a bank in town. There is just a lot of things that need to be done to ensure a successful application once it becomes available later this year, Person said.

There are no guarantees, only 50 dispensary permits will be awarded and the Department of Health says they have received over 100 inquiries.

I know exactly how difficult this process is going to be and I am not underestimating that at all, and thats why I am starting work now, Person said.

According to Middletown Borough Councilwoman Diana McGlone, the borough has not received any complaints from residents about the proposal. McGlone says the Middletown Borough Planning Commission is currently working on drafting amendments to the boroughs zoning ordinances to allow a medical marijuana dispensary in a manufacturing or commercial zoned area only.

The current law already prohibits a dispensary from being close to a school or day care center.
PM arrives in Amsterdam in last leg of his three-nation tour

Modi in US: He came, saw, conquered and re-assured

Foreign policy not just about embracing: Congress to Modi, urges to raise issues of Indian interest in US

In meet with PM Modi, Kamala Harris refers to Pak terror role, agrees on need to monitor

This is how US media reacted on PM Modis address to Congress

International

oi-Jagriti

Washington, June 10: Prime Minister Narendra Modi joined the long list of foreign leaders who have spoken in the Hall of the House when he addressed the joint meeting of the US Congress on June 8.

PM Modi received nine standing ovations during his 45 minute long speech at the joint meeting of the US Congress.

PM Modi is the fifth Indian PM to have addressed a joint meeting of Congress. Last former PM Manmohan Singh had addressed the joint meeting of Congress in 2005.

Modi in US: A brief look at Narendra Modi's speech at US Congress

Here is how US media reacted on his speech

U.S. and India Mark a New Moment in Relations as Narendra Modi Speaks to Congress (New York Times)

Modi to Congress: India, US can anchor stability in Asia (Washington Post)

India's Modi tells Congress that U.S. is 'indispensable' partner (USA Today)

India's Narendra Modi Emphasizes Security Ties in Address to Congress (The Wall Street Journal)

Modi to Congress: India, US can anchor stability in Asia (Star Tribune)

OneIndia News
I also take advice from Mamata to run railway ministry, says Suresh Prabhu

Kolkata

oi-Shubham

Kolkata, June 10: Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu on Thursday showered praises on West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, calling her a "successful" former railway minister.

Prabhu, who went to the state secretariat Nabanna here to showcase the achievements of the Narendra Modi government, also said that he often takes advice from Banerjee over running his ministry.

The Bengal CM, in her response, said she always maintained a good relation with Prabhu and will do the same in future.

'Modi govt not deproving Bengal'

On the occasion, representatives of the central and state governments also said that they would coordinate to sort out complications in the Metro Rail project in the state capital. The central team also produced documents to show the Mamata Banerjee administration that the Modi government at the Centre is not ignoring Bengal's interests.

It said the allocation of funds for railway projects in Bengal has been increased from Rs 3,000 crore in 2014-15 to Rs 4,000 crore in 2015-16. Various rail goods manufacturing units in the state have also been granted fresh assignments, the officials said, adding that work on two dedicated freight corridors has also started in the state.

Prabhu was in Kolkata on a one-day visit and besides meeting the CM, attended a businessmen's conference in a five-star hotel, held a press meet and went to a party function. He left for New Delhi in the night.

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The Shippensburg Area School District board of directors passed by a 6-1 vote Thursday a final budget of $47,131,777 for 2016-17.

The budget reflects an increase of 0.1415 mills in Cumberland County and an increase of 1.7508 mills in Franklin County.

Director Thomas Enderlein was the only director who voted against the budget.

I think taxes are high ... (and) Im not comfortable with the structure of the budget, he said. Its based on one-time funds. Next year, those funds wont be available and the deficit will be compounded.

I think we need to fine tune the budget, he added.

Director Susan Spicka also had concerns.

Im voting for it, but Im voting for it knowing that next year we will be facing a huge deficit, she said.

Spicka also encouraged area residents to advocate for a state budget that puts a huge emphasis on education funding.

In other action, the board voted 4-3 to approve a list of one-time expenditures totaling $249,500. The vote failed, however, because all contracts over $100 require five votes, according to Business Administrator Christy Lentz.

Among the items were upgrades to the high school stage at a cost of $200,000.

Director David Lovett called the renovations a big ticket item and said it should have been a projected expenditure.

We need to have the information (sooner), so that each budget cycle, we know what we are going to have to repair or upgrade, he said.

Were going to have a high school stage that is partially unusable if something isnt done, director Herb Cassidy said.

We were told this was the Cadillac plan, Enderlein said, referring to information presented at the last board meeting. We asked if there were other options, and there are other options.

Enderlein said he is interested in exploring those options, which may cost less.

In response to a question by resident Marlyn Reed, Lentz said the money for the projects will come from additional revenue that we didnt expect ... plus debt refinancing.

Reed also asked for more information about Grace B. Luhrs University Elementary School.

Luhrs school is located on the Shippensburg University campus but is part of the Shippensburg school district. Operation expenses are shared by the district and the university.

The Pennsylvania Department of Education has demanded that Luhrs school abide by the districts enrollment procedure, which does not allow top priority to be given to the applications of children of university employees. An affiliation agreement between the district and the university is due by June 30, or the school could be in danger of closing.

Director Mark Buterbaugh called it a gray legal area because Luhrs school, the only lab school in Pennsylvania, works through an affiliation agreement with the local school district.

Spicka said it is unbelievable to think the school could be closed if an affiliation agreement is not in place by June 30.

I dont think we can legally spend money if there is no agreement, and the university cant accept money without an agreement, Buterbaugh said. If we cant spend money and the university cant accept money, how is the school funded  how does it operate?

In addition to equal enrollment, the agreement would require the school district to provide transportation, which it currently does not, at a cost of $85,000.

Resident Sarah Bryant asked how the district came up with that number, and if it had considered that many students may not need transportation.

The district must provide transportation for all students whether they use it or not, Buterbaugh said.

Resident Jennifer Clough said the lack of an agreement causes worry for both parents and students.

Buterbaugh said the boards GBLUES Committee, comprised of directors Herb Cassidy, Charles Suders and Geno Tori, continues to meet with university representatives to discuss the agreement.
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Nicaragua, officially the Republic of Nicaragua, is the largest country in the Central American isthmus, bordered by Honduras to the northwest, the Caribbean to the east, Costa Rica to the south, and the Pacific Ocean to the southwest. Managua is the country's capital and largest city. As of 2015, it was estimated to be the second largest city in Central America. The multi-ethnic population of six million includes people of mestizo, indigenous, European and African heritage. The main language is Spanish. Indigenous tribes on the Mosquito Coast speak their own languages and English.
Tom Flagg was not afraid to speak his mind as a witness to public outrage.

We want action, the Carlisle publisher flashed in big bold letters above the fold. Not a multiplicity of words, one piled on the other, until no one can wade through the various meanings.

We are tired of hearing Help the veterans but nothing is being done to take care of housing the boys and girls, the newly married and those with one or more children, Flagg wrote in his weekly newspaper, The Free Press.

The date was June 7, 1946  two years and one day after the Allies landed forces on the D-Day beaches. Only nine months prior, on Sept. 2, 1945, Japanese officials signed the surrender documents ending World War II.

Millions of Americans were returning home from years of military service overseas to start their post-war civilian life. Carlisle was among the towns across the country facing a housing shortage.

By that time, Flagg had become a fixture in the community and something of a local eccentric. Historian Paul Hoch described the native West Virginian as one of the last of the old-time tramp printers in the country ... Part gypsy, these guys wanted nothing more than to work their presses but (they) just couldnt stay in one place very long.

Restless soul

Born in 1880, Flagg lived where the spirit and jobs took him. He graduated from high school in Martinsburg, West Virginia, before going to work in the print shop of his uncle in Virginia. There Flagg learned the trade but also sold subscriptions to the local newspaper through barter and collected on delinquent accounts.

When his uncle cut his pay, Flagg cut loose and left Virginia up the Cumberland Valley Railroad to Harrisburg where he took a job with the city newspaper. He met a girl from Middletown and they married in 1901 before he headed south again to work for several newspapers and then entering law school at the University of Virginia in 1907.

Flagg passed the bar in 1909 and practiced as an attorney in Virginia, but then an FBI agent, working a case, contacted him and persuaded him to join the bureau. But Flagg was restless and longed for the press. He made his way back to Harrisburg in 1930 and worked there for a few years before joining The Sentinel in Carlisle.

After retiring from The Sentinel in 1945, Flagg opened a print shop at 131 N. Pitt St. There he published two newspapers  the weekly Free Press and the monthly Valley Planter  while continuing his long-time hobby of collecting unusual and old style type and printing equipment.

Convoluted content

These publications were mainly an outspoken editorial voice, Hoch wrote in an Aug. 9, 1975 column published in The Sentinel. Toms use of old and various sized type, deliberate typographical errors and random spacing made the papers very much sought after.

Copies of his newspapers are stored in the Cumberland County Historical Society archives. Below are examples of some of the content quoted direct from the page:

A public service announcement published in 1952: J walkers B ware U will git nocked up on the Square!

An Aug. 1, 1952 ad: Notice Boiling Springs Pool is now open ... Swim in water pure enuf to drink.

A display ad for Batmans radiator cleaning & repairing ... auto body and fender repair, 70 East Locust Ave.

An editorial column that reads: Drunk drivers are a scourge on our highways and we under stand that these menaces on our highways are getting off too easy with small ffines and paroll ... Who knows who ... may be you reading may be the next killed ... Have youns made your will?

Occasionally Flagg turned to a more traditional content and design like he did for the front page of the June 7, 1946 edition of The Free Press. In an editorial, he vented his contempt for local movers and shakers who had done nothing to invest resources toward helping returning veterans.

Shame on you men of influence and means in Carlisle and vicinity that ye will not have faith in the future of Carlisle and put your capable hands to work to provide shelter for those ... noble, gritty, uncomplaining children, wrote Flagg, who was 66 at the time. He compared the men to those who bilked the local population out of $1 million by gambling their money with speculators before the 1929 Stock Market crash.

Even though Flagg only lived in Carlisle the last 30 years of his life, he had the look and character of somebody who had been a community fixture for many generations.

There he was, ambling down Hanover Street, a tall, thin, slightly bent figure with dangling arms, watery eyes and gray hair combed straight back, Hoch recalled in his column. He always wore a white shirt and tie, usually a vest, and was seldom seen without a suit coat. Tom was possessed of a deep sense of humor, but in his wry manner he rarely cracked a smile.

Flagg was unusual. Hoch wrote how the tramp printer delighted in taking walks in the downtown dressed in a top hat, frock coat and fake Abraham Lincoln whiskers. He was also seen with a calabash pipe and deerstalker hat in the style of Sherlock Holmes. Flagg died on Feb. 28, 1959 at the age of 79.
If that headline sounds a bit like "God Is Dead" to you, you just might be from the United States. Only what the people who live in this one country of the American hemisphere call "an American" carries that variety of flag passion. If, on the other hand, you find watching paint dry more engaging than the suspense of waiting for the next Flag Day, you just might be a candidate for citizen of the world.

In fact, I think Flag Day needs to be canceled. It's not a holiday that the government, much less the military, much less the rest of the United States, actually takes off work. It's rumored, in fact, that any socialistic interruption in work schedules would be offensive to the flag herself.

So we can indeed cancel Flag Day just by totally ignoring it, along with the overlapping Flag Week, the simultaneous U.S. Army's Birthday, the mythological tales about Betsy Ross, and the celebration of a war in 1812 that failed to take over Canada, got Washington D.C. burned, and pointlessly killed lots of human beings in a battle we celebrate with bad singing auditions before every sporting event because a colored piece of cloth survived it.

This Flag Day, instead of trying to add, if possible, yet more publicly displayed U.S. flags to those already flying, take down a flag instead. Don't burn it, though. There's no sense in giving flag worshipers martyrs. Instead, I recommend Betsy Rossing it. Cut and stitch that flag into clothing you can donate to those in need of clothing -- a significant section of the public in fact in this incredibly over-wealthy country in which the wealth is concentrated beyond medieval levels -- a situation from which we are distracted in part by all the darn flags.

Here in Charlottesville, Virginia, we have a lovely city with tons of natural beauty, history, landmarks, available imagery, talented artists, an engaged citizenry capable of civil debate, and yet no Charlottesville flag. We do have a huge debate over whether to remove from their prominent positions all the statues of Confederate fighters. Less controversial, costly, and time-consuming would be to add to the local scene a Charlottesville flag that did not celebrate slavery, racism, war, or environmental destruction.

What? Now I'm in favor of flags? Of course, I'm in favor of pretty pieces of cloth waving around when they're not icons of war and separation. In the United States, local and state flags don't create any sense of superiority or hostility toward the rest of humanity. But the flag of war, the flag that the U.S. military has now planted in 175 countries, does just that.

UVA alumnus Woodrow Wilson proclaimed Flag Day the year before pushing the United States into World War I, as part of that propaganda campaign. Congress joined in the year before the war in Korea. Five years later "under God" was added to the Pledge of Allegiance, an oath originally written by a fascist preacher, originally administered with the pledgers holding their right arms straight, outward and up. This was changed to the hand-over-heart routine during World War II because the Nazis had adopted the original salute as their own. Nowadays, visitors from abroad are often shocked to see U.S. children instructed to stand and robotically chant an oath of obedience to a piece of colored cloth.

To many "Americans" it comes naturally. The flag has always been here and always will be, just like the wars under which it is fought, for which lives are taken and risked, for which lives are even exchanged. Families that lose a loved one in war are presented with a flag instead. A majority of Americans supports freedom of speech in many outrageous instances, including the right of massive media corporations to present us with false justifications for wars. But a majority supports banning the burning of flags -- or rather, of the U.S. flag. You can burn the flags of 96% of humanity. You can burn your state or local flag. You can burn a world flag. But burning a U.S. flag would be a sacrilege. Sacrificing young lives to that flag in yet another war is, however, a sacrament.

But the U.S. military now has robotic drones it can send to war. Robots are also perfectly capable of swearing the pledge of allegiance, although they have no hearts to put their hands over.

Perhaps we should reserve our actual human hearts for things robots cannot do. Perhaps we should liberate our landscape from both Confederate statues and the ubiquitous flag of the still crusading union empire.


Pentagon

(Image by gregwest98) Details DMCA



"The White House said Tuesday [June 7] that President Barack Obama will veto the Senate's version of the annual defense policy bill," Richard Lardner of the Associated Press reports. Why? Lardner cites provisions that would prevent Obama from shutting down the prison at Guantanamo Bay and limit the number of "national security" functionaries he can put on the White House payroll.

Deeper in the story, however, we find meatier objections: The $600 billion bill "denies the Defense Department's request for a new round of military base closings" and Senate Armed Service Committee chairman John McCain (R-AZ) "plans to propose an amendment that would add nearly $18 billion to the defense budget to pay for additional ships, jet fighters, helicopters and more that the Pentagon didn't request."

If Obama, who doesn't face re-election, follows through on his veto threat House and Senate Democrats will likely join Republicans in overriding that veto so long as they get their share of that $18 billion and the bases in their districts remain open. What gives? Nothing. It's politics as usual.

In the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson asserted that the purpose of government is to secure the rights of the governed to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Jefferson, to put the best face possible on things, was hopelessly naive. The purpose of government is -- and always has been -- to transfer wealth and power from the ruled to the rulers. Politicians crave unearned power; plutocrats crave unearned profit. The two groups, broadly constituting the "political class," prop each other up and assist each other in milking the rest of us.

Since World War 2, the premier American political milking operation of this type has been what President Dwight D. Eisenhower labeled "the military-industrial complex." Politicians receive campaign contributions and golden parachutes as corporate directors. In return, "defense" contractors knock down billions in arms sales, base maintenance contracts, etc. All at your expense, and none of it related to any reasonable conception of "national defense."

It's not just treasure the political class takes from the productive class. It's blood as well. Justifying insane levels of military spending requires the occasional war. Not to worry. The political class considers your sons' and daughters' lives a reasonable price to pay to keep their gravy trains running on time.

Don't expect anything different from this year's crop of presidential candidates. Donald Trump believes the bloated US military needs to be "rebuilt." Hillary Clinton hasn't met a war she didn't love since Vietnam. Even "libertarian" vice-presidential candidate William Weld, running on a second Republican ticket, avers that he and running mate Gary Johnson believe "a bedrock responsibility of the US government is to maintain the most powerful military in the world, by a wide margin." Given that the US is separated from all credible military threats by two oceans, Weld's line is clearly the usual political class pandering.

If voting won't fix the problem this November, what next? Well, the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee (nwtrcc.org) has some ideas for next April.
Reprinted from Reader Supported News

In February of 2015, when Bernie Sanders was traveling around Iowa in a Dodge muscle car trying to decide if he should run for president, I asked him what he needed to see to decide to run. His answer was not selfish: it wasn't about his political future, it was about the future of the progressive movement. It wasn't about whether Bernie Sanders could win, but whether a run for president would benefit the progressive movement. He made the right decision. Bernie's campaign has launched a progressive political revolution.

As Bernie contemplates the next step, we should trust that he will do the right thing for the movement. If he endorses Hillary Clinton for president, we should trust that it is the right thing for our movement. He is not going to come out and say "we lost, I'm going home now, so Hillary Clinton is now your leader." He will continue to lead the political revolution. So I say to Bernie-or-Busters, trust Bernie and continue to follow his lead. He will not lead us astray.

I will be going to The People's Summit in Chicago next week. Nina Turner, Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, Rep. Raul Grijalva, Chuy Garcia, and RoseAnn DeMoro are the Bernie surrogates who will be there. It will be the start of the discussion on where we go from here. Remember, this campaign has been about us from the beginning. Who we vote for in November is a tactic, not the endgame. If Bernie's name is not on the ballot, we should vote for the candidate our movement can have the greatest influence on. I'm pretty sure that Bernie Sanders will tell us that is Hillary Clinton.

We have already forced Hillary Clinton to change her position on the TPP and the Keystone XL pipeline. She recently came out in favor of adding a public option to Obamacare that is a back door to single payer. Her debt-free college tuition plan is a step in the right direction. She is for a $12-an-hour national minimum wage, but wouldn't oppose $15-an-hour if we put it on her desk.

Click Here to Read Whole Article
Reprinted from Democracy Now!

As Bernie Sanders prepares to meet with President Obama, we speak to Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein, who has also been reaching out to the Vermont senator. With Hillary Clinton claiming victory in the Democratic race, Stein is attempting to start a dialogue with the Sanders campaign. In an open letter in April, Stein wrote, "In this hour of unprecedented crisis -- with human rights, civilization, and life on the planet teetering on the brink -- can we explore an historic collaboration to keep building the revolution beyond the reach of corporate party clutches, where the movement can take root and flourish, in the 2016 election and beyond?" Stein joins us from Albany ahead of this weekend's New York Green Party convention.

Watch below...









Amy Goodman: Jill Stein first announced her candidacy on Democracy Now! last June. She also ran for president on the Green Party ticket in 2012. In April, she wrote an open letter to Bernie Sanders urging him to consider joining forces to, quote, "ensure the revolution for people, planet and peace will prevail," unquote.

Jill Stein joins us now from Albany, New York, ahead of Saturday's nominating convention of the New York Green Party. Jill Stein, welcome back to Democracy Now! Can you respond to what happened this week, Hillary Clinton clearly saying in the Brooklyn Navy Yard, before thousands of people, that she has secured the Democratic Party's nomination, she is the presumptive nominee?

Dr. Jill Stein: Yes and good morning, Amy and Juan. It's great to be with you. You know, this is kind of what many people have foreseen all along. It was kind of in the cards. The Democratic machine has very steeply tilted the playing field, from the beginning, by limiting the debates, limiting the exposure of Bernie Sanders, some very questionable election practices, 100,000 voters disappearing from the rolls in Brooklyn, some very questionable things that happened in the Democratic primary in California where independent voters thought they could just show up at the polls and cast a vote for Bernie Sanders but were unable to, by large numbers and huge discrepancies between the polls in advance and the actual outcome of the elections.

So, you know and needless to say, the superdelegates have massively tipped the playing field. And the announcement the night before by major news organizations that Hillary Clinton had already clinched it, you know, hard to call that just a coincidence, seems tailor-made for discouraging people from actually turning out and exercising their right to vote. So, this is what the Democratic Party has done for decades -- many decades, in fact. And after the election of George McGovern in 1972 as a peace candidate -- I should say his election to the nomination of the Democratic Party, the party changed the rules to steeply tilt that playing field, creating superdelegates and Super Tuesdays that make it very hard for a grassroots campaign to prevail.

And over the years, the party has allowed principled candidates to be seen and heard, but has, at the end of the day, sabotaged them in one way or the other, often through fear campaigns and smear campaigns, in the same way that Bernie is being called a spoiler now and has been for some weeks. Dennis Kucinich was redistricted and basically, you know, taken off the political map. We saw Jesse Jackson the victim of a smear campaign. People remember the Dean scream that was used against Howard Dean as a peace candidate who was doing well.

So, in many ways, the Democratic Party creates campaigns that fake left while it moves right and becomes more corporatist, more militarist, more imperialist. This is why we say it's hard to have a revolutionary campaign inside of a counterrevolutionary party. That's why we're here as the Green Party to build a place where a revolutionary movement can truly grow with a political voice.

Juan Gonzalez: Well, Jill Stein, you've been trying for months to reach out to Bernie Sanders, because you acknowledge that there are many similarities in your program and his, to join forces. What's been the response from the Sanders campaign and what are you hopeful for now?

Dr. Jill Stein: Well, the response over the last several weeks has been the same as the response over the last several years. And in fact, the Green Party reached out to Bernie Sanders before the last election to see if he might be interested in running on the Green Party ballot line. And that was in 2011. And basically, we haven't heard back yet, so I'm not holding my breath that we are going to. And in fact, I think it was just yesterday that Senator Sanders announced that he would be meeting with President Obama to basically stay the course and to essentially move his campaign inside of the Democratic Party, which I think is a mistake and would be essentially an abandonment of the movement that has been built. We've seen many very principled and powerful efforts to reform the Democratic Party from within over the course of many years and Democratic Party keeps marching to the right.

So, you know, my hope, as Senator Sanders himself said, is that this is a movement, it's not a man. And my hope is that the movement will continue. And we've offered -- I've offered, basically, to put everything on the table and to see how we can work together and explore the -- what it would take in order for that to happen --

Amy Goodman: Well, let's go to Bernie Sanders --

Dr. Jill Stein: -- to run a joint ticket, for example.

Amy Goodman: So, let's talk about that for a minute. Let's go to Bernie Sanders last July speaking at the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, when he was asked if he would run on a third-party ticket if he failed to win the Democratic nomination.

Sen. Bernie Sanders: If it happens that I do not win that process, would I run outside of the system? No, I made the promise that I would not and I'll keep that promise. And let me add to that: And the reason for that is I do not want to be responsible for electing some right-wing Republican to be president of the United States of America.

Amy Goodman: So that is Bernie Sanders last July. You talked about the possibility of a joint ticket. Are you saying that you would--I mean, you are not the presidential nominee of the Green Party yet. You're running in different state primaries and conventions. But are you suggesting that the Green Party would consider him being the presidential candidate, whether or not he would consider this?

Dr. Jill Stein: It would obviously take a major change of rules for that to happen. But what I'm saying is that if Senator Sanders made the case that now he understood, after the very, you know, disturbing experiences of the last many months and the way that he's been mistreated and beaten up by the party, perhaps he has a different view of the potential to create revolution inside of a counterrevolutionary party. Maybe he has come to see the necessity for independent third parties to actually move this movement forward. That would be -- you know, that would be a game changer if he made the case that he has come to understand the critical need to build the Green Party as the political voice of that revolution. If that were the case, I think many things would become possible at that point for making the rules changes.

I can't change those rules, but I can have those discussions with him and lay the groundwork for it. It would probably have to be taken to the Green Party convention. But in terms of my own view, you know, I'm a physician, not a politician. I don't have a vested interest in a particular political career or a particular political office. My job is to do everything that I can to create an America and a world that we can live in and that we can survive in. And I would be very interested in having this discussion. I am not holding my breath that it's going to happen. And I think it's important that our campaign be plan B, if not for Senator Sanders, then for his supporters.

But Hillary Clinton isn't the only woman aiming to be on the ballot in November. Jill Stein is moving closer to securing the Green Party nomination. On Tuesday, Stein won the Green Party's primary in California. She has so far won 20 of the 21 contests ahead of the party's national convention in August in Houston.
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On June 8, 1967, the Israeli Air Force attacked an American reconnaissance ship, USS Liberty, killing 34 American sailors and wounding 174. Over a period of an hour-and-a-half after Israeli pilots identified the ship as American, while the sailors battled to save the ship and their lives, the Israelis attacked the ship from the air and torpedo boats, hitting it with armor-piercing rounds, at least one bomb and one torpedo, and strafing the lifeboats. The Israelis wanted no survivors to embarrass them. Israeli jets had also targeted the antenna, to keep the ship from calling for help. But, as James Bamford recounts, a couple of radiomen:

patched together enough equipment and broken antennae to get a distress call off to the Sixth Fleet, despite intense jamming by the Israelis. "Any station, this is Rockstar," [radioman] Halman shouted, using the Liberty's voice call sign. "We are under attack by unidentified jet aircraft and require immediate assistance."

"Great, wonderful, she's burning, she's burning," said an Israeli pilot.

But, hey, the Sixth Fleet had the message. We all know what happened next. Seen it in every movie. The cavalry was on the way. You can hear the order to American pilots: "Splash the bastards."

Er, no. Wrong movie. (Try Exodus.) What actually happened was that the Secretary of Defense (Robert McNamara) and the President of the United States (Lyndon Johnson) twice recalled the American planes that were launched from nearby carriers to defend the ship. That's right, twice. When the Sixth Fleet carrier division commander resisted the Secretary of Defense--because, you know, RUFKM!--and demanded confirmation of the recall order, he was shocked to hear President Johnson come on the line personally, to say that he "didn't care if the ship sunk, he would not embarrass his allies."

[And let's not pretend the plural is relevant here: there is no other "ally" that would have been granted the right to sink an American ship]

Never heard of this incident? Think about that for a second. No, five seconds. Give it some thought. Did you hear about in once upon a time somewhere, but it was treated as insignificant, and never heard of again? I bet you've heard endlessly, and know all about, John McCain's POW experience at the hands of the Vietnamese? (His father presided over the cover-up of the Liberty incident, by the way.) I wonder how this will be treated in Brian Cranston's LBJ biopic. All The Way, LBJ went with Israel.

Why no Hollywood movie, ever, about this great story of military heroism? Isn't it a natural, with the survivors appearing in cameos and all? What's remembered and reported, and what's forgotten and dismissed, and why, and under whose orders?

When you hear the great patriotic paeans to America from our President and presidential candidates, ask what they have to say about what happened forty-nine years ago today, whether they think it was OK for the President to accept--to order, in a real sense--208 American causalities so as not to embarrass Israel. And ask yourself why there is never peep one about this from any of our flag-pin-wearing American leaders or our free of critical thought media. Where, exactly, do they rank American lives on their scale of whom to protect?

What else is there that we might not be being told, today, about American lives jeopardized for Israel? Think the Iraq war, the destruction of the Iraqi state, and the Libyan state, and the ongoing attempt to destroy the Syrian state are "senseless"? Can our American school-and-media-built thought radar detect nobody who wanted, and benefitted from, the destruction of three states in the region that were militarily strong, socially-advanced, secular, and defiantly supportive of Palestine resistance? The Middle East is burning. Great, wonderful.

Remembering the Liberty is not just an exercise to boil your blood about what happened forty-nine years ago (and reading the links below will do that). Remembering the Liberty is necessary to understand what's happening to us now, and what will happen in the future, if we obey the orders of President Trump or Clinton--either of whom will go all the way with Israel, and to protect it, will sink our ship.

There is no more urgent task--none-- for progressive-minded Americans than to end American involvement in Israeli colonialism, which might start by ending Israeli impunity for the murder of Americans.

Links and References

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Biology 201

This course will offer an intensive review of hair care methods and other cosmetic approaches for aging white males. Topics will include comb overs, weaves, and surgical transplants. Additional topics will include self-injection of BOTOX; collagen shots for a big mouth; bridgework to nowhere; the art of the tan--when is well done overdone? Students will be required to spend tens of thousands of dollars to look like a revived corpse. This course will include a 1-credit lab where students will apply Viagra, Levitra, Enzyte and testosterone supplements to a cadaver. If erection persists more than four hours, call Melania. Students may pass out of Biology 201 by juicing, taking daily shots of human growth hormone, and wearing a girdle.



This course will survey autocrats, tyrants, and demagogues through the ages and apply their guiding principles to the modern political arena. Topics will include mass deportation; making the trains run on time; reinterpreting Joseph Goebbels for the new millennium (The bigger the lie the more they'll tweet it.); the Berlin Wall, the Maginot Line, the Korean DMZ and other historically successful barriers; mass hypnosis for the beginner; cutting taxes, doubling military spending, and balancing the budget (see Voodoo Economics 101); Putin people on; non-aggression pacts with other dictators and dictators-in-waiting; plutonium and the free market--a franchise approach to nuclear proliferation; using economic contraction to promote xenophobia--a winning electoral strategy; when to call other heads of state "losers;" thugs, Brownshirts, intimidation and the art of the rally.

Students will be required to compile an enemies list and to develop a protocol for verbally abusing each member in a public forum. Extra credit will be awarded for inventing pejorative nicknames. Students may pass out of Public Policy 101 by assuming control of a First World nation and running it into the ground.

Women's Studies 101

This course is an introduction to issues confronting the average real estate tycoon looking to get laid. Topics will include why it's so hard for flat-chested chicks to be a 10; a brief history of Eastern European mail-order brides; the art of frequent STD testing; beauty pageants and sampling the merchandise; the do-it-yourself prenup kit; robbing the cradle; fleecing the cradle; bilking the cradle; foreclosing on the cradle; using the cradle as collateral during a leveraged buyout of a much larger cradle; when to dump your trophy wife; mastering the lecherous grin. Students will be required to date their own daughter.

Finance 201

This course will cover conventional and unconventional methods of turning millions of dollars into millions of dollars. Topics will include overstating your net worth to investors while understating your income to the IRS; how to lose money operating a casino; guidelines for lobbying your way onto the Fortune 500 list; leveraging parental assets; leveraging sibling assets; leveraging taxpayer assets; tax abatement strategies for charitable donations never made; exploiting real estate bubbles; reversing globalization in three easy steps; profiting from national and institutional financial collapse; Chapter 11 as a financial planning tool; opening your own university; closing your own university. Students will be required to saddle an otherwise successful business with excessive debt, file for bankruptcy, ruin dozens of creditors, and reopen days later under a different name.
This week Hillary Clinton became the presumptive nominee. Many Bernie Sanders supporters are not giving in to what they consider an establishment driven coerced appointment through anointment. So how will they handle the 'afterbern'.

Today I am honored to have two young supporters that want a more progressive America. Eleanor Goldfield and Professor Cody Pogue.

Eleanor Goldfield is the Founder & Host at Act Out, Founder / Senior Consultant at Art Killing Apathy and Founder, singer, writer at Rooftop Revolutionaries. She is an all around social justice, economic justice, and political activist.



Cody Pogue is a professor at San Jacinto College. He is also a community activist that was instrumental in several grassroots actions throughout Houston.




Why I Bought Four Syrian Children Off A Beirut Street

(Image by frank lamb) Details DMCA



Franklin Lamb (Damascus)

So what became of the four children rescued from a Beirut Street?

Given the unanticipated intense interest in the subject of my article ( See Oped News Why I bought 4 Syrian children off a Beirut street March 11, 2016) which resulted in the receipt of more than 1000 emails, approximately 130 being requests or inquiries about adopting the children (as if I had any right or role with the children's future, since engaging in the instantaneous transaction with the "vendor" that day related only to the reality of an in extremis situation that prompted a spur of the moment gesture to find safety for the little ones and report the case to authorities), an update about the four beauties is warranted. Unwittingly, the four beauties achieved much for humanity, as suddenly many in Lebanon engaged publicly with the subject of abused Syrian refugee children.

Shortly after the Ramlet el Baida event with the lady who sought money in exchange for the children, they were returned to the Aleppo area of Syria and are being cared for by distant relatives. A female relative of the children who learned about what had become of them appeared and it was clear from the children's reaction of running to her and hugging her that they knew her and wanted to be with her. After verifying her connection with the children she took custody of them and a few days after their departure from Lebanon the note below appeared outside this observer's south Beirut apartment door:

This observer met again with the children, this time in Syria, and also with their "uncle Khalid." They appear very well and seem as secure for the moment as is anyone living these days in north Syria near Aleppo. They have food and a clean place to live and play with other children. When we met again we were all very happy and the older child remembered well the American "hide & seek" game we played in Beirut and insisted that we do it again. And his little sister blurted out from memory the "Ready or not, here I come!" call-out that starts the "hide & seek" search. They love that game and have taught it to their friends including the covering of the seekers eyes without peeking and counting loudly to ten.

But they are not in school yet. Their parents remain missing and reportedly were killed.

These children's experience and public interest in them caused the Lebanese authorities to take more seriously reports of refugee children endangerment. At the urging of this observer and others, the Internal Security Forces now patrol Ramlet el Baida strip with undercover officers as shown in the photo below. Their efforts are preventing young girls from Syria and elsewhere selling themselves to the occupants of cars that pull up to purchase "roses" or offer money to young boys. The street kids have as of 6/1/2016 largely disappeared, at least for now. Hopefully to a more safe area with proper housing and assistance from NGO's. More research is required to monitor their wellbeing. Hopefully the police will continue their humanitarian work and will respond seriously to reports from a concerned citizenry. The observer credits the 4 Syrian children with getting the attention of local authorities and helping other endangered children at Ramlet el Baida beach strip.

(photo: fplamb) Credit due to the Internal Security Force (ISF) Lebanon's police force that eventually, after many submitted reports from eyewitnesses, has last month agreed to send undercover cops to Ramlet el Baida strip. This observer's friend, 12-year-old "Leila" from Aleppo shown above, and other Syrian children preyed upon by pedophiles using a pretense of "buying roses" are not currently working there. Vigilance by ISF undercover cops, one pictured below, will protect these hungry Syrian refugee children as long as they stay on the job until the kids can return to Syria.

(photo: fplamb) Not only girls are being hunted along Ramlet el Baida beach. Many young Syrian males who may be their family's only breadwinner are vulnerable as they desperately seek to earn cash to feed their loved ones.

(photo: fplamb) ISF undercover cops in unmarked cars with cameras on the right side of the dashboard are alert as a result of the 4 Syrian children case and the public pressure it placed on multiple Lebanese government agencies. Beirut police are finally patrolling Ramlet el Baida beach and are protecting Syrian, Palestinian and other refugee children. All praises to them if they continue their vigilance until the refugee children can return home and to the only place they want to be - which is Syria. When that can happen, as we all know, is anyone's guess.

Police Crack-down on the Prostitution Network

Another consequence of the attention given to the case of the 4 Syrian refugee children being "bought" at Ramlet el Baida beach was to provoke a long delayed police action shutting down a Syrian refugee girls (and women) sex slave operation in Maameltein, the red-light district of Jounieh about twenty miles north of Beirut on Mediterranean coast.

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Reprinted from Paul Craig Roberts Website

On the eve of World War II the United States was still mired in the Great Depression and found itself facing war on two fronts with Japan and Germany. However bleak the outlook, it was nothing compared to the outlook today.

Has anyone in Washington, the presstitute Western media, the EU, or NATO ever considered the consequences of constant military and propaganda provocations against Russia? Is there anyone in any responsible position anywhere in the Western world who has enough sense to ask: "What if the Russians believe us? What if we convince Russia that we are going to attack her?"

The same can be asked about China.

The recklessness of the White House Fool and the media whores has gone far beyond mere danger. What do the Russians think when they see that the Democratic Party intends to elect Hillary Clinton president of the US? Hillary is a person so crazed that she declared the president of Russia to be "the new Hitler" and organized through her underling, neocon monster Victoria Nuland, the overthrow of the democratically elected government of Ukraine. Nuland installed Washington's puppet government in a former Russian province that, until about 20 years ago, was part of Russia for centuries.

I would bet that this tells even the naive pro-western part of the Russian government and population that the United States intends war with Russia.

Ever since Russia stood up to Obama over Syria, the Russians have been experiencing hostile propaganda and military operations on their borders. These provocations are justified by Washington and its NATO vassals as a response to "Russian aggression." Russian aggression consists of nothing but obviously false assertions that Russia is about to invade the Baltics, Poland, and Romania and recreate the Soviet Empire, the Eastern European part of which, together with the former Russian provinces of Georgia and Ukraine, now belong to the American Empire.

The Russians know that the propaganda about "Russian aggression" is a lie. What is the purpose of the lie other than to prepare the Western peoples for war with Russia?

There is no other explanation.

Even morons such as Obama, Merkel, Hollande, and Cameron should be capable of understanding that it is extremely dangerous to convince a major military power that you are going to attack. To simultaneously also convince China doubles the danger.

Clearly, the West is incapable of producing leadership capable of preserving life on earth.

What can be done when the entire West demonstrates a death wish for Planet Earth?

Until the criminal regimes of Clinton, George W. Bush, and Obama, American presidents from John F. Kennedy forward worked to reduce tensions with the Soviets. Kennedy worked with Khrushchev to reduce tensions caused by US missiles in Turkey and Soviet missiles in Cuba. President Nixon negotiated SALT I (the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty) and the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. President Carter negotiated SALT II, which was never ratified by the US Senate but was observed by the executive branch. President Reagan negotiated with Soviet leader Gorbachev the end of the Cold War. President George H.W. Bush in exchange for Gorbachev's agreement to the reunification of Germany promised that NATO would not move one inch to the East.

All of these achievements were thrown away by the neoconized Clinton, George W. Bush, and Obama regimes, each a criminal regime on par with Nazi Germany.

Today life on Planet Earth is far less secure than during the darkest days of the Cold War. Whatever threat global warming poses, it is miniscule compared to the threat of nuclear winter. If the evil that is concentrated in Washington and its vassals perpetrate nuclear war, cockroaches will inherit the earth.

I have been warning about the growing danger of a nuclear war resulting from the arrogance, hubris, ignorance, and evil personified by Washington. Recently, four knowledgeable Russian-Americans spelled out the likely consequences of trying to drive Russia to submission with war threats.
Progressive Content Not Found

Sometimes, authors delete their progressive content after publishing.



To see if the progressive content was renamed or re-published, please click here.
An out-of-town jury will decide the fate of a survivalist charged with fatally ambushing a state police trooper near a rural barracks, prosecutors and defense lawyers agreed Friday.

The stipulation keeps Eric Freins murder trial in Pike County, where he is charged with opening fire outside the Blooming Grove barracks on Sept. 12, 2014, killing Cpl. Bryon Dickson and seriously wounding Trooper Alex Douglass.

Frien led police on a tense 48-day manhunt through the northeastern Pennsylvania woods before U.S. marshals caught him outside an abandoned airplane hangar about 30 miles from the shooting scene, prosecutors said.

He has pleaded not guilty. Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty.

Defense lawyers had asserted that Frein couldnt get a fair trial in Pike County, in the Poconos, because of the heavy news coverage about the ambush. His attorneys also said that Pike County District Attorney Ray Tonkin distributed campaign fliers last year that referenced the case and surrounded Frein with an aura of guilt.

With Fridays stipulation, the defense dropped its bid to get the trial moved elsewhere. A judge told the sides at a pretrial hearing that he will likely sign off on it but needs to work out the details with state court administrators.

Frein, 33, spoke of wanting to start a revolution in a letter to his parents and called Dicksons slaying an assassination in a police interview after his capture, according to court documents. His attorneys are trying to get the videotaped statement suppressed.
Patient Handling Equipment Market is anticipated to Exceed USD 17.5 Billion in the Forecast Period by 2021 - by Market Research Engine

Patient Handling Equipment Market

http://www.marketresearchengine.com/reportdetails/patient-handling-equipment-market

http://www.marketresearchengine.com/

New York, June 07: Market Research Engine has published a new report titled as Patient Handling Equipment Market by Product (Wheelchair, Scooters, Medical Beds, Bathroom Safety, Mechanical, Ambulatory), Type of Care (Bariatric Care, Critical Care, Wound), Accessories (Lifting, Transfer) & by End User (Home, Hospital) - Forecast 2014 - 2021Patient handling equipments are used to provide safety and reduce the hazard when handle patient. The patient handling equipment should have easy to handle and secure to workers when they require equipments. The main reason for patient handling equipment is to provide correct shifting, moving and lifting of patient so that minimizing injuries and the injuries related cost. Varity of methods are used to handle patient such as physical moving technique, small patient handling support and big patient handling support equipment.Browse Full Report:The global patient handling equipment market is anticipated to exceed USD17.5 billion in the forecast period. North America is expected to grow at highest CAGR. Europe is projected to be the market leader of patient handling equipment market in 2017. Government regulations on mandating use of patient handling equipment is driving the market in Asia Pacific.The major driving factors of patient handling equipment market are as follows: Rising old population is driving the patient handling equipment market Growing the number of diseases is expected to increase need of it Government plans to support the use of patient handling equipment Development in technical field.The Restraints factors of patient handling equipment market are as follows: Skillful training and sufficient information are necessary to handle patient safely. Dare to handle bariatric care patient.The patient handling equipment market is segmented on the lines of its product, end user , accessories and type of care. The patient handling equipment market is segmented on the lines of its product like ambulatory aids, non mechanical equipment, mechanical equipment, bathroom safety supplies, medical beds and wheelchair and scooters. The wheelchair and scooter is further segmented into manual wheelchair, powered wheelchair and scooters. The medical beds covers curative care beds, psychiatric care beds and long term care beds. . Under end user segmentation it covered home care, hospital, elderly care, nursing homes and long term care. The patient handling equipment market is segmented on the lines of its accessories like lifting accessories, transfer accessories, evacuation accessories, stretcher accessories, hospital bed accessories, bariatric boards and transfer sheets. By type of care it contains bariatric care, fall prevention, critical care and wound care.This report provides:1) An overview of the global market for patient handling equipmentand related technologies.2) Analyses of global market trends, with data from 2013, estimates for 2014 and 2015, and projections of compound annual growth rates (CAGRs) through 2020.3) Identifications of new market opportunities and targeted promotional plans for patient handling equipment4) Discussion of research and development, and the demand for new products and new applications.5) Comprehensive company profiles of major players in the industry.Key players profiled in the report include: Stryker Inc Hill-Rom Inc. ArjoHuntleighInc Guldmann Inc. Invacare Corporation Linet Inc. Stiegelmeyer Inc. Joerns healthcare Handicare Inc. Prism MedicalCompany profile includes assign such as company summary, financial summary,business strategy and planning, SWOT analysis and current developments.The Top Companies Report is intended to provide our buyers with a snapshot of the industrys most influential players.The Patient Handling Equipment Market has been segmented as below:By Product Segment Analysis Wheelchair and scooters Manual wheelchair Powered Wheelchair Scooters Medical Beds Curative care beds Psychiatric care beds Long term care beds Others Bathroom safety supplies Mechanical equipment Non mechanical equipment Ambulatory Aids OthersBy End-user Analysis Home care Hospital Elderly care Others (Nursing homes, long term care)By Accessories Analysis Lifting accessories Transfer accessories Evacuation accessories Stretcher accessories Hospital Bed Accessories Others (Bariatric boards, transfer sheets)By Type of care Analysis Bariatric care Fall prevention Critical care Wound care Others (transfers)By Regional Analysis North America Europe Asia-Pacific Rest of the WorldReasons to buy this Report:1) Obtain the most up to date information available on all active and planned patient handling equipment industry globally.2) Identify growth segments and opportunities in the industry.3) Facilitate decision making on the basis of strong historic and forecast of patient handling equipment industry and unit capacity data.4) Assess your competitors refining portfolio and its evolution.About MarketResearchEngine.comMarket Research Engine is a global market research and consulting organization. We provide market intelligence in emerging, niche technologies and markets. Our market analysis powered by rigorous methodology and quality metrics provide information and forecasts across emerging markets, emerging technologies and emerging business models. Our deep focus on industry verticals and country reports help our clients to identify opportunities and develop business strategies.Media ContactCompany Name: Market Research EngineContact Person: John BayEmail: john@marketresearchengine.comPhone: +1-855-984-1862, +91-860-565-7204Country: United StatesWebsite:Address: 3422 SW 15 Street, Suite #8942, Deerfield Beach, FL 33442, United States
Hormone Refractory Breast Cancer to be Driven by Demand for More Effective Therapeutics

http://goo.gl/KyNNB8

A new market research study by Transparency Market Research offers an in-depth analysis of the global market for hormone refractory breast cancer.You can download a sample for free:The research report, titled Hormone Refractory Breast Cancer Market  Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast 2014  2020, covers the product segmentation, current trends, key geographical segments, growth drivers, restraints, and competitive scenario.The research study also offers projected statistics and historical information of the global market to guide the existing and new players in formulating business strategies effectively. Several analytical tools have also been used in the research report to determine the growth prospects and opportunities for the major players operating in the global market.Breast cancer is one of the most common types of cancer that is affecting women in both developed and developing regions at an alarming rate. The growing prevalence of hormone refractory breast cancer is the key factor fuelling the growth of the market. In addition, the growing demand for advanced therapeutics and a rising number of drugs in the pipeline are further projected to contribute substantially towards the growth of the market.By geography, the global market for hormone refractory breast cancer has been divided into North America, Asia Pacific, Europe, and Rest of the World. In the last few years, North America and Europe have been dominant regional markets. As per the study, these two regions are projected to lead the market through the reports forecast period. The rapid growth of North America and Europe can be attributed to the growing base of patients suffering from hormone refractory breast cancer and the increasing geriatric population.In addition, the growing number of drug developers in Europe and North America are expected to contribute substantially towards the growth of the hormone refractory breast cancer market throughout the forecast period. On the other hand, the Asia Pacific market for hormone refractory breast cancer is projected to witness rapid growth in the next few years, owing to the expanding healthcare sector and increasing purchasing power of consumers.The research study further offers a detailed vendor analysis of the global market for hormone refractory breast cancer and throws light on the competitive scenario for the same. Some of the leading players operating in the global market for hormone refractory breast cancer are AmpliMed Corporation, Boehringer Ingelheim GmbH, Bluefish Pharmaceuticals AB, F. Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd., Neopharm Ltd., Bioenvision Limited, NeoCorp GmbH, and AstraZeneca plc. Detailed profiles of these players have been included in the scope of the research report.Transparency Market Research (TMR) is a market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. We have an experienced team of Analysts, Researchers, and Consultants, who us e proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather, and analyze information. Our business offerings represent the latest and the most reliable information indispensable for businesses to sustain a competitive edge.90 State Street, Suite 700 Albany, NY 12207
International "EPROM Industry" Market -by Applications - Global Trends & Demand, Forecasts to 2016-2019

http://www.researchmoz.us/global-eprom-market-professional-survey-report-2016-report.html

http://www.researchmoz.us/enquiry.php?type=S&repid=722823

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Description - EPROM MarketThis reportMainly covers the following product typesCeramicSiliconOthersThe segment applications includingOEMAftermarketSegment regions including (the separated region report can also be offered)USAChinaGermanyJapanKoreaNetherlandTo Browse a Report Detail with TOC @FranceUKOthersThe players list (Partly, Players you are interested in can also be added)FUJITSUTEXAS INSTRUMENTSINTECHADVANCEDDATA-INTERSILANALOG DEVICESGENERALROHMPANASONICRCAPHILIPSSIGNETICSSONYSOLITRONPLESSEYSONYFAIRCHILDAECOTHOMSON-CSFGOLD STARDAEWOOSAMSUNGSANYOHITACHIMOTOROLAWith no less than 15 top producers.Data including (both global and regions): Market Size (both volume - Unit and value - million USD), Market Share, Production data, Consumption data, Trade data, Price - USD/Unit, Cost, Gross margin etc.More detailed information, please refer to the attachment file and table of contents. If you have other requirements, please contact us, we can also offer!To Free Sample Report With TOC @Table of Contents1 Industry Overview of EPROM1.1 Definition and Specifications of EPROM1.1.1 Definition of EPROM1.1.2 Specifications of EPROM1.2 Classification of EPROM1.2.1 Ceramic1.2.2 Silicon1.2.3 Others1.3 Applications of EPROM1.3.1 OEM1.3.2 Aftermarket1.4 Industry Chain Structure of EPROM1.5 Industry Overview and Major Regions Status of EPROM1.5.1 Industry Overview of EPROM1.5.2 Global Major Regions Status of EPROM1.6 Industry Policy Analysis of EPROM1.7 Industry News Analysis of EPROM2 Manufacturing Cost Structure Analysis of EPROM2.1 Raw Material Suppliers and Price Analysis of EPROM2.2 Equipment Suppliers and Price Analysis of EPROM2.3 Labor Cost Analysis of EPROM2.4 Other Costs Analysis of EPROM2.5 Manufacturing Cost Structure Analysis of EPROM2.6 Manufacturing Process Analysis of EPROM3 Technical Data and Manufacturing Plants Analysis of EPROM3.1 Capacity and Commercial Production Date of Global EPROM Major Manufacturers in 20153.2 Manufacturing Plants Distribution of Global EPROM Major Manufacturers in 20153.3 R&D Status and Technology Source of Global EPROM Major Manufacturers in 20153.4 Raw Materials Sources Analysis of Global EPROM Major Manufacturers in 20154 Global EPROM Overall Market Overview4.1 2011-2016E Overall Market Analysis4.2.1 2011-2015 Global EPROM Capacity and Growth Rate Analysis4.2.2 2015 EPROM Capacity Analysis (Company Segment)4.3 Sales Analysis4.3.1 2011-2015 Global EPROM Sales and Growth Rate Analysis4.3.2 2015 EPROM Sales Analysis (Company Segment)4.4 Sales Price Analysis4.4.1 2011-2015 Global EPROM Sales Price4.4.2 2015 EPROM Sales Price Analysis (Company Segment)4.5 Gross Margin Analysis4.5.1 2011-2015 Global EPROM Gross MarginTo Enquire Regarding This Report @ResearchMoz is the worlds fastest growing collection of market research reports worldwide. Our database is composed of current market studies from over 100 featured publishers worldwide. Our market research databases integrate statistics with analysis from global, regional, country and company perspectives. ResearchMozs service portfolio also includes value-added services such as market research customization, competitive landscaping, and in-depth surveys, delivered by a team of experienced Research Coordinators.Researchmoz Pvt. Ltd.,90 State Street,Albany, NY 12207,United States,Tel: 866-997-4948 (Us-Canada Toll Free),Tel: +1-518-621-2074
LEO Pharma A/S - Product Pipeline Review Key Trends, Size, Growth, Shares And Forecast Research Report 2016

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http://www.researchmoz.us/leo-pharma-as-product-pipeline-review-2016-report.html

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Researchmoz added Most up-to-date research on "LEO Pharma A/S - Product Pipeline Review - 2016" to its huge collection of research reports.LEO Pharma A/S - Product Pipeline Review - 2016, provides an overview of the LEO Pharma A/Ss pharmaceutical research and development focus.The report provides comprehensive information on the therapeutics under development by LEO Pharma A/S, complete with analysis by stage of development, drug target, mechanism of action (MoA), route of administration (RoA) and molecule type. The report also covers the descriptive pharmacological action of the therapeutics, its complete research and development history and the dormant and discontinued projects.To Get Sample Copy of Report visit @Global Markets Directs report features investigational drugs from across globe covering over 20 therapy areas and nearly 3,000 indications. The report is built using data and information sourced from Global Markets Directs proprietary databases, company/university websites, clinical trial registries, conferences, SEC filings, investor presentations and featured press releases from company/university sites and industry-specific third party sources. Drug profiles featured in the report undergoes periodic review following a stringent set of processes to ensure that all the profiles are updated with the latest set of information. Additionally, various dynamic tracking processes ensure that the most recent developments are captured on a real time basis.The report helps in identifying and tracking emerging players in the market and their portfolios, enhances decision making capabilities and helps to create effective counter strategies to gain competitive advantage.Browse Detail Report With TOC @Scope- The report provides a snapshot of the pipeline therapeutic landscape of LEO Pharma A/S- The report provides overview of LEO Pharma A/S including its business description, key facts, and locations and subsidiaries- The report features descriptive drug profiles for the pipeline products which includes, product description, descriptive MoA, R&D brief, licensing and collaboration details & other developmental activities- The report covers pipeline products based on various stages of development ranging from pre-registration till discovery and undisclosed stages- The report assesses LEO Pharma A/Ss pipeline therapeutics based on drug target, mechanism of action (MoA), route of administration (RoA) and molecule type- The report features LEO Pharma A/Ss out-licensed and partnered product portfolio and summarizes its dormant and discontinued projectsReasons to buy- Evaluate LEO Pharma A/Ss strategic position with total access to detailed information on its product pipeline- Gain strategically significant competitor information, analysis, and insights to formulate effective R&D strategies- Identify emerging players with potentially strong product portfolio and create effective counter-strategies to gain competitive advantage- Identify and understand important and diverse types of therapeutics under development for LEO Pharma A/S- Identify potential new clients or partners in the target demographic- Plan mergers and acquisitions effectively by identifying key players and its most promising pipeline therapeutics- Devise corrective measures for pipeline projects by understanding LEO Pharma A/Ss pipeline depth and focus of pipeline therapeutics- Develop and design in-licensing and out-licensing strategies by identifying prospective partners with the most attractive projects to enhance and expand business potential and scopeAbout ResearchMozResearchMoz is the one stop online destination to find and buy market research reports & Industry Analysis. We fulfill all your research needs spanning across industry verticals with our huge collection of market research reports. We provide our services to all sizes of organizations and across all industry verticals and markets. Our Research Coordinators have in-depth knowledge of reports as well as publishers and will assist you in making an informed decision by giving you unbiased and deep insights on which reports will satisfy your needs at the best price.Mr. NachiketState Tower,90 State Street,Suite 700,Albany NY - 12207United StatesEmail: sales@researchmoz.usWebsite @Tel: 866-997-4948 (Us-Canada Toll Free)Tel: +1-518-621-2074
Rett Syndrome - Pipeline Review Industry Key Trends, Size, Growth, Shares And Forecast Research Report 2016

http://www.researchmoz.us/enquiry.php?type=S&repid=731180

http://www.researchmoz.us/rett-syndrome-pipeline-review-h1-2016-report.html

http://www.researchmoz.us/

http://bit.ly/1TBmnVG

Researchmoz added Most up-to-date research on "Rett Syndrome - Pipeline Review, H1 2016" to its huge collection of research reports.Rett Syndrome - Pipeline Review, H1 2016, provides an overview of the Rett Syndrome pipeline landscape.The report provides comprehensive information on the therapeutics under development for Rett Syndrome, complete with analysis by stage of development, drug target, mechanism of action (MoA), route of administration (RoA) and molecule type. The report also covers the descriptive pharmacological action of the therapeutics, its complete research and development history and latest news and press releases. Additionally, the report provides an overview of key players involved in therapeutic development for Rett Syndrome and features dormant and discontinued projects.To Get Sample Copy of Report visit @Global Markets Directs report features investigational drugs from across globe covering over 20 therapy areas and nearly 3,000 indications. The report is built using data and information sourced from Global Markets Directs proprietary databases, company/university websites, clinical trial registries, conferences, SEC filings, investor presentations and featured press releases from company/university sites and industry-specific third party sources. Drug profiles featured in the report undergoes periodic review following a stringent set of processes to ensure that all the profiles are updated with the latest set of information. Additionally, various dynamic tracking processes ensure that the most recent developments are captured on a real time basis.The report helps in identifying and tracking emerging players in the market and their portfolios, enhances decision making capabilities and helps to create effective counter strategies to gain competitive advantage.Browse Detail Report With TOC @Scope- The report provides a snapshot of the global therapeutic landscape of Rett Syndrome- The report reviews pipeline therapeutics for Rett Syndrome by companies and universities/research institutes based on information derived from company and industry-specific sources- The report covers pipeline products based on various stages of development ranging from pre-registration till discovery and undisclosed stages- The report features descriptive drug profiles for the pipeline products which includes, product description, descriptive MoA, R&D brief, licensing and collaboration details & other developmental activities- The report reviews key players involved Rett Syndrome therapeutics and enlists all their major and minor projects- The report assesses Rett Syndrome therapeutics based on drug target, mechanism of action (MoA), route of administration (RoA) and molecule type- The report summarizes all the dormant and discontinued pipeline projects- The report reviews latest news related to pipeline therapeutics for Rett SyndromeReasons to buy- Gain strategically significant competitor information, analysis, and insights to formulate effective R&D strategies- Identify emerging players with potentially strong product portfolio and create effective counter-strategies to gain competitive advantage- Identify and understand important and diverse types of therapeutics under development for Rett Syndrome- Identify potential new clients or partners in the target demographic- Develop strategic initiatives by understanding the focus areas of leading companies- Plan mergers and acquisitions effectively by identifying key players and its most promising pipeline therapeutics- Devise corrective measures for pipeline projects by understanding Rett Syndrome pipeline depth and focus of Indication therapeutics- Develop and design in-licensing and out-licensing strategies by identifying prospective partners with the most attractive projects to enhance and expand business potential and scope- Modify the therapeutic portfolio by identifying discontinued projects and understanding the factors that drove them from pipelineAbout ResearchMozResearchMoz is the one stop online destination to find and buy market research reports & Industry Analysis. We fulfill all your research needs spanning across industry verticals with our huge collection of market research reports. We provide our services to all sizes of organizations and across all industry verticals and markets. Our Research Coordinators have in-depth knowledge of reports as well as publishers and will assist you in making an informed decision by giving you unbiased and deep insights on which reports will satisfy your needs at the best price.Mr. NachiketState Tower,90 State Street,Suite 700,Albany NY - 12207United StatesEmail: sales@researchmoz.usWebsite @Tel: 866-997-4948 (Us-Canada Toll Free)Tel: +1-518-621-2074Follow us on LinkedIn @
World Pneumonia Diagnostic Testing Market 2016 Growth & Opportunities

Pneumonia Diagnostic Testing

http://goo.gl/vdwsTM

http://www.marketintelreports.com/pdfdownload.php?id=vpid16259

http://www.marketintelreports.com/purchase.php?id=vpid16259

www.marketintelreports.com

The 2016-2020 World Pneumonia Diagnostic Testing Market: Commercial Labs, Hospitals, Physician Offices, Public Health Labs--Supplier Shares, Competitive Strategies, Country Volume and Sales Segment Forecasts report presents a detailed analysis of the Pneumonia diagnostics market in the US, Europe (France, Germany, Italy, Spain, UK) and Japan. Current scientific views on the Pneumonia definition, epidemiology and etiology are reviewed.Check complete report @The report provides the 5- and 10-year test volume and sales forecasts by country for the following market segments: Hospitals Commercial/Private Labs Physician Offices Public Health LabsIn addition to test volume and sales projections, the report presents sales and market share estimates for major suppliers of Pneumonia tests.Get Sample Brochure of the report @Also, the report examines the market applications of DNA Probes, Monoclonal Antibodies, Immunoassays, IT and other technologies; profiles leading suppliers and recent market entrants developing innovative technologies and products; and identifies emerging business expansion opportunities, alternative market penetration strategies, market entry barriers and risks, and strategic planning issues and concerns.Contains 197 pages and 12 tablesGet 20% discount on 2016-2020 World Pneumonia Diagnostic Testing Market with ordering now, Offer Valid Till June 30th, 2016 @MarketIntelReports (MIR) aim to empower our clients to successfully manage and outperform in their business decisions, we do this by providing Premium Market Intelligence, Strategic Insights and Databases from a range of Global Publishers.A group of industry veterans who are well experienced in reputed international consulting firms after identifying the sourcing needs of MNCs for market intelligence, have together started this business savior MarketIntelReports.MIR intends to be a one-stop shop with an intuitive design, exhaustive database, expert assistance, secure cart checkout and data privacy integrated. It curates the list of reports, publishers and studies to ensure that the database is constantly updated to dynamically meet the targeted, specific needs of our clients.MarketIntelReports currently has more than 10,000 plus titles and 35+ publishers on our platform and growing consistently to fill the Global Intelligence Demand  Supply Gap. We cover more than 15 industry verticals being: Automotive, Electronics, Manufacturing, Pharmaceuticals, Healthcare, Chemicals, Building & Construction, Agriculture, Food & Beverages, Banking & Finance, Media and Government, Public Sector Studies.Sales ManagerMayur S.2711 Centerville Road, Suite 400,Wilmington,Delaware,19808United Statessales@marketintelreports.comTelephone: 1-302-684-6088
Soap and cleaning compounds Global Market Briefing Released By The Business Research Company

SOap and cleaning compounds

http://www.thebusinessresearchcompany.com/our-research/chemicals/soap-and-cleaning-compounds-global-market-briefing-report-2016/

Soap and cleaning compounds Global Market Briefing Released By The Business Research CompanySoap and cleaning compounds Global Market Briefing provides strategists, marketers and senior management with the critical information they need to assess the global Soap and cleaning compounds sector.Soap and cleaning compounds are substances made of a compound of natural oils or fats with sodium hydroxide or another strong alkali and typically having perfume and colouring added. They are used with water for washing and cleaning.The soap and cleaning compounds industry comprises establishments primarily engaged in manufacturing and packaging soap and other cleaning compounds, surface active agents and textile and leather finishing agents used to reduce tension or speed the drying process.The segments in the soap and cleaning compounds market were Soap and Other Detergent Manufacturing,surface active agent manufacturing and Polish and Other Sanitation Goods ManufacturingUse Of Polymer Beads To Clean Clothes Polymer beads are being used as cleaning agents to reduce water and energy consumption. Tiny, spheroidal plastic chips beads absorb stains, stray dye, and soil, carrying them away from fabrics, resulting in a cleaning process that uses less water and chemicals than traditional commercial washing machines. It also washes fabrics at lower temperatures, thereby conserving energy. For example, Xeros developed near-waterless polymer bead cleaning technology for the dry cleaning, hospitality and industrial industries.Increase In Demand For Organic Soaps There has been a rapid growth in sales of organic soaps in many regions. Companies are investing in green chemistry to develop organic cleaning agents such as laundry detergents, dishwashing detergents, toothpaste gels, and tooth powders and natural glycerine and preservatives. For example, the global organic personal care products which include soaps, toothpastes, and tooth powders is expected to reach $XX billion by 2020.Description Soap And Cleaning Compounds Global Market Briefing Report from the Business Research Company covers market characteristics, size and growth, segmentation, regional breakdowns, competitive landscape, market shares, trends and strategies for this market. The market characteristics section of the report defines and explains the market. The market size section gives the soap and cleaning compounds market revenues, covering both the historic growth of the market and forecasting the future. Drivers and restraints looks at the external factors supporting and controlling the growth of the market. Market segmentations break down the key sub sectors which make up the market. The regional breakdowns section gives the size of the market geographically. Competitive landscape gives a description of the competitive nature of the market, market shares, and a description of the leading companies. Key financial deals which have shaped the market in the last three years are identified. The trends and strategies section highlights the likely future developments in the soap and cleaning compounds market and suggests approaches.Reasons to Purchase Get up to date information available on the soap and cleaning compounds market globally. Identify growth segments and opportunities. Facilitate decision making on the basis of historic and forecast data and understand the drivers and restraints on the market. Develop strategies based on likely future developments. Gain a global perspective on the development of the market.ScopeMarkets Covered: Soap and other detergent manufacturing, Polish and other sanitation goods manufacturing, and Surface active agent manufacturing.Companies Mentioned: Procter & Gamble, Colgate-Palmolive, Ecolab Inc. and S. C. Johnson & Son, Inc.Geographic scope: Americas, Europe, Asia, Middle East and Africa, Oceania.Time series: Five years historic and forecast.Data: Market value in $ billions.Data segmentations: Regional breakdowns, market share of competitors, key sub segments.Sourcing and Referencing: Data and analysis throughout the report is sourced using end notes.Table of Contents Introduction 5 Soap And Cleaning Compounds Market Characteristics 6 Soap And Cleaning Compounds Market Historic Growth 7 Drivers of the Market 7 Restraints on the Market 8 Soap And Cleaning Compounds Market Forecast Growth 9 Drivers of the Market 10 Restraints on the Market 10 Soap And Cleaning Compounds Market Geography Split 11 Soap And Cleaning Compounds Market Size, 2015, By Region 11 Soap And Cleaning Compounds Market Segmentation 13 Soap and Cleaning Compounds Competitive Landscape 14 Key Competitor Profiles, Soap And Cleaning Compounds Market 14 Procter & Gamble Co 14 Colgate-Palmolive Co. 15 Ecolab Inc. 16 S. C. Johnson & Son, Inc. 17 Unilever 17 Key Mergers And Acquisitions In The Soap And Cleaning Compounds Market 19 Soap And Cleaning Compounds Market Trends And Strategies 20 Appendix 21 NAICS Definitions Of Industry Covered In This Report 21 Abbreviations 21 Currencies 21 Research Inquiries 21 The Business Research Company 21List of TablesTable 1: Global Soap And Cleaning Compounds Market Historic Market Size, 2011  2015, $ Billion 7Table 2: Global Soap And Cleaning Compounds Market Forecast Market Size, 2015  2019, $ Billion 9Table 3: Global Soap And Cleaning Compounds, Split By Region, 2015, $ Billion 11Table of FiguresFigure 1: Global Soap And Cleaning Compounds Market Historic Market Size, 2011  2015, $ Billion 7Figure 2: Global Soap And Cleaning Compounds Market Forecast Market Size, 2015  2019, $ Billion 9Figure 3: Global Soap And Cleaning Compounds Market, Split By Region, 2015, $ Billion 11Figure 4: Global Soap And Cleaning Compounds Market, 2015, Split By Segments, $ Billion 13Buy Now Soap and cleaning compounds Global Market Briefing is a detailed report giving a unique insight into this market. The report is priced at $1000 for an individual user. To use across your office the price is $1500 and $2000 if you wish to use across a multinational company. Clients are able to input on the design of the report and highlight points of special interest.About The Business Research CompanyVisit TheBusinessResearchCompany.com, mail info@tbrc.info or call +447443439350 or +918897263534 or +919160996838 for more information on this and many other titles.The Business Research Company is a market research and intelligence company which excels in company, market and consumer research.It has research professionals at its offices in the UK, India and the US as well a network of trained researchers globally. It has specialist consultants in a wide range of industries including manufacturing, healthcare, chemicals and technology.The Business Research Company's management have more than 20 years of varied business research experience. They have delivered hundreds of research projects to the senior management of some of the world's largest organizations.The Business Research Company,Horizon Avenue,8-2-603/b/s/1/2Road Number 10Banjara HillsHyderabad (India)
MW GOLDEN CONSTRUCTORS donates to Family Food Fund and Habitat for Humanity

MW GOLDEN CONSTRUCTORS, an award-winning Colorado construction firm, reported donations to Habitat for Humanity and will donate to the upcoming Grand County Builders Associations (GCBA) annual sale on June 25.MW GOLDEN CONSTRUCTORS consistently donates leftover construction materials and expensive machinery to help important causes. Last year, their donations helped to provide homes for poverty stricken families. This year, MW GOLDEN has committed to helping Grand County Builders Association, an advocate for the building industry. Fifty percent of the auction proceeds will be distributed to a community-based food fund for families in need.MW GOLDEN CONSTRUCTORS shows a great deal of consideration for their surrounding communities and for those in need, says Meagan Wairama, marketing manager for MW GOLDEN CONSTRUCTORS. This week, for example, we worked with an animal rehabilitator and a professional re-locator to find new homes for a mother raccoon and her babies who had been living in our noisy, busy barn. We continue to give whatever we can, whenever the opportunity arises.About MW GOLDEN CONSTRUCTORSMW GOLDEN CONSTRUCTORS is an award-winning firm that has been providing professional construction services throughout Colorados Front Range and mountain towns for more than thirty years. We take pride in building some of the states most recognizable schools, fire stations, libraries and other local and regional landmarks, as well as a wide range of commercial and industrial buildings, each project expertly designed and built to establish a sense of place in its respective community.1700 N. Park StreetCastle Rock, CO 80109
Donald Trump is still no conservative and never will be.

He still hasnt figured out that the mix of insults, bluster and off-the-cuff political statements that won him the Republican Party primary wont work in the general election.

But a lot of us conservatives enjoyed watching him attack the news media for the way theyve questioned his handling of the $6 million donation he raised for veterans organizations.

For decades weve watched the unfair and unbalanced mainstream news media spew its liberal bias and wanted to throw a brick through the TV screen.

Trump symbolically did just that when he called that press conference on Tuesday.

He went overboard in his attack, of course, because hes Donald Trump. But his media rage was justified.

The news media questioned him like a war criminal about the details of the $6 million he raised for the vets, acting as if he had never really raised the money or never intended to disburse it.

Trump is hopelessly naive if he really thought he was going to be given a standing ovation by the news media for raising money for the vets or anyone else.

But the liberal media wolf pack nitpicked at every part of Trumps charitable effort.

Some of the checks had not been sent out yet!

It was only $5.6 million that was raised, not $6 million!

And look! Trump hadnt yet paid the million bucks he promised to chip in!

Everyone knows it was a PR stunt for Trump to skip Republican Debate No. 37 and go on TV and pander to military veterans.

And its true that it was way back in January when he was bragging he raised the $6 million.

But come on. Did anyone  other than the biased reporters in the news media  really think the checks were going to be mailed out the next day or next week?

To any vets group that sent in an email asking for money?

The organizations clamoring for a share of the money had to be carefully vetted by someone on Trumps staff.

Imagine what the news media would have done to Trump if some wacko paramilitary group ended up spending $100,000 on hate billboards or worse.

And really, did anyone  other than the media dumbos  think Trump was planning to never pay his million or pocket all the money himself?

Trumps message was valid. He just didnt deliver it well.

He shouldnt have singled out individual reporters, and he should have taken a more lighthearted, sarcastic, mocking approach, not an angry one.

He should have said he was sorry the liberal news media thought the process was taking too long, but that raising and responsibly handing out $6 million takes time.

He should have explained that he had his small staff working on it, but that they were also busy trying to help him become president of the U.S.

At his press conference Trump also should have asked something like, I was wondering. When will the Washington Posts crack investigative team and the rest of you so-called journalists show the same level of interest in exposing the shady fund-raising techniques of the Clinton Foundation?

Itd be a major accomplishment if the Washington press corps merely asked Hillary a few tough questions about the lucrative international influence-peddling racket she and Bill are running.

But of course Hillary doesnt do press conferences. She hides from the press  and the press is so biased it barely complains.

Im not a big fan of Trump, but he was right to attack the Washington media. The trouble is, the way he did it was not even close to being presidential. And in November that could prove to be his Achilles Heel.

Michael Reagan is the son of President Ronald Reagan, a political consultant, and the president of The Reagan Legacy Foundation. Email him at Reagan@caglecartoons.com.
Illegal trading of human organs: a worldwide growing market

Frederike Ambagtsheer, Willem Weimar (Eds.) Trafficking in Human Beings for the Purpose of Organ Removal - Results and Recommendat

http://www.pabst-science-publishers.com/index.php?30&backPID=30&swords=978-3-95853-121-5&tt_products=180

http://www.ciando.com/ebook/bid-2097046-trafficking-in-human-beings-for-the-purpose-of-organ-removal-results-and-recommendations.html?CFID=363b1718-80b7-4287-b6c3-b63186e71d05&CFTOKEN=0&jsessionid=D23BD119DD18829D042FFE15B902644A

www.psychologie-aktuell.com

Illegal organ trade is on the rise worldwide - with approx. one billion USD per year. The study "Trafficking in Human Beings for the Purpose of Organ Removal" provides new insights and recommendations. "Brokers are key players in the organ trade network. They financially benefit the most from these transactions."Brokers may include doctors, hospitals and matching agencies. They operate individually or work with agencies and organized groups - e.g. criminal syndicates. Testimonies against brokers are very rare. As recipients and suppliers do not file complaints against them, many brokers escape law enforcement. Prosecutions of brokers have taken place in Turkey, Israel, India, South Africa, United States, Kosovo and Brazil.Organ brokers encounter little difficulty in finding impoverished individuals willing to exchange their organ for cash ...Many suppliers approach brokers themselves and some have said to put pressure on the broker to arrange the organ sale. Many are known to be disappointed, frustrated or angry if they fail to pass the required medical tests and therefore are deemed ineligible for providing an organ. However, suppliers who voluntarily sell their kidneys may nonetheless face severe vulnerabilities and exploitation ...The payments that living donors receive varies extensively worldwide. Individuals from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Colombia and the Philippines reported to have received between USD 1.000 and 2.500 for their kidney or liver. In contrast, kidney suppliers from Israel and Turkey reported to have received between USD 7.500 and 20.000, before the brokers discovered that poor Romanians and Brazilians were willing to accept less ...Although the number of organ buyers is much lower than potential organ suppliers, the authors found that the amounts of money paid by recipients for kidneys and livers varies extensively. The mean prices range from USD 20.000 (e.g. India) to 75.000 (e.g. China). The Israeli-led syndicate of organ brokers in general set a fee of USD 100.000 to 120.000 for its Israeli recipients. In the first organ brokering case in the United States the accused broker admitted in federal court that local recipients paid him up to the high amount of USD 160.000 for a kidney, acquired from suppliers for USD 10.000 each...Brokers use all kinds of tactics to maximize earnings and are criticized for paying substantially less than what they have promised and keeping a large share of the payment themselves. Their presence is likely to enhance exploitation of hope on the one hand and hopelessness on the other.>> Frederike Ambagtsheer, Willem Weimar (Eds.) Trafficking in Human Beings for the Purpose of Organ Removal - Results and Recommendations.Pabst 2016, 152 pages.ISBN print 978-3-95853-121-5ISBN ebook 978-3-95853-122-2Pabst Science Publishers (Lengerich/Westfalen) veroffentlicht zehn psychologische und neun medizinische Fachzeitschriften; daruber hinaus erscheinen bei Pabst aus den gleichen Fachbereichen mehr als hundert Bucher jahrlich - teils wissenschaftliche Spezialtitel, teils allgemeinverstandliche Fachliteratur.Pabst Science PublishersEichengrund 2849525 LengerichTel. 05484-308Fax 05484-550E-Mail: pabst.publishers@t-online.deInternet: pabst-publishers.de /
Quy Nhon in the off tourist trail of beach vacations in Southeast Asia

Vietnam beach vacations, Vietnam tours, Quy Nhon, Hoi An, My Son, Hue

http://insightasiatravel.com

The UK travel magazine of Rough Guides ranks Quy Nhon third among 9 places to get off tourist trail in Southeast Asia. More widely known by locals and foreigners taking Hoi An beach vacations, Cua Dai beach is on the top 25 beaches in Asia. Insight Asia Travel offers the most beautiful beaches in the world in Vietnam beach vacations and runs Long Stay Promotion at the Nam Hai Resort in Hoi An.Boasting terrific beach-blessed shoreline and grand boulevards, Quy Nhon is also a good spot to sample some fresh seafood. The Rough Guide suggested that travelers should head up Quy Nhon by xeom (motorcycle taxi) for sweeping views over the unspoiled countryside before returning to town for a seafood supper.In 2015, Quy Nhon started a city sightseeing tour by horse-drawn carriage. Visitors can opt for the city's most beautiful and green street  An Duong Vuong or go along the beach on Xuan Dieu Street. Quy Nhon attract tourists with plenty of fascinating landscapes such as Eo Gio, Ghenh Rang (Rang Rapids), Hoang Hau Beach (Queen Beach), etc. and cultural and historical relics like Twin Tower, Long Khanh Pagoda, etc. Travelers also have chance to taste many specialties like banh it la gai (sticky rice cake with coconut or green bean stuffing wrapped in pinnate leaf), chicken, especially seafood dishes, etc.Insight Asia Travel is offering special offer on Hoi An Beach Vacation at the Nam Hai Resort. Along a seemingly infinite stretch of sand, amidst Vietnams richest cultural heritage, a strand of sophisticated, visually striking villas of this luxury resort lines the dramatic beachfront. Holiday-makers have chance to explore the nearby UNESCO World Heritage Sites of Hoi An, My Son and Hue with its Buddhist pagodas, royal tombs and historic citadels. The 3 Nights Stay in One-bedroom Villa for 2 persons starts from US$ 1,190. This best rate guaranteed offer is valid from 1st September to 22nd December 2016.Insight Asia Travel customizes and creates products, itineraries and experiences as requested by clients. Day-by-day program is flexible, personalized, and creative. For the tour offers best suit your taste, please send us a message via e-mail at sales@insightasiatravel.com or visit our websiteLiving in South East Asia and with many years of experience in the travel industry, we are committed to delivering high-quality travel services and life-enriching, memorable holiday experiences for each and every individual.We are proud to be one of the best tour operators in the regions who offer the Highlights of Vietnam Tours, Laos Tours, Cambodia Tours, Myanmar Tours and Thailand Tours.Insight Asia Travel1 Do Hanh street, Hai Ba Trung District, Hanoi, Vietnam
Get the best directory for schools, education and careers in USA with w3Education!

http://www.w3education.org

Education is a boon to mankind which helps them to grow and develop in a forward direction in life. There is a horde of subjects and courses that one can pursue in different schools and colleges in the country. An education directory like w3Education one can accumulate and use a lot of valuable information in the field of education in the United States. This online directory is a great way for students to realize how they can turn their passion into their career and hence attain much more. An education directory has the latest information regarding various courses available in different fields in schools and colleges in the current scenario. There is information regarding all such subjects and different courses that one can pursue.The website of w3education focuses on all such different subjects and the kind of career opportunities that they can lead on to! Be it art and design or business studies, there is information regarding all such subjects on this online portal. Other fields include media studies and communication, culinary arts, computers and technology, education and teaching studies, engineering and architecture, fashion, interior design and many other such promising fields. Other than useful information about such subjects and their corresponding career fields, this portal also acts as a school directory for American students. So, be it information regarding business schools, culinary schools or health and nursing schools, there is latest information available here. Their school directories consists of thousands of traditional as well as online degree programs such as online MBA programs, which are very popular with the students. Such degree programs, whether online programs or on campus programs help the students to launch into the careers of their choice and field.All the questions in a students mind, pertaining to different fields of education, colleges as well as career opportunities can now be answered with the help of their career guide. All types of colleges and schools can be found through this career guide who enlightens the student about the career opportunities that it brings with it. All additional information regarding the American Education system and potential career opportunities can now be found atwith the career guide and school and college directories of w3Education, any student can make himself knowledgeable about various subjects and courses and their corresponding career opportunities!Casella Postale 143,Castagnola, Ticino6976, Switzerland
IQPC announces 5th International Conference Offshore Wind Power Substations

Offshore Wind Power Substations 2016

http://www.offshore-windpower-substations.com/

Taking place in Bremen, Germany, this technical event with special focus on assessing cost-effective solutions to optimize design, construction, installation and operation of offshore substations will give the opportunity to share experience with next generation transformer stations, as well as development optimization for lower costs.The 5th International Conference Offshore Wind Power Substations 2016, produced by IQPC GmbH, will be held at the Swissotel in Bremen on August 30th  September 1st 2016, and will welcome experts from offshore wind farm owners, manufacturers, developers, major suppliers, insurance, and academia to exchange knowledge on the latest material innovation, new strategies to improve development and installation time, reducing overall costs, and extending substation lifecycles.The conference offers 3 full days of insights from global industry experts, 2 technical workshops, and 5 interactive sessions including our notable speed networking. The event will be co-located with Advances in Wind Turbine Towers and Anti-Icing for Wind Turbines.Key topics include: Optimization of offshore transmission systems to minimize losses for HVAC and HVDC Modular solutions and grid code-compliant designs with a focus on cost reduction Utilities and TSOs experience in design, fabrication, and installation of offshore substations New electrical design concepts to improve reliability Risk management strategies for transformer platformsPresentations include: Design, construction, and operation of far-shore HV wind farms: a contractors key takeawaysThomas van Peteghern, Electrical Project Engineer, Systems DivisionCG, Belgium Strategies for cost reduction and optimization of substation designsReimar Schlogl, Managing Directortkb, Germany Standardisation of 700MW offshore AC substations as part of the strategy for offshore wind in the NetherlandsMarien Ruppert, Project Engineer Offshore substationTenneT TSO, Netherlands Solving the topside weight optimization challengeDaniel Noermark, Senior Project Manager, Offshore SubstationsRamboll, Denmark Utilities experience on Sandbank substationBart Verbeeck, Package Manager Offshore SubstationVattenfall, Germany Risk management of HVAC and HVDC OSS seen from the insurer perspectiveTruels Kjer, Senior Risk Engineer CoC Windpower, VP Global MarketsSwiss Re Denmark Services A/S, Denmark Grid connection and grid code compliancePaul van Leest, Package Manager Electrical Infrastructure, Peter Huiberts, SCADA EngineerGemini Offshore Wind, the NetherlandsFor more information and details concerning speakers, sessions, and presentations, visit:About IQPC:IQPC provides business executives around the world with tailored practical conferences, large scale events, topical seminars and in-house training programs, keeping them up-to-date with industry trends, technological developments and the regulatory landscape. IQPC's large scale conferences are market leading must attend events for their respective industries. IQPC produces more than 1,500 events annually around the world, and continues to grow. Founded in 1973, IQPC now has offices in major cities across six continents including: Berlin, Dubai, London, New York, Sao Paulo, Singapore, Stockholm, and Sydney. IQPC leverages a global research base of best practices to produce an unrivalled portfolio of conferences.Karina SchultzMarketing ManagerIQPC GmbHFriedrichstr. 9410117 Berlin
Get Best Quality Products At Easy Cost

6/10/2016- HS metal products is a brand name offering Post anchor along with timber wood connector, fence post manufacturer and related items at low cost. They have helped local people in managing Great products as per their convenience. You can always contact them if looking for great quality equipments at low cost. They were established in the year 2001 in China and have now more than 10 years production experience in the relevant field. They have successfully produced a variety of attractive DIY metal equipments at low cost in the market. You can always get in touch with them if looking for great quality products as per your needs. They offer attractive DIY metal products at competitive price.They began to develop products as like ground screws as like screw pile and achieved milestone with the same. There are many professionals looking to compare great products with great domestic care and so on. They have successfully acquired two Certificates for Utility Model Patent and Design Patent. The ground screws are quite popular in purchasing of construction of solar power plants with city guardrails, advertising boards and so on as like house building and more. They have incorporated steel nail business as started from the industry and began exporting products with nail as traders. They have been producing great products as like anything and buyers are always looking for quality products online. They have been looking to produce according to buyers samples and drawing for exports. They have been offering free samples for testing the product and so on.They are able to offer ground screw options and helping people in managing all kinds of soil and investigation reports along with usage. They also help people by OEM services and so on. The products as offered by them have a good reputation from home and abroad. They have provided Post anchors, ground screw along with wooden connectors and fence posts as possible. They have exported the products to various cities as like Asia, Europe and America as well. Hey have also cooperated people with constant customers. They are always looking to help people by joining hands and creating mutual benefits as needed for win-win cooperation. They have always visited the factory and look for negotiation business. They have successfully honored the customers and offered great respect based on sincerity and so on. You are always free to write to them as according to your convenience. The Post anchors are widely used in construction to fasten fence along with pergolas, shelters and so on.They are easily protected by corrosion and so on and has served as the foundation of light construction, temporary construction on working site with temporary construction on working site along with utility and so on. They also take care of green house effect gases and easily available for wide application, with sustainable usage.HS metal products are helping those people who are looking for screw drives and similar accessories. They act as a amazing choice for local people in the region.Gu Town, National Road 205, Huanghua,Hebei Province, China
Increasing service life for Seco rotary vane vacuum pumps and compressors

Seco SV 1025 C rotary vane vacuum pump from Busch: a new vane material drastically increases the service interval

www.buschvacuum.com

www.buschvacuum.com

The service life for dry-running rotary vane vacuum pumps and compressors from Busch has been drastically increased. The proven oil-free Seco vacuum pumps and compressors are now equipped with new high performance vanes as standard. Newly developed, self-lubricating Aerodur 274 zircon material makes it possible to offer a service life that is at least three times as long as that of conventional materials. Furthermore, resistance to moisture is increased so that even damp gasses and vapours can be extracted or compressed. Busch offers dry-running rotary vane vacuum pumps with pumping speeds of 10 to 40 cubic metres per hour (50 Hz operation), with the longest service intervals on the market.Busch vacuum pumps and compressors in the various Seco series are tried and tested in many handling or pick and place applications. They are used during packaging processes in carton erectors, on tubular bag packaging machines, or with filling machinery. Additional application areas are in medical technology and electrical engineering, as well as the food industry. The Seco DC series, which simultaneously generates a vacuum of -0.6 bar and overpressure of +0.6 bar, was specifically designed for the transportation and supply of paper sheets or foils to printing or print processing machines. Seco DC models are available in two sizes with pumping speed or volume flows of 25 and 40 cubic metres at 50 Hz operation.The Seco SV series includes vacuum pumps in sizes with 10, 16, 25 and 40 cubic metre pumping speeds per hour (50 Hz operation), with ultimate pressures from 120 to 150 mbar. The Seco SD series consists of the same increments for plain compressors creating overpressures of 0.6 bar.Busch offers an exchange set for the Seco SV, Seco SD and Seco DC series so that conventional vanes can be exchanged for the new high performance Aerodur 274 zircon vanes. Vacuum pump or compressor operators can quickly and easily exchange the vanes themselves.Author: Uli MerkleContact:31 May 2016Busch Vacuum Pumps and Systems is one of the largest manufacturers of vacuum pumps, blowers and compressors in the world.With a lot of experience and top qualified personnel, we are forward-looking and strive to improve our products and ourselves. We are constantly at work developing innovative technologies that will define the vacuum world of the future.Our manufacturing plants utilize the most modern manufacturing techniques, machinery and equipment under very strict quality controls, which surpass DIN EN ISO 9001 requirements.As of 2016, Busch Vacuum Pumps and Systems employs more than 3000 people and features the largest selection of vacuum pumps for the industrial applications in the world. Due to its immense line of vacuum pumps, expertise and experience in the building of vacuum systems and the extensive service network, Busch is capable of providing ideal comprehensive solutions.With 60 companies in 42 countries and sales agents in over 30 countries, we are strategically positioned throughout the world to provide our customers with the essentials for success.Our goal always is to provide the customer with the highest possible return on investment. Personal consulting, choice of the optimum product and prompt service on site are key features of our comprehensive service that make the achievement of this goal reality. Our experience and know how in broadly diversified applications and product design furnish the basis.Buschs headquarters is located in Maulburg, Germany. Besides Busch Holding, the German manufacturing plant, Busch Produktions GmbH, the sales organization, Dr.-Ing. K. Busch GmbH and service company, Busch Dienste GmbH are headquartered here. In addition, Busch operates production plants in Switzerland, Great Britain, Czech Republic, Korea and the USA.Busch Dienste GmbHMarketing/Marketing ServicesUli MerkleSchauinslandstrae 179689 MaulburgTelefon: 07622/681-144E-Mail: Uli.Merkle@busch.deWebsite:
Multiverse vision of a Cuban painter

Havana, Friday, 10 June 2016  The researcher in charge of the project FMCR is pleased to announce findings on the aesthetic evolution of the contemporary Cuban painter Fidel Mico between 1999 and 2000. The most relevant clue seems to be placed around the painting Rio de aromas (50 x 70 cm, oil on canvas, 1999, USA private collector, New Jersey, USA.) taking into account a short communication published by Mico in his virtual gallery hosted at the web site ArtsCad. In a brief statement entitled Spirits of the tropical wood, the artist wrote: In autumn of 1999, I was travelling in my island being almost sure that I would find a natural landscape comparable with those painted by Ivan Ivanovich Shishkin (1832  1898). I was sure that I have seen similar woods in some place of my country, but rather I found something different. A place plenty of idyllic smells appeared in the way and it was unavoidable stopping to enjoy it. Suddenly, I felt out of the real world. I felt that I was looking to the world from other world. At the beginning, a massive fear takes me, but I overcame it by deciding to explore this new perception of the existence. Later, Mico wrote: I decided painting Rio de aromas in the hope of trapping in my canvas, at least, a small part of the air suspended over the river.During the research project, Buxado reported to a peer-reviewed journal from University of Chicago: Micos style has evolved constantly. If several paintings from the same year are compared, one can find a continuous experimentation on issues of composition. The apparently simple landscapes Al cantio de un gallo (95 x 130 cm, oil on canvas, 2000, unknown location), Amanecer en la sierra (95 x 130 cm, oil on canvas, 2000, unknown location), and Camino a la laguna (95 x 130 cm, oil on canvas, 2000, unknown location) show his ability to change the position of a single tree and a few palms with different intentions (Art Documentation, 2015, 34 (2): 349-353). However, later examinations of the three artworks painted in 2000 and Rio de aromas, painted in 1999, revealed the actual aesthetic game of the artist after an impressive spiritual experience. It seems to be obvious that he received the impact of a special kind of inspiration force, and probably he tried to represent his perceptions in more than one painting. Looking to the four paintings as a whole, the compositional experiment seems to be far beyond the initial interpretation published in Art Documentation. He also included different positions of the river, as a third compositional element, which suggests a multiverse thought line during the painting process that could be useful for further examination and appraisal of Micos works and other pieces painted by contemporary Cuban artists.The project FMCR is an exceptional opportunity to study the painting of an artist with special natural gifts. New evidences found during the study include: 5 images of oil on canvas painted in 2015, additional details on the provenance of 11 artworks, the expansion of his market to The Netherlands, 5 additional peer-reviewed publications, examinations in the original of 33 oil on canvas, and 3 new images on authenticity. A recent exhibition in Mexico City, the book The silence smell, the public auction at Ruby Lane Inc, the growing international visibility of his son Michel Mico, a formidable painter, and recent historical events in Cuba have confirmed the fair market value of his paintings.Although at present there is not perceptible marketing activity on the artworks painted by Fidel Mico, the fair market value of his paintings could be estimated at 4 000 USD/m2. Auction records of landscapes painted by the contemporary Cuban artists Tomas Sanchez and Ernesto Estevez, after moderate to low marketing activity, suggest that a similar level of promotion with Micos paintings will result in a total market of 18 million USD by the year 2027, and a rate of return well above the generally accepted value of 9% for Latin American Fine Art (Economia, 2004, 4 (2): 1-35). The present owner of the painting Rio de aromas is the Industrial Engineer Yaneldys Garces Morales (e-mail: nuevav2012@yahoo.com) who is waiting for the best offer.The Fidel Mico Catalogue Raisonnee is a research project opened to explore the artists work in the last 40 years. The project began 5 years ago from informal interviews at the artists studio, and has received particular attention from international organization for art research.Jose A. Buxado, MSc.Rodriguez N 14, entre Maboa y Rabi, apto 1,Rpto. Santos Suarez, Municipio 10 de Octubre,La Habana, Cuba.e-mail: jose.acosta@cigb.edu.cu
Bahama Air Direct from Orlando to Grand Bahama Island

www.Escapesint.com

Orlando, FLEscapes International Travel announced today that their Orlando based clients will soon be able to take direct flights on Bahama Air form Orlando International Airport to Grand Bahama Island, Bahamas.Bahama Air has always had direct flights from Palm Beach and Miami so it was more difficult for my Orlando clients to jump on a quick weekend get-a-way, with this newly added direct service out of MCO to Grand Bahama Island Airport it will be a breeze to have a quick getaway said Lucie Pescatello the owner of Escapes International Travel.Couples and families that live in Central Fl, are always looking for a quick get-a-way. I am always asked about the Bahamas and have to tell them they need to do a connection in Miami which usually turns off the client. Now with a direct one hour or less gate to gate option many central Floridians will be pleased, continued Mrs. Pescatello.To find out more information on get-a-ways to Grand Bahama contact Lucie Pescatello at Escapes International Travel.About Escapes International Travel.I started Escapes International because several friends and relatives loved the places I have booked for myself and asked me to help them plan their dream vacation. I used to be like many people and thought I could just jump on the internet and book a trip. I quickly learned that is not always the best deal and that having a personal travel concierge to do the leg work for you and make recommendation is a far better use of one's time and resources and at no added cost to you.Visit Escapes International Travel website for more information atAbout Freeport BahamasFreeport is the main city on Grand Bahama, an island in the northwest Bahamas off the Florida coast. It's best known for the oceanfront Lucaya district's beaches, resorts and shopping. Nearby, Deadman's Reef is popular for snorkeling, and the surrounding offshore waters have many dive sites. Up the coast, Lucayan National Park features extensive underwater caves plus kayaking and nature trails.Escapes International TravelLake NonaOrlando, FL 32832
Homeowners now able to sell their home fast in Houston, TX with Moneybug's instant cash offer

Houston, Texas: Houston is the biggest city in Texas, and as such, is a popular destination for homebuyers. Recently, Houston recently surpassed New York City as the most culturally diverse in the country and has been steadily increasing in population. With such a population growth over the past few years, homeowners in Houston are urged to take advantage of the increasing demand for available housing. When they sell their home fast with MoneyBug, this demand has the market set to benefit the sellers most.When someone needs to sell their house fast in Houston, MoneyBug will work quickly to buy it. Homeowners can sell their home in Houston without having to deal with the hassle of MLS paperwork, fees, or realtor commission, and MoneyBug buys houses no matter your situation. Whether you need to sell your house because of foreclosure, you are liquidating assets, or even if youre going through a divorce, MoneyBug will buy your house. Homeowners dont even need to repair their home before the sale; they can sell a house with MoneyBug even if it has flood damage or needs repair.When a homeowner needs to sell a house fast, MoneyBugs website provides them with an instant cash offer. With state-of-the-art technology, MoneyBugs site features developed algorithms that crunch data to return a cash offer instantaneously. Homeowners do not even need to call and speak to a MoneyBug representative in order to receive this cash offer, and MoneyBug will work quickly to give this cash to the homeowner in just seven days.Since it was founded in 2008, MoneyBug has been bringing this opportunity to sell a house fast to homeowners across the country. MoneyBug is there to help owners sell their house fast in Collin County, The Colony, Dallas, Houston, Fort Worth, St. Petersburg, Atlanta, Inland Empire, and Los Angeles. In just eight years, MoneyBug has purchased over 6,000 single-family homes for a total over one billion dollars in acquisitions.MoneyBug works hard to help homeowners who dont want to deal with the hassle of listing their home through MLS and traditional realtors, or just want an easy solution to sell their house fast. They stand separately from other cash-for-home companies with a unique ability to work quickly to close the sale in just seven days, while high-tech advancements provide homeowners with an instant cash offer for their home online. Homeowners dont even have to pay to make repairs or renovations before they sell. MoneyBug buys houses as-is, even if it is damaged. Without spending extra time or hard-earned cash on repairs and improvements, MoneyBug will still give homeowners the highest amount of money for their home.4600 Fuller Dr.Ste 200Irving, TX 75028
If you have attended many commencement ceremonies in your life you have likely struggled to stay awake through more than one.

On a rare occasion there will be one so good its YouTube posting and spread on Facebook make it go viral.

Not long ago I watched the 2014 University of Texas commencement address given by Admiral McRaven. A 36-year Navy Seal, McRaven retired as commander of the U.S. Special Operations Command.

His simple, short address cited 10 things he learned in Navy Seal training.

Among the lessons cited were, making your bed every day, failing a uniform inspection and being punished with extra calisthenics.

His simple points are great life lessons. Making your bed every morning, he said, is that it is an accomplishment of a simple task and it leads to a second task and a third task and so on.

He said he quickly learned that no matter how good, even what you think is a perfect uniform would fail inspection because the person inspecting would find something in order to make you walk into the surf and get soaked, then roll around on the beach getting sugar cookied.

He said the lesson is that no matter how well you think you have done something, you sometimes fail. Get over it, he said.

Here is a link to the full 20-minute address by Admiral McRaven. It is worth a listen. www.youtube.com/watch?v=pxBQLFLei70

And just this week one of my cousins alerted me to another terrific commencement address.

Harvard Graduate School of Education dean, James Ryan, presented five truly essential questions you should regularly ask yourself.

The first is Wait, what? You have likely heard this asked by your children when you say something that they feel they must process to understand  something crazy like, you cannot turn on the television until you complete your homework.

Ryan says the wait, what question indicates inquiry, and inquiry always precedes advocacy. He says it is at the root of all understanding.

The second essential question is, I wonder why/if ... This shows curiosity and a willingness to improve on an idea or thought. It is at the heart of all curiosity.

And since not everyone is always going to agree with us, Ryan suggests a third essential question is, Couldnt we at least ... Ryan says this indicates a willingness to reach a consensus. It is at the beginning of all progress.

The fourth essential question is, How can I help? Asking how you can help indicates a level of concern and caring that goes a long way toward consensus and understanding. It is at the base of all good relationships.

The fifth essential is asking, What truly matters to me? He suggests this might be asked when considering New Years resolutions and refocusing on what things are truly valuable and matter in life. It gets you to the heart of life.

And then in reflection, realizing that not everything is going to go as we would like or how we may expect, we should ask ourselves Did you get what you wanted out of life, even so ...

The even so evaluates our aspirations, hopes and dreams through a lens of maturity that recognizes life must be measured on, did I feel beloved, cherished and respected.

Ryan concludes by saying the world will be a better place not when people feel successful, but when they feel beloved.

Here is the link to the Ryan address. www.youtube.com/watch?v=bW0NguMGIbE

Both can be viewed is less than 30 minutes and I am certain you will feel like it was 30 minutes well spent.

Gary Adkisson is publisher of The Sentinel. Reach him at 240-7110 or at gadkisson@cumberlink.com.
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Fifty years after The Dalles Dam went into operation, damming the Columbia River, flooding Celilo Falls and destroying a nearby Native American fishing settlement, a ghost has come to haunt Cal Claxton.

The ghost is that of Nelson Queah, a Wasco tribal activist and decorated U.S. Army veteran, who hasn't been seen since the night the falls vanished in 1957. Now his granddaughter has sought out Claxton, a onetime Los Angeles prosecutor who's reinvented himself as a one-man law practice in Oregon wine country, to help her sift through newly uncovered information that could reveal what happened to Queah. But no sooner does Claxton start investigating than the bodies start piling up.

Warren C. Easley, author of "Not Dead Enough," a Cal Claxton Oregon Mystery.

Claxton is the protagonist of "Not Dead Enough" (Poisoned Pen Press, 288 pages, $26.95), the fourth in a crime fiction series by Oregon author Warren C. Easley about an "everyman" who can't resist a plea for help. Here, the plea leads him into a thicket of political and personal intrigue that goes all the way back to the last days of Celilo.

Easley, who's listed writers Raymond Chandler, Tony Hillerman and James Lee Burke as influences, recently answered questions about his book by email.

Q: Why did you choose to frame your plot within the story of Celilo Falls?

The story of Celilo Falls has a lot of emotional resonance for me, which is what I need to start a book. As a mystery writer, I thought, what if a Native American activist against the dam construction disappeared the day the flood gates were closed? That spark got me going, and the fact that it would be a fifty-year cold case was daunting but didn't deter me.

Q: As Cal pursues his investigation, he roams the state to such an extent that the reader gets a crash course in Oregon geography. What was your goal in writing in such detail about so many settings?

The beauty and variability of Oregon's geography is fundamental to the experience of living here. I wanted my readers to experience that as vividly as possible. I suppose that reflects my own love of this place.

Q: How would you categorize this book? As a mystery set in Oregon? As an Oregon thriller? Something else?

The book is definitely a mystery set in Oregon. It's a whodunit that lies between hardboiled and cozy. Cal's a lawyer, but it's not a legal procedural. So, I guess you could call it a medium-boiled, legal whodunit.

Q: What do you hope readers take away from this book?

I hope the reader enjoys playing cat and mouse with me to figure out who's committing the crimes and why and that they come away having experienced an authentic slice or two of Oregon. At the same time, I hope they'll better understand what happened at Celilo and the devastation to Native American culture and economy that followed.

Easley will launch "Not Dead Enough" with a reading at 7 p.m. Wednesday, June 15, at Annie Bloom's Books, 7834 S.W. Capitol Highway. Here's an excerpt.

***

In my book, the only decent reason for getting up before dawn is to fly fish. But there I was, fumbling around with the coffee machine at four thirty on Friday morning. Philip was right about an early start. I sure as hell didn't want to miss Sherman Watlamet after driving all the way out there. But I had to admit I was looking forward to the drive to a part of Oregon I'd only read about. I would go through the Gorge again, this time well past Celilo Village, and then climb out into the high desert. Out there, the landscape was formed, not by the ice age torrents that carved the Gorge, but by millennia of erupting volcanoes that sculpted a sprawling, starkly beautiful landscape.

Archie was in the backseat, a happy puppy. He loved to ride in the car, so I'd decided to take him with me, his first serious road trip. He was large for his breed, with a black coat trimmed in copper and white and big, expressive eyes that matched the coppery color of his trim. Not high strung like most Aussies, he was calm, inquisitive, and utterly undeterred by any obstacles he encountered. He had a way of winning people over, too--even folks who thought they didn't like dogs.

We were twenty miles into the Gorge when the sun ignited the horizon in gold and orange light filtered through a low bank of thin clouds. A profusion of sharply etched silhouettes emerged upriver--knife-edged cliffs, blunt headlands serrated with firs, and smooth, humpbacked peaks. In first light, the scene was a study in purple, with the distance of the shapes marked by the depth of their hues. The river materialized almost simultaneously as a smooth, rose colored band that ran through the center of it all.

We exited the Gorge at Biggs and made a pit stop before heading south on Route 97. The sky had turned vivid blue and was featureless except for the blurred arcs of two crossing contrails. I smelled sagebrush and juniper as we sped through the high desert, slowing only for a couple of one-stop towns and one big coyote on the side of the road that set Archie off in a fit of barking.

Just before Clarno I turned off the highway onto a dirt road that ran more or less parallel to the John Day River. A mile in I slowed down as I approached a thick line of junipers on my left, which, according to Philip's directions, marked an intersecting road without a street sign. I was to turn there, toward the river. A pickup suddenly emerged from the shielded road, swung into the intersection, and blew by me in the direction I'd come from. Fearing it was Watlamet on his way out, I craned my neck to get a look at the driver, a man in a cowboy hat. As we passed each other, our eyes met for a moment before he turned away. "Too young," I said, feeling relieved. I was sure he wasn't the man I'd driven all this way to see.

I took the left at the trees and a quarter mile further in saw a rusty mailbox marking a deeply rutted driveway, just as Philip had described it. The driveway led up a low knoll. I stopped at the top and took in the view of Watlamet's place--a weathered, ranch-style house, a barn behind the house with an old tractor parked alongside, and pasture land behind the barn, where at least a dozen head of cattle were grazing. Two horses were corralled next to the barn, and a cherry red Toyota pickup sat in front of the house.

I eased down the drive and parked well back from the truck so that I could be seen from the house. Philip had reminded me that it was bad manners to barge in on an Indian household unannounced. The proper etiquette was to wait outside several minutes, which I did before leaving Arch in the car with the windows partway down. The house was quiet, and no one answered the door, so I started around the house toward the barn.

That's when I saw him.

Reprinted with permission of Poisoned Pen Press, from Not Dead Enough by Warren C. Easley.
bz.aircrane.130.JPG

Erickson Inc., famed for its heavy-lift helicopters, is considering various restructuring options, it acknowledged Thursday. Jeff Roberts, the company's CEO, predicted Erickson will survive and thrive thanks to its passionate employees. Fredrick D. Joe/The Oregonian

(Fredrick D. Joe)

Struggling Portland helicopter company Erickson Inc. announced Thursday it is considering restructuring alternatives in the wake of contract setbacks and the lingering impact of a controversial 2013 acquisition.

"We're going through some difficult, challenging times," said Erickson chief executive Jeff Roberts. "This is a great company. We're sick, but we're not terminal."

Erickson's revenue and stock price have plunged in recent years. Seemingly, the only things growing are the company's quarterly losses and the interest it is paying on the $355 million in long-term debt borrowed in 2013 as ordered by its private-equity owner.

After cutting 150 jobs last year, Erickson now employs fewer than 800, about half of them at its Portland headquarters and an operations center in southern Oregon.

Erickson has hired investment banker Imperial Capital to guide it through the restructuring. All options are on the table, Roberts said, from standing pat to selling off assets to a formal bankruptcy.

"One option is doing nothing," Roberts said. "Another is some sort of court action. There are 500 other options in between and my feeling is, that's where we'll end up."

Roberts acknowledged Erickson is plagued by a shortage of cash and an overabundance of debt. "There's no question for the size of the company today, we have unacceptable levels of liquidity and leverage on the business," he said.

Most of that borrowing came in 2013, when Erickson bought the helicopter unit of a fellow-Oregon aviation company, Evergreen International. Erickson borrowed $355 million to fund the deal, more than tripling its debt.

At the time, Erickson executives boasted the Evergreen acquisition would be "transformative," leading to unprecedented growth. The acquisition gave Erickson entry into a large new market: Military and government defense contracts.

But the deal closed just as the United States was rapidly cutting back its missions in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the government transport contracts at Evergreen were expiring.

Erickson's acquisition of Evergreen was masterminded by ZM Equity Partners, the New York private equity firm that owns a controlling stake of Erickson. While the deal has proven disappointing for Erickson, it was beneficial for ZM.

At the time of the deal, Evergreen was in disarray. It owed more than $317 million to an army of creditors. ZM was one of them -- owed a hefty $62.5 million, according to court documents.

Erickson paid a premium price -- more than $250 million. As part of the convoluted transaction, ZM also got repaid, but not by Evergreen, by Erickson.

In a lawsuit filed in 2014, a shareholder claimed ZM engineered a bailout for itself on Erickson's dime and never even bothered to get the approval of Erickson's independent directors. The lawsuit claims ZM breached its fiduciary duty to Erickson and its shareholders.

The suit is still pending.

More recently, Erickson's ties to ZM have brought additional headaches.

Late last year, the Small Business Administration notified Erickson it would no longer be eligible for government contracts reserved for small businesses. That decision cost Erickson a crucial U.S. Forest Service firefighting contract this year worth between $45 million and $50 million, Roberts confirmed.

Erickson appealed the Small Business Administration's ruling. The company pointed out it was actually smaller, after last spring's layoff, than when it was awarded Forest Service contracts reserved for small business in prior years, Roberts said.

But the Small Business Administration informed Erickson that it no longer viewed the company as a stand-alone entity. Rather, it considered Erickson part of a family of companies controlled by ZM and its principal, Quinn Morgan.

Reached by phone Thursday, Morgan declined an interview request.

"I have nothing to say to you, nothing whatsoever," he said before hanging up.

-- Jeff Manning

503-294-7606, jmanning@oregonian.com
Portland-based Allegro Media Group, a distributor for small, independent music and video labels, appears to be leaving a swath of unhappy business partners in the wake of its financial problems.

FJ Forest, owner of Waveform Records and an Allegro customer, said he talked to a former Allegro employee who said the distributor laid off "several dozen people" last Friday.

"They called employees into a conference room and gave everyone their last checks," Forest said. But, he said, company officers "didn't tell the labels."

The company kept CD inventory from dozens of independent record labels in the process, Forest said.

Forest's label sells its CDs to Allegro for distribution, but hasn't received a payment in more than a year. He said Allegro sent him another purchase order last week, but because he hasn't been paid, he didn't fill it.

Forest said Allegro is refusing to return CDs to him and the other labels, too. Because Allegro does not pay for CDs upfront, customers don't have the money or the inventory.

Forest said Allegro doesn't appear to be filing for bankruptcy but will instead "reorganize" under Somerset, one of its subsidiaries.

Mark Powell, executive director of the independent label Cappella Romana, said he also heard about the layoffs and liquidation.

Powell said Cappella Romana is owed more than $15,000 in back sales from CD and digital downloads, and the retail value of his label's seized assets is another $14,000.

In a press release, Powell said Allegro issued an email statement earlier this week.

It read: "The company has engaged, [sic] Edward Hostmann Inc., [sic] as Chief Restructuring Officer to supervise the process. EHI will be managing the liquidation of the Allegro business lines in an orderly out of court liquidation."

Edward Hostmann Inc. provides financial advisory services to companies in crises, according to its website.

Edward Hostmann was not available for comment Thursday, and Allegro did not respond to interview requests.

-- Natasha Rausch
Federal regulators had yet to release their $746 million plan to decontaminate the Portland Harbor Superfund Site on Wednesday when they got their first grilling from a community activist underwhelmed by the agency's response.

Barbara Quinn, who sits on a community group demanding an aggressive cleanup of the lower Willamette River, had just learned the feds plan to leave much of the 10-mile stretch untouched. The technique, known as "monitored natural recovery," relies upon time and natural processes to dilute the cancer-causing chemicals lining the river bottom.

Quinn's voice on the telephone line was unmistakably testy.

"What do you have a say to the community members who are concerned that so-called natural recovery does not deal with the problem of persistent pollutants?" the St. Johns resident asked the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

And so began a 60-day race to shape the long-awaited federal document that will guide the cleanup of Oregon's most polluted river.

How to comment...

The EPA meetings, all running from 11:30 a.m. to 8 p.m., are:

June 24:

Portland Building, 1120 S.W. 5th Ave.

June 29:

Expo Center, 2060 N. Marine Drive.

July 11:

University Place Conference Center, 310 S.W. Lincoln St.

July 20:

Ambridge Center, 1333 N.E. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd.

Russian, Spanish, Vietnamese, and Chinese interpreters will attend the June 24th meeting. To request an interpreter at one of the other meetings, email knudsen.laura@epa.gov or call 503-326-3280 at least two weeks in advance.

Copies of the plan will also be available for review at the Multnomah County Central Library, St. Johns Library and Kenton Library.

To comment on the plan, email harborcomments@epa.gov,

or mail your comment to Attn: Harbor Comments, U.S. EPA, 805 S.W. Broadway St., Suite 500, Portland, OR 97205.

The agency's release of its proposed plan after 16 years started the clock on a public comment period that, so far, has been marked by outrage from community groups and environmental activists who argue the plan is too weak -- and virtually no public reaction from the companies and government entities that could be forced to pay the tab.

Hundreds of millions of dollars, hundred of thousands of residents' health and miles of wildlife habitat are at stake. A century of industrial activity along the stretch of river that runs downstream from the Broadway Bridge to the Columbia Slough has left the sediment rife with heavy metals, pesticides and cancer-causing chemicals including PCBs. The soil is so tainted, it's unsafe to eat the area's resident bass, carp and catfish.

The remedy released Wednesday calls for natural recovery -- sometimes with a boost from strategically-poured sand -- along 1,936 acres of the river bottom. The remaining 231 acres would be dredged to remove tainted soil or capped with a humanmade barrier to keep contaminated sediment from threatening human health. Business groups worried about costs of an expansive cleanup have long lobbied federal regulators for a similar approach.

When the work is completed, officials say, the average person should be able to dine on fresh-caught Willamette River catfish about 20 times each year without elevated risk. Right now, officials warn no consumption comes without risk.

"We feel like we have a good remedy, and we think our analysis is sound," Cami Grandinetti, a manager in the environmental agency's Seattle office, told The Oregonian/OregonLive. "But we're open to the possibility that some of our analysis may change, and so we want people to weigh in."

The federal agency can expect many strongly worded comment letters. Leaders of groups representing environmental concerns, tribal interests, neighborhood associations and community organizations all expressed disappointment with the plan.

Some questioned the federal agency's insistence that vast swaths of the Superfund site can be healed in less than 30 years without any active cleanup work. The technique has been successful at other contamination sites, and federal officials say they'll periodically check to make sure it's working on the Willamette and pursue other options if it fails.

Others argued the agency should strive to achieve pollutant levels significantly lower than the current plan prescribes. And still others accused the agency of attempting to distract from the debate over monitored natural recovery by including in the plan an unpopular "red herring" proposal to store dredged toxic waste in a special containment area in the river.

Rose Longoria, a Superfund manager for Washington state's Yakama Nation, called the plan "grossly inadequate" and said tribal leaders were scheduling a meeting with Environmental Protection Agency Director Gina McCarthy to air their grievances. When it comes to protecting the health of tribal members who consume more fish than the average person, Longoria said, "the plan fails miserably."

Bob Sallinger, conservation director at Audubon Society of Portland and a longtime presence in the Superfund process, hinted that the group is already considering its legal options should the current plan stick.

"They're pretending that the solution to pollution is dilution," Sallinger said. "It's not."

Travis Williams, executive director of the Willamette Riverkeeper, accused federal regulators of bowing to pressure from industrial polluters, resulting in a weaker, cheaper plan than some alternatives floated before a federal review board late last year.

All parties said they're now focused on a massive public awareness push, hoping to amass thousands of public comments urging agency leaders to include more dredging and less monitored natural recovery in the final document they hope to release by year's end.

The 150-plus businesses and government entities that could share the cleanup costs remained largely silent Thursday. Those groups, known as "potentially responsible parties," have long insisted on a more affordable plan that includes substantial monitored natural recovery. Reached by The Oregonian/OregonLive on Thursday, many said they're still reviewing the plan and have yet to draw conclusions.

"Our issue has always been that the cost needs to be commensurate with the reduction in risk," said Barbara Smith, a spokeswoman for the Lower Willamette Group, a group of 14 parties including Portland's city government that could be tapped to pay for cleanup.

Federal regulators must read and respond to each public concern, and are likely to modify parts of the plan in response to public input. For instance, they have already expressed willingness to abandon plans to store contaminated soil in the river if community members object.

But the plan is unlikely to change substantially between now and when the feds make it official, which could happen by year's end.

"It's not a popular vote," Grandinetti said. "We certainly care about what the people think about the plan, but at the end of the day EPA needs to be able to implement the remedy."

--Kelly House

503-221-8178; @Kelly_M_House
      :     ;              
The issues of mosquito-borne Zika and West Nile viruses landed close to home this week when the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services confirmed two additional cases of Zika virus. One case is a male Missouri resident who had traveled to the Dominican Republic. The other is a Massachusetts resident visiting Missouri who sought assistance from a health care provider. The Massachusetts resident had traveled to Puerto Rico.

Earlier this month the St. Francois County Community Partnership made available two free publications dealing with Zika and West Nile. Both brochures are available at the partnership office at 200 West First Street in Farmington or by calling 573-756-0212.

According to the state health agency, "Nearly 80 percent of people infected with the virus will have no symptoms. Typically, symptoms are mild and include fever, rash, joint soreness and/or redness of eyes.

"International health officials have found a connection between pregnant women contracting the virus and a birth defect called microcephaly in their newborn infants. According to the CDC, babies with microcephaly often have smaller head sizes and brains that might not have developed properly."

As for the two free brochures - "Zika Facts-What Everyone Should Know About the Virus" and "10 Ways To Help Prevent Mosquito Borne Diseases" - community partnership Executive Director Al Sullivan said, "We are able to make these publications available through the money received from the Children's Trust Fund from people purchasing the special license plates for cars showing the children's hands. For each plate sold in St. Francois County the partnership receives a small portion of the fee."

According to the CDC, Zika virus has the potential to be spread through a mosquito bite, through unprotected sexual contact, through blood transfusion and an infected pregnant woman can pass Zika virus to her fetus during pregnancy.

There is not currently a vaccine for Zika virus. The best prevention measure is to avoid mosquito bites in areas with ongoing transmission.

There have been no reported cases of Zika virus contracted from a mosquito bite in Missouri. Ways to avoid mosquito bites while outdoors include wearing EPA-registered insect repellent with DEET, wearing pants and long sleeves, or remaining indoors in an air conditioned environment.

The CDC is recommending pregnant women avoid traveling to Zika-affected areas which include countries ranging from Mexico into the Caribbean, Central American and South America.

Since the beginning of the year, DHSS has regularly updated health care providers and the public about Zika virus in addition to coordinating the approval of Missourians for testing by the CDC.
Several Missouri schools are recognized for achievement in School Wide Positive Behavior Support each year. This year there are 217 Missouri public and charter schools that will be recognized for exemplary implementation of School Wide Positive Behavior Support (SW-PBS).

SW-PBS a proactive approach to teaching behavioral expectations in order to improve student behavior and maximize instructional time and student engagement. North County Primary is one of those schools and North County Primary Assistant Principal Laura Momot said they have been recognized as a Bronze school in the past and a Silver school in 2015.

This year we are being recognized as a Gold school and Mr. Chad Lynn, building principal and I, are proud of our teachers, said Momot. The North County Primary staff work together to teach students how to be safe, respectful and responsible. We have defined the expected behaviors, teach those expectations and recognize students for positive behavior. We are proud of our staff and it is nice for our teachers to be recognized.

Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education Assistant Commissioner Dr. Stephen Barr will be present to address the award recipients. Schools are awarded a recognition level of gold, silver or bronze, which represents the extent of their implementation of SW-PBS strategies and the evidence they have compiled about the programs impact in their school.

"MO SW-PBS recognition criteria are rigorous and research based," said Missouri SW-PBS State Director Nanci Johnson, Ph.D. "Schools that meet criteria for bronze, silver, and gold are demonstrating high fidelity of implementation at Tiers 1, 2, and 3, respectively. I applaud the ongoing work of all MO SW-PBS participating schools to improve learning environments for all students."

Momot said North County Primary is being recognized as a school that works as a team to help kids learn positive behavior.

Our PBS team meets monthly to discuss positive rewards for students and provide teachers and students with support, said Momot. We provided behavior interventions for students, collaborated as a PBS team, tracked student data and submitted the data to demonstrate we are following procedures.

SW-PBS is a systematic approach to creating safer and more effective schools by structuring the learning environment to support the academic and social success of all students. It focuses on encouraging positive student behavior, preventing disruptive behavior, and tailoring supports to individual student needs.

Momot said she and PBS Team Member Alicia Yount will attend the Summer Institute Conference in June to receive the award for the school.

The schools will be honored during the eleventh annual SW-PBS Summer Institute opening ceremonies on June 13 at 1 p.m. at Tan-Tar-A Resort in Osage Beach where more than 1,000 educators are expected to attend.

During the 2015-2016 school year, approximately 700 Missouri schools participated in the SW-PBS program. Successful systematic changes, such as SW-PBS, will help Missouri reach Goal 1 of the Department's Top 10 by 20 initiative, which focuses on college and/or career readiness for all students statewide. The Top 10 by 20 initiative aims for student achievement in Missouri to rank among the top 10 states by the year 2020.
The kids depended on her. They needed knowledge. Direction. Care.

Its hard to forget your kindergarten teacher. Especially someone like Nancy Wolanin, a woman who served as the first mentor for generations of 4- and 5-year-old chipmunks at Chestnut Hill Elementary. But her 23-year career as an educator came to an unwanted end.

In February 2013, Wolanin was diagnosed with leukemia. After all the years of teaching, shed need something in return: life.

Wolanin remembers emailing the principal to announce her retirement. She said she cleaned out her classroom the following March.

It was pretty emotional, said Wolanin, 66. I miss teaching kindergarten. I loved my job and loved those little faces.

She remembers the fatigue that set in while teaching. That was the only symptom.

Shed later have trouble breathing. Local doctors told her she had the flu. It got worse over a weekend. Doctors still thought it was the flu, she said.

But blood work would show she had acute myeloid leukemia, a cancer of the blood.

In acute myeloid leukemia, one of the four main types, bone marrow makes abnormal white blood cells, red blood cells or platelets, according to the National Cancer Institute, which said it worsens quickly if not treated.

Wolanin said she was told to immediately go to the hospital.

Five-year survival rates for those diagnosed with leukemia have more than quadrupled since 1960, according to the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. From 2006 to 2012, about 60 percent survived five years or more, according to the National Cancer Institute.

But for acute myeloid leukemia, the type Wolanin had, only 26 percent survive five years or more based on cases from 2006 to 2012, the National Cancer Institute said.

Wolanin said she faced either massive chemotherapy to put the cancer in remission, or a bone marrow transplant. For the latter, shed need a matching donor. None of her five brothers or sisters matched.

The really sad part is, less than half find a donor match, Wolanin said. The rest typically die because they dont have a donor.

So she played the waiting game, requiring 24/7 care and relocating to Ann Arbor. A social worker would help search for a donor. It took time to find the right one. The cancer had already spread to her stomach, chest and head, she said.

You wait on pins and needles every time, Wolanin said.

In the meantime, more chemo. More wait.

Then, in May 2013, someone saved her life.

It was a Texas medical student.

He was a perfect match, Wolanin said.

The bone marrow transplant took place May 1, 2013. Her University of Michigan oncologist said the next three years would be a critical time, because the leukemia could return. Those three years passed and for now, Wolanin said shes in the clear.

In November 2015, Wolanin met that Texas medical student. It was the most thrilling part of my life to meet the person who gave me life, she said.

Now, Wolanin, with support from a new Midland Area Interfaith Friends community group, wants to help others in need.

The group has helped organize a bone marrow registry. Theyve set a marrow donor drive at Blessed Sacrament Church, 3109 Swede Ave., from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Saturday, June 11. Donors between 18 and 44 in good general health are needed. The 10-minute procedure involves filling out a consent form and cheek swab. No appointment is necessary, but Wolanin asks those interested to call the church at (989) 835-6777 so she can estimate the turnout.

Its very near and dear to my heart, she said of the donor drive, adding the group has planned another one for the fall.

See more info on donating bone marrow here: http://bit.ly/1WYOJil.

From 2008 to 2012, leukemia was the fifth most common cause of cancer deaths in men and the sixth most common in women in the U.S.; in 2016, 24,400 people are expected to die from leukemia, the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society said.

Wolanin said she wants to make sure anyone else who faces the same grim news has a chance to live.

At 66, Im just glad to be alive and have another chance of life, Wolanin said, crediting support from family, Chestnut Hill staff, local and University of Michigan doctors  and her lifesaving donor.

Its a wonderful thing that people are coming forward to save lives. Its such an easy thing to do, she said.
DETROIT (AP)  Two men and a woman were charged Thursday with murder and kidnapping in the abduction and killing of a 13-year-old Detroit boy whose body was found a week ago in a vacant lot.

Gregory Walker, Lillian Roberts and Earnest Coleman all are charged with murder, unlawful imprisonment, kidnapping, torture and gun crime, Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy said.

Walker is accused of choking Deontae Mitchell to death with help from Roberts and Coleman. Coleman had been charged with kidnapping last weekend.

"This whole thing is hard to believe," Worthy said at a news conference. "This case shocked us all. There's not a whole lot that shocks seasoned prosecutors, but there are some things you just cannot explain."

A cousin told police that Deontae picked up some money dropped by a man outside of an eastside market May 31. Surveillance video shows Deontae being pursued by a man, who grabbed his arm and forced him into a car.

Deontae's body was found a week ago in a vacant lot in Detroit. A cause of death is being investigated.

It wasn't immediately clear whether the three had attorneys in this case.

Walker was arrested in Ohio, extradited to Detroit and pleaded guilty Wednesday to violating probation and other crimes stemming from a 2013 case.
A friend of a 20-year-old Midland man remembered as a bright light and a leader is planning a fitting honor with a 5K run/walk.

Quinten Greiner, a 2014 Midland High graduate and track leader at Spring Arbor University, died in a head-on traffic crash early Sunday in Van Buren County.

Quinten, a Spring Arbor sophomore, was on his way to the airport for a summer counseling position at a Christian camp in Montana when the crash occurred. He is the son of Eagle Ridge Church of God Senior Pastor William Greiner and wife Robin.

His friend, Brad Belson, has organized a 5K run/walk to start at 3 p.m. Sunday at the Pere Marquette Rail-Trail near the Midland Area Farmers Market.

Belson, 20, also a 2014 Midland High graduate, said he got the idea Monday when his brother told him his friend had died. The two met in middle school, where they would talk all the time, he said.

I started bawling, Belson said of hearing of Quintens death. He was literally the closest thing you could get to perfect.

He knew he had to turn the 5K idea into reality. So he created a Facebook page for Quintens 5K Run/Walk.

The support poured in.

It just blew right up, he said. Hundreds of likes, 100-something shares. It ended up being about 800 people interested.

Since then, Belson said hes worked with other area families and businesses to bring live music, food and a silent auction. Theres a $5 charge to run or walk the 5K, and T-shirts honoring Quinten will be sold for $10, with all proceeds going to the Greiner family.

Even if youre not running, come down and support and listen to the music, he said. Even being there is just great.

For those grieving, theres often no way to help, Belson says.

Now Ive given everyone in Midland a chance to help, and thats awesome, he said.
National organizations are communicating their concerns about the proposed merger of the Dow Chemical Co. and Delaware-based DuPont Co., citing decreased competition and adverse economic concentration.

Roger Johnson is the president of the National Farmers Union, and one of three signatures on a letter addressed to the Department of Justice. Diana L. Moss, president of the American Antitrust Institute, and Wenonah Hauter, executive director of Food & Water Watch, also signed the letter dated May 31.

It contained pages of data and research studies related to worries the three organizations share, Johnson said, that boil down to one concern: economic concentration.

The proposed merger of Dow and DuPont is likely to adversely affect competition in three ways, the letter read. First, it will eliminate head-to-head competition in markets for crop seed and chemicals. Second, the proposed merger will eliminate head-to-head competition in agricultural biotechnology innovation markets and reduce opportunities for pro-competitive research and development collaborations. Third, the merger would create substantial vertical integration between traits, seeds and chemicals.

The nonprofit American Antitrust Institute is devoted to promoting competition that protects consumers, businesses and society, and national consumer organization Food & Water Watch is dedicated to ensuring the food, water and fish we consume is safe, accessible and sustainably produced.

The National Farmers Union was founded in 1902, and advocates for the economic and social wellbeing and quality of life for 200,000 farmers across the country. Some of those farmers are quoted anonymously in the letter, saying competition is needed to keep prices down.

What will happen is there will be less competition, when and if these mergers go through, far less choices farmers will be presented with, and significantly less innovation in the marketplace, Johnson said. Farmers are going to end up paying higher costs for their inputs.

Dow responded to the letter with the following statement:

The combination of Dow and DuPont will generate significant pro-competitive efficiencies that will allow the combined company to be a more effective sustainable participant in the highly competitive agriculture industry, to the benefit of channel partners, growers and consumers. DuPont and Dow operate in adjacent areas.

There is very little overlap and the transaction broadens our product offerings to many different customers. The transaction is procompetitive and good for consumers, and we are working closely with the various antitrust authorities to answer any questions they may have. Because of the size and complexity of the companies, we anticipate that this will be a thorough process.SClBDow and DuPont announced today that they have reached a milestone in the merger process and set stockholder meetings to approve the merger.

The letter to the Department of Justice was specifically focused on DowDuPont, Johnson said, adding there is no debate in economic circles about whats going to happen if the merger is approved.

The DowDuPont one is particularly problematic, Johnson said, noting that both are domestic companies.

He also referred to recent moves by Monsanto to acquire Syngenta, and Bayer to acquire Monsanto, in a conversation with the Daily News.

You cannot look at DowDuPont in isolation. For the last year and a half, there has been an incredible amount of activity from these six predominant seed, chemical, technology providers, Johnson said. These concerns are similar in all parts of the country. Michigan is a very diverse state, agriculturally, and in some ways this makes the concern even more heightened.

Those concerns are also shared by some consumers, Johnson said.

In the long run, those costs get picked up by consumers. Consumers themselves will face fewer choices, he said.

While he does not anticipate a response from the Department of Justice, Johnson said the letter is an expression of the natural alliance the three organizations share.

These mergers and consolidations, obviously, are in this space of both food production and impacts to the environment, whether positive or negative, Johnson said.
The Michigan State Police are asking members of the public to assist in identifying a suspect in a theft.

The MSP Tri-City Post is investigating a theft that occurred at about 9:20 a.m April 29. The incident occurred on a Bay Metro Bus enroute to Saginaw Valley State University from the Midland Area. The victims wallet was mistakenly dropped, and then picked up by the male subject in the attached photographs, police stated.
Two men were arrested late Wednesday night after an assault in Greendale Township, the Midland County Sheriffs Office reports.

Deputies were called to a home just before midnight for a report of an assault that had just occurred. After further investigation, a 19-year-old Greendale Township man and a 23-year-old Indiana man were jailed on assault charges.
PACAF top chief visits SKorea

Chief Master Sgt. Harold. "Buddy" Hutchinson, Pacific Air Forces command chief, meets with Airmen from Osan Air Base, Republic of Korea during his visit to the ROK June 7, 2016. Hutchinson met with Airmen to discuss current topics such as the Weighted Airman Promotion System changes and enlisted professional military education. The chief's visit provided him an overview of 7th Air Force and its tenant units and included a stop at Daejeon to meet with the ROK air force command chief master sergeant to discuss training, partnership enhancement initiatives, and improving combined flying and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance operations. As the PACAF command chief master sergeant, Hutchinson leads 45,000 total force Airmen and advises the PACAF commander on matters affecting the readiness, training, professional development and effective use of assigned enlisted personnel. (U.S. Air Force photo by Tech. Sgt. Travis Edwards/Released)
RED FLAG-Alaska 16-2

A U.S. Air Force F-15E Strike Eagle all-weather, highly maneuverable, dual-role fighter assigned to the 494th Fighter Squadron out of Royal Air Force Lakenheath, England, gains speed as it lifts off from the Eielson Air Force Base, Alaska, runway June 6, 2016, during RED FLAG-Alaska (RF-A) 16-2. RF-A missions are conducted over the Joint Pacific Alaska Range Complex, more than 67,000 square miles of airspace that includes one conventional bombing range and two tactical bombing ranges containing 510 different types of targets and 45 threat simulators, providing units like the Liberty Wing a realistic training environment in the largest instrumented air, ground and electronic combat training range in the world. (U.S. Air Force photo by Master Sgt. Karen J. Tomasik/Released)
Medical professionals from the U.S. Air Force, U.S. Navy, Australian Defense Forces, Royal Cambodian Armed Forces and the Kampot Provincial Hospital and Health Clinic kicked off Pacific Angel 16-2 with a subject matter expert exchange here June 6-10.

The multilateral exchange consisted of a public health emergency course focused on humanitarian assistance and disaster response.

The intent of this course is how to deal with a displaced population following a natural disaster, said U.S. Air Force Lt. Col. Timothy Ballard, a Preventive Medicine Physician at Lackland Air Force Base, Texas, and lead for the Defense Institute for Medical Operations outreach team. Were putting the participant nation in the position of managing their own population that has been displaced, and we start off with international standards from the United Nations and World Health Organization.

The United Nations and World Health Organizations standards aid in determining how much water, toilets and shelters are needed by the population and also the appropriate risks and medical threats, according to Ballard.

The DIMO team builds on lecture material that is presented at the beginning of the week where they introduced and discussed a variety of topics to include: triage of patients, medical management, public health, infectious diseases and how to control them, animals in disaster, epidemiology in disaster situations, and how to talk to the media and present correct information.

After the material is presented in lectures, the medical groups have to put their knowledge to action through simulated disaster response scenarios.

We broke into different teams and ran through engagements and patients, said Royal Australian Air Force Flight Lieutenant Karen McMahon, Environmental Health Officer, and one of the small group team leads. Teams had to determine what the treatment for the patient would be, and if there are any outbreaks or any actions they had to conduct to control those outbreaks to minimize the number of patients.

The week continued to build on the various scenarios, where groups were required to assess and treat simulated patients, and determine hospital and patient placement within their hospital camps. The amount of patients either increased or decreased depending on the situation and how the groups diagnosed and treated the simulated patients.

Together were working through these solutions, and the Cambodians did exceptionally well, said Ballard. My personal group identified an early [simulated] influenza case, they did appropriate identification treatment and they did appropriate public health countermeasures.

This exchange helps build partner capacity and bolsters each nations ability to work side-by-side, which is particularly important when faced with responding to a natural disaster.

Working with both the USAF and the RCAF is really important for the interoperability of our nations so if we do need to work together in the future it assists in that, said McMahon. It also allows us to learn from them how they would act in situations which we may not be used to, and they can also learn from us how we would act in situations that they may not be used to.

Events such as this aid in the Cambodian Armed Forces and the provincial hospital and health clinic staff in being better-prepared and able to care for citizens as well be as ready to overcome a natural disaster.

This training was beneficial for me because I had never learned in this way before, said Cambodian Maj. Lt. Kim Thou, a physician with the Cambodian Ministry of National Defense. It is different in a natural disaster to know how to take the patient who has a serious disease and treat them correctly. We get to learn about how to help the people in emergency healthcare during a disaster.

Pacific Angel 16-2 will continue through 13 June with health services outreach and renovation projects to be completed by medical professionals and civil engineers of the armed forces from the United States, Cambodia, Australia, Vietnam and Thailand in partnership with non-governmental organizations.

Multinational medical service providers will conduct general health, dental, optometry, pediatrics, physical therapy for Kampot residents at Por Thivong Primary School in Tuek Chhou district June 13-15, and at the Ang Chum Trapaing Chhuk Secondary School in Kampong Trach district June 16-18 in Kampot Province.

Pacific Angel is a humanitarian assistance and civil military operation mission that builds partner capacity through medical and health outreach, engineering civic projects and subject matter exchanges.
Manila, June 8, 2016  Thirty-seven law enforcers from the Bureau of Customs, National Bureau of Investigation (NBI), and Philippine National Police (PNP) join a workshop to learn to enforce action against trademark violators, and build solid cases leading to successful prosecutions. The U.S. government agency, Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) is leading the workshop, with support from the Fight Illicit Trade movement, the anti-smuggling initiative of the Federation of Philippine Industries.

The workshop will increase the participants understanding of the critical role of law enforcement in the successful pursuit of counterfeit products cases and improve cooperation between government and private experts in the field of intellectual property protection.

Intellectual Property Office of the Philippines (IPOPHL) Director General Atty. Josephine R. Santiago highlighted the importance of collaboration in her opening address:

One of our key areas of focus is combatting counterfeit goods and this workshop is very timely in its message on collaboration between government and the private sector. If we are to make a dent in this issue we must all be better equipped in our investigation techniques and in pushing through cases all the way to successful prosecution. This is the only way we can achieve a suitable deterrent.

U.S. HSI Attache Ransom J. Avilla also highlighted the significance of addressing intellectual property violations through partnerships in his opening remarks:

These partnerships with the Philippine government and the private sector are how we are able to detect, interdict, and assist with Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) violations. Due to the transnational nature of these crimes, we depend on these partnerships for successful outcomes.

Attache Avilla further explained that the training is hands-on and designed to be interactive. The training demonstrates to the enforcers the individual steps required to build a successful trademark violation case, beginning with the application of a search warrant.

During the workshop, U.S. Embassy Economic Officer Brian Breuhaus highlighted the progress the Philippines has made on IPR issues. Following several decades on the Special 301 report Watch list, which identifies countries who deny adequate effective protection for IPR, the Philippines has been removed from list for the last three consecutive years. He attributed the countrys delisting to a coordinated effort by the government led by the National Committee on Intellectual Property Rights (NCIPR). The NCIPR is composed of 12
KADENA AIR BASE, Japan -- Kadena's Air Force Sergeants Association Chapter 1553 assisted a local non-profit organization, Promise Keepers, with an outreach project here June 2.

Promise Keepers is part of the Two Fish Project, which is dedicated to ensuring families in poverty are cared for and motivationally encouraged. They were arriving to pick up a very special delivery courtesy of AFSA.

Nearly 3,000 pounds of clothes and shoes from Kadena members was donated to those in need from the surrounding community.

These clothes go to Okinawa's single parent families, children's shelters, homeless, and those seeking job employment.

"We try to have good engagement and good involvement with the local community," said Tech. Sgt. Jamie Smith, AFSA vice president and 31st Rescue Squadron resource advisor. "I know every time we have one of these drives, I've always seen a good turnout with AFSA, and with people who are a part of AFSA, to make sure they can support the local community."

This opportunity to give back makes this project an invaluable resource for Kadena and the local community.

"There's a lot of low-income families here," said Yoshihiko Nishime, pastor of Yugafu Church, a partner of Promise Keepers. "Most of the kids going to school have very little, so that's why we try to clothe them."

These are donations that can be delivered to a specific location or the families can come and pick up the clothes, Nishime commented.

AFSA advertised the clothing drive throughout many of the organizations across base. This particular clothing drive marked the third year in a row AFSA has partnered with Peace Keepers. The generous amount of clothing was donated over the course of one month.

"Team Kadena really got together to support our local community," said Tech. Sgt. Kahlila Mutidi, AFSA outreach committee lead and 18th Civil Engineer Group group safety manager. "We accumulated more clothes than ever before. It truly was a Team Kadena effort."

Volunteers loaded the clothes onto a truck which would bring them to people in need.

"I have clothes I haven't worn for years, so I was able to give some pants, and some sweatshirts," said Smith. "I know some homeless people could be outside or in the elements where they're not always warm; they might need some warmer clothes, so that was something I thought would be beneficial."

This clothing drive is just one of many projects AFSA does for the local community.

"I am very thankful for what Kadena does for the children in Okinawa," said Nishime. "I really appreciate all of the Americans coming to help with this project."
PEARL HARBOR (NNS) -- U.S. Pacific Fleet staff gathered to pay tribute to naval heroes during the commemoration ceremony at Pearl Harbor headquarters, marking the 74th anniversary of the Battle of Midway, June 7.

"It was a combination of intelligence, tactics, courage and sacrifice that forever changed the course of the war and world history," said keynote speaker Rear Adm. Paul Becker, Special Assistant to the Director of Naval Intelligence. "That's impart why we gather together and recount this story in early June every year to remember Midway; to reinforce our identities as thinkers, fighters and as winners."

The Midway victory, fought June 4-7, 1942, was widely considered one of the turning points of the war in the Pacific. In May 1942, intelligence experts at the Combat Intelligence Unit at Pearl Harbor, known as Station Hypo, intercepted nearly 1,000 Japanese radio messages per day and deciphered and translated about 25 percent of them. They provided Fleet Adm. Chester Nimitz with information that the Imperial Japanese Navy intended to attack the Midway Atoll. Acting on this intelligence, naval forces were able to deliver a decisive blow, driving the enemy back, which ultimately resulting in their surrender Sept. 2, 1945.

As the commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, Adm. Scott Swift now fills the same role as Nimitz and recounts the importance of learning from history.

"This is much more than about history," Swift said during the ceremony. "I frequently raise in my discussions with the staff and the fleet about being predictive and thoughtful rather than be descriptive and reactionary. Nimitz was predictive and thoughtful. He took incredible strategic risk when he committed to the intelligence he had and he trusted in his intelligence officers and task force commanders to make the decisions necessary to turn the tide in the battle of the Pacific."
etary of Defense Ash Carter and Maj. Gen. Bradley A. Becker, commanding general, U.S. Army Military District of Washington hosted Prime Minister of the Republic of India, Narendra Modi, for an Armed Forces Full Honors Wreath-Laying Ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Arlington National Cemetery June 6, 2016 in honor of the Prime Minister's official visit to the United States.

After the wreath-laying ceremony, Modi laid a wreath at the Space Shuttle Columbia Memorial in the cemetery.

According to the State Department, the relationship with India is rooted in common values, including the rule of law, respect for diversity, and democratic government. We have a shared interest in promoting global security, stability and economic prosperity through trade, investment and connectivity. The United States and India have a common interest in the free flow of global trade and commerce, including through the vital sea lanes of the Indian Ocean.
U.S EMBASSY IN CAMBODIA -- At the invitation of the Cambodian government, the United States and Cambodia militaries will conduct humanitarian assistance events and military to military subject matter expert exchanges from June 6  18, 2016, in Kampot Province, Cambodia, as part of Pacific Angel 2016.

During this mission, approximately 80 members of the U.S. military and their Cambodian counterparts, along with service members from Australia, Vietnam and Thailand, will work together in partnership with local non-governmental organizations to provide humanitarian assistance to the residents of Kampot Province.

Pacific Angel is a joint and combined humanitarian assistance mission conducted in various countries throughout the Indo-Asia-Pacific region with the active participation and leadership of the U.S. Air Force. Pacific Angel includes general health, dental, optometry, pediatrics, physical therapy and engineering programs as well as various humanitarian aid and disaster relief subject matter expert exchanges. The mission enhances participating nations humanitarian assistance and disaster relief capabilities while providing needed services to people throughout the region.

In Cambodia, multinational engineers will work on reconstruction projects for four local schools and two health centers in the city of Kampot andmultinational medical service providers will conduct health service outreach in the Tuek Chhou and Kampong Trach districts in Kampot Province. The subject matter expert exchanges between the two militaries will focus on public health emergencies and humanitarian aid and disaster response. The mission will conclude with a closing ceremony on June 20.

Since 2007, Pacific Angel events have improved the lives of tens of thousands of people across the region while ensuring that the regions militaries are prepared to work together to address humanitarian crises. This will be the fourth Pacific Angel event conducted in Cambodia.
DILI, Timor-Leste - The Chief of Defense Force to Timor-Leste, Major General Lere Anan Timur hosted the Pacific Partnership 2016 opening ceremony June 8.

Hospital ship USNS Mercy (T-AH 19), anchored off the coast of Dili, brought an international team of military and civilian professionals in disaster relief, engineering and medicine to Timor-Leste for its first mission stop of Pacific Partnership 2016.

Speakers at the event included His Excellence Dr. Rui Maria de Araujo, Prime Minister of Timor Leste, U.S. Ambassador to Timor-Leste Karen Stanton, and Rear Adm. Charles Williams, Commander, Task Force 73.

Today is a very special day for Timor-Leste and we are honored to host you in our beautiful country, said His Excellency Araujo. Today is also particularly momentous because we gather from various countries and nationalities to work hand-in-hand in a multilateral program in identifying and responding to our common challenges in the region, through Pacific Partnership.

It is imperative that we work together, share our knowledge and skills through a program like this one. Share our hands-on experience and strive to help each other to the best of our ability, said Araujo.

Also in attendance were ambassadors from Australia, Japan, New Zealand, Canada, Malaysia, and Singapore along with service members and civilians from those nations.

Im thrilled to see the many flags flying here. The flags represent the many nations working together in a spirit of international cooperation, said Ambassador Stanton. Pacific Partnership and engagements like it in Timor Leste and throughout the region demonstrate our shared determination to foster trust and cooperation and to improve our ability to respond together to disasters and address common threats to stability.

While in Timor-Leste, Pacific Partnership personnel will work side-by-side with civilian leadership from the Dili community and Timor-Leste Defense Forces in a disaster relief symposium, civil engineering projects, cooperative health engagements, subject matter expert exchanges and community relations projects.

Pacific Partnership at its core, and by its very name, is about nations working together. This collaboration and teamwork among nations can only occur through persistent presence and sustained relationships, said Williams. Now in its 11th year, Pacific Partnership allows us to build those enduring relationships with nations across many years and across the vast area that is the Pacific Ocean, and that, again, is what Pacific Partnership is all about.

After Timor-Leste, Pacific Partnership will conduct mission stops at the Republic of the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia and Indonesia. Pacific Partnership 2016 is focused on enhancing relationships and multinational-interoperability through knowledge exchange and cooperative training, ensuring partner nations are prepared to collectively and effectively respond when disaster strikes.
CLINTON  The closure of the Clinton Power Station could triple the cost of producing electricity for much of Illinois, one lawmaker says, but critics of a proposed power subsidy plan say the estimates are based on faulty assumptions.

The entire future of downstate Illinois is at stake here because if you lose 20 percent of the power on the grid, that will be a massive rate hike on consumers that live well outside of Clinton and DeWitt County, said state Sen. Chapin Rose, R-Mahomet, whose district includes the plant.

Wholesale energy prices could double for residential and business consumers in Central Illinois, Ted Stoner, site vice president at the Clinton plant, told The Pantagraph previously.

Last week, Exelon Corp. officials announced they intended to close the plant on June 1, 2017, and another one near the Quad Cities in 2018 unless state lawmakers approve the Next Generation Energy Plan, which included subsidies for nuclear power among other carbon-free energy sources and certain rate structure changes.

Rose said analysts have told him the current market price for electricity in the state is about $72 per megawatt-hour, but if the Clinton power plant closes, that could go up to as much as $225 per megawatt-hour.

This is about the future of downstate Illinois as much as it is about Clinton or this region, he said. The policy decisions that are being made or not made by the Illinois General Assembly will have decades-long consequences for all of us.

"Whether its Clinton or Carbondale, people should be worried about this," he said. "They should be worried about what will happen to their businesses and their jobs when their power bills go through the roof.

Dave Lundy, director of the BEST Coalition, which describes itself as a grass-roots energy policy group that opposes the subsidy plan, disputed those projections.

Lundy said Roses figures come from a report based on 2014's House Resolution 1146, which required state agencies to analyze the economic, environmental and service reliability impacts of nuclear plant closures in Illinois.

The report, for example, assumed the price of natural gas, which also is used to generate electricity, would be about 200 percent to 250 percent above where it is today, he said.

Those assumptions were completely bogus," he said. "They may have been fine when they worked on this in 2014, but natural gas is cheaper today than what they expected."

He also said the report included assumptions that the demand for power would increase substantially and that the Byron nuclear plant, which has twice the generating capacity of the Clinton plant, would close, but neither has happened.

"So, most of these assumptions have been proven by current reality to be false, he said.

Exelon announced the plant closures after the General Assembly adjourned its spring session May 31 without moving the legislation, Senate Bill 1585, out of committee. The company left open the window for a possible reversal of the decision if lawmakers still act this summer.

Mid-September would be the drop-dead date, said Exelon spokesman Brett Nauman.

Rose said giving nuclear power the same subsidies offered for other carbon-free energy sources, such as wind farms and solar panels, to meet federal standards is good public policy.
LINCOLN  At one table, women were double-bagging and folding plastic grocery bags to be filled with donated food for hungry older adults.

At other tables in the activity room, men and women were playing card games. Others were catching up on the latest news and teasing each other. Some were reading.

In the board room, a woman was getting her hearing tested. In the wellness room, a man was exercising. At the reception area, someone was getting a question answered about senior services as a woman browsed in a gift shop.

To an outsider, it looked like a busy special event. But to regulars at the Senior Citizens of Logan County Inc.  commonly called The Oasis Senior Center  it was Wednesday morning.

"It is an amazing place," said Ellen Burbage, human resource director with Community Action Partnership of Central Illinois, whose programs in Logan County include senior nutrition and transportation and foster grandparenting.

"I love it," said Marilyn Armbrust, 74, of Lincoln, taking a break from organizing the bags. "It's the socialization."

Without Oasis, many people who frequent the senior center would be sitting home alone, she said.

"The seniors need socialization  whether they know it or not," Armbrust said.

"Having a place to socialize keeps people alive longer," Burbage said.

While most people in the Oasis were older adults, some were not.

"Society works better when we bring people together," Oasis Executive Director Dom Dalpoas said as he walked around the center in a former restaurant building at 2810 Woodlawn Road.

Some people don't socialize as much as before because they are spending time in front of their smartphone, computer or television. But there's no substitute for face-to-face contact, he said.

"It's all part of the healthy lifestyle that we try to support here at the center," Dalpoas said. "Being alone is not being healthy."

While there are several senior centers in Central Illinois, what sets Oasis apart is its variety of services and programs, the number of years it's offered those programs and Oasis' role in Logan County, several residents said.

The building is accessible and on the Logan Mason Public Transportation bus route, Dalpoas said. "Program-wise, we offer as much as others but we could always expand."

"There is a sense of pride," Burbage said. "When you talk to people about our community, they always mention that we have a viable senior center. It keeps people in the community rather than moving to other places."

"We are one of the jewels of Logan County," said office manager Donna Smedley. "We try to help as many people as we can help while being a fun place."

In 1984, Senior Citizens of Logan County opened at the former First National Bank building, 501 Pulaski St., Lincoln. A contest to give the center a nickname resulted in "The Oasis."

In 2013, a lightning strike caused a fire, so the Oasis moved in 2014 to its current location, the former Rusty's Steakhouse. The location is double the size of the earlier location and includes a large parking lot.

The variety of programs and camaraderie are what keep people coming to the center, which is open 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday, members said.

Near the front entrance is food for people who need it. Bags of food also are available at the center's monthly potlucks.

"It's for any senior," Dalpoas said. "We didn't set up strict guidelines. You don't have to be the poorest person to have a need once in awhile."

A small library sells books for a $1 a bag, 50 cents for a hardback or 25 cents for a paperback. A couch, chairs and a fireplace offer a place for people to read.

On Tuesdays and Thursdays, quilters practice their craft. There's a computer lab with six computer stations for people to check their email or Facebook or take a class.

Hearing testing, a Diabetes Support Group, breast cancer survivors' group, classes on health topics such as Kidney Smart, foot care, blood pressure screenings and a Coping with Loss Support Group are offered.

Information on the Senior Health Insurance Program, Social Security, legal assistance, Veterans Administration and Rules of the Road are available. But there are fun programs also, such as book club, adult coloring, crafts, Bingo, Bunco and card groups.

The wellness room is open to anyone who has been trained to use the equipment, Dalpoas said.

The west end of the center is a reception room that's used for monthly potlucks, bingo and birthday parties. It's also available for the general public to rent for receptions.

And there are van trips to take the seniors to ball games, plays, museums and restaurants.

"Everybody can find something here," Dalpoas said. "We gear our programs to fill the needs of seniors and we are always looking to expand."

The center is open to anyone  not just seniors  in the Logan County area. "We have members (age) 18 to 100," Dalpoas said.

But you don't even need to be a member. People are asked to pay $10 yearly membership dues  which entitles them to receive Oasis's monthly newsletter  and 1,374 people are members, Smedley said.

But some people use the center and aren't members. Dalpoas said 8,860 people used Oasis services last year. Some people are there daily; some are there occasionally.

Those services will expand this summer with the addition of a 1/8-mile outdoor walking track.

Oasis' yearly operating budget is about $300,000, Dalpoas said. About 20 percent of that is county tax money, grants and United Way funding, he said.

The remaining 80 percent is from gifts, gift shop proceeds, fundraising (such as Bingo Tuesday Nights, First Sunday Flea Market/Craft Show and Schnitzel Night) and from fees and donations that people pay to participate in some programs, such as computer classes, legal aid and foot care.

"Our programs are designed to be self-supporting," Dalpoas said.

Expenses are kept down because Oasis relies largely on volunteers. Dalpoas and Smedley are the only paid employees.

"Logan County has a high senior population," Dalpoas said. "People live here, they work here, they retire here and stay here. They are generous and supportive because they want the Oasis to succeed."
When Sean Meyers was in a car accident on a November evening three years ago, he was flown by air ambulance to the emergency department at Inova Fairfax Hospital, in northern Virginia. With his arm broken in four places, a busted knee and severe bruising to his upper body, Meyers, 29, was admitted to the hospital. While badly hurt, his injuries didn't seem life-threatening.

When his car went off the road, Meyers had been on his way to visit his parents, who live nearby in Sterling. They rushed to the hospital that night to wait for news and to be available if Sean or the hospital staff needed anything. But beyond the barest details, no one from the hospital talked with them about their son's condition or care, not that night nor during the next 10 days while he was hospitalized.

"All the time he was there, the hospital staff was very curt with us," said Sam Meyers, Sean's dad. "We couldn't understand why we were being ignored."

After leaving the hospital, Sean moved into his parents' spare bedroom temporarily to continue his recovery. About a week later, he was in their kitchen one evening with his girlfriend when suddenly he collapsed. He was rushed to the nearest hospital, where he died. An autopsy revealed that he had several blood clots as well as an enlarged heart.

For Sean's parents, the results were particularly wrenching because there's a history of blood clots on his mother's side of the family. How much did the hospital staff know?

"It might have saved his life if they'd talked to us," Sam Meyers said.

A spokeswoman for Inova Fairfax said, "We cannot comment on specific patients or cases." But she noted that information about a patient's care can be shared in a number of circumstances.

These days, when people think about patient privacy problems, it's usually because someone's medical record has been breached and information has been released without their consent. But issues can also arise when patient information isn't shared with family and friends, either because medical staff decide to withhold it or patients themselves choose to restrict who can receive information about their care.

The federal Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) established rules to protect the privacy of patients' health information while setting standards for hospitals, doctors, insurers and others sharing health care information.

Stepped-up enforcement in recent years and increased penalties for improper disclosure of patient information under HIPAA may lead hospitals and others to err on the side of caution, said Jane Hyatt Thorpe, an associate professor at George Washington University's department of health policy and an expert on patient privacy.

"For a provider who's uncertain about what information a provider may or may not be able to share, the easiest and safest route is to say no," she said.

However, the law is actually quite permissive about providers disclosing information to family members and others who are involved in a patient's care, said Thorpe.

"If the physician thinks it's in [the] patient's best interest to share information with mom or dad or whatever, they may do so," she said.

They may also decide not to share information, however.

Generally, if a patient is unconscious and unable to give permission to discuss his medical information, a doctor may share details about his health with family and friends. But even if the patient is alert and able to make a choice, a health care provider can use discretion in deciding how much to tell family and friends.

Dr. Wanda Filer, president of the American Academy of Family Physicians, recalled a patient who was an HIV-positive sex worker who didn't want his family to know about his health, even as he was dying. She honored his wishes. "The family was left in the dark," she said.

State laws may be more restrictive than HIPAA, requiring patient permission to disclose information to others, said Elizabeth Gray, a research scientist at George Washington University's department of health policy.

In Sean Meyers' case, there are unanswered questions. For example, "we don't know what the patient actually said to the providers," said Filer.

"HIPAA does allow information to be shared with family or friends based on the patient's wishes or, if the patient cannot make his/her wishes known, then based on the family member's or friend's involvement in the patient's care," the spokeswoman for Inova said. The health system's privacy policy states that it may disclose a patient's medical information to a friend or family member as permitted under HIPAA and provides details about how to request a form to restrict such disclosures.

There's no surefire way to avoid lapses in communication or ensure that providers get all the relevant information about a patient's health. Most smartphones today allow people to store health care information that can be accessed by emergency personnel, said Joy Pritts, a privacy consultant who is a former chief privacy officer in the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology at the federal Department of Health and Human Resources. In addition to listing allergies and other health concerns, people could state their wishes about disclosing their health information.

In the case of adult children, it may be useful for the child to carry a signed document that authorizes health care providers to disclose and discuss health care information with the parents for a set period of time, said Pritts.
BLOOMINGTON  Central Illinois' first heat wave of 2016 has prompted the state to open cooling centers, health and human services groups to release safety tips and Ameren Illinois to announce an air conditioner giveaway.

The heat wave is expected to extend until at least Monday.

According to the National Weather Service in Lincoln, temperatures throughout Central Illinois reached the mid-90s on Friday and Saturday and that's expected to continue through Monday.

Increasing humidity means that the heat index through Monday could reach a high of 99 degrees, the weather service said. The heat index is what the temperature feels like to the human body and includes humidity and air temperature.

Illinois Department of Human Services announced that its offices may be used by residents without air conditioning who need a place to cool off during the day. The offices are open 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday.

In The Pantagraph area, offices are at 501 W. Washington St. and 207 S. Prospect Road, both Bloomington, and 1550 Fourth St., Lincoln.

Also in Lincoln, Oasis Senior Center, 2810 Woodlawn Road, may be used as a daytime cooling center by Logan County residents without air conditioning. Residents don't need to be an Oasis member to stop in, said Office Manager Donna Smedley.

Oasis hours are 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday.

Libraries, shopping malls and village halls are among other places where people without air conditioning may cool off.

Ameren Illinois announced that it will donate 50 window air conditioners at 2 p.m. Tuesday to Mid Central Community Action, 1301 W. Washington St., Bloomington. The fans, which will be distributed through Community Action, are intended for low-income families, veterans and the elderly, Ameren said.

American Red Cross, the weather service and Department of Human Services passed along heat safety tips, including:

Don't leave a person or pet alone in a vehicle, where temperatures can reach dangerously high levels within a few minutes.

Stay hydrated with water.

If you must be outdoors, limit strenuous activities to early or later in the day when temperatures are cooler.

Wear loose-fitting, lightweight, light-colored clothing.

Check on family, friends and neighbors without air conditioning or who live alone or have a chronic medical condition.

Bring pets indoors or make sure they have water and shade.

If someone becomes overheated, move them to a cooler spot, have them lie down and loosen their clothing, give them water to sip and apply cool, wet cloths to as much of their body as possible.
CHICAGO  The former Clinton woman whose three children drowned in Clinton Lake 12 years ago deserves a chance to continue to work toward regaining custody of the three children born since their siblings died, according to the children's legal representative.

Carol Casey, a lawyer appointed as guardian for the children of Amanda Ware of Chicago, argued Wednesday during a hearing in Cook County Court that Ware "should be given another chance."

Casey admitted that her recommendation was a close call to make, noting that the mother has completed many mental health and substance abuse counseling services required by the state. Prosecutors disagreed with her assessment.

The guardian told Judge Demetrios Kottaras that her opinion is based on the interests of her clients  the three children of Amanda and Leo Ware  who love their mother and expect to go home.

Casey also had positive remarks for Leo Ware, who is receiving drug treatment after a relapse almost a year ago. The drug habit "is a challenge I think he should be given the opportunity to meet," said Casey.

Recommendations were made by Casey, Cook County Assistant State's Attorney Gina Perdue, and lawyers for the Wares.

The state argued the Wares have not made substantial progress with treatment services and remain unfit, unwilling and unable to care for their children.

Kottaras said he will rule Friday on whether the custody case should remain on a track to return the children home within 12 months.

Perdue said the Wares have not dealt with the history of domestic violence and drug abuse that has impacted their family.

Lawyers for the Wares said both have worked to complete services and visit the children almost daily in foster care.

Amanda Ware's lawyer Stephen Dore pointed out that she has been clean and sober for more than two years.

The state's criticism that she minimizes events in her life ignores the fact that her response is a coping skill to help her deal with the tragic loss of her children and the extensive abuse she suffered in her life, said Dore.

Leo Ware's lawyer Lisa Dedmond said, "The children adore him and wait for him to visit."

Reports from social service agencies found him able to parent the children, she said.

Leo Ware wiped away tears as he spoke after the hearing.

"It's just very emotional, it's hit me all at once," said Leo Ware, adding that he was pleased with the positive recommendations given to the judge.

Amanda Ware was at work and did not attend the hearing.

Amanda Ware, known as Amanda Hamm in 2003 when her three children drowned in the back seat of her car as it sank in Clinton Lake, was acquitted of murder charges and served a 10-year sentence for child endangerment. Her former boyfriend, Maurice LaGrone, is serving a life sentence for murder in the childrens deaths.

She married Leo Ware after her release, and the couple had two daughters and a son.

The Cook County custody battle began in March 2014 after the birth of the Wares' son when a doctor recognized Amanda Ware as being the mother involved in the Clinton Lake incident.

The Department of Children and Family Services removed the Wares two young daughters from their home and took the baby from the hospital pending the outcome of the custody case that has lasted more than two years.

The Wares, who have been separated for several months, reportedly visit the children daily at the home of Leo Wares sister where they have lived since their removal from their parents' custody.

Cook County prosecutors denied throughout the proceedings that it was their intent to conduct a second trial for Amanda Ware on the deaths of her first three children. Much of the focus of the evidence and testimony related to the 2003 case, however.

Lawyers for the Wares presented testimony in March from child welfare workers who have been involved with the couple and their children since 2014. The social workers told Kottaras they believed the parents were capable of raising their children.
CHICAGO  A Cook County judge ruled Friday that the three children of a former Clinton woman and her husband will remain in state custody while their parents continue their efforts to regain custody.

The state took the children after learning of the 2003 deaths of Amanda Ware's three older children.

Ware was known as Amanda Hamm when her two sons, ages 6 and 4, and a 23-month-old daughter drowned in the back seat of her car in Clinton Lake. Ware has been embroiled in a two-year battle to bring her three younger children home.

She was acquitted of murder but sentenced to 10 years for child endangerment in connection with the older children's deaths. In a separate trial, her former boyfriend, Maurice LaGrone, was convicted of murder and is serving a life term.

A Chicago doctor recognized Amanda Ware as the woman involved in the DeWitt County case when Ware was in the hospital for the delivery of her third child in March 2014.

Veronica Resa, spokeswoman for the state's Department of Children and Family Services, said Friday that Amanda and Leo Ware were found to be unable to care for the children, who will remain in foster care with a family member.

A Dec. 12 permanency and planning hearing is scheduled to review the parents' progress. Similar hearings will be held every six months.

Resa said it is important for the children to "maintain their bond with the parents, even in these circumstances."

The Wares, who separated several months ago, will be allowed to continue their supervised visits with the children, said Resa.

In his ruling, the judge found the mother unable, unfit and unwilling to care for her children. Leo Ware was found to be unwilling and unable to parent. Both parents fell short of the substantial progress standard in their remedial plan, the judge ruled.

Carol Casey, a court-appointed guardian, recommended at a hearing Wednesday that the mother be given a chance to continue working toward the goal of returning the children home, noting that Amanda Ware has "a huge trauma background" going back decades.

Leo Ware "landed on his feet" after his release from prison and should be recognized for his efforts despite a drug relapse about a year ago, said Casey.

Cook County State's Attorney Gina Perdue argued Wednesday that Amanda Ware has not effectively dealt with the psychological impact of the events at Clinton Lake. Leo Ware's history of drug offenses and domestic violence make him a poor candidate for parenting, she said.

Greg Hamm, Ware's first husband and the father of 6-year-old drowning victim Christopher Hamm, said Friday that he does not support the return of the children.

"She's too mentally unstable to be a mother and she's proved it," said Hamm.

Under Illinois law, the goal in child abuse and neglect cases is the return of the children to the home. Separate proceedings to terminate parental rights are initiated only after a judge finds that such a goal cannot be reached and it is in the best interest of the children to place them outside the family.
BLOOMINGTON  Former Bloomington Alderman Judy Stearns says she feels vindicated that the Illinois attorney general's office has agreed with her contention that the City Council violated the state's Open Meetings Act during a closed session in November 2013.

"I stood up for the public's right to know what the City Council was discussing in secret," the former Ward 4 council member told The Pantagraph this week, calling for Mayor Tari Renner to apologize for previously dismissing her complaint as "ridiculous."

"The public has a right to all dealings, proceedings of the City Council except in a very narrow guideline," she said. "It was very clear that the discussion (at the Nov. 15, 2013, meeting) strayed far from those guidelines."

Renner said Thursday he thought the complaint was unfounded because what he described as background information on possible administrative reforms discussed in the closed session was discussed again in the subsequent public meeting.

Stearns walked out of the closed session. She later filed a request on Dec. 6, 2013, for a review by the attorney generals public access counselor's office.

The Open Meetings Act requires public bodies to discuss public business in open session, but it does provide for limited exemptions for discussions related to the employment and performance of specific employees, collective bargaining or the purchase of real estate.

"This office's review of the verbatim recording of the closed session revealed the City Council's closed session discussion clearly centered on changing the culture within city government rather than specific employees," said Assistant Attorney General Christopher R. Boggs in a determination letter dated June 3.

To accommodate the schedule of an alderman, the council met in closed session prior to its regular meeting rather than afterward, Renner said.

There was some background that (City Manager David) Hales gave in the closed session to provide context, but we also gave that information out again in the open session, so there was no information kept from the public," he said.

But the council's subsequent open session discussions "are immaterial to whether its closed session was authorized by the (law's) exceptions," said Boggs.

During the public session Hales presented broad ideas for restructuring city government, including potentially consolidating several departments and reducing the number of department heads, Renner said.

"What the attorney general's office is saying is that even though everything was made public, that broader policy discussion should not have happened in the closed session, said Renner. "We won't do that anymore because we do pride ourselves on openness and transparency."

"Yes, I feel vindicated for leaving an illegal meeting," said Stearns. "Mayor Renner said my allegations were 'totally ridiculous,' and he owes me an apology."

"Because nothing was kept from the public, that's why I thought it was ridiculous," Renner said. "If she can show me something that was kept from the public then I am more than happy to issue her and the public an apology."

The attorney general's office said Boggs' determination letter closes the matter and no binding opinion or sanctions are warranted.

Boggs did ask the council to release a verbatim transcript of the meeting along with its minutes.

The city "will certainly comply with the request," said city attorney Jeff Jurgens, adding the employee names will be redacted as allowed by Boggs' letter.

"The city takes compliance with the Open Meetings Act very seriously, and in my tenure as corporation counsel, we have implemented new procedures for closed meetings," said Jurgens, who was not in that role when the meeting in question occurred.

The council previously released in May 2014 "a significant portion" of the meeting minutes, and city staff is in the process of reviewing those to determine if additional portions need to be released, he added.
BLOOMINGTON  Marching in clothing reminiscent of the early 20th century and chanting Votes for women, a group of Illinois Wesleyan University students drew curious looks, along with a few thumbs-up from passing motorists recently.

The demonstration, a re-enactment of the 1913 Women's Suffrage Parade, was part of a May term class, Women, Work and Leisure, 1890-1930, taught by history professor April Schultz, director of American studies at IWU.

It wasn't until June 4, 1919, that Congress passed what would become the 19th amendment, and it took more than 14 months for it to be ratified by the states, giving women the right to vote nationwide.

Schultz has taught the class for about 25 years, but this is the first time she has used an approach called Reacting to the Past, in which students take on the persona of someone from the period they are studying. Schultz learned about the approach at an institute.

Students also portrayed a labor faction and presented a scene from the Paterson Silk Strike Pageant on the steps of Evelyn Chapel.

It's my favorite period to teach in because so much happens that sets the stage for what comes after, said Schultz.

About 300 or 400 colleges use a Reacting to the Past approach to varying degrees, but not all have access to costumes from the theater department, as Schultz has, which she said adds to the authenticity.

Monica Mocogni, a junior in women and gender studies from Highland Park, said dressing up and staying in character helps immerse you in the experience.

To give students a better feel for the period, certain words and phrases were taboo, as they were at that time, such as anarchy, birth control and even family planning. If a student used a taboo word, Schultz would put on a police cap, blow a whistle and arrest the student.

Students did a lot of reading and writing for the class, researching people they portrayed and staying in character during classroom discussions, Schultz explained.

Some, such as sophomore Ben Zentner, a psychology major from Austin, Texas, were assigned real people.

Zentner was Max Eastman, editor of the socialist magazine The Masses for the duration of the class.

It was cool to go back and read the the documents he had written, Zentner said. I feel like it was something I would write.

Others were composite characters that had elements of real people.

Danielle Zofkie of Chicago, who received her nursing degree in May, portrayed a character who was part of an immigrant family from Ireland and a union leader with the Industrial Workers of the World.

My family immigrated from Ireland, said Zofkie. I also come from a labor home.

She said having a character with a background similar to her own made me appreciate a lot of where my family came from.  The privileges in my life have come from what they did.

Bridget Hathaway, a sophomore in physics from Barrington, was modeled, in part, after Inez Milholland, a key participant in the Women's Suffrage Parade.

Hathaway said, I didn't know what I was signing up for. I just needed a gen ed  general education class. More than anything, I really feel I'm in the shoes of the suffragist.

Schultz said any similarities between the students and the characters they were assigned were pure luck on her part, although she did survey students about such things as their backgrounds in debate or theater and willingness to play a leadership role.

Music major Catherine Carini, a senior from Lincolnwood, claimed, with a smile, I was typecast. My character is a drama queen.

Carini said her character, a real person named Mabel Dodge, was described as the de facto queen of Greenwich Village, which I like a lot.

But senior Yolanda Juarez of Chicago, a math major, said as much as she loved her character, political activist and anarchist Emma Goldman, "I had to do my research. ... Anarchy isn't really my everyday thing."

Students noted similarities between the present day and the period they were studying and how they have application today, whether it involves women's rights or the labor movement.

One of the things Savanna Steck, a junior in English writing from Frankfort, noticed  and worries about  was how economically similar 1913 and 2016 are. We know what happened after 1914. Where are we headed now?

Sophomore Bob Ladd, a psychology and math major from Aurora, noted that the socialist candidate for president in 1912 got 6 percent of the popular vote and now we have Bernie Sanders.

It interesting to see how history goes full circle, said Ladd.
Sitting on the sun-dappled terrace of the House of Lords, watching the Thames flow, Lord Nigel Lawson explains that the June 23 referendum, which he hopes will withdraw Britain from the European Union, was never supposed to happen. It is, he says, the fulfillment of a promise Prime Minister David Cameron expected to be prevented from keeping.

Going into the 2014 general election, Cameron, heading a coalition government with Liberal Democrats, placated anti-EU Conservatives by promising a referendum on the EU membership. He expected that another close election would leave him again heading a coalition, and that he would be able to say, truthfully, that his pro-EU Liberal Democrat partners would block a referendum. But his Conservative Party won a large parliamentary majority, inconveniently liberating Cameron from the constraints of a coalition and leaving him with an awkward promise to keep.

Full of years, 84 of them, and fight, Lawson has spent 42 years on the Thames embankment, as a member of both houses. He is impatient with the proposition that it is progress to transfer to supra-national institutions decision-making that belongs in Britains Parliament.

When Britain votes on whether to withdraw from the EU, it will be deciding for or against the constraints of deepening involvement with a political entity born from cultural despair about Europes past and complacency about a European future of diminishing social dynamism and political democracy. Britain will consciously choose between alternative national destinies that Americans are less consciously choosing between by their smaller choices that cumulatively subordinate them to a vast, opaque and unaccountable administrative state.

Cameron says leaving the EU is unnecessary because Britain has rejected membership in the eurozone currency and is not bound by the EUs open borders policy. Advocates of Brexit reply that if the common currency and open borders, both crucial attributes of the EU, are defects, why remain?

Cameron says leaving the EU would be imprudent for security reasons. Wielding the fallacy of the false alternative, he says those who favor leaving the EU favor going it alone and isolationism. They respond that Britain out of the EU would remain Europes foremost military power. When Cameron recalls war in the Balkans and genocide on our continent in Srebrenica, Leave advocates note that the EU had nothing to do with suppressing this, which fell to NATO and especially the United States, neither of which would be diminished by Britain leaving the EU.

Cameron invokes the serried rows of white headstones on British graves in military cemeteries on the continent as a silent testament to the price that this country has paid to help restore peace and order in Europe. Historian Andrew Roberts tartly responds that the British war dead fought for British independence and sovereignty, not for European unification.

The remain camp correctly says that Britain is richer and more rationally governed than when European unification began. The leave camp, however, correctly responds that this is largely in spite of the EU  it is because of decisions made by British governments, particularly Margaret Thatchers, in what is becoming a shrinking sphere of national autonomy.

In 1988, Thatcher said: We have not successfully rolled back the frontiers of the state in Britain, only to see them reimposed at a European level with a European super-state exercising a new dominance from Brussels. Stressing Britains European credentials, she also said our maps still trace the straight lines of the roads the Romans built. But todays leavers, who carry the torch of Thatcherism, do not favor straight lines drawn by foreigners. They prefer G.K. Chestertons celebration of spontaneous, unplanned cultural particularities:

Before the Romans came to Rye or out to Severn strode,

The rolling English drunkard made the rolling English road.

In politics, sensibility is prior to and inseparable from philosophy. The referendum will record, among other things, the strength of the revulsion many people here feel about a multiculturalism that celebrates every permutation of identity  except that of nationality. This is a trans-Atlantic revulsion.

What Daniel Patrick Moynihan, an Irish-American and Anglophile, called the liberal expectancy is the belief that the rise of reason and science would mean the waning of pre-modern forces such as religion, ethnicity and even nationality, which would be regarded as an anachronistic tribalism. British voters, who may be as weary as many Americans are of constantly being told that they cannot turn back the clock, and that historys centralizing ratchet has clicked irreversibly too many times, might soon say otherwise.
Get on script is the message from the Republican party when it comes to how The Donald should communicate with the American public. What script do Republicans have that will hide the hate this candidate supports? What script will fool the American public to support a racist? What does it say for a party that will support a racist for president? What vision do they have for America? Where do they wish to lead us?

The Republican Party has embraced The Donald claiming that Hillary is worse. What makes her worse? A poor decision to have a private email server or Benghazi a situation over which she had very little control. The Donald has shown he has no control over himself and his analytical and decision-making ability does not exist. His statements on nuclear weapons, trade wars and resurrecting the coal industry clearly illustrates he has no clue.

The Donald will try to talk about all the contrived Clinton conspiracies in order to divert our attention from his hate and incompetence. Will the Republican Party support this falsehood with more Benghazi hearings and, if so, this is a clear indication of the lengths they will go to steal the presidency by deceiving the American public.

Will they switch to the economy, claiming Hilary will be an extension of President Obama policies which has rescued the nation from the great Republican depression? Are we so disconnected from reality or filled with hate to believe the deception?

Jerry James, Normal
Urban homeschoolers frequently cite the homogenization of public education as the reason they chose to take over their kids' schooling. With the federal and state education policy placing ever-greater emphasis on core standards and standardized tests, many parents want to give their kids something more creative, flexible, and engaging than a school day they see as factory-made, according to about education.

The one-size-fits-all model is especially unappealing to parents of children who are "special" in some way. Unevenly intelligent, intensely shy, immature, or in need of a flexible schedule to accommodate their professional acting or dancing or musical careers.

In New York, even parents in the best districts complain about overcrowding schools and about teachers, who, however motivated and skilled, have their hands full managing the unruly few who can reign in some classrooms. Then there are the problems that come out with all traditional schools.

The bullying, the playground politics, and the escalating gadget and fashion arms races. According to the DOE, nearly 88 percent of U.S. home-school parents express their concerns about the school environment, citing drugs, negative peer pressure, and general safety.

Kristin Sposito was one of the moms at the Monday-afternoon gymnastics class. She and her husband, Brett, decided to home-school when their daughter, Maya, was 5. The Spositos, who lived in Portland, Oregon, at the time, looked around at their friends' children who were going off to school.

The school day seemed very long for children so young, Kristin thought. And the kids who did go to school came home "with bad attitudes right off the bat," she says. The children were mouthy.

Family relationships grew strained; the joy of family life was somehow lost; and the children were none the better for it. It's not like they were away all day and then came.


When a shoot out happens in the United States, almost instantaneously one would assume that the source of the bullet is mentally ill. Researchers who study mental disorders are working to end this stigma because it doesn't reflect the general truth and is unfair to mentally ill patients.

According to The Atlantic, only 4 percent of violent incidences is linked to mental illness. It cited a new study that blames the media for mass perception of mental health instability as a perpetrator of gun violence, or any kind of violence.

Based on the study, 55 percent of print and broadcast media's mental health coverage involved violence. Noticeably, reports of mass shootings driven by mental illness increased from 9 percent within 1994 and 2004 to 22 percent within the following decade (via The Atlantic).

The Atlantic article discusses further that even though there is no proof of mental health collapse, the media seem to find it important to mention the shooter's mental state. The history of the killer's mental illness is almost an automatic bit of information the media must supply and when it does see a link of the event to mental health, they report it in a way that the ultimate cause of the violent attack is already determined.

The stigma is too prevalent that people experiencing symptoms of mental health deterioration are afraid to come out in the open and consult a doctor for diagnosis. This means one thing: No diagnosis, no clinical treatment.

Clinical psychologist Dr. Bart Rossi tells Quartz, "The stigma associated with mental health is so great that parents are afraid to bring their children to a psychologist because of the fear of having them 'labeled.'"

If anything, more mentally ill patients point the gun to themselves than use it to take away other people's lives. A very recent published study spans ten years of studying 81,794 people with mental illnesses (via Duke Medicine).

Gun violence causes the suicide rate to hike up, not lead to interpersonal violence of which 96 percent is not caused by their mental states. Within the decade, from 2002 to 2012, 254 participants committed suicide, a number of which according to the study, is almost four times the average suicide rate in Florida during the same aforementioned period (via Duke Medicine).

As per a study published by American Public Health Association, the connection of gun violence and mental health is more represented by cultural stereotypes than statistics. The influence of race, ethnicity, social class and/or politics to violence are obscured by the wrong notion attributed to people suffering a mental health condition.

The main lesson is that mental health does not necessarily lead to gun violence; it is just one of the multiple factors. If the government wants to end gun violence without blaming majority of shooting cases to mental health patients, it must strengthen and enforce gun laws more strictly.

Do you think there's a chance for gun violence to end in America? Sound off your thoughts in the Comments section below and follow Parent Herald for more news and updates.
Depressed patients are often treated with a trial-and-error approach to find the best drug for each patient. The results show that half of the time the first type of depression treatment administered would be ineffective. Scientists in the U.K. have developed a new blood test to help doctors point out the best drug for patients with depression.

The blood test can predict whether patients suffering from depression will respond to common antidepressants. This discovery could bring in error-free promises of customized depression treatment for people with the draining mental condition and the earliest signs of it.

Guided by this test, researchers say medical practitioners would be able to direct patients to a certain level of inflammation in their blood towards earlier treatment with a more effective course of antidepressants, possibly including combining two medications, before they get worse, as per The Nation.

Techie News reports that the study was conducted to a small number of 140 volunteers who are suffering from depression, tried out their blood test. They pointed that those who were tested positive for inflammation will be given a more aggressive therapy from the outset of the depression treatment. The new study on depression treatment still needs a larger trial to check how accurate the new blood test will work in the real world.

Lead researcher Professor Carmine Pariante said in BBC News that this knowledge could help modify depression treatment that will work for the individual although the test needs more work and development to make sure it would be reliable enough to use regularly. He added: "We would not want to go in prescribing too much medicine if it's not necessary."

The team is hoping to escalate people sooner rather than later if they need it. Patients are firmly cautioned not to alter their medication on their own or take any anti-inflammatory without the knowledge of their doctor.

Antidepressants may be safe, but they have side effects as well. When it comes to depression treatment one shouldn't rely on drugs too much. Various studies have shown that medication is not the only option to manage depression.

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A high school valedictorian from Texas is being a harassed after posting a tweet that implied that she's actually an undocumented immigrant in the U.S. Her post has created a ruckus with people threatening that she should be deported. This forced her to shut down her social media profiles.

Mayte Lara Ibarra graduated as valedictorian at the Crockett High School in Austin, Texas this June and excitedly shared her accomplishments on Twitter. "Valedictorian, 4.5GPA, full tuition paid for at UT, 13 cords/metals, nice legs, oh and I'm undocumented," she wrote. She did not expect that it would receive such a strong reaction online.

Following her post, Mayte Lara Ibarra received over 20,000 likes and nearly 10,000 retweets before she deactivated her account, per NBC News. Not everyone actually liked what she shared as some criticized her for bragging when she should have been deported because of her status.

Let's show our support for #MayteLara for coming out about her immigration status! #ImmigrantHeritageMonth pic.twitter.com/C22Ifh2HHo  Define American (@DefineAmerican) June 9, 2016

Mayte Lara Ibarra comes from Mexico and displayed the Mexican flag on her post. Speaking exclusively with Austin American-Statesman, the high school valedictorian said that she posted on Twitter because she wanted to show how anyone "can accomplish anything, regardless of the obstacles you have in front of you," Teenagers commonly do this on the social site, but since she received harassment, she decided to deactivate her account.

Mayte Lara Ibarra insists that while she's proud of her heritage, she is grateful for the opportunities she was able to get now that she's living in the United States. She also said that she pays her taxes to the U.S. government and she has a social security and a DACA, which gives her the right to study in the country while working on her citizenship.

Unknown to those who harassed her on Twitter, Texas is actually one of the few states in the U.S. that allow undocumented immigrants to earn their high school and college degrees, per the National Immigration Law Center. In fact, there's also another undocumented high school valedictorian who graduated from a Texas school this year named Larissa Martinez, per Fusion.

While this experience has devastated Mayte Lara Ibarra, it's not hindering her from pursuing her plans. She is heading to college in the fall at the University of Texas-Austin and she's thinking long and hard about returning to Twitter.
A high school student who graduated last week at the top of her class gave her valedictorian speech and in it, she revealed she is an immigrant and hopes to make America great again referencing to Donald Trump's slogan.

Martinez had a 4.95 GPA and is from McKinney Boyd High School. Her GPA earned her a full-ride scholarship to Yale University and when she spoke to her fellow students and educators, she used choice words aiming at the GOP presumptive nominee. Trump has been facing backlash since his comments against the Mexicans, immigrants, Muslims were revealed as well as his plans for building a wall at the border to prevent undocumented immigrants from crossing.

In one part of her speech, Martinez shared that the most important part of the debate is the fact that immigrants, both undocumented and legal, are people too with "dreams, aspirations, hopes, and loved ones." She pointed out that people like her want to help make the U.S. great again without the "construction of a wall based on hatred and prejudice." She did not, in any way, mention Trump, Business Insider reported.

Martinez continued to reveal that she, together with her mother and sister, went to the U.S. after leaving behind their abusive and alcoholic father in Mexico City behind. She pointed out that she is still waiting for her application for citizenship that she sent in six years ago to be processed. She added that the U.S. immigration system is broken as many are trying to be documented the right way but they do not know how.

She continued her speech saying, "I am one of the 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the shadow of the United States. I decided to stand before you today and reveal these unexpected realities because this might be the only chance I get to convey the truth to all of you, that undocumented immigrants are people, too."

Aside from seemingly taking a jab at Trump, Martinez slammed the media for their portrayal of immigrants living in the U.S. illegally. She called on the audiences to look beyond the accusations made against the immigrants that politicians continuously make.

The speech of Martinez was met with cheers from her fellow students and educators.
In an effort to curb the number of children suffering from Zika-linked microcephaly and other diseases due to the health outbreak, the World Health Organization (WHO) has urged women in affected countries to consider getting pregnant at a later time rather than sooner.

The mosquito-borne virus is spreading like a wildfire now especially in Brazil. Nearly 50 other countries are now dealing with the plague especially in Latin America and in the Caribbean. The advice of WHO echoes the recommendations of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as they recently said that women, their partners, and their doctors should decide carefully over the timing of their pregnancy.

WHO said in their statement that they are giving the guidance in order to prevent adverse pregnancy and fetal outcomes. They are advising the men and women of reproductive age who are living in areas where local transmission of Zika virus is known to occur. The guidance comes after more evidence showing that the virus could also be sexually transmitted, The Washington Post reported.

Men and women alike who have travelled in areas that are affected with Zika are also urged to remain abstinent for at least eight weeks.

Despite the clear intentions of WHO about the issuance of the guidance, global health experts are saying that it could face social consequences. Rebecca Katz, a specialist in the global health policy at Georgetown University, explained that the guidance has a huge impact on family planning and reproductive rights.

Most of the countries experiencing an increased number of Zika patients are Catholic and they do not have that much access to contraception. Katz continued to say that the guidance issued by WHO could also put pressure on governments to face the issue of not only contraception but also abortion.

This is not the first time, however, that such issuance was given out. Just this January, El Salvador urged women in the area to refrain from getting pregnant until the year 2018. Colombia, Honduras, and Jamaica have made the same statements. Pope Francis also said in February that artificial contraception could be used as the virus potentially results to miscarriages or infants born with birth defects linked to Zika.

The most common Zika-linked disease is microcephaly wherein children born with the condition have abnormally small ears and brains that are underdeveloped resulting to delaying many of the child's skills.
"Pretty Little Liars" season 7 is getting massive attention over a promotional material showing Ali DiLaurentis, played by Sasha Pieterse, with a missing leg. While some say this is a "Pretty Little Liars" season 7 promo blooper, it may be an intentional warning of dire things to come - and so is Hanna Marin's absence.

According to New York Daily News, fans caught on to what tragedy "Pretty Little Liars" season 7 will deal Ali DiLaurentis. Some say the reveal on Ali DiLaurentis' leg for "Pretty Little Liars" season 7 is unintentional.

However, in the "Pretty Little Liars" season 7 poster, Ali is the only character wearing a long skirt while Spencer Hastings, Aria Montgomery and Emily Fields are all bare-legged. Which may mean that the "Pretty Little Liars" season 7 poster is supposed to create the ruckus it is effecting now.

Whether the leg loss in the "Pretty Little Liars" season 7 poster is a literal or a figurative injury remains to be seen. The Futon Critic cites "Pretty Little Liars" season 7 episode 2 synopsis to say that Ali DiLaurentis' situation will get much worse as Elliot Rollins continues with his murky plans.

In the meantime, the absence of Hanna Marin from the "Pretty Little Liars" season 7 poster in question caused even more worries, especially given the end of the previous season. "Pretty Little Liars" season 7 episode 1 if indeed, the PLLs are able to save Hanna Marin in "Tick-Tock Bitches."

The "Pretty Little Liars" season 7 episode 2 synopsis as cited on The Futon Critic says that the aftermath of Hanna's kidnapping won't be so good. The synopsis further teases that "Pretty Little Liars" season 7 episode 2 will see tension between Spencer and Caleb grow.

In the meantime, producer Marlene King gave E! News an interesting response when questioned about whether or not Hanna Marin dies come "Pretty Little Liars" season 7. "Well, even when people are dead they still stay on our show," Marlene King curiously said.

Luckily, the "Pretty Little Liars" season 7 premiere comes soon on June 21. Troian Bellisan, Lucy Hale, Shay Mitchell, Sasha Pieterse and Ashley Benson will return when "Pretty Little Liars" season 7 premieres.
A review of 34 trials of 14 antidepressants of the effects of antidepressants on children and teenagers with major depression has revealed that the drugs are ineffective. The results of the review were published in The Lancet.

"The balance of risks and benefits of antidepressants for the treatment of major depression does not seem to offer a clear advantage in children and teenagers, with probably only the exception of fluoxetine," co-author Professor Peng Xie was quoted by MedicalXpress as saying. Xie is from The First Affiliated Hospital of Chongqing Medical University, China. Fluoxetine is sold as Prozac.

Most antidepressants not working for children and teenagers - study:https://t.co/SFX8AIe1kL  David Whittle (@13SciDave) June 9, 2016

Antidepressants And Suicide

The Guardian reported that one antidepressant called venlafaxine, sold as Efexor was associated with greater risk of suicidal thoughts and suicidal attempts. Despite this finding, the risk for suicide could not be determined for all antidepressants because of a lack of accurate information.

This is not the first time that antidepressants were linked to suicide. Reports noted that in 2004, the US Food and Drug Administration had already warned against young people up to 24 using antidepressants because of suicide risk. Despite this, children and teenagers who use antidepressants are on the rise in both the United States and the United Kingdom.

Prescribing Antidepressants To Children

Doctors should think that antidepressants actually have lesser benefits and greater negative effects than what is marketed, Professor Jon Jureidini was quoted by the Sydney Morning Herald as saying. Jureidini is child psychiatrist from the University of Adelaide

Doctors should "not be pressured into prescribing just because they have no capacity to offer evidence-based psychotherapy," Jureidini added. Jureidini wrote an accompanying editorial to the review of antidepressant drugs.

The trials reviewed had 5,260 participants whose average age was 9 to 18. Pharmaceutical companies shouldered 65% of the trials. The review regarded 29 percent with a high risk of bias, 59 percent had moderate bias while 12 percent had low bias.
Employees at Zee.Aero and Kitty Hawk are working in secrecy in buildings next to Google in Mountain View, California. Larry Page was "The guy upstairs," or preferred to be called by his subordinates "Gus" is also Google co-founder.

Larry Page didn't want people to know he has been personally funding the pair of startups devoted to creating flying cars. Zee.Aero was created in 2010 with Page's investment of more than $100 million. And just last year, he then put money into another startup, named Kitty Hawk. CNBC reported.

Zee.Aero and Kitty Hawk have been dedicated to developing designs for flying cars completely separate. They are actually competing against each other in the flying-car space. There are currently dozens of firms working on flying cars globally but these two are the closest realm of reality.

The secret was revealed in 2012 when a report of patents filings was discovered showing Zee.Aero was working on a small, all-electric plane with a thin central fuselage and twin rows of propellers like outriggers that could take off and land - or in short, flying cars. Zee.Aero now employs close to 150 people. Kitty Hawk, on the other hand, has been building its own that resembling a giant version of a quadcopter drone. - According to Bloomberg.

Zee.Aero has recruited engineers and aerospace designers from big organizations like Boeing NASA and SpaceX. The company has been conducting regular test flights of the two single-seater prototype designs operating at a nearby airport about a 70-minute drive south from Mountain View.

The Zee.Aero headquarters is located at 2700 Broderick Way. It is a 30,000-square-foot, two-story white building. While Kitty Hawk headquarters is a half-mile away from Zee's offices. Presently, Larry Page and Google have been declining to speak about Zee.Aero or Kitty Hawk.
At the time, "The Blacklist" is currently on hiatus fans. However, after its cliffhanger finale, fans can't help but speculate what will happen in "The Blacklist" Season 4. According to reports, there is another big reveal in the new season and that is Red (James Spader) being Liz's (Megan Boone) real dad.

Red Is Liz's Real Biological Father

Liz and Red share a not so typical father and daughter relationship. They both care about each other but are very secretive. However, Red told Liz beforehand that he is not her real father. But was he telling the truth?

"The Blacklist" Season 3 finale ended with Alexander Kirk abducting Liz and telling her that he is her biological father. If we believe Red's earlier admission that Liz is not her daughter, maybe Kirk could be her father. But what if Red was lying in the first place?

One Reddit user shared his speculations about Liz's real biological father. According to him, Red could be Liz's biological father. It started with a mission to track down a legendary target, Katarina Rostova. When he finally met her, they fall in love but she was already married. When the KGB learned about their affair, they suspected Rostova to be a double agent who was working with Red.

Rostova escaped with her husband and Red's love child. They lived in a secluded location for years. Fitch and the KGB eventually tracked them. Operatives were sent to Red's home first killing his family. They moved on to Rostova's but Red arrived there a few seconds earlier. He argued with Rostova to escape. The bad guys arrived and burned the house. Katarina disappears while Red got burned after saving baby Liz.

Red doesn't want to tell Liz the truth because he doesn't want to tell her that her mom just disappeared but it is certain that Katarina Rostova is still alive.

Red And Liz To Reunite In 'The Blacklist' Season 4

Meanwhile, Melty reported that no matter how things will go in "The Blacklist" Season 4, Liz and Red would eventually reunite and it will be fiery. "They're inevitably going to reunite in Season 4, and fireworks are going to fly when they do," the report said.

Do you agree that Red could be Liz's biological father? Are you positive that they will reunite in "The Blacklist" Season 4? Share your thoughts in the comment section below.

"The Blacklist" Season 4 is expected to premiere in September.
A sad, shocking news came to a family in Midvale, Utah when 2 year old Suzie Suhaka, was found faced down in the water on their family pool at around 7 pm on Monday. She was rushed to the hospital in critical condition but did not survive.

According to the police reports, her family was right beside her when he life support was taken from her at the Primary children's hospital.

As per reports from KSL, the investigators said that the child appeared to snuck back outside of the house after her family played in the pool that evening.

Because of this incident, Lt. Lex Bell from the Unified Police Department, reminded parents to be vigilant when swimming or wading in the water. Some of the safety rules in the water includes the following:

For Toddlers ages 1-4, make sure your toilets seats in the toilets are kept closed. Doors are also to be closed always in bathrooms and the laundry rooms.

It is crucial to know that babies could drown in as little as a 1 inch water, so never ever leave you child unattended. Even in a bigger swimming area, if the kid is a bit grown and can already understand simple instruction, tell them not to go anywhere near the water if there is no adult in sight. One does not simply trust a floating device for your child's water safety.

As for swimming with bigger kids, private pools, must have a latching gate around them. Ladders should be kept away from the above ground pools if not in use, to keep children from climbing them on their own. For safety reasons, empty all containers, buckets, tubs and wading pools every after use.

When swimming in public pools, do not assume that the lifeguard will be watching your child. It is best to have a look out on your own children. Teach them or enroll them in swimming classes that they may know how to tread water, and do learn CPR. It is the first aid for drowning casualties that could help save a life.

For more pool safety guidelines, you can visit Swimmingpool.com. Here's also another video for water safety guideline:
Years of debt have cast a dark shroud over Detroit public schools. Lack of funds due to corruption and mismanagement have led schools to close, teachers to protest by calling out sick and deficits to rise as enrollment continue to fall.

Governor Rick Snyder rejoices on the middle of all the hullabaloo as the House and Senate successfully passed bills that aim to pick Detroit from the ashes and help it rise again. The bills were heavily favored by the Republicans that Democrats were in opposed of because according to the latter, these are "inadequate" and "politically motivated" (via CNN).

The bills in question passed the Senate with a 19-18 vote on Wednesday that was followed by a 55-54 decision from the House, both of which are controlled by Republicans. It is now waiting for Governor Snyder's signature who has recently applauded the passed bills as a "fresh start" for Detroit public schools.

The new bills propose a $150 million budget to build a new Detroit school district that would be active in educating students while the old district would remain alive to collect taxes and reach the half a billion worth of debt it has incurred since 2009. The school board that would be in charge of officiating operations in the new district will be elected while the overseer of finances would be a commission appointed by the state (via Local 4-ClickOnDetroit).

AFT Michigan, Detroit Federation of Teachers released a statement thereafter, urging Governor Rick Snyder to veto the bills. While the group recognizes that the new plan would provide more resources and returns the power of electing the governing board to the people, it shows "an utter disregard for children's futures because "it does not meet the needs of students and attacks educators."

While the House bills pay down the debt that accumulated at DPS under state control and provides for DPS employees to keep their jobs and their union representation, the package as a whole does not prioritize adequate financial investment in the district.

The bills raise the stakes of standardized testing, which waters down education to multiple-choice answers, while, ironically, at the same time Congress in minimizing the role of this type of testing," the AFT Michigan statement says.

As per WZZM 13, Senate Majority Leader Arlan Meekhof, R-West Olive disagrees, saying "This represents a realistic compromise for a path to the future. At the end of the day, our responsibility is to solve the problem. Without legislative action, the Detroit Public Schools would head toward bankruptcy, which would cost billions of dollars and cost every student in every district in Michigan."

In a statement as quoted by WZZM 13, Governor Snyder says, "This is a new Detroit Public School district. The debt will be gone. The emergency managers will no longer be needed. Local control will be restored, so that new leaders for the district can be chosen this fall by Detroit voters."

The Senate-approved bill is an upgrade of an earlier bill passed by the House. The House plan did not include a Detroit Education Commission (DEC) that would rule parts of the charter and other public schools in the new district. The latter was endorsed by Governor Snyder himself and had a bi-partisan vote in the Senate as well as Democrat votes from the House (via WZZM 13).

Do you agree with Governor Snyder that the bill would help Detroit public schools to rise above its debts and start anew? Comment below your thoughts and follow Parent Herald for more news and updates.


Should it be considered illegal for a terminally-ill patient to take his/her own life when death is expected to knock anytime soon? California, together with four other states, disagrees as it legalized "assisted suicide" last year for patients who are on the brink of death.

In October 2015, California Governor Jerry Brown signed into law the "End of Life Act." The governor said he took into consideration diverse perspectives including religious beliefs before he decided to officially pass the law allowing assisted suicide. (via NPR).

"I do not know what I would do if I were dying in prolonged and excruciating pain. I am certain, however, that it would be a comfort to be able to consider the options afforded by this bill. And I wouldn't deny that right to others," Gov. Brown said in a statement as quoted by NPR.

More than a year after, California officially puts the law into effect, giving a 16 percent of the U.S. population an option for assisted suicide. Oregon was the change maker being the first state to pass such legislation, which was soon followed by Washington, Vermont and Montana (via The New York Times).

These states met a number of terminally-ill patients who took medication that will kill them. From 16 people who legally requested for assisted suicide on 1998 at Oregon, it grew to 132 opportunity takers in 2015 (via The New York Times).

While the fate seems entirely driven by the patient's choice, this assisted suicide law has stringent measures. In California, patients should prove that their decision is voluntary and had gone through a painstaking thought process. Two California doctors must present a six-month life expiration before the medicines could be prescribed to an interested patient (via NPR).

The intent for assisted suicide should be made known 48 hours before the actual act. And like how babies go to this world alone, adults leave the world alone too as the person should take the drugs without any help (via SF Gate).

Many right-to-death advocates rejoiced last year upon the completion of the California law but today, another problem concerning the law on assisted suicide surfaces. Many hospitals in the state have yet to release policies that will make assisted suicide more accessible. Also, any person from the medical field has his/her own right to say no to a patient, even having the liberty to not recommend a physician who would agree (via The New York Times).

Columnist David Lazarus of Los Angeles Times expects many hospitals to decline prescribing drugs that will kill terminally-ill patients, especially religious-affiliated health institutions. Secular hospitals have an easier decision in comparison but they also have concerns on assisted suicide such as dealing with healthcare's mandate to preserve life than to end it.

For instance, secular hospital, Huntington Memorial Hospital in Pasadena is complying with the law for the meantime until its board makes a final decision. "We are being thoughtful and deliberate in our process and will therefore not restrict ourselves to a set timeline," spokesman Derek Clarke said in an email to Los Angeles Times.

As per New York Times, Palliative Medicine Specialist at Keck Medicine of the University of Southern California, Dr. Sunita Puri acknowledges that assisted suicide is a relatively "new territory." This explains why most physicians are reluctant to prescribe it to their patients.

My sense of talking to colleagues is they simply dont know enough about what the medication will be, and part of it is not knowing if it is resulting in a comfortable experience that leads to their death. They take very seriously the obligation to support patients and not do something harmful. The other reason is that people feel very uncomfortable about what this act means for the changing role of physicians in society, what would be right for patients and what would be appropriate for them to do.

Do you support the legalization of assisted suicide in California and the other states? If yes, why? Comment below your thoughts and follow Parent Herald for more news and updates.


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Youll see Secretary Clinton walking with President Obama and the abbot of Wat Pho monastery in Bangkok, Thailand at about 55 seconds in. The image is from a 2012 tour of Asia by the President and Secretary of State. As the picture flashes on the screen, President Obama discusses his his and Clintons pursuit of diplomacy in capitals around the world.

While it would be easy to make too big a deal of it  it is, after all, just one second in a three-minute video  it is still worth remarking that Buddhists around the world have a role to play in global politics. Here in the U.S., Buddhists comprise just 1-2% of the population but can still tilt political scales in some places and reach out to non-Buddhists and broader causes elsewhere.

And while certain Buddhist ideals appear to point beyond petty politics; many others point to the need for compassionate action in whatever circumstances we find ourselves in. In some traditions  thinking of the 10 ox-herding pictures  the final stage of progress is a return to society, not to get caught up in its drama, but be and to serve.
Under the Shadow: Iranian horror set during the Iran-Iraq War. The movie opens with Shideh (Narges Rashidi) being told, by a man sitting under a portrait of the Ayatollah Khomeini, that she wont be able to continue her medical studies because of her political activities. She goes home to an apartment building where the windows are crisscrossed with masking tape in case bombing raids shatter the glass. She fights with her husband about whether shes unsupportive, taking the disappointment too hard, a bad mother. She exercises to an illegal Jane Fonda tape, with a ferocious neurotic energy familiar to countless tightly-wound, muscled, driven women. And then theres an air raid and the buildings residents have to huddle in the basement and a little boy says something very disturbing to Shidehs daughter Dorsa. And the real trouble starts.

The implied criticism of religious repression of women isnt exactly subtle, but Under the Shadow is strengthened by the fact that it deals with so many issues. No one concern predominates. So instead of feeling like a message picture, it feels like reality: Our real lives are shaped by religion and family drama and war, not one at a time but all at once.

Writer/director Babak Anvaris supernatural chiller bears some similarity to The Babadook: Victor Morton notes, Both are about a mother and child losing their sanity in a fatherless, high-stress situation, when one of the childs favorite objects becomes a cursed talisman.

I thought the movie was at its best when it was replacing standard horror events with 80s Iranian reality. For example, Shideh runs out of her building in terror, clutching her child. In a normal horror movie shed run into a monster or the killer or whatever the antagonist is. Here she runs into the religious police, who jail her for being in the street without a headcovering. There are several moments like this and they all worked for me, genuinely chilling and unexpected. Unfortunately, when the movie was using more standard horror imagery and scenarios it felt, honestly, overfamiliar and merely okay. Definitely worth watching if the subject matter interests you, but maybe not otherwise.

Black Girl (La Noire de): A pioneering African film, made by Senegalese director Ousmane Sembene. Diouana (the introspective, expressive Mbissine Therese Diop) takes a job as a nanny to the children of a white French couple. Things go well while the white family is living in Dakar, but once they move back to Paris, the wife becomes a cartoon shrew and everyone is racist. Lots of striking b&w compositions. This screened at the National Gallery of Art with the short film Borom Sarret (The Wagoner), which is a slice of poor Dakar life. Less predictable than Black Girl. Both movies use music really powerfully.

Black Girl does not have the worlds most original plotline. But the ending is powerful and haunting, in part because, unlike so many movies, Black Girl keeps going after the climactic violent event. It shows consequences and aftermath. The little boy with the mask, following the white man through the neighborhood, is unsettling, unexpected, unresolvedand powerful for those exact reasons.

Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters: What I learned from this artsy mid-80s meditation on the life and death of Japans great lyric fascist: 1. You can know exactly whats wrong with your terrible plan (the emperor doesnt even want you to do this! dying isnt everything!), and write a play about it, and still do it, because knowing is the wrong half of the battle.

2. We are playing with the same pack of cards, but I have the joker. I have the Emperor. Or, all reactionaries are either satirists or fools.

Loved this.
Patna: Police in Patna on Wednesday arrested five men and seized 640 kilogram of ganja along with a large amount of cash, two guns, a semi-automatic revolver, and half a dozen live cartridges from their possession.

The contraband, believed to be in several lakh rupees in street value, was seized from warehouses located in Patna City and Katra Bazaar Samiti under Malsalami police station after police was tipped off of a large consignment of illegal drugs being sent to retailers across the state and outside Bihar.

Acting on the tips, a special team formed by Patna Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) Manu Maharaj carried out raids in various warehouses in Patna City and recovered dozens of large packets stuffed with ganja.

Police also seized a truck that was to be used to haul the drug and a Bolero to follow it to its destination, police said.

Four out of five men arrested in the connection were said to be residents of Raghopur in Vaishali district.
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Hardliners: The Real Barrier to Iran's Economic Revival

06/10/16

By Shireen T. Hunter (source: LobeLog)



Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, a noted hardline conservative and chairman of Iran's Assembly of Experts.



By now it has become clear that Iran's expectations of an immediate economic revival following the nuclear deal were unrealistic. Tehran thought that the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) would restore its severed links to the international financial system and to sources of foreign investment. Instead, the restoration of Iran's links with the international banking and financial systems has been delayed, partly as a result of still existing American sanctions unrelated to Iran's nuclear activities. These sanctions, along with the fines that the US imposed in the past on foreign banks that engaged with Iran, have deterred international banks from dealing with Iran.

Secretary of State John Kerry has called on European and other banks to resume dealings with Iran within the limits set by JCPOA. But international banks have been unwilling to take the risk, particularly in light of the forthcoming American presidential elections and the significant anti-Iran feelings within the US Congress. Given the uncertainties surrounding future US-Iran relations, the hesitation of international financial institutions, although regrettable, is understandable. The Iranian market is not large enough to warrant taking such risks. The same holds true for European countries. Although many of them resent the limitations imposed on their economic activities in Iran by unilateral American legislation, they are unwilling to jeopardize their far more important economic and strategic relations with America for Iran's sake.

This has always been the case, which the Iranian leadership should have by now realized after trying for nearly 30 years to convince the Europeans to stop following the American lead. In other words, Iranian leaders should understand that Iran's relations with Europe will only go so far without better understanding between Iran and America. This is not because, as some Iranian hardline publications claim, the EU is a creature of the CIA. Rather, Europe and America have essentially very similar, although not identical, interests in the Middle East and, to a great extent, globally.

For instance, Europe and America agree on the question of Iran's approach toward the state of Israel. Whether rightly or wrongly, Iran's anti-Israel stand and its uncompromising position on the question of Palestine is a significant barrier to a true warming of relations with both Europe and America. If Iranians had any doubts on this score, statements by German Chancellor Angela Merkel and more recently the EU's High Representative Federica Mogherini, possibly the European politician most eager to expand relations with Iran, should have convinced them. Even Iran's relations with Russia are not immune from the negative impact of the Israel factor, because Vladimir Putin is not willing to jeopardize Russian relations with Israel for Iran's sake. On the contrary, he and other Russian leaders will continue to play the Iran card in their regional politics while throwing mere crumbs to Tehran, knowing full well that Iran's options are limited.

Despite these international realities, Iran's hardliners continue to mortgage Iran's economic and political future by insisting on policies that, even if they had some obscure justification in the past, have become obsolete in the changed world. This unrealistic, or even surrealistic, aspect of Iranian politics was in full display during ceremonies marking the recent anniversary of the death of Ayatollah Khomeini. Exhortations were made that Iran should not deviate from the path of the Imam. In particular, Iran should not give up its anti-imperialist-read anti-American-struggle and the struggle to free Palestine, even while most Arabs have either made peace with Israel or are in the process of at least accommodating to it. Domestically, the celebrants urged Iran to fight against cultural corruption and creeping capitalism. Instead, they called on the country to continue the struggle to strengthen Islamic values and develop a resistance economy and a jihadi spirit. These measures, they argued, would cure all of Iran's present ills, since Islamic values, jihadi spirit, and anti-imperialist struggle have been the source of Iran's strength, independence, and pride since the Islamic revolution.

Absent from all these exhortations has been the following question: if Iran has become so great and strong under the Islamic Republic, why is its economy in such dire condition? Why does it have so much unemployment? And why are its best and brightest leaving the country in droves?

In their hearts, even Iran's hardliners know that the Islamic experiment has been a failure in every sense of the term. Economically, Iran has not lived up to its potential. For any Iranian with a sense of national pride, it must surely be humiliating to watch the country ask for the help of Turkey and India in order to revive its economy. Politically, Iran has succeeded in uniting its traditional rivals: the Turks, the Arabs, and the Israelis. The Islamic Republic has stymied the country's flourishing culture and deprived it of an important source of soft power. It is only due to Iranian talent and resilience that the people of the country have found ways to circumvent Islamic restrictions and produce artistic works, like Iranian cinema, that have gained international recognition. More telling, however, is the fact that Islam's influence in Iran has declined under the Islamic Republic, and the prestige and appeal of the clergy has dramatically eroded.

Yet the hardliners insist on continuing their failed policies. After all, they themselves have benefitted economically and politically from these policies, and they are unwilling to lose their privileges and perks even at the cost of undermining the country and its people. Even ideology now is only a thin guise for hardliners' efforts to safeguard their parochial interests.

The bottom line is that, even with the nuclear deal and even if America removed all other sanctions as well, Iran's economic revival and its full international integration will not be possible without basic cultural and political changes and the adoption of a realistic and national as opposed to revolutionary foreign policy. For example, Iran cannot expect fully to develop its tourist industry without relaxing social restrictions. Yet its hardliners consider Turkey's Antalya-a major tourist attraction, even for Iranian citizens-as a den of moral corruption. In short, Iran cannot expect to develop economically, scientifically, and artistically and join the ranks of advanced nations as it wishes to do, while holding onto rigid, ideologically determined socio-political and cultural policies. The continuation of current polices will only exacerbate many contradictions inherent in the Islamic system with unpredictable but certainly negative consequence for the country, including the hardliners.

For the sake of their own interests, the United States and Europe should help those in Iran, notably the government of President Hassan Rouhani, who want to reform the system. Ultimately, however, no country can expect others to be more concerned about its welfare and interests than its own government and leadership.





About the Author:

Shireen T. Hunter is a Research Professor at Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service. Her latest book is Iran Divided: Historic Roots of Iranian Debates on Identity, Culture, and Governance in the 21st Century (Rowman & Littlefield, 2014).




Christian Convert Repeatedly Imprisoned for his Faith Denied Timely Adjudication

06/10/16

Source: International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran

A Christian converts appeal against his five-year prison sentence has not been adjudicated more than a year after his third conviction on repeated charges related to his new faith, a source knowledgeable about the case told the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran.



Ebrahim Firoozi



Ebrahim Firoozi, a 31-year-old welder from the city of Robat Karim (16 miles southwest of Tehran), is being held in Rajaee Shahr Prison in Karaj (12 miles west of Tehran). He was initially arrested in January 2010 for converting from Islam to Christianity and allegedly organizing Christian religious meetings.

During his first arrest he was told he would be freed if he declared himself a Muslim, a source told the Campaign. After Firoozi refused, the Revolutionary Court in Karaj convicted him of propaganda against the state for his religious conversion and alleged missionary activities and sentenced him to five months in prison with an additional five-month suspended prison sentence. He was freed on June 8, 2011.

Firoozi was arrested a second time on March 8, 2012 for allegedly attempting to create a website teaching about Christianity (in order to convert people) and again charged with propaganda against the state for which he was sentenced to one year in prison and two years in exile by Judge Hassan Babaee of the Revolutionary Court in Robat Karim. The Appeals Court upheld the decision.

The Christian convert was arrested a third time on September 16, 2013 and held in Ward 240, which is under the control of the Intelligence Ministry, in Evin Prison in Tehran where he was insulted for his beliefs and pressured to give false confessions, the source told the Campaign.

In April 2015 Judge Mohammad Moghisseh of Branch 28 of the Revolutionary Court sentenced Firoozi to five years in prison for allegedly creating a group with the intention of disturbing national security.

Ebrahim objected to and appealed the sentence a year ago, but the final verdict has still not been decided, said the source.

The source added that the repeated prosecution of Firoozi for charges he has already been convicted of violates Article 7 of the International Convention on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), ratified by Iran in 1975, which states: No one shall be liable to be tried or punished again for an offence for which he has already been finally convicted or acquitted in accordance with the law and penal procedure of each country.

Meanwhile Firoozi is being denied access to state-sanctioned religious books that he had ordered from outside the prison.

For more than a year the [Rajaee Shahr] prisons authorities have refused to deliver the books Ebrahim had personally purchased, even though they have all been published with the permission of the Culture and Islamic Guidance Ministry, the source told the Campaign.

Article 148 of Irans Prison Regulations Code allows prisoners to maintain access to items associated with their faith.

Despite President Hassan Rouhanis pledges during his election campaign in 2013 that All ethnicities, all religions, even religious minorities, must feel justice, the targeting of Christian converts has continued unabated under his administration.

Ailing Imprisoned Christian Convert Home On Brief Leave Maintains Demand for Permanent Release

Maryam (Nasim) Naghash Zargaran, a Christian convert who has been imprisoned since 2013 while suffering from several ailments, has been home with her family on a five-day furlough (temporary leave) since June 6, 2016 following her life-threatening hunger strike in Tehrans Evin Prison. Now her family is repeating their demand for her permanent release.



Maryam (Nasim) Naghash Zargaran



We are happy they gave her furlough, but thats not why my daughter went on a hunger strike. We want her to be free, Zargarans mother, Zahra Pour-Nouhi Langroudi, told the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran. Maryam has served a third of her sentence and by law she qualifies for conditional release. We dont know why she was sentenced to four years in prison in the first place.

Langroudi added that Zargaran began her most recent hunger strike on May 29, 2016 after an Intelligence Ministry representative falsely led her to believe that one of her convictions could be overturned.

Zargaran has said she will resume her hunger strike if she is not formally released by July 7, 2016, according to her mother.

Maryam was sentenced to four years in prison on two charges, but they had no evidence to support either one, said Langroudi. They accused her of preaching Christianity in Babolsar (145 miles north of Tehran) with 20 other women, but no one [was presented in court] to prove that he or she had been converted to Christianity by Maryam.

During the trial Judge Moghisseh joked with his staff and said: What should I do, Haji? How many years do you think I should give her? Is five years good? And then his colleague said: No! Shes too young-poor thing. Judge Moghisseh then said he would sentence her to four years, said Langroudi.

Can a judge joke like this about sentencing someone? Shouldnt he stick to the law and base his decision on evidence? added Langroudi.

Langroudi also informed the Campaign that her daughter would be going to the hospital during her five-day furlough to receive treatment for health problems that have been exacerbated by her hunger strike.

Maryam is suffering from heart, ear, and spinal disc ailments, and neck and hand arthritis. She had heart disease before she was sent to prison and underwent an operation for it last year, said Langroudi. The doctors had told her that she must absolutely avoid stressful situations, but the other problems with her ear, back and arthritis are the result of her imprisonment.

Since March 2011, Zargaran, a childrens music teacher, was regularly summoned and interrogated by security police about her alleged Christian missionary activities. She was eventually arrested on November 5, 2012 and accused of seeking property in northern Iran for an orphanage along with converted Christian pastor Saeed Abedini before he was also imprisoned for his religious beliefs in 2013.

Abedini, an Iranian-American dual national, spent eight years in prison on proselytization charges until he was released in January 2016 along with two other Iranian-Americans following a prisoner swap deal between Iran and the United Sates.

In 2013, despite having no access to legal counsel, Zargaran was sentenced to four years in prison by Branch 28 of the Revolutionary Court, presided by Judge Mohammad Moghisseh, for assembly and collusion against national security. The Appeals Court later upheld the sentence.

Zargaran began serving her sentence on July 15, 2013 in Evin Prisons Womens Ward. She has been granted furlough twice to receive specialized medical treatment.

Irans Protestant Christian and Christian convert community are subjected to severe persecution and discrimination, and are prosecuted vigorously for what authorities view are their proselytizing activities.
Iran, Russia, Syria agree to promote anti-terror cooperation

06/10/16

Source: Press TV

Iran, Russia and Syria have agreed to step up cooperation in their fight against Takfiri terror groups wreaking havoc across the Syrian soil and elsewhere in the region. We made decisions for what must be done on the regional and operational levels in an agreed upon and coordinated manner, said Iranian Defense Minister Hossein Dehqan on Thursday. He made the remarks following a meeting with his Russian and Syrian counterparts, Sergei Shoigu and Fahd Jassem al-Freij, in Tehran.





Iranian Defense Minister Brigadier General Hossein Dehqan (C) meets with his Russian and Syrian counterparts, Sergei Shoigu (L) and Fahd Jassem al-Freij, in Tehran, on June 9, 2016.

(Photo by

Iranian Defense Minister Brigadier General Hossein Dehqan (C) meets with his Russian and Syrian counterparts, Sergei Shoigu (L) and Fahd Jassem al-Freij, in Tehran, on June 9, 2016.(Photo by Islamic Republic News Agency

"The terrorists and their supporters must know that the group fighting against them is determined to support this route until the end and will do so, Dehqan said.

Dehqan also strongly denounced US and Saudi support for what they call moderate rebels as further proof of the falsehood of their anti-terror slogans.

He went on to say that the three countries were determined to deliver a decisive battle against all terrorist groups wreaking havoc in Syria and elsewhere in the region.

Dehqan earlier said during the meeting that Iran considers the struggle against terrorism to be its duty and its mission. He also accused the US and Israel of patronizing terrorism in the troubled Middle East region.

The aggressive policy based on hegemony, which is being pursued by the United States, Israel and some other countries, which patronize terrorism, stands behind the current regional crisis, he said.

Iran has always been and remains a reliable anchor of regional security that has always been opposed to violence, aggression, terror and terrorism, Dehqan added.

A Russian Defense ministry statement said talking points were "priority measures in reinforcing the cooperation" between the defense ministries of the three countries in the fight with Daesh and al-Nusra terrorist groups.





Senior military officials of Iran, Russia and Syria hold three-way talks on anti-terror cooperation in Tehran on June 9, 2016.

(Photo by

Senior military officials of Iran, Russia and Syria hold three-way talks on anti-terror cooperation in Tehran on June 9, 2016.(Photo by Islamic Republic News Agency

The visit of Russia's defense minister to Tehran comes after Moscow's pledge to step up its airstrikes against Takfiri forces in and around Aleppo.

Iran and Russia are Syria's main allies against the various foreign-backed armed groups fighting to topple President Bashar al-Assad, including Daesh terrorists.

Moscow has sent warplanes and special forces in support of Syrian troops, while Tehran has deployed military advisers and trained and equipped pro-government militias.

During the talks, Dehqan reiterated Irans support for talks between the Syrian government and opposition groups.

He said Tehran welcomes any cessation of hostilities in Syria provided that it doesnt allow for a reinforcement of terrorists in the war-torn country.

We agree to a guaranteed ceasefire that doesnt lead to the strengthening of terrorists in this country, Dehqan noted, adding, The first step toward restoring security to the region is comprehensive ceasefire and humanitarian aids.
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
We just saw Motorola do something with Android that up to now, only Windows 10 has been able to do. Motorolas OneCompute prototype Moto Mod takes the concept behind Windows 10s Continuum featurethe ability to project a Windows phone onto a PCand ports it to Android. Shown at parent company Lenovos Tech World exhibition Thursday in San Francisco, OneCompute could further blur the line between smartphone and desktop.

OneCompute is conceived as one of the magnetic Moto Mods add-ons that can clip on to Motorolas new phone, the Moto Z, announced Thursday. The OneCompute technology uses that Moto Mod as a wireless bridge to a wired dock. The dock communicates with a traditional monitor, providing a desktop-like experience.

Officially, Motorola employees said OneCompute is part of the Moto Mods Developer Kit, designed to show off the power of Moto Mods and lure third parties to the platform. But both the Moto Mod and dock itself are branded and have the appearance of near-final hardware. Without lengthy tests, its difficult to tell what, if any, bugs may have crept in. But my gut says that Motorola plans to ship this as a product, and soon.

Mark Hachman Motorolas OneCompute hardware: the Moto Z phone, the OneCompute Moto Mod, and the dock.

Why this matters: Peter Hortensius, Lenovos chief technology officer, cautioned reporters not to think of this as an Android version of Microsofts Continuum. Duly noted. But he also pointed out the relatively low numbers of users who may own a Windows phone. (To be fair, Moto Mods will work with only one Android phone at launch, which means OneComputes sharewhen and if it shipscould be equally minuscule.) Motorola showed off the Android version of Word Mobile running on a Moto Z, filling a widescreen monitor like it belonged there. Oh, and it ran in a window that could be snapped to the left or right, just like in Windows 10. A major productivity advantage the Windows Mobile platform enjoyed apparently just evaporated.

A Kiss to die for

On the rear of each Moto Z are sixteen metal bumps, which, when the Mods are magnetically attached on to the phone itself, provide electrical power and pass data back and forth. In the case of the JBL SoundBoost speaker or the Insta-Share Projector Moto Mod, all of the hardware is self-contained. Not so for the OneCompute.

Mark Hachman The Moto Zs electrical connections are how the magic happens.

The OneCompute solution uses a Moto Mod with a chip embedded in it from Keyssa, a small Silicon Valley startup that hired the minds behind HDMI and the LPDDR4 memory standard, among others. The companys short-range Kiss wireless technology transfers data at about 6Gbps over very short ranges, and preserves USB, HDMI and DisplayPort protocols as well. (Acer built the Kiss technology into the Acer Aspire Switch 12 S and its associated dock.)

Most Android tablets use MHL to reproduce an Android display onto an external monitor, but MHL has limitations, Motorola executives said. For one thing, MHL can be laggy. That might be because MHL also supports both 5-pin and 11-pin connectors, and most manufacturers havent done a good job of telling you whether the phone or tablet actually supports MHL, let alone which connector it supports.

Mark Hachman Motorolas dock uses USB ports and an HDMI connection.

Motorola built its own dock, which boasts three USB 2.0 ports, an HDMI output, and a power connectorall connected to the receiver via a short cable. The external receivers important because it includes a charging plate, wirelessly charging the phone as it communicates with the display. Conceptually, the whole setup is pretty ungainlydata is passed from the phone to the Mod to the receiver to the dock to the display via an HDMI cablebut it seemed to work in practice.

A functional desktop interface

Connected, the Moto Z displayed a desktop similar to that of Android tablets like the Samsung Galaxy series, with an few key icons (phone, contacts, email) at the bottom of the screen, and a familiar array of icons at the top. The only hint that the setup is somewhat unusual are the three familiar Android buttonsback, home, and the menu keythat are tucked into the corner of the screen, rather than the bottom.

Mark Hachman The Motorola OneCompute app, which manages the hardware.

Its not exactly clear what changes Motorola made to Android to enable OneCompute, though the company says they were minimal. Certain tweaks, however, are very Windows-like: Windows had options to snap it to the left, right, or top of the screen. Apps could be windowed, and information cut and pasted from app to app. Applications could also be run inside standard windows, though this could have just been a standard Android N implementation.

Otherwise, Motorola doesnt seem to have done too much to facilitate OneCompute. The company authored a OneCompute management app and built separate AMP Connect and AMP Disconnect apps. (A demo video that the company createdand which is in our attached video, aboveshows that one of the advantages of OneCompute is the ability to dock and undock a video, while streaming, without needing to restart it.)

Microsoft The competition: Microsofts Display Dock performs a smiliar function, but for Windows.

Consumers can be finicky about such things as plugging in cables, and the $99.99 price Microsoft charges for its wired Display Dock means that probably only a tiny subset of users bought one for work and home. Plopping your phone onto a wireless charging dock that also connects to your monitor, though, seems a lot more appealing.

Two pieces still have to fall into place: Motorola needs to ensure that the OneCompute solution works, and cheaplyand that includes the price of the Moto Mod and the dock, too. Unfortunately, combining a wireless charging pad, USB ports, and an HDMI connection will probably push up the price considerably higher than the $30 or so Id prefer. Still, the OneCompute concept means that Android phones could increasingly pressure Windows PCsbad news for Microsoft, maybe, but a win for consumers.
Users worried about being caught up in the recent leak of more than 32 million Twitter login credentials should already know if theyve been hacked. Twitter confirmed on Friday that it was notifying users whose valid login credentials were recently being passed around on the so-called dark web. The account credential leak became public after LeakedSource published the collection on Wednesday. LeakedSource maintains a database of nearly two billion online account credential leaks.

Twitter said in a blog post that it had obtained the leaked data, and matched it against their records. As a result it identified a number of Twitter accounts for extra protection. Affected accounts have been locked and their passwords must be reset by the account holder. If your Twitter information was impacted by any of the recent issuesthen you have already received an email, Twitter said.

The impact on you: This latest login credential leak is another reminder how critically important it is to maintain a valid email address for receiving password reset notifications. As we discussed on Thursday, make sure you are using a password manager, that you are not reusing passwords on multiple sites, and that you enable two-factor authentication whenever possible. Twitter offered similar advice in its recent blog post.

How big was it?

The total number of legitimate leaked account credentials is unclear, but Twitter confirmed to The Wall Street Journal that millions of users were affected. The company also told the WSJ that millions more of the published credentials were not valid.

Confirming what LeakedSource reported earlier, Twitter said it was confident the breach did not come from its servers. The company said the credentials were amassed from combining information from other recent breaches, malware on victim machines that are stealing passwords for all sites, or a combination of both.
A driver injured in a collision with a San Bernardino County sheriffs detectives unit the day of the Dec. 2 San Bernardino massacre has filed a claim against the county seeking more than $500,000 for personal injuries and damages related to the accident, according to the document received by the county Tuesday, June 7.

It is the second claim tied to the 12:57 p.m. accident. A California Highway Patrol investigation concluded Detective Grant Ward ran a red light, causing the collision that injured the officer and the other driver, Andreas Gutierrez. The three-vehicle accident was at the intersection of Sterling Avenue and Fifth Street in San Bernardino.

The report said Ward told an investigator he was headed west on Fifth when he entered the intersection with some of his emergency lights activated and he believed he entered on a green light. The report stated that Ward did not have the right of way to enter an intersection on a red light because he had not activated his siren.

Ward told investigators he was en route to a staging area and en route to a call. The shooting was reported about 11 a.m., where two terrorists shot to death 14 people and wounded 22 others at the Inland Regional Center. At the time of the accident, law enforcement officers were looking for the terrorists who were gunned down in a shoot out hours later.

The countys response to claims is that they will be considered and the county will act in the best interests of everyone involved.

In January, Infinity Insurance Co. filed a claim against the county seeking $10,608.76 for damages to Gutierrez vehicle and $500 for the insurance deductible. A sheriffs spokeswoman in January had not received any information that the two incidents were related.
Update: All lanes except one southbound lane of the 79 were open about noon.

A crash that erupted in flames along the 79 freeway on Friday morning, June 10, has forced authorities to close the road down entirely.

The crash between a Honda and a dump truck was reported about 9:30 a.m. near the community of Gilman Hot Springs just north of San Jacinto, according to the CHP logs.

Both vehicles burst into flames and one woman needed to be extricated from her vehicle, according to a Cal Fire/Riverside County Fire Department news release. She was taken to a nearby hospital with major injuries.

CHP Spokesman Darren Meyer said Riverside County Sheriffs officials were on scene helping to close the road down.

The condition of the other motorist wasnt clear about 2 p.m.

The 79 was temporarily closed between Ramona Expressway and Gilman Springs Road. Meyer said Caltrans would be called to help divert traffic until the crash and whatever investigation follows is finished.

The 79 is a main artery spanning the area between the 10 and the Hemet/San Jacinto area.

This story is developing. Check back for updates.
Re: La Sierra July 4 fireworks are back on [News, June 7]: Since we predicted that this would happen, it would be interesting to know, before we go giving too many plaudits, exactly where the money came from.

Did the city simply find the money by reallocating it from some other project? Did a council member find a sugar daddy, as has happened in the past, a one-time fix for this year? Or did the City Council come up with a special appropriation?

Wherever it came from, I think voters need to know so these panic shortages dont become a political tool to curry voter favor and distract us from the true budget issues.

Bill Densmore

Riverside

  

Can we all try to make this year a safe and sane and fire-free holiday? Weve already got fireworks going off out here in Highgrove almost every night  found some folks last night in the community park parking lot. Common sense goes a long way and its going to be a long, hot, dry summer so lets use a little of it to keep everyone safe.

Vicki Perizzolo

Riverside

Democracy in action

Re: Clinton clinches, AP declares [News, June 6]: Foul play, dirty pool, shame on you! AP has violated the good citizen clause of its charter of incorporation, which should be revoked for this behavior. This must be criminal to purposely stink up our American voting process and intentionally twist the meaning of the results.

Also, shame on the Press-Enterprise for going along with the publication  your charter of incorporation should also be considered for revocation. Citizens United v. FEC should be rescinded based on this example of bad behavior. The whole concept of corporate personhood is a laughable folly.

As an American citizen and veteran, I live and have served democracy. Can you imagine what people around the world will think of our pro-democracy propaganda after reading about this case, and the government takes no action?

Don Tracy

Banning

Thanks for what?

So Eric Garcetti, the esteemed mayor of Los Angeles, wants everyone to thank former prisoners for their service for doing time in jail and prison. Man, is that guy twisted or what? I will only thank him for being the mayor of Los Angeles, and not of Redlands!

Brad Willason

Redlands
E-commerce, the internet economy tightly bound to the Inland areas growing logistics industry, grew in all key areas including warehouses and truck transportation, the U.S. Census Bureau reported.

The numbers from 2014 placed total e-commerce trade at $298.6 billion, up more than 14 percent from 2013s $261.2 billion. The reported figures were national.

Transportation and warehousing e-commerce revenue increased 6.5 percent, crossing the $100 million mark in 2014. Truck transportation was up 12.4 percent, at $19.8 million for 2014. The revenue is reported by the companies.

More than 6 million square feet of warehouses were completed in the Inland Empire in the first quarter of 2016, and nearly 16 million square feet are under construction.

Amazon announced in May it was building a million-square-foot fulfillment center in Eastvale, its sixth for the Inland area. Fulfillment centers are not part of the Census Bureaus warehouse category, but their expansion is driven by the growth of e-commerce.

The bureau defines e-commerce sales and revenue as orders and price terms or negotiations done over the internet or other online systems. Payment does not have to be made online.

The growth raises possibilities as well as questions for the Inland area, from infrastructure for port-to-warehouse truck traffic, to how that affects air quality.

It also can spur new support businesses , said Amanda Ishak, a doctoral student of strategic management at UC Riversides A. Gary Anderson School of Management.

Whenever you have influx like this, it creates opportunity, she said.

It also brings a global perspective to the area, as large companies such as Amazon bring in people from outside the Inland area, and that knowledge is going to spread from there, she said.

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported the Inland region had 102,970 workers in jobs linked with the logistics industry as of the first quarter of 2015.

While the warehouses continue to grow, support lags for improving the truck routes that bring the goods from ports in Long Beach and Los Angeles, said Jay Prag, an economy and finance professor at the Drucker School of Management in Claremont.

We already know some jobs in logistics are threatened by robotics, but the transportation jobs are threatened by our own lack of action Prag said in a telephone interview.

If the trend continues, he said, companies will find another way to move goods.

As much as 70 percent of cargo coming into the twin ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles is transported by trucks, and 40 percent is headed for the Inland Empire, according to the the Port of Long Beach, which is now studying short-haul rail as an alternative to trucks.

Penny Newman, executive director of the Jurupa Valley-based Center for Community Action and Environmental Justice, said the warehouses may bring jobs, but not prosperity, because many of the pay categories are low-wage.

Its not that we are opposed to growth or development, Newman said in a telephone interview, But dont place warehouses and truck routes near people  and we continue to do that.

Contact the writer: rdeatley@pressenterprise.com or 951-368-9573
More than 220 dogs that are temporarily housed at the Ramona Humane Society shelter in San Jacinto will have more comfortable living quarters thanks to generous donors contributing to the Kennel Capital Campaign.

The cost is $2,500 per kennel. A bone-shaped plaque lets visitors know who donated the funds, whether it is a business name or families and individuals who want to honor or memorialize a loved one or past pet.

The campaign aims to replace 100 failing kennels that are more than 20 years old.

We have already had one company purchase a whole kennel, said Jeff Sheppard, president and CEO of the Ramona Humane Society. If a company has 25 employees donate $100 each or 100 employees donate $25 each, they can fund a kennel.

Art Davis, director of information technology at Airplus of California Inc. in Corona, said they made the large donation because as a corporation the company desires to give back to the communities where its employees live and work.

Ive always had a soft spot for our animal friends, Davis said. Currently my two cats, Gladys and Gertrude, reside with me in Nuevo.

Sheppard said the center purchased 16 kennels during the first phase of the campaign with an interest-free loan and use designated donations to make the monthly payments.

We cannot make payments out of the general fund, which is used for food, electricity and other utilities and wages, he said. Medications are our biggest expense but its worth it if we can save the animals.

Sheppard said the cost of repairs to the failing kennels uses money that could be better spent elsewhere.

With the current condition of the kennels, there is a real sense of urgency to get people behind this campaign, he said. These kennels have been in constant use for 22 years and subjected to harsh chemicals to keep them clean. The new kennels are made of stronger materials, have sealed bottoms and a drainage system that makes them even more sanitary.

On June 25, the nonprofit organization will host its Bow-Wow Meow Luau for 350 guests to raise further funds to help spruce up the facility.

Things just wear out over time, said Sheppard, who has been at the helm for 19 years. We want our animals to have a pleasant temporary home to keep them comfortable until they find their forever homes.

The shelter started as the Ramona Animal Haven nearly 50 years ago by caring local residents who saw a need to help animals.

The same drive is still here  its just a new generation, Sheppard said. We have been consistently expanding our services to the community and now we are asking for its help.

Lori Nedderman, vice president of operations at the shelter, said the facility averages 24 new animals each day but this time of year its double that due to the influx of kittens. The Ramona Humane Society is offering a discounted fee of $25 for any cat or kitten adopted in June.

 (The society) is nonprofit and an open admission shelter for five cities, she said. That means that we accept all animals from the cities that we serve whether they are aggressive, feral, sick, injured or underage.

Contact the writer: dianerhodes.writer@gmail.com
Minnesota Life Insurance Company is alleging in a federal lawsuit that the mother of San Bernardino mass shooter Syed Rizwan Farook knew of her sons planned terrorist attack and should not be entitled to $275,000 in life insurance benefits.

The lawsuit, filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Riverside, alleges Rafia Farook was living in the Redlands apartment with her 28-year-old son, a San Bernardino County health inspector, and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, at the time of the Dec. 2 attack at the Inland Regional Center.

Clad in black tactical gear and armed with assault rifles, Syed Farook and Malik entered the IRC conference center about 11 a.m. and opened fire on a crowd of about 70 people, killing 14 and wounding 22 in what the FBI called the deadliest terrorist attack on U.S. soil since 9/11. Thirteen of the 14 people killed and most of the wounded were Farooks coworkers at the countys environmental health services division, who were attending a training seminar and holiday party the morning of the shooting.

Minnesota Life is informed and believes that Ms. Farook had material knowledge of, and/or participated in, the planning of the terrorist attack executed by the insured, according to the 6-page lawsuit, which names Rafia Farook, Saira Khan, who is Syed Farooks sister, and the U.S. government as defendants.

During a search of Farooks and Maliks Redlands apartment following the shooting, FBI agents seized pipe bombs, bomb-making materials and thousands of rounds of ammunition.

Minnesota Life is informed and believes that FBI agents found bomb making materials in the garage, including explosive powder consistent with the explosive powder used in the IED found at the site of the attack and other bomb-making components, the lawsuit states. Minnesota Life is therefore uncertain as to whether it is obligated to pay a death benefit to a beneficiary who had material knowledge of, and/or participated in, the planning of the terrorist attack executed by the insured.

Cristyn Chadwick, an attorney representing Minnesota Life in the litigation, said Thursday in a brief telephone interview she could not say if the insurance company had any additional information proving its allegations against Rafia Farook.

As to Syed Farooks sister, Saira Khan, Minnesota Life lacks information or belief as to her involvement in the terrorist attack, according to the lawsuit.

Rafia Farook could not be reached for comment Thursday.

FBI spokeswoman Laura Eimiller and Los Angeles U.S. Attorneys Office spokesman Thom Mrozek both declined to comment on the lawsuit Thursday.

In January 2012, Syed Farook took out a $25,000 life insurance policy, designating his mother as the primary beneficiary and Khan as the contingent beneficiary. In July 2013, he took out a supplemental life insurance policy for $250,000, also naming his mother and sister as the primary and contingent beneficiaries, respectively, according to the lawsuit.

Both insurance policies were issued under San Bernardino Countys group life insurance policy.

In June 2015, about six months before the attack at the IRC, Syed Farook logged into the countys employee benefits website and confirmed his life insurance coverage and beneficiary designations, according to the lawsuit.

On May 31, the Los Angeles U.S. Attorneys Office filed a civil asset forfeiture lawsuit in Riverside in an effort to seize the life insurance money and use it for the surviving victims of the attack and the family members of those who died. Federal prosecutors were expected to make another filing in that case Thursday.

Minnesota Life noted the governments asset forfeiture action in its lawsuit, stating, By reason of actual or potential conflicting claims to the proceeds from defendants, and each of them, Minnesota Life does not know and cannot determine the person or persons legally entitled to the death benefit.

Neither Rafia Farook nor Saira Khan have been charged criminally in connection with the attack.

Contact the writer: joe.nelson@langnews.com, @SBCountyNow on Twitter
UPDATE (Thursday, Oct. 6): ABCs 20/20 investigates overturned conviction of Coronas Kimberly Long

After about seven years in state prison for a murder she says she did not commit, a Corona woman was released Friday from Riverside County Jail to await a possible third trial in the bludgeoning death of her boyfriend in 2003.

A judge on Friday vacated her conviction and ordered a new trial following concerns over the fairness of her second trial. The first trial ended in a hung jury.

After a weeklong hearing, Riverside County Superior Court Judge Patrick Magers found that Kimberly Louise Longs public defender, Eric Keen, did not provide effective legal counsel for his client.

The judge ordered Long, 40, released on $50,000 bail and set a status conference for July 8. She has been in state prison since 2009.

RELATED

Wrongfully convicted? New law changes standard for appeals

From the archives: Coverage of Kimberly Longs first 2 trials



The California Innocence Project took up Longs case more than five years ago and had a team of attorneys with her Friday in Riverside.

We hope the case is over today, Alex Simpson, associate director of the California Innocence Project, said outside court after the judges ruling. The project, based at California Western School of Law in San Diego, is dedicated to the release of wrongfully convicted inmates.

Simpson expressed hope that the Riverside County District Attorneys Office will not refile murder charges in the case.

That still must be determined, according to the District Attorneys Office.

We will be reviewing whether to appeal the ruling today by the judge to grant Ms. Long a new trial and, either way, we are prepared to move forward to trial, district attorneys spokesman John Hall said in a statement.

The judge found the defense attorneys actions came up short in several areas, including not calling forensic pathologists as witnesses to address the time of death, not completing DNA testing on certain evidence and not introducing important circumstantial evidence for the jury consider.

Long didnt have any blood on her or her clothing despite a blood-spattered crime scene, but her defense did not introduce that evidence.

During Fridays court proceedings, Long, who was dressed in blue inmate clothing, turned to one of her attorneys, Alissa Bjerkhoel, after the judge made his complex legal ruling and asked, What just happened?

Bjerkhoel said outside court, I dont think it sunk in until the judge set bail.

The defendants attorneys headed to a bail bonds office after the morning hearing to make bail arrangements, but her parents and supporters had to wait late into the night before her release on bail pending her next court date.

Around 4 p.m. a Riverside County Sheriffs deputy took Longs clothes upstairs. Then, word came that the state Department of Corrections still had to release a hold on her, and later the process was delayed by a jail staff shift change.

Longs parents, Roger and Darlene Long, were allowed to wait inside the jail building. Their daughter had been a registered nurse at Corona Regional Medical Center. Her two children are now in high school and college.

I am Kimberlys mom and her advocate, and she is getting freedom, and that is what we have been waiting for for 13 years, said Darlene Long outside court.

Our daughter is the most amazing person Ive ever known, Darlene Long said. She is the light shining, helping other inmate women. Her mother described the defendant as our rock.

In October 2003, Kimberly Long had spent the evening with friends and returned home to find her boyfriend, Oswaldo Ozzy Conde bludgeoned to death.

Conde had been hit in the head three to eight times with a blunt object, possibly while he was asleep, according to testimony at trial. The weapon was never found and a key witness, who had been with Long that night, died in a traffic collision before trial.

His recorded interview with law enforcement was used in the preliminary hearing.

Magers, who heard Kimberly Longs petition for release in Riverside on Friday, also presided when her second trial ended in a conviction in 2005.

The judge had his doubts.

At her 2006 sentencing, he released her on $100,000 bail, pending appeal. At that hearing, Magers said there was insufficient evidence to prove her guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. Appellate judges said there was ample evidence.

RELATED

How Kimberly Long is rebuilding her life after murder convictions reversal

District attorney appealing Kimberly Longs overturned murder conviction

Wrongfully convicted? New law changes standard for appeals

Staff writer Alexander Groves contributed to this report.
The Godzilla of all El Ninos is dead. And the big guy went out with a whimper, at least in Southern California.

On Thursday, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administrations Climate Prediction Center declared the much-anticipated  and miserably disappointing  El Nino of 2015-16 history.

Theres nothing left, said Climate Prediction Center Deputy Director Mike Halpert. Stick a fork in it, its done.

It is the end of a dramatic weather show, said Bill Patzert, a climate scientist at NASAs Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena,

This long-running El Nino had a fairly spectacular run on the world stage. It lasted for almost 15 months, Patzert said. And so the consensus now is, its time for the curtain call.

The consensus at the outset was the event that has taken on mythical proportions and is driven by a pool of hot water in the equatorial Pacific would unleash torrential rains on Southern California and dent a stubborn drought.

And while El Nino did deliver much rain to the Pacific Northwest and Northern California, it confounded experts by leaving the southern part of the state dry.

As a result, an unprecedented surge in flood-insurance purchases turned out to be largely unnecessary in Southern California, and the regions water-producing lakes and underground aquifers continue to recede.

People took action, said Michael Glantz, a former senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo., and operator of a website that shares information about global El Nino impacts. People paid money taking action.

And he said that was a result of hype about expectations.

The problem probably started when they started calling it a Godzilla El Nino, Glantz said.

The label Godzilla was coined early on by the colorful and quotable Patzert. And it stuck. Pretty soon, it seemed, everyone was using the term  to the growing frustration of some in the forecasting business as storm after storm veered north.

We actually asked NASA not to do that again, said Alex Tardy, a warning coordination meteorologist for the National Weather Service in San Diego. Weve asked them nicely not to do it.

Patzert said he would take the heat for ridicule generated by the term.

It was billed as the Great Wet Hope. And it wasnt, he said. And I have to assume a little responsibility for that.

But Patzert suggested others should share the blame.

Im sorry that I hurt their feelings, he said. But I was not the only one. Everybody, including the National Weather Service, was pretty optimistic  and exuberant  about getting a down payment on this huge drought.

The focus shifts toward preparing for El Ninos dry cousin, La Nina, which could prolong the drought, and toward solving the scientific puzzle of why this hot-ocean episode didnt deliver  at least in Southern California.

If the now-dead El Nino delivered anything, it was questions. And experts plan to gather in San Diego in August to explore what went wrong, Tardy said.

He said a number of climate scientists are expected to publish detailed studies. Maybe there are a lot of flavors of El Nino that we werent aware of, Tardy said.

For sure, said Glantz, this past winter and spring made clear there remains much that is not known.

Its time to take stock of what they really know and what they dont know, he said. Theres a lot of research to be done.

For now, Tardy said, experts believe the bypass of Southern California was due to where the pool of warmer-than-normal water was. He said the pool was 1,000 miles farther west than the one that generated the big El Nino in 1997-98 and dumped 30 inches of rain on Southern California.

So were blaming it on the position of the tropic ocean temperatures, Tardy said.

It wasnt, he said, because El Nino was wimpy. He said the pool was massive, the size of North America.

And at many places across the globe, it had a Godzilla-like impact, Patzert said, citing the flooding in Texas.

Dont tell the people in Texas that it was El No-Show, he said.

The Associated Press

contributed to this report.

Contact the writer: 951-368-9699 or ddowney@pressenterprise.com
Since high school, Kendall Oliver has preferred short hair, half an inch on the sides and three to four inches on top.

When Oliver, a transgender Army veteran, visited a Rancho Cucamonga barbershop in March seeking a trim, the owner refused because he perceived Oliver to be female.

Richard Hernandez, who owns The Barbershop on Milliken Avenue, said his Christian religious beliefs forbid him from cutting womens hair.

Its not a matter of discrimination, its a matter of religious convictions, the 30-year-old Ontario resident said. Its something I cant compromise on. To me, thats a sin and its something I cant do. You can put a gun to my head. Its not something Im able to change.

Oliver, a 24-year-old Eastvale resident, filed a lawsuit in late May alleging the business violated Californias civil rights law when it denied Oliver a haircut based on religious objections.

I was very disappointed, embarrassed, upset, Oliver said. There were other people staring at me. I dont understand, especially in this day and age with how far weve come with equality and human rights, that something like this would still be happening.

The case is the latest in a series of legal battles across the country that pit religious freedom against discrimination.

The debate has ensnared an Indiana pizza shop that wouldnt cater a gay wedding, New Mexico photographers who didnt want to take official pictures at a lesbian wedding ceremony and a Colorado baker who refused to make a wedding cake for a same-sex couple.

Its not going to be the last time we have these things, said Ivan Strenski, professor emeritus of religious studies at UC Riverside. I think the country is going to have to get over this idea of seeing things as black and white. Theres going to be a lot of gray in the world: racially mixed marriages, racially mixed kids, gender bending.

NO, MAAM

Oliver, who grew up in Ontario, has served more than six years in the Army Reserve, including a tour of Afghanistan. Oliver was born as a female but identifies more male than female.

In adulthood, Oliver came to terms with being transgender. As a self-description, Oliver uses gender-neutral pronouns such as they rather she or he.

When Oliver arrived at The Barbershop for an appointment March 8, a woman with short hair on one side and longer hair on the other was already there. Hernandez told her he didnt cut womens hair and she left, the lawsuit states. Oliver was still optimistic about being served because Oliver didnt have long hair.

Hernandez looked at Oliver and repeated that he didnt cut womens hair, the lawsuit says.

I was like, Even though I already have short hair? I just want to get it like the guy in the chair right now, Oliver recalled telling him.

Oliver left and a few minutes later called Hernandez to explain about being transgender and asked if he would reconsider.

Hernandez told Oliver, No, maam, and stated he wouldnt cut the hair of any kind of woman, the lawsuit states.

The refusal caused Oliver to feel more insulted, hurt and upset, the suit states.

After the incident, Oliver and Hernandez were interviewed together by television news media. Oliver asked Hernandez during the interview why he doesnt advertise that he doesnt give haircuts to women. Hernandez said it would be bad for business, the suit states.

Hernandez said thats not what he told Oliver.

What I said is, I would have people trying to sue me all the time if I (advertised it), he said. People would stereotype that as discrimination.

Hernandez said he belongs to the Church of God, which includes several evangelical Protestant denominations, the largest of which is Pentecostal. Hernandez declined to discuss details of his faith or name the church he attends, saying he fears retaliation.

He said hes following a practice of not cutting womens hair that was customary in Christian denominations until the early 20th Century.

We dont compromise with the times, said Hernandez, a 30-year-old Ontario resident. We dont change because the rest of the world changes.

Its a shame for a man to have long hair, but if a woman has long hair, its her glory and it speaks to being given to her as her covering, and I dont want to be the one who is taking away from her glory, the lawsuit states, quoting news reports.

He added that when people go against what God has created, you start getting everything out of whack, the suit says.

Hernandez said he apologized to Oliver and offered to reimburse the cost of a haircut. He said he has had subsequent conversations with Oliver, who seems to be pretty understanding about his views but is being influenced by outside forces in the LGBT community trying to exploit the situation for their own purposes.

I did nothing wrong, nor did I do anything degrading or demoralizing, he said. I also treat everyone with the utmost respect. And I treated her with the utmost respect.

RELIGION OR DISCRIMINATION?

The suit seeks damages of at least $4,000. Oliver said the case isnt being driven by outside pressure and money doesnt matter.

The only thing I care about is that this doesnt happen to anyone else again and they comply with the law, Oliver said.

Lambda Legal, a Los Angeles-based nonprofit organization that advocates for LGBT people, is representing Oliver along with other pro-bono lawyers.

The lawsuit, filed in San Bernardino County Superior Court, alleges The Barbershop violated Californias Unruh Civil Rights Act, which guarantees all people full and equal access to all business establishments in the state without regard to their sex, race, religion and other characteristics.

In addition to civil rights, the case is about whether religion can be used as an excuse for discrimination, said Peter Renn, Lambda Legal staff attorney.

The answer should be no, Renn said. Ultimately, freedom of religion also requires freedom from religion, especially given the huge diversity of religious beliefs we have in this country. If everyones religious beliefs allowed them to violate the law, the law would come to a screeching halt.

Douglas NeJaime, a professor at UCLA School of Law, said objections to anti-discrimination law based on religious beliefs go back to the civil rights era in the 1950s and 60s, when some restaurants and other businesses refused to serve black customers.

He noted the California Supreme Court in 2008 unanimously ruled in favor of an Oceanside lesbian who was denied infertility treatment based on her sexual orientation. Doctors at a womens medical clinic sought a religious exemption to the law because of their fundamentalist Christian beliefs.

NeJaime, faculty director of the Williams Institute, a think tank focused on LGBT legal issues, said the facts in the barbershop lawsuit appear to make a clear case of discrimination that would violate state law.

Hernandez said he has lawyer but wouldnt provide a name. He said several legal organizations have offered to take his case.

Im not bowing down at all, he said.

If theres one thing Oliver and Hernandez can agree on, its that they have received angry comments from people who disagree with them.

Theres hateful people on both sides, Hernandez said. I dont want it to get ugly for either one of us.

Contact the writer: 951-368-9292 or swall@pressenterprise.com
Usually we receive a sample ballot by mail a few weeks before Election Day. Having not received them, we called the Registrar of Voters and requested one be sent to each of us. Still nothing, so we called the Registrar again. Never received a sample ballot.

At the polling place Tuesday, it was very disorganized. The volunteers seemed confused. There were three tables and notebooks at each that had to be checked to see if we were registered. We were on the supplemental list, although we registered long ago. The separate ballots for all the different parties was ridiculous. There must have been eight or more. Just printing all these different ballots must very expensive and, to some degree, superfluous. We left the polling area not sure our votes would be counted. Voting is the only real voice we have. To doubt that it will mean something is more than a little disconcerting.

Larry Palmer

Norco

Profiting from tragedy

When an employee from the public sector retires and then takes his/her old job as a consultant for the same or higher salary, essentially, that is double-dipping. This is an outrageous practice and is sold as a cost-saving measure by elected or appointed officials.

However, some people associated with the terrible shooting in December have redefined this term. Many individuals will collect from the over $3 million donated. Several of these people will collect workers compensation for injuries or death. And a high percentage of these, and some not even associated with the tragedy, have filed monetary claims with the county of San Bernardino, thus, triple-dipping.

What is most disturbing is the claims filed by individuals not involved with the actions of the two terrorists, but rather in the proximity, heard the gunshots, traumatized by the events and so on.

I wish I had kept the time line to file on my calendar. I would have filed a claim, as I am traumatized whenever I see a black SUV.

Patrick Flaherty

Highland
Triston Muzics love of the military and appreciation for sacrifices its members have made is on full display at his Murrieta Valley High School campus.

Triston, 16, unveiled a $48,000 Eagle Scout project during a dedication ceremony Saturday that includes an outdoor physical fitness center for the JROTC program and a memorial honoring two alumni who died in action in 2012.

The aspiring U.S. Marine Corps pilot said he knew he wanted to do something for JROTC and worked with his instructor, 1st Sgt. David Huckobey, to come up with ideas for a physical training field and outdoor fitness area.

The idea for the memorial to the two fallen Nighthawks, the schools mascot, came from Tristons respect and admiration for the men and women who serve.

I saw around school all of these memorials for different things, but there wasnt anything for the people who sacrificed everything for the betterment of their country, said the junior. These people died for things greater than themselves, and they havent had any recognition.

To make the project a reality, the Murrieta resident had to raise around $12,000. The son of two U.S. Air Force veterans also solicited in-kind donations of labor and materials needed to complete the work.

The physical training field features parallel bars, double and single pull-up bars and concrete stairs. In addition to the permanent equipment, it also is equipped with dumbbells, kettlebells, medicine balls, conditioning ropes, large flipping tires, sledge hammers and ammo boxes. There is also a structure for storage.

The memorial, which honors U.S. Army Sgt. Clinton K. Ruiz and Sgt. Eric Williams, features a decorative cube inscribed All Gave Some  Some Gave All, and on it is placed a stand with a pair of boots, a rifle and a helmet. It also features two benches encircled by a low concrete wall.

Ruiz, 22, of Murrieta, was killed Oct. 25, 2012, when his unit was attacked by gunfire in Khas Uruzgan, Oruzgan province, Afghanistan.

Williams, 27, of Murrieta, was killed July 23, 2012, in an attack at a base in Pul-E Alam, a city just south of Kabul in Afghanistans Logar province.

Tristons mother, Cindy Muzic, said her son spent a year working on the project. Besides his work on the construction of the project, Triston started a GoFundMe page, sent out letters asking for help and held a fundraiser at a Chick-fil-A eatery.

I am super proud of him, Cindy Muzic said. He worked hard to get there. It was no easy task.

Triston said he learned to be flexible, as the project went through frequent design changes, and work with others, as many had their own ideas of what should be done. However, the teen, who has been involved in Scouting for 12 years, said it was an experience he wouldnt trade.

It was amazing, he said. Without all of our veterans, I wouldnt be where I am today. I walk in their footsteps.

Contact the writer: melaniecj@yahoo.com
An 80-year-old Los Angeles woman who drove her Cadillac around Southern California for over 24 hours was found about 120 miles from home in Idyllwild on Thursday, June 9.

The ordeal began about 11:30 a.m. on Wednesday, when Bennie Ruth Bowell  dubbed Runaway Ruth by officers  left home to grab a quick lunch at a local restaurant, according to a California Highway Patrol news release.

Her grandkids and cell phone still at home, Bowell never showed up at the restaurant.

Family members waited for about an hour before they called the Los Angeles Police Department to file a missing persons report. By sundown, the release says, family, friends and officers were searching for her.

Then, on Thursday morning, LAPD officers asked the CHP to issue a silver alert, which activated changeable roadway signs to let motorists in Los Angeles, Riverside, San Bernardino and San Diego counties know that Bowell was missing. Her vehicle and its license plate were listed on them, according to the release.

Finally, someone called 911 about noon to report a gray Cadillac driving south on State Route 243 in the Pine Cove area of Idyllwild, the release said. CHP Officer Mike Murawski found the vehicle driving slowly near Marion View Drive toward the center of the town. He stopped her and spoke with a hungry, tired Bowell.

Dispatchers called her tearful family members to let them know she was safe and on her way to the CHP office in Beaumont, the release said. Officer Murawski bought her some food and waited with her until her family showed up about 3:30 p.m. Her sisters, daughters and grandkids all showed up to hug her.
Loma Linda University violated federal civil rights law when it refused to enroll a would-be student in classes because of her immigration status, according to the ACLU of Southern California.

And the university agreed in a statement issued late Thursday saying it regretted the mistake and apologized.

The civil rights group wrote a letter to the university Thursday, demanding the university review its policies and refund the students application fee and deposit.

Carson resident Veronica Velasquez, 23, a senior in kinesiology at Cal State San Bernardino, was born in the Philippines and arrived in the United States as a child, but she does not currently have legal immigration status.

Under the 2012 federal policy known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals  or DACA  shes protected from deportation.

Velasquezs DACA status became a problem in April when she was accepted into Loma Linda Universitys graduate physical therapy program. Eight days later, according to the ACLU, Velasquez was told she couldnt enroll in classes because of her DACA status.

That decision broke federal law, according to the letter sent to the university.

Excluding students like Veronica Velasquez from LLU simply because they have been granted deferred action under DACA discriminates based on alienage in violation of 42 U.S.C.  1981, the nine-page letter, credited to a trio of ACLU lawyers, reads in part.

According to the letter, Loma Linda University justified its action by saying that undocumented students cannot obtain professional licenses, that DACA status only is valid for one year and that DACA students are ineligible for many kinds of financial assistance.

The ACLU said California prohibits state licensing boards from denying an applicant based on citizenship or immigrations status, DACA status can be renewed for two years at a time, and Velasquez is still eligible for private loans and other forms of financial assistance.

LLUs policy is not only discriminatory and unlawful, it is ill-advised, the ACLU letter continues. It prevents eligible students like Ms. Velasquez  who have worked hard and want to make a meaningful contribution to their families and to the community  from achieving their educational and professional dreams. We urge LLU to cease its unlawful and discriminatory policy denying enrollment to students with DACA immediately.

The letter from the ACLU concludes by asking the university to reconsider its unlawful DACA policy immediately and asks the university to refund Velasquezs $40 application fee, $350 deposit to hold her spot in the class of 2016, and $42.95 fee for a criminal background check, which was required for enrollment.

Thursday evening, the universitys lawyer agreed with the ACLU.

Undocumented or immigrant status is not a legitimate basis for denying students admission to the university, a response letter from Kent Hansen, general counsel for Loma Linda University, reads in part. It has never been a basis for denying admission to the university, hence Ms. Velasquez was accepted.

There was a time when the university, out of concern for our students finances, hesitated to enroll those who might be licensed to practice, he wrote.

That issue was resolved on Jan. 1, when California law was updated to allow DACA students to receive their licenses in the state of California. But not everyone at the university was apparently aware of the change in the law.

We regret that mistake and apologize, Hansen wrote. We immediately rectified the situation and communicated that to her. We are also reviewing our applications and acceptances to correct any other instance of this problem that may have occurred.
Talk that Accras huge population, which has placed pressure on its facilities, coupled with the citys low-lying topography, makes it flood-prone, for which reason a new capital for Ghana is required, has been described as needless, by Geographer Professor Emmanuel Amamoo-Okyere.



Prof Amamoo-Okyere, a former Executive Director at the Centre for Geographical Information Service (GIS) at the University of Ghana, said these in an interview with Prince Minkah on Class FMs Executive Breakfast Show on Friday June 10 after a heavy downpour the previous day, which left most parts of Accra, submerged.



Dozens of people had to be evacuated from their homes in Adabraka, in the Greater Accra Region, by personnel from the Ghana Army, Ghana National Fire Service (GNFS), and the National Disaster Management Organisation (NADMO), after they were trapped in their homes and schools during long hours of heavy rains.



Dredgers and other heavy-duty machines decongesting the Odaw River, located close to the Kwame Nkrumah Circle, were all inundated.



Other areas which were affected by Thursdays downpour include Kaneshie, Avenor, Weija, Alajo, the Stanbic Heights area within the Airport Residential Area, the Fiesta Royale area, and the Graphic Road, among others.



In a bid to find solutions to the flooding, which also led to the loss of over 150 lives at a Goil Fuel Station on June 3, 2015, the host asked the geographer if the capital of the country would have to be relocated due to its low and flat topography.



Deputy Ranking Member of Parliaments Works and Housing Committee, Justice Joe Appiah had earlier suggested in an interview with Class FM's Parliamentary Correspondent, Ekow Annan that the capital city ought to be redesigned and if possible, relocated.



But Prof Amamoo-Okyere responded: We do not need a new capital. We need to expand Kumasi and all the regional capitals.



He suggested that the country must rather work towards equalisation than trying to have a specific place to rebuild a new capital.



To him, massive funding will be needed for such a large project, but he had his doubts citizens would benefit, as he feared government officials will only seek to line their pockets with such money.



What money will that cost us? Where will the money come from and what honesty do people have [to use the money appropriately without siphoning]? Look at the Kwame Nkrumah Circle project, has anyone told us the engineering implications? We have not done any serious drainage work there. Who approved it and who is inspecting it? How much money has gone into it? It will come back to the same human factor of us not being honest with ourselves. Billions of dollars will be spent in building a new capital and at the end, we will ask ourselves what went wrong, he noted.



Go to Rotterdam, it was under the sea. So, if we want to rebuild, it can be done, but if you want a new capital to solve these things [like floods], then I am sorry. It is like an Ananse story. Unless we change our attitude of doing things [the country will suffer].



Most of the occasion, public interests are as a result of an individuals own interest that has been engineered to appear like a public interest. For me, Accra is historical. How many capitals have you seen being moved across the world? London is still there, Amsterdam is still there, Berlin was, but changed and now it is gone back to Berlin.



He, therefore, suggested a re-engineering of the whole capital to solve the perennial flooding associated with the rainy season.



We have to do a specific, accurate mapping of wherever there are floods and incorporate it with all plans we want to execute and if discipline is working, we should stop sprawling, which has spread all the way to the mountains.

Source: Classfmonline









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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A Bahraini man murdered his four-month-old baby and caused the death of his wife after becoming convinced that the child had been possessed by an evil spirit.



The man threw the baby out of the window of his car while driving down a highway in Manama, Bahrain, at which point his wife fled the vehicle and was hit by a truck.



He was found guilty of killing the baby and causing the death of his wife, and sentenced to 15 years in jail and 1,500 lashes by a court in Mecca, Saudi Arabia.



The man had reportedly become convinced that his young child had been possessed by a jinn - a spirit which Muslims believe can take over the body of a human.



He had reportedly been high on unnamed drugs when he the incident took place last year, Gulf News reports.



The unnamed man started beating his child while driving on a highway in the small Gulf state of Bahrain, and suddenly threw the baby out of the window.



His shocked wife managed to get out of the car and started running down the road to get help, but was hit by a speeding lorry and killed instantly.



The man continued driving until he met a police vehicle, which he flagged down from the driver's seat.



According to a police officer's statement, the man was 'mumbling incomprehensible words' and had blood on his clothes and in the car.



He was arrested after trying to flee the scene, and was allegedly began 'screaming hysterically that he had killed the jinn' when taken away by police.



The man was found guilty of the deaths of his wife and child by a court in Mecca, Saudi Arabia.



A prosecutor had called for a death sentence, which was rejected by the judge.



Instead, the judge ruled that the man would serve five years for the murder of his child, and ten years for causing the death of his wife and driving while under the influence.

Source: Daily Mail









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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Less than two weeks after the Ashanti Regional Chairman of New Patriotic Party, Bernard Antwi Bosiako vowed to lead attack on polling agents of the National Democratic Congress, his colleague foul Member of Parliament for Assin Central, Kennedy Ohene Agyepong, has also said his party will lynch security officials on election day.



According to the self-acclaimed financier of the biggest opposition party, his party has recruited ex-military officials to assist the NPP in lynching security officials who dare stand their way on the day of the election.



The Assin Central MPs comment on Oman Fms Boiling Programme monitored by ghanapoliticsonline.com. came days after another leading member of the party, Maxwell Kofi Jumah openly declared that the NPP has hatched a plan code-named operation let the blood flow to be unleashed during the election.



Mr Agyapong said he used to trust the military but he has in recent lost their confidence in them because they (the military) have a special task force in which one Atatsi is recruiting NDC sympathizers for the military special task force for 2016 elections.



The security task force main agenda is to send 6 or more task forces to NPP strong holds, hot spots on elections day and that day we are going to lynch them if they try it, we have also head that the security will be snatching ballot boxes and we want to tell them we going to lynch them if they try it, he stated on the programme which was monitored by ghanapoliticsonline.com.



Turning attention to the Inspector General of Police, John Kudalor, the Assin Donpim born braggart warned the IGP should be careful not to allow the NDC to use him.



Im surprise hes saying he will block social media, is he a parliamentarian; hes not above the law. If he wants to follow NDC and disgrace himself then he should go and ask Afari Gyan. Police Chief Inspector takes GHC 900 and what are you IGP doing about that for the police? He is an old man or he thinks someone is afraid of him, he should try it and see, he stated in his usual abrasive tone.

Source: Daily Graphic









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Hon. Justice Joe Appiah, Member of Parliament for Ablekuma North Constituency has alleged that the five (5) companies which are responsible for bringing in the new prepaid metres have a linkage with President John Dramani Mahama.



According to him, the ongoing investigations into the new prepaid metres has shown that the five companies which he declined to mention, didnt have engineers and expertise to ascertain the metres were without any form of blemish before purchase was made.



Speaking on Okay FMs Ade Akye Abia Morning Show, Hon. Joe Appiah pointed out that Parliament is finding out more about details of the agreement, and how the five companies through sole-sourcing, got the contract to supply the country with the new prepaid metres which many believe is a contributing factor to the unbearable hike in electricity bills recently.



Five companies were mentioned in bringing the new prepaid metres and they are linked to the President and so we are finding out and we will make Ghanaians know the outcome of it because this work should have been given to engineers who are experts in the prepaid metres and not to some ordinary sole-sourcing or used his political power to accord contracts to just anybody, he asserted.



He emphasised that the Procurement Act of the country must work effectively, maintaining that the billing software is absolutely beyond the bounds of human reasoning.



We dont agree with the billing software; in a nutshell, it is a very bad energy policy on behalf of government because government wants to sell ECG but we wont allow it. Selling part of ECG to a private company will not help us. In conclusion, they lack planning and focus," Hon Joe Appiah maintained.

Source: Daniel Adu Darko/Peacefmonline.com.gh









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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Audio Attachment: Listen to Ex-Prez Jerry John Rawlings

Today marks the 24th Anniversary of the formation of the National Democratic Congress.



The event attracted top functionaries of the party.



Founder of the NDC, former President, Flt Lt. Jerry John Rawlings took part in todays celebration and seized the opportunity to address the gathering on events that led to the formation of the party.



He also reminded executives of the party to stick to the core ideals of truth, justice, equality, transparency and accountability and not to gravitate from the ideals that necessitated its establishment.



Former President Rawlings shamed government appointees who are riding on political authority to push the boundaries of political decency instead of doing what is right.



According to him, the NDC was borne out of the toil and sweat of the ordinary people of Ghana, who spontaneously rose up on June 4, 1979 to put an end to the arrogance of power, massive corruption and the denigration of the people of Ghana for well over a decade.



Below is his full statement





REMARKS BY H.E JERRY JOHN RAWLINGS AT THE NATIONAL DEMOCRATIC CONGRESS FOUNDERS DAY EVENT NDC NATIONAL HEADQUARTERS, FRIDAY JUNE 10, 2016



Mr. President,



Founding Members of the NDC,



Members of the Council of Elders,



The Chairman, General Secretary and National Executive Committee members,



Members of the NDC present,



Distinguished Guests,



Ladies and Gentlemen:







Today marks 24 years since the National Democratic Congress was registered as a political party.



The NDC was borne out of the toil and sweat of the ordinary people of Ghana, who spontaneously rose up on June 4, 1979 to put an end to the arrogance of power, massive corruption and the denigration of the people of Ghana for well over a decade.



I need not bore you with the history of the AFRC and the PNDC even though there are some here who actually need a few years of education on why some laid down their lives to bring them where they are today.



Meeting you all here today gives me mixed feelings. It is uplifting that the party is using today to recognize many of those who joined forces to establish the NDC.



We have lost many of such personalities along the journey and some are too weak to join us here today. It is nevertheless commendable that the party has thought it appropriate to honour these heroes and heroines for the role they played in setting up this formidable political force.



The party has seen significant changes and many of those who started the journey are no longer around. Their absence however does not mean we should gravitate from the ideals that necessitated its establishment  the core ideals of truth, justice, equality, transparency and accountability.



The NDC has returned to power since 2009 and undoubtedly faced some major challenges including the scourge of dumsor, a global economic downturn created by falling oil prices and an unfair world economic order.



We have to concede however that in spite of governments conscious efforts to ensure that we surmount these challenges some within the party and government have swayed from the core ideals of integrity and transparency and decided political authority offers them the opportunity to push the boundaries of political decency.



We need to offer ourselves multiple opportunities for intra-party soul-searching, where we can candidly look ourselves in the face and question our contribution to the success or otherwise of this political force.



It is commendable that the party has opened up the Electoral College for the selection of executives as well as parliamentary and presidential candidates.



As a party dedicated to grassroots participation, it is praiseworthy that registered members are now issued with biometric identity cards.



I call on leadership at all levels of the party to ensure that the list of registered members is widened to embrace millions of our supporters who are yet to appreciate what it means to register officially for the party.



Election of party leaders must be truly representative of the full strength of the party and membership registration should be made as simple and accessible as possible.



I implore party leaders at all levels to also endeavor to consult members on all decision-making processes to ensure true participatory democracy, the bedrock of the NDC.



2016 is an election year and the media is awash with political rhetoric.



Naturally the incumbent government must be feeling the heat of the criticism, being the party facing critical assessment from the electorate including me, and an opposition feeling justified and hungry to unseat the NDC.



Tempers may rise and angry words exchanged, but the NDC must not allow its desire to stay in power compel its leaders at various levels to descend into the gutters and contribute to an atmosphere of insecurity.



We have to accept criticism in good faith and recognize the fact that criticism is the best form of praise. It offers you an opportunity to assess your weakness and better appreciate how others perceive you.



Today it is not uncommon for there to be multiple and contradictory responses from government officials to allegations against the government or party. That is unpardonable.



Mr. President, Distinguished Guests, Ladies and Gentlemen, the NDC will have to lead all in ensuring that this years election is conducted in an atmosphere of transparency.



Ensuring free and fair elections devoid of unfortunate incidents will be a huge credit to the NDC and we have a responsibility to direct all our operatives to comport themselves during the most trying moments of the campaign and election period.



We cannot win the trust of the people by putting up aggressive and abrasive behaviour. It will sour the electoral result and poison an already challenged political environment.



Thank you.

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.

Featured Video
Welp. You know what they say: Possession is nine tenths of the law.

And if a crafty banker in Sydney has it right, that little adage is about to score him a million dollar property for sweet fuck all.

A young, mysterious bloke who identifies both as Andrew James and Andy Robert is on the verge of claiming ownership of a Redfern townhouse using a archaic old real estate law.

The bloke, who has told neighbours that he is a banker, has been squatting in the abandoned property on Elizabeth Street in Redfern, and intends to make a claim on ownership of the house using the claim of adverse possession.

The law states that a person occupying a property can make a claim of ownership after living in it unobstructed (ie, freely, without paying rent or signing any legal documents of occupancy) for a period of time. In essence, if someone lives in a house without interference from the owners for long enough, they can legally make a claim of ownership.

Under NSW law, the bloke in question would have to live in the house unobstructed for 12 years. But in this utterly bizarre case, thats not even close to being impossible.

The property itself was bought by an investor named Paul Fuh, who purchased it back in 1991. However in 2007, Fuh returned to his native China and has not been heard from since. Hes not even traceable, as it turns out. The house became dilapidated and in 2008 the City of Sydney took Fuh to court for neglect of the house. Fuh, quite obviously, did not show up to proceedings, and in his absence a Judge ordered emergency repairs be carried out by the City of Sydney council which (combined with legal costs) ran up a bill of $35,850. Its unclear whether the Council was able to contact Fuh or whether that bill was paid.

The squatter living in the house now, apparently gained access to the property with a locksmith, and has told neighbours he intends to renovate and rent the house out until the claim of adverse possession can be fulfilled.

The neighbours, fearing the houses run-down state could adversely affect their property value by extension, have been urging the council to put the house up for public auction and hold the amount raised in the public trust for whenever Fuh resurfaces. But the council states that it has no legal rights or grounds to take possession of the property, unless the rates on the house are not paid. Instead, the council suggests that the issue is merely a matter for the owner of the house and its current occupant to sort out.

Neighbours fear this bloody brazen move could spark a rash of similar, copycat efforts by people legit fed up with the housing affordability crisis, particularly with so many useable properties sitting empty and unoccupied after being snapped up by overseas investors.

Holy bloody hell. Who knew the answer to not being able to afford property was just to find an empty gaff and barge your way into it?

This is NUTS.

Source: Domain.

Photo: Google.
Joe Biden  Vice President of the United States and tireless advocate for womens safety  has penned an open letter to the Stanford rape survivor, praising her breathtaking bravery to go through the trauma of taking her rapist to court and then writing so eloquently about her experience.

I am in awe of your courage for speaking out  for so clearly naming the wrongs that were done to you and so passionately asserting your equal claim to human dignity, he writes in a letter first obtained by BuzzFeed News.

By now youve at least heard of the Stanford survivors letter, which has been read millions upon millions of times, and has sparked a US-focused but worldwide conversation about rape culture, consent, and why society focuses on the accuseds future, yet asks the accuser what she was wearing.

This culture also finds itself squarely in the firing line of Biden, who launched the Its On Us campaign in 2014 to promote safety on campus and raise awareness of sexual assault.

You were failed by a culture on our college campuses where one in five women is sexually assaulted  year after year after year, he writes in his open letter. A culture that promotes passivity. That encourages young men and women on campuses to simply turn a blind eye. The statistics on college sexual assault havent gone down in the past two decades. Its obscene, and its a failure that lies at all our feet. And you were failed by anyone who dared to question this one clear and simple truth: Sex without consent is rape. Period. It is a crime.

He also turns his savaging to Brock Allen Turner, who was sentenced to a paltry six months jail for his crimes and as of yet has displayed no understanding that his crime was a matter of consent and not alcohol.

You will never be defined by what the defendants father callously termed 20 minutes of action. His son will be.

Is it inappropriate for a Joe Biden mic drop? Probably. But that was one all the same.

You can read his powerful as hell letter in full below.

An Open Letter to a Courageous Young Woman







I do not know your name  but your words are forever seared on my soul. Words that should be required reading for men and women of all ages. Words that I wish with all of my heart you never had to write. I am in awe of your courage for speaking out  for so clearly naming the wrongs that were done to you and so passionately asserting your equal claim to human dignity. And I am filled with furious anger  both that this happened to you and that our culture is still so broken that you were ever put in the position of defending your own worth. It must have been wrenching  to relive what he did to you all over again. But you did it anyway, in the hope that your strength might prevent this crime from happening to someone else. Your bravery is breathtaking. You are a warrior  with a solid steel spine. I do not know your name  but I know that a lot of people failed you that terrible January night and in the months that followed. Anyone at that party who saw that you were incapacitated yet looked the other way and did not offer assistance. Anyone who dismissed what happened to you as just another crazy night. Anyone who asked what did you expect would happen when you drank that much? or thought you must have brought it on yourself. You were failed by a culture on our college campuses where one in five women is sexually assaulted  year after year after year. A culture that promotes passivity. That encourages young men and women on campuses to simply turn a blind eye. The statistics on college sexual assault havent gone down in the past two decades. Its obscene, and its a failure that lies at all our feet. And you were failed by anyone who dared to question this one clear and simple truth: Sex without consent is rape. Period. It is a crime. I do not know your name  but thanks to you, I know that heroes ride bicycles. Those two men who saw what was happening to you  who took it upon themselves to step in  they did what they instinctually knew to be right. They did not say Its none of my business. They did not worry about the social or safety implications of intervening, or about what their peers might think. Those two men epitomise what it means to be a responsible bystander. To do otherwise  to see an assault about to take place and do nothing to intervene  makes you part of the problem. Like I tell college students all over this country  its on us. All of us. We all have a responsibility to stop the scourge of violence against women once and for all. I do not know your name  but I see your unconquerable spirit. I see the limitless potential of an incredibly talented young woman  full of possibility. I see the shoulders on which our dreams for the future rest. I see you. You will never be defined by what the defendants father callously termed 20 minutes of action. His son will be. I join your global chorus of supporters, because we can never say enough to survivors: I believe you. It is not your fault. What you endured is never, never, never, NEVER a womans fault. And while the justice system has spoken in your particular case, the nation is not satisfied. And that is why we will continue to speak out. We will speak to change the culture on our college campuses  a culture that continues to ask the wrong questions: What were you wearing? Why were you there? What did you say? How much did you drink? Instead of asking: Why did he think he had license to rape? We will speak out against those who seek to engage in plausible deniability. Those who know that this is happening, but dont want to get involved. Who believe that this ugly crime is complicated. We will speak of you  you who remain anonymous not only to protect your identity, but because you so eloquently represent every woman. We will make lighthouses of ourselves, as you did  and shine. Your story has already changed lives. You have helped change the culture. You have shaken untold thousands out of the torpor and indifference towards sexual violence that allows this problem to continue. Your words will help people you have never met and never will. You have given them the strength they need to fight. And so, I believe, you will save lives. I do not know your name  but I will never forget you. The millions who have been touched by your story will never forget you. And if everyone who shared your letter on social media, or who had a private conversation in their own homes with their daughters and sons, draws upon the passion, the outrage, and the commitment they feel right now the next time there is a choice between intervening and walking away  then I believe you will have helped to change the world for the better.

Source: BuzzFeed News.

Photo: Getty / Paul Morigi.
Star Wars actress and all-round excellent human Daisy Ridley has opened up about her struggles with endometriosis, posting a message to Instagram about this not-at-all-fun condition that affects 10% of women.



At 15 I was diagnosed with endometriosis, she wrote. One laparoscopy, many consultations and 8 years down the line, the pain was back (more mild this time!) and my skin was THE WORST. Ive tried everything: products, antibiotics, more products, more antibiotics, and all that did was [leave] my body in a bit of a mess.



She says that eight years after she was first diagnosed with endo  and after dealing with the shitty, shitty skin problems it brought on  shes *finally* been diagnosed with polycystic ovaries, and thats why her struggle has been so bad.



I can safely say feeling so self conscious has left my confidence in tatters, she wrote. I hate wearing make up but I currently dont want to leave the house without it on. HOWEVER PROGRESS IS BEING MADE!



Ridley joins a growing number of celebs  including Lena Dunham, Whoopi Goldberg, and Halsey  speaking publicly about their struggles; one of them, Indian-born American actress, author and model Padma Lakshmi, is even the co-founder of the Endometriosis Foundation of America. And every time a celebrity speaks about it, the more light is shed on this vastly misunderstood disease.

Ridley ends her message with a call-out to anyone suffering anything, endo or not, to seek the help they need.

Go to a doctor; pay for a specialist; get your hormones tested, get allergy testing; keep on top of how your body is feeling and dont worry about feeling like a hypochondriac, she says.

From your head to the tips of your toes we only have one body, let us all make sure ours [is] working in tip top condition, and [get] help if its needed.



Preach it bb.



Photo: Instagram / @daisyridley.
HAPPY FRIDAY, YALL.

I hope youre all ready to simultaneously get fired up and have your guts ripped out, because todays Like A Version is an absolute pearler.

Coming at the end of one of the toughest weeks the Tasmanian city of Launceston has endured in a many a decade, local-boys-done-good Luca Brasi dropped into the Triple J studios this morning to lay down some froth.

Circling the absolutely iconic, bittersweet Paul Kelly Christmas hit How To Make Gravy, Brasi manages to keep the constant-crescendo and non-traditional song structure of the original, whilst driving it up into a raucous, sweaty, arm-in-arm singalong; one that deadset needs to enter their regular setlist toot suite or I will legit flip it.

The song is an Australian institution, and the Brasi boys absolutely do it justice  and then some.

Dont take my word for it, hit play and get ready to feel some shit.

Hows that A+ little shoutout to Luca Brasis current tour-mates The Smith Street Band too? You beaut!

The boys: Get around them.

Source: Triple J/YouTube.
Gawker Media-Bankruptcy

FILE - In this Wednesday, March 16, 2016, file photo, Gawker Media founder Nick Denton arrives in a courtroom in St. Petersburg, Fla. Gawker Media has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, about three months after pro wrestler Hulk Hogan won a $140 million lawsuit against the online gossip and news publisher. (AP Photo/Steve Nesius, Pool, File)

(STEVE NESIUS)

Gawker Media LLC filed for bankruptcy protection Friday in New York, and the online publisher plans to put itself up for sale, according to Reuters.

The decision comes months after former professional wrestler Hulk Hogan, backed by Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel, won a $140 million judgement against the company, according to the Los Angeles Times. Hogan, whose real name is Terry Gene Bollea, sued Gawker for invasion of privacy after it released part of a sex tape involving him and a friend's wife.

Chapter 11 bankruptcy could allow Gawker to delay its payment to Bollea for a while longer, according to the Los Angeles Times. In the meantime, the company still plans to appeal the Florida jury's ruling.

Gawker reported its assets are estimated to be between $50 million to $100 million and its liabilities between $100 million to $500 million, according to Reuters. The judgement that was awarded to Bollea is the company's biggest liability, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Media company Ziff Davis LLC has reached an agreement to buy Gawker for less than $100 million, according to Reuters. If there aren't any better offers at the publisher's bankruptcy auction, likely at the end of July, Ziff Davis will become its new owner.

Thiel revealed that he helped pay for the lawsuit against the company, according to Forbes. It published an article titled "Peter Thiel is totally gay, people," in 2007 that made the billionaire very uncomfortable, according to those close to him. Some dispute whether the story outed the billionaire, as Thiel said his friends had known since 2003.

Thiel describes his efforts to bring down Gawker as "one of my greater philanthropic things," as he's helping those who the company has wronged, according to Forbes.

Other Silicon Valley bigwigs that Gawker has previously targeted, such as Vinod Khosla, have voiced their approval of Thiel's actions. Free speech advocates, such as Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, have denounced it as an attempt to smother unfavorable media outlets through litigation.
DO NOT REUSE

Beautiful scenery along the Great Allegheny Passage.

(Jim Cheney | Special to PennLive)

The fact that Pennsylvania has more rail trails than any other state in America shouldn't come as much surprise given the state's rich railroad history. However, what few realize is that Pennsylvania is home to the fourth longest rail trail in the entire country.

The Great Allegheny Passage (GAP) was officially completed just three years ago, nearly three decades after the first section was completed. Utilizing old railroad grades, the trail travels 150 miles from Pittsburgh to Cumberland, Maryland, cutting a path through some of the most beautiful terrain in southwestern Pa.

Despite the trail's length, it is relatively flat, making it a perfect biking trip for beginners and experts alike. The GAP passes through trail towns every 15-25 miles, meaning that you are never far from help, a warm meal, or a comfortable bed for the night. However, despite being close to civilization, outside of the Pittsburgh suburbs, the trail feels secluded, passing through forested hillsides filled with beautiful waterfalls, stunning vistas, and abundant wildlife.

The trail is highlighted by the amazing Ohiopyle State Park. Home to fantastic hiking to secluded waterfalls, amazing history, and the most popular whitewater rafting site east of the Mississippi River, Ohiopyle is a must-visit destination for travelers along the Great Allegheny Passage. And, what Ohiopyle lacks in accommodation choices, it makes up for with great dining options in the tiny town. A stop in the town is a great way to break up the trip as nearly all of the park's highlights are located within a short hike or bike ride from the bike trail.

One of the many waterfalls along the Great Allegheny Passage.

Another highlight of the Great Allegheny Passage is the Levi Deal Mansion in Meyersdale. This early 20th century home was built by a coal and lumber magnate, and after nearly being torn down decades ago, has been revitalized as the most luxurious place to stay along the trail. Owners Jan and Michael Dofner welcome guests to their immaculately restored home and offer a touch of luxury that's very welcome after a long day on the trail.

The lower half of the Great Allegheny Passage, from Connellsville to Cumberland, Maryland, is the most secluded portion of the trail, and features most of the major points of interest. Along this portion of the trail are multiple long bridges and viaducts that cross over valleys and rivers at heights of up to 100 feet.

There are also four long tunnels that once carried trains through the forested mountains. These trail features give uniqueness to the Great Allegheny Passage and add to its beauty and history. Along the way, there are signs telling about everything from interesting rock formations to the history of coal mining in the region, giving history lovers many reasons to take short breaks along the trail.

The Levi Deal Mansion in Meyersdale, Pa., is the most luxurious place to stay along the GAP.

I recently had the chance to ride the Great Allegheny Passage with my wife and nearly two-year-old son.

The fact that we could complete the trail, despite being inexperienced bikers that had never biked more than 25 miles in a day and never biked with heavy bags, proves that nearly anyone can enjoy this amazing ride.

As we rode into Pittsburgh at the end of our journey, the city peaking into view as we followed the twists and turns of the Monongahela River, I couldn't help but think about how lucky we are to have such an amazing trail in Pennsylvania. The Great Allegheny Passage showcases the region's amazing beauty, history, and culture in a way that is accessible to all.

Whether you are able to spend just a few hours enjoying a portion of the trail or have time to bike the entire 150 miles, a trip along the Great Allegheny Passage is a journey that every outdoor lover should embark on.

Jim Cheney is the writer behind UncoveringPA, Pennsylvania's most read travel blog. He has traveled to every county in Pennsylvania, and to many countries in North America, Europe, and Asia. He lives in Harrisburg, Pa.
Dallas Love Field Airport in Texas was locked down this afternoon after an officer-involved shooting that injured at least one person.

A video, posted by a freelance videographer to Instagram, shows officers outside a baggage area with guns drawn. They fire several shots. No officers were hurt, Dallas police say.

Update from The Associated Press:

Assistant Dallas Police Chief Randall Blankenbaker says a man was using rocks to attack a woman in a car at Dallas Love Field on Friday afternoon when an officer responded to the incident.

Blankenbaker says the man rushed the officer. He says the officer was able to get away before he was rushed again by the man. Blankenbaker says the officer then fired his weapon at the man several times. He says the man was taken to a local hospital, but that his condition wasn't immediately released.

From the Dallas Morning News, which says at least one person was taken to a hospital:

Baggage claim remains closed, but other parts of the airport had been reopened. [Director of aviation Mark] Duebner said just before 1 p.m. that the entire airport had to be emptied, because during the panic, some passengers ran past the TSA security checkpoint.

Initial reports indicated that the incident began as a domestic dispute between a man and a woman. The man is believed to have been throwing large rocks at a car before the shooting occurred.

A witness told WFAA-TV that a man smashing a car with a rock threatened officers:

Sources told News 8's Rebecca Lopez the incident began when a man was attacking a woman in a vehicle. He charged at officers who responded to the attack, and at least one officer fired a weapon several times.

Ray Williams, who witnessed the attack, said a man went after officers with the rock after being asked to stop.

LIVE on #Periscope: Incident at Love Field Airport https://t.co/2ZuyhLUWqg  Dallas Police Dept (@DallasPD) June 10, 2016

Dallas police: After shooting at Love Field, all passengers were pulled out of secure area and rechecked.  WFAA (@wfaa) June 10, 2016

Dallas Police Association confirms officer was involved in shooting at Love Field, but was not shot - @YeomansNBC5 https://t.co/bKYIXBsrGZ  Breaking News (@BreakingNews) June 10, 2016
Pennsylvania Solicitor General Bruce L. Castor, Jr. today announced the Office of Attorney General has opted not to appeal a judge's order dismissing some of the criminal charges filed against former Harrisburg Mayor Stephen R. Reed.

"A conviction on the remaining charges in this case could effectively result in a judge sending Mr. Reed to prison for the rest of his life," Solicitor General Castor said. "We see no reason to delay justice any further."

There are 144 criminal charges remaining in Reed's case. Those charges carry a maximum sentence of 886 years in prison.

Attorney General Kathleen G. Kane last July announced the arrest of Reed, 66. According to a statewide investigating grand jury that reviewed evidence and testimony in this case, Reed, during his nearly three decades as mayor, used city money at his discretion to obtain thousands of artifacts, which was a violation of Pennsylvania's Criminal Code.

Many of those city-owned artifacts were later recovered as investigators with the Office of Attorney General searched Reed's home and office.

"With his fascination for the Wild West, this man used other people's money to decorate his house and office with antiques. But, Pennsylvania is not the Wild West. We have the rule of law here," Solicitor General Castor said. "We look forward to presenting our evidence in court."
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Sexual assault survivor Chris Huqueriza speaks at a rally before over one million signatures were delivered to the California Commission on Judicial Performance calling for the removal of Judge Aaron Persky from the bench Friday, June 10, 2016, in San Francisco. A group of California lawmakers joined women's rights advocates Friday in urging a California agency to take action against the judge who sentenced a former Stanford University swimmer to six months in jail for sexually assaulting an unconscious woman. (AP Photo/Eric Risberg)
FILE - In this Oct. 20, 1969, file photo, Georgia state Sen. Leroy Johnson speaks for a group of Atlanta African-American leaders in support of Vice Mayor Sam Massell at a City Hall news conference in Atlanta. Johnson was the driving force in Muhammad Ali's return to the ring on Oct. 26, 1970, in Atlanta. (AP Photo/Joe Holloway Jr., File)
Whitmer and Dixon highlight differences in final debate

Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and Republican challenger Tudor Dixon stepped up the rhetoric in their second and final debate before the Nov. 8 election,.
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Beyond the Moon and Mars

Musk has been quoted saying that the Dragon capsule can be used to explore almost any world in the solar system: With Dragon launched on a Falcon Heavy, it can go pretty much anywhere in the solar system, because thats a heck of a big rocket...Dragon 2 is capable of transporting scientific payloads to anywhere in the solar system, with a liquid or solid surface, with or without an atmosphere. So Dragon is really a crew transport and science delivery platform...Dragon, with the heat shield, parachutes and propulsive landing capability, is able to land on a planet that has higher entry heating, like Mars. It can also land on the Moon, or potentially conduct a Europa mission.

Musks claim appears to touch on three separate issues. The first is whether the Falcon Heavy could propel a Dragon spacecraft to any location in the solar system. The answer likely is yes. For our moon, Mars, and Venus, the launcher will be able to send the Dragon directly to these worlds. If the Falcon Heavy cannot send a Dragon directly to Mercury or the outer planets, it certainly could launch it on a trajectory that would use Venus and/or Earth gravity assists to provide the additional velocity needed.

The second issue is whether the Dragon could land on these more distant worlds, which breaks into two parts. The first is how the Dragon capsule would kill the high approach velocity when it reaches its destination. The atmospheres of Mars, Venus, and Titan can kill much of the speed. Its less clear to me whether the Dragon spacecraft would carry enough fuel to first brake into, say, Jovian orbit and then kill the remaining velocity to land on Europa. (A direct landing on Europa without entering Jovian orbit also would need to kill a lot of speed.) Musks statements suggest it could, but for now we lack details.

The third issue is whether the Dragon spacecraft could deal with the special environmental issues at various worlds. The moon and Mars are reasonably straightforward challenges both because of their proximity and their comparatively (for planetary destinations) benign environments. By contrast, while the Mercurian poles are cool, the spacecraft would need to deal with intense solar heating on the way to this world. The surface of Venus is intensely hot and has a crushing atmospheric surface pressure. Jupiters moon Europa sits deep within an intense, electronics frying, radiation belt. Titans surface is as bitterly cold as Venus is broiling. Landing on a small asteroid or comet may require special adaptations such as harpoons to hold the capsule on the surface. Traveling to any world beyond Jupiter will require a radioisotope generator for power (Saturn might be an exception).

It is possible to design spacecraft to handle any of these challenges. Missions have been proposed to land on each of these worlds, but using custom designs that take into account the unique challenges of each environments. Would it be cost effective to modify the Dragon spacecraft to handle the challenges of any of these worlds, or more cost effective to design a custom spacecraft?

Theres also the question of whether a prior scouting mission would be needed. For the moon and for high priority locations on Mars, existing high resolution images would allow mission planners to identify precise locations of safe terrain within otherwise rugged but scientifically interesting terrains. The same will be true for selected sites on Europa following NASAs planned Europa Multiple Flyby mission. What about a world with only coarse resolution mapping or none at all?
Sgt. Derrick Mingo (Photo: Facebook)

An on-duty Winnsboro (LA) Police Department officer was killed in a car crash on Louisiana State Highway 4, Prairie Road, in the early morning hours Saturday, reports KNOE.

Sgt. Derrick Mingo, who has been with the Winnsboro Police Department for five years, was en route to assist another officer pursuing a drunk driver.

Winnsboro Chief of Police George Wilhite stated that the crash occurred at approximately 4:30 a.m. when Mingo left the roadway and struck a tree.

Wilhite said this was a tragic loss and that Sgt. Mingo had served the public faithfully since he was 18 years old and was extremely dedicated to his job as a police officer.

Prior to working with the Winnsboro Police Department, Mingo worked for the Franklin Parish Sheriff's Office for 12 years.

Sgt. Mingo is survived by his wife.
York County, PA, Sheriff Richard Keuerleber confirmed one of his deputies was shot in the face Thursday morning in York City, reports the York Dispatch.

The sheriff said the deputy is expected to survive, but may require surgery.

The deputy, whose name has not yet been released, returned fire and shot his attacker, according to the sheriff. Shortly before 4 p.m. Thursday, York County Coroner Pam Gay announced the attacker had died.

An official at York County Prison confirmed suspect James Allen Nickol, 38, was a walk-away from the prison's outmate work-release program. Nickol left the prison Wednesday and didn't return, the official said.

James Allen Nickol

The deputy, who was shot in the cheek, was assisting York City Police in serving an arrest warrant for Nickol's escape, the sheriff said. Gunfire erupted about 8:50 a.m., according to Gay.
Joshua Anthony Sumter is charged with four counts of attempted capital murder.

A Stafford, VA, deputy who was shot four times after responding to a call late Tuesday was recovering from surgery Thursday in a Richmond hospital, reports the Free Lance-Star.

"He seems to be doing as well as he could be considering what he went through," Sheriff David Decatur said. "The hope is that he will have a full recovery."

Decatur has not released the deputy's name.

Suspect Joshua Anthony Sumter, 18, of Meadows Drive in southern Stafford is charged with numerous offenses, including four counts of attempted capital murder, aggravated malicious wounding, and four firearms offenses.

In addition to being accused of shooting the injured officer, Sumter is accused of trying to kill Stafford deputies Karl Warnick, David French, and Daniel Purcell.

He is also accused of assaulting Sgt. Dale Colona during an attempted escape following his arrest, court records show.
A suspect in the fatal shooting of an Ohio police officer has pleaded not guilty to charges that could carry the death penalty upon conviction, reports the Associated Press.

Lincoln Rutledge is accused of shooting Columbus SWAT officer Steven Smith in the head while officers were trying to arrest him on an arson warrant. The 54-year-old officer was shot April 10 while standing in the turret of a SWAT vehicle. He died two days later.

The 44-year-old Rutledge is charged with aggravated murder, attempted murder, felonious assault and aggravated arson. He entered his not guilty plea Friday in Franklin County court and was ordered held without bond.
Photo: istockphoto.com

Within my first week as an attorney at the National Rifle Association of America's Institute for Legislative Action I took a call on the Law Enforcement Officers Safety Act (LEOSA). I admittedly knew nothing about the law, but in my post-military arrogance, I assumed there would be nothing too complex about responding to an inquiry from a fellow Marine on a two-page law. Little did I realize that almost six years later a large portion of my time would still be devoted to clearing up all the misconceptions there are about LEOSA.

A book could be written about all the unique and novel problems that arise under LEOSA, but after mulling my word count limit for this article for several weeks I decided to attempt to tackle one of the most common areas of confusion I encounter. Let me stress that this is not meant to be either legal advice or an end-all/be-all discussion, but it is my hope that it will assist many of you in answering this question: Who qualifies for the privilege LEOSA affords?

The Employment Requirement

Many of you may recall a story from earlier this year regarding the arrest of a Pennsylvania State Corrections Officer in New Jersey after his vehicle was struck by a drunk driver. Upon informing the responding officers that he was in possession of a firearm under the false assumption that he was protected by the law, the officer quickly found himself facing a minimum of three-and-a-half years in prison over a charge of unlawful possession of a handgun. There were many conflicting reports over the applicable law and what, if anything, exempted the officer from New Jersey's archaic firearm laws. But here's what really happened. The officer in question believed his state of Pennsylvania permit afforded him protection in New Jersey under the erroneous belief of a reciprocity agreement between the states. It was the media who distorted the narrative, claiming that LEOSA applied and protected him from prosecution. The charges were ultimately dropped, but it had nothing to do with LEOSA. Despite the law's intent, LEOSA afforded this officer no protection.

The unlikely facts leading to the corrections officer's arrest in New Jersey should serve as a cautionary tale to many who carry under the false belief that the LEOSA privilege extends to them. There are many qualified law enforcement officers/qualified retired law enforcement officers (QLEO/QRLEO) that fail to realize they qualify for the LEOSA privilege such as animal control officers, coroners, arson investigators, to name a few, but my experience shows there are far more who falsely believe they do.

Both sections of the law (18 U.S.C.  926B & C) outline the requirements one must meet in order to qualify for the privilege LEOSA affords; however, many people fail to recognize one of the most important elements contained in both. Perhaps it is because they are not listed individually like the others, or because the language differs in each section, but even though you may have 20 years of service as a POST/DCJS certified law enforcement officer and meet every other element of the statute's requirements, if you are not employed by a government/public agency you are not protected.

It is heartbreaking for me to relay this information. There are countless good officers who should be able to carry under the intended purpose of the law, but the simple fact remains that your employment matters. And while you may think any uncertainty over your employment status is easily resolved by a quick check of your employer's status it is not. Because even if you work for a government/public agency LEOSA does not define who or what an "employee" is.

When LEOSA was amended in 2010 significant changes were made to the definition of a "qualified retired law enforcement officer." Along with substituting "separated" for "retired" in all areas except the title, the requirement that separated/retired officers have a "nonforfeitable right to benefits" was removed and the language "regularly employed  for an aggregate of 15 years" was changed to separated after having "served as a law enforcement officer for an aggregate of 10 years" While these changes may appear only relevant to those who previously left service after 10 years but before 15, the change of language effectively opened the door to everyone that is, and could be, considered a law enforcement "employee."

Prior to 2010, officers in a non-full-time status could carry under the LEOSA privilege only while actively attached to a government/public agency. However, the minute they separated or retired the LEOSA privilege was lost. This was because most could not meet the "nonforfeitable right to benefits" requirement. When the amendment removed that language, the LEOSA privilege was effectively opened to almost every separated government/public LEO with 10 or more years of aggregate service, whether he or she be reserve, auxiliary, special category/level officers, and even volunteers. And individuals who separated after completing any applicable probationary period due to a service-connected disability also qualify.

Defining Qualifications

Most states define who a peace officer is and where the officer's authority extends under law. Many agencies rely on these definitions when looking to apply or, more often, deny their officers the ability to qualify for LEOSA. This often comes through an agency's refusal to issue the law's required photographic ID to anyone but those defined as full-time active or separated/retired officers. Those that rely on the false assumption that LEOSA requires 24/7 law enforcement authority fail to comprehend that LEOSA contains its own definition of a QLEO/QRLEO, and that definition is what determines an individual's qualification status for the LEOSA privilege. Furthermore, because LEOSA neither defines "employee" nor contains any limiting language on it, agencies that establish policies denying IDs to non-full-time officers may be exposing themselves to liability.

Agency Control

Much like the many issues that arise under LEOSA, an entire book can be dedicated to the topic of employment, but the most important takeaway in relation to employment under LEOSA is that had Congress intended to limit the LEOSA privilege solely to full-time officers, it could have done so.

A review of LEOSA's legislative history highlights the amount of consideration given to the law's terms. H.R. Rep. No. 108-560, at 80 (2004) reads in part: "We think of a law enforcement officer as someone who is actively engaged in making arrests; however, this legislation uses an expanded definitionThis broad definition could encompass different individuals in different states including probation and parole officers and jail or prison guards. These officers, while performing an admirable service, will not necessarily have the experience of the beat police officer, yet, this legislation insists we allow them the same authority to carry concealed weapons anywhere in the country." This debate over the statute's definitions of QLEO/QRLEOs not only highlights Congress' understanding of the broad applicability of the law, but also the legislators' understanding that limiting language such as a requirement for financial compensation could have been included had the desire been to limit the privilege solely to full-time officers. Absent any limits on the word "employee" it is clear that none are intended. But conveying that point to agencies hostile to the theory that non-full time officers qualify can be difficult without further support.

Most states have laws defining "employee," but an analysis of the laws of all 50 states is impractical for the purpose of this article. However, since most state laws mirror federal law, a simple, yet non-exhaustive review of how "employee" is defined at the federal level is instructive.

While a federal definition of employee can be found in specific contexts such as federal employment laws such definitions provide little assistance for LEOSA purposes. So we must look to case law. Again, while no direct definition can be found, the Supreme Court has found that when determining the meaning of an undefined word contained in a federal statute common law principles apply.

For purposes of LEOSA, the Supreme Court case of Nationwide Mutual Insurance Co. v. Darden (503 U.S. 318, 322-23, 112 S. Ct. 1344, 1348, 117 L. Ed. 2d 581U.S. 1992) is instructive. It details that agency law principles, or what is more commonly known as the "agency control" test, is to be used to determine the definition of "employee" when a statute does not helpfully define it. Under the "agency control" test, your employment status is determined by an analysis of the amount of control the agency/department exerts over you. Broken down even further, employee status is found if the purported employer controls, or has the right to control, both the result that is accomplished and the means and manner used to accomplish it.

Given the amount of oversight an agency has over the activity and conduct of its officers, little argument can be made that any law enforcement officer, regardless of status, does not qualify as an employee. While there is some limited case law examining this principle, The People of the State of New York v. Arthur Rodriguez (Indictment Number 2917/06 [November 2006]) provides us with the most thorough analysis.

Rodriguez, a Pennsylvania Constable paid on a per-job basis, was found to qualify for the LEOSA privilege because of the agency's control over him. While termed an "independent contractor," not subject to the same supervision as police officers or sheriff's deputies, and not qualifying for state legal representation when sued in connection to his duties and lacking any municipal oversight for his actions, the court nevertheless found that "with respect to the work done by a constable for a court, the constable is performing 'judicial duties' and is in fact 'employed' by the court, district or judge which engaged his services."

Applying the agency control analysis, the Court reasoned that "the fact that Pennsylvania courts have full power to remove Pennsylvania State Constables from their positions, and the fact that they are elected officials, conflicts with the People's theory that Pennsylvania State Constables are not government employees."

Despite being labeled as independent contractors, the ability of the courts to remove state constables from their positions was both a clear indicator of the control they exercised over constables and that constables were in fact employees. Applying this universally, there can be little argument made that agencies do not control the conduct of their officers or have the ability to remove them, regardless of their status.

This is not to say that all law enforcement officers in a status other than full time do in fact qualify for the LEOSA privilege. All of the other statutory requirements must be met in order to meet LEOSA's definition of QLEO/QRLEO, the most applicable being statutory arrest authority and authorization to carry a firearm. But for the vast majority of LEOs, even those that do not receive any financial compensation, due to the amount of agency oversight they are subject to there can be little doubt that they qualify for the privilege LEOSA affords. It is important to recognize this both for administrative and enforcement functions.

Agency Liability

Misidentifying those who qualify for LEOSA can be costly, not only for the individual carrying under the false belief he or she qualifies for the privilege the law affords, but also for agencies and departments that refuse to recognize or misapply the law. The case of Diaz v City of San Fernando, et. al., Los Angeles Superior Court Case No. PC 044139 highlights this point.

Prior to the 2013 amendments that clearly opened the door to military and Department of Defense law enforcement personnel, Diaz, a reserve Coast Guardsman, was pulled over for having a temporary plate on his vehicle. During the stop, a plastic Glock handgun case was observed on the rear floorboard of Diaz's car. During questioning, Diaz identified himself as a "maritime law enforcement officer" and presented his military ID (CAC card) to the officer. After contacting the Coast Guard to "ascertain if the defendant was allowed to carry a loaded firearm," and learning that the Coast Guard "does not issue firearms to reserve personnel" Diaz was arrested for 12031(A) PC, possession of a loaded firearm in a vehicle and spent the night in jail.

When the LEOSA privilege was explained by Diaz's counsel, the case against Diaz was dismissed. Rightfully unsatisfied with the mere dismissal, Diaz sued the city, police department, and officer involved, leading to an out-of-court settlement of $43,500 in Diaz's favor.

The Diaz case demonstrates both the importance of officers understanding who qualifies for the LEOSA privilege and why agencies that refuse to issue LEOSA compliant ID cards to their non-full-time officers, whether they are active or separated, are exposing themselves to potential liability. While the law does not mandate the issuance of LEOSA compliant IDs, failure to issue them to those who meet the statute's definition of a QLEO/QRLEO is a de-facto acknowledgement by denying agencies that those individuals do not qualify for the law. Accordingly, even if the denying agency properly trains their officers to recognize who qualifies for the privilege LEOSA affords, a savvy attorney can easily argue that the conflict between training and department policy creates confusion in the minds of their officers. Accordingly, should an officer fail to properly recognize the privilege in the field, a very credible and costly improper training argument could be made.

James M. Baranowski is manager of External/International Affairs at the NRA's Institute for Legislative Action. As both an attorney and member of the International Law Enforcement Educators and Trainers Association he has served as a subject matter expert on LEOSA issues to legal counsel and agencies throughout the country. He is also a decorated combat veteran, having served more than eight years in the U.S. Marine Corps both as an officer with 1st Reconnaissance Battalion and as a judge advocate. His numerous awards and decorations include the Navy and Marine Corps Commendation Medal with Valor, which he received for his actions during a sniper attack on his unit in Fallujah, Iraq.
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Elizabeth Warren was at it again on Thursday in a blistering speech in Washington D.C. where she called Trump a loud, nasty, thin-skinned fraud and obliterated the presumptive GOP nominees racist attacks on Judge Gonzalo Curiel.

Video:

Elizabeth Warren: Trump does exactly what youd expect from a thin-skinned, racist bully https://t.co/5shczMjJaD https://t.co/BhRywIVVz8  CNN Politics (@CNNPolitics) June 9, 2016

The Massachusetts senator also went out of her way to commend Judge Curiel, calling the Indiana-born judge one of countless American patriots who has spent decades quietly serving his country, sometimes at great risk to his own life.

She said Trumps attack on Curiel is indicative of how the Republican Party as a whole often treats federal judges they disagree with.

Donald Trump chose racism as his weapon, but his aim is exactly the same as the rest of the Republicans  pound the courts into submission to the rich and powerful, Warren said.

In her remarks, Warren also slammed Trumps wealth, saying he has only been successful because he inherited a fortune and kept it by cheating people.

She added, to a standing ovation: We will not allow a small, insecure, thin-skinned wannabe tyrant or his allies in the Senate destroy the rule of law in the United States of America.

Once again, Warren showed just how effective she is at taking on Trump and getting under his spray-tanned skin.

We await Donald Trumps whiny response via tweet.
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Its hard to keep up with the incoming fire on the Trump campaign, much of which has come from those in his own party in recent days.

But its his own attack last year on a disabled New York Times reporter that is coming back to haunt him in a new 60-second television ad out this week.

Video:

In the ad, which was funded by Priorities USA Action, the parents of a girl with spina bifida  a condition in which a developing babys spinal cord fails to develop properly  call Trumps 2015 attack on a disabled reporter shocking.

When I saw Donald Trump mock a disabled person, I was just shocked, Lauren Glaros, the mother the girl says in the video. The children at Graces school all know never to mock her, and so for an adult to mock someone with a disability is just shocking.

The father, Chris Glaros, added: When I saw Donald Trump mock someone with a disability, it showed me his soul. It showed me his heart.

To this day, Trump claims he wasnt mocking the reporter and didnt even know he was disabled. In fact, the presumptive GOP nominee says it is him, not the reporter, who deserves an apology.

The ad, which is titled Grace, began running Monday in seven battleground states  Florida, Ohio, Virginia, Nevada, Colorado, Iowa and New Hampshire.

Its a sign that no matter how hard Trump tries to change, he will never be able to run from his primary-season rhetoric.
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The effort by Democrats to unify behind presumptive nominee Hillary Clinton hit a fever pitch Thursday as President Barack Obama officially endorsed the former Secretary of State in a video message.

Obama isnt wasting any time in hitting the trail either. He and Clinton will campaign together next Wednesday in Green Bay, Wisconsin.

The presidents support is huge for Clinton in energizing Democrats and kicking her general election campaign into high gear, but its only one in a series of stars that aligned today for Clinton.

Bernie Sanders also gave what sounded a lot like a concession speech on Thursday afternoon.

I spoke briefly to Secretary Clinton on Tuesday night, and I congratulated her on her very strong campaign, Sanders said following his meeting with President Obama at the White House. I look forward to meeting with her in the near future to see how we can work together to defeat Donald Trump.

After Sanders huddle with the president, the Vermont senator met with Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid and Sen. Chuck Schumer  another sign that this is a concerted effort by Sanders and top Democrats to quickly unify the party.

On MSNBCs Rachel Maddow Show Thursday night, Sen. Elizabeth Warren is also expected to throw her support behind Hillary Clinton, a shock to no one as Warren has been lambasting Trump for weeks now. Still, Warrens endorsement will help Clinton attract voters who supported Sanders during the primary campaign.

It may be surprising just how quickly this is all coming together, but the truth is that its quite simple for a party to unify when its presumptive nominee is actually qualified to be president. Its not so easy, on the other hand, to unify behind a candidate who has no knowledge of the issues and uses bluster and racism to fuel a substance-free campaign.

Its so difficult, in fact, that many Republicans are refusing to do it.

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, who had previously endorsed Trump, walked back his support on Wednesday, saying Trump is not yet the nominee.

Ohio Gov. John Kasich also said its hard to say if hell ever endorse Trump for president, and hinted that its possible he could go to next months convention without supporting his partys nominee.

These are just the two latest GOP figures to express their disappointment with the nominee.

Conservative talk show host Steve Deace even said today, Delegates from at least eight states have contacted me in the last four days about a revolt in Cleveland.

There couldnt be a sharper contrast between the two sides and how they are reacting to their respective nominees. Democrats are quickly coming together behind their nominee, while Republicans are falling apart and looking for an exit ramp.

What Democrats have been able to accomplish in 24 hours is what the GOP has failed to do in the span of a month. Thats because one partys nominee is qualified and the others is dangerously unfit.
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Protesters disrupted Donald Trumps speech at the Faith and Freedom Conference by chanting, God hates Donald Trump.

Video:

The protesters began by chanting, Stop hate dump Trump, and refugees are welcome here. The protesters also chanted, God hates Donald Trump, and build bridges, not walls.

Trump responded, Whats happening in our country is so sad. We are so divided. Its such a shame, and by the way, folks, these are professional agitators. They are sent here from the other party.

ABC News Politics caught the chant of God hates Donald Trump:

Donald Trump interrupted by protesters who chant "God hates Donald Trump" https://t.co/Vvai84oHZl pic.twitter.com/tIy2jvO9R4  ABC News Politics (@ABCPolitics) June 10, 2016

The crowd ironically responded to the chant of refugees are welcome here with a USA chant, which is an expression of the belief that it is an American value not to welcome refugees? Trump is a nominee who is appealing to bigotry. He is popular with evangelical Republicans because he tells them that they can win. The conservative evangelical movement has been soundly defeated in the culture wars, so they are desperate to hear someone tell them that they can win.

Of course, the person who is telling them this is a thrice married pathological liar who betrays everything that they claim to represent, but the far right has shown itself to be an easy mark for Donald Trump.
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By stating that she sees herself as ready to be commander-in-chief, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) gave Democrats a preview of a potential Clinton/Warren ticket.

Video:

Transcript:

MADDOW: And I know youre not seeking the job and I know you love being a senator. But if you were asked to be Secretary Clintons running mate, do you believe you could do it? By that I mean, the most important job of being a vice president is to be ready to be president if God forbid something happened to the commander-in-chief.

I know you dont want the job. But do you know you would be capable of stepping into that job and doing that job if you were ever called to do it? Because  and I ask you because Ed Rendell, former DNC chairman, former Pennsylvania governor, said recently that you were no  not in any way, shape or form ready to be commander-in-chief. I want to know if you think you could be.

WARREN: Yes, I do.

Sen. Warrens comments were significant because she would not run against Hillary Clinton for president, but if she feels that she is ready to be commander-in-chief that is a clear signal that Warren could see herself as vice president.

The calculus that both the Clinton campaign and Sen. Warren are weighing involves whether or not Democrats can win with two women on the ticket. Democrats are lucky because they have a wide variety of potential running mates who would be great vice presidents, but there is something unique about Sen. Warren that could take a likely Democratic victory and turn it into a dominant win.

The Democratic ticket may go in a different direction, but for the first time, Sen. Warren publicly stated that she views herself as ready to be president. That is a bombshell statement that suggests that Warren has her eyes on the White House.
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*The following is an opinion column by R Muse *

Its not unusual for a candidate for political office to embrace what is proven to be a winning strategy. Based on the success of Donald Trumps takeover of the GOP it was just a matter of time before other Republicans took a page from Donald Trumps bigoted campaign and used it as a strategy to win elections and endorsements. Although it is possible a Republican identifying heavily as a Christian may have simply alluded to an opponents racial makeup and sexual orientation, Donald Trump has made it acceptable to blatantly attack an opponent using bigoted remarks. It certainly paid off for a Minnesota woman running for a seat in the state legislature.

The Republican seeking a state House seat is Ali Jimenez-Hopper and during a Republican district convention late last month she was able to seal the Party endorsement with a speech attacking Democrat Erin Maye Quade because of her sexual orientation and race. Maye Quades father is African American, and she is married to a woman; something that, according to Jimenez-Hopper, makes her really far left in her values.

In fact, Jimenez-Hopper took exception to Maye Quade even mentioning,

That she is half black and she uses that as a strength. She brings up that she is in support of LGBT and that lifestyle and puts out pictures on Twitter of her and her wife. I believe in the traditional marriage in the sense its between a husband and wife and God and that family is important. We need to have these [Christian] values so we can go forth and think about your community.

Apparently the idea of Ms. Quade sharing her family pictures on her campaign website and social media, like Jimenez-Hopper does, is an issue Jimenez-Hopper finds offensive. So much so, that during her speech at the GOP endorsing convention she focused on her opponents family and ancestral heritage as it contrasts with her evangelical bona fides that earned her an all-important official party endorsement.

For Erin Maye Quade, who heard about Jimenez-Hoppers comments just two days ago, it was not a Republican or Democrat thing, its basic human respect and its shocking to hear from anyone. Thats not the tone I want for this election  at least for me.

On her Facebook page, Maye Quade wrote:

While [Jimenez-Hopper] is busy focusing on my blackness, Ill be working to ensure all students have access to affordable and equitable education. While shes busy worrying about my marriage, Ill be working to ensure Minnesotans have increased access to mental health services, support to care for aging family members, eliminate racial disparities, support to maintain independence and an economy that works for us all.

Ms. Quade is wise to stick to the issues and obviously doesnt want Jimenez-Hoppers hateful remarks setting the tone of the campaign. But this is 2016 and it is Donald Trumps GOP; a critical aspect to the new-and-improved Republican Party is abandoning basic human respect and any sense of inclusion. The base doesnt want to hear about respect for other Americans who are not white heterosexual Christians or Donald Trump would not be the Republican Partys presumptive nominee.

The Republican ended her speech with a perfect demonstration of the socially-conservative (read religious right) ideal for the people making laws affecting every American. Jimenez-Hopper said:

If we ever needed a leader that holds true to our values as a Christian and as a mother, now is the time. If we ever needed a leader to claim our responsibility to make the right choices to shape our self [holding the unique] values of integrity and honor, now is the time.

One thing is certain; Jimenez-Hoppers values are incongruent with values preached by Jesus Christ, and more people than one Democratic candidate noticed the evangelical Republicans comments are shocking.

Ms. Quade has been a longtime community organizer and local resident and shared with Think Progress that she is completely unaccustomed to experiencing racism or homophobia in her suburban community. In fact, Maye Quade shared that as the news of her opponents bigoted and religious remarks began circulating, shes experienced an outpouring of love from people on both sides of the aisle.

One seriously doubts she has received much love from the GOP endorsing committee that were obviously enamored with Jimenez-Hoppers portrayal of Maye Quade as being on the far left due to her bi-racial ancestry and LGBT identity.

Besides Maye Quade being on the far left for talking about her family and racial heritage, it is likely that her opponent is offended by Ms. Quades goals and hopes for all Minnesota residents. Maye Quade says that her typically-Democratic campaign will be focusing on those extremely far left issues like ameliorating childhood hunger, investing in transportation, enacting statewide paid family leave, and providing people with better mental health resources.

It is noteworthy that Republican Jimenez-Hopper did not attack Maye Quade over those issues. It is why Maye Quade said, We cant afford to focus on dividing people and spewing hate. Although there are certainly Minnesota residents who agree there is no place for bigotry or divisiveness, her opponent must disagree mightily or she would not follow the GOPs standard bearer Donald Trump. And, she would not have appealed to the GOP for their endorsement based on attacking her opponents racial makeup and sexual preference; Republicans know bigotry and divisiveness sells.

The chair of the Minnesota Democratic party, Ken Martin, slammed Jimenez-Hopper on Facebook for her Trump-like comments as he rightly should have. Martin wrote, Unfortunately, I am not surprised that the Republicans have recruited candidates who resort to outright racist and discriminatory statements and tactics given their standard bearer, Donald Trump.

However, what Mr. Martin forgot to mention is that those kind of statements and tactics, no matter how hateful, are precisely what the base wants to hear after seven-and-a-half years of conditioning by the Republican establishment; it cannot all be attributed to their standard bearer Donald Trump.

It is important to keep reiterating that Trump did not create the base he appeals to, Republicans did. And like Trump, Minnesota Republican Ali Jimenez-Hopper is just taking advantage of a base ripe for a racist evangelical candidate. It is something the Minnesota GOP endorsing convention leaders and any politically-savvy Republican knows is necessary to win GOP endorsements and the 2016 presidential primary races.

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Katie Lund has joined Merchants Bank in Rochester as a mortgage lender.

Lund has been part of the Merchants Bank team since 2008. Since 2013, she has worked at Merchants Bank in Rosemount as a mortgage loan coordinator.

"Katie brings a great deal of knowledge and experience with the mortgage origination process, which will be an immediate benefit to our customers," said John Doyle, president of Merchants Bank in Rochester, in a news release. "She puts the needs of our customers first, and she is dedicated to making sure those needs are met. I know people will enjoy working with her."

Lund's Rochester office will be at Merchants Bank's Northwest Plaza location.

"I'm familiar with the needs of the individuals and families who are part of the Rochester market," Lund said. "I'm excited to help people realize their dreams of home ownership with the programs and support we can offer at Merchants."
Dear Dave: At my company we have what we call MIA leadership. Basically, our managers never take the time to get to know the staff, connect with them and spread a little praise every so often. We are not looking for loving relationships, just leaders who treat us as individuals that matter. Please say something about this.  W

Dear W: I will, because this is a basic requirement for managers. Sadly, I have known many managers who prided themselves on spying on their staff in the hopes they can catch them doing something wrong  and then pouncing on them. The best leaders mingle, talk to their employees, praise them when appropriate and create a culture of trust and respect.

I'm not telling anyone anything new here, but employees who feel valued and appreciated by their leaders definitely are more likely to go above and beyond for the company and their department, and hold themselves accountable for their part of the overall work. Last but not least, they will be happier in their jobs.

If managers do not connect with their employees, they will be unable to recognize and capture the very important things employees have to say. They will miss out on the input, ideas and creativity their employees may have. If you want robots, then treat employees like robots. If you want thinking, purposeful, caring and dedicated staff, then treat them properly.

Some managers think if they get too close to their staff, they will lose a position of authority. They are afraid they may look weak or vulnerable. This is not true. Leaders who connect and show an interest gain a position of respect and power. They know if you want dedication and high morale, you need to care and show you really "want to be there" for them.

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Appreciating appreciation

The first thing managers must remember is, they manage real, live, caring and often impressionable people, who are just trying to get ahead and have a good day. That's it! Managers must look beyond the plan and the spreadsheet and appreciate the emotions, sensitivities, needs and wants of the precious staff they are blessed to have.

If managers did their job of hiring the best they can find, then they need to get busy and bring out the best in these people. This is a requirement for managers and it all starts with taking the time to know them and realize and appreciate what they have to offer. Please note the following three ways leaders can interact with and demonstrate their appreciation for employees.

Find out what matters to them.If you want to connect and communicate better, you must begin by learning what matters most to them. Do some research and ask some questions. What matters to them about their job and the company? What motivates and inspires them to do great work? How do they want to improve and develop their skills? Once you know what matters, you can then have some real heart-to-heart dialogue.

Give them your time.I think it's hard for employees to feel connected and appreciated when their manager closes his or her office door and is "way too busy" for a simple conversation. Often, managers get tangled up in day-to-day tasks and projects and fail to capture the feelings and needs of their staff. But if a manager takes the time for regular  even brief  conversations with their staff, employees will feel valued, recognized and appreciated.

It's OK to connect personally.Besides helping with work matters, a great leader should keep his or her eyes open for ways to help out with personal issues as well. It's completely possible to show you "tastefully and respectfully" care about your employee's personal life without appearing like you are prying  everyone wants work-life balance. You do not need to be their best friend, just friendly and caring.

In summary, what employees want from you as a leader, is for you to communicate with them often in a way that tells them you care and they matter.
ARDEN HILLS  Land O'Lakes is planning an $80 million expansion at its corporate headquarters in a northern Twin Cities suburb.

The expansion will allow the company to house employees who are now split between the Arden Hills headquarters and the Shoreview offices, while also making room for at least 200 new jobs that will be added over the next few years.

The recent announcement followed the Ramsey County Board's decision in April to give the company a 15-year tax abatement of up to $1.5 million on the expansion.

Land O'Lakes wants to build a four-story office building and a 1,700-stall parking lot on its 50-acre site in Arden Hills.

The project plans are still subject to city approval.
AUGUSTA, Maine  Maine's governor says the European Union should deny a push from the Swedish government to have American lobster listed as an invasive species.

Sweden has asked the European Union to bar imports of live American lobsters into the 28-nation bloc after 32 American lobsters were found in Swedish waters. Swedish officials say an invasion of American lobsters could outcompete or spread disease to European lobsters.

Republican Gov. Paul LePage says the risk of American lobsters establishing a population in Europe is minimal. American and Canadian scientists also have said that the proposed ban isn't based in sound science.

Maine is by far the biggest lobster producing state in the country. U.S. fishermen caught nearly 150 million pounds of lobster in 2014, and Maine accounted for almost 125 million.
Whether you're just starting your new business, or have been up and running for a while, protecting the business you worked so hard to build is a critical step.

Unfortunately, it's one many entrepreneurs neglect in the rush of launching a startup and operating day to day. This topic is top of mind for many CEOs that I talk to. Last week I referred a group to go to SCORE.org to check out the many tools, templates and articles that are offered free to small businesses.

For example, one of my favorite business authors is Rieva Lesonsky, CEO of GrowBiz Media, a content and consulting company specializing in covering small businesses and entrepreneurship. She recently wrote a piece for SCORE about protecting your small business. I thought she did a good job of capturing some key points.

 Choose the right form of business. Operating as a sole proprietorship  the default business structure for a one-person business  may be easy, but it's not necessarily the best choice to protect your business. For one thing, the sole proprietorship structure doesn't protect your personal assets. That means if a customer decides to sue you or a vendor demands payment that your business can't afford, your savings, home and other assets could be fair game.

 Hire an attorney.You may not need to use a lawyer that often, but when you need one, you need one fast. Ask other entrepreneurs, business colleagues and friends for recommendations for attorneys who are familiar with small business issues. Take the time to compare attorneys by scheduling an interview with each before you hire them. Discuss payment options  most attorneys have affordable solutions for even the smallest business.

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 Find an accountant.Even if you plan on doing the bookkeeping yourself, a good accountant is worth the price. Who has time to keep up-to-date on tax law changes? You sure don't, but accountants do. Not only can they save you money on your taxes, they also can provide valuable advice on how to structure your business, the best way to finance expansion and how much to pay yourself. At my company, we consult our accountant before making any big decision.

 Be smart about new customers.Before taking on a new business-to-business customer, always conduct a credit check. This helps protect you against unpaid invoices. Never do business without a contract  no matter how confident you are in the customer's word. If something goes wrong, a written contract may be the only thing that ensures you get paid for your hard work.

 Buy business insurance.Most businesses need general liability insurance, and if you provide advice or professional services to customers, you also may need professional liability insurance, also known as E&O (errors and omissions) coverage. Depending on which state you operate in, you may be required to have workers' compensation insurance. Other insurance products to consider include key man insurance on your life and the life of other key employees, business interruption insurance (which protects your income if your business has to shut down because of a disaster) and cyber insurance.

 Protect your employees.Disaster can strike any time, so it's important to have a disaster plan for what you will do in case of emergency. Create a plan and assign responsibilities for how to get employees and customers out of the building safely, what to do if a disaster keeps you and employees from getting to your business, and how you will keep running even if you can't get to your physical location. Learn more about creating an emergency disaster plan.

 Protect your business data.Back up your company data and documents with a cloud storage and sharing solution so you can access files anywhere. When your information is stored in the cloud, you don't have to worry about a crashed hard drive or fire on your premises wiping out precious data. To protect your business from cyber crime and hackers, install appropriate firewalls and, more importantly, train your employees in cyber security measures, such as creating strong passwords.
I like to write, but for me, summer seems like the more expressive time. I've dug up some sites that might help your writing and your overall summer enjoyment.

Sentence structure

I loved to diagram sentences in school even though I was quite shaky in the endeavor. To me, it was taking a natural flow of words and giving them a scientific analysis. So here's a great site that will help you in school or even just analyze your writing efforts' grammatical structure. Are you as sharp as you think? Check it out. I tapped out "Mike Dougherty writes a weekly newspaper column called Digital Mike. Do you like it?" Check out Fox Type's other features, some of which are paid services.

foxtype.com/sentence-tree

Write right

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Grammarly's proofreading browser extension is a good thing. In the end, nothing beats a good education where you learned grammar, punctuation and spelling, but the grammar helper is a good thing for writing, I've even read a piece where a blogger suggested it for online dating writing to up your chances at success . Sad but true. But give it a look and see how it might help you when you pen a note or the great American novel. It's a free extension on Chrome. Give it a look.

www.grammarly.com

Kids covers

I'm a fan of quizzes, but approach cautiously to determine who's offering it and where it might take me. In this case, this was a fun one. It's a quiz to tap your memory of childhood book covers. See how you fare in the list of 10. Some are very predictable, while others might stretch your memory of stories read long ago and maybe rekindled if you were the book reading parent to your kids. Ready, set go!

tinyurl.com/grxq6yn

Right field

I'm also a fan of George Plimpton, a wonderful writer of so many things, much of them his experiences. Plimpton was a founder of The Paris Review, which he edited for five decades. In this piece on the Paris Review blog , his piece on playing right field is resurrected. It's so good. It captures the spirit of the position, the place on the field and how we often view it. It's rich. Give it a read and then peruse Mr. Plimpton's other works. It'll help fill your summer. I was lucky enough in college to help guide him around our college campus during a speaking engagement. I'd dug deep enough to find a book he had written about fireworks, which I also love, and pitched him a few questions on it. It was the perfect approach when he'd expected " Paper Lion " questions or " Out of My League " queries. Then he asked where I grew up. When I told him Montana, we had a great discussion on a bench on the St. Thomas quad.

www.theparisreview.org/blog/2016/06/02/right-field

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Summer fun

Did you catch the P-B's vaunted annual fairs and festival listing ? It's a herculean task to chronicle the multitude of fairs, festivals and gatherings in southeast Minnesota, but Life Editor Jeff Pieters always manages to come up big. If you are pondering what I speak of, click the link on the online column to get to the listing. It's a good go-to list with links and descriptions of events that will give you a true flavor of this region of the country and our state. I prefer the print version, but if you didn't save yours like I did, give the online listing a look. In the meantime, here are two other good methods of gathering ideas for weekend and summer events that will help you enjoy our sumptuous summer.

www.exploreminnesota.com/events/fairs-festivals

tinyurl.com/zzc9dn6
Jeffery Amundson, the former president of the Rochester Symphony Orchestra and Chorale who was accused of stealing thousands of dollars from a vulnerable adult, was ordered Monday to pay more than $18,500 in restitution.

Amundson originally was charged with four counts of financial exploitation of a vulnerable adult; in April, he entered an Alford plea of guilty to one of the counts. As part of the plea agreement, one count was amended to theft, to which Amundson pleaded guilty. In exchange, the remaining counts were dismissed at sentencing.

With an Alford plea, the defendant maintains his innocence but acknowledges the evidence would be sufficient to convict him.

Amundson received a stay of adjudication in the case. With a stay of adjudication, the defendant pleads guilty, but the court doesn't "accept" the plea. When probation and its conditions are successfully completed, the charges are dismissed and the defendant's criminal record doesn't reflect a conviction. The arrest record remains.

In addition to paying $19,261.58 in restitution and fines, Amundson was ordered to complete a mental health screening and have no contact with the victim. He also must not hold a position of fiduciary responsibility and was placed on probation for six months.

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The charges against Amundson, 46, were filed in January 2015, after an employee at a licensed group home in Rochester told authorities Amundson had been spending the victim's money on himself, and the victim was receiving only $20 per month.

That prompted authorities to gather the victim's financial records from 2010-13. An analysis of those records revealed numerous suspicious debit card purchases, including many restaurant and online purchases, as well as cash withdrawals by Amundson, court documents say.

When questioned by authorities, Amundson denied stealing the funds, claiming the victim owed him $20,000 because he had "paid for the victim's apartment and helped him get Social Security benefits and medical assistance," according to the complaint.

Amundson had once told staff with Olmsted County Adult Protective Services that the victim owed him $50,000.

Court documents itemize more than $18,500 spent by Amundson from January 2011 through December 2013.

He told investigators, however, that he'd been taking money for about a year, tracking the amount, but said a fire destroyed the paperwork that documented it.

The RSOC assured its members that its financial integrity hadn't been compromised. Amundson, who had been with the organization since April 2011, was placed on unpaid status in April 2015.
A jury convicted a former Rochester coffee shop owner of sexual assault Thursday after about five hours of deliberations.

Christopher Holloway, 46, was found guilty of one count each of third- and fourth-degree criminal sexual conduct, with aggravating factors. Olmsted County District Court Judge Joseph Chase released Holloway on his own recognizance following the verdict; sentencing has been set for Aug. 18.

The maximum sentence for each count is 15 years and 10 years, respectively. Holloway, now of Lee's Summit, Mo., has signed a waiver of extradition, meaning that he will likely serve his sentence in Minnesota.

Holloway, who represented himself in the case, repeatedly questioned the credibility of the victim, as well as the way the case was investigated.

During Thursday afternoon's closing arguments, James Haase, a senior assistant county attorney for Olmsted County, told jurors that despite having a cooperative victim  who provided two statements to law enforcement, in addition to testifying during the trial  "the circumstantial evidence in this case is sufficient" to convict Holloway.

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After being caught naked in bed with the 14-year-old victim, Holloway fled, leaving his boxer shorts behind. When police stopped his vehicle a few minutes after the boy's mother called law enforcement, Holloway's shoes were untied and he wasn't wearing underwear.

A "moist" used condom was found in his vehicle, the report said, leading to what Haase called "the most crippling evidence"  the DNA of the victim on the outside of the condom, Holloway's DNA on the inside. A rectal swab of the victim indicated the presence of semen.

Medical reports indicated "bruising, abrasions and tearing" of the victim, "consistent with trauma," a pediatrician testified.

Consent by the victim is not a defense, Haase told the jury, nor was Holloway's alleged ignorance of the boy's age.

The two met on a social media website chat room frequented by homosexual males, court documents show. The victim said though his profile listed his age as 18, he told Holloway when they met up that he was actually 14.

Holloway argued in his closing that Haase "discounted his original case and instead started to build a circumstantial case" in the State's closing argument.

What Holloway never said, though, was "I didn't have sexual contact" with the victim.

"We've heard different versions of the story," he said. "It's hard to come to the conclusion of what really happened," calling the victim's testimony "questionable, at best ... five different versions of an event that may or may not have happened."

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The boy's mother "didn't see any of the things they're alleging happened," Holloway said. "It comes down to, do you know beyond a reasonable doubt that what Mr. Haase said happened, happened?"

The semen on the rectal swab wasn't his, he said, prompting a rebuttal by Haase.

"Semen is not a DNA test," Haase said. "Semen was identified, but not tested for ownership."

He asked the jury to "consider the reasonableness of the testimony in light of all the other evidence in the case. Consider the interest  or lack of interest  in the outcome of the case. What would (the family) gain by making up this story about the case?"

According to the criminal complaint, Holloway and the boy met on the social media site Dec. 19, 2014. Holloway went to the victim's house early Dec. 20, and went into the boy's bedroom, where the sexual contact took place.

Holloway left a few hours later, and the two continued chatting throughout the day Dec. 20, the records show. He went to the boy's house about 2:30 a.m. Dec. 21, when more sexual contact occurred. The victim's mother discovered the two in the bedroom, prompting Holloway to flee.

The 14-year-old told authorities he admitted his actual age to Holloway before both meetings.
A Rochester woman who was arrested on drug charges three times from November to February was sentenced Wednesday to more than seven years in prison.

Marcie Marie Maklenburg, 40, pleaded guilty in April to two counts of felony first-degree drug sale. In exchange for the plea, an identical count was dismissed, as were two counts of first-degree drug possession, one count each of fifth-degree drug sale, fifth-degree drug possession and second-degree controlled substance crime, all felonies. One count each of gross misdemeanor possession of a firearm and two petty misdemeanor counts of possession of drug paraphernalia were also dismissed.

Olmsted County District Court Judge Pamela King sentenced Maklenburg to concurrent prison terms of 94 and 86 months in prison.

In February, Maklenburg was arrested after being found in possession of 19.9 grams of methamphetamine and about $1,000 in cash, according to Capt. Scott Behrns, of the Olmsted County Sheriff's Office. That amount of meth carries a street value of around $2,000, Behrns said.

In November, Maklenburg and Michael Scott Mechtel, 40, were arrested after a warrant was executed at a northeast Rochester residence.

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Inside, officers found three safes containing cash and methamphetamine. A further search of the residence turned up 586.4 grams of meth  about 1.3 pounds; 135.5 grams of marijuana  more than a quarter-pound; 2.6 grams of mushrooms and nearly 100 prescription pills, court documents say. The currency found throughout the house totaled $34,110 and law enforcement also found a stun gun and other pieces of drug paraphernalia.

The pair remained free pending their next court appearances  until the morning of Jan. 19.

That's when members of the Southeast Minnesota Violent Crimes Enforcement team, as well as local law enforcement, served another narcotics search warrant.

Maklenburg and Mechtel were arrested about 9:15 at the same northeast Rochester residence, where authorities found 491 grams  more than a pound  of methamphetamine and $6,700 in cash, the reports say.

The meth has a street value of about $27,000, Behrns said.

Mechtel pleaded guilty in March to one count of first-degree drug possession-25 grams or more in the first case, and to one count of third-degree drug possession-3 grams or more in the second case. Both are felonies.

He was sentenced last month in Olmsted County District Court to concurrent prison terms of 86 months and 33 months.

In exchange for the guilty pleas, additional counts of first-degree drug sale, first-degree drug possession, fifth-degree drug sale, fifth-degree drug possession and possession of a firearm were dismissed.

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Olmsted County District Court felony dispositions for June 2016:

 Domestic assault  Billy Green, 54, of Rochester. Sentenced June 1, 2016, to 30 months in prison, stayed for 10 years; to 90 days in jail, with credit for 21 days served; to complete 40 hours of community work service; to pay $485.

 Second-degree drug sale  David Bruce Hansen, 31, of 721 Fourth St. SE, Rochester. Sentenced June 6, 2016, to 68 months in prison, stayed for 25 years; to 169 days in jail, with credit for 169 days served; to be served concurrently with a 173-day jail term, with credit for 169 days served, for a conviction of issuing a dishonored check; to complete 75 hours of community work service; to pay $6,681.45.

 Second-degree assault  Zakariya Hussein Ali, 18, of 17 13 1/2 St. NW, Rochester. Sentenced June 6, 2016, to 21 months in prison, stayed for seven years; to 67 days in jail, with credit for 45 days served; to complete 100 hours of community work service; to pay $1,085.

 Terroristic threats  Daniel Blake Schmitz, 34, of Faribault. Sentenced June 6, 2016, to 18 months in prison, stayed for five years; to 60 days in jail, with credit for 58 days served; to complete 100 hours of community work service; to pay $85.

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 Issue dishonored check  Sarah Kay Stoen, 27, of the Gables, Rochester. Sentenced June 6, 2016, to 104 days in jail, with credit for 104 days served; to complete 50 hours of community work service; to pay $7,066.56.

 Domestic assault  Shawn Earl Vanzant, 42, of 456 13th Ave. NW, No. 4, Rochester. Sentenced June 6, 2016, to 15 months in prison, stayed for five years; to 120 days in jail, with credit for 94 days served; to complete 100 hours of community work service; to pay $85.

 Fifth-degree drug possession  Joshua Bernard Smith-Bey, 37, of 624 Seventh Ave. SE, Rochester. Sentenced June 8, 2016, to 24 months in prison; to pay $135.

Felony dispositions are public records and are available at the city/county Government Center in Rochester. For more information, call 328-6800.
Prosecutors say an Onalaska man accused of beating his infant son cut off his GPS monitor, stole a shotgun, broke into the boy's mother's home and confessed days after being released from jail.

Chad Parker, 29, was arrested May 26 after his 3-month old son was taken to the hospital with skull fractures and a possible brain injury. According to court documents the child had bruises on his chin, neck, chest and back.

Parker told police he had been drinking and "passed out" with the infant on the couch; he said he woke up on top of the boy but denied shaking him, according to court documents.

Parker was released from jail May 27 after posting bond.

The boy's mother called police early Thursday to report that Parker had climbed through a bedroom window in her residence shortly before 5 a.m., saying he was upset and wanted to talk. He left on foot after giving her a letter, according to a criminal complaint.

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According to the complaint, Parker wrote that he was "feeling overwhelmed" and had gotten little sleep when he "flipped out" and threw the boy on the couch, "started smacking him on the butt really hard, and then bit him really hard on the hand."

"After me doing something like that, I can't live the rest of my life, I don't deserve to live," Parker wrote.

Police went to the home where Parker had been staying. His parents had found his GPS ankle bracelet and a note saying he couldn't "live like this anymore." They later discovered they were missing a 12-gauge shotgun, according to the complaint.

Parker was arrested Thursday in Jackson County with a loaded gun in the back seat of his vehicle. He was charged later that day in La Crosse County Circuit Court with physical abuse of a child, intentionally causing great bodily harm, which carries a maximum 40-year sentence.

Prosecutors charged him Friday with two counts of felony bail jumping for removing his bracelet and violating a no-contact provision of his bond.

Judge Gloria Doyle ordered his $5,000 cash bond forfeited and imposed a new $50,000 bond, saying Parker is "a poor candidate for GPS monitoring." Parker remained in the La Crosse County Jail on Friday afternoon.


The man accused of shooting an acquaintance in the face in 2014 during a drug deal gone wrong  but wasn't sent to prison  has been arrested again, his second probation violation since his sentencing in October.

Aries Candler, 18, pleaded guilty in July to felony first-degree aggravated robbery; he was sentenced last fall to 48 months in prison, stayed for 20 years. Olmsted County District Court Judge Debra Jacobson also ordered Candler to complete a teen treatment program, write a letter of apology and complete 100 hours of community work service in lieu of a $1,000 fine.

In exchange for the guilty plea, a single count of second-degree assault with a dangerous weapon was dismissed.

A month later  Nov. 16  Candler was sentenced to 90 days in jail after violating the terms of his probation. Judge Joseph Chase ordered Candler to complete adult inpatient drug treatment; it's unclear if he's done so.

Wednesday morning, members of the Rochester Police Street Crimes Unit saw a vehicle whose occupants appeared to be engaged in a "hand-to-hand narcotics transaction," said Capt. John Sherwin.

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Candler  who was reportedly in the vehicle  had been the subject of an intelligence-led policing effort, which "targets the most prolific offenders," Sherwin said.

While under surveillance earlier in the day, officers had watched as Candler put a large bag in the trunk of the vehicle, the report says. After the alleged drug transaction, officers conducted a traffic stop on the vehicle Candler was in.

They smelled marijuana, prompting a search of the car, Sherwin said. Inside a large bag in the trunk, officers reportedly found 110 grams of marijuana.

Candler was arrested on suspicion of felony fifth-degree controlled substance crime sales. He's expected to be arraigned today or Friday.

The shooting case began July 30, 2014, when police were called to the emergency room of a local hospital for a reported gunshot wound. When officers arrived, the 20-year-old victim had been taken to surgery and was unable to talk to them immediately.

The two men who had brought the victim to the hospital were cooperative and told them this:

The 20-year-old had arranged for the group to meet two other men  now known to be Candler and Elijah Jachon Golden  at 7 p.m. in the parking lot of Perkins, at 432 16th Ave. NW, to buy marijuana. When the victim and his friends arrived, Golden and Candler got into their vehicle; together, the five drove to a nearby neighborhood.

At some point in the drive, an altercation began, and the fight spilled out of the vehicle in the 400 block of 13th Avenue Northwest.

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Candler then allegedly pulled a small-caliber handgun from his clothing and fired a single shot. The round struck the 20-year-old in the chin, traveled laterally and exited the side of his face near his mouth.

All of the people involved in the car were arrested within hours  except Candler. He was on the run for months, changing his identity and address multiple times.

He was eventually arrested in 2015.

Golden is serving a 23-month prison sentence.
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.

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Rochester City Council candidate Nick Carter is calling on his experience as a civil servant as he enters a three-way race for the city's Ward 6 in an August primary .

As a council member, Carter said he would be focused public infrastructure planning, prioritizing spending and constituent service.

"I think we've got to start looking at some of our infrastructure," Carter told the Post-Bulletin.

"Sometimes I look at some of these commuter areas and we're behind. We're playing catch-up. If we're going to grow, we can't be behind. It can't be next year or the year after. They've got to get this stuff done now," he said.

Carter is familiar with public government processes, including planning and budgeting, from his career in public service. A Vietnam veteran , Carter returned from his active duty to take a civilian position with the U.S. Army in Washington, D.C.

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After working in the capitol from around 1968 through 1986, Carter returned to Minnesota to work for the Army Corps of Engineers. His career gave him experience working with information systems, purchasing and procurement, contract negotiations and other areas, he said.

The city has a "tendency to use contractors," Carter said. He is "not a big believer" that consultants are needed in many situations in which they are hired, he said.

"I've done a little bit of everything. I've negotiated contracts with contractors; I've fired contractors," Carter said. "I'm not a big believer in that  you don't need $50,000 in consultants to come up with 'Rah-Rah-Rochester.'"

Most importantly, Carter hopes to be a responsive member of local government.

"The reason I ran is  I still think there's something called constituent service, and I think it's lacking.," he said. "You've got to represent the people that elected you, and I think that's a dying deal now."

Carter is an active volunteer as adjutant of the Disabled American Veterans, Chapter 28, Mayo Southeast. He has volunteered with a variety of area organizations, he said.

In an Aug. 9 primary election, Carter will face off with Annalissa Johnson and Patrick Day for the city council Ward 6 seat. Current Ward 6 council member Sandra Means will not seek re-election.

The general election is Nov. 8.
WINONA  Brian Conner said he wants the Winona County Board of Commissioners to lead, not follow.

That's why he's challenging incumbent Greg Olson for the District 4 seat. Conner, along with Olson and Norman G. Kostuck have filed for the seat.

A graduate of St. Peter High School, Conner grew up in the small town just north of Mankato, but has lived in Winona for 35 years, spending 32 years with Benchmark Electronics.

"I feel that the county needs a consistent, proactive voice on the commission rather than a reactive one," said Conner, who has never run for elected office.

A good example, he said, is the frac sand mining issue.

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"Only now are the commissioners going to look at the frac sand issue," he said of the board's decision to study the ramifications of a ban on that particular mining practice. "It should have been looked at in 2012 or 2013."

In 2014, the board spent time updating the comprehensive land use plan, Conner said. That would have been the the right time to deal with frac sand mining. Instead, the board did not pass a ban at that time.

"Now Mr. Olson is asking the commissioners to look at the issue, but the horse is out of the barn."

Other issues Conner said he is concerned about include funding for roads. "We need to keep our infrastructure viable," he said.

Conner said he will sit down with people advising him to come up with a plan to get the word out on his campaign, but he sees a lot of door knocking in his future.

"I'll be taking some tread off of the shoes, that's for sure," he said.
PRESTON  A water rescue on the Root River near Whalan in the dark Saturday was a perfect way for Fillmore County Sheriff Tom Kaase to ask the county board Tuesday to approve a $1,564 boat and water safety grant from the state.

He needed the county board's approval to accept the grant and introduced it by telling board members about the rescue that required special equipment that his deputy and a member of the Preston Police Department didn't have. Fortunately for the 17-year-old girl who was rescued, the Lanesboro Fire Department has the equipment and knew how to do the rescue, he said.

"The fire department rescue workers were fighting the darkness of night, and the high and swift water conditions, making it very challenging," he said. But they got a life jacket to the girl and also a raft and tow ropes and brought her to safety.

One of the things he is thinking of using the grant for would be to get new equipment that could be used in such a rescue, he said.

He can also use that money for salaries of deputies doing water patrols, supplies or maybe educating river users on how do it safely without hurting the resource, he said.

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While the grant is good, it would pay for only a small part of the cost of patrolling the Root River, usually in the Preston-Lanesboro area, he said. On a warm summer weekend, there might be 1,200 people canoeing, rafting or tubing on the rivers.

"That's a lot of people," he said. While it's great for the local economy, it also means more work for law enforcement, he said.

Because of the demand, it's possible he will ask for more money next year, he said.

The board unanimously approved the grant.
A Twin Cities-developer interested in buying an old Rochester school building says it needs more time to put a plan together.

Ryan Cos.signed an agreement last fall to buy the former Golden Hill Schoolbuilding for $1.8 million from Rochester Public Schools. The empty 36,000-square-foot building is located at 2220 Third Ave. SE.

Mark Schoening, Ryan's senior vice president of national retail development, described the tentative plans in September as " Bringing additional retail to that part of Rochester."

However, Ryan Cos. did not complete its due diligence on the property by a May 31 deadline. That's why the Rochester School Board voted to approve a request from Ryan at Tuesday's meeting to extend that period to Sept. 30. Ryan is willing to forfeit $25,000 in "earnest money" to pay for the extension.

Ryan pledges that if needs more time before Sept. 30, it will forfeit another $25,000 to extend the deadline to Dec. 31.

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Biz buzz

Staff at the Kahler Grand Hotelsay plans are in the works for a major renovation and remodel in 2017.

Beside refreshing the historic downtown hotel, the word is that it is possible that an international brand name could be added to the nameplate.

If that happens, it's expected that Kahler would remain part of the new name. So 2017 could bring a new look and a name for Rochester's oldest hotel. -- Jeff Kiger
One Fillmore County commissioner will have a challenger in November's election while one will run unopposed and a man who had been on the board for 16 years has filed to get back on.

Marc Prestby, who is board chairman this year, is being challenged by Vance Haugen for the Fifth District seat while Commissioner Mitch Lentz is unopposed for the First District and Gary L. Peterson has filed to get back on the board for the Third District.

Prestby, of Canton, said he has been on the board 16 years after serving on the Canton City Council for eight years.

"I filed again because I enjoy serving the people of Fillmore County," he said. "A lot of change has occurred in the last 16 years and I hope to continue serving the people of District 5."

The biggest problem facing the county is transportation funding, he said. The county has many bridges and roads and many need fixing, he said. "We need to lobby the legislature for

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more funding to repair our bridges and roads," he said.

Haugen, of rural Canton, said he has worked 31 years as a University of Wisconsin Agriculture Agent and farmed in Fillmore County for 23 years. "I have had ample opportunity to see how local government works and how to get things done," he said. He has not held any elected office but decided to run "to lend a different view point and set of experiences to move Fillmore County's governance forward."

The county is being run well and he said he wants to make it better. He said he's not running against Prestby but more to improve governing by asking "what do we want to accomplish and are we making progress?"

Lentz of rural Spring Valley is running for a second term. He has worked for IBM for 35 years and also raises beef cattle. He has been on the Kingsland School Board and is now serving on the Spring Valley Area Community Foundation Board.

"I believe that Fillmore County is a section of the state that has many assets and resources that we need to maintain, promote, and protect," he said. He said all the committees and boards he's been on are "good base to build upon as a county commissioner."

"I think the role of the commissioner is not to only manage the current programs and activities of the county but to have a plan to where the county will be in the near and long term," he said.

Peterson, of Spring Valley, was on the board for 16 years but had to leave when he was hired to work at Channel 6 in Austin. Today, he's helping the Southeast Minnesota Regional Medical Examiner's office doing ground searches and has the time to again serve on the board.

He said his experience will make him valuable on the board. Many of the things he helped start when he was on the board, such as improving water quality and solid waste, are continuing to be issues, only the board is now working on better refining how to deal with them, he said.
RED WING  A notice from the Red Wing Area Chamber of Commerce to its members sent out last week warned them to beware of criminal activity after a pair of break-ins and a rash of vandalism in downtown Red Wing.

Red Wing Police Chief Roger Pohlman said the warning from the chamber is both timely and appropriate. "The best thing to do is put the word out, which is what the chamber did," Pohlman said. "Report suspicious activity, which often is the break we need."

According to chamber Executive Director Patty Brown  and confirmed by Pohlman  several vending machines were damaged from people trying to break into them, and other minor acts of theft and vandalism have plagued downtown businesses in recent weeks.

Brown said not all of the crimes have been reported to police. "One had a birdbath fountain with a gazing ball that was stolen," she said. "It's not big crime. It's just little annoying stuff."

Pohlman said area businesses and residents should report crimes no matter how minor so police can track the crimes to see if there are any patterns. Brown said six businesses had contacted the chamber to warn of petty crimes.

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As for the break-ins, Pohlman said a suspect is in custody and has been charged with the break-ins at the Red Wing Visitor and Convention Bureau and the Red Wing Arts Association that occurred May 21.

Eugene Bluemke, 49, of Staten Island, N.Y., is being held on charges of theft, third degree burglary, fourth-degree damage to property and trespassing, according to the Goodhue County Attorney's Office. Pohlman said Bluemke "got booted off" an Amtrak train. He was found with jewelry reported stolen, as well as a wi-fi router.

Of bigger concern to Pohlman was the vandalism done to cars along South Park Street on the weekend of May 27-28. Several tires were slashed and windows broken, he said, resulting in as much as $20,000 in damage. "That one's more troubling," Pohlman said. "Someone was just plain malicious there."

Red Wing police are still investigating the crime, he said, hoping some information will come forward.

"The thing the chamber sent out was a reminder to follow good crime prevention practices and report suspicious activity," Pohlman said. "We'd rather check it out and find it to be nothing than miss out on a lead we could have had."
The Rochester Fire Department honored a number of current employees and local citizens for their service to the community and their neighbors at a ceremony Tuesday.

"Every firefighter who shows up to work deserves a medal," said deputy chief Steve Belau.

Among those receiving awards was 12-year-old Kathleen Thompson, who earned the Fire Chief's Commendation Award. Thompson, who will be a seventh-grader this fall at Friedell Middle School, recently participated in the Rochester Regional Science Fair and the Minnesota State Science Fair.

Her research, entitled "Don't Be a Flamin' Fool," examines the safety of synthetic polyester children's sleepwear, labeled fire resistant, compared to textiles made from natural fibers. Thompson competed with 350 other middle school students at the Regional Science Fair in Rochester in February.

Thompson was inspired for this idea when part of her family's apartment building caught fire last fall. Thompson was aware of which unit was on fire and realized there were children living in that home. A lot of clothes that children wear to bed are not suitable for sleepwear because of the flammable graphics, material or oversized nature so Thompson decided to test the differences.

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Starting in November, Thompson worked with her teachers at school to develop the idea, then worked with several Rochester firefighters to research burning characteristics. Once completed, the Rochester Fire Department also helped re-evaluate Thompson's project after the regional science fair.

In addition to advancing to the state competition, Thompson received The Young Skeptics Award at the Rochester Regional Science Fair, given by the Rochester Free Thinking Society to an outstanding project that shows the application of critical thinking and skeptical inquiry. She also was nominated for the BroadCam Masters Award, which is given to the top 10 percent of students competing in regional science fairs.

"I feel so honored because I didn't think my project would go this far," Thompson said.

Thompson has since applied for the BroadCam Masters national competition in Washington, D.C., and is awaiting the announcement of finalists.

Aside from Thompson, many other firefighters and citizens who went above and beyond for the community were recognized:

 Citizen Recognition Award: Laura Lee and Brooklyn Haasch.

 Good Citizen Commendation: Dennis Teichman.

 Citizen Life Saver Award: Tom Owens.

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 Sudden Cardiac Arrest Life Saving Award: Engine No. 5-Shift No. 2  Capt. Bill MacMonegle, motor operator Doug Brinks and firefighter Greg VanMoer.

 Sudden Cardiac Arrest Life Saving Award: Engine No. 16-Shift No. 2 -- Capt. Dave Beagle, motor operator Larry Mueller and firefighter Joe Pearson.

 Unit Commendation: Engine No. 2-Shift No. 2  Capt. Brennan Kelly, motor operator Dean Hofschulte and firefighter Jessie Ptacek.

 Unit Commendation: Engine No. 2-Shift No. 1  Capt. Gary Kittleson, motor operator Sean Grethen and firefighter KC Clark.

 Meritorious Service: Truck No. 12-Shift No. 1  Capt. Chuck Solseth, motor operator Jeff Drew and firefighter Nick Wiese and Engine No. 4-Shift No. 1  Capt. Holly Mulholland, motor operator Brian Buss and firefighter Brandon Okins.

"We like to recognize high quality staff who do an exceptionally great job," said deputy chief R. Vance Swisher.
Rochester Public Schools will add a second "community school" to the district this coming school year, thanks to the United Way of Olmsted County.

The district approved an agreement with the United Way at Tuesday's board meeting to put a two-year agreement between the two in place. The agreement will provide a United Way employee as a community school coordinator for Riverside Elementary, the second of its kind in Rochester Public Schools.

"What this leads to is improved student learning stronger families and healthy communities," said Julie Ruzek, the district's facilitator of family and community engagement.

Community schools act as a hub for meeting student and family needs and offering support in a "holistic" way, bringing together health and social services, youth and community development and community engagement, with the idea that the school will become the center of the community.

A community school is both a "place and a set of partnerships between the school and other community resources," according to the district. The model brings together academics with health and social services along with development and community engagement on the premise that students will be better learners if their basic needs are met.

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With funding through the United Way, RPS hired its Riverside site facilitator, which the district says is essential to running a community school. They are the "backbone" for partnerships, data analysis and resource development, according to the district.

"Students face multiple challenges that go well beyond the academic mission of the school," said United Way President Jerome Ferson. "We're excited to bring our expertise in facilitating, as well as our knowledge of community resources."

Gage and Riverside were identified as potential sites for a community school model in December 2014. The district applied for grants through the Minnesota Department of Education to fund positions at Gage and Riverside in the fall of 2015, but only received the funding for Gage , without an explanation why Riverside wasn't also funded.

Gage received $173,000 over a two-year period to hire a facilitator to create partnerships with community organizations.

At Gage, the school set up a community resource room as a central space for many of the things the district is providing for families, including food and clothing. The resource room opened in April after the district hired a facilitator with the state grant money.

If the two models are successful, the district may look to implement the model at other schools, said Superintendent Michael Munoz.
WESTFIELD TOWNSHIP  The state plans to review the township's supervisors conduct and determine whether open meeting laws were violated.

Several Westfield residents recently made a request to the Minnesota Department of Administration, asking the agency to review alleged open meeting law violations, said attorney James Peters, counsel for Dodge County Concerned Citizens.

"The commissioner of administration has asked the township to respond basically to the claims that they violated open meeting laws," Peters said. "They asked the township to provide comments by June 20."

The commissioner will issue an opinion based on the letters by July 21. If the state finds the Westfield Township supervisors violated open meeting laws, then they can be subjected to fines. If it's proven they habitually violate them, then officials could be removed from office.

The Minnesota Commissioner of Administration stated the following issues will be undergoing an advisory opinion:

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 Did the Westfield Township Board of Supervisors comply with Minnesota Statutes, section 13D.04 regarding a March 31, 2015, meeting?

 Did the supervisors comply with Minnesota Statutes, Chapter 13D, if they met outside a noticed meeting and agreed not to implement any planning or zoning ordinance?

 Did supervisors comply with Minnesota Statutes, Chapter 13D, when two members (a quorum) attended a county planning commission meeting and heard and discussed matters also before the board?

Although the advisory opinion will not be binding on the township board, a court still must give the opinion deference in a subsequent lawsuit, according to a news release.

Peters also represents Lowell and Evelyn Trom in a lawsuit against Dodge County that's related to the township's actions in issuing a feedlot permit. Recently, the lawsuit was dismissed by Judge Joseph Chase in district court this past May.

"We were disappointed, but the judge worked hard on the decision and analyzed the issue," Peters said of the case. "There's hundreds of feedlots in Dodge County, and there's not a lot of resources to administer them appropriately. We kind of disagree on the outcome of the decision. The court gave it a good effort."

In March 2015, DCCC requested that Westfield Township conduct a public vote on whether to wrest control of planning and zoning from the county. This was in an attempt to limit proliferation of feedlots, according to a previous story.

The township supervisors rejected the petition. DCCC then filed a complaint against the township board in June 2015, asking for criminal charges against the supervisors. Olmsted County Attorney Mark Ostrem dismissed the complaint after he couldn't find anything "irregular or offensive" to the supervisors' duties during the special March meeting.

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The meeting was properly noticed, the discussion continued and the board adopted an interim moratorium on all new land uses until a final decision was declared, Ostrem wrote. "The decision was made during a board meeting on May 4, and the interim moratorium was vacated."

For now, the pending opinion from the state will help determine whether open meeting laws were indeed violated.

"We think there were violations by the township," Peters said. "We hope the commissioner will agree."
WINONA  The Winona Area Public Schools will find out Monday whether its request for an election filing deadline has been extended.

The school district's case will be heard in district court Monday, said Winona Superintendent Steven West.

"We're feeling pretty good they will extend this thing for us," West said. As soon as the extension is granted, the district will immediately begin promoting the dates for filing.

Four candidates filed for the five openings on the Winona School Board during the filing period that ended May 31. Allison Quam filed for Position 3, Karl Sonneman filed for Position 4, and Kenneth Kersting and Tina Lehnertz, the incumbent, filed for Position 5. Two ballot positions had no candidates filing.

School Board Member Jay Kohner said a change in the district required it to hold a filing deadline to accommodate the August primary. There would need to be more than two candidates filing for a single position on the board to trigger a primary runoff.

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"My understanding of what happened was a misunderstanding at the administrative level," Kohner said. "They were under the impression they did not need the earlier filing period."

West said, once approved the extended filing period would be for two weeks.

"As soon as we have it, we'll get those dates out," he said. "We want to extend this deadline so anyone who wants to be on the school board doesn't feel they have been disenfranchised."
Would you be willing to plant 25 percent of your lawn to butterfly and bee friendly plant species?

It would be good if you would, said Mike Muzzy, Rochester-based USDA-Natural Resource Conservation Service district conservationist. The agency went to great lengths to demonstrate available plant mixes fit for farmers and land owners by planting a 30-foot wide and 220-foot long parcel at 2122 Campus Drive SE near the incinerator plant.

The seed mixes  more than 30 varieties  serve several purposes. Some are nitrogen-fixers, which help farmers produce high-yielding crops. Other mixes are designed to reduce soil erosion while other mixes give butterflies and bees a helping hand. Keeping the soil covered with living plants helps soil microbes and hence protects soil health.

Clovers, turnips, radishes, big bluestem are among the plants that will take root in the plot, Muzzy said.

The specialized planter was brought to Rochester from NRCS Plant Materials Center in Bismarck, N.D. The center collects seeds and offers it to commercial sellers and individual landowners.

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Muzzy said cover crops and alternatives to corn and soybean production will be a big part of farming's future.

"It could be a whole revolution in farming,'' he said. "It is going to help clean up the water. It has a lot of benefits for water, air and wildlife."

Muzzy said people can watch the plot grow. A field day for the general public and farmers is in the works. The NRCS has work to do first. Each plant mix will need to be labeled to provide a better education opportunity.

Muzzy added that it would be great if Rochester home owners meet the 25 percent goal.
Rochester-area Democrats are hosting an open house on Saturday.

Olmsted District 25 DFl and Senate District 26 DFL are inviting the public to check out the party's new office at 1500 1st Ave NE, Suite A in Rochester. The event will be from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. DFL office holders and candidates are expected to attend. Refreshments will be served.
After Tuesday night, Bernie Sanders' infinitesimal chance of winning the Democratic nomination rests on one possibility: that Democratic superdelegates will overturn the will of the voters.

This is no small irony: Sanders spent much of his campaign railing against superdelegates and fighting to eliminate the practice of giving party officials and establishment types a say in the nominating process. But the only thing keeping him in the race is the vain hope that superdelegates, the vast majority of whom support Hillary Clinton, will defy the popular vote and throw their support to him.

Little noticed in Clinton's resounding victories in California and New Jersey Tuesday: She clinched an outright majority of regular, pledged delegates. Her 2,203 (to Sanders' 1,828) are a majority of the 4,051, even before the District of Columbia has the final Democratic primary next week. If there were no such thing as superdelegates  as Sanders claims to desire  Clinton already would have won.

For some context: Clinton's lead of nearly 400 pledged delegates is triple the lead Barack Obama had over Clinton when the 2008 primaries ended. Clinton has won 13 of the past 19 Democratic contests, compared with Obama's wins in three of the last 10 in 2008. Clinton has won 15.6 million votes, which is 3.7 million more than Sanders has received. (As for the Sanders claim to have brought new voters to the party, turnout has been lower than it was in 2008.)

By Sanders' own argument, superdelegates have no right to overturn the result of the popular vote. On June 4, 2008, Sanders, who hadn't endorsed during the primaries, decided to back Obama -- days (BEG ITAL) before(END ITAL) Clinton dropped out and months before superdelegates voted. At the time, Sanders' hometown Burlington Free Press wrote: "Sanders said he held off supporting either of the Democrats because he has made it a custom not to support any Democrat for the presidential nomination until the party had chosen its nominee."

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So why isn't Sanders using the same standard now, even though Clinton has an outright majority of pledged delegates and a lopsided number of superdelegate commitments? Call it the politics of pique.

Politico, in an extensive look at the waning days of the Sanders campaign, described a candidate aggrieved. "Sanders is himself filled with resentment, on edge, feeling like he gets no respect -- all while holding on in his head to the enticing but remote chance that Clinton may be indicted before the convention," Edward-Isaac Dovere and Gabriel Debenedetti wrote. "His guiding principle under attack has basically boiled down to a feeling that multiple aides sum up as: 'Screw me? No, screw (BEG ITAL) you.(END ITAL)'"

Politico reported about an email from the Sanders rapid-response director about the campaign's scorched-earth position against the Democratic Party in Nevada, "just to pick up two f -- ing delegates in a state he lost." Sanders campaign manager Jeff Weaver replied that Sanders himself is "driving this train."

So, if this is all about Sanders' hurt feelings, let us praise and affirm him. He has run a brilliant campaign, invigorated the left, pushed Clinton in his direction and made his populist politics ascendant in the Democratic Party. He is entitled to his share of happiness. He's good enough, he's smart enough and, doggone it, people like him.

But it's time to abandon the canard that he is saving democracy in his bid to rid the party of superdelegates. In the young history of superdelegates, there never has been a case when party-appointed delegates overruled the popular vote  even in 2008, when Clinton had early commitments from most of the superdelegates. Had Sanders won the popular vote, they would have swung to him, as they did to Obama.

Sanders seemed to be of two minds Tuesday night when he delivered a speech alternately defiant and conciliatory.

He vowed to "continue the fight in the next primary, in Washington, D.C.," and to "take our fight for social, economic, racial and environmental justice to Philadelphia" for the Democratic convention.

But he also said that "we will not allow Donald Trump to become president of the United States," and that, in regards to Clinton, "our fight is to transform this country and to understand that we are in this together."

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As the crowd cheered Sanders in California Tuesday night, The Washington Post's Robert Costa reported, his wife whispered to him: "They're still with you."

They are. And Sanders can either lead them to work with Clinton for the ideas he believes in -- or to nurse pointless grievances over a race Clinton won, fair and square.

Dana Milbank is a columnist for the Washington Post.
In the military we have an always correct expression, "keep it simple, stupid," abbreviated as the KISS principle.

The more complex we make an operation, the risk level goes up. We have several complex questions to answer as a nation  illegal immigration, radical Muslim terrorism, a stagnant economy, and youth unemployment to name a few. Perhaps the best way to solve or resolve these issues is to keep potential answers as simple and as easy to understand as a Gomer Pyle or Forrest Gump-ism.

Presidential candidate Donald Trump wants to build a wall to keep illegal immigrants out. He wants to solve the immigration problems we have by force, including the roundup of millions and then make judgements on who will stay and who will be deported. That is a simple solution, but is it workable? We also have an old saying that says "the devil is in the details." So which one is it, simple or detailed?

Constructing a wall, which must be defended with border forces, is the easy part, as problematic as that would be. The second half of the simple approach is another matter, including identification and collection of what could, in reality, be more than 20 million people. Interviewing them in captivity to determine their immediate future status and that of their families is not impossible, but appears improbable at best.

Let's let Trump play on the simplicity and enjoy the show, whether it works or not. There could be some simple solutions to even thorny reality like what such an interview and status determination program would be, out there, somewhere.

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Our national security is threatened with our open borders, open to everyone, as President Obama and his globalist allies fervently desire. Radical Muslim terrorists must be stopped from entering our country in droves.

Our future depends on our security. We must do whatever it takes to keep these terrorists out. Trump's simplistic solution to temporarily halt Muslim refugees from Muslim countries is keeping the solution simple, understandable, and legal, in accordance with the MacCarran Walter Act of 1952, which grants the president the power to halt immigration from any country based on national security concerns. President Carter used it in 1979 to keep Iranians out.

The simple solution here is to elect Trump and replace the ideas of the one we have now for obvious reasons.

Global warming/climate change absolutely is not our greatest threat. The overwhelming majority of Americans know this, based on poll after poll. This administration is the problem, not the solution. The simple solution is to not spend a dime on this until the bad science on climate change is cleaned up and clearly spells some kind of disaster down the road. KISS this issue goodbye.

The economy is stagnant. Businesses are overloaded with red tape regulations  468,500 pages of regulations since Obama took office. All these need to be terminated immediately by Trump. (By the way I don't mention another candidate from the Democrat side, whether Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders or Joe Biden, because none of them will take the simple solutions to resolve any of our most serious problems. The figure above is certainly proof).

This summer will be a hot one in more ways than one, and I know you know what I mean. There are at least two simple solutions to reduce crime in urban space. One solution is to reclassify street gangs as the terrorists they are in our community. By legally classifying all gang activity as domestic terrorism, by modifying US Code 18, Chapter 113B, we can use the terrorism statues which are not as forgiving as our normal legal jurisprudence.

These tough anti-terrorism laws are there for our use, if only we had a president who recognized simple solutions. El Salvador did reclassify gangs as terrorists. If a third world country can do it, Mr. President, so can we.

In addition to roundup and prosecution of gang members, not as criminals, but as terrorists, we need to take action to form military style camps for at risk urban youths by using our underutilized military properties, and teach the teens to become honest, ethical people, not a two week summer camp, but a summer-long, total change in environment. We know boot camps work. The funding can come from simply stopping illegal immigrant welfare.

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Yes, I have presented simple solutions to what can be very complex and detailed issues, similarly to what a President Trump might propose, but if we try to keep our solutions to these problems simple, we won't be as stupid tomorrow as we are today.

David Shaver is a retired U.S. Army colonel and former faculty member at the U.S. Army War College.
Hillary Clinton. First woman presidential nominee.

OK, of a major political party. We're not going into the minor-party exceptions since that would require a lengthy discussion of Victoria Woodhull in 1872. Under normal circumstances, Woodhull would certainly be worth talking about, given the faith healing and the brokerage firm and the obscenity trial. But this is Hillary's moment.

"It's really emotional," Clinton said in a speech this week. Clinton brings up the first-woman thing a lot, and the idea of showing little girls that they can be "anything you want to be. Even president of the United States." For many young women, that's actually old news, since Hillary the potential president has been around most of their lives. Back when she was first elected to the Senate in 2000, the coverage was so omnipresent that my niece Anna, who was around 3, asked my sister whether it was possible for a man to be a senator.

The people who get most excited are the ones who remember how things used to be, back when girls couldn't envision being in the Little League, let alone the White House. And can you imagine going back in history and sharing Clinton's news with the suffragists? This is one of my favorite mind games  pretend you're returning to 1872 and telling the story to Susan B. Anthony while she was being handcuffed for the crime of voting while female.

Or there's the other route of telling some historical figure who would faint with horror. Like Thomas Jefferson  wouldn't you want to see his face? We all know how good Jefferson was on freedom of speech, but he was possibly the worst sexist in the very competitive group known as the Founding Fathers. ("Our good ladies, I trust, have been too wise to wrinkle their foreheads with politics. They are contented to soothe and calm the minds of their husbands returning ruffled from political debate.")

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But Clinton wouldn't want this to be a moment for rancor. So I asked for her own pick.

And her answer was: If she could go into the past to tell someone that she'd been nominated for president of the United States, it would be her mother.

Dorothy Rodham had an auspicious date of birth  June 4, 1919, the very same day the Senate passed a constitutional amendment giving women the right to vote. But otherwise, she had a terrible beginning. Her parents abandoned her. At 8, she was riding across the country, unaccompanied except for her younger sister, on the way to live with grandparents who didn't want them. She went off on her own at 14, working as a housekeeper during the Depression. But she got herself through high school, was a good student and raised her own daughter to believe the sky was the limit.

Before we head off on the rest of this deeply imperfect election, take a second and enjoy. Imagine Hillary Clinton going back in time. She sits in the train next to a frightened little girl and delivers the news about what happened this week.

Gail Collins is a columnist for the New York Times.
Society can't keep itself from falling to pieces. Relationships between individuals provide the glue necessary to keep that chaos suitably bound, and we find those between mentors and mentees among the best to guide our community into a peaceful, profitable future.

Sankesh Prabhakar, founder of The Commission, has a few people in his life he calls before making a big decision.

"What it does for me is it puts my decisions in check. They'll never tell me what to do, but they'll put it in perspective of what I want to do. That's been huge for me career-wise, and community-wise as well," he said.

Encouraging students to stay in school and pursue higher education is a primary goal for the Somalia Rebuild Organization, a nonprofit founded to aid Olmsted County's Somali community.

Executive director and founder Omar Yusuf Nur took English as a Second Language classes in Rochester and earned his associate degree at Rochester Community and Technical College before receiving other degrees. He works to leverage stories like his, which are increasingly common among the Somali community, into examples for students who might otherwise turn to anti-social behavior.

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Recent arrivals, regardless of English ability, go to school based on age and older students can quickly become disillusioned.

"That student becomes confused, he doesn't know what he's doing, nothing. Immediately, he decides to drop-out," Nur said. "When he drops off, we've found, many kids before him, they drop out and they go out and join the crime people, selling drugs, doing that. They say, 'Don't waste your time, join us, you'll never go anywhere.'"

"If you have these facts, some graduate students in your community, it's easy to explain. Say, 'I was like you, same age like you. Came here, and today, I have that degree, I'm a Mayo employee, I'm a nurse, a laboratory technician, I have a business in accounting,' whatever," Nur said. "When I stand in front of people, I say, I am role model. I'm a full-time employee, raising a kid, immigrant... from ESL to master's degree is a tough time."

Through close collaboration with the public school system, Nur tries to get his message to students before that negativity.

Mentoring does not stop with the young, though.

"When we wanted to help our kids, we found, without the parent education, we cannot help the kid. So we also started the program called Parent Education," Nur said.

The program helps parents, a portion of whom do not speak English, learn how to work with the public schools and other community bodies, such as law enforcement.

The multi-generational approach is also central to The Commission's fledgling mentorship program, Mentorship Rochester, which connects high schoolers with young professionals, who are, in turn, mentored by older professionals. It creates a chain of influence that binds people to each other and the community.

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Prabhakar said The Commission was inspired after connecting with the Rochester public schools' SAFE Club and the Boys & Girls Club.

"We don't know everything, but we know a little bit more than a high school kid, so we can help them out," Prabhakar said. "We want to leave a stamp for the next generation. I think the older generation wants to do the same for us. I think it just all works hand in hand to create a vibrant community here."

We salute both organizations for their contributions to our workforce.

Somalia Rebuild works closely with the workforce center to connect students with summer and part-time jobs. It also provides business advice to immigrants wanting to start small businesses.

The Commission holds career panels and conducts mock interviews with their mentees, many of whom, especially those in the SAFE program, aim to return to Rochester after schooling to open businesses or begin careers.

We've argued this point before; these are the people who can make a difference in our current workforce shortage.

Thankfully, we are not alone in noticing.
The latest protest by Core Tech International Corp. of the $100 million Simon Sanchez High School renovation and school rehabilitation project has been denied, according to a response by the Department of Public Works.

Felix Benavente, deputy director of DPW, stated that the government's negotiating committee was in full compliance with Guam law when it settled on one of the proposals provided by the project's intended awardee, the Guam Education Facilities Foundation.

Core Tech submitted two protests at different stages of the procurement. The first protest was dismissed in January based on the failure to submit it in a timely manner.

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The second protest came after GEFF was given a notice of intent to award by DPW. On May 27, Core Tech filed the protest with attorney Joyce Tang of Civille & Tang PLLC representing the company.

According to the protest documents, Core Tech took issue with the project's intended awardee being able to submit additional proposals after being chosen as the highest ranked offeror.

The protest also stated that the final proposal settled on by a negotiating committee does not meet the required number of rooms stated within the project's request for proposal.

The protest also contends that GEFF was required to disclose its ties with a company co-owned by a relative of Gov. Eddie Calvo.

The request for proposal for the $100 million renovation and maintenance project combined two laws that authorized the leasing of a new Simon Sanchez facility and the rehabilitation of Guam's public schools.

To Core Tech's first contention, the denial letter stated that "the Guam Legislature authorized the negotiation committee to negotiate a scope of work and fee estimate for Simon Sanchez High School with the highest ranking contractor."

In addition, DPW stated that the negotiations considered what was the "best value" for the Guam Department of Education. Based on that desire and upon assessments of other leased schools and interviews with teachers and staff at Simon Sanchez, GDOE slightly altered the scope of work. GDOE decided on reducing the number of classrooms originally stated in the RFP to reduce costs and add four new science labs with co-sharing of labs.

"These types of minor adjustments were proper, provided GDOE and Guam the best value and were fully within the contemplation of the governing legislation and RFP," the letter stated.

Regarding GEFF's supposed ties with a company co-owned by a relative of Gov. Calvo, DPW stated that Core Tech's assertion that there may be a potential conflict of interest in the procurement was speculation and lacked merit.

GEFF issued a release following the decision.

As soon as we are authorized, GEFF is ready to continue with the design of the new facility," said Sean Easter, vice president of construction and development for GEFF, in the release. "We are looking forward to completing this project for the students and faculty of SSHS as soon as possible.
KOROR  Palau President Tommy Remengesau and the Global Island Partnership (GLISPA) recently hosted the Voyaging To A Sustainable Planet event in celebration of World Oceans Day at the United Nations Headquarters in New York.

According to the Glispa website, the event is hosted by Palau in partnership with the Permanent Missions to the United Nations of Micronesia, Seychelles and Grenada and will share important perspectives on the intersect with the Ocean Agenda at the U.N. including on Biodiversity in Areas Beyond National Jurisdiction and the Agenda 2030 Sustainable Development Goals.

As part of the event, the traditional Polynesian voyaging canoe from the Pacific, Hokulea, which arrived at the United Nations for the first time in history was honored.

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Hokulea is sailing across oceans to support the global movement toward a more sustainable world.

The voyage will cover 60,000 nautical miles, 100 ports, 27 nations, and 12 Marine World Heritage Sites. The Malama Honua Worldwide Voyage will continue through 2017 when a new generation of navigators takes the helm and guides Hokulea back to Hawaii after circumnavigating the globe.

Hokuleas navigators use traditional wayfinding with stars, waves, wind and birds as mapping points for direction.

As Hokulea crossed the vast Pacific, Indian and Atlantic Oceans, including visiting Samoa for the Third International Conference on Small Island Developing States, her crew has been entrusted with commitments to action from the UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, other world leaders and communities across the Pacific. The event brought these commitments to the United Nations to inspire greater action for a healthy ocean and planet.

The event was also part of a series of events that took place at United Nations Headquarters to celebrate World Oceans Day. World Oceans Day is annually observed on June 8 to raise awareness of the challenges humanity faces to protect the world's oceans.

The theme of this year is Healthy Oceans, Healthy Planet.

After Remengesaus trip to New York, he is scheduled to make return stops in Kansas, Arizona and Honolulu, and meet with members of Palauan communities in those states. The president returns to Palau on June 13, according to the Office of the President.
This past Friday afternoon the jury returned with guilty verdicts in the trial of the three Minnesota men charged with seeking to join ISIS in Syria. Having attended the trial and filed daily reports on Power Line, I spent the weekend working on a short article summarizing what I saw at the trial. The article is published as Minnesota men on trial in the new issue of the Weekly Standard that is out this morning. Please check it out.

This article is a companion to The threat from Minnesota men' and Judging the Minnesota men.' I am grateful to the Standard for letting me have my say in my own voice in these articles. This time around I am grateful in particular to deputy managing editor Kelly Jane Torrance for improving the draft I submitted and to assistant editor Priscilla Jensen for her care in fact-checking the article.
Zimbabwean President, Robert Mugabe, has given insight into how his successor will emerge.

Mr. Mugabe said in Harare Friday that his successor must be chosen democratically and that no automatic ticket should be given to his wife, Grace.

He said the veterans of the 1970s independence war, who have publicly accused some ZANU-PF members of trying to manipulate the president by rallying behind his wife, were behaving like dissidents.

He recalled that in Zimbabwe, that term revives memories of a 1980s crackdown against Mugabes political rivals by an elite North Korean-trained brigade in which rights groups say some 20,000 civilians, most from the minority Ndebele tribe, were killed.

Are we seeing another dissident rise and activity again?

The dissidents tried it and failed, he said.

The president accused the veterans of trying to influence the choice of his successor when he eventually leaves office.

The 92-year old leader on Friday in Harare said leaders of the influential Zimbabwe Liberation War Veterans Association had indicated their willingness for his retirement.

Mr. Mugabe said he would have considered their opinion if they had asked him directly.

He, however, warned that that the veterans should stick to looking at the welfare of men and women who fought against colonial rule and not dabble in ZANU-PFs succession politics.

War veterans must know that it is the politics that leads the gun, not vice versa, as the war veterans are not bosses of the party.

Mr. Mugabe, a war veteran himself, warned that the war veterans leaders have no business to talk about succession in the party.

(Reuters/NAN)
Contractors who executed federal governments road projects over the past three years were not paid for their job, Babatunde Fashola, the Minister of Power, Works, and Housing, has said.

Speaking at the inaugural Buharimeter town hall meeting in Abuja, Thursday, Mr. Fashola said the contractors had, nonetheless, continued to work with the present administration based on their credibility.

As far as my ministry is concerned, I think the best way to understand where we are is where we came from, Mr. Fashola said at the meeting organized by the Centre for Democracy and Development.

If you look at the budget of the country from 2007, a country that was making a minimum of $100 per barrel for almost a decade, we shouldnt be here. But the reality is that in 2007 we spent only N41 billion on roads in Nigeria. The highest we spent between 2007 and 2015 was in 2009 when we spent N195 billion on roads.

After that the figures started declining, and the last three years are significant, today I mentioned where we are, we spent N65 billion on roads, I think Lagos state government alone spent as much if not more on roads.

In 2014, we spent N45 billion on roads, for the whole country. And we spent N18 billion on roads in 2015.

Now the fallout of meetings with our contractors, generally, is that they have not been paid for three years. But budgets have been made for the last three years.

Mr. Fashola said despite non-payment of the contractors, work would soon begin on the Jebba-Ilorin road as well as the Lagos-Ibadan expressway.

The Jebba-Ilorin road is a very significant road, he said.

If you havent passed through it, perhaps you will not understand how significant it is for the prosperity of Nigeria, because that is where farmers mainly move their trucks and their goods, their vegetables, their cattle through. And that is where fuel comes through from the tank farms in Lagos to many parts of the north of Nigeria.

That road used to take four days simply because a section of barely about 100 kilometres was unmotorable. The trucks used to turn.

Now on the basis of just our credibility, that I stuck my neck out and I told the contractor please go back to this site. Go and work. We have stabilized that road. We havent finished repairing it but we have stabilized it, that section is now motorable and provision is now made for some parts of it in this years budget.

Now compare this with a government that was in power, budgeted for that road, and did not even release the money.

This is what has happened in our meetings with our contractors, just on the basis of our credibility, our collective integrity, saying to them go back to site.

Our contractors will go back to site on Monday next week, they told me, for the Lagos-Ibadan expressway. They havent been paid. But that is what change is, that this government is credible and believable. If we say we will pay, we will pay, Mr. Fashola said.

Four other ministers, including Lai Mohammed (Information and Culture), Udo Udoma (Budget and National Planning), Amina Mohammed (Environment), and Audu Ogbeh (Agriculture and Rural Development), also participated in the town hall meeting.

Mr. Ogbeh said some states had donated land for cattle grazing, adding that the herdsmen crisis would soon end.

The minister also said the government was working on improving farmers access to credits.

We have no access for credit for farmers, Mr. Ogbeh said.

We are about to restructure the Bank of Agriculture and we want farmers to be the biggest shareholders so we can actually lend to farmers. Our target is five percent on Agriculture.

No other country that wants to develop agriculture is lending money to farmers at 18  25 percent. That figure may be wonderful for growing cocaine, but certainly not for rice and beans and sugar.

He urged the youth to engage in agriculture as a way of reducing the rising unemployment.

Young people, please, we shall be holding an evening with the minister shortly, think of doing something in Agriculture, he said.

Even if you are based in the city, go home and start a plantation. I started one many years ago and now Im a cashew farmer with 14,000 trees in the village. So come around lets talk about this. You have to feed yourselves.
A notorious group of economic saboteurs, the Niger Delta Avengers, on Friday morning said a crude pipeline owned by Italian oil giant, Agip Eni, was destroyed in an overnight explosion.

The group, which claimed responsibility for virtually all major attacks against oil installations across the restive oil-rich region this year, said the incident occurred at about 3:00 a.m.

In a tweet posted on its Twitter page, @NDAvengers, the Avengers wrote: 3:00 a.m. on Friday. Niger Delta Avengers blow (sic) up the Obi Obi Brass trunk line belonging to Agip ENI. It is Agips major crude oil line in Bayelsa State.

Agip Nigeria did not answer or return calls by a PREMIUM TIMES reporter seeking comment for this story.

The attack is coming three days after the Nigerian government announced that combat troops deployed to the area to rout the militants had been ordered to stand down.

The decision was reached after the Vice President, Yemi Osinbajo, met with governors from the region, including Deltas Patrick Okowa and Edos Adams Oshiomhole.

The next day, the group dissociated itself from any truce with the government, saying if the federal government is discussing wth any group, theyre doing that on their own.

The latest damage to Agip installations followed a series of bombings that rocked Chevron, Shell, NNPC oil and gas installations across the Niger Delta in the last few weeks, including other Agip Eni-operated facilities.

The Avengers said it wanted a sovereign nation for the people of the Niger Delta, calling on the international community to intervene and help compelled the Nigerian government to yield to its demand in order to avoid a situation like Sudan before the southern part of that country finally broke away in 2011.
Global rights body, Amnesty International, has accused the Nigerian Army of extrajudicially killing at least 17 unarmed pro-Biafra supporters in Nigerias south east, demanding an immediate investigation of the attacks.

The report by Amnesty International, released Friday, supports a PREMIUM TIMES investigation published on Wednesday which documented the killing of dozens of unarmed Nigerians by the army in Onitsha and other areas of the south east.

Read full Amnesty statement:

An on-the-ground investigation by Amnesty International has confirmed that the Nigerian army gunned down unarmed people ahead of last months planned pro-Biafran commemoration events in Onitsha, Anambra state.

Evidence gathered from eyewitnesses, morgues and hospitals confirms that between 29-30 May 2016, the Nigerian military opened fire on members of the Indigenous people of Biafra (IPOB), supporters and bystanders at three locations in the town.

Opening fire on peaceful IPOB supporters and bystanders who clearly posed no threat to anyone is an outrageous use of unnecessary and excessive force and resulted in multiple deaths and injuries. In one incident one person was shot dead after the authorities burst in on them while they slept, said M.K. Ibrahim, Country Director of Amnesty International Nigeria.

Opening fire on peaceful IPOB supporters and bystanders who clearly posed no threat to anyone is an outrageous use of unnecessary and excessive force and resulted in multiple deaths and injuries.

These shootings, some of which may amount to extrajudicial executions, must be urgently and independently investigated and anyone suspected of criminal responsibility must be brought to justice.

The exact number of deaths is unknown, partly due to the fact that the Nigerian army took away corpses and the injured.

In one incident one person was shot dead after the authorities burst in on them while they slept.

Amnesty International has received reports from various sources on the ground alleging that at least 40 people were killed and more than 50 injured.

After visits to hospitals and morgues, the organization has confirmed  based on this initial investigation  that at least 17 people were killed and nearly 50 injured. The real number is likely to be higher.

Some of the dead and injured IPOB supporters seen by an Amnesty International researcher were shot in the back, an indication that they were fleeing the scene when they were shot.

The leadership of IPOB claim more than 50 of their members were killed. The Nigerian army has said in a statement that they acted in self-defence, and five IPOB members were killed. However, Amnesty International has seen no evidence that the killings were necessary to protect life. Although the police also claim that IPOB supporters killed two policemen the next day in neighbouring Asaba, Delta state, Amnesty International cannot confirm this claim. However, such killings would not substantiate the armys argument they acted in self-defence.

A joint security operation was carried out by the Nigerian army, police and navy between the night of 29 May and throughout 30May, apparently intended to prevent a march by IPOB members from the Nkpor motor park to a nearby field for a rally. Before the march began the military raided homes and a church where IPOB members were sleeping.

IPOB supporters told Amnesty International that hundreds of people who had come from neighbouring states, were asleep in the St Edmunds Catholic church when soldiers stormed the compound on 29 May.

I saw one boy trying to answer a question. He immediately raised his hands, but the soldiers opened fireHe lay down, lifeless. I saw this myself



Witness to the shootings

A 32-year-old hair dresser who was in the church told Amnesty International: At about midnight we heard someone banging the door. We refused to open the door but they forced the door open and started throwing teargas. They also started shooting inside the compound. People were running to escape. I saw one guy shot in the stomach. He fell down but the teargas could not allow people to help him. I did not know what happened to the guy as I escaped and ran away.

Another witness told Amnesty International that on the morning of 30 May, he saw soldiers open fire on a group of around 20 men and boys aged between 15 and 45 at the Nkpor Motor Park on the morning of 30 May. He says that five of them were killed. I stood about two poles [approximately 100 metres] away from where the men were being shot and killed. I couldnt quite hear what they were asking the boys, but I saw one boy trying to answer a question. He immediately raised his hands, but the soldiers opened fireHe lay down, lifeless. I saw this myself.

The witness described how military officers loaded men with gunshot wounds into one van, and what appeared to be corpses into another.

Later that morning, another witness described how police shot a child bystander as a group of young men protested the shootings, blocking a road and burning tyres along the Eke-Nkpor junction.

He told Amnesty International: I heard a police siren and everybody started running helter-skelter. I ran away with other people, but before we left, the police fired tear gas at us and shot a boy in my presence. He was just hawking in the street. He wasnt even there to protest, he said.

An Amnesty International researcher visited three hospitals in Onitsha and surrounding towns and saw 41 men being treated for gunshot wounds in the stomach, shoulder, leg, back and ankle. The researcher also visited mortuaries in Onitsha and saw five corpses with bullet wounds, all brought in by IPOB members on 30 May.

Amnesty International has been informed that many of those killed or injured are still held by the military and police. Several witnesses said that the military loaded corpses in their vehicles and took them to Onitsha military barracks. Amnesty International was not able to confirm this.

One witness told Amnesty International that around 30 people were held in the military barracks, while another witness said 23 people who were held in State Criminal Investigation Department were brought to court.

Following the shootings, the military told media sources that the soldiers only opened fire after being shot at first, but Amnesty Internationals research has found no evidence to support this. All the people the organization interviewed said that the protesters were not armed; one young man said that he threw stones at the police and military after they shot teargas at the IPOB members. He said the military then fired live ammunition in return.

This is not the first time that IPOB supporters have died at the hands of the military. It is becoming a worrying pattern and this incident and others must be immediately investigated

Information gathered by Amnesty International indicates that the deaths of supporters and members of IPOB was the consequence of excessive, and unnecessary use of force.

International law requires the government to promptly investigate unlawful killings with a view to bringing the perpetrators to justice. Amnesty International is also calling for those IPOB supporters still held in detention without charge to be either immediately charged or released.

This is not the first time that IPOB supporters have died at the hands of the military. It is becoming a worrying pattern and this incident and others must be immediately investigated, said M. K. Ibrahim.

In addition there must be an end to the pattern of increased militarization of crowd control operations as soldiers are frequently deployed to undertake routine policing functions.

Background

Amnesty International interviewed 32 witnesses between 1-3 June in Onitsha and an additional five people on the phone.

The IPOB members had informed the Anambra State Police Commissioner of their plans for Biafra Remembrance day and requested for security to be provided for the procession.

Amnesty International has been conducting research into violence and killings of IPOB members and supporters in south east Nigeria since January 2016. A comprehensive report will be published in the near future.

The organizations research shows that since August 2015, there have been at least five similar incidents in Onitsha alone where the police and military shot unarmed IPOB members and supporters. Amnesty International has documented cases of alleged unlawful killings by the Nigerian army between August 2015 and May 2016.

In August 2015, military officers opened fire on peaceful supporters of IPOB calling for an independent Biafran state. The killings and mass arrests of members and supporters of IPOB by a joint military and police operations continued in October, November and December 2015.

On 17 December 2015 for example, the military killed five people when they opened fire on members of the IPOB who were demonstrating in Onitsha in a celebration of a court order for the release of their purported leader, Nnamdi Kanu.

In February 2016, the Nigerian military used excessive force to disperse a peaceful gathering in a school compound in Aba. At least nine people were killed and many more injured.

The Nigerian government has not conducted any independent investigation into any of these incidents.

The right to peaceful assembly and association, as well as the right of freedom of expression, is protected by the Nigerian constitution. International human rights standards also require that law enforcement officials must, as far as possible, apply nonviolent means. The intentional lethal use of firearms is only permissible when strictly unavoidable in order to protect life.
MTN Nigeria on Friday announced it has reached a final resolution on the N1.04 trillion fine imposed by the Nigeria Communications Commission (NCC) in October 2015.

The telecom firm was sanctioned by the regulatory authority over its refusal to disconnect 5.1 million improperly registered lines within the prescribed deadline.

MTN said in a statement Friday that after several weeks of negotiations, an agreement was reached with the Nigerian government on terms acceptable to all parties.

MTN will pay the NCC the sum of N330 billion in full and final settlement of the fine in line with an agreed payment plan, the MTN Nigeria Chief Executive Officer, Ferdi Moolman, said in a statement.

In addition to the monetary settlement, Mr. Moolman said MTN Nigeria would commit to complying with the Code of Corporate Governance for the telecommunications industry.

He said the company would also take steps to ensure the listing of its shares on the Nigerian Stock Exchange as soon as is commercially and legally possible as well as ensure full compliance of its license terms and conditions as issued by the NCC.

MTN Nigeria once again offers its most sincere apologies for the series of unfortunate events that led to the imposition of the fine, Mr. Moolman said.

The NCC is yet to confirm the agreement, as the Director of Public Affairs, Tony Ojoboh, was yet to respond to enquiries from PREMIUM TIMES to that effect.

More to come.
A former Comptroller-General of the Nigerian Immigration Service, David Paradang, has narrated how former Interior Minister, Abba Moro, reversed ex-President Goodluck Jonathans directive to employ relatives of the deadly 2014 Immigration recruitment victims.

Mr. Paradang said the former minister described the employment of some family members of those who died in the stampede, as illegal.

Only those who were qualified for junior positions out of 45 total family members of 15 victims, were given jobs, he told a court trying Mr. Moro on Friday.

Mr. Paradang did not say the exact number of those employed. It was also unclear whether former President Jonathan was consulted by the former minister before the employment offers were cancelled.

Mr. Moro and four others are facing an 11-count charge of money laundering, arising from the conduct of the tragic recruitment.

They are accused of defrauding 676, 675 applicants of N676. 7 million being the aggregate of N1000 paid by each applicant to the recruiting agent, Drexel Nigeria Limited, a company Mr. Moro had ties with.

Despite the huge amount realized from applicants, the recruitment was poorly organised, resulting in deadly stampedes across the country.

Mr. Paradang, who is the first prosecution witness in Mr. Moros trial, told the Federal High Court in Abuja on Friday that after a presidential directive of employment to victims relatives, Mr. Moro ordered the withdrawal of offer letters.

At the close of the day, we had 15 casualties and the office of the State Security Services later called to inform us that they were 165 persons injured nationally, he told the court.

Soon after the compilation of names of victims, the service received an order from the presidency, which was flouted by Mr. Moro, Mr. Paradang said.

Immediately after the letters were sent, the board (board of the Interior Ministry) asked them (the fresh applicants who were relatives of the deceased victims) to bring back the letters of appointment. The ministry said that the appointments given to them were illegal, said Mr. Paradang.

Mr. Jonathan had ordered the immediate employment of three family members each victim, while a fresh recruitment was to be conducted.

The former president also handed out cheques of N5 million each to families of the deceased. It is also unclear whether the monies were cashed.
Boboye Oyeyemi, the Corps Marshal of the Federal Road Safety Commission (FRSC), on Thursday said the sensitisation efforts the commission embarked upon several months ago had paid off.

Mr. Oyeyemi made the observation when he hosted zonal and sector commanders of the FRSC for a strategic session at the agencys national headquarters in Abuja.

In a statement signed by Bisi Kazeem, FRSC Head of Media Relations, Mr. Oyeyemi expressed his satisfaction with the level of cooperation from Nigerians in the safety measures the agency recommended during its public awareness campaigns.

When you go to market now, the major problem that the dealers are telling me now is that Nigerians dont want to buy tyres manufactured in 2015, they are looking for the ones manufactured in 2016, Mr. Oyeyemi said. That means the level of awareness is high and I am happy that we have been able to achieve this.

Nigerians now know that they must check the date of manufacture of tyres which is good.

Mr. Oyeyemi said the strategic session allowed commanding officers and management to review the agencys activities in the first quarter of 2016 to enable them strategise towards the next quarter, the statement said.

Mr. Oyeyemi reiterated the commitment of the FRSC to consultation and collaboration with relevant stakeholders for partnership that could deliver safety for the people.

Mr. Oyeyemi also expressed appreciation to the federal government for logistics support to the agency, adding that the empowerment of the FRSC through procurement of operational equipment would assist in tackling the challenges of road traffic crashes in the country.

Mr. Oyeyemi said the FRSC needed supports to increase the visibility of the officers on the nations highways as more commands were being established in relevant corridors to improve officers capacity to promptly respond to emergencies.

From what we have seen so far, our officers across the country are doing well. We would continue to maximise the logistics available to ensure safety on the nations roads, Mr. Oyeyemi said.

The opening day of the strategic session attracted commanding officers from the 12 zonal commands and sector commanders from the 36 states of the federation, including the Federal Capital Territory.
Normal medical services have been disrupted at the University College Hospital (UCH), Ibadan, following the nationwide strike called by the Nigerian Association of Resident Doctors (NARD).

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that members of the UCH local chapter of the association joined their counterparts in other States and Federal Government-owned hospitals on an indefinite industrial action to press home their demands for improved working condition.

Lugman Ogunjimi, the NARDs branch chairman, made this known in Ibadan on Friday in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN).

Mr. Ogunjimi said that NARD took the decision at the ordinary meeting of the associations National Executive Council held between May 30 and June 5 in Jos, Plateau.

He said 16 out of the 58 federal health facilities have been exempted from the initial centre-based strike for the commitment of their chief medical directors, to implement Federal Governments directives.

If by midnight of June 19 our demands are not met, all the members of the association including those exempted would join the indefinite nationwide strike.

The association has to take this painful decision in order to highlight the plight of our hard working members, who have had to endure a long period of deprivation and disenfranchisement, he said.

He said the Chief Medical Director (CMD) of UCH, Prof. Temitope Alonge, was yet to commence the implementation of the federal government directive to meet their various demands.

This strike is centre-based and is indefinite, he emphasised.

According to the chairman, NARD has been agitating for the payment of salary arrears of some of their members and skipping of CONMESS 12 for its members, among others.

Meanwhile, the management of hospital was yet to react to the development just as the CMD was said to be busy holding meetings. (NAN)
The Senate of the University of Port Harcourt may reopen the institution soon if the school environment is conducive for learning, an official has said.

The Deputy Registrar (Information) of the university, Williams Wodi, said this in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Port Harcourt on Friday.

He said the Senate, which met recently, only deliberated on results and administrative matters.

The Senate of the university will meet at the appropriate time and when they meet, if the school environment is conducive, they will fix a resumption date.

But for now, the last meeting they held considered results only  which means that they did not fix a resumption date based on the variable information available to them.

The Senate meets almost every month, and also meet in emergency session and extra ordinary session if there is any reason for such meeting.

So next time they meet, if they feel it is appropriate and the time is right, they will direct us to announce the resumption of the university, he said.

The school was closed on April 11, after students protested no tuition no examination policy, which compelled defaulting students to repeat a whole academic session.

The violent protest led to the death of a final year student, Peter Ofurum, who was of the Faculty of Management Sciences.

The protesting students destroyed properties. (NAN)
Former military ruler, Ibrahim Babangida, has returned to Nigeria from a three-week trip to Germany for medical treatment.

Mr. Babangida arrived Minna Airport on Friday at about 3:30pm.

Rumour of his death was awash in the social media last week before it was refuted by his son, Mohammed Babangida.

Niger State governor, Abubakar Bello, said the country still needs Mr. Babangida around for his counsel.

Gov. Sani Bello who welcomed the former military leader said despite unfounded rumour about the life of our national icon, General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida, we are grateful that it pleases Allah (SWT) to preserve his life and bring him back safely and healthier to continue in the good work of nation building.

General Ibrahim Babangida remains one of the few leaders in this country that we still need around to tap from their wealth of experience and knowledge and we are grateful he is back and kicking like the old soldier he is.

Your safe return has finally put a lie to the rumour and the evil machinations of those who are playing God. We are grateful to Allah (SWT) that He has silence them.
The Nigerian Army has rejected a report by Amnesty International on Friday accusing Nigerian troops of killing at least 17 unarmed pro-Biafra supporters in south eastern states.

Amnesty International said it conducted extensive research on the attacks and could confirm 17 killings, but said the number could be as high as 50.

In a statement following the report, H.A. Gambo, a colonel and deputy director, Army Public Relations, accused Amnesty International of not verifying its claims and seeking to discredit the Nigerian Army.

The attention of 82 Division Nigerian Army has been drawn to insinuations of misdeed being leveled by Amnesty International against security forces during the MASSOB/IPOB violent protests in Onitsha and environs on 31 May 2016. Accordingly, it is deemed imperative for the wrong and misleading impressions with which the public is being fed to be corrected once and for all, the statement said.

The synopsis of occurrence on that fateful day is that elements of MASSOB/IPOB engaged in violent protests which were featured with outright disregard for law and order. In the scenario of anarchy that ensued, the pro-Biafran protesters who had chosen the day to mark the 50th Anniversary of Biafra perpetrated a number of unimaginable atrocities to unhinge the reign of peace, security and stability in several parts of Anambra State.

A number of persons from the settler communities that hailed from other parts of the country were selected for attack, killed and burnt. 2 personnel of the Nigeria Police were killed, several soldiers were wounded, a Nigeria Police vehicle was completely burnt down while another of the Nigerian Army was vandalized.

The strategic Niger Bridge at Onitsha was at the verge of being captured particularly with the coordinated reinforcement of the violent protesters from the Asaba end of the Bridge. In addition, wanton destruction of lives and properties were brazenly carried out by the protesters who employed firearms, crude weapons as well as other volatile cocktails such as acid and dynamites. In consequence, law, order and security were grossly threatened across the State and beyond.

The Nigerian Army in synergy with other security agencies under its constitutional mandates for Military Aid to Civil Authority (MACA) and Military Aid to Civil Power (MACP) acted responsively in order to de-escalate the deteriorating security scenario in-situ. Instructively, the military and other security agencies exercised maximum restraints against the odds of provocative and inexplicable violence that were employed against them by the pro-Biafran protesters.

The military and of course the other security agencies acted professionally within the extant Rules of Engagement to successful de-escalate the budding anarchy in-situ. It is rather inconceivable for any individual or group to have decided to inundate the general public with an anecdote of unverified narratives in order to discredit the Nigerian Army in the course of carrying out its constitutional duties despite the inexplicable premeditated and unprovoked attacks in the hands of the violent pro-Biafran mob.
Desmond Nunugwo, a suspect under investigation by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, passed away Friday few hours after he was taken into custody, the EFCC said in a statement.

Mr. Nunugwos death was confirmed at the hospital where he was rushed after he suddenly took ill.

The EFCC said he fraudulently obtained N91 million from an acquaintance after he tricked her into believing that he had high net worth business associates in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, who were at the verge of buying Nicon Insurance and convinced her of their disposition to help her stock fish business.

Consequently, the acquaintance wired N91 million into Mr. Nunugwos nominated account (Mainagge General Merchants) in Diamond Bank.

After the transfer of the funds, Mr. Nunugwo became evasive forcing the complainant to report the transaction to the EFCC.

Mr. Nunugwo was arrested in Utako, Abuja, at about 5.33pm on Thursday, June 9, 2016, a statement signed by EFCC spokesperson, Wilson Uwujaren, said.

His statement was taken, where he admitted receiving the money from the complainant, with the additional information that he transferred N30m of the said money to Norway. But he could not explain the whereabouts of the balance of N61m.

The suspect was detained at about 7.30pm, in the absence of anybody to take him on bail.

Six hours later, he suddenly complained of discomfort and was rushed to the hospital where he was pronounced dead, the statement said.

The commission said the incident had already been reported at the Wuse Police Station, where investigation into the cause of the sudden death has commenced.
MTN Nigeria on Friday resolved with the Nigeria Communications Commission (NCC) to settle their differences over the $3.4 billion (N1.04 trillion) fine imposed on the telecoms firm in October 2015.

After nearly six months of negotiation, both sides have agreed that MTN should pay only N330 billion from the N780 billion it was earlier reduced to.

The latest amount includes the goodwill payment of N50 billion earlier by MTN to the federal government.

In line with terms of the resolution, the balance of N280 billion would be paid by MTN in six tranches between now and May 31, 2019.

Details of the payment plan showed that MTN would immediately pay N30 billion into NCCs Treasury Single Account (TSA) with the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) 30 days from June 10, 2016 when the agreement was signed.

A statement by the NCC on Friday, signed by the director Director, Public Affairs, NCC, Tony Ojobo, indicated that other tranches of payments would included March 31, 2017 (N30 billion), March 31, 2018 (N55 billion), December 31, 2018 (N55 billion), March 31, 2019 (N55billion) and the balance of N55 billion on May 31, 2019.

Mr. Ojobo said the resolutions were signed by Executive Vice Chairman (EVC) of NCC, Umar Danbatta; NCC Commission Secretary, Felix Adeoye, Chief Executive of MTN Nigeria, Fredi Moolman and the Company Secretary, Uto Ukpanah.

As part of the agreement, MTN is expected to apologize to the federal government and Nigerians within one month of the execution of the agreement.

Besides, the telecoms firm would also subscribe to voluntary observance and compulsory compliance with the Code of Corporate Governance for the industry.

Equally, MTN has agreed to take immediate steps to list its shares on the Nigerian Stock Exchange as soon as commercially and legally possible after the date of execution of the agreement.

Both MTN and NCC have also agreed that the terms of settlement cannot be altered, varied, annulled or modified in any respect, except by writing duly executed by both parties.

MTN Nigeria CEO, Mr. Moolman, said it was of critical importance that the resolution was reached, noting it would be of universal benefit to all parties given the importance of the ICT industry in Nigeria and its tremendous impact on socio-economic growth of the people.

MTN Nigeria once again offers its most sincere apologies for the series of unfortunate events that led to the imposition of the fine, he said.

Mr. Moolman said the companys decision to list its shares in the Nigerian Stock Exchange was to showcase broader public participation MTN Nigeria exemplifies as one of Nigerias success stories.

MTN Group Executive Chairman, Phutuma Nhleko, commended the spirit in which the matter was resolved by the Federal Government, describing it as the best outcome.

On October 20, 2015, the NCC had imposed a fine of N1.04 trillion on MTN for infraction of the provisions of the NCC (Registration of the telephone subscribers) Regulations, 2011.

The company was accused of failing to disconnect 5.1million improperly registered telephone lines within the prescribed deadline.

The fine was later reduced by 25 per cent to N780 billion. But, MTN was later to take an action against the NCC at the Federal High Court in Lagos against the manner the fine was imposed, describing it as not in accordance with the NCCs powers under the Nigerian Communications Act.

However, in February 2016, MTN announced the withdrawal of the case against the NCC and an initial goodwill payment of N50 billion to create a conducive atmosphere for further negotiations.

Last month, the federal government ordered negotiations on the fine to be suspended indefinitely.
A court has ordered the Nasarawa State government to pay N100 million as general and aggravated damages for unlawful termination of contract, trespass and demolition of property belonging to an investment firm, Kinric Construction & Fabrication Company, and its affiliate, HARPS Property & Investment Company Limited.

The two companies had filed a case against the state government at the state High Court for unlawful demolition and destruction of properties on the proposed Kinric Commercial Park along Abuja-Keffi Expressway, Mararaba-Karu, in the state.

Also joined in the case as co-defendants were the state Attorney General/Commissioner for Justice, Usman Yusuf, and the state property and investment agency, KAPDA Properties Company Limited.

Counsel to Kinric and HARPS Property, Sebastine Hon, had asked the court to declare that the invasion, demolition and destruction of his clients investments despite the memorandum of understanding with Greater Karu Planning and Development Authority (GKAPDA), were unconstitutional and illegal.

Mr. Hon, a senior advocate of Nigeria, had also asked the court to grant a perpetual injunction restraining the state government and its representatives from interfering with its right of lawful occupation of the landed property as defined in the MOU.

Other demands included an order for immediate right to repossess the property without any further interference or disturbance as well as a refund of N898 million as full value for the development of the property.

The lawyer had told the court that his clients had a MOU incorporated by KAPDA Properties Limited in whose name a Right of Occupancy (R of O) certificate No.12305 issued on January 23, 2007 by the state government through the then GKAPDA, which later became Nasarawa State Urban Development Board.

The MOU had leased to Kinric Construction and HARPS Property to develop for 25 years the 23 hectares of land that belonged to KAPDA Properties near the international market area in the state.

With the agreement, Mr. Hon said his clients mobilised and commenced development works on the site, including a concrete block production line made up of heavy duty equipment; construction of warehouses and assorted units of one, two and three bedroom apartments on the site.

The legal counsel said Kinric and HARPS also invested huge amounts of money to construct internal access roads, bore holes and other water generating and distribution plants on the site.

But, despite the huge investments on the development of the property based on the MOU they had with GKAPDA, Mr. Hon said the state government, through the Attorney General and Commissioner for Justice, went ahead to order the demolition and destruction of the property resulting in huge losses.

Mr. Hon had argued that because the state government and the Attorney General were not parties to the agreement, they lacked the powers to order the termination of the contract, trespass and take over, or cause to be destroyed or demolish the developments in the property.

But, counsel to the state government, Solomon Ayenaje, had told the court that because Kinric and HARPS did not do anything substantial for more than two years after the execution of the MOU, including submission of building plans for approval, the state government was compelled to order work stopped and subsequently terminate the contract.

However, in his ruling, Justice DD Adeck held that the state government had no powers to terminate the MOU the way it did, adding that the forceful entrance to the property by its agents amounted to trespass, describing its destruction/demolition as unlawful.

Consequently, the judge upheld the requests by Kinric and HARPS for a declaration that the invasion using armed policemen and other security personnel to demolish/destroy investments on the property was unconstitutional, illegal, unlawful, null and void.

The court also granted a perpetual injunction restraining the state government and its agents from interfering with Kinric and HARPS right to the lawful occupation of the landed property as defined by the MOU.

In addition, the judge ordered that Kinric and HARPS took back the possession of the property, while the sum of N98million should be awarded to them as general damages and another N2 million as aggravated damages against the defendants.

Additional 10 per cent interest would be paid by the state government on the N100 million judgment sum.

In a related development, a New Karu High Court has also declared as illegal, null and void and of no effect the revocation of the certificate of occupancy, No. NS 7549, issued to HAR Petroleum Services Limited, an affiliate of HARPS Group.

The court, which said the purported revocation without an advance notice was not in line with the required procedures under the Land Use Act, also granted a perpetual injunction restraining the government from unlawfully revoking the C of O, or ejecting, harassing the company from the property.

The State Attorney General and Commissioner for Justice, Usman Yusuf, told PREMIUM TIMES on Thursday that his office was currently studying the judgment and would advise the state government on the next appropriate line of action.

The court has just passed a judgement. We are studying the judgement at the moment. I am not actually in a position to say what the next line of action would be. But, after studying the judgment to understand the real purpose of the judgment, my office would advise the government appropriately, Mr. Yusuf said on telephone.
The Police in Kaduna State, on Thursday, paraded four persons suspected to have killed Ismail Inusa, a Nigerian Army colonel.

Mr. Inusa of the Army School of Infantry Corps, Jaji, was abducted on March 27.

His corpse was found on April 1 in Chikun Local Government Area of Kaduna state.

The Commissioner of Police in Kaduna state, Adamu Ibrahim, said the suspects were arrested by a joint team of the command and police intelligence response team from Force headquarters.

Mr. Ibrahim gave the names of the suspects as: Ibrahim Kabir, 23, Emeka Okeke, 44, Ebele Precious, 41, and Chijioke Ugwanyi, 42.

He said another suspect known as Dan Sokoto was still at large.

The commissioner said AK47, pump action guns, four pistols and caches of ammunition were recovered from the suspects.

In another development, the command recovered 629 livestock from a cattle rustler who had allegedly been terrorizing Kaduna, Niger, Kogi, Kebbi, Zamfara, Nasarawa, Katsina and Plateau States.

Mr. Ibrahim said the police recovered 507 cows, 110 sheep and 12 donkeys from the rustler.

The commissioner appealed to the public to assist the command with vital information to rid the state of crime. (NAN)
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.




EDMONTON, Alberta, June 10, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

Alberta Investment Management Corporation ("AIMCo") is pleased to announce that it has successfully entered into a strategic financing relationship with Calfrac Well Services. ("Calfrac") (TSE: CFW), an Alberta-based pressure pumping services provider, on behalf of certain of its clients.

AIMCo's investment in Calfrac provides its clients an attractive opportunity to gain direct exposure to an innovative provider of pressure pumping services focused on North America's premier unconventional natural gas and light oil plays plus strategic international markets. With state-of-the-art equipment, in-house research & development, a diversified customer base, an expert team of employees, and experienced management, Calfrac is strongly positioned for long term success.

"AIMCo is very pleased to provide this strategic funding to Calfrac on behalf of our clients" states Kevin Uebelein, AIMCo CEO. "Calfrac is a global player in the hydraulic fracturing industry. It is an innovative leader and has set the benchmark for mindful environmental stewardship within its industry. We believe that investments like this one afford our clients the opportunity to participate in the long-term success of top-notch Alberta companies."

Peter Pontikes, Senior Vice President, Public Equities said, "AIMCo's public equities investment teams are committed to identifying value creating opportunities for our clients. Companies in the energy sector locally have been particularly hard hit by the falling price of oil over the past eighteen months. This investment signals our confidence in Calfrac's outlook."

"AIMCo is a high-caliber investment manager that shares our commitment to seeking out the best opportunities around the globe," said Fernando Aguilar, President and Chief Executive Officer of Calfrac Well Services. "We remain focused on growing Calfrac through these difficult times in our industry and are proud that AIMCo has given our team this vote of confidence. We look forward to a productive partnership with AIMCo."

About Alberta Investment Management Corporation (AIMCo)

AIMCo is one of Canada's largest and most diversified institutional investment managers with more than $90 billion of assets under management. AIMCo was established on January 1, 2008 with a mandate to provide superior long-term investment results for its clients. AIMCo operates at arms-length from the Government of Alberta and invests globally on behalf of 31 pension, endowment and government funds in the Province of Alberta. For more information on AIMCo please visit http://www.aimco.alberta.ca.

About Calfrac Well Services (Calfrac)

Calfrac provides specialized oilfield services to exploration and production companies designed to increase the production of hydrocarbons from wells drilled throughout western Canada, the United States, Argentina, Mexico and Russia. Calfrac's common shares are publicly traded on the Toronto Stock Exchange under the trading symbol "CFW".

Media Contact: Denes Nemeth, Corporate Communication, O: +44(0)780-392-3857, M: +44(0)780-932-4013, E: denes.nemeth@aimco.alberta.ca

SOURCE Alberta Investment Management Corp.
ALTAVE OMNI is the first wide area persistent surveillance aerostat ever developed for civilian application.

With growing concerns about terrorism and criminal acts, especially at international events, the ALTAVE OMNI Aerostats were selected due to their unique ability to prevent, detect and quickly investigate suspicious acts:

6m size aerostats floating continuously at 200m above the ground are intimidating to potential terrorists or criminals

Captures imagery of more than 120 MPixel per frame (60 times a Full HD resolution or 15 times a 4K resolution!), 3 frames per second

Extraordinary capacity of real-time detection for multiple users - up to 6 users can watch different parts of the full captured image, as if they were independent Pan, Tilt & Zoom cameras

Provides forensic investigation for multiple users - up to 2 users who can locate an event by time and GPS coordinates and track backwards and forwards to understand the facts

Covered area of up to 40 km 2 , all the area all the time  even if the users are zooming into a specific area, all of the area is recorded for future access

, all the area all the time  even if the users are zooming into a specific area, all of the area is recorded for future access Up to 3 days continuous flight, after which a small amount of helium replenishment is required

Mobility to transport all items in a trailer and change launch sites

Low operational costs when compared to any other flying platform

Contract information & values

The total contract value granted to ALTAVE was approximately US $8 million and included all items required for the 4 systems to operate, such as the aerostats, winch systems, tethers, trailers, optronics, imaging processing servers, energy supplies, software and training.

The project was developed under hash requirements and deadlines, making a total of 6 months from signing to delivering 4 field-tested units, ahead of schedule.

For additional information or interviews:

Bruno Avena de Azevedo

Director, co-founder

brunoavena@altave.com.br

Phone: +551239135900

Address: Praca Marechal Eduardo Gomes, 50, Incubaero  Sala 05  Campus do CTA. Sao Jose dos Campos / SP.

Livia Dias

contato@altave.com.br

551239135900

Press Kit, High resolution Photos & Videos Available

SOURCE ALTAVE
ASTANA, Kazakhstan, June 10, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

The Astana Economic Forum 2016 under the theme "New economic reality: diversification, innovation and knowledge economy" has finished its work. This year AEF was organized by the Ministry of National Economy of Kazakhstan, "Economic Research Institute" JSC (ERI), and "Economic Initiatives Fund of Kazakhstan". The agenda of the Forum traditionally included the most topical issues on economic development.

(Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160610/378039 )

(Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160610/378040 )



The Forum brought together more than 4500 delegates, including 1000 foreign participants from 90 countries, and over 200 speakers from 31 countries. Nearly 600 journalists from more than 140 media of 16 countries of the world worked at the Forum. Well-known politicians of European and Central Asian region met in a dialogue to answer the global questions - how to obtain peace and security, how to overcome the challenges in geopolitics, economy and financial system.

Since its inception, the Forum has been one of the most significant economic, business, academic and political events in the region and this year was not an exception. The Forum discussed the number of topical issues that range from regional integration, hyperglobalisation, and sustainable development to corporate social responsibility and blockchain technologies. The Silk Road Countries' Forum raised the issues of the most profitable partnerships in the field of transport, logistics and energy. "Promotion of competition: New "Game rules" session discussed the success and achievements of the twenty-five-year antimonopoly regulation. Whereas the session dedicated to UNDP's 50th anniversary event highlighted the progress of Kazakhstan on the world stage - Kazakhstan has ranked the 42nd place among 140 countries of the world in a global competitiveness index. Among other important issues, the Forum brought to the agenda Corporate Social Responsibilities aspects highlighted by Samruk Kazyna Trust.

The Regional Think Tank Summit co-organized by ERI discussed issues of appropriate policy response by regional decision makers to navigate in the geopolitics; strategies to overcome the challenge of low commodity prices and weak growth in trading partners. According the Chairman of ERI A.Irgaliyev, the Institute entered the list of think tanks of the world - 2015 Global Go To Think Tank Index Report - and the top 100 research centers in the nomination Leading think tanks in the field of foreign policy and international relations", ranking 71st place out of 132.

The outcomes of the AEF 2016 will feed into the final recommendations to be published in the second half of June.

SOURCE Astana Economic Forum
LONDON, June 10, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

The Campaign for Free Parliament today endorsed the independent candidate, Dr Zia Samadani, in the Tooting by-election, due to take place next Thursday, 16th June.

The by-election, caused by the resignation of Sadiq Khan on his election as London Mayor, has been beset by the established political parties making the usual unrealistic promises. The Campaign believes that Dr Samadani offers a fresh approach, based on an accomplished career and freedom from party control. Dr Samadani will have the ability to act in the best interests of her constituents at all times. In contrast, the established parties put up candidates who will vote in Parliament according to what party managers tell them.

Campaign Director, Martyn Greene said:

"We are delighted to be able to endorse Dr Samadani's candidature. We believe democracy is best served by people of integrity and independent minds, rather than party appointees slavishly following the party line."

Dr Samadani added:

"I put myself forward to by the next MP for Tooting because I believe I have the skills and experience to represent my constituents effectively. I strongly support the objectives of the Campaign for a Free Parliament and am delighted to have received their endorsement."

Notes for editors:

1. Dr Samadani's CV is here A list of our proposed reforms is available here; Frequently Asked Questions are listed here The Campaign has secured a 6m funding package to present 10,000 awards to the winners of 600 primary competitions to find the best independent candidate in all Westminster constituencies in the 2020 General Election. All entrants must sign up to the Bell Principles and agree not to stand against the winner. Applicants will be expected to provide a CV along with details of any notable achievements to date rather than a manifesto. The Campaign has the support of Lord Digby Jones We expect a number of sitting MPs to sign up to our campaign ahead of the 2020 General Election.

Media Contacts:

Martyn Greene : martyn.greene@freeparliament.org.uk

: martyn.greene@freeparliament.org.uk Alan Douglas : alan.doug@ntlworld.com

Campaign for a Free Parliament

4th Floor, Rex House,

4-12 Regent Street

London SW1Y 4RG

Tel: +44(0)843-886-0020

Email: info@freeparliament.org.uk



SOURCE Free Parliament
Albany Police detectives on Thursday arrested Brandon Taylor Beckner, 29, of Albany, after they say surveillance video identified him as the perpetrator in the June 2 sexual assault in a ladies restroom at Two Rivers Market, 250 S.W. Broadalbin St.

The victim reported that she was in the upstairs womens restroom when Beckner exited a bathroom stall and grabbed and groped her. She reported she was able to pull away and run.

Beckner has prior misdemeanor convictions for public indecency, and was recently released from prison, where he did time for a felony public indecency conviction. He was arrested without incident and lodged in the Linn County Jail for first-degree sexual abuse.

At his arraignment Friday afternoon in Linn County Circuit Court, Beckner asked to be released, but Judge David Delsman imposed the mandatory $50,000 security for the Measure 11 offense, which carries a possible six-year, three-month sentence. Beckner also invoked his right to a preliminary hearing, and will be back in court for that hearing June 17.
SAN FRANCISCO, June 9, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

The global enzymes market is expected to reach USD 17.50 billion by 2024, according to a new report by Grand View Research, Inc. Growing demand for enzymes in food & beverage products as they improve quality and eliminate deficiencies in the products is expected to propel industry growth in the near future.

(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20150105/723757 )

Increasing demand for bioethanol and biodiesel in emerging economies including India, Brazil, and Thailand will augment industry growth over the forecast period. Growing number of government investments along with R&D activities in industrial enzymes will drive demand over the next eight years.

Rising population along with rising living standard will drive processed foods demand, which in turn will stimulate industry expansion. In addition, emerging protein design algorithms, along with growing inexpensive DNA sequencing technology will open new market avenues over the next seven years.

Carbohydrases accounted for 47.7% of the global market share in 2015, dominating the enzymes industry and the segment is expected to show significant growth in light of high usage in animal feed, textile, food & beverages, and pharmaceutical applications. Moreover, mounting usage of artificial sweeteners, prebiotic products, and juices is expected to fuel product demand over the forecast period.

Browse full research report with TOC on "Enzymes Market By Type (Industrial, Specialty), By Product (Carbohydrases, Proteases, Lipases, Polymerases & Nucleases), By Application (Food & Beverages, Detergents, Animal Feed, Textile, Paper & Pulp, Nutraceutical, Personal Care & Cosmetics, Wastewater, Research & Biotechnology, Diagnostics, Biocatalyst) And Segment Forecasts To 2024" at: http://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/enzymes-industry

Further key findings from the report suggest

Specialty enzymes are anticipated to witness the fastest growth at a CAGR of 9.2% from 2016 to 2024 on account of increasing awareness regarding therapies for chronic diseases, along with growing incidences of digestive enzyme disorders. Moreover, increasing usage of the ingredient for diagnostic solutions is expected to augment growth. Chemical reactions in research & biotechnology are accelerated by making the use of enzymes. They also optimize the yield of the production processes, which is expected to bolster demand over the forecast period.

Animal feed is likely to witness significant growth at a CAGR of 9.0% from 2016 to 2024 as a result of mounting demand for swine, bovine, poultry and aquaculture species. Growing global meat production coupled with rising health concern regarding meat quality will augment animal feed demand, which is expected to stimulate industry expansion.

North America enzymes market was valued at USD 3.59 billion in 2015 and will show high gains in light of favorable government policies along with a robust manufacturing base in the U.S. Growing demand for animal feed and biofuels in the U.S. is expected to drive market size.

enzymes market was valued at in 2015 and will show high gains in light of favorable government policies along with a robust manufacturing base in the U.S. Growing demand for animal feed and biofuels in the U.S. is expected to drive market size. Latin America accounted for 8.3% of the overall enzymes market and will show substantial growth in light of rapid industrialization coupled with increasing biodiesel production in Brazil and Argentina .

accounted for 8.3% of the overall enzymes market and will show substantial growth in light of rapid industrialization coupled with increasing biodiesel production in and . Key industry players include Novozymes, Danisco, Royal DSM, BASF SE, DuPont, Lonza Group, and Advanced Enzymes Technologies Ltd. In January 2014 , DuPont launched LAMINEX MaxFlow 4G enzyme, intended for increasing texture, taste and appearance of beer in beverages applications.

Grand View Research has segmented the global enzymes market on the basis of type, product, application and region:

Global Enzymes Type Outlook (Revenue, USD Million, 2013 - 2024) Industrial enzymes Specialty enzymes

Global Enzymes Product Outlook (USD Million, 2013 - 2024) Carbohydrase Proteases Lipases Polymerases & nucleases Others

Global Industrial Enzymes Application Outlook (Revenue, USD Million; 2012 - 2022) Food & Beverages Detergents Animal Feed Textile Paper & Pulp Nutraceutical Personal Care & Cosmetics Wastewater

Global Specialty Enzymes Application Outlook (Revenue, USD Million; 2012 - 2022) Pharmaceuticals Research & biotechnology Diagnostics Biocatalyst

Global Enzymes Regional Outlook (Revenue, USD Million, 2013 - 2024) North America U.S. Mexico Canada Europe Germany UK France Asia Pacific China India Japan Latin America Brazil MEA



Browse related reports by Grand View Research:

Fuel Pumps Market - http://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/fuel-pumps-market

Flame Retardant Chemicals Market - http://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/flame-retardant-chemicals-market

Release Agents Market - http://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/release-agents-market

Protein Hydrolysis Enzymes Market - http://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/protein-hydrolysis-enzymes-market

About Grand View Research

Grand View Research, Inc. is a U.S. based market research and consulting company, registered in the State of California and headquartered in San Francisco. The company provides syndicated research reports, customized research reports, and consulting services. To help clients make informed business decisions, we offer market intelligence studies ensuring relevant and fact-based research across a range of industries, from technology to chemicals, materials and healthcare.

Read Our Blogs - ni2014.org , grandviewresearch.com/blogs/specialty-and-fine-chemicals

Contact:

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Grand View Research, Inc

Phone: 1-415-349-0058

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Web: http://www.grandviewresearch.com

SOURCE Grand View Research, Inc.
CHENNAI, India, June 10, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

Quality assurance for system, material and process serves central customer requirements

As the global technology and quality leader for high-end Additive Manufacturing (AM) solutions, one of the central concerns at EOS is to establish a holistic approach to quality assurance in series production. The process, which was mainly used for Rapid Prototyping in the early years, is increasingly making fully-fledged series production possible in many areas.

(Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160506/364521 )



Dr. Tobias Abeln, Chief Technical Officer (CTO) adds: "Consistent and repeatable part quality is essential for series production applications. With its quality assurance concept, which is unique to the industry, EOS covers the three technological elements of Additive Manufacturing which have a direct influence on the quality of an additively manufactured component - namely system: reliably meeting manufacturing standards, material: guaranteed consistent quality of every material batch and process: checked and validated parameters. Thanks to the joint development and mutual adjustment of systems, materials and processes, EOS ultimately establishes the conditions for best possible part properties."

Focus on technology development and quality assurance

EOS puts a high emphasis on technology development and quality assurance. At the headquarters in Krailling alone, there is an area of around 2,300 m reserved for the seventy Additive Manufacturing systems used for research and development, quality assurance, application and training for both polymer and metal products. An additional twenty systems are available in the international EOS technology centres in China, Singapore and the US. At the EOS Oy plant in Finland, an additional fifteen systems are being used for the development, qualification and quality assurance of metal materials.

- Cross reference: Picture is available at AP Images (http://www.apimages.com) -

Please find the complete English press release here . For further information: Stephanie Cheong, Marketing Manager EOS Singapore Pte. Ltd. (phone +65-6430-0541, e-Mail: Stephanie.cheong@eos.info).

SOURCE EOS India
NEW YORK, June 10, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

According to market research "Global Chlorobenzene Market Size, Share, Development, Growth and Demand Forecast to 2022 - Industry Insights by Type (Monochlorobenzene, Orthodichlorobenzene, Paradichlorobenzene, Others) by Application (Nitrochlorobenzenes, Polysulfone Polymers, Solvents, Polyphenylene Sulfide Resin, Room Deodorants, Moth Control, Others)" by P&S Market Research, the global chlorobenzene market was valued at $1,787.3 million in 2015, and it is expected to grow at a CAGR of 5.4% during 2016 - 2022.

(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20150727/756778 )



The factors driving the growth of the global market include large base of end-users, large volume application in chemical industry, and increasing consumption in Asia-Pacific. The growth of the global chlorobenzene market is largely driven by high demand for chlorobenzene in manufacturing of dyes and pigments, pesticides, pharmaceuticals and several other organic chemicals. In addition, the increasing consumption of chlorobenzene in Asia-Pacific is fueling the growth of the global market. The growing demand for chlorobenzene in personal care and pharmaceutical is creating ample growth opportunities for the manufacturers of chlorobenzene.

Explore Full Report at: https://www.psmarketresearch.com/market-analysis/chlorobenzene-market

Among the various types of chlorobenzene, the monochlorobenzene segment held the largest share with 71.6% in terms of volume and 67.7% in terms of value in 2015. The paradichlorobenzene segment is anticipated to witness the highest growth (6.7% in terms of value) during 2016 - 2022. The increasing production of polyphenylene sulfide in China, Japan, and the U.S. is fuelling the demand for Paradichlorobenzene.

In 2015, Asia-Pacific held the largest share (79.3% in terms of volume) in the global chlorobenzene market. The region is also anticipated to be the fastest growing market for chlorobenzene, growing at a CAGR of 5.8% in terms of value during the forecast period. The major reason behind the growth of the chlorobenzene market in the region is high consumption of chlorobenzene in China and Japan. China held the largest share in the Asia-Pacific chlorobenzene market, as well as in the global market in 2015.

Among the different applications of chlorobenzene, the nitrochlorobenzene segment held the largest share in the global chlorobenzene market in 2015 in terms of volume as well as value. A large share of monochlorobenzene produced globally is utilized in the manufacturing of nitrochlorobenzene.

Explore More Reports Related to Chemicals: https://www.psmarketresearch.com/industry-report/chemicals-materials-and-energy

Some of the players operating in the global chlorobenzene market include Beckmann-Kenko GmbH, KUREHA CORPORATION, Nanjing Chemical Industries Co. Ltd., Cambridge Isotope Laboratories Inc., Jiangsu Yangnong Chemical Group Co. Ltd., SP Chemicals Holdings Ltd., Chemada Fine Chemicals, HBC Chem Inc., Hindustan Organics Chemicals Limited.

GLOBAL CHLOROBENZENE MARKET SEGMENTATION

By Type

Monochlorobenzene

Orthodichlorobenzene

Paradichlorobenzene

Others

By Application

Nitrochlorobenzenes

Polysulfone Polymers

Solvents

Polyphenylene Sulfide Resin

Room Deodorants

Moth Control

Others

GEOGRAPHICAL SEGMENTATION

By Region

North America U.S. Rest of North America

Europe

Asia-Pacific China Japan Rest of Asia-Pacific

Rest of the World

Browse Other Reports by P&S Market Research

Global Heat Transfer Fluids Market - https://www.psmarketresearch.com/market-analysis/heat-transfer-fluids-market

Global Automotive Lightweight Material Market - https://www.psmarketresearch.com/market-analysis/automotive-lightweight-material-market

Global Isostearic Acid Market - https://www.psmarketresearch.com/market-analysis/isostearic-acid-market

About P&S Market Research

P&S Market Research is a market research company, which offers market research and consulting services for various geographies around the globe. We provide market research reports, industry forecasting reports, business intelligence, and research based consulting services across different industry/business verticals.

As one of the top growing market research agency, we're keen upon providing market landscape and accurate forecasting. Our analysts and consultants are proficient with business intelligence and market analysis, through their interaction with leading companies of the concerned domain. We help our clients with B2B market research and assist them in identifying various windows of opportunity, and framing informed and customized business expansion strategies in different regions.

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SOURCE P&S Market Research
PUNE, India, June 10, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

The 2016 - 2030 Heterogeneous Network (HetNet) market report estimates small cell, carrier Wi-Fi, C-RAN and DAS investments to account for nearly $13 Billion by the end of 2016. Global spending on enterprise RAN solutions will grow at a CAGR of over 14% between 2016 and 2020, and eventually account for over $500 Million in revenue. The research estimates that among the enterprise community nearly two-thirds of mobile usage is indoors. In addition, indoor coverage and congestion has already been shown to be a key concern for enterprises. Specialist HetNet vendors are targeting this opportunity by providing scalable enterprise RAN solutions that encompass centralized coordination platforms besides small cell nodes.

Complete report on HetNet Market spread across 621 pages, analyzing 350 companies and provides 226 data figures is now available at http://www.reportsnreports.com/reports/469698-the-hetnet-ecosystem-small-cells-carrier-wi-fi-c-ran-das-2016-2030-opportunities-challenges-strategies-forecasts.html.

The overall HetNet market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 15% between 2016 and 2020, as mobile operators stay committed to tackle the continued growth of mobile data traffic and evolving coverage requirements. There are numerous HetNet market and technology drivers impacting this forecast, obviously. They consist of data demand from extraordinary smartphone growth usage globally, swelling customer perception of the need for pervasive coverage, and wireless carrier needs to better control their network and expenditures.

All of these things have caused HetNets to gain relevance and importance like never before. Today, service providers can employ Macro Cells and Small Cell technologies across their networks to deliver end user services and reduce churn. The term Small Cell itself covers a broad set of technologies present in the market. These are the Pico Cells, Femto Cells, Micro Cells, Carrier Wi-Fi, etc.

The HetNet Ecosystem (Small Cells, Carrier Wi-Fi, C-RAN & DAS): 2016 - 2030 - Opportunities, Challenges, Strategies & Forecasts report presents a thorough assessment of the HetNet market including enabling technologies and key architectural components for small cells, carrier Wi-Fi, C-RAN and DAS. The HetNet market driver and challenges of the industry along with key trends including SCaaS (Small Cells as a Service), unlicensed small cells, virtualization, baseband functional splitting, enterprise RAN and public safety/military small cells have been explicitly mentioned. The regulatory landscape and standardization, the future roadmap, value chain, and profiles of 350 leading ecosystem players including HetNet infrastructure vendors and enabling technology providers have all been vigorously researched. The report also presents forecasts for HetNet market infrastructure investments from 2016 till 2030. The forecasts cover six individual submarkets like Small Cells, Small Cell Backhaul, Carrier WiFi, C-RAN, C-RAN Fronthaul, and DAS along with six regions.

The HetNet Market report has the following key findings - research estimates that global infrastructure investments on small cells, carrier Wi-Fi, C-RAN and DAS will reach nearly $13 Billion by the end of 2016, as mobile operators remain committed to tackle the continued growth of mobile data traffic and evolving coverage requirements. Small cell and C-RAN solutions are beginning to converge as small cell OEMs seek to capitalize on the benefits of centralized coordination for in-building and enterprise coverage. Despite opposition from the Wi-Fi community, unlicensed LTE small cell shipments are beginning to gain traction, with shipment revenues potentially reaching $220 Million by the end of 2020. The vendor ecosystem is gradually consolidating with several prominent acquisitions such as Nokia's acquisition of French rival Alcatel-Lucent and CommScope's acquisition of small cell specialist Airvana. Order a Copy of the HetNet market Report for 2016 to 2030 at http://www.reportsnreports.com/purchase.aspx?name=469698.

Another related report is the 5G Wireless Ecosystems: 2016 - 2030 - Technologies, Applications, Verticals, Strategies & Forecasts. With large scale commercial deployments expected to begin in 2020, it is estimated that 5G networks will generate nearly $250 Billion in annual service revenue by 2025. The "5G Wireless Ecosystem: 2016 - 2030 - Technologies, Applications, Verticals, Strategies & Forecasts" report presents an in-depth assessment of the emerging 5G ecosystem including key market drivers, challenges, enabling technologies, use cases, vertical market applications, spectrum assessment, mobile operator deployment commitments, case studies, standardization, research initiatives and vendor strategies. The report also presents forecasts for 5G investments and operator services. Complete report available at http://www.reportsnreports.com/reports/498612-the-5g-wireless-ecosystem-2016-2030-technologies-applications-verticals-strategies-forecasts.html.

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NEW YORK, June 10, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

Rising Number of Mobile Subscribers, Increasing 3G and 4G/LTE Network Penetration and Growing Demand for Mobile Data Services to Drive Telecom Towers Market in Algeria and Morocco

According to a recently released report by TechSci Research, "Algeria and Morocco Telecom Towers Market By Grid Type, Competition Forecast and Opportunities, 2021", telecom towers market in Algeria and Morocco is projected to register a low growth during 2016 - 2021, however demand for Off Grid telecom towers is set to witness robust growth due to rising concern over carbon emissions and growing consumption of fossil fuels in operating telecom towers site. In addition, rising mobile subscribers base; 4G/LTE (Long Term Evolution) services deployment; growing mobile penetration; favorable government initiatives and ongoing technological advancements in telecom tower infrastructure for not only optimizing operational costs, but also to reduce carbon emissions due to burning of fossil fuels is set to drive demand for Off Grid telecom towers in both the countries.

(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20140117/663730 )



According to Autorite de Regulation des Postes et Telecommunications (ARPT), telecom regulatory authority of Algeria and Agence Nationale de Ruglementation des Telecommunications (ANRT), telecom regulatory authority of Morocco, 93.07 million mobile subscribers were registered in Algeria and Morocco as of 2015.

Browse 9 market data Tables and 25 Figures spread through 94 Pages and an in-depth TOC on

"Algeria and Morocco Telecom Towers Market"

http://www.techsciresearch.com/report/algeria-and-morocco-telecom-towers-market-by-grid-type-reliable-grid-unreliable-grid-off-grid-competition-forecast-opportunities-2021/685.html

Telecom towers market has witnessed rapid growth in terms of tower deployment, globally, over the last decade. On similar lines, Algeria and Morocco have witnessed strong growth in terms of tower deployment over the last few years due to rising demand for voice as well as data services across provinces in both the countries. In 2015, around 27.79 million individuals were using internet services in Algeria and Morocco, and this number is expected to grow many fold by 2021. Rising trend of green towers has also led to robust growth in off-grid telecom tower deployment, and this segment is expected to emerge as the fastest growing telecom towers segment on the basis of grid-type in the coming years in Algeria and Morocco. In 2015, reliable grid telecom towers segment dominated Algeria and Morocco telecom towers market, followed by unreliable grid and off-grid telecom towers. Marco Telecom, Medi Telecom, Optimum Telecom Algeria SPA (Djezzy), and Wataniya Telecom Algerie S.P.A. are among the popular telecom operators and telecom tower owners in Algeria and Morocco.

Download Sample Report @ http://www.techsciresearch.com/sample-report.aspx?cid=685

Customers can also request for 10% free customization on this report.

"Advancements in mobile network technologies have led to innovations in telecom towers as well as related infrastructure. Growing focus on lower carbon emissions; rising demand for passive infrastructure sharing, i.e. telecom tower sharing among telecom operators; growing number of voice as well as mobile internet subscribers coupled with rise in population have emerged as the key factors driving the telecom towers market in Algeria and Morocco.", said Mr. Karan Chechi, Research Director with TechSci Research, a research based global management consulting firm.

"Algeria and Morocco Telecom Towers Market By Grid Type, Competition Forecast and Opportunities, 2021", has evaluated the future growth potential of Algeria and Morocco telecom towers market and provides statistics and information on market structure, size, share and future growth of Algeria and Morocco telecom towers market. 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 present in Algeria and Morocco telecom towers market.

Browse Related Reports

Telecom Towers Market Forecast and Opportunities, 2020 - Indonesia, Malaysia, Cambodia and Myanmar

http://www.techsciresearch.com/report/telecom-towers-market-forecast-and-opportunities-2020-indonesia-malaysia-cambodia-and-myanmar/437.html

Global LTE Consumer Devices Market Forecast and Opportunities, 2020

http://www.techsciresearch.com/report/global-lte-consumer-devices-market-forecast-and-opportunities-2020/458.html

Global Deception Technology Market By Deception Stack (Endpoint, Application, Data, Network), By End User (BFSI, IT & Telecom, Energy & Power, Retail, Others), By Region (Americas, Europe, Asia Pacific & Middle East) Opportunities and Forecast, 2011-2021

http://www.techsciresearch.com/report/global-deception-technology-market-by-deception-stack-endpoint-application-data-network-by-end-user-bfsi-it-telecom-energy-power-retail-others-by-region-americas-europe-asia-pacific-middle-east-opportunities-and-forecast-2011-2021/656.html

India Telecom Cable Market Forecast and Opportunities, 2019

http://www.techsciresearch.com/report/india-telecom-cable-market-forecast-and-opportunities-2019/372.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
LONDON, June 10, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

Companies Looking to Replicate Wet AMD Drug Successes in Dry AMD, Glaucoma and Allergic, Inflammatory & Infective Ocular Conditions

What can be expected from the ophthalmic drugs market? Which companies are going to be most successful in the next 10 years? Which therapeutic areas are going to grow at the fastest rates? This visiongain report shows you potential revenues to 2026, assessing data, trends, opportunities and prospects in the market.



Our 220-page report provides 160 tables, charts, and graphs. Discover the most successful companies, the most lucrative areas in the industry and the future market prospects. Our new study lets you assess forecasted sales across the whole ophthalmic drugs market. You will see financial results, trends, opportunities, and revenue predictions. There is much opportunity in this fast moving market.

Forecasts from 2016-2026 and other analyses show you commercial prospects

Besides revenue forecasting to 2026, our new study provides you with recent results, growth rates, and market shares. Discover qualitative analyses (including SWOT and Porter's Five Forces analysis) and commercial developments.

In the report also you will find revenue forecasts to 2026 for the following submarkets in the ophthalmic drugs market:

 Retinal Disorder Drugs

 Allergic, Inflammatory & Infective Drugs

 Glaucoma Drugs

 Dry Eye Drugs

 Other Ophthalmic Drugs

To see a report overview please email Sara Peerun on sara.peerun@visiongainglobal.com

The report provides detailed profiles and revenue forecasts to 2026 for the following key companies operating within the ophthalmic drugs market:

 Novartis

 Regeneron

 Allergan

 Roche

 Valeant

 Santen

 Bayer

 Pfizer

 Senju

 Akorn

The report also includes revenue forecasts to 2026 for the following ophthalmic drugs:

 Eylea

 Lucentis

 Restasis

 Lumigan and Ganfort

 Travatan/Travatan Z and DuoTrav

 Alphagan/Alphagan P and Combigan

 Vigamox

 Xalatan/Xalacom

 Azopt

 Jetrea

 Hyalein

 Cosopt

 Tapros/Taflotan

 Diquas

 Cravit

 Alesion

 Lotemax

Leading companies and potential for market growth

Novartis (including subsidiary Alcon) will remain the leading ophthalmic company to 2026, our work forecasts. We predict strong revenue growth across the ophthalmic drugs market through to 2026. Advances in ocular drug delivery, treatments which address areas of unmet clinical need and the launch of several new therapies across all submarkets will drive sales to 2026.

Our work analyses the key companies in the market. See visiongain's analysis of over 25 leading companies, including these:

 Novartis

 Regeneron

 Allergan

 Roche

 Valeant

 Santen

 Bayer

 Pfizer

 Senju

 Akorn

A company profile gives you the following information where available:

 Discussion of a company's activities and outlook

 Revenue forecasts to 2016 for ophthalmic drugs marketed by the company

 Analysis of major products currently on the market

 Acquisitions and strategic partnerships

Discover capabilities, progress, and commercial prospects, helping you stay ahead.

What issues will affect the ophthalmic drugs industry?

Our new report discusses issues and events affecting the ophthalmic drugs market. You will find discussions, including qualitative analyses:

 Highly diverse market needing strong knowledge of key therapeutic indications

 Emerging therapies with the potential to reshape the market

You will see discussions of technological, commercial, and economic matters, with emphasis on the competitive landscape and business outlooks.

How the Pharma Leader Series: Top 25 Ophthalmic Drug Manufacturers 2016-2026report helps you

In summary, our 220-page report gives you the following knowledge:

 Revenue forecasts to 2026 for the 10 leading companies in the market - discover the industry's prospects for companies including: Novartis, Regeneron, Allergan, Roche, Valeant, Santen, Bayer, Pfizer, Senju and Akorn

 Revenue forecasts to 2026 for each major submarket - discover prospects for leading ophthalmic drugs in the following areas: retinal disorder drugs, allergic, inflammatory & infective drugs, glaucoma drugs and dry eye drugs.

 Revenue forecasts to 2026 for 17 leading drugs - discover prospects for leading ophthalmic drugs including: Eylea, Lucentis, Restasis, Lumigan and Ganfort, Travatan/Travatan Z and DuoTrav, Alphagan/Alphagan P and Combigan, Vigamox, Xalatan/Xalacom, Azopt, Jetrea, Hyalein, Cosopt, Tapros/Taflotan, Diquas, Cravit, Alesion and Lotemax.

 Assessment of 21 emerging ophthalmic companies - analysis of products, revenue, mergers & acquisitions and leading pipeline drug candidates

 Discussion of what stimulates and restrains companies and the market

 Prospects for established firms and those seeking to enter the market You will find quantitative and qualitative analyses with independent predictions. You will receive information that only our report contains, staying informed with this invaluable business intelligence.

Information found nowhere else

With our survey you are less likely to fall behind in knowledge or miss opportunities. See how you could benefit your research, analyses, and decisions. Also see how you can save time and receive recognition for commercial insight.

Visiongain's study is for everybody needing commercial analyses for the ophthalmic drugs market and leading companies. You will find data, trends and predictions. Please order our report now.

To see a report overview please email Sara Peerun on sara.peerun@visiongainglobal.com

To request an exec summary of this report please email Sara Peerun at sara.peerun@visiongainglobal.com or call Tel: +44 (0) 20 7336 6100 Or click on https://www.visiongain.com/Report/1654/Pharma-Leader-Series-Top-25-Ophthalmic-Drug-Manufacturers-2016-2026

Companies mentioned

Actavis

Acucela

Advanced Vision Research

Aerie Pharmaceuticals

Aerpio Therapeutics, Inc

Alcon

Akorn

Algeta

Alimera Sciences

Allergan

Allegro Ophthalmics

Amakem

Ampio Pharmaceuticals

Asahi Glass

Aton Pharma, Inc.

Aventis

AYUMI Pharmaceutical Corporation

Banyu Pharmaceutical

Barr Laboratories

Bausch & Lomb

Bayer AG

Bayer HealthCare

Bayer Yakuhin

Bristol-Myers Squibb

Can-Fite BioPharma

Chiron Corporation

Chugai Pharmaceutical

Ciba-Geigy

Ciba Vision

Chengdu Kanghong Pharmaceutical

Eleven Biotherapeutics

Eli Lilly

EyeGate Pharmaceuticals

Eyetech Inc.

Fougera Pharmaceuticals

Genentech

Gene Signal

GSK

Hi-Tech

Hospira Inc

ICN Pharmaceuticals

Icon Bioscience

Inception Sciences, Inc.

InSite Vision

Inspire Pharmaceuticals

ISTA Pharmaceuticals

Jenapharm

Kestrel Ophthalmics

King Pharmaceuticals

Kyorin Pharmaceutical

Kyowa Hakko Kirin

LEO Pharma

MacuCLEAR

MacuSight, Inc.

MAP Pharmaceuticals

MEAgate International FZLLC

Meda

Medicis Corporation

Merck & Co.

MerLion

MSD K.K.

Mystic Pharmaceuticals

Nestle

Neurotech

Nippon Boehringer Ingelheim Co.,Ltd.

NovaBay Pharmaceuticals

Novagali Pharma

Novartis International AG

Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research

Novartis Venture Funds

OcuSciences

Omeros

OphthtaliX

Ophthotech

Ora, Inc.

Otsuka Pharmaceutical

Parke-Davis

Par Pharmaceutical

Pfizer Inc.

Pharmacia

Philidor

PreCision Dermatology

Premacure

Procter & Gamble

pSivida Corp.

Quark Pharmaceuticals

Regeneron

Rekitt Benckiser

Roche Consumer Health

RXi Pharmaceuticals

Salix

Sandoz

Sanofi

Sanofi-Aventis

Santaris Pharma

Santen Pharmaceutical Co.

Santen S.A.S.

SARcode Bioscience

Schering AG

Senju Pharmaceutical Company Ltd.

Senju Pharmaceuticals Science & Technology (Beijing) Co., Ltd.

Senju USA Inc.

Shire

SkinMedica

Spark Therapeutics

Steigerwald

ThromboGenics

Upjohn

Valeant Pharmaceuticals International Ventana Medical Systems

Versant Ventures

VersaPharm

Warburg Pincus LLC

Warner-Lambert

Wyeth Pharmaceuticals

Zoetis

To see a report overview please email Sara Peerun on sara.peerun@visiongainglobal.com

SOURCE Visiongain Ltd
ALBANY, New York, June 10, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

Transparency Market Research has published a new report on the global regenerative medicine market. As per the report, the global regenerative medicine market stood at US$2.6 bn in 2012 and is predicted to reach US$6.5 bn by 2019. The report, titled "Platelet Rich Plasma Market (By Type: Pure PRP, Leucocytes and PRP, Platelet Rich Fibrin; By Origin: Autologous PRP, Allogeneic PRP, and Homologous PRP; By Application: Orthopedic Surgery, Cosmetic Surgery, General Surgery, Neurosurgery, and Other Surgeries) - Asia Pacific Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends, and Forecast 2015 - 2023," states that the global regenerative medicine market is expected to expand at a 12.80% CAGR during the period from 2013 to 2019 due to factors such as technological innovations in biomaterials, the increasing prevalence of joint disorders, and the increasing number of orthopedic surgeries.

Get Free Research PDF for more Professional and Analysis Insights: http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=S&rep_id=419

Regenerative medicines are an emerging field of medical science aimed at regeneration, repair, or replacement of damaged tissue and organs. As per the U.S. National Institute of Health, regenerative medicine is the procedure of creating functional tissues to repair and/or replace nonfunctional organs or tissues. With regenerative medicines, tissues or organs that have lost their functioning power due to congenital defects, age, and external or internal damage are repaired or replaced. Some of the application areas of regenerative medicines are neurology, cardiovascular, orthopedic, and musculoskeletal disorders.

Factors such as technological advancements in stem cell therapy and tissue engineering are predicted to propel the global regenerative medicine market during the forecast period. However, ethical issues, post-implantation infections and complications, and regulatory constraints are expected to hamper the growth of the global regenerative medicine market in the years to come. Leading players are focusing on capturing the untapped market to increase their share in the global market. The high number of mergers, acquisitions, and partnerships expected to occur in the coming years is predicted to make the global regenerative medicine market highly competitive in the near future.

Research Report with ToC & Free Analysis: http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/regenerative-medicines-market.html

The global regenerative medicine market is segmented on the basis of technology, application, and geography. Based on geography, the global regenerative medicine market is divided into Asia Pacific, Europe, North America, and Rest of the World. In 2012, the global regenerative medicine market was dominated by North America due to the rising demand for bone and joint reconstructive surgeries. The region's increasing aging population is predicted to propel the Europe regenerative medicine market in the next few years. Going forward, Asia Pacific is expected to register considerable growth in the global regenerative medicine market.

Companies such as DePuy Synthes, Inc. (HEALOS Bone Graft), Stryker Corporation (Vitoss Bone Graft Substitute), Zimmer Holdings, Inc. (CopiOs Bone Void Filler), and Medtronic, Inc. (INFUSE Bone Graft) are expected to lead the global regenerative medicine market in the years to come. The entry of new players is predicted to create new growth opportunities in the near future.

By technology, the global regenerative medicine market is classified into stem cell therapy, tissue engineering, and biomaterials. In 2012, the biomaterials segment dominated the global regenerative medicine market due to factors such as favorable reimbursement policies. Moreover, strong demand for biomaterials is predicted to propel the segment in the coming few years.

Browse Regional Market Analysis: http://www.europlat.org/regenerative-medicine-bone-and-joint-bringing-lifesaving-breakthrough-products-for-reconstructive-surgeries.htm

Key Segments of Global Regenerative Medicine Market

Regenerative Medicine (Bone and Joint) Market, by Technology

Stem Cell Therapy

Biomaterial

Tissue Engineering

Regenerative Medicine (Bone and Joint) Market, by Application

Bone Graft Substitutes

Osteoarticular Diseases

Allogeneic Bones

Autogenic Bones

Others

Regenerative Medicine (Bone and Joint) Market, by Geography

North America

Europe

Asia-Pacific

Rest of the World

Healthcare Trending Topics 2016

Stem Cells Market: http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/stem-cells-market.html

http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/stem-cells-market.html Collagen and Tissue Engineering Market: http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/collagen-market.html

http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/collagen-market.html Allogeneic Platelet Rich Plasma Market: http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/asia-pacific-platelet-rich-plasma-market.html

About Us:

Transparency Market Research (TMR) is a U.S. based provider of syndicated research, customized research, and consulting services. TMR's global and regional market intelligence coverage includes industries such as pharmaceutical, chemicals and materials, technology and media, food and beverages, and consumer goods, among others. Each TMR research report provides clients with a 360-degree view of the market with statistical forecasts, competitive landscape, detailed segmentation, key trends, and strategic recommendations.

Contact:



Mr. Sudip. S

90 State Street, Suite 700

Albany, NY 12207

United States.

Tel: +1-518-618-1030

USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453

Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.com

Website: http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com

Blog: http://www.tmrblog.com/



SOURCE Transparency Market Research
NEW YORK, June 10, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Using social media is an affordable option for small businesses that are looking to productively engage with their audience and generate buzz for their products and services. However, staying informed about changes to existing platforms presents a serious challenge to marketing professionals as even the savviest of Facebook users might be unaware of new features that could benefit their efforts.

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20110831/NY59180LOGO

CEO and founder of Author Marketing Experts Penny Sansevieri understands this unique challenge, and in her latest article posted to PR Newswire's Small Business PR Toolkit, discusses various ways to harvest the power of Facebook.

Facebook ads. With its endless choices, the Facebook dashboard can be daunting for first time users. Sansevieri suggests focusing your efforts on "boosted posts" and "ads with a specific call to action." Boosted posts: This cost effective option is usually the go-to because of its low cost and ease of use. For a nominal fee you can boost posts that your audience is already engaged with and limit the exposure to your targeted demographic. Ads: Consider driving your audience to a blog post that contains a great call to action such as a newsletter sign-up. To be effective use casual language in the ad with an eye-catching image. Both of these can help to engage your existing fans and also build up a new following.

With its endless choices, the Facebook dashboard can be daunting for first time users. Sansevieri suggests focusing your efforts on "boosted posts" and "ads with a specific call to action." Facebook posts. To optimize your facebook posts without spending any money consider the following: Posting times. Identify the specific time slot from your posts that have the highest levels of engagement. If you uncover a trend, Sansevieri suggests you continue to post during those times.

To optimize your facebook posts without spending any money consider the following:

To learn more about how you can make Facebook a valuable marketing tool in 2016, read the complete post here: http://bit.ly/28q1dUq.

PR Newswire's Small Business PR Toolkit is a comprehensive resource that provides small businesses and entrepreneurs the tools to develop an affordable public relations and marketing plan that helps generate interest from potential customers, engage with key audiences and grow their businesses. The toolkit features relevant content such as informative white papers, interactive webinars and how-to articles and premium access to educational resources, as well as the opportunity to take advantage of special offers designed specifically for small businesses. To request information on how PR Newswire can help your small business, click here. You can receive updates on new Small Business PR Toolkit content by following @prnsmallbiz on Twitter.

About PR Newswire

PR Newswire (www.prnewswire.com) is the premier global provider of multimedia platforms that enable marketers, corporate communicators, sustainability officers, public affairs and investor relations officers to leverage content to engage with all their key audiences. Having pioneered the commercial news distribution industry over 60 years ago, PR Newswire today provides end-to-end solutions to produce, optimize and target content -- from rich media to online video to multimedia -- and then distribute content and measure results across traditional, digital, mobile and social channels. Combining the world's largest multi-channel, multi-cultural content distribution and optimization network with comprehensive workflow tools and platforms, PR Newswire enables the world's enterprises to engage opportunity everywhere it exists. PR Newswire serves tens of thousands of clients from offices in the Americas, Europe, Middle East, Africa and the Asia-Pacific region, and is a UBM plc company.

Contact:

Amanda Eldridge

Director, Strategic Channels

201-360-6906

Amanda.eldridge@prnewswire.com

Related Links

http://www.prnewswire.com



SOURCE PR Newswire Association LLC
NEW DELHI, June 10, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

- The Company is Actively Connecting With Start-ups in the Telecom, Mobile Advertising, Utility Apps and Mobile Gaming

- The Program Offers Startups a Chance to go Global With U2opia Mobile's Network in Over 60 countries

- Plans to Invest Over USD 3 Million in Over Three Years in the Catapult Program

In a move to boost entrepreneurial zeal and innovation in mobile, U2opia mobile has announced the launch of its, Catapult Program - A platform for growing and scaling early stage product ideas to a global audience.

(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20150219/731415 )



The Catapult program is inviting early-stage startups and entrepreneurial teams focused on innovation in scalable mobile technology.

Under this program, all teams will be given access to state-of-the-art technology infrastructure, ample working space, brand and marketing support, management and financial cover, along with a chance to leverage on U2opia mobile's global reach, where the company runs existing operations in partnership with global mobile operators and internet publishers.

About the program

To qualify for the program, entrepreneurial teams need to have a product that has global focus, a proven history of user traction, a validated plan for user growth and should be within two years in business. Once the teams apply, shortlisted/selected teams are taken under the program and will be incubated and supported for a period of six months. The early traction and momentum for these teams will determine the next course of growth.

Speaking about the initiative, Sumesh Menon, Co-Founder and MD at U2opia Mobile said, "At U2opia mobile, we believe in supporting entrepreneurial vision and innovation that has global ambition. Given that the investment sentiment in market indicates a prolonged winter for startups, it's imperative that we support the community by creating opportunities for young entrepreneurs to continue building great products without the fear of failure."

"As an entrepreneur myself, I realize the challenges and uncertainties that other entrepreneurs when the market is in doldrums face. The Catapult program aims to give entrepreneurs a chance to work on their dream projects, get the needed support and also get a chance to leverage on U2opia mobile's existing global network," he further added.

To know more about the program, log on to: http://www.catapultprogram.in

About U2opia Mobile:

U2opia Mobile is a mobile technology company that enables technology that drives connectivity, fuels transformation and helps companies grow and innovate. Since its pioneering launch in May 2011, its flagship product, Fonetwish, that enables ubiquitous and customized access to the social internet on USSD, U2opia Mobile now offers data driven solutions. U2opia Mobile's solutions include Fonepass, a sponsored data platform that excites customers with possibilities of data and Foneverify, a user authentication tool for businesses application economy. The solutions engage a variety of customers, across generations of handsets.

U2opia Mobile works with the largest and most innovative mobile operators in Asia, Africa and Latin America and is managed by an experienced team with deep understanding of consumer, internet and mobile ecosystems. The company addresses a global user base of 1 Billion users in emerging markets with its innovative mobile data solutions. Over the span of 5 years, U2opia Mobile has inked strategic relationships with over 80 MNO's globally. The company is backed by marquee investors Matrix Partners and Omidyar Network, who provide strategic market reach as well as strong financial support. U2opia Mobile runs operations from Singapore, Delhi, Dubai and San Francisco.

For further details contact:

U2opia Mobile

Nikita Nadwani

Nikita.nadwani@u2opiamobile.com

+91-9953835798



Neha Chandra

Neha.chandra@2020msl.com

+91-9818055857



SOURCE U2opia Mobile
DUBLIN, JUNE 10, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

Research and Markets has announced the addition of the "Gambling industry in Vietnam: Business Report 2016" report to their offering.

This report is a comprehensive research of Gambling industry in Vietnam.

The first two chapters of the report feature the country profile by giving general information on Vietnam and by thoroughly studying its economic state (including key macroeconomic indicators and their development trends).

The third chapter covers common business procedures in the country: from starting a project to closing a business. This chapter elucidates the country's fiscal system, existing labour practices, property rights regulation peculiarities and other issues vital for running business in this country.

Further the report analyses Gambling industry in the country. This key chapter tells about main trends in the industry, identifies key market players (including major producers, traders, etc.), and evaluates trade operations within the sector in the recent years.

Related news bulletins update adds the finishing touch to an overview of economic situation in Vietnam.

Key Topics Covered:

1. VIETNAM: COUNTRY PROFILE

1.1. Geographical position

1.2. Historical background

1.3. Demography

1.4. Administrative divisions

1.5. Political situation

1.6. Economic situation

1.7. Foreign relations

1.8. Social environment and culture. Cultural differences and their impact on business negotiations

2. VIETNAM: FINANCIAL AND ECONOMICAL PROFILE

2.1. Country's Gross Domestic Product (GDP): historical trends and projection

2.3. Industrial production outlook

2.4. Vietnam foreign trade

2.2. Current investment climate

2.5. Labor market overview. Current employment state

2.6. Ratings by major rating agencies

3. PECULIARITIES OF DOING BUSINESS IN VIETNAM

3.1. Procedures for starting a business

3.2. Routine for building permits obtaining

3.3. Registration of ownership rights

3.4. Basic terms of providing business loans by banks

3.5. Measures for investments protection

3.6. Tax system

3.7. Foreign trade transactions

3.8. Debt collection

3.9. Business liquidation

4. VIETNAM GAMBLING INDUSTRY OVERVIEW

5. VIETNAM ECONOMY NEWS AND ANALYSIS DIGEST

For more information visit http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/v2fsdj/gambling_industry

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

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SOURCE Research and Markets
Dec. 16, 1931  June 8, 2016

Lieselotte Barbara Beasley, 84, of Lebanon died Wednesday at the Samaritan Evergreen Hospice House.

Barbara was born Dec. 16, 1931, in Wertheim, Germany, the daughter of Fredrick and Pauline (Grimm) Segner. She was raised in Germany where she met Riley Beasley while he was stationed in Germany. They were married Feb. 2, 1957, in Germany. They later moved to the United States and settled in Lebanon in 1974. Riley preceded her in death in 2006.

Barbara had been a homemaker and was a member of the American Legion Santiam Post 51 Auxiliary. She loved playing bingo and in her younger years enjoyed fishing at Carmen Lake and the coast. She also enjoyed camping, bowling and canning.

She is survived by her daughter, Linda Biever of Lebanon; son Richard Beasley of Terrebonne; grandchildren Stefanie Busse of Lebanon and Andrew Biever of Medford; and four great grandchildren.

She was preceded in death by her son, Ralph Beasley, and great-grandson Christian James.

A viewing will be from 4 to 7 p.m. Monday, June 13, at Huston-Jost Funeral home. A graveside service will at 2 p.m. Tuesday, June 14, at the Lebanon IOOF Cemetery.

Contributions in her memory may be made to the American Cancer Society and sent in care of Huston-Jost Funeral Home, 86 W. Grant St., Lebanon, OR 97355.
LONDON, June 10, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- For the fourth year in a row, global Business Intelligence (BI) and analytics software vendor, Yellowfin, has been recognized as one of the world's most important companies in data management and analysis in Database Trends and Applications (DBTA) magazine's annual DBTA 100: The Companies That Matter Most in Data.

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20150616/223408LOGO

The 2016 DBTA 100 is the fourth annual list of the "100 companies that matter most in data", which are "addressing market demands" with new and innovative technologies that offer "fresh approaches" to industry challenges. Compiled by DBTA's experienced editorial team, the list recognizes companies based on their presence, execution, vision and innovation in delivering products and services to the marketplace.

Managing editor of DBTA magazine, Joyce Wells, highlighted Yellowfin's breadth of reporting and analytics capabilities when discussing its inclusion within the 2016 version of the DBTA 100.

"Delivering BI functionality via a single integrated platform, Yellowfin provides interactive dashboards, support for data exploration, collaboration, data visualization, and mobile device access," said Wells.

Yellowfin Global Head of Channel and Marketing, Daniel Shaw-Dennis, said that Yellowfin's inclusion was reflective of its unique approach to enabling pervasive business-user-driven BI deployments.

"Organizations from across all industries, and business leaders throughout all job functions, are now looking to unlock the power of their data assets with analytics," said Shaw-Dennis. "Yellowfin's unique approach to Business Intelligence software empowers business users to work collaboratively with data analysts in their organization to achieve better business insights and act faster with analytics."

About Yellowfin

Yellowfin is a global Business Intelligence (BI) and analytics software vendor passionate about making BI easy. Founded in 2003 in response to the complexity and costs associated with implementing and using traditional BI tools, Yellowfin is a highly intuitive 100 percent Web-based reporting and analytics solution. Yellowfin is a leader in mobile, collaborative and embedded BI, as well as Location Intelligence and data visualization.

Over 10,000 organizations, and more than 2 million end-users across 70 different countries, use Yellowfin every day. For more information, visit www.yellowfinbi.com

For regular news and updates, follow Yellowfin on Twitter (@YellowfinBI), LinkedIn (Yellowfin Business Intelligence), YouTube (Yellowfin Team) or email pr@yellowfin.bi to subscribe to Yellowfin's free e-newsletter.

For further media information, interviews, images or product demonstration, please contact:

Lachlan James, Yellowfin Global Communications Manager on +61 (0)3 8617 4954, +61 (0)431 835 658 or lachlan.james@yellowfin.bi

SOURCE Yellowfin
Selected as Manufacturer of the Year, Large Enterprise, GE developed the Industrial Internet Consortium. The Consortium is a 2-year-old initiative that is leveraging the power of 3,500 members and representing 250 organizations from 25 countries, to drive the Manufacturing 4.0 era by breaking down technology silos, improving machine-to-machine communications, and bringing the physical and digital worlds closer together.

"The ML Awards' top winners in 2016 are at the forefront of the Manufacturing 4.0 era, embracing emerging technologies and innovative business models to deliver greater value to customers," said David R. Brousell, Global Vice President & Editorial Director, Manufacturing Leadership Council. "I congratulate these manufacturers and the leadership teams that made their achievements possible."

Another winner, Chuck Hull, co-founder and chief technology officer of 3D Systems, was named the recipient of the Manufacturing Leadership Lifetime Achievement Award in recognition of his invention of stereolithography, the first commercial rapid prototyping technology commonly known as 3D printing. Senet Inc., a start-up enabling breakthrough Internet of Things applications, was also named Manufacturer of the Year, Small Enterprise.

Twelve recipients of ML High Achiever Awards were also announced. The High Achiever Awards are presented to a select group of ML Award-winning projects. These ML Award winners received the most votes from the judges in each of the 12 ML Award project categories. Winners of the High Achiever Awards were:

The Dow Chemical Company in the Big Data & Advanced Analytics Category for its Operations Analytics with Enterprise Manufacturing Intelligence Project;

The Dow Chemical Company in the Customer Value Leadership Category for its Pack Studios Project;

Kostal of America, Inc. in the Engineering and Production Technology Leadership Category for its Advanced Manufacturing Assembly Lines Project;

Lexmark International, Inc. in the Enterprise Technology Leadership Category for its Enterprise Social Networking Project;

Lockheed Martin Aeronautics in the Innovation Process Leadership Category for its Automated Drilling and Fastening Systems Integration Using Reverse Engineering Project;

AGCO Corporation in the Internet of Things in Manufacturing Leadership Category for its Wearable Technology in the Plant Project;

The Boeing Company in the Mobility in Manufacturing Leadership Category for its Go4Zero - One Day at a Time Project;

The Dow Chemical Company in the New Product Leadership Category for its Dow AgroSciences Arylex  Project;

General Motors Company in the Next-Generation Leadership Category for its Partners for the Advancement of Collaborative Engineering Education Project;

Peterbilt Motors Company in the Operational Excellence Leadership Category for the Truck Assembly Process Efficiency Project;

Cisco Systems, Inc. in the Supply Chain Leadership Category for its Supply Collaboration Platform Project;

Lexmark International, Inc. in the Sustainability Leadership Category for its TonerPave Project.

Winners of the ML Technology Partner Awards were also recognized. These technology providers played key roles in assisting many ML Award winners achieve an outstanding performance.

Winners of the Manufacturing Leadership Technology Partner Award were:

Cisco Systems, Inc., Demand Management, Inc., Epicor Software Corp., Librestream Technologies, Inc., Logility, Inc., Lucid Way E-Learning Group, Netsuite, Inc., Oracle Corp., Paper-Less, LLC, CADENAS PARTsolutions, Rockwell Automation, Inc., Siemens PLM Software, Smartware Group, Inc., Tata Consultancy Services Ltd., and Teradata Corp.

Nominations for the 2017 Manufacturing Leadership Summit will open in August 2015 at http://mlawards.gilcommunity.com/

About the Manufacturing Leadership Council

The Manufacturing Leadership Council, Frost & Sullivan, is the world's first member-driven, global business leadership network dedicated to senior executives in the manufacturing industry. The Manufacturing Leadership Council's mission is to help senior executives define and shape a better future for themselves, their organizations, and the industry at large. The Council produces an extensive portfolio of leadership networking, information, and professional development products, programs, and services, including the Manufacturing Leadership Community website, an online global business network with over 6,700 members worldwide; the Manufacturing Leadership Council, an invitation-only executive organization of over 260 members; the annual Manufacturing Leadership Summit; the Manufacturing Leadership Awards, celebrating industry achievement; and the thought-leading Manufacturing Leadership Journal. For more information, visit www.MLCouncil.com.

About Frost & Sullivan

Frost & Sullivan, the Growth Partnership Company, works in collaboration with clients to leverage visionary innovation that addresses the global challenges and related growth opportunities that will make or break today's market participants.

Our "Growth Partnership" supports clients by addressing these opportunities and incorporating two key elements driving visionary innovation: The Integrated Value Proposition and The Partnership Infrastructure.

The Integrated Value Proposition provides support to our clients throughout all phases of their journey to visionary innovation including: research, analysis, strategy, vision, innovation and implementation.

The Partnership Infrastructure is entirely unique as it constructs the foundation upon which visionary innovation becomes possible. This includes our 360 degree research, comprehensive industry coverage, career best practices as well as our global footprint of more than 40 offices.

For more than 50 years, we have been developing growth strategies for the global 1000, emerging businesses, the public sector and the investment community.

Is your organization prepared for the next profound wave of industry convergence, disruptive technologies, increasing competitive intensity, Mega Trends, breakthrough best practices, changing customer dynamics and emerging economies?

Contact Us: Start the discussion

Contact:

Jeffrey Moad

P: 510.531.3456

F: 510.531.3456

E: [email protected]

http://www.frost.com

Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160610/377868

SOURCE Frost & Sullivan

Related Links

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BOULDER, Colo., June 9, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- 8z Real Estate is excited to be the Presenting sponsor of the Venus de Miles bike ride, as a continued effort to support Greenhouse Scholars. Venus de Miles is an annual non-competitive, organized women's bike ride, held in Boulder County. The 2016 ride will take place on Saturday August 27th at Prospect Park in Longmont, Colorado. The event is a major fundraiser for the Greenhouse Scholars, a nonprofit organization that supports low-income college students with scholarships, mentorship and support to succeed in college.

8z Realtors and staff will volunteer along the route and signage will be visible throughout the bike event. The event sponsorship is just part of 8z's commitment to support Greenhouse Scholars. The company also makes a donation to Greenhouse Scholars on behalf of the client for every closing with an 8z Realtor.

After the ride, participants are welcome to stop by the 8z Shasta at the finish line festival. 8z Realtors will be serving complimentary refreshments.

8z welcomes staff, family, friends and clients who are interested in riding this year's Venus de Miles to join "Cycle 8z." The team is fundraising on their team RaceRoster.com profile for additional donations to benefit the Greenhouse Scholars.

About Venus de Miles

The Venus de Miles bike ride is a unique road ride event with a fun, non-competitive, sisterhood of female bikers. There is a crew of "men in drag" to assist with mechanical issues on the course. This year there will be three route options: 33, 62, and 100 miles. Registration and information about the event can be found at venusdemiles.com.

About 8z Real Estate

8z Real Estate is a residential brokerage that empowers buyers and sellers with unmatched market data and online tools, combined with the knowledge and expertise of professionals on the ground. Each Realtor specializes in a specific community, to develop expertise on everything local. 8z puts clients first with Realtors who listen to their clients' needs, address their concerns, and deliver solutions so that each client has clarity, control and confidence in their real estate transaction. For more information call 303-563-4103 and visit http://8z.com/.

SOURCE 8z Real Estate

Related Links

http://8z.com


EDMONTON, June 10, 2016 /PRNewswire/ - Alberta Investment Management Corporation ("AIMCo") is pleased to announce that it has successfully entered into a strategic financing relationship with Calfrac Well Services. ("Calfrac") (TSE: CFW), an Alberta-based pressure pumping services provider, on behalf of certain of its clients.

AIMCo's investment in Calfrac provides its clients an attractive opportunity to gain direct exposure to an innovative provider of pressure pumping services focused on North America's premier unconventional natural gas and light oil plays plus strategic international markets. With state-of-the-art equipment, in-house research & development, a diversified customer base, an expert team of employees, and experienced management, Calfrac is strongly positioned for long term success.

"AIMCo is very pleased to provide this strategic funding to Calfrac on behalf of our clients" states Kevin Uebelein, AIMCo CEO. "Calfrac is a global player in the hydraulic fracturing industry. It is an innovative leader and has set the benchmark for mindful environmental stewardship within its industry. We believe that investments like this one afford our clients the opportunity to participate in the long-term success of top-notch Alberta companies."

Peter Pontikes, Senior Vice President, Public Equities said, "AIMCo's public equities investment teams are committed to identifying value creating opportunities for our clients. Companies in the energy sector locally have been particularly hard hit by the falling price of oil over the past eighteen months. This investment signals our confidence in Calfrac's outlook."

"AIMCo is a high-caliber investment manager that shares our commitment to seeking out the best opportunities around the globe," said Fernando Aguilar, President and Chief Executive Officer of Calfrac Well Services. "We remain focused on growing Calfrac through these difficult times in our industry and are proud that AIMCo has given our team this vote of confidence. We look forward to a productive partnership with AIMCo."

About Alberta Investment Management Corporation (AIMCo)

AIMCo is one of Canada's largest and most diversified institutional investment managers with more than $90 billion of assets under management. AIMCo was established on January 1, 2008 with a mandate to provide superior long-term investment results for its clients. AIMCo operates at arms-length from the Government of Alberta and invests globally on behalf of 31 pension, endowment and government funds in the Province of Alberta. For more information on AIMCo please visit www.aimco.alberta.ca.

About Calfrac Well Services (Calfrac)

Calfrac provides specialized oilfield services to exploration and production companies designed to increase the production of hydrocarbons from wells drilled throughout western Canada, the United States, Argentina, Mexico and Russia. Calfrac's common shares are publicly traded on the Toronto Stock Exchange under the trading symbol "CFW".

SOURCE Alberta Investment Management Corp.

Related Links

www.aimco.alberta.ca


PUNE, India, June 10, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

The report "Aircraft Cabin Interiors Market by Fit (Line, Retro), Product Type (Seating, IFEC, Galley Equipment, Cabin Lighting, Windows & Windshield, Lavatory), Aircraft Type (NBA, WBA, VLA, RTA) and Region (Line Fit, Retro Fit) - Global Forecast to 2021", published by MarketsandMarkets, the market is projected to reach USD 29.16 Billion by 2021, at a CAGR of 11.57% from 2016 to 2021.

(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160303/792302 )



Browse 107 market data Tables with 167 Figures spread through 219 Pages and in-depth TOC on "Aircraft Cabin Interiors Market".

http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/aircraft-cabin-interior-market-74760139.html

Early buyers will receive 10% customization on this report.

Factors such as increasing number of aircraft orders, growing regional economies; modernization of aircraft programs to reduce operational costs, and increasing demand for air travel are expected to drive the global aircraft cabin interiors market.

The seating segment to dominate the aircraft cabin interiors market

On the basis of product, the seating segment dominates the aircraft cabin interiors market and is expected to continue its dominance over the next five years. The demand for aircraft seating is primarily driven by upgradation of aircraft programs to reduce operational cost, increasing aircraft deliveries, and significant growth in air traffic across the globe

The retrofit segment is expected to grow at the highest pace during the forecast period.

The retrofit segment dominates the overall aircraft cabin interiors market, by fit and is expected to exhibit a similar trend during the forecast period. It is expected to dominate the market on account of modernization of aircraft programs to reduce operational costs and the replacement requirement for aircraft cabin interiors including seating, galleys, windows & windshields, cabin lighting, lavatory, and IFEC.

The aircraft cabin interiors market is expected to witness the highest growth in the Asia-Pacific region.

The Asia-Pacific region has been witnessing strong growth in the aviation industry over the past few years, mainly driven by increasing demand for new aircraft deliveries and increasing air traffic in this region, which in turn is expected to boost the aircraft cabin interiors market. This growth can also be attributed to the increase in trade and tourism, increasing disposable of the middle class population in emerging countries such as India and China.

Inquiry Before Buying: http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Enquiry_Before_Buying.asp?id=74760139

Key players in the aircraft cabin interiors market includes Thales Group (France), Honeywell International Inc. (U.S.), Diehl Stiftung & Co. KG (Germany), B/E Aerospace (U.S.), United Technologies Corporation (U.S.), Luminator Technology Group (U.S.) Panasonic Corporation (Japan), and PPG Industries Inc. (U.S.) among others.

Browse Related Reports

Aircraft Lighting Market by Fit (Linefit, Retrofit), Aircraft Type (NBA, WBA, VLA and RTA), Light Type (Interior Light, Exterior Light), Technology and by Geography - Global Forecast to 2021

http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/aircraft-lighting-market-1092.html

Galley Equipment Market by Fit (Line Fit, Retro Fit), by Galley Type (Single Aisle, Twin Aisle, Business Aviation), by Galley Inserts (Electric Inserts and Non-Electric Inserts), by Application (Aviation, Marine), by Geography - Global Forecast 2020

http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/aircraft-galley-equipment-market-16966730.html

About MarketsandMarkets

MarketsandMarkets is the world's No. 2 firm in terms of annually published premium market research reports. Serving 1700 global fortune enterprises with more than 1200 premium studies in a year, M&M is catering to a multitude of clients across 8 different industrial verticals. We specialize in consulting assignments and business research across high growth markets, cutting edge technologies and newer applications. Our 850 fulltime analyst and SMEs at MarketsandMarkets are tracking global high growth markets following the "Growth Engagement Model - GEM". The GEM aims at proactive collaboration with the clients to identify new opportunities, identify most important customers, write "Attack, avoid and defend" strategies, identify sources of incremental revenues for both the company and its competitors.

M&M's flagship competitive intelligence and market research platform, "RT" connects over 200,000 markets and entire value chains for deeper understanding of the unmet insights along with market sizing and forecasts of niche markets. The new included chapters on Methodology and Benchmarking presented with high quality analytical infographics in our reports gives complete visibility of how the numbers have been arrived and defend the accuracy of the numbers.

We at MarketsandMarkets are inspired to help our clients grow by providing apt business insight with our huge market intelligence repository.

Contact:

Mr. Rohan

Markets and Markets

UNIT no 802, Tower no. 7, SEZ

Magarpatta city, Hadapsar

Pune, Maharashtra 411013, India

Tel: +1-888-600-6441

Email: [email protected]

Visit MarketsandMarkets [email protected] http://mnmblog.org/market-research/aerospace-defence

Connect with us on LinkedIn @ http://www.linkedin.com/company/marketsandmarkets



SOURCE MarketsandMarkets
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla., June 10, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- It is our pleasure to announce that all six of our partners at Clark, Fountain, La Vista, Prather, Keen & Littky-Rubin have been honored with selection for inclusion in the 2016 list of Florida Super Lawyers. This recognition is given to just 5% of attorneys in each state. Super Lawyers uses a rigorous selection process in order to provide potential clients with a comprehensive and reliable list of the top attorneys across more than 70 practice areas.

Partners at the firm Mark Clark, Don Fountain, Nancy La Vista, David Prather, W. Hampton Keen, and Julie Littky-Rubin have each consistently been selected to the list of Super Lawyers for many years. Associate at the firm, Attorney Poorad Razavi, was also selected again to the list of Super Lawyers "Rising Stars."

In order to be selected for inclusion in the list of Super Lawyers, the attorney must first receive nomination from peers, third-party review, a managing partner survey, or identification by the Super Lawyers research team. An independent research panel then evaluates the attorneys on 12 factors, including honors and awards, verdicts and settlements, experience, bar standing, and more. After the Blue Ribbon Panel completes their final evaluations, Super Lawyers makes the final selections.

We are honored that all of our firm's partners were recognized by Super Lawyers this year, and look forward to continuing the level of representation that warranted these awards.

Clark, Fountain, La Vista, Prather, Keen & Littky-Rubin has more than 220 years of combined experience and more than $1 billion in verdicts and settlements recovered for its clients. In addition to Super Lawyers, the firm has been recognized both locally and nationally for its legal expertise by other organizations such as The Best Lawyers in America and Best Law Firms by U.S. News. Additionally, many of the firm's attorneys are double Board Certified in their area of specialty.

Call (561) 922-0258 to learn more about the firm, or visit our website at http://www.clarkfountain.com/.

SOURCE Clark, Fountain, La Vista, Prather, Keen & Littky-Rubin

Related Links

http://www.clarkfountain.com


AGOURA HILLS, Calif., June 10, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- American Homes 4 Rent (NYSE: AMH) (the "Company"), a leading provider of high quality single-family homes for rent, today announced that a per share quarterly distribution on the Company's 6.5% Series D cumulative redeemable perpetual preferred shares of $0.16964 per share will be paid on June 30, 2016 to shareholders of record on June 15, 2016.

About American Homes 4 Rent

American Homes 4 Rent (NYSE: AMH) is a leader in the single-family home rental industry and "American Homes 4 Rent" is fast becoming a nationally recognized brand for rental homes, known for high quality, good value and tenant satisfaction. We are an internally managed Maryland real estate investment trust, or REIT, focused on acquiring, renovating, leasing, and operating attractive, single-family homes as rental properties. As of March 31, 2016, we owned 47,955 single-family properties in selected submarkets in 22 states.

Additional information about American Homes 4 Rent is available on our website at www.americanhomes4rent.com.

Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains "forward-looking statements" that relate to beliefs, expectations or intentions and similar statements concerning matters that are not of historical fact and are generally accompanied by words such as "believe," "expect," "will," "intend," "anticipate" or other words that convey the uncertainty of future events or outcomes. These forward-looking statements include the payment and anticipated timing of the payment of distributions of the Company's common and preferred shares. The Company has based these forward-looking statements on its current expectations and assumptions about future events. While the Company's management considers these expectations to be reasonable, they are inherently subject to risks, contingencies and uncertainties, most of which are difficult to predict and many of which are beyond the Company's control and could adversely affect our cash flows and ability to pay distributions. Additional information about these and other important factors that may cause our actual results to differ materially from anticipated results expressed or implied by these forward-looking statements is available in the Company's most recent Annual Report on Form 10-K, subsequent Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q and other reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The Company undertakes no obligation to update any forward-looking statement to conform to actual results or changes in expectations, except as required by applicable law.

Contact:

American Homes 4 Rent

Investor Relations

Phone: (855) 794-2447

Email: [email protected]

SOURCE American Homes 4 Rent

Related Links

https://www.americanhomes4rent.com


GREEN BAY, Wis., June 10, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Associated Banc-Corp (NYSE: ASB) today announced it will release second quarter 2016 financial results on Thursday, July 21, 2016, after market close. The company will host a conference call for investors and analysts at 4:00 p.m. Central Time (CT) on the same day.

Interested parties can listen to the call live on the internet through the investor relations section of the Company's website, http://investor.associatedbank.com or by dialing 877-407-8037. The second quarter 2016 financial tables and an accompanying slide presentation will be available on the Company's website just prior to the call. The number for international callers is 201-689-8037. Participants should ask the operator for the Associated Banc-Corp second quarter 2016 earnings call. An audio archive of the webcast will be available on the Company's website approximately fifteen minutes after the call is over.

ABOUT ASSOCIATED BANC-CORP

Associated Banc-Corp (NYSE: ASB) has total assets of $28 billion and is one of the top 50 publicly traded U.S. bank holding companies. Headquartered in Green Bay, Wisconsin, Associated is a leading Midwest banking franchise, offering a full range of financial products and services from over 200 banking locations serving more than 100 communities throughout Wisconsin, Illinois and Minnesota, and commercial financial services in Indiana, Michigan, Missouri, Ohio and Texas. Associated Bank, N.A. is an Equal Housing Lender, Equal Opportunity Lender and Member FDIC. More information about Associated Banc-Corp is available at www.associatedbank.com.

Investor Contact:

Teresa Gutierrez, Senior Vice President, Director of Investor Relations

920-491-7059

Media Contact:

Cliff Bowers, Senior Vice President, Director of Public Relations

920-491-7542



SOURCE Associated Banc-Corp

Related Links

https://www.associatedbank.com


MIAMI, June 10, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- In 2013, 289,000 women and nearly two million babies died during childbirth, according to a report published by the United Nations Population Fund. Simulation training to manage childbirth complications can help to save lives, and from June 11-15, Gaumard Scientific's realistic simulators for training nurses to handle those complications will be on display in Booth 1021 at the 2016 AWHONN annual meeting at the Gaylord Texan Convention Center in Grapevine, Texas.

Attendees will be able to practice life-like scenarios, such as shoulder dystocia, placenta previa, nuchal cord, umbilical cord prolapse, breech delivery and postpartum hemorrhage on Victoria, the most realistic, fully tetherless and wireless maternal/fetal simulator for use in actual point of care training. Obstetric Nurses can set up and operate real equipment, interpret critical information and follow protocols just as they would in real clinical situations using real TOCO, fetal heart rate, and NIBP monitors, plus real pulse oximetry, and EKG.

The most prevalent cause of maternal death during childbirth is post-partum hemorrhage (PPH) and Victoria can be programmed by instructors for a wide range of PPH scenarios. Victoria's vital signs deteriorate over time in response to the selected blood loss, and she can automatically simulate physiological changes in response, including changes in heart rate and blood pressure. A balloon tamponade device can be inserted and inflated to alleviate the bleeding, thus allowing obstetric nurses to be prepared for PPH emergencies.

In addition, attendees will be able to see how Tory, the most sophisticated neonatal simulator available, integrates seamlessly with Victoria via a wireless link, allowing healthcare providers first to tend to labor and delivery and then to stabilize or treat the newborn. Neonatal nurses can even obtain APGAR scores on Tory.

"Simulation training leads to safer real-world clinical outcomes and ultimately can help to save lives," John Eggert, Gaumard's executive vice president, said. "Victoria and newborn Tory are so realistic that they provide true-to-life training experiences for complications that nurses may experience only a few times during their careers."

The Association of Women's Health, Obstetric and Neonatal Nurses, or AWHONN, supports four million women each year by helping make birth safer, tackling maternal mortality and providing members with the latest evidence-based education. The AWHONN annual convention is the largest gathering of its kind in the United States.

About Gaumard Scientific

Gaumard Scientific Company has designed, manufactured and marketed simulators for health care education for more than 60 years. Users worldwide  the military, emergency medical services, major teaching hospitals and nursing schools  recognize Gaumard products for their innovation in simulation in the pre-hospital, obstetrics and gynecology, surgical and nursing care segments. In 2000, Gaumard launched the revolutionary family of NOELLE maternal and neonatal care simulators that changed the way training is conducted. In 2004, Gaumard pioneered the use of fully tetherless technology with the introduction of the family of HAL simulators. In 2014, the company introduced Victoria, its most advanced, mobile maternal/fetal simulator as part of the NOELLE family.

Gaumard manufactures its products at its world headquarters in Miami. The company sells simulators through its own representatives in North America and through 200 distributors in 70 countries. For more information, visit www.gaumardscientific.com. Follow Gaumard on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/GaumardInFocus; on Facebook at www.facebook.com/gaumardsimulators; and on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/user/gaumardmedsimulators.



View a video of Gaumard customer testimonials at http://bit.ly/1Oqhwcl. To view a video demonstration of Victoria, see http://bit.ly/1OSPBNd; for product photographs, visit the Gaumard online gallery at www.gaumardscientific.com/galleries.

Click here to see a schedule of all upcoming events at which Gaumard will demonstrate its patient simulators.

Company Contacts:

Peter Eggert

Vice President,

Vice President International Operations

(800) 882-6655

[email protected]

James Archetto

Vice President Corporate Planning

(800) 882-6655

(305) 484-3309 Mobile

[email protected]

Media Contact:

Russo Partners

Amiad Finkelthal

(646) 942-5626

(917) 217-1838 Mobile

[email protected]

SOURCE Gaumard Scientific

Related Links

http://www.gaumard.com


ATLANTA, June 10, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- The Atlanta Ice Cream Festival is celebrating its 6th year at Atlanta's historical Piedmont Park near the Meadows on Saturday, July 23, 2016 from 11am-6pm. The Festival, which started with a small amount of vendors and a big dream by Executive Director Kevin James, this year has grown with numerous vendors, wonderful sponsors, and a boat load of fun activities. "Our exciting partnership with the Fulton-DeKalb Hospital Authority promises to make this year's festival an event not to be missed!" says James. "We want everyone to enjoy eating ice cream but we also want to improve the quality of lives and educate people in sustaining a healthy lifestyle. Since FDHA promotes the health of the greater Atlanta community, they will help bring a healthy balance to the festival."

Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160609/377470

Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160609/377469LOGO



One of the exciting changes this year is the launch of the redesigned website, www.atlantaicecreamfestival.com which provides visitors and potential vendors and sponsors with even more relevant and easy-to-find information and resources on the festival.

"Our website is our storefront and is an important way for us to share information with our audience" states James. "The redesigned website has a new look and improved functionality to ensure an easier and more engaging experience for our users."

In addition to the relaunched website, AICF believes that it is vital to support the Atlanta community and this year have reinvigorated the slogan "Get The Scoop On Atlanta And Wellness" by showcasing various Atlanta vendors such as Sno Bayou Snowballs, Rita's Italian Ice and Frozen Custard and Jake's Handcrafted Ice Cream. Returning festival favorite such as Bruster's Real Ice Cream will be playing a dual role this year as vendor and sponsor of the crowd loving Ice Cream Competition.

For a list of updates and scheduled events for the festival, visit the website www.atlantaicecreamfestival.com

About Atlanta Ice Cream Festival

Atlanta Ice Cream Festival is Atlanta's premier family fun event featuring America's favorite dessert  ICE CREAM! Not only is there a plethora of ice cream to choose, the festival also includes a variety of health and wellness agencies, fitness routines, vendors and so much fun for the entire family to enjoy. Relish in the delectable varieties of ice cream offered but also be ready to enhance your mind on living a healthy-balanced lifestyle all year long.

Contact:

Melisa Fox

Fox Media & PR, Inc.

Email

678-439-9641

SOURCE Atlanta Ice Cream Festival

Related Links

http://www.atlantaicecreamfestival.com


SAO PAULO, Brazil, June 10, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

BANCO DO BRASIL S.A.

(acting through its Cayman Islands branch)

(a bank organized as a sociedade de economia mista and accordingly

a sociedade por acoes incorporated under the laws of the Federative Republic of Brazil)

Offer to Purchase for Cash Up to U.S.$200,000,000 Aggregate Principal Amount

of its Outstanding 9.250% Perpetual Non-Cumulative Junior Subordinated Securities

Banco do Brasil S.A., acting through its Cayman Islands branch, a bank organized as a sociedade de economia mista and accordingly a sociedade por acoes incorporated under the laws of the Federative Republic of Brazil (the "Bank"), hereby announces the commencement of its offer to purchase for cash up to U.S.$200,000,000 aggregate principal amount (subject to increase by the Bank in its sole discretion under the circumstances described in the Offer to Purchase (as defined below), the "Maximum Tender Amount") of the outstanding notes set forth in the table below (the "Notes"), upon the terms and subject to the conditions described in the Offer to Purchase dated June 10, 2016 (as it may be amended or supplemented from time to time, the "Offer to Purchase"), the accompanying Letter of Transmittal dated June 10, 2016 (as it may be amended or supplemented from time to time, the "Letter of Transmittal" and, together with the Offer to Purchase and the Soliciting Dealer Form (as defined below), the "Offer Documents").

The following table sets forth certain terms of the Tender Offer:

Title of Notes CUSIP and ISIN Numbers Aggregate Principal Amount Outstanding Tender Offer Consideration (1) Early Tender Premium(1) Total Consideration (1)(2) 9.250% Perpetual Non- Cumulative Junior Subordinated Securities CUSIP: 05958A AG3 and P3772W AC6 ISIN: US05958AAG31 and USP3772WAC66 U.S.$1,598,627,000 U.S.$802.50 U.S.$30.00 U.S.$832.50











(1) Per U.S.$1,000 principal amount of Notes tendered and accepted for purchase. (2) Includes the Early Tender Premium (as defined below).

The Tender Offer will expire at 11:59 p.m., New York City time, on July 8, 2016, or any other date and time to which the Bank extends the Tender Offer (such date and time, as it may be extended, the "Expiration Date"), unless earlier terminated. Holders must validly tender their Notes at or prior to the Expiration Date to be eligible to receive the Tender Offer Consideration (as defined below) plus Accrued Interest (as defined below). Holders must validly tender their Notes at or prior to 5:00 p.m., New York City time, on June 23, 2016 (such date and time, as it may be extended, the "Early Tender Date") to be eligible to receive the Total Consideration (as defined below) plus Accrued Interest. The Total Consideration, the Tender Offer Consideration and the Accrued Interest will be payable in cash. Tendered Notes may be validly withdrawn from the Tender Offer at or prior to, but not after, 5:00 p.m., New York City time, on June 23, 2016 (such date and time, as it may be extended, the "Withdrawal Deadline").

Subject to the Maximum Tender Amount, the Bank intends to accept for purchase all Notes validly tendered (and not validly withdrawn) at or prior to the Early Tender Date, and will only prorate such Notes if the aggregate principal amount of Notes validly tendered (and not validly withdrawn) at or prior to the Early Tender Date exceeds the Maximum Tender Amount. If the Tender Offer is not fully subscribed as of the Early Tender Date, Holders who validly tender Notes after the Early Tender Date but at or prior to the Expiration Date may be subject to proration if the aggregate principal amount of Notes validly tendered (and not validly withdrawn) at or prior to the Expiration Date exceeds the Maximum Tender Amount. Subject to the Maximum Tender Amount and proration, all Notes validly tendered at or prior to the Early Tender Date will be accepted for purchase before any Notes validly tendered after the Early Tender Date are accepted for purchase. Furthermore, if the Tender Offer is fully subscribed as of the Early Tender Date, Holders who validly tender Notes after the Early Tender Date will not have any of their Notes accepted for purchase, provided that such Notes may be accepted for purchase if the Bank increases the Maximum Tender Amount, which it is entitled to do in its sole discretion. There can be no assurance that the Bank will increase the Maximum Tender Amount. See "The Tender OfferMaximum Tender Amount; Proration" in the Offer to Purchase for more information on the proration provisions applicable to the Tender Offer.

All Notes validly tendered and accepted for purchase pursuant to the Tender Offer will receive the applicable consideration set forth in the table above, plus accrued and unpaid interest on those Notes from the last interest payment date with respect to those Notes to, but not including, the applicable Settlement Date ("Accrued Interest").

The Tender Offer is not conditioned upon the tender of any minimum principal amount of Notes or upon any financing. The Bank refers to the offer to purchase the Notes as the "Tender Offer". The Tender Offer is open to all registered holders (individually, a "Holder," and collectively, the "Holders") of the Notes. The Tender Offer is subject to the satisfaction of the General Conditions (as defined in the Offer to Purchase). The purpose of the Tender Offer is to purchase up to U.S.$200,000,000 aggregate principal amount of Notes and reduce the Bank's interest expense.

Subject to the terms and conditions of the Tender Offer, the consideration for each U.S.$1,000 principal amount of Notes validly tendered (and not validly withdrawn) and accepted for purchase pursuant to the Tender Offer will be the tender offer consideration set forth in the table above (the "Tender Offer Consideration"). Holders of Notes that are validly tendered (and not validly withdrawn) at or prior to the Early Tender Date and accepted for purchase pursuant to the Tender Offer will receive the Tender Offer Consideration plus the early tender premium set forth in the table above (the "Early Tender Premium" and, together with the Tender Offer Consideration, the "Total Consideration"). Holders of Notes tendered after the Early Tender Date, but before the Expiration Date, and accepted for purchase pursuant to the Tender Offer will receive the Tender Offer Consideration, but not the Early Tender Premium. No tenders will be valid if submitted after the Expiration Date.

The Tender Offer commences on the date of the Offer to Purchase and will expire on the Expiration Date, unless extended or earlier terminated by the Bank. No tenders will be valid if submitted after the Expiration Date. If a Nominee holds Notes on behalf of a beneficial owner, such Nominee may have an earlier deadline for accepting the offer. Any beneficial owner should promptly contact such Nominee that holds its Notes to determine its deadline. The Tender Offer is open to all registered Holders of the Notes.

A soliciting dealer fee equal to 0.25% of the principal amount of Notes that are validly tendered and accepted for purchase will be paid to retail brokers that are appropriately designated by their clients to receive this fee (the "Soliciting Dealer Fee"). The Soliciting Dealer Fee will only be paid to each designated retail broker for each tendering Holder that tenders Notes with an aggregate principal amount of U.S.$500,000 or less. In order to be eligible to receive the Soliciting Dealer Fee, a properly completed instruction submitted on the soliciting dealer form relating to the Tender Offer (as it may be amended or supplemented from time to time, the "Soliciting Dealer Form") must be received by the Tender and Information Agent prior to the Expiration Date. The Bank shall, in its sole discretion, determine whether a broker has satisfied the criteria for receiving a Soliciting Dealer Fee (including, without limitation, the submission of the appropriate documentation without defects or irregularities and in respect of bona fide tenders).

The Bank reserves the right, but is under no obligation, following the Early Tender Date, to have an early settlement date in respect of Notes validly tendered and not validly withdrawn at or prior to the Early Tender Date (the "Early Settlement Date"). If the Bank elects, in its sole discretion, to have an Early Settlement Date, based on an Early Tender Date of June 23, 2016, it is expected that the Early Settlement Date would occur on June 27, 2016. The acceptance for purchase by the Bank of validly tendered Notes on the Early Settlement Date would be subject to the Maximum Tender Amount, proration (if applicable) and all conditions to the Tender Offer having been either satisfied or waived by the Bank. Irrespective of whether the Bank chooses to have an Early Settlement Date, it expects to purchase any remaining Notes that have been validly tendered and not validly withdrawn at or prior to the Expiration Date and that the Bank chooses to accept for purchase, subject to the Maximum Tender Amount and all conditions to the Tender Offer having been either satisfied or waived by the Bank, promptly following the Expiration Date (the "Final Settlement Date," the Final Settlement Date and the Early Settlement Date each being a "Settlement Date"). Subject to the Maximum Tender Amount and proration, all Notes validly tendered at or prior to the Early Tender Date will be accepted for purchase before any Notes validly tendered after the Early Tender Date are accepted for purchase. The Final Settlement Date is expected to occur on the second business day following the Expiration Date. If the Bank elects, in its sole discretion, to have an Early Settlement Date, and assuming that the conditions to the Tender Offer are satisfied or waived, such Early Settlement Date may be two business days following the Early Tender Date. Notes accepted on the Final Settlement Date, if any, will be accepted subject to the Maximum Tender Amount and proration, each as described herein.

Notwithstanding any other provision of the Tender Offer, the Bank's obligation to accept for purchase, and to pay for, any Notes validly tendered pursuant to the Tender Offer, is conditioned upon the satisfaction of the General Conditions (as defined in the Offer to Purchase). The General Conditions to the Tender Offer are for the sole benefit of the Bank and may be asserted by the Bank, regardless of the circumstances giving rise to any such condition (including any action or inaction by the Bank). The Bank reserves the right, in its sole discretion, to waive any and all conditions of the Tender Offer, at or prior to the Expiration Date (or the Early Settlement Date, if the Bank elects, in its sole discretion, to have an Early Settlement Date). The Tender Offer is not subject to a minimum principal amount of Notes being tendered.

Withdrawal rights with respect to the Notes will terminate on the Withdrawal Deadline, unless extended pursuant to applicable law. Accordingly, following the Withdrawal Deadline, any Notes validly tendered (whether before, on or after the Withdrawal Deadline) may no longer be validly withdrawn. For the withdrawal of a tendered Note to be valid, such withdrawal must comply with the procedures set forth in the Offer to Purchase.

Subject to applicable law and the terms set forth in the Offer to Purchase, the Bank reserves the right: (i) to extend or otherwise amend the Early Tender Date, the Withdrawal Deadline or the Expiration Date, (ii) to increase the Maximum Tender Amount without extending the Withdrawal Deadline or otherwise reinstating withdrawal rights of Holders except as required by law; (iii) to waive or modify in whole or in part any and all conditions to the Tender Offer; (iv) to modify or terminate the Tender Offer; and (v) to otherwise amend the Tender Offer in any respect. In the event of the termination of the Tender Offer, the Notes tendered pursuant to the Tender Offer and not previously accepted and purchased will be promptly returned to the tendering Holders.

If a Holder does not tender its Notes or if a Holder tenders Notes that are not accepted for purchase, they will remain outstanding. If the Bank consummates the Tender Offer, the trading market for a Holder's outstanding Notes may be significantly more limited. For a discussion of this and other risks, see "Certain Significant ConsiderationsThe Tender Offer may adversely affect the market value and reduce the liquidity of any trading market of the Notes" in the Offer to Purchase.

THE OFFER DOCUMENTS CONTAIN CERTAIN IMPORTANT INFORMATION THAT SHOULD BE READ BEFORE ANY DECISION IS MADE WITH RESPECT TO THE TENDER OFFER, IN PARTICULAR, SEE "CERTAIN SIGNIFICANT CONSIDERATIONS" IN THE OFFER TO PURCHASE FOR A DISCUSSION OF CERTAIN FACTORS HOLDERS SHOULD CONSIDER IN CONNECTION WITH THE TENDER OFFER.

NEITHER THE OFFER TO PURCHASE NOR ANY OF THE OFFER DOCUMENTS RELATING TO THE TENDER OFFER HAVE BEEN FILED WITH OR REVIEWED BY THE FEDERAL OR ANY STATE SECURITIES COMMISSION OR REGULATORY AUTHORITY OF ANY COUNTRY, NOR HAS ANY SUCH COMMISSION OR AUTHORITY PASSED UPON THE ACCURACY OR ADEQUACY OF THE OFFER TO PURCHASE OR ANY OF THE OFFER DOCUMENTS RELATING TO THE TENDER OFFER. ANY REPRESENTATION TO THE CONTRARY IS UNLAWFUL AND MAY BE A CRIMINAL OFFENSE.

NONE OF THE BANK, ITS BOARD OF DIRECTORS, THE DEALER MANAGERS (AS DEFINED BELOW), THE TENDER AND INFORMATION AGENT OR THE TRUSTEE (AS DEFINED IN THE OFFER TO PURCHASE) OR ANY OF THEIR RESPECTIVE AFFILIATES IS MAKING ANY RECOMMENDATION AS TO WHETHER HOLDERS SHOULD TENDER ANY NOTES IN RESPONSE TO THE TENDER OFFER. HOLDERS MUST MAKE THEIR OWN DECISION AS TO WHETHER TO PARTICIPATE IN THE TENDER OFFER, AND, IF SO, THE PRINCIPAL AMOUNT OF NOTES TO TENDER.

The Offer to Purchase does not constitute an offer to purchase the Notes in any jurisdiction in which, or to or from any person to or from whom, it is unlawful to make such offer under applicable securities or "blue sky" laws. If the Bank becomes aware of any jurisdiction in which the making of the Tender Offer would not be in compliance with applicable laws, the Bank will make a good faith effort to comply with any such laws. If, after such good faith effort, the Bank cannot comply with any such laws, the Tender Offer will not be made to (nor will tenders of Notes be accepted from or on behalf of) the owners of Notes residing in such jurisdiction. Neither the delivery of this announcement, the Offer to Purchase nor any purchase pursuant to the Tender Offer shall under any circumstances create any implication that the information contained in this announcement or the Offer to Purchase is correct as of any time subsequent to the date hereof or thereof or that there has been no change in the information set forth herein or therein or in the Bank's affairs since the date hereof or thereof.

The Offer to Purchase does not constitute an offer to sell any securities or the solicitation of an offer to buy any securities (other than the Notes). Any offering of securities will only be made by an offering document and any such offering may not be registered with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

D. F. King & Co., Inc. is acting as the tender agent and as the information agent (the "Tender and Information Agent") for the Tender Offer. BB Securities Ltd., Citigroup Global Markets Inc. and Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith Incorporated are acting as Dealer Managers (the "Dealer Managers") for the Tender Offer.

The Tender and Information Agent for the Tender Offer is:

D.F. King & Co., Inc.

In New York.

48 Wall Street 22nd Floor New York, NY 10005 Banks and Brokers: (212) 269-5550

Toll free (U.S. only): (800) 821-2794 In London: 125 Wood Street London EC2V 7AN United Kingdom Telephone: +44 20 7920 9700 In Hong Kong: Suite 1601, 16/F, Central Tower 28 Queen's Road Central Central Hong Kong Telephone: +852 3953 7230

[email protected]

By Facsimile (For Eligible Institutions only): (212) 709-3328

Confirmation: (212) 232-3235

Attention: Peter Aymar

Any questions or requests for assistance or for additional copies of the Offer Documents may be directed to the Tender and Information Agent at one of its telephone numbers above. Copies of this Offer to Purchase, the related Letter of Transmittal, the Soliciting Dealer Form and all press releases issued in connection with the Tender Offer will also be available, during the period of the Tender Offer, at www.dfking.com/bb. A Holder (or a beneficial owner that is not a Holder) may also contact any of the Dealer Managers at their telephone numbers set forth below or its broker, dealer, commercial bank, trust company or other nominee for assistance concerning the Offer Documents.

The Dealer Managers for the Tender Offer are:

BB Securities Ltd. Operations Department

4th Floor  Pinners Hall

105-108 Old Broad Street

London EC2N 1ER

United Kingdom

Collect: +44 (20) 7367-5800 Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith

Incorporated Debt Advisory Group

One Bryant Park

New York, NY 10036

United States

US Toll Free: +1 (888) 292-0070

Collect: +1 (646) 855-8988 Citigroup Global Markets Inc. Liability Management Group

390 Greenwich Street, 1st Floor

New York, NY 10013

United States

US Toll-Free: +1 (800) 558-3745

Collect: +1 (212) 723-6106

SOURCE Banco do Brasil S.A.
LONDON, June 9, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --



This research study analyzes the market for base metal mining in terms of volume (million metric tonnes). The market has been segmented on the basis of type and region. The global base metal mining market has been segmented into five regions: North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa, and South and Central America. For the research, 2014 has been taken as the base year, while all forecasts have been given for the period from 2015 to 2023. Market data for all the metal types has been provided at the regional as well as country-specific level from 2015 to 2023. The report provides a broad competitive analysis of companies engaged in the base metal mining business. The report also includes the key market dynamics such as drivers, restraints, and opportunities affecting the global base metal mining market. These market dynamics were analyzed in detail and are illustrated in the report with the help of supporting graphs and tables. The report also provides a comprehensive analysis of the global base metal mining market with the help of Porter's Five Forces model. This analysis helps in understanding the five major forces that affect the market structure and market profitability. The forces analyzed are bargaining power of buyers, bargaining power of suppliers, threat of new entrants, threat of substitutes, and degree of competition.



The high-level analysis in the report provides detailed insights into the base metal mining business globally. There are currently numerous drivers of the market. One of the most prominent drivers is the rise in infrastructure development. Market attractiveness analysis was carried out for the base metal mining market on the basis of geography. Market attractiveness was estimated on the basis of common parameters that directly impact the market in different regions.



The base metal mining market was segmented on the basis of type into copper, nickel, zinc-lead, aluminum, and tin. Base metals vary according to physical properties and applications.



Aluminum held the significant market share in 2014 on account of its wide applications in various areas such as packaging, transportation, construction, consumer durables, machinery equipment, electrical systems, etc. Zinc is another most widely consumed base metal in the world due to its various physical properties such as galvanizing properties and capability of bonding with various metals. Zinc has been growing due to its anti-corrosion property which helps prevent corrosion in metals. Corrosion is a major hindrance to the base metal applications. Lead is primarily used in portable batteries, which are used in vehicles and emergency systems. Expanding portable batteries market, is driving the demand for lead. Demand for copper is projected to grow with increase in population as it would require expanding power infrastructure which is copper-intensive. Copper market would be boosted by the increase in number of infrastructure facilities such as buildings and complexes.



Nickel is used in highly-specialized sectors such as industrial, aerospace, and military. Nickel plating is one of the important industries, wherein the usage of nickel is essential; expanding nickel plating industry would boost the demand for nickel in the next few years. Utilization of tin-coated electronic components is increasing in motor vehicles, which in turn, is boosting the consumption of tin. Tin is being used as an alternative to other materials. It is also used in various industries, such as food and beverage and packaging.



The base metal mining market was analyzed across five geographies: North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa, and South and Central America. Regional data has been provided for each sub-segment of the base metal mining market. Key players in the market include Alcoa Inc., Anglo American plc, Antofagasta plc, BHP Billiton Ltd., Corporacion Nacional del Cobre de Chile (CODELCO), First Quantum Minerals Ltd., Freeport-McMoRan Inc., Glencore plc, Kaiser Aluminum Corporation, Rio Tinto plc, Southern Copper Corporation, Teck Resources Limited, and Vale SA. The report provides an overview of these companies, followed by their financial details, business strategies, and recent developments.



Base Metal Mining Market: By Type



Copper

Nickel

Lead-zinc

Aluminum

Tin

Base Metal Mining Market: By Region



North America

U.S.

Canada

Mexico

Europe

Russia

Kazakhstan

Rest of Europe

Asia Pacific

China

India

Australia

Japan

Indonesia

Rest of Asia Pacific

Middle East and Africa

South Africa

Rest of Middle East and Africa

South and Central America

Chile

Peru

Argentina

Rest of South and Central America

Download the full report: https://www.reportbuyer.com/product/3661972/



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Reportbuyer is a leading industry intelligence solution that provides all market research reports from top publishers

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NEW YORK, June 9, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Big Data in Global Manufacturing market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 15% representing in huge opportunities in this sector, finds a new research report launched by NOVONOUS. This growth is driven by increasing penetration of big data, increase in analytics services and availability of affordable big data solution and services to end users.



Big Data in Manufacturing Industry controls the 18% market share in terms of revenue in Global Big Data market. It is expected to become sixth largest industry in terms of it's market share position in 2020.



Organizations worldwide are turning their attention to Big Data as a useful means to derive insights from the huge amount of data generated from various sources. Technologies such as NoSQL databases and MapReduce/Hadoop frameworks are at the core of the solutions heralding a paradigm shift.

This research found that high investment costs, lack of awareness and novelty have been the main threats for new entrants in the Big Data space. There are a few major players who control the entire value chain. However, many smaller players have mushroomed who provide consulting in the Analytics space. This research also found that most organizations misunderstand Big Data and it is important to educate the end users through face to face interactions.



Spanning over 101 pages and 75 exhibits, "Big Data in Global Manufacturing Market: Key Trends, Market Opportunities and Industry Forecast 2015-2020" report presents an in-depth assessment of the Big Data in Global Manufacturing market from 2015 till 2020.



The report has detailed company profiles including their position in big data market value chain, financial performance analysis, product and service wise business strategy, SWOT analysis and key customer details for

12 key players in Global market namely TEG Analytics, Heckyl Technologies, KloudData Inc., Gramener, Germin8, VIS Networks Pvt. Ltd., Abzooba, Fintellix, Latentview, Indix, Analytic-Edge and Tookitaki.



Scope of Big Data in Global Manufacturing Market: Key Trends, Market Opportunities and Industry Forecast 2015-2020 Report

- This report provides detailed information about Big Data in Global Manufacturing market including future forecasts.

- This report identifies the need for focusing on Big Data in Manufacturing market.

- This report provides detailed information on growth forecasts for Big Data in Global Manufacturing market up to 2020.

- The report identifies the growth drivers and inhibitors for Global Big Data market.

- This study also identifies various parts of Big Data value chain.

- This report has detailed profiles 12 key players in Global Big Data market covering their business strategy, financial performance, future forecasts and SWOT analysis.

- This report covers the competitive landscape in Big Data in Global Manufacturing market.

- This report provides Porter's Five Forces analysis for Big Data in Global Manufacturing market.

- This report provides SWOT (strengths, weakness, opportunities and threats) analysis for Big Data in Global Manufacturing market.

- This report also provides strategic recommendations for end users, Big Data service providers and investors.

Read the full report: http://www.reportlinker.com/p03812891-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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NEW YORK, June 9, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Big Data in Global Telecom market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 65% representing in huge opportunities in this sector, finds a new research report launched by NOVONOUS. This growth is driven by increasing penetration of big data, increase in analytics services and availability of affordable big data solution and services to end users.



Big Data in Telecom Industry controls the 14% market share in terms of revenue in Global Big Data market. It is expected to become largest industry in terms of it's market share position in 2020.



Organizations worldwide are turning their attention to Big Data as a useful means to derive insights from the huge amount of data generated from various sources. Technologies such as NoSQL databases and MapReduce/Hadoop frameworks are at the core of the solutions heralding a paradigm shift.

This research found that high investment costs, lack of awareness and novelty have been the main threats for new entrants in the Big Data space. There are a few major players who control the entire value chain. However, many smaller players have mushroomed who provide consulting in the Analytics space. This research also found that most organizations misunderstand Big Data and it is important to educate the end users through face to face interactions.



Spanning over 103 pages and 75 exhibits, "Big Data in Global Telecom Market: Key Trends, Market Opportunities and Industry Forecast 2015-2020" report presents an in-depth assessment of the Big Data in Global Telecom market from 2015 till 2020.



The report has detailed company profiles including their position in big data market value chain, financial performance analysis, product and service wise business strategy, SWOT analysis and key customer details for 12 key players in Global market namely TEG Analytics, Heckyl Technologies, KloudData Inc., Gramener, Germin8, VIS Networks Pvt. Ltd., Abzooba, Fintellix, Latentview, Indix, Analytic-Edge and Tookitaki.



Scope of Big Data in Global Telecom Market: Key Trends, Market Opportunities and Industry Forecast 2015-2020 Report

- This report provides detailed information about Big Data in Global Telecom market including future forecasts.

- This report identifies the need for focusing on Big Data in Telecom market.

- This report provides detailed information on growth forecasts for Big Data in Global Telecom market up to 2020.

- The report identifies the growth drivers and inhibitors for Global Big Data market.

- This study also identifies various parts of Big Data value chain.

- This report has detailed profiles 12 key players in Global Big Data market covering their business strategy, financial performance, future forecasts and SWOT analysis.

- This report covers the competitive landscape in Big Data in Global Telecom market.

- This report provides Porter's Five Forces analysis for Big Data in Global Telecom market.

- This report provides SWOT (strengths, weakness, opportunities and threats) analysis for Big Data in Global Telecom market.

- This report also provides strategic recommendations for end users, Big Data service providers and investors.

Read the full report: http://www.reportlinker.com/p03812892-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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NEW YORK, June 9, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Growing concerns about spread of infectious diseases through donated blood has surged the demand for blood and blood products. Blood collection tube is a disinfected glass or plastic tube with a closure that is evacuated to create a vacuum inside the tube enabling the draw of a predetermined volume of liquid. The tubes are most commonly used to collect blood samples, but can also be used as urine collection tubes and as serum separator tubes. The research report on the blood collection tubes market provides detailed analysis of the North American market and helps in understanding the driving forces responsible for the growth of these tubes. With the increase in aging population and prevalence of diseases, there is an increase in the blood testing in the developed regions such as North America. Moreover, increasing government initiatives and rise in the number of surgical procedures in North America are the factors driving the demand for blood collection tubes. Demand for blood is continuously rising with patients undergoing advanced surgeries that require blood transfusions. In order to support patients, countries are expanding their healthcare coverage so that maximum number of people can avail of required treatment. While there are opportunities in the market for developing cell therapies, the cost of blood handling equipment is a major disadvantage.



The North America blood collection tubes market is segmented by tube type and by geography. The market by tube type includes serum separating tubes, plasma separating tubes, EDTA tubes, heparin tubes, rapid serum tubes and other tubes. The serum separating tubes account for considerable share of the market followed by EDTA tubes and others. Geographically, the market has been studied and estimated for North America region including the U.S. and Canada. The serum separating tubes segment dominated the market due to higher number of serum samples collected and used for various diagnostic applications. However, the rapid serum tubes market is expected to grow at a higher rate due to advanced technology and increase in work efficiency offered by the product.



The market overview section of the report demonstrates major market dynamics such as drivers, restraints, and opportunities that influence the current and future status of the industry. The market overview section includes market attractiveness analysis, by geography, to provide a thorough analysis of the overall competitive scenario in North America blood collection tubes market. This section of the report also includes the qualitative and quantitative analysis of the competitive landscape. The market has a bright outlook for implementing new blood collection techniques, screening tests and implementation of automation in the process of collection of blood. These factors are expected to create a significant demand for blood collection tubes across the globe. However, stringent regulatory guidelines and healthcare policies also influence the growth of the market. Manufacturers are coming up with new, improved and safe technologies for blood collection. Moreover, developed markets such as North America are expected to grow due to increased level of awareness, government support and advancements in blood collection technologies.



Market share analysis is also provided in the market overview section of the report for 2014 in terms of value (%). The report also provides important recommendations for market players and new entrants. These recommendations would enable existing market players to expand their market shares and help new companies to establish their presence in the blood collection tubes market across North America. The report concludes with the company profiles section, which includes key information about major players in the market such as financial overview, business strategies, and recent developments.



Major players in this market are Becton, Dickinson & Company (U.S.), Greiner Group AG (Austria), Sarstedt AG & Co. (Germany), QIAGEN N.V. (Germany), Terumo Corporation (Japan) and FL Medical srl (Italy).



The North America Blood Collection Tubes market has been segmented as follows:



North America Blood Collection Tubes Market, by Tube Type

Plasma Separation Tube

Heparin Tubes

Serum Separating Tubes

EDTA Tubes

Rapid Serum Tubes

Others

North America Blood Collection Tubes Market, by Geography

U.S.

Canada

Read the full report: http://www.reportlinker.com/p03661970-summary/view-report.html



About Reportlinker

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ANDORRA LA VELLA, Andorra, June 10, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- The Cierco family, the majority shareholders of Banca Privada d'Andorra (BPA), have filed suit against the Andorran Government and the Andorran National Institute of Finance (INAF) for the damages caused to BPA as a result of the reckless negligent and arbitrary actions of the bank's administration after it was illegally seized by the Andorran authorities on March 10, 2015.

The 125 page lawsuit, which was filed this week in Andorra's Administrative Court, states, "the repeated breach of the duties and obligations of the Andorran government and INAF, which took place before and after the issuance of the FinCEN notice on March 10, 2015, constitute a failure of the Andorran Government to meet its constitutional duty."

Based on two independent valuations that are included in the complaint, the Ciercos are seeking 364.6 million in damages, which is representative of their 75.5% stake in the bank. The Ciercos claim the damage the Andorran authorities inflicted on BPA is approximately the same value as Andorra's annual GDP. Despite numerous warning and requests to avoid or mitigate these destructive actions, the mismanagement by the Andorran authorities has caused damage equivalent to the entire annual efforts of the Andorran economy. This is public incompetence of grave consequence.

"Fifteen months ago BPA was a healthy, compliant and robust business with a great opportunity for growth. The bank is now destroyed and the Cierco family was never afforded the right to defend itself," said Eric Lewis, the Ciercos' Lead Global Coordinator. "Both the U.S. and Andorran governments have acted exclusively behind closed doors without any transparency whatsoever."

In the aftermath of the U.S. Treasury's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network's (FinCEN) March 2015 Notice of Finding and Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, the Andorran authorities had the opportunity to take constructive steps consistent with preserving the value of the bank, the jobs of Andorran citizens and the safety and soundness of the Andorran economy. Instead, the Andorran government chose to stonewall in the shadows, leading to this disastrous result for which it must be held accountable.



Anton Smith, the Economic Attache at the US Embassy to Spain stated in May 2015 that the U.S. government was forced to drop the "hammer" on BPA because of a lack of cooperation from Andorran authorities. The Ciercos' complaint outlines Andorra's inadequate response to U.S. requests in 2014 regarding money laundering precautions that served as a catalyst for FinCEN's actions against BPA.

FinCEN's action against BPA relied primarily on three cases that BPA self-reported to INAF in 2014. It is still unclear whether INAF shared this information with FinCEN. The disproportionate and arbitrary intervention of the Prime Minister on March 10, 2015 generated alarm and caused other financial authorities to act against BPA, including the Spanish authorities with Banco Madrid, thus inflicting more damage to the value of BPA.

The Ciercos' complaint amends their complaint filed on October 14, 2015 incorporating new facts as a result of the evolution of this case. The complaint includes two separate economic reports that value the BPA Group between 482.8 million and 496.4 million euros and asserts damages at 364.6 million euros, which is equivalent to the Ciercos' 75.5% stake in the bank.

In the claim, the Ciercos reject the conclusions of INAF that found BPA was no longer a viable institution. The Ciercos further assert that this entire situation has been handled without any respect for the rule of law and the Ciercos' due process rights.

SOURCE Ramon and Higini Cierco
The Vagelos Education Center, designed by the New York-based interdisciplinary design studio Diller Scofidio + Renfro in collaboration with Gensler as executive architect, is a 100,000 square-foot, 14-story glass tower that incorporates technologically advanced classrooms, collaboration spaces, and a modern simulation center to reflect how medicine is taught, learned, and practiced in the 21st century. The design seeks to reshape the look and feel of the Medical Center, and also create spaces that facilitate the development of skills essential for modern medical practice.

Construction began in September 2013, with an initial lead gift from P. Roy Vagelos, MD, a distinguished alumnus of Columbia's College of Physicians and Surgeons (P&S), and his wife, Diana Vagelos, an alumna of Barnard College and the Vice Chair of the Trustees of Barnard College. The Vagelos Education Center was funded through the generosity of many committed friends, faculty and alumni donors.

"We are training the doctors who will deliver medical care, the scientists who will perform groundbreaking scientific research, and the teachers who will help train the future generation of physicians and scientists. It is important that their educational facilities are as exciting as medical science is today," said Dr. Vagelos.

"We are so grateful for Roy and Diana's dedication to Columbia, not only through their own generous gift for this important new education building, but also the inspiration they provide to others," said Columbia President Lee C. Bollinger. "They are joined in this enduring commitment by Philip and Cheryl Milstein who have long supported so many parts of the university, from Morningside Heights to the Medical Center, and Mary Jaharis and the late Michael Jaharis and their family, for their long-established engagement with the Medical Center and this project. Because of their collective efforts we are adding another of several new architectural jewels on our campuses."

In addition to the new Vagelos Education Center, initiatives to revitalize the campus include adding green space, creating a new gateway to the medical school, consolidating student services, renovating several existing buildings, and constructing new spaces, including the new home for the Columbia School of Nursing. The Vagelos Center will help define the northern edge of the campus and provide a bridge to the surrounding Washington Heights community.

"Our new education building will ensure that Columbia continues to train superior doctors and researchers, educated in the latest techniques, as medicine continues to evolve rapidly throughout the 21st century," said Lee Goldman, MD, Executive Vice President and Dean of the Faculties of Health Sciences and Medicine at Columbia University. "The building also will allow us to centralize key activities in a state-of-the-art facility that reflects our commitment to providing world-class instruction and a superb learning environment for students."

About the Design of the Roy and Diana Vagelos Education Center

"Space matters for structured and informal learning," said Elizabeth Diller, founding partner at Diller Scofidio + Renfro. "To support Columbia's progressive medical education program, we designed a building that will nurture collaboration. Its defining feature is the Study Cascade--a 14-story network of vertically linked spaces in a variety of sizes, both focused and social, private and communal, indoors and out."

The Roy and Diana Vagelos Education Center is a 14-story glass, concrete, and steel structure defined by the "Study Cascade"a network of social and study spaces distributed along an exposed, interconnected vertical staircase that extends the height of the buildingand encompasses 100,000 square feet of state-of-the-art medical and scientific facilities. The alcove interiors of the Study Cascade, designed to be conducive to collaborative, team-based learning and teaching, open onto south-facing outdoor spaces and terraces. Other key elements of the design include:

Ground floor lobby and cafe , which adjoin a "study bar" with views of the Palisades

, which adjoin a "study bar" with views of the Palisades Student Commons , which features a cafe, computer work area and computer labs

, which features a cafe, computer work area and computer labs Advanced clinical simulation center , a specialized space for mock examination rooms, clinics and operating rooms

, a specialized space for mock examination rooms, clinics and operating rooms Multi-purpose auditorium , a 275-seat flexible space used for campus-wide events such as lectures, screenings and concerts

, a 275-seat flexible space used for campus-wide events such as lectures, screenings and concerts "Academic Neighborhoods ," groups of classrooms that can be configured according to need by operable partitions, drop down screens and large-scale multi-user touch screens, suspended ceilings, and distributed power and data at the floor

," groups of classrooms that can be configured according to need by operable partitions, drop down screens and large-scale multi-user touch screens, suspended ceilings, and distributed power and data at the floor South and West Courts , outdoor spaces featuring local plant species

, outdoor spaces featuring local plant species Anatomy Quad, a flexible learning space with integrated screens and task lighting

"The Vagelos Education Center started with a clear vision as a place of excellence for higher learning that would also act as a much needed social center," said Maddy Burke-Vigeland AIA, Principal at Gensler. Because of everyone's deep involvement, it has transformed into something that exceeds even those high expectations: a vibrant new hub for Columbia's Medical Center Campus."

DS+R's design takes advantage of an incredible view of the Hudson River and the Palisades. The building also integrates a range of sustainable featuresincluding locally sourced materials, green roof technologies, and an innovative mechanical system that minimizes energy and water useand the facade features ceramic "frit" patterns that are baked onto the exterior glass to diffuse sunlight. All new construction and renovation projectsincluding the Vagelos Education Centerwork toward the goal of minimizing CUMC's carbon footprint and reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 30% by 2025.

For more information about the building, visit The Roy and Diana Vagelos Education Center.

For more images of the building, please visit: http://newsroom.cumc.columbia.edu/blog/2016/06/10/columbia-university-medical-center-dedicates-roy-diana-vagelos-education-center-2/

About Columbia University Medical Center

Columbia University Medical Center provides international leadership in basic, preclinical, and clinical research; medical and health sciences education; and patient care. The medical center trains future leaders and includes the dedicated work of many physicians, scientists, public health professionals, dentists, and nurses at the College of Physicians and Surgeons, the Mailman School of Public Health, the College of Dental Medicine, the School of Nursing, the biomedical departments of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, and allied research centers and institutions. Columbia University Medical Center is home to the largest medical research enterprise in New York City and State and one of the largest faculty medical practices in the Northeast. For more information, visit cumc.columbia.edu or columbiadoctors.org.

About Diller Scofidio + Renfro

Diller Scofidio + Renfro is an interdisciplinary design studio that integrates architecture, the visual arts, and the performing arts. The New York City-based studio established its identity through independent, theoretical, and self-generated projects, and has realized over 60 art/architecture projects around the world including the High Line and the redevelopment of Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, both in New York City; The Broad Museum in Los Angeles; and curatorial works and installations exhibited at leading cultural institutions. Founding partners Diller and Scofidio are recipients of the MacArthur Foundation's "genius" award, the first given in the field of architecture.

About Gensler

Gensler is a global architecture, design, and planning firm with 46 locations and more than 5,000 professionals networked across Asia, Europe, Australia, the Middle East and the Americas. Founded in 1965, the firm serves more than 3,500 active clients in virtually every industry. Gensler designers strive to make the places people live, work and play more inspiring, more resilient, and more impactful. For more information, visit our website or blog, follow us on Instagram and Twitter or like us on Facebook.

Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160610/378052

SOURCE Columbia University Medical Center

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LAKE CHARLES, La., June 9, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Cotton Logistics celebrated a groundbreaking ceremony with the community at its OneLodge North Lake development located at 516 Prater Road, at the intersection of Old Spanish Trail and Prater Road, Sulphur, LA 70669. Special guests in attendance included elected officials, members of the Chamber of Commerce and representatives from the McNeese State University Foundation, who accepted a donation from the Cotton Foundation in honor of David Conner and his many contributions to the Southwest Louisiana area and McNeese State University.

The OneLodge North Lake project represents a unique housing solution and is a culmination of two years of planning to create a facility which will serve as an anchor for temporary workforces. A study completed in 2015 commissioned by SWLA Economic Development Alliance and administered by CSRS, predicted the need for 20,000 temporary workers to support local industrial expansion projects. Recognizing the need to address the significant shortage of lodging for these workers migrating into the region, Cotton Logistics established a task force to design a campus that would promote a positive community atmosphere within close proximity to the industrial sites.

Cotton Logistics is an experienced and trusted developer for lodge communities in the energy sector. Given their extensive history in creating, developing and managing multiple campuses in the United States, Cotton Logistics was able to custom design and tailor fit the OneLodge North Lake campus for the Southwest Louisiana region. Designed with an overall bed count of 2,500 upon completion, construction of OneLodge North Lake will begin immediately and Phase 1 is predicted to be open for occupancy by Fall 2016.

This top quality development is centered on social responsibility and safety for the community and its patrons. OneLodge North Lake will be an all-inclusive type campus, to include dining and recreational facilities. The experienced staff of Cotton Logistics will provide daily housekeeping, grounds and facility maintenance and overall management of day-to-day operations. Amenities onsite will include a fitness center, business center, billiards, lounge areas, laundry facilities, cable and wireless internet, allowing guests a variety of options to recharge at the end of a long work shift. To complete the experience, guests of the lodge will receive three meals per day, including box lunches, prepared by quality chefs of Cotton Culinary, Inc, an individually operated food service company affiliated with Cotton Logistics.

Cotton Logistics' foremost priority is the safety and security of our guests and staff, which is evident in the planning, construction and daily operation of each OneLodge campus. OneLodge North Lake will feature perimeter fencing, lighted parking, and a gated entrance. A credentialed safety manager and 24-hour onsite security team will work to ensure the well-being of all patrons on property. Further, the lodge is strategically positioned within close proximity to multiple industrial sites, reducing the drive time for our clients' workforces in the area.

About Cotton Logistics

Cotton Logistics provides worldwide operational support and infrastructure for the shortages of workforce housing, catering and other resources associated with a catastrophic event, a large industrial or development project, and for the complex and ever-changing work environments of the energy and petrochemical industry. Backed by the expansive capabilities of the Cotton Holdings, Inc. family of companies, the Cotton Logistics team can deliver under the most challenging of scenarios. Whether the task involves a remote geographic region, extreme climate, stringent timeline or other unique problem set, Cotton Logistics pairs subject matter expertise with innovation and flexibility to determine the best possible solution that satisfies each clients' specific requirements.

Contact: Kristy Armand

(337) 312-0972 or (337) 532-2571

[email protected]

SOURCE Cotton Logistics
FORT WORTH, Texas, June 10, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Crestline Investors, Inc., a credit focused institutional alternative asset manager, today announced an additional closing of its Crestline Opportunity Fund III strategy, bringing capital in the strategy to $720 million. The strategy invests primarily in small to mid-size corporate and asset-based credit-oriented opportunities, with a focus in North America.

The new fund is the ninth in Crestline's series of opportunistic funds, which started in 2005 and have attracted nearly $4 billion in client commitments to date.

The investment strategy seeks to take advantage of dislocations and inefficiencies in the primary and secondary credit markets in North America and Europe. The fund focuses on under-served or capital constrained asset classes, including SMEs, out-of-favor sectors, companies in transition and stressed or special situations. The fund provides sub-$50 million capital solutions in the form of direct lending, distressed credit, and structured finance, among others. Crestline Opportunity Fund III will follow the same direct investment strategy as its predecessor, the Crestline Opportunity Fund II strategy, which closed in March 2014 with $980 million in commitments.

"We seek attractive investment opportunities across credit and opportunistic strategies, and this latest close is a testament to our team's continued success in identifying quality transactions," said Douglas Bratton, Managing Partner & CIO of Crestline. "The firm is on track to close over $250 million in commitments to investments in these strategies during the first half of 2016."

"There are large numbers of opportunities in the North American and European markets with capital requirements that are not easily addressed by traditional capital providers. We help fill that gap with flexible capital solutions below $50 million," said Keith Williams, Partner at Crestline and Senior Portfolio Manager of Crestline Opportunity Fund III.

Crestline's Opportunistic and Credit Strategies group focuses on providing capital solutions to lower middle market and middle market companies, ranging from senior secured loans to junior capital in performing and distressed situations.

About Crestline Investors, Inc.

Crestline Investors, Inc., founded in 1997 and based in Fort Worth, Texas, is a credit focused institutional alternative investment management firm with approximately $9.7 billion of assets under management. Crestline specializes in credit, opportunistic investments, and hedge fund and beta solutions. In addition to its Fort Worth, Texas headquarters, the company maintains affiliate offices in New York City, Chicago, London, Toronto and Tokyo. For more information, please visit www.crestlineinvestors.com.

Credit & Opportunistic Investment Opportunities:

Jonathan Ben-Horin

817-339-7169

[email protected]

Media Contact:

Dmitriy Ioselevich

212-279-3115 ext. 243

[email protected]

SOURCE Crestline Investors, Inc.

Related Links

https://www.crestlineinvestors.com


"DogSmarts" will feature a mix of stories and interviews from leading scientists, psychologists, anthropologists and veterinarians on topics from canine memory and word learning to nutrition and love. The Panoply-produced podcast series is available on iTunes and Google Play and examines various dimensions of canine cognition. Episodes include:

" Memory Master " : Did you know that canines have incredible and complex memories? In this episode, Dr. Hare explores how memory plays a powerful role in understanding canine cognition with Dr. Evan MacLean , Assistant Professor at the University of Arizona's School of Anthropology.

" Did you know that canines have incredible and complex memories? In this episode, Dr. Hare explores how memory plays a powerful role in understanding canine cognition with Dr. , Assistant Professor at the School of Anthropology. " Internal Compass " : Some dogs seem to have a built-in GPS. Dr. Hare is joined by Dr. Alexandra Rosati , Assistant Professor of the Department of Human Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University and Dr. Evan MacLean to explain how dogs use the earth's magnetic fields to navigate.

" Some dogs seem to have a built-in GPS. Dr. Hare is joined by Dr. , Assistant Professor of the Department of Human Evolutionary Biology at and Dr. to explain how dogs use the earth's magnetic fields to navigate. " The BRIGHT MIND Effect " : Can canine nutrition support cognitive health? Dr. Hare speaks with Dr. Janet Jackson , VP of Nutrition Research at Nestle Purina PetCare, and Dr. Gary Pan , Principal Research Scientist at Nestle Purina PetCare, who helped develop the breakthrough innovation in the Purina Pro Plan BRIGHT MIND Adult and BRIGHT MIND Adult 7+ formulas- cognitive supporting nutrition for dogs. They are joined by Dr. Bill Milgram , a leader in canine cognitive aging. Together, they'll discuss their research and how essential nutrients can help support cognitive health as a dog ages.

" Can canine nutrition support cognitive health? Dr. Hare speaks with Dr. , VP of Nutrition Research at Nestle Purina PetCare, and Dr. , Principal Research Scientist at Nestle Purina PetCare, who helped develop the breakthrough innovation in the Purina Pro Plan BRIGHT MIND Adult and BRIGHT MIND Adult 7+ formulas- cognitive supporting nutrition for dogs. They are joined by Dr. , a leader in canine cognitive aging. Together, they'll discuss their research and how essential nutrients can help support cognitive health as a dog ages. " Get to Work " : Dogs have more health-focused jobs now than ever before. Hear from experts in the field of working and therapeutic dogs how these dogs use amazing cognitive abilities to help humans. This episode features interviews with Betsie Hughes (alongside her CCI service dog), Jamie Togal , a Guide Dog Mobility Instructor at Leader Dogs for the Blind, and Paul Mundell , CEO of Canine Companions for Independence.

" Dogs have more health-focused jobs now than ever before. Hear from experts in the field of working and therapeutic dogs how these dogs use amazing cognitive abilities to help humans. This episode features interviews with (alongside her CCI service dog), , a Guide Dog Mobility Instructor at Leader Dogs for the Blind, and , CEO of Canine Companions for Independence. "Empathy": Join Dr. Hare as he explains the physiological phenomenon behind the universal and undeniable bond between dogs and humans with guests Ragen McGowan , Senior Scientist in the Behavior Group at Nestle Research and Development Center, Sue Carter , Director of the Kinsey Institute at Indiana University in Bloomington , Ramiro Joly-Mascheroni , PhD Student at the Cognitive Neuroscience Research Unit at City University London and Dr. Evan MacLean .

Join Dr. Hare as he explains the physiological phenomenon behind the universal and undeniable bond between dogs and humans with guests , Senior Scientist in the Behavior Group at Nestle Research and Development Center, , Director of the Kinsey Institute at , , PhD Student at the Cognitive Neuroscience Research Unit at City University London and Dr. . "On Point": Do you ever wonder how much of what we say and do is actually understood by dogs? In this episode, Dr. Hare is joined by Dr. Josep Call , Professor in the Evolutionary Origins of Mind at the University of Saint Andrews , and Dr. Adam Miklosi , Head of the Department of Ethology at Eotvos University in Budapest, Hungary , to explore verbal and non-verbal communication between humans and dogs.

"The scientific community has made huge strides in our understanding of the rich mental lives of dogs, and with this series, we aim to share those fascinating  and sometimes surprising  learnings with dog- and science-lovers," said Hare. "Each episode is packed with stories and interviews with world-renowned experts to explain the intriguing and expansive world of canine cognition."

"Purina Pro Plan BRIGHT MIND is proud to be a part of the 'DogSmarts' podcast series to help empower dog owners with the latest research and insights about canine cognition," said Robert Miller, Pro Plan Brand Director at Purina. "This effort is a part of our ongoing commitment to strengthen the bond between dogs and their owners and help keep dogs' bodies and minds healthy, longer."

The podcast is part of an ongoing partnership between Purina Pro Plan, Dr. Brian Hare and Dognition, which offers fun, science-based games that reveal the unique way each dog sees the world. The partnership pairs the breakthrough innovation in Purina Pro Plan BRIGHT MIND formulas, which provide brain-supporting nutrition for cognitive health, with the Dognition cognitive assessment to help dog owners find the genius in their dog.

Customers that purchase Purina Pro Plan BRIGHT MIND Adult or Adult 7+ dry dog food can get a FREE Dognition Assessment  a $19 value*. To learn more visit www.dognition.com/BrightMind.

To listen to the podcast, visit iTunes, Google Play or http://www.panoply.fm/shows.

For more information on Purina Pro Plan, visit www.proplan.com.

*Offer valid through 12/31/2016 or while supplies last. Participation in the promotion is only open to legal residents of the 50 United States and the District of Columbia, who are 18 years of age or older. Limit of one (1) $19 Dognition Digital Reward per qualifying purchase during the promotion dates. Full Terms and Conditions available here.

About Purina Pro Plan:

Purina Pro Plan is the food of choice for the past 10 Westminster Best in Show winners.** Our goal is to give your dog the nutrition to be his absolute best, helping him to be energetic and resilient, and maintain an ideal body condition, healthy skin and a stunning coat. Because being the best he can be means something different for every dog, our wide range of dry and wet foods, snacks and supplement bars, sold exclusively at pet specialty stores, can be found in five specialized categories formulated for a dog's unique needs. For more information, visit www.proplan.com or follow @ProPlan on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Vine or Google+. The brand is manufactured by Nestle Purina PetCare, which promotes responsible pet care, humane education, community involvement and the positive bond between people and their pets. A premiere global manufacturer of pet products, Nestle Purina PetCare is part of Swiss-based Nestle S.A., a global leader in nutrition, health and wellness.

**Handlers or owners of these champions may have received Pro Plan Dog Food as Purina ambassadors.

About Panoply:

Panoply, launched in 2015, is an innovative, full-service podcast network for premier media brands, authors, personalities and organizations. As the audio arm of The Slate Group, Panoply provides production, audience development, sales, and technology services for its expanding number of partners. With the launch of its content management system, Megaphone, in January 2016, Panoply became a full-service podcasting platform, making it possible for a wider range of new and existing podcasters to partner with the network. To learn more about Panoply's new technology or to submit your podcast for consideration, please visit: http://announcements.panoply.fm/. To find out more about current Panoply programs or to subscribe to the network, please visit http://www.panoply.fm/ or search Panoply on iTunes.

Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160609/377802

SOURCE Purina Pro Plan

Related Links

https://www.proplan.com


ST. PETERSBURG, Fla., June 10, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Duke Energy has selected five Florida properties for participation in this year's Site Readiness Program to prepare them for business and industrial development.

The company's award-winning endeavor identifies high-quality industrial sites in its service areas then collaborates with county leaders and local economic development professionals to develop a strategy for providing water, sewer, natural gas and electricity to the parcels and help diversify Florida's economy.

The locations include:

The BKV Technology Center is located at the Brooksville Tampa Bay Airport and is owned by Hernando County . It features two active air traffic-controlled runways (7,000 and 5,000 feet) and a CSX branch line connecting the 2,400-acre technology center. The Site Readiness Program evaluated a 285-acre parcel adjacent to existing commercial and industrial tenants with the ability to accommodate buildings of nearly 800,000 square feet.

"The Duke Energy Site Readiness Program has provided Hernando County the opportunity to highlight and pre-qualify a large parcel at the BKV Technology Center, ensuring we are poised to act quickly upon any inquiries for future development. We truly appreciate this partnership and their commitment to economic development," said Len Sossoman, Hernando County administrator and director of Hernando County Office of Business Development.

The Sunny Oaks Technology Campus in Marion County is a 456-acre business park zoned for light industrial users. It is located on the southeast corner of Highway 318 and I-75, with approximately 1.5 miles of I-75 frontage. It is centrally located between Ocala and Gainesville and is approximately 15 minutes from the University of Florida .

"The Duke Energy Site Readiness Program helped our community identify and further advance the development of the 456-acre Sunny Oaks site," said Brett Barnes, director of business attraction for the Ocala/Marion County Chamber & Economic Partnership. "We now have extensive feedback from an internationally recognized site selection firm in McCallum Sweeney (MSC). With the knowledge gained, we are in a better position to continue to develop the site for future growth. We greatly appreciate this incredible opportunity Duke Energy presented to us. It was a pleasure working with them and the MSC team."

Central Florida Business Park in Osceola County is a 217-acre site strategically located just south of U.S. Highway 17-92 on Ham Brown Road and is equidistant from the Port of Tampa and Port Canaveral. The property is zoned for industrial use and is located just 10 miles from the new $200 million Florida Advanced Manufacturing Research Center, which is the first industry-led smart-sensor research facility in the nation.

"Participating in Duke Energy's Site Readiness Program was a tremendous asset for us," said Bill Martin, executive director of the Greater Osceola Partnership for Economic Prosperity. "Duke's program is crucial to the development of 'shovel ready' sites to help us meet our goal of balanced growth, and having solid information on available sites is the best way to stay in the competition for new business and industry."

The Airco Aviation Business Center is located in Pinellas County , adjacent to the St. Pete-Clearwater International Airport with more than 130 acres of property designated for aviation and light manufacturing uses. The site is strategically located less than two miles off of I-275 and is in the heart of the Tampa Bay region.

"This is a remarkable opportunity in Pinellas County for an expanding business seeking direct airside access to a growing airport and major roadways," said Mike Meidel, director of Pinellas County Economic Development. "With further analysis and the information gained through the Site Readiness Program, we will be able to better highlight the advantages of this location. This primary Gateway/Mid-County employment center is home to over 2,800 businesses, including Raymond James, Lockheed Martin, Jabil and Home Shopping Network. It is served by a regional workforce of nearly 2 million professionals."

The Smyder Property includes 94 acres in the City of Alachua within the Alachua County / Greater Gainesville region. The property is strategically located in close proximity to several key regional assets, including the Sid Martin Biotechnology Incubator, which has been ranked among the nation's top three biotechnology incubators by University Business Incubators Global since 2013. Also nearby are Progress Park, a biotech park with more than 30 companies; a logistics hub for major distribution centers; the University of Florida , a preeminent state university; and Santa Fe College , the nation's No. 1 community college as ranked by the Aspen Institute. Additionally, the Smyder Property is ideally located near several key transportation corridors including U.S. Highway 441 and I-75, as well as the Gainesville Regional Airport.

"We're excited about the opportunity to work with Duke Energy through its Site Readiness initiative to increase competitiveness in Florida and the Greater Gainesville region," said Susan Davenport, president/CEO of the Gainesville Area Chamber of Commerce. "We look forward to continued efforts to advance the chamber's mission to facilitate economic prosperity, business growth and community progress."

After each evaluation is completed, a site flier highlighting the property attributes is generated and shared with Duke Energy's business development team who help strategically market the sites nationwide to companies looking to expand or relocate their operations.

Coreslab Structures is an example of a Site Readiness economic development win for the state. The company's announcement in late 2015 included a $10 million investment and 55 new jobs. The city of Leesburg and Lake County made the development of the 470-acre park a top priority, and through their partnership with Duke Energy, the community was able to systematically prepare the site for the competitive consideration of expanding businesses. This site was the first in Florida to be evaluated through the Duke Energy Site Readiness Program.

"If you have ever wondered why a power provider might focus on site development, the answer becomes evident in the benefits this approach brings," said Marc Hoenstine, Duke Energy Florida's director of economic development. "Two of the top factors determining a community's success in attracting new business are having the right talent or labor force and having a site or building that meets a company's needs.

"Our CareerSource and educational partners are meeting the talent needs. Duke Energy is addressing the need for ready industrial sites in Florida. In the end, our efforts result in new jobs, new capital investment and a diversified industry base in the communities we serve," he said.

Duke Energy works with McCallum Sweeney Consulting, a nationally-known consulting firm in Greenville, S.C., to conduct site evaluations. McCallum Sweeney has been instrumental in locating many high-profile headquarters and industrial relocations and expansions throughout Florida and the U.S. In addition, Heidt Design, a Tampa, Fla.-based engineering firm, conducts buildable area studies and generates conceptual drawings to support each site evaluation.

Duke Energy's economic development efforts are perennially recognized by Site Selection magazine in the publication's annual list of "Top Utilities in Economic Development."

In 2015, Duke Energy helped to recruit more than $285 million in capital investment and more than 1,870 jobs to Florida. By the end of 2016, the Duke economic development team will have evaluated 12 properties throughout its Florida service territory representing three years' worth of site evaluations since the Florida program began in 2013.

So what's the secret to a winning record when it comes to growing the economy?

"Economic development is a team sport," said Alex Glenn, Duke Energy Florida state president. "We partner with our local economic development organizations, real estate and development community, counties and cities and the many other groups and companies influencing the economic development process. We are focused on supporting the cultivation and attraction of high-level, high-wage jobs and capital investment in the areas we serve, and our smart grid will provide clean and reliable energy service to help those companies continue to grow in our state."

For more information about Duke Energy's economic development programs, visit www.duke-energy.com/economic

Duke Energy Florida

Duke Energy Florida owns coal-fired and natural gas generation providing about 9,100 megawatts of owned electric capacity to approximately 1.7 million customers in a 13,000-square-mile service area.

With its Florida regional headquarters located in St. Petersburg, Fla., Duke Energy is one of the largest electric power holding companies in the United States. Its regulated utility operations serve approximately 7.4 million electric customers located in six states in the Southeast and Midwest, representing a population of approximately 24 million people. Its Commercial Portfolio and International business segments own and operate diverse power generation assets in North America and Latin America, including a growing portfolio of renewable energy assets in the United States.

Headquartered in Charlotte, N.C., Duke Energy is a Fortune 125 company traded on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol DUK. More information about the company is available at duke-energy.com.

The Duke Energy News Center serves as a multimedia resource for journalists and features news releases, helpful links, photos and videos. Hosted by Duke Energy, illumination is an online destination for stories about remarkable people, innovations, and community and environmental topics. It also offers glimpses into the past and insights into the future of energy.

Follow Duke Energy on Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram and Facebook.

Contact: Ana Gibbs

Office: 727.820.4722

24-Hour: 800.559.3853

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20130322/CL81938LOGO

SOURCE Duke Energy

Related Links

http://www.duke-energy.com


LONDON, June 10, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

Celyad can now move to the highest planned dose of 3x107 cells in the important NKR-2 Phase II CAR trial. If the next 30m cell dose is also safe (and the MTD) it will lead to two separate six patient open label studies in Acute Myeloid Leukemia and Multiple Myeloma. Further data is possible in late June. Efficacy indications in either of these could enable a series of solid tumor exploratory studies. The advantage of the NKR-T immuno-oncology approach is that it is easily transferred to multiple cancer types. FY15 accounts were as expected with year-end cash of $122m.

(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20130417/608168 )



The core value remains C-Cure at 45% probability of success for CHART-1, and 40% for CHART-2. The probability for CAR in AML and MM remains at 17.5%, but could rise once the last safety hurdle is cleared. The indicative valuation assumes that C-Cure is partnered after Phase III in Europe with some upfront fees; C-Cure was always assumed to be partnered for US marketing. The value estimate remains at $947m ($98 per ADR). The FY15 financial results were as expected with cash of $122m. We have updated our 2016 forecast based on the 2015 results. The 2017 forecast (Exhibit 1) does not assume any C-Cure royalties or deals and is preliminary pending the CHART-1 outcome.

Click here to view the full report.

All reports published by Edison are available to download free of charge from its website http://www.edisoninvestmentresearch.com.

About Edison: Edison is an international equity research firm with a team of over 110 analysts, investment and roadshow professionals and works with both large and smaller capitalised companies, blue chip institutional investors, wealth managers, private equity and corporate finance houses to support their capital markets activity. Edison provides services to more than 420 retained corporate and investor clients from offices in London, New York, Frankfurt, Sydney and Wellington. Edison is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority.

Edison is not an adviser or broker-dealer and does not provide investment advice. Edison's reports are not solicitations to buy or sell any securities.

Contact details: Learn more at http://www.edisongroup.com and connect with Edison on:

LinkedIn - http://www.linkedin.com/company/edison-investment-research

Twitter - http://www.twitter.com/Edison_Inv_Res

YouTube - http://www.youtube.com/edisonitv

Google+ https://plus.google.com/105425025202328783163/posts



For more information please contact:

Dr John Savin MBA, Edison Investment Research, +44-(0)20-3077-5735

[email protected]



SOURCE Edison Investment Research
NEW YORK, June 9, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Black Swan Analysis Epiomic Epidemiology Series Forecast Report on Brain & CNS Cancer in 19 Major Markets



Primary brain and central nervous system (CNS) tumours (ICD-10 codes C70-C72) are a group of primary tumours arising in the brain, meninges or central nervous system. As such, this is a cluster of conditions rather than one disease per se. There are considered to be over 120 types of brain tumour including glioblastoma multiforme (GBM), meningiomas and astrocytomas.



This report provides the current incident population for Brain & CNS Cancer across 19 Major Markets (USA, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, UK, Turkey, Russia, India, Canada, Australia, Japan, China, South Korea, Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, South Africa and Saudi Arabia) split by gender and 5-year age cohort. Along with the current incidence, the report also contains a disease overview of the risk factors, disease diagnosis and prognosis along with specific variations by geography and ethnicity.



Providing a value-added level of insight from the analysis team at Black Swan, several of the main symptoms and co-morbidities of Brain & CNS Cancer have been quantified and presented alongside the overall incidence figures. These sub-populations within the main disease are also included at a country level across the 10-year forecast snapshot.



Main symptoms and co-morbidities for Brain & CNS Cancer include:



 Genetic susceptibility

 Family history of brain & CNS cancers

 Ionizing radiation exposure

 Non-ionizing radiation exposure (e.g. mobile phones, electromagnetic fields)

 Growth hormone deficiencies

 Epilepsy & seizures



This report is built using data and information sourced from the proprietary Epiomic patient segmentation database. To generate accurate patient population estimates, the Epiomic database utilises a combination of several world class sources that deliver the most up to date information from patient registries, clinical trials and epidemiology studies. All of the sources used to generate the data and analysis have been identified in the report.



Reason to buy



 Able to quantify patient populations in global Brain & CNS Cancer's market to target the development of future products, pricing strategies and launch plans.

 Gain further insight into the incidence of the subdivided types of Brain & CNS Cancer and identify patient segments with high potential.

 Delivery of more accurate information for clinical trials in study sizing and realistic patient recruitment for various countries.

 Provide a level of understanding on the impact from specific co-morbid conditions on Brain and CNS Cancer's incident population.

 Identify sub-populations within Brain & CNS Cancer which require treatment.

 Gain an understanding of the specific markets that have the largest number of Brain & CNS Cancer patients.



Read the full report: http://www.reportlinker.com/p03876350-summary/view-report.html



About Reportlinker

ReportLinker is an award-winning market research solution. Reportlinker finds and organizes the latest industry data so you get all the market research you need - instantly, in one place.



http://www.reportlinker.com

__________________________

Contact Clare: [email protected]

US: (339)-368-6001

Intl: +1 339-368-6001

SOURCE Reportlinker

Related Links

http://www.reportlinker.com


NEW YORK, June 9, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Black Swan Analysis Epiomic Epidemiology Series Forecast Report on Dysmenorrhea in 21 Major Markets



Dysmenorrhoea is a common menstrual complaint, also known as painful menstruation. It is defined as severe, painful cramping in the lower abdomen beginning shortly before or at the onset of menses. Dysmenorrhoea is often accompanied by other symptoms such as sweating, headaches, nausea, vomiting and diarrhoea. Dysmenorrhea only affects women during their fertile years.



There are two main categorisations of Dysmenorrhoea: Primary (generally associated with females less than 20 years of age with no identifiable cause) and Secondary (usually caused by presence of another pelvic condition such as endometriosis). Please note that this report mainly focuses on primary Dysmenorrhoea.



This report provides the current 12-month prevalent population for Dysmenorrhea across 21 Major Markets (USA, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, UK, Poland, Portugal, Sweden, Croatia, Switzerland, Japan, China, India, Australia, Canada, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Brazil and Mexico) split by 5-year age cohort. Along with the current prevalence, the report also contains a disease overview of the risk factors, disease diagnosis and prognosis along with specific variations by geography and ethnicity.



Providing a value-added level of insight from the analysis team at Black Swan, several of the main symptoms and co-morbidities of Dysmenorrhea have been quantified and presented alongside the overall prevalence figures. These sub-populations within the main disease are also included at a country level across the 10-year forecast snapshot.



Risk factors or conditions associated with developing primary Dysmenorrhea include:



 BMI (low or high)

 Smoking (inconclusive)

 Family history of dysmenorrhea

 Early age at menarche

 Nulliparity

 Exercise level / fitness



This report is built using data and information sourced from the proprietary Epiomic patient segmentation database. To generate accurate patient population estimates, the Epiomic database utilises a combination of several world class sources that deliver the most up to date information from patient registries, clinical trials and epidemiology studies. All of the sources used to generate the data and analysis have been identified in the report.



Reason to buy



 Able to quantify patient populations in global Dysmenorrhea's market to target the development of future products, pricing strategies and launch plans.

 Gain further insight into the prevalence of the subdivided types of Dysmenorrhea and identify patient segments with high potential.

 Delivery of more accurate information for clinical trials in study sizing and realistic patient recruitment for various countries.

 Provide a level of understanding on the impact from specific co-morbid conditions on Dysmenorrhea's prevalent population.

 Identify sub-populations within Dysmenorrhea which require treatment.

 Gain an understanding of the specific markets that have the largest number of Dysmenorrhea patients.



Read the full report: http://www.reportlinker.com/p03876349-summary/view-report.html



About Reportlinker

ReportLinker is an award-winning market research solution. Reportlinker finds and organizes the latest industry data so you get all the market research you need - instantly, in one place.



http://www.reportlinker.com

__________________________

Contact Clare: [email protected]

US: (339)-368-6001

Intl: +1 339-368-6001

SOURCE Reportlinker

Related Links

http://www.reportlinker.com


LONDON, June 9, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- This strategic research service provides a detailed assessment of the key trends and technologies for industrial robots in the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) ecosystem. Some of the key focal areas include development of cobots and the new age workforce, advancements in robotic parts, and software and applications. The study provides an outlook of the key challenges, opportunities, and strategies for industrial robotic value chain participants and solution providers.



Key Findings



Evolution of Robots: Key Findings, Global, 2015

Robotic technology is merging with other complementary technologies such as force sensing (touch), speech recognition, machine vision, and advanced mechanics to provide added functionality and value.

Automated manufacturing functions comprise of about % of all functions; this is expected to increase as advancements in both robotic software and hardware enable robots to achieve more than they previously could.

Mobile robots, through autonomous self-guiding vehicles, are expected to grow at an annual rate of % by 2020.

While the capital costs for the robot accounts for % % of the total system cost, the development of cobots could potentially lower the overall costs. The sales of cobots account for % of the overall robot market; this is expected to increase tenfold by 2020.

The use of cloud and new robotic systems such as cobots are expected to ensure several partnerships and enable the development of new operating models such as robot-controlas-a-service.



Key Questions This Study Will Answer



 What is the current state of industrial robots and how is this poised to change with the advent of the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT)?

 What are some of the critical challenges facing the industry regarding awareness/adoption?

 What key technologies will influence developments in the industrial robotics market?

 How are robotics applications and technologies evolving in the IIoT ecosystem?

 How will robotic software transition in the IIoT ecosystem?

 What are the new business models and best practices related to robotics in the IIoT ecosystem?



Download the full report: https://www.reportbuyer.com/product/3846635/



About Reportbuyer

Reportbuyer is a leading industry intelligence solution that provides all market research reports from top publishers

http://www.reportbuyer.com



For more information:

Sarah Smith

Research Advisor at Reportbuyer.com

Email: [email protected]

Tel: +44 208 816 85 48

Website: www.reportbuyer.com

SOURCE ReportBuyer

Related Links

http://www.reportbuyer.com


DENVER, June 10, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- In response to a recent spike in cases of Zika virus in the U.S., Colorado Center for Reproductive Medicine (CCRM) and other fertility clinics are advising individuals who plan to become pregnant or are currently pregnant to take certain precautions to avoid transmission of the disease to their unborn children. Individuals that plan on traveling to areas currently affected by Zika virus and plan to conceive in the near future should consider egg and sperm freezing before traveling.

Zika virus is a mosquito-borne virus that can cause severe, neurologic or fatal conditions to a fetus if the woman is infected during pregnancy. Zika virus can be transmitted through blood, semen of infected men, placenta and amniotic fluid, as well as the breast milk of pregnant women. Recently, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) confirmed the link between Zika and microcephaly, along with other severe, fatal brain defects. The virus is also thought to potentially be associated with other neurologic conditions such as Guillain-Barre syndrome, a serious neurologic condition that leads to paralysis.

Local outbreaks are occurring in many countries, including parts of Africa, Central and South America, and in the Pacific Islands, so CCRM is encouraging couples trying to conceive to avoid travel to these areas of the world if possible. A list of countries with current Zika transmission is available on the CDC website.

"As far as we know, the only people living on the U.S. mainland currently at risk for Zika are those traveling to affected areas or those who have had sexual intercourse with someone who has recently been in that region," said Dr. Brian Levine, practice director for CCRM New York.

Dr. Levine recommends that all travelers should use insect repellents or oil of lemon eucalyptus and para-menthane-diol products, which provide longer-lasting protection.

Women and men who are trying to conceive should adhere to the CDC's following guidelines:

Women who have Zika disease symptoms should wait at least 8 weeks after symptoms appear, and men should wait 6 months, before attempting reproduction.

Men and women with possible exposure to, but not showing symptoms of, Zika should also wait 8 weeks.

These same timelines should be used for sexually-intimate couples using their own gametes in fertility treatments.

For donated reproductive tissue, FDA guidance should be followed. Currently, FDA rules a potential donor ineligible for 6 months following being diagnosed with, or having had a high probability of exposure to, the virus.

Testing for Zika virus is complicated, not universally available, and routine serologic testing is not currently recommended.

In areas of active Zika virus transmission, the use of contraceptive methods to prevent unintended pregnancy is essential.

Pregnant women's sex partners living in or returning from areas where local transmission of Zika virus occurs should wear condoms, or abstain from sex throughout the pregnancy.

Additionally, individuals who plan to freeze eggs or sperm prior to travel/exposure must wait the time frames of eight weeks post travel or, in symptomatic males, six months post travel before attempting pregnancy.

"Many of our patients have struggled to have children and are eager to start treatment right away  encouraging them to be patient is not easy. But if they have traveled to at-risk areas or have plans to, we are cautioning them against going through treatment until the proper waiting time has passed. Successful and healthy pregnancies are always our highest priority," says William Schoolcraft, M.D., medical director of CCRM.

CCRM

Founded in 1987 by Dr. William Schoolcraft, the Colorado Center for Reproductive Medicine (CCRM) is one of the nation's leading infertility treatment centers, providing a wide spectrum of infertility treatments ranging from basic infertility care to advanced in vitro fertilization (IVF) technology. CCRM has locations in Colorado, Atlanta, Houston, Minneapolis, New York, Orange County and Toronto, Canada. Dr. Schoolcraft and his colleagues achieve some of the highest pregnancy rates in the country. CCRM has been ranked "The #1 Fertility Center in the U.S. with the Greatest Chance of Success" by Child.com. To learn more, visit www.ccrmivf.com. Follow us on Facebook and Twitter.

Contacts:

Katie Trexler Kern, Evolution Communications Agency

303.941.4118 or [email protected]

Sarah Stavros, Colorado Center for Reproductive Medicine

303.761.0579 or [email protected]

SOURCE Colorado Center for Reproductive Medicine (CCRM)

Related Links

http://www.ccrmivf.com


In addition to the arrival of the reactor coolant pumps, construction progress continues across the site including the setting of CA03 and CA02 inside the Unit 3 nuclear island, which completes the placement of the "Big Six" modules for Unit 3, and the vertical completion of the Unit 4 cooling tower to a final height of 601 feet. The company has posted the latest images of progress at the site in the online photo gallery which includes elevated photos of the Unit 3 and 4 nuclear islands and an updated aerial of the construction site and a view inside the Module Assembly Building (MAB) where the Unit 4 CA01 module is under fabrication.

The Vogtle project is the state's largest job-producing construction project with more than 5,000 construction workers onsite and 800 permanent jobs once the new units begin operation. Once all four units are online, Plant Vogtle is expected to generate more electricity than any other U.S. nuclear facility, enough to power more than one million homes and businesses.

The projected overall peak rate impact of the Vogtle nuclear expansion continues to be significantly less than when the project was originally certified due to lower financing rates, other benefits the company has proactively pursued and the fuel savings of nuclear. The company projects that, even with the new costs and schedule forecast, the peak rate impact will be approximately 6 to 7 percent  which is nearly half of the original rate impact forecast. Of this, approximately 4.5 percent is already in rates. Once the new units come online, they are expected to put downward pressure on rates and deliver long-term savings for Georgia customers.

About Georgia Power

Georgia Power is the largest subsidiary of Southern Company (NYSE: SO), one of the nation's largest generators of electricity. Value, Reliability, Customer Service and Stewardship are the cornerstones of the company's promise to 2.5 million customers in all but four of Georgia's 159 counties. Committed to delivering clean, safe, reliable and affordable energy at rates below the national average, Georgia Power maintains a diverse, innovative generation mix that includes nuclear, 21st century coal and natural gas, as well as renewables such as solar, hydroelectric and wind. Georgia Power focuses on delivering world-class service to its customers every day and the company is consistently recognized by J.D. Power and Associates as an industry leader in customer satisfaction. For more information, visit www.GeorgiaPower.com and connect with the company on Facebook (Facebook.com/GeorgiaPower) and Twitter (Twitter.com/GeorgiaPower).

Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements

Certain information contained in this release is forward-looking information based on current expectations and plans that involve risks and uncertainties. Forward-looking information includes, among other things, statements concerning job creation, the expected impact on customer rates, and completion of construction of Plant Vogtle Units 3 and 4. Georgia Power cautions that there are certain factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from the forward-looking information that has been provided. The reader is cautioned not to put undue reliance on this forward-looking information, which is not a guarantee of future performance and is subject to a number of uncertainties and other factors, many of which are outside the control of Georgia Power; accordingly, there can be no assurance that such suggested results will be realized. The following factors, in addition to those discussed in Georgia Power's Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2015, and subsequent securities filings, could cause actual results to differ materially from management expectations as suggested by such forward-looking information: the impact of recent and future federal and state regulatory changes, as well as changes in application of existing laws and regulations; current and future litigation, regulatory investigations, proceedings, or inquiries; available sources and costs of fuels; the ability to control costs and avoid cost overruns during the development and construction of facilities, which includes the development and construction of generating facilities with designs that have not been finalized or previously constructed; state and federal rate regulations and the impact of pending and future rate cases and negotiations, including rate actions relating to fuel and other cost recovery mechanisms; the ability to construct facilities in accordance with the requirements of permits and licenses, to satisfy any environmental performance standards and the requirements of tax credits and other incentives, and to integrate facilities into the Southern Company system upon completion of construction; advances in technology; legal proceedings and regulatory approvals and actions related to Plant Vogtle Units 3 and 4, including Georgia Public Service Commission approvals and Nuclear Regulatory Commission actions; and the ability of counterparties of Georgia Power to make payments as and when due and to perform as required. Georgia Power expressly disclaims any obligation to update any forward-looking information.

Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160610/377993

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20050216/CLW066LOGO

SOURCE Georgia Power

Related Links

http://www.georgiapower.com


WASHINGTON, June 10, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Late Thursday afternoon, the First Lady of the Republic of Congo (ROC), Antoinette Sassou Nguesso, was served with a subpoena compelling her to appear for a deposition in the offices of White & Case. White & Case is the D.C.-based law firm representing Commisimpex in the long-running dispute between the company and the Republic of Congo. The First Lady was lawfully served in Washington, D.C., as a person within the jurisdiction of the U.S. courts. She is believed to possess information about the assets of the ROC (the judgment debtor in this case) and/or that may lead to disclosure of such information.

Service against the First Lady is part of Commisimpex's nearly 30 year effort to obtain satisfaction on its various final judgments under U.S. and international law. The subpoena can be made available in its entirety to journalists upon request. It requires the First Lady to produce records and appear at a deposition to disclose, the sources of her family's income and the location of their assets, as well as the location of their State's assets, which are known to be the subject of corrupt practices and transfers.

Commisimpex's legal counsel, Frank Vasquez, commented from Washington, D.C.: "Commisimpex has given the Republic of the Congo and President Sassou Nguesso every opportunity to resolve this matter and they have so far steadfastly refused to do so. Multiple courts in several countries have repeatedly ruled in our favor and against Congo. Our efforts to achieve justice and recompense in this case will not cease until this debt is paid."

Commisimpex undertook major engineering infrastructure contracts with the ROC Government in the 1980s for which it has never been paid. Mr. Mohsen Hojeij and Mr. John Anton Grosso are the British and American partners in Commisimpex respectively.

In 2015, two federal courts in Washington, D.C. finalized judgments against the Republic of the Congo, worth over $1 billion. Courts have now ruled in favor of Commisimpex in France, the UK, Belgium, Sweden and the U.S. Two arbitral tribunals formed under the auspices of International Court of Arbitration also ruled in favor of Commisimpex in 2000 and 2013.

The Congo has repeatedly attempted to file appeals against these losses to no avail. In February 2016, the Congo abandoned its U.S. legal strategy and fired its counsel, facing motion for sanctions for failing to comply with court orders. Commisimpex has moved for sanctions in the United States, and is proceeding with enforcement actions in a number of jurisdictions.

Commisimpex fully expects the First Lady to comply with the subpoena and thus to demonstrate respect for the rule of law in our courts.

About Commisimpex: Commisimpex was registered in the Republic of Congo on July 24, 1980 and at the Department of Trade in the Ministry of Commerce on 9 December 1982. Registration permitted the company to obtain a rating and to engage in contracts within the Republic of Congo. The majority shareholding in Commisimpex rests with British national, Mohsen Hojeij. A significant number of remaining shares are held by American investor, John Anton Grosso. During the 1980s the company was valued at $400 million (equipment and land), was the third largest private company in the Republic of Congo and in Central Africa and the largest private company outside the oil sector. At one point, the Company employed over 5,000 full-time workers and was the country's largest employer outside the oil and gas industry. Between 1983 and 1988 the company entered into contracts with the Government for public sector engineering infrastructure contracts (public works), including Etoumbi-Kunda, an extensive infrastructure and sanitation construction project in the capital. The company was, in less than one month's time, put through a fraudulent liquidation in 2012. Today, the company is still owed over 1 billion (Euros and US dollars) by the Government of the Republic of Congo.

U.S. Court Action: On 15 May 2013, the company launched a petition in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia to enforce the ICC's 2013 award of 222 million plus interest. On 30 September 2013, a default judgement was entered in favor of the company. The Republic of Congo government attempted to vacate the default judgement as void, pointing to breach of formal procedures of Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (FSIA) and lack of subject-matter jurisdiction of the court in the USA. On 6 July 2015, this motion was denied. The U.S. District Court acknowledged that Commisimpex followed all legal procedures in demanding its rights, while underscoring the fraudulent and corrupt nature of the Congolese judicial system and the illegal nature of Commisimpex's liquidation by Congolese officials. Specifically, Judge Leon noted that Congo purported to liquidate Commisimpex "under highly questionable and fraudulent proceedings" and went on to call the Congolese court system "well recognized to be corrupt and lack impartiality." Judge Leon further made it clear that the 2013 ICC award is now enforceable in the United States, as "there is no remaining issue that the Company is the real party in interest with standing to enforce the arbitral award."

On 30 July 2015, Commisimpex's 2000 ICC ruling was also domesticated and made enforceable in the U.S. In this ruling Judge Lamberth likewise found that the purported liquidation "was not the product of a full and fair trial, but instead has risen from unfair proceedings that were not likely to secure an impartial administration of justice." As a result of the domestication of both the 2000 and 2013 ICC Awards in the U.S., the company can now proceed (as it can in Europe) with efforts to satisfy both Awards.

Recent French Court Action: The 2000 ICC Award is final and binding, as a result of an Order form the Paris Court of Appeal on 23 May 2002, which rejected The Republic of Congo's motion to annul the 2000 Award.

The 2013 ICC Award is also final and binding as it was recognized by the Paris Tribunal of First Instance on 13 February 2013. The Republic of Congo's motion to set aside the award and vacate this order was denied, first by the Paris Court of Appeal on 14 October 2014, then by the Court of Cassation on 25 May 2016.

On 16 December 2015, the President of the Paris Tribunal of First Instance, Judge Kurtz, ruled that the purported Congolese liquidation was against French public policy and therefore would not be recognised in France, pointing to the rapid nature of the liquidation in the Congo, the irrational nature of the findings of the liquidation judgment and the close ties of the appointed liquidators with the Congolese government.

SOURCE Commisimpex